Old Labour, New Labour, slave labour
Just a couple of short extracts from a chilling article on Labour Uncut this afternoon to give you that feelgood Friday-afternoon vibe.
They refer to a document called “Labour’s manifesto uncut: How to win in 2015 and why”. The key concept can be summed up in just two paragraphs.
“Our polling shows that 44 per cent of people think the benefits bill is ‘too high’ with only 35 per cent saying it is ‘about right’ or ‘too low.’ So much, then, for people rising up against the government’s benefits changes.”
A troubling start. For the sake of a 9% gap, barely much more than the standard margin of error on polling, Labour is prepared to accept defeat and sacrifice the core principles of the welfare state that many in the party still consider its proudest achievement, at the same time as it’s frantically disassociating itself from the trade union movement that created the party in the first place. Fighting to change public perception, requiring just a 5% turnaround, isn’t even considered as a possibility.
(The piece notes that 54% of those who think benefits are too high blame Labour. But only 44% do actually think benefits are too high, so this complete moral capitulation is in fact based on the view of just 24% of respondents in a single survey. Among Lib Dem voters, who you’d think would be the lowest-hanging fruit for Labour, just 31% think welfare spending is too high, with 51% saying it’s too low or about right.)
“Labour needs to articulate a new golden rule on welfare. Apart from the disabled and most vulnerable, work is expected. It is the duty of all adults to put their shoulder to the wheel. Work is normal.”
So the idea here is that everyone has to work all the time, but only some people get paid for it. Never mind the living wage, never mind the minimum wage – if you lose your job you have to keep right on working, except that now you don’t get paid.
It should barely need saying that all the normal arguments against workfare still apply:
1. When are people being forced to work without pay for 30-40 hours a week supposed to find the time and energy to go and look for real jobs?
2. Why would companies participating in workfare schemes bother to employ anyone if they can rely on a steady stream of state conscripts who’ll have to do it for nothing?
3. Any job category incorporated into workfare schemes will sooner or later vanish. If people are made to sweep the streets for benefits, full-time street-sweepers will be fired and not replaced, particularly if it can be done under the guise of outsourcing council services to the private sector to save money.
Companies will bid impossibly low for the contract, everyone will be sacked and invited to reapply for new jobs (quite possibly on zero-hours terms), and the gaps will be plugged by the forced-labour battalions, leaving fat profits to be made.
4. The notion of poverty as a crime is entrenched. Workfare is essentially indistinguishable in concept from community-service sentences for criminals, and anyone finding themselves unemployed, ill or disabled becomes immediately stigmatised and cast into a vicious spiral making the prospect of finding paid work less and less likely.
5. As huge amounts of money are sucked out of the public sector (diverted to private-sector shareholder profits), the economy stagnates, because poor people have even less money to spend. Growth is choked, providing the excuse for more austerity and ever-tighter restrictions on benefits, with more and more workfare, and we go back to step (2) and repeat. The poor are squeezed until the pips squeak, again and again, and the wealthy get wealthier.
We’re watching, before our eyes, the creation of a new serf class. In the space of less than a generation (essentially in the 21 years since the 1992 general election), Labour have undertaken the journey in this article’s headline, sending Britain hurtling back towards the Middle Ages. It’s terrifying to watch. Enjoy your weekend.
Well, that certainly cheered right me up.
Surely one of them has even a basic knowledge of Keynesian economics? Or are they so in thrall to Daily Mail headlines they can’t see straight?
This is it in a nutshell. The slowly but steady transfer of the public sector to the private but with the subsidies still in place, and state money used to subsidise free labour. It’s a form of quantitative easing but the danger is that it creates no wealth for the nation.
Shareholders get rich sure, but no one else will. Certain jobs will actually vanish from the market. Billions will be squandered propping up a private sector with public money, employing people who in receipt of benefits.
I always felt that the next financial crisis will be in this area, its already crippling the states and will eventually cripple the UK. labour sadly are too keen to chase voters whose opinions are informed by media complicity in spreading Conservative bullshit and spin. They are changing into lib-dems, a party of idiots who have been breathing their own brain-farts for so long they actually think, being unpopular but principled is a vote winner.
Camp.
