New Year #FacePalm

Good one to start the new year in this mornings Metro (apologies for resolution; trying to take a picture on a moving bus of a thin page is tricky). Moaning about MP salaries whilst you earn nearly 40% above the average wage in this country sucking on the exact same teat as the rest of us is a little presumptive of sympathy right.

FFS you earn twice what I do in the private sector.

My thoughts? Last year I said we should give MPs the ability to moot their own compensation to their constituents at the ballot box who would then be directly liable to pay for them via a council tax levy; stick your desired salary on the ballot paper then convince potential constituents at hustings and hitting the streets. Simples.

Quote of the Day

Via jgm2 on the following Guido article; the following cannot be said enough.

jgm2 says:
August 22, 2012 at 11:13 am
Biggest insider dealing scam of the last 10 years? Labour politicians using ‘expenses’ to do up multiple properties knowing full-well that the government would do everything possible to maintain runaway house pr*ices.

Turn a blind eye to reckless lending? Oh yes.

Ignore house price inflation to justify low interest rates? Oh yes.

Change from RPI to (lower) CPI to justify lowering interest rates? Oh yes.

Employ one million bedwetters, box-tickers and bastards on job-for-life deals and set them loose on the limited housing stock available? Oh yes.

Reduce interest rates to 0.5% to artificially prop up house pr*ices even more. Oh yes.

Guarantee mortgages to the (newly) unemployed for two years. Oh yes.

No wonder the likes of Alistair Darling flipped five (was it?) flats.

C*unts. Destroyed the UK economy so they could make a few quid in property speculation.

Darling, Balls et al, not to mention the Bory's, were all at it - whilst I think this was merely a symptom of a deeper malaise it is but a gold seam to add to a rather thick and luxurious noose we should be hanging the lot of them by.

The Left Have Set The Bar

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!

Gah!!!

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.

Giving Out Of Poverty

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

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?

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

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.

Where Are They Going With This?

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.

If We Are "Immune" To Our Own Incompetence

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.

If 6 Were 9

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.

Can We Not Call Time On This Already?

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?

There's A Simple Solution To This Too!

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.

Am I Supposed To Be Grateful?

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?

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

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.

Joke Of The Day #2. Sadly Not

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

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?

Their Contempt For You Is Absolute #2

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

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?

The Clock Is Ticking

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?

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?