The Daily Telegraph was very keen this week to make hay out of the fact that there are apparently 102 criminals who we can’t deport because of the European Convention on Human Rights. This may well be true, although if the Daily Telegraph told me the sun would rise tomorrow, I would want the fact independently verified by a competent astronomer.
I would be much more likely to believe in the Daily Telegraph if it balanced its relentless bashing of the ECHR with some sort of statement to the effect that in any complex area of jurisprudence there are inevitably going to be times when the result of the process is not what you would expect. On both sides of the ledger.
I reckon, for instance, that – given the resources and the budget of the Daily Telegraph – I could probably find at least 102 instances of people who we have deported who we shouldn’t have done, because by doing so we were condemning them potentially to torture and death at the end of their journey.
Such as the Tamil asylum seekers we deported back to Sri Lanka this week despite clear evidence, which it was left to the likes of Channel 4 to publicise, that there was, potentially, genocide committed by government forces against the Tamil Tigers and those allegedly associated with them. One of the Tamils was so concerned about his potential fate that, rather than risk being deported, he tried to hang himself with his prison duvet. A Labour MP who raised the matter in the House of Commons said – quite truthfully in my opinion – that deporting them was akin to “painting targets on their backs”.
I once read somewhere, I can’t remember where, but I daresay it’s verifiable one way or another, that the standard test for the effectiveness of a particular type of toilet was whether or not it was possible to flush a rolled-up copy of The Daily Telegraph down it. If that is true, I would strongly contend that it remains the most useful thing you can do with it.
Saturday, 18 June 2011
No dissent, please, we're British
The possibility of being found guilty of thought crimes came another step nearer with David Cameron’s recent pronouncement that he was going to “crack down” on anyone not espousing traditional British values. Bizarrely, this apparently includes getting Ofsted to spy on universities and educational establishments to see if they are being “radicalized”. As the only difference between Ofsted and a plastic surgeon is that the latter tucks up the features, I can’t see this being a riproaring success.
Still, one question haunts me… would that include the “traditional British value” of free speech within the bounds of the law, Mr Cameron?
Still, one question haunts me… would that include the “traditional British value” of free speech within the bounds of the law, Mr Cameron?
Gadaffi your horse, and drink your milk
Can anyone tell me what we are still doing meddling in Libya?
VAT a Balls-up!
Hot on the heels of the IMF’s “endorsement” of George Osborne’s plans for the economy comes the disastrous May figures for retail sales, and Ed Balls making a speech suggesting that VAT be cut back to 17.5% to jump start sales on the high street.
Clearly, our economic waters are confusing and choppy at the moment.
Buried deep down in the original text of the IMF document (point # 9, in fact) we find:
Risks and uncertainty around this central scenario are significant. Large risks to growth and inflation arise from uncertainties surrounding euro-area sovereign turmoil, the housing market, the size of the output gap, and commodity prices. Indeed, unexpected spikes in commodity prices were a significant factor behind revisions to our 2011 inflation and growth forecasts since the 2010 Article IV consultation. Another risk is uncertainty surrounding the size of fiscal multipliers and the degree to which private demand and net exports will be vibrant enough to pick up the slack from fiscal consolidation. Uncertainties arising from key risks are further compounded by the unusually large disconnect between recent weak GDP outturns and other indicators that are stronger (e.g., rising employment, higher-than-forecast tax revenue, and stronger private sector surveys), making it all the more difficult to ascertain the economy’s near-term direction
Translation? We haven't got a fucking scooby.
My interest had been piqued by this, so I rang up the IMF Press Office. I know, I will be for it when the phone bill comes in, living off bread and scrape, sleeping in the dog kennel and no sex for a month (no change there, then) but it was worth every penny.
I wish I had recorded it.
IMF WOMAN: Media relations, how many I help you?
ME: Hi, I am a freelance writer in the UK and I was thinking of writing something about John Lipsky, following his pronouncement on the UK economy. Am I right in thinking he's now the acting managing director?
IMF WOMAN: That's right
ME: And is he getting the same salary as Mr Strauss-Kahn, I mean, given that he's going the same job?
