Enoch was right

In Mum and Dad’s library, I recently found Reflections, a book containing some of Enoch Powell’s speeches, interviews and essays. It was sandwiched between several books by or about Maggie on one side and Confessions of a Political Maverick by Austin Mitchell, a friend of Arthur Scargill’s, on the other. I’m wondering whether my Sis bought them this book as a joke. Can’t imagine why else they’d have a copy. Anyway, I commandeered Powell and Maggie while sorting stuff to go to the local hospice charity shop. Much to Hubby’s Horror, it was one box of books for the hospice, and one for me; one for the hospice, and two for me, etc.

Ah yes, I remember it well

It’s Not Unusual (how many song titles can I cram into one blog?) to remember the first time you did something, saw something or felt something. Recently, I’ve been reminiscing about the first time I didn’t do, see or feel things. Not, as in, didn’t do this but instead did that; no, I mean didn’t do / see / feel anything at all.

Philosophers, and maybe psychologists, would have fun with the idea of doing / seeing / feeling / reminiscing about nothing. Nothing is nothing. Nothing is a strange concept ‘personified’ by, if I can anthropomorphise it, the time before the Big-Bang, which is an oxymoron because time didn’t exist before the Big Bang. Pre-Big-Bang itself didn’t exist. No existence, no time (almost rhymes with No Woman, No Cry).

The Bud Jet

I was going to title this one The Budget, but then I decided I wanted ‘The’ to be read ‘Thu’ as in Thud but with a silent ‘d’, and all three syllables to have equal weight, i.e. Thu Bud Jet. That’s because it sounds heavy and clumsy and odd and unbelievable, like Kwarteng’s debut (deh bew?) budget à la Trussonomics and the reactions to it.

The measure of weights

Not long ago, a post popped into my LinkedIn feed decrying the Government’s consultation on the privatisation of Channel 4 as a travesty of democracy, or some such hyperbole. I easily knocked that one on the head and moved on with my life.

Last weekend, another post appeared denigrating the Government’s consultation. on giving businesses and consumers more choice in selling and buying goods in imperial as well as metric units. According to the post’s author and various commentators, the consultation was a waste of time, a distraction from more pressing issues, and the questions were fiendishly biased. In fact, it sounded like the worst consultation ever. 

Truss(t) in democracy

Just a quickie and apologies that I’m being rather prolific at the moment, but this topic is too time-critical to leave it until the weekend.

Am I pleased Truss won?  I’m more relieved that Fishy lost, actually. He was plotting to bring down Boris and planning his own election campaign when he should’ve been doing his job as Chancellor and managing the British economy. Truss on the other hand was loyal to Boris to the end and did her job, regardless of whether she did it brilliantly, putting her ambitions for the country ahead of her ambitions to be PM, as evidenced by her lack of preparedness when the leadership race kicked off.

Striking while the economy’s cool

This blog’s longer than my usual, so make sure you’re sitting comfortably before you begin.

I’ve gone on record since before I was weaned that it’s not right for workers to strike. My opposition is rooted in their impact on the general public – the health hazards of uncollected waste spring to mind. In particular, I remember the 1970s’ strikes and the Labour government awarding huge public-sector pay deals that helped to fuel inflation to over 25 per cent (the rocketing oil price was also a factor). Those hardest hit were already the poorest, and the average couple ended up taking home less money in real terms than they had before inflation took off, so the strikes were counter-productive.

Allison Bailey knows who her friends aren’t

Cheering news. An employment tribunal has ruled that barrister Allison Bailey was discriminated against by senior colleagues at her chambers over her gender critical views, i.e. the sex of a person is immutable: women cannot become men and vice-versa.

These views are what the silent majority would refer to as ‘common sense’. Cross-dress, have surgery, take hormones all you like but you cannot scientifically change the sex you were born into: female or male. Some people are genuinely convinced they were born with the wrong body and they take various steps to ‘rectify’ this. Assuming they’ve had the necessary advice and support, then they should be allowed to live peaceable lives as they wish and not be discriminated against. Live and let live is what I say. 

