Well, how far things go rather depends on resource availability.

Lets just imagine there was another crash, only far worse than the current recession, and unexpected to boot – beyond the realms of possibility ……….. maybe?

But 61 million and counting – I haven’t heard anybody say this is great news.

“The evidence of an impending catastrophe can no longer be ignored: only yesterday I had to queue up in Waitrose behind 3 other people, adding another 5 minutes to my already nauseating weekly shop.”

Lucky you that can afford to shop in Waitrose, thus bypassing the queues of plebs in the sort of places most of us have to shop. No doubt you took a cab back to avoid having to rub shoulders with the great unwashed on public transport too.

And next week on LC: “Crime’s no problem if you travel by limousine”

Patroninising Prat.

Matt Munro

You know it’s a spoof, right? Click on the link at the top to view Amanda Platell’s original…she’s the one you should be aiming for.

And as for patronising…

“…thus bypassing the queues of plebs in the sort of places most of us have to shop.” doesn’t do you too many favours

Next time try…

“…thus bypassing the queues of us plebs in the sort of places we have to shop.”

might avoid possible accusations of hypocrisy

Lucky you that can afford to shop in Waitrose, thus bypassing the queues of plebs in the sort of places most of us have to shop

These right-whingers really don’t get satire do they?

Maybe Matt Munro is a satire? His name is an anagram of “O M Tantrum”

As always the answer is to direct resources to where they are most needed. What we need, it is clear, are more middle-class babies. So if a couple can demonstrate that they are genuinely middle class ( a simple ten-point check list should cover it) then state sponsored nannies would go a long way towards encouraging fecundity.

People assume that the middle class can just snap their fingers and afford these necessities but some of my best friends are middle class and once they have paid for school fees and skiing trips they can barely afford a daily cleaner and a personal Reiki trainer. The third and fouth children which the lower class have as a matter of course are an impossible aspiration for all but a few of this neglected demographic.

The lower middle-class might have to settle for a subsidised skivvy, but as our forebears demonstrated, even a member of the semi-literate underclass can be trained up for menial tasks if caught young enough.

The middle class are our future, invest wisely.

I think the fact that I didn’t realise it was a piss take says more about LC than it does about me.

Matt said: I think the fact that I didn’t realise it was a piss take says more about LC than it does about me.

Maybe LibCon could typeset all satire in comic sans. Sure, it would be ugly and annoying for everyone of average reading comprehension and above, but at least Matt Munro wouldn’t break his brain on the joke.

Well I thought it was funny.

I prefer Fortnums anyway. Home delivery of course

I think the fact that I didn’t realise it was a piss take says more about LC than it does about me.

Or maybe you’re just a typical humourless, po-faced right-whinger.

And next week on LC: “Crime’s no problem if you travel by limousine”

It’s true, I’ve never been mugged in my limo. And I can fit all my butlers in too!

I think the fact that I didn’t realise it was a piss take says more about LC than it does about me.

I know, right?? There’s so many posts calling for death panels and enforced sterilisation on LC these days, they might as well rebrand as ‘Authoritarian Nightmare’.

I note from news reports that without special measures worse is to come:

“Britain could have the biggest population in Europe by 2050 and be the third biggest recipient of migrants in the world, UN projections suggest.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7938173.stm

Local terminator stations?

Brilliant. Better than the original.

Twat Munro, if you’ve got a problem with this blog why not fuck off and post elsewhere or return to hectoring people at bus stops like you did before you got the internet?

You wouldn’t be missed.

Matt Munro’s in a hole – and keeps on digging. Matt Monro, on the other hand, would have know when to Walk Away.

Immigrants have helped to keep down wage inflation, marvellous if one is an employer but not so great if one is a tradesmen. England is one of the most densely populated countries in the World. One of the reasons why building new infrastructure is so expensive, say compared to France- land is more expensive here.

