772 days ago
I discuss OEICS (Unit Trusts) and liquidity and then the bumper pay rise for the welfare classes paid for by you and I. Can Peter Brailey, or any other Tory out there, explain how this is fair or fits in with basic Conservative principles? I can’t.
1093 days ago
It is especially when you see the smiling face of a little kid who drowned yesterday in the channel that your heart melts. Or it should. Some of those on twitter appear to have no hearts while, for others, the important matter at hand seems to be weaponizing the deaths and playing the blame game. It is the fault of the Tories, or Labour or the Frogs and little Macron.
2498 days ago
I start with US classic car prices. It is relevant, bear with me. Then it is onto the Begbies (BEG) red flag report, a real bombshell. Then Carpetright (CPR), Bonmarche (BON), Dignity (DTY), RM2 (RM2), Online Blockcrap (OBC) and Character Group (CCT). I also look at today's article in te Times on insider dealing and welfare fraud.
2978 days ago
Okay Nimo is not exactly a neighbour. She lives in Easton a district of Bristol that is a bit more expensive than our own and full of edgy Guardian reading lefties. The Mrs and I both work but don't get to live in such a big house as Nimo because...she's on housing benefits. I pay my taxes so she gets a nicer house than me. Or maybe not as the lazy lardbucket has now, finally, been evicted after two years despite left wing action group Acorn and her sanctimonious neighbours trying to foil bailiffs with a human chain around chez Nimo.
Lets start twelve years ago
2987 days ago
Lardbucket welfare slut Emma Lawlor, who was featured earlier HERE, is a despicable parasite demonstrating that the welfare state is failing. But, at least, she can say that she was born into an area where life on benefits is deemed normal. There can be no such excuse for the parasites born into privilege. I refer as a case in point to the nine "activists" arrested last week campaigning for BlackLivesMatter and against the racism of climate change by disrupting London City Airport. Judge, Elizabeth Roscoe, noted how they were all white. I note something else.
The ringleader Natalie Geraldine Twistleton-Wykeham-Fiennes ( no kidding)
2987 days ago
Emma Lawlor is a 27 year old lardbucket from Wolverhampton who has five kids by two absentee and unsupportive fathers and has never worked in her life. She trousers £19,000 tax free in benefits a year , plus free housing one assumes, and that allows her to spend £100 a month on takeaways and £20 a month on cigarettes. and now she wants more...
3151 days ago
If you are prepared to swallow vast amounts of junk food you will probably swallow anything, even the hocus pocus policies of Labour and the SNP. Perhaps it is all those folks mainlining welfare payments as they sit on thair arses which explains the correlation but it is official: Labour and SNP voters are fat slobs as the map below demonstrates with Scottish nationalists being the biggest lardbuckets by a mile.
3168 days ago
The resignation of Iain Duncan Smith has forced those on the left and followers of David Cameron and George Osborne to twist logic and engage in smears to try to counter the former minister. But IDS is 100% right about how and why welfare needs reform. His analysis of what was a mean spirited and nasty budget last week and of the flaws in Chancellor Osborne's budget is simply correct. Why the hell should those in the top 11% of earners get tax breaks paid for by the handicapped today and by our kids inheriting even more Government debt tomorrow?
3441 days ago
In this week's postcard I ask can someone in a wheelchair jump queues as of right - this is based on an incident at 1.35 AM at Bristol Temple Meads last night. Then it is onto jihadis on UK welfare and what that says about welfare and finally to answer a few points made by my pal Paul Scott I explain why I believe in gun ownership
3442 days ago
There is no austerity in Britain under the "wicked Tories". Since 2010 Government spending and the national debt has risen year on year. The burden our children will inherit as a result of this profligacy mounts daily.
Yet today in London a couple of hundred thousand folks - c0.36% of the population to be exact - have gathered to protest against "austerity". Why do they want exactly? They want the Government to create a bigger debt which will have to be serviced and paid off one day, by spending more. These folks do not appear to realise that the Money Tree really does not exist.
The money will be spent on more pay for public sector workers who already earn more than their peers in the private (wealth creating) sector yet have more job security, throw more sickies, get longer holidays and get cushier pensions. The money will be spent on bloating a welfare system that is already out of control, not a safety net but - for many - a lifestyle choice which includes booze, fags, SkyTV and playing the lottery.
Among the headline speakers are millionaires
3452 days ago
Today comes the news that planning permission has been granted to a £1 billion wildlife destroying green energy project in Swansea bay. This will cost the British consumer vast amounts of money but the political, media and business elite are right behind it. The Swansea bay tidal energy scheme shows the folly and corruption of an elite that has never been more out of touch with the plebs, the punters, you and me. We who pay the bills.
It will cost £1 billion to build the scheme, a massive seawall containing 16 turbines that generate power as the tide goes in and out. Migrating fish, like the ones that the uncles of my daughter catch in the river Tawe will be minced like the birds that are chopped by wind turbines. But it is all in the name of the environment so who cares?
The cost of this scheme and the fact that tidal power is not that er...powerful means that the £1 billion scheme will generate only enough electricity to power 155,000 homes - that is to say 90% of the households in the post industrial welfare slums of Swansea.
But the capital cost and the ongoing cost of maintaining underwater turbines means that for the consortium behind this which includes AIM listed Good Energy (GOOD)
3575 days ago
The local Tory candidate for the Bristol East Seat, Theo Clarke has just stuffed a flyer through our letterbox. The Mrs, being a deluded lefty, saw the flyer from Theo – who seems like a nice young lady – and noting the party said “it’s for you.”
Hmmm. I was hoping to see that Ms Clarke wants to slash welfare spending, introduce huge tax cuts for lower paid workers, and tackle the grotesque waste in the NHS and other branches of Government as she reduced the size of our bloated - and totally unaffordable – state. Maybe she might believe in other Tory policies like law and order or lifting the red tape and regulatory burden on small businesses? Er no….
Her priorities are:
3582 days ago
Prompted by the words this week of Crispin Odey (see here) but also by the unedifying spectacle that was Question Time in Wrexham I ask why cannot the political class tell the truth about the NHS, pensions, welfare and the appalling fiscal mess we are in. Instead they just lie to us and tell us what we want to hear. I despair.
3670 days ago
Plastics Capital (PLA) has announced a, conditional on 20th November General Meeting approval, £5 million placing at 98p per share to help fund a prospective £9.82 million, and up to £10.64 million, acquisition of a business from the Grim North. we guess that this shows that not everyone living north of Kenilworth lives off welfare. You learn something new every day.
3686 days ago
I went to Nadine’s Birthday party yesterday. She was also celebrating 10 years in the UK with a British party. Since she is a friend of the Mrs and so it goes without saying that the place was packed with deluded lefties.
I therefore discuss the politics of food in relation to Britain’s poor but also the idea of taking responsibility for one’s own actions. I then move on to reclaiming the flag, the idea of Britishness and the whole immigration debate based as it is on lies and a fail to tackle the real issue of welfare abuse.
