Tag Archives: ‘Jack’

The UK’s food bank shame will not be solved by Tories like Lee Anderson

Lee Anderson (right) with his leader Boris Johnson: no wonder Anderson thinks he can get away with a Big Lie when his boss is the biggest liar of them all.

This MP is a disgrace to his Ashfield constituency.

He stood up in the House of Commons and admitted that his local food bank won’t give out desperately-needed parcels to people unless they sign up to take a course in budgeting and cooking skills – but you’ll notice he never said anything about whether such courses were effective in reducing demand.

Mr Anderson invited MPs to visit a food bank in his Nottinghamshire constituency where he said people “have to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course” if they receive parcels.

“We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget,” he added. “We can make a meal for about 30p a day and this is cooking from scratch.”

“There’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who can not cook properly… they can not budget.”

Here’s video of what he said, along with some of the more well-informed comments by opposition MPs:

As usual, though, the best commentary on this came from the food writer and blogger Jack Monroe, who slated Anderson’s comment in an LBC interview:

“It’s not a lack of skills or knowledge that is causing people to struggle in food poverty in this country…it’s the lack of resources, it’s the lack of finances.

“It’s not that people don’t know what to do with a bag of pasta, it’s that they don’t have the 29p to buy it in the first place.

“Helping somebody conditional on them saying ‘you know what, I’m a terrible kind of poor person, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor’, is disgusting, actually.

“In his own constituency one in three live in poverty…I don’t think he’s the one to be touting the solution.”

Jack, who is a genuine national treasure, went further on the Cooking on a Bootstrap website, reminding us all of the main reasons people can’t afford food any more – and the fatal results of these Conservative Party policies:

If the ‘let them eat 30p meals’ brigade were really concerned for the welfare of people suffering, and I mean suffering, under the worst cost of living crisis this country has known for decades, they would take heed from the thousands of stories of people who have died at the hands of the callous DWP machine, and the people who enthusiastically grease its sharp and unforgiving cogs.

Stephanie Bottrill, a mother of three who was so concerned about the impact that the bedroom tax would have on her family, that she walked out in front of an articulated lorry.

Phillipa Day, whose overdose resulted in a coroners report stating that the flaws in her PIP assessment led to her death. A nine day inquest uncovered multiple failings by both the DWP and the private sector contractor Capita in the handling of her case. The coroner issued the DWP a PFD report – Prevention Of Future Deaths – which was supposed to force them to make significant changes to the system in order to prevent this entirely needless tragedy from ever happening again. Did they implement the recommended changes? Of course not. Not then, and not after multiple more coroners reports and PFDs from multiple subsequent deaths in similar circumstances.

Jodey Whiting took her own life after her benefits were stopped. Her family received a letter endorsing the DWPs actions, incorrectly stating that Jodey was fit to work, and mailed it to them as their daughter lay in a mortuary, awaiting her untimely and again, utterly preventable, burial. Following her death, and with his life thrown into utter turmoil at the loss of his mother, her 19 year old son Cory also killed himself.

I have thousands of these stories, each and every one a heartbreakingly familiar narrative: a vulnerable person denied absolutely vital assistance, unable to bear the pain of a day to day life scrabbling at the periphery of insecurity and just-about-survival, choosing a devastatingly permanent ending to a story that they didn’t get the luxury of choosing their own adventure in. God, they didn’t even get the luxury of choosing their own living accommodation, the colour of their front doors, or the meagre combination of basic store cupboard staples that made up their dinners.

What kind of world do we live in, where these horrific and very real examples of destitution and desperation are not a clarion call for an immediate overhaul of a barbaric and repeatedly proven fatal ideology?

And it begs the point, that with several hundred thousand pounds of full time staff at their disposal to do the everyday grunt work, you’d think that MPs would use a fraction of that generous budget to actually do some research in their chosen field.

Yes indeed. Lee Anderson’s most recent expenses claim alone came to £220,000. That will have included the cost of employing his support staff, so the question goes straight to the point.

