Have you ever been to one of these parties where you were expecting a houseful and only 4 people turned up, and even they left early?
Well today there was one such do in London. The rally against debt, organised in response to the March rally against cuts when hundreds of thousands took to the streets, had been promised around 1500 adherents on Facebook, but in the end only about 350 people bothered to turn up.
Even some of its most ardent supporters found that they had other engagements.
Speakers included Paul Staines (Guido Fawkes to you and me), Nigel Farage (UKIP leader), Matthew Sinclair of the Taxpayers’ Alliance and Tory MP Priti Patel. At one point the “crowd” chanted “What do we want? Cuts! When do we want them? Now!
They complained bitterly that they want cuts now so that their children and grandchildren don’t have to pay, but of course most of the protesters were people who wouldn’t actually “suffer” from cuts. They want rid of libraries that they never use; parks that they have no need of; public transport that they shun; benefits they wouldn’t be seen dead collecting and health services that people like them simply don’t need.
And of course they are entitled to these views. I can’t help but wonder if I were a millionaire paying 50p in the pound on my earnings over £150,000 a year, would I not think it was a bit steep that I had to subsidise buses so that poor people could go places; libraries so that they could read; parks for their children to play in, or benefits that their likes are forever trying to get their hands on?
I’d like to think that I wouldn’t mind. I’d like to think that, having more than enough myself, I wouldn’t object to paying just that little bit more so that they could have a little. I’d like to think I’d have a bit of compassion for people who weren’t as lucky as me.
Anyway, it is cheering that only around 350 people from all over the UK thought it worth turning up... and that, as it was so dull, they all went home early.
While there certainly needs to be cuts, and I support this coalition in its mission to do it, I would disassociate myself with anyone who delights in "cuts".
ReplyDeleteGod knows, I don't and only do so extremely reluctantly.
p.s. Well done Azerbaijan (I was right, see last thread last comment by me :))
Aye well apaprently thre were some who did rejoice in them. Someone had a banner that said Libraries suck.
ReplyDeleteClearly they didn't work in one.
Yes Azerbaijan... that should bring some much needed tourism money to Baku next year.
I didn't see or hear any of it, but someone said that the quality of the music was much higher this year.
It was extremely high this year, with significantly less "political voting" thanks to the reintroduction of popular votes AND JUDGES votes.
ReplyDeleteWell done to the winner, since they are oil rich, expect a good spectacle!
As for anyone who delights in closures of libraries, fuck them. It is equatable to burning books. It is totally, and unremittingly disgusting. Sorry for swearing, but in this case, please do not censor - we need to highlight the dangers of censorship. I will never forget the fact that my Grandmother had to flee Austria (1938) due to certain people burning books ...
No Dean... this time i won't censor, because I can imagine how strongly you feel about that.
ReplyDeleteThat said, of course, it's more than libraries. Swimming baths, sports facilities available to the reasonably wealthy, in private clubs, are only available to the poor when run by councils.
I wonder if Scot Goes Pop has got a post up yet about the contest! He's a bit of a fantatic!!
The rally was to raise awareness to the fact that the UK was bankrupt. It was a rally against debt and deficit.
ReplyDeleteThe UK is totally bust. Our total debt is between £4,000Bn and £7,000Bn. It rises by about £120Bn every year.
The 'cuts' are meaningless. £20Bn is merely a rounding up figure or an an extra payment to the EU.
I'd advise people to buy silver ( dropped to $31 this week - buy)
Buy some land and learn to rear hens.
H J done it, not the chickens or silver bit (yet).
ReplyDeleteI am rearing organic cherries, no treatment, took me about 15 years to get the one seedling up and fruiting in quantity. Trouble is, I am not there at Chateau Snooty when the damn tree fruits. At least I have organically fed birds flying about.
A minority that do not think that an enriched and content society benefits them in any way. Clearly they would rather live in some sort of third world dump with crushing poverty, rocketing crime with a soulless un-educated underclass that has nothing to lose.
ReplyDeleteThe English don't need to wait much longer, they are nearly there as it is. Can't be a lot of hope left to spare south of the border with a choice of three Tory parties!
ReplyDeleteThankfully we have the SNP and independence is right around the corner-at last!
Hi Tris. You mention that someone had a banner saying "libraries suck" - they did but it was a banner from someone who'd gone to protest against the pro-cuts demo. I think it was supposed to be mockery. Many pro-cuts supporters were also drawing attention to the vast amounts of money drained by the EU.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how serious this rally was meant to be - maybe it was just an excuse to meet up and have a pint after the speeches.
