Call for Environment Secretary to Resign

Take a look at the obnoxious Owen Paterson posturing in parliament about the badger cull. One Labour MP called on him to resign as I am sure the majority of the voting public would welcome as well.

http://www.itv.com/news/west/update/2013-10-10/call-for-environment-sec-to-resign-over-badger-cull/

Owen Paterson is an industry puppet. This is the minister who makes nonsensical claims about the benefits of GM technology and clearly does not understand the dangers genetically modified crops pose to the ecosystem. Despite this, Owen Paterson has launched a campaign to grow GM crops in Britain.

Owen Paterson is a key member of the Conservative right along with chancellor George Osborne, education secretary Michael Gove and Ian Duncan Smith, the Work & Pensions secretary. That is some gang of four, each one of them despised by so many in Britain. The worst of these is Mr Paterson - he is against gay marriage, deeply sceptical about Europe and has yet to clarify whether or not he believes in man-made global warming. In April he fought against a Europe-wide ban on nerve-agent pesticides, known as neonicotinoids, which many scientists believe are accelerating the decline in bee populations, arguing that there was insufficient evidence. I am sure that he has a vested interest in Monsanto...

To have this man as our environment secretary is of major concern as it appears he cares nothing for the very cause he is supposed to champion and defend. He prefers to slaughter our cherished wildlife in spite of irrefutable scientific evidence that this is indefensible madness that is already costing millions of £s that could have been far better spent on a programme of inoculation.

Owen Paterson must go.

The Reality of Life on The Dole

Let me preface this by stating that I am not speaking from personal experience. I am happily retired after a long and rewarding working life. I do however have acquaintances amongst the long-term unemployed. Not because they want to be and not because they are scroungers. They remain unemployed because they are superabundant. If there were several million vacancies and nobody was filling them because of their attachment to daytime TV then the Tory campaign against the jobless would carry more weight. But clearly, George Osborne and Ian Duncan Smith do not have a clue.

I am told by those in the know that the Work Programme is not working. Tougher sanctions against the unemployed are not what is required. What is required is to make work a realistic prospect, which does not mean cleaning graffiti and cooking for the elderly.

Now, IDS has come up with the cockamamie idea under a Workfare scheme that jobseekers will have to report to the job-centre every day, some benefit claimants facing 35 hours a week so occupied. How will the unemployed in rural areas cope? Reporting to the job centre everyday and what that alone means in transport costs. And where will these people be put? There are millions of them all needing to use the toilet facilities....

I am not standing in defence of the work-shy. I am saying though, that treating the unemployed as social outcasts is a toxic form of political attack that has no place in my reasoning.

GO and IDS should try living in the real world....