‘Gideon the Gormless’, or ‘Jumped up Jeffrey’ as Obama called him, otherwise known to us as ‘Osborne Housey-house’, has been calling the numbers again. The four year ‘Spending Plan Review’ that Gordon Brown introduced has just been announced for 2015/16. What’s that you say? That’s only one year, not four? Yeah, well, Gideon’s not very good with numbers.

It’s like watching a performing flea circus, monitoring the Con-Dem politician’s pole vaulting reaction to media wails.

“Oh, you say people are concerned about immigration? How high would you like us to jump? Would a £3,000 ‘bond’ to be paid by anyone coming from a country where they wear tea-towels on their head do the trick? OK, we’ll stick that in our plans”.

Look, you gormless Berk. There’s a reason why the tea-towel world and his uncle overstay their visitor’s visa in England, and it’s NOT that they haven’t had to lodge £3,000 in your fat paw. What are you trying to do? Compete with the people traffickers? £5,000 for a ticket to cling to the underside of Eurostar, or £3,000 for an Osborne ‘ticket to ride’ in comfort? Why not deal with the reasons WHY people overstay?

•  Everyone who pays into the National Insurance scheme has a National Insurance number – put it on a plastic card. If you go to the Doctor or hospital, you put the card into the machine. The French do it, and it works a treat. IF you haven’t got a card, they don’t actually leave you to die in the street – they deliver emergency care for heart attacks and other life threatening ailments and they give you a bill when you leave. They don’t lock you up if you can’t pay – they know they will be left with an unpaid bill sometimes, it’s called social justice. What they don’t do is give you IVF treatment or remove your tattoos, or deal with your bunions without asking any questions.
• Same goes for education for endless children, translation services into Swahili dialects only spoken by 200 people or government funded drop in centres for bored Kurdish lesbians with a case pending against British Rail for failing to pay them their ex-partners pension.

Just try acting like a grown up country instead of handing sweeties out to all and sundry. There will still be some people overstaying their visitor’s visa – but they’ll be doing something of value to someone somewhere, even if they’re not legally registered, otherwise they won’t be eating. And if they’re still getting their tattoos removed, it’ll be because they’ve paid to have it done. You did want to boost the economy, right?

“Oh you say the welfare bill is too high? How about if we nick £200 back from the people who’ve paid most into the national handbag? Let’s see, what if we take the winter fuel payment away from ‘ex-pats who live in warmer climes’, does that sound good?”

Can you hear that gurgling sound Gideon? Its 250,000 ex-pats laughing their socks off! Hear the slurping sound? That’s 250,000 ex-pats licking the end of their pencil as they prepare to send you letters giving you the winter temperatures in their part of the Sierra Nevada mountains, or the Limousine. That’s 250,000 letters your civil servants are going to have to answer, and it’s 250,000 ex-pats who will still be getting their winter fuel allowance now that it is ‘geared to winter temperatures’. Pity we don’t have a vote, we would have voted for you for that one alone. Can’t say how the pensioners in balmy Ayr or Torbay will react in the voting booth when their Winter Fuel Allowance is taken away from them on the grounds that they live in a ‘warmer clime’. Priceless!

“Oh, you say people are annoyed that the country is full of people who don’t speak English? How about if we insist ‘migrants will lose benefits if they refuse to improve their English’ to the equivalent of an average 9-year-old?”

The average 9-year-old, eh? I’m prepared to bet you that most migrants can actually say “Fu*k off you Wan*er, I’ve got me ‘uman rights”, in imitation of the average English 9-year-old. They just chose not to. Why should they, you translate everything for them. Stop making with the translations, dickhead, you’ll be amazed how quickly people learn English. You’ll save money and everything. Besides, have you got anybody left in the teaching profession who is even capable of testing the heights of 9-year-old English?

“You say some of the unemployed are actually unemployable? How about if I say “no one will receive unemployment benefits until they have drawn up a CV, registered for online job searches and started looking for work”.

Gideon, Gideon, dearie me – are you telling me that you’ve been paying unemployment benefit to people who haven’t had to say what they are capable of doing, and haven’t started looking for work? What a dipstick you are. Unemployment benefit is supposed to be like a Christmas hamper scheme. If you haven’t paid into it, you don’t get any goodies at Christmas.  For God’s sake man, privatise it. Hand it over to First Direct or someone. They won’t pay out to anyone who hasn’t put at least the first instalment of the premium into their sticky fist. They’ll soon sort it out – in English.

