Parody of "Conservative vs. Liberal" polls

It is quite wrong to just help people when they need help. You have to show them how to help themselves then they will cope better in the future and not become a statistic of failure.

If I give a starving family a fish they can eat for a day. If I give them a boat and nets and teach them how to catch fish they not only eat for life but can produce a surplus and earn cash and elevate their condition.

Of course at a time when the seas are becoming overfished and polluted, that may be a bad analogy!! But you get the general idea.

That's why I support Comic Relief, Sports Relief and Practical Action - you can too and make a real difference in this world!

Yeah, the whole point is to empower people, but there really are people that need immediate help that are sometimes overlooked. I may be assuming this, but I'm sure in Scotland, there aren't quite the massive numbers of homeless people, or people living in extreme poverty as there are in the good ol' USA.

Proportionally it's probably similar although we do have the Welfare State so medicine is free to those who need it, we have an old age pension and state benefits for people who can't work (incapacity) or who can't find a job (there's a retraining scheme) so there is a safety net in place.

I have a friend who works in the 'alternatives to prison' team. This is a newish service - only 15 years! They work with non violent offenders and help them with the problems which they face and teach them how to get through them. It's been reasonably successful with much less reoffending than any other system. They also do community service - it's not an easy option as all their spare time is used up either in community service or in the retraining programme. Their community also benefits.

The Youth service also works with an 'alternatives to prosecution' service which takes young people who would otherwise start on the road to prison and a criminal record and ties them in to behaviour contracts, community service, training and group therapy. There are also early intervention schemes which work with young people who are beginning to show signs that they might offend and uses a variety of tools including those used on the alternatives to prosecution but with some training in liesure activities. This has led to young people becoming qualified as coaches and a couple being signed on by the local football team and they'll be playing in the Premier League next season. A very successful project.

BJake: We aint got no commie welfare state in the good ol' USA. We also got more people in jail than just about anywhere. Many are in there for posession of drugs, prostitution, and other non violent crimes. Of course, if the Bush crime family decides that you are a terrorist, than it's off to gitmoland where waterboarding and other torture methods await. Rule of law, constitution, just quaint old notions/documents. I actually like my country though, just not the current direction it has gone in.

Of course, Universal Health Care would interfere with the profit margins of the sacred insurance companies, so that is ALWAYS off the table. Sure, a few of the liberal dems talk about it, but once they get their big fat bribes...er...I mean lobbyist contributions, it all gets "compromised" away. There are a few politicians that are exceptions to the rule like Dennis Kucinich and Barbara Lee, but most of them just spread 'em wide for the corporations.

Isn't it interesting that the US government puts more money into health care than the UK does per head of population and yet we have a National Health Service and you don't?