On Easter Sunday, the BBC decides that its lead story is an attack by four Churches on the Coalition plan to try and reduce Welfarism in the UK.Conveniently, this dovetails into the Labour meme that welfare cuts are aimed at “the most vulnerable” and “the poorest” rather than the skiving subclass that parasites off those of us who can be bothered to get out of bed each day and work. There is a dreary and relentlesss drip drip drip to the BBC output which continually undermines the best intentions of this Coalition. Miliband must be delighted to have his broadcast division so active and always present in our living rooms.
BLESSED ARE THE IDLE..
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And Jesus came unto the town of Bethany. He gathered his disciples around him and he said unto Lazarus who had risen from the dead,
‘Watch it mate, better get back to your bed – ‘cos if them DSS snoopers catch you running about on your way to the pub, they’ll cut off your Disability Benefit!’
Here’s 1.7M ‘idle’;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9963012/900000-choose-to-come-off-sickness-benefit-ahead-of-tests.html
The church like the bBC does not want to mention these.
According to the BBC the NHS envy of the world is doing a fantastic job. How come then we have so many sick people that the nasty Tories are trying to get into work?
The BBC know that by their continued attacks and by giving any and all other groups opposed to these modest changes air time , they will succeed in making the government climb down. They have put them in a position where any government can only govern with their consent. So much for democracy.
So desperate is the position that I think the Tories should ignore the BBC entirely and go ahead with implementation of a vigorous savings plan. There is a chance that people will support it even in the teeth of furious opposition by the BBC. At least it would force out into the open the way in which the BBC oppose the policies of the democratically elected government and with skillful handling the Tories could make an issue out of the anti democratic stance of the BBC.
Obviously this is a high risk strategy but by just allowing the BBC to dictate the agenda the Tories are 100% certain to lose and the people will go on being lulled to sleep by the BBC and their liberal left chums.
The Tories should try trusting the people and it might reveal how unrepresentative the BBC liberal left position is. .
Great idea, but it would require a Conservative Party leader with a spine and at least a vague idea of how his would-be-voters really feel.
1. Cut all quangos.
2. Banish all charities that are not to be found on the High St
3. Cut Foreign Aid except to our friends in the future.
4. Banish all pilgrims and union double headers from the pay roll..let the unions stump up.
5. Banish the next of vipers that is the BBC.
6. Make the top public sector post to carry no more than £40,000.
7. Make Labour pay for its own bloody broadcasts, and stop the bloody BBC doing it for nothing.
*…and with the money saved?…target it at the genuinely poor, not the BBCs idea of vulnerable poverty…which will always go the likes of Huntley, Huhne and their kids private school fees.
Let`s see them follow Pope Francis eh?…obedience and poverty-let them do what they like re chastity…for they`ll not be costiing the deserving poor their taxes and times by then!
I agree with everything you say except the last point. With the money not spent by the governmet; who don’t actually have any money of their own; give it back to those from whom it was taken. I firmly believe that individuals know best how to spend their money, not government parasites.
All you have to do is watch that loathesome tv programme “The Jeremy Kyle Show”.
Enough said…..
I know; with the BBC so active on Labour’s behalf, Rubberband must be rubbing his hands with joy. The BBC have dropped any pretense at being an impartial, non-political organization. What I simply don’t understand is why the Tories let the BBC get away with it? I mean, have any of these leftist groups actually sat down and studied the figures? I am no economist but I have studied enough of the data to know that in fact this government’s borrowing is still increasing and that reduction is not the reality but simply containment at a lower level, as IDS has said. The irresponsibility of the BBC and Labour is despicable; they know that we will end up like Greece, but they simply don’t care as they are hell bent on realizing their pathetic multicultural, Marxist utopia. I won’t be here when it is realized as I will be sitting on a beach in New Zealand drinking wine, listening to Handel and enjoying the company of my lovely girlfriend.
Sorry, I meant “containment at a lower level of increase”.
This dovetails with the report in The Sunday Mail about the Iraqi woman with four children on benefits who has been caught sub letting her taxpayer funded apartment for 4000 pounds per week to a Kuwaiti family.
This is an outrageous title!
It shows David Vance’s total ignorance of what the government is doing and rather than free thinking adopts the opposite of the BBC bias and introduces an equal & opposite bias of his own!
