657 days ago
I start with NatWest closing down a bank branch (quite rightly) and what the fuss made by MPs etc says about the doomed UK. Then I look at Predator (PRD) and others ramping for survival, a chance for bears not bulls. Finally a long look at Schroder UK Public Private Trust (SUPP), formerly WPCT, past present and future.
1108 days ago
For the avoidance of doubt I am delighted that people of faith celebrate their festivals however they want but it seems that those who run our lives, that is to say the sleazy meddlers at Westminster, take a different view and that is the answer to my first question as I celebrate the wankfest that is COP26.
1108 days ago
According to the ONS just 2.7% of the UK population is LGBTQIA+. Wildly over-represented in the media, in politics and in academia, if you spend an evening watching the BBC you might have thought that the number was far greater but it is not. In London as a whole the percent is just over 3%, out here in the boonies it is far lower. Things are what they are. But other than casting at least one gay character in almost ever TV drama there are other ways in which activists try to persuade us that thereare far more LGBTQ+ folk than there are, so that there can be more demands for special treatment for a community that is more affluent than the straight community and clearly encountering few glass ceilings these days which is, for the avoidance of doubt, a good thing. Think of gay days.
1115 days ago
They just think they are better than us. They deserve more pay,longer holidays, bigger pensions, to live by different rules and for us to venerate them. For the political class different rules seem to apply and there are different punishments should they break them. Take the career politician that is Claudia Webbe, a woman found guilty of harassing and stalking another woman, threatening to throw acid over her face and to send nude pictures of her victim to the victim’s kids. What a vile piece of work.
1417 days ago
At what point will the Government and MPs wake up to how useless is the FCA. I first warned a leading figure, Sir George Young (now Lord Young), that it was asleep at the wheel – with regard to the £3 billion Quindell fraud – back in 2013. The complacent old fool assured his errant step nephew and second cousin that the regulator knew what it was doing and I had no need to do anything more. Of course it did not. Belatedly MPs are waking up to the failings of the FCA with regard to London & Capital Finance but there have been a stream of other mini-bond disasters where I have issued explicit warnings over two years and the FCA has done BUGGER ALL to stop them from continuing to raise funds. Some have already gone tits up so losing vulnerable savers hundreds of millions of pounds. Others are car crashes in waiting. I am so angry at the FCA for letting down those who are most vulnerable.
1451 days ago
“So you are an anti-vaxxer” she said to me as I dared to offer a modest dissent from the party line. The Ministry of Truth, aka The BBC and the social media companies, are leading the charge to eradicate social media posts by wicked anti-vaxxers lest they confuse the plebs. There is even talk of specialist army units being brought in to fight this menace. In the way that, this summer, anyone who did not apologise for historic slave activities by taking a knee was deemed to be alt-right extremist who needed re-education, anti vaxxers must now be insulted and, once suitably demonised in the eyes of the population, purged.
1553 days ago
Tim Martin is once again this website’s hero of the day. The JD Wetherspoon (JDW) boss reports that trade is improving despite continuing assaults by those who thing we should boycott his chain because of Tim’s support for Brexit, including MPs and the loathsome newspaper founded on slave trading profits, The Guardian, who all stoop to lying. His statement today is cracking stuff. The great man opines:
1875 days ago
MPs and the FCA seem happy that London & Capital Finance, which we have done so much to expose, is a one off fraud. Of course it is not, it is part of a much larger mini-bond scandal. Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable savers will face ruin and our leaders and regulators are asleep at the wheel. In fact LCF is one of a number of such schemes to go pop. The next big one to topple will, be….
2676 days ago
It was 50 years since the legalisation of homosexuality and 1 day since President Donald Trump said he was banning Transgender folks from the US army. And thus BBC breakfast focused in hard on issues that affect directly just over 2% and between 0.3% and 0.6% of the population directly. What else could the liberal media focus on? It was a veritable LGBT-fest and a reminder why BBC Breakfast really is just such dismal viewing.
