Father Tim Jones of York preached a sermon recently where he said that, if you were in desperate straits. and you were faced with a choice of burglary, prostitution, or shoplifting, in his opinion, shoplifting was morally less of an evil than the alternatives.
Needless to say, he was pilloried for it by the likes of the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, to the extent that even his Diocese felt the need to distance themselves from his words by posting a slightly inaccurate version of what he said on their web site.
Well, I am afraid I have to disagree with them. I think he should be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. For the record, here is the full transcript of what he said:www.yorkpress.co.uk/
...As you will see he actually says that for those in desperate straits, shoplifting is the least morally damaging option when the alternatives are suicide, burglary, or prostitution.
he says:
Let my words not be misrepresented as a simplistic call for people to shoplift. The observation that shoplifting is the best option that some people are left with is a grim indictment of who we are.
But why let the facts get in the way of a good story, eh?
He's right though. The dichotomy between the glittery, gleaming, gadget ridden, food-stuffed consumer M & S advert Christmas and the grim reality for people on the dole or homeless is obscene, and it IS a grim indictment of society's values.
And these supermarkets who are bleating about it today, such as Asda in York, who described Fr Jones as being "one prayer short of a sermon", would they be the same supermarkets who regularly SKIP huge amounts of "waste" food because of sell-by dates, and would they be the same supermarkets who are ######ing up the planet by flying in dwarf beans from Kenya? Motes and beams, mate, motes and beams. Good luck to Fr Jones, I say, at least he's put it higher up the news agenda, despite every paper reporting it in precisely the opposite way to what he intended.
It would be better if the supermarkets, instead of bleating about the words of an Anglican priest, channeled some of their huge profits back into bolting on an extra "leg" onto their existing logistics network, which already exists and is geared up for the overnight transport of consumables, so that the stuff which currently ends up in the skip at the back of the shop, goes back in the otherwise empty delivery lorry instead, once it's been unloaded at the shop, to a central depot or depots and thence into a separate distribution network run in conjunction with, say The Salvation Army to those who need it.
Funded by the supermarkets. Then people wouldn't need to shoplift out of desperation (though I agree some may still do it for other reasons) which in turn cuts down some of the supermarket's need for CCTV and security, and associated costs etc etc. Win-win.
The only "supermarket" I regularly shop at these days is the Coop attached to the garage in Brockholes, which doesn't stock cats, which is just as well, because they would have to remain unswung if it did, but even so, I would happily forego my divvy for a few years or indeed forever, if the money went into such a network instead.
We HAVE to have a SERIOUS rethink about all this stuff. Since the banks went mammaries uppermost, we are NOT in Kansas anymore.
Now is the hour. Now. We have to start thinking along the lines of SOCIALLY USEFUL CAPITALISM, hopefully with the consent of those enterprises who want to be seen as having corporate social responsibility to the community that gives them their profits. The yardstick is not how big your share is, but how much you can share. There's a song in that somewhere...
Thursday 24 December 2009
PC Bill Barker, George Medal
It will never replace him in the lives of his family, but I still think that PC Bill Barker, who died in the Cumbrian floods in Workington (he had gone to the aid of a motorist on Northside Bridge in Workington when it collapsed, carrying him away) should get a posthumous George Medal.
Top Bloke Awards
Another couple of candidates for the "Top Bloke of 2009" award:
The first is cafe boss George Anderson of Banff, who plans to open the doors of his cafe on Christmas Day so that homeless and elderly folk don't have to spend the day alone.
And despite those who tell you there is no such thing, - they will also get a free lunch.
Mr Anderson and his staff are giving up a day off from the kitchen because they feel they have something to offer the community. He is appealing to other businesses in the town to help out by donating foodstuffs and other treats that will make the day memorable.
"We are going to be open for anyone who is displaced or who has no one to spend the day with, because no one should have to be alone at Christmas," he said.
"There are people living in homeless accommodation and elderly people with no family for who Christmas is a really sad time of year. It's not a happy time at all.
"We would like them to come and spend the day with us and have some lunch. If someone is elderly and can't manage out, we will even deliver their meal."
"As a community, one way or another we all have something that we can offer, and I firmly believe that we should all be trying to do that little bit more, especially at this time of year."
