Sugar: He’s probably not feeling too sweet right now.
I appear to have handed Lord Sugar his arse, without really trying.
He was on Twitter this morning (September 25), complaining about rubbish on the streets of Hackney. Here’s what he said and what I jotted off in response:
You supported successive Conservative governments that have cut council grants by 60%, meaning they had to cut back on services or go bankrupt. No, they couldn't have done it more cheaply; if private firms got a contract with a low tender, they'd have gone bust with work not done
As you can see, a few people seem to have enjoyed my reply.
Of course, it does have the virtue of accuracy.
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Rubbish collection: this is not happening in Edinburgh.
Those of us who remember the original Winter of Discontent in 1978-9 may recall seeing news footage of bins overflowing with rubbish that was going uncollected because the workers who usually picked it up were on strike.
Well, thanks to the Tories, it seems those bad old days are back:
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Brexit: When describing his deal, Boris Johnson couldn’t help but wear this smile, known as ‘duper’s delight’ – it means he didn’t mean a word of what he was saying. Now a Brexit Party MEP has said the UK would be better-off remaining in the EU than going through with it.
Boris Johnson’s Tory Brexit deal is so bad, at least one member of the party named after Brexit would rather remain in the EU than go through with it.
That tells me everything I need to know about it – but I’m a Remainer.
It does seem to me that those of you who are dead set on quitting the European Union might want to take note of these comments, though:
A Brexit Party MEP has said that the UK is better staying in the European Union, rather than leaving under Boris Johnson’s deal.
Appearing on Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Saturday show, Ben Habib, the Brexit Party MEP for London came out with a quite frankly startling attack on the prime minister.
“What we need to do is to get the prime minister to pivot away from the withdrawal agreement which I think is subjugation of the UK.
“I see the withdrawal agreement as much worse than remain, quite frankly.”
Did a Brexit Party member just say the remaining in the EU was better than leaving?
“I do think it’s better. It’s much better because if you think about it under Boris Johnson’s deal we’re going to leave Northern Ireland bereft.”
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“Go bin-diving for Britain!” says Michael Gove. “It’s your patriotic duty!” After you, Pob.
We owe a debt of thanks to nincompoops like Michael Gove; they make the Conservative government’s attitude to the rest of us crystal clear.
His high-handed view is that those who don’t own as much as his ilk should root around in other people’s dustbins because, in his opinion, that’s all we’re good for.
He’ll probably try to make it sound patriotic, like Theresa May did in her conference speech. “Bin-diving for Britain!” or some such stupidity.
It is an insult to everybody the Tories have impoverished with their silly state-shrinking austerity policies that stole all our cash and tripled the income of super-rich idiots like Michael Gove.
Homeowners should be allowed to scavenge for old televisions, furniture and appliances at dumps so they can reuse them, Michael Gove has suggested.
The Environment secretary told a meeting that he wanted to change rules at council recycling centres so people can recover valuables.
Currently, many local authorities ban people from taking away anything their tips,however Mr Gove said he wanted the rules to be relaxed.
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The blurry man on the left is Chris Stevens, a Tory councillor who pretended to be a member of the public to deny the devastation that Conservative policies have done to the sick and disabled people of the UK. The woman on the left will soon be an EX-prime minister.
Some people – and I use that word mockingly – in the Conservative Party simply don’t know when to shut up.
Two cabinet ministers have lost their jobs within a week (Michael Fallon and Priti Patel), and been replaced by shambling inadequates. A third – Boris Johnson – is set to follow at any time, due to his own arrogance.
The minority Tory government is under attack for its failure to address appalling levels of tax avoidance by the very rich, for its failure to make any progress in Brexit negotiations, and for its indifference to shocking levels of sexual harassment among its own MPs.
This is the moment a ‘plant’ in the audience of the BBC’s flagship political debate show Question Time decided to revive the debate over the thousands upon thousands of sick and disabled people who have died because of Conservative policies to restrict state benefits.
In response to accurate claims by Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortti, the audience member stated that they were “inflammatory rubbish”:
The absolute state of this: A Tory plant in the BBC Question Time audience outright denying the Tories horrific mistreatment of sick and disabled people. pic.twitter.com/0NFQntHuot
His name is Chris Stevens and he is a Conservative councillor from Horley, in Surrey. He used to be a member of UKIP, which is probably the reason he was so keen to support Brexit in his comments, and he provided absolutely no evidence to support his defence of the Tories’ genocide – yes, I put it as strongly as that – against the sick and disabled. Tom Clark, the Another Angry Voice blogger, has put this infographic together about him:
That guy furiously denying the Tory track record of abusing disabled people on BBC Question Time last night was @christevens, a Tory councillor and part of the massive Blue-kip influx since Theresa May took over. pic.twitter.com/XFS24MLG6q
The response on the social media has been overwhelmingly opposed to Cllr Stevens and his ignorant assertions. News stories detailing the deaths of the sick and disabled, dating back several years, have been brought back to light.
