Shame on you
Tory candidate for deprived area makes shocking attack on poor
BODY SHAMING the poor while reflecting on your own gaze in the mirror of social media is a pretty conceited and self-absorbed political statement.
While Tories come in all shapes and sizes, we guess the wannabe Bruce Willis in the shape of no-hoper candidate Craig Ross is not exceptional in his attitude.
The Conservative attitude to the poor was best illustrated this week not by Ross’s pull-ups, more Travis Bickle than John Travolta, but by the image of the £5 poverty rations that passes for a meal package to the neediest kids in society.
Despite the blustering outrage from the Prime Minister the meagre contents pretty much matched the Government’s set list of what should be contained.
Heaping scorn on the poor is one thing but nothing compared to the Tories being shamed over how they treat the poorest children in society.
Ross should walk away – and never attempt to be a credible politician ever again.
A HEARTLESS Scottish Tory candidate has claimed people who can’t afford to eat are fat. Craig Ross also had a pop at anti-poverty footballer Marcus Rashford and said folk filmed on TV at food banks are “far from starving”. H i s comments sparked calls for him to be axed as a candidate. He spoke out in his podcast, in which he sounds off about food banks, immigration and racism. In one episode, recorded recently amid the pandemic, the former lecturer said: “In this world of such tremendous hunger, in this world where people are routinely struggling to eat, in this world where people appear on Channel 4 News and talk about how their children eat but they don’t because they can’t afford to… almost everybody in that world is grossly overweight.
“And again people can’t accept this. People have no idea how fat they are.”
Ross, who is standing for Holyrood in Glasgow Pollok, added: “I’m not saying that every single person who claims to be really hungry and is reliant on charity is also very overweight, but what I am saying is if Channel 4 News is having a reasonable go at showing the reality of food bank usage, then we know that the people that they film are far from starving.
“If anything, their biggest risk is not starvation, it’s diabetes.”
On Rashford, the Manchester United striker who has forced the UK Government into U-turns on providing meals to poor children, Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross has backed the star’s campaign on free school meals.
But namesake Craig Ross said: “Has Marcus Rashford stood for election to anything? Not that I’m aware of.
“So should we turn our welfare policy upside down in order to suit Rashford’s view as to what would be decent?” Ross also
Should we turn our welfare policy upside down to suit Rashford’s view of what is decent?
referred to a historical report which described the Metropolitan Police as “institutionally racist” in the wake of the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence.
Ross said: “I remember my pal, the Metropolitan police officer, and his mates, and their reaction to that.
“How nauseated they were, how utterly sickened they were, to be told that there was something called institutional racism and that they worked in the institution and therefore they by implication were racists.”
He added: “This is the least racist country in the world.”
Ross described the Human Rights Act as an “obscenity” and said of immigration: “We’ve taken everybody who has been mistreated by Slovakia, and said, ‘Come here, and work a little, and we will make it such that you have in effect won the lottery’.”
He also claimed the idea that the UK had benefited from migration was “false” in terms of “raw economics”.
Ross was mocked this month over a bizarre video which showed him boasting about the number of pull-ups he could do.
According to LinkedIn, he used to be a lecturer and was an “external verifier” at the Scottish Qualifications Authority.
The SNP called for him to be sacked last night.
A spokesman: “These ignorant, outdated and offensive attitudes have no place in modern Scotland.
“But the Tory mask has slipped, showing the party is as
This is the least racist country in the world
Come here, and work a little, and we will make it like you won the lottery
backward-looking and out of touch as ever. Someone who denies the existence of poverty and racism in our society is clearly not a suitable candidate to be an MSP, and this raises very serious questions about the type of views that are circulating in the Tory party.
“The Tories must remove Mr Ross as a candidate and make clear that they do not consider these comments appropriate.” Asked about the comments on his podcast, Ross told the Record: “They don’t represent Conservative Party policy. I recorded them all before I was a candidate.”
A Scottish Conservative spokesman said: “We are investigating these comments which do not reflect the views of the party.”