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UPDATED: Tory MP Owen Patterson, an LGBT road crossing in Surrey and David Amess – the political class just don’t get it

Tom Winnifrith
Wednesday 3 November 2021

Like, I suspect, many couples The Mrs and I stare at our fuel bills with horror. We discuss what the financial impact of higher mortgage rates will be when our current deal expires in 18 months time. I present the latest Tesco bill for her to see and it is shocking.  These are the grim financial realities we dirty plebs face in Britain 2021. And then we see our leaders, and other 1%ers, flying in private jets to Glasgow to lecture us on how we should not take an Easyjet trip to Greece next summer.  It is nauseating. COP26 may well be seen as yet another sign of how it is them and us. The murder of Tory MP David Amess was another.


More or less the entire population saw this as another radical Islamist outrage and how such attacks make all of us feel less safe. MP’s – and the media – did their darndest not to mention the I word and instead talked about how MP’s in particular needed more protection from physical threats and also from online abuse although there is no evidence that the death of poor Mr Amess was in anyway linked to that. If “David’s law” is passed no doubt it will be used to stop folks saying nasty things abut their greedy and useless MP on twitter. Cripes you should see the abuse I get on twitter from folks who don’t like me exposing fraud. Do the Old Bill do anything, even when the abuse becomes a death threat? Like Hell they do. And after “David’s Law” they still won’t. Because I am only one of the sans culottes.


And so we, today, learn that Surrey County Council is painting zebra crossings the rainbow colour of Pride. The exercise starts this week with a crossing in Godalming to mark Surrey Pride week and will cost £55,000 and it is, apparently, about making the LGBTQ community “more visible”. As it happens the LGBTQ community is over-represented in  Parliament, on TV, in local politics, in film and elsewhere. The ONS says that 2.5% of us are LGBTQ but you would have thought that number was way higher if you switch on your TV at any time.  The LGBTQ community is already utterly visible. This is pointless virtue signalling.


Repainting zebra crossings can confuse guide dogs so threatens the safety of blind folks and in recent years Surrey County Council has pleaded poverty so slashed spending on a number of services including front line fire crews. But not a soul within the political class dissents from this nonsense. I suspect most folks in Surrey outside the polotical class would rather have another fire engine toprotect them than a new zebra crossing to confuse the guide dogs. But the career local politicians don’t see it that way.


Then there is Owen Patterson MP. A former Tory Minister, as soon as he heard that my late Uncle Christopher Booker was seriously ill he jumped in his car to go see him. Most of Chris’s former Brexit pals called or wrote, Owen went the extra mile and for that I would normally judge him a good bloke. However, to top up his £81,000 salary Owen felt the need to work for two firms, Randox and Lynn’s Country Foods, who paid him, way over £100,000 on top. Lucky Owen. He did declare this in the register of member’s interests but failed to declare it on numerous occasions when asking questions on their behalf.


A commons committee found Patterson guilty of breaching Parliamentary rules in this respect and recommended he be suspended for 30 days. That could allow a recall petition and if 10% of his constituents want him out there would be a by election. Patterson says this is a witch hunt because he is a Brexiteer and he was only asking questions to improve food safety.


Really?  In one episode he sought to have a competitor firm forced to re-label a product so as not to compete with Lynn’s own products. And he did not declare his interest.


That seems slam dunk sleaze to me and to any normal person yet Patterson says due process was not followed and, disgracefully, says the enquiry contributed to his wife killing herself last year. Weaponising a suicide is shoddy. But what is truly grubby is that Tory MPs, Tory whips and even Boris Johnson are now working to overturn the ruling and instead to sack the Parliamentary sleaze watchdog.  Update: They have voted this through.


In the real world, if folks tried to gain commercial advantage for a company from which they were receiving payments and not being open about those payments as rules dictated this would be a sacking offence but the political class again think that it is a different world for them. They appear to have learned nothing from the public anger over the expenses troughing. And then they wonder why dirty oiks, worrying about how they will pay their electricity bills, look at Mr Patterson grubbing around on £200,000 + a year and beng protected by his chums and might just say something nasty about greedy MPs on twitter? It is okay Owen, Boris et al: when my gas bill goes through the roof my family can always at cake can’t they?

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About Tom Winnifrith
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Tom Winnifrith is the editor of TomWinnifrith.com. When he is not harvesting olives in Greece, he is (planning to) raise goats in Wales.
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