Sunday 2 December 2012

GO getting tough with the rich? Pull the other one!

I get easily confused.

It appears that the Chancellor is finally after tax evaders and the wealthy – about time too and begs the question why didn’t he start with them instead of hounding the poorest & most vulnerable in our society!

Anyway, that’s not why I’m confused.  It’s a couple of things that apparently he will be saying in his Autumn Statement on Wednesday.  (Don’t you just yearn for those wonderful days in the past when the news really was news and hadn’t been told to us hours or days before it happened.)

He’s going to ‘slash the £50,000 annual tax relief cap on pensions to as little as £30,000’  according to The Sunday Times.  What confuses me is when he uses the word ‘slash’ when these are millionaires we are talking about.  And doesn’t that mean they will still be able to claim £30000 a year, ie more than the average salary for the rest of us?

But more confusing still is the comment from his Sun interview (although as it is the Sun maybe they’ve got it wrong?)   "Every one of my Budgets has raised more from the richest” he says.  D’oh, what about the reduction in additional tax from 50% to 45%? 

If someone can explain any of the above I’d be glad to hear it!

Les

Sunday 21 October 2012

A Future that Works?

Well, the present certainly isn’t!   Unless, of course, you are a rich Tory supporter, get a tax cut off Dodgy Dave & Dubious George, who make out that they are doing it so you have more money to spend in the UK economy, when they know full well that you are far more likely to hive it off in some tax free account abroad.

Jeff & I went on the march in London yesterday.  Like 1000’s of others I was there to show I realise how important this is, despite the fact I know full well it isn’t going to make a blind bit of difference to the way the Gruesome Twosome are ruining the country.  As long as they have plenty, which of course they do, along with the majority of the rest of the cabinet, what’s the point. 

Probably a naïve question to ask but I find myself wondering, and not for the first time, as they certainly don’t need the money, and they only seem to care about other rich people like themselves, why exactly are any of them in politics?!

Better still, what is the point of any of them?!!! 

Les

Saturday 1 September 2012

Division & Hypocracy

I feel another bout of despair coming on …

Two e-mails I’ve received recently yet again show just how extremist & appallingly unfair this Tory led government is.  Despite Cameron himself saying that ‘inequality is at a record high’ it displays all the characteristics of a rich man’s club, as it seems to be doing all it can to widen the divide between their wealthy & healthy cronies, and the poor.

The first e-mail reinforced the ‘Club’ idea, referring to a site called searchthemoney.com, where you can see how much wealthy Tory supporters donate to their elite men-only clubs which then gets its way into Tory coffers.  Apparently £7500 is the maximum someone can donate to these private clubs.  No problem for them, and no doubt it doesn’t bother them in the slightest that there are people in Britain who don’t even earn that in a year!

The other e-mail is one you may have already seen, about the truly horrendous decisions that the French company ATOS are making when deciding whether a disabled person is fit for work.  These have often lead to worsening the health of the person under investigation, and in many cases leading to suicide.  But why would this government care when that just means less paid out in benefits which is of course the idea.  And I would like to know why we are paying a French company millions to do this when surely it would be fairer and cheaper to go with whatever the doctors have recommended with regard to anyone in receipt of a disability allowance or pension.  And why a French company at all?!  But what is truly beyond belief is that this company is sponsoring the Paralympics.  Sick or what?!!!

Les

Tuesday 3 July 2012

2 Points and a Pinch of Praise

Open letter to Daily Mirror columnist, Kevin Maguire 

Points first …

If Blair is so poisonous why give him any column inches?

And whilst I see some improvements I’d
like to see more plaudits for Ed please –
he’s slowly but surely emerging as good
PM material.

And wouldn’t it be nice to have someone
who’s perhaps a bit geeky looking, and
has a slightly awkward way of talking,
unlike the oil slick we currently have. 


