Fat Cat Boris Johnson is being ‘urged’ to sanction splashing out the totally obscene sum of £190 million on a luxury yacht with the vessel to be named in honour of the late Duke of Edinburgh. The public aren’t even shocked that another huge dollop of dough might be allocated to the super wealthy elite while the UN steps in to feed starving children in the capital of one of the richest countries on earth. If that doesn’t scream inequality, exploitation and corruption what will it take for our citizens to revolt? Amid the nationwide compulsory tributes thrust upon the long-suffering British public via the trusted Tory propaganda mouthpiece at the BBC, who drenched us in wall-to-wall coverage, now there is talk of commissioning a new Royal Yacht! While the public can certainly empathize with the Queen over the loss of her lifelong companion, husband and Prince Consort there are so many throughout the country whose desperate plight is ignored; where is our noble Queen’s compassion for those less fortunate masses she rules?
As I have taken pains to point out here before, while HRH lived a very full life of opulent luxury, the average homeless person does not survive beyond half his age. The Tory Government didn’t quible for an instant before approving the staggering amount offered to the Queen to compensate for her financial losses from her extensive property portfolio due to Covid 19. While the Sovereign Grant Fund perpetually ratchits up, despite an economic downturn, the misery of the Queen’s subjects spirals remorselessly down towards destitution. You do not need to be rabidly anti-monarchy to scream in frustration that our privileged head of state really should at last set a clear example to the wealthy 1% that they could do so much more. The greatest speech Queen Elizabeth II will never deliver has the potential to mark the most important legacy in tribute to her dead husband HRH Prince Philip. So what could our revered Queen say and do to begin to redress the massive disparity between the privileged elite and the poor in the UK?
She might begin by thanking the public for all their kind displays of sympathy providing so much comfort to her in her time of grief. She might then claim: “My husband and I have always maintained a sincere concern over the welfare of the British people…” But this hails from a lady whose opulence is so great that it provides an aloof detachment from the growing reality of rampant poverty among the majority of her ‘subjects.’ Is she blissfully unaware that the UN has stepped in to feed the starving children in London? Is she oblivious to the UN rapateaur’s repeated recriminations over Tory human rights violations in their punitive abandonment of the disabled resulting in thousands of unnecessary deaths? Why isn’t she deeply ashamed of the destitute homeless, as bundles of human detritus litter our streets, disgarded to die in abject misery at half the age of her beloved Prince Consort? Only a person totally devoid of any semblance of conscience could honestly express pride in ‘ruling’ over such a festering cesspit of corrupt depravity.
The BBC and Mainstream Media’s PR machinery maintain the propaganda of this benevolent old lady to whom we all owe fealty and reverence. While she is constrained by historical obligation to refrain from political commentary she is not incapable of controlling her own finances and using generosity to set a compassionate example that other titans of wealth would feel compelled to emulate. The Queen could use the distressing occasion of Prince Philip’s death to establish a significantly generous fund in honour of her late husband and encourage the wealthy elite to chip in the spare millions in cash they have been raking in during the Pandemic, to eradicate poverty, destitution and homelessness throughout the realm. In such compelling circumstances, under an appeal directly from the Queen, those messages of condolence could be suitably monetized as prominent personalities outbid each other and the privileged 1% were publicly embarrassed into parting with their cash to help compensate for decades of elitist exploitation.
The Queen is not short of money and this might offer her a unique opportunity to explain just why the crown accepted a massive compensatory payout, authorized by this crooked Tory Government, to top-up the Sovereign Wealth Fund at a time of crisis when impoverished British children were on the brink of starvation. She could explain that regrettably it took time to organize exactly how the fund would be managed and allocated, a task her now deceased husband would have helped her plan before his death. That really would be a stunning legacy, genuinely appreciated by her long-suffering ‘subjects,’ and it could be administered independently from Tory Government corruption and punitive means testing of recipients. Even overseas contributors including serial plunderers like Amazon’s Jeff Bazos might use this as a PR opportunity to provide philanthropic cover for their decades of exploitation. The Queen’s immense global influence could pry generous contributions from the Davos crowd as they jostled to publicly show respect.
