LEGAL AID is the equivalent of BENEFITS for the lowest of the low income earners, jail birds, illegal immigrants etc., and as a honey pot for long winded lawyers. The rich can afford the rich price of lawyers; the poor – through free legal aid supported by the middle classes through taxation – can afford the rich price of lawyers, whilst the backbone of society, the middle classes, cannot obtain legal aid and aren’t rich enough to afford overpaid lawyers. As always the middle gets the shaft. Legal aid should be financed by the lawyers either by a required contribution by all lawyers making in excess of 100k a year or by pro-bono work !! As long as lawyers fees are outside the ability of ordinary working people to afford then then the blatant discrimination against them in legal matters should require the abolition of legal aid as it stands until everyone can afford lawyers.
Month: March 2014
VICARIOUS RESPONSIBILITY – ANOTHER WAY THAT COUNCILS COULD RAISE INCOME
In most cities and towns of the World, it is illegal to post bills on city property, however, people do it, and taxpayers spend a lot of money – liberally dispensed by the cities involved – to have them removed. The simplest way to deal with the problem is to invoke the law of vicarious responsibility: they may not know who posted the bills but they know who is paying for their distribution and that can be determined by looking at what is being advertised: go to the source and fine then at least the equivalent of the cost of removing them plus punitive damages.
BRITISH AID TO THE DRUG TRADE
In the last 10 years, during which time the UK government, has doled out pots of money to re-habilitate Afghanistan, it would appear that a large chunk of the money has been used to improve opium poppy production, which has trebled during the same period of time.
The UK’s foreign aid bill – which Mr. Cameron, bloody mindedly, holds at 0.07% of the national GDP, and which is currently around 17 billion pounds a year – has been used to help countries that expand opium production, make atom bombs, support dictatorships and continue to undercut manufacturing costs in the UK to the detriment of all UK citizens !
FORTALEZA, BRAZIL – THEN AND NOW
The World Cup games will be here in just under three months so people might get to see some images of the city on TV…since I first came here a long time ago it has grown from about 250,000 to 2,500,000 people in just 60 years.. the roads are choked with cars and the people keep coming to the seaside city which boasts that it’s Summer lasts 12 months. Currently about 50 high-rise apartment buildings are under construction along with another mega mall to accommodate the continuing demand for safe living spaces for new arrivals and locals alike.
From a city where – in 1956 – I lived safely in a house with a garden, a 2 foot high front wall and windows with just wooden shutters that stayed open all day – no glass, iron bars, hot water or air conditioning – this city is now a place where the majority live in air conditioned homes, travel in air conditioned cars and work in air conditioned offices, stores, malls, etc.; only the people who have to work outdoors, the poor and the tourists walk the streets; the houses are rapidly being bulldozed and the middle and upper classes are all moving into apartment buildings secured by armed guards, or gated communities where people can live in homes like they used to in the past – but the difference is that the developments are surrounded by high walls and the entrances to the communities are secured by armed guards ! What few houses remain in Fortaleza are almost always surrounded by 10 foot high walls topped with broken glass and barbed wire, or they are in the shanty towns where the poor live and don’t need such security. The city has a peripheral area, not unlike Paris’s no-go zones, where people are killed daily, however, just like Paris, the secret to safety is not to enter such areas. The tourist and upmarket commercial areas have a sufficiency of police and private security as to make them safe places to live or visit. Welcome to 21st century Brazil !
TRUECYNIC 