God I love this thread...
Pull up a chair folks, because PJM here is going to have a monumental fucking rant. Each of you folks who've posted so far would get my vote over and above any one of the spin-crazed cretins we've had in the last twenty years who've whored this country out left right and centre.

While it's easy to blame Gordon Clown and Alistair Grasping for laughingly spunking 47 pence out of every pound every single man, woman and child in Britain will have in their pocket this year (yep, that's how much of your income finds its way back into the treasury in 2008), the rot started years ago.

One telling statistic of the last eleven years of Labour government is that Social Mobility has ground to a halt and stalled. If you're born to poverty, you're going to die in poverty. The last time that social mobility was in a similar condition, Britain was in the midst of rationing in the immediate post war period. Proof that socialism, in the new Labour terminology Does. Not. Fucking. Work.

I blame many factors. We have a fascination with improving the rights of those who have chosen to reject and even abuse the rights entrusted to them by the state. We namby pamby over the workshy, the thieving scumbags, the sticky fingered junkie subclass who opine that "the social" owes them their dues and in return they give absolutely fuck all except more fucked up children for the working classes to feed and clothe at their expense. It's become cool to be semi-literate, we're obsessed with the lives of the rich, idle and fucking clueless if the endless Katona/Jordon/Posh articles in the Slagazines whinge for our attentions from the shelves of the supermarkets.

It's the total discharging of social responsibility and the state looks on, shakes it's head and then takes yet more money from those who choose to work hard for a living. That fact enrages me no end each and every time my wallet is raped at the petrol pumps and some faux-green decides that I should pay more to travel to work so that I can pay taxes to keep a bunch of utter worthless cunts shopping at John Lewis for tax free wide screen TVs (and I'm not just talking about MPs here).

If I had my way, perpetrators of crime would be denied their liberty and put to work on the minimum wage until such time as they'd paid the cost of their crimes back to the victims. That'd ensure a steady supply of labour, plus it would help the fucking joke that our expensive insurance industry has become. The perpetrators of crime might then learn a little about the impact and social cost of their antisocial ways.

As a nation, we're desperately crying out for cheap housing, clean and cheap public transport (at over a pound a litre I've every fucking right to expect the best public transport in the world). Why can't we put the long term jobless to work for the good of society? It's not a radical concept, Roosevelt did it in 1936 with his "New Deal" and it pulled the nation out of the post Wall Street crash recession.

My old local newspaper reported on a family given a three bedroom house by the local council, who'd managed to fart out another three children in just over two and a half years making a grand total of six brats. The parents seemed indignant that they were entitled to a five bedroom council house.

Fuck 'em. If they haven't got enough room for six, then why keep breeding? Take a couple into care, give the parents a job building us more railways and then once they've gained a knowledge of the basic concepts of work and reward then maybe let them make a contribution to a larger house.

[edit: and breathe......]
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Tue 18 Mar 2008, 22:52, Reply)