A party with any principles would be working to inform the 44%, not changing its policies to placate them. But as the Rev points out, Labour lost its principles post-1992, when it decided it was better to be elected as Tories than be in opposition as Labour. It no longer serves its natural constituency, its members or its major funders. It’s a dead party walking: why vote for Labour Tories when you can have real Tories?
What a pity Nicola didn’t take it from him when he offered it. Then she could have opened it on air. I wonder what was behind the front cover. Just blank pages or perhaps his marvel comic.
Ordinary Labour members should have asked why their ‘top’ folk were going to the USA for finishing school. Why were the likes of Murphy and Alexander going to the USA to receive training?
Vote Tory (Republican) or Labour (Democrat), and you get the same result. Two parties in thrall and controlled by business, just like the US. The rumours have been floated for years that Blair was a CIA plant, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if some Labour ministers owed their primary allegiance to money and Langley.
I can’t agree with the first quote from Thomas Carlyle, but I don’t have a problem with the rest.
“All work, even cotton spinning, is noble; work alone is noble”
“A laugh, to be joyous, must flow from a joyous heart, for without kindness, there can be no true joy”
“Tell a man he is brave, and you help him to become so”
“Go as far as you can see; when you get there you’ll be able to see farther”
“Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are.”
Good piece, illustrating why UK policy is now driven by focus groups of swivel-eyed loons in the mythical middle England. I’ll link to it on my Blue Labour, because Bollinger doesn’t buy itself and the Nanny doesn’t pay herself from back in June.
Elsewhere, my continuation of your fisking of Duncan Hothersall on the LGBT side (Wings & Waffle about LGBT issues) has been by far the most runaway successful post on my rather young blog. I think I’ve fought off a hystrionic ‘transphobia’ attack in the comments and I note that the #indyref twitter feed has been a pleasantly Carmen-free zone for 2 days now, long may it continue. They don’t like it up ’em, Captain Campbell.
Please don’t quote “Scottish” Daily Mail. Alan Roden, Scottish Political Reporter (or something like that) was taken on to slate independence and SNP. I think I am right in thinking before his current job he was the local government reporter for Edinburgh Evening News. Now he commands the Scottish headlines if it’s anti Yes.
Coming up on a flight from London a few months ago a copy of the Daily Mail was available free. I read quite an interesting non political article about the quintessential English gentleman and there were quite a few references to England and the English, all quite in order as it was to do with England and I have no problem with that at all. When I got home, the Scottish Daily Mail had the same article but had changed every reference to England or English to British. How utterly sad, that they will even do down England to stop Scottish independence. Verging on censorship I think.
“Coming up on a flight from London a few months ago a copy of the Daily Mail was available free. I read quite an interesting non political article about the quintessential English gentleman and there were quite a few references to England and the English, all quite in order as it was to do with England and I have no problem with that at all. When I got home, the Scottish Daily Mail had the same article but had changed every reference to England or English to British.”
Now THAT’S the sort of thing I need readers to keep and send in.
@Roddy.
I tried to comment on your fine piece, but was asked a few personal questions before I could.
Is that really needed?
This piece just enforces the need for independence, the Uk aka the Titanic, is about to flood too many compartments, fortunately Scotland has a lifeboat, but will we use it.
Or will we go down.
Juteman
I’m afraid I know nothing about that. The blog is hosted on Google blogger as it was easy and I didn’t know if it would take off when I started it, but that means I’m beholden to them. I’ve not asked it to ask for any details and I don’t pre-moderate or anything. Do they ask you to sign up for the whole Google bolleaux just to post a comment?
But how can companies make money if most people can’t afford the stuff they make?
Easy, they’ll lend it to you.
Can’t afford the £200 for a new mobile phone? You can pay it off at £20 a month over the next 2 years and then it only costs you £480. That works for almost everything. That’s the way General Motors changed from being a big car company with a small finance division to being a huge finance company with a small car division. And that’s what gave us the crash, not that many politicians seem to have noticed.
If the phone company or your service provider take those profits out of the country without paying tax, well, that’s just the way the system works. You don’t expect Labour or the Tories to change things do you?
Some people used to think the answer was quite simple, but they’ve sold off all the lampposts and we can’t afford the rope.
It’s even simpler than that now. Voting YES isn’t all we need to do, but it’s a good first step.
@Roddy.
