The News In Shorts

How the news would look if everyone stopped waffling and told the truth.

Thursday 25 July 2013

Mystery Rise In Britain's Death Rate.

After three years of austerity in which the poor, disabled, unemployed and elderly have seen their disposable income shrink disastrously there has been a 5% rise in Britain's death rate. In actual figures this represents 23,000 unexpected deaths mainly amongst the elderly poor. What in any third world country would be regarded as genocide is, in Britain, simply described as "mysterious." How could this be? We asked a government spokesman for the Coalition's view; "Well first of all let's get it straight - this has absolutely nothing to do with either austerity or the reform of the NHS. It's a well known fact that austerity prompts people to become far more productive - especially those over 85 years of age. At the same time the reform of the NHS which has led to a cut in the number of nurses, hospitals being forced into bankruptcy, A&E departments being overrun because sick people can't find a doctor with radar and privatisation by stealth has absolutely nothing to do with the rise in the death rate. If you don't believe me just ask Iain Duncan Smith who's beliefs are far more powerful than something as inconsequential as facts. I suspect that many of these people have committed suicide simply to make us look bad. We also believe that some have feigned death to avoid work and claim death benefits. In any event we know for certain that the rise in death rate over the last 18 months is all the fault of the Labour party. Don't forget we're all in this together, though for the poor this often means in it up to the depth of six feet."

Wednesday 24 July 2013

Britain Now Officially A News Free Zone.

Simon McCoy, reporting for the BBC, summed it all up quite neatly when reporting on the Royal birth - Britain has become a news free zone. With nothing to report and thoroughly fed up with standing in front of a London hospital for no good reason, his grumpy coverage was the only authentic voice to be heard on the BBC all day. As other reporters gushed uncontrollably and wittered on about utter nonsense he was the only one asking the question we should all be pondering - why are we all watching this pap? Is it because we need a diversion from the awful reality of Cameron's Britain? If so we've been diverted from it quite a bit lately what with the Olympics, the Jubilee, the Ashes and now the Royal birth. Is the BBC really so inane and irrelevant that it simply couldn't help itself? If so then every other news gathering service seem blighted by the same shortcomings. No, the real reason for the sickening national outpouring of sheer mindless adulation seems to point to a much deeper malaise in the British people. Nosey by nature and educated to be deferent, news about the Royal family seems to provide the nation with all the information it needs or can handle. Why worry about poverty and inequality when we can all become gooey-eyed over the birth of yet one more over-privileged and ornamental individual destined for a life of unlimited luxury at taxpayers expense? Of course the politicians love this sort of rubbish. For the Tories it allows them to do something really despicable while no one is looking. For Labour it means getting one day closer to the General Election without having to say too much about their non-existent policies. For the LibDems it means very little - which suits them because they too mean very little. The rest of us, however, have no excuse.

Sunday 21 July 2013

David Hague Sqaunders Public Money On Expensive Wines.

While the vast majority of us are suffering from the effects of austerity and are encouraged to attack disabled people in the street, while David Cameron tells us "We're all in this together" and George Osborne tells us "There's no alternative", David Hague seems to have missed the point somewhat. He is in the habit, it seems, of taking time out of his busy schedule as Foreign Secretary to choose the wines for official functions. Having once boasted than he can swill 14 pints of beer a day when in opposition, he is now able to swill some very expensive wines by the case now he's in government. During a period of 9 months last year his department managed to down 3,900 bottles of wine including Paul Jaboulet Aine Hermitage at £450 per bottle, a Bordeaux at £320 per bottle, Chateau Cos D’Estournel 1990 at £200 and Chateau Margaux 1983 at £150. In June 2012 alone his department downed 60 bottles of the Chateau Cos D’Estournel 1990 worth in excess of £11,000. But we shouldn't worry too much about this it would seem because, as a Foreign Office spokesperson made clear; "The Government Hospitality Wine Cellar is now self-financing" Self-financing? In what sense? This is taxpayers money which ever way you cut it and mealy-mouthed nonsense such as it being "self-financing" cannot hide the fact that we are not all in this together, that there is an alternative if you're a Tory scrounger and that austerity is reserved only for the hoi polloi. Bread and water is too good for this scum.

Tories Laundering Public Money.

