£58,000 on a makeover is nothing short of insult
THE Tories may be correct to assume the general public does not care about who paid for the refurbishment of the Prime Minister’s residence in Downing St.
Obviously, compared to the millions of pounds in government contracts a mere £58,000 donation, is chicken feed.
However, it is an interesting insight into the standards and values of those that rule us.
The official allowance of £30,000 a year to spend on the PM’s flat was apparently not sufficient for Boris Johnson and his partner.
This will horrify many people. For anyone on the minimum wage and working a 40-hour week, this would represent over 18 months’ income, before deductions.
Yet, still it wasn’t enough. Us ordinary mortals could be forgiven for wondering what this kind of money buys.
Well, for one thing, it buys you the services of someone to tell you what is ‘good taste,’ useful if you doubt your own instincts. And this ‘good taste,’ involved, among other things, wall paper with real gold in it, coming in at £490 a roll and a sofa at almost £6,000.
Those unfortunate enough to have to live on Universal Credit and needing furniture would be offered a loan they had to repay out of future payments and told to lower their expectations.
This whole saga is one more thing that exposes Johnson (Eton, Oxford and the Bullingdon Club) and his ‘ordinary bloke’ image – based on unruly hair and the suggestion he is not a ‘real’ politician – for what he is. It seems likely that the Tory party will ditch him as these scandals pile up and they need to shore-up the party’s vote among people for whom spending £58,000 on a house makeover would be seen as insulting.
Choose health over war
OVER the next four years, the UK will spend eight times more on the military than it will on tackling the climate crisis.
And with just 7.1per cent of last year’s global military spending, we could have vaccinated everyone on earth against Covid – we’ve got our priorities all wrong.
In 2020, global military spending rose to nearly $2 trillion, and the UK is the fifth highest spender in the world.
At a time when our community has been wracked by Covid, and thousands have lost their homes, jobs and businesses, the government has been spending money expanding into new areas of warfare such as killer robots, and increasing the UK’s nuclear warheads, which breaks international treaties and fuels a nuclear arms race.
Military spending makes us less safe, and wastes vital resources on outdated notions of military strength. Spending like this makes a mockery of Boris Johnson’s ambition to be a ‘force for good’ in the world. It’s time we chose healthcare over warfare, to truly defend people and planet.