It's ALL about the money - ker-ching, ker-ching

While everybody is banging on about the living wage it’s convenient to forget that money is an abstract, constructed by man in order to trade. It’s also probably the closest thing we've got to an accurate measure of exactly what somebody is worth – morally fair or not - to the society in which they live.

We each accrue what we are able, by whatever means we have at our disposal. So, if increasing numbers of people who go out to work are unable to live within their means it can only mean that our society does not value their labours. Let’s look at a few numbers… (Where’s Carol Vorderman when you need her?) 

The proposed living wage, outside London, is calculated at £7.45 per hour, presumably based on a 37.5 hour EU working time directive week. That’s a little over £14,500 per year. Take off Income Tax and National Insurance and you’re left with around £11,500 or £220 a week. You’re not worth a whole lot, are you? And after a rise in wages pushes up the price of goods – because it’s the economy, stupid – you’ll be worth even less. 

Contrast that with a family of non-workers having their benefits ‘ruthlessly’ capped by the Nasty, Nasty Tories at a mere £26,500 or £500 a week. So, let me get this straight… in effect the Labour party are opposing any reduction in benefits received while pushing for workers to survive on less than half the proposed reduced benefit ceiling? 

And then of course, a disproportionate amount of government spending goes to stopping some welfare-dependent families from eating their own kids, succumbing to various addictions, spreading disease and making the whole country look untidy. No wonder they think working is a mug’s game. It doesn't seem to make sense, does it? But then, nothing does in Socialism. 

And when all the social spending doesn't work – and it rarely seems to – we take them off benefits and bang them up in jail. Well, if it costs £47,000 a year to keep a man in prison that means they accrue some £900 a week of national wealth merely to keep them off the streets. Crime don't pay? 

Following, so far? A quick summary then, of your net worth to the country as it stands: 

• Honest worker = £220 p.w.
• Unemployable layabout = £500 p.w.
• Nasty thieving bastard = £900 p.w.

It seems pretty clear to me that this is arse-about-face and it has to change. LESS should be spent on the non-productive and the unwanted. Prison should be hard and cheap – lock ‘em up & make ‘em work to survive. Benefits should be bloody difficult to come by unless you’re genuinely needy. And work should pay enough to live a reasonable life. Who can possibly argue that this isn't how it should be?

I've got my eye on you... one false move...

But there’s no way we’re going to be able to get to that position with a population fast approaching 70 million. So, unless anybody has a better answer than my oft-proposed cull, I’ll be away to ready the snipers.

Pee-nuts, myths and legends

There's a popular urban myth that 'scientists' have analysed bowls of peanuts provided for patrons in pubs and discovered traces of urine or faeces from, variously, ten, a dozen, twenty, or as many as a hundred different people. Such 'facts' are accepted as truths almost without question because they sound vaguely plausible. Well this one is bollocks on so many counts. Firstly, what kinds of 'scientist' would mount such a study and who would pay for it? Secondly, if it had actually been done, why the alarming discrepancy with the numbers? And thirdly, a cursory understanding of bio-chemistry would tell you that nothing conclusive could be revealed by any such study.

This made up inconsequential titbit is probably the brainchild of somebody with a bee in their bonnet about blokes not washing their hands. (As if any such story would really have any effect; there's no limit to the crap blokes will swallow!) It's a fable, not a fact.

If you hit somebody over the head with a cosh, a chair, a piece of lead pipe or a handy rock you may well kill them. If you sock somebody in the jaw you are just as likely to break bones in your hand as their mandibular bits. (It's one of the reasons boxers wear gloves.) The least likely outcome is that you render them harmlessly unconscious just long enough for you to make your escape. But the latter possibility is a regularly used cipher, a handy code used in movies and thriller novels, suspending reality and allowing the plot to progress. Don't try it at home, kids.

We grow up with tales of ghoulies and ghosties and long leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night. We are also calmed by once-upon-a-times and all's well that ends well. But eventually most of us grow up and begin to grasp that the only reality is cause and effect and cold, hard economics. And so to the politics...

