15 October 2020

Diary of a Corbynista

Building Back Bullshit

by Don Urquhart

7 October

The Unite union has decided to reduce its funding for the Labour Party by 10%.  A key contributor to that decision was Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to pay off the Panorama “whistleblowers” rather than fight them in court as advised by the Party’s lawyers.

8 October

On Politics Live yesterday Ben Bradshaw MP illustrated the depth of the chasm between Labour Party factions.  Asked about the Unite Union’s decision to reduce Labour Party funding he asserted that its General Secretary had done more than anyone to keep Labour out of power.

9 October

Rishi Sunak announces another of his half-baked gimmicks, this time to pay 2/3 of the salaries of employees whose companies are closed by law.  He is foreseeing the closure of pubs and restaurants in Tier 3 areas.  Yes Tier 3 – we now have the concept of tiers to describe the relative impact of Covid-19 in different areas.  And in case we are stuck for sound bites we have ministers talking of a clever traffic lights system which might bear some relation to the tiering and certainly bear no relation to reality.  We, the victims will have little clue as to what we should be doing.

10 October

The delayed Birthday Honours were announced.  Plenty of gongs for the Covid-19 heroes, but still no pay rise for the nurses.

11 October

A Twitter Stalwart called StrongerStabler is documenting his concerns about the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.  One of his kinder allegations:

60 towns of 61 picked by Minister Robert Jenrick for financial support ahead of the 2019 General Election were Conservative marginal seats or targets AND included his own seat!

Mr. Jenrick was on Sophy Ridge and Andrew Marr without considering the consequences for our own household.  For a start our normally totally apolitical cat Spider, at the sight of the Minister attempted to turn him off by jumping on the remote, sending me scrambling for displaced batteries.  Jimmy Savile, Dennis Nielsen, Jeffrey Epstein and worse have filled our TV screen without arousing any interest in our pet.  On a positive note I happened to observe that it was like interviewing a rice pudding.  Luckily this was in my wife’s hearing and reminded her of the need to provide such a dessert later on.

12 October

Ash dieback was in the news this morning.  It seems axiomatic that we should be financing the preservation of this national asset.

A bigger story was the proposal by the richer clubs in football’s Premier League (PL) to rescue the 72 teams of the English Football League (EFL) with an immediate subvention of £250 million and a regular revenue stream thereafter. And you can consider the 3 lower leagues as a national asset.  They talk of the PL as the peak of a pyramid which would collapse without the EFL.  However, there are strings attached.  The strangest is the proposal that 9 of the PL teams would have certain unspecified voting rights which, many suspect would be a precursor to the establishment of a European super league so that Manchester United can play Barcelona on a Saturday rather than slumming it with the likes of Fulham.

As with most proposals coming from the owners of football clubs, there is something smelly about it.  It might be the only issue where I will agree with Oliver Dowden, the Sports Minister, who is looking for an equitable way of keeping the EFL clubs in business.

13 October

Nobody trusts this government and the Prime Minister least of all.  His presentation of our Coronavirus status yesterday was incompetent and deceptive.  Chris Whitty let on that SAGE had advised a full lockdown 3 weeks ago so Johnson is clearly not acting on the best scientific advice.  The Metropolitan Mayors up North are rejecting his plan, including Steve Rotheram of Liverpool, despite Johnson claiming him repeatedly as a supporter.  On Social Media northerners can see a crowded London Palladium and can ask themselves why there is no rule of six or social distancing down South while they are being forced to close pubs and restaurants.

Clearly we are not all in it together and if Johnson wants to convince us otherwise he needs to come up with a set of rules that apply equally to the whole country.  And get Track and Trace out of the hands of clueless bodyshoppers while we still have some old people uninfected.