Thread by @RussInCheshire

#TheWeekInTory Armageddon Special covers events since Wednesday

1. A lucky (legal term) week for Jacob Rees-Mogg, the brain of a tapeworm trapped in the body of another tapeworm, who moved £44m of his money out of a Russian bank only days before he sanctioned it. Phew!

2. Defence Sec Ben Wallace reminded a definitely terrified Putin that Britain had “kicked the backside of Tsar Nicholas I in 1853”, and we would do it again, grrrr

3. Remind me: how did the Charge of the Light Brigade work out?

4. And then Liz Truss (Cunk on Foreign Relations) gave her backing to any UK citizen travelling to Ukraine to fight

5. It is illegal for UK citizens to fight in any war UK isn’t involved in

6. So presumably we’re either now at war, or we have to arrest the Foreign Secretary

7. Since 2016 we’ve issued just 6 (six) fines for breaches of existing sanctions

8. There have been 132 proven breaches of British sections, but Tories ignored 126 of them

9. So Putin is probably even more scared of our sanctions regime than he is of shouty old Ben Wallace

10. EU sanctioned 350 people. We sanctioned 3. All 3 have been sanctioned by USA since 2018

11. Tories said they’d legislate to prevent shell companies being used to launder Russian money

12. But we’re not going to BEGIN that until the next session of parliament in 2023

13. Duplo Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was back to reassure us the Tory Party would keep the £2m of Russian donations since Johnson became PM. Phew!

14. She went onto explain sanctions weren’t happening faster because “clever lawyers” were delaying the move

15. An actual clever lawyer explained: law firms can’t hold up actions. Only a court can, and there have been no court orders to delay anything

16. Truss was asked to name the law firms she had claimed were delaying sanctions

17. She couldn’t name one. Not one.

18. Meanwhile Brendan Lewis (who got £25,000 from Russia) said Russians give us money “because they admire us”

19. To prove how admirable we are, we rolled out our world-class response to the refugee crisis

20. We started by refusing to set up safe routes for refugees

21. Then we stopped granting visas to Ukrainians

22. Then we issued guidance saying Ukrainian refugees who come here via a 3rd party country can’t claim asylum

23. But we also banned all direct flights, meaning it’s impossible to NOT come to UK via a 3rd country

24. Then Home Office minister Kevin Foster said he would help Ukrainians to escape death if they promised to pick fruit for him

25. Fruit-picking doesn’t begin until August, so I guess we’ll just have to ask Mr Putin to put his genocide on hold until the raspberries are ripe

26. Then the govt said asylum seekers need to pay a £95 fee and attend an in-person interview at a UK Embassy before being considered

27. And then we moved the Embassy

28. And then randy haystack Boris Johnson said Ukrainians could come here if they have family in the UK

29. But his definition of “family” didn’t include people over 18

30. Or the parents of people over 18

31. Or siblings

32. Not content with that, we then sent Home Office staff to Paris to turn back Ukrainians boarding the Eurostar to London

33. Then Johnson claimed “the UK is way out in front in helping refugees”

34. We offered £40 million aid to Ukraine

35. We also cut their aid to £0 last year

36. But we did shine the Ukrainian flag onto the front of Downing Street, for the virtue signalling fans amongst you

37. The 4000 refugees we grudgingly helped out of Afghanistan last year are still having to survive on £40 a week and living in B&Bs, whilst being legally prevented from working.

38. Not one of them – not one – has had their asylum application completed yet

39. This is mainly because Sauron's gnome Priti Patel has actively gutted our asylum system

40. James Cleverley defended Russians in UK politics, saying “do you think dual nationals should be denied a vote?”

41. He denied a vote to EU dual nationals in the Brexit referendum

42. What else happened since Wed? Oh yes: PartyGate, and Boris Johnson told his cabinet he “wants to give his side of the story” about events

43. Previous versions of his side of the story are now presented in this fun little sub-thread, as if things aren't stressful enough

He has claimed:

a. The parties didn’t happen

b. They did happen but weren’t organised

c. They were organised, but were work events

d. Johnson didn’t know about the work evens

e. Johnson knew, but didn’t attend

f. He attended, but after 25 minutes figured out people drinking booze from a suitcase while a DJ played meant this probably WASN’T a work event

g. He apologised to the Queen for doing something wrong

h. He denied doing anything wrong

i. Then he shouted “Savile” and ran away

44. Anyhooo, back to the main thread: and the latest story is that taxpayer’s money wasn’t used for any of the booze at the "work events"

45. Which means they can’t have been work events, because work events are – complex stuff, but try to keep up, Nadine – PAID FOR BY WORK

46. Leaks from Scotland Yard’s investigation found No 10 drink parties regularly “descended into carnage” with wine sprayed up the walls (won’t somebody think of the wallpaper!)

47. None of this should surprise Sunak, who this week also got questioned by police about attending

48. Hus latest improvements to benefits payments will leave the 9 million poorest people worse off

49. And Tory changes to student loans will cost disadvantaged students the most, but high-earners will “stand to benefit substantially”, quelle surprise

50. The UK faces the biggest fall in living standards since 1950

51. The PM was formally reprimanded for the 2nd time in a month for claiming employment rose 600,000

52. It fell 600,000

53. And he didn’t just lie once. He told the same lie to parliament 7 times in a day

54. The govt abandoned its own health advice on Covid, writing a memo that “public health advice would not be met in NHS or social care”

55.Unsurprisingly a record 400 staff per week are quitting the NHS

56.And care homes in England lost 1600 beds in the last 3 months

57. But at least the names of the companies given £4.9 billion in Covid loans are being kept secret, making it impossible to detect corruption

58. Although we have literally given up on having a minister for tackling corruption, so it’s probably a moot point

59. And finally, a Christian group in the constituency of Born-Again Christian and beta-version humanoid Steve Baker has begun an organised prayer vigil to stop his genocidal opposition to action on climate change

I hope you're doing OK. I hope you're remaining able to laugh at some of this, if not all.

If you're lucky enough to have a spare fiver, can I encourage you to lend a hand to the Red Cross appeal for Ukraine. It's bad here, but ... man alive

donate.redcross.org.uk/appeal/ukraine…

And because I get shouted at by the publisher when I forget to mention it, there's a book coming out which covers - not kidding - about 500 scandals we've barely scratched the surface of

unbound.com/books/the-deca…