Jerub-Baal's Spleen Vent

The Left Have Set The Bar

2012-01-24T23:57:00.001Z

But Lib Dem leader and Deputy Prime Minister Mr Clegg said on Tuesday he was a "strong supporter" of the cap, as were the "vast majority" of people, because it was "fair to say you can't receive more in benefits than if you were to earn £35,000 before tax".

And for one of those rare fleeting moments Mr. Clegg is right.

Still when all is said and done the question I will be asking to my mp Rachel Reeves and what I urge you to ask your own mp and assorted lefties will be this:

If £26,000 is not enough in take-home benefits to support those on welfare then why is it more than ample for a taxpaying worker?

Divvy up that figure into 2 people working and you get a minimum £13k income untaxed that Labour and associated peers say is desperately not enough to support a household; current standard tax free allowance is ~£6.5k for most folk.

So why is it ok to tax twice as much income from a hardworking taxpayer as it is to cap double that in benefits to someone who isn't working?

Blogging light for the foreseeable future; work heavy. Will try to get more in but money and patience in short supply. Stay safe and eyes open!

Hilariously Ironic e-Petition

2011-12-07T22:47:00.001Z

Third one down.

Tee hee.

How To Cut The Public Sector Pay Bill, Give Them More Money To Pay For Higher Pension Contributions & Reduce Headcount

2011-12-01T23:12:00.001Z

No, Not Via The Jeremy Clarkson Method

It seems everybody is doing it these days; my wife did it yesterday; it seems highly likely my work colleagues will be doing it next Friday and it is not entirely out of the question that my wife may be called to do it again in the very near future without resolution: I am of course talking about having some sort of naughty intercourse with a loved one despite the thrill being long gone.

Or striking due to pensions; I cant remember which as I have had very little sleep in the past few days.

In both cases my view on the subject has changed little (my feelings on the content of the arguement on both sides are a different matter): the government has been keen to kick this particular ball into the long grass well into the future for decades and a considerable ratcheting up of the public sector liabilities in terms of wages, pensions and perks is now being challenged by a massive financial crisis in major part caused by the kind of intervention perpetrated by those self-same civil servants. However, those civil servants did sign a contract in good faith with their paymasters with a view to getting a particular benefit in return for the sweat of their brow; if there paymasters wanted to change the terms of their pay for new employees then that would be fine but that is not what is being offered: as this BBC Q&A on the pension strikes shows what we actually have is an attempt to change the goal-posts midway through.

Irrespective of what libertarians think of the public sector pay, scope and conditions (here is an excellent example) I cant help but think we should see this from a contractual point of view - they offered a service for which the expected returns are now being renegotiated; however you feel about the supposed fore-knowledge of those self-same unions and workers about the likelihood of their fields continued expansion and the ability to meet the ever increasing wage and pension bill, the coercive autocracy that Labour became (ever was?) that perpetrated this massive expansion knowing full well that history would regard them as heroes and the incoming conservatives as monsters stealing milk and pensions and stuff and would forget about the actual detail such as the former government having no credible plan to pay for any of it or the actions of a few rogue bankers intent on derailing the whole socialist utopian exercise by employing cutting-edge financial instruments that mainly focused on the financial powerhouses of black men in string vests' - for the record I think it's a combination of all 3 of the above (the bankers in question being central bankers, not, as is obviously assumed, entirely at the doorway to commercial banks, though undoubtedly not helped); you need just look at the asinine suggestions of union leaders over the last few years - government has Ponzi'd all our pension contributions away on Cherie Blair's human rights law firm and Gordon Brown vanity projects? Pension fund has been scuttled by poor pension investment vehicles? I know! Soak the rich! shut down global trade! charge people for sending/receiving spam! To me that sounds like a good reason to linch your paymasters, not rob the productive and successful.

Anyway, coming back off tangent, how do we solve the problem? I have a 3-point plan on how to deal with the problem that is both elegant, simple, non-fattening and would prove almost universally popular by all but the most left-wing, swivel-eyed sociopathic, diversity mung-bean, poy-dance coordinator (so am guessing about half of them): it would enable:

The public sector by and large to get a pay increase.
Enable them to also afford the new pension contributions being asked for.
Reduce the overall headcount of some of the British public's least favourite aspects of the public sector with little or no fuss from the remainder.

My idea?

The public sector pay average as of January this year out-stripped the private sector at £23,660 compared to £21,528 (and I am certain this figure doesn't take into account the other perks such as the final salary pension schemes etc. so the difference has some ancillary factors pushing this even higher); this means that net an average public sector employee takes home approximately £17,470 according to my shiny Listen to Taxman app on my iPhone; just short of £1500 a month spare. To give them a "happy" pay rise lets assume we match inflation - call it a 5% pay rise + 3% for the additional requested pension contributions for simplicity: that would mean the take home pay increase should be ~£1575 a month or an extra £1400 extra a year.

So again Tom get to your point - what's your idea?

Simple: immeadiately reduce public sector pay by 6-8% and make the remaining income-tax free (NICs, student loans and pension contributions etc. remain).

The difference in the cut wage bill and the increased take home pay + pension contributions would be more than enough to keep the workers happy; you could then renegotiate new and recent starters' pension schemes with less fuss kicked up by those lucky enough to have a final salary pension, perhaps by ending national pay scales and paying new recruits weighted against their predecessor.

This also carries the advantage of making the public sector the most vocal group on the reserve to argue against increasing income taxation and high NICs - it would not be tolerated for long were the public sector wage bill to rise again and the issue of "fairness" would be thoroughly abandoned by those self-same groups with their massive advantage over taxation.

This also just makes sense; why on earth do we think it's a good idea to pay our employees only to take a portion of the cash back in order to pay other employees? Why not just pay them less, code them differently in the tax system and remove them altogether?

But what about the higher paid local council millionaires Tomrat I hear (myself?) scream? Fair enough - charge them a high rate of national insurance and/or remove any upper maximum take; failing that stop voting for spineless politicians and ask for real, bloody reform of the system that allows the mass looting of public finances. Similar rant but this time about QuANGOs? They aren't public sector bodies or the tax code doesn't apply - as such they are subject to whatever rules for taxation the rest of us put up with but would find themselves with all the problems of a rapidly reducing pension pot; the pressure will be on the government to fold them back in and reform/remove their role.

The only people who should be out of work at the end of this exercise should be a couple of thousand HMRC admin staff who are surplus to requirements as a large number of tax returns, PAYE forms and ancillary documentation will simply cease to be processed.

As far as I can see this government has missed a vital opportunity to argue for reform of the public sector by instead focusing on reduction of the bill they will always lose the latter arguement because without addressing the former civil servants will reduce at the coalface, not the back offices and executive suites; the managers are not going to vote for less management. All that is left to this current government if they want to make an impact is elegant, unarguable changes to the system that are both exercises in reform and compromises on the subject of money; a subject the state seems constantly fixated on.

Gah!!!

2011-11-23T08:49:00.001Z

At work I now enter the period of the year when I'm trying to make sense of the ongoing chaos: what has been spent, what has been ordered and what has been requested and present it to all the people who pay my wages and decide if the whole thing is worth doing next year or not.

And I just had my laptop stolen from my car.

And as a security measure I've had IT account access suspended until a new one arrives; I've got to request desktop access in the interim.

My Christian patience is being tested this morning.

Yes Mr. Cameron But How?

2011-11-05T11:51:00.000Z

Laugh it up. Assholes.

David Cameron has said increasing UK contributions to the International Monetary Fund "does not put Britain's taxpayers' money at risk".

The PM said it was "in our interests" to support the IMF but stressed again that the money would not support a eurozone bailout.

Riiii'ght. So he can absolutely guarantee that te ex-French Finance Minister now head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, halining from the very country up to it's eyeballs in Greek-debt, will not be dipping her hands in the till to shore up her countries precarious financial failings?

And how, might I add are you going to stop this? You seem to be pretty sure of yourself that you can convince the G20 but the IMF is a transnational entity; it doesn't have to listen to a word you say - it is beyond your feeble control ~~Cast~~Pig-Iron Dave, and what will you do when it hands the cash over to French banks? Reduce our contributions next time?

He also suggested any increase would not be put to a vote in the Commons.

So you know you are going to lose so you have decided mp's don't get a say? How very Blairesque of you.

When I asked my MP to vote for a plebiscite on our Eurozone membership the other week and was promptly told no I had promised her that I would make it a hobby, nay, a favourite past time to bring it to everyones attention in her constituency just how much she has cost us by her towing the party line, greasy-pole climbing actions and see if her less than 25% of the electorate will keep her in power.

What makes you think Mr. Cameron that I will any less easy on any of your candidates in Leeds? Most are in precarious positions as it is and I will see them lose to a Labour'ious candidate before I allow you to circumvent parliament.

You will pay for your promise breaking to the electorate in small cuts and I promise I will contribute to that humiliation.

You and Osbo the Clown started out mediocre at best but at least in the right direction; you have now sold off all the savings made from your cuts for international recognition and praise by players who wouldn't sooner wipe their dog-shit stained shoes on you.

There is a reckoning coming.

One Before Bed

2011-10-16T22:52:00.001+01:00

Have just finished watching Thursday's BBC Question Time in which Mark Littlewood from the IEA gave an impassioned defence of free market economics in a hall of question time's usual swivel-eyed left-wing lunatics.

What was particularly interesting was the rousing debate on the future of the NHS - it doesn't take much to raise the ire of the assembled state-paid paper shufflers, diversity coordinators & 5-a-day managers.

What was particular interesting was the widespread detachment from reality about the state of our healthcare; it soon degenerated into "no, the NHS's outcomes are better than [insert evil private/any other healthcare system]'s".

He pointed out that he was not going to bite into the usual canard of "you just want the NHS to be the US healthcare system" and pointed to other systems like Singapore's, only to be shouted down saying it was even worse.

Apparently the WHO disagree; it ranks Singapore at #6.

The UK? Number 18.

Emotionalism aside how about we go for reductionist's approach: we simply copy what the WHO's #1 healthcare system is doing: France.

So how does this system work then (note: links wikipedia, emboldened/underlined text my own)?

France has a system of universal health care largely financed by government national health insurance. In its 2000 assessment of world health care systems, the World Health Organization found that France provided the "best overall health care" in the world.^[1] In 2005, France spent 11.2% of GDP on health care, or US$3,926 per capita, a figure much higher than the average spent by countries in Europe but less than in the US. Approximately 77% of health expenditures are covered by government funded agencies.^[2]

Great so let's spend more money on healthcare! A chorus of praise for this action goes up amongst of Britains established medical monopoly!

Oh wait:

Most general physicians are in private practice but draw their income from the public insurance funds. These funds, unlike their German counterparts, have never gained self-management responsibility. Instead, the government has taken responsibility for the financial and operational management of health insurance (by setting premium levels related to income and determining the prices of goods and services refunded).^[1]

So the government operates a virtual monopsony on healthcare spending just not on healthcare provision ("we are willing to pay this for that treatment"). It also garners the costs back from people in a manner in which they only pay what they can afford, very progressive.

The French National Health Service generally refunds patients 70% of most health care costs, and 100% in case of costly or long-term ailments. Supplemental coverage may be bought from private insurers, most of them nonprofit, mutual insurers. Until recently, coverage was restricted to those who contributed to social security (generally, workers or retirees), excluding some poor segments of the population; the government of Lionel Jospin put into place "universal health coverage" and extended the coverage to all those legally resident in France. Only about 3.7% of hospital treatment costs are reimbursed through private insurance, but a much higher share of the cost of spectacles and prostheses (21.9%), drugs (18.6%) and dental care (35.9%) (Figures from the year 2000). There are public hospitals, non-profit independent hospitals (which are linked to the public system), as well as private for-profit hospitals.
Average life expectancy in France at birth is 81 years.^[3]^[4]

The average, reasonably healthy health consumer has to pay some of their costs, ensuring that that consumer is at least sensitive to the price of it, either in noticing which way their health premiums are going or how it hits the wallet if they have to pay the difference, and as we know human beings are very sensitive creatures - they want to command the maximum number of high quality goods or services they can with the resource available to them (this is actually the real definition of wealth - getting something more valuable in return for something less; in this case lower healthcare costs for same/better healthcare). Those who can't pay or will have chronic long term costs are fully covered.

And the state doesn't massive intervene in who provides the healthcare.

I think we could with that level of choice too; let's hope that Lansley's tome goes some of the way to providing that. Not holding my breath.

Those Scoundrels? Or Blaming The Wrong Schlebs

2011-10-15T20:41:00.000+01:00

Profit margins at the ‘big six’ energy firms have leapt more than 700 per cent as millions worry about keeping warm this winter.

Those fiends! they are casting our elderly, our infirm and our poor into the oblivion of an icy, cold winter freeze, doomed to die.

The average amount of profit per customer has risen from £15 a year to £125 in just a few months, according to the industry regulator Ofgem.

Wait wait wait - so before a few months ago the blood, sweat and tears of business men in the energy sector only roped them £15 profit for every piece of business? Wait - it was even worse before?

via The Daily Mail - why are we getting so mad at this?

Up to Aug 2009 the margin on energy prices were negative; energy companies were losing money versus rising costs, particularly in wholesale energy costs and "other" costs.

"Other" costs is a little disengenuous - if wholesale costs are approx 45%, then we add in the costs that you cannot drop - i.e. operating and network costs - this comes in at 29% (74%) then you add in the net margin for the company: 9%. 9. per. cent.; so 83% of the bill isn't up for negotiation and is intrinsic to the cost (and let's be fair if you know a plumber who would work on a margin at 9% give me his number - I have a few jobs I'd like him to do around Tomrat Towers) then 17%, or ~£230 of the highest domestic bill recorded, is going to these guys:

That's right; you are giving a collective £6.7Bn of your energy bills to these smoes.

It is only right that the energy companies should be hitting back; it is long overdue (and not just for the energy companies) - it is not an unfair that a company providing a service should expect a decent profit; when you consider that 9% of the bill goes to the company in profit is paltry compared to double that figure taken in taxation/government and "green" initiatives, not to mention the very likely additional efficiency losses due to the monopoly on transmission that the National Grid, a de facto state monopoly, has.

We really need to shut this particular shit down.

Less Ignoring & More Obfusticating

2011-10-13T23:16:00.001+01:00

The subject of the first e-petition to prompt a Parliamentary debate has been ignored by MPs when the debate took place.The online petition - signed by more than 240,000 people - called for those convicted of involvement in the summer riots to be stripped of their benefits.
The three-hour debate in Westminster Hall covered the wider response to the riots, but did not touch on benefits.

To me this is less about ignoring the issue and more about confusing it; the prediliction for public outcries to incite "something-must-be-doneism" in our politicians has probably done more to allowing the destructive behaviour of the last 15 years than anything else; if it wasn't Diana shrines popping up to appease Daily Fail readers it was Blair's law-a-minute approach whilst ignoring perfectly good but unenforced laws or Brown's purple banana's.

During the hearing, MPs shared their views on the causes of the riots, the police response and the impact on their constituencies

....
Nick Raynsford, Labour MP, said eviction should not be used as a secondary means to punish people who should have already been punished by the law.

Conservative MP Gavin Barwell said when one person in a family was repeatedly antisocial, this could be considered a proportionate response.

And both are right - in general it is unlikely that many of the rioters were not indulging in their first offence and fewer still are probably recidivists who belong in jail; it is these few that add nothing to society who need their benefits stopping and the largesse of an increasingly pressed and tired society curbing, preferably following a period in jail.

Do not get me wrong - the e-petitions website is a good thing but it is not, should not, be there so that the public at large dictate the nitty gritty of the law making process - that is what we pay MP's for; remember: Blair's pandering to the masses allowed him to bypass in a multitude not only the rule of law for himself and his crony capitalist buddies but also damage the spirit of the law too: we have judges who rule against parliamentary law in favour of alien authorities like the EU, statutory instruments designed to fine tune ancient acts of parliament steam-rolling over it's mechanisms of introducing new laws or putting them in front of elected representatives and a political clique so disconnected from the boring job of ensuring a simple, enforcable system of law is suitable for it's time that it concerns itself with trivialities.

We need to keep pushing for e-petitions like this, don't get me wrong; but more importantly if we feel we are capable of writing the law we should be standing for parliament - at the very least asking our elected representative for their views on this and making it known that without their support for reform of our dessicated government, the state and the systems we have for "dealing" with these kinds of problems they will not see our votes or that of anyone else we will be actively convincing.

Incidentally if you want to support a petition I think we can all believe in click here.

So Much For The Arab Spring

2011-10-09T23:37:00.001+01:00

Remember how the media was rejoicing at the rise of protests across the Arabian peninsula and uprisings in Egypt which ultimately led to Mubarrak's downfall, and how this was to usher in a new era of brotherly love?

Apparently not:

At least 23 people have been killed and scores injured in the worst violence since Egypt's former President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February.

Clashes broke out after a protest in Cairo against an attack on a church in Aswan province last week which Coptic Christians blame on Muslim radicals.

What the media doesn't report is the ongoing persecution of Christian minorities across Africa and Asia by Muslim groups, particularly in places like Nigeria - one group we were supporting build a school finished only to have a governor-backed Muslim protest group raze it to the ground.

As vicious as the last lot were in T'gypt they weren't down with widespread beatdowns of minorities.

No doubt though Old Holborn will justify this as perfectly acceptable considering the persecution of Arabs in Palestine, or some other faux-victim group.

