Fuck the Tories

[AhabsOtherLeg]

And Gordon Brown ... the fact that he forgot he is still paid to represent the plebs proves that he is indeed a politician to the bone. (To be fair, though, it is the kind of thing that's easy to forget at an International Conference on Innovation in Qatar.)

May the Laird forgive me, I am beginning to distrust Democracy.

Gordon Brown has good reason to forget. He has spent twenty years failing to deal with a serious MoD-related radiation crisis in his constituency.



That fellow in the video, Andrew Robathan, was briefly the Tory Secretary of Defence in the present government.

He got fired after publically slagging off the men who worked (and died, in large numbers) on the Arctic convoys during WW2. Apparently they did not deserve any medals for working (and dying, in large numbers) on the Arctic convoys, because that would be like giving away medals to North Korean generals, or like Colonel Gadaffi giving out awards just for the sake of it. Seriously.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ddafi.html

[MacCruiskeen]

This is that increasingly rare thing, a non-trivial article in the Guardian. What Polly Toynbee is describing here is an implacably fascist mindset at work.

I could as easily have posted this article in the Scottish Independence thread or the Revolution-Now thread. It repays close reading. I've resisted the strong temptation to bold-type & underline about every second sentence in it.

Best read at source for the numerous embedded links (and for the comments).

Iain Duncan Smith's second epiphany: from compassion to brutality

I've seen his benefit sanctions inflict misery on places like Easterhouse, where poverty made him weep a decade ago

Polly Toynbee, Glasgow
The Guardian, Friday 8 November 2013

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... asterhouse

Jump to comments (635)


Iain Duncan Smith visiting Easterhouse in 2002: 'In Easterhouse, as everywhere, the bedroom tax causes mayhem. There are no one-bedroom homes, so £14 or £25 cuts to benefit are widespread among many with spare rooms.' Photograph: Murdo Macleod

In Easterhouse this walk has become a Via Dolorosa, a path trod regularly by visiting journalists and TV crews seeking the sacred spot where Iain Duncan Smith (nearly) wept in epiphany a decade ago. It sickens the locals, groaning when yet another visitor asks the way. The picturesque boarded-up Glasgow tenement, where Duncan Smith was photographed looking stricken, was already condemned, and long ago replaced under Labour's Decent Homes programme. But life behind front doors took a desperate turn for the worse, largely due to the man who underwent a Damascene conversion here – only to undergo a reverse conversion later.

Bob Holman, the 76-year-old lifelong community organiser who founded Fare – a celebrated community centre staffed mainly by unemployed volunteers – was touched by Duncan Smith's conversion: "I thought him a decent man" – perhaps misled into trusting a fellow Christian.

Tim Montgomerie, founder of ConservativeHome and now the Times comment editor, arranged that visit as Duncan Smith's adviser. When Holman asked why, he was told: "We're interested in compassionate Conservatism." Later Holman was asked to speak on poverty at the Conservative party conference. In return Holman invited IDS to speak at Labour's 2005 conference, where the ex-Tory leader called Labour's poverty measure inadequate, saying: "Everyone should have enough money to live properly in their community."

What happened? "He wept at the plight of the poor, yet now hands out punishments that must bring tears to their eyes," Holman says. Duncan Smith once called Holman "a living saint", and indeed he has an air of gentle naivety, not bitter but disappointed – convinced that he was not duped, but that IDS was seduced by power.

Now Holman is outraged at the suffering he sees as deliberately inflicted by his erstwhile friend. This week emerged the long-delayed figures for people "sanctioned", their benefits withdrawn under a tightened screw. I have visited food banks, Citizens Advice bureaux and social fund offices from Stoke to Leeds: everyone says the same – of the people reduced to penury and starvation, most are those whose benefit is delayed or withdrawn. The 580,000 sanctions between October and June, hailed by the government as ending a "something for nothing culture", removed anyone deemed not trying hard enough to find work.

The numbers vanishing from the unemployment register hugely improves the apparent tally of those finding work. In the last three months the government boasts of 120,000 fewer unemployed claimants, in contrast with the much larger numbers shown in the internationally recognised labour force survey of numbers wanting work. Those in work have undoubtedly risen, but knocking people off the claimant count is a win-win for Duncan Smith, who can pretend that all who have left the register are working, although many are now queueing at food banks.

