The Week In Tory Archive (Russ Jones)

This is my archiving of the Twitter Hashtag #theweekintory tweet threads created by @RussInCheshire.

I don’t claim credit for any of this… I’m just saving it in a more convenient format that I can look back on and sob.

I’ve not edited the text, so any spelling, grammar and number errors come from the originals. I have removed any animated gifs though, as I fucking hate them.

For each thread, I’ll link back to the tweet that started it, so you can follow it that way, if you can be arsed. Obviously I can’t which is why this page exists…

The Week in Tory – Posted 17.05.2020

Original thread begins at this tweet.

1 Accidentally made it illegal to drive to Wales

2 Made it easier to see other people’s parents than your own

3 Issued new advice that was officially ignored by Scotland, Wales, NI, and the councils of Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle.

4 Admitted there WOULD be a border down the Irish Sea, after a year claiming there wouldn’t

5 Said its ok for a child-minder to come into contact with your kids, as long as you “open a window”

6 Published advice that you can car-share, as long as the driver “doesn’t look left”

7 Announced £2bn investment, so we could use public transport again

8 Told us it’s our “civic duty” to avoid using public transport

9 Announced the PM would make a speech on Sunday, cos it had to be implemented Monday

10 Then, when challenged, said they meant Wednesday

11 Then said we must go to work

12 Then said we must not travel to work

13 Then said it was all explained in the published guidelines

14 Then had it pointed out to them in parliament that they hadn’t published guidelines

15 Blamed the public for not understanding the new rules

16 Then went on TV to explain the rules, got them wrong, and had to be corrected by Piers Morgan

17 Then went to parliament to explain the rules, STILL got them wrong, and had to be corrected by the opposition

18 Said we should wear facemasks

19 Then said we shouldn’t wear facemasks

20 Then said – again – we should wear facemasks

21 Clapped for NHS workers

22 Then introduced a 55% increase in the fee foreign staff pay to work for the NHS

23 Announced quarantine for new arrivals, a mere 73 days after being officially advised to quarantine new arrivals

24 Announced they had “only just started” recruiting people to do track and trace, a mere 110 days after being officially advised to urgently do track and trace

25 Issued a plan to open schools, which teachers said was unsafe

26 Then said doctors were brave, but teachers weren’t

27 Then had to watch as doctors said the teachers were right, and it wasn’t safe to open schools

28 Then announced tests for kids but not for teachers

29 Then had to have it explained on live TV that infected teachers can still infect kids

30 Scored 0% in a French poll of which govt was doing best for its people

31 Dropped 45 net approval points in UK opinion polling

And there are still 24 hours of this week to go

… back to the top

The Week in Tory (Cummings special) – Posted 27.05.2020

Original thread begins at this tweet.

1. Dominic Cummings, one of the few men to have ever been found in contempt of Parliament, moved onto contempt for everything

2. When the story broke, and he was accused of doing things that look bad, he said he didn’t care how things looked

3. Then ministers said press outrage meant nothing, only the opinion of the people mattered

4. Then polls showed 52% of people wanted Cummings to resign

5. So Cummings decided to show the public some respect, by turning up 30 minutes late to make his explanation

6. He began by saying he wasn’t speaking for the govt, which must be why he was in the Rose Garden of 10 Downing Street

7. Then the self-styled “enemy of the Islington media elite” said his wife, who works in the media, had been ill in their house in Islington

8. But she was only a bit ill, so he popped home, got himself nice and infected, then went back to Downing Street for meetings with lots of vitally important people in the middle of a national crisis

9. But then he got ill too, so then it was suddenly important

10. Sadly he couldn’t get childcare in London, even though 3 immediate relatives live within 3 miles of his London home

11. So because he was carrying a virus that can cross a 2 metre distance and kill, he immediately locked himself in a car with his wife and child for 5 hours

12. He then drove 264 miles without stopping in a Land Rover that gets maybe 25 MPG

13. Then the scourge of the metropolitan elites made himself extra-relatable by describing his family’s sprawling country estate, multiple houses and idyllic woodlands

14. He explained that he’d warned about a coronavirus years ago in his blog

15. Then it was revealed he actually secretly amended old blogs after he’d returned from Durham

16. And anyway, if he’d warned years ago, why was he so massively unprepared and slow to react?

17. Then he said he was too ill to move for a week

18. But in the middle of that week, presumably with “wonky eyes”, he drove his child to hospital

19. Then he said that to test his “wonky eyes” he put his wife and child in a car and drove 30 miles on public roads

20. Then it was revealed his wife drives, so there was no reason for the “eye test”, cos she could have driven them back to London

21. Then it was revealed the “eye test” trip to a local tourist spot took place on his wife’s birthday

22. Then cameras filmed as he threw a cup onto the table, smirked and left

23. And then it emerged his wife had written an article during the time in Dunham, describing their experience of being in lockdown in London, which you’d definitely do if you weren’t hiding anything

24. A govt scientific advisor said “more people will die” as a result of what Cummings had done.

25. Boris Johnson said he “wouldn’t mark Cummings ” down for what he’d done.

26. The Attorney General said it was ok to break the law if you were acting on instinct

27. The Health Minister said it was OK to endanger public health if you meant well

28. Johnson said Cummings’ “story rings true” because his own eyesight was fine before coronavirus, but now he needs glasses

29. But in an interview with The Telegraph 5 years ago, Johnson said he needed glasses cos he was “blind as a bat”

30. Michael Gove went on TV and said it was “wise” to drive 30 miles on public roads with your family in the car to test your eyesight

31. The DVLA tweeted that you should never, ever do this

32. Then ministers started claiming Cummings had to go to Durham because he feared crowds attacking his home. The streets were empty because we were observing the lockdown.

33. And then a minister finally resigned

34. Steve Baker, Richard Littlejohn, Isabel Oakeshott, Tim Montgomerie, Jan Moir, Ian Dale, Julia Hartley Brewer, 30 Tory MPs, half a dozen bishops and the actual Daily Mail said Cummings should go

35. The govt suggested we can ignore them, because they’re all left-wingers

38. And if the guidelines were so clear, why were people being stopped and fined for driving to find childcare in the first place?

39. Then a new poll found people who wanted Cummings sacked had risen from 52% to 57%

40. Cummings is considered the smartest man in the govt

41. And in the middle of all this, in case we take our eye off it: we reached 60,000 deaths. One of the highest per capita death rates worldwide.

42. We still face Brexit under this lot.

43. It’s 4 years until an election

44. And it’s still only Wednesday

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 06.06.2020

Original thread begins at this tweet.

1. The govt reduced the UK-wide coronavirus alert level on the advice of the “Joint Biosecurity Centre”

2. Matt Hancock revealed the “Joint Biosecurity Centre” doesn’t exist yet

3. Boris Johnson said he was “very proud” of the UK’s response

4. After previously telling us facemasks were essential, then not essential, then essential, then not essential, then essential, then not essential (6 U-turn) the govt said facemasks were, actually, essential

5. But not until 15th June. 2 weeks more of them being not-essential

6. And then NHS leaders revealed they hadn’t been consulted on any of this

7. The govt announced dentists were returning to work the following day

8. And then dentists said they also hadn’t been consulted about this, or even warned it was happening

9. The govt announced it was relaxing the lockdown nationally, because it said the R level (infectivity rate) had fallen as low as 0.7

10. Within 2 days the R level had risen back above 1 in much of Northern England, but the govt has not reintroduced local lockdowns

11. The gov justified relaxing the lockdown because we would have a “world-beating Test and Trace” in place by 1st June

12. And then the next day, the head of the Test and Trace programme revealed it would not be operational until Sept

13. The following day it was revealed an “urgent Test and Trace programme” was recommended by experts in February, but not acted upon until May

14. Boris Johnson announced he is personally taking charge of the coronavirus response, a mere 138 days since the first UK case

15. The head of Outbreak Modelling at Imperial College said he was shocked that Covid-19 was still “spilling out of hospitals and care homes”

16. It was revealed advice was given to the govt on 24 Feb that there should be “no discharges to care or residential homes”

17. The Italian Health Minister has reported that Boris Johnson had told him UK govt policy was Herd Immunity

18. The govt and Boris Johnson continue to deny the policy has every been Herd Immunity, even though Boris Johnson went on TV and advocated it

20. The most comprehensive World Health Organisation study to date found the risk of Covid infection doubles if the 2-metre rule is reduced

21. Then Boris Johnson went on TV to say he wants to reduce the 2-metre distancing rule as soon as possible

22. Matt Hancock tweeted that he was proud we reached a 200,000 test capacity

23. The next day he said he was proud of a lower 171,000 tests

24. If you get a nasal, throat and antibody test, that counts as 3 tests, even if it’s 1 person

25. So 171,000 tests = 57000 people

26. At that rate it will take 1,175 days to test the whole UK. That’s 3 years and 3 months.

27. And almost 75,000 tests had to be redone because of problems in UK labs

28. Boris Johnson repeated he was “very proud” of the UK government’s response

29. The govt said it would not open playgrounds, because children from different families meet there

30. The govt said it would reopen schools where – yes – children from different families meet

31. 44% of England’s schools did not trust the govt advice enough to re-open

31. The govt announced people could now meet in socially distanced groups in gardens, but under no circumstances could anybody enter the houses of friends and family

32. The govt said homeless people should “move in with friends and family”

33. Parliament stopped digital voting, leading to a 1.3 km long queue of MPs, right down the road and into a local park, waiting 90 minutes to do one vote.

34. MP’s often vote 8 times per day. Under the new system, this means they will do nothing at all except stand in queues.

35. No provisions had been made for extra security, or to protect those vulnerable to Covid-19.

36. Within 24 hours a cabinet minister was ill and needed to be tested. He said he tested negative.

37. It was later reported around 1/3 of tests produce false-negative results.

38. Only 12% of Britons say Parliament needs to physical voting, and there have been absolutely zero instances of voting irregularities under the digital

39. The House Of Lords continues to vote using the digital system

40. The Minister for Mental Health objected to Pier Morgan’s criticisms, and tweeted “could you please avoid wherever possible calling people ‘completely mad’”

41. And then it was revealed some time earlier, she had called people on Twitter “window-lickers”

42. A Tory MP breached guidelines by going to a barbeque during the lockdown, attended by the deputy chairman of Spectator, the Brexit Party chairman, and journalist Isabel Oakeshott.

43. All three of these defended Dominic Cummings, who is, incidentally, still not sacked

44. The govt criticised Chinese food standards and lack of transparency, which it said first caused, and then exacerbated coronavirus

45. And then the govt voted to lower UK food standards, and refused to publish a report on excess coronavirus deaths

46. In Jan the Environment Secretary said “we will not be importing chlorinated chicken, we will not be importing hormone-treated beef” as part of any future trade deal

47. The govt said it would import chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef as part of a US trade deal

48. In a single day the UK had 359 Covid-19 deaths, which was 45 more than the other 27 EU countries *combined*.

49. Boris Johnson, joint-leader of the Brexit campaign, announced he would start a “charm offensive” to get EU workers to return to the UK

50. Sir Paul Nurse, former President of the Royal Society, described talking to ministers about coronavirus as “like talking to a blancmange”

51. Boris Johnson said for a 4th time he was “very proud” of the UK govt’s response

52. We still have 24 hours of the week to go

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 09.06.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

I’m having a few days off, so here’s an early #TheWeekInTory

Don’t worry. They’ve been busy.

1. The govt said “we will work around the clock to ensure nobody goes hungry as a result of this crisis”

2. Four days later the govt ended free meals for the poorest 1.3m children

3. The govt ruled that teachers must wear face-masks on public transport whilst travelling to school “for safety reasons”

4. The govt then ruled that teachers must NOT wear face-masks in schools

5. Matt Hancock said he was “100% guided by the science”

6. A leading govt scientist said the failure to enter lockdown sooner “has cost a lot of lives”

7. Matt Hancock said that bit of science was wrong

8. The govt said nurses had received a “significant pay rise” in response to Covid-19

9. Nurses have not been awarded a pay rise since 2018

10. The govt said “a protective ring had been thrown around care homes”

11. The head of Outbreak Modelling at Imperial College said Covid-19 is still “spilling out of hospitals and into care homes”

12. The govt said “we have now managed successfully to offer tests to every care home”

13. National Care Forum found 13% of care homes had not been tested, and 43% had tests which were void due to testing infrastructure problems

14. Boris Johnson said the lockdown would “remain until the R rate falls below 0.7”

15. The govt announced “R rate is below 1 in each region of the country”

16. In some UK regions, the R rate was recorded as 0.98

17. Serco was granted the contract to do contact-tracing, despite having been recently fined £1m for multiple failures on a previous govt contract

18. The Health Minister responsible for the contract is a former Serco lobbyist

19. Boris Johnson said “decisions will be taken with the maximum possible transparency”

20. The detailed reasons for Serco’s fine have not been revealed, despite a 6-month freedom of information battle

21. The govt said the testing and contact-tracing system would be “world beating” and ready on1 June

22. It wasn’t, and won’t be ready until Sept

23. The former govt chief scientific advisor said it’s “not fit for purpose” and would miss 80% of contacts with the virus

24. Boris Johnson acknowledged the “incontrovertible, undeniable feeling of injustice” behind #BlackLivesMatters

25. Boris Johnson has previously (sub-thread):

a. Referred to Commonwealth citizens as “picaninnies”

b. Described black people as having “watermelon smiles”

c. Called the people of Papua New Guinea “cannibals”

d. Suggested reinstating the British Empire in former colonies

e. Said “Islamophobia seems a natural reaction”

f. Stated that the UK must accept “Islam is the problem”

g. Referred to Muslim women as looking like “bank robbers” and “letter-boxes”

h. Recited a racist poem in Buddhist temple, and had to be stopped by the British Ambassador

i. Called Africa a “blot” and said “the problem is that we are not in charge any more”

Back to the main thread…

26. Boris Johnson said racism in the UK “cannot be ignored”

27. Two years after the Windrush scandal was revealed, only 60 of the 1,275 victims have yet received compensation

28. Boris Johnson said “I will not support or indulge those who break the law”

29. Dominic Cummings is still in his job. So is Housing Minister Robert Jenrick, who unlawfully approved a £40m property development for a Tory donor.

30. The Attorney General tweeted Cummings breaking the lockdown was not be a crime because he acted on “instinct”

31. The Home Secretary said she “understood the instincts” of #BlackLivesMatter protesters, but they had to face justice

32. The govt said destruction of a slave-trader’s statue by #BlackLivesMatter was “vandalism and completely unacceptable”

33. When Boris Johnson joined the Bullingdon club “the whole culture was to exert vandalism – they had to have their room smashed to pieces”

34. The govt (which promised an “oven-ready” deal on Brexit) said the deal had stalled

35. The govt (which said there were no down-sides to Brexit) agreed with the IMF that No Deal would mean a permanent 5% cut to GDP

36. The CBI said Covid19 left companies with “almost zero” resilience to No Deal

37. It is reported Boris Johnson shouted “Christ!” when told No Deal, on top of Covid, would lead to 3.5 million job losses

39. The govt refused to extend the transition period to avoid No Deal

39. In January, Boris Johnson agreed a Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and called it a “fantastic achievement”

40. Boris Johnson now says the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement he agreed is “defective” and wants to change it

41. Britons receiving German citizenship rose 2,300% last year

42. Boris Johnson said “I want to share all our working, our thinking, my thinking, with you, the British people.”

43. The govt is now facing a legal challenge from doctors and other health workers, because it refuses to order and inquiry into PPE shortages

44. And we still haven’t seen the report into Russian interference with the Brexit campaign

45. Boris Johnson said he is taking “direct control” of the handling of coronavirus (it is not clear who has been in control for the previous 132 days of the outbreak)

46. It was reported Boris Johnson takes naps for as much as 3 hours per working day

47. The UK govt now has the joint-lowest approval rating worldwide for how they have managed coronavirus

48. The govt said in March that a coronavirus death toll of 20,000 would be a “good result”

49. The ONS said excess deaths from coronavirus reached have now officially reached 64,000

50. Boris Johnson’s personal approval ratings have fallen 40% in 40 days

51. Boris Johnson said he was “very proud” of the govt response

52. It’s still only Tuesday

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 17.06.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

An early #TheWeekInTory (Sun to Tues), but things are moving crazy fast

1. Last week the govt said “we will work around the clock to ensure nobody goes hungry as a result of this crisis”

2. Then 4 days later the govt ended free meals for the poorest 1.3m children

3. So Marcus Rashford called for meal vouchers for hungry children during school holidays

4. But Boris Johnson’s spokesman said “the MP understands the issues” and refused to change the policy

5. So Rashford continue to campaign for meals to be provided

6. But Boris Johnson refused to do this as it would cost £115m to feed all those children

7. EasyJet got £600m in April

8. And the govt is spending £900,000 painting the PM’s plane with what cabinet sources called “an Austin Powers-style union jack”

9. Meanwhile, the Housing Minister admitted he knew he was breaking the law when he saved a billionaire Tory donor dodge £50m tax, – half the cost of feeding 1.3m children

10. And then Boris Johnson then said he hadn’t even heard about Rashford’s campaign, and did a u-turn

11. But then a Downing St spokesman said Boris Johnson HAD heard about Marcus Rashford’s campaign

12. And then Boris Johnson said he had DEFINITELY heard about the campaign all along, but didn’t offer any excuse why he still thought it was OK to let kids go hungry

13. In March, student nurses nearing the end of training were asked to forego exams and volunteer to fight Covid19 on the front line

14. This week their contracts were dropped, so from July they have no work, no pay and no qualification

15. And their July wage won’t be paid

16. Last week Boris Johnson said that after and 64,000 excess deaths, he would take “direct control” of Covid19

17. He immediately missed his own deadline for a review of the 2 metre distancing rule, and it was revealed he hasn’t attended a Cobra meeting for over a month

18. In one of last week’s best U-turns, Boris Johnson said immigrant NHS workers wouldn’t need to pay a $400 surcharge to use the NHS

19. This week a study found 95.4% of immigrant NHS workers are still paying the surcharge

20. Horse-racing became the first major sport to return

21. Matt Hancock is MP for Newmarket, and received tens of thousands of pounds of donations from racehorse owners, trainers, and Jockey Club bigwigs

22. The Jockey Club board includes Dido Harding and Rose Paterson

23. Rose Paterson is the wife of Tory MP Owen Paterson. The Jockey Club’s biggest event, the Grand National is sponsored by Randox Health, to which Owen is an advisor. Randox was granted a £133m contract for testing kits without other companies being given the chance to bid

24. And Dido Harding was put in charge of the Covid-19 track and trace app, which most developers (and I am one) reckon could be done in 3 weeks, and has now taken 5 months. Its development cost is the highest worldwide, and described by scientists as “not fit for purpose”

25. Meanwhile campaigners are seeking a judicial review into why a pest control company with no experience of producing PPE and assets of just £19k was granted a £108 million PPE contract. It doesn’t appear, at first glance, that Chris Grayling was involved.

26. Bob Stewart MP, a leading Brexiter, asked in Parliament for his “French Speaking dogs” (!) to continue to have freedom of movement after Brexit, something humans don’t get

27. Michael Gove said he would aim to ensure dogs keep freedom of movement – but replied in French

28. The EU launched a website to help travellers see coronavirus status, so we can travel safely and open up tourism

29. The UK declined to contribute data to the website

30. In the UK, 94% of tourism staff are not currently working, and tourism earnings are down 98%

31. As other nations relax their lockdown, Britons are forbidden from entering multiple European countries due to our high infection rates

32. After 3 weeks without a single Covid19 case, New Zealand reported 2 infections – travellers from the UK, obviously

33. It was revealed Matt Hancock failed for 11 months to respond to a report calling for an immediate injection of cash for social care, highlighting the risks of infections in care homes months before Covid19

34. At least 12,500 people have died of infection in care homes

35. Two of the govt’s most powerful civil servants have said there were no economic preparations for a possible global pandemic in the years leading up to the coronavirus outbreak, despite a 2016 simulation that prompted demands for a plan.

36. On Sunday Matt Hancock said there were “only” 36 recorded deaths, proving we are “winning”

37. Next day there were 233 recorded deaths. Matt has not commented on the winningness of this

38. The UK has 0.9% of global population, and 10% of the confirmed cases of Covid19

39. The govt said local councils would be responsible for “local lockdowns”

40. And then local councils had to explain to the govt that councils have no legal powers for local lockdowns, and even if they had, 26% has been cut from their budgets since 2010

41. Sadiq Khan asked for emergency funding to fill a £493m hole in his budget

42. Ministers anonymously accused him of “typical Labour mismanagement”

43. A group of Tory councils said they are about to go bankrupt

44. Ministers anonymously didn’t say a thing about that

45. An IMF report found a No Deal Brexit is now “a highly likely outcome” and that it will reduce UK GDP by 5% permanently

46. So Boris Johnson made a video celebrating Brexit as an opportunity to sell Penguin Biscuits to Australia. So we can all relax.

47. In response to the urgency and importance of #BlackLivesMatter, the govt immediately pledged to never, ever remove the statue of Churchill that nobody had suggested removing

48. And then, after a few days, Boris Johnson promised a new commission on race equality

49. There are currently over 600 recommendations from previous commissions on race equality between 2010 and 2020, which the govt hasn’t implemented and has no published plans to implement

50. Then the govt appointed Munira Mirza to head the commission. She has previously called anti-racism a “neuroses”, written that “institutional racism is a myth”, “the UK has no problem with racism”, and that race equality “fosters victimhood”.

51. And then the former Tory party chair said the new commission was “designed be a whitewash”, and warned it would “find the answer they want to hear – there is no such thing as racism”

52. It’s Tuesday. Not even late Tuesday.

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 22.06.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

Part 2 of #TheWeekInTory (Wed to Sun)

1. The actual Paymaster General suggested we spend the International Aid budget on a new yacht for the Queen

2. And the actual Foreign Secretary said “taking the knee” was an act of subjugation, and was taken from Game Of Thrones

3. And then actual Health Minister was filmed breaking social distancing rules in Parliament

4. And then the actual Care Minister said student nurses didn’t need financial aid as they volunteered to fight Covid 19 as they “are not deemed to be providing a service”

5. And then the actual Culture Secretary said theatres could reopen if we had musicals in which nobody was allowed to sing

6. Sub-thread of quotes from anonymous Tory MPs and Ministers this week:

a. “If we were in normal times you would be hearing talk by now about removing the prime minister. It is that bad”

b. “Boris may have to go”

c. “It’s all gone for a ball of chalk”

d. Gavin Williamson deserves to be sacked and the No 10 operation is “totally dysfunctional”

e. “There’s a feeling the basic level of competence isn’t there in No 10”

f. “Cummings is the only thing they’ve actually dug in over. Everyone and everything else is expendable”

g. “Boris and Cummings are great at campaigning but rubbish at governing”

h. “[Boris] is not a politician, he’s a brand, and one day he’ll just walk. He’ll just get up one morning and take the brand somewhere else”

i. “Public will conclude [will] that we are a useless shower of incompetents who were asleep at the wheel”

j. The cabinet are “nodding dogs”

k. “No one seriously thinks that this cabinet is the first 11”

l. Boris Johnson’s absence due to illness made “To be honest, not much [difference]”

And now onto App news…

7. In March the WHO recommended all countries launch a Track and Trace app

8. Apple and Google developed one and made it freely available to any country. Dozens of countries use it without any issues

9. But the UK decided to build its own “world beating system”

10. Apple and Google said the UK’s approach was impossible

11. 300 app and technology experts condemned the UK plans

12. But the govt ignored that, put the wife of a Tory MP in charge and gave her £11m, almost 3x the average budget for any Track and Trace app worldwide

13. The UK app planned to collect your data, which could be sold to any private business for 20 years

14. The govt promised the App by mid-April

15. Then the govt promised it by Jun 1

16. Then the govt promised it by Sept

17. Then the govt promised it “for the winter”

18. Then it was revealed the govt had asked Apple for access to their proprietary code, to which Apple said no, because the app breached international privacy laws

19. Then the WHO said lock-down measures should not be relaxed until Track and Trace were in place

20. But the UK govt replied that manual track and trace would work fine

21. And then it was revealed the UK’s manual track and trace service missed between 30% and 80% of contacts

22. After a trial of the App, a report showed it worked just 4% of the time on Apple devices and missed 25% of connections on Android

23. And then, finally, the govt announced it was abandoning its “world beating system”

24. Matt Hancock said he had long been aware of “technical blocks” in the UK app

25. Then Matt Hancock said we had long been working on both Apps, but didn’t explain why we only tested the one he “knew wouldn’t work” on the Isle of White

26. Matt Hancock said he would now create a “hybrid system”, and had spoken to Apple about it

27. Apple and Google said nobody had spoken to them, and it was still impossible

28. It was reported the UK app developers had tried to block rival apps, and called them “the enemy”

29. It was reported the scripts given to manual contract tracers didn’t even match the app

30. MIT Technology Review described the UK’s contact tracing and app development as a “fiasco” and “a masterclass in mismanagement”

32. The Welsh govt released a report saying systemic racism is amongst the reasons BAME people have a higher Covid death-toll

33. The UK govt continues to refuse to release its own report, or implement more than 600 recommendations from previous reports into systemic racism

34. It was reported the govt strategy on BlackLivesMatter is to “declare a war on ‘woke’”

35. It was reported Boris Johnson wanted Chris Grayling on the Intelligence Committee. I’ve checked. There’s only one Chris Grayling, so they must mean him.

36. MPs condemned an “utterly reprehensible” delay in releasing the Russia Electoral Interference Report

37. Dominic Raab said he hadn’t read it, but he knew it exonerated the govt

38. Nobody had formally accused the govt of anything that needed exoneration

39. A report showed 26,000 patients were released from hospital into care homes without testing, leading to at least 16,000 deaths from Covid19

40. The govt defended this by saying it “wasn’t illegal” to negligently spread a pandemic in care homes

41. WHO reported a record 24-hour increase in Covid19 cases

42. German reported the R-level increased from 1 to 1.8

43. The largest ever study found cutting social distancing 1m doubled the rate of infection

44. The UK continues to press for relaxation of social distancing

45. After one of last week’s best u-turns, free school meal vouchers are to be distributed for poor children

46. But they can’t be spent at Aldi, Lidl or Co-Op, the 3 cheapest supermarkets, so they don’t offer good benefits to poorer families

47. In May 2019 the UK declared a “Climate Emergency” and said we must reduce travel and trade closer to home

48. In June 2020 the UK announced it would stop negotiating deals with the country next-door, and trade with Australia and New Zealand instead

49. So Boris Johnson announced a great new trade deal with New Zealand

50. Immediately afterwards the govt issued a statement saying it will have “close to zero” benefit to the UK

51. Michael Gove said border controls Boris Johnson agreed “should not be implemented”

52. It was reported Boris Johnson signed the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement without having read it, or understanding what it meant

53. Boris Johnson said Brexit discussions would go “to the wire” of the December deadline

54. The next day Boris Johnson said there was “No sense” dragging trade talks on beyond the summer

55. Boris Johnson claimed in Parliament that child poverty had fallen and “400,000 fewer families living in poverty now than there were in 2010”

56. In fact there are at least 800,000 more families in poverty, a rise of 38%

57. Boris Johnson’s car was in an actual car-crash in Downing Street. Metaphor.

58. And that’s edited highlights. I genuinely had to remove half a dozen things cos I reached the thread limit.

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 26.06.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

1. Let’s start with the milder corruption: it was revealed Matt Hancock tried to block 400 homes and a primary school near Newmarket racecourse, after receiving at least £65,000 in donations from horseracing bigwigs who opposed the scheme

2. And then Robert Jenrick, the Housing Minister, overruled his dept and planning officers to rush through planning permission that saved Richard Desmond a £45m fee. Desmond is a billionaire pornographer, former-Express owner, and (subsequent to this) a Tory donor
Russ

3. The Tory Manifesto says: “we will offer more homes to local families, enabling councils to use developers’ contributions via the planning process”

4. The lost £45m was the “developers’ contribution”. One of Britain’s most deprived areas lost it. A billionaire kept it.

5. And then, I’m sure coincidentally, Desmond donated £12,000 to the Tory Party the next week. A bargain – only 0.02% of the £45m he saved

6. So this week Jenrick denied he had done anything wrong

7. Unfortunately, he had already admitted his actions were “unlawful” on 29 May

8. And then the business minister said voters could “raise their concerns at Tory fundraisers”

9. So now have to donate to the Tory Party before we can complain about the Tory Party doing illegal things for their donors

10. In Coronavirus news: Boris Johnson announced more relaxations of the lockdown, saying he would “trust the British public to use their common sense”

11. 48 hours later a major incident was declared on the South Coast, as 500,000 people common-sensibly crowded the beaches

12. Boris Johnson said he “would not hesitate” to bring back lockdown if the rules on social distancing weren’t observed

13. 48 hours later, he hasn’t brought back lockdown

14. Then the govt announced councils would have the “power and resources” to enforce local lockdowns

15. But council leaders wrote to the govt to explain that they don’t actually have the legal powers to do this

16. And then 8 out of 10 councils in England have declared they are at risk of bankruptcy, having absorbed cuts of between 26% and 50%

17. Health leaders, including the presidents of Royal Colleges of Physicians, Nurses, GPs and Surgeons wrote to the govt asking for an urgent review of preparations for a second wave

18. The govt declined to do a review

19. And then the WHO warned of global shortage of oxygen and breathing equipment

20. So naturally, the govt opened pubs and cinemas

21. Then, after a month of not telling us the daily test numbers, the govt went a step further and cancelled the daily briefings altogether

22. UK Statistics Authority issued a 2nd official warning about the “trustworthiness” of the govt’s figures

23. Association of Medical Research said 74% of clinical trials had been put on hold in 2020 due to cuts

24. So we spent £900k painting a flag on Boris Johnson’s plane

25. And then it was revealed the govt spent £12m on the “world beating” contact app that didn’t work

26. If you paid the average £50,000 programmer salary, £12m buys 320 programmers

27. The German app code is open-source, and the free repository for it lists 34 programmers

28. The UK has repeatedly declined to use the free German App

29. Boris Johnson claimed in Parliament that “no country in the world has a working contact tracing app”

30. There are working contact tracing apps in: Angola, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh…

… Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Czech Rep, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Latvia, Malaysia, Morocco, N Macedonia, Netherlands, Norway, NZ, Poland …

… Qatar, Russia, S Africa, S Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland and Vietnam. That’s 42 countries.

31. The gov declined to publish its report on food and medicine shortage risks from no-deal Brexit, which surely bodes well.

32. Boris Johnson said Brexit must be delivered, as we have a “democratic duty” to listen to the people

33. A report this week found 9m voters – most thought likely to oppose the Conservatives – will vanish from the electoral roll when new Westminster seats are drawn up

34. When the govt (breaking pre-election promises) merged the Dept for International Development into Foreign Office 2 weeks ago, they said there would be no cuts to overseas aid

35. This week the Treasury asked govt depts to find “a minimum of 30%” cuts, including overseas aid

36. The govt continued to decry the removal of statues connected with slavery, as this might “diminish public knowledge of British history”

37. Govt cuts led to the closure of 773 public libraries, and I suspect many of them contained books about British History

38. The Minister for Arts said the govt was “committed to supporting the Arts Sector in through crisis”

39. Emergency funding for the arts (converted into £)

– France £6.3bn

– Germany £900m

– Canada £295m

– Italy £221m

– NZ £90

– Spain £68m

– Ireland £18m

– UK £0

40. In 2019 the govt committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2050

41. A year on a report found at the current rate, the govt would hit its target by the year 3650, which is 1500 years from now, a mere 1470 years too late

42. This week it reached 38°C in the Arctic

43. The govt said it would “fairly and courageously to maintain law and order” in the light of the #BlackLivesMatter
movement

44. And then the govt announced it wants to abolish trial by jury in order to address a 41,000-case backlog caused by its own cuts

45. It’s Friday. Not even very late Friday. There are 2 more days of this week to go.

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 30.06.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

This episode of #TheWeekInTory is just stuff since Friday

1. Ineptitude alert: due to Brexit the UK is leaving the EU’s Galileo satellite scheme, which is vital for satnav

2. Independent experts said developing our own satellite system would cost around £4bn

3. So instead, the govt announced £500m investment to make existing satellites to do the job

4. But they are too close to earth to be used for GPS positioning, so cannot work

5. A space policy expert said “The fundamental starting point is, we’ve bought the wrong satellites”

6. Democracy news: it was reported “PM wants Brexiteer to head Civil Service”

7. But the Code of Conduct says Civil Servants “must not act in a way that is determined by party political considerations”

8. Then Michael Gove gave a major speech about the need to decentralise govt

9. And the next day the Cabinet Secretary was sacked, so that Dominic Cummings could centralise more power

10. A replacement – David Frost, a Brexiteer – was appointed, and will now be Cabinet Secretary, National Security Advisor and simultaneously lead Brexit negotiations

11. The former Cabinet Secretary Lord O’Donnell said “I’m worried about the appointment” as it was “made without any due process”, and Frost “doesn’t have much background in security”. He said “it shows an erosion of civil service impartiality”

12. Public safety news: 3 years from Grenfell, the National Audit Office found only 14% of dangerous buildings have had their cladding removed

13. The UN warned the UK may breach international law over its failure to remove combustible cladding from high-rise buildings

14. Days after corruption allegations against Robert Jenrick & Matt Hancock, it was revealed developers backed by Johnson as London Mayor donated almost £1m to the Tory Party

15. If you take away some of the letters and add different ones, “donation” is an anagram of “bribe”

16. And now, onto Covid. On 1 June the govt said “we will work around the clock to ensure that nobody goes hungry as a result of this crisis [Covid19]”

17. This week govt data revealed 7.7m adults missed meals, and 3.7 used food banks during the crisis

18. Senior police officers warned govt that lifting the lockdown was “total madness”

19. The next day the govt lifted the lockdown

20. The day after that, a major incident was declared as 500,000 people crowded beaches, and illegal street parties broke out across the country

21. Priti Patel said “I want to make sure our police are absolutely resourced”

22. Since 2010, Tories have cut 21,000 police officers, 23,000 police support workers, and shut 600 police stations

23. Trading Standards, which investigates fraud, also had 70% of its budget cut

24. The Home Secretary said the public “shouldn’t take liberties” with the rules and “the full weight of govt powers” could be called upon to ensure guidelines are followed

25. I’ve looked into this, and Dominic Cummings is still in his job. So, remarkably, is Robert Jenrick

26. Matt Hancock said “a protective ring had been thrown around care homes” by the govt

27. A report this week showed the risk of Covid-related deaths in UK’s care homes is 13-times higher than in German care homes

28. The govt told parliament there are sufficient supplies of PPE

29. The next day govt confirmed that the phrase “200 pieces of PPE equipment” refers to 100 pairs of gloves

30. UK Statistics Authority issued a 2nd official rebuke about the trustworthiness of govt data

31. To address the financial crisis caused by Coronavirus, the PM pledged a £1bn school building programme over 10 years

32. This is 1/7th of the cuts to school budgets since 2010

33. The Blair govt increased school budgets by £12bn in 3 years, which is 40x as much per year

34. A SAGE scientific report said fully reopening schools without substantial improvements in the performance of the test-and-trace system could risk a new surge in cases of Covid-19

35. So the govt announced it would fine parents who didn’t send their children to school

36. Boris Johnson compared himself to Roosevelt and promised a £5bn “New Deal” to boost the economy, and said “this is what the times demand”

37. Roosevelt’s New Deal expenditure was up to 40% of US GDP at the time

38. Johnson’s £5bn is slightly less: about 0.2% of UK GDP

39. PM promised £100m for 29 road projects – around £350k per road

40. The Manchester Airport bypass alone cost £280m

41. And then it was revealed Johnson’s “New Deal” is not new at all, it just brings forward money already promised in previous budgets. So… Old Deal.

