State of the Nation

I am getting a little tired of listening to people complaining of government ‘cuts’.

The UK state is unnecessarily and unaffordably bloated and unwieldy.

It is that way, largely because too many people reflexively expect it to control so much more of every aspect of our lives than it has any real right or honest need to. So much so that even our ownership of our own bodies is threatened. it is that way because Authoritarian Stateists want it to be. It is that way because of empire building.

One suspects many of the places cuts fall are exaggerated or are made worse by the self serving politically motivated spin and subterfuge of some Local Government.

Ed Milliband (leader of the opposition) is now shifting his basically dishonest and untenable position on cuts slightly. Labour's latest line is that it opposes some spending cuts, on the basis they slow recovery. At least now he admits he would not necessarily reverse them. Many in the LibDem party, Partners in the coalition seem unable to move even that far towards actual coffee smelling.

Presumably Vince cable and Nick Clegg have had their noses sufficiently rubbed in economic reality to be ahead of the average member of the so-called “Liberal” Democrat pack.

OK, so let’s look at the actual figures (as seen in the Guardian).

What do they show?

They show that after inheriting a nice black balance sheet Gordon Brown, first as Chancellor and then as Prime Minister spent money hand over fist that he just didn’t have.

He was running the UK deeper and deeper into debt over the whole period he held office.

He also sold off half the UK's gold reserves when gold was at an all time low and plundered pension schemes helping to create the current pensions "Black Hole", and promised "No more Boom and bust", he got plenty of mileage out of that, but what's all that between friends, eh?

Don’t forget the graph only shows each year’s borrowing, not the total amount the UK actually owes. That is horrendous and still going up literally by the minute, check out the TPA clock on this site (top left). God help us if we loose our triple A rating and have to pay higher interest rates on it.

Look at the last two years of the graph. Those are the years of so-called coalition cuts that Labour and the Lib-Dems have bleated so much about and blocked at every turn.

Those cuts have not been enough reduce the debt. No – those last two years figures just show that the actual speed that we are sinking into the financial doo-doo under the Coalition has finally actually slowed a little.

If the majority of the electorate had the feeblest grasp of simple maths… perhaps enough to avoid being short changed… and if Milliband, or Balls, had any shred of honesty, or were capable of the least embarrassment, they would cringe and hide themselves in a deep cave somewhere from the honest light of day.

Meanwhile the UK economy continues to be crippled by so-called green taxes, an unwieldy unaffordable social security system and wasted billions pumped into our EU membership.

Should we pay out yet more to rescue the Euro? In an ideal world no. The Euro is probably not capable of surviving in anything like it’s present form without much of Europe being disenfranchised and a severe loss of sovereignty for most nations in it.

But the Euro needs to be supported into a landingsoft enough the world can walk away from in one piece, so reluctantly we have to at least to some extent.

Foreign aid? Again used properly it saves us from having to fight wars, and we no longer have the military capability we had a decade ago, thanks to a maintained level of government dishonesty, waste and incompetence over the last decade or more.. As the civil service has got bigger and more unwieldy the armed forces have been cut back and back... so again in our own interests we need to keep up foreign aid.

What can we do about it all, if anything?

Take responsibility and PAY ATTENTION!! for a start, don’t let the politicians distract you with pretty lights and spin.

Make sure you really know the facts and arm yourself with them. Actually think. Is what a politician says really true? Does it fit with the facts? Politicians are careful about the words they choose. Are they true, but still fool you into misunderstanding what they actually mean.

When they talk about inflation going down what they really mean is that it is going up more slowly than it was. It is still going up it is just the rate that has decreased.

What is their track record? Did they deliver on what they promised to get elected? If not, why not - and why should you believe anything else they say?

Ask yourself what might happen down the line if they bring in some new policy, or law and do you really need it?

Check their sums are honest and make sense. Remember there are lies, damned lies - and worst of all statistics. Check your pockets after you hear a politician speak.

Vote. Not like some zombie for whoever your ancestors did, but for what you think makes sense and is best. Watch what they are up to – ALL THE TIME. Don’t take your eye off the ball.

Email your MP if you don’t like something It only takes a few minutes. If you don’t like his answer, or it tries to wriggle off the hook then email them again and tell them so.

