Elderly should do community work or lose pension, said peer

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Lord Bichard, an ex-chief of the Benefits Agency, said in October 2012, and while I know that this is almost six years ago, that the elderly should get rewards and fines to make sure they are taking a more active part in the world.

While, as I have said, this is almost six years ago, attitudes of the regime in Westminster have not changed one iota. It must be remembered also that this comes from a member of the House of Lords, an elderly person who clocks in in the morning to generally sleep on the benches in the House (if that) and gets £300 for just clocking in.

The crossbench peer, who also chaired an inquiry into the murder of two Soham school girls, suggested the same tough attitude towards benefit scroungers should be taken with older people.

“Older people who are not very old could be making a very useful contribution to civil society if they were given some incentive or recognition for doing so,” he told a committee of MPs.

“We are prepared to say to people if you are not looking for work, you don't get a benefit. If you're old and you're not contributing in some way, maybe there should be some penalty attached to that. These debates never seem to take place.

“Are we using all the incentives at our disposal to encourage older people not just to be a negative burden on the state but actually be a positive part of society?”

His remarks were condemned, and rightly so, by pensioner groups as “little more than National Service for the over-60s".

Dot Gibson, general secretary of the National Pensioners Convention, said: “This is absolutely outrageous. Those who have paid their national insurance contributions for 30 or more years are entitled to receive their state pension and there should be no attempt to put further barriers in their way.

“We already have one of the lowest state pensions in Europe and one in five older people in Britain live below the poverty line.”

All through their working life those elderly will have paid in to the social security pot in order to receive their pension and it is not a hand-out, in the same way that other social benefits are not, but something that the working person has paid in for. Thus it is his or her due and not something made out by government to be some charity from the side of government.

The attitude seems to be that if you do not work – in the way that the powers-that-be see work – then you have no right to eat. I am waiting when they are going to extend that thought to children too young to work. Maybe I best not give them any silly ideas as they have already far too many of their own.

A similar song, if not even the very same, is also being sung in countries such as Germany, and a couple of other EU nations. First of all, just like the UK, the retirement age is being raised, and it would appear almost year by year now, and then they, like in the UK, make noises that pensioners should still be productive thereafter in charity work or such so as to still contribute rather than “scrounge” from the state.

Countries, like the UK, and others, that are run by neo-liberal thought, can, with attitudes like that prevailing in the corridors of power, really no longer be seen as civilized. Those that they would like to refer to as savages – on the other hand – in may departments are much more civilized than seem to be our nations.

© 2018

California Legalized Selling Food Made At Home And Created Over A Thousand Local Businesses

A government official appears at a man’s door.  The man has been breaking the law: He has sold bread baked at home.

This isn’t a page from Kafka—it happened to Mark Stambler in Los Angeles.

For decades, Stambler has followed traditional methods to bake loaves of French bread.  The ingredients are simple: distilled water, sea salt, wild yeast and organic grains.  Stambler even mills the grain himself.  To make it easier to steam loaves, he built a wood-fired oven in his own backyard.  Stambler’s loaves came in first place at the Los Angeles County Fair and the California State Fair.

Soon after that, Stambler got the idea to expand his hobby into a home business, which became Pagnol Boulanger.  Word of mouth spread.  In June 2011, The Los Angeles Times profiled Stambler and his bread in a full-page feature.

Read more: http://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2014/01/29/california-legalized-selling-food-made-at-home-and-created-over-a-thousand-local-businesses/

Government council cuts are punishing the most vulnerable

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Mass scale cuts to council budgets will lead to the death of local government and heap punishment on the most vulnerable, as ministers announce a further 2.9 per cent cut in funding for 2014/15, warns Unite, Britain and Ireland’s largest trade union.

Many of the country’s most deprived councils will bear the brunt, with Liverpool city council facing a 62 per cent cut in funding between 2010 and 2017. Local government workers, who have already suffered a £3,544 cut in pay since 2010, will be pushed deeper into poverty as they are forced into a jobs versus wages tussle.

