John Glen, Tory Chief Secretary to the Treasury, got badly mauled when he tried to dissemble about the Budget in an interview with Victoria Derbyshire on the BBC’s Newsnight.
He couldn’t explain why it was a “Budget for growth” when medium-term growth forecasts have been downgraded.
And on the effects of Brexit, challenged to admit that it has made the UK poorer, he could not provide an alternative explanation for what has happened since the country left the European Union.
He crumbled under scrutiny.
Watch this car crash interview and understand why Tory leadership has taken the UK nowhere.
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A Tory MP, trying to defend Liz Truss lifting the cap on bankers’ bonuses by saying the UK needs to stop them defecting to the EU, was forced to admit that bankers are only going there because of Brexit.
It’s a huge foot-in-mouth moment because Truss is currently a huge Brexiteer (she used to be a Remainer but it seems she’ll support anything if she thinks it’s good for her career) and the decision to leave the EU is not to be questioned on any level.
And it is also true; lifting the bonus cap won’t keep bankers from going to the European Union if that is where their job takes them, due to political decisions.
Here’s Maximilien Robespierre:
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“Much of Yorkshire and Derbyshire was deluged. And who turns up? Boris with a mop.” If he’d taken the “Free eye test” advertised next to him, he might have been able to recognise a national emergency. But it seems doubtful.
Boris Johnson may have thrown away the Conservative Party’s chances in the North of England after he said major flooding that has already killed one woman was “not a national emergency”.
Boris Johnson has said major flooding across swathes of northern England is not a “national emergency”, during a visit to an affected area.
The prime minister made the comments in Matlock, Derbyshire, near where a woman died after being swept away after a river breached its banks.
Mr Johnson said the government had set aside billions for flood defences and preparations due to an increase in serious flooding “perhaps because of building, almost certainly because of climate change”.
“You’ve got to face the reality that places like this are vulnerable to flooding – we’re going to see more of it,” the prime minister said.
However, he said the recent bout of floods “is not looking like something we need to escalate to the level of a national emergency”.
At the time of his words, the Environment Agency had made no less than seven “danger to life” severe flood warnings along the River Don in Yorkshire.
According to The Independent, the North and the Midlands have all seen torrential rain and flooding over the past few days, with some areas seeing a month’s rainfall in just 24 hours.
“Around 35 home were evacuated in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, after a collapsed quarry triggered a mudslide. People were seen leaving their homes in boats in one Doncaster street.
“South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service said it had rescued more than 100 stranded people on Thursday night.”
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has also been visiting the North.
He seems to have taken the matter more seriously: “This is what a climate and environment emergency looks like.
“Every year we don’t act means higher flood waters, more homes ruined and more lives at risk.
“Flooding isn’t a natural disaster – it’s human-made. Not only are the government’s plans to tackle the climate emergency weak, they’ve failed to prepare communities by investing in flood prevention and Tory cuts have stretched emergency services to breaking point.”
What a contrast.
Boris Johnson – still the prime minister, remember – says “places like this are vulnerable to flooding – we’re going to see more of it,” while Jeremy Corbyn points out that it was a Tory government that cut funding for flood prevention – as he said during a previous flooding crisis.
It is a subject on which he has much to say:
JC today: “The consequences of not doing flood prevention are enormous. There is the social cost of people’s lives disrupted but there is also the loss of businesses, jobs and work that goes with it."https://t.co/f1rxf4YXr3
Here’s another question, posed by a commenter to This Site. They write: “I was wondering what happened to the army over the last couple of days. There’s supposedly thousands of troops on standby to prevent riots and looting if and when Brexit ever happens, but nowhere to be seen when sandbags needed to be distributed, river banks needed shoring up, people needed rescuing or evacuating, whilst much of Yorkshire and Derbyshire was deluged. And who turns up? Boris with a mop.”
Last word goes to Ash Sarkar on Twitter (apologies for the free use of language):
If the floods up North had been in London, I guaran-fucking-tee you that Boris Johnson would be declaring it a national emergency.
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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This is what happens when people start believing wild talk rather than examining the facts for themselves.
It seems somone named Thomas Pearson decided to take advantage of the nonsense being spoken about Labour MP Chris Williamson, and defaced his office with graffiti claiming Mr Williamson was an anti-Semite:
Derbyshire Police says it's investigating after graffiti was attached to the outside of Chris Williamson's constituency office.
