Prime Minister David Cameron is a man who talks a lot of shit.

He is insistent that we need to cut public expenditure.

He claims that he wants the Con Dem coalition to be the greenest government ever.

And yet in June, he spent £303,006 of our money on a four day trip to Canada. £303,006 on travel, food and accommodation in FOUR DAYS? Perhaps part of the massive cost was the insanely environmentally un-friendly private jet he chartered for him and his mates…

You can find these figures and many more in the Cabinet’s figures on ministerial gifts, hospitality, travel and meetings with external organisations.

The figures also include a list of presents received by Cameron, Clegg and Co.

Just for fun, let’s see what they all got in the period May-July 2010.

Cameron was given jewellery, bowls and boxes, tennis racquets and wine, whisky, books, hampers, an iPad, a wallhanging, a pen set, leather goods, ties, more jewellery, a clock, a painting, another iPad, and two rugs.

And Clegg got… nothing. Not a thing.

The government has announced that they will no longer lock up asylum seeking kids.

Coincidentally, I have the strangest sense of déjà vu…

We’ll have to wait and see if they’re got their fingers crossed behind their backs this time, too, or whether they’re actually capable of doing what they say they will.

Nick Clegg said:

The change prioritises doing the right thing over looking and sounding tough.. reforms which will give the UK one of the most child-friendly immigration systems in the developed world.

It’s great that the government finally recognises that imprisoning innocent children is inhumane, something which David Cameron apparently described as a “scandal”.

665 asylum seeking children have been held in detention in the past year alone, in centres which are notorious for their brutality and racism. This should never happen again. But are the new proposals any better?

According to the plans, no children will be detained as of May 2011. But why wait? It’s not like any government departments will need to be dismantled or any staff will need to be given notice and redundancy packages. This move doesn’t require six months of preparation – just stop putting children in jail.

And once the the changes are enacted, parents would still be detained in high security complexes but their children would be assigned minders so they can “move around freely”.

Um. What? So these already extremely vulnerable children are going to have to watch their parents be imprisoned for no reason, but it’s ok, because they’ll get a social worker/babysitter to allow them to continue their lives as normal? No part of that is either normal or acceptable. Besides which – young children like Wania Shabaz, who was eight months old when she was taken, don’t really do much moving around freely without their parents.

Imprisoning asylum seekers and taking their children into care until they’re forcibly deported to a country they don’t know is just as inhumane and unjustified as keeping the children in prison with their parents is.

Just let them stay.

Colin Firth was one of many high profile supporters that came out to back the Lib Dems prior to the election earlier this year.

He has now confirmed that his no longer supports the party, saying:

I think it is profoundly disillusioning if you are a student who registered to vote simply because of what the Liberal Democrat were promising, and many, many did and simply because of what the Liberal Democrats had to say about tuition fees and things. It is one of the reasons I went in that direction.

As well as saying that the Liberal Democrats and their kowtowing to the Tories and the cuts agenda “made it difficult for us who thought progressive politics would be the way forward.”

And he’s right – it has been very difficult for people who invested all their hopes and dreams into a political party posing as progressive.

What we can learn from the recent behaviour of the Lib Dems (as well as the SNP in the Scottish Parliament, and Obama in the USA) is that politicians with progressive promises have never, and will never, make real change. They are too invested in our political system and the capitalist regime it props up, and is propped up by.

If we want things like free education, free healthcare, progressive taxation, free school meals, an end to nuclear weapons and all the other things we’ve been promised by politicians who promptly changed their minds after election over the years, we need to stop investing our hopes in our votes, and start taking action to make real change. System change.

We have the power.

You may have heard of Jody McIntyre -- he is the wheelchair user who was violently dragged from his chair and along the ground twice at the student demonstations in London last week. McIntyre, who has cerebral palsy, was interviewed by the BBC last night about what happened.

If you have any confusion about who was responsible for violence at the student protests, watch this video in full. You can also read Jody’s account of what happened on his blog.

