“We are all in this together!” says George Osborne, every time he opens his mouth. Of course we are. But some are more in it than others.
Take Business Secretary Sajid Javid, please. You will know that despite knowing that a critical announcement was being made by the Tata steelmaking company in India this week, he flew to Australia for a jolly. The government is saying it wasn’t a jolly, he was there to work for British business. So, that’s why he took his 16 year old daughter with him, then? Oh, don’t worry, Javid paid for her flight himself, but we paid for his. And does this matter? Well, yes it does, actually: the Telegraph, hardly an enemy of the Tories, reports Javid “was planning to extend his visit by several days so he could go on a holiday with her.” So there you have it: we paid for Javid to go on a business jolly that was of such importance he was able to take his 16 year old daughter with him.
Some media suit has just suggested that “there is no suggestion Mr Javid has done anything wrong”. How do they work that one out? I suppose it depends on how you look at it, but if I was to go away with work and I took my son with me, I would be getting my flights (and hotel) paid for by the taxpayer. Javid may be many things, none of them nice, but he isn’t stupid. MPs, unlike anyone else, can get away with things that ordinary folk can’t. A freebie to Australia isn’t something that the lumpen proletariat can even dream about. We have paid for him to have a half price holiday.
Why the hell was Javid in Australia when he would have been in Port Talbot or India? No Tory cabinet minister was there, along with the local Labour MP and the leader of the Community union and PM Cameron was too busy in Lanzarote, enjoying an Easter break. We are all in it together indeed!
There is a terrible game being played out here. High value high skilled jobs are on the line here and when we hear Cameron repeating the mantra that “we are doing all we can”, you know he means it. Let me elaborate. Politicians were happy to rescue the banks. The great unwashed still own some of them eight years on after the financial crash. That cost a hell of a lot more than rescuing the steel industry did, but the government always said they would flog them back to the private sector once we had finished propping them up. So, given the likely importance of steel to our nation at some point in the future, why not take it into public ownership until that time comes? But Cameron has ruled out nationalisation – he always does, unless it’s nationalising the friends of the Tory Party who have been bankrolling them but almost bankrupting the nation for years – so “we are doing all we can” means we are doing next to nothing.
This will end up with that old Tory favourite about making “difficult decisions”. These decisions are difficult not for the politicians, but for those who will lose their livelihoods and the nation which will lose an entire industry.
Worst of all, Cameron adds, “there are no guarantees of success”. Read that as “there is no chance of success”.
I fear that soon the furnaces of Port Talbot and everywhere else will be cooling down for good and I will then ask the question: when are the people going to rise up and say that enough is enough? If we keep leaving it to someone else to stand up to this government, we’ll deserve all we get.
2 comments
Fighting talk…nice one
Sad thing is that though the Torys are scum Labour are worse. And as for the Libs, well what a waste of space they are. I know who will get my vote but while people are willing to vote for any of those 3 lying barstewerd party’s nothing will ever change. The fault lies with those that vote these scum in all the time.
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