A Commentary by Kalliste
Storm Bert laid bare the cruel reality that Kid Starver’s government has ushered in. A massive increase in the money for the “civil list”, as we euphemistically call the annual royal handout to the spongers in the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha “firm”, was coupled with yet money for Ukraine, the most corrupt country in Europe;but none for the majority of people in the UK.
Exactly why the new “slimmed down” family should need an increase when the vast majority of the people, and specifically those on fixed pensions and benefits get nothing is not even mentioned in our lame-stream media. What benefit yet more money for Ukraine does for the people of Britain is even less obvious. Ukraine has been a US proxy for the past decade, locking up trade unionists, outlawing political parties, and committing human rights abuses by banning both the majority religion (the Ukrainian Orthodox church) and the Russian language (spoken by over a third of the population)
Chris Bryant lays claim to having solved the devastating flooding crisis for his constituents, not by doing his duty as their MP and a cabinet minister, and lobbying for a share of the government money set aside for flood victims but instead a “go fund me page” (started by someone else, to which he donated £100, yet asking others for thousands). We’ll wait to see if he claims that on “expenses”, as so many MPs have claimed their showy wreaths on Armistice Day.
Similarly the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall charge our public services for parking while expecting us taxpayers to additionally stump up for the armed forces to put on courtesy flights and other transport for “security reasons”. There’s nothing quite like taking with both hands to build up a family fortune of £80 billion and then setting up a new charity to show the incompetent poor how to solve their financial problems. The latest scam to reassure the public that the royal family is still relevant has been unveiled, setting up a charity to address homelessness, a situation made infinitely worse by the 2012 legislation to criminalise squatting.
There are 350 000 homeless people in England and Wales, and over 650 000 empty and abandoned homes. We don’t need another charity to decide who are the “deserving poor” are, we need to stop criminalising need, and an end to the system of quangos that allow the ruling class to control our own natural generosity, guilt tripping us with endless appeals for yet more “funds” from the little we have, and force the government to comprehensively provide for the needs of the people who cannot provide for themselves.
It is as insulting as the previous ones to address “early years child development” and breakfast clubs as injuring when the 2 child benefit cap remains, treating almost every 3rd and successive child born since 2017 as unworthy of the support their older siblings receive. Over a million children grow up in poverty thanks to this iniquity, but successive governments prefer the band aid of charity to social justice and equality.
It should not be a crime to be poor. It should not be a crime to be born into a larger family. It should be a crime for the government to spend money on aggressive wars and regime change, tax breaks and self-aggrandisement, and ignore their responsibilities to provide services for our people. And when the government cannot or deliberately will not do its duty, the ministers who fail should be locked up for a period of time commensurate with the lives they have taken through their deliberate negligence or ideological malice.
In times of austerity the wealthy should shoulder the load, not the poor, and the royals should set the example they claim they are there to represent, and give up their civil list, their “income” from the duchies, and live on their own “savings”.
