Cars

There are three things about cars that have got me rattled this week:

School Runs

Parking Fines

Imbecilic Ignorant Drivers...

So not much there, then?

I do not profess to understand the education system in this country any longer. It's been over 30 years since I left school and everything has changed; even the location and name of my alma mater. Everything seems slightly Americanised (or should that be Americanized?). Nothing is measured in forms any more, it's all Year this or that and obviously there are more kids getting brilliant A level results, not because it's easier, but because kids today are considerably more cleverer than wot we was...

Arguably, the education system is better now; it has more opportunities, more diversity and, um, I'm struggling to come up with a third example, but I'm sure there are loads. What amazes me is young people can still manage to attend school. I mean, they're such fragile little creatures now with especially vulnerable legs. If the poor dears use their legs too much they're apt to have them wear out or fall off. This, to me, has to be the reason why kids don't walk to school any more. I can understand, in this age of going to the best possible school, rather than the one just down the road, the need for the youngsters to be taken, especially if they live five or six miles from their educational institution of choice (which to me is a complete anathema); but if a kid lives less than a couple of miles from their school, why the hell can't they walk? Or, you know, catch a bus?

Rush hour is bad enough in any town without it being added to by parents taking their precious little angels to school in their 4x4s or, as is the main reason, in their cars that they have almost zero understanding how to drive and leaves you feeling that they had to have paid the test examiner money to get their licences to kill.

I'm thinking anyone that takes their kids to school and parks within a mile of the school should be fined, rather than focusing traffic wardens' attentions on nabbing as many people as they can in places that really need help - like town centres.

The news that parking charges and parking fines are likely to go up, by more than 10% nationally, just smacks of a country that no longer wants its people to do anything. Just going out now poses a logistical nightmare. Even shopping centres, like the Weston Favell Centre, are imposing time limits and employing parking stewards. This is blamed on the people abusing the system, which, as we all know, normally works out to be less than 1% of the users, so everybody gets punished. The WFC is pretty fare in many respects (apart from needing a degree in maths to work out exactly how its road layout is supposed to work), you get, I believe, about 4 hours before your car is pounced on and if 4 hours isn't enough to get all your shopping, have a cuppa and do some browsing, them you're either stupid or possibly disabled - maybe not disabled enough to warrant a Blue Badge, or maybe you're just a wee bit older than the average users and getting around is a bit slower?

I appreciate that we need to make money; money makes the world go round, it pays for things (mainly council workers salaries) and we need to be punished if we abuse the system. Why else does the council only employ certified deaf sociopaths as traffic wardens. In the USA, the cops treat everyone like they're an axe or machine gun wielding homicidal maniac; we're getting that way with everyone in this country. No one has a genuine reason for being 2 minutes over their allotted time; they are just abusing the system and taking the piss out of everyone else. You are a liar and you can't argue with this accusation. Try taking the council to court over an unjust parking ticket and see how far you get.

Incidentally, I have not been the victim of an irrational parking fine for a couple of years. I avoid anywhere that is likely to have a hidden, covert warden hiding behind a wall ready to pounce on me whenever I have a centimetre of wheel infringing upon a double yellow line - when in reality they should be allowed to penalise idiots who don't know how to park their cars properly and who leave about 3 feet either side of their bumpers. It doesn't matter if you park like a chimpanzee on crack as long as you're within the lines!

And what about imbeciles that have been given the right to drive cars? Over the last couple of years I've noticed that traffic lights have a new unwritten meaning: green means go, amber means go and red also means go for the first ten seconds after it gets there! This is especially prevalent to drivers of white vans of whatever shape or size. In fact, as a friend of mine suggested, anyone driving a vehicle that obviously doesn't belong to them will abuse the system as far as they can, as long as there isn't a speed camera or a police car in sight.

I've stopped being courteous to other drivers as much as I was. The reason is two fold - I rarely get acknowledgement for my kindness and I'm never the recipient of courtesy. I still see no end of people cutting others up, barging in, ignoring traffic instructions, just to gain that extra car's length and as I get older, the more I want to buy a clapped out old banger and plough straight into these arseholes cars and then just say, 'Oops, sorry bloke and guess what I don't have any insurance' then run away. It might make these idiots realise that one day they're going to cause a god awful accident, especially involving some stupid woman badly driving her children to school in a very crowded street...

