Thursday 20 September 2012

HASTE YE BACK, IAIN

Mr Iain Duncan Smith deigned to come all they way from London to explain his new welfare system which will cut billions off the welfare budget, throw hundreds of thousands of people out on to the street and generally make Britain a much better place for...erm..well nobody.

(I say this because I've been to countries where there is inadequate welfare protection, and everyone, even the rich, suffer as they pick their way to the shops, theatres and night clubs, through the poor who have nowhere else but the streets to live.)

Anyway while he was here in Scotland he couldn't help but put his ill-informed two penny worth in to the independence debate.

An independent Scotland won't be able to afford to pay benefits, he informed us. North Sea Oil won't cover the cost, said the failed Tory leader.

In reply the First Minister pointed out that Scotland contributes 9.6% of the UK's taxation in return for 9.3% of the spending, on 8% of the population. That in fact was a surplus of £2.7 billion, or £500 for every man woman and child in Scotland.
I thought that Mr Duncan Smith might like to consider that without the need to pay from nuclear weapons and the "punching above our weight" that David Cameron is so pleased about, in terms of military strength and foreign aid,  we would have considerably less in the way of expenses.

Also welfare is not paid out of North Sea Revenue. Rather it is paid for from general taxation, which would be likely to rise in terms of the fact that much money currently spent in Scotland is taxed as English (because it is spent in organisations with their head office England ...supermarkets, for example. I buy stuff in Morrison's. Morrison's head office is in Bradford, to which comes all the money spent in Morrison's in the UK and from whence Mr Osborne takes his share in corporation tax: English corporation tax!).

These organisations operating in Scotland, would pay tax to Edinburgh, not London.

The First Minister's rebuttal was backed up by the Centre for Public Policy for Regions.

Mind you, as we have already seen the UK itself is unable to afford the welfare budget it currently has, which is why 88% of people who are sick are now going to have to find work, no matter how ill they are; why the Cameron government removed the right to 6 months on 'contribution based' benefits for people out of work, why they are now proposing to freeze benefits for 2 years and increase them thereafter at a lower rate...

And they say WE can't afford welfare... Oh physician heal thyself.

But please feel free to come back to Scotland and make an idiot of yourself by telling porkies again Mr Duncan Smith. You know you are always more than welcome!

*****
Bravo of the week goes to privately-educated Oxford man, Damian Collins, Conservative, Folkestone, who has said that young unemployed people should busk for money if they can't get a job. Does he, I wonder, have any suggestions for those who are tone deaf?

Aren't you glad we will be shot of cretins like this in the near future? 


PS: Yes, he spells his name with an "a". Must be the posh way.

8 comments:

  1. That was a positive case for the Union? Haste ye back Iain and hopefully some Scottish journalist will actually tackle him regarding on his figures.

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  2. Marcia, I've not heard one positive case for the union except when Cameron came to lecture us and told us that:

    In the UK we can punch above out weight in military. (Yipee, that makes me a very excited guy. I love bombing other places, and the thing is, it makes us so popular all the way round the world);

    In the UK we get to sit on the Security Council. (It's nice there, I always enjoy it when I go, the coffee's good, and nothing like a good chat with the Secretary General, I find);

    In the UK we have 240 embassies. (Oh damn, I'd forgotten that. I must start visiting them all, and maybe stay over, have dinner with the Ambassador and his good lady);

    In the UK we are a big noise in the EU. (Hmmm... its a sort of raspberry noise really...very loud though, he's right).

    All really positive things...always assuming that you give a damn.

    Apart from that it all boils down to the three toos..

    wee, poor and stupid.

    In this case its "poor". And of course the UK is rich. How does Iceland manage again?

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  3. I look forward to his next visit because they come across really quite badly regardless of how the press paint them.

    When ever a tory and increasingly, any westminster politician come north (even those holding a seat up here) their message sounds more and more like that coming from a colonial overlord and as we all know, colonial overlords are like so, 100 years ago.

    Funnily enough, I found another report.

    "Explorers today while studying a hitherto unfound & unexplored region of hell have finally uncovered the positive case for the union.

    Tory adventurer Damian Collins while speaking to Sally Lucifer, our BBC damnation correspondent, said, 'the reason the positive case for the union hasn't turned up before was because it was hidden under Ian Duncan Smith's soul which he presumably sold at some earlier point to the devil.'

    He went on to say his team had not so far found the soul of Tony Blair but did say, many believed it was Blair who brokered the purchase of IDS's soul in the first place.

    Johann Lamont was not available for comment."

    I can't remember where I read that but I'm sure its quite genuine.

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  4. As a former Scots Guards officer, IDS is used to telling Scots what to do.

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  5. Well, Pa, there is no doubt in my mind that it is genuine. It certainly has the ring of truth in it.

    They will probably find that Mr Tony B£air's soul was starting to give hell a bad reputation, so he sold it on, possibly to some Southern Baptist preacher in Alabama!

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  6. Perhaps Juteman, he's like to pop out to Afghanistan and shout at them there.

    The frightening thing is that IDS is the soft man in the DWP. That Grayling character would have simply had people shot.

    Even at that I read that he was set to redefine "poverty" so that the government would have a chance of meeting their legally binding target to reduce it.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/14/poverty-measure-to-be-redefined_n_1595677.html

    What, you wonder, happens to a government that misses the target in 2020. Do the English public get to throw them all in jail, or better still send them to the tower and have them beheaded.

    Wouldn't make much difference to this lot. They have been wandering about like headless chickens for the last 2 1/2 years.

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  7. I'm pretty confident of a Yes vote in 2014. Especially when folk like IDS pay a visit to the colony. It's like looking at a different species, and i can't see many Scots identifying with them or their policies.

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  8. That's why, Juteman, I on behalf of all Scots, extend a warm welcome to them all to come and talk to us about the benefits of the union.

    Mr Reese-Mogg, driven by his nanny in the Rolls (as he was when he was the candidate for a Labour constituency in Fife, would be a splendid start; and then Andrew Mitchell reminding us of our place...

    Oh all of them, please please come and lecture us about how poor and stupid and wee we are....

    ReplyDelete