Andrew Neil And Times Staff Show Complete Disragard for Low Pay.

In the video above Andrew Neil and Times Radio staff show a complete disregard for how things at the lower end of the social scale works.

Discussing Immigration and how many people should be allowed into the country, they discuss how people in the UK don't or won't do the jobs available to them and that we need immigration to fill those jobs.

Then the usual tropes about tough love and forcing people into work. Totally ignoring the reality of the situation.

Currently renting a single bed property in a large city can run to something like £1500 a month. Wages at the lower end of the scale for carers, janitors, labourers, shop workers, etc. struggle to reach over £1000 a month. 

I'm getting more than the minimum wage and I'm only getting around £1700 a month. I couldn't afford to pay the rent on a flat and live. 

So quite a lot of people can't afford to live in rented accommodation without some sort of subsidy but sadly in-work benefits only extends to families, in the form of family credit introduced by Tony Blair.

Don't get me started on why taxpayers should be subsidising people's wages when the wages. Employers should pay decent wages in the first place.

Why not choose social housing where the rents are more affordable? Don't make me laugh. Waiting lists for those in employment are the longest and can stretch to over 10 years to get a place. That's if some migrant hasn't been given the place already because the council have a statutory duty to house them, where they have no such duty with a UK citizen.

Which brings me to the imminent increase in rental prices, thanks to the government paying £5000 per month to house refugees under their new scheme to move immigrants out of 4 star hotels and reduce the optics a bit. 

I'm not sure how the optics of a minimum £5000 per month rent compares to housing immigrants in a 4 star hotel. 

All I can say it's going to be bad for the low-paid. 

The problem is, everything conspires to keep people on the dole. Everything is paid for. Rent is covered (up to a point), and you get a nice little bung in your account every month. Why would you risk homelessness by leaving the comfort of welfare? 

What needs to happen is rents need to be more affordable and wages more able to support living independently of government support. 

Sadly successive governments have allowed house prices and rents to increase, the stock of social housing has not kept up with demand, the minimum wage has started a race to the bottom, where it defines the wage for a huge swathe of the working class, government have given up on training people in order to allow them to try and attain the types of jobs that would pay a better wage. 

Nope, let's blame the poor as lazy and feckless, not the victims of circumstance and import a huge load of migrants to fill the jobs the poor can't afford to do, whilst the immigrants sleep 50 to a house in order to share the rental costs. 

Just yet another example of broken Britain.

Kier Starmer's Cloak of Many Colours

Kier Starmer's latest speech has appropriated the language of the far-right. He has yet again donned the cloak of many ideologies and is trying to make himself look as if he supports what the majority of the people want.

It's strange how all of a sudden he supports secure borders (with no evidence of course)

I'm not sure how members of his party can avoid calling him a Nazi, because many of us normal people have been called that for expressing the same opinions.

Sadly it won't wash Kier. We do not believe you. The fact that you're a Communist one minute and now best buds with Farage's mob doesn't square. Next you'll be down the pub drinking pints and smoking like Farage. 

Pull the other one Kier. 

Actions dear boy, we want actions. Not empty words.

United Kingdom: Organised Crime Capital.

I watched (for a short while, it was pretty boring) a TV documentary about fly tipping. The documentary team had apparently found links to fly tippers all over the country, showing that it was actually an activity backed by organised crime. 

Which got me to thinking: how many organised crime rackets are there running in the UK at the moment, how many organised crime syndicates are there?

I mean, we have the barbers that have proved by the Police to be fronts for money laundering, drug dealing, people trafficking and other organised crime activities.  

The same for nail bars, run in part by the triads.

Fly tipping, barbers, nail bars, drugs, slum landlords, money laundering, people trafficking, online scams, just how come organised crime has been allowed to flourish like this?

And it's not like the secretive organised crime of the past: this is very much visible, in your face, in the high street.

Is the reason it hasn't been stamped out is the amount of money being generated? 

Without the dark economy, the illegal economy, that pays only a fraction of it's profits in tax, would there even be an economy to speak of at all? Is that why the Police keep away and rarely prosecute?  Do they only raid an prosecute if the gangsters don't pay their dues? Have they been given orders to turn a blind eye as long as some tax is being paid? Is the government that desperate for income they would allow crime on such a scale to happen, as long as they get their cut? Is government, both local and national that corrupt? The answer appears to be yes.

I thought about it for a moment and then realised that whether it's the dark economy or the global corporate economy, both work the same.

The dark economy makes millions illegally, but only declares a small fraction of their income by way of the fronts, the legal businesses they use to hide the illegal activities. They pay tax on a fraction of the actual money they make.

But then the legal global corporations make millions, but only pay tax on a fraction of what they earn, due to legal tax loopholes, or the power to tell HMRC what they will pay, rather than what they should pay.

Both are doing the same thing. Effectively throwing crumbs from their table to the exchequer. The difference is the illegal guys stay here and buy Range Rovers, big houses and effectively re-invest in the economy. The legal global corporate cunts don't, they take the money out of the UK, they bleed us dry.

But it very much appears that to get on in business, skirting the edge of legality may not be enough these days to be successful. You have to push the envelope over the edge. 

The UK is fast becoming the organised crime capital of Western Europe.