Channel 4 – 2 wrongs don’t make a right

I was skim-reading news online the other day and registered the following isolated words from a Twitter extract: “insane”, “government consultation”, “ignored”, “travesty”.

I didn’t have to read any more to fill in the gaps and deduce that someone thought it was insane that a government consultation had ignored responses and was pressing ahead with whatever they had always intended to do, which was a travesty of democracy. Why was this news? I’ve never met a government or local authority consultation that was worthy of the name.

Nothing to see here. Move along please.

But then I saw who had Tweeted, and I was torn. I’d never read anything this bloke had ever written that I agreed with. That would mean that this particular consultation was actually kosher. Oh dear. If I don’t sort this out before lunch I’ll get indigestion.

Am I bovvered?

My recent Boris-tribute blog drew mixed reactions in the blog comments, other platforms, by email and in person. They were small in number but mega in back-slapping (mine) and arse-kicking (mine again). Boris isn’t the only one with a cohort of bashers. Yay, I have something in common with the man himself!

I’d rather people read my blogs and hated them than didn’t read them, or worse, read them and didn't feel compelled to respond, favourably or no, civilly or no. Indeed, those who responded unfavourably to the Boris blog enticed others to have a read and, within 48 hours of posting, it became my most-read blog ever. What’s the mantra? No publicity is bad publicity? Who knew?!

Boris, my kind of leader

Because Boris got Brexit done as he promised he would, and stood his ground against the EU, Irish, French and Russians as I prayed he would, I consider him to be my mate, and mates are there for each other, through good times and bad, warts and all.

So I find it all very sad if not scary that Boris, our Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, elected with a thumping majority just 2 ½ years ago, is stepping down at the behest, not of the electorate, but of disloyal and/or incompetent civil servants, biased and unprofessional media, selfishly ambitious Cabinet Ministers and other Traitorous Tories (TTs), traitorous against Blighty as much as against Boris. They prefer instability to peace and progress; personal advancement to team-playing; lemming mentality to loyalty; insults to reasoned debate; subservience to the bullying EU despite the democratic will of the people.

I'm thinking of doing something naughty

This is how I imagine BoJo broached a subject with Lord Geidt, who recently resigned as the Government’s ethics adviser because, he claims, the Prime Minister put him in an "impossible and odious position.”

The usual BoJo Backstabbers are, of course, in paroxysms of delight at this ‘cast-iron evidence’ that Bojo is a criminal. My working hypothesis is therefore the opposite: that BoJo is nothing of the sort, and his Backstabbers are too busy backstabbing to smell the coffee, see the light and analyse yet another situation remotely fairly and intelligently.

God Save the Queen, Zelensky and the Daily Mail

I really like Peter Hitchens (writes for the Mail). He’s brave. He puts his genuine beliefs out there, even when he knows his is the minority view. He’s also not afraid to publicly admit when he’s changed his mind. He used to be a member of the Labour party, then he joined the Conservatives, but left again when he realised his take on conservativism didn’t align with that of the party.

And he’s a good writer. That and a sense of humour earn my unfettered respect and admiration.

So when yesterday he wrote yet another piece criticising Ukraine, lambasting the West’s almost unanimous support for the country, and defending (up to a point) Russia, I felt I had to tread carefully before blogging any disagreement.

Homes are where the money is

I did quite well with the cost-of-living crisis last week, so today I thought I’d solve the so-called housing crisis.

The frothing vitriol of the pro-development lobby was bad enough when the Government announced it was scaling back plans for 300,000 new builds a year, but when Simon Jenkins agreed that we don’t need that many new homes because the housing market isn’t in crisis, anyone would think he’d expressed his undying love for Putin.

Cost-of-living crisis? What cost-of-living crisis?

According to a Tory MP, people should learn to budget and to cook and they wouldn’t have a problem. He claims that you can cook a meal from scratch for 30p.

