US AND THEM: ALL IN IT TOGETHER

POOR BRITAIN

“Fuel prices rose by an inflation-busting seven per cent in 2013, pushing more people into fuel poverty. The fact that this is happening in an energy-rich country is scandalous." - Housing Minister Margaret Burgess.

In fairness I very much doubt that by any measure the UK is the
6th largest economy in the world,
but by anyone's standards we are relatively rich as a country.
Why, then, do people have the indignity of begging for food thrust upon them?

This is because he is a Tory. The Conservatives in Scotland
who accept that they have no chance of forming a government
want to see Gentleman Jim as the leader.

I suppose there are always food banks ma'am. Although it is rather infra dig, and
there are a lot of MPs who would think that you were faking it.

Ah, yes, the horrendous cost of keeping this OAP home for toffs open could have been reduced just a little, had they agreed to share catering with the Commoners along the corridor. However, this was rejected by their Erminenesses on the basis that the vintage of the subsidised champagne would not have been of sufficient quality for the taste buds of aristocrats, and well, one couldn't have that, could one?

Ewwwww. UGLYYYYYY Bastards

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, largely responsible for the misery of hunger
gets a photo opportunity at a food bank, and shows just how detached from reality he is.

I suppose there must be trickle down in some way. After all the hyper rich have to eat, have their cars driven and
their houses cleaned, but they are so incredibly mean that they pay for it all at the bottom possible rate, leaving the
recipients unable to let the money trickle any farther.

In one of the top 20 countries in the world...
Makes you so proud to be British.

Who can argue that?
Not seen many poor councillors though...

Well, we couldnt have a Westminster government frightening
away their friends who will give them directorships when they retire to the Lords

Socialism... what's that then?

Well, otherwise he wouldn't get home in time to see his little prince get off to bed
like hundreds of thousands of other fathers all over the country.
Maybe the DWP could provide helicopters for all of them on the social security?
No?

NOW SEE HERE, YOU POOR PEOPLE HAVE TO MAKE SACRIFICES FOR THE GOOD OF OUR GREAT NATION

According to a report in the Record, one million Scots are living in poverty.

That is to say that about one in five of us is on the breadline.

Needless to say the “I could live on £50 a week, even if I charge you £37 for my breakfast” incompetent who is running the DWP, said that his policies were helping poor people. Iain Duncan Smith said child poverty had fallen, despite the figures showing 220,000 children in Scotland in poverty, an increase of 30,000 on last year. Is he stupid or is he a liar? 

Do I look like I care?

I think, on the basis of his record, we can safely dismiss his statement as a pile of cobblers.

The worst off have been hit by reductions in income of around £20 a week, which is around £1,000 a year. So much for Nick Clegg and his tax changes. The poorest  don’t earn enough to pay tax.

The bulk of people who are suffering are working families. Not Gidiot’s skivers, but strivers. Only striving in this god forsaken land makes you worse off, unless you are a striving banker , Lord, MP or businessman with good connections.

You simply cannot get around the fact that six out of every 10 kids in poverty come from families where at least one adult is a striver.

Across the UK, 10.6million Britons were in absolute poverty.

Peter Kelly, of the Poverty Alliance, said: “Much of this is due to the policies being pursued by the current UK Government. Regressive tax policies and punitive welfare reform measures are pushing more people into poverty. People in Scotland and the UK simply don’t have enough money to live on.”

 

Giver her a lollipop, for no particular reason,
but it might shut her mouth for a little while

Scottish Labour social justice spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said (and you’ll love this): “The SNP failed to act quickly enough to mitigate the impact of the Tories’ bedroom tax in Scotland.” She has of course forgotten that when the DFM wrote to the unelected aristocrat, Fraud, who for some reason, in this mother of democracies, finds himself in the position of being allowed to grant to, or withhold from, an elected Scottish government the power to act on that matter, the lazy little lord couldn’t be bothered answering.

She also seems to forget that bedroom tax was originally introduced by Labour and expanded by the Tories, and that Labour has promised to be even tougher on Social Security than the Tories.

Still as Baillie has a reputation at least the equal of IDS for being a liar, I reckon we shouldn’t be too surprised.

RANDOM THOUGHTS AND SOME SNAPS FOR SUNDAY

Mark Coburn, who cycled from Rome to Scotland to raise money for the YES campaign arrived home last night. Munguin's intrepid reporter was on hand to catch a couple of photos of him. It's worth mentioning that he did the bike ride with a broken bone in his elbow and four cracked ribs.

Munguin's woman on the scene was none other than Arbroath to whom Munguin sends his sincere thanks for sharing the pictures. Expenses are paid, he reminds her, on the usual basis. (Anything over £500,000 is reimbursed fully.)

Mark, his bike and Arbroath's car!

Mark with Arbroath, her partner and a friend from YES.
More photos on Yes South Annandale Facebook page

The Euro part of the election results hasn't even been announced yet (counting can't begin till after the polls close in all countries... and even then Western Isles won't count on the Sabbath so we won't have the final results till tomorrow), but based on what, I'm sure UK politicians see as the more important elections (English local councils) the knives are out for all the party leaders.

It's been hilarious listening to them wriggle and squirm over the last few days.

The parties are turning on their leaders and factions are setting up. Conservatives like our old favourite Jacob Rees Mogg are urging a pact with UKIP; Labour MPs are calling Ed Miliband weird and there are widespread calls for Nick Clegg to stand down.

But fear not. None of them will go. It's far too near the UK elections and the Scottish referendum for that, so we will have all of them to laugh at for a while longer.

My favourite interview has been Gideot telling us he respects Nigel and the people who voted for him and that they/he must do more listening to and understanding "ordinary" people. (He'll have to meet some first.)

The phrase that keeps coming to mind is: "when thieves fall out, honest men come by their own".

