From 40 New Hospitals To Levelling-Up - You Cannot Trust Boris Johnson
Way back in 2019 I offered to give you 40 brand spanking new pairs of shoes.
Not 10, not 20, but 40.
These shoes would be of the highest quality - the very best that Primani has to offer. You don’t need to throw your old shoes away, they have served you well, and there is plenty of life left in them yet, but there’s no denying that you need more shoes.
Skip forward to today and now. I still haven’t supplied you with those shoes, and you are still wearing your old faithfuls, as worn out as they may be. When you consider the amount of wear and tear they went through during 2020 it’s quite remarkable that they’re still in good order.
But, I have a solution to this. You don’t really need new shoes. I will send you some new laces, and maybe a few inner soles - we will call them your new shoes, and I will have fulfilled my side of the deal.
Now here’s the best bit. Once you’ve done the gluing, popped some new laces in, scraped the dog poop off the bottom, and gave them a wipe with a dishcloth, I want you to tell everyone that you know all about your brand new shoes.
Tell your Facebook friends, your Twitter followers, and anyone gullible enough to believe the elastic band holding your shoes together is in fact the very latest fashion accessory.
If you can’t see where I’m going with this then I can only put it down to my inability to explain something clearly.
Now, my failure to supply you with 40 nice new pairs of shoes is likely to make you think I might be somewhat disingenuous, particularly unreliable, and utterly full of shit. The kind of person that will say anything to anyone, no matter how untrue it is, simply to buy popularity.
Now change those shoes for brand spanking new, state-of-the-art, fully funded and staffed hospitals.
Now you probably know where I’m coming from.
I’ll now hand you over to Boris Johnson.
“We’re launching the biggest hospital building programme in a generation. You will have seen that on the steps of Downing Street I announced 20 new hospital upgrades.
“We’re now following that up with 40 new hospitals we’re going to be doing across the country. It’s the biggest programme of hospital building in a generation.”
I repeat: Boris Johnson promised to launch “the biggest hospital building programme in a generation”.
The Conservatives repeatedly pledged to build 40 new NHS hospitals. I’m not imagining it and you’re not imagining it.
Their 2019 manifesto said they are proud "to have begun work on building 40 new hospitals across the country".
"We will build and fund" them, it adds, "over the next 10 years."
Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: "We've made a manifesto commitment to build and fund 40 hospitals over the next decade, and a Conservative majority government will deliver on that commitment."
Could they possibly be any clearer than this?
I mean, this is a government that intentionally confused the public during a global pandemic, simply so they could shift the blame for their disastrous handling of the crisis away from themselves and squarely at the feet of the general public.
But there’s no confusion here. We, the electorate, were promised 40 new hospitals.
Not upgrades to existing wings.
Not a lick of paint here and there.
Not an extension to your ‘local’ maternity unit.
Not enough to buy a few first aid kits and a couple of packs of Nurofen.
40 new hospitals.
A manifesto is a published declaration of the intentions, aspirations and/or views of any individual or group. In this case, the Conservative party.
It is not a binding, legally enforceable contract.
But why not?
If a pre-election party manifesto is considered a binding social contract, why shouldn’t political parties that win elections - and consequently break their promises - be legally prosecuted?
It would be lazy and utterly naive to believe the voters will punish the Tories for not keeping their promises, because as soon as the next election comes around you’ll find the same charlatans spinning the same lies, and the same voters swallowing every uncosted and wholly unachievable promise with an alarming ease.
How about it, Keir Starmer?
I say to you in good faith, Why don’t you promise to enter the next general election with a simple commitment that a Labour government, led by Keir Starmer, would legislate to make a socially binding contract - such as a political party manifesto - a legally binding contract?
One would imagine a former Director of Public Prosecutions could quite easily cobble together a Director of Political Prosecutions, no?
As I pointed out on Twitter just yesterday, I’m really not sure the public are fully aware of Boris Johnson’s promise of 40 new hospitals turning out to be little more than a box of Smart Price sticking plasters for every hospital in a Tory constituency.
Have you seen the waiting lists? Have you seen the staff shortages? Have you seen the derisory pay offer to an outstanding workforce that lost more than 1,000 of their colleagues thanks to that arsehole Johnson and that pissant Hancock and their inability to act in the national interest, so that wretched serial failure Dido could have a few quid on the Cheltenham Gold Cup?
Take it on the chin? You can fuck right off, Prime Minister.
Where are the media on Johnson’s complete and utter failure to deliver on the promises he made during the 2019 general election campaign?
Will the British press afford equal prominence to Johnson’s inability to deliver on one of his key promises as they did to promote the original lie?
Of course they won’t. They’re almost as guilty as the scruffy Etonian scarecrow himself.
They knew it wasn’t ever going to happen, but that didn’t stop them from pretending it was a credible policy. They knew Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t a terrorist sympathiser, but that didn’t stop them from calling him a terrorist sympathiser.
They are liars, politicians and press alike. They’re all in it together. Protect the status quo at all costs. They, just like Johnson, can fuck right off.
The media should be holding power to account. When you realise the media are an integral part of this power, it all makes so much more sense.
So you find yourselves not only wanting to see the government be held accountable for the decisions that they make, and the promises that they fail to keep, but you also find yourselves demanding accountability from the very people who should be demanding the same accountability from the politicians!
I’m actually close to confusing myself here.
If we enforce accountability now, future generations will act with accountability at their own free will - think of it as a knock on effect.
Unless the governing politicians live a life of accountability, there will be no order in politics, just an illusion of order.
The lack of accountability stretches way beyond the promise of 40 brand new hospitals.
Why don’t we talk about the “levelling-up” agenda? Because it was and always will be a load of fucking nonsense.
What about the £20 a week cut to Universal Credit? Will the bone idle fuckers that voted to bring about further child poverty and an explosion in Food bank use like we’ve never witnessed before lead by example, and take a £20 a week cut to their handsome salary? Of course they won’t.
How much of the flaghumping media are willing to admit they spent years dreaming about keeping ‘Johnny Foreigner’ out of their country, only to realise it's kind of hard to get their hands on their finely trimmed broccoli stems when the very same people they berated no longer feel welcome on this hateful plague-ridden island?
We don’t hear them talking about this very often because they enabled it. They all knew Johnson was this deplorable lying bag of venom, but the only other realistic candidate for the job scared the living daylights out of them, so they lied for him.
And that’s where we are now. There won’t be 40 new hospitals, but you knew that already.
It’s just amazing how many people don’t.
Until next time,
Rachael x
Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts, if you want to chip in towards improving my ongoing campaign, and it would cause you *no hardship*, you can do so here:
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