Still trying to buy votes on tick

You might have thought that the news that welfare payments will be higher than tax revenues raised from those actually working might have made some impression on those currently running the Westminster shooting match.

And the prediction that by the end of the year the welfare bill will be higher than taxes from the workers and their national insurance contributions combined you might have thought would at least have slowed down the spending of our money.

But not a bit of it. The welfare culture and benefits as a career option are still alive and well in Whitehall where the Government are still trying to buy votes for next year's election.

Anyone still drawing breath must have worked out by now that as a nation we are skint yet far from telling everyone that belts need to be tightened and spending cut - and what better place to start than benefits - all we get from the Government is dire warnings that everyone will suffer if the Tories win the next election because they will cut spending.

Not only that but we are told the spending will continue to grow under Labour and we even get grandiose plans with names such as Winning the Fight for Britain's future or the current Building Britain's Future and other such cobblers with talk of extra investment in schools and hospitals - presumable we are not seen as being bright enough to remember what little return we have had so far for the billions poured into health and education since 1997.

Then we are all going to have access to mega fast broadband which, despite telecoms all being privatised, and very profitable, we will be paying to install at the rate of a £6 tax per bill which in many cases - mum, dad and two kids on mobiles and a house landline, will be £30 a year- to provide a service many people already have for free. I have not yet heard any mention of all these private telecom companies buying or renting back from us, the taxpayer, all this infrastructure we are providing for them. Perhaps it is in the small print.

None of this will happen or need to be paid for before the next election of course and just in case anyone questions whether we can even afford to print the plan let alone implement it, the Government's biennial spending review - a sort of audit - has also been delayed until after the next election.

And speaking of the next election as an out and out spoiler there is the British council houses for British families policy which is nothing more than a blatant attempt to pull back votes from the BNP.

The previous policy based purely on need left ordinary decent folk languishing on housing lists in their home town for years while migrants with large families were housed at once. Locals were not adverse to using the system either. Any girls who fancied their own place but didn't really fancy a job to pay for it, employed pregnancy to go to the top of the housing list and set them up for a career in benefits.

Does anyone believe that if the BNP had not been picking up votes the policy would have changed?

Meanwhile figures today show that the public sector pensions schemes are unsustainable and for every two pounds a private sector worker puts into his own pension pot his is putting three pounds into the public sector pot.

What we need is what we do not have, a party to tell us how much we can afford to spend, what our priorities need to be and then promise to cut the rest including benefits which should be regarded as a safety net and not a wage for not working. Come up with that plan and it could be a winner at the next election rather than the current offer of various Government member's grannies in return for votes.