More travails of taxpayer Joe

Too many things to be angry about today I don't know where to start... Well I've already ranted about how almost everything this government have done so far has been an attack on the poor, http://musingsfromaneet.blogspot.com/2011/12/goodbye-2011-beginning-of-my-life-but.html and another week just brings another initiative to make the poor; poorer. Capping benefits. It was only due to the Lords that child benefit is excluded from this cap.

But, wait hold up?!! This would not just be a win for the right-wing, it's a win for the taxpayer Joe who wakes up, goes to work, pays his taxes, pays the bills, comes home, kisses his wife and kids goodnight, sleeps and does the same shit the very next day.

I'm not that much of a deluded left-winger that I cannot see when something is just plain wrong,  OF COURSE  no-one should be paying their taxes in order for some others to not do much more than sit on their backsides and occasionally get up to reproduce more little no hopers just like them. OF COURSE  it gets me mad when I see that grown arse men who probably have wives and children cannot possibly get a job, but you can make damn well sure they can make it to the bookies for 9am. OF COURSE it gets me mad that the local drug dealer has the same house as my parents whilst paying at least 5 times less than they do, whilst driving around in 11 plate cars. OF COURSE it gets me mad that my grandma had no choice but to get married at the age of 15 and take on three stepdaughters, yet the girls in my school had every choice but chose to accidentally on purpose get up the duff because they have no further ambition than a council house and benefits. OF COURSE there is something wrong with a society that has everything but chooses to achieve nothing.

But wait again! Does capping benefits make Joe's life any better? Will he sleep any better? Does he get any richer? Will living costs go down and employment go up? If all the poor lived in shanty towns like Cameron would like, would Britain still be 'Great'? Will the government also aggressively recoup more money from the rich people we bailed out? What about the multi-million pound corporations that pay less tax than Joe does? If benefits do get capped will Joe receive a tax rebate? Because you know, we're all in this together?

Hell to the NO!

Wake up and get your priorities straight or we'll end up under a government like the French, who debate Burkhas and whether or not to define certain genocides a genocide, when their economy is crumbling and the people are suffering. But don't worry, making Vicky Pollard receive less benefits will give us a FAIRER SOCIETY. Can't wait.

SOPA cartoons

Bloody immigrants. Paying their taxes and contributing to society and shit. How dare they

There is a constant barrage of negativity levelled at immigrants and more specifically non-English native speaking foreigners i.e. not American, Canadian or Australian, by the media, government and much of the general public. Any debate on immigration by politicians focuses on a competition to see who can exclude the most brownies, blackies and Polish. (I once read a reader comment in the Metro saying 'all Polish women are dogs', I also read an article in The Sun which purported that due to the allegedly high incidence of HIV in Poland, meant that Britain was going to be on the receiving end of an HIV epidemic; for your information, both allegations remain unfounded).

So it was no surprise to hear on BBC radio last week that a so-called study had found a link between youth unemployment and Eastern European immigrants, when is the last time you saw a British 18-24 year old waiteressing or hauling tourists around Central London on bikes?? There was also a headline in the Metro today reading 'One 'British' job is lost for every four immigrants'. This was according to government immigration advisers, the Migration Advisory Committee. They say there were 23 fewer jobs for every 100 migrants who came from outside the EU.

Does this take into consideration all the British expats around the world? No.

Will it publish that the proportion of Brits who live in Spain is the same proportion of Mexicans that live in the US? No.

But that is not what this study was designed to prove now was it? Britain appears to act like a petulant child who happily shares other kids' toys in the nursery but God forbid anyone tries to share Britain's toys. Bitch fit ensues!... Wake up!! Our economy is crap because of our and the world's financial systems, not because of immigrants! Governments always fail to mention the positivity of immigration, Tesco and Google were invented by immigrants, anybody find these two companies useful?

So what makes my leftist/ 2nd generation brownie immigrant/ pro-immigration/ living in the real world stance less biased than a study by government immigration advisers? Nothing, yet this same government report goes on to say that immigrants are less of a burden on health services than us beer guzzlers because they are young and tend to be in good health. They cost Joe taxpayer on average £2,216 in education, £2,450 in healthcare and £708 in social services per year. Notwithstanding how crap 'average' figures always are, this in effect establishes that immigrants pay MORE in taxes than they cost in state services. Tell that to any member of the group BNP/ EDL/ uneducated zenophobe; (who each have about four teeth on average,) that immigrants contribute more than the average BRIT, they are 'net contributors'.

More music to my ears from the report includes that crime rates have fallen because immigrants are less likely to offend. Furthermore, average wages have remained the same. It also adds that 'migrants are found to increase wages at the top of the UK wage distribution and to lower wages at the bottom'. How did they link this fact to immigrants in particular? Nothing to do with the effects of capitalism, shareholder and corporation power and rubbish education for the working class no?

Additionally the National Institute of Economic and Social Research said this week that immigrants had little to no effect on unemployment. Although according to the Metro that is a 'claim' and not a matter of fact. Other positives to emerge from the government report are that immigrants are more likely to use public transport than drive, walking and cycling, so immigrants contribute less to our pollution too! Another conclusion was that immigrants love Britain more than white Britons! 'expressing a higher sense of belonging to Britain than the average British-born individual without any migrant heritage'. I think that calls for a Pow Pow! In spite of the pandering to the anti-immigration squad headline even a government source has shown immigrants are not to blame for criminality, unemployment, HIV, the state of our state services, lack of social mobility or anything else they want to blame on Johny foreigner. The headline should have read 'Britain. All our problems are our own fucking fault'.