The Department for Work and Pensions considers these stories to be anecdotal, and therefore uninformative about the overall situation. But the DWP – the only organisation in a position to track that overall situation – deliberately refuses to do so.
DWP found thousands were dying within weeks of having their benefits stopped, IDS told them to stop counting.#bbcqt
It does not check the health of people who have been denied benefits after a very short period of time and, when deaths are recorded, the reasons are explained away as being “complicated”. The reasons aren’t complicated:
The Tories are killing people who are disabled. It's as simple as that. https://t.co/eBybr1y3DB
How can the government claim to be doing its best for the sick and disabled people when it is putting those with long-term degenerative conditions – who are never going to improve – through pointless reassessment procedures?
The claim that their benefit award would then be tailored to fit their needs is a lie; many people don’t even get enough to survive.
That is the “conscious cruelty” of the Conservative government’s policy – the claim to be doing good when in fact doing harm, and the huge effort to hide the evidence.
After Cllr Stevens’s outburst on Question Time, This Writer received multiple requests for my own perspective on these issues. I can do no better than to refer you to my previous articles.
That information was only published as a result of a Freedom of Information request by Yr Obdt Srvt – the same request that showed 2,400 people had died in a two-week period after the DWP decided to deprive them of their Employment and Support Allowance. The DWP had tried to avoid publishing the information and had to be forced to do so by the Information Commissioner.
Bear in mind that at the time the information was released – August 2015 – the number of deaths per week was not 90, as has been suggested after last Thursday’s Question Time.
Perhaps I should post links to all the other articles I’ve written on this subject over the last nearly six years? There have been hundreds.
And that’s the point.
The evidence demonstrating Tory cruelty isn’t “inflammatory rubbish” – it is thoroughly documented.
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The blurry man on the left is Chris Stevens, a Tory councillor who pretended to be a member of the public to deny the devastation that Conservative policies have done to the sick and disabled people of the UK. The woman on the left will soon be an EX-prime minister.
Some people – and I use that word mockingly – in the Conservative Party simply don’t know when to shut up.
Two cabinet ministers have lost their jobs within a week (Michael Fallon and Priti Patel), and been replaced by shambling inadequates. A third – Boris Johnson – is set to follow at any time, due to his own arrogance.
The minority Tory government is under attack for its failure to address appalling levels of tax avoidance by the very rich, for its failure to make any progress in Brexit negotiations, and for its indifference to shocking levels of sexual harassment among its own MPs.
This is the moment a ‘plant’ in the audience of the BBC’s flagship political debate show Question Time decided to revive the debate over the thousands upon thousands of sick and disabled people who have died because of Conservative policies to restrict state benefits.
In response to accurate claims by Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortti, the audience member stated that they were “inflammatory rubbish”:
The absolute state of this: A Tory plant in the BBC Question Time audience outright denying the Tories horrific mistreatment of sick and disabled people. pic.twitter.com/0NFQntHuot
His name is Chris Stevens and he is a Conservative councillor from Horley, in Surrey. He used to be a member of UKIP, which is probably the reason he was so keen to support Brexit in his comments, and he provided absolutely no evidence to support his defence of the Tories’ genocide – yes, I put it as strongly as that – against the sick and disabled. Tom Clark, the Another Angry Voice blogger, has put this infographic together about him:
That guy furiously denying the Tory track record of abusing disabled people on BBC Question Time last night was @christevens, a Tory councillor and part of the massive Blue-kip influx since Theresa May took over. pic.twitter.com/XFS24MLG6q
The response on the social media has been overwhelmingly opposed to Cllr Stevens and his ignorant assertions. News stories detailing the deaths of the sick and disabled, dating back several years, have been brought back to light.
The Department for Work and Pensions considers these stories to be anecdotal, and therefore uninformative about the overall situation. But the DWP – the only organisation in a position to track that overall situation – deliberately refuses to do so.
DWP found thousands were dying within weeks of having their benefits stopped, IDS told them to stop counting.#bbcqt
It does not check the health of people who have been denied benefits after a very short period of time and, when deaths are recorded, the reasons are explained away as being “complicated”. The reasons aren’t complicated:
The Tories are killing people who are disabled. It's as simple as that. https://t.co/eBybr1y3DB
How can the government claim to be doing its best for the sick and disabled people when it is putting those with long-term degenerative conditions – who are never going to improve – through pointless reassessment procedures?
The claim that their benefit award would then be tailored to fit their needs is a lie; many people don’t even get enough to survive.
That is the “conscious cruelty” of the Conservative government’s policy – the claim to be doing good when in fact doing harm, and the huge effort to hide the evidence.
After Cllr Stevens’s outburst on Question Time, This Writer received multiple requests for my own perspective on these issues. I can do no better than to refer you to my previous articles.
That information was only published as a result of a Freedom of Information request by Yr Obdt Srvt – the same request that showed 2,400 people had died in a two-week period after the DWP decided to deprive them of their Employment and Support Allowance. The DWP had tried to avoid publishing the information and had to be forced to do so by the Information Commissioner.