Good for him.
The second candidate is a taxi driver today who battled through blizzards to deliver vital blood to treat cancer patients.
Abdirashid Issa was taking the supplies from Southampton to Winchester and Basingstoke when he was caught up in Monday's snow in Hampshire.
He made the drop in Winchester but was forced to abandon his car due to tailbacks and walk four miles from the M3 motorway to the North Hampshire Hospital in Basingstoke in "horrible" blizzard conditions. He was then stranded overnight and had to sleep on a waiting room chair before he made his way back to get his car.
Father-of-one Mr Issa, who works for Central Shirley Cars in Southampton, moved to England from Somalia six years ago with his wife Iasha.
He set off with the blood at 5pm but he did not reach Basingstoke until 11pm.
The taxi driver told the Southern Daily Echo said: "It was very important. It said 'urgent blood' and if someone needed it I had to make sacrifices because they might be dying.
"I could have stayed in my heated car but I had to do it."
A spokeswoman for the North Hampshire Hospital in Basingstoke said: "We have sent a huge thank you to Mr Issa, who went well beyond the call of duty to deliver blood stocks to Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital.
"The delivery included platelets needed for our leukaemia patients and other blood stock which enabled the hospital to continue with planned major operations on Tuesday as well as maintaining an adequate stock for emergencies."
I don't know! These immigrants eh! What are they like?
The first is cafe boss George Anderson of Banff, who plans to open the doors of his cafe on Christmas Day so that homeless and elderly folk don't have to spend the day alone.
And despite those who tell you there is no such thing, - they will also get a free lunch.
Mr Anderson and his staff are giving up a day off from the kitchen because they feel they have something to offer the community. He is appealing to other businesses in the town to help out by donating foodstuffs and other treats that will make the day memorable.
"We are going to be open for anyone who is displaced or who has no one to spend the day with, because no one should have to be alone at Christmas," he said.
"There are people living in homeless accommodation and elderly people with no family for who Christmas is a really sad time of year. It's not a happy time at all.
"We would like them to come and spend the day with us and have some lunch. If someone is elderly and can't manage out, we will even deliver their meal."
"As a community, one way or another we all have something that we can offer, and I firmly believe that we should all be trying to do that little bit more, especially at this time of year."
Good for him.
The second candidate is a taxi driver today who battled through blizzards to deliver vital blood to treat cancer patients.
Abdirashid Issa was taking the supplies from Southampton to Winchester and Basingstoke when he was caught up in Monday's snow in Hampshire.
He made the drop in Winchester but was forced to abandon his car due to tailbacks and walk four miles from the M3 motorway to the North Hampshire Hospital in Basingstoke in "horrible" blizzard conditions. He was then stranded overnight and had to sleep on a waiting room chair before he made his way back to get his car.
Father-of-one Mr Issa, who works for Central Shirley Cars in Southampton, moved to England from Somalia six years ago with his wife Iasha.
He set off with the blood at 5pm but he did not reach Basingstoke until 11pm.
The taxi driver told the Southern Daily Echo said: "It was very important. It said 'urgent blood' and if someone needed it I had to make sacrifices because they might be dying.
"I could have stayed in my heated car but I had to do it."
A spokeswoman for the North Hampshire Hospital in Basingstoke said: "We have sent a huge thank you to Mr Issa, who went well beyond the call of duty to deliver blood stocks to Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital.
"The delivery included platelets needed for our leukaemia patients and other blood stock which enabled the hospital to continue with planned major operations on Tuesday as well as maintaining an adequate stock for emergencies."
I don't know! These immigrants eh! What are they like?
Wonderful, Wonderful, Copenhagen
I had very low expectations of the outcome of the Copenhagen conference on climate change, and even then, I was disappointed. Seeing the various squabbles and shenanigans, the cabals and the backroom deals, I think the best thing from now on for anyone who is worried about climate change is to buy a CNB suit and some really thick sunglasses.
What cracks me up, though, is that some people still deny it's happening. Of course, those remarkably dim boffins at UEA, artlessly discussing whether or not to fudge their data, have not helped matters, and I cannot but wonder that there is an untold story there about how that was hacked and released to the media, just on the eve of the conference starting.