Unite, Britain’s biggest union, fears that by 2015 there will be little local government left after a 43 per cent real terms cut in funding in the five years since 2010. Cuts of this scale will lead to the complete demolition of services including care for the frail and elderly, children services, support for vulnerable families and youth services.

Despite the huge pressures faced by councils, Unite appeals to councils not to slash before thinking, but to work with unions to find savings and to protect service quality.

Responding to the government’s provisional local government financial settlement, published on December 18, 2013, Fiona Farmer, Unite national officer, said: “This government is presiding over the complete meltdown of local services. Ordinary hardworking people are, again, the ones being battered by the loss of the services they rely on to educate and care for their families.

“This is a shamelessly political settlement which rewards wealthy Tory councils and punishes the less well off.

“In some of the country’s most deprived areas, including the prime minister’s Oxfordshire constituency, services such as care for the frail and elderly, support for vulnerable families, children’s centres, sexual health services around teenage pregnancy and Connexions services, have already been shut or are threatened with closure. The wealthy Tory shires continue to escape relatively unscathed.

“The government will be gambling on the public blaming local councils for service cuts, but it is wrong; the public understand where the real blame lies - at the door of the communities and local government secretary, Eric Pickles.”

Unite is Britain and Ireland’s largest trade union with 1.4 million members working across all sectors of the economy. The general secretary is Len McCluskey.

In spite of warnings such as this by the leaders, so to speak, in the labor movement the British Labour Party has stated that it will continue, should it win the 2015 elections, which cannot come too soon, with the austerity measures and cuts.

While it is true that the finances of the United Kingdom are rather in disarray and the country is heavily indebted to the bankers of the world there are savings and cuts that can be made elsewhere and which would be real cuts in expenditure and not to vital services.

Alone abandoning the stupid idea of a nuclear deterrent which is laughable in the extreme would save billions upon billions which could be better used elsewhere and that is just for starters. Abandoning ideas of wars in countries where we have no business of being would be another great saving that could be made, not that the generals and warmongers would like this idea and neither the industries whose “vital interests” might be abandoned if we did.

The brief of our armed forces is the “defense of the realm” and the realm, last time I checked, does not include Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, or any other country. It also does not include Bosnia and such like. It ends with the territorial waters of the United Kingdom and may, if we so want, include Gibraltar and the Islas Malvinas and other so-called dependents.

Let's look at savings there and to creating a peaceful country that regards the sovereignty of other countries and to a green economy which could create masses of jobs and give us energy and food security and much more.

© 2013

Freedom and government are opposites

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Peace and freedom comes about when nation states and governments are abolished and when people are allowed and empowered to be their own masters, their own sovereigns. When the land, which can be owned by no man or state, is worked by all for the benefit of all. Then and only then will things truly change.

We we stand at this moment in time and history is at the crossroads of the old and the new. The old we all know only too well and the new most fear, as it is unknown. But, the choice is simple. Go on as is and we commit ecocide and wars will always be with us or take the road less traveled towards a new dawn.

You cannot be free while being governed at the same time. The two diametrically oppose each other. Freedom and being governed just does not compute as the two, government and freedom, are in direct opposition to each other.

The majority, around the world, however, seems incapable to fathom and understand this simple truth having been conditioned – brainwashed might be a better term – to believe that government is necessary and that it requires a government by the people for the people. But any government of any kind means that there is no freedom and only privileges granted which can, at any time, arbitrarily, be removed.

Even “rights” supposedly guaranteed under a constitution or “basic law” are but privileges that the powers-that-be have, often begrudgingly, granted and they will remove them as and when they see fit.

Do not believe, not even for one minute, not a second even, that a written constitution, not even the one of the United States of America, is any different.

If you are free then you have all the rights under the sun but no government. If, however, you have a government then you are not free and then there are no rights; only privileges granted like to a prisoner or a slave who behaves well.

