Yes, you heard that right. 47% of children in Glasgow live in poverty, only 25 miles from £100,000,000,000 worth of nuclear weapons whose only purpose appears to be to maintain the likes of Cameron on the permanent membership of the UN Security Council, no matter how inappropriate that membership is.
While children head off to school with empty bellies from cold homes William Hague appears on television looking desperately serious and what he thinks looks "statesman like" to tell Vladimir Putin a thing or two. How they must laugh in the Kremlin.
Blame it on your socialist governments, you still have more per head spent on you than any other part of the UK save Northern Ireland. If they cannot budget properly like other parts of the UK, there's perhaps no hope for you.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your advice.
DeleteNo child poverty in England I suppose? The last time I was there people were begging on the streets... and that was under your right wing government which is most judicious on its spending.
Of course there are important things for the Tories to spend money on... hmmmm Trident for example so that that figure of fun can ponse about on the world stage pretending to be important... oh and Maria Miller's parents' home and 5 palaces for one family and... so on ...
Mind you, in fairness, you must be an incredibly successful country because I remember that I did notice many Rolls Royces and other German luxury cars and people wearing clothes the cost of which would keep a pensioner alive for a couple of years...
Oh to be English, It must be wonderful to be that perfect...
Only the third most unequal country in the developed world...
On reflection we might be better to take our advice from people who care a toss about children less fortunate than the His Royal Highness, the Prince George.
Does London not have more spent on it to? Oh but a pound spent in London is worth £100 Billion spent in Strathclyde.....treble food banks all round!!
DeleteBetter Together!! After 80 years solid support for Labour almost half of Glasgow east end kids are living in poverty. What an achievement thank Christ for this most glorious Union, the best thing that has ever existed in history or in time.
Bless them...
DeleteThis is where I wish I had the time and contacts to do more than back-of-the-envelope estimates on how many people Trident's replacement could feed.
ReplyDeleteOh, and Quiet_Man: The Scottish Government doesn't have control of taxes. How can they be responsible for something they have no control over?
Well, it's £10 billion Illy. I reckon we could send some kids off to school with food in their bellies, but yes, it would be interesting to see how best that kind of money could be used.
DeleteWhen we no longer have a tax system that favours the grossly rich, and a benefits system that realises that not everyone is a grasping-stand-on everyone's-fingers-to get-to- the-top type of person, then we shall undoubtedly have a better way of life.
We can't all aspire to be Englishmen.
It's £10,000,000,000,000 over what, an expected lifetime of 25 years?
DeleteSo £400,000,000,000 per year.
Lets assume someone needs £20,000 per year to live reasonably (I make less than that, and I get by)
So that can fully support 20,000,000 people for 25 years.
There are roughly 60,000,000 people in the UK.
Why are they talking about social security cuts again?
Yes. I see Labour is now saysing that it will deny social security to people under 25 to save money, and still the nationalised bank makes a loss and pays £500,000,000 in bonuses...
DeleteWeird old world Illy. Well, weird old country.
£500,000,000 for a year's bonuses could support 25,000 people for the same year.
DeleteI think I'll keep doing this every time I see a large amount of money mentioned. Human brains have a problem with large numbers, so this can help put things in perspective.
Does anyone know how much ATOS got paid each year for denying people their social security money?
I think it was £100,000,000.
DeleteYou're right. These numbers mean nothing to people.
£100,000,000 for ATOS could support 5,000 people for the year.
DeleteDoes anyone know if that's more than ATOS employed to deny people their social security money?
Actually, they seem to be at the heart of government... throughout all the countries of this dreadful union.
Deletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atos
I couldn't find how many people they employ, but you can bet your life that it will be fewer than they money they get would allow.
Britain appears to be run by ATOS, Capita, G4S, Serco.
It's frightening how much money they must get. And not one of them could run a piss up in a brewery.
Ach what's all the fuss about here Tris. I'm proud, just ever so proud to be living in a country where the poor, ill, disabled, elderly, malnourished, unemployed, children etc are given so much care and attention by our ever loving, ever caring government in London. Surely an independent Scotland could never hope to achieve such high levels of care.
ReplyDeleteDamn it, that was one hell of a nightmare there. I didn't say anything to untoward whilst I was enduring this nightmare did I Tris?
Surely anyone with at least one brain cell can see what Westminster's despicable desperation to keep hold of its WMD's is doing to the people of not just Scotland but the whole of the UK?
