Communist architecture is not dead

In the aftermath of the second world war - in which many stupid British men fought and died in the cause of communism - the powers-that-be decided to force their communist beliefs on us.  In order to do so, it was necessary for them to undermine almost everything that the British people had previously believed in.

One of those things was beauty, and so the communists infiltrated the world of architecture and began designing lots of truly hideous buildings.  Communist architecture flourished from the 1960s to the 1980s, but fortunately the 1990s saw a return to more acceptable designs.

Nevertheless there is still a lot of communist architecture springing up around us.  Witness these two monstrosities:

Jobs: the stats remain grim

The government is crowing about the latest figures about unemployment.  These are going in the right direction, assuming that they are accurate, but they remain grim.

There are still around FIVE MILLION households in the country in which at least one person has no job, and there are around HALF A MILLION people who have never had a job.

Behind the statistics lie the grim facts: misery, loneliness, hunger.  Surely it is time for the British people to turn their backs on LibLabCon misrule.  If the three main parties cared about full employment then they would have achieved it many years ago.

The reason why Britain has high levels of unemployment is because that is what our political leaders want. Nothing will change until we stop voting for evil politicians, and so presumably nothing will change ... ever.

A child is raped in uncaring Britain

Paul Wilson raped a child in a nursery.  A report has concluded that:

nursery workers, council staff and even Ofsted inspectors had investigated complaints that Wilson had a 'special relationship' with the child but failed to act.

Sadly though, it seems that no punitive action will be taken against the various offenders - and so the public sector in this country continues to wallow in its own muck.

The public sector should exist to provide good quality services to the people of this country, but it appears to exist primarily for the benefit of its employees,and in particular its better paid employees.  Politicians are unwilling to discuss this, and public sector workers are unwilling to risk losing their jobs for life by urging the case for reform.

If you have a small child, then do yourself a favour and never vote Labour or Tory or LibDem.  Those parties exist to protect the bloated public sector, and do not care about you.

Syria does not want to be bombed

The newspapers today are discussing the likelihood that Britain and the USA may soon begin firing missiles at Syria, apparently in a bid to destabilise the oppressive regime of President Assad.  I have several points to make here.

First, it is hard to be certain who carried out the various atrocities perpetrated recently in Syria.  They could be the work of the government, or of rebel groups funded by wealthy Arabs, or of Israel.  Do you trust either David Cameron or Barack Obama to be honest about what is going on?

Second, even if Assad's regime is oppressive that does not give any other country the right to intervene militarily.

Third, to intervene militarily would not merely be a war crime.  It would also be gross hypocrisy.  The world is full of oppressive regimes, but Britain and the USA do not go to war against all of them, and British taxpayers actually fund quite a lot of them.  I expect that American taxpayers do as well.

Fourth, it is unlikely that any military intervention would produce no civilian casualties, and the bombing of Libya a couple of years ago gives us no reason for complacency on this point.

Fifth, neither David Cameron nor Barack Obama are - so far as I am aware - offering us any guarantees that there will be no ground war in Syria. Will we soon be seeing the body bags coming back?

Let me remind you of two of my earlier posts:

One more widow...

The holocaust continues ...

Has immigration killed the middle class dream?

A national newspaper has recently warned of the possible demise of the British middle classes.  The author notes that:

Today, many people are starting to realise they will probably never enjoy the comforts their parents took for granted.

The author looks into a number of issues, all of which have some relevance, but he ignores the critical factor of open door immigration.

In 1970 a young school teacher settled in a small provincial town and bought his first ever house.  The comparable house today would cost in the region of £160,000 – probably more.  I wonder how many young one-income families could make such a purchase today.

The population of the United Kingdom is increasing every day, due in large part to immigration.  This inevitably creates more demand for housing, and so house prices tend to increase.  This increase could be prevented if more houses were built to meet the increased demand, but this is not happening.  Also, such new houses that are built are often very small.

Many working people in this country will come under financial pressure at some time or another, and for a wide variety of reasons.  Fluctuations in the state of the economy determine the number of people with jobs, and also the level of salaries.  Changes in demand for products like metals and mineral oil in other countries can impact on the cost of living in this country.

Nevertheless, as far as the cost of buying a house is concerned, the trend will remain detrimental to the middle class dream – at least until we elect a government that will put an end to immigration.