© 2013

The Constitution does not grant you your rights, it protects them

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The Constitution does not grant you your rights, it protects them, for they are not privileges but they are rights. Privileges are given or granted while rights are inalienable, as the Constitution states, and thus are what are rightfully ours. That includes the right to life and liberty, the right to be able to defend ourselves against assailants and tyrannical governments, and much more.

While you are asking the government to limit or take away the right to bare arms, that is to say the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, you would do well to remember that once they do it will be that much easier for them to take away the rest of your rights without your consent.

In the UK the Freedom of Speech is not a right, according to our current Home Secretary, but simply a privilege extended to the general public. Originally the Freedom of Speech only applied to Members of Parliament and only in the House. She, the Home Secretary, stated that in 2012 with the addition that this privilege could be withdrawn from the people at any time if government would be thus inclined and the more we see nowadays the more it becomes apparent that this move is under way.

The right to peaceful assembly is also be curtailed as, once again, it appears not to be a right but a privilege that was extended to the people, and once again was intended for the aristocracy only in Britain.

The Magna Carta and the British Bill of Right also have to be seen in this context for they never were meant to be extended, except as a privilege, to the villains, the plebs, that is to say the ordinary citizens which, in the UK, still are referred to – even though government tries not to let the people know that – as “subjects of Her Britannic Majesty”.

Britain, unlike the USA, does not have a (written) Constitution. In fact, it does not have a Constitution, written or otherwise, and the talk of government that this or that would bring about a constitutional crisis or that this or that is unconstitutional is a smokescreen to hide the fact that there is no Constitution of any kind in the UK.

The United States, on the other hand, does have a written Constitution that protects the rights of the citizens, and is not a document granting privileges. Be careful, therefore, what you wish for as to having rights curbed for they, if you reach them the little finger, will grab the entire hand and chain you.

Remember what the Constitution is and what it is for and do not surrender one iota of it to government.

© 2013

Whipping in Parliament

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

In order to be a true democracy whipped voting cannot be tolerated and this shows that Britain is NOT a democracy whatever it may wish to claim.

If members of parliament are compelled by the leaders of their party as to how the MUST vote – as they are in most cases – then that is totally against the letter and the spirit of democracy.

Parliamentarians who are not able to vote as their consciences dictate or in line with the wishes of their constituents cannot be regarded as representatives of the people. They are but puppets who have their strings bulled by their political masters.

True representatives of the people must be free to vote as their consciences dictate and as their electorate wishes and expects them to and not toeing the “party line”. This is not democracy. No more than women's only lists or trade union board members “elected unopposed” on ballot papers which members cannot vote for or against.

Britain, which claims to be the mother of modern democracy is, as far as I am aware one of only a handful of countries (give or take a country or two) where parliamentary whips exist. Others are those that took, by “virtue” of having once been part of the Empire, the British system.

While the British legal system of “common law” is by far superior to that of the rest of Europe of “Roman law” the political system stinks and that to high heaven, especially the parliamentary whip thing.

The British parliamentary system, as venerated as it may be, is not the be all and end all despite of what we are being told and taught. It is, in fact, rather deeply flawed with its “first past the post” system and the fact that, in most cases, Members of Parliament are made – actually forced to – vote as they are told by their part whips.

One could argue that the very system of political parties is one that causes problems not allowing parliamentarians a free vote and that, even though being used almost everywhere (the system of parties not of whips), the system needs abolishing and replacing with independent and freely elected members of a parliament. And this would make yet for another argument namely that for a tribal system with the “heads” of the clans and tribes forming the parliament.

But who will then be president, or prime minister? If one still wants to play with the nation state even then it should be possible for those “parliamentarians” to elect a “speaker” and “deputy speaker” from within their own ranks and that only on merit.

To say that the party system has served us well we most certainly cannot. It has caused divisions in the same way as denominations and sects have done in Christianity, Islam and even Judaism and Hinduism and often has led to internal strife and civil war.