If we want to reduce our over reliance on the finance and the construction sectors we need to develop high value manufacturing. However, there a is the lack of a sufficiently large skilled and educated workforce. If we had a policy of educating and training the unskilled and uneducated so they could enter high value manufacturing, rather than allowing them to spend their life on welfare and allowing mass immigration, we could reduce the inequality in the UK. Britain did start the Industial Revolution but we appear to have lost much of the technical and entrpreneurial skills, but above all, the spirit to better oneself.

For those who fear heretics may I commend this item on Free-Speech?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3Hg-Y7MugU

Alternatively we could tackle the ball and not the man.

I think the fact that I didn’t realise it was a piss take says more about LC than it does about me.

Are you seriously saying that you read, “These wrinkly economic leeches must be culled with the greatest of haste. I saw on Fox News that America is to introduce ‘Death panels’ to deal with their over crowding problem, and, to my mind, it is high time we did the same. Nobody likes visiting their grandma anyway; why not just do away with her altogether?” without realising it was satire? Really?

This is a double win, first off the piece is funny and then Twat Munro’s EPIC IAIN DALE made my day..well, my hour.

+1 on the EPIC DALE call. There’s nothing quite like a game of po-faced right-wing talking-point bingo to chase the rain away!

Dear me! How can anyone seriously not understand the fantastic level irony in this post. Right from the first paragraph it is blindingly obvious.

I heartily approve of venemous sarcasm. Keep up the good work

Ok you got me – duly taken on chin, memo to self read entire piece and cogitate before battering keyboard. Yes it is a very funny post, even by my apparently humourless standards

BTW can someone explain why that comment @14 is being allowed to stand whereas mine was deleted ? I seem to remember one of the rules is “abusive posts will be deleted” ? I don’t mind being shot at when I’ve pissed someone off in debate but that’s his only contribution to the entire thread, it’s just gratitous abuse.

Now now, you two.

Give peace a chance!

We NEED more immigrants:

http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/2357/

Well, the employing class does, and THAT’S the main thing, isn’t it?

You dont need euthanasia or sterilisation – just eliminate welfare beyond a bare minimum safety net that would provide for essentials but is uncomfortable enough not to be a lifestyle choice. Welfare has made poverty an impossibility in the UK which has gradually turned the working class (of which I am one and grew up on a council estate) from hard work and decent values into people who generally have little respect for themselves or others. This is simply because they dont have to go to work and aren’t afraid of the consequences of criminal records or unplanned children. It is a sad but uncomfortable truth and some middle class commentators would do well to spend a few days on a council estate seeing this in action.

Welfare has made poverty an impossibility in the UK

Well that’s just quite clearly untrue, isn’t it? Or are those homeless people on the streets just there because they prefer cardboard to bricks?

The homeless are largely victims of abuse or mental illness and dont claim the benefits available to them. Having worked a soup kitchen on the Embankment, I am not being unkind to the homeless – any of us spending a few nights without food in the british climate would find our mental faculties reduced to the point where making rational decisions is difficult. The homeless are deserving of more help and services – as opposed to the millions who rationally choose a welfare lifestyle.

How many trolls are in this thread? With econutter’s blather and Stanley talking shit about benefits and that poverty is impossible, when it is clearly not and that benefits are actually quite good to live on when again they are not.

Your anecdotal evidence is not backed up with any facts and your ideas about what works are primitive at best and at worst, make you look a wee bit mad.

And anyone who ends a paragraph with this heap of shit:

“as opposed to the millions who rationally choose a welfare lifestyle”

Utter fiction, you a BNP supporter perchance? Either that or a daft Tory…

“Welfare has made poverty an impossibility in the UK which has gradually turned the working class (of which I am one and grew up on a council estate) from hard work and decent values into people who generally have little respect for themselves or others”

So it’s got fuck all to do with Thatcher deliberately destroying decent jobs in pursuit of an economic mirage, now conclusively proven to be a failure. No, the working class chose to impoverish themselves.

