2697 days ago
Ooooh you are awful said Dick Emery. In the case of London Mayor Khan that is awfully politically correct. And awfully useless. Fresh from supporting the Al Quds day, aka lets blame the Jews for Grenfell Tower, march, hapless Sadiq Khan has a new battle: saving LGBT bars and clubs and he has promised "urgent action." Politicians always promise urgent action never just action but what exactly is little Khan's understanding of why gay bars are shutting?
2913 days ago
There is nothing wrong with a bit of toff bashing now and again. The sorrow of seeing an airhead Lib Dem win the Richmond Park by-election was softened by the fact that the defeated, sort of, Tory was the slippery posh Cameron type twit Zac Goldsmith. But even in what is deemed a "post-fact era" it helps to er..get your facts right when lambasting those born with silver spoons emerging from every orifice.
2971 days ago
Yes I am beginning to miss George Osborne. No I lie, he really was useless. But so too is Hammond. I comment on him believing the boy who cried Euro Wolf (Nissan) and handing over taxpayers cash as a result but also on the way that he is set to allow the deficit to balloon again - this man is a danger to your wealth. At a company level I look at Inspirit (INSP), Cloudtag (CTAG), SKIL Ports and Logistics (SPL), Quantum Pharma (QP) and my pals the fraudsters as African Potash (AFPO) - Lord Peter Hain when will you blink and quit?
2976 days ago
Remember that before the Brexit vote the City warned that if we voted to leave the EU then tens of thousands of well paid bankster jobs across London would be lost. Oddly the Remainers thought that this would drive folks to vote for them because - outside London we really care about ensuring banksters continue to earn megabucks.
Maybe if Project Fear had announced that if we stayed in the EU all banksters would be lead through the streets in chains and pelted with rotten fruit the result might have been different? As it was, cheered by the thought of thousands of banksters being fired and losing everything, the UK voted to leave. And now the bankster firing fest is underway...but hang on!
2996 days ago
In today's statement from JD Wetherspoon (JDW) its boss Tim Martin lets rip on those doomsayers from Project Fear who lied to us ahead of the referendum on Independence Day, June 23rd. that fat self righteous windbag Nicola Horlick - who stuffed her clients into Bernie Madoff funds - the banksters at Goldman Sachs, the smug FTSE 100 bosses, lyin' George Osborne and Dodgy Dave Cameron himself all get it in the neck from the visionary Martin. This statement is poetry. I loathe Martin's plastic pubs but I shall hold my nose and go to one in appreciation of what follows. Over to our hero of the day, Mr Tim Martin:
3055 days ago
Having trotted out a load of left wing tosh about how she planed to trainwreck the private sector in order to bring the nation together, Theresa May has today moved forward with her project to rebrand conservatism. No longer will it be the Nasty Party. It is now just an increasingly "silly party"
3072 days ago
A lot of Tory MP's do not like or are jealous of Boris Johnson and are said to be plotting to do anything they can to stop him being their next leader. The trouble is that he is by far and away the most popular Tory in both the wider party and also the country. He is box office. Being a Brexiteer means that he was on the side of the 52% but also of the vast majority of Tory members. So if among MPs he is in the top two in the initial poll, then Tory members are bound to vote for him.
That is not only because Boris has sex appeal but because there is no other credible candidate which almost guarantees him a top two slot. Theresa May has no personality and backed Remain - the losing side - and did so in a cowardly fashion yet she is seen as the leading challenger to Boris. George Osborne still thinks
3075 days ago
I am not writing much today as I am 100% fecked off with everyone especially Ben Turney, Jason Drummond and lyin' George Osborne. Instead I finished my olive pruning. I think I am going to quit writing and become a full time olive pruner. I discuss Teathers Financial (TEA), the Brexit vote, Photo-Me (PHTM), Chemring (CHG), Churchill Mining (CHL), xCite Energy (XEL) and dog spreadbetting waste of space London Capital (LCG)
3108 days ago
George Osborne says UK house prices will fall by 18% if we vote for Brexit. At every single conceivable level he is talking bollocks. Even the lovely Cheryl Cole can testify to that as I explain in today's podcast.
