The Benefits Cap

Here's Raymond and his family. Raymond, his wife and six children live in a three bedroomed house in North Wales. Neither Raymond nor his missus work. They live on state benefits, from money paid by you and me (well, not me any more). They receive £30,284.80 in benefits per year, a full £82.40 per week more than the proposed benefit cap of £26,000 per year.

But don't feel sorry for Raymond and his family. They can save £15 per week by cancelling their Sky subscription, £32 by cancelling their mobile phone contracts and if Raymond didn't go to the pub every Friday they could save an extra £20. I'm sure they could make the extra £15 up from the £92 per week they have to pay for school books and trips, clothing and white goods replacements. No, I have no sympathy for Raymond and his family, none whatsoever.

Therefore the Government is right to impose a £26,000 cap on benefits. Isn't that right?

Well, the BBC have done their research, alright. You see the average weekly housing benefit award in the social rental sector is £76. And that's what Ray and his family get! They are an average family of eight, paying £76 per week in rent which is the average rent paid in the social rental sector so the average family is taking us for a ride, right? RIGHT???

No, you fuckers. It's not right.

For a start, the average weekly housing benefit award in the private rental sector is £110 and the maximum weekly housing benefit awards are as follows:-

1 bedroom property - £250 per week, £13,000 per annum
2 bedroom property - £290 per week, £15,080 per annum
3 bedroom property - £340 per week, £17,680 per annum
4 bedroom property - £400 per week, £20,800 per annum

There are 1.58 million recipients of housing benefit who live in homes in the private rental sector. They receive an average of £5,720 per annum to pay their landlords. You can see what landlords can charge above. Slightly above the average.

Right, BBC? Do you see how typical Raymond and his family are as far as the effects of the benefit cap go? Do you see how you're pandering to stupid popular opinion, based on distorting the facts to suck up to a government you are are scared shitless of?

Fuck you and your Birdsong.

Graduates Are Better

Nowadays I get my news from Channel 4's catch up service on my nifty iPhone app. It keeps me abreast.

Yesterday we had the news that applications to university this year are down on last year, unsurprising as tuition fees have been significantly raised. Of course, as the professor says in the interview above, graduates are still the first choice for employers when recruiting for all sorts of interesting and life-enhancing jobs.

There are other benefits of obtaining a degree, too. The professor, at 04.25 above, says, "All the evidence that comes out of the OECD is that graduates have a much better quality of life. They're better parents, they're better citizens, they participate in democracy, they're healthier..."

And who could argue with her? Generally, middle class people are better than working class people in this great meritocracy we live in. It goes without saying that a doctor, a lecturer or an accountant is a better parent, a better citizen, more politically active, and more healthy than a plumber, an office clerk, or, especially, a scummy chav living on benefits.

And all children can do it, they can be whatever they want to be. All they have to do is knuckle down at school, "do the right thing" to better themselves if you will, and a golden future awaits them.

Carol McGiffin Nation

One of the joys of not working is the ability to watch daytime television at the time it is broadcast. Instead of having to record The Jeremy Kyle Show I can now join the other skivers and pensioners simultaneously looking for members of our communities.

Most days I catch some of Loose Women. I've seen some awful condemnation of this show on Twitter. People call it all sorts of names.

But it is the best daytime programme and more watchable than some of the evening programmes feted on Twitter such as Sherlock, Doctor Who, Come Dine With Me, Antiques Roadshow, X-Factor, Masterchef, The Apprentice, Question Time, etc. Actually it is better than anything that has a fucking hashtag in the evening.

Yes, there are the guests such as Cliff Richard, Larry Lamb, Dave Spikey and Sue Pollard, regulars who I have no interest in, but it's when the women get down to current affairs that the show shines.

And no one shines more than Carol McGiffin. She is truly the voice of the nation. She talks a lot of common sense, understanding how ordinary people think, giving them a voice. There is a crescendo of applause every time she gets on her high horse about benefit scroungers and those who do not want to work and those who are on the dole as a lifestyle choice.

They're not interested in statistics, your ordinary people aren't. You tell Carol or an ordinary person that there are six times as many unemployed people as there are job vacancies and that a lot of those vacancies will be filled by the currently employed, or that only one in eight people claiming housing benefit is unemployed, she will look through you as if you were talking a foreign language she never took the time to learn. And, of course, the truth is a foreign language millions of people never bothered to learn but they don't like their opinions to be blighted by the truth because then their opinions wouldn't count and they'd have to shut the fuck up.

Russell/Blake

The previous post was my last serious one. I've had enough with real life, it's boring. From now on I'm going to restrict my posts on here to the media which as we know is far from real.

The other night we saw a conversation between Ken Russell (not long before he died) and Peter Blake. I didn't know that Blake had grown up in Dartford, though I should have guessed by his accent.

For the first half of the programme Blake asked the questions and Russell answered with few words. It seemed that only one of them wanted to be there.

Blake was very serious. I'm sure Russell, though he couldn't have been feeling 100%, must have been longing for some levity. He was still making films in his back garden at the time, using old friends and anybody who knocked on his door, even the postman, as actors. Still having fun behind a camera.

