Speaking of an over-burdened public service can I throw this into the mix before this thread goes stale ?

rlhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/famished-woman-fined-330-for-stealing-a-75p-pack-of-mars-bars-after-benefits-stopped-10455635.htmlrl


At what point in this dash to privatise and profit-ize every public service was it decided that our court system should pay for itself ? I have actually read comments from "a spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice", in other words a politician who doesn't want to make his/her name known, that "Its right for criminals to pay for the courts time".

So a woman who steals a 75p Mars Bar because she says that she had no money and needed to eat something is fined £73 plus £0.75 compensation to the shop, which then increases to £328 after civil service fees are levied, and yet no-one stops to ask the blindingly obvious question "If she can't pay 75p for a Mars Bar then..." (complete the sentence yourself if you have more brains than whoever decided that court fees were equitable).

At what point do we close down the whole of government and tax collection because every civil service department now pays for itself by charging fees instead of being paid for by taxation as it has been for centuries.

PS - the introduction of the court charge has seen an ever increasing number of magistrates resigning their voluntary roles in protest as they see the issues stood ten feet in front of them rather than looking at numbers on a balance sheet in a hidden office in Whitehall and being able to hide behind "a government spokesperson" statement.

Do you also find self loathing therapeutic as well as despising individuals less fortunate than yourself?

You mean running their own business?

You said people should get off their backsides and do something to change their situation.
Does that include working together with others to improve many peoples working lives?

The thing is, if all these people "got off their backsides, and achieved" then the world would essentially grind to a halt. Who would stack the shelves in the supermarket? Who would load the luggage on to the planes at the airport? Who would process the invoices for all the "achievers"?
What would happen if developing commodity exporting countries, and the workers within those countries working for peanuts because they don't feel they have another choice suddenly realised that they're being bent over, and actually started charging a more appropriate price for their labour, commodities?

The fact is, big business needs a significant amount of unskilled labour to pick from to exploit. It needs a high level of poverty, and corruption in developing countries to keep their import costs down.
Governments need people on welfare to buy votes. Big business needs government, to be able the pass legislation that favours their interests.
There're are definitely people in society who are parasites, and exploit the system, but many of those people are the ones who designed the system in the first place.