The lovely J M Barrie-like stories of the happy ever after welfare state, where everybody is nice and kind and we all care about each other and nobody ever has to suffer indignity or ignominy or hardship or pain or poverty is really a Grimm's tale of trolls and goats and wolves and dark, dark woods. Politicians want to tell you the first without accepting the second; who would vote for pain? (At least in this matter religion, the flimsiest of fictions, pulls no punches with its 'vale of tears'.)

We all learn by our mistakes. We've all made promises we couldn't keep and we learn two strategies to cope with this; either only make promises you know you can fulfill or, far more successfully, don't make unfulfillable promises.

Growing up is hard for everybody. Leaving behind the fantasies and facing the facts is no easy mission, but it's the only honourable way out of childhood and into a life well-lived. While we do have plenty of fully-formed adults among us we still have a far too highly infantilised population; a population who still hide under the bedclothes to avoid facing the monsters. Deliberately, or misguidedly allowing voters to believe in unsustainable fictions has lead us to a world where some people never question where their living comes from and expect the world to provide.

But I sense the tide changing. The budget is straining the seams of the nation's purse. We have no choice but to pay our way. For those who already do, this is a common sense. For those who never have, it's time to lose the jim-jams and get out of bed. As the welfare burdens weighs ever heavier on the shoulders of the nation's wide-awake, grown up tax payers, we have less and less tolerance for those who think we pissed in their peanuts.

(If you want a great example of a fairy tale - read this illuminating story about the best Prime Minister we've had since the war.)

(If you want another one, how about the great EU jobs myth?)

England, my England

I'm confused. I live next door to people I don't know. I'm not that bothered about knowing them and given that no overtures have been made, I'm guessing they're quite happy with that arrangement. In the main we rub along okay. They occasionally have a party and make a noise, I occasionally tell everybody on Twitter how annoying it was and that's about the limit of our interaction.

I have no doubt that should our road get flooded, or an earthquake blight our little corner of England, we would help each other to safety if needs be. Then, being British, we'd maybe shake hands, or shrug, say something enigmatic and insincere about not grumbling and get on with our separate little lives. Thereafter maybe a wave of acknowledgement in passing or a hurried "hello" on the infrequent meeting.

But should they decide to have relatives over to stay I'd be mighty pissed off to arrive home and find them camping out in my living room. Similarly, a raid on my kitchen cupboards, the uninvited use of my car or the viewing of Eastenders on my telly, under my licence would earn them a look of my sternest disapproval. I would show them the door and lock it after them.

I wouldn't pay them to go somewhere else, nor would I be evenly remotely interested in chipping in to pay for something I don't want in a part of town I never visit, for the benefit of people I will never know, who haven't asked for that help and don't even need it in the first place. That would be utterly ridiculous. None of that has anything to do with me. I should be free to choose who I assist. Or not.

That's how I'd like it to be with Europe. The sometimes annoying neighbour, who we could occasionally help out in a crisis, but who would otherwise just keep the hell out of our affairs. And there's no reason in the world why that couldn't be the case. For all the bollocks spouted about how we can't do this and we can't do that, of course we can. We simply announce we're shutting the door and locking the larder. How hard can it really be?

Europe, you outstayed your welcome and it's time to go home. And if anybody still believes that the EU is a force for good, you should cast your eyes over this recent Telegraph article. And when, over the next two years, you start to see lots of YOUR money being spent on the campaign to persuade you that the EU is a good thing, please remember that this is exactly what happened in 1975. Don't get fooled again.

No offence...

It's a minefield out there as you carefully negotiate your chatty way through life, dodging the bear traps and skipping over the potholes on the oh so rocky social dis-obstacle-course. Obstacle courses used to be so much fun as a kid; laughing and giggling as you grazed your knees and bruised your egos and learned how to fend off childish insults with even better ones.

And so from the playing fields to real life; like the chilli in your stir fry, casual insults liven up our dull and dreary lives and make banter better. Accepting an insult with good grace is the mark of civilised man and giving as good as you get is a sign that you have achieved your majority sense-of-humouro intacto.

Oi, you cheeky monkey! Hey, shit-for-brains! Who ate all the pies? Don't mind him, he's a bit 'special'. You clueless fuckwit! If he had one thought in his head he'd be dangerous. Think you're a wit? You're half right. She's been banged more than a Monday morning snooze button. Wow, you're even dumber than you look. I've heard more coherent arguments from a schizophrenic with Tourette's. Oh, I could play all day...

