399. Dogs over people & state handouts for the rich – Britain 2021 !

‘Urgent’ is not within Johnson’s meagre abilities but he does do accidental irony, which is handy in a country that is now infamous globally for the escape from Afghanistan which prioritised pets over people and where it’s the wealthy who benefit most from the state.

For some it came as a surprise that Dominic Raab (who – as we’ve said many times – didn’t understand the importance of the Dover to Calais trade route when he was BREXIT minister) did not understand that if you’ve been promoted – however irresponsibly and recklessly to Foreign secretary – the least you can do is stop working on your tan when another foreign policy fuck up is underway.

But then Gavin Williamson – Minister for Education appeared to be asleep for the whole of covid as far as the state-educated children of Britain were any concern of his – while the privileged privately educated – non-tax paying schools were able to function in their wealth bubbles.

The only thing that seemed to happen with any energy during covid was the handing out of contracts to government mates – which were “fast tracked” (we know this, thanks to The Good Law Project) so that more state funds found their ways into the pockets of those with contacts – often with nothing to show for it as far as the British people were concerned. Free money then.

Boris Johnson was able to complete his divorce settlement when it turned out the daughter-age girlfriend was up the duff, however, he could not really be arsed to do anything about the start of the pandemic and was in fact far too ‘not arsed’ to attend emergency covid meetings. So, British tax payers were, in effect, paying for him to sort out who he was going to be shacked up with next.

He illegally prorogued parliament – because why should he actually run the country just because he was manoeuvred into the position of Prime Minister by Dominic Cummings and – getting paid out of the public purse?

He’s done f’all about the Northern Ireland Brexit deal disaster despite the fact that he personally created the chaos.

He takes the same lackadaisical attitude as COP26 nears. The self-appointed guardians of this bit of the galaxy we call earth - wealthy nations who meet every so often to make themselves sound worthy before doing really nothing that is significantly altering our chances of having a planet to live on, are due to meet on November the 12^th. Johnsons’ government are hosts – though you’d never know. It’s like Boris Johnson is hosting a tea party for his ex-wives and some of his known children and he’d really rather pretend it’s not happening.

Unlike urgency, irony seems to ooze out of him. Most recently he opined that Brits should “not rely on handouts” when talking about taking the £20 uplift from already mean benefits that have left many in the UK in poverty. This from a man who has done so little of any benefit to anyone while in office that one can only think of his publically funded remunerations as monumentally disproportionate handouts.

While the country sinks and sinks – those still getting the freebies are all at the top – from the royal family (including prince paedo) – to the liggers and hangers-on of government ministers getting the expensive contracts and oiled pathways to power. From those getting the tax breaks to the government subsidies for so-called privatised industries.

The problem is that unattended problems don’t go away.

Whatever Faustian pact Johnson has made, so that almost none of the catastrophes that follow in his wake are ever successfully pinned to him – the disasters, like the bodies, are piling up.

The financial cost is piling up.

The social harms are piling up.

The damage to the UK’s international reputation is the only thing that is diminishing fast.

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And do check out My BOOKS (now available on expanded distribution so you can check out here then buy from your favourite online bookseller) Thank You.

398. ‘World-beating Britain’? Clearly most Brits swallowed the blue pill…

 Along with other ‘remoaners’ I’ve long got over the fact that the bigots, Faragistas and Borishits who chose Brexit over the chance of a future, will never admit that their xenophobia led them into a shit pile. Just as MAGA nutters will never admit that Trump is a cheap con man. However, with Trump as a yard stick, voting in an obvious low-life charlatan like Boris Johnson seemed to be something beyond delusion and self-harm. It was as if the worst of Britain recognised something even more corrupt and crass and craven in him than in the darkest corners of the black hole where their souls shrivelled and died from the effects of jingoist-rot and said – yeah – lets have that – that will show the liberal do-gooders…

But now the extent and depth and width of the shit hole this government and this party has dug for Britain is evident – even to the flag-waving cretins who’d rather torch their own homes than be nice to a foreigner. Where is the anger / disappointment / horror / real-reaction-of-any-kind from the public or the media? Did EVERYONE apart from a couple of crazies (me included) take the blue pill?

 

Let’s take a quick, painful sideways glance at a few of World Beating Britain’s current list of global embarrassments – (an exhausting but not an exhaustive list)

 

• Decreasing life-expectancy in poor areas of Britain
• One of the worst mortality and economic outcomes from covid of any EU country
• NHS slipped from 1^st place in the world to 4^th after a decade of Tory austerity
• Total failure of test and trace during the pandemic (Vietnam and Taiwan did better than the UK…)
• Raab too busy tanning to attend to obviously unfolding Afghanistan crisis
• Increase in gap between rich and poor
• Racism in the royal cabal
• Moralising on Afghanistan while supplying Saudi Arabia with weapons
• Ireland’s fragile peace put at risk by Johnson’s hopeless Brexit deal
• Tory cronies profiteering from the pandemic
• Total incompetence of government ministers e.g. Raab, Williamson, Shapps
• Grubbiness and incompetence of government ministers e.g. Matt Hancock
• Incompetence and proven bullying by government minister - Pritti Patel
• Increase of child poverty
• Food banks becoming a permanent fixture of UK life
• Shortages and catastrophic damage to small businesses (under-reported in a limp media) due to Brexit
• Infrastructure failures (the rail network [generally] – raw sewage being dumped by privatised water company – for YEARS)
• Royal family hiding a suspected paedophile in plain sight
• Waste of money and environmental vandalism of HS2
• Cruelty towards refugees and assylum seekers
• Cutting the aid budget during covid

and so on...

