Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Why do we do this?

A question raised by a work colleague, to which there is no easy answer. Of course the reference is to why do we (those of us who earn a living) get up before dawn, travel miles, work, go home, do the same thing every day, while large numbers live on benefits.

Well it seems one reason, might be so that a ragbag coalition of left wing er....activists, (Anti Cuts Thanet and the Thanet Trades Union Council) can celebrate, us tax prayers by bleating about cuts. if you'd like to join them, you have an opportunity to mix with like minded people at the Red Hall, Broadstairs, next 12th September @ 7pm.

Looks like they'll also be arranging a Charabanc trip to London to join a mass demo arranged by the TUC in October, no doubt so that the nations free loaders can make us, work longer hours, pay more tax so that large swathes of the population can continue to slump in front of the Telly watching Judge Judy, Loose Women and the appalling Jeremy Kyle or just go to the local park and drink cheap booze.

Even Thanet council, who have a rash of consultations just now, have one about council tax benefits with the apparent aim of making taxpayer dig deeper TDC "aims to reduce the impact on benefit customers by removing some Council Tax discounts and exemptions" don't get me wrong I've no qualms about funding those unable to work, but who cannot think of someone abusing the system.

Welfare ought to be a safety net, not a flipping way of life as it is for some many. How about someone organises a demonstration for more cuts.

51 comments:

  1. Er.. that demo is called "A Future that works"
    No mention of benefit.

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  2. Sorry that out with your comrades

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  3. I hope you don't just work for money Tony, and that pride in what you do also comes into it.

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  4. Cheers yogi for the input, i naturally assumed it the TUC RALLY DEMO would be following the irrational meaningless cuts theme of the meeting.

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  5. Perhaps some day soon you'll be made redundant and then forced to stack shelves in Tesco to earn your £71 per week dole money (which may be reduced further soon). Maybe then you'll support the people who trying to stop this type of exploitation.

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    1. In some countries you get nothing if you earn nothing. Stop calling handouts exploitation and be grateful for mercies, however, small.

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    2. In some countries 6 year olds are used as slave labour, does that make it ok?

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    3. comparing asking fit people to do work in exchange for tax payers' money is hardly comparable to child slave labour and it is grossly insulting to those campaigning against it to suggest it is. The attitude that being asked to work for money is exploitative is corrosive. The rest of us make that exchange every day - our labour for money. Being asked to do some work for benefits is not scandalous. Some may not like it and may prefer money for nothing but that is not a reason for comparing it to slave labour.

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    4. Left wing mentality I am afraid, but they have never figured out what happens when the coffers are empty. Sadly, though, no government will ever really be brave enough to tackle the problem anymore than they will immigration. The S.H.one T just gets deeper from here on until we are all up to our eyebrows in it. The only consolation is that Yogi, the Red Hall mob, Ed Balls and all the other lefties will be in it with us.

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    5. Very rational statement. Glad you can resist being personal when at a loss for any persuasive argument.

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    6. reall don't know who you are! but! I have no sympathy with the unemployed in Thanet, they are a bunch od whimps, unless the job is at the bottom of their street they will not take it. They will not do a manual job or a menial job if offered, they should not have a choice, if the job is offered and they refuse, benefits should be immediately squashed. People in Thanet turn down jobs in Canterbury/Folkestone and other local places, getting into work should give them some new perspective in life.
      Bring back hard labour for those who refuse to work, don't even consider striking if you already have a job.
      Don't carry on molly coddling them for the rest of their lives. Their are hundreds of jobs waiting for the people who want to turn their lives around, we have no fewer than 37 job recruitment centre in thanet not to mention others on the website and farm work in an office in Cliftonville, if our foreign woorkers can do it, so can YOU

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  6. Well as many of us I have,been made redundant, unsettling as it is you take what you can in such circumstances although many jobs at the bottom end of the market have been soaked up by migrants

    I guess that 09 43 is unfamiliar with my world, probably either bludging benefits or in some pointless state funded non job like much of today's workforce I have no guarantees

    As I said at the end of the piece welfare should be available to those unable to work, not to all and sundry with bad backs loose morals ie having children with no intention of looking after them

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    1. Left the army after medical downgrading and spent a year looking for work unsuccessfully whilst living off savings. Eventually, in desperation, I went to see if I could get any help from the Benefits Office only to be told by a bloke in a turban that there was a problem with my NHI contributions for the preceeding year. What about all the years I paid before that whilst in the army I asked. Not the relevant year came the reply.

