Nuisance Texts - and People

Had one of those texts that tells you you may be in line for compensation is you took out a loan before a certain date?

I got 3 last week - all within 2 minutes and from the same outfit. I replied to one, simply to get someone to call me so I could have a bloody good go at them for sending me unsolicited texts - which if I'm abroad I have to pay for.

Well knock me down with a feather, but no-one called back. Bloody annoying when you purposely want someone to call back because you don't want them to annoy you and they don't. Doubly annoyed!

Yesterday I was reading about government plans to cap what an individual pays toward their care when elderly so as to prevent them having to sell their home. FOR GOD'S SAKE WHY - it's not as if the buggers are going to live there any more. Yet another plan to make the taxpayer pay for what individuals, or their kids, should be paying for.

There are 'heart-rending' stories about arseholes having to sell their parents' houses to pay for care. Well, sorry, but isn't that right and proper? It's as if children are entitled to their parents' houses, come what may. Isn't that morally and ethically wrong?

Care for the elderly should be means tested - the test being applied to both the old person and their kids. If the CSA can chase wayward parents (both make and female) for child maintenance payments, then surely children can be chased for parental maintenance costs - and the money taken from them at source? They should set up the PSA - the Parental Support Agency.

This is what I mean a few days ago about the misplaced sense of self-entitlement that is pervading our society. The state should be there as a last resort for the destitute, not a first resort to protect a middle class individual's investment or inheritance.

Oh, and while I'm at it - the government reducing the tick boxes for school trips and making them easier to organise isn't going to stop greedy and overly litigious parents taking schools to court if something goes wrong and they sense the chance of making a few bob in compensation, which is what puts most schools off organising trips.

Cameron's Big Society should be geared to the above - making citizens take responsibility for themselves and their families. Saving for pensions, caring for their kids, caring for their elderly parents; not expecting the tax payer to fund everything, as that leads to everyone losing out in the long run.

However, people are only human, and scientific tests on humans have demonstrated time after time that if humans are offered money by government, they will grab it with both hands. Government should not be in the business of putting temptation in the way of humans in this manner - it's cruel.

Don't get me wrong - I have no problem at all with the poorest in society availing themselves of state aid; it's the smug, well-off, middle class people who seem to think they're owed everything under the sun that really get my goat. Avaricious, self-centred bastards!