A president or prime minister (as long as we still have the party system) should also not automatically be the leader of the victorious party in an election regardless. That post should be dependent on merit, as already said, and that is where almost all political systems the world over are flawed. And party loyalty also, in general, leads to voting, in the majority, whip or no whip, of parliamentarians along party lines, and, more often than not also to the fear that if they do not vote with the party that they may lose their positions or parliamentary privileges.

This very fear of losing position and such is also the reason why, even if no party whip or similar exists, the voting will almost always be in favor of what the party and its leader wishes to achieve and thus the system needs changing, including the abolition of the nation state itself.

We don't need a new government; we need a new system.

© 2013

Government: It's all about control

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Government is all about control and absolutely nothing else regardless what we are being told.

A free people do not need to have anyone lord it over them, no king and not government, however democratic it claims to be.

Democracy is but an illusion to keep the masses quiet and does not and cannot work with groups larger than 150 individuals. The monks of old learned that and that was why, when that number was being reached, they sent out groups of monks to form sister monasteries and abbeys.

The so-called people's representatives, the elected ones, are about as much representatives of the people as Monsanto is a charity and the knight in shining armor protecting us from pesticides.

A free people, theoretically, can do as they wish as long as they do not infringe on the liberty of others and harm others. However, find me a country, a place, where this is the case. Everywhere government of one kind or another tells the people what they can do and what they cannot do and for most activities the people require a permit – against payment – from said governments.

You have hens and want to sell eggs to your neighbors. Can you, legally? No! You need a government license to do so and that license will cost you money and government interference.

The same goes for growing produce in your garden or allotment and wishing to sell surplus. You cannot do so, legally, without a paid-for government permit.

You need a government permit, called a driver's license, to drive a car and another license to actually run the car on the road. And the same goes for motorbikes. You need a license to get married, you need to have your birth registered or you cannot leave the country and reenter it; that is to say you cannot get a passport without this piece of government paper.

If you have children they can be taken away from you if you do not raise them as the government tell you to and do not send them to school (in many places).

In order to – legally – get a job in the great majority of the countries, even so-called democratic ones, and especially in those, you need a government number, the social security number, and that is almost not possible to get without the aforementioned birth certificate. And the same goes for a bank account and many more things.

Even if you have committed no crime, are not even in the slightest a terrorist, the government is more than likely to spy on you and your every move, and even more so if you express dissident thoughts or read books that they may consider “bad” or visit websites your government does not like.

There is an old saying that the enemy at the gate we do not have to be afraid of as we know them but the enemy within we have to watch and the enemy within are, predominately, our own governments.

As far as the governments are today concerned all citizens are potential criminals and terrorists and are guilty until and unless they, the people, can prove themselves innocent, and even then the control will continue.

Those who think that they are free think again... and I have only touched upon a small amount of government control here.

We do not need a new government; we need a new system without government. A new true system where men are truly free...

© 2013

UK government to force Internet content blocking

The British government is trying to force search engines and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block content and websites

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The claim by Whitehall that it is predominately aimed at porn sites and especially child porn to prevent also and especially children accessing such materials does not hold water as, first of all, accessing child porn is a crime and secondly that no one can believe anymore what they say.

The “for the good of the children” claim has become a mantra under which the freedoms of the individual are being eroded by increments, in the UK and the USA. Blocking porn is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

So-called extremist websites are also in the cross hairs of the government's gun sight and we can take a sure bet that many survivalist sites and such like will also be considered and affected. And, no doubt, alternative media sites such as Russia Today and many others.

In the end we will only be allowed, for our own protection and that of the children, obviously, to access such sites only as are approved by the powers-that-be.

The British and American governments keep harping on about freedom and scream blue murder when the Internet and social media are being censored and restricted by China, in Arab countries, and so on while, at the same time, they are aiming to do the very same at home. The term “double standards” does not even come close to conveying it properly.