Bear in mind that at the time the information was released – August 2015 – the number of deaths per week was not 90, as has been suggested after last Thursday’s Question Time.
Perhaps I should post links to all the other articles I’ve written on this subject over the last nearly six years? There have been hundreds.
And that’s the point.
The evidence demonstrating Tory cruelty isn’t “inflammatory rubbish” – it is thoroughly documented.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Who said it could never happen here? Children are starving on the streets of Britain as the Tory-led Coalition’s hate policies bite ever-more-deeply into the poor [Image: Stoke Sentinel].
British children are sifting through bins left outside houses in search of scraps of food because they are starving, it has been revealed.
But Tories and their supporters in rich London won’t have to look at them – because they are in Labour-held Stoke-on-Trent.
The Stoke Sentinel reported that “Youngsters have been searching through bins in the Hollings Street and Brocksford Street area of Fenton before eating any leftovers.”
It said, “Dozens of hungry families are referred to Fenton’s food bank for help every week.”
What’s really sad about this story is that some of the people interviewed seemed to think the problem was with the mess left behind by these children – youngsters who are, remember, so hungry that they are rooting through rubbish for stale leftovers.
One said: “It’s horrible to see… Some days on the school run we have had to actually cross over the road because there’s so much rubbish on the pavement because of this. Luckily I keep my bins to one side so we haven’t been too badly affected.”
Clearly she is full of the milk of human kindness. According to the newspaper, that person was just 26 years old. Perhaps she should consider growing up.
Police in the area said the matter had been reported to them. What did people think they were going to do – arrest starving children?
Fortunately, Sgt Jason Allport demonstrated that police have the right attitude: “The issue isn’t theft; it’s children going around not having enough clothing and food.
“That issue is really something for social services to look at.”
In fact, it is something for every single citizen of the United Kingdom to look at.
This is the sixth-richest economy in the entire world. It is a land of plenty. Yet people here are happy to allow their neighbours to starve – probably to the point of death.
Their only concern is that they shouldn’t have to see it.
If I was living in Stoke, I would be ashamed to share the streets with people who think like that.
If I had voted for the political parties that have inflicted this misery on our nation, I would be ashamed of what I had done.
But you can be sure that David Cameron isn’t ashamed.
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Public interest, not party interest: Thanks to Jim Moore for this cartoon. I’ve been waiting for a good moment to release it. Notice Iain Duncan Smith’s face looks like it’s behind bars – which is where many people believe he ought to be!
“The DWP has quietly decided to ditch statistics it used to collect on the number of deaths of recipients of incapacity benefits (now ESA) and its predecessors Incapacity Benefit (IB) and Severe Disablement Allowance (SDA),” according to Liberal Conspiracy.
The story, by Sunny Hundal, claims: “It is thought the numbers of deaths has sharply increased since the Coalition government’s severe cuts to social security benefits.
“But to ensure that deaths aren’t cited as evidence of failure of the changes, the DWP won’t be collecting and updating its statistics.”
No supporting information is provided and nobody from the Department for Work and Pensions is quoted. Does this change the chances of success for my Freedom of Information request, in which I asked for statistics in ESA/IB claimants who have died?
No. Not at all.
I requested statistics for 2012, which we all know already that the DWP has collected. They are there; they should be available.
The fact that they aren’t open for inspection is already incriminating, if you ask me!
My FoI request will be granted in the near future – even if the DWP finds another reason for refusal, the Information Commissioner’s office will overrule it. I’ve been through the rules. In this instance, it is Iain Duncan Smith who doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
If the DWP then claims that it has destroyed the figures – as seems to be claimed by the Liberal Conspiracy story – then we’ll be looking at a criminal investigation, I think.
There can only be one reason for hiding the figures – they must have risen and have not dropped. For the DWP to actually delete them, rather than allow them to be released, they must have risen sharply.
This would not only indicate the failure of Iain Duncan Smith’s policy – after everything he and his ministers have said, time and time again, about the fairness of the assessment regime, and how it is carried out in a humane way, this would prove that it is neither fair nor humane – and that, given the opportunity to stop the deaths from accelerating, these Conservative politicians allowed them to continue.
If a person knows that their actions are causing people to die, and does nothing about it, then an observer may rightly conclude that this person wants those deaths to take place. There’s a word for people who cause others to die – with the intention of causing them to die.
That word is “murderer”.
Or in this case, “mass murderer”.
The net is closing, Iain Duncan Smith.
Nobody will think it is a coincidence, if the DWP really has binned its statistics on claimant deaths at a time when public interest is focused on the issue.
And to any DWP interlopers, reading this site because it is on a ‘watch list’: This is a very dangerous time to be working for that organisation. People who help others to commit murder are accessories to the crime and may also be convicted for the offence.
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![Who said it could never happen here? Children are starving on the streets of Britain as the Tory-led Coalition's hate policies bite ever-more-deeply into the poor [Image: Stoke Sentinel].](https://i0.wp.com/voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/140703starving.jpg)
