This blog post was written over the course of three days – 14th – 16th May 2020 – so some events might well have been overtaken but I have indicated when I was actually writing.
WHAT IS A LIFE REALLY WORTH TO THE TORIES?
No! Really?! What value does the Tory Government really put on the life of, say, a zero-hours contract cleaner or a bus-driver or a nurse or a doctor? This list of jobs is almost endless but the answer remains the same – nothing! That’s right, you heard me correctly, Johnson and his cabinet of clowns and his government of gob-shites see all of us as valueless, and I make no apology for that assertion.
I have to admit that Rishi Sunak’s intervention(s) were timely (sometimes), costly and of great support to people so quickly taken away from their employment and income but it has taken a long time for people to start receiving their promised payments and people and businesses are suffering. But the fact remains that he had no alternative, it was that or watch the economy absolutely tank – and even now we are on the verge of the worst recession since the Napoleonic Wars. The Tory money tree has grown itself a forest, never mind the odd new branch and the cost of the recently extended furlough scheme will likely reach £70 billion. The Office of Budget Responsibility are now saying that
‘with state spending soaring and tax revenues badly affected by the lockdown of much of the economy, the OBR said it was now expecting the government to borrow £298.4bn in 2020-21, up from £273bn at the end of April and just £55bn at the time of Sunak’s budget on 11 March’.
I lifted that text from an article here.
Now do the sums – on 11th March government borrowing was going to be ‘just’ £55 billion, then the figure was £273 billion by the end of the financial year April 2020 and now it looks like £298.4 billion more will have to be borrowed in financial year 2020-21. I’m no mathematician so I’ll let you do your own figures but to me that looks Covid-19 will hit the UK for over £500 billion extra borrowing by this time next year. Now compare that with the annual cost to the UK for being a member of the European Union where our net contribution was around £9 billion. Covid-19 will cost the UK over 50 years’ worth of contributions, the best part of two generations! When the Brexiteering bastards are all dead and buried my grandkids (and yours) will still be paying for this but you can guess the ‘get rich quick and stay rich’ Tories won’t get stung to help pay the bills – just like after the Banking crisis
So who will pay for that?
Already there’s been a leak from the Treasury hinting at even more austerity which will include an end to the ‘triple-lock’ on the state old-age pension, income tax rises and a two-year pay freeze for public-sector employees.
Yep – that’s right – the very same people who have been lauded by Johnson for saving his life, the new heroes of the nation who have been risking their lives on a daily basis to save his worthless hide will be in the front of the queue, again, to carry the can for this governments failings. And yes they have failed, failed to recognise the danger by ignoring the warning signs from China and Italy, failing to take notice of the findings from Exercise Cygnus and failing to properly source and stock all the necessary PPE. Oh and don’t swallow the self-righteous shit dripping from Jeremy Hunt’s lips – he is very much to blame for the state of the NHS after being Health Secretary for something like six years and it needs someone a little bit less mealy-mouthed that the BBC’s Nick Robinson who spoke with him on R4’s Today programme this morning (14th May) and didn’t press that point when he had the chance.
And while I’m ripping into the Tories and their shameless two-faced attitude to all workers in the Health and Social Care sector just remember these are the bastards who cheered a vote in the House of Commons that rejected, yes REJECTED a pay raise for Nurses!
I’ll refer you to blogs passant about my thoughts on the bosses of tech companies trading in the UK and not paying their way, the Branson’s and Green’s of the world, all those rich sods who keep feeding the troughs of their shareholders with dividends while going cap in hand to their mates in Government for handouts. Let me tell you how it should be – shareholders should be bailing out their companies, not UK tax-payers – and be brutally honest – will we really miss all those polluting airlines slowly choking our grandchildren’s planet to death?
It’s now Friday 15th May 2020 but let’s go back to my opening statement:
WHAT IS A LIFE REALLY WORTH TO THE TORIES?
I made my views quite clear in the opening paragraph but let me add a little meat to the bone and hopefully find a receptive ear or two.
Start by reading this article from Stefan Stern in the Guardian. Working from home is a great idea if you can but if you can’t it is imperative that travelling and working is SAFE – so stay safe by staying at home if you have to.
