Tag Archives: £50

Tories said they were rebuilding 50 schools per year. Actual number: TWO

This is fine: the image was originally created to symbolise Rishi Sunak’s attitude to climate change but it works just as well for his position on schools that are falling apart because of RAAC concrete collapses.

The trouble with Tory lies – other than the fact that there are so many of them – is their tendency to fall apart when the facts are checked.

Here’s Peter Stefanovic on the schools’ rebuilding programme, and on Tory education funding in general:

So the Tories claimed they would be rebuilding 50 schools per year – down from 100 and far below the 400 rebuilds required.

And the total number of actual rebuilds per year is two.

Yet the Tories cheer in support of this monumental failure.

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50 more fines for Downing Street partying reveal the scale of the lawbreaking

Christmas party: the fines announced today were for an event Boris Johnson was said not to have attended. Here’s an image of him from one he did.

The Metropolitan Police have fined 50 Downing Street employees for taking part in an illegal Christmas party there in 2020.

Prime minister Boris Johnson is not among those being fined this time, as it is understood he did not attend – but the new fines illustrate the scale of lawbreaking in Whitehall while the rest of us were being forced to observe strict social distancing rules that kept us from our loved ones while they were dying – and afterwards.

It is now clear that staff at Downing Street and Whitehall enjoyed a culture of lawbreaking that lasted for months on end – possibly more than a year – under the noses of Boris Johnson and his senior government ministers.

Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak have already been served with fines, and with the prime minister believed to have attended at least three of the 12 gatherings under Met Police investigation. Also fined was Johnson’s wife Carrie, who had no reason to be anywhere near Downing Street employees under any circumstances at the time.

The announcement of the new fines must be like a noose tightening around Johnson’s throat; the police investigation is not close to being over – and a second, more detailed report from Cabinet Office civil servant Sue Gray, set to follow once the last fine has been served, threatens to be more damning than all of the penalty notices put together.

Johnson says he will have “plenty to say” about the scale of the lawbreaking “when the thing’s finished”.

But why won’t he say anything about it now?

He knows what happened and whether he took part in it.

But he has refused to provide any information himself, leaving it to investigators to discover the damning evidence – such as that which led to his first fine. If you are a UK citizen, your prime minister is a criminal.

And the decision to force others to drag out the incriminating information simply makes him look worse. We know he is a habitual liar so his determination to hide the facts should be no surprise – but if he is found to have lied to Parliament, he will have broken the Ministerial Code, and the refusal to apologise for doing so, plus the failure to admit his crimes, will make any such offence worse.

So it seems to This Writer that, at the end of the day, Boris Johnson won’t need to say “plenty”. His only option will be summed up in two words: “I resign.”

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What has happened to the missing £50 BILLION in UK banknotes?

Where has all the money gone? With £50 million missing, someone would need a pretty big sofa to have it all stashed down the back.

MPs are getting their knickers in a knot after around three-quarters of all the UK banknotes in existence dropped out of circulation.

The House of Commons’ public accounts committee has said the cash – £50 billion of it – might be supporting the so-called “shadow economy”.

It could also be overseas or tucked away in homes, unreported.

This Writer thinks there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation. For example, does anybody remember, when the crisis flared up, we were told that we could be unwittingly transmitting the virus via money, which passes unwashed through many pairs of hands as it is exchanged for goods and services?

Also, people no longer trust the banks and have been stockpiling cash to cope with the Covid crisis – and ahead of the financial disaster that we call Brexit.

Remember that banks provide information on your savings to the government, and this can affect the value of benefit claims.

At a time when huge numbers of people are trying to claim state support to get through this short-term pandemic, doesn’t it make financial sense to keep as much as possible in reserve, in the form of physical notes?

I’m not saying it’s an attitude that is particularly helpful to governments – but it has become abundantly clear since March that Boris Johnson’s wishes are not the same as ours.

Personally, I don’t have anything stashed away. As This Site has been able to keep operating in spite of the pandemic, I have not had reason to. Most of my transactions are carried out via card.

But I know I’m among the lucky ones. Millions of people have lost income – or lost their jobs altogether – only to find that they do not qualify for the support schemes offered by Johnson.

What are they supposed to do – lie down and die?

Most people have a bit more life in them than that.

They’ll do what they have to, in order to survive.

If that means stashing away some cash in the belief that the legendary “rainy day” has come, then that’s what they’ll do.

If it means resorting to this “shadow economy”, they’ll do that as well – and Johnson will have been the one who pushed them to it.