The painful reality is that when most basic of human needs costs more than the meagre payments that the recipients are forced to subsist on, cheap pasta and canned beans aren’t going to make a jot of difference unless you’re willing to stuff them up your jumper and make a run for it. Those that claim to be the party of clever economics and fiscal responsibility would do well to remember this simple truth: the square root of fuck all is always going to be absolutely fuck all, no matter how creatively you’re told to to dice it.

I make no apology for the strong language; sometimes people need to be told the facts in the hardest possible terms, just so they’ll sink in.

You’ll hear it again in the following video rant from another great social media icon, Cornish Damo:

Sadly, This Writer doubts that any amount of factual argument will persuade people like Anderson to change their tune, because they believe in the tactic the Tories stole (back) from the Nazi propagandist Goebbels: The Big Lie.

Anderson thinks if he keeps repeating, often enough, the lie that poverty is entirely the fault of people who are poor, and not of those who have deprived them of decent, affordable food, housing, energy, water and all the other necessities of life, we will all eventually believe that lie.

It’s up to you to prove him wrong.

ADDITIONAL: This could be very embarrassing for Mr Anderson:

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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Jack Monroe explains the UK’s cost of living crisis for ignorant Tories

Jack Monroe: “The people who have the least in this country have routinely been asked to shoulder the burdens.”

This is why the BBC tries not to allow socialists onto its current affairs programmes any more.

But it seems that Politics Live bosses couldn’t avoid inviting ‘Bootstrap Cook’ Jack Monroe, who made a name as the author of a guide for people on benefits, trying to feed a family with only pennies to spend on each meal (courtesy of a Tory government that couldn’t care less).

Jack had given evidence on the current cost of living crisis to the Commons Work and Pensions committee on the morning of March 9, and subsequently appeared on the programme to explain the problems people at the lowest level of society are facing – and the reasons for them.

Here’s what was said:

There’s so much good material here – that the Tory government would undoubtedly wish to suppress:

  • Every pound spent on a child’s health now will save £220 in the future (according to a recent study) – investment in early years education, free school meals, milk for kids and warm, safe, decent homes leads to saving on healthcare, justice and social support.
  • 4.1 million people in the UK are living in poverty, and 4.5 million in fuel poverty. The last number is set to rise to 6.5 million next month (April), when new energy prices are imposed by the privatised energy firms – and to 8.5 million by October. That means around one-eighth of the population of the UK won’t be able to afford to heat their homes properly.(And this doesn’t include the cost to businesses, that are not protected from the full force of the price rises by Ofgem’s cap.)
  • In the UK, 80 people were dying every day as a result of living in cold homes – before Covid-19 and the economic hits that people have taken since, meaning that figure is certain to become much worse.
  • A rapid government intervention is needed to life people out of poverty, allow them to heat their homes, feed themselves and their families and to prevent them from dying.

Jack said: “The Chancellor can find a whole orchard of magic money trees for his pet projects and the things that he deems to be worthy: ‘Eat Out to Help Out’, writing off furlough fraud. He needs to dig around in that orchard and find some money for people who don’t have the same recourse, don’t have the same voice, don’t necessarily have the same lobbying power – and that’s children, disabled people, vulnerable people, elderly people, and act in their best interests as well.”

Here’s a vital point: “If people had listened when those of us who started to raise the issue [did so] a decade ago, we certainly wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in now.”

Also: “The policy groups… today… the Resolution Foundation, the Social Policy Forum… they all advocated a one-off cash lump sum of around £500 to help lift people out of the cost of living crisis… in a mirror of what America did during the pandemic; to give all their citizens £500, to let them make all the judgement calls and decisions themselves about how best to rescue their household budgets and how best to sort out the situations that they are in.

“People who are in the lowest income deciles, when you give them money, it goes back into their local economies. If you give people who earn the top 0.1 per cent of wages in the UK money, it disappears off to the Cayman Islands. So giving people a one-off lump sum payment in order to dig themselves out of whatever holes they’re in isn’t just something that us mad left-wingers are banging on about, it’s what the government’s own think-tanks and policymakers are avidly recommending.”

