What Are You Thinking?
- Thread starter NotSoAwesomeFaise
- Start date
V
Oldschool DMC fan
I am impressed the petition asking Iain Duncan Smith to live on the £53 a week he claims "he would if he had to" has got 400,000 signatures in 4 days and it will probably have reached 500,000 by tomorrow.
But civil petitions and protests won't change anything if the government doesn't listen or care (which this one doesn't). In that case, when democracy is ignored, the only option left for people to voice their anger and desperation is violence. When enough of us can't afford to eat, it will happen.
A government making barbaric poor-hating policies like it is, will only cause a barbaric response in the end. Honestly, if they insist on making the poor of this country even more numerous and poorer, I can only hope some kind of revolution is afoot before the country is screwed and the people lose their spirit entirely.
But civil petitions and protests won't change anything if the government doesn't listen or care (which this one doesn't). In that case, when democracy is ignored, the only option left for people to voice their anger and desperation is violence. When enough of us can't afford to eat, it will happen.
A government making barbaric poor-hating policies like it is, will only cause a barbaric response in the end. Honestly, if they insist on making the poor of this country even more numerous and poorer, I can only hope some kind of revolution is afoot before the country is screwed and the people lose their spirit entirely.
Angel
Is not rat, is hamster
Ha - I got a questionnaire from our very own Prime Moron-ister the other day asking about my views on how the budget cuts are affecting people. I am under no illusions that the PO box it goes back to is just a big wheelie bin somewhere in Halifax, but I still took the time to include an A4 sheet of paper detailing why he's a prick and all his lackeys want rounding up and shooting in the knees. And then watch as they are refused DLA and told they are contributing to being a "nation of skivers".
Aspiration Nation indeed...they just put that in because it's an assonance and sounds clever.
What they need are people who have learnt through hardship how to budget and manage costs telling them how to set the budget. It's all very well raising the level of personal income to £3000 before the tax kicks in but who in the hell has money to spare to save that much as it is?? Or how about how £58 per week is nowhere NEAR enough to care for a disabled person - sure, here's some money to help you with caring costs. But don't you DARE earn anything over £100 or we'll fine the crap out of you. No carrots, just big capitalist sticks.
Aspiration Nation indeed...they just put that in because it's an assonance and sounds clever.
What they need are people who have learnt through hardship how to budget and manage costs telling them how to set the budget. It's all very well raising the level of personal income to £3000 before the tax kicks in but who in the hell has money to spare to save that much as it is?? Or how about how £58 per week is nowhere NEAR enough to care for a disabled person - sure, here's some money to help you with caring costs. But don't you DARE earn anything over £100 or we'll fine the crap out of you. No carrots, just big capitalist sticks.
Angelo Credo
Kept you waiting, huh?
Bet you loved the Right Honourable Moron Ian Duncan Smith claiming he can live off £7 a week, eh?
Angel
Is not rat, is hamster
Tosser. What he knows about "living on the breadline" when his wife is the daughter of nobility and they live in freaking Bucks (where I come from, interestingly enough) would fit on the back of a postage stamp. That has been cut in half.
Hells bells, I was a single parent in council housing living off £43 per week - I still had bills, food to provide and clothing to consider. Until he has spent an ENTIRE winter without heating and about one decent meal per week, he can eff right off. If the Salvation Army hadn't sent me aid parcels every so often, we'd have starved - no exaggeration.
Angelo Credo
Kept you waiting, huh?
I can't help but get the feeling that his belief that he could live on that £7 a week would also include financial back up from his dear wife.
Two weeks of unemployment and living off benefits does not the experienced man make, I'd actually like to see him stripped of his wealth and home, thrown in a council house and forced to live off of what benefits he can get granted to him for a year just to see how long he goes before calling it quits and going back to wifey + sacks of cash.
Actually, I'll correct that, I'd like to see him fed to sharks.
Angel
Is not rat, is hamster
I watched about an hour of the budget this year and just spent most of that time raging. Not least because of the "catchy" little phrases they kept spouting which essentially meant nothing. Along with the jargon (they still have yet to present a budget in language that your average person would understand) and insulting attitude towards those who simply CANNOT work...yeah, I was fuming.
Add the bedroom tax onto that and you're on your way to having riots like we had over the Poll Tax back in the day. We keep our head above water now but how long will that last? I cannot work until Jake either is miraculously cured or is forced through taxes to leave home to go into residential care (which will be over my dead body). So that leaves Steve to try and make enough money to keep us all going. And he works damn hard but when you've got kids at home and one of whom needs constant care it's not easy to keep a business going at the same time. Where we live there is virtually NO work - anyone with a job before the crash wasn't dumb enough to leave it and those needing jobs are literally queuing up for them. We don't all live in Buckinghamshire - and even when I did, there was more than your fair share of homeless, destitute and struggling people. But hey! We're all a bunch of skivers, right? So why not just create little workcamps for us and never speak of us again to polite society...
Add the bedroom tax onto that and you're on your way to having riots like we had over the Poll Tax back in the day. We keep our head above water now but how long will that last? I cannot work until Jake either is miraculously cured or is forced through taxes to leave home to go into residential care (which will be over my dead body). So that leaves Steve to try and make enough money to keep us all going. And he works damn hard but when you've got kids at home and one of whom needs constant care it's not easy to keep a business going at the same time. Where we live there is virtually NO work - anyone with a job before the crash wasn't dumb enough to leave it and those needing jobs are literally queuing up for them. We don't all live in Buckinghamshire - and even when I did, there was more than your fair share of homeless, destitute and struggling people. But hey! We're all a bunch of skivers, right? So why not just create little workcamps for us and never speak of us again to polite society...
