I genuinely understand how people who read this blog from outside the UK can find it difficult to accept a lot of what I write about the state of British politics and government and not only how incompetent this Conservative administration is, but how out of touch they are and divorced from reality. The British Prime Minister David Cameron is the MP for a constituency in Oxfordshire called Witney and he has written to senior politicians in Oxfordshire county council, the very people he is the elected MP for, to challenge the council not only on the scale and extent of the cuts to front line services such as elderly day care centres, libraries, museums etc. that have been imposed by Oxfordshire county council but also on the necessity for them. This correspondence between Cameron and the council has been made public and the council responded by explaining how it had already cut services by over 40% in the past few years losing 2,800 jobs in the process as a direct result of his own policies, sold off almost all of the property owned by the council and reminded the Prime Minister that using the income from these sales to pay for the council’s running costs “is neither legal, nor sustainable in the long-term since they are one-off receipts”.
Cameron’s letter to the council expressed bemusement at the extent of the cuts because of what he described as “a slight fall in government grants in cash terms”. The leader of the council replied to him that “I cannot accept your description of a drop in funding of £72m or 37% as a ‘slight fall’. In his letter Cameron argues that the cumulative cuts in the council’s budget since 2010 amounts to £204million when in fact it has been £626million, and this is the man who is the member of parliament for this authority. You genuinely could not make this up, it reads like something from PG Wodehouse. Indeed I would argue that Wodehouse's characters are actually more intelligent that Cameron. It is only a year ago that the National Audit Office told us that the government has only a ‘limited understanding’ of what is happening because of their budgetary decisions and now we have graphic evidence of the truth of that statement coming from the Prime Minister in person. Now, for those of you from outwith the UK I have to tell you that Oxfordshire is by far one of the wealthiest parts of the UK. If that is what is happening in Oxfordshire, what do you think it is like for people in places such as Liverpool, Newcastle or Glasgow which are genuinely deprived areas? On top of that, it was announced just this week that local authorities will be required to make a further 30% of cuts to their budgets by 2020. What the Prime Minister's letter demonstrates beyond any doubt is that he is blissfully ignorant of the reality of life within the nation he is Prime Minister for. He does not even have the remotest idea of what is happening within the authority for which he is the member of parliament. I wrote in my last post about Ben Carson, but these revelations make Carson look like Albert Einstein next to this complete imbecile that is the British Prime Minister.
It is an imperative in any system that claims to be democratic that the elected representatives are indeed representative. Modern Britain is about as unrepresentative as is possible. This man comes from an aristocratic elite as do most of his government, educated at private exclusive schools such as Eton and Harrow and Oxford and Cambridge. It is hard to imagine anyone more out of touch than this Westminster parliament given that the opposition parties of Labour and the Liberal Democrats replicate that same demographic. If anyone doubts this unrepresentative picture, then consider the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn was elected by 70% of the Labour Party members, but has almost no support within his own members in the Westminster pigsty. Britain is in political crisis that has yet to manifest itself. When the backlash comes from the longsuffering public against this cruel, sneering, arrogant ruling elite remember where you heard it first. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
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