You’re a fuckwit, seriously. How many people lived on benefits in the 60s? Virtually none, yet welfare dependency rose dramatically when your heroine was in power for reasons obvious to anyone who isn’t a lying Tory. What’s the difference between now and then? Millions of well-paid jobs, that’s what.

But you don’t dare admit that, because you’d have to admit that your right-wing free market shite is a failure and has collapsed during this recession, so you blame the victim instead.

Usual fucking cowardice and lies from the Thatcherites.

Hear hear Mr. Brough!

Thanks- and before the usual fuckwits come along I should make clear that I regard Major, Blair and Brown as all furthering Thatcher’s work.

In particular, Brown has dealt with this crisis by trying to piece together the economic system he loves (with taxpayers’ money) rather than admit its failure.

I have to say this in case anyone comes along and accuses me of being a loyalist for this government- which I’m obviously not, but it isn’t obvious to them.

You guys are living in a dream world that will soon be taken apart limb from limb by the harsh realities of global economics of which you seem to be completely ignorant. This country is broke, we have pissed away hundreds of billions on welfare and public services we simply can’t afford (now or then) and now have a historic deficit and the worst fiscal position in the G20 with tax revenues that have collapsed and show little potential for returning. We have an education system that is amongst the worst in the west (despite our self-congratulatory grade inflation) and a youthful population so workshy that millions of low-paid jobs in the boom-boom naughties were filled by eastern european immigrants whilst millions of young brits decided to sit at home on benefit instead. The north sea oil has gone and we have no other natural resources and little agriculture – the only source of revenue to pay for your socialist enterprises is tax on business and their employees. The same goes for most of europe and with unemployment in spain and the PIGS countries soon to hit 25% and above you will see the end of their socialism soon enought too.

Look at china, india, vietnam or many countries in the developing world for that matter and you will see how pathetically we stack up against them in terms of their competitiveness, the work attitude and quality of education of their young people – and the sheer size of their populations. If you work in business as I do you will see that we are losing high quality jobs in research and service industries at a rate of knots. My company moved our research department to Hyderabad in India last year and we hired a team of fantastic PhDs out there for about 10% of the cost we would have paid in the UK. Movements like this are a DAILY occurence in industry now and are a big part of collapsing tax revenues and rising unemployment.

We are a post-industrial society that will soon have to become an industrial society again. Only the services industries (mainly financial) kept us in this bubble for so many decades. We now have little or no edge on services either and will soon begin to lose those as we lost manufacturing after WWII. That means that instead of earning 20 times what a chinese or indian worker does (as today) the average brit will soon earn 5 or 10 times and enjoy comparable welfare and benefits (i.e none). Cut the bullshit and look at the numbers and the reality …you are in for a shock if you think this isnt true

“My company moved our research department to Hyderabad in India last year and we hired a team of fantastic PhDs out there for about 10% of the cost we would have paid in the UK.”

Ever noticed how these people never give the name of their company?

Obviously they still need our lazy overpaid British custom.

If I gave the name of my company (or my surname for that matter) it could hurt my career. Believe it or not but companies dont want their employees using their name to help win arguments in political blogs. If you doubt that companies are moving departments (or themselves wholesale) overseas read a business section of a newspaper most days and see.

My company doesnt need british custom actually, 80% of our revenues are from overseas sales. We were based here because of historical reasons, because of skilled staff and low taxes. These become less true every year.

“If I gave the name of my company (or my surname for that matter) it could hurt my career.”

If everything you say is so obviously true, how so?

Matt Munro is right about one thing, and that is that this site is developing a good record of deleting abusive comments from right-wingers but allowing things like #14 to remain. I don’t think it portrays the liberal left in a very good light to be both censoring people and yet leaving in their own insulting comments. If you are going to have a “tight comments policy” then it is on your heads to apply it equally and fairly or risk losing your credibility.

Neil, you have either never worked in a profit-makin organisation or never worked in anything other than a very junior position. Most people in my company from the top down would agree with all that I have said but companies are in the business of quietly getting on with doing business, not of making provocative political arguments (however true).