Stop the Revolution, I Want to Get Off

Obviously, the 50,000 protesters peacefully marching on Westminster yesterday will have been forgotten when the Tories (you can't really call it a coalition, can you?) make sure that we see a repeat of the scenes that graced our TV screens during the 1980s - and I'm not talking about the riots, I'm talking about heavy handed policing. But will it be like that? Really?

I was talking to a policeman friend of mine today and he reckons the reason that most of the coppers were as laid back as the peaceful protesters was because they're all fearing for their own safety as well as ours. The police are not exempt from the ConDem cuts; in fact, considering the Tories have built themselves up for years as the party of law and order, there doesn't seem to be a lot of sense in their axing of police budgets. Surely our police deserve more protection than our troops; who really shouldn't be doing anything but defending our own shores - not that they'd need defending if we didn't go following the USA around as their world police sidekicks.

My policeman mate has essentially been a bit right wing for most of his life, not just his 28 years as a copper; but even he thinks the current government are being a wee bit Draconian with their proposed cuts. He thinks, and rightly in my opinion, that doing too much too quickly is just going to piss a lot of people off, a lot of whom voted Tory.

There's not a lot of point talking about people like me, who unwisely voted Liberal. The reason for that is simple - after this parliament, the Liberal party will be as significant as the BNP and just as hated. You can't escape the Tories, they get everywhere and it doesn't matter what a miserable bunch of bastards they are, there will always be some poor misguided fool (or rich wanker) who will vote for them. The Liberals on the other hand have slowly inveigled their way back into British politics and mostly because disgruntled Labour voters saw them as more centre left than their own party. Mr Clegg put paid to that and it's going to take another 80 years before they can class themselves as worthy of the floating voters' cross.

At first I thought that some of the Liberal MPs who had consciences might rebel against these essentially Tory policies, but I'm coming to the conclusion that they realise that their collected gooses are cooked, so they're just holding out as long as they can hoping for a peerage or a nice paid job on the board of some corporation. I have to say, even if he looks uncomfortable, I expected more of Vince Cable; but he's getting on a bit so I suppose the previous sentence applies to him all the more.

Going back to yesterday; it was a shame that a handful of idiots and wannabe anarchists ruined a good day out for the students, at least it got them out of bed, prevented them from giving pot noodle manufacturers more profit and made sure the viewing figures of Neighbours was halved. I do think our students are a wee bit misguided; they should pay for their education - all of them. That means that Jacosta and Quentin also need to pay for their educations rather than get Daddy to pay for it for them. I quite liked the idea of a percentage of their wages being deducted from their salaries (when they eventually get one), it sort of made it sound fair; and that way if you came out of Bog Standard Uni with a 2:2 and end up as a shelf stacker on £15k a year, your 1% will be nothing compared to Quentin's £200k a year job working for Daddy's Porsche dealership.

The chilling thing is that even The Guardian went with the headline that this is just the beginning; obviously there is a large school of thought out there who believe that the students revolting is just the tip of an iceberg. No one is denying that changes need to be made to drag back some of the money we're in debt, but at the expense of our future? Or the futures of our kids? The Tories have never seemed to give a damn about those who will inherit the mess, but they wouldn't, because their children are all going to be well off.

The government claim that people don't understand how their new fairer education system is going to work and that worries me; if our brightest and best students don't understand it, it can't be that easy to follow, can it? I mean, they wouldn't have been marching on Westminster if it was a fair system, would they?

America

I know quite a few Americans. Unfortunately, the other 800 million appear to have one brain cell and they share it. Now, I can't say for sure what the politics of the Americans I do know is, but I do know that they're all pretty intelligent people and have gone a long way to preventing me from just having a complete and irrational dislike of inhabitants of their country.

American politics has always fascinated me. In many ways, I find it far more interesting than British politics. I also find it ironic that the two homes of democracy - the USA and the UK are both tied to an electoral system that stretches the literal definition of democracy very thin.

