About 2 million people in the USA will have their unemployment benefits stopped for Xmas and 3 million will be in this position by the New Year. There is no safety net, unless further emergency benefits are agreed. A number of towns cannot afford to pay for their own emergency services already. I was locked up once in the Middle East as I was regarded as subversive for showing my students how to access journal articles that revealed something of where the oil revenues of their countries went. An unpleasant affair, but I’d have to do the same again. I get the distinct feeling now that we are not able to ask the right questions about where the money, manufacturing and attitudes towards providing work rather than benefits for our peoples has gone.
The USA may be heading into the pit. I shall raise a glass to the west later today, in cheerful solidarity. Our students were out protesting in the snow yesterday. Now who would have thought they could withstand that? Poor Americans have access to guns. Perhaps the revolution is coming at last! I doubt ConDoomed could be stupid enough to combine a benefits reduction with the entrepreneurial issue of guns to the poor so they could fend for themselves. Yet we have so often followed the American Way.
Allcoppedout's Blog 
Well happy Christmas back at you Neil. I’m sure our new Congress will get right to extending those benefits forthwith. If they can be said to do anything well it’s got to be spending money we don’t have. Perhaps the pit is what we need to cull the herd.
I’m very happy I do have a gun. I just wish ammunition wasn’t so expensive.
Always seriously laughing,
dj
Happy Xmas to you Don. I’m just off to the pub with a better smile from being reminded of you mate. I’m working over Xmas and the New Year. Draw the wagons in a circle old friend; that’s my relief platoon’s bugle you can hear in the distance. I now threaten recalcitrant students with exile to Gary, Indiana. I wouldn’t be happy with much less than a Minimax there!
My pal is stranded in Saratoga Springs, laying in imported beer pending my arrival in the fall. He was in military intelligence, so I may need someone to cover my six when we make our break to get back to Blighty for the summer.