I'll stick to making the point that I doubt if I have ever disliked anyone as much in my life.
I have to keep asking myself, why has this ghastly liar of a man have any place in the governance of Scotland? Did we vote for him, or his ilk?
Please try to keep your responses reasonably decent, hard though it will be, heaven knows.
http://www.leftfootforward.org/2013/07/trade-unionism-is-not-about-creating-divisions/
ReplyDeleteO/T already ...tut tut, Tris...
This article is worth a read specifically for the comments....many comments... by reader (most notably our mate Dougthedug) rubbishing everything the writer has said.
and Bugger (the Panda)?
Deleteyes, and Bugger (the Panda) :)...actually and several more.
DeleteIain Duncan Smith gets £1 for every person he causes misery to. IDS is now a millionaire :/
ReplyDeleteAfter being an officer in the army, IDS used his army connections to get a job selling weapons through GEC-Marconi, no doubt to any despot with the ready cash. Just like the other millionaire Tories, they are pseudo-Victorians drunk on power and ideologically bent to hitting people with a big stick that don't have a bank balance equal or greater to theirs.
The man has caused untold misery to just about everyone who isn't rich.
DeleteMost people on benefits are working. The UK allows companies (and government) to pay so little that people working full time have to bed for extras, just to feed themselves. many of them are going to food banks (3 new ones open per week, so I heard).
For those who have been thrown out of work but the cuts, some after 40 years of work, overnight they become "skivers" or "scroungers" as this filthy government gears up a hate campaign against them.
(It's a bit ironic that he should be behind any of this, as he lives off his wife's riches, so he's a scrounger himself.)
The UK once again belongs to the Eton educated toffs. The rest of us are there simply to serve them.
And I'd sooner eat my own foot than serve the likes of IBS. Sorry easy mistake. IDS.
I can't wait to get out of this excuse of a country. But I can't help thinking that there is only so far you can push people. The fewer people you are pushing, the further you can push them... but there are an awful lot of people now who are being pushed beyond endurance.
I'm so glad I don't live in one of the overcrowded, dilapidated, cities, particularly in the heat of the summer.
IDS saying that 'there's more people in work than ever before' is meaningless. You have to go by the number of manhours being worked. Most new jobs are part time so obviously there will be more people in work.
ReplyDeleteAnd so many of them zero hour contracts. I read this evening that summer jobs at Buckingham Palace are zero hour jobs. That sickens me. Nothing is worse than not knowing form one week to the next whether you will be working 2 hours, 40 hours, 10 hours or not at all.
Deletehttp://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/jul/30/buckingham-palace-zero-hours-contracts
It means that you have terrible problems trying to manage any kind of regular payments, including rent and council tax. And the cheeky bast***s say that you are expected to work "exclusively" for them. You have to seek permission to take a second job.
That the queen is employing, no exploiting, people on that basis is in my opinion a national disgrace.
She gets her money no matter what. And the summer jobs are there because of all the tourists which make MORE money for her. That woman drops in my estimation every time I hear anything about her. Time she was gone and her family of scrounging layabouts.
Tris
DeleteIt is like the way the dockers, navvies, farm workers and other unwashed were engaged for menial and manual work.
Explains why none of the 3 unionist parties were so concerned about the gang masters enslaving illegal immigrants to pick cockles (remember the dead Chinese in Morecambe Bay?)and, Eastern European vegetable pickers in East Anglia?
It was all dry run for what was to come, in a more legalised and sophisticated manifestation.
It will be "Free Schooling to Stop for over 14 year olds" soon.
I feel it in my waters.
Lord, I never thought of that notion Snotty.
DeleteThey could save a fortune if they stopped free education at 14 and refused to pay unemployment benefit to anyone under 21. (You remain the responsibility of your parents until you reach the majority which was in place when mrs Thatcher was a lass.
