Stuck

So...as I predicted here...I was right. We are well and truly stuck on the 45% top rate of tax from today's news. Well anyway until after a possible Tory win in 2015. And where does that place us in the international league table then?

Sweden - 56.6%
Belgium - 53.7%
Denmark - 52.2%
Netherlands - 52.0%
Japan - 50.0%
United Kingdom - 50.0% (old rate)
Austria - 50.0%
Finland - 49.0%
Germany - 47.5%
Ireland - 47.0%
Australia - 46.5%
Canada - 46.4%
Iceland - 46.1%
Portugal - 45.9%
France - 45.8%
Israel - 45.0%
Greece - 45.0%
United Kingdom - 45.0% (new rate)
Italy - 44.9%
Spain - 43.0%
United States - 41.9%
Switzerland - 41.7%
Slovenia - 41.0%
Chile - 40.0%
Norway - 40.0%
Luxembourg - 38.9%
Korea - 38.5%
Turkey - 35.7%
New Zealand - 35.5%
Poland - 32.0%
Hungary - 32.0%
Mexico - 30.0%
Estonia - 21.0%
Slovak Republic - 19.0%
Czech Republic - 15.0%

Whoopy fucking do. All that media savaging for that? Not good.

Interestingly, if you can be assed to delve into the Red Book and see what the Treasury's own analysis is on this issue, it turns out that 37% is the optimum rate for raising the most money. But then logic always gets trumped by politicking.

(PS The table highlights just how stupid the loony Lefty French Presidential candidate Francois Hollande's 75% policy looks. Coupled with their Financial Transaction Tax policy, this should utterly screw the French economy for some time. I suppose there is a silver lining to every cloud after all).

Council Homes for Life

In advance of the Budget, fascinating pieces of information are dribbling out through Government leaks - presumably placed leaks - concerning rich Council house tenants, see here and here.

Apparently, 25% of Council tenants (720,000 of them) earn more than the national average wage - £26k. Even more amazingly, there are 15,000 Council tenants that earn over £80,000 and 6000 of those earn over £100,000. Apparently, Labour MPs, union leaders, academics, senior public sector and NHS staff etc are on the list. At the same time, 1.8 million people are on Council waiting lists.

Un-fucking-believable.

You and I are paying for people in the top 10% of earners to live in taxpayer-subsidised housing. Franks Dobson’s comment shows this dislocation from reality:

“Market rents in our area are phenomenal. I wouldn’t be able to afford it.”

And I cannot afford to live there either, Frank, so guess what? I don’t live there and I don’t expect people earning £20k to pay for me to live there either. Join the reality based community, Frank.

Top Tax Rates

In the last 50 years, which politician actually wins the title of ‘The Greatest Redistributionist’, ie who achieved the greatest increase in the amount the rich pay? Tory B-liar? Gordy? Mrs T? Nope. Nigel Lawson. ‘Really?’ I hear you say. Yup. Why so?

Well it was he who in 1988 reduced the top rate of income tax. Back then, the top 1% only paid about 14% of all income taxes. And once he began to ratchet down income tax, the money flowed into the Treasury at speed. From my post last Sunday, you will recall that this has now steadily climbed so the top 1% now pay over 25% of all income taxes.

And this is always a fact studiously ignored by the left. Lower taxes, and tax collection soars. It’s obvious. If there is no need to avoid or even worse evade tax, you just pay it. If you want to squeeze more tax from the rich, cut their tax rates. As JFK once said: "It's the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run".

So with that lesson, where do we stand right now in the top income tax league table:

Sweden - 56.6%
Belgium - 53.7%
Denmark - 52.2%
Netherlands - 52.0%
Japan - 50.0%
United Kingdom - 50.0%
Austria - 50.0%
Finland - 49.0%
Germany - 47.5%
Ireland - 47.0%
Australia - 46.5%
Canada - 46.4%
Iceland - 46.1%
Portugal - 45.9%
France - 45.8%
Israel - 45.0%
Greece - 45.0%
Italy - 44.9%
Spain - 43.0%
United States - 41.9%
Switzerland - 41.7%
Slovenia - 41.0%
Chile - 40.0%
Norway - 40.0%
Luxembourg - 38.9%
Korea - 38.5%
Turkey - 35.7%
New Zealand - 35.5%
Poland - 32.0%
Hungary - 32.0%
Mexico - 30.0%
Estonia - 21.0%
Slovak Republic - 19.0%
Czech Republic - 15.0%

Hmmmm. We're not doing too well are we? Particularly as the soon to be announced HMRC and IFS research into the 50p rate concludes that it doesn't really raise anything significant and may actually reduce HMRC's income!

