Who Are The 1%?

Recently, my favourite Lefty hate figure Polly Toynbee extolled the virtues of Occupy as great champions of the Leftist movement who have almost singlehandedly created the agenda and pressure to reduce bankers’ pay. Putting aside the fact that this is entirely untrue as pointed out here, I thought it worth looking at what Occupy is really all about.

Occupy has behaved like the usual Far Left protest group. They have been very savvy at running a publicity stunt, keeping the media occasionally interested over a sustained period, pissing off almost all normal people who have actually come into contact with them, then falling out with each other publically as they bicker about what they are trying to achieve and how to achieve it whilst losing all their legal fights, which of course we have paid for. (Loving the fact that they use our tax to pay for their pointless legal fights via Legal Aid).

Anyhoo, establishing what are Occupy’s central demands is impossible because depending on who you speak to at Occupy depends on what answer you get. The one thing that seems to reoccur in all their blatherings is woolly talk about the wealthy 1% who apparently are to blame for all the worlds ills.

Now here’s the thing. The activists of Occupy ARE the 1%.

Because the developing world is so poor in comparison with the developed world the cut off for the global 1% is an income of about £21,500, a lot less than you can get if you play your cards right on benefits.

Workfare or Slavery?

The multimillionaire, three home owning - London, country, Tuscany, obviously - private school user Polly Tithead always talks shit. She is one of the most egregious examples of waffly, factually wrong, muddleheaded, hypocritical Lefty bullshitters. She always manages to come to a wrong but ideological conclusion. I am constantly bewildered that anyone takes her seriously. Her recent diatribe on Workfare is a wonderful example. Read it first.

Crikey. Where to begin? Putting aside the incredible hypocrisy that she loathes lobbyists but Lefty protesters are to be admired - surely they are lobbyists too, but no, ‘her’ lobbyists are I suppose good lobbyists, so that’s OK then - she makes three points that are just ludicrously wrong:

“Workfare is Government sponsored slavery for rich companies”.

Putting aside (a) the ridiculous hyperbole, (b) the factual inaccuracy and (c) the insult to the memory and hardship of real slaves - beaten, raped, tortured, butchered and killed in their millions - what we are actually talking about is people on benefits volunteering to do work experience in top end companies whilst they are trying to get back into the workplace, where the results abroad and in the UK pilots have delivered a more than 50% success rate. Note I wrote ‘volunteered’. Yup. Not forced. They volunteer.

She is wrong on sooooo many levels. Her beloved party’s ideology has increased underlying unemployment through overly expanded employment rights (see yesterday’s post), trapped people in unemployment through over indulgent benefits where they earn more on benefits than working, absolutely fucked over the economy and spent gazillions on work programmes that manifestly failed on almost every measure. This policy works. She suffers from NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome.

“…absurdly calling objectors "job snobs.”

Well Polly, my darling, job snobbery (ie I’m not prepared to do that job, it’s beneath me) is what comes of:

a. promising 50% of the population degrees, and

b. having to expand and dumb down universities to cope with the increased numbers, thus

c. needing to invent nonsense degrees for those who aren’t really up to it, and

d. giving people job aspirations that the employment market cannot possibly satisfy as it simply can never generate enough graduate jobs for them, whilst

e. almost dispensing with immigration controls allowing in huge numbers of immigrants who then take all the lower end jobs,

which leaves a generation of workers caught out in employment no-man’s-land.

“...Stephen Hester can probably blame them (Occupy) for the loss of his bonus.”

Er, no, Polly. Banker bashing has been a blood sport since Northern Rock (Feb 2008) and Lehman (Sep 2008). And you have been at it regularly since then. Occupy (since Oct 2011) has achieved nothing. Other than fouling various public places across the UK.

And she ends: “…all praise to UK Uncut and Occupy”.

She is either unkowingly wrong, so an idiot, or purposefully spreading lies and untruths for political advantage, just like the Socialist Workers Party who are running the campaign against Workfare, frightening good businesses from taking part - who needs the crap - and helping the unemployed back into the labour market.

What an utter fuckwit. Again, how can anyone take her seriously? Try this or this instead.