I was asked questions about my gender, not the usual sort of stuff.
It sounds like that was none of your doing, so WTF was that all about?
Juteman – I haven’t a clue, have you had that when trying to comment on other Google Blogger blogs?
We hear much from unionists and in particular Labour about a “race to the bottom,” when they try and fail to discredit the SNPs ambitions for Scotland by being allowed to handle out own money and decide what rates to set our taxes at. Apparently this can only be a “race to the bottom,” sung and chanted like a mantra but with not one shred of evidence when you consider the different tax regimes in the EU, that appears not to have triggered this “race to the bottom.”
The race to the bottom I have identified since the heady days of Blair and Thatcher, is the one where workers rights are trampled on, where working for nothing is regarded as desirable, “something for nothing,” aye right. Where disabled claimants are now routinely demonised to the extent that they see suicide as the only option. Where Labour politicians turn up to celebrate the opening of food banks, whilst stuffing their pockets with tax payers cash. And where it is now the norm to lie, lie and lie again, with regards to Scotlands viability and place in the world. And where they allow millions of people in to the country unchecked and do not where they are or who they are. That is the race to the bottom that was triggered by Thatcher and her beloved son Blair. Labour are now away out in front in that race and are favorites to win it, because if they do not they will fail to ever get elected in England again. Their ranks are stuffed with liars and hypocrites who have such contempt for the public they would tell them the moon was made of green cheese if it got them in to power. The race has been running for years.
Of course you can see from the tables that it is Tory and UKIP voters who think in clear majority the welfare bill is too high; 7/10 in both cases.
For Labour and Lib Dem voters, it’s the other way around; only ~30% of their voters think it’s too high. For Labour voters, ~30% think it should be increased, with ~20% thinking it’s at the right level, meaning a majority are for keeping it the same or increasing it. A similar ~50% of Lib voters think it’s about right (~30%) or needs increasing (20%).
link to labour-uncut.co.uk
So who are Labour tailoring their policies for? Well Tory and UKIP voters of course.
So, let me get this straight. Labour, whilst being ahead in the polls – enough for a majority – are going to go against the will of their own voters and instead push a Tory/UKIP agenda.
Well, that’s them losing the 2015 election for sure.
Note their poll lead is becoming ever more tenuous. A 10 point gap at the beginning of the year is a 5 point one at best with Milliband’s ratings continuing to plunge.
Vote No and you can be very confident of a Tory led government post 2015. Could even be in coalition with UKIP.
And if you think Labour’s plans look increasingly nasty, just imagine what the Tories will do if they’re given a second backing in 2015.
@Roddy.
I post using Disqus and Google logins, and don’t usually have any problems.
I’m not too PC savvy, and am starting to think something strange was going on. The ‘pop-up’ on your blog looked real, but it asked me for info on gender and sexual preferences. I simply closed the comment.
I’ve had log-in problems recently on Munguins blog using my phone, so i’m getting paranoid now! 🙂
@Jiggsbro
A party with any principles would be working to inform the 44%, not changing its policies to placate them. But as the Rev points out, Labour lost its principles post-1992, when it decided it was better to be elected as Tories than be in opposition as Labour. It no longer serves its natural constituency, its members or its major funders. It’s a dead party walking: why vote for Labour Tories when you can have real Tories?
Sadly, I think it was the late eighties, early nineties when some leading figures in the British Labour Party decided to fully embrace Thatcherism. Gordon Brown and Tony Blair were both briefing against John Smith in the period before he died in 1994. Given that Smith was on the right of the Labour Party at that time, then it is clear that the people who created New Labour wanted to go even further to the right. Their record post 1994 proves this.
@Juteman
Ordinary Labour members should have asked why their ‘top’ folk were going to the USA for finishing school. Why were the likes of Murphy and Alexander going to the USA to receive training?
Vote Tory (Republican) or Labour (Democrat), and you get the same result. Two parties in thrall and controlled by business, just like the US. The rumours have been floated for years that Blair was a CIA plant, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if some Labour ministers owed their primary allegiance to money and Langley.
Yes, the British American Project started up in the 1980s by a right wing supporter of Reagan. This group has bad news written all over it.
Miliband wants the votes of middle England; he’s taking Scotland for granted.