Sign single issue petitions you support, email your MP about issues you feel strongly about.

Ken's got to pick a pocket or two

So much to post on so little time.

With a smorgasbord of ‘delights’ available I decided to focus, for this post, on a fairly "local" matter but it perfectly illustrates the left’s thinking on personal property and the private contracts we enter into with each other voluntarily.

Dear old cuddly newt loving - amphibian type not republican politician type - ‘Red’ Ken Livingstone, for those of you who don’t know, Is an ex mayor of London England, not to be confused with the Lord Mayor of London of - No I have not been hanging round in dubious clubs – “puss in boots” fame, I am talking - as seen in Shreck.

Having been thrown out of office Ken wants to get back in to city hall out of the cold. Having brilliantly worked out that rents (property prices, transport and just about everything) are a bit high in London he had decided if he can offer tenants a discount paid for by someone else’s money they might vote for him, despite his record.

I am reminded here of Ben Franklin’s comment that “When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”

Ken is proclaiming that “rents rose by 12% on average in the capital last year - with no sign of improvement in the quality of the housing provided.”

October’s official National RI rate is 5.0347% inflation. That figure is derived over the whole country, London is, as we noted, more expensive and this does not take into account of the disproportionate impact of some commodity rises, 12% is probably not unreasonable. Some London business rates (property tax) were up by 23% in 2011 for instance.

He is quoted as saying; “no one should pay more than a third of their income on rent” and in the London Evening Standard saying;“I would cap the rents. We want to have rent control.

He has also been quoted as having said he would "actually intervene" in the private sector rent controls?

So Given his prefernce he would definitely cap rents. So not just taking from all London’s council tax contributers, but specifically something extra directly from the pockets of private landlords.

He would presumably impose a maximum that a landlord could charge. I am not sure how that would dovetail with ensuring no tennent paid more than a third of their wages in rent I find it difficult to imagine landlords would be forced to rent expensive properties at knock off prices to pecunious tenants, but who knows.

Virtually any cap would involve the local government forcing landlords to let properties below the market level. In other words the state treating private property as it’s own, and possibly intervening/restraining in private commerce and contracts.

It is open to question how long any landlord who owned decent properties would actually be willing to rent them at all under those circumstances. They would shortly find it to their advantage to sell to private owners who could afford it, thus reducing rented stock and reinforcing the effect still further..

Instead of picking private landlords pockets it would be possible to achieve virtually the same aim by introducing some sort of housing tax rebate, based on earning bands or tax levels might be more equitable and less damaging, but far less ideologically pleasing to Ken.

Boris Johnson (the current Mayor) pay attention here - you could steal a march on Ken here, feel free to pinch this idea, gratis. Though if you need further advice I am available for weddings, bah mitzvahs and helping govern London J

Good money after bad

What is the point of politicians? I am sure they have their own reasons for being (Power? Money?) - but what is the point, the benefit, from the average citizens perspective?

Take David Cameron as an example. The EU wanted to increase it’s budget. As a negotiating position it suggested 5.9%. He was not going to stand for that – he said.

Now if you were thinking of buying something and there was a haggle possibility just you know the salesperson will ask double and let the unwary tourist knock them down and think they got a bargain. Did Dave never buy any jewellery for his wife in Greece?

This was of course readily agreed by the European Commission and rubber stamped by the European Parliament to keep the gravy high speed train rolling and would have cost the UK an extra £900m per year until it was put up again the following year.

The UK contributes a ridiculously large share of the operating costs of the EU. Who knows they might have been stupid enough to just go along with it.

So David Cameron makes militant noises and sets off apparently like St George himself to do battle with this hungry Wurm that nests on a pile of taxpayer’s gold.

Sadly the EU is an organisation it would be difficult to argue is fit for purpose, one who’s finances have, as far as I can tell, never been signed off as honest and above board by any accountants.

Put bluntly no accountant who wanted to stay in business, or to be able to portray themselves as honest, or marginally competent, is willing to chance their reputations and the prospect of doing time by signing off on them.

Now a question immediately occurs - well it would if you were not carefully steered away from it.

Why is it - when every European government is having to reduce their expenditure and operating costs - the EU feels the need to increase theirs, without apparently noticing everyone else is having to retrench.

