Tit-Bits

This, believe it or not, is Blog 500 so, put together with the ones I lost, I must have written about 750! Actually I see it is 720. How many of them are worth anything I wonder and how much of it is dross? Well, the only way to find out would be to reread them and that I definitely ain’t going to do; but here are a few more tit-bits to enliven your day.

There was once a weekly magazine in England called Tit-Bits – human interest stories, drama and sensation. It was founded in 1881 and expired in 1984. So many publications have died. There was once an excellent daily newspaper, The News Chronicle that ceased publication in 1960 and The London Evening News was incorporated into The Standard in 1980. The latest to fold, thanks to Mr. Murdoch of course, is The News Of The World (1843), or ‘The Screws’ as it was nicknamed. I never thought I would live to see it. That paper was a famous British institution. Over the years it had lost much of its bite of course once naughty politicians, naughty vicars and naughty scout masters were no longer of much interest. Times do change. Anyway, today’s tit-bits for your edification – I suppose I really should have talked about Her Maj’s Jubilee that’s driven the UK crazy because, in a way it is a Jubilee for me, having landed in England that very year and getting chilled to the marrow and soaked as I remember overnight in Hyde Park waiting for that once in a lifetime glimpse of the procession passing by but somehow I can’t seem to rake up the enthusiasm. I remember also at the time watching the recording of the coronation on a little black and white television at a friend’s house in Croydon. Television was so primitive in those days.

Would you like to know where British taxes go? Well, partly anyway. It goes on Civil Service credit cards allowing civil servants to book into first class hotels, dine in expensive restaurants, make purchases, etcetera without in many cases having to provide a receipt. There are 24000 cards and they have been used for such purchases as teddy bears, doughnuts, lingerie and tooth brushes! I suppose with a stretch of the imagination these could be claimed as legitimate expenses. I mean, you could be sitting in the Laundromat waiting for your lingerie to be laundered, with a teddy for company and eating doughnuts to sustain you while you wait, after which of course you will have to use a newly purchased toothbrush to clean your teeth or your dentist’s bill will be charged to the card and that is more money from the exchequer. So really, when you analyse it, you are being economical with the taxpayer’s hard earned money. After all, dentists don’t come cheap. The public accounts committee is now evidently clamping down on the abuses. It’s amazing how often horses and stable doors spring to mind.

Evidently the government is also worried about the benefits system being virtually out of control. Surprise surprise! If people can take advantage of the system they will take it. If they can fake it and get away with it they will fake it. There are four million homes in the UK where no one goes to work. I wonder just how many of the inhabitants are work-shy: and can you blame them when benefits pay more than they would get by working, especially if you have kids, the more the merrier? What started off as a wonderful piece of socialist thinking, giving support to those in need, has turned into a nightmare when so many rely solely on benefits and wouldn’t know how to do a day’s work even if they were inclined to. The modern education system doesn’t help of course. Some pupils leave school virtually illiterate and unemployable. Some students leave university unemplpoyable! Meanwhile what are the wonderful members of parliament getting up to righting the wrongs that beset British society? They’re busy twittering with inane messages like ‘Kids in bed. Chicken in Oven. Was careful not to muddle the two up.’ You realise of course that this is what passes as the soul of scintillating wit but has the perpetrator nothing better to do? It was the tax-payer’s vote that put her into parliament and the tax-payer’s money that keeps her there. Who needs it?