One of the reasons the UK is going broke is bribery. There is a massive well organised and completely public programme of voter bribery. Involving all major parties.

You, your mum, your dad, potentially even your silver haired nan are part of this, and it is bankrupting our nation. Not only that but it is denying support to the most vulnerable.

These bribes have names like child benefit, winter fuel allowance and Disability Living Allowance.

The problem is they are not means tested. When a person who would be destitute, cold or trapped without them receives them, then they are a benefit. When they are received by somebody who doesn’t, then they’re a bribe.

The government is rapidly finding that hundreds of thousands may receive incapacity benefit and millions receive job seekers allowance. But the number receiving child benefit or winter fuel allowance stretches into the tens of millions. So the benefits which stop people starving or living on the street are cut back or ever more carefully tested. whilst The bribes that are just handed out once you can prove you have a kid or you’re old are not. Of course here and there, there are the occasional family who score a hundred thousand in benefits. But they are a tiny minority against those living on a pound a day per person. It Is now easier for a 60 year old, mobile, employed person to get a freedom pass. than it is for someone who cannot walk more than a few hundred yards.

If you need help with your personal care, which in all likelIhood you want be able to afford,. the welfare pot is so scraped that all you get is two portions of 15 minutes a day. at that point that bribe starts to look a little foolish,

This is silly, this is wasteful and most of all it isinsulting.

It’s insulting that our leaders view us as being so venal, we’ll vote because we’re handed a bribe for being over a certain age or for having kids.

Why not just do away with the pretence? Let your local MP hand out £50 notes on election day?

Because right now the cuts are landing where they hurt the most and can be afforded least. Today the government announced the scrapping of the Social Fund. This was a benefit of last resort. It existed for those with no bank account and no access to credit and only benefits as income. It was a small bridging loan from giro to giro. It was helpful if you had been mugged or your fridge failed. It wasn’t expensive nationally. It cost one hundred and seventy eight million pounds. But for that money there’s going to be several thousand people with absolutely no where to go and no money in their pockets. People only bribe you, as a away of taking something even more valuable later.

About 5 years ago Sardo got an ulcer on his left leg. Ouch not nice; the nice nurse at his surgery dressed it. When he needed it looked it and couldn’t get an appointment he popped into an NHS walk in clinic. And when it started to get better he was prescribed dressings and took care of it himself.

It came back a couple of times, as these things do. Only a couple of years later NHS walkin clinics stopped treating wounds, then dressings stopped getting prescribed without increasingly tight monitoring.
So the last time Sardonicus’s leg used up scarce resources at his clinic, cost him hours of work waiting to be seen. And took longer to heal.

A little example granted. But the withering cuts are there for everyone to see. If you work in autism the damage from parents not getting the most basic advice from speech and language therapists. Or people moving from diagnoses of asperger’s syndrome to more sever psychiatric conditions because even the most basic support isn’t there.

28% cuts in care and health as we all live longer and survive more are there for all to see. Quickly we are becoming a sicker, harder more fearful society.

Of course there needs to be cuts, we’re not as rich as we once were and the economy is sick.
But are we all contributing we should? Cuts would be more bearable if everyone was paying their way.
There’s too many people in this country with too much money, paying too little tax. But what to do? When the tax avoider can pay his accountant ten times what the government can, it’s only ever going to go one way.
No there is only one person who can sort this out. And in the unlikely chance you’re reading this Queen Liz, it’s you know. No Sardo isn’t suggesting beheading them or seizing their lands (well maybe Fred the Shred).

No there is one thing even the most dispecable crook seeks and that’s respectability. So you’re Queeness next time you get asked to knight some captain of industry or CEO ask the following question.
Does he or she pay your tax collectors 25% of their disposable income? That’s pretty much what everyone else pays.

You’ll need a copy of the Times Rich List, their P60 (and/or tax return) and a calculator.
If they don’t knight them, don’t patron their charities (giving thousands to charity whilst dodging tax millions in tax is a swizz). Don’t have them at your palace.

Because if you squeeze them hard enough that the cuts are only 26% not 28% it’ll make such a huge difference to thousands.
Not least of all Sardonicus’s leg.