Blake's life, though there was more of it left, seemed less fun. Designing Fred Perry shirts, a collage for Adidas and Chelsea football club. Russell didn't seem too impressed with the knight's assimilation into the establishment.

One of Russell's 60s TV documentaries was about four pop artists, Blake being one of them. As Russell started to ask Blake the questions he asked him if he still had the pyjamas he wore in that old film. Blake didn't. This was a disappointment to Russell. As it would have been to any film-maker. That was the essence of Blake, the old young rebel in the stripy pyjamas, not the long-time Fulham fan who took the Chelsea dollar.

"Think of all the starving children"

Now I've learnt as much as I want to about Microsoft Excel 2010, I'm ready for my dream job. The next time I go to an interview and they ask me if I can do pivot tables I'll say, "Yes, they're a piece of piss and I wasted a hundred quid on software from which I've learnt very little. It's all common sense, innit?"

I say the next time I go to an interview but maybe there won't be a next time. You see I'm looking for a part time job, a few days a week. I've had enough of the Monday to Friday grind. I was interviewed for a part time job last year. The man interviewing me inferred that I should have been looking for an 8 to 6, Monday to Friday, me not being a married woman whose kids have grown up and who's just looking for a bit of pin money. A man needs to work and work long hours to prove his manhood.

I'm now unemployed but not part of the government's statistics. How many of us are there, living off our savings, taking an early retirement we didn't ask for? The careers adviser said I should be doing some voluntary work to put on my CV. But there's bugger all of that around locally unless I want to do the petty cash for five minutes a week for the Scouts.

Work still has the ability to make me anxious. I still wake up in the middle of the night thinking dark thoughts about my experiences of the past three years. Then I tell myself I've been lucky, look at all the people working in horrible jobs on poverty wages. All the people with no hope trying to survive on poverty benefits.

But that doesn't make me feel better about myself. Why should it? When a child is egged on by a parent to eat something they hate the taste of, does being told "Think of all the starving children!" actually make the food taste better? If the child has any sensitivity they will get depressed about the starving children and will want to not eat in solidarity. They will make themselves ill. In the same way that my anxiety is fed by constant news of how shit the world is and constant confirmation that we are led by cunts. How can anybody feel optimism?

It's Like That And That's The Way It Is

I like to be educated by the programmes I watch on television. And when knowledgeable celebrities are talking about things that happened in the past, I like to have a comparison with something I have experienced so that I can imagine what the real thing was like.

In Armando's Tale Of Charles Dickens, I was transported back to Dickensian times, realising more and more just how much we've got in common with Victorian Britain. For example, Iannucci describes the excitement of a Dickens' public reading. I immediately tasted the flavour of such an event when told it was like "Lady Gaga coming to town".

I'll always remember Lady Gaga's readings at the local Methodist Hall last year. You could cut the air with a knife as her fans listened intently to the story of a poor one-legged wastrel girl who battled against overwhelming odds to become world famous as an entertainer.

Then there was Timeshift: The Smoking Years in which Stuart Maconie gave us probably the most evocative description possible of entering the smoky atmosphere of the upstairs on a double decker bus. "It was a blue fug of cigarette smoke...Like being in a foxhole in Vietnam".

Now I've been in a foxhole in Vietnam on one of my discovery holidays and let me tell you, those Vietnamese foxes smoke like troopers, one after the other.

Neigh, Neigh and Thrice Neigh

One of the awkward things about being the child of divorced parents is the extended family. I've never got on with my stepdad's sons and their families. But my mum and sister do and yesterday we were the only ones left out of Christmas Dinner at my stepbrother's.

And so to the presents.

My mum likes going to see musicals in the afternoon. She's 80 and an evening performance is really a bit too late. So as a special treat she is now to see an evening performance of a play with her husband, stepchildren and step-grandkids.

Not any old play, though. It's War Horse.

From what I can gather, War Horse was originally a children's book written in the early 80s, for readers aged under 10. The play based on the book includes lifelike mechanical horses. It is a real tearjerker. Steven Spielberg has jumped on the bandwagon and made a film of the story.

From what I can gather, a book written for 8 year olds is seen as raw material for a family show. Not for 8 year olds but for a 13 year old boy, a 16 year old girl, a 45 year old woman, a 50 year old man, a 78 year old man and an 80 year old woman. All together, all feeling the same emotions, all releasing their inner child.

When I was 13, when I was 16, I would have hated the idea of my parents deciding my entertainment. It was my entertainment, my choice, I was an individual with my own ideas, would have hated to be associated with children's entertainment, wanted to be a grown-up.

I am now 50 and feel the same way and I'm sure I will if I reach 80.

But we have a generation of middle aged parents who refuse to grow up living vicariously through the inner children of teenagers and pensioners. "We've been and we know you'd love it. This is our gift to you, a chance for you to come back with us in wide-eyed innocent wonder to the land of childhood."

I'm sure my mum and stepdad will love it, despite the lateness of the performance. I'm sure the teenagers will love it, too. I'm sure I'd hate it as since I was 8 I've been old and cynical and unable to fit in with the crowd.