Corruption, Lies and Hypocrisy: The Rot Starts From The Top
The Cambridge Dictionary defines sleaze as “activities, especially business or political of a low moral standard”. This means that while figures and parties accused of sleaze may not have technically broken any rules, they may have found loopholes or acted against the spirit of fairness.
Corruption is the abuse of power for private gain. Corruption takes many forms, such as bribery, trading in influence, abuse of functions, but can also hide behind nepotism, conflicts of interest, or revolving doors between the public and the private sectors.
So just how unlucky are we to end up with such a staggeringly sleazy and demonstrably corrupt government like this rancid, bent Conservative Party of 2021?
When I say “we” I am talking about the people who realised ‘getting Brexit done’ wasn’t the soundest of singular reasons to give Boris Johnson another five years. He was always going to need a bit more than the promise of fish wars with France.
He only had one job, and Johnson has screwed that up too.
The media reaction to the ongoing corruption saga is still at peak ludicrousy. They know the Tories are corrupt. Why act all shocked? They’ve been attending the same black tie balls. They have spent countless column inches defending the corrupt bastards.
I was calling out Geoffrey Cox’s behaviour in 2016. So much so he went to his local newspaper to complain that I had unfairly represented him when I called him a “bastard”. I stand by this today, and feel I have been proven to be correct.
Mr Cox has been taking the piss out of us for years now, from expense claims of 49p for milk, and £4.99 for some weed killer, to the not-so-shocking revelations that the former Attorney General had spent much of the last year voting from a Caribbean tax haven.
Owen Paterson is another. The media knew about his lobbying, they knew about Randox picking up government contracts, so why the outrage now?
I had a rant about Paterson and Randox over a year ago now. Outlets such as Byline Media and Open Democracy have been hammering the Covid contract corruption drum loudly and consistently, as well as campaign groups such as The Good Law Project.
Are you suddenly supposed to forget how this miserable catastrofuck of a government wormed its way in? I haven’t.
It was a choice. Johnson or Corbyn. It wasn’t about left and right, or leave and remain, it was about right and wrong, and them and us.
Britain got it wrong. It was an act of national self-harm, aided by the very media that find themselves profusely bleating about Tory corruption, now they have realised Keir Starmer is as much of a threat to the status quo as I am to the Nine Inch Nails.
A number of you kind enough to read this will thoroughly disagree with that last paragraph, as is your right to do so, but I am afraid the evidence is undeniable and on display for all to see.
Johnson and Corbyn are two very different types of leader, although Jeremy does an excellent impression of Johnson. But here’s the key difference, way beyond policy and personality.
Jeremy was a true believer in leadership being about listening. Johnson refuses to listen to anyone but himself.
Some of us ‘Corbyn outriders’ used to laugh when we saw news clippings calling him a “dictator” or an “authoritarian”, because no matter what they tell you, it simply was not true.
But our laughter, well, at least mine, was tinged with sadness, because we knew that enough of the electorate really did believe he was a “crazy Commie”, (he’s a democratic socialist) or they really did think that a peace-loving marrow grower with a knack of making some first class jam was somehow a “national security risk”.
Even to this day, the Tories insist we wanted to scrap NATO, which was a steaming pile of bullshit, designed to scare the floating voter into thinking Jeremy would have you all speaking fluent Russian and living under Sharia law faster than you can say “free Palestine”.
Jeremy was a regular visitor to Swindon - and who can blame him? I can’t remember the exact date, but I’m pretty sure England were playing in the Rugby World Cup final, so I’m guessing November 2019.
I was keen to catch up with Jeremy, but the rest of my household were fixated with the Rugby. Eventually, they agreed to radio commentary, and we made our way to see the boss.
He delivered a cracking speech, and then he fielded a few questions before meeting the hordes of campaigners and supporters, posing for selfies, and being lovely to everyone he encountered, taking time to listen to each and every one of them. From past experiences, this was typical of Jeremy.
I got my turn soon enough, a front row seat had its advantages, and once I had got this kiss and hug secured (judge me all you wish) I said to him something along the lines of his leadership inspiring so many people, both young and not-so young, to get involved in politics, and turn up to hear what he had to say.
His reply, word-for-word, was “leadership is listening”. And you knew he meant it. Regardless of how you felt about Jeremy, to claim he is anything other than genuinely sincere would be a vulgar act of insincerity in itself.
See, that’s what would’ve happened, my Daily Mail reading ‘comrade’ and Guardian-sniffing liberals. Jeremy Corbyn would’ve listened.
Listened to experts on when to go into lockdown during a global pandemic, going on to save tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths and untold misery that still lives with us to this very day.
Listened to the NHS workers - they who have been ostracised by the media for wanting a bit more than claps to put food on the table - they who have seen successive Tory governments underfund and demoralise our national treasure to the benefit of the private sector. Private wealth has been prioritised over national health.
Corbyn was fucking right, again.
Listened to the majority of the public that want MPs to be MPs, full time. This second job malarkey is absolutely ludicrous and would’ve been dealt with once and for all by a Corbyn government. It was a manifesto commitment. Can you see why these greedy fucking parasites moved heaven and earth to make sure he didn’t get a sniff of power?
That includes Starmer, who was stopped by Jeremy Corbyn from taking up a lucrative position with a law firm. They can deny it as much as they want, the receipts exist, and with each new denial they are making themselves look even more dishonest than normal, if that’s even possible.
Ridiculous, lamentable individuals.
We are surrounded by corruption, whichever way you look. It is easier to buy a Tory MP for Christmas than it is to buy a Playstation 5.
The thing so many of us find hard to stomach is the fact they are being paid £82,000 a year, as well as being able to claim hundreds of thousands of pounds in expenses, and it is YOU that funds every penny of that money.
They shouldn’t need a second job. They shouldn’t have time for a second job. But when you look at the likes of Geoffrey Cox and Owen Paterson, the job that you pay them to do becomes a part-time position, and the generous MPs salary is vastly overshadowed by the potential payday on offer from businesses and organisations looking to purchase their own unique wedge of influence.
As with the Covid-19 crisis, we are living in a time where leadership has never mattered quite so much, but we have one useless, deeply unlikeable, and thoroughly dishonest leader, surrounded by sycophantic cultists, as well as the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.
The staggeringly hypocritical Starmer is in no position to call out second job earnings, because he is a massive part of the institutional corruption that needs to be ended once and for all.
The Johnson administration is in its dying days. The Tories will give you Gove, Sunak or maybe the ghoul Patel, and Johnson will toddle off back to the Telegraph and the highly lucrative after-dinner speaking circuit, and this cruel, incompetent, and deeply corrupt government will be confined to the history books.
Just to be replaced by another.
Until next time.
Rachael
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