29 October 2020
Diary of a Corbynista
Johnson Batting 0 for 2
by Don Urquhart
21 October
The Guardian headline:
Sadiq Khan accuses Boris Johnson of ‘blatant lie’ over TFL.
At PMQ’s Johnson accused Sadiq of bankrupting TFL (Transport for London) before the pandemic.
People will choose who to believe.
Tip: one of the two has a track record.
BBC reporter Lewis Goodall has an analysis on Twitter and concludes:
So was TfL “bankrupted” before going into this crisis? The answer quite simply is no. Yes fare freeze (which I assume PM is referring to) affected finances but the deficit was falling and cash reserves solid. The problem came with Covid (and previous withdrawal of govt grant).
22 October
Earlier this week we had Johnson and Burnham squaring up to each other over how much support Greater Manchester should receive in Tier 3 and it seemed that Burnham’s argument rested on the 4 months of debilitating Tier 2 the City had suffered. He was slapped down. Then today out comes Sunak with his replacement Job Support programme as of November 1st which includes funds to cover hardships experienced in Tier 2 backdated to the start of August.
So did Burnham’s defiance force the government into yet another U-Turn? We will probably have to await Sunak’s memoirs. Johnson’s? I don’t think so.
23 October
Michael Cohen, Trump’s Mr Fixit lawyer, has written a book and was plugging it on Newsnight. He ascribed his behaviour to being a member of the Trump cult. There were other things but this seemed to be his main excuse.
Watching Baroness Morgan on Question Time excusing her Commons colleagues for voting down free meals for hungry children, I wondered how many Tories would at some time in the future be using a similar defence as Michael Cohen in respect of the Boris Cult.
Also on Newsnight the BBC located an exemplar of businesses that had suffered under Tier 2 restrictions. They selected a City cocktail bar whose owner delivered his sad story. Really BBC is that the best you can do? Were I to make a list of types of business that needed to be saved, cocktail bars would not figure in the top 1,000.
24 October
The Deputy Leader of the Labour Party uttered the word “scum” during a speech by a Conservative member.
More than 100 Tory MPs have signed a letter to the Labour Party leader asking him to put a stop to such atrocities.
One of their concerns was that #ToryScum had gone viral on Twitter. If they think that this happened as a result of Angela Rayner’s outburst they are incorrect. It is occasioned by their attitude to hungry children.
25 October
I worked in Germany for 15 months in 1970-1971.
My German colleagues pulled my leg for being an “arme Engländer”. They were in the midst of the Wirtschaftswunder and Britain was the sick man of Europe.
When I retired 40 years later the German authorities informed me that I was due a pension from their government relating to my period of employment there. And they have been sending me money ever since.
Last year Conservative MP Mark Francois argued that his father had not fought in the Second World War for him to be pushed around by the Germans in respect of EU negotiations.
My father was a D-Day veteran, he never submitted to bullying by any German. Neither will his son.
This was all brought to mind by reading a tweet from German comedian Henning Wehn who pointed out that Germany did not have charities because essential needs were met by the state.
We don’t do charity in Germany. We pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments’ responsibilities.
It is fair to say that the two countries have taken very different paths since 2010.
26 October
We usually watch BBC’s Breakfast Time first thing, but too often they fill time with the froth of people pushing their books, music or what have you. So occasionally we switch over to Good Morning. Love him or hate him Piers Morgan takes no prisoners. He wasn’t on this morning but Adil Ray, dealing with the starving children issue told us they had invited a government minister on but none had been forthcoming for 181 days. So Marcus Rashford is not the only effective opposition and Good Morning’s viewing figures will surge in our postcode.
27 October
Johnson casts round desperately for distractions from his starve the children policy. His Universal Credit argument was savaged by a teacher who described it as a trickle down approach. Now he is pushing Henry Dimbleby’s holiday village approach which is about as practical as the Moonshot vaccination project.
Speaking of which I was mortified to see NASA spreading fake news about discovering water on the moon. How different from the way news of the fine achievement of a working class Wigan resident was suppressed, when in 1989 he discovered cheese on Earth’s only natural satellite.
28 October
My daughter visits and we sit in the garden. This will get harder as it gets colder and wetter. My son lives on his own so we regard him as bubble and he can come and stay with us. We meet up with friends and relations outside – in pubs with gardens for example.
We are the lucky ones – we have a garden and we don’t have to go out to work.
I remember a Swede at the start of the pandemic saying that the big difference between his country and ours was that they trusted their government.
The people they put in front of us are ones only a mother could love. We are without leaders who put out a consistent and convincing story. They make a better job of it in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
In a sense I don’t care what the solution is I just want to believe that the people presenting it know what they are doing and have our interests at heart.
Johnson and co. bat 0 for 2 on this basis.
