Tag: liz truss

Mediocrity in British politics

By Daviemoo

The British political establishment continues to decline before our eyes, and though at the beginning of 2023 a national revolt or general strike seemed inevitable, confoundingly these rumbles of discontent have ebbed- but the steady stream of stories highlighting Westminster corruption continue, today with the news that ex Attorney General and now deportation enthusiast Suella Braverman has been breaking laws in a “limited and specific way” again.
One must begin to ask at what point we look at the decimation of political standards which, coincidentally, fits hand in glove with the erosion of our standards of life and question when we begin to fight back bodily for a country we know lies under the mire of corruption spilling from our political leaders.

I’ve already had pushback for mentioning the Braverman story. “There’s bigger issues going on than something like speeding” I’m told. But it’s not about that one incident- it’s never been about the one incident.
One thing like this would be enough to sink any other party’s minister: Diane Abbott had weeks of racial abuse for drinking a can on a train, Gordon Brown was decimated in the press for calling a woman bigoted on a hot mic. So the first bone of contention to note is the slavish attitude that terminally mediocre politicians like Braverman are given by the press and even their own party- the double standardisation of who is castigated and when we’re given the old eye rolling forbearance of our complaints. Let’s look to Boris Johnson who weathered the scandal of breaching laws he himself implemented to stop the spread of a virus which took the lives of hundreds of thousands of our countryfolk- Braverman went to bat for him, scoffing at the idea of his law breaching- much as she did during her defence of his “damn them all” Brexit strategy.
Secondly though, it’s not just about the hypocrisy which threads every damn thing the conservatives do- the “I can do it but not you” serfdom wound around their reign, because one instance of hypocrisy is, as the pathetic weasel that is Matt Hancock described of his own disgusting dereliction of duty, “only human”- it’s the never ending, always expanding patina of lawless indecent behaviour which has typified this radical, useless government.

The conservatives hold everyone else to standards they fail to meet. Johnson broke the law not just with Partygate but with PPE contracts, with an arguable churlish attitude over protecting British lives when he ignored a joint EU/UK ventilator scheme, he fell foul of the laws around his flat refurbishment paid for by a tory lobbyist- and what sank Johnson in the end? His flipping appointing of a man he knew was a sexual pervert to his closest aides, with the wink wink dismissal of the man’s propensity for sexually assaulting his colleagues. Then we had months of absolutely no leadership as the conservatives collectively decided to let the country falter under a cost of living and cost of heating crisis. After a juddering competition where even ex-“moderate” tories like Penny Mordaunt gleefully carved up any decency they had and threw it to the pyre of potential governance, Liz Truss inexplicably emerged on top, perhaps winning because of her repeated demonstrations of propensity for throwing her own beliefs in the sewage pipes formerly known as the British coast- an ex republican who paid cringeworthy deference to the royals, an ex remainer who sold out common sense for popularity like so many other awkward dolts, Truss’ time in power was underscored not by myriad small scandals but by the echoing shotgun blast she delivered to the throat of the UK economy.
Truss and Kwarteng’s blazing stupidity will echo across British bill payers’ lives for a generation, as she melted down our banks in one fell swoop. A decent political would have quietly resigned and gone to live somewhere far away. Truss is now attempting to restyle herself as a misunderstood genius, appointed at the wrong time- I personally get the same vibes from Truss’ redemption arc as I do every awkward tweet from Elon Musk from his large and no doubt echoingly empty home. There’s as much collective genius between Truss and Musk as there is sexual chemistry between me and fitness model Ken Bek- and he doesn’t even know I exist.

Finally Truss slunk awkwardly out of the job and the role- the top governance role in the entire UK I may add, the job reserved for the best politicians we have, the most able, brilliant minds we keep on shore- was handed perfunctorily to Rishi Sunak, a man who ostensibly played a role in the Bankers crash that necessitated austerity. Sunak was described as a “winner” by Sky’s Beth Rigby recently- an irony. Can you call it winning when you have every single thing handed to you whilst you lay prostrate, sticking your nose up at the idea of having working class friends?
Sunak fucked up his banking role in tandem with so many others that we had a world wide recession, he married someone else who is eye bogglingly wealthy, as chancellor he open handedly threw public finance into the sea and continues to float on the idea that he came up with the furlough scheme. Whilst the scheme was good, its no less than I’d expect from a mildly talented chancellor and I saw it with a pall of dread, knowing that it would lay the groundwork for more predictable tory gutting of an economy already threadbare since 2009. And what has the illustrious Sunak done with his time in office? Brexit prevarications, bending over for Braverman’s ERG racket, scandal after scandal from the front benches to the back- and of course, a second FPN for his casual lawbreaking in the back of a car, not to mention we’ve never heard the conclusion to his “oops I forgot to declare my actual domiciliary status correctly so my wife and I underpaid our taxes” saga.
It’s said that Sunak is a big fan of the Star Wars movies- one wonders whether he’s rooting for the plucky rebels or sees himself in the shiny bleak surfaces of the empire’s ships – I know which side I think he’s on.
It just seems ironic, doesn’t it: seems to me that the party of law and order has something of a problem in adhering to the law.

The problem with British politics is that we’ve normalised weak, average people in politics. We jeer at the corpse haired dilettantes like Fabricant, we mock the 3 IQ on a good day ruffians like Gullis, we mock 30p Lee and his ridiculous half a weetabix mixed with some dehydrated milk, poor person tears and Kleenex lunches- and the stumbling, stuttering and painfully insincere speeches that Sunak awkwardly meanders through: how sad, though, that these people are meant to be the brightest minds in the UK, the most talented and able of our political leaders. The woman currently in charge of women and equalities thinks women should grin and bear their menopause (lets see how quick your tune changes in a few years by the way Kemi), our current chancellor took an open kick at the backside of our NHS workers in 2015 and 2016, the chancellor before him neglected to pay his taxes- maybe it was this slip of millions of pounds in country revenue that endeared him to Sunak who pulled the same trick?

Our politicians aren’t mediocre. Mediocre would be a dream, a gift, a premium upgrade. We started with mediocre and over the recent years have paved way for establishment dilettantes, clinging to bygone eras where the working class was widely too focused on living to fight back- and they saw those heady days of political betterment on the backs of the workers as an aspiration, not an aberration.

Braverman, Gove, Baker, Dorries, Johnson, Truss, Kwarteng, Badenoch and more- all of these names sit in an ever growing pile of political scandal, every day they tip their hand more to the obvious, indefatigable truth that they cannot handle power because they seek to bend it against those they see as inferior or simply ignore it. The conservatives have had their time, been able to try to prove themselves to us over and over again, had facelifts, shiny new slogans, shuffles and reshuffles, they’ve changed their promises, broken the new ones… they are dead in the water, but still swimming: exactly when do we fish them out, discard them as a bad job and get some new guppies in?

Ultimately, the status quo of British politics is woeful across the board. But even mediocrity would be a huge improvement upon this bunch of collective charlatans. The question isn’t if, but when- and between the haemorrhaging of damning news from the front bench and the slow bleed of taxpayer money to projects like “helping the private companies improve infrastructure” (that’s why you were privatised in the first place?) one has to wonder exactly what the conservatives have to do short of collectively dressing like the hamburgler and going door to door to take our valuables, for us to make the move to oust them once and for all.

We are witnessing the biggest scam in history.