I was fuming on behalf of everyone who is genuinely struggling to make ends meet through no fault of their own, then I caught sight of his background. Lee Anderson, MP for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, is a former coal miner and ex-Labour councillor. Not your typical monied, out-of-touch Tory then. I kept digging (or mining) and learned that he has volunteered for Citizens Advice and worked in hostels for homeless care leavers. Sounds like an ok kind of guy.

He was slapped with a community protection warning for trying to block access to a local site to deter Travellers. Bravo that man!

Shortly afterwards, he defected to the Tories and was elected to Parliament in 2019.

In addition to trying to protect his community from illegal incursions, he has said and done many other ‘controversial’ things, most of which I agree with: supporting Brexit, objecting to England footballers taking the knee, and voting against Covid restrictions. Where did he go so horribly wrong? Or is he right?

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), “The Consumer Prices Index [a measure of inflation] … rose by 6.2% in the 12 months to March 2022”. In everyday parlance, that means that if something cost £10 in March 2021, it now costs £10.62. So what? If something cost £100 in March 2021, it now costs £106.20. Yeah – still not a crisis.

However, relying again on those clever people at the ONS, who assure us that the median household disposable income in the UK was £31,400 in the financial year ending (FYE) 5th April 2021, if a household’s annual bills totalled £30,000 (I like round figures, given that I have one) in the FYE 2021, then in FYE 2022 their bills would have totalled £31,860. Stating the obvious, that’s an extra £1,860, which doesn’t sound so paltry, does it? 

What’s really scary is that for the next 12 months, the extra money needed to, well, live, is projected to be even higher, for the sake of argument say another £2,500 on top of the £1,860 some had to scrimp and save for this year. Doing the maths for you, it means that an average UK household will have had to find an extra £4,360 within a two-year period. That is serious dosh and the very epitome of a cost-of-living crisis.

However…

Have you seen the horrendous queues of holiday makers at various airports trying to go abroad for a short break? Have you tried to book a table at a favourite restaurant on a Friday evening? We popped down to Somerset recently and made our usual pilgrimage to Clarks Village (outlet mall) on the hunt for essentials such as handbags, serving platters, and matching underwear. We struggled to find a parking space it was that busy with other shoppers. We picked up Covid fairly easily but that’s another story.

Plenty of people do still have plenty of money to burn. If the credit card does suddenly start to throw a wobbly, then there’s plenty of luxuries to forgo for a couple of years, such as climate-change-causing holidays, boutique gins and designer condoms. You’ll be fine. Trust me. Growing up in a farming-cum-mining village in the 1970s, with winters of discontent and hyper-inflation thanks to a failed socialist government (was it ever thus) for company, my parents ended one bleak month with just 80p in the bank. I know how to cut back, make do and mend. It’s not that difficult. Eggs, mince, offal and milk puddings kept us nourished; hand-me-down cardies from older cousins kept us warm, and staying with family in the Lake District did us proud for our one, yes one, holiday a year.

But there are plenty of other people who don’t have any luxuries to barter, and for whom 80p at the end of the month would be wonderful. They were living hand-to-mouth before Covid and Ukraine; the current situation must be terrifying. They’re the ones who really are suffering a genuine cost-of-living crisis. What’s to be done?

Despite me being, normally, very (too?) forgiving of Boris because he got Brexit done, he really hasn’t got a handle on the inflation-situation. Maybe Lee Anderson MP has ganged up with Fishy Rishi to persuade Boris and the rest of the cabinet that households need to get a grip before being given bigger handouts. Sorry, chaps, but you’re wrong. Mr Anderson MP might be right about Brexit, Covid-lockdowns, trespassers and BLM, but he’s way out of order with his views on the cost-of-living crisis.

If I were Prime Minister (I really must devote a whole blog to that title), here’s what I’d do (the list is not exhaustive):

Put more money in pockets:

• Immediately cut income tax and National Insurance for the lowest earners.

• For those on benefits who can find some / more work, don’t cut their benefits until they’re earning a proper living wage.

• Capacity-build food banks to turn food-recipients into food-bank workers.