2799 days ago
I comment on the hopeless response of smug MPs and the established media to yesterday's terror attack on my own website in a podcast HERE. On the markets I look at expectations management at Next (NXT), at how we know or knew about the balance sheet at Toople (TOOP) covered HERE by Cynical Bear or Advanced Oncotherapy (AVO) heading for 0p and covered in detail by me earlier HERE. I look at Public Services Properties (PSPI ) and what its AIM casino departure says about RTOs and contingent liabilities - which reminds me again of New World Oil & Gas (NEW). Finally I have a detailed look at the strange world of Paternoster Resources (PRS), not a stock you have to own in any way. PS Cynical Bear is not me. Can you see any typos in his articles?
2814 days ago
I noted in a bearcast a while ago that Charlotte Hogg, the - for now - deputy Governor of the Bank of England - was an Oxford contemporary. Two years my junior her first year room was two doors away from my third year room. We did not mix. She was clever but, by a long chalk, not the smartest person of her year but with a grandfather like Lord Hailsham, a daddy in the cabinet and mummy in the House of Lords... well some folks are more equal than others are they not?.
2943 days ago
We were told that we, the people, would decide whether we stayed in the EU just as we had in 1975. The wording on the ballot was clear and we voted to leave in the largest vote ever held in this country. Today the High Court has ruled that the Government cannot trigger Article 50 and so pave the way for Brexit without a vote by MPs.
So unelected judges now pass the baton back to MP's 80% of whom voted to remain and some, such as Ken Clarke and David Lammy, say they will vote against what the people wanted. If that happens one hopes that Theresa May deselects all Tory MPs who dare to show such open contempt for democracy and calls an immediate election. She would win by a landslide.
Indeed,
3080 days ago
The murder of Jo Cox MP throws up key issues that are not being discussed: accountability ( or rather lack of it ) in public services and also how we treat and view mental health issues in the UK. The reaction of MPs and the media shows what a different world they live in from the rest of us. The reaction of the left and the some in the Remain camp in using this as an opportunity to smear and shut down debate is repulsive. This is an awful event but folks need to get some things in perspective. Knowing a little bit about murder and also psychiatric issues first hand - as I explain in the podcast - I speak from the heart as well as the head.
3092 days ago
If we vote for Brexit on June 23rd we will get to leave the European Union, right? No. Wrong. Certainly that is the view of certain MPs, Tory and Labour who have stated that they will use Westminster rules to insist that the UK still stays in the single market, pays money to the EU and allows unlimited numbers of migrants in, even if the UK leaves. This contempt from some of of Westminster "servants" for the folks who pay their wages is obscene.
The EU itself has "form" in ignoring referendum results it does not like. It either
3135 days ago
When we are born we are all equal in the eyes of God. It matters not whether your parents live in Buckingham Palace or in the slums of Liverpool. We are equal. For me that is a core belief and as such I can be nothing other than a Republican.
I can't say that I feel strongly enough about the issue to do anything about it.
3360 days ago
In my first postcard for a while I feel forced to comment on two hot topics. Secondly it is why the MPs were wrong on not allowing assisted dying in the UK - they will simply add to the suffering of those who are most vulnerable. But first I explain why Germany's policy on migrants is driven purely by selfish need. Not that our own selfish policies are laudable it is just that we find ourselves in a different position.
I commented on the great victory of Comrade Corbyn in my bearcast today HERE
3491 days ago
Until the General Election is finally over, we are allowing both idiot comments by MPs or political figures as well as by Bulletin Board Morons to be entered in this contest. And as such we have a tie for the most moronic posting of the week.
3538 days ago
Just when you thought that our MPs could not sink any lower in talking complete bollocks as they engage in populist pre-election vote grubbing, they turn up en masse to surprise you with a new act of idiocy. Leading the charge on this occasion is the economic illiterate business secretary Vince Cable and the matter at hand is Quindell (QPP).
Cable, Andrew Tyrie (the Tory buffoon in charge of the Treasury Select Committee) and the expenses fiddling permatanned Peter Hain of Labour are lambasting the FCA for not dealing with market abuse at Quenron. Yes…I think you know what is coming next.
