The Cameron Cancer

Would you pay £47.51 for a chicken? Of course not! If the cost of chickens had increased at the same rate the same rate as house rentals over the last 30 years that is what you’d be paying.

A majority of people believe that benefits should be cut, they have swallowed the Tory lies. Housing benefit rose by £1 billion last year and you are lead to believe that it went to the lazy workshy or to single mothers or to drug addicts. In fact 98% went to people who are actually in work! The continuing shortage of housing and landlords greedily ripping off the State are the reasons behind this incredible increase; to cut benefits is to tackle the problem from completely the wrong end.

Cameron’s answer is to compel thousands of our fellow citizens to move hundreds of miles from their homes, their friends and families, and to drag children away from their schools. Under 25′s to be forced to go home to their parents after further education or training rather than starting employment (if they can find any) on low wages because they simply can’t afford a roof over their head. This is the economics of the madhouse.

The arrogance of this extremely wealthy Prime Minister beggars belief, in that he thinks that by kicking away the crutch of a cripple it will make him walk. He cannot countenance the real solution as this would possibly affect his and his rich friends grasp on the national wealth. Embark on a massive house building program which not only employs building workers but also manufacturing by way of the building materials but also every new home will need carpets, curtains, furniture, the list is almost endless, creating even more jobs. Rents to be controlled by law and the National Minimum Wage increased substantially to catch up with what it should be worth. This would also put more of the burden onto employers rather than the tax payers.

It was announced today that government borrowing for the month of May increased by £2 billion more than expected due mainly to lower tax receipts. What the hell do they expect? 2.6 million out of work and 1.4 million in part time work wishing they were in full time employment and therefore not paying any or very little income tax. This regime is a cancer spreading over our land and the only therapy that will work is to cut it out and soon.

Osborne : Liar or Cheat?

Questioned on BBC’s Today programme George Osborne was asked if he would personally benefit from the tax changes on the wealthy he replied that he would be unaffected and implied that he gets less than the £150,000 per year.

According to the best information I can find he has a personal fortune of £4 million. Now either he is lying to the nation or he has engaged in extensive tax evasion or tax avoidance schemes that he is supposedly against. So it would seem that we have as Chancellor of the Exchequer either a liar or a cheat running the finances of our country; surely he should be made to explain himself or better still resign.

Twenty two of the twenty nine cabinet ministers are millionaires so to expect fairness, equality and help for the less well off would be like expecting turkeys to vote for Christmas. Wake up Britain, rise up Britain, we deserve better than this. We need to pay off our debt; not the notional paper monetary debt, because almost every country in the World is in reality bankrupt but the debt of fairness and equality that we owe to ourselves, our children, our grandchildren and generations yet unborn.

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.

Sleeze Alive and Well

Interesting start to the day; I was just doing a little research into David Cameron and came across a nice aerial view of his home in Oxfordshire  valued at around £800,000 and then his London home  at around £1.5million bought with a tax payer funded mortgage of £375,000. In addition he owns a £2.7million pound house in Notting Hill that he rents out for £6000 per month. I was reminded that he is also a slightly distant cousin to the Queen and his father was a wealthy stockbroker.

I linked this sarcastically on my Face Book Wall to “We’re all in this together”! This initiated a selection of humorous remarks such as ‘poor man, he’s not even got a tennis court or swimming pool’. Within minutes The Daily Mail published an item showing that a Tory donor and boss of one of the largest lobbying company’s in the UK, Lord Chadlington, had purchased property and land adjacent to Cameron’s and had sold some of this land to enhance Cameron’s. The Prime Minister did not register this transaction in the MP’s Register of interests claiming that as he paid more than the market rate for the land there was no profit involved. Maybe not at the present moment but as Cameron extends his estate it certainly will in the not so distant future. Nest feathering continues apace.

The sleeze and cronyism goes on while the masses can only write humour on Facebook.

What Do They Expect?

Figures just out report unemployment has risen to the end of November by 49,000 to 2.5million. The number of 16-24 year olds out of work is at the highest level since records began. These figures are just the beginning with the effects of the VAT rise and public sector redundancies yet to come to fruition along with reductions in benefits and pensions.

The current bunch of boys playing at government with their half baked, half thought out ideas appear at first glance to just be idiots but I’m beginning to wonder. The Torys have always liked to have high unemployment as it tends to keep wages at low levels thus creating more wealth for their business compatriots. Changes planned for the Health Service will eventually cost far more than the suggested £3bn but will virtually privatise the NHS with vast profits going to you know who. Education will be similar.

Of course, paying off the necessary debt that the country has, at such a reckless rate will undoubtedly mean that come the next election, in about four years time, there will be quite a bit of cash sloshing around in the nation’s coffers so that ‘the boys’ will feel happy to bribe the electorate with gifts from on high. The expectation being that voters will reward them with re-election. As the public so quickly forgot the eleven out of thirteen years under Labour, of vast improvement in public services and exceptional improvement in living standards it wouldn’t surprise me if the ruse worked.

 

The Tory Plan Comes Together

Ian Duncan Smith is about to unveil plans to force the long term unemployed to do unpaid work. What work you may ask? Well, work that used to be done by people who had ‘proper’ jobs employed by local councils etc but have now been made redundant by the government’s cut backs.