This is a unique opportunity for the Queen to establish her own legacy by initiating a global shift in priorities thus offering obscenely wealthy people a chance to absolve themselves of the crime of their rapacious greed. The British hate to admit that they see their own much revered monarch as the ultimate greedy parasite supported by the self-serving Parliamentary decisions of the horde of greedy parasites in Government who have extorted every last ounce of blood, sweat and tears from the population of this country for centuries. Their model of rampant inequality is unsustainable as there’s a finite amount of money you can manage to squeeze out of those on the brink of destitution, but Boris and his Tory cabal want the public to stump up for a new royal yacht! The Queen herself is nearing the end of her long life, does she really hope to see all of her massive reserves of hoarded wealth distributed among her obscenely wealthy heirs or will she be persuaded to make a historic commitment towards eradicating inequality before she dies?
We should not forget the recent tragic failure of our monarchy to use the power that the British Queen uniquely still retains, to step in and rescue the country by demanding the resignation of her Prime Minister at a point where he Prorogued, Parliament, broke the law and forced us into a rigged election in which he should have been prohibited from participating. The Queen could have used her immense sway with the citizens of this country to set an important example of conduct that cannot be tolerated in a democracy and the Tory Party of ‘God, Queen and Country would be obliged to obey without question. While I am not a supporter of the Monarchy this course of action was within the Queen’s constitutional power under exceptional circumstances; Boris Johnson crossed the line to create that crisis. Despite probably realizing that the consequences of her inaction would be seriously harmful to our democracy and unnecessarily traumatic for her subjects she prioritized the interests of her own wealth threatened by equality under socialism.
The death of the Duke of Edinburgh has been seized upon by Tories as a chance to promote their mantra of ‘God, Queen and Country’, as they desperately apply the pumps to salvage the sinking ship of isolationist patriotism. The monarchy cannot possibly endure much longer in its current form, a potent symbol of the inherited wealth of undeserved privilege juxtaposed to the grotesque extremes of poverty in the UK. If this were the gross inequality displayed by a foreign despot we would be clamoring for justice for an oppressed people; do the British people not deserve the justice of equality? The Brits are cajoled into reverance, clinging to the nostalga of the notorious victories of empire we were taught about in school that are now start to sour as we learn the truth of brutal subjugation, slavery and exploitation under the ‘Butcher’s Apron’. You cannot eat a Union Jack! Now only the barrier of troubled Ireland remains to prevent the untethered remnant of ‘little England’ from drifting out to its rightful place of isolation mid Atlantic.
Homage to royalty, patriotism and the nationalist fervor are a desperate attempt to foster pride in our ruthless expansionist past that only the easily manipulated myopic sector of our increasingly multicultural society still cling to. It is heavily dependent on a culture of ‘divide and rule’ othering where all too many ordinary people are being swept into the net of targeted enemies of society. The Black Lives Matter protests were filled with white protesters who have come to realize the slippery slope we are being forced down by this rogue Government; now people are even prepared to protest in support of the Gypsies and Travelers the Tories thought of a safe bet easy target for their hateful ideology. Has the haunting message of a haunting poem that begins “First they came for…” resonated in the collective consciousness of the British public as a prophetic warning of the extreme and dire consequences of the road our nation is traveling down towards the far-right fascist goal of this Tory Sovereign Dictatorship.
Confident optimism is now reliant upon the expansive fake promises of a Government with a long and sordid track record of great abandoned pledges and a strong history of implementing austerity, but in the words of our former PM Theresa May “Nothing has changed!” Optimistic aspiration, striving to create a better life through hard graft is a whole world away from the current reality for most people in the UK who are caught in a desperate struggle for basic survival on a daily basis. There is a unique opportunity for this Tory Government to transform and drastically alleviate the mental health crisis, eradicate poverty and homelessness in this country by first and foremost, leaving office! An impressive consensus of cooperation and community cohesion is developing due to the unnecessary hardship and burdens inflicted upon vast swaths of the population impacted by this Tory Government’s criminally negligent exploitation of the Covid using the crisis as a tool to whitewash over the catastrophic mistakes of their hard Brexit.