IMF WOMAN: I don't know. Would it be possible for you to put your question in an email to ...
ME: Well, it's a simple enough question, someone must know the answer. Is there a section on the IMF web site where you publish peoples' salary scales?
IMF WOMAN: No.
ME: Is that because it's a secret?
IMF WOMAN: I don't know. If you could just send an email to...
ME: So you are saying that you either don't know or you won't tell me what the managing director of the IMF earns?
IMF WOMAN: Yes
ME: Well, I think that tells me all I need to know about your grasp of economics. Goodbye.
My reason for asking is that I suspect, from Mr Lipsky's bio on the IMF web site, that he is not short of a bob or two. Given his current directorships and his previous posts with various fund managers (hang on, weren't they the ones that caused all this...?) I reckon he's probably got the odd "portrait of Madison" in his safe. And good luck to him.
I also suspect, although, unlike Mervyn King, he hasn't been stupid enough to say that he's probably also of the opinion that unemployment in the North of England is a price worth paying etc etc chiz chiz, whatever the quotation was. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's ... probably ... a duck.
I managed to find out, by a bit more research, what Mr Strauss-Kahn was on in 2007 when appointed. A tax free salary of $420,930 pa [source: Bloomberg Economic Weekly] plus benefits.
So, let us assume that Mr Lipsky is on the same, although if he's still working on a 2007 salary scale, I will masticate my headgear.
$420,903 pa is $8094.81 per week, which, at today's exchange rate, is £4913.55 per week. Tax free.
The current rate of Employment Support Allowance in the UK at the lowest level is £65.45 per week.
Obviously Mr Lipsky is very well-qualified to rubber-stamp Osborne’s assault on the poor and the disadvantaged.
True, there has been one glimmer of hope for the benighted fools in Westminster in the news that unemployment is apparently down. The private sector created 88,000 jobs in three months, apparently. Of course, many of these “jobs” will be part time and poorly paid, with little or nothing in the way of security or workers’ rights. And I still adhere to my previous statement that we haven’t seen the worst of it yet, simply because the effect of the Tory cuts dumping people onto the unemployment register hasn’t percolated through to the bottom line yet.
Into all this maelstrom of uncertainty blunders Ed Balls, attacking the government and insisting that the VAT increase be reversed as a matter of urgency. On the face of it, it should be good news that at least the Labour Party has rediscovered its balls (literally and metaphorically) and is making some sort of effort to attack the Tories.
However, as Ann Pettifor points out on the blog “Left Foot Forward”, by accepting that the underlying premise for the debate is simply “cuts” to “pay down the deficit”, and the only point at issue is how quickly and how deeply these should take place, Balls has in fact surrendered much of the battlefield to Cameron from the start. The whole article is worth reading, but these are the salient points:
Balls began his speech by mentioning Labour’s “emphasis on jobs and growth”, but the speech immediately morphed into Labour’s concession to the coalition, that what is needed is “a steady and balanced approach to halve the deficit in four years”. The implication being that cuts must be matched by ‘jobs and growth’. But the highlight of the speech – the soundbite that his spin doctors no doubt intended the media to emphasise – is a call for a cut in VAT “to boost consumer confidence and jump-start the economy”; Cameron flashed back his retort: “slashing taxes”, he argued, would only make the UK’s fiscal deficit worse. And so Balls is trapped: the debate now centres on whether the deficit can be financed by increasing or cutting taxes, in particular VAT. For most people, Cameron has the upper hand.
‘Of course the deficit can only be financed by increased taxes’ is the consensus. Because we have ‘spent beyond our means’, we have to raise taxes, like VAT. “Slashing” VAT – when it is higher VAT returns that are paying down the deficit – is unacceptable to the coalition, to the Treasury, to orthodox economists and to the bulk of the British public. But that’s only because most have been drilled in the propaganda: “the deficit is like a credit card”. We need to pay it down. To do so, we have to mobilise/hoard ‘savings’, i.e. higher taxes, to pay down the ‘credit card’ – but the government’s deficit is not like a credit card. And nor do we need ‘savings’ to pay it down.
