A ship funded by Bristol street artist Banksy to rescue migrants in the Mediterranean was so successful that it had to call for help itself after it became too loaded with migrants to move.
The ship, the Louise Michel, ended up with more than 200 traumatised migrants on its deck, meaning it was unsafe to move, while it was in the see near Malta.
The Italian coastguard responded to calls for help and took 49 people, and another rescue ship, Seawatch4, arrived to help as well.
But the ship’s 10-strong crew poured scorn on the lukewarm attitude of most European countries who, they said, had been “ignoring our emergency calls for immediate assistance”.
The Italian coastguard finally responded after the crew warned Maltese and Italian authorities: “Don’t let it become a body count. Do your job. Rescue them.”
It seems the UK’s is not the only European government for whom humanitarian aid is a foreign concept.
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Keir Starmer: at least this time he has reason to look relaxed – he hasn’t done anything wrong.
Let’s get one thing clear: Keir Starmer has been a disaster (so far) as leader of the Labour Party.
It comes as a relief, therefore, to learn that he is at least a good son.
Using his own money, Starmer bought a field near his parents’ home, so his mother could look after rescued donkeys. This was before he was a member of Parliament, when he was working in the legal profession.
Apparently the land is now worth “up to £10 million”, but he bought it in 1996 when it is likely to have been worth a considerable amount less.
And reporters in the Mail on Sunday want us to believe that Starmer is set to sell this Green Belt land to the local council – for housing:
The claim is false. Even the MoS article features a quote from a Labour spokesperson, saying that the field is not for sale – but a strip of land next to his late parents’ house is being sold, in accordance with his father’s will.
Contrast this with George Osborne and his paddock.
Remember that?
I wrote about it in 2012, as follows:
“Osborne – who is, let’s remember, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and therefore should know the rules extremely well – included the mortgage for a paddock in his taxpayer-funded expenses.
“He bought a farmhouse in Cheshire, along with the neighbouring land, for £455,000 in 2000, before he became an MP – but then, between 2003 and 2009, he claimed up to £100,000 in expenses to cover mortgage interest payments on both the land and the building. The mortgages were interest-only. After 2003, he never paid a penny himself.
“When he re-mortgaged in 2005, he increased the amount to £480,000 – again on an interest-only basis – to cover the intial purchase costs and £10,000 for repairs. He was using public money to claw back his outlay on the property, so from then on, none of the money paid on that building or land was paid by Mr Osborne. It all came from the taxpayer.
“During the MPs’ expenses scandal of 2009 we learned that he had “flipped” his second home allowance onto the property and increased the mortgage. What we didn’t know was that the expenses payments were not just for the house, but for the paddock as well; it is registered separately with the Land Registry.
“Osborne sold the house and the land – both of which are now firmly established as having been funded with your money, not his – last year, for £1 million. That’s more than double the original price. He has pocketed that money; the taxpayer won’t get any of it back.”
Osborne did not need this building or the adjoining land to discharge his Parliamentary duties, nor did he pay back anything like the amount he claimed, when he was found to have overclaimed for mortgage interest on the farmhouse (and only the farmhouse).
The difference is clear.
Osborne used public funds to pocket hundreds of thousands of pounds. Starmer used his own money to help his mother.
And the Mail on Sunday attacked Starmer!
Perhaps this is because Osborne is a Conservative and could therefore do no wrong, as far as the Tory rags are concerned. Starmer, on the other hand, despite being practically a Red Tory, is Labour and therefore a target.
Fortunately the Twitterati feel otherwise:
The funny thing about the Starmer row (Btw I have no idea what his background is) is that helping out your parents because you’re now earning good money is a very working class thing to do.
What a monster: Keir Starmer bought a field by his parents' house so his mum could look after rescue donkeys.
This is a desperate joke, but when the worst of the pandemic is over, the right-wing press will throw everything at Starmer: they are the Tories' campaign arm. https://t.co/7ce5ew9mEd
Who knows what they’ll throw at him after the Covid-19 crisis finally subsides?