On Tuesday, the USA goes to the polls for the midterms - they're a bit like our council elections, except in the USA they have far more impact on the central government. A massive swing away from the politics of the President and his work becomes increasingly more difficult, if not almost impossible, because the senate and congress have to ratify any idea he has and if he's democrat and they're republican, they simply won't endorse any of his ideas, even if they're good ones. US politics is so disparate, the other side invariably votes against the side in power even if they have a good idea. It makes you wonder how anything ever happens in the world's most powerful country (and I am aware that I am over simplifying it, but this is a punchy, pithy blog and not a politics lesson).

Listening to the coverage from the forthcoming midterms has reminded me that so many citizens of the US of A are basically morons. Barrack Obama inherited a country that had been royally butt-f*cked by George W. Bush Jr was a president who had so little idea of how to run a country that it almost fell apart. Obama has spent best part of his 20 months in office trying to sort the mess left by the previous administration; he has been stymied by Republicans (who themselves are in their own form of turmoil) and the world recession and on Tuesday is likely to be stymied even more as supposedly loyal democrats switch sides because they think the republicans can do better. Well, the republicans had 8 years before Obama and they didn't do anything for the people of America, unless they owned oil wells or munitions factories.

What annoys me most about these flip-flop Yanks is that they are quite happy to have a warmonger in charge who employs people that know as much about the economy as I do about the inside of a famous film star's anus, yet aren't prepared to give the man currently in charge a few years to try and sort the mess out. I recall Jimmy Carter saving the USA's bacon - economically - only for Ronald Reagan to be elected and take all the credit for it. An astute businessman was given 4 years in power and ousted and a man who played sidekick to a chimpanzee got 8 years (and he couldn't even remember the name of one of the members of the British royal family and famously joked about bombing Russia off the face of the planet) but that's the kind of thing a nation more preoccupied with their stomachs seem to like!

And now we have this almost offensive Tea Party movement, led by ultra right wing republicans. Which is a bit like our Conservatives being run by the BNP. The thing is, because the US press is run by ultra right wing fascists, this movement is gaining support and the chances are that come 2012, there will be an uber-fascist US president (please God not that Palin woman) and then we'll really see what a mess this world will be in.

I love melodrama - as anyone who reads this blog will no doubt agree with - but if the ultra right get in power in the USA, then there really will be a 3rd world war. We'll see Muslims treated like the Japanese were in 1940; we'll see more and more money directed towards war as the USA returns to its position of world's policeman and as a result, the UK, always keen to be seen as the USA's lapdog will face an even greater security threat - no, let me quantify that statement - the UK will become a legitimate terrorist target, rather than a fictional one. Because most of the world is not at risk from the largely made up (as in fictional) Al-Qaeda at the moment, but give Palin or any of the Tea Party madmen the reigns of that country and Al-Qaeda will be the least of our worries.

The Power of Paranoia

Accuse me of being a terrorism denier if you want; but is it just possible that the explosives found on planes headed for the UK and USA might be the figments of the imagination of the people who run the countries?

Currently the ConDems are facing a massive backlash from the huge portions of the general public; the cuts they're bringing in have been met with considerably more defiance than agreement. Over the pond, Barrack Obama is facing meltdown less than 2 years since winning the most powerful man in them world contest. What better way of detracting from the issues at hand than by bringing terrorism back to the forefront?

Of course, these incidents may well have happened; there are, after all, a lot of fundamentalists out there. However, the timing of this is so Falklands War its unreal. I just can't help thinking that there is considerably less threat out there than our governments let on. After all, terrorism is such an insidious way of not achieving anything, it is feasible that government spin doctors suddenly hit on this great idea to turn peoples' fears into a weapon of mass hysteria.

There is strong anecdotal evidence to suggest that the Falklands War was constructed by Thatcher and Galtieri because both of them were on the verge of being ousted from office. Just 4 months before the 'war' started, representatives from both countries met and the very amicable meetings could easily have led to the 'need' to do something to stop socialists from regaining power. Four months before the 'war' Thatcher was the most unpopular UK prime minister ever. She was so far behind in opinion polls, it was possible she might be responsible for the complete destruction of the Conservative party. Then this war comes along and she wins the subsequent election by a landslide. All it cost was the lives of some easily expendable lives - after all, that's what you join the army for.

The problem with having theories like this is you're branded a conspiracy theorist, nutter or somewhere in between...