So what was the result of all this tough negotiation, this rhetoric and spin? Was the budget actually cut, or even frozen - as it should have been if the EU reflected the states that make it up.

What did you expect? The budget was increased anyway of course, but by a mere 2.9% In real money 3% instead of 6%.

Dave Cameron is presumably not actually stupid so he must have some idea of the haggle, that suggests he knew quite well that 6% was a starting point. Maybe he thinks we are stupid.

The UKs massive contribution to the EU is a luxury it can’t afford, let alone increase. Even the EU recognised the UK had been rooked when it gave Thatcher a reduction in contributions, disguised as a face saving rebate. A rebate that Labour later pointlessly gave away big chunks of. Still it was only taxpayers money – plenty more where that came from.

How those European politicians must laugh when UK politicians turn up offering yet another opportunity to be fleeced yet again.

So Cameron comes back having committed the UK to pour a staggering extra £400,000,000 down the EU pissoire - and tries to spin that as tough negotiating! As some sort of great victory! Can’t afford too many more "victories" like that.

Getting back to that original question - What exactly is the point of David Cameron?

Good Intentions?

The UK Coalition government are desperate to save the pennies.

We all know why - Mainly because Gordon Brown and the Labour Party did the political equivalent of getting a terminal diagnosis and then going on a credit card spending spree.

Unfortunately they didn't have insurance...

Now we are all going to have to pay for it - In a way it is fair enough - as collectively we enabled them to do it to us by voting for them... Oh except we never did vote in Gordon did we? But yes we did vote in Labour.

"Not in my name" - as they say.

So the Coalition are scrabbling around for Ideas - and I am prepared to believe for the moment they at least have good intentions - but some of the stuff they come up with seems just stupid or suicidally desperate - and we all know what the road to hell is reputedly paved with...

Firstly, why on earth are they ring fencing foreign bribes.. er aid.

They are planning on blowing some £7.8 billion on it this year. This is a huge amount - and charity, as they say, begins at home. Anything that is not a strategic policy aimed at propping up friendly states, or ensuring terrorism is suppressed should be cut to the bone.

What are they planning at the same time? Oh yes. To damage our armed forces and nuclear deterrent while we are fighting what amounts to two wars.

Reward those who are willing to defend the big society with their lives by making them unemployed!?

Wake up and smell the coffee people.

Food for thought

The UK government and it's indirectly government financed “pressure groups” and “Charities” have been really pushing the anti obesity thing for some time now with talk of taxing certain food products plus having set minimum prices for alcohol and punitive taxes on it too.

If you are overweight you are not just morally reprehensible because the Puritanical socialist-patrician classes don't approve of you.

No from their tone you are not just a resource hogging criminal because you are personally destroying the UK's National Health Service.

Now it seems you threaten the whole planet, every last one of us, every creature and plant you are personally making “Climate Change” worse and you must be stopped.

Brown banks on the taxpayer to bail him out

It’s a funny old world as they say...

Sub prime lending by banks to people who were likely to default on their loans got the world into a terrible two & eight, now more sub prime borrowing, this time by the banks from the UK government is going to get us out of it, according to the newly endowed superhero of our times...

...who is about to be outed by the evil Lex Luthor Lord Mandleson as none other than mild mannered Gordon Broon.

It may do, but one suspects as much for psycological reasons as economic.

Who is really lending the dosh? The British Taxpayer is who. Why does the Government not have the readies to hand? Well one reason might be that Gordon sold off half the countries gold reserves precisely when the price of gold had bottomed out. Now of course it is riding sky high. Just like government borrowing that has now hit an all time high.

If he had actually been canny or even prudent, as he likes to spin himself and hung onto it to a more opportune moment (almost any other time since, but now would have been good) maybe he could have got a good price for it and not hocked us all up to our eyebrows.

What strikes me as crazy is that there are people out there who believe the spin and feel safer with him in charge than anyone else.

UK’Stamp Duty’ suspended for 12 months

Has anyone noticed?

New Labour’s much trumpeted partial holiday on ‘Stamp duty’ (for non UK residents this is a sales tax imposed by the state on house sales) is, if it is of benefit to anyone, mostly likely to be of benefit in the north, which at least historically was demographically more New Labour friendly.

