It turns out the Office for Budget Responsibility provided Kwasi Kwarteng with a report on his mini-budget plans on September 6, the day he took office as Chancellor.
The OBR offered to update it with any extra information before Kwarteng’s ‘fiscal event’ on September 23 – and would have been able to provide this – but was not asked to do so.
Instead, Kwarteng refused to issue any OBR report on that day – claiming there was not enough time. This appears to have been a lie:
Truss is still refusing to publish the OBR’s assessment of her plans until November 23 – nearly three months after it was written.
So Kwarteng has lied to the nation and Truss has compounded that lie by refusing to rectify it.
And the reason?
The OBR’s report would have damned the plans in the “fiscal event” as economic suicide. Truss and Kwarteng were told what their plans would do, and they produced them anyway. Shouldn’t they resign for deceiving us like this?
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This Tory leadership contest is like watching children squabbling over a toy.
Neither Rishi Sunak nor Liz Truss have any decent ideas to improve the quality of life in the United Kingdom, so all we are seeing in the end is the pair of them plumbing the depths in accusing each other.
Sunak’s latest attack on Truss is a claim that, if she doesn’t choose to offer either an unfunded £50 billion of tax cuts – mostly for the rich – and cost of living support (mostly for the poor), she will plunge the UK into an “inflation spiral”.
But his own economic policies are already sending UK inflation rocketing: US bank Citi has predicted it will reach 18 per cent – nine times the Bank of England’s target – in 2023.
That’s because of soaring energy prices – but Sunak’s policies are to blame for the effect they’re having on UK households because neither he nor any of the Tory chancellors since 2010 bothered to invest in UK-based green energy generation; they left us at the mercy of foreign fossil fuel bosses.
Meanwhile, it seems both candidates are committing political suicide by ignoring the interests of the Tories’ natural constituency: pensioners.
Propertied and pensioned people aged over 65 tend to vote for the Conservatives because they want to protect the investments and savings they have earned over the decades. Most Tory Party members are over 60.
But according to Dame Esther Rantzen, older people are facing “victimisation” due to current government policies, with the needs of senior citizens “totally ignored”.
She said both candidates should commit to creating a post for a minister for older people – but that seems a forlorn hope.
Neither Sunak, 42, nor Truss, 47, seem to have anything to say about older people.
And the independent Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that Truss is planning an emergency budget, if she is elected Tory leader (and prime minister by default), without an official economic forecast, even though one is ready and may be used.
Supporters of Sunak say she is trying to avoid scrutiny.
It seems that the policies being offered up by either candidate are no better than a dog’s dinner. We should all be living in fear for the future, no matter which of them gets into 10 Downing Street.
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After the crisis, will we put up with the cover-up? For the sake of the many thousands he sent to early graves, we have a duty to hold Boris Johnson to account for his Covid-19 cock-ups.
This Writer had the first Covid-19 vaccination on Easter Sunday and within a few hours I felt terrible.
Having been warned that a tiny minority of people experience headaches, fever and/or flu-like symptoms, I was forearmed and didn’t panice. That’s the best I can say about it.
After the headache came on I retired to bed, which I found to be extremely cold – to a point where my hands and feet felt like blocks of ice, no matter what I did to warm them up. I also experienced bizarre pains in my legs.
I did get some sleep, but awoke to the onset of the flu-like symptoms and spent the day on the sofa with the cat lying on me, downing Paracetomols and sniffing (me, not the cat).
When I told my stepdaughter about this, she said, “It’s ok, it’s just your body trying to reject the DNA changes and the nanochip. Bill Gates gets all the information fed back to him, it’ll pass and you’ll be fine in no time.” It’s good to know that someone saw the funny side.
I’m writing this just before going to bed and all those symptoms have died away.
It’s a small price to pay for the protection that the vaccine promises.
With the rollout proceeding at high speed (the vaccination centre in Builth Wells was as full as social distancing would allow when I attended), Boris Johnson and his government have announced that they are proceeding with their plans to lift lockdown restrictions, according to the timetable they set some weeks ago.
Here’s what it means, according to the BBC:
More businesses will open, but indoor settings should be visited alone, or with household groups. Outside, six people or two households can meet.