While they insist that the Internet must not be censored – and it should not be – as far as what they class repressive regimes such as China, Iran, etc., are concerned a different set of rules are applied to their own citizens. What are they afraid of?

© 2013

Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the state

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the state ~ James Jesus Angleton, Head of CIA Counter Intelligence 1954-1974

It is a shame that James Angleton was so right in his statement and that it is still as valid, if not even more so, today than it was then. Instead of becoming more open government and society has become more deceptive and secretive.

It is all a game of smoke and mirrors and the general public do not seem to see this or simply do not want to see and accept it. They go even as far as saying that if the government would be planning anything evil (against the people) they would announce it on TV. Right, sure, and pigs do fly!

It is the people that gave and give government the right to exist and not the other way round and thus government is accountable to the people regardless of what they may think.

However, it would appear that it will take something other than the so-called democratic process of elections to get that into the thick skulls of the Skull & Bones people that have decided that they can lord it over the people who put them into office – unfortunately often – in the first place.

Overthrowing the government is, by the powers-that-be or better the powers-that-they-have-assumed, regarded as treason but who put them there. We, the People, did and it is the right of the people to remove a tyrannical government and one that disregards the people.

Government has only those rights of existence as given to it by the people and if the people remove consent the the government has no longer got any right to govern. It is as simple as that. That is the theory. In practice things are different as the powers-that-be will not allow themselves to be removed and replaced, not even by so-called democratic means.

Democracy is one of those smoke and mirrors devices that the ruling classes have invented in order to deceive the people and make them believe that they, the people, have a say in who governs them and how they are being governed.

Time to de-cloak the real enemy of the people...

© 2013

The grass is always greener...

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Basildon Council in Essex had to admit on June 12, 2013 that they have spent £150,000 this year on research into how quickly the borough's grass is growing!

Beware of the gnomes!

A council spokesman commented: 'This is a major and vital piece of work that has to be done in preparation for a tender exercise in 2014'.

Not only are they calculating the speed of grass growth, but also an assessment of obstacles like bollards and pylons (watch out for gnomes!) which may hinder grass cutting efforts in the future!

An outside company was hired and paid the handsome sum of £150,000 (almost US$300,000 give or take a little) to conduct this research.

This is a waste of money for any council in a time of supposed austerity and one can but assume that anyone in the council could have conducted the same kind of research for much less in a couple of days than employing an outside consultancy firm. The latter which generally charge councils through the nose.

When there are so many other causes, so to speak, within a council that could have benefited from this sum of almost US$300,000 it is beyond belief that such a sum was wasted, and there is no other word for it but wasted, on measuring the rate of grass growth and such with regards to a tendering exercise for contracts in 2014.

While staff are being forced to accept pay cuts, while jobs are being cut and services, the council sees it fit to waste such a sum on a futile exercise and using an outside agency to boot.

It would appear that, much like politicians, many council leaders and councilors do not live in the real world but in a parallel universe which is different to the world that we ordinary mortals live in.

© 2013

The government controls

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The government controls our water supply (including, in many places in the USA the rainwater, making rainwater harvesting illegal), our food supply, our medical supply, our media, our armed forces, our police. They all our money and all of the most horrifying weapons on earth.

In short, the government controls everything, including and especially each and every one of us.

Do you see anything wrong with that equation? I do!

The fact is that we do not seem to (be able) to control the government, and that is what we should be able to do. They are, to all intents and purposes, our servants and not we theirs.

However, the way things have turned out, and We, the People, have allowed this to happen by demanding more and more (false) security, is that they are intent on controlling us and everything else.

Government control of everything is fascism, regardless of the color of the regime, whether it claims to be democratic, socialist, communist, or whatever. And, in Europe, this control of everything has gotten worse ever since the European Union has usurped the power that is it its to have and use and even more so since none of them – bar the so-called MEPs – are elected. The fact that they are unelected makes the unanswerable to the people and this is a dictatorship regardless of whether the dictate comes from but one man or a group of them. It still is a dictatorship.

