Say what you want about the Conservative's, but they are masters of putting everything in perspective.
The Tories immediately jumped onto the fact that Jeremy Corbyn didn't sing the national anthem before being silenced by the #piggate allegations. The media criticised Corbyn celebrating the 35th anniversay of the Iranian revolution whilst reports revealled that David Cameron cut a deal with Saudi Arabia that's resulted in them becoming head of the UN's human rights panel despite beheading more people than ISIS. (This was followed by a senior Tory confessing that the government really doesn't care about human rights.) Now, there is a storm brewing concerning the Conservative Conference. From tax-cuts, sweat-shops, and downright racism - the Tories are really putting the Labour Party Conference in perspective; where the worst thing they did was not mention anything about Trident.
For writers such as myself, this year's conference was a goldmine of material to criticise. In fact, I'm overwhelmed with things to dissect. In previous years I could always count on George Osborne to say something that'll annoy me for the next year, but this conference has been omnishamble after omnishamble. For once George Osborne isn't the worst thing since Cthulu's clogged toilet. The king has been overthrown. So I'm left with only one option: a Top 5 list.
5. The Manchester Wall
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| Picture courtesy of @jamesdoleman |
Yet a wall of steel - a literal iron curtain - was erected to keep protesters out. It's understandable that the Conservatives should fear for their safety, but the most important thing to bear in mind is that the barrier is opaque. Not only does it keep intruders out, but it also means that those behind the wall don't have to see the world behind it. The wall sends a message: that the government are ignoring all your problems. It's the police barricade equivalent of a baby thinking that if he closes his eyes then everything will go away.
The image of the conference centre surrounded by steel and police summarises the whole affair nicely. The proletariat of Manchester must remain outside in the streets whilst the upper class barricade themselves indoors. It's symbolic of the housing crisis, the refugee crisis, the economic crisis and the continuing corruption of democracy all in one simple image.
Labour got it right by having their conference in The Brighton Centre. My family and I drove past it during Corbyn's speech, and there was only one lone protester spouting something about the EU along with a handful of casual onlookers. This wasn't because Labour is completely free from controversy, but because The Brighton Centre is right by the sea. There is no physical space outside for a protest to happen unless anti-trident groups hired a yacht or tied children's swimming armbands together to form a raft.
But I suppose since the last Tory conference in Brighton was bombed, Cameron doesn't want to take his chances.
4. Michael Gove Not Knowing Where Or Who He Is.
Whilst the Conservatives are masters of unintentional perspective, their biggest strength is unintentional irony. Earlier this year, David Cameron attended the anniversary of the Magna Carta - an event celebrating the first known bill of human rights - to announce that he was planning to scrap the Human Rights Act.
In his speech, Michael Gove proposed more focus on education in prisons, which is...a good idea. Whilst the UK's prison system is currently a mess (what isn't these days?), focusing on rehabilitation is a good place to start. There's still work needed when it comes to prisoner's rights and corruption among prison guards, but, considering Gove's track record, trying to get people out of prison instead of just hanging them is certainly a step forward.
But Michael Gove still finds a way to make us wonder why on earth he's allowed in parliament, let alone in cabinet.
In a low-key event, Gove claimed that: "People should challenge the 'undeserving rich' who undermine society." Everyone, including the government, needs to stand up to those who exploit others for their own gain. People must fight against inequality to better society as a whole rather than the individual.
Um...Michael....you do know which party you're in, right? You're speaking in the same conference as Jeremy Hunt and George Osbourne. You're best friends with David Cameron; an undeserving rich man who rules our society and under-mines it more than Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood. The Conservative party fail every single day at their jobs yet politicians are receiving pay rises. You're effectively condemning yourself.
Whilst all the other entries on this list make me horribly depressed, this is the only one that makes me laugh. I had to double check that this was a serious article and not The Daily Mash or another satirical 'news' site that publishes fake stories because the irony levels are off the scale. I refuse to believe that Michael Gove is serious either. No-one could possibly be so lacking in self-awareness. No-one could be this stupid.
3. George Osborne's Speech
When I first heard George Osborne's speech, I thought there was no way it could get any worse. But amazingly the master himself only reached number three on this list. That doesn't mean that Osborne didn't continue to prove himself as by far the biggest threat to this country, but it means that the events following his speech overshadowed everything somewhat.
Why do I despise George Osbourne so much? Because he's pure evil, and I'm going to tell you why.
The thing that lives under the guise of George Osborne is a nonsense-spewing machine. For every statement it makes, it makes another contradicting it. In last years conference, the Osborne stated that benefits will be cut to tackle the deficit whilst taxes will be lowered in the wake of a falling deficit. Two contradicting policies announced for two contradicting reasons - all within the same speech.
