After the Tory Environment Secretary defended his government’s determination to starve poverty-stricken children during the school holidays – including Christmas – people in his Cornwall constituency have retaliated with a “Banksy”-style graffiti criticism.
The text reads:
“Georgie Porgie pudding and pie,
“Starved the kids and made them cry.
“#endchildfoodpoverty”
The artist even painted it onto a board that was then discovered attached to the front door of his constituency office:
Tories like Eustice thought members of the public have short memories and would forget that the decision to starve children at Christmas had been made by them.
Responses like this make the point clear:
They thought wrong.
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Perhaps they thought we would forget. If so, they thought wrong.
Conservative MPs who voted to starve children whose families have been plunged into poverty as a result of their selfish policies are being made to face the realities of their decisions, with scores of paper plates, empty apart from messages of condemnation, delivered to their constituency offices.
They aren’t likely to make a fuss about it, as they did about social media condemnation, for a simple reason: they can hide the evidence and pretend it hasn’t happened.
So This Site recommends that anybody laying out a plate protest at their Tory’s constituency office take photographs of it and put them on Facebook, Twitter and your favourite other social media.
That’s what people in Brecon and Radnorshire did when they launched a plate protest against local Tory MP Fay Jones, who voted to starve children in England even though those in her own constituency will receive meals over the holidays, courtesy of the Labour-run Welsh Government.
An initial set of plates was put out yesterday morning (October 29) and looked like this:
But when more people arrived to add to the protest later, all of this original set had disappeared – cleared away by Tories who were desperate to pretend there was nothing to see, it seems.
The explanatory information makes chilling reading:
“In a country that rates 8th in the world for military spending, cutting free school meals during a pandemic impoverishing working class children is totally unacceptable and shows the cruel and callous attitude of the current government towards its own citizens.
“This is a political party which is completely out of touch and has shown nothing but contempt for the electorate that trusted them with power in 2019.
“We will stand in solidarity as a community to oppose this form of state-inflicted cruelty against those who are most vulnerable in society.
“After 10 years of austerity we will not agree that normal people should be the ones to suffer, especially children. We demand this government reverses its decision to end free school meals.”
Plate protests are taking off across the country, as these news reports show:
Will you come and use a paper plate to have your say?
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Make no mistake – this is an expression of disbelief in Tory promises by the social media-using public.
Boris Johnson has refused to u-turn on his refusal to provide free school meals for children.
Some of you may consider that to be positive proof that a u-turn is coming, but while we wait, we should consider his words, that the government will “do everything in our power to make sure that no kid, no child goes hungry”.
The obvious thing to do would be to spend some money into the economy to ensure that they can enjoy a good nutritious meal – and the easiest way to do that is by funding free school meals!
Failing that, what else can the Tories do?
Some commenters on Twitter think they might offer advice on how to make cheap and easy meals – and have offered suggestions on the form this advice may take, using the hashtag #ToryFoodTips:
One gets one's gun, then it's into the 4×4, and off to the woods, where Mellors the loyal gamekeeper has the jolly old pheasants* all ready to bag for the pot.
We all know quail and grouse are a marvellous free British food staple, but did you know they also lay eggs? Ask your groundskeeper to set some aside. Delicious, and completely free!#ToryFoodTips
Foraged Chanterelles are nutritious and free! I have the au pair pick mine from the South Pasture, cook them on the Aga in a little truffle oil, and serve on home-made sourdough toast for a cheap and easy meal. Delicious with grouse.#ToryFoodTips
#ToryFoodTips A warming broth can be made by simply boiling leftover lobster, the dregs from last night's Moet and those truffles everybody forgets at the back of their cupboards.
If preparing food for a person on benefits, and it falls on the floor, and it's been less than 10 seconds, then leave it on the floor a bit longer, the hairs and dust will encourage them to get a second or third job to better themselves #ToryFoodTips
As a special treat buy a chicken with all the giblets still inside. Then throw the raw innards on the floor and let your kids fight over them. It's good exercise, builds character and adds a bit of fun to their meagre, miserable existence. #ToryFoodTips
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I raise this to point out the hypocrisy of Conservative MPs.
Last December, people in This Writer’s constituency – Brecon and Radnorshire, in Wales – voted Conservative Fay Jones into Parliament as their MP.
