Benefits – Wrong Cuts
The Bishops .in particular, in the House of Lords are speaking out against the proposed Welfare benefit cuts and putting aside the fact that Bishops are un-elected and should have no place in our law making process, they are right to do so.
Yes there is a problem with too much being paid out but this is not the fault of the claimants at whom the government likes to point the finger of blame. As usual governments and particularly Tory ones, wear blinkers and always react by hitting the weakest hardest rather than looking more deeply into a problem. Stopping just short of naming them as ‘scroungers’ ministers speak of them as ‘getting’ £25000, £35000 + per year but let’s just pause and think for a moment. Who is actually ‘getting’ this largesse? A not uncommon rent in London and other large cities could be £300 per week which equates to nearly £16,000 in a year and this goes to Landlords who are generally investment companies and rich individuals taking advantage of a cronic housing shortage and the, so far, willingness of the welfare system to keep paying. It is the Landlords who are ‘getting’ the payouts not the claimants.
Tackle the greed of landlords, tackle the housing shortage and there will be no need to uproot people, to risk family breakdown and impose intolerable stress on individuals. These proposals should be fought with as much vigor as was the Poll Tax but I doubt it will happen. The Poll Tax affected everyone, these proposals affect only a weak and demonised minority.
Freethinkeruk's Weblog 
I agree with all you say my friend except about the Bishops – I believe it is good they are there. If a lot of those in the Commons had their way, the whole Upper House would be elected the same as the Commons and then they could get their cronies in more easily and we would be getting closer to a Dictatorship. At least the Bishops and a lot of the hereditary Lords care about the Rights of the population in general.
I actually (partially) agree that some of the Bishops and others do a really good job in The Lords but they are not elected! It’s not the fact that they are pedlars of religion, simply that they are not elected by the people. No one but no one should be in a position of power to make or amend laws that govern us without our consent.
The absence of democracy is what can lead to a dictatorship and if we, the electorate, do not want any political cronies in a second chamber or indeed in the Commons, then don’t vote for them. The same would apply if we had a democratically elected head of state rather than the first born from just one family in the land, if we didn’t want a Tony Blair or a Thatcher, don’t vote for them.
So how did we get into this mess having ‘voted for’ the bunch that are in the Commons?
Exactly! We got what the electorate voted for but there was a choice. The voters have very short memories and very easily swallowed Tory misinformation. They forgot what a terrible state our hospitals and schools were in when Labour took over from Cons and how vastly improved they became over 13 years. They forgot how unemployment was comparatively low and child poverty was steadily decreasing. They also ignored the fact that the financial crisis we found ourselves was not caused by the Labour Government but was a global event and one which Gordon Brown, for all his faults, helped to mitigate.
The voters chose to believe the Tory line that immediate and massive cuts, mainly targeted at the poor, was the answer, they didn’t see beyond the rhetoric and recognise that this meant not just attacking the weak and relatively powerless but also those employed in higher paid jobs. They forgot that Torys always look after the rich and powerful and that they always have high unemployment to keep salaries and wages down to increase company dividends and line their own pockets.
That, as we know to our cost, is what electors voted for but that is democracy. The alternative to democracy is a dictatorship and I can’t think of even one benign dictator.
The problem is getting the message through to those sad people who didn’t vote. Too many people think, “It’s not my problem; my vote won’t make any difference.” Too many read the biased views supplied by the ‘tabloid’ press – The Sun, etc – and don’t really work out what they can do about the situation.
The main question is, how can they be persuaded to get off their moaning little bottoms and speak up.