Doing what our parents did

Long, long ago back in the days of my youth people were very very careful with their money and what they would spend it on. There was little or no credit as such, occasional store "tick" but that was often measured in weeks not years like today's credit cards, there were also savings schemes like the Co-op "Divi"
Thing was people were very careful with their money as they knew that if it ran out, well you went hungry till you got paid, gardens were for vegetables mostly and anyone who had a allotment was envied.
Seems people though are heading back to those days...
Telegraph.

Shoppers are becoming increasingly "professional" as a result of the lowest consumer confidence in a generation, according to the head of Morrisons. 

Dalton Philips, the chief executive of the country's fourth biggest supermarket group, said: "We're seeing it across the country: the phenomenon of checking all the prices, of leaving the credit card at home, of being very savvy about what they are buying, buying in bulk packs and splitting the packs with friends or freezing. This professional approach to shopping, this rigour will continue long after the recession, I think. Grocery shopping is the biggest bill after your mortgage, after all."

The company said that 51pc of its customers were now checking the price of every single item before they put it in their basket, and that spending on credit cards had fallen by 8pc over the last six months, while spend on debit cards had increased by 4pc.

Its bleak assessment of the consumer economy came as it reported a strong set of figures, at the top end of analysts' expectations. Like-for-like sales increased by 2.2pc and the company claimed it was the only one of the big four supermarket groups to be gaining market share, with an extra 400,000 customers a week visiting its shops, taking the weekly total to 11.5m shoppers.

"We're encouraged by these results. It is especially encouraging that we delivered these results at a time when the economy is having such a pronounced impact on consumers. The last three years have seen the largest drop in spending power since 1980 to 1983. We are also hearing concern from our customers that there seems no end in sight. Consumer confidence is almost as low as it has ever been," Mr Philips said.

 I have to admit that the QM extended household do this sort of thing with buying in bulk and splitting the packs amongst the family. We also use our mobiles when at farmers markets and occasionally boot sales, though this is more down to the ladies being jigsaw fanatics.
People are learning the old lessons of not spending what you don't have again, often enough using the credit cards only for emergencies and setting out a fixed budget for food rent/mortgage, power, transport etc and sticking to it as their actual spending power has been reduced by price rises coupled with no real term wage increases.
Hard times in old England? Well not so much, we're still immeasurably better off than previous generations, though it's debatable whether we're happier or have more in the way of spare cash in our pockets at the end of the day. My Dad could easily afford to take himself and his 2 sons to the football on Saturday and go out drinking on Saturday night, I can't, I have to be a lot more careful with my spare cash in that sense, though I have a great deal more choice on where to spend it.
I expect a lot more families are now in the same boat, becoming more careful on where we spend what spare cash we have, we aren't poverty stricken by any means, just more choosy as and how we spend it. I don't expect this to change any time soon, if anything it will get worse as belts are tightened and prices rise.

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False economy

No, not about cheap flyspray or weedkiller but about the MSM's obsession with spurious data and trying to make themselves look like consumer champions.
Mail.

Cutting through the sales patter when buying a TV is difficult at the best of times.
But now it seems that the cables can trip us up, too.
High Street chains have been accused of ripping off customers by encouraging them to spend up to £100 on high-definition leads which are no more effective than ones costing as little as £2.
However, when a technology magazine showed experts footage using a £100 cable from electronics company Monster and an unbranded version costing about £2, they found the picture quality to be identical.
Ruslan Kogan, the boss of cable manufacturer Kogan Technologies, claims retailers are carrying out a marketing scam.