Paul Scully, Tory minister for Small Business, Consumers and Labour Markets, said the government had increased its euphemistic ‘National Living Wage’ by the highest cash terms ever. But this is a burden place upon businesses – not on the government itself; no Tory minister has explained where most firms are going to find the money to pay this increase, on top of paying energy bills for which the standing charge alone may have increased by 500 per cent, at a time when their customers are unlikely to be able to afford their services due to their own struggle to pay the bills.

Then he said: “It’s right that we actually make sure that we’re not recovering our economy on the back of the lowest-paid.”

Labour’s Jim McMahon contradicted him, pointing out that this is exactly what is happening: “BP and Shell have made record profits but they’re not being asked to contribute more; it’s households that are being asked to contribute more.”

Scully said the government wanted the energy giants to invest their huge profits in diversification away from fossil fuel – an admirable ambition, but is there any evidence that they are actually bothering to do it?

And Jack Monroe came back with the clincher: “I really have to take issue with the fact that you said that the government are not going to recover the economy off the back of the lowest-paid people, because that has been Conservative policy for the last 12 years. b

“Austerity-led ideology has meant that the people who have the least in this country have routinely been asked to shoulder the burdens of the bank bailouts and of all of the policies that consecutive Conservative governments have put in place – to reduce welfare payments, to reduce the support that is available for the poorest and most vulnerable people and the lowest-income households.

“The economy has been rebuilt … on the bodies of the dead people who are no longer with us because they have been failed by the Department for Work and Pensions.”

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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Four Johnson advisors quit in disgust – and Tory MPs say he’s doing a great job! What?

Isolated: Boris Johnson has tried to show strong leadership by accepting resignations from top advisors who were going anyway. All he has done is show that he is isolated from anybody who could have helped him retain his position as prime minister.

After This Site (and many others) reported that Boris Johnson’s policy advisor Munira Mirza quit her role – after 14 years with him – in disgust at his attempt to shame Keir Starmer for failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile, a further three advisors have quit.

This is hardly a sign of good leadership.

But here are a couple of brainless Tory MP drones saying it’s a sign that Johnson is doing a brilliant job!

What gives?

I’ll tell you – but you won’t be happy with Boris Johnson when I’m done!

It seems the resignation of Munira Mirza actually rocked Johnson hard. She had been with him for 14 years and quitting in the way she did sent a very clear message that he should be ejected from office; no ifs, no buts.

It left him in a very difficult position, with his authority – and his ability to restore order to Downing Street – under serious question.

So he cast around for a way to at least appear to be exerting control – and his gaze fell on three other advisors:  director of communications Jack Doyle, principal private secretary Martin Reynolds and chief of staff Dan Rosenfield.

All have been implicated in the Partygate scandal.

It seems Johnson reasoned that, if he pushed them out, he would present an appearance of acting decisively to restore order to Downing Street after the parties in which they were all involved.

Doyle and Rosenfield are said to have taken part in a party on December 18, 2020, and Doyle is said to have participated in at least one other event. Reynolds allegedly invited around 100 Downing Street staff to a “bring your own booze” party in the garden of 10 Downing Street in May 2020 when the UK was under strict lockdown.

But…

Doyle is also known to have wanted to quit his job after two years in any event, and it is understood that Johnson had previously refused his resignation.

Accepting it now merely makes Johnson look like a scurrilous (as Ms Mirza put it) opportunist and that, rather than forcing anybody out, he is in fact finally letting them go – because it suits him, not them.

Similarly, Rosenfield and Reynolds may have resigned because they feel it is the honourable thing to do after the party revelations. That would lend credence to allegations that these events took place, of course, in contravention of lockdown rules.

So instead of forcing out people who broke the rules, in order to restore order at Number 10, it seems Johnson is instead trying to spin the loss of three top advisors to his advantage.

It won’t work – or shouldn’t, in spite of the best efforts of nobodies like Stuart (who?) Anderson and Chris (who?) Clarkson.

The reason is clear:

No matter why they went, the four resignations mean Johnson has removed the entire top layer of management at 10 Downing Street, isolating himself from his party and showing he lacks any management ability at all – when he should be trying to show strong leadership. And there are plenty of us who can see that.

