“TIME FOR A SWIFT ONE IN THE SUBSIDISED BAR BEFORE WE GET A FREE TAXI HOME?
“SPIFFING, WHAT!”
I just saw this, posted on Twitter by Craig Dempsey. It seems somehow especially appropriate today given the vote to take free school meals away from around a million kids from poorer families in England.
This deal was set to cover Northern Ireland as well as England (because the province has no government), but Mrs May was obliged to remove the children there in order to get the voted of the DUP, who then happily voted to hurt English kids. (These are the people who demand that there be no difference between their province and their beloved England…except of course when it suits them eg abortion, same-sex marriage, etc, and now free school meals).
In one of the richest countries in the world (they keep on telling us), why are the English depriving their kids of the one semi-balanced meal they might get in a day? And why can it even be possible for the Northern Irish to be able to vote on this if it doesn’t affect them?
Scottish MPs were, of course, excluded from the vote under the EVEL law brought in the day after the last Scottish referendum, but that didn’t stop Scottish Tories trooping through the antiquated lobbies anyway and then having their votes discounted.
Exactly why they did this isn’t known.
It could be that they were too thick to realise that they weren’t allowed to vote on something that was Engish only. (They’ve only been there for 9 months or so. They still probably aren’t quite sure where the toilets are…although I’m betting they know the way to the subsidised restaurants and bars).
On the other hand, however, perhaps it was the thrill of doing something so utterly despicable that was just irresistible. Let’s starve poor kids, even though they are outwith our jurisdiction. Yippee.
Whatever it was, I wish we, the public, could respond by saying that cheap meals and drinks in the Commons and Lords, should now, in view of the ever-crumbling economic situation, be restricted to those who can show without a doubt that they earn less than the so-called “Living Wage”.
These people make my flesh creep.
There’s a list of this **** here.
++++++++++
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
So Scottish Tory MPs , voted on something they can’t vote on , the DUP voted on something they shouldn’t have voted on , and kids from poor families in England suffer . The question that has to be asked is ….. just what will it take for England to vote for their independence !
There must be something going on behind the scenes , are the IMF waiting to bail UK (sorry England ) out of a financial mess , as they did in the 70’s ? Is the reason for no EU deal so far , the Tories are waiting for Scotland to stop the madness and then blame us for not leaving and saving everyone’s ass ?
Whatever the next few years hold , its going to get nasty for everyone , not just these poor kids .
LikeLiked by 7 people
Dreading it, but hungry kids is something I can’t bein to countenance.
What kind of an animal does it take to think that’s acceptable.
Although I’m a relatively polite person, as a rule, I make no bones about the fact that if I met a Tory MP or MSP or even MEP at the moment, I’d be inclined to punch him or her on the noise.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Link to new ipso mori poll . https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/scottish-public-opinion-monitor-march-2018
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s a bit disappointing.
Suffer Together should be the name of their new campaign.
LikeLiked by 1 person
LikeLiked by 3 people
You have to work on your parents and grandparents. If they are No’s persuade them not to vote. The future is what we are fighting for, not the past. Try to get them to stay at home if they are against us.
LikeLiked by 6 people
Well, at least point out to them that it is YOUR future they are messing with.
LikeLiked by 2 people
At the end of the day it will be down to the Grim Reaper then. Trouble is he may have claimed some of us before the happy day arrives 😦
OTOH folk may just get more reactionary with age … hope not, I haven’t 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
People seem less inclined to accept change as they get older and that’s natural enough… but, that said, why was there a balance of older people who voted for the chaotic change of Brexit?
LikeLiked by 2 people
A desire to get back to the imagined Britain of the post-war years. “British and Best!”, “We Won the War!”, the loss of Empire not yet apparent, disguised by the cover of ‘Commonwealth’, “A New Elizabethan Age” … I grew up then and if I disengage my logical conscious brain, the lower reaches of my psychie can easily empathise with the Yoon Loons and Fanatical Leavers. Pity them! Accepting that England = Britain = World Power is a bitter pill. We didn’t experience WWII, Britain Stands Alone and all that. We just got its endless retelling via fiction and documentaries, ‘Europe’ was a foreign and threatening place … Well I think you may begin to get the picture.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Whoops! This is what happens when you try to type with Cat on your knee. Replace the ‘=’ signs by ‘NOT EQUALs’ 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, I do. And like I say, I understadn it to some extent.
