Bishops, I'm glad you're helping the poor, but you're doing it the wrong way

We have a disturbed view of the poor. This is a statment with which most people would probably agree to a greater or lesser extent, but probably not for the reasons that I'm about to put forward.

My rant starts with an article I read that said that the UK was the worst country for social mobility, citing that those who are from poorer background are less likely to do well than their European counterparts. But I have a problem with that. What has that got to do with social mobility? If the people who are born to poor backgrounds work hard and never go anywhere then there is a problem, but if they are lazy and don't go anywhere then that is how things should work, isn't it? Or are the lazy to be promoted above others?

So far, so harsh. Now I'm not saying we forget social mobility, it is very important, I just recommend a different measurement, how about we take those who are from poor backgrounds, who get AAA (or ABB etc) at A-level (unlike me) and then ask where they end up. That way what we're asking is 'what happens to those from a poor background who are competant and work hard?' If the answer is still 'they don't suceed', then we've got problems!

Unfortunately this lack of understanding goes even into the Church. The Bishops in the House of Lords recently defeated a bill that would cap the amount people could get from benefits. I'm sure they thought that this was a win for Christian charity, sadly I'm not so sure. This is based on what I would call 'rights' verses 'grace'. When someone can be given over £26,000 in benefits, they are unlikely to work. Who would? Work is hard, tiring and often boring. It requires dedication, persistence and the ability to concentrate on the tidious and the repetitive... why would someone do that if they can get far more doing nothing? And remember the average wage is £26,000 BEFORE TAX, which means someone being given £26,000 in benefits is getting a net sum. To get £26,000 net a working individual would have to earn around £35,000!

Meanwhile to pay for such benefits we need to borrow until our country is in serious debt and tax people who have earned money giving them even less of an incentive to do so. That makes no sense, unless you want to try to force the system to collapse.

Anyway that isn't my main point. I'm not in the take all the money off the poor and let them rot camp. Far from it. What I want to point out is this:
Lets say you're in trouble, you can't pay your rent and you don't want to be thrown out of your home. You tell me about your troubles and I say to you, well I'll pay your rent for the next two months while you look for a job. Two months goes and you find a job, would you pretend that you haven't and keep taking money off me?

No, of course you wouldn't. Why? Because you would feel terrible that you're ripping off your friend who was there for you when you needed it and because sooner or later I'd find out and then you'd lose the type of friend everyone needs around.

But this is basically what government benefits allow people to do everyday. When a friend gives you money it is an act of grace, recieved with thanks. But when a benefit is given to you by the government, it is a 'right' that you ought to demand. Why not after all? You are entitled to it!

But really both scenarios are the same, when a benefit is handed to someone, it is not government money, it is money that has been taken off someone who earned it. It did not come from a bottomless pit that people think of the government as being, it came from a man or woman, who worked hard, then had their due wages taken off them by HMRC and then given to someone who hadn't worked for it.

I've been told of people who have told the government that they need a house because their girlfriend argues with their mother.... when they don't. And who have stayed in a hostle two nights a week so that they are classified as homeless to get a house sooner, even though there was no reason for them to say there, they just wanted to be shifted up the list. This was because it was their 'right' that they were entitled to. But no one would lie to their friend in such a way, despite the fact it is the same thing.

Further each time that money is taken off people and then given to another there is an army of civil servants who are required to do the taking. They need to take the money, process it, analyse who to give it to, get it to them, and chase up those who don't pay or claim when they shouldn't. All of that costs money which is also taken off the person who works. That isn't efficient.

So what is the answer? Do I think we should let the poor suffer? No of course not. But we can't 'nationalise' our poverty relief. It just leads to people treating the government as an infinite source of cash, it leads to people cheating the system, and plenty of money being syphoned off in the process. Oh, all the while giving every working person less of the money they earn.

What we need to do it organise our giving ourselves. Cut back benefits, cut back tax. We'll all have more money and when we get it we need to give it away. How much? Well is you're earning the average £26,000 per year and over night you stopped having to pay tax, you could afford to give away £3,700 per year to charities. Now I know that the government is important for certain things, defence for example, or the NHS, but those don't account for the £700,000,000,000 (£700Bn) the government spends!

Think of what could be acomplished if we only spent the bare minimum on the government, say £150Bn (the cost of Defence and the NHS and a bit more) and then spent the rest on charities and each other instead?
You know your friends so they aren't going to rip you off like they would the government and if a charity is wasting money on unecessary things then you can just give it to a more efficient one... so you don't have to pay for arts grants of £50,000 for something useless.

Our fellow man would be a lot better off as long as we were generous. We can do that, right?

So you don't like cuts? Who does?

There seems to be a lot of whinging going on at the moment about cut backs to the governments budget.

Every other day there is a document or statement made by a member of a publicly funded department or organisation that says if they are forced to make cut backs [insert public service] will suffer. It is almost like they are taking it in turns, each week a new department.

