(satire?)
Osborne must publish the names of every benefits claimant – and how much they receive – on their forearms
by our Chief Crackpot Correspondent Mark Littlewood
The amount Daily Mail columnists now spend on poor people is jaw-dropping. The average right-wing polemist is taxed to the tune of thousands of pounds every year to finance the State’s programme of helping people they’ve made unemployed.
The shocking truth is that we national newspaper contributors now spend about twice as much on economically fruitless activities like educating and feeding poor children as we used to just a decade ago.
We need to be much more transparent about exactly what and who we journalists are spending our hard-earned tax write-offs on.
Every individual who claims welfare benefits – including pensions, jobseeker’s allowance, bus passes, winter fuel payments, child and sickness benefit – should have their National Insurance numbers listed, in full, on their publicly accessible forearms for all of us to inspect. Taxpayers have a right to know exactly who is claiming what and how much they are getting.
This wouldn’t be a matter of ‘tattooing and shaming’ anyone. After all, if you are legally entitled to a particular benefit, what is there to be ashamed about having your NI number tattooed on your body for all to see? Anyone ashamed to be permanently marked for life after they claim money from the State maybe shouldn’t be claiming it at all.
Many tabloid columnists now have around a third of the money they receive for writing the odd swivel-eyed rant once or twice a month confiscated at source by Revenue & Customs. Shockingly, the government admits the biggest item this cash is then spent on is people poorer than us – as well as other economically fruitless things like roads, hospitals and schools
Publishing this sort of information on skin should be quite straightforward. The Government has never been competent at running an IT system, but uploading to the forearm each payment handed out, along with the National Insurance number of the person claiming it, must be doable. Even by the dimmest bureaucrat.
After all, if the Germans could do it 80 years ago, why can’t we?
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Mark Littlewood is not a Tory. He is an example of an Orange Booker Liberal Democrat. The real face of the Liberal Democrats?
You can see his original article here (warning – here lies Daily Mail nonsense):
Why Osborne must publish the names of every benefits claimant – and how much we pay them
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Related articles by Tom Pride:
Government Announces Clampdown On Work-Shy Babies
Don’t turn your back on the disabled. Because you’re going to be disabled too one day.
EXCLUSIVE – leaked sample questions from Michael Gove’s new GCSE Mathematics examination
The UK judge who thinks benefit fraudsters should be jailed but lets rapists go free
Parliament backs plans to cull paupers
The UKIP – under us thousands will lose their jobs and most will pay more tax (not satire)
Unemployment pays tribute to Margaret Thatcher by going up
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Seems this idea was a bridge too far even for daily mail readers, judging by the best rated comments. Cheer up there is hope!
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Let’s get this straight. Mark Ars’olewood is director general for the Institute of Economic Affairs. We’re not talking half-wit populist hack Littlejohn here.
Scary shit.
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yep!….
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so he wants benfit treated the same as sex offenders.
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these people are cordoned off from the daily reality of most people….cordon themselves off from it…
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Don’t give Osborne ideas please!
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Richard – tattooing NI numbers on the arms of benefit claimants too extreme for Daily Mail readers? That’s a surprise.
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Pingback: Mark Littlewood: making the War on Welfare personal | Indigo Jo Blogs
Please try to keep abreast of technological advances and stop dwelling on past glories.
The uneducated poor would regard such tattoos as something to be proud of on Labour council sink estates in the same way that ASBOS have become a source of pride and a mark of street cred worthy of ‘respec innit’.
I’d have thought that micro chipping would be much more efficient and less expensive, have you seen what these scruffy ex bikers charge for a fanny piercing or a tramp stamp these days?
Micro chip readers could be concealed in the anti-shoplift gates of supermarkets like Aldi, Lidl and Asda and a fat bloke in anti-stab hi-vis chic could gather all sorts of data, like how much super strength lager or cider was consumed, how many roll ups were smoked and how many sexual partners the average 14 year old copped off with in an evening hanging round the local offy.