And the pinch …

Thank you for finishing with that oh so succinct quote from Ed
“if you go out and nick £50 from Tesco you are punished; if you
fiddle lie and cheat millions of pounds then you should face the
full force of the law.”  Nuff said.

Les

Thursday 28 June 2012

All in the family

All this week I have tried to do this blog post but just haven’t been able to find the right words to react to Cameron’s inference that ‘it’s your own fault if you are poor’.  My thoughts have ranged from despair to anger, from shock almost to hopelessness.

Sweeping generalisations – what a curse these are, so often used by newspapers to save space or ‘better’ still, from their viewpoint, to create more sensational stories – you know the adage ‘never let the truth get in the way …’.  This is of course compounded when politicians don’t even tell the whole story in the first place. 

Cameron gives the impression that all well off people are decent and do good works, and all unemployed are benefit scroungers & cheats who wouldn’t do a days work even if you did pay them.  And he’s relying on the rest in the middle to believe this crap!  Divide & rule, of course.

So what about other side of this ‘story’?  What about all the rich who fiddle their taxes so they can get even richer?  What about all the countless families, increasing daily, now on benefits because the main breadwinner has lost their job through Cameron’s Cuts, far too many having to make the choice between eating or heating?  What about all the vast majority of young people now out of work after studying hard to get qualifications only to find there are no vacancies?

I could go on but you get the picture.  Cameron on the other hand either doesn’t or wont.  Oh boy, isn’t he just the Son of Thatcher!

Les

PS Interesting story in Monday’s Mirror page 2 ‘HMRC staff strike after jobs are cut’, claimng cuts ‘have ruined a crackdown on tax avoidance’.  Need I say more!

Thursday 24 May 2012

Another open letter to David Cameron

“This morning a woman on the radio was speaking about how she had more that one job in order to get by.  In particular she stated how she had to choose either use money for bus fares to get to one of the jobs or to buy food.

The chances are you will never, ever be in that situation, so perhaps it is understandable that you cannot really comprehend this happening.  But then again, I’m also lucky.  Although not quite in your league where income is concerned, I’ve never been in that dreadful predicament, nor am likely to be.  The difference is I can still manage to feel for her, and the millions of others like her who are suffering the same choices because of austerity measures which you and your pal George still insist are necessary.

So why cant you?”

Les

Monday 14 May 2012

‘56 up’, or down again?

This evening at 9pm ITV1 are showing a program called “56 up” which continues to follow a group of people all aged 56, a series which began in 1964 when they were all 7.  One of the group apparently made comments in the early 80’s criticising the “crippling public sector cuts”.

Oh how history repeats itself! 

I understand people have different political viewpoints as to how to solve the financial crisis, and whilst I don’t agree with them I accept that there are those that blame the last Labour government.  What I cannot understand – more than that it is totally beyond my comprehension – is that this government keeps making out their solution is the only way.  To name but a few contradictions they say

‘must claw back the deficit’ but they give back money to millionaires

‘thousands of job losses are inevitable’ but this costs more in benefit payments, retraining and the money needed to recreate jobs

‘huge cutbacks in the number of police are manageable’ but lack of opportunities leads to more unrest which will need more police

So regardless of the fact that I am totally opposed to what they are doing IT DOESN’T EVEN MAKE ANY SENSE!

Les

Friday 30 March 2012

Spring in Bradford?

There are two choices how us Labour activists should react to the George Gallaway result

1) hang our heads, wring our hands, and wail in despair
2) move on

Don’t know about you but whilst I have had plenty of practice at 1) finally at long last, after years playing this ridiculously unfair game of politics, when the rules change daily, as if you ever knew them in the first place, these days even after a hefty blow I find I can actually pick myself up again pretty fast. And looking at this ‘hefty blow’ rationally :

- it’s a mid term result, maybe we should have worried if we HAD won!
- being a seasoned politician I suspect either he went round saying ‘ex’ very quietly and ‘Labour’ at the top of his voice or he made himself out to be the innocent party and that Labour had maliciously accused him of wrongdoing before kicking him out of the party

So 2) it is, then. OK, have a bit of a wail first if you need to but for God’s sake don’t take too long over it!