Yes, we know that cut backs make services suffer, well, that is when they are in the region of 25%. Frankly small cuts of around 5% should make no difference at all if departments do things efficiently but that is another point. The fact of the matter is however, and listen when I say this, because people don't seem to understand it: WE DON'T HAVE ANY CHOICE. Well technically that is a lie, would could just refuse to cut back and then go bankrupt. But then everyone will lose their job and we will be in anarchy. It won't be a case of "I can't afford a new car" rather "there is not point in having a new car because it will just get petrol bombed in the next set of riots".

Cuts of this magnitude suck, but then the reason why they are having to be made is because we over spent in the first place. No one complained when Labour was piddling away hundreds of millions over the years, while claiming to have abolished boom and bust (a natural and inevitable economic occurrence).

Lets do the figures to show what I mean.

You are Mr UK. You earn £100 per week and it costs £100 per week to run the country properly.

When taking advice from Mr Labour you start spending £120 per week meaning you have to borrow £20. You keep doing this until you have a dept of, say £70.

You still earn only £100 per week and it still costs £100 to run the country properly and yet you now have to find more money to pay off the £70.

You could tax more, but that will just kill more companies who won't be able to afford it. So the only thing you can really do is cut back to spending £90 on the country and use the extra £10 to pay off debt. This means that something essential (like the police) has to be cut back more than it ought to be. It is bad for the country, but it is tough luck, you piddled the money that you borrowed away and now you have to pay it back.

So yes, our public services will be cut back too much, but that is the only remedy, if you don't like it you should have kicked off when the government was spending all the money during the good times... but you didn't.

Hurray for debates... oh wait, no BOOOO!

The first UK election TV debate ever! How exciting! 10 millions people tuned in, making the first one, the most watched program for the whole channel that night. How exciting, what a way to inspire interest into the election!

Then, Nick Clegg won. I think I was quite interested to see what happened in the debate. But after seeing what happened, I think that they are a bad idea... yes I know, that is because I'm massively bias. That is true, I'll be up front and say that I'm a Tory (despite being of a throughly working class background).

The reason why I don't like the debates (after seeing one) is because of my old simple complaint. Nick Clegg won, no, that isn't the complaint. Why did he win? He won the first debate because no one knew or cared about him. He was a nobody and so when he said something no one really criticised it, because they didn't know enough about him to know all the really stupid things that his manifesto contains. Is that his fault, not at all. But is that a good reason for someone to succeed, not really.

Let me put it this way, the policies that he made were the same ones that existed before when no one would bother voting for him. What changed was that he looked good in the debate. No new policy, no change in substance, just he looked good, he looked new.

As a result apparently he has garnered quite a following amount floating voters. He has even got lots of new people to sign up to vote. Great! most people are thinking, he has increased interest in politics.

But why is that great? The people who are voting for him couldn't care enough to be bothered to look at his policies before and yet they now want to vote. He has gathered to himself, those who can't be bothered to put any effort into voting, the 'he looks quite good' vote.

In short this debate has made politics less about policy and more about personality. This is shallow and pointless. Why not just skip out the debate and decide purely on which tie the leaders choose. Make it even more asinine?

I understand why people don't bother voting, the complexities of the economy are so difficult to grasp not even those who are trained in it get it right (inter alia the recession!) so what chance does Joe Bloggs have who doesn't know how the stock exchange works, has no idea what the IMF does and can't manage his own credit card bills let alone understand our countries credit?

I'm not being harsh, I'm not saying people are stupid, it is just a perfectly valid observation. So why do you want such people to then decide who is best to help the economy recover? Everyone is going to say they know best and everyone is going to say the other party will ruin it. How is the public going to decide? Most of them, on personality and class. The Tories are going to look out for toffs, Labour are going to look out for single mothers and Liberals.... no one knows... or should I say knew. Which is why they were failing so badly. They had failed to ally themselves to a class of the population.

Now they have the young and hip vote... anyone who doesn't really care but has decided they don't like the parties in at the moment because they are too 'mainstream'.

So that is what our countries future is going to be decided on... who has a reputation for being nice to their 'class' and who is seen as a bit alternative, a little bit edgey... suffice to say it 'does my head in'.

I'm not sure if you know Mr Reader but Gordon Brown is making off with your wallet.

I was planning on rambling on about poor Myleen Klass today. She recently had some guys peering through her window at mid night when only she and her daughter were home. She waved a knife at them and they left. Nothing wrong with that, until the police came around and told her off for possessing an offensive weapon.

But the thing is it is a bit too obvious. Everyone knows that a woman at home having people considering breaking into their house should be able to use most means available to scare away the intruders, and when no one is hurt in anyway they certainly should be told off for it.

All this is straight forward though, and there is something a lot more important that has come into view. It is not more important as such, but it is less obvious.

I have recently read about Labour taking money from the government foreign aid budget and giving it to the TUC.

Let me put that plainly, Labour is taking money earmarked for Orphans starving in Africa and giving it to the Trade Unions, who, pay large amounts of money to Labour.

I don't mean Labour as in the government either, I mean as a political party. Labour is taking tax that would/should/could be spent on schools hospitals and infrastructure and they are paying it into their own party bank account (indirectly).