The interviewer, Ben Brown, is clearly a piece of human shit -- you can make a complaint about his conduct here.

The media have put a lot of effort into making Camilla-and-Charles-were-frightened the main image of violence last week -- the real violence was perpetrated against people like Jodie McIntyre and Alfie Meadows, who had to undergo life saving emergency brain surgery after being beaten by the police.

Bonus: here’s Ben Brown being made a fool of.

Some of you may remember earlier this year, SSY members chased Nick Clegg out of Glasgow when he turned up in our local community centre.

We had found out about Clegg’s public meeting literally half an hour before it began, and were most perplexed about how he managed to fill the Woodside Halls with people despite not publicising the meeting at all… but we shrugged it off and carried on furiously making placards.

We can now reveal that not only had the Lib Dems “bussed in activists from across the country – and across the border…” they also paid companies to ‘recruit’ audience members, spending £9000 on finding gullible chumps to make Cleggy look good at the meeting in Glasgow, as well as four further meetings in England.

The list of ways in which the Lib Dems have duped the public just keeps getting longer and longer…

Men, we’ve decided to give you some handy hints on what to get your womenfolk this Christmas.

We don’t really care about any of the things we pretend to be interested in -- what we want this Christmas is for you to find us sexy enough to give us the honour of pleasuring you.

So, please, buy us underwear -- the more impractical, uncomfortable and ’sexy’ the better. After all, that’s what underwear is for, right? Pleasing packaging on the sweet product underneath?

Bra company La Senza have also noticed that men are too stupid to know what their wives and girlfriends are actually interested in, and will need a little extra help -- so they’ve come up with this handy new campaign “aimed at men to help them with their Christmas shopping”.

They’ve put together The Cup Size Choir -- a choir of women, arranged by how big their tits are. Classy.

Firstly, how does watching a load of semi-naked women writhe around and make sex noises help anyone with their Christmas shopping?

And let’s analyse this video a little bit.

In the introduction, ‘The Notes’, each woman is introduced -- by her cup size, of course (who needs names?) -- and gives the viewer a sultry look of… well I think it’s meant to be desire, but all it really does is illustrate that if you are buying La Senza’s products, you are not buying underwear. You are buying women.

Ladies A, B, C and D are introduced standing up and facing the camera, whereas E, F and G are flat on their backs. -- letting gravity give a helping hand in the illusion that you can have plus-sized breasts without a plus-sized body.

So yes, the being-in-naught-but-yer-undies and the lying-on-a-bed aspects made it pretty clear that the “singing” these women are doing is meant to be orgasmic… but who the hell sounds like that when they’re getting it on? As Jezebel once wisely said:

And as if that’s not enough, you can play along and interact with these sexy ladies -- that’s right, those orgasmic noises of pleasure can be controlled by your touch. And each time you make one of the women “sing”, the bed they’re so strategically arranged on is pushed downwards, and springs back up -- it’s almost as if you’re thrusting into her in the real world!

La Senza, we’ve got a message for you.

1) Men are not stupid. Stop trying to make them second guess themselves. When we tell our male partners what we want for Christmas -- that is what we want. We are not trying to trick them into failing by not buying the correct underwear set. If we want underwear, we will tell them what we want -- and what size to get it in.

2) As mentioned above, if we want underwear for Christmas, we’ll ask for it. But the super-sexy-make-me-scream image that you’re selling is not a present for women. It’s a present for men.

3) The sound of our orgasms do not correspond with our cup size.

Now kindly fuck off.

P.S. Additional reporting by Brogan.

P.P.S. I know bra burning is a myth, but it is clearly a very appropriate image for this article.

When the Budget was announced this Summer, one facet of the backlash came from women’s rights campaigning group The Fawcett Society, who initiated a legal challenge against the Budget, on the grounds that it was unfair to women, who would bear the brunt of the majority of the cuts.

As we reported at the time, a gender audit of the budget showed that more than 70% of the revenue raised from direct tax and benefit changes would come from female taxpayers.This audit was initiated by the opposition, and took place only after the budget had been announced.