Someone said the other day that, but by bit this bunch of Eton toffs, aided and abetted by the Liberal lackeys, are reversing all the decnet things that have been done since the 2nd world war and that we are heading back to a time when ordinary people had no rights. The thing that amazes me is that the sheep are just letting them do it.
How did we get to this? That a politician can say the things he just said and people not take the opportunity to get away from it...
ReplyDeleteHe's not just a disgrace of a politician, he's a disgrace of a human being.
I feel dirty just being on the same plane of existence as that piece of immoral detritus.
I don't know how we got to this. It's despicable.
DeleteThe man wouldn't know the truth if it smacked him in the coupon.
He lied about his university; he lied about management college; he lies consistently about the running of his department, but he's a right wing nutter with, amazingly, support on the back benches and Cameron can't afford another wildcard loonie on the loose.
So he keeps the job, wastes millions and kills off the sick and the poor.
Nothing important as far as Cameron the Coward is concerned.
I've no idea who James O'Brien is, but well done him. He refused to be bullied by the vile man. And two things -
ReplyDelete1. Yes of course long term unemployment is falling. Because anyone long term unemployed is passed onto Work Programme and not counted as unemployed but they still receive JSA. Long term unemployment will start rising as people return from WP.
2. All this wittering about young people and "work experience"/workfare being voluntary. What about the not so young people MANDATED to workfare? Yes there are voluntary schemes for the young and there are ALSO MANDATED schemes.
3. Work experience - plenty of unemployed people have years of paid work experience - they don't need to stack shelves at Poundland to gain skills. Not does shelf stacking need months of training, unless you are 5. Low skill jobs should be paid NMW. There MAY be a case for work experience on JSA for higher skilled jobs but funnily enough none of the placements seem to be for those.
4. IDS is a vile bully. I suppose, given he was born in Edinburgh, we'll just have to hope he doesn't take up Scottish citizenship in 2016!
okay that ended up being 4 things. Oops, but I was on a roll.
DeleteMorning PP...
ReplyDeleteIn fact one of the cunning plans that they used to use (and you may be more up to date than me on this) is that people who are taken off the "long term unemployed" list for 13 weeks or more, for any reason, return to it as new claimants.
When i worked for JC+ it was thus anyway, which is why all the programmes that they ran at that time lasted 13 weeks or more.
There was a thing called Project Work which was piloted in Dundee (although it was never rolled out). It took people who had been unemployed for over 2 years and put them to work on a project for 18 hours a week for £10 extra a week and bus fares after the first £3. At the end of the project they returned to the dole, but were new claimants. There were two projects in Dundee. Both dealt with around 200 clients. This made a huge difference to the LTU figures in Dundee.
Most of the clients were poor souls with drug or drink problems or serious criminal histories. There was a pretty small chance of them ever being employed.
I wonder, in IDS's department what they would say if someone said: "No, I'm not working for nothing. I'm not doing this voluntary work in Tesco when I have two degrees in anthropology. If you are keen to get me some work experience, arrange with the local museum to take me on. If there is a job at the end of it, that would be so much the better." What's the betting there would be benefit sanctions?
Point 3 I agree with. Why is it labouring jobs they get people to do? Can they not arrange something more useful?
On point 4, I know we need to welcome people into our country, but I think we should make an exception with him. He's not what I think of as a person.
Ha ha... I never noticed that you couldn't count!
DeleteThis is the thing about work fair (or whatever bullshit name they're giving it.) Its stupid, as already said, many people already have work experience and those who don't, aren't given a choice on what work experience they do.
ReplyDeleteNow, you could say, why should they get a choice but why not? Are they being deliberately obtuse or nasty by forcing people to do 'work experience' which arguably - requires no experience? Last time I checked, shelf stacking job ad's usually came with the caveat - no experience necessary.
Its obviously a sop to already successful moderately big business which allows them a cheap rolling work force.
I did my work experience at Ferranti because I was studying electronics at the time. Going by IDS's disgustingly twisted logic, my college tutors may-as-well have sent me to Fine Fair, (it was a wee while ago.)