I am not a scientist. I dropped physics like a red hot brick in the third year, despite, paradoxically, being quite interested in it now. So, I don't understand the data, I don't understand the graphs.
What I do see, though, is a tedious concentration on the single issue of temperature. Almost to the angels-on-pinheads stage. Is it getting warmer? Is it getting cooler? It's the warmest decade since etc etc etc.
Anyone with half a brain can see there's SOMETHING wrong with the weather. We never get hot summers any more, every winter we always get catastrophic floods, like those in Cockermouth and Workington, and in other parts of the world, eg Indonesia, it's much much worse. It's more extreme. It can't ALL be caused by Barrats and Wimpeys building yuppie-hutches on the flood plain.
As I sit here typing this, we are in the midst of the coldest snap in the UK for about 20 years, which has been gleefully seized on by media wits along the lines of "what price global warming now, then, hur hur!" God, how tediously short sighted these idiots are, not to recognize that it is all part of the massive disturbance of weather systems. I'd like them to spend a few weeks filling sandbags in Cumbria, they might buck their ideas up then.
Irrespective of whether it's warmer or not, SOMETHING is screwing up the weather and making it more EXTREME, so I would be grateful if all the learned boffins could kindly roll down the sleeves of their lab coats, stop arm wrestling about the temperature and shouting "Lower!" and "Higher!" at each other like they were at a screening of "The Price is Right" and actually work out what it is that is DISTURBING the weather systems.
You can drown in warm water or cold water, Even I, as a non-scientist, know that.
What cracks me up, though, is that some people still deny it's happening. Of course, those remarkably dim boffins at UEA, artlessly discussing whether or not to fudge their data, have not helped matters, and I cannot but wonder that there is an untold story there about how that was hacked and released to the media, just on the eve of the conference starting.
I am not a scientist. I dropped physics like a red hot brick in the third year, despite, paradoxically, being quite interested in it now. So, I don't understand the data, I don't understand the graphs.
What I do see, though, is a tedious concentration on the single issue of temperature. Almost to the angels-on-pinheads stage. Is it getting warmer? Is it getting cooler? It's the warmest decade since etc etc etc.
Anyone with half a brain can see there's SOMETHING wrong with the weather. We never get hot summers any more, every winter we always get catastrophic floods, like those in Cockermouth and Workington, and in other parts of the world, eg Indonesia, it's much much worse. It's more extreme. It can't ALL be caused by Barrats and Wimpeys building yuppie-hutches on the flood plain.
As I sit here typing this, we are in the midst of the coldest snap in the UK for about 20 years, which has been gleefully seized on by media wits along the lines of "what price global warming now, then, hur hur!" God, how tediously short sighted these idiots are, not to recognize that it is all part of the massive disturbance of weather systems. I'd like them to spend a few weeks filling sandbags in Cumbria, they might buck their ideas up then.
Irrespective of whether it's warmer or not, SOMETHING is screwing up the weather and making it more EXTREME, so I would be grateful if all the learned boffins could kindly roll down the sleeves of their lab coats, stop arm wrestling about the temperature and shouting "Lower!" and "Higher!" at each other like they were at a screening of "The Price is Right" and actually work out what it is that is DISTURBING the weather systems.
You can drown in warm water or cold water, Even I, as a non-scientist, know that.
Insurance Proposal
Given that some of the people in Toll Bar and Hull who suffered in the 2007 floods are still arguing it out with the insurance companies, I would like to propose a simple solution to stop the same thing happening in Cockermouth, Keswick, Workington et al. This could only apply to people who have insurance in place, but at least it's better than nothing.
Given that they need help STRAIGHT AWAY, but the insurance companies are going to be overwhelmed by claims and given that (from experience) I know that even a simple claim will be bitterly fought in a sort of hand to hand, house to house, Stalingrad style resistance until finally you have to go round their office, grasp them by the ankles, invert them, and shake them til the ££ drop out of their pockets, to get them to pay up, I think the banks should take up the slack in the interim.