3604 days ago
Elm House. Dolphin Square. The revelations keep on coming. The Sunday Mirror has another compellig and persuasive front page splash today about how a Tory minister appears to have killed a young girl in one paedophile party at Dolphin Square. The police are meant to be investigating this thoroughly. But….
it is clear that when all this was going on the Police and Security services were directly implicated in the cover up. Today’s report suggests that an officer was stationed outside the door where the MP killed the girl. So do I have faith in the establishment to allow “its own” to face justice? I am not so sure.
Trawl the internet and you can be in little doubt as to some of the names who are allegedly involved. The two most prominent ex MPs both now Lords (one Labour one Tory) have been the subject of Fleet Street speculation bordering on certainty for years. Shall we call them
3712 days ago
Rent-a-quote MPs and the Daily Mail are lining up to bash the BBC for including an interview with former DJ and convicted nonce Jonathan King in a documentary about the unbelievably tedious rock supergroup Genesis. Bash a paedo sells newspapers and may have popular appeal but this is the stuff of 1984.
The hard reality is that among his many crimes against impressionable young folk, was the fact that Mr King discovered Genesis and played a key role in the band's early career. Yes we knew that King was a nonce, but his filthy secret is that he launched Genesis on us all. To make a documentary about the rise of Genesis and to ignore Mr King’s key role, to treat him as a non-person, is to rewrite history in an Orwellian fashion.
As such having agreed with my deluded lefty step mother for the first time in years (on bombing ISIS) and now find myself supporting the BBC just 48 hours later for not rewriting history. This is an unusual turn of events.
3878 days ago
The papers are full of lurid details of the personal activities of the lads and lasses who work at the Conservative Policy Unit. Apparently gay and straight alcohol fuelled orgies are par for the course. I do not care. What folks do behind closed doors is 100% their own business. So what if some Tory researchers and MPs like casual gay sex? Who cares? This is 2014 not 1914. It is not as if what they are doing is even illegal anymore.
Yes I find some of their activities distasteful. It is very brave of them to “come out” and admit that they work for a party that contains Maria Miller, wants to gag the press, supports secret courts and intervention in Syria and pisses away tens of billions on welfare, joke University degree courses, foreign aid, etc., etc. Being one of Cameron’s conservatives is pretty embarrassing but they are consenting adults so, though I find it distasteful they have every right to be 2014 Tories.
But there is a scandal here. And as ever it is the brazen way that the political classes abuse the taxpayer. The CPU is funded
3881 days ago
And so finally the greedy pig Culture Secretary has quit as a minister. This vile woman is an expenses cheat. Someone who has stolen taxpayer’s cash for vast personal enrichment. In the private sector she would not have been demoted (from minister to MP) but fired. And then prosecuted. And would never worked in her chosen career again. But she is an MP so it is different. The greedy pig Miller will be back.
Who says so? Call Me Dave Cameron says so. He looks forward to welcoming her back to Government. Like David Laws and many others before him the thief gets a temporary demotion and when we poor saps, the plebs, the peasants, the taxpayers who pay for this stinking farce have become a bit less angry, the crim will be allowed back into Government. Cameron has said so explicitly.
I am not sure what makes me most angry. Is it the thievery of Miller? Is it the way
3890 days ago
This article appeared in the weekend Tomograph but for those who are not registered ( why not?) I offer it to a wider audience.
I do not like prostitution and on balance regret that it exists. Some men and women (mainly women) who are prostitutes are empowered by it, regard it as a career and make a good living. Most make less than a good living and many are exploited by really very unpleasant criminals. The work is dangerous and comes with rather obvious health risks.
The answer according to our political class is to criminalise not the prostitute but the client. This our leaders claim will curb the oldest profession since “punters” will not risk a criminal conviction. As ever our leaders have just got it all wrong.
Some of those MPs who support these measures do so because they argue that all prostitution is exploitative. Oddly many of those who oppose this line most strongly are themselves prostitutes who just want to earn a living. Others simply regard this as a moral issue. They disapprove of paying for sex and want to shape society in their own mould.
