Looters and thieves

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook: "These people have no morality. They sponge off the taxpayer, they are thieves, have little respect for the law or society, they steal, loot, run riot through the city, have no concern for other people. And now they're coming home from holiday to sort the riots out."

Other friends of mine have suggested bringing back national service while Theresa May is talking about bringing in the army to beat the rioters down. What she fails to understand in the cause of the problem and like so many she is concerned about treating the symptoms.

Young people have a natural angst and aggression. They need time to find their place and direction in society, to sort out where they are going with their lives. They need a heroes journey, a rite of passage, call it what you will, and some rites of passage are more damaging than others as we have seen these last few days. Destructive rites of passage are going to be more likley when you combine angst and aggression with a sense of despair, high unemployment, widening poverty gap and little hope of a better life.

So maybe my friends who are suggesting national service have got a point. Not that I would want to see people being made to serve in the forces, but there may be a case for other types of service that would provide a sense of achievement and pride for younger people, as well as some training and career skills.

So what about the other part of the cause, poverty, unemployment etc. These are much easier to fix unless yu have a government wedded to an ideology of cuts for the masses with bonuses for the rich. An ideology based on hard capitalism and hard knocks.

The great seer and prophet Nick Clegg predicted the riots before the election if the Tories got in to Downing St. Let us not forget who put them in power though:

Tories and Disability

Great Facebook campaign page:

Reduce Philip Davies's salary to less than £5.68 an hour

Still can't quite believe the comments that he has made (suggesting that disabled people should take work at below minimum wage rate), but then the Tory approach to diasbility is pretty awful generally.

Council cuts aimed at the North

The one thing that struck me about the local government spending cuts this week apart from them being uneccessary, disastrous for the economy, disastrous for public sector workers and disastrous for the less well off, was that they are targetted at the north of England.

The map from the Guardian shows the level of cuts to councils across the country and aside for the level of cuts in London, the cuts are aimed squarely at the north.

It would be interesting to do some statistical analysis based on voting patterns, political control of councils, indicies of deprvation and so on, but I doubt it is necessary. The pattern of cuts shown visually is as clear as it needs to be.

The cuts are going to protect the affluent Tory controlled south and take from poorer areas in the north. Pickles cuts are aimed at the poor - Tory policy in action.

p.s. Sadly (because I have little better to do) I have just done a quick T Test looking at Labour and Tory controlled councils. The probabilty that the spending cuts randomly fell into the unequal pattern is <0.0001 suggesting that there may be a reason for the cuts being made as they have been...

Helen Grant - apologise now!

Apologise now, Ms Grant!

Ben Carpenter, a sixth form student at Cranbrook School has spent months arranging a debate between the four parliamentary candidates in Maidstone. His communication and organisational skills were excellent and he had even arranged Paul Sigert to chair the debate. As previously blogged, Helen Grant (Con) subsequently pulled out, but the comments from her press officer (and husband) in this week's Courier are patronising and insulting. Ms Grant needs to make a formal apology.

In the article, Ms Grant's team accuse Ben of "duping" the other candidates into attending the debate as "the others wouldn't have turned up if the main candidate was not there". Clearly she has an ego the size of Jupiter! So much for her pledge of a clean campaign.

Her team go on to say: "It is unfortunate that he misled everybody. I hope he will learn a lesson from it". Aside from being completely untrue and disgustingly patronising towards Ben, I hope that it is the people of Maidstone who will learn from it - do people really want someone as rude as this as their MP?

The other candidates are more than happy to turn up without Ms Grant. We want to engage with people, we want to debate the issues and policies and we want to support Ben in the work that he has done.

Its just a lurch to the right...

Fantastic piece by Cruella on the Tories going lap dancing, the photo from the Daily Mail is particularly enlightening! As the economy crumbles, we will know where to find the Tories...

Meanhile, the LibDems seem to be trying to position themselves to the right of the LibDems with their latest tax promises. Their new health tax will give tax breaks to the rich while punishing the poor - regressive taxation. They reiterated their support for PFI yesterday too!

Vince Cable, the oil man, seems to be pushing their tax plans which are clear attempts to win votes at the expense of policy substance.