All shops allowed to open
Hairdressers, beauty salons and other close-contact services can open
Restaurants and pubs allowed to serve food and alcohol to customers sitting outdoors
Gyms and spas can reopen, as can zoos, theme parks, libraries and community centres
Members of the same household can take a holiday in England in self-contained accommodation
Weddings attended by up to 15 people can take place
Funerals be attended by up to 30 people, with 15 at wakes
Children will be able to attend any indoor children’s activity
Care home visitors will increase to two per resident
Here in Wales, matters are slightly different:
All travel restrictions have been lifted within the country – residents can travel anywhere within Welsh borders
Six people from two different households (not counting children under 11) can meet and exercise outdoors and in private gardens
Organised outdoor activities and sports for children and under-18s can resume
Limited opening of outdoor areas of some historic places and gardens
Libraries and archives can reopen
Self-contained holiday accommodation, including hotels with en-suite facilities and room service, can open to people from the same household or support bubble. But non-essential travel to and from other UK nations remains banned
And then, from 12 April at the earliest:
All pupils and students return to school, college and other education
All shops and close-contact services can open
The ban on travelling in and out of Wales ends
Driving lessons can resume and some driving tests (remainder on 22 April)
In Scotland:
Outdoor mixing between four people from up to two households is already allowed, along with outdoor non-contact sports and organised group exercise.
Communal worship is also now allowed with up to 50 attending (if social distancing permits).
The stay at home became the stay local rule on 2 April.
From 5 April, hairdressers and barbers (but not mobile services) can reopen for pre-booked appointments; more shops can reopen and non-essential click-and-collect can resume; outdoors non-contact group sports for 12 to 17-year-olds can resume.
12-19 April:
All pupils back at school full-time
And in Northern Ireland:
People can now meet for exercise in groups of up to 10 from two households
Golf and other outdoor sporting activities can resume (although clubhouses and sports facilities must stay closed)
Six people from two households can meet in a private garden
Garden centres can operate click-and-collect services
From 12 April:
Remaining school year groups 8-11 return (Years 1-3, 4-7 and 12-14 have already returned)
Stay-at-home message relaxed
All other non-essential retail can operate click-and-collect
Sports training with up to 15 people can resume
Up to 10 people from two households can meet in a private garden
It all seems very optimistic.
Personally, I’m hoping it all works out because I am sick to the back teeth of being stuck at home.
But I don’t want us to forget that we have paid a terrible, terrible price, just to get to this point.
Our government, in whom the nation placed its trust in December 2019, failed us abjectly – and the number of deaths so far is greater than many recognised genocides including:
The Romani genocide in Nazi-occupied Europe (130,000 at its lowest estimate).
The Polish genocide (around 110,000 at lowest estimate).
Idi Amin’s Ugandan genocide, the Rohingya genocide, and the genocides in Darfur, East Timor, Bosnia, Croatia, and California.
I use the lowest estimates because, of course, the number of deaths currently known in the UK is also a lowest estimate. It will be a long time before we get the final figure.
It is already horrifying enough, though:
What a searing, unforgivable milestone 😔
Today’s @ONS statistics show a staggering 150,116 people have now died of Covid.
These deaths were not inevitable. Not predestined. These people didn’t have to die.
Boris Johnson avoided dealing with Covid-19 when the pandemic first arrived in the UK. He avoided briefings and refused to take the decisions we needed, to restrict the spread of the virus.
Because he wanted it to spread through the population and kill where it could. He said as much in a TV interview in March last year.
It was his great “herd immunity” fallacy.
Ever since, he has been too keen to lift lockdown early and too reluctant to impose it again.
He has relied on a heavy propaganda campaign, intended to whitewash his decisions by claiming that the UK’s response to Covid-19 has been successful when it hasn’t.
And while he has said he is willing to have an inquiry into his government’s handling of the pandemic, he has demanded that it will only happen “at the appropriate time”, inducing some of us to believe that, for him, the appropriate time is “never”.
Alternatively, he’ll just fob us off with a government-scripted whitewash, like we’ve seen in his “racism report” last month.
He will never accept responsibility for the huge death toll he has caused.
And that means it’s up to us to pin it onto him.
But will we?
I’m concerned that the Great British Public will let him off the hook.
We have a deplorable tendency to forget about terrible injustices, pretty much the instant after we’ve had a good complain about it.
We shout at the television during the news, but how many of us actually do anything about the cause of that rage afterwards?
You know I’m right.
I can think of 150,116 people who would demand that Johnson and his government be held to account – if only they could communicate with us from beyond the grave.
They can’t so we should.
Whatever happens, it is our duty to demand justice for the multitude who died when they should not have died – because an ignorant, selfish part-time politician could not do his job properly.