3140 days ago
Im not feeling terribly well so this may be the only bearcast of the weekend. We shall see. However I look at the Phorm debacle on AIM which saw £201 million sent to money heaven. I name the guilty men and look at the lessons learned (or ignored if you are AIM Regulation). Then I show why George Osborne is lying about mortgage rates under Brexit as he wages war for Project Fear.
3170 days ago
The resignation of Iain Duncan Smith has forced those on the left and followers of David Cameron and George Osborne to twist logic and engage in smears to try to counter the former minister. But IDS is 100% right about how and why welfare needs reform. His analysis of what was a mean spirited and nasty budget last week and of the flaws in Chancellor Osborne's budget is simply correct. Why the hell should those in the top 11% of earners get tax breaks paid for by the handicapped today and by our kids inheriting even more Government debt tomorrow?
3173 days ago
George Osborne claims to have tackled debt. If you believe that you will take your trousers off and allow Boy George to chain you to a radiator. A picture speaks 1000 words.
3174 days ago
In this bonus podcast I discuss all aspects of today's UK Budget from Chancellor George Osborne. It was an intensely political budget from Mr Osborne but not one I believe in very much. I failed to mention the lifetime ISA that lets help young people overpay for housing gimmick. It will not address the real issue that is asset inflation, instead it may fuel what is a bubble that bit longer.
3191 days ago
We have today penned an open letter to George Osborne regarding the ever-growing scandal of the ShareProphets AIM-China Filthy Forty. Mr Osborne, you will remember, is keen to see greater links forged between the London and Chinese markets. Under the circumstances we are deeply concerned about this and call for a full investigation.
Given the statistics of Nomad resignations (fourteen so far since the start of 2015, eight in the past six and a half months) it is crystal clear that there has been a serious problem: Nomads do not resign on a whim – business is hard to come by these days.
The question of how so many Chinese companies which, for reasons of fraud
3206 days ago
MPs on the Treasury select committee want George Osborne to reverse changes in the tax treatment of Buy to Let. They lie about why they are bleating and they lie about the consequences. As a dyed in the wool capitalist, I explain in this podcast why, for the good of the economy, the Chancellor must stick to his guns
3214 days ago
The BBC's Question Time was from Bradford last night and my heart sank as I looked out an audience comprised largely of fat people who pretty ssoon showed that they were also - almost to a person - just plain stupid. It was all too predictable what followed as a questionner asked whether George Osborne's pre-election talk about a Northern Powerhouse was just vote grabbing waffle.
A silly Labour MP said how some Government department had just been moved from Sheffield to the South and asked how this would help the Northern Powerhouse. The audience lapped it up. Shuffling desks in the great State apparatus has nothing to do with creating wealth and prosperity but that was a point no-one in the room seemed to appreciate.
A woman in the audience who appeared to have an almost negative IQ and thus boasted that she worked in local Government talked of savage cuts in her employer's budget and austerity and the rest of the audience wet themselves with joy.
The odious careerist Amber Rudd for the Tories talked about investing in trains in Manchester & Liverpool but that seemed only to irk the audience from the other side of the pennines even more. One assumes that Ms Rudd, like myself
3228 days ago
I continue the theme of what capitalism really means from yesterday's bonus bearcast on the news that North Sea oil companies want Chancellor George Osborne to use your hard earned cash to bail them out. I explain why the Chancellor needs to ignore this completely even if it means that the North Sea basically goes bust taking a number of listed companies - I mention XCite (XEL) specifically - with it. Sorry, I don't care if Aberdeen becomes a ghost town. Taxpayers from the profitable part of the economy should NEVER subsidise loss making sectors, be they milk farmers, oil companies or the Yorkshire coal miners that the great and much missed Maggie Thatcher quite rightly put on the dole.
3286 days ago
Last weekend I explained HERE how the purchase of the fraudulent and grossly overvalued business of Quindell (QPP) by Slater & Gordon (SGH) earlier this year threatened the Aussie poltroons with a drowning in debt wipe-out – quite simply it is not generating any cash, thanks to Quenron. This afternoon things got worse, much worse. Thanks to Chancellor George Osborne, shares in S&G are now almost certainly heading for zero. It is now the short of the century.