The possibilities are endless, the uneducated poor could even be electronically rendered so dissolute and desperate that they’d become cannon fodder in illegal foreign wars, just imagine that!
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Littlewood is the libdem that was thrown out for being too extreme .he seems to overlook things like data protection and incitement to commit harm to vulnerable people..but what do you expect from think tanks where we are not allowed to know who fund them. Double standards spring to mind.
In other news : how NHS privatisation can be sold as good news when disguised as employment issue..
http://uk.m.yahoo.com/w/ygo-frontpage/lp/story/uk/894908/coke.bp%3B_ylt=A2KL8w95QMhRvRUA.Bsp89w4%3B_ylu=X3oDMTFyNHVjZDdrBGNwb3MDMQRjc2VjA21vYmlsZS10ZARpbnRsA3VrBHBrZwNpZC04OTQ5MDgEcG9zAzIEc2xrA3RpdGxl?ref_w=frontdoors&view=today&.tsrc=yahoo&.intl=gb&.lang=en-gb
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Bob – Mark Littlewood wasn’t thrown out of the Lib Dems. He resigned when he became director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs “in line with its non-partisan status”.
That’s a real quote from the IEA, by the way – not satire – hard as it might be to believe.
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Yes Tom it even surprised me..for a while Now the daily mail comments have been wondering if the newspaper is cracking up…
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It would be much better to name those employers who pay their staff so poorly that they have to rely on tax benefits to simply subsist. While we’re at it, let’s also name each and every landlord whose profits are bolstered by Housing Benefits because the rents they set are simply too high.
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NHS culture ‘rotten to the core’ from the torygraph..GPs may start charging fees in another paper and NHS privatisation may solve UK unemployment crisis. Oh do fuck off….
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So he was thrown out by lib dems then…whichever the way you want to phrase it…’too extreme’ the tory back bench wouldnt want him as he would be ‘too soft’
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Tom it looks like you have been vindicated Now about david rose who claimed there was no child sex abuse in jersey.. oops because a certain james savile has been implicated in csa in…jersey….HDLG in fact…
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Just because you got money & might, don’t make you right?
Lemmy, Motor Head.
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What about naming the employers who use the tax credit system to pay part of their employee’s wages? I bet that amounts to a hefty chunk of tax payers money.
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Sorry codhead99 I’ve just realised I have repeated your comment.
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Aynuck
What does your moniker represent because after that sarcastically amusing reply, you should rename yourself the tipton terror.
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Hi Guy Fawkes,
I’m glad that you were amused, I was joking in my reply but we all know that it’s there just under the surface, they would microchip benefit claimants and vulnerable disabled people if they thought we’d stand for it……..
In the Black Country there have been two mythical characters around for at least 100 years who have figured in a large number of Black Country in- jokes which are rarely understood by many outside the area (Andy Capp is possibly a North Eastern nearest counterpart in terms of domestic bliss and work ethic)
Aynuck and Ayli are phonetic translations of Enoch and Eli, very common solid Biblical boys names in days gone by (our landlord who collected the rent every Friday when I was a kid rejoiced in the name of Hezekiah Clee) and the names of the mythical best friends and close neighbours were Enoch and Eli so ‘Aynuk’ is exactly how a Black Country person would pronounce ‘Enoch’ in the local dialect which is still widely used here.
I chose the name Aynuck rather than Ayli because it would be instantly recognisable to fellow Blackcountrymen, Aynuck always seemed to come out the better of the two and also partly as a bit of a joke against myself.
Many will know that Enoch Powell, a once highly respected Wolverhampton MP, made the famous ‘rivers of blood’ speech in Birmingham, and he is still revered by many around the West Midlands for his anti-immigration stance which cost him his position and the possibility of being Prime Minister.