After about half an hour of such brilliant posts as “I’m Gary Glitter I like soup” or “You want to be in my gang? Oh I see that was one of my hits.”
Fake Glitter was rumbled. And was a chance for comics to dig out all their old paedo gags (now disguised as ironic protests at him). And some hilarious threats of violence from premier league footballers (albeit surprisingly well spelled).

This was a protest about the easy access paedos can get to the Internet. So no need to worry about a big glittery, twittery van to turn up like a glam rock pide paedo and snatch your kids away. It was all a big attention seeking exercise. Oops I mean a cogent protest.

Poor old Glitter even channel 4 hanged him last year. If he wasn’t a sinister sex offender one could quite sympathise with him.

Monitoring sex offenders online is a great idea. And it’s terribly remiss of the government not to do it.
But the government can’t even stop convicted murderers having twitter pages whilst in maximum-security prison. And selling photos of themselves stabbing other notorious but less popular crims to the tabloids.

6 year olds seem to dodge most parental safeguards, as can those with moderate learning disabilities. In a world where a second hand blackberry, false ID and pay as you go 3g contract; will cost you less than a bowl of cockroach porridge will at one of Heston Blumenthal’s new happy chef’s (about £200).

Technology isn’t going to do it. Not unless you want SOPA or PIPA (is this the law with the best ass in the world?) and even then they won’t work.

The police, probation service should monitor the internet usage of manipulative criminals. But isolating and stigmatising criminals just makes them identify with their criminal identity and other crooks. Education and commonsense for users is the only route.

Remember stop, look and don’t post photos of your genitals.

School one. Women need to be protected from men. In Japan and India the railways provide women only carriages. Women can choose to use mixed carriages, but they have an alternative if they feel threatened by harassment.

School two. Men need to be protected from women. This school doesn’t suggest ladies will go on rampant rampages of male bum pinching, or making withering comments about bald spots and food stains on ties. Rather it claims that men are fragile creatures at the whim of their raging hormones and desires. Men are in danger of spiritual pollution by merely looking at a female form, however well concealed it might be.

The first school would seem an unfortunate necessity in some cultures. The second school is more disturbing. It suggests men are children or beasts unable to control their desires. And women? Why, they’re the very well spring of sin. Veritable ‘Typhoid Marys’. Just glancing at a woman, never mind being close to one can cause irreversible spiritual pollution.

A society that supports school 2 isn’t just and it isn’t kind. It’s a world where the sole duty of the individual is to uphold their virtue and avoid sin. It’s worth noting that the Taliban’s feared religious policy makers were called “the Ministry for the Upholding of Virtue and Prevention of Sin.” It’s a world where a harried mother with 4 kids and a baby carriage, trying to pay her bus fares, is a seen as a seething pit of potential sin.
Sadly, parts of the State of Israel is turning to school two. Buses are being segregated into men and women’s sections.
If the only way you can pursue virtue and sin is to place your virtue and purity above the needs of your fellow human beings then your virtue is worth nothing. It’s a neurosis that may benefit from therapy or other treatments.
Virtue is about moral courage, kindness and generosity. It’s about helping that woman with her baby carriage, or sitting with your family because you love them. Its about looking at a woman or man as a fellow human being. And if in the process you find them attractive its about enjoying that even if it smudges your virtuosity ever so slightly.

A kind and just society, is one where we help others whilst taking responsibility for our own behaviours and actions. A society where we’re not scared to even look at a human being, never mind respect them.

MASTER
Right Badgersworth Your father’s merchant bank is bust, RBS are asking for at least one GCSE and the Household Cavalry are so broke they’re eating their horses. How are you going to earn an honest living?

BADGERSWORTH
I’m not sir. I’m going to be a bally gang banger.

MASTER
A what? You blithering idiot?

BADGERSWORTH
A cad, a ruffian, a rascal a law scoffing oik sir. I’ll sell Pimms to the gels at Cheltenham Ladies College, knock police officers’ helmets off and thrash some bugs from Eton with my cricket bat

MASTER
That’s no career you brainless imbecile. You’ll just go to the clink.

BADGERSWORTH
For about 2 years sir. Better food, no prep and I get my own Playstation. Then I repent my wicked ways. And swan around public schools telling all the new bugs not to sin the way I sinned. And getting paid a fancy coin all the time.

MASTER
By jingo you’ve cracked it. Can I join you? Only the burser has pissed my blasted pension up the wall and I’m going to have get a job as a double dratted classroom assistant at the local academy when I retire.