Lamont does what she’s told.
muttley79
Some would say the British American Project goes back a lot further than that.
“One recent fact: The Fabian Society acquired – and sealed – the archives of Eric Blair (better known as “1984” author George Orwell) when his wife died some years ago. Orwell became disenchanted with the Fabian Society and it is now thought his book was really aimed at the kind of world he believed the Fabian Society would achieve.”
link to amazon.com
Murphy was invited to give a speech to the Henry Jackson Society.
Unbelievable for a ‘socialist’ to be asked to address that right wing think tank.
Miliband wants the votes of middle England; he’s taking Scotland for granted.
Actually, I more inclined to believe he’s not counting on Scotland at all.
From what I have poll data-wise (which is a multiple Scotland subset and SNP share of total UK vote database), the SNP would oust Labour and take the majority of Scots Westminster seats in a GE.
This has been the case since 2011. Labour are down to core in Scotland both at Holyrood and Westminster level. Voting SNP has become normalised in Scotland.
A last desperate attempt was made by a section of the Scots electorate to stop the Tories by voting Labour in 2010 (which caused the pre-2011 spike). It failed and everything changed. They’ll vote SNP now. SNP are on up to 45% for Westminster with Labour lucky if they’ve 30%.
I imagine Ed is quite aware of this.
It’s a big part of the reason for the increasing irrationality of labour MPs in Scotland. Yes or No (narrow if it happens at all) their careers are likely over at MP level anyway.
The dreams that a No would send the SNP into oblivion, returning Labour to the party in control of Scotland is a complete fantasy.
The best bet for their MPs is to back indy and stand for Holyrood in 2016.
I forgot;
link to amazon.com
link to amazon.com
Curious YouGov poll! Last week I was asked if I would take part on a poll on the party leaders and if I was agreeable and I was selected they would email me at 10.15 on Friday 13 th September with access code to the survey which would remain open for 30 minutes. I agreed and they give me a last minute test. Two pictures of a cow and the question on the first picture was what do you see……i answered ..a cow. The question on the second picture was what do you hear?…..and it was the sound of a chicken clucking….I answered…a chicken clucking……..
This morning I was ready at 10.15 and five minutes later I got the email to do the Survey.I would be shown a video on the Party Leaders first .The survey was then to last twenty minutes and my account would be credited with 250 points ( the usual is 50 points for that time). I started the survey and the first question was again the two pictures of the cows with what do you see and what do you hear….I answered I could see a cow…BUT this time there was no sound so answered I could hear nothing.I was immediately granted my 250 points and saw neither video nor survey. It ended with the usual quality questions which I gave a zero. I checked my account and was credited with the points.
My only guess is to do with suggestion as I was tempted to answer..chicken …for the silent second question.
Any guesses folks?
@Roddy,
Blogger/Blogspot is a popular platform and lots of people use it. I think your problem is to have enabled Google+ comments, and Google, with its insidious intent of harvesting as much information from everyone as possible, has effectively hijacked the comments section of your blog and imposed its own criteria on those who wish to comment. Have a look around and see whether you can’t disable Google+. If you can, the blog should default to the usual Blogger format, which allows login through ID/Wordpress, etc. The only thing I object to about Blogger is that it seems over-fond of irritating captchas. Frankly, before you go much further, I think you would be better off with WordPress, which uses Akismet, and is virtually spam-free in consequence….
This article is chilling…
“work without pay for 30-40 hours a week; stream of state conscripts; any job category incorporated into workfare schemes will sooner or later vanish; forced-labour battalions; poverty as a crime is entrenched; anyone finding themselves unemployed; ill or disabled becomes immediately stigmatized; the poor are squeezed until the pips squeak, again and again, and the wealthy get wealthier”.
This is NOT what I want for the people of my country and it is what makes me get off my bahookie and get out there delivering YES leaflets, attending markets and events to try to persuade and encourage my fellow Scots that they could live in a more decent, equitable country. For those of you who come into the Rev’s site and think he raises a few interesting points and then wander off, I would urge you to fully engage and join me and other fellow Scots in striving for a better country. We can do better than this.
As for the labour for independence people, shoot and shoot now. The goal is wide open, the “New” labour team has gone off to fantasise about gated enclosures, private security, work houses and serfs. You’ll clean up if you do.