See http://www.paulvallely.com/?p=1437 and http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/

God versus Atheism Part 2

OK I have been very diplomatic before with regard to the debates over atheism, but now I just feel annoyed about the attacking nature of atheists on Twitter specifically. People will claim that atheism is not a belief, that it is a disbelief yet it has so many over zealous champions the faith-hood nature it has taken on is difficult to deny. Most people get annoyed by Jehovah's Witnesses knocking on their door and who can forget that infamous Christian preacher on Oxford Street given an ASBO some years ago? ('Don't be a sinner, be a winner' Ring any bells?) Yet they do not see attacking believers in God as intolerant and irritating and of an extremist nature. They arrogantly claim it as 'truth telling'. As an advocate of free speech in a world where sometimes that's all we have, I believe people should be allowed to say what they please, but I just don't think that people should dress up their preaching as some sort of self-righteous good. If you are a tool, please recognise!

This year, so many things have happened, the world has woken up and people are dying every day to fight corrupt governments. Generalising generally never helps but from my young therefore admittedly limited perspective, the causes of most cruelty, past and present, are government self-interest, greed, tyranny, corruption, nationalism and intolerance. Note, the same intolerance some atheists are exhibiting. Not belief or disbelief in God.

One claim was that organised religion causes genocide, I asked which genocides, the tribalistic Rwandan? The communist Khmer Rouge? The atheist Nazi extermination of Jews? As I have said before the biggest genocide which killed more people than all of the genocides in the 20th Century is the selective abortion of foetuses with chromosomes of the XX variety. These have nothing to do with religion/God.

Yes there are plenty of so-called religious nut jobs but the common denominator of said nut jobs is not religion, they twist ideologies to suit their own purposes. Thinking that your beliefs or sweeping generalisations alone have the answer to the world's problems? Sounds familiar, like hmmm... religious extremists?! If nuns, priests, monks and all devoted religious people stopped believing in organised religion, probably because they were convinced by some OTT atheist preaching of course, would the world become better, would there be no cruelty and tyranny? No don't think so.

Admittedly, I have found Biblical quotations in a public sphere cringey but this new no God preaching and writing anti-religion quotes from public figures is equally vomit inducing. FYI snooty arrogance will rarely convince someone of whatever your argument may be. Both sides can be arrogant and human beings have been this way since the dawn of time. We have always thought we have known it all no matter how limited our education. If you told a foetus there was a world outside the womb, they would probably not believe you. Judging from the past, just because we have not discovered something, like the discovery of the shape of the earth, other planets, entities smaller than microscopic, does this mean that they do not exist?

Apparently being a liberal lefty is not compatible with believing in God, in the world where we must define our being in 160 characters or less, yet why should I have to fit into the box that people want me to. I am educated, I live in secular Britain, a society where most people are atheist or agnostic, I hardly have any religious friends and yet I believe in God and justice in the afterlife. Unless that is affecting your life please leave your ridiculous preaching/ ignorant generalisations to yourself. There are peaceful protesters and 84-year-old women being pepper sprayed in the face, whistle blowers being punished and ostracised more than war criminals and apartheid in the Middle East being championed because powerful corporations and lobby groups control the government in the land of the free. Surely these issues should take priority over your 'liberal' godless crusading?

See also http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/

Let's just start from zero

The economy schonomy is all over the news and I don't know if it's just me but it's sooo boring, plus it's terribly depressing. We've been hearing about financial doom and gloom for years now, everything is all 'recession' this and 'slow growth' that. Governments are meant to be controlling/providing for us but the real control over all nations is the economy.

Aaaah the economy, all our lives and livelihoods rely on this thing getting better, oooh don't hurt the poor economy, it has to be fed anything it wants because it has to grow, it can't be restricted by government but yet it must be fed by government money. Well it sounds to me like this economy thing is the emperor in the emperor's new clothes. It's an idea which is enamoured and revered more than God yet it is non-existent and just totally crap.

Everything to do with bail-outs is coated with billions of dosh, where are these billions and now trillions coming from? Greece may get a trillion euros to save them from bankruptcy, America is in trillions of debt and no, all the debt is not owed to China as they are also in trillions of debt apparently. The International Monetary Fund lends out billions on a regular basis, especially to 'developing' countries like Somalia who owe 90% of the entire country's debt to them. How come the Bank of England can just pump billions to provide quantitave easing? Whatever the hell that means. Where did they get all this money from and more importantly, why don't they give it to me?!!

My point is if everyone is in debt, with little to no hope of paying it back this century, yet these random organisations which are meaningless to the ordinary person seem to have an abundance of cash, why don't we just either rob all this money they have or better yet just start from scratch. No-one's listening to the 99% as they allegedly have no resolution except to be anti-capitalist. Rampant capitalism obviously is not full proof or they wouldn't have to keep being rescued by taxpayer's money in a socialist fashion. The power of the West is slowly but surely dying out with the emergence of the Bric countries and nobody can estimate or underestimate the direction of the Arab Spring, so let's just forget AD and call this era PR- post recession and start from zero.

See also http://raraproductions.blogspot.com/ & http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/