Gold stars all around

If there is one thing that a government is good at then it’s diversion, in fact that may be the only thing that some of them have mastered. Much has been made recently of welfare scroungers in the UK and rightly so as they seem to be the only thing that we produce!

What I find interesting though is the way that politicians use this debate. They don’t jump on the evils of wage dodgers, that would be too simple after all. They quietly agree that having generations and entire communities that no longer understand the concept of employment is wrong but that is it. Of course they can’t jump on the bandwagon too much because it is them that created welfare dependence, tax payers weren’t queueing up to offer their hard earned to those that chose not to work after all.

What the politicians have done is to generate a new class, dependent on welfare but oblivious to the fact. These people work and so they enjoy the privilege of looking down upon the Jeremy Kyle audiences and pyjama clad shoppers. But they enjoy this privilege through delusion and a perspective shift. These people are like the children that went to school and we’re too dumb to do maths but got gold stars and praise for colouring in the question! The state rewards them for leaving the house by creating a social class for them. This act of smoke and mirrors distorts the real picture and allows the state to divert attention from problems that they are not brave enough to tackle.

I am no economist but I know that this country (UK) borrows massively more than it ‘earns’ every year a significant proportion of this is spent on welfare. Don’t let the politicians confuse you the definition of employment has not changed it is a person who is rewarded for the provision of labour by an employer. The state can be an employer and in the past this was considered an easy way of reducing the unemployment queue. When you are employed you pay tax, your income is derived solely from your own means, be that employment or investment, and you purchase goods and services at face value. The words ‘tax’ and ‘credit’ should not exist in the same sentence, together they form an oxymoron.

If you work and the state returns money to you in the form of tax credits, allowances and discounted services then you are not an effective employee. Since you are not making a positive contribution to the tax take you are, to all intents and purposes, a state employee. Because your welfare has a different name or you spend 20 hours a week playing at work does not make you an employee. Don’t think for one minute that child care is excluded from this, if the state pays for your childcare then you are engaged in their ponzi scheme. If you have children then the cost of their childcare has to come from your wages or you employment is pointless, like writing lines at school it serves simply to fill time.

Look at your pay slip and the amount of tax that the state takes, employment only works if you don’t get that back. If you pay £80 in tax but claim £100 in housing and £70 in childcare then your wasting your time, go watch Jeremy Kyle and let’s get someone working that can afford to live on the wage. I know this is a rant but it is so frustrating watching the state sponsor made up jobs and encouraging people to believe that they are real. That kid that was no good at maths, guess what he still isn’t despite all the gold stars for colouring in!

I have to share a new definition of camouflage with you, spotted on the train this morning. A young man with bright ginger hair had clearly thought long and hard before having “13” tattooed on his neck because he chose a colour that was easy to hide, red. You see, no matter what you think, some people are born to watch Jeremy Kyle.

Build it and they will… wonder why

Some of you will recall that I am a massive fan of the urban explorer website http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/ for those that do not know these guys photograph abandoned buildings. The photographs provide a fantastic journey through a past that is often only the other side of a door. These guys were brought to the fore of my mind recently when a fire occurred in an old building in town. These decrepit structure sits on an old industrial site that has gradually been squeezed by residential development. The building harks back to a day when there was actual industry in town so that gives you an idea of its age. When the fire services attended the blaze they had to call on bomb disposal experts because the building was actually full of unexploded mines and associated ordnance. Nobody that I have spoken to knew that this stuff was stored there or what the building was currently used for. Like so many old buildings it had been forgotten and perhaps there is a lesson there.

As I was looking through pictures of derelict and abandoned industrial sites it struck me how hopelessly slow the human race is to adapt. When you look at these factories that would have employed thousands and now stand idle you wonder what future we see that keeps us breeding. The insanity that these hubs of employment are listed for demolition to make way for more housing seems to be lost on us. Where we used to live in small terraces adjoining an industrial site we now have much better housing stock which seems to lead us to believe that we are improving. Like a slow-moving ocean liner facing an iceberg we plough on with any slight reduction in birth rate more than backfilled by immigration. There can never be a return to full employment in the west until and unless we adjust our birth rate to match our labor needs and , since nobody can see a reversal of the industrial revolution, that means fewer children.

I have said several times that I believe state sponsored or supported child-birth is a disaster that results in the wasted generations that we are now seeing. It is interesting to read that the, ever logical, Germans are now facing labour shortages because they saw a massive decline in birth rates when the wall came down. The German’s reaction to uncertainty over the future was not to bring children into the world, can you fault their logic? The government will tell you that we need more young, working age people to fund the pensions of an aging population. Firstly they are wrong what they mean is that they need more income to pay the pension bill because they failed to invest the pension contributions. The reason that they failed to invest is because they predicted eternal growth, in short they are morons. The logic that more working age people = more tax receipts is as flawed as the eternal growth. It is like going to the brewery and ordering four times your normal order because you need to make more money. The truth is that more working age people in a shrinking employment market means more welfare which in turn means higher taxes which depresses the jobs market, again the politics of morons.

This year, in the UK, welfare is predicted to be 16% of the governments spend, education is 12% so in laymen terms we are spending more money supporting those that don’t work than we are educating the next generation. This can only mean that each successive generation will be less unemployable and hence welfare spending will rise. Of course as a percentage it will rise even faster because GDP will also be dropping and remember welfare at 16p in the pound does not include pensions.