3840 days ago
It is entirely likely that thanks to Labour dirty tricks, that is to say the Mrs neglecting to put me on the electoral roll, I shall not be able to vote at all this week. We will troop over to the polling station near her old flat on Thursday and find out.
If I can vote what should I do? As a dyed in the wool Eurosceptic and someone who believes that the entire political class should be strung up with piano wire my natural inclination is to vote UKIP. After all the European elections do not really matter do they? My guess is that enough folks will view it this way to ensure that Mr Farage and his supporters will be celebrating triumphs in both the local and European elections as I explained HERE earlier.
I do not care if UKIP contains more than a smattering of prize loons that does not deter me.
However, I find that when Mr Farage moves away from Europe, where I agree with him 100%, to other matters I get rather agitated. He is clearly now trying to appeal to traditional Labour voters and so he supports a minimum wage (a tax on jobs) and there is talk in UKIP circles of backing the living wage. This is not a pro-business agenda but it will also not assist the poor since it will destroy jobs.
I remember wincing when I heard him at UK Investor Show 2013
3900 days ago
The spin doctors of Chancellor George Osborne had leaked much of what he said so it is not as if anyone was waiting with baited breath. What he did serve up was a combination of political posturing and timidity. It is not a conservative budget and it does little for Britain.
Posturing? The Welfare cap of £119 billion. Hmmmm. I am capped in my size 34 trousers but will binge and booze and then buy a pair of 36 inch trousers. Parliament can vote to lift this inflation adjusted cap and will do so.’
£119 billion is a lot of money. A brave Conservative chancellor would be tackling a system where folks like the vile fat slob and, now patron Saint of scroungers, White Dee can pick up £200 a week tax free and regard welfare as a lifestyle option. Forget setting caps that can be lifted. Start tackling welfare abuse. Cut payments. That is what a country running an unsustainable budget deficit needs.
What about the poor? Osborne has lifted the personal tax allowance by a few hundred quid to £10,500. That is simply not enough. It means that folks earning less than £1000 a month are paying tax. The incentive for those living on welfare need to take a low paid job is not just a stick (which Osborne declines to use) but also a carrot – that is to say to lift the tax threshold to £20,000.
What about creating jobs?
3919 days ago
UKIP supporters are frothing madly at data showing that 600,000 EU citizens are living in the UK claiming welfare – the answer according to the fruitcakes is to stop them coming here. It is a populist line but a nasty one. On twitter I am lambasted: “You diss non-working Brits and ex-pats, but then defend benefit claiming EU folks.” Of course I do nothing of the sort. It is just that I am not an economic illiterate.
Do I enjoy EU citizens turning up her to claim benefits? Of course not. But I am minded that there are many British ex-pats living in the EU enjoying a range of state benefits paid for by the taxpayers of France, Spain, etc. This is not a one way matter as UKIP tries to pretend.
But there is a bigger issue. I am equally disgusted by our home grown welfare bums on Benefits Street. Frankly I “diss” all welfare bums equally wherever they were born. The way to deal with all welfare bums living in the UK is to drastically scale back the level of largesse of the British welfare state – reinvesting the savings in increase sing the thresh-hold at which all workers pay tax.
The answer is not as UKIP pretends simply to stop other EU citizens claiming welfare payments and State benefits (such as the NHS) here. Aside from the problems that would cause our ex-pats when other countries showed reciprocity, it would deter those from outside the UK who wish to come here to work but might take a few weeks to find work.
For the reality is that British workers simply refuse to take low paid jobs. Those jobs are filled by migrant workers from the rest of the EU. Adopt UKIP policies and British businesses would not be able to employ workers who would allow them to remain profitable. We would all be worse off – something Nigel Farage has admitted.
Showing real compassion to those who wish to work (by arguing for tax cuts for them), but also a grasp of basic economics (I'd like British businesses to thrive) I find myself concluding that UKIP is increasingly a party of populists, economic illiterates and frankly just very nasty people.
3925 days ago
No folks there is no mistake in the headline. And no, I have not been infected with the mad lefty virus following my brief visit to the Socialist benefits paradise that is Wales. You read it here first: The Guardian has on one issue got it bang on the money, the British Chambers of Commerce is just wrong. The issue is youth unemployment.
I start with the pantomime villains, or should that be clowns, that is the small business organisation.
3937 days ago
I noted yesterday that if life on the Somerset Levels was not unpleasant enough right now, the poor bastards were faced not only with water up to their wastes but with a plague of politicians arriving to promise the earth and do nothing. The flood sound bites yesterday plunged new depths with Farage (UKIP) vs. Pickles (Con).
First up was the UKIP Fuhrer who demanded that the UK stop spending £11 billion a year on foreign aid and divert the cash to fighting the floods. One thing you may notice about UKIP is that whenever there is a problem that foreign aid cash is the answer. Want more hospitals? Axe foreign aid. Want more money for the armed forces? Axe foreign aid. Want to cut the deficit? Axe foreign aid. And so with floods in the news naturally UKIP thinks we should stop sending our cash off to Johnny Foreigner in Bongo Bongo land and look after folks back in Somerset.
As it happens I too would scrap foreign aid too
3949 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
3964 days ago
The weekly video postcard is back from its Christmas break. You know how you do not want to do something so you put it off and it gets worse and worse and harder to do? Like the washing up or subbing a book by Zak Mir? Of course once you start such a task (subbing Zak’s book excepted) it is easy. And so I fear next week’s video very little.
On the agenda this week, prompted by this piece earlier, is Scottish independence and its funding but also UK welfare abuse and reforms.
3964 days ago
The Scots it would appear have negotiated the deal of the Century with England for post-independence financial Armageddon. They get the freedom. The English get to pick up the tab.
The Scots would be able to set their own budgets, their own tax rates and spend as much as they want yet the English taxpayer c/o the Britsh ( or post independence English) Treasury has agreed to underwrite its debt. This is sheer insanity.
87% of Scots take from the State (in terms of services, welfare, etc.) more than they give. And thus Scotland has found itself with an electorate which things that austerity means deep fried mars bars all round on the State being cut back to only 6 days a week. Or only giving free cigarettes to Primary School Children only on alternate days.
Given that you have more chance of finding a heterosexual non child molester presenting a Top of the Pops edition from 1977 than you have of finding a Tory voter in Scotland, its three political parties that matter ( Labour, The Nationalist loons and the Lib Dems) are all committed to more spending and more tax but the ultimate funder is always seen as the great Money Tree.
Scottish economic policy and the prevailing ethos of a land that once gave us Adam Smith is akin only to Greece. Edinburgh is the Athens of the North.