This speech was no better. Once again, Osborne seems to think that clearly poor people are hiding all the money. The working classes have plenty of funds stashed away that they're just too lazy to use. That's why Osborne's scrapping tax credits - a plan which even Boris Johnson says is a terrible idea considering how hard it'll hit the working class. But Osborne claims that Conservatives are the true party of labour. So I guess that makes everything OK.
George Osborne says that the British public cannot afford to not have their tax credits cut. Well, they can't anymore...because now they're on average £1,300 a year worse off.
Among the incoherence, there was one phrase that stood out to me: "Devolution Revolution." These are two words that sound the same but mean entirely opposite things. Together they make absolutely no sense. And that's how the Osborne works. It constantly contradicts itself whilst seeming the same. It's deliberately confusing everyone so they have no idea what to think and just blindly support whoever is the most well-presented.
And everyone's in on it. The rest of the party praises Osborne when he has one of the worst records for any Chancellor in the history of British politics. It and the rest of the Conservative government has also presided over the slowest economic recovery since records began. Under Osborne, it'll take over a hundred years for the economy to fully recover.
This thing pretending to be a man wants to be the next Prime Minister. And people wonder why teen suicide rates are up...
2. Jeremy Hunt's Chinese Sweatshops
If you don't know, Jeremy Hunt is a former businessman who elbowed his way through various companies, putting pressure on colleagues not born into the same class as him and evading thousands in tax. In his time in parliament, he has used his former post as Culture Secretary to leak information to James Murdoch and work closely with BSkyB, shunning the licence-paid BBC. By some miracle he avoided punishment, probably because he said to the courts: "I'm rich, you know."
So naturally he's the perfect person to be put in charge of the NHS. And he proved this by, in a discussion, claiming that the working class should work as hard as the Chinese and Americans - adopting their cultural attitudes whilst he sits back reaping the benefits.
Because, as we all know, both China and the US have excellent track records when it comes to workers rights and poverty. It's not like over 50 million Americans live in poverty, and over 82 million Chinese receive less than $1 a day. It's not like China or any other Asian countries have a culture of sweatshops and child labour. It's not like the US has an even lower minimum wage than we do. This combined with George Osborne's speech really seems to enforce the message of: "Don't worry, we'll have you up the chimney's in no time!"
David Cameron actually defended Mr Hunt's comments, which I thought would be career-suicide but I suppose Cameron has nothing left to lose now after #piggate. Just as Nigel Farage reliably bleated feeble excuses whenever a UKIP candidate reduced himself to a mound of froth and xenophobia, Cameron's responded that people have "wilfully misinterpreted" Mr Hunt's comments.
No David. There's no way you can misinterpret something like this. I think Jeremy was making himself quite clear. He wants to reform society into mindless drones who shut up and work without all this namby-pamby about fair pay and human rights. This is all said by a millionaire who earned all his wealth by pushing himself out of his mothers womb. Unless Jeremy Hunt was speaking in some kind of spy code, there's no misinterpretation here. He wasn't reciting a Kafka novel.
When everyone else is concerned how far the standard of living in this country has fallen in the past five years, it's nice to see that the Conservatives are setting the bar even lower. Clearly they haven't even begun to ruin the country. It seems that now they've made Britain the most unequal developed nation in the world; it's full steam ahead to raise our poverty rates. "Ooh look, China doesn't even have the right to protest, let alone strike! And what's this? America has a healthcare system just as overworked and underpaid as the NHS...but people actually have to pay for it too!"
I refer you to my previous comment about teen suicides. My only hope is that people will never forget Hunt said this. I hope that people protest against him until the glorious day when he's re-shuffled or outright booted from power.
1. Theresa May's Speech
Home Secretary Theresa May has one of the better track records out of the rest of Cameron's Cabinet. That's not saying much seeing how many of them opposed gay marriage, the hunting ban, and the climate change act; but I can certainly think of worse candidates for the job. I was expecting her speech to simply be a spiel about how we're totally going to do something about the refugee crisis possibly maybe in the next twenty years depending on if we remember to write it down. The rest would be dedicated to how we're very truly sorry about not meeting our net migration targets and we promise to do better cross our hearts hope to eat some plebs pie.
Oh boy.
Perhaps this stands out in my mind as one of the worst things the Conservative party has done since last month because of it's placement. After the double-barrelled shotgun that was George Osborne and Jeremy Hunt on the very same day, both of which were the most vicious attacks on the common people since Assad's barrel-bombs, May's speech the following morning was the straw that broke the worker's back.
