August 2020
Deceit, Deception and Delinquency – Johnson’s 3-D vision of the future.
It has to be said that I sit here and write my blog from a protected, indeed privileged position. Karen and I were here well before the 31st December 2020 Brexit deadline so our position here in France is very much secure. Because we are now considered as pensioners our Form S1 will see our healthcare costs covered and we have an extended period in which to re-register our residency – it has been put back to 1st October because of Covid-19 – and the process is a very simple on-line exercise, reinforced by the fact that we already have our Titre de Séjour. Nevertheless, we look on in horror every morning when we read the paper and every evening when we sit and watch the UK news bulletins and witness the crumbling of fairness in society, democracy and common decency brought about by Johnson and his right-wing extremist version of the Conservative Party.
Johnson’s reign over the Tory Party has been illuminated by his absolute absence of a moral compass. He deliberately took the loony right-wing nationalist option to support Brexit knowing that the extreme elements of his party (namely the inappropriately named European Research Group) would take to him as some kind of saviour and do him no harm even if – as he suspected – Leave lost the referendum. I wouldn’t have liked to be responsible for his laundry when it was revealed that they’d won ! Having won that vote he then spent the next few months undermining Theresa May’s government, succeeding her as Tory Party leader and ultimately as Prime Minister when he decisively won the General Election that followed.
But what have they foisted on themselves and the rest of us ? The UK is lead by a man who lies continually and with absolutely no shame !
Where do I begin ? Lets go back to his time as a correspondent for the Times in 2004, when he was sacked for lying. How about when he was the EU correspondent for the Daily Telegraph where it was known that he had two versions of every story, to suit the occasion. Where even arch-Tory Max Hastings sacked him for his lies. When he was sacked by Michael Howard from his job as Vice-Chair of the Conservative Party for lying about a personal dalliance – and when found out refused to resign and so was fired. We all remember the lies about the £350 million a week the NHS would be better off after Brexit and the masses of Turkish immigrants that were on their way because of the EU. And then, as PM, he prorogued Parliament to help him smuggle his Brexit bill through – and stood in front of Betty Battenberg and lied to her face ! Now I’m no fan of the Royal Family – I’m a Republican at heart and long for the day we have a written Constitution, an elected President, an elected Upper House and Proportional Representation – but when all’s said and done she is the Queen, our constitutional Head of State and should be accorded the respect that position demands. By his actions over Brexit he now looks like he will be the PM who will preside over the breakup of the United Kingdom – giving a lie to the Tories lofty title of being the ‘Conservative and Unionist Party’. His disrespectful treatment of Her Maj, at a stroke, consigned her and her position to irrelevance but have no doubt that somewhere in the deepest, darkest corners of the Royal Household there is someone waiting their moment to sink a very sharp blade between his shoulder blades, metaphorically or otherwise. We can only hope.
His list of lies, of his deceit, are myriad and I wont go into any more detail but would invite you to look at some (or all) of these links and decide for yourself if he is a right and proper person to lead the country :
https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/times-boris-johnson-flat-lied-130475
I think that pretty much covers the ‘Deceit’ item in my header so let’s turn our thoughts to ‘Deception’. Now I know that technically this is a synonym for Deceit but I’m trying to highlight the trickery Johnson and his minions are trying to pull where their deceit is a case of them lying by omission.
So let’s start with all the secret Trade Agreement talks that are ongoing – are still ongoing four years after the Brexit result even though the likes of David Davies, Liam Fox and Michael Gove were telling us how quick and easy getting these deals would be – more lies to add to the list! Are you aware that the USA is insisting on a five year secrecy clause, in effect not allowing the people of the UK to know what their government would have signed us up for? Well they are and if the Tories agree to that any negotiating strength we might have had would be washed away with all the chlorine they’d just washed the chickens with. Just think about that for a moment. The Tories will sign us up to a deal and never have to answer for it – helped along by the fact that MP’s will not be able to scrutinise or amend/alter/prevent any deal.
Now consider all the ducking and diving surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic. The story of this disaster has been one of blatant deception from the initial ‘herd immunity’ policy (since denied), through the glaring lack of PPE and the excuse that this was a brand new and so unknown disease that couldn’t have been prepared for (although Operation Cygnus refuted that assertion), the sight of Matt Hancock assuring us that the Care sector had been hugged by the Government since the outset and that they had always been guided by the science ! The web of deception also included Johnson refusing to accept Cummings had done anything wrong by zooming off up to his mummy and daddy’s and then Barnard Castle (even though his wife had been symptomatic before they went) never mind sack him for his blatant disregard of his own rules ! Then we had Johnson senior (his old man) flying to Greece via Bulgaria so he could dodge the travel restrictions in place at the time.