If you don’t give a lot of thought to it. If you read the tabloid press mainly for the football or the tv page, etc etc…
I suppose even if you just watch Union Jackie and the BBC news.
But if you actually stop and think about the stuff that goes down here. How could you possibly support the UK in its current state?
LikeLike
Is there a breakdown of the population by these age groups? If we add all the groups we get 50% Yes, and 47.25% No, there is 3.5% Don’t know. I know it doesn’t add up to 100, but we are talking polling, statistics and damn lies.
The older the age grouping the more likely they are to vote. We HAVE to get the groups 1 and 2 out to vote.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is the best I can do and it’s obviously out of date, belonging to the 2011 census.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom
LikeLike
There is, of course, the possibility the Tory whips, seeing the UK as “Greater England”, thought the Colonel’s Westminster platoon were allowed to vote on this, and whipped them to do so.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Where would that leave EVEL ?
LikeLiked by 1 person
As far as Westminster is concerned it only applies to the SNP! Democracy EH!
LikeLiked by 2 people
As Conan says, it never occurred to Cameron that this wold affect Tories. Bum bitten!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ermm…. There’s a word somewhere for it…
LikeLike
Arsenick?
What I’m feeling right now is Schadenfreude, but I bet they’re not.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Interesting, isn’t it, how EVEL can be ignored when it’s the Arlene Foster Party – not only does she get the billion-pound bung, and wall-to-wall coverage of Orange marches and other Orangery on BBC Norniron, and free school meals for poor children in the Province, she gets to vote when everything says she shouldn’t be allowed to.
EVEL is eerily similar to the Sewel Convention: they can both be waived at the whim of the Westminster regime of the day.
It is intolerable. I keep hoping that our MPs will do something dramatic should EVEL be used abusively against us, or its abusive use is threatened. Regardless of whether a mass walk-out would have any immediate practical or procedural effect, it would look good on Commons TV and help galvanize public opinion – it would make the commentariat start asking questions, some of which might even not be reflexively anti-Scottish.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I wonder about the SNP walking out of parliament. I suspect the press and and BBC would manage to make it an SNP bad thing.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well – they would, but if we make our decisions contingent on how the BritNat meeja are going to portray it, we would never do anything at all.
With propaganda, as in theatre, there is always a risk of breaking the willing suspension of disbelief, they call it the “fourth wall” sometimes in theatah, I’m told. It’s also like the point in your bodice-ripper when the omniscient narrator says something along the lines of “the Baron would have laughed if he had been there”, or in American, “the Baron would have laughed if he would have been there”, and the reader is jolted out of her comfortable imagined, imaginary world and thinks – “Hah! None of those people is real. None of them is there, wherever ‘there’ is. We have an unfulfilled condition in a world which is itself unreal!”
Well, more likely she just thinks “What rubbish!”, or some such, and goes on to something else.
“What rubbish” – that’s what we’re looking for – the reaction we got when Ms. May said “strong and stable”, the reaction the East German public had when, as the Soviet Union was starting to fall apart and Hungary had already opened its borders, and so on and so forth, the East German authorities came out with a particularly asinine piece of propaganda claiming that East Germans were actually materially better off than the West Germans, as if a Trabant or a Wartburg could be equated to a BMW or a Mercedes, say. The same reaction as the Romanians had when Ceaușescu said something when addressing that final rally that caused people to start booing…
Ceaușescu was born on 26 January 1918, so he would have been 100 years old now if he hadn’t been shot. Oh well, at least he didn’t live an indecently long time, unlike Mugabe has.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ha ha… yes, I think I agree with that.
Specially the bit about good old Ceaușescu. Although I rather think his wife was worse than he was.
LikeLiked by 1 person
There kids were disastrous too, overprivileged, self-harming and spoiled – I don’t know if they’re even alive still. I can’t imagine that either Mr. or Mrs. C was big in the parenting department. Not as bad as Uday or Qusay, though … I know little about their sisters Raghad and Rana, except that Uday had them put under house arrest in 1997 for plotting to assassinate him… très Jacobean tragedy, don’t you think? Uday was most definitely a monster.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh lord. A lot of kids of ruling parents turn out repugnant. You only have to look at the Brit royals.
Uday was a monster… is a monster?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Very funny post Ed.
The fourth wall must have been demolished for me some time ago because a wee voice in my head shouts, what rubbish, before May even opens her mouth.
