Only likely?

Seems the UK is only likely to cut the amount of aid sent to the spacefaring nation of India, rather than say definitely cut it too zero, after all if they can afford a space program and nuclear weapons, they clearly don't need aid.
Telegraph.

Justine Greening, who took on the post of Development Secretary last month, said she wants to see Britains's links to richer developing nations become about business, rather than hand-outs.
The Minister is under pressure to get better value for money from Britain's £12 billion per year spending on countries including China and India, which has its own space programme.
Speaking at the Tory Party conference in Birmingham, Ms Greening signalled India will be a target for cuts.
"We should recognise that as countries get richer, we need to be responsible about how we transition in our relationship with them from aid to trade," she said.
"Those are the discussions that I am having with the Indian government at the moment."

This is the same aid budget that will rise to £14.5 billion by the year 2014.
I really fail to see why we're in discussions with the Indian government, they didn't by our products (Jet fighters) yet are still sucking at the teat of our aid packages. Perhaps we should be more like the USA and state that aid comes at a price, you buy our stuff, we give you bribes give you aid. Then again, I am a firm believer of any government aid being spent at home, leave the rest to our consciences when it comes to funding foreign aid schemes.
I really don't know where the Tories got the idea from that ring fencing and even expanding the foreign aid budget was a good idea. Perhaps it was simply an attempt to move away from the 'nasty party' tag that the hard of thinking on the left seem to have stuck them with. After all, it appears to make common sense to me that what socialists believe to be worth spending on should be subject to extreme scrutiny as it's probably funding something detrimental to the country as a whole. After all that's where the inefficiencies in the NHS come from, the use of full time union reps paid for by the taxpayers, the complex benefits system which has moved from a safety net to somewhere a person can live comfortably for the rest of their lives (in some cases) because taking on a job leaves them worse off. To the foreign aid budget which funds kleptocracies in Africa and nuclear powers in Asia.
There is so much this (or any) government could have done to reduce the cost of the state to the taxpayer. Yet year in year out costs (and government) increases.
Yet still some people out there keep voting for them.
That I believe is where we have to start changing things, so long as the political parties continue to take our votes for granted, the more they take advantage of us.
This more than anything else needs to stop, and only we can do that...

Well they all do it

I remember back in the days of Thatcher how the Labour party used to bleat on about how a differing method of counting the jobless was being used to hide the actual figures. I believe that promises were made to go back to the 'old' system as and when Labour got into power. They never did of course, bit too inconvenient for them, though their faux outrage at meddling with the jobless totals has never stopped them fiddling the figures themselves.
Express.

LABOUR kept tens of thousands of jobless young people out of official unemployment statistics before the 2010 election to conceal soaring levels of welfare dependency, it was claimed yesterday.
New figures released by the Department for Work and Pensions show that under Labour around 50,000 unemployed people aged under 24 were given a “training allowance” or paid from a “Future Jobs Fund” rather than Jobseeker’s Allowance.
Ministers yesterday said that once the Labour “gerrymandering” is discounted, the number of unemployment young adults has fallen by 5,000 since the Coalition came to power two years ago.
The Whitehall figures were released as ministers hit back at Labour claims that the Coalition will spend £9.1billion more on welfare than expected in this Parliament because of its failure to get people off benefits.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith rejected the figures and said welfare spending was so high due to Labour’s failed policies.
He said: “Labour gerrymandered unemployment figures for years to conceal the fact they have let down generations of young British people. They found it easier to park young people on spurious schemes than deal with the root causes of their unemployment.

I remember those schemes, my stepson ended up on one, he rather enjoyed it too, though sadly like most who ended up on one there was no permanent employment at the end of it. I thought at the time it was just a way to mask the unemployment figures, but I'm an old cynic anyway so would have thought that.
Seems Labour was pouring billions of taxpayers money into make work schemes to hide the unemployment totals, something that a lot of people suspected, though knowing how much on a national scale it was, was difficult to tell, just that everyone I knew who had a teenager who'd left school and hadn't made it to university, said teenager was usually unemployed.
Did my stepson learn some useful skills? Well yes, he did, he also demonstrated that he was reliable by turning up every day, on time and worked hard at the tasks he was set. Did it do him any good? Only in the abstract, certainly didn't help him find another job immediately. Though he is now in full time employment, granted it's McDonald's, but at least it's work and he knows he can do well there if he applies himself.
Still, you have to wonder if the money spent on hiding the unemployment might have been better spent creating real jobs by reducing the tax burden on industry.
But sadly that's not how politicians think, they only see as far as the next election.

Fear of offending

Multiculturalism, the leftist idiocy pervading government and various state provisions such as health and teaching has caused untold harm, differences do not unite us, by their very definition they can’t, they divide us and allow fears and prejudices to grow like cancers in various communities. After all, how on earth can we feel united or a part of a group of people who are so different to us? Especially when we don't mix and aren't allowed to criticise aspects of those cultures that don't fit in well with our basic freedoms and liberties (though it seems it's perfectly ok for them to criticise and insult us) It just seems that even the basic building blocks of how our society works is failing and set to fail, sometimes by well intentioned people, often enough by those with a driven political agenda who hate the English with a passion (yes Jack Straw I'm looking at you). It now turns out that the fear of offending another culture (Islamism) has endangered us all.

Telegraph. 

A fear of offending Muslims allowed extremists into Britain before the 2005 London Tube and bus bombings, a former Labour minister with close links to the intelligence services has admitted.

