"Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!"

And as David Blunkett warns, the worst thing of all:

Councils are reaching the point where they will only be able to carry out their most basic statutory duties.

O....M....G!!!!!

WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE DIVERSITY CO-ORDINATORS AND THE FIVE-A-DAY CONSULTANTS!!!

Hey, Cameron's Cabinet Is Doing Something Right After All!

That 'something' being this:

A month ago, alarmed by moves to water down a key protection arising from Sir William Macpherson's inquiry into the death of her son, the campaigner wrote to the prime minister, the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, and the other major party leaders. She told the Guardian the letter had been ignored. An earlier communication seeking to establish relations with the coalition at the outset also went without reply.

Hurrah! Who the hell are you, and why should you think you have the ear of ministers? Hell, as DumbJon points out, even the business advisors don't get that...

"With the new government in, the whole thing around race has changed completely," said Lawrence, who will unveil a series of events on Wednesday to mark the 20th anniversary next year of Stephen's murder.

"Race is definitely not on the government's agenda. They have done away with the stop-and-search recording. Even before they came in, they talked about changing things, particularly on stop and search; that they would do away with the forms and they have done that. "I don't really understand it because we all want a society in which we can live safely and live freely and to have police officers doing what they need to do on the street. But when it comes to race, they feel as if they are doing us a favour rather than doing what is right."

If you really want a society in which you can 'live safely and live freely', Doreen, why don't you turn your attention to your own so-called 'community'?

Because it seems to me that the biggest killer of young black youth is....other young black youth.

Oh, and Andy Warhol says 'You've had more than 15 minutes, love!'. I guess the 'Guardian' will always be around to take your call, though...

Baccalaureate Blues (For Some)...

The proposed English Baccalaureate. Will it be a winner?

Well, it's annoying the right sort of people:

...critics including Dr Vardy fear the move will result in arts subjects being sidelined as schools and students increasingly focus on the EBacc.

"Well-placed people I have spoken to say Michael Gove is adamant that this is the way things should be going and will push it through," Dr Vardy explained, adding: "I fear that it is because he wants to create economically effective units who will encourage growth, but that is short-sighted.

"Look at the financial crisis. We need young people with a broad range of skills and understanding, not a narrowing of education."

Yes! Who wants the next generation to learn how to be 'economically effective' when they could study so much more progressive and rewarding things instead?

“But…Parenting Isn’t Supposed To Be Hard Work, Surely..?”

The latest ‘Guardian’ attempt to whip up enthusiasm for a public-supported fight back against benefit cuts fails as miserably as the others:

Karen and Darren Millar live in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. They both work full-time, Karen as a family support worker and Darren as a computer programmer. They rent privately and have four children, aged between three and 16. Their gross family income is £44,000, including tax credits.

Ah. Right. And their beef?

Karen said:"People might think that four children is asking for trouble but we coped perfectly well until the coalition came in and began cutting away at the tax credit system at the same time as childcare costs increased."

Translation: ‘I could easily afford four kids when everyone else was paying, but now look what’s happened!’

Newsflash, Karen; that’s exactly why we’re cutting benefits!

"We don't have any disposable income any more. Every single penny we earn goes on the most basic necessities. If we're really lucky, we might have £20 left at the end of the month but that doesn't happen often. "

Oh, boo hoo! Hang on, where’s my tiny violin? I know it was around here somewhere…

"I try to make sure the children can have fresh fruit every day but there are occasions when I can't even afford that: they go without anything fresh at all maybe one week in four."

Really? I take it you don’t bother shopping around, or buying fruit that’s not absolutely perfect, then?

Still, as long as you aren't telling me you've got mobile phones and Sky t…

Oh:

"We have the lowest possible tariffs on our phones, a no-frills Sky package so the children have a little bit to watch because we can't afford to take them out."

Blood pressure….RISING!

"It's very difficult to eat healthily if you don't have lots of money. There are loads of deals on ready meals and food high in fat but you very rarely see a deal with fresh or healthy food. We realised that our diet was making us all lethargic. The children were quieter and didn't have as much life in them. "

Well, hallelujah! They've seen the light!

"So last year, Darren and I completely changed the way we eat. We now cook everything from scratch. The change in our health is amazing: our skin and hair has improved, the children wake up better in the mornings and don't seem as grumpy or agitated. It's changed their attitude to school: they're making more of an effort with their work. Their attitude to their health has improved too: the 14-year-old has started doing exercise. The 16-year-old has started asking for fruit and vegetables. "

Amazing! But….wait. This is supposed to be a typical ‘Guardian’ whingefest, isn't it?