42. The govt refused to rule out tax rises to pay for the coming crash

43. Then Boris Johnson explicitly ruled out tax rises for the rich, saying we should “clap for bankers who make the NHS possible”

44. So if the rich aren’t being taxed, that means… oh, it’s you and me again

45. On 24 June, Jeremy Hunt wrote an article in the Telegraph urging the govt to do mass testing of NHS and Care staff to prevent a second wave

46. On 24 June (the same day) Jeremy Hunt (the same Jeremy Hunt) voted in parliament against mass testing of NHS and Care staff

47. The WHO said “a second wave of Covid 19 is a highly likely outcome” and advised all nations to begin preparations for one

48. The govt declined to do a review into preparations for a second wave, even when one was recommended by the Royal Societies of Surgeons, Nurses & GPs

49. BMA reports 1 doctor in 7 is planning to quit after the current crisis subsides

50. Over 22,000 EU-national staff already quit the NHS after the Brexit vote

51. Tories cut £1bn from NHS training budget from 2018 to 2023, so there aren’t enough trainees to replace them

52. And, to end on a cheery note, researchers in China discovered a new type of swine flu capable of triggering a pandemic.

53. So far, there’s no confirmation that Chris Grayling is involved in Chinese pig-farming

54. This is just 4 days. My previous #TheWeekInTory was worse

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 09.07.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

1. Boris Johnson nominated Chris Grayling to chair the Intelligence Committee

2. Yes. Chris Grayling.

3. Matt Hancock said “I’m really pleased that the Domestic Abuse Bill has been passed” 12 hours after he voted against it, so maybe it’s catching

4. A Sage official govt scientific report said test and trace must be improved before schools were re-opened

5. The following day the Education Minister said he would fine parents who didn’t send kids to schools. Test and Trace is still not working.

6. In March, Govt advice said we must “urgently discharge all hospital in-patients who are medically fit to leave”, including elderly patients returning to care homes

7. As a result, 25,000 patients were discharged into care homes without a coronavirus test

8. Which is why, as of June 20, there were 19,394 deaths in care homes

9. Deaths in UK care homes are 13x higher than those in German care homes

10. So – quelle surprise – this week Boris Johnson blamed those deaths on care home workers. Charmer, isn’t he?

11. Boris Johnson attempted to explain this by saying nobody knew about asymptomatic infections

12. But on 11th March (before govt advice about discharging to care homes) Matt Hancock said scientific evidence showed the amount of asymptomatic infection was “very significant”

13. So they knew. And they did it anyway.

14. And now they’ve moved onto pubs

15. Senior police officers warned govt lifting the lockdown was “total madness”

16. The chairman of the Police Federation said “it is crystal clear that drunk people won’t socially distance”

17. The Texas Medical Assoc published a table of the 47 riskiest activities – the most high-risk was “going to a bar”

18. So the govt tweeted “Grab a drink and raise a glass, the pubs are opening” on the day figures showed we had the 3rd highest confirmed death-toll in the world

19. Boris Johnson said “Anyone who flouts Covid rules isn’t just putting us all at risk, but letting down the rest of us”

20. And then Boris Johnson’s father broke the rules to go to his villa in Greece

21. And I’m sure I don’t need to mention Dominic Cummings

22. But it’s OK, Mark Francois mentioned Dominic Cummings for you, warning a giggling General that “Cummings is going to come down and sort you out”

23. That’s the Dominic Cummings who is an unelected bureaucrat, and and ran a Brexit campaign against unelected bureaucrats

24. Brexit also promised an end to red tape, and Boris Johnson insisted “emphatically” that border checks in the Irish Sea would not happen

25. So imagine my surprise when, this week, the details of the additional red tape and Irish Sea border checks were revealed

26. The International Trade Secretary said the plans “risk smuggling, damage to the UK’s international reputation and legal challenge from the WTO”

27. And then she said we aren’t ready for Brexit

28. So the govt let the deadline for extending Brexit slip past. Oh good.

29. Boris Johnson denied No Deal, but said we would have an “Australian-style” deal

30. The EU coughed and said “We do not have a deal with Australia”

31. ONS figures showed No Deal will cut UK economy by 9.3%

32. That’s on top of the predicted 14% slump caused by Covid 19

33. To save money the govt announced it would stop free parking for NHS staff, which annoyed NHS staff and saved almost nothing

34. Hours later the govt unannounced that particular idea, and denied it had ever said it. Reassuringly competent, isn’t it?

35. More competence: the govt announced a new policy of sanctions against regimes engaged in Human Rights violations

36. Literally the following day, the govt announced it would resume arms sales to Saudi Arabia despite acknowledging Saudi war crimes in the Yemen

37. But at least they’re on the ball about PPE we need to, yknow, stay alive

38. Except the govt is facing a string of legal challenges about why it awarded multimillion-pound PPE contracts to, let’s say, strange choices, which I list below:

39. A £108m contract awarded to a sweet wholesaler with no experience of PPE and total assets of £18000 (about the price of a mid-range Kia Stonic)

40. An £18m contract for PPE awarded to an employment agency with total assets of £332. Not a typo. A company worth £332 got £18m

41. A £24m contract for PPE awarded (and paid upfront!) to a pest-control company with no experience of PPE

42. A £250m contract to a “a London-based family office” involved in “offshore property” and “currency trading”, and which shares an advisor with Tory Minister Liz Truss

43. And in every case: no bidding process

44. And finally, having come into office promising 50,000 new nurses, this week it was revealed nursing recruitment is down 5%. There are already more than 40,000 UK vacancies for nurses, and WHO is warning Covid has “only just started”

45. Don’t be too downhearted. It’s only Thursday. They could turn it all around in the next 24 hours. You wait and see, it’ll be amazing.

Use #TheWeekInTory to find previous reassuring installments

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 15.07.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

1. The govt relaxed the rules on eating in restaurants, as long as the restaurants followed the guidelines

2. To promote this, the Chancellor posed for a photo-op serving customers in Wagamama, whilst breaking the guidelines

3. Having told us, since 3 Feb, that masks were: useful, not useful, recommended, not recommended, essential for health workers, not essential for teachers, useful in “small spaces” but not on buses, and then on buses but not in shops, the govt had its most spasmodic week to date

4. (Coincidentally, it was revealed the govt awarded, without tender, a £3m “coronavirus communications operation” contract to 2 right-wing campaigners, which seems quite a lot for the, ahem, operation described above)

5. This week the gov said masks worked in SE Asia because there is a “culture of wearing them”, but “we in Britain don’t need to wear them”

6. A virus is an inert, non-living, sub-microscopic entity, so it’s a stretch to expect it to adhere to our cultural norms

7. Michael Gove said masks wouldn’t be mandatory in shops, and Britain could rely on “common sense” and “basic good manners”

8. The next day Michael Gove was photographed displaying “common sense” and “basic good manners” by not wearing a mask in 2 separate shops

9. Inevitably, Boris Johnson said masks would be mandatory in shops, a mere 163 days since his govt was first recommended to make them mandatory in shops

10. But they weren’t mandatory for 12 more days

11. 77 people died yesterday. At that rate, another 12 days is 924 deaths

12. And Matt Hancock ruled out masks in offices, which are some of the the enclosed spaces we’ve needed to wear masks in since 11 May

13. The govt promised local Covid tests would be completed with 24hrs by 1st of July

14. A report found just 5% were completed within 24hrs

15. And then the PM dodged a question on whether he’d even read last week’s report on preparations needed for a second wave of coronavirus that could kill 120,000 people.

16. But he gained a nice tan over the weekend, so he’s clearly focussing on the important stuff

17. And the Health Minister, also on his A-game, didn’t know about the 2017 report on our poor pandemic preparedness (spoiler!) til he saw it the Guardian in May 2020

18. Meanwhile the UK opted out of the €2bn programme to have advanced purchase of a vaccine, cos it’s European

19. Which brings us to Brexit, and the govt bought a huge plot in Ashford, Kent, to act as a customs clearance centre

20. This customs clearance centre is to handle all the friction caused by the “frictionless trade” Boris Johnson could “absolutely assure you of” in 2016

21. David Davis, who negotiated the Withdrawal Agreement and then voted for the WA was surprised at the contents of the WA and wants it renegotiated

22. Not to be confused with Dominic Raab, his successor in the role, who actually resigned in protest at his own actions

30. This entirely avoidable £15bn cost was announced in the same week a report showed the number of British children admitted to hospital with malnutrition doubled in the last 6 months. So it’s possible we could spend that £15bn a bit better

31. The govt stopped describing No Deal Brexit as “No Deal Brexit”, and rebranded it “leaving on Australian terms”

32. Ireland, which is still in the EU and still broadly sane, reminded the UK that the EU doesn’t actually have a deal with Australia, so… yeah.

33. And the OBR said the cost of No Deal would be 9% of GDP. Permanently.

34. Liz Truss said it was OK, we could sell lamb to New Zealand

35. The Farmer’s Union said NZ lamb is half the price of UK lamb, so NZ wouldn’t buy it, and 95% of UK sheep farms would fail

36. Other fun food news: with No Deal, beef will cost 48% more, cheddar 57% more, oranges 12% more, and rice 16% more

37. So the gov handed out £10 vouchers to get people to eat in restaurants (at the same time as ending the free school meals programme for 1.6 million children

38. Restaurants warned their prices would rise 30% under No Deal, so spend those vouchers quick, folks. Ideally on a starving child.

39. And then the Govt spent a further £93m to tell you to prepare for a Brexit they assured us would be cost-free and painless

40. More from the party of fiscal responsibility: the cost of rolling out Universal Credit rose another £1.4bn

41. And the IFS said the much-vaunted jobs retention scheme was “badly timed and poorly targeted”, with most of the £9.4bn being spent on jobs that are already safe

42. But some money is going where it was wanted: without being put out to contract, a £840,000 contract to 2 friends of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings

43. And £25m for “biological and chemical protection garments” to a company with no employees, no assets, and no turnover

44. But it’s fine, cos there probably won’t be any care workers to protect, since Priti Patel excluded them from her new immigration system

45. She also blamed the Covid outbreak in Leicester on “cultural sensitivities” preventing local govt from checking min wage enforcement

46. Min wage enforcement is the job of central govt, which you’d hope somebody in govt would know

47. But she also didn’t know the correct assessment for people entering the country with Covid19, which you’d think was kinda her thing, after a 10 years of obsession with borders

48. Mind you: details can be tricky. The PM told Parliament our Test and Trace programme is “as good as or better than” any other system in the world

49. 2 hours later, Downing Street had to admit what we all know: it really isn’t. Not even close.

50. But finally, some good news: Chris Grayling officially failed his intelligence test. Always leave them laughing Chris, but most of all: always leave.

51. It’s only Wednesday. How much more #TheWeekInTory is ahead of us?

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 21.07.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

#TheWeekInTory is a misnomer: this just covers the last 5 days

1. Matt Hancock told Parliament lockdown started on 16th March, the day SAGE told them to, so all those unnecessary deaths didn’t happen

2. But lockdown started on 24th March, and all those unnecessary deaths did

3. The govt announced a “New Deal” for infrastructure, with £600bn of new money

4. Turns out, only 0.8% of that is new money

5. The £34bn “new money” for the NHS was actually announced in 2018

6. The govt then announced £3bn of additional funding for a possible second wave

7. That’s less than half the £8bn NHS England said it needed just to stand still, which hasn’t happened

8. Matt Hancock said wearing a mask is mandatory

9. Downing St said wearing a mask ISN’T mandatory

10. So Gavin Williamson cleared it all up by saying they’re both right ????

11. England’s Chief Nurse confirmed she was dropped from briefings cos she refused to back Dominic Cummings

12. A poll found public trust in UK gov ability to manage the pandemic is lowest worldwide, and I nearly fainted

13. The govt cut the budget to end FGM by 84%

14. A Tory MP texted his intern to ask for “no strings” fun “pweeease”.

15. She replied that she was having a “bad mental health day”

16. He said maybe if she thought of “fun times” with him, she’d feel better. Nice.

17. Brexit: and now we’re back in control, it was confirmed the govt cancelled the Huawei 5G project because Donald Trump told them to

18. The Institute for Govt found 61% of businesses have made no preparations at all and that “Britain is fatally ill-prepared” for Brexit

19. The business secretary said “Seamless trade is vital for our economy, boosting business, supporting jobs, and ensuring consumers get the best deal”

20. He was talking about England and Scotland. He still thinks abandoning seamless trade with the EU is a great idea

21. The govt used its majority to vote against protecting the NHS from being sold

22. The govt used its majority to vote against protection of agriculture and food standards

23. The govt used its majority to vote against parliament having oversight of any trade deals

24. And now corruption news, and we’ll start small: Robert Jenrick, who you might remember from previous episodes, was in charge of £25m regeneration scheme

25. 60 of the 61 constituencies helped were Tory seats with small majorities, or Tory targets at the general election

26. Only 2 towns had Tory majorities over 10,000. One was Jenrick’s own seat

27. It was reported the Irish tracing app cost £773,000 and works

28. The contract for managing our “world beating” app was given to the wife of a Tory MP, cost £13m in 4 months, it didn’t work

29. Even if you paid £50,000 to each programmer for 4 months work, £13m buys 260 programmers

30. The successful app used by Germany – which is open source – lists 17 programmers

31. Did we hire 260 programmers? If so, why? If not, where is the rest of the money?

32. Also, the govt admitted its “world beating app” broke the law

33. A leaked govt report found our “world beating” trace system is failing

34. Serco traced 59,000 contacts in 6 weeks, which is less than 1 contact per tracer per fortnight. They got £10bn for that

35. But the govt claimed it was a success because it managed to find an outbreak in its own call centre

36. Russia report news: The govt attempted to suborn parliament by fixing the appointment of Chris Grayling to chair the Intelligence Sub-Committee (ISC)

37. It failed, so suspended the MP who did get the job

38. The ISC said the reasons given by the govt for delaying the report were “simply not true”

39. As the ISC released the report, the govt announced a pay rise for 900,000 workers. Were you distracted? Me neither

40. The report confirmed Russian interference in the Scottish Independence referendum

41. The report “reveals that no one in government knew if Russia interfered in or sought to influence the [Brexit] referendum, because they did not want to know”

42. The ISC demanded an inquiry into Russian interference in Brexit

43. The govt immediately said no

44. I’m sure this is a coincidence, but this week it was reported the largest political donor in British history is a Russian Socialite who has paid £1.7m to the Tory party

45. She paid £160,000 for game of tennis with Boris Johnson

46. She paid £30,000 for dinner with Gavin Williamson. I know, it’s baffling

47. The company she runs has assets of £23,000 and liabilities of £8.4m, so it’s a mystery where all that donated money is coming from.

48. And finally: it was reported that the UK doesn’t even have enough palettes to transport goods after we leave the EU, cos we’ve been relying on theirs until now, and have neither the wood nor the treatment facilities required to build enough of our own.

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 29.07.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

1. The govt launched a “Fix your bike” voucher website

2. It broke in less than an hour

3. The govt said we should all lose weight

4. The govt is still issuing vouchers to help us buy burgers

5. It was revealed the govt spent £400m buying a bankrupt satellite company, OneWeb, to replace the Euro GPS system we lose due to Brexit

6. Months before, a study by MIT found that OneWeb’s tech is 6x less efficient than the EU solution: the worst of the technologies studied

7. In June the govt merged the Dept for International Development into the Foreign Office, and said the move “guaranteed there would be no cuts in International Aid”

8. This week the gov cut International Aid by £2.9bn

9. And the govt quietly granted permission for your health records to be given to Palantir, a controversial data-mining company said to have worked with Cambridge Analytica on Brexit

10. It did both these things the day parliament broke up, so there couldn’t be any questions

11. But in answer to questions about the Russia Report, the gov’s suggested solution is to (I’m not making this up) to ask Russia to tell us who their spies are

12. Ex-Russian intelligence staff say 85% of their work is not spying, but “political funding and misinformation”

13. Which brings us to: Funding and Misinformation news

14. Since 2012, the Tory party has had almost £3m in donations from members of Putin’s cabinets

15. 14 current govt ministers have received donations from individuals or companies connected to the Russian leadership

16. Priti Patel said the Russia Report could be ignored because it was now 9 months old and “out of date”

17. The govt delayed the release of the report for 9 months, and the reasons given were described as “simply not true” (aka “misinformation”) by the Intelligence Committee

18. Now Covid news, and Matt Hancock boasted he had met the targets on his “Six tests” on Covid 19

19. Full Fact found 4 of the 6 targets were missed, one target couldn’t be met because it had never been defined, and 1 “relied on a definition [that] does not reflect practice”

20. The cross-party Media & Culture Committee found that the gov’s support for arts was “vague and slow-coming” and “jeopardised UK culture”

21. The cross-party Public Accounts Committee found there was an “astonishing failure to plan for the economic impact” of Covid 19

22. It also said the policy of discharging patients into care homes was a “reckless and appalling policy error”

23. It called the govt “slow, inconsistent [and] negligent”

24. The chair of the Committee said “A competent government does not run a country on the hoof”

25. More on-the-hoof news: the gov quarantined tourists returning from Spain because Spain was a danger

26. The day before, Spain had 2 Covid deaths. Britain had 114

27. The transport secretary was on holiday in Spain, so was effectively trapped by his own dept’s decision

28. Which brings us to Brexit, and a report from London School of Economics showed a WTO Brexit will permanently shrink 16 out of the UK’s 24 industry sectors by up to 15% each. Permanently.

29. A Tory MP tweeted “(thumbs up emoji) WTO here we come!”

30. Another pro-Brexit Tory MP with a grasp of what’s to come tweeted “my strong advice is: take the opportunity to live abroad”

31. Dominic Cummings tweeted that leaving the EU “could be an error”

32. And now PPE contracts, so prepare to begin eternal screaming:

33. £252m to Ayanda Capital, registered in Mauritius for tax purposes. PPE not delivered

34. £186m to Uniserve. PPE not delivered

35. £116m to P14 Medical Supplies, with assets of just £145. PPE not delivered

36. £108m to PestFix, with just 16 employees. PPE not delivered

37. £107m to Clandeboye Agencies, a sweet wholesaler. Yes, a sweet wholesaler. PPE not delivered.

38. £40m to Medicine Box Ltd, with assets of just £6000. PPE not delivered.

39. £48m to Initia Ventures Ltd, which registered itself as “dormant” in March. PPE not delivered.

40. £28m to Monarch Acoustics, which makes shop furniture. PPE not delivered

41. £25m to Luxe Lifestyle, which has no employees, no assets, and no turnover. PPE not delivered

42. £18m to Aventis Solutions, which has total assets of £332. Not a typo, £332. PPE not delivered

43. £10m to Medco Solutions, incorporated just 3 days after lockdown, with share capital of (not a typo) £2. PPE not delivered

44. In all, approx £1bn to inexplicable suppliers for PPE that hasn’t been delivered

45. The gov still polls well for economic competence. Go figure

46. Meanwhile a Nuffield Health study found after 10 years of “chronic underinvestment”, UK is at the bottom of the league table for health resources; and diagnostics and surgery by the NHS will take 4 years to return to pre-Covid levels. But £1bn for non-existent PPE

47. The gov’s “world beating” test-and-trace programme was described as “scandalous” by the British Medical Journal, and found to miss its 80% target in every Covid hotspot announced this week

48. And finally, Boris Johnson refused a public enquiry into gov handling of Covid 19

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 05.08.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

#TheWeekInTory is a monster today because they’ve been, well, even busier than usual, the scamps

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

37. The govt said it would not isolate over-50s

38. The govt said you can’t meet other families in your home

39. The govt said you can meet other families in pubs

40. The govt said pubs might have to close so we can open schools

41. The govt said pubs would be spared Covid-19 restrictions

42. The govt said it would be “as good as over by Christmas”

43. The govt said we should “not delude ourselves this will go aware in a few months”

44. The govt said it was abandoning its pledge to conduct regular testing in care homes

45. The govt said it wasn’t abandoning its pledge to conduct regular testing in care home and oh god, kill me

46. The PR firm responsible for creating a false Labour manifesto website and a renaming the Tory twitter page “factcheckUK” then tweeting falsehoods was granted a £3m Covid-19 communications contract. There was no tender process

47. A report found only 45% of adults have even a “broad understanding” of the lockdown rules, which is hardly surprising when the PR firm’s major experience is false news

48. Only 26% of emergency funds for small charities had been allocated, and even less actually paid

49. After introducing quarantines on returning tourists, Dominic Raab said “you cannot be penalised in this country lawfully for following the rules”

50. It was later admitted that employers can penalise employees who quarantine, but the govt hadn’t known this. The actual govt

51. It was revealed UK negotiators “only engaged with Brexit issues [the single most important political business since WW2] in the last 2 weeks”

52. The PM’s father said Johnson was “living in cloud cuckoo land” about getting a free trade deal without meeting EU standards

53. The OECD showed the number of UK citizens emigrating to the EU has risen 30% since the Brexit vote

54. The report concluded “These increases in numbers are of a magnitude that you would only expect when a country is hit by a major economic or political crisis”

55. Polling shows a drop in Tory support by expats, and pinpointed “the implications of a hard Brexit” as the primary reason

56. Random Tory MP news: a Tory MP said the “vast majority” of people breaching lockdown rules were from minority, and specifically Muslim, backgrounds

57. But a study found 80% of infections in locked-down areas were in the white British community and said this should be “a warning to the complacent white middle class”

58. In 2019 the govt promised a “transparent and independent appointment strategy” for top Whitehall jobs. This year, 44% of those appointed to top Whitehall jobs are close personal friends of Michael Gove, which might just be one of those absolutely incredible coincidence things

59. More Gove: the NI politician John Hume died, and Gove praised his “integrity and wisdom” in helping to create the Good Friday Agreement

60. Gove wrote a 58-page pamphlet opposing the Good Friday Agreement and said those involved in the GFA were akin to “appeasing the Nazis”

61. A Tory MP was arrested for alleged rape, and not only did the party not suspend him, it was revealed the chief whip and Jacob Rees-Mogg both knew about it for at least a month and did nothing

62. The effortlessly brilliant Liam Fox appears to be a major cause of Russian hacking of British politics, after it was found he was highly likely to have used unsecured personal email for classified govt business, and got 451 pages of it nicked

63. Jeremy Hunt, who is worth £14m, and once explained bogus expenses claims by saying he forgot about 7 houses he owned (and which of can honestly say we haven’t forgotten about 7 houses we own) boasted of using £50 of taxpayer’s money to buy fish and chips

64. The govt announced it would employ an official PM’s spokesperson at a cost of £100,000, even though Whitehall rules about civil servants explicitly forbid it, and the rules explicitly say the PM must answer questions personally

65. Boris Johnson said of Black Lives Matter, “I hear you, and I understand”

66. And then this week the govt refused to even begin a review into possibly introducing more black, Asian, and ethnic minority history in schools

67. It’s Wednesday. Two more days to go, and then we begin another #TheWeekInTory for me to catalogue, assuming I don’t shove my head through a bacon-slicing machine first

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 13.08.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

1. The govt said they had to “balance the nation’s health with our economy”, and in that respect, they have succeeded: both are evenly balanced as the worst in the G7

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.

21. Education news, and in the beginning, the govt opposed adjusting A-level grades

22. Then top fireplace salesman and irony no-fly-zone Gavin Williamson said “The danger is that pupils will be over-promoted into jobs that are beyond their competence”

23. And then the govt introduced a “moderating” algorithm to adjust grades

24. Then the Tories told the Scottish govt to abandon its own adjusted grades

25. And when the Scottish govt did Tories had asked, the Tories said it was a disgrace and they should resign

26. Then multiple Tories called for Gavin Williamson to do exactly the same thing

27. The Assoc of Headteachers said the govt’s handling of this is “a rolling disaster”

28. Things are moving fast. But not as fast as the contents Gavin Williamson’s small intestine

29. The govt’s algorithm awarded twice as many grade increases to pupils from private schools as it did to state schools.

30. And an Education Policy Institute report found wealthy pupils get 1/3 more funds from the “levelling up” budget as poor pupils get

31. Scrupulous honesty news: property developers gave the Tories £11m in the last year, and then, miraculously, the Tories relaxed rules on planning permission

32. Amongst the regulations they tried to scrap was the one requiring dwellings to have at least 1 window

33. Robert Jenrick said “you can trust me on housing”, 3 weeks after he admitted wrongdoing in helping a Tory donor avoid £45m tax

34. To be fair, he then denied admitting wrongdoing, even though he had admitted it on camera, and that’s always the mark of a man you can trust

35. The Royal Institute of British Architects said the reforms were “shameful” and would “lead to a generation of slum housing”

36. Housing charity Shelter said the reforms “will mean the end of affordable housing” and force more than 1m people onto housing waiting lists

37. But Priti Patel said Syrian refugees were the real cause of our national housing crisis

38. She asserted that people claiming asylum in the UK was illegal, which it absolutely is not, under any circumstances, ever

39. Then she appointed an excitingly-titled “Clandestine Channel Threat Commander” tasked with, amongst other impossible things, pushing migrant boats back out to sea, in direct contravention of international law and British Navy regulations

40. A leak from inside the MoD said Patel’s plans were “completely potty”, “inappropriate, impractical and unnecessary” and had “more holes than a slice of Swiss cheese”. I’ll put them down as a ‘maybe’

41. Priti Patel then had an argument about this with some ice-cream

42. James Cleverley, a hugely successful one-man campaign against nominative determinism, joined in, but confused “virtue signalling” with “obeying the law”

43. Tory MP Sir Edward Leigh had a solution: “We should never have lost Calais in 1558. Why not take it back?”

44. Then Sir Edward, a vocal, life-long Brexit fan, said we should pay the EU to manage migration for us, but it has been very warm, and he does look like a man who has been in the sun far too long

45. Speaking of Brexit, it was revealed Tate and Lyle, Tory donors and No Deal cheerleaders, will gain £73m if we get No Deal, because they can import more of the very unhealthy sugar they supply

46. So obviously, the govt started a TV campaign telling us to stop being fat

47. The govt condemned the Russian state, which said it had a vaccine that hasn’t been approved by regulators

48. And then it was revealed UK’s much-vaunted 90-minute rapid Covid test has not been approved by regulators

49. The govt said children would be safe if we re-opened schools

50. And then Boris Johnson said he would “bulldoze schools” in which there were Covid outbreaks, which seems a smidge excessive if Covid can’t spread in schools

51. The govt said there was no evidence any children had caught Covid in school. Schools are closed, so it would be difficult right now, but let’s not try to apply logic any more

52. An international study found pupils over 12 are just as susceptible to Covid-19 as any adult

53. Scientists called for routine testing of teachers and pupils

54. The Schools Minister said no because, I’m sorry, I have no idea why the Schools Minister said no, and neither does he. People asked. He didn’t have an answer.

55. And then Immigration minister Chris Philp asked if he could re-record a live interview, after he forgot what country he was from

I’m sure it’ll be fine.

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 18.08.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

It’s Tuesday, #TheWeekInTory is already 80 points long, and I’m very sorry you have to read it.

And even more sorry I had to write the bloody thing.

Anyway, here goes.

1. The govt announced quarantine for people returning from France

2. It waited until everyone had made travel plans, then brought the policy forwards 24 hours

3. And then an MP using the name “Grant Shapps” helpfully told everybody the wrong date for the start of quarantine

4. Irony’s own Bermuda Triangle, Priti Patel, said migrants were only coming here because the French are all racist and Germans torture people

5. Days after MoD said Patel’s plans for channel protection were “completely potty”, the Navy refused to send warships into the Channel

6. And the UN said her ideas were “very troubling” and would cause “fatal incidents”

7. The govt proceeded with plans to end the furlough scheme, after think-tanks predicted would cost 2 million jobs

8. Universal Credit requires £11bn extra investment to make it cope with current levels of claims, and here come another £2m

9. So naturally, the govt made applications for Universal Credit “online only”, after removing 4000 computers from libraries and job centres since 2015

10. The govt claimed 90% of homeless people were helped off the streets, but data actually showed rough-sleeping rose sharply

11. So govt will scrap the ban on evictions in 5 days’ time, predicted to cause 220,000 extra people in England to become homeless just as winter starts

12. The National Residential Landlords Association said the ban on evictions was “an unnecessary hindrance to our members”

13. 28% of Tory MPs are landlords, and I’m going to mark that down as “an incredible coincidence” and ask no further questions

14. News of unnecessary hindrances brings me to top fireplace salesman Gavin Williamson. He started the week modestly, with a cheery pledge to starve 175,000 children of immigrants, by stopping their free meals while their families cannot legally work or claim benefits

15. All the way back in the mists of time (in May) the govt instructed Ofqual to tell teachers to spend hours per-pupil creating estimated grades, which were reviewed and approved by headteachers

16. But then toothsome mantis Gavin Williamson decided teachers know less than quickly-written and badly-tested software does, and commissioned an algorithm to invent grades for this year’s students, based largely on totally different students from different years

17. The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) offered to help assess the outcome of the algorithm after staff at Dept for Education raised concerns. But the govt put barriers in the way which would prevent the RSS from operating properly for 5 years. So they couldn’t help.

18. Gavin Williamson is on record instructing Ofqual to design a system that could not allow grade inflation

19. But this week, in a wildly unpredictable turn of events, he blamed Ofqual for – brace yourself – designing a system that did not allow grade inflation

20. But private schools did get grade inflation, an average 8x the increase state schools got

21. On average, 40% of state schools results were downgraded, and in Northern England it was as high as 84%

22. In some subjects, 98.9% of results from private schools were inflated

23. The Times reports the govt still plans to use the algorithm for GCSE’s, but will not downgrade any results, only upgrade them: which only benefits private schools

24. And then a maelstrom of policy changes began: first, students were barred from appealing against results

25. Then they were permitted to appeal results, at a cost of £113 per exam

26. Then it was announced schools would pay the fees, even though schools are not only closed, but broke, having had £7bn cut from their budget by Tories

27. And then it was announced the appeals would be free, even though Ofqual has no facilities to handle that number of appeals

28. And then they cancelled the appeals program completely

29. All that appeals stuff happened in just 48 hours

30. When Scotland used the algorithm, it led to a crisis and had to be abandoned, and Tories called for the Scottish Education Minister to resign

31. Regardless, the UK govt implemented the algorithm that had just been proven to fail, and seemed surprised when it failed

32. The Minister of Innovation said A-Levels don’t matter as much as “grit and determination”, and his failure at Harrow “taught me how to hustle”. He is the 5th Lord Bethan, and “hustled” his way to a hereditary peerage as a result of his Dad dying. Good hustling, dude!

33. Gavin Williamson said there would be “No U-turn, no change”, which I think he got from a sign outside a toll-booth on the M6

34. Boris Johnson said, “be in no doubt about it, the exam results that we’ve got today are robust, they’re good, they’re dependable for employers”

35. The Daily Mail – yes, even them – reported the govt only changed its mind after the headmaster of Eton – yes, even them – complained about the unfairness

36. The UK Equalities Watchdog warned it would intervene because the algorithm results were discriminatory

37. Gavin Williamson claimed he only spotted the flaws “at the weekend”, but hours later it was revealed the Commons Education Dept warned him of all these flaws and dangers, in person, and then in a report sent to him on 10th July

38. On the steps of Downing St the day he became PM, Johnson said “My job is to make sure your kids get a superb education, wherever you are from. I will take personal responsibility. The buck stops here”.

39. Boris Johnson is busy “glamping”, so in his absence it was decided the buck stops at the head of Ofqual, who simply followed ministerial instructions; and at Gavin Williamson’s permanent secretary, who was unceremoniously sacked for doing what his boss told him

40. Meanwhile, Williamson felt the best use of his time was to pose for a photo with little on his desk but a cup, a seemingly empty file, and a whip (for reasons that bewilder, but are in keeping with his apparent background as a mildly disturbing minor Addams Family character)

41. Winston Churchill’s grandson, a Tory MP, said of Gavin Williamson “what could have been in the Prime Minister’s mind that led him to appoint so mere, so unreliable, so wholly unsuitable a man to one of the most important jobs in Government”

42. A Tory MP said “It was as clear as day that there would be an issue, given what happened in Scotland, yet they fucked around”

43. A poetic Tory MP said the govt was “wanking into the void”, and if that’s not the name of a band by midnight, what’s the point of anything?