Which brings us nicely to flat taxes. The first time I really thought about flat taxes was when Steve Forbes ran as a Republican candidate in the 1996 and 2000 US Presidential races. He was a flat tax fan. But the Left hate flat taxes as they don’t satiate their class war desires to soak the rich and, as Forbes was and is very very rich, his campaign was a ‘red rag to a bull’.

But of course, since then lots of countries have adopted flat taxes: Albania, BIH, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Iraq, Jamaica, Jersey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mauritius, Mongolia, Montenegro, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Trinidad and Tobago and Ukraine.

Now, notice something about this list? Yup, they are all countries which had struggled to collect taxes as the rich had avoided, evaded or just buggered off. They had to adopt flat taxes to entice them to stay and pay.

Now what happened to their tax income? It soared. Obviously. Lesson there for Lefties and Greeks, no?

The Left's Tax Problem They Dare Not Mention

I have a friend. He was a non-dom. When NuLab started taxing non-doms, he simply moved abroard. He now lives in Italy and is enjoying the sun. That policy worked well then.

I have another friend who’s a Top 1% type. When the 50% tax rate came in, he believed that it was unreasonable for him to be forced to hand over so much of his very hard-earned income (a marginal rate of 61%, ie he got to keep only 39%) so he re-structured. And now he’s only paying 32.5% tax. So, in fact, less than the 40% he was paying before NuLab’s 50% tax rate was introduced. Yup, that policy’s really helping things.

And therein lies the problem with taxing the rich. They either just fuck off abroad or they restructure themselves so they pay less, whatever the rules. That is just reality and nothing’s going to change it, a fact that our Lefty social engineers in Parliament can never seem to get their heads around.

So what is the Left’s tax problem then?

The problem is not that the rich are paying too little. As demonstrated in my post on Sunday, they are paying considerably more than perhaps they really ought to.

Nor is the problem that the rich are evading tax. HMRC are onto that 24/7.

No, the real problem is that there is a huge, national tax evasion operation in progress. And who is carrying out this enormous scam on honest law abiding taxpayers?

Those who work in cash.

A massive number of people at the lower end of the tax pile ‘do it for cash’. Taxi drivers, hairdressers, cleaners, plumbers, electricians, decorators, garage mechanics, builders - you name it. They all ‘do it for cash’. And many of us merrily help them. As we saw from HMRC’s data in my Sunday post, there’s many, many millions of these people and thus a large chunk of HMRC’s potential revenue never actually makes it into the tax system in the first place.

Now I’m not suggesting that we, as a nation, are evading tax on anything like the scale that Greece or other tax basket cases do. But millions of Brits are at it. And the amount they don’t declare utterly dwarfs the amount not making it to HMRC by that very small number of rich people who are legally minimising their tax bill or illegally evading it. Those HMRC stats just put things into perspective.

Now you never hear the Left moaning on about that, do you? Nope. All they want to talk about is how the rich need to pay more tax.

I say again: the main problem I have with the Left is that so much of its rhetoric is anchored in populist, mythical ideology rather than cold, hard and rather inconvenient facts.

The Golf Club Analogy

Mrs Cragsbury has a tendency to be a bit grumpy. And she has regularly given me a bit of grief over my ‘blame shift’ argument, whereby I believe that politicians should be blamed for the financial crater that is our economy rather than those lovely, cuddly, innocent bankers we all like. Thus, I need to explain my theory to her in detail. I shall do this via – The Golf Club Analogy.

La Famille Cragsbury live in a nice rural Sussex village. The village has a golf club. Obviously. The Cragsbury's are not members. I can think of no better way to spoil a pleasant afternoon than by chasing small white balls around the countryside. But imagine that the golf club’s management committee passed a new bylaw this afternoon:

“Byelaw No 296 - After any round, all members will be positively encouraged to drink as much as they can in the bar – as this is good for the golf club’s profits – and never minding how drunk members are when they leave the building, all members will be issued with blindfolds for them to wear whilst they drive out of the car park.”