In his Autumn statement Osborne unleased a bombshell on the ambulance chasing industry. I quote
3403 days ago
I have been a mega bear on Monitise (MONI) and with the shares now sub 5p feel rather vindicated. I still would not touch the shares with a baregepole.
3416 days ago
Martin Wheatley, the head of the FCA is to leave his job in September after the twat George Osborne refused to extend his contract. Wheatley is being shown the door and the spin is that he is being given the bullet because he was too tough on the banksters and on the financial services industry. George, pal, you are ‘avin a bubble.
The FCA is not fit for purpose
3418 days ago
Tim Martin of JD Wetherspoon has today commented on the moronic plans of George Osborne to put SME's out of business, ooops I meant to say to pushing the minimum wage up to £9. For Paul "Trotsky" Scott, "Red" Darren Atwater and others here are some hard maths. Just who is subsidising who? Look at how much profit JD makes per pub and how much tax that pub generates. Over to my hero of the day Tim Martin:
3419 days ago
So Paul "Trotsky" Scott, "Red" Darren Atwater, George "the twat" Osborne and your out of touch cabinet pals who have never risked their capital to run an SME, PR supremo Reg "crony capitalist" Hoare et al you want me to pay my staff £9 an hour. Let me tell you about Christina and why I am in such a foul mood today. Warning this podcast contains a stream of bad langauge. I also cover Greece, Blur, Johnston Press, Mosman Oil & Gas (0p here we come) and Armadale Capital.
3421 days ago
Sorry to go back to the national Living wage of that twat George Osborne but the piffle spouted by its supporters grows by the day. Businesses paying £7.50 an hour are not subsidised by the State. I give you the real maths, the maths on why Osborne's measure makes the working poor worse off and why he has done this and what he should have done. I am such an angry capitalist I really am thinking of packing it all in. This country no longer deserves entrepreneurs.
3423 days ago
Once again IT issues in Greece delay this podcast. I start by explianing why the reaction of Paul Scott and the craven deadwood press to the new national living wage proposed by George Osborne displays 100% economic illiteracy. It is simply a transfer of wealth from business to the State, the poor will gain nothing. Then onto defending David Lenigas and Andrew Bell from some of the sillier comments made by some folk and to explain why flip flop Ben Turney is again wrong on New World Oil & Gas. hats off to Paul Curtis for the silliest remark of the day as I stck the boot into Gulf Keystone and then also to the prep, pump and dump at Beowulf Mining. And finally I have another go at biotech dog ValiRx.
And fear not Champagne Charlie Gibson fans, I had not forgotten about you. Just a reminder of why the Edison analyst is a convicted felon HERE and as a bonus a reminder of how it is not only the poor he screws HERE - and a reminder of why I feel the urge to remind you all HERE
3425 days ago
This has been delayed by certain IT issues here in the Hellenic Republic. I start the podcast on Greece then onto China and finally to chancellor George Osborne and his budget - the guy is a prize twat. At a company level I look at Azonto Petroleum, Monitise ( TSOA wins again!), Red Rock Resources and the fraud Jiasen.
And fear not Champagne Charlie Gibson fans, I had not forgotten about you. Just a reminder of why the Edison analyst is a convicted felon HERE and as a bonus a reminder of how it is not only the poor he screws HERE - and a reminder of why I feel the urge to remind you all HERE
3478 days ago
In a fairly long postcard from the Greek Hovel I cover a number of issues and start with the migrants in the Med and the ISIL threat - as ever the howling right wing British press has got this wrong. Then to the battle for the soul of the deserving working class: Labour vs UKIP vs The Tories - I have a few ideas for George Osborne.
3537 days ago
George Osborne will deliver a budget of cheap bribes and minor tweakings. I have an alternative set of proposals which is genuinely radical and would put the UK and its finances back on a firm footing. In this podcast I outline my alternative Budget 2015 and commend it to the House.
3902 days ago
The spin doctors of Chancellor George Osborne had leaked much of what he said so it is not as if anyone was waiting with baited breath. What he did serve up was a combination of political posturing and timidity. It is not a conservative budget and it does little for Britain.
