High energy costs have forced 6.7 million homes into fuel poverty – expected to rise to 8.4 million homes in April.
It means increasing numbers of households are checking their smart meters before doing anything that might cost money.
Campaigners are calling for the government to introduce a special “social energy tariff” to make it easier to afford heating:
And there has been a knock-on effect: shop sales over the Christmas period are down – by around 50 per cent in some cases:
It’s only to be expected.
If you starve working people of cash, as the government has by cutting real-terms wages, and then charge them a fortune for the basic necessities of life, then they won’t have any spare readies for non-essential items.
Shops are going to go out of business, worsening the current recession, and overbalancing the economy into collapse.
But the Tory government doesn’t seem to care.
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This year’s Christmas dinner will be 22 per cent more expensive than last years – that’s almost a quarter as much on top of last year’s.
And it’s full of plastic, because of pollution.
Meanwhile, MPs have just been cleared to claim the cost of their Christmas parties – from us – on expenses.
That includes food, soft drinks and even decorations.
And then they have the cheek to tell us there’s no cash to pay nurses the wage they used to get 12 years ago.
Shops like Aldi are trying to put a smile on our collective face – but it’s not working well, as Russell Howard demonstrates:
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The ‘Money Saving Expert’, Martin Lewis, spoke up on ITV’s Good Morning Britain to urge the government to act on mortgage costs, saying a plan is needed before Christmas:
He highlighted three core issues: interest rates, the affordability test and correction in the house price market:
Mr Lewis also spoke about the government’s decision not to run an information campaign on how to save money on energy bills – and how it is lunacy to suggest such a campaign is too expensive when it could save millions from what the government is expecting to pay to energy firms when subsidising our bills:
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UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was momentarily blindsided when a Labour MP challenged him with brand-new allegations about him attending 2020 Christmas parties, during Prime Minister’s Questions on February 9, 2022.
Here’s the moment when Fabian Hamilton, MP for Leeds North East, brought the matter to Johnson’s attention:
He was referring to this photo:
How is Mr Hamilton “completely in error”? Johnson may not be “surrounded” by alcohol and food, but there is quite clearly an open bottle of what looks like champagne on the table in front of him, along with a packet of crisps that has been torn open in the way that happens at social events when many people are invited to dip in and take some.
And there’s definitely one person wearing tinsel.
It really does look “a lot like one of the Christmas parties that [Johnson] told us never happened”.
So… perhaps Johnson was mistaken in his answer. And of course he did not respond to the thrust of the question.
That’s okay – he was given an opportunity to correct the record only minutes later, courtesy of Labour’s Gerald Jones:
“That event already has been submitted for investigation,” Johnson spluttered, after stuttering several times (a sure ‘tell’ that he was trying to mislead us all).
Has it?
The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg wasn’t so sure when she discussed it on Politics Live, a few minutes later. She said Cabinet Office secretary Sue Gray, who had carried out Johnson’s investigation (not an independent one), had chosen not to refer it to the police.
But this is a photo of the prime minister, in a party situation, at Christmas 2020 – and finding such evidence was exactly the purpose of the Gray investigation. If she did not pass this evidence of criminal activity on to the police, then she was derelict in her duty.
Gray’s interim report is vague about this. It states: “The Metropolitan Police has now confirmed that as a result of information provided by the Cabinet Office investigation team, as well as assessments made by Metropolitan Police officers, they are investigating the events on the dates set out above with the exception of the gatherings on:
• 15 May 2020
• 27 November 2020
• 10 December 2020
• 15 December 2020.”
It does not explain whether all the information Gray had received had been passed on to the police; it does not explain whether Gray herself chose to tell the police which events to investigate; and it does not explain whether the police made that decision.
In any case, it seems unlikely that Sue Gray even had the image (above) to pass on at the time she discussed these events with the police, as it has only just become public, according to Pippa Crerar in The Mirror, where the story of this new development was broken.
