Commuting is Suffering

Iain Duncan Smith suggested that people commute from one town to another for work. His example was doing an hour's commute on the bus from Merthyr Tydfil to Cardiff. Apparently this is unacceptable.

Mr McClusky, assistant general secretary of the Unite union, said: "While Iain Duncan Smith has been presented as the Government's Mister Nice, he cannot shake off the vicious Tory determination to make the poor suffer.

Average commute time in the UK is around about 45 mins

"Can the ConDem coalition really believe that the unemployment being created by savage government cuts will be fixed by having people wandering across the country with their meagre possessions crammed into the luggage racks of buses."

The concept of a commute is obviously foreign to Mr McClusky.

"Iain Duncan Smith offers us a 19th-century vision of sturdy beggars and the undeserving poor, while the bankers and their chums continue to rake in millions and dodge taxes. The only polite reaction to all this is to say: shame on you."

Any chance that the BBC could not quote the opinions of a moron who clearly is only interested in lying to everyone for political gain?

Stupid Headlines

The BBC has made available on its website a 54 minute recording of the discussion in Parliament about the quangos situation. The page is headlined:

Quango reform will cost jobs, warns Maude

No, really? Wow, who would have thought it.

I'm not watching the entire discussion so cannot say whether Frances Maude did or did not make such a warning. What I'm pretty sure of though is that he probably said something more interesting in his speech than the obvious. In fact the article quotes him saying:

For too long we have had quango pay spiralling out of control so that seven people in the Audit Commission are paid over £150,000 a year at a time when the average civil servant's pay is £23,000.

Would it be too cynical to suggest that the publicly funded BBC didn't want to bring too much attention to the positive sides of cutting government spending on non-government jobs?

Wait What?

Here is a BBC article about the ongoing trial of two people accused of sexually abusing a baby by a couple. Very serious stuff. At the end of the article there is an explanation of the background and how police found incriminating evidence on the computers of the two people involved.

And then there's this:

A computer file containing stories about incest was also found.

Is that illegal now? Is it evidence of paedophilia? Anyone know?