Posturing? The Welfare cap of £119 billion. Hmmmm. I am capped in my size 34 trousers but will binge and booze and then buy a pair of 36 inch trousers. Parliament can vote to lift this inflation adjusted cap and will do so.’
£119 billion is a lot of money. A brave Conservative chancellor would be tackling a system where folks like the vile fat slob and, now patron Saint of scroungers, White Dee can pick up £200 a week tax free and regard welfare as a lifestyle option. Forget setting caps that can be lifted. Start tackling welfare abuse. Cut payments. That is what a country running an unsustainable budget deficit needs.
What about the poor? Osborne has lifted the personal tax allowance by a few hundred quid to £10,500. That is simply not enough. It means that folks earning less than £1000 a month are paying tax. The incentive for those living on welfare need to take a low paid job is not just a stick (which Osborne declines to use) but also a carrot – that is to say to lift the tax threshold to £20,000.
What about creating jobs?
3904 days ago
In a secret meeting George Osborne apparently stated that more folks paying 40% tax is good news. They feel happier because they feel like they are successful and have joined the middle classes and so will share Tory values and vote for his party. At every level these claims are stupendously stupid.
As a Conservative I believe that folks should pay as little tax as possible – I have always thought that this was a core conservative belief. We believe in a small state and a society where one is encouraged to work harder to earn and keep more money, not just to pay more in tax for an ever bigger Government to piss away. And I always thought that George Osborne was meant to be a Conservative. Have I missed something? Has he joined the Lib Dems?
If folks are mad enough to want to pay more tax then they always have the right to send a cheque off to the Treasury and make a voluntary donation. But it should be their call. Not that of a patronising dicked like George Osborne.
As to the idea that if the State steals more of my money then I am likely to reward the party in power? This is sheer folly.
Osborne like most of the out of touch upper class twits who dominate the Conservative Party these days has no idea how the aspirational working and middle classes think. They come from the classes who believe, to quote Leona Helmsley, that tax is for little people.” They come from families who have never had to juggle bills and dip into overdraft to pay the mortgage or to pay for Christmas. They simply have no idea how ordinary folks live and struggle.
It is inconceivable that anyone in the Conservative party of Thatcher, Tebbit and Joseph would have spouted such nonsense. But then they were not patrician fools like the current Tory elite.
4000 days ago
This is a great piece by my pal Dominic Frisby. It is bang on the money:
Our tax code is 11,000 pages long. That is too long. By about 10,990 pages I'd say. Its size and complexity make blunders and fraud inevitable.
But it's worse than that. Our system of tax is immoral, it is inconsistent and it creates inequality.
So I am simplifying it. Here's how.
Why should the individual worker pay more tax than the company? Why should the multi-national corporation with an army of accountants employed solely to deal with the taxman receive better treatment than the local small businessman? Why should any group receive special favour? That is not capitalism, that is not socialism, it is not social democracy - it is crony capitalism.
4081 days ago
I never cease to be amazed at the appalling coverage of basic economics by the national press but today’s shock exclusive from the Daily Mail really plumbs new depths. The headline reads: Government borrowing falls by £3.6billion as the recovery powers on. The sub heads read: Deficit cut from £14.2billion to £13.3billion in the space of a year and Borrowing falls from £50.4billion to £46.8billion. It concludes from this that George Osborne’s austerity policies are working.
Ok. Back in the real world. The statistic the Mail uses is that in the six months to August Government Borrowing was a mere £46.8 billion, down £3.6 billion from the prior six months. But that is not is not TOTAL borrowing just ADDITIONAL borrowing. Total borrowi9ngs are still increasing at almost £100 billion a year. The budget deficit in August was marginally down on a year ago but was still a disgraceful £13.3 billion.
So the correct headline should be: Government borrowing still increasing rapidly. The sub heads should read
4081 days ago
George Osborne is set to follow Nigel Lawson as the chancellor who created a mega house price bubble. It is fun while it lasts but real pain is on the way. It is only a matter of when.