And so post-independence
3965 days ago
I just spotted that my profile still describes me as, among other things, as Clinton loathing. I wonder, is it time to move on. Old Billy is now out of politics allowing to spend all his time raking in the cash a la Blair, groping interns or whatever turns him on the most. That would be a hard call I suspect. Surely I should move on to loathing Obama for his economic recklessness, love of the Big State and of illegal wars and crushing basic principles of civil liberty?
Hmmmm. I thought about this for a few seconds. Clinton covers not just old Bill but his loathsome Mrs as well and she spouts more than her fair share of total hogwash on issues like women’s rights and global warming (oops I meant climate change). She is even more into involving the US in illegal, unafordable and in the end disastrous Middle East military ventures than her old man and I have not heard her speak up much about the Big Brother tendencies of the Obama regime.
And Old Bill still pops up now and again to rouse the faithful to go vote for folks who love trees more than unborn kids, argue that every welfare programme is a way to create jobs and who think that Big Government is the solution not the problem.
I rather hope that after his second term ends in shambles Obama will head off into the sunset. I rather fear that the Clinton’s will be around for a while to come.
No need to change my profile then.
3974 days ago
I realise this may not win me many friends among the Daily Mail reading classes but I need a new waitress as Real Man Pizza Company in Clerkenwell is opening up a new venture in its basement area from February and if you are reading this in Romania and Bulgaria today feel free to get in touch.
Naturally I shall advertise in the UK as well. £6.50 an hour or whatever the minimum wage is. 30 hours a week. Job waitress and also plongeur. She needs to be presentable. To like very hard work, to be numerate and to speak good English. Notwithstanding the need to be numerate and to speak good English a few products of the UK Comprehensive schooling system will be qualified.
But will they apply? Like hell they will. You see I have done this before and young Brits would rather live on welfare/go to a crap former poly to study a worthless degree than go get a job which involves hard work and pays the sort of wage an unskilled less than 20 year old can expect to get as a first job. If they work hard they can expect to earn more in due course, I am a fair employer.
But folks. You always start at the bottom.
What the immigration loathing wolf-whistlers of UKIP and the Tory right fail to realise is that the Romanians/Bulgarians are not taking jobs from Brits but are needed to do the jobs Brits refuse to take.
I shall give home grown talent the chance to apply. But since I know from bitter and hard experience that this is doomed I also make this offer to our friends in Transylvania, Sofia and Bucharest. If you want to work hard, improve your English and have the skills I want we want to offer you a job. Can you start February 1?
3985 days ago
I never thought I would be writing this but I suppose it had to happen eventually: I find myself agreeing 100% with what our thoroughly deranged Business Minister Vince Cable had said. The man is just bang on the money. The subject is immigration.
Cable, who I accept is mad as a hatter 99% of the time, says that the Tories are running scared of UKIP and so are engaging in wolf whistle politics on the subject of Romanian and Bulgarian immigration after Christmas. As Cable, Call Me Dave Cameron, the frightful Theresa May and Nigel Farage all know full well, the numbers arriving here will not be gargantuan. None will be able to claim benefits for quite some time and so those coming here will be those willing and wanting to do low paid jobs.
British business needs such folk because our welfare system is far too generous and so has created a whole layer of society which is fit only to undertake unskilled/low skilled labour but refuses to do so. In making that point Cable is again bang on the money. The Business Secretary understands that for GDP to grow as it should we need these immigrants.
The facts are:
3999 days ago
Outgoing Domino’s Pizza boss Lance Batchelor is being attacked from all sides for saying that the UK needs to relax immigration rules so he can find suitable staff. Ex M&S and now Ocado boss Sir Stuart Rose said the same thing. They are spot on and “fake Tory” immigration minister Mark Harper is taking prize bollocks for attacking the pizza fellow.
Batchelor says that Domino’s could hire another 1.000 drivers and pizza toppers tomorrow but native Brits won’t take the jobs and tighter immigration rules mean there are fewer foreigners ( who will take them) around.
Harper, who after Oxford went to work for big 4 accountants KPMG before meeting up with his old Uni pal Call Me Dave and becoming a Southern England MP, disagrees with the analysis of the real life businessmen who have actually run businesses creating thousands of jobs. So who do you believe?
Being a fake Tory Harper says Batchelor should see that “market forces” are telling him that he has to up his pay rates. You will note the use of the word market forces – that is to make you and I think Harper is really a Tory.
4014 days ago
Why did I rise to the bait of a twitter fight with UKIP loons regarding immigration? Paul Nutter UKIP’s deputy Fuhrer is on C5 News tonight ranting on about how we will be swamped with millions of Romanians and Bulgarians on 2nd January.
What Nuttall does not say is that Romanians already here, on average, pay 34% more in taxes than they take in benefits, which is a far better ratio than native born Brits. Romanian workers are good news for Britain. What Mr Nutter also declines to mention is that folk arriving in 2014 will not be able to claim a single cent in benefits for at least a year. So they will take the low paid jobs Britain needs to fill if it is to compete.
Aha…they are stealing British jobs. So goes the chant from UKIP followers on twitter.
Bollocks.
4022 days ago
Don’t’ know who Jumaa is yet? Is that
a) Because Theresa May has cracked down on the UK’s insane asylum laws and so there is no problem
b) Becuase you have not read the sane Sunday press
c) Because you read the Guardian/Observer/Independent and think that our immigration/legal aid/welfare system is an unmitigated blessing so have not been told about Jumaa?
Ok, to the chase: Jumaa arrived in the UK illegally in 2004 in the back of a lorry. He cannot speak proper English. He has never worked. He has always lived on benefits. And he raped a 13 year old girl and two other minors. He is a paedophile.
So is the UK:
a) putting him in prison for a long time and then sending him back to Sudan because Theresa May has cracked down on the UK’s insane asylum laws?
b) Sending him straight back to Sudan?
c) having jailed him for just two years it is now paying him vast amounts of compensation for keeping him in prison longer as we tried to deport him and thus infringing his human rights?
Guess what? It is c. No kidding. Apparently Jumaa has cost the British taxpayer £350,000 since are arrived here. And Theresa May is useless. Well that second item won’t be news to you.
In honour of this case I ask you for captions to the picture below. Please post your entries in the comments section.
For what it is worth my caption is:
4025 days ago
Brooks Newmark Is a Tory MP and even more embarrassingly a supporter of Newcastle United. And he is terribly excited that the Sun Newspaper is backing his “big idea” to cut employers NI contributions when a firm takes on someone under 25. Oh please. Brooks try to think this through logically. I know you are an MP but can you try?
You appear to accept that employers NI is a tax on jobs. That is a really good start. Albeit, not facing much competition, that marks you out as one of our smarter MPs.
But if you accept that principle
4051 days ago
I am barraged on twitter by folks challenging me to watch a video that shows that Israel is a nation of black hating racists and then to defend the Jewish State. I do so willingly because this is a crude and manipulative piece of propaganda which will be used by those who loathe Israel if not just all the Jews. It needs to be exposed.