The only surefire way of paying down the deficit is not by government cutting the deficit (which I and others have argued it cannot do), but by employment. Put 2.43 million people back to work, and – hey presto! – the deficit will vanish. Get 2.43 million people, including thousands of skilled and unskilled workers, clever and talented student graduates, to address Britain’s very real insecurities in energy, food and health and – hey presto – the deficit will be financed.
How? By the tax revenues that will pour into the Treasury’s coffers, either directly or indirectly – and by the savings that will be made on welfare benefits.
However, keep 2.43 million people unemployed, keep them feeling insecure, with their purses firmly shut, and you can guarantee an ever-rising government deficit (April’s deficit numbers were the highest on record for that month). And 2.43 million unemployed is sure to make British ‘confidence’ fall and the recession deepen.
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Clearly, our economic waters are confusing and choppy at the moment.
Buried deep down in the original text of the IMF document (point # 9, in fact) we find:
Risks and uncertainty around this central scenario are significant. Large risks to growth and inflation arise from uncertainties surrounding euro-area sovereign turmoil, the housing market, the size of the output gap, and commodity prices. Indeed, unexpected spikes in commodity prices were a significant factor behind revisions to our 2011 inflation and growth forecasts since the 2010 Article IV consultation. Another risk is uncertainty surrounding the size of fiscal multipliers and the degree to which private demand and net exports will be vibrant enough to pick up the slack from fiscal consolidation. Uncertainties arising from key risks are further compounded by the unusually large disconnect between recent weak GDP outturns and other indicators that are stronger (e.g., rising employment, higher-than-forecast tax revenue, and stronger private sector surveys), making it all the more difficult to ascertain the economy’s near-term direction
Translation? We haven't got a fucking scooby.
My interest had been piqued by this, so I rang up the IMF Press Office. I know, I will be for it when the phone bill comes in, living off bread and scrape, sleeping in the dog kennel and no sex for a month (no change there, then) but it was worth every penny.
I wish I had recorded it.
IMF WOMAN: Media relations, how many I help you?
ME: Hi, I am a freelance writer in the UK and I was thinking of writing something about John Lipsky, following his pronouncement on the UK economy. Am I right in thinking he's now the acting managing director?
IMF WOMAN: That's right
ME: And is he getting the same salary as Mr Strauss-Kahn, I mean, given that he's going the same job?
IMF WOMAN: I don't know. Would it be possible for you to put your question in an email to ...
ME: Well, it's a simple enough question, someone must know the answer. Is there a section on the IMF web site where you publish peoples' salary scales?
IMF WOMAN: No.
ME: Is that because it's a secret?
IMF WOMAN: I don't know. If you could just send an email to...
ME: So you are saying that you either don't know or you won't tell me what the managing director of the IMF earns?
IMF WOMAN: Yes
ME: Well, I think that tells me all I need to know about your grasp of economics. Goodbye.
My reason for asking is that I suspect, from Mr Lipsky's bio on the IMF web site, that he is not short of a bob or two. Given his current directorships and his previous posts with various fund managers (hang on, weren't they the ones that caused all this...?) I reckon he's probably got the odd "portrait of Madison" in his safe. And good luck to him.
I also suspect, although, unlike Mervyn King, he hasn't been stupid enough to say that he's probably also of the opinion that unemployment in the North of England is a price worth paying etc etc chiz chiz, whatever the quotation was. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's ... probably ... a duck.
I managed to find out, by a bit more research, what Mr Strauss-Kahn was on in 2007 when appointed. A tax free salary of $420,930 pa [source: Bloomberg Economic Weekly] plus benefits.
So, let us assume that Mr Lipsky is on the same, although if he's still working on a 2007 salary scale, I will masticate my headgear.
$420,903 pa is $8094.81 per week, which, at today's exchange rate, is £4913.55 per week. Tax free.
The current rate of Employment Support Allowance in the UK at the lowest level is £65.45 per week.
Obviously Mr Lipsky is very well-qualified to rubber-stamp Osborne’s assault on the poor and the disadvantaged.