4085 days ago
From our man on Hampstead Heath...Swimming in the now cooling waters of the pond - as summer recedes and energy bills rise - somehow prolongs those salad days of life; the water being as crisp as a lettuce and the swimmer growing as cool as a cucumber. These days when the wind scuds across the surface water, raising small droplets that splash over your head, are a particular pleasure to inland pond swimmers; it is like swimming at sea but without the salt.
Only a week or two ago in heat wave weather, the pond was more like the African Impop; now, it is a little closer to swimming in Dover Harbour Pond swimming, like markets, is often surprising in its sudden changes of mood - or is it my mood?
Dear old ‘Athenean’ George Osborne, Blighty’s Chancellor is probably - to steal the imagery of Andrew Neil - celebrating his ‘winning the economic argument’ down at Anabel’s. I am sure it was him I saw in a darkened corner? In any event,
4147 days ago
My old pal Robert Sutherland Smith, now aged 167, is off on a summer break for a few days. Before departing he offered up his thoughts on life from Hampstead Heath. He has also served up two articles today (on G4S and Tesco) on www.shareprophets.com Over to RSS.
Now that the great heat has come, the ponds more closely resemble the Ganges with seemingly half the population of London seeking its cool liquidity, except that the water no longer has that cool crispness which bites back in less sunny days.
Crowds as we know are prone to madness
4164 days ago
Over on Shareprophets.com my financial weekly video postcard this week looks at the small resources stocks. It explains why there traditional sources of funding have been cut off and asks how many of them are actually already at a near zero real cash position and asks why they cannot be more transparent about it.
You can watch that video here.
My political postcard covers two topics.
In that vein my next video postcard here on TomWinnifrith.com will come to you from Greece
Video
4164 days ago
And so this week George Osborne laid out his plans for how the Government will spend money it does not have over the next few years. The reactions were sadly predictable and the truth is, my friends, that they are all lying.
On the right there was praise for canny George who so cleverly snookered New Labour with populist pledges about tackling welfare scroungers and who is clearly a safe pair of hands to act as custodian of the nation’s finances. Middle England and the Bond markets are meant to be reassured.
On the left the BBC, its sister paper The Guardian and other associated loons continued the post 2010 narrative of wicked Tory cuts, back to the 1930s, blah, blah, blah.
Both sides are lying although it seems that the BBC/Guardian agenda has won as most folks do actually think that Government spending is being cut. It is not.
4180 days ago
It was one of those days when the “white pages” of the newspapers led with a City story: the shock departure of Stephen Hester as CEO of RBS. Shares fell by 4% in early trading on the back of the news. From there, the story moved from the financial arena to the political one. Labour said that Chancellor George Osborne had cost taxpayers billions by pushing Hester out. Osborne said that Labour had cost the taxpayer even more billions by overpaying when it bailed RBS out in 2008. It was all usual schoolboy knockabout stuff.
But does it really matter who is at the helm of giant FTSE 100 companies? Clearly it can if the captain of the ship is someone like Hester’s predecessor Fred “the Shred” Goodwin. Fred drove a (with hindsight) reckless acquisition spree and created a culture where RBS simply took on too much risk. But RBS was unusual among FTSE 100 companies
4224 days ago
At 8 degrees - the swimming temperature is chalked on a board each day – these intoxicating waters, sparkling and dancing in the early morning sun of an early May morning have the coolness and body of champagne; perhaps a Dom Perignon 55 in deference to Ian Fleming, who once lived nearby and who may have had a swim or two here in his days living on the edge of Hampstead Heath. All Etonians are taught to swim after all. The idea of 007 swimming in champagne seems perfectly normal. The water clinches you in a thrillingly cool embrace that would have pleased Her Majesty’s secret agent, as it does me. Did not 007 seduce some gorgeous foreign agent by a river whilst sipping the classic vintage? I trust the lady was stirred but not shaken.
Pond swimming prompts the imagination. I consider the policies of our Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne - wondering if he could in fact be a vampire
4250 days ago
Maguire is a senior journalist with the Daily Mirror and a professional Northern class warrior. He was born in South Shields and has made a point of not losing his Geordie accent - indeed it has got more pronounced over the years - despite him being a full time member of the political media elite of London. I imagine that he lives in a plush part of North London. But he is oh so very working class (with an A pronounced the right way).
