BACK TO THE FUTURE
I don’t know what was more nauseating, the smug self
congratulatory tone in Parliament over the dangerous and illiberal attack on
free expression represented by the tawdry deal done in Ed Miliband’s office in
the early hours of Monday morning, or the revolting spectacle of Newspapers
like the Sun or Daily Mail quoting Churchill, Orwell and John Stuart Mill. I
mean Orwell, John Stuart Mill, do these people have no shame? Sorry, I forgot,
of course they don’t.
Meanwhile, despite being no part of the Leveson proposals,
the establishment, for given the three party consensuses we must now call it
that, shiftily inserted a clause to the Royal Charter to embrace[1]
the Internet;[2] extending control
over any ‘news related material,’ that
is blogs like this one.
Of course the government says don’t worry your pretty little
heads, we don’t mean people like you. The Charter of course makes no
such distinction. Whenever I hear this kind of reassurance I know I’m in
trouble.
Meanwhile yesterday the government past a measure tawdry
even by its own squalid standards; having been found guilty in the courts of
illegally coercing people to work for free for organisations like Poundland[3]
and consequently being the required to make good the lost wages, the government
simply changed the law retrospectively .In this way they avoided
paying the people they had illegally sanctioned.
So much for the rule of law, from now on the law, when it
comes to the unemployed and disadvantaged is what ever the government says it is.
It would be nice to think this disgusting behaviour would at least free us from
lectures about ‘the rule of law’ and the preposterous proposition that we are
all equal before the law! I fear however it will not.
This measure was steered through parliament by the truly
odious Iain Duncan Smith, I am not given easily to personal hate but in the
case of Mr Smith I can make an exception.
The man is wholly malign, devoid of empathy or compassion, bitter and
twisted; he carries on his own personal vendetta against the uppity unemployed
who have the temerity to insist upon their legal rights.
After the Titanic went down the agency that employed the
musicians, who famously played whilst the ship was sinking, billed their
families for the cost of the dead men’s uniforms;[4]
today fines and preposterous rules are being imposed on cleaners contracted to
clean the hotels and large corporation, by the agencies that employ them for a
pittance..
We now live in a more
unequal society than at any time since before the First World War. Whilst
corporations like Amazon and Starbucks milk the taxpayer and stash the cash in
offshore accounts and bankers award themselves grotesque amounts of money for
mismanaging their respective institutions, the Government decrees that £71 per
week is sufficient for food, clothing, travel, gas and electricity and laundry,
an amount most Government ministers pay for a couple of bottles of reasonable plonk;
plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
[1] Rather in the manner that
a snake embraces its victim.
[3] Such court cases are of
course no longer supposed to happen, since welfare is now excluded from legal
aid.
[4] Both the White Star Line
and the agency concerned wriggled out of paying any compensation to the
families, each arguing in court that it was the others responsibility. See ‘And
The Band Played On,’Christopher Ward, Hodder and Stuaghton.
Having visited this page I would be grateful for your feedback, either tick one of the boxes below or make a comment via the comments button.
