LOOSE MONEY

I can't believe how free and easy some people are with public money. Today both the newspapers and the TV news are full of LibDem former leader, Lord Ashdown, talking about voting against the proposed benefit cap of £26,000pa. For a person prepared to work and support themselves and their family, they need to bring in about £35,000 a year before tax to have the same standard of living as a family at the proposed benefit cap. Half the population don't make that sort of money. What incentive to work is there for some one of only modest earning capacity when they can rake in £26,000 just sitting on their sofas watching their mates on the Jeremy Kyle show? But even that cap is too low for Lord Ashdown. Labour were obviously happy for families to get £50,000 or even significantly higher in overall benefits. Indeed they set up the system to disguise the total by creating a plethora of individual benefits and an ever increasing army of public sector employees to administer all the handouts.

Give Nick Clegg his due - he's woken up and smelt the coffee. He realises the present benefit system is both unfit for purpose and financially ruinous for the country. But how many of his rank and file are behind him and how many are cheering on Lord Ashdown? How many commuters travelling into London long to live in places like Kensington and Chelsea but instead have to buy homes outside London then endure an hour or more each way to get to work. Meanwhile the combined taxes of several of these hardworking families are needed to pay the housing benefit to let one family, making no contribution to the public purse, live in Central London.

UPDATE: On the above theme, Iain Duncan Smith is quoted in Monday's London Evening Stardard saying "The purpose of this is not to punish people but it is to give fairness to people who are paying tax, who are commuting large distances because they can only afford to live in the houses that they have chosen". (Click on the word "saying" above for a link to the article, which also includes "some households have been living on benefits of more than £100,000 a year in affluent areas of London" [New Labour, New Excesses?]).

A HAPPY NEW YEAR

The first day of 2012 and my best wishes for "A Happy New Year" to anyone reading this posting. Although individually there may be happy 2012's it is looking very bleak collectively. After the Merkozy Junta just managed to keep kicking the can down the road in 2011 I suspect events will come to a head in 2012. Apparently the UK Treasury is doing some worse case scenario planning based on the premise that some countries after defaulting and with the euro collapsing will have to physically close their borders as well as put a halt to all money flows across their borders. UK holiday makers could find themselves marooned abroad with ATMs not working and will need to be repatriated.

This whole situation of over-indebted countries facing collapse can perhaps be best explained by the following:-

Despite it being a self-evident truth it seems that politicians of the Left and so many voters continue to fail to grasp it.