Many of the people – indeed possibly the majority targeted by these cuts are the working poor, those in receipt of tax credits. It is these working people who are the ones claiming at the food banks, not the career scroungers who have a kid to gain a very nice lifestyle thank you.
Just listening to someone now who sums up what the coalition have done, and how unfair it is.
Instead of targeting claimants fairly across all of them, and remember that the majority of benefit claimants are pensioners, and the main group of under occupiers, they have excluded the majority and imposed savage cuts to be paid by a minority.
While a spread of cuts would have resulted in average payments of around £1 per week they have selectively targeted a few claimants and asked them to bear the burden for everyone. In some cases the cuts are so savage they amount to more than the amount they receive in benefit.
So here’s a challenge Mr Big Mouth Vance, put your money where your mouth is and agree to live on the same as a benefits claimant for a month. You can give the money you need to find to a charity – I’d like to see you live on less than nothing, and then come back and tell us how fair you found it all!
B-L-E-A-T
very grown up I must say !
“…While a spread of cuts would have resulted in average payments of around £1 per week they have selectively targeted a few claimants and asked them to bear the burden for everyone. In some cases the cuts are so savage they amount to more than the amount they receive in benefit.”
Would you care to provide references to support your hopelessly misguided and unfounded claims? And I don’t mean reference to the Guardian or Labour/BBC websites. Would you also care to enlighten us as to how we, as a country, are to fund the bloated welfare budget? I suppose we could cut the Foreign Aid – but you would, I wager, be opposed to that; we could also leave Europe, but, I wager again, you’ll no doubt be against this too. We could, also, scrap the TV License, but that’ll mean you’ll be out of a job!
Don’t be silly Alex I post as often as anyone about the bias of the BBC.
I haven’t made my mind up on Europe as it’s not as simple as many would like to think.
The bloated welfare budget? Well seeing as more than half of that is made up of pensioners I wouldn’t have exempted them from the cuts which is exactly what Cameron did leaving the minority to suffer some very deep cuts indeed.
Perhaps we should do as the French and bill the countries of origin of failed asylum seekers. Why should the UK pay for their keep and costs of return?
Then there’s foreign aid ring fenced ridiculous!
And why is the NHS and education sector ring fenced?
A 5% cut in the salaries of the overpaid teaching profession after the huge pay rises under Liebour would be reasonable, and as for the NHS we now have the highest paid GPs in the world with some earning close to £500K!
How much did our involvement with Libya cost? or aiding the French adventure in Mali?
Just wait once the Romagarians get here, what’s going to be left to cut then?
‘Tax Credits’ ‘the working poor’
I wish someone on the left could explain to me how and why it should be deemed such a great idea that the State ought to supplement and so perpetuate low wages?
Shouldn’t the Trades Unions see eliminating low pay as their prime objective rather their current number one plan of trying to push for increased public expenditure?
As far as I can see the Unions have been conspiring with the government bodies to increase the number of immigrants. If the Unions actually did what they were paid for, then there would be no immigrant workers other than the marginals where companies need to supplement the indigenous workforce for short term reasons. But, look at the work done to build the Olympic venues; who were the workforce? English or even, British (ie. English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh) employees? I think you’ll find the answer is no. So, anyone who thinks his union subs are going to protect him, he needs to think again. And the same people who automatically vote labour, for goodness’ sake for once in your life think about what you are doing. Don’t take my word for it, see for yourselves. Your paid servants are pissing in your face and you’re drinking it up.
How come the BBC is force feeding its stories about Tory attacks of the welfare community, whilst starving the juicy one about some dozy WPC who fell over at a garage without her lifejacket on?
I reckon that WPC sums up the Police Federations dream of what a police “officer” should be…fearless, forever prepared and not just sniffing round Mitchells laundry basket or Coulsons shagpile.
Yet the BBC want the Toricutz to go bulimic in all their bulletins, whereas they make the true stories that reveal the TRUE state of Britain into anorexics on starvation diets.
We need to puff up the ones the BBC chooses to neglect-and shrink the crap about BoJo, Milibandwagon and Tory cutz.
Bout time we popped their f***in bouncy castle and smothered them all with the flaccid plastic we saved!
You may say I`m a dreamer….
Another thing we should all be very suspicious of leftie Dave & his mates from t he Fib Dems.
benefits claimants cuts:
Pay up to 90% of council tax
Bedroom tax
rent paid to tenant not landlord.