The Welsh government – run by the Labour Party – has already legislated to ensure that children who have been flung into poverty by UK-wide Tory policies and/or by the Covid-19 crisis will enjoy free school meals to ensure they do not grow hungry.
Last week, Jones was among the 322 MPs who voted to ensure that English children – afflicted in the same way by Tory policies – starve.
What utter hypocrisy.
The worst part of it is that people here will probably vote for her again, in the mistaken impression that she had something to do with the decision to provide free meals for children here in Wales.
I note that Ms Jones has been in Parliament for less than a year but has already incurred expenses claims totalling £25,717.57 – equivalent to the average wage in the UK – on top of her MP salary of around £82,000. She seems far more a waste of money than English children – the feeding of whom I would consider to be more an investment.
It is notable that she has also received a supporting donation from the bottled water company Radnor Hills, totalling £10,000.
Considering that fellow Tory MP Selaine Saxby has said she hopes firms providing food to starving English children should not seek government support, it seems appropriate that this firm (that would receive any such support from the Labour-run Welsh government, rather than Westminster) should be deprived of public support in return for backing Jones.
Don’t you agree?
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Brandon Lewis: this is an old image so the facts about his houses may be out of date.
If you think we’ve reached peak Tory cruelty, allow me to point out at the outset that we haven’t.
It may seem that way, with Boris Johnson and his government passing cash hand-over-fist to their Tory chums while ordering that children stricken with a poverty that they have created must starve, but believe me – it is possible for these soulless monsters to do much worse.
On the subject of soulless monsters, Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis made an appearance on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show today to make it clear that, no matter how much abuse they receive, Tory MPs have absolutely no intention of reversing their decision to deny free school meals to kids who need them over the half-term and Christmas holidays.
He claimed that the Tory government has already put huge amounts of money aside for this purpose but the claim does not correspond with reality; he was just plucking numbers from his rear end.
The Tory response to the charity from local businesses was to claim that these firms clearly do not need government support during the Covid crisis and should not apply for it; a clear indicator that they intend to punish anybody in a position to stop poor children from starving:
“We wanted those kids to starve. If you feed them, we will fuck you up.”
… but it is hard to see how “I am delighted our local businesses have bounced back so much after lockdown they are able to give away food for free, and very much hope they will not be seeking any further government support” can be interpreted any other way.
Ms Saxby was elected last December with a massive majority of 14,813 votes – that’s 14,813 more than her nearest rival, 26.6 per cent of the total. She took 56.5 per cent of the vote altogether.
This means the people of North Devon voted by an overall majority to support a Conservative who endorses policies that put children in poverty, and votes to starve them once they are there.
I know This Site has readers from that constituency who are sickened by their MP’s choices. Public voting habits being what they are, it will be up to these people to force their peers to see what they have supported – possibly by finding local examples of children who are going hungry as a result of this cruel Tory policy? – and make them face their responsibility for it.
Meanwhile the backlash against the Tories continues:
Davies is the MP for Grantham and Stamford. People living there: you know what to do.
If you have made a similar infographic – or have seen one – please send it in so I can publish it here.
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Rolling in it: Boris Johnson has received enormous amounts in donations related to his work as a member of Parliament. But now, as prime minister, he complains about having to pay for his own food and that of four of his six children, while denying free school meals to people earning less than £6 per hour.
Sour grapes from the UK’s prime minister?
In this case it seems likely.
Boris Johnson was one of the 322 Conservative MPs who voted against free school meals for children whose families have fallen below the poverty line, either because of 10 years of Conservative-fuelled wage depression or because the Covid-19 crisis is forcing them to live on a fraction of their normal income.
His choice to starve poverty-stricken children came only weeks after it was revealed that he is “complaining about money” because he is having to use his £150,402 prime ministerial salary to feed himself, his paramour and four of his six children. At least his accommodation is provided by the state, though!
Was his vote fuelled by resentment?
Well, it is a possible interpretation. It doesn’t present the prime minister in a very good light but, if people complain when you mention this to them, just remind them that they voted for him.
Of course, Johnson does receive a certain number of donations from pro-Tory sources. These seem to have dried up since he became prime minister but I note from the register of members’ financial interests that he has received two “gift hampers” worth a total of £1,100, that he registered in May.
