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!
This is an open letter to my MP, one Mark Jenkinson of Workington in Cumbria. I’ve written it because I’m absolutely disgusted at the way this tory majority government has been riding roughshod over peoples’ rights, including abandoning unaccompanied children. Please consider doing the same. Either amend this letter or write your own, Send a paper copy or Email to your MP and also publish it widely across social media. Then wait for the response. Let’s make these appallingly cruel bastards face what they’ve done. Let’s make sure everyone knows just what monsters they have elected and let’s make sure that they never get to pretend to be decent human beings ever again!
Dear Mark Jenkinson, MP,
I am a Workington resident and so one of your constituents. I find it difficult to understand how anyone claiming to represent this fine community of hard-working people could vote repeatedly to abandon unaccompanied and isolated children. The horror of this scenario for vulnerable minors, including toddlers and presumably even orphaned babies will be beyond the experience of most if not all of your constituents and presumably beyond your own experience too.
Yet even you should be able to understand the helpless vulnerability to which you and your colleagues have condemned so many young refugees and asylum-seekers. If you have within you the slightest ability to empathise then I ask you to search your conscience now and undertake never again to repeat any similar travesty in the name of the people of Workington. Remember, people ‘lent’ you their vote because many in our community are impatient to get Brexit done but they did not consent to barbarity of this nature.
I do not know whether or not your votes to remove child protections and then to oppose the proposal to reinstate them were subject to party whips but it makes no difference. You may say that you had to vote with the government or lose the party whip but so what? You’d still keep your seat. You could still vote on any issue you wanted to, you could support the government when your conscience allowed and you could still maintain your integrity.
But no – the price of you remaining in the tory party (to whom you’ve shown precious little loyalty in recent years) is the abandonment of vulnerable children. They pay the price of your acceptance into the parliamentary tory club. And what a club it turned out to be, a nasty little cadre of abusers who are prepared to treat children this way isn’t a club I’d want to be part of.
I would be very grateful to hear or read your responses to the various questions I have put to you. I will be equally keen to publish your response alongside my letter or, if no response is forthcoming by Friday January 31st 2020, to publish a notification that you did not respond.
Yours sincerely,
Stuart Sorensen
Workington resident
Back on December 22nd I blogged about the Tory plan to abandon LONE children left alone in Europe whose families are settled in UK. Yesterday every single Tory MP (including my own ‘excuse for a human being’ MP, Mark Jenkinson) voted to amend the European withdrawal bill to that effect.
This isn’t just oversight – they’re actively removing the relevant clause from Boris’ increasingly changing ‘oven ready’ deal.
If you ever doubted that the UK has elected a truly monstrous government just imagine the plight of a small child alone, abandoned and at risk this winter. Imagine your own children in such a situation. Imagine the risk, the fear, the lack of nurturing as they face the elements, unfed and uncared for in a strange land.
Such pathetic, evil, selfish bastards! How can they look ordinary, decent people in the eye? They should hang their heads in shame.
There’s a reason why the Tories are known as ‘The nasty party‘. It’s because they are!
“Eat your greens! There are kids in Africa who’d be really grateful for what you’ve got there.”
So my mother used to rebuke me. It was a mealtime ritual that has stuck in my memory ever since. I was a picky eater as a child, to say the least. Oh to return to those heady years of my 32” waist and slim fit shirts. Those were the days!
We weren’t exactly wealthy when I was a kid. A student grant doesn’t go far when feeding three children and a single mother who’d gone back to college when my Dad abandoned us. We had lots of homemade rice puddings with strawberry jam. We had crumpets grilled on a toasting fork over the electric fire. We ate cereal a lot (not the fancy stuff) and jam sandwiches. My grandmother’s tatie pots were a joy to behold on winter evenings. So were her meat and tatie pies. It was basic fayre but it was tasty enough. And it was food.
Today, 50 years later I can still hear my mother’s voice echoing in my head. But this time the starving kids she talks about aren’t in far off parts of the developing world. This time she (or rather my mental representation of her) is talking about the children down the road, the school-leaver sanctioned because he didn’t get the DWP letter or the family of four with a single zero-hours contract to live on.
Today, in the world’s fifth largest economy there’s more hunger, poverty and destitution than ever before in my lifetime. And that’s just disgraceful!
This is what we get after 9 years of tory rule.
What will we see after another 5?
I genuinely do not believe that the majority of tory voters really meant for this hardship to continue – even to increase but as is becoming all too obvious, that’s what’s happening. That doesn’t mean that those usual labour voters who ‘lent’ Boris Johnson’s far right government their vote are stupid. But it does mean that they were lied to by an efficient main stream media and a slick marketing campaign aimed at whitewashing the conservative record and deifying Boris in particular. My people, my working-class brothers and sisters aren’t stupid but maybe they’re too trusting.
There’s no point in becoming too despondent about that right now. Instead we need to get active. Community groups are cropping up all over UK to combat the worst abuses of Boris’ government, to help feed the hungry and house the destitute. You can find out what’s going on by checking this link or by subscribing to this blog. Over the next five years I’ll be interviewing and showcasing a host of community action organisations, offering them encouragement and ensuring they keep getting their voices heard.
Why not join one – or start one yourself?
Happy Christmas kids, especially those unaccompanied kids who find themselves abandoned on the continent. Yes, we know we had a Brexit deal ‘ready to go’ before the election, an ‘oven ready’ deal that would help reunite you with parents and carers but that was then. The Tory monsters have won their majority now so they can drop the act. They don’t give a damn about you and now it shows.
For pity’s sake – these are children!
Left eye view 