True, there has been one glimmer of hope for the benighted fools in Westminster in the news that unemployment is apparently down. The private sector created 88,000 jobs in three months, apparently. Of course, many of these “jobs” will be part time and poorly paid, with little or nothing in the way of security or workers’ rights. And I still adhere to my previous statement that we haven’t seen the worst of it yet, simply because the effect of the Tory cuts dumping people onto the unemployment register hasn’t percolated through to the bottom line yet.
Into all this maelstrom of uncertainty blunders Ed Balls, attacking the government and insisting that the VAT increase be reversed as a matter of urgency. On the face of it, it should be good news that at least the Labour Party has rediscovered its balls (literally and metaphorically) and is making some sort of effort to attack the Tories.
However, as Ann Pettifor points out on the blog “Left Foot Forward”, by accepting that the underlying premise for the debate is simply “cuts” to “pay down the deficit”, and the only point at issue is how quickly and how deeply these should take place, Balls has in fact surrendered much of the battlefield to Cameron from the start. The whole article is worth reading, but these are the salient points:
Balls began his speech by mentioning Labour’s “emphasis on jobs and growth”, but the speech immediately morphed into Labour’s concession to the coalition, that what is needed is “a steady and balanced approach to halve the deficit in four years”. The implication being that cuts must be matched by ‘jobs and growth’. But the highlight of the speech – the soundbite that his spin doctors no doubt intended the media to emphasise – is a call for a cut in VAT “to boost consumer confidence and jump-start the economy”; Cameron flashed back his retort: “slashing taxes”, he argued, would only make the UK’s fiscal deficit worse. And so Balls is trapped: the debate now centres on whether the deficit can be financed by increasing or cutting taxes, in particular VAT. For most people, Cameron has the upper hand.
‘Of course the deficit can only be financed by increased taxes’ is the consensus. Because we have ‘spent beyond our means’, we have to raise taxes, like VAT. “Slashing” VAT – when it is higher VAT returns that are paying down the deficit – is unacceptable to the coalition, to the Treasury, to orthodox economists and to the bulk of the British public. But that’s only because most have been drilled in the propaganda: “the deficit is like a credit card”. We need to pay it down. To do so, we have to mobilise/hoard ‘savings’, i.e. higher taxes, to pay down the ‘credit card’ – but the government’s deficit is not like a credit card. And nor do we need ‘savings’ to pay it down.
The only surefire way of paying down the deficit is not by government cutting the deficit (which I and others have argued it cannot do), but by employment. Put 2.43 million people back to work, and – hey presto! – the deficit will vanish. Get 2.43 million people, including thousands of skilled and unskilled workers, clever and talented student graduates, to address Britain’s very real insecurities in energy, food and health and – hey presto – the deficit will be financed.
How? By the tax revenues that will pour into the Treasury’s coffers, either directly or indirectly – and by the savings that will be made on welfare benefits.
However, keep 2.43 million people unemployed, keep them feeling insecure, with their purses firmly shut, and you can guarantee an ever-rising government deficit (April’s deficit numbers were the highest on record for that month). And 2.43 million unemployed is sure to make British ‘confidence’ fall and the recession deepen.
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
For what it's worth (or "Rabid Davies Raves Again")
Another cog in the machinery of the relentless Tory onslaught on the ill and the disabled clicked into place this week, in the unlikely form of Philip Davies, MP for Shipley, who suggested that because “disabled” people are “worth less” to an employer, they should have to work for less than the minimum wage, at least until they have “proved themselves” in order to level up the playing field, because apparently this is how things should work in the “real world”.
I've just had a look at this geezer's declarations on the register of members' interests and I see he declares (inter alia) that he earned:
£600 for writing article for Mail on Sunday. Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, Kensington, London W8 5TT. Hours: 2 hrs. (Registered 29 November 2010)
I make that £300 per hour. Tell you what, I think a slightly more stupid MP could have done that for £250 per hour. If they could have found one. Such a level of part-time income (which I am assuming he declared and paid tax on) says to me that his familiarity with the difficulties faced by people already on the minimum wage may be er... less than nodding. He also claimed (2008/09)£23,886 for staying away from his main home, and a further £11,878 for travelling to and fro.