The Best £7 You'll Ever Spend

2011-09-21T10:21:00.001+01:00

As I lay in bed recovering from the lurgy I cannot believe many of today's tabloids main stories:

Ministers are locked in battle over a Liberal Democrat plan to splash out £5billion to boost the economy.

As the International Monetary Fund slashed economic forecasts, Vince Cable stunned colleagues by claiming there is ‘flexibility’ within austerity plans for public spending on road schemes, business parks and faster broadband links.

He was responding to an IMF report which said growth will be ‘anaemic’ and warned the world was in a ‘dangerous new phase’, with Britain facing a one-in-six chance of slipping back into recession.
...
However, the proposals for substantial public spending on infrastructure deals – referred to as ‘Plan A-plus’ – are clearly being talked about and the Business Secretary insisted that the Lib Dems were not backing away from the Coalition’s commitment to cutting the budget deficit.

The story is similar across several papers, and whilst the amounts talked about in the grand scheme of things are paltry*, it is indicative of the fatal conceit our ministers have that any problem they have is solvable if you only coat it in paper money and hope it sticks.

Which is why I think we need to remind Osbo the Clown of a few basic economic realities and logic; it is growing increasingly obvious he was more stuck on the PP side of his PPE course when he attend toffee-nose college at Oxbridge-on-sea or wherever and thus is up to us his masters to beef up the E.

Let's send him this, Henry Hazlitt's finest work (the link goes to a free copy for your own benefit). The tome explains in big shiny, easy to understand words the futility of what we have come to know as "Keynesian Economics"** - something we used to originally call "Village Idiot Speak" - it explains eruditely the contrary folly of many types of public spending and regulation in a way even Ed Ballsup could understand***.

Let's do this on some key date in the near future: how about Henry Hazlitt's birthday? November 28th sounds like as good as any date. You could send them a print out of the tome from the link above but it might be more striking if you bought a copy: Amazon are selling it pretty cheap at the moment.

As someone who took part in LPUK's (RIP) 1984 campaign - giving every MP in the last parliament a copy of George Orwell's 1984 with a word of advice not to treat it as an instruction manual - I know that these kind of campaigns work; I'm sure after the first couple of hundred copies Georgie will start handing them out/leaving them in Whitehall loos/propelling them into tue Thames - in any case likely every mp will see one before the years out.

Go on you know it makes sense.

* = incidentally what have they been spending money on if they haven't been improving infrastructure over the last 15 years? WTF are we paying out half our GDP for if they are having trouble keeping the sodding lights on?

** = yes I'm aware that Keynesian economics isn't nearly as simple as that but only in so much as I am also aware that the left-leaning intelligentsia and elites in government essentially treat it as code for hacking the valve off the spending facet.

*** = in fact if you can get hold of 2/3 copies pretty sure Balls and Cable could both benefit from owning a copy.

Dead Island - The Gamers Crack Cocaine

2011-09-19T23:24:00.000+01:00

Dead Island: Better Than Your POS.

Not since Fallout 3 have I felt such wonderful levels of surprise and satisfaction with game, its depth, complexity and that wonderful "X" factor that is missing in so much of what is being churned out.

Despite the really bizarre opening and the irritating bugs (which have at least been addressed and are being repaired) Dead Island is a gem; from it's story, which, if there is any justice, should stand proud in the hgher echelons of cult zombie stories, to it's incredibly clever combat system round the game off wonderfully - it is obvious why it was delayed for so long and the game's producers were right to do so.

Dead Island takes place on the fictional paradise island of Banoi - you awake as one of the 4 in game characters to find the hotel* you are in in chaos; baggage strewn everywhere (which, game producers, it is not okay to loot before you know what is going on) people diving off of higher floor balconies and, eventually, a substantial hoard of the infected, a runner-class of zombie, bearing down on you.

It is also at this stage that you find out that you are immune (yay!) to the plague, but not invulnerable to the rather hungry and violent carriers.

The combat system yields some interesting dilemmas; like the Dead Rising series it can be extremely useful to lay down projectile weaponry - which is lucky as it tends to be quite rare - in favour of melee; the speed of the walkers and their relative ruggedness towards small arms fire makes the best option a combination of melee combat combined with rapid, crazy foot stomping action; my character (pictured above) recently found herself without a working bladed weapon so had to resort to kicking the walkers over, then stamping on their necks.

To make matters really interesting no single melee weapons themselves degrade over time, but unlike the Dead Rising games you can repair weapons, upgrade them so they last longer and trick them out so they develop unique and powerful secondary effects; I had a wonderful machete which electrocuted walkers on critical hits until my idiot brother Buffrat tried my game out, threw it at a thug-class walker, a giant type zombie incredibly resilient and tough, then proceeded to walk off into a new game zone, losing it in the process - bringing another unique (and in this particular case irritating) feature of the game - the save game jots checkpoints along the game at regular intervals but does not allow you to save at points; in other games this would appear like quite a piss-poor way of doing this but in Dead Island this actually compliments the pace and evolution of the game itself.

As your character improves so too does your mastery of different weapons and skills; your choice of characters makes you skilled in particular weaponry and levelling up leads to clever ways of adapting to weapons making themselves stronger; as a result you can grow quite attached to particular weapons as you improve yourself with them (just as I was with my brilliant machete till idiot boy threw it away, bastard.) The fact that game nurtures a sense of care and attention, that if you look after your weapon, spend resources and time improving yourself and it, it will care and attend to your needs, is a very, very nice touch.

This game is a joy to play; I hope someone will do the right thing and make it into a movie, at the very least it should get a sequel, sans the bugs.

Score: buy full price. Now. Heck, buy this version in case the zombie apocalypse does come.

Awesome Hackers Are Awesome

2011-09-19T22:21:00.003+01:00

Can't put it any better myself than the subject line from my friends email:

Dr Conan T. Barbarian was ripped from his mother's womb on the corpse-strewn battlefields of his war-torn homeland, Cimmeria, and has been preparing for academic life ever since. A firm believer in the dictum that "that which does not kill us makes us stronger," he took time out to avenge the death of his parents following a sojourn pursuing his strong interest in Post-Colonial theory at the Sorbonne. In between, he spent several years tethered to the fearsome "Wheel of Pain", time which he now feels helped provide him with the mental discipline and sado-masochistic proclivities necessary to sucessfully tackle contemporary critical theory. He completed his PhD, entitled "To Hear The Lamentation of Their Women: Constructions of Masculinity in Contemporary Zamoran Literature" at UCD and was appointed to the School of English in 2006, after sucessfully decapitating his predecessor during a bloody battle which will long be remembered in legend and song. In 2011/12, he will be teaching on the following courses: "The Relevance of Crom in the Modern World", "Theories of Literature", "Vengeance for Beginners", "Deciphering the Riddle of Steel" and "D.H. Lawrence". He strongly objects to the terms of the Croke Park agreement and the current trend for remaking 1980s films that he believes were perfectly good enough in the first place.
He is happy to hear from potential research students with an interest of any of these topics, but applicants should note that anyone found guilty of academic misconduct or weakness in the face of the enemy will be crucified as an example to the others.
Email: conanb@tcd.ie

Brilliant. Let's hope he gets tenured.

As We Enter Silly Season

2011-09-12T23:15:00.001+01:00

Conservative party members enjoying last years conference. Probably.

Something to take on board in case you are the type to tow tribal lines:

Politicians who can take supporters for granted will do precisely that, particularly when taking supporters’ issues seriously would require upending the status quo.

Matt Welch in this months Reason Magazine; this goes doubly strongly for all those on UKIPs train.

Quote of the Day

2011-09-12T18:07:00.001+01:00

Old but brilliant:

'I may not agree with what you say, but I'll bayonet every bastard on the planet who says you can't say it, and then I'll riddle their Stasi - Fascist - Anti-Freedom Corpse with bullets for your right to say it...' (I think that's how it went anyway)

Erudite as only the Skip Licker can be. Gawd I missed him...

Why Habitat Went Bust: Tomrat's School of Business 101 pt1.

2011-09-10T13:29:00.001+01:00

There is something very wrong with your business model if you charge £15 for a box of disposable cutlery.

QED

Killing Aunty Beeb

2011-08-21T23:44:00.001+01:00

Gawd bless my lil Sis; convinced her to get me a subscription to Reason magazine for my birthday and she pulls through (a little over 6 months late but who's counting.

Anyway a brilliant column on the makeup of new agencies and how this correlates with the behaviour of the host state:

In a paper published in the spring issue of the journal Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, Pal analyzed data from 98 countries. Her goal: to see if there were statistically significant correlations between press freedom and seven measures of instability, including ethnic tensions, external and internal conflicts, crime and disorder, military participation in government, and religious tensions. An increase in press freedom, she concluded, reduces all seven measures of instability. (emphasis mine)

Now I think we are far from being able to say explicitly that one causes the other; more likely there are synergies at play that won't show up on an initial analysis but the results are compelling: greater press freedom skews attempts at government at closing down alternative lines of debate (why I feel the internet is so important and rightly feared by our current political elites).

This is particularly interesting though:

Pal also noted that state ownership of media is associated with higher corruption, weaker civil liberties, insecure property rights, lower education and life expectancies, and higher infant mortality and malnutrition.

And yes I realise that Aunty Beeb is not technically state owned, but it does derive it's powers of coercion from the state so will be less likely to bite the hand that feeds it (nibble mildly in the case of the Squandervative coalition maybe, but only because they lack the prerequisite spine to do anything about it).

Worth a try killing the Beeb in any case though eh?

Giving Out Of Poverty

2011-08-17T23:53:00.001+01:00

I am on holiday having spent the better part of 3 months working 12 hour days just to keep vaguely on top of my work; it has been the peak season for us and I am bushed. I am on a retreat with several churches in North Wales with my wife and daughter followed by 2 days back before heading out to Spain, palming off our daughter on the grandparents (you know, for an actual vacation.)

In a meeting this morning the retreat organiser got up to remind us of the annual offering we make to the hotel staff; we bulk-buy the rooms and services of 2 hotels each year and at dinner on the Thursday we all contribute massively to the tips for the staff; the amount is divied up by management depending on the hours worked - we are hoping to raise over a £1000 this year as the staff are impeccable, attentive and long-suffering considering the number of elderly and infirm with us.

That is why it struck me as Dow right offensive when David, the organiser, told us that the management, in a spirit of honesty and integrity, put all the collected offerings through payroll, making it subject to tax and national insurance, then top up the amount extorted in tax so it doesn't hit their employees: the cleaners, the waiters, the receptionists and the cooks.

It struck me that in the drive to alter tax breaks for the rich and poor one thing that is never brought up in discussion or is very quickly closed down is the righteousness of taking this money; the workers in the hotel are all minimum wage and earn every penny yet will still be taxed and squeezed till their pips squeak; the final act of indignity is only avoided by the long-suffering management of the hotels giving up their own monies to dole out a gift for their staffs' hard work given by those, the majority of which are on a fixed income, who are seeing their savings undermined, and their own limited income destroyed by inflation. All so David Cameron can continue paying foreigners to build idols to the green god while thousands die for want of NHS resources being cut, squandering every saving he makes on keeping a currency we elected not to join afloat and an established elite saving face.

The poor will not bleat because they will never understand why their wage packet seems so light despite their phone calculator saying it should be something else; they don't understand why the terms of their contract with government - what they are getting with their money - are so inexplicably skewed towards the socialist kleptocracy and squandervatives in charge because they are too busy scrubbing toilets and waiting tables, and their management have enough respect and integrity to mitigate the effects of the looting of a gift from those they serve to ensure it is a finer offering than is possible.

But we are on the precipice; when understanding comes it carries a whirlwind with it and it will carry this new bourgeois with it; we have seen a glimpse of it over the last few weeks with a thousand people suddenly realising that the behaviour of the politicos' client class will never be challenged, whilst those who do try, the breadwinners, the tax-chattels defending their property, will be punished severly.

This can't go on.

Them Riots

2011-08-14T21:11:00.001+01:00

Been a little busy these last few months and Lord knows the faux-Duggan riots has been better covered elsewhere.

But man this idea is coming into it's own eh?

Thinking Outside Of The Box

2011-07-04T22:25:00.002+01:00

Your Nan. And A Solution to Greece's Debt Crisis

So a report is out describing the latest Titanic-deck-chair-rearrangement to the welfare system; this time to the social care system for the elderly and infirm:

"Social care costs in England should be capped so people do not face losing large chunks of their assets, an independent review says.

Council-funded home help and care home places for the elderly and adults with disabilities are currently offered only to those with under £23,250 of assets.

The Dilnot report said the threshold should rise to £100,000 and a £35,000 lifetime cap on costs would be "fair".

But the Treasury is known to have doubts about the expense of the plans.

Just over £14bn a year is spent by councils on social care.

However, the changes would cost an extra £1.7bn a year if they were implemented now - and this figure could rise by 50% as the "baby boom" generation begins to retire."

So under the law of unfeasible, made-up politician numbers lets call it £5Bn added to the above figure; this, if I've understand it correctly, is the amount of money taxpayers today will be screwed for whilst the vast Ponzi scheme wheels on.

I have an alternative suggestion: Greece is liable to British banks for £14.1Bn; I'll take a guess and say the same idiot bankers, who put themselves in a hole in this country for Gordo forked out billions, are the ones likely wrist-deep in greek debt.

So how about this - why not just do a straight swap for the debt? Those bankers get their debt clear in about 75 years and our wrinklies get to spend their twilight years in sunnier climes whilst the greeks enjoy the written off debt-swaps all for the knock-down price of looking after a few more wrinklies, likely re-energising local economies spending their own cash on cheap ouzo and dolmades.

I can dream.

In Mixed Minds

2011-07-03T23:59:00.001+01:00

Been a while guys - mega mega busy but this caught my eye (H/T to Dick Puddlecote):

Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.
...
"Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws," said Lynn Paltrow of the campaign National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). "It's turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights."

No, how the state views the rights of unborn children with respect to their mother's behaviour, whether they intentionally seek to commit "foeticide" or their lifestyle simply endangers a child to a great degree, is what is being rightly challenged in court.

I say rightly in a neutral capacity: regardless of my views of state-mandated child murder when a precarious position appears in law, particularly in one where it is readily apparent the waters are being tested to see precisely what the law makers meant when they passed it, it follows logic that the first few cases will be painful; all cases should when one entity in the equation is murdered.

The next story in the article illustrates this perfectly:

Bei Bei Shuai, 34, has spent the past three months in a prison cell in Indianapolis charged with murdering her baby. On 23 December she tried to commit suicide by taking rat poison after her boyfriend abandoned her.
Shuai was rushed to hospital and survived, but she was 33 weeks pregnant and her baby, to whom she gave birth a week after the suicide attempt and whom she called Angel, died after four days. In March Shuai was charged with murder and attempted foeticide and she has been in custody since without the offer of bail.

This is both a long-standing contention between libertarians: whether abortion is something allowed by negative freedoms or not, and a dilemma that would test the Wisdom of Solomon; as tragic as her story and life obviously are did it really require her making that decision to end not only her own life but that of her child's?

I am, quite obviously, of the caste of libertarians who believe that negative freedoms protect the life of unborn children; there is something abhorrent in nature that allows us to abrogate the rights of one who's only crime is to grow, a living testament of either or both parents' recklessness: there is no greater example of human sacrifice to vanity than this.

Casting aside fear of straw men a question: were I to walk up to a happily pregnant woman and kick get in the stomach causing the baby to die should I end up in jail? If so then why does my act of foeticide carry criminal consequences? Is it merely because of the mothers desire to have children or the child's life?

All this and more will no doubt be debated in one way or another in the coming months surrounding such instances as these as the argument for human sacrifice starts not to look so glossy; it tends to excuse lifestyle choices which are naturally risky by allowing innocents to pay the price.

All that being said I do share Mssr. Puddlecote's concerns over the other religious aspect of this: that of the ascendency of the great Shiboleth of Public Health:

We've already seen a few rumblings, and I'm sure we've all heard the "it should be classed as child abuse" line many times already with regard to parental lifestyles. So why not just go that little extra step and push for the prosecution of women who have problematic pregnancies while also being obese, consuming cigarettes, or drinking in excess of guidelines, eh?

We'll just have to take it on trust that those currently taking the opportunity to rail against the religious right on the criminalisation of pregnant mothers will be consistent when the idea is picked up by the predominantly left-leaning health lobby.

I will not be holding my breath either; it has never been a problem for the left to excuse ones' actions as you hold the right opinions: climate change fanatics bending results or damaging energy companies property are fine; conversely skeptics are "fair game" whether the operate above board or not.

Sadly the cost is eternal vigilance, not shutting the questions down; for good or ill these lady's actions (and that of the men who are as copacetic to these situations as any) must be questioned - we may not like the answer but we should endeavour to keep it accountable to all, not just those in unassailable positions of power over life or death.

Screwed. Royally Screwed

2011-06-26T17:14:00.003+01:00

At 23 months old my daughter favourite garden object is our clothes line pole, she is forever clambering onto tables to dance, and she has a prediliction for putting her face in piles of spilt talc when I change her.

Epic fail.

And There Will Be Those Who Think This Man Cold

2011-06-25T09:00:00.001+01:00

Gary Bennell, 52, put aside his grief over the death of 27-year-old son Jon to admit he hoped he too would have the "guts" to fight back if confronted by intruders.
...
He added: "The family view is he's dead and we're sorry about it and we're grieving. He's not lived with us for a few years. He was on bail for burglary and that's just the way he was.

"My wife is gutted - broken-hearted. Whatever has happened in the past between us, he's still our child - or he was still our child."

