Our new Wanker of the Week is muddled Labour politician Harriet Harman. No surprise there, then. Here's why ...
Harriet Harman has praised ‘heroic’ immigrants who claim welfare payments in Britain and use the cash to support families living abroad. She said the Government should make it easier for them to send the money home and called for tax refunds to encourage more immigrants to follow suit, in particular those who paid for their children to be educated in the Third World.
The Labour Deputy Leader, who is also the party’s spokesman on International Development, derided ‘those who say we should look after our own first’ in the recession and vowed to fight any attempt to cut the £9.4 billion overseas aid budget.
Last night the Government challenged her; International Development Minister Alan Duncan called on Ms Harman to explain her 'bizarre' comments.
Her comments were made at a meeting at Southwark town hall in her South London constituency, called to find ways to increase the flow of money from Britain to other nations in ‘remittances’ – money sent by families who have settled here to those left behind. The meeting was attended by many local voters with Nigerian, Ugandan and other foreign backgrounds, as well as representatives of aid charities.
An eyewitness said: ‘Harriet led a discussion on how to back up what she called the “hidden heroes of development through developing new policies on remittances”.’
Ms Harman said she had conducted a survey of constituents, mainly West Africans, attending her surgeries who were regularly sending money back home to sustain children and other relatives. ‘She said she had been amazed by how many were doing this,’ said a source. ‘Some were themselves in receipt of State benefits here and were still sending what they could abroad.’ (Our underlining - GOS)
Ms Harman said she intended to launch a new international survey to learn how other countries handled remittances to poorer nations to enable Britain to ‘make the procedure easier, even possibly with some sort of tax relief for those who send payments to educate relatives abroad’.
Her radical proposal was supported by some at the meeting. But one member of the audience said Ms Harman would have to be ‘careful’ how she campaigned on the issue. ‘She was told that if it was found the majority of people sending remittances were on benefits, critics would say it proved that they are receiving too much in State handouts if they can still send money abroad,’ according to one person who was present.
A Conservative official said: ‘The idea that people should come here from Africa, claim welfare benefits and send it all back home is ridiculous and irresponsible.’
Naturally the article in the Mail attracted a massive number of comments from readers. We made it 1 comment in favour of Harman and 321 against. Here are some ...
“The woman's bloody mad!!!”
“Nothing new here, except a Labour politician being open about the party's ideology of internationalism and re-distribution of wealth. As the country goes more and more to the Left (engineered by the educational establishment over recent generations) so these Labour politicians feel more comfortable being open about it. They have changed the face of our country for ever through uncontrolled mass immigration which is still out of control. Won't be long before we join the Third World but why should dictatorial politicians like Harman worry - she'll still be one of the elite.”
“How low will these people sink in order to attract votes? - it is all about them and their success and the country and the population can go to hell as long as their success is assured. Absolutely shameful statement and unconscionable whilst real heroes who fought for this country and those who continue to risk their lives in our name are treated appallingly.”
“If the government is giving these people enough money to live on and send some to their families abroad, they are getting too much. Benefits should be given to people to help them back onto or on the employment ladder. When they are employed and have a wage, then they can then send their well earned money back to their families abroad.”
“This encapsulates Labour's approach - having lost the support of British people they resort to securing votes from immigrants, hence the open border policy and generous benefit system.”
“This is just the beginning - we will be seeing much more of this in the near future as the only way you can get elected and stay in power in a constituency that is located in an inner city full of ethnic groups and immigrants or out of work spongers is to side with them ... if you were an immigrant or anyone living off the tax payers would you vote for an MP that wanted to cut your income? The minority is now pulling the strings and we let them.”
"Why is she so generous to foreigners who have not paid into our system, yet the government refuses us OAPs who choose to live abroad any increases in State pension? We have paid into the system all our working lives for 40 to 60 years and some of us are still paying. Where is the justice and fairness in that?”
“It's a pity we don't still hang traitors. There wouldn't be many people left in the shadow cabinet. I'm not convinced that this disgusting woman actually believes what she says; like many so-called socialists she likes to cloak herself with an ideology that she believes makes her look heroic. She is pandering to Labour's specially imported immigrant electorate. It would be far too conventional for her to support the British people. Most people grow out of socialism, people like her are still too juvenile to leave the addiction behind.”
“The taxpayer must not be asked to support family members NOT present in this country, they are not our concern because they do not contribute to our economy. The only way we can secure our own country's financial future is by our own money going back into our economy - anyone sending money abroad does so at their own cost. I'm glad that Labour are no longer in power.”
Columnist Melanie Phillips could be trusted to put her finger on the nub of the problem ...
“Ms Harman ... does not appear to grasp the difference between earnings and welfare ... it is outrageous to extol their (i.e. welfare payments') diversion to prop up the needy abroad. For this is swindling the British taxpayer, who understands that this money is to be used to support the needy at home.
That indeed is what a ‘welfare state’ means. It is a compact between Britain’s government and those who reside in the country. The idea that it is to be used instead as a kind of global poor relief fund is utterly bizarre.
Yet to Ms Harman, such behaviour is ‘heroic’. What a debasement of the language ... true heroes sacrifice themselves out of a sense of duty towards their country. Ms Harman wants people to milk her country by abusing its sense of duty.
Of course Ms Harman has always taken positions which are as unjust as they are ridiculous. Take, for example, her oppressive and destructive equality laws. Or her campaigns against marriage and the entire male sex, which she seems to regard as intrinsically violent and oppressive towards women (one always wondered whether her trade union leader husband Jack Dromey was sufficiently androgynous to meet his wife’s exacting feminist requirements).
Those who dismissed Ms Harman because she cut such an absurd figure were much mistaken — and not just because of her pernicious effect upon business, the traditional family and the male of the species. For Ms Harman’s extremism is rooted in a wholesale and terrifying denial of justice and reality that characterises the progressive intelligentsia in general. This is because the whole purpose of its political existence is to create the unattainable utopia of the brotherhood of man. Which is why the Labour Government of which Ms Harman was such an ornament subjected this country to unlimited immigration. The result has been impossible pressure on the public services, destruction of the country’s identity and character, and widespread resentment. And those who dare object are branded as racists or xenophobes.
It was, after all, attitudes like this that caused Labour to all but destroy Britain. Ms Harman’s remarks remind us that if ever they were to be re-elected, they may be expected to finish the job.”
So, congratulations, Harriet Harperson. You are our Wanker of the Week. But then you've been here before, haven't you? That would make you a recidivist (a word we've been aching to use here, because ... well, it's such a nice word, isn't it?), except that a recidivist is one who relapses or returns to their old ways, and that doesn't really apply to you, does it? You aren't returning to your life of wrong-headed stupidity, because you never really left it.
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