I’ll blow my own trumpet a little bit here as a long time ago (mid-1990’s) and in a different life I negotiated the first working from home agreement in BT, for a specific group of Engineers in Manchester in what was called the DMC (Digital Maintenance Centre). They’d had a visit from their senior manager (imagine your boss’s boss’s boss’s boss) and complained about having to drag in to Manchester every day to do their job when their job was maintaining BT computer lines that allowed national connectivity. This was before ADSL and Broadband and a time when BT made a fortune from providing Megastream, Kilostream and ISDN point to point computer lines. Their line manager (Derek Redfern – one of the best in Manchester) was told to look at it and see what he could do. Derek called me and within a matter of months we had it boxed off, trialled and agreed. I fired the agreement off to Head Office as a matter of courtesy and got my knuckles rapped by a National Officer, who insisted I had no right to make such a deal locally. I told him to fuck off and then the next thing I know it was rolled out nationally. No mention was made of how it came about though, my Branch’s role was ignored and consequently I never had much to say to a certain Clerical National Officer with a Scottish name after that – enough said – but old comrades should be able to recognise who I mean. It stood the test of time though as when I left BT in 2013 I was an official Home Worker enjoying my own terms and conditions. Enough of that for now
There is some opinion that Johnson has listened to reason by delaying an end to lockdown and offering a phased three steps to lifting restrictions, based on the evidence offered by the science. Fair enough, except that he now expects those least capable of affording ongoing restrictions to squeeze on buses and trains, with nothing more than a face covering to protect them as PPE face masks should be reserved for Health and Social Care workers – this from the same man who compared Muslim women who choose to wear veils as ‘letterboxes’ and ‘bank-robbers’! . Now I don’t deny for one moment that front-line workers should be any more exposed to Covid-19 than is absolutely necessary – but it is the Governments fault that there isn’t enough to go round and people shouldn’t be forced, bullied or coerced back into unsafe work areas, it’s as simple as that. Owen Jones gets it spot on in the Guardian here and I would recommend this as a good read.
Johnson’s reliance on British common sense to see us through by staying alert just doesn’t cut it I’m afraid. I for one won’t take common sense advice from the same buffoon who got himself infected by his own cavalier actions, risking not only himself but also his partners and their then unborn spawns’ lives.
But not only was he prepared to risk his own kids life he is now prepared to risk your kids and grandkids lives by sending them back to school, simply so he can release some parents back into the workplace to kickstart the economy. This at a time when the holy grail ‘R’ number has been seen to have regional and local variations and – more worryingly – looks like its on the increase in the UK.
In my view a direct consequence of allowing people to think lockdown is coming to an end!
And with a stubbornly immovable R1 where’s the sense, common or otherwise, to allow children back to school? Parents are understandably concerned, teachers and their Unions are understandably concerned about returning to anything less than a Covid-19 safe environment and yet it is now beginning to look like teachers are deliberately scaremongering and holding back restarting the economy – just listen to the fireplace salesman now pretending to be Secretary of State for Education or the Daily Mail! Doh!! It makes no sense to me – trying to get kids, especially infants, to ‘socially distance’ would be more difficult than herding kittens and what about the potential for asymptomatic kids infecting school staff and even other parents as they drop off and pick up their little darlings.
The time to start coming out of lockdown is when the R1 has reduced significantly and has stayed low for at least fourteen days (the accepted contagion period) and there is an effective test, track and trace system in place, No sooner than that. Anything else will just invite round two and that’s something too scary to contemplate.
With thanks to Steve Bell
The current Tory thinking basically means that when it all goes wrong and a second wave rips through the UK it will all be your fault for not showing enough common sense – by allowing yourselves to be confused by what I believe are deliberate mixed and confusing messages. Dominic Cummings masterminded Johnson’s Brexit ‘victory’ and I have no doubt he is now sat in the background twiddling around trying to ensure that his lord and master doesn’t take the fall for the almighty fuck-up made of the pandemic in the UK to date. The scientists and medics have been lined up, poor old Matt Hancock similarly is teetering on the brink of professional political oblivion (I never thought I’d ever refer to a Tory toff twat as ‘poor’ in that sense, or indeed any!). Having said all of that the Tories are ruthless when it comes to shifting their leaders – so who knows – I get a distinct impression that Johnsons’ days might well be numbered as even the dimmest of Tories must see that his competence is non-existent and blustering bonhomie just doesn’t work!