Could the contents of those not have helped him out?
And the £14,672 he has made from his various books since the current Parliament began last year should also ease the burden a little, This Writer would have thought.
Come to think of it, some of the money donated to him in previous years might come in handy, considering the huge amounts he received.
For example, in 2019 he received from polling and market research company CTF Partners Ltd, £3,000 and an interest-free loan of £20,000 for office and staffing costs.
From JC Bamford Excavators Ltd, of Uttoxeter (Constituency: Burton and Uttoxeter; MP: Kate Griffiths (Con)): £64,000.
From “general secondary education” firm RTC Education 2 Ltd (Constituency: Harrow West; MP: Gareth Thomas (Lab)): £10,000.
From First Corporate Shipping Ltd (trading as The Bristol Port Company) (Constituency: Cities of London and Westminster; MP: Nickie Aiken (Con)): £25,000.
From real estate trader Countywide Developments plc (Constituency: Warwick and Leamington; MP: Matt Western (Lab)): £10,000.
From bookkeepers MET Trading Ltd (Constituency: Leeds North East; MP: Fabian Hamilton (Lab)): £5,000
From investment firm Killik & Co LLP (Constituency: Cities of London and Westminster; MP: Nickie Aiken (Con)): £10,000.
From Audley Ltd (for whom Companies House failed to provide the nature of the business) (Constituency: Cities of London and Westminster; MP: Nickie Aiken (Con)): £5,000.
From “business support services” firm Albion Agencies Ltd (Constituency: Cities of London and Westminster; MP: Nickie Aiken (Con)): £5,000.
From Dow Investments plc (Constituency: Edinburgh North and Leith; MP: Deidre Brock (SNP)): £10,000.
And from private donors: an eye-watering £633,900!
And a prime minister who has recently received this kind of wealth begrudges free school meals to children whose parents are living on £5.80 an hour.
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No square meals: vulnerable children will be forced to go hungry during the school holidays because the stingy Tory government wants them to starve.
Conservatives in Parliament have rejected a plea by footballer – and anti-poverty campaigner – Marcus Rashford for the government to fund meals for poor children during school holidays.
Despite some unease on the Tory benches, a motion on providing 1.4m disadvantaged children in England with £15-a-week food vouchers during holidays until Easter 2021 was voted down.
Conservatives were scathing in their criticism of Rashford, who personally experienced food poverty as a child:
Tory MP Brendan Clarke-Smith thinks feeding poor children during school holidays is “nationalising” them No it’s providing a safety net during a once a century pandemic If that’s nationalisation, then it’s the morally right thing to do
But this attitude is nonsense from a political party that has spent decades depriving working-class parents of the financial ability to feed their children.
The hypocrisy is even stronger during the year of Covid-19 when people are being forced to live on a fraction of their normal wages, or to claim Universal Credit and suffer a five-week delay in payments that pushes them into debt, meaning the amount they receive will never be enough.
I'm watching cruel Tories protesting that parents are responsible for feeding children when they've spent the last decade and more taking money away from parents in order to PREVENT them from being able to feed their children. Take responsibility, Tories! #PoliticsLive
Meanwhile, the Tory-funded “gravy train”, pumping money to their chums in business for Covid-19-related measures that don’t work, is chugging along merrily:
“While the provision of free school meals is closed, the gravy train is still open for business. £7,000 a day for consultants working on a test and trace system that doesn’t work"
But the most biting criticism came from Nigel Farage, the former UKIP and current Brexit Party leader, who said on Twitter that “not being seen to give poor kids lunch in the school holidays looks mean and is wrong”.
The comment went viral, and it isn’t hard to understand the reason:
If you're keeping score at home, the UK government has now gone to the right of Nigel Farage. https://t.co/MzT8qDTzP7
Oh dear, my government is now more far right than Nigel Farage. Thankfully, I don't think anyone has noticed. https://t.co/uWu2RgP5fw
— Boris Johnson #StayAlertControlTheVirus ᵖᵃʳᵒᵈʸ (@GetBrexit_Done) October 22, 2020
The strange forces on Twitter that spot anti-Tory tweets and try to mitigate them meant that the very first reply to Farage’s message came from one Helen Thomas, who contradicts herself in her own Twitter bio: “No personal messages, why are the lefties so vile?”
