COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

UK- Hard Road to a Better Future




There is no reason why a similar thing could not be done in the US.

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Osborne Unveils Spending Review

BBC
Chancellor George Osborne on the "hard road to a better future"

Chancellor George Osborne is to slash welfare benefits by a further £7bn as he sets out the biggest spending cuts since the Second World War.

The pension age will rise sooner than expected, some incapacity benefits will be time limited and other money clawed back through changes to tax credits and housing benefit.

A new bank levy will also be brought in - with full details due on Thursday.

Mr Osborne said the four year cuts were guided by fairness, reform and growth.

Unveiling his Spending Review in the Commons, which includes £81bn in spending cuts, he told MPs: "Today is the day when Britain steps back from the brink, when we confront the bills from a decade of debt."

He added: "It is a hard road, but it leads to a better future."

Universal benefits for pensioners will be retained exactly as budgeted for by the previous government and the temporary increase in the cold weather payment will be made permanent.

But a planned rise in state pension age for men and women to 66 by the year 2020, will be brought forward, with a gradual increase in the State Pension Age from 65 to 66, starting in 2018.

Up to 500,000 public sector jobs could go by 2014-15, according to the Office for Budgetary Responsibility.

Bank levy
Mr Osborne has not set out in detail where the jobs will go but he admitted there will be some redundancies in the public sector, which he said were unavoidable when the country had run out of money.

He has set out extensive cuts to individual government departments - including:

Home Office - 6% cuts, with police spending down by 4% each year of the spending settlement
Foreign Office - 24% cut through reduction in the number of Whitehall-based diplomats and back office costs
HM Revenue and Customs - 15% through the better use of new technology and greater efficiency
The Department for International Development's budget will rise to £11.5bn over the next four years, reaching 0.7% of national income in 2013.

Each government department will next month publish a business plan setting out reform plans for the next four years.

Plans for a 1,500 place new prison have been dropped, he said.

The government will also deliver £6bn of Whitehall savings - double the £3bn promised earlier, said the chancellor.

There will be overall savings in funding to local councils of 7.1%, but ring-fencing of all local government revenue grants will end from April next year, except for simplified schools grants and a public health grant.

The Spending Review is the culmination of months of heated negotiations with ministers over their departmental budgets and comes a day after the Ministry of Defence and the BBC learned their financial fate.

'Irresponsible gamble'
The MoD is facing cuts of 8% - less than most other departments but enough to mean 42,000 service personnel and civil servants will lose their jobs over the next five years and high-profile equipment such as Harrier jump jets, the Ark Royal aircraft carrier and Nimrod spy planes will be scrapped.

The BBC has been told it must freeze the licence fee for six years and take over the cost of the World Service, currently funded by the Foreign Office, and the Welsh language TV channel S4C. This adds up to an estimated 16% cut in the BBC's budget in real terms.

The chancellor insists tough action on spending is needed to stave off a debt crisis - and that the private sector will create new jobs to fill the void.

Labour would also have had to make major cuts if it had won the general election, but the party insists Mr Osborne's plans are too aggressive and risk tipping the country into a "double dip" recession.

The Spending Review: Making It Clear
Labour leader Ed Miliband accused the chancellor of taking an "irresponsible gamble with our economy and, indeed, many of the frontline services people rely on."

Health spending and international development will also be protected from cuts - and Mr Osborne has pledged funding for big infrastructure projects like London's Crossrail project and the Mersey Gateway road bridge between Runcorn and Widnes.

But Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has confirmed a £30bn 10-mile barrage across the Severn estuary, intended to generate renewable electricity, has been axed on the grounds of cost.

30 comments:

  1. WiO, on the suffering of other children of the One:

    "I hope they have very painful wounds, I hope many of them linger for months til they pass from this earth...."

    Just in case anyone thought Judaism was a religion of peace.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Limbaugh has been contacted, or has had friends who have been contacted by Republican elites, who seem not to have learned one bit in the last several years.

    They want to ride back to power on the strength of the Tea Party without adopting any of the changes which are driving forces behind the power of the Tea Party.

    If this does not change, he sees the birth of a third party, with the GOP becoming a minority party.

    The question is, does the country have the reserves to survive yet another interim failed government headed by an unchanged GOP?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thomas Sowell - The Multicultural Cult

    The Multicultural Cult: Part II

    There was a reason why employers in the middle of the 19th century had signs that said, "No Irish need apply" -- and why employers in the middle of the 20th century no longer had such signs. It was not that employers had changed. The Irish had changed.

    The Catholic Church for years worked to bring about such changes among the Irish immigrants and their offspring, just as various religious and secular organizations among the Jews, among blacks and among other groups worked to bring about changes within their respective groups. By and large these efforts paid off. All these groups were advancing, long before there were civil rights laws.

