Reality. For those of us living in this country Reality is an integral part of our existence. And that reality is not a good one for most of us at present. Reality is huge unemployment, massive cuts in funding of our health and education system, a “bedroom tax” that is as flawed as it is audacious, and of course benefits cuts leaving some people to live on just £53 a week.

That's not a lot of money. But Iain Duncan Smith, henceforth to be called IDS (despite him causing a great deal of IBS in those who have to have dealings with him...), says that it's easy. If you don't know who he is he's the Works and Pensions Secretary. It's his job to look after the poor. And most people don't really think he's doing a very good job of doing that.

So much so that a petition was started on change.org. A simple petition as it happens. All it wanted was IDS to do one week, just one week, on £53. A simple challenge you'd think and one that IDS with jump at to prove that his austerity measures work.

This petition was, in fact, so popular that over 350,000 people have signed it. Which I'd argue is a significant number of the electorate so you'd think that good ol' IDS would want to respond.

And respond he has. Now here he had a rare opportunity. He could've chosen to accept the challenge and prove categorically that it can be done, easily as he claimed, and thus prove to the nation that his unpopular measures do work. He could prove that his Tory party mantra “We're all in this together” has a basis in fact.

But... As you've more than likely guessed, the word “could” really is the give away here, he's chosen instead NOT to do that.

In fact of the whole thing good ol' IBS (typo-intended and WILL be used henceforth. So there) had this to say:

“This is a complete stunt which distracts attention from the welfare reforms which are much more important and which I have been working hard to get done. I have been unemployed twice in my life so I have already done this. I know what it is like to live on the breadline."

IBS - http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/10327664.IDS__Petition_is_nothing_more_than_a_stunt_/

Do you IBS? Do you really? I somehow doubt it. He once said that being unemployed he was devistated to tell his wife and he had to survive on his savings. Right there he's distanced himself for a great deal of the populace. People just don't have savings any more. They can't afford it. His wife, Betsy, is the daughter of the 5th Baron Cottesloe who served as lord-lieutenant of Buckinghamshire in the 1980s and 1990s. IBS and his wife, who sent their children to Eton, moved into Lord Cottesloe's 17th-century Old House in the village of Swanbourne in Buckinghamshire in 2002. His in-laws moved into smaller accommodation to make way for the Duncan Smiths and their four children. So really is this a man, who even when faced to live off of his savings, knows what it's like on the bread line? Like hell he is!

He really missed a trick here. If he responded and did this he could've won people over to his cause. Instead all he's gone and done is re-enforce just how out of touch Big Dave, Norman Osbourne and IBS are along with the rest of this Conservative-Liberal Demacrat Coalition. They've certainly Con-Dem-ed us haven't they?

And that's before I got started on the so called bedroom tax whereby people in social housing who have a spare room now have to either have their benefits cut or face a larger rent bill unless they move somewhere smaller. There are people in their late 50s who have had nearly 40 years in their homes and now face the daunting prospect of moving because they can't afford the extra cost staying put will incur. It's frankly insane

All this from a Government who reduced income tax on the most wealthy members of our society.

All this from a Government who just do not get it.

When as a Tory Government you find the The Daily Fail is against you on most of your policy decisions you have to worry. When everyone in fact would appear against you you really should have a long hard look in the mirror. No-one voted for this coalition of the damned. Labour in fact got more votes at the last election... But we're stuck being Con-Dem-ed aren't we?

I'd claim to being shocked that we've not forced an election yet. But let's face it the Labour party are currently something of a joke of an opposition party. The alternatives left then are the fringe groups, UKIP, The BNP and The Green Party. Yes I'm lumping them all in together, and no, I really don't care. In terms of political sway they are all similar.

This Government needs a wake up call. If we can't rely on petitions, the oppositon or any other political parties, or anything else for that matter what have we left to do?

I reckon we should all take it back and go old school on ol' IBS ass.

A snail mail campaign. Signing a petition online is, as IBS has proven, easily ignored. If all 350,000 plus people who signed it online all sent him a formal letter asking him to do this? That's a lot less easily ignored. And wasn't it John Major's Government who told us that we'd all be guaranteed a response when sending a letter to a member of Government?