Miss paying any one of these and you’ll be out on your ear, evicted. The state doesn’t have enough housing to meet it’s EU obligations to house the Romagarians so the solution is a bit of ethnic cleansing of the existing tenants to free up enough housing stock without the state having to pay to construct new ones.
BH this morning-news reviews by two ex-Beebers, a Microsoft shiller in a Bonnie Greer voice…oh, and a comical Tory sketch writer for balance.
Before that though, we had a few minutes of some clean-nailed harpie telling us that Health and Safety has NOT gone too far, and is an unmitigated pleasure…the match girls and mercury hatters could have done with it…
True…but this WPC at a Norfolk garage somehow had NOT made the news reviews this morning…and sure as well was not going to!
Hope the garage was selling round-edged/filed flapjacks…not those lethal pointy ones…nanchuks!
As mentioned by Fred Bloggs above, some of the true extent of welfare-dependency is shown by the government’s amazing figures for those assessed for incapacity benefit.
878,300 didn’t even bother to be tested, and voluntarily stopped claiming our money.
Another 837,000 who did take a medical test were found to be fit to work immediately.
A further 367,300 were judged able to some level of work.
Only 232,000 (one in eight of those tested) were classified by doctors to be too ill to do any sort of job.
Where is this news on the bBBC? Nowhere.
But do remember that the ATOS test is so unfair it has even found the dead fit for work!
Honestly I don’t know what these dead people think they’re doing lying around on their backs all day when they could be working, it’s outrageous!
Probably the dead were those working in the BBC.
Sky started reporting this about 11pm last night. So far bBC news24 and web, not a peep. Oh, they managed to report the church criticisms of the gov. But a report that shows they have been feeding the public false propaganda for years, that might expose their lies.
Lets take a look at the governments ‘spin’ errrr figures.
‘more than’ 2000000 people claiming incapacity benefit I shall take that as not many more because of the tendency to round stats up where it suits.
878300 chose to drop claims
837000 immediately found fit to work 1715300 total
367300 able to do some work 2082600 total
232000 too ill to work at all 2314600 total
Much closer to 2.5 million and this is what the figure would have been rounded up to if it was realistic.
Just to make these figures worse here’s a quote from the article:
“More than 2 million people who previously claimed sickness payments are gradually being assessed to determine whether they are eligible for the main incapacity benefit, Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). ”
So the assessment process has not finished and the figures quoted will have to increase as those assessed are placed into one of the three categories (fit for work, partly fit, unfit).
This means that the figures given in the article are completely misleading, this is the problem with government figures from any source or party, they don’t tell the truth!
If it’s all government ‘spin’, why have 878,300 people voluntarily decided to stop taking our money rather than get themselves medically tested?
then explain how these figures massively exceed the number of claimants ?
The report doesn’t say how many people found fit to work by ATOS later had their benefits reinstated by tribunals either.
Here is a website dedicated to bringing clarity to government lies oops sorry spin which is not completely true.
http://fullfact.org/factchecks/fit_for_work_employment_support_allowance_half_appeals-28552
I don’t know where your figures come from (the bBBC?) but the Department for Work and Pensions (http://statistics.dwp.gov.uk/asd/index.php?page=statistical_summaries) says there were 2.52million claimants of incapacity benefits in August 2012.
That so-called ‘full’ facts website also seems to ignore the 878,300 people who withdrew their claim for our money instead of being medically assessed. Why?
And by the way, anyone thinking that FullFact.org is ‘dedicated to bringing clarity’ should be aware of the Full Facts.
Full Fact’s directors are two Labour peers, a Liberal Democrat peer and a former PR man for Tony Blair.
In 2010 Full Fact was refused charitable status by the Charity Commission on the grounds that it did not meet “rigorous standards of objectivity and independence”.
The Chief Executive of Full Fact is also a director of Hacked Off, lobbying against freedom of the press.
They don’t want the Full Facts to be exposed.
Whoooops!….someones arse just got handed to them….next!
(Excellent digging work btw Sir Arthur)
Bulleseye!
Not so thoughtful now. Methinks time for a name change.
You`ve made some good points thoughtful, in my opinion.
Trouble is that , being the Biased BBC site we all know what the game is.