Don’t expect that ever to happen though. The communists will continue to rule the British people with an iron rod.  (Feel free to prove me wrong.)

Related previous posts include:
Micro-life

Hundred applications: who is to blame?

Who is to blame? 

A business in Wales advertised a vacancy with the jobcentre – warehouse, £8 per hour – and received nearly a hundred applications.  Company director Jean Rasbridge claims that she soon realised that many of them were not interested in the job.

Apparently the reasons for her reaching this conclusion included the fact that some of the applicants lived more than a hundred miles away, and also that some had academic qualifications including PhDs.

I am prepared to believe that applicants who live in other parts of the country do not want the job, but I am not convinced about the academics.

As I understand it, each jobcentre makes its own rules to some extent, and I have heard that some jobcentres require claimants to apply for a certain number of jobs every week.  Suppose you are a claimant and you have to apply for (let’s say) ten jobs every week in order to persuade the jobcentre that you are actively seeking work.   If you can find ten jobs each week in your local area which you can reasonably apply for, then that is fine – but what if you can’t?

You have three options.  Either you apply for fewer than ten jobs and risk having your benefits cut; or you apply for jobs which you cannot hope to be taken seriously for; or you apply for jobs in other parts of the country.

I imagine that the applicants from Glasgow and Peterborough were trying to reach a quota, and did not want to work in Wales.  The same may be true of the academics, as there are not many job vacancies out there for people with PhDs.  Then again, even someone with a PhD might prefer working in a warehouse to being a benefits claimant, but the Jean Rasbridges of this world don’t seem able to appreciate that.

The company eventually invited seven people for interview, but only two turned up, and the person who was offered the job did not accept it.  I will make no apology for either the five people who did not turn up or the person who refused the job, but I am curious to know whether the other person who was interviewed was offered the job when the successful applicant refused the offer.  I would also like to know if any of the academic applicants were among those invited for interview.

Jean Rasbridge claims that she knows of other employers who have had similar experiences, and the comments section likewise contains assertions from employers about people on benefits not wanting to work.

While I accept that there is some truth in what they are saying, I think it is fair to point out that people who are under duress to meet a quota of job applications will apply for jobs they don’t want.  The business community is welcome to lobby the government to amend the rules.

It is also fair to point out that people with PhDs might actually want a job in a warehouse.  One of the biggest problems facing the British economy is the fact that far too many businesses are run by prejudiced overpaid twits.  We deserve better.

Do you care about dry statistics?

We all know that statistics can be dull at the best of times.  The news that government borrowing rose last month might therefore not exactly fill you with dread.

Nevertheless this is just one more reason why the coalition government cannot be trusted.  Behind the dry statistics lies a catalogue of incompetence and vanity.  The government is throwing away money on overseas aid, HS2, and membership of the EU.  The welfare bill is rising, even though unemployment is falling, and even though the government is taking every opportunity of stripping unfortunate people of their benefits for trivial reasons.

Also behind the dry statistics lie countless stories of misery.  Unemployed people struggle to find work while the economy continues to flounder.  Many pensioners and working people struggle to subsist on small incomes. More and more people are hungry, and turning to food banks for help.

If you care about the misery behind the dry economic statistics, then make sure you NEVER vote Conservative or Liberal Democrat ever again.

Micro-life

The government may be about to curb the building of small homes.  Apparently the government is worried about the fact that houses in this country are getting progressively smaller, and want to do something about it.

In a sense this is excellent.  While some people would no doubt be happy to live in a small home, and while many others would doubtless prefer a small home to no home at all, it remains the case that many new houses and apartments these days have very little storage space.  Given that the British people have a tendency - as Jerome K Jerome put it - to overload the boat of life, it is clear that a lot of people resent the trend for smaller homes.

There is a problem though, which is that larger homes require more space.  As Britain's population grows, there is a need for more housing, and the normal solutions are either to build up or build out.  Building up is where houses become taller - three storeys instead of two - or where tower blocks are built instead of housing.  Building out is where new houses are built on what used to be green land on the edge of towns.

Plans for new housing tend to meet with opposition from local people, which is pretty disgusting.  There are far too many homeless people in this country, and the problem of homelessness cannot be cured without building lots of new houses.  Arguing that the housing should simply go somewhere else is a lame response.  We need a lot of new housing, and we cannot be fussy about where exactly it goes.

