Tories Give Criminals A Helping Hand.

Eric Pickles is now officially the dimmest member of the cabinet after the successful launch of his campaign to turn street lights off in order the "save" money. When asked about the wisdom of this Mr.Pickles replied; “I love it because I am economy-minded. It’s saving a phenomenal amount of money, it’s decreased crime because burglars love ambient lighting, it’s nice to see the night sky and, as someone who lives in a main street that has had its lights cut off, I can get a good night’s sleep." Unfortunately criminals don't listen to politicians too much and crime immediately shot through the roof with an increase in burglaries, car theft, muggings and vandalism. We asked a government spokesman for their view; "We are pleased to see that the entrepreneurial spirit amongst British criminals remains undimmed by this necessary action to save public money and allow us to cut the taxes for rich people. Fortunately the rich in this country can afford state-of-the-art security so it hasn't been as much of a problem as we first feared. I'm glad to be able to report that most of the increase in crime has been restricted to the lower classes who, as we all know, don't count. We regard Mr.Pickles' policy as a stroke of genius and fully support him. It's also nice to know that the criminal classes have emulated the Tory party with such enthusiasm - stealing whatever they can get their hands on while no one is looking."

Tories Undecided Who To Blame For Flooding.

Eric Pickles has decided to break ranks with his fellow Tory conmen and has now admitted that it is the cuts that are to blame for the catastrophe unfolding in Somerset. David Cameron had sought to blame Labour hoping that would be enough to draw attention away from the £97 million cut in spending on flood defences that he had sanctioned as soon as he had slithered into No.10. Recognising that no one was fooled by this clumsy attempt to shift the blame, Eric Pickles has now decided that the best thing to do is tell the truth - something no Tory has attempted in living memory. However, his admission was accompanied by a plea for the electorate to "forget the past" on the basis that it is the charitable thing to do if blaming Labour won't wash. Nonetheless he couldn't resist putting at least some of the blame on the Environment Agency. "We perhaps relied too much on the Environment Agency's advice," he told the BBC, "we thought we were dealing with experts." In fact the Environment Agency warned the government what might happen if they cut spending on flood defences four years ago but were ignored. Which just goes to show that, even when they try to tell the truth, Tories still can't resist telling a few porkies at the same time. Still you can't blame them. Somerset is a largely Tory-voting area and, if they can hide the truth that spending cuts undermines the whole economy with a few nonsensical homilies that the national budget is just like a household budget, they can't hide the flood water lapping at the front doors of those stupid enough to have voted for them. The overarching truth is that austerity is bad for everyone, except the very rich, and simply hoping that Tory voters are too dim to understand this will not be enough to win them the next election after all. Despite all their efforts to "shrink" government so they can be paid for doing nothing, the Tories are now beginning to realise that, like the rest of us, they will have to work for a living instead.

Eric Pickles Too Important To Embarrass.

It has emerged today that Eric Pickles, pictured above, is far too important to embarrass. The civil servants working in his Department of Wrecking Communities and Local Misgovernment have suggested that the ministry should be exempt from Freedom of Information requests because Pickles is so stupid he might be embarrassed if his emails were made public. "Exposure of his routine communications would reveal that Mr.Pickles is depressingly thick," a Ministry spokesman explained to our reporter. "Most Ministers are to be honest but very few of them are so dumb that they would risk revealing this by actually committing their innermost thoughts to paper. We believe that publishing his emails would bring the whole of government into further disrepute and this would be grossly unfair. It's not his fault that he was born with a mind so limited that he was forced to become a Tory MP or face starvation. His latest piece of utter tomfoolery was to try and stop union dues being voluntary paid through the wage system. This constituted a breach of contact since the union members were not consulted or their permission sought. Faced by the utter idiocy of his idea Mr.Pickles then went on to try and defend his decision in the courts and succeeded only in costing the taxpayer £90,000 in legal fees. Personally I think the money should be stopped out of his wages." We asked if Mr.Pickles would make a statement but were told that the Minister was too busy "trying to find his own arse with both hands."