And so he wades into the debate on child killing welfare junkie Mick Philpott by suggesting on twitter
The issue of "funding lifestyles" should begin with George Osborne's family trust fund and the knighthood Sir George inherits
What a tool. Osborne will one day become Sir George as he inherits a baronetcy. This is the same reason Sir George Young is a Sir – he is a baronet. It is not a knighthood. It is a hereditary title and brings you zero money just a silly title. It funds no lifestyle.
And yes Osborne’s family is rich and the chancellor has enjoyed the benefits of that and will inherit wealth. So frigging what. Does Maguire think that no-one should inherit wealth? The Osborne cash has been around for a couple of generations. What about the Miliband cash – both of those boys inherited a good amount from their Marxist Dad. Does Maguire think that is wrong? Will his three offspring inherit anything from the money Maguire and his partner (Cambridge educated novelist and Guardian writer Emma Burstall) have made over the years from the lefty media circus? Go on Maguire: who are you leaving your cash to?
As it happens it is none of my business who leaves their cash to whom. The point is that it is the fruit of their labour (or perhaps that of their parents or grandparents) and individuals should have every right to decide where cash they earn goes to. That is rather different to Mick Philpott who acquired income and wealth with money taken from folks who worked to fund his lifestyle and his asset accretion (the snooker tables etc.) via Britain's utterly crocked welfare system and onerous tax regime. We as taxpayers had no say in the matter we just ponied up involuntarily to give Mick an easy life.
You have to be a bitter and stupid deluded leftie not to appreciate the difference between the funded lifestyle of Mick Philpott and that of George Osborne. Step forward Kevin Maguire.
4251 days ago
Child killer Mick Philpott “earned” the equivalent of £100,000 a year milking the benefits system. He could afford booze, drugs, a snooker room extension, SkyTV and much, much more and never did a day’s work. It was a broken benefits system that allowed him to lead such a life, that incentivised him NOT to work and which caused him to lose any sort of moral compass. For this dirtbag life was about rights and self-gratification and not about obligations and responsibilities.
Anyone who makes this point, be it the Daily Mail, myself or George Osborne is now abused by the left as heartless in that we ignore the human tragedy of six dead kids or of using one human tragedy to bash all on welfare. The left – as ever – misses the point.
There are countless Philpott’s out there. Only a few go around murdering children in order to obtain more benefits. But vast numbers now regard benefits as a lifestyle and an entitlement. Keep the system as it is and this underclass will slip further and further into depravity. It is bankrupting Britain financially and it is morally bankrupting those who now have no concept of the idea that with rights come obligations and responsibilities. Deluded lefties seem unable to see this. In some cases it is because their Parliamentary seats or worthless taxpayer-funded jobs depend on keeping a client state poor. For others there cannot be the excuse of self-interest, those folk are just deluded.
But the way that the entire left tries to drown out rational debate on the UK’s broken system with smears and attack is Fascism. Why is the left afraid to debate the real issues? What is so wrong with saying that a subscription to SkyTV should not be part of the standard benefits lifestyle?
4261 days ago
Three weeks ago I wrote that shares in three of the UK’s biggest house builders were hugely overvalued on the basis that house prices were quite simply too high and that any correction in the value of UK house prices – which I regarded as inevitable – was not discounted. This week Chancellor Osborne announced a series of measures to boost the UK housing sector in his budget. Shares in house builders have reacted positively to that news. Are they reflecting a new reality? Should I change my tune?
4268 days ago
Dear Mr Osborne.
You are in a mess. The left attacks you for wicked cuts. Those with half a brain know that you are not cutting at all. Your budget this week is your last chance and so I offer you a radical set of suggestions to sort out Britain’s ills once and for all. And unlike anything from Vince Cable my ideas stack up.
Your three priorities are:
1. To slash the £100 billion plus budget deficit
2. To encourage those on welfare to take low paid jobs
3. To encourage employers in the private sector to hire aggressively.
As such my first two proposals will initially increase the deficit. To deal with point two you should, at once, declare that all annual incomes under £20,000 should be tax free. Thereafter you pay the standard rate (30%) up to £30,000 and then a higher rate of 50%. National Insurance is not a hypothecated tax and should therefore be scrapped and included in income tax – let us make the system simple and open. This would be tax cuts for all, a huge admin saving by abolishing NI and the tax cuts would be targeted at the lowest paid.