And yet you can be for private property even when it means the death of a wayward son.

Only hope I never have to endure what this brave man has endured.

Kudos sir.

Am I The Only One More Offended By The Use Of Internet Twit-Talk?

2011-06-16T14:07:00.001+01:00

A juror who contacted a defendant via Facebook, causing a £6m drugs trial to collapse, has been jailed for eight months for contempt of court.

Couldn't happen to a nicer lady; this is just grating though:

Fraill also described her role on the jury in their conversations. "All that note-taking was just killing time. lol. drew more than i wrote lol," she said.

Mr Garnier had told the High Court that the contact and discussion had been in direct breach of the judge's repeated directions to the jury - and it constituted a contempt of court.

Peter Wright QC, for Fraill, said his client was terrified at the prospect of prison and was distraught and inconsolable about what she had done.

He described her as a woman of completely unblemished character before she "lost her senses" in the Facebook exchanges.

Should be done for murder...of the English language.

Problem With Proscription Not Application

2011-06-15T08:55:00.001+01:00

Thousands of sex offenders, including rapists and paedophiles, will be able to apply to be removed from the sex crimes register under human rights laws, the Government has announced.

A Supreme Court ruling has forced the Government reluctantly to draw up new rules allowing serious sex offenders put on the register for life to have their place on the list reconsidered.
...
The case is the latest involving the Act to set judges against political opinion. It has increased calls for reform of the Act, which is being reviewed by a Coalition committee.

Under current rules, anyone sentenced to more than 30 months in jail for a sexual offence is put on the register for life on release. Those on the register are monitored by police and visited regularly by officers. The Home Office estimates that there are about 44,000 people on the register, about 25,000 of them for life.

The problem here as I see it is that sex offender registration has been argued effectively against as an arbitrary measure introduced and enhanced by knee-jerk reactionaries I'm the previous government (note, almost completely unopposed by the current one) in response to some pretty dire but isolated events (Ian Huntley's victims in the long run, with the hideous level of CRB checks required to even go near a kid, extend much further than the children the scummy bastard murdered); a 17 year old boy who sleeps with his 15 year old girlfriend should not be trusses up in the same band as a sexual predator like Huntley (which thankfully the law reflects I believe).

What this is actually arguing for is a more comprehensive set of rules governing sex offender registry; we already do this in lot other criminal hearings: 5 years for burglary reduced to 2.5 for a guilty verdict; 1 year for shoplifting suspended as it's a first offence - why shouldn't the law be able to say "10 years in jail with a further 10 on the sex offender register before you can appeal"?

What's that? Don't like the fact your judge is giving too lenient a sentence? Elect a new one or elect his boss on a tough on crime ticket.

Oh that's right you can't.

And maybe that is the problem; the extent of the human rights act only extends as far as parliament will let it - if our government is lazy in stating the rules surrounding it, or delegates it to soft, lefty judges then what the hell do you expect?

Expect more from your mps', and the rule of law will follow; ask for democratic police chiefs, justices' and hospital commissioners and they will respond to your concerns.

Or lament at the feet of the daily mail and talk about the "laws being made"; crap politicians make crap laws make crap society - demand more.

May I Make A Suggestion About The Scale Of This & Also Provide A Solution To The Homeless Problem?

2011-06-14T12:01:00.001+01:00

Via @Old_Holborn on twitter O saw this; a plan to make prisoners work and contribute to society.

Many of my fellow libertarians may identify this with slavery to which I say the following: by and large criminals bought and paid for their proclivities, whether theft, rape or murder*, before they read the fine print - their problem, not society's. That all said I found interesting:

The thinktank suggests the introduction of a new prisoner minimum wage. This would be less than the national minimum wage to reflect the costs of board and lodging but more than current inmate earnings to encourage prisoners to work and save for their release as well as pay into a victims' fund.

What could this "prisoner wage" be? Let's tot it up:

Average cost to house prisoner in the UK: £34,000 (any better references please send me).
National Minimum Wage: £6.08
Salary based on 40hrs @ min. wage.: £12650
Therefore:
cost of prisoner wage = 12650 - 34000 = -21350

So the minimum prisoner wage is actually -£10.26 an hour; they still owe money for the cost of hosting them at our majesty's pleasure: so no wage then, at best, and longer working hours at worst.

And if prisoners don't like it? Tough: that case they can stay in jail indefinitely.

Thus solving the homeless problem as well; live on the street? commit a criminal act, refuse to work, live in prison for the rest of your life.

Flagrant Advertising, But Something I Am Actually Looking Forward To:

2011-06-10T15:58:00.003+01:00

Feel like you did when you were on the e-train back in the 90s at Gatecrashers: buy Child of Eden.

Having just downloaded fun labs which babyrat loved I'm sure she'll love this.

Or have a fit.

Comment On Richard Murphy's Tax Clog: D'ya Think It'll Get Through??

2011-06-09T09:13:00.001+01:00

Done in response to this piece of odourous doublethink:

No - I prefer freedom within a defined rule of law and the means to pay for it's upkeep; it matters not one jot if that is achieved by a dictatorship, democracy or theocracy, though all 3 and more besides have been found profoundly wanting.

Democracy beyond arbitrating over how best to deal with infringements on negative freedoms will also trend to tyranny and their suppression; it has become a decision between 2 wolves and a sheep as to who to eat for dinner.

And I will have no part in moralised cannibalism.

Apologies about my absenteeism - work calls, and frankly the pays better. I am still reading and seething though people.

Peace.

Proof There Is A God.

2011-05-17T08:59:00.001+01:00

And he hates infidelity:

Chris Huhne’s career was hanging by a thread last night after his estranged wife agreed to testify that he asked her to take speeding points for him.

All part of a crass attempt to avoid controversy when he was contesting a seat in parliament by avoiding a ban for his precocious driving habits, something which later happened anyway when he was caught driving whilst using a mobile phone.

This is all the more fattening (being so rich and all) considering his last generic erection campaign was thought on the ticket that he was a family man - all the while schtuming a lefty bunt in a think tank.

Hopefully this'll mark the end of the lib dumb's insane climate policies.

We can live in hope.

Quote Of The Day (Goebbels Warmong Edition)

2011-05-10T19:38:00.001+01:00

"We have used the best available data [and] the conclusion is that shale gas may indeed be quite damaging to global warming, quite likely as bad or worse than coal," he told BBC News.

- Robert Howarth from Cornell University in Ithaca, US on his report as reported here.

Yeah, I'm sure it's quite bad "to global warming"; you schills have been disabusing climate science of any credibility for decades.

Quote Of The Day

2011-05-09T23:26:00.001+01:00

Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all it's myriads of inhabitants was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe...would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life...And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the sameease and tranquility, as if no such accident had happened...If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but...he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren.

Theory of Moral Sentiments, part 3-5 - Adam Smith

Say a prayer for those who suffer in places like Libya, Syria, Nigeria or the Arabs in Israel tonight; at least be thankful your elsewhere and you and your family are safe.

Where Are They Going With This?

2011-05-09T08:35:00.001+01:00

Day off today getting my car cleaned and checked over then into sunny Bradford with my little girl for a day out; one thing picked up this morning from Aunty Beeb concerning cancer rates in homosexual men being higher than their heterosexual counterparts:

Homosexual men are more likely to have had cancer than heterosexual men, as US study has suggested.

Now it easy for a Christian to be tarred with the gay-bashing brush, to gloat over the misfortune of someone with a particular lifestyle - I prefer consistency in my belief in ideological freedom and so won't be doing that; besides I think the following author's comment might provide the clue as to why:

The authors speculate that the difference in the numbers of cancer survivors could be down to the higher rate of anal cancer in homosexual men or HIV infection, which has been linked to cancer.

Jason Warriner, clinical director for HIV and sexual health at the Terrence Higgins Trust, said: "We know that HIV can cause certain types of cancer, and that gay men are at a greater risk of HIV than straight men.

"Another factor potentially having an impact is Human Papilloma Virus, which can lead to anal cancer in gay men.

"The government currently runs a national vaccination programme for young girls, but we think recent figures on oral and anal cancers justify taking another look at whether the programme should be extended to include boys."

HIV is linked to a higher incidence of a cancer known as Kaposi's Sarcoma, which, like Human Papilloma Virus, can potentially cause cancers (in both cases sarcoma, cancers of connective tissues). My contention would be this is less "gay linked" and more an aspect of a person's sexual activity; the village bike would likely die from this family of cancers than their chaste neighbour for example.

This is all contention; what I am curious about is this comment:

Jessica Harris, senior health information officer at Cancer Research UK, said: "There is already evidence of some health inequalities as a result of sexuality, for example, smoking rates are higher in homosexual men and women than in heterosexual people.

I'm sorry, are we saying that the free action of homosexual men smoking is somehow linked to me being heterosexual and a non-smoker? That my not smoking is linked to a homosexual taking up the habit?

I really don't understand this, but if the contention that somehow my not smoking causes homosexuals to smoke, or increased use of nicotine is linked to homosexuality I have to call bullcrap.

This is almost as preposterous as The Spirit Level's authors claiming my rich europeaness causes poverty of a tribal Amazonian who has never seem civilisation.

Another Landslide Victory For The NOTA Party

2011-05-06T12:25:00.001+01:00

Bramley & Stanningley Ward
Electorate: 16657
Total Number of Votes: 5137
Labour Win for Ted Hanley: 3121 votes, 18.8% of the vote or less than 2 in 10 people installed him into the LCC.
Voters who chose None Of The Above: 11520, 69.2% or a little under 7 in 10 people chose none of the people on the ballot paper.

I wonder what the figure will be for AV?

But Of Course He Did

2011-05-06T07:14:00.001+01:00

Documents found at Osama Bin Laden's Pakistan home suggest he was planning new attacks on the US, including on the 9/11 anniversary, US reports say.

One plan aimed to target a US rail route, the reports said, although no imminent threat was detected.

Amazing what you can find when you want to continue the status quo ofass arms buildup and the war on terror: more evidence of terror.

The Terrifying Reason I'm Saying #Yes2AV Today

2011-05-05T12:38:00.002+01:00

In my post yesterday I discussed how PJ Byrne's views on the AV referendum today were only partly right: i.e. it is a question nobody wanted to ask that has replaced several we were all asking, and how he was wrong that an AV system would largely be an irrelevance - let's illustrate the pros and cons of AV; I'll start with con:-

Con
1. It is complicated.
2. It will be expensive; additional layers of complexity always are.
3. It does reward the most "useless" votes/voters the most: you could effectively give multiple votes to a voter intent on the most insane and unelectable of candidate choices.
4. It will lead to more coalitions: this could be viewed as a bad or good thing - in one way endless coalitions mean nothing much can be changed without enormous amounts of horse trading and compromise; however, ultimately the good is that they cannot introduce too many laws straight out of parliament - it will become fast apparent that much of our laws come from the EU which is something a Bory/UKIP caucus is likely to get a referendum on more than a Bory or UKIP minority government.

Pros
1. It does require a great deal more focus of the candidate on their electorate; how likely that will last when the whip comes in to play is debateable.
2. It will be more representable of what voters actually want: 3 in 4 voted against New Labour in 1997, likely a government will come in in 2015 that the electorate will grudgingly accept under AV.
3. .
Pro 3. I believe weighs out all the cons above.
3. There is now a credible link to a desire for the majority of the electorate to select one candidate: any candidate will need 50% of the total number of voters at least agreeing to their representative; for example, look at Ed Balls fiercely contested 2010 constituency of Morley & Outwood:

Let's assume under AV that UKIP vote for the Bory's as a second, the Watermelons vote for Labour and the Lib Dumbs split between Bory and New Labour and the BNP vote for a single preference; my fag packet calculations indicate that no one will win and the election will void; where any candidate to pander for secondaries from the BNP will surely result in alienating other voters leading to the same problem.

This has been portrayed as a bad thing, but think about it for a second - the problem lies in the fact that we are presented with candidates who wield absolute power over the electorate and in most cases we wouldn't be willing to pee on them if they were on fire.

We have abrogated responsibility for our lives to incompetents and fools and wonder why things are going wrong - the least we can do is thwart the system, make it clear that we are not consenting to their rule, as often as possible until they actually start listening; to dictate to as their role demands rather than us being dictated at.

And I think AV gives us a powerful weapon in being able to void elections which in the absence of a recall or NOTA vote we desperately need to restrain the legislature.

My yes vote is not an endorsement of the #Yes2AV camp; it is a statement that the status quo, and of having a firm None Of The Above vote summarily ignored year on year.

And anything likely to deprive Ed Balls of his seat can only be a good thing.

In Which I (Partly) Disagree With PJ Byrne

2011-05-04T14:53:00.001+01:00

Master Byrne in many ways manifests my own thoughts on AV in this article: that it matters little how we vote when we have no real choice over who we vote for and to what extent they control how we live our lives:

Despite the best efforts of the belligerents, I still struggle to care. The facts are these: the referendum will not end debate on electoral reform, since the twin bugaboos of proportional representation and reform of the House of Lords lurk still in the wings. Nor will the referendum, regardless of outcome, make our system "more democratic"-- not that this would be a good thing, since for seventy years "more democracy" inevitably meant more bureaucracy, unsustainable deficits and a lot of unwanted, oppressive and inflexible laws, with negative implications for day-to-day life. So why on earth are Libertarians talking about AV at all-- which seems, by comparison, such an inconsequential issue, a procedural tweak of a right we exercise for thirty seconds every five years?
...
Libertarians seek to minimize the existence of masters generally, particularly the state, a goal which currently no major UK political party is prepared to adopt and we are, therefore, only notionally able to participate in mainstream policy debate; free elections of whatever major party will not change the fact that in Britain, the tax-to-GDP ratio hovers around 40%, the state gags private citizens and the media over trivial information and singing Carl Douglas constitutes a hate crime. In this context, the central question for all reform of any kind -- electoral, fiscal, penal, or otherwise -- must be: will this reform emancipate individuals? And if not: what position can we adopt to try to steer public debate in our direction?

The answer is not to lose hope, to keep writing and keep moving; as put by Sam Bowman, to "'stand athwart history, shouting'... Faster!" For everywhere we look-- Greece, Spain, Japan, here in the UK, and even in the United States-- the onslaught of circumstance operates to prove libertarians right: global economic shifts, individual empowerment, demography and the structure of democracy itself conspire together to undermine the foundations of the western welfare state. As the catastrophe unfolds, the conventional wisdom will cling to the old ideas, the quartet will play the same familiar tunes-- "our institutions are sound," "our way of life is sustainable"-- despite a growing recognition from all quarters that Western governments will, one day this century, no longer wield the coercive and economic power to meet the obligations they set themselves in the last one.

In the meantime, however, I suggest getting used to being told you're wrong.

Quite, and whilst PJ isn't necessarily agreeing/disagreeing with the concept of the currently mooted electoral reforms, stating rightly that it doesn't really matter how we pick our masters, I disagree with him saying AV is a bad system.

That is not to say I am siding with the #Yes2AV cretins as a vehicle for greater Lib Dem recognition at elections.

My interest, as I stated in an earlier post, is that AV does enable a disaffected electorate to essentially derail election results effectively voiding results.

If the outcome of the entire libertarian philosophy is to point out how our western welfare statism will eventually fail for the sheer balk at reality that it is then why not merely underline it by upsetting the electoral system a bit?

Currently the FPTP enables governments to wield absolute power on not very many votes; New Labour royally screwed over the country on the basis of a little over 1 in 4 people voting them over the last decade and it seems Euroslime Dave couldn't even muster that kind of support; he had to bribe Clogg with a European Commission role when he is summarily ejected from his Sheffield Hallam constituency, just like Bliar had to do when Mandelson indicated he knew where the bodies were buried.

If AV offers anything, it gives us the chance to show how ultimately nonsensical an idea it is to give some idiot ultimate power over our lives, particularly when we are vehemently against the idea or have simply accepted their existence is at best unnecessary, as most NOTA voters have done.

And wrapping politicians up in knots and forcing them to pander to a wider community, then watch as there election is voided for lack of voters, is just too tempting.

Dem GDP Figures

2011-05-02T21:48:00.003+01:00

Yes Chris you still get that shiny fiver once you put in your donate button.

But lets look at these GDP figures closer:

Preliminary figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that in the first quarter the economy merely recouped ground lost from severe snow in December, growing by 0.5 per cent. With value added tax rising 2.5 percentage points to 20 per cent in January, economic weakness was always expected in the first half of 2011.

But the stagnant economy over the past six months will force another downgrade to official forecasts – unless the gross domestic product figures are subsequently revised upwards.

Current UK GDP is £1310 billion, making a 0.5% an increase in £6.55 billion over 3 months.

But compare this to the amount borrowed in March alone according to the ONS:

In March 2011, there was net borrowing (excluding financial interventions) of £18.6 billion, which compares with borrowing of £19.8 billion in March 2010.

£18.6 Billion.

So the government has spent the increase in GDP nigh on 3. times. over. in 1 month.

Yes I know that this isn't an exact comparison; no doubt someone will say the only comparitive is the rate at which we have to pay off the interest on this - life is too short to do those calculations.

But with spending like this, in comparison to the wealth generated cannot be good.

Stop spending our money Osbourne you annoying ass-hat.

The Alternative Vote: A Flawed Guide

2011-04-20T16:30:00.001+01:00

Course their is a flaw with this explanation, in that all your really choosing is between varying qualities and flavours of dog turd.

How Many Can We Do For HMRC

2011-04-18T23:20:00.000+01:00

HMRC: Harmful Malpractice (of) Reducing Compensation.

