Mark Jenkinson – Left eye view

My MP, Mark Jenkinson shamed on a Christmas card

This Christmas send the gift of understanding to your nearest and dearest by exposing the vilest of our political establishment. This Christmas card, created by Cold War Steve, casts the likes of Farage, Rees-Mogg and my own MP, Mark Jenkinson in their true, narrow-minded and mean-spirited colours. Even better, 100% of the profits from sale of the cards goes to the charity ‘Refugee action’ whose work supports those desperate individuals who so many of our politicians would abandon despite our international commitments and legal obligations.

I’ll be off to pop one in the post to my local constituency tory club shortly. I’m sure many of them will enjoy the joke just as much as the rest of us will.

Visit http://www.coldwarsteve.com

Mark Jenkinson MP – Bigoted and ignorant abuser of minority groups

My MP, Mark Jenkinson MP is a bit of a smart-arse when it comes to trans rights. I’ve blogged about his anti-trans bigotry before.

Is Mark Jenkinson MP the most bigoted man in Parliament?

As usual, “Jenky” as he’s not so affectionately known here in Workington is going around pretending to know stuff that he really doesn’t have the first clue about. This is quite normal behaviour for him. He uses his spectacular lack of understanding to whip up dog-whistles to inspire his ever-dwindling band of ‘true-believers’ to support him as he attacks minority after minority from travellers to refugees, Asylum-seekers to hungry children.

Recently he had a go at trans people, claiming that science determines that there are only two sexes and absolutely missing the point that gender and sex are different.

He told his local paper…

“Responding, Mark Jenkinson said he has never said anything transphobic, and rejects the term, choosing to call himself ‘gender critical’.

He said he does not recognise the identities of trans men and trans women, pushing favour of biological sex over gender identity to be the salient factor.”

But hey ho – he isn’t very well educated so we might forgive him for not understanding that gender is a fluid, social construct that changes dramatically from place to place and era to era. What isn’t so forgivable is the way he misprepresents scientific understanding. This video should put him right though.

Fortunately for Jenky there are people like Forrest Valkai in the world. He’s an evolutionary biologist and science educator who really can tell Jenky a thing or two – not that this bigoted and wilfully ignorant MP would listen. He’s far too interested in being right or, as we say in West Cumbria…

“He’s too clever to learn”!

Eat your heart out, Jenky!

My MP is very expensive!

I remember hearing Mark Jenkinson, back when he was just a candidate for election talking about MP sleaze and the gravy train of MP expenses. He was rightly outraged (or so it seemed) at the way that some of our nation’s elected parliamentarians were treating the public purse as though it was their personal magic money tree. If elected, Jenky assured us, he would never treat the taxpayer funded expenses pot like that.

Well… let’s see how sincere he was, shall we?

In his first year as an MP he ranked 20^th out of 650 MPs which means he claimed more than fully 630 of his peers. That’s quite high, weighing in at a whopping £61,197.82. The justification for this massive claim on the public purse was that he was a new MP, setting up a new office and he lives a long way from London. I have some sympathy with that. Setting up a new office is expensive – but lots of the new ‘red wall’ tories have had to do that and many of them live just as far from Westminster as Jenky does. And that’s before we consider the Scottish MPs, many of them are newly elected too and they all live further from Westminster so that doesn’t really wash.

But let’s not labour too much on the past. We’re another year on and surely, without a new office to set up Jenky’s expenses will be lower. Won’t they?

Newly released figures show that far from dropping down the rankings of high expense claimants, Mr. Jenkinson has risen from number 20 to number 6. His most recent figure is £35,164.16 in this financial year. And we’re only 4 months in. There’s less travel because of Covid and presumably no new office set up costs to include there so it’s interesting to note that over £17,000 has gone on office expenses.

And this is the guy who voted against feeding hungry kids last Christmas!

Follow the link in the description below if you’re interested in the not very specific details. It’s interesting reading, more by its lack of detail than by its clarity but hey ho – that’s MP expenses for you.