So snail mail him today. In fact do it twice to both his constitency office and at The Palace of Westminister. Let him know what you think of him and his policies. Send him a formal letter requesting him to prove his £53 a week claims. And let's hope and pray to whichever God or Gods you believe, or don't, that this might be the wake up call IBS needs.

For those joining in his snail mail address is:

Iain Duncan Smith MP

Parliamentary office

House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

Tel: +44 2072192664
Tel: +44 2072191210
Fax: +44 2072194867

His constituency office address is:

Iain Duncan Smith MP

64A Station Road
Chingford
London
E4 7BE
Tel: +44 2085244344
Fax: +44 2085239697

Oh and as a final note? If you're in his constituency good look trying to find him! His office isn't particularly easy to Google!

Last year I wrote a little article for Saint Patrick's Day. Given that we're at that time of year again, and that the number of you our dear readers has gone up by several thousand, I thought I'd share it again with you today. So without further ado I give you the truth about old Saint Patrick!

March 17th. Saint Patrick's Day. A day where people all around the globe go out, dress in green, wear silly hats and drink Guiness.

But just what exactly do we know of Saint Patrick? Not alot I'm betting. So lets have a little i3t look at the myths and see where the truth lies.

First up is a biggy. Saint Patrick was NOT Irish. He was born in Northern England.

Second up he did NOT chase a single snake from Ireland. There have NEVER been any snakes in Ireland.

There is also no evidence that he originated the shamrock symble for both Ireland and as a Christian symbol (the thee leaves representing the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the stalk being the Whole, three into one).

There are also myths and legends going around that his hands could turn to torches, he turned an evil ruler into a fox, he was immune to poison, and on his eventual death the sun refused to set for 12 days afterwards. Oh and every March 17th, his Saints day and the anniversary of his death, fish have a habit of flying.

All quite bizarre.

The truth however, for he WAS a documented person so did exist in some form or other, is a far more interesting tale.

Born in Northern England as Patricius around 390 AD as the son of a wealthy noble family he was looking at a good life for the time period. However when he was around 15 he was abducted by Celtic pirates and sold into slavery. He spent 6 years living as a slave in Ireland for his new Pagan owners most likely as a Shepherd.

He escaped by walking around 200 miles and talking his way onto a ship back to England where he managed to find his family.

After arriving back in England Patrick joined the Church (back then it was Catholic or bust) and then went into the clergy working his way up to become a Bishop.

What he did next however is what was surprising. Aged around 45 he went back to Ireland. This time? He wanted to speak to word of God.

Various sources have various accounts of how he did this but this is my blog so you're having the one I think is the most viable.

Saint Patrick on arriving to Ireland needed something big and showy to do to help convert the Pagans to Christianity. So he told the Irish that their country was being invaded by giant invisible snakes that only he, as a man of God, had the power to see.

And if the people joined him in his religion he would fight and banish these snakes freeing the people from them once and for all.

What happened? People bought his story hook, line and sinker. Resulting eventually in Ireland being the deeply Catholic country it is today. All based on an Englishman out for revenge against a country whose residents had abducted and enslaved him and managing to pull off the ultimate conjob. One that now around 1,700 years later millions believe as Gospel truth.

Is this the actual truth about Saint Patrick?

I'll leave you to decide.

Charity.

We all know of and most of us support various charities.

They all do great work out there helping those in need. We here at BTS support several charities very close to our hearts including Help For Heroes and MacMillan along with local charities and of course our support of Sue Whitham and her story is now legendary.

The key to all charities is fund-raising. Help For Heroes, as a good example, is very very good at doing this in a variety of fun ways. Our friends at House of Pain have in fact put on wrestling shows with all money raised going straight to them. Other charities rely on donations of old clothing and the like.

And then there are the charities that have me writing this article today. Let me set the scene for you...You're walking through your local town centre and some energetic person comes up towards you with a clipboard wanting you to donate to their charity. This is usually done by setting up a direct debit payment with the campaigner.

However what I'm betting most people do not know, for I know I didn't until recently, is that these people are being paid £7.50 an hour, and often far more than this, and that they often get commission on top of that.