New Labour are talking about a holiday for stamp duty under £175K This should cover quite a few properties for sale in the North and proportionately far less in the South, due to regional differences in house prices. Any figures the Government states one suspects will be 'spun' averages.

Could it be that they calculate they have terminally burned their bridges already with the South, so they want to minimise the coming electoral debacle for at least some of their sitting MPs

House sales depend on chains, with new time buyers going in at the bottom of the market and the others in the chain trading up, How far up the chain will theis make a difference?

Of course if you can't get a mortgage in the first place – and that is the major actual problem with the housing market, mortgages having effectively dried up because of the credit crunch. Then what difference will reducing the sales tax of around £1.7K imposed on a few of the sales make?

And let’s not forget that any improvement in the housing market that may actually be had from this piece of spin will have to be paid for in reverse, at the end of the ‘holiday’ in a year’s time, when ther will be a corresponding rush then a step back down in sales.

Gordon Brown blames UK consumer for rising food prices

OK. I heard this on the radio news today. Apparently, according to Gordon Brown, the reason why food is much more expensive of late is because of… wait for it…

The consumer wasting vegetables, buying them and then throwing them away because they don’t know how to look after them properly and have gone off - and the evil supermarkets making ‘two for the price of one’ offers tempts them into it too.

I am now waiting for Gordon’s performing seals on, say the GMC, to start calling for VAT on vegetables to be doubled to eliminate this problem. Or maybe consumers to be licensed to purchase food, license cost £25 renewable yearly, 2,500 civil servants to administer.

Next they will be quoting little old ladies on how a robust national ID card system will help curb the wastage and prevent illegal immigrants from depriving 'hard working families' of their carrots.

I am so glad it has nothing whatsoever with the drop in the value of the pound against the Euro that by weird coincidence happened about the same time as food costs rose

Or the cost of oil rising and therefore petrol rising (most of the cost of which is due to punitive taxation) and therefore transportation rising in turn. Also coincidentally happening at the same time.

Oh and we must not forget Gordon’s Government slavishly following the EU dictat of pushing bio fuel production, that takes acres and acres of productive land out of food production and into fuel production.

Does he really expect anyone to believe it?

One can hardly imagine even one so stupid as to sell off half the nations gold reserves when the market had bottomed out to believe such complete nonsense himself.

Gordon’s pork pies anyone?

Still, thanks to all his New Labour cronies, he and they, have just secured access to new 'John Lewis' fridges in all their second homes, to help keep their veggies and pork pie collections fresh in...

Is the UK state just too big?

Is it too big? If you have visited this blog in the past then my opinion will be quite clear to you - Of course it is..

This article By Iain Martin in the Telegraph examines the matter intelligently and is well worth a read.

Time to roll back the state.

Social Care for elderly in UK set to take a turn for the worst

Gordon brown apparently wants to make social care for the elderly in the UK ‘fairer’. If only that were indeed the case – actually really fairer.

The sad fact is that, based on easily duplicated empirical observation of New-Labour’s efforts to make things ‘fairer’ in other spheres of life, is that ‘fairer’ is New-Labour-speak for, crap and getting worse, but an enforced equally crap for all treatment. Preferably at the same time suppressing any proof that things could be better. It is unlikely to be any different in this case.

The fact is that because there is never any actual money invested behind these schemes, because they are instead funded directly out of taxes there is looking to be a rather large gap between what is available to fund care in the next 20 years and the numbers requiring it. Oh and Gordon helped make sure the country is brassic by selling off half our Gold reserves when the price was at a historic low. You have got to hand it to the man with the financial acumen…

You can easily understand why this has caught new-Labour and Gordon’s vaunted financial acumen flat footed, after all it was only predictable since they came to office. It’s not like the baby boomer generation is a state secret, or the fact that people get older as time goes by, any more than the names and addresses of every recipient of child benefit is – now…

Gordon’s stealth tax raid on the pensions of the poor

More of the ramifications of Gordon Brown’s infamous final budget slowly sink in. This time it’s the pensions of the less well off that take a pounding.

One wonders why these things only seem to really dawn on people once they are actually happening to them, it would appear that people just don’t have the sense to get out from under a falling piano when they see one. Or simply don’t recognise what they are seeing until it is actually affecting them.