If you ever dare to oppose a planning application for new housing, then you are part of the problem of homelessness in this country.  A large part of that problem, as the government recognises, is that new homes are often very cramped, and it remains to be seen how successful the government will be in tackling that.

Of course we could greatly alleviate the housing problem in this country if we stopped immigration, and we could alleviate it even further if we began a programme of voluntary assisted repatriation for those immigrants who have already settled here.  That will not happen though, because the British people will not vote for it.

Enjoy living in your rabbit hutch.

This post is also relevant: The story of a narrow garage

LibLabCon failure on youth unemployment

The BBC is reporting on youth unemployment. I reproduce most of it here, with my own comments added in.

National schemes to tackle youth unemployment are not working, the group representing English councils has said.

Of course they are not working.  Schemes for the unemployed have a long and ignoble history of not working.  Why should the current rehash be expected to work where previous efforts have failed?

The LGA said the current system was over-complicated, with 35 different national schemes across 13 different age boundaries costing £15bn a year.

This may be a fair point, but even a simplified system would be a waste of money - not that we can expect communists to want to admit that.

The government has insisted it is not complacent about youth unemployment.

Which is a lie.  The government is complacent about 
youth unemployment just as it is complacent about unemployment generally, crime, public order, poverty, the NHS, and so on.

A Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) spokesman said: "This report fails to recognise that despite youth unemployment being a big challenge for a decade, the level has fallen by 38,000 since last year, and the number of young people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance has fallen for 14 consecutive months."

Those statistics are very poor.  If they really cared about tackling youth unemployment then they would reduce it by more like 38,000 every month.

He said the Youth Contract alone would offer help to nearly 500,000 young people over three years.

And a new traineeship programme would be launched in the autumn to help those without the right experience or qualifications to get an apprenticeship or a job, he added.

And the difference between an apprenticship and a job would be what exactly? 

On Wednesday, the Office for National Statistics said youth unemployment, among those aged 16-24, had increased by 15,000 in the three months to June to reach 973,000 despite a fall of 4000 in the overall level of unemployment.

So presumably the various schemes for young people are a complete farce and should all be abolished.

The Local Government Association (LGA) said 50,000 fewer jobless young people were getting help from job schemes today, than was the case three years ago, despite long-term youth unemployment remaining stubbornly high.

Given that these schemes serve no purpose, then surely any fall is to be welcomed.

Programmes include the Work Programme, which gives support to welfare claimants who need more help looking for and staying in work, and Youth Contracts, which create opportunities including apprenticeships and work experience.

Please see my previous comments about the Work Programme.

The LGA said that not only was the national system too complicated, but that "meddling" by successive governments had made the situation worse.
It said that only 27% of 16 and 17-year-olds starting the government's Youth Contract were helped into training or work.

This is typical communist weasel-speak.  We should not care how many people are helped into training or work.  We should care only about how many people are helped into jobs.  A training course is not a job.


David Simmonds, chair of the LGA's Children and Young People Board, added: "It's clear that nationally driven attempts to tackle youth unemployment aren't working.

"Many young people tell us that... finding a scheme that's right for them is a real challenge.

"While there are a number of good initiatives, government has side-lined councils and incentivised a series of services like schools, colleges and third sector providers to work in isolation of each other, with no clarity on who is responsible for leading the offer to young people on the ground.

"We think by aligning what's happening in local government with many of these schemes, we could get a lot more young people into work than is the case at the moment."

If all the schemes were abolished, we could probably get everyone into work.

Liam Byrne, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said David Cameron's government had "comprehensively failed young people".

True, but the last Labour government also failed young people, and everyone else as well.

"The Work Programme has missed every single one of its performance targets. The Youth Contract is on course to miss its targets by 92%.

I'll take his word for it.

"Ministers need to act now to introduce a Compulsory Jobs Guarantee to get any young person out of work for more than a year into a paying job - one they would be required to take."

That sounds good to me, but can we know why the last Labour government did not introduce a Compulsory Jobs Guarantee?  Also, if a future Labour government were to introduce such a scheme, then why not apply it to all unemployed people regardless of age?