We see you, Mark Jenkinson MP. We see you!

https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/mp/mark-jenkinson/expenses

Mark Jenkinson MP’s expenses exposed

Brexit, the ERG and the terror of success

It’s very strange that the larger Brexit looms in our lives the more Brexiteers want to distance themselves from it. It’s almost as though they know it’s going to be a disaster and they don’t want to be blamed for the damage Brexit continues to do to our economy, our access to goods and our standing in the world at large.

Four years ago it was all hunky dory.

That was when the Brexiteers were still calling our warnings ‘Fake news’ or ‘project fear’, despite knowing all about Dominic Cummings dirty tricks and Boris’ lies on the side of the bus.

Even last year they still kept up the pretence…

Remember how we held all the cards and the EU would give us a better deal even than its own members were getting?

And now they’re even lying about anyone saying there’s an oven ready deal in the first place.

It’s fascinating how these giants of intellectualism, these Eton and Dulwich college educated men of the people, these wealthy gents with their even more wealthy backers who want nothing more than to help out the working man have forgotten almost everything they once said about Canada deals, Norway deals, Sweden deals and even Australian deals (that last one is really just no deal, by the way).

Even my own MP, former UKIP candidate and now tory MP, Mark Jenkinson seems desperate to move away from his hardline, no deal past.

Despite joining the ERG, the tory backbench extreme Brexit pressure group just 5 days after being elected he now claims that he has never been a member. The chairman of the ERG, Steve Baker actually lists Jenky in the roll of new members in the press. Jenky’s own twitter feed displayed a picture of his at the ERG meeting on 17^th December 2019. A picture that appeared in the press shortly after.

Well… seeing is believing, Jenky.

So why Are you trying to distance yourself from the hardline, no deal Brexit you always wished for? Is it because you’re finally beginning to understand the dire consequences that we Remainers have been warning you about for years? Is it because you finally realise the damage you’ve already done to our economy and to the electorate in one of the country’s hardest hit areas by voting for this awful nonsense?

Are you that desperate to make someone else take the blame that you’re walking away from your success so quickly now that you’re getting what you wanted?

And remember, Jenky… and all the rest of you sleazy tories who voted to impoverish your fellows just so you could make a quick profit. This really is what you’ve worked so hard for and we will not forget it.

Far right bingo card: Representing the working class

It seems ridiculous to me for anyone on then right wing of politics to claim to represent the working class. The right has always been about exploitation, about keeping us, the riff raff in our place and about squeezing every last drop of profit from us that they can get away with. That’s why the working class has always opposed the right – because it’s the right that uses our hard work to enrich others. This was obvious once but over the years the inequalities of life have become so normalised, so expected that many people think they’re inevitable. But they’re not.

Why should it be inevitable, for example that business owners can earn hundreds of thousands a year whilst their employees survive on subsistence wages?

Why should it be inevitable that these same business owners pay so little tax whilst their employees cannot access the public services they need because the country hasn’t the funds to provide for them?

Why is it that the people who do the hard work, put in the long hours for minimum wage, aren’t the ones who see the rewards from their labours?

These are the questions that the left want addressed and that’s why socialist parties insist upon better wages for working people. Thast’s why we demand proper taxation strategies to ensure that those at the top of the income ladder pay something toward helping those at the bottom. After all – they’re not the only people who invest in businesses.

As the late, great, Tony Benn once remarked…

“Your people invest their money… My people invest their lives.”

When the right wingers oppose the left they’re not doing so on behalf of the working class – they’re undermining us.

When the right wing oppose brown people or Muslims, Poles or LBQT citizens they’re not supporting the working class – they’re dividing it. This is the strategy of the cynical ‘man’ at the top of the tree. He knows that a united working class could easily force him to accept a fairer system so he works hard to keep us at each-others’ throats. And the stupid little neoNazi with his EDL tattoo or his Britain First mug spreading hatred between working people of different races or creeds is part of that machinery of oppression.

