Skip to main content

Manufacturing dissent: welcome to the political excesses of the election campaign

Rishi Sunak is so palpably convinced he can’t win he’s promising any old mad thing. Meanwhile, the Lib Dems are falling off kayaks

People say manufacturing has declined under the Conservatives, but the sheer volume of outrage manufactured by Rishi Sunak’s national service wingnuttery at the weekend was last night compounded by his decision to unveil a quadruple lock to the state pension. Truly the seven-blade razor of advanced pensions technology. It’s so innovative it might even spin off and manufacture another deranged Loose Women segment. I am still howling at the moment on the show a couple of weeks ago when Janet Street-Porter demanded of Sunak: “Why do you hate pensioners? WHY DO YOU HATE PENSIONERS? That is the only conclusion I can come to.” State of the art lunacy, made end-to-end in the UK. Let’s face it: this is what you call a joined-up manufacturing industry.

But look, for whatever reason, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves preferred to spend their afternoon at a facility where they manufacture something other than abstract nouns: Airbus Defence and Space in Stevenage. A lot of election campaign visits are to places connected with jobs the politician probably wanted to do when they were little. Digger driver. Train driver. Biscuit factory worker. Today’s broadly fell into the category “spaceman”. Airbus are serious manufacturers in aerospace and defence, and recently won a new contract to maintain the Skynet military satellite system (although, I obviously massively misunderstood the movies because I hadn’t realised we were supposed to think calling things Skynet was cool?).

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/f2UGHls
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Guardian view on Covid-19, five years on: lessons still to be learned | Editorial

Though many would rather forget the pandemic, we are living with its consequences. Are we any better prepared for the next one? “When asked what was the biggest disaster of the twentieth century, almost nobody answers the Spanish flu,” notes Laura Spinney in her book Pale Rider, of an event that killed as many as one in 20 of the global population. “There is no cenotaph, no monument in London, Moscow or Washington DC.” Most of us will better understand that absence after Covid-19 , which was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization five years ago this week. Some cannot put those events behind them: most obviously, many of those bereaved by the 7 million deaths worldwide (not including those indirectly caused by the pandemic ), and the significant numbers still living with long Covid . Others want to forget the loss of loved ones, the months of isolation and the costs to businesses, families and mental health. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? I...
Post a Comment
Read more