Theresa May launched an attack on migrants. In her speech, she vowed to dramatically lower net migration as migrants do not contribute sufficiently to society, steal jobs, and put strain on public services. And she's been on record in 2002 saying that the Conservatives need to stop looking like "the nasty party."
Just like when I spoke against UKIP, I'm going to now link to various studies saying how migration isn't a strain on the economy. The Home Office themselves last year published a detailed study into how precisely increased migration would impact the country. Their conclusion:
"There is relatively little evidence that migration has caused statistically significant displacement of UK natives from the labour market in periods when the economy is strong."
And, according to George Osborne's speech, the economy is booming - right? All of the posters around Manchester say how well the Conservatives are doing economically. So, assuming that Osborne is telling the truth (which is like assuming bread is sentient) then that means the government should continue allowing migrants in at the same rate it's currently at. May should have made a high-profile speech publicising these findings, silencing the more right-wing members of the party who are pressuring David Cameron to be more racist. In fact, why was I only aware of the Home Office's findings when James Kirkup from The Telegraph mentioned them in his damning critique of May's speech? This information has been available for over a year. Both the public and the lesser read members of parliament should know about this. It would put so many people's minds at rest.
Yet the government are still scapegoating migrants and refugees. Even though everyone including experts within the government itself say that migrants have no real impact on the economy, Theresa May still gets up on a podium and still says that it's "difficult for schools and hospitals and core infrastructure like housing and transport to cope" when the reason why all these services aren't coping is because the government are cutting them. The NHS is being privatised. Schools are being privatised. Affordable housing is non-existent, and oh my god a one-way ticket to Woking is HOW MUCH?!
Theresa May is callously shifting the blame from herself and her government to a minority group without any factual evidence whatsoever. At least other fascists like UKIP, the BNP, and Britain First blame migrants for problems caused by other people. Nigel Farage didn't cut public services. Nick Griffin never pledged to remove tax-breaks. Britain First aren't privatising the NHS. Even Adolf Hitler used Jews to scapegoat the problems caused by the Treaty of Versailles and the subsequent Weimar Republic. He didn't deliberately lower Germany's standard of living before blaming it on other people. Yes, this speech actually makes Hitler look better in comparison.
This is not only racism in it's most mainstream and institutional state, but it's perhaps the most shocking display of open hypocrisy from a party where hypocrisy is a virtue. It makes George Osborne's speech look almost ethical and factually relevant in comparison.
This is vile. This whole conference was vile. From walling the public off to besuited men explaining how extorting your money and working you unto death will benefit you, all washed down with a final dousing of xenophobia. And we have five more years of this...
References:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-34433017
https://twitter.com/jamesdoleman/status/650656454643425280
http://www.itv.com/news/2015-10-03/michael-gove-urges-more-focus-on-education-in-prisons-to-stop-reoffending/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/11913128/Michael-Gove-People-should-challenge-the-undeserving-rich-who-undermine-society.html
http://press.conservatives.com/post/98719492085/george-osborne-speech-to-conservative-party
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34440479
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/oct/06/boris-johnson-warns-george-osborne-over-tax-credit-cuts
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/19/george-osborne-progressive-reform-welfare-benefits-system
http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/2015/01/how-osbornes-claim-of-having-halved-the-deficit-backfired/
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/10/george-osborne-magician-record-success-budget
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http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/apr/24/jeremy-hunt-calls-resign-bskyb
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/oct/05/hunt-tax-credit-cuts-make-britons-work-like-chinese-or-americans
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/11/06/243498168/how-many-americans-live-in-poverty
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/10/15/more-than-82-million-chinese-live-on-less-than-1-a-day/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/these-are-the-ten-most-unequal-developed-countries-in-the-world-10267862.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34453348
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/oct/08/uk.conservatives2002
http://www.cream-migration.org/publicationsdiscussionpapers.php
http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/fiscal-impact-immigration-uk
http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/pa014.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/287287/occ109.pdf
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/11913927/Theresa-Mays-immigration-speech-is-dangerous-and-factually-wrong.html
Image Sources:
https://conservativepartyconference.com/index
https://twitter.com/jamesdoleman/status/650613088119603200
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/11913128/Michael-Gove-People-should-challenge-the-undeserving-rich-who-undermine-society.html
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ddbe7a8840331a9826a686d44b01fd6a98d532cf/0_463_3000_1801/master/3000.jpg?w=1920&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=edfaaa7999893e7f3eef2cc2a606f62c
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/11911451/George-Osborne-to-sell-off-final-2billion-Lloyds-bank-shares-Conservative-conference-live.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34450887
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