The real enemy of the working class is the wealthy tax avoider with his offshore account who leeches funds earned by our labour out of the only economy that could help improve our situations.

When you give tax relief to working people they spend it – that money goes back into the economy and other businesses prosper, local traders and local employees start to feel more confident and their money circulates. Everyone gets wealthier. When you give it to the rich banker he just puts it with the rest of his unnecessary pile in the Cayman Islands and forgets about it.

The far right claim to represent the working class whilst supporting right-wing policies and policy-makers such as our present government whose ministers gorge themselves whilst ordinary people are forced into destitution. Our conservative ‘masters’ vote to reduce benefits payments for the most needy and yet give themselves a ten grand bonus just for staying at home. When you support these nest-featherers you do not represent the working class.

The right wing has normalised its abuses so much that many of our own people think it’s inevitable that working peoples’ children should go hungry over Christmas and that a 10% tax cut for millionaires is just how it ought to be. Even the most obviously weak excuses don’t demonstrate just how badly they’re being played by a cynical financial elite.

And they call us ‘cucks’!

These people don’t represent the working class – they undermine it by falling for the divide and conquer politics of those who purport to be our ‘betters’. And in doing so they maintain the very system that treated them so unfairly and made them so very angry in the first place.

They’re on the wrong side and they don’t even know it!

A Test Of Character by Graham Bragg

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.

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.

Mark Jenkinson failed the test pitifully

Covid: The story so far

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!

And now – Now – they tell us that we’ve plenty of ICU beds. If so, why is the government developing protocols that deny ICU care to older people?

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!

Before we leave the actions of this rather obscure and ineffectual back-bencher it’s worth mentioning his vicious, victim-blaming attack on the Royal College of Nursing, my union, as it happens for daring to question Government rhetoric and, like Oliver Twist in the workhouse dare to ask for more PPE. It didn’t take too long to destroy his extremely superficial argument. It’s really easy to take down a man with the intellectual capacity of a warthog who’s spent the afternoon drinking ketamine and barbiturate cocktails. Perhaps that’s why he prefers to keep politics out of the public domain – unless he thinks he can spout his nonsense unopposed.

It’s very clear that from the outset that the whole government, not just Jenky, ignored scientific advice in favour of the eugenicist doctrines of Dominic Cummings.

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.

And then the pubs opened! Oh dear! A group of scientifically illiterate arse-holes got gobby about refusing to wear facemasks – clearly the Darwin award judges will be selecting from a very strong field of candidates this year.

Links in chronological order

https://lefteyeview.com/2019/12/22/christmas-monsters/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/03/24/coronavirus-what-to-do-with-all-that-hand-sanitiser/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/04/03/nurses-arent-heroes/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/04/05/covid-19-and-the-eternal-now/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/04/05/whos-afraid-of-corona-virus/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/04/05/a-little-graph/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/04/06/covid-19-and-the-spivs/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/04/06/5g-stop-being-so-bloody-stupid/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/04/10/boris-and-the-nhs/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/04/11/how-dare-you-matt-hancock/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/04/12/the-great-ppe-swindle/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/04/13/mark-jenkinson-outlaw-mp/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/04/14/was-boris-really-in-icu/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/04/15/questions-for-my-mp/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/04/19/one-rule-for-one/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/04/21/tory-mp-attacks-the-royal-college-of-nursing/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/04/27/email-to-my-mp-about-sages-scientific-integrity/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/05/04/sage-ignoring-the-science/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/05/13/let-me-rephrase-that/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/05/23/social-media-politics/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/06/02/get-back-to-school-plebs/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/06/02/dear-constituents/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/06/13/stus-news-roundup-june-13th-2020/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/07/06/stus-news-best-of-british-edition/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/07/19/whos-to-blame/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/07/25/nomaskselfie-is-trending/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/08/23/my-mp-doesnt-care-for-democracy/

https://lefteyeview.com/2020/08/26/stus-news-august-26th-2020/

Tory MP attacks the Royal college of nursing

Mark Jenkinson says it’s “Disgusting” that the RCN is politicizing the coronavirus question. What he means is that it’s embarrassing for him to have to face questions about inadequate PPE and so he’s accusing and blaming the victims.