The only scam going on here is the sales patter to get people to buy an expensive lead, sure £100 pound is far too much to spend on an HDMI cable, but rest assured, £2 is far too little unless it meets certain requirements.
Yes a £2 cable will work perfectly at first, that's because when you get it, it wont have any oxidisation on the terminals. Now oxidisation is bad news on any signal carrying cable as oxidised matter (rust) does not transmit an electrical signal very well and when it goes on for too long it will have an effect. You also have an anode/cathode effect between dissimilar materials too which will accelerate corrosion, essentially a cheap cable made from cheap materials will deteriorate quite badly possibly within a year and may not just damage itself but the connection to your device.
Oddly enough there's one material which does not corrode or oxidise and which is a very good conductor of electrical current and frequencies and that material is gold. Gold is not cheap, gold plated connectors are however still pretty cheap and you can find them online for about £1.70. However the savings you make there will be offset by the quality of the product as the plating itself will be so thin (0.7 micron) as to have a chance of wearing away, gold is expensive, but it's also soft too.
Essentially you should when connecting an HDMI cable from the dvd player/sky/virgin connection box use a quality cable. No, don't spend over £100 on one, you'd be daft if you do. But on the otherhand don't spend any more than £15 which will give you a better level of plating (1.5 micron) and a better level of shielding from other interference.
But it's up to you in the end what you do, unlike the government I'm not about to force a minimum standard on you, but one of life's basic rules when playing in a market is that you get exactly what you pay for.
Same with cheap sausages.

More about → False economy

Balancing acts

Football used to be the sport that working men (and some women) went to watch at the weekend, well until the so called "Sky" revolution which pushed the price of tickets into levels only the well off or the most fanatical were prepared to pay. Also the number of matches increased in order to generate the revenue that a big club needed to pay its way with massive transfer fees and sky high stadium costs with all seater stadia now a requirement in the professional game. Sooner or later though the bubble was bound to burst...
Express.

FORGET signing Sergio Aguero for less than £40million – the biggest battle most football chairmen seem to be facing this summer is whether they can lure Joe Bloggs to their ground for more than a tenner.
Year after year, the current economic climate appears to have little effect on the frenzied activity of moving players around a world that seems to have little grounding in the lives of the people who pay their wages.
But a new survey by the BBC has looked at precisely that – and discovered that, while football’s bubble may not be bursting, it is certainly deflating as supporters are being forced to tighten their belts.
The Premier League gravy train has ridden along for some time under the steam of season-ticket holders who fill stadia week-in, week-out to justify the pricing policies of the country’s elite clubs.
Nowhere is that problem felt more keenly than in the North-west, where last season Blackpool, Bolton, Blackburn and Wigan were all fighting for support with more famous neighbours Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool and Everton – all within the traditional boundaries of what used to be known as Lancashire.
As a result, Blackburn feel the need to offer tickets to games for just £10 – a move echoed throughout the divisions this season by Watford, Rochdale, Preston, MK Dons, Rotherham, Torquay and Plymouth.
The war on cost that football is needing to wage to compete with other distractions is best illustrated by considering how much people are prepared to pay from their diminishing disposable incomes on other pursuits.

The big clubs so far are managing, though at the bottom end it seems you either have to have a billionaire chairman or even if you get lucky and make it too the top you won't be able to afford to stay their, not without pricing your fans out of the stadium. Football used to be quite affordable once, yet the last match I attended over 10 years ago cost £25 and there's no way I could afford to pay that week in week out and if my sons or daughters wanted to come along as well, forget it, no way could I afford that. Yet in the 70's and 80's my Dad did just that for me and my brother and we still had the money to go out on the beer at the weekends. These days I can't even afford Sky sports to watch any match I have to rely on Match of the Day for the occasional highlights or if I'm lucky an FA cup appearance on BBC or ITV. 

So long as people could afford to pay and fill the stadia that was ok, I found other interests, but now it seems that the money tree is finally starting to dry up at the roots and it can't be too long before it hits those at the very top.

Classic case of market forces, make something too expensive and people will move on to something they can afford. Took some time with football, but it was inevitable.

More about → Balancing acts

House of cards

or the domino principle if you wish, referring to a situation in which the collapse of one part of a structure has the end result of the next part falling until the whole structure collapses. In the case of the Euro it was (and is) Greece, however the warning signs are now showing that Italy or Spain is now about to go under too, rapidly followed by Portugal and possibly Ireland as their reckless borrowing based on the strength of the steady German and other Northern European states comes home to roost as they now simply cannot pay off their debts, or carry on the way they were doing.
Of course our banks are up to their necks in it, though fortunately although we aren't in the Eurozone, if our economy wobbles we can at least re-value our currency, something Greece, Italy or Spain cannot..
Express.