The video appears on a website (The Electronic Intifada) which purports to give you “all the news from Palestine every day”. Hmmmm. So I see plenty of stories about what the wicked frigging Jews are up to. What about the 171 million tonnes of aid sent by Israel into Gaza last month? What about the rockets fired onto Israeli schools? What about the gays buried alive in concrete by Hamas in Gaza? I guess it was a busy news day/week/year so not time to give us that news.
So we start with the FACT that the website relaying this video is not exactly 100% balanced in its coverage. You can link to the website and that video HERE
The website then bleats about how the New York Times refused to run the video. It “did not dare”. Hmmm. Is that all part of a global Jewish conspiracy or perhaps just because it is grotesquely misleading? Those bloody Jews they control everything don’t they? Come on, I am sure you know that the frigging Jews run all the media. And the banks.
Well done the NY Timesfor not running a video which is, at best , crap journalism and, at worst, vile propoganda.
The video tells the story of the 60,000 Africans who since 2006 have fled all the undoubted miseries that lie in Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, etc. and “with the European Union having closed its doors to illegal immigrants have gone to the next best place, Israel.” Jump forward and the next scenes show Israeli politicians saying they will deal with the “infiltrators” and some Israelis making openly racist remarks about the Africans. We see Africans in camps. Natural conclusion: Israel hates the blacks. Those frigging Jews they have learned nothing from the Holocaust and just hate darkies don’t they?
Except that this is not actually the whole picture. Rewind to the 1980s
4107 days ago
I see that some poor students with useless degrees are saying that they cannot get jobs. No! They cannot get the jobs they want and so would rather suit on welfare bleating. I open fire in my weekly video postcard number 44
My weekly financial video postcard covers companies that use the law to try to bully critics (notably Sefton & Cupid) and also the abject failure of the piss poor AIM regulation team and it can be viewed here.
4120 days ago
In the 1950s the Tory Party had 3 million members. When Call Me Dave was elected leader it had 258,000 members. These days the Tories won’t say how many members they have but it seems that the number is sub 100,000. And with an average age of almost 70 and each year seeing Councillors (the main local recruiters) lose seats won during the hated Labour Government that number will carry on falling.
Some blame call Me Dave for pissing off traditional Tories
4136 days ago
Call Me Dave this week boasted that he wanted “to export gay marriage” around the world. I support the idea that gay men and women should be allowed to get married and divorced just like straight couples. Why should the misery of this institution be the preserve of heterosexuals? Spread the pain. But at every level David Cameron MP just shows himself up as a member of a metropolitan Elite with a particular world view which makes me despise ever more.
My starting point is that as a libertarian I believe that you have every right to do whatever you want with your own body. As such there should be no differentiation in law between gay folk and straight folk. Homosexuality, like playing Hockey, watching Golf or going to Ibiza has never appealed to me personally but whatever floats your boat. So
4156 days ago
Abu Qatada is an Islamofascist hate preacher with clear links to Al Qaeda. Finally, after ten years he is as we speak in a prison van heading off to the airport on a one way ticket to Jordan where he is going to goal for terrorist offences. This is being presented as a triumph for Home Secretary Theresa May and the Conservative Party “Tough on terrorism, tough on the causes of Terrorism (except in Syria where want to give guns to Al Qaeda).” Bollocks.
It has cost £2 million to deport this loathsome man. He and his family have taken the grateful taxpayer for another £3 million plus in benefits and free housing over the past decade. And that is a triumph?
Three questions for Mrs May:
4161 days ago
Go back to bed and take an aspirin, I fear that I find myself agreeing 100% with Nick Clegg who for once shows himself as a true liberal. Meanwhile the Tory party nauseates me. The issue is tax breaks for married couples.
Call Me Dave has already pledged to hand out £150 a year in tax breaks to folks who opt to get married. But some of his more reactionary colleagues in Westminster (step forward Tim Loughton MP and Peter Bone) want the number to be £2,000. The Tory party is split on how much should be handed out to one section of society who have made a lifestyle choice of which they approve but they wish to use money paid for by every sort of taxpayer to fund those who follow this moral path.
Clegg may support Secret Courts, gagging the press and various other appallingly illiberal measures but on this one he is bang on the money. Government should never seek to use money taken from all sections of society to bribe people to follow one lifestyle course of which they approve purely on moral grounds.
If I suggested that there should be tax breaks for those men who frequented gay bathhouses to have sex with complete strangers you would think me mad.
4161 days ago
It is a quiet night at Real Man (Monday always is) and so I am sitting here with two staff who are working away while I write. And so in wanders this old crone who says “I am from Bulgaria and have no money”. I rather sense that this will become an increasingly poor way for her to start a conversation.
The deal is that she cannot find work in the UK so would like those that do have work to give her some money. Hmmm so the two immigrants who are sitting here with me earning just above the minimum wage should hand over some of their after tax earnings to someone who came to the UK with the intention of begging and who will after January 1 supplement their begging income with welfare paid out of those taxes.
My response: if you cannot find a job in the UK you should go back to Bulgaria. Is that a bit harsh?
No. I believe in unlimited immigration (I am such a frigging tree hugger) but no welfare payments until you have paid five years taxes (I’d apply the same rule to the begging home-grown Jeremy Kyle class too). But begging is a crime. In my book – three strikes on that count are you are out. Why the hell should I give any of my after tax income earned by working my nuts off to folks who opt not to work or, worse, have moved to the UK with the explicit intention of not working?
Now what sort of “ist” does that make me?
a) a racist
b) a class-ist
c) a nationalist
d) a realist?
4163 days ago
And so this week George Osborne laid out his plans for how the Government will spend money it does not have over the next few years. The reactions were sadly predictable and the truth is, my friends, that they are all lying.
On the right there was praise for canny George who so cleverly snookered New Labour with populist pledges about tackling welfare scroungers and who is clearly a safe pair of hands to act as custodian of the nation’s finances. Middle England and the Bond markets are meant to be reassured.
On the left the BBC, its sister paper The Guardian and other associated loons continued the post 2010 narrative of wicked Tory cuts, back to the 1930s, blah, blah, blah.
Both sides are lying although it seems that the BBC/Guardian agenda has won as most folks do actually think that Government spending is being cut. It is not.
4187 days ago
Speaker John Bercow is in many ways a horrible little man. However for once I have to applaud him for stating what is a self-evident truth on the matter of immigration – something which the mainstream parties have lambasted him for as they grub for votes.
Bercow stated: "I want to underline the fact that there has been an important wave of immigrants that came to Great Britain from new member states and in many cases they came with aptitudes and a commitment, an involvement we haven't always seen in our labour force.”
He is bang on the money. The growing success of our Real Man Pizza Company restaurant in Clerkenwell sees us again hiring for another waitress/sous chef position. It is hard work and if you play the benefits system well you are better off not taking the gig. Once again the advert goes up and once again I have received a flood off applicants from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe, all keen and in London looking for work.
