Hard power v soft power

Between February and July 2020. the UK Government spent £12.5 billion on 32 billion items of PPE.

THe usual market price for this amount of PPE would have been £2.5 billion. Meaning the UK paid an average of five times the market value for PPE from mostly sources of their friends and backers.

There is so much PPE that the UK have purchased 36 years of it that has a shelf life of just 3 years.

There is so much PPE arriving on these shores, that the port of Felixstowe is being jammed, and so over a thousand freight containers are being moved out to be stored on former airfields across East Anglia, where the multi-coloured stacks rise over hedgerows and ploughed fields.

THere are so many containers, no one can chack them to see if they contain what the UK has bought, or if any of it is any good.

The UK paid all its bills for these.

I mention this as today the Chancellor announced that the overseas aid budget wuld be cut from 0.7% to 0.5% of GDP so that Government could look after our own.

Their own starving children who for over two weeks Ministers and the PM refused to fund meals for the poorest hungry children over Christmas.

Conservatives will think nothing of spending tax-payers money on goods and services from their corporate backers and friends, but support blue collar workers or the poorest and sickest in society? We have to balance the books is the answer.

A 100,000 children will die as a result of the funding cuts according to Save the Children.

Such spending is cut because Conservatives want to be cruel, its what they do. Fund bailouts for corporations and multinationals, but help blue collar workers pay their bills and stop them being evicted? Oh no, there's no money.

Johnson and his Government are choosing to spend money on the military rather than on humanitarian aid, choosing hard power over soft power. It panders to their gammon faced xenophobic support base and polls well. Apparently those who support aid won't vote Conservative, so feed their base red meat.