Free Advice (with swearing)

For Fucking Fuck’s Sake!

I try to be a bit civilized on here and generally manage to get my point across without resorting to my favourite words but… fuck, the tories make it difficult.

It is Father’s Day, Sunday 18th of June and in the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell Tower disaster (because that is what it is) Phillip Hammond is on the Andrew Marr show. Here is what he had to say about fitting sprinklers.

“If the conclusion of a proper technical evaluation is that [fitting sprinklers] is the best way to deal with the problem, then of course. But my understanding is that the best advice is that retrofitting sprinklers may not always be the best technical way of ensuring fire safety in a building,”

I have watched the segment a couple of times now and he takes valuable air and time to make absolutely sure he isn’t tying himself down in any way. And I have no idea why.

The tories seem to do this a lot. They are making unforced error after unforced error these days and it seems like every day.

What they don’t seem to realize is that they are being given golden opportunities every day. This is going to sound callous (not as callous as Tories can be, but callous all the same). Theresa May should have been secretly fucking delighted with the Grenfell Tower tragedy. She should have been out on Downing Street in the middle of the night professing her horror and then walking back into number 10 giving it Cameron’s ‘tum-te-tum tum’ tune.

Why?

Because it was a chance to change the story from her calamitous election decision and the even more calamitous alliance with the Satanists DUP. All she had to do was be a human being. Actually, scrap that. All she had to do was not be a complete cunt.

But she couldn’t manage it.

And neither could Phillip Hammond. At every point in this story they could have turned this around.

Carrying on her winning strategy from the election Theresa May ducked the chance to talk to anyone who wasn’t working for her when any politician of any party in any country would have been straight down there and putting an arm around those poor unfortunate survivors. Even if you were doing it for selfish political gain you would go down there. But Theresa is terrified that someone will shout at her and so she only talked to people who are paid to do what she wants.

The excuse? Security.

Which is a fucking riot given that the Queen didn’t seem to need the security but maybe they are putting her in harm’s way to create another story.

Okay Theresa you fucked it up but the excuse was nearly as bad as the mistake. All you had to say was ‘Actually I went straight back to Downing Street to get working on helping those people’

You are a fucking incompetent.

Then there was the £5 million pound emergency fund.  I can see them now, all smiles and self-congratulations as they come up with what they think is a big number. This will impress the voters thinks Theresa.

No, no it won’t. We might be poor but we know what a colossal deal this is. What you should have done is come out and said what the Americans would say (except Trump, he’s as much a shitpouch as Theresa) and what they say in these situations is.

They’ll have everything they need.

Every Democratic President Ever

That’s it. Five words. Nobody was expecting a figure. You made that up and you released the information because you thought it would sound good. Even if someone asked you for a number you could have said ‘An initial five million’.

You have left the Fire Brigade to deal with it. You left the Borough to deal with it. When any other country would call it the catastrophe it is and send in the Army to help out. I hate seeing soldiers on the streets and I would have cheered that decision.

And now the aftermath. The survivors are living on a tenner – christ! – and there is talk about whether the cladding was illegal and what might be done to fix this shitstorm so that it doesn’t happen in the future. Which brings me back to Phillip Hammond and his nit-picking over whether or not sprinklers are the absolute best solution as told to him by a fire safety expert (weren’t we tired of experts?) anyway.

What he is saying is that you need to get the best solution for the money. Hmmmm, hold on.

 

No You Fucking Don’t !!!!

I don’t know how to make this any clearer. Phillip, what you should have said is

‘Yep, sprinklers. And even where it isn’t the 100% best system we’ll put the best system in AND the fucking sprinklers’

Because people want to feel safe and the safety of the population is your first and most important duty you useless shitstain. We don’t care what it fucking costs. Go find the money or move the fuck out of the way and let someone else have a go. Idiot.

In all of this I was actually glad to hear that he has consulted a fire safety expert.

Why? Because it shows me they are actually willing to hire in the skills when they don’t have them.

So, given that they are a bunch of cunts lacking basic human empathy or any clue as to what a human being might do in any given situation I will now dispense my free advice.

Hire a human being. Anyone will do. Any of the people reading this blog would be able to advise you on how to react. I’ll do it. Send my consultancy fee to the survivors of Grenfell Tower. Just phone me up, day or night.

Scott, there’s been an airplane crash at Heathrow, should we send Boris to the scene?

Have a fucking guess.

Actually don’t. Hire someone who hates you. And run every idea you have past them.

Here’s my last piece of advice – stop being tory cunts, start being people.

The Tempest

Strange Bedfellows

Anyone who knows me knows that my daughters are central to my thinking in just about every way (except music, I don’t know what it is they are listening to but it ain’t music) and politics is a major factor in all of our lives so the overlap is enormous. I make most of my judgements on what is politically right based on how it impacts, or might impact, them.

I don’t want anyone else to be making choices regarding their bodies when they grow up, for example and  I am pro-indy because I think they should be able to rise as far as their talents will let them; The London-centric old boys network that is UK politics does not seem conducive to that.