That will just leave you and the national handbag giving support to people who can’t speak English, don’t have any skills to put on a CV, haven’t started looking for work, and live in balmy Teignmouth in a £200 a week sea view apartment. I don’t think there’s that many of them, so you should be able to cope.

Could you have a look at the National Deficit when you get time?

Penseivat June 29, 2013 at 21:40

I have several friends who served with me in the Army or Police and moved
abroad (France, Spain, Australia and Russia) and whose main income now, are
the pensions (employment and old age) paid to them by the British Government.
Apart from my Aussie friend’s state pension being frozen, despite living in
the Commonwealth, while the others enjoy annual increases – even the resident
of St Petersburg – what annoys them is that these pensions are all taxed at UK
rates, before they are deposited in the relevant bank accounts. As they are no
longer allowed to vote in UK, they now suffer taxation without representation
and face the cessation of a winter fuel allowance (the Auvergne’s winter
rarely rises above freezing point while few would call January in St
Petersburg ‘balmy days’. Still, as George Osborne once said, “Why do people
think I’m a rubbish Chancellor. There are three reasons why I’m good at what I
do. One is going to the right school, and the other is being a friend of David
Cameron.”

Frankie June 28, 2013 at 20:19

Osbourne is TRULY an utter moron, to spout this bilge in the hope it would
win some votes and the same goes for the chinless Whitehall wonder that
dreamed it up without thinking it through.

I asks you, what a bloomin’ div!

Wallie June 29, 2013 at 21:25

You can’t even spell his name correctly you div. But I agree he’s a
div.

Frankie June 29, 2013 at 22:35

I didn’t consider Osborne was worth a carrot, never mind a
spellcheck…

Elena ‘andcart
June 28, 2013 at 12:08

It’s quite simple really. This is just another case of sour rapes. When
people get vindictive it usually is.
Mr. Osbourne is thoroughly pissed off
with The EU and having to pay this allowance to the very few people like me
who had the good sense to get out of Britain before we retired. And judging by
some of the ill advised remarks made to me, in writing, during my on going
claim for thirteen years of back payments, they are going to have to pay those
as well. In my case this amounts to about £2,500. A lot of money to me, but
not very much in the true scheme of things. So in fact, they have been
thoroughly shown up for penny pinching against little more than a handful of
old people, and they don’t like it.
Now I have actually got it for
2012/2013 I do not need to worry about losing it again. I am already living in
penury on a Basic State Pension, and Winters in Brittany are measurably colder
than Cornwall.

Anna
Raccoon June 28, 2013 at 13:23

Ooh! May I please pinch ‘sour rapes’? That’s a cracker…

Elena
‘andcart June 28, 2013 at 13:42

Sadly, it was a typo. Although I wish it wasn’t. But then my best
quotes always are, and probably more enduring for being so. So please do
use it. I might make it into posterity yet.

carol42 June 27, 2013 at 18:42

I loved the German Health System when I lived there but I share the doubts
whether it, or the French system, would work here. Not that they are not much
better but I just don’t see that many people prepared to make their own
choices, many seem to have lost the abilitiy to fight for the loss of freedom
we experience daily. I have always had decent NHS treatment personally but
then I am quite prepared to argue and fight for what I need. I think Anna’s
ideas are absolutely right, especially making sure people are entitled to
services and no translation services paid for. I don’t think any other country
pays for this, learn the language or bring your own.

Dioclese June 27,
2013 at 15:13

Here’s a simpler method of dealing with the winter fuel payment : You don’t
get it if you live abroad.

It’s peanuts in the great scheme of things anyway. And as for Binky
Balls…….God, I despair! Him and Miliband running the country? I prefer what
we’ve got and that doesn’t exactly impress me.

Still, if you didn’t vote, then you have no right to complain about what
you got.

David Rosemont
June 27, 2013 at 17:43

It’s precisely the arrogant opinions of Dioclese and similar that so
irritates those Brits who are expats and have paid into the Brit social
system all their lives and maybe served their country. The UK political
class are becoming more and more remote from the actual population. There
are plenty of expatsand indeed others who try to live off their UK state
pension. They were probably not “civil ” servants, ex MPs or those cosseted
against the real world.

Philip
Champion June 27, 2013 at 18:19

Could not say it better! I can only afford to live away from Britain.
Very small pension and all my savings trapped in Britain have been
decimated. I don´t even receive my state pension until next year. Where I
live, near the Pyrenees, the winter fuel allowance should certainly be
available. Disgusted! Thieving Ponzi bastards, the lot of them! Stuff
Britain!