How on earth can ANY Westminster politician stand up and defend the sickening and revolting amount of money being spent on Trident whilst ignoring at the same time what is happening here, in the REAL world, to our elderly, poor, children etc.
There is only one way ahead for the people of Scotland to go that will allow us to rectify this totally unforgivable situation, we have to win the referendum on 18th September. NEVER again can we allow a situation like this to happen again. Only independence can ensure that we have a government in power, with access to all the necessary financial controls, that is in a position to prevent such disgusting situations to raise their ugly head ever again.
P.S. Just so we are clear here Quiet Man, it has nothing to do with socialist governments. There has never been a socialist government in the U.K. since Maggie Thatcher first came to power!
Secondly the government in Holyrood has no financial control over how it can acquire any money from the markets or anywhere else so it can only work with the pocket money Westminster deems it worthy of.
Coincidently Quiet Man this pocket money is continually getting CUT!
I'd be extremely interested to hear from you what services you deem unnecessary in Scotland that would allow the Scottish Government to transfer funds into a new fund to help those in the most need of help for heating, meals etc!
Erm...well, there was a moment when I worried for your sanity... I think you must have been thinking of something quite grotesque... Maybe it was Iain Dudcan Smith or Maria Miller's parents' house...
DeleteWe have of course tried to help the poor from the patience we get by grace of all these kind English people. The fact that we keep them in oil and gas and have paid for all their WMDs and the upkeep of their nobility all this time shouldn't be taken into consideration . It was a pleasure.
What I'm always asking myslef is when this government won;t subsidise a bedroom, why on earth does it subsidise all us lazy dirty drunks in Scotland...
Why doesn't it just say sod off and take your drunkenness and your oil and your whisky and your water and tourism and farming and fishing and engineering with you, you worthless scabs....
Odd lot the English ruling classes...
Very odd.
Quiet man? No quiet enough....just sayin' like....
ReplyDeleteEck
LOL
Delete"Quiet man? No quiet enough..."
ReplyDeletePrecisely - wish I'd thought of it.
You did after a little hint....
DeleteI watched a piece of crap on BBC last night about the bright, talented, creative people flooding into London to make it the greatest centre of something or other on earth. It could have been a party political programme for any of the 3 main Westminster parties, but allegedly wasn't. Then these facts about poverty appear today. If we don't get out of this shit union in September we would be as well putting the 47% of children in the east end of Glasgow into a concentration camp. They won't have a fucking chance in our bright, talented, creative UK.
ReplyDeleteTwo worlds.... millions of miles apart.
DeleteHouse prices rocketing...
Everything is booming... well, for the people in Knightsbridge and Kensington.
Tough for the rest, but they don;t count. By the ruling classes estimates they barely count as people.
And all the time we have to watch these pompous English government people talking about what they will do to the Russians.
We know what they will do. They will do what Mr Obama tells them to do.
Independence can't come soon enough. I'm ashamed of Britain.
"Two worlds.... millions of miles apart."
DeleteYou been using this mode of transport again Tris?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=egHXCF9Knn4
Aye that was it ...London to Liverpool...
DeleteTris,
ReplyDeleteYour comments regarding the English don't sit very comfortably but having said that the Quiet Man obviously buys into the notion that the rUK are quite happy with their lot. At least we can do something about it and, hopefully, having set a precedent the English can be spurred on to reject the two main-stream right wing parties who have had their cold clamming and grasping hands on power for far too long and set up parties that will deliver to need and not greed. It may not happen in this generation but it will have to happen sometime.
Sod it! clammy!!! clammy!!! I'll get the hang of this foreign language yet!
ReplyDeleteClamming works well too...
DeleteI don't mean to be rude about the English, but they seem to be in favour of voting for governments which take delight in impoverishing their lower orders.
In fairness, it doesn't seem to make much difference whether they vote for Labour or the Tories.. different bucket with the same shit in it.
Then one of their number tell us it's our fault that 47% of our kids in Glasgow living in poverty, because we vote socialist... ...(what?) And that they have to subsidise us...when in reality we subsidise them...
Jeez!
Great piece.
ReplyDeleteWhy do Scottish Labour politicians at Westminster seem comfortable with this outrage?
See my view at http://whitefeatherclub.wordpress.com/blinded-by-ermine/
Hi Goose...
DeleteThanks .
I've had a look... thanks...
Aye, you see, when they get to sit in the House of Lords, or even when they hope to get to sit in the house, their whole perspective gets a bit hazy...
I'll add your blog to our blog list...
:)