To annoy/anger Scottish people!

Hi folks

I was reading my dad’s daily mail yesterday, (I know stupid thing to do really), anyway I saw a small article that stated that there are more people on sick benefits in Scotland and one of the reasons given was that Scottish people are more likely to try and claim disability benefits. This article did not mention that this could be because there are more disabled people in Scotland. If I was Scottish I would be very annoyed by this. I couldn’t help but think there are also more people with MS in Scotland than anywhere else in the world, or was that N. Ireland, well anyway there are a lot! Presumably with the climate in Scotland there are probably lots of people with other diseases too.

Wendy x

There are more Pandas in Scotland than Tory MP’s and I think that explains all you need to know.

Hi, from what I have been told by my daughters M.S. nurse the national average is 1 in 500 people have M.S. but here in Scotland it is 1 in 400 so that is quite a big difference and that is only 1 disease. I also believe we have a high but not necesserily higher than average amount of benefit cheats that need to be weeded out. The Daily Mail is not just anti Scottish, it is anti English/Irish/Wales, rich, poor, thin women, fat women. So really they hate everyone equally and every now and then they stick something in the paper to poke one nation to hate against the other, this times it’s to rile the English in anti Scottish rants, this time next week it will be to rile the Scottish to rant against the English. Think it was to partly sway the vote against Scotland going it alone, try and scare folk into thinking Scotland could not afford to be an independent nation without the English funding us. Which in turn makes the English think that we in Scotland have our grubby little hands in the English pockets and makes the Scottish pride rise up and think we don’t need the English to fund us as we have North Sea Oil or help us in anything when in my humble opinion we need each other. The rest of the article goes on to explain that pound for pound Scotland receives no more than the rest of the United Kingdom, it is just the disability payments that are more but less than average spent on housing so it balances out. The Daily Mail is a skewed and not to be trusted perpetrator of half truths and inflamatory “reporting”. Usually there is just enough truth in their stories to make some folk believe everything they read and this does not help at a time when the whole country is going to hell in a handbasket and we need to pull together to make us a great nation again instead of the reputation we have caused by the loud and leary minority. Linda x

Oh Wendy, after reading your post I thought to myself that anything the Daily Mail has to say does not annoy me as I know they talk rubbish half the time so I read the article to see and thought nope not annoyed, just the usual drivel from them. Then reading back my post I realised just how annoyed I sound by that article, then I realised yip I am annoyed by that article. Their job is done. Sorry for the rant. Linda x

You’ve hit the nail on the head there Linda.

I wish I could stop reading this paper it’s not good for the blood pressure. There was also a photo of Brit Ekland when she was young and how she looks now aged 70 without makeup, now I know she has played on her looks rather than talent over the years but what a cruel thing to do; there was also an article denegrating Jane Austen, and what an audacity that she should appear on our bank notes hinting it was just because she was a woman!

Why do I read this paper do you ask? well it helps to prevent my lovely old dad’s habit of reading aloud, both my mum and his 2nd wife were able to tell him to stop but as his daughter I find it difficult to disrespect him and he may not be around much longer.

Wendy x

Just wondering how to get the bits of half chewed croissant and jam off my laptop.

You are so erudite.

Liz

Ah, the Daily Fail, one of the reasons I’ve had a busy worklife for the last 12 years, they do love a bit of scare-mongering, not to mention misinformation and half a story! :wink:

Sonia x

Every Sunday evening - we have friends round for dinner - they have to work Sundays - so l know she looks forward to not having to prepare dinner. He reads the Daily Mail - and always starts a ‘debate’ based on the so-called facts he has read printed in the Mail. All their facts are fiction - and my OH- who never reads a daily paper but does watch the 24hr news programme on BBC - does retaliate. And it does get quite heated at times. They seem to enjoy the banter - whereas l get really fed up with it. Trouble is, if they did come up with something ‘newsworthy’ - who is going to believe them.

The only good use for daily newspapers is at the bottom of the ferrets cage - for them to cr@p on!!!

I quite agree, it wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t gone through it all with father in law, (I seemed to be the only one who would sit and keep him company) and we had many debates which he loved by like you found it all very trying), and now I have the same with my own father, the problem is that these old folk belive what they read and they do tend to vote!

Wendy x

Pure basic economics. Not an indictmenht on “lazxy and feckless” Scots no matter what the Dail Heil would like to suggest.

Remember that it was government policy rigfht from the days of Thatcher (the Daily Mail’s favourite pin up girl) to Blair (Thatcher’s love child) to encourage long term unemployed people to move from Income Support / Unemployment Benefit to Incapacity Benefits.

This was cynically done to make he unemployment figures look lower than they really were.

If you break down the whole country and compare average income against recorded levels of disability obviously more disadvantaged areas will have more people on benefits. If they have been suffering from recession for a long time they are going to have more of those people on Disability Benefit - not because they are scroungers but because the Government put them there in the first place!

If you looked at other parts of the whole Country such as the North West of England where I come from originally and South Wales where I live now there are still lots of people who were “put on the sick” to make the Government of the day look better. Scotland (like Merseyside and South Wales etc etc) have had high unemployment for years so, of course, benefir rates are going to be higher.

Added to this, if you are disabled or generally in poor health, you are likely to have less income anyway so you are less likely to be living in “posh” area. If you look at areas that you know are “richer” than others you will see far less people with obvious health issues. When I lived in London, I always noted that you saw far fewer people using walking sticks, wheelchairs etc in Clapham than you would in Elephant and Castle and they were only a mile or so apart.

Hello, in the inter-war years the Daily Mail praised the efforts of Oswald Moseley and Adolf Hitler. That sort of says a lot doesn’t it?

Yes Boblatina, I agree I do remember this happening.

John Humphries wrote a piece in the Mail last week, didn’t read all of it but got the gist from my dad, anyway apparently there is to be no more welfare state, we are going down the road of the good old USA, there will have to be more than just food banks to feed the poor, life is going to get very hard for people, I envisage more riots and hope that there are people out there who will fight for the poor as New Labour seem to have stopped being the party for the working classes.

Wendy x

I didn’t know that Steve Snore but I am not surprised.

Wendy x

The Mail feeds on the prejudices of the old, they seem to get more right wing as they age. I’ve given up arguing with my aged but incredibly kind parents as it just causes Aggro when I visit, sad but I’ve pointed out the failings of the right wing press so many times to them that I just smile now and accept that they are misguided but ultimately harmless in their views. Most of my friends parents are the same, it’s almost as if they suffer from right wing dementia.

Hi Louiec,

Know where your’e coming from, wouldn’t buy one if you paid me, well if you paid me lots I might consider it, then put in the recyling bag.

Wendy x

Ooo, I can remember buying a Daily Wail. Not, you understand, because I am old. This was right after the William and Kate wedding, and it was bought for the supplement which was then posted to the US. The remainder was dealt with as Wendy suggests.

@Boblatina - I just love your description of Tony Blair.

Geoff