So, once we get past the condescension, you’re agreeing with with what I said at #34.

Thanks.

No idea what you are on about Neil, sorry. Anyway, enough chatter, do you want to respond to the more substantive issues in this blog or what?!

What’s that clucking noise?

Sanbikinoraion:

I wouldn’t agree with Twat Munro too often if I were you.

Stanley the Coward:

It is you Stanley that is living in some odd dream world, first off we’ve already seen the world taken apart limb by limb by the current effects of terrible free market policies and the harsh realities of global economics. Harsh realities that don’t even need to be that harsh if some people weren’t so greedy and so obsessed that free market ideas work when they don’t.

The UK is broke because it had to bail out the bastions of the free market otherwise they’d have gone under, see America also for reference and with public funds propping them up they can slide back into their old ways.

Like any twat, you’re obsessed with welfare and cutting public services, no doubt to free up more room for exploitative private sector investment and seeing how well that’s worked…*cough* it looks a sure fire bet to succeed.

You tell lies about our education system (no doubt because it isn’t a business and that upsets you) andmake up stuff about young people that exposes your prejudice and lack of knowledge…indeed I smell a Daily Fail reader here, you are trotting out verbatim their churnalism.

You forget that up until June of last year youth unemployment was the lowest it has been for decades and you over estimate how many A8 immigrants came here. Typical twat.

You then make up a whole raft of figures. As liar as well as a coward? Ouch.

Let’s look at the countries you name check: china, india, vietnam. Wow, so ignoring human rights issues, crippling poverty and starvation, corruption, crime, caste systems, massive inequality and the fact that two of them are Communist regimes with massive, massive state subsidy…your point is?

It’s odd, you complain about Britian and then brag about investing elsewhere, (where may I add people are paid terrible wages they can hardly live on and are exploited beyond belief but hey, I digress) failing to see that you are part of the problem, not all the young people you oddly blame.

You twat.

You dont need euthanasia or sterilisation – just eliminate welfare beyond a bare minimum safety net that would provide for essentials but is uncomfortable enough not to be a lifestyle choice.

So you think we need to raise benefits then? Right now, they frequently don’t “provide for essentials”.

Let’s look at the countries you name check: china, india, vietnam. Wow, so ignoring human rights issues, crippling poverty and starvation, corruption, crime, caste systems, massive inequality and the fact that two of them are Communist regimes with massive, massive state subsidy…your point is?

I’m not sure he’s ignoring those things. They’re all good for business, which seems to be his bottom line. If you’re looking to keep production costs down, what could be better, short of outright slavery? (Although it must be remembered that chattel slavery does have significant running costs… In many cases, it’s probably more expensive than wage slavery or indentured servitude, unless you can convince the state to pick up the tab for housing, feeding and clothing your slaves – which is generally known as “prison labour”.)

Daniel, why would you use abuse if you had any coherent arguments? I don’t know your age but using abuse in response in a serious discussion really makes you look childish.

Our education system is tumbling down world rankings and turning out an ever higher proportion of illiterates whilst at the same time awarding itself ever higher grades. The end users of the products of this system (businesses and UK and foreign universities) complain like never before at the extra time and preparation they have to take to finish the job themselves. I have seen the results myself when we interview people – full of crammed facts and little problem solving ability.

The UK has no choice about avoiding the realities of globalisation and the global free market because we have no natural resources. If you are in the UAE or Saudi you can maintain a vast welfare state simply through oil revenues. We dont have that and we are dependent on service industries to pay for EVERYTHING. Yes – it did cost a fortune to bail out the banks – but guess what, without the revenues from finanical services and dependent industries over the last few decades we wouldn’t have been able to afford our public sector or welfare states and would have largely lost them years ago.