But yes, I mean, good idea, Davies old chap: why *not* put everyone on performance related pay, and only pay them pro rata according to their productivity and usefulness to the Tory master plan. After all, it sits quite nicely with their *existing* policy on the deserving and undeserving poor... and it's another step down the road to British Air plc, where your oxygen supply is regulated according to how little they can get away with giving you to breathe, and British Families plc, where your mum invoices you for cooking your breakfast. We've already got “thought crimes” and "cracking down" on people who don't espouse "traditional British values" (one of which I thought was freedom of speech, but hey, that's just me). We've already got "work til you drop" if you are lucky enough to still have a job. Why not go the whole hog. After all, it’s much easier to pick up litter in a wheelchair, you don’t have so far to bend!
The only *problem* with a completely unregulated market that only pays people according to what they are "worth" to an employer, instead of treating people with equaity and dignity, is that - if you are looking for “usefulness” and “productivity”, for instance - many of our MPs are among the most useless part- timers, wastrels and oxygen thieves. Motes and beams, mate, motes and beams.
Actually, thinking about it...I can write articles, I am in a wheelchair, so by his argument, *I* could write it instead of him, for say, oooh £500 a pop - just until I have "proved myself", you understand.
I think I might ring them up. After all, the repetitive xenophobic claptrap that fills the pages of the Maily Dail could *probably* be randomly generated by a program*, and it's got to be better than having him wittering on about his opposition to gays and his views in favour of smoking.
I'm gonna spend the weekend looking for a monkey and a typewriter - subcontacting, outsourcing, it's the Tory way, folks. Sorry Mr MP, you've just been downsized and replaced by a chimp on a Remington. For the benefit of Mr Davies, and other hard-of-thinking heartless bastards, I am not knocking the NHS here, they saved my life, it's what happens after you fall off the end of the system that could be better.
This time last year, I was a director of two companies, one of which I owned. I had worked continuously from 1976 to 2010, paid into the system, paid corporation tax in the good years when we were making money. Latterly, since a spat with Barclays bank in 2005/2006, the company I actually owned has had to divert any spare cash to paying those corporate leeches, so I have not been taking drawings from it. But that was OK, while I still had the other directorship, because I was doing well enough to cover the Barclays money out of that if need be. And come 2012, we would be free of them at last.
Bang! Life shook me a seven. July 2010, rushed into hospital for an emergency operation and came out on 7th December in a wheelchair as one of “the disabled”. Will probably never walk again, apparently. In the meantime, I (or rather my post, har har…) has been made redundant, leaving me as the sole director of a company that owes a lot of money under personal guarantee to Barclays Bank, oh, and of course the Halifax still want their £402.66 a month for the mortgage as well.
Yes, I do qualify for benefits, specifically DLA and ESA. The DLA is meant to be for coping with "disability" and motability and stuff like that, but to be honest, it's much more use to us at the moment in its raw form as "money" that can be exchanged for "food" at the "shops".
As for ESA, that has to be levered out of the DWP with a crowbar, because they have a habit of paying it a month or so in arrears or when they get round to it, presumably because it helps the government's cash flow to keep us on tenterhooks about whether or not we're going to be able to hold out for another month.
The council has just decided, after six months of dithering, that because we have too many "assets" (aka millstones) they *won't* after all be building a ramp to help me get in and out of my own house, so in effect, unless I prevail on someone to heave me down the temporary ramps like a sack of spuds, I am confined to two rooms. People in jail have more quality of life and freedom of movement.
I've also found out, during the course of my stay in hospital, that the underlying cause of my previous mobility issues, which didn't actually prevent me from leading an active and useful life up to that point, was facioscapularhumeral muscular dystrophy, which is progressive, and incurable. but, as the physio so cheerfully advised me, at my age (56), "something else will probably finish you off first".
Now, the thing is, life can do this to any of us. It would be a good thing if it happened to Philip Davies for instance. If he carries on smoking, it probably will. I have been doing a bit more research on Mr Davies. He is also a supporter of a movement called Interlibertarians, in fact they paid over £1000 for him to attend their conference last year, according to the register of members' interests. I have had a look on their web site, and they appear to be some sort of global alliance of scary, right wing whirly-eyed fundamentalists.
