A winter of discontent

I've been on another hiatus and wish I could tell you that I've been gallavanting around the world doing some incredibly interesting and exciting stuff..alas! alack! no such luck..although one day this blog may come to you from some distant and far off land from the tales of Marco Polo ...well I can dream!!

Actually there is a lot I've wanted to write about; the spending cuts, welfare reform, and the rise of the right. It's 'funny' how in times of economic strife, it's the visible minorities that get targeted as scapegoats. As anyone who has studied history and the rise of fascism and nazism, you'll see the same patterns emerging, just a different set of protagonists and a different set of bogeymen.

The Guardian recently highlighted how the Roma gypsies are being abused and assaulted as well as being targeted by governments. The friendly French didn't think a niqab ban was evidence enough of liberte, egalite and fraternite, they thought that getting rid of the gypsies would also help towards pandering to the far right (Vichy anyone?). Sarkozy, I fear has a touch of the Napoleon in more ways than one...

In Britain, it's the Muslims, immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers (let's just bunch them under the banner of immigrant benefit scrounging, job stealing, white slave trading, terrorists - this pretty much encapsulates what The Daily Mail/Express/Star and The Sun think anyway)... so there's not just the BNP (although they have currently imploded), we now have the English Defence League (EDL) who apparently are saving England from Sharia and those nasty Muslims who are heaven/hellbent on (depending on which side of the fence you're on) taking over England, Britain..nay the whole of the world and impose ..wait for it...HALAL CHICKEN..the dutty barstewards!! sorry I couldn't resist...and the really funny thing is that there are some brown and dark brown and black people who suddenly think they're job is to defend England as well by joining the EDL and standing outside KFC with placards reading 'GET RID OF HALAL CHICKEN IN KFC' or maybe outside Toby Carvery with 'THE EDL IS DEFENDING THE ENGLISH CHICKEN'S RIGHT TO BE STUNNED NOT HAVE ITS NECK CUT OFF WITH SOME ARABIC CHANTING' ...what a bunch of nutjobs...the thing is, didn't people say that about Hitler and his little army of aryans before they dragged the whole world into war and killed a few million Jews? Us humans sure have short memories! I reckon I'd like to stick the EDL, BNP and Muslims against the Crusades and any other crazy nutjob in a field full of horseshit where they'll feel right at home, and let them fight amongst themselves. Meanwhile the rest of us normal people can get on with dealing whether we'll vote Wagner or Matt on the Xfactor!

That last bit really was a joke, what I meant to say was dealt with the stupendous welfare benefit reform and spending cuts that were recently announced. Now I'm not housing or welfare expert but even I can see that there are some serious flaws. If it were only the poor that were being affected then we'd probably ignore it because they all want to be there so they can live off benefits. However it isn't just the 'lazy' poor that are being targeted but Middle England. The child benefit cut pretty much left a lot of people astounded. Thanks to the Daily Mail housing benefit seems to be fair target although I do think like many others that the reform is ever so slightly flawed. If you want to create ghettos and even more social exclusion then this is one way of doing it. The mixed rhetoric from government also doesn't help. Maybe Nick Clegg keeps forgetting which party he belongs to? Nick! You're a libdem! You know, the ones that said no to a hike in uiversity tuition fees!

I'm pretty sure this is a 'wait and see' game as the level of reform being proposed and the level of cuts being pursued are so extensive that I don't think anyone can accurately predict what the situation will be in 2 year's time. All I know is that there are a lot of local volunteer and community groups that have done a lot of good work that are suddenly facing a bleak future due to funding cuts. Not so much 'Big Society' ...more Con-dem BS in my opinion...