Free Money

At about the same time £200, in the form of a Winter Fuel Allowance, was winging its way into my bank account courtesy of the Department of Work and Pensions, the Equality and Human Rights Commission was publishing a damning report on the care of the elderly in England and Wales.

To my mind the concatenation of these events illustrates all that is wrong with us.

I, along with Bernie Ecclestone and any comfortably well off 60  year old plus, receive a largess from you dear tax payer. I and Mike Jagger, are grateful to all those taxpayers struggling to keep body and soul together for providing us with the wherewithal to have a slap up meal at the Ivy or that extra case of fine wine.

By contrast, we learn that if you're frail, aged, lonely and poor you are treated like shit.

What a difference in the way Vodafone or Goldman Sachs are viewed by the establishment. Tax obligations to the tune of billions of pounds waived away.

The Government has the gall to introduce a measure to "free up the housing market", which must be good as it was suggested by the very people it's designed to help - the house builders.

Not the millions who have as much chance of decent housing as a snowball has of freezing in Hell.

We appear to be rapidly returning to the pre-reform years of the early 1800's. Swathes of our society are scythed down in the name of what? Growth. If the last 15 years of growth has landed us in this mess, I'd rather miss out thank you.

Growth, and liberal capitalism has led to debt and lack of opportunity for the poorest and massively increased the wealth of the advantaged. Years of "growth" has led to a nation of shelf stackers and burger flippers.

We have governments fearful of the power of capital, politicians who are pygmies in a world full of corporate giants.

It is a tragic irony that half of  the Middle East yearns for "democracy" when our own democratic systems are crippled by self interest, temerity and a complete lack of vision.

It's enough to make an old cynic like me want to cry.