There might be a few days when nothing untoward occurs in the car park. My guess is that over the next couple of weeks, a few minor prangs might happen. But I’m sure we’ll all agree that at some point during the month of February there would be a bloody great pile up at the car park exit, probably on a Saturday evening.

Now. Who is at most fault?

• Is it all the dumb assed members who followed Byelaw 296 to the nth degree? For sure they share some of the blame.
• Is it Sir Gred Foodwin the driver of the biggest and flashiest car that accelerated into the rear of the pile up? He gets quite a bit of blame for sure.
• Or is it the golf club’s management committee, who incidentally were all in cars in the pile up too?

And, after the events of this week, who should be banned from the golf club and have their ‘golden putter’ award taken away from them: all the drivers, Sir Gred Foodwin or the chairman and members of the management committee?

Mr Cragsbury rests his case.

Hester-gate - The Impact

Labour forcing a vote on Hester’s bonus in the next Opposition debate. Pathetic populist bullshit or what? But, with this announcement, it became inevitable that Hester could not therefore take his bonus.

The impacts:

1. Hester is now the worst paid bank CEO in Europe and will be poached within weeks/months for a job paying him 4 times as much.

2. This will now become an annual blood sport for RBS CEOs.

3. We will struggle to find a good enough candidate to fill his shoes.

4. This silliness will have zero impact on other banks.

5. As ever, the 'politics of jealousy' caravan will rumble on.

Economics for Dummies - Lesson 2

And so to Hester-gate, aka ‘21st century class war’ or ‘the next ride on the blame shift merry-go-round demonising bankers so that politicians can get away scot free’.

Let’s get straight to the facts:

Arguably one of the most important jobs, if not THE most important of jobs in the UK right now, is to get our damaged and recently part-nationalised banks back on their feet so that we taxpayers can get our money back. With interest. As soon as is practicable.

The last Government brought in Stephen Hester, apparently the best man for the job. He has been endorsed as such by the new Coalition Government as well.

He is acclaimed by everyone to be doing a good job, apart from assorted meanies on the Left who want to throw stones at him because he is a banker and rich. (They’d love to be able to denigrate him as an ex-public school boy too but sadly for them he went to a comprehensive before going up to Oxford. He is also a white Anglo Saxon protestant. If he was very ethnic, the Guardianistas would be less hopping mad but the Daily Mail would be more so).

So far, so good. He’s doing a good job, earning big money but substantially less than he could earn elsewhere in the private sector, accepting this no doubt partly because his current role is one of THE jobs of the moment and thus is a challenge and will be good for his CV, maybe partly out of altruism and probably because he will likely pick up a knighthood at the end of it, assuming he is successful. And assuming he is, the non-executive director roles will come flowing in for years to come.

So, the big three questions of the day:

Q1. Should he have such large potential remuneration in the first place?

Simply, we need the best turnaround expert for this task. And that will cost. Inevitably. Supply and demand and all that - something our Lefty luvvies often try and pretend does not exist when it does not suit their ideology.

Now he wasn’t bumbling along running some dull Government department or quango, earning around £100-200k. No, he was the acclaimed CEO of British Land, one of the top 3 property companies in the UK, one that is well run, cautious and has survived numerous booms and busts very comfortably since 1856. This boy had been earning millions for years being a high flyer at Credit Suisse and Abbey National before British Land.

When you are in intensive care, you don’t say: ‘Take away this acclaimed medical expert who is doing a brilliant job and seems to be saving my life, he is paid far too much. Bring me a more sensibly remunerated doctor.’ On the contrary, you say: ‘Can I get this wizard to make me better any quicker and would it help if I motivated him more by paying him more?’

Unless you are a Lefty, when you make cheap political points about how much he earns, how much more that is than a senior civil servant – good comparison, Chuka, really? – and how much this is in relation to a corporal in the British Army in Afghanistan – and you Peter? All of which, of course, is bollocks.

Supply and demand.

Simples.

Q2. Should he get his bonus?

He should get whatever bonus the RBS’ remuneration committee feels he deserves for his last year’s performance under his contract. Populist bullshit from Lefty politicians, journalists and all the rest is just that. Bullshit.

I, as a taxpayer, want his mind 100% on the job getting my money back not on endless meetings with his chairman, UKFI, Government ministers, his comms team and others about various Lefties views on his bonus.

Q3. Should he take it?