By Daviemoo

The British government, hand in hand with the monarchy, has cracked the spine of fairytale books and told us time and again over the years, but never more so than recently, their favourite myth: that we should, must…will suffer together collectively for the “greater good”: austerity, pandemic, the cost of living crisis- it’s no wonder that people’s empathy has all but burned to ash in the constant pushing of the fallacious narrative that one must suffer for their fellow man: especially when the curtain obscuring the truth is gossamer thin and cobweb light: let us lift it now and talk about the great wealth heist.

The Crown Jewels of the British monarch are worth between £1 billion and £4.9 billion pounds. As his mother ailed, Charles, this year, sat solemnly on a golden throne, next to a crown made of gold and diamonds to address the British public and to say gravely that, together, my friends, we face difficult times ahead. On that, my unelected king, we agree for certain: difficult times have been here for many years for some of us but clearly there are no plans to abate this.
One imagines the heating bill for what is now Charles’ estate is astronomical in this climate: he’s very lucky that he’s one of the breakaways who does not pay his own energy bills. Or rent. Or, anything really.
I do.
You do.
Your family and friends here do. We pay for everything, from the ill gotten diamond that adorns the crown to the golden chair Charles sat upon to tell us how hard things would be, that austerity and cost of living was coming and to prepare to cut a new notch and again tighten our collective belts.

The Royals sit hand in hand with the British government, overseeing affairs of state. Now, earlier this year MPs voted on a pay rise, bringing them to £82,000 a year (their subsidised food and paid for expenses notwithstanding)- this is more than twice my own salary, almost three times: and of course people will hear this with jealousy. Yes, I would love to earn that much money, mostly because I’d have something of a shot at getting a mortgage before I’m 45. But the point is, the threshold for being in the top 5% of earners in the whole UK is £85,000. So when the government, too, tells us to prepare for austerity- Truss in her flash in the pan told us that, what she planned, she “wouldn’t call austerity”, but a rose by any other name, eh, Liz? Now Sunak prepares to draw us into another collective five to ten (or more) years of harsh cuts, rollbacks, spending halts and more, one has to remember that these people, those shot callers, the people making these “hard decisions” that we all have to live with- won’t suffer. Like fibreglass is insulation in a cold home, money is an insulation against austerity: if you already have it, you can afford not to suffer- after all, it’s literally called a cost of living crisis: the cost attached to how much you need to spend, just to live. Dystopian.

Rachel Johnson, sister of the disgraced ex PM did a radio show a few months ago, waxing painful on what luxuries she’d have to cut back on due to the cost of living crisis in some unfathomably painful attempt to appear as a woman of the people. Johnson is also a regular advocate for returning to the office rather than working from home: she described civil servants as “riding pelotons” instead of getting on with the job, as her brother (at the time still our prime minister) said working at home was “distracting” and taking about how you would just eat cheese: remember, by the way, that the prime minister lived in a flat above his workplace at the time and suddenly you realise just how horrifyingly prescient his statement, for once, was. Bear also in mind that Rachel Johnson’s opinions on anything are unfetterably only interesting because she’s related to the sex addled scandal ridden man who spent his entire tenure as prime minister, lying to the public- brexit would be simple and boost the economy, we would ignore the coronavirus and get on with it, we all had to stay separate for each other, he didn’t know Chris Pincher was a pervert… One has to wonder whether Rachel holds her brother’s dual ability to be as unfailingly, unpleasantly delusional and yet be paid as handsomely as he back when he was a journo, once describing his exorbitant second salary at a newspaper -£250,000, as “chickenfeed”. Ones sympathy for Rachel’s brave cost of living sacrifices is as limited as her ability to see under her no doubt constantly carefully maintained fringe.

Day upon day, the UK public are fed messages that are so 20 karat dystopic in nature, the cut so diamond sharp and crystal clear, that I find myself in an almost constant state of flabbergast: we, the little people, the poor, the beleaguered, must go to the office, and earn our meagre salary (but don’t worry, you’re paying less tax under the anti tax tories who raised them 15 times), putting that money aside- not for frivolity but just to afford our variable mortgages, to keep the lights on and to quietly drive to the local food bank, primark sunglasses shoved up our noses so the neighbours don’t realise it’s us because god forbid people realise for a second how dire our own and each others situations have become-because we’re all in it together, aren’t we?

Rishi Sunak, the new prime minister, is married to one of the richest people in the UK. During his tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer he broke lockdown rules when he wasn’t extremely busy making sure he and his wife took full advantage of the broken tax rules to pay less than their due to the country he serves- but when he was working on the pandemic, he was a crucible for the situation we’re now in. Some will cry that he had to pull out all the stops: furlough cost money don’t you know. These armchair economists, friendly to Sunak, usually only know the value of a pound contrasted against a Freddo and have a purposeful lack of understanding when it comes to countrywide economy.
Yes, Sunak had to pull out all the stops for furlough or the hospitals would have been flooded with sick workers, death on even more of an industrial scale- because people could not afford to go to work and die, nor could they afford to sit at home for free. Naively, these same chocolate penny economists will tell you that furlough came at a cost to us: not to the landlords though. Those of us lucky enough to own property and to be paid for it- furlough covered them, because where did that money people earned for “sitting at home doing nowt” go… banks, or landlords, and energy companies. And harking back to the ineffably babbling point- missing waffling vicissitudes of Rachel Johnson, it’s funny how many rich folk wanted us back in the office- not, I believe, to ensure that hard work continued (after all, according to Truss, and Raab and Johnson, the British proletariat are lazy, idlers, prone to drink and violence over a hard days graft) but because rich people own property.
When you own eight office buildings, and none of those offices need you any more because SURPRISE, home working does work, your valuable property that accrues you money for just sitting there is suddenly useless.

During Truss’ tenure, if you didn’t blink and miss it, you may remember that she came up with what she termed as an “aggressive growth plan” to shore up the economy. Do you know the real reason that stupid, ill thought out plan didn’t work? Do you know why you should block and ignore any single person, pundit, newsreader, broadcaster or family member who for one second believed in the mythical magic wand waving of trickle down economics?
Because we’ve just lived through proof it doesn’t work.

Pandemics throughout history had been assumed by economists and historians to be a crucial crux of wealth redistribution: the rich suddenly having the onus thrust upon them to pay for the poor when the world came to a crashing halt and could not function as normal.
But this only demonstrably happened once- it was an aberration, during the Black Death, and other subsequent pandemics didn’t offer this proof. But they should be. Because wealth is accrued via the poor doing the jobs the rich pay us tiny slivers of their wealth to do, and when that stops, the rich should stop getting richer… shouldn’t they? That is when trickle down should manifest, as the rich haemorrhage money because the poor are verboten from working for them. But that didn’t happen.

Wealth accrual is not, or should not be, another form of immunisation against the pandemic: the poorer suffered from more adverse conditions than anyone during the pandemic. CEOs sat in their spare room ordering the office to continue under covid guidance, royalty broadcast remotely from chintz desks worth more than my flat’s monthly rent and bills. And so richness became an immunisation against covid too- because as with abstinence, it’s the best preventative. If you have a huge estate and you’re never exposed to another person, you won’t get sick.

The rich are in charge, the rich are in power- and so of course, they sit on their golden thrones or behind their vivid red placards, quoting three word slogans and telling us that we’re in it together. Because even in the most horrific conditions, they do not pay their fair share- and during the coronavirus pandemic, this was exemplified. The rich collectively gained a huge sum of money that the poor- us- lost. That money was not economy money, like the money that is created when people apply for mortgages or create a new business to meet demand: it was a simple transfer of wealth, from the collective poor to the privileged few. Investors in vaccines and masks, in ventilation tech or in industrial sign printing or whosoever else was “savvy” enough to spend a small sliver of their money to make huge gains right back.
So there you have it: trickle down economics doesn’t work- because during the pandemic and beyond the rich have accrued collective money at a rate never seen before in history and… it hasn’t trickled down. We’re still in a cost of living crisis, still in an energy crisis, still being told by those who benefited from existing wealth and wealth disparity that we’re all in the same boat. The difference is the boat has ten chairs, all occupied by unfathomably rich people, and the rest of us are dangling over the edge desperately paddling with both hands towards a shore we’ll never reach because the rich do not want us to.

