🎵"I'm all mixed up inside, I want to run but I can't hide, and however much we try, we can't escape the truth..."🎵

I wonder how much Starmer and his wretched party are enjoying what promises to be a Long Hot Summer...?

I guess when you excuse one group's reactions to events and urge the police to go softly-softly with them, other groups think 'Well, might as well chance my arm!'. 

Because all that happens when the police crack down even harder on them is the sense of grievance gets stronger, and a few more people observe the differing reaction and start to think 'Hey, that conspiracy theorist I laughed at might not have been so wrong after all!'...

And then, no amount of 'It's the Russians to blame!' is going to help things. 

It's Not 'An Injustice' To Protect Our Borders...

...in cities, another huge issue is now inescapable. As the pandemic has ground on, attention has belatedly been paid to the million or so people in Britain who have what officialspeak terms “no recourse to public funds”, or NRPF: that means no access to benefits, notwithstanding the right to live here at least temporarily.

In other words, people who came here and didn't take up citizenship, or illegal immigrants. So, yes, of course they have no recourse to public funds.

People like this:

I also spoke to Maruf and Tasnova, a couple who volunteer at the food bank. They are unable to get work, barred from benefits, and living with their six-year-old son and three-month-old daughter in a single room. Food is at the heart of their family’s plight – not just because they have so little of it, but also in the way their anxiety is playing out in the daily rituals of mealtimes. Their son has been so unsettled – by lockdown, the suspension of school and his family’s awful circumstances – that he often refuses to eat.

Wait, I thought you didn't have any food? Now you have so much your children can choose not to eat it?

Can't you people get your story straight?

There are ways out of these injustices that are not nearly as inconceivable as some people would have you believe: a minimum income guarantee or universal basic income, an end to the immigration rules that mean so many people live in a state of constant panic, and the long-overdue abandonment of the thinking whereby people are threatened with destitution as a matter of policy.

Yes, we'll just change our whole society for the benefit of people who come here to mooch off us. That seems sensible...

The Honours System Is Becoming A Sick Joke

Former Redcar Labour MP and now Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner, Vera Baird was made a Dame for her services to women and equality...

You couldn't make it up, could you?

Ms Baird, 66, originally from Oldham, Lancashire, and who now lives in Newcastle, said: “This was very delightful and surprising news.

“I am particularly pleased that the award specifically refers to services to the cause of women and equality, recognising that gender equality is desirable for the country and for everyone in it.

“There have been great advances, but there is still more to do.

“It is important we also continue addressing other forms of equality, across race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and the other protected strands in the Equality Act 2010, which I helped to take through Parliament, as solicitor-general.”

Truly, she represents everything that is wrong about this country.

Her PCC website states that, Ms Baird, who was widowed in 1979, her interests include travel, reading, running, and Poppy, her rehomed Bedlington Terrier.

Perhaps the Queen would like to pop the award in this to hand it to her?

Chipping Away At Dependency…

Plans laid out in Essex County Council’s consultation on Sure Start centres would see one of the district’s two 50-hour-a-week centres closed. The plans are part of county hall’s consultation on reducing the number of Sure Start centres across Essex from 37 down to just 12.

Oh noes! Disaster!

The consultation, even with a month still left to run, has already faced a backlash.

See? Try to pry the state teat away and there’s all sorts of squalling and kicking of tiny feet…

An e-petition calling on Mr Madden to rethink plans to close the centres has already got nearly 10,000 signatures.

Ooooh, an e-petition! The laziest form of ‘protest’ ever invented, besides taking a selfie in a protest T-shirt and Instagramming it.

Margaret Montgomery, of Rayleigh, is one of those to have signed, she said: “These centres are a lifeline for many people and are cost effective as they can help to solve problems early in a child's life.

“If left, these could become more complex problems resulting in the need for more support for the family.”

Ah, yes, the ‘spend to save’ theory. Which can only work if you’re sheep-dipping everyone, rather than targeting those that need the extra assistance.

Mum-of-two Sally Robarts, also of Rayleigh, was not impressed by the plan to close a full-time centre. She said: “I think this kind of support network is vital to young families and mothers.

“In a world where families are living further and further away from one another and we have parents raising kids with no outside family help, these centres are a lifeline.”

Good lord, we can’t have families raising kids on their own! Anarchy will ensue! Help us, Big Nanny State, we implore you!