Yes we've entered an era where we now have the professional fund-raiser.

|Just run that around your head for a second.

These charities, who all plead the heart strings for your money, can afford to hire armies of volunteers and give them a large chunk of what you donate, in good faith, to the charity for the intended use to help people.

Since finding this out I'm now making it an active point of mine to not give to any charity who employs this technique for fund-raising. I feel that it is downright dishonest. I'll also point out here that I have no issue here with charity shops, such as Oxfam, paying their store managers. Given the paperwork and responsibility needed to have your name on all the forms I think in that instance it's only fair.

However... those charities who use these professional fund-raisers, often dubbed “Chuggers” derived from Charity Muggers, must obviously have a surplus of money.

Friends of the Earth, British Heart Foundation and Save The Children are just three of the many charities paying people to fund raise. I shall be keeping and regularly updating a list naming and hopefully shaming these charities.

The charities we support here on the site don't do this. They rely on the old fashioned method people volunteering their time, going out after change with a bucket. No one gets paid but I'm going to wager a significantly larger percentage of the money raised goes directly to where it's needed.

In these hard times we should definitely all give to charity if we can afford it and we should give as much as we can afford. But what we shouldn't do is support a very misleading system.

So I'm going to say go out in your area and find those small local charities. Those who do good work and get on with it quietly. They don't make a fuss but they provide life changing help for those that need it. Go and support those charities as I'll wager that your donations will be infinitely better received and that an infinitely larger proportion of your donation will go towards where it is needed most.

A good example close to The Spaceman's heart is the story of Sue Whitham. She's released her single and album and all money she makes will be go towards her treatment. Any monies left over is going towards the local cancer charity who has provided Sue and her family, along with I'm sure untold hundreds more, much needed help and support.

Full details can be found here: http://www.suewhitham.co.uk/

In the end I guess all I'm asking is do you want to support huge charities who seem to big and have forgotten what they were all about or do you want to help people in need, which is the whole point of charity, by supporting those small charities who'll gladly take your donations and put it directly towards where it's needed most.

Have a think eh?

Especially when it comes to the following charities who all DO use Professional Fund-Raisers and are shall we say less than upfront about the practice:

Music retailer HMV has been placed into administration along with rental chain Blockbuster. Both are huge employers and both are huge household names. But it seems when faced with the internet neither could keep up.

HMV relied on the traditional approach of selling CDs and DVDs and has been a household name here in the UK for over 90 years. In recent years the CD section has shrank to almost none existence in a great many stores with DVDs and latterly BluRays taking over. This is alongside video games, books, t-shirts and increasingly technology devices such as iPods, tablets and designer headphones.

To go into a HMV today is a very different experience to what it was going into a HMV ten years ago. With an ever increasing majority of us buying our music digitally HMV were left a little behind the times. Why buy a CD for £10 when the same amount of money could get you a months unlimited legal music on services such as Spotify?

And as for DVD and BluRay sales? People just aren't buying as much. That combined with the cheapness of online stores such as Amazon, more on those later, plus the rise and rise of VOD services such as LoveFilm (Amazon again) and NetFlix have left HMV, and here Blockbuster too, unable to compete.

The thing is we will all miss going into HMV and browsing but truthfully, hand on heart time, who actually bought anything from the store? I've a feeling a lot of people looked around at what they wanted and then went home and ordered it online for far cheaper. Or just pirated the material. I know I've done that before I've spotted a DVD I like and through the magic of my phone I've purchased said DVD online before I've even left the store.

It's safe to say HMV was never the cheapest place around especially compared to online retailers. But was it a fair playing field? Well... No.

You see thanks to some wonderful loopholes stores such as Amazon have been able to get around paying most UK taxes thus allowing them to sell things for for cheaper. As consumers we don't tend to complain as we're getting our goods for cheaper. But with the troubles at HMV you do have to wonder just what the cost is with this.

We've lost Comet and Jessops recently. Again here you can blame both changing technology and of course the cheapness of the internet.

It's been an interesting few years for the high street. We looked at Game's woes last year, of which around a half of the stores seem to have survived, so I think sadly now the question is who's next?

Join me here this weekend where I'm going to have a look at the state of the High Street, i3t style!