The fact that the NHS is a nationally funded institution that was created politically and has been managed politically ever since doesn’t mean that when we complain about working conditions we’re ‘politicizing’ anything. It just means we’re talking about our terms of employment!

How dare you try to blame the victims in all this, Mark. That’s what’s truly disgusting!

22/4/2020: Update
Since I posted this one or two people have accused me of biased editing. In truth I edited only slightly for brevity but was scrupulously fair in leaving Jenky enough rope to hang himself. If you’re concerned about editing you can compare my video with the original to see how little I edited this disgraceful MP’s words. Hardly anything has been changed. Click the link and go up to around 3hrs 18minutes. You’ll see that Jenky screwed himself with his own ignorant views.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p088vp90

Jenky’s native American name

Native Americans have some excellent names. ‘Running Bear’, ‘Sitting Bull’ and ‘Black Elk’ to name just three. Some names reflected the aspirations of parents and were given to children in their papooses. Others seemingly were given in adulthood and reflected some characteristic of the recipients personalities. These names might reflect physique, historical achievements or physical prowess. ‘Crazy horse’ might be an example of this latter type of name. It is this second type of name, the one based upon attributes that I now confer upon my MP, Mark Jenkinson. It’s loosely based upon the first names listed above, ‘Running Bear’ and ‘Sitting Bull’…

Running-away Bullshiter (RAB) MP, the member for Workington.

Why am I being so hard on this newly elected gobshite from my home town?
Why do I choose not to give the scheming little runt the benefit of the doubt?
What’s my reason for calling him a coward and a bullshitter?

Because it’s the truth!

Early in January I posted an open letter to RAB MP in which I asked him a series of questions relating to his decision to abandon unaccompanied, vulnerable and traumatised children. I also Emailed him at his parliamentary Email address with exactly the same letter. I still haven’t received a response.

I did get an Email from his staff explaining that Jenky needed my postal address in order to respond as ‘we’ don’t respond by Email. I pointed out that the staffer was replying by Email already and that I really don’t trust RAB enough to give him my home address. I know far too much about him and the company he keeps to want him anywhere near my accommodation details.

The staffer responded that it’s to make sure I really am a constituent, citing parliamentary rules that seem to be broken extremely regularly so far as I can tell. My response was that Jenky is well aware that I’m a constituent and has been since his UKIP days when I took him on about racism and nationalism. I sent links from ParliamentUK detailing how to write to MPs that are not your own so that argument didn’t wash either, truth to tell.

I still didn’t get any reply to that letter. I just got blocked from commenting on RAB’s facebook page.

Not only is this poor excuse for a member of parliament so callous that he would vote (twice) to abandon children fleeing war zones and torture but he doesn’t even have the intellect to come up with a good excuse for his cowardly refusal to acknowledge his inhumanity.

Yep, Running-away Bullshitter (‘RAB’ for short) seems like the perfect handle to me.

Tory MPs caught telling the truth

Yes, I know – trawling through Hansard can be a pain. So much of a pain that few people ever bother but I promise you, it’s well worth it if you want to know what’s actually going on. It’s one thing to see how an MP votes but if you want to actually catch them in their hypocrisy then Hansard is the place to go.

