Tag Archives: Craig

MP says he never intended to make people colder and poorer – while doing just that

Craig Mackinlay: busy making his constituents colder and poorer.

Check out the complete failure of self-understanding displayed by Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay in this clip from the BBC’s Politics Live:

He said he didn’t become a Conservative – I think he means a Tory MP – to make his constituents colder and poorer.

But he should know perfectly well that being a Conservative MP means doing both of those things.

Consider the decision to end the triple lock on pensions for a year because the Covid-19-related fall and rise in earnings had created an anomalously large percentage wage increase that had not been anticipated when the idea had been enshrined in law.

That single change will mean a massive fall in pensioners’ incomes, that has already been mapped out as far as five years into the future:

An attempt by Baron Sikka to save the triple lock, during a debate in the House of Lords, was foiled when other peers shouted over his call for a vote:

So we see that by voting to abandon the pensions triple lock (as you can see by checking Hansard here), Mackinlay did indeed – deliberately and knowingly – make his constituents poorer.

Remember that, even though pensions are still being uprated, inflation is higher than it has been in many years; the cost of things like heating will outstrip pensioners’ ability to pay for them.

And that brings me to Mackinlay’s claim about making his constituents colder. If they can’t afford to heat their homes then they will be colder. It’s as simple as that.

And his government’s refusal to accept Insulate Britain’s call for social housing to be properly insulated (rather than left to be leaky, as they are now) mean any heat generated in these dwellings dissipates into the atmosphere, increasing climate change.

And that brings us back to Mackinlay’s argument – that he doesn’t think the investment in fighting climate change is worthwhile.

Either he has not realised that ensuring that people are warm, by spending on insulation, would help to fight climate change – or he’s disingenuously trying to convince you of that.

That’s just a simple chain of logic involving two sets of people. Feel free to work out ways the Tories are impoverishing and freezing other sections of society.

And if you ever meet Craig Mackinlay, feel free to point out the faults in his logic.

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Mind games: Marr misspeaks anti-Tory film title to take heat off killer Tories

#IDanielBlake – not #IDanielCraig

Did you hear it?

Andrew Marr, interviewing Theresa May on his Sunday morning political chat show, referred to the film I, Daniel Blake – which is highly critical of the Department for Work and Pensions as it is run by the Conservatives; it shows a man with a serious heart condition being repeatedly denied benefits, forced to attend ridiculous training events, sanctioned out of his money for weeks at a time on specious grounds, and put through the enormous stress of a semi-judicial hearing to establish whether he should have benefits after all.

A female character is denied benefits because she arrives at a Job Centre a few minutes late for her appointment, starves herself so her children can eat, and ends up being tempted toward prostitution.

All these are accurate depictions of situations that have faced real benefit claimants, which is why damn-fool Tory vice-chairman James Cleverly tried to play it down by tweeting:

In response, he was inundated with news reports of real-life examples of the nightmare treatment dished out by the DWP in the film.

In fact, Twitter was full of such stories while – and after – the film was screened.

So, when Mr Marr mentioned the film to Theresa May, he said – well, hear it for yourself:

I disagree with Yannis Gourtsoyannis; this is not an example of TV presenters being unable to remember the names properly.

By confusing the film’s protagonist with a major movie star (and current James Bond), it seems likely Mr Marr hoped to divert attention away from the cacophony of fury that it had stirred up.

Sure enough, a new hashtag appeared on Twitter, ‘#IDanielCraig“.

It wasn’t entirely successful – some of the tweets were satirical, and highly critical of the government. But the connection with a major movie franchise provided distractions, as you can see if you click the link.

Lauren Gavaghan had it right: “Not mere accidents. Not about being so removed as not to remember either, in my view. Look how Daniel Craig has jumped to trending now.”

She tweeted:

I wonder how Daniel Craig feels about being used by the Tories in this way?

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