The Bizarre World Of Right-Wing Politics.

There are some days when you'd be forgiven for thinking that the world has suddenly turned upside down. The reason for this feeling, unfortunately, is that it is often true in the bizarre reality that is Toryworld. We are constantly being bombarded by opposing and mutually exclusive "facts". While there are two million unemployed in the country, half of whom are under 24, and controlling immigration is a right-wing fetish, we are now being told by the "Telegraph" that retirement age should be increased to 70 because we have a shortage of workers. In a country in which homelessness is on the rise and is about to get worse and where young people are completely shut out of the housing market because of house prices and a shortage of supply, the Tories are moving heaven and earth to increase those same house prices. In an economy all but destroyed by privatisation, low wages and deregulation the Tories want more privatisation, pass laws to create "a more flexible workforce" and look to deregulate ever more industries while rewarding those who break existing if weak laws with ever-growing bonuses. This is the strange world where less money in consumers pockets has no effect on demand, taxing rich people at higher levels returns less money to the Exchequer, houses stand empty and abandoned while homelessness is on the rise, criminal bankers are rewarded with bigger bonuses and better tax breaks and a £10 million state-funded funeral for a widely loathed ex-Prime Minister whose own children are worth millions is better value for money than funding a hospital. This is "having your cake and eat it" politics, a "heads I win, tail you lose" political philosophy in which the Tories provide themselves with a plaster for every sore. This is what naked greed and selfishness looks like when elevated to the level of policy.

Mystery Fall In Unemployment Without Jobs Explained.

The mystery as to how the government has brought down unemployment while, at the same time, wrecking the economy has been made clear today by the BBC in a rare departure from their normal support of the Tories. It would seem that welfare to work corporate sharks have been taking the line of least resistence and encouraging the unemployed to pretend they are self-employment so they can claim working tax credits instead of benefits. Essentially they have been perpetrating a confidence trick at public expense and pocketing huge amounts of money in the process. This is hardly surprising since they are a bunch of crooks and have been encouraged to plunder the public purse by another bunch of crooks who like to call themselves "the government." The Tories have managed to privatise unemployment and turn it into cash cow for the corporations they themselves have invested in just as they have with the NHS. Nearly all of the so-called "reforms" that the Tory party has introduced so far are little more than a licence for them to print money for themselves and, as such, are corruption on a literally industrial scale. They may have an Eton and Oxbridge education but this latest inacrnation of the Tory party are spivs pure and simple, the lowest form of pond life - confidence tricksters.

Gove Helps With The Unemployment Figures

Michael Gove, the obnoxious runt in the Tory litter, has taken the lead in reacting to the bad news about unemployment. Not only have the figures for those out of work gone down but the figures for those claiming unemployment benefits have gone up. This, as can be imagined, is a Tory nightmare as workers threaten to become slightly more confident while the cost of throwing people out of work goes up. The fact that the figures make absolutely no sense whatsoever is a secondary concern since nothing the Tories claim makes sense to anyone but them. Gove's solution is quite simple - reduce those working at the Ministry of No Education by 25% while making sure that the redundancies fall disproportionately on ethnic minorities, the disabled and those over 50. "My measures accord well with Tory principles," he told our reporter. "They will redress the imbalance of too many people having jobs causing them to become increasingly bolshie and threatening to expand the economy by creating extra demand. At the same time they will attack the causes of all that is wrong with Britain - filthy foreigners, useless crippled people and old farts who have not had enough sense to become government ministers. Coupled to my improvements in education - a greater emphasis on rote learning, privatised schools to fleece parents, universities that working class scum can't afford to go to and the King James' Bible to ensure mindless acceptance of my authority - we can all look forward to a new future in the 18th century."

Yet Another Tory Parades His Ignorance.

As the Tory party reels from the shock disclosure by Andrew Mitchell as to how they regard the rest of us, they also seem compelled to line up in order to underline the message. George Osborne, for instance, seems completely unconcerned that he is willing to spend £180 of taxpayers money to avoid sitting with the plebs on a train. The latest suicidally stupid Tory to get in on the act is Mark Hoban, the Employment Minister, who is urging the uenemployed to “roll up their sleeves” and get a job. The fact that the Tory party has done its absolute level best to make sure that there are no jobs to get doesn't bother him at all. Nor does the fact that taking money from the unemployed, as he will begin to do from tomorrow, will not create a single job but, instead, will simply add to the sum total of human misery that the Tories are inflicting on the country so they and their rich pals don't have to pay tax. The reason that Mr.Hoban can be both so stupid and so lacking in empathy is easy to understand. He has spent his entire working life in the finance industry where ineptitude is par for the course and is positively encouraged while fraud is considered to be the pinacle of achievement. In 2011 he was happy to secretly meet with banking lobbyists intent on watering down the controls that the Vickers Report was urging to stop banks from taking insane risks with our money. He neither understands what it is like to be unemployed nor does he care. He is only concerned with making sure that bankers can continue to defraud the rest of us, while the problems of the plebs remains eternally beyond the scope of his limited imagination. For him it is axiomatic that the rich have to be rewarded to make them productive while the plebs have to be punished because that self-serving philosophy is the foundation of all Tory philosophy.