Holman, Fare and the local Citizens Advice know who is knocked off benefits and why. There is the man with acute psychosis from a background of extreme abuse (for which his stepfather is in prison) who was declared fit for work, found a job he couldn't cope with and was cut off benefit for six months when he dropped out. A 50-year-old was struck off when told to apply for 10 jobs a week online but, barely literate, he couldn't use a computer.

Behind the scenes, Duncan Smith's sanctions cause a special kind of hell for jobcentre staff, mostly decent people. A regular "deep throat" correspondent describes the work: "You park your conscience at the door," he tells me. "Sanctions are applied for anything at all to hit the targets."

Many claimants don't know what's happened until their benefit suddenly stops. Many are semi-literate or have bad English: "It's very easy to hand someone two sheets of A4 and get them to 'agree' to 50 'steps' towards work and then sanction them when they don't even know what a 'step' is. The claim is shut down for two weeks and sanctioned for two weeks, so the person disappears from the figures."

People are often sanctioned for a no-show at appointments they never knew about. If they call to rearrange an appointment, "we don't answer the phones, so that's a bit tricky". A flowchart on the wall shows how to raise a successful sanction.

If advisers often find "good cause" not to sanction the vulnerable, at monthly performance reviews their managers "examine our sanction-raising figures" against an "expectation" of how many should be cut off. A "PIP" (personal improvement plan) for each member of staff detects low sanctioners and "manages them out" of their jobs.

Someone with a disability who is knocked off employment support allowance can reclaim while awaiting an appeal. "But we are explicitly forbidden from telling them that – in black and white in the briefing pack – so these often very ill, quite confused and low-capability people are easy meat."

Here's another perversity in this brutal system: advisers are so busy knocking off easy, vulnerable cases that they have no time to chase up devious criminal gangs and fraudsters who take longer to catch. Meanwhile, out of fear or confusion, and faced with a 55-page online application form, many stop trying to claim, only to have Duncan Smith pretend they must be cheats who have been chased away.

In Easterhouse, as everywhere, the bedroom tax causes mayhem. There are no one-bedroom homes, so £14 or £25 cuts to benefit are widespread among many with spare rooms. Labour has called a full-day debate in the Commons next Tuesday: every Labour MP should give testimony from their constituency, as should all Lib Dem and Tory MPs who see the evidence in their own surgeries. Outside, there will be a lobby of parliament. Rachel Reeves, Labour's shadow work and pensions secretary, is calling on people to join in, details here from campaigner Sue Marsh's blog.

Duncan Smith invents figures, defying even the UK Statistics Authority's rebukes. His Centre for Social Justice churns out reports that blame poverty on the poor and their failure to marry, while all his own policies are in crisis. This week universal credit was blasted by the Commons public accounts committee, while Deloitte is bailing out of his Work Programme. Easterhouse is left asking: what second epiphany led him to cut £23bn from children, the sick and the unemployed, shrinking their incomes by a quarter?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... asterhouse

[MacCruiskeen]

Jeremy Paxman annoys the Tories:

Furious No10 demands apology from Jeremy Paxman for calling David Cameron a 'complete idiot' over plans for World War One centenary

- Prime Minister called for a 'WWI commemoration like the Diamond Jubilee'
- 63-year-old Newsnight presenter dismissed proposal as 'clumsy language'
- Tory MP Rob Wilson wrote to BBC director Lord Hall demanding apology

By GLEN OWEN

PUBLISHED: 23:43 GMT, 9 November 2013 | UPDATED: 10:46 GMT, 10 November 2013

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z2kG15z000


Attack: Jeremy Paxman told The Graham Norton Show 'only idiots would celebrate calamity'


Downing Street is demanding a ‘full and public apology’ from the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman for calling the Prime Minister a ‘complete idiot’ over his plans for the First World War centenary.

The extraordinary public spat has erupted after the Newsnight presenter claimed Mr Cameron had likened the commemorations to last year’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

Mr Paxman incensed No10 when he told BBC chat show host Graham Norton last week he was ‘troubled’ by Mr Cameron ‘talking about how millions of pounds were going to be spent marking this anniversary’ and the fact that he had ‘compared it with the celebrations for the Diamond Jubilee’.

