At the end of our Teather?

Over the weekend a former minister condemned Government plans to cap household benefits at £500-a-week as 'immoral'. Sour-faced Libdem, Sarah Teather, accused the government of seeking to 'gain popularity at the expense of children's lives', claiming it as a purely political ploy to pit one class against another, or some such whining drivel. Ah, that would be the popular political ploy of bringing the ickle children into your argument, would it?

“But what about the child?” is the policy discussion equivalent of Godwin’s Law. As soon as you mention the little fascist, you have lost the argument just as surely as if you’d said “Hitler”. The kids are collateral damage in the war between granting freedom to individuals and then restricting what individuals will do to demonstrate that they don’t deserve such freedom. The children are not relevant here. They’re really not.

What is relevant is the whole way our society is structured. Some people work long hours in demanding jobs for little monetary reward. Some earn colossal salaries by dint of specialist knowledge. A lucky few inherit their living. But most of us would hope to be able to earn a living wage for a fair sacrifice of our time and talents; anybody objecting to that would surely find it hard to argue a realistic and reasonable alternative. By our joint endeavours and by our contributions to the communal pot we should be able to also help those less fortunate and run our society fairly with a bit put by for a rainy day.

Of course, there will always be a small number who will take what they want without regard for the rightful owners’ losses, but those people are called criminals and we generally frown on them, censure them, penalise them and ultimately lock them up. Depriving somebody of their hard-earned possessions is considered wrong from almost any perspective and rightly so.

I would have left it there, except, on Petrie Hosken’s show on LBC973 on Sunday afternoon, there were callers who argued that Ms Teather was right and that it was, indeed, ‘immoral’ to consider limiting the amount of unearned benefit a family could claim to a level higher than a majority of ordinary, full-time workers could ever dream of earning. What? Has the country gone stark, staring mad? (Don’t answer, it was rhetorical; of course it has. The UK lost its plot many years ago.)

But what we should be getting mad about isn't the idea of a benefit cap – there HAS to be a limit - but that such a high ceiling of benefits are being paid not to those who have fallen on hard times, not to those who need a helping hand to get back to work, but in the main to the least employable in society; those who could never command more than the minimum wage and yet have been allowed to breed uncontrolled an entire class of citizen who in turn will never work.

What’s to do? Well, I reckon two birds, one stone. Teather says we are at risk of demonising them; I say criminalise them. As many of them have subsisted all their lives on benefits – always taking and never contributing, never considering the losses of their victims, the tax-payers, they can be considered by any objective measure as thieves. And as a large part of the cost of their upkeep is housing way beyond their worth, we can redress all the wrongs by bringing back the work house.

Sorry love, the foie gras is off. Damned cuts!

Work for your keep, support your interned community, reclaim the council houses for key worker accommodation. Don’t pay, won’t pay? Welcome to Don’t work, don’t eat. Seriously you guys, you should make me King now!

Top of the Pops!

Well, it's been a record-breaking week for the blog. On Tuesday we hit the best one-day view count with the Denis McShame interview thrusting into the number one slot at 409, for which many thanks to Rob and his co-bloggers at I like being right. But every day this week has seen well over 200 views and at the time of typing When I'm King has welcomed over 1500 visitors for the week.

There's a long way to go to beat Bora Bora at 2833 all-time views, but from a standing start at the end of July 2011, I'm pretty chuffed. To think that I can enrage a couple of hundred people a day. And what's more, it's a been a bit of an international affair.

United Kingdom	21793
United States	8753
Germany	2044
Russia	1944
France	410
Ireland	385
Canada	358
Australia	308
South Africa	171
Turkey	163

So, a great big, hearty thank you to all my regulars and welcome to anybody who's stumbled onto this stinking pile of malodorous malcontent by accident.

I'll be back with more bile after the weekend! You can count on it...

For the love of Paed...

Let’s look at the facts – or failing that, let’s leap to a few conclusions. First, Jimmy Savile seems to have been a right wrong ‘un. Quickly thereafter the Feds knock on the door of the nation’s favourite go-to paedo, Gary “do-you-wanna-be-in-my-gang” Glitter and before you know it, nature-lover Freddie Starr is engaging lawyers.

