I was going to blog on the frankly disgusting plan by the government to pay for “tax cuts” by slashing benefits, but I will wait until I have calmed down a bit.
Instead the Saturday Telegraph caught my eye with the most ridiculous series of articles and letters on its op ed pages, a not infrequent event.
This Saturday it had letters from readers bemoaning (quite rightly) the state of the Royal Navy, which is having to mothball ships because it is running out of sailors, recruitment having been privatised. The Navy is already in a dangerously weak state, while we all know these mothballed ships will never come back into service, even though one has just had millions spent on it in a refurbishment.
There was also an article by the former general Lord Dannatt on how now is the time for more defence spending, not less. In fact he fears that the UK is making the same mistake as the Tories made in the 1930’s.
Then there was an editorial claiming that national debt is far too high and something must be done, along with a long article by Kwasi Kwarteng, of all people, calling for the government to slash taxes. In fact the man who crashed the economy with bold and unfunded tax cuts thinks the Tory party is doomed without “bold” tax cuts.
To my mind the UK’s military is in a dire state and God alone knows what message it sends to the Kremlin and others that it is failing to recruit enough sailors, and has too few tanks, aircraft and ships, while there is a war going on in Europe. It is not quite appeasement, because that was a conscious policy, but it is deliberate, shameless and highly risky cheese paring, when the country needs more and better defences.
Debt is high but not yet a crisis but there is certainly no money or room for tax cuts.
But the bigger issue is this, can the right not read 4 or 5 items on two pages of its house magazine and realise that it is impossible to have better defence, higher spending, lower debt and lower taxes?
Later this week I will write a longer piece on where all the money has actually gone but to be honest there is little point when the government is in this kind of sad, dystopian, cakeist, fantasy world.
These are policies that are mutually contradictory, pathetic, and dangerous; austerity has failed, growth has failed, productivity has failed, the government has failed, totally.
It cannot find the money to defend the country or the people to man the defences, while instead of rushing to solve this crisis it is obsessing about debt and drooling over tax cuts.
5 year olds can connect the dots better than this.
Cakeism has led us to this and the country is riding for a fall, led by third raters who put there own re-election and economic illiteracy ahead of the national interest.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media
When Sunak pushes off to some ‘job’ like Clegg’s he’s going to leave a real shit show for Labour to sort out. Really looking forward to the longer piece about where the money’s gone (and why are we not going after all the PPE fraud? There must be some cash to be recouped surely?)
I may print this out & keep it handy to show to recalcitrant older Telegraph readers I encounter!