Austerity is a choice. It is a choice, to force the poor to pay more tax proportionally. To offer temporary, sticking plaster aid to people to pay their bills, a choice to cut money to already skeletal public services when the answer is there: it’s plain to see energy companies and the rich collectively need to pay windfall taxes. Do you know what a windfall is? It is when money unexpectedly comes to you all at once. So we’ll implement half hearted windfall taxes against some energy companies sometimes as an emergency.

What about the billionaire CEOs who invested money into PPE schemes and got returns numbered in the millions, each pound or dollar measured in the flickering beep of a heart monitor attached to a COVID patient? That wasn’t smart investment, it was betting on death, insider trading on mortality. And those people get to… what, keep that money? Sit back and enjoy the spoils they, if you can lower yourself to using this word, “earned” by transferring wealth to already rich companies?

In accounts around the world, wealth sits- be it the collective wealth of companies or the accrued riches of some illusory businessman. That money could be put to use- it could pave our roads, fix our schools, hire our doctors, it could be leveraged back to its company to cheapen our bills, it could be used to democratise property ownership and prevent predatory landlordism.
Instead this money, this accrued wealth of those who could provide solutions to the problems humans face every day, goes towards vanity projects like buying social media, goes to space flights or it’s offshored where it is secreted away from the economy it came from: smaller sums go towards golden wallpaper or towards paying security to sit in one of six estates owned by a man whose claim to fame is his mother’s title, and her father’s title after that. This wealth exists to create a them and an us, and during this time, as temperatures plunge, as mortgages spiral, as windows stay dark and old people ride buses just to stay warm, we still live in a world of fools who think the them, the millionaires and billionaires, will keep feeding us the crumbs from their cakes if we just keep paddling that boat for them.

National debt is a myth. Money can just be printed. Its value is imaginary and human life is worth inconceivably more. And between a monarch under a gold and diamond hat, clutching a sceptre, and the richest PM in history whose wealth is still being accrued from a business operating out of Russia, being told we’re all in it together is not just a bitter pill to swallow: it’s a placebo.

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

“Finally, a Conservative government” – they’ve been in power for NEARLY THIRTEEN YEARS

By Daviemoo

I’ve no doubt that I’m biased, I see things through my own lens and what I believe is not always necessarily correct, but the open flippancy the tories continue to display to the British public at large is a point of utter rage inspiration at this point: Kwarteng, fresh off of making a total arse of himself at a funeral, has now decided to create a budget that’s tantamount to whipping out a bruised red areola and shoving it into the mouth of the already milk sozzled rich, once again and always at the expense of the poor in the UK. When will tory loving lunatics learn that when they say things like “you won’t like this budget if you care more about the poor”, they don’t mean some theoretical string vest wearing cousin of Hyacinth Bucket, they mean YOU!

Truss recently… Can I really call it “hit out at” when she is the physical doppelgänger of Pinocchio in a wig… “futilely flailed at” the idea that we’re putting future generations into debt to slightly ease the energy crisis now. Ironically this performance was even more milquetoast than tory fans had predicted: Like eager football fans, “they’re keeping it close to their chest, they’ll pop out with a plan last second and do something spectacular, it’s coming! Any second now!” they cheered- only to be met with the ooooOOOOOOOAAAAAaaaaaah of a ball sailing nowhere near an open goal.
Ursula Von De Leyen, every brexit hard man’s secret wank fetish had recently declared that repeated windfall taxes and harsh scrutiny of energy companies was one of the key ways to help the average person through the crisis facing most countries. Germany is forcing returned ownership of an energy company to the state to ensure that pricing does not spiral. Spain, France, all of these countries working hard to ensure the prosperity of their citizens as economic conditions decline.

The tories have created a budget that gently trouser-strokes the swollen gland of the rich with the callused fingers of the poor, once again leaving us to foot a bill so astronomical that it would even make Jeff Bezos’ brows crease should it land on his door. Wealthy people are set to make a fortune just from not paying the taxes they’re due, and of course poor people are set to pay equal to or more than what the rich will pay; because it’s fair to have someone earning £17.25 an hour pay the same tax percentile as someone who has a flat screen tv screwed into the ceiling over their fucking bath tub isn’t it.

And all the while the seething rage that we all once felt towards the tories is slowly being reflected backwards now, because we always knew these petulant, coke fuelled shysters were, as Angela Rayner said, scum: But honestly British public WAKE THE FUCK UP, give your head a shake and get the placards out! Enough with the vague promises of shouties and frowns via the Enough is Enough campaign, enough is bloody enough but I don’t need endless rallies, I need tory ministers to be PETRIFIED to leave their houses for fear of being dogged every step by people asking them why they should pay for the tories’ bakers dozen and then some years of idiocy.

I’m tired, reader. I’m tired of every day switching on the tv or opening social media to another frosty faced tory minister grim-facedly defending another sex scandal (lest we forget the “anonymous” rapist that’s still working happily in the government or Pinchy Pincher the literal pervert), another misstep in policy and every single time, enabled by media commentators who don’t even look shocked any more when politicians say bollocks like “the cost of living crisis is less significant than the death of a 96 year old” (cheers Lindsey). I’m tired of listening to people saying they love the tory party because they’ll sort out this WOKE NONSENSE- they’ve been running the show for 12.8 years now and their greatest joy is that you’re more arsed about pronouns and who shits where than their reverse-Robin-Hood cuntery.

But most of all, I’m tired of living in a country where the citizens will grumble, and shuffle, foot stamp and huff and keep taking the hits. Our government should be petrified of us. Our government should be treating us like a dog, teeth bared, tail wagging, straining at the lead to get to them. They work for us- but they don’t fear us. The nation is supernanny and the tories are a bratty little toddler, completely unaware of the power dynamic that could, that should sweep over them as we tell them to fuck off to the naughty step for breaking the economy.

What’s wrong with us?

So many times I’ve had the usual union jack masturbatorial idiots tell me their grandfather didn’t die for me to kiss another man. Well, too bad but your grandfathers sure as shit didn’t die so everyones businesses could fold and we can’t afford to put the big fucking light on either.
The UK was supposedly a proud nation of people who would never take anything lying down once, and yet here we are, supine underneath a government giving us a caustic golden shower. The UK badly needs a wakeup call- the tories aren’t going to change, aren’t going to get better- they’re the perpetually pissed-up spouse ready to come home and slur out some blame for why they’re so depressed and much like anyone in that situation it’s time to pack their shit and kick them the fuck out.

Stand up for yourselves, Britons!

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

They think you’re stupid

By Daviemoo

The Conservatives think you’re stupid.
This isn’t some controversial hot take from a loony leftie- it’s factual. Do you think when Dominic Raab refers to us as “amongst the most feckless and lazy workers”, or Boris Johnson says “the working class man is likely to have a drinking problem” or Truss blithely declares that we “don’t work as hard as people in communist China outside of London” that they are mentally adding a postscript to exclude you and yours?
The British are guilty of a hilarious type of exceptionalist elitism, where the rhetoric is- “everyone is bad but I”. But every member of the conservatives looks at every one of us, and especially every person who props their shambolic government up, with the open scorn and the quiet dislike we reserve for those we feel are beneath us. This is beyond question- and the only question left to ask is, do you prove them correct by voting for them?

