TAX RELIGION! TAX RELIGION! TAX RELIGION!

Joe Hockey wants to alter the age pension. He wants to increase pension age from 65 to 70.

Many people, because of the nature of the work they have done ovcr their lifetimes are unable to work till they drop!

Joe Hockey, like others before him, refuses to tax religions.

The main reason of course is that so many of the likes of Hockey belong to religions which have never had to pay tax and are, of course, inordinately wealthy.

If religions were to be taxed, governments would lose their votes - or would they?

Considering what some of the largest religions of this country have done to some of their younger parishioners - and got away with - and not had to pay for their misdeeds - it is a disgrace that governments have not imposed taxes on them.

Instead, governments of all persuasions deem it easier to scapegoat the poorest and most vulnerable members of the community and lower their incomes, one way or another, to increase their budgets.

Do they increase taxes to the already fabulously wealthy? Of course not!

It is time voters showed governments that they mean business when they tell them to tax the wealthy - and religions - but too many of the voting public seem to be fearful and intimidated by those in power.

...........and what is desperately needed is for taxes on alcoholic drinks to be magnified, durgs to be legalised and taxed, and governments to wake up to themselves and start actually governing!

AUSTRALIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION, VICTORIAN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION - OXYMORONS - MORE MORONS THAN OXYS!

There are two organisations in Australia, one a national body and the other a state body, which are supposed to be organisations whose charters enable them to engage in assessing  human rights in our communities, and where there seem to be problems of various sorts, to try to come to a resolution and settle the possible disputes involved.

What do we find?

Australian Human Rights Commission - a new appointee to the board is a political appointee by a government already notorious for its record on human rights abuses.

Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission - a recent appointee to the board is someone from a community organisation which is notorious for its record on hypocrisy - it is a body fortunately not in a position to be able to be guilty of human rights abuses.

SELECTIVE INDIGNATION!

An article in the newspapers during the week of 31 December 2012 to 4 January 2013 - has produced some interesting analyses.

Pension reductions have been forced on single women with children to force them into newstart allowance and to make them look for employment when the youngest child turns 8. There are less and less jobs and if incomes are reduced, searching for jobs becomes more and more difficulty because of associated costs. No matter, an Australian Labor Party (sic) has all the answers for social problems, as ever robbing the poor to pay the rich and make them richer. Hence the growing divide between rich and poor!

On 1 July 2009 the Rudd ALP government "married" gay, lesbian, transgender, HIV couples living together and made them into "married couples" in itself and antiquated outmoded custom where men owned women and no woman was entitled to a single pension when her husband retired and was given a pension. Married couples did not and do not each get a single pension - they get a married rate pension, considerably less than 2 single pensions - and this is now 2013!!

Fast forward to the here and now! When the two of us were "married" by Kevin Rudd and his bunch of merrie men and women, and our single pensions which we had been receiving during our 70s and some of our 80s were combined into a "married" rate pension, we each lost about $100 per fortnight.

The Rudd government refused to provide a "grandfathering" clause to this change thus apparently ensuring a saving annually to the federal government of about $66 million per year.

In addition, now that we had a joint and combined income, where previously I personally as an individual received extra income from two small superannuation indexed pensions which, when they went up with indexing increased my income by a few cents a week, Centrelink reduced my pension by a few cents per fortnight, but now that we had been turned into Siamese twins by the government, when my pension was reduced fortnightly, so too was my partner's, thus saving the federal government a paltry sum which was expended on sending us letters each time with our amended incomes.

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction!

Where is the understanding of low income people by a government hell-bent on ensuring that their capitalist friends are enriched immeasurably - by a few paltry dollars from pensioners and single parents?

Spare us from their tears!