Roll on 2014 to get rid of this dross and the attitude that supports it.
@famous15
Only those who hear a chicken clucking when they see a cow are qualified to answer questions on party leaders. If you had not failed this easy test, you would have been shown a monkey with a red ribbon and asked whether you thought you would vote for it.
It’s all about gaining power, then keeping it. No more ascending to office and doing good for the people, that went when Thatcher was elected. Labour, like all the main parties in Westminster, are serving themselves. We need a revolution and that will come in September 2014.
Incredibly depressing but true. The saddest thing for me is that points 1 to 5 are pretty much obvious consequences. All the better together right wing coalition parties are pedaling this crap now.
It is all so short sighted. They just can’t see beyond winning an election at one single point in time
That reminds me: You can get full episodes of New Statesman on You Tube, now.
Pictures of cows and clucking chickens. Reminds me of a book I once read about farming and animal husbandry. Or was that a dream?
Something I thought about as a new parent and negotiating maternity and paternity leave. If work is normal, does that mean the removal of certain workers rights such as these, giving people protracted time away from work are on the cards for Labour?
Miliband wants the votes of middle England;
To me, this is the nub of the problem. The parties (all of them) are CHASING voters ……. modifying their policies to fit with what they think people will vote for. That’s not how its supposed to work!! Parties should have principles, ideologies, ideals, vision…. if people (voters) then agree with those, they vote for them. Simples! Silly me …….. I just had a utopian vision of democracy there … not the political prostitution that actually exists. Sorry.
Now, I’m not stupid enough (I hope) to not realise that to implement those policies, visions, ideals etc …. that you actually have to BE in power, and thus require votes, but …….. if people aint gonna vote for what you stand for, you shouldn’t be empowered. Sorry, folks, but that’s what democracy REALLY is … surely??
O/T – Boothman now on Newswatch being interviewed re Refendum coverage saying basically that they get complaints from both sides so is fair.
Orly? Never occurred to anyone that the side that’s being favoured might make some spurious complaints (Ian Davidson, Isabel Fraser is looking at you) to allow this claim to be made?
@TJenny
‘O/T – Boothman now on Newswatch being interviewed re Refendum coverage saying basically that they get complaints from both sides so is fair.’
That is illogical because if they were fair there should be no complaints at all.
To be fair, I didn’t catch all of Newswatch but they seemed to have had a group of teens/students on before and I caught one of them saying that all they wanted was facts and not spin from media favouring one side or the other. I’ll watch the whole thing later on.
@muttley79, juteman –
When it comes to BAP etc, Robin Ramsay’s yer man. He’s been into this stuff for years and his work is meticulous. Check out:
link to lobster-magazine.co.uk
@Juteman, I just posted twice on Roddy’s site, using a Google+ log-in, with no pop-ups, your experience sounds fishy…
I have voted Labour once, in 1979 in an effort to keep Thatcher out, it didn’t work! After that, Labour elected then humiliated and dumped their last socialist leader Michael Foot. Since then the ‘People’s Party’ have been chasing the tails of the Tories in a slow steady move to the right and a decline into the politics of the sewer. For the last thirty odd years, I have maintained a certain respect for the Tories, they are my ideological enemy, but I know where I am with them. Labour on the other hand, have squirmed, back stabbed and abandoned every shred of their socialist roots in an effort to get elected. They have used and abused the working poor, the sick, the elderly, the disabled, the vulnerable and the needy in a lust for power. They were in power for thirteen long years and in that time they pandered to the bankers, engineered an illegal and imperialist war and almost bankrupted Britain. The Tories are bad, but they at least they make no bones about which section of society they are working for. Labour are evil because they betray the trust of the most vulnerable in our society.
My son attends a sports centre several times a week (6am start) and needs driven there. I stay in the cafe area while he does his thing, as it’s not worthwhile doing the trip twice. The centre receives the Herald, Record and Daily Mail every morning.
When the cleaner comes in he clears away the papers from the previous day, stacks whatever magazines have been left by parents, and bins everything else.
On Tuesday morning, having been at the Irvine Yes Scotland gig (Sturgeon & Canavan) the night before, I left two sets of the Yes Scotland literature (comprising five different leaflets, including details on the Calton Hill rally) on the window ledge.