Fellow mum-of-two Kassie Wharton, of Rayleigh, is a user of the current services and does not want them to change. She said: “I have two children under two and love everything the children's centres offer. It would be awful for this to stop.”

Yes, you’d miss your ‘Jeremy Kyle’ if you had to do some parenting yourself, eh?

Wait, Using Children As Human Shields Is OK Now..?

…because I thought we all got really upset when Saddam Hussein did it?

Education experts are calling on the government to review its bedroom tax after early research indicated it was having an adverse impact on learning because affected children were stressed and hungry at school.

Which is unfortunate, but 100% the responsibility of their parents.

Researchers from Manchester University found that children were showing signs of emotional distress because they were seeing their parents under pressure and were experiencing material hardship as a result of the benefit cut. Parents were having to cut back on food, shopping for fewer and cheaper provisions, and hungry children were finding it harder to concentrate in lessons, sometimes leading to classroom unrest and aggressive behaviour, the report said.

Aha! Yet another excuse to be trotted out when ‘It ain’t ‘is fault, ‘e ‘as that ADHD!’ stops working…

The study, by researchers at Manchester Institute of Education, found that forcing children to share bedrooms – under the policy, two children of the same sex under 16 are expected to share, as are two children under 10 regardless of sex – was also having a negative impact on learning, with no quiet place for homework and teenagers’ sleep disturbed by younger siblings.

So a hard-working parent struggling to afford rent must see a benefit monkey get a larger house so their kids can have separate bedrooms? I should cocoa!

Erica Burman, also professor of education at Manchester, added: “The government should review its policy. Doing so would show a greater commitment to supporting children, helping parents to maintain their responsibilities, reinforcing communities, tackling educational inequalities and ensuring that the effects of austerity do not fall disproportionately on poor families.”

Everything will fall ‘disproportionately’ on poor families – it’s an incentive not to be poor in the first place!

In addition, the Manchester research claimed that the policy was not persuading families to downsize. As well as a lack of suitable smaller properties in the social housing sector, parents said they were prepared to lose money and suffer the hardship in order to stay in their home and keep local family ties and friendships.

So, it’s their choice. They are the ones condemning their offspring to these disadvantages. Not my problem. Certainly not worth a single penny more of my taxes.

Schools and community groups have responded to increased need by reallocating resources to ensure that children are fed and clothed. Schools have used pupil premium funding, available to children from deprived backgrounds who are on free school meals, to extend breakfast clubs.

Clearly the schools have too much fat in the budget. Time to cut it again, Education Secretary!

Apart From Child Benefit, That Is..?

Mr Iqbal, 57, a cab driver, lived in Blyth Road, Walthamstow for seven years before losing his job and being housed at the temporary property in March this year with his wife and his 12 and nine-year-old sons.

He lost his job as a cab driver and was totally unable to get another one?

Hmmm…

He said: “I wasn’t given a choice. It was either go to Luton or just walk out of the door and be on the street.

“I asked if we could go to Birmingham or anywhere else but I was told again this was my only choice.

“If the council came down here they could see the reality is tough.

“My children wake up at 6am to get ready for school and they are so tired you can see it in their eyes. There were no places at the local school here.

“I have never claimed benefits from the state before but we have lost our freedom, we feel like prisoners here, waiting to go home.

“They have told me it could be up to two years. We are away from all our friends and other family members in east London it is horrible.”

So, doesn’t child benefit count, then? You have been claiming that, I assume?

John Knight, director at Ascham Homes, the housing manager for Waltham Forest council, maintained that Luton council were informed of the new residents.

He said: “Due to the level of housing demand in Waltham Forest, the council is not currently able to source sufficient properties within the borough or in east London generally which can be used as temporary accommodation.

“Our supplies are under instructions to secure properties in Waltham Forest wherever possible. “Where the pipeline of such properties is not sufficient to meet our needs we consider properties in other boroughs, and make use of them where we are satisfied they are both suitable and cost-effective.

“We take into account the size of families when placing them in these properties however, it is not always possible to avoid some families having fewer bedrooms than their assessed needs.

“In the short term we have no realistic option other than to place some families elsewhere to meet our legal obligations to the homeless.”

And if that means Luton, so be it.

He’s Your Son, Not A Meal Ticket…

A young, homeless mum has been left "depressed" after three weeks of uncertainty about where she and her son will sleep each night.

*rummages* Where’d I leave that tiny violin?