Well Hugh. No one much was interested.
ReplyDeleteYes. The UK is broke, so why does this idiot government continue to behave like it was playing fag to Obama’s Flashman?
I agree with you. There should be a referendum tomorrow on membership of the EU with honest (yes, I know lol lol lol) figures about the cost of pretending that we still matter instead of being honest and saying that we are just above Portugal, Ireland and Greece, and way behind Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia in the growth stakes.
Guaranteed win, which would doubtless delight most conservatives (except the ones at the top who love to play with the big boys).
Let’s have a referendum too on whether we should stay as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, with its attendant costs of nuclear capacity.
It’s too late to cancel the Olympics although the rest of the state is fed up paying for London to be improved with no compensation to us.
And let’s while we are referring everything to the people, have a referendum on whether we want the government to hit disabled people for the few quid they get to make their difficult lives a little less difficult, or whether we would prefer them to put the same resources into nabbing people who fiddle millions a year by evading or avoiding paying tax.
But I’m certainly with you n the EU. Let the people decide based on the facts....
Organic Cherries?
ReplyDeleteWell, I suppose every little bit helps.
Munguin. Because the Finance Secretary is a genius, we have managed to survive the worst of the mad cuts of the English government ...so far.
ReplyDeleteBut I see that there are so many discontent and unhappy people in the country. They worry about being able to eat, heat and clothe.
Now I'm sure that David Cameron's female relatives will tell him that if you want to run a good household you must ensure that the staff are happy and healthy. Unhappy staff mean badly starched shirts, lumpy gravy, cold deserts, badly decanted port, dust in the fireplaces in teh drawing rooms, and kitchen gardens neglected.
He should remember that! A country house and a country are not that different.
Hi GV...
ReplyDeleteWell I did think that it was a bit of a dumb thing to say. I mean some of the Lords might think quite the wrong thing about their own libraries.
Well, as I said to Hugh above, I think that we should be having a referendum on whether or not to be in the EU.
We are hearing a lot at the moment in Scotland about how unsettling it is to the market that there is talk of independence. Is it not equally unsettling to the markets that there is an estimated 80% of the population in the UK that want out of the EU and there is a government that is constantly blaming the EU for everything, but won’t actually hold a referendum on it?
The last bloke who had the nerve to do anything like that was Harry Wilson, way back in the 70s, I think.
So why does Mr Cameron not have the guts to call that referendum?
I’d like him to answer THAT question. Of course he won’t, but buoyed by his success in the last referendum (He was able to get vast amounts of Tory money poured into it and of course he lied about baby deaths, costs, well, just about everything...but he wouldn’t even need to do that this time. He could take a week off, hell no, a month off and people would still vote to come out).
If he won’t give us a referendum then he should at least stop pretending that we are one of the “big three”. I saw a set of figure the other day which showed our growth to be just above the levels of Greece and Portugal. We are poor. So we should be net recipients, not contributors.
Membership on our membership to the EU? Absolutely not, the UK might vote to leave.
ReplyDeleteWe need the EU, not only does it make travel easier across Europe, not only does it ensure we can properly control transnational big business; but it is vital to our future economic growth prospects.
Take a look at yesterdays Financial Times, the eurozone average of growth from last quarter is significantly higher than the UKs.
UK growth from last quarter stands at 0.5, meanwhile the Eurozone ave is 0.8. And why withdraw from an organization which is the solution to - rather than cause of - the economic woes facing Britain?
All of that gluttonous credit-borrowing we all engaged in before the crash, all those years of incompetent government soothing our irresponsible behaviour with "no more boom or bust" ... it is representative of the increasing irrelevance of the nation-state. We need cross-border solutions to what are now global challenges.
To withdraw from the EU is tantamount to ignoring the challenges we face. It is rank isolationism and 'little englander' mentality. I shall always, forever and continue to oppose such stupidity.
tris..
ReplyDeleteThe EU will collapse long before we get our promised referendum on getting out. Even Dean admits we'd vote to get out so we'll never get asked.
Ireland, Greece and Portugal are finished so once Spain goes down it will be the endgame.
We just can't print money fast enough to bail everyone out. I notice the head of the IMF and future French leader was arrested in New York over sex charges. Possibly a set up with an agenda that we'll never know about ?