Any more?

Presumed Value

2011-04-15T10:59:00.008+01:00

First a quote (emphasis mine):

The real message of the conservative pro-life position is that we're in favor of living. We consider people--with a few obvious exceptions--to be assets. Liberals consider people to be nuisances. People are always needing more government resources to feed, house, and clothe them and to pick up the trash around their FEMA trailers and to make sure their self-esteem is high enough to join community organizers lobbying for more government resources.

- P J O'Rourke

The above quote not only illustrates part of my own beliefs in the pro-life debate but also links in to the next bit below.

I had a tweet exchange with Mr. Murphy on the subject of the minimum wage that went something a little like this (*cues piano*):

Today's announced increase in the minimum wage of 2.5% to 608p is considerably less than current rate of inflation. bit.ly/f1a0H7 (Retweeted by Mssr Murphy)

ME: @RichardJMurphy @Peston yes - where are employer[s] supposed to find the extra money to pay their employees?

@tjerubbaal @Peston if u r paying min wage your staff costs r already state subsidised massively - how much state sub do u need?

This comment came as odd, alien even; on top of enforcing higher rates of pay from employers was the government also subsidising this? How?

To this day I still await an answer from Mr. Murphy, accountant extraordinaire; but, using the magic of twitter, stream of consciousness that it is, I delved into the vast knowledge and "wisdom" of my "zealous" following to invite an answer from further afield.

It appears that being on minimum wage attracts additional "subsidies" in the form of housing benefit and tax credits to make up the shortfall; like Gordon Brown's splurge of tax credits for the middle classes down this seems to me like robbing Peter to pay Peter and Paul a moderate sum back the difference going to paying Humphrey's wage and giving him paper to shuffle, the effect here being to raise the amount of income to an "acceptable" level for those on minimum wage; below is the breakdown of what is available to the average singleton on the new £6.08 minimum wage:

So on a 37.5 hour week at minimum wage of £11856, £483.30 is added as the bare minimum, making their wage up to £12339.30.

Course you then have to take of the tax for that first:

So on an after tax income of £10,424.44 they add £483.30, making the amount those hard-pressed minimum wage earners working under the jack-boot of a top-hat wearing capitalist is £10907.74.

This gets to you by first taking off £876.20 from your wage annually only for you to get a fraction back from the state.

A few things.

Lets accept that we can (not should) guarantee a minimum wage - lets ignore the fact that the labour theory of value has almost certainly been proved a nonsense since it was first mooted (a one word answer as to why it is a nonsense: eBay) - are we really going about it the right way when we tax the pay of those we consider to require subsidy?

Further if we are admitting that the minimum wage doesn't cover the basics, something I'm naive to think if we are going to have should be a pre-requisite, then why bother with it in the first place? Why would you tax any of it? I means that like admitting it should be lower isn't it?

In fact if we are going to buy in full time to the charade that is the state subsidy of workers wages then why not abolish all benefits and fold them into one benefit system?

In a negative income tax system, people earning a certain income level would owe no taxes; those earning more than that would pay a proportion of their income above that level; and those below that level would receive a payment of a proportion of their shortfall, which is the amount their income falls below that level.

Now it could be said that eliminating minimum wage legislation and initiating a Negative Income Tax benefit system doesn't eliminate the possibility that employers will attempt to milk the subsidy for all its worth in order to reduce pay below what they would offer for that role, and you would be right; if employers can reduce wages at another's expense then they will (look at how health and safety legislation and regulations favours the incumbent, larger established businesses, dissuading new entrants to the market); likewise what is to stop someone from doing no work at all and just collecting their pay whilst staying at home? This is of course a dilemma that we face today but with the myriad benefits system, albeit currently the system dissuades people from entering work altogether

One model was proposed by Milton Friedman, as part of his flat tax proposals. In this version, a specified proportion of unused deductions or allowances would be refunded to the taxpayer. If, for a family of four the amount of allowances came out to $10,000, and the subsidy rate was 50% (the rate recommended by Friedman), and the family earned $6,000, the family would receive $2,000, because it left $4,000 of allowances unused, and therefore qualifies for $2,000, half that amount. Friedman feared that subsidy rates as high as those would lessen the incentive to obtain employment. He also warned that the negative income tax, as an addition to the "ragbag" of welfare and assistance programs, would only worsen the problem of bureaucracy and waste. Instead, he argued, the negative income tax should immediately replace all other welfare and assistance programs on the way to a completely laissez-faire society where all welfare is privately administered. The negative income tax has come up in one form or another in Congress, but Friedman opposed it because it came packaged with other undesirable elements antithetical to the efficacy of the negative income tax. Friedman preferred to have no income tax at all, but said he did not think it was politically feasible at that time to eliminate it, so he suggested this as a less harmful income tax scheme.

I would perhaps make it less restrictive on how you retain the advantage offered by your tax-free income, as I laid out here.

And can anyone really claim this would be more expensive to implement? Switching from 50+ benefit systems to one would save money in the long run.

That is of course unless you are a civil servant intent on a little empire building, less interested in what actually works rather than what gets you more unbridled power over the people you deign to serve.

If We Are "Immune" To Our Own Incompetence

2011-04-14T08:18:00.001+01:00

Ye God's I hope this isn't true (the highlighted bit that is):

A woman on the way to pick up her terminally-ill elderly mother for a hospital appointment was subjected to a nightmare ordeal by police who put her in a cell on suspicion of stealing petrol.

It was six hours before officers realised they had made a mistake because the theft was in fact carried out by two men.
And by the time they returned law-abiding grandmother Beverley Bennett to the spot where she was arrested, her car had been stolen.

When Mrs Bennett, 58, complained about her treatment, police said she could not take action against them because they were immune from prosecution in negligence cases.

If your boss was elected by the people he served, I doubt this would be a problem.

In Defence of AV

2011-04-10T12:33:00.007+01:00

Having nearly given Mrs. Tomrat an embolism by asking her if it were ok for me to stand for local elections I embarrassingly withdrew at the first hurdle (having also asked LPUK isf I could stand under their banner); the strain on my personal life and time did not stack up against cowtowing to the vast horde of ingrates that currently occupy my particular ward.

The date for the local elections also happens to be the date when we get to choose how we will vote in the future for our mps'; I've covered my thoughts on this earlier post, and whilst my view hasn't changed - electoral reform to the way in which our mps are elected is a poor substitute for improving the ways we un-elect them - I do think my view has evolved somewhat.

Lets assume that the referendum passes and the next election is decided by AV; this graph from an Aunty Beeb Radio 5 phone in discussion and experiment on a mock election under AV shows just one potential result:

As you can see even with several rounds leading to Nulabourious and the Watermelons coming 1st and 2nd neither group obtain the pre-requisite number of votes to be declared the winner, and as Guido pointed out this result would be declared void.

You see, as I pointed out in this post, the biggest party in any election result is probably the NOTA party; that group of people who, whether through ignorance or apathy, are simply not interested in taking part in our political system - to me this seems to be a gross injustice, in so much as the few grant the power over so many; left leaning zealots, moochers and and looters dictate the election because the NOTA party, that group of people who do not want their life divied up by politics or simply don't care who does the divying, rightly figuring that there vote wont matter; democracy is merely a tool legitimising theft.

If AV has the potential though to remove this legitimacy - by voiding the result - then this is at least part way there to effectively calling time on the whole stitch up; plonking in candidates who will tow the party line, cowtow to the whip or sell out their constituents for vested interests and professional lobby groups will get shown the door, all of them potentially.

This is a. good. thing.

Ultimately I think I may even partake in this referendum in favour of the #Yes2AV camp; if anything it cant detract from the FPTP system - you can still vote for only one candidate, just that if they poll the lowest in the group they are eliminated; how is that really that different ito your candidate losing in FPTP? The left will ultimately opt for any quasi-marxist/maoist/stalinist loon who will keep the funding faucet running and who will never sit well with the majority of the electorate.

Ultimately people are working out the scam being presented to them by the elitist clique, this can only add to that.

I've Got An Alternative Suggestion

2011-04-07T16:29:00.001+01:00

A couple who disguised their £500,000 home as a hay barn yesterday lost a four-year legal battle to save it.
...
They tried to outwit council planners by disguising their house as a windowless barn and surrounding it with farmyard machinery.
...
The saga began in 2001, after Mr Beesley was granted planning permission from Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council for a building to be used as a barn on green belt off the M25

He claims that he had no intention to live there, but changed his mind after a spate of burglaries in the area. So he altered plans to relocate the large barn door and built extra doors and lighting, which were never approved by the council.

He and his 37-year-old wife moved into the house in August 2002 – without planning permission.

In 2007, the couple applied for a certificate of lawfulness, which would allow them to remain in the barn legally after four years.

So a couple buy a plot of land and build a home on it, in a land in which house prices are going through the roof and are sustained by monopolies in planning permission, where many people considered themselves to live in an "over-populated" land despite the total UK land developed being 10% with housing taking up less than 2%.

And for their trespasses they are being evicted, their child being made homeless and their beautiful home destroyed.

No doubt there will be attacks from both left & right: the horror that someone would try to get on the property ownership ladder and ignore the governments every attempt to prevent all but the very rich and the governments favoured clientele doing this goes the cry of the Watermelon left; the nerve of building your own mansion-like home for half a mil when you could buy our crappy 2-up, 2-down in crime-ridden commuterville for the same price pops the colonel blimps of the Tory right.

I say sod them all; stay put in your house mate and let them drag you and your family kicking and screaming from it; salt the earth all around and make sure nothing grows there again ever.

You do not owe your allegiance to a state that will happily throw you off your own land because it doesn't fit into their neat little pigeon holes.

And before anyone engages in flippantly raising straw-men all over the place about allowing polluters to strip the green belt clean and destroy this answer this; has anyone pointed out that this is what he has indeed been doing? Has his presence somehow led to the greenbelt becoming less green? Is he hurting anyone or disposing of his rubbish on public land? Are these the issues he is being evicted over? No - he is being thrown out because he took his life in his hands and risked 100s of thousands of his own money to build his dream home and dared his local jobsworths to tell him he couldn't.

If 6 Were 9

2011-04-07T10:37:00.001+01:00

Remember back when the coalition still hadn't markedly pissed off anyone? You know it was sometime in October/November; Osbo had just told us all calmly that DROSSTRAP would be the order of the day - the brakes going on for getting more indebted, with a view to a second term setting a plan to handle all those IOUs under the carpet - Zippy as business secretary was chatting up journalists and briefing against businesses his lefty constituents didn't particularly like; Cameron courageously and heroically arguing down the amount of ~~our~~ government money handed over to an increasing EU budget in this new age of austerity.

This last point, Cameron's first of many backtracks on the EU, thus tune being to push for a halt in it's budget or potentially a decrease, led to a 2.9% increase: equating to roughly £440 million extra in our contribution.

Man, those were the days weren't they?

So what has this budgetary increase now become?

[EU budget increase: £0.45Bn] + [Irish Bailout: £7Bn] + [Portugese bailout: £6Bn] = £13.45 BILLION in additional money's going to the Eurozone.

If £0.45Bn = 2.9% increase that equates to £0.225Bn per 1%; therefore £13.45Bn/£0.225Bn = a 59.77% increase in our net EU contributions.

Looked at another way the average cost of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning "Joint Strike fighter" - those jets we have had to cut the majority of our order of to make up budget cuts - come in based on the Wikipedia pages' figure at about £85 Million a piece.

So we've just given up a potential 158 brand spanking new and shiny fighter jets bailing out the unaccountble Eurozone colleagues an their ambitions for a single currency.

You still glad we got "cast-iron Dave" at the helm? More like pig iron; will crumble at the slightest hint of pressure onto a bed of taxpayers money.

You Got It All Wrong Mr. Martin..

2011-04-06T08:58:00.001+01:00

This is a good thing:

MPs broke up yesterday for the start of a series of holidays that will see them in Parliament for just 17 days over the next two months.

As part of what is being dubbed the Great Westminster Shutdown, they will not return from their Easter break until Tuesday, April 26.

Even then they will only be in the Commons for three days before they get time off for the royal wedding.

When they return to work on May 3, they will only be sitting for three weeks before they have another fortnight off for Whitsuntide.

Taking into account the Fridays they are away as a matter of course, it means that in the two months from now until June 7, MPs will only sit in the Commons for 17 days.

I might run an experiment from now to June 7 and monitor the effect on the FTSE and the non-appearance of our MPs; would it be wrong to posit a theory that their absence is matched by the market doing better? We will see.

Can We Not Call Time On This Already?

2011-04-06T07:18:00.001+01:00

David Cameron vowed to hand hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money plus vital military secrets to Pakistan yesterday to make amends for offending the Muslim nation last year.

The Prime Minister pledged to invest £650million in Pakistani schools at a time when the education budget at home is being cut.

Britain is also to give highly sensitive military technology to combat roadside bombs to the Pakistani security services, which are widely blamed for funding and arming the Taliban.

Notwithstanding the humongous amount of money simply mulched up by our own local authorities on beano's to far away lands*, I think giving aid money bungs to hostile, submarine and nuclear-weapon-totting savages is an appalling use of our money by our increasingly vainglorious Euroslime Dave.

If it is worth giving aid to Pakistan (and I'm sure it is), there should be no need to compel taxpayers to do it; it'll come naturally by the charitable sector, and as we see from the revealed preferences of all those calling for more government spending (H/T to Tim Worstall) they are unwilling to back up spending plans which involve giving money to other nation's governments.

After all isn't that really the ultimate test for the left's desired spending habits: not their desire to give to Oxfam or UNICEF, but cutting checks to give directly to those governments responsible for the people concerned? If you are unwilling to give to corrupt third world politicos in places like Libya, Pakistan or Umbongo, why should the government be able to?

David Willetts: Douchebag*.

2011-04-04T10:15:00.001+01:00

Universities minister David Willetts said middle-class pupils from good schools who get straight As at A-level have not achieved 'something exceptional'

Poo-pooing the efforts of the children of your core vote doesn't sound like a particularly wise course of action now does it?

And what pray tell did David "two-brains" Willetts do at school and beyond?

Willetts was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

King Edwards?

King Edward's School (KES) (grid reference SP052836) is an independent secondary school in Birmingham, England, founded by King Edward VI in 1552. It is part of the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI in Birmingham, and is widely regarded as one of the most academically successful schools in the country, according to various league tables. It was ranked 7th for A-Level results[1] and 20th for GCSE results,[1] out of all schools in England in 2004.

So, by the fuzzy logic of two-brains Willetts, whereby a students educational achievement is inversely proportional to the success of his school in churning out more tax-drones this puts him on the level of...: Homer Simpson.

That someone with a crappy start in life goes on to succeed and do great things is to be celebrated, but the mindset that says the middle classes should pay for the party because their own success is implicit in their upbringing is as asinine a suggestion as any I've heard and should be challenged. Daily.

David Willetts: Douchebag*.

2011-04-04T09:11:00.001+01:00

Universities minister David Willetts said middle-class pupils from good schools who get straight As at A-level have not achieved 'something exceptional'

Willetts was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

King Edwards?

King Edward's School (KES) (grid reference SP052836) is an independent secondary school in Birmingham, England, founded by King Edward VI in 1552. It is part of the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI in Birmingham, and is widely regarded as one of the most academically successful schools in the country, according to various league tables. It was ranked 7th for A-Level results[1] and 20th for GCSE results,[1] out of all schools in England in 2004.

Quote Of The Day

2011-04-01T15:14:00.001+01:00

60 years of the Welfare State and 14 year olds are shooting 5 year olds. That's progress? God, I hate Politicians. They make awful parents. Perhaps Lee and I have more in common than I knew.

- Old Holborn.

Those New Rules Governing Nuclear Power In Full

2011-04-01T14:17:00.001+01:00

Following Sarkozy the Wunder-midget's call for tougher rules governing the use of nuclear power I thought I would posit a few potential minimum standards for operating them - here goes:

1. Nuclear Power Stations must be built to withstand at least a devasting natural disaster such as an asteroid the size of Yorkshire directly colliding with it

The only way we can prevent any chance of a massive natural disaster from ever causing devastating radioactive leaks, or worse, ANOTHER CHERNOBYL, irrespective of the mind numbingly high improbability of the latter happening.

Bad, but can you imagine how much worse it'd be if it hit a nuclear power station in YOUR town?

2. Nuclear power operators must be ex-army artillery experts.

Why, I hear you ask? I have 3 words for you: Godzilla and Mothra.

Library images. Imagine that glass building was ACTUALLY A NUCULAR* POWER STATION for an idea of the worst case scenario.

Oh you may laugh, you may say "Tom you realise that's some dude in a suit fighting a papier mâché moth right?", to which I can only point the following:

Maybe that's what the Japanese want you to believe to avoid the international outcry about the unsafe working practices of running nucular* power around rampaging monsters; after all that radiation in Japan is well documented to cause animals to grow to monstrous levels irrespective of the massive physiological impossibilities they represent. Doesn't that make more sense? Doesn't it?

3. An international tax to mitigate the effects of environmental impact of nucular* power.

"What environmental impact?" I hear you cry? The one few people have really considered but potentially devasting nonetheless; I am if course talking about those 3 little words so feared by our leaders concerning the safety of our planet: Unstable Inter-dimensional Portals.

Coming to a highstreet near you.