4270 days ago
The next weekend edition of the Tomograph will go out on Sunday afternoon.
Register HERE to join the ever growing Tomograph mailing list. In this weekend’s issue you will, as always, find links to all the content that has appeared on the TomWinnifrith.com website this week. And given how much I am writing today (Saturday) the total scores on the doors will not be insignificant.
You will also find an exclusive piece of the welfare scrounger of the week plus 10 suggestions for George Osborne for his budget next week .
To receive all of this register HERE
4285 days ago
The Lib Dems held on but UKIP was surging. A couple more days and UKIP would have snatched it. In the end it was wasted Tory votes that let the Lib Dems in as Call Me Dave’s party came third in what is his 40th target seat. Labour was always irrelevant here, its own disaster is not an issue.
The Lib Dems will be greatly relieved to have held onto what should be one of their safest seats albeit in very tough circumstances: Chris Huhne off to do porridge and the current sex scandal. For now Clegg hangs on but if he is shown to have lied about his knowledge in the sex pest cover up he may still face the chop. This is not the start of a Lib Dem recovery, Rennardgate may well still drag that party to Thorpe style lows.
UKIP is now coming second in both leafy southern towns like Eastleigh but also GMSH’s like Rotherham. There is a growing disgust with the entire political class and UKIP is the big winner from that. All the established parties should be worried but they are so arrogant and out of touch that the corrupt establishment will not change tack.
But the big losers right now are the Tories. As long as Call Me Dave stays as Tory leader it is only a matter of time before UKIP gains an MP. For the Tories are in trouble.
4288 days ago
My old ( very old) friend from t1ps.com Robert Sutherland Smith continues his monthly column dreamt up while taking an early morning swim on Hampstead Heath… Pond Life.
There is nothing better at about 7am on a raw February morning, when flurries of snow in the air are driven hither and thither by a hectoring easterly wind coming across the North Sea from somewhere south of the Ural Mountains, than to make your way to the ponds for a winter dip. Thankfully, it is not that cold this morning; only three degrees above freezing. Almost sub tropical compared with some days. You enter the enclosed compound to find that a few other sturdy fellows are already undressing; hanging their winter cloths on cold metal hooks. They stand there in the poor light of an early winter dawn, white as flour; more like spirits from another plane or dimension than living, breathing beings from north London before the working day.
What is this urge to plunge into forbidding steel grey waters on such a day – or indeed almost any day in an English winter?
4356 days ago
This article first appeared in my Tomogrraph Newsletter a couple of weeks ago but prompted my an angry response or two to my article of yesterday (Being on Welfare is NOT a Job) I am goaded into republishing the piece to a wider audience. One chap thinks I am “ bitter and twisted” and a “sad man” for arguing that taxpayers have no obligation to support a life of Sky, fags and booze on welfare. Whatever…folks need to face up to the problem.
This piece deals with those deficit deniers who cannot accept that Britain is heading for bankruptcy and offers up a 13 point plan to deal with the issue – needless to say I do not expect the cowardly Conservatives to adopt even one of my suggestions.
The Autumn statement came and went. George Osborne laughed and smiled. Ed Balls stammered. The left bleated on about wicked Tories and even more wicked cuts. The Tories claimed to be satisfied with the job being in hand. But we are as a nation kidding ourselves. We are all deficit deniers.
Two and a half years into this Parliament, Osborne has missed his forecasts again. Government spending has, in absolute terms risen year on year since the election.
4364 days ago
The chancellor’s Autumn statement was spun by the Tory Party and its supporters in the press as a bit of a triumph. George Osborne was helped by the fact that the riposte from New Labour came from Ed Balls who is nor an impressive orator, appears to have a minimal grasp of his subject and who was part of the Treasury team which created many ( but not) all of the balance sheet issues that Bankrupt Britain faces. But the Tories should not kid themselves – Osborne has not delivered.