Angelo Credo
Kept you waiting, huh?
Know what you mean on the whole there being no work here.
I live in what is basically the arse end of nowhere, fairly small little seaside town with other reasonably small little seaside towns dotted around it and no feasible way for me to get anywhere bigger at the moment. I was told at the job centre recently, that in this area alone, last year, for every job I was applying for, there were 40 to 50 other applications going for the same position.
This year? It's closer to 70-80.
Don't get me started on the bedroom tax business, my biggest bout of rage about that was related to parents who's children are in the armed forces, while they're on deployment, the parents holding their rooms for them so they've actually got a roof over their head and a place to sleep when they come back are forced to pay extra for the cost of an empty room, the alternative? "Move somewhere smaller."
Maybe it's just me, but I have this idea that most parents would sooner have it happen over their dead body than move into a smaller house and allow for their child to come back and find they don't have a roof over their heads.
Punishment and taxes because parents care about their children, where's the justice, eh?
Angel
Is not rat, is hamster
To me, parents saving a room for their kids is sensible - surely it's either that or the young person in question has to sign on until they can find work and afford a place of their own or else clog up the already-full housing waiting list. But no, let's tax people for trying to help the economy by being financially responsible.
We got a bill one year for, and I quote, "saving too much". I would have laughed if it wasn't all so utterly depressing.
We got a bill one year for, and I quote, "saving too much". I would have laughed if it wasn't all so utterly depressing.
V
Oldschool DMC fan
What does that even mean...? Other than being a stupid buzzword like 'Big Society'. Eurgh.
I thought that in the 80s it was a well-known leak that the Tories did not want to encourage ordinary people to be ambitious and to aspire to anything more than buying a house, because it made 'civil unrest' and demands for more likely.
And since this lot slimed their way in (illegally I'll bet) haven't they been saying we all feel too entitled, we should knuckle down and be grateful we're not living in China, etc. - right after they monetise the university system so that it's no longer there to educate so much as make a quick buck from wealthy foreign students, and are busy dismantling the NHS and demonizing the poor, unemployed and disabled people as Scroungers. It sounds and looks to me like they would like nothing more than for us all to feel unendingly grateful we still breathe, than have any 'aspirations' whatsoever.
There was a time I'd have voted for the Lib Dems as well. Not any more.
These politicians remind me of some people I meet around here now and again who think poverty is a myth. They don't have any hardship of their own, apparently, so anyone else who says they are having some is just exaggerating of course. We're a first world country! Puppies and rainbows and tea and cake, la la la. We won't be first world for much longer at this rate....
Vergil'sBitch
I am Nero's Mom & Obsessed fan girl
I still live at home with my parents and I pay £20 a week in rent for a tiny box room in a house that my parents get housing benefit for. My dad is one of those people unable to work and my mum is his carer. If it wasn't for me, I don't think they'd be able to make it through a fortnight between payments.
(Also, if the bedroom was empty, they'd have to pay £14... I know it's a £6 difference, but to me, it doesn't make sense.)
V
Oldschool DMC fan
You're exactly right - the people who say it are not local, they are landlords from elsewhere in the country, even my own landlord here has stood there and made fun of my profession (that pays his rent). And they let out holiday cottages that stay dormant for 3/4 of the year and turn Cornish villages into ghost towns. If I were a house owner around here selling up, I seriously think I would only sell it to a local/Cornish person who was going to live in it, not someone who was going to leave it to collect dust. There's a huge problem in this part of the country with people buying up houses and trying to sell them at ludicrous prices to rich people. Seriously, I saw one the other day up the road, wanting nearly 3 quarter of a million for a small cottage in the middle of nowhere... yet everyday people here struggle to even buy one because the demand here has been over-inflated by this whole practice.
The Tories and Cornwall Council are apparently in cahoots to do even more housebuilding... too much of which will probably be totally beyond the reach of people like us.
The Tories and Cornwall Council are apparently in cahoots to do even more housebuilding... too much of which will probably be totally beyond the reach of people like us.
Angel
Is not rat, is hamster
my mum and stepdad have been trying to retire to cornwall for 3 years now but cannot afford the prices. found a perfec little place in Mousehole but costs a fortune.
V
Oldschool DMC fan
Oh! I was going to live either here or Mousehole when I chose to relocate... I saw the prices there!! Madly expensive. It's almost the same situation in a sense if you are renting and not buying, you are being charged too much just for the privilege of being 'there' in a 'nice' place. In the end I chose Tintagel because the estate agent in Mousehole rudely let someone else have the place I wanted to rent right under my nose even though I'd booked a viewing, so I ended up here. I'm still paying for the privilege of living in this amazing wonderful place - and guess what, someone got stabbed practically outside my door last month by a drunk from Camelford. . .
Autumn
Welcome to my world....
:w00t:
Who iz dat?! :O and where can I find him...
Have you met Zevran from Dragon Age?
If your breathing, I think he'll like you XD
Dante's Stalker
"Outrun this!"
Ish Julian and NO HE'SH MINE!!!!!!
It's Luke Worrall ^_^ I've been using him for my Julian base since Skins came out.