The Covid Pandemic has made ordinary working people realize how easily the demonized ‘them’ can become ‘us!’ A huge number of people who honestly believed that they had reliable, steady employment, have now been forced to join the ranks of the despised unemployed. Previously they were heavily encouraged to believe that only the ‘losers’ and the ‘work shy’ brought such dire shame upon themselves and needed to rely on that precarious and punitive Social Safety net they were so eager to strip away. They paid into the system with their taxes and only had the number of children they knew they could afford to raise. Only now are they finally coming to understand why the cruel Tory ‘two child policy’ is grotesquely unfair punishment that’s not deserved by anyone’s innocent offspring as we can all fall on hard times. The Tories so called ‘strivers,’ even former entrepreneurs and small business owners are entering food banks for the first time, worried about basic survival and the devastating impact of destitution on their family.
This is the demographic who traditionally support capitalism, free enterprise, the security of empowered law enforcement, a strong overseas presence from our UK military, the importance of defence spending and retaining Trident, but at what cost? The current obscene level of Tory Government corruption has warped their perspective on ‘free enterprise’ as ‘crony capitalism’ has supported rampant profiteering during a time of crisis that has hit them hard. Our influence overseas is rapidly dwindling fast with the error of Brexit, untrustworthy adherence to signed treaties and the rule of international law, plus reversal of the Tory manifesto pledge on Foreign Aid. At a time when the Tories should be prioritizing the real threat to our precious NHS though underfunding, pay cuts, misguided outsourcing and privatization they are instead they boast of 48 new fantasy Hospitals they cannot staff and focus on saber-rattling against an unspecified foe to increase our nuclear arsenal and expanding justifications for deploying deadly weapons!
While those who haven’t in the past had to worry about job security are now being plunged into poverty this Tory Government has exhibited the classic behavior of despotic regimes, spending eye-watering sums of money on superfluous fluff that create a false impression of power and control with the trappings of opulence. First there was an unnecessary nationalistic paint job on a military plane for the sole purpose of increasing our pathetically insecure PM’s overseas prestige with an ‘Airforce One’ look alike. The recent outlandish expenditure to create a Press Briefing Room similar to his US hero Donald Trump was another clear indicator of the growing despotic narcissism of our usurper PM. It is not aimed at providing greater transparency it’s a stage set for our ruling Dictator to spout an endless stream of Tory propaganda broadcast via their compliant mouthpiece the BBC. Will the public get stuck with the bill for the privileged designer choices of Boris Johnson’s mistress with the costly revamp of Number 10?
Those who were moved to join the Sarah Everade vigil, some of whom had perhaps avoided public gathering due to the strict Covid restrictions or just not felt compelled to join protests in the past are now finding their voice only to have their delusion of ‘free speech’ in our democracy shattered by police violence. They are witnessing first hand the unprovoked attacks of police no longer focused on law enforcement to protect the public, but mobilized as the Government’s tool of repression just as it is used in brutal Dictatorships overseas. But with the UK populace are well connected online, regularly filming the reality on the ground and sharing YouTube videos while the BBC refuse to broadcast the news, this deliberate Government suppression of the truth cannot persist in keeping people ignorant of the facts. A totalitarian regime is rapidly securing absolute power in the UK and the disgruntled masses will need to unite as one to fight back to remove them from office before it is too late as Dictators cling to power for decades.
No doubt the Tories would deeply lament the minimalist ceremony for the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh due to their Covid restrictions, but the BBC were seriously committed to forcing the entire nation to a few more days of mourning for a man who has been virtually ignored during his 73 years of service to the Queen. Competing for our attention now is the exposure of layer upon layer of Tory Government sleaze and rampant corruption they were hoping to drown out with prolonged homage to the Prince Consort as royalty is such an easy sell. The ranks of those who were once economically secure, but are now struggling to cope has increased exponentially due to Covid. Those who ignored Tory overspending on things like a dysfunctional Track and Trace system under the direction of Tory chum serial loser Dido ‘Tallyho’ Harding, the Nightingale Hospitals that could not be staffed and the dodgy PPE that had to be dumped are now outraged to discover this is just the tip of the extensive Tory corruption iceberg.