That’s likely to be a long way off yet (because the Tories are busily turning coronavirus into the biggest massacre of UK citizens ever to happen in peacetime).
But Starmer’s record as Labour leader suggests that this merely means they will have plenty of ammunition by then.
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“Nine-nine-nine emergency; which service do you require?”
“Fire service, please.”
“Thank you! Your fire service today will be provided by G5S/CrApiTOS. Putting you through…”
<click>
“Hi! Your fire and rescue services today are sponsored by U-None Insurance – when U need a payout from us, U get None!”
“At last! I need you to come to -”
“One moment, caller! How will you be paying for today’s service? We take Visa, Mastercard, Maestro, PayPal, Bitcoin or blood.”
“Huh?”
“We take-”
“Forget it. It’s too late now. The fire is everywhere. There’s no way out for me, even if you could get here in time.”
“Okay. We’ll bill your heirs for this call.”
That’s the Conservative privatised fire and rescue service – if it is ever allowed to happen.
They’ll make you pay, or they’ll make you pay with your life. Is your credit good enough?
Don’t let it happen.
All 46 fire and rescue services in England could be sold off to private firms under secret Government plans.
Local government minister Brandon Lewis calls for new laws that “would enable fire and rescue authorities in England to contract out their full range of services to a suitable provider” in a letter obtained by the Mirror.
He continues: “I appreciate that the proposals are not without controversy; however these changes will help remove barriers and to increase choices that fire and rescue authorities have to contract out their services.”
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Amber Rudd: This resident of Cloud Cuckoo Land was never in danger of losing her Cabinet seat in the reshuffle. What does that say about Theresa May?
… Get a bizarre answer.
Chris Williamson, Labour’s shadow minister for fire and emergency services, should know his numbers when it comes to those services’ budgets.
When he says these organisations have reserves of £143 million, to set against a budget of £2.3 billion, This Writer is inclined to accept his figures.
But look what happened when he tackled Home Secretary (yes, even after the reshuffle) Amber Rudd about the pitiful inadequacy of this amount of reserve cash.
Trying to point out the inaccuracies in the govt's rationale for cuts to the Fire & Rescue Service I uncovered a Home Office Truth: ask a Tory a serious question, get a ridiculous non-answer. pic.twitter.com/7MsAYATnKS
Was Ms Rudd making up these figures as she went along? If the reserves were 40 per cent of annual revenue – meaning, one supposes, the £2.3 billion annual budget – then they would stand at £920 million, wouldn’t they? Or what was she talking about? Without hard figures to support her statement, it was meaningless.
And as for taking “a little more scrutiny to this matter, rather than treating it like some Venezuelan dictatorship” – that’s exactly what Mr Williamson was trying to do!
So, yes, it was certainly generous of Ms Rudd to suggest of herself that she isn’t living in Cloud Cuckoo Land. From this performance, it seems she is planning to take up permanent residence there.
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Is this the face of a ‘Caring’ Conservative? Or is he nasty and clumsy? And if he is, does that mean the supporters behind him are stupid?
Independent luminary Andreas Whittam Smith reckons the Conservative Party in its current form is both nasty and stupid – and also clumsy, if his latest article is to be believed.
Or because of benefit assessment policies that mean people living with progressive and degenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s, motor neurone disease and rheumatoid arthritis are being subjected to what a group of charities describes as “upsetting and unnecessary” examinations to see whether they will recover enough to look for work in the future – a pointless exercise because their conditions are flagged up from the start as progressive and degenerative; they’re never going to get better.
Or because, after the Resolution Foundation found that one-in-five employees (4.9 million people) earned less than the living wage, George Osborne is promising that if the Conservative Party wins next year’s general election, then most welfare payments that the working poor rely on – including child benefit, tax credits, jobseeker’s allowance, housing benefit and income support – will be frozen in April 2016 for two years. They are currently rising by 1 per cent a year. He will make the working poor poorer.