The Treasury are legally obliged to carry out a pre-budget audit to check any disproportionate impact on women, ethnic minorities , LGBT and disabled people. But they didn’t.

Theresa May, InEqualities Minister, even wrote to the Chancellor at them time warning him about the necessity of these audits (not to protect communities in need, of course – but to prevent them from suing the government).

This week, the Fawcett women were finally allowed to present their case in an initial hearing. A high court judge heard that the budget cuts were having a “grossly disproportionate and devastating” impact on women, as the group sought a declaration that the government had acted unlawfully by formulating the budget without paying due regard to gender equality laws.

Despite the government admitting that they hadn’t carried out any assessment on how the budget might unduly affect women, and that these assessments should have taken place, the judge dismissed the case, calling it “unarguable and academic”.

Well, alright then. So long as the Con Dems are willing to say that they ‘regret’ breaking the law and fucking over women (and potentially many other under represented groups), they can just do what they like? Thanks for clearing that up for us, Lord Fuckface.

But as well as the royal fucking over that we’re getting from the government this week, they’re also going to make it much easier for our employers to fuck us over, too. Yay!

Plans to force companies to disclose how much they pay men and women, and therefore embarrass them into paying women a fair wage, are to be scrapped. Instead, companies will be gently encouraged to narrow the pay gap – one of the worst in Europe – you know, if they can be bothered.

Sigh.

Prince William and his lovely lady friend Kate Middleton are to marry at Westminster Abbey on Friday 29th April 2011 – which has been declared a bank holiday in celebration.

Prime Minister David Cameron said:

The wedding of Kate and William will be a happy and momentous occasion. We want to mark the day as one of national celebration. A public holiday will ensure the most people possible will have a chance to celebrate on the day.

Public holidays are a devolved issue, though… but thankfully, First Minister Alex Salmond has reinforced his allegiance to the royal family and granted us the holiday, too – “so all of Scotland has the opportunity to enjoy the celebrations.” Great.

Bizarre anti-royalist group Republic have criticised the extra holiday, saying it’s “absurd” that the whole of the UK would get a day off for something “most people are not interested in”.

Whilst we at SSY are not remotely interested in a pair of posh weirdos making their patriarchal family line official in the eyes of God and the law – we do positively welcome having two four-day weekends in a row.

Mike Trim: he's well angry.

However, it’s not all good news, as Mike Trim, the head of Exeter City Council’s cleaning services told his local paper:

…the date for next year’s royal wedding has left the council with a major headache…

It means that some city residents may not have their rubbish picked up for four weeks.

I just don’t think William and Kate took waste collections into consideration when they were sorting through dates for their nuptials.

Arseholes.

But regardless of Wills and Kate’s totally inconsiderateness, if you can find it in your heart to forgive them… please do join SSY as we take a rare pilgrimage down to London to *ahem* celebrate the royal wedding. Megabuses are bookable eight weeks in advance, meaning that tickets down to arrive on the morning of the day in question will become available on Monday 7th March, for as little as £5.  You coming?

Less than six weeks ago, we reported that the Vince Cable, Business Secretary and Lib Dem member of the Tory Cabinet, had cancelled a visit to Oxford because he couldn’t face the wrath of the student protesters waiting to face him there, and confront him about his, and his party’s, role in the government’s attacks on education.

It was the beginning of new wave of protests, the birth of a new student movement – and the moment the anti-Lib Dem backlash stepped up a gear.

Since then, hundreds upon thousands of university, college and school students have ruled the streets in a reign of terror… for the Lib Dems at least.

They’ve been forced to cancel regional party conferences and MP’s surgeries,  as it has become increasingly clear that the anger of the student protesters – soon to be priced out of education, and many of whom cast their first vote for the Lib Dems in hope of a better society – is not going to go away.

Whilst they’ve been hiding behind locked doors and closed offices, the Lib Dems are in chaos – with more infighting, backstabbing and lies every day.