      Having left empty handed I determined never to ask for anything from them again and have got by since with highs and lows. Yet, despite my experience, the system seems to look after people who have never worked since leaving school or arrived here yesterday. Is that not flawed?

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    2. Why mention his turban? Would you mention if he wore a cap or trilby?

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    3. I mentioned it because here was somebody, not indigenous to my country and probably not even here when I first joined the army, telling me that I was not entitled to anything.

      What do you reckon my chances would be of getting a job in the Job Centre in Mumbai? Furthermore, I very much doubt whether anyone who wore a cap or a trilby would do so inside a building at work if you want to be pedantic.

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    4. I agree. But that doesn't mean people who are genuinely unable to work should be made to.
      That's where this road ends.
      People on benefit should be made to do something for the community but that doesn't include a shift at the local supermarket.

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    5. With you on that, Yogi, community work, but not for private enterprises unless as a route to a job with some guarantees in return for quality of performance.

      The problem on those unable to work through health is a difficult one. You see severely handicapped people working cheerfully whilst some ex-electrician with a bad back plays politics on benefits for years. Who decides who is genuine?

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  7. Reading most of the comments and the blog post itself is extremely disheartening but unfortunately to be expected of a nation of dumbed down television heads.

    The fault of our current predicament can be laid squarely at the feet of the banksters, yet I hear no complaints at all about the billions in 'corporate welfare' that have been handed over to this bunch of shysters.

    The banking bailouts considerably dwarf social welfare payments and yet the state of the nation "is all the fault of the unemployed" and of course "the foreigners".

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    1. Utterly wrong, 13:30, and seriously missing the point. Who runs the country? Politicians, yet are they fit to govern? If the banking regulation is a shambles it is down to them. Likewise if the benefit system is perceived to be unfair or immigration is out of control.

      Currently, no party in this country is fit for the purpose of government. Perhaps they never were. Yet we ordinary people argue amongst ourselves about the respective merits or demerits of political parties. Total waste of time for they are all incapable and leadership is something that academics theorise about, but does not really exist. Would anyone seriously entrust their lives to Cameron, Clegg or Milliband?

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    2. Not utterly wrong, Chatham House dude, and you damned well know it!!

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    3. well said anon 13.30

      Look at how they have turned a war on poverty to a war against the poor - shame on them


      anon 15.32

      Absolutely correct this is being imposed from behind the scenes by some very vile creatures.

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    4. Pay attention folks, we're in trouble and it ain't because of a bunch of unemployed.

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    5. What has Chatham House got to do with anything, 15:32? If you cannot get your head round the notion that if things fail then the buck stops with government, god help you.

      Let's make it simply though. If you go out and leave your front door wide open, whose fault is it if you are burgled. The burglar simply grabbed his opportunity. Likewise, if government fail to properly monitor banks then somebody will dip their grubby fingers in the till.

      Until we get effective government we are stuffed though I am inclined to agree that it is no use blaming the poor, immigrants, bankers or royals. Each, in their way, exploits the sytstem that governments preside over.

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    6. government is run by the banksters how can politicians represent you ,when they're given millions to represent some one else?

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    7. You may well have a point, 21:46, but it does not change the fact we need better and effective governance. Perhaps you should form a new party not made up of people in the bankers pockets. Trouble is, whatever their background, few seem able to resists the bribes when offered. Just look at those who started out seemingly as good working class Labour MPs and finished up as strutting millionaires decked out in ermine.

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    8. Politicians run the country??
      On what planet?

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    9. Amazingly, I find myself agreeing with you, Yogi, having grown increasingly disillusioned at the performance of politicians, so where lies the answer? Please don't say the people because even politicians, hard as it is to believe, start out as people.

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  8. The real spongers are at the very top of the tree not the bottom but of course over paid gatekeeper MP's don't want you to know that because they will be out of a job when the public wake up.

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    1. The real spongers are the royal family.

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    2. Having read some of the comments on here there is evidently sod all chance of the public understanding anything let alone waking up. Wallow in your stupidity, plebs.

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  9. What goes around comes around.

    If we move to universal credit then payment of rent direct to landlords will stop.