I try very hard not to be ‘a racist’ and wouldn’t discriminate against a person because of their race or colour but as far as more unlimited mass immigration and bogus asylum into this country goes, I’m implacably opposed to it at least until our dire domestic economic and employment situation is resolved and we once more have full employment with full time jobs and sufficient schools hospitals and houses.
I hope that I’m not as hard line as Enoch Powell was, I understand why poverty stricken migrants would make for here and had no issue with it until fairly recently but I’m a bit of an Enoch at times and feel that we need to control our borders and stop pandering to every unlikely tale of woe.
Aynuck also has a bit more resonance than ‘Steve’, and although Tipton Terror has a nice ring to it I could never compete with the Tipton Taliban, who I used to see around fairly regularly. 🙂
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Aynuck
Thanks for explaining that to me, it’s always interesting to know the origins of things we do not understand.
It seems every area has it’s share of comic characters like rab c nesbitt, or our andy capp, perhaps others on here might like to share the colourful characters that represent their area?
I wrote a poem that incorporated Enoch’s “rivers of blood” speech, where I felt we could be if we do not limit immigration although it was within the context of European immigration.
I think most people are concerned deep down about how our infrastructure will support more migrants, but it seems only UKIP are responding to those concerns at the moment and gaining votes, so other parties should take note.
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I like the idea of a ‘Rivers of Blood’ poem Guy Fawkes, at least you care enough about mass immigration to enter the fray, rather than ignoring debate but smearing everybody else as racist.
The strange thing is that the indigenous population has been fairly passive until recent times and even now I can’t imagine ‘rivers of blood’ flowing between the Brits and migrants. We seem to rub along fairly well, at least here in the Midlands.
The rivers of blood are far more likely to flow within and between migrant communities.
There is Afro Carribean versus Asian tension in parts of Birmingham which has led to rioting and deaths, Sikhs are a warrior race and can be militant at times, there was a bit of a Sikh riot about alcohol being served in their community centres here last year and as trade union members they are second to none, the finest of brethren.
Inter-Muslim sectarianism could quite literally explode at any time on our streets to say nothing about fundamentalist Muslim versus kuffar.
There has been much recent publicity about an IED being found at a Walsall mosque and many would hope to see the English right wing activists blamed.
What many may not realise is that while Sunni and Shi-ite Muslims loath each other both Islamic sects despise Ahmadiyyas who are also active in the town but are regarded as apostates and heretics by ‘mainstream’ Muslims.
The Walsall explosive device is highly likely to have it’s origins in Muslim sectarianism within Walsall. Political unrest because of the Woolwich atrocity provides a useful shield with white extremists taking the blame as has happened with the mysterious outbreaks of arson in and around mosques in the past month or so.
I very much doubt if the political will exists to do much about migrants both legal and illegal who live here now, personally speaking I couldn’t support such action anyway, but there’s definitely a groundshift of opinion against more mass immigration into this country both from the EU or anywhere else.
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Aynuck
Your should do a theology degree with your knowledge of religion, I had no idea there was so much dissension or so many factions of the same religion. I was born a Roman Catholic which has it’s own problems with peadophile priests and the controversy over the exclusion of women as priests, not to mention their stance on other controversial issues, but as they say better the devil you know.
My children went to a catholic school but my daughter only goes to church now if her children’s schooling or religious ritual demands it and my son is now athiest because of the hate and sectarianism religion can cause. He thinks I’m mad for believing in a spiritual deity of any kind as it is illogical and cannot be scientifically proved, but then again faith is an illogical thing is it not?
I choose to believe in a God but would not impose my views or beliefs on others. Despite sending my children to a faith school they are now adults and free to follow their own path and make their own decisions which I accept, rejecting their religion has not turned them into reprobates, nor rebels much to my dismay, but the young are nothing like as militant as I was in my youth, there was always a cause worth fighting for.