Hollywood, TV and video games may glamorise these abominations of theoretical physics but the reality is a lot more mundane but nonetheless dangerous: radiation and nucular* accidents tends to go hand in hand with interdimensional rifts opening up.. Aside from the obvious danger associated with interdimensional alien and demonic invasions hellbent on enslavement or playful amusement in torturing human kind, the prospect of adverse conditions causing a radioactive leak are too much frightening to contemplate.

Some scientific commentators even believe nucular* accidents could be attributable to manbearpig breaching one of these portals.

So there are just 3 of my valuable contributions to potential rules that should be used to combat nucular* power.

Let us not split hairs on this: the relatively few survivors left in the area after just one of the above scenarios, the ones not immeadiately killed off, enslaved by interdimensional space aliens or demons or who become collateral damage in the ensuing firefight with either Mothra or Godzilla may be exposed to radiation scientists believe is safe, potentially leading to CANCER in later life. Provided none of the above kills them.

* = yes I'm aware I've not spelled nucular; it's unlikely anyone will notice as the p is silent. ;-)

A Letter To Aunty Beeb

2011-03-28T14:13:00.001+01:00

Hello,

Lately I have read several articles on the BBC website and associated media outlets that have left me puzzled; as the BBC is committed to impartiality and explanation of daily current affairs and the provision of supplementary explanations of certain concepts and words I wonder if it might define, or direct me to its chart-agreed definition of the following:

1. "Inflation" as regards to finance, business and monetary and government policy.

2. "Anarchist"/"Anarchism" as regards to the ideology.

3. "Right-wing"/"right-leaning"/"of the right-wing [name] party..." as regards to its reports on the actions of various political groups.

4. "left-wing"/"left-leaning"/"of the left-wing [name] party..." as regards to its reports on the actions of various political groups.

5. "conservatism"/"conservative"/"tory"/"tory-led" as regards to description of the UK Conservative Party and in description of the Republican Party in the USA.

As a dutiful licence fee payer I look forward to a timely reply and explanation of these points at your earliest convenience; in addition I look forward to your explanation of the editorial process that assures us that these terms are used in the correct context and what schemes/measures are in place to castigate staff for deliberate mis-representations of these meanings.

Yours sincerely,

They're unlikely to answer due to the "volume of correspondence" I was informed they apparently get upon completing the contact form; why not do your own letter and maybe ask for some definitions of your own.

And if they are supposed to be the Oxford Dictionary definitions then they are in a lot of trouble.

There's A Simple Solution To This Too!

2011-03-27T11:50:00.001+01:00

In a tale which sounds like it could have come straight from a Yes, Minister script, Digby Jones, the former head of the CBI, reveals this weekend that he was so frustrated that he wasn't allowed to drive a British-built car he even offered to use his own Jaguar.
...
The book, serialised in The Telegraph, also reveals that inward investment opportunities were often squandered because civil servants were slow at responding to requests from businesses that wanted advice.

In one example the Canadian aerospace and engineering company, Bombardier, almost abandoned plans to invest £500m to build business jets in Northern Ireland because it had "heard nothing" from the Government's business department.

Civil service incompetence should come as nothing new to readers of this blog; some may even be aware of the downright insidious behaviour against it's political opponents.

But a question remains; why do we need a BIS? Implementing health & safety legislation could be handled by the Dept. if Sickness, tax liabilities by Her Mag's State Sanctioned Theft & Violence and environmental concerns by the Department of Energetic Zealots for Climate Change or the Department of Environmental Fabians & Rural Turnip Mulchers.

So why not wrap up what appears to be a vehicle for state-gerrymandering in private business, an especially repugnant concept considering that it mandates a third party's involvement in what should be a private agreement between the individuals involved.

Angry At The Wrong People

2011-03-25T18:13:00.001Z

Fuel prices have fallen since the Budget, but by less than the 1p cut in duty announced by Chancellor George Osborne, UK-wide research has found.

There was a 0.6p average fall in petrol and diesel from Wednesday to Thursday, the survey by Experian Catalist found.

The 1p cut in duty on petrol and diesel took effect from 1800 GMT on Wednesday.

The Retail Motor Industry Federation (RMI) says many garages will delay implementing the cut until stocks of existing, more expensive fuel are gone.

Aunty Beeb getting mad at those evil capitalist bastards not passing on the whole penny of duty our glorious leaders deigned to bequeath us in an act of infinite grace and generosity

And how much was this value?

Based on the above forecast you get the following percentages:

-57.19p duty = 47.7%
-39.85p product = 33.2%
-17.86p VAT = 14.9%
- 5p delivery & retail = 4.2%

Or to put another way 62.2% of the cost of fuel goes into George Osbourne's pockets.

4.2%.

Vs.

62.2%.

That poor chap who gets your late night beer & rizla run order on your way home walking from town takes just 4p from every £1 you spend on fuel through the week; the government takes 60-bloody pence and positively conflates many of the conflicts that are driving the price skyward.

Aunty Beeb should be ashamed of herself.

Am I Supposed To Be Grateful?

2011-03-24T13:47:00.001Z
Just did the budget calculator on Aunty Beeb- the results:

The indications are that you will be £110.82 better off.
Breakdown of Difference £
Alcohol £-24.71
Fuel £-32.09
Income tax £+400.00
National insurance £-82.58
Tax credits £-144.80
Vehicle excise duty £-5.00

So, as long as I behave as a mindless automaton, consuming a precise amount of victory gin each weekend and driving nowhere but work and to pick up ever more costly food I can be a whole £100+ up?

And I should be grateful?

Thinking Differently On Tax

2011-03-24T13:05:00.001Z

Tax legislation, measured by the respected Tolley’s ‘Yellow’ handbook on direct taxes, has mushroomed from two to five volumes since Labour took power in 1997, and from 1,800 to a voluminous 18,000 pages.

I have a solution that would concentrate minds bit:

- all legislation which directly remove monies from people needs to be collected in one place (a government codex, like Tolley's, on taxation if you will), including substance of laws, statutory instruments and regulation.

- Legislation put in place stating the tax law and codex should be written in plain English. Tax calculations should be incorporated in tables on the codex; any calculations should be proofed so they can be done by anyone possessing a GCSE in maths (low bar I know).

- The text format should be one font and one standard size, say 10/12pt for main body text and 8/10pt for notes or indices in arial.

- now the important bit- the codex cannot be any thicker than 1 inch when printed on standard printer paper; if the printed codex fails this stress test it has to be rewritten; no caveats, no separate indexes or additional explanatory notes - just one 1-inch document.

Doesn't matter the content; the government has to justify that at the ballot box, but a more useful exercise long term would be to get successive governments to think how they raise their money and justify why special interest groups deserve tax breaks (in both sense of the word "break").

I wont hold my breath; might be cool to petition government to do this - would at least raise some interesting questions about tax in general.

There Is A Relatively Simple Solution To This

2011-03-23T09:20:00.001Z

Whitehall departments are still recruiting thousands of staff, official figures revealed yesterday – despite a Government pledge to slash the number of civil servants.

The figures, obtained by former Tory Cabinet minister John Redwood, show that Coalition efforts to cut the civil service payroll are being undermined by continuing recruitment drives in Whitehall.
...
But they have also decided to recruit more than 4,100 new staff – cutting the reduction in overall headcount to just two per cent.

Leviathan is still leviathan, even in it's current vulnerable, flaccid, porcine state; it is unlikely to relinquish all that NuLabour cash easily.

This is, of course, only possible because the civil service, abetted by lazy, profligate mps, have wrapped their incoherent babble (let's call it mandarinese for posterity) around what should be some pretty simple public service roles to the effect that they are no longer simple and no longer a service; bins go un-emptied but are searched for rogue bits of recycling by council jobsworths; chronic, entrenched welfarism is trapping generations in poverty, while the newly unemployed are starving for want of benefits.

Good managers are first and foremost accountable to those they serve; brilliant managers understand this and make their staff likewise upwardly accountable but not proscriptive enough to stifle innovation. If Cambo wants to alter things for the better and put pay to this sort of fannying around he couldn't go much worse than this: ask each minister what their department should be doing and what it is actually doing in plain English; if he doesn't know fire him. Once he knows what they should be doing they should have their mandarins look through their whole budget and wind down any area not pertaining directly to those goals laid out by the minister. Once this has been done the report should be looked over by the minister, clearly stating the costs and price tag; The treasury should scrutinise the budget at this point too.

Once this is done we come to the final stage: the whole budget should be ratified by parliament with objections noted. The report and ratification notes should then be made available online for public scrutiny.

This should be the basis of what we vote for our mps on; how they insist they spend our money and what goals they do and do not support, and whether they are whipped by party politicos or if they bow to their constituents mores.

Carrying on in the vague way we are going isn't helping anyone.

The Whole #Yes2AV/#No2AV Debate In a Nutshell

2011-03-20T22:21:00.003Z

Really, this is all any electoral arguement boils down to.
A lot has been said about the Alternate Voting system and no doubt more will be said in the near future; there are many pros and cons to changing the electoral system so that everyones votes' counted in a more effective way (not withstanding the fact that the type of people who vote for the Monster Raving Loony party or the Free-Banana party would effectively get multiple votes in AV, but lets not split hairs over this).
But really, when all the choice available to you boils down to a giant douche or a turd sandwich, then it really doesn't matter how you vote for them, but how you unvote for them; currently the only way this happens is if the MP in question:
Goes to jail for a year or more.
Resigns of his own accord.
Dies.
So you catch them in the act of committing crime, you appeal to their conscience or sense of honour or you will them to keel over with all your might.
In no other job in the UK can you earn in excess of a quarter of a million pounds (topped up by a generous expense system and ridiculously long holiday period with no accountability other than a box ticking, glad-handing exercise once every 4-5 years, tickling the bellies of a few, dedicated but ultimately ill-informed and potentially delusional activists in their constituents, the remaining votes coming from people who see it as a tradition for vote for the giant douche or the turd sandwich party's their parents and their parent's parent's voted for, because, you know, "that's democracy an' that".
Our political masters are happy as larry that the only opinion you hold is who has the prettier rosette - arguement over policy never gets to more than the token strawman stage nor is discussing how your selected politico will achieve his aims ever called into question; if they say they will build a mountain of cheese to the moon to set up a space gun to kill martians invading from mars then the cost is not to be mentioned or considered - it just is something no doubt the other party will put a stop to.
No.
Truth is all we do with our current electoral democracy is abrogate responsibility for some pretty crucial aspects of our life: how we will fund our old age, how we will fund our education and that of our children or who we will contract with to take of us if we get sick/have an accident/lose our means of making money. The ones we palm this off to have royally screwed us all over and no AV system will change this.
Nothing short of a revolution in ideology, a veritable waking the f**k up from the comprehensive welfarism we inherited from the past will be enough.
Otherwise someone is going to get stuck holding the cheque for this debacle. People need to learn to be masters of their own destiny, again, and not mere appointees to either a giant douche or turd sandwich to rule over it.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-17T22:56:00.003Z
"LUNA: MILES, ERNO'S GOING
TO LEAD THE REVOLUTION
AND HEAD THE NEW GOVERNMENT.

MILES: LOOK, DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND ?
IN SIX MONTHS, WE'LL BE
STEALING ERNO'S NOSE.

POLITICAL SOLUTIONS DON'T WORK.
I TOLD YOU THAT.

IT DOESN'T MATTER
WHO'S UP THERE.
THEY'RE ALL TERRIBLE."
Woody Allen's penultimate deliberations in the movie Sleeper.

Isn't This A Good Thing?

2011-03-16T11:08:00.001Z

At the start of a three-part series on the future of the NHS, the Guardian commissioned Kieran Walshe, professor of health policy and management at Manchester Business School and an adviser to the Commons health select committee, to examine how GPs could profit from the reforms. His work shows GPs could more than double their average pay of £105,000 to £300,000 a year as a direct result of the reforms. At present fewer than 3% of GPs earn more than £200,000 – but Walshe suggests such salaries could become the norm.
...
According to Walshe, the most lucrative ventures would see GPs setting up private companies that would turn underspends in their annual budget – in effect, savings on patient spending – into profits. He calculates that individual GPs could net more than £140,000 a year in extra income by saving 5% in commissioning costs. Another £55,000 of income each would come from taking on the responsibility of managing their local population's needs.

So as long as the services they buy for their patients are cheaper than the associated NHS cost, assuming they shop around for it of course, and the government, the ones with the (our) money bags, are saving some money and splitting it with the successful GPs we, the patient, get:

- Cheaper services.
- Faster services.
- Greater control over how the money is spent (no commissars, no health tsars, just you and the GP you choose to use).

Who cares how much the GP earns? There pay will better reflect there ability to organise the individual healthcare needs of their patients, who are entitled to take themselves and their funding elsewhere; civic-minded GP consortia will no doubt set up non-profit groups to appeal directly to this subset of malcontents; followers of the politics of envy.

Personally I reckon an (unintended?) consequence of this will be to encourage preventative measures becoming more prevalent; in general preventative treatments - drugs, lifestyle changes, early identification - is cheaper and more effective than fixative measures - heart surgery, chemotherapy etc.

We shall see - In short I would rather have a medically trained individual I know well choose my providers than some civil disservant in the Department of Sickness.

If Your Going To Start Anywhere With Welfare, Start With Speed

2011-03-15T12:16:00.001Z
First some background.

My brother Buffrat, royal pain the ass that he is, is a dreamer; a regular space cadet with what can only be described as a rather tendentious hold on reality driven by an ego that would put Gordon Brown to shame; roughly 2 years ago following a stream of batshit-crazy but insanely hot girlfriends he conceived a plan - the plan being to quit his highly lucrative, on-the-up career in recruitment and join the RAF (his is in his twenties and in great shape still making it a viable career move).

He told his boss, his boss told his bosses boss who told senior management; in short panic ensued for the sole reason that Buffrats department was the only one making money for their entire division - enough to support it indefinitely through the recession (Buffrat as with all space cadets sometimes verges on the fringes of truth and can talk an unbelievable amount of codswallop; however the above factoid I believe considering what happened next).

Meetings were called - pay increases, generous holiday entitlements and stock options were offered all to no avail; once Buffrat gets an idea he sticks to it (long enough for it to screw things up and annoy everyone around him, more of which later); he was joining the RAF and that was that - notice was handed, he would leave in 2 months time.

It was at this point that things turned nasty.

His company immediately put him on leave but demanded he attend the office daily to ensure his team could get sign-offs on work without bothering Buffrat's immediate superior; he was reduced to playing online poker and navel gazing for fear he would take his knowledge to a competitor. They also started to have "human resource issues" associated with my brothers pay and commission from previous months; combined with an extremely messy breakup with Buffrat's batshit-crazy ex left him nearly penniless (admittedly not helped by his profligate spending habits; he is not the perfect victim in this story).

The months went by and it got to November last year; he moved out of the house he co-mortgaged with a friend who agreed to take over the mortgage completely and moved in to the old family home (Mumra runs an old people's home and lives on site) to conserve money; his meagre savings quickly vanishing, but the date he was due to head off for officer training fast approaching.

Then idiocy struck.

Somehow he managed to find the means (Buffrat often finds the means) to go out one evening, proceed to get blind, stinking drunk, fall over, lose his phone, wallet and chip a bone in his elbow; his imminent move to pastures greener and new adventure was delayed while his elbow was examined; the might of crushing NHS bureaucracy would delay his start in the RAF by 3 months while doctors would poke his poorly arm with a stick and mutter about getting an Xray and bone scan at some point in the distant future once all the Climate Change Coordinators and One-A-Day Commissars had done their fortnightly gender equality check in the radiology department.

Naturally, having drained his savings and his old company now trying to "disappear" his last 2 months wages and commission under the dusty carpet of latinised legalese, he was broke.

Which brings me to the following story in the Fail this morning:

A charity which sends food parcels to impoverished Eastern Europe has had to redirect some of its aid nearer home – to the South West of England.

More than 200 people a week are picking up ‘basic foodstuffs’ such as cereals and tinned goods from a help centre at a Baptist church in Okehampton, Devon.

The crisis arose after the closure of three factories, leaving 350 workers redundant.

Many are living below the poverty line as they wait to qualify for benefits, which can take five weeks or longer.

There are bigger problems at the heart of welfare certainly: the tragic moral hazard associated with intergenerational dependency, the insane number of benefits available and the near-schizophrenic levels of intrusion they allow considering the political football they've become; I'm glad the coalition seems to be making moves in this area.

But, as is happening with the above group of poor people, as happened with my brother who similarly lived on handouts from his already hard-pressed family, perhaps the first point of reform should be speed; the mandarins in charge of implementing these reforms have every incentive to make things more difficult: the more difficult it becomes to get through the process the more bods needed for civil-service fiefdoms, the more intrusive they can be.

This is not a call to make the benefit system easier to game; it is a call to reform the very public sector drag that created the mess in the first place, the desire to fill the gaps in welfare with more welfare, the long term welfarism implicit on a system that the work-shy and unfortunate together have to wade through; would you honestly keep searching for part time work, any work, if it might disappear upon entry leaving you to jump through all the sane hoops again?

Welfare and care for the unfortunate needs to become as adaptable as our unpredictable economic climate requires; this is a good place to start.

Please Lord Let This Be The Straw

2011-03-11T09:29:00.001Z

The gay couple who won damages from Christian hotel owners for refusing them a bed are suing to get even more money from them, according to documents filed at the Court of Appeal.

Steven Preddy and Martyn Hall said the owners were let off too lightly because of their Christian beliefs.

Peter and Hazelmary Bull now face having to pay the couple thousands of pounds more in compensation.