Since it's all our money anyway these days, what the government should do is to declare a specific disaster zone, then any business with insurance within the zone who has been damaged by the floods can have a visit and a desktop valuation from the bank. Say for instance, you have insurance which will cover a claim, and the bank agrees that the claim is £50,000. They advance you the money as an immediate interest free advance. This allows you to get up and running again QUICKLY, so that your business can start generating income again. In the meantime, you pursue the insurance claim, and when it comes through, the money goes to repay the bank. If there is any shortfall between the bank;s desktop valuation amount and the actual insurance payout, that is transmuted to a fixed interest rate fixed term loan, underwritten by the disaster fund. Say the bank advanced you £50,000, but the insurance when it came through was only £47,500, the £2500 gets transmuted to a fixed loan.
Since the banks seem to have a never-ending appetite for taxpayers' money, and will never be happy until they are wearing a suit made entirely of money and sitting down to a dinner of roast money in a money sauce with a side salad of money, I think it is the least they can do.
I'd also suggest that next summer every tourist attraction within the National Park asks for an additional voluntary contribution/tax of 50p per adult visitor, to be passed on to the disaster fund. This money could go towards alleviating the plight of the people who were unable to get insurance because of previous problems with flooding, of which I understand there are a substantial number.
The government needs to step in and take over the process of obtaining advances quickly, for those in the defined zone, until the insurance companies catch up. I am being charitable to the insurance companies here and assuming that they will catch up, setting my own experiences aside for now. Make the most of this unexpected leniency on my part. I must be going soft.
Builders, electricians, etc., etc., still have to do the work, and they too are in limited supply.
Once again, the state could organise gangs of them and get them bussed up there, I am sure there is an army of skilled tradesmen, brickies etc in the rest of the UK on short time or with no work because the construction industry is in the doldrums, who would welcome a tour of four weeks paid work in the Lakes. Open up some of the mothballed space at army camps and RAF stations within driving distance of the disaster area to provide accommodation.
The scale of this thing is going to require a Dunkirk Armada of White Transits heading up the M6, and a promise of organised, guaranteed work for a term at the end of the journey. Sort of like Auf Wiedersehen Pet, but bigger.
Given that they need help STRAIGHT AWAY, but the insurance companies are going to be overwhelmed by claims and given that (from experience) I know that even a simple claim will be bitterly fought in a sort of hand to hand, house to house, Stalingrad style resistance until finally you have to go round their office, grasp them by the ankles, invert them, and shake them til the ££ drop out of their pockets, to get them to pay up, I think the banks should take up the slack in the interim.
Since it's all our money anyway these days, what the government should do is to declare a specific disaster zone, then any business with insurance within the zone who has been damaged by the floods can have a visit and a desktop valuation from the bank. Say for instance, you have insurance which will cover a claim, and the bank agrees that the claim is £50,000. They advance you the money as an immediate interest free advance. This allows you to get up and running again QUICKLY, so that your business can start generating income again. In the meantime, you pursue the insurance claim, and when it comes through, the money goes to repay the bank. If there is any shortfall between the bank;s desktop valuation amount and the actual insurance payout, that is transmuted to a fixed interest rate fixed term loan, underwritten by the disaster fund. Say the bank advanced you £50,000, but the insurance when it came through was only £47,500, the £2500 gets transmuted to a fixed loan.
Since the banks seem to have a never-ending appetite for taxpayers' money, and will never be happy until they are wearing a suit made entirely of money and sitting down to a dinner of roast money in a money sauce with a side salad of money, I think it is the least they can do.
I'd also suggest that next summer every tourist attraction within the National Park asks for an additional voluntary contribution/tax of 50p per adult visitor, to be passed on to the disaster fund. This money could go towards alleviating the plight of the people who were unable to get insurance because of previous problems with flooding, of which I understand there are a substantial number.
The government needs to step in and take over the process of obtaining advances quickly, for those in the defined zone, until the insurance companies catch up. I am being charitable to the insurance companies here and assuming that they will catch up, setting my own experiences aside for now. Make the most of this unexpected leniency on my part. I must be going soft.
Builders, electricians, etc., etc., still have to do the work, and they too are in limited supply.
