An out-of-work university graduate was forced last year by her local Jobcentre to stop volunteering at a museum and do a voluntary work placement at Poundland to keep her unemployment benefits. When challenged about this, the DWP which administers unemployment benefits said: Working in retail is perfectly good experience for a career in a museum. [...]

Shropshire Council is spending a million pounds on 22 new pitches for travellers. A million quid!  For 22 pitches!  That’s 45 and a half grand per pitch!  Multiple exclamation marks!  They’re a sign of a diseased mind! Let’s see how much value for money Shropshire Council are getting … How much would a 56 acre caravan [...]

David Cameron told us that now wasn’t the time for a referendum on the EU, saying it was more important to sort out the economy and that most people were more interested in jobs and the cost of living than having a referendum on the EU. So it’s not the right time to sort out [...]

The British government is graciously allowing the proles in England and Wales to vote for police commissioners. We want the vote on the EU Constitution/Lisbon Treaty that we were promised and we get a vote on changing the voting system from one undemocratic system to another, marginally less undemocratic system.  We want a vote on [...]

I’m away on a training course this week and staying in a rather nice two-bedroom apartment in an old manor house-type thing (I think it might be Edwardian judging by the windows)  on the bank of the Thames with a colleague. The place is covered with wi-fi which is pretty essential if you’re away from [...]

The British government have announced a £2.2m funding package for the BBC Arabic service after the BBC announced it was closing it as part of its cost-cutting measures. Apparently the “valuable work” it does in the Middle East is more valuable than, say, the cost of 100 life saving courses of the breast cancer treatment, [...]

A primary school in Inverness has cancelled an adventure holiday for its pupils after the mother of a disabled pupil threatened to sue the school for discrimination because her daughter was incapable of taking part. Rather than tell the idiot mother to crawl back under whatever rock she’d dragged herself out from underneath, Highland Council [...]

One thing the English are famous for is queuing.  But someone forgot to tell that to the people at the petrol station today. Every pump was taken with people waiting so I positioned myself strategically covering both sides of one pair of pumps.  Then a woman came out of the forecourt shop and got into [...]

Three years ago one of my kids was punished for “racism” at school after he called one of his black friends a monkey when we was pulling monkey faces and making monkey noises. The Manifesto Club has finally noticed that something is seriously amiss when primary and nursery school kids are being accused of racism [...]

I’m away from home this week on a training course and I took a walk into Watford town centre this evening to find somewhere to eat. Maybe I’m just getting old or maybe society realy is taking a turn for the worst because I found myself shaking my head in dismay at the sights that [...]