Dystopian Tory Britain - Pay Hikes For Them, Fuel Poverty For You

Let’s start with a few questions today. 

You’re disabled. You survive simply down to payments of ESA (Employment and Support Allowance) and a small amount of PIP (Personal Independence Payment). It might be the case you get Universal Credit with the disability ‘premium’ added on.

You have a key meter for your gas and electric, which means you are paying more than someone who is billed monthly or quarterly. You regularly sit in your accommodation in the dark, because you have used up all of the £5 emergency credit.

You cannot afford to drive. The cost of tax, MOT, insurance and fuel would likely use up most of your ESA, so car ownership is normally out of the question.

Your weekly food shopping bill has gone through the roof, and you’re on first-name-terms with the kind volunteers at your local food bank. The indignity can only be described if you’ve been there. You’ll get it. 

Essentially, you are facing the biggest decline in living standards since the days of rationing. 

So I need to know, what did Rishi Sunak’s spring statement do to help this person, or the millions of people with similarly diabolical circumstances who are facing extreme hardship? 

I’ve looked, and looked again. I even waited for the dust to settle - surely there must be something hidden away in Sunak’s script that will go directly and immediately into the pockets of the people that need it the most? 

I’m sure you Tories will point me to the ‘new’ £500 million heading to local authorities to distribute to the poorest and most vulnerable, but in reality it simply doesn’t work like this, and the poorest and most vulnerable are often unable to jump through the various hoops put in front of them by the local authorities. 

But how much of this £500 million will find its way to the people that are most in need when the local authorities themselves have seen unprecedented budget cuts for more than a decade of Tory austerity? 

Not a great deal, you can be absolutely certain of that. 

The Spring Statement needed to find something to bail out the people of Britain, just like they bailed out the banks, but Sunak’s widely-unpopular statement has only served to isolate the poor, vulnerable, sick, and disabled even further from safety. 

Once again, the working classes have been brutally shafted by the Conservative Party - unless you happen to own a £5,000 heat pump or thousands of pounds worth of solar panels.

The callous inadequacy of the Spring Statement can only be intentional. These Tory governments have a habit of committing economic murder, and getting away with it, every single time. 

How can it be right that people are turning up food banks and rejecting fresh vegetables, because they literally cannot afford to turn the oven on? 

What did your Spring Statement offer them, Rishi Sunak? 

The cold facts…

6.32 million households are living in fuel poverty. This has DOUBLED in just 3 Tory years. 

2.5 million of these households have children living in them. 

11,400 winter deaths were caused by cold homes last year. 

At the current rate, it will take the government 60 YEARS to catch up with its own fuel poverty targets.

What did your Spring Statement offer them, Rishi Sunak? 

Tragically, more people die from cold homes than they do from alcohol, Parkinson’s Disease or traffic accidents.

What on earth did the Chancellor from the billionaire family think when he put together this monstrosity? How many times did he mention the words “poor” or “poverty” during the speech? I don’t remember any. You do know he’s the favourite to be our next Prime Minister, right?

The Resolution Foundation claim a staggering 1.3 million people, including 500,000 children, will fall into absolute poverty, after Rishi Sunak’s failure to deliver on his promise to support the British people through the worsening cost of living crisis. 

Think about it. That’s the entire population of Birmingham - England’s second largest city - all forced into absolute poverty because of Sunak’s unsympathetic and inadequate Spring Statement. 

Do you remember Sunak doing those Downing Street press briefings? He said he will do “whatever it takes” to see us through the financial apocalypse that accompanied the arrival of Covid-19. 

They did whatever it takes to ensure their friends and donors made billions of pounds supplying us with faulty PPE. The wealth of the Tory donor will always be put before the health of the British people. 

The response to Sunak’s Spring Statement from the Labour Party was almost as ghastly as the Statement itself. Jokes about Ted Heath (who was never Chancellor), and no realistic vision of how they would make things better for millions of hard-pressed families.

Incredibly, the leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, has managed to lose a ten-point-lead in the polls over the worst government in living memory. 

As we have been saying for some time, the only reason Starmer was ahead of the Tories was the unpopularity of Boris Johnson. Throw in a few air defence missile systems and the talk of war, and Johnson’s recovery was guaranteed - albeit temporarily.

None of our Parliamentarians will face the same painful decisions that you will face this year. They are on their NINTH pay rise in the last decade, the latest one is worth £2,200, and comes into effect next month. 

How about legislation to turn down the pay rise, totalling £1.4 million, and investing it back into the British people? I know we’re not Royal Yachts, extravagant wallpaper, or a £2 million press briefing room, but we are cold, hungry, and sick and tired of being used as collateral damage by successive Conservative governments.

316 MPs claimed their utility bills on expenses last year, with some members claiming more than £3,000 to cover their utilities. If ever there was a case of what is good for the goose is good for the gander, it is now. 

The average dual fuel bill last year was £1,138, so I absolutely stand by my suggestion that the government should issue rebates of £1,138 to every household - half in April and half in October - rebates, not repayable loans. 

Of course you would be right to ask how we can pay for this, and my answer is simple enough. 

We managed to pay Serco some £37 billion for Dido’s test and trace shenanigans - that’s more than ten times the GDP of Sierra Leone. 

We managed to write-off billions and billions of pounds for Covid fraud, just recently. No arrests, no charges, no convictions. Now imagine if they paid you too much Universal Credit - the bailiffs would be round in no time whatsoever, to make your life a misery. 

We haven’t even started on a windfall and wealth tax. Huge oil suppliers making profits of £600 every single second, and some not paying a single penny in income tax. 

To suggest we cannot afford to take care of the most vulnerable people in society is utterly risible and demonstrably dishonest. We can and we must, but the government chooses not to do so. 

Ridiculously-rich Rishi hasn’t got a clue. He cannot pretend to understand what it’s like to go without. Rishi won’t have any pre-payment key meters to worry about, which is good for him, as he won’t have to pay the £700 increase being forced upon some of the poorest people in society. 

If Sunak’s substandard Spring Statement was an application for the top job he will not be coming back for a second interview. 

A government, this government, relies on the subservience of the British people. The future will always depend on what we do in the present, and now, today, we have to keep shouting, keep protesting, and keep ranting - and lend your voice to aid the voiceless. 

Solidarity. 

Rachael

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