Clumsy because they have imposed unpopular decisions on the people in an unfair way. Mr Whittam Smith defines fairness in terms of “the four main elements that go into creating a sense of procedural justice: Those concerned should have been able to play an active part in the process. The rules should be applied with sensitivity to individual situations. Decision-makers should be impartial and fair. And the agents of the system with whom people have to deal should treat them with respect.”
He continues: “There is no evidence that people living with progressive and degenerative conditions or members of the working poor or families struggling to pay care bills for elderly relatives have been consulted. There is no evidence of sensitivity to individual situations or else the bedroom tax legislation would have recognised the special difficulties of disabled tenants who are unable to share a bedroom and would have taken into account where homes have been specially adapted.
“As for the agents of the system with whom people have to deal, outsourcing many of these tasks has not produced happy results. Naturally the outsourced staff work by the book. They cannot be flexible or understanding. They are chiefly concerned with getting the job done as quickly as possible so as to reach the profits targets set by their employers. And then, in the final analysis, claimants are not dealing directly with the state at all but with a sort or mercenary army. Mutual respect cannot exist in these circumstances.”
Let’s expand on the last point for a moment, and connect it with the previous points about benefit assessment, with this snippet of information: An academic report from Edinburgh Napier University and the University of Stirling has confirmed that the Tories’ welfare reforms are not helping people to find work.
“The current welfare system is not helping people find work. Those who had moved into employment found work independently and not due to Jobcentre Plus services;
“There was limited support on offer to help recipients of out of work benefits move into work. Those participating in the Work Programme did not report that it was helpful;
“Most people wanted to work but issues such as childcare, illness and training made it difficult for them to do so;
“The current welfare system also does not appear to meet its aim of ‘make work pay’. People who had moved into work felt only slightly better off and continued to find it difficult to make ends meet;
“Benefit freezes or restricted increases have meant falling real-term incomes, with many study participants finding it hard to meet basic needs.
“The report concludes that: ‘Participants with a health condition or a disability, and those who were lone parents, reported that they wanted to be in work but faced considerable barriers to doing so, which were unlikely to be addressed by increasing conditionality.
“’According to the views of participants, stronger conditionality is unlikely to get more people into work, due to a lack of suitable work and barriers in the areas of education, skills, employability, childcare and health.’
“The researchers found that claimants who did not abide by the new conditions faced serious consequences.
“’The impact on benefit recipients who fall foul of new rules – or who are affected by a mistake on the part of a benefits agency that is not their fault – can be severe,’ they said.”
That’s nasty – not only have benefit changes been forced onto people without any regard for them, but they don’t even work.
However, this – moving back to Mr Whittam Smith – may be the Tories’ downfall. He points out: “Nowadays we are no longer a homogenous mass but an agglomeration of minorities. In my own circle of family and friends, for instance, there are people who are disabled and others with serious illnesses. There are those who are single parents, others who are retired. There are middle-aged people with back-breaking mortgages, others who are and young and ambitious. There are regular Church-goers as well as non-believers. There are people in jobs, and people who cannot find work. There are Londoners who can’t conceive of living anywhere else (I am one of these), and people who resent the capital city and all its works.
“Each of these minorities has its own particular concerns and needs, prejudices and resentments, but yet feels sympathy for any group that is badly treated.
“The Coalition led by its Conservative ministers has often gone about its work in an unfeeling, insensitive manner. And for that shortcoming there could be a price to pay at the next general election.”
Quite so – especially as they came into government under the banner of ‘Compassionate Conservatism’. What a terrible joke.
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Not only does this look like happy days are on their way – for SMUGGLERS – but it also shows up what an irresponsible idiot David Cameron really is. He tried to cover up his mistake by calling it a clerical error when it is clearly nothing of the sort. Please spread this information around – especially in coastal areas!
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