Tuesday 13 January 2015

THE MEMBERS WHO VOTED AGAINST TORY/LIBERAL/LABOUR AUSTERITY


I suppose most of us would agree that there has to be some cutting back.

But cutting back on social security, pensions and in general anything that benefits the poorer in our society is hardly fair, and exactly what we expect from the Westminster coalition of three parties. 

After all, we are in this situation because a succession of right of centre governments, Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown adn Cameron, have wantonly spent money on stuff we couldn't afford and didn't need and have allowed the banks and insurance companies to play fast and loose with the financial services industry that served the country well enough until Thatcher started to deregulate.

If we need to save money, (we do), and if we really are all in this together (we're not), there are several things I'd like to see cut. 

Firstly, our nuclear weapons aren't needed. They are not even technically ours. They belong in every way (except paying for them), to America. America counts them as part of their weaponry. Whilst the French WOULD NEVER use their nukes without America's permission, the truth is that we COULDN'T even if we wanted to, because America holds the firing codes. So Cameron doesn't even have a red button!

In any case America has plenty of nukes of its own. Britain only has them for show, and to allow it to have a seat at the top table. It's a bit like the family whose main breadwinner just lost his job but they keep the Mercedes in the drive to impress the neighbour, even though they can't afford to put petrol in it adn sneak out the back to get the bus. 

So let's bin it.

A smaller saving, but one nonetheless that we could make is to rehouse all the royals into Buckingham Palace (it has over 500 rooms after all) and sell off the other palaces. Clarence House, St James's, Kensington Palace, Windsor Castle and all the other grace and favours in London would raise a fortune not to mention the vast treasures that are housed in them. And it's not like the royals would be falling over each others' corgis. They all have private houses to live in, and some of them have several. On the subject of the royals, we should slim them down to just the very top ones. The rest should go get jobs, or sign on just like other people do.

I read that the Westminster parliament buildings are falling into ruin. It seems that several billions are going to have to be spent on renovating them, and, in the meantime finding suitable accommodation for the UK parliament, both houses, including the preposterously large house of lords. 

I suggest a fairly simple building be constructed or perhaps even converted, preferably in one of the northern English towns and made available for them. I'd close their restaurants which are subsided to the hilt and they can do what most people do at lunch time and go to the shops for a sandwich... or bring it in with them and eat it at their desks. (Oh shock horror... but they really are just ordinary people with ordinary red blood. They won't die, unlike some of the people they've kicked out into the street, from queuing in a sandwich shop.)

In the interim they can use one of the vacated royal palaces with a large enough room for debates. let's be fair most of them don;t turn up most of the time anyway. (The lords will probably need beds because the old fellows/dears sleep a lot of the time.)
Then we should sell off the BBC. It's not necessary to have a state broadcaster. The BBC may have originally been meant to provide us with mind improving programmes but they long ago ceased to serve that purpose. The garbage they produce at enormous cost could easily be provided by the private sector. And let's be honest, the coalition of three parties in the UK LOVE privatizing things.

I'm going to stop there, but the list is endless...

I'd welcome any suggestions for what kind of austerity you would like to see in the 2015-2020 parliament.

Addendum:

Here's the list of New Tories that voted for £30 billion cuts. I wonder how many of them voted against their own pay rises!
List of Shame. The New Tories.
Sod the poor, we're getting 11%!
And again... you couldn't make this dame up...
And today she voted for another £30 b in cuts.
I can't think of any words for her.
Munguin can, but he's a very rude animal!

29 comments:

  1. How about chasing down, the billionaire/millionaire tax dodgers, cutting MPs expenses and scrapping the house of lords. Not forgeting, stopping going to war, with all and sundry.

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    1. That won't get any argument form me.

      I see that the SNP has proposed that the lords should be abolished.

      Reform, for over 100 years Labour policy, has only made a small difference (although credit to them for trying at least at the beginning). Life peerages act and more or less phasing out of hereditary ennoblements, and then the removal of some of the hereditary lords from the chamber. But we still have clerics of the state religion sitting in the parliament, like Iran!

      Except it seems that the British ones get through a power of the very best vintage champagne.

