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.
I've been thinking a lot about this minimum pricing lark and I've reached a conclusion; I like it. I fact I like it so much I can think of a number of other area we could apply it to:
- Receding hairline matt varnish. - Vaseline intensive care eye-lid moisturiser. - Cocaine and related products. - Samuri swords.
For as you know a minimum price will have the following effects:
- it dissuades frivolous uses of those products it's applied to, leading to a much snazzier kind of user. - it leads to better quality product as providers of poorer versions quickly go under.
Examples:
Receding hairline matt varnish
Ye gods the light! It burns!
VIC eye-lid moisturiser
Moisture. SO MUCH MOISTURE!
And clearly the last 2 examples never saw anything crop up as a consequence of raising the minimum price to, say, ooh 5 years in jail minimum.
Oh.
Well never mind that I have a rather elegant proposal we could apply minimum pricing too which would kill 2 (fat) birds with one stone.
We legalise prostitution and apply a minimum price for services rendered by sex workers; I can see it now (or hypothesise on the impact as my wife doesn't let me out after dark; it's scary out there) - beautiful, scantily clad maidens fair wandering the darker reaches of Leeds' Red Light District scanning for work, Roxanne will put on her red light tonight.
But wait Tom it just won't be that way you say? Why not - surely higher quality poontang will be in the offing if we raise the minimum price Bertha charges versus some lithe eastern European competition; it'll be safer too - the bottom-dwelling echelons of the market for sex will no longer have the cash to partake, prostitutes will be cleaner and safer as their violent cheapo-stinko punters disappear.
What do you mean that will put Bertha on the dole? She was on there already - why does it matter if she can't afford that Sky TV anymore? She was already finding it difficult to attract punters as it was, particularly since you banned smoking in her work place.
And wait your telling me those violent, dirty disease riddled punters just found other ways of getting rowdy, assaulting folks, drinking alcohol hand gel and sniffing glue? What - they managed to shack up with one another?
Then,
For what reason do you think pricing the violent, unwashed masses out of the drinking market will have an impact on their behaviour?
And even if it did why would you allow the purveyors of alcohol to keep the artificially raised profit from this activity?
There is no economic justification for creating a minimum price; there is no legitimate moral argument ultimately - your just spreading the misery on the lowest earners from the top.
But, by forcing the revenue onto the industry, which will see some companies who went for premium product not affected by minimum pricing, whilst killing other groups who sold alcohol to the lowest paid (and I believe we would be lucky to see this be neutral in aggregate on the alcohol industry) you create the least good, most destructive justification of them all: a political one.
Raising taxes is always unpopular, artificially raising prices further along the supply chain (whether it be money, booze, fags...) mitigates the effects of that unpopularity, moving it onto other groups (read big alcohol/tobacco/finance etc.)
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.
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.
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 ofuniversal 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