The UK media has propped up and enabled every governmental misstep for years. From it’s “both sides but here is Nigel Farage as an ‘expert'” coverage of brexit to the desperate commands of the Daily Mail and Express to forgive and forget legal transgressions aplenty under tory governance, it’s hardly an open secret that British media is bought and paid for by and large with the thrombosis blue cash of conservative pundits.

BBC Bias & the mishandling of COVID

Emily Maitlis casually confirmed everything we leftists have been saying for years last night; that the BBC is increasingly biased in favour of positive coverage for the conservative government, and that critical coverage of their performance is met with consternation- not just from number 10 which has long been the case, but from within the upper echelons of the BBC itself.
When top advisor to Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, broke the lockdown rules to travel the length of the UK from London to Durham- and despite lack of police action, he DID break the rules- the BBC rightly scrutinised his actions. And yet, the BBC, hand in hand with the party, convinced a critical mass of people to calmly accept the lie.

In any other administration throughout history (and no doubt in any future administration which has extricated itself from the miasma of corruption which blights the conservatives now), Cummings’ transgression would have been met with immediate repudiation. His actions endangered people- simply stopping for petrol could, and would, have spread the coronavirus to people around him. Cummings reported later that he was “testing if his eyesight was ok” by driving to a town nearby- begging the question of how he felt safe to drive 200 miles when first becoming sick with the virus. Had Cummings had an accident whilst driving (likely- as coronavirus can make you extremely unwell and especially at the time), his actions would have spread coronavirus throughout whichever hospital was unlucky enough to take him. The hubris with which Cummings et al. handled this betrayal of the British public did two things: compounded the conservatives ability to simply double down in the face of outrage and disgust, and expedited the collapse of the British public’s trust in the government.

Maitlis confirmed in her speech that her opening remarks on Cummings breaking the rules were met with fury from those at the BBC who supposedly oversee impartiality. Justice is blind, the saying goes, but everyone at the BBC who has failed to step forward is guilty of wilfully covering their own eyes to the facts surrounding a lack of non partisan coverage, throughout the pandemic and in the run- up to the leadership contest in 2019.
Many right wing pundits regularly accuse the BBC of a lack of impartiality but when one side says “be less biased” and the other side said “be more biased”, this is not the battle for impartiality the right claim it to be.

Remember as well, the reaction of conservatives to the BLM protests; back then, how dare people risk the spread of the virus at any cost? How disgusting and disgraceful that this is how the social justice warriors flaunt lockdown- and yet every time a conservative broke the rules, that exception was acceptable. the double standards and division of equals has been driven into an engine shaking overdrive by the tenure of Johnson.
Many of us at the time knew that Johnson’s term would be a disaster- and we cannot blame Johnson for the initial effects of coronavirus, as this was a freak occurrence. What we can do, however, is zoom out: coronavirus does not exist in a vacuum. It’s damaging influence also wrapped tendrils into every other problem the UK was facing. From the continuing ablation of security data leaks via Dido “dataloss” Harding heading up the most vital tool in coronavirus protection and prevention to Governmental backroom dealings were brought to the forefront by the brave actions of Jo Maugham of The Goodlaw Project. Even broader still, the economy was already shaking at the knees prior to the pandemic as businesses shored up their interests against the well known but insidiously unreported effects of a horrendous EU withdrawal agreement. This mess, however, can be laid at the feet of Johnson and his unscrupulous enablers, from Priti Patel who formented an anti EU group long before the referendum was announced, to Lord Frost who- just like tinpot Thatcher-a-like Liz Truss, defected from remain to leave just to taste the winner’s champagne- only to discover those of us shouting poison were correct all along.

Coronavirus no doubt exacerbated many problems faced by the British public, but despite being its own distinct illness, coronavirus and its subsequent mishandling was merely a symptom of the long-term disease British people have unknowingly suffered from for many years- governmental malfeasance.

Truss, Sunak and post-Johnsonism

The liar, the switch and the million pound wardrobe

The most insidious aspect to hiring Johnson on as prime minister was the tacit acceptance of the normalisation of political lying. Johnson’s duplicity was “priced in” we were told, better to have a disgusting truth twister as PM who could bluster his way into every situation that came up and leave wreckage behind, because at least he has funny hair and makes us laugh?
The country is in shambles, in every possible way it can be- Johnson cleaved a divide in the nation through nationalist rhetoric, polluting the nature of pride in Britain- it was wrong to be proud of Britain for being multicultural and diverse, wrong to be proud of our progressive steps towards acceptance of the LGBT+: the only thing to be proud of was Britishness itself. So long as you help your bloo passport up high and kept quiet about the ever decreasing living conditions you passed the tory test and were welcomed into the fold as a true patriot, glibly accepting the country’s decline whilst denying the evidence of your eyes.

Who cares if your rivers are suffused with human offal, it’s BRITISH offal…

And what has that led to? Johnson’s eventual ousting has left us with two choices:
Rishi Sunak, a man who has been variously seen to disparage working class people as roundly as his other colleagues, a chancellor whose short sighted stabbings at sense have decimated the economy that, as aforementioned, was already bowing under pressure, a person whose moral fibre is falling apart because he committed the same open transgressions against the British people as Johnson did during lockdown.
And Liz Truss, a woman who has never stuck to a point she didn’t hear cheers for, a woman who changes her allegiance like some people change shoes. Truss has been widely derided in every position she’s been in- known as the “inequalities minister” down the corridors of Whitehall because she’s done not one useful thing for LGBT+ people during her long tenure- except for trying to sneak the LGB alliance, now deemed a hate group in Northern Ireland, in the back door to replace the LGBT council she dissolved out of spite when they criticised her.
When sent to the UN to hold talks with Russia about its assault on Ukraine, Truss managed to infuriate Russia so much that it was rumoured they stepped up their alert on nuclear weaponry and laid the explanation of why squarely at Truss’ lack of diplomatic skill.

The shadow of Johnson looms still over the country, dampening the light of truth- but in the dimness, puppets like Truss and Sunak have been able to fester, and so we end up here. Their normalisation of lying is enabled at every step by tory rags like the express, whose front page today (Thursday 25th August 2022) Tells us that we all must suffer because it helps Ukraine in the war: Make no mistake that our suffering is a political choice by a party so consumed with self masturbatory leadership hustings that they think we can wait until they’ve settled on which head of the hydra gets to speak.

The leadership battle has shown another crack in the conservative armour- so eager they are to blame social justice for the ills of the nation, that they overlook their 12 year tenure; if anyone is responsible for the culture of a country it is the leaders of it, especially when they have had almost 13 years now to address it…

The UK is dying- Scotland wants to leave, Wales will seek to leave, Ireland even hopes to reunify. And still there are those amongst us desperate to cling to the long-dead conservative ideology. Starmer appears to have won back those who defected to tory in 2019 and whilst many of my fellow lefties see this as an indictment on Starmer and his stances (and whilst you may have validity in some of your criticisms) there is no doubt that traditional conservatism has a certain brand of popularity in the UK, and that brand has long since failed to be offered by this iteration of the Conservative party.
Johnson’s (and soon Truss or Sunak’s) cabinet is crammed full of the sort of political ne’er do wells whose entire ideology rests on the accurate recitation of the party line. Not one tory has actually had the courage to draw a line in the sand since Christian Wakeford defected to Labour. I have my own issues with Wakeford simply because he was who he was and did what he did prior to his defection. But every single conservative sat on those benches has been taught, like hell’s own choir, to sing in tune for their supper, to repeat the same tired lines about levelling up, about getting Brexit done, about getting on with the job or the vaccine rollout- to gulp the oxygen in the room and strangle any talk to the contrary, and in doing so they have imbibed every other egregious fiction the upper level of the party have spat out.