Once again, the state could organise gangs of them and get them bussed up there, I am sure there is an army of skilled tradesmen, brickies etc in the rest of the UK on short time or with no work because the construction industry is in the doldrums, who would welcome a tour of four weeks paid work in the Lakes. Open up some of the mothballed space at army camps and RAF stations within driving distance of the disaster area to provide accommodation.
The scale of this thing is going to require a Dunkirk Armada of White Transits heading up the M6, and a promise of organised, guaranteed work for a term at the end of the journey. Sort of like Auf Wiedersehen Pet, but bigger.
Rooftree
This blog has been rather neglected of late because I have been working on trying to start a movement called ROOFTREE. I have hinted at something similar in this blog before but I was galvanised into more direct action by a strange course of events.
I was doing some research on the history of the old Hull and Barnsley Railway and in particular Drewton Tunnels, a rather spectacular set of Victorian tunnels under the Yorkshire Wolds near Riplingham, in the East Riding. My research led me to a site called 28dayslater.co.uk, which is dedicated to the pastime of Urban Exploration. Urban Exploration is apparently the practice of exploring derelict buildings and associated sites.
I was staggered, literally staggered, to see how many of these derelict sites there are in the UK. Often large, publicly owned buildings, sometimes hospitals, with (presumably expensive) medical equipment still inside them. This set me thinking, and the result was what I call the Rooftree Letter, the text of which is below:
We have a country where some people are homeless. This is unacceptable. We have a country where some people who need it, cannot access affordable housing. This is unacceptable. We have a country where hundreds, maybe thousands, of sites are derelict, many of which feature large, substantial. public buildings which we, the taxpayers, own, in effect, and which are being allowed to deteriorate to the point of no return. Finally, we have a country where many bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers and electricians, roofers and tilers are either now unemployed or on short time, as the credit crunch bites.
I would like to propose a solution to deal with all of the above. The Government, and/or the relevant local authorities, should compulsorily purchase these sites. They should then use any existing structures on the site to provide either accommodation and or core services to support a “settlement” in the grounds, based on the existing modular timber-framed prefabricated structures of the technology favoured by Walter Segal, to provide a source of low cost, affordable housing. The central core building could provide a local source of combined heat and power technology based on a combination of waste incineration and anaerobic digestion.
People have told me this is impossible. Too expensive, compared to building new houses on greenfield sites. That is as maybe, but “expensive” is a relative term. Does it take into account, for instance, the cost of having all of those unemployed builders, bricklayers, architects, draughtsmen, carpenters, roofers, plasterers, tilers, electricians, and plumbers? No, it does not.
Basically, my idea is this: you take the central building on the site and turn it into tenements to house people along the lines of those produced by the Victorian Architect HENRY ROBERTS and also the central building houses the communal waste incineration leading to CHP unit, the anerobic digester, the other communal facilities, and then around it you scatter these individual bungalows, modular timber framed buildings built by the Walter Segal method, which draw their heating and other services from the central building, enhanced by solar panels on the individual houses themselves. Each house gets a stake in the communal allotments which are laid out over any spare land left over which is too small to build on.
It seems to me that most of what Henry Roberts did would be consistent with building regs anyway, I would have thought that the major stumbling block would be cost in his using (for eg) slate for the floors etc. My idea is to start a *campaign* (doing what I do best, allegedly, pontificating and badgering people) to pressure the authorities into changing the building regulations on socially useful housing to make it easier to do this sort of development; to pressure the government to acquire these sites, many of which, I repeat, belong to us, the taxpayers and are currently standing empty, decaying, and prone to vandalism, some of them (the ex-NHS ones) still containing presumably valuable equipment, and many of them having extensive grounds, which could also be utilised; and to pressure the government and the authorities to provide the wherewithal, the seed capital, to allow these communities to come into being, on the grounds that they will eventually recoup the cost in rent and show a profit, and of course they will have the site on their books as an asset, owned for and on behalf of all of us; it would reduce pressures on social housing elsewhere in the system, and building on brownfield sites that would otherwise be derelict is much better than tearing up green fields and trees; and finally that it is socially useful to have all of the construction workers, brickies, electricians and joiners who would otherwise be drawing the dole, actually working.