    Yet today, attempts to get black or Hispanic youngsters to speak the language of the society around them are decried by multiculturalists. And any attempt to get them to behave according to the cultural norms of the larger society is denounced as "cultural imperialism," if not racism.

    The multicultural dogma is that we are to "celebrate" all cultures, not change them. In other words, people who lag educationally or economically are to keep on doing what they have been doing -- but somehow have better results in the future than in the past. And, if they don't have better results in the future, it is society's fault.

    Such notions have been tried, and failed, in other countries and times, long before they became a fashionable dogma called multiculturalism.

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dick Morris: At the Tea Parties, evangelical pro-lifers rub shoulders happily with gay libertarians. They are united by their anger at Obama's economic policies, fear of his deficits and horror at his looming tax increases. Obama's agenda has effectively removed the blocks that stopped tens of millions of social moderates from joining the GOP.

    The GOP is catching up to the Elephant Bar.

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  6. Let me know which of those articles are available from Rush's home page if you are not a member.

    ...I used to be able to log out to see what was available to none members, but homepage does not have that link at present.

    ReplyDelete
  7. RUSH: All right now, look, folks, I understand your frustration. I understand totally your anger. What I don't understand is why anybody is surprised by this. I warned you people about this. I think it was the week before last, yeah, when I described for you the conversation I had with the ranking Republican. Well, now it's official.

    The elites in the GOP want to compromise with the Democrats, and they think that's what you want. It's all over the news today, and there's a bunch of lessons here.

    Here's how to blow the greatest election opportunity you've ever had since 1894, here's how to blow it two weeks out, and at the same time here is how you form a third party, how you create the circumstances a third party would form.

    This is the problem.

    The elites inside Washington, I don't care what party, Republican, Democrat, cocktail, doesn't matter what party, it's the elites, we need to break the back of the elites out there.

    They have nothing to do with this grassroots movement that's the Tea Party, nothing whatsoever. They have nothing to do with any victories in this election.

    This is going to be very key. All of these big time wins that are on tap two weeks from today, the elites will have had nothing to do with it.
    The elites have, in fact, stood in the way.
    The elites have decried and pummeled all of the Tea Party people and the candidates that have arisen from this effervescent grassroots movement.

    It's the elites in both parties who paved the way for Obama.

    It's the elites in both parties who gave us Senator McCain.

    The elites in both parties spent like liberals; they paved the way for McCain, they paved the way for Pelosi, for Harry Reid, and Obama.

    And now they're sitting in Washington hoping to benefit from the results of an election that is in part in response to their malfeasance...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Selah said...
    WiO, on the suffering of other children of the One:

    "I hope they have very painful wounds, I hope many of them linger for months til they pass from this earth...."

    Just in case anyone thought Judaism was a religion of peace.



    This has nothing to do with Judaism, it has everything to do with Islam and using a home as a bomb factory...

    Dont blame me for hoping for a painful lesson....

    ReplyDelete
  9. Islam loves death as Judaism love life...

    That's why Jews build BOMB shelters and hospitals and moslems build ied's, suicide vests and rockets in hospitals and homes...

    ReplyDelete
  10. Selah said...
    WiO, on the suffering of other children



    also...

    I do not cheer if an Israeli harms a child of the palestinians...

    But if a moslems blows up himself and his family?

    let the pain roll....

    ReplyDelete
  11. Beck says Mr. Collective Salvation ommitted "THEIR CREATOR" from the Declaration.

    For the THIRD TIME.

    ReplyDelete
  12. The Feds our my shepherd,
    I shall not want.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Kinsolving confronts Gibbs:

    Gibbs replies that The Won believes in the Declaration.

    Great.

    ReplyDelete
  14. let the ONE show his birth certificate...

    let the ONE release his college papers...

    let the ONE release his fund raising from Hamas

    let the ONE tell us of his CONTACT with Hamas BEFORE elected as POTUS.

    start there...

    ReplyDelete
  15. still is good news...

    they dont learn...

    13 injured in Kassam training site explosion in Rafah
    Five children and three women among casualties after blast at Hamas's al-Qassam Brigades site located in southern Gaza Strip.

    HOW OLD WERE THE SO CALLED CHILDREN, and AS FOR THE WOMEN? EQUAL RIGHTS BABY


    A powerful explosion ripped through a Hamas Kassam rocket training site in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, the Ma'an news agency reported.

    In a statement Hamas did not give a cause for the blast in the town of Rafah. The Israeli military said it wasn't involved, which suggests that the explosion was an accident.

    DARWIN BABY....