Every tory is as guilty as the wordsmiths for their failure to condemn Johnson and Truss’ dismissal of working class brits, every single MP on those benches is culpable for the mass death and ongoing trauma and misery the UK face with the coronavirus pandemic (and no doubt monkeypox). And every person who continues to spiral in tighter and tighter turns to deflect the constant patter of criticisms of this government, wears the badge of dishonour Johnson tore for himself from the ragged material of the Union Jack he so vehemently claims to stand for.

Restricting your rights

Would a prime minister confident in their ability to discharge this oft-fabled “will of the people” feel the need to force through strict curtailment of protest rights?
It seems to me that it simply would not occur to a decent prime minister that he, she or they would have to safeguard against an uprising of people furious at their malfeasance. And yet that is what Johnson and his lieutenant Patel did- despite the open fury at the legislation (I myself attended no less than five protests specifically about the injustice) of the Police Crime Courts and sentencing bill, they kept pushing until the Lords accepted that it was merely- what was the phrase? Ah yes, “priced in” as the cost of a tory government, that UK Citizens should have a tightening of the restrictions on their ability to protest.
Tory supporters would and should have felt a frisson of horror at their government placing these collars around their necks, but were too busy pointing and laughing as it was fit around ours- but a government doing a good job does not waste time debating legislation around whether it’s people can protest or not, because a good government isn’t protested against.

The fact is- the tories aren’t wrong when they look with distain upon some of us. Because a disturbing chunk of voters wilfully crossed that box, gave the tories their assent that this was the status quo they wanted. They were tired of listening to experts so they hired on a government of headline grabbing louts, affair having, law breaking, contract stealing, rights curtailing scum. And some of them have at last woken up- not that they’d admit that we were right all along, no, they’re convinced that swapping Johnson for one of his lessers will improve things, but Truss is as inept as Johnson and much worse with her verbiage and Sunak is just as likely to lie and fall back on culture war garbage to distract from his unfunnily laughable performance: and still yet, behind these folk are the worst- those who still believe wholeheartedly that the conservatives are the best choice for us, that the continually obvious evidence of poor governmental management is just because of social justice and equality even with a huge Conservative majority and compliant media. These people are stupid. And frankly I am tired of capitulating to them, giving in to their ongoing foghorn yells that they are oppressed because they are asked to look critically at the state of the UK and take ownership of it. You are not oppressed, you are not on “the winning team”- because of you we all lose, and those of us who aren’t stupid, who don’t buy into culture war drudgery and the continued propagandist push to accept lacklustre government are sick and tired of having to baby a population of UK citizens unwilling to accept that their ideology was always a shibboleth for the small minded, xenophobic bigots to gain and maintain power.

You made your bed, we warned you it was full of glass- don’t complain to us about your cuts.

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

The Homeless Generation- how the governments of the last 50 years have betrayed the generations to come

By Daviemoo

I used to have a savings account choc full of money with an ex. When we split up I was so desperate to escape him I didn’t even fight over the money in that account. I will never regret it- he was, and I don’t use this term lightly, evil.
Successful, single at 34, I’ve watched property prices explode out of reach again and again as my savings went from just enough to never enough. My hands are caked with the soil that covers my hopes of affording property, perhaps until I marry another man or my media career somehow ignites and I can supplement my income.
But why?
Is it my desperate need for chai latte, my selfish need to live in a nice flat or my lazy refusal to take on a third/fourth job that means I can’t own property… or are we just being screwed by people who don’t live the life of the average Brit, but know how to convince the average Brit that their strife is their own fault, or the fault of some illusory shibboleth?

I woke up to a text this week. It was just a link to an app that helps you save money for a mortgage- it’s name was so ridiculous I’d never have considered using it anyway- but the message rankled me nonetheless. It felt like the sender was implying that my lack of home-ownership was due to my laziness, lack of effort or some other jibe. I thanked them and closed the conversation- I couldn’t be bothered to be drawn into another defensive delineation: “I saved money in my old job because my salary was good. I saved money again recently because I have not only two jobs but I freelance as a journalist”.
There’s many things you can say about people like me when we tell you we don’t own property. Idealistic? Sure. Scatterbrained? Absolutely. Lazy? I wish.

There seems to be an enduring belief by the British public at large that owning property is a salve for all of the monetary issues we face. I refuse to buy into the endless recitation of the “avocado toast and latte” nonsense: even if I bought one coffee a day at £3, that’s £90 a month: that, hardly a mortgage does make. We foster a culture of “pay into the economy to make it strong”- so deeply pushed during the pandemic that the eat out to help out scheme may have contributed to thousands of avoidable coronavirus deaths- ironically, despite that, our economy is still on ventilation and atonal breathing. But think how contradictory those messages are: “don’t spend, save for a mortgage- but also go out and spend for the precious economy” and yet those messages coexist in some sort of peaceful harmony in the heads of many people, the irony somehow missed.

The problem isn’t saving up or lack thereof (I did, though not so right now), our problem isn’t our proclivity for purchasing hot drinks- the problem is that we exist in a system that has continually failed to provide for the next generation, whilst shoring up the assets of those who built and maintained it.

Studies show that in London in particular, by 2030- 7.5 years away- the average property price in London will reach a million pounds- someone who bought a London property for the average, £130,000, in 2000 will have seen an increase in their property price of £870,000…
London is, however, its own mini entity within the UK and its property prices are an aberration – but the phenomenon around the property price increases is not.

This graph stops in 2020- but the pandemic saw the disparity increase even more

In the 70s, the average house price was approximately four times the average yearly salary. Now in most areas, the average house price is nearing eight times that. Bear in mind that is the AVERAGE. The average salary in the UK? 31,000. Guess what I, with my 2 jobs and freelancing earn? And another cherry on the cake: because I can’t use my rental receipts as proof I pay nearly £900 a month and because my rent, council tax, electricity etc have all gone up in price, not only have my savings stagnated, they have started a slow decline- and I can’t prove legally that I can pay a mortgage of £650 a month…

My rent, when I moved into the flat I live in was £850- I’d previously been living in a very very small, moth infested flat which only cost me £550 a month: bear in mind though that when my dad saw how small my old flat was, where I lived for a year during the worst of covid- he actually got upset for me.

Moving here was costly but was a reward for getting through a year of total isolation due to covid, in a hot, tiny flat crawling (sometimes literally) with insects that I couldn’t find the source of. I had to move somewhere else and at the time I was doing a job that paid enough.
Why not move somewhere nice, I thought- I could always make more money… my mental health had been crushed by living in that dank little flat. So here I am, and for 12 months I dutifully paid my rent on time every month with no complaints: I chose to move here, I can hardly quibble about the rent price, and because I can be quite frugal often I managed to keep making savings. Can you see the storm clouds yet?

A mere nine days after the papers began to speak in earnest about the cost of living crisis, I went downstairs to get my mail to find a letter from my landlord.
The letter thanked me for living here but said that now the pandemic was over, so was the rent freeze- they planned to increase my rent by £24.

