Germany Zaps Spawn World Saviour Amid Grecian Riots

So, Germany doesn't think much of the Spawn of the Manse's efforts to save the UK economy and that of the world.

Coming to Spain, soon, and then the UK (certainly if Labour get in at the next election): a little bit of public aggravation in Greece.

Which may have something to do with eu-conomic pressures, among other things. so, not a good idea to press for closer integration and joining the Euro.

And while we're at it, more shite about the EU: the reason the EU will find it difficult (nay, impossible) to launch proper public PR for itself is that as soon as it becomes visible, its faults become immediately apparent as well. And they are such screamingly obvious ones that even the dimmest of Europhiles cannot waffle them away. Chuck in the fact that plenty of people through Europe and especially in the UK don't like the bloody thing on principle and you can see their dilemma. Why else has the EU had such a low profile in the media the pas 10 years?

And while I'm at it, I'd like to say I'm heartily sick of the media and blogosphere's moral panic stampede all over welfare and dependency. Are there scum out there? Yes. Are they vile to live near? Yes. Are there generations of workless deadbeats? Yes. Of course. Are they 'legions'? Well, no they fucking aren't. They're a minority of the population and they're a minority of the people who live on benefits or are supported by benefits. I can tell you for a fact that getting money out of the benefits system is hard-work, time-consuming, intrusive and demeaning. And that's money you supposedly deserve.

Joining in this squalid mob doesn't help the majority of people who need benefits. The one group of people that you can never weed out is precisely the persistent element. There's no point screwing up a whole system and making it worse for the majority who need it just so that you can assuage your own biliousness nastiness by thinking you're targetting the scum.

Labour are just as disgusting as the Tories on using this as a PR election ploy. It's shit, it's dishonest and it doesn't work. Both parties are in some ways quite keen to have both an underclass and a group of unemployed/workless precisely for this reason, that they can wheel out fake policies to garner votes when necessary. That's why you end up with some ignorant middle-class twat like David Freud being commissioned to write a policy report on welfare reform for the government - in three weeks, knowing nothing about it.

We've had mass unemployment in this country for nearly 30 years now: even Labour's own figures show there have been over a million unemployed for the last ten years. Thatcher got in on the "Labour isn't working" ploy, doubled unemployment within 18 months of gaining power - and then the matter ceased to bother most of the electorate. In fact, they were happy enough with mass unemployment to vote the Tories in for 18 years.

And before I sign off...regarding the Baby P case, I noted that in a media report it was said that Sharon Shoesmith and her colleagues failed partly because they didn't have enough social work experience - because their background was in education. Not unexpected, when you think about it: Sharon Shoesmith had previously worked for Ofsted, which gave the Council a positive report in 2006 and Ofsted are now the government department in charge of all childcare as well as education. When did that happen? Didn't it occur to anyone in government that child welfare and education are not the same thing and require different skills and knowledge?

Still, education doesn't matter any more. It doesn't even appear in the title of the relevant government departments.