44. There are now calls for Ofqual to be abolished and replaced with something that will probably be worse, but as yet no news on which unqualified but vaguely aristocratic Tory MP’s wife will run it. I’ll keep you posted.

45. Meanwhile, Gavin Williamson had promised to provide laptops to disadvantaged students during the lockdown, but only half the required laptops were delivered, and 27 Academy Trusts got just 1 laptop each, to be shared between over 2000 students

46. After the stunning success of this bit of Artificial Intelligence, the govt announced plans to boost Whitehall AI spending by £200m. The money will go to Faculty AI, which has links to [checks notes] a Mr Dominic Cummings, resident of Whitehall and Specsavers in Durham

47. Rumours that the govt has an algorithm that turns every minister into Chris Grayling are unfounded

48. Chris Grayling – I mean, Gavin Williamson – now has to persuade parents that he’s competent enough to make schools safe for their kids to return. Good luck with that, Gav.

49. The govt had 5 months to plan and execute one exam policy affecting 335,000 students

50. The govt now has 4 months to plan and execute over 2000 Brexit policies affecting 67 million of us, and every business in the country. Brace, brace.

51. On the subject of Brexit, this week Boris Johnson said there would only be a customs border in the Irish Sea “over my dead body”.

52. The same Boris Johnson signed the Withdrawal Agreement that creates a customs border in the Irish sea

53. Trade Secretary and part-time punchline Liz Truss promised “I will consign these unfair tariffs to the bin of history” when she makes her stern demands in a trade deal between USA (world’s biggest economy) and UK (2% of global trade). I bet the USA is shitting itself.

54. Meanwhile, after Liz Truss sang the praises of a potential deal with NZ (value: 4% of the trade we will lose with a No Deal Brexit) the NZ deputy PM said “Britain is not match fit for trade talks” and was “beset with inertia”

55. Boris Johnson promised “lower costs and a bonfire of red tape” as a result of Brexit

56. So imagine my shock when this week the govt pledge £355m to help companies in NI deal with “a new wave of red tape”

57. The govt scrapped Public Health England in the middle of a pandemic. Cos that’s what we need. Not testing. Just a new sign over a door.
.

58. It then appointed Dido Harding to the replacement organisation, even though the replacement organisation didn’t exist at the time

59. Some notes on Dido Harding, in case you’re unfamiliar with her impressive record of failing upwards

60. The Evening Standard – a Tory-supporting paper – wrote of her “Dido Harding’s utter ignorance is a lesson to us all”

61. She ran the programme that spent 15x the worldwide average building a tracing app that she was told wouldn’t work, unsurprisingly didn’t work work, and which it then scrapped without publishing accounts of where that £13m went

62. She runs Test and Trace, described as “not fit for purpose, let alone world-beating” by the chair of NHS Providers

63. Her £100m Test and Trace programme traced only 56% of cases, compared with Blackburn council, who traced 98% without a penny of new funding

64. She is a Tory peer, married to a Tory MP, who is adviser to a group that campaigns for the defunding, break-up and sale of the NHS; and if you wanted that, putting somebody famous for “utter ignorance” in charge would be a good first step

65. She’s on the board of The Jockey Club, which is based in Matt Hancock’s constituency and gave tens of thousands in donations to Matt Hancock, and then coincidentally got dispensation to stay open for 180,000 unwitting fans when the Covid 19 outbreak began

66. A major Jockey Club sponsor is Randox, to whom her husband is an adviser, and which coincidentally got a £133m contract to produce testing kits without any other providers being allowed to bid for the work

67. Her husband – get this – is a “Govt Anti-Corruption Champion”

68. More govt anti-corruption, and Serco got a £108m contract, just months after it was fined £2.6m for buggering up a previous contract. The minister awarding the contract? A former Serco lobbyist. Chief exec of Serco? A Tory MP.

69. Meanwhile, Medical Examiners have been instructed not to make public the results of investigations into hundreds of deaths of NHS workers who didn’t have PPE

70. The value of utterly useless PPE rose from a mere £50m last week to £300m this week

71. And who got the contracts for useless PPE? A company part-owned by a friend and advisor to Liz Trust. Did I say Trust? I meant Truss. Definitely not Trust.

72. Meanwhile, Sajid Javid, employed full-time as an MP, also took a job at banking giant JP Morgan; cos if the last 10 years has taught us anything, it’s that there’s no danger in MPs or bankers not fully concentrating on what they’re doing

73. The Royal Society issued a report saying relaxing the lockdown early would “inflate deaths and deepen recession”

74. So obviously, the govt relaxed the lockdown in Leicester

75. The Chief Exec of the care home charity CIC said the care sector was “being left to prepare for a second wave alone” as it has received no advice or assistance from govt

76. 10% of care home residents died of Covid in the first half of this year. Not laughing now, are you

77. Weeks after it was proven Russia was regularly attempting to pervert UK democracy, a report found “an ongoing risk of cyber security incidents within Cabinet Office due to the vulnerability of legacy IT systems”, and Michael Gove is directly responsible for fixing it

78. Michael Gove was found to use an insecure email account under the name “Mrs Blurt” (and boasting of blurting as a way of deterring spies is, shall we say, novel) to discuss govt business with Dominic Cummings. So I don’t have terribly high hopes

79. The govt continued to focus on the big stuff, by converting a privy council room in number 9 Downing St into a TV studio it dubbed “the best in the world” – but then again, isn’t everything in this list?

80. The “best in the world” studio isn’t big enough to fit socially distanced journalists, the PM hasn’t even got an official spokesman, and Civil Service regulations prevent one from being appointed but the govt hadn’t realised that

It’s Tuesday. We have 3 more days of this week to go.

I’ll be here again in a few days, and in the interim I will accept gifts of good single malt whisky, or heroic doses of laudanum

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 14.09.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

#TheWeekInTory had to pause for a bit while I dealt with a poorly old mum. So this is actually about 3 weeks, very compressed

I dreaded coming back to this. I mean, honestly, where do you start?

Deep breath…

1. Theresa May couldn’t agree a Withdrawal Agreement (WI) because – in news that will shock the millions who warned about this – it’s impossible due do without accepting EU rules, or harming NI, or breaking up the UK, or crippling the economy, or all of the above

2. Nevertheless, Boris Johnson agreed a WI from the EU

3. Then Tories voted to accelerate the Withdrawal Agreement through parliament, specifically so it wouldn’t have to face scrutiny

4. And Boris Johnson withdrew the whip – sacked – 21 Tories who didn’t support the delay

5. Then he won an election by promising the WI was “oven-ready” and “brilliant”

6. Later, in a massive shock, it was discovered the WI contains all the problems that prevented May from agreeing it

7. So the govt announced it would just break the law and ignore its own treaty

8. Each MP’s Oath of Allegiance includes “I will give my loyalty to the United Kingdom… uphold its democratic values … and observe laws faithfully”

9. All 5 living ex-PM’s oppose this plan

10. Every living ex-Tory leader opposes it (except IDS, but c’mon, it’s IDS)

11. So now the govt which sacked 21 MPs for opposing the WI is threatening to sack any MPs who support the same WI

12. The actual Police Minister said it’s OK to break the law

13. The Lord Chancellor, Britain’s highest law officer, said it’s OK to break the law

14. The Attorney General, responsible for advising the govt on legal matters, said it’s OK to break the law

15. The Lord Chancellor and Attorney General are barristers, and the Bar Council guidelines say you will be struck-off if you “knowingly advise a client to break the law”

16. Same day, Foreign Secretary and irony no-fly-zone Dominic Raab said Iran “must comply with its legal commitments and treaties”

17. Gavin Williamson and Mark Francois were nominated for the MP Of The Year Award

18. This was the last known sighting of Mark Francois

19. Michael Gove said in a July speech “failures of policy and judgement”, are generating a “crisis of authority” and “Politicians like me must take responsibility for the effect of their actions”

20. Gavin Williamson is still in his job

21. But the head of Ofqual was sacked

22. And the most senior education civil servant had to stand down

23. In fact, resignations by senior civil servants are up 14% in a year

24. But 44% of new senior appointments are personal friends of Michael Gove, in one of those amazing coincidence things

25. Other amazing coincidences, a sub-thread:

a. Public First, a company led by Govt and Cummings associates, was handed a contract to help Ofqual with the exams fiasco. The contract wasn’t put out to tender

b. Gove appointed ex-girlfriend Simone Finn as adviser to Cabinet Office. Finn immediately paid her own company to “shake up the Cabinet Office”

c. Gove handed a contract (without tender) to PWC, a company that pays him £5000 per hour to give speeches

d. Gove gave £21k to Signal AI, a company associated with Gove and Cummings, to ask Tunisians what they think about Covid

e. Faculty AI, associated with Gove and Cummings, got £400k to analyse tweets by UK citizens. So if I vanish one dark night, tell my family I tolerated them

f. And another contract went to the cousin of Tory MP Tom Tugendhat to “analyse the awarding of govt contracts”, which is like a spiral, wrapped inside a Möbius strip, encased in a corkscrew, and tethered to a twat

26. Anyway, back to the fun: Home Secretary and Nurse Ratched cosplayer Priti Patel authorised “more painful” Taser guns, clearly anticipating more determined rioters

27. She then abandoned a deportation flight after it was found every passenger had leave to stay in the UK

28. Matt Hancock said we should get back to work as there is “little evidence” coronavirus is passed on in offices, having seen Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings catch coronavirus in their office

29. Then he voted for himself to continue to work remotely for 11 more weeks

30. Tories told us to lose weight

31. Then they paid us to go and eat out

32. Then they told us face-masks were essential

33. But not in schools

34. Then they were essential in schools

35. Then they told us to keep social distancing

36. Then they held a meeting of 50 PMs in a room with a capacity for 29

37. Then only 8 minutes later, they tweeted that the were updating advice to ban meeting in groups of 30

38. Then they banned you from meeting more than 6 people

39. But you can still go to the pub, 30 of you can attend a wedding or (more likely) a funeral, 30 of you get in a rugby scrum, and you can sit on a packed train carriage with 80 other people

40. Oh, and obviously, grouse-shooting is exempt. After all, what are we: French!?

41. And the new ban didn’t start for a week, and excluded the St Leger horse racing meet, where 3640 people crowded together making money for The Jockey Club; and isn’t it amazing that Matt Hancock is MP for Newmarket, where his major donors The Jockey Club are based?

42. So now the R number (which Boris Johnson was “absolutely committed to keeping below 1”) is at 1.7

43. Matt Hancock made a big deal of £60k compensation for families of NHS workers who died fighting Covid. The govt simultaneously stopped all their benefits

44. Hancock then started a scheme to financially support those forced to self-isolate, paying them up to (that’s “up to”) £13 a day

45. In preparation for the forthcoming homelessness epidemic, Tory councils voted to fine people £1000 for being too poor have anywhere to sleep

46. The govt said it was “ramping up to 150k tests a fortnight” 3 months after they claimed they were doing “over 100k tests a week”

47. Matt Hancock said he was changing the law to allow nurses to give flu vaccinations, unaware nurses already give over 93% of flu vaccinations

48. Then he launched a campaign to fight obesity, and immediately closed the agency responsible for delivering it

49. And then he advertised for a person to replace the head of Public Health England. The advert said no experience in health is required. In a pandemic.

50. The govt announced Operation Moonshot!, an exciting-sounding £100bn plan to test 10m people a day using technology that doesn’t exist, delivered by the people behind the PPE crisis, Brexit, Gavin Williamson, and Chris Grayling literally failing his own intelligence test

51. Meanwhile, we ran out of home testing kits

52. Then more shortages led us sending people on 500-mile round trips for a Covid test, in what experts have dubbed “the full Cummings Experience”

53. Six months after the first case in the UK, despite having diligently spent over £1bn on contracts with sweet suppliers and dormant companies with no employees, the UK still is not capable of producing a single piece of hospital-standard PPE

54. Researchers from King’s College London found Tories “employed overt disinformation” with “new levels of impunity” in the 2019 General Election

55. The govt was “formally warned for threatening press freedom” (putting us in the same classification as Russia) by the Council of Europe, which the UK co-founded in 1949 to protect human rights

56. It was then reported Boris Johnson plans to opt out of human rights laws

57. Meanwhile, a cross-party group of MPs is threatening to sue Boris Johnson if he continues to ignore calls for an enquiry into Russian interference in UK politics. People connected to the Putin regime paid £160k to play tennis with Boris Johnson

58. The leader of Scottish Tories tweeted “I would have no hesitation in voting against any legislation which would allow chlorinated chicken or hormone-injected beef. That’s a categorical assurance.”

59. He then voted to allow chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef

60. The govt voted not to implement the recommendations of the Grenfell Tower enquiry

61. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions was quoted as saying “it is not my job to worry about people starving to death in the UK”

62. The govt announced new Covid restrictions with a densely worded 10-page legal document, released at 11.38pm on Sunday night, just 22 minutes before police, hospitals, health officials, local councils, schools and businesses had to implement them

63. The document ends: “no impact assessment has been done”, surprising nobody familiar with Brexit

64. Environment news, and as a liveable world slips relentlessly from our grasp, the UK spent just £2000 – not a typo – tackling environmental damage to the British countryside

65. They spent £46m (2300 times as much) telling us to get ready for a Brexit that didn’t happen

66. And the Tory-appointed head of the Environment Agency endorsed proposals to weaken laws on the cleanliness of rivers, lakes and coastlines

67. Meanwhile the Fisheries Minister posed “catching mackerel” with a rod that had no line in a sea that has no mackerel, and I had to order a fresh barrel of satire

68. Nine months into Boris Johnson’s “levelling up” agenda, the gap between rich and poor pupils has grown 46%

69. And finally, because no list of abject failure is complete without him, Chris Grayling literally resigned from Intelligence

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Please pick up your complimentary revolver on the way out, and remember to write a will.

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 21.09.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

#TheWeekInTory returns for the second time in 4 days

The weeks grow shorter, but the days last forever

Anyway: don your athletic support, lower your visor, drink heavily, and start with some comparatively minor corruption…

1. The consultant who advised the govt to look for “alternative arrangements” on the Irish Border is in line for a £200m contract if alternative arrangements go ahead

2. But to facilitate this, the govt has to break international law with the Internal Market Bill (IMB)

3. Nobody can tell us what the “alternative arrangements” are, but the IMB passed through parliament anyway

4. The UK’s highest-ranking law officer in Scotland resigned over the IMB

5. The UK’s special envoy on media freedom, Amal Clooney (yes, that one) quit over IMB

6. The former (Tory appointed) ambassador to USA said the IMB was “hugely damaging to our international reputation”

7. Those snowflake liberal Remoaners Toby Young, Peter Hitchens and Tim Montgomerie turned on the govt over IMB. As did every living former-PM

8. Joe Biden said there would be no UK/US Trade Deal if the IMB went ahead

9. Iain Duncan Smith said “we don’t need lectures” from Joe Biden

10. Trump’s special envoy to NI also said there would be no Trade Deal

11. Apparently, IDS does need lectures. Who knew?

12. Oh, and IMB also includes a provision allowing the govt to break absolutely any law, absolutely any time

13. Unrelated, I’m sure, but the number of “problem drinkers” in England doubled this year

16. So the govt cut funding to alcohol addiction services

15. Dominic Raab, whose job it is to understand the Good Friday Agreement, admitted he hasn’t read the Good Friday Agreement

16. His excuse is: “it’s not a novel”. True. Novels tend to be longer than 35 pages, aren’t vital to solving conflicts that killed 3600 people

17. The PM, who literally voted to break a deal he signed with the EU, said the EU was “not negotiating in good faith”

18. The next morning, NI minister and arch memo-misser Brandon Lewis went on TV and said “I believe the EU is negotiating in good faith”

19. It was revealed the Smart Freight System to handle post-Brexit trade won’t be ready until at least April 2021.

20. That’s at least 4 months without a freight handling system, during the time of year we rely on food imports the most

21. The Road Haulage Assoc said a meeting with Michael Gove to discuss border checks provided “no clarity” and was “a washout”

22. An official report says 2-day queues at Dover in January are “a certainty”

23. So the govt closed a Covid test site in Kent, to convert it into a lorry park, in what experts (well, me) are calling “the world’s shittest game of whack-a-mole”

24. The govt said people would be fined £1000 if they don’t self-isolate after getting a positive test

25. And then all tests ran out in the 10 worst-hit Covid hotspots

26. And then all home testing kits ran out, nationally

27. And then the website for booking tests broke, and just showed a series of error messages

28. And then the govt said the system was under strain cos people were asking for tests when they didn’t know they were infected

29. So [deep breath] you must self-isolate after getting a test that doesn’t exist, and you can only get a test if you already know the result

30. Naturally, honesty no-fly-zone Priti Patel went on Radio 4 and announced tests were available everywhere and there were “no problems getting tests”

31. Same day – same hour, in fact – Boris Johnson said the testing system “has huge problems”

32. Jacob Rees-Mogg, who simply cannot shut up about fish, said we should stop the “endless carping” about not being tested for a fatal infection

33. Boris Johnson went on national TV and announced a “£100bn moonshot” approach to Covid, which would test “10m people per day”

34. Three days later, in front of a Parliamentary Committee, said he “didn’t recognise” the figure of 10m a day

35. And it was reported his half-brother is on the board of the business that would get most of the £100bn budget, which I’m sure is just a massive coincidence

36. Officials branded the moonshot as “Moonfuck”

37. And then Matt Hancock had to ask other cabinet ministers to stop referring to him as “Matt WankCock”

38. Despite appearances, these are not 7 year old boys

39. Food news, and Tory MP Douglas Ross said “I have seen the difference free school meals can make, and I want to make sure nobody falls through the cracks”

40. Douglas Ross voted against free school meals

41. Boris Johnson said we cannot put punitive restrictions on food imports from the EU (to force them to give up on Ireland), or we will starve

42. And then, minutes later, he agreed with a Brexiter MP who said we SHOULD put punitive restrictions on food imports from the EU

43. Boris Johnson said “I venerate our civil service” after sacking the innocent heads of multiple departments to protect friends including Gavin Williamson and Dominic Cummings. And as a result, people leaving the civil service rose 14% in a year

44. Planning-ahead news: an international conglomerate pulled out of a £16bn power project because the govt hasn’t performed its part of the deal for the last 20 months

45. Funding cuts since 2010 meant the govt had to inject £700m to prevent further education going bankrupt

46. This week it was found the govt – which last week voted not to implement the recommendations of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry – has also failed to deliver its promise to remove the same dangerous cladding from at least 2000 tower blocks. Sleep well.

47. And then the govt said files on Grenfell were “lost forever”, after a laptop was wiped. Cos everything is always stored on a single laptop. We all know this.

48. The govt runs G-Cloud, its own dedicated cloud backup service, which has been active since 2012. So… yeah.

49. At a committee in parliament, an MP read out the Covid test figures. Dido Harding, in charge of testing, said “I’m sorry, that’s just not true, I don’t know where that number is from”

50. It was from her own report. Page 8. In bold type.

51. Dido Harding said “nobody could predict” a rise in demand for testing

52. Govt scientists predicted it, and in a July report sent to Dido Harding – maybe it was a different one? – said “July and Aug must be a period of intense preparation for a Sept resurgence in Covid”

53. Oh, and standard advice says the NHS must always prepare for cold and respiratory infections to spike immediately after the return to school in Sept

54. Dido Harding wasted £13m on a “world-beating” testing app that cost £12.3m more than the German app, and didn’t work

55. She is now in charge of the test-and-trace service which has collapsed completely

56. So naturally, it was reported the govt wants to sack the head of NHS England and install Dido Harding instead. Let’s make the most of that successful record, eh?

57. In June the govt tweeted “grab a drink and raise a glass, pubs are reopening”

58. The PM said “it is your patriotic duty to go out and enjoy yourselves”

59. This week they said the public is responsible, and “people going to the pub fuelled the rise in Covid”

60. So the govt closed pubs at 10pm, cos it’s well-known viruses only pop out for last orders.

61. Matt Hancock said the govt “threw a protective ring around care homes”

62. A leaked document said care homes are now being asked to accept patients who are known to have Covid

63. Hospitals were banned from launching their own testing regime for staff and patience because… nope, nobody knows why. Just because.

64. There hasn’t been a meeting of COBRA (the govt’s committee for national emergencies, headed by the PM) since 10th May

65. As Covid infections surged, Matt Hancock said restrictions are increasing, and pointed to a chart showing the govt has “moved to alert level 3”. Level 3 is “a gradual relaxing of restrictions”. Not only can’t he remember his own alert system, he can’t even read it.

66. Despite travel restrictions, it was reported the PM flew off for a long weekend in Perugia, where his friend the Russian billionaire Evgeny Lebedev lives. He denies it, but the airport has his landing documents. So either he’s lying or… no, that’s the end of that sentence

67. In June the govt spent £500m on a GPS satellite system to replace the one we lose due to Brexit

68. In July it was reported “we bought the wrong satellites”

69. This week the govt cancelled the programme and began asking the EU if we can keep on using their GPS system

70. A cross-party committee of MPs found nurse-Ratched cosplayer Priti Patel “bases immigration policies on anecdotes and prejudice”

71. It found her dept has “no idea” what its annual spending achieves, and referred to “the wreckage that [Patel’s dept’s] ignorance caused”

72. She is one of the favourites to replace Johnson

73. This is because it was reported the PM is thinking of quitting because he’s worried about his personal finances: the poor man has to “pay tax”, “buy his own food” and “support 4 of his 6 children”. Oh, the humanity!

74. And Jonathan Aitken – look him up – continues to get privileged access to parliament despite a ban on MPs who have served more than a year in prison. Which he did. And it was hilarious.

75. And finally, because he always needs a guest appearance, Chris Grayling, the man who awarded a ferry contract to a company with no ships, has got a £100k appointment to advise ports

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 28.09.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

I was gonna leave #TheWeekInTory until Friday, but at their current rate it’ll be 1000 tweets long by then, and I’m worried about you, mate.

It’s OK to get drunk on at 5pm on Monday, isn’t it? Well, that’s my recommendation anyway. Here goes…

1. In June Boris Johnson said to Black Lives Matter protestors: “I hear you”, and acknowledged the “incontrovertible, undeniable feeling of injustice” that “we simply cannot ignore”

2. So obviously, 40 Tory MPs refused to take part in unconscious bias training

3. The govt shut pubs an hour early, seemingly under the impression coronavirus (an inert, sub-microscopic infectious entity with no brain or nervous system) can tell the time

4. The govt demanded we all follow the rules

5. The govt exempted House Of Commons bars from the rules

6. Health Minister Helen Whately said “people who get drunk and leave the pub to keep on partying should remember their responsibility for the nation’s health”

7. Helen Whateley, who is *actually* responsible for the nation’s health, was sober when she said this. Presumably

8. After 6 months of world-leading “throwing apps in the bin but taking the cash anyway”, the govt finally proudly released an NHS Testing App

9. It didn’t work with NHS tests

10. Or on 18% of phones

11. Or in Scotland or Northern Ireland

12. And a report said only 10% of the us will use it, cos we don’t trust Dominic Cummings with our data

13. Nor should we: the Data Commissioner said Cummings’ proposed changes to privacy law will see the UK barred from sharing global data, and cost the UK economy “up to £80bn”

14. Meanwhile the promise of 500,000 tests per day won’t be reached because, in news that should shock nobody, the govt failed to order enough raw materials

15. So the govt stopped releasing evidence of how many are being tested, cos if you don’t look at it, it isn’t real

16. The govt, which only weeks ago was demanding we go back to work or all get sacked, now demands we all stay at home

17. Them the govt said the reason the UK had the worst Covid response AND worst economy in Europe is because we are “freedom-loving”

18. And then govt freedom-lovingly banned schools from using any materials that criticised capitalism

19. Not content with this, they also banned schools discussing “victim narratives”, which is going to make it tough to maintain their national anti-bullying strategy

20. And then a leaked report said the govt was planning to freedom-lovingly deploy the military on the streets

21. Meanwhile, the govt announced only 24% of businesses have done any preparation for Brexit, and only 30% of cross-channel HGVs have the correct paperwork

22. The govt finally admitted what they’d been told repeatedly since 2016, and said Brexit would create 2-day queues of 7000 lorries at Channel ports

23. 7000 lorries (at the average 16.5m each) is 1155km. That’s a queue over 700 miles long. Every day.

24. To solve this, the govt announced a new internal border in Kent, helpfully relocating 700 miles of queues to London, Essex, Surrey and East Sussex instead

25. A month ago, Tory MP Sir Edward Leigh was demanding we “take back” Calais. Now we’re essentially abandoning Kent.

26. Because we only had 4 years to plan for this, our lovely new border will start on 1 January and be controlled by software that – and you should probably open a second bottle around now – won’t be ready until at least 4 months later

27. Oh, and border checks won’t be ready in Northern Ireland either

28. But we might not have a problem anyway: it was revealed there are just 2000 EU haulage permits for our 40,000 UK hauliers. That’s 5% of what we need, for any Govt Ministers struggling with the maths

29. And we don’t even have enough pallets for the goods we import, cos we currently rely on a supply we share with the EU, and have neither the wood nor the treatment plants, nor the required chemicals to make and treat our own

30. So now the govt has to make a 200m border, a mechanism for policing it, an internal passport system, software, admin, buy 38,000 permits and grow enough trees for 700,000 pallets. In 3 months.

31. It had 5 months to add up some A-Level results, and that went swimmingly

32. I’m sure supply-and-demand won’t force prices sky high, cos it never does when you have 5% of the food the nation needs and a govt which boasts about breaking the law, but it was also announced tariffs will add £3.1bn to the nation’s food bill in Jan 2021

33. As a mark of confidence, Jim Ratcliffe, Britain’s richest man and a leading Brexiteer, buggered off to Monaco

34. And an unnamed minister was quoted: “We are stuck in a bind. If we try to cancel Brexit we destroy ourselves; if we go ahead with it we destroy the country”

35. The London School of Economics reported the long-term cost of Brexit will be 2-3 times the cost of Covid

36. So Rishi Sunak cancelled the budget, cos once again, if you don’t look at it, it doesn’t exist

37. JPMorgan shifted £200 billion out of the UK and into Germany calling it “a result of Brexit”.

38. At least 22% of our entire national economy depends on international banks based in the City of London, so when the largest one fucks off, it’s a relaxing development

39. Theresa May said the govt’s bill to break international law is “reckless” and “risks the integrity of the United Kingdom”

40. The Attorney General, who takes an oath to parliament, the Queen and The Bar to observe the law, said she was “very proud” to be breaking the law

41. The UK is a signatory and legal guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace to the island of Ireland after 3600 violent deaths. The Attorney General, who is sworn to maintain peace, says Brexit will break the GFA, and she is “extremely proud” of that too.

42. Turns out, the advisory Professor who told her she should go ahead and break the law and endanger peace in Ireland is the partner of Michael Gove’s special advisor. It’s amazing, these coincidences. Almost as if they don’t want to listen to anybody else

43. Speaking of which, Boris Johnson’s old friend and unfailingly irrumating backer (google it) Charles Moore, who has spent his life demanding the end of the BBC, and said the BBC causes “human misery worthy of Dickens” (does he mean Mrs Brown’s Boys?) is in line to run the BBC

44. And it was reported ex Daily Mail Editor Paul Dacre, who shouts c*unt so much his meetings are called “the vagina monologues”, and whose paper is banned as a Wiki reference cos it lies so often, is going to be put in charge of Ofcom: ensuring decent and honest broadcasting

45. Oh yeah, and Boris Johnson tweeted “a free press is vital in holding the government to account”, which is probably why the people holding his govt to account are being replaced with his mates and cheerleaders

46. Tory MP and successful conscience-donor Andrea Jenkins got paid £25k from a thinktank that doesn’t exist

47. And because no list is complete without a disturbing nocturnal visitation from the smirking angel of death, Priti Patel was accused of incitement to racial hatred

48. Whilst Patel, Jenkyns and the Attorney General were busy redefining “the party of Law and Order” the rest of the govt took a wild swing at “the party of fiscal responsibility”, when it was revealed the govt has wasted £3,895,556,000 since March.

49. This includes unsafe testing kits; face masks that don’t work; broken tracing systems; useless antibody tests; cancelled ventilator challenge; and inexplicable contracts to sweet manufacturers and dormant companies with no employees, to provide PPE that never arrived

50. The govt, which insisted schools and universities reopened, said it was now vital to lock down students and prevent them from mixing in large groups

51. And then the govt said it was sanctioning class sizes of up to 60 which … remind me, is that more or fewer than 6?

52. Matt Hancock said “we’re giving up to 11,000 iPads to care homes to enable residents to connect with loved ones”

53. “Up to” is a bit telling, but even if it’s 11,000, there are 21,700 care homes in the UK. I guess they’ll just have to share. Goodbye forever, nana!

54. And finally, if you feel all alone in despairing at this: you aren’t. Belief in Britain as a “global force for good” has fallen 10% since 2019. I, for one, am shocked to the core.

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 01.10.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

IHey Russ, didn’t you just do #TheWeekInTory on Monday?

Yes. Yes, I did.

But you’re having to do another on Thursday?

I don’t make the rules. And apparently, Boris Johnson doesn’t either.

Anyway, here we go again…

1. Boris Johnson said “The rules are very simple”

2. Then he got the rules wrong

3. Then he said “the rules are confusing”

4. Then he said he’d fine anybody breaking the rules £1000

5. Then his dad broke them

6. Then Boris immediately didn’t fine him a penny

7. This week’s fabulous quote from an anonymous Tory MP: “[Boris Johnson] genuinely doesn’t give a flying fuck what the policy is, he’s never done the homework, so he doesn’t know anything. There really is no point in talking to the Prime Minister about policy at all”

8. To make life less confusing for Boris, the Tory MP for 1950s Jaguar showrooms, Desmond Swayne, suggested every pub should just make up its own rules

9. Mr Swayne refused to take unconscious bias training: said he didn’t need it

10. Last year he was caught wearing blackface

11. Mind you, a poll found 60% of Tory members are openly Islamophobic, so [shrug]

12. In March Rishi Sunak, the nicest Tory, said “Nobody will go hungry as a result of Coronavirus”

13. This week, Sunak rejected calls to end cuts to benefits for the poorest 300,000 children

14. Let’s move on to this week’s best bewildering assault on logic. The Tory leader of Herts Council (which presumably means he’s the best one they’ve got) said the govt should abolish local councils so that local councils could remain Tory. Read that twice. I had to.

15. Over 80 Tory MPs confronted Boris Johnson, concerned about increasing length of his shortcomings, and demanded a say in future policy

16. Then they voted for the Internal Market Bill, which removes their say over future policy

17. Theresa May said the Internal Market Bill, which also breaks international law, was “reckless and irresponsible” and “risks the integrity of the United Kingdom”

18. See if you can guess who didn’t vote against the bill. Go on, have a guess. Yep. Theresa May

19. Hard-line Brexit cheerleader and Beta-version human Steve Baker said on Radio4 “many members of the Tory party are seriously concerned about parliamentary democracy and the rule of law”

20. So obviously, the next day, he too voted to break the rule of law

21. And the Lord Chancellor, the Attorney General, and the Solicitor General for England and Wales all voted against a clause in the bill “requiring Ministers to respect the rule of law and uphold the independence of the Courts”, cos why would they? They’re only in charge of law

22. So the EU, the other signatory to the deal, launched a legal action to stop us breaking it

23. We now have 3 months to resolve this case so we can get a vital trade agreement

24. An Argentinian / EU trade dispute has been ongoing since 2012. That’s a bit more than 3 months

25. All of this is, of course, to let us Get On With Brexit, primarily, judging by the rhetoric, so we can save our fish; which must be why this week, heroic Boris Johnson, our very own Sir Plankton Churchill, quietly gave away our fishing rights for another 3 years

26. It was revealed Financial Services businesses operating in the UK have relocated $1.6 trillion in assets to the EU ahead of the Brexit deadline

27. For context, the UK’s GDP is $2.8 trillion. Fairly simple maths, I don’t need to point it out to you.

28. It was revealed UK data about terrorists and serious criminals would “legally, have to be deleted” in the event of No Deal, because it would become illegal for the EU to share the information with us. So we would no longer be able to track terrorists.

29. To avoid import tariffs on car parts, we spent this week attempting to pretend Turkey was actually British

30. Sadly, the EU owns a map, so yep: we’re paying tariffs on car parts

31. The car industry said this would mean £100bn in losses, and be “catastrophic”

32. Fortunately, this week the govt admitted it is preparing finances to support “around 4 million unemployed for a significant period of time”. The maximum unemployment benefit is £74.35 a week, so… sleep well.

33. However, whilst preparing for mass unemployment, the govt doesn’t see much value in spending a penny saving jobs in the £12bn arts and culture sector, because who needs London to remain a major global destination for millions of tourists who love our arts and culture?

34. Doesn’t matter: we’re not keen on foreigners anyway, as Priti Patel was keen to point out when she genuinely suggested we build machines to generate massive waves to drive them all back into the sea, like a modern-day Cnut. This is not a typo. You just think it is

35. Next, she suggested we ship migrants to uninhabited Scottish Island, until it was pointed out all the ones you can land on are inhabited

36. Undeterred, the cabinet’s favourite Rosa Klebb impersonator suggested building concentration camps for migrants on a literal volcano

37. This idea wasn’t rejected cos it’s insane – it was rejected because it’s expensive

38. And we need the cash for Deloitte, who we pay to run a national Test & Trace programme that doesn’t work, whilst simultaneously selling a programme which *does* work to local councils

39. Matt Hancock told the Commons the govt trial on the use of Vitamin D as a treatment for Covid “sadly, did not appear to show any impact”

40. There has been no govt trial on the use of Vitamin D as a treatment for Covid

41. But in seemingly good news – no, really! – we now have four times as many ventilators as we had when the virus first hit

42. Oh, hold on: we can only use one fifth of them because we forgot to train enough staff. That’s more like it.

43. The govt pressed on with appointing Charles Moore as Chair of the BBC, even though he was fined for refusing to pay the licence fee, and even though the Tory head of the Culture and Media Committee said Moore being appointed would be “beyond the pale”
Russ

44. Charles Moore said “The Korean sets up a grocery store, which the black then robs – that is the caricature. One explanation is that there really is something different about blacks”

45. And he can also “detect in black men an indifference to normal social constraints”

46. And finally, a leaked letter from the Cabinet Office Minister to all heads of department said governance was “infantilised” and “unacceptable”, so at least one person in Whitehall is aware of the things the rest of us have known for years

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 05.10.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

I was gonna do another #TheWeekInTory but, try as I might, I could not find a thing they’d done wrong since Friday.