Tonight we were back there again. Four days’ worth of newspapers have been and gone, the magazines have all gone – the two sets of leaflets are still there, not far away from where I left them. Don’t know if anyone’s been reading them, but clearly, no-one’s felt moved to bin them.
I worked for 15 years with folk with learning disabilities, alongside that a professional expertise in theatre, enough is enough, for all of you here my name is Paul Wright, and the destruction of all we hold dear has gone beyond any form of humour, I am raging at the destruction of our civil life.
This is an interesting piece for the undecided to read, but does not come as a surprise for any who have watched the gradual decline & slide of New Labour from the moral highs of social justice, rights and equality.
Power crazy as ever it has become so easy to jettison principles in order to match and correlate with the ideals of middle England and the regions of wealth, to the detriment of all else.
It is shameful for these ‘Stealth Tories’ to claim to be on the side of the disadvantaged if this is really what is proposed.
But then Scotland has an opt out; ditch Labour and vote YES 2014
@Paul Wright –
Hear hear.
More power to ye mister.
@Paula Rose – Hear, hear. I had the privilege of teaching young people with Additional Support Needs for 25 years. They were and are, just some of the victims of Labour’s betrayal.
In case people don’t know, and given the quality of our news media it’s a reasonable assumption, more people would be in jobs if the DWP Work Programme designed to get people into jobs didn’t exist. In effect, the DWP is creating more unemployment at the cost of about a billion pounds to the taxpayer so far. which has all went straight in the coffers of companies like G4S managed by ex-Scottish MP John Reid.
The Labour Party’s response to the fact that the DWP work creation programme creates more unemployment at extra cost to the taxpayer will be to force the long-term unemployed into failed compulsory slavefare schemes if it wins the next UK general election. This is especially ironic given there are some indications that the coalition government is thinking about doing away with its embarrassing slavefare schemes.
References –
Is Workfare Behind the Work Programme Disaster?
the void
22 Feb 2013
link to johnnyvoid.wordpress.com
“Today’s damning report from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) reveals the shocking revelation that Iain Duncan Smith’s flagship Work Programme is performing significantly worse than if the DWP had done nothing at all.
According to the PAC, just 3.6% of claimants have found long term jobs on the Work Programme. The DWP had estimated that 9.2% of mainstream unemployed claimants would have been expected to find work had the programme not been launched….”
Alarming figures show something is very seriously wrong with the Work Programme – Liam Byrne
Labour
20 June 2013
link to labour.org.uk
“We need urgent action to bring the cost of social security spending under control for good – starting with Labour’s Compulsory Jobs Guarantee to get the long term unemployed off benefits and into a real paying job they would be required to take.”
The Work Programme: Is It The End?
the void
26 June 2013
link to johnnyvoid.wordpress.com
@joe kane-
Why is it that I read or watch ‘the news’, or ‘current affairs’ programmes, or Toby-Jug’s latest roadshow, but don’t read or hear any serious consideration of what you’ve just said?
Why is that?
Why?
In case anyone needed more proof that the Tories are not interested in solving Scottish problems, check this report on the fate of Robert Smith’s private members bill on Rural delivery charges……filibustered by a Tory.
link to bbc.co.uk
“they actually think, being unpopular but principled is a vote winner.”
The LibDems. the chameleon party – principled?
“You don’t like that principle? Have no fear we’ve got another one.”
“Our polling shows that 44 per cent of people think the benefits bill is ‘too high’ with only 35 per cent saying it is ‘about right’ or ‘too low.’ So much, then, for people rising up against the government’s benefits changes.”
I would say ‘Turkeys voting for Christmas’, but of course Jesus was way too left wing for the neo-elitists.
ss says
“And if you think Labour’s plans look increasingly nasty, just imagine what the Tories will do if they’re given a second backing in 2015.”
That should be on every billboard in Scotland
“I’ve had log-in problems recently on Munguins blog using my phone, so i’m getting paranoid now!”