Former Prime Minister David Cameron never intended to address the Liberal Democrat proposals for reforming lobbying so he designed those so-called ‘reforms’ in such a way as to leave plenty of scope for future abuse. The lobbying of Charities on behalf of the public interest was more strictly curtailed which didn’t go unnoticed or unchallenged at the time. David Cameron’s obsequious overtures to Rishi Sunak and Mat Hancock onl serve to demonstrate the shameless expectation of privilege that is not a right of public office. Robert Jenricks maneuvers to assist a friend in tax avoidance and the exposure of tit for tat Tory leverage to insure that fanding intended for deprived areas is instead allocated to bolster the political hold of undeserving Tory MPs in a devious type of gerrymandering for votes. Dominic Cumings was the recipient of Tory largese and the PMs philandering led to the forking out of public funds to his mistress. Despite the legal challenges being brought will the public purse ever recover all the squandered funds?
In another arena of extreme public concern the Canary Article entitled “The shocking numbers of insecure workers who died of coronavirus” they point out how according to TUC research “Insecure workers died of coronavirus (Covid-19) at twice the rate of people in other jobs. That’s the finding of new research into the pandemic. It shone a damning light not only into the government’s response but also the state of employment in the UK more broadly.” Highlighting the problem of insecure jobs they report on “The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has researched how the pandemic impacted insecure workers. It says these are people whose: contract does not guarantee regular hours or income (including zero-hours contracts, agency work and casual work) or are in low-paid self-employment (earning less than the government’s National Living Wage). In total, this is one in nine in of those in work.”
But as the TUC said, insecure work is not just people like app-based taxi drivers. It said that the following percentages of workers were in insecure jobs. 15.6% of people in ‘caring, leisure and other service roles;’ 18.4% of those in ‘elementary roles, such as security guards, taxi drivers and shop assistants and 17.2% of ‘process, plant and machine operatives’.” The label it “Working chaos UK” saying “A lot of what the TUC found about the pandemic and insecure work was unsurprising. For example: Between those the government ‘excluded‘ and people who didn’t get help for other reasons, some three million people missed out on any kind of coronavirus support. In April 2020, two million people were not getting the minimum wage. Of these, 1.3 million were on furlough. Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) was not fit for purpose; 1.8 million employees had no entitlement to it, 70% of these were women. A third of people on zero hours contracts could not get SSP versus 6% of all employees.”
The Canary report that “Care workers were particularly hard-hit. For example, the government put in place the Adult Social Care Infection Control Fund. It was worth over £1.1bn. The fund was for care companies. Part of it was to pay staff who had to stay off work due to coronavirus. But as the TUC wrote: a UNISON survey of care workers revealed the money did not get through to workers, with more than two fifths (44%) saying their employer is offering just statutory sick pay (SSP) of £95.85. Around one in 12 (8%) workers say they and colleagues were not paid at all if they needed to stay at home.” This Tory Government put in place support packages without any necessary strings attached allowing exploitative employers to siphon off the money while they abandoned the needs of their staff; no where was this more abhorrent and abusive than in exploitation of Carers.
“Overall, the TUC also said marginalised communities bore the brunt of this.” In a move the Canary describe as “Marginalising the marginalised” they say the TUC “Research found that the following percentages of people are in insecure work: 7.1% of women versus 6% of men; 16% of BAME workers versus 10% of white workers; 12.1% of BAME women versus 6.4% of white women and 5.5% of white men. Also, bosses are more likely to employ disabled people on zero hours contracts (3.8%) than non-disabled people (3.1%). But it’s the death toll of coronavirus on insecure workers which is particularly shocking.” The Canary article includes illuminating charts that demonstrate the impact of this on various employment sectors. This distressing reality is far more relevant than the triumphalist bragging over the vaccine that has helped rescue the PM from far greater social unrest.