The government is always banging on about the ‘pensions hole’ after Gordon brown personally helped create it with his infamous £5billion-a-year state stealth raid on pensions in 1997 where he abolished tax relief on dividends paid into pension funds.

This lead to the collapse of hundreds of final salary pension schemes and resulted in huge numbers of workers being worst off. It means unless everyone now has to make a bigger contribution or there would be rather less in the pension pot than had been expected - and the state was worried about having to support this, after having caused it.

A bit like spending the rent money on gin and then worrying about the landlord’s knock on the door.

All of this would not be so much of a problem if the state ran an honest pension scheme, with real money in it, that the contributions were actually invested in - but no they have a system where those who pay taxes have to cover the cost of pension contributions out of their taxes, less workforce, less tax.

When Gordon brown combined the bands that applied to the lowest paid, the lowest tax bands from 10% and 22% both to 20% it affected the amount of tax relief on low paid pensions in some cases dropping it This means that any of the poor who actually gained anything out of the change to 20% who was investing say £200 a month now has to cough up almost £50 a year more (£48) just to avoid loosing ground on their pension pot.

So if Gordon Brown, or any of his NL cronies wants to shake your hand on the run up to the Local elections, keep your other hand on your wallet and check you still have your watch afterwards and if they tell you they care about the poor and lower paid remember pension contributions and the abolition of the 10% rate that has not gone away, despite the spin.

Why Gordon axed the 10p tax rate

The current fuss and hot air generated by Gordon Brown’s axing of the 10p tax rate is truly amazing.

The New-Labour rebellion over it for one. These are the same planks that were making like performing seals with much clapping and ‘hear hear’s when their master and then leader in waiting, Gordon Brown, actually did the dirty deed in his last budget as chancellor.

What is also amazing is that most of the pundits and commentators only get half the picture. Gordon Brown may lack bottle to do stuff in the light of day, but he has considerable animal cunning and likes complex double and triple bluffs concealing much of what he does in the hope no one will ever notice, let alone call him on it.

A number of them have noted that the changes coincidentally leave those on low incomes with no children much worse off. They have all the pieces but seem to fail to fit all the pieces of the jigsaw together.

It also shows how few pundits read this blog ;-) as I pointed what follows out at the time.

So - let's set the picture and go over it again. Cue wobbly fade…

Before Gordo’s last budget there was much rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth over ‘Child Poverty’. New Labour had foolishly promised (though why breaking some promises should bother them more than others is not clear) to halve child poverty in Britain by 2010 - and there was no way they were going to meet that target.

Now New-labour were presumably too stupid to realise this is effectively impossible when they set this target. But because of the way the formula is calculated ‘Child Poverty’ is defined by a moving set of goalposts. If you were to somehow magically increase the household incomes of all families, every single one, who fall within the definition at midnight on Sunday - and then re run the figures the poverty line would have increased and you would still have children living in ‘poverty’. You can do the sums for yourself if you care to.

So what has this to do with the abolition of the 10p tax band? Well there is one way of getting a temporary boost to the child poverty figures. It is a matter of percentages. If you take from the really poor who it would take a lot of cash to lift out of actual poverty and give that to those who are not so badly off just below the ‘poverty’ line and only need a little to lift them out, then you can keep the goal posts more-or-less where they are and improve the figures no end. It works especially well if you mostly just take from those poor who have no children.

One suspects it is far from a coincidence that Gordon Brown, knowing he would be judged on New Labour's rash promises on ‘Child Poverty’ decided to do the one thing that could easily improve his figures and might be made to look like a tax cut. Rather like a magician drawing your attention to his right hand whist his left does the real trick.

So it looks suspiciously like just another, albeit particularly dodgy, case of New Labour manipulating figures to pretend to be accomplishing something.

If it is true then it shows the his truly cynical nature, the true depths to which he is willing to sink and puts the lie to any claims he may make to actually care about the poor.

Alarmist predictions of 5 foot rise in sea level

According to a report from a UK/Finnish group sea levels could rise by up to almost 5 ft (4 ft 11 ½ inches) by the end of the century.

But ‘up to’ clearly includes any figure below that, including no discernable difference at all.