You think I'm condescending? Do you even know what that means?

But they've banned the obstacle courses now.  In the lack-of-adventure playgrounds of today, children are taught to be kind and civilised and tolerant and oh-my-god, so fucking DULL. But being nice on the outside is sinister. It's Peter Mandelson personified. It's oleaginous and slimy and just plain wrong, because it invariably turns out to conceal contempt and malice and the underhand betrayal of what used to be common British decency.

All of which is why this kind of story, about a Glasgow pub's "Ugliest Woman Competition" is both funny and sad. The pub was visited by police after an anonymous complaint was lodged, however, "they gave manager George Hogg the go ahead after discovering it was, in fact, a competition for men dressed as women." Funny, because it just IS. Sad because only the product of years of political correctness and pompous and damaging thought crime prosecution could lead to a situation where the police response was anything other than, "You're surely taking the piss?"

So, in the spirit of all that is good and wholesome and robustly Anglo-Saxon we should track down the complainants and hurl bawdy badinage at the loathsome inadequates until they fucking well cheer the fuck up, or fuck the fuck off!

The Shitty Circle of Life

So, an interesting evening yesterday as the Twitteratti gathered to reaffirm their allegiances.

I work for a living. I always have and sometimes I'd rather not, but if I don't work I don't eat. Plus, the good old Protestant work ethic keeps my nose to the grindstone. It's how it is. One day I'd like to retire - at the moment that's looking increasingly unlikely. And unless I win the lottery I may will end my days doing increasingly menial work to subsidise a meagre pension.

I can turn my hand to pretty much anything. I can read and write and count, sometimes without even moving my lips. I can cook and clean and sew and fix things up; a wall, some shelves, a kitchen... I could easily self-build a house. I have even managed the allegedly impossible Ikea assembly methodology. A Jack of all trades and master of some. I'm not 'fortunate' I have striven throughout my life to acquire skills and knowledge and fully expect to keep on striving.

I loathe those who do nothing. Those whose existence is catered for by the rest of us. Those who no more need to get up on a Monday as on a Sunday. Those who, having a 'bad day' can simply stay in bed and shut out the world. They can pity themselves as much as they like, but if they're in the system it IS piss-easy living on benefits. We workers cannot just coast along - a life on welfare includes an abundance of one luxury we will never be able to afford; time.

In pursuit of a reliable income,I had to move in 2008. I spent the thick end of £20k making my little house safe and warm and clean and new, knowing it would need to be just so to rent to the private sector. I'm no Rackman; I have to rent down here and on balance it costs me considerably more each month than I receive. But that's the economy, which I fully accept.

After proposing just one, wholly unacceptable tenant, the letting agent mislaid my details, didn't market the property and some weeks after the move the house was still empty. I accepted the entreaty of my former neighbour who loved what I'd done to the place and let it out to her. She paid the rent and yes, she was in receipt of Housing Benefit. She looked after the place and three years on, when she found a council house, she proposed her sister to take over mine.

I didn't set out to be 'social landlord'. I don't have a string of shitty little sub-standard slums to exploit migrant workers and cynically extort from the public purse. I made no money whatsoever from the deal and in fact over four years I am out of pocket, even taking into consideration the partial coverage of my mortgage liabilities during that time. If I could have sold I would.

So why should I tolerate the taunts of the pissant little commie wanker who last night revealed the true extent of his blind hatred for anybody with a job who doesn't want to support a welfare economy? His argument? That is was hypocritical of me to slag off welfare dependees while simultaneously accepting the socialist shilling in the form of Housing Benefit. Bollocks.

How many workers despise the people they work for, while accepting their wages? How many taxi drivers are repulsed by the objectionable, drunken scum they depend on for their Friday night's takings? Should every hard-working business owner, shop keeper, doctor and bin man refuse to deal with 'clients' who don't directly earn their income, or with whose preferences they differ? I rented out my home because i couldn't afford to run two houses. They [sometimes] paid rent; it was a business arrangement that allowed me to continue paying taxes.

How they earn that rent is an entirely separate issue and I reserve the right, without hypocrisy, to find welfare dependency objectionable and many of its recipients sub-human scum. The state in which MY home was left gives me no cause to change my mind or alter my principles.