I’m a Tory, get me out of there!
Just had the most amazing idea for a new game show, ‘I’m a Tory MP, get me out of there!’ The premise is simple really, we take our Conservative MPs and bestow upon them some real-world experience which doesn’t involve them having to go and take a second job where they’re paid hundreds and thousands of pounds. Instead, they would have to make do like the rest of us. The rules would be easy enough to follow, we put them into rented accommodation while making them work full time for minimum wage, they would need to budget for rent, childcare, energy bills, food bills and so on. You know, the basic necessities in life, all the stuff that Labour won’t stop banging on about.
Whoever can last the longest (without cheating) gets to be leader of the party.
Every week we can set them a new task. Week one, a surprise invoice for a broken fridge, with no savings to hand, let’s see who makes it through the week. Week two, having to pay for new school equipment because the Tories have been underfunding state schools. Week 3, eviction notice, time to find somewhere else to live. Good luck! Social housing is in short supply.
The public could vote each week on who they would want to see face upcoming challenges such as the MPs losing their job, car break-downs, being off sick with no pay, only fair we give them some easy ones. Depending how well they do, we can just cut their benefit. ‘Cause if they manage to make it through the week they obviously don’t need it that much.
Just need to get someone to host it….
Now, this may not be easy, I doubt most of them would sign up willingly to this sort of a social experiment. Since many of them have made clear these past few weeks that 82k is simply not enough to live on, yet they are happy to take away the £20 universal credit uplift from the poorest. I wonder what the thought process was behind that reasoning. Do they simply not care about the poor at all? Or is it necessary for them to make a ton of money because they simply do not know how to live any other way? A damning indictment which only goes to prove how out of touch these MPs are despite all that ‘real world experience’ they have managed to gain from their high paid second jobs.
I thought up this brilliant plan while watching Theresa May speak up in the House of Commons earlier today. It was about ten past 2, I was desperately trying to rock my 7-month-old to sleep. He hadn’t napped all day and his grizzly-ness was off the scale. With him displaying outwardly the frustration I was feeling inside about the current state of our democracy, which by the way, our Prime Minister is hell bent on making a mockery of; my new game show idea was born. Plucked out from the darkest recesses of my mind, fabricated by the madness I’ve been driven to having spent way too much time this past week imbedded in the news and scrolling through the deepest corners of twitter. Yet I’m still not sure this idea would be going far enough to achieve the sort of social justice I’d be aiming for. No, that would involve many years of eroding away their self-confidence as well. Forcing them to work long hours, working for less than their worth, them being in debt and still having to pay for more than they can afford, while waiting for relatives to die just so they can afford a home. While, at the same time doing everything within my power to promote the ideology that the people who don’t make it in life are simply lazy and don’t deserve help. I’d have to be completely heartless to go that far…Hmm, who would do that?
It’s not often I agree with Tory MPs but today I did agree with Theresa May. She stood up, spoke up, and said that the paid advocacy is wrong! Just wrong! Karl Turner (MP for Kingston Upon Hull East) then said that he thought it was clear from what May had said that this would not have been allowed to happen had she been PM and there is only one person to blame. I think that anyone with even a modicum of morality knows that what has been occurring in government of late is wrong, criminal and downright shameful. I still can’t quite understand the position of those trying to defend it. On this topic, Lee Rowley MP said on Question Time that we want ‘parliamentarians who write good legislation, and that requires them to have some real-life experience.’
Call me common, but I personally do not see how advising a tax haven is a real-life experience. Hence my proposal above. If real-life experience is what you’re after, then take a second job at a supermarket, or a call centre, become a delivery driver for f***sake! Work within our NHS, volunteer at food banks. Provide people with something worthwhile! Or why not just do what you’re meant to? Spend some time in your constituency listening to the people you represent, the people who are paying you 82k a year! Stop mugging us off ‘cause we’ve had enough!