The sheeple have been so brainwashed, however, that they are unable to see this and demand more and more security from the government, for which they are prepared to give up their freedoms and expect everyone else to do so too.

But, this is exactly what the powers-that-be want the people to demand and clamor for so that they, the powers-that-be can get more and more power and control over the people, all the people.

Oh, say the sheeple, but we all have to be prepared to surrender some of our liberties so that the police and the security services can keep us safe (from terrorist attacks). But by doing so we give them the little finger and they take not just one hand but both and take away more and more freedoms in the name of needing to make the streets secure, and the Internet, and this, that and the other.

They also think they have to control food by decreeing which seeds and plants we are allowed to grown (and thus eat) and which herbs we can or cannot use (for medicine). All seeds must be licensed in order to be sold and used, and herbal medicine has been outlawed to be sold as medicine, at least in the EU. Though, it has to be said, if the same are referred to as “food supplements” they can, for the time being, still be sold.

The government is trying to tell us what we can eat, what medicines we can and cannot use, what water we can use, and, no doubt, very soon they will tell us where we can and cannot live.

This is wrong and needs to change and this means that we need a new system; not a new government. We need no government, period!

© 2013

US Congress in pockets of arms industry

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The US Army says “no thanks to new tanks” but Congress says that the army is going to get the new tanks whether they want them or not. In fact, Congress has, apparently, said that the army WILL take and use those new tanks, period!

So, despite the fact that the guy who know tell the Congress critters that they are more than happy with the MBT in current service, the Abrahams MBT, Congress tells the army that they have to have those new tanks army does not want, regardless. Someone at Capitol Hill, and probably more than just someone, seems to have been unable to resist the lobbying and the fat brown envelopes.

When the arms industry and the oil, gas, and coal industry is in bed with government it is a very bad combination. Another proof that government is not a good idea at all.

© 2013

The USA: Now also the Internet policeman?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Not content with its self-appointed role as world cop the United States now have decided it also must police and have total control of the Internet, with full power of decision as to what is allowed and what is not.

This is rather interesting if we consider that if and when Iran, or China or any other any other country block access to certain sites, especially American propaganda ones, the US is the first to call “foul” or “illegal censorship”. It appears there are two standards and two set of rules; one for the USA and one for everyone else.

While, according to the USA, it is foul and illegal censorship when sites, especially American sites, are being blocked by China, Russia, Iran, it is not, it would seem, when it is done by or on behest of the American government and its backers.

A variety of supposed justifications are put about as also in the latter half of January 2012 when Megaupload, a major file sharing and -hosting platform, was shut down but the US authorities and four people were arrested in conjunction with this in New Zealand on order of the FBI.

The SOPA proposals are not even law as yet and still the US takes it upon itself to close down websites or orders, and I stress orders, other countries to shut them down.

America is getting too big, way too big, for its little boots. A serious counterbalance is needed. Someone, some country, who is prepared to put the US in its place but there is no one left out there.

The USSR, which was the counterbalance, faulty as it was, is history: Others just simply do not exist with the possible exception of China.

When President Obama came to power it was hoped by many that the excesses and abuses of the Bush era were at an end. Alas, it was all but rhetoric and business continues as usual.

The SOPA proposals began under Bush, if I am not mistaken, and Obama and those that actually pull the strings behind the scenes – yes, all any US President is is a puppet – want this power and even more in order to totally control the Internet.

The Powers-That-Be do not like the freedoms of the Internet (and of digital publishing) and the fact that it gives ordinary people a voice as citizen journalists and -reporters, as Bloggers. The fear the Blogger like nothing else.

The Internet allows – in its current state – people to publish and distribute their own books without the control of publishing houses and the censors and that too goes very much against the grain of The Powers-That-Be.

To The Powers-That-Be the Internet, and the freedom that it gives people, is an anathema and while they may – as a cover – have a go at the likes of China with regards to restrictions imposed there on Internet usages, etc., the restrictions that they have in mind to impose on the Internet per se are even more draconian than those restrictive countries employ.