No corruption. No ineptitude. No lies. No hypocrisy. Just a solid 96 hours of honest, decent and reliable governance.

Only kidding: it’s an absolute shit-show…

1. A report found the “Eat Out To Help Out” scheme cost £500m and didn’t do a single thing to improve the economy of the UK’s hospitality sector

2. However, it did help to double the number of infections, although they forgot how to count, so didn’t notice

3. As infections spiked, the govt briefly woke up and introduced local lockdowns

4. But predictably, the local councils responsible for implementing the new plans were given literally (not making this up) 5 minutes warning and no additional resources whatsoever

5. It was revealed absolutely not a single penny of the £1.58bn “Arts Rescue Plan” announced to great fanfare in July has actually been handed out to the artists or venues relying on it

6. So unsurprisingly, the country’s largest cinema chain had to close, costing 5,500 jobs

7. But thankfully Work and Pensions Minister Thérèse Coffey was on hand to reassuringly tell them they can all become Care Workers with “very little training” (I’m sure nursing is a doddle)

8. Slight problem: in June the govt froze millions in funding for training care workers

9. But it’ll be fine, won’t it? I mean, who needs to train care workers? We have plenty, don’t we? Oh, hold on: this week it was revealed care workers are caring for 2,400 families each, which is 10x the recommended number

10. Good News for Boris Johnson, as a poll of Tory Members found they think Gavin Williamson is even shitter than the PM

11. Bad News: they think every other Conservative MP is better than the PM, and only 28% of them think he’s up to the job. And that’s his fan-club.

12. So Boris Johnson went on a charm offensive (and did both), and promised to build 40 new hospitals

13. Seemingly he had forgotten – or hoped we had – that he also promised to build 40 new hospitals a year ago, and then … how can I put this? … didn’t

14. The 40 new hospitals have £3.7bn budget

15. Unfortunately, 40 new hospitals would cost at least £24bn

16. And there’s backlog of £6bn in maintenance and repairs, so the day it was launched the “new hospital fund” was £2.3bn short of building a single Lego Hospital

17. Last week Boris Johnson said the Covid rules were simple, then forgot them, then said they were complicated, then said he’d fine people breaking them, then didn’t fine his own dad

18. This week his own dad broke the rules for a second time and [tumbleweed]

19. So 6 days after the PM went on TV to assure us the lockdown rules were simple, the govt has announced it will announce some simplified rules. But not yet. Soon. In a bit. First we need another few levels of announcements about announcements, cos there’s no rush fellas.

20. I always try to find a supportive and approving quote about Boris Johnson from an star-struck anonymous Tory MP: this week, I have an embarrassment of riches

21. “It’s like ‘carry on coronavirus’, with Boris as Sid James and Matt Hancock as Kenneth Williams”

22. “I find myself bewildered at the clownish lack of professionalism in Downing St”

23. “If you drop something which is entirely ornamental [meaning Boris] it tends to lose its appeal”

24. “We’ve gone from eat out to help out, to drink up and piss off”

25. The Tories called loudly for the firing of the SNP’s Margaret Ferrier for travelling by train after being found positive for Covid

26. No word yet about them calling for the removal Tory MP Peter Gibson, who travelled 250 miles by train with Covid symptoms

27. Peter Gibson is part of the new “Red Wall” intake of Tory MPs, so presumably was keen to return to his constituency to inform them that 1/3 of them would be £1000 a year worse off due to govt cuts

28. It was revealed that 5 years after Tories pledged to end money laundering with the announcement “there is no place for dirty money in Britain”, absolutely no action has yet been taken, and the legislation has been gathering dust since 2015

29. But thankfully, non-corrupt ministers like Robert Jenrick, who takes “donations” (which are apparently different from bribes) from housing companies, are still doing the right thing, such as unlawfully overruling his own officials to grant a £50m tax saving to a donor

30. And a legal challenge was launched over a £580k contract to friends of Dominic Cummings, with no competitive tendering

31. Oh, and Matt Hancock takes “donations” from the horse-racing fraternity, and excluded the highly profitable Cheltenham Festival from the lockdown

32. The former Chief Scientific Advisor said Cheltenham Festival “probably helped to accelerate the spread” of coronavirus

33. Not that we’d know, because it appears a mere 227 days after the first case, the govt still hasn’t learned to import data into an Excel Spreadsheet

34. Any IT manager would tell you Excel is not the way to store the data of up to 67 million people – it is spreadsheet software for a max of 1 million records

35. 16,000 tests were lost, and over 50,000 potentially infectious people may have been missed by contact tracers

36. On 2nd June, Boris Johnson announced he would take “direct control” of Covid

37. So 125 days later, he couldn’t tell us the social distancing rules, how many records had been lost, or explain why 4 different lockdown regimes exist in Greater Manchester alone

38. But human spork Matt Hancock rushed out to say NHS Test and Trace are working hard, neglecting to mention the slightly awkward truth that NHS Test and Trace is not run by the NHS, but by a private business under the guidance of the effortlessly terrible Dido Harding

39. Highly effective private business Serco do our contact tracing, which is why some of its tracing staff report being so under-occupied they have managed to watch 3 entire series of The Good Place and play computer games all day for months, while 60,000 Britons died

40. I have no idea if the Queen has noticed her govt’s honesty, but this week she said “having trusted, reliable sources of information is vital”

41. We enter flu season under a govt you can trust, but who accidentally failed to send the flu vaccine to GPs for over a month

42. And the average hours for teachers increased from 53 to 70 hours per week, as they attempt to cope with endlessly shifting instructions

43. Teachers are also having to be cleaners in schools, as there is no additional money for adaptations to keep staff and students safe

44. As the govt prepares for 4 million unemployed in 2021, Rishi Sunak said he would introduce “job coaches”, and said 4 million of us being coached for *up to* 2 hours to do jobs that don’t exist would be “the first time that people will realise government could be helpful”

45. A report found “trust between ministers and staff is being severely eroded” by a 7-month delay in the bullying inquiry into Home Secretary and horcrux, Priti Patel

46. She then made a speech in which she voluntarily opted to define herself as opposite to those who “do good”

47. Possibly to distract from this, health minister Lord Bethell rushed out to claim Covid 19 would make us as proud as the Olympics

48. Covid 19 has killed about as many as you can fit into an Olympic Stadium, so maybe that’s what he meant

49. A quick detour into the magical, spinning world of gaffe-hamster Lord Bethell: last week he tried to distract from govt student cockups by claiming Covid 19 was predominantly caused by “late-night intimacy” and not by, for example, failing to trace infections

50. Earlier, Bethell tried to distract from govt A-Level cockups by claiming him failing A-Levels didn’t prevent him hustling to his lofty position (momentarily forgetting the hustling assistance he gained when his dad, the 4th Lord Bethell, hustled his way into a grave)

51. And finally, in an image that will haunt you, Matt Hancock announced he would only snitch on his neighbours if he was “watching them having an Animal House-style hot tub party”. Watching. He said watching. Matt Hancock. Watching.

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 08.10.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

The thing I regret most about #TheWeekInTory is the actual events.

But just behind that is the fact I called it #TheWeekInTory, when in reality I am having to do one every 2 days.

Anyway, grab a pint of Laudanum, hide any sharp objects, and dive in…

1. A few days ago Boris Johnson excitingly announced 40 new hospitals he’d excitingly announced only last year; and then he arbitrarily upped it to 48 hospitals, cos whatever

2. To show how serious he is, he allocated a budget that will pay for slightly fewer than 2 hospitals

3. I don’t want to put doubt in your mind, but he’s promised us a garden bridge, and airport on a floating island in the Thames, and a bridge to Ireland…

4. Anyway, he then promised to turn Britain into “a new Jerusalem”, one of the most violent and divided places on earth

5. Pledging to unify the nation, he decried lawyers as “lefty do-gooders”, hot on the cloven-heels of Priti Patel

6. The ex-president of the Supreme Court said by “undermining the rule of law” the govt “is going down a very slippery slope” towards “dictatorship and tyranny”

7. Boris Johnson then listed all the great things he was going to do in the coming [unspecified period of time], but mystifyingly forgot to mention “Operation Moonshot”, which was the £100bn centrepiece of his Covid strategy only [specified period of time] 25 days ago

8. Un-phased that his Grand Plans last less than a month, he promised wind-turbines would power all UK homes within 10 years

9. He’s only slightly out: a report the next day found at the current rate, the govt will not meet its low-carbon targets for [checks calendar] 700 years

10. And now onto led-by-the-science news: back in May, only 47 days after South Korea introduced mandatory quarantine and free tests with a 24-hour results, the govt introduced quarantine after arriving UK airports

11. But we made it voluntary

12. And then we paused it

13. And then we re-introduced it, but made it shorter

14. And then we added fines

15. But we didn’t tell anybody to police the system

16. And then we said it was all under review

17. And now we’re talking about maybe announcing something new in November

18. But in the meantime, a man operating under the name “Grant Shapps” floated the idea that passengers should have to pay for their own tests, cos nothing says Serious About Public Health like an 8-month delay before shrugging and saying “oh, do it yourself”

19. But first (cos he wouldn’t want to rush things) a mere 253 days after the first UK case, and after a barely-worth-mentioning 60,000 deaths, the govt is considering maybe setting up a task-force to think about quarantine and testing at airports

20. In charge of this Quest for The Truth is Matt Hancock, a forlorn Weeble who this week refused three times to tell parliament whether Serco are still being paid for all the tests they lost, which means they definitely are

21. Hancock bought 1m antibody tests which dept for evaluating tests has said “cannot be trusted”

22. He’s has already blown £30 million on antibody tests that were “not fit for purpose”. He learns from his mistakes, and that’s why he’s now making much more impressive mistakes

23. Rishi Sunak said the jobs of all actors were “not viable” and they should find a new career, using the govt’s shiny new careers website

24. Almost every person who uses that site is advised to become an actor. It’s the first recommendation in almost every case. No, really.

25. The UK arts sector generates over £23 billion a year and employs 370,000 people

26. The UK fishing sector generates under 1.4 billion a year and employees 24,000 people (7% as big)

27. Guess which one Rishi Sunak, the man in charge of the budget, says is viable

28. But some sound decisions are still being made: a company run by associate of a Tory peer got a £122m contract to provide PPE only 7 weeks after the business was founded, with no competitive tendering and, thus far, no PPE delivered. So that’s OK then

29. 250,000 businesses NOT closely aligned with leading Tories can’t access the loans the govt promised

30. But because the govt didn’t track the loans it did give out, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to get repaid for a few of them. Well, I say a few. £26 billion. Pennies, really.

31. A cabinet minister said “local lockdowns have no effect. I don’t know why we’re doing them”

32. Another cabinet minster said “there’s no science behind the 10pm pub curfew, it’s back of a fag packet stuff”

33. So the govt said they would introduce more local curfews on pubs

34. But obviously, they told the newspapers about this, but didn’t inform the actual councils responsible for delivering it. Cos why would you?

35. Oh, and obviously, poor areas of the country were found to be four times more likely to be locked down than rich areas.

36. Fraser Nelson, editor of Tory cheerleader The Spectator, said: “Around the world, no govt has been judged to do a worse job by its people, and no country has created as much debt: no matter how you look at it, we’re pretty much the worst in the developed world”

37. And the head of the UK Covid Task Force said that even if we develop a vaccine and somehow manage to order it correctly and get it delivered to the right address, vaccinating all of the UK “is not going to happen”, which is funny way to issue a few thousand death warrants.

38. Anyway, we’ve giggled enough at the dead, let’s move on to the homeless: official analysis of govt housebuilding plans shows it would cut affordable housing by 47%

39. Robert “Elwood” Jenrick defended this policy on the remarkable grounds that he was “on a moral mission”

40. And so, onto Brexit, and Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, who voted to build border checkpoints in Kent, and voted to build a 27-acre lorry park in Kent, and voted to build infrastructure to cope with 70-mile traffic jams in Kent, called on the govt to stop all this building in Kent

41. Feral pipe-cleaner Michael Gove said “things are still looking very positive” and that he thinks the UK now has a 66% chance of what he once called “the easiest deal in history”

42. However, the lead EU negotiator said “it is difficult to feel optimistic about a deal”

43. Boris Johnson, who has spent the last 4 years telling us the Human Rights Act is a terrible thing that Brexit will finally free us from, has been forced to promise the EU that he won’t rip up the Human Rights Act, cos we really desperately need a deal

44. Sadly, he also promised he’d stick to the Withdrawal Agreement, and didn’t. So the EU said the UK deciding to break international law “calls into question trust in future promises and negotiations”, which absolutely nobody saw coming, except for everybody.

45. With only 7 days to go until the deadline for a deal – no, really, 15th Oct is the deadline – the UK chief negotiator, who wants to amend state-aid rules, admitted “no extensive text on state aid rules will be admitted” by the UK

47. So we want the EU to scrap its rules, and replace them with a set of vague, airy concepts that we can’t even put into words, 4 years after we voted to do this idiocy, and a mere 27 years after the campaign to leave the EU began

48. But there finally some great news about Brexit: Daniel Kawczynski, top Tory bullshit-hoover, and graduate of the Shaggy school of denialism, proudly announced he’s been appointed Trade Envoy to Mongolia. So we’re saved!

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 15.10.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

Here comes another #TheWeekInTory, and I’m afraid it’s quite lengthy.

The positive we can take from this is that if you start now, you can probably get through the 2 bottles of gin you’ll definitely need before the end.

Uncork and begin…

1. Boris Johnson announced a new 3 Tier lockdown system, with the lowest Tier being “medium”, like at McDonalds

2. As part of the announcement, the Chief Medical Officer reassuringly said the plan wouldn’t work

3. The govt said “in all cases, we are following the science”

4. It was revealed the SAGE science committee told the govt to lockdown weeks ago, but that bit of science wasn’t followed very far

5. SAGE went on to say the govt’s “world-beating” £12bn Test and Trace system was having only “a marginal impact on transmission rates”

6. Dido Harding, head of Seemingly Everything, said Test and Trace would be “local by default” and be “highly efficient”

7. She then handed £12bn to Serco, which is highly efficiently charging us £7360 per day for consultants. To trace Covid infections. Which they aren’t doing

8. Serco’s CEO is the brother of an ex-Tory MP. His partner is a Tory donor. Serco’s ex-head of PR is now a Tory Health Minister

9. If you feel all this is a bit corrupt, you can complain to the govt’s Anti-Corruption Champion, John Penrose, who is married to Dido Harding

10. Meanwhile an investigation by the Good Law Project found PPE suppliers owned by Tory donors or associates were paid 30% more per item than similar businesses globally. I’m talling you: John Penrose. He’s your fella. He’ll get to the bottom of it, fo shizzle

11. And only 34 days since the announcement of Boris Johnson’s “brainchild”, the £100bn Operation Moonshot, it was quietly scrapped, along with (apparently) Boris Johnson’s brain and around 28% of his children

12. A Tory MP said Boris Johnson’s “personal skillset this doesn’t play to this. He’s not a details, manager type. He’s a picture painter”. On the side of wine-boxes, mostly.

13. Another said “I think it’s obvious this is a government happier picking fights than governing”

14. Another said Boris Johnson “prefers to get on with dog-walking” and “let’s Dominic do the work”

15. Chastened by reports local authorities were given only 5 minutes notice of previous lockdowns, this time the govt gave them … 7 minutes notice of the meeting to discuss it

16. Except some MPs didn’t even get that, and were only invited after the meeting had started

17. And the govt invited the MP for Sunderland, who had to inform them she was only of 3 Sunderland MPs. The govt was “surprised to be informed” of this

18. The dep Chief Medical Officer said the infection rate in the north “never dropped” meaning the relaxation of lockdown was at the expense of lives oop north

19. Then the govt said they would “devolve more decision-making” and “give more financial aid to local authorities”

20. But the aid is conditional on the “devolved” local authority doing what the govt wants, which is quite a novel a definition of “devolved”

21. So, following criticism, the govt briefed the press that it was going to consult more with regional govts

22. Literally 2 hours later, the govt briefed the press that Manchester was moving into Tier 3 restrictions. The Mayor of Manchester was not consulted (or even informed) about a decision he must implement, and which affects the largest city-region outside London.

23. A Tory MP, anxious about the lockdown affecting businesses over the party season, asked the PM “what can you tell us about Christmas”. Boris Johnson replied, “it’s a religious festival that’s been celebrated 2020 years”, which I’m sure helps us all

24. Matt Hancock insisted we all follow the science and adhere to the 10pm pub curfew that scientists say makes absolutely no improvement on infection rates

25. Then Matt Hancock broke that curfew, in a House of Commons bar

26. And then Matt Hancock said “The drinks are on me but Public Health England are in charge of payment methodology so I will not be paying anything”

27. In August, Public Health England was scrapped by [checks notes ] Matt Hancock

28. But prior to that, Tories imposed budget cuts of 5% to 10% on Public Health England for each of the previous 7 years

29. Unsurprisingly, it was reported that hospitals in the north of England would run out of beds within 7 days

30. The govt said “Hospital Trusts should consider cancelling all non-urgent treatments”

31. The govt then refused to drop fines it imposes on Hospital Trusts which cancel non-urgent treatments

32. So Matt Hancock announced the reopening of Nightingale Hospitals, which were closed last time because nobody could send patients to them, due to them not being staffed

33. They still aren’t staffed: Matt Hancock’s’ “urgent boost to nursing training” doesn’t start until 2021

34. Fortunately, the govt began a campaign to get ballerinas to retrain, and then scrapped the campaign 24 hours later

35. In June, Boris Johnson announced an “urgent” £1.57bn Arts Rescue Plan

36. A mere 127 days later, it “urgently” got around to paying out some of that money

37. Except by now the £1.57bn had become £257m, which is 16% of the plan they originally announced

38. Meanwhile, in news that will surely leave you all stunned and astonished, a month after work began on HS2 the budget for it has already risen a further £800m

39. Boris Johnson congratulated Marcus Rashford on the MBE he was awarded for his efforts to overcome the cruel policies of Boris Johnson

40. The Law Society raised concerns about the “dangerous rhetoric” of Home Office Minister and Mouth of Sauron, Priti Patel

41. The next day, a migration lawyer was victim of a knife attack, and senior lawyers said “Responsibility and accountability for this attack lies squarely at the feet of Priti Patel”

42. The Home Office announced plans to catch migrants in a big net and OH MY GOD

43. And then Lord West reassuringly said, “we need to deal with migrants in a concentrated place, a camp or whatever”. He didn’t mention whether Arbeit Macht Frei, but it’s still only Thursday, and who can tell what the remainder of the week will bring?

[ Open 2nd bottle now ]

44. Speaking of dates: today is 15th Oct, the absolute, immoveable deadline for trade talks that mighty, fearsome Boris Johnson laid down to the cowed and quivering EU

45. Talks continue tomorrow. Because obviously, duuur

46. This is the third absolute deadline imposed by the British that has been missed because the British have temporarily inverted arse and elbow

47. This didn’t stop Cabinet Office minister Lord Agnew from berating haulage businesses for not being ready for Brexit on 1 Jan

48. The Road Haulage Assoc pointed out we have only 1,668 of the 33,000 EU Haulage Permits we need on 1 Jan

49. Software to control our borders won’t be ready until 4 months after 1 Jan

50. And the govt is “still in the planning stage” of the “Kent Passports” we need on 1 Jan

51. And construction of Kent’s “world’s largest lorry park” is behind schedule, so probably not ready on 1 Jan

52. Fortunately the govt is well-prepared, and plans to install 1000s of Portaloos in Kent, the garden of England, to be used by lorry drivers trapped in 2-day queues

53. And our food standards will still be fine, as Tory MP Nadhim Zahawi tweeted “Our manifesto was clear. We will not compromise our animal welfare and food standards”

54. He then voted to compromise our animal welfare and food standards, as did the rest of the Tory Party

55. And then govt used an obscure rule to deny MPs a vote on whether to allow chlorinated chicken

56. Meanwhile, 20 years after North Sea Cod became so overfished the WWF declared it “economically extinct”, Tory MPs voted to reduce protections designed to let fish stocks recover

57. So, after Brexit, our current plan is to accept tariffs that will destroy our manufacturing sector, and border delays that will destroy farming exports and imperil food supplies, and destroy the farming sector … all so we can go and catch a fish that doesn’t exist

58. But at least we’ve now “got back control”, and therefore we can level up the playing field by implementing the govt’s landmark “digital tax” policy on giants such as Amazon

59. This week it was announced Amazon will be exempt from the digital tax

60. Speaking of tax exemptions, it was revealed Dominic Cummings has had a £30,000 council tax bill “written off” because he built the house illegally, so it doesn’t count as a real house, or summat. Sorry, my hurricane-force sarcasm briefly turned me more northern.

61. And on the subject of extreme dodgy dealing, let me direct your attention to Robert Jenrick, who set up the £3.6bn “Towns Fund” for the 101 most deprived town, and then gave the maximum grant of £25m to his own constituency, which is the 270th most deprived town

63. His explanation was that he, Jenrick, did not make the decision. It was made by a colleague, Jake Berry.

64. Jake Berry also got money for his constituency. By a dazzling coincidence, that decision was made by – you guessed it – Robert Jenrick

65. Finally: at a meeting led by Liam Fox, the TaxPayers Alliance (insanity-pushers to the Tory Party) advocated cutting pensions immediately because half of old people “won’t be around to vote against you in the next election”, and the other half “will have forgotten by then”

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 20.10.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

#TheWeekInTory returns, and I’m very sorry, but it’s a monster. The little scamps have achieved quite a lot in the – yep – FIVE DAYS – since the last one.

Let’s dive straight in with probably the most gobsmacking sentence you’ll read all year…

1. NHS staff were polled on whether, in recognition of their efforts to fight Covid 19, they would prefer to be given a badge or a snack box

2. It was reported 2 out of every 3 hospices will have to make redundancies. In a pandemic.

3. The govt published a poster: “We plan to cut all homeless people in half by 2025”, which is a bit severe even for Priti Patel

4. The govt insisted we all comply with Test and Trace rules, and then excluded restaurants in the Palace of Westminster from Test and Trace rules

5. In Sept Boris Johnson announced a £100bn “Operation Moonshot” to fix Covid “within months”

6. A month later it was leaked Moonshot was cancelled

7. The next day it was revealed the govt still pays over 200 private consultants up to £7000 per day each to work on Moonshot

8. So 2 days after it was cancelled, it was reinstated, but now Boris Johnson said it will “take time”

9. We’re still giving £100bn to private suppliers for a vaguely rapid thingy to do a hazily defined whatchamacallit that will happen too slowly to produce any useful results

10. In May Boris Johnson reassured a grateful nation that “nobody will go hungry as a result of Coronavirus”

11. He then denied food to the UK’s 600,000 poorest children

12. So Marcus Rashford ran a campaign to get the kids fed

13. Then Boris Johnson congratulated Rashford on the MBE he got for his campaign to overturn the cruel policies of [checks notes] Boris Johnson

14. And then 3 days later, Boris Johnson refused to feed the kids again

15. And then, (because let’s face it, allowing children to starve barely raises an eyebrow any more) the govt won a vote in parliament to prevent child refugees from being reunited with their families, because obviously that’s helpful to … anyone know who that helps? Anyone?

16. But the govt pressed ahead with helping British people to lose weight (by starving them), and it was reported the (obviously) private contract to provide emergency food-parcels is charging £44 for a box that costs just £19 at Aldi. And the govt one contains rotting food.

17. In Sept Boris Johnson said “a free press is vital in holding the government to account”

18. This week, govt scientists reported they are being banned from speaking to the press, due to “the difficult political landscape”, meaning silencing science is a purely political act

19. More media news, and it was revealed that following a long, noisy, mostly Lineker-focussed campaign to cut the wages of BBC staff, the Tories offered to increase the wage of the BBC Director General from £100k to £280k, but only if it could be Boris’s friend Charles Moore

20. In June the govt gave a contract for PPE worth £32m to Pestfix, a sweet warehouse with assets of £18,000. The govt paid 75% upfront, and the delivered materials turned out to be faulty

21. The govt has since awarded 5 additional PPE contracts to Pestfix, worth £313m

22. The govt is now being sued to find out why it’s covertly handing out almost £350m to a crisp warehouse for PPE it has proved it cannot supply, and Pestfix is using the £350m to pay lawyers to stop us finding out why it got £350m in the first place. Still no PPE.

23. And now, the latest update on Mark Francois…

Nope, that’s all I’ve got. Moving on…

24. Boris Johnson announced the new lockdown rules were “simple enough for anybody to understand”

25. He immediately got them wrong, telling the press separated parents could not see their children, convenient for a man who famously only acknowledges 57% of his offspring

26. Anyway, Johnson then said the rules were obviously too complicated, so he would overhaul them. Again

27. He said he’d liaise with local regions, and provide “improved financial support”

28. He then forgot to liaise with local regions, and cut their financial support

29. Boris Johnson said “whatever happens, nobody gets less than 93% of their current income”

30. People get a max 67% of their current income

31. The govt said it would “stop at nothing” to support people in Tier 3 areas

32. The govt stopped at £7.85 per person in Manchester

33. By contrast, Robert Jenrick improperly arranged a £25m gift to his own constituency – £237 per head, 30x as much as Manchester

34. And Boris Johnson paid £100k of public money for “IT advice” from Jennifer Arcuri, who this week admitted they were actually having an affair

35. Anyway, the Mayor of Manchester didn’t ask for such largesse, or even offer to pole-dance for the Prime Minister; he just asked for Manchester to get the same amount of money per person that is being given to Lancashire.

36. Boris Johnson said he “completely understands” why Andy Burnham objects to the settlement

37. And then Boris Johnson stopped understanding, and said Andy Burnham was “playing politics” and therefore he would impose direct rule on the region’s democratically elected Mayor

38. And in further boost to the govt’s support for regions, Daniel Kawczynski, Tory trade envoy to Mongolia and successful brain donor, called for the Welsh Assembly to be scrapped

39. Kawczynski then called for improvements to his local hospital to be scrapped. In a pandemic

40. And then, after many eventful years calling for Britain to leave the EU, and objecting to a (non-existent) plan for an EU Army, Kawczynski, a technically sane man, tweeted that we should “begin the process of creating an alternative EU” that is “predicated on defence”

41. Brexiters insist we can strike great deals around the world, and immediately failed in negotiations with Manchester and Wales

42. Which brings us onto Brexit: and Boris Johnson’s oven-ready deal has skipped the middle-man and gone straight into the toilet

43. This week the PM appeared on TV in the guise of a traumatised Shredded Wheat, and told us all we should get ready for No Deal

44. It was reported Boris Johnson was “startled by the EU insistence” that he sticks to the agreements that he, personally, insisted the EU signed

45. So the PM said we should walk away and have an “Australian-type deal with the EU”

46. It was quickly explained to the PM that Australia doesn’t have a deal with the EU

47. So Boris Johnson, now a master of detail, amended it to Canada-style deal next time he was asked

48. But then it was revealed the Canada/EU deal includes an arbitration mechanism that Boris Johnson has already rejected

49. John Redwood, a Tory MP and Vulcan, insisted all we want from the EU is the same thing Canada gets, such as protection of our fishing industry

50. Canada doesn’t have a fisheries deal with the EU

51. After a dizzying evening chasing reality in circles, it became an Australian-type deal again

52. The business secretary was asked the difference between No Deal and Australian Deal and had to admit: nothing

53. Brexiter Andrew Bridgen said we wouldn’t be limited to trading on WTO rules, we could trade on “WTO plus”, a thing that doesn’t exist

54. The Chairman of the Royal Inst for International Affairs said “it now seems likely that Brexit will lead to the break up of the UK”

55. The head of the CBI and head of the Fed of Small Businesses said the UK is not ready for No Deal

56. Tesco chairman said the UK will have months of food shortages after No Deal

57. British Pharmaceutical Society said there would be shortages of medicines if we have No Deal

58. Even William Shatner – yes, you read that correctly – got involved, explaining that Brexit means smaller overseas businesses importing into the UK have to pay £1000 just to file the forms to register for VAT, and therefore would likely stop trading with us

59. Reassuringly, the govt said it was “determined to continue to seek a deal”

60. And then the govt told the EU not to bother coming to London for more talks

61. And then multiple Tory MPs, each provided with real human brain, tweeted identical suggestions to “sod the EU”

62. Michael Gove, a quasi-sentient almond who last year said “Let no one be in any doubt how difficult and damaging [No deal] would be”, now went on TV and insisted the EU had to “make constructive moves towards a deal”

63. He then said, inside the same 2 minutes at the dispatch box in parliament, that talks had “effectively ended”; and then that the EU had taken the “constructive move” he demanded; and then that as a result, talks could now “intensify”. Wait for it…

64. And then he refused to restart negotiations anyway, cos honestly, what do words even mean any more

65. He claimed in parliament the UK would “do better” without the law enforcement cooperation we get from the EU, which made even Theresa May gasp “utter rubbish”

66. And then Michael Gove said we shouldn’t worry about the 12% unemployment the IFS predicts would be caused by a No Deal Brexit, because we can create lots of new jobs building enough lorry parks to obliterate Kent

67. I’m sure we’ll be fine, because the govt proudly announced a trade deal with Côte d’Ivoire, to which we sell 0.13% as much as we sell to the EU

68. The world-beating Test and Trace service sent hundreds of people to be tested at a testing site in Kent that doesn’t even exist

69. And then the world-beating app that is designed to give accurate information the public can rely on sent a series of incorrect and contradictory risk-level alerts

70. But good news: profits at Serco are expected to jump 18%, which I’m sure is your top priority right now

71. And on the subject of profit, Boris Johnson is rumoured to want to resign in March because his salary is too low. Which means in the middle of a Brexit crisis and a global pandemic, the Tory party will spend months fighting over which Dementor becomes the next leader

72. It’ll be Priti Patel, obviously, because this week she announced she, personally, would tell judges what constitutes “inhuman or degrading treatment” (being an expert) and they should no longer use the globally accepted UN Declaration on Human Rights

73. And now, unexpectedly, an all-bishops finale! The Archbishop of York was denied the traditional peerage on his retirement. I don’t know if you noticed – it’s hardly worth mentioning, really – but he’s the first black Archbishop we’ve ever had

74. The excuse given by the govt was that it “needs to limit the size of the house of Lords”, days after ennobling 36 peers including Boris Johnson’s brother, Ian Botham, and Claire Fox, an unrepentant apologist for IRA terrorism who just happened to support Brexit.

75. Five archbishops appealed to the govt not to breach international law, which seems like a reasonable thing to ask. It’s the law. Don’t break it.

76. Beta-version human and self-styled “Brexit-hardman” Steve Baker said “of course they entitled to these views”

77. And then Steve Baker went on to say if they have the views they’re “entitled to”, they should be thrown out of the house of lords; and the Church of England, which the Queen is head of, should be disestablished. A perfectly sane response to being asked to obey the law.

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 23.10.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

It is 4 days since the last one, and here’s another 69 items.

But as it’s the weekend, let’s start #TheWeekInTory with a frivolous and jolly story about our own govt deliberately starving hundreds of thousands of children…

1. In May, Boris Johnson promised “nobody will go hungry as a result of Coronavirus”

2. He then denied school meals to the 600,000 poorest children

3. So Marcus Rashford ran a campaign to get the govt to feed children, which – just think about that: he had to *campaign* for it

4. Then Boris Johnson congratulated Rashford on his campaign to overturn the cruel policies of, erm, Boris Johnson

5. And then 3 days later, Boris Johnson refused to feed those kids during school holidays

6. So this week Labour organised a parliamentary vote about it

7. And 322 Tories voted against feeding hungry children

8. Vicky Ford, the Children’s Minister (who you’ll be surprised to hear neither looks nor sounds like a ludicrous Dickensian villain) went ahead and voted against feeding children

9. Tory MP Jo Gideon voted against feeding children. Jo Gideon, in case you didn’t think things could get any more unbelievable, is also the chair of “Feeding Britain”, a charity that campaigns to end food poverty and hunger in the UK.

10. Tory MP Paul Scully waved away the grumbling parents of kids with grumbling tummies, and said “children have been going hungry under Labour for years”, seemingly forgetting Tories have been in power for a decade

11. Tory MP Ben Bradley, who once had to apologise for suggesting sterilising the poor, said feeding children will simply “increase their dependency”. On food. Yeah, wean the little bastards off it. It’ll do them good in the end, which will be around 3 agonising weeks.

12. At this point, pause to consider that MPs get their food and drink subsidised. A £31 meal in a parliamentary restaurant costs MPs £3.45. In 2018 this subsidy cost the taxpayer £4.4m. I can’t find any record of Tories like Ben Bradley voting against this.

13. Pressing on: Ben Bradley also said “Some parents prioritise other things ahead of their kids. Small minority, yes… but some do”. Yes, and a small minority of Tory MPs have been arrested for rape. Should we send them all to prison?

14. Also, Mark Francois voted (by proxy) to keep kids hungry. Not related to the previous item. Why would you think that?

15. Tory MP Nicky Morgan said the govt voted to starve 600,000 children cos a Labour MP called a Tory MP scum. And that’s not a scummy thing to do at all.

