• Visitors can check out the Forum FAQ by clicking this link. You have to register before you can post: click the REGISTER link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. View our Forum Privacy Policy.
  • Want to receive the latest contracting news and advice straight to your inbox? Sign up to the ContractorUK newsletter here. Every sign up will also be entered into a draw to WIN £100 Amazon vouchers!

Britain 'nation of form fillers watched by quarter of world's CCTV cameras'

Collapse
X
  •  
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Britain 'nation of form fillers watched by quarter of world's CCTV cameras'

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...V-cameras.html

    Britain 'nation of form fillers watched by quarter of world's CCTV cameras'
    Britain has become a bureacratic and authoritarian state watched over by a quarter of the world's CCTV cameras, a study of Labour's decade in power claims.

    National debt is running at £175,000 per household, five times more than thought, while each year the Government has passed 3,500 regulations, along with 100,000 pages of rules and explanation.

    'The Rotten State of Britain' claims to be the first "deeply researched factual account" of Tony Blair's and Gordon Brown's time in office.

    The author Eammon Butler, a director of the leading think tank the Adam Smith Institute, claimed that his book had been turned down by two publishers because of the "unconventional" nature of the content.

    He said: "A new form of centralised government and authoritarian government has been created that is worse than ever in Britain's recent history."

    Among the claims in the book are that Britain has a quarter of the world's CCTV cameras, the largest of any country and that taxes have risen by 51 per cent since 1997.

    Mr Butler also claims national debt is running at £4.6billion, or £175,000 per household, not £729billion (£29,000 per household) as the Government claims.

    In the audit of 10 years of the Labour Government, Dr Butler says that there are now 1,406 litter wardens and dog catchers who have been given powers to levy on the spot fines.

    Dr Butler said he wrote the book because he got "so angry about the way that they have no concept of the rule of law".

    Dr Butler found that in just one year - 2006/7 - half of the 722,464 DNA samples collected by the police came from children, including a seven-month year old girl.

    One in nine hospital patients picks up an infection during their stay on a ward, while the total cost of outstanding claims against the NHS is £9.2billion, Dr Butler claimed.

    He said that 30,000 of the 200,000 people who die of cancer and strokes each year would survive "if they lived anywhere else in northern Europe".

    Dr Butler also claimed in the book that the number of people receiving state benefits has risen from 17million people in 1997 to 21million people by 2007.

    He found that nearly six million families receive £16billion-worth of child credit. Dr Butler said: "It's ridiculously high number of beneficiaries for something aimed to help the poorest."

    The result is that some families would be better off it he parents did not live together.

    He said: "Three-quarters of the poorest households would be better off splitting up. And when money is tight, that is exactly what happens."

    #2
    They put in literally hundreds of new cameras in Glasgow Central recently, they must be running facial recognition software. As you walk out the front door the council wardens are chasing the smokers round to hand out 50 quid fines for dropping fag ends.

    You are constantly treated with suspicion these days.

    Comment


      #3
      Doesn't put many people off. Half the world still wants to come here to live.

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by Turion View Post
        Doesn't put many people off. Half the world still wants to come here to live.
        Yeah, to live a life of handouts and benefits, not because the place is a sh*thole.
        The cycle of life: born > learn > work > learn > dead.

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by Turion View Post
          Doesn't put many people off. Half the world still wants to come here to live.
          And half the Brits would happily leave, I admit I'm seriously considering it myself.

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by TykeMerc View Post
            And half the Brits would happily leave, I admit I'm seriously considering it myself.
            If I was not tied to the UK by court order I would have left by now. I guess by the time the kids are 18 I will be too old to go.

            Comment


              #7
              Where would you go?

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by Foxy Moron View Post
                Where would you go?
                We do this one from time to time (I am intensely interested myself). If there is a single magic Camelot then those in the know are keeping it to themselves. It usually comes down to a category choice:

                1. Old-fashioned emigration to one of the big English-speakers, the USA or one of the old dominions, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. You need immigration brownie points, and usually a job to go to, in order to do this. It's easy to get too old for this without noticing.

                2. Northern EU, or similar. Basically Netherlands and Germany: there is work there, you can do it without the language, and they are in the EU so there is little formality. Belgium and France may count, and Switzerland really belongs here, although neither Northern by compass nor really in the EU.

                3. Southern EU: use the ease of travel in the EU to go and live somewhere pleasant and normally cheaper, like Spain; and commute weekly to work. As indeed many of us have to do from the UK anyway.

                I think that's about it, if you're still working on-site.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by Foxy Moron View Post
                  Where would you go?
                  Where the streets are paved with cheese!

                  There's no cats in america.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Like Expat says, I'd love to know where this place is with a perfect mix of high paid jobs and non (or fewer) of the problems the UK has.

                    Comment

                    Working...
                    X