So, the Tory story is that private enterprise is more "efficient" than the public sector and offers better "value for money" to taxpayers. Eager to prove this Michael Gove is busily engaged in privatising the education sector, promising that things will then miraculously improve. He's not wrong, though not in the way most people would wish. It turns out that one of the largest of the education trusts, the Academy Enterprise Trust, registered as a charity to avoid paying tax, has been stealing public money and diverting hundred's of thousands of pounds into the pockets of its trustees and executives. Instead of going to the schools to improve educational standards this money has found its way into the offshore bank accounts of a bunch of crooks appointed by Michael Gove. Why would any minister in his right mind allow this? Is it sheer coincidence that Gove has raked in over £500,000 in donations to the Tory party - more than any other Tory minister? The conclusion, that public money is being diverted into the hands of private enterprise who then pass some of this on to the Tory party in the form of "donations", seems inescapable. Privatisation, it would seem, is nothing less than a money laundering scheme for the Tory party. In the case of Gove this might be over-stating the case somewhat - though not by much - since much of the money given to him has come from a disgraced aluminium trader wanted by the FBI and a Mayfair nightclub owner. However, the vast majority of the donations he has gathered have come from so-called "supper clubs" in which money is handed over to the Tory party under a veil of secrecy by unknown individuals. If this is not simply organised crime then what is?

Saturday 20 July 2013

The Tories Unbalanced Economy.

The Tories are very fond of fairy tales - the unemployed are all feckless, the disabled are all benefit cheats, the economy is just like a household budget and they are all about saving money. But these so-called "ideas" are actually nothing more than half-baked prejudices that allow narrow-minded morons such as Iain Duncan Smith to declare that facts are nothing when compared to his "beliefs." In fact IDS unwittingly summed up the totality of Tory ideology and the extent of their blind arrogance. That is how the completely unwarranted "reform" of the NHS, far from saving money, has led to profligate spending amounting to £1 billion with no discernible improvements to the service whatsoever but with considerable damage inflicted upon it. Essentially this money is nothing more than the start-up costs for a new business provided by the taxpayer while the business itself is to be handed over to private enterprise with no charge. The same can be said for the new gas fracking industry which will benefit from tax breaks courtesy of the public purse. It would seem that not only are private losses to be covered as in the case of the banks, but so is the investment needed to get profitable businesses off the ground in the first place. Entrepreneurs are supposed to take risks and reap the rewards if those risks pay off, they are supposed to invest their money and be prepared to lose that investment if they are mistaken. When our government uses our money to invest in business and then uses even more of our money to cover any losses even as profits remain private, this is not entrepreneurship it is fraud pure and simple. The Tories claim that all they are doing is "encouraging" investment in Britain. But since when have energy companies needed any encouragement to help themselves to the Earth's resources in order to make huge profits or healthcare companies to profit from other people's misery? Little wonder then that since the Tories seized power in 2010 state borrowing has mushroomed while we get poorer and poorer and big business gets richer and richer. The British taxpayer has become an involuntary investor in business without any hope of reward but in the certainty that any losses will be covered by us.

Wednesday 17 July 2013

Death By Tick Box.

You hear a great deal about "the tick box culture" nowadays and how it diverts people away from their proper concerns and squanders their time. But how does a tick box culture develop in the first place? It comes about because someone, with no idea as to how a job should be done, decides that the person doing that job cannot be trusted and need to be told exactly how their working day should be structured. Usually this is because some customer or service user has complained often because they are impatient know-alls who think they are the most important person in the universe. Management, afraid that they may be criticised and with no real operational experience themselves, now introduce a questionnaire that is designed to control the behaviour of their staff and micro-manage their working day. Often this is very successful, inasmuch as the staff now have to spend so much time collecting proof that they are doing their jobs that they no longer have time to actually do their jobs. In the NHS this means that patients are neglected while doctors and nurses begin to believe that their work actually consists of ticking boxes. As a consequence complaints multiply and management, convinced that they were right all along, introduce yet more tick boxes. Eventually things become so insane that patients actually begin to die, the government steps in and - you guessed it - introduce yet more tick boxes to collect the same information that management has already collected. In other words you have tick boxes to make sure that the tick boxes are being completed correctly. Tick boxes destroy the ability of people to do their jobs properly and, in the case of the NHS, actually kill people but remain popular because incompetent managers and ignorant politicians believe that doctors and nurses cannot be trusted to do their jobs without close supervision. The question is who is supervising the incompetent managers and ignorant politicians? Perhaps they need to start ticking boxes of their own.