Mr Paxman said: ‘Therefore people get the idea that somehow this is going to be celebrated. Well, only a complete idiot would celebrate such a calamity.

'Three quarters of a million men never came back to this country.

'Millions of men served. Millions of men were wounded mentally and physically. No one would celebrate that. It was just Cameron’s clumsy use of language.’

Now a Downing Street aide, Tory MP Rob Wilson has written to BBC Director-General Lord Hall to demand an apology from the 63-year-old BBC veteran.

[...]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... enary.html

Seriously, that interview with Brand has clearly had an effect on Paxman, a rejuvenating effect. Things are finally starting to move.

Paxman: Brand was right over public's disgust at 'tawdry pretences' of politics

Newsnight presenter, who berated Russell Brand for never voting, admits 'green-bench pantomime' also stopped him once

John Plunkett, The Guardian, Tuesday 5 November 2013

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/n ... and-voting

[peartreed]

To bks regarding your October 31 post here that Mac proudly reposted to RI Quotes:

While you might condone and rationalize your three-year-old son’s use of obscenity that he learned from you to express his frustration, I wouldn’t tolerate it. While you assert that obscenity doesn’t damage children’s sensibilities, I contend it unnecessarily taints an innocent and will continue to offend others’ social sensibilities hearing it, especially from a toddler. It also invites shock, unkind harsh judgment and pejorative labels. Why expose your son to that?

Outrage, frustration and emotion can be expressed as effectively without resorting to obscenities. Ahab’s quote of Churchill illustrates that in your own argument. He didn’t demean himself to the level of his adversaries in debate. The absence of obscenity as “punctuation” doesn’t tone down outrage, it merely confines vile language to the gutter where it belongs. None need to coat themselves and their words with it.

Your contention that context condones obscenity is common, all too common. And that is precisely the inherent shame of it. We all need to reach for higher standards in our conduct.

At least Billy Connolly confines his cussing to the context of his comedy act where adult audiences expect it.

I’m going to take a break from this playground while the taggers continue to deface it with obscene spray and then admire their own ghetto day glow of ugly gratuitous graffiti.

[JackRiddler]

I’m going to take a break from this playground while the taggers continue to deface it with obscene spray and then admire their own ghetto day glow of ugly gratuitous graffiti.

I think that's an unfortunate response.

[gnosticheresy_2]

To bks regarding your October 31 post here that Mac proudly reposted to RI Quotes:

While you might condone and rationalize your three-year-old son’s use of obscenity that he learned from you to express his frustration, I wouldn’t tolerate it. While you assert that obscenity doesn’t damage children’s sensibilities, I contend it unnecessarily taints an innocent and will continue to offend others’ social sensibilities hearing it, especially from a toddler. It also invites shock, unkind harsh judgment and pejorative labels. Why expose your son to that?

Outrage, frustration and emotion can be expressed as effectively without resorting to obscenities. Ahab’s quote of Churchill illustrates that in your own argument. He didn’t demean himself to the level of his adversaries in debate. The absence of obscenity as “punctuation” doesn’t tone down outrage, it merely confines vile language to the gutter where it belongs. None need to coat themselves and their words with it.

Your contention that context condones obscenity is common, all too common. And that is precisely the inherent shame of it. We all need to reach for higher standards in our conduct.

At least Billy Connolly confines his cussing to the context of his comedy act where adult audiences expect it.

I’m going to take a break from this playground while the taggers continue to deface it with obscene spray and then admire their own ghetto day glow of ugly gratuitous graffiti.

lol @ "the gutter". I'm fine down here with the rest of the plebs thankyew. Down here with our low standards, "coating" myself with "obscene spray" in the "ghetto"

[MacCruiskeen]

This is it, the pretence is over.

- And by the way, peartreed: this is personal, too: my very young nieces and nephews are among the millions who are going to suffer the obscene consequences of all this, for their entire lives, unless there is a revolution, or at least independence for Scotland. I myself am lucky enough not to have to live in Great Britain.

David Cameron makes leaner state a permanent goal

PM reverses 2010 claim that he was imposing cuts out of necessity in speech that calls for permanently reduced state spending

Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent
The Guardian, Tuesday 12 November 2013
Jump to comments (1744)



David Cameron delivers a speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet at Guildhall in London, revealing permanent government plans for lower spending. In 2010 he claimed austerity measures were only to reduce the deficit. Photograph: Tal Cohen/EPA

The government is to forge a "leaner, more efficient state" on a permanent basis, David Cameron has said as he signalled he had no intention of resuming spending once the structural deficit has been eliminated, a clear change to claims made after the last general election.