"But healthy eating carries a cost: our food bills have gone up by about £50 to £100 a month, although that's also due to food prices spiralling. "

Ah. Right. They want more money so they can parent their brood in the style to which they've become newly accustomed.

"It definitely makes us tempted to return to our old diet: when you can spend £4 on a deal that gives you a week of meals for one person, you wonder if it's worth all the effort. But then you see the health impact and you see that it is. "

Good. Get on with it then. No, you can’t have more money.

And no, it doesn't matter that you seem like a nice well educated family, with non-feral children with sensible names, rather than the usual demanding underclass feckless wasters with children whose names look like a particularly difficult to use handful of Scrabble tiles (some of these are coming up later today, though).

The simple fact is...I don't want to have to pay for you to breed. You want kids? Fine. Pay for them yourself.

“Don’t You Know Who We Are?!”

Ah, if only Culture Minister Maria Engel had reached for the intercom on her desk and summoned a constable with the words ‘Please help these two gentlemen. It seems they don’t know who they are…’

Speaking after an event that brought together the heads of 23 of England's leading regional theatres, Boyle told the Guardian that the lack of attention to the arts shown by the culture secretary, Maria Miller, was "outrageous".

"Not one of those [artistic directors, including Hytner] has been even approached by this woman," he said.

"That is outrageous. This is cultural life of our country. She is the minister of fucking culture. I mean, come on."

I thought the ‘minister of fucking culture' was the recently-booted out Mr John 'Secretary Shagger' Prescott?

Boyle, Hytner and the 23 other directors, including Erica Whyman from Northern Stage and Gemma Bodinetz from the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, had gathered to argue the claims of English regional theatre as pressure on their funding increases.

Ah, yes, we’ve been here before, haven’t we?

English theatre was, they said, a delicate ecosystem of creative life, nurturing the talents on which events such as the Olympic ceremonies depended.

But, they argued, it is threatened by cuts to public spending, especially from under-pressure local authority budgets. Speaking of the value of theatre in the English regions,

Boyle said: "What they provide is something else to believe in … Something in our cities and towns that isn't Wetherspoons and Walkabout pubs and Mario Balotelli and John Terry."

I see the hyperbole and exaggeration is flowing like...well,. like fine wine at the Arts Council events.

He added that politicians such as Miller appeared to want "to just swan around with the blooming glamour stuff" rather than undertake serious conversations with those at the sharp end of supporting creativity in the regions.

Riiight. The 'sharp end', eh, Boyle? Good lord, you're not in the trenches, man! Maybe, just maybe, you aren't as worthy of praise and exaltation as your circle of luvvies keeps telling you?

This is funnier than the time Polly mounted her Steed of Outrage and started hacking about with her Sword of Dudgeon. Or Rosie Millard's weeping and wailing over the failure of the ConDems to keep the money flowing into things the public just won't pay money to see...

Speaking about the situation in Newcastle, Whyman, who is about to take up a post as deputy artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, said her own organisation had been warned that Newcastle council is considering, unwillingly, completely scrapping its arts budget in the next three years.

"This is not the decision they want to have to make; but they are putting on the table the possibility of removing arts funding," said Whyman.

"If they take that decision, or even a decision less serious than that, it will devastate the cultural landscape. [Newcastle] will not be that home that people are as proud of as they are now."

*looks around at cultural landscape* Oh, it seems to be doing OK to me.

Yes, The Cuts Will Be Painful – But Consider The Alternative…

The ‘Guardian’ is in one of its fits of supercilious moralising, holding up a litany of hard-luck cases and inviting us to consider their plight before we go too far down the route of those awful, terrible Tory-led cuts. 

They know full well how it’s going to be received, even by their own readers, mind you:

Housing is an emotive subject because most people are struggling to pay rent, or a mortgage, making life-altering decisions about where to live based on how much they can afford to spend – so making the case for the state to be subsidising large chunks of rent for other people to live in London does not instantly elicit sympathy.

If you're in any doubt about this, just glance below to read the comments that inevitably follow pieces on this theme.

Yes, this is all about the effect on low-income families of the benefit cap, which numerous charities and pressure groups fear will remove their client base from comfortable walking distance from their cosy London offices…

So let’s have a look at the examples quoted, shall we?

Rana and Mina (who, like most people interviewed for this piece, asked for their real names not to be printed in case any suggestion that they might be complaining rebounds on them in the council's housing office) are living in this bed and breakfast, as a direct result of changes to the housing benefit system.

