Lots of people are demanding that Boris Johnson resigns over Partygate. What I find difficult to understand is why that is their trigger. Why not about the absolute economic disaster that is Brexit/covid?
Why not about the 4.3 million children living in poverty in the UK? That’s 31% of all children in the UK or nine in a classroom of 30. Shouldn’t that be a reason for the entire UK Government to resign, not just the Prime Minister? Should that not make us want to tear down the entire structures of UK Governance?
The UK now has over 2,000 food banks. In 2020/21 approximately 2.5 million people used a food bank, over 600,000 more than the previous year. Throughout the provided time period, the number of foodbank users has increased every year, from just under 26,000 in 2008/09.
With inflation running at 6% and energy bills set to rocket by 50% + we can expect all these numbers to grow. Should that not make people so angry they would want the entire government to resign, not just Boris Johnson?
https://cpag.org.uk/child-poverty/child-poverty-facts-and-figures
https://www.statista.com/statistics/382695/uk-foodbank-users/#statisticContainer
There are around 300,000 homeless people in the UK. Many of them tonight will be sleeping rough. Why does that not have our media and public demanding a change of leadership?
There are almost 1.5 million people unemployed in UK. They are expected to survive and prosper on a Universal Credit payment of £324.84 a month if they are over 25, £257.33 if they are under 25.They are not only meant to eat, heat and travel to interviews on this amount, they are supposed to be grateful too. Meanwhile, the disgusting UK Media tell their readers these people are living the high life on their hard earned taxes. It is easier to blame the poor, for being poor than to repair the system that produces poverty.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/280383/unemployment-figures-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/
Many of the people that attend food banks and are viewed as living in poverty are in employment.They are not lazy as the establishment would have you believe. Some indeed have more than one job to just try and get by. Wage levels in the UK are appallingly low. The economy is geared to generating profits and dividends. Decent pay and conditions is not part of the neoliberal economic model.
Investing in public infrastructure and projects holds little appeal to the British Establishment. There is no interest in anything that may serve society if there is no profit at the end of it. They couldn’t care less if you have a new school or road if there is no direct benefit to them. That is why the further you get away from the centre of London the less investment you see.
The NHS throughout the UK is underfunded as this government redirects more and more of the health budget out to private companies. Our road and rail infrastructure are underfunded and in dire need of upgrading with massive investment. The same is true of our schools. Everywhere things have become progressively worse for the population at large since this Tory Government took office in 2010. This should have triggered calls for resignation time after time!
There is though one group of people that have benefitted. There are 171 billionaires in the UK, 24 more than a year ago, according to an annual ranking compiled by the Sunday Times. It was the highest number in the 33 years of the newspaper’s rich list, as the combined wealth of billionaires in Britain grew by more than one-fifth.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/21/number-of-billionaires-in-uk-reached-new-record-during-covid-pandemic
The UK is home to more millionaires than anywhere on Earth except the US, Japan and Germany – each with bigger economies and larger populations. And the boom time is far from over: Credit Suisse estimates that the UK will see another 50 per cent rise in millionaires by 2025 when 3.7 million UK adults will be US-dollar millionaires.
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/uk-millionaires-increased-pandemic-government-made-sure-1068648
In the UK Top 1% of households have 230 times more wealth than those in the bottom 10%.
The UK state pension comes bottom in a league table of net rates for average earnings at just 28 per cent, according to a study carried out by the OECD.
This compares with a 59 per cent average across the 36 members of the international organisation of rich democratic countries analysed in its latest report, which was published in 2019.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/pensions/article-9803095/Is-UK-state-pension-REALLY-worst-rich-rival-countries.html
These appalling facts have not caused outrage or uproar among the British public, media or political class. It took the information that some of the government employees and elected officials held and attended Christmas and Summer parties at No 10 Downing Street to get people and the media angry.
The general public took their cue from the media.They were outraged because at the same time as these people were partying on the taxpayer they had been making personal sacrifices.
