This government has refused to assist struggling families to feed their children. Using the most spurious of excuses from fantasy drug deals to callous, Victorian child-starving notions of the undeserving poor, the government would have us believe that the best response to an adult’s poverty is to punish the children who depend upon them.
This shameful philosophy literally leads to children starving, a slow and painful process that was all but eradicated in UK prior to the return of the tories in 2010. These people have systematically starved unemployed, disabled and low-waged citizens for over a decade now. The issue is bigger than just Christmas and it’s been around for a lot longer than Covid-19.
And yet we’re expected to subsidize MP’s meals even as our own working class children go hungry.
If you think that’s unfair, I urge you to sign the petition to remove public subsidy from all Houses of Parliament restaurants and bars. After all, if the government won’t feed the children of poor people then it has no business buying pies for the likes of Mark Jenkinson MP, with his fantastical tales of dealers trading heroin and crack cocaine for a few stale orios and a large tin of spaghetti hoops!
Did you expect lots of lazy days out with the family, sitting picnicking by a lake or hosting a neighbourhood barbecue in the garden?
Did you spend a small fortune stocking up on disposable barbecues and paper plates back in the day?
Don’t despair. Someone’s found a use for them, after all.
Decorating Jenny’s door
Tory MP, Mark Jenkinson represents a constituency with some of the worst poverty in the whole of UK. Many of his constituents are unemployed whilst others, earning only minimum wage to start with, have seen their incomes further reduced through furlough and now worse. Many have lost their jobs altogether. West Cumbrian hardship is as bad as it ever was. For many hard-working people it’s like the 1980s all over again.
So how did Jenky choose to represent the good people of Workington and surrounding towns and villages? He voted not to help feed their kids!
That’s right. He voted not to help feed their kids.
If you’re as disgusted as I am you may approve of the sentiment expressed here by one Marypost resident who put all those extra plates to good use. What an interesting and fun way to get rid of all that unused clutter from the summer that never was.
What will you do with your unwanted disposable paper plates?
Please, Mark… May the kids have something to eat this Christmas?
Once again I find myself making an offer to my MP, Mark Jenkinson. I do this periodically when he makes outrageous and damaging statements about issues dear to me. Issues such as nursing, education, the economy, the Tory vote to abandon lone children in the camps at Calais for example.
Jenkinson’s the one with the symbolically accurate imagery of a nice plush office for him and a tatty, neglected union flag to stand for the rest of us. It’s easy to see where his priorities are.
This time I’m taking Jenky on about hungry children, if he has the bottle to face a constituent who wants him actually to justify his appalling cruelty. The offer is simple.
Let’s debate, (formally or otherwise) Jenkinson’s and the Tory party’s decision to deny free meals to qualifying children over the Christmas break, children whose parents have already suffered massive financial damage due to Covid and who clearly need help to feed their families.
Let’s discuss this over Skype, Mark.
Let’s both record the discussion to ensure there’s no dodgy editing.
Let’s both be free to post the discussion (with commentary and ‘right to reply’) wherever we like.
As ever, you know how to find me, Mark. contact me via this website, by Email or if you like, since your little helper, Adrian ferreted out my postal address you can even write to me.
I’ve just heard there’s a vote of no confidence in Jenky Petition circulating. If anyone knows about it please contact me at http://www.lefteyeview.com
On Wednesday night the Conservative MP for Workington, Mark Jenkinson, faced a Test of Character. In these difficult times, low paid and poor families are struggling more than ever to make ends meet. Many people have already lost their jobs, redundancies are on the rise and there will be worse to come. Many have seen their incomes reduced initially to 80% and now to 67% while being on furlough.
Graham Bragg
Loss of earnings will obviously hit hardest for the lowest paid and most vulnerable in our society. With winter coming many families will face hard decisions about what they must go without in order to get by (if indeed it is actually possible for them to get by). Official figures for child poverty in this country have risen by 600,000 while the Conservatives have been in power. Figures have surged by 100,000 in just the last year (no doubt the covid-19 crisis has played a significant part in this).
Recognising this situation, the Labour Party proposed a motion in Parliament to extend a scheme to provide free meals (to qualifying children) in non-term times until next Easter. It is a very modest, short-term measure. Surely not much to ask??
During the 2019 election campaign (and since), Mark Jenkinson, made much around the ‘levelling up’ soundbyte. He inferred that he would personally support policies that reduce the massive wealth disparities in this country by bettering the lives of people at the very bottom of the economic pile. This is indeed much needed given the brutal attack on the welfare system during the last 10 years of Conservative austerity that has seen the incomes of the poorest reduce but incomes of the richest increase.