BADGERSWORTH
With all due respect sir. Respect!

MASTER AND BADGERSWORTH Snr bump knuckles

Ridiculous, non?

But this does seem to be how the community leadership industry works these days. The more you let your community down, the hungrier and more desperate the desire to see you turn up contritely at school, college or Newsnight to speak about having seen the error of one’s way. Well, it wasn’t your fault anyway, was it?

As Bim Adewummi in her excellent article in the Guardian says http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/05/diane-abbott-twitter-row-racism?newsfeed=true
Why when Barrack Obama was elected president of the US did the BBC feel the need to choose Dizzee Rascal to represent the black community? (and then act surprised that Mr Rascal is both informed and articulate).

Or in the case of Stephen Lawrence trial. Why was Maddox, a community leader and exgang member, interviewed on Newsnight? This is political correctness masquerading as racism or vice versa. Especially as the point made in the Lawrence case again and again was that Stephen was innocent, blameless and certainly not in a gang.

Diane Abbott’s initial tweet comments were ridiculous. The follow up that she was speaking about white folk’s tactics in the Congo were offensive. Not only do Caucasians not have secret cabal meetings on how to run the world, it is also ridiculous to compare us all to an insane Belgian dictator with an obsession with controlling the world’s rubber supply.

And most of all it doesn’t help.

Sorry, but even Nick Griffin would have had to resign if he’d started twittering all Black people think like Idi Amin.

There is a point where community leadership can’t be constantly handed to the least representative most negative and most self selected.
The 3rd rate remarks of a second rate MP like Dianne. Ignore the vast number of black and other minority people in the UK who rise above racism and get on with their lives. Who aren’t exgang members because the only gang they joined was their Union at work.

Because racism reinforced out of embarrassment and patronage is still racism. If anything it’s worse.

Really?

Well a few works ago a woman with a child on her knee on a tram in Croydon decided to have a racist rant at passengers. To date we don’t know why.

Someone filmed it. Then it went viral. Then she was arrested. Then the hate mail and death threats started. Oh and her home address went up on the internet.

The threats were sufficiently worrying that she was remanded in custody for her own safety.
She will spend Xmas in prison, seeing her kids in some grim little visiting room.

Tried, sentenced convicted and appeal rejected by a court of millions. Some of whom were Sardo’s friends and to the best of his knowledge were quite nice people.

Lets be clear she broke the law. The evidence is clear and she should be tried and if found guilty punished.

Compulsory classes in cultural awareness Sardo’s view. The only real punishment for ignorance is education.

Not terror and a prison sentence.

Because people of internet land. I didn’t vote for any government that appointed you judge and jury.

Lynching racists isn’t progress it’s just a new mistake.

Part of the problem with mob rule is it’s impartial fickle and weak.

In the same week racist tram lady got her comeuppance. A whole family didn’t.

David Askew a gentleman with moderate learning disabilities died about a year ago. He collapsed with a heart attack after decades of persecution by 3 generations by a local family.
The inquest into his death finished this week. There’s something uniquely horrible about a 90 year old woman attending her son’s inquest.
Just before his death one of his chief tormentors patted him down in public to see if he had any cigarettes, he could help himself to.

In full view of the neighbours; his tormentors smashed his windows, taunted him and abused him.

Where the facebook polls? Where was the outrage and the death threats?

He complained to the police and the local council daily. Their excuse for doing nothing? He gave some of his tormentor’s cigarettes to leave him alone, so was his ownfault.

Now it’s all over his family have moved to another estate. His worst tormentor served 16 weeks in prison.

The problem is the internet makes us feel quick superficial actions is doing something.
Paste up a kids cartoon in your avatar and end child abuse. Like a statement on bullying to end bullying. Repost a picture 10 times and pay for a child to have a heart transplant.

Lots of bad things happen which aren’t videoed with good sound on youtube. No one videod David Askew’s lonely death. But this sort of cruel tormenting happens every day. All to often ignored by the authorities.

The real shocking things in life don’t always happen on youtube, they’re not always tweeted about. They maybe happening down the road from you.

It would be shame if so many advances in communications. Have done little more than take us back to a Dickensian era of hue and cry.

That’s not progress it’s just a new mistake.

