Saturday, September 25, 2010


British carpenter who paid for 5,000 leaflets to find a job loses benefits...because he was 'not actively looking for work'

The insanity of bureaucratic Britain again

After two months claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance and no sign of work on the horizon, Adam Pay decided to do something about it.

The carpenter, who had been made redundant, printed and distributed 5,000 leaflets around his neighbourhood advertising his handyman skills. He also placed adverts in four local papers, all at his own cost. But when he reported to his local jobcentre he was told his £65.45-a-week benefits would be stopped because he had not been ‘actively looking for work’.

Staff told the father of two that trying to generate customers for his own handyman business did not count as searching for a job. If he had told them untruthfully that he had only searched the internet, checked local papers and made phone calls to look for work, the money would have continued to be paid into his account.

Mr Pay, 38, from Gillingham, Kent, said: ‘I told staff at the job centre I’d been spending six hours a day distributing the flyers and they wanted to know if I had done anything else. I thought they were having a laugh. It didn’t seem to count for anything at all in their eyes. I’m just trying to do the right thing. I have a family to look after.

‘The building industry isn’t good at the moment so it seemed the logical step to try to find my own work.’

Mr Pay’s case has now been passed to a senior official who will decide whether his claim for Jobseeker’s Allowance can be reactivated.

He worked at his last firm for two-and-a-half years on a salary of £22,000 but was laid off in July when the company lost an NHS contract due to public spending cuts.
Since then he has been rejected for a job as a Tesco delivery driver and as a maintenance man at a private mental hospital.

When he was told he needed a qualification to apply for sub-contracting work he signed up to the exam and passed on Tuesday. His wife, Louise, 37, a psychiatric nurse, is currently receiving £120-a-week maternity pay while she cares for their eight-month-old son Ben.

The couple also have a daughter, Scarlett, three, and are using their savings to cover the mortgage on their three-bedroom home.

Mr Pay spent £90 on printing 5,000 leaflets advertising his handyman skills, and another £220 for five weeks of advertisements in four local papers. He and his wife then spent 30 hours in the past week distributing the flyers throughout Gillingham.

When Mr Pay visited the job centre in Basildon, Essex, on Thursday he was given the bombshell news that he could no longer claim Jobseeker’s Allowance.

Claimants are told to keep a diary to ‘prove’ they have been looking for work which must be presented for their fortnightly visits.

Mr Pay’s plight emerged after official figures revealed 1.5 million Britons had never done a day’s work in their lives, with whole communities dependent on welfare.

He said: ‘It’s ridiculous. I’m going a step further than just looking for a job by trying to establish my own company and make my own work.’ His wife said: ‘Adam was applying for everything he could find. He came home from the job centre very upset. We are both exhausted. We thought they would be impressed that we had taken the initiative.

‘I agree with having a system to support those who can’t work through no fault of their own or when they’re hit by hard times. It’s a great thing about this country. ‘But it makes me angry as a taxpayer to be supporting a tickbox mentality with a system that can be scammed. The whole set-up is ludicrous. It seems as if they are telling us not to go out and look for a job. ‘We would have been better off doing nothing and just putting on the form that we had checked the internet and the papers every day.

‘We are staying hopeful that there is the need for a handyman in the local area and that something will come of our hard work.’

SOURCE






Britain's insane welfare state at work

What a depressing snapshot of Broken Britain Keith Macdonald gave us this week. The jobless 25-year-old has fathered 15 children by 14 different women (though he denies some of them are his). His illegitimate brood will cost the taxpayer £ 1.5million in welfare support.

As for Macdonald himself, he has no involvement in their upbringing whatsoever, save to contribute £5 per child per week out of his own benefits — less than the price of a packet of cigarettes.

Shocking? Yes. Surprising? Not really. As despicable as Macdonald is, the whole sordid tale begs the question: what kind of girl has unprotected sex with a virtual stranger with a violent past and a string of abandoned children to his name?

One answer is: the kind who wants a fast track to a council home and state benefits that are greater than she could earn in a lowly-paid job.

But, for me, the real blame for this travesty should be laid at the door of Britain’s well-intentioned but hopelessly naive ruling class, who condone a welfare system that unquestioningly and unapologetically indulges the feckless, calculating and work-shy.

These ‘people who know best’ have created a massively flawed welfare system that supports parasites like Macdonald and his low-rent conquests.

