Related To My Last Post...

Disclaimer: I am not a smoker, just consistent in my being pissed off at freedoms being poo-pooed on by our freedom-loving coagulation.

Master Snowden has a wonderful anecdote on his recent experiences trying to traverse the new "tobacco shutters" that have sprung up at every major supermarket across Britain; a similar thing has been seen at my local ASDA, Tesco and Morrisons lately, but as I don't (at least haven't for a decade or more) smoke I have not had the privilege of being denied tobacco from any of these establishments.

That said I am naturally all for this and, as with my last post want to see it applied elsewhere.

Yes I think this might work in the tupping, grot and saucy movie industry too.

To be enjoyed, but from behind a piece of white MDF.

I mean after all men do sexually assault women; all the time in fact, the news is rife with stories, and I'm guessing most men got the idea that women were all up for it from sexually charged literature and films giving that obviously false impression. Clearly this is entirely down to what people have access to and not down to the individual in question and we should puta stop to it so I put forth the following suggestions for your consideration:

- We place a 6ft tall barrier along the route through Spencer Place in Leeds with a 1ft gap at the bottom so punters can see the ladies of I'll reputes' legs and pick one on that basis; I know we run the risk of exciting sexual ardour by showing the legs but by god man, we aren't living in North Korea.

- The top shelf front bracket gets higher; I would suggest at least reaching the ceiling. It's contents can only be accessed by answering a number of elaborate questions to identify if your a sex fiend, a pervert or a 15 year old boy with a libido the size of a walrus.

- DVDs will naturally have white covers and plain DVDs which give no indication as to there contents.



In fact it be best to package these up at random in packs with blank DVD cases; that way potential perverts are forced to buy large numbers of Blank DVDs until they find one, potentially giving up in the process and instead recording a nice episode of Gardeners World or A Place in the Sun instead.




or they could tape Fireman Sam for the kids.

I'm certain this idea will protect children and women alike from the dangers of passive grot-enjoyment; it'll be several years before third-hand grot enjoyment is eliminated but those crested uplands are on the horizon.

One Before Bed

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.

The Best £7 You'll Ever Spend

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.

Dem GDP Figures

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.

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.

Angry At The Wrong People

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.

Isn't This A Good Thing?

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.

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?

Again, Grow A Set Of Balls Lansley

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.

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?

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

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?.

On A Lighter But Still Important Note...

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.

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

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.

Theft Is Not A Source Of Income

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.

Banker Bonuses: The Wrong Trousers

This arguement & incessant moaning is really getting to me now; am I alone?

Bob Diamond is right - bonuses should be paid and he shouldn't have to argue the toss with MPs who's major concern is pleasing a few bulgar wheat eating sandalistas rather than addressing the real issues surrounding the crash.

But, were it not for The BoE's and New Labour's and now the New Coalitions policy of keeping interest rates at near-zero banks would almost certainly have not been nearly as profitable and wouldn't warrant the bonuses received (BTW: the blog for the linked article will be added to my list soon as I sit down at a computer; would recommend to all having found it yesterday.)

So were it not for Brown jumping the balloon maker, most Banker would now be signing on, not coining in - and the blame rests firmly at the door of our lords and masters at Whitehall.