SUNDAY SNAPS, FEATURING HIT THE WEAK WEEK AND McCAMERON THE FEART

The welfare changes started this week and, true to form, we were treated to Cameron and his ministers out in force making ridiculous statements about how much welfare costs. 

Ignoring reality, which is that the bulk of the welfare bill is spent either on the elderly (and everyone has known that that was coming for the last 60 years and more) or on people who are in work but paid far too little to cope with the outrageous (and wholly unnecessary) price of staples, like foods, electricity, gas and petrol , they and their friends in the press continued telling us that all the money was soaked up by undeserving lazy skivers, criminals and child murderers. 

The truth is shown by these (the most recent) breakdown of expenditure from the DWP (2011).

42.3% elderly,

20.8% low income,

18.4% families,

15.5% sick/disabled,

2.6% unemployed.

Source: DWP

Still there isn't much profit for the Tories in letting the truth get in the way of their vile propaganda machine. And vile it is: Comparing struggling OAPs, and people dying of cancer, to a man who murdered 6 of his own kids is low, even for the likes of Osborne ...and yes, I know he didn't actually say it, but he implied it, and allowed the Daily Mail readers to make of it what they would. And if he didn't know that that was what they would do, it is high time he was back on his ancestral estate counting the sheep instead of our money.

Then we had Cameron in Scotland, refusing to debate independence with Mr Salmond. He said because "it was for Scots to decide... not an Englishman like me". (He seemed momentarily to forget that while Mr Salmond is first minister of Scotland, he is (like it or not) prime minister of Scotland) Maybe we successfully managed to make him feel like the outsider he is in our country. I hope so, because he is, and a dangerous one. 

He kicked holes in his own argument, however, by lecturing us about how much better we have been, and would be, in the UK. He's a Tory so he retreated into the usual jingoistic talk...it's all they know about.  We beat fascism together, we had nuclear weapons together and, if we didn't then Kim Jong Un could blow us off the face of the earth, and probably would. 

Cleverer than IDS a week before, he was talking to an audience that was bound to show him respect, as the talk was hosted by their employers. So telling him to... erm...'go away', wasn't really a possibility. 

But he won't talk to Alex. Oh no, despite the majority of Scots wanting him to, he just won't. I wonder what the real reason is...

By the day, it seems more and more obvious that if we want to live a decent life in a decent country with decent laws, we have to do this on our own. The alternative is to remain part of an angry and deeply divided country where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; where we store, and help to pay for, dangerous and unnecessary weapons, capable of killing tens of thousands  of people, while our schools and hospitals are underfunded, and those down on their luck because of illness, old age or unemployment are left to feel like thieves and child murderers. 

This one takes the biscuit!!

******

In under 24 hours check out the difference from the Scotsman.

Friday's story on Western Baths:

"One of Scotland's best-known artists, Alasdair Gray, has unveiled a major piece of his work in arguably the most unusual location yet - his local swimming baths."

Saturday's story on Independence:

"Controversial artist Alasdair Gray is to publish a major new book setting out his case for Scottish independence in the run-up to next year’s referendum, The Scotsman can reveal."

Hmmmm. Best known one day and controversial the next... What a fickle world the Johnson Pressers live in.