I don’t suppose I’m alone around here with that though?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I won’t say I automatically disbelieve everything May says, but I certainly take every word with a pinch of salt. As I do with all of them. They say what they think will gain them something.
Like so many of them before her, May rants about her Christianity… and takes food out of children’s mouths, as her predecessor took their milk. She revolts me. I can’t abide cruelty to animals or kids, and I detest people who practise it. And she does.
I see our semi-adolescent idiot defence secretary told Russia to go away.
For the love of heaven. Where do we get these morons? This is NOT a playground game, Gavin.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe even forgot they were Scottish, what?
I say you chaps, just get yourselves along to the lobby and vote. Pink gins all round afterwards, old beans.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Given that we Scots are under a constant bombardment of propaganda messaging – intentional or unconscious – from the BritNat meeja, it astonishes me that the number of people in favour of independence is so high.
LikeLiked by 3 people
It’s just continuation of the intergenerational war
Older Torys attacking the younger generation .
Hoarding the wealth whilst draining the pockets
Of the young to pay for the benefits they gain from
The Tory run state.
Starving kids as a Tory once said
If it ain’t hurting it ain’t working.
On the up side as the vile older Tory voters die
Demographic trends and the tsunami of younger
Votes will wipe the Tory scum out of power.
I hate them
LikeLiked by 6 people
Me too, Niko. They make me sick. They are living proof that “vile” is an anagram of “evil”.
In 1948, Nye Bevan said in the House of Commons: “No attempt at ethical or social seduction can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of people to semi-starvation. I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying … They have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse.”
The only change I would make to that to bring it up to date would be to replace “slightly worse” with “much, much worse” – there is no longer even a pretence of “fair play”, which always was much more fiction than fact, of course.
I love the idea of a tsunami of younger voters sweeping the Tories into the dustbin of history. Or maybe a tsunami for the scum and a dustbin for the trash.
LikeLiked by 7 people
I have to say, although I usually rush to say that you can’t judge anyone in such general terms, that Bevan was right there.
Anyone who can support this is just despicable.
Once again Munguin repeats that it is VERY important for young people to vote. Are you listening young ones? The fate of the country can be in the hands of the elderly… or it can be in YOUR hands.
I’ve said it before; you wouldn’t let your granny chose your clothes or music or mates… don’t let her choose your laws or the way your society is structured.
LikeLiked by 7 people
Unless, of course, their granny is me, or someone like me. I will tell them instantly how they must vote – but I would never, ever infringe their human rights by telling them what to wear or not wear, or what to listen to or not listen to, or who with.
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing! I always say.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Cameron never considered he’d get as many as a baker’s dozen of Scots Tories again. The laws of unintended consequences strikes again 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yep, that’s true… mind he has that in common with me. (The only thing, I suspect, that he and I will ever have in common.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
LikeLiked by 2 people
Sad to see the loss of a great mathematician today, his work and humour entertained us all in the eighties.
Oh, and well as Jim Bowen, Stephen Hawking died too. A doubly sad day.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Ahhh… and Ken Dodd too…
I was particularly sad that Prof Hawking died before he had a chance to demolish ‘unt in court.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It’s OK Tris, I’m sure he’s downloaded a copy of himself somewhere… 😦
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, wouldn’t that be good?
LikeLike
LikeLiked by 5 people
Another great quote from Bevan, “How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies whole art of Conservative politics.” He sure got that right and people are still falling for it.
LikeLiked by 6 people
Yes, they are.
Something to do with the class system and the subservience of the underclasses to their betters.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The tories manage to leave me speechless and head shaking in disbelief at their policies and arrogance, with increasing regularity. These kids played no part in being poor, how might they develop being deprived, for some, the only chance of a balanced hot meal. What a disgrace, delivered by a disgraceful bunch of humans. This because we have a chancellor stated 1.8 trillion deficit, ffs by the time the with held dinners pay that off the expanding sun will have consumed the solar system, eejits.
I didn’t hear the chancellors speech but I was told that when he reached a bit about Scotland’s economy not doing so well, the Scottish tory contingent cheered. They cheered, even though their constituents were going to be wore off. That also left me speechless.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Yes, they cheered that our economy wasn’t doing so well.
They are disgusting specimens of humanity. They get a thrill out of hungry bairns and take pride in the fact that Brexit is ruining the economy.