16. Tory MP David Simmonds said Marcus Rashford’s experience of poverty in secondary school “took place entirely under a Labour government”. Rashford was 11 when Tories came into power, making David Simmonds are rare example of an ad hominem attack on yourself

17. Simmonds then said Labour’s parliamentary vote was “all about currying favour with wealth and power and celebrity status”. He might be right – the govt managed to unify Gary Linaker and Nigel Farage in condemnation of their denial of food to kids

18. Brandan Clark-Smith (who voted to starve kids) demanded “more action to tackle the real causes of child poverty”

19. So at once, the govt cut minimum wage for furloughed people. They now get 2/3 of the money the govt says is the absolute minimum it is possible to survive on

20. And then it was revealed that low-paid workers who have to isolate due to Covid can claim £500. Yay!

21. But if they’re told to isolate by the govt’s contact tracing app, they can’t claim anything. Un-yay.

22. Long story short: the govt cannot spend £120m feeding children. But it can spend £522 on the Eat Out Scheme, which its own report said contributed “negligible amounts” to the hospitality economy, and Boris Johnson admitted drove up infection rates – especially in the North

23. Those infection rates caused the govt to move Manchester into Tier 3

24. So the Mayor of Manchester asked for a £90m support package (1/6th of the money the govt spent causing the problem in the first place)

25. The govt said no, £60m

26. The Mayor said, how about £65m?

27. The govt said no, £60m

28. The Mayor said ok, fine, we’ll take the £60m

29. And then govt offered Manchester £22m, and then went to the press and said the Mayor was “being unreasonable”

30. The negotiations were led by Robert Jenrick, who recently set up a fund for the poorest 101 towns, then awarded his town £25m even though it is the 270th poorest, and therefore not even eligible

31. £25m is £237 per person

32. Manchester gets £7.85 per person

33. Robert Jenrick gave Manchester (2.8 million people) £22m

34. Robert Jenrick gave Richard Desmond (1 person) £45m

35. The talks broke down when the govt wouldn’t spend an extra £5m

36. The govt plans to spend £7m vitally rebranding “Highways England” to “National Highways”

37. Manchester Young Conservatives tweeted “Boris has lied about helping us in the North. It’s time for him to go”. Don’t look – they deleted it. Suspect somebody had a word.

38. Meanwhile the govt said Manchester will get the £60m after all, and chaos continue to reign supreme

39. But that £60m is brief reprieve for the Tories of Manchester, as a govt report said Tory seats in the North of England (the so-called “Red Wall” seats) can expect to lose at least 4000 jobs *each* as a result of Brexit, even if we do get a deal. More if we don’t.

40. The govt rushed to begin its first airport Coronavirus testing, a mere 211 days after mandatory airport testing was begun in South Korea

41. South Korea has had 8 deaths per million

42. The UK has had 665 deaths per million

43. More airport news, as the govt finally accepted Brexit will cause “up to 8-hour delays at passport checks” and asked the EU to allow UK citizens to queue at EU-only lanes. Like we did when we were in the EU. But we aren’t now. So tough.

44. A senior diplomat said, “Having grown up in Brussels, Boris Johnson values the ability to travel freely to the continent”. You’d think Boris Johnson would foresee this problem when he led the campaign to stop that freedom.

45. The independent reviewer of Terrorism Legislation said the UK “will be increasingly unable to cope” after Brexit, as we lose access to EU data-sharing agreements

46. And a No-Deal end to UK/EU scientific collaboration will leave London with a £3bn annual deficit

47. In the space of 38 days, the govt announced the £100bn “Operation Moonshot” to solve Covid; then cancelled it; and then re-launched it again after it was found they’d accidentally continued to pay over 200 private consultants up to £7000 a day to work on it.

48. So this week, Boris Johnson said Moonshot would continue, but it’s goals “would take time”, which is the literal opposite of what he said it would do when it first announced it, and makes the entire thing absolutely pointless

49. And now it’s been admitted that Operation Moonshot would be quietly folded into the existing £12bn Test and Trace programme, and the £100bn has vanished. Apart from the bits the Serco consultants took for doing… nothing.

50. But Boris Johnson said the Test and Trace programme was “helping a bit”, and “a bit” is the least you’d expect if you’d spent £12bn

51. And then the £12bn Test and Trace programme fell to its lowest success rate so far, identifying only 60% of at-risk people

52. Local councils, with no additional funding, are tracing 98% of cases

53. A quick sweep though other epic successes you may have missed (or deliberately blocked out): Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch declared that it should be illegal to teach about inequality

54. The Cabinet Secretary said the report into “vicious and orchestrated” bullying by Home Secretary and Dementor Priti Patel “may never see the light of day”, cos if you have a report that vindicates you, you definitely sit on it as long as possible

55. And the appeals court unanimously overturned Priti Patel’s policy of removing people from the UK without giving them access to legal process or justice because – and I’m paraphrasing the judges here – what the fuck, Patel? What the actual fuck?

56. Undeterred, she announced plans to make rough-sleeping “grounds for removal of permission to be in the UK” and “denial of legal aid”. So if you’re too poor to have a home, you must pay for a lawyer or she’ll shove you in the sea

57. After an unnamed Tory MP said it “looks bad to be handing top jobs to your friend and old boss”, Charles Moore, Boris Johnson’s friend and old boss, withdrew as next BBC chair.

58. The new favourite is Richard Sharp, the – yep – friend and old boss of Rishi Sunak

59. You’ll be amazed to hear this: Richard Sharp is a major donor to the Tory party. These little coincidences keep on happening

60. The govt decided to prevent EU citizens from having physical proof of their right to live in their own home

61. Grant Shapps threatened to “seize control of Transport for London” to save it from financial ruin at the hands of Sadiq Khan, who – the bastard – achieved a mere 71% reduction in the debts caused by his noble predecessor, Boris Johnson

62. Matt Hancock, facts at his fingertips, told MPs from Yorkshire their constituents could go on holiday abroad

63. But not in the UK

64. And then that they CAN go on holiday in the UK

65. But can’t leave Yorkshire

66. He then said “I’ll get back to you” about the details

67. A cross-party report found “the UK’s foreign policy is adrift”, that it lacks “clarity, confidence and vision” and that Britain is “absent from the world stage”. All of which is very soothing, as we move into the govt’s proclaimed goal of a post-Brexit Global Britain.

68. And we can all relax: the govt is finally supporting culture in the UK, specifically the Nevill Holt Opera, which performs private operas, and is owned by Boris Johnson’s friend (and – jaw on floor! – Tory donor) David Ross, who is worth £700m so really needs the money

69. The Nevill Holt Opera only functions in the summer, so thank god it has been prioritised with £85,000 to “maintain operations” in October. And now, in honour of the opera, the fat lady can sing, cos I’m off to drink myself into oblivion. Join me.

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 26.10.2020

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

Amazingly, this is my third #TheWeekInTory in 7 days, and if anybody wants to pay for me to go somewhere comparatively sane and relaxing for a week, I’m up for it.

I hear Mogadishu is nice.

Anyway, buckle up, here we go…

1. Previously on The Week In Tory: the govt campaigned for Brexit so we can “look after our own”, and then immediately voted not to

2. Instead they opted to let up to 900,000 children go hungry during school holidays, including – bless you Santa Johnson – Christmas

3. In July, when the govt lifted the original lockdown, Rishi Sunak, the nicest Tory, tweeted “I can’t wait to get back to the pub”

4. This week he voted to let thousands of kids starve, and as a result was barred for life from his local

5. Ben Bradley, a Tory MP and Al Murray character made of Lego, spent last week appealing for justice and opportunity for “working class white boys who have been left behind”

6. He then voted to deprive them of food

7. Then this stout defender of the working class said food vouchers for poor kids will just end up being used in brothels and crack dens

8. He said he knows kids living in these conditions, and yet, like a true humanitarian, he appears to have done absolutely nothing about it

9. He also overlooks the fact that the vouchers can only be used to buy food, and I’ve yet to find evidence that crack dens commonly set up a tuck shop

10. He then invited his critics to visit “one of the country’s most deprived schools, who’s Head agrees with me”

11. The school’s governors replied to say neither they, nor the Head, agreed with him

12. It’s Monday, and most experts estimate that by Wednesday afternoon, Ben Bradley will have dug himself a hole deep enough to see kangeroos

13. Tory MP Gary Sambrook said it was OK for kids to go hungry during holidays, because they’ve “been benefiting from free school meals during term time”. It will come as a shock to Sambrook to discover humans require food on quite a regular basis

14. Tory peer Baroness Barran went on radio and said Tories had done other things to help poor children, such as extra money for emergency Universal Credit

15. So the govt announced it was reducing emergency Universal Credit by £20 a week

16. Tory MP Selaine Saxby said if businesses help starving kids she “very much hopes they will not be seeking any further govt support”

17. Selaine Saxby consistently votes against measures to reduce tax avoidance, cos avoiding tax is the sort of govt support she’s fine with

18. McDonalds offered 1m free meals over half term, proving to the govt that it is possible for clowns to make moral decisions

19. At a Downing St press conference, the govt repeatedly declined invitations from the media to praise businesses providing meals to hungry children

20. Matt Hancock said local councils had been provided with “a huge amount of extra investment” to feed kids

21. Since 2010, Tories cut funding to local councils by 60%

22. The Tory council in Boris Johnson’s own constituency joined the campaign to give free school meals

23. Matt Hancock, a sentient teaspoon and ever-dependable master of detail, went on radio and said there had been “lines of communication” between Boris Johnson and Marcus Rashford

24. Marcus Rashford said there hadn’t

25. 2000 paediatricians condemned the govt

26. The Children’s Commissioner it was “like something out of the pages of Oliver Twist”

27. An anonymous Tory MP said it was a “political disaster” and he had “never known so many Conservative MPs and council leaders so angry”

28. Senior Tory MP Sir Bernard Jenkin said the govt had “misunderstood the mood of the country”

29. Tobias Ellwood, Tory MP and spine-donor, voted with the govt, but is now openly calling for the policy to change

30. Multiple Tory MPs have predicted a U-turn, which means at least the govt won’t go hungry over the holidays: it’ll have all those lovely words to eat

31. And then, cos they don’t know when to stop, the govt cut the laptop allocation for England’s most deprived schools by 80%

32. In a not-at-all-obvious attempt to distract attention, 112 Tory MPs (98% of whom had just voted to let children starve at Christmas) wrote to Keir Starmer to complain of the “widespread abuse” they received as a result of Angela Rayner calling one of them “scum”

33. They must have been unable to find a pen and paper when there was a 375% increase in Islamophobic incidents after Boris Johnson referred to Muslim women as “letterboxes” and “bank robbers”

34. They were probably having difficulty with a gummed-up biro when Boris Johnson called gay men “bum boys”. or said black people were “picaninnies with watermelon smiles”, or said in parliament that proven death threats against female Labour MPs were “humbug”

35. And perhaps they didn’t have an address for Home Secretary and Thor’s sister Priti Patel after she made an incendiary speech attacking “lefty” immigration lawyers, one of who was stabbed 4 days later by a far-right activist

36. Speaking of witch – tsk, me and my spelling – more than 800 lawyers and judges wrote to the govt demanding an apology from Priti Patel, and saying her “rhetoric and hostility” risks “undermining the rule of law”

37. After demanding local councils “build build build”, Michael Gove personally stepped in the oppose building in his constituency

38. There’s a fine line between spin and outright lies, and that is just one of many lines Michael Gove has caused to disappear

39. The govt confirmed it was going to start charging 20% VAT on PPE. In a pandemic

40. The govt said it would be fine, cos care homes can claim back the VAT

41. But the govt’s own advice says “Care homes … are unlikely to be able to recover any VAT on PPE”

42. Rishi Sunak said he would provide the NHS with “whatever resources it needs” to cope with the pandemic, which is why the NHS is £1bn short of funds needed to pay wages to the end of the year

43. SAGE said Test and Trace, the centrepiece of our Covid strategy, was “having only a marginal impact”

44. Test and Trace system achieved new heroic heights, as it was revealed of 268m records, just 104 cases had been pursued

45. Labour’s NHS IT System was described by Tories as “one of the worse scandals ever in terms of waste of public money”, costing £12bn over 6 years

46. By contrast, the Test and Trace system has spent £12bn in just 4 months and failed to meet a single target set for it

47. Tory MP Bernard Jenkin called for Dido Harding to be sacked

48. Matt Hancock said he had (finally) published the highly critical 2016 report into the UK’s lack of preparedness for a pandemic, which his dept had seen and then done nothing at all to act upon

49. Due to some terrible and entirely unpredictable oversight, the version he published was incomplete and heavily redacted, cos that’s exactly what you’d do if it wasn’t massively embarrassing

50. Only 211 days since South Korea started mandatory test and quarantine at its airports, the UK govt announced plans to do the same

51. Except unlike South Korea we’ll charge people for tests

53. Deaths per million in South Korea: 8

54. Deaths per million in UK: 665

54. It was then reported that Bankers and Hedge Fund Managers would be exempt from quarantine because obviously the virus, a non-living sub-microscopic entity with no brain or nervous system, will figure out how rich you are before deciding whether to infect you

55. Boris Johnson held a meeting with UK business leaders, and urged them to follow the govt’s guidance in preparing for Brexit

56. The govt hasn’t agreed a deal, so has not yet issued final guidance for preparing for Brexit

57. Then it was reported Boris Johnson won’t make a decision about whether to accept a Brexit deal until he finds out if Trump has won the election, because an important part of Taking Back Control is not being able to decide a thing until we find out what Donald is up to

58. Assuming the election happens cleanly (and Trump is involved, so god knows) this leaves businesses just 31 working days to implement a plan for the end of a 41 year period of stability, in the middle of a pandemic that most believe will be at the peak of its second wave

59. But huzzah! the govt announced a deal with Japan that was “even better than the one Japan has with the EU”

60. But whoops! the EU/Japan deal prevents either side from offering better terms to anybody else, and our deal with Japan is 5% of the one we lose with the EU

61. The former ambassador to USA (under both Tory and Labour govts) said the UK’s plans for handling a Joe Biden presidency are “profoundly clumsy and stupid” and that “Number 10 is absolutely clueless” about how to manage a post-Brexit relationship with the USA

62. Between them, the EU and USA account for around 60% of the UK’s total trade, so deliberately losing one, and then accidentally losing another is definitely a reason to be intensely relaxed about the whole thing

63. And that’s why, spurred by their stunning victory over UK trade, a group of Tory MPs led by Steve Baker, a scale model of C3P0 made entirely out of ham, is urging the formation of a “European Research Group for the pandemic”

Gas and air, please. In heroic quantities

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 23.01.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

It’s been a while, but for the masochists amongst you, here’s the return of #TheWeekInTory

1. The PM said he’d done nothing wrong, and had therefore apologised to the Queen for doing it

2. He claimed he hadn’t broken rules because nobody had told him the rules, which he wrote

3. He said he’d have to wait for Sue Gray to tell him whether the gathering of people drinking booze from a suitcase and playing on his swing during a DJ set was a party

4. He claimed it had taken him 25 minutes to realise this might not be a business meeting
Russ Jones

5. Dominic Cummings said he’d “swear under oath” Boris Johnson green-lit parties

6. Dominic Raab said there hadn’t been a party, and he should know, cos the party was in his honour

7. And then Johnson hid in the back of a car, a fridge presumably not being readily available

8. Downing St said it was untrue the PM was warned ahead of the party

9. Reports said Sue Gray had the email warning the PM ahead of the party

10. And Downing St staff told newspapers it was “inconceivable” a party could have happened without Johnson’s approval

11. In no way to change the topic, the govt launched Operation Red Meat, a dazzlingly successful exercise in limited and specific failure, which I present to you in the following sub-thread.

(Hey, you try writing this shit without it getting complicated!)

a. the govt tweeted it was talking to Ghana about making our migrants go there for processing

b. Ghana said this was complete bollocks, and called Johnson’s Operation Red Meat “Operation Dead Meat”

c. The govt deleted their Ghana tweet and pretended it didn’t just happen

d. The govt said it was now entirely safe to lift Covid restrictions

e. Then the govt said we should excuse Johnson’s behaviour – he was distracted because his child was very ill with that “entirely safe” Covid, which your kids must now risk without masks, because FREEDOM

f. Boris Johnson’s emotional comfort turbot, Michael Gove, said he would continue “levelling up the country”

g. Then the levelling-up fund for public transport was cut by 50%

h. So it’s all going terrifically well, but enough Red Meat – back to the main thread…

12. Playdoh nonentity Dominic Raab, said the Tory party was behind Johnson

13. Behind Johnson, David Davis stood up and told him to resign

14. And Christian Wakefield defected to Labour

15. And 5 other Tories are reported to be considering defecting

16. Govt whips were accused of blackmailing MPs into supporting Johnson

17. In a bold challenge to logic, the govt said they wouldn’t look for evidence of this unless they found evidence

18. 12 Tory MPs said it had happened to them

19. No, not that kind of evidence

20. MP Nusrat Ghani said she’d been sacked as a minister because she was told “Muslim women [made her] colleagues feel uncomfortable”

21. Chief Whip Mark Spencer tweeted he never used the words attributed to him

22. They hadn’t been attributed to him

23. He then deleted the tweet

24. Then he had what seemed to be a bit of a breakdown, and wrote the tweet again, this time denying any such event had ever happened

25. Then No10 said they had discussed the thing that didn’t happen with Nusrat Ghani in July

26. It was reported chief whip Mark Spencer spends most of his days inventing dazzlingly clever new insults for his colleagues-

27. The most Wildean examples include:

– Anthony Mangnall = Anthony Wanknall
– Tom Tugendhat = Tom Tugentwat

28. Mark Spencer is 52 years old

29. It was suggested the Chief Whip might not be very good, compared to the previous occupant of the role

30. To put this into context, the previous guy was Gavin Williamson, a supernaturally incompetent lurching tower of wrong wearing the teeth of a starved horse

31. Even so, PMs suggested bringing Williamson back, which means a Staffordshire village will soon need to advertise for a new idiot, but at least we’d have a non-blackmailing Chief Whip

32. It was immediately reported Williamson had also engaged in blackmailing colleagues

33. As part of her ploy to replace Johnson, Liz Truss, ITV4 made flesh, claimed she’d resolve Brexit in a month, a prediction previously made by

– David Davis (2016)
– Theresa May (2017)
– Liam Fox (2018)
– Jacob Rees-Mogg (2019)
– Boris Johnson (2020)
– and Lord Frost (2021)

34. As part of Rishi Sunak’s ploy to replace Johnson, he said he would look after the finances and had “low tax dreams”

35. He then decided not to even bother chasing £4.3 billion of fraudulent Covid claims

36. And he introduced the highest taxes for 28 years

37. And AAAARGH!!

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 27.01.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

I’m rushing out an interim #TheWeekInTory cos… damn

1. The sleaze watchdog said Johnson escaping the sack for his earlier £142k decorating corruption was “bonkers”

2. During that week’s ludicrous scandal, he’d told parliament he’d never even met the wallpaper lady

3. He’d met wallpaper lady during the cause of this week’s ludicrous scandal: his birthday party during lockdown

4. On the day of that shindig, the PM wrote a letter a 7-year-old telling her she was right not to have a birthday party, but still claims he didn’t know the rules

5. Johnson said his bash wasn’t a even party, just 30 pals, singing happy birthday, drinking, breaking all the guidelines, and being ambushed by cakes

6. Anyway, he said only his essential work-bubble had attended

7. “Work-bubbles” never existed. That’s not a thing

8. And that “work-bubble” seemed to include his wife, his favourite interior designer, and a passing make-up artist. And Rishi Sunak

9. Sadly, for the 2938th time, his barber couldn’t make it

10. Yet another former Tory minister breached rules over lobbying and Covid contracts

11. A report found after 12 years and £14 billion of implementation costs, Universal Credit still isn’t fit for purpose

12. Another report found the govt’s Help to Buy scheme to fix the housing crisis wasted £29 billion and made the housing crisis even worse

13. Playmobil chancellor Rishi Sunak wrote off £4.3 billion in fraud

14. So Nadine Dorries, a beef-witted, one-woman riot of idiocy, scrapped funding for kids TV cos we don’t have any money left. Nnng!

15. And the minister for tackling fraud resigned cos there’s too much fraud

13. Playmobil chancellor Rishi Sunak wrote off £4.3 billion in fraud

14. So Nadine Dorries, a beef-witted, one-woman riot of idiocy, scrapped funding for kids TV cos we don’t have any money left. Nnng!

15. And the minister for tackling fraud resigned cos there’s too much fraud

16. Dominic Raab confirmed to journalists that ministers – including the PM – must resign if they break the law or lie to parliament

17. Journalists asked him if that meant Johnson should resign if he was found to have done those things

18. Raab said no, of course not

19. Johnson confirmed the govt would publish all of Sue Gray’s report

20. Raab said they wouldn’t

21. Downing St said they would

22. Johnson said it would just be highlights

23. Downing St said it would be most of it

24. Raab said it might be redacted

25. No 10 said it might just be an executive summary of all their misconduct, because the full report might be too long

26. Yeah mate, I know the feeling.

27. Johnson said publication would be “on the basis previously stated”, which by now could mean literally anything

28. And then the police rocked up

29. So the UK had now reached the stage where our govt was grateful to be facing criminal investigations, cos it gave Johnson an excuse to delay Sue Gray

30. Police said there was no reason to delay Sue Gray

31. The govt said Oh fuck

32. Feral gonad Sajid Javid told Radio4 that Tory inconsistencies were damaging democracy

33. Radio4 asked him if he’d just admitted Tory inconsistencies were damaging democracy

34. He immediately denied he’d said it. Literally the next sentence

35. Then the Tories had to launch an official investigation into their own Islamophobia

36. And, look, I hate to break this to you, but this thread has still only reached TUESDAY

[Crack a bottle or do some primal screaming, and then let’s press on]

37. On Wed Johnson told parliament he hadn’t lied, and we have the fastest growing economy in G7

38. Half the G7 is growing faster than us

39. So that was a lie to parliament about a lie to parliament, to detract from another lie to parliament. The famed bullshit turducken!

40. In December Johnson said it was “absolute nonsense” that he’d intervened to prioritise the evacuation of dogs from Afghanistan over the rescue of humans

41. This week an email showed he’d personally intervened

42. Raab said the email didn’t exist, while reading from it

43. Jacob Rees-Mogg, who looks like somebody made the Microsoft Paperclip stand to attention, said “My experience is very few people lie in public life”

44. In-house Tory jazz-mag The Spectator called JRM “laughable” and the Tory Reform Group called him “irresponsible”

45. But only 3 days into the week, the only ministers still prepared to defend the PM are laughable bassoon JRM, and the exuberantly stupid flapdoodle Nadine Dorries

46. And this week’s really big bag of insane bollocks is still to come

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 28.01.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

3rd #TheWeekInTory of the week. This covers events since Thursday morning

(Yes, you read that correctly)

Let’s go!

1. Liz Truss, a Foreign Secretary we got off Gumtree, blew £500,000 on a private flight to Australia to sign a trade deal that probably makes us poorer

2. That’s enough to buy her 166 of her famed £3000 lunches

3. The most expensive commercial flight that day cost £7000, which is – check my maths – less than half a million quid?

4. And it would have got her there faster

5. Australia’s former PM called Truss “deranged”

6. Her flight landed the day Alok Sharma said the govt was providing “a practical demonstration of honouring our COP26 climate promises”

7. Also, Jacob Rees-Mogg launched more coal mines in what he called “our green and pleasant land”

8. He’s never seen a coal mine, has he?

9. JRM, a cross between a spindly mantis and the concept of gout, said we needed coal to support our “heritage railway” industry

10. So, sure, the planet will die, but at least there will be a fancy ancient steam-train to cart away the corpses

11. Rishi Sunak, the discarded draft of an Aardman sidekick who threw away £4.3 billion last week cos he couldn’t be arsed tackling fraud, is now privately threatening to resign if he can’t raise National Insurance, cos he’s just realised he’s run out of money
… back to the top

12. Johnson said the National Insurance rise was vital to “fix social care”, something he’s assured parliament he has already fixed on – by my count – 27 separate occasions since he was elected. I mean, just in case anyone is looking for examples of him lying to parliament

13. The Defence secretary, discussing airlifting animals out of Kabul, said “at no stage did the prime minister ask me to make a way for those pets. Not at all”

14. An email showed the PM asking to airlift animals out of Kabul

15. The PM denied the email exists

16. It does

17. Dying palm-tree Michael Fabricant said a fellow Tory complaining of Islamophobic abuse didn’t look Muslim enough to abuse*

18. Nadhim Zahawi was revealed to have been “instrumental” in securing millions of allegedly corrupt loans to David Cameron’s billionaire pal

19. Pitch for a TV show where Tory MPs tell ludicrous stories to excuse their greed. It’ll be called I’m-All-Right-Jackanory

20. Priti Patel, Home Secretary and Mouth of Sauron, admitted (yet another) “unlawful and secret policy”, this time stealing phones from migrants

21. Plague update: professional obscurity and extremely amateur Tory MP James Heappey said we were “emerging from the pandemic”

22. We have the highest death toll in Europe

23. Over 600,000 cases, 12,000 hospitalisations, and 2000 deaths this week

24. Regardless, the Tories announced everything is now *awesome*, and lifted all restrictions

25. 300 scientists called this “reckless”, cos Tories were creating a hub for infection with excellent global transport links to 3 billion people who still haven’t been vaccinated

26. On to Partygate, where Tories spent the first half of the week insisting the PM had been ambushed by a cake

27. And then they spent the second half of the week insisting cakes don’t exist

28. Clearly, the quantum state of cakes is a complex issue than needs looking into

29. Sadly, the Met police said they don’t investigate crimes that have already happened

30. When we’d all finished laughing at this, police said there wasn’t enough evidence for an investigation anyway

31. Sue Gray immediately found evidence

32. So the police said there was now TOO MUCH evidence for Sue Gray to report

33. The Met immediately offered to let No 10 partygoers pay fines rather than be interviewed by police

34. Oh, and the fines will not be made public, so nobody’s career will suffer

35. Not asking any questions and keeping all punishments secret makes me VERY confident they’ll get to the bottom of things

36. Incidentally, Sajid Javid’s brother is Dep Assistant Commissioner of the Met Police

37. There is, however, some good news: Dry January is over

The Week in Tory – Posted 31.01.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

#SueGrey is imminent, so I’ll do a quick #TheWeekInTory for the stuff that will be drowned out

1. The Tories celebrated 2nd anniversary of Brexit, which costs us £800m a week

2. The Tories then celebrated a huge new trade deal with Greenland, which makes us £6m a year

3. Startled haddock Michael Gove asked for “Christian forgiveness” over Johnson running a frat-house in 10 Downing Street

4. This was the latest in a series of excuses, which I will now remind you of in a sub-thread

—
a. No party happened

b. It happened but wasn’t a party

c. It was a party but wasn’t organised

d. It was organised by nobody told me it broke rules

e. It broke rules but I didn’t know the rules

f. OK fine, I wrote those rules, but I thought it was a business meeting

g. After 25 minutes watching people drink from a suitcase, play on swings, and do a DJ did a set, I worked out it might not be a business meeting

h. I didn’t kill the stripper [OK, I made that up, but would it shock you?]

i. I’ve done nothing wrong

j. I have apologised to the Queen for “doing nothing wrong”

k. I have also apologised to parliament for “doing nothing wrong”

l. This is disproportionate

m. I am a big dog who dominates his party

n. Quick, everybody shout a stupid policy, cos I need saving

o. My child was poorly with Covid, now take your fucking mask off in school, it’s safe

p. My wife made me do it

q. WAR WAR WAR
—

5. Anyway, Brave Sir Boris is NOT running away, simply flying to Ukraine so he can [checks notes] make a phone call to Putin

6. Liz Truss, Maggie Thatcher from Elizabeth Duke, announced sanctions hitting Kremlin money in UK companies

7. Sanctions will not hit Kremlin money in the Tory Party

8. US officials expressed “dismay and frustration” at Russian money still “entrenched” in our governing party

9. So that’s this year’s (first) embarrassing foreign disaster dealt with – now onto last year’s embarrassing foreign disaster: Afghanistan

10. A report found the PM’s chief of staff skipped tackling the withdrawal from Kabul cos he wanted to go and watch the cricket

11. Johnson insisted he hadn’t authorised saving pets instead of humans from Kabul

12. Emails showed he had

13. So now the govt says officials often write the PMs instructions for him, while the PM has no idea what’s going on

14. Is it bad that I find that slightly reassuring?

15. Stoned halibut Michael Gove announced a new £1.5 bn “levelling up” fund, which amounts to £3 per person per week. We’re rich!

16. Except it’s not new money, so actually amounts to £0

17. 2m “red wall” households expecting to level up will be the worst hit by Tory tax rises

18. Tories announced a multimillion £ cut of all the “Brexit red tape” they had promised would never happen

19. 4 months ago they spent £335 million to fund red tape Brexit caused in Northern Ireland, which they are now cancelling

20. But they can’t cancel it, cos it’s EU rules

21. Tories wasted £2.7 billion ordering PPE that didn’t work and got a warning for “extreme negligence on an industrial scale”

22. 20% of govt Covid contracts in 2020/21 raised a “red flag” for corruption using internationally recognized standards

23. Bewitched trellis Theresa May said “nobody is above the law”. Sure

24. The Met dropped corruption charges against Johnson, a one-man game of shag, marry, avoid, for lack of evidence over Jennifer Arcuri

25. Arcuri then released 100 pages of evidence police didn’t look for

26. The Met division where Sajid Javid’s brother is a senior officer told Sue Gray her report into parties could **not mention parties**

27. Rishi Sunak told the UK’s National Crime Agency to “butt out” of investigating Covid fraud

28. And researchers found the Johnson administration “more corrupt than any UK govt” since the study began in 1945

29. So that’s nobody being above the law, is it?

30. Plague update: last week the govt cancelled masks in schools to get Johnson out of trouble for 15 minutes

31. Infections soared, and now 415,000 kids are off sick with Covid

32. So a week later, masks are back in schools and Johnson is still in trouble

33. Only 3 months after its vaccine policy drove 40,000 workers out of care homes, the govt did a U-turn on vaccines

34. It then changed Universal Credit rules to force people to go and work, ideally in care homes

35. And MI5 were asked to investigate “security risk” Boris Johnson after it was found he often left top secret papers “lying around his flat” during his illegal parties

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 01.02.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

As you can imagine, the latest #TheWeekInTory is quite long, and I strongly recommend consuming heroic doses of whatever sedative, alcohol or narcotic gets you through this. The war on drugs is temporarily suspended.

Light up, let’s get stuck in…

1. Our PM, Sir Plankton Churchill, cancelled a call to Putin so he could go to parliament and tell them he must focus on phoning Putin

2. Theresa May, a tin seabird that’s swallowed a kazoo, asked Johnson whether he was too thick to understand the rules, or too corrupt to care

3. Andrew Mitchell became the 2nd long-term Johnson supporter to tell him to go and spend more time with his family. Or somebody else’s. Boris isn’t picky.

4. Because Johnson had quite obviously lied to parliament, he covered up by [checks notes] lying to parliament some more

5. Johnson said he’d got “all the big calls right”. Oh, is that right pal?

6. An Imperial College study says his delayed first lockdown cost 20,000 lives

7. It found he prioritised 2020 Christmas over public safety, and as a result 80,000 more people died by Feb 2021

8. Johnson accused Labour frontbenchers of having a drug problem, seemingly forgetting he works with shite in sheep’s clothing Michael Gove

9. He accused Starmer of letting off Jimmy Savile, which is a lie so big even the speaker rebuked Johnson – albeit 24 hours too late

10. Johnson claimed we had the fastest growing economy in G7: we’re 6th

11. He said crime was down 14%: it’s up 14%

12. He said he’d “got Brexit done”, just before the constitutionally slack-brained Liz Truss headed off to continue negotiating the supposedly “done” Brexit

13. Truss promised Brexit will all be sorted in a month

14. She had also promised that in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021

15. Truss was given a direct quote from the Sue Gray report, and refused to discuss it because “I won’t comment on hypotheticals”

16. Truss also sat unmasked for an hour next to the entire cabinet in parliament, and then told them she had Covid

17. She was sat immediately next to Priti Patel, Miss Trunchbull in larval form, and I don’t fancy Truss’s chances if “Razors” Patel gets poorly cos of this

18. Straight after that, Johnson piled into a room with 365 Tories and a few trillion Covid particles, to tell maskless MPs he takes the pandemic seriously

19. He reassured MPs his old campaigner Lynton Crosby was coming back to fix shit

20. Crosby said he’s not taking the job

23. 2/3 of voters want Johnson to resign

24. 83% think he broke rules

25. 75% think he’s a liar

26. Presumably Tory MPs think this is all just fine and dandy, cos they still haven’t ousted him

27. Not all though: Angela Richardson, aide to Michael Gove, resigned in disgust

28. Tory MP Peter Aldous called on the PM to resign

29. Tory MP Tom Hunt said Johnson’s story is not “acceptable, excusable or defensible”

30. Other Tory MP quotes:

31. The entire party “is fucking deluded”

32. “Boris still things this is all a game”

33. Johnson is “a bastard [who will] do anything to wriggle off the hook”

34. “I have to say, isn’t the PM just fucking awful?”

35. “He’s dead, we’re just waiting for the coroner”

36. “I am currently in Europe and can report the PM is turning our country into a laughingstock”

37. Sue Gray said there was a culture of excessive drinking in Downing St

38. Oliver Dowden, Tory Chairman and adenoidal Morph cosplayer, said the PM is “committed to tacking the underlying culture” of everybody getting pissed whilst driving a country

39. Johnson is on record saying “I drink an awful lot at lunch”

40. Gavin Barwell said drinking didn’t happen under Cameron or May, so the “underlying culture” is basically Johnson

41. So an whole new govt dept is being formed to try to stop the PM getting pissed and fucking up

42. Other news: Michael Gove’s forthcoming epoch-making “Levelling Up” policy promises less money than Tories have cut *just since 2020*

43. His other main idea – and I use that word quite wrongly – is that people from poor areas should not to move to London to find better jobs

44. You have to get 200 pages into the Dept of Health annual report before you find where they hid the fact they’d wasted £8.7 bn of their £12 bn PPE orders

45.That’s the same as a stack of £10 notes 60 miles high, maths fans

46. And they published a 100-page booklet on the benefits of Brexit

47. It says we can now create freeports, which we could before Brexit

48. It says we can now cut plastic bags, which we could before Brexit

49. It says we can now add crown marks to pint glasses, which we could before Brexit

50. And it says we can have blue passports, which we could before Brexit

51. And that’s it. For £800 million a week.

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 04.02.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

#TheWeekInTory is my 3rd this week, but feels like my 30th. And it probs won’t be the last.