Of course, it’s only right and proper that the State should assist families who — through no fault of their own — have fallen on hard times. But benefit entitlement is now institutionalised among some sections of Britain’s underclass society. The generous handouts lavished on girls like Macdonald’s harem enable them to behave without censure or penalty.

If you need further evidence of the culture that’s causing this social decay, then just look at the health watchdog NICE’s recommendation this week that pregnant teenagers should have their antenatal classes at school — because waddling along to their local GP is far too embarrassing, apparently. Well, so it should be! Perhaps if society showed a modicum of disapproval of teen pregnancy, Britain would not be the single-mum capital of Europe.

Until we have the courage to say that NICE — which denies money for some cancer drugs — should not be squandering our money in this way, and until the Government finds the backbone to stop these girls using their womb as a fast track to a council home, nothing will change.

The Coalition has begun the bonfire of the quangos; surely it’s now time for a bonfire of the benefits, before we lose another tragic generation to worklessness, fatherlessness and hopelessness.

SOURCE






Polymorphous Propaganda

The sexual revolution always seems to have another frontier. Indeed, the very idea of a "revolution" would be negated were there no frontiers to conquer. So deeper, ever deeper, we plumb the depths. Look at television: Every new frontier is just another titillating, initially shocking plot for a fictional or "reality" show, until there's a "new normal" and the novelty and naughtiness wears off. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The latest example is a brand-new show on the TLC cable network called "Sister Wives," all about a likeable, longhaired Utah man named Kody Brown and his three wives and 13 children. But this isn't enough drama for a "reality" show, so the plot twist has Brown taking on a fourth wife with three of her own kids from a previous marriage. We've gone down a very strange path from "The Brady Bunch."

HBO started the normalization of polygamy with its drama "Big Love," but TLC is openly pushing for the walls of judgment to come falling down. Its slogan for the show is "Rethink love. Rethink marriage. Rethink family reality." In the first promo, one of the wives argues, "I think we're normal, and I go out and go, 'Oh, yeah, I can't tell everybody about my normal family.'" Kody Brown insists, "If you're good with one marriage, they figure you'll be good with two. I hope they think I'll be good with four."

They're not kidding. Off camera, there's more religion and politics at work. Kody Brown and his wives are in fact "fundamentalist Mormons" who have been political activists to legalize polygamy in Utah. The name of their lobbying group is Principle Voices. The group promotes a book called "Jesus Was Married," in which the disciples Martha and Mary, as well as Mary Magdalene, were all married to Jesus. It's "The Da Vinci Code" on Viagra.

This isn't the only TLC show to promote the "poly" -- yup, the hip new word -- lifestyle. They also aired a series this summer called "Strange Sex," which also had a plot about "polyamory," which is described as "consensual, responsible non-monogamy." TLC started as the Learning Channel; it's fast becoming the Libertine Channel.

The TLC show promoted a woman named Jaiya who lives with two men, having a baby with one of them. The bloggers at Polyamorous Percolations were delighted by its favorable spin: "the very picture of a respectful, insightful, beautiful poly documentary." A Chicago Tribune critic explained it "definitely aims to establish a sense of normalcy to an otherwise hard-to-understand situation" and "offers a great deal of education about human sexuality."

We're never being indoctrinated, just "educated." The abnormal is replaced by "a sense of normalcy."

Jaiya also appeared on "The Joy Behar Show" on CNN Headline News on Aug. 27 to promote her revolving-bedroom-door lifestyle: "It's great to have both, to be able to morph in and out of lots of different relationships." She's not kidding. Her more reluctant partner asks her how many boyfriends she wants. Her motto, she declares, is "If a man can love five persons, he should love five. If a man can love 50, he should love 50. If a man can love 500, he should love 500. Love is so rare that the more you can spread it, the better." (And CNN wonders how it lost the title of "most trusted name in news.")

For the more conventional polyester '70s "open marriage" types, there's a new adultery-promoting movie called "The Freebie," in which it's suggested the best way to spice up a marriage is a "free pass" for a one-night stand. Sept. 17 was dubbed "National Freebie Day" and the movie has a website at Untie-theknot.com. The site offers free-pass "Do's and Don'ts," lists the "Top Five Items You Must Have on Your Special Night" (don't ask) and even insists, "It's Time to Start Planning" and links to New York's Craigslist ads for "Casual Encounters" so you can "find a random partner."

Throughout this sudden avalanche of polygamy propaganda, a question persists: Where is the market demand for this? What significant segment of the vast American tapestry is being served by this message?

