Food for thought.

This woman is 51.

Gillian McKeith used to claim to be a doctor, until she was told to stop it. She promotes herself as a 'nutritionalist'. TV has bought into this in the UK and across the Atlantic. She has had TV shows where she advocates a 'holistic' approach to nutrition and ill health, promoting exercise, a pescetarian diet high in organic fruits and vegetables. She recommends detox diets colonic irrigation and supplements, also making statements that yeast is harmful, that the colour of food is nutritionally significant, and about the utility of lingual and faecal examination. She is a brow-beating, shreiking, foot-stamping, Righteous, harridan.

I'm betting she eats alone, in silence, probably indulging in a spot of scouring at the same time.



This woman is 50.

Nigella Lawson is a TV cook. Her entire output would have McKeith going purple with rage. She eats nothing but meat, butter and deserts. Half-fat is a mystery to her. No meal is complete without accompanying alcohol. She is one of the most popular figures in the UK. Admired by women for showing that real women exist and loved by men because, well, look at her.

I'm betting she eats with friends and family, surrounded by contented chatter and laughter. Except when she's tucking into the leftover chocolate mousse just before going to bed.

These two pictures demonstrate what the Righteous, the people that would have you smoke-free, drink-free, fat-free, friend-free, choice-free, freedom-free actually look like, and what they want you to look like. It also shows how those who want everyone to spend the time we have on this Earth actually living and loving, rather than surviving and cowering in fear, look.

Which would you rather be?

The One That Fails To See The Logic. . .

Welcome to the UK.

Now give us your money.

You'll already be taxed for landing at or taking off from a UK airport, one can only wonder how long it will be before the same is extended to British sea-ports and the Eurostar stations. People coming to the UK for tourism and business already pay the government for the privilege of landing here.

So people that are coming here to spend money have their wallets prised open before they even make it to the baggage reclaim area. Nice.

Now those who come here to pay through the nose for our services, or to work and pay tax are to be relieved of £50 at the stage where they apply for their visas (any non-EU national must have a visa to enter the UK for a period longer than 6 months).

Pravda reports that:

People from outside the EU moving to the UK to work or study will have to pay £50 extra for visas to help areas struggling to cope with immigration.

The £70m raised by the two-year scheme, announced by Communities Secretary Hazel Blears, will help fund more police support and translators.

Right let us set aside that this has been announced by Hazel Blears, a creature who is living on borrowed time as far as I'm concerned.

Let us set aside the fact that we don't need more police, we just need them to be left alone to get on with their jobs rather than filling in forms and attending endless political indoctrination courses. Let us set aside the fact that people who come here to study and work are unlikely to need translators as they'll probably speak English anyway.

Let us concentrate instead on the fact that these people who are coming here to make something of themselves, and through the money they pay for their studies and the tax they pay on their earnings, are being pickpocketed to pay for those who arrive on false passports, in the backs of lorries or in the boots of cars.

Labour have fallen into the BNP trap again. They've decided that all immigrants are bad, and must be punished. So much for social justice.

Make no mistake about it, the clandestine entrants to the UK are economic migrants (believe me, I know more than the average bear on the subject of immigration), they queue up outside the ports of Calais, Dunkerque and Coquelles and cast envious glances at the departing trains and ferries. For the (admittedly falling) number who make it across the water without being discovered by the French Police, private security firms and British immigration who now work in France, the first question they ask is 'When do I get my house?' this is normally followed up by 'When do you give me money?'

You see international law states that those seeking political asylum (and that's the only sort) must claim their rights under the 1951 UN Convention in the first safe country they arrive in. If you're coming from Iran, I'll accept Iraq isn't safe. Ditto for Afghans going into Pakistan or Eritreans going into Ethiopia, but when you are in France, and many of the countries en route, you're safe. The EU and UN agree and have certified it as a safe country. The Taliban and Iranian extremists are a rare sight on the beaches of Cannes and the vineyards of Burgundy.

So I'm not going to entertain the idea that those in Calais are fleeing for their life. Persecution in Calais doesn't seem to go much beyond punchups between different ethnic groups. Hardly the state sponsored persecution you must prove to qualify for refugee status.