Heads They Win, Tails We Lose.

The coalition government has become rather fond of claiming that they have brought down the deficit and that their austerity programme is working. The truth is that this is an outright lie. Britain's national debt is rising faster than any other European country. In five years the Labour government borrowed £319 billion. In the two-and-a-half years since the coalition came to power they have managed to borrow £465 billion - a stagering increase by a factor of three. If this is not shocking enough the way that money is being used, or rather abused, is even more disturbing. The number of homeless families being accomodated in Bed and Breakfast establishments has increased by 44%, the number of people receiving emergency food aid from charities has doubled, many teachers are now buying food for their pupils even as the number of breakfast clubs declines at an alarming rate and the number of young people now out of work has risen by a frightening 168%. That is the cost of the Tory-led assault on the ordinary people of this country while things are set to get worse as benefit cuts begin to bite and energy and food prices rocket upwards. And what are our MP's talking about as the Tories pursue the hopeless goal of lowering spending to fund tax cuts for the rich? The proposal that their pay should increase by over 40% to "compensate" them for a potential loss in their pension rights. Compensated? They should all be beaten with sticks.

Benefit Scroungers Cost Millions.

As part of his campaign to raise his own personal prejudice against the unemployed to the level of a political philosophy, Ian Duncan Smith wants a legal ban on them spending their money on such things as booze and fags. This, of course, makes the assumption that the unemployed, many of them thrown out of work by the Tories themselves, are all feckless scroungers whose selfishness knows no bounds. It also assumes that, as a group, the unemployed are different and simply don't deserve the freedom of choice that the rest of the population enjoy. "“There are people who are using benefits to fund a habit and children are going hungry," IDS slyly suggests in a blatant attempt to shift the blame for starving children in this country from himself to the victims of his vile policies. His bigotry is brought into sharper focus when the privileges that he and his fellow MP's get are taken into consideration. While the unemployed are being faced with a choice between a packet of cigarettes or a tin of beans, MP's are faced with a choice between a risotto of pea and broad bean with Golden Cross goat’s cheese or a roasted half spring chicken with stuffing for less than £3.00, while their cigarettes, cigars and booze can be bought without the taxes that the rest of us have to pay. Why? Because such items are subsidised by the taxpayer to the tune of a cool £5.8 million per year. That is nearly £10,000 a year for each and every MP - in addition to their basic salary of £65,738 - £175 per week, or three times what a single unemployed man or woman get in benefits to pay for everything. When it comes to scrounging IDS and his mates leave the unemployed in their dust.

Tories Blame The Unemployed For Unemployment.

In the wake of their utter failure to revive the economy by bleeding it to death the Tories have, once again, taken up their fall-back position of blaming the victims. Those who want only to live a life of luxury on less money per week than most Tories spend on a good lunch will have 20% of their benefits taken off them after being unemployed for 12 months the right-wing think tank The Free Enterprise Group has proposed. Anyone out of work for more than six months will be forced into unpaid labour. This, the Tories have the sheer brass neck to claim, is part of their measures to "boost economic growth." How such measures will do that is anyone's guess, but the Tories have never allowed inconvenient facts get in the way of a good lie. It is also proposed that the first 12 employees of a company should be allowed to dodge tax by claiming to be self-employed and that transport and emergency service workers should be banned from striking by law. Chris Skidmore, Tory MP for Kingswood who co-wrote the proposals, commented; “Now is the time for the Conservative party to be brave. We need bold thinking and ideas that reflect the fact that we are the party that believes people should have the freedom to make the decisions about the things that affect them.” Cheered by such inane comments Geoffrey Wheatcroft writing in the "Guardian" has suggested that the time is right for the Tories to shake off popularism and embrace their aristocratic instincts. The problem with the Tories, it seems, is that they've forgotten the "redeeming virtues of the old aristocracy." They may have but others have not. These "virtues" included arrogance, selfishness, self-satisfaction and the deluded belief that they were a superior race distinct from the rest of Britain. In fact exactly how the Tories see themselves in any case.

Nick Clegg Tries To Claw His Way Back.

