Lee Anderson MP for Ashfield is a pompous, ignorant, patronising oaf

[newnamethanks]

Mr Anderson invites us all along to his local food bank to see how they do things there. If you're poor enough and don't have any food you can register there for a handout. You have you sign up to be taught to budget and cook and be properly grateful. So, great. Budget with the cash you haven't got in the first place then cook with the fuel you can't afford. Reminds me of something I read in "Wotking Class Wives" a study of poverty in the 1930s. Lady Health Visitors were surprised that when some people were rehoused from the slums into houses with gas cookers, they continued to cook on the fire. Because, like now, they couldn't afford 2 amounts of fuel, gas AND coal. Such progress we've made in the last 100 years. I'd like to kick his arse.

Everyone who votes for the Tories votes for the UK breaking international law, doing sod all to support the poorest in society, for offering referendums on conservatories and extensions instead of ensuring working people can afford to buy homes, for the inhumane treatment of refugees and for attempts at scrapping the rule of law and parliamentary democracy.

Hows that?

I’ll take a twenty year old war and supporting trans people over attempting to prevent parliamentary democracy, removing checks and balances on the Government, channelling billions of pounds to their greasy mates, breaking international law, shitting on refugees…..

Everyone can vote for whatever reason they choose. Even in 2019, Corbyn’s indifference to antisemitism may have made a vote for the Tories understandable. But if anyone is still doing it now, they have no moral compass and entirely undeserving of respect imo.

And Bozo's just bounced back from Finland asking them to take his word on a proposed agreement. This, from à man who's proposing to break an agreement with NI that he didn't have faith in when he signed it. 'Trust me. I'm a duplicitous liar '.

We've gone right back to Victorian times, blaming the poor for a situation that's often out of their hands, and - as I saw someone mention on another thread - the notion of the 'deserving' versus the 'undeserving' poor has returned and takes no account of a person's circumstances or what they are up against in life. And don't even get me started on the idea of budgeting advice being forced on people who may know perfectly well how to budget but have nowt to budget with. Talk about rubbing people's faces in it. Budgeting advice is a great thing to offer those who seem in need of it, but to force it on everyone seeking assistance makes a whole ton of assumptions that are beyond insulting. Ditto assuming people don't know how to cook just because they are poor.

It's bloody disgusting what's happened to this country. YANBU OP.

Oh, and this too. Couldn't agree more.

Your point is?

It's all in the tone, the victim blaming tone from an MP who claimed 220k+ in expenses in a year.

Many voters would welcome Victorian values. And the not everything in the Victorian age was as terrible as Captain Hindsights make out - the Victorian age had fabulous innovation, economic growth and buccaneering trade deals. The buccaneering wasn't as innovative as in the first Elisabethan age but let's hope buccaneeering trade deals in this second Elisabethan age might surpass them both.

Well he's doubled down - "The point I was trying to make is that I think the actual food-bank usage is exaggerated."

But according to the Trussell Trust -
"New figures released today reveal food banks in the Trussell Trust’s network provided more than 2.1 million parcels to people facing financial hardship across the country, from 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022.
This represents a 14% increase compared to the same period in 2019/20 – before the pandemic – as more and more people are unable to afford the absolute essentials that we all need to eat, stay warm, dry and clean."

He is from the same area as my Dad, but a bit younger. Also a coal mining family (although I grew up in London, after my Dad went to Grammar school then university).

I asked him about the Miners strikes recently. He just went very quiet. My mother explained... my grandmother saw both her husband and younger son without income relying on charity to feed my cousins. And all the others around them. The stress killed her.

This MP would have grown up around this happening to his friends and family. He would have been a teenager then. How can not know the reality?

Presumably his constituents of an MP who proudly cleaves to his opinions and doubles down instead of Labour scallywags flip flopping in the breeze. Double the common sense. Double the advice reaching double the number of constituents looking to him for an example of frugality and healthy cooking. In the photos he looks a fine figure of a chap.

I see that Lee Anderson claimed nearly £220,000 in expenses for one year with staffing at £165k and office costs of £33k.

The way I see it Lee Anderson is what he is, namely an out of touch patronising over entitled Tory with no understanding of the cost of living crisis and its impact on many people. You can't blame him for being what he is, in the same way you can't blame a tiger for wanting to eat you. It is what it is.

BUT you can blame the people who voted for this man to be an MP, in the same way you can blame people for letting a tiger lose on the streets.

I'm sure those who had to live in workhouses were very excited about the 'economic growth and buccaneering trade deals' too.

Good grief.

^ Just to add I was attempting to agree with/add to the irony of your post there @Zilla1 - I read it back and realised it sounded like I was serious.😁 The 'good grief' was in reference to the state the country's in, not your comment.

The Tories would have been kicked out years ago if it wasn't for charities and food banks, as even a lot of Tory voters wouldn't stomach so many people starving to death.

They all claim thousands of expenses - for things like food - at the expense of the taxpayer.

There were vox pops on the BBC in the build up to the 2019 general election where there were people literally saying they were voting Tory because there's more food banks now than there were under Labour.

Of course MPs need food providing. We don't want highly intelligent MPs making bad decisions because of hunger. And the male MPs might be away from home so won't have their wives or nannies to cook for them. We can't expect them to buy food from their salary. Come on. They need top quality brain food. It's like pay - MPs and captains of industry - pay peanuts and get monkeys. Nurses and doctors work for claps and would be insulted if we thought they'd accept a pay rise. I don't want to insult nurses and doctors. Only those Labour scallywags insult doctors and nurses and try to undermine the NHS that the tories helped create by doing all the preparatory work during WW2.

It's pure envy to begrudge MPs their subsidised foie gras

How did Lee Anderson feel about the miners strike? Well Mr Anderson belonged to the Labour Party then, so presumably he gave the miners some support. Indeed, as Clavinova has helpfully pointed out his 'loyalty' was with Labour until he sussed he'd be better off as a Brexit supporting Tory and promptly got selected as their candidate. A man of firm conviction, little knowledge and a politician through and through. Oaf.

He was expelled from the Labour Party before joining the Conservatives

The Tories would have been kicked out years ago if it wasn't for charities and food banks, as even a lot of Tory voters wouldn't stomach so many people starving to death.

THIS. THIS. THIS.

Lee Anderson is from a Notts mining background. He may not be as supportive or sympathetic to miners' solidarity as all that.

suspended not expelled

I'm not so so sure Valleria, they would probably be starving due to a combination of not working hard enough and not getting on their bikes. I think this Party operates on the principal that people are plentiful and can always be replaced at little nor no cost.