Ten ideas for a crapper Britain

Komment Macht Frei carries a 10-point plan to make the UK even worse than it already is, from the notorious Will Hutton. They are in fairness not all totally wrong, but some of them are truly idiotic.

1. Break up the banks
I can live with this actually, in principle, but it would help if there was an acknowledgement that the ridiculously complicated regulatory environment has forced banks to become larger and larger in order to cover these costs and keep up with it all. Reduce the regulatory bureaucracy and barriers to entry and you would indeed improve the banking sector. Not convinced these are his motives.

2. Build Great Companies.
This is a stinker, and worth quoting in full:

Too few British firms have good owners. Two more important companies – Smith and Nephew, and De La Rue – are fighting to retain their independence from foreign takeovers. Their shareholders do not care about innovation, their staff or customers; their priority, and thus that of the directors, is only next month's share price. Increasingly Britain is a hollowed out economy for hire rather than a centre of business decision-making and wealth generation in its own right. There has to be root-and-branch overhaul of the framework for owning, directing and launching takeovers of Britain's companies.

So basically foreign ownership is bad, Will has no solutions, so we should start with roots and branches. Really, this is 6th-form stuff, blindly blaming shareholders. Shareholders do care about "innovation, their staff or customers" because that is what drives the share price. Shareholders tend to want their companies to be successful and well-run. That is why you invest in a company.

3. Bust the Monopolies
Meh.

4 Abolish Redundancy Payments
Why do I sense in this some sort of increased state intervention coming up?

5 Livelihood Insurance
Whoooomph there it is! Surely this is a bit like National Insurance, except I guess everyone will still pay National Insurance, right?

6 A Citizen Grant of £50'000 for every 21-year-old
Oh no, sorry, whoooooooooooomph THERE it is. Now that is special. And where pray tell might this money come from? Oh, you planted some beans? Should be fine then.

7 Payback time for babyboomers
Some interesting thoughts here actually. Probably the least bad of his ideas.

8 An end to parents-pay education

Private schools should ... be compelled to admit, through competitive examination, children from households with less than £40,000 a year. Their fees would be paid by the government.

Ah yes, the problem is private schools, not the parlous state of the state school system. Why not just bring back grammar schools, if you want competitive examinations?

9 An Honest Media
I agree, but bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha good luck with that.

10 A written constitution along with proportional voting
I don't think this would make a blind bit of difference but there you are. This is instructive however:

In particular, there should be an entrenching of local government's power: it should have the constitutional right to raise up to half its revenue from local taxation.

That is the extent of Will's ability to imagine what local government power should look like - how much tax they can raise. Sad.

And to avoid accusations of being negative for the sake of it, here is my 3-point plan for a better Britain.

1. Get the fuck out of our lives, just stop bloody interfering and remember that you work for us.
2. Stop fighting pointless, never-ending wars to distract from what is going on at home.

Actually, that'll do for starters, there you go, a 2-point plan!

The Myth of Contagion

Another good article this morning from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph. He actually seems to have a reasonably good grasp of what is going on in Europe at the moment, which makes a change from most of the commentary I read.

However, I want to specifically address the idea of "contagion", which anyone that has followed the Greek and Irish bailout stories will have heard as a key reason for the bailouts. Here is a good example, I have pulled out they key quote:

The problems of Ireland's banking system pose a risk of contagion to other Eurozone countries, European Central Bank Governing Council member Yves Mersch warned in a newspaper interview released Wednesday.

(...)

To banish this contagion risk, other governments must make the reforms needed "to gain market confidence," and appropriate structures must be set up for the Eurozone as whole, Mersch said.

This "contagion" is not something that can be averted with the application of more money. In reality, the bailouts are fuelling the crisis, because now the market knows that by exerting enough pressure on the bond market, credit spreads will widen to a point where the EU/IMF will intervene, pouring liquidity into that economy via the bond market.

This is not a malicious attack on a currency or economy, but rational behaviour. The fact is that the Greek, Irish, Portuguese and Spanish economies are all in serious trouble, and while Portugal might conceivably be saveable with a third bailout, you can forget it with Spain, it is FAR too big to bail. In fact, as Evans-Pritchard points out:

Saxo Bank said the EU's €440bn (£370bn) bail-out fund would lose its AAA credit rating if Spain needed serious help.

This would require Germany & France to put more money in, which for Merkel in particular would be very hard to explain to voters. She is already rowing hard in the other direction, with her insistence that Irish bondholders must pay for the Irish collapse. Morally she is right perhaps, but it is a very damaging thing to say and suggests to me that she has already given up on actually saving the Euro area as it stands, and is positioning Germany for the future.