"Democracy Dodging" Tories Blame Councils.

In their quest to avoid paying tax the Tories have pulled some pretty impressive confidence tricks. They've managed to slice up British society like so much salami and then turned each slice against all the others. They've turned a crisis in capitalism into a problem not for capitalists but for those they swindled. They've taken the gross ineficiencies and sheer criminality of the private sector and turned them into virtues with which to batter the public sector to death. Essentially they have turned the world on its head. Nothing, however, demonstrates their sheer audacity more than Eric Pickle's accusation that Councils are "dodging democracy." The Tories have no majority, no mandate and no real legitimacy, yet have launched an attack on the ordinary people in this country of breathtaking scope. Determined to take away our rights at work, our ability to find redress in the law and persecute the vulnerable, they steal our pensions and our NHS using their favourite tactic of blaming the victims and accusing others of being "anti-democratic." The Tories are a disgraceful blight on this country and a shameful reflection of how low we have sunk as a people.

Tories Still Scrounging.

Rural Tory councils have managed to persuade Eric Pickles that, unlike Labour held city councils, they should escape from many of the cuts to their budgets. This was achieved, sources have suggested, because the Tory Councils were threatening a Judicial Review. However, this fails to answer why the Tories couldn't give a toss about Labour councils doing the same. The real answer is that the Tories are scroungers of legendary ability and are able to get their grubby little hands on money denied to the rest of us with ease. Like all really good scroungers they are also adept at providing thmeselves with alibis for their money-grubbing. The official line was delivered by Andrew Lansley, Liar-In-Chief for the Smug Tendency in the Tory party; “Ministers agree that the evidence shows that rural areas are comparatively underfunded, and that a correction should be applied so that there is proper recognition of the additional costs of delivering services in rural areas.” Naturally the "evidence" remains unpublished while the average wealth of those living in rural Tory council areas goes completely and conveniently unremarked. What is abundantly clear is that we are no longer "all in this together" - not that we ever were - and that the Tory party has now taken to rewarding itself for voting Tory - not that it ever did anything else.

Tories Declare Their Hatred For Fat People.

Picture the scene. Tory cabinet ministers meet together at 10 Downing Street to discuss what part of society they can next vilify and punish for having the cheek to exist. They've already attacked the unemployed, the disabled, the sick, doctors and nurses, the police and working people. Who is left? They deliberate, they shake their jowls in indignation at one another and then Eric Pickles has a brainwave. "Let us attack fat people!" he declares. "What, all fat people?" David Cameron replies, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice. "No, no," Eric Pickles shoots back. "Only poor fat people. You know, the benefit scroungers who maintain a filmstar lifestyle on £60 per week. The scoungers who gorge themselves on free food from the foodbanks in between swilling their cans of lager and smoking fags three at a time. Those people." "Ah, yes," Ian Duncan Smith muses with relish. "I know all about those sort of people. I've seen millions of them in my imagination. We'll stop their benefits if they don't lose weight, join an expensive gym and fail to win a gold medal at the next Olympics." "Ooooh, the Olympics," the entire Tory cabinet sighs. "Is there any truth in this story that your ministry spends £10,000 a year on biscuits?" David Cameron asks, suspecting a banana skin. "Absolutely not," Pickles assures him. "It was only £9,999 and, anyway, we didn't spend anything really because the taxpayer paid for them." "That's all right then," Cameron replies with a sigh of relief. "I thought we might be about to do something really stupid and uncalled for. Fortnum and Mason's biscuit anyone?"

Neoliberalism Comes Of The Rails.