However the idea of working for £6.50 an hour or may be £7 really does not appeal to native Brits. I have received absolutely ZERO applicants from British born workers. And how many unemployed young Brits are there in London?
Real Man currently has one part time waitress who is British and killing a few months before heading off to set up a scuba diving school. She is the only British applicant (other than one who was utterly illiterate) I have had recruiting for 5 staff posts since Christmas. I have had hundreds of European applicants. Most have degrees and qualifications and are well spoken and presentable.
Bercow is bang on the money. Our welfare system has created an attitude amongst far too many of our home grown “talent” that they will wait for the “right job” or forever and live off welfare. Thank God for immigration.
Bercow is attacked
4192 days ago
Islamofascist terrorist Abu Hamza is currently rotting in a US jail and will hopefully not be returning to these shores any time soon. But the wife of Hookie and his seven kids still live in Britain. There is outrage in some quarters that Mrs Terrorist lives in a £1 million house for which she pays nothing – the grateful taxpayer picks up the tab. There is apparently nothing that can be done about it.
Predictably some bigots regard this as an immigration issue – they just want her booted out, preferably with her kids. While I very much doubt that the old bag has contributed anything at all to Society that is not the answer. You cannot just say we will boot this immigrant out because they are a scumbag parasite married to an Islamofascist terrorist (i.e. she has broken no laws but we do not like her) but we will keep that hard working Mr Patel from the corner store in. You cannot make arbitrary rules on a case by case basis.
There are vast numbers of immigrants in the UK who work damn hard doing jobs feckless Britain’s would rather not do (claiming welfare instead), and in many cases as entrepreneurs making Britain richer. I would welcome more immigration and have an open door policy.
The general issue here is welfare. I work damn hard and pay tax. I resent bitterly that much of that tax goes to folks who have never worked and will never work. I resent white chavs on the Jeremy Kyle show as much as I resent Mrs Hookie. There has to be a change
4203 days ago
You know who Abu Qatada is. He reckons that there is something wrong with the UK’s welfare system. We agree on that. Abu’s specific complaint is that the five bedroom house that the taxpayer provides him with is not big enough. He needs more storage space. Saints preserve us. Now meet John Thuo
Back in in his native Kenya he killed between 100 and 400 people using a machete. Policemen, innocent civilians, members of other criminal gangs – he butchered the lot. He also undertook female circumcision. In 2003 he came here as an illegal immigrant and has lived in taxpayer funded accommodation and on benefits ever since.
The Home Office tried to boot him out but failed because it would infringe his Human Rights. You see, he might get murdered by his old gang back in Kenya. Apparently Thuo also has mental health problems and says he might top himself if we boot him out.
Of course if I say that these cases shows our immigration and welfare system is flawed, the deluded lefties and liberal elite respond in three ways:
1. Anyone who says the immigration system is flawed must be a racist.
2. These are exceptional cases and very rare – most of the time our system works fine.
3. The Daily Mail has reported these cases and so this is just right wing scaremongering, gosh we hate the Daily Mail, let’s talk about what an awful paper it is.
Whatever. The UK has a £100 billion budget deficit. We are going bust. These gents add to that deficit. They contribute nothing to our society. They will not seek work.
I fail to understand why anyone who has never worked should get any benefits at all. Whether the scrounger is an Islamofacist hate preacher/probably terrorist, a Kenyan mass murderer or a white chav from some Grim Northern Shot Hole appearing on the Jeremy Kyle show.
In the case of Mr Thuo I cannot see why we are protecting him from justice in Kenya. Why cannot we hand him over to the Kenyan Police? If his gang manage to get at him or he tops himself do I really care? Do you?
4220 days ago
David Cameron: an out of touch, principle free, liar – a Godsend to UKIP
147 net gains for UKIP on Thursday was a political earthquake. The political classes are scared. They do not like it up ‘em.
Like most folks I was first attracted to UKIP over the EU. It wants out of the Evil Empire and so do I. Does it have any other policies? Yes. Do I agree with all of them? No. But where we disagree on matters like immigration UKIP at least accepts that the current system (easy entry + free welfare) is a joke and unworkable. UKIP would make entry impossible & keep welfare, I would make it automatic but scrap the welfare.
My point is that UKIP is instinctively right in that it sees – as do – most folks in Britain – that there is a vast problem. In its DNA UKIP is on the right track. The established parties have – for years – made it clear that the immigration system needed minor adjustments. They have lied about the scale of immigration, tarred anyone who questioned the system as a racist and then occasionally made tiny changes which stop skilled workers coming here ( who we want) in order to win grubby votes and Daily Mail headlines.
And so when David Cameron or Ken Clarke or any of the other mainstream politicos of all three parties tarred UKIP as racist in the past they meant it. That is what they actually believed. When they now say they are “listening” and must “connect with the views of those who voted UKIP” it is just another big fat lie. It is a lie born out of desperation.
And that brings us to David Cameron
4249 days ago
Maguire is a senior journalist with the Daily Mirror and a professional Northern class warrior. He was born in South Shields and has made a point of not losing his Geordie accent - indeed it has got more pronounced over the years - despite him being a full time member of the political media elite of London. I imagine that he lives in a plush part of North London. But he is oh so very working class (with an A pronounced the right way).
And so he wades into the debate on child killing welfare junkie Mick Philpott by suggesting on twitter
The issue of "funding lifestyles" should begin with George Osborne's family trust fund and the knighthood Sir George inherits
What a tool. Osborne will one day become Sir George as he inherits a baronetcy. This is the same reason Sir George Young is a Sir – he is a baronet. It is not a knighthood. It is a hereditary title and brings you zero money just a silly title. It funds no lifestyle.
And yes Osborne’s family is rich and the chancellor has enjoyed the benefits of that and will inherit wealth. So frigging what. Does Maguire think that no-one should inherit wealth? The Osborne cash has been around for a couple of generations. What about the Miliband cash – both of those boys inherited a good amount from their Marxist Dad. Does Maguire think that is wrong? Will his three offspring inherit anything from the money Maguire and his partner (Cambridge educated novelist and Guardian writer Emma Burstall) have made over the years from the lefty media circus? Go on Maguire: who are you leaving your cash to?
As it happens it is none of my business who leaves their cash to whom. The point is that it is the fruit of their labour (or perhaps that of their parents or grandparents) and individuals should have every right to decide where cash they earn goes to. That is rather different to Mick Philpott who acquired income and wealth with money taken from folks who worked to fund his lifestyle and his asset accretion (the snooker tables etc.) via Britain's utterly crocked welfare system and onerous tax regime. We as taxpayers had no say in the matter we just ponied up involuntarily to give Mick an easy life.
You have to be a bitter and stupid deluded leftie not to appreciate the difference between the funded lifestyle of Mick Philpott and that of George Osborne. Step forward Kevin Maguire.