• Increase benefits for those with known chronic health issues where working (more) is just not possible

• Incentivise banks to relax overdraft criteria and help people to budget

• ‘Incentivise’ supermarkets to buy more British food at more realistic prices without passing on the cost to the consumer. The farming community deserve our support as well!

Take less money out of pockets:

• Suspend VAT on gas and electricity bills

• Suspend the green fuel levy.

• Cut vehicle fuel tax

• Mandate housing associations and private landlords to immediately improve their properties’ fuel efficiency

• Capacity-build food banks to enable education of recipients re budgeting and cooking (which is supported by Mr Anderson!)

• Donate all edible excess food from the catering industry, including excess portions, discarded trimmings and failed attempts (soggy bottoms?) to hostels and foodbanks.

• Supermarkets to donate all (safe) ‘past-sell-by-date’ food, including wilting fruit and veg, to hostels and foodbanks

How can the Government pay for their measures?

• Windfall-tax fuel / energy companies. No it won’t stifle investment like the companies are claiming, because the current profits are higher than investor expectations so these decisions won’t be impacted.

• Windfall-tax the property industry. Gove did well to get big developers to cough up for the cladding crisis. Now how about aiming for the large land agents and investors like Bidwells and Savills who have made housing so unaffordable?

• Increase taxes for foreign property investors who are likewise major contributors to the affordability problem

• Tax aviation fuel and hike Air Passenger Duty – those who can afford to fly should help support those who can’t.

• Sell seized Oligarch assets

One final note on foodbanks. Some say they are demeaning and the Government should increase benefits / tax the rich more. That is economically and socially illiterate. Increasing taxes actually depletes Government coffers, so there’s less money to fund benefits, hospitals and the Police, etc. Very little comes from the rich, but middle-earners end up with less money in their pocket so are less likely to support charitable causes. Community foodbanks respond much more quickly and efficiently when needs arise, compared to the lumbering Government machine, restricted by its size, complexity, bureaucracy and political shenanigans. 

Trust the people to look after their own, which overlaps with what Lee Anderson MP was saying, but his other pronouncements were, in truth, economically and socially illiterate.

Some inconvenient truths

You’ve probably guessed from reading my posts that I’m opinionated. And you probably think that I can’t abide others’ opinions. That second sentence is so untrue it would feel at home in the Guardian. What irritates the hecky-thump out of me are opinions based on lies, damned lies, skewed statistics, inconsistency, hypocrisy and an uncritical adherence to Zen-like group-think.

When I come across stuff like that, I feel compelled to counter with at least an alternative 'fact', whether it completely holds water or not. As long as it’s as defensible as, or more so than, the stance I’m criticising, it’s job done. I’ve come across so much tripe in the past few days that I couldn’t possibly write a blog on each topic; instead, here are some soundbites to get you grinning from ear to ear, or foaming at the mouth:

Better a Nimby than a parasite

In our early married life, Hubby and I used to do our bit for the local Conservative Association, such as shoving leaflets through letter boxes - which was boring - and knocking on doors asking people how they were going to vote in forthcoming elections, answering any questions they might have - which I loved. Me? Enjoy chatting? Well there's a surprise!

Back then, Maggie ruled supreme nationally. I had sold my soul to her in 1979 and she owns it to this day, so we (in truth, me plus Hubby in tow) wanted to do our bit to keep her blue flag flying. The most practical way to do that was to volunteer locally. We soon grew to adore the local party members for themselves. They were down-to-earth, genuine, witty, hard-working, kind-hearted, clever, street-wise and jolly good fun. Very quickly we were rooting for the local candidates as friends rather than as ‘the party’.

Those heady days ended when Maggie was ousted, Major (of less-than-minor ability) took over, and we moved out of the area. I hadn’t shoved a leaflet through a letter box since, until this weekend when I did over 400 for an environmental cause in two Oxfordshire villages as part of the May 2022 local election campaign.

I volunteered to do this to ‘do my bit’ but, given the unpleasant drive over to the area two days running and the fact I didn’t know the villages at all, it really was all about duty and nothing about enjoyment. Or so I had anticipated.