Mark Jenkinson MP: betraying his election promises again
So, given an opportunity to support even the most modest ‘levelling up’ scheme, you’d think, if sincere, that he would be a fervent supporter?However, on Wednesday, Mark Jenkinson, was briefed by his party leadership on what to say, what to think and how to vote on the amendment. Mark Jenkinson obediently voted against the motion that would have brought some small relief to struggling families. In justification; on Wednesday night he merely posted verbatim from his party briefing diktat. On Thursday he merely shared a ridiculous and inaccurate post by the extreme right wing MP, Ben Bradley.
Mark Jenkinson has no words of his own to justify his hypocrisy in voting against the extension of free school meals.
So, here it was; A Test of Character. Mark Jenkinson had a straightforward choice. To vote in the interests of those he claimed that he would support. Or to obediently, docilely follow orders.
A few days ago Mark Jenkinson MP, my MP I’m not at all pleased to say, had a go at teachers for complaining about risks from Covid19. Today, on the same Facebook page where he attacked our local teachers, without a word of explanation he warns of the dangers of Covid to young people.
I would love for him to explain to me how these two posts relate to each other but I can’t imagine my question will be answered. Engaging reasonably with the electorate just isn’t Jenky’s style.
When Covid19 first made it into the news I was as concerned as most people but not dismayed. I had faith in the government to do what’s right and in fact, didn’t criticise the shower of shit we have in Downing Street until April. I saw my role as a good citizen to get behind the government, propagate positive messages abut hand-washing, social distancing and generally support the national effort to keep people alive and not too worried.
I did criticize a bit but that was reserved not for Boris and his cabal of criminals but for hoarders and spivs. Not until April did I start openly criticizing the way the government was handling the pandemic, putting British lives at unnecessary risk by ignoring the advice from the rest of the world.
Even then though, my regular blog posts and videos were aimed more at ludicrous conspiracy theories about mobile ‘phone signals and unsubstantiated claims about Boris not really being unwell, after all. I’m still uncertain about that last one, mind. Then the Health Minister, Matt Hancock delivered a message that I’m afraid really did get up my nose. He claimed that the reason we hadn’t enough PPE to keep ourselves and our patients safe at work was because we were over-using it. The chance would have been a fine thing.
The reality was (and is) that 10 years of Conservative government failures to prepare for the inevitable contagion, a contagion that the government’s own exercise highlighted was not sufficiently prepared for, has left us woefully under-resourced to meet the challenge. My own MP, Mark Jenkinson (more about his spurious attempts to discredit nurses later) insisted there was no problem. As his more senior colleague (everyone’s more senior than Jenky), Matt Hancock had claimed it’s our fault, we nurses for actually using the stuff we’re given. Of course we’ll run out if we use it… and only once too! That’s what ‘disposable’ means, Matt. It’s to do with infection control, a rather important aspect of dealing with a pandemic like Covid19, as it happens.
A large part of the reason why we went into this crisis so unprepared is because of 10 years of conservative cuts on the health service.
A large part of the reason why we went into this crisis so understaffed is because the tories have spent the last 10 years abusing the workforce. A workforce that now, after risking their lives to care for the sick and the dying are expected to pay for the shortcomings of this despicable bunch of bastards. As if we haven’t given enough already.
A large part of the reason that we went into this crisis so under-resourced was because when everyone else was buying up PPE, ventilators and other equipment we were still being told to sing happy birthday by our Prime Minister who made a song and dance about shaking hands with hospitalised Covid-19 patients. What an example to set!
Then, to add insult to injury, Jenky hired people to travel 35 miles during lockdown to go door to door posting his pointless propaganda like so many typhoid Maries merrily spreading the virus as they went. It seems that nothing can get in the way of a tory MP’s self-agrandisement – not even the risk of killing his own constituents!
And it was Dominic Cummings who stole the headlines in early June with his now infamous ‘Durham Dash’. Conservative MPs across the land frantically toed the party line, desperate to placate constituents with thinly disguised platitudes and non-sequeters, posted en masse without the slightest thought or apparent concern for the impact such patronising authoritarianism might have on their recipients.
Needing a distraction and still ignoring scientific advice the government began a new offensive. This time they were attacking the teachers, hoping to make them the next scapegoat because of their reluctance to return to over-crowded classrooms full of covid19. Unfortunately for them, the nation had already seen through the same tactic when Hancock tried to blame health care professionals and were having none of it. The clear message was that the government didn’t care a jot about children, despite their protestations. A decade of abandonment, not to mention their recent decision to cut off lone child refugees in Calais showed just how little concern they have for anyone’s children but their own (well, except boris who doesn’t even know how many kids he’s got). No, this was all about the money – about freeing up parents to get back to work and die of Covid just so long as they can keep their betters in profit.