I emailed my landlord, pointing out how hilarious it was that they chose the beginning of a cost of living crisis to increase rent and asked whether they felt any remorse: they said that they had to “cover their own costs”. Two days later I went on a trip to London to the Byline festival and as I left my flat to get the train down, I found a fully dressed man unconscious in the corridor, sleeping outside one of my hall mates doors- I took a photo, sent it to the landlord and asked them if the rent increase was to pay for rehab.

But lets do some maths: there are approximately 110 flats in my building, the adjacent and opposite ones and the square next door- all owned by the same company. so that’s 880 flats, and I assume the smaller flats rent went up by less and the larger flats went up by more- but for simplicity, lets say that we all had our rent increased by £24:
24x 880= £21,120

My landlord, with the printing of 880 letter, increased their profits- just from increasing the rent- by over £21,000

At the same time as my rent increased, we started seeing the huge bump in energy prices. My energy has also gone up by £41 a month. My council tax is up £20. My food bills have escalated insanely because goods simply cost more to buy now. Everything is more expensive.

Now let’s talk about salary stagnation!
Everywhere you look at the moment, everyone from rail workers of all job delineations to doctors are planning strikes because their salaries don’t cover their cost of living. Are these strikes annoying when you depend on the services provided? Absolutely! Which is why you should be backing those workers all the more: their labour allows you to live your life smoothly, and their labour isn’t paying them enough to live.
Mick Lynch has been a steadfast storyteller, the de-mythologist of the idea of the lazy strikers, and has explained over and over to somehow continually glib listeners that companies are maximising profits which only hit the pockets of a select few shareholders and CEOs whilst the company does not reinvest that money back into itself to the benefit of its users or the staff who run the businesses.
Wage stagnation is at it’s worst level in, drumroll please- TWO HUNDRED YEARS in the UK.

My favourite response to my talking about this is “why don’t you just move somewhere smaller?”
I looked at a flat further out of town which was smaller and cost £660 a month last Monday.
It was on the market for 4 hours and 30 minutes before it was taken by someone else.

When I asked to view one of the studio flats in my block, the man literally laughed and said “I’d just take it mate, property’s going quick right now”- they wanted me to move into a smaller flat that I’d never seen. Welcome to renting in 2022!

The sad fact is that now, thanks to real terms pay cuts, pay stagnation, inflation, deregulation in the housing & property sector and the increase in goods prices due both to Brexit and covid sprinkled liberally with the awful governance from the unfathomably wealthy ex chancellor & final contender for grand high prick, Rishi Sunak, over ten percent of UK citizens survive on £18,000 a year or less which puts them at or under the poverty line.

Property ownership isn’t a distant dream- it doesn’t even register as thought when you can’t pay your rent and bills with your salary.

Tom Tugendhat, recently eliminated contender in the soulless despot of the year competition, stated that we needed to create more houses. To Mr Tugendhat, to Ms Truss, to Mr Sunak and indeed to those steady of ear in the other political parties, I’d like to introduce them to the idea that the issue isn’t simply creating more property- it’s the affordability of it.
I’d be happy to forego six months of hot drink purchases if it meant the end of my ever spiralling financial woes- but when those woes are caused by the increasingly flailing decisions of a ridiculous government, when your lack of property ownership as you march ever closer to 40 without home ownership is caused because property prices diverge ever further from salary, it’s nice to see those responsible not only helm solutions to the problems, but place the blame on their own shoulders and not yours.

The overarching point is that property ownership has been made almost impossible by the continually more vapid and short termist decisions of successive UK governments who have not only decimated the economy by making unfortunate decisions, but allowed landlords to lean heavier on the ‘lord’ part of their title whilst providing less and less of the land.
The master stroke as always is for the government to continue to point the finger at everyone but itself- it’s definitely the foreign gay trans people making property prices explode of course, not the people who have been in charge for hundreds of years- and if we only work harder, if we only forgo any pleasure besides the consumption of endless ramen packs in a dark, cold flat wearing threadbare clothes we’ve owned for 7 years, perhaps we can afford a matchbox for one in the next 5 years.

We would all, I’m sure, be happy to invest in the economy by purchasing a house, furniture and more- but until everything else stops paring back our finances and gnawing at the bones beneath we will be stuck in a cycle of saving, then checking the market only to see that extra £2.5k that we saved didn’t keep up with the rise in property prices- back to the drawing board again eh.

We’ll have to forego the precious dream of owning our own pied à terre, at least until politicians in the UK can grapple with keeping down the price of a pomme de terre.


Conversion therapy is torture

By Daviemoo

Conversion therapy is a clumsy and useless umbrella term for everything that falls under it- from simple talking therapies to violence, rape and castration, it is a term that does not encompass the horror which it can, does, and has entailed for those who have suffered at it’s hands and – thanks to the conservative government, will continue to. This violence against the trans community must be stopped at all costs.

Firstly a disclaimer to the “gender critical” LGB and perhaps even T people who enjoy consuming my content to harass me: they were going to ignore any suggestions of a ban: you’re on the side of people who would happily see you tortured because of your identity too. Be careful throwing around the term ‘handmaidens’ in future because we may not be able to hear you over the flapping of your collars.

Anti trans activists have fastened their hands around some key phrases I want to debunk: “we are just women with concerns”. Many (not all, perhaps) of the concerns that anti trans activists have revolve around the bodies of trans people, information they are not entitled to: they revolve around baseless claims of transgender people as predatory, or about the damage that transition does to trans people rather than the successes of those who have been helped immensely by it- focusing on the small percentile who desist in their transition rather than those who happily, safely transition and live in their gender or those who choose to re-transition down the line. For women with concerns there is also a surprising amount of virulently anti woman commentary- Steve Brookstein, an X factor competitor tried to have a tweet saying “can we all agree the main purpose of a woman is to procreate” go viral.

We also see a surprising paucity of coverage of other concerns for women: a cursory search of some of the more prominent anti trans figureheads like Maya Forstater, JK Rowling, Kathleen Stock, Graham Linehan, Helen Staniland- reveal little to no discourse around topics like the horrific murder of Sarah Everard at the hands of a policeman, or Blessing Olusegun’s mysterious death, Sabina Nessa’s murder in a London park. They, of course, will argue that they see trans people as the biggest threat to women, that women are being erased in favour of a hopelessly small minority. Not to insult your intelligence dear reader, but can you spot the flaw in claiming that trans WOMEN are erasing the word women, or erasing women in general when trans women ARE women?

The other phrase often repeated is “standing up for women and girls” which I find a truly bizarre sentiment when those who spend hours online describing the rising transgender menace rarely speak out on topics like medical misogyny, period poverty, the disproportionate ageism women face, rape culture, body shaming- yet today the daily mail, with a photoshoot, lauds Forstater with a campaign she deems “the most significant women’s rights movement since the suffragettes”.

Suffragettes committed acts of what would today be called terrorism in desperation to be legitimised as human beings, as people with feelings, thoughts, brains, pride, and a fierce determination to be treated with respect: one could easily argue that Forstater’s virulent anti trans rhetoric could be pushing trans people so far to the wall that they are the oppressed facing a violent struggle for legitimacy. There is also the often spotted repetition of anti trans activists stating glibly that they can ALWAYS TELL someone is trans then blithely calling non trans allies trans: and it brings up a philosophical point: if you can “always tell” why is there also a huge push for trans women to disclose their medical history to you? Perhaps transphobes like being told things they apparently already knew: it does explain why the discourse is so hopelessly circular.