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  2. 1. First idea is to buy 600 odd ONE bedroom flats in London (However many are needed for MP's who need to be in London regularly). These are owned by the country and are the official residences of MP's when they are Westminster MP's. When they are no longer MP's the next one gets the flat. No second home allowances, no meals out, they will have a kitchen and they can bring there packed lunches with them to the HoC. Put microwaves into the Westminster canteen so they can heat stuff up.
    2. Obviously get rid of trident.
    3. Necessary expenses should be paid. BUT NOT for any alcohol. If having to travel they must use public transport.
    4. I agree that one main residence for the Royals is all that is needed but we could let them chose one other holiday home. The rest should be sold or used for the public good.
    5. Royals should be immediate family only. Her and Him, their children and grand children. That is all.
    6. No more large parties paid for by the country.
    7. Anything else which is a ridiculously stupid waste of money.

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    1. Great list Gloria...

      Surely there is a multi going somewhere in reasonable proximity to parliament where they could have their little London pied à terre. Done up reasonably like mature student accommodation. Those who were exceedingly rich could always make their own arrangements of course. Those who wanted their extended family to stay with them could do likewise. Decent honest MPs needing a place to spend the 3 or 4 nights a week for 30 weeks of the year (about a third of the year) would be well satisfied with that.

      A certainly agree about no alcohol. I have no idea why we are subsidising MPs to get so drunk that the waltz with little old ladies (Foulkes) or knock seven bells out of each other (Joyce). The we end up having to provide cells for them too!

      I'm not sure about this holiday home business for the royals. I don't have a holiday home. Sandringham and Balmoral are theirs as private residences. Victoria built Balmoral and one of the Kings bought Sandringham. They are nothing to do with us. As long as we don;t pay for them, they can do whatever they want with them.

      I'd be just as happy to get rid of the royals altogether and let the presiding officers act head of state, but if we are stuck with the parasites then I'd have the Queen, Charles and William and their spouses, and no one else kept at the public expense. The French don't keep the president's children and grandchildren. Why would we keep the queen's?

      Apart form that I'm totally in agreement with you.

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    2. I think the flats would need to be spread out over greater London so that they weren't a security risk. One big block wouldn't work.

      I didn't realise that they owned Balmoral so I agree no holiday home needed.

      I don't think we need the Royals either but if we did keep them they MUST appreciate how much they cost. This should be pointed out to them in a lot of detail. They need to know how much the public has to live on and be asked to undertake their own austerity measures.

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    3. I suppose you have a point on security Gloria. We don't want to waste any more money having their flats blown up and having to replace them.

      Fair enough. Over London. Not Belgravia and Kensington, Chelsea and the likes though. ordinary places where ordinary people live, so that they can see what life is actually like.

      Yes Balmoral and Sandringham are nothing to do with us. If the roof falls in in them they pay, we don't. However I imagine a lot of the treasures within them are ours.

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  3. You might get 25,205 bottles of budget champagne at Lidl s for 275 grand - it works out at £10-92 a bottle - but you wont get "the best vintage" for anywhere near that. Are you sure the figure is not 10 times more than that? I got some 2004 vintage Larry Perry for £30 a bottle last year, but Vintage Bolly or Dom or Cristal will set you back way way more than that.

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    1. Ah, well from what I've hear, their grandnesses aren't likely to accept champagne at that price... and out of Lidl's arghhhhh!

      So I guess that was a conservative (small c) estimate.

      Let's multiply it by 10 then.

      Even more scandalous.

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    2. I was just thinking... the palace seem to hand out drinks pretty freely when they have one of these receptions for those and such as those who have bought ... sorry I should say "got" not "bought"... an honour.

      That old fool Mellor got totally ripped before insulting a taxi driver when he was taking him home from Buck House after a function where his bit of stuff was made a countess or something.

      We were just laughing at Mellor the other day, because he gave the taxi driver chapter and verse of how he was better and cleverer than he was. Listing his achievements he ended with him being a cabinet minister. But for some strange reason, he neglected to mention that he had had to resign because he was caught bonking a prostitute whilst dressed in a Chelsea strip, and thus he brought his boss's "family values" policy into disrepute... not to mention caused much mirth because he was a wee podgy bloke and it was next to impossible to imagine him squeezed in a football strip!

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  4. What to cut we could cut IDS into a thousand pieces for a start might waken a few up in what they vote for.

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    1. LOL.