Its stupid in two ways, the work experience doesn't require experience and its probably not going to be the kind of work many want.
If they were being truly altruistic (and not completely bat-shit evil & dogmatic about it,) they'd arrange proper work experience that is salient to the person doing it.
Just another area where shit Britain is in a race to the bottom. Its also why, when ever I hear someone bang on about Team GB or see Union flags fluttering (and that completely asinine thing in Sun rag yesterday,) i feel the urge to vomit.
I think I can safely say that we feel exactly the same about this Team GB spirit.
DeleteI look at that sporting crap, or royal baby rubbish or jubilee rubbish, and all I can see is the Eton boys reminding the peasants that we are a great country, an empire upon which the sun never sets, and they should forget about the crumbling infrastructure; the lack of housing, roads, trains, buses, internet connections, and the prevalence of food banks and rejoice that we won more medals than other lesser countries (most of them went to ex independent or public school people); that we have the biggest royal family in Europe with more places than any other royal family; and that we have the bulldog spirit because we are all in it together.
And the idiots buy into this rubbish, whilst queuing for the foodbank as the Eton boys drive past in the rollers deciding where to put the fracking plants... probably in the North East.
Work experience for young people (or people who had been made redundant) would be a first class idea, if it were work experience that would be useful to them.
So the girl leaving uni with a degree in anthropology could get her work experience in a museum, and the guy with the qualification in hairdressing could get his work experience in a salon.
But no. That would take money, time and HR skills to arrange, so it's better (cheaper) to put them all in Tesco or Poundland (pretty much securing directorships for themselves when they slip into the House of Lords) and make the working classes learn how to stack shelves.
Work experience is about more that learning the job, of course. It is about teamwork, self discipline and interpersonal relations and many young people need to learn these skills.
But a person who deeply resents their placement will learn nothing, and I hope will bring nothing but hardship and misery to the company which is complicit in employing slave labour and doing people out of proper jobs.
If I know for sure that a store has employed slave labour, I will not shop there. I hope other people take that attitude.
"So the girl leaving uni with a degree in anthropology could get her work experience in a museum"
DeleteIt's actually worse that this. Cat Reilly, the lass that took DWP to court over the shelf stacking, actually had to give up her voluntary position at a museum to do the shelf stacking because she was initially told it was compulsory work experience although it was in fact voluntary until you started then became compulsory.
was it not Fine Fare if memory serves?
DeletePP...yes. I know. That was a total travesty, and then the sneaky wee git rushed through retrospective legislation so that he'd be in the clear. I can't begin to say how I hate these Tories.
DeleteAny notion that they were no longer the nasty party was very short lived.
Actually Ms Reilly must have been in my thoughts when I used that example, but I wasn't specifically meaning her.
Tris, ever get down to Glasgow?
ReplyDeleteI'll be over for a family wedding in Ayr the 25th August but will be staying in Glasgow and Babbity Bowsters from the 21st night on 'til the 28th minus the night in Ayr.
Fancy a glass of wine or two and it would be really good if the Librarian could come through on the Sat afternoon?
BtP etc etc etc
Is this a private party or can anyone join in?
DeleteHey...why don't you have a Munguin's Republic get together without me.... :)
DeleteYou are welcome but I thought you were oop north?
ReplyDeleteAhhh Snotty.
ReplyDeleteLovely idea but sorry man, I'll be out of the country at that time.
But it would have been great to rendezvous... I bet Conan would love to though...
My pc had a fried hard disk and I moved to a MacBook so, I have lost a lot of my contacts. Can you pass me Conan's e-mail account and I will send him an invite. As for Panda Paws, she would be welcome, I am assuming he other Panda is a Lady buy not too much one to go out for a swally with me / us
Deletemy details for you and PPaws is
ReplyDeleteinnerbearsden@gmail.com