Monday 15 July 2013

Tories "Revitalise" The Housing Market.

The picture above shows just a few of the thousands of empty homes that represent the complete collapse of the housing market in Spain. That collapse was inevitable given the circumstances of the banking crash in 2008 after the they had gone completely insane and invested in over-valued properties for which there were no viable customers. With prices far beyond the reach of most people and far, far too many on the market even the banks couldn't find enough sub-prime borrowers to support this madness. Many of these empty houses were intended for sale to British buyers - those whose over-valued properties allowed them to take on another mortgage to invest in their dream of a place in the sun. Property values in Britain have, in fact, remained reasonable stable despite the nature of the crisis, though the sudden reluctance by the banks to lend has led to a shuddering halt for the Spanish housing boom. How has this been achieved in Britain? In a word - supply. Successive governments have kept housing in Britain in short supply by refusing to build more and, as a consequence of the ever-increasing demand, have managed to sustain a property price bubble that is nothing short of criminal. The Tories, faced with such a threat to their personal wealth in unearned property value increases, have gone one better and made housing totally unavailable to an entire generation of young people. Now local councils, in the wake of the iniquitous bedroom tax, are preparing to demolish - that's right, demolish - housing stock because no one can afford to rent them. And this is how the Tories have "revitalised" the housing market. Unable to do anything remotely moral in terms of demand and keep the value of their property portfolios intact at the same time, they have resorted to managing the supply. In other words overcrowding in slum conditions and rising homelessness is a price worth paying as far as they are concerned - as long as someone else is doing the paying. They call this a recovery when it represents only a return of the insane greed and utter selfishness that got us here in the first place.

Sunday 14 July 2013

Osborne Makes Shock Admission Over Food Banks.

George Osborne has made the shocking admission that he's never visited a food bank. The reason for this is quite easy to understand - he lives in one. Not the kind of food bank that doles out canned food close to its "best before" date to the poor however. No, his food bank is a moveable feast that follows him wherever he goes. He pays nothing for this, nor does his family because, despite being a millionaire, he and his family are fed by us the taxpayer. His property portfolio is paid for by us, his travel costs are paid by us, his TV licence is paid by us as is his subscription to Sky TV, he is paid at a rate that puts him to the top 3% of earners in the country, his pension is a platinum plated final salary scheme, he will get a huge golden handshake when he's finally voted out of office and he will shortly be getting a whopping 11% pay rise. Yet, despite his ivory tower lifestyle, the fact that he's never done a real day's work in his life and has never, never visited a food bank or even knows where the closest one is, he agrees with Lord Freud that demand for food banks has increased primarily because the poor are greedy and grasping. Talk about the pig calling the whippet fat. The stark truth is that since the welfare changes were brought in by Osborne and his gang of self-satisfied wealthy scroungers demand for food banks has risen by a staggering 200% and there has not been a single Tory MP in sight at any one of them.

Thursday 11 July 2013

The Only People Greedier Than A Tory MP.

As predicted by the News In Shorts MP's are wringing their hands in anguish at being forced to accept a hefty pay rise of 11%. While the queues outside the food banks are growing daily, the poor are taxed for having the cheek to have too many bedrooms and the disabled are told they must work or die, MP's are once again helping themselves to the public purse. This has been achieved by grasping MP's through the simple expedient of appointing an "independent" body who's narrow brief was based entirely on "need". We all need a pay increase but only MP's have found something better than a Trade Union to get it for them. To be fair they have also agreed to a curb on their expense accounts and, as we all know, they are well known for their restraint and sense of honour so that should be all right then. Meanwhile the wives of Tory MP's have apparently waded into the fray and demanded that their husbands accept the pay rise or else. It would seem that many of these so-called ladies simply can't afford enough shoes and handbags and feel that starving the poor is only right when faced by such personal hardship. A delighted Tory MP, glad for any alibi no matter how thin, told the Telegraph that "you don’t want to get on the wrong side of the wives. These are formidable ladies.” I'll bet they are, but they seem to be strangely mute when it comes to the welfare and well being of families other than their own.

Wednesday 10 July 2013

National Asset Stolen By Desperate Gang Of Crooks.