Nothing so pedestrian. No Sardonicus used to write gags for a 118 information company. Who for a pound would send you a joke by text no more than a 140 characters long, probably not funny, guaranteed inoffensive. Racist, rude, disablist, chavist, sexist gags all banned. About the only immoral feature of this joke trade was taking a pound off someone to dim witted to realise they could bathe in an endless free diarea waterfall of bad gags merely by using twitter, or googling “terminally unfunny.”

Ah but for a pound you could have such classics as; “my local policeman can whistle 500 tunes, he’s an iplod,” “where were the Bisto kids buried? In the gravy yard.” And “my babies going to be wicked he’s had an ultrasound!” Proof for the Frankie Boyle’s of this world that a sprinkle of bile can sweeten jokes a tad.

Thing is said phone company had an information service. Text them a question, any question and they’d answer it. So one day a couple of students for a laugh texted
“tell us a racist joke.” The response was “no” so they texted, again and again and again. Till eventually an exasperated phone operator sent them a racist joke.

Having now invested I suspected a largish sum of money in this rather pointless activity. Said students then phoned a well known tabloid to say
“oi this mobile company is sending racist jokes!”

Well this is a rather boring story.
“None racist 118 company sends racist joke after repeated requests, causes some offence to morons who should be studying for exams.”

So it became
“Racist 118 company sends racist jokes to racists on request. Students to shocked to watch Jeremy Kyle.”

Sardonicus had the brief pleasure of seeing samples of his jokes on page 4 of a national tabloid.
The tenor of this story being Sardonicus’s jokes may not have been racially offensive, just offensively poor.

The net result being the joke service wound up shortly after (the given reason being they weren’t quite making as much money as they would have liked but, meh that’s a bit like Galtierri saying he surrendered the Falklands because he was scared of sheep)
It was a little job that made Sardo and a few others a bit of pin money. And a few twitterphobic dimwits a few laughs.

And then it was gone. Why? Because the rather obvious story was to boring so the papers spiced it up and when they got it wrong why bother apologising? It’s a business isn’t it?

Sardonicus takes some small pleasure in hoping the “student” tormenting the poor info service worker was Osama Bin Laden in a desperate attempt to start a jihad on unfunny jokes. And the £100 he wasted on repeat texting in fact just stopped him being able to afford an atomic/anthrax bomb.

But the serious point is in the Sardo did feel a bit hurt and put out. Like all the other writers he wasn’t racist or offensive but he was branded that and cost money. And why? Because it sold a few more fish wrappers.

In the hacking enquiry far worse is coming out. People have been driven to suicide, madness, joblessness and ridiculous accusations of drunkenness. And even when they didn’t hack the greasy implications have been no better. The whole debate over expenses denigrated to self righteous howling over money spent on kit kats and tampons. That has done nothing but prove parliament right for not sharing information with an immature press.

As ever the question isn’t why papers print these stories. The answer is pretty simple, it’s because people read them. The question is why do they read them? More specifically why do you read them? If you don’t want to read such stuff then write to the editor informing them thus.

Lest a journalist should steal your receipts for; red wine, a spicy Italian takeaway and contraceptives. And on the front page declare you’ve been shagging Berlusconni.

NJG
Gosh it”s great living in 1930s Germany.

AJS
But that Hitler has just been elected, if only we Jews would fight!

N
Achtung Juden!

PLAY WRITE (PW) WALKS ON AND HITS N WITH A SCRIPT

PW
No! No! You are nice nazi at the moment, who the Jews talk in you only turn later! Did you not read the script?

N
Sorry sir, no sir, had a late night sir.

PW
You’re not even supposed to be dressed as a Nazi yet, where are your school boy shorts symbolising your innocence?

N
Forgot them sir.

PW
Then do it in your pants!

N TAKES OFF TROUSERS AND STANDS DRESSED AS A NAZI OTHER THAN HE’S WEARING HIS UNDERPANTS

NJG
I do love nice Nazi, even if our love is forbidden.

JM (WHO ACTUALLY HAS A STRONG BIRMINGHAM ACCENT)
Oi very gevalt, I wish my poor Harold was hear, such times, I’m glad my poor Harold isn’t alive to see us. Such times gevalt anyone fancy some soup?

AJS
Don’t worry mum every generation they rise upto kill us; Pharoh, Haman, Hitler, Arthrur Pilchard at the town planning commitee.