    Tony Blair introduced the change to Local Housing allowance. Cunningly he let public sector landlords continue to be entitled to be paid tenant rents direct from benefits. But private landlords could only get LHA direct once a tenant was two months in arrears. A mass giveway to tenant claimants of two months rent stolen off the landlord.

    Once we move to universal credit there will be no direct payments. Benefits tenants will be sent the rent money each month and entrusted to pay it over.

    It is estimated that the amount stolen from private landlords under Blair could top half a billion.

    Private landlords should ensure they have mortgaged to the hilt. Then when universal credit comes in send the keys to the bank or building society. And file bankruptcy. (You'll be in a queue swamping the County Courts for arrears of rent CCJs and possession orders etc.

    I hope the banks are gearing up to become the country's largest loss making landlords. With their "rent receivers" having no means to enforce rent payments from benefits tenants. Other than the ineffective county court system.

    Then the banks will be stuck with a house estate in negative equity with all the landlord duties in law to cater for every tenant need (Annual gas safety cert, endless repair bills for tenant damage, smoke detectors etc etc)

    And the benefits tenants will find themselves better off to the tune of their rent each month and the banks can cry all the way to the ...... government (Again)

    Should be fun.

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    1. I believe that an end to private property ownership was the plan all along, in line with the commie manifesto and I know that the banksters have been cleaning up from 'fraudclosures' in the States due to some very nifty derivatives swindles; pension funds, municipalities and the like being on the losing side of those bets.

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  10. Tony, thank you very much for publicising the meeting. I do hope to see you all there next week with lots of ideas about how we can fight the cuts.
    Christine

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    1. Fight the "cuts"? I think you left out the "n".

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  11. Tony, what about the fat cat directors now retiring on Average pensions of £250,000, contrast that with the average worker's £9,500. Or the sports shop director trying to pay himself £26 millions a year. Or the pseudo contractors that pay themselves and their spouses though a limited services company to avoid tax, NI payments and be able to make travelling costs tax free.

    Its not surprising that people join unions to try to get a fair deal when clearly others are ennjoying more than their fair share of the nations wealth.

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    1. The top slice are always filthy rich even in Communist Russia days. Trouble is though, that when you try to share it out amongst the poor is really does not go far and then it's gone. What then?

      Unless we have capitalists there would be no handouts for the needy at all. Perhaps it is best to have the well heeled in government for they are less needy and thus, less corruptable.

      We have seen the grabbing Labourites like crochet on the lawn Prescott, sailing in the Med Mandelson and Blair, particularly his greedy other half. Perhaps Cameron is better because he has already got his pile.

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    2. Without the crony-capitalists that have hi-jacked the globe, we would all be considerably better off.

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    3. Nice statement, 20:50, but what does it mean? How would your system work? Who would provide the jobs? Who would run the show? No answers? Thought not, just the usual leftie cloud cuckoo land rubbish!

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    4. What it means is that under a free market, common law system, productive people would enjoy a better quality of life due to not being extorted, exploited and poisoned by non-productive, control-freak parasites.

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    5. Yes, but you still have not said who would run the show, where the capital would come from and who would look after the ones who are non-productive through no fault of their own.

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    6. We have a constitution and bill of rights that takes care of most of it.

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    7. We have a constitutional monarchy and the European Human Rights act adopted into British law. Very different to a written constitutuion and bill of rights like the US has. If we retained our present constitutional arrangements there would be no change, monarch and a parliament of two houses.

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    8. Wrong 9:32, what we have is a bunch of twisted, corrupted, compromised ne'er-do-wells, involved in crap like this:

      http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/jeremy-hunt-sugar-daddy-under-siege-as-groucho-allegations-fly/

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  12. You know you are British when you have a government in "power" who nobody voted for

    Arrest England's Politicians and Hang Them From The Neck Till Dead. Albert Burgess 7/9/12

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMW3bQ29fn4

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    1. Superb interview! The good stuff begins at 41 minutes in.

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  13. Back to reality, friends! The meeting about the public services cuts, organised by Thanet Trades Union Council, is tomorrow, Wednesday 12th September at the Red Hall, 11 Grosvenor Rd, Broadstairs, 7pm.
    All welcome
    Christine

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    1. Enjoy, Christine, and then tell us how you propose to bankrupt the country, fleece the rich and make the poor happy. Falls off chair and rolls about in hysterical laughter.

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  14. Sounds good to me but I'm sorry you fell off your chair.
    Christine

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