A Fare-Appeal ?

"They" say that the public get the press they deserve, its true.

And hanging onto the coat tails of the popular press come our Members of Parliament - casting laws by the latest newspaper headlines, actually believing and following the newspaper polls.

What other explanation is there for this story ?

Since christmas hamper company Farepak went into liquidation back in October the popular press and GMTV have been campaigning and championing the cause of all the poor little children up and down the country who will now simply not have any christmas presents to open on christmas day this year because their mums were daft enough to hand money over to someone in their street who then hopefully paid it into Farepak's bank account who then hopefully would send them some Argos and Aldi vouchers in time for little Johnny's christmas box.

You may think that I sound a tad unsympathetic.

You would be correct.

I don't believe for one minute that the uncounted families up and down the country will have nothing at all this christmas, ok they might not have all of the Argos vouchers that they thought they would have, but (for example) since the collapse of Farepak and before christmas they will have three family allowance payments, with two children thats £300+ or £150 per child, plenty enough to avoid a distraught christmas using just a few seconds forethought.

So why do we get a group of MP's signing a petition to ask Britains FTSE100 companies to donate a days profit to the welfare fund that has been set up for the "victims", nay, "innocent wee victims" of the Farepak crash ?

This isn't another tsunami appeal, no-one has died, no-one even knows how many creditors there are nor will they ever know because like other such credit clubs, Farepak didn't deal direct with its savers, the savers handed their money to "agents", often women in the same street as them who agreed to collect the money and distribute the vouchers at christmas, no written records, no membership details means incredibly inaccurate creditor numbers and leaves any appeal fund wide open to massive corruption - all I need to do is find a Farepak agent and offer her a 50% share of anything I get in compensation if she puts me on her list of members.

So far the "victims of Farepak" appeal fund has raised around £5million and they "think" that there could be "up to" 150,000 "victims", so thats £33 each then - thats a nice xmas day turkey dinner and a bottle of cheap whisky to wash it all down with then, so who's christmas has been spoiled ?

Its another example of Members of Parliament jumping on a tabloid newspaper band wagon in order to garner what they see as "good publicity" whereas the non-stupid members of our society can see right through what they are doing and sum them up as shallow, unthinking media whores with a desperation to be re-elected over and over again and make a lifetimes career out of this politiking business, especially as most of them have arrived at the sharp end of politics straight from studying politics at university and without having had the benefit of a real job in the real world first .

We get the professional politicians that we deserve, is there any wonder that they are so far detached from our lives ?