Apparently the team has built a computer model that can reflect the relationship between temperatures and sea level over the past 2000 years.

For the model’s predictions outside normal parameters to work it has to be accurate outside the parameters. It is simply not possible to test it against reality without data and many a model that accurately reflects relatively chaotic behaviour within certain bounds fails singularly when taken outside them.

It is an fact that global temperatures were significantly higher than current levels, between the 9th and 14th centuries. A period of some 500 years when temperatures were warmer than those today, what does the model say about sea level and ice cover during that period?

There is also the fact that the data on temperature predictions fed into such a model has to be accurate for it to be accurate. GIGO as they say.

The fact is that the global temperature of 2007 was statistically the same as 2006 and 2005 and every year since 2001. Unless the IPCC does a Robert Mugabe on the figures ‘global warming’ appears to have, for the moment at least, halted .

What happens next is anybody's guess - and that’s really what it is, a guess.

It could warm up to something more like it was back in the middle ages, it could remain stable, conceivably it could drop. Whatever happens it will sooner or later change, one way or the other.

That’s what climate does - and has done since long before humans learned to harness fire.

Maybe politicians on the AGW bandwagon should think twice about bio fuels and punitive taxes before they cause a crisis of their own, a food crisis.

Mind that’s no reason not to cut pollution, or build nuclear power stations, or develop compressed air or hydrogen powered transport. That makes sense anyway.

Diana Inquest ‘unlawful killing’ by Driver and Paparazzi

The result is in for the inquest on Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed. The latest figure I heard for UK public money spent in relation to the deaths to date is £10 million. The chance of this being the final figure is I would suggest vanishingly small. This presubably does not include French Taxpayers money also spent.

The decision? What most rational individuals had concluded was the case within a very short time.

A driver who was under the influence in a heady atmosphere who liked to pump his own self importance by dropping hints. A ravening pack of paparazzi. An escape plan that didn’t come off and probably didn’t allow for the drivers impairment and was agreed not allowing for it. All these factors came together disastrously and randomly with a difficult section of road resulting in a crash.

The driver’s condition, behaviour and the behaviour of the paparazzi being the primary causes and being so reckless, so negligent, ("gross negligence") as to be unlawful.

The driver paid the ultimate price for his folly along with two of his passengers and is beyond the reach of the law. The paparazzi have successfully muddied the waters so it is impossible to tell with sufficient certainty who out of them were to blame enough to be prosecuted with any hope of success.

There are already indications that Mohammed Fayed is not satisfied with this result - But then he never will be satisfied with anything that fails to absolve him, if it’s the truth or not.

The fact is that driver of the vehicle who according to best evidence had drunk a fair bit and was on pills, was his man. He had apparently OK’d the plan that resulted in the crash with Fayed Senior. It seems that Dodi Fayed also checked in with him and agreed it.

Mohammed Fayed is, in a significant part, much of the reason the investigation has dragged on for so long and cost so much. The ‘if onlys’ must be eating at him and one can’t help but sympathise, for all that his behaviour in court and out, in relation to the matter, appeared so bizarre - But that doesn’t entitle him to cause the waste of any more public money.

Leave it to the tin foil hat squad now. If Mohamed Fayed chooses to become one with them then that is his mistake and his choice.

Royal Mint monkey with UK coinage

The Royal mint has proudly announced a complete re design of Britain’s coins. To which the immediate response is why?

It is the first change in coinage since decimalisation was imposed on the UK in 1968 and will no doubt be accompanied by similar confusion in the elderly.

Clearly this will be more expensive than simply leaving the coinage as it is and appears to bring no benefit whatsoever. Business as usual for the British State under New-Labour then.

The Royal Mint’s chief executive Andrew Stafford, came up with the pathetically inadequate excuse (I bet he’ll get an unreasonably huge productivity bonus at the end of the year too) that:

"We had to make sure that the coin design was true to the heritage of British coins and gave fresh inspiration and modernity to something that has been in existence for 40 years."

Doh! No - You didn’t: “Fresh inspiration”? “Modernity”? I am not usually drawn to using such language in ‘print’ but... What absolute Bollocks!