Were the residents in their gardens, I’d ask first before making my way to their letter boxes. Mostly they just said yes go ahead, or take the leaflet from me to save me a few steps, but several actually asked what the leaflet was about. This led to quite lengthy conversations that I loved. I found the locals to be knowledgeable, insightful, sensitive, passionate about their village and the environment, and frustrated if not angry. 

That makes them Nimbys, according to the pro-development lobby. Well, better a Nimby than a parasite.

One lady told me that her family farm had been ‘taken’ for a large development. An unexpected choice of word. It had me imagining Liam Neeson exacting sweet revenge against the developers on behalf of the dispossessed. Amen to that.

When not talking, I was observing, specifically what had changed since my earlier days of leaflet-dropping. One new feature was the plethora of solar panels on roofs; another was electric charging points for vehicles. All well and good for the environment except, more often than not, the front and side gardens had been paved over to accommodate more vehicles and / or to reduce the gardening chore. Less green means less biodiversity and fewer carbon sinks. I could also see lots of aesthetic and security lights, CCTV and ‘Ring’ doorbell cameras, all requiring oodles of electricity, all countering the solar panels and charging points. 

I bet they bloody well fly on holiday as well, I grumbled to myself, having forgotten to bring a homemade flapjack to keep my blood sugar at a civilising level.

The other thing I noticed was the number of traders’ vans on driveways and roadways in what I would have said were middle-class housing estates. When we were first wed, such vans were commonplace around the smaller, ‘cheaper’ homes, but not in, forgive me, these more traditional Tory areas. I was delighted. Social mobility rules ok in Blighty, whatever the claims of the lefty doom-mongers, who can’t see the evidence for their discredited rhetoric.

The final thing of note was the lack of political party posters, banners and boards in windows, on fences and on farmland. Not one. For any party. When we were first wed, I remember noting which of my neighbours supported which party, marking their card as appropriate. The Lib Dems used to plaster the ward with their posters from day one of the election campaign. We Tories used to keep our powder dry until the weekend before polling day then put them up all at once, en masse, intending to panic the Lib Dems into last minute angst, if not mistakes. No idea if it worked or not but it felt good thinking about it!

Not to see any such support for any candidate anywhere in two villages this close to polling day signifies disengagement and disenfranchisement. And is it any wonder? One of the villages I leafleted is threatened with being swamped by a ubiquitous, large, low quality, characterless, cramped, soulless housing estate, with more farms and greenbelt being ‘taken’ to line the pockets of developers, planning consultants, property lawyers and stooges. All objectors are dismissed as Nimbys, which proves my oft-spouted mantra: Those who can, engage. Those who can’t, insult.

The other village is clinging desperately to an illusion of ‘ruralism’. Within spitting distance of a major ‘A’ road, motorway and service station, the persistent background drone of traffic is a constant, brain-burrowing reminder of a fate that awaits many rural communities – noise, concrete, urbanisation, lining the pockets (again) of the bullying few at the expense of the disenfranchised many.

When we were first wed, the percentage turnout for local elections (those not being held at the same time as general elections) was on average in the low 40s. Latterly, it’s more like the low 30s. Given population increases, the absolute loss of voter participation is even more stark.

A meaningful demographic analysis of these outline stats can’t be done in a short blog (trust me – I’ve just read a long blog on the topic), but I’m going to stick my neck out and say voter apathy is worst amongst the young, with older voters more likely (but less than in previous years) to bother to vote. In one respect this isn’t surprising – older people have always been more likely to vote, even though they will have experienced far more broken promises than the young; very few politicians intend to or are able to honour their campaign hype. 

There are some exceptions. 

I recently found a local election pamphlet from 1965, in which the ward-incumbent – my Dad – wrote, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am standing for re-election because I feel confident I can help you as individuals … At your personal request, I have dealt with many of your problems, involving housing, lighting, drainage, public facilities, pets, etc … Some of these problems I have been able to solve, some are still pending, with some I have failed. At all times, however, I have done my best … [A large majority of the other party] has led to an unhealthy domination … it is no real consolation … that [I] can therefore disclaim responsibility for the rates and rents!”

