Tag Archives: handout

Tories have been … misleading … with ‘Welsh Government handout for asylum-seekers’ claim

Rishi Sunak: he made himself look like an utter halfwit by answering a question about Welsh Government policy in Prime Minister’s Questions.

Senior Conservatives have been telling porkies to get electoral advantage over the Labour Party in Wales, it seems.

Leader of the Welsh Conservatives Andrew RT Davies and Secretary of State for Wales David TC Davies both endorsed a claim that the Welsh Government is planning to give asylum seekers £1,600 per month.

But it seems the claim is utter bunkum, based on a letter that was not what The Sun had claimed. But then, why would anybody believe The Sun? Here’s Nation.Cymru:

The letter – which has been obtained by Nation.Cymru – was not an attempt to create a new asylum seeker policy, but involved three Welsh ministers seeking clarification on a pilot that already exists in Wales regarding 18-year-old care leavers.

The Welsh Government launched the Basic Income for Care Leavers scheme in July 2022 which ensures eligible young people leaving the care system receive £1,600 a month for the first 24 months of leaving care.

The Basic Income for Care Leavers only focuses on the category of care leavers which does include some unaccompanied asylum seeking children who were looked after by a local authority up until the age of 18.

The inclusion of asylum seeker children who were raised in care was always a factor that had been budgeted for by the Welsh Government from the outset of the pilot.

Eligibility for the scheme has not changed since it was set out in a written statement by the Welsh Government in February 2022.

Although it has not yet confirmed how many young asylum seekers leave care on average every year, a Welsh Government source said the number is “a very small proportion of those taking part in the pilot”.

So there’s nothing dodgy about this scheme at all.

But Andrew RT Davies said it was “creating an even bigger pull factor to bring people across the Channel”.

Welsh Secretary David TC Davies said: “Incentivising illegal migrants to risk their lives by crossing the Channel in exchange for taxpayers’ cash is wrong, dangerous and hugely irresponsible. That is why I have denied the Welsh Labour Government their request.”

One of the letter’s signatories, Mick Antoniw, pointed out to him: “This is nothing to do with you. No request has been made to you. Your permission is not required for anything.”

The lunacy even reached as high as prime minister Rishi Sunak, who said the pilot could incentivise people smuggling.

Nation.Cymru has acquired a comment from the Welsh Government that makes Sunak look like a simpleton:

“It is disappointing that inaccurate and misleading claims are being used to trivialise these sensitive issues.”

Source: Senior Tories accused of ‘distorting’ truth over ‘inaccurate’ reports of £1,600 payment for asylum seekers in Wales


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Did ‘no handouts’ Liz Truss really claim for Amazon Prime on her expenses? [VIDEO]

Exciting moment: is Liz Truss reacting to a tense piece of action on an Amazon Prime drama, funded from public money by her expenses claim?

Let’s have a couple more reactions to Liz Truss being propelled to the highest office in the land.

Here’s a serious one from The Mirror:

And a less serious on from Jonathan Pie… with a sting in the tale:

Standout comment from either of them is the claim that Truss – who insists that she won’t give “handouts” to the millions who will suffer because of her party’s policies in government – demanded that public money should pay for her subscription to Amazon Prime.

Is it true?

Is she demanding that we subsidise her viewing of orc attacks in Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – and doesn’t she have a less expensive way of seeing her relatives?

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.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


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The two faces of the Tories – enscapsulated in two policies today

This is the UK’s Conservative government:

And this is also the UK’s Conservative government:

Huge handouts to rich corporations, while they take away what little the poor receive to help them survive.

It is homicidal.

But millions of poor people insanely voted for rule by these insults to humanity.

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.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


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Flooding: Why is the taxpayer picking up the tab? There’s an EU fund!

The Conservative response: David Cameron swans around the Somerset Levels in his wellies while local MP Ian Liddell-Grainger (second from left) tries to get a word in edgeways.

The Conservative response: David Cameron swans around the Somerset Levels in his wellies while local MP Ian Liddell-Grainger (second from left) tries to get a word in edgeways.

It seems that David ‘Money Is No Object’ Cameron is unnecessarily forcing British taxpayers to fork out for flood relief while European officials scratch their heads and wonder why he isn’t taking advantage of a huge EU fund that is available to us.

We should all know why the comedy Prime Minister is avoiding Europe – he doesn’t want to lose face.

Eurosceptics in the Conservative Party across the UK criticise our membership because we pay so much in and take so little out (in their perception); this argument would be defeated if Cameron actually used the fund in the manner for which it was created and he would then lose support from members of his Parliamentary party.

Also, at a time when the UK’s future in Europe is being questioned, it would be “politically sensitive” (as Reuters describes it) for Cameron to go there and ask for a handout.

But governments are judged on the way they deal with crises (as the Political Rant blog put it) – and this one has put Cameron, figuratively as well as literally, between the rock and the river.

According to Reuters: “Asked whether Britain would ask for EU money, Cameron’s official spokesman told reporters on Wednesday the government was looking at every source of possible funding, playing down the idea that there was anything political behind it.

“Under EU rules, a country has 10 weeks from the first damage caused by a natural disaster to request aid.

“A person close to Cameron said there were technical grounds to do with spending thresholds that determined when to apply for a grant. Britain had no desire to get into a war of words with Brussels on the matter, he said.”

The news agency added that the government had deployed the armed forces to evacuate residents and shore up river defences, while under fire from critics for what ministers have acknowledged was a slow initial response.

Political Rant is less diplomatic (as you might expect): “Ken Clarke said it was just a normal winter and people complaining about flood defences were just a ‘lynch mob’. Eric Pickles criticised the Environment Agency while the Environment Agency criticised government cuts and Owen Paterson criticised Eric Pickles.

“David Cameron has undertaken several jaunts in his nice clean wellies, first to Kent just after Christmas where he was harangued by people left waist-deep in water without power for a week, then Somerset which he only visited after Prince Charles had been the day before, making it look rather silly the Prime Minister hadn’t bothered, and … to Cornwall where, a friend tells me, Railtrack diverted engineers who were supposed to be fixing the washed-out rail line at Dawlish to shake hands with the PM at a rail depot.

“The same PM has talked sadly about how a power cut interrupted his viewing of The Sound of Music on New Year’s Day while staying silent about two SSE engineers who said they were diverted from reinstating the power for 11,000 people to locate his trip switch.

“When the floods recede, we are more than likely to find a few people who died.”

Yes, and they’ll be in rural areas because the increased funds Cameron has announced amount only to a slightly smaller cut than he had originally intended, and the funding formula for flood defences demands £8 of economic benefit for every £1 spent – meaning a concentration on densely-populated urban areas.

Add to that the fact that Cameron only bothered to act when Conservative-voting areas were affected – the Somerset Levels, Windsor, Reading, Oxdfordshire, Surrey, Kent – and couldn’t care less when the waters were hitting places like Scunthorpe (as revealed on the BBC’s Question Time yesterday) and Cameron has put himself in a serious political mire.

He has made it clear that his is a government that only looks after its own supporters.

Everyone else can drown.

We won’t forget that.

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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