SHARES in British banks plunged today amid fears the Eurozone debt crisis is set to spread to Italy and Spain. Jittery market traders ditched shares in banks across Europe in a huge sell-off.
British banks were among the worst hit with Barclays, which has major exposure to both Italy and the Iberian peninsula, down nearly 5 per cent at one stage.
Taxpayer-backed Lloyds was down 3 per cent and Royal Bank of Scotland down 1 per cent.
The FTSE 100 Index fell 100 points, or 1.7 per cent, today with banks among the biggest fallers. Meanwhile, the Dax in Germany and the CAC 40 in France fell more than 2 per cent.
Britain’s exposure to the Italian economy amounted to £43 billion at the end of March, according to Bank of England figures.
UK banks and investment houses risking losses of £7.9 billion if the Italian government defaults on its debts and a further £5.7 billion if Italian banks collapse.

Of course, the ultimate horror of it is, is that governments might move in to shore up the banks with our money (again) and if you thought the national debt was bad now (see counter on the left), just wait and see what it will be like if or when our so called leaders have finished with trying to put right what simply should be left to sort itself out.
The problem is a matter of pride to certain EU apparatchiks, they simply cannot allow their prestige "currency" symbol of all that the EU is about fail, yet if anything should be obvious, you cannot buck the market. The Euro is doomed to fail simply because there are nations in it who do not belong to it, who falsified their economic standings to be a part of it and borrowed like hell to cover their outstanding costs as prices rose, retirement ages fell but productivity remained the same.
The fall is inevitable now, the only thing to wonder about now is how painful the leaders of the EU make it, for all of us.

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Cameron does something I agree with shocker

Dave and I don't see eye to eye on a lot of things, I think he's doing a crap job of running the country, that he's an EUphile and that he can't be trusted to reduce the government size and spending. Plus he's just as authoritarian as the last lot to be in power. Still people were foolish enough to vote him marginally into power so we have to put up with his crap for the next few years until we get to choose again.
Today though he did something I agreed with and for pretty much the reasons I would do it too.

Telegraph.

David Cameron blocks Gordon Brown as head of IMF

In a direct attack on the former Prime Minister, Mr Cameron said his predecessor was not the "most appropriate person" to lead the IMF because he would not admit the UK had a "debt problem".

Mr Brown is reportedly hoping to take on the £270,000-a-year role but he must first be nominated by the Government.

“If you have someone who didn’t think we had a debt problem (running the IMF) they may not be the best person to decide whether other countries have that problem," he said on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

He added that the role needed to be filled by “someone who understands the dangers of excessive spending.”

Or to put it simply, you don't give a lunatic the keys to the asylum.

Brown's naivety and ignorance of economics stems from his socialist roots where the belief that you can spend other peoples money indefinitely seems to have deep roots. This coupled to a lax regulation of financial services lead to the banks loaning and taking up toxic debt from all over the world as they looked for high interest returns on investments without adequate checks to see if the loans could actually be paid back. Nor can quantitative easing (printing money) ever be a real solution to a debt crisis, look at Zimbabwe if you want a prime example of the end result of that type of solution.
So in this case yes Cameron has got it right, I'll allow him his day in the sunshine and probably return to normal service tomorrow.

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First line of defence?

Labour have apparently not learned the lesson of last weekend and associating themselves with the violence of those who oppose cuts (yes we know most of the marchers were peaceful, but they didn't grab the headlines) Instead Millipede E has launched their local election campaign with the slogan "First line of defence against the cuts" whilst probably hoping no-one will ask why the cuts are necessary and/or blaming the banks for Labours spending spree.

BBC.

Ed Miliband has launched Labour's campaign for council elections in England, saying the party will be the "first line of defence" against cuts.

The Labour leader argued local authority budget cuts will hit the poorest communities hardest and his party will stand up for those affected.

David Cameron told Conservative MPs on Wednesday they could win the "big argument" over the extent and speed of coalition plans to cut the deficit.