The precise thinking of Mina's previous landlord is not clear, but she was charging £500 a week for the two-bedroom flat in St John's Wood in north London, paid for by housing benefit, when a new housing benefit cap was introduced, which would have reduced the maximum payment available to Mina to £290. Rather than waiting for her tenant to fall into arrears, the landlord gave her notice to leave earlier this year.

Ah. See, according to the ‘Guardian’, this was a dreadful miscalculation by the ConDems when they put the benefit cap in place:

The coalition's introduction of a housing allowance cap was based on the theory that by capping the amount available to housing benefit recipients, landlords would drop their rents and renegotiate lower contracts with tenants.

But because the rental market in the capital remains so buoyant, what appears to have happened instead is that families like Mina's have been evicted and made homeless.

Mmm, yes, expecting the landlords to take a loss on the chin was rather daft, come to think of it.

So, how did Mina wind up in this situation where she required benefits?

A refugee from Iran who has lived in London for many years, Mina used to work in a cafe but now has arthritis in both knees; she walks with difficulty and does not work. There was nowhere else she could afford to move to in the vicinity of her daughter's school…

Ah. Ok. Stop right there. People have to live according to their means.

And the ‘Guardian’ is quite right when they assume that all those others living within their means aren't going to be too happy. Even Mina herself sort of gets it. She just thinks she should be exempt.

Mina understands that the government has to save money, but wonders if they need to target people like her, who have long-term roots in the area. "I've had the same GP for 20 years, the same hospital. All my daughter's friends are here. Are we meant to change all these things? " she asks.

"Suddenly they've changed all the rules. They are playing with people. They are messing around with people's lives. It's a lot of stress for a single mother."

Guess what? Recessions are ‘a lot of stress’ for everyone. And yes, you are meant to change all those things if they will no longer support you – haven’t you already changed Iran for the UK when things became untenable? So swapping one part of the UK for another should be a breeze!

They desperately try to find a more ‘worthy’ example. They fail. Miserably:

This housing crisis affects people who are working, as well as those who are not. Helena Carroll, who works in accounts, spent two nights in a bed and breakfast in west London last month with her seven-year-old daughter…

She was evicted from her flat in Hammersmith in August, probably also the victim of the incoming benefit cap. She works 25 hours a week, earning around £800 a month, and paid part of her own rent, but is unable to afford to live in the part of London where she grew up, and where her daughter has always lived, without state support.

Ah, but see, she only paid ‘part of her own rent’. Those paying ALL of their own rent are quite entitled to think ‘Hey! Hang on a minute here…’

And she can’t live in the part of London where she grew up without state support? So what? I can’t live in Mayfair without state support, so where’s my flat, then?

Got anything else, ‘Guardian’?

Meanwhile Abdul has been living in a string of bed and breakfasts with his wife and 18-month-old son since June 11, when they were evicted from their home in Maida Vale, north London, where he has lived for 11 years since he arrived as a refugee from Syria.

*throws PC out of the window*

Last one. Make it good!

Grace, a mental health nurse, has been living in a room with her 16-year-old son, in a white stucco-fronted hotel in west London for five months…She became homeless when she and her son were thrown out of the flat they were sharing with friends. Her son is at school nearby, but as a newly-qualified nurse earning a salary of £21,000, Grace, who moved from Nigeria over a decade ago, is unable to afford to rent in this part of central London, where she wants to be so that her son can stay in the school where he has begun his A-levels, and so she can easily travel to the hospital where she often works nights and early morning shifts.

Ah, so, we’re back to the Mina situation. With the added fillip that she’s a public sector worker. You know, I'm not sure that’ll be the argument-swayer that you fondly imagine it to be…

Romin Sutherland of the NextDoor project, a charity helping people affected by housing benefit cuts believes the system of benefits will not be fairer and argues that capping the housing benefit "is driving a huge rise in homelessness, which is itself costing the taxpayer many millions. And this doesn't account for the longer term costs of uprooting established communities and dumping them without support in unfamiliar areas that are unable to provide for their needs.

"Instead of capping housing benefit, perhaps the government should be focusing on providing low-cost housing that gives back to the taxpayer over generations, rather than squandering our money on exorbitant rents," he says.

The comments, as you can imagine, soon descend into a screaming rabble demanding rent controls, more council housing, higher benefits, the immediate execution of the Housing Minister (in fact, all the Tory cabinet), government-mandated social mixing for areas, you name it.

And no-one, not one that I can see, seems to have asked the question; If these are the people that the ‘Guardian’ chooses as the most sympathetic, what must the rest be like?