In a change of tack from saying in 2010 that he was imposing cuts out of necessity, rather than from "some ideological zeal", the prime minister told the Lord Mayor's banquet that the government has shown in the last three years that better services can be delivered with lower spending.

Cameron said that the government would press ahead with tackling the deficit after cutting it by a third. But he made clear that his party intended to go further.

"We are sticking to the task. But that doesn't just mean making difficult decisions on public spending. It also means something more profound. It means building a leaner, more efficient state. We need to do more with less. Not just now, but permanently."

[...]

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... ient-state

"Leaner state"... "more efficient" ... To the obscenity of all this, including the obscenity (and obscene mendacity) of its language, peartreed has not the slightest objection. For peartreed has other priorities.

[MacCruiskeen]

[MacCruiskeen]

Conservatives 'attempt to delete record of all party speeches from internet'

GAVIN CORDON The Independent, Wednesday 13 November 2013

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 37435.html

The Conservatives have attempted to erase from the internet a record of all party speeches given in the decade before they came to power, it has been reported.

Computer Weekly said the party had not only removed its archive of speeches and press releases from 2000 to its election in May 2010 from its own website, it had also struck them from the record of search engines such as Google.

The party was said to have used a robot blocker to force the Internet Archive - described as the public record of the web - to remove the entire record of speeches and news it had collected in 1,158 snapshots from the Conservatives' website since May 1999.

The magazine said: "The erasure had the effect of hiding Conservative speeches in a secretive corner of the internet like those that shelter the military, secret services, gangsters and paedophiles."

Computer Weekly said that since it had raised the issue with the San Francisco-based Internet Archive, some speeches had re-appeared on the site.

A party spokesman said that it wanted to keep its website as easy to use as possible.

"We're making sure our website keeps the Conservative Party at the forefront of political campaigning," the spokesman said in a statement.

"These changes allow people to quickly and easily access the most important information we provide - how we are clearing up Labour's economic mess, taking the difficult decisions and standing up for hardworking people."

However Labour former deputy prime minister, Lord Prescott, accused the Tories of hiding details of past pronouncements so they could not be held to account.

"How do Tories stop being accused of breaking election promises? By DELETING all pre 2010 speeches & press releases!" he wrote on his Twitter feed.

PA

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 37435.html

"He who controls the past..."

They are trying to hide their history because it proves them to be deliberate & calculating liars.

George Eaton responds with admirable speed in today's New Statesman:

The pre-election pledges that the Tories are trying to wipe from the internet

"No frontline cuts", "no top-down NHS reorganisations", "no VAT rise" - why the Conservatives are trying to erase all pre-May 2010 speeches and press releases from the internet.

BY GEORGE EATON PUBLISHED 13 NOVEMBER 2013 13:59

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/20 ... e-internet


David Cameron speaks at a Cameron Direct Q&A session at the Royal Bath and West Show on May 27, 2009. Photograph: Getty Images.

As I reported earlier, the Tories have attempted to erase all pre-May 2010 press releases and speeches from the internet, but what could they possibly have to hide? Here are some suggestions.

1. No cuts to front-line services

As remarkable as it may seem, David Cameron told Andrew Marr the weekend before the general election that a Conservative government would not cut any front-line services.

What I can tell you is, any cabinet minister, if I win the election, who comes to me and says: "Here are my plans," and they involve front-line reductions, they'll be sent straight back to their department to go away and think again. After 13 years of Labour, there is a lot of wasteful spending, a lot of money that doesn't reach the front line.
Since then, 5,870 NHS nurses, 7,968 hospital beds, a third of ambulance stations, 5,362 firefighters and 6,800 frontline police officers have been cut.

2. "We have absolutely no plans to raise VAT"

In an interview with Jeremy Paxman on 23 April 2010, Cameron said: "We have absolutely no plans to raise VAT. Our first Budget is all about recognising we need to get spending under control rather than putting up tax."

VAT was subsequently raised from 17.5 per cent to a record high of 20 per cent in George Osborne's emergency Budget.