The posters accuse the Derby North MP of being a "systematic anti-semite and Jew-baiter" – something he has vociferously denied. pic.twitter.com/BPMGnvztT2
And Conservative Party leader (and prime minister) Theresa May has been asked to comment on this:
@theresa_may@Conservatives – can yon confirm if Thomas J Pearson, is a Conservative Parish town Councillor for Sandiacre, Derbyshire??? If so can you advise what action you will be taking against him for vandalising Chris Williamsons MPs surgery!
— The MidNightOwl #SupportTheNHS (@owl_mid) March 1, 2019
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Ingeus out of favour: This image was found on a site protesting against Workfare and demonstrates the high regard in which it is held by previous users of the Ingeus service.
Perhaps we’re jumping the gun with the headline but alarm bells tend to go off when you read that “people on sickness benefits will be required to have regular meetings with healthcare professionals to help them with their barriers to work”.
Everyone working on Employment and Support Allowance should already know what everyone receiving it knows – it’s more a bloodbath than a benefit.
This is down to the attitude of the healthcare professionals already working on it – the people who (and God forbid you should ever ask to see their qualifications) automatically sign 70 per cent of claimants as ‘fit for work’, whether they are or not, and tell most of the rest they need to be work-ready within a year.
The result? Mental breakdowns, depression and suicides; physical breakdowns, worsening of existing conditions, and premature deaths. By the thousand.
These are the people who ask claimants when amputated limbs are going to grow back, and who tell people with Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis that they’ll be fit for work within six months.
If you did (God forbid) ask them where they got their qualifications, it was probably the Teaching Hospital of Noddyland.
“People on sickness benefits will be required to have regular meetings with healthcare professionals to help them address their barriers to work – or face losing their benefits [italics mine] – in a two-year pilot scheme in central England which begins in November,” the DWP press release states.
Isn’t this what happened with people on Jobseekers’ Allowance? Suddenly they had to start fulfilling lots of pointless extra requirements or their benefits would be withdrawn? Part of that is a regular meeting in which – as far as we can ascertain – innocent people are harassed, threatened and abused by DWP employees who are themselves, it seems, millimetres away from nervous exhaustion brought on by the pressures of the job.
Claiming benefits, it seems, is now an endurance test: Who cracks (up) first?
Now, for 3,000 people in the work-related activity group for ESA in the Black Country, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland, Staffordshire and Shropshire, there’s no relief even if they have a nervous breakdown and have to claim ESA on mental health grounds.
“People involved in the pilot – who have all been assessed as being able to work at some point in the future – will have regular appointments with healthcare professionals as a condition of receiving their benefit, to focus on helping them move closer to being able to get a job.”
There you go – all judged as able to work in the future. Presumably Iain Duncan Smith has taken a look at their files, glanced into his crystal ball, and declared that he has a “belief” in their fitness to work. If any of these people are reading, please contact this blog if you have a progressive health condition that won’t ever improve.
Because the meeting is a condition of receiving benefit, anyone attending can expect to be treated abominably. This is not about helping you back to work, or even back to health; it’s about kicking you off-benefit and nothing further. The aim, as with JSA, is to cut claimant numbers and thereby cut spending.
“It’s really important we give people who are disabled or have a health condition the support they need to get into work if they are able,” said employment minister Esther McVey who knows nothing about this at all (despite having been minister for the disabled).
“Traditionally, this help has tended to be work-related, but this pilot will look at whether a more holistic approach is more successful in helping people to manage their conditions and so break down their barriers to work.”
The biggest barrier to a person with a disability getting work is the fact that the Conservative-led Coalition government has been closing down employment opportunities for them and removing incentives for employers to take them on.
The healthcare professionals will be provided by Ingeus UK – a welfare-to-work provider that has been involved in the Work Programme – you know, the time-wasting scheme in which jobseekers are taken off the unemployment statistics while they learn simple skills that, in fact, most of them already have.
The company’s website is very slick but contains no information about the number of doctors in its employ.
Oh, and guess what? The company is half-owned by Deloitte, one of the ‘Big Four’ accountancy firms that currently writes British tax law to make avoidance easy for the big corporates. How much tax has Ingeus paid lately?
“Everything we do is results driven”, the site declares.
One wonders what Ingeus will do when the casualties start piling up.
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