Epic thread from Samuel West
x.com/exitthelemming/status/1795425589647856102?s=46&t=Uw4lJNwxFZFnX0Xs3doHYg
Fifteen years. Five prime ministers, seven chancellors, eight foreign secretaries, twelve culture secretaries and sixteen housing ministers.
A thread, for #RantyTuesday.
One third of all children in poverty. Triple the NHS waiting list (6.4m). Energy bills up a quarter in the last two years. Food prices up a fifth. Huge mortgage increases. Four million hours of sewage poured into our rivers and seas in 2023, more than twice as much as in 2022
Number of food banks up 7000% since 2010. More food banks than branches of McDonalds in the UK, and now 4250 food banks operating in British schools
230 000 deaths from COVID; £29 billion on Test and Trace. £10 billion on unused PPE; £4 billion on fraudulent COVID loans. People dying alone; meanwhile, 126 Partygate fines from 16 parties at 10 Downing Street, among “the worst governing ever seen.”
Two years of talk about “levelling up” leading to Bradford and Hull, among the most deprived councils in the country, being cut by 28.5% and 27.9% respectively, Sheffield by 27.2% and Doncaster 25.8%. Councils in Surrey and Oxfordshire got the smallest cuts
A 45-day Prime Ministerial reign by Liz Truss and a mini-budget from Kwasi Kwarteng that cost the country £30bn, enough for an inflation-equalling pay rise for every public sector worker in the country. Kwarteng said they “got carried away.”
Immigrants, the working poor, the hungry, the unemployed, the sick, the mentally ill and the disabled demonised for their circumstances. Half a billion pounds on the Rwanda scheme, a performatively cruel and unworkable policy that criminalises the trafficked, not the traffickers
Taking no responsibility. Blaming teachers, nurses, railway workers, lawyers, lifeboat volunteers, the BBC, care home staff, local government, the civil service, the C of E, footballers, refuse collectors, universities and people who use food banks. So that’s everybody, then
Accepting £8.4 million from fossil fuel interests and climate change deniers since the last election. In the face of climate disaster, green policies delayed or abandoned. Rowing back on Net Zero. F.o.I. requests about the state of the environment buried by the Environment Agency
A pledge for everyone in UK to live fifteen minutes from a green space quietly shelved. Plans to make the target for access to green space legally binding scrapped. Sunak not attending COP 27.
The dismantling of democracy. “Limited” law-breaking; proroguing Parliament; junking parliamentary standards; the Internal Market Act; the Elections Act; endangering the right to protest while claiming the Public Order Act only targets “Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati.”
The Home Office deliberately removing legal protection for Windrush immigrants in 2014. 164 people wrongly detained or deported in the ensuing scandal. 30 Windrush Report recommendations: nine not delivered; three cancelled by Suella Braverman
Very British scandals: Post Office; Grenfell; Windrush; Contaminated Blood; the Carers’ allowance. A cover-up culture: defend; deny; deceive.
A tax gap 100x bigger than that of benefit fraud. Huge systematic corporate tax avoidance by the government's friends and backers. FTSE bosses earning on average 120 times the average employee (people think the ideal ratio should be 7:1). 24 more new UK billionaires in 2021 alone
Local Government revenue funding cut by 48% since 2010. Culture funding down 43%. Our world-class arts organisations clinging to their reputation, begging a government who believes “music, dance, drama and performing arts, art and design …are not among our strategic priorities.”
A third of England’s libraries closed since 2010. A-level and GCSE arts entries down by 29% and 47% respectively. Humanities degrees defunded because they don’t produce “graduate outcomes in areas of economic importance.”
Cheerleading the self-inflicted wound of Brexit: border checks that cost £4.7bn. GDP down 4%. Food £250 a year more expensive. A trade border in Ireland which threatens the Good Friday agreement. An ‘oven-ready deal’ that turned out inedible
Systematic underfunding of the Health Service by people who never use it. Backdoor privatisation by stealth. Clapping for the NHS and refusing nurses a pay rise over 1%. Driving down public sector pay so healthcare becomes dependent on immigration, then demonising the immigrants
The average person in the UK £10 200 poorer. The worst fall in real wages in the G7. 2.2m women in low-paid jobs. UK workers earning £75 a month less in real terms than in 2008, though we work Europe’s third longest hours. Retirement age raised to 68 (women’s up from 60)
Voting down free school meals. Twice. Closing 500 Sure Start centres. Some of the least happy children in the developed world, and some of the worst child poverty. In 2014, there were no British cities where more than a third of children lived in poverty. By 2021, there were six
Record inequality in education. 70% of state schools’ funding cut. State school teachers run into the ground by people whose children don’t go to state schools. Child trust funds scrapped. Childcare costs up 30% in the last ten years - far higher than most European countries
Compulsory National Service for 18-year-olds. No money to feed hungry children or to remove the two-child benefit cap. But always money for a new nuclear arms race.
The highest rail prices in Europe; the second worst fuel poverty; the third highest housing costs; the fourth poorest elderly
Distracting from every failure of government with a culture war which sees challenging racism and inequality, making the curriculum factual or representative of historical truth and a changing Britain derided as “woke".
The wholesale dismantling of the Welfare State. Wealthy people running a wealthy country, choosing to create scarcity. Austerity sold to us as a financial necessity. Instead, every inequality increased; every benefit cut
The worst regional inequality in Western Europe and perhaps unsurprisingly, the lowest level of trust in politicians
We’ve had fifteen years of this shit. We need these people out, we need them out now, and we need to keep them out for a very long time.
I feel like there is something for everyone on that list.