As far as I know there was no universal clamour to change the existing coinage. It works perfectly well as currency, we all recognise it. How about changing all the road signs while you are at it, or switching to use a different alphabet while you are at it.

Apparently they had a competition (a pretty quiet one by the looks of it) and someone came up with re cycling the idea they used to use with card collections like the ‘Man from Uncle’ and ‘Batman’ ones of yore, part of a picture on one side that you need the complete collection to assemble.

Apparently the winning design was inspired by the thought of drunks in pubs trying to assemble the image.

So presumably Stafford feels that the heritage of the British State is fractured , maybe he is not so wrong there.

How about Britannia? That is certainly true to the heritage of British coinage, maybe with a raised hemline and a kick ass attitude a-la girl power?

Or better still - how about not wasting taxpayers money on an utterly pointless exercise? How about, just for once, not 'fixing' something that isn’t broken.

New Report critical of UK asylum system

The independent Asylum Commission haspublished a report critical of the way asylum seekers are treated in the UK.

The system does seem to be far from satisfactory. It takes far too long to make decisions and implement them, keeping people in limbo. It does not appear to consistently implement those decisions when they are made. The decisions do not always seem to make sense to a ‘layman’. It is actually illegal to employ ‘illegals’ and the punishments for doing so appear to be becoming increasingly draconian, so they cannon provide for themselves.

It must be said that many of the cases of asylum seekers that one hears about look far more like economic migration than actual genuine asylum seeking.

This impression is bolstered by the undeniable fact that the UK has many more‘asylum seekers’ than any other state in the EU. The natural question that arises is: If all these people are genuine asylum seekers, then given that many have to travel through large areas of Europe to get here, why do they not claim asylum at the first opportunity, as they are supposed to?

One can’t help but wonder if the welfare state is part of the attraction - and part of the problem. It is the nature of the system that actually makes it a problem. The chance of enjoying the ‘benefits’ of they system is an undeniable magnet. The drain on the system caused by large numbers of people who have never contributed to it is a problem, a serious one in certain areas.

If there were no welfare state, or broadly it could not apply to those who had not significantly contributed to it, this would remove the ‘drain’ and much of the problem. It might also make the UK less likely to be a preferred destination. In addition those who came in reality as economic migrants could be honest about it either working and contributing to society, or go elsewhere, possibly back home.

Surely those willing to work hard to honestly obtain a better life and who want to become British and adopt our values might be considered to be more of an advantage than a disadvantage.

It seems it is only under a social welfare system like ours, designed as if it operates in isolation, that this would be a problem at all, before the advent of the welfare state it would not have been. One wonders if this might be a main driver behind New Labour’s desperate desire for a compulsory national identity card system, that and their apparently compulsive desire to regulate the population, in as many aspects of their lives as possible.

Before the advent of the welfare state incomers who did not contribute to, or preyed on society, would have found it uncomfortable, even impossible to stay and left, or fallen foul of the law and been forced to leave. The Honest and hardworking would have settled and become British. In any even there would have been no ‘drain’.

Brits no longer believe fad diet claims

It seems Britain is becoming disenchanted with the claims of fad diets. Over the last 5 years sales of slimming products have dropped by a third. This may also hold true for low calorie and reduced fat products, as growth in that market appears to be plateauing.

After years of trying diets, with no discernable signs of success, people finally seem to have stopped believing the diets' claims anymore.

Mintel, the market research people state: "Attitudes to dieting have become more negative with a higher proportion of consumers believing that they are hard to follow, confusing and may be harmful."

This may be more promising than it seems. If the public are wising up about fad diets maybe they are also capable of learning the same lessons about politics. What with two of the major parties (New-Labour and Lib-Dem ) manifesto promises now clearly proven to be, like the diet’s claims; “Not subject to legitimate expectation”

Frankly, if they cannot be held to their promises, at least to a reasonable extent, then there is little point in voting for them at all. Especially when Parliament's power and relevance diminishes with every new ‘treaty’.

Of course, by now, many of us will have realised that the most reliable way of loosing pounds, at least from your pocket, is not by means of a New-Fad diet, it is to vote New-Labour. It will not be your waist you are watching, so much as their waste and ineptitude - your wallet loosing weight ;-)

Hike in UK alcohol duty is bigger than advertised

I was out of the country, enjoying the benefits of a less punitive tax regime, for Gordon Brown’s darling glove puppet’s first (and hopefully last) budget.