4249 days ago
Child killer Mick Philpott “earned” the equivalent of £100,000 a year milking the benefits system. He could afford booze, drugs, a snooker room extension, SkyTV and much, much more and never did a day’s work. It was a broken benefits system that allowed him to lead such a life, that incentivised him NOT to work and which caused him to lose any sort of moral compass. For this dirtbag life was about rights and self-gratification and not about obligations and responsibilities.
Anyone who makes this point, be it the Daily Mail, myself or George Osborne is now abused by the left as heartless in that we ignore the human tragedy of six dead kids or of using one human tragedy to bash all on welfare. The left – as ever – misses the point.
There are countless Philpott’s out there. Only a few go around murdering children in order to obtain more benefits. But vast numbers now regard benefits as a lifestyle and an entitlement. Keep the system as it is and this underclass will slip further and further into depravity. It is bankrupting Britain financially and it is morally bankrupting those who now have no concept of the idea that with rights come obligations and responsibilities. Deluded lefties seem unable to see this. In some cases it is because their Parliamentary seats or worthless taxpayer-funded jobs depend on keeping a client state poor. For others there cannot be the excuse of self-interest, those folk are just deluded.
But the way that the entire left tries to drown out rational debate on the UK’s broken system with smears and attack is Fascism. Why is the left afraid to debate the real issues? What is so wrong with saying that a subscription to SkyTV should not be part of the standard benefits lifestyle?
4250 days ago
Mick Philpott is clearly a loathsome man. He killed six of his 17 kids by setting fire to a house in order to frame one of his ex-partners. He is off to prison. The true victims of this awful crime are the six children who died. But Philpott is also a victim of the bleeding heart liberals who try to defend a welfare state that is a cancer at the heart of Britain.
Philpott used women to breed 17 children and then milked them all for benefits. He was trousering £60,000 a year in benefits tax free. That would you require you to earn c£100,000 a year. And that enabled him to lead a life fuelled by drink, drugs and doing no work at all. The lefties would tell you that all the children (and Philpott) were living in poverty. But it is a poverty which saw all the kids housed, fed and clothed and Sky TV in all the homes with Philpott still able to fork out vast amounts on drugs and booze (and I bet lottery tickets as well).
The left will defend this system by saying
4253 days ago
This will make your blood boil. Bushra al-Rahimi is an Iraqi national. She lives in London and was given housing benefit to cover the cost of a flat in an exclusive part of Westminster which she then let out at £4,000 a week. Finally she has been booted out of that accommodation and ordered to repay rent arrears of £30,800 BUT…
She is now living in an Islington flat paid for by housing benefits which in the private sector would cost £5,000 a month to rent. She continues to get a Jobseekers Allowance worth £71 a week. God knows what other benefits this parasite is getting.
This just defies belief:
a) This woman has broken the law. Is it not possible to amend our laws so that if someone arrives in this country seeking political asylum we make it explicitly clear that if they commit any crime (including benefits fraud) they will be sent back home (even if it means they face persecution) with all their dependents automatically? It is a sort of social contract: we give you safety but you MUST obey the law.
b) Why the hell does she get to choose where to stay?
4268 days ago
The next weekend edition of the Tomograph will go out on Sunday afternoon.
Register HERE to join the ever growing Tomograph mailing list. In this weekend’s issue you will, as always, find links to all the content that has appeared on the TomWinnifrith.com website this week. And given how much I am writing today (Saturday) the total scores on the doors will not be insignificant.
You will also find an exclusive piece of the welfare scrounger of the week plus 10 suggestions for George Osborne for his budget next week .
To receive all of this register HERE
4268 days ago
I was walking a deluded lefty to Highbury tube station this morning but as we approached we encountered the assembly the start of a “demo” against wicked Tory cuts. The victim in this case is the world’s third largest employer (viz the NHS) but the moaning and wailing from the crowd was against cuts in general. Yes, I know Government spending is in fact increasing but that does not fit in with the narrative of the left. Tories = cuts = wicked.
And so as we approached the tube one lardbucket who looked as if he had not encountered a bath in quite some time tried to thrust a pamphlet into my hand “stop the cuts” he said. I could not be bothered to point out that Government spending was in fact increasing. So I just said “No, I want more cuts, in welfare payments, in Government spending and in taxes for lower paid workers.” I am not sure that the protester (whose life is, I bet you, funded by the State) was expecting such a response in Islington and he looked a bit baffled as if I had said “the moon is made from cheese.”
Before had time to think of a response I was hustled swiftly on and reprimanded for being a) too right win and b) confrontational. When is the great demo protesting about how this hopeless Government is not cutting enough/at all planned for? I am happy to attend with my placard “Cut taxes for the poor workers,” “Heather Frost welfarism isn’t working,” “No more cash for kleptocrats.”I’ll be there.
4272 days ago
Last week was International wimmins day, next week is International smelly, bearded, jobless and selfish cyclists day and today is National No Smoking Day. The common thread: it is the State (or State’s getting together) telling you what to do and who to idolise and who to demonise. I regard the whole exercise as a costly piece of thought control and would scrap all these days. If we have to have them how about “Hard working taxpayer’s day,” “International never claimed a cent in welfare day”, “National entrepreneurs, job and wealth creators day.”
Sorry big brother you were right all along. I will learn what I should put into my body and shall lambast myself for being a heterosexual, hard working, tax paying and generating white male. I am ashamed of all of the above.
Smoking is a filthy habit. I will quit one day. But I shall do so when I want to not when a state that discourages me only slightly from drinking does not discourage me at all from smoking pot, runs limited campaigns pointing out the dire health implications of having unprotected anal sex in bathhouses bashes me yet again ( with taxpayers cash) about the fact that I smoke cigarettes. This is the one day of the year that you can guarantee that I shall not quit smoking.
In solidarity, all non-smokers should scrounge a fag off a smoker today to have just one drag. It won’t kill you but it is the suitable two fingers to nanny state. I could go on but I am off for a cigarette.
4272 days ago
There are few sentient human beings who maintain that prohibition of alcohol in 1920s America was a roaring success. Criminals benefited and made a killing. The costs of law enforcement went through the roof. Customers had to pay more. Checks to ensure safe supply of liquor became impossible. And anyone who wanted a drink could get one anyway. Yet still mainstream opinion argues that prohibition is a good idea elsewhere. The results are always the same.
As a libertarian I believe it is my call on what I put into my body not that of the State. So I have a philosophical opposition to prohibition. I do not expect many of you to agree with that stance. But you should see that on a practical level it does not work. Legalise drugs and allow supply via tobacconists and you could ensure that no dirty heroin hits the streets, tax receipts would go up, prices would go down. The 80% of crimes that are drug related would disappear and so we could reduce policing costs. With your car & house less likely to be broken into your insurance premiums would fall.