You would think that would make me more sympathetic to feminism, gay issues and other isms, all of which I support to a high degree, but when the pendulum swings too far away from common sense and encroaches on the right to free speech(not insults)and other personal freedoms, I think you have to draw the line somewhere.
I believe the Stephen Lawrence case and what his family have had to suffer at the hands of our judicial system and it’s exponents, makes me ashamed to be British.
The way the press, government and dare I say it members of the public are treating the unemployed, sick and disabled is also anathema to someone who considered the welfare state to be one of the most humane political feats apart from the abolition of slavery we can leave as a legacy for our children.
we need a “William Wilberforce or Clement Atlee” day or a “Winston Churchill” day, but certainly not a “Margaret Thatcher” day.
Anyway I’ve had my say, so until the next rant………..:)
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PS That last sentence should have ended with a smiley face, another abject failure I must be Andy capped or something.
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To have faith is to blindly hope for forgiveness and understanding from our fellow man Guy Fawkes it’s natural to reach out, it’s part of the human condition that is being somewhat eroded by our modern way of life, by instant worldwide communication and 24 hour news reporting which encourages cynicism.
We all need to believe in something even if we ‘believe’ in atheism, we all rely on a touchstone or talisman don’t we?
Our ancestors certainly believed most fervently, how did even the smallest villages get such beautiful elaborate and no doubt costly church buildings?
There was an element of fear and oppression, that’s true, and there were very few distractions so church going was a much remarked upon social event and to some extent the Catholic Church is at the crossroads between modernisation and the old guilt ridden ways.
Glasnost and Perestroika have to come if the church is to survive.
The priest has to know his flock and the flock know each other so becoming lapsed is perhaps more noticeable as a Roman Catholic than it would be for, say, an evangelical Methodist or a Low Church goer, but a similar situation to Catholic discipline still exists in other religions such as Islam, Sikhism or Judaism.
The feelings of doubt and guilt are not exclusive to Roman Catholics or religious practitioners who have family members who dislike the ritual or the message, Sikh and Hindu friends face similar turmoil with their young and although there has been a resurgence in Muslim religious observance of late I’d suggest that the wars where Muslims are enemy combatants are at least partly responsible.
There’s nothing clever or mysterious about how to discover things that other people believe in, all you have to do is to talk to people, and it’s been said that I could talk a glass eye to sleep 🙂
Sometimes people of faiths other than my own seem a bit nonplussed when I try to engage them in a conversation about what, or who, they believe in, how they worship, why they think the way that they do, what their lives are like, but it’s easy enough.
Talk to people on buses, but listen rather that talk because you want to find out about them not you.
Talk to waiters in restaurants, talk to market traders,talk to shopkeepers or the guys who sweep the streets, it’s surprising how much you can find out, what you can learn about the similarity of different faith groups if you scratch the surface.
The young will make up their minds when they are mature enough to be reminded of their own ultimate mortality, it’s a long story but one half of my family were Roman Catholic so I’ve been to Mass as a child but circumstances intervened and I became a Methodist (but not a strict one).
I rarely have (or perhaps make) time to attend church now, my three grown up sons are not religious but I try to live my life according to Christian principles as much as I’m able to.
You mentioned the pendulum of the ‘isms’ and I think that it has reached it’s limit as far as individual freedoms are concerned, it is now swinging the in the other direction and features what amounts to Goebells like propaganda against the most vulnerable in society.
Even when we imagined that we belonged to a liberal society obscenities like the attempts to smear the family and friends of Stephen Lawrence were taking place when the police were supposed to be investigating an act of mindless savagery that resulted in the murder of that young man.
I mentioned instant worldwide mass communication earlier, so there are still causes to fight for and windmills to tilt at Guy Fawkes, but instead of fighting in Grosvenor Square our battleground is the internet, guard it’s freedom well because it is the new battleground. 🙂
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I know what they ought to have tattooed on their FOREHEADS………………… . 5 letters,.begins with C, middle N and ends with S.
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