posted on 6/8/2020 14:27Russ In Cheshire's 'The Week In Tory' - new edition - Part 1 - Gramsci.

1. The dictionary definition of Honour is, “the quality of knowing and doing what is morally right”. Keep that in mind as we tackle the Honours system

2. Boris Johnson gave lifetime appointments to his own brother, and to the editor of the Telegraph, the newspaper which provided Johnson with his most obsequious coverage

3. Theresa May’s husband was knighted for “political service”, although an ITV investigation found “a brief stint as chairman of Wimbledon Conservative Assoc was as close as he got to politics”. But he was named in the Panama Papers, which is credentials enough for this govt

4. But more political than Ian Botham, an anti-immigration cricketer who bafflingly lives in Spain, and now has the power to affect our laws

 

5. And Claire Fox, who backed IRA bombings, never apologised, is now able to influence terrorism laws for the rest of her life

6. Also, arise Lord Alexander Lebedev, son of a KGB spy, and the man who threw an “anything goes party” for Boris Johnson which Tory cabinet ministers said made Johnson “a security threat” and “open to Kompromat” (Google that word)

7. Half the new Lords are leading campaigners for Brexit, and as such are viscerally opposed to unelected power and sprawling bureaucracy. They join 808 unelected members of parliament. There are only 650 elected ones

8. And in an already spiffing week for democracy, the govt set up a council to investigate ways to prevent courts from ruling ANY govt action is unlawful, even if it is literally unlawful

9. And now stats news, and the Office for Statistics Regulation said the PM repeatedly used poverty stats “selectively, inaccurately and, ultimately, misleadingly”

 

10. Then the ONS revealed the UK had the worse excess death rate in Europe

11. So Johnson hailed Britain’s “massive success” on Covid19, and I wondered how things could get worse...

 

12. Hello, Iain Duncan Smith! Two weeks after the cost of IDS’s Universal Credit rose by a £1.4bn, the Lords found it was “not fit for purpose” and needed £8bn more

13. The cross-bench Lords committee found Universal Credit “has led to an unprecedented number of people relying on food banks”

 

14. Dominic Raab saw this as an opportunity, and posed, smiling, at a food bank that specifically illustrated massive government failure

15. In Oct 2019 IDS voted to accelerate the passage of the Withdrawal Agreement, specifically so it wouldn’t have to face parliamentary scrutiny

 

16. In Mar 2020 IDS voted for the Withdrawal Agreement. Wait for it...

17. This week IDS apparently got around to reading the WA, saw it would cost £160bn, and demanded it be renegotiated.

 

18. He said the details were “buried away, unnoticed by some”, which is kinda why we needed time to scrutinise it, but Iain will be Iain

19. Iain being Iain has cost the country £170 billion this week alone, in return for a future that is demonstrably worse

 

20. Small change, but it was also revealed it will cost £1bn to replicate the chemical industry safety regime that we got for free from the EU

21. Oh, and £170,000 loan to a “sex party company”, which honestly, barely raises an eyebrow compared to the rest

 

22. And now Covid, and a study found Dominic Cummings’ Durham adventure “was a key factor in the breakdown of a sense of national unity” that cost lives

23. A cross-party group of MPs said the failure to close airports in March was “inexplicable” and “a serious mistake” that led to thousands of deaths, and ever-so-slightly worryingly, they could not identify anybody in govt who was making decisions

24. The govt’s top coronavirus expert, who attempted to persuade the govt to lock down, revealed he has never met Boris Johnson, our PM, who said he was “taking personal responsibility” for lockdown and Covid policy

25. Dido Harding, head of the Covid App, said “I absolutely don't accept that this is failure, it's the opposite". It cost £13m, which is £12.3m more than the functioning Irish app. And then it was abandoned because it didn’t work

26. She also leads Test + Trace. A report found contact tracers “making only a handful of calls every month and occupy their time with barbecues and quizzes”

 

27. Test +Trace contacted only 50% those at risk, so local councils set their own up in 2 weeks. They’re tracing 98%

28. The govt announced a lockdown for Britain’s 2nd largest city-region not via a PM announcement, but via a tweet at 10pm, 2 hours before it began

 

29. Directors of public health were not informed before the lockdown, and no procedures were in place for implementing it

30. A SAGE subcommittee said there was “a high risk of widespread urban disorder” requiring military intervention, and a decision to reopen pubs would "complicate these problems and introduce entirely new ones”

 

31. The govt opened pubs

32. The govt said extremely vulnerable people should stop shielding

 

33. The govt said shielding was essential to stop the spread of Covid

 

34. The govt said people should return to work in offices

 

35. The govt said people should increase their isolation

36. The govt said it would isolate over-50s