A Week in Parliament

Donald Trump

It’s often said Donald Trump is the most dangerous man in the world due to the fact he controls the trigger to the United States’ nuclear weapons. It turns out he is the most dangerous man in the world because he says ridiculously stupid things that carry weight and media attention because he is the President of the US. This has become more evident during the Coronavirus pandemic – recently he was encouraging people to take part in demonstrations to lift the lockdown. The states he encouraged these protests were controlled by Democrat Governors proves how sinister that is. But the other daft aspect is he was encouraging his own supporters to gather together and risk catching Covid-19.

Then to top matters off, he suggested an injection of disinfectant into humans was a good way to consider getting of the virus “within a minute or so”. You know things are bad, when bleach companies then felt obliged to warn people not to try injection or drinking of their products. Trump’s follow ups were no better – wash your hands in bleach and then the classic backtracking of stating he was only joking/using sarcasm. Here in the UK, Boris Johnson has clearly had a forced absence due to his own contraction of Covid-19 and his need to recover. However, it would be hard to argue against the premise that Nicola Sturgeon has shown real leadership in Scotland and been a true statesperson in the daily briefings. When you look across the Atlantic, you really do know we are lucky in that aspect.

 That Homeworking Fund

The Standard’s online headline was “Alan Brown MP opts to use £10,000 coronavirus grant for home working”. I think it’s fair to say the headline suggests I used £10,000 which I haven’t (The Standard did ask for confirmation of how much I had used but I didn’t think it was necessary to disclose figures at that time). Also, it is titled a grant which isn’t true either. It’s a contingency fund to support measures deemed necessary to facilitate homeworking and therefore any unused money remains with the authorities. The official UK and Scottish Government advice is all companies are to take the necessary steps to facilitate homeworking where possible. It would be bizarre if I couldn’t do likewise for my office. One other aspect is by not travelling to London, the savings for this will offset expenditure to date. I can also guarantee any purchase will still be a valuable office asset for the remainder of my term.

I have always said journalistic integrity and newspaper income should be detached, and this was something ably demonstrated by The Standard – while the story was running, I was offered a special deal on how to advertise my office contact details in the paper. Incidentally I chose to do so to remind people we are here to help, although with the number of enquiries we have had, people do recognise this. Separately Covid-19 has clearly been a difficult time for newspapers and there’s no doubt local newspapers are vital so hopefully they will all come through.