If I was him, after all this bollocks, I’d refuse it and resign. My resignation letter would say:

‘We agreed my remuneration in my contract. Nowhere does it say the Polly Toynbee set gets a vote on what my bonus should be. I have been working night and day to turn this fucked up company around with considerable success and acclaim and all I get is bullshit from people who know nothing about what I am doing, could not understand it if I explained it to them and want to use me as a class war political football. To say I am demotivated would be a fucking understatement. I’m out.’

He would be in a higher paid job by Easter.

PS Loving the paradox of unions which endlessly use every aspect of employment law to defend their often idle and incompetent members whilst seeing no hypocrisy in demanding that a manager’s contract should be completely ignored.

Economics for Dummies - Lesson 1

OMG, I have longed to blog again. Many times I have almost started again. I have missed it. So much. But time has been against me. And still is. But daily helpings of the madness of modern British society and all its loopy nonsense, with no one pointing out the cold, hard facts of reality, have compelled me to return. Here goes:

The economics of the Left's 'anti-benefit reform' agenda

First a few facts, delivered to us on this day children, by the ONS - they're impartial, right?

Fact 1 - National mean salary = £26k

Fact 2 - Salary needed to be in the top 25% of taxpayers = £32k

Thus, lowering benefits - apparently outrageously - to a maximum of £26k (which is the equivalent of earning £34k) means that even after this change you can still earn way more than the national average and in fact be in the top 25% of earners. Unbelievable. Unless you are a bishop that is. I have blogged many times before that the Left's well intentioned but economically illiterate over-active philanthropy with other people's money (ie ours) has simply priced the low paid out of work. What incentive does someone who cannot ever earn £34k have to work? This fundamental will never change until we decrease benefits to more sensible levels. So I have a suggestion: why not create a tax ratchet, whereby starting at the new £26k benefit maximum, in each fiscal year from 2012 we decrease that maximum by £500 whilst raising the income tax nil band by £500. This would begin to decrease benefits to levels that will incentivise work but reduce tax/increase income for the low paid whilst having an almost completely negligible financial effect on those horrible greedy rich people politicians want to kick all the time. Simples.

Let's Have Some Common Sense

As Mr Eyebrows reminded us today in the Pre-Budget report, we are in the shit. Deep in it. Way past our armpits. There are just a few tufts of hair poking up from beneath the NuLab economic shit that has enveloped us. (And before you Lefties who always email me complain about the bias in that last sentence, remember this: we are the only G20 nation still in recession. Think about it.)

And we also know that we need to give the public sector a haircut. A massive one in fact to reign in public spending. Even NuLab and the Etonians agree on that; they are just arguing about when and how drastic the haircut should be.

So, let me in my sweet simpleminded way suggest some common sense to the thinking behind that public sector haircut.

The social welfare state in the form it has now grown into is ethically and financially out of control and now completely unaffordable. This is the time to be bold and re-model what type of social welfare state we want and can afford.

Four examples of how topsy turvy our social welfare state has become:

1. BOM is a wonderful blog I read daily. I do not agree with all that it says, but I respect its intellectual rigour and common sense economic logic. It had a really interesting post the other day, which in summary and in round numbers said this:

Good thing - 22 million private sector employees (aka the producers).

Bad thing - 12.5 million state pensioners, 7 million out-sourced Government employees, 6 million direct Government employees, 6 million people totally dependent on benefits (of one kind or another), 530,000 employed in further and higher education, 40,000 GPs and 33,000 working at National Rail. Thus 25.5 million public sector employees (aka those for whom the taxpayer pays.

Spot the problem? We have an imbalance. Too few in the private sector paying for too many in the public sector. We need a change.

2. Next, the NHS. Should your next door neighbour pay for you to have bigger tits just because it would make you feel a bit better about yourself? Should the people down the road pay for you to have your cock chopped off if you feel more like a woman than a man? Should the inhabitants of the next town pay for gluttons to have appetite suppressants because they are too fat? Should the taxpayer pick up the bill if you make lifestyle choices that have zero financial implications for yourself but significantly expensive financial implications for the taxpayer, like fags, booze and drugs? You get my drift.

We have an NHS where we have subverted 'no taxation without representation' into 'I do WTF I like and some other fucker should pay for my life choices'. We need a change.

3. Now, employment. Do we want a society where those that are willing to work are worse off if they do because the benefits system is too generous? Don't we want to make work a more attractive option than living on benefits? The so-called benefits trap. Crazy. We need a change.