You keep missing the point. You dont like to face the reality that someone has to pay for all your welfare and public sector costs. That someone is, alone, business and taxes on private sector employees. We are not competitive and that means we are losing service business abroad and that our living standards and benefits will slowly converge with those in India and China etc until we become as competitive as they are. That means a MIGHTY drop in our living standards! There isnt room for a welfare state or large public sector when the developed world catches up with us – for decades their lower living standards and higher productivity has funded our deficits and living standards and now they are beginning to generate domestic demand they dont need to fund our deficits for much longer.

“That means a MIGHTY drop in our living standards!”

So much for “a rising tide lifts all boats”.

Anyway Stanley, good luck telling that to your Indian or Chinese workers when you decide they’ve got too uppity.

In the meantime, would you mind telling us who you work for, so we can avoid buying their product? Tnx!

Stanley the Coward:

There’s plenty of coherent arguments in my comment Stanley, looks like you’re ducking. Which is understandable, as you are a twat.

Your anecdotal evidence is not backed up with any data or facts regarding the standing of UK education, esp, when you are so keen on taking your work elsewhere, you don’t take it to countries that are educationally doing well: Finland, South Korea, Canada and Holland because labour and skills there is also dear.

So stop trying to kid yourself it is about education when in reality it is about costs.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia don’t operate welfare systems because they are backward regimes that have no semblence to democracy, they do however operate a systme of royal patronage which means that productivity is actually very low and when the oil runs out there you may find that the way they operate has to shift.

You then confuse yourself by using a chicken and egg gambit which is to say that the financial sector, in its failure and thus failure of the free market economics you love so much, deserves to be propped up with public funding, public finding that in your ideal world would not exist in the first place, because it is a source of revenue for the UK but then the UK has to prop it up at great cost.

Do you see how you don’t know your arse from your elbow?

And your obsession with welfare costs, I presume you are referring to benefits for those not in work? They are a fraction of the bail out, so what gives there? Or do you want more public money to prop up failed private enterprise?

I you don’t make any points to miss twat, I have no problem with the costs of public sector because, due to how bad the private sector is at doing pretty much anything, I prefer it in government hands and to keep ideas of profit as far away from it as possible.

The UK tax burden is not that great in comparison to many nations and our public services are far cheaper than if we had to pay a private provider, so until I end up paying 95% income tax on below £100,000 earnings, I’m not complaining or worried, also because I’m not a greedy solopsistic fuck.

You also foolishly suggest that our living standards and quality of life will retreat to levels in China and India, now this is pure non-eivdence based idiocy from your own odd shaped mind. You can think that all you want but don’t confuse the opinions you rattle off down the boozer with fact.

And again, you seem dead set on reducing us to the level of those frankly backward countries in your desperation and drive for money and in order to be competative…no matter what the human cost.

Also funny how you’ve ignored all the points that rebutted your madness.

Well done that coward!

Daniel,
Twenty years from now the biggest source of income for britain will be remittances back home from brits working in fish and chip shops in china.
if you have grown up by then I’ll give you your first job working in one of mine
Stanley

Again, so much for “a rising tide lifts all boats”. Always knew the free-market fundamentalists don’t believe their own scriptures, but it’s nice to hear it from the horse’s mouth now and again.

Of course, what you forget is that just as quickly as you substitute us, we can substitute you. Now what’s the name of your company again, Stanley? Your (soon to be former) customers would love to know.

Stanley:

Pure fiction and I pity you, really I do because you actually believe your own nonsense, any business you’re involved in I fear for becuase your knowledge of economics is quite limited.

Oh well.

Well children, let me explain for you, a rising tide may lift ‘all boats’ – taken in aggregate across global humanity. Although the aggregate effect of globalisation is positive there will be some losers. Do you really think in any large global adjustment there ever aren’t? Several billion in the developing world will rightfully see their ‘boats’ rise as their living standards catch up with their superior productivity. A far smaller number in the developed world will suffer a sharp adjustment as their ‘boats’ fall. But there will be nobody to subsidise the useless lifestyles of workshy westerners.