So it seems clear that this new evidence should indeed be passed to the police, who should reconsider whether to add the Christmas Quiz of December 15, 2020 to the 12 events they are already investigating.
If they don’t, even more serious criticisms will be made about Metropolitan Police bias and the suitability of Cressida Dick, who is an alumnus of Balliol College, Oxford, along with Boris Johnson, to continue in her role.
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The UK’s leaders – on both sides of the political divide – are insane.
With millions of people infected with the Omicron variant (and other variants) of Covid-19 over the Christmas period, many thousands hospitalised, and the National Health Service pushed beyond its limits in attempting to cope, hindsight tells us there should have been a lockdown the instant Omicron was discovered.
But Tory education secretary Nadhim Zahawi – the Tory who infamously claimed public money as expenses so he could heat his stables, interviewed by the BBC’s Sophie Raworth on Sunday morning, attacked Labour’s Wes Streeting for advocating just such an approach!
And – worse still – Streeting then insisted on correcting the record, pointing out that he did not call for a lockdown and posting video evidence to prove it:
How does this make Labour look better?
Streeting just admitted he supported a plan that has killed hundreds of people, hospitalised thousands, and may force millions to live with Long Covid for years to come, while crippling the National Health Service that was created by a previous Labour government.
And Zahawi just admitted that it was Tory policy to cause those hundreds of deaths, hospitalise those thousands of people, infect millions with Long Covid and attack the NHS.
Both the Tories and Labour have disgraced themselves.
Zahawi made matters worse for the Tory government by lying about investment in the NHS, repeating claims about the recruitment of nurses and doctors that were proved to be false, long ago.
I’ll hand you over to Peter Stefanovic for those facts:
How can UK news shows still be allowing Government Ministers to repeat, unchallenged, statements made by the Prime Minister long since proven to be barefaced lies?
After what we have witnessed in the first week of Parliament they need to step up
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Another late night, Boris? The prime minister may well have spent Christmas raving it up as usual. But the question is, where?
It’s a valid question – especially with Boris Johnson himself saying workplaces should be prepared for a quarter of employees to be absent.
But while they may be missing due to Covid-19 – Johnson himself is far more likely to have jaunted off to foreign parts on his holibobs.
Who can forget this interview from just after Christmas?
With his reputation for (dis)honesty, it’s entirely reasonable to wonder where Johnson is and what he’s up to.
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Under suspicion again: Cressida Dick’s decision not to investigate an alleged Christmas party at 10 Downing Street on December 18, 2020 is being reviewed. But is the correct authority handling the case?
The Independent Office of Police Conduct has cleared the Metropolitan Police of misconduct over the alleged Christmas party at Downing Street on December 18 last year.
But the exoneration does not cover the Met’s failure to investigate an alleged breach of Covid-19 social distancing rules that were in force at the time.
No – it was cleared because the complainant, Baroness Jenny Jones, was not herself adversely affected by any such failure by the police.
Baroness Jones had stated that police working outside 10 Downing Street controlled “all access to and from Downing Street”.
“Put very simply, if there was an unlawful gathering taking place at No 10 Downing Street, then the police must have known and were highly likely to have played an active part in organising or facilitating the illegal gathering,” she said.
“I believe there is a case to answer for the police aiding and abetting a criminal offence or deliberately failing to enforce the law in favour of government politicians and their staff.”
She also argued that Met Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick’s decision not to investigate the reported party represented “a potential cover-up”.
Acting Detective Chief Superintendent Tony O’Sullivan of the Met Police responded that he had referred the complaint to the IOPC, “given that you effectively allege misconduct in public office by MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] police officers”.
But the watchdog said a “valid complaint” could only be made when “an individual, or someone acting on their behalf, has been adversely affected by the alleged conduct or its effects”.
And as there was no evidence Baroness Jones had been nearby when the event took place, “we have decided it is invalid”.
What a stitch-up!