To the latter
4024 days ago
You would have thought that greedy MPs have by now decided to err on the side of caution when it comes to expenses. Oh no. Think again.
Before we start on that I hope you can see that I now sport a 17 day old Movember moustache and if you care to sponsor my Movember efforts you can do so here.
This MP scandal is over office rents. And it goes to the heart of the battle between the political classes and we mere plebs.
4156 days ago
I noted here six days ago that MPs (who earn between 4 and 7 times the national average wage) reckon that if they don’t get a £10,000 pay rise they will be forced to fiddle their expenses again. But of course I got my sums wrong. It is even worse that I first thought.
For we learned at the weekend that 150 of the Westminster swine are claiming £50 a week for transport costs for their kids. That is deemed a legitimate expense. £2,500 a year tax free – that is worth £4,500 as a higher rate taxpayer. How many other "little" fittles like that are there which are all 100% legit under rules created by the MPs themselves? One suspects quite a few. And it all adds up.
As a bonus we also discovered that speaker John Bercow managed to claim £84 travel expenses for a journey of exactly one mile. Ironically it was a journey to visit the body set up to oversee MP’s expenses.
The political classes are right now thrashing about in a row about how Labour is bankrolled by Unite and the seeming corruption within Unite designed to fix election meetings. I do not give a damn about this. Or about the various corporates and dodgy hedge fund managers who bankroll the Tories. The real issue is that the entire political class is venal, corrupt and out of touch.
The battle is not between Labour and Tory or between Call Me Dave and Miliband. It really makes no difference who is in charge. Both accept the ultimate supremacy of the Evil Empire, pander to the moral sensibilities of a metropolitan elite and are happy to see the deficit remain out of control as Britain goes bankrupt every more quickly.
The battle is between the political classes who are robbing the citizenry, making Airstrip One ever less free while feathering their own nests and the rest of us.
Every time a new expenses scandal emerges or there is another episode of beltway sleaze newspaper columnists (part of the political media beltway class and inveterate expense fiddlers themselves) write “they still don’t get it do they?” Er… they never got it and they never will and any pre-election suggestion otherwise is mere pretence.
4162 days ago
That is the conclusion of Jack Straw MP, a sort of unofficial shop steward for the Westminster political classes. Mr Straw, whose son is being groomed to be an MP too as the political class becomes self-perpetuating, writes in the Daily Telegraph that unless MPs pay matches that of CEOs, Head Teachers etc MPs will be drawn from a narrower and narrower social class, be of poorer quality and will “make ends meet” by fiddling their expenses.
On the same principle unless you give big brown envelopes to prisoners on their release they will go and rob banks and mug old ladies. Let’s start such a scheme at once. Let’s be consistent and treat all dishonest vermin who contribute nothing to Society and have a lust for lucre equally.
The basic pay of an MP is £66,000. One in three earns more by chairing a committee, having ministerial responsibility, etc. Since MPs work less than 150 days a year many of them (Straw included) earn even more by doing other work. So the average MP earns three times the National average wage while one third earns between 4 and 7 times the average wage. And then there are their non Westminster activities.
No wonder that for every “winnable seat” there is a mammoth rush of applicants to fight that seat for the parties that are in contention. Would there be any less of a scramble if MPs took a 10% pay cut? I doubt it. Let’s try an experiment and see how many MPs quit if their pay is cut by 2%?
Once again I point out that in the US 425 Congressmen represent 250 million people. Why do we need 650 MPs to represent 60 million of us? How about we halve the size of the House of Commons, freeze MPs pay and let the ferrets fight it out for the seats that remain?
In any other profession the admission that if pay is not increased staff will simply steal from their employers (that is you and I the grateful taxpayer in this case) would be met with outrage. But apparently greedy MP’s regard it as a bargaining chip.
And they wonder why they are so universally despised?
4187 days ago
The British Government is threatening journalists with jail if they report on how the British Government helped the US Government to spy on you and me – innocent British citizens. Oh, and it has also threatened journalists with jail if they report on the fact that they are being threatened with jail. 1984 in Airstrip One – this is surreal. And terrifying.