Since 1971 Sterling has lost c99% of its value against Gold. To be fair the dollar has lost 98.4% of its value too. The great experiment with the printing press has had a rather predictable result but the weakness of Sterling against not only gold but other paper currencies has been marked. This is a reflection of the fundamental economic problems the UK faces. And the biggest of those problems remains that Government spending is quite simply out of control, notwithstanding two years of “austerity Britain.”
For three years every State employee, student, Guardian reader and welfare recipient has bleated on about the wicked Tories and how they are slashing State spending
4373 days ago
Memo to Ed Balls & George Osborne: watch and listen to this inspiring video of Margaret Thatcher at the 1983 Conservative Conference: “Someone has to add up the figures, every business has to do it, every housewife has to do it, every Government should do it and this one will.”
“There is no such thing as public money. There is only taxpayers money”
Sadly a lesson lost on Balls & Osborne.
“The state has no other source of money other than money that people earn themselves”
“Prosperity won’t come by inventing more and more lavish public expenditure programmes”
“You don’t grow richer by ordering another chequebook from the Bank”
4393 days ago
Under its super crackpot socialist loon of a New President Frances Hollande France is going bust even more quickly than bankrupt Britain. As such, nothing the Froggies do should surprise you. In France government spending is already 56% of GDP (OECD average 46%) The debt to GDP ratio at the end of 2011 was 85.8% and with a whopping budget deficit it is rising fast. 90% is the point at which debt stifles growth – a point of no return. Pretty soon you get to 120% and you are Greece.
So faced with a country going bust and spending too much what does a Socialist do? Yes, of course. He spends more. And he pays for it by a) borrowing, while he can and b) by imposing new taxes. And this brings us to the great Nutella tax. According to France 24, the latest wheeze from the loons comes in the form of an attempt to hike taxes by 300 percent% on a key ingredient in Nutella. A bill to push through the tax was adopted by a Senate commission and heads to the National Assembly this week for review.
The key ingredient is palm oil which comprises about 20% of Nutella. So how do the Froggies justify this tax hike?
4393 days ago
Post the defeat of Romney it was inevitable that “modernisers” within the Tories would draw the conclusion that the way to win in 2015 is to be more socially liberal. And so today George Osborne insists that the “nice” Conservative Party will put gay marriage at the centre of its next election manifesto. Oh saints preserve me. I think I am emigrating.
As a social liberal I actually support gay marriage as well as legalising drugs and a whole raft of other measures which would horrify traditional Tories. If gays want to sign up for marriage with a one in three chance of an acrimonious divorce to follow why not allow them that right? But do I really regard it as a key issue? Does anyone outside certain metropolitan circles (where they are never going to vote Tory anyway) regard it as a key issue, one that should be central to a manifesto? I doubt it.
4413 days ago
Child Benefit should be scrapped altogether. It is costly, a bureaucratic mess and misguided. I say this as the Daily mail bleats about £36.6 million a year being sent as child benefit to kids living abroad and as chancellor Osborne plans to scrap the benefit for those earning £50,000 a year or more. This is all tinkering.
Let’s start with basic principles. The world is overpopulated. We keep on going on about how folks in the third world should have fewer kids yet across the EU we provide economic incentives (in countries like Spain they are vast) to have more kids.
4428 days ago
George Osborne is once again the hero of the Tory press. But the press has got it wrong. The man is a fraud and not a very nice one at that. The acclaim comes from his promise to slash welfare spending by £10 billion as part of his work to tackle the deficit. But there are just so many holes in this thesis that it is hard t know where to start.
Instinctively I winced as he heard the plans. Osborne is targeting groups that are unpopular.
4504 days ago
Today’s UK GDP numbers are disastrous for George Osborne. Folks do not expect to like Tory chancellors (except perhaps Ken Clarke in his fat, cigar smoking and whisky drinking pomp) but they expect them to be competent. Osborne is now going to be the chancellor who sees the UK lose its AAA rating and it is going to happen soon.
That we still have this rating is a joke. Somehow Osborne has managed to persuade us all that he is curbing Government spending ( he is not it is rising in actual terms, in real terms and per head of population) and that he is tackling the deficit ( he is not) and so getting national debt under control ( he is not). His claims were based on assumptions for growth which were, shall we say, optimistic.
