The Wide Awakes » An Introduction

1/17/2007

Hi,

I would like to thank Cao for this opportunity to write for TWA. And thanks to Rotty Puppy for recommending me.

For my first article I thought a couple of lines by way of introduction would be the best course of action.

I am a 28 year-old father of one beautiful (and scarily smart) 15 month old daughter. I SCUBA dive, play Rugby Union and am a competent mountaineer. I live in the West of Scotland in a small town beside Glasgow International Airport. In this area the Labour Party and Socialism has been in uninterrupted local power for 100 years. They have destroyed an area once renowned for its work ethic, turning them into welfare victims. In areas of the City of Glasgow, a city that once revelled in the title of the Second City of Empire, there are people who are born, live and die entirely on the public penny. They contribute nothing to society and are kept in their place by a Socialist establishment that has then convinced them that their predicament is the fault of Right Wing politicians.

The Labour Party has created in the West of Scotland a voter base dependant on their policies of big government and has convinced them that it is someone else’s fault.

I am part of a very small (but growing) band of people who have rejected this and are working to convince people that they are better off being self reliant and working their way out of poverty.

Indeed the one object that sums up the Labour Government’s policies towards self reliance and welfare stateism is a sign on a job centre window I pass on the way to a client’s office every day. It reads “Single Parent? We can prove you can be better off working”. Imagine a Welfare State where someone in a job centre has to be employed to convince people they will earn more money in a job than on the dole?

The Labour Government has been responsible for some of the worst crimes against the poor. In 1998 they “lifted” millions out of poverty. Not by cutting taxes or letting them earn more but by re-defining what the word “poverty” meant. They cut the amount of income required to define the poverty line thereby being able to claim to cut the number of people below that line but without improving the quality of life for those people. And still they vote for them.

There was also the introduction of the National Minimum Wage (NMW). The Chancellor introduced the idea that everyone over the age o 22 will earn £5.22 an hour. Great. More money for the poor. Eh, no.

The chancellor forced businesses to pay people more but did not increase the tax-free amount that we can earn before we are taxed. Net result? The poor end up paying more in tax to fund the abhorrent spending required to create the New Labour Client State. The poor are paying for the Government to employ more people in the public sector who then require a Labour Government (with it’s commitment to massive public spending) for their jobs. The poor are paying to create a massive constituency that will then keep the Labour Party in power. Since 1997 over 1 million private sector jobs have been lost in the UK yet the unemployment figures remain low because the Chancellor has created 900,000 public sector jobs - most of them jobs created to monitor performance against arbitrary targets set by the government in order to create jobs in the public sector to monitor them.

Still those in the sink estates vote for the Labour party because they are told it is the faceless right-wing “establishment” that keeps them in poverty.

I believe that all people should be helped out of poverty, not through Big Government Paternalism but by working at a job. I also believe that Government has no automatic right to any wages or salary that a person brings home.

To this end I promote a Compassionate Flat Tax to replace the current complex tax system. I champion a tax free amount of at least £10,000 which will ensure that those earning the NMW (or slightly more) will not pay any tax. This will lift those at the bottom of society out of poverty for real (as opposed to “on paper”). A tax rate of say 25% (I am not an economist so I leave the exact number to others but I use 25% as a standard). I often use the Adam Smith Institute blog (where various PDF reports illustrate the policy) to show that tax cuts result in increased tax revenues.

Of course I also campaign against the National Health Service (for whom I worked for a number of years) where the British tax payer funds it to the tune of £2bn a week (up from £1bn a week 10 years ago). And of course in Britain we have seen a doubling of the quality of service? The answer would be no.

I believe in climate change in so much as our climate is changing but believe that it is cause by nature and astrophysics and that the current religious fervour surrounding the “consensus” on human causation is because not to blame humans would be uncomfortable to secularists who firmly believe that humans can cause and cure everything. I suppose it can be scary to admit that there could be things on our planet that are completely beyond our control and it will allow us to reign in “globalisation”. Which is handy.

I think that the biggest sore on the face of international politics is the UN. This is a place where civilised people (basically the US, GB and Australia) have to interact with despots and “presidents for life” who spend their days robbing their people and then killing them. Someone once said that when decent people try to compromise with thugs the compromise tends to favour the latter rather than the former. When a democratically elected politician is under public pressure to strike a deal with someone who uses their national football stadium for a prison then they tend to end up pandering to the despot. And that is what the UN is all about, allowing murderers to play on the international stage.

What else? If I hate the UN I am obviously dead against the European Union. The Labour Government is currently re-structuring our armed forces to fit into a European “rapid reaction” force which will mean that we will never be able to operate independent of the countries that have spent 600 years producing maniacal midgets bent on world domination. The maniacs are taller and not as into uniforms but the trade off is that within 20 years they will command Ghurkhas and Paras.

So that is pretty much me. “Hi”. I have been blogging for about two years now so if you head over to me you will see that I have had a lot to say for myself, your input and feedback is always welcome (lefties, make sure you firmly reattach the tinfoil to your hat before posting, no incoherent paranoia please). You can also email me at: rightforscotland@gmail.com

Thanks.

Said RfS @ 12:01 am | Permalink

4 Comments »

Welcome aboard RFS. I was born in Thurso Scotland, my mother,(note: I did not say mum) grandfather and other relatives live in Bridge of Allen. Welcome and enjoy the arguements (fruits) of your labor (labour for you) and join in our never ending quest of debating socialists.

Comment by Richard Nixon — 1/17/2007 @ 8:41 am

Ditto on welcome aboard…thank you for the insight on what’s going on “over there.” Nothing like the window into someone else’s world to help round out a knowledge base.

Comment by xformed — 1/18/2007 @ 7:23 am

Hello RFS. Reading this just gives me a feel for where we are headed if we don’t fight the liberal agenda in our own Congress. The UK has always seemed to be the mirror image of our own county.

Comment by HoosierArmyMom — 10/8/2007 @ 10:34 am

Hello - as a keen scuba diver myself I hope you don’t do your scuba diving around Scotland because my last trip to Inverness proved one thing to me - Scotland is cold

Comment by Terence – scuba Florida — 6/9/2008 @ 5:13 am

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Dec				Feb »
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31