I know they are pushing hard, I've been canvassed twice here in the last couple of weeks, that's more than they managed in the last 10 years I've been here. It's the same message too that somehow or other their plans to help recover the economy are going to be kinder than the oppositions. All again without mentioning why we're in such a mess and not liking it at all when asked and no I don't take "it was the banks fault" as an acceptable answer, I know about PFI, the growth in the public sector, the pensions raid, the gold sell off and whilst the financial sector might have been complicit in starting the recession, they are not to blame for the state of the countries finances, that can be laid right back at the door of Labour and their economic incompetence, particularly that of one G Brown esq.
So no, Labour aren't the first line of defence unless of course you are in the public sector, what they should be is the last resort of the mentally unstable, not so much as scraping the bottom of the barrel, but scraping what's left underneath it. Labour have a great deal of nerve pontificating over the mess they left the country and their attempts to shift the blame for their mess and the cleaning up onto the Tories, not that the Tories are doing such a grand job themselves, but at least they admit the full scale of the problem even if doing nowhere near enough about it.
Problem is, Labour have entrenched too many people on non jobs in the public sector and these have to be peeled back layer by layer despite the strenuous objections of the public sector unions. Unemployment will rise inevitably, but it will get the states finances back under control. It would be nice to see the country run without borrowing for one thing. Job creation has to be a genuine thing, public sector jobs are essentially non contributory to the economy so the private sector needs to be encouraged to grow, best way to do that would be to leave the EU...

And there's the problem, the elephant in the room, we can't sort out the mess till we leave and we definitely can't sort out the mess by voting Labour, they put us there after all, the EU keeps us there and the Tories and Lib Dems won't get us out either.
You can see why I probably wont vote for anyone around here, they wont do what I want.

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Sounds about right

Don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly feeling the pinch here or pleading poverty, I have no idea what real poverty is like after all having merely seen it when abroad travelling to do the odd bit of engineering work in the third world. Closest I have come to it would be doing the servicing of some warehouse cranes in Romania where I'd go out with the local crew and watch them nurse a drink all night whilst a round cost me little more than a couple of drinks here. The equivalent of £10 would get me absolutely wasted over there and I didn't mind buying the drinks, it was more or less covered by my company eating expenses which were the same no matter which country we were in.
Still, this article from the BBC does not surprise me.

BBC.

The average employee takes home £1,088 a year less than two years ago when the sum is adjusted for inflation, research commissioned by BBC Panorama suggests.

The sharp drop, in real terms, highlights the effect of stagnant wages and above-target inflation on incomes.

The average British worker earned £20,149 at the start of 2011 - a real terms fall of 5% from what they were earning in the middle of the recession.

The research was based on actual salaries paid into bank accounts.

It was carried out by the Centre for Economics and Business Studies and based on data on salaries from the payment processor, Vocalink, which looks after more than 90% of deposits into employees' bank accounts.

It was commissioned by Panorama to work out how much worse off employees have become since wages hit their peak.

People are indeed feeling the pinch, low percentage pay rises coupled with a higher rate of inflation coupled to an even higher cost of living means that peoples budgets no longer stretch as far as they once did. The still rising cost of fuel just keeps adding to everyones burdens as well as pushing the price of everything else up. 20% VAT hasn't helped either, though that's just pin money to the government.
What I expect to see is a return to a bit of self reliance, my Dad grew his own fruit and veg to supplement the family finances it helped a lot, other families did pretty much the same thing in the North East, getting an allotment was the equivalent of digging up gold so I'm wondering if there will be a return to such hobbies here. Certainly allotments are still very popular, but most gardens around here are still for relaxation, flowers and trees etc. So it strikes me that we're not quite into penury yet, but I do expect it to get worse before it gets better and I also plan to buy some decent gardening tools this year as well, self reliance is starting to become quite important to me, though I doubt I'll apply for an allotment, I'd be dead before I got one around here such is the waiting list. I'm also looking at a second hand wood burning stove plus a 3kw diesel generator. My good lady thinks I'm mad, but I'd rather be mad my way than the madness of ignoring the sign and partying till the last.

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Not in my name

There's an anti cuts demo in London today, the public sector have finally woken up to the fact that there's no money left and have decided to march in protest of the government slowing down its borrowing and many local councils deciding that they