What I enjoy most about this situation is the knowledge of how many socialists in the developed world will see their value system turned upside down and will have to do a proper (and real) job for the first time in their lives – something that wont come easy given the lack of backbone and work ethic ingrained in most of them.

Wait until after our election in June and the cuts that are going to follow. That will be your first taste of reality.

Stanley the coward:

You do know that by saying children doesn’t make you look any wiser, for that your ideas need to be robust and capable and unfortunately, they are weak?

You see first off you try and make out that free market global economics is a good thing when clearly, the evidence points in the opposite direction for that.

Then you do some terrible maths about how others will catch up etc, failing to see that one thing free market capitalism when unchecked has always done is keep the poor poor and the rich even richer, that is the only way it can succeed.

Then you keep referring to work shy Westerners with no use of evidence that points to the fact that productivity in many Western nations is excellent and it manages to do so without abusing the work force.

Now let me move on to yout odd rant about socialists, well first off, this makes you look stupid because you pool a whole bunch of people together in a vague term and suggest that a value system will be turned upside down.

Pardon? Not only is this wrong it is so horribly vague and loose that one fears for your ability to put together coherent ideas at all.

You then presume that because some may be a socialist, that they aren’t doing proper jobs, whatever that means you pathetic prejudiced twat.

You then, no doubt because you’re a jealous free market loon that sees public sector working and worries about a profit, suggest some sort of massive public sector cull if the Tories come into power.

Again, you confuse your own silly thoughts with reality, you must learn to make your opinions clear and not confuse them with fact.

Silly old twat.

Daniel, I dont have a lot to go on other than the utter crap you talk and your poncey double-barrelled name. However, I confidently predict you are a guardian-reading, sandal wearing aspergers sufferer who still lives at home with his mother, scrounges off both her and the state and spends his evening masturbating alone in cinemas. If I met you in real life you wouldn’t have the confidence to talk to a successful hard working person like me and would scurry off to some corner to hide

Stanley the Coward:

Yep, you’ve lost the argument.

Nice to see you judging someone based on their last name, you clearly are middle-class aren’t you because such a name threatens you horribly and messes with your wee bourgeois mind.

You’ll be glad to know you cunt that I come from criminal stock, that I do read The Guardian, along with many other news sources, I don’t wear sandals but do wear flip-flops when it is hot and the only mental health issue I have at the moment is talking to fucking idiots like you via teh Interwebs.

To clarify, I own me place in London and make a lovely living from acting, writing and living the bloody dream and when not doing that I volunteer and work with all kinds of groups to try and make a bit of a difference.

Unlike you, you ballbag.

PS:

Not a big fan of the pictures but if you want to spend your life jacking off over moving images be my guest.

“Wait until after our election in June and the cuts that are going to follow.”

You dropped this: “n”

Stanley – if you’re so successful and hard-working, what the hell are you doing trolling liberal blogs during office hours?

(Full disclosure: I don’t read the Guardian, I wear combat boots, and I have a pleasantly lucrative career as a software developer.)

You go to a surprising amount of effort to defend yourself and your life. I often find socialists are insecure, often with good reason. I am bored with this. Off to make money now – have fun scrounging fellas.

That is a good question Dunc. I like to see what the other side have to say. No point in pleasuring oneself too much by reading opinions that tally with one’s own

Stanley you twat, you go to a surprising amount of effort to defend yourself and your life as well. I often find free market mong-bats are insecure, often with good reason as their ideas have proven to be unworkable.

Have fun being a cunt Stanley!

“To clarify, I own me place in London and make a lovely living from acting, writing and living the bloody dream”

Doesn’t that make you a snooty liberal Islington elitist?

You can never win with right-whingers, they’ve always got some bollocks generalisation to throw at you.

Maybe Bernard but I don’t live in Islington, I am liberal though but not an elitest.

These brandings try and smudge everyone into handy groups so as to be easier to attack, such is the way of things.

Why does stanley hate the West?

And why has he still not told us the name of his company?