The truth being 90% + of us behaved in a decent fashion. We have obeyed the guidelines. We have worn masks, socially distanced, been vaccinated, not attended parties or family gatherings. Many of us have not been able to sit with dying parents, husbands, brothers, sisters, grandparents. Not allowed to attend funerals or birthday parties for loved ones. Millions have been deprived from going to the football, theatre, cinema the pub, participating in normal human interactions. We did it for the common weal. However, the Tories in England partied and just did whatever they wanted. We now know not just a, one off party, there were dozens of occasions Johnson’s Tories were partying and in doing so flicking the finger at us all. No rules, no repercussions, no fixed penalties for the Tory elite and their helpers. Corruption and contempt thrive in a Tory UK.
When the general public realised that the elite had been partying they got very angry. Now everyone is shouting for Johnson to resign. Social media is ablaze with hashtags #johnsonresign. I agree he probably should. There is no justification for his actions. As the Prime Minister he should have been setting an example. He more than anyone is meant to be leading the nation. It seems among the elite the only one self-isolating and keeping a low profile is Prince Andrew!
If the moneymen decide Boris Johnson has served his purpose and it is time for him to go before the proletariat get too uppity then he will go. The elite in London live much like the Bourbons did at Versaille. They remember what happened to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette when they went too far. They still push it to the limit however, even they know when danger to their lifestyles looms.
When he does go, he will be replaced with an equally sociopathic evil bastard. There is no such thing as a decent Tory. Nothing will change there will still be millions of British kids living hungry and in poverty. Lots of pensioners will be choosing eating or heating. Homeless and unemployment will still be there but just as now it will be a number a quick mention on a news item.
The vast majority of the public won’t care and won’t demand action. All because unlike Partygate they are not affected by the hungry, the impoverished, poverty pensions. They will all revert to I’m Alright Jack until something affects their tiny world. Thatcher succeeded in her quest to end society. There is no such thing as society she famously said. Ever since right wing media, and commentators have tried to sanitise what she meant. Today’s UK confirms her dearest wish, there is no society!
Thatcherism was the concept to promote low inflation, a small state and free markets through tight control of the money supply, privatisation and constraints on the labour movement. The present Tory and Labour Party politicians are the children of Thatcher. They have taken her right-wing neoliberal economic and social model to new highs of greed.
In a few weeks from now when, we have a new Prime Minister, the right-wing media will lull you all back into your slumber. The belief that poverty, unemployment and disability are life choices will once again be in your newspapers your television news and drama. Instead of bread and circuses, you will be served up EPL football, Strictly Come Dancing and Take Away meals. The anger will dissipate, and life will resume as before especially the stealing by the wealthy elite. The transfer of wealth from the state coffers to rich will gather pace. Where did you think the £37 billion Track and Trace money went, into foodbanks, more like Panamanian banks!
Greed is why our world is so uneven and so unfair. Mandela got it right, Poverty is man made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. And overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life.
I wish people would get as angry about child, adult and pensioner poverty in UK as they do about a handful of greedy Tory bastards partying!!
Brilliant piece. All so very true, Roddy. Thank you.
The SNP is desperate to get rid of Johnson; desperate to get rid of a major asset for the independence movement; desperate to replace him with someone less incompetent.
The SNP continues to prop up the British establishment.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt this angry about politics. The poverty suffered by so many in our midst is an affront in a country as rich as this one. The political choices that have left more than 150,000 people dead from COVID are an affront to anyone with any empathy for their fellow citizens. The extreme inequality that is engineered into the fiscal rules is an affront to common decency. The Tories decline to do anything about the outrageous domestic power costs that we all are suffering and will continue to suffer. Who is making the profit on that? Is the wind charging more for blowing? They decline to properly fund and staff our flagship public service. In fact, they are happy to see it carved up to profit making private companies. And yet, it seems that, according to our, apparently, Independence-seeking Scottish Government, not enough Scots believe in Independence. Those “soft noes” that can’t see how we could better govern ourselves aren’t really “soft”, are they? They are completely brainwashed unionists. The Scottish Government need to get out and campaign for Scotland’s future, not wring their hands and say how awful the Westminster Government is.
Spot on, well said.
Yes, completely agree wuth Janice.
Yes, we are fat and happy apparently, conditioned by the media to jump when they say, and only ask – how high?
All this pain over Johnson and his appalling behaviour is real though for folks who lost and couldn’t give their loved ones a decent send-off – if any. You are right though about what triggers us, and how meekly we collectively accept their vision of how society should be. We being the UK “nation”, although of course we see things differently in Scotland and didn’t even vote for the evil bastards. Surely that alone should have us uprising.