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Contempt: at the national Remembrance Day commemoration service in 2019, Boris Johnson showed contempt for our Armed Forces by laying his wreath face-down. Is this merely symptomatic of the Tory government’s attitude to veterans generally?
I pass this on without comment. Do I need to amplify it further?
Disabled ex-armed forces personnel are being let down by the welfare system, with many experiencing stress and anxiety brought on by the struggle to access social security benefits, according to the Royal British Legion.
The charity said frontline Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) staff were insufficiently aware of their obligations under the armed forces covenant, which requires public services to give special consideration to injured ex-service personnel.
Among the difficulties reported by veterans to a Royal British Legion survey was the failure of benefits officials to understand post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) when carrying out and scoring health assessments for disability benefits.
A study by a Salford University academic published last year found many armed forces veterans with complex needs reported overwhelmingly negative experiences of universal credit, disability benefits assessments and benefit sanctions.
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We thought this window-writing was by a child in care. It seems it might have been by a carer instead.
This research shows all the hallmarks of Tory employment policy: early years workers – predominantly female – are considered to be of low worth and paid less than the minimum wage, and have few career options – and the Covid crisis is likely to make matters worse.
It’s Conservative policy, remember: they have victimised women since they got back into office in 2010, with the so-called austerity policies attacking women far more than men.
One in eight childcare workers in England earn less than £5 an hour, according to new research which warns that low pay, high workload and a lack of career development are having an adverse effect on the sector.
The Social Mobility Commission (SMC) report says… as many as 13% of childcare workers are paid under £5 an hour.
The workforce included apprentices, students on placement, volunteers as well as childminders, hence the low hourly rates.
Staff turnover is high at 13%, with one in six leaving their posts within a year, and 37% quitting within two years.
The report also highlights a lack of training opportunities for those who enter the workforce, which is 96% female, with just 17% of early years workers in receipt of job-related training.
Workload is high and the job carries considerable responsibility – more than one in 10 (11%) full-time early years workers reported working more than 42 hours per week, compared to 3% of retail workers.
It’s cognitive dissonance; the job is clearly highly-responsible and stressful, yet the remuneration is pitiful and there are no associated benefits.
Does this not indicate a political decision by the Tories?
That party’s notorious “nudge unit” has long been tasked with pushing people into particular decisions by making the alternative unacceptable.
Apparently they don’t want children to have professional care while we go to work.
Clearly we’ll all have to stay at home instead – or stop having children so we can go to work.
But if we stay home, what will happen to the economy?
And if we stop having children, well, there aren’t enough people working in the economy to support the current number of senior citizens, and that will only get worse if the working population diminishes – as it must in that eventuality.
So it seems that, by allowing childcare workers to be treated so badly, the Tories are deliberately trying to trash the UK economy.
And some of us voted them into office with a landslide in order to do that.
Were these voters ill, or insane, or suffering mass hysteria?
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Closed: schools in England should stay that way because the Tory government cannot guarantee that they are safe – and parents will be legally responsible if their children catch Covid-19 while following the government’s demand that they attend.
If English parents send their children back to school on Monday (June 1), they will carry responsibility if their child catches Covid-19 as a result.
It seems the Tory government isn’t telling anybody about that part of the law on parental responsibility.
This Writer is grateful to one such parent, who writes:
You have a legal obligation to not send your child anywhere you believe to be unsafe.
If you suspect your child is going to be harmed and you send them anyway and they get harmed, you are legally liable.
You cannot be made non-liable either, not while you have parental responsibility and they can’t penalise you for fulfilling a legal obligation.
So the law seems clear, in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic:
There is no guarantee that children will be safe from catching this potentially deadly disease at school.
If they catch it, then it doesn’t matter whether they show symptoms or not – they will still be vulnerable to the variant of Kawasaki disease that has proved fatal in several cases both in the UK and around the world.
Parents have a responsibility to keep children away from places where they may be endangered – and these places currently include schools.
If the child catches Covid-19, or contracts the Kawasaki variant, at school then the parent will be legally responsible for it – not the Tory government that demanded that the child must go back to school.
So the law tells us that parents must keep their children away from school, no matter what the government says.
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How tasteless of the Tories to try to blame Labour for a tragedy that they caused.
People have died and both Home Secretary Priti Patel and prime minister Boris Johnson have tried to turn the atrocity into a political football.