I for one don`t dispute that the State tells lies and will connive to chip away at many who are indeed deserving of better. It is not fair-nor has it been in recent history.
But you have one problem-one that the last Labour lot ran a mile from, and the same one thaat the liberal media will not face up to. Never has had to before, and sure as hell isn`t going to start now.
Now this problem-to sift the deserving from the undeserving poor, the real from the fake, the genuine from the scam artist-is THE one that requires discernment and (yes!) discrimination. It requires backbone, morality and to face down some nasty groups as well as some politically-sensitive consequences.
It does NOT require tolerance, inclusiveness or any notion of a universal umbrella of entitlements> Pensioners yes…prisoners no for example…real asylum seekers yes, Islamist moles seeking Jihad Seeking Allowance…no, deport them!
You`d have thought what with everything Jesus said about such things-sheep and goats, pearls and swine-that the likes of Rowan, Justin and Giles would spell this out.
They do not-no backbone, and an obsession with avoiding hard choices forced on us by their Labout luvvie pew-filling their boots types.
THAT is what the Church should have been spelling out-and what you my friend have to address in your correct analysis of much that is going on.
When the BBC show us the more typical dole seeker…not the single mum up at the crack of dawn working for slave wages, but the Staffie owning, lager swilling NEET who`s breaching bail just to terrorise his estate with assorted babyfather druggies as mates-THEN, and only then will I believe one word that the Church or the BBC have to say on the matter.
I know that this will be another state shambles, but IDS has had to do something…thing is it`ll never satisfy the lefties who made all this necessary, yet offer no solutions.
Just to borrow from 8 generations as yet unborn, not just the 7 already in hock to Balls, Blair and Brown with their Poncy Schemes!
Much of what you say I agree with, and yes it is difficult, a tightrope to walk, but the current government attack on the disabled has been a disgrace. They have shied away from tackling the ‘lager swilling drugged up idiot’ on the estate, and the unmarried mothers (lets not use the PC single parent/mother), and deliberately attacked the most vulnerable who cannot defend themselves and are unlikely to riot.
As for borrowing I do have a theory on this, my parents generation (not them included!) returned several Labour governments which wrecked the economy and strike after strike wrecked industry. Mass immigration began under them, and they took massive unrealistic unfunded pensions that their children have had to pay for.
My generation have had to pay off their ridiculous overspending, we’ve even had to pay for the second world war for Gods sake! I have no problem leaving some debts for their grandkids like they had no issues making us pay the debts for them.
No one with the slightest ounce of sense would consider it reasonable for one generation to pay the debts of the previous one, with a reduced industrial base thanks to them wrecking it, and then to leave next to no debts for the next generation
Not for nothing were the baby boomers deemed the most self interested, self obsessed, and destructive generation the West has had the misfortune to breed. Most of our problems can be laid at their door, and we’re having to pick up the pieces.
Labour hid millions from the unemployment list simply by allowing people to claim sickness and invalidity benefit instead. It is these people who are being revealed now, not some mythical legion of wheelchair users.
Why? To hide the number of people made unemployed by the minimum wage/immigration scandal.
A response to Thoughtful which seems to have become orphaned, ironically.
I think if you look a little deeper you will find that it was John Majors Tory government which started this policy specifically to hide the scandalously high numbers of unemployed people.
B Liars Labour government hid the unemployed by increasing the size of the public sector to such an extent that the state employed more people as a percentage than East Germany did under communism!
Credit where its due !
Not to mention sending them all off to University for 3 years! Now that University is less attractive we can see that youth unemployment is rising, quelle surprise.
One of the main items on news on the Beeb this morning, both on tv news and their website, was that a church in Aberdeen has opened it’s doors for Muslim’s to celebrate prayers, rather than kneel out in the cold at the over sub-scribed mosque next door. Ok, apparently this has been going on for some time, so why choose to highlight it on Easter Sunday, one of the most important days in the Christian callendar? That’s the answer, of course, it is an important day for Christians, and this was one way of getting in their daily Muslim story on the website.
You can bet that if this story had been the other way around it would have made headline news for years, but that’s silly of course because a Mosque would never ever be made available for another faith to worship at.