On Thursday January 16th, the House of Commons debated a motion tabled by Shadow secretary of state of health, Jon Ashworth. It was a proposed amendment to the new Health and Social care legislation proposed in the Queen’s Speech. The amendment would acknowledge that nothing less than a cumulative 4% increase in NHS funding would suffice to repair the damage caused by long-term Tory underfunding since 2010. Mr. Ashworth began…

“I beg to move an amendment, at the end of the Question to add:

‘but respectfully regrets that the Gracious Speech fails to ensure that the National Health Service and social care will be properly funded;
and calls for the Government to bring forward a plan and additional funding to end the crisis in social care and provide for at least a 4 per cent per year real terms increase in health spending.’. “

Yasmin Qureshi Shadow Minister for Justice reported that…

“When Labour came to power in 1997, there were 1.3 million people on a waiting list—the highest number since the NHS was created in 1948. The Labour Government used targeted and sufficient funding to bring all those figures down, to the point where A&E waiting times were down to four hours and waiting lists were down to 18 weeks. It is regrettable that the Government now want to abolish the A&E waiting time target. Is that simply to spare Ministers’ blushes? Since last October, 320,034 people waited more than four hours at A&E, whereas in 2010 the figure was just 41,231.”

This is, of course a damning indictment of not only the conservative mishandling of the NHS since 2010 but also of the previous tory government that ran it down in much the same manner prior to 1997.

This is why a minimum, consistent 4% increase is so vital. But it’s not only the opposition that are highlighting such damning figures. The tories themselves are unhappy at the state of the NHS too. That’s why Conservative MP. Desmond Swayne’s words near the beginning of the proceedings were so important…

“This motion is about giving the NHS the funding it needs. It is a motion that will test every newly elected Conservative Member of Parliament on their commitment to the NHS.”

And test them it will!

Every single Conservative MP claimed to support the NHS. My own MP, Mark Jenkinson was extremely clear about his intention to support extra funding for health and social care services of a kind that would make a genuine difference to the level of service available to his working class constituents.

Swayne continued…

“The hon. Gentleman will recall that the Government accepted the Dilnot proposals and even put in place certain legislative provisions for them to be implemented in the next financial year.”

The Dilnot proposal recommended placing a maximum cap on the amount that individuals could be asked to contribute to their care in any circumstance, including issues related to old age or chronic illness. The conservative government scrapped their commitment to it in 2017 leading to the famous ‘Dementia tax’ proposal that lost Theresa May so much ground in the election of that year.

“…I never understood why, during the 2017 election campaign, they departed from that position—but what is the Opposition’s position on Dilnot?”

The commitment to Dilnot has still not been reinstated by the Conservative government despite its popularity within the country at large. Speaking for the labour party Jon Ashworth, Secretary of State for Health responded…

“We have long argued for a cap on care costs, but of course the Government, as the right hon. Gentleman says, dropped their support for this policy.”

He went on to remark that…

“This is a motion about the 4.5 million people on waiting lists… This is a motion about the 34,000 people who wait more than two months for cancer treatment. This is a motion about those constituents, such as mine in Leicester, who had their bladder cancer operations cancelled twice. This is a motion about the 79,000 cancelled operations last year, and the 18,000 children’s cancelled operations. This is a motion about the 110,000 children denied mental health care, even though they are in the most desperate of circumstances. This is a motion about the 98,000 patients who waited on trolleys last month—a 65% increase on the previous year—many of them elderly, many of them in their 80s and 90s, languishing for hours and hours on trolleys in hospital corridors… This is a motion about the 1.5 million people, many of them with dementia, denied the social care support they need after years and years of swingeing cuts.”

Mr. Ashworth later remarked…

“The Secretary of State is proposing a Bill that fails to reverse the £850 million of cuts to public health prevention services… He is asking us to approve a Bill that does not reverse the raids on capital budgets or deal with the £6.5 billion backlog of repairs facing our hospitals… He is proposing a Bill that does not give the NHS the 4% uplift annually that many experts say it needs. That is why Labour has tabled an amendment today to give the NHS a 4% uplift, and every Tory MP who believes in the NHS should support it.”

Every Tory MP who believes in the NHS should support it.

But that’s all very well. The opposition is supposed to call out the government on its plans and claims. What did the Conservative MPs have to say about the NHS after 10 years of their own party’s policies? For example, Caroline Johnson, Conservative MP for Sleaford and North Hykeham pointed again to the ‘creative accounting’ of the Prime Minister’s claims about new nursing staff…

“I want to ask him about the 44,000 vacancies that he talked about. Is it not right that when the Health Committee looked at that, it found that 38,000 of those places were actually occupied by nurses who work on the bank?”