I like this approach – it sounds genuine, honest, personal, pragmatic, with a hint of humour. No spin, posturing, insults, fake news, condescension, arrogance, party line. It’s just him and I’d vote for him even if he weren’t my Dad.

In contrast, I remember the claptrap Hubby and I used to deliver about twenty years later – slick, sour and superficial – even if they were our friends. Their literature, you see, was controlled by the constituency office. 

As for 2022 election literature, most of the leaflets I’ve seen (thank you, Google), regardless of party or location, promise to limit council tax rises, help residents with the cost-of-living crisis, cut through bureaucracy, protect the environment, improve public transport, broadband, waste collection, speeding traffic, rat-running, flooding, do everything better / different, blame everything on the other parties …

With everyone promising more or less the same (unattainable) goals, there is absolutely nothing to choose between any candidate or any party. If any of these goals are possible at all, they are impossible for individual councillors to take credit for them. In reality, all policies and decision-making are stymied by the law, big business, funding constraints and the capability (or lack of) and agendas of council officers.

Which, to be honest, is exactly the same as when we were first wed ☹

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The sermon Welby should have given

Like many, I was incensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Easter sermon, widely reported with glee in the likes of the Guardian, and with umbrage in the Daily Mail et al.

Welby is an intelligent man, an experienced man of the cloth, a man with a real-world (i.e. non-ecclesiastical) past, so you’d think he’d know how to write a sermon, especially at Easter, the most joyous event in the Christian calendar. Such a sermon should have been accessible and inspiring, uplifting yet deep, authoritative but humbling, didactive while forgiving.

‘Twas nothing like that. The kindest thing I can say is that it was unhelpful. Welby basically said, Priti’s plan to send immigrants to Rwanda is bad and God will be cross, because I say so.

Pants round their ankles

Having ached a bit on Saturday evening owing to, so I thought, a day’s gardening, I tested positive for Covid on Easter Sunday morning. 

Talk about cocking everything up: I can’t visit my Mum; Hubby can’t visit his; my friend with whom I spent Thursday evening cancelled her Easter lunch with her neighbours; and friends with whom we lunched, also on Thursday, are running around like headless chickens. I feel like I swallowed a wasps’ nest, my cough is worse than any chain-smokers’, and I spend my days sleeping in bed, sleeping in the comfy armchair, or nodding off at my desk. However, my vitals (signs, not statistics) are all good so I think I’m getting off lightly. 

Unfortunately, a lot of people didn’t. Horrific stats, horrific suffering, horrific impact on loved ones and healthcare workers, horrific impact on our kids’ education, horrific mental health legacy, and so it goes on. We can’t afford to get distracted and allow the horror to return because we failed to plan for a sinister new variant. We need to stay alert, focused, prepared, not distracted or stuck down a rabbit hole. However, the country’s needs are once again playing second-fiddle to the wants of a few sanctimonious, hypocritical, own-agenda, traitorous rabbit arseholes who’d rather risk emboldening Putin with a PR coup than tolerate a democratically elected PM they despise. BoJo’s crimes, in their eyes, include getting Brexit done, going after the Northern Ireland Protocol, and caring more about saving lives at sea than being intimidated by a few Peloton-obsessed, workshy civil servants who obviously haven’t read the Rwanda policy, just the BBC take on it. Sigh. 

BoJo is also loathed because of reports he overruled the security services and got his Russian oligarch mate ennobled. Except he didn’t, did he. The Lords’ appointment chief just said so. 

Oh dear. BoJo haters been caught with their pants round their ankles.