The background is that it emerged last week that the US PRISM programme where US intelligence services snooped (illegally) on millions of emails, Facebook postings, etc. of ordinary US citizens actually operated in the UK too thanks to the folk at GCHQ.
President Obama thinks it is okay to snoop on anyone in the interests of National Security. But under this administration other Government agencies have been used for expressly political purposes. The IRS (the US taxman) has been shown to have explicitly targeted and abused those folk who contributed to Republican and Right Wing groups. Do I trust a State agency to always act fairly? Never. Do I trust one under Obama’s stewardship? Never, never, never.
What is chilling is that the same sort of abuse is going on in the UK. And the Government is doing its utmost to stop you finding out about it. While GCHQ is set to report to MPs as soon as next week on what it did do I trust a criminal to report on himself? So far it has been the much maligned press making all the running.
And that brings me to June 7th when the British Defence Ministry press advisory committee, reacting to a flurry of revelations in the American press about massive warrantless US government electronic surveillance programs, warned UK organizations Friday not to publish British national security information.
Defiance of the June 7th “DA-Notice” could make British journalists vulnerable to prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. And it gets better – that DA notice was itself marked confidential and so revealing its existence is a breach of the Official Secrets Act.
The DA-Notice accepted that the U.S. National Security Agency was indeed working with spooks in the UK but said that our spooks are worried about revelations of their involvement. Too frigging right. They should be worried. This is a scandal and another sprint down the road to 1984 here in Airstrip One.
The DA Notice states:
"There have been a number of articles recently in connection with some of the ways in which the UK Intelligence Services obtain information from foreign sources," said the notice issued by the Defence Advisory Committee, a joint body with media organizations.
"Although none of these recent articles has contravened any of the guidelines contained within the Defence Advisory Notice System, the intelligence services are concerned that further developments of this same theme may begin to jeopardize both national security and possibly UK personnel," it said.
The notice is marked "Private and Confidential: Not for publication, broadcast or use on social media."
Well this blog is anti-social media. If the spooks want to arrest me I have just sent an email to myself marked Barack Obama is a c*** which has details of where I shall be this weekend.; No doubt they can hack into gmail and find out where to get me.
4193 days ago
You kind of thought that cash for questions was just a bit nineteen nineties. that after the expenses scandal the Westminster stable had been cleansed. Wrong! Those greedy mothers in parliament, not content with gunning for inflation busting pay rises are at it again, taking bribes for asking questions. Panorama has exposed not only Patrick Mercer MP but also three Lords for taking cash for asking questions about Fiji on behalf of a bogus lobbying company.
Other MPs lined up to join Mercer's all party Fiji Group, one asking if he could take his wife on the first "fact-finding mission." Mercer described most of the recruits as freeloaders. I'd describe the entitre political class as freeloaders.
Right now the political class is taking yet another well earned holiday. But the MPs and Lords will be back soon. And in that vein I ask for captions to the picture below. Post your captions in the comments section below.
For what it is worth my entry is "At the annual AIM awards dinner the Jim Ellerton and the directors of Motive TV and Verdes Management tuck into the main course and discuss how important it is to remunerate senior staff appropriately in order to attract the right talent"
Post away....
4276 days ago
I am not sure what the Lib Dems are meant to stand for these days and in a couple of years’ time they will be an electoral irrelevancy anyway. But I always thought that a party with the word Liberal in its name might have some sort of core beliefs in the liberty of the citizen against an all-powerful state. Unless I have read my John Stuart Mill very incorrectly I think that should be the case.
However, under current plans which the Lib Dems in parliament have largely supported, the law will change to extend secret hearings across the civil justice system. In a secret hearing defendants or claimants will not be allowed to be present, know or challenge the case against them and must be represented by a security-cleared special advocate, rather than their own lawyer. Right now these procedures are used in tiny numbers of immigration and deportation hearings, but the Government wants to extend them across the civil courts in cases deemed to involve national security.
