My goodness. The figurehead of the We’re not really Tories, we flip-flop on policies to suit any changes in the weather, but we strongly push unionism at all times on every occasion to appease those in bowler hats with a penchant for being up to their knees in hateful bile, and our London masters, Ruth Davidson Party of Scotland, has hardly left the Parliamentary chamber, her seat still warm, and already the mask has slipped.
Like a long forgotten horror movie franchise revived and re-scripted to give the latest Hollywood teenage up-and-comers a run out before a cinema audience we can confirm that “The Spawn of Thatcher” are walking this land and appearing regularly in matinee sessions at Holyrood.
Tory MSP Michelle Ballantyne’s attack on benefit recipients, when asked about the two child tax credit limit in the Scottish Parliament yesterday, was a disgrace. There is no other word for it.
The political party she represents, under the guise of necessary austerity measures, has torn away any small semblance of security that many vulnerable and disenfranchised groups had in their lives through biting welfare reforms, cuts and failed experiments like the disastrous Universal Credit roll out, but it’s their own fault really, the unwashed, implies Ballantyne, because if you are on the bones of your arse and eating only every other day, because of delays in receiving your benefits, and the assistance you received from the Foodbank only allows you to just about adequately feed the wean, you shouldn’t be thinking of having any more children at any point during your miserable stay on the planet.
If you are thinking of having another child you are only creating another burden for the state, so procreation must be limited, implies the Tory Welfare Spokesperson mother of six, who, according to the National, claimed tax credits for all of them. (Of course obviously the rich, the influential and the powerful won’t take the financial hit for the burden created by someone on benefit having another wean because they either organise their finances to avoid UK taxes, paying pittances abroad, or they have tax experts rorting the system to limit their tax liability to ludicrously small sums in comparison to their income).
How about that revelation for a throwback to the days of Filofaxes, self-indulgent eejits with oily hair in pinstripe suits and braces setting fire to fifty pound notes, and Iron Looney Sermon on the Mound quotations from St Paul like “ If a man will not work he shall not eat”? It fair brings back unhappy memories.
With this in mind then, maybe upon the completion of their brilliant and well thought out Brexit plan the Tories (and there are no such things as separate Scottish Tories, they are all the same thing) will consider partly reviewing their policy to ditch renewable energy, although instead of advocating the use of the wind and waves to generate power they’ll be looking for teams of the unemployed, or the working poor, or those on zero hours contracts, or the many disabled who have somehow managed to be found fit-for work during an assessment by a private sector contractor on a performance related bonus scheme, to rotate giant propellers by physical force, walking around in circles for eight hours a day, so that they’ll at least feel like they are contributing to society whilst receiving their more than generous benefit from the state. This will improve their mental health, a renewed feeling of taking part, of belonging.
For those that want it perhaps even housing costs can be drastically cut too. Any large disused factories left over from the original de-industrialisation of the 1980’s that haven’t been turned into retail parks could be fitted out with ropes, like Victorian times, when the poor slept standing up in workhouses leaning over ropes attached to the walls of the building. Just think of the improvement that would have for those with lumbar injuries, they’d be cured almost overnight, and they’d have far better postures than they have developed sitting watching TV adverts all day for goods they’ll never be able to afford to buy.
It’s such a relief to those of us just getting by, struggling at times, but keeping our heads above water for the most part, to know that if we fall sick, get injured at work, suffer a bereavement of a loved one who contributed to the family income, or fall on any number of hard times in life, that our government in London thinks so much of us that it sees us as an underclass who, for the best, really shouldn’t consider breeding and spreading our genes around. For them it would be better, if we fall off the consumer conveyor belt, that we just quietly disappear.
Our Scotland, the Scotland that is coming, will not be that country. No one will be left behind. Michelle Ballantyne’s words yesterday act as a sharp reminder to me of what it is that we are striving to achieve, an independent self-governing Scotland with control of all the levers of power to allow it to focus on, first and foremost, benefitting, and improving the lives of its people, all of them.
We need independence and we need it yesterday.
itisintruthnotforglory 