I doubt that there are many readers who believe that women have equality or equity in society: for those that disagree, you are wrong. Women have been maligned by men for all of history and are now, and unfortunately will continue to be because whether you believe in patriarchy or not, some form of male supremacy does exist, persist and propagates in society. One must ask though whether the anti trans movement is a cause that champions women’s equality or whether it opens the door for further oppression of women and girls.

Looking at LGBT+ oppression specifically which obviously encompasses that of women and girls- cis and trans- let us view the statements the UK government itself has made;

there is no robust evidence that conversion therapy can achieve its stated therapeutic aim of changing sexual orientation or gender identity

the types of practices tend to be similar for conversion therapy for sexual orientation and for gender identity – for example, talking therapies delivered by faith groups or mental health professionals

conversion therapies were associated with self-reported harms among research participants who had experienced conversion therapy for sexual orientation and for gender identity – for example, negative mental health effects like depression and feeling suicidal

there is indicative evidence from surveys that transgender respondents were as likely or more likely to be offered and receive conversion therapy than non-transgender lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) respondents

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/an-assessment-of-the-evidence-on-conversion-therapy-for-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity/an-assessment-of-the-evidence-on-conversion-therapy-for-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity

If you create a ruling against transgender people being able to access certain healthcare, that ruling likely speaks on the individual’s bodily autonomy. Bodily autonomy is already (for ridiculous reasons) still questionable when it comes to women: from seeking abortion rights to whether or when they may access birth control and which method- to the simple right to say no to men in some cultures. Propagating an argument about bodily autonomy against trans people can- and will – be weaponised against these supposed moral crusaders for women’s rights because it’s plain to see that the anti trans panic is being championed by those who also work against womens’ rights: fundamentalist christians and hard right figures who believe that their entitlement to control women’s bodies is paramount to women’s own rights to choose.

Don’t believe it? Vladimir Putin has, before defending JK Rowling, called trans acceptance a “crime against humanity”. Donald Trump almost immediately enacted a ban on trans people serving in the army (it is more nuanced than written here for the sake of expedience but is no less true). Trump’s son lauded Rowling’s scorn filled tweets about “penised people”. Let us also highlight the irony of Putin’s rhetoric- he claimed JK Rowling was “cancelled” and that the west is trying to “cancel” Russia: bold words from a man so afraid of political rivals he has them murdered, imprisoned or injured. Rowling enjoys wealth, influence and adoration untainted by her increasingly outspoken verbiage against a community she’s previously expected praise from for the crumbs of a non sexual gay character who went full wizard Nazi because his boyfriend wanted him to.

This does, however, run deeper than left or right wing politics though the case is easily made that this is right wing propaganda, especially as we see that the only thing the tories are levelling up on is the rhetoric that labour are woke lefties as we prepare for the announcement of an early election. MPs who would normally take pragmatic views step back on making clear statements of support for those they normally would for fear they would upset bigots. I myself have written to my local MP in disgust of both sides of the political aisle, from Rosie Duffield’s endless platforming to speak out against trans people to Wes Streeting’s repeated and ignored transgressions against trans people, and conversely to the openly empty sentiments of permanently angry sentient felt tip Sophie Corcoran tweeting “don’t call me cis!”.

Prominent news outlets like (and I won’t say respectable because) talk radio, sky news, LBC, The BBC, all dedicating portions of their air time to questions like “can a woman have a penis” or “should we ask men if they’re pregnant in hospital”.

Insanity incarnate rules the media: because who cares? Shall we entertain discourse about how big a penis has to be before a man is a man? Does a micropenis mean a man is not a man? Genitals do not define you wholly.

Non parody-parody commentator Darren Grimes leapt to an impassioned defence of conversion therapy on twitter- it’s strange that Darren is so passionate in the availability of conversion therapy and yet hasn’t gone through it. Mayhaps he hasn’t run out of hope that he’ll find someone who can overlook his personality, lack of intelligence and disturbingly toothy face in favour of his good qualities, like his mam’s cooking. Mayhaps Darren hasn’t partaken in conversion therapy because:

These troubling ethical practices have raised alarm in major mental health professions, particularly because of the harm to patients. Further, all of these factors raise another ethical issue: Even if the questionable claims of conversion therapy’s effectiveness are valid, should the conversion of some “homosexuals” to heterosexuality condone the iatrogenic harm done to other patients who later come out as gay or lesbian?

In other words, should it not matter how many gay or lesbian people are hurt in the process of creating a few heterosexuals?

https://meridian.allenpress.com/jmr/article/102/2/7/80848/The-Growing-Regulation-of-Conversion-Therapy

The argument has always been that you are what you are born, that biology and nature matter. This of course discounts the gene therapy people can have to prevent inherited conditions, the plastic surgery people can have on lunch to hide signs of ageing, the cancer destroyed by gamma knives, the towering blocks of concrete and glass we erect. Denying trans healthcare is to deny the progression of a species scientifically out of fear and bigotry: we live in a world where these things are possible- what does preventing it do?

There is no weight to arguing that women are women because of breasts which some women do or don’t have for one reason or another, or uteri, or hormones or this or that: combined, these things may- MAY – make up a huge proportion of woman, but cis or trans some women do not fit all or even any of these stereotypes. It is ultimately YOU who decides what makes your womanhood and though that can have commonality with other women’s ideas it absolutely does not make you more correct than the woman whose breasts never developed, who never had a period, and so on and so on. Nobody though is denying the biological reality of sex: but gametes do not dictate our societal treatment of each other (I would hope).

There is SOME weight to arguing that women are women because from the moment they grow they are treated as women are, for better or worse. But pause and ask the commonalities between trans and cis women’s growing experience and see whether you believe those common threads are enough that the experience is not wholly unique.

Now let’s move to a question on the topic at hand: do you believe conversion therapy works?

The government’s own compiled dossier on conversion therapy states as above that “there is no evidence that conversion therapy can or does achieve the aims it seeks to”. Those wishing to keep it legal will ask why it would then harm to keep it legal. This dry sentence does not encompass the horror that lurks beneath.
Documentaries covering the repeated brutal rape, beating, ECT, medication, physical and mental abuse that can- and does- encompass conversion therapy are widely available online. So is research into what these tactics achieve: high morbidity rates and for those who are “successfully converted” a lifetime of PTSD and dissatisfaction that may or may not prevent you from continuing to be exactly what you always were.

There is an irony I enjoy pointing out in fundamentalist anti LGBT+ thinking: you are the ones who sexualise us. The mere mention of gay men has people covering their children’s ears and hissing about inappropriate topics! But my penchant for finding men attractive is quite a distinguished topic from anal sex, poppers, doucheing. Did you know that the recently signed “don’t say gay” bill in the US had two proposed amendments offered? One suggested that it would be appropriate to provide assistive materials to those who a teacher reasonably assumed to be LGBT+ so they would be able to access materials to help them understand their identities? It was voted down. Another amendment suggested that it be made completely blanket illegal to talk about sex (of any kind): it was voted down. So you can talk to a 6, 7 or 8 year old child about heterosexual sex but not homosexual sex: because, it seems, it’s wrong to talk about gay sex but not straight sex? But this act is oft touted as “not homophobic, it’s about stopping children hearing about inappropriate topics”. No. It’s erasure.

There’s a saying which has deep roots in mythology: “we are legion”. And this applies to the LGBT+. You can legislate against us. You can demonise us, imprison and kill us; no doubt people will continue to do so. But we are born, not (to my knowledge) made- evidence backed up by the solid failure of conversion therapy to do it’s stated aim- convert.