But there is another prohibition which is an abject failure – that on the movement of people into this country. It emerges today that it costs £25,000 to boot an illegal immigrant out. And he or she will soon be replaced. Criminals make a fortune trafficking people into the UK. A whole industry of lawyers and other parasites makes a living (from the taxpayer) arguing that folks should not be deported because it will infringe the human rights of their cat, result in homophobic bullying or whatever. And still we have no idea how many illegals are in the UK – it is probably well over one million. The whole system is a costly farce as any system based on prohibition always is. All those who talk tough about immigration seem to miss the point. We could spend 20 times as much as we do on “getting tough” but prohibition NEVER works.
And so why not allow anyone who wants to come to the UK? But with a twist. It is quite clear that we have vast number of home grown Heather Frost figures who have never worked, will never work and regard welfare as an entitlement. That is not sustainable or equitable. And so we make a small rule change. You can only claim income support up to a value of x times the amount of NI contributions you have made historically. And unless you have paid NI you and your offspring shall have no entitlement to schooling, healthcare, subsidised housing or any other state benefit. If you cannot afford kids do not have them and simply expect others to pay.
If one adopts these rules for our own home grown Heather Frosts you will not – with an open borders policy – get folks moving to the UK to live off the State because the same rules will apply to them. By all means let the Rumanians come en masse. But unless they are working they will starve. Make that abundantly clear and those who want to work hard will come to the UK and we will benefit from that. Those who want to scrounge can go to a “caring, socialist paradise fucked economy” like France or Scotland when it gets its independence. Perhaps they can take Heather Frost with them.
Adopt this policy and UK welfare spending will plunge. The parasite lawyers who feed off immigration law at the taxpayers’ expense will have to go get proper jobs and save us all a packet. All those employed by the State in this futile pretence that we are tough on immigration can be let go. And the vast savings can go on slashing the UK’s unsustainable deficit and on raising the threshold at which anyone pays tax to £20,000 so making ,low paid work that much more attractive.
Obviously this makes sense. The chances of it happening zilch.
4280 days ago
Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has suggested that the Government should cut welfare rather than defence spending. That seems like the sort of thing a Tory should support. Why should our troops in whichever pointless wars they are fighting right now not have the best armour and bullets for their guns and not have to worry about getting a P45 if they make it home alive? And is not welfare spending (at more than three times defence spending) bloated?
Apparently not. A Downing Street spokesperson said: “The Government has already set out additional welfare savings. If new and specific proposals were to emerge, then they would need to be considered.”
To which I say just two words: Heather Frost. A system that allows someone who has never worked to fund: the purchase and maintenance of a horse, flying lessons for her partner, the hire of a fairground attraction for her kid’s Birthday party, etc is a system that is flawed. And every day we read of other Heather Frost type figures, perhaps not in the league of the Queen of welfare parasites but still living a life of fecklessness funded by the taxpayer. For the arrogant and out of touch elite who lead the Conservative party to say that they cannot cut welfare spending is quite simply pathetic.
4293 days ago
I wrote earlier today about the jobless mum of 11 who lives on benefits and is getting a £400,000 eco mansion built for her by the local Council but says if she does not like it she will demand something better. That piece is HERE.
It now emerges that last year this loathsome woman bought a horse ( she tried to buy three but the deal collapsed) and now spends £200 a month caring for it.
Benefits are meant to be a safety net. There are millions of people working in the UK and paying taxes to fund this woman’s eco mansion, her frigging horse and god knows what else and all she can do is sit around on her arse. She had children through choice and expects others to fund her and the consequences of her actions and luxuries like owning a bloody horse.
I have just put in two sixteen hour days on the trot and work a 6 and a half day week providing employment for nine peiople who, in turn, all pay taxes. Why the hell I am bothering to work so hard to pay taxes to fund this monster? When I hear stories like this I question the morality of tax evasion. I cannot imagine that anyone in the UK supports the welfare state as it is other than parasites like Heather Frost. Yet our useless, sleazy and idle MPs do nothing about it. Some posture but nothing ever changes.
No taxation without representation was the cry of the colonists in 1776. As a hard working taxpayer I feel totally unrepresented.
I am now off to the Cinema to watch a film about an out of touch elite being overthrown by over-taxed plebs who had just had anough – I cannot be arsed to write another article today knowing that 31% of the proceeds will go on crap like this. This is unbearable.
4295 days ago
As I was happily preparing for the publication of another ebook tomorrow I see that I have received a volley of twitter abuse from a good man, but a deluded lefty of the highest order, @Mickkipper. In response to my suggestion that the crackpot Lib Dems wished to tax your jewellery and paintings as well as your house if you were rich, Mick replies ”Why not, most of them have been robbed pillaged during the common wealth days. Bring back slaves ehhhhh Tom.”
Saints preserve us. Is this really the high level debate that the left offers up? I object to being taxed on wealth accumulated as a result of me buying assets with taxed income ( a double tax) and that means that I want to bring back slaves?
But it got better. In stating the fact that at least twice a day some young person from Southern Europe wanders into my restaurant with a word perfect CV begging to work at the minimum wage but in a City were 100,000 young Britons are without work and living off welfare , not one home grown applicant turns up, I am lambasted. Mick sent of a series of tweets of which the best were:
“Caitt Reilly…. out of touch Winnifrith. Bring back the workhouse, chimmney boys and mine boys. Employ a eastern European”
and
4295 days ago
Caitt Reilly is the job snob geology graduate who said that being forced to work at Poundland rather than just sit on the dole until she found a job that suited her was illegal. Needless to say some crackpot judge found in her favour. Incidentally that work experience did her some good as she now has a job at Morrison’s with one suspecting that the supermarket thought the stint at Poundland was a more impressive part of her CV than a degree in geology.
Caitt seems like a sour faced deluded lefty with a point to prove but she is utterly typical of British youth today in believing that she can sit on her fat arse collecting benefits paid for with taxes paid by those of us who do work (often in jobs we don’t relish) until something she likes comes along. That process can take years. And the more we churn graduates out with 2:1 degrees from useless Universities in pointless subjects the more you will get young people saying that a menial job is “beneath them.” The only way to address this is by root and branch reform of the welfare system.
I contrast this with the attitude of young Europeans mainly from Spain and Italy who are flocking to London. Back home there are simply no jobs – youth unemployment is 50% plus and rising thanks to the joys of being in the Euro. And so the more enterprising ones
4314 days ago
It is quite clear that, as things stand, anyone in Romania or Bulgaria will be able to celebrate New Year’s Day by coming to live in Britain. We are after all brothers in arms in the EU. Given that the average net wage in Romania is £275 a month, with many earning far less, while in the UK families can trouser up to £500 a week tax free on benefits you do not need the brains of Lloyd George to see what is going to happen next. Yet our political elite seem either not to care or not to have an answer and so they resort to lies and smears.
