Please Sir, I Want [some] More

Five days worth of school lunches? Eighty percent profit, anyway; so that's all right, then...

 

Where in God’s good name are we headed? As I said the other day, at least the US at least seems to be clawing its way back from the brink of paranoiac chaos; but here? I really am concerned that we will be taken so far, so fast into the maw of that beast’s seemingly civilised British cousin, our genteel take on Neo-liberalism, that we may never recover from the damage our government will inevitably wreak on the  economy and our society. The framework is there: a solid mandate for the next four years, with a practically unassailable majority; key discussions regarding our trade deals, post Brexit being held in camera in closed committee, courtesy of the leader of the House: the Right Honourable(!) Member for the Eighteenth Century,  Jacob Rees-Moog - personal and family wealth, north of £150,000,000 - the very person who accused UNICEF of playing politics in giving a paltry few thousand quid to hungry children in this allegedly first world country of ours. His arrogance beggars belief.

Just about all spending from the public purse is now farmed out to inadequately performing private companies; usually Tory donors. The latest abhorrence is the emerging scandal - and no other word suffices here - of the thirty quid vouchers to replace school meals for families struggling to feed themselves during lockdown. This contract is in the unsavoury hands of Chartwells, part of the Compass Group; the chairman of which is Paul Walsh; a former member of David Cameron’s business advisory group and Tory donor. The contents of the food parcels, thankfully now widely reported in the mainstream media are laughable, disgraceful and frankly an insult, without even considering the thick end of eighty percent profit levied by these leeches on Government money - our money; supposedly provided to help the most vulnerable families during these extraordinary times of Covid. The very people in charge of this unforgivable theft are those who pontificate from where they consider to be the moral high ground on the way that poorer countries conduct themselves. Utter disgrace.

In the same week we also hear that now we are ‘free’ from EU regulation, we can start engaging in that sphere of activity so beloved of the right: polluting and despoiling the natural environment. That’s right, folks; they want to start coal-mining in this country again [nearly forty years after the Tories destroyed our original coal industry and the Unions with it], and are about to relax pesticide controls. What is it about these people? You give them the privilege of a million quids’ worth of education, untold wealth on inheritance; and they still want to shag the world to which they owe so much. Privilege afforded to the very few, paid and apparently voted for by the very many, and that privilege so badly, wantonly squandered in blind pursuit of mammon. We are staring the abyss in the face and they laugh at us, whilst stealing our money, livelihoods, health and pride from under our noses. Something really needs to be done about this coterie of entitled thieves and vagabonds before there is nothing left for them to steal and they up sticks and leave us the scraps, just like those they’re giving to the  school-kids they’re supposedly helping to feed.