1. Operation Save Big Dog reached the “eating his own faeces in the garden” stage, as his aides “strongly advised” Johnson not to lie about Starmer and Savile, then he did it anyway

2. He said he had nothing to apologise for, and raising Savile was “the right thing to do”

3. His aides threatened to resign if he didn’t apologise

4. Instead of apologising, he said everyone had misunderstood him, cos yeah Boris, WE’RE the problem here

5. Johnson’s sentient comfort blanket Michael Gove said it was a “slip of the tongue under pressure”, even though Johnson had rehearsed it in front of advisors before PMQ

6. Munira Mirza resigned. She was described as “Boris Johnson’s brain”, so thankfully we haven’t lost much

7. Johnson said he was “very sad she’s decided to leave”

8. He then claimed her leaving was his grand plan all along

9. His comms manager said “We’re very sorry Munira has decided to leave No 10”

10. And then his comms manager immediately quit too

11. Then 3 other aides quit

12. So Johnson compared himself to a lunatic monkey from the Lion King *on purpose*

13. And then a flange of spineless Tories started claiming Johnson forced resignations cos of his aides’ roles in parties

14. Two of them hadn’t even been aides when the parties happened

15. Rubik’s gobshite Dominic Raab said lying to parliament about paedophilia was “the normal cut and thrust” of politics

16. And bestial antique dildo Jacob Rees-Mogg said the real problem in public life wasn’t the PM lying, but people “doubting the PM’s faith and honesty”

17. And then, having lost all his chief advisors, offended every one of Savile’s victims, been bollocked by the Speaker, called himself a gibbering ape, and forced most of his venal backbenchers to lie for him, Johnson tried to withdraw his remarks about Starmer anyway

18. After which, seemingly still in the dark about, yknow … reality… James Cleverly, a dazzlingly effective one-man campaign to disprove nominative determinism, went on radio to still defend the Savile claims

19. Major Tory figures: “What a shitshow”

20. “It’s Armageddon”

21. “Johnson and his Poundland cabinet. You think it can’t get more ridiculous, and somehow he seems to make it worse”

22. “The problem isn’t just Boris. The problem is the party that chose him. They’ll want Liz Truss next, not a frightfully good idea, to put it mildly”

23. So Johnson, a punctured bin-bag full of custard and Viagra, claimed Lynton Crosby was coming back to run No 10

24. This was a surprise to not only Crosby, but to No 10, who’d had no warning

25. Crosby said he’d answer the phone if Johnson called, but wouldn’t work for him

26. More than a dozen Tory MPs have called for him to go, which means over 300 of the shit-spackled goons still think this is all fine

27. Moving on: now we’re free from the stranglehold of the evil EU, energy prices rose 54%

28. In EU-dominated France they rose 4%

29. Rishi Sunak, a YTS kid who boasted he knew how to defuse a bomb and now has to style it out, said he had to raise energy prices

31. In UK, Shell made a 14-fold increase in profits and paid rich shareholders $8bn

30. France taxed oil profits rather than put up prices

32. Sunak couldn’t be arsed to chase a piddling £5 bn just last week

33. But he generously gave every household a £200 “rebate”

34. Except it’s not rebate, it’s a loan – basically bribing poor voters with their own money while Shell pays itself billions to destroy the planet

35. And Sunak simultaneously cost every household £2,875

36. The Bank of England predicted inflation will reach 7%

37. So ministers told people not to ask for pay rises

38. Then the *next day* ministers told off the Bank of England for urging people not to ask for pay rises

39. GDP forecasts were slashed for the 11th year in 12 years of Tory rule

40. And Uncle Fester cosplayer Therese Coffey won’t release a report into lives of low-income people cos “it is necessary to protect the private space” of ministers who’d be affected by negative coverage

41. Brexit news: and once again our national experiment with the bounds of sanity broke international law in NI

42. Liz Truss said she’d have it all resolved in a month

43. Boris Johnson secretly told the DUP there was a less than 30% chance of it *ever* being resolved

44. The Stormont leader resigned in protest, imperilling the entire shared NI govt

45. Johnson said the NI protocol was “crazy”

46. Johnson had personally negotiated it, signed it, and forced it through Parliament without scrutiny, having already cancelled our democracy once

47. Meanwhile chaos at channel ports continues, with emergency traffic measures being triggered 11x more this year than has ever happened since records began

48. Jacked-up Pob doll Michael Gove published his long-awaited “Levelling Up” plans to help poor regions

49. It gives wealthy areas 10 x more funding than poor regions

50. Much of his plan was copied directly from Wikipedia

51. The rest was copied directly from Theresa May’s 2017 regeneration plan, which failed completely

52. The IFS said Gove’s masterplan was “unlikely to work”

53. The CBI chairman said “it is simply not good enough”

54. And in total, it provides less money than the Tories have cut from poor areas in the last 2 years alone, and which themselves were on the back of 10 years of record-breaking austerity. Happy Levelling Up, Red Wallers!

55. So these economic masterminds have given us the worst collapse in household incomes for 30 years … which was last time they were in charge

56. Theresa May, who cut arts funding by 50%, wrote to her local council to complain about them closing local arts facilities

57. And the official statistics authority reprimanded Johnson and Rosa Klebb tribute act Priti Patel for lying about a 14% fall in crime, cos it’s actually gone up by 14%

58. This is all in just two days. Two. Two fucking days.

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 08.02.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

Prepare to be pissed off by #TheWeekInTory (since Saturday)

1. Spoof minister and literal mad woman in the attic Nadine Dorries agreed to an interview without understanding what “interview” means

2. She appeared next to her wall of bookshelves, which contained no books

3. And then she claimed the internet is 10 years old

4. Please note: the book-free, tottering technophobic abomination who seems incapable of sane media appearances is also our Minister for Culture, Digital and Media, and the reason the gene-pool needs a lifeguard

5. Liz Truss went to the aide of “Baltic allies across the Black Sea”, 2 different places 700 miles apart

6. Tasked with preventing war with Russia, Truss instead to provoked war with China over the Falklands, like a cartoon Thatcher so thick you could stand a spoon up in her

7. Meanwhile that spoon, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the ethical anti-abortionist who makes money flogging abortion pills, spread disinformation about contraception

8. Chris Phelps, minister for tackling disinformation, refused to correct that, or Johnson’s disinformation about Savile

9. And then a mob attacked the leader of the opposition over Johnson’s Savile slur

10. The PM, a horny Honey Monster in a suit he’s borrowed for a tribunal, refused to withdraw the remarks

11. It’s 4 months since an MP was stabbed to death by a fanatic spouting disinformation

12. Deflated scrotum Peter Lilley said “both sides should apologise”, seeming to think there was equal blame attached to the liars who deliberately kickstarted a riot of violent fanatics; and innocent people who as a result get death-threats from a baying mob

13. At least we have honest Rishi Sunak, who is having a go at being Chancellor during his gap year, and claimed we were seeing 54% energy price increases (compared with 4% in France) because we’d had a “colder than usual winter”

14. It was one of the warmest on record

15. Jacob Rees-Mogg, Napoleon Dynamite cosplaying a Regency abattoir-creeper, was put in charge of delivering all the advantages of Brexit

16. He has previously told us there won’t be any advantages to Brexit for half a century, so let’s see how he does

17. I’m not suggesting Johnson won’t last that long, but his new PR chief Guto Harri is so committed to the PM’s long-term survival that he’s said he’s going back to his old job in 6 months max

18. Harri had previously called Johnson “hugely divisive” and “sexually incontinent”

19. In response, Johnson threatened to report Harri to the police for blackmail. Pals then?

20. Harri is responsible for making the PM look good, and in a sign of his professionalism got off to a simply marvellous start by reassuring us Johnson “is not a complete clown”

21. BoJo then began Harri’s tenure by performing a rendition of some of his favourite disco classics. No, really.

22. They ruined ABBA, and now it’s Gloria Gaynor’s turn

23. Also joining the circus, Steve Barclay, a man so devoid of personality his DNA profile says “404 error”

24. You will have forgotten Steve Barclay exists by the time you’ve finished this sentence

25. This is also true if you are Steve Barclay

26. Barclay is now PM’s full-time Chief of Staff, as well as holding 2 other govt positions, which presumably aren’t now being done at all

27. Another of Barclay’s proliferation of new jobs is “Levelling up”, which is also apparently being done by beached mudskipper Michael Gove

28. So we have 2 ministers for something that we all know isn’t gonna happen, and no ministers for things that should

29.When asked to tell MPs how the hell this is gonna work, Barclay didn’t even turn up. Or maybe he did, and people just assumed he was the curtains.

30. He’s so committed to levelling up wages for the poor that this week the govt told the poor not ask for better wages

31. And the head of the Levelling Up taskforce said he wants Britain to become “like Renaissance Florence”, a place where the richest 3 families had 70% of the wealth, slavery was normal, and there were annual riots over bread shortages

32.Which brings us to Brexit, and shattered supply chains pushed up food prices so much there’s been an 11% increase in foodbank use since Jan 1

33.Scientists found PartyGate had “undermined trust in govt advice” and stalled the booster programme for 5 mil unvaccinated people

34. So Typhoid Liz Truss rocked up unmasked in parliament and gave half the cabinet Covid

35. And it’s reported Boris Johnson has begun “exploring opportunities” on the US lecture circuit for $250k per speech, cos ruining a country doesn’t mean you can’t make a pile of cash

36. Minor stories from our newly grown-up and serious govt: a Tory backer demanded repayment of £200,000 donations because he hadn’t been given his promised magic show from ex-minister and minor Addams Family character Penny Mordaunt. No, really.

37. The govt wants to use “Brexit freedoms” to reduce safety regulations in cars, which I’m sure is exactly what you voted for

38. Scientists urged MPs to move to “incredibly cheap” renewable energy to prevent spiralling costs as the world squabbles over the last carbon fuels

39. Instead, Rishi Sunak put all the costs on you, and urged “emergency investment in North Sea gas” while Shell paid out billions in profits to shareholders

40. It is 3 months since COP26, when the Tories said “we owe it to our children to deliver on our climate promises”

41. So Boris Johnson took a private jet to Blackpool for 2 hours

42. And Michael Gove was back again, meaning 2 things: shit was about to get much much worse; and somewhere in Surrey a park suddenly felt a lot safer

43. Gove was found to have closed multiple Birmingham schools at a cost of millions over an imaginary “Islamic plot”, which he had based on one unsubstantiated photocopy of an anonymous letter that turned out to be evidence-free racist bollocks

44. Sajid Javid, a child’s drawing of pure greed superimposed onto a competitively evil snooker ball, said his plans for cutting NHS waiting lists were so good that NHS waiting lists would continue to grow for years

45. And then Boris Johnson proudly announced bold and ambitious new targets for cancer treatment

46. They’re exactly the same as the existing targets, which the Tories haven’t met since 2015

47. And finally, the govt condemned Jimmy Carr’s joke about the Roma community, which it mostly hated because it had interrupted the govt while it was passing multiple pieces of legislation to suppress the Roma community

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 11.02.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

I would hate to ruin your weekend, so let’s do #TheWeekInTory now, and get it over with.

Events since Tues

1. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the haunting end-product of The Child Catcher having hate-sex with a pendulum, was made “Minister for Brexit Opportunities”

2. It is 10,388 days since UKIP began the Leave campaign, so Brexit mastermind Rees-Mogg’s first move was to ask people who read The Sun to tell him what the hell any of it meant

3. The Public Accounts Committee found the only effect of Brexit was severe damage to UK trade

4. The Committee had told Tories for 4 years solid to sort out infrastructure at ports thrown into chaos by Brexit, but they’d done fuck all

5. Top Brexiteer Natalie Elphicke said port chaos is DEFINITELY NOT CAUSED BY BREXIT, merely caused by all the things Brexit had done

6. Boris Johnson, an abandoned candyfloss who does Prime Minister impressions, appointed unquestioning apparatchik Mark Spencer to be Leader of the House

7. Spencer is under fire after he allegedly sacked someone cos her “Muslimness” was upsetting fellow ministers

8. In a bizarre spasm, Spencer had voluntarily outed himself as being responsible for this

9. Then he’d deleted the tweet

10. Then he apparently underwent some sort of temporary mental aberration, and wrote exactly the same tweet again

11. Then he denied it was him

12. Now Spencer says “people in the real world” (which he sometimes visits) don’t care about partygate

13. 83% of people said they cared A LOT about partygate

14. John Major said Johnson was a “distinctly shifty” threat to democracy and should resign

15. So Guto Harri, Johnson’s effortlessly terrible new Comms chief, retweeted somebody agreeing with this notion

16. And then he deleted that tweet

17. And then the blathering shambles updated his Twitter bio to plead that he shouldn’t be held responsible for what he says

18. Britain’s first surviving heart, brain and ethics donor, Lucy Allan, said Major wanting Johnson to quit was “subverting democracy”

19. In 2019 Allan had demanded May quit

20. And only last month Allan said Johnson’s position was “terminal”

21. Off to 8-bit culture minister Nadine Dorries, who was happy for Johnson to lie, be corrupt, dissolve democracy, break international law, and be found guilty of crimes by the Met, but “if he kicked a dog I’d probably withdraw support”

22. Has anyone seen Dilyn recently?

23. Dorries then removed restrictions on Murdoch’s interference with the editorial independence of newspapers, which bodes well for democracy

24. Rishi Sunak boasted of his ongoing economic success

25. A report found his plans will push 1 million households into destitution

26. Sajid Javid, an Obscurial crammed inside a suit and forced to work in an office whilst plotting your destruction, pledged 15,000 new health workers

27. Brexit alone cost the UK 26,000 NHS workers

28. And there are 52,000 NHS staff off sick with Covid

29. And 1 in 7 NHS staff plan to quit, citing pay and conditions as the main reason

30. So naturally, Javid promised no improvements in pay or conditions

31. Meanwhile 200,000 new people are infected every day, and Covid deaths are up 43% from last week

32. So Johnson said he’d scrap Covid rules a month earlier than the most optimistic estimates allowed

33. He didn’t even discuss this decision with scientists

34. A SAGE member said “this is pure politics, not science”

35. Chris Witty was “blindsided” by the announcement

36. Gillian Keegan, health minister, knowingly held a face-to-face meeting while positive for Covid

37. The Met, now under new – I’m gonna use the word “leadership” in the absence of anything better – is considering reopening enquiries into Johnson’s refurb and Tory blackmail

38. Kwasi Kwarteng said fraud wasn’t an everyday experience

39. Fraud is up 36%

40. And Rishi Sunak wrote of £4.3 billion lost to fraud in a single year

41. North Korean wannabe Nadhim Zahawi suggested students should be officially banned from criticising Boris Johnson

42. Just as Johnson was telling parliament his partygate crisis was over, a new photo emerged

43. It showed Johnson with tinsel, Santa hats and open bottles of champagne 2 days after he’d told the public “I can tell you once again that I certainly broke no rules”

44. He told MPs the Met has already seen that photo

45. The Met said they hadn’t

46. They both talk bollocks, so either could be true

47. Anyway, that’s yet another “work meeting” being investigated by police

48. More than 50 are now being investigated

49. Liz Truss, a foreign secretary you’d expect to get free with a HappyMeal, told MPs the “toughest sanctions” against Moscow would be in place by 10 Feb

50. On 11th she flew off to terrify Moscow with those sanctions, having unfortunately neglected to put sanctions in place

51. Moscow, for some reason unterrified by the clumbidextrous doofus Truss, said speaking to her was “like talking to a deaf person”

52. Her diplomatic mission was so good, reports described her as “throwing insults” and “accusing people of not listening”

53. ITV reported “if anything, the situation is now worse than before she arrived, which is an achievement in itself”

54. Russia then walked out of a press conference Truss had arranged to tell everybody how well her negotiations were going

55. And then, to demonstrate how mighty Britain can be when not held back by the evil EU, Machiavellian genius Boris Johnson went on TV to *publicly announce* his top-secret plan for outwitting Putin

56. All since Tuesday. Haven’t the little scamps been busy!

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 17.02.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

The UK faces 5 crises: Brexit, Covid, Economy, Ukraine, and the PM’s belief that all business meetings should involve a glitterball.

Let’s dive into #TheWeekInTory

1. Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nosferatu trying to fit in at a Bible Study Meeting, declared Brexit was “already a success”

2. Exports to the EU fell 14% – that’s £20 billion lost

3. Rees-Mogg then promised he would soon cut all the red tape he’d just spent 20 years campaigning to create. He just needed Sun Readers to inform him how to do it, and then all would be well

4. Same day: Nathalie Elphicke, who is so dense no light can escape her, boasted that the main benefit of Brexit was new jobs created by all the red tape she pledged to immediately destroy

5. That extra red tape increased the cost of essential food imports by up to 60%

6. Unsurprisingly, this helped push inflation to its highest level for 30 years

7. So the PM boasted to MPs that jobs are up

8. The official stats watchdog said jobs are down 600k, and warned the PM to stop lying to parliament

9. So instead, he repeated his jobs lie on Twitter

10. Govt scientific advisors told the PM not to end free Covid testing

11. So we’re ending free Covid testing

12. Half the PPE from “VIP” companies connected to leading Tories wasn’t used

13. But on the bright side, companies connected to leading Tories got £1.7 billion

14. Meanwhile a much-lauded £200m vaccine factory was put on sale having failed to produce a single dose

15. At least that money might help with the cost of trundling horcrux Priti Patel’s exciting new idea, which will add £2.7 bn to the cost of asylum seekers and will fail

17. So Patel appointed the man behind Australia’s asylum plan to fix her shit

18. Australia’s asylum plan is described as “inhumane”, “degrading” and “a failure”

19. Meanwhile 4000 Afghans we took last year are still in B&Bs, cos the govt isn’t competent enough to help them

20. This might be cos they’re too focused on getting Netto Foreign Secretary Liz Truss’s official photographer to take 5 publicly funded portraits of her EVERY DAY

21. Since taking office, she’s had a new official portrait taken every 5 hours, including 5 a day in Russia

22. So while the Foreign Secretary was more focused on her Instagram game than preventing WW3, we sent Defence Secretary Ben Wallace to de-escalate regional tensions and escalating military build-up

23. He did this by selling arms to Ukraine

24. And then (cos we’re now a mighty, independent and dominant world power again) Russian officials told Wallace there was “close to zero” point in him even being there, and abandoned his meeting to attend one with an EU delegate instead

25. The govt said they’d put pressure on Russia by cracking down on money laundering

26. The govt had “leant on” a Tory minister to drop plans ending Russian money laundering via London in 2017, so the scheme was scrapped

27. Putin must be shitting himself. Well, pissing.

28. Meanwhile another stunning success by Truss, who was making good on her assurance she would resolve the NI Brexit border problem by the end of Feb

29. Pro-Brexit MPs described her performance as “a disaster”

30. NI politicians said there was “very little progress”

31. And even Boris Johnson said there was less than 30% chance of it ever – ever – being resolved

32. Sadly the PM was still reeling from his realisation it might not have been a good idea to employ an official photographer to take a snap every time he breaks the law

33. So we moved from “there wasn’t a party” to “I only danced to ABBA for 10 minutes, and then I had to leave to make a phone call to the Queen”

34. Speaking of whom, the PM is now briefing that he did nothing wrong, which must be while he called the Palace to apologise for it

35. The govt, which had promised to release all details of reports into parties, formally asked the police to hide the 300 worst photos of parties

36. So now the govt is being taken to court to force publication of the full report it already promised parliament it would release

37. Also in court this week, Matt Hancock, PeeWee Herman reflected in the back of a spoon, who was found to have acted illegally in appointing his £37bn pal Dido Harding

38. Hancock claimed on twitter the court had found him innocent

39. The court had found him guilty

40. Brexit hard-man Steve Baker’s constituents set up a movement to stop their futures being destroyed by their own MP, a maniac who approaches life with the ever-so-pleased air of someone desperate to be asked if he’s finished his Rubik’s Cube yet

41. Permanent backbencher and top-flight word-understander Mark Jenkinson railed against a tweet he said demonstrated the “rank misogyny of the left wing towards Priti Patel”

42. The tweet didn’t mention Priti Patel

43. Or, for that matter, any women at all

44. Boris Johnson laughed on live TV when told Keir Starmer had received death threats over the PM’s Jimmy Savile bullshit

45. Actual Bishops emerged to say Johnson should “feel ashamed” over the slur, and called govt lies “rancid and dangerous”

46. Even whispering abomination Iain Duncan Smith suggested Johnson can’t cling to power any more

47. And police had to warn No 10 they’d face criminal charges if it was found they cheated on their questionnaire about the previous set of criminal charges they were facing

48. You might think this is a shit-show, but Tory Chairman Oliver Dowden, who seems to be Scooter the Muppet after an unexpected flash-fire, said the main problem with British society was people that people weren’t OK about rampant prejudice any more

49. And then Dowden courageously said he would make needless prejudice OK again by engaging in a “vigorous defence of the values of a free society”, whilst in the background his govt tried to outlaw the right of anybody to protest against them

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 23.02.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

#TheWeekInTory

1. Jacob Rees-Mogg, Minister for Brexit Opportunities and a posturing Regency undertaker, had a busy old week

2. He said “Britain should unilaterally accept other countries’ regulations”, a subtle shift from his earlier “regaining our independence” work

3. Then he said there was “no point” in testing produce imported into Britain

4. No 10 said they would definitely not scrap the testing of imports

5. Whitehall insiders were quoted: “Oh, it’ll just be Rees-Mogg not knowing what he’s talking about again”

6. And then JRM launched a study on the “economic benefits” of reintroducing imperial units, which are: zero

7. Regardless, he espoused our “ancient freedom” to work out how many thrupnies are in a florin before we can buy a scruple of rice. Assuming we import rice any more

8. Brexit cost UK firms had a record £4.5 billion of customs fees (in imperial money), which beat the previous record by 64%. World-beating stuff!

9. Farmers said the govt “shows a total lack of understanding of how food production works” as Brexit destroys their industry

10. We just culled 40,000 healthy pigs because we haven’t got enough staff to care for them or prepare them for the table

11. 200,000 more pigs face the same fate – almost quarter of a million animals thrown in a bin

12. All while we have 2.5 million people using foodbanks

14. Meanwhile Tories got £3m from 6 donors, each of whom – amazing coincidence – were subsequently appointed to top public jobs

15. And an “advisory board” has been formed to meet secretly with the PM, but you have to donate £250,000 to the Tories to join it, because democracy

16. Our last Minister for Corruption resigned at the dispatch box because there was too much corruption for him to cope with it

17. Randy dust-bunny Boris Johnson didn’t bother to replace him, so now we no longer have a Minister for Corruption. Well, plenty for. None against

18. 6th worst plague in human history news: and health experts said it would be “very unwise” to scrap self-isolation

19. So we scrapped self-isolation

20. Johnson declared “we are in a different world”

21. His scientific advisors were asked if they agreed. They all said no

22. Health experts said “It is reckless. It has no public health rationale” when asked if we should scrap free testing

23. We scrapped free testing

24. A govt advisor (non-paying variety) said: “This is against scientific advice, and against what the WHO, BMA, RCN, NHS advise”

25. BMA said this is “premature”, “incredibly concerning” and “completely illogical”

26. Johnson said he was “in favour of encouraging personal responsibility”

27. He was asked if he would take personal responsibility if found to have broken the law

28. He refused to answer

29. He’s now the first sitting PM in history to be interviewed by police under caution

30. The govt said it can’t afford to provide primary schools with air filters to keep kids safe

31. Then the govt spent £12 million to send a picture of the Queen to every primary school

32. More education: and they launched a plan to scrap tuition loans for poorer students, making it impossible for them to attend university

33. And as part of our a low-carbon plan, the govt is cutting funding for public transport that will mean the end of 1/3 of bus services

34. Having assured us construction companies would definitely pay to replace Grenfell-style flammable cladding, Boris Johnson’s emotional comfort turbot Michael Gove now says the taxpayer will fund the £9bn cost

35. 20% of Tory donations come from the construction industry

36. Playdoh minister for shouting at his own demons Dominic Raab proudly announced terrorists would now face polygraph tests

37. “Most psychologists agree that there is little evidence that polygraph tests can accurately detect lies” – American Psychological Association

38. WW3 news: and the EU sanctioned 350 Russian politicians

39. Meanwhile Tories sanctioned 3 Russians, all of whom have been on the US sanctions list since 2018

40. When BBC asked an expert in Russian politics if UK sanctions would work, he gave a one-word answer: “No”

41. Detail-centric dynamo Boris Johnson told parliament he had sanctioned football boss Roman Abramovich

42. When MPs asked him to correct this obvious mistake, he told them he hadn’t made a mistake

43. 24 hours later Downing St said he had made a mistake

44. Tories also sanctioned 5 quite small Russian banks and nobody else, allowing (as Robert Peston said) “anyone who thinks they will be targeted to ship assets out of London by the lorry load”

45. One quarter of the cabinet took Russian-linked donations since Johnson became PM

46. Meanwhile Nadine Dorries, who borrowed her brain from crab, said she was determined to “end the north-south divide” in TV production, and force people to make things outside London

47. And that’s why she wants to close the BBC studios in Salford

48. Rees-Mogg popped back to announce it should be illegal for anybody paid by the state to support Black Lives Matter

49. The IP address of Bob Blackman’s office was found removing Wiki entries about money he gets from Azerbaijan days after he denied lobbying for Azerbaijan

50.And finally, Tories have learned from their mistakes, which is why their mistakes are even better the 2nd, 3rd, or 100th time around: Andrew Bridgen is being investigated for alleged paid lobbying, just as Owen Paterson was less than 3 months ago
… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 28.02.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

#TheWeekInTory Armageddon Special covers events since Wednesday

1. A lucky (legal term) week for Jacob Rees-Mogg, the brain of a tapeworm trapped in the body of another tapeworm, who moved £44m of his money out of a Russian bank only days before he sanctioned it. Phew!

2. Defence Sec Ben Wallace reminded a definitely terrified Putin that Britain had “kicked the backside of Tsar Nicholas I in 1853”, and we would do it again, grrrr

3. Remind me: how did the Charge of the Light Brigade work out?

4. And then Liz Truss (Cunk on Foreign Relations) gave her backing to any UK citizen travelling to Ukraine to fight

5. It is illegal for UK citizens to fight in any war UK isn’t involved in

6. So presumably we’re either now at war, or we have to arrest the Foreign Secretary

7. Since 2016 we’ve issued just 6 (six) fines for breaches of existing sanctions

8. There have been 132 proven breaches of British sections, but Tories ignored 126 of them

9. So Putin is probably even more scared of our sanctions regime than he is of shouty old Ben Wallace

10. EU sanctioned 350 people. We sanctioned 3. All 3 have been sanctioned by USA since 2018

11. Tories said they’d legislate to prevent shell companies being used to launder Russian money

12. But we’re not going to BEGIN that until the next session of parliament in 2023

13. Duplo Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was back to reassure us the Tory Party would keep the £2m of Russian donations since Johnson became PM. Phew!

14. She went onto explain sanctions weren’t happening faster because “clever lawyers” were delaying the move

15. An actual clever lawyer explained: law firms can’t hold up actions. Only a court can, and there have been no court orders to delay anything

16. Truss was asked to name the law firms she had claimed were delaying sanctions

17. She couldn’t name one. Not one.

18. Meanwhile Brendan Lewis (who got £25,000 from Russia) said Russians give us money “because they admire us”

19. To prove how admirable we are, we rolled out our world-class response to the refugee crisis

20. We started by refusing to set up safe routes for refugees

21. Then we stopped granting visas to Ukrainians

22. Then we issued guidance saying Ukrainian refugees who come here via a 3rd party country can’t claim asylum

23. But we also banned all direct flights, meaning it’s impossible to NOT come to UK via a 3rd country

24. Then Home Office minister Kevin Foster said he would help Ukrainians to escape death if they promised to pick fruit for him

25. Fruit-picking doesn’t begin until August, so I guess we’ll just have to ask Mr Putin to put his genocide on hold until the raspberries are ripe

26. Then the govt said asylum seekers need to pay a £95 fee and attend an in-person interview at a UK Embassy before being considered

27. And then we moved the Embassy

28. And then randy haystack Boris Johnson said Ukrainians could come here if they have family in the UK

29. But his definition of “family” didn’t include people over 18

30. Or the parents of people over 18

31. Or siblings

32. Not content with that, we then sent Home Office staff to Paris to turn back Ukrainians boarding the Eurostar to London

33. Then Johnson claimed “the UK is way out in front in helping refugees”

34. We offered £40 million aid to Ukraine

35. We also cut their aid to £0 last year

36. But we did shine the Ukrainian flag onto the front of Downing Street, for the virtue signalling fans amongst you

37. The 4000 refugees we grudgingly helped out of Afghanistan last year are still having to survive on £40 a week and living in B&Bs, whilst being legally prevented from working.

38. Not one of them – not one – has had their asylum application completed yet

39. This is mainly because Sauron’s gnome Priti Patel has actively gutted our asylum system

40. James Cleverley defended Russians in UK politics, saying “do you think dual nationals should be denied a vote?”

41. He denied a vote to EU dual nationals in the Brexit referendum

42. What else happened since Wed? Oh yes: PartyGate, and Boris Johnson told his cabinet he “wants to give his side of the story” about events

43. Previous versions of his side of the story are now presented in this fun little sub-thread, as if things aren’t stressful enough

He has claimed:

a. The parties didn’t happen

b. They did happen but weren’t organised

c. They were organised, but were work events

d. Johnson didn’t know about the work evens

e. Johnson knew, but didn’t attend

f. He attended, but after 25 minutes figured out people drinking booze from a suitcase while a DJ played meant this probably WASN’T a work event

g. He apologised to the Queen for doing something wrong

h. He denied doing anything wrong

i. Then he shouted “Savile” and ran away

44. Anyhooo, back to the main thread: and the latest story is that taxpayer’s money wasn’t used for any of the booze at the “work events”

45. Which means they can’t have been work events, because work events are – complex stuff, but try to keep up, Nadine – PAID FOR BY WORK

46. Leaks from Scotland Yard’s investigation found No 10 drink parties regularly “descended into carnage” with wine sprayed up the walls (won’t somebody think of the wallpaper!)

47. None of this should surprise Sunak, who this week also got questioned by police about attending

48. Hus latest improvements to benefits payments will leave the 9 million poorest people worse off

49. And Tory changes to student loans will cost disadvantaged students the most, but high-earners will “stand to benefit substantially”, quelle surprise

50. The UK faces the biggest fall in living standards since 1950

51. The PM was formally reprimanded for the 2nd time in a month for claiming employment rose 600,000

52. It fell 600,000

53. And he didn’t just lie once. He told the same lie to parliament 7 times in a day

54. The govt abandoned its own health advice on Covid, writing a memo that “public health advice would not be met in NHS or social care”

55.Unsurprisingly a record 400 staff per week are quitting the NHS

56.And care homes in England lost 1600 beds in the last 3 months

57. But at least the names of the companies given £4.9 billion in Covid loans are being kept secret, making it impossible to detect corruption

58. Although we have literally given up on having a minister for tackling corruption, so it’s probably a moot point

59. And finally, a Christian group in the constituency of Born-Again Christian and beta-version humanoid Steve Baker has begun an organised prayer vigil to stop his genocidal opposition to action on climate change

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 08.03.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

#TheWeekInTory is about 10 days – I was busy.

So were they. This is an 86-point epic.

