Serious Unwanted Truths

Banks and Your Cash

The unwanted truth is that they don't have it. When we take our cash down to the bank they buy executive jets, huge buildings, employ tens of thousands of staff, give themselves huge salaries and bonuses and with what's left over they go down to the casino(stock exchange). Let's face it the casino rarely has any relevance to how companies are doing and the gamblers haven't the foggiest idea how companies work anyway. The only money banks possess is in the small change till. While everything is running smoothly this is fine but if lots of people decide they want their money back or for that matter if there is any sort of glitch in the system like in the sub-prime market they collapse and the economy goes into recession. Of course the government bails the banks out and we have to bail the government out thus the money we put in the bank is really lost.

Was it just the bankers and government AND the 'Bank of England' that didn't realise that giving people on minimum wage a 120% mortgage on a £150k house was a bad idea? Or basing mortgages on 10x people's annual income was a bad idea or for that matter the government allowing banks to conduct this charade making houses for the majority completely out of reach?

£50000 Pension Scam

One for the ladies. You have made your pact with the government. You pay loads of tax and at sixty you retire and get a pension. So you were born in early 1955, as you reach for your pension age of sixty the goal posts will move to sixty one and as you approach sixty one it will move to sixty two then sixty three then sixty four and just as you are about to reach sixty five you make it. Personal cost in lost pensions around £30k plus of course you will probably pay another 20k in taxes. Most women never see this sort of money and they never will. As society advances we should be able to work less not be forced to work longer?

Gays

These happy people used to be considered unholy, depraved and their activities illegal. For any red blooded heterosexual just seeing other men hold hands is enough to make them gip. I must confess to watching the kiddies version of 'Torchwood' so as not to be exposed to the intimate scenes. While I was young I had a grave dislike of these people but in later years I gained an understanding. Gays are gay because of their genes, they have no more control over their sexual preferences than paedophiles. And like heterosexuals or for that matter any other sexual preference they come in three varieties, the good the bad and the downright ugly, this in itself is an unwanted truth. To understand them I had to realise that their bodies and minds react the same way to say 'Bill Oddie' as my mind and body reacts to the 'James Bond' girls. They have my sympathy in the respect that they can't have children, not at least without hoodwinking some unsuspecting lady. Gay men performers do seem to have massive support from the ladies?

Global Warming

Global warming, is it real? This unwanted truth is not about whether it is real or not, it’s about countries involved in trying to prevent global warming. The problem is that the only people who really care about global warming are the people, the individuals directly threatened with its consequences, many others don’t give a damn. China has great concerns about climate yet it seem hell bent on creating 3 times the pollution of the U.S. The bottom line is of course is power, influence and bank accounts.

Home Alone

If you leave young children at home unsupervised you can really find yourself in hot water, make that boiling water. I don’t mean 2 year olds or left for a week. I mean junior school kids left for a few hours. Back in the fifties millions of working class people left their kids and went down to the pub for a couple of hours. I can’t ever remember anything-untoward happening to these kids. The unwanted truth (for the authorities) is stepping out of the house and leaving a 10year old for a while is not evil. Most youngsters are quite capable people and usually more sensible than their teenager counterparts, where hormones rule.

Hospital Waiting

Incapacity Benefit

In Britain the DSS lose over 50% of their battles with claimants over incapacity benefit. They declare someone fit for work, withdraw their benefits and leave them to suffer. One has to ask oneself how can you possibly make so many bad decisions unless the system is corrupt but hang on, are these figures correct. Of course many claimants who should be receiving benefit don’t fight the DSS when declared fit for work so the judgment of the DSS is lousier than it first appears. Now if you are not fit for work and you have had your money stopped, all of it, as in the kids are starving and so on, you can claim job seekers allowance. Now isn’t this a little bent if you are not fit for work? You are supposed to claim when you know you are not fit for employment? Are you supposed to ring companies up and apply for jobs you cannot possibly do? While there are many people fraudulently claiming benefit it is usually the genuine cases that suffer. Even when they win their cases with the DSS, the DSS simply restart their procedures and the money’s gone again. This situation causes anguish; it ruins what’s left of many hard working people's lives; is it any wonder that these people think the DSS agents; the doctors who work for the DSS and people in parliament who like to spout their mouths off and have never dirtied their hands in their lives are a bunch of complete bastards. People have died while fighting for benefit, hardly the sort of thing a fit person does. If company bosses can be held to account for corporate manslaughter, shouldn’t this also apply to DSS bosses?