The idea of neoliberal economics seems to have run its course in Britain as the system it created is submerged under a tide of scandal and criminality. People are getting really, really tired of being pissed on and being then told its raining. The catalyst for the change in thinking that has taken place was the sheer criminal greed displayed by the banks who shouted loudly for deregulation and then indulged themselves in a law-breaking and common-sense-defying gambling spree that wrecked the world economy. The present scandal over the Libor is simply the tip of a very dirty iceberg and demonstrates quite clearly what the "News in Shorts" has been saying for some time - these people are criminals and should be thrown into prison where they belong. Despite the mounting evidence, however, the present government has tried to forcefeed the country with ever more unpalatable and ultimately self-defeating neoliberal nostrums. Fortunaterly there are growing signs that the tide is beginning to turn at last. After decades in which the Labour party seemed as much in thrall to the likes of Margaret Thatcher as the Tories themselves, socialist principles such as fairness and regulation are making a comeback. In London the council in Islington has refused to take advantage of Eric Pickles offer to allow them to hike council-house rents up to the astronomical levels charged by greedy private landlords and deny tenants any security of tenure. More telling still is that the Labour party is actively considering a renationalism of the railways, removing the private companies, who have plundered the transport system in their quest for ever-growing profits, once more from the equation. Only two years ago, under the shadow of Thatcher and the neoliberal economic nonsense, that would have been unthinkable. Hopefully it will only be a matter of time before the same sea-change happens with regard to the utilities - water, gas and electricity. Meanwhile the Tory party is descending into complete chaos as right-wingers continue to feed Cameron with soundbite policies that both terrify and disgust the electorate and George Osborne completes his latest u-turn, while the Chancellor now has a new nickname amongst Tory backbenchers - "Bastard."

Eric Pickles Announces Another Tory Housing Scam.

Eric Pickles has today announced a new initiative to allow unscrupulous landlords to cash in yet again on the housing shortage. Disgusied as a measure that allows ordinary families to convert their garages to "granny flats" and ease the housing shortage by moving the elderly out of houses that are too large for them, the devil, as usual, is in the detail. Pickles measure calls for making it easier to adapt garages and "other outbuildings." In other words, having looked at the huge number of garages that have been let out to migrant workers, the Tories have found a way to legitimise this and cash in on it at the same time. The scam, of course, has been couched in cosy and warm phrases intended to appeal to the middle-classes such as the idea that these outbuildings "could also be used to accommodate young people looking to make their first step on to the housing ladder." But the message is clear. Unable to countenance the idea of building proper houses for people, scared that house prices might fall and frightened that an expansion of the housing stock would undermine the profits of landlords, Pickles is determined to squeeze as many of the peasants into overcrowded slum housing as possible.

Eric Pickles - Another Tory With No Answers.

After William Hague and Simon Burns we were all treated to the thoughts of Eric Pickles on the BBC Sunday Politics Show. Having reitereated the empty phrase that "we should all work harder," that lack of demand in the economy is all the fault of too many worker's rights and reducing the deficit is the only priority, he was asked by Andrew Neil where economic growth was going to come from. He immediately disavowed government intervention and investment and said that the government was relying entirely on a non-existant expansion of exports. Pressed on this he then said that we shouldn't rely on business after all, especially in the face of competition from India and China and the economic dowturn in Europe. In short the answer was that he didn't have a clue - something he has in common with the rest of his Tory colleagues. Tories use words like "growth" but have absolutely no idea how that can be achieved and have no policies - none - that might deliver it. Instead they are straining every sinew to use the present recession as an excuse to impliment and entrench a worn out ideology that has delieverd nothing but poverty and inequality. Essentially they have commandered the lifeboats and left the ship of state rudderless while they make off towards the nearest off-shore tax haven.

Eric Pickles Now in Touch With Public Mood.

In a determined effort to demonstrate that he's in touch with the public mood, Eric pickles has thrown his not inconsiderable weight behind the campaign to save Britain's bowling greens. "I've decided to grasp this thorny issue of national importance in order to prove, once and for all, that the Tory party is a party of the people," he told reporters. "All too often, as I've toured the country in my capacity as Minister for Local Mismanagement, I've noted the parlous state of our bowling greens and the distress this causes local people. It's time to fight back and put this important policy at the centre of our political agenda." A straw poll taken in the centre of Liverpool was inconclusive as 90% of those asked made rude gestures and threatened to kill the polster.