The final argument that I wanted to address was the argument of ‘build it and they will come’ which says that as an ingenious race we will naturally find new employment opportunities for the masses. I read a line in a book recently that caused me to do some research and I can say that this principle has been proven to be wrong.  Have you ever wondered why there are so many Romanians and why they are so adept at begging? Ceausescu had a vision for the country, he wanted to make it the industrial power house of Europe. To achieve this vision he needed a large working age population but the country was in a dire state and, like the Germans, having families was well done the average mans list. On the principle that if you ‘build it they will come’ he set about a regime of mandatory annual pregnancy tests from the age of 14. These tests were monitored and enforced by the securitate and there were severe penalties for terminations. This is absolutely true, please feel free to research the subject. For my purposes though it proves definitively that simply making a workforce will not change the world in a positive way.

I don’t know the answer to this problem but I like to think that I have been reasonably sensible in having two children in marriage and then a vasectomy. I firmly believe that more important than your ‘right’ to have children is your children’s right to have a future, I didn’t need a vasectomy as it turns out but the principle was sound, it readily defeats any arguments for more children. As to the rest of it perhaps the next time we ‘oo’ and ‘ah’ over a baby or congratulate a couple on their ‘good news’ we should address the elephant in the room and ask “what will they do with their life”. I know it sounds cold and well a little Germanic but they are the leading economy in the west after all……..

 

 

Carbon firbre apron strings

They say that youth is wasted on the young but they must be deaf because they are not hearing it.  The hardest working and most grounded youngsters that I know seem permanently worried about finances and futures, all far too early. It is as if they look to their parents and aspire no further which is a crying shame. What your parents have achieved was the result of the point in time at which they hit certain points in life. Their accomplishments come from life and experience you can’t borrow or copy that you have to make your own.

I was talking to a young lady recently who, whilst enjoying her job, was bemoaning the lack of consistency and money. This is a young lady who is, to all intents and purposes, young free and single. The apparent desire to become as her parents seems to have limited her ambition. I see this in lots of youngsters and I struggle with where the drive to succeed has gone. There is no real employment where I live but it seems people can’t see forward enough to make sacrifices today. Sure it is a lovely place to live, the downside is a few hours commuting to earn a living wage. Yes travel is expensive but if you earn more, albeit spending it on travelling, you grow and become more employable. I recently discovered what the mad, space obsessed, commuter does for a living. He works as a shop assistant in Waterstones in town, the commuting alone must wipe out his salary. I am sure that he has some deal carried over from a previous owner but nonetheless he is spending most of his salary on travel costs. I just don’t see youngsters prepared to sacrifice the time, money and effort that they need to just to get a start in a hard world.

I would love to be in the carefree state years so that I could disappear for a year to sunnier climbs and work to live. In your younger years you should use the lack of responsibilities to allow you to explore. You don’t need to make a great deal of money or look to the future just pay your rent and your beer tab. It is those experiences and the fact that you made the effort to go and have them that distinguishes you from the crowd and helps you grow. The Kiwis have the right idea here, travel is a rite of passage for them, everybody spends a couple of years in the bigger world. I have worked alongside business heirs and sons of wealthy families who have been pushed out into the world to grow and experience the world.

The world doesn’t dance to your tune and wont bring opportunity to your door. You have to go out and grab opportunity and experiences, you have to write your story. There must be some way in this nanny state to mandate that youth are young while they can be, old age and responsibility finds you no matter how hard you hide.

They walk amongst us carefully

Were the stories of evil masterminds taking over the world a ruse? Were we brought up on a diet of manufactured stories to hide the truth? I would suggest that this is the case. The developed world’s governments were conspiring to hide the real threat from the masses. What is this threat that I speak of, this force of world domination and change?

It is not nuclear power or evil masterminds that are changing the world. There is no James Bond style hero to save us from this combination of money and ignorance. The elephant in the room is Health and Safety, allow me to explain why.

For generations we had huge textile and clothing industries in Europe. We manufactured all that we needed from imported raw materials because transport was so expensive and unreliable. These industries gave employment to the masses and provided families a standard of living. It is true that these industries had a cost, there was an awful lot of maiming and death involved. Of course a few decades ago the standard of healthcare was such that survival chances were not very high reducing the burden on the state.

Looking just at textiles we were all clothed, had bed linen and curtains. In essence we produced goods that the manufacturing masses could afford. But within these growing industries the conditions were ripe for growing Health and Safety, like bacteria they reproduced. Now your Health and Safety are averse to death and maiming, they positively frown upon it. So we smartened up our mills and factories, we reduced the risk and in so doing increased the cost.

More automation in industry removed humans from risk and therefore the number of people employed. Improved processes, rules and enforcement reduced injuries dramatically. Our lifes increased in length as our employment opportunities fell, after all we can’t have people near machines its dangerous. With the reduction in employment came an increase in state support, taxes had to rise.

Rising taxation led to increased wage demands, people simply couldn’t afford to purchase what we produced. The next great idea was low cost manufacture, ship it abroad where labour is cheap. Let me be clear, I talk from experience on this subject, labour is the measure of humans working so low cost of labour = low value of life.

Low cost sourcing was great, we could purchase products more cheaply. There were less jobs so H&S were happy because you have less accidents if your not working. And because low cost is the other side of the world you can’t see their working conditions. The trouble is, like bacteria, H&S breed in industry.

So now we read in the news of bad working practices and factory collapses in the low cost countries. Well the H&S won’t be having that, they need to drive standards up. The low cost manufacturers agree but to do this prices must rise. But the public are outraged and nobody spends money they don’t have like the righteous.

So the H&S consultants will be drafted in, automation will rise and employment will fall. Taxes will rise and prices will outstrip wages. Do you see the pattern here? The righteous will be silenced and probably naked since prices will have risen. No jobs will be recreated and tax can’t decrease. Where is the next low cost country, there isn’t one that ship has sailed.

So we will all sit at home, safe from the perils of work and production. The H&S will produce charts to explain why our lives are so much better and we will live longer. That is until we start killing each other from boredom or perhaps just to steal clothes.