Civil partners Mr Preddy, 38, and Mr Hall, 46, of Bristol, won their case in January and were awarded £1,800 each.

Their legal challenge to the amount of damages is being backed and fully financed by the taxpayer-funded Equality and Human Rights Commission, according to the documents.

The move led yesterday to fresh protests that the might of the State is being used to sweep away any remaining claim Christianity has to a hearing in the courts.

Mr and Mrs Bull, who run the Chymorvah Hotel in their seven-bedroom home in Cornwall, had turned away the men on the grounds that their policy is to let double rooms only to married couples.

In January Judge Andrew Rutherford, at Bristol County Court, ruled that the Bulls had broken sexual orientation regulations under the Equality Act, because in the eyes of the law civil partnership is the same as marriage.

My prayer this morning in light of this:

Lord God I know all things work together for your glory and good; forgive me when I question this truth in the face of so much darkness.

Thank you God that you have revealed to me so much already, so as to not fear when persecution comes to my door; thank you more so that we in the west are so lightly touched by the enemy in this regard.

And God please continue to use your enemies in this way as to reveal the contradiction present in our present darkness; that the state is not our friend nor the last vestige of the rule of law any longer, but merely an agent if legalised violence, captured by pressure groups intent on spreading it's cancerous power.

Lord whom you wish to destroy you must first turn mad or to your light; let this be an example of the former so the many of us asleep in your light awaken.

Most of all help me to know you more in these times of trouble.

Amen.

Note: This is an excellent dissertation on what I believe is really going on here.

The Squeezed Middle Riddle

2011-03-07T10:30:00.001Z

Middle class families in which one parent stays at home to look after the children pay more than a third extra in tax in Britain than those in other Western countries, a report has found.

Quel surprise.

As I keep bleating on about there is a relatively painless alternative (well, painless if your not a member of the bureaucracy built up around the poor and welfare stricken).

You can get rid of most, of not all of the DWP and administrate this via the HMRC, with limited new legislation & regulation required.

Joke Of The Day #2. Sadly Not

2011-03-07T09:08:00.001Z

David Cameron launched an extraordinary attack on his own civil servants last night for loading costs on to business, as he set out the ‘moral’ case for enterprise.

The Prime Minister expressed intense frustration with the failure of officials to understand that firms buckling under the weight of Labour’s red tape ‘frankly cannot take it any more’.

Brilliant you may think, and what does he intend to do about it?

‘If I have to pull these people into my office in No 10 to argue this out myself and get them off the backs of business, then, believe me, I’ll do it,’ he said.

Oh my! he's going to have stern words with them. No doubt he might even write them a letter.

Chancellor George Osborne’s March 23 Budget will include plans for at least ten new enterprise zones, with tax breaks and relaxed planning laws.

No doubt the new "enterprise zones" will be placed in the wary of some northern dossholes and will eventually become filled with QuANGOs and fake charities (a future blog there methinks); I'll ask the obvious though - if tax breaks encourage growth and entrepreneurship, then why stop at 10 geographic locations? Better yet why not have one: the UK?

Steps are also expected to try to increase trade with economies such as India and China, cut red tape and open up public sector contracts to small firms.

Now the second idea I like; opening up trade with the new tiger economies is a brilliant idea, but last time I checked we already were trading with them en masse - what business is that for the government anyway?

The first sentence though is pure boilerplate - every government since time immemorial has said they will "cut red tape" and/or "open up the public sector to competition" etc. - few have EVER gone much further than soundbite-land in the search for pastures new.

This remains a joke till Cameron actually puts something meaty behind his soundbites.

Like a plan for starters.

Somethings Got To Give

2011-03-06T11:56:00.001Z

Protesters warned of a fuel price ‘crisis’ last night after the cost of unleaded petrol hit £1.40 a litre – £6.37 a gallon.
Campaign group Fair Fuel UK said that the price charged at a BP garage in Kent was the highest so far in Britain.
The forecourt on the M2 near Rainham, Gillingham, was also selling a litre of diesel at £1.44 – about £6.55 a gallon.

This is a product of monetary inflation and the events in the Middle East.

Oh, as will no doubt be pointed out by the various useful leftist idiots, by Osbourne's Declining Rate Of State Sanctioned Theft Re-Appropriation Programme (DROSSTRAP as I'll now refer to it as in the future; in a nutshell taking more from us at a slower rate of increase).

However, I for one see that the DROSSTRAP's only problem comes down to the ideological diarrhoea epidemic at the core of the coalition; how they proselytise on personal freedom yet introduce more regulations than ever before, how they talk about rethinking what government should do then completely botch the so-called bonfire of the QuANGOs, the technocrats expanding such areas of proscription.

I have heard many figures as to the percentage cost as tax for petrol; the figures below are just one estimate taken from here.

Unleaded: 64%
Diesel: 62%
LPG: 63%

Or for ever pound you spend at the pump 62-64 pence finds it's way into the coffers of the state.

Or an effective tax rate of ~125%.

Hands up who think thats reasonable?

Barnsley Central: A Victory For N E Bodyelse (NOTA)

2011-03-04T11:20:00.001Z

Labour have won the Barnsley Central by-election, while the Lib Dems slipped to sixth in the South Yorkshire seat.

UKIP, the Conservatives, the BNP and an independent all finished ahead of the Lib Dems, who came second in the seat in last May's general election.

Lib Dem candidate Dominic Carman said his party had been given "a kicking", while Labour's victorious Dan Jarvis said it was a message to the coalition.

The seat's previous Labour MP was jailed for fiddling his expenses.

The votes as reported by Aunty Beeb:

By-election results

Dan Jarvis (Lab) 14,724
Jane Collins (UKIP) 2,953
James Hockney (C) 1,999
Enis Dalton (BNP) 1,463
Tony Devoy (Ind) 1,266
Dominic Carman (LD) 1,012
Kevin Riddiough (Eng Dem) 544
Howling Laud Hope (Loony) 198
Michael Val Davies (Ind) 60

Lab maj 11,771: Turnout 36.5%

And the votes as reported by me, or to put another way as they are, complete with the real percentage voting:

N E Bodyelse (NOTA): 42,135 (64%)
Dan Jarvis (Lab) 14,724 (22%)
Jane Collins (UKIP) 2,953 (4%)
James Hockney (C) 1,999 (3%)
Enis Dalton (BNP) 1,463 (2%)
Tony Devoy (Ind) 1,266
Dominic Carman (LD) 1,012
Kevin Riddiough (Eng Dem) 544
Howling Laud Hope (Loony) 198
Michael Val Davies (Ind) 60
Lab maj 11,771 (18%)

The top bods in this one horse race rely on the None Of The Above party's non-participation.

If you don't vote, heck, don't even spoil your vote to register your discontent, you have no right to complain about what these bastards do in your name.

Jokes As Illustrations #1

2011-03-04T08:38:00.001Z
Told to me by a friend at work, liberated originally from a friend on Facebook then ad naseum after that:

A banker, a Daily Mail reader and a benefit claimant are sat down together for tea and biscuits. There are 12 biscuits on the table.

The banker takes 11 then turns to the Daily Mail reader and says:
"you better watch that benefit claimant; he's trying to take your biscuit."

Atlas Shrugged Part 1: Abridged & Anglofied

2011-03-03T22:43:00.002Z

"If this was a microcosm of the true state of this nation, God help us. It was clear to me that the majority of people paid to run things efficiently weren't bothered, while a stream of useless or patronising information was constantly relayed over tannoy systems to frustrated passengers. In spite of being entangled in a nightmare of regulations, warnings and idiotic announcements, most people remained robust and resilient, laughing at officials who, bound by more rules and regulations, were unable to adapt flexibly to a bad situation."
Discovered today via the good Dr. North is this gentleman Jim Greenhalf. You could almost see an annoying British director putting Hugh Grant in as the lead and have all the train staff making merry about the decline of the rail network.
Ye gods.

What Happens If They Fail?

2011-03-03T14:55:00.001Z

Thousands of children have taken GCSE-style exams which teach them how to claim unemployment benefit.
...
Its material states: ‘Find out what benefits you are entitled to if you are unemployed’. It also teaches how to ‘obtain information’ from ‘using the telephone’, the ‘internet’ or ‘newspapers/magazines’, and even how to ‘host a tea party’.
...
Another course, the level 2 Certificate in Preparation for Working Life, was taken by 29,689 pupils and is worth half a GCSE. It includes a compulsory section on ‘hazard identification at home, on the roads and at work’, which involves a required understanding of ‘self-concept’.

Unlikely I know; if you are really struggling at 15/16 with the concept of oncoming traffic, faulty sparking electrical wires & whether or not bleach is a decent mixer for Red Bull then I'm sure you would likely be on the receiving end of another award entirely.

God help us all.

There's a phrase that comes to mind the TV series The Wire: "duking the stats"; never has there been more brazen efforts to do just this than British Education.

Their Contempt For You Is Absolute #2

2011-03-03T09:28:00.001Z

David Cameron has been secretly consulting Tony Blair about Libya despite publicly criticising his links with Colonel Gaddafi.

Senior officials say the Prime Minister has held at least two conversations in the past fortnight with the former Labour premier, now a Middle East peace envoy.

Mr Cameron has consulted Mr Blair about the Libyan dictator’s state of mind and sought advice about how to make him quit.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1362345/David-Camerons-secret-Libya-crisis-talks-Tony-Blair.html
still does these shady dealings with the opposition- with men who's actions were criminal before you even start to talk about the legitimacy of their actions with things like Iraq.

The reason? there is no sodding difference irrespective of who's in power; it is only your compliance with their law (they long ago abandoned justice) that enables them to carry on.

Why their heads are not poles, CINOs, Blairites and Brownites alike, outside Westminster I will never know.

Sexism Sells Cheaper Car Insurance

2011-02-28T08:30:00.001Z

European judges are expected to pass an equality ruling tomorrow that could cost British taxpayers almost £1billion.

They are poised to make it illegal to assess insurance premiums and pension payouts on the basis of a policyholder’s sex.
...
Female drivers under 26 would be the big losers, with some seeing premiums rise by 25 per cent at renewal. The premiums paid by young men will fall by around 10 per cent.

Pretty easy to understand why young men folk are becoming less gentile towards the fairer sex; it's court mandated.

Women, you have sought wholesale to put professional feministas on pedestals to speak for you; you didn't honestly think there would be no price did you?

And Now For Something Completely Local

2011-02-23T19:53:00.001Z

Leeds' big three political parties have revealed details of their budgets for the city ahead of this afternoon's full council meeting.
Councillors will meet at Leeds Civic Hall this afternoon to debate the budget for 2011-2012. The council faces a £90m shortfall thanks to a £50m reduction in government grants and £40m as a result of rising cost pressures. The council is also having to identify further savings of at least £25m for the next financial year.
...
Councillor Keith Wakefield said the "unprecedented scale" of government cuts means that the council is unable to maintain services at current levels.
Wakefield has pledged to work "against the tide of financial pressures" to deliver a budget that prioritises and protects services for the most vulnerable people, as well as investing in jobs and skills, community safety and street cleansing.
Wakefield has also expressed disappointment that a cross-party approach to budget setting could not be secured.

In a nut shell in a city with going on a hundred private providers of cheap gyms and pools and a dozen or so private bus companies the councillors are bellyaching over a few leisure centres in deprived areas and a free bus service predominantly used by lazy students in walking distance of town.

One of the things I felt secured Leeds' public finances quite well was that no one party had an overwhelming majority of councillors through which to push an ideological agenda rather than what Leeds actually needs; the roads repaired, bins cleaned and mentally ill and incapacitated cared for.

Now it appears the situation has reverted to a more taut tightrope: 48 Labour + 2 Watermelons vs. a consortia of Lib Dems, Bory's & independents: putting a precarious left-leaning majority of 50:49.

Hence Labour have a lot of clout still, and presented with a change in the power structure they are making the cuts about frontline public services rather than cuts in the back offices strewn across Leeds (and believe me there are a lot of back offices with dubious responsibilities; I've worked for a few)

Might be a good idea to tip the balance of power away from the mainstream parties eh? LPUK are looking for locals wanting to do just that, to stand up to the wolves deciding which sheep to have for dinner.

We are not anti-public sector we are pro-individual rights to make contracts with whom we like without a third party; to provide public services only in so much as to cover the basic rights of man to go about his business and let the natural ingenuity and entrepreneurship of mankind provide the rest.

The collectivists call us cynical without knowing the meaning of the word; they bleat about our desire to shrink the state and raise their eyebrows at our desire to encourage private provision where public provision exists and then wonder why we laugh when their false dichotomy and belief in democracy doesn't provide the answers they want us to hear or be given.

If you feel as I do stand for your local seat; if you can't support someone who can - your area or not it is surely better to crush the consensus politics that have led us here than keep on with the status quo.

Again, Grow A Set Of Balls Lansley

2011-02-23T18:45:00.001Z

More than 50,000 doctors, nurses, midwives and other NHS staff are due to lose their jobs, according to the most comprehensive survey of health cuts since the Government came to power.
...
And the University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust was reported to be forecasting a reduction of 1,349 full-time posts by 2015 - 22.5 per cent of its staff. A spokesman said that a “significant number” of employees were being relocated elsewhere.

Mr. Lansley can rest assured that each and everyone of these cut posts, like local government, will have a direct impact on frontline services.

The Bory's and their associated Lib Dumb bell-clappers* have unfortunately been treated like mugs and chosen to fight Labour and the civil disservice on their choice of battle field; they didn't realise the narrative had been hijacked, changed from "service reform" to "service cuts".

And as the good Dr. North pointed out last week, both inflections of language and meaning here carry responsibilities, the former meaning you have to take command on behalf of taxpayers as to where the axe will fall, the latter passing the axe to those who should be getting cut.

If proof were needed to this check out this job, one of only 5 available for North Staffordshire NHS Trust:

Mystery Shopper Programme Manager (£30,460 to £40,157 pa)
Organisation Development
Posted: 14/02/2011
North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust
Mystery Shopping is a customer feedback tool, more commonly used in the commercial sector which is now attracting growing attention in healthcare environments. Funded by the Workforce Locality Board, for a period of 12 months, the Programme Manager: Mystery Shopper provides an exciting opportunity for a forward thinking, enthusiastic individual to develop and implement Mystery Shopping across NHS partner organisations...

Mystery shopping being a contradiction in terms when there is a sole supplier of healthcare, so what is the point of even pretending?

Ah, you say, service improvement, to which I cynically point out that the trusts' gets paid whether your happy or not, improvements interpreted as to mean "more money" or "more resources" to be squirrelled away by management consultants and diversity coordinators.

Or I could point out that there are private companies that do marketing research for a fraction of the price, by company utilising just such groups to do this.

So are we likely to see a set of balls descend amongst any of the coalition anytime soon?

I wont be holding my breath.

* = that little bit of poo that dangles down at the end of a bog session, probably after big steak, pasta, and 3 cups of coffee.

Fill Yer Boots #2

2011-02-21T21:47:00.004Z

Cameron answers our questions? Gonna be thinking long and hard about this one.

Still there are lot of things I'd like to see him try to worm his way out of.

So, fill your boots.

UPDATE

Have given my question in for your consideration, using my twitter username, tjerubbaal, if you like it vote for it.

Some brilliant gems so far:

"How will Britain increase the value of exports over imports after the economic downturn?"
Um I have a very complicated answer to this but will just ask it as a 5 year-old would: "if what we get from other countries is worth more than we give to them that means we win right?"

"hello my name is teoni my question is why is pollution in the air"
Not really worth an answer is it? Euroslime Dave is a politician, not an environment scientist.

"Are you a member of the global elitist Builderburg group and what are your views on the new word order"
Please change the f*****g record; our political masters are all Oxbridge multi-millionaires and couldn't find their arse with both hands - what makes you think these shadowy types are any better at keeping the conspiracies secret and successful?

Personally though I am loving this question:
"Where is your chin, and are you the nexr doctor after Matt Smith?"

Got my vote

The Clock Is Ticking

2011-02-20T11:57:00.001Z

Following my last call for Euroslime Dave to tell the Strasbourg/Brussels consensus to piss off, comes this potential political IED:

Murderers and rapists locked up in psychiatric hospitals are challenging the British Government in a test case at the European Court of Human Rights which could see them win full State benefits.

The case will intensify pressure on David Cameron, after the Prime Minister pledged to review Strasbourg's influence on British law following the row over whether prisoners should have the vote.

The prisoners' votes issue was a ruse, as the Synonblog pointed out; a means for the CINO* Euroslime Dave to tickle faux-euroskeptic ears in the CINO* party and the real ones belonging to the swivel-eyed loons reading the The Daily Fail.

Now it looks increasingly like the unnaccountable, unelected ECHR will be testing how far there powers can take them, which is looking increasingly likely to be anywhere, tramping over the elected scum currently asleep at the wheel in our parliament of whores.

* = Conservative In Name Only

Isn't This A Good Thing?

2011-02-19T13:34:00.001Z

Mr Diamond explained in his letter that the amount of corporation tax paid by Barclays was a result of it being able to reduce its bill due to "UK losses brought forward principally arising from credit write downs".

Most of these credit writedowns are understood to be related to losses Barclays made on holdings of US sub-prime debt securities that crashed in value.

Under UK tax law, companies incorporated in Britain are legitimately allowed to write off losses against their tax bill.

Without even getting into the moral or ethical issues surrounding whether there is any legitimacy in calling for corporation tax (remember: all you are doing when claiming tax of a legal persons is depreciating real wages for real people working for "them") there is something for all those #ukuncut idiots to consider.