I do not expect that a Labour government would seek to cut unemployment though, because far too many Labour supporters have jobs in the training sector.  Communists have been known to look after their own.

A tale of two scumbags

Justyn Larcombe is £100,000 in debt.  It appears that this man who once had a successful career and a family wants us to feel sorry for him because he ruined his life with a gambling obsession.  He did not just squander one huge sum of money after another.  He sold family possessions, lied to his wife, and neglected a sick child.

Mr Larcombe, you are a scumbag, and I have no sympathy for you.  Of course many people in this country ruin their lives with excessive gambling, and many of them turn to crime to obtain more money to gamble with.

When will you develop an obsession with gambling?  Maybe you won't.  Maybe someone in your family will.  Maybe a colleague will, and maybe you will be made redundant when the said colleague steals loads of money from your employer and cannot pay it back.

The LibLabCons love gambling.  The evil Tory Prime Minister John Major gave us the national lottery, but did not put any safeguards in place to prevent it ruining the lives of stupid people and their family and colleagues.  The evil New Labour duo of Blair and Brown gave us casinos open 24/7, but also failed to provide any safeguards.  If you vote Labour or Tory or LibDem, then you are part of the gambling crisis in this once-great country.

Scumbag number two is Gyles Brandreth.  This horrid man was a Tory MP and whip back in the 1990s, and he has just spilt the beans on his activities in the corridors of power.  For those who don't know, MPs are required to vote as and when and how their party dictates, and whips are MPs whose job it is to tell their fellow MPs how and when to vote.  He explains:

Each whip has 25 to 30 individual MPs in his or her flock ...

One MP I saved from bankruptcy and at least three from scandalous exposure. They owed me their support. I helped supply others with a better office, a place on the committee of their choice, an invitation to a royal garden party, tea with the prime minister, a parliamentary trip to a sun-kissed island in the West Indies, and the promise of preferment. They were in my debt.

While saving a fellow MP from bankrupcy may be all very well, the other things listed are pretty disgusting. Why should any MP be given a trip to the West Indies as an inducement to toe the government line? He continues:

In my experience, most MPs are committed to their work. They’re not cheating on their expenses or chasing their secretaries round the House of Commons library. They work long hours in the interests of those they are elected to serve.

They may not have chased their secretaries, but Brandreth makes clear that at least one of the MPs in his flock was an adulterer.  As for not cheating their expenses, what planet is this man on?

Fortunately, Brandreth was not allowed more than one term in parliament.  He notes that:

Some of my colleagues who also lost their seats had breakdowns. Others, because of their age and because they had little experience outside politics, found it impossible to get another job.

I have no sympathy for any Conservative MP, nor for any Labour or LibDem MP.  They are parasites who feed off a largely gullible public.  Britain would be a much better place if the LibLabCon parties had no MPs at all.

Update: another former Conservative MP has lifted the lid on events in the House of Commons.  If you don't have time to read it right through, then it includes the quote: when it came to dirty tricks, I was just an amateur compared to the whips.  We pay their salaries.

Another update: Justyn Larcombe's wife has now spoken out about his selfish behaviour.

Congrats to the A Level success stories

The newspapers are full of photos of elated (or occasionally upset) teenagers who have just learnt their A Level results.  To all of those young people, I say congratulations.  Now try finding a job.

Of course many of them do not dream of a job right now.  Many of them plan to start debt factory university in the next few weeks.  I remember a couple of years back reading in a newspaper about a young lad who was living in a bedsit in London while struggling to subsist in a low-paid job.  He was a medical school dropout.  He was probably over the moon the day he landed a place in medical school, but debts drove him out and into a life of poverty.

Nevertheless many young people make it through university, and they do not all rack up huge levels of debt, and some of them actually manage to find work after they graduate.

Claimant count falls

The claimant count - the number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance -  has fallen to its lowest level since February 2009.  If we leave aside the fact that the claimant count is a grossly misleading statistic, it does not alter the fact that the claimant count was obscenely high in February 2009, and remains obscenely high today.

 

The good news (for Romanians and Bulgarians) is that there has been a sharp rise in the number of Romanians and Bulgarians who have jobs in this country.

 

In other news, Ajmol Alom was not the intended target.  So what?  He's still dead.