Nick Clegg, probably the worst turncoat in the history of British politics, has apparently had an epiphany and come to the conclusion that perhaps, after all, wealthy people should pay taxes too. Telling the "Guardian" that the recession is deeper than expected and has mysteriously turned into a double-dip variety for no apparent reason, he has suggested that perhaps rich people should pay tax in the interests of "fairness". His colleagues in the LibDem party are reported to be astonished at his sudden conversion to the principle that we should "all be in this together" and it has been widely mooted that Nick might be trying to save his party, not to mention his reputation and career, before the next election. "This is an exciting development," a leading LibDem told the "News in Shorts". "Nick has finally realised that the only way to save the party at the next general election is to get his lies in good and early. We think that this initiative could become one of our flagship policies along with "no tuition fees for students". Meanwhile the Tory half of the firing squad that describes itself as a government showed its true colours when Chris Grayling, the Tory Minister for employment and notorious for the size of his property portfolio paid for by the taxpayer, announced that young Londoners would be forced to work for nothing. "I've looked at Nick's proposal," he told our reporter with a snigger,"and come to the conclusion that this is nothing more than the politics of envy. Rich people can't be taxed because they'll throw their toys out of the pram and move to Lichtenstein. We cannot kill the golden goose that refuses to lay any eggs. I for one would immediately upstakes and move to Belize in order to demonstrate my patriotism. The only way forward is less taxes for me and more for you - after all we are all in this together aren't we?"

Ian Duncan Smith Upset By The Facts.

Ian Duncan Smith, the most evil and odious man in modern British politics, has railed against the BBC for telling the truth about unemployment. Faced by the truth - that the recent "fall" in unemployment is down to the rise in part-time work and zero hour contracts that have seen the return of day labour - IDS has accused the BBC of "peeing all over British industry and the private sector." This, apprently, is a far worse crime than IDS's own vicious campaign against the disabled and sick. The "News In Shorts," in the interests of fairness asked the Tory's leading bully-boy and chief scumbag for a further statement; "How dare the BBC tell the truth about me and my suspect statistics. The truth is whatever I say it is. The private sector is not simply an economic force, it is a holy God-inspired crusade that will lead us all to the promised land and I am its prophet! Bow down before me and worship at the altar of untrammeled greed and stupidity before I have you all burned at the stake for heresy." Somewhat surprised by the glazed look on IDS's face during all this, our reporter asked a leading psychologist for his opinion; "Well, of course, psychologists no longer like words like "insane" and, instead, now like words like "delusional" or "anxiety." IDS, however, is simply barking mad and should, in my opinion, be loacked up before he runs amok in the street. I'm afraid that less harsh words such as "barmy" are no longer adequate to describe this absolute nutter."

Back-To-Work Companies Demand More Torture Of The Unemployed.

Having spent two years trying to shoehorn 2 million unemployed into 500,000 jobs the "back-to-work" companies are beginning to panic. Unable to make the kind of money they would like for teaching people to write "killer" CV's and coaching the unemployed in interview techniques they are increasingly turning to punishing the unemployed through the imposition of sanctions. Now they are asking the government for more punishments to be handed out for those who refuse to get non-existant jobs. In a mealy-mouthed statement Chris Grayling, the Employment minister, said; "This government expects jobseekers to comply with the conditions of their benefit if they are receiving taxpayers' money." The same might be said of MP's who continue to abuse the expenses system to line their own pockets and look to backhanders from corporate "lobbyists" for nice little earners at the expense of the rest of us. We might also expect a British government to work in the interests of the people rather than in their own interests but, alas, the idea that they are there to serve the people as a whole is not a principle they are prepared to consider. Unwilling to take any action that might alleviate the situation the Tories have only one solution to every problem - punish the victims. They continue to trot out the same tired old phrases about tax-payers money, but conveniently choose to forget that they, too, are paid through the public purse and ignore the fact that they are hardly good value for money.

Return To Slavery Underpins The Jubilee.

One of the most shameful and disturbing aspects of the Diamond Jubilee celebration was exposed in the "Guardian" today in a story that outlined the use of slave labour to marshall the crowds in London. Unemployed people, forced to work for their benefits, were bussed into the Capital in the early hours of the morning, forced to change clothes in the street and made to work with no toilet facilities for 24 hours. Arriving after an overnight trip from Bristol many of them were only able to snatch a couple of hours of sleep under London Bridge before they made to marshall the crowds that lined the Thames. Of course in those halcyon days before the Tories seized power these people would have been given temporary contracts and paid at least the minumum wage. But today, with the unemployed demonised as "feckless," the Tories have managed to turn public opinion against themselves to the point where such a monstrous piece of profiteering would even be contemplated. Worse yet it calls into question the very idea of the Jubilee which now stands exposed as nothing more than a political diversion, a celebration of how the "haves" can command the "have-nots" to undertake any demeaning task or risk punishment and how 1,000 years of British history shows us in no incertain terms that there has been no progress whatsoever. Perhaps the Queen, when she sees this story, will find those people, so shamefully treated, and pay them a decent amount of money out of her own personal vast fortune. Perhaps, but I wouldn't hold my breath. The Jubilee gives Britain the opportunity to look at itself. The question is can it look itself in the eye?