A heartfelt letter from an eight-year-old girl to Stephen Timms, the Shadow Minister for Employment, has highlighted the crumbling living standards experienced by a growing number of families in Britain.Oh, this'll be good. *gets popcorn*
The handwritten plea, presented to the Labour MP for East Ham at his regular constituency surgery, asks the politician to intervene on her family’s behalf because “my parents keep telling me we don’t have enough money.”
She describes how they are all sleeping in one room so they can rent out their spare bedroom and pay the rent and says that “we now even find it difficult to feed.”Odd phrasing. Oh, well, that’s UK education for you, I guess!
She encloses her school report to show how well she is doing in her studies and says “I am a hard working girl that wants to learn more and more but due to the financial situation of my parents I am unable to attend teaching lessons and swimming lessons on Saturdays because my parents say they don’t have enough money.”*wipes away a tear*
Mr Timms told The Independent: “It’s difficult to draw any wider implications from this letter but certainly there are a growing number of people on the verge of destitution because of the bedroom tax, welfare reforms and immigration changes. ”Wait. What? What have immigration changes got to do with...
Oh. I see.
“You can just see it from the number of people using food banks. The problem for this family is an immigration one. They have been denied leave to remain so they can’t work. However the government has not said they will remove them yet so they have no chance to appeal and put their side of the story over. ”So why don't they just leave?
“This family is only surviving because of help from friends and handouts from the church. Her parents also brought their daughter’s school reports to the constituency surgery, which showed she had all A’s. She obviously a remarkable little girl facing a very tough time but who knows if she will even be here in a couple of years?”Back in her own country, I'd hope, and not wasting the time of our MPs who are supposed to be working for the people who pay their expenses...
It’s difficult to draw any wider implications from this letter
ReplyDeleteIt is very easy. Without key data such a confirmed identity, public fact-checking of the existence of the flat and why they are 'renting out a spare room' (normally not within the rental rules) then I call 'bullshit' on the lot of it and say that the child, if she exists, has just been used as a pawn by a local Labour party so the MP can run a PR story which he hopes will automatically damage the government.
Labour have form in this respect, remembering the Battle of Jennifer's Ear (1992). That too was a creative writing exercise which the party tried to pass off as 'based on a true story' which had come from Robin Cook, shadow health secretary.
Strange how things worked out. The Sun accused Kinnock of telling lies about a child for political effect, although the source liar was Robin Cook, who turned out to be capable of telling lots of lies when it suited him. Then Cook flounced off, attempting to stand on the moral high ground when it turned out there had been a dodgy dossier and Tony Blair had lied, as if that was anything unusual in politics where they have, for fifty years, felt that telling lies is OK if it gets you what you want.
" They have been denied leave to remain so they can’t work. "
ReplyDeleteSurely that should read
" They have been denied leave to remain so they can’t work.[Ed in the UK - they could of course in their own country but don't want to]"
I assume that is the same Stephen Timms who is praised to the rafters by that bunch of skanky Islamic extremists the Muslim Public Affairs Committee?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fahrenheit211.net/2013/10/28/stephen-timms-the-member-for-islamabad-west/
Life as a non-Muslim or non-Labour voter or non-foreigner is pretty shit in Newham, but we don't hear Timms piping up about that.
I'm not normally a 'swear-blogger' but one of the nice things about not living in Newham is not having a See You Next Tuesday like Timms as my MP. Sadly it is impossible to remove him due to a combination of the 'whipped mosque vote' and the large amount of Divs who bovinely vote Labour because 'they're for the working class innit'
To add to my previous comment if I may be permitted to do so:
ReplyDeleteDo not get old, do not be English, do not be Jewish, do not be white, do not be a Conservative in Newham because I guarantee that your life will be shit if you are.
I want to let rip, to use incandescent words of rage when it comes to Newham. I want to expose what I know about the generalised crapness of the borough in glorious technicolour detail. But whilst I still have vulnerable friends and relatives there I cannot. The risk to them would be too great.
A political culture that filled a housing estate with criminal human crud purely to prevent a ward falling to the Tories or the far right, is quite capable of making life very difficult for those I love and care for.
Only 16% of the Newham population are what is classed as white British, anyone of that category who had sense or was able to has fled.
Fuck the appeasing bastard Timms and all his works and all his party.
"So why don't they just leave?"
ReplyDeleteIf they can't stay, they ain't going to bugger off until we stump up for the plane ticket.
HOLD ON, HOLD ON !!! STOP RIGHT THERE !!
ReplyDeleteQUESTION, and this is IMPORTANT !! : Where the hell is the "Give-O-Fuck-O-meter ?" You haven't broken it have you ? I distinctly remember telling the site owner that it was faulty and the readings were too high !! But no, I was ignored. Well this serves you all right !!
If you had taken better care of it Julia then you would have had it ready for such a story as this.
I am very disappointed in you.
@WOR;
ReplyDelete"remembering the Battle of Jennifer's Ear"
I was just trying to remember her name, and up it popped in your post!
Synchronicity!
XX So why don't they just leave? XX
ReplyDelete'cus their fucking boat sank!
:-D :-D :-D
XX the Labour MP for East Ham XX
ReplyDelete"Ham".... as in PIG!!??
How long will they allow THAT to remain?
http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/asylum/outcomes/unsuccessfulapplications/voluntaryreturn/
ReplyDeleteMachiii
I don't think even Labour will touch this one,they will "manufacture" a similar story from an English family.Even they realise immigration is poison to their chances of getting back in.
ReplyDeleteJaded
Anon 19:10 30/10/13. It looks like this story from Timms, although featured in a national newspaper, appears to be primarily aimed at the communalist Islamic/foreigner electorate of the constituency of East Ham, and the idiots of the Middle Class Left.
ReplyDeleteYou are certainly correct that Labour will play a similar sort of manufactured story in the run up to the next GE, but they will change the details to show an English family instead. The great Labour immigration disaster has not been forgotten and it is poison for Labour.
"...then I call 'bullshit' on the lot of it and say that the child, if she exists, has just been used as a pawn by a local Labour party..."
ReplyDeleteYes, there's that.
"I assume that is the same Stephen Timms who is praised to the rafters by that bunch of skanky Islamic extremists the Muslim Public Affairs Committee?"
Indeed so, also the one who was attacked by a knife-wielding Muslim maniac at his surgery.
"Where the hell is the "Give-O-Fuck-O-meter ?"
It's in for repair! ;)
"I don't think even Labour will touch this one,they will "manufacture" a similar story from an English family."
The 'Guardian' keeps telling us there's lots of them. So, Timms couldn't find ONE?