A lot of their web site is in Italian, and I don't speak fascist, so I am struggling a bit, but they have links to the Ausralian Liberal Party for instance, which believes that the disabled should work for "negative income tax", ie there should be no benefits structure at all, and that the gaps in such provision should be filled by a patchwork of "friends, family, private care and charities" - welcome back to Victorian Britain. I suppose as a last resort there is always the Workhouse. So this is the sort of people we are up against here.
People who think that just because you are "disabled" you are "worth" less to an employer and who think that your "worth" as a person, a human being, is the same as your "earning potential".
Well, Mr Davies, I am more than just a tick in a millionaire's ledger, thank you very much, I utterly reject your doctrinaire reduction of my "worth" to a calculation of what I can earn versus what the state provides for people who are unfortunate enough to be ill, and it is the attitude of you and people like you that means I have now applied for over 100 jobs and none of them wants a 56 year old hairbag in a wheelchair, because, thanks to the efforts of Mr Davies and those like him, people only see the wheelchair. His solution is that I accept the situation and agree to be treated as a second-class citizen.
My solution is that he goes and sticks his head in a dead bear's bottom. Except that he'd probably want to put the dead bear on expenses.
I've just had a look at this geezer's declarations on the register of members' interests and I see he declares (inter alia) that he earned:
£600 for writing article for Mail on Sunday. Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, Kensington, London W8 5TT. Hours: 2 hrs. (Registered 29 November 2010)
I make that £300 per hour. Tell you what, I think a slightly more stupid MP could have done that for £250 per hour. If they could have found one. Such a level of part-time income (which I am assuming he declared and paid tax on) says to me that his familiarity with the difficulties faced by people already on the minimum wage may be er... less than nodding. He also claimed (2008/09)£23,886 for staying away from his main home, and a further £11,878 for travelling to and fro.
But yes, I mean, good idea, Davies old chap: why *not* put everyone on performance related pay, and only pay them pro rata according to their productivity and usefulness to the Tory master plan. After all, it sits quite nicely with their *existing* policy on the deserving and undeserving poor... and it's another step down the road to British Air plc, where your oxygen supply is regulated according to how little they can get away with giving you to breathe, and British Families plc, where your mum invoices you for cooking your breakfast. We've already got “thought crimes” and "cracking down" on people who don't espouse "traditional British values" (one of which I thought was freedom of speech, but hey, that's just me). We've already got "work til you drop" if you are lucky enough to still have a job. Why not go the whole hog. After all, it’s much easier to pick up litter in a wheelchair, you don’t have so far to bend!
The only *problem* with a completely unregulated market that only pays people according to what they are "worth" to an employer, instead of treating people with equaity and dignity, is that - if you are looking for “usefulness” and “productivity”, for instance - many of our MPs are among the most useless part- timers, wastrels and oxygen thieves. Motes and beams, mate, motes and beams.
Actually, thinking about it...I can write articles, I am in a wheelchair, so by his argument, *I* could write it instead of him, for say, oooh £500 a pop - just until I have "proved myself", you understand.
I think I might ring them up. After all, the repetitive xenophobic claptrap that fills the pages of the Maily Dail could *probably* be randomly generated by a program*, and it's got to be better than having him wittering on about his opposition to gays and his views in favour of smoking.
I'm gonna spend the weekend looking for a monkey and a typewriter - subcontacting, outsourcing, it's the Tory way, folks. Sorry Mr MP, you've just been downsized and replaced by a chimp on a Remington. For the benefit of Mr Davies, and other hard-of-thinking heartless bastards, I am not knocking the NHS here, they saved my life, it's what happens after you fall off the end of the system that could be better.
This time last year, I was a director of two companies, one of which I owned. I had worked continuously from 1976 to 2010, paid into the system, paid corporation tax in the good years when we were making money. Latterly, since a spat with Barclays bank in 2005/2006, the company I actually owned has had to divert any spare cash to paying those corporate leeches, so I have not been taking drawings from it. But that was OK, while I still had the other directorship, because I was doing well enough to cover the Barclays money out of that if need be. And come 2012, we would be free of them at last.