4. Last, prisons. Under NuLab, we have locked more and more up in prison (and not built enough prisons so then let them out again, but that's another story). However, prison is so cushty that for many of those that end up there it is better than being outside. Here's David Bywater, an ex-prisoner:

"Things can get difficult if you are shoplifting or whatever you are doing. So you think, I will go to a prison for a bit of a rest period. You know you are going to get your drugs, methadone and what have you, so you are better off inside."

Or Andrew Whalley another ex-prisoner recently released after spending 10 years behind bars for a drug-related robbery with a firearm:

"I'm an addict, so if you give me free methadone, free drugs, keep me in active addiction, then release me out of prison, then surely when I come out of prison I've got to commit crime to keep me there." Was he ever offered rehab? "The last course I was offered was a safer injecting course". We need a change.

Now, of course I am being simplistic here. But my main point remains true. If we are to spend taxpayers hard earned cash that we have ripped out of their pay packets, then we should be giving them a good return on investment. Neither of these four random examples are doing that right now. And there are many other examples I could have cited. We need a much less generous social welfare state. Right now, it is too easy to beach yourself there and let the taxpayer pick up the cost. We need a strategic re-balancing.

Now, Lefties, before you cry foul and accuse me of being a self satisfied, arrogant fascist who does not care about those less fortunate than myself, consider this:

We are allowing our generous nature to (a) make the most vulnerable in society more dependent rather than less dependent, actually enslaving them to social welfare dependence and (b) bankrupting the country in the process. Is it sensible for the public sector to be larger than the private sector bearing in mind the latter pays for the former? Is it reasonable for taxpayers to pick up the bill for any damage I inflict upon society or myself; should I not have responsibility for my own actions? Should the benefit system pay me more than I can earn with my qualifications and experience? Should the prison system not be taking me off drugs and preparing me for an honest working life hopefully in the private sector?

So as the Etonians are 'blue sky thinking' about WTF they are actually going to do come 7th May 2010, they should be thinking on this: we need to use the discipline of having to downsize Government to re-fashion what Government should be doing and how it should be doing it.

The Politics of Jealousy

I have always thought that jealousy is without doubt the most unattractive of all human emotions. It is totally negative. It has no redeeming features. And, ultimately, it is utterly pointless. Has jealous behaviour ever stopped a partner or friend from misbehaving? No.

But for the last few months we have been engaged nationally in a monumental act of petty, pointless, vindictive and hypocritical political jealousy on a massive, industrial scale. Politicians and the media have been queuing up to bash bankers. The international political class at various summits have been queuing up to do it too. The French, socialist to their finger tips, have been in the vanguard of pushing for EU action to punish bankers and take away their bonuses.

Tomorrow, Mr Eyebrows will publish his Pre-Budget Report and, we are led to believe by the usual heavy trailing in the media that politicians now go in for, he will enshrine this jealousy into policy and no doubt promise legislation to enshrine it into law as well.

This is all just absolutely ass numbing madness. Let me explain...

1. Political dishonesty - We are in the midst of an enormous 'blame shift' operation being carried out by the political class, led by Gordy's Government. Once again for the Lefties, the stupid and those that have forgotten, the banking crisis was caused by regulation that was too lax. Who regulates? Government. Did the banks adhere to the regulation? Yes, to the letter. Thus who is to blame? Duh!

Let me explain this another way. Suppose you belong to an organisation which has some rules. You keep to those rules to the letter. Then the organisation implodes. Is it the fault of those that ran the organisation and its rules or those that worked within it and kept to the rules?

Now do I think the banks should have spotted that regulation was too lax? Yes, of course. We all should. Some did. Not enough, sadly. But the overwhelming major culpability rests with Government. But they don't want to be blamed, so by tapping into our jealousy of those more rich and successful than us, they have shifted the blame to the banks. As ever, once the media agenda was set, the banks have just had to soak it up. (This behaviour is similar to how the police behaved after the that moronic McPherson Inquiry conclusion that the Met was institutionally racist. Once the media agenda was set, everyone queued up to self-flagellate themselves that they were institutionally racist because (a) this tapped into our first world, post colonialism guilt and (b) it was good for your career prospects because that was the prevailing orthodoxy).

2. Economics for dummies - Supply and demand, children, supply and demand - aka the market rate. If you tax entrepreneurial rich people more than they think is fair, they fuck off. They are already doing it: companies moving to other countries (viz Shire Pharmaceuticals, UBM, WPP, Yahoo), hedge funds moving to lower tax states (viz Amplitude Capital, Odey Asset Management, Guy Hands) etc.