It seems to This Writer that this superintendent only made the referral to the IOPC in the terms he did in order to secure a whitewash on specious grounds.
The issue isn’t whether Jenny Jones was personally affected by the alleged party, but whether it took place in defiance of then-enforced Covid-19 rules and police knew about it.
The grounds on which the IOPC looked into this are not valid at all because nobody is going to say they have been “adversely affected” by the conduct of police in failing to enforce those rules. They were having a party and the cops were (allegedly) turning a blind eye.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that Acting Det Ch Supt O’Sullivan has referred the second part of Baroness Jones’s complaint – that Commissioner Dick had not investigated the allegation of a party at 10 Downing Street – for investigation.
But this will be carried out by the London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPC) which sets the direction and budget for the Met.
Is that the appropriate organisation to investigate such an allegation?
I don’t know.
But I fear another whitewash.
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This is what you get if you vote Tory: Boris Johnson partied it up (he’s seen here asking Christmas Quiz questions for groups of Downing Street workers at a Christmas party last year) while millions of people cancelled their own celebrations and hundreds more died alone because of his social distancing demands. Do the people of North Shropshire want another party boy, or would they rather try to have an MP who actually represents them?
Does Westminster really need another rule-breaking Tory who’ll rave it up at parties rather than work for the interests of everybody in the UK?
That’s the question that should be on the minds of every voter in North Shropshire as they head for the polling stations today (Thursday, December 16, 2021).
The Conservative candidate may have said he does not approve of what is alleged to have happened – but then, Boris johnson said last night that he follows the rules, and if you believe that, then you were born yesterday and shouldn’t be allowed to vote!
Some political agitators are claiming that the Tories who are already in Parliament aren’t guilty of committing crimes because the Metropolitan Police, run by a woman who owes her job to the Tory government, are refusing to investigate the rule-busting Christmas parties last year.
Well, workers at the Met had a bit of a surprise recently, when a mobile billboard used by the media organisation Led By Donkeys broadcast the facts of the case at them in their Scotland Yard offices, to great public interest.
Take a look at the message yourself:
Damning – of both the Met and the Tories.
Do the people of North Shropshire want a member of Parliament who will represent them? Or do they want to send another sponger off to have a party while hundreds of people die?
It seems there’s a new poem on the London Underground, that chimes well with the zeitgeist in the UK.
It’s called Downing Street December, it’s by one Mark Grainger, and for those who can’t read the words in the image, it goes like this:
“If I were posh, and blond, and hard of heart,
“I’d host a Christmas do at Downing Street,
“While making normal families stay apart.
“You wouldn’t see me there; I’d be discreet,
“Chugging champagne and snogging – cautiously,
“To give myself the best chance to deny
“That there’s one rule for them and one for me.
“Outside I’d let the bodies pile high,
“And when drilling the denial with my staff.
“They’d rehearse the bald-faced lie – and laugh.”
That’s pretty much what has happened, isn’t it?
What a shame Boris Johnson won’t see it – unless he reads the social media.
If he does, he’d probably love it – he’s that much of an egotist.
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Shaun Bailey: he was the Conservative candidate for Islamophobia, sexism and misogyny. Now he has resigned from a police committee after breaking rules on attending Christmas parties last year.
Remember Shaun Bailey?
I do.
He was the Tory racist and sexist who stood as their candidate in the London mayoral election that Sadiq Khan won.
A former Conservative mayoral candidate who attended a Covid regulation-breaching Christmas party has quit as chair of a police and crime committee.
Shaun Bailey’s team organised the gathering at the Conservative Campaign Headquarters on 14 December 2020 when London was under Tier 2 restrictions banning household mixing.
He has now stepped down from the role but remains a member of the committee and the London Assembly.
Note that Bailey would have been quite happy to stay on the London Assembly’s Police and Crime committee if a photo of him at the rule-busting party had not been published in the Mirror.
And he’s happy to remain a member of the committee, even now!
These Tories. There’s not an ounce of integrity in any of them.
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