Budgets, Autumn Statements, Spending Reviews, we may as well just have a date put on the calendar each month for the government of the day to set out its ‘scribbled down on the back of a fag packet’ electoral bribes for the next thirty days.
Getting a kicking from the populist right? Just throw a few more foreigners under the Brexit bus. The left on your case because you stole £300 from pensioners last winter? Perform another screeching U-turn while refusing to admit you actually got it wrong the first time.
Whenever this useless shambles of a government think a certain part of the electorate are sharpening their knives, they will try and defend themselves with an off-the-hoof policy that tends to create far more questions than it actually answers.
Austerity by stealth
Let’s have a monthly state-of-finances thing with Kid Starver and Rachel Thieves. We can all gather around our TV sets and be thankful for the crumbs that are nonchalantly brushed from the briefing room table.
Rachel from accounts, or the pretend economist if you prefer, insisted her review wouldn’t see a return to the days of Tory austerity.
But this is, surprise surprise, entirely dishonest because the review imposes austerity-by-stealth through real-terms cuts to eight government departments.
The £39bn for affordable and social housing is to be welcomed, of course, but just how many council estates is that going to buy?
The last government allocated £37bn for a flawed two-year Covid test-and-trace scheme with god only knows how much ending up in private pockets. More than half-a-billion was spent treating just 272 inpatients at those Nightingale hospitals, which are now most likely B&M bargain outlets or hand car washes.
£39bn is a drop in the ocean.
Reeves had a golden opportunity to deliver the bold, transformative change that the country so desperately needs. But she prioritised her self-imposed and entirely unnecessary fiscal rules over social needs.
A real Labour government should be wholeheartedly committed to addressing structural inequalities, not bringing in austerity-by-stealth, and certainly not behaving like Temu Tories.
Where’s the debate and scrutiny?
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, better known as the Assisted-Suicide Bill has been up for discussion once again this past week.
The more I read about it, the more testimonies I hear and see, the less scutiny the proposed legislation seems to be receiving, and the more it appears to be built upon coercion rather than the compassion it purports to provide.
Don’t get me wrong, the Assisted-Suicide Bill has drastically raised the level of debate surrounding an incredibly challenging and important matter. I am a democrat, and I believe this deeply sensitive matter should be debated.
But every debate — particularly one that ultimately results in state-sanctioned suicide — should listen to the people who are most likely to be affected this hideous and ghoulish legislation.
Some shockingly-misguided MPs may well be swayed by a few insignificant tweaks to the bill, but the end result doesn’t change, does it?
Why didn’t Chancellor Reeves use her spending review to announce a bit of help with assisted living? Capital investment doesn’t put a penny in your pocket NOW.
State coercion from a government death cult
The Assisted-Suicide bill will utterly erode societal norms of compassion for vulnerable and disabled people. Let’s not pretend otherwise. This is unprecedented coercion on a state level.
The Assisted-Suicide bill will normalise the idea that the lives of disabled people are less worth living. We can’t just be okay with that. Marginalised groups must be protected from the Labour death cult.
The Assisted-Suicide bill will put an end to any hope of the massive financial bolstering that is already needed in social and palliative care.
Hospices are already facing a dire shortage of funding, having suffered real-terms cuts to their funding for the previous two years. A proper Labour government would put this right, not legislate to speed up the process of death.
Hospices receive around 30% of their funding from the government, with the rest coming through tireless fundraising and generous donations.
One hospice, St Giles in Lichfield, receives just 17.7% of its funding from government sources.
The campaigners in favour of state-sanctioned suicide want to lecture us about dignity? I don’t fucking think so.
Where’s the bill for assisted living?
I will say it again: we must have a bill for assisted living.
I’ll be absolutely honest with you. I used to agree (in principle) with the idea of assisted dying. I was too naive to consider the safeguarding implications, I hadn’t done any research, and I certainly hadn’t listened to the people that were at the front of the discussion, which is exactly where the Labour leadership are right now as they finalise their plans for state-sanctioned suicide.
Skip forward a decade and I couldn’t be any more opposed to this frightening piece of legislation, and the government of the day, if I tried.