I’m sure I’ve used The Matrix analogy before but clearly this cannot be analogous to any super hero movie I’ve ever seen. Terms Apocalypse and Armageddon are over-used (including by me) when referring to ongoing environmental vandalism and the climate crisis that barely registers with the self-interested clique at the top. It’s certainly not a rom com as there is no feel-good factor. There is plenty of painful-to-watch slap-stick but not the sort to make you smile. Sci-fi ? – no. Although – we are working towards making the planet we rely on similar to Mars - cold and devoid of human life. But despite the real drama of the crisis all around us, the audience seems dead from the neck up. Switched off. Unplugged (or plugged in but not to the real world)?

Can it really be that imminent unstoppable destruction of our only home due to the incompetence, venality and corrupt self-interest of those paid huge sums out of the public purse to represent us and manage the country cannot compete with ‘I’m a Celebrity watch me debase myself’ or ‘Strictly come fake shit’ or ‘Marvel costume pile-up, scriptless, brainless shite?

If there is a next time, please take the red pill…

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Talking of being not plugged in - for anyone reading - NB I am not on any social media - I only exist in what is left of the 'real' world so thank you for finding your way here.

Do check out  MY BOOKS and thank you for finding your way there too if you do.

If any  more gigs come up I will post here.

397. Equality Equality Equality…

 When you look at the world in terms of lack of equality it is suddenly obvious why it’s in such a mess.  When you balance everything on the scales measuring inequality, suddenly everything makes sense.

Politicians’ atonal whining that they are ‘working to make things better’ or that ‘it’s complicated’ or ‘we are making difficult decisions’ all turns to tepid turds. It is actually very straightforward.

Last century – when I first became involved in formal politics and got elected as Newcastle City Councils first black woman councillor, I was unfortunate enough to encounter Tony Blair when he posed for a photo opportunity in my ward. Little did I know then that I’d met my first (and hopefully only) future war criminal. Also one of the new breed of British leaders where personality – or what passed for it - counted for more than substance. He also loved a soundbite. Something else that was to become endemic in British politics. Paving the way for the likes of Boris Johnson where slogans trump substance every time.

One of Tony Blair’s favourites was Education Education Education. Odd then that his government presided over a huge increase in the gap between the privileged and the rest of us and also his government introduced tuition fees – crushing the futures of generations of young people saddled with debt and diminishing job prospects.

Over the last two months I’ve been hosting a new social debate programme on Jambo Radio Scotland. I’ve been fortunate enough to talk to many interesting and well informed people from a union activist and a poverty campaigner to an international aid expert, an environmental consultant and someone who has dedicated his working life to supporting and working with refugees.

And what has hit home hard is that in fact it is Equality Equality Equality that matters. It is Equality that is at the very heart of improving everything. It is inequality that is the rot at the core of what is wrong.

Whether it’s that rich countries pollute and poor countries pay the price or the rise of poorly paid insecure jobs, decades after we all thought unfair work practices had been shown the door to the fact that International Aid actually benefits wealthy countries far more than the poor countries and keeps poor countries in insurmountable debt.

Check out this interview I did with  Dr Samuel Mwuara

If we had real Equality in the work place there would not still be a significant average gap between the pay of men and women. Nor would there be a significantly higher chance of you being unemployed if you are Black or Asian (or being in insecure work).

IF there were real equality in relation to the climate crisis – then countries dumping their waste and pollution into the sea and land and air would be duty and legally bound to pay compensation to those countries where rising sea levels are rendering life unliveable or the heat is decimating crops and infrastructure.

 More so – there would be a direct link made between environmental devastation – climate refugees and the responsibility of the main polluter countries to take in and support the climate refugees. Ironically this would put those who care about the environment suddenly on the same side as the idiot bigots who piss themselves every time they come across someone who is ‘different’ from them.

IF there were real Equality, we in the West would not be spending time, money and resources on nonsense and self-indulgence while the world literally burns and our fellow human beings, mainly in the global South pay the price for our selfishness.

Equality

Equality

Equality

It is the answer - to EVERYTHING.

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Do remember to check out MY BOOKS (available on expanded distribution so you can buy from your favourite online book supplier). In relation to the above – do especially look at Zero One Zero Two.

Its nice to be back. Thank you for reading.