    The blast shook through densely crowded Tel As-Sultan neighborhood in Rafah. Hamas said thirteen people were injured during the explosion, including five children and three women, all by flying glass shrapnel.

    MUST REALLY SUCK HAVING AN AMMO DUMP INSIDE YOUR KINDERGARDEN....

    Ambulance crews arrived on the scene to evacuate the injured to Abu Yousef An-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, said Gaza medical services spokesman Adham Abu Silmiyya.

    The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights has repeatedly called on the territory's Hamas rulers not to store explosive materials in civilian areas. It said a similar explosion in August wounded 58 people and destroyed seven houses.

    THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME THE BEST ONE?

    ReplyDelete
  16. go here: http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/9917



    this was amazing...

    a Hamas PARADE, hundreds of kids and a pickup truck LOADED with LIVE Kassams, or as our resident Nazi would call them, "harmless homemade fireworks"

    It's hard to not fun humor in a death cult to stupid not to bring live rockets to their OWN PARADE...

    Think I am an ass?

    To bad...

    ReplyDelete
  17. Beck seems to be descending into cartoon caricature. In fact, many Republicans have this startling communications disconnect - Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich.

    Beck starts out making sense when he dissects liberal thought, political structures and demonstrable 20th century social failures. It's a strong case. But, as reliable as Big Ben, he segues into a religious rant. Shuts me down cold.

    Rat makes a good case for the Founders being deists.

    I hate to admit it but Trish was right. The Republicans aren't ready to round up the neighborhood strays, let alone re-assume political leadership of either House or Senate.

    (News rumblings that Pelosi will not survive as House leader if Dems manage to keep the House.)

    ReplyDelete
  18. Rat makes a good case for the Founders being deists.


    That's cause Rat's to stupid to understand the founders were Noahides..

    ReplyDelete
  19. But he is smart enough to know that Semites are not the most hated of the Middle Easterners, by those of the "Western World". That space is held by the Persians, both today and in the past.

    From the days of Alexander to present. Much as that disputes Israeli and Zionist propaganda, it is the truth.

    In fact the fellow at somethingjewish.com debunks another of the Story of "o"'s myths. The idea that Judaism was of a major cultural impact in the "West".

    Because that is what we (Jews) have always done. From Spain to India we have adopted local colour, dress, technology and culture, while remaining true to our core religious values.

    Completely at odds with the Story of "o" and the version of historical myth propagated there. The Jews of the whirled did not change their cultural enviorments, but adapted to them.

    Good golly Molly

    ReplyDelete
  20. Better Late than Never:

    .................................

    Meanwhile, a federal law enforcement official says the FBI is in the initial stages of trying to determine whether the financial industry may have broken criminal laws in the mortgage foreclosure crisis.

    The law enforcement official says the question is whether some in the industry were acting with criminal intent or were simply overwhelmed by events in the wake of the housing market's collapse.

    The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is just getting under way.

    Hundreds of judges around the country have the authority to penalize bank officials who violate their procedural rules.

    They could also force thousands of foreclosure cases to go to full trials rather than issue a quick ruling.

    Judges won't take well to banks that filed erroneous documents with their courts, said Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller.

    "There could be some serious consequences," including criminal charges, Zoeller said.

    Even if there aren't, lawsuits are likely to continue for years, said Guy Cecala, publisher of trade publication Inside Mortgage Finance.

    "Some of these plaintiffs' attorneys clearly smell blood in the water," Cecala said.

    ................................

    It's all about the process.

    ReplyDelete
  21. .
    Mississippi looks to Iran for healthcare solutions.

    Iran Pushes Smaller Solutions

    .

    ReplyDelete
  22. The barrier to medical paraprofessionals providing a prevention and treatment service continuum is legal liability. One mistake and all hell breaks loose.


    Everybody here got dental problems ’cause no one teaches them how to take care of their teeth.

    I despair for this country.

    ReplyDelete
  23. This is a professional piece of writing.

    Long, but professional.

    Is it propaganda?


    Any guesses as to the "Brand within a Brand"?

    Without cheating.

    (PS Not for me. I already know. And I'm not out the $50.)

    ReplyDelete
  24. To get out of the video and into the text, navigate away from the page to bring up the "are you sure?" query. Click cancel and the text appears on the web page.

    [marketing hell]

    ReplyDelete
  25. T, the Bar is always ahead of the curve.

    ReplyDelete
  26. to whom it may concern...

    Dr Hiss is a self confessed murderer...

    A jew hater and an anti-semite..

    Please read his "words" with the understanding that if not for luck of the draw he would be in prison.

    One can only hope for his arrest, conviction and hard labor.

    ReplyDelete