The "contagion" is unavoidable, it is a consequence of a single currency and single monetary policy, neither suit any of the countries in the Euro. The bailouts, just like the whole Quantitative Easing debacle, are making everything much, much worse.

Why the cuts won't be enough

This is a superb article from Simon Heffer, on why today's cuts simply won't be sufficient. He picks up on two major problems, namely:

1. Certain budgets are ring-fenced. The NHS and Education, two of the most wasteful black holes, are too sensitive to be touched, showing that the Coalition are indeed pussies. Furthermore, the ludicrous decision to ring-fence overseas aid is truly without merit at a time when the UK debt mountain is piling up by the day.

2. There is no room whatsoever for tax cuts at any stage. If the Chancellor is serious about stimulating the economy, he needs to get people spending, not take money out of the economy in order to reduce its impact with bad decisions by taxing the "wealthy". Angry Teen has posted on this element many time so I direct you to his house for further musings.

However, Mr. Heffer misses the Belgian mammoth in the room. His Grace has eloquently posted on this topic today, borrowing some words from Dan Hannan in the process. Hannan sums it up, so I shall do the same:

Britain’s net contribution to the EU is rising from £6.4 billion this year to £8.3 billion in 2011-12 and £10.3 billion in 2015. But, of course, the net figure is misleading: the EU may spend some of this money in the UK, but rarely does so on things we would have chosen for ourselves. Much of the moolah goes to a privileged class of EU contractors and consultants; some goes on straightforward propaganda. Our gross contribution is rising from £14 billion to £19 billion – enough to cut council tax by half, take fourpence off income tax or pay of our Olympic debt in a single year. Here are some vivid ways of visualising the sum.

The Coalition do not give a shit about you, anymore than Labour did. Until this torrent of money flowing from the UK to the EU stops, you can count on that. This is what happens when Cast-Iron Dave makes a promise.

More HMRC Failure

The rolling, relentlessly ugly car crash that is the HMRC just keeps embarrassing itself more and more.

This, bear in mind, is the same organisation that felt it would be a good idea to collect gross income and distribute the net, post-tax amount, as a way of "simplifying PAYE".

Here are some choice nuggets to feed your ire, emphasis mine:

Millions more people could be caught up in the HMRC tax chaos than first thought, its chief executive admitted yesterday.

Ah yes, the chief executive. Because HMRC is a company accountable to, wait, wait, no sorry I can't find anyone.

Dame Lesley Strathie warned the PAYE problems could continue for at least two years, with hundreds of thousands more people falling victim to mistakes. She revealed the whole fiasco had cost Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs almost £170million.

Clearly not made a Dame for her grasp of simple facts. This hasn't cost HMRC anything, because HMRC do not have any fucking money! It's taxpayer money that you are wasting, losing and fucking up with. Which is why your position of CEO is utterly irrelevant.

Dame Lesley disclosed that the fiasco had lost the HMRC £167million – and she admitted that the organisation had known about the problem before the election but had not said anything.

Why am I not even surprised. It's beyond the tail wagging the dog, it's like the turd wagging the tail wagging the frigging dog.

But she added that it would not be until 2012 that ‘we still see a stable system’ – meaning that wrong codings could still be being sent out two years from now.

No, we won't. No govt department will ever have a stable system because procurement is such a cluster-fuck and everyone working there is so wilfully ignorant.

And why the fuck is it still called Her Majesty's anything? Can we not just be honest and accept that they are the collections agency for the Government and name it more honestly? Any suggestions?

Coalition fiddling while the UK burns

Sometimes I wonder if I've just made up in my own head the disastrous state of the UK economy, the monumental debt burden the country is labouring under, the straining welfare state and the unsustainable and unfillable black hole in the state pension.

I wonder because I keep reading shit like this, where the Coalition show their true socialist colours.

Or perhaps this, which Al Jahom tears apart here.

Then there is this colossal pile of horseshit, which Dizzy has already shovelled into the toilet where it belongs.

I could go on and on, check out AmbushPredator's daily demolition of local news idiocy as well, it never ends.

However, the point is, there are some really serious concerns around the future of the UK. Anyone who has children should be genuinely worried about what world they are growing up in. Yet all the Coalition can manage is a relentless slurry of ill-thought out, pointless ways to further harass the UK population.

Meanwhile, the lapdog media provide the mouthpiece for this flow of turds, without ever really posing any difficult questions, like exactly what the fuck are you going to do about the UK deficit Cleggeron?