Daniel Poulter MP is a Conservative with grave concerns about the impact of market forces on the NHS…

“There is a particular concern among patients and people who work in the NHS about the fragmentation of services, which has been the result of the sometimes market-driven approach to the delivery of healthcare and the encroachment of the private sector on the delivery of traditional NHS services.

“As a clinician, what matters most to me is that we deliver the right services for patients. We need to recognise that the involvement of private sector provision has sometimes led to greater fragmentation and a lack of joined-up care for patients.”

The damage caused by this fragmentation is plain to see thanks to the targets and metrics set up by the last Labour government. And they make very telling reading.
What is the Tories’ answer to the worst A&E performance figures on record? It is to scrap the four-hour A&E target. Abolishing the target will not magic away the problems in A&E. It will not suddenly fix a system that saw 100,000 people waiting on trolleys last December.

Perhaps most bizarrely, Mike Penning is the tory MP from Hemel Hempstead. Despite knowing full well the problems resulting from the last 10 years of tory governance he still intends to vote against the amendment…

“We have got into a situation where the only way we can fight this, believe it or not, is to take the trust to court. There is a lack of accountability—I have called for debates in this House on that for years now. The only way we can fight the fact that the trust has only put in a bid for refurbishment of the Watford site is to take it to court and challenge it under judicial review. I have a fantastic community. We have raised the money. We will go to court. But is it not crazy that here I am praising, and I will be voting for, the Queen’s Speech and against Labour’s amendment, when I am saying that the £400 million being offered by the Government is going to the wrong place?”

Those voters local to me might be interested to know that despite assurances to support our health and care services, Mark Jenkinson MP also voted not to increase funding for the NHS and Social care last week.

James Davies MP is a Conservative. He’s also a doctor. He seems less than confident that the concerns of his profession will be met sympathetically by the Secretary of State for Health.…

“I have outlined not only interesting statistics, but sadly an indication of unnecessary loss of life and of harm to real patients. At the very least, there is a need for UK-wide patient safety mechanisms and rigorous inspection regimes, underpinned by comparable statistical data on performance and outcomes. I urge the Secretary of State seriously to consider that when progressing the initiatives outlined in the Queen’s Speech.”

Barbara Keeley, Shadow Minister for Mental Health and Social Care may have made the most direct appeal, whilst calling out Boris on his lies about a ‘clear plan’ before the General election…

“Proposing a solution to the crisis in care should be the Government’s top priority, as we have heard in many of the speeches this afternoon. However, despite the Prime Minister’s earlier pledge to fix the crisis in social care once and for all, and with a clear plan we have prepared, he now says only that he will do something ‘in this Parliament’. After 10 years of inaction, is that the best the Prime Minister can say, alongside a vague offer of cross-party talks?”

But for me it was the many Conservative voices highlighting the inadequacy of their own government’s funding strategy that resonated the most. If only these people would vote with their consciences. But hey ho – they are Tories, after all!

The bastards still voted not to increase it though!

Government refuses to honour pledge to European citizens.

7/1/2020: Despite reassurances that European citizens living in the UK will be treated fairly the conservative government used its majority to refuse to honour that guarantee. They also ensured that any such citizens will be denied the right of appeal. This from the BBC website…

Workington man joins the ERG

The European Research Group (ERG) is a parliamentary fifth column of far right, hard Brexit MPs. So far they’ve opposed every version of Brexit that protects working people or vulnerable groups such as those with disabilities or who are unemployed. They’re cynical, callous and bullish in their single-minded determination to bring about a toff-friendly Brexit at any price to the rest of us.

And who’s just joined this bunch of Brexit bastards? Who’s thrown his hat in with the pressure group behind the removal of Workers’ rights and minimum wage increases?

That’s right. Jenky.

I’m sure the people of Workington will really appreciate that, Mark!