N
Arthur Pilchard?

PW (OOV)
Read the script you imbecile!

NJG
Yes that Arthrur Pilchard is the worst I wrote about him in my diary.

N
I love you Jews, you’ve been so nice to me. No true German could turn on you.

PW WALKS ON AND SMASHES A MILK BOTTLE

AJS
Eek it’s Kristallnacht! Lets fight the nazis no lets not.

NJG
Dear diary I hope the nice Nazi saves us, he’s so lovely even if this is a self hating stereotype.

JM
Oi gevalt, all my sons and daughters. Where is my Harold?

HECKLER
He’s dead!

PW
Bloody shut up this isn’t The Sound of Music.

HECKLER
That had songs!

JM
Hitler, Arthur Pilchard such evil, oi how will we survive this?

N
I hate you Jews, Achtung Juden!

PW OOV
Put your bloody trousers on, you’re a Nazi now!

N PUTS TROUSERS ON

N
Achtung Juden!

PW OOV
And you Jews put your pyjamas on!

JEWS WALK OFF AND COME ON WEARING JM (A SEXY BASQUE), AJS A SEXY BASQUE, NJG PADDINGFTON BEAR PYJAMAS

PW OOV
Bloody hell where are the striped one?

AJS
Don’t blame us, the Almyra is remaking Cabaret, and Cameron Mackintosh is opening Schindler’s list the opera.

N WALKS OFF AND WALKS OFF AND WALKS ON WITH AN ALSATION IN A STRIPED CAP.

JM
Oh now that is offensive and I’m not even Jewish.

PW OOV
Don’t be so Judocentric Hitler killed all sorts, Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, alsations.

NJG
He killed one alsation, his own Blondie after taking her for walks and feeding her weiner shnitzel for 5 years.

N
I heard Eva Braun used to kick her.

PW OOV
That’s it., plays over all the Jews die of Typhus.

EVERYONE INCLUDING N FALLS TO THE GROUND

PW
Not you Nazi read the bloody script!

N GETS UP

N FACES THE AUDIENCE

N
And the whole of the cliched Jewish family died. But there will always be tyrants Hitler, Pharoh, TonyBlair
N GIVES THE AUDIENCE A WINK AND MAKE APPLAUSE HAND GESTURES
and of course Arthur Pilchard.

PW STORMS ON STAGE
Who turned down my application to build a writing studio in my garden. Hear that Arthur fucking Pilchard I’m calling y ou a Nazi ha!

JEWS GET UP

JM
Of course some people would say the modern Holocaust play is just a ragbag of poorly researched cliches, used to push forward what ever agenda is bugging some unimaginative playwrite.

N
Where you don’t even need to learn the script.

WARDROBE ASSISSTANT FLOUNCES ON

WA
Sorry lovies I jsut got a call. Stephen Spielberg owns Intellectual Property on the Holocaust.

AJS
So now what do we do.

WA
Easy lovey you’re all Rwandans!

WA SMEARS CASTS FACE WITH BOOT POLISH

AJS
I hope dem Hutus don’t massacre us Lordy Lordy!

Not the recent ones with petrol bombs and anger.

The other one’s a few years ago.

The demonstrations when thousands of Greeks filled the streets waving placards saying

“Lie about our economy now!”

“Can’t pay but Germany will!”

“Shh if you don’t tell the world bank we won’t!”

You don’t? Surely they must have happened. Because when ever there is a discussion about Greece defaulting on it’s debts that’s what people say.

“The Greeks lied about their economy…”

They didn’t their leaders did and they lied to their people as much as they did to the rest of the EU.

And of course there was the “Lying Aid” concert Bono organised in Dublin. The whole population in Ireland crammed into a massive concert. He took the stage and declared,

“Bejeezus were going to stick it to the English gobshites. We’ll massively over value our economy then force them to bail us out!”

Then his helicopter dropped millions of business cards with the details of his dodgy Dutch accountant.

Then he hugged the president of Ireland and the CEO of Lehman brothers and the crowd went berserk.

Until he started singing.

We need to stop blaming the citizens of countries whose governments have lied to their people. Who’ve taken part in massive, mind boggling fraud with the tacit connivance of the EU and the active connivance of some of the world’s largest banks.