Talking of which...

How useful this will be to the average person from Glasgow or Wick.
Will Londoners be helping to pay for new sewerage in Stornoway?
And isn't sewerage in England a matter from private companies?

How handy this train will be for people in Kirkcaldy, or  Keith.
Hop on and hop off.
Studies have shown that it has the potential to damage the economies of Eastern Scotland
and yet we will end up paying £& or £8 BILLION towards it.
Oh the benefits of the greatest union ever known to man or beast...

And, just a few months in they are starting to question whether
the will be able to sustain the universal delivery. Look out
fro massive price rises in all but the biggest cities in Scotland

It speaks for itself. Add in the BBC money taken from Scotland
to be spent in the UK. All the taxes from Tesco and its
 likes  that go to London. What a rip off.

This is what I just don't understand Labour.
What is their motivation?

Well, of course, there is this. Eh Robertson, ffoulkes, Martin,
Liddell, and Wee Jock (it's a kilt I tell ye) McConnell.
No daft Tory aristocratic titles in Scotland

Oh yeah... and that.
Doubt you'll do that in Edinburgh.
Actually, you have to travel every day. Tough!

Unless of course you like having the lowest pension
by comparison to average wage in the developed world, in
which case the UK is just superb.

In fact what you pay would buy a far far better set of public services

So, you read it in the Financial Times,
that well-known pro independence paper...?

They used our taxes to commission a report and when it didn't
 say what they wanted it to say they hid it.
Does that sound familiar?

Oh, I feel so safe with that big safety blanket of the UK's
broad shoulders and clout to keep me from harm.

SCOTLAND'S CLIMATE IN THE UK

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.

But seriously, what kind of people are we that allow this obscene level of poverty and suffering all the time pretending an importance the last vestage of which disappeared forever 70 years ago?

FUR COATS...

...and no knickers

It doesn't have to be like this. It really doesn't. 

But does anyone think that people in London give a damn if Scots live in these multiply deprived areas, as long as people like Cameron can brag that Britain has the forth largest military spend in the world and is, therefore, a force to be reckoned with?

I know that instead of fighting pointless and sometimes illegal wars against countries in the Middle East, I'd rather we spend our vast income on giving Scots somewhere decent to live.

After the referendum and a positive outcome, there will be a period when the Scottish government negotiates with the UK government who gets what; who pays for what.

Then, five years after the last Scottish general election in 2011, there will be a Scottish general election. 

By 2016 the Scottish branch of London Labour will have had time to break free of the policies that are designed to impress the Ukip trending, Tory voting, southern part of England.

It's unlikely that a successful party like the SNP will disappear completely, although some may rejoin the parties from whence they came. But it seems likely that we'll have at least two parties whose policies are broadly progressive. 

With the Tories similarly detached from the greedy big business London City politics that they have followed since Mrs Thatcher's day we might even have a half decent right of centre party, possibly led by someone like Murdo, who was only stopped in his tracks last time round by Cameron's (strictly against the rules) interventions on behalf of his little helper, Ruth, only a few weeks into her political career.

We will have a lot of UK debt to pay off, but we will have vast resources: resources that  will make us one of the top ten rich countries of the world. 

We could rid ourselves of the fur coats, and buy up half of Marks & Spencer's  knicker department in the first year.

This article is worth a read.

TO HELL WITH THE HARD PRESSED, HARD WORKING BRITISH FAMILY

I wanted to say a little more about the subject of families that I raised briefly in yesterday’s post.

It seems that a series of governments over the years has let down families in the UK. Ironic, as no matter the subject you can always assume that at some point in a speech a politician will mention them. Sometimes they are hard working, sometimes hard pressed, but they are almost invariably there and all government policies are alleged to support them.

So it’s pretty damned poor then that a research project has concluded that the UK’s families have amongst the worst conditions in Europe.

The report called ‘Family Pressure Gauge’ drawing on statistics from the EU and OECD, over 25 indicators with comparison over 26 countries, makes the following points.

*The UK has high levels of debt and poverty, coupled with long and unsocial working hours;
*Stress from money and work worries, along with a lack of support for parents and poor living conditions, are all factors;
*20% of families struggling to make ends meet;
*14% of families suffer "critical" levels of debt (compared to 1% of Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian households, to which at least Scotland is very close);
*Almost 25% of the average British working family income goes on childcare costs (double French costs and triple German).
*14% of families spends more than 40% of income on the rent or a mortgage (1.8% of French are in this situation).
*Britain is the second worst country in Europe for provision of maternity and paternity leave.
*340,800, British families (5%) live in severe housing deprivation with overcrowded homes in poor condition, without a bath, shower or indoor toilet, for example. (12 times more than in the Netherlands, and substantially worse than Germany or Spain and the Nordic countries).
*Britons work some of the longest hours in Europe (on average 43 per week). 78% of British workers do not have flexible working hours.

The report accuses the Cameron/Clegg Government of a lack of focus on family policy. The Childhood and Families task force, set up in June last year, has not, it says, delivered anything and pledges on flexible working had been reneged upon.

It says that things are set to get worse and with more redundancies, lower wages, higher inflation, rising interest rates, house possessions and so on, I can see where they are coming from.

According to figures from the Rowantree Foundation, a record 2.1 million children in Britain live in poverty, an increase of 400,000 in 5 years, despite one or both of their parents working. So much for Brown and Blair’s pledge of getting rid of it completely.

The report gives examples of families with two people working, where they are only just able to pay the interest on their mortgage, no holidays, no drinking and smoking and only a cheap car; others who work 50+ hours a week for around £14,000 a year.

This makes a total mockery of the spoutings of Iain Duncan-Smith that work is the way out of poverty. Not in Britain, it ain’t matey.

How on earth did we get ourselves into a mess like this?