It’s a little like charity, I see lots of Moslem charity collections but without exception they are always for other Muslims. I have never seen a Muslim collecting for a mainstream charity
I stopped watching the BBC News some time ago because of the relentless propaganda, however I have to say Sky aren’t much better. They went on this morning about the (dreadful) cuts, but not a word about the taxpayers who have to foot the bill or our children and grandchildren who will have to pay the interest and capital back on the money the country has borrowed.
Funny forester but I don’t remember being asked if I wanted to pay for WWII or the UK bailout by the IMF, nor the massive unfunded index linked salary related pensions our parents made us pay for, but which are denied to us. To suggest that we should pay for the baby boomers massive debts and not leave any for the next generation is pure madness.
COFFEE HOUSE UPDATE It appears that the timing of this – Easter – may have been chosen by the BBC rather than the four church groups. The report that the BBC report refers to was published four weeks ago (pdf) but appears to have been reheated for a slow news day. The Guardian’s version of the story is more honest about the timing, admitting this halfway down.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/03/a-church-for-the-poor/
I put this on the ‘Easter Sunday’ thread. Tonight’s Westminster Hour on Radio 4 started with the introduction “And today, Easter Sunday, a coalition of four churches has attacked the government over its changes to welfare payments” thus making clear that the bBBC’s antics in delaying this to Easter Sunday were quite deliberate, manipulating the ‘story’ to fit their agenda.
The BBC News at Ten was the first longer news I heard today. It shocked me, with the unrelenting anti-government nature of the stories. The timing of the attack by the four churches seemed too convenient somehow. I admit I am not up to speed on the earliest dates of the churches’ comments, but contributors above have confirmed my worst suspicions. It makes me worry even more about our state broadcaster.
Funny though.
The media are all over this puff piece re poverty( where were Labour and the BBC as this boil supperated re welfare dependency and parking the poor as Guardian labrats for all those jobs that they were concocting in the stickybeak industries?)…but no-one , as yet has commented on a common thread of both the Pope and the Archbish.
Pope Francis said that the Church is just a “pitiful NGO” without Christ at its centre, directing everything…hear that Labour?…BBC?…UN?…EU…NHS…Dez/ colditz/Scott…PITIFUL N.G.O
So that`s what Pope Francis thinks of all your “passions, concerns and targeted interventions”…without Jesus this Easter, the Catholic Church will be just as ineffective, redundant, wrong-headed and shit as that panoply of NWO instruments I name above( as far as acronyms allow!).
Welby also said something similar…you can`t militate, organise and restructure things to be good, for you set them up to fail…as Eliot said, there is no point in endlessly trying to devise systems to be so good that people no longer will ever need to be. It doesn`t work, it won`t happen…you need the Easter Resurrection point to be central to any plans to do anything that is good and will last.
NO WONDER then, that the BBC etc would not join the dots and see the trend…and this of 2 rather big churches that aren`t TFTD muppets, concertina`d carpet warehouses or playthings of Steve Chalke or Diane Louise Jordan.
Sermon over.
Majoring on minors-our BBC…pretty much what Jimmy Savile did though after all eh?
Refuse to pay on trains, or use a seatbelt until Savile is put on trial…now THAT would show things have changed, now the old Beeber has gone!
“…it appears that the timing of this – Easter – may have been chosen by the BBC…”
Really, if so why was it also reported today by The Metro, The Times and The Telegraph?
Typical diversionary tactic – don’t discuss the subject of the report but the way it was delivered. Job done.
Well you can’t polish a turd although IDS did try this morning!
Humphries missed a trick when interviewing IDS this morning.
Why aren’t you cutting benefits for pensioners?
IDS because pensioners can’t be expected to find work.
Humphries should have countered with ‘Then why are you cutting the benefits of the disabled whom ATOS – your own assessors have found incapable of work?’
Thus revealing the Tory assault on disabled people. Unfortunately he allowed him to get away with what was a pretty lack lustre performance.
“80% of Turkish Muslim Settlers in Germany Live off Welfare”
By Daniel Greenfield.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/80-of-turkish-muslim-settlers-in-germany-live-off-welfare/
Don’t worry our friend leftie Dave is campaigning hard to allow Turkey to join the EU and thus for millions of Muslim Turks free access to the UK. What this mindless mans motives are I cannot begin to guess, what I do know is that he is incredibly destructive, both to his country and his party. The sooner he is removed from office the better, even if that does mean allowing Labour in for a time.