So tax is being spent on keeping labour in power, propaganda and so on. If you are a UK citizen you are paying money to brain wash yourself that Labour aren't an incompetent bunch of morons. Why you ask?

Well it is also in the news that Labour as a party (not as a government) is all but bankrupt. They have massive debts and there is no chance of money coming in. So they are either going to go bust or use their dying moments in government to embezzle money out of the public to keep themselves afloat.

Apparently 'Jim, they're gone for door number 2!!'

Now if you're British the standard reaction you will be having now is one where you say 'typical' or 'no surprise there then!' But I resent this response even if it is wholly and completely British in nature. It is typical for a government to renege on its promises, it may be typical for the government to be less than forthcoming with the truth. But I'm sorry when they start committing out right fraud the response should not be 'no surprise there then' but rather, 'lock the cheating fraudsters up!'

We went mental when the MP's claimed for a duck island or two, we Brit's went mad when they claimed expenses for having their huge gardens tended (which technically was perfectly within the rules) but now that they are paying their supporters millions to keep themselves afloat it hardly makes the headlines. That is a bit backward.

All I can hope is this, David Cameron (leader of the Conservatives, the opposition) will hopefully make a big point out of this. Elect labour and money will be embezzled from you under the pretense of being given to the poor and then given to those who line the pockets of New Labour.... when I think about it is makes the people who were going to rob Myleens house look almost open and honest!

Labour: keeping the working class where it is!

First of all a very Merry Christ-mas to you all!

There is so much to write about at the moment I don't know where to begin.

Maybe I'll split it into two?

First stop, Gordon Brown has decided to cut funding to Universities. This is highly amusing and yet altogether quite annoying. It is amusing because it shows just what a load of idiots run Labour. Even if your a labour supporter I'll explain why. If you support Labour you probably do so because you are a 'working man' or consider yourself 'working class'. Amusingly though Labours ruining... er I mean running of the Universities has done everything it can to screw the working man. It has made class mobility more difficult.

Lets consider a simple example to show this. You are 'Dave Smith' your mother is a hairdresser and your father works in a factory, there you go, that is working class (if a bit stereotypical, but that doesn't matter). I've worked in a factory and I know the wages are between about 6k (part time) and 14k per year generally. So lets say Dave's father earns 12k (full time). Dave's mother earns 6k because she doesn't have the time to do anymore (this is well below the quoted average on mysalary.co.uk.) So together they earn 18k. I could say they earn more but that would just make this even easier.

You Dave, are a genius, I mean you are amazing. You are so good that given the chance you would cure cancer, stop the destruction of the rain forest and cause crops to grow in the Sahara ending world hunger. But first you need to get to University.

Under the Tories you would have got a grant gone on to University got a good degree from a good University and then probably got a job and saved the world.

Under Labour, you don't get a grant you get tuition fees, big ones. Much more that a low income family could afford to pay. Even if you could afford it (or didn't mind risking everything on your debt) when you finished Uni (probably a lower Uni since the higher ones can often be more expensive) thanks to labour everyone has a degree, and so you're less distinguished and less likely to get a job. Presumably when everyone has good CVs you have to revert to good old nepotism to cut the pack. Which doesn't favour old 'Davey boy' now does it?

Essentially what Labour has done is tried to get 50% of the population in University, not think about whether it will actually help them, the economy or whether they are actually up to it.

You're not meant to say it (I'm told) but how do you know that 50% of the population is up to going to University? If they are surely they will manage on their own and if they are not surely they will just end up doing pointless degrees that are too easy, have no application, devalue degrees generally and worst of all waste 3 years and several thousand pounds when they could have been doing something useful?

And don't think I'm down on people who aren't 'academics'. As far as I'm concerned having a degree doesn't make you a better person. It is no mark of superiority over someone who just an academic type. After all thanks to this wonderful policy the UK is having to import all their plumbers because we don't have any of our own. No we don't Gordon, because all the people who would make excellent plumbers are doing a film studies degree!

But now the government has decided to cut the Universities budget. Which is great, I believe the phrase needed here regards a rug being swept from beneath ones feet?

Meanwhile the Universities are told not to let this effect their teaching. Presumably they should also try pulling rabbits out of hats and if that works working on a source of perpetual energy! Everyone knows that academics aren't that well paid in Universities anyway. They are there for a labour of love not because they want to hit 80k per year as soon as possible. Where is the space for cuts?

Still at least in all this we can be happy that the working man has benefited from it all... oh now wait, I've already covered that.

Maybe Labours next slogan should be "Labour; keeping our foot on the working class"

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A couple of facts about Universities

- Fees are set to rise... again
- Household income required to be gov' funded through University <£16,00
- Minimum wage of a house with two full time adult parents £22,000
(so the only people realistically who will get funded have unemployed parents)
- Minimum wage before you have to pay back your loans £15,000
(this is at any point in your life, so if you're 55 and you start earning £16,000
for the first time in your life you will have your loans and a life time of interest
to pay off).