Les

Thursday 29 March 2012

Where there is hope, Tories bring despair ...

These days I feel a mixture of anger & jubilation.

Every passing day this government is being shown in its true colours. In the Budget last week, David Cameron and George Osborne gave 14,000 millionaires a tax cut worth £40,000 - while asking 4.5 million pensioners to pay more. In addition millions of families will be worse off because their tax credits are being cut.
But at the same time the Government has returned £1.6bn to people earning over £1
50,000 in additional tax relief on their pensions.

They are without doubt a bunch of arrogant, greedy, dishonest, self-preserving group of elitists, intent on making the divide between rich and poor such a chasm that (they hope) will never be bridged. They are the wealthy overlords and the rest of us are expected to survive on any scraps they deign to throw down.

Anger? They have done incalcuable damage so far – the absolute disgrace of the Risk Register not being made published in order to con MPs and the Lords into passing the loathed NHS Bill just about sums up their deceit. Even a report on last summers’ rioters recognises that whilst no excuse, the reason that so many resorted to looting & violence is that they have no hope for the future. And if the deficit is so bad that everyone else has to suffer further deprivation then surely instead of reducing it to 45% for highest earners he should have INCREASED the tax threshold!

Jubilation? I believe – I hope – that at last the cracks are coming all too clear and all too often so that they no longer be ignored even by the Tory faithful – the latest VAT slapped on bakers being a corker of an own goal.

But another two years of them? That almost makes me despair but of course they’d love that so instead I’ll carry on fighting.

Les


PS A bit of light relief - quote from yesterday’s Mirror in the light of Dave Cameron’s cash-for-access scandal. Labour MP Steve Rotheram has called No10 Dodgy Dave’s Downing Street Diner – try saying that after a few pints!

Wednesday 7 March 2012

NHS – MEDICATION NOT MUTILATION!

There’s nothing wrong with the concept of the NHS – free health care for all. Even if it needs a radical overhaul there’s no reason why this cannot be done whilst keeping to that premise. Indeed, we must do so to ensure we avoid going backwards to pre 1948.

And there are those that might argue that no services are better run privately. Whilst I might not necessarily agree with this across the board I resoundingly support that mantra when it comes to health. Come to think of it, also when it comes to water, gas, electricity, buses, railways …

But I have noticed over the past couple of years more than ever before how the current government (or incompetent, inefficient, divisive & destructive set of bastards as I prefer to call them!) whether by design or accident have managed to divide & rule public & private sector workers. Notice how they used this tactic over pensions, constantly citing that people with private pensions were worse off – at best a red herring and at worst often not even true!

And it would be damn easy to fall into the same trap, only the other way round by stating ‘when it comes to health the private sector are only in it to make money’. That statement is true but you can’t blame the thousands of workers who are employed in that sector – most of them are just simply doing their job. Trouble is their job means they have to play by the rules, most important being ‘no results, no money’.

I've had two hearing tests recently, both carried out very competently & professionally. But the private sector supplier was required to try and sell me a hearing aid, whereas the NHS concentrated totally on helping with the problem, what would be best for me.

That's why it is absolutely vital the government's terrible health bill doesn't get through. In private hands, whether nice caring people or not, they are there to sell a service not provide one.

STOP PRESS!!!

Not content with wanting to dismantle the NHS I hear today that they are intent on withdrawing funding from Remploy, the company who specialises in providing employment for people who have some form of disability.

So why is the government doing this? They say it’s because they want these people ‘integrated’ into the mainstream workforce. But I say that as it’s extremely unlikely that they would be able to get a job outside Remploy then this is a complete & utter lie to disguise yet another of the government’s despicable cuts!