Sunday Funnies...

Even more surprising, none of them come from Australia!

How About The Fear Of Wondering If We’ll Be Paying For People Like You Forever, Steve?

Steve Dee wails at the unfairness of Australian disability benefit processes:

I don’t watch horror movies. Partly because I have an anxiety disorder, and partly because my life has been filled with enough fear already. I know the horror of watching your bank account slowly slip into the red, several days before payday and with the cupboard running bare. I know the chill of panic that runs down your spine when you hear the car engine rattle and know it will be months before you can afford a repair, and have no other way to reach your place of employment. I know the ghastliness of having to decide which relative to ask for help, which bill collection company to beg for mercy, which medical problem to ignore for the moment and which you can afford to fix now.

Fears and anxieties that a lot of people know, surely? Especially in days of recession and inflation? Congratz, Steve, you're one of us!

But wait, not so fast! Steve, you see, is special:

And oh yes, I know the dread of your benefits being taken away from you.

Of course! Benefits are forever, you see, like diamonds:

After several meetings with Centrelink, I had to have my illness certified by a psychiatrist. It took a month to get an appointment, and he required two appointments minimum – each at a cost of several hundred dollars – before he would attest to my condition. It took a few more weeks before the final interview with Centrelink where I was once again asked to prove I was disabled to a scrutineer: a final humiliation that presumes the weakest of us are criminals, and permits us to prove our innocence only by proving our incompetence.

No. it's not 'a humiliation'; it's a safeguard. That the money is being spent on the right people, and not squandered on fraudsters. Do you think there should be no checks at all?

In 2013, I watched the government cut mental health funding so I could only get half as many subsidised treatments a year. Then Kevin Andrews began to suggest plans to alter benefit payments to people with mental illnesses, saying he was "alarmed" by growth in mental illness numbers. The pressure of this constant threat – along with the need to keep working in case it became a reality – have continued to damage my mental health, making it harder and harder for me to get well. Which means I spend longer and longer on the pension, and cost the government more and more money.

That sounds a lot like blackmail, Steve-o...

Andrews continues to talk about making sure those who can work do. It is a choice of language that reduces people to resources: if they are able to be turned towards a profit, they will be, because anything less is a travesty against capitalism. This is a mindset that leaves no consideration for health and well being, of getting better and staying better. Certainly no concern for making lives richer and people stronger.

I'm a little unclear about just how handing out money with no safeguards for life so people can sit on their backsides makes anyone's life richer, or how it might make people stronger for that matter. It seems to me it just makes them dependent.

Yes, It’s Eye Catching All Right…

…but probably not for the reasons the ‘Guardian’ might suppose:

Dog bites man has never been a headline, but the fact that three times as many people living in the most deprived areas of England are bitten by dogs as in the least deprived areas is an eye-catching statistic.

Well, indeed so. Dogs are expensive to keep and feed (assuming, of course, that you do both properly).

How can these areas be considered ‘deprived’ if they can afford to do so?

Public managers and government bodies, as well as academics, are starting to realise the value of putting together different bits of the jigsaw to achieve more joined-up thinking about public health policies in local areas.

Hmmm, really? Sounds like they merely concentrate on their usual hobby horses to me:

One conclusion that is already inescapable is the role of alcohol in endangering public health.

Errr, I’m not sure you can conclude from this that the dogs are getting drunk…

People living in poorer neighbourhoods are still substantially more likely to suffer an assault – by dog or human – than those who live in more affluent areas, but Manchester University academic Ian Warren, has found that living in an ethnically diverse area reduces the impact of poverty on levels of violence. This suggests that there is more violence in poor white neighbourhoods.

What about poor black/brown/yellow neighbourhoods? Or are we supposed to pretend they don't exist?

Yet More #FirstWorldProblems…

…and this one’s great, even by ‘Guardian’ standards. Apparently, Bear Grylls isn’t featuring women on his survivalist show.

I know, I know. I was shocked and appalled* too…

So why is he in the news now? Has he been accused of exaggerating the hardships he faces in his TV shows? Not this time. This time he has been accused of peddling sexist twaddle. For his new Channel 4 series, The Island with Bear Grylls, a dozen volunteers are dumped on a Pacific island for a month and left to feed and house themselves. What's so controversial about that? They're all men.