Ahead of December 9th’s vote on the tripling of university tuition fees, Nick Clegg is insistent that “Liberal Democrat ministers in government are as one on this, and as a team every single person will vote for this measure on Thursday,” whilst frantically trying to fly allies home (from a climate change conference, no less) to get the extra votes, fearing that Lib Dem MPs will abstain or vote against the government’s proposals. Well known Lib Dems such as former leaders Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell are set to vote against the fees increase. The Lib Dem leader of Newcastle City Council has come out in public against the plans, and assured protesters that he will lobby party leader Nick Clegg not to raise tuition fees and email all the party’s MPs voicing opposition to the fees plan. Resignations have been considered, and promised.

Indeed, it has been revealed that Scottish MP Michael Crockart, who (as we reported yesterday) was victim to a hoax in which an imposter posing as him promised to resign over the issue, in fact did promise to resign! He had been holding secret meetings with student representatives from Edinburgh University at which he assured them he would be voting against fee increases and that his opposition to the fees bill would inevitably involve his resignation from the government.

After yesterday’s confusion, and Crockart’s strenuous denial of any resignation promise, the students went public about the meetings, saying:

For months now, Mike Crockart has confirmed to us that he will vote against tuition fee increases but we have kept quiet until now.

He said that he would resign but he wanted to wait and wait until the last minute so that he could input into the internal Lib Dem debate, because he was quite well placed to do that. And then he would resign. We are not worried whether he resigns or not but we do want him to stick to his promise.

If Crockart doesn’t honour his pledge, we will not only be calling for his resignation from his government post, but his resignation as an MP.

Instead of apologising for being a lying bastard, though, all Crockart had to say for himself was that he was “disappointed” in the students for telling anyone what they had been promised by their elected representative.

The Liberal Democrats have come a long way since we decried them as a bunch of boring bastards in their first mention on this blog little over a year ago. A lot has changed since then, and I don’t think any of us could have predicted Nick Clegg’s rise to stardom and what a key role the Lib Dems would come to play in the government.

I’ll tell you what we did predict though. Point 4 on our list of initial reasons the Lib Dems are rubbish:

They’re going back on their promise to abolish tuition fees.

Hate to say I told you so, but seriously, check out the archive of our Lib Dem coverage for some more pre-election analysis and insight into their all round shiteyness.

A lot of the recent anti-Lib Dem rhetoric has labelled them as treacherous traitors who sold their souls for a seat in Cameron’s Cabinet – but they didn’t have them to sell in the first place.

Political parties make progressive promises in order to trick us into thinking we’ve chosen them, and chosen the system that they’re all so heavily invested in. Of course they then drop those promises like the proverbial hot cakes – we’ve seen it with the SNP administration in the Scottish Government, and now with the Lib Dems.

A change in political parties and prime ministers will never solve any of our problems. We can’t be satisfied with changing who runs society – we need to change the way it’s run. We need socialism. And we’re willing to fight for it.

Rory Stewart: creepy looking bastard.

Tory MP Rory Stewart is an Eton-educated, son of a diplomat, ex-Army officer, professor who tutored Princes William and Harry and a Grade A ARSEHOLE.

When first elected, he said:

It was a bit of a surprise when I became a Tory MP. My friends said it was a stupid idea.

Some areas around here are pretty primitive, people holding up their trousers with bits of twine and that sort of thing.

I have a constituency with 52,000 people and a million sheep. I was in one village where a local kid was run over by a tractor. They took him to Carlisle but they couldn’t be bothered to wait at the hospital. So they put him in a darkened room for two weeks, then said he was fine. But I’m not so sure he was.

I don’t know whether to feel sorry for his constituents or tell them that by voting for him, they got what they deserved.

Non-Tory voting citizens of Penrith and the Border -- we would be happy to grant you asylum, if you’d like to move to sunny Scotland.

Whilst we make preparations for your arrival, please watch this video of your MP looking like a total spanner whilst trying to join in with a load of dancing Santas and remember -- it’ll all be over soon.