One can’t help feeling there’s some malice behind the “queue jump” saga involving Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby.
The This Morning presenters have been accused of jumping the queue to attend the body of the late Queen Elizabeth II as she lay in state in Westminster Hall – a queue that, at one point, it would have taken 14 hours to traverse.
But it seems to This Writer that they were just doing their job – reporting on the event for viewers of their show. They had press passes and were accorded the same access as others who were covering it. And of course, they were there because their producers had told them to go.
Yet a petition demanding their removal as presenters has hit 55,000 signatures.
Here’s a video clip about the controversy:
Personally, I’m sure they have done much more questionable things on their show – supporting Boris Johnson in some of his more idiotic moments springs to mind. Why couldn’t they be pilloried for that?
Hi @BBCNews@Telegraph@TheSun just wondering why you haven’t got round to the sorry about the chancellor seemingly high and definitely muttering to himself and laughing at a state funeral? I assume it’s an oversight you’ll soon rectify.
Even if it’s not true, the BBC will be prey to such accusations as long as it has a Tory on its board, responsible for “impartiality” (a euphemism if ever there was one).
So how about it, BBC? Why not kick Robbie Gibb off your board and run a proper investigation into Kwasi Kwarteng?
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This being a bank holiday weekend, This Writer is either otherwise occupied or almost totally incapacitated, so I’m putting up material that has interested me – and I hope it interests you. Make of it what you will:
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This being a bank holiday weekend, This Writer is either otherwise occupied or almost totally incapacitated, so I’m putting up material that has interested me – and I hope it interests you. Make of it what you will:
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 the consequence of voting for Boris Johnson and the Tories: they don’t care about you, they never will, they never have – and until people realise that, nothing is going to change.”
Maximilien Robespierre on the rise of pawn shops and warm banks in the fifth-richest nation on Earth:
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Wow. Tory columnist Tony Parsons reckoned Queen Elizabeth II went to Balmoral to die – but also to save the union between the countries of the United Kingdom.
Alternatively: did she just go there because it’s an escape from the rigours of day-to-day life, and she ended up passing away there because it’s where she happened to be?
Here’s a video clip:
(Incidentally, I love the sideswipe in which Robespierre namechecks someone for sitting through the Piers Morgan show in order to get the clip.)
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Uh-oh: once again, public opinion should be against the man whose policies caused the deaths of untold thousands of benefit claimants.
After his persecution of people who are sick, disabled and unemployed at the Department for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith simply has no right to criticise other nations for causing deaths.
He has criticised the decision to invite the Chinese government to the Queen’s funeral, saying it was “extraordinary” that the “architects” of genocide against the Uyghur minority had been invited.
But there is a strong diplomatic reason to do so. Here’s Professor Tim Wilson:
Prof Wilson thinks Vladimir Putin should be invited as well, and it’s a good idea; get him here and we can quietly suggest face-saving ways to end the war in Ukraine, for example.
Now Boris Johnson is no longer in charge and is unable to derail peace proposals, we might actually make some progress.
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The Department for Work and Pensions has refused to stop taking money from already-inadequate benefit payments – and has hidden the decision by releasing it while the media were focused on the Queen’s funeral.
MPs on the Commons’ Work and Pensions Select Committee called for the DWP to stop debt repayments being deducted from benefits, back in July.
They said deductions should be restarted only when inflation eased or benefit levels caught up.
It seems DWP chiefs have spent around two months waiting for “a good day to bury bad news”, as the saying goes.
[MPs] said the debt deductions were causing “hardship” for “households currently struggling with huge financial pressures”, and people needed “breathing space”.
Nearly half (45%) of people on Universal Credit are currently having deductions taken out of their benefits to repay debts, at an average of £62 a month. The debts are typically caused by historic overpayments and other errors, advance payments made during the five-week-wait for Universal Credit, and by arrears on energy costs and other priority bills. Currently the government can deduct up to a quarter of someone’s benefits each month to repay these debts.
MPs heard from charities including the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that these deductions were “a key factor in destitution”. The Trussell Trust said the practice was pushing “people into destitution and needing to turn to a food bank”.
Now brace yourself for the DWP’s nonsense justification for putting people into destitution:
the Department for Work and Pensions said it did not believe pausing deductions was “necessarily in the claimant’s best interest”. It said that if that deductions were paused between now and the April 2023 rise, people might then not notice the impact … when it comes … and people might “feel no better off”.
But they’re not going to feel better-off anyway if the whole uplift has to go towards servicing debts that could be avoided if the DWP simply paused these deductions for a while.
The government also rejected MPs’ calls to bring forward the uprating of benefits, currently not due to take effect till April 2023. In April this year, benefits were increased by an inflation rate that was seven months out of date – rising 3.1%, at a point when inflation was already running at 9%.
So already, people on benefits are receiving far less than they should, simply to keep up with inflation.
Claimants are eligible for additional money to help with housing costs – but this is “not intended” to cover the rent fully in many areas, meaning people have to make that shortfall up from their benefits, too. MPs called for the housing element to be increased, as happened during the pandemic, but the government rejected this call, too, citing its work on helping people on benefits save for a deposit to buy a house instead. According to housing charity Shelter, most private tenants have a shortfall, as the maximum amount is set to cover only the lowest 30% of rents in any given area, and there are other exclusions as well.
It should be easy to conclude from this that the Tory “benefit” system is unfit for purpose and the sooner they are taken out of its administration, the better.
And the reason the DWP is refusing to take action to stop people on benefits from falling into debt and destitution should be clear: that is exactly what the Tory system is designed to do.
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Party girl: this is how Therese Coffey commemorated the removal of £1,040 per year from Universal Credit payments. As Health Secretary, is she partying in similar manner while appointments are cancelled because they are scheduled for the same day as the State Funeral of Queen Elizabeth II?
Vital hospital appointments and treatments are being cancelled by NHS trusts because they were due to take place on the day now scheduled for the funeral of the late Queen Elizabeth II.
This is hugely dangerous for the patients involved. Waiting lists are at record lengths. How long will it take for the appointments to be rescheduled?
(To give you a clue – and I know this is slightly different: Mrs Mike badly needed to have a tooth filled and the dentists offered her an appointment the following week, which required rescheduling of other events… or in December. Who knows how badly her tooth would have deteriorated by then?)
Here’s Maximilien Robespierre with a video clip:
And here‘s the Open Democracy article to which it refers. I’ve excerpted the following:
Some NHS trusts have said that all non-urgent procedures and clinic appointments will be postponed, including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery, maternity checks and some cancer treatments.
Many patients had been waiting months for surgery – only to have it cancelled a week beforehand. In a letter to one patient, the NHS blamed “unforeseen circumstances”.
Doctors at one central London hospital trust were told: “The day of the State Funeral will be treated as a bank holiday so please go ahead and start rescheduling patients.”
It follows the announcement that the UK will have a bank holiday on September 19 to mark the Queen’s funeral. But government guidelines says: “There is no statutory entitlement to time off,” adding that this is “a matter for discussion between individuals and their employer”.
So it is clear that the decision has been made unilaterally by the NHS trusts involved and there is no reason at all for the treatments to have been cancelled and rescheduled.
This Writer looks forward to hearing the rationale from party-girl Health Secretary Therese Coffey. Is she still having the time of her life?
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