Reality Bites

Apparently, I'm a 'Deficit Denier'.

This is the term used by Tory boys for anyone who either doesn't feel the cuts are fair or doesn't believe that Lord Snooty's plans aren't the best thing since torturing fags at Eton.

I don't think there are many people who are actively denying that cuts were needed. Britain, like most of the rest of the world, is in debt and something needed to be done about it. It's just an even more massive insult to intelligent people to be told by pompous 'I'm all right Jack' Tories that we actually know nothing.

On Nick Clegg's Facebook page there was, at first, a stampede of insults aimed at the political equivalent of a Transformer (he's a Tory in disguise!) and then, quite remarkably, a backlash against the backlash. Ironically, very few of the people defending Cleggatron were actually Liberals, most of them were Tories. One in particular, a guy called Andrew, was a self-employed financial advisor from Oxford who like Neil O'Brien, the Director of the Tory supporting Policy Exchange, was calling for more money to be taken away from the poor; because giving them less will encourage them to get jobs. An idea which would possibly work if there were jobs to apply for. Andrew also spouted on about people having to make difficult decisions and these cuts not being about fairness but about being in the national interest. Like most politicians, when casual readers of the Facebook page asked him for specifics or to explain himself, he suddenly was no where to be seen.

I've been slightly bemused by the way the press seems to have drawn a line under the affair. On Thursday there was 11 pages devoted to Lord Snooty; by Saturday, The Guardian's coverage had dropped to less than 2 pages. But, I realised that the editors probably felt having page after page of commentators forecasting the end of civilisation as we know it would probably not be good for sales. Obviously the Daily Mail thrives on such stories, yet amazingly they seemed to be in full support of Blackadder's sanctioned cuts. After all, of the 1.8million unemployed in the UK, probably 1.7999million are scroungers, fraudsters and are purposefully screwing the rest of us while laughing into their Pinot Grigios, watching their flat screen TVs and driving their Lamborghinis (without tax or insurance) around the filth laden streets of Britain's council estates...

The main thing we all need to understand is that a lot of these massive cuts will not happen for a few weeks or months. This allows us (and Dave Blackadder & Nick Baldrick) to prepare for the changes. It makes me wonder how this entertaining double act is going to deal with the mass unemployment that will undoubtedly kick in once Georgie's cuts kick in. I mean, even if the Private sector has faith in the future of this country, it's going to take a while for that to actually happen. It'll also be interesting to see how the ConDems deal with the fact that the so-called Export-led Recovery will only work if other countries decide to buy anything from us. It seems the ConDems are the only people in the country that haven't noticed that every other country in the world are having the same economic problems that we are.

On a moral standpoint; how long is it going to be before the conscientious Liberals (because there must be a few of the left) realise that the unfairness of making the poor pay for the mistakes of the bonus greedy bankers has placed them in an untenable position; one which is likely to see them all out of work and joining the swelling ranks of unemployed and hopeless people?

Of course, there could be a school of thought in Westminster that is actively waiting and hoping that there is some form of civil unrest; because governments love the peasants revolting, as it suddenly gives them the moral high ground regardless of how wrong their policies are. Violence solves nothing and neither does industrial action. If there were mass strikes once the cuts start to bite you might get a high percentage of the populace actually supporting them; but once the rubbish starts to pile up, or the buses stop running, or X Factor isn't on the screens, the support will waiver and crash. Just look at France: 79% of the population supported the industrial action; but once the petrol started to run out and the bins started overflowing with effluence, that support has dropped to 59% and it will continue to drop; because, essentially, the majority of people will only support something as long as it doesn't impact on their own lives for long.

So, the long and the short of it is, the ConDems know that however much a percentage of the country will moan about it; the support and sympathy of the rest of the country will not stick for long. The reason for this is because about 25 years ago, a very evil woman destroyed community spirit, made the unions out to be the spawn of Satan and turned a large percentage of the country into greedy bastards.

***

Speaking of Maggie: Go here - http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/thatcher-gaining-strength-from-nation's-misery-201010223185/

When this woman finally dies there is going to be some crazy things happen. There will be a goodly percentage of people who will demand that she is given a state funeral and that she is honoured in some way - maybe a statue in Trafalgar Square or even Parliament Square. These people will campaign tirelessly for the woman to be given the send off she deserves.