We just need 1000 sites housing 63 people each, or 500 sites housing 126 people each, or 63 sites housing 1000 people each, and suddenly that figure of 63,000 homeless people in the UK last Christmas becomes much less daunting.
Now is the time, with the property market still depressed, for the government to step in and compulsorily purchase these sites. Say at £2M a site on average, that is £1BN. Small change, compared to what we have been chucking at the banking system.Rooftree is not a charity, not a company, it’s not an anything really. It’s a movement, in the same way that Solidarnocz was a movement. We don’t even have a web site unless someone wants to donate one to us. But what we do have, is a desire to build the new Jerusalem, one brick at a time, one site at a time, until there is no one left sleeping out in the cold.
Please join us. Go to the ROOFTREE Facebook Page or ROOFTREE Facebook Group, (enter “Rooftree in the search box) or sign our petition on the Number 10 web site (search under “Housing” or "Rooftree")
Anyway, that is what I've been doing. Just in case you thought I had been slacking or anything.
I was doing some research on the history of the old Hull and Barnsley Railway and in particular Drewton Tunnels, a rather spectacular set of Victorian tunnels under the Yorkshire Wolds near Riplingham, in the East Riding. My research led me to a site called 28dayslater.co.uk, which is dedicated to the pastime of Urban Exploration. Urban Exploration is apparently the practice of exploring derelict buildings and associated sites.
I was staggered, literally staggered, to see how many of these derelict sites there are in the UK. Often large, publicly owned buildings, sometimes hospitals, with (presumably expensive) medical equipment still inside them. This set me thinking, and the result was what I call the Rooftree Letter, the text of which is below:
We have a country where some people are homeless. This is unacceptable. We have a country where some people who need it, cannot access affordable housing. This is unacceptable. We have a country where hundreds, maybe thousands, of sites are derelict, many of which feature large, substantial. public buildings which we, the taxpayers, own, in effect, and which are being allowed to deteriorate to the point of no return. Finally, we have a country where many bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers and electricians, roofers and tilers are either now unemployed or on short time, as the credit crunch bites.
I would like to propose a solution to deal with all of the above. The Government, and/or the relevant local authorities, should compulsorily purchase these sites. They should then use any existing structures on the site to provide either accommodation and or core services to support a “settlement” in the grounds, based on the existing modular timber-framed prefabricated structures of the technology favoured by Walter Segal, to provide a source of low cost, affordable housing. The central core building could provide a local source of combined heat and power technology based on a combination of waste incineration and anaerobic digestion.
People have told me this is impossible. Too expensive, compared to building new houses on greenfield sites. That is as maybe, but “expensive” is a relative term. Does it take into account, for instance, the cost of having all of those unemployed builders, bricklayers, architects, draughtsmen, carpenters, roofers, plasterers, tilers, electricians, and plumbers? No, it does not.
Basically, my idea is this: you take the central building on the site and turn it into tenements to house people along the lines of those produced by the Victorian Architect HENRY ROBERTS and also the central building houses the communal waste incineration leading to CHP unit, the anerobic digester, the other communal facilities, and then around it you scatter these individual bungalows, modular timber framed buildings built by the Walter Segal method, which draw their heating and other services from the central building, enhanced by solar panels on the individual houses themselves. Each house gets a stake in the communal allotments which are laid out over any spare land left over which is too small to build on.
It seems to me that most of what Henry Roberts did would be consistent with building regs anyway, I would have thought that the major stumbling block would be cost in his using (for eg) slate for the floors etc. My idea is to start a *campaign* (doing what I do best, allegedly, pontificating and badgering people) to pressure the authorities into changing the building regulations on socially useful housing to make it easier to do this sort of development; to pressure the government to acquire these sites, many of which, I repeat, belong to us, the taxpayers and are currently standing empty, decaying, and prone to vandalism, some of them (the ex-NHS ones) still containing presumably valuable equipment, and many of them having extensive grounds, which could also be utilised; and to pressure the government and the authorities to provide the wherewithal, the seed capital, to allow these communities to come into being, on the grounds that they will eventually recoup the cost in rent and show a profit, and of course they will have the site on their books as an asset, owned for and on behalf of all of us; it would reduce pressures on social housing elsewhere in the system, and building on brownfield sites that would otherwise be derelict is much better than tearing up green fields and trees; and finally that it is socially useful to have all of the construction workers, brickies, electricians and joiners who would otherwise be drawing the dole, actually working.