But wait! I shouldn’t be so cold, so hard-hearted! Maybe her misfortunes are not her own?

The mum to six-year-old Dillion has been homeless since leaving a temporary living situation, sleeping on her mum’s sofa, in January.

She was 'kicked out' of emergency council accommodation in Dartford on May 11 after failing to keep up with the rent.

Oh. OK. Forget I spoke.

She said: "I am running out of options. I have nowhere to go.

"The council is telling me to go private, but all they have offered me is a bond.

"Everyone wants a first month’s rent and a deposit and a home owner guarantor.

"I am trying to look for work but it’s hard when you’re looking for a home too."

That’s why you breed when you have a stable job and life, not before.

Get the sire to pay. I’m not going to. The days of irresponsible breeding with the taxpayer left paying the bills are over.

You too, love.

Well, Yes, He’s A Politician…

The judge told Joyce in his sentencing remarks: “In my view, the evidence against you was very overwhelming and the defence that you put forward was lacking in any credibility, particularly when one looks at the CCTV evidence, and your interpretation of what that demonstrated, I’m afraid, vastly differed from the way I saw the events portrayed.”

…so it stands to reason, doesn’t it?

The Entitlement Generation…

Bailiffs arrived at Michael Hilton’s home in Meadoway, Church, at around 9.20am yesterday. They reported him to police after they heard him say that if they entered the property - his home of 30 years - there would be an ‘explosion’.

The police said they believed petrol and gas canisters were in the house. Mr Hilton, 52, was last night in police custody after being arrested on suspicion of affray following a stand-off lasting around three and a half hours.

Two fire engines were called to the scene, close to St Christopher’s High School, as well as around six police cars, two police vans, a riot van and later, police dog teams.

*sigh* The usual police overreaction.

Mind you, I’m not too concerned about the residents this time. Their attitude leaves a lot to be desired…

Johnny, who lives with his father, said: “I knew something like this was going to happen. He has been hounded to pay bedroom tax since September last year.

“My dad has four children altogether and, sometimes, they stay here with him.

“In the eyes of the council, he has a spare room but, from his point of view, that’s a bedroom for his kids.

“I have even tried to speak to the council myself and try to sort it out. I called them last week and told them that my dad has mental health problems. He thinks he’s being persecuted.”

Well, he’s not.

And it doesn’t matter what his ‘point of view’ is, does it? The fact remains ordinary taxpayers are fed up shelling out for people to have a better lifestyle on benefits than they do while working!

Johnny added: “He has been driven to this and I think that he feels like he is making a stand for everyone that has been faced with the unfair bedroom tax. I am very worried about him.”

He hasn’t been ‘driven to this’, unless of course someone held him at gunpoint and forced him to father children he couldn’t support in a house he couldn’t afford…

Another neighbour, a resident of nearby Queensway who knows Mr Hilton, said: “All of this because of that stupid bedroom tax.”

A crowd gathered at the police line and many of the onlookers seemed to show sympathy towards Mr Hilton.

One said: “It’s the government, this. They are putting these taxes on vulnerable and poor people and look what happens.”

What a pity all the fed-up taxpayers don’t start having screaming tantrums & holding police at bay. I guess we just have to keep paying and paying and paying…

Never Bloody Satisfied!

Jennifer Tankard announces the Left’s latest victory:

It appears that half of all payday lenders have pulled out of the UK market in the last 18 months, according to news reports. The increased focus by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on the business practices of payday lenders and the prospect of greater regulation is clearly having an effect. The UK's high-cost short-term credit market has been coming under relentless pressure from the media and campaigners to change its ways.

Hurrah! A great victory, comrades!

*sotto voce* …but what about the people who need a…*sotto voce*

Silence! No dissent is allowed! Let them use credit unions!

While the number of payday loan providers may be declining, credit unions and community development finance institutions (CDFIs) are slowly scaling up and offering a wider range of services, such as short-term loans, at affordable prices. Barclays has announced a £1m fund for credit unions, along with a range of other measures, including helping with access to premises. Lloyds Banking Group has revealed that it will invest £1m a year in credit unions and has piloted a project in Leeds signposting appropriate customers to the Leeds City Credit Union and local money management charities.

See! There’s an alternative! A glorious socialist alternative!

But wait! The usual socialist stumbling block is hit. There’s a shortage!

But the geographic reach of credit unions and CDFIs is still patchy, and many of their potential customers are not aware of their existence. Community projects such as Big Local and Community First are helping to tackle this, but it is an uphill battle.

