Budget Cut Protestors - Help Me Understand

[giblets]

Floyd watches Fox and believes them when they claim 50 year old elementary school teachers are "union thugs" who violently attacked Fox News reporters. It's such a complete joke you should see the video. "That guy just hit me!!1111!!!!ONE" when no one even came close to touching him. Just full of ****.

http://www.politicususa.com/en/fox-news-reporter-attack

This is Tobin's follow up report and explains exactly how Fox stilted everything. Watch this video too.

http://veracitystew.com/2011/02/28/fox-news-lies-reporter-provokes-protesters-then-claims-he-was-assaulted-video/

Goebbels would be proud.

[Dauphin]

I guess we all thought we knew everything when we were his age.

But in our cases we did.

[Dauphin]

No, just taxes better collected (especially from wealthy corporations with clever tax avoidance schemes) and cuts more fairly aimed- in the U.K. the cuts have been disproportionately distributed to lower income more deprived areas, especially in cities.

To have cuts to your benefits you'd have to be on benefits. People on benefits tend to be disproportionately distributed in the lower income more deprived areas, especially in cities. Oddly enough.

I've not lost a penny in cuts. But then that's because I got no benefits before (or none that I know about and use).

[MikeH]

But in our cases we did.

In that case it's amazing how much I've forgotten.

[Dauphin]

When we were his age there wasn't a lot you needed to know.

[MikeH]

When I was his age I couldn't expose how much I knew or how ignorant I was on the internet, 'cause I hadn't encountered it yet. *phew*

[molly bloom]

Yay. We certainly don't have enough leftist tools already.

Gosh, I hope that little squib is directed at me. It's not as if my opinion of your intellectual abilities could have reached much lower, regardless.

[MRT144]

Uh, germanos, antiglobalization protests do not fall under the "protesting deficits" category. They fall under the "general stupidity of the masses" category and if you're one of those Naomi Klein/Henry David Thoreau kooks then just go away.

Thoreau was so awful!!!

Simple living, anti-tax, naturalist, encouraging civil disobedience for morally objectionable things.

You're such a tool sometimes HC.

[molly bloom]

To have cuts to your benefits you'd have to be on benefits.

I'm aware of that. I was referring to cuts in funding to charities and council services which deal with the kind of problems that George Osborne (just one of the public school educated Oxbridge graduates from a wealthy background in the current Cabinet) has never faced.

People on benefits tend to be disproportionately distributed in the lower income more deprived areas, especially in cities. Oddly enough.

No sheet, Sherlock! See, two can play the sarcasm game. However, a recent article I read was outlining what the effects of some of these cuts in funding from Central Government would also mean to areas like Cornwall, which although not being heavily urbanized, also has problems with young homeless people, rough sleepers and those addicted to alcohol or drugs.

Jamie is one of scores, perhaps hundreds, of people sleeping rough in the far south-west of England. New figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government show that Cornwall is the local authority with the second largest number of rough sleepers in England (65), behind Westminster in central London.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/20...ng-rough-woods

The response of caring, sharing Conservative-run Westminster City Council to the problem of rough sleepers and the homeless is to try to enact a bye-law to ban charities and individuals from giving out drinks or soup or food to the homeless- on the grounds that giving them food 'encourages' them to stay that way, as if somehow a cup of tomato soup makes up for the dangers to bodily and mental health from living on the street.

Perhaps some Conservatives think of this as a 'lifestyle' choice, rather like having a gite in Normandy, or a villa in Tuscany...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/...00/9438461.stm

[Hauldren Collider]

Thoreau was so awful!!!

Simple living, anti-tax, naturalist, encouraging civil disobedience for morally objectionable things.

You're such a tool sometimes HC.

I've read Walden. Are you even suggesting that I might find some common ground with Thoreau on anything substantial? Any agreement I might have with him is a complete coincidence and/or accident. The man was a moron.

[MRT144]

I've read Walden. Are you even suggesting that I might find some common ground with Thoreau on anything substantial? Any agreement I might have with him is a complete coincidence and/or accident. The man was a moron.