Of course, some of us have been having fun with it:

Source: Call for probe into ‘missing’ £50bn of UK cash – BBC News

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Jamaica deportation: will the Tories go ahead after appeal court decision?

Doing a runner: Priti Patel leaving the Commons to avoid a question about the Windrush-style deportation of people to Jamaica (not really, but she did run like a coward when David Lammy asked her about it).

The Court of Appeal has advised the Tory government not to deport 50 people to Jamaica until it has confirmed they have all had access to advice from lawyers.

But will Boris Johnson and his bandits accept that advice?

Consider the way Priti Patel swanned out of the Commons chamber, while David Lammy was asking her an urgent question on the subject.

Former Labour leadership candidate Clive Lewis also demanded that the flight should be stopped.

It is racism, if their convictions are suspect and they haven’t had access to a lawyer. And if the Home Secretary can’t answer a simple question about it.

But as I write this, it seems unlikely the Tories will stop the flight. They think they can do whatever they like, to anyone they feel like. Are they right?

Source: Jamaica deportation: Appeal court issues order over phone access – BBC News

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Johnson insists on deportation of Caribbean nationals despite claims they’re NOT ‘serious criminals’

Nazi overtones: Hitler deported Jews from Germany, before deciding to murder them instead; now it seems Boris Johnson is picking on people of Caribbean descent. What next?

Exactly why is the Tory government insisting on deporting people of Caribbean origin who have been UK residents for many years?

He says they’re “serious criminals”. But are they? Let’s remember, the Tories have been wrong about their deportations before, but still insisted on causing misery to thousands of innocent people.

(And the UK electorate then insisted on returning them to office. I suppose it’s true that some people only care when they’re the ones being persecuted.)

All 50 of those being deported are said to be convicted criminals, but here’s the catch: they have all served UK prison terms for those crimes.

They have already paid the required price for their crimes and it would be perverse to punish them again. Isn’t this simply more Tory racism?

The Home Office says the flight is “specifically for removing foreign criminals” and includes “people convicted of manslaughter, rape, violent crime and dealing Class A drugs”. Number 10 has said all the people on the flight have sentences of 12 months or more.

But a law firm representing some of the people on the flight has put forward a different view – that they are “potential victims of trafficking, groomed as children by drugs gangs running county lines networks and later pursued in the criminal justice system as serious offenders”.

And why is this flight scheduled to happen before the ‘Lessons Learned’ review of the Windrush Scandal is published? That event showed that the Tories had wrongly detained and deported thousands of people, forcing then-prime minister Theresa May to apologise for the suffering she had caused as the Home Secretary who approved it.

But at least one person on tomorrow’s (February 11) flight has been found to have been convicted falsely under an unlawful interpretation of the ‘joint enterprise’ rule. He served only two months in prison and has a heart condition which means he may not survive the stress that Mr Johnson is forcing him to undergo.

This would tally with the legal challenge against the deportations.

More than 170 MPs have signed a letter organised by Labour MP Nadia Whittome, demanding that the flight be cancelled, or at least delayed until after publication of the ‘Lessons Learned’ report:

A draft of the report in June 2019 said: “Government should review its policy and approach to FNOs [foreign national offenders], if necessary through primary legislation. It should consider ending all deportation of FNOs where they arrived in the UK as children (say, before age of 13).

“Alternatively, deportation should only be considered in the most severe cases.”

Source: Boris Johnson insists first deportation of Caribbean nationals since Windrush scandal must go ahead | The Independent

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Margaret Thatcher could be the new backside of the £50 note

Appropriate: Wouldn’t it be fitting if the Spitting Image dummy of Margaret Thatcher became the model for her appearance on the £50 note – if she ends up winning the vote?

In a way it might be considered reasonable to put Margaret Thatcher on money.

She always wanted to be staring out of our currency – but most of us thought her preference would be to replace the Queen on the front.

If she has to be on a note, it is much more appropriate for her to be staring out of its rear end.

And, considering what certain members of her own party have been said to do with £50 notes, one might even consider it poetic justice.

Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher is among a list of names being considered as the face of the new £50 note.

Baroness Thatcher, who was born in Grantham in Lincolnshire, occupied 10 Downing Street as Conservative leader between 1979 and 1990, making her the UK’s longest-serving leader of the 20th century.

She was also Britain’s first female prime minister.

She died in 2013 but remains a controversial figure of British politics.

Source: Margaret Thatcher could be the face of the new £50 note | Central – ITV News

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