3. Cameron on child benefit: "I wouldn't means-test it"

At a pre-election Cameron Direct event, the Tory leader issued this "read my lips" pledge: "I'm not going to flannel you, I'm going to give it to you straight. I like the child benefit, I wouldn't change child benefit, I wouldn't means-test it, I don't think that is a good idea." The coalition went on to abolish the benefit for higher earners in the Spending Review and froze it for three years.

4. NHS: "no more top-down reorganisations"

Perhaps most infamously, the Conservatives repeatedly promised before the general election that there would be no more "top-down reorganisations" of the NHS (Andrew Lansley, Conservative Party press release, 11 July 2007). In a speech at the Royal College of Pathologists on 2 November 2009, Cameron said: "With the Conservatives there will be no more of the tiresome, meddlesome, top-down re-structures that have dominated the last decade of the NHS."

In his 2006 Conservative conference speech, he said: "So I make this commitment to the NHS and all who work in it. No more pointless reorganisations."

The coalition went on to launch the biggest top-down reorganisation of the service in its history.

5. On Education Maintenance Allowances: "we don't have any plans to get rid of them"

At a Cameron Direct event in January 2010, Cameron said: "We've looked at educational maintenance allowances and we haven't announced any plan to get rid of them." Challenged to firm up his pledge, he added: "I said we don't have any plans to get rid of them . . . it's one of those things the Labour Party keep putting out that we are but we're not."

Nine months later, the coalition announced the abolition of EMA, which paid up to £30 a week to 16-to-18-years-olds living in households whose income is less than £30,800 a year, in the Spending Review.

6. Cameron on Sure Start: "Yes, we back Sure Start. It's a disgrace that Gordon Brown has been trying to frighten people about this."

The day before the general election, Cameron pledged to protect Sure Start, the network of children's centres founded by the last Labour government.

Asked for a guarantee that the centres would continue to receive funding, he replied: "Yes, we back Sure Start. It's a disgrace that Gordon Brown has been trying to frighten people about this. He's the prime minister of this country but he's been scaring people about something that really matters."

In his 2009 Conservative conference speech, he said: "It’s also about emotional support, particularly in those fraught early years before children go to school. Labour understood this and we should acknowledge that. That’s why Sure Start will stay, and we’ll improve it."

Since then, 566 of the centres have been closed, with over half of those still open no longer providing any onsite childcare.

7. On the Future Jobs Fund: "no plans to change"

In March 2010, Cameron praised the Future Jobs Fund as a "good scheme" and said the Conservatives had "no plans to change existing Future Jobs Fund commitments". On 24 May 2010, the coalition announced its abolition (only for a subsequent Department for Work and Pensions study to show that it had been an unambiguous success, with a net benefit to the economy of £7,750 per participant) and replaced it with the ineffective Work Programme, later found to be "worse than doing nothing".

8. Cameron on green taxes: "[they] need to go up"

While recently pledging to "roll-back" green taxes, Cameron took a very different line during his early hug-a husky phase. On 29 October 2006 he told the BBC's Politics Show: "I think green taxes as a whole need to go up". He also told Newsnight on 3 October: "We’ve said publicly, we’ve committed that we think green taxes should take a bigger share of overall taxes."

In a speech at the Tories' local election launch on 17 April 2008, he said: "Our message in this local election campaign is simple: vote blue, go green - and save money. It's been our campaign slogan for the last three elections. Why? Because it goes to the heart of what Conservatives believe. And because that's the kind of change people really want."

9. Osborne on bank bonuses: "totally unacceptable"

In an interview with the Guardian published on 14 August 2009, George Osborne said: "It is totally unacceptable for bank bonuses to be paid on the back of taxpayer guarantees. It must stop."

Not only did he fail to keep his pledge to ban bonuses at state-owned banks, he is now taking legal action against the EU commission over its plan to cap payments.

10. And finally...Cameron on transparency in 2007

"It's clear to me that political leaders will have to learn to let go. Let go of the information that we've guarded so jealously."