Vince Cable, hiding behind his Tory minder Michael Fallon, has announced the sale of British Mail today. We asked Mr.Fallon for his view after Vince Cable told us "Nothing to do with me mate"; "We are very excited by this sale," Mr Fallon told our reporter, "and I think that our plans should be described in full. First and foremost we will pretend to sell shares to the public, even though they own Royal Mail anyway. Think of it as if a burglar steals something from your house and then can legally offer to flog it back to you. Good eh? When this fails spectacularly on account of the public having no money, we can then turn to flogging it off at a knock-down price to our rich foreign mates. They, of course, will establish their business in the Cayman Islands or wherever and then avoid paying tax on the profits they get from putting up prices to ten times their present levels and forcing down the wages of postal workers. And, if after all this, the company still gets into trouble then we can nationalise the debts and get the taxpayer to bail them out. All in all we see this as a good deal." Somewhat concerned by this analysis we asked Mr.Fallon how this could be seen as a good deal for the public; "Public?" Mr.Fallon replied. "Oh, you mean the chumps who pay our wages and provide us with unlimited expense accounts? Who gives a monkey's trunk about them? They're too stupid to even notice when we're ripping them off and some of them will even be persuaded to buy shares in assets they already own. Give 'em a couple of grand in one hand and then take millions off them from the other and they'll be happy. In fact they'll probably erect a statue to me they're that stupid."

Saturday 6 July 2013

Peter Bone Fails In Bid For "Thatcher Day"

Looney Right campaigner and Tory MP for Wellingborough Peter Bone has failed in his attempt to get the August Bank Holiday renamed "Margaret Thatcher Day." His bid fell foul of the rules governing Parliament which give MP's more holidays and time off than most other professional pickpockets. Devastated and disappointed, Bone was left with only nine seconds of Parliamentary time to outline his scheme before he was forced to give up and think up ways to pad out his expense account instead. "This is important," he told our reporter. "If the President of Turkmenistan can ban ballet dancing and gold teeth then I don't see why we Tories can't have a Margaret Thatcher Day. If we can't get this through then how will ever get the death penalty reinstated or have the NHS privatised? Then there's the problem of UKIP. Everyone knows that if we get a Margaret Thatcher Day then former Tories who have turned to UKIP because they are insane will immediately return to the Tory party where they naturally belong. How can we survive as a political party without the blue-rinse "its all the fault of the EU, filthy foreigners and the unions" vote? Still, I am confident that we can get every school in the country to erect a bronze statue of the Blessed Margaret in their playgrounds in order to celebrate her stealing free school milk and every former mining community doing the same to celebrate her freeing them from meaningless jobs."

MP's: "Give Us A Pay Rise Or We'll Steal The Money Anyway".

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) has warned that if MP's are not allowed an inflation-busting 10% pay rise then they will have no choice but to steal the money instead. "It's a tragedy just waiting to happen," an IPSA spokesconman told our reporter. "Times are tough what with the economy being forced into a completely unwarranted recession by one group of MP's while the rest sit on their hands and do absolutely nothing about the situation. Under these circumstances MP's have no choice but to drown their sorrows in the public purse, or the trough as we like to call it. The only alternative is to pad out expense accounts like they have in the past. You can see the problem can't you? MP's must either steal money one way or be forced into stealing it in another. Important people like MP's shouldn't be forced into criminality simply because the public refuse to indulge their greed which, as everyone knows, is good. The worst thing for Parliament at the moment would be yet another scandal. MP's are delicate flowers who get very upset when they get caught doing something criminal and its our public duty to protect them from that kind of stress. Money has always proven to be an effective cure all for politicians and its important that lots of public money should always be available to attract the right kind of self-serving spivs and conmen into Parliament."

Friday 5 July 2013

More "Inadvertent" Loopholes Allow Tax Avoiders to Get Away With It Again.

The Tories have come to the shock realization that their measures to prevent their wealthy mates from squirreling away money in Switzerland in order to avoid paying tax have come to nothing after the Swiss patiently explained to our government that they could bugger off. "Try as we might," George Osborne explained to our reporter, "we simply cannot close the colossal loopholes we've deliberately created in our tax laws. We've tried, we really have, but its all too much for us. The problem with loopholes is that they have a life of their own and the more we try to close them the wider they seem to get. Essentially they are a force of nature and cannot be controlled by us poor mortals. I simply can't understand why rich people who avoided paying tax at 50p in droves aren't queuing up to pay tax at the new 45p band." The Treasury was equally apologetic; "We really are sorry that the £3.2 billion we thought we could get off our rich mates just isn't coming after all. It's all a great shame but we think we can make up the shortfall by flogging off parts of the NHS to the same rich mates who, try as they might, just can't find a way to pay their fair share of taxes. It's all very unfortunate. Still, we should all look on the bright side - at least our rich pals are happy and that's the main thing."