Now, I am sure you can spot the flaw in this proposal. It is the State that decides when the security of the State is threatened. In a country where burning a poppy on twitter and where calling a police horse “gay” have both been deemed by the State to be offences, I simply do not trust the State.
That may trivialise the point. What about the whistleblower? The David Kelly figure. As the law stands now he is just murdered in the woods, sorry I meant allowed a public trial if charged. But as the law may stand in future someone who exposed how a crazed leader started an illegal war with a pack of lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction
4284 days ago
It was hectic Friday evening at Real Man Pizza Company. I served up a couple of Linguine Manx dishes which I was really proud of and I left happy, but utterly shattered, after putting in 90 hours in five days. I just managed to catch the 11.30 from Paddington. Of course 30 of those 90 hours I was working for the taxman. That sort of work ethic and work rate just to pay the bills is something the political elite who run all three parties just do not understand and cannot comprehend.
I enjoy my work so do not take this as a grumble. And I am delighted that RMPC is doing well enough that we will hire another member of staff next week. That is another person to generate tax income for our elite to waste. I mean spend.
I know that some folks, notably those employed by a company that failed to make Real Man profitable, laugh at me for running and working in a restaurant but Real Man will, by April, have taken on a net four new employees and two contractors in the first four months of 2013. I regard creating jobs and so generating wealth for the UK and tax revenue for the Government as an honourable thing to do. To be lambasted by wage slaves for having the nerve to risk my capital to do that says more about them and also about the decline of Britain in terms of our attitude to entrepreneurs than it does about me.
Back to the train. I prepared to fall asleep but within five minutes I was roused by the sound of the woman in front of me vomiting copiously in her seat. So drunk was she that she could not make the toilet. She just vomited on herself, the seat in front and the floor and sat there grinning. What are you going to do about it said her grin? I moved again as did other, clearly tired, passengers and tried to sleep.
I awoke suddenly at Bath as a crowd of 40 students joined the train after a night out. That they want to have fun is great but, with no consideration for others, the last fifteen minutes of my journey was to the backdrop of singing, shouting, swearing and just noise. The student opposite slouched so that his legs dug into mine but, after ten pints of Fosters, he did not give a damn.
That I am subsidising the students does not bother me. As a student I was subsidized by others. What goes around comes around. But the utter lack of consideration and manners shown by all sorts of folks today leaves me feeling like Bankrupt Britain is not a land that I want to live in. The 11.30 from Paddington was Hogarth’s Gin Alley.
Of course First Class, where our leaders travel at our expense, was quiet and pleasant. And the idea they they would be on the 11.30 is ludicrous. For the 140 days a year they do “work” the hours are civilised. They have no exposure to hard work or to the stench of vomit and the rudeness of so many of our fellow citizens. They do not create jobs or wealth, they just suck money away from those who do. As an elite as they become ever more cushioned from reality, I become ever more alienated from them.
At 2 PM I finally made it to bed. Today and tomorrow will be light days. Perhaps just five hours work. And on Monday at the crack of dawn the whole circus starts again. That the Westminster elite think that by “presenting policies better” they will “connect with voters” like me is laughable. They are on another planet and Marie Antoinette had more chance of “connecting” with the Parisian mob of 1789 than those in the Westminster bubble have of understanding how real life is for those they are meant to serve.
4295 days ago
I wrote earlier today about the jobless mum of 11 who lives on benefits and is getting a £400,000 eco mansion built for her by the local Council but says if she does not like it she will demand something better. That piece is HERE.
It now emerges that last year this loathsome woman bought a horse ( she tried to buy three but the deal collapsed) and now spends £200 a month caring for it.
Benefits are meant to be a safety net. There are millions of people working in the UK and paying taxes to fund this woman’s eco mansion, her frigging horse and god knows what else and all she can do is sit around on her arse. She had children through choice and expects others to fund her and the consequences of her actions and luxuries like owning a bloody horse.
