We never seem to learn do we ? The Tories always try to dismantle laws that protect people when in work under the guise of helping business to create jobs. What it of course would mean would be that firms could sack you whenever they liked with minimal consultation.

We seem to have the habit in this country to over analyse stuff and we seem to always end up blaming ourselves for things happening around the world. We have politicians so they can make the decisions and take the actions we don’t want to. You can look at the Middle East and say it was our fault because the way we have tried to exert influence and have turned a blind eye to unsavoury leaders who it’s been in our interest to support. In the end though, why would we not try and have a say in how the world is run ?

Let’s hope we see more like this in the coming months when people realise exactly how the Conservative led government’s cut will decimate our public services. Good for them !

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I’ve just watched a programme on Channel 4 called Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story the basic premise of which was if you cut taxes and have a basic flat tax and low income people paying no tax, everyone becomes better of through economic growth and Britain would end up booming like Hong Kong did. Apart from it being arrant right wing nonsense, there is something to be said for having rights balanced with duties. Martin Kettle makes quite a sound defence of Ian Duncan-Smith’s new welfare policy but it is the comparison with Beveridge that is really interesting. It’s easy to forget how the Beveridge Report ended up transforming the lives of millions of people in Britain something that simply wouldn’t have happened if Britain had become a low taxing paying country as suggested in the Martin Durkin programme.

Since the Coalition got in, I’ve been trying to encapsulate what I feel is wrong with it and it’s idealogical laying waste of the country. Amongst all the despair and bad news people must be given hope and this article sums up brilliantly the mess we’re going to end up in simply because the Bullingdon Club boys at the top don’t understand what it is to be an ordinary person in this country.

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David Miliband lost and it looks like he couldn’t take it. It would, of course, have been difficult for him to work with his brother but if he really cared about the Labour Party and more importantly the country, he would’ve given it a go. The dithering and the hesitancy was perhaps a good indication that he wouldn’t have been as good a leader as he thought he would be. That Baroness Warsi is sharp as a marble though isn’t she ?

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This is a party that spends five years writing 35 policy papers and nine months writing a manifesto, and it manages to come up with just one policy that wins votes [raising the income tax threshold]; two policies which lose votes [immigration and tax credit changes] and 7,000 policies that no one gives a flying f*** about.

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The Coalition doesn’t want to be defined by cuts, yet they continue, as this reports shows, to hit the hardest in society the most. It is impossible to reconcile the cuts with continuing economic growth. If people don’t have enough money, or are jobless or on benefits how is the economy going to grow ? Any job losses in the public sector will never be picked up by the private sector and so you’ll get the situation where people lose their jobs and won’t have sufficient benefits to enure they enjoy a half decent standard of living. It’s not economic rocket science.

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The Coalition is really starting to show it’s true colours now. Right to Buy did enable people to enter the private housing market and many people did really well out of it. However, not everyone wants to or can buy, so we will always need council housing. The idea that somehow this should be fixed rather than you staying in the house as long as you pay the rent is ridiculous and frightening. It is such a non idea that has no merit. What the coalition are really saying is they hate the idea of the state being involved in any aspect of our lives and that we should do it all ourselves. What about people like my mum. Always paid her rent so are they now going to put her on a fixed five year tenancy ?

This Coalition has no legitimacy and the shabby Lib Dems and their turncoat leader Clegg are, through their support,  letting the Bullingdon Club Boys wage idealogical war against the 65% of people who didn’t vote for their policies. God help us all (which is a bit rich coming from an atheist).

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The BBC does drive me mad. BBC 3 and 4 are a waste of money, as are some of the more obscure radio channels that have sprung up over the last few years.         I resent the fact the BBC website can be see all over the world by non-licence paying people and it spends too much time trying to compete with the commercial channels instead of concentrating on the quality programmes we know it can make. Having said that we would be lost without it and would sink into a sea of commercialised news reporting and programme making.

The Times newspaper is a good case in point. I’ve enjoyed reading it the last few years but since Rupert Murdoch told the paper to start supporting the Tories again it has lost the balance in it’s reporting that I enjoyed. It is just  a mouth piece for the Tories. So we need the objectivity that the BBC offers, rather than just let the Murdochs of the world take over and all those who resent the licence fee should really just get over it.