 |
| Doghouse_Reilly |
on Fri 20 Mar 09, 5:38 PM to Doghouse_Reilly's blog.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/7955...
This story is apparently a major one according to the BBC. A couple swiped about £50,000 between them over a couple of years in benefits. They're going to prison for a year or so each. This makes it into the front page of the BBC website, a small amount of money, nobody hurt, but because it's benefit fraud, and we know how much the government and middle England hate that, it's news. We're supposed to believe these people are pariahs because they didn't do any honest work, got paid by the state and had a whale of a time.
Meanwhile on the other end of the wealth scale we've got the bonus-crazed executives of banks in the US and UK. These guys broke capitalism, so now we just have to give them money apparently. This baffles me, a guy runs a giant company, that company fails, the tax payers bail that company out by giving it money, which goes directly into the pockets of the senior executives to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds. Having pulled off what can only be considered the single most spectacular piece of benefit fraud in the history of the planet these men are never going to prison, never going to see the poor house, never going to be short a few hundred thousand quid. But that's okay, because apparently they are not benefit fraudsters.
Trying to get my head around how spectacularly retarded politics has been for the last year or so is actually giving me a headache. How the hell anybody is expected to respect the government or its institutions after this I have no idea. Why don't we cut out the middle man and just pay our taxes directly into the pockets of the richest 1%?
| 20 Mar 09, 5:48 PM Jezzebelle UK, 10 yrs |
Yeah and how many more couples are screwing the system for similar amounts? My taxes pay for their spending sprees and I have to work for my money when I'd rather not! http://www.flickr.com/photos/jezzebelle/ | ||
| 20 Mar 09, 5:59 PM Doghouse_Reilly UK(MK), 6 yrs |
Here's the thing though, those amounts are fuck all. Yet these people are criminals. Meanwhile we've got bankers getting paid hundreds of thousands by tax payers in lump sums, and what have they done to deserve it? Failed, spectacularly. These guys ran companies into the ground, so we give them hundreds of thousands of pounds. I mean if the government is going to do that with our money, why the fuck do we let them have it in the first place? Where is their moral authority to tell people it's wrong to steal from the state when their mates at the bank are getting ten times as much for just as little reason. I'm not saying it's right to mooch off benefits, but what pisses me off so much is the double standard of this, and other, governments. Benefits fraudsters are an enemy of the state, the mooching financial sector bosses however are the salt of the earth and must be saved at all costs. Anybody who says truth is stranger than fiction has never seen tentacle porn. | ||
| 20 Mar 09, 6:09 PM Stallen 6 yrs |
They played the game, lost now they pay the price, good warning to others these two where never near the poverty line therefore depriving genuine claimers.
Makes me happy just shame they can't deduct their stay in clink from their own assets.
Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into a giant oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay!" —George Bernard Shaw | ||
| 20 Mar 09, 6:42 PM ThedaVamp UK, 6 yrs |
"A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp."
Please check your irony levels before attempting to respond to the majority of my posts. | ||
| 20 Mar 09, 7:01 PM Doghouse_Reilly UK(MK), 6 yrs |
You've been at those book things again haven't you. Anybody who says truth is stranger than fiction has never seen tentacle porn. | ||
| 20 Mar 09, 7:33 PM blacksheepboy UK(CR), 4 yrs |
That's pretty much how it works right now, and always has done. When politicians get kicked out of office, they have to have a few non-executive directorships to walk into, after all. It pays to make friends in the upper echelons of business, and when you have the power to award lucrative public sector contracts (or business bailouts), you have to make sure your friends are ... kept happy. Cynical? Moi? And yes, the traders and bankers who helped to screw our economy whilst pocketing fat bonuses by selling credit and derivatives have effectively waltzed off with billions of our quids and are sipping pina coladas in Aruba right now, laughing their arses off. Somehow, the media finds it easier to get worked up about benefit fraud. Mind you, the benefits system is insane and practically invites fraud. Those who deserve or need benefits the most often don't get enough, whilst those who can work the system or fiddle it do. It's virtually impossible to live on them anyway, so small-scale fiddling is widespread and almost essential (a cash job here or there). The system should be swept away and replaced with negative income tax, guaranteeing a minimum income for all and ending the poverty trap at a stroke, as well as saving billions in administration costs, probably. Vote Me for Diktator! What's the point having cake, if you can't eat it? | ||
| 20 Mar 09, 8:29 PM ThedaVamp UK, 6 yrs |
We don't like no book lernin ere boy.
Please check your irony levels before attempting to respond to the majority of my posts. | ||
| 20 Mar 09, 9:56 PM Doghouse_Reilly UK(MK), 6 yrs |
Damn skippy. Anybody who says truth is stranger than fiction has never seen tentacle porn. | ||
| 20 Mar 09, 11:28 PM DaddysTouch UK(RG), 3 yrs |
'Tis true, if a £50,000 car was stolen it might make local, but not national news.
I wouldn't blame the executives too much to be honest. The politicians didn't have to steal our money, they didn't have to give it away to businesses who fucked up i.e. encourage businesses to carry on fucking up (admittedly, it was the US and to some extent British and other governments which lead to them fucking up)... but they did. "I want that cocksucker to send me at least fifty thousand fucking dollars. And if she can't do it, I'll try ten. If she can't do that, I'll try five. But that's it. If you've got a dowry of five thousand dollars, come out here and suck me off and do what I tell you from now on." | ||
| 21 Mar 09, 1:53 AM blacksheepboy UK(CR), 4 yrs |
They (the bankers) weren't just bad at their job. In fact, they were spectacularly good at turning our money into theirs. That WAS their job, at which they were utterly brilliant. Strangely, it just wasn't against the law, unlike benefit fraud, but it cost us much much more. What's the point having cake, if you can't eat it? |