Bang! Life shook me a seven. July 2010, rushed into hospital for an emergency operation and came out on 7th December in a wheelchair as one of “the disabled”. Will probably never walk again, apparently. In the meantime, I (or rather my post, har har…) has been made redundant, leaving me as the sole director of a company that owes a lot of money under personal guarantee to Barclays Bank, oh, and of course the Halifax still want their £402.66 a month for the mortgage as well.
Yes, I do qualify for benefits, specifically DLA and ESA. The DLA is meant to be for coping with "disability" and motability and stuff like that, but to be honest, it's much more use to us at the moment in its raw form as "money" that can be exchanged for "food" at the "shops".
As for ESA, that has to be levered out of the DWP with a crowbar, because they have a habit of paying it a month or so in arrears or when they get round to it, presumably because it helps the government's cash flow to keep us on tenterhooks about whether or not we're going to be able to hold out for another month.
The council has just decided, after six months of dithering, that because we have too many "assets" (aka millstones) they *won't* after all be building a ramp to help me get in and out of my own house, so in effect, unless I prevail on someone to heave me down the temporary ramps like a sack of spuds, I am confined to two rooms. People in jail have more quality of life and freedom of movement.
I've also found out, during the course of my stay in hospital, that the underlying cause of my previous mobility issues, which didn't actually prevent me from leading an active and useful life up to that point, was facioscapularhumeral muscular dystrophy, which is progressive, and incurable. but, as the physio so cheerfully advised me, at my age (56), "something else will probably finish you off first".
Now, the thing is, life can do this to any of us. It would be a good thing if it happened to Philip Davies for instance. If he carries on smoking, it probably will. I have been doing a bit more research on Mr Davies. He is also a supporter of a movement called Interlibertarians, in fact they paid over £1000 for him to attend their conference last year, according to the register of members' interests. I have had a look on their web site, and they appear to be some sort of global alliance of scary, right wing whirly-eyed fundamentalists.
A lot of their web site is in Italian, and I don't speak fascist, so I am struggling a bit, but they have links to the Ausralian Liberal Party for instance, which believes that the disabled should work for "negative income tax", ie there should be no benefits structure at all, and that the gaps in such provision should be filled by a patchwork of "friends, family, private care and charities" - welcome back to Victorian Britain. I suppose as a last resort there is always the Workhouse. So this is the sort of people we are up against here.
People who think that just because you are "disabled" you are "worth" less to an employer and who think that your "worth" as a person, a human being, is the same as your "earning potential".
Well, Mr Davies, I am more than just a tick in a millionaire's ledger, thank you very much, I utterly reject your doctrinaire reduction of my "worth" to a calculation of what I can earn versus what the state provides for people who are unfortunate enough to be ill, and it is the attitude of you and people like you that means I have now applied for over 100 jobs and none of them wants a 56 year old hairbag in a wheelchair, because, thanks to the efforts of Mr Davies and those like him, people only see the wheelchair. His solution is that I accept the situation and agree to be treated as a second-class citizen.
My solution is that he goes and sticks his head in a dead bear's bottom. Except that he'd probably want to put the dead bear on expenses.
Saturday, 11 June 2011
Turbulent Priest!
As far as I can see, the Archbishop is spot on.
Looking back at the last election, both major parties, and the Literal Dimwits, led vacuous, negative campaigns, more concerned with damage limitation and not dropping any major bollocks than with any vision for our country's future, or policies aimed at making things better for us all, despite the dire straits of the near-collapse of the world economy caused by the banks playing roulette with our money...
So instead of policies we got, in effect "don't vote for him, he smells of poo". That, and the unpredictable impact of the television debates, where Clegg came across as young, telegenic, and appealing to a large number of first-time voters who didn't know any better, plus of course Broon dropping the said bollock in the form of bigotgate, produced a result where no one party had a really clear mandate for their policies, such as they were. In fact, the election result was really the population saying, fairly unenthusiastically, "a plague on all your houses".
