Who owns politics?
I was going to call this 'Who owns government?' but it's blindingly bleedin' obvious in the UK right now who owns government.
Dominic Cummings and his glove puppet Boris Johnson are in charge of politics and they are going to do exactly what they want.
You can line up all the bishops and archbishops (though not enough of them have come forward in my opinion), all the opposition politicians in 'the House', all the NHS and care staff currently slogging away and sometimes dying on our behalf, all the grateful public who rely on the NHS, all the 'devolved' nations and their governments, all the folk who clap and bang their pots every Thursday night, the pathetic 60 Tory MPs who are the only ones that have found a conscience, the working class people who voted Tory in 2019 and have now changed their minds, all the scientists working on a Covid-19 vaccine - and it will make not one bit of difference.
Johnson wants things back to 'normal'. He wants his ranks of bully boys back behind him shouting down the opposition, so MPs are all going to file back into 'the Chamber', and many of them will vote with the government, knowing that Johnson's only policy in this pandemic is to get everyone back to work (well, the ones that still have a job, that is). So English schools will have to open next week, against the advice of medics and teachers. And that may just trigger a second wave of the pandemic.
They've surrounded themselves with the weakest Cabinet ever seen, because that makes Johnson look strong. They refuse to listen to anyone's advice: WHO, the EU, countries who have survived the first wave. For now, they'll go on spouting PR slogans at us: Stay alert/Get Brexit done/Time to move on. That, I'm afraid, is all they're capable of. For some reason, their PR people don't seem to understand that we - the public - have been exposed to PR slogans for decades now. We can spot them a mile off and we don't believe them.
When Scotland wanted its independence in 2014, independence supporters found themselves up against an array of what were then called 'heavy hitters'. Blair, Brown, Darling and every Tory grandee you could name all told us we were so much safer staying in the UK. Where are these people now? Maybe they could tell us more about how to safely negotiate our way through this chaos.
Right now, it feels as if we're being held hostage in Scotland. We're in a terrible situation, with people dying of a virus for which there's no prospect of having a vaccine any time soon. The virus reached Scotland later than England, so we're still in lockdown here (much to the rage of Westminster). Generations of poverty means we have a high number of vulnerable people who need to be 'shielded'. We have a large elderly population. We have more people in care homes than other parts of the UK. Every decision of the NHS and the Scottish Government has to bear these factors in mind.
But every step the government of Scotland (the one we voted for instead of voting Tory or Labour) takes to deal with the virus, they are criticised in Holyrood by opposition midgets who seem to be unable to summon up a single idea to help their country. Both Tories and Labour are still talking about 'no independence' and attacking 'the SNP government', and taking no notice of what's actually happening. They are masters of 'what the government should have done' months after urgent action had to be taken - and they can talk safe in the knowledge that no one in Scotland ever asked them to do anything. And never would on their current showing.
Politics, folks, belongs to us. The voters. The people who paid to see the UK through the bank crash and who are likely to be clobbered by Westminster again to pay for this disaster. We are the people who are bringing the country through this crisis. And don't let Johnson and Cummings tell you any different.
Dominic Cummings and his glove puppet Boris Johnson are in charge of politics and they are going to do exactly what they want.
You can line up all the bishops and archbishops (though not enough of them have come forward in my opinion), all the opposition politicians in 'the House', all the NHS and care staff currently slogging away and sometimes dying on our behalf, all the grateful public who rely on the NHS, all the 'devolved' nations and their governments, all the folk who clap and bang their pots every Thursday night, the pathetic 60 Tory MPs who are the only ones that have found a conscience, the working class people who voted Tory in 2019 and have now changed their minds, all the scientists working on a Covid-19 vaccine - and it will make not one bit of difference.
Johnson wants things back to 'normal'. He wants his ranks of bully boys back behind him shouting down the opposition, so MPs are all going to file back into 'the Chamber', and many of them will vote with the government, knowing that Johnson's only policy in this pandemic is to get everyone back to work (well, the ones that still have a job, that is). So English schools will have to open next week, against the advice of medics and teachers. And that may just trigger a second wave of the pandemic.
They've surrounded themselves with the weakest Cabinet ever seen, because that makes Johnson look strong. They refuse to listen to anyone's advice: WHO, the EU, countries who have survived the first wave. For now, they'll go on spouting PR slogans at us: Stay alert/Get Brexit done/Time to move on. That, I'm afraid, is all they're capable of. For some reason, their PR people don't seem to understand that we - the public - have been exposed to PR slogans for decades now. We can spot them a mile off and we don't believe them.
When Scotland wanted its independence in 2014, independence supporters found themselves up against an array of what were then called 'heavy hitters'. Blair, Brown, Darling and every Tory grandee you could name all told us we were so much safer staying in the UK. Where are these people now? Maybe they could tell us more about how to safely negotiate our way through this chaos.
Right now, it feels as if we're being held hostage in Scotland. We're in a terrible situation, with people dying of a virus for which there's no prospect of having a vaccine any time soon. The virus reached Scotland later than England, so we're still in lockdown here (much to the rage of Westminster). Generations of poverty means we have a high number of vulnerable people who need to be 'shielded'. We have a large elderly population. We have more people in care homes than other parts of the UK. Every decision of the NHS and the Scottish Government has to bear these factors in mind.
But every step the government of Scotland (the one we voted for instead of voting Tory or Labour) takes to deal with the virus, they are criticised in Holyrood by opposition midgets who seem to be unable to summon up a single idea to help their country. Both Tories and Labour are still talking about 'no independence' and attacking 'the SNP government', and taking no notice of what's actually happening. They are masters of 'what the government should have done' months after urgent action had to be taken - and they can talk safe in the knowledge that no one in Scotland ever asked them to do anything. And never would on their current showing.
Politics, folks, belongs to us. The voters. The people who paid to see the UK through the bank crash and who are likely to be clobbered by Westminster again to pay for this disaster. We are the people who are bringing the country through this crisis. And don't let Johnson and Cummings tell you any different.
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