Tag Archives: Easing

Senior Tories including ‘Brexit Steve’ Baker demand continuation of Covid death spiral

The image above may not be the most sophisticated graphic This Site has ever published, but it is accurate all the same.

The Tory rabble who have been pushing for more deaths in a bid to keep the economy going and their paymasters in big business happy have been pressuring Boris Johnson for another early end to the restrictions he has (laughably) encouraged us all to call a lockdown.

The infection and death rates are back at pre-‘lockdown’ levels, they say, so he she start easing us all back into work at the beginning of March.

Shockingly, arch-Brexiteer Steve Baker, clearly believing he hasn’t done enough to wreck the nation, has been traipsing around the broadcast media today, claiming that we need to give Covid-19 a chance at a third wave, for the sake of the poorest in society.

“Think of the poor!” How disgusting.

As the infographic above points out, he couldn’t care less when he voted against letting the poor keep the Universal Credit uplift they need to get by.

In this light, he seems clearly revealed as the kind of opportunist who says whatever he thinks will get him what he wants.

And he isn’t the only one:

Lockdown-sceptic Tories have piled pressure on Boris Johnson, calling on him to commit to a timetable for lifting coronavirus restrictions with a complete end to controls by the end of April.

In a letter to the prime minister, the leaders of the Covid Recovery Group (CRG) said the “tremendous pace” of the vaccination rollout meant restrictions should begin easing from early March.

They said ministers must produce a cost-benefit analysis to justify any controls that remain in place after that date, with a “roadmap” stating when they would be removed.

The letter was organised by the CRG chair and deputy chair, Mark Harper and Steve Baker, and was said to have the backing of 63 Conservative MPs in all. However, scientists advising the government are warning that lifting restrictions too quickly risks another wave of the disease as big as the current one.

Of course, 63 Tory MPs in rebellion isn’t enough to bother Johnson – the Tory majority in Parliament is 80 – but it might be enough to rattle his cage, reminding him that he needs to keep his members happy.

He has already said he hopes to map out a “cautious” route out of lockdown on February 22 – next Monday.

The CRG people, led by Baker and Mark Harper, reckon they can dictate its pace – demanding that schools reopen by March 8 and hospitality businesses by Easter.

So we’ll be well on the way to another surge by Whitsun, then.

Source: Tory MPs tell Johnson to commit to lifting Covid restrictions by end of April | World news | The Guardian

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New threat to UK economy as Calamity George vows to give it “110 per cent”

According to the Telegraph, George Osborne has promised that the Coalition will give “110 per cent attention” to boosting the economy after the Bank of England admitted there will be no growth at all this year.

He’s like a child trying to appease Mum and Dad: “I’m sorry we’ve got nothing to show for the last two years but we’ll give it 110 per cent from now on!”

I have a doubt about that. Not about his sincerity; about his ability.

He says he’s got the deficit down – but did he do it in the right way? I suspect the thousands of disabled benefit claimants who’ve lost their benefits in the Atos* debacle would say no – as, I’m sure, would all those who committed suicide because they could see no way to carry on living after the DWP cut them off, on advice from Atos. That’s not good government – that’s oppression.

The tens of thousands of jobseekers who were unfairly cut off from their benefits because the DWP’s correspondence about Workfare was badly written would probably have something to say about this as well. Not only is the correspondence bad but Workfare itself is oppressive to the jobseeker and terrible for the economy! It makes no economic sense at all to supply businesses with workers for free when they should be taking on employees to do the job and paying them a living wage – part of which would then come back to the Treasury in taxes, boosting the economy and reducing national debt at the same time.

It is clear that the “austerity” agenda has done nothing for the economy. That’s no surprise. If you cut the money going into a project – be it a business concern or a public service – you’ll have cash left over, sure – but you won’t have made any profit; you’ll have made a saving. The two things are not the same and you can’t build the economy by saving money. In fact, as far as both business and public services are concerned, you’re dismantling the very machinery you need, in order to rebuild!

Finally, perhaps somebody could explain to me why the Bank of England has been so obsessed with Quanititative Easing? As far as I can tell, all this has done is provide the banks with billions of pounds of free money. What have they done with it all? They’re not lending it, as intended. My understanding was that the money has been used to buy big houses in, is it Portland Street? And on fixing up those houses. I’m willing to stand corrected on that if anyone knows better and the point is that the only organisations that have benefited from the money are the banks themselves – the very organisations that caused the economic mess in the first place (carry on about Labour’s lack of regulation if you like but the bare fact is that the bankers all made their own choices and it turned out that those choices were wrong).

According to the Telegraph, George Osborne’s going to give the economy 110 per cent. If it improves by 110 per cent (impossible, as the maximum percentage of anything is 100) we’ll be in exactly the same place we are now – because 110 per cent of nothing is still nothing.

*According to a commentator on Sue Marsh’s excellent Diary of a Benefit Scrounger blog, ATOS means “Authorised To Organise Slaughter”.