In the leadership debate, the mantra of Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak has been that hard work pays. As he said in the latest television head-to-head, his father was a GP and his mother ran her own pharmacy – and they worked “day and night” to build a better future for their children.
Gawd help ’em, if I have seen one chemist or GP in rags, I have seen, well, none actually. Wee Rishi even did medicine deliveries from the shop, probably because the poor were too lazy to pick up their own antidepressants.
He said: “I am standing here because of the hard work, the sacrifice, and love of my parents and the opportunities they provided to me.”
Ergo, if you are not a millionaire, it was because your parents were lazy, they didn’t love you, nor did they provide you with enough aspiration. That’s why Rishi can afford a three grand suit and you are shopping in Primark. Simples.
This may be confusing news to those of you juggling two jobs to barely survive or if you are say a nurse, who has been sweating through 12-hour shifts during the pandemic. It felt like hard work, but was it really luv?
In a recent snap poll of 1,000 nurses, 150 said they had sold holiday days – accepting payment instead of the time off – while 700 said they had worked extra shifts to get by.
That sounds like they are working hard but, with less shut-eye and a bit more pounding the wards, they too could send their kids to a public school like Sunak’s to the tune of 45 grand a year. Apparently there are places on the dark web where you can flog a kidney... and nurses do have access to scalpels and cool boxes.
Semi-skimmed Thatcher, Truss, would call that entrepreneurial. Watching the millionaire candidates get in a tizzy over who is nearer in class to the cloth-capped has been ridiculous.
Truss has milked Sunak’s privileged background, ignoring the fact that she has been cosy in Government with half of Eton and is worth around £8million. She wasn’t too pleased when her close ally Nadine Dorries brought up the £4.50 earrings she had been wearing in the campaign.
Truss questioned how Nadine knew they were from Claire’s Accessories, not that anyone from her campaign told her. Nope, absolutely not. Admittedly it was clumsy delivery from Nadine but her experience of competition thus far has been limited to eating kangaroo balls in I’m a Celebrity.
The good news is the future looks bright for coming generations with Truss offering up “less food waste” as a solution for the earth burning itself to extinction.
Doggy bag our food waste for Amazon drivers to eat in the van and the polar bears will thank us. When Truss offers up solutions, she is reminiscent of a 50s housewife giving out cleaning tips like “get your toilet gleaming with a can of Cola”.
In the same era, Sunak would fit comfortably with the bowler-hatted banker complaining to his wife that supper is late and his slippers chafe.
But Sunak, like Liz, is concerned with the future, accusing her of reckless tax cuts which will put a £40billion debt on the “country’s credit card”. He doesn’t want his kids to have to pay the debt – as their American Express spending limit is only £30billion.
Paying back our debt too early would be foolish according to Truss, so remember that when a rent-to-own store come back to get their £500 telly because you haven’t paid the grand you now owe.
Pitting the heroic “hard workers” against the feckless poor is the Conservative message that the party membership of old, rich white blokes will be lapping up before they choose the next PM.
Watching the two Tory piranhas rip at each other would be satisfying if they were only stumps at the end but one of these heartless cretins will be Prime Minister.
Where’s wee Sunak with the Valium delivery when you need him?
Homeless being hidden in filthy hotels
Another week and another dire tale of homeless people being warehoused in filthy hotels in Scotland.
Yesterday we reported online on the council-funded Rennie Mackintosh Hotel in Glasgow branded uninhabitable by one resident living in a room with blood splatters across the walls. The room was unfit for human habitation, filthy with a syringe discarded on a radiator and plug sockets pulled from the wall.
The hotel was previously infested with mice.
Earlier this month we also reported on the Queens park Hotel in Glasgow, which was raking in a million pounds a year housing the homeless in shabby conditions. The hotel was charging the council £1400 a month for a double room which was in poor repair.
The homeless are being hidden from sight in hotels where they are treated with utter disrespect, not allowed to speak to each other or they will be evicted and forbidden to mix, forced to adhere to strict curfews.
It is tough for councils to find a solution to housing people who often suffer from mental illness and addiction issues but surely handing over millions to so-called hoteliers is not the answer for the tax payer or homeless.
Brainless comments
Aesthetic nurse practitioner Miranda Wilson has insisted she “didn’t mean to offend” after she sparked outrage by reeling off a list of cosmetic surgery procedures that beautiful Stranger Things actress Natalia Dyer could undergo.
“I was simply offering suggestions,” she said after her backlash to her TikTok video, in which she suggested a new chin, lips, cheeks and a brow lift for the young actress, above.
It would appear the barking Ms Wilson might see some personal improvements with a lobotomy.
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