Michael Jackson's Trial

They swooped like locust on Neverland, helicopters in the sky police cars on the ground. They came with a hundred and fifteen search warrants. Hang on, is that right, a hundred and fifteen search warrants, surely if you searched the Vatican that many times you would be able to nail the Pope. This was the case where the DA dug up everybody in the world that hated MJ or had an axe to grind. Even Jordan Chandler (the boy in the previous Jackson scandal, who made loads of cash and whose family were still making money out of the affair), was at the trial. The trial ended with highlights from the Gavin Arvizo's 'nail Jackson police video'(the boy whose family brought the charges). Isn't that a little bias? Which bit? All of it. This all started with Martin Bashir(you don't see much of him these days) and Granada TV making insinuations which they knew would start the cash rolling in. Bashir had nothing to say at the Jackson trial, strange when he had so much to say before it. My opinion on this is that Granada not only set Michael Jackson up, they also set up Martin Bashir. It reminds me of the press assault on Arthur C. Clark.

The case sort of rotated around Michael Jackson sleeping in the same room as children. This isn't the first time I have come across people sleeping with children. I was out in the Sahara when my camp commandant (who did the business deals with the high ranking Libyans) said to me, in a shocked voice, 'The Libyans have a large house, there are lots of people there, they all have their own beds, yet they all sleep together on the lounge rug.' I thought how uncomfortable and quaint. It's a different psyche isn't it? We have all at some time slept with our own kids (woke up to find there are five of us in the bed) and thought nothing of it because they are ours. Michael Jackson did the same thing but he considered the world's children to be his (no, not like David Blunkett). This behavior is bound to get the 'huddles' chin wagging.

We all tend to write ourselves into the things we do. I write stories and the stories say something about me. Michael Jackson wrote music which says an awful lot about him and the media write stories as well, don't they?

Pain Killers

I was in hospital in Harrogate and receiving pain killers, they didn't work so off I went around the ward to ask everyone else if their pain killers were working; the answer was no they were not. The unwanted truth is that pain killers are not all they are cracked up to be. It's pretty scary really, we presume that if we are in great pain we can be helped. While some people respond better with certain drugs than others there are times where nothing short of anaesthetic is of use and operations aside that isn't used.

Phone Tapping

Why is it that the News of the Worlds 'Royal' editor gets thrown in jail for tapping the phone of the 'Royals' yet no action is taken when they are accused of tapping everyone else’s phone line. The unwanted truth here is that everyone in authority taps our phones be it MI5, MI6, the police or even the Americans at Menworth Hill, to name a few. I suppose it’s difficult to prosecute a newspaper for doing something you or other agencies do as a matter of course. Most of it’s done in the name of terrorism (you can take that how you want it), and is supported by the general public.

Police State

We have all the laws of a police state, thousands of new ones since this government came to office; a law against everything. Fortunately there isn’t enough cell space to lock up the entire population. To be fair you shouldn’t be able to lock anyone away for a law they were not made aware of. I bet for every thousand laws there are in existence the public's aware of one. While these laws are used with a measure of restraint there isn’t too much of a problem but suppose the National Front win an election? Let’s face it as the historic population of this country dwindles into a minority, like it did in Fiji then often the more militant come to the forefront

Tax Credits

Tax credits are paid to the needy by the needy. I say this because the bottom 10% of tax payers pay more tax than the top 10%, you can hardly expect the rich to pay for anything, they wouldn't be rich if they had a conscience. The unwanted truth here is that no one should need tax credits. If you are putting a full weeks work in and you are still below the poverty line and lets face it, you are, then there is something seriously wrong with the business which is paying you, be it the businesses fault or not.

Video Surveillance

The unwanted truth is they are 'after the event' cameras. If you are going to get mugged the fact that there is someone, somewhere watching you being mugged doesn't stop the event. If it's a hoodie they will not catch them later either. They have been used to trace terrorists, again after the event and one would imagine that such is the cost of studying thousands of hours of recordings the authorities would only do this for terrorists. It seems that the main use for these cameras is watching the general public. Really what these cameras view should be available online in low resolution to the general public. This could be done in a random manner which would not help the bad guys but would help the general public keep an eye on the good guys.