They know that the Internet can be a tool used against them and hence they will try to find a way, under guises and excuses, curb the Net and its freedoms, if we are not careful.

The most dangerous government is not one that is (openly) hostile against its people and its neighbors but one that seems to be benign and friendly. It is those where we let our guard down at our peril for they are capable of lulling us to sleep.

The Powers-That-Be, which control the US, and probably, by proxy, also the UK and the EU, are not benign and the Internet, and the capacity that it gives to the people, gives them the jitters. And while, as said, they may rant and rave when during demonstrations and actions such as in the “Arab Spring” the Internet was cut in places such as Egypt, Libya, etc., they intend to do the very same if protests happen on their patch.

America, however, is the one that wants to call the shots and that absolutely everywhere, as one can see by the actions against Megaupload (and the attempt to silence WikiLeaks). One can but wonder as to what was really being distributed by Megaupload. Was it a movie about something sensitive or what?

The US government has ordered YouTube before to pull videos and user accounts with regards to footage from demonstrations such as the Occupy Movement ones and the related brutal police actions against peaceful protesters, and others. So, I guess we may as well wonder...

We need to have a counterbalance again and in the lieu of the USSR is will have to be “We The People”.

© 2012

US Congress wastes thousands on bottled water

Congress wasting thousands of dollars in taxpayers' money on bottled water that harms our environment

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

During and after the State of the Union recently, President Obama and Congressional Republicans waxed poetic about the need to cut wasteful spending in Washington. But there is an easy place to start:

According to Corporate Accountability International, Congress spent nearly $200,000 on bottled water in just three months last year. Recent studies estimate that bottled water costs almost 2,000 times more than tap water – even though the two types of water often come from the same sources.

Besides being a waste of money, bottled water is terrible for the environment: The energy needed to produce the plastic consumption is enough to fuel three million cars for a year.

But it is not just the plastic bottled and the fact that most of them never get recycled, for instance, that is the problem; the unnecessary extraction of water, whether from springs or municipal sources, as it the case in 40 percet of all cases, is what is the greatest problem even.

Nearly one million tons of plastic bottles are discarded as litter each year, ending up in landfills, lakes and streams. What's more, public water infrastructure in DC and around the whole country needs all the support it can get – especially from Congress.

And the same is true elsewhere too and while the American citizen can, theoretically, find out all theses things, such as Congress expenditure on bottled water in Britain, for example, that information is, and please don't laugh, covered by the “Official Secrets Act 1911”. Sad, I know. It is, however, the belief of the British government, over the years, that the general public could not understand all those fact and figures. In other words, the Subjects of Her Britannic Majesty are seen as and treated like children, or imbeciles.

American lobby groups are now calling upon Congress to stop wasting our money and end its use of bottled water and to sweeten the deal, DC Water (a local utility) has even offered to provide every member of Congress with a reusable water bottle as well as free water quality testing systems for Congressional office buildings.

When members of Congress complain about wasteful spending, they should curb their own bad habits first.

No doubt the same problems exist in the Houses of Parliament as regards to bottled water usage and other waste too. I could mention the waste of food, for instance, and while government keeps telling us that we must end the practice of food waste the catering establishment within the Palace of Westminster, in the way they operate, waste tons, literally, of food a week. Food that has been cooked but never been eaten.

They, whether in the Palace of Westminster or Whitehall or at Capitol Hill in DC, try to tell the general public how to live and behave but it would seem that it is a definite case of “Do as I tell you not as I do”. Shame they think that different rules apply to them than to the rest of us.

We can see that by the way the British MPs have been milking the expenses system and when they are caught with the hand in the till, so to speak, try to claim parliamentary privilege and thus exception from criminal prosecution. They really think themselves, in the majority, better than those that have put them there. Time for a change, methinks, a serious one.

© 2011