We just need 1000 sites housing 63 people each, or 500 sites housing 126 people each, or 63 sites housing 1000 people each, and suddenly that figure of 63,000 homeless people in the UK last Christmas becomes much less daunting.
Now is the time, with the property market still depressed, for the government to step in and compulsorily purchase these sites. Say at £2M a site on average, that is £1BN. Small change, compared to what we have been chucking at the banking system.Rooftree is not a charity, not a company, it’s not an anything really. It’s a movement, in the same way that Solidarnocz was a movement. We don’t even have a web site unless someone wants to donate one to us. But what we do have, is a desire to build the new Jerusalem, one brick at a time, one site at a time, until there is no one left sleeping out in the cold.
Please join us. Go to the ROOFTREE Facebook Page or ROOFTREE Facebook Group, (enter “Rooftree in the search box) or sign our petition on the Number 10 web site (search under “Housing” or "Rooftree")
Anyway, that is what I've been doing. Just in case you thought I had been slacking or anything.
80 MPs are appealing (not from where I’m sitting)
My flabber has been gasted once again by the news that 80 MPs may be considering appealing against the assessment of their expenses by Legg.
How many times do I have to say this?
Welcome to the REAL world, MPs. The world where the REST of us live, where things get changed arbitrarily and retrospectively, and we just have to put up with it and lump it. Welcome to the real world, members of parliament, for a much-needed dose of reality up the jacksy. Welcome to the world where, if you are late with your CT600 Corporation Tax return, the HMRCE fines you £500, and you can't get away with writing a letter saying "accountancy isn't my strong suit". Welcome to the real world. wake up and smell the coffee, shut up, stop whining, and get on with running the country.
If they have the brass nuts to try and claim for moat cleaning, duck houses, and bell tower repair on the public purse, they deserve EVERYTHING coming their way. If they want respect, they should shut up and earn respect, instead of whinging about "having to live on rations". As to their pay, a) most of them have several other jobs and b) if they don't like it, they can shove off and join the poor unloved bankers who are going to throw their teddy out the pram and all move to New York or Geneva. I'll do their job. I'll be an MP, for that money. Three times what I earned last year, before tax. Yes please.While there is still ONE homeless person in Britain these cold nights, I would REQUISITION MPs' second homes for emergency accommodation, and make them sleep on cardboard boxes in a sleeping bag under Westminster Bridge, until they do something to end it.
And as for the bankers, I've already said what I would do with those ######s. Tax their bonuses at 150%. Their bonus is that they still have a job, and we allow them to continue breathing until such time as they have paid us back.
How many times do I have to say this?
Welcome to the REAL world, MPs. The world where the REST of us live, where things get changed arbitrarily and retrospectively, and we just have to put up with it and lump it. Welcome to the real world, members of parliament, for a much-needed dose of reality up the jacksy. Welcome to the world where, if you are late with your CT600 Corporation Tax return, the HMRCE fines you £500, and you can't get away with writing a letter saying "accountancy isn't my strong suit". Welcome to the real world. wake up and smell the coffee, shut up, stop whining, and get on with running the country.
If they have the brass nuts to try and claim for moat cleaning, duck houses, and bell tower repair on the public purse, they deserve EVERYTHING coming their way. If they want respect, they should shut up and earn respect, instead of whinging about "having to live on rations". As to their pay, a) most of them have several other jobs and b) if they don't like it, they can shove off and join the poor unloved bankers who are going to throw their teddy out the pram and all move to New York or Geneva. I'll do their job. I'll be an MP, for that money. Three times what I earned last year, before tax. Yes please.While there is still ONE homeless person in Britain these cold nights, I would REQUISITION MPs' second homes for emergency accommodation, and make them sleep on cardboard boxes in a sleeping bag under Westminster Bridge, until they do something to end it.
And as for the bankers, I've already said what I would do with those ######s. Tax their bonuses at 150%. Their bonus is that they still have a job, and we allow them to continue breathing until such time as they have paid us back.
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