We can push the Hancock story of deception even further – he, the MP for Newmarket, turned a blind eye to this years Cheltenham Festival going ahead even though they all knew Covid-19 was on its way to us – that saw over 250,000 race goers over the Festival period all coughing and spluttering over each other. Then, to further take us all for mugs he gave his mate Dido Harding (Baroness Harding of Winscombe) the job of running Johnson’s ’world beating’ Test and Trace system – the same lady who holds a Board position on the Jockey Club and which is responsible for guess what? Yep – the Cheltenham Festival. This lot have no shame. By the way, our ‘world beating’ Test and Trace system isn’t, nor is the system they’ve ploughed £10 billion into working. Local Authorities are doing all the work, for which they’ve shard £300 million, whilst that £10 billion had vanished into the coffers of the likes of Serco and Capita. Follow the link for the real story and be horrified and then read here about their recent U-turn where now they recognise the importance of the local knowledge and expertise within the Local Authorities when dealing with Public Health issues.
By their sleight of hand this shower are siphoning off OUR money and dropping it into the hands of their mates in business, with no due tendering process and no accountability. If that’s not crooked what is?
This isn’t the only instance of dodgy dealings – there’s more for you to read here.
The more I write the angrier I get about all of this because let’s not forget that while Johnson’s mates are all getting richer on the back of the covid-19 pandemic the UK still has more cases of infection than the whole of Europe put together and we still have the horror of watching over 100 people a day dying of the disease – all of which is down to the Delinquency of Johnson and his Tory government.
Now I define Delinquency as a deliberate act of criminal or anti-social behaviour and that being the case we can list a whole host of examples so, in no particular order, let’s start:
#1 Charging headlong towards a ‘no-deal’ Brexit, so shovelling avoidable economic hurt on an economy rapidly collapsing under the hurt caused by Covid-19.
#2 Johnson ignoring all the signs coming out of China at the very beginning of the pandemic and failing to respond appropriately.
#3 Johnson failing to lockdown soon enough, preferring to keep the economy alive for longer.
#4 ‘Herd immunity’
#5 The release of elderly hospital patients back into Care Homes without being tested so spreading infection and deaths amongst the weakest.
#6 PPE
#7 Testing
#8 Tracing and Tracking
#9 Cummings and Castle Barnard, which not only totally undermined the generally country-wide adherence to the lockdown restrictions but also showed the Police Forces involved for what they are – Government lackeys!
#10 Handing out the Test Track and Trace contracts to their chums without the proper tendering to ensure best value for us tax-payers – £10 billion is now unaccounted for – how dare they!
#11 Coming out of lockdown too soon, witness the ‘Castle Barnard’ effect.
#12 Not sacking Cummings.
#13 Not sacking Cummings after he went back to the future and re-wrote his blog to infer he had some kind of divine forewarning of Covid-19
It’s so easy to go on but lets just revisit the toll in lives in the UK.
To date – 11th August 2020 – there have been 46,526 Government confirmed deaths due to Covid-19.
46,526
The detail can be found here and I would advise that you follow this link to get a clear view of the human cost of the Tories DELINQUENCY.
Then try and factor in the human economic cost – 730,000 jobs have been lost to the UK jobs market between March and July – and that’s with all the protections that Sunak has thrown at bolstering jobs trying to prevent redundancies. These losses have hit the young and older workers in the main whilst zero-hours contracts have increased by over 17% to over 1 million. Future employment prospects in the UK look grim I’m afraid.
When we return to any kind of normality it is imperative that we have an independent judicial review of the what, where, how and responsibility for the impact of the pandemic on the UK.
Heads will need to roll – in Government, in the Civil Service and indeed in Industry – how can it be possible that firms receiving millions in bail-out payments then go and pay enormous dividends to their shareholders? Remember Tesco?
Oh and did I mention that the word ‘delinquency’ is usually preceded by the word ‘Juvenile’ – says it all really.
Thanks for reading, stay home and stay safe – this is a long way from over and virtually all of Europe is seeing infections increase.
It’s difficult for me not to continue the alliteration theme by including ‘Despondency’ or ‘Disillusionment’, Dismay and ‘Desperation’ – all of which readily apply to the change in attitude to Covid-19, especially amongst the younger end, who, it would seem, look like they feel they are immune to the ravages of this disease. A lot of the new cases being seen are amongst the younger end and to those I would just like to say – please think about what you are doing – how would you feel if you gave it to your Mum or Dad, Gran or Grandad? I know how hard lockdown has been for you all, life in a wheelchair and depending on others for everything (and I mean everything) is the worst kind of lockdown so please think on, do the right thing, stay home, stay safe and keep saving lives.
Cummings’ ‘Delinquent’ behaviour needs dealing with, sooner rather than later, and I place the blame for the recent increase in infections firmly at his door. He has a lot to answer for.
Thanks
Jem