For clarity: convicted terrorist Usman Khan murdered two people on London Bridge last Friday (November 29).
Both Mr Johnson (see the link below) and Ms Patel have tried to blame the fact that he was free and able to commit these murders on an early release policy which they say was imposed by a Labour government.
Both Mr Johnson and Ms Patel were telling an untruth.
Khan had been jailed under Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) – a policy imposed by Labour, but abolished by a Conservative Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, in 2012.
It is because the Conservatives abolished IPP that Khan was able to appeal against his sentence – successfully. It was reduced to 16 years, meaning he was released on licence in December 2018.
Labour had nothing to do with it.
If you read the article (link below), you’ll see that Mr Johnson changed tack – to claim that his government could not be responsible because he has only been prime minister for 120 days. What drivel.
The UK has been under continuous Conservative rule since 2010. The same Conservative government that repealed IPP is now being run by Mr Johnson. The only differences – of cabinet members and prime minister – are cosmetic.
So don’t let Boris Johnson and his Tory cronies make a fool of you.
His government was responsible for Usman Khan’s release and as leader, he should take responsibility for it.
The fact that he is desperately trying to slither out of it is more proof of his unsuitability to govern.
Make sure he doesn’t get the chance to cause any more harm. Vote Labour on December 12.
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An anti-Brexit demonstration outside Parliament on June 12 last year.
The possibility of a Tory prime minister trying to prorogue Parliament – discontinuing it without dissolving it – in order to pass a “no-deal” Brexit has been pushed back by the House of Lords.
Peers voted by a majority of 103 to ensure Parliament will sit in the weeks leading up to the October 31 deadline, making it impossible for Boris Johnson (or, indeed, Jeremy Hunt) to ensure the deadline can pass without MPs interfering.
The vote happened the day before the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) warned that a “no-deal” Brexit could trigger a recession, shrinking the economy by two per cent by 2020.
The organisation said increased uncertainty and falling confidence would deter investment and hit trade.
The decision was an amendment to the Northern Ireland (executive formation) Bill which returns to the Commons today (July 18).
Voting by MPs is likely to be tight.
Supporters of Mr Johnson are saying that concerns over the economy are fear-mongering, and that it is buoyant at the moment.
That may be, but the OBR is saying leaving without a deal would add £30bn a year to borrowing from 2020-21 onwards and 12 per cent of GDP to net debt by 2023-24.
Watch how your MP votes – and take note of the effect on the economy. There will be an election soon, and you should judge your MP on whether they are reckless about your well-being.
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The Mentorn TV executive who chooses Question Time audience members may be reviewing the company’s policy after this truth bomb dropped on the April 4 edition of the programme (there is a connection with the Conservative Party, as I understand it):
She was referring to the attempt by Home Secretary Sajid Javid – and by prime minister Theresa May, let’s not forget – to palm off responsibility for knife crime among young people onto teachers like herself.
As I wrote last week, she wants teachers to have a “public health duty” to identify warning signs that a young person could be in danger, such as worrying behaviour at school, issues at home, or “presenting at A&E with a suspicious injury”. For real?
There is an existing duty requiring teachers and police to work together to safeguard children. As a former Home Secretary, Theresa May should know that.
Chris Keates, general secretary of the teachers’ union the NASUWT, delivered the reality check to Mrs May when he said: “All professionals involved with children and young people are well aware of their responsibilities for safeguarding their health and welfare.
“Violent crime involving young people, of course, needs to be taken seriously and appropriate strategies considered. However, this is a complex issue which will not be resolved by putting additional pressures and responsibilities on teachers and head teachers or indeed others.”
No it will not.
But the very rich are looking for their next tax cut, aren’t they, Mrs May? And what’s a bit of extra crime among the plebs anyway? That’s just culling the stock. Am I right, Mrs May?
What do you think?
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Is anyone keeping track of the amount of money these failed Conservative vanity projects are costing the public purse?
Boris Johnson cost us £53 million with this silliness alone, but has everyone forgotten his costly water cannon project?
Chris Grayling haemorrhages money.
The DWP spends a fortune trying to deny help to benefit claimants.
I’m sure you can think of plenty of other examples.
Under the Conservatives, the national debt has more than doubled, but they have insisted on granting huge tax cuts to the super-rich.
The £110 billion in tax cuts the Tories gave to corporations and the wealthy 2010-18 could have been used to fully fund the shortfalls in spending for NHS, Social Care, Mental Health, Education & to house every rough sleeper in the UK.
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