Blairey Superstitious...

That Tony Blair has come out for Ed Miliband shows how desperate Labour are for votes at any cost in the coming election because, surely, it is all or nothing for them now. After all the distance Ed has tried to put between himself and the Tory-Lite facsimile of New Labour the party faithful clearly have no faith in the old way that Ed represents. Big gamble, because Blair is as hated by almost as many Labour supporters as he is by the centre-right, whose garb he adopted as a Fabian wolf in the sheep’s clothing of woolly-soft faux conservatism before allowing his chancellor to do his worst.

His worst? To plunge us further into the welfare mire from which the coalition has tried to extract us, one sticky welly at a time. Because Labour is nothing if it isn’t spending other people’s money and then demanding more. A great deal that is wrong with our country can be summed up with a few of JFK’s famous words: “Ask not what your country can do for you…” If people did more for themselves then there would be fewer Marys in the world.

Mary is a hobby alcoholic; it’s an occupation of sorts. To ring the changes she also dabbles in other mood-altering substances when the opportunity arises but times are hard and there is only so much cash to go around. To this end she is grateful for her several children, who give her unchallenged access to the benefit bounty of free money for kids, rent and Council Tax. These, of course, are well-known gateway benefits, leading users to seek ever more exotic handout-highs.

 The children, as is natural when you have no aspiration, rarely attend school regularly and they are in and out of the courts and state care as often as Mary is in and out of rehab and treatment programmes. Between them they cost the country many hundreds of thousands of pounds in failed education initiatives, court costs and frequent unnecessary visits by the emergency services, called in by concerned neighbours because of the violent stand-up rows, which replace normal functional communication.

It’s likely the kids will never work and will inherit many of Mary’s troubles, going on to reproduce for recreation and soaking up ever more healthcare and social services resources. The brood will spread and in a few generations will fill a small sink estate and its attendant state-provided army of people whose miserable job it is to contain their worst excesses and limit the damage they can do to others. Multiply the problems by the number of Marys and it is clear that public spending could be vastly reduced were they simply not there.

It's our country now...

Draconian measures would be needed to expunge the blight though, and any party attempting it is automatically damned as monstrous, but it is clear to most that it can’t continue. If the country isn’t allowed to do for Mary, then Mary must do the right thing and exercise restraint. Fat chance. The rot started long ago but it accelerated wildly under the ‘caring’ and ever watchful evil eyes of Blair’s administration. New Labour solved nothing, they just took your money and concealed the crap under the carpet. The money is still all gone – where do you think Labour will look for more?