What Barclays have done is absorbed the difference in value created by the property bubble and credit crunch into their taxable income and profits; in effect detoxifying the debt.

They have done this through a legal tax-reduction method that behaves like a tax cut which improves profitability whilst simultaneously removing some dangerous inflationary credit from the system.

All this shows is:

1. That tax-cuts, convoluted or direct, promote growth & profitability.
2. Tax-cuts detoxify debt by removing false price signals from a market.

And this is a bad thing?

Quote Of The Day

2011-02-16T21:56:00.001Z

But then, I've never been much taken with the myth of "military efficiency" - how those two words ever came to be linked is an ongoing mystery. Like every bureaucracy, there is good and bad, and that is what the Army is, first and foremost, a bureaucracy. Unfortunately, in my long and less than illustrious career, I have found that there is one constant in life: a bureaucracy is a means by which good men do evil.

The good Dr. North talking about a wronged man in an ocean of wronged men.

Letting People Down Roughly

2011-02-16T10:29:00.001Z

Baby boomers should be prepared to fund their own care in old age because their generation has done ‘pretty well for itself’, a Government adviser said yesterday.
Lord Warner, a former Labour health minister who is drafting reforms on the future of elderly care, said that far more people born in the ‘baby boom’ years after the Second World War owned their own home than previous generations – and many of these properties were worth a lot of money.

In my days avoiding the dole line not long in the dim distant past I worked for a benefits unit for Leeds City Council; their job was to maximise the benefit package available to vulnerable groups: the elderly, the chronically poor and the invalid, and to ascertain if the richest amongst the groups could afford to pay towards the cost of their care.

It was alway fun to hear the stories; the incredulous, aghast faces on the little Lord Fontelroy's after you told them that they would be expected to pay the maximum rate to their still-subsidised care (note the emboldened word), the joy of an aged lollypop lady widowed with nothing finding she wouldn't be expected to pay anything at all.

Or anger at those gaming the system; a millionaire who signed over power of attorney and all assets to his son who then charged his father rent in order to claim housing benefit, paying for his holiday in the Mauritius or a down payment on a holiday home in the dales no doubt, or the old housewife left her family home by a late, sorely missed husband, with rapidly dissolving, scant savings who would be liable for massive unaffordable payouts.

You could easily say that the subsidised scheme was illiberal, an imposition on today's taxpayers paying for the previous generations mistakes, and you would be right.

But right doesn't wipe old ladies bottoms, feed geriatrics or break the day-on-day tedium with a visit to a recreation centre.

Nor does right fight the regulatory impacts on these services killing off any chance of seeing them get cheaper or the burden on others reduce. How every terrible happening prompts political axes to the grindstone making the process of looking after our burgeoning elderly population more cumbersome and expensive.

No; wrong has prevailed too long and now one generation must make a sacrifice for another - it has not be unreasonable for the elderly to expect to keep their homes and have their care paid or; they were told and promised as much by previous governments who knew they could promise jam tomorrow without ever having to worry about it's cost.

However it falls the translation will impact the old and the new together; there really is no alternative now. One generation will have to make sacrifices bigger than any other, will have to realise there is no jam tomorrow; the vast corporatist state's ponzi schemes has squirrelled it all away for itself and it's own benefit.

That sacrifice will see reward though; it will follow the mass realisation that we are not our collective brothers' keepers and that self-reliance, eroded by so much over-reliance on an all-powerful state will reappear with a vengeance.

And it will accompany the greatest uprising against this present darkness ever seen.

That or we can wind our way to slow painful decline as civilisations have done before.

Flagrant Advertising #1: Nintendo 3DS

2011-02-15T15:21:00.001Z

Sweet.

Being an avid gamer I attract a lot of interest from gamers and advertisers of games and gaming systems. This is one such advert.

I've had them all: Nintendo, Playstation, Xbox...all through the generations, all through the platforms and play areas at home or abroad.

This, however looks likely to dominate the out an about market:

Sharing propelled by Wikio

Very very excited.

P.S. If Nintendo or Ebuzzing would like a playtester out in the field will happily oblige!

This Is Why You Don't Leave Cuts To Those In Line For The Chop

2011-02-15T11:10:00.001Z

Dr. Fox: Hard at work or hardly working?

The Ministry of Defence has apologised after a reported 38 soldiers - including one serving on the Afghan front line - were sacked by email.

The troops, all of whom are warrant officers, were told they were being dismissed as ‘the Army has to make significant cutbacks’.

I've said it before and I'll say it again; Team Cambo could do worse than fire the top 5 layers of the civil service and then instruct real reforms rather than kick this particular poo-ball into the long grass.

Noone likes a coward Liam and Dave; still, people like Disingenuous shits even less:

But shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy said the soldiers had been treated in a 'callous, cold-hearted, soulless' way and called on Government ministers to take responsibility for the incident.
Mr Murphy told the Today programme: 'We can't halt every redundancy in the Armed Forces, but this is no way to treat men and women who have served their country fearlessly for so many years.

Lest we forget, Murphy was the Minister for Europe, overseeing the biggest transfer of powers and money to the vast QuANGO that is the European commission and the empowerment act known as the Lisbon Treaty; essentially running interference while the EU takes control.

So now when £10Bn is to be wasted on an unnecessary waste policy while our Air Force, our Navy and our Army are expected to fight wars with little more than an active imagination.

Ye' gods.

The End of Armani-dinner-jacket?

2011-02-15T09:08:00.001Z

Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Iran today, hoping to emulate the popular uprising in Egypt in a bold move which prompted a violent crackdown by security services.

The streets were flooded with police and militia as the hardline regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sought to prevent marches in support of Egypt's pro-democracy movement becoming demonstrations against the government.

Greater scholars than myself will tell you the situation in Iran is vastly different to t'Egypt; for one thing the armed forces will probably not be turning against the Ayatollah nor the Islamic councils and thus against their political puppet, Armani-dinner-jacket.

Still, fingers crossed aye? Worse thing Israel or the Western world could do would be to stick powerful 3G transmitters on the Iranian borders; despots know if you want to win a war of attrition like this you cut off communication.

Thin End Of The Wedge?

2011-02-13T22:49:00.001Z
I was in Church this morning when one of our older members mentioned the following story in a particularly worried tone:

Ministers are expected to publish plans to enable same-sex couples to "marry" in church, the BBC has learned.

Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone is to propose lifting the ban on civil partnerships taking place in religious settings in England and Wales.

There are no plans to compel religious organisations to hold ceremonies and the Church of England has said it would not allow its churches to be used.

Further to this assault on liberty I could agree with the apprehension.

But, as is suggested by Karthik Reddy at the Adam Smith Blog, all it really represents is an equalisation in the eyes of the law for anyone making a social contract.

We are starting from a running block which saw homosexuality banned and practitioners jailed; you don't have to be pro-gay or like the act itself to realise this is. A. Bad. Thing.

And it's a good thing that their is greater equality; however, the worry is still there that because this doesn't deal with the underlying problem - law where none need exist - in such cases the scales of justice inevitably fall in the opposite direction under the momentum of good intentions; how long will it be before a homosexual couple take umbridge at a church telling them to piss off, it's not biblical to marry them, and find themselves facing a hefty fine?

Do we really believe this won't be tried?

Then May I Suggest That You Tell Them Politely To Bugger Off

2011-02-10T22:44:00.001Z

The government says it has to end the ban on inmates voting, or face being sued for tens of millions of pounds.

Then can I firmly suggest, Coalition Masters, that you tell them to whistle for it.

After all, what are they gonna do - arrest us?

My Growth Agenda: Keep The State Busy Doing Nothing

2011-02-09T13:36:00.001Z
Dr. Butler has been discussing "growth" with our lords and masters; apparently it didn't go too well:

I had one of those depressing meetings with government folk the other day, this one on growth. It started well enough, talking about the need for deregulation, competition policy, and the burden of employment law. The trouble is, though, that deregulation has been found too difficult. Nick Clegg's intended repeal of outdated laws has been put in a drawer because there's too much outdated law for him to get his head round, while Francis Maude's proposed bonfire of the quango is a damp squib. And as for employment law, well, much of it comes from the EU, and the rest is stuff that is easy to create but not easy to repeal, since all such laws build up dependency groups.

Perhaps I go beyond myself in saying this but in all likelihood this meeting was probably a way of satiating calls from the more traditional Thatcherites amongst the conservative right: 'Nick Clegg's people are talking to the ASI about ways to encourage growth' becoming a widely reported meme to the Torygraph and Fail, without the content or the extent of his success in convincing leviathan to cut itself down to size ever entering the popular discourse.

Now I know Dr. Butler isn't that daft to be taken for a ride and his very post illustrates how he won't let it lie but I'm starting to wonder if the answer to this problem shouldn't stem from creating more laws; starting with one very simple one in particular, preferably given some constitutional weight to it.

The law I am off course talking about is one designed to introduce sunshine clauses, both retrospectively and for all future laws and treaties; all existing laws and statutes must be debated and cleared by both houses before the end of this particular parliament and all new legislation will be reviewed in 2 parliaments time; any law not debated in this period will then cease to be a constituent of British law and attempts to uphold it could he challenged in court, with a view to all challenges being upheld as the law no longer applies.

The pressure and honus would then be on this current parliament to prove the usefulness of current laws and ease the burden of new lawmaking being a referential process to older faultier laws; likewise it would ensure the law is adaptive to the environment it finds itself in.

A side effect would be to ensure fewer laws come into effect from illiberal statutory instruments and by association from the EU without first concentrating the minds of our politicos on it's impact and synergy with our own common law system, as successive SIs rely on their power and enforceability through consent to previous law.

Ultimately it puts what our politicos minds on their collective sleeves; the Cleggeron rode in on a wave of liberal conservatism saying they were going to restore the supremacy of the individual over the collective, roll back state encroachment on our personal freedoms and through a lot of deceptive rhetoric have managed to carry on doing exactly the same thing as their predecessors; more laws, more gloss, state engorgement on more freedoms and noone really in charge other than an incumbent, unelected EU bureaucracy.

Let's see them back this up with a reform that will see actions rather than rhetoric.

A Victory For Freedom?

2011-02-09T10:04:00.001Z

It will become a criminal offence to clamp cars on private land, putting rogue firms out of business, under a ‘Freedoms Bill’ to be introduced in Parliament in the next few days.

So it'll now become a crime to stop people using your land to park on. YOUR land?

Now I can get behind calls for greater transparency in advertising clamping spots and fine amounts; heck I'd even support harsher penalties up to bankrupting clamping companies who flaunt these rules and go about using the drivers ignorance to obscured rules about the use of the parking area.

What I can't get behind is the top down blanket ban on self-determination and diktat on the use of your private property for exactly the same reasons that I don't support tax for taxes' sake; that the government may earn a little revenue from something seems to be an excuse I'm seeing all the more regularly and it is repugnant in the extreme.

This is sorely the wrong way to go in what should otherwise be quite a hood bit of legislation.

I hope.

Quote of the Day: One For You @minibus_paul

2011-02-09T08:37:00.001Z

Social justice theory rationalizes covetousness, theft, and bitterness. This anti-Christian ideology turns eternal moral principles upside down.

From the following article, borrowed liberally from here.

This Week I've Mostly Been Playing... (part 2)

2011-02-08T14:41:00.001Z
...Read Dead Redemption

In a sporadic, spume of consciousness kind of weekly series about what I am doing to feign off boredom and donate my time to something other than filling Osbourne's swag bag, I hereby talk about the awesomeness that is Red Dead Redemption.

It's actually a bit of a lie; ive mostly been killing 12 years olds who's parents had no problem buying them Call of Duty: Black Ops for Christmas. But as this would be a very short lived series if I did a weekly and it was proportionally based on my playing habits.

So all that said Red Dead is the focus.

Set in a rapidly changing old west you are John Marston; thrust back into your old life of gun slinging and cowboying you've been blackmailed by a government agency holding your family captive into hunting down your old gang and bringing them to justice.

You achieve this by entering what must be one of the most open-ended universes yet in a Rockstar game; not quite on the same par with Bethesda's Fallout 3 or The Elder Scrolls but definitely as inviting an arena as any.

What is striking is how the environment interacts with you; I spent several hours navigating a particularly hostile area of land fighting off bears and bandits alike - other more gentile appearing areas can suddenly erupt into gang warfare, dragging you in.

What is most striking about it above all is the storyline: the twists and turns take you through stirring up revolutionary uprisings in Mexico to quelling the same amongst Native Americans in the old west, all the while weaved into a story of loss and redemption mingles with a lot of anti-government sentiment.

Overall this is one of the best games of last year, featuring mountains of versatility if your willing to step outside of the main storyline for a minute.

Score: I'd be willing to part with £25 for it still.

Quote Of The Day

2011-02-08T09:33:00.001Z

"Anyone with good intentions is the traitor because being evil is the norm."

- Wael Ghonim, a Google marketing executive behind a Facebook page widely credited with starting the Egyptian protests.

Treason

2011-02-07T17:04:00.001Z
Wasn't there a time when this would be considered high treason?

A definition:

High treason is criminal disloyalty to one's government. Participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplomats, or its secret services for a hostile and foreign power, or attempting to kill its head of state are perhaps the best known examples of high treason. High treason requires that the alleged traitor have obligations of loyalty in the state he or she betrayed, such as citizenship, although presence in the state at the time is sufficient.

Now whether you believe Al-Megrahi is guilty or not the fact remains that the Scottish and UK government conspired to have a convicted mass murderer of British nationals released on behalf of a foreign state power.

Now, they may not hang you for this any longer but suffice it to say Brown, Blair, Mandelson and Macaskill should all be put away for a very long time.

Isn't This A Stronger Arguement To Abolish The Minimum Wage?

2011-02-07T16:39:00.001Z

The Prince’s Trust and other charities will set up stalls in Jobcentre Plus offices after agreeing a deal to be rubber-stamped by ministers today.

The move comes after youth unemployment leapt by 32,000 to 951,000 in November – its highest since records began in 1992.

Critics said the scheme could merely ‘massage’ jobless statistics while distracting from the creation of muchneeded new jobs for young people. Britain’s jobless total is 2.5million – an unemployment rate of 7.9 per cent, rising to 20.3 per cent among those aged 16 to 24.

Currently people have 2 choices at the lower end of the job market.

They either vie for a toilet cleaning or pot washing or some other menial job paying ~£5.80 an hour or they stick on the dole and do nothing, replete with all bills paid in the process.

IDS is trying to get the latter to do the former for free, as paying half the above amount

So why can't their be some happier medium? Say like a negative income tax scheme, or better yet to avoid those eeeville capitalists taskmasters from taking advantage of the good graces of a benevolent state (sarcasm aside - Ed) why not this?.

More Telling Than He Probably Realised

2011-02-07T08:50:00.001Z

David Cameron has ruled out 'significant' tax cuts while the Government is cutting spending to reduce the deficit.
...
But Mr Cameron insisted there was no 'Plan B' on the coalition's deficit-reduction strategy and said tax cuts would only undo the work of painful curbs in public spending.

"Curbs" not cuts - the difference should be noted in his phrasing.

I happen to agree with Mr. Cameron; deficit reduction is now effectively a tax on our children and grandchildren - inter-generational state terrorism if you will - we should put the 11% overspending down; that should have been a non-negotiable start and done this year.

The Fabian left and Progressively Labourious would no doubt argue that a vast proportion of the present deficit was due to the bank bailout - and they would be right.

However, when state spending has reached an unjustifiable, nigh on 50% theft of total GDP slowly decoupling banking liabilities makes for a very useful start to cutting the overall tax take.

For a start.

Question For Those In The Know

2011-02-04T11:02:00.001Z
Further to my post earlier today, Mr. Tebboth has directed me to this Private Members Bill from last year and I noticed this:

This Bill will be on the Order Paper for a Second Reading debate on 30 March 2012, although the House is not expected to sit on this day.

From a bill put forward 5 July 2010; is this what is known as "kicking it into the long grass" or are our MPs really that busy discussing other matters?

Beggars belief.

Self Control's The Way To Go

2011-02-04T08:50:00.001Z

That, or we start handing these out at chemists.

I once went to University and studied chemistry which I enjoyed, but quite frankly, was rubbish at; where you to ask me about some deeply complex chemistry theorem I would most likely look agog at you.

Despite this a fine blend of hubris, ego and lack of self-awareness (or honesty perhaps?) led to me taking my 2:1 Masters degree as evidence I was capable of a PhD; I was to move onto asking new questions rather than answering older ones.

Whether this would have proved I was the idiot I know I am now or not will never be answered, because it was during my first year that my parents teetering marriage finally went overboard and my entire family went mental (a story for another time), not least myself , newly married being unable to cope with becoming father (I'm the eldest) to my siblings whilst the original buggered off to mid-life crisistania whilst Mumra took off to De-Nileism.

Why am I telling you all this? Because, fearless reader I believe there is some relationship between what is happening in scientific "research" today in many fields and how my family behaved (behaves).

Lately science has become less about discovering new things and more about avoiding tricky questions that challenge old rules; my folks tried this for years to everyones detriment and it was once reality finally settled in that things that could've been cordial and polite became destructive and heartbreaking.

This looks like one of those questions scientists have been trying to avoid:

The drive to give free morning-after pills to teenage girls has failed to cut underage pregnancies.
Schemes to offer over-the-counter emergency birth control to girls under 16 have simply encouraged youngsters to have more unprotected sex, damning research found.
In doing so they have fuelled a rise in sexually transmitted diseases.
The findings are a blow to public health chiefs who have argued that handing out the morning-after pill cuts schoolgirl pregnancies.
Family campaigners seized on the research as more evidence that the problem of teenage pregnancies needs a ‘moral solution’ and not one based on dishing out drugs.