1. Matt Hancock, a spork owned by the Milk Tray Man, relaunched his career by claiming snogging people in the office didn’t breach social distancing guidelines, because ❤️love❤️

2. As WW3 ramped up the Tories decide to prove to the Russians that we have a serious govt for serious times

3. It’s chosen tactic for proving this was: knighting Gavin Williamson, a supernaturally incompetent lurching tower of wrong, wearing the teeth of a starved horse

4. He did NOT get his gong for being Johnson’s mate. He got it for “services to the nation”, including being sacked for leaking National Security info, fucking up an entire year of exams, and telling Russia to “shut up and go away”

5. Russia didn’t. Which brings us to Ukraine

6. Beautifully upholstered moral vacuum Edward Leigh said Lincolnshire is “too full for Ukrainians”, what with it containing the 4th most sparse population of any English county

7. Dominic Raab said “we have a reputation second to none across the world” for helping refugees

8. The Etch-a-sketch deputy PM then immediately said the EU was better than the UK at helping refugees, because they’re closer to Ukraine

9. Ireland, which is further from the Ukraine, took 3500% more refugees than UK

10. The govt said Ireland helping Ukraine is a security threat to Britain, cos Ukrainians (who Tories claim we’re welcoming) might come to UK (using a border scheme Tories designed)

11. Priti Patel, the larval form of Miss Trunchbull, refused to open safe lanes for refugees

12. Then Boris Johnson told reporters we would set up safe lanes

13. So then Patel said she would set up “a new humanitarian route to enter Britain”

14. And then Boris Johnson said we weren’t setting up humanitarian routes

15. Then Patel said UK had set up a “very generous” visa processing scheme, based in Calais

16. So Ukrainian refugees with relatives in UK started walking across Europe to Calais in the middle of winter

17. Then No 10 admitted the Calais centre doesn’t exist

18. And then we put up posters in Calais telling Ukrainians there would be “no visas delivered in Calais”

19. So Patel said the centre is not set up, but “we are planning one” and meanwhile refugees should phone the “free application hotline” instead

20. The hotline isn’t free

21. And the hotline number doesn’t work from outside the UK

22. So: refugees have to walk 2000km to Calais to apply for a visa we won’t give them, at a centre that doesn’t exist; and before they enter the UK they have to call a number that only works if they’re already in the UK

23. But the Home Office changed its colours to Ukrainian blue and yellow, so that’s fine

24. And then the Home Office boasted of “the first visa scheme in the world” to help Ukraine

25. That’s because all the other countries scrapped visas and just took in terrified refugees

26. And then Patel told refugees reaching UK to go to Paris or Brussels instead, and then the arch-Brexiteer asked the EU to pick up the cost of her own refugee scheme

27. Hot on Patel’s cloven-heels, Liz Truss encouraged Britons to volunteer to fight in Ukraine

28. The UK defence chief had to inform her it would be unlawful to do this

29. Shortly after, Putin put his nuclear arsenal on “high combat alert”

30. He said he “won’t name” the person who had prompted this escalation, but “it was the British foreign secretary”

31. Part of Boris Johnson’s laughably hazy 6-point plan for Ukraine is “diplomatic efforts” to de-escalate the conflict, and I’m sure we can agree Truss raising the risk of nuclear war means we’re off to a great start

32. An anagram of Elizabeth Truss is Haziest Bluster

33. Truss was asked how many visas have been given to Ukrainians since the war began

34. She said “I have no idea”

35. It’s 50

36. More than 50 people were invited to illegal Downing St parties during lockdown

37. We airlifted 94 dogs and 68 cats out of Kabul

38. We gave 700 Russian millionaires rapid “golden visas”

39. Poland has taken over 800,000 refugees

40. Truss then tried to blame a Labour MP for sanctioning so few Russians

41. She apologised, saying the details of who is in govt were “written wrong in her notes”

42. Truss then refused 3x to say whether Russia’s invasion is a “war of aggression” because she said she “doesn’t understand what that means”

43. She then said the International Criminal Court (ICC) would handle such issues

44. The ICC doesn’t have jurisdiction to do that

45. Luz Truss’s mind is like a multibillion-dollar stealth weapon: nobody can detect it, but it can still cause phenomenal damage

46. Still, she beats Nadine Dorries, who boasted that Russian’s RT station would no longer be available on British TVs

47. She forgot to mention she’d done nothing to achieve this. The EU did it

48. Boris Johnson, this war’s Sir Plankton Churchill, promised a crackdown on dirty money in the UK

49. The crackdown won’t begin for 18 months, giving oligarchs plenty of time to shift their cash out

50. And Johnson has cut the budget for the department that does investigators into that dirty money by 13%

51. But at least the Tory chairman owns a company offering “luxury lifestyle management services” to the Russian elite Tories also claim to be targeting

52. Stung by criticism he isn’t being harsh enough on dodgy Russians who give his party millions, Johnson ordered Tories to vote in parliament for a loophole, allowing Russian oligarchs 6 months before they have to declare any assets liable for sanction or seizure

53. The EU has sanctioned over 750 Russian individuals and companies

54. Canada: 908

55. USA: 1195

56. Britain: only 35 new sanctions

57. So naturally, the PM said “The UK has led the way with our toughest ever sanctions package”

58. Harrowing antique dildo Jacob Rees-Mogg moved £44m of his money out of a sanctioned Russian bank just before sanctions hit

59. Rees-Mogg’s govt then offered £40m of humanitarian aid to Ukraine, which JRM could pay with the money he withdrew, and still have a nice £4m profit

60. Patel refused to waive visas cos of a risk of “spies and security threats” entering

61. Sunday Times quoted multiple security sources saying Johnson overruled them and gave a peerage to his pal (and son of KGB spy) Evgeny Lebedev, who was described as a “security threat”

62. Johnson says all those sources, who are high-ranking members of British security forces, are lying about Russian spies

63. James Cleverly said it didn’t matter than Lebedev’s family were all spies, because his own dad was a chartered surveyor

64. Meanwhile post-Brexit rules meant charity aid supplies to Ukrainian refugees were held up for 2 days at Dover

65. Charity workers coming into contact with Brexit for the first time called the entire thing a “waste of money and waste of time”

66. This seems to have come as a shock to Brexit’s Desmond Swayne too. The reanimated corpse Alvin Stardust said it was “monstrous” that we have to fill in forms to trade with the EU, and called for the border to be made “seamless” after campaigning for a border for 30 years

67. Sajid Javid blamed it all on the NHS, for using gas supplies from Russia

68. Unsurprisingly we’re down over 110,000 NHS staff

69. Which brings us to plague news, and remember that time we didn’t have a stockpile of PPE because the govt didn’t plan for a pandemic?

70. And then we ended up paying 5x the normal price for PPE sourced from associates of govt ministers, who suddenly became millions of pounds richer?

71. And while we waited for the PPE, thousands of health workers and hundreds of thousands of UK citizens died? Remember that?

72. Well now our plan is to burn 15000 pallets of our newly created PPE stockpile every month, so we end up with no stockpile again

73. That’s enough PPE to fill a queue of HGVs 7 miles long, up in flames, every month

74. And this comes as Covid hospitalisations are at the highest rate for almost a year

75. And a new variant has been discovered, which seems far more risky

76. So Philip Davies wrote to every govt department, telling them to scrap every single Covid precaution

77. And a few minor stories you may have missed

78. Johnson’s flagship promise to build 4000 zero-emissions buses reached the halfway mark

79. Don’t get over-excited, I just mean he’s built zero. Plenty of emissions though!

80. Salaries for the dept working towards net-zero have been cut by 20%

81. But MPs will get a £2,200 pay rise

82. Johnson was castigated for the 3rd time in a month for claiming unemployment is down 600,000

83. It’s up 600,000, and climbing

84. So DWP blocked access to the data that was used to study the very clear relationship between benefit sanctions and suicides

85. Levelling up news, and changes to student loans mean low-earning graduates will pay £28[k] more, while the wealthy pay just £15k more

86. And finally, quietly in the background, startled halibut Michael Gove moved ahead with plans to abolish the electoral commission and put the Tories in charge of honest elections, a move a parliamentary committee called “undermining the independence of our electoral system”

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 16.03.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

#TheWeekInTory

1. It’s been a busy 3 weeks, during which we’d denied entry for refugees, allowed refugees if they’d pick fruit, turn back over 600 refugees in Calais, hung posters in France saying, “no visas here”, and taken 0.015% the number refugees taken by Ireland

2. This week the Home Office followed up on their *excellent* start by sending emails to displaced people in Ukraine, asking them to head INTO THE WAR ZONE to attend a visa application appointment at a UK centre 500 miles from their home

3. And that visa centre is shut

4. Michael Gove, with the soul of a hyena, said the UK had “granted 300,000 visas”

5. Sky News asked if he was sure about that number

6. Michael Gove, with the mind of a goldfish, said the UK had “granted 3000 visas”

7. And only 300 people have actually been allowed in yet

8. Poland has taken over 1.8 million

9. So Boris Johnson, an internationally recognised lodestone for bullshit, said “we have taken more refugees than any other country in Europe”

10. And then he halted Home Office plans to expand the refugee offer

11. Meanwhile Daniel Kawczynski, the gobshite’s gobshite, tweeted it would be “immoral” and “left wing” for Britain to take refugees

12. Instead he said kids, pensioners and pregnant women fleeing Russian bombardments should “remain on the front line” for “their own good”

13. Having bravely volunteered Ukrainians to the front line, he bravely deleted his Twitter account because people mocked him for being as thick as a boxing day turd

14. But the govt has eventually done the right thing, having finally exhausted all the alternatives

15. The Tories created a website where you can register to house a refugee

16. The website crashed

17. When it did occasionally work, it was discovered you need to know the individual names of any refugees you wanted to help, and the govt wouldn’t assist with that in any way

18. Michael Gove suggested the best way for Ukrainian refugees to let volunteers know their names was to “set up an Instagram account” (presumably while being shot at in a freezing crater that used to be their bombed-out home), quickly learn English, and “advertise”

19. Gove said he’d “had it up to here” with people saying his govt was dishonest about its commitment to refugees, and that “Labour introduced the Hostile Environment”

20. It was 2012 when Tories announced their policy to “create, here in Britain, a really hostile environment”

21. Trundling horcrux Priti Patel said incredibly slow visa applications were necessary because of Windrush, which ended in people being unable to access benefits

22. Windrush only happened because of the Hostile Environment the Tories created, and are still running

23. Sajid Javid said he had considered taking in a refugee, but decided not to because “he wouldn’t be a good host”

24. He’s worth over £8m, and owns 3 homes in the UK

25. One has 5 double bedrooms, a Star Wars themed cinema, and a self-contained guest barn

26. But he can’t put up a refugee, cos he’s not around to offer canapes

27. Patel tweeted it was “appalling misinformation” to suggest Ukrainians still needed a visa to enter the UK

28. Same day, Boris Johnson announced details of the visas Ukrainians needed to enter the UK

29. Tory MPs accused Patel of misleading the House of Commons (again) over visas

30. Patel told MPs “I have made it clear, the visa application centre has now been set up and we have staff in Calais”

31. That Calais visa centre is in Lille, which is 70 miles from Calais

32. And it didn’t exist when she told parliament it “has how been set up”

33. But she did tell MPs refugees could take “a free Eurostar” to the quantum fluctuating visa centre in Calais/Lille, so that must be a relief to them

34. Or maybe not, since no such train route exists

35. This week Boris Johnson wrote a Telegraph article blaming the EU for not using its influence to prevent Putin’s expansionism

36. In 2014 Boris Johnson wrote a Telegraph article blaming EU influence in Ukraine for Putin’s expansionism

37. Warming to his theme of Bullshit Tsunami, Johnson denounced our dependence on oil from a brutal undemocratic dictatorship that has invaded neighbouring lands

38. So instead, he went to ask for more oil from Saudi Arabia, a brutal undemocratic dictatorship that invaded Yemen

39. And Jacob Rees-Mogg, a cross between a cursed dildo and the concept of gout, claimed UK “leads the way” in removing corrupt Russian money from our system, thus proving the UK had previously led the way in allowing corrupt Russian money in our system

40. Bearing that in mind, grant me the balls of Nadine Dorries, who launched a “crackdown on people telling lies, using the internet to exploit innocent people”

41. She then asked Microsoft “when are you going to get rid of algorithms”, which are the basis of computer science

42. Meanwhile Facebook deleted quotes by Dorries and Boris Johnson for breaching their decency standards

43. Dorries then announced “400 new jobs” in culture

44. This consisted of her firing 600 people, moving 400 of their roles to Manchester, and cutting the remaining 200 jobs

45. Covid: and the former Corruption Minister (who earlier resigned cos there was too much corruption) said Tory Covid policy was “happy days if you were a crook”

46. As cases soared and scientists globally warned “the pandemic is not over” the Tories leaped into inaction

47. They cancelled funding for Covid tracking apps

48. And cancelled funding for Covid transmission studies

49. And cancelled all travel restrictions

50. And abolished the Covid declaration form on entry into UK, so we have no clue about new infections

51. Sajid Javid, apparently the health minister and a child’s drawing of infinite irresponsibility superimposed onto a competitively evil gonad, said Britain is “in a very good position” as 12,000 people ended up in hospital with Covid

52. Then he cut NHS training for new staff

53. The NHS already has 94,000 full time vacancies

54. And because of cuts a record 791 medical graduates were refused training places this week

55. Unsurprisingly Javid said we should “prepare ourselves” for many deaths. I’m gonna do 10 press-ups and bleed my radiators

56. Grant Shapps celebrated this great health news for people who somehow make it through alive, saying “you can now travel, like in the good old days”

57. And Greg Hands tweeted his delight at the memory of his 1985 move to Germany, where he went to live and work

58. They’re both members of a govt that ended the right to do any of that

59. Boris Johnson said the NI Protocol (which he negotiated, said was “brilliant”, and pushed through parliament without scrutiny) now needed “significant changes” because he said it might break the law

60. Courts ruled the Protocol is “not simple, but it is lawful” so we’re stuck with it

61. MPs said the Festival of Brexit is a £120m “recipe for failure”, “vague”, “shape-shifting” and “an irresponsible use of public money”. Therefore a perfect celebration of Brexit

62. Rises in prices for energy, heating, oil, water, council tax, broadband, food and National Insurance all happened before Russia invaded Ukraine

63. But they all happened since Brexit

64. So after their last stunning success, the ERG transformed into a pro-fracking group

65. COP26 chair, climate super-champion, and the world’s first spine-donor Kwasi Kwarteng suggested fracking should go ahead in 138 English constituencies

66. Of those 138 MPs found only 5 would allow fracking under their OWN homes, but were all for it under anybody else’s

67. And speaking of COP26, this week it was revealed a Tory peer – no, not Evgeniy Lebedev, a different one – had attended that conference as a **Russian delegate**

68. Needles to say, the govt denied Russia was too embedded in the Downing St operation

69. And then it emerged Russia had fitted all the electronics, computers, recording and broadcast equipment for the ghastly £2.6 million Downing St briefing room that was only used for Allegra Stratton to admit to illegal parties, and for Johnson to watch Bond movies.

70. Minor stories you may have missed, or may wish you had: only 29% of students with disabilities were approved for govt disability grants

71. We suddenly face a multibillion-pound bill from China, because we forgot to collect customs duties on Chinese imports for SIX YEARS

72. Having left the Charity Commission without a chair for a year, the Tories finally found a former Tory candidate (what a coincidence) to take over, just in time for the review of whether private schools should still be charities

73. And finally, some much-needed good news: the law banning the import of dead wild animals from trophy hunters was axed after “lobbying from a small group of wealthy Tory peers”. And I bet that’s a huge relief to voters in those Red Wall seats

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 24.03.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

I was going to do #TheWeekInTory, but try as I might, I can’t find a single thing they’ve done wrong this week.

Only kidding. It’s been an absolute casserole. 91 items long, you poor fuckers.

Drink heavily before, during and after.

Here we go:

1. Boris Johnson got things off to a cracking start by telling adoring 79-year-old Tory youngsters that Ukrainians huddling in basements to survive a murderous Russian invasion was the same as an obsessive, Daily-Express-inspired quibble about energy efficient lightbulbs

2. Johnson – who says he “leads the world” on Ukraine – was subsequently uninvited from a summit on the war

3. Sajid Javid told R4 “Russians mislead their public all the time”, and then immediately denied Johnson had even said the Brexit / Ukraine thing. Which he said. On TV.

4. Nadine Dorries, a beef-witted, one-woman riot of idiocy, told BBC “of course the PM doesn’t regret saying it”

5. An hour later it was reported Johnson “regrets the remarks”

6. An hour after that Johnson said he regrets nothing. Still keeping up? It’s OK, neither is Nadine.

7. A report emerged of Johnson telling people Russian oligarchs were “buying influence in the Tory party”

8. So Priti Patel said Putin might use Ukrainian women and children to “infiltrate the UK”

9. It’s a fair point: they’re cheaper than Tory donors, and Putin loves a bargain

10. On the night Putin invaded Ukraine, it turns out Boris Johnson had attended a secret fundraising dinner with Russian donors

11. Meanwhile Alan Duncan, who had argued that the UK shouldn’t sanction Russian oil, was this week reported to be working for a Russian oil trader

12. Senior Tory Bernard Jenkin said it was “unbelievable” that Johnson ennobled a man who got all his money from his KGB-officer father, overriding warnings from the security services

13. Johnson denied it happened

14. Dominic Cummings said he personally watched it happen

15. Almost 140000 Brits have volunteered to house Ukrainian refugees

16. So the Tories issued 8300 visas, which – help me out, maths fans: is that enough?

17. We have now generously offered – but not yet delivered – visas to 1 in every 372 people fleeing Ukraine

18. Researchers described the “excessive bureaucracy” of our refugee programme as “completely unworkable”

19. So to ensure Ukrainians understand her govt’s welcome, Priti Patel created a law to put them in jail for 4 years if they lack proper visa paperwork

20. Not even a UK jail – they’ll be shipped to “camps” overseas

21. Patel’s first choice of location was a literal volcano in the middle of the Atlantic

22. In a first for Patel, this idea was quickly abandoned because it’s “demonstrably insane”, which is usually her sweet spot

23. So now Patel said refugees will be stored “offshore”, but nobody knows where, and Australian experts described the idea as “a human rights disaster”

24. All this makes UK “the most anti-refugee country in the world” according to Médecins Sans Frontières

25. Despite this, Tory chairman and betwattled Morph cosplayer Oliver Dowden announced Boris Johnson has a “real emotional connection” with refugees

26. So deep is that connection that Boris Johnson intervened to airlift 96 dogs out of Afghanistan rather than humans

27. So the PM tweeted “warm wishes to Afghan friends in the UK”, all of whom still await asylum approval

28. Then Johnson said it’s “not up to him” to work out if he’d allow a refugee in his house, proving he’s really taken the whole PartyGate “I know nothing” thing to heart

29. Posturing mantis Jacob Rees-Mogg loomed up, like your worst stilton nightmare, and implied he was glad Ukraine had been invaded cos it let Tories “get away” from the “fluff” of the PM getting pissed in the garden all day while 160,000 Brits died from Covid

30. JRM said Ukraine was finally an opportunity to “roll back wokery”, and then to demonstrate his unerring commitment to free speech he said Britain should “refuse to use socialist vocabulary”

31. Oliver Dowden said people criticising those nice Russian oligarchs are “racist”

32. The PM’s unofficial advisor Charles Moore joined in, telling R4 “the govt’s refugee policy isn’t racist. It’s just that we like Christians in this country and Muslims should go elsewhere”

33. Words. They can be so difficult.

34. We flushed and flushed, but Dowden bobbed back up, blaming a Labour govt for the energy crisis. Tories have been in office 12 years

35. And then he asserted – out loud, where any passing psychiatric professional could hear him – that privet hedges would vote Conservative

36. Defence secretary and novelty pencil eraser Ben Wallace spent several minutes on a hoax call from a pretend Ukrainian minister

37. He then said it was “standard practice” for Russians to do this sort of call, which makes you wonder why he took several minutes to work it out

38. Despite it being “standard practice”, Priti Patel and Nadine Dorries then both fell for hoax calls

39. Rishi Sunak, having a go at being Chancellor during his gap-year, made an impassioned statement on Ukraine while Boris Johnson hunched behind him, practicing his gurning

40. Sunak said he wouldn’t be homing any refugees, but he and his wife would help “in other ways”

41. One of those other ways is Sunak and wife urgently doing absolutely nothing to withdraw their family investment in Russian businesses, for which I’m sure Ukraine is grateful

42. As foodbanks stopped accepting donations of potatoes cos recipients can’t afford the fuel required to cook them, Sunak decided to boast of all the different types of bread he can afford to buy

43. He then claimed “Tory policy has led to a million fewer living in poverty”

44. That policy is: manipulating the data by changing the way Tories measure poverty

45. Tory Scott Benton said the best way to avoid fuel poverty is “to get a job”

46. Getting a job doesn’t seem to help much: poverty in working households is at the highest level ever recorded

47. And Sunak just pushed another 1.3 m into poverty. He’s the best one. They keep saying he’s the best Tory

48. Warming up for his pitch for becoming next Bullshitting PM, Sunak told parliament he was cutting taxes as he announced the highest jump in taxes since the 1940s

49. He boasted of “the biggest cut in fuel tax 70 years”, taking petrol prices all the way back to where they were 4 days earlier

50. A month after claiming he’d created the “fastest-growing economy in the G7”, he’s caused the biggest drop in living standards since the 50s

51. But – huzzah – at least we’ll get a 1p tax cut in 2024, coincidentally scheduled for the day before the general election is pencilled in.

52. Sunak then posed for perfectly life-like photos depicting him – the richest MP there has ever been – putting petrol into his Kia Rio

53. He said he was cutting VAT on solar panels which “the EU would not allow us to do”

54. The EU did it last year

55. Sunak then teed-up us blowing a hole in the NI Protocol, which Johnson negotiated, told voters was “a great deal”, and forms the basis of his 80-seat majority

56. This brings us to Brexit, and the USA said breaking the Protocol mean they wouldn’t even attempt a trade deal

57. And then the USA said no matter what, a trade deal with a “shrinking UK” – which was the whole basis of our Brexit plan – wouldn’t be worth their time and effort

58. Not that it matters much, since the Public Accounts Committee said Brexit trade deals will “not deliver any actual economic benefits”

59. Former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib announced plans to take Johnson to the Supreme Court to prove Brexit is worse than remaining in the EU

60. More Quantum Fluctuating Tory Manifesto news, as Oliver Dowden was back to hit out against “net-zero dogma”, seemingly unaware he fought an election on a manifesto promising to deliver net-zero

61. P&O sacked 800 workers and then rehired replacements at 30% of minimum wage

62. The govt said it was shocked and appalled by this sudden news, despite having been told by P&O the day before it happened, and doing nothing to prevent it

63. The Tories now claim it P&O have broken the law (and the Tories let them, but shhhhh)

64. A maritime law specialist said it isn’t actually against the law, cos the legislation P&O used was signed off by Chris Grayling, the Home Bargains Pennywise, in 2018

65. Even so, the govt was so upset that Grant Shapps and Kwasi Kwarteng tweeted an angry tweet about it

66. They addressed the tweet to a man who had resigned as P&O chairman months before any of this happened

67. Then they deleted the tweet and sent it again to the right man

68. And then irony no-fly-zone Kwarteng said P&O’s ineptitude had “lost the trust of the public”

69. Clattering halfwit Natalie Elphicke was so incensed she told a protest rally that she would “be marching for the people of Dover”

70. Three days later, she abstained from voting to save P&O jobs

71. In fact, not a single Tory MP voted to prevent “Fire and Hire”

72. Grant Shapps said Tories would send a message that P&O sacking workers was “disgraceful treatment that would never be tolerated”

73. The same Shapps – perhaps using a different identity – was author of a paper arguing “it should be easier for firms to sack workers”

74. P&O had taken £10m grants to furlough workers, £150m as a bailout, and then its owners paid £250m to shareholders

75. To prove how terribly cross Tories were about all this, they gave the P&O owners an additional £50m as part of Rishi Sunak’s ever-so-clever Freeport Scheme

76. So crepuscular Regency abattoir-creeper Jacob Rees-Mogg sympathetically said he intended to scrap even more employment rules

77. He said “safety laws that are good enough for India are good enough for UK”

78. Workplace deaths per year in the UK: 112

79. In India: 48,000

80. Speaking of avoidable mass-deaths, despite the govt writing a terse memo telling the pandemic to pack it in, infections are up 400% since mask restrictions were lifted

81. 3.3 million people were infected in just 7 days

82. Admissions in England are up 26% in a week

83. So health secretary Sajid Javid moved on from last week’s soothing advice to “brace yourselves” for loads of deaths, and now says primary school kids should “socialise a bit less”. Cos cutting down on 7-year-olds having dinner parties beats simple preventative measures

84. Speaking of utter failure to perform basic duties, senior officials reported the PM is “too lazy” and “unfocused” to read briefing papers, even on Ukraine

85. Instead, they send him summaries of sensitive material in WhatsApp messages, in breach of govt security regulations

86. All Johnson’s WhatsApp messages are still there, except for the ones about Covid contracts, which he seems to have entirely accidentally deleted, just as the Covid enquiry begins. The “delete awkward evidence” button is in the Settings menu of WhatsApp

87. Also, Matt Hancock failed to declare WhatsApp messages he exchanged with disgraced former Tory MP Owen Paterson during last year’s illegal lobbying scandal

88. And his week Tories dropped plans to cap earnings from MP’s second jobs, which they promised after Paterson

89. They then rejected new rules to prevent “discriminatory language” in parliament

90. Which brings us the person in charge of equality, Kemi Badenoch, who said the black schoolgirl Child Q being strip-searched just shows how much the UK cares about minorities

91. She then boasted the British Empire achieved “good things”, overlooking the small matter of 100 million deaths

92. Despite this, dying palm-tree Michael Fabricant rushed out to boast UK still had an excellent “soft-power” score of 64/100

93. It was 75/100 before Brexit

94. Finally, glistening human polyp David Cameron tried to rehabilitate his rep by posing for photos at one of the 2800 foodbanks his own policies had created

95. And research showed his decision to “cut the green crap” has added £150 a year to every fuel bill in the country

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 01.04.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

This edition of #TheWeekInTory falls on April Fool’s Day, and there’s an obvious temptation to slip a fib into this.

I didn’t.

So if you feel fooled, it’s only cos some of you voted for these gibbering apes.

Anyway, here we go, with the longest, stupidest one yet…

1. Grant Shapps (who has more identities than Jason Bourne, somebody else people would travel halfway round the world to punch) was ooooh, livid about P&O, and demanded workers be reinstated

2. He tweeted “P&O Ferries has ripped up 800 workers’ rights and hung them out to dry”

3. P&O’s owners pointed out that they’d told Shapps they were going to do this a year ago, and he’d implicitly given them the go-ahead for the sackings, telling them “you will need to make commercial decisions” that are best for P&O

4. Boris Johnson told parliament P&O had broken the law – and he hates that kind of thing – so “We will take them to court to defend British workers”

5. This week the govt dropped plans to take P&O to court, leading experts to say “it looks like they’ve got away with it”

6. Last month’s relaxation of public health measures has been so successful that this week Covid infections reached a record high, and hospitalisations of older people are 15% up on the last Omicron peak

7. So obviously, from today free Covid testing has been scrapped too

8. And funding for tracking Covid has been axed, cos if you don’t look, it isn’t really happening

9. When presented with the option of reintroducing basic public health measures, the health secretary instead went with advising primary school children to “socialise a bit less”

10. The “protective ring” thrown around care homes was breached (again) as the cost of tests for visitors rises to £73 per month, and becomes voluntary

11. And then, to thank health staff for their work, sacrifices and avoidable deaths, Sajid Javid scrapped their free parking

12. So sad news for the NHS, but fabulous news for Tory peer Michelle Mone

13. She was reported to have directly lobbied govt ministers to place orders for PPE from a company she was secretly involved in, via a tax haven – cos you wouldn’t wanna pay tax on your profiteering

14. The Mone-adjacent company bought PPE for £46m, then sold it to the govt at 3x the price, and pocketed the difference

15. And the PPE was never used cos it failed inspections

16. And it looks the PPE was somehow – surely by accident – issued with fake approval certificates

17. And the entire thing had been negotiated between Mone and ministers using private email accounts, so there would be no papertrail

18. Govt guidelines forbid the use of private emails for govt business. But they also forbid illegal profiteering, and look where that got us

19. Rosa Klebb tribute act Priti Patel didn’t want to miss out, so made a “flagrant breach” of ministerial code by intervening to get a PPE contract for a company represented by her friend and former advisor

20. Startled turbot Michael Gove was involved in granting the contract

21. That company’s profits jumped from £38m to £166m

22. After the last lobbying scandal – and I know it’s hard to keep track – the PM said he would “crack down” on the practice, and put a cap on MPs earnings from second jobs

23. This week he quietly scrapped those promises

24. And so ex-social care minister Caroline Dineage immediately took a lucrative second job at a social care business owned by a Tory donor

25. The Met continued their Cosmo-questionnaire-based approach to crimefighting, and issued 20 fines for people involved in PartyGate

26. The fines coincided with the opening of the Covid Memorial wall, and also with the day Tory MPs chose to throw a jolly party for themselves, what larks

27. Tories entered the shindig via a line of mourners from Covid deaths, and not one Tory MP looked at them. Not one

28. Follicular fire-hazard Michael Fabricant, having experienced this, was moved to tweet his outrage – not about the flatly ignored mourners, but about the wine at the party being merely a “passable” House Merlot, and not up to his usual standards

29. On the way in he said “We’re going to have a lot of fun”

30. On the way out, clearly briefed by somebody smarter, such as the animal corpse on his head, he said it “wasn’t a party, just colleagues having dinner and drinks”, which is exactly what they just got fined for

31. Months ago, as PartyGate kicked off, Solicitor General Alex Chalk put it in writing that he would resign if there was “a scintilla of a suggestion” anyone had broken the law over Downing St parties

32. Alex Chalk has not resigned as Solicitor General. I know. I’m amazed too

33. Boris Johnson suggested the fines simply showed that he was being honest when had told parliament “There was no party and no rules were broken”

34. The ministerial code says “Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation”

35. Dominic Raab, the kind of Justice Minister you’d expect to find on Gumtree, admitted laws had been broken

36. Johnson listened politely, then said he would remain “pretty firmly on his position” that no laws were broken

37. And then No 10 said laws had been broken

38. But Johnson refused to admit laws were broken

39. To help out, the police said laws had been broken

40. No 10 then had some sort of episode, said “we do not formally accept laws were broken”, and began denying Raab had said laws had been broken. Which he had said. On TV.

41. No 10 then claimed the PM denying parties wasn’t a lie, even though police had fined 20 people for those parties

42. Faced with a paradox hard for any mind to handle, let alone his, Raab said the PM’s bullshit was merely him “telling the truth, to the best of his ability”

43. And then, in a magisterial challenge to irony, Raab complained we “can’t believe a word that comes out of Putin”

44. So off to the NATO summit, where our world-leading PM, Sir Plankton Churchill, was ignored by everybody, and ending up alone, gazing forlornly at the ground

45. The govt boasted it had sanctioned 18 oligarchs, cos we don’t want dodgy Russian money queue-jumping honest visa-applicants

46. 8 of those 18 got into this country via the Tory policy of “golden visas”, using dodgy Russian money queue-jump honest visa-applicants

47. Rishi Sunak, the rejected first-draft of an Aardman sidekick who is pretending to be a chancellor, said “I want to make it clear that there is no case for UK business investing in Russia”

48. His family has a £727m stake in Russian business, but he blamed his wife for that

49. He said anyone blaming his wife should be ashamed, but at least he hadn’t gone all Will Smith on their ass

50. He’ll go slap-happy when he finds out the ministerial code says ministers “must ensure no conflict arises between their public duties and their private interests”

51. Sunak told MPs he was a “tax-cutting chancellor”, and to prove it he introduced the biggest rise in taxes since the 1950s

52. Energy bills rose 54%, so his brilliant plan for people with terrifying fuel debt was to force them into deeper debt, with a mandatory £200 loan

53. He then – and bear in mind he’s supposed to be an expert on this stuff – said just because he was lending money to people who then had to repay it, that didn’t mean it was a loan

54. David Davis – so good they named him once – said Sunak is “making the economy worse”

55. To celebrate this glowing review, Sunak, who’s primary skill appears to be taking his jacket off, got his official photographer to snap him (jacketless) posing as he filled up his very own Kia Rio

56. Except he’d borrowed the Kia from a supermarket worker

57. But he paid for the fuel, bless him, although it wasn’t easy. Footage showed the guy in charge of our nation’s money battling heroically as he got confused between a credit card and a can of coke, while desperately attempting to negotiate a till at a petrol station

58. After his wily Kia Rio ploy fell through in about 4 seconds, he told MPs he really drives a “battered old Golf”

59. He seems to have forgotten about the Range Rovers and 3 other luxury cars he owns, some of which he keeps at his modest, man-of-the-people pad in Santa Monica

60. He told MPs it was impossible to say whether Brexit had hurt the economy, mainly cos he didn’t give a shit, what with him being massively rich

61. Then, seemingly having cleared the cache in his brain, he told MPs it was “always inevitable” that Brexit would hurt the economy

62. At the last general election Rishi Sunak had campaigned for a party promising their Brexit would make every person in Britain £993 a year richer

63. It’s made every household £3,600 a year poorer

64. That’s very nearly enough money to fill up a Kia Rio

65. Research found the £20 Covid increase in Universal Credit lifted 400k children out of poverty, so naturally Sunak scrapped it

66.And then, in a major shock to those who have been observing his levelling up plans, it was shown his changes to student loans hurt the poor most

67. He’s clearly holding his levelling-up-o-meter upside down

68. Economists said his plans leave 1/5 of the UK in poverty

69. He said “I am comfortable with the choices I made”

70. 3 hours later, he was reported to be “panicked” into considering throwing his entire plan away

71. As previous Tory decisions to scrap green investment added £190 a year to energy bills, an SNP MP asked Johnson in parliament how people in Scotland could afford to heat their homes

72. Johnson – the actual Prime Minister – responded by calling him a fatty. In parliament

73. Priti Patel, the Gnome of Sauron, promised a “fairer, more compassionate” Home Office after a report found her dept was cruel, incompetent, and badly managed

74. This week the report’s author said in 2 years since then, Patel had done almost nothing to fix her dept

75. Only 8 of 30 recommendations have been even *partly* implemented, and the report said it was “disappointed” 13 times

76. So Patel, stalwart in her adherence to reality, said she was “pleased the report says significant progress has been made”

77. She also designed a scheme for EU citizens to keep living in the UK, which is so good it means 2 million of them now face deportation

78. A new independent (but Tory) head of Ofcom was announced, responsible for overseeing social media regulation and protecting broadcasting

79. He immediately said he wants to privatise Channel 4 and scrap the BBC funding model

80. The man now in charge of regulating social media proudly stated that he’s never used social media, but “is aware of it” because his children told him about TikTok

81. He went on to say how much he admired Laurence Fox, that waxy, lurching manifestation of entitlement and stupidity, because “I know his family”, which I think we can all agree is a GREAT reason to support Fox constantly undermining public health in a pandemic

82. Nadhim Zahawi, a child’s drawing of pure greed superimposed onto a competitively evil gonad, announced he would force all schools to become academies by 2030

83. This was because “evidence” showed academies “deliver the best possible outcomes”

84. The “evidence” actually shows academies perform 23% worse than council-run schools

85. Then Zahawi proudly announced a bold new idea – never tried before, not at any parents’ evenings ever – of getting teachers to tell parents if their kids were doing badly in school. Cool.