Let me guess? More of other people’s money would help?

The £38m invested in credit unions is almost the same amount as the top five payday lenders spent on advertising in 2013 (an estimated £36.3m). The financial services market is still distorted, with poorer communities offered a wealth of choice of high-cost credit providers but no choice of other types of financial services… … we need to see a massive scaling up of credit unions and CDFIs as well as encourage the main high street and new challenger banks to serve poorer communities…

OK. Fine. Sink your own money into it, then.

Why Is There Even ‘Debate’ About This?!

The debate over benefits claimants being denied money from a hardship fund if they smoke or own a satellite dish has reopened.

I … I just …

Rob Waltham, of the council's ruling Conservative group… "There is strong evidence to suggest that the spare room subsidy has stimulated a return to work among long term unemployed.

"Locally we have established a policy which supports residents with grant assistance. "There is, however, an eligibility criteria which prevents residents who smoke and have satellite television from securing this assistance.

"Conversely, if a resident has genuine need we do support them.

"I know of many residents who work hard every day and don't have these luxuries, and quite rightly they believe it is wrong to expect taxpayers to fund these life choices."

Well said!

”And the award for best comedy show of 2014 goes to…”

”…Panorama: Don't Cap My Benefits, BBC One!”.

Mainly because if you didn't laugh at this pathetic attempt to drum up sympathy for those affected by the government benefit cuts, you’d cry…

Councils such as Brent are also struggling because, in 2011, the government cut what they could pay private landlords.

Laurence Coaker, Brent's head of housing needs, said some private landlords were losing £200 or £300 a week, so they evicted tenants and refused to relet their accommodation to the council.

"By putting on a cap, which is for the whole country, it hasn't worked for London or the South East," he said.

"What we're having to do is to find accommodation which the households can afford by claiming the housing benefit, but that's outside of Brent, and families don't want to go there, understandably, because they've lived in Brent all their lives."

Well, it turns out, ‘all their lives’ is a bit of hyperbole in a lot of cases:

Large families, such as that of Awes Osman, who originally came from Somalia and has lived in Brent for 23 years, are worst hit.

‘Large families’..? On benefits? Well, why not? The taxpayer’s paying!

He has seven children and the rent for his four-bedroom house was around £500 a week, but that is the total amount of benefits he received after the cap. The council believed his only option was moving to cheaper accommodation, in Birmingham.

"I've never been to Birmingham. We lose everything if we go to Birmingham. If we lose the school, that will be the biggest damage. And we have to lose our job as well. I live all my entire life in London," he said.

You’d ‘never been to England’ at one time, but you sure adapted well to that, didn't you?

You Know Who Can’t Be Choosers, Don’t You?

People in Oxford in urgent need of housing are being offered properties as far away as Cardiff and Birmingham by council officials.

So..? If they really are in ‘desperate need’, they’ll take it, won’t they?

John McNulty, a solicitor for Oxford firm Turpin & Miller, is fighting to keep several families in the city and has accused city council officials of ‘dumping’ people outside the area.

That’s generous of him. Doing it out of his own pocket, is he? Or are these people getting legal aid (on top of all the other benefits)?

Ah, well. Bring on the sob-stories!

Mother-of-two Elysha Britnell , 22, has been living in temporary accommodation controlled by the council in Cowley for two years, but was shocked when told she should move out of Oxford for the first time to live in Birmingham.

…

She says she has no family or friends outside of Oxford, and has never lived anywhere else.

She added: “I’m Oxford born and bred. If this appeal fails I’ll be completely homeless. I have got nowhere else to go. Even if I go to Birmingham, I may as well be homeless, because I have nobody there.”

Oh, you seem like the type of girl who makes friends easily…

Single mum-of-two Lisamarie Richards was offered homes in Birmingham and Cardiff, before she says she was given a final offer in Cheltenham. She said she has until the end of the week to find somewhere else to live after her private landlord in Bampton Close, Littlemore, decided to sell his house.

Miss Richards, 32, said she spent months trying to find another home, but was priced out of the rental market.

Miss Richards, mother to Charlie, 11, and Oscar, one, said: “I will have no-one. I’ve never lived out of Oxford.

“It is heartbreaking to watch my son come home from school at night and cry.”

You know what’s ‘heartbreaking’, Lisamarie? Looking at the eye-watering levels of tax we shell out to be squandered on people like you.