These people have made a lifestyle choice to get to the UK and live on the freebies from the public purse. Those coming here to contribute will have to foot the bill for them, even though they've nothing to do with them.

Don't worry Japanese students, Indian chemists, American lecturers, South African geologists and Pakistani doctors - you've just been assimilated. You are just like us.

You see, I have nothing to do with the British who choose not to work, who choose to squeeze out kids like a queen bee spits out eggs and who choose to sit back and let the State support them. I've nothing to do with them or their lifestyle at all, and yet I still have to foot the bill, to the detriment of my lifestyle.

Doesn't really seem fair, does it?

The One That Will Examine Some Points. . .

I was directed by (I think) Obo the Clown towards Tom Harris' blog (he's a Labour MP for a Glasgow constituency) where he said some, frankly, amazing things on the subject of benefits. Attracting scorn from some of his party colleagues, but a good deal more praise from a wider range of readers. It was Tom who so nonchalantly batted away the message contained in his copy of 1984 that all MPs received as part of a Libertarian Party campaign. I've found it almost impossible to agree with anything he's said in the past, until the other day. Suggestions that he's been taking brave pills whilst his boss has been tucking his trousers into his socks, not getting his makeup done properly, not having a press conference with Obama and addressing a load of wonks bussed into the Capitol Building in DC are pure conjecture.

I for one will be delighted if he keeps it up.

Anyhow, in my rather jokey posting below, a correspondent named 'Andromeda' posted a link and a list of points for consideration my responses are underneath each point:

(a) deprive a single mother of child benefit if she cannot produce a marriage certificate
Marriage is irrelevant, just because you get hitched doesn't mean you're a fit mother or that you're not going to screw the system for what you can get. It isn't a magical cure, people who think it is are living in the 19th Century.

(b) fine the single mother for producing an illegitimate baby, say £1000, if she does not name the father
Irrelevant. I am proof that being brought up by a single parent (although in my case it was my father's death that caused this) does not mean it is going to be a disaster. This is about stopping paying out sums to those who do not deserve it. Why is there this obsession with taking money off people? The State arbitrarily taking cash from people because they do not comply with their moral code is no better than people demanding the State support their lifestyle choices. Stop it.

(c) require her parent(s) to pay this sum if she cannot or will not
See point b above.

(d) fine the father of an illegitimate child a sum of money, say £1000
See point a above. Legitimacy of birth doesn't matter. A bit of paper does not make anyone a model parent.

(e) require the parent(s) of that father to pay this sum if he cannot pay it himself
See point a and point b above.

(f) require that the mother give up the child for adoption before more lives are ruined
Perhaps one of the most odious, repugnant and authoritarian measures I have ever heard.

I'm surprised that point (g) doesn't read: 'require that a single woman undergo a termination in the first instance of becoming pregnant out of marriage, and undergo termination followed by sterilisation in the second instance.'

All these points do is stifle freedom and liberty. I have no problem with people having kids in wedlock, in a stable non-formal relationship, as single parents, in same sex partnerships, whatever. What I do object to is the expectation that I and all the other taxpayers will foot the bill because people have decided to have kids they cannot afford to look after.

I don't have any kids as yet, we have neither the income nor the space to do it, and it will be a cold day in hell before I become beholden to the State to help bring up my kids. My kids, my choice, my responsibility. I do have a dog. Substitute dog for child and the whole thing is shown to be the ridiculous situation it is.

Getting a puppy means that State will provide you with housing and an income. The State will pay for your puppy to be trained, vaccinated and have its healthcare assured. If you are having problems with your puppy, the State will send someone round to assess the situation, and they will tell you it isn't your fault that you can't look after your puppy, which it is your right to have, and will send you on dog walking and tripe making classes. All this will be paid for by the taxpayer.

The message needs to be sent out, if you can't feed them, don't breed them. Benefits have ceased to be a safety net. When I was a kid, receiving State assistance was a situation of great shame, you didn't want to be the kid being given the vouchers for free dinners. Now it is a valid lifestyle choice, and a lifestyle that is funded in such a way that when I look at the deductions on my payslip each month, I am unable to follow the lifestyle I would like.

What do you call a system where one way of life is supported and encouraged to the detriment of all others?