This is Hollywood blazing a trail because it wants to tear down the family, for once and for all. The barrage of libertine entertainment should remind us that it's become countercultural to champion the Judeo-Christian tradition. As strange as it may sound, the advocates of tradition can't rest on their laurels. Marriage as we've always known it has to be not just revered, but saved.

SOURCE





Who should libertarians hope for as the next leader of the British Labour party

Excerpt from Sean Gabb:

This leaves us with the two Miliband brothers. And these are certainly worth considering. They have the great advantage for us of being Jewish. Now, while there are Jewish organisations that get money and support by insisting that England is two steps from our own Kristallnacht, I doubt if many English people have even noticed the shape of the Miliband noses. Of those who have noticed, I doubt if more than a few thousand think ill of it. Native anti-semitism is so rare that it has to be hunted out, where not actually fabricated. And do bear in mind that the British National Party, which is our largest white nationalist organisation, welcomes Jewish members and is vaguely pro-Israel in its foreign policy. However, the non-white population is solidly anti-semitic. Moslems, black Christians, whatever – they largely hate Jews with a ferocity not known in England since the middle ages.

It may be disagreeable that we must share a country with such people. But it would be rather funny to see Labour hoist by its own petard. After 1997, Labour Governments knowingly encouraged the immigration of between seven and ten million non-whites into this country. They did so because it accelerated the upward redistribution of wealth to which modern ruling classes are all committed. They did so because it helped break up the solidarity of the ruled that is another ruling class project. They also did so because they believed that the new arrivals, once they had been waved through the citizenship formalities, would mostly vote Labour. And they will – so long as an English or a Scotch man or a black woman is in charge. They will not vote, I think, for a Labour Party led by a Jew. And this is regardless of how seldom either Miliband goes into a synagogue, and regardless of how little public enthusiasm either has shown for Israel.

This will be still more the case if the Liberals get the electoral reform that the Conservatives may not be able to deny them. So far, the two main parties have been held together by the iron logic of the first past the post system. I, for example, voted Conservative in this year’s election not because I thought David Cameron would be a good Prime Minister – but because the Conservatives were the only force able to get Labour out of office. I normally vote for the UK Independence Party. I would, in other than general elections, and if a candidate were to stand where I live, vote for the Libertarian Party. But I voted Conservative in the general election because not to vote Conservative would have risked another Labour Government.

It is the same with non-white electors. They might swallow their prejudices and vote for a Labour Party led by a Jew if the alternative was to let in a Conservative Government. But the alternative vote system will allow them to give their first preferences to Islamic and black nationalist parties. Their second preferences might be enough for Labour. But the loss of first preferences might be enough to keep Labour from ever winning a majority of the English seats. And the accompanying redistribution of seats would make Scotch votes far less important than they have been.

And so, my prayers are with the Milibands. I should now say, though, which of the two brothers I prefer. My preference is for David......

David Miliband, however, is irremediably tainted with all the horrors of the Blair and Brown regime. He supported those wars. He supported every police state law that was brought forward. And he has all the commitment in his speaking manner of a Kremlin teleprinter. He looks thick. If we leave aside his ability to crawl nearly to the top of the Labour dung heap, he probably is thick. But, where his brother does not, he also manages to look like a supercilious fraud. I do hope he wins. Indeed, I am so convinced he would be the right man for the job, that I did briefly think of handing over a £1 joining fee to the Labour Party in order to vote for him. With David Miliband in charge, we might hope for a repeat at the next election of Labour’s 1983 performance.

Now, here I must say, as clearly as I can, that, I do not want a melt-down of Labour support because it might give a clear run to the Conservatives. The reason I want the Labour Party to vanish up its own bottom is because this enables our own attack on the Conservative Party.

The new order that I want – and that I largely believe is wanted across our Movement – is one in which most state agencies will have been shut down, and in which the legal and administrative privileges that maintain big business, the credentialed professions, the centralised media, and all other sinister interests, in existence will have been revoked. This does involve a revolution of one kind or another – a revolution, or a counter-revolution, or just a reaction: call it what you will. But, if the people ever take to the streets to demand change, this will have been preceded by a delegitimisation of the present order of things – just as the ancient régime in France withered after the 1770s, and the traditional autocracy in Russia withered after the 1880s. Long before a visible blow can have been landed against it, this present order of things will have been made incapable of defending itself. Of course, it must - as will every order founded on a denial of human nature - perish from within. But this inevitable fall will have been hastened by our own relentless critique.

Much HERE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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