Goodwill to None?

It's freezing cold, Google appears to have turned off the search traffic to everyone except their own properties and their corporate buddies like Amazon, (you can see the tumbleweed blowing through my sites), and as a consequence I'm too tired and pissed off to bother even attempting to post anything today.  Just a regular winter Thursday.  It doesn't even feel very seasonal, despite the increased occurrences of garish Christmas lights on people's houses, the biting cold and the frost which has made Crapchester look like Narnia for the past couple of days.  Maybe it is because I've spent most of the week alternately rushing around in search of Christmas presents and shivering.  Perhaps it just down to the marked lack of Christmas spirit being demonstrated in society at large.

I mean, just look at the government's benefit 'reform' proposals which, even by their low standards, are pretty despicable.  Even worse are the accompanying attempts to demonise the poor, with people on benefits being characterised as 'shirkers' rather than 'workers'.  George Osborne's sanctimonious rhetoric about how it isn't fair that 'hard working people' getting up for work early should have to see the still drawn curtains of their'shirking' neighbours represents a new low in the class war.  It is clearly ridiculous, when we are in the middle of a recession precipitated by Osborne's banker pals and perpetuated by his economic incompetence, to suggest that people have chosen to be unemployed. Quite obviously they are claiming benefits because they've lost their jobs and, thanks to Tory policies, insufficient new jobs are being created.  Oh, I know all about the supposed fall in the unemployment figures, but come on - most of those jobs are low-paid part time jobs, not substitutes for real work.  Sadly, it appears that there are some people who actually believe all this shit the Tories are spouting.  Fucking incredible - where's your seasonal spirit of goodwill, you moronic bastards?