It was the longest PMQs, possibly ever, at 46 minutes, and time, well time running out, was the theme that dominated the session.
In the UK we are living longer than ever, and Jeremy Corbyn was wondering why the Tories had axed £4.6bn social care funding, to ensure our final years are as miserable as Alf Garnett seeing out the rest of his days in The Gambia.
Local Authorities can now raise additional council taxes to fund elderly social care, but the tax base in Windsor is going to be higher than inner city Liverpool. Additionally the tax hike will put the Jams in even more of a Jam, boom boom (look it’s nearly xmas, I just want to get to the pub and photocopy my genitals in the office stock cupboard like everyone else).
However, even though the plight of old people in the UK is a pressing matter, the time the citizens of Aleppo have on this earth, could be a matter of minutes or even seconds.
MP after MP stood up to ask questions about the plight of Syrians trapped, in an enclave of hell, in Eastern Aleppo. I vehemently opposed military action in Syria when the idea was tabled; more war creates even more war in my opinion, but who can say that was the right decision now? This assault feels more like the destruction of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, than a battle to seize part of a rebel controlled city.
May replied to each question saying that it is in Putin’s hands to stop this massacre. For a man who allegedly engineered Brexit and Trump’s election victory, his hands only know duplicity.
There were no answers to the plight of the elderly in Britain or the people of Aleppo from May, but there was enough time for a bit of union bashing over the Southern Rail strike, as if industrial action at Horsham station was the greatest treachery on show today.
To be fair one MP, Philip Davies, Con, had a solution to the social care crisis. He moaned that the overseas aid budget, should be used to plug the social care gap, he said “charity begins at home,” a delightful phrase only he could manage to make sound like a Hammer Horror character.
The PM dismissed the Vampire of Shipley’s suggestion. She said the way we look after old people in the UK shows we should also take our job around the world seriously. Maybe that is why Aleppo burns, at the same time we can’t get Doris, from Pendle, a regular home visit until February 2017. By that time will she or the people of Eastern Aleppo still require our assistance?
Sycophantic question of the day
For once it was for a good cause and many MPs urged the public to buy the Jo Cox tribute single by the House house band, MP4. However, banging the drum, for a good cause for once, can’t be faulted.
Winner
Peter Dowd, Lab, who asked the PM if the FO to Boris Johnson was an instruction rather than a job offer.