On the other hand there will be a goodly percentage of people who will spontaneously break out in celebration; these people will organise street parties and the streets will be over run by people for whom that day has been a long time coming. It might be viewed by people as a horrendous display of disrespect to the dead; especially one who achieved so much for this country. The people celebrating her death will undoubtedly campaign tirelessly for the woman to be given the burial she deserves - either dropping down an abandoned colliery or left in a dustbin on a council estate in Toxteth. Perhaps they could just cut her body up into pieces and give parts to any one who can prove that she was responsible for the downfall of whatever part of the country they live in.

Straight Answers, Please

The cuts have been made. There's no changing them now. The poorest 10% and the richest 2% will pay the highest percentage of the debt. There's no changing that.

The question that is being asked more than any other question is whether or not this deficit strategy is fair to the poor. I have heard this question posed to numerous ConDem MPs and do you know, not one of them has answered it with anything other than rhetorical 'we're all in this together' styled answers. Therefore, NOT ONE OF THEM HAS ANSWERED THE QUESTION!

We had David Blackadder and Nick Baldrick in Nottingham today avoiding answering the question. We had the Transport Secretary on Question Time not answering the question. we've had Tory sympathisers all over the country claiming that people don't realise the mess we're in. But NO ONE IS ANSWERING THE QUESTION!

The poor are, over the next couple of years, going to be royally shafted, while the rich will have to limit Jacosta and Tarquin's allowances by a couple of hundred quid a year; they might not be able to afford a new pony. Daddy might not be able to buy a new Porsche.

Neil O'Brien, the new Director of Policy Exchange, on BBC News today claimed that taking money away from the poorest people in the country was a good thing. He claimed there was no point in throwing money at the poor because it doesn't help them. All credit to BBC newsreaders Ben Brown and Ellie Crisell for managing to stay professional in light of unbelievable pompousness from a man who undoubtedly earns more in a year than a minimum wage cleaner in Middlesbrough earns in 5 years. At least he didn't try and hide behind rhetoric, he just came straight out and made people realise he was a fascist.

It still doesn't answer the question of why no one in government is answering the question of how this is fair on the poorest. Is it their fault that the world economy is such a mess? It certainly isn't the former Labour party's fault, despite every Tory and their suck arse Lib Dem fags blaming them. Yes, Labour might have handled it differently; it might have taken twice, possibly three times longer to cut the deficit; but they wouldn't have ignored it and the poorest wouldn't have to take the most burden.

There are some good things that will come out of this.

• Nick Clegg will never serve as an MP ever again. His goose is well and truly cooked!
• The Liberal Democrats will never be given the opportunity to govern anything again.
• The Tories will never taste power again until we're all long dead and buried.

If only two of these three things happen, it will be a good result.

I intend to write Mr Clegg a letter in the next few days. The letter will be as restrained as I can muster, but the upshot of it will be that I voted for him because I thought he'd make a difference. I never expected the difference he would make would make me feel as though I've robbed this country and its children of their futures. I shall point out to him that the coalition does not have a mandate to instigate the kind of damning changes it intends and I shall ask him if he would like to explain to me in simple terms why the poorest 10% of people in this country are being expected to burden the brunt of these cuts and whether or not it is fair.

I urge everyone to do the same. You can contact him at House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA.

It might interest you to know that once upon a time you could email Clegg directly from his web page; this facility has been disabled. It might also be of interest that you could leave remarks on the Liberal Democrat Facebook page; anything disparaging is being removed. It might also interest you that if a general election were to be held tomorrow, Clegg would finish 3rd in his Sheffield seat and the LibDems would lose 48 of their 51 seats. He must be proud of the work he has done. Frankly, I'm surprised at him, I'm anything but surprised at Cameron; he is just a pompous arse who doesn't give a toss about any one.

If it's broke, don't fix it

We all know something has to be done about the budget deficit. We're all aware that Labour had a large hand in putting us into a lot of debt; but arguably, had they not borrowed loads of money a lot of the remaining infrastructure of this country would have crumbled into nothing and our children would have been educated in Portacabins and our sick would have been treated in crumbling ruins. Only a Labour government would have ensured that there was something of a legacy for the future.

