Reading LegIrons round up of Madness reminded me of a little press release from the London assembly I read a while back.
I thought at first that the headline had to be misleading as with all the savings we need to be making paying people to walk or cycle rather than just say improving cycle facilities and the like would be silly. But no the press release goes on to say:
“rewarding people with offers and discounts should help get even more Londoners walking.”
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Whilst this may be a bit like a dog going back to it’s vomit, or picking a scab – I’m afraid on the day when the big news seems to be the rapid approach of the collapse of the euro I’m going to sort of revisit the whole “occupy where ever you feel like” movement.
Firstly because The Nameless Libertarian has said what I was trying to say the other day far better than I did, especially with this bit:
However, there is a second reason why I think these protests may be deriving such scorn from many people. It is the arrogance of those involved to claim that they speak on behalf of the 99%. Put simply, you don’t. You don’t speak on behalf of me, and I am neither a banker nor a politician – ergo, I am one of the supposed 99% you claim to represent. And I would guess that you don’t speak for at least 85% of those including in your spurious figure of 99%. From what I can gather, the vast majority of people don’t want radical change; they want to be allowed to get on with their lives – preferably with the bills (tax ‘n’ all) being considerably lower. They don’t want to take to the streets to occupy financial districts, and even if they did then they couldn’t as they have jobs to go to and families to provide for. They just want life to a be a bit easier. And to have urban campers claiming their voice to back up a shambolic act of civil disobedience is bound to stick in their throats a bit.
The other reason I thought I’d go back to it is that a friend of mine did a bit of number crunching on the US version of things:
“Here are some numbers for you: 1% of the US population is about 3 million people. Roughly 2 million will be of working age. 1.4 million of those actually earn an income (that they reported to the IRS). In the top 1%, each of those made upwards of $380,000 in 2009. That’s 24% of the total income. They control about 43% of the wealth, and they pay about 38% of the taxes. The top 2% of earners (back to 3 million people, roughly 1% of total US population including kids and grandmas) made upwards of $225,000. If you made less than that, you are the 99%.”
Pretty scary huh? Unless you’re on over $225,000 you’ve in the 99%! Except well notice the other numbers in there:
that 1% controlling 43% of the wealth are paying 38% of the taxes – which is just 5% off being paying an equitable amount surely? Given another site apparently claims it’s 33% of the wealth they control and this is just for federal income tax. So it would seem to me that the 1% are probably paying their “share” So it seem it’s just that the idea of a smaller government spending less money so that the poorer elements (and everyone else) can pay less tax is just too strange a concept. So trying to take more money from people with the resources to avoid you doing that is obviously the only sensible alternative, followed by occupying random places when that doesn’t work how you hoped?
Great minds think a like they say, and also that what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. So after our wonderful elected representatives decided that it wasn’t safe to even discuss holding a referendum about joining the EU. It looks as though we’ll have to take a leaf out of their book, and following the Irish principle just keep asking them again and again. Spotting a passing bandwagon they jump on to be anti the government they’re in, the Limpdems have set up a petition to ask for a referendum again (see linked image), and there’s a new e-gov petition as well. With luck eventually they’ll hold a referendum just to shut us up, probably when it’s getting round to election time. Mind it would be foolish to underestimate just how good our glorious leaders are at ignoring us, and stickign their fingers in their ears and going “lah lah lah can’t hear you”, so maybe it’s time to consider that most radical ideas of paying as little tax as possible? Or if you’d like to do something a bit more visual but less useful why not burn an EU flag on the 5th (after going for a little walk).
It would seem that all our suspicions about the e-petitions may even have been optimistic, for ignoring the fact that the backbench committee has no mechanism to get them debated, they’ll still happily ignore a petition over 100,00 real signatures. If though horror or horrors an MP actually stands up and asks that they maybe debate having a debate to ask us what we thing of the EU – never fear call-me-Dave will just roll out a three line whip to make sure no one is so foolish as to represent the voice of those 100,000+ signatures. Despite all that effort this was the biggest euro-sceptic/pro-democracy rebellion in parliament since we got sucked into the EU, with an entire 17% of MPs thinking that maybe we should perhaps be asked about the EU. Those 17% may of course just have done some maths and decied that maybe they don’t want to piss off the 70% of the electorate that want a referendum – after all that’s a lot of voters.
Perhaps as LegIron suggests they’re all scared of actually governing and just want to play in the pretty building. So much easier to just go along with the undemocratic and ineffective EU
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"a youngster trying to defend from a moral standpoint themselves living an immoral existence." - Harbringer