Wednesday 3 July 2013

What Came First? The Tory Party Or Wealthy Freeloaders?

Lord Freud, yet another smug, self-satisfied Tory scrounger, has suggested that there is no connection between people being deliberately starved by the Tory party and the proliferation in the number of food banks. According to this dedicated freeloader on the public purse the number of food banks is increasing because the feckless working-class have an unlimited demand for free food. “It is difficult to know which came first," he told the House of Lords "supply or demand.” In other words he chooses to believe that poor people are claiming free food simply because food banks exist. The corollary would be that, if the food banks were closed, then the demand for free food would fall and that all this has nothing to do with poor people not having enough to eat. Lord Freud, having spent many years working as an investment banker - in other words in organised crime - was appointed in 2006 by the best leader the Tory party ever had, Tony Blair, to provide an "independent" review of the welfare system. In 2008 he primly told us; "We cannot have people simply loafing about, doing nothing and expecting the state to finance their lifestyles". Then, in 2009, he accepted a life peerage from the Tory party after joining their ranks officially, and suddenly expected that we, the taxpayers, would finance his lifestyle while he loafed about in the House of Lords and avoided paying tax on the money he steals from us. The real question that he should be asking is "What came first? The Tory party or wealthy freeloaders?"

Monday 1 July 2013

Bedroom Tax Worse Than Tories Hoped.

The Tories are cock-a-hoop today after the BBC has reported that the effects of the bedroom tax are even worse than they hoped. Rents remain high, empty houses are proliferating, rent arrears are growing, homlessness is increasing and demoralised benefit claimants, including those in full-time work, have been reduced to quivering wrecks fearing an uncertain future. Ministers, many struggling to prevent themselves from giggling, have said that they are monitoring the situation closely and can't believe that the electorate really are as spineless and selfish as they hoped they were. In a statement, the Department for Work and Pensions said: "The removal of the spare room subsidy is returning fairness with the poor once more forced to live in the gutter where they belong and with the rich having to pay less tax." We asked Iain Duncan Smith for his view; "As a Christian I am delighted to see that the meek really are inheriting the earth inasmuch as they are being forced to eat dirt. Mine is a vengeful God and He is wreeking his revenge on all those dirty poor people who still refuse to vote Tory and give us the majority that He wants us to have. Without addresses this scum won't be able to vote at all and that should get us the majority we need to abolish tax for all rich people. This serves them right for trying to blame the poor hard-working bankers for the collapse of the world economy when everyone knows that it was all Labour's fault. Many poor people are now openly demonstrating their sinful nature by committing suicide and proving that the Tory party is quite right to punish them for being wilfully poor." Puzzled by the complete lack of any protest to the bedroom tax from the electorate we asked a Tory voter for his reaction; "Wonderful people the Tories. Many poor people say that they feel the Tories have spat in their faces, but, I ask you, who wouldn't want to be spat in the face by a Tory?"

Why MP's Are Worth More Than The Rest Of Us.

The TV studios have been packed with MP's today explaining patiently to us thickos why they can't do anything to stop themselves getting a 10% pay rise. As Keith Vaz said with a smirk "This has nothing to do with us. Our pay is in the hands of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA)." David Cameron immediately announced that he wouldn't allow any pay rise before being reminded that he had no power to stop it. "Oh dear," he then said, "how unfortunate." So what's going on? IPSA, following its brief, has looked at MP's pay and, against a background of rising prices, has concluded that MP's need a 10% pay rise simply to maintain their standard of living. Within the narrow limits of their brief set by MP's this happens to be true. What these smug, self-serving bunch of crooks are not saying, however, is that what is true for them is also true for the rest of us. What would any of us give for an "independent" body that awards us pay increases based solely on need? How much more than 1% would a nurse get, for instance, if NHS pay was decided by a similar body. Yet again MP's are wringing their self-righteous hands and telling us "Nothing to do with me, mate" while trousering yet more of our money.