*gasp* Say it ain’t so?

Are survival skills really a guy thing? Not according to bushcraft instructor Lisa Fenton, who called the idea "fantastical and ridiculous", or explorer Sarah Outen, who denounced the "male-oriented bias" of adventure TV, or Ruth England, from the Discovery Channel series Man, Woman, Wild, who pointed out: "The basic tenets of survival are the same, regardless of your genitals."

Ah. And of course, it’s clearly not the case that they are simply jealous of his success and feel that they should be given their own TV show, why, perish the thought!

And what does "Bear" have to say for himself? "It's nothing to do with who's the stronger sex," apparently, and he'd "really love to do a study of modern women. What does it mean in the modern world to be a woman today? How can you be a strong, empowered, go-getter woman with all of the womanly qualities that are important?"

In other words? It's all a silly misunderstanding, and you girls will get a go eventually.

I thought this was 2014 – do women have to ‘wait their turn’? Why can’t they do what he did and get cracking on developing their own TV shows?

*totally nonplussed

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!

Clearly, He’s The Real Victim, Poor Lamb…

Jane Chamberlin, defending, said Hodge had not assaulted her previously.

Well, it was a pretty good first attempt!

She said: "He has found being remanded in custody depressing, stressful and horrible. It has had a substantial impact on him."

Miss Chamberlin said her still young client left school without qualifications and had found getting employment difficult.

Or maybe just inconvenient for his lifestyle as full-time leisure pursuit co-ordinator…

An ‘Isolated Incident’, Eh..?

Sgt Rob Jameson said: “We are treating this as a serious incident because we want to speak to the man involved.

“This is an extremely isolated incident because the majority of pet owners are responsible people and keep their pets under control and well behaved."

You are kidding, officer?

Have You Considered Getting A Job..?

..as a roofer, perhaps? Or would that be 'punishment of the undeserving poor' (according to this daft mare)?

A neighbour said: “He was shouting and taking tiles off, yelling ‘they stopped my income support, they stopped my housing benefit, how am I supposed to live? ’

“He worked himself up into a bit of a frenzy and started smashing things.

“He was in his 50s or 60s and was wearing a t-shirt that he soon ripped off. He had a hammer and a can of beer.

“A few days ago he was playing music so loud it sounded like a rave in the street. The day before that he had all these strobe lights going, like it was a concert. I think he’d just worked himself up and it built to this.”

He had time to do thousands of pounds worth of damage because, as usual, the police allowed him the time to do so…

A Met Police spokesman said: “Police were called at 2.45pm to reports of a man throwing objects off the roof of a house. Road closures were put in place.

“Shortly before 9pm the man was arrested and released on bail. He was not taken into custody.”

It’s about time a suitable proportion of any payout for damage caused by their ‘softly, softly, hands off’ policy came out of their budget, isn't it?

I Wonder Where She Gets It From?

"That is when everything kicked off. I admit Megan has a bit of an attitude, like any teenager…"

Gosh. It’s a total mystery where she could have picked up this attitude.

Mr Scarah, 42, said: "In this day and age this kind of behaviour by a school is unacceptable.

…

"The school has history of doing this and it is completely out of order."

The school, rightly or wrongly, has rules about mobiles in class. They expect their pupils to obey them. They expect the parents to support them.

That way, they’ll be able to have a faint prayer of turning out decent individuals with good qualifications, and not stroppy entitled little madams like your daughter.

"It was extremely difficult to watch..."

Was it really?

As difficult to watch, perhaps, as when your partners in crime buried alive the woman you'd just blasted with a sawn-off because she caught you robbing her house?

Doesn't sound much like a 'botched execution' to me, either. Dude's dead, ain't he?

Lockett's victim's family put out a statement- presumably written before the execution- saying they are 'thankful this day has arrived'

Heh! Don't be too sure...

Adam Leathers, co-chair of the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, accused the state of having 'tortured a human being in an unconstitutional experimental act of evil,' reported CNN.

You're getting confused son. That's what the killer did.