Regardless, as we can only dream of the Tories seeing sense, the economic fightback has commenced (supposedly) and the first troops over the top are, as said earlier, those least able to resist the pressure to return.
In World War One such people were referred to as cannon fodder – only good enough to keep the (war) economy going, making certain elements in society (even) richer. Similarly in World War Two, when, at its end the British economy was on its knees, massively in debt to the good ‘ole US of A and on the verge of running out of the manpower it needed to either continue the war or start to rebuild it. That we had no men left (hardly) was why the Government asked people from the (then) Empire to come and help – and that didn’t end well did it? Just ask anyone from the Windrush generation! This lot will sacrifice whoever is necessary to ensure that their own kind do not suffer any more than is absolutely unavoidable as a consequence but what they need to remember is that at the General Election after the Second World War Winston Churchill, as good a war leader as he might have been, was ousted as the British people wanted better. And better we got, namely the NHS, the organisation that the Tories have been trying to dismantle ever since, the same NHS they’d have you believe is now close to their hearts and worth
its weight in gold – which it is – to all their mates lining up to buy a piece!
So I’ll put it to you – no single life is worth another £1 profit in the purse of another million/billionaire robber baron. If there’s no place for homelessness with Covid-19 then there’s no place afterwards. If we can afford to fund the NHS properly with Covid-19 then we can afford to do it afterwards. If we can afford multiple emergency ICU units – prosaically named after Florence Nightingale – we can afford the 40 new hospitals Johnson promised during the run-up to the last election. If we can properly fund Social Care at this time then we can afford to do it afterwards. Tories, neo-liberals, hedge-fund managers, Banks – they all know cost of everything but have no idea of the value of anything. Fortunately an awful lot of people are waking up to what’s worth paying for and who are worth paying more. When we eventually recover from this pandemic we need to ensure a new world order, I know probably wishful thinking but if nothing changes then all of this, all our sacrifices, the cost and the generational national debt incurred will be for nothing.
OK – enough for now other than a quick few comments on lockdown here in France.
Things have eased off ever so slightly but only ever so. Departments have all been colour coded to reflect their Covid-19 status – red for bad or green for good. People are not allowed to cross from green to red or red to green zones but are allowed to travel a maximum of 100k within a green zone.
The Creuse, our Department, is in a green state – basically meaning the Covid-19 is under control. To illustrate what that means let me quote the latest statistics:
Population 123,401 (2006 census – we’ve actually just completed new census forms)
Area 556,538 sq kms
Population density 22.17 per sq km
Covid-19 hospitalisations – 12 (as of 15/05/2020) https://www.santepubliquefrance.fr/
Covid-19 deaths – 1
As you can see things are pretty safe here but that doesn’t mean it’s a free for all. Benoit our local cantonnier (literally a road-mender but in this instance someone employed by the commune to maintain roads, communal spaces etc.) called this afternoon with a couple of re-usable face masks courtesy of the Mayor.
As a quick aside, the cheerful chappie above is an 1896 version and – below – when motoring through rural France have you ever noticed little sturdy looking buildings by the road like this –
Well that’s a cantonniers cabane and this one is actually just 20k from us by the side of the road near St. Alpinien.
Karen was out at the local supermarket in Auzances when he called and when she got back told me of the precautions in place there – strictly one in or out at a time, no crossing in the doorway and access was blocked to ensure this, disinfectant wipes for the trolley handles and hand sanitiser freely available inside. Only two tills were open, markings on the floor to show 2m distance, protective screens at the tills and staff wearing visors and face masks. At the time of writing it is expected that restaurants will be able to open again on 2nd June, a little late for our wedding anniversary (27th May – 7 years) and Karen’s Birthday (don’t ask) but given that our weekly treat was Sunday lunch out I think a quick call to see what’s what is in order as we’ve missed Le Damier (and others) no end.:
So, to end, what about Jem’s Juke Box I hear you say?
As an absolute Beatles nut here are a couple of my all time favourites, in no specific order of preference.
Enjoy, stay home and stay safe
Jem