The council is, of course, in blame-avoiding and finger-pointing mode:

Scott Seamons, Oxford City Council’s board member for housing, blamed the cap on housing benefit. He said: “Due to cuts in the Local Housing Allowance, it’s become increasingly difficult to place people with private landlords in Oxford.

“There’s too much choice for landlords, so they’re refusing people on benefits.”

Oh, if only people weren’t free to make a choice, Scott, eh?

He added: “Our first choice is absolutely to keep people in Oxford. I don’t want to see people being pushed out of the city. We’re doing what we can to build new houses. It’s the only way we’re really going to be able to make a difference.”

Yes, let’s allow people to breed indiscriminately knowing that the taxpayer will pick up the tab and the council will bail them out with free housing!

The Three Pillars Of… Err….

Arnie Graf and Jon Cruddas attempt to re-launch Labour. As expected, it hits the harbour wall, breaks in two, and sinks:

On the doorstep and in meetings around the country, people are telling us that what matters to them is their family, the work they do and the place they live in.

All of which Labour, when last in office, did their level best to change!

There is visceral anger towards the big six utility companies, and rising resentment over the price of transport. Many people are having to devote five days of working every month just to meet the cost of getting to work.

Yes, for people who forget that the companies that provide utilities and transport are businesses, and expect to turn a profit. They also invest in their chosen areas in order to do this. There’s no magic gas tree!

The cost of rent is becoming prohibitive for many people, taking up 50% or more of their monthly pay. Buying a home is getting beyond hope, especially for their children. Food costs are rising, and university fees are despairing for many.

More to the point, the university degrees they send you off with are worthless…

So family integrity is one pillar of a one-nation Britain, which is why in government Labour will cap energy prices and back up our campaigning against payday lenders with a levy on their profits and a cap on the cost of their loans.

And the companies will just absorb this, will they? They won’t pass it on to their customers, and so make the interest rates even higher?

Work to support our families is a second pillar. This is about self-respect and dignity: austerity without strategies for growth and work is dooming a whole generation who do not know about the importance of work in their development as full human beings.

Yes, we call that generation ‘Labour voters’. You expect to convince us you want to cut that pool?

In government we will support the living wage campaign with make-work-pay contracts to help businesses raise wages for millions of workers.

Which, again, will be passed on in higher prices for others. Really, can no-one see how this is going to affect things?

The third pillar is a place to belong. We see the empty shops, the potholes, the betting shops and the legal loan sharks in the high streets we campaign on. These places smell of decay. It is hard not to feel a sense of loss and concern for the future when we walk these streets. And we hear the anger about immigration. People are not anti-migrant, but to them immigration is the cause of rapid social and cultural changes that leaves them not knowing where they fit in. So Labour will make sure everyone in Britain can speak English, the language that binds us together as a national community.

And if, like Farhia, they don’t plan on learning it? Are you going to set up re-education camps?

One-nation Labour is for family, for getting Britain working again, and for community. It means doing politics in a new way. Not the old top-down transactional politics of doing things to and for people. But a bottom-up transformative politics of the common good that gives people the power and responsibility to take more control of their lives, their work and their communities.

Fine words, though they ring utterly hollow when set against the last Labour regime, which created exactly the conditions you now rail against..

"When there’s something strange in your neighbourhood, who ya gonna call?"

Well, the police, it seems:

James Creighton, 25, decorated the outside of his house with skeletons, bloodied corpses and cobwebs in a display dubbed Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The bar owner transforms his house in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, every year to raise money for the Cancer Research UK charity in memory of his grandmother Betty, who died from the disease in 2009.

Awww, how heart-warming! Isn’t it nice to hear a…

Oh.

But he had a nasty shock when two police officers knocked on his door to tell him a parent had complained it was frightening children.

Mr Creighton said: “The police came round knocking on my door. They said they were sorry to disturb me but they had a complaint from a member of the public who walks past my house in the morning.

"Apparently their child starts crying every time they walk past my house. “I was shocked - more to the point that the parent couldn't come to the door themselves and speak to me personally, but had to get the police involved and waste their time."

Oh, please, don’t waste any sympathy on them! They are wasting their own time, and trying to resolve the situation by making you compromise, rather than having the balls to tell the offended party that what you are doing isn't illegal and so they have no jurisdiction, now mind how you go sir/madam...