When you say stuff like that, your ignorance is profoundly clear. You may have read Walden, but you didn't understand it.

[Dauphin]

No sheet, Sherlock! See, two can play the sarcasm game.

I thought it necessary to point out, because you had missed the obvious explanation and put a political slant on it. Just keeping you honest.

Yes, Tories are not exactly caring, but when complaining, complain about the right things.

[molly bloom]

The man was a moron.

I'd think that anyone who had actually read 'Walden' wouldn't have reached the conclusion that the writer wasn't a moron.

As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a necessary of life, though there are instances of men having done without it for long periods in colder countries than this. Samuel Laing (1) says that "the Laplander (2) in his skin dress, and in a skin bag which he puts over his head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on the snow .... in a degree of cold which would extinguish the life of one exposed to it in any woollen clothing." He had seen them asleep thus. Yet he adds, "They are not hardier than other people." But, probably, man did not live long on the earth without discovering the convenience which there is in a house, the domestic comforts, which phrase may have originally signified the satisfactions of the house more than of the family; though these must be extremely partial and occasional in those climates where the house is associated in our thoughts with winter or the rainy season chiefly, and two thirds of the year, except for a parasol, is unnecessary. In our climate, in the summer, it was formerly almost solely a covering at night. In the Indian gazettes a wigwam was the symbol of a day's march, and a row of them cut or painted on the bark of a tree signified that so many times they had camped. Man was not made so large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his world and wall in a space such as fitted him.

From: Economy, 'Walden' .

http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden1c.html

It might make an amusing thirty seconds or so to imagine which contemporary American politicians would be capable of organising language or thought along comparable lines- without the aid of a ghost writer or speechwriting aides.

[molly bloom]

I thought it necessary to point out, because you had missed the obvious explanation and put a political slant on it. Just keeping you honest.

But I hadn't missed the obvious explanation, and with the cuts in question tnere is undeniably a political slant, unless of course you think that the coalition and Eric Pickles in particular, are really concerned with making similar cuts across the political landscape, regardless the complexion of the council affected- 'cos it just ain't so, Joe:

This week, the communities secretary, Eric Pickles, announced a review “to end council dependence on Whitehall”. Councils will be allowed to keep business rates they raise, instead of sending all the money to Whitehall to be redistributed according to local need. Instead, Pickles has “a vision of self-funded councils that keep their business taxes with central grant dependence scaled back”. What would this mean?

Imagine if Westminster were allowed to keep all its business rates – £1bn a year. No need for Westminster residents ever to pay council tax again: they could be paid instead. Currently Westminster keeps just £150m. Sigoma, the municipal authorities group, says that if councils were all allowed to keep their business rates, the City of London would gain £517m. Together, the Tory boroughs of the City, Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Kensington and Chelsea would gain £1.6bn. Who would be the losers? Birmingham would lose £175m, Hackney £116m, Liverpool £104m – and Cornwall £45m. To them that hath shall be given – yet again.

http://http://securedloanuk.org.uk/b...polly-toynbee/

and

Liverpool, the poorest city, was cut deepest. Who gained most? Oliver Letwin’s Dorset. Least affected in spending power were Vince Cable’s Richmond upon Thames, Windsor and Maidenhead, Wokingham, and Michael Gove’s Surrey.

House of Commons library research found the political match near perfect: the more solidly Labour the district, the harsher its cuts; while the more blue Tory the shire, the less it was affected, with the Lib Dems in between. So if the government now adds to that injustice by rebalancing the proceeds of business rates, expect the distribution of spending power to become even more grotesquely distorted.

Funny, that seems like what I said in my earlier post....

Just keeping you honest.

Can't see as I need any help in that regard. Now Nick Clegg and Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary- there are two who might profit from a little honesty dust sprinkled on their public statements.

[Myrddin]

Perhaps you might like to check the distribution of public spending since 1997 - perhaps the last government was also not completely fair in its targeting of spending?