The Westminster MSM vultures are back …

 

The holidays are over and the usual suspects are back, gossiping and pontificating. They are like a flock of vultures, watching for the body politic to die already. Here are the print editions’ front pages: “Newspaper headlines: ‘Minister’s TV blunder’ and ‘Blairites are back’.” (link).

This is what happened in regard to the ‘TV blunder’ – it makes for fine reading (all emphases are mine):

“The Education Secretary is fighting to keep her Cabinet job after being forced to apologise for claiming other people had “sat on their a—-” during the school concrete crisis. Gillian Keegan was caught claiming she had done a “f—ing good job” at the end of an interview on Monday, unaware that she was still being recorded in a “hot mic” incident. She later apologised, but Tory MPs said the incident showed that she was not fit to stay in the Cabinet. Adding to the pressure, officials admitted on Monday that Ms Keegan was on holiday in Spain in the week before schools were ordered to close over crumbling reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC).” (paywalled link)

Well, she is a ‘lady’ and should not have used the ‘a’ word or, gasp, the ‘f’ word. After all, she’s not a Bavarian politician who can use this and worse words without the nation fainting, clutching their pearls. Moreover, how dare she even think of defending herself and blaming others!

However, where Ms Keegan is right she is right. I am mildly astonished but not surprised that the massed flock of vultures, a.k.a. ‘journalists’ have either not seen fit to investigate or, having been on holidays themselves, were unable to check out what others, e.g. a certain Sir John Redwood, had to say, writing a pertinent Diary entry on Saturday. Since it’s apparently too difficult to find nowadays, especially for ‘hacks on holidays’, I’ll quote:

“The law lays down that the maintenance and safety of school buildings is the responsibility of the Council acting as the Local Education Authority or the Educational Trust in the case of Academy schools.” (link)

Now isn’t that interesting: the safety of school buildings are the responsibility of local councils, via their LEA! Since the problem with yon crumbling cement has been known for decades one might be permitted to ask: what have those local councils been doing? Sir JR asks this question as well and then points out that the government then decided to ‘intervene’, with sending out questionnaires that were not answered, and with providing ‘guidance’, to then observe:

“Now the government is being attacked for  telling the schools to take tougher action.” (link)

What dicta expect, Sir JR! Of course ‘government’ is being attacked. After all, it’s the task of government to hand over as much of our money to local councils as possible. This has become the mantra of said local councils up and down the country as well as if not especially so in the devolved fiefdoms Scotland and Wales. 

Of course a Labour government will rectify this, telling us voters that, sadly, given the state of affairs and finances, they will have to scrap their election promise of not raising income taxes. There are only so many stealth taxes which can be raised without destroying the economy. And then Sir JR really lets rip:

“Surely we need to ask how come more of  the expensive local bureaucracies that control our LEA schools did not take stronger action earlier, and why they had  not reviewed and surveyed on their own initiative? We have many examples of power delegated to local government or to quangos in the UK, yet whenever anything goes wrong blame is usually transferred by the Opposition and media back to the government. If the government is to be to blame for everything maybe we should save the money on the delegated authorities that are  not doing the job.” (link)

Just so, Sir JR, although one might point out to Sir JR that nowadays, nothing can be done, be it by LEAs, local councils or indeed any of us peasants, without ‘guidance’, without mandarins telling us precisely what to do and how to do it. It’s the modern political excuse, the ‘it weren’t me, guv’.

And then we have the massed pack of Westminster ‘authors’ who regard themselves as arbiters of policies nad politicians. Like a flock of vultures they are now content to watch and rip out pieces of flesh from the still living body of government, to accelerate the demise.

Just as in Germany, they’ve decided it’s their task to ‘educate’ us plebs and form our opinion instead of reporting properly what we, the people, think. The reputation of German MSM has been severely damaged in the few years since the German ‘Ampel’ took office. The Bavarian campaign against Mr Aiwanger being the latest blatant example. The German public however isn’t taking it any longer. So why are we so supine over here?

Do we have to wait until a Starmer regime has been in office for a few years, driving the economy fully into the abyss before some Westminster editors notice that they themselves created such conditions, before they notice that they are more to blame for the merde we’re in than the politicians? 

I’m sure I don’t need to point out the hypocrisy of yon MSM authors, blaming ministers for having dared to go on holidays while the whole country has done the same, and never mind that all who ought to have been aware of the crumbling schools were probably WFH.

That’s all I have for today. I better stock up on industrial strength tranquilisers so as not to get heart attacks every time I open the papers. After all, doctors are going on strike this month … Have a good day.



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