What is even worse is that this is man-made, a political choice, a way to keep the rich richer and the poor (the rest of us) poorer, and in our place. They can make/issue as much money as is required, they can direct it to improve life for all, and choose to not do so. They chose to line their pockets and do it with that glib smile on their faces as they look at us dumb fucks who grumble but tread onwards with our heads down.
Bare-faced lying is the new normal, a badge of honour even, amongst these thieves. Smugness, elitism, considerably better & richer than you-ism, is the tory mantra. Disaster capitalism the way to riches, and still we let them stay “in charge”.
I do blame the English public more here, especially the working class who got hoodwinked by the Sun, dumbed down enough to vote for that charlatan and his party, what are they on exactly? I blame us just as much though, for staying tied to it when we at least have an out.
The real powermongers will jettison Boris when it suits them and put yet another one of their minions in charge, giving us all the deceit that we had a choice. Brief satisfaction as the knives plunge in his back, and on we go with nothing changed. They will still lie and steal, sabotage the welfare state and health service and plunder as much gold as they can while the going is good.
We should be sharpening the guillotine and getting our seats booked, but they have the game sewn up – especially in England, with Sir KS waiting in the wings to carry on, the latest corporate stooge in shining armour, with just a lesser tint of blue.
Up here, we are not much better off, are we. We wait, and we wait, and we wait, for some material change, and all we get is the incumbent Scottish government acting more and more like the westminster tories and also enriching themselves in the process.
Whatever happened to people power, critical thinking, and some decent outrage at the loss of our rights and our democracy? We can’t all be fat and happy on the meagre diet of this present day bread and circus charade we are forced to live in, can we?
Covid has only multiplied the effect of their policies, greed and opportunism by 1000 times, and Brexit is just beginning to show its teeth and the folly of their lies and greed in that escapade is seriously going to hurt us – not them.
Meanwhile they get even richer on it and sit on their hands doing nothing to change it, simply because they think they have us beat, fooled and cowed into submission. Time we showed them all that we are not prepared to meekly accept the fate they have planned for us.
Absolutely spot on. Sadly your words are so true but how do we get the blind to see? How do we open people’s eyes to stop voting these charlatans into government? I don’t know. Just like we couldn’t stop people voting ‘both votes SNP’.
This article should be published in every newspaper.
Totally agree, Iain. It’s the entitlement that’s obscene. Get your stables heated out of the public purse, offshore your own money to avoid tax & just get richer & richer but that money is then just a number on an offshore balance sheet and it’s dead as far as the local economy is concerned. Putting money into the pockets of the people at the bottom makes sure that that money circulates and supports local businesses. The Government should also ensure that all its citizens can both eat and stay warm. Government’s duty is to protect people. Unfortunately, as you say, that’s not how the Tories view their role
Well put Brother ,this is a rotten fascist state run by a greedy privileged establishment and their corporate capitalists pals .The Torys think being patrotic is about wrapping yourself in a Union Jack. Patrotism is about paying you taxes so your children can get educated and care for the elderly. Patrotism is about creating a country worth living in. Our children starve our old people shiver, in any other country the people would be at the barricades by now. The UK is not a proper state it is a failed state, Scotland is fracturing under the weight of coercive colonial rule. Braced by the BBC Goebbals school of brainwashing ,levelling up is actually levelling down, independence bad, UK Ok. Does anybody even believe their sad mantras anymore , even no voters must see where we are heading now . Bojo is like Nero partying while Brexitland burns and what of our colonial administration Nicola takes another selfie. Get us our of this dystopian nightmare. Disolve the Union.
