Corporatism at its best ...

You know that we have sunk to a whole new level where it's not specific industries that are holding out the begging bowl, which would be understandable enough, provided the government, as representative of the taxpayer tells them politely to f*** off, but supposedly independent bodies (fakecharities, quangoes, trade unions, regulators etc) doing it on their behalf:

Exhibit One:

Companies will not be allowed to cut cash contributions to underfunded pension schemes if they are still paying dividends to shareholders, the UK Pensions Regulator will announce on Wednesday.

Dude, WTF? The largest single collective shareholder in UK plc are the pension funds of UK plc, whether that money goes in as contribution or as dividends should be neither here nor there. As it happens, cash contributions are much more tax-effective as they come out of pre-corporation tax profits, but hey, if UK plc hasn't worked that out yet, Heaven help you all.

Exhibit Two:

The government is being urged to give the same financial support to manufacturing during the recession as it has to failing UK banks. The Work Foundation think tank wants emergency state funding to help save jobs and companies.

Woah! Stop right there! The Work Foundation is a fakecharity, as we have established before, see footnote here. The BBC also get the inevitable rent-a-quotes from Brendan Barber and Derek Simpson, leader of the largest trade unions, which receive £3 million a year from the taxpayer-funded 'Union Modernisation Fund' yet still find it in their hearts to donate about £10 million a year to the ruling Labour Party.

I would have expected to see a sound-bite from Steven Alimbritis of the Engineering Employers' Federation - who is surprisingly left-wing, but there is none. And this is not just down to BBC bias - the EEF aren't mentioned in The Metro's write up of the same press release either.

Exhibit Three:

An extra £4.2bn a year will have to be spent on tax credits if the government is to meet its target of halving child poverty, a report warns. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) estimates that 2.3 million children will be in poverty in 2010, missing the 1.7 million target set in 1999.

The various Joseph Rowntree bodies are in fact funded by a good old fashioned trust set up by Quaker and erstwhile Land Value Tax enthusiast Joseph Rowntree at the turn of the last century, although they seem to have lost their way badly, and now tackle the symptoms, and not the causes of poverty.

The BBC get the inevitable rent-a-quote from the Child Poverty Action Group, which is a bona fide fakecharity, which receives £500,000-odd from various government bodies (note 3, page 21), as well as from Joseph Rowntree (who pays the piper ...). I'd love to know who pays them £1,314,000 a year for 'publications', I'd hazard a guess that some government department or other pays them to do leaflets and stuff, there's hardly a big market for welfare reform porn in this country.

HH looks at this madness in more depth, the post title sums it up nicely in one word.