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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Tories pilloried for politicising London Bridge murders – that they enabled

Boris Johnson with Michael Gove: As Justice Secretary, Gove ignored recommendations that could have prevented the London Bridge murders; now Boris Johnson is trying to make electoral profit from his colleague’s incompetence.

The Conservatives ignored recommendations from one of their own justice ministers to create the conditions that allowed Usman Khan to be released – and have been attacked by the father of one of his victims for using the attack to spread their “vile propaganda”.

In an article in The Times, prison safety expert Ian Acheson – a committed Conservative who led the independent review of Islamist extremism in prisons and probation ordered by then-Justice Secretary Michael Gove in 2016. That’s four years after Usman Khan successfully appealed against his original, indefinite sentence and had a new sentence imposed under Conservative laws.

Mr Acheson stated that he made 68 findings and recommendations. These were reduced to 11 by the Tories, of which only eight became law.

In the article, he said: “Many of the recommendations I made related to what I saw as serious gaps in the management of terrorist offenders into custody and ‘through the gate’. There was a lack of expertise and appropriateness in the arrangements for probation supervision of these most potentially lethal offenders.”

He added in a Radio 4 interview that “a lethal combination of arrogance, ineptitude and defensiveness in Whitehall”, with “fearful” staff struggling because “training simply didn’t exist” led to “the destruction of the prison and probation service through crazy, failed, ideological, austerity cuts.”

So the Tories knew about problems with their own handling of people convicted of terrorism, two years before Khan was released.

Not only did the Tories ignore fears over the handling of terror convicts, but David Merritt, whose son Jack was one of Khan’s victims in the London Bridge terror attack, has accused Tory leader Boris Johnson of actually exploiting what happened for electoral purposes:

He also retweeted a post by writer Liam Hogan, which said: “Hey @BorisJohnson , instead of making capital on “tougher sentences”/no early release, why don’t you take a look at what Jack Merritt believed? Because he believed in prisoner rehabilitation, even if you don’t. (Unless presumably it suits your electoral purposes…)”

It’s a damning indictment of Johnson’s attitude.

This is a wannabe prime minister who would spit on the memory of a man who died as a result of his party’s policies, by promising to do exactly what this bright young man opposed.

The only consolation is that, knowing Boris Johnson, he is probably lying.

This is the lowest and most disgusting stunt performed by the Conservatives in their election campaign so far.

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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Laughing At Jack Is Fair – The Critique Archives

James O’Brien of ‘Leading Britain’s Conversation’ (LBC) Radio is becoming quite the needle in the flesh of the UK Independence Party, writes Martin Odoni.

A few months ago, many will recall, he gave the party’s loathsome leader, Nigel Farage, an absolutely bruising grilling live on air, and triggered several rather telling xenophobic ‘slips’ from Farage. This week, he presented a phone-in in which he spoke to a UKIP supporter going by the name of ‘Jack’, and exposed rather easily just how little that ‘Jack’ knew about the party he supports with such unquestioning passion.

Now, it has been pointed out by a few people on social media that it is perhaps a little one-eyed to mock ‘Jack’ for his abject failure to make a case for UKIP, or even for his own support for them. One counter I have heard or read more than once is, “I doubt if you asked most supporters of any of the three main parties what their policy platform is, that they could give you a better answer than this.”

But even so, I don’t feel in any way sorry for ‘Jack’ that he has been given a bit of a public kicking over social media since, because he really brought the ridicule on himself… I fear that ‘Jack’ fits a wider pattern of UKIP-supporter behaviour. He is whiny and paranoid whenever confronted, not with propaganda, but with simple evidential facts about the party’s uglier characteristics, among both its membership and its policies. ‘Jack’ is very loud, and goes out of his way to make sure that everyone hears him, so when he says something stupid, everybody knows about it. He speaks up with impassioned certainty and love in defence of UKIP, while not really knowing anything much about the people running it, or what they aim to do. He almost seems to have a teenage ‘crush’ on UKIP.

To find out how this crush ends (will it be tears before bedtime?) visit The Critique Archives – and tell them we sent you!

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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