Speech at Google Zeitgeist Conference, 11 October 2007

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/20 ... e-internet

[conniption]

[coffin_dodger]

We should be humbly thanking the super-rich, not bashing them
Boris Johnson Lord Mayor of London 17 Nov 2013 The Telegraph

The great thing about being Mayor of London is you get to meet all sorts. It is my duty to stick up for every put-upon minority in the city – from the homeless to Irish travellers to ex-gang members to disgraced former MPs. After five years of slog, I have a fair idea where everyone is coming from.

But there is one minority that I still behold with a benign bewilderment, and that is the very, very rich. I mean people who have so much money they can fly by private jet, and who have gin palaces moored in Puerto Banus, and who give their kids McLaren supercars for their 18th birthdays and scour the pages of the FT’s “How to Spend It” magazine for jewel-encrusted Cartier collars for their dogs.

I am thinking of the type of people who never wear the same shirt twice, even though they shop in Jermyn Street, and who have other people almost everywhere to do their bidding: people to drive their cars and people to pick up their socks and people to rub their temples with eau de cologne and people to bid for the Munch etching at Christie’s.

Please don’t get me wrong. I neither resent nor disapprove of such zillionaires; quite the reverse. I just wonder, a bit, what it is like to be so stonkingly rich, and I wonder – as the rest of us have wondered down the ages – whether you can really expect to be any happier for having so much dosh.

I suspect that the answer, as Solon pointed out to Croesus, is not really, frankly; or no happier than the man with just enough to live on. If that is the case, and it really is true that having stupendous sums of money is very far from the same as being happy, then surely we should stop bashing the rich.

On the contrary, the latest data suggest that we should be offering them humble and hearty thanks. It is through their restless concupiscent energy and sheer wealth-creating dynamism that we pay for an ever-growing proportion of public services. The top one per cent of earners now pay 29.8 per cent of all the income tax and National Insurance received by the Treasury. In 1979 – when Labour had a top marginal rate of 83 per cent tax after Denis Healey had earlier vowed to squeeze the rich until the pips squeaked – the top one per cent paid only 11 per cent of income tax. Now, the top 0.1 per cent – about 29,000 people – pay an amazing 14.1 per cent of all taxes.

Nor, of course, is that the end of their contribution to the wider good. These types of people are always the first target of the charity fund-raisers, whether they are looking for a new church roof or a children’s cancer ward. These are the people who put bread on the tables of families who – if the rich didn’t invest in supercars and employ eau de cologne-dabbers – might otherwise find themselves without a breadwinner. And yet they are brow-beaten and bullied and threatened with new taxes, by everyone from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Nick Clegg.

The rich are resented, not so much for being rich, but for getting ever richer than the middle classes – and the trouble is that the gap is growing the whole time, and especially has done over the past 20 years. It is hard to say exactly why this is, but I will hazard a guess. Of all the self-made super-rich tycoons I have met, most belong to the following three fairly exclusive categories of human being:

(1) They tend to be well above average, if not outstanding, in their powers of mathematical, scientific or at least logical reasoning. (2) They have a great deal of energy, confidence, risk-taking instinct and a desire to make money. (3) They have had the good fortune – by luck or birth – to be able to exploit these talents.

So we are talking about the intersecting set in what are already three small-ish sets of people. It is easy to see how, in an ever more efficient and globalised economy, they are able to amass ever greater fortunes.

The answer is surely not to try to stop them or curb them or punish them – but to widen those intersecting circles that they inhabit. There are kids everywhere who have a natural, if undiscovered, flair for mathematics and the mental arithmetic that business needs. They just don’t have the education to bring out that talent – which is why Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, is so right to be conducting his revolution in schools.

There are loads of kids with the chutzpah to be kings of the deal, and there are plenty of businesses that could be the billion-pound companies of the future but are currently being held back – either by the weediness of the venture capital industry in this country, or else by something as simple as excessive business rates – the single biggest issue that is raised with me by London businesses.

There is no point in wasting any more moral or mental energy in being jealous of the very rich. They are no happier than anyone else; they just have more money. We shouldn’t bother ourselves about why they want all this money, or why it is nicer to have a bath with gold taps. How does it hurt me, with my 20-year-old Toyota, if somebody else has a swish Mercedes? We both get stuck in the same traffic.

We should be helping all those who can to join the ranks of the super-rich, and we should stop any bashing or moaning or preaching or bitching and simply give thanks for the prodigious sums of money that they are contributing to the tax revenues of this country, and that enable us to look after our sick and our elderly and to build roads, railways and schools.

