Coalition fiddling while the UK burns

Sometimes I wonder if I've just made up in my own head the disastrous state of the UK economy, the monumental debt burden the country is labouring under, the straining welfare state and the unsustainable and unfillable black hole in the state pension.

I wonder because I keep reading shit like this, where the Coalition show their true socialist colours.

Or perhaps this, which Al Jahom tears apart here.

Then there is this colossal pile of horseshit, which Dizzy has already shovelled into the toilet where it belongs.

I could go on and on, check out AmbushPredator's daily demolition of local news idiocy as well, it never ends.

However, the point is, there are some really serious concerns around the future of the UK. Anyone who has children should be genuinely worried about what world they are growing up in. Yet all the Coalition can manage is a relentless slurry of ill-thought out, pointless ways to further harass the UK population.

Meanwhile, the lapdog media provide the mouthpiece for this flow of turds, without ever really posing any difficult questions, like exactly what the fuck are you going to do about the UK deficit Cleggeron?

This article may be the next shoe to drop, and if it does, then the UK really will be in the shit.

Part of me almost hopes it does, so people might actually wake up. However I fear this will just be yet another opportunity for the State to expand and take more control of people's lives and money.

The Fairtrade Delusion

The Adam Smith Institute have an absolutely brilliant report on the failings of Fairtrade on their website. It's a couple of years old, but seems to be doing the Twitter rounds today, and I'd not seen it before.

Since this is a massive bugbear of mine, I direct you to the report and encourage you to read it in full.

Report is here.

Stealing Photos

Looks like the French Army have been looking to the British coppers for inspiration

Murky Waters

Sion Jenkins has been refused compensation for the time he spent in jail for his step-daughter's murder. The rationale that the Ministry of Justice has given is that "For the purposes of paying compensation, the applicant must be shown to be 'clearly innocent'."

I'm not sure that I'm very comfortable with this. Ultimately, guilt or innocence should be black and white. If you are guilty beyond reasonable doubt, then you are guilty. Otherwise you are innocent. It seems here that the Ministry of Justice are saying - "he's innocent, but we don't think he is so we're not going to compensate him for 6 lost years of his life".

I don't want to speculate on his guilt by the way, not my place as I haven't followed the case, but this to me seems like a slippery slope. It's the same logic of using ASBOs to jail people without trial - someone other than a jury finding people guilty or innocent. He may be a shit. He may have killed her. But since he has been acquitted, he should be compensated for his time spent in jail for something the court has decided he did not do.

The whole thing reminds me a bit of the civil case following the OJ Simpson trial. No doubt that if the police had done things differently, OJ would be in jail, if not already executed. But they didn't, and as such the court was obliged to acquit him. Subsequently, a civil court ruled against him and he paid a massive compensation claim to the victims' families. This again sits badly with me - if you're ruled innocent by a court of law, no other court should be able to dispute that verdict. It's not about whether he did it. It's about the principle of guilt and innocence being decided by a jury alone.

Weakness Personified

No doubt the story about Social Housing no longer being "for life" will have people up in arms about "rights", and the nasty party trampling on the poor and needy once again.

However, the key element in this piece is the following:

The Prime Minister said that any changes would not, however, apply to people already in social housing. The Conservatives pledged in their general election manifesto to protect the rights of existing tenants.

What. The. Fuck?

I've struggled to find exact numbers for the amount of people in Social Housing, but it seems about 18% of households are classified that way. I suspect Social Housing would hold more people on average than Owner Occupied housing, but let's say for the sake of argument that every household has the same amount of people. UK population is roughly 60 million, so that's 11 million people already in Social Housing. All of whom will have that housing for life, and indeed are allowed to give this unlimited tenancy to their children when they die.

So what on earth is the point of this policy? The relatively tiny amount of new people demanding social housing will have fixed contracts, while 11 million people get to keep it regardless of status and salary.

This coalition is so pathetic, so terrified of offending anyone and actually making any changes. Obo's right, they're utterly useless and no better than the last lot.