Admittedly, they took us into a war that we should have avoided and Tony Blair proved to be as dislikeable as Margaret Thatcher; but arguably every government does things that the majority of voters will not agree with. Just take the current proposed austerity measures; there are few people who don't agree that something needs to happen; it's just that very few people seem to realise that what is about to happen is going to have repercussions that screw up your grandchildren's children.

George Osborne doesn't live on an estate run by a housing association, nor does he need to top up his money with child or housing benefit. regardless of what happens to the rest of the country, he'll be alright Jack...

Except... the current Tory section of the coalition are not stupid. I think many of them realise that this is it. This is the last 5 years any of them are ever going to see in power again.

I blame Labour for this. The party knew they had little or no chance of winning the general election, especially with Gordon Brown leading them. Regardless of how brilliant the man was with our economy, there was no way to fix it. And before any of you suggest that Brown was a brilliant chancellor, just dig out the copy of The Economist that suggested he was responsible for preventing a massive financial crash throughout most of Europe. He stopped Britain from being washed away in a flurry of debt and greed; well, he didn't actually stop it, he just put off the inevitable. So, when it became obvious they weren't going to hold power, or even the balance of power, they screwed it up for the new team. It's a shitty thing to do, but it's also what successive governments have constantly done; they make the incumbents' job impossible for the first few years and with a bit of luck the new government will be ousted before they make any significant changes.

Osborne inherited not just a poisoned chalice, he inherited one that was rotten to the core and probably unfixable. So what better way of dealing with it than screwing up the country to the point where whoever gets in power after the ConDems, won't be able to do a thing about it? There will be nothing left to try and fix or even try and rebuild. There won't be any money to reinstate any vital public services, without plunging the country back into the same mess its in at the moment. Once Osborne wields his axe that'll be it. It'll be goodbye to anything that resembles a public service.

He is going to systematically destroy anything that needs government money and with the private sector having zero faith in their ability to fill the void, we'll see 5million plus unemployed with no hope and no future. But that won't be the end of it: you see Cameron and co can truly believe that the private sector will fill some of the void, but whatever happens, even in the most optimistic worlds, they won't be able to fill it all. So we're going to have a lot more people trying to claim benefits and there won't be any money to pay them. How do you pay an extra 2 or 3 million people JSA or Income Support when you haven't got any money? Come to think of it, how are they going to get all those people off of DLA and Invalidity Benefits when there won't be any jobs for them to do. It's well and good saying that you want to get all those malingerers off of benefits, but they have to actually have something to do. Or are we going to see the new government reinvent things like The Youth Training Scheme or The Community Programme? You remember them (and if you don't); they didn't work. All they did was artificially take a million people off the dole so that the Tories could say how good they were.

George Osborne knows that he has an impossible task and he is acutely aware that aware that this is his once in a lifetime chance to have some power. He is also aware that this being his only chance and that he has no real way of solving the problem, so he's going to make sure whoever inherits his job won't be able to change anything. He won't even have a guilty conscience, because he's going to be okay regardless of what happens.

Now, I don't have a miracle cure. There's no point in saying, "So what would you do, Phil, if you're so bloody clever", because my cures would rankle as many people as they'd please. I would however not renew Trident; I would pull our troops out of anywhere they shouldn't be; I would employ intelligent people at the tax office to claw back all the billions of pounds that the richest people avoid paying, through one scam or another. But after that I'd be hard pressed to think of anything to cut; you see the problem is that this country needs £150billion spending on it to rebuild its infrastructure and make it a better place. I just have to accept that we're going to be the first generation for almost 70 years that will be worse off than our parents. I have to accept that the kids who are currently going to school are going to be devoid of anything by the time they leave school; devoid of jobs, money, a future and hope. I have to realise that one day very soon there won't be anything left that is supported by a government.

I have to accept that this country, whoever's in charge is so deep in the shit it might possibly never get fixed.

I have to accept that the current government are going to be the people who make this nightmare scenario a reality.

I have to accept that even though it isn't mine or your fault, that me, you, your children and your children's children are going to have to pay for it.

I have to accept the fact that many people will think I'm scaremongering and won't believe it, even when reality bites them on the arse and I'll have to accept the fact that a lot of people will also be alright Jack.