Indeed, it is possible, as the American economist Art Laffer pointed out, that they might contribute even more if we cut their rates of tax; but it is time we recognised the heroic contribution they already make. In fact, we should stop publishing rich lists in favour of an annual list of the top 100 Tax Heroes, with automatic knighthoods for the top 10.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/10456202/We-should-be-humbly-thanking-the-super-rich-not-bashing-them.html#disqus_thread

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Couldn't believe that attempt to erase Cameron's old speeches. it's not so much the evil of the Tories that galls me (that's to be expected) but the ineptitude - the constant insults to the intelligence of the public.

"There will be no top-down reorganization of the NHS." Nice one.

Here is a handy list of 100 of the current government's many and varied failures.

They are not just failures as we would measure them, but failures to even live up to their own bad policies. It'll make the post a bit long, but it's probably worth it. At the site you can find links to evidence of how shit they are.

I write a list of the government's 100 greatest failures every year. For a glimpse at last year's list (see here). Below I list 100 of the most up to date failures of this Tory government. Each point is evidenced with a hyperlink in brackets after the claim. Please click on the hyperlinks if you wish to explore the evidence.

Tories have axed 576 Sure Start Centres (evidence)

Bankers' Bonuses rise by 64% in just 1 year (evidence)

Food Bank usage has grown by 700%+ in 3 years (evidence)

1 million are now employed on Zero-Hours Contracts (evidence)

The Disabled have suffered real term cuts of 1.7% this year in benefits (here)

52,701 firms have been declared Insolvent (Q2 2010 to Q2 2013) (evidence)

379,968 persons have been declared Insolvent (Q2 2010 to Q2 2013) (evidence)

Unemployment is 20,000+ higher today than May 2010 (evidence & here)

Private Rental Homes costs £9,084 to rent (£1,128 up from Apr 2010)

Tories have axed 5,601 Nurses since May 2010 (evidence)

http://www.greenbenchesuk.com/2013/10/l ... erons.html

As they say, more at link.

No wonder people curse.

It'll be a relief when Labour get back into power, except it won't, because Miliband has already said he won't reverse any of the Tory cuts, and they recently even failed to vote for THEIR OWN BILL against the Bedroom Tax, just as they regularly abstain and fail to vote against Tory policies.

The vote was lost by 26, while 46 Labour MPs failed to attend the Commons. The Party gave the lame excuse that the non-attenders had been "paired" with Tory MPs, and so their votes wouldn't have made any difference - but on the Parliament's own website the rules clearly state that pairing is "not allowed in divisions of great political importance."

If Labour don't consider the Bedroom Tax to be of great political importance, then we are all humped, sooner or later (including those not affected by the Bedroom Tax itself, I mean).

To be fair to the Tories, it was Gordon Brown who introduced the Bedroom Tax anyway, for private tenants, in 2008, by capping the Local Housing Allowance. They are only carrying on his legacy. Labour have no ideological objections to it, on principle. On principle? Ha!

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Permanent austerity. Hmm.

"...Outlining his vision for the future, the Prime Minister said,'Imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.'"

[AhabsOtherLeg]

May the Laird forgive me, I am beginning to distrust Democracy.

Take consolation and solace in the fact that the Tories were not elected to govern the UK in 2010.

Despite the determination and thoroughness with which Labour had disgraced themselves while in power, the Conservatives still couldn't win a majority of the vote in order to replace them as the mandated government.

Even with all the Labour voters who have given up voting in despair over the decades, the Tories still couldn't win outright. It took the collusion of the Orange Book Lib Dems to prop them on the throne, so they won't last long there.

But, sadly, they don't have to, because Labour will be just as bad in their own way, once they get back in. Worse I suppose, since it is always less pleasant (if no more painful) to be stabbed in the back than the front.

[coffin_dodger]

Damaged rural roads could be abandoned, warn councils
4 February 2014 BBC News

He said: "We're going to have to consider withdrawing maintenance from the rural road network...."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26014054

, we (the UK) are so skint, we can't even afford to keep our National road network maintained any more. This is not looking good. I'm sure I read somewhere recently that Queenie is down to her last mill. Probably did it on purpose to deny Charlie an inheritance. Good grief woman, that's spiteful.