I got “SERVICE DENIED” message when I tried to log in to the————————-Hootsmon?—————————–oh?
maybe I’ll just eat worms 🙁
Just musing here
after Jutemans comment about the labour leadership going to “American Finishing School
maybe we could convince the current (bad)crop to take XFACTOR auditions and give jola jaba ansa and ilk four yesses and send them off to bootcamp in the the good ol US of A
thats it
message over
cameron b says
“Or was that a dream?”
wow here’s a man who can dream an entire book, now THAT’S impressive
mines are more like a goldfish in a bowl, hmm nice wallpaper,, swim swim hmm nice wallpaper, swim swim hmm nice wallpaper 🙂
I hear you Paul Wright
my colleague at work as a child with ADHT and she is a very strong young woman but is struggling to keep home/work life going,
the lack of support (spending cuts) from her local council is having a dramatic effect on her and her family,
we need people like you Paul,
respect!
I read some of the other articles on that website- from bashing Union leaders as ‘out of touch’ and ‘delusional’ to encouraging the US to attack Syria, it reads more like some right-wing rag!
It is similar to the Tom Harris stuff, and shows very clearly how far the Labour party are lurching to the right. Very scary.
I hate the Scottish Labour Party. I absolutely detest them. I hope they burn in Hell in a years time should it be a ‘Yes’ vote. How the people of that party can lie to their own people staggers me. I can’t honestly comprehend how you can do it.
What god-awful ideology are they taught when they are young, that they must deceive the people at all costs? Surely somewhere when they were being told what to do and say, they must have thought, ‘Wait a minute, that is wrong! That is just …so wrong!’
Surely, there must be one or two of them who sit in the Parliament, and must rage at Lamont, Sarwar, and a few others, because, they know deep down, that what they are doing is so wrong; that it borders on treason. I hope one day, one of them stands up in Scottish Parliament, looks at the Labour Leader and says, ‘No more! No more lies!’
Surely they must wonder that at some future point, if the people ever do learn the truth about Scottish Labour’s deceitful lies, then they are going to be terrified when walking about the town, or entering a pub.
In my head, the saying, ‘When you make your bed, well …you have to lie in it.’ That would be a fair warning to me if I was a Scottish Labour MP. God help them next year, if the Scottish Public do read the white paper, learn the facts, and realise that they have been taken for a ride by the Labour Party for the last 20 years.
Jackie Baillie on GMS Radio Scotland going to bring to Bedroom Tax members bill but it has not yet been lodged despite Anas Sarwars false prop in recent STV debate .
Also blaming Scottish government of course and that Labour “soon” going to give Westminster commitment to scrap Bedroom Tax ……………if Ed Miliband can persuade Middle England to vote for him!
If you want to keep your sanity don’t watch this mornings Newswatch
Shinty –
Sorry is it just me ? ….. it just seemed 1/2 of the students had been briefed with BBC speak /agenda they were supposed to be talking about a percieved bias.
2 said – “I watch BBC all the time” couldn’t say I noticed any bias ???? (what were they watching ???) Very worrid about losing BBC News – no worry about losing your country then !
As for Boothman – nothing to see here ….move along !!!! ( No guilt whatsoever – no ground given)
All labour want is to be Boss Hogg in a devolved Tammany hall – they truly are wretched. Tories are stuck in the past and seem content to be there. The Lib-dems are quite simply the dumbest fuckers in the room. This is not to give the SNP a free pass, they can get it wrong on a lot of issues but compared to the others they do seem to have their shit together.
“Do you think the benefits bill is too high?” Yes
“Why do you think the benefits bill is too high” It is too high because we are paying benefits to workers and therefore are paying the wage bill of employers. We shouldn’t be. We should be insisting employers pay a wage that is enough, for example, for one wage to be more than enough to pay the expense of running a home and raising a family.
Work is not normal. Cruel men wi a near religious ideology had the hungry build amine walls for no reason other than they thought work is normal. Enjoying the countryside is normal. Paddling in the ocean is normal. Gazing at the stars is normal. Hanging out chatting with our friends and neighbours, our families is normal.
Work is not normal. Don’t Labour members read? They would do well to start with Bertrand Russell’s in Praise of Idleness
Gordoz
‘I watch the BBC all the time?’ WTF was that all about.
I don’t watch BBC but Mr Shinty does so I just picked up the tail end, seeing Boothman for the first time – he might as well have had SLAB tattooed on his forehead. As for the kids, was there a special selection process for the most uninformed in the class.
It was all too depressing to watch.