Folk get angry at what the media tells them to be angry at not what truly they should be. As Scots, it should make no difference what the Prime Minister of England does or doesn’t do. That is a position of a foreign country’s government. It is the English that should be crying for his head and those of every parliamentarian that violated domestic and international law and not merely asking him to go of his own free will. Any other employee would be immediately sacked and taken to court. The media though paints it as a wee infringement that the PM should walk away from office for. The narrative having been set. The masses jump on board. In Scotland, the Scots should be outraged at the FM and the Scottish government they elected and imbued with Scots sovereign authority for permitting a foreign government to govern Scotland in their stead. They should be outraged that they have permitted a foreign country’s government to set Scotland’s budget when both country’s governments have equal authority and representation to the treasury of GB as per the terms of the treaty. They should be outraged that Scotland, a country that would have been one of the wealthiest in the world (as highlighted in the Crone report), has food donation outlets in almost every region of Scotland. A situation that should never have been. They should be outraged that Scotland pays the highest energy and fuel prices despite being resource rich. They should be outraged that Scotland adopts a second class position within GB with even their elected parliamentarians sitting at the back of the room in the same way they do in international affairs while allowing others to speak on Scotland’s behalf and to represent them. What is the point of electing anyone in Scotland when they act in this manner? Where is the authority of Scotland when both signatory countries are legally equal partners with equal authority to GB? The Scots need to get angry. Yes. But not at foreign governments. They need to get angry at their own!
“… I wish people would get as angry about child, adult and pensioner poverty in UK as they do about a handful of greedy Tory bastards partying!!… ” – BB.
It is always the small, overlooked detail that does for them, rarely the big, in-your-face stuff, although that is what is simmering beneath the surface. People are angry, BB, very angry, and Brexit has not really bitten yet. They will see the NHS melt away before their eyes, only the latest casualty of the great Tory project. His own backbenchers are furious, but not because he did party, but for getting caught and putting their lucrative jobs and pensions in jeopardy.
Every revolution and social upheaval in history was brought about by a tiny detail that the b******s overlooked. However, there is a caveat: all evolutions are led by the middle-class, not the working-class; and that applied to the Russian one, too, ostensibly a Communist one. The middle-class has not had its pips squeezed enough yet, so it will do zilch so long as the working-class (or under-class) carries the burden. Brexit, though, will almost certainly ensure that the middle-class starts to feel the pinch, and their jobs are going faster than working-class ones this time around.
Then, the middle-class and its sense of morality has to be outraged, too, in culmination with getting its pips squeezed. Its morality requires to be challenged by a removal or threat of removal of its comforts and conveniences which exist at the expense of the lower orders. When those two come together, the squeaking of pips and the challenge to its morality, and there is huge, seething working-class/under-class waiting to be to led, Bob’s your uncle. In Scotland, we are far closer to that sparking point than they are in England, albeit it might infect England, too. Virtue-signalling is a great ego masseur/masseuse when you are comfortably off and have never had to struggle. Quite a different story when your own privileges are being withdrawn or are under threat.
Excellent and passionate argument Roddy.
The media create the circus in order to distract us from the lack of bread.
That puts it in perspective!
@Lorna Campbell
No doubt about it: it’s the middle-class that makes the revolution. Historically speaking, though, it’s important to remember that the European middle-classes have always made their revolutions in the cause of exclusively middle class interests. Namely: the taking of power from the old regime to be wielded, exclusively, by and for the pursuit of its own ends. A project that, I think you’ll agree, has little accommodation with general fairness or moral decency. What in essence, was the Thatcher-revolution if not a middle-class revolution?
Yes, agree completely, Josef. Brexit, too, was a middle-class action which recruited many working-class supporters to vote against their own class interest for supposed sovereignty which was not actually threatened in the way that Scottish sovereignty is threatened.
I don’t want to veer off on to another subject, but women routinely vote against their own interests, too, on a far greater scale than even the working-class does, and I believe that other marginalised groups do so, as well. Always, they seem to prefer to cling to the comfort of the group that betrays them at every turn.
That is what makes the whole trans thing so clever: this is a part of the elite group that has managed to subvert all other marginalised groups in pursuit of its objectives. If it were not so tragic, it would be admirable and even a little farcical. Unfortunately, it is extremely dangerous and inimical to an ordered and balanced society – without which, human beings will be unable to survive as a species.