A question for Ajmol's father

Ajmol Alom was just sixteen when he was murdered in a pack attack, which apparently is not being treated as racist - which presumably means that the killer will be allowed out of prison after about ten or eleven years, and that no one in the press or parliament will make a fuss.

Just six weeks earlier, Ajmol's father had hired a supercar so that his son could arrive at the school prom in style.  (For those who do not know, a school prom is apparently a school disco with a posh name.)  Apparently the supercar cost thousands just to rent for one evening.

I have a question for Ajmol's old man.  How much money have you ever donated to a political party which supports bringing back the rope?  I don't need an exact figure, but are we talking about more or less than the cost of renting a supercar?

IDS = irrational despicable scumbag

Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith has written an essay about welfare reform for a national newspaper.  It makes painful reading.

He observes: Britain’s benefits system used to be a source of pride but after 13 years of Labour it became a way of life for some.

It may have escaped this horrid man's attention, but living on handouts was a way of life for millions of people under the last Conservative government, just as it is under the present coalition government.  The evil prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major made it very hard for unemployed people to find work, presumably because they were evil.

Now the evil prime minister David Cameron is making it hard for unemployed people to find work, presumably because he is evil.

IDS also notes that: The Claimant Commitment transforms the relationship between the claimant and the system. Claimants will sign an agreement to undertake certain activities in order to get their benefits in return.

This is misleading.  The claimant commitment appears to be nothing more than a rehash of the jobseeker's agreement, which has existed for years.  IDS continues:

Our advisers have the power to sanction people who don’t uphold their part of the bargain. No longer can people just turn up to claim benefits with no onus on them to better their situation.

This also is not new.  For many years now the jobcentre have been able to sanction the benefits of people who are perceived to have broken some rule or other.  I have met one young lad who had his benefits stopped for two weeks because he missed a Work Programme appointment BECAUSE HE WAS ILL.  A few years ago I met a man who had his benefits stopped for four weeks because he failed to apply for a particular job vacancy, even though he maintained that he had applied for it.

IDS is happy for people to starve while the government continues to make it very hard for people to find jobs.  If he cared about full employment, he would abolish the Work Programme.

Dentist commits suicide

Dr Anand Kamath, an immigrant who worked as a dentist in Yorkshire, killed himself after allegedly being pursued by the NHS over some errors of record-keeping.

I cannot comment on all the issues here, as I do not know all of the circumstances, but I am curious about one or two things.

At the last general election, did Dr Kamath vote for a political party which supported running the NHS in the most efficient way possible?  I do not know for certain that he could vote, but I expect so.

Also, when he faced problems with his dental career, why did he not simply quit his practice and look for a job stacking shelves in Tesco?  Of course doing so would have left the community with one less dentist, but so did his suicide.

As it is, his widow has no husband and her children have no father.  The family has also lost an income.  If he were still alive and stacking shelves, then his family would be so much better off.

Some people ... I don't know.

Signs of an economic upturn

There are two items of good news regarding the economy.  The first is that exports are improving, and the second is growth in the construction sector.

My first point to observe is that the growth in exports is due in large part to exports to countries outside the EU.  This is another example of how unimportant the EU is to the success of the British economy.  We pay billions each year to support the EU, and yet we derive no real benefits from our membership.

My second point is that the construction sector is fuelled by people buying houses, which in turn is largely fuelled by credit.  Credit is a fickle thing, however, and we need to accept that growth founded upon credit may not last long.

My third point is that the upturn in the economy, while welcome, is nevertheless far from satisfactory.  A government which has been in power for three years now ought to be doing a lot better.  To vote Conservative is to vote for failure.

You pay for foreign crooks

Last year the government published a list of twenty people who had apparently fled the country owing huge amounts of money in unpaid taxes.  One of them has since been caught.

Take a look at their names.  Look at the photos.  At least one is Irish, one is from Pakistan, one is Chinese, one is believed to be hiding in northern Cyprus, one is believed to be in Iraq.  I could go on.

So far as I can make out, very few of these people are actually British. The rest might have British passports, but are able to disappear to foreign countries and ... well ... disappear.  If these people came back to the UK and paid the taxes that they owe, then the rest of us could perhaps pay a little bit less tax as a result.

You are paying for these crooks, and you will continue to pay for them and other crooks like them until the British people can be bothered to elect a government that actually cares about them.