Friday - July 08, 2011

more money for foreign aid while cuts are made in home country

I have come to the conclusion that nobody, absolutely no one, should be allowed to run for high public office, or any public office outside of dogcatcher, unless they have worked at a regular job in the private sector for a min. of 25 years. Period and no exceptions.  Today’s crop of pols and I don’t care what party they belong to, are too far out of touch with the real world and with people who actually have to go out and work for a living.  Support a family and pay a mortgage etc.  And by job I do not mean someone out of law school who is shoehorned into a high end job cos daddy once worked for the firm or is a senator.

There’s a small blurb in the paper that reports a fifth of MPs (members of parliament) are opposed to receipts to back their expenses.
And this is after all the proven documented evidence from a year or so ago with regard to the expense fiddling committed by so many of them.

They lead privileged lives and I don’t begrudge them some perks of office.

It isn’t just the report of receipts that has me bugged.  There’s so damn much else that common sense tells us isn’t right or fair.  OK, life isn’t fair. Live with it.  But not with self serving, egomaniacal pumped up job smiths and something called Quangos that cost the earth.  And certainly not the BILLIONS this small island hands out and btw says it’s going to give even more, in foreign aid.  And a planned increase to another African country.  It’s fine to give money to the really needy but … what about the really needy in your own god damn constituency?  What about them?

What about this woman?  Look, I accept the fact that the state is not our mommy. And it shouldn’t be.  I also think there might be some holes in this story which I read originally a few days ago. By that I mean, it doesn’t tell us if she’s able to pay anything out of existing funds or if she has a pension of some kind.  I don’t know.
But what bothers me so damn much is reading about some aid given to Afghanistan, and then it’s found that the aid given by Britain was then sold off by the folks who collected same.  AND …. more aid is being earmarked for turd world countries.
How easy it is to play with other people’s money.  Fine, you wanna be Mother Teresa?  Good on you. Be Mother Teresa at home FIRST!

Callous judges have sentenced Elaine to life without dignity
By RICHARD LITTLEJOHN

A stroke victim has been told by the highest court in the land that she has no right to expect the State to provide her with a helper so she can live with dignity in her own home.

Elaine McDonald, a celebrated former ballerina, needs assistance to use the bathroom three times a night. But she lost her appeal against a decision to deny her a night-time carer.
Five Supreme Court judges ruled by 4-1 that there was no legal duty on her local council to supply her with a home help. Only one of the five senior judges dissented.
Miss McDonald, 68, who was once described as Britain’s best classical dancer, said: ‘I have paid my dues since I was 16. I am not a scrounger. But now I need care and that is being denied to me.
‘I have the right to live with dignity. And for me that means being able to go to bed knowing that I have the help I need to go to the toilet in the middle of the night.’
Until recently, Miss McDonald, who is confined to a wheelchair, lives alone and needs round-the-clock care, had a visiting social worker to help her ‘access a commode’.

As part of a programme of spending cuts, the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea withdrew night-time support to save £22,000 a year. Social services officials told her to use incontinence pads in future, even though she is not incontinent.

Miss McDonald, with the backing of the Equalities Commission, challenged the decision using the Human Rights Act, which is supposed to guarantee everyone dignity and the right to a family life.

The court, however, rejected her appeal, with the honourable exception of Lady Hale. She said: ‘I would have allowed this appeal. We are, I still believe, a civilised society. In the United Kingdom we do not oblige people who can control their bodily functions to behave as if they cannot do so.

‘A person in her situation needs this help during the day as well as during the night. Logically, the decision of the majority in this case would entitle a local authority to withdraw this help even though the client might be left lying in her faeces until the carers came in the morning.’
Lady Hale said that the ruling by her colleagues would also allow councils to withdraw daytime help, too.

‘The only constraint would be how frequently - or, rather, how infrequently - it was deemed necessary to change the pads or sheets, consistent with the avoidance of infection and other hazards such as nappy rash. The consequences do not bear thinking about.’

Indeed, they don’t. Over the past five years, Town Halls have been slashing spending on personal care for the disabled and elderly. In the light of this ruling, expect them to cut back still further.
What do councils think they are for, if not to provide help for the most vulnerable and the elderly? Anyone with any experience of the elderly and disabled is aware that the inability to control their basic bodily functions is what causes them the greatest distress.

Admittedly, care provision is expensive, but so are grandiose new civic centres; superstar salaries for senior officers; gold-plated pensions; inflated allowances and expenses for ‘Cabinet’ members; daft diversity departments, global warming directorates; propaganda sheets masquerading as newspapers; ‘walking bus’ co-ordinators, equality enforcers, gay rights advocates; anti-nuclear programmes, and all the other wasteful and unnecessary initiatives on which councils all over Britain choose to fritter away taxpayers’ money.
The £22,000 it would cost to provide Miss McDonald with a carer would barely pay for half a dozen hideous traffic humps.

It is monstrous that a Conservative council - as Neil Kinnock might say: a Con-serv-ative council - would condemn a woman who has paid taxes all her life to rot in her own waste.
The legal costs of this case alone must run into seven figures. Why not give the money to a low-paid carer instead of a rich barrister?

This case demonstrates - as if any further evidence was required - just how remote the State has become from those it is paid to serve.

Judges, in particular, seem to delight in perverse rulings in favour of the undeserving and undesirable. The same section of the yuman rites act, under which Miss McDonald brought her claim, is regularly used to allow foreign terrorists, drug dealers, rapists and murderers to stay in Britain and live on benefits.

Only this week, as I mentioned here, an unemployed single woman has been given the ‘right’ to IVF treatment on the NHS so she can have a bay-bee. She will be free to bring up the child at taxpayers’ expense and will cost us far more than the £22,000 denied to Miss McDonald.

While the politicians grandstand and pick the fluff from their own navels, and the judges congratulate themselves on their wisdom, it is left to a few charities and this newspaper to speak for the elderly and their right to basic dignity.

Meanwhile, a once beautiful and gifted ballerina is condemned callously to a nightmare existence festering in her own filth.

MORE LITTLEJOHN

Heaven knows I’m no socialist. Never have been.  But having lived through what my wife put up with re. her mom for three or more years, and understanding something about bed and nappy changes etc., I can not help but feel sorry for the lady this article is about.  The mil had a daughter.  Apparently, this woman has nobody.  I don’t know what might be missing from her story, if anything at all.  But I damn well believe that there IS the money to help folks like this, provided the govt. use cuts in foreign aid instead of cuts at home where it’s needed.
But the folks who make these decisions are remote from the real world.  They generally do not even have to drive their own cars. Someone does it for em.
They don’t wait in long lines at the grocer or the barber and their needs are seen to immediately. Nuts!  Politicians and committees and “consultations.”
All just a bunch of crap.

I’m outta here. Back tomoro. Stay tuned.

Posted by peiper     on 07/08/2011 at 01:44 PM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine • UK •  
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