She had to change it from “Why are there so many rude selfish people on Twitter?” – possibly after it was pointed out to her that she is one such person. So we can see where she’s coming from.
Her response was that poor people should forage for food – and it has received short shrift, I’m happy to report:
When you are making Nigel Farage look like the compassionate one, it's time to evaluate your conscience.
She's changed it. These old tories don't understand that anyone with empathy disagrees with letting kids starve to death. They can't comprehend how that's not something we can get on board with pic.twitter.com/msb70tO6uJ
Lazy parents?! Food inexpensive?! What a morally bankrupt know-it-all Helen is. How devoid of empathy & humanity must you be to make Nigel Farage appear sensible.
I speak on behalf of hungry British children & 'lazy parents' when I say:
Yes indeed. How devoid of empathy & humanity must you be to make Nigel Farage appear sensible.
But that is exactly what many (although not all) Conservative MPs have done – following their boss Boris Johnson’s lead.
Including your MP, perhaps.
Postscript: Readers in England may wish to note that the devolved governments in Wales and Scotland have both provided funds to ensure that free school meals are available to children who need them:
We've guaranteed free school meals for every school holiday up to and including Easter 2021.
It's important families don't have the added pressure of worrying about food in these uncertain times.
Attended today’s Daily Briefing to announce £10 million for local councils to help fund free school meals.
The @scotgov investment will support around 156,000 children and young people – helping families who are facing increased financial pressure due to #COVID19pic.twitter.com/8bBKMVPn8Z
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Not the NHS: Boris Johnson privatised the Covid-19 test and trace system, believing it would be a great advert for privatisation. Instead, it has become a millstone around his neck – so he refers to it constantly as “NHS test and trace” in the hope that people will blame the nationalised health service that has nothing to do with it.
The Serco Test and Trace scandal gets worse and worse; it has just been revealed that some employees receive £7,360 per day to pretend to find people with Covid-19 and trace their contacts.
That’s the equivalent of £1.5 million a year. These are people from companies with strong connections to the Conservative government, that won their contracts via an emergency system which avoids the normal tendering process.
And it has already been established that most contact tracing personnel spend their time playing computer games because they are not being given work to do.
City AM says,
Sky, citing leaked documents, reported that the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has paid BCG around £10m. That was for a team of 40 consultants to work for four months on test and trace.
BCG’s “day rates” for public sector work – which determine the cost of its service – range from £2,400 to £7,360 for its most senior employees.
The report said BCG is giving the government a 10 to 15 per cent discount. Although this would still equate to day rates equivalent to around £1.5m a year.
BCG declined to comment.
Sky also said that 165 more consultants had been hired to work on test and trace. They include 84 from Deloitte, 31 from EY and 50 from KPMG.
So much for Boris Johnson’s claim that he was “levelling up” the UK. Tory friends are being paid millions in public money while those who desperately need it are being starved.
While ministerial salaries are being frozen, all MPs are getting a pay rise of £3,300 per year – equivalent to around two-thirds of the current annual rate of Universal Credit for an adult aged over 25.
The lowest MP salary will be £85,291 per year. Compare that with nurses on £24,000. Who does the more important job?
What about care workers, who receive an excruciatingly-low £18,553 per year. Who does the more important job?
The Durham-based family of Boris Johnson’s adviser Dominic Cummings have been excused from paying £30,000 in backdated council tax on houses they built without planning permission 18 years ago – while child poverty in the Durham North constituency has rocketed by nine per cent – to total one-third of all children living there – in the last four years… after housing costs were taken into account,
The social media are seething with discontent:
As MP’s give themselves a pay rise of £3,300 Matt Hancock says Nurses don’t deserve more than £92 a day. #BorisJohnson pays Test and Trace consultants £7,350 a day and Dominic Cummings is let off £50,000 fine. And they wonder why they’ve lost trust. #ToryCorruptionpic.twitter.com/XgVtapGRFB
I wonder how many people when they see public money being thrown at failing private organisations wish they'd believed @jeremycorbyn .He was right then & he is right now .The Tories are draining the public purse & its us that will suffer .#ToryCorruptionhttps://t.co/sssJaVLqvS
Serco Test and Trace consultants paid equivalent of £1.5m salary
NHS Nurses salary is just £24k a year, so when you see johnsons friends swimming in taxpayers money to the tune of £7,360 a day it shows #ToryCorruption has gone too far🤬 #BBCBreakfasthttps://t.co/uZeXTLn6nH
The first Lockdown was supposed to flatten the curve AND buy us time to develop a decent track and trace system. Unsurprisingly a Govt led by Mr Garden Bridge has failed miserably while chucking public money at its friends.#r4today
I think the following three tweets put the current situation in a nutshell, using the current northern lockdown as an example of Tory corruption at its worst. First, let’s set the scene:
#r4today There would probably be no need for the Northern lockdown if the government of @BorisJohnson had not wasted £12,000,000,000 of our taxpayer cash in handing it over to their inept/corrupt mates to run a rotten test and trace system.