Kim Howells blamed “political correctness” for fostering a situation in which dozens of extremists being sent to fight the West after being indoctrinated in Britain.
The Daily Telegraph has disclosed this week how terrorist recruits from across Africa and the Middle East flocked to London to claim asylum.
According to leaked detainee files from the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, obtained by the WikiLeaks website and passed to The Daily Telegraph, at least 35 detainees were sent to fight against the West after being indoctrinated in Britain.
Mr Howells, a former foreign office minister and chairman of the influential Commons intelligence and security committee, blamed “political correctness” which meant that the extremists and their views were not challenged.
He said: “There is a great reluctance to talk about the whole issue. 

“It was political correctness and it lasted really until the bombings of July in 2005 when everyone realised that these people simply didn't subscribe to political correctness.”  

The Daily Telegraph disclosed today that a leaked US diplomatic cable, sent five days after the July 7 bombings, said Britain ignored repeated warnings to stop granting asylum to Islamic extremists wanted in other countries for terrorism offences.

Mr Howells, who stood down as an MP at the last general election, said that even today there was a nervousness among moderate Muslims and mainstream political debate about tackling head on these inflammatory remarks.

He said: “There's still a great reluctance to take on the basic philosophy that these jihadists argue for, which is that infidels should be killed - that it’s not really a murderous and hellish thing to do to set off a bomb and murder innocent people including innocent Muslims..

“Even now there's a huge reluctance in many of these communities to actually condemn the activities of murderous individuals who spread this kind of poison.

And there you have it, a poisonous fruit was allowed to bloom in these islands and was nurtured by the various governments until it exploded killing 52 people on July the 7th. Yet even now though it's anathema to criticise the Muslim and Islamic communities, those who do are often vilified as racists, Islamophobes, fascists, etc. Derided in the press as the "extreme right" thugs and hooligans and yet they've never set off bombs to kill people, yet are at more risk from losing their jobs if identified with a "right wing" organisation or party. Yet those they criticise seem to still have some immunity from prosecution.

The religion of peace in action.

It does seem at times that the socialists who want to bring down western civilisation may have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, though few seem to have learned from the example of the Iranian socialists massacred after helping in the return of Khomeini. The fanatics we've nurtured under our generous benefits system (we pay them to do nothing other than be fanatics) have even threatened the Royal wedding as a legitimate target for jihad. Yet the Muslim community remains quiet over the whole issue, because no-one is allowed to openly criticise them anymore for fear of offending and those that do offend them such as burning their silly holy book end up with 70 day prison sentences.
Something has to be done soon to remove the cancer of multiculturalism from our shores, something needs to be done to remove the fanatics the system has nurtured in our midst. Yet governments are now paralysed by the human rights act and even end up paying compensation to terrorists, whilst other leftist groups insist there isn't a problem despite the fact that there very obviously is. No, I don't any longer believe that the problem in Islam is just a minority, I believe the problem "is" Islam and is endemic in the Muslim communities who don't deal with their fanatics, because their fanatics control them. Sooner or later though they'll push just too far, they can't seem to help themselves and they'll do something really stupid and we'll deal with them once and for all.
We might regret it or be sorry afterwards (about 50 years afterwards seems to be the average) but we'll still do it.

At least they want to work

Senior ministers are said to be astonished that almost 80% of newly created jobs in the last 2 months went to foreign workers.

Telegraph.

Nearly four out of five new jobs in Britain have gone to foreigners over the past three months, official figures show. 

The figures show that a record number of non-Britons started work in Britain between April and June.

Senior MPs described the jump, which threatens to reignite the row over 'British jobs for British workers', as "astounding". 

Labour market figures showed that 186,000 people started work – of which 145,000 were foreign and just 41,000 were British - in the three months to June 30.

The total number of foreigners in employment – 3.85million - is also at a record high, and amounts to one in seven of the workforce, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The rise reverses a series of declines since the number last peaked in December 2008 as the impact of the recession deterred economic migrants. It will raise fears that local workers are poorly placed to capitalise as conditions improve.

Immigration was a major issue during the election and the new Government introduced a cap on the numbers of foreigners from outside the European Union who can work in the UK last month.

Under the cap, the numbers of skilled and highly skilled workers who can come to the UK was limited to just over 24,000.

However yesterday's figures cast doubt on its effectiveness as more than half of the foreign workers – 77,000 – would have been exempt because they come from within the EU.

Of those who came from outside the EU more than half - 37,000 - came from India. 

Last night, Keith Vaz MP, the Labour chairman of the Commons’ Home Affairs committee, said his committee would investigate the sharp rise.

"They might want more British workers to get jobs but membership of the European Union mean that non-Brits will get those jobs"

Unusual to find a bit of honesty from Vaz, but I guess now he's in opposition he can say things the previous government would have went into convulsions of spin over. Fact is though, these jobs are going to those who want them, who are prepared to work at fairly poor rates of pay and work all the overtime God sends so they can send money home, more money per month than some could earn in a year. When I worked in a sausage factory, we had a lot of Poles working there including I was surprised to find  the equivalent of a junior doctor, his English wasn't so great, but it seems he was happy to earn more making sausages than he could make as a doctor in Poland, it would apparently pay for a good nest egg before he went home to do the job he was trained for. The company itself loved polish workers, they worked damned hard and kept the costs down, English workers couldn't really get a look in, wasn't worth their time and didn't want to work the hours to make up the difference either.
Seems we have two choices, we either make staying on benefits so uncomfortable that people will do anything to get off them, or we incur the necessary price increases as wages are weighted at levels where it pays to work, even then the dead hand of the EU will allow workers in to take those jobs as well, classic catch 22 situation.
Of course if we just left the EU, set up a proper border force we could cure the problem ourselves, our way. But the Lib/Lab/Con party ruling us doesn't like that idea at all, they'd rather we were subject to Brussels than actually take note of what might be good for the country, and no the EU is not good for the country, never was, never will be.
So unless we can force political change, British jobs for British workers is just a pipe dream.