I was pleased ;-) along with the health fascists at the British Medical Association (BMA), to see the "large rise", on top of the already outrageous levels of taxation imposed on alcohol by the glove puppet - They have been so effective on curbing alcohol abuse to date that much more of the same is a sure recipe for success.

The huge price hike in duty on alcohol (six per cent above inflation), 55p on a 70cl bottle of spirits coupled with the increase of 14p in the duty on a bottle of wine is bound to stop the quality single malt whisky fuelled drunken binges of retired colonels and vicars in our high streets at weekends. Not to mention the sparkling wine fuelled thuggery so prevalent in our towns and cities.

Of course it is a moneymaking exercise. The last thing the state wants is for us to cut back on buying alcohol as this would eat into their revenue. It makes a nice fig leaf for gouging levels of taxation to wave at the naive though - and an excellent excuse for ever more intrusive measures of social control.

It’s the gift that just keeps on giving because every penny increase in duty allows a corresponding increase in VAT, so that 55p headline increase is actually a hike in the Government’s cut of over 64p per bottle and that’s just the hike, not the total taken. Oh and don’t forget you already paid tax on the money you are being taxed for spending, when you originally earned it.

But we should all feel hap-happy about it because… Ahh! it’s allegedly going towards a good cause - towards ending “child poverty” by 2020.

New Labour are unlikely to ever have to actually live up to such a distant target. Though it would be nice to believe they might be slightly more effective at it between now and when they finally get kicked out of power, than the pathetic showing they have managed to make on this moving target to date.

Rural communities in the UK get a raw deal from New Labour

A report by the Rural Services Network points out what has been apparent for years; that ‘rural’ communities Small towns, villages and hamlets in the UK, come a very poor last when it comes to almost anything the state has control over or any influence in.

Things like schools, hospitals, post offices, public transport, police stations, fire stations, etc.

In many areas it is literally impossible to manage without cars. If there is heavy rain or snow many of these can not get through.

Schools and hospitals are have been centralised into larger and larger buildings, further and further away from many rural communities.

This is hardly surprising when the state is controlled by an urban patrician elite, who see anything outside of large towns and cities as the equivalent of one large diorama, or quaint theme park, provided largely for rambling purposes and as a backdrop for BBC costume dramas.

It is also worth noting that where these elite do not hold sway they are quite happy to damage the provision of services in order to ensure those provided in their own seats are maintained and their seats are therefore safer.

They would presumably prefer to spend nothing on it, whilst still milking those living there for every penny they can - pretending the entire countryside is populated by fabulously rich conservative farmers who spend all day hunting foxes.

Will this report make any difference? Probably not…

Tesco willing to work with the UK State (thus logically against it’s customers) on banning 'cheap' alcohol

It is interesting to note that Tesco appear to be cravenly responding to New Labour’s, authoritarian, patrician, health fascist line, that supermarkets are selling alcohol to the proletariat too cheaply.

At first thought one might wonder that some are willing to go along with anything and conjecture they may be hoping for a position of relative authority over the other prisoners in the concentration camp.

It is also quite possible that they are just boxing clever by responding to the likes of Professor Julian le Grand, when they know the only route is really even higher punitive taxation.

This is undoubtedly where the government would desperately like to go, but even they clearly realise that, without first demonising alcohol and all those who sell and drink it, this may be a step too far - even for New Labour supporters. That is why they now have their like minded medical glove puppets whipped into doing a chorus line on the subject.

Tesco's executive director for corporate and legal affairs, Lucy Neville-Rolfe, pointed out that it was actually really in the State’s hands as: "We can't put up our prices because people will simply shop elsewhere - it could be commercial suicide - and we (the supermarkets) can't act together to put up prices because that would be against competition law.”, in other words a price fixing cartel and "Supermarkets are not allowed to act together to put up prices because that would be bad for the consumer."

Tesco knows perfectly well the government can’t bypass that - or they would run afoul of the real law of the land in this respect - the EC and the European Court.

It is possible they are betting both ways… any further such pronouncements though - and I will be voting with my feet, on principle.