We then had a weekend of horse trading where the spectre of "what the markets would do on Monday" and the Greek economy (remember that?) was used as a goad to prod the various participants into a coalition of the unwilling.
Since then, the Toriess have pressed ahead with an agenda (previously hidden)of demonising people on welfare, the disabled and the unemployed, while inflicting savage cuts on public services, either directly or at one remove via reduced council grants, and have potentially stalled the economy and are planning to put yet more people on the dole to keep the likes of the IMF happy. The "Big Society" is supposed to pick up the pieces, of course, but it's a steaming pile of doodoos, and was only ever a device to cover up the cuts. Do one thing, while claiming to do the exact opposite, is how Cameron operates.
The Literal Dimwits, whose role seems to be to hand round the hobnobs at cabinet and act as apologists-cum-targets whenever there is something particularly nasty to announce, have proven to be the weakest link, and are left ... with nothing.
Plus, somehow we now seem to be at war with Libya, and Cameron is about to embark on a root-and-branch reform of the NHS which nobody wants, nobody voted for, is going to cost squillions, and will leave the NHS in a worse mess than it was.
In these circumstances, I think anyone has the right to question this government's "mandate" I've been questioning it since day 1, and pointing out to all the mad colonels in Gloucestershire who used to bang on about Brown being an unelected leader, that this government has just as little legitimacy, or probably even less.
It's a great shame that the official opposition is so weak feeble and generally useless, that it is left to the Archbishop of Canterbury, of all people, to point out the logical and moral weaknesses of the policies now being implemented by the Tories, and their effect on the many vulnerable people (economically, physically, socially, mentally) in society at whom they are targeted.
If Rowan Williams keeps this up, I might have to start going to Church again!
Looking back at the last election, both major parties, and the Literal Dimwits, led vacuous, negative campaigns, more concerned with damage limitation and not dropping any major bollocks than with any vision for our country's future, or policies aimed at making things better for us all, despite the dire straits of the near-collapse of the world economy caused by the banks playing roulette with our money...
So instead of policies we got, in effect "don't vote for him, he smells of poo". That, and the unpredictable impact of the television debates, where Clegg came across as young, telegenic, and appealing to a large number of first-time voters who didn't know any better, plus of course Broon dropping the said bollock in the form of bigotgate, produced a result where no one party had a really clear mandate for their policies, such as they were. In fact, the election result was really the population saying, fairly unenthusiastically, "a plague on all your houses".
We then had a weekend of horse trading where the spectre of "what the markets would do on Monday" and the Greek economy (remember that?) was used as a goad to prod the various participants into a coalition of the unwilling.
Since then, the Toriess have pressed ahead with an agenda (previously hidden)of demonising people on welfare, the disabled and the unemployed, while inflicting savage cuts on public services, either directly or at one remove via reduced council grants, and have potentially stalled the economy and are planning to put yet more people on the dole to keep the likes of the IMF happy. The "Big Society" is supposed to pick up the pieces, of course, but it's a steaming pile of doodoos, and was only ever a device to cover up the cuts. Do one thing, while claiming to do the exact opposite, is how Cameron operates.
The Literal Dimwits, whose role seems to be to hand round the hobnobs at cabinet and act as apologists-cum-targets whenever there is something particularly nasty to announce, have proven to be the weakest link, and are left ... with nothing.
Plus, somehow we now seem to be at war with Libya, and Cameron is about to embark on a root-and-branch reform of the NHS which nobody wants, nobody voted for, is going to cost squillions, and will leave the NHS in a worse mess than it was.
In these circumstances, I think anyone has the right to question this government's "mandate" I've been questioning it since day 1, and pointing out to all the mad colonels in Gloucestershire who used to bang on about Brown being an unelected leader, that this government has just as little legitimacy, or probably even less.
It's a great shame that the official opposition is so weak feeble and generally useless, that it is left to the Archbishop of Canterbury, of all people, to point out the logical and moral weaknesses of the policies now being implemented by the Tories, and their effect on the many vulnerable people (economically, physically, socially, mentally) in society at whom they are targeted.
If Rowan Williams keeps this up, I might have to start going to Church again!
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