Bloody hell, we thought, who knew? Then the whispers… John Peel and his ‘Schoolgirl of the Year’ competition and of course the BBC (who in the main appear to have employed or otherwise paid lots of dosh to the majority of the accused) gleefully touted the unsubstantiated ‘Tory-peer-who-shall-remain-nameless-but-it-was HIM’ story. In the oh-so-apt Twitter phrase, *facepalm*.

And now, just as it seemed to be settling down, The Hairy Cornflake, Dave Lee Travis is having his collar felt and all of a sudden it’s the Seventies in flashback. Flowers, flares and fanny could have been the mantra of the post-pirate DJs and ‘popsters’. Jonathan King had some sort of fling, around the time Chuck Berry was singing about his ding-a-ling.

Aargh, I need mind bleach! It’s everywhere! Every famous person I remember from my childhood is in the frame. If I was Simon Bates, or Mike Read, or Noel Edmonds, I’d be getting out the Cillit Bang and making sure all my records were scrupulously clean. (I’m betting David ‘Kid’ Jensen is starting to regret that chirpy nickname now.)

And what of poor old ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris… Even as I say his name – and, dear God, please don’t let this be true – you can’t help yourself imagining a dark room, a hand on the shoulder and a gentle “don’t worry, I won’t hurt you…” before a new talent is subjected to the Old Grey Whistle Test.

In the Seventies (thanks, Marilyn French) all men were declared rapists. In the Noughteens (I'm baggsying that word) we’re all paedophiles, guilty whether innocent or not. Careers will be wrecked and reputations ruined as this most emotive of accusations turns good lives bad and idols into monsters. Once you pin on the paedo badge you’ve branded somebody for life.

Kangaroos in bondage, Rolf? Noooooo!

So what can we expect over the weekend? Were you paid by the BBC in the seventies? Have you ever had a hit record? Did you appear on Top of the Pops? Have you ever presented a show in which children were featured? If I was Rolf Harris I’d really be shitting myself right now… If only those Two Little Boys could talk?

Stop Thief!

There's been a fair bit of news these past few weeks. We've had paedos and press mobs and pandemonium at the barricades of the BBC. There have been resignations and accusations and allegations of racism in refereeing. We've had  a brand new Archbishop of cant and rubber bullets in the bull rings as Europe pursues its impossible, jackbooted dream.

Yes, some pretty terrible things have been going on, but forget Savile and Starr and Entwistle and Patten. Put aside fears for the future of France and Italy and Spain. Dixon of Dock Green has far bigger fish to fry, Rebus must face his biggest case yet and Morse must remorselessly face down an evil as great as ever seen in the groves of academe.

For a monster stalks the halls of Westminster. A rapacious phantom strikes, then fades into the shadows to bide its time and strike again. Such an audacious crime has rarely been seen outside the campuses of the bright young things. A disease which formerly only affected young people living in crowded, unhygienic ghettos, or lowly office workers crowded into cubicles, has spread its deadly tentacles into the very heart of government.

And the first of its victims spoke out yesterday. Shadow Minister Liz Kendall, MP for Leicester, wrote "Someone has stolen my lunch from this fridge." She went on to say, "I do not appreciate this and warn other people don’t leave anything in here unless you’re happy for it to go missing." In a sane and normal world the travesty would end there but no, the nightmare continues, for the wrongdoer is without shame or decency and replied, "I took it… AND I’D DO IT AGAIN!"

Oh. My. Fucking. Good. God. She is forty-one years old! She's a member of bloody Parliament Has she never seen The Thick Of It? She's the shadow Shadow Care Minister? CARE? There's a minister for care?  It's easy to see what she cares about; well I bloody well don't unless the culprit turns out to be Gordon Brown, leading a Phantom of the Opera existence in the secret places of the palace, living off scraps and feeding his soul from the despair of his party.

You never see them in the same room, do you?

