EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY

In these hard, hard times when everyone is making sacrifices...when sick people are being made to work, when the English part of the UKOK government is contemplating rationing health care based on some arbitrary measure of useful you are as a person and when, regardless of how much work you have done at the age of 24 (it could be 8 years), you won't be entitled to benefits, it's nice to know that there is still loads of money to throw around on vanity projects for our betters.

There is a committee of the House of Commons which secretly meets and decides which among their colleagues should be honoured with a portrait or a statue.

And they spend hundreds of thousands of pound glorifying themselves for posterity, like they were important which of course they sincerely believe themselves to be.

Of course I could accept that, incompetent, inefficient and self serving though they may have been, ex prime ministers have always had a portrait down to hang in Downing Street, and Speakers have traditionally been painted for posterity; they form part of the history of the country. But the names of some of the subjects that have been painted leave you gasping for breath at the audacity of this committee wasting money while people go cold.

The subjects themselves are nominated by this committee, and only have to agree to be painted. They do not put themselves forward.

None the less I can't help but wonder at their vanity that they accept that your money be wasted on them.

It is a cross party affair too. The only person who comes out of this Daily Mail article with any credit, is Harriet harman, who originally agreed to be painted, but withdrew when she found out how much it would cost the taxpayer.

I thought you might like to see some of the daubs that you paid for, because stuck up here in "North Britain", and it being a day's journey to the grand imperial capital, you are unlikely to actually see the real things for yourself.

One of the things that amazed me was the difference in prices... This little beauty cost nearly £12,000

And one of the reptilian Iain Duncan Smith cost £10,000, possibly because it had to be done at night!

Bercow, the current Speaker, sometimes called Squeaker, for no reason that immediately springs to mind, except maybe his rodent like actions, apparently was afforded the amazing sum of £37,000 for this.

Ming the merciless was painted at £10,000 (why?), Ken Clarke at £8,000, Wee Willie Hague only cost £4,000, possibly because they didn't have to do hair.

Betty Boothroyd, who, as Speaker i would have accepted been immortalised once, was done three times, presumably incase they lost two of them. That cost us £18,000.

Some were much cheaper. Left wingers Dennis Skinner and Tony Benn came in at a much more reasonable £2,000, although I can't see why they were done at all.

For some reason beyond understanding Pete Wishart was only deemed to be worth a photograph, although why he was included, I simply don't know. 

Needless to say Bair was done (on one occasion, a portrait of him was criticised for showing an abnormally large head. I wonder why that occurred to the artist!)

And of course Thatcher was immortalised (ye gads) in a statue which cost £150,000 was decapitated, but another one was put in the House of Commons right opposite Churchill, whom she always called Winston, like they were mates or something! (It is likely that they met when she was a junior MP and he was PM, but highly unlikely that they were on first name terms. He would most likely have sent her to make a pot of tea, or get him a brandy!)

Munguin is hoping that he will be nect to have his portrait painted, or maybe, he was thinking, a statue in bronze. What do you think?

Some more portraits for your enjoyment...

Fat head?

What a shine on that ...

You made it Chic

The bird is prettier...

Another one Betty?

Mug of tea and a pipe...

I HAVE A FEELING THAT SOME MAY LIVE TO REGRET THESE SMIRKS

Some people might call me a bleeding heart liberal, although after what the Liberals have been up to recently, I very much hope that it is with a lower case "l". 

OK, so I have worked for 20 years with people who for one reason or another are unemployed. Sometimes I've been teaching languages to help them get jobs in tourism, sometimes "job readiness skills". Sometimes I have been a "recruitment consultant" for unemployed, getting vacancies and filling them from my clients, and sometimes I have run courses designed to help people who had been ill, return to the workplace.

I've worked in some fairly sleazy places and I've met some dodgy characters and yes, there are some people who are swinging the system for all that it is worth.

But in honesty, in my experience they are relatively few, and even then there is usually an underlying reason.

The great bulk of the people I've had to do with have been honest enough in their endeavours to get a job that would keep them, and where they have one, their family.

Ha ha ha , isn't this fun. We're stuffing the poor. 

I've worked hard to help people who have had to face huge obstacles to getting a job. Some because of illness or disability; some because their early days have scarred them for life; some because there just aren't jobs for people like them any more.

The latest campaign by Westminster to blacken the name of anyone who has to apply for help, by setting "strivers" against "skivers" has sickened me beyond measure. I never thought I would see such heartlessness, not even from the nasty party. What an insult to people who are out of work because their company has closed down, or the government has withdrawn funding. What a kick in the teeth to people who have worked all their lives but been put out of that work by the bankers' and politicians' incompetence and greed.

Or even worse, the disabled people who were thrown out of work and on to the scrap heap when the government withdrew funding for Remploy. What are they then, skivers? Well clearly yes, if they are claiming benefits.

What the hell kind of country is this? 

In any case 70+% of people in receipt of benefit in the UK are already in work but either earn such low wages that a full working week's money isn't enough to live on, or their employer can only give them 10 or 15 hours' work a week. 

All the way through the debate yesterday the creeps on the Tory - Liberal benches laughed and jeered at the way they are making the poor pay for the mistakes, greed and theft of the rich.

If ever any decent person needed another reason to persuade them that Scotland should get the hell away from this united kingdom, this display of Tory and Liberal scumminess must surely be it. 

In Scotland there were 12 votes for the government and 47 against. (The SNP and Labour voted together against; the Liberals and the Tory voted for; Charlie Kennedy abstained, voting both for and against.)

In the UK 328 voted for the government and 262 against.

So you can see from the figures that although Scotland voted against this, which should mean that it won't happen in our country, unfortunately the UK as a whole voted for it. As the poster says: Bill passed... Any questions?

As I said in the heading of this post, I have a feeling that some may live to regret their smirking and cat calling at the expense of the poor. I most sincerely hope that they do.


(Alistair Darling, incidentally, was too busy in Inverness working on his Buggered Together Campaign to bother his lazy fat privileged arse to go to London and vote for his constituents who pay his salary. Maybe he is as confused as to what his job is now, as he was to where he lived when he kept changing the address at which he could claim public money in expenses  for home improvements.)

As I understand it, in Scotland some of the privations will be escaped, as where it can legally do so, the Scottish government will help. This will mainly be in Housing and Council Tax benefits which are the responsibility of the DWP, but which are dealt with by local councils in Scotland and in the UK. John Swinney has, I think, found enough money to give councils the extra necessary to minimise the reductions to these benefits for the year to come. A policy for which Mr Salmond wrung a reluctant acknowledgement from Mrs Lamont.

Edinburgh however can do nothing about benefits paid directly by London, so although we may avoid the homelessness that will certainly ensue in England, we won't avoid hunger and cold.

The newspaper for the less cerebral blue rinses

SNAPS FOR SATURDAY

Over the last couple of weeks I've been saving pictures for articles I thought I might write, but didn't get around to... Of course they are now out of date, and you may have seen them anyway, but in case you haven't, here they are for your delectation. As always, they can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Whit an eejit, indeed!

Morecambe and Unwise

Ah, that's quite something for a lassie from Anderston

Doubtless he thinks about it first thing in the morning until last thing at night.

Stop the world, we want to get on, to quote a weel kent phrase or saying.

As we said. whit an eejit.

Of course it is, Boris. Londoners are far more important than mere Scotchmen

Being nice to ghastly little plebs, huh? I must have blinked and missed it.

Actually, it really does suit her.

Looks like Alistair has his hand on Annabel's shoulder. I hope he won't ask her about her tartan knickers!