Ed P June 27, 2013 at 12:44

All Osborne’s sphericals were a useful distraction from a big story – an
extra 70 BILLION (QE by another name) for the banks. See hat4uk.wordpress.com
for John Ward’s article about this.

David Rosemont
June 27, 2013 at 12:23

I’ve heard that in England they are forming a new political party called
the STE party. (Stuff the Expats). Founder members are rumoured to be George
“Hamburger” Osborne, Nigel “Waffle” Farage and “Rambling” Nick Griffin. The
first meeting is being arranged and will be held at “Le Manoir des trois
saisons” (winter season cancelled as the expat heating has been cut off) -last
one out of the UK please switch off the lights

Saul June 28, 2013 at 14:09

We already have an old political party, it’s called “stuff the poor”

Moor Larkin June 28, 2013 at 17:15

I guess one way of stuffing the poor is to eat the rich…………….

Saul June 28, 2013 at 18:11

Gastromoney

Moor
Larkin June 27, 2013 at 11:15

The sensible reason not to have one is that the project will go hugely
over-budget and those of us who would use it properly, who are the only ones
who pay tax in the first place, will end up paying an exorbitant charge for
the privilege of having one, whilst all those who have lost it, or used it to
smoke their crack-cocaine on, will still get all they need on the basis of
their Ooman rights and because we are a “decent society”.

I’ve less issue with most immigrants, who almost certainly work for
somebody (often themselves), than I have with British-to-the-core, lazy,
self-pitying gits who mope about complaining and demanding their rights to a
job for life with the government.

I was hearing on the radio last night that the Common Agricultural Policy
is finally being ripped apart!! I can hear Maggie in my minds-eye, “Rejoice
Rejoice.” I wonder what the French are saying………..

jonseer June 27, 2013 at 11:50

Yes M.L. BUT ” A plan by farm ministers to trim payments above 150,000
euros for a single farm was left out of final talks as there was no
consensus……”
Sighs of relief by Prince Charles and The Duchess of
Alba.

Moor Larkin June 27, 2013 at 11:55

I recall it being made clear in the last election that 90% of so-called
immigration in the UK was actually the free-flow of labour within the
European Community, I recall getting a 911 card is it called? So I can get
medical treatment in European countries. I have no idea where mine is……….

Kingbingo June 27, 2013 at 10:39

By the way I would actually do the healthcare system and benefits a little
differently.

On healthcare I would ask the banks/insurers/supermarkets to setup a new
type of current account a ‘healthcare account’. Each month the government
would pay into everyone’s account a certain amount. You could use your
healthcare current account to access whatever medical service you so desired
or just save your allowance. Every trip to the doctors or tattoo removers
would be charged, you chose to pay cash, from your personal account, or your
healthcare account, but your healthcare account could only be used on medical
services. You could even go overdrawn in an emergency, and if you were, God
forbid, every diagnosed with say a Cancer, you would get a large lump sum paid
into your healthcare account and higher monthly payments while the condition
persisted. It would then be down to the individual if they wanted to blow it
all on one experimental treatment, go down the conventional route, or just
manage the best quality of life to mitigate the symptoms, the choice would be
entirely theirs.
This takes all the power away from the state and gives it
all to the people. It would allow new entrants to enter the healthcare market,
subject to a basic check by a small regulator to confirm they were actually
providing healthcare of some kind, not sell fags and booze.
A new free
market in healthcare would spring up and flourish. And yet there would still
be universal healthcare open to all. Competition would be rife and standards
would rocket while costs fell. I genuinely believe that if we had this system
the quality of healthcare in this country would be an order of magnitude
better than it is today.

I would also do welfare very differently. I would simply pay out a
proportion of tax receipts every month to everyone, with zero conditionality.
That would mean that there was no perverse incentives not to work, and every
job no matter how small would benefit the worker breeding a culture of work.
It would also eliminate the need for tens of thousands of people to work for
the department of work and pensions, you could do with a few hundred at most.
I would also scale it double for those in retirement age, and give half share
to those under 15 (to avoid feckless breeders using kids as an income),
although I would also use school accounts like the healthcare account above
for any child in school age.
So there are 63m people in UK, 7million over
70, so let’s count them twice, and 11m under 15, so count them by half to make
a total of 64.5m shares and then say you want to pay out 40% of all tax
receipts as redistribution of wealth. That would mean each week all UK citizen
would receive £70 a week as a minimum, plus whatever they earned on top. No
one is going to starve with that much to feed themselves. If they truly do not
want to work, they might not be able to afford their own 3 bed house with sky
TV like under the current system, so they might need to share a flat with a
couple of other non-workers the way students do, but it’s their choice. I
suspect most would do some work to top up. Young children would get £35 a week
paid to their parent or guardian, and pensions would get £140 a week, more
than they do now.
Of course that is an average, I would actually pay this
‘Citizens dividend’ on a monthly basis in arrears. So there would be monthly
fluctuation. For example January is a good month for tax receipts so everyone
would get £85 that month, while June is poor so only £40 that month. This
would closely align people to the economic fate of the nation as a whole. I
suspect lefties would be less keen to go bank bashing to push HSBC to relocate
in Hong Kong or trying to drive companies into the ground with crippling
regulation when by doing so it had a very direct effect on their share of the
Citizens dividend received the following month.