We all relinquish a little of our individual and group interest in order to co-exist with others, who do the same. For the first time in our history, a sub group has arisen which has the potential to destroy our civilisation while also taking everything from every other group along the way. The only winner possible will be Mammon. I know how poor old Kassandra felt: don’t bring that bloody wooden horse into the citadel; it will fall! What? It’s a gift, you stupid woman/working-class realist/black activist, so shut your cakehole. We won…
Postcolonial theory tells us that a people cannot expect much support from the national bourgeoisie in the quest for independence, and rather more the opposite. It is no accident that the pro-independence movement is predominantly made up of working class Scots-speaking Scots as reflects the group suffering most from oppression and inequality, whilst the anti-independence group may be mostly middle-class, and Anglophone. This reflects a cultural and linguistic divide, as is always the case for peoples in self-determination conflict, which is brought about through colonialism/imperialism. We should also remember that “colonialism is a co-operative venture” in which the bourgeoisie tend to embrace the culture, language and values of the coloniser, and in so doing they denigrate and cast aside their own native culture and language an an effort to elevate themselves socio-economically above the native-speaking population, and in their quest for cultural assimilation with the coloniser (Memmi).
As Frantz Fanon noted about the bourgeoisie and colonialism: “The national bourgeoisie, since it is strung up to defend its immediate interests, and sees no further than the end of its nose, reveals itself incapable of simply bringing national unity into being, or of building up the nation on a stable and productive basis. The national bourgeoisie …. has totally assimilated colonialist thought in its most corrupt form …. (and) establishes a racial philosophy which is extremely harmful for the future” of the nation. “By its laziness and will to imitation, it promotes the ingrafting and stiffening of racism which was(is) characteristic of the colonial era.”
This helps explain the Manichaean nature of colonialism whereby “the national bourgeoisies bar the way to unity” of the independence movement, which means that “unity can only be achieved through the upward thrust of the people, and under the leadership of the people, that is to say, in defiance of the interests of the bourgeoisie.”
In circumstances where the people have put their faith in a single dominant national party, such as is the case with the SNP, the danger here, much as we can now see in the way the SNP behaves, is that: “the single party is the modern form of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, unmasked, unpainted, unscrupulous and cynical.”
Ah Roddy. The fathers, the mothers, the sons and daughters who were denied access to their loved ones as the breathed their last. Or those who were denied access to the funerals of their loved ones whilst the prime minister and his ilk partied, danced and boozed with gay abandon.
All part too of the cold homes, food bank, fuel poverty driven obscenity that stalks our land. And you ask why folks don’t get angry. That’s a good question and it maybe shows how little empathy people actually have for those in extremis.
Or is it our society doesn’t care about all of those who died alone, or were cremated alone. Maybe goodbye to old rubbish. It is Roddy, truly that bad. Like the exterminations so extant in 1930s Germany, who cares – not it would seem, the so called progressive, caring, socially aware Scots.
So let us raise a party glass to all those who died alone.
A very good article Roddy asking some very significant questions.
The trouble is the people haven’t got a clue as to the truth about our “democracy” and “governments” etc and how everything that is going is deliberate as exposed here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98qv9ztkW_U
Other countries have governments that look after their people . In Brexitland we have a callous lack of compassion by the ruling elite. The poor and disabled are scapegoated and despised, the establishment and media sell this narrative to the masses. A smoke screen for the Tory crime syndicate to rip off the taxpayer .Tory raw meat eaters sociopaths and parictical thieves sucking the nations life blood form the cadaver of the Union.The SNPs reaction to this is to be Nodding dogs to try and sell Devo Max , that poisoned old bone. This is truly a mafia state corupt rotten to the core, nothing is what it seems. Strugeon does nothing to further the cause of independence, do the right thing and step down. We can get away from this xenophobic banana dictatorship take the next election as a pelbisit and Desolve the Union.
Unfortunately your message is 100% correct. Please, please, why can’t all those who desire independence, no matter what part they belong to, shout about this every from morning to night?
Scotland’s roads are almost 3rd country standards, our health system has the worst outcomes of all OECD countries, our welfare provision is lamentable, our education system is failing huge promotions of kids (my wife is a teacher, so I am not making that up), our pensions are so low that you are damned to abject poverty if you were unable to earn enough to put money aside in some form, life expectancy is falling from a not exactly brilliant level, with some parts of our great city of Glasgow have a life expectancy lower than many 3rd world countries.
Why are independence supporters not selling this disaster to the Scottish people?
Thank you for writing this in your blog. This must be said to all those people that still think the union is of value.
Ron Rothammer
I could care less whether he goes or stays. As far as Scotland is concerned it will just be more of the same.