Pet food for lizards – At Home

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I can’t help feel a tad disenfranchised. But first, let us set the scene.

The cost of living crisis is worsening by the day. The price of fuel is ridiculously high. Inflation is out of control and pocket money for the kids is no longer an option because I don’t have pockets never mind pocket money. Perhaps most importantly, the arse has fallen out of the environment and it looks like the earth is cooking itself to death.

So what are our so-called leaders doing? Well, that’s the billion dollar question.

Close to home, we have a devolved government that can’t form a government. Now, you could wax lyrical about why that’s the case all the live long day – who’s to blame, why there isn’t an executive in the first place and how is it that Sammy Wilson can get away without washing his hands. However, the fact remains that there is no, real functioning devolved government at Stormont and to all intents and purposes, this is a shameful truth. Also, I should point out that MLAs are still receiving their wages – quite handsome wages, I might add – during this time of forced austerity. Nice work if you can get it.

Across the water though, things are looking even worse. The Tory leadership contest was a situation akin to throwing a bone into a pack of rabid, mangy dogs but instead of the hounds fighting to see who’d win the prize, it was a case of who can lie the most with a straight face – or in the case of Liz Truss, if she can lie and then find her way out of the room without getting lost.

I can’t help but think: Is this the best we can do?

So let me get this straight: The previous three Tory leaders and by extension, prime ministers have been, to a man (or woman), massive disasters. And now we’re going to have a fourth and hope that things change? Sure! That sounds likely.

It was possibly Albert Einstein who once suggested that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. A Tory Groundhog Day?

Unfortunately, I fear that capitalism in general has run its course. It is morally unjustifiable that we have CEOs and shareholders making millions off the toil of underpaid workers, many of whom are forced into using foodbanks. How long will it be before we see the concept of ‘heat banks’ raise its head, whereby people are advised to attend government-heated buildings like libraries during the winter because they are unable to heat their own homes.

It is also morally unjustifiable that people like Rishi Sunak – a multimillionaire ten times over – is even in the running to become the next prime minister when his very bank account confirms that the man is as greedy as a fat wean in an ice-cream van. This was the man who was pictured smiling when filling someone else’s car up with petrol, during a photoshoot. Smiling? SMILING!? Everyone else is normally slack-jawed and tearful watching the cost outstrip the litres. A tenner doesn’t even turn the light off any more!

AAAAARGH!

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I can’t help feel a tad disenfranchised. We have a non-entity of a government in Stormont and the headers at Wild-Westminster are only concerned about making us believe more lies so that they can feather their non-dom nests with freshly minted hundreds rather than twenties. We don’t need miniscule, piece-meal intervention like reversing the National Insurance rise or a couple of hundred quid to heat our homes this winter. We need bombastic, solid as steel, turn-it-up-to-eleven intervention like nationalisation taking place as soon as yesterday. We need transport, fuel, energy and electricity nationalised. We need a cap on bonuses for high earners and more suitable taxes for the super rich and in a nutshell, we need a redistribution of wealth. Oh, and while you’re at it, the NHS could do with a leg up and all.

After austerity and Covid and now the cost of living crisis, the Tories have the bare-faced shame to appear on TV and tell us that they are the only ones who can change things and that the situation can only be sorted by the same people who got us into this mess in the first place… What a bunch of clowns for politicians, we have. And what a bunch of suckers the English are, for voting them in time after time.

“At least our crowd can form a government,” those English suckers will chime.

And unfortunately, I can’t argue the point.

What I can point out is: At least it’s only a minority bunch of religious fundamentalists holding these six counties to ransom.

This imperfect system needs an overhaul.

Our Next Prime Minister shows Monday at 9pm on BBC1…

Sophie Raworth leads this debate between Rishi and Liz, the final two Conservative liars (sorry, hopefuls) vying to be the next party leader – and the country’s new Prime Minister.

‘Rishi and Liz’ – it sounds like a kind of gourmet pet food for lizards.

Clowns.