Tag Archives: phone-in

Emotional phone-in caller clarifies why nobody in Covid inquiry deserves privacy

“They smirked”: Boris Johnson grinned inanely and bobbed about on his bench while MPs attacked his contempt for the rules and denials of guilt, back in January 2022.

You probably know the argument already: the Cabinet Office reckons that, even after Boris Johnson waived his own right to privacy over the contents of his WhatsApp messages, diaries and notebooks, they should be redacted to protect other members of the government before being handed over to the Covid inquiry.

A caller to the BBC’s Any Answers has a very strong opposing argument, which I provide here. Be warned: it is not easy to listen to this and may trigger a strong emotional reaction.

I think her point is very good, augmented as it by the emotion with which she made it.

Considering those circumstances – and this lady’s family were not the only people to suffer such experiences while Johnson and other members of his government partied, including civil servants and ministers – what right should any of them have to privacy?

Let them all go under the public spotlight. If any of them are exonerated by it, then the exposure will be to their credit.

As for the others… people died and their relatives suffered terribly while they raved it up. Even the late Queen had to grieve alone after the death of her husband, Prince Philip, in April 2021.

You don’t forget something like that. You don’t forget the insult and injury your government does to you by stopping you from attending relatives, or friends, who are at the brink of death while they party so hard they end up vomiting over the walls of Downing Street, as has been recounted previously.

If it happens to you, you want justice. And you know you won’t get it with a veil of “privacy” drawn around the proceedings of the Covid inquiry.

I look forward to hearing how the Cabinet Office responds to the outrage of the public.

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Theresa May’s dire LBC appearance – every time she speaks in public she puts her foot in her mouth

This was the look on Theresa May’s face as a Conservative voter told her to resign.

It is shocking that 14 million people thought this woman was good prime ministerial material. What is the matter with the UK?

She refused to say – three times – whether she would vote ‘Leave’ if there was another EU referendum:

She wouldn’t guarantee the rights of EU citizens who are living in the UK:

And she contradicted herself:

This is a woman who u-turns so often that, if she were a car, her indicator lights would all be broken from overuse.

She is the exact opposite of “strong and steady”.

And as for “calm leadership” – she got flustered in the middle of the first clip in this article!

Even a Tory voter told her she needs to resign.

He said: “I’m a Conservative party member and I’m concerned. We’re on course for a guaranteed Corbyn win at the next election. Currently the only slim chance we’ve got of avoiding that is fresh leadership. The longer you cling to power unfortunately, the more you increase the certainty of Corbyn.”

He clearly hasn’t realised that the reason Mrs May won’t go is, there is nobody to replace her. The Conservative Party is a spent force, with no ideas and no talent with which to push them forward.

But still she – and they – won’t go.

There has to be a way to put this woman and her miserable gang of cut-throats and tax-avoiders out of our misery for good.

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Listen to this, then try to say the government isn’t victimising the disabled

Disability rights campaigners protest outside the Houses of Parliament, in Westminster, London, after they had disrupted a session of Prime Minister's Questions.

Disability rights campaigners protest outside the Houses of Parliament, in Westminster, London, after they had disrupted a session of Prime Minister’s Questions.

In the same week David Cameron tried to put us off signing the petition on ESA deaths by saying mortality statistics would be published – but failed to mention that the numbers would be fudged into an ‘Age-Standardised Mortality Rate’ ratio, rather than be a straight statement of the number of deaths…

In the same week that the Gentleman Ranker, Iain Duncan Smith, tried to tell MPs that his Department for Work and Pensions doesn’t collect those figures…

In the same week that the Labour Party told us the DWP’s flagship Universal Credit will take nearly 500 years to roll out across the UK at the current rate, while the cost has increased to £15.8 billion…

… a disabled pensioner named Susie called an LBC radio phone-in and spoke emotionally to Iain Dale about her worries over the forthcoming budget and its implication for another benefit, Disability Living Allowance. Here’s what she had to say:

It is abundantly clear that this poor lady is being driven out of her mind with anxiety about her future – a future which the Conservative Government is deliberately keeping uncertain by refusing to give any hints about its plans for sickness and disability benefits.

The DWP has stated – repeatedly – that it is “irresponsible” to connect the deaths of people claiming sickness and disability benefits with the stress that its ministers have gleefully encouraged, by making changes to the benefits assessment regime that mean no claimant can feel secure about their immediate future – let alone their long-term hopes.

Susie’s call shows that all this bluster is bunkum.

Whatever happens in the July budget, DLA claimants are being migrated onto PIP, a benefit with much harsher – some would say unreasonable – conditions. For a start, it employs the same brutal ‘work capability assessment’ medical test (in fact a tick-box computer questionnaire designed to put people off-benefit if at all possible) as Employment and Support Allowance.

Not only that, but the claim process – originally estimated by the government to take around 2.5 weeks per claimant – has left thousands waiting more than a year for a decision.

The best way to end this deliberate infliction of suffering on those who are already suffering enough is to join together and present a united front.

Protests against DLA/PIP aren’t currently gaining national media attention – but the petition for the government to tell us how many people have died while claiming Employment and Support Allowance has.

Cameron’s false claim that the government will publish those figures has slowed the number of people signing it – exactly as he hoped it would.

So let’s all get behind it. Tell everyone you know that they have been misled by this stranger to the truth – and let’s get more signatures on the petition!

It can be found here, on the Change.org website. If you haven’t signed already, please do so.

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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!

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