Of course the long term unemployed need encouragement to get back to work if possible but this encouragement should be along the lines of ‘Here’s a job you could do, we’ll arrange an interview.’ This plan of the Tory’s is little short of forced or slave labour given that for a start there are five unemployed people chasing every vacancy and that’s before the cuts really bite. If this is where our country is headed then I’m ashamed to be British and this disgraceful coalition should hang their heads in shame too but I doubt very much it’ll happen.

Social ‘Cleansing’

Under this ideologically driven government, because of changes to the Housing Benefit system, many thousands of tenants will be driven from their homes, their neighbourhoods,  their children from their schools and away from their friends and support networks. In addition many, as a result, will also lose their jobs.

Were all the tenants of similar ethnic backgrounds this would be classed as ‘ethnic cleansing’ and would be illegal under international law and questions would be raised in the United Nations and most likely sanctions imposed on the UK.  The tenants though are not all similar only sharing the inability to pay criminally high rents. They will be forced to move to the outer suburbs, assuming that accommodation there is available, thus leaving their old homes for the wealthy. This is surely ‘Social Cleansing’ which to our ever lasting shame is ‘legal’. In addition no mention has been made of the costs of moving; credit reference checks, deposits, carpets, curtains etc and the actual cost of removal. These additional burdens to placed on people of low income.

Yes I can see that some housing benefit costs are ludicrously high and unsustainable but putting the blame on the tenants is like blaming the victim of a mugger for being in that particular street at that particular time of the day.

So what could be done in ‘fairness’, that much abused word of late? Cap the current rent as it is and leave the tenants where they are. When they move or die then bring in the Housing Benefit level at that proposed, for new tenancies.  If the landlords don’t like it, let them squirm or threaten them with compulsory purchase at the lowest national rate. The real problem though is of course a lack of affordable housing. A large and sustained building programme should be embarked upon to house the 1.8 million on housing waiting lists and this would also create thousands of jobs not only in building but in manufacturing and the service sector. The only problem of course is that Conservatives are also capitalists through and through and capitalism depends on a pool of unemployed to keep wages down and a housing shortage to keep those prices up and so increase profits.

 

Trident Replacement

This new government is quite obviously incapable of thinking things through as can be seen by the Child Benefit debacle but they have excelled themselves on Trident.

Liam Fox has just announced that they will be replacing the Trident nuclear missile system at a cost of £20bn. Yes £20bn at a time when we are told there are huge cutbacks in social services to be made. We all know as well that a government estimate for cost usually doubles particularly when it comes to defence spending.

Even the most fevered mind would be hard put to come up with a scenario in which a British Prime Minister would actually give the order to destroy 10′s of millions of people. As for being an independent system everyone knows that it depends entirely on the USA for the missiles and for the guidance system that can be switched off at any time. Even the regular refurbishment of the nuclear warhead carried out at Aldermaston is done by an American owned company.

Apart from France no other mainland European country has these weapons; are they all shaking in their boots because they haven’t got some? I suggest not, they are spending their £20bn plus on better lives for their citizens.

Finally this decision  is nothing more than encouragement to countries, like Iran, to develop their own nuclear capability on the grounds that if Britain says that they are essential for it’s defence then it must also be essential for theirs. There was an acronym for this idea during the cold war; MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. The madness goes on.

HM Department of Loan Sharks

The Dept of Work & Pensions under Iain Duncan Smith (IDS) is today announcing a loan ‘service’ for the poor and vulnerable in our society. (Let’s ignore for a moment whether in the 21st Century there should still ‘poor & vulnerable and that an earlier Tory had said ‘there is no such thing as Society’)

This scheme called My Home Finance is supposed to protect people who are in dire straits from the clutches of loan sharks who charge exorbitant rates of interest often backed up with threats of violence.  From this perspective it’s a good idea. The scheme though, when rolled out nationwide, will be charging 49.9% interest! At a time when the Bank of England Rate is 0.5% and credit card companies are offering around 12% and Credit Unions are prohibited by law from charging more than 26.8% but usually charge less, I would call this Government scheme Loan Sharking.

If further proof were needed that this Con/Dem coalition is intent on fleecing the poor to pay for the capitalist excesses you must be very difficult to convince.

‘Do’ God!

It’s a funny twisted world of politics we have to survive in isn’t it? Baroness Warsi the Chair of the Tory Party and herself a Muslim (no bias here then) has said that the coalition “does God” unlike the Labour Party. She said that ‘Labour acted as if faith was confined to “oddities, foreigners and minorities’.

Hmm! Interesting! Let’s have a closer look. There’s quite a few ‘odd’ faiths around, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons spring easily to mind. ‘Foreigners’ and their offspring make up a large proportion of the Eastern faiths along with Catholics from Eastern Europe. Figures also show that less than 10% of our population regularly attend a church, mosque, synagogue etc so that is definitely a ‘minority’. QED

Tony Blair despite being as close to a war criminal as you can get without being convicted, is a ‘devout’ Christian and a convert to Roman Catholicism. On the other hand David Cameron said his faith “is a bit like the reception for Magic FM in the Chilterns, it sort of comes and goes”. Nick Clegg is an atheist.

One can’t help but wonder if the coalition ‘does God’ because the ‘Big Society’ will require unpaid volunteers and the religions are always keen to get involved as a way of peddling their beliefs.