Fun to see Sunak U-Turn on his "no tax-cuts!" stance from... *checks notes* last week. I suppose it's similar to his "I won't tax energy firms!" that time, which was promptly followed by a remix of Labour's "Windfall Tax" idea into a familiar-sounding - though less catchy - "temporary, targeted energy profits levy". Somehow we've ended up in a situation where the former Chancellor, who raised taxes to their highest level for decades and who warned tax-cuts should not be implemented in the face of soaring inflation (and a severely stretched exchequer) has re-evaluated matters and figured he *can* afford to make some adjustments after all. It's hard not to draw the conclusion he's making this shit up as he goes along. Is anything sacred? Is anything rooted in a principle with these fuckers? Only in January the Conservative Govt told us they couldn't reduce VAT on energy bills despite having promised to do so as part of the Brexit campaign. Now, six months later, we've got the Chancellor from that same period saying forget what I said last week actually I *can* ease the burden, and I know we lied to you before but THIS time you can believe us. THIS time we'll slash VAT of the energy bills. Exactly how beaten down and traumatised do they think we are here? "Amy, baby, I swear on my life I'll never punch you in the face." "You have literally just punched me in the face, Terry." When you look at the two front runners' commitments, their shape-shifting, their pivoting, their u-turns, how do you escape the conclusion that this is a breed, or class of people who habitually put their own thirst for power ahead of the interests of the country they claim to love? They pursue the keys to No10 like rabid, drunk pitbulls chasing a car but with Dick-1 idea what they would do if they ever caught it. You almost hope they never achieve their goals, if not for the good of the nation, then for fear they wouldn't survive the emptyness they'd feel having done so. Like a drunk and divorced man in his forties thirty seconds after having had sex in someone he never really fancied or even liked that much. **SPAFF** "Wait, why did I want this so bad again?" Now, as well as being unutterably depressing, it all rings a few bells for me (the shitness of Sunak/Truss, not the spaff bit). The whole people putting their personal goals ahead of a responsibility to wider society thing. The whole experts are saying this is madness but I'll just do it anyway because it's what's politically convenient to me personally right now in this moment. As I say, it rang bells. Comfortable parallels can be drawn with Climate Change. We know the planet desperately needs us to retire fossil fuels; to use raw materials more responsibly. We can see the impact of Global Warming on the news, outside our front doors as passing pigeons burst into flames; and yet there’s a feeling that those in charge who could actually do something about it put their own situation first, and to hell with the rest of us. They could help us with Gas prices, but they don't want to piss off the donors. They could try to save the NHS but that wouldn't play well with the ERG types. I suppose to some extent it’s the nature of Tory Britain. America First. Political Psychopathy unrestrained. For every Liz Truss posturing about "POLICE HAVE TO SOLVE CRIMES!" instead of looking at the actual problems regular people are facing, every day, there's a Steve Baker hyping a fracking project that wouldn’t fix the energy crisis. Also interestingly, for every Steve Baker there’s a £5,000 donation from Neil Record, chairman of the Global Warming Policy Forum (now rebranded as Net Zero Watch) and the Institute of Economic Affairs which has accepted funding from BP. For every Minister for Housing who’s pulling in a hundred grand for overseeing a hugely problematic housing bubble and ballooning inequality, there's a Secretary of State for Health who'll accept the ministerial car/flat/expenses but can't quite bring themselves to improve the Health Service. Indeed, whether it’s a collapsing NHS, generation rent or the death of the fucking planet, wherever you look it feels like there's another sociopathic chancer trying to get ahead, trying to get a leg up, or a donation - trying to get their last dollar out before the whole shit collapses. "One more drink! One more drink!” cried Baker, as the Nags Head enveloped in flames that had spread from the British summer wildfires. For those that like to police my language, please know that the original draft included a metaphor about psychopaths fucking a corpse one last time before the body gets cold. So you can consider my language very much tempered. Now, look... I’m sure there are idiots and cynics out there. It’s hard to critique Francois or Fabricant (for their positions on Net Zero or whatever) when - if we tested their intellect, it's hard to imagine the pair of them making it past the first round of Fun House. But with people like Steve Baker, or Xi Jinping or the CFO of Esso, or someone capable of using cutlery, on their own, safely - it's hard to escape the idea that they know everything's fucked, that the ice caps will melt, oceans will rise, millions will invade other countries for their supply of fresh water, or gas, or grain that's not scorched and inedible... they KNOW we're fucked. But by signing off on a fracking site in Wessex, or displacing a community in Mozambique, they *might* just be able to make a few billion, buy a Barn Convo on an island off New Zealand and watch the rest of the world sinkhole on a plasma as they sip canned mojitos forevermore. Wherever you look, there are crumbling systems and institutions and people just trying to make their last, quick buckout of them. They are gamblers throwing it all on 28-red and hoping they make enough to get a slightly nicer penthouse, removed and away from all the riffraff. At least they have that. For the rest of us, we're just watching the roulette table, sipping our drinks and hoping it spins a little longer, that the drink lasts a little longer, that the hangover never kicks in; Whisky, anyone?
