The Friday Joke 05/04/2013

Philpott

T*ssp*t

Want to hear a complete joke?

The politics of division. It is pretty clear George Osborne knew exactly what he was doing and who he was targetting his "Philpott benefits" comments at. As far as I am concerned, these comments are despicable.

The reason that so many UK citizens are living on benefits is because of the failure of Conservative economic policies in the UK. Since 1979, we've had 17 years of hard right Thatcherite government, followed by 12 years of Blairite social Conservatism, followed by three years of lord only knows what with ConDem coalition. 

Philpott is a very extreme case. Most people on benefits do not have a harem of women under their control, going out to work and breeding like rabbits as they sit at home smoking weed and planning their next appearance on the Jeremy Kyle show. They are receiving benefits because they have been failed by the educational system of years of Conservatism, followed by the failure of the UK to manage its economy under both Tory and Labour governments. 

We are not in the economic quagmire because of benefit recipients, we are there because Tory and Labour governments allowed such a lax system of banking control to emerge that some of our banks allowed their financial position to disintegrate. A report in the Guardian today detailed how HBOS would have gone bust WITHOUT the banking crisis - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/05/bank-delusion-greed-hbos-fail . 

We may find Philpott revolting, but the area of the country where he lives has seen its economy decimated by the wanton destruction of the UK manufacturing base. If you embark on a program of wholesale destruction of communities and local economies as the Tories did in the 1980's and 1990's, this is where you inevitably end up. When Margaret Thatcher took power in 1979, Derbyshire was a thriving industrial hotbed of innovation. Rolls Royce are based there, British Rail had a massive centre building and designing some of the most innovative transport technology in the world. The area was also a centre for mining. 

Thatcher destroyed the mining industry, the Rail industry was hacked into hundreds of tiny pieces and the Derby works hangs on by a thread. Rolls Royce cars are now in foreign hands. Who's fault was all of this? The one group who do not want to accept any blame are the architects of the policy - The Conservatives.

If you destroy communities, decimate economies and remove any prospect of decent jobs, as far as I am concerned, you should shoulder the blame when a sub section of society decides to give up.

I have never claimed a penny in benefits and have always worked. I have paid a fortune in tax over the years and so I need no lectures off Tory politicians such as Osborne on any of this. He's been Chancellor for three years and the economy has gone into reverse. His only answer is to demonise the most vulnerable people in society and blame them for the ills of a society that himself and his peers created.

If under George Osbornes regime, the economy had picked up and their was a shortage of jobs for people looking, then he may have a point. His captaincy of the UK economy has been a disaster. That should be the end of the matter. By making inflammatory statements about Philpott, Osborne has (temporarily) silenced people who were talking about the possibilities of a "triple dip recession". He's also managed to associate millions of decent people, who find themselves in a difficult situation because of the policies of him and his predecessors, with the stain of the Philpott murders.

Would anyone suggest that because Lord Lucan, who murdered his nanny (mistaking her for his wife) went Eton, George Osborne and the thousands of other old Etonians may harbour similar personality traits? - of course not. 

It strikes me that there is a very pronounced Left/Right divide in response to Osbornes comments. Those on the right seem to think he was spot on and what he said was marvellous. Those on the left are outraged. I predict that within a couple of weeks Osbornes comments will have been forgotten. What won't have been forgotten will be the mess that Osborne has made of the economy. I believe that Osborne made the comments because he harbours ambitions to lead the Conservative Party and become Prime Minister. His comments were a blatent appeal to the hard right of his party. I personally think they show his complete unsuitability for the role. Then again, he wasn't trying to appeal to me, was he?