Friday 25 March 2011

The Budget – good for some?

When you read the (few) pro Labour Party newspapers it’s easy to be misled into thinking that the country is being run by a couple of Tory toffs with only a few brain cells between them, with their FibDem lapdog in tow. Of course it's true they did have that trigger happy idiot Bush running America for years. (People can blame Blair for a lot but it’s a shame we can't ever know what might have happened if Clinton had been there instead.) But after having a good laugh at the lampooning cartoons, we must be careful not to underestimate either of them.

George Osborne actually played the right cards with Wednesday’s budget, coming out with quite a few things businesses wanted to hear – they in the main being Tory voters. Being in business myself (definitely NOT Tory in case you weren’t sure!) I do have total sympathy for other small companies who have been perilously close to going under because of fuel costs, so I have to support those measures in the budget that has done something to alleviate the situation. What I am not so sure about is the apprenticeships promise – sounds good but …

The government wants the private sector to take up all those who are going to be out a job because of their cuts. Apprenticeships – yes this is good news but just because they are available doesn’t mean that they will all be taken up, and even those that are, this certainly wont mean that they all automatically turn into a job. And incidentally the pay is just £2.50 an hour.


And pursuing this further, the notion that the private sector will be able to create enough jobs for all those who are going to be made unemployed – at least ½ million, and probably a lot more – is stupifyingly ridiculous!

So coming full circle it’s easy to see why I’m tempted to believe that the country is run by idiots after all!


Les

The Difference between ‘Left’ & ‘Right’

George Bush senior once said he wished Americans would be more like the Waltons (no – not me & Jeff!) an less like the Simpsons. He obviously had never watched the latter. On the face of it the whole family are somewhat disfunctional, but if you look beyond that they are actually as moral as the Waltons, just come at it from a different angle.

I think this just proves that the ‘right’ haven’t got any common sense, and they are usually wrong!


Les

Tuesday 8 March 2011

The worse & the even more worse!

Over the past few weeks I have been listing some of the cuts that have been made or are being proposed. Well, I’ve had enough, as it’s just getting far too depressing & frightening. It's all too clear that the future under this ConDem shower is pretty grim. And anyone who thinks the gap between rich and poor is bad enough already, all I can say is you ain’t seen nothing yet!And a Mirror investigation has proved what people have been saying all along, that it will affect those on lower incomes the most. But for me it’s taken their article in yesterday’s paper for that fact to really sink in. Suddenly hit by a flash of understanding – of course the poorest will suffer most as they are the ones who use public services the most! And the converse is even more sickening. Where cities like Sheffield, Liverpool, & Manchester need to make cuts of 8% and above, the Tory constituencies across the country are much luckier, for instance to name but two, Oxfordshire County Council 1.9% David Cameron, and Cheshire East just 1.6% George Osbourne. Now there's a surprise!

And who was it who said “we are all in this together”?!

Les

Sunday 6 March 2011

How NOT to spend council money

A much sadder story in yesterday’s Mirror was about the closure of the Grange Day Centre in Shropshire – a centre where physically disabled adults can get physiotherapy, learn life skills & socialise, also allowing full-time carers to have the odd day off.

This centre costs £200,000 a year to run. Compare this with the £85,000 the council saw fit to spend on their offices. No prizes for guessing who runs this council!

Les

How NOT to increase tourism in the UK

I read in yesterday’s Mirror that apparently if the government cut VAT on hotel rooms to 6.5% this would help create nearly quarter million new jobs over 5 years and so encourage more visitors to come here. And moves to change the clocks to ‘summertime’ all year round would bring us in line with Europe, which would also help tourism.

So what do these CrapDim bunch of morons do in their attempts to help the industry? Well, to be fair they do come up with something I support, that both St David’s Day & St George’s days should be a bank holiday in Wales & England respectively. Unfortunately they ruin it by suggesting swapping with the first bank holiday in May which we’ve had for centuries instead of the newer one near the end of the month. Plus they aren’t going to do anything about VAT even when Britain has just come bottom of 133 countries for price competitiveness, and they’ve scrapped the proposal for all year British Summer Time.

So they're incompetent as well as nasty - what a frightening combination!

Les

Saturday 5 March 2011

Why do the LibDems support PR?

Because they are not in favour of last past the post.

Les

Thursday 3 March 2011

Bank of England V The ConDem Government

Two interesting facts from yesterday's Mirror:

Bank of England chiefs reckon that the 2½% rise in VAT has in part caused inflation to increase to 4%

And far from backing the cuts, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King has said that one way to cut the deficit would be to hike up taxes for “people like myself” and thereby save jobs, and then went further by condemning the banks for not lending to small businesses.

A glimmer of hope perhaps?

Les

Wednesday 2 March 2011

Hiding the Homeless

There are a hundred and one reasons that are the trigger to people ending up homeless – relationship break-up, abusive parents, lose job … and almost always being made homeless is not directly the person’s fault, and certainly rarely by choice, but the result of a train of events that the rest of us will feel fortunate not to have experienced.

Well most of us but not the extremist Tories on Westminster council who have apparently decided being homeless is a crime. And they don’t stop there – they also want to make it a crime to help the homeless. The bylaw, should it go through, says it will become an offence to “sleep or lie down, deposit materials used as bedding” and to ”give out, or permit another to give out, food for free”.

And exactly just how do they think this will help the homeless to find a home? Will the jobless person go back to their former employer and get their job back simply by pointing out that otherwise they will be prosecuted? Does the young person who ran away because of the abuse they were suffereing at home have to go back for more?

What planet are these people on? What century do they belong to? Certainly not this planet nor this century! And if we are to believe anything at all that Cameron says the latter ‘offence’ goes against the very grain of his Big Society.

But of course I’m being oh so dumb & naïve. These Tories do not care in the slightest about the homeless. To them they are just an inconvenience making the streets of Westminster look untidy and this will put off the tourists. So this bylaw is the perfect solution.

There are no words to adequately describe how I feel about these Tory councillors, so I wont even try. I think the vast majority, if not all of you, will know where I’m coming from.

Les