We will continue to persist no matter what you do to us. Those of us with decency stand together. And again a reminder that you can only push a community so far before they need to resort to desperate efforts to defend themselves.

Please consider writing to your MP today regarding this fallacious state of affairs: the government must stop the rhetoric of transgender people being less deserving of dignity and safety and must start looking after the citizens of the UK. Legal torture protects nobody.

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

The Party is Over: The Tory Party, That is.

By Daviemoo

The British public faces a stark choice: to continue to enable and embolden a wholesale corrupt political party, or to shake up a system that has failed us repeatedly over the last decade. As pressure mounts on Johnson to resign and a report by one of his employees is awaited, the question has shifted from “will Johnson step down” to “will the British public continue to be a doormat for the Etonian elite”?

Prime Minister Boris Johnson stands accused of lassitude, corruption and collusion in not only partaking in parties when the nation was on strict lockdown, but in engendering an attitude of utter Devil-May-Care wankery in the walls of our most respected institution of Great British Governance. True to form, Nadine Dorries took a running leap at a Sky News microphone to defend professional alcoholic and philanderer Boris Johnson this week ahead of yet more party allegations. She told us that we should accept the disgraced Prime Minister’s “fulsome apology”. Here, incidentally, is the dictionary definition of “fulsome”:

Nadine Dorries reportedly once stood near a dictionary

Unsurprisingly it was a matter of 37 minutes between me watching this interview with Dorries and with the breaking news of two more unsanctioned Downing Street carnivales. Angela Eagle, in PMQ’s on Wednesday, asked whether it might be appropriate to investigate the days parties DIDN’T happen in downing street as the number of known illegal or at least horribly ill advised gatherings numbers thirteen- as much as Eagle meant this as a joke, it may actually be taken as a collaborative suggestion for expedience from the opposition to assist Johnson’s employee, Sue Grey, in her report on what appears to have been a two year long Oktoberfest in the walls of Downing Street.

Like Michael Gove, perhaps we should all be drawing a line somewhere- and like Gove perhaps it’s related to the Westminster toilets- his location of choice, and the current location of the Tory party’s moral standing.

The incarnated marionette that is Jacob Rees-Mogg lost no time in disparaging fellow tory party members to curry favour with everyone’s favourite scruffy haired scrounger-in-chief, insulting Douglas Ross, one of over 30 Scottish tories, whose tartan pattern is simply the sad face emoji. Weak and ineffectual Ross may be, but for once he is genuinely interested in the good of country, party and nation by calling for the resignation of Crime Sinister Johnson for his piss-taking parties.

And back to Dorries, she defended the most tepid tweet of prime ministerial defence from chancellor and all around rich boy Rishi Sunak, saying he was absent in defending the prime minister because he was in Dorset and “there’s no wifi in Dorset”. Dorries apparently mistakes Dorset for a concrete and steel box sunk forty feet beneath the earth – or perhaps this is a tacit confession that Sunak is an anti vaxxer and therefore doesn’t have access to the magic 5G properties of a nice dose of moderna.

And then we look to Michael Fabricant- at least, in his capacity as MP and not in his second job as wig stand for H&M’s mannequins, desperate to split hairs – theoretical ones, much like his own head hair- over whether the laws were indeed broken. The fact that the court of public opinion doesn’t even need consultation because the prime minister himself has said it was a party and he did attend – and yet we’re being asked to both congratulate him on the bodies piled high and simultaneously to forget it all and move on. We’re being pulled in more directions than Michael’s hairpiece.

Rees-Mogg was quick to claim that perhaps the laws were too strict, and should never have been enacted- and between this and the claim by the Metropolitan Police that retrospective crimes wouldn’t be investigated, unless we happen to recruit for minority report style policing my future defence for any crime committed will be “it’s all in the past now, the law is too strict, move on- in fact, congratulate me on doing such a good job”. Let’s see how that works shall we?

Approximately 17,000 people have faced criminal sanction for breaking lockdown rules- and those claiming that they should be refunded miss the point that a refund acknowledges Johnson should also be let off- in my eyes, if you broke lockdown rules you- and he- are subject to punishment on behalf of those of us who did our damndest not to spread the virus.

Another person who bent the knee without a moment of question was Priti “torpedoes away” Patel- taking a brief moment away from writing authoritarian legislation whilst gently caressing her well worn copy of Mien Kampf, she put a message into the tory whatsapp group (imagine how dry that group must be… PORK MARKETS!) to let them know she stands with Johnson. Patel, known for having the moral fibre of a rusk- condemns misogyny but works for a man who talked about grabbing women’s arses, who is disgusted by racism but denies it’s systemic presence in the system she maintains, who thinks the death penalty is a good idea even if people are innocent of their crimes, who stands for protecting British citizens* (*unless you’re gay or of colour or disabled or naturalised as a citizen or a woman or old or poor…) and the age old Great British values of racism and inappropriate smirks.

But let’s not forget who is also culpable here- a reticent, sneaky and subverted media whose job is to inform the British public of newsworthy events and give us, uncritically, a picture of our world, our country and our politics, sat on reports of these parties even as their own colleagues attended! The media is as culpable as the tory party for attending these events and for burying them in the sand- and once we sweep out the self serving tory party we should be casting a critical eye over journalistic moxxie in the UK and asking why they felt it appropriate to obfuscate these vital stories.

Casting a broader eye away from the media and to the rest of the tory party, and widening the lens beyond partying we can see that this isn’t just a Boris Johnson and his criminal ineptitude problem- the tory party as a whole is institutionally corrupt, debased to a level akin to violence.

PPE VIP lanes now ruled illegal, the restoration of Patel after proven allegations tantamount to espionage only for her to bully staff out of a job, Theresa May’s hostile environment and Windrush reaction and that of her Grenfell response, Owen Paterson’s indignance at being found to be a scumbag and his insistence on blaming the public for being angry that he lobbied for a terrible company to give us terrible service, track and trace to the tune of 37 billion, delivered late and carried in the data-sieve hands of Dido “GDPR” Harding, a Brexit which has caused food, energy, petrol and more issues, Eat out to help out (“out” being COVID-19), Matt Hancock too busy having an awkward teenage looking fumble to be health secretary during a health crisis, Javid throwing off all restrictions as if being an open economy makes up for tens of thousands of preventable deaths, Dominic Raab trying desperately to google what time the sea opens as “Afghanistan Minister- Missed call” flashes up on his phone for the 7th time that day, Dominic Cummings tootling about the country with a car full of pathogen and who thought that driving a one ton machine powered by dinosaur explosions was a good way to make sure his eyes were in working order. These parties are the latest episode in a cascade of cacophony that is only outstripped by the thud thud thud DJing of the music in the basement of our most prized political institutions. Corruption is the surface level scummery of the tory party, and the only conserving that the Conservatives have done is to Conserve their own hides; the only person to lose their job so far in the allegations- provable ones- of illicit parties is a person who wasn’t even AT the parties but joked about them, as callous and cavalier as any attendee.

Johnson’s cabinet is being chewed up by the woodworm of corruption, but to try to assure the public that throwing him out will deal with this rot is to lie as surely as Johnson at the despatch box. If a cabinet is rotten you don’t replace the struts- you throw it out wholesale and get a new one with the hope this one does not succumb as did the last.

The British public only has one choice- not to “keep calm and carry on”. We have to evict this disgraceful and corrupt party from office.

Ultimately there is only one party that deeply concerns me overall- the tory party. And much like the ribald bashes thrown in Downing Street over the two aching years of pandemia endured, apparently solely, by the common man- the party is truly over.

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.