So, on the day which provided a final reminder of a splendid summer during which British sportsfolk proved they really do have Hearts of Oak, when Britain showed the world that it actually can deliver vast projects on time, when the games volunteers showed that, despite everything, Britain’s coping/volunteering class contains just about the nicest people on earth, and when London once more became the greatest city on the planet – yes, this is the day the miserable socialistic shags who run our trades unions demonstrated once again how cosmically selfish and delusional they are by calling for co-ordinated strike action against a public-sector pay freeze.
Look, it’s really quite simple. We can no longer afford the public sector in its present form. We can’t go on paying public sector workers more than we pay the private sector, and we can’t afford to employ nearly as many of them. You have to be economically illiterate to imagine this is sustainable, and morally insane to believe that it’s justifiable.
In 2010-11, the top 1% - i.e. the rich – paid 26.6% of all income tax. That’s over a quarter of income tax. ONE PERCENT = ONE QUARTER. By contrast, the bottom 50% of tax-payers contributed 11% of the total. That’s right – the top 1% contribute two and a half times as much to the Exchequer in total as the bottom 50%. And it doesn’t take a maths genius to figure out that the top 50% pay over eight times as much as the bottom 50%.
How mendacious or barking mad do you have to be pretend that this state of affairs is unfair in any way (except, perhaps, to the top 50% of tax-payers). Those of us who belong to the genuine middle classes (not the pretend middle-classes Miliband and Obama keep raving on about) have particular cause for complaint, given that – unlike many members of the bottom half – we don’t get any of the money back in the form of tax credits or housing benefits or disability allowance, and we don’t have enough left over to be able to afford fancy accountants to hide anything from the Inland Revenue. We grit our teeth and pay up and get practically sod-all in return.
The statistic that really shocked me was that there are only 13,000 people with taxable incomes of over £1m.
According to Dave Prentis, general secretary of "Our people face a three-year pay freeze, with living standards slashed while the rich and powerful remain untouched.”
Untouched? UNTOUCHED? A handful of people paying over a quarter of all income tax have remained “untouched”? Do these leftists ever listen to the sheer nonsense dribbling from their mouths? If they do, how could a rational human being with a double-digit IQ actually believe it? Unless, of course, they subscribe to the ancient Marxist view that making a profit is an absolute evil - and haven't we all got over that ridiculous sort of tosh by now?
Prentiss went on, "It's our job to lead the fightback, to protect our heritage, to defend that fairer society that those who went before us fought for." Yes, Dave, some of those who went before you did indeed fight for a fairer society, but for at least the past five and a half decades you and your ilk have been fighting to entrench a grotesquely unfair system. And now that a section of the banking “community” (gang?) - aided by some spectacularly inept politicians and civil servants - have managed to wreck the economy by matching you in terms of greed, selfishness, economic illiteracy and social irresponsibility, we simply can’t afford you lot any longer.
Take your pick – pay freeze or wholesale redundancies. One or the other - we don't really care which.
As for your ludicrous “campaign against austerity”, there hasn’t been any austerity yet, which is why the UK’s debt is still growing apace. And as for your characteristically brutish threats to indulge in “mass co-ordinated strike action across the public and private sectors", are you really so dumb you can’t grasp the fact that it’s the private sector that pays for you and your members. Why would you make it harder for the private sector to make profits?
I mean, Good God, this is like trying to teach a chimpanzee to speak English.
Of course, as leftist commentator Dan Hodges points out here, the vast majority of Britain's 5.9 million union members couldn't give a stuff about their leaders - that, at least, is cause for celebration.
Now back to the Olympic parade.
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Is there anything more heartening than seeing a great batsmen returning to form? After a brief Bopara-like slump [in his case, permanent] with injudicious remarks about General George Marshall he is reeling off cover drives and fierce hooks again. As Celia Johnson's husband said at the end of "Brief Encounter": "Thank you for coming back to us."
ReplyDeleteMind you, if I even begin to suspect she's boffing that bastard doctor again, I'll swing for both of them, so help me.
DeleteYes, SDG, when every other ball is a fearsome Commie bouncer you have to look for the occasional Socialist lob to despatch through the covers. The boy is now spotting the Militant TUC googly and then defending elegantly the anti-Thatch doosra, as well as adjustitng his grip during lengthy Moss overs. It's a remarkable raising of his game. He could be a contender for Wisden polemic blogger of the year.
ReplyDeleteOn a point of detal, Freddie, it's fairly clear that the relationship between the Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard characters in Brief Encounter never reaches the 'boffing' stage. She thinks about it and he gets the keys to his pal's flat, presumably on the basis that the tea room at the station is a little too public for what he has in mind. However, it being the 50s, they decide they can't go through with it. Doing her in simply for contemplating the prospect of diddling the Doc is a bit much. You'd do better to put down the crossword, get out of that armchair and nip down to your local Ann Summers shop to put a bit of a pep back in your marriage.
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