DOUGLAS Four Jobs Ross would have us believe that he and his party are the authentic voice of working-class Scotland, which would be true if were only talking about that small and diminishing minority of working-class Scotland which likes to dress up in military-style uniforms and march about with Union flags behind a big drum, while singing songs about sticking it to their fellow working-class Scots who happen to be of Irish Catholic heritage. Funnily enough Douglas and his pals don't like to acknowledge that section of their support base, seeing as how it is supposed to be independence supporters who are solely responsible for intolerant and racist nationalism in Scotland.
The rest of working-class Scotland regards the Conservative Party in much the same way that a funeral party views a distant uncle who on news of the death demands a share of the inheritance, helps himself to the silverware and the deceased's antique knick-knacks, then turns up drunk at the cemetery and promptly falls in the open grave - with a mixture of anger, contempt, affrontment, and a desire to disassociate themselves from him and his entitled behaviour as much as possible.
READ MORE: Douglas Ross 'sorry' and reports himself over £28,000 of undeclared salaries
Nevertheless at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester last month, when Douglas was forced to speak in a side room to a fringe meeting because even the Tories didn't want to see him on the main stage, Douglas Ross accused Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP of being "detached from working-class communities", you know, those working-class Scottish communities which vote SNP and not Tory. He went on to claim that the Conservatives are the only party to represent the working classes. Because when we look at Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg or hear the booming tones of Geoffrey Cox with his £6 million extracurricular earnings over the past 16 years, we think how marvellous it is that the Conservative Party is giving such a prominent platform to the authentic working-class experience.
Over the weekend it was reported that Douglas Ross, he who is really in touch with working-class Scotland, at least in his own imagination, managed to forget about £28,000 of annual income over and above his MP salary and failed to declare it on the MPs' register of financial interests. There can't be many working class people who manage to forget about £28,000, but then when you represent a party whose leader once described his own outside earnings of £250,000 a year as "chickenfeed", your concept of what counts as a large sum of money is likely to be rather skewed. £28,000 a year- the money that Douglas Ross claimed he had forgotten about works out at £540 every week, 27 times the £20 per week uplift in Universal Credit which Douglas's party recently voted to strip from some of the poorest and most struggling working-class families.
£20 per week makes a huge difference when every day is a struggle to put food on the table and keep your home heated, but it's a tiny fraction of a weekly income that Douglas Ross can afford to forget that he even has, a forgotten income which all by itself is about the same as the UK average wage. For a man who has claimed that he and his party are the ones who are really in touch with the needs of working-class Scotland, that's a truly epic level of hypocrisy.
Naturally such industrial-scale hypocrisy was all over the Scottish press and the lead story on BBC Scotland, who have been unceasing in their efforts to doorstep the Scottish Conservative leader and demand that he explains just how he is able to be in touch with the experience of working-class Scots when he is able to forget about earnings over and above his MP's salary before expenses of £82,000 a year which is higher than the total annual income of many working class Scottish families.
Nah, of course they haven't. The Scottish media just winks and nods indulgently when it comes to rank Conservative hypocrisy. The story wasn't even mentioned on BBC Scotland's lunchtime news today.
Had it been an SNP or pro-independence politician who had been guilty of such shameless hypocrisy, the story would have been the lead item on Reporting Scotland for the whole week, we'd have Glenn Campbell and Sarah Smith doing their concerned faces as they solemnly told us that the Scottish Government needed to take action. But as it was the Conservatives, coverage of the story was of the blink and you'd miss it kind. The role of the British media in Scotland is to prevent Scotland from getting angry about the true extent of Conservative deceit and duplicity.
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