H is for Heinous
Week H | Thursday | Tory Time: 30p Lee, Part Duh
Last week I chose to profile a Tory MP so icky that I was running out of room to ick:
So here’s the second and final installment in the saga of Thirty Pee Lee Anorak Anderson and his amazing journey from Labour party to Conservative party party to hopefully obscurity again forthwith. Red wall schmed wall.
You may not know I was once considered the leading expert on law and policy relating to Gypsies and Travellers. I worked every hour going for equality for them for seven years, hence my two nominations for the Liberty/Law Society Human Rights Award. The Traveller Movement won it, which was perfect.
So the primary reason that 30 Pee Lee makes me properly angry is his dumping of stones to block a stopping place, for which he was charged, as covered last week; his saying in a Commons committee that Travellers are thieves who’ll steal “your lawnmower and half your tools,” along with other nakedly racist slurry.
Come to think of it, he made the same false distinction between ‘real Romanies’ and others as Jack Straw did in 1999, see the Guardian above. Straw was the Home Secretary, responsible for Race and Community Relations at the time. We had a meeting at the Home Office. He said thick things. Said Gypsies should ‘police each other.’ His own son and brother were in legal trouble very soon afterwards.
Anyway. 30p Lee MP. MP stands for Mother Phucker. Voting:
✔️ cap civil service redundancy payments, stricter asylum system, crippling NHS
✖️ reducing tax avoidance or climate change, more powers to Welsh or Scottish Parliaments
Zero surprises there. Let’s see financial declarations and more of 30p Lee looming in an anorak, using the Euro emoji for shits and giggles.
💶 A grand from the Fail for an article, said he’d donate it to a local educational trust.
💶 £7500 from Cayzer Trust’s Tory red wall funding project
💶 Has rental property in Ashfield. More Tory landlordism. See my piece for Byline Times about the effed-up housing situation.
💶 1000s more from Cayzer.
💶 Lee was elected in 2019, but was also on Ashfield’s Town Fund Board from January 2020 [in an unpaid role]. It received £62m+ from central government.
💶 30p Lee is one of many MPs who blocks constituents he doesn’t agree with on Twitter. This should not be allowed; not under Twitter rules but British law.
💶 30p Lee wrote on Facebook in January that he wouldn’t back anyone who’s ‘knowingly done wrong’. Yet after the Crime Minister was fined over partygate, he said: “I suppose there could be some confusion about gatherings in the workplace … it should be paid and an apology issued. The PM has done both.”
💶 When it looked like the Crime Minister was on the outs at last, shortly after the results of the vote of confidence in his leadership were announced, 30p Lee claimed he was the victim of "a witch hunt led by the BBC”. Yet in July 30p Lee withdrew his support over the Chris Pincher scandal. He can always be relied on not to be relied on.
💶 Speaking of Facebook, 30p Lee also ran this ‘poll’.
What a 🍑
Now we reach the reason for the childish nickname, whatever, it’s staying. 30p Lee was roundly criticised by food poverty campaigners, charities, opposition politicians, and even Tories, for saying in Parliament that there isn’t a "massive use for food banks”, and people only use them because they’re shit at budgeting and cooking. This is when 30p Lee finally passed his Tory probation period, by proving that he’s as good as the rest of them at making people poor then telling them they’re doing it wrong.
30p Lee doubled down by inviting opposition MPs to visit a foodbank in his constituency, saying meals can be made for 30p a day, and that the foodbank insists on mandatory education for users. The foodbank’s founder had other ideas, saying the course is optional actually, and adding, "people do know how to cook, obviously, because people have been eating and surviving before we've been intervening with food parcels,” and that giving guidance on ‘economic’ cooking is just being helpful.
The 30p figure was arrived at during a team batch-cooking session led by a professional chef, turning a £50.24 shop into 172 meals. The foodbank founder sensibly qualified this, saying, “It illustrates the point you can produce healthy meals [cheaply] but it's not in the capacity of every family, and not easy to replicate in every household. It presupposes you're buying in bulk, cooking with big catering trays and have the storage.”
No shit, Sherlock. And can afford the energy to cook with, to boot.
You’ll be astonished to hear that 30p Lee later said his comments were misinterpreted.
The thing I understand least about 30p Lee is that he does as little to help vulnerable, immunocompromised, and disabled people as any other Tory, including voting against Covid protections, yet his wife falls within those categories. I will never, ever wrap my brain around such things.
I need my Tory Time Thursday hazmat shower now, and I’m sure you do too. See you tomorrow for part two of what lies behind a £70 billion ‘framework contract’.
This takes ages, but in an age of bombardment with info and scandal so we can’t keep up, or put the pieces together, I feel it’s important to curate ‘conservative’ characters. If you find it to be a public service, you could contribute to a new protest outfit for me. The old one is covered in Tory tears. Or, you know, a ☕️
☕️ https://ko-fi.com/5by5creativity