Now trying to at least retain some vestige of the scientist within
I decided you use some academic contacts to get a copy of the unreleased paper; this was a Fairly Pale story afterall, only to find that the authors had tried their hardest to back up their claims with several layers of statistical formulae - none of which really detracted from the overall picture the results painted; the evidence may not be on a par with truly empirical observation due to the small numbers involved, but it is compelling.

And it makes sense; people respond to incentives and if you offer them the opportunity to experience something in a little more pleasurable a manner to which the uninformed (or, if Dwayne really was lying to you and did sleep with the town bike, Dwaynerita, the lied to) see as having little cost associated with the action but to take 10 minutes out of their Trisha and Jeremy Kyle watching and pop down to the chemist's.

Knowing several teenage single mums I can see why the results are not as black and white as the Fail would wish (if not for their desire to beef up the rhetoric in the article mind); some rise to the challenge of parenthood admirably and make good with their lot - others not so much. How these 2 groups measure up is beyond me and I will leave it to Proffessor Paton, his group and others to ascertain.

One thing I am convinced of; these children ultimately have no father; they are the States progeny - having torn out the heart of personal responsibility by effectively subsidising baby-making they are now reaping all the unintended consequences.

And once one uncomfortable question is asked, the rest come tumbling out.

No Mr. Raab; MP's Are Out Of Control - Ours.

2011-02-04T06:52:00.001Z

European judges have turned Britain into a ‘safe haven’ for foreign terrorists, the independent reviewer of anti-terror laws warned yesterday.
Lord Carlile said rulings by the European Court of Human Rights had undermined efforts to deport dangerous individuals intent on causing mayhem.
...
Last night Dominic Raab, Tory MP for Esher and Walton, said European judges’ law making was ‘out of control’.
He added: ‘It is not the job of an international court to re-write British laws on deportation, parental discipline or prisoner voting. It is high time we drew a line in the sand.’

But it is their job; the Westminster clique abandoned it's primary function - to make and amend law as the need arose - to technocrats, QUANGOs and the EU; the result has been empowerment of the unelected chattering classes, the professional lawyer and the politician who chooses soundbites over substance and the resultant levels of debt, public service stagnation in all but price and crony capitalist bailouts.

You've had well over thirty years to reverse these decisions at any point; an amendment tabled to the 1972 European Communities Act and democratic judicial reform at the UK level would make most judges think long and hard before making an unpopular decision like votes for rapists or pool tables for murderers.

So no more Mr. Raab, you did this by not challenging the status quo; you forget where power comes from - us.

On A Lighter But Still Important Note...

2011-02-03T10:10:00.001Z
Aunty Beeb is reporting yet another group of malcontents moaning they won't be sucking at the government teat anymore:

More than two-thirds of councils in England are planning major cuts to their bus budgets, it is claimed.

According to the Campaign for Better Transport, which is launching the Save our Buses campaign, some councils intend to end all subsidised services.

The Local Government Association also warned many bus routes would disappear as a result of government cutbacks.

Unfortunately matey what we are seeing here is the realisation of risks and cost of living in isolated areas; the cost can no longer be mitigated against hard pressed groups in urban areas as they are already squeezed from elsewhere - the crunch has put paid to that idea.

Still, you might want to ask about the way bus services are regulated cross-country, or how councils dictate the route and timings in many cases, leading to skewed incentives; same thing goes for National(ised) Rail and train providers.

Deal with these problems of provision, freeing people up to plan the best routes possible and the timing they can afford and see this situation change; even in poor countries we see the markets finding solutions to these issues.

Enraged.

2011-02-03T09:37:00.001Z
Were it not for traffic I woul have undoubtedly arrived at work in tears and with a murderous gleam in my eye:

A baby was found dead in his pushchair in front of a blazing gas fire – his body charred and burned – after social services missed 17 chances to save him.

Alex Sutherland, aged 13 months, had been dead for at least three days, according to a harrowing report published yesterday.

You need not read any more than that; the horror was almost too much for me this morning , I dare not share it with Mrs. Tomrat.

What is wrong with people? I see the exact same destructive tendencies in some of the "families" our youth group belong to - it is an abuse of the word in many cases, with the occasional heartening case where families are simply doing everything they can with the little they have.

He said there was a lack of communication and joined-up working between agencies and he highlighted problems, with under-trained social workers and a ‘tick box’ mentality.
...
‘No single agency was responsible for failing to protect Child T from the chronic neglect which he suffered at the hands of his mother, but rather he was the victim of the multiple failures of all those agencies … to recognise the risks to which he was exposed and to take appropriate action.’
...
Pauline Newman, the city council’s director of Children’s Services, said it was clear ‘there were areas where we could have done better’.

She added: ‘We have carried out an extensive programme of work since this little boy died to ensure that staff fully understand the lessons that need to be taken on board from this tragedy.’

I'm not trying to absolve the mother of her horrible crime which should see her in jail for much longer than she has been given, but isn't the "lessons are being learned" excuse just getting a little tired? In a personal capacity I see this exact same 'horse:bolted' attitude throughout the social services almost as much as I do in the papers and it wore thin some 30 excuses ago.

You want some real lessons learned? Amend the Childrens Act and related documents so that it doesn't protect the authorities, only the families involved; injustices like this don't help the cause of child welfare when the state is happy to challenge unconventional lifestyle choices but not the destructive ones of their own creation.

Immediately fire every social worker, child protection bod and anyone else involved in social services or is a member of one of these myriad organisations who never seem to be directly responsible for any of these events but are learning a lot from them in what must surely be a cross between car crash television and an open university show and immediately fold them and all-comers into one agency; the police - form a specialist group within a publicly accountable, elected chief-led, police service to deal with this with police powers; at worst no one can mitigate the blame for such events across the old, lame "no one agency was to blame" excuse; I'm sure in this age of austerity the co-attrition would be happy to save the cash on executive jobsworths' in multiple social services.

Finally recognise that these abuses occur, by and large, by families fathered by the state; they consist predominantly of groups who treat their kids like proverbial meal tickets and derive their economic and social activity directly from the state, and the sins of the father, it's abuses and it's lawlessness is rubbing off; removing people wholesale from the states coat tails and forcing them to take care of themselves would be a good place to start - perhaps here.

None of this will stop bad parenting; only bad parents can stop this, but ye gods is it really so much to ask that when the state dips it oar unto every aspect of our lives it takes some flaming responsibility for the fallout?

The Coalition Takes A(nother) Leaf Right Out Of The NuLabour Playbook

2011-01-28T08:50:00.001Z

The Post Office increased the sales tax for its 500,000 telephone customers to 20 per cent from early October, the Daily Mail has discovered.
...
By contrast, Chancellor George Osborne will have reason to smile, because all the extra cash, which is likely to run to several million pounds, will not go to the phone companies, but straight into Government coffers.

The decision to bring forward the rise – which the taxman insists is up to the companies’ discretion – has been described as ‘lazy billing’, as it is an easier and cheaper option for the firms than changing computer software to reflect a change part-way through a billing cycle.

Whilst I understand this is at the companies discretion doesn't this just smack of Gordon Brown's attempts in 2009 to retroactively tax companies to shore up his falling tax revenues?

Will we be seeing a consummate drop in the deficit or current debt mountain with this money? I won't be holding my breath.

My advice to those people stung by this is to punish the companies greatly by getting on Uswitch and finding someone else; likely won't be cheaper but at least they'll know not to mess with your cash?

If You Can Afford To Be Discriminating Beyond Red, Purple & Yellow What Business Is That Of The Courts?

2011-01-27T17:21:00.001Z

If you feel your business can afford to look beyond the reddies, purplies & yellowies, then what business is that of the courts?

A gay couple are suing a Christian bed and breakfast owner after she told them it was 'against her convictions' for them to share a bed, it emerged yesterday.

Michael Black, 63, and John Morgan, 58, are claiming sexual discrimination after being turned away from Swiss B&B in Cookham, Berkshire, last March.

Their case follows that of Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy, who won £3,600 damages from the owners of a Cornish guesthouse last week for refusing them a double room.

Now I am a Christian - sometimes I lapse; my language can be atrocious, I drink far too heavily and frequently get vitriolic when discussing the turds of any rosette (to coin that acronym: TOARs.)

But I love God and all he's done in my life; I would be in a much darker place right now where it not for him.

All that said my God is a God of liberty and freedom; his kingdom is open to everyone who chooses to follow him but he doesn't persecute those who adopt a different lifestyle in this world* - that is the very essence of free will after: to live and let live.

This has honed my libertarianism; a belief in individual freedom and the pursuit of it up to the limit of another's freedom: gay marriage, adoption** and a right to dispense with property as the owner sees fit all come with this.

What also comes with this is the right to discriminate; how you conduct your business and who you conduct it with is sacrosanct and is at the very core of our natural rights.

And all this case represents is an encroachment on the right to do business and conduct oneself as you want.

By saying you have a right to do business with someone who doesn't want to do business with you, you disenfranchise them of their freedoms.

Yes this does mean that racists and a whole assortment of other bigots would be able to wear their prejudices on their sleeve, but is this really any worse than the unintended consequences this type of law making will have? Will it kill bigotry and prejudice or just push it into more subtle, faux-intellectual ways of handling business with people you don't like? Will it encourage friendship and trust or a pervasive atmosphere of distrust and intergenerational irrationality?

My guess is that this will only make the problems associated with it more ingrained, and put hardliners in positions of power over sheeple.

* = please note this is saying what God does, not what established churches do or people do, as is made in my point about free will.

** = yes, as a Christian Youthworker I see the problem caused by, quite frankly, shitty heterosexual "parenting" (if you can call it that); parents who gladly choose smokes and cider over new shoes and clothes for their ~~beer voucher subsidy~~ progeny.

However, this is not the same as saying adoption agencies must consider all patrons irrespective of deeply held convictions; the true answer to this problem perhaps lies in parental choice and a liberalising of adoption providers.

Prediction For Economic "Growth" In The Next Quarter: Someone Should Slap George Osbourne. Hard.

2011-01-26T12:17:00.001Z
With the economy shrinking in the last quarter, and many Labourite apologists claiming this as a victory for #ukuncut and other bunkum, I felt obliged to try my hand at predicting the economic movements in the net quarter.

This downturn has, in my opinion, quite lazily been blamed on the horrific snow we had over Christmas, which, if so, Lays firmly at the door of the MET office; logic dictates that if the MET office couldn't find their arse with both hands today then how can they effectively predict it's location in 20-50 years time?

Judging from the continued support of this laughable woo-QuANGO by the big wigs in Whitehall I think that they don't even believe that is the full sort.

So, that said let's try my theory.

I work for a large company; in order for it to survive in the good times it's needs to plan effectively and release new products encouraging innovation and growth; new products are planned years in advance with a view to material ordering and customer needs, but with enough wiggle room to adapt to changes in demand and culture.

All good business, businesses that survive downturns, do this.

Now Georgie boy pre-announced the increase in VAT; a good thing (the announcement, that is) - as a result manufacturers thought "demand for our product will drop with rising prices, therefore we cut production, staff and sell up unnecessary capital", banks thought "lots of additional capital on the market; let's sell it to foreign nationals, then rinse our savers so we can get a bonus and retire to our portugese villa. Job done." whilst our politicians engage in a lot of mutual back slapping that they are saving public sector jobs and the EU project with our money.

However, companies would have encoded the VAT rise into their calculations months before; more than likely before even George knew about it- the result? Fewer goods produced locally, fewer jobs, exports and thus a drop in the growth of the economy.

Thus as this has been encoded into good businesses plans now my prediction is that growth will continue to be negative until it bottoms out to meet internal and external demand; in all likelihood the next time this will be a 1% contraction rather than 0.5 (if were lucky.

This is not a call for faux-Keynesian pump-priming of the economy - if anything it prove what geniuses, or as most people will choose to remember them, a devious shit Gordon Brown and Ed Balls truly were was; his strategy of QE and bank bailouts pumped money into the economy when it was in free fall just in time to see Labour coast to a mild loss at the 2010 General Election and put a damp squib on the Tory's already touchy-feely squibishness and chances at a stable Bory-only majority, all in time for the other big two in their happy clappy coalition to reap the rewards of the dead cat bounce.

No if anything it is a call for Osbourne to lead where Euroslime Dave is sore to follow; bringing about real reform to the public sector starting with drawing a line in where it is stable, and currently at over 50% of the economy, stable it aint.

Best economic advice you could give George if you see him in the street? A cold hard slap, telling him to set departmental budget rather than let the cabinet fanny around with them to electoral oblivion.

I'll See Your Friedman, @Obotheclown...

2011-01-25T23:28:00.001Z
...and raise you a well constructed smack down of Naomi Klein from beyond the grave (woooohhh!!!):

here*.

*apologies - can't embed YouTube with the app I blog with.

Benefits Whom?

2011-01-21T11:03:00.001Z

If Only It Were So Easy

Via Aunty Beeb:

Little progress has been made in reducing losses caused by benefit recipients making errors in their claims, a report has said.

Some £800m was not paid to people in 2009-10 who were entitled to the money because of errors on forms, the National Audit Office (NAO) said.

Another £1.1bn was lost to the taxpayer owing to overpayments of benefits.

The NAO report found "no discernable decrease" in losses after three years of a five-year plan to cut errors.

The spending watchdog said that overpayments caused substantial unrecovered losses to the taxpayer, and underpayments could cause hardship for individuals.

First off: giving people too much OPM* my be a loss to taxpayers and too little may mean they lose out? And we need a quango to tell us this?

Buffrat, my idiot brother, is currently unemployed through a mixture new career entry delays (he's joining the RAF), old work-colleague sabotage (his old boss has tried to scupper his new role by spreading discourse & having his final salary/commission fall victim to "administration errors") & outright personal stupidity (a month before he was due to enter the RAF he went out, got blind drunk, fell over and chipped his elbow, resulting in several weeks of additional observation & delays). As a result of not having had a wage since September he has lived in veritable poverty and handouts.

I say handouts in the sense of myself, my sister and assorted family bankrolling him; only now is he starting to see benefits kicking in - it has taken several flaming weeks to get anything money out of the system to which he has committed substantially all through his working life.

As a libertarian I would love to see an individualist approach to benefits and welfare, but I am solidly aware that this is unlikely to happen in mine or my children's lifetime; what could and should happen this year is drastic welfare reform to stop this kind of faff, first and foremost, but the only way to do that is to make the benefits system less complicated and about hoop jumping.

I suggest trying this might be a good place to start.

Theft Is Not A Source Of Income

2011-01-17T11:37:00.001Z

Danny Alexander: "Might as well leave your wallet on the table and piss off, prole."

Yet again we have our assumed lords and masters getting this accountability thing all mixed up again:

Families were warned last night there was little prospect of a lifeline on fuel prices – despite repeated pledges from David Cameron.
Treasury Chief Secretary Danny Alexander said his department would not ‘sacrifice income willy nilly’ to help out motorists.

Words really do fail me they do; "sacrifice income"? WTF did you do to deserve it?

He did reveal, however, that the Treasury was pushing ahead with a pilot scheme to offer discounted fuel to rural communities in the Scottish Highlands, which could extend to his own constituency of Inverness.

So yes we are all about to be nipple-twisted till they're blue, just as long as those mp's with their mitts closest to the till (or should that be swag bag?) swipe a little extra for their own vested jockanese interests.

The Liberal Democrat minister said: ‘The biggest economic problem facing every household is the deficit. If we come off that deficit reduction plan, the risk to the country would be truly huge, so that has to be the first priority.’

This governments predilection for scapegoats is no less hungry than the previous ones; it us very easy to blame New Labour for the deficit but let's review:

• Does Osbourne's plan see a reduction in public spending? What? Spending increases over this parliament? Moving on-

• Did Cameron, or any other Bory leader for that matter, mount a credible offence against these insane spending sprees in opposition? What? They said they'd match Labour's spending? so no then.

None of the big three parties offered any credible alternative to Labour's spending spree; tapering off the deficit over several years is the equivalent of skinning a man with a potato peeler; better just to cut the damn limb off ad cauterise the wound.

His comments came as Energy Secretary Chris Huhne acknowledged that rising fuel prices could ‘potentially have devastating effects on employment’ – but said fuel duty should be kept high in the long term for environmental reasons.

So when there not responsible for drowning people, destroying their homes & livestock, they are intent on taking extortionate amounts of money with menaces from us in homage to the widely discredited green religion.

Let me be frank: Dave and his merry band of political thieves are stealing your money; if they are not keeping interest rates intentionally low resulting in a transfer of wealth from savers to bankers bonuses and spenders they are dallying around real issues which are quickly destroying their credibility dealing with making life easier (preferably by pissing off out of ours).

Tax should be a means of accounting for negative externalities; if polluting the air from burning fossil fuels is bad then yes charge us, but can you honestly say this externality accounts for 60% of the price?

I can even, grudgingly, accept budget deficit costs being internalized; I'd like that to happen so our generation pays for it's mistakes, then we could see Red Milliband try to weasel out of that and explain why it should be our children.

Actually yeah - I want that tax emblazoned on everyones pay slip monthly in luminous yellow script just to drill the point home.

Just stop taking money for no better reason than because it's a good source of revenue; we don't expect that rationale to apply to burglars and thieves when they get put in prison.