Iain Duncan Smith to live on £53 a week

"This petition calls for Iain Duncan Smith, the current Work and Pensions Secretary, to prove his claim of being able to live on £7.57 a day, or £53 a week.

On Monday's Today Programme David Bennett, a market trader, said that after his housing benefit had been cut, he lives on £53 per week. The next interviewee was Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, who was defending the changes. The interviewer then asked him if he could live on this amount. He replied: "If I had to, I would."

This petition calls on Iain Duncan Smith to live on this budget for at least one year. This would help realise the conservative party`s current mantra that "We are all in this together".

This would mean a 97% reduction in his current income, which is £1,581.02 a week or £225 a day after tax* [Source: The Telegraph]"

Please join me.


Lets show the TBS that we are not fooled by their lies!

Monty Gompertz?

Have you noticed how you never see Will Gompertz and Charles Montgomery Burns in the same room together?

For those of you that don’t know, Will Gompertz is the the annoying BBC art critic and all round tit and Charles Montgomery Burns is the evil boss from the Simpsons.

 

The fact that Charles Montgomery Burns is a cartoon character has absolutely nothing to do with it. Come on, tune into your surrealist side. Keep up you lot!



Dogwood sunrise

Sometimes less is more...

Big respect

Watching Made In Dagenham on the idiot box last night reminded me both of how far we have come, how far we still have to go and how much we have got to lose if with give in to the TBS that run this country.

 

When equal pay for women was introduced (by a Labour government) the scare mongers and lackeys for the wealthy TBS claimed that 1000s of jobs would be lost. Of course that didn’t happen. Then when the minimum wage was introduced, along with implementing the social chapters (by Tony Blair’s government) the TBS and their hangers on claimed the same again; massive job losses as a result. It never happened. And neither will it happen when the living wage is finally introduced. What the greedy Tory Bastard Scum won’t accept is that if you treat workers with respect and reward them well productivity goes up. What they also don’t want to accept is that if people were at least paid a living wage it would remove so many from welfare. It’s a disingenuous myth that most benefit claimants are either unemployed or immigrants. It just isn’t true. The majority of benefit claimants are hard working people who work for bosses that are too fucking tight and exploitative to pay them a decent wage. That’s why the welfare bill is so high. We, the tax payer (which is all of us incidentally) are subsidising private industry big time!

 

One of the most successful economies in the world, Germany, pays some of the highest average wage rates. If they can do it so can we. Wake up Britain and stop believing the nonsense that the TBS and their snidey newspaper and television mates tell you. Now!

Tory Bastard Scum

A respectable, church-going, pillars of their community, couple that we know have this phrase that they use that I quite like. It is ‘Tory Bastard Scum’ or TBS for short. A snappy little phrase I’m sure you’ll agree and something that can be applied to most Tories. So when you see TBS mentioned on my blog you know what it means.

Dear Diary Nº5

Dear Diary, woe is me. Yesterday I had the wind taken out of my sails. I received a phone call just after five from the diabetic nurse at my doctor’s surgery. She had the results of a recent blood test. Back in July I was diagnosed with Impaired Glucose Tolerance so this was a follow up test to gauge how I was doing. My red blood cell glucose level were down and into the okay but my fasting level was no different from the time before and still too high. I felt gutted. I’d vastly improved my diet, I get regular exercise, I’ve lost weight even though my body mass index is low and I had cut down on my alcohol intake. I feel hungry most of the time and now felt totally despondent. Oh Dear Diary what am I to do?

 

After a healthy evening meal and a couple of glasses of wine I decided to sleep on it.
 

And, Dear Diary I can confide in you that it was the right thing to do as this morning I’ve awoken refreshed and determined to do something about it. As you know one of my passions is ale. Think I need to cut down on my passion even more. I’m starting to think the unthinkable. Not give it up completely. I’m not that deranged. The unthinkable is ordering halves instead of pints. My strategy will be to order a half pint of ale and a glass of sparkling mineral water. A tad girly you might think but not as girly as just ordering a half pint of ale in my humble opinion. But Dear Diary I feel this, though it will help, will not be enough. A bit more vigorous exercise is needed. My sedentary job doesn’t help. Whilst every day between home and station and work and station I walk most of my working day sees me sat sitting at my desk. I need to be up and down more. I need to drink more water. And, I need at least one long power walk at the weekend. Wish me luck. I have to beat this.

 

 

Life tag – Editors – Munich

Marks and Spencer are pants!

For two days now I’ve been trying to place an order online with Marks and Spencer. I get right to the final stage, hit the ‘Place Order’ button and the fucking useless website crashes out. M&S are in my opinion a bunch of useless tossers.

I phoned the so called customer services who were rather brusque and not at all helpful. Because I was using Internet Explorer they suggested I used Google Chrome instead. Why is it that other retailers don’t seem to have these problems? Why is it that Marks and Spencer can’t employ a decent software company to design them a website that works?

How many Trotskyists does it take to change a light bulb?

Well by the time they’ve formed a steering committee, drafted a resolution condemning capitalist light bulb manufacturers, gone out and tried to sell a few newspapers, condemned the resulting darkness as bourgeois oppression and then gone down the pub; none.

But never mind, come the revolution…

Comrades the proletariat are incandescent with rage

Motion passed. By.

Left hand down a bit

That!



I do my thing

I’m currently reading a book that makes reference to the work of Fritz Perls. Not in any great detail, just a few references. Quotes mainly. Quotes which seem quite apposite to my life at the moment. So I searched the web for some of Fritz Perls’ quotes and found this:

“I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful. If not, it can't be helped.”

Fritz Perls

Make of it what you will.