I have just put in two sixteen hour days on the trot and work a 6 and a half day week providing employment for nine peiople who, in turn, all pay taxes. Why the hell I am bothering to work so hard to pay taxes to fund this monster? When I hear stories like this I question the morality of tax evasion. I cannot imagine that anyone in the UK supports the welfare state as it is other than parasites like Heather Frost. Yet our useless, sleazy and idle MPs do nothing about it. Some posture but nothing ever changes.
No taxation without representation was the cry of the colonists in 1776. As a hard working taxpayer I feel totally unrepresented.
I am now off to the Cinema to watch a film about an out of touch elite being overthrown by over-taxed plebs who had just had anough – I cannot be arsed to write another article today knowing that 31% of the proceeds will go on crap like this. This is unbearable.
4334 days ago
I have just worked a 22 hour day, juggling the needs of sick staff, bills to pay, deadlines to meet etc. That is what life is like in the private sector. The bit of the economy that employs folks, pays over taxes to support the State, etc. And the chances of myself or my staff getting a 32% pay rise this year are zippo. Frankly almost no-one in the UK will get that sort of rise this year.
But one bunch of parasites, tarnished by allegations of corruption, working 3 days in 5 and universally despised reckon they merit a 32% hike taking them from the top 5% of earners into the top 1%. Even had I worked only 21 hours yesterday I would still be livid.
This week’s caption contest is in honour of the scumbags who forget that they work for us not the other way round. Please post your captions in the comments section below.
The best caption will win an “It’s Time to leave T-shirt which you can also buy exclusively here.
4335 days ago
Are you getting a pay rise this year? Not many folks are. Some like those on welfare are, in real terms, getting a cut. Pensioners are worse off thanks in part to low interest rates. The Government needs to slash its spending. To sack people. To make them unemployed. As Call Me Dave said “we are all in it together.” Er… not quite. Some folks are more equal than others. MPs are demanding a pay rise. A 32% pay rise. Where is Guy Fawkes when you need him? These pigs are beneath contempt.
An MP already gets paid £65,378 a year plus expenses. Those were meant to have been reformed but
4336 days ago
The Government is meant to be making spending cuts. Of course we all know that the wicked Tories are doing no such thing, spending is going up. But just for a minute let us humour Call Me Dave and pretend that MPs realise that Bankrupt Britain is going bust and that Government spending has to be cut back. So what news do we have today? MP’s reckon that local councillors should get more money for their allowances. Hell’s teeth. Labour MP Clive Betts things that compensation needs to be “appropriate.” At a number of levels this is obscene.
Checking out the website of Real Man Pizza’s local council ( Camden) I see that in the year to April 2011 ( the last available data) its local councillors cost local residents £807,473.47.
4343 days ago
In case you missed it, yesterday was the 40th Birthday Party of what we used to know as the European Economic Community (EEC) but is now simply known as the Evil Empire. No doubt in the slums of Athens and Madrid as youth unemployment hits 60% they were having a party to celebrate. Back here in the UK our political and media elite were strangely quiet on the matter because they are – for the most part – supporters of the EU in one form or another but aware that the plebs feel rather differently.
In years gone by, we Europsceptics were a minority. Our predictions that the Euro would be a disaster on economic grounds and that the Evil Empire would seize powers from Britain were dismissed by the bien pensants as the rantings of a crazed Xenophobic, little Englander, sort of racist minority. Yet sadly for Lords Howe, Hurd, Pantsdown, Mandelson, etc and for Tony Blair himself we sceptics have been proved 100% accurate in our predictions. And consequently popular opinion among those who pay for this folly (the pleb, taxpaying class) has moved strongly our way. As such the “guilty men” can no longer equate euroscepticsm with racism etc as they know they are insulting well over half the electorate.
The debate among the political/media classes in the UK
4354 days ago
The weekend Tomograph Newsletter will go out on Sunday Evening. This will be an abridged Christmas issue but will also announce the winner of the 2012 Pig of the Year award (EU & Westminster category).
To ensure that you receive the newsletter and these articles which will only be in the newsletter and not accessible elsewhere for some days click HERE.
The newsletter should be out on Sunday Evening.
4357 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.
