Rick's b.log - entry 2022/08/24

The Tory psychodrama drags on

Rishi Sunak

He has tried hard over the past few years to cultivate an image of being The Good Guy, he even responded to the Covid crisis with the "Eat Out To Help Out" campaign, which went down well with many.
But all of that has fallen apart since he simply failed to do anything useful at all as the Cost Of Living Crisis loomed on the horizon. Now it's not so much away on the horizon but more like Godzilla stomping on houses, and still...nothing.

But we don't need to look far to see that Sunak, for all that he might want to be seen as some sort of hero, is really Just Another Bloody Tory. During the aforementioned Covid situation, the derisory (and least generous in Europe) Statutory Sick Pay was not increased. This left people with the option of either going to work and spreading the virus, or isolating and... eating what?
In Sunak's time as Chancellor, nearly nine billion in PPE fraud and a little over four billion in Covid-19 fraud has been written off. This is the largest amount any Chancellor has had to deal with. Imagine what could be done with thirteeen billion quid, if it wasn't being spaffed over some tosspot mate-of-a-prominent-Tory.
There are around three million self employed people who not only were not included in the furlough scheme, they haven't received so much as a rusty tuppence. Note, again, over thirteen billion was written off.
Plenty of tax rises over the past two or three years. Mostly aimed at low and middle income families. Meanwhile he has fairly consistently voted against higher taxation on banks and the banking industry.

He is, as if it wasn't already abundantly clear, the sort of Tory who gives rise to the nickname "The Nasty Party".
Having him as Prime Minister would be a catastrophe, especially if you're poor.

Liz Truss

She has happily followed the party whip to vote forty eight times in favour of benefits cuts. Typical sodding Tory wankbiscuit.

2014 was an interesting year for Truss. A rather infamous speech about the UK importing so much cheese, and how This! Is! A! Disgrace!, followed in the same bloody speech by her proud proclamation that she'll be in Beijing in December opening up new pork markets.

If you want to know who was the architect behind the Northern Ireland Protocol bill, you know, the one that risks breaking the Good Friday Agreement and starting a trade war with the EU... go on, guess. I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count.
Speaking of trade deals, post-Brexit, she managed to arrange a trade deal with New Zealand that looks as if it will help out New Zealand's economy to the tune of about five hundred million quid. The effect on the UK economy? "Negligible" was the word used. In fact, it was reported at the time that Kiwi television got the government to confirm the specifics of the trade deal twice just to make sure it wasn't some sort of prank.

On one of the televised leadership debates, talking about her policy on China, one of the best soundbites of that discussion was "freedom is a price worth paying".
Don't actually try to rationalise that. Truss is an eccentric madwoman who likely became an MP because she wasn't capable of existing in the real world. After all, when she was Justice Secretary back in 2018, she said that barking dogs in prisons should work to deter drug delivery drones.
She has also promised to issue a directive to every police force in the country telling them to reduce murders by 20%. As if there's some sort of knob on a wall of the local nick that they can adjust. Maybe if she issued that directive a little sooner, Olivia Pratt-Korbel would still be alive.

And now, today, she stated that she's more than happy to reach for the nuclear button should it be necessary. A question that most sensible PMs avoid actually answering. But Truss doesn't seem overly bothered about global annihilation, stating that she would be ready to do that while appearing completely emotionless.
Perhaps the lack of emotion was due to the big word "annihilation" (oh, five syllables!) causing a cerebral hiccup.

That being said, we must remember that we are talking about Liz Truss. Illogical gibberish is her superpower. I mean, for god's sake, she would fail a Turing Test.

Having her a Prime Minister would be a catastrophe, but would give foreign press outlets no end of column inches.

We might laugh at some of the things that Dick Cheney/Dubyah/Palin have said, but there is a sort of logic behind it, even if they're talking about known unknowns or rather saying squicky things about their own daughter.
Truss? Truss' logic comes from a place so outlandish that unicorns probably do fart rainbows. And with Truss as PM, we'll all have to try to figure out what the hell she means every single time she opens her mouth...
...only to immediately regret the effort as she'll have done a(nother) U-turn.

None of this crap matters

This is real and this is now. For some people times were hard. But nowadays? Not so much hard as defying belief. Soaring energy prices, spiralling inflation, and damn near everything else going up in price because it's a convenient bandwagon (think of the shareholder profits!).

If this is real and this is now, what the hell is going to happen when winter comes? Long nights, cold days...

Neither Sunak nor Truss have any coherent policy for helping those who need it (indeed, any Tory government is actively hostile to those who need welfare), and honestly neither strikes me as having any coherent policy for bringing the economy back under control.

Indeed, I rather get the feeling that the entire campaign, and all the U-turns, is not because any of them are trying to convince you that they are good for the country, but because they're trying to convince you that their opponent is worse. It's like being given a choice of a bullet in the head or in the heart. Neither option is good and both options have the same outcome. Sophie's choice.

So flip a coin. Sunak or Truss. I don't have a coin, so evens it's Sunak and odds (because she's very bloody odd), it's Truss.

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Truss it is, then.

Britain doesn't need either of these ridiculous cockwombles.
It needs a General Election, an Opposition that stops trying to be a Tory tribute act, and a public brave enough to vote for an alternative instead of parroting meaningless mantras that usually involve "getting Brexit done".

I despair for my former country.

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J.G.Harston, 26th August 2022, 21:43

Liz Truss on trade reminds me of David Cameron on benefits.    In the noughties a big chunk of my benefits casework was child benefit. The rules were very clear. It was the primary carer (gobbledegook for "the adult the child lives with") who had to apply. It was the primary carer who was assessed, it was the primary carer who was the applicant, it was the primary carer who received the money, and it was the primary carer's local benefit office that they applied to.    So then we had this nonsense about non-UK workers in the UK getting UK child benefit for children living back home with relatives back home. Naturally, UK benefit recipients, administrators, and taxpayers were saying "ey up, if Mischa is living with Babula in Warsaw, she should be damn well applying to Warsaw DSS, not Wath-on-Dearn".    Cameron said "I'll go to Brussles and sort this!"    He came back and said: "It's all sorted! Instead of kids in Poland being paid UK child benefits, I've got the EU to agree that....... kids in Poland will be paid UK child benefit, but at Polish rates."    You. Had. One. Job....

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