If you tax UK bankers more than their foreign counterparts or bankers from certain selected UK banks (that happen to be part owned by the Government) more than their competitors, then they will fuck off to other banks, other financial institutions, other countries. In fact, they already are. 1000 RBS staff have already jumped ship. QED.

And the loser? The freaking taxpayer you numpties! You muppets tried this in the 1970s, remember? Didn't work then, won't work now.

3. Pissing away our unique international positioning - Banking is an absolutely critical part of the UK economy. It attracts massive inward investment. It is one of our key selling points internationally. Dick around with that at your peril.

What message are Gordy and Eyebrows giving internationally? That we are targeting bankers comparatively more aggressively. That we are going to tax the rich harder than other countries. Hmmm. Good for inward investment, d'ya think?

4. Cutting off your nose - Large salaries and bonuses are taxed, shortly at 50% (but that's another story). If you don't pay them, then the Chancellor's tax coffers further diminish just when he needs more cash. Duh! (Where's both my feet. Ready. Aim. Fire.)

All this nonsense is just the politics of jealousy. It is always popular with us Proles to tax the rich more. We're just jealous of their success and their money. It is for politicians to rise above this base stupidity, see the bigger picture, take their own fair share of the blame, and not pander to us dumb Proles.

But then again, I may as well just piss into the wind.

(And for the record, before some Lefty tosser emails me, I am not a banker).

Oh, the Irony, the Irony!

1. Having hurled our tax payments at the public sector, ripped out of our pay packets each month for the last 11 years, resulting in civil servants, council officers, doctors, teachers etc - not to mention MPs - earning six figure salaries,

2. Having grown the public sector headcount by 17% since NuLab came into Government,

3. And having presided over public sector productivity actually declining over the last 11 years despite 1 and 2 above,

Today Gordon Brown had the fucking balls to say:

"...I can announce today that the senior civil service pay bill will be cut by up to 20 per cent over the next three years to release savings of £100 million a year...In the wider public sector, some senior pay and perks packages have...lost touch with the reality of people’s lives. Money which should be spent on health, on schools, on policing, and on social services is in some cases going on excessive salaries and unjustified bonuses far beyond the expectations of the majority of workers...It cannot be right that taxpayers fund 300 local authority officials who have salaries over £150,000, or that in total over 300 staff across public sector bodies are paid more than £200,000."

Un-fucking-believable. The brass neck. The balls of the fucker. No shame. Will no one rid me of this troublesome NuLab priest?

Manufactured Political Outrage

FACT 1 - One of the duties of central banks is to prop up banks when they look like they might collapse, to forestall a run on the wider banking system.

FACT 2 - This is always done secretly and has been all over the world for centuries.

FACT 3 - The Tories and Lib Dems need to prolong the recession story right up to the General Election to help them and hinder NuLab. The fact that the Tories' and Lib Dems' mock outrage lasted just one 24 hour news cycle, tells us all we need to know about their reasons.

The only thing surprising about this week's £62 billion story is that the Governor of the Bank of England thought is wise to tell everyone what he'd done. Transparency is one thing but some things we proles don't need to know. Whatever next? MI5 and MI6 telling us all their secrets?

Update: Could this be the reason why the Governor spilled the beans?

Crass Stupidity

What an arrogantly patronising, nanny state, pointless waste of taxpayers' money.

My anger is only just subsiding.

No, in fact it's not. I am absolutely incandescently fucked off.

Yesterday, La Famillie Cragsbury had a visit from our health visitor. One of those milestone check ups for very young children. Now she is a nice lady; a sprightly 50-60, sparky, lively, originally Canadian. Full of good advice and reassurance. All good so far.

But what has gripped my shit is what she gave us: a purple 'conference giveaway' style plastic briefcase, containing:

2 children's books - Owl Babies, Elmer's Friends
3 handout leaflets
2 posters
1 sheet of stickers

This apparently is part of a Government funded project called 'Bookstart'. I have now looked into it. The facts (such as they are):

Bookstart is a project which you and I, the taxpayer, has thrown cash at for some years now, funding 25% of the project. The basic idea is as follows: "Bookstart aims to provide a free pack of books to every baby in the UK, to inspire, stimulate and create a love of reading that will give children a flying start in life. But most of all we want to show that books are fun."

