Osborne, HS2 And A Massive Stink of……….?

The proposed new HS2 needs a track as ‘straight as a die’ to achieve its maximum speed of 225 mph, yet when the track reaches the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s constituency of Tatton, which is full of mansions owned by the extremely rich, the track takes a massive curving dogleg that manages to avoid the moneyed lands of rich footballers, bankers and property speculators in Osborne’s constituency. The detour will add an extra £500 million to the cost of this massive political vanity project. Osborne claims he has not been lobbying to divert the line.

I’ll just file that claim along with his claims of reducing borrowing, creating growth and that the allegations were untrue about drug taking, his acquaintance with a dominatrix and the reason that Osborne was so keen to get Cameron to employ Former News Of The World Editor Andy Coulson was payback for Coulson running a spoiler article in order to bury the story about the drug and dominatrix allegations.

Beef Found In lasagna Shock.

I bought a lasagna yesterday and I thought there was something a bit strange about it, so I took it to be tested. Guess what they found in it........ Beef! Yeah that's right. Bloody beef. Not a shred of horse. I was disgusted! I said to the shop girl, when I took it back,  if my lasagna isn't full of a once cherished and cared for family pet that the owner, probably a vacuous fifteen year old who has just discovered make up and boys, and is now bored of the pony she once dreamed of as a little girl. If that little chestnut mare hasn't been rammed into a stinking truck with a bunch of other bewildered, dread filled, once loved pets, deprived of food and water, and driven hundreds of miles before being poked with an electric prod, kicked, punched and driven into an abattoir that's air is thick with the feted smell of blood, gristle and fear, it's floor covered in excrement, urine and offal. If that terror stricken and confused little pony hasn't been brutally slaughtered by some slow eyed, slack jawed, dim witted uncaring malcontent, who probably sports a massive erection, as he gleefully goes about his business of killing beautiful, graceful, intelligent and sentient beings for a living.

Well, I said to the shop girl. I want my bluddy money back! I know what's right yer know!

Do You?

Farmers, Landowners and Europe.

Often when driving through the countryside I see signs urging people to vote UKIP or promoting the idea of pulling Britain out of Europe. I’m confused. Why is it that the most rabid eurosceptics are landowners or farmers, who are currently receiving thousands of pounds in subsidies (benefits) from Europe via The Common Agricultural Policy?

Do they seriously think that, if Britain pulls out of Europe, the British taxpayer is going to allow them to continue to live a life on benefits by continuing to shovel thousands of pounds in subsidies (benefits) in their direction?

I’m afraid the days of leaving a rusty old piece of farm machinery in a hedgerow and getting thousands of pounds in free money in return, so you can buy the wife a new 4x4, or buy some more carbofuran to poison raptors with, will be over. I’m afraid the days of making boots from old tractor tyres and marrying your sister will be back, my inbred bucolic friends. After all the Common Agricultural Policy is nothing more than a slush fund for landowning dukes, earls,princes and Tory MP's.

Childcare.

The government is keen for childcare assistants to achieve qualifications in English and Mathematics. It’s the same approach that has been taken with nurses and we have seen where that has left us. Some nurses now seem to think it’s beneath them to carry out the more mundane duties expected of them, like changing soiled sheets or feeding patients.

I can understand the need to improve mathematical skills in childcare assistants if part of the nursery curriculum was the story of the little bear and the quadratic equations or how the wheels on the bus go round and round because mass is converted into energy, but other than that I would have thought the most important skill a childcare assistant would need when looking after six toddlers, under the age of three, is the ability to count up to six. Any other skills are superfluous to the task in hand, methinks.

Polish (the language, not the stuff you use to makes things shiny).

Apparently Polish is now are second language. I haven’t got a problem with that, although I do find it a rather arrogant language, as it seems to think it can exist without the need for vowels. In fact I will go further and say it is openly vowelist.

What does concern me though is an attitude I have noticed in some immigrants who have settled down and made a life in this country. They have come to this country to take advantage of the opportunities which, presumably, were denied to them in the own country, but once they have achieved their, again presumably ,better life, some start piping up and begin to criticise our welfare and health  systems, as well as our liberal democracy and  values. The suggestion, it would seem, is that they would prefer it if their new country was more like their old one. The solution is simple. If you’re not happy with the way we live our lives then perhaps you would like to return from whence you came.

Statements made about immigrants.

“ what they earn is sent back to their home country”

They pay taxes, consume food, buy clothing and fuel, pay for goods and services. Yes they save, but so do the British. It’s not a crime. The Polish return £1.3bn to Poland. The French send back £1.4bn to France. You don’t hear people complaining about French migrants.

“ They do jobs the British can’t be bothered to do”.

Prior to freedom of movement and mass migration I don’t remember cabbages and turnips rotting in the fields because farmers couldn’t find anybody to pick them. I think you’ll find the real problems are gang masters, farmers and landowners using the availability of migrant labour as an opportunity to suppress wages. Some farmers provide a rusting caravan as bed and board and deduct it from the wages of workers, reducing their outgoings. If they employed British workers they would have to pay minimum wage at least because British workers would not need bed and board provided, thus increasing the farmers outgoings. They would have to wave goodbye to the new 4x4 they had their eyes on.

Middle East and North Africa. I’m Confused.

We support the Syrian rebels, which include elements of Al Quaida, but we don’t support the Malian rebels. We supported the Libyan rebels and we supported the Egyptian dictatorship of Mubarek. We didn’t support The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt until the Arab spring and now we do. We support the tyrant king in Bahrain, whose troops are shooting people who are protesting for greater democracy, and whose secret police arrest female doctors who have treated the injured, and then rape and torture them. We support the ferocious dictatorship of Saudi Arabia who is supplying the king of Bahrain with troops and guns to kill its citizens. We also support The State of Israel (it’s the only democracy in the Middle East you know) while it persecutes the Palestinians and steals their lands. We obviously don’t support the Palestinians in their quest for their own sovereign state or we wouldn’t put up with Israeli settlers invading and stealing land and the Israeli Defence Force brutalising and persecuting Palestinians.

They say if a politician is in difficulties at the home then the best thing to distract the sheeple at home is a foreign war, where they can look all ambassadorial, as they swan around another country telling people how keen they are on freedom and democracy, although I doubt if the topic is high on the agenda when you are welcoming a Saudi prince or the King of Bahrain to 10 Downing Street.

What would be nice would be if we could be more Scandinavian in our approach to foreign affairs. If we could throw of the tired old relic of colonialism and accept that we are no longer a major player in the world and that all we are, in reality, is a ‘useful idiot’ for the USA and Israel, as we aid them in achieving their military objectives in the Middle East and beyond.

 Instead we could spend all those tax pounds we use to prosecute wars in foreign lands in our own country. Then maybe the fifth richest country in the world wouldn’t need so many food banks.

Song lyrics.

‘Tonight there’s going to be a jail break,

Somewhere in the town.’

 Jail break by Thin Lizzy.

I’m no expert, but I bet it’ll be at the jail.