And this is yet another incident which gives the lie to the constant police whinging about how they are so stretched and short of staff, because if that were really true, they wouldn't feel obliged to hot foot it round every time some cretin gets it into his/her head to screech about being 'distressed'.

"Police have asked me to put black tarpaulin along the fence so the kids can't see it, but why should I do that? It ruins the whole rest of the display for everyone else.

“All the other kids love it. It is just this one who doesn't like it."

Yes, and sadly, today, that one person wields power beyond measure, because the police have become the kind of spineless, 'let's see if we can work out a compromise here', social workers with uniforms and radios, and not the simple crime-fighting service they were envisioned to be.

No more, it seems, do new recruits long to kick in doors and face hardened villains with shooters. Now, it seems, they long to broker 'peace' between Mrs Grimethorpe and Mrs McTavish over noise issues with the former's kids and the latter's barking dog.

Well, if that's the case, can we make them wear the blue berets of the UN Peacekeeping Forces and no longer have to pretend they are 'our finest boys in blue'?

Inspector Simon Tabert told the BBC that officers had visited Mr Creighton "to discuss the matter." He said: "We had a complaint (from a parent) that it was so realistic, it was going to upset their children.

“Mr Creighton offered to create a barrier, but it's my understanding we did not ask him to do so.

"We asked him to tone it down, because people were being distressed by it."

Then you are every bit as much a snivelling little weed of a man as the complainer, and as for your role as 'Safer Neighbourhood Team Member, a role you seem unusually proud to claim, it seems what Stevenage really needs is someone to keep them safe from cretins like you and your team...

As Leg-Iron points out, it is indeed a funny old world.

Well, Stop Them Defining ‘Vital Services’ For Themselves, Then…

Dozens of local authorities are on the brink of financial collapse but ministers have failed to come up with adequate contingency plans to prop up vital services, according to a committee of MPs.

Oh, really? ‘Vital services’, eh..?

Hodge warned that some councils may have no option but to cut services as a result of tight finances.

"Local authorities are tending to cope with funding reductions. But in the long term there might well be little room for further efficiency gains and services would have to be cut. There needs to be frank and open dialogue between central and local government and the public on just what services councils will be expected to provide in a prolonged period of declining funding."

Well, I’ll tell you what I consider to be 'services councils should provide', and I’ll certainly tell you a service that they shouldn’t provide.

Feeding other people’s kids for ‘free’:

Free healthy breakfasts could soon be on the menu at all primary schools in Hull, the Mail can reveal today. The move is part of a fresh drive to improve the health of children in the city, as figures confirm rising obesity rates.

Let’s get this straight – feeding children is the responsibility of their parents. It’s not the responsibility of the school, or the council, or anyone else.

The board, which is a partnership between the council and public health experts, is expected to approve a number of new initiatives costing about £200,000 at a meeting later this month.

There’s £200,000 that can be saved immediately, then, and put to work on repairing potholes, ensuring that refuse is collected and fly-tippers prosecuted and that local parks are maintained. All services the council should be providing…

Cllr Inglis said: "What I have been trying to do is focus the board's activities on younger age groups.

"This really has the same principles behind the free school meals initiative – catch them early, get them into good habits and we all reap the benefits in 20 or 30 years' time.

"For me it's almost a no-brainer."

It certainly takes a no-brainer to come up with it, though perhaps not in the way you meant!

Blackpool council leader Simon Blackburn said as well the nutritional and educational benefits, the scheme was designed to tackle poverty.

"This is not about helping kids whose parents are on benefits, it's about people earning £12,000-a-year and struggling to make ends meet."

Perhaps you should ask yourself why people earning that amount might struggle? Could it be because they are paying too much in tax that then goes to feed other people’s children?

A Nice Vignette Of What 13 Years Of Labour Has Produced….

Steven Rea, 39, of Baleside Close, Chelsfield, is charged with one count of common assault after the incident at Bexleyheath Police Station on October 13 last year.

The youngster, who was 14 at the time, had been arrested on suspicion of stealing a bottle of vodka from Iceland in Erith town centre.

And despite the worry from the progressives about how stressful and intimidating young people find interaction with the justice system, he wasn't exactly chastened by his experience:

Defence counsel Billy Emlyn Jones suggested the youngster provoked the attack by showing Rea his middle finger after he had been brought into custody.

Lovely!

Nor was that all…

Mr Emlyn Jones added: "You have no respect for the police doing their job.