Bear with me on this. I was delighted lately to be able to take them to see Wonder Woman. A strong and powerful woman with a moral centre and her own agenda. What’s not to like? Truth told it was a bit much for my youngest but they both still loved it. A reaction echoed around the world by girls young and old.

And now, finally, it seems that the country is in the hands of women.

And how I had hoped for more. Are men better than women? Absolutely-fucking-not. I have never thought so and never will. But a small part of me had hoped that women would be better than men. It turns out they aren’t.

The moves made lately are typical of political operatives be they male or female and a cynical call to the polls has resulted in the three above coming together in an unholy alliance.

misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Does Arlene Foster have any affection for Theresa May? We may never know but I doubt it. What we do know is that her beliefs are anathema to Ruth Davidson. Do we think for one moment that Theresa May was looking forward to dealing with Arlene? Of course not, this government has tried its hardest to ignore the issues in Northern Ireland.

Who among us had really been following the breakdown of powersharing at Stormont? Go on, be honest. I know I have spent more time watching the Trump Train Wreck than I have watching events in Ulster – and I used to bloody live there!

The DUP leader holds the whip hand with her 10 MPs but then the exact same thing can be said can be said about Ruth and her 13 staunch combatants. Somehow, we have no idea how, Theresa May has to keep them both happy. The DUP are going to be looking for extra cash and if Ruth doesn’t get the same then neither Kezia nor Nicola are going to be shy about shouting the odds in Holyrood.

If Mrs May had just that to deal with then maybe she would look forward with some small glimmer of hope. She still could, if she would stop reacting to individual issues as they arise…

Misery

Shame about the Brexit thing. She has to negotiate a complex trade relationship with a party standing behind her that is nowhere near unified. If Ruth asks for a soft Brexit and the 1922 committee ask for hard then who does she serve?

Theresa May might be forgiven for thinking she has been somewhat unlucky.  Sure, even someone like the PM has to admit that she has made a few errors of judgement.  The Dementia Tax can’t really be placed at anyone else’s door; the attack at Borough Market though?

That just happened to highlight the police cuts as we went into the final days of the campaign and I am sure Theresa will be telling herself that had it not occurred then she might not be having meetings with Arlene.

Equally, Brexit was not her doing. She’s been dealt a bad hand as a new Prime Minister. Take the election campaign  – that strategy could also be placed at other doors besides No 10.

Lynton Crosby might take a little blame  and the disgraced advisors might take a little more…

And now there is the Grenfell tower – I am not English, nor do I live in London but you would have to be inhuman (or a vicar’s daughter) to be unmoved by the stories coming out of this horrible, horrible event – an event that does not play well for her either.

Can you blame the Grenfell tower directly on Theresa May? I doubt it. Can you hound other Tories for their housing policies and their votes on building regulations? More likely, much more likely.

So Theresa might understandably be sitting in No 10 moaning like a teenager convinced that it does, actually, all happen to her. It is Boris in the meeting telling someone to get stuffed. It is Cameron on video promising to gut the Health & Safety community. Not Theresa’s fault at all.

Problem after problem, blow after blow.

But it doesn’t have to be.

What we are seeing is the logical result of flawed thinking – for decades (yes, I include the other parties in this) we have seen an adherence to political and economic policies that increase inequality. Am I saying that Theresa May decided Manchester could suffer an attack and it would be all right? No, I am not. Neither am I saying anything similar about the  attack in London. But the police cuts were made in the name of an economic policy that benefits corporations and the wealthy. Would the events have happened if we had not made these cuts? We will never know. But the Police think they would have had a better chance.

And the fire services are also cut to the bone.

As is the NHS.

One cannot draw a line between decisions and consequences in these cases. It’s just not that simple – but what we are seeing, in my opinion, is more than just a streak of bad luck.

Inevitable unless they find their humanity

This is a tempest conjured out of politics. By ignoring the population and simply assuming that we will get by whatever privation is visited upon us the people at the top (who happen to be women at the moment) guarantee further problems. Like continental plates pressing against one another something has to give sooner or later. A build up of pressure can only be released by an earthquake, preceded by tremors. Theresa, you are now feeling the tremors.

This isn’t going to stop because life doesn’t do that. There will be a train wreck, or a bridge collapse or… it doesn’t matter what the actual event is. The upshot will be yet another graphic example of how the political class have weakened the fabric of our society. They have set it up to serve the few and it can be no surprise then when it fails to meet our needs. You can’t expect it to carry all our weight when the politicians have been removing the supports year after year.

No, there will be more events, more tremors and what needs to be done is to evacuate the political area you currently inhabit. The lower orders have been treated like kine for long enough and are you surprised that they are turning to Jeremy Corbyn?  A man who sees them as people (or at least, gives that impression) is about to upend your precious order if you are not careful.

Strangely, he is doing it using tools that would once have been labelled as women’s specialities. Compassion, caring, empathy and a focus on things other than money and war. Theresa May, Ruth Davidson and Arlene Foster are playing the game of the past and ignoring the warning shocks of the future – which is a shame.

We always hoped that female leaders would bring these aspects to the world of politics and now it seems they will… in the form of a middle-aged bloke.