Boris Johnson’s conservative government was elected on a manifesto which included fair warning that they intended to ‘overhaul’ our parliamentary processes and dismantle the checks and balances that have maintained the balance between Parliament, Government and the judiciary for generations. The motivation seems to have been the fact that the courts prevented Boris (and his predecessor, Teresa May) from introducing illegal or unacceptably sectarian measures. MPs exercised their democratic right to scrutinise and ratify (or not) Parliamentary bills that would have been profitable for a few wealthy tories but disastrous for the majority of citizens. This is why Boris Johnston wants to remove legal scrutiny from his machinations.
It’s unfortunate that so many Brits either didn’t bother to read the manifesto or brushed over that page without really noticing just what it meant. Here I’ll link to various posts outlining just how they’re going about that process and why it’s such a problem for anyone interested in fair and democratic representation of the people. But first let’s hear what two parliamentary candidates had to say about the issue at my local hustings. The labour candidate, Sue Hayman counselled caution and spoke of the importance of scrutiny whereas the conservative candidate, Mark Jenkinson clearly had a different view.
Boris Johnston wants to assume power like a dictator and simply do whatever he wants without reference to parliament or law and without having to listen to anyone who may have cause for concern. And Tory MPs apparently want to help him do it. That’s not democracy.
There’s good reason why we have those checks and balances. They prevent a plethora of evils from police states to human rights abuses. They’re not just minor inconveniences to be swept aside by egotistical overgrown children like Johnson. These are our protections and the consequences if we allow this government to tear them down will be dire.
Within a single month of taking their seats in the House of Commons, every single conservative MP voted to remove their own right to scrutinise Brexit legislation. At a stroke they disempowered parliament and in doing so guaranteed that Boris Johnston won’t need to listen to MPs or the electorate in forcing through Brexit – even under the worst of terms.
That’s not all. This unscrupulous regime is attempting to influence culture itself. They’re interfering in academic appointments and attempting to politicise every aspect of British life. From schools to museums, the message is the same. And the historical implications of that are genuinely terrifying.
Then came Covid19 and yet another excuse to disempower parliament. Boris wasted no time in deploying his majority to ban parliament from scrutinising or commenting upon laws he chose to pass in relation to the pandemic – a topic with an alarmingly wide reach as we shall see. The combination of powers relating to Coronavirus and to Brexit make Johnston dictator in all but name. The government even ignored its own scientific advisory group, SAGE, choosing instead to scapegoat the expert panelists under the distorting auspices of Dominic Cummings, eugenicist and far right sectarian who seems to be pulling Johnston’s strings like some Machiavellian puppet master straight out of renaissance Italy.
It may be that Cummings’ divisive views were the impetus behind the obvious racism inherent in the domestic abuse bill recently passed by this disgraceful tory government.
As if that’s not bad enough. The tories have also voted to remove any and all protections from our NHS. They have completely ignored their oft-repeated manifesto promise to protect the National Health Service from foreign (in particular American) private health investors. This government has quite literally paved the way for the health needs of British citizens to be sold down the river, sacrificed at the altar of corporate profit and private greed. This is not democracy!
In truth, our democracy has been so damaged in just a few short months that it’s genuinely reasonable to compare UK with a banana republic, a totalitarian state in which dissent is ignored, privacy is a thing of the past, laws threaten the peoples’ right to scrutinise the powers that be and where the majority become poorer whilst the elite cabal increase their own wealth exponentially.
Mark Jenkinson MP represents the people of Workington by ignoring their opinions, insulting them when they raise questions and disempowering himself, their only voice in parliament.
My Tory MP, Mark Jenkinson demonstrated once again how little regard he has for representative democracy or the constituents he purports to represent. He couldn’t have made his contempt for his constituents involvement in British politics any clearer if he’d tried.
How on Earth did this ignoramous make it into parliament?
Technically they kept their manifesto promise. Actually they made it toothless and a travesty. Shame on this gaggle of Tory goons who see the problem so clearly, had a mandate from the electorate to fix it and polluted the solution they had promised us with extreme nationalism, racism and petty greed instead!
The two divisions in overviewTruly mean-spirited Tories denying victims access to benefits or a safe place to live!Doing it on the cheap. Plenty of dosh for rich party donors though, eh Mark?
Will Mark Jenkinson MP condemn the violent, racist far right the way he condemns the cross-political campaign against racism? Or does he, like Trump think of the far-right as ‘very fine people’?
Two friends of mine received the exact same letter defending Dominic Cummings little lockdown jaunt from our Tory MP, Mark Jenkinson. That’s no big deal. The amount of complaints probably meant a job lot from the printer made sense.
What’s concerning, contemptuous, even is the way that the letter appears to have been written by two different people. It’s almost as though it was forwarded to constituency MPs from Tory HQ with the instruction to add a little personal information to make it look good. Here we unpick that letter line by line. It’s not pretty, I’m afraid.
Left eye view 