Such a contrast between former prime ministers
AN interesting tale of two ex-Prime Ministers is unfolding. Former Labour PM, Gordon Brown is campaigning to get the world’s richest nations to help fund Covid vaccinations for the world’s poorest people. The right thing to do he says, and besides it will reduce the risk of new variants of the disease emerging.
Then there is David Cameron. Having won power by saying Brown had spent too much and ruined public finances, while neglecting to mention the money spent had averted a devastating banking crisis, his government introduced a series of cuts across the public sector. ‘We’re all in this together’ he said, while wages stagnated, benefits were cut and child poverty rose. And the share of the national cake that went to profits soared.
Now out of office, the personally wealthy Cameron has become a paid lobbyist for the finance company Greensill Capital, a company he himself had formerly hired to advise on government spending cuts. Trying to secure public money for the company, Cameron arranged for the boss of the firm to meet health secretary Matt Hancock, ‘for drinks’ and wrote begging letters to the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak. The ex-PM did not seem to mind the Government spending too much when the money went to his friends.
What a contrast. There is Brown arguing on behalf of the poor and there is Cameron, further feathering his nest. Such times we live in!
Shame about our ice cream van man
ONCE again Kirklees demonstrates its unfitness to look after Huddersfield with its removal of a trader (ice cream van) from working at Beaumont Park, a pitch held for 20 years, selling ice cream – excellent by the way, made by Dixon’s, a Huddersfield company and handed over to after tender to a Bradford company. Strange at the best of times, but in the present coronavirus climate bizarre!
Personally I would like to see Kirklees broken up and Huddersfield restored to its borough status, we might then get councillors who respect the town and want to support it, not like now, giving people what they haven’t asked for or had a say in.