Because I’m not fit to do much else this week, I’ve spent more time than usual reading newspapers – not exactly morale-boosting. Here’s a selection of headlines (paraphrased):

• Putin orders troops to seal civilians in steelworks and starve them to death
• Five-year-old was tortured then murdered by own family
• Cocaine gang exchanges cash in busy street while unsuspecting bystanders walk by
• 40% of households face fuel poverty
• Scholar banned from Twitter for quoting Shakespeare
• Prince Harry opens his mouth
• Labour moves for a fresh PartyGate probe

PartyGate! Down the rabbit hole the country went some months ago – I think my first blog about this was in January – and we still haven’t re-surfaced. One might expect opportunistic politicians, woke ‘civil servants’ (who are no longer civil or act like public servants so don’t deserve respect in my blog), and headline-chasing journalists to enjoy skulking where the sun don’t shine – in rabbit holes, not the other sort (oh, I dunno though) – but now the business community has joined the fray, bleating for their Brexit-revenge in group-think fashion rather than running their businesses. 

Yes, the great and the good on LinkedIn, setting themselves up (for a fall) as ‘Leadership Consultants’, ‘Ethics Advisers’ and ‘Risk Assessors’, have picked up the ‘lied to Parliament’ baton as proof that BoJo has no integrity, and integrity is a key characteristic of a good leader, so BoJo has to go. Sounds as if integrity is the only attribute, doesn’t it? Bugger ‘perspective’, ‘empathy’, ‘perspective’, ‘free-thinking’, ‘perspective’, ‘personable’, ‘perspective’ and so many more. Choose one that Boris hasn’t got and the others don’t matter.

The problem with such group-think is it puts off potential clients. I mean, it’s not exactly conducive to projecting a Unique Selling Point, is it; and it limits the way problems are analysed and solutions are developed. Overall, bigotry clouds judgment and compromises skillsets. Would you hire a leadership consultant who thought integrity was the only attribute? What about an ethics adviser who felt that not telling the whole truth about eating cake was a bigger crime than marching at a terrorist’s funeral à la Sinn Fein’s Miss-step O’Neill? Would you trust a risk assessor who advocates the (avoidable) creation of a power vacuum for a dubious gain that would in any event destabilise the country? 

Pants round their business ankles, indeed.

There are so many pants round ankles with PartyGate that it’s beginning to look a lot like a Carry On film – full of immaturity, crudeness, naivety, clichés, corn, has-beens, wannabees, closed minds, and open goals. The three most apt titles that spring to mind are: Carry On Regardless, Carry On Screaming and, all I can do is hope and pray, Carry On England.

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Rwanda or bust

If there’s one notable Tory whom the anti-Tories love to hate more than Boris, it’s Matt Hancock, Michael Gove, Nadine Dorris, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Priti Patel.

Her ‘problem’ is that she’s a female ethnic-Asian from an immigrant family who doesn’t think like she’s supposed to. She’s not only a Tory but a right-wing Tory, which is not what a female ethnic Asian from an immigrant family should be. The easiest way to defeat the Tory party, ya see, is to portray them as offensive, racist misogynists – I’ve got two of those three T-shirts so I should know. Then along comes Pretty Priti (something else they don’t like about her – she looks good) who cannot, by definition, be a racist misogynist, which drives the Guardian fan club to distraction.

Fishy Rishi is a sprat

This blog, not unexpectedly, is about the Chancellor’s wife, Akshata Murty, declaring non-dom status to avoid paying tax in the UK on her worldwide income. The sub-plot is whether I can forgive her as readily as I have forgiven BoJo almost anything to date, because Akshata’s hubby got furlough done during the height of the pandemic, just as solidly as Bojo got Brexit done.

By way of explanation, a non-dom tax status typically applies to someone who was born overseas, spends much of their time in the UK, but still ‘considers’ (for sentiment or convenience) another country to be their permanent residence or 'domicile'. Citizenship is irrelevant when it comes to non-dom status, because it is possible for a UK citizen, or someone born in the UK, to claim they are a non-dom. In Akshata’s case she was born in India and, while living in the UK at the moment, claims permanent residency elsewhere.

Does this make her a ‘bad’ person, or at least an ‘unfit’ Chancellor’s wife? Does this make Rishi an unfit Chancellor?