Do all of the above and you RADICALLY realign the incentive structures
associated with healthcare, education and welfare while at the same time
making sure that no-one starves or goes without medical care when they need
it. It would significantly reducing the need for a civil service, you could
run the above schemes on 10% of the current civil service workforce attached
to these functions now. All of the positive benefits of ‘social justice’ with
none of the perverse incentives. I’ve actually been meaning to write this all
up in a pamphlet and send it to all MPs.

Anna
Raccoon June 27, 2013 at 10:50

…and I think you should work on it just a tad more and give it back to me
as a blog post….!

Kingbingo
June 27, 2013 at 11:06

I could certainty do that!

ivan June 27, 2013 at 12:20

Your welfare reform sounds very like a modified form of NIT (Negative
Income Tax), something I have been banging on about for years – since 1990
actually.

Maybe you could also include a form of direct democracy into it. That is
the population do the actual voting on those things parliament brings
up.

Moor Larkin June 27, 2013 at 12:35

The 30% or so who can be bothered to vote you mean?

One of the key issues with this sort of idea:

“This takes all the power away from the state and gives it all to the
people. It would allow new entrants to enter the healthcare market,
subject to a basic check by a small regulator to confirm they were
actually providing healthcare of some kind, not sell fags and booze.
A
new free market in healthcare would spring up and flourish. And yet there
would still be universal healthcare open to all. Competition would be rife
and standards would rocket while costs fell. I genuinely believe that if
we had this system the quality of healthcare in this country would be an
order of magnitude better than it is today.”

is that it presupposes a well-educated, rational and self-disciplined
population, well-equipped to make good decisions. This is not the broad
mass of those most likely to be suffering the biggest health issues just
now. A German friend was telling me how their Insurance system works, and
I was amazed at how much power and control they had, but I was left with
the sinking feeling about many people I have come across over the years in
Britain, who wait to be told what to do and how to do it. I’m not sure how
the British masses could cope with such a culture-shock after so many
years of nanny knows best, and not having any responsibility for
themselves or their relatives, and always having the option to get compo
when Nanny fails, regardless of the fact that Nanny failed right in front
of their eyes, often over many weeks and months whilst they – the citizen
– apparently stood by and watched it happen. I also anticipate newspaper
headlines about “Postcode Lotteries”.

Kingbingo
June 27, 2013 at 14:41

Moor, the answer to your question is brands.

Consumers from the most learning disabled to the Nobel laureates in
this country receive no guidance from the state as to how to buy and eat
food. You just go buy stuff. The way that everyone works out how to
select which offering is the correct one for them out of the literally
thousands of options is branding. So for example I go to Sainsbury’s
walk straight up to their Taste the Difference section and select from
that, by having made two simple brand identification I have filtered out
99% of the food content and gone straight to a section that suits my
needs. Those of you that are posher than me will go to Waitrose or
M&S, those of you that are less posh than me might go to Iceland
etc.

If we have healthcare system that places all the power in the hands
of consumers the same thing will happen, brands will emerge and people
will quickly identify with the brand that they identify with most. So
those people who want the cheapest service who they can go to every time
they get a runny nose can have GP-Land. If you want fast and no–frills
GP by the train station on your way to work your pop into GP-express. If
you want a fancy waiting room and a GP with bow tie and impeccable
manners you can go to GP-Posh, or whatever these brands end up getting
called.

Moor Larkin June 27, 2013 at 16:28

@ Brands @

Presumably that’s some of the idea behind Dr.Foster?
But you
have to tell them where you live………
http://myhospitalguide.drfosterhealth.co.uk/

Kingbingo
June 27, 2013 at 14:43

Ivan, I would suspect so. I highly doubt any of my ideas are original
even if I have no idea what they are called.

Kingbingo June 27, 2013 at 09:43

“translation services into Swahili dialects only spoken by 200 people”

Oh its worse than that, much worse.