86. Local elections are coming, and the public need honest communications about what they’re voting for

87. So the govt was found to have illegally spent £100,000 of public money on “Tory Propaganda” ads on Facebook, targeted on areas where they are defending small majorities

88. Etch-a-sketch thundercunt Dom Raab was back, with a new bill of human rights to guarantee free speech

89. But you have to exercise your free speech in monastic silence, cos Priti Patel has simultaneously banned any protests that is loud enough for anybody to hear

90. Patel, the Shetland Pony of the Apocalypse, was also found this week to have breached human rights by her policy of literally stealing phones off asylum seekers

91. More human rights news, as Johnson promised to ban conversion therapies that claim to “cure” gayness

92. He then did a U-turn on that promise

93. Then he did a U-turn on the U-turn… do we need to coin the phrase “W-turn”?

94. But he hasn’t banned conversion therapy for being transgender

95. And then Tory MP Jamie Wallis came out as transgender

96. And so, as a consequence all this, Jamie Wallis is now a member of a political party with a stated policy – at least for the next 10-15 minutes – of “curing” Jamie Wallis of being Jamie Wallis

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 08.04.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

1. Let’s start #TheWeekInTory with PartyGate, where randy Honey Monster and (no, really) Prime Minister Boris Johnson denied 20 fines meant there had been wrongdoing

2. This doesn’t quite explain why he had personally phoned the Queen to apologise for all the wrongdoing

3. Regardless, The Met issued MASSIVE fines of £50 for breaching lockdown rules

4. Last week a £2,200 was handed down to a member of the public (who didn’t live or work in Downing St) for breaching lockdown rules, thus proving we’re all equal in the eyes of the law

5. Maria Caulfield said the PM was “very clear there was wrongdoing”

6. Same TV show, she said the PM “did not believe there was wrongdoing”

7. Dom Cummings (Lucius Malfoy after a flash-fire) said “the PM encouraged attacks on junior officials” to distract from his own crimes

8. Having promised to release all party photos to the Sue Gray inquiry, No 10 now refuses to release photos, and denies they even exist

9. Anyway, off (very slowly) to Dover, to find a week of 23-mile, 30 hr traffic jams as a combination of Brexit paperwork and P&O problems hit

10. Last week the govt promised to sue P&O

11. It dropped that promise 4 days later, once it had attracted enough good headlines

12. The govt had also promised to improve worker’s rights

13. This week the govt shelved those plans for the second year running

14. Kent had a “temporary traffic management system” that we were told would be scrapped in Oct 2021, by which time Brexit would be simply marvellous

15. This week that temporary traffic system was made permanent, in recognition that Brexit will never stop being dog-shit

16. This brings us on to a cross-party report this week, which found Brexit has caused 500,000 agriculture vacancies

17. So the govt issued 30,000 temp visas, which is 6% of what we need

18. Amazingly, this didn’t solve the problem

19. Nor did a 50% increase in farm pay

20. But it has led to a huge increase in food prices and costs for farmers

21. Lack of workers means crops are going unharvested, and left to rot

22. The loss of crops, cost increases, and damage to supply chains caused by Brexit has been “financially ruinous” to UK farmers

20. But it has led to a huge increase in food prices and costs for farmers

21. Lack of workers means crops are going unharvested, and left to rot

22. The loss of crops, cost increases, and damage to supply chains caused by Brexit has been “financially ruinous” to UK farmers

26. But at least it’s better than the horror of Ukraine, where 6.5 million refugees seek homes, and our world-leading govt has taken 43 days to issue just 2700 visas

27. So far only 500 refugees have been allowed into the country. Out of 6.5 million

28. Naturally, given the urgent crisis, this week the Home Office chose to shut down part of its visa system, which officials called “chaotic”

29. And then the govt admitted they’ve been “giving Ukrainian refugees the wrong guidance” on how to apply to come here for over a month

30. The Tory refugee minister in the Lords said his own govt’s response to refugees was “embarrassing”

31. Undeterred – but definitely still turd – Home Secretary and rabid Dolores Umbridge cosplayer Priti Patel’s put forward lovely new plans to criminalise refugees

32. They were rejected by the House of Lords after the lord chief justice pointed out they “breach international law”

33. Over to Number 11, where Rishi Sunak, who is being chancellor during his gap year, made loads of friends in yet another devastatingly successful week

34. He began by blocking the Green Homes plan that would have reduced energy bills

35. Then he forced everybody with rocketing and terrifying fuel debt to take on an additional £200 of fuel debt, whether they like it or not

36. Sunak then insisted giving people money that they had to repay “doesn’t make it a loan”

37. Brandon Lewis, out of his depth on a sheet of graphene and battling to hold 2 ideas in his head at once, told an interviewer “It is a loan, let’s remember. No, it isn’t”

38. To show how much he sympathised with the desperate plight of the poor, Sunak generously donated £100,000 to foodbanks

39. No, hold on: let me correct that: he donated £100,000 to his old boarding school Winchester College, alma mater of some of the richest people on earth

40. In his next act of empathy, Sunak demonstrated a great way we could all avoid freezing as his fuel and tax policies cause catastrophic hardship: leave behind all the massive problems you just caused, and fly off to your £5m holiday home in sunny Santa Monica

41. Feral gonad Sajid Javid said it was “right and fair” that we all pay more tax than we can afford

42. He then said it was right and fair for Rishi Sunak’s billionaire wife to avoid tax she can easily afford, cos what are we: animals? Or – god help us – Belgians?!

43. Akshata Murthy (Mrs Sunak) has non-dom status, so doesn’t pay tax on most of her billions of income

44. This includes income derived from the £727m stake she has in Russian businesses that her husband spent last week telling the rest of us we shouldn’t invest in

45. Sunak said his wife was only avoiding tax cos she’s Indian

46. But being Indian doesn’t make you exempt from UK tax if you live/earn here

47. And being non-dom isn’t an accident of birth: she pays £30k a year for it

48. But it has allowed her to avoid £20m of tax

49. The average Brit worker pays £6k per year in tax, so Murthy’s greed has wiped out the entire contribution of 3,330 British workers

50. And then the govt, by some amazing twist of happenstance, chose her family firm to be recipients of £50m in contracts

51. Let us enter the (presumably quite large) orbit of Eric Pickles, former housing minister and current twat, who respectfully attended the Grenfell Inquiry

52. He respectfully told them he was too busy to answer their questions

53. He said the fire killed 96 people. It killed 72, which he respectfully couldn’t be arsed remembering

54. Still, he’s an improvement on Nadine Dorries, who ignored a committee of MPs telling her the new Ofcom head shouldn’t get the job because he has a “clear lack of depth”

55. The same flaw hadn’t stopped Dorries getting into cabinet, so she pressed on regardless

56. The last time Dorries appointed a head of the Charity Commission – and a friend of Boris Johnson’s, wouldn’t you just know it – was December, and he lasted barely a week

57. So this week, without bothering to run an appointments process, she appointed a different member of the Tory inner-circle as the new charities head

58. MPs had already rejected this one too, as being “slapdash”, and I think I’m starting to spot a pattern

59. The Tory chair of the culture committee said the actions of Dorries simply proved “the public appointments process is broken”

60. Taking her queue from this, Dorries then moved on to breaking Channel 4

61. Dorries (the actual Culture Minister, and not a woman dragged in front of the cameras straight from a fight outside a flat-roofed pub) said C4 being publicly funded was “holding it back”

62. C4 isn’t publicly funded, and Nadine is so thick you could stand a spoon up in her

63. Dorries’s sterling native stupidity didn’t stop Ben Bradley (the Lego form of Al Murray) from using her as a role-model, so he also claimed C4 gets “£ from the taxpayer” and can’t raise its own funds

64. It raises its own funds via advertising

65. Grade B MP David Warburton was suspended for class A drugs, and for sexually assaulting 3 women

66. It probably won’t help his defence that he’d posed for photos next to a baking-tray full of cocaine

67. Tory whips knew about his drugs/assaults for weeks, and did nothing

68. Warburton has checked himself into a psychiatric unit

69. He somehow jumped the place of the 60% of children’s mental health referrals currently being rejected, because a decade of Tory cuts (which Warburton voted for) has left us unable to care for our kids

70. Perhaps Warburton will pay for his own care, maybe using the undisclosed £100k he just took from a Russian businessman

71. This was hot on the cloven-heels of Priti Patel, who this week took a £100k “donation” from an oil trader

72. A donation is not the same as a bribe. One is illegal, the other legal. But occasionally, by some chance-in-a-million fluke, they produce identical results

73. For example, days after getting a donation from an oil trader, Patel opposed windfall taxes on oil company profits

74. Which brings us to the energy crisis, and 2 weeks ago the PM promised a “long-term energy policy” based around windfarms

75. And then 9 cabinet ministers – the usual supercluster of arrant gobshites, Patel, Dorries, Rees-Mogg etc – demanded a cut in support for windfarms

76. So the PM’s “long-term energy policy” has lasted 2 weeks, and today’s wild, sweaty fumble in the policy tombola has led to a new one: 6 nuclear power stations instead, which won’t open for decades, and for which there is no money

77. There’s also no money for home insulation, which is the cheapest, fastest, and greenest way to conserve energy and reduce bills, and could start tomorrow

78. However, ministers did launch a plan to drop the ban on fracking, contradicting their own manifesto pledge

79. Other manifesto pledges: a mini-thread, as if you haven’t suffered enough

a. “We will not raise National Insurance”

b. National Insurance increased by 10%

c. “We will keep the pension Triple Lock”

d. They abolished the triple lock

e. “No-one will have to sell their home to pay for care”

f. People still have to sell their homes for care

g. “We’ll build rail between Manchester and Leeds”

h. Scrapped

i. “40 new hospitals”

j. Isn’t happening

k. “We will cap energy bills”

l. Energy bills are up 54%

m. “0.7% of GDP on international aid”

n. They ended most international aid

o. “We will host the first ever LGBT conference”

p. So this week govt cancelled that conference as 100s boycotted it in protest at Tories failing to outlaw conversion practices for transgender people

80. Anyway, back to the main thread, which – yep – is still grinding on, you poor fuckers. The latest broken pledge on clean energy came the same week the IPCC said “extreme steps” are needed immediately to avert “catastrophic climate change”

81. Faced with this existential threat, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the result of a Dalek having hate-sex with a pendulum, said he supported extracting “every last drop of oil from the North Sea”

82. Bear in mind this lot hosted the COP26 climate summit less than a year ago

83. Although Boris Johnson did take a private jet to Devon to attend it, which should have given us a hint about his intentions

84. And if that wasn’t a big enough clue, the Tories let Shell pay £0 tax on oil and gas production last year, and instead we PAID THEM £92 million

85. Research this week showed in 2 years the PM has told 17 uncorrected lies in parliament, and ministers a further 27

86. The ministerial code says any falsehood must be corrected, or the minister must resign. But still they cling on

87. And finally, 5 million people had Covid last week, experts called the cancellation of health measures a “perfect storm”, and 3000 NHS staff per week are off sick with the virus

88. So naturally, we chose this exact moment to cancel free rapid testing.

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 13.04.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

As some of you might expect, the latest banshee howl that is #TheWeekInTory is quite lengthy, and I advise a deep dive into your preferred sedative before beginning.

Let us begin where the last one ended, which is, astonishingly, a mere 5 days ago [queue wobbly screen]…

1. Having spent a week insisting there was nothing wrong with avoiding £20 million in tax while being responsible for raising tax, Space Family Sunak have now concluded that for PR purposes their monumental, sickening greed is “not compatible with British fairness”

2. Sunak insisted he should not be associated with his spouse for tax purposes

3. This came as a shock to the rest of us, for whom our spouse’s income affects every personal tax matter, every mortgage application, and all benefits claims

4. But you can’t you expect poor, bewildered Sunak to understand the UK’s rules, especially as it seems he’s spent half his time as chancellor accidentally pledging allegiance to a foreign state for tax purposes, and promising to make USA his forever home

5. Parliamentary rules state MPs must be UK residents for tax purposes, so Sunak broke both MP’s rules and the Ministerial Code, both resigning matters. He didn’t resign

6. And then it was revealed Sunak had listed his wealth in the Cayman Islands to avoid even more domestic tax

7. He also failed to list his wife’s £690m stake in Russian businesses in the register of members’ interests, even though the govt of which he is a senior member has given that company multiple contracts, and even though he told us all not to invest in Russia

8. So by Sunday we’d discovered Sunak was chancellor of one country while legally domiciled in another, claimed his wife didn’t pay tax cos she was from a 3rd, got paid by a trust fund in a 4th, and was secretly breaking the rules of his job to give money to a 5th

9. So to prove he’s now 100% committed to his job, his nation, and our struggle, he moved out of 11 Downing St and into one of his 4 giant luxury houses

10. Furiously glaring testicle Sajid Javid leaped to Sunak’s defence, saying it would be “morally wrong” not to put up taxes

11. And then Javid admitted he’d spent 20 years as a non-dom avoiding paying those taxes, but there was “nothing immoral” about it

12. He then pressed SHIFT + F5 in his brain, and announced Tories would “tackle aggressive tax avoidance and evasion”, like all the stuff he did

13. Sunak, laser focussed on what was really pissing us off, decided “divulging the tax status of a private individual is a criminal offence”, and he HATES criminal offences, as we all know

14. So Boris Johnson – yes, Boris Johnson – ordered an ethics inquiry into Sunak

5. In all the kerfuffle, you may have missed the news about Nadine Dorries, which is understandable, since she’s so dense no light can escape her

16. This week the exuberantly befuddled Nadine claimed opponents of her plan to privatise Channel 4 were “ill informed”

17. This claim is only slightly undermined by the fact she’d argued for the privatisation whilst still not having the faintest idea how Channel 4 operates

18. She said only 7% of TV production companies get money from Channel 4

19. It’s actually over 50%

20. She said privatisation would finally force the majority of TV to be made outside London

21. 66% of Channel 4’s UK content is made outside London

22. She said Channel 4 was currently a debt-risk and should be more like Netflix

23. Netflix is has over $15 billion of debts

24. She said Channel 4’s advertising revenue has collapsed

25. All advertising collapsed during the pandemic. Channel 4’s has recovered

26. She said Channel 4 becoming like the big streamers would protect its news service

27. None of the big streamers provides a news service

28. Let’s visit Boris Johnson, a leaking bin-bag full of custard and Viagra, who began the week by heroically facing a terrifying inquisition from GBNews interviewers Esther McVey and Philip Davies, who just happen to be Tory MPs he gave jobs to

29. The interview probably breached Ofcom rules because we are in an election cycle, meaning press interviews must meet defined impartiality standards, such as not being a cosy chat between people with one brain between them

30. Johnson still lied, telling McVey he would introduce more lockdowns, despite promising MPs there would be no more lockdowns in Feb

31. Don your biohazard suits and let’s see what’s been happening to Priti Patel, answer to the question “what did Bellatrix Lestrange do next?”

32. This week Patel surprised us all with her first ever attempt at an apology, in this case over the Ukrainian visa fiasco

33. Let’s be honest, even for a first attempt it wasn’t a wildly successful apology

34. She admitted it was “always easy to blame someone else”, and then immediately blamed somebody else, claiming her insistence on shellshocked Ukrainian children completing byzantine visa application forms in a foreign language “is not the problem”

35. She insisted she couldn’t let refugees into the country without visas just in case we ended up with a repeat of the Windrush scandal

36. The Windrush victims all had visas, but the Tories locked them up and kicked them out of the country anyway. Details schmetails

37. Patel boasted of a “surge of staff to Calais” to cope with applications

38. Reporters found she’d actually sent “two guys, a table, and some crisps”

39. So nobody can get in, and in news that will shock 48% of us and be ignored by the rest, nobody can get out either

40. Brexit is going so well that we had to close 23 miles of motorways in Kent

41. Instead of tackling crime, Kent police now have to patrol the 30-hour queues of HGVs to ensure weeping drivers don’t simply abandon their vehicles as their livelihoods gently rot in the back

42. Boris Johnson, who won an election telling us Brexit was done, has now become so bored with Brexit not being done that he told German leaders he was ready to rip up the protocol

43. A committee of MPs concluded Brexit will make us more reliant on imported food, not less

44. But MPs found we probably can’t that import food, cos by the time HGV drivers finally escape our shores, most of them have concluded it’s not worth coming back

45. Such is the demand for food that as inflation reached a whopping 7%, the cost of basic foodstuffs rose by 12%

46. More than 550 foodbanks warned parliament they were at “breaking point” because supporters can no longer afford to give donations, and rising poverty sees centres overwhelmed by desperate demand

47. Foodbank use has doubled since January

48. John Redwood said the govt needed to sort out import/exports at Dover, finally catching up with where everybody else was in June 2016

49. Well, everybody except for Dominic Raab, a betwattled, box-faced Etch-a-Sketch dingbat who famously didn’t know what Dover was for

50. This week Raab applied his fierce wisdom and keen intellect to a spiffing new Human Rights Act, and introducing something he was SURE would be better, because it would “counter wokery”, an indefinable, shape-shifting curse that makes people have basic manners

51. Raab’s human rights plan was immediately condemned by the Joint Committee on Human Rights for “weakening protections”, for not being based on any evidence, for undermining the right to a fair trial, and for suggesting some classes of people should have fewer human rights

52. To Westminster, or maybe Pentonville: and despite a ban on MPs employing wives, 2 aides to gropy cocaine enthusiast David Warburton said they were unable to report his misconduct, because the person paid £52k of public money to handle complaints against him was his own wife

53. Fellow Tory MP Simon Hart defended this arrangement, claiming MPs – such as Simon Hart – who employed their wives delivered “real value for money” for the taxpayer, presumably on the basis that it minimises the risk of MPs facing costly criminal prosecutions

54. Even so, brace for another prosecution soon: it seems Warburton had secretly lobbied on behalf of an iffy Russian businessman without revealing that the Russian had given him a £150,000 loan, and that he wasn’t able to repay it

55. A former Tory minister said, “This is symptomatic of a party in terminal decline. We are in a death spiral”

56. Also on Monday… no, really, we’re just on Monday… Tory MP Imran Ahmad Khan was found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy

57. Crispin Blunt, Tory head of the all-party group on LGBTQ+ rights, said the conviction of his friend Khan for abusing a child was an “international scandal”

58. So half the LGBTQ+ members resigned from the group, because Blunt refused to quit

59. And then Blunt quit anyway

60. So now, only a week after we had to cancel an LGBTQ conference because 100s of LGBTQ groups objected to Tory policy on “conversion therapy”, a Tory MP has managed to make half the gay members of parliament stop being members of the group for gay parliamentarians

61. Meanwhile (former) Tory Rob Roberts is still acting as an independent MP, and refusing to step down from his seat a year after being suspended from the Commons for making repeated unwanted sexual advances

62. This is despite his suspension leading to a recall petition of his own voters, which he lost, therefor the regulations mean he now has to face a byelection. He still hasn’t agreed to step down. He’s just sat there, immoveable, undermining democracy

63. And so to the big news of the week, as Boris Johnson, a crapulous Honey Monster crammed into a suit he’s borrowed for a tribunal, got a fixed penalty notice for attending parties during Covid lockdown, thus becoming the first sitting PM ever convicted of a breaking the law

64. Johnson still insists he hadn’t lied to parliament, because he had naturally assumed the rolling stream of parties involving suitcases of booze, DJs, birthday cakes, party hats, tinsel and people playing on swings in the garden were simply standard govt meetings

65. Johnson wrote in the forward to the Ministerial Code that to “win back the trust of the British people we must uphold the very highest standards of propriety, and this code sets out how”

66. That very same Ministerial Code says ministers must resign if they lie to parliament

67. Johnson has told parliament the following lies:

a. “All guidance was followed completely in No 10”

b. “There was no party and no Covid rules were broken”

c. “I have been repeatedly assured there were no parties”

d. “I follow the rules”

e. “There was no Christmas party. Covid rules have been followed at all times”

f. “I can understand how infuriating it must be to think that the people who have been setting the rules have not been following the rules, because I was also furious”

68. Rishi Sunak – last year’s Best Available Tory whose primary skill now appears to be removing his jacket on Instagram – also got fined, even though he had told parliament “I did not attend any parties”, which was another flagrant lie

69. Sunak didn’t resign either

70. A whole fesnying (google it) of Tory MPs rushed out to independently tweet nearly identical messages of irrumating (don’t google it) support for Johnson

71. These were led by be-Tangoed Party Chairman and adenoidal Morph cosplayer Oliver Dowden, who said he was “fully behind” the PM, the ideal position from which to stab him if the polling turns bad

72. It turns out it was absolutely right for Allegra Stratton to resign for making a joke about illegal parties she hadn’t attended, but absolutely wrong for Boris Johnson or Rishi Sunak to resign for attending those illegal parties

73. Later, somebody who was genuinely prepared to admit that he is Grant Shapps was sent out to defend Johnson, immediately got confused by his brief, and said Johnson’s actions were “indefensible”

74. Various floundering attempts at avoiding consequences were deployed, such as: Johnson can’t resign cos we’re at war

75. We’re not at war. Although don’t put it past them to declare war if it buys them an hour to clean up Johnson’s latest stinky brown gift to the nation

76. The next attempt to keep Johnson in power came from a backbencher struck with the brilliant idea of stating in public that all the alternative potential Tory leaders were “damaged people”, which isn’t exactly wrong, but is a monumentally stupid thing to admit out-loud

77. Another Tory argued Johnson couldn’t resign, because that would send a message to Russia that we’re a soft touch, somehow convincing himself Russia hadn’t figured this out for themselves during all their years of giving money to Tories so they could avoid the law

78. Reports emerged that the world-leading PM wanted to recall parliament to discuss the risk of chemical weapons in Ukraine

79. And then reports emerged that Ukraine could go fuck itself, cos there was no way our world-leading PM wanted to face parliament right now

80. The next desperate gambit was to insist the PM hadn’t broken any laws because he’d only broken the law for 9 minutes

81. So presumably the “party of law and order” is now behind the notion that an 8-minute burglary doesn’t really count. Especially if nobody eats cake

82. Johnson, leader of this seemingly eternal gobshite jamboree, has already said he attended a party for 25 minutes, so that idea floundered, and the burgary is off

83. Next preposterous claim: the PM didn’t understand the rules, and therefore wasn’t immoral, merely stupid

84. Unfortunately the Tory MPs using this defence have merely shown they’re immoral AND stupid

85. Gibbering ukulele fanatic and dying palm-tree Michael Fabricant had a go at defending the PM by insisting NHS doctors get pissed at work all the time

86. Hospitals don’t allow alcohol on the premises – not even in a suitcase

87. So in a year, we’ve gone from the people of Britain applauding health workers from their doorways to MPs abusing health workers to keep a bullshitting one-man game of Shag/Marry/Avoid in power

88. Gilead commander’s wife Liz Truss was taking a break from “leading the world on Ukraine” to undertake the urgent task of being photographed sitting with eerie serenity in an haunted orchard, but she somehow found time to say she “fully backs” the PM

89. This doesn’t entirely explain why she’s registered 2 domain names for a future leadership bid

90. Despite Tory MPs attempting to overwhelm us with their panicky blunderbuss of fuckwittery, only 6% of the public believe the PM is honest, and 57% of us want him to resign

91. A rising number Tory MPs have had enough, OK with the 150,000 deaths, but not with this, and have begun sending letters of no-confidence to the 1922 committee

92. The public are being encouraged help matters along by writing a letter of complaint to their own Tory MP

93. This, of course, assumes their Tory MP isn’t one of the ones who – in this week alone – have been found guilty of paedophilia, or suspended for railing coke and doing sexual assaults, or celebrated the anniversary of them refusing to step down for being handsy as fuck

94. Anyway, minor stories hidden behind the more obvious vortex of broiling chaos – and do try to remember the missing £20 million of Sunak tax as you read these

95. UK benefits – already the worst in Europe – have now fallen further, reaching their lowest level for 50 years

96. Meanwhile Minister James Heappey complained that he couldn’t survive on his £106k salary

97. After every single Tory MP voted against making rented housing fit for human habitation, 1 in 8 privately rented homes are now a “serious threat to people’s health and safety”

98. And after a decade of the lowest funding in its history, half of A&E patients now wait over 24 hours to be seen

99. 23% wait more than 2 days

100. 80% of hospitals reported storing patients in desperately needed ambulances because wards are packed with Covid cases

101. The NHS said spiralling Covid infections were “being ignored for ideological reasons”, cos stopping spindly, posturing mantis Jacob Rees-Mogg from whining is more important than public health

102. The NHS said the “living with Covid” policy was “dooming the health service”

103. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine said the Tories abandoning cheap, workable and basic public health measures in a pandemic was “breaking the basic agreement to provide a health service”

104. They said the NHS is in “a deeper crisis than ever before”

105. GP numbers have fallen every single year since the Tories promised to increase them in 2015

106. This week a study fond 44% of teachers said they plan to quit due to “unmanageable workload”, made worse by constant rolling absences caused by unconstrained Covid

107. And finally, the chairman of Enfield Conservatives has been suspended for dressing up in a Nazi uniform for “perverse-themed” parties, but said he didn’t remember

108. I don’t know about you, but I think I’d remember dressing up in a Nazi unform for a perverse-themed party

… back to the top

The Week in Tory – Posted 25.04.2022

 

Original thread begins at this tweet.

It’s been a challenge to find anything to write in the latest #TheWeekInTory. They’ve all been such well-behaved boys and girls.

Only kidding: it’s absolute carnage.

Don your biohazard suits, top up your breakfast absinthe, and let’s dive in

1. Under Boris Johnson, 10 Downing Street now holds the record as the most law-breaking address in the country

2. A just-fined Johnson promised to “set the record straight” by finally telling the truth about the thing he also denies telling hundreds of lies about

3. Having acted contrite for a record 18 minutes in parliament, Johnson performed a “pantomime” to backbenchers so tonally crass that multiple Tory MPs walked out

4. Steve Baker called it “an orgy of adulation, a festival of bombast” and said the PM “should be long gone”

5. Baker called the cabinet “dumb and happy”, which is rich from a science-denying dolt cursed with the self-satisfied grin of someone desperate to be asked if he’s any good at Connect 4

6. The Justice Minister resigned cos Boris Johnson is “inconsistent with the rule of law”

7. David Davis said Johnson was “morally delinquent”

8. Mark Harper said Johnson was “no longer worthy of office”

9. However Alexander Stafford said we should forgive the PM “as a Christian country”, only slightly undermined by the PM attacking the Archbishop of Canterbury

10. Johnson was deluded enough to think this cluster of backstabbing, squabbling dingleberries could be persuaded to block a plan to have him investigated for years of quite obviously lying to parliament

11. His MPs refused to block the inquiry, so it’s going ahead

12. But Johnson said the inquiry was unnecessary, because he’d learned his lesson about lying to parliament, and to prove it he immediately lied to parliament about there being more people in work now than before the pandemic. There are fewer

13. Last year’s “Best Available Tory” prize-winner Rishi Sunak said “the govt must do everything it can to deal with the cost-of-living challenges”

14. It is 2 weeks since he did absolutely nothing to deal with the cost-of-living challenges

15. Boris Johnson insisted he was “getting on with the job” of fixing the cost-of-living crisis, just like he fixed Brexit in 2019

16. He then ignored the cost-of-living crisis, and bravely flew off to India, cos he urgently needed to sign **absolutely no new trade deals**

17. Thrashing around for anything positive to say about himself, Johnson alighted on Ukraine, and reminded everybody he had led the world on support for the country

18. A FOI request revealed only 1/4 of the aid Johnson promised to Ukraine has actually been delivered

19. A whistle-blower working on the govt’s Ukraine asylum system said it is “dysfunctional and useless”, with a “pattern” of visa applications “accidentally” going missing that seems designed to prevent any Ukrainians from actually being allowed into the country

20. Besuited batrachian monstrosity Andrew Bridgen was found by a high court judge to have lied under oath

21. To prove he wasn’t a liar, Bridgen, who lost the case, said “actually I won the case”, and is now facing an inquiry by the parliamentary standards watchdog

22. But he still found it in himself to write a Daily Express column, teaching morality to the Archbishop of Canterbury

23. This was due to the Archbishop speculating that God might not like the idea of us shoving the most vulnerable people on earth into a concentration camp

24. The idea arose from what we must, I suppose, call “the mind” of smirking, razor-faced angel of death Priti Patel, who opted to distract us from Boris’s problems by announcing a pointlessly cruel scheme to achieve nothing and annoy everybody

25. Her great plan was to ship Africans who had been people-smuggled to Britain straight back to Africa, so they can be smuggled again, thus creating a self-perpetuating market for criminals, and inventing Snakes and Ladders for cunts

26. Just 8 days before the announcement the Refugees Minister had said there was “absolutely no possibility of sending refugees to Rwanda” and that if there was, he would know about it

27. He didn’t know about it, and resigned

28. Patel told MPs asylum seekers would live in Rwanda until accepted in the UK

29. Turns out the policy will force people to claim asylum in Rwanda instead of UK, so Patel’s tactic for distracting from stories about Johnson lying to parliament was: lie to parliament

30. Junior MPs without the wit to refuse were rolled out to defend the indefensible, and seemed even less well-briefed than usual

31. Tom Hunt battled Year 7 geography to claim Tories were “offshore processing in a safe European country, Rwanda”

32. Tom Pursglove, minister for illegal immigration, and therefore a man you’d expect to have a few details up his sleeve, had done his homework, and told the BBC that “clearly in Africa there are many countries in Africa, and this is one”. Well done, Tom

33. Meanwhile banjaxed halfwit Lucy Allen claimed “the point of [sending people to Rwanda] is to be a deterrent”, which will come as a shock to [checks notes] Lucy Allen, who reassured us that “Rwanda is a wonderful welcoming country” and demanded the left stop trashing it

34. 10 months earlier the Tories had condemned Rwanda for “human rights violations including deaths in custody and torture”

35. Johnson, picking up that Lucy Allen vibe, informed parliament Rwanda is “one of the safest countries on earth”

36. In 2020 the UK accepted 100% of claims for asylum from “safest county on earth” Rwanda

37. We also told Rwanda we were disappointed they “did not support the UK recommendation to provide support to trafficking victims, including those held in government transit centres”

38. So to summarise: the UK govt is simultaneously encouraging Ukrainians to take refuge here, designing a system to prevent Ukrainians claiming refuge here, and launching a scheme to send trafficking victims to a place we condemn for not helping trafficking victims

39. Claims the scheme would save money weren’t helped by Andrew Mitchell admitting it would be “cheaper to place asylum seekers in the Ritz”

40.Theresa May, a tottering mechanical seabird that has swallowed a kazoo, said the scheme lacked “legality, practicality and efficacy”

41. The Church of England said the policy was “against the judgement of God”

42. By contrast, renowned Christian Jacob Rees-Mogg said the opportunity to be whisked 4500 miles away to be locked in a concentration camp run by torturers was an “almost Easter story of redemption”

43. And the UN said the plan breaches international law

44. Which leads us to Brexit, where haunted, shag-happy dust-bunny Boris Johnson was once again announcing he was preparing to breach international law by throwing out his own agreement, for the umpteenth time

45. Both the Brexit campaign and the 2019 Tory Manifesto promised to AT LEAST match the regional funding we got from the EU

46. Imagine my – and 48% of Britain’s – surprise when it turns out regions are getting less than half the funding they used to get from the EU

47. The PM announced another delay in changes to import checks, making it the 4th time in 4 years that he’s delayed the implementation of his “oven-ready deal” on the quite reasonable grounds that it’s based on technology that is exclusive to the Marvel Cinematic Universe

48. The Kent traffic system was relaxed to prove Brexit was working

49. Four hours later the system was put in place again, cos Brexit isn’t working at all

50.Brexit is also behind an 80% drop in visits by foreign students, risking 40,000 UK jobs and a £3.2bn industry

51. To solve the supply chain crisis he caused, Boris Johnson launched a taskforce last autumn

52. This week the govt admitted the taskforce had been closed within days of being launched, and before it had even held a single meeting, but having generated a lovely headline

53. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the exact physical intersection between the concept of rickets and a cursed dildo, told parliament the Brexit treaty he had insisted was brilliant in 2019 was now invalid, because the govt had its fingers cross when it signed

54. He then lurched wildly around Whitehall, leaving notes on empty desks to inform non-existent people that they should work harder at generating treaties for him to later ignore

55. This is a bold move for somebody famous for lying down on the job

54. He then lurched wildly around Whitehall, leaving notes on empty desks to inform non-existent people that they should work harder at generating treaties for him to later ignore

55. This is a bold move for somebody famous for lying down on the job

57. It is also just one week since Nadine Dorries, the reason the gene-pool needs a lifeguard, demanded Channel 4 become more like Netflix, so it is almost inevitable that Netflix’s share price immediately tanked 35%

58. So Dorries opted to make a TikTok about her job, seemingly straight after a prolonged lunchtime celebration of doing well in a Wetherspoons meat raffle

59. She then told rapt viewers that she runs one of the govt’s largest departments

60. It’s one of the smallest

61. The video showed Dorries being rightly proud of her innovative department, which had, that very day, invented the concept of downstreaming tennis pitches

62. She went on to claim her complete absence of pertinent knowledge about her brief was caused by dyslexia

63. Researchers into dyslexia expressed the opinion that dyslexia was probably not an adequate explanation for the lavishly scattered wits of Nadine Dorries

64. We welcomed the return of Matt Hancock, who appears to be PeeWee Herman reflected in the back of a spoon, and announced to an expectant public that he’s written a book detailing his massive success in killing 100,000 people during Covid

65. Not sure if his book will include this week’s news that Hancock had accepted “hospitality” from Randox, had failed to declare it, and then headed a dept that gave £500m to Randox

66. Randox were also behind the Owen Paterson scandal, which ended sooo well for Tories

67. And finally, as we slide closer to complete planetary breakdown, Steve Baker moved from “scrutinising” climate change to posting papers actively denying it’s happening

68. Baker is seen as a key organiser for whoever succeeds Johnson, and I’m building a bunker

… back to the top

The Twisted Brain Wrong Of A One Off Man Mental

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