Our MP (Debate)

Sat 26 Nov 2022, 11:10 (last edited on Sat 26 Nov 2022, 11:35)

I expect by now you too will have received the latest propaganda sheet from Mr Courts, full of ‘oven ready’ waffle and ‘world beating’ platitudes.  They’re good at them.

My particular passion being the state of our rivers, how he has the nerve to say he backs ‘stronger laws to tackle pollution’ in them when he voted against giving the unbelievably feeble Environment Act something approaching teeth is beyond me.  It was his party that privatised the water industry, allowing over £70 billion to be paid since to often foreign investors instead of requiring proper investment in the infrastructure.  It’s all the Victorians’ fault of course, nothing to do with recent governments…

Labour admittedly didn’t address the fundamental problem either but at least they left a reasonable enforcement regime in place.  Only Mr Courts' party would make the water companies responsible (in 2011) for their own monitoring and reporting while emasculating the agency responsible for policing them – kind of similar to the building industry, result, Grenfell and others.   Result on this is that not a single river in England now meets EU water quality standards.  Not one.  Sure the issues are complicated but there’s a simple truth, that as long as it costs the water companies less to pollute than it does not to, they’ll go on doing it.

 Add to that their meddling with electoral issues, the weakening of the Judicial Review process, further restrictions on rights of protest and politicisation of the police, the proposed replacement of the Human Rights Act (itself derived largely from the work of a former Conservative Lord Chancellor), destruction of the criminal justice and Legal Aid systems, the possible abandonment of EU environmental protections and regulation of the finance industry (including lifting the cap on bankers' bonuses - retained by Hunt), and the treatment of potential refugees as sub-human.  As I heard a Philipino journalist say recently, democracy dies from a thousand cuts.  When oh when are we going to grow up and stop electing incompetent ex-public schoolboys with a sense of entitlement whose main concern is to look after their own??  GGGRRRRR!!