60 days ago
What a pathetic country we have become. Someone living entirely on welfare in the UK is in the top 2.5% of global earners but today we read that 15% of UK households were so poor that last month they had to skip at least one meal a day. Really? 4.5 million households? 11 million people?
523 days ago
This morning on Radio 4’s flagship Today programme it was the TUC boss Frances O’Grady ( total package £167,000) saying that the Tories were bad because they were going to lift the cap on bankers bonuses while nurses have to eat from food banks. This line is trotted out by those on the left many times a day but it is just palpable nonsense. Let’s start with the banksters…
568 days ago
The sprawling massd you see before you are the two butternut squash plants I put down earlier this year which seem to have merged into one. Behind them lie half my tmatoes and under the white netting winter cauliflower and cabbages. I hope that the last of the cabbage whites will soon bugger off and I can remove the netting allowing my plants to shoot higher. Underneath the squash foliage I have, so far, found five squashes but there may be more. The first two picked are shown below.
887 days ago
The twitter exchange below may be deemed a little cruel and harsh. But you can bet that the family below are keen food bank users when not bleating about state subsidised social housing. For folks like them the State really should do absolutely everything for them as that is part of their “human rights”
2321 days ago
A couple of weeks ago BBC Question Time went to Barnsley in the Grim North and among its audience of hand picked members of Momentum was the lass below Samanatha Thompson who bleated on about how she and her family had to use food banks and this was a sign of wicked Tory austerity causing rising poverty, blah, blah, blah. I gather that Samantha has taken offence at some Tory councillor who noted that for someone claiming to be on the brink of starvation she is, to put it bluntly, very fat indeed. Miss Piggy reckons that this is offensive and wants an apology and maybe in these PC free speech denying times the poor chap will be forced by his party to grovel. Since I have no such pressure I say "Miss Piggy your are a fat blubbermonster and if you find that offensive how about you eat less and stop looking quite so much like a beached whale? Of course this story gets more ridiculous.
2820 days ago
I noted yesterday the persecution of Ofsted boss David Hoare for making a number of factually verifiable statements about the inbred chav community of the Isle of Wight and their propensity to crime, poor educational results and poverty. The old fool should have known better than to tell the truth and use empirical data in Airstrip One these days. It is far simpler to blame everything on global warming, the wicked Tories, Maggie Thatcher, Brexit or racism. Naturally my defence of Mr Hoare has already seen one chav from across the Solent send me a semi literate tweet and that prompts me to come up with "A Modest Proposal."
3610 days ago
As ever I start my day reading the excellent column of my old pal Malcolm Stacey, the grandfather of share blogging. But today I was spluttering into my cornflakes as I read his words. Has my old pal become infected with “deluded lefty disease”? Please tell me it is not true or that it if it is you will spend a weekend at the Richard Poulden libertarian boot camp with Ms Argyle (pictured as she is better looking than Comrade Poulden), Matthew Sutcliffe and Dominic Frisby seeking urgent therapy.
Malcolm’s offending phrase in his otherwise excellent column today – HERE – was:
Of course, I sympathise with young people who still can't get jobs and families who have to rely on food banks. That is down to inequality of opportunity, for which the government must shoulder blame.
Where to start with such obvious tosh?
3707 days ago
A bird called Claudia is keen for me to go on the TV to talk about the great food bank con. She thought my video on this matter was really interesting. It was. But do I really care?
Claudia works for a new cable outfit ( London Live) called London Live which is owned by which Lebedev Holdings, the Ruskies who now own the Evening Standard. Apparently they are looking for sparky bloggers to appear frequently.
Such is the desire of 99% of the population to appear on TV, even if it is a cable show where there are more folks in the camera crew than in the audience, that I am sure Claudia will be inundated with offers. But not for me. I did my TV stint 14 years ago. I hated it. I cannot be arsed to trundle over to West London taking me away from work which might actually earn me some money for this vicarious thrill. Incidentally I feel the way about various financial TV channels. The monetary value of appearing is zilch so the only folks who cosnistently appear are those who have nbothing to say. I have no desire to join that club.
I enjoy writing especially in a forum where there is no censorship at all. I’d rather eat cat poo than waste my time and money to appear on a 2-bit cable show – it is vanity publishing for the unthinking.
3741 days ago
The theme of this week’s video postcard, as so often, is the UK welfare state with a passing swipe at Food banks. Inspired by watching last week’s “Benefits Street” I discuss three of the feckless spongers who featured and what their story’s say about why Bankrupt Britain is not working.
My weekly financial postcard is a macro view on the markets and a discussion of Shareholder activism and steps I am taking to encourage it. You can watch it here
3749 days ago
The weekly video postcard this week looks at food banks where Edwina Currie is getting it in the neck for making a perfectly valid observation. Indeed the mammoth growth of food banks is based on a lie and spawns more lies – this goes to the heart of the austerity & welfare debate.
Colleagues of the Mrs don’t get it but this video explains why food banks are an unnecessary evil.
