Sunday, January 29, 2023
The price we are paying
Sometimes it seems that ever since the 2015 General Election we have been in the middle of a form of collective madness. A minority of voters gave the Tories a Parliamentary majority for the first time in 18 years and the party immediately set about trashing the country they were meant to be running.
Leading the charge, as it were, was Boris Johnson, a man for whom rules, ethics and the standards of public life are a minor inconvenience, whose main motivator is self-interest and who has spent his entire life winging it and surviving on the good grace of his friends and benefactors.
It is though, one thing to get a rich pal to loan him £800,000, or to have exclusive holidays at the expense of others, it is quite another to get the taxpayers to pick up the bill for his excesses. And yet that is precisely what is happening over the latest investigation into Johnson.
The Mirror reports that taxpayers are expected to foot a massive £222,000 bill for Boris Johnson's legal defence against allegations he misled Parliament over Partygate.
The paper says that a senior civil servant has confirmed that the estimated cost in defending the shamed former Prime Minister had soared by more than £90,000 since 2022. Abd it could go still further:
Liberal Democrat Chief Whip Wendy Chamberlain said: "While the British people battle with a cost-of-living crisis, this Conservative Government seems more interested in helping Boris Johnson with his cost-of-lying crisis. This is a sleazy new low for this Government, dragging politics into the gutter.
"People will be outraged that hundreds of thousands of pounds of their money will be used to defend a lying lawbreaker who disgraced the office of Prime Minister.
And yet the government say that they cannot afford to give nurses, other medical professionals and teachers a decent pay rise.
Leading the charge, as it were, was Boris Johnson, a man for whom rules, ethics and the standards of public life are a minor inconvenience, whose main motivator is self-interest and who has spent his entire life winging it and surviving on the good grace of his friends and benefactors.
It is though, one thing to get a rich pal to loan him £800,000, or to have exclusive holidays at the expense of others, it is quite another to get the taxpayers to pick up the bill for his excesses. And yet that is precisely what is happening over the latest investigation into Johnson.
The Mirror reports that taxpayers are expected to foot a massive £222,000 bill for Boris Johnson's legal defence against allegations he misled Parliament over Partygate.
The paper says that a senior civil servant has confirmed that the estimated cost in defending the shamed former Prime Minister had soared by more than £90,000 since 2022. Abd it could go still further:
Liberal Democrat Chief Whip Wendy Chamberlain said: "While the British people battle with a cost-of-living crisis, this Conservative Government seems more interested in helping Boris Johnson with his cost-of-lying crisis. This is a sleazy new low for this Government, dragging politics into the gutter.
"People will be outraged that hundreds of thousands of pounds of their money will be used to defend a lying lawbreaker who disgraced the office of Prime Minister.
And yet the government say that they cannot afford to give nurses, other medical professionals and teachers a decent pay rise.