The Canary highlight the “Shocking coronavirus death figures” saying “The TUC found that insecure workers were more likely to have died from coronavirus. It noted that the death rates were: 51 per 100,000 for men in insecure work. This is versus 24 in 100,000 in ‘less insecure’ work; 25 per 100,000 for women in insecure work. This is versus 13 in 100,000 in ‘less insecure’ work. In short, the coronavirus death rate for insecure workers was double the national average. The TUC noted that the more insecure the industry, the higher the coronavirus death rate was: The TUC wouldn’t commit to why the rates were higher in insecure work. But it did note that: many of these occupations include work outside the home and that many insecure workers lack decent sick pay. In other words, people in insecure industries had no choice but to go to work in the middle of a global pandemic. Despite the risks, they could not afford to protect themselves and their families fully from coronavirus.”
Change is needed the Canary insist “As the TUC summed up: The pandemic has exposed the lack of dignity that many insecure workers face. Society relies on these workers to carry out vital roles such as caring for sick people and delivering vital food and other services. In return, a significant number of these workers will have no job or income security. It says that three things need to change: Increasing and enhancing sick pay entitlement; New rights for workers to benefit from the protection that collective bargaining brings; A ban on zero-hours contracts. After such a devastating time for so many workers, you’d hope the government would listen. Whether it will or not remains to be seen.”
Real change will take more than repeated reruns displaying the pageantry of a royal funeral to paper over the cracks. The feeble Prime Minister imposter is hiding from the reality of imminent collapse of his despotic rule of tyranny. Boris Johnson’s leadership failures have never been more starkly obvious as he hides behind this nationalist branding, with copious trappings of Union Jacks, as the Union goes into meltdown in Scotland, Northern Ireland, now even Wales eyeing independence. He cannot permanently dodge the catastrophic failures of his shambolic Covid strategy and badly botched Brexit leading to riots in Ireland and destruction of our export market. The growing number of street protests cannot be quelled with increased police violence without the distinct possibility that peaceful protesters will be seriously injured or killed. The systemic Tory corruption is creating a vile stench of sleeze that his nauseating attention-seeking photo-ops cannot dispel: Ian Hislop expose the PM’s façade on “Have I got News for you.”
Boris Johnson is obsessed with creating a desirable image of himself as a rampant stallion conquering attractive blond bombshells due to his sexual prowess: this is a woefully feeble profile that screams massive insecurity. The pathetically contrived appearance of his permanently ruffled hair, as if to imply the robust lebido of a much younger man in a continual state of coitus interruptus, caught out during an indulgent perpetual sexual rampage: what a sick joke! In reality the PM displays all the vim and vigour of a sedated sloth as he cultivates the classic impression of an overindulgent lazy git who just fell out of bed after a night of excessively heavy drinking! The truth is that Boris is pudgy, pushing 60 and he’s far too narcissistic to consider diverting attention from his own instant gratification to ever devote even the briefest moment to the genuine desires of any female companion. The PM lacks the self-awareness to recognize the ridiculousness of this pathetic character he presents to the British public and to the world.
Just as he was at the start of the Covid Pandemic, Boris Johnson is guaranteed to be strategically ‘missing from action’ with his tousled mop in the sand ostrich style as per usual. Now this spineless wimp is ignoring his ultimate responsibility for the broiling riots in Belfast as he runs off to the comfort of scheduled photo-ops in Cornwall, but still he remains too cowardly to face down the ridicule of locals demonstrating their disdain for his febrile attempts to cling to power through authoritarian policing policies. Like his rejected hero Donald Trump, he will never be taken seriously as a respected statesman by overseas dignitaries; it is our turn in the UK to endure the folly of his continuing public embarrassment until he is removed from office. We are entirely capable of truncating this torment by calling him and his corrupt Government to account over the mounting scandals of perpetual plundering of public funds and by demanding a full Investigation into the incredulous result of the Covert 2019 Rigged Election: Get The Tories Out Now! DO NOT MOVE ON!