posted on 14/8/2020 15:49Russ In Cheshire's 'The Week In Tory' - part 1 - Gramsci.

 

2. So Boris Johnson went on holiday. See if you even notice.

 

3. Britain’s death toll, pretty much the worst per-capita in the developed world, rose again to the levels it was 2 months ago

 

4. Fortunately, the govt solved those deaths by the simple expedient of publishing the figures on a different website and not telling anybody

 

5. A mere 6 months into the Covid-19 crisis, the govt advertised for a "Head of Pandemic Preparedness" with a salary of – honest to god – less than mine. And I do colouring-in for a living.

 

6. In Feb the govt said "nobody will go hungry as a result of Covid-19"

 

7. The FSA said 7.8 million Britons had skipped meals or eaten unsafe food as a result of skyrocketing “food insecurity” since the outbreak

 

8. So the govt is planning to stop the furlough scheme to force us to go back to jobs that don’t exist

 

9. Britain’s GDP fell 21%, more than twice as much as Germany or the USA, and even more than Spain, which we keep telling ourselves is doing terribly, whilst avoiding mirrors

 

10. And an IFS study showed UK can expect to be permanently 9% poorer if we have no Brexit deal by Nov

 

11. So naturally, Liz Truss paused a £14bn trade deal with Japan over concerns for the fate of Stilton, which is 0.007% of the deal. But she’d made a big deal over Brexit saving Britain’s vast and vitally important Stilton industry, and everything else comes second

 

12. Liz Truss suggested increasing the speed limit to 80mph could be the solution to all our economic woes

 

13. And then The Express – yes, them – suddenly discovered the USA favour a deal with the EU over a deal with the UK because, and this will shock you, the EU is much bigger

 

14. Boris Johnson insisted the central Test and Trace system was "still world-beating" after it traced only 56% of cases

 

15. Local councils set up their own tracing in Lancashire, Liverpool and W Yorkshire and traced 98%. "World-beating" isn’t even beating Blackburn council

 

16. NHS Providers said Test and Trace is “not fit for purpose, let alone world class”

 

17. A month after knighting Sir Tom for raising £32m, the govt gave 10x as much to company valued at £100, and with no expertise in producing PPE, for 50m masks we can’t use

 

18. By one of those massively rare coincidences that happen 9 times out of 10, the owner is a close friend Liz Truss 

 

19. And then it was revealed the govt didn’t just sign one inexplicable contract with a useless and inexperienced supplier: they had at least 20 contracts

 

20. One of the contracts is for £108m, paid to a pest control company with assets of just £18,000. The company is now using money from that contract to threaten legal action against a lawyer who asked what it is doing with the money. I kid you not.