Now we can go into details with this excellent speech by Labour MP Dan Carden:
The whole thing stinks.
This Government’s incompetence, its cronyism, its ideological obsession with outsourcing and rip-off privatisation has undermined our NHS and put lives at risk.
Time to kick the profiteers out of the system and put local public health teams in charge. pic.twitter.com/ivqRy4WgOe
Lastly, let’s remember that there was an alternative – but people were steered away from it by liars in the mainstream media who shilled for the corrupt Tories instead. Now what, do you think, encouraged them to do that?
I wonder how many people when they see public money being thrown at failing private organisations wish they'd believed @jeremycorbyn .He was right then & he is right now .The Tories are draining the public purse & its us that will suffer .#ToryCorruptionhttps://t.co/sssJaVLqvS
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Marcus Rashford: he is campaigning to end food poverty and the Tory government has said it will listen to his recommendations. But one Tory MP seems to be shooting wild.
Footballer and food poverty campaigner Marcus Rashford scored against Kevin Hollinrake after the Tory MP shot his mouth off about parental responsibility to feed children.
Hollinrake responded to a tweet from a member of the public asking why it was necessary for Marcus Rashford to make a stand for hungry children in society.
This person asked: Isn’t that the job of our MPs?
Hollinrake responded: “Where they can, it’s a parents job to feed their children.”
But Rashford had noticed the exchange and responded to it – politely, but firmly:
“I would urge you to talk to families before tweeting. To this day I haven’t met one parent who hasn’t wanted or felt the responsibility to feed their children…”
To This Writer’s way of thinking, he was too easy on the Tory twit.
The point is that, in many cases, it is Tory policy that has made it impossible for parents to feed their children; they have cut real-terms wages and benefits to the point where it is impossible to afford the rent, other bills, and food as well.
Hollinrake should have known that, but chose to express his ignorance instead.
The amazing thing is that the people of Thirsk and Malton thought he was fit to represent them.
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You know when we told y’all the rich declared class warfare and you told us to stop being loony lefties. Well now your kids are collateral damage. Wake up, and fight.
— Kerry-Anne Mendoza 🏳️🌈🏴 (@TheMendozaWoman) August 14, 2020
Let’s not delude ourselves. @BorisJohnson does not care for equality & fairness.
Liberals are mistakenly framing #ToryChaos as “callous indifference” or “incompetence”.
It’s class war.
Analysis that fails to explain dynamics of class power & the systematised destruction of the working class is not just bad but dangerous.
— Kerry-Anne Mendoza 🏳️🌈🏴 (@TheMendozaWoman) August 14, 2020
Quite. This is not incompetence. There is no lack of competence In giving contracts to their rich mates or giving them honours or artificially helping the children of the affluent to boost their exam results. This is nor a problem algorithm. This is class warfare.
— Nick Matthews #keepcooperating (@NickCooperative) August 14, 2020
I’m not claiming credit for calling a thing by its name – this is “multiple discovery”, “simultaneous invention”, “synchronicity” or, if you like, an expression of the “zeitgeist”. More and more people are simply coming to realise, understand and accept that it is the policy of the UK’s Conservative government to push them down unfairly.
That is what the decision – and it was a decision, deliberately made – to punish ‘A’ level pupils who weren’t from private schools was all about. Yes, Gavin Williamson and the other Tories are saying it was down to a mechanical system, an algorithm – but that algorithm was written by a human being who intended it to give an advantage to the children of very rich people.