"You did absolutely nothing to cooperate when you had been arrested.

"You made their job as difficult as you possibly could deliberately.

"The police had no choice but to try and pick you up and get you to a cell using force."

Still, I'm sure his brief has coached him well on how to be contrite and express regret now he’s in the d…

Oh.

After viewing the footage the boy said: "You f**king mug. I haven't even seen this before and that is not right.

"I was drunk, that is what I am like when I am drunk.

"But what I did, I did not deserve that.

"It is not hard, they could have just picked me up and put me in a cell."

Yes, indeed. Why should there be any consequences, he (quite reasonably) asks, when there haven’t been any up until now?

"This Awful 'Tax' Affects Ordinary Families!" Screams The 'Guardian'...

...yet is curiously unable to find any to illustrate the point:

When Aisha was evicted from her flat in East Ham, east London, on 15 April, she packed her belongings in a suitcase and went with her six-year-old daughter to the council's housing office in Stratford, hoping for help to find somewhere else to stay in the area.

Instead she was given a train ticket to Birmingham, and details of how to take the bus from the station to the Bailey hotel in Edgbaston, a hotel providing emergency accommodation 127 miles away.

So, someone who's evicted (we aren't told why, though we are told that another family mentioned in the article were in arrears with their rent) has to take the best offer she can get? So what?

Oh, you heartless fiends, wail the left-wing press - we have to think of the children!

Because she has no idea how long she will be in Birmingham, her daughter is not in school. The six-year-old is very bored and is missing the friends she made at her primary school in East Ham.

The hotel, a very basic bed and breakfast establishment, has no facilities for children, and a sign on the door to the only communal space announces: "Due to recent events the dining room has been banned from children for play."

Too bad. When you are living on the State, beggars can't be choosers. Say, just why are you living on the State, anyway?

She understands that there is an intense housing shortage in London, and is resigned to moving from the city where she has put down roots over the past 10 years, since she moved to the UK from the Gambia.

Ah. She must be one of those 'hard-working immigrants' without whom our vital services would all collapse, right?

She is unable to look for work because she has no permanent address. She has worked previously as a radio presenter, but now is anxious to get any job.

*puts away Nano-Violin*

*checks flights to the Gambia from Birmingham Airport*

You Chose To Climb Aboard That Tiger, Heather...

...so don't expect sympathy when you find it's eyeing you up and licking its chops:

She told the Echo she had "plenty to say" in response to her own father's stinging claims that she was "lazy".

But she said she would not air her thoughts publicly and added: "I just want it all to stop now, it's gone far enough."

 Perhaps you should have thought of that beforehand?

In an interview with the Daily Mirror, Heather said: "A mass murderer wouldn't get as much attention as I'm getting. One bloke said on Facebook he wanted to put all my kids in a house and gas them. It's just sickening."

 I fully agree. If the house is made airtight, there's no need to waste valuable gas...

She added: "I'm not prepared to say how much I receive (in benefits) – that's my business."

Well, no. We're paying it, so it's our business.

"But I run out of money every week. Luckily I've got a good mum who bails me out."

 Does she have her own gold mine?

"I usually spend £250 a week on food. We have everything large – Iceland do family meals.

My kids eat anything – bangers and mash, lasagne, spaghetti, and we always have a full Sunday roast.

"I go to Primark for the kids' clothes, but if people give me second-hand ones I will gladly take them. I'll take anything off anybody."

Well, yes. That is, after all, the point. Isn't it?

Try This In A National Park & The Rangers Will Lock You Up!

As 'The American Spectator' points out!

A homeless centre says it is being overwhelmed with people needing food because their benefits have been temporarily stopped.

The Storehouse in Coleman Street is feeding more than 200 people a day and instead of just providing one or two bags to those in need it has become a sole source of food for many.

Well, who could have predicted that? You hand out free food, and you get people flocking to you. It’s a mystery!

The increase is being blamed on Government benefit reforms which have seen people “sanctioned” for not trying hard enough to get a job. People are asked to fill in forms and provide evidence of job hunts and if they fall short of the criteria, benefits are stopped for several weeks.

A sensible precaution, surely? What could be wrong with expecting people to justify their need for these benefits?

John Williams who helps run the Storehouse said many who can’t cope with the forms are being left destitute.

Can’t cope with the forms? But… wouldn't they have had to ‘cope with forms’ in order to get the benefits in the first place, as a commenter points out?