      I take your thousand and raise you 500! And I'll throw in McVile and that foul Lord too!

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  5. Hows this for irony? On this day in 1893 Kier Hardie founded the Independent Labour Party. Today they voted for vast austerity on the poor.

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    1. Do you think any of those baistards, were thinking about that when they cast their vote and cast the less fortunate into deeper despair.
      Or was Spud and his flunkies, toasting the great mans memory?
      No, me neither.

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    2. Spud was planning his palace in Edinburgh adn his coronation!

      That seems to be all he cares about.

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  6. Nico, are you there Nico?
    What's your thoughts on Labours backing of these cuts?

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    1. I'd be interested to know that Niko!

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  7. The more and deeper the cuts that are made the better it will be ,taxpayers are tired of supporting Labours lazy thick feckless bone idle chav class.

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    1. Indeed Anon.

      I heard that the royals were fed up of supporting the lazy Tory middle classes.

      So if the Tories starve the poor and the royals and aristos starve the Tories, we should be down to a manageable population size.

      Sorted!

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    2. Chav= conservatives have alienated voters.
      Maybe if your Tory pals had not shut down industry, and favoured long dole queues and service industries, these feckless people would have a job to go to. It is your rich tax avoiders that cost the country, not those less fortunate than the chattering classes, you seem to support.

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  8. I expect that the Anonymous commentator is not Niko, but some nasty troll.
    I thought it was lovely to see Mr Thomas Docherty on the roll of those supporting the Tories, should be a good leaflet for the doors round here in Dunfermline. Now that Ms Hilton has decided it is too tough to be an MSP and she is leaving, perhaps Mr Docherty should consider doing so as well.

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    1. I should think you;re right there Helena.

      I didn't know Hilton had decided to give up. She didn't last long. She won;t get to the House of Lords on a short stay like that... I hope she realises that!

      Maybe Mr Docherty should stand as a Tory next time. It's clearly what he wants to be.

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    2. I am not a nasty troll, I am retired ,and still find myself paying tax to keep labours client underclass scum in the fashion to which they have grown accustomed .

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    3. Hey Anonymous do you think you are the only one, I am also retired and so is my husband who is yet to receive his Government Pension, we are both still paying tax though. I just wonder how many of the underclass you know. I do know of some, they are well out weighed by decent people who need a break.

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    4. What would you do with them Anon?

      You should try not to believe everything you read in the Daily Express.

      Most people at the bottom have terrible lives of ghastly privations while Prince Andrew gets his £13 million ski chalet and William gets his helicopter at £8 million a year so that he can get home in time to see George to bed.... awww.

      So worth my tax money. NOT.,

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    5. Tris, as my Husband pointed out Anon is not what he or indeed she appears. Do you know anyone who refers to Chavs in Scotland? I certainly don't. We may disparage someone by referring to them as Neds but never chavs, and I have to say I do not know anyone who ever refers to the Labour Party that way. So perhaps Anon is from GCHQ, or somewhere else, sort of imagine some earnest person from Conservative or Ukip head quarters. See you and Munguin have finally qualified for a Troll

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    6. This has been Munguin's lifelong ambition!!!

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  9. Didn't recognize a lot of the names on the list and had to look up party allegiance - makes even more interesting reading.

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    1. Very interesting.

      In short there were a few decent Labour MPs who voted against. There was the Greens and there was Paid and the SNP.

      I just noticed this on the BBC site where I was actually looking for weather information...

      "Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy says his party "does not want" a coalition with the SNP if it fails to win a majority at the general election.

      " After becoming the new leader of the SNP in October last year, Nicola Sturgeon predicted that her party would hold the "balance of power".
      Polls have suggested Scottish Labour will lose seats to the Nationalists.

      "Mr Murphy told BBC Radio Scotland that his party was not planning for a Labour/SNP deal.

      "However, UK Labour leader Ed Miliband has not directly ruled out post-election talks with the SNP."


      It seems that he is now making policy for the English party as well. Jeez, will this man be the king of England by the end of the month?

      I like the way that the BBC put it... "polls have predicted that (Scottish) labour will lose seats to the SNP".

      Actually the pools, whether you believe them or not, have predicted that (Scottish) Labour will be wiped out. Trust the BBC to tell a story, huh?

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    2. Ouch... POLLS!

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