The Daily Mail calls the note 'hilarious'. I think it's downright hysterical. Anyway, whoever would have dreamed there could be dishonesty in the Houses of parliament?

Moira and Me

It’s a tough old life, this being a beacon of hope and enlightenment in a dim and dismal universe, but what’s a future King to do, eh? A couple of days ago, a random visitor to my blog - we’ll call her Moira - had this to say, by way of comment:

“…you appear to be a merciless, pitiless person.”

So far, so good. But Moira had more:

“With all your rage against [the world] I came to the conclusion that it is YOU who feel the self-pity you so readily scorn,”

Nah, not really, love, you’re kind of missing the point. What you don’t like, my dear, is me having opinions which don’t chime with your chakras.  Although she did then redeem herself by signing off with:

“I expect you will reply to this with your usual rapier sarcasm…”

Oh good. At least she’s sort of getting it. But you should never assume I don’t mean what I say; I prefer to think of my rapier as being more sincerely sardonic than merely sarcastic. You can make up your own mind, but maybe Moira cannot. She came over not so much despairing as simply humourless. A bland and predictable response to a world she fears, full of merciless, pitiless people spoiling it for everybody. Maybe she believes in the human spirit, free of reality and deadly earnest in its mission to bring peace and contentment to all?

And that’s the trouble, isn’t it? Had she read further she may have seen that I harbour little in the way of spite (way too much effort) more a resignation to the simple and often humorous realities of human frailty. You want nobility? There’s plenty of bloggers regularly posting feelgood, aphoristic nonsense out there; happy, clappy, hippy shit about being lovely to one another. If it only it were true. Life in Britain may have taken a downward turn but not because people are nasty, rather because people have let themselves become helpless.

The DPP, Keir Starmer, has had to be brought in to give his verdict on Twitter prosecutions – the more followers you have, the more guilty you are, apparently. Of what, you ask? Of causing offence, naturally; the big crime explosion of the decade. Since when did the police and courts system become our moral shepherds? I thought their role was to nab the bad guys, not police our beliefs – that’s the job of community, not coppers.

Yesterday I heard Labour’s Margaret Hodge on Radio Four bleating on about tax avoidance being unfair and an abuse of the system. I’m sure the many who owe their livelihoods to the tax regime in the UK, or are directly involved in assisting and advising companies and individuals would be delighted to hear her wringing condemnation of their legally playing by the rules. Who makes those rules in the first place? What a pity Labour didn’t have the luxury of office in order to bring about the great social changes they now demand. Oh, wait…

The BBC is current undergoing a period of hand-wringing self-immolation over the McAlpine affair for which George Entwistle has paid the ultimate sacrifice of having a wad of cash stuffed in his back pocket. The ensuing expensive inquiry circus will conclude, as everybody else already has, that the BBC should stick to reporting the facts, unadulterated by partisan views. The Beeb should be the voice of the nation, but why does it feel the need to be our conscience as well? (I much preferred it when Mr Entwistle wore a skeleton costume and played bass for The Who!)

The NHS is full of willing, dedicated staff who will cut you open, take out stuff, put stuff in, stitch you back together and ply you with ‘care’ until you get better. But, just like any other bloated behemoth it is also somewhat self-serving. The job of any industry is to find new markets and medicine is no different. As the list of physical illnesses nears a finite total, there are much richer pickings to be had on the mental bandwagon, where barely credible research ‘discovers’ things for people to feel bad about. Is the medical profession partly the CAUSE of mental illness?

Whatever happened to Individual responsibility? It seems to have sunk beneath a sea of collectivism, where what we do and what we say and how we feel about things is no longer in our hands. The more we expect other people (society) to direct us and protect us, the less happiness and freedom we achieve and far too many people now rely on the state to take care of every aspect of their lives. (I believe they tried that in Russia in the last century… how did that turn out?)

Yes! We are ALL individuals!

THAT, Moira is what happens when you lose your sense of perspective, your sense of humour, your grip on reality. I see my role in all this as the small boy in the crowd, pointing out what is plain to see if you only look properly. Merciless and pitiless, Moira? I prefer to believe I’m being cruel to be kind.