In this way, the Tory class war has stolen your children’s futures and given them to the undeserving rich.
It’s what the decision – and it was a decision, deliberately made – not to fight Covid-19 in any meaningful way was all about. Tens of thousands of people in care homes have died – your relatives, maybe – because Matt Hancock and the other Tories said people with Covid-19 who lived in those homes should be sent back to them – never mind the fact that they did not have isolation facilities and the virus would run through those places like wildfire and be transferred to others by part-time staff who worked in different homes run by the same – private – firm.
The Tories – and their private business collaborators – failed to source personal protective equipment, ventilators, tests and the facilities to carry out tests. The lockdown they imposed was half-hearted and failed to stop the progress of the disease. Now that they have lifted it, albeit with a few measures still in place, more people are contracting the virus again. So they have stopped reporting the daily number of infections.
And the Tories have rewarded their private business collaborators for their failures with hugely expensive contracts to continue failing us – all at the public expense. Serco’s test and trace contract has been renewed, even though we know it won’t stop any second wave (really just a resurgence of the first wave that was suppressed but never went away).
You won’t get justice against the Tories by the normal means available to civil society because the Tories have either corrupted them already or are in the process of doing so. Boris Johnson illegally terminated Parliament’s last session in the autumn of 2019 and what was the result? He called a general election, lied to us until he was purple in the face and was rewarded with an 80-seat Parliamentary majority.
Now he is using that power to ensure that the courts will not be able to stop any more of his corruption by planning a curb on judicial review of government activity. He is imposing a dictatorship – just as he told you he would, if you could have been bothered to read page 48 of his election manifesto.
The police won’t help. Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, Gavin Williamson and the others are all above the law – no matter what they do. Try reporting a cabinet minister for a crime and see how far you get. They’ll tell you they’re treating it seriously, bounce the accusation around a few different departments and then say there’s no evidence. I’ve been there.
Hundreds of thousands of people have died already because it is Tory policy to kill claimants of sickness or disability claimants, who they consider to be “useless eaters”. That’s why the newspapers have been full of reports showing people with long-term illnesses and disabilities starving to death.
They wanted your homes so they imposed the Bedroom Tax and took them away from you.
The list goes on and on.
And still, too many people think they are the best choice to run the UK – even though the economy is in its deepest recession ever, and Brexit means it may never recover. You will suffer – they won’t. They have been stockpiling your cash and will simply use it to sit out any unpleasantness in the future.
But I feel sure a tipping-point will come – a flashpoint. I wonder how much we will all have to lose before that happens. I’m guessing it’ll be pretty much everything.
By then, many people may think there is nothing they can do. I am reminded yet again of Martin Niemoller’s poem about how the Nazis came for different groups who received no help from anybody else until, by the time they come for the author, there was nobody even left for him to ask.
But I am reminded of another group who were put in a similar position. When I visited Bosnia in the 1990s, I was told how – when the tanks from other countries moved in – the people, who were weaponless, left their homes and went up into the hills. They came back at night, when they took weapons – and lives – from the soldiers who had taken everything from them. And slowly, they took back their land from their oppressors.
I can see that happening here in the future.
I would rather it didn’t.
But it will, if people of good conscience don’t wake up, get up and put up a fight.
Keir Starmer won’t do it. He agrees with the Tories. That’s why he’s busy turning the Labour Party into Tory Lite Mk II (New Labour was Mk I) and accusing anybody who disagrees with him of anti-Semitism.
If you don’t want this to fall into violence, then you need to think what else you can do.
The ‘A’ level fiasco creates opportunities. Already some further education institutions have said they will take students who were downgraded, on the basis of their predicted results. Some haven’t. Clearly we should take note of the side that each University, each college, takes. Those who do the right thing should be rewarded in whatever ways we can. Those who do not should be shunned – meaning not only that we should not even try to send our children there, but that we should reject their graduates when they seek employment with our businesses. We know they won’t be any damn good anyway.
And employers who turn down applicants on the basis of the Tory algorithm’s discredited results should also be named, so we can stop buying their products.
That’s the best – non-violent – response I can conceive on the spur of the moment, and these things need to start happening now.
We’d better get to it, if we don’t want to roll over and die. And yes, that means you.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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