Somerset Tory MP Rebecca Pow thinks we’ve never had it so good. She said so in the House of Commons this morning.
Ms Pow regaled MPs with a tale of how the grateful people of Taunton Deane tell her they’ve got more money in their pockets than ever, and how the Tories are responsible for this supposed prosperity.
Chancellor John McDonnell, gently but firmly, had to remind the out-of-touch Tory of the reality of life faced by huge numbers of people in this country – including millions of children in poverty, many of them in spite of having family members in work:
Original video by @EL4JC. Subtitled version by SKWAWKBOX
It’s not even as if Ms Pow’s own constituency contains no poverty. According to Taunton Deane Borough Council’s Health and Wellbeing strategy document:
- 14.6% of Taunton Deane households are in fuel poverty
- Taunton Deane has the highest number of young people not in education, employment or training in Somerset
- poor Taunton Deane residents have a life expectancy more than ten years lower than richer residents
- Taunton Deane contains areas that are in the bottom 5% in England for income, education and deprivation
- over 11% of Taunton Deane residents live in deprived areas
The people Ms Pow speaks to have ‘thousands’ more in their pockets than they’ve ever had. Apparently.
Perhaps she’s very choosy about the people she speaks to – or perhaps she’s simply staggeringly oblivious to the real lives of huge numbers of people suffering under Tory government.
Which makes her well suited to the party of Philip ‘I see no unemployed people’ Hammond.
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Shades of Harold McMillan in the Fifties!
Reblogged this on SidLabour.
14.6% of Taunton Deane households are in fuel poverty
Taunton Deane has the highest number of young people not in education, employment or training in Somerset
poor Taunton Deane residents have a life expectancy more than ten years lower than richer residents
Taunton Deane contains areas that are in the bottom 5% in England for income, education and deprivation
over 11% of Taunton Deane residents live in deprived areas
And STILL they elected a tory MP…Small wonder she’s an arrogant twunt.
There is absolutely no doubt that those at the top of the income scale have benefited from Tory policies, but for the many that just isn’t the case.
The rich get richer under the Tories and the poor get poorer, those poor currently extend into the middle classes, hence a shrinking middle class, the unintentional consequence of the new classless society.
I don’t suppose any of the poorer residents of TD voted for her!
Perhaps not – But there’ll be those like that soft mare on QT who whinged about how she voted tory and then they took away from HER…
https://youtu.be/cwfoP0DshgQ
There’s enough of them whining about how the west country’s ‘hard done by’ and yet they’re STILL electing toerag MP’s. Then you have the stats from the OP on top of that…
Perhaps those misguided and lied to folks still voting for Tories might just see the light as to what a dispicable lying bunch of vermin Tory MPs are . As for the woman on QT she , I now believe , is a Labour Party member and actively campaigns for Labour in her constituency , and it’s down to JC and his policies for that .
Labour and it’s membership just have to keep confronting the lies and correcting them each and every day wherever we find them , as to the direct effects on those folks who still think they are ” one up ” on their fellow working class peers by voting Tory. Some however , never will , and for them they really do deserve the full load of shit they get , it’s a pity they drag the rest of us thro that with them.
Oh, I forgot to mention – they re-elected pow with an increased majority back in june.
As I said, small wonder she’s an arrogant twunt. She’s been afforded it by her constituents.
It astonishes me that anyone like the woman in the audience would even consider voting conservative in the first place. It betrays a depth of ignorance that leaves me speechless.
In a democracy, you get what you deserve.
Well, she’s now an active Labour campaigner & member. Perhaps because there’s now a real alternative in Jez, and also because Cameron had the knack of selling himself & his policies a hell of a lot better than May does or ever could, and possibly because in 2015, when she voted Tory, they were able to blame it all on the Lib Dems as well.
Not everyone can see through the snake-oil salesmen like you & I did–luckily we all now have Skwawkbox, too!!
Reblogged this on The Night Owl and commented:
Unfortunately it’s the willful blindness to the actual true facts of life in Tory Britain, for so many millions of people, that is consistently ignored by there Tory elite!
Rebecca Pow has obviously got a major blind spot to the poverty in her own county, and must only talk to her own peer group where finances are concerned, otherwise she’d realise what a struggle so many households have to make ends meet – and this defiitely includes the working families, as the Tory ‘living wage’ is anything but!
Just like the driver who’s never been involved in an accident, but seen plenty in their interior mirror!
None blinder than those who don’t want to see!
Ms Pow is right when she says: “We have never had it so good!” but of course the “We” is the rich and powerful courtesy of the Tories and initially the Lib Dems. They gave tax cuts to: millionaires, corporations, hedge funds (the Tories and Lib Dems gave hedge funds £145m in tax cuts, hedge funds donated £50m to the Tories), private landlords with multiple properties, grouse moor owners. They also changed local government settlement rules, instead of being based on population size and NEED (under a Labour Govt.) they counted population size only, result billions of cuts for non-Tory Councils. Then the upper class welfare state gives tax cuts and tax rellief (corporate welfare) of £93b a year to big business which is the equivalent of £3,500 per household! Then there’s £120b in tax avoidance a year AS THE RICH AND BETTER OF AVOID GIVING TO SOCIETY! So this austerity stuff was never meant for the rich and powerful and Ms Pow has let is slip: “WE have never had it so good!” LAB4HOPE!
Tories do not speak for the majority of British citizens, they speak for the wealthy vested interests who indeed have ‘never had it so good’ leeching off and privatising the wealth of British public.