Sep 172010
 

Voice’s Dave Watt describes how the government’s budget cuts put women and children first.

A little known fact about Steig Larsson’s celebrated novel ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ was that the original Swedish title was ‘The Man Who Hated Women’ (Män Som Hatar Kvinnor) and while I don’t think the ConDem coalition has any particular hatred for women, they are certainly going to be beating on them pretty badly with a disproportionate burden of the budget cuts.

A gender audit of the Budget, commissioned by MP Yvette Cooper found that of the £8bn net revenue to be raised by financial year 2014-15, nearly £6bn will be from women, in contrast with just over £2bn from men.

Responding to the study’s findings, Ms Cooper said: “I cannot recall any budget that has ever had such a severe attack on women in the history of the welfare state. Cameron and Clegg …..simply don’t get that things like the child tax credit help millions of women manage to balance work and family life.”

perhaps the ConDems simply saw them as an easy, pliable target that wouldn’t be out protesting in the streets.

The cuts have also drastically reduced support for children more savagely than anything else so far with billions of pounds being cut from child benefit, child tax credits, maternity support and child trust funds.

Amongst the reports’s key findings are:

Of £8.1bn net personal tax increases/ benefit cuts, an estimated £5.8bn (72 per cent) is being paid by women and £2.2bn (28 per cent) is being paid by men.

• Support for children is being cut by £2.4bn – including cuts in Sure Start maternity grant, health in pregnancy grant, child benefit and tax credits. The majority of this support is paid to women. A further £560m cut from the Child Trust Fund is not included in the gender audit.

• Even excluding support for children, women still pay £3.6bn (66 per cent) compared to men paying £1.9bn (34 per cent). This is because women are more heavily affected by things like housing benefit cuts and the switch to CPI uprating of the additional state pension and public sector pensions.

Women have, in general, have traditionally tended to be more politically conservative than men (and indeed the Nazi vote before 1933 was largely female) and perhaps the ConDems simply saw them as an easy, pliable target that wouldn’t be out protesting in the streets. Whatever the rationale, any women who voted for the Conservatives or the Lib-Dems last May are going to find themselves being very poorly rewarded for putting their cross in either of those two little boxes.

Obviously, the cuts will hardly affect the ultra rich (Baroness Warsi won’t be taking up that early morning office cleaning job just yet) but her poorer sisters: the working mothers, the single parents and the other women who can just about make ends meet at present are going to suffer very badly and very unfairly from these economic cuts.

Sep 032010
 

Voice’s Dave Watt regales us with a tale of new found local nuclear might!

Shock waves reverberated around the globe this week as it was announced that Banff and Buchan had become the world’s latest nuclear power.

Grampian TV revealed that the region had concluded a trade deal with the ex-Soviet republic of Kazakhstan with the region’s huge surplus tattie mountain being exchanged for a dozen SS-20s. The missiles and their targeting equipment were delivered by a fleet of trawlers to Fraserburgh on Saturday morning and are fitting out at present. Whilst most are in the process of being installed in missile silos in Rosehearty and Whitehills it is rumoured that several are to be deployed on deep sea trawlers in a similar fashion to the Trident system presently employed by the UK government.

Defence Councillor for the region, Bob ‘Hermann’ Kahn, previously Councillor for Sanitation and Waste Disposal, confirmed the council’s stated policy on first use of its nuclear arsenal, “We will definitely not be advocating a first strike ag’inst onybody iv a’. Nae even ag’inst toonsers or yon orra tinks fae West Aiberdeenshire an’ Kincardine – well, nae unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

On being questioned as to whether or not the region’s actions were in contravention of last year’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Mr Kahn said that prepared statements delineating the council’s position had been sent to Washington, Beijing, Moscow and Woodhill House and if anybody wanted to argue the toss they were welcome to send him or the council an e-mail – preferably with their home address and GPS grid reference for their house attached.

The council has also issued a public statement on Northsound outlining the stages for the launching of its nuclear weapons, ranging from the relatively peaceful ‘Defcon 1’ up to the immediate pre-launch condition red ‘Defcon 5’.

Defcon 1 Aye, aye min, fit like?

Defcon 2 I hinna seen you aroon here afore.

Defcon 3 You’re nae fae roon here, are ye?

Defcon 4 Hemmin, fa are you lookin’ at, eh?

Defcon 5 Right, toonser – ootside. Noo!

Although the majority of governments have expressed their concern at Banff and Buchan’s nuclear sabre-rattling, the US, Russian and Chinese governments said they were unable to formulate a response until the following phrases from the region’s message had been clarified:

1. Who or what is an ‘ill trickit vratch?’and why should this object’s actions ‘gie fowk a fleg’?

2. What form of locomotion is ‘knyppin’?

3. Does the expression ‘Fit’s a dee?’ have any connection with the river in the North East of Scotland?

4. As the nuclear warheads in the SS-20 are MIRVed (ie with multiple warheads) how many warheads is ‘a pucklie’? We also notice in your communication that you refer to firing off ‘a puckle warheids into Ibrox and Parkheid in Weegieland for a lauch’. We require to know if ‘a puckle’ is the same as ‘a pucklie’ and where Weegieland is, as we cannot find it on any of our maps. In addition, is ‘a lauch’ a misprint of ‘a launch’?

Aug 132010
 

By Dave Watt.

1) King Edward VII – corner of Union Terrace/Union St by Alfred Drury RA & James Philip.

Connection with Aberdeen: Once caught one of his many doses of clap off a chambermaid who owned an Aberdeen Terrier.

2) William Wallace – colossal bronze statue by W. Grant Stevenson which is by far the cities most famous and is located adjacent to Union Terrace Gardens and opposite His Majesty’s Theatre.

Continue reading »

Aug 132010
 

Dave Watt shockingly reveals that colourful, honest and fun-loving Scots have not always been revered beyond our own shores…

The traditional picture in Scotland of we noble Jocks being welcomed all over the world for our forthright honesty, creativity, general lovability – and not being English football fans – took a bit of a knock for me earlier this year when I read an interesting book, The Scots Abroad by TA Fischer. Continue reading »

Jul 302010
 

By Dave Watt.

Fat Dave Visits the Colonies.

Hello oiks.

In the spirit of my Big Society, I thought I’d bring a little sunshine into your drab, tiny proletarian lives by writing you a few lines. After all, it can’t be much fun working down coal mines and up chimneys with only the prospect of racing pigeons, whippet-breeding and drinking gin at the weekend to look forward to. “What would I want to read about after a hard evening shovelling coal into the bath,” I thought to myself, so I decided to tell you all about me.

After all, what could be more encouraging for a poor person than to see how someone with the right attitude can get on just through sheer hard work and application? Continue reading »

Jul 092010
 

By Dave Watt.

There you go. Giving them £41.5 million a year isn’t enough. You have to pray for them as well.

With the ConDem government introducing what is widely accepted to be the new Screw The Underprivileged measures almost hourly you might think there are others in our society more in need of prayers but Gilcomston Church would appear to see things differently.

Continue reading »