The Libyan conflict has led to the collapse in the Schengen (?) agreement where mainland Europe had an open borders policy. The 'free' movement of people policy is in doubt. France is sending Africans back to Italy where they were given visas to travel in Europe.
tris
ReplyDeleteYeah! well nobody understands self harmer's and we shan't encourage them either cutting themselves to bits ..blood everywhere Ugh make you quite sick
Dean
you make a damning indictment of Camerons and Osborne's misrule
The UK Recovery in International Comparison
Oh! Deano you have been well and truly filleted
ha ha ha
Dean:
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that we can have cross border solutions to things without something that seems to cost the earth to one of the poorest and under-performing countries in the union.
Thatcher was right to get the money back from Europe, because we were in a bad way financially after the last labour government, but you can't keep on pretending to be America's right hand man, fighting wars and renewing weapons systems, if you are at the same time asking countries like Germany and Austria and the Northern countries to pay more so that you can afford to play the big man on world stage.
There is no doubt that we have had better legislation from Brussels than these half wits in Westminster could ever manage, but we can’t afford the money it costs...and Europe is as wasteful and corrupt as Westminster. We already have two houses of chiselling b*****ds to keep without another one in Brussels. Frankly, although I think there is a lot that has come from there that is good, we must consider the option of leaving.
Lord Snooty..
ReplyDeleteBest keep things simple. Hens and spuds. My diet is mainly egg and chips.
Hugh Spain's economy is growing faster than the UK one.
ReplyDeleteIt will only be scaremongering by credit agencies that will make it dodgy. That could happen to the UK too, if someone doesn't get a handle on inflation, lack of growth and discontent among the people.
I saw these figures too Niko.
ReplyDeleteIt's not working just like we all said it woudn't work!
Private sector growth and jobs was definately going to replace the public sector job losses.
Yep...
Good one George.
Hugh:
ReplyDeleteYou should try egg, chips and cherries.
Delightful!
I can't get infused about this as it is more a storm in a tea cup. sorry I'll pick up my caddy now signed Earl Grey.
ReplyDeleteAnother nobleman CH?
ReplyDeleteHow they flock to this site!
Me, I'm a coffee man.....
tris said.
ReplyDelete"Hugh Spain's economy is growing faster than the UK one"
I'm not sure if that's anything to write home about as we too are bankrupt.
Spain's deficit is rising year on year and will be 75% of GDP next year rising to 100% in the following years. Everything it produces of worth will be cancelled out by it's debts. Just like us.
They've 20% unemployment. A bloated public sector that will never see any cuts. Over a million new homes unsold. A catastrophic green agenda that will see them have to import more expensive electricity from abroad.
They're a bit like where the UK will be in a couple of years time.
Yes I know Hugh.
ReplyDeleteActually I wasn't bragging about it. It's a disgusting situation and getting worse thanks to inexperienced hands on the tiller of a ship that was already sinking due to being steered for 13 years by a madman.
The UK is finished. I hate to seem like a rat, but it's time Scotland was launched as a life boat.
Tris.
ReplyDeleteNigel Farage! He has to be the most ludicrous politician of his generation. Anything which involves this guy is prone to fail.
Totally agree with you Tris, the people who tend to shout the most about the cuts tend to be people who don't need/or choose to use public funded services yet your super suburban mum driving the 4x4 (Chelsea tractor) would be the first to complain if a sweet wrapper had found its way off the street and into her garden. Endless emails to the local council, oh dear poor woman.
Unfortunately we live in a society of greed and selfishness, paying taxes was never about helping a individual but to benefit everyone. I would like to see my tax bills come down and I certainly would welcome a reduction but not at the expense of my local Library, Swimming pool, bus service or bin collecting service. Instead I would like to see a reduction in defence spending, ie Trident and I would also like to see a tax hike for the super rich and the banks.
It is hard to strike a fair balance between someone on a low income to someone who is super rich when it comes to how much tax they pay but to me it's more important for a family to put food on the table than someone getting his/her name onto the Sunday Times rich list.
I don't have a problem with high earners and many people on a reasonable income do get squeezed by tax but please think about the people who depend on public services the most.
What a sensible post Allan.
ReplyDeleteIt’s difficult to disagree with a single word of it.
The problem for the rich in a society where a larger and larger section of society are genuinely struggling to have any kind of decent life for themselves is that things start to fall apart for them too.
Perhaps it’s mrs 4x4noticing that the park grass not getting cut and the flower beds haven't been weeded; more people unemployed; the fact that more and more shops are lying empty and starting to look dilapidated. Maybe it’s all the people hanging about on the street, the increase in the number of pound shops, the general sense of decay, the increase in beggars, the fear of crime...
It’s all a part of the price that even the rich pay for the fact that the country is falling to pieces and the government’s policies are not working.