PC, lefty, 'right on' laudable stuff you might think. But hold on, is that really what taxpayers should be throwing their hard earned cash at? Isn't learning to read at the 0-3 age group a parental responsibility? Why should the taxpayer fund this at all? Nice to do if the money is free, but it's not. It is hard earned cash, ripped out of the pay packets of normal, everyday average men and women whom earn around £25k pa on average. Not Fred the Shed. He's in the top o.1%. No, normal hard working ordinary people, desperately trying to afford books for their own kids. WTF should they be forced to fund other people's lack of application as parents?

As ever an initiative like this has some solid junk science behind it. Here it is, straight from the Bookstart website:

"Wade & Moore undertook an observational study, where parents shared a book with their children, of two to three years, and compared Bookstart families with a non-Bookstart sample.

83% of Bookstart parents read the whole text compared with 34% of non-Bookstart parents. 64% talked about the story, compared with only 24%. 43% encouraged the child to join in, compared with 17%. 68% encouraged the child to make predictions, compared with 38%
68% of Bookstart children looked at books as one of their favourite activities 21% for children who had not received Bookstart. 75% of Bookstart parents said they usually bought books as presents for their children compared with 10% for parents who had not received Bookstart. 43% of Bookstart parents took their children to the library at least once a month compared with 17% for parents who had not received Bookstart. "

Brilliant so, actually we are training the parents, rather than the children. Isn't that what we should be doing at school? Instead of stalactites and stalagmites, instead of oxbow lakes and Venn diagrams, how about teaching the 16 year old girls who will shortly be getting up the duff several times by various itinerant job seekers, how to parent properly as they are likely to have had appalling parenting example up till this point no doubt.

How screwed up is our society? Instead of addressing the disease, we throw charitable and taxpayer resources at the symptoms.

As I said at the beginning, this initiative is arrogantly patronising, nanny state bollocks at its worst and a pointless waste of taxpayers' money. God save us.

Gotcha

As regulars will know, I am implacably opposed to ID cards. Here's my reasoning. But this is a good day for freedom, democracy and privacy. Testament to how out of control Gordy's inept Government is, can be found in this wonderful story.

Today Chris Grayling, the Tory Shadow Home Secretary, has changed our national policy on ID cards by effectively pulling the rug from underneath the Government's scheme, rendering it incapable of coming into existence. By writing to the five bidders for the contract, telling them clearly that whatever is agreed this side on the General Election will be ripped up straight after it. These bids cost millions, and what company is going to engage in the bidding process when the overwhelming likelihood is that it will be scrapped almost immediately.

Wednesday Games - Game 2

If as an MP you have been shamed into retiring at the next election because you have been exposed for (a) fraudulently using taxpayer's cash to benefit yourself, or (b) unethical behaviour by working the system for your personal benefit or (c) gilding your home with luxury accoutrement's paid for by the taxpayer, do you get:

Option 1 - Thrown out of office and prosecuted

or

Option 2 - Salary and allowances of around £250k pa to spend as you like until the next election, about another £100k in loss of office allowances, the most generous public sector final salary pension scheme ever, to keep the profit on the 2nd property the taxpayer kindly bought for you, and membership of the Association of Former MPs, giving you a Commons pass (which no doubt will help in your new role as a commercial lobbyist).

Did you guess right?

Crime Madness

So, in The Sunday Telegraph this week, there was an interview with Otis Ferry, the son of Brian and ardent hunt campaigner. Read it here. His is a pretty silly story of the jockeying between pro-hunt and anti-hunt campaigners. He was charged with various fairly stupid stuff, then remanded in prison for four months and then the CPS and the police offered no evidence in court. Says the article:

"It is not just Ferry and his supporters who think he was hard done by. Even the judge who had presided over his case after Ferry was accused of perverting the course of justice could not hide his anger at the defendant's treatment when the charge was dropped."

In the normal course of events, none of this would trouble me. But then today this, an article in today's Metro covering the Home Affairs Select Committee report on knife crime. It included this choice line:

"...just one in five of those caught with a knife was jailed in the last three months of last year, the report revealed."

WTF? Did I read this right? The taxpayer has paid for some dumb assed Hooray Henry to get banged up for four months for a whole load of utterly irrelevant and trivial crap and where it turned out there was not enough evidence to prosecute him in any case, but 80% of those who get caught walking around toting a potential murder weapon just get a caution or a non-custodial sentence. Fucking hellski. What the fucking fuck is going on around here?