If the alternative was the devil himself I wouldn’t vote Tory.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Just when you think you’ve seen the worst of politicians … FFS have they no humanity at all?
LikeLiked by 3 people
No.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sorry “dept”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Shows just what a bunch of fools we’ve got in the mother of parliaments.
Westminster is responsible for the UK ecomomy so tthey are congratulating themselves on failure, surely a lunatic response.
R4 this morning pulled out all the stops, TM thinks Corbyn will be neutered by war drums.
Get ready for a general election in May, they even called in an ex Nato director general for a comment on chemical warfare.
Then announced the go ahead to build a new facility at Porton Down.
They’re taking the piss folks
LikeLiked by 2 people
They are a particularly thick group of MPs. But you would have thought that even they, with the probably exception of Kirsten, would have been bright enough to see that this was not a good look.
I’ve more or less given up on R4 now as they seem to have the ghastly Humphries and the even more ghastly Robinson on every day cheering for the Tory party, but I did hear Boris this morning.
Lord, what an embarrassment. How to fill 10 minutes saying absolutely nothing, except to mislead about the President of France had said.
And being allowed to dodge the question of money, and never even being asked about the Tory propensity to make loads of cash from indecently rich Russians.
Boris is a buffoon.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Surprised that the Britnat prints haven’t picked up on dastardly Scots voting to take food out of the mouths of English weans. Shows that Scots really are motivated by anti-English prejudice. But oh – forgot that these are Tories so it’s all right then.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Could someone explain to me why NI politicians are allowed a vote under EVEL? Or have I just got that totally wrong?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Probably because they don’t have a government at the moment, and their business is being dome in London.
LikeLike
Doesn’t count when they are Tories, because they are “one of them”. ..or rather “some of them”
LikeLike
I think that there is far too much money floating around democracies these days. You could argue that it was ever thus, but it is not even camouflaged now. Removing wealth, especially money given by people that use it to gain influence whether (allegedly) legitimately, or nefariously, ought to be far higher up the agenda than it is.
Whilst that is going on we also appear to be having yet another of those ‘plucky little Britain’ standing up to the world moments. It resonates for folk. It worked on me during the Falklands War. Then I grew up.
I absolutely do not know anymore whether anyone I read or listen to has huge funds, or via that money, propaganda, to influence my opinion. Apart from here, obviously.
We are, I would argue, all consumers of ‘fake news’ and the problem is that my ‘fake news’ may be your truth and vice versa.
I have a little hope for US news. It seems a threadbare thing, but still, at the very least have some journalists left. We, on the other hand have Royalist sycophants, pretendy journalists who only read press releases from HMG, and promulgate that as news.
It is a sair fecht!
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s certainly that!
LikeLike
Not read many comments yet, but I have a theory on why the troughing, greedy Scottish branch of Tory MPs voted to starve English children. It’s most likely to wind up the English voter. You see, re EVEL, I had friends in England getting all bothered about it, and saying it’s only fair, because our MPs can’t vote on Scottish matters, ie, you have Holyrood.
Yep, the reasoning leaves something to be desired, but, the ‘Scottish’ Tories voting on English matters? When the WMGov attempt to dismantle Holyrood, if they can’t oust the SNP anytime soon, Eng voters will be happy as Larry. I mean, you have your MPs, coming down to vote on stuff so why should you be allowed your cake and eat it, with your own little parliament as well! Huh!
The main thing to remember, is that most people both sides of the border, have no idea about reserved matters, or devolved matters, and what it all means, and how it works, or doesn’t. Friends from Newcastle up last week were very surprised to hear that Scotland has no control over immigration! ‘Non at all?’ They said.
The Britnats, in London, and Scotland, are relying on peoples lack of knowledge and lack of information about all things political. Job done, easy peasy.
So, let’s make sure we keep sharing info as much as possible, everywhere. Thanks for great article btw.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good points.
I was talking to a lad at the gym a few years ago. He was recently made redundant and was incandescent with the SNP for the carry on he was having with the DWP trying to get benefits.
I put him right about it, but whether he believed me or not is another matter.
You’re dead right. We need to get people informed about what we can and ca’t do.
Even people like Dick Leonard and Col Ruth don’t seem to know.
I’ll keep it in mind that we have to publish what is reserved and what it not.
Then people might see what a mess Westminster make of things.
LikeLike