Is it unreasonable for you and I to object to the idea that Romanians and Bulgarians will in very large numbers make a sensible economic choice and move to the UK? Are we racists for objecting? Of course not. The fact is that the UK has mammoth debts and is running a huge budget deficit. So having to pony up vast amounts in benefits for folks from out East is beyond our means. We cannot afford it. This is not an argument about race simply basic economics. Britain is going bankrupt and this could accelerate that process.
4318 days ago
Just a reminder that my Tomograph Newsletter goes out bi-weekly with its Weekend edition set to go out on Saturday
And of course the Wednesday edition is the only way to get an alert to my free share tip of the week.
Tomorrow’s issue has two exclusive new articles: Boris – you’ve lost the plot & the sinking ship of Welfare madness.
Plus there will be links to all the stories published this week and a other bits and bobs
The only way to get all of that is to
REGISTER HERE
Planned delivery time is Saturday afternoon.
Tom
4341 days ago
Iain Duncan Smith has claimed that the bloated UK welfare budget of £150 billion a year is bloated in part by around £10 billion a year being claimed in benefits as a result of quite deliberate fraud, often by international syndicates targeting bankrupt Britain. For this he has been vilified by Deluded Lefties elsewhere for “picking on the poor” for “ignoring the real target, tax dodging multinationals” etc. What a bunch of tossers.
In terms of the multinationals, they are not actually breaking the law. If they use Britain’s tax regulations as they stand to pay a low rate of tax it is because their officers have a fiduciary duty to investors to pay as little tax as is legally possible. If the Government wishes to change the tax rules it can do so. But as things stand, the “wicked corporations” are actually doing nothing wrong. They are stealing from no-one.
Those commit deliberate benefits fraud are, on the other hand, stealing from the British taxpayer. It is you and I who will pick up the tab for this theft either now or (as it adds to Government debt) later. It is criminal. I cannot see how anyone could possibly oppose the idea of IDS that we should stamp it out. And in stamping it out IDS is not targeting the poor he is targeting criminals. Who, in the right mind, could argue with that? Even some deluded lefties must admit that there is some merit in stopping handing taxpayers cash to criminals. Yet IDS has been described as creep of the year and lambasted by many of the usual suspects. Tossers.
4344 days ago
I find myself temporarily in the Grim North. The folks here all seem to have shoes, I have not yet been mugged and although it is a Sunday there seem to be plenty of folk off to work and Church. I have yet to see a whippet. It is all rather surprisingly ungrim.
But I cannot stay here long in case I catch the welfare addiction so I shall be heading back South soon. But before I go, since I am within ten miles of Grantham I feel I should pay a brief visit to the birthplace of the last Conservative PM Britain enjoyed. I hope to post a photo report later.
4355 days ago
And so it is suggested by some in the Tories that those on welfare should not get cash but a card which would allow them to buy anything they wanted except booze, cigarettes and Sky TV. Deluded lefties are bleating that this is demeaning for hardworking folks who are just temporarily out of work and that the Tories thus hate the working class. Bollocks.
If you are temporarily out of work you will get another job. You then get off welfare and then start paying taxes. At which point you will resent that cash going to folk on welfare who spend it on luxuries. Welfare is meant to be a safety net not a way of life. It is not a job.
If you plan on being unemployed for a long time or forever that is fine. Well it is not actually. But I cannot see why
4356 days ago
The feeble party of Government is today making great play of how it has frozen bank accounts containing £217,000 belonging to bearded Islamofascist terror lover Abu Qatada, saying it will try to reclaim the cash to get back some of the costs the feeble party of Government has incurred trying to boot Abu out of the UK. Let us hope that it is more successful getting the cash than it has been with the extradition. However, this attempt at hard man PR by the Conservatives does not wash as it begs yet more questions. Viz:
1. How much taxpayer’s cash will be spent on a new legal challenge to recover this paltry amount? I.e. what is the anticipated net return?
2. If Abu is sitting on £217,000 cash why the hell does he get a) legal aid – costs to date c £500,000 and b) free luxury housing for him and his family and c) welfare payments for him and his ghastly family.
The welfare system is meant to be a safety net for those between work – not a way for those with hard cash to preserve that cash as they do not work. But then in Bankrupt Britain anything goes, I guess.
Might it not be simpler simply to cut off Abu’s supply of free housing, welfare and legal aid. Unfreeze his bank accounts. If he chooses to send that cash off to Hamas or Al Qaeda rather than spend it on housing and food for the kids that is fine. Then he and his family can starve and freeze to death. That is all part of the idea of taking responsibility for your own actions. Do you think that anyone would care?
4365 days ago
Sign on, sign on, with a pen in your hand, and you’ll never work again. Sign on. Sign on.
Or perhaps given the time of year and a chance to think of those less fortunate than ourselves a few choruses of “Feed the scousers, let them know it’s Christmas time.” Actually I have no hard feelings for Liverpool. My Aunt Lucy’s family are all Liverpool fans and my sister was born there. She clearly picked up the Souse mindset in those early days. As a Doctor paid £50,000 plus for two days a week she fits in well: living off the state and not doing much work.
When football Santa grants me the chance to decide the league table, I won’t really be thinking about Liverpool. Naturally Santa and I will start at the top. West Ham to come first. Then Santa and I will head straight to the other end. The old man in the beard does not need to ask the first question. Spurs to finish bottom. And then
4408 days ago
The Daily Mail carries a rather typical scare story today about how the UK will have 80 million residents by 2050. I am not sure that given my health profile I shall be one of them. In fact I know that I shall not be, I am determined to end my years in a rather warmer climate. But the Mail, needless to say, gets its assumptions wrong in a rather desperate attempt to cosy up to its Middle England readership.
4419 days ago
Forgive me Dear Lord, for I am about to defend call Me Dave Cameron against the charge that he sounds like a Conservative. I know that he is not and that he will not do what he says but, and I cannot believe that I am writing this, he is attacked unfairly.
Call Me Dave apparently says that he plans to cut certain benefits as part of his valiant attempt to cut the deficit to prevent Britain going bankrupt. Blah, blah, blah.
4433 days ago
Thanks to the Ambush Predator blog for this tale of utter hopelessness which shows why our current drugs policy is such a disaster. The blog recounts:
A Liverpool shoplifter snubbed the help that had been given her by travelling to Blackburn and stealing just six days after completing a residential drug rehabilitation programme.The chairman of the magistrates, Vanessa Pickup, said residential rehabilitation places were like “gold dust.”
“You were given a chance many people would give their right arm for,” said Mrs Pickup. “Your response was to come out, and six days later travel to Blackburn to steal.”
And so a custodial sentence was imposed.
She was jailed for 12 weeks.
Gareth Price, defending, had been faced with a large electricity bill and a drug debt and found herself in dire financial straits.
Okay so let’s work this out. Our heroin (or whatever drug it is) addicted scouser friend has to find a very large amount of money each week to buy a commodity (heroin) which costs nothing to produce. Her welfare cheques are not enough. So she steals. Not big amounts but enough to piss off a series of shop owners and homeowners in Liverpool.