This article may be the next shoe to drop, and if it does, then the UK really will be in the shit.

Part of me almost hopes it does, so people might actually wake up. However I fear this will just be yet another opportunity for the State to expand and take more control of people's lives and money.

Mixed Feelings

A strange day today. Part of me feels very excited about the whole thing - I can sort of see the merits of a Libservative coalition, and I must concede parts of the manifesto are appealing. It would seem the Lib Dems are relatively keen on repealing some of the damage done to civil liberties in the last few years, while the Tories seem to have kept in place their ideas on schools reform, and knocked on the head the silly idea of losing Trident and thus our sway with the UN. No arguments with the 10k personal tax allowance either, and I believe ID cards will die a quick and painless death. So part of me understands where Charlotte Gore is coming from here.

However, part of me also knows where Herr Clown is coming from here (and he's not the only one).

I believed before the election that all three parties are fundamentally pretty much the same. I do not believe that this coalition will make any meaningful efforts to reduce the role of Government in day-to-day life, which is a huge problem for me. The Tories are apparently pleased to have kept their "£6bn cuts this financial year and a reversal of some planned rises in national insurance contributions" (from this article). Well, pardon me for not getting too excited, but last time I checked, the National Debt was £912,123,669,658, but that was 3 seconds ago so it is probably a few grand higher.

This debt is the defining issue of the next 5 years. As AngryTeen said, and he should know since he is a yoof, "their bailouts will leave me with an unbelievable debt to pay". His generation will be saddled with a humongous debt burden to pay. Christ, if we're not careful, my two sons, whose combined age is 19 months, will be saddled with this debt. It needs sorting, and until I see some honest figures and a plan of action, my joy at Brown's departure is heavily tempered by the concern that not very much will change.

I am stoked about Brown going though, I can't deny it. Time for a new tag I think...See Ya!

The public wants what the public gets

Apologies in advance for swearing and general rage, not impressed.

What a monumental failure on the part of everyone, and I do mean everyone. Let's look at the list of failures shall we:

1. The British Public. 235 Labour seats at the last count. Ed Balls still has his seat. Ed fucking Balls. Hazel Christing Blears as well. What do these people have to do, actually come round to each voter's house and shit on their carpet before these pig-ignorant tools decide to vote for someone else? Seriously, you idiots in those constituencies, enjoy these devil children looking after your area. And by the way, if Labour somehow wangle their way into a minority coalition, enjoy that too. That's on you. When they destroy the country and the UK goes begging to the IMF, remember that you voted for that.

2. CMD. I know that Labour have gerrymandered the boundaries, bought a load of votes with benefits etc. but seriously. You couldn't beat Gordon Brown? You useless, spineless jellyfish.

3. Cleggmania and the Lib Dems. Don't, don't, don't, don't believe the hype.

4. The BBC. If there is one area of sympathy I have for the Tories, it's this. When the major state broadcaster turns against you for 20 years, and when many people believe that this broadcaster is impartial, it's hard to come back from that. So BBC, you can have a piece of this as well. I hope whoever does get in takes your licence fee away so all your Guardianista idiots can try the real world for a change.

5. I could go on and on, but I won't. Enough bile for a Friday.

Notice who I have left off the list? Labour and Brown. Gotta say credit to them, they really didn't underestimate the public. Hey fuckhead, I just spent 13 years ruining your country and saddling you and your children with ludicrous amounts of debt. Hey look, a squirrel. What was I saying? Oh nothing, just Vote Labour, here's a lollipop made of shit. Yeah, you like that, don't you. That's right you do.

Sorry Charlotte, I really do agree with everything you said here, but sometimes it's just too much.

King Canute

There was much excitement in the financial world yesterday as the Euro collapsed following a relentless stream of negative news on Greece and Portugal. Things are a little brighter today (ish) after the IMF talked about increasing the bailout size, however Germany is clearly still not overly keen on helping the Greeks out, and who can blame them.

There is a monumental amount of denial going on here though. Even if Greece is bailed out, it won't solve any structural problems, but merely buy some time. This time will be used to spend the bailout money, and we'll be back in the same boat as before, but this time 60bn Euros poorer, and with Portugal and Spain also on the brink.

The whole thing looks to me like trying to push the tide back. Eventually, no matter what you do, you'll be like King Canute, up to your neck in it. Better not to spend the money in my view. It's actually quite hard to see how we're going to get out of this one really. I just hope there's some bailout money left for the UK!