In Portsmouth there is a deaf Iranian burglar, quite an active one at that.
And can you guess how many police translators (consultants) there are in the
country that can do sign language in Farsi ….. one. And does he know he is the
only one ……yes. And does he charge absolutely exorbitant rates to attend every
police interview and court hearing…… you guess.

In this country we piss away taxpayers money at every possible opportunity.
To describe me as “somewhat pissed off” by this state of affairs would be an
understatement of most epic proportions.

Me and those of us on the right can live perfectly well without lefties.
Yet lefties cannot survive without those of us on the right to pay for them.
It pretty obvious who is the Host and who is the Parasite in this
relationship.

Ted Treen June 27, 2013 at 12:13

“Me and those of us on the right can live perfectly well without lefties.
Yet lefties cannot survive without those of us on the right to pay for
them.”

How deliciously succinct & accurate. Mind if I use it in conversation
at appropriate times?

JuliaM June
27, 2013 at 12:24

At ALL times!

Ted Treen
June 27, 2013 at 13:53

Yes, Dear…

Kingbingo
June 28, 2013 at 10:22

Feel free Ted.

Brentfordian
June 27, 2013 at 09:33

CC Georgie boy – please.

Don Cox June 27, 2013 at 09:18

” It’s not an ID card, it’s a registration and entitlement card”

It is an ID card and would be used as such. One of the few vestiges of
freedom that we still have in Britain is not having to carry an ID card.

However, there is no reason why you should not be asked for your NI number
if you want to register with a doctor or receive hospital traetment.

jonseer June 27, 2013 at 09:25

But as the UK security services say “You have nothing to fear if you are
an honest citizen”. So, why not have them , Nat Ins No. cards, I.D. cards
whatever. After all we have them in mainland Europe. In 25 years I have not
noticed any oppression .

Anna
Raccoon June 27, 2013 at 09:27

We don’t have to carry our carte vitale in France. You just need to have
it with you if you go to hospital or the doctor. Most people chose to carry
it ‘just in case’. It is a choice. We do NOT ‘have to carry an ID card’.

jonseer June 27, 2013 at 09:34

Likewise in Portugal Anna.

Furor
Teutonicus June 27, 2013 at 09:33

Name, address, Photo, rough description (Eyes blue, height),D.O.B, and
Sozialversicherungsnummer (N.I number).

Any one that sais “If you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to
worry about, is a total fucking imbicile, BUT, with those details. if you
ARE doing nothing wrong, like trying to fiddle the dole, what HAVE you to
worry about?

Nothing more than you supply to get a bloody library ticket. Or do you
refuse one of those on principal, as well?

jonseer June 27, 2013 at 09:03

Yes, all good fun. Looked up the average winter temps for this area of
central Portugal after Georges whimsies. For Dec, Jan & Feb it rates
10.33C. Jersey, if Jersey is still in the UK, well it was when I grew up
there, rates11.30C according to the figures. Anyway what is it I hear about
EEC law precluding a withdrawal of cold weather payments ? And why is this to
be culled in 2015 ? Is it because George expects to be out of the E.U. by
then.
But, after all if financial self interest is a motivation, then one
can return to those misty shores and draw carers allowance, attendance
allowance, free bus passes, pension credit, warm front allowance, community
care grant, free TV license, housing benefit, and council tax benefit as well
as winter fuel allowance, I and wife being over 70.
This is typically
cowardly politics enacted because we have no parliamentary representation in
the U.K. & are therefore powerless to react forcefully, but then not
totally unexpected.

Mudplugger June 27, 2013 at 08:58

Not just ‘everyone who pays in’ should get an NI plastic card – this should
be issued at birth, and then to anyone granted full citizenship. Thereafter,
this single card/number should be used for all interfaces with government
services – health, education, employment, taxation, voting, driving, passport,
marriage, even registering the final death, thus enabling all state records
for that late-person to be formally closed.
So simple, yet no government
has ever thought of doing it. It’s not an ID card, it’s a registration and
entitlement card, with a free, bang-up-to-date census service thrown
in.
Guess how empty the hospitals and schools would be then, along with
many government offices currently chasing their tails on flaky data?

Philip Champion
June 27, 2013 at 18:02

Every citizen in Spain has a numero de identidad, including foreign
nationals, such as myself, and is required for all the services you have
outlined. Mine is not an ID card.

Span
Ows June 30, 2013 at 13:00

It is an ID card really, hence it’s name. And wait until 5 years are up
and you get your A4 sized certificate and NO replacement card.