Oh, but it gets even madder when you read on. Keith Vaz, the Home Affairs Select Committee chairman and well known utter wanking tosspot, said this:

"'We are seeing a spiralling of the arms race as far as knife crime is concerned,. Young people carry knives because they fear that others are carrying knives. We are clearly failing them."

No we're fucking not you moronic asshole, you are failing us by not making sure that (a) they are educated and (b) they are locked up when they commit a crime. Fuckwit.

And his solution? He goes on to call for a Downing Street summit on the issue. OMG. How NuLab's love calling for summits. I have covered summitry before (here) but let's just remind ourselves of what they are about. If there is one certain rule in life, it is this: when politicians announce a 'summit' you know that:

a. they're in the shit
b. that means that we poor proles are in the shitter with them
c. they have absolutely no idea how to get out of the shit, and
d. they are desperate to be seen to do something to deflect attention from c above

The article ends with a classic NuLab quote from another total thieving tosspot:

"But Home Secretary Jacqui Smith insisted: 'Through tougher sentencing we are carrying out a clear message."

Yup. Tougher sentencing. 80% chance of no prison sentence for wandering the streets with a potential murder weapon. NuLab spin is alive and well.

McKay and Kirkbride

I am told by close colleagues who know him well, that Andrew McKay is a good bloke. Honourable. Sensible. Solid. Would have been a good minister etc. So the logic goes that it is sad that he has been forced out.

Good men sometimes make mistakes. Fleecing the taxpayer, as he and his wife have been, was wrong and clearly a mistake.

Thus he had to go and that was clear days ago. He just took too long working it out...as did Cameron.

Kirkbride will go shortly as well. It's just inevitable. If you are wrong, you are wrong. It is as simple as that, however nice you are.

Poor Nadine

Ahh, diddums. Poor Nadine Dorries MP is worried about the mental health of MPs who are under "unbearable pressure" from the media. Hear it here on R4.

1. No one asked them to stand for Parliament. If you can't take the pressure...

2. Unbelievable hypocrisy. MPs love inflicting pressure on others all the time.

2. They are in the media spotlight because...they have been caught stealing or misusing taxpayers' cash.

3. Tough shit. She may be top Tory totty but she, like that absolute asshole Anthony Steen - the poster boy of arrogant entitlement - still just doesn't seem to get it.

WE, THE PEOPLE, ARE FUCKED OFF THAT THE MONEY WE HAVE WORKED OUR ASSES OFF TRYING TO EARN, AND HAVE BEEN COMPELLED TO PAY TO THE GOVERNMENT, HAS BEEN STOLEN BY YOU FUCKERS, SQUANDERED ON CRAP, AND YOU WANKERS HAVE DONE YOUR DAMNEDEST TO HIDE THIS FROM US.

US Budget Cuts Explained

Can some clever dude work this out for the UK please...

Hat tip - Donal Blaney

Dishonourable Arrogance

Yesterday was an inglorious day.

Since the early 90s under the Tories, and dramatically since Labour came to power in the late 90s, the days of honourable behaviour in public life have long since ebbed away. Perhaps, Lord Carrington in 1982 was the last set piece occasion when it was evident. All those ghastly Tories during the Major years (Hamilton, Treddinick, Smith etc) and almost every Labourite who has tried to stay in office when it was clearly time to go, have demonstrated this point.

We now have a professional political class who cling to power at all costs. Despite the fact that their position is untenable, that they are openly vilified, that they have been publicly disgraced, that they are ridiculed daily in the media, that public opinion is lined up against them, still they try to cling to power, the trappings of office and, most importantly, the big salary that goes with it.

Even the Great Iain Dale has been caught up in the Westminster madness that is the current febrile atmosphere in the political village. In short, Martin is not going anywhere because:

• He wants to keep the big salary for another year (ie until the election)
• Gordy wants Martin around to take the heat and media attention away from him
• Labour MPs will fight to deny as many Labour scalps as possible to the Daily Torygraph
• Dave needs to retain as much discredited Labour shit in place as possible to help him at the polls in 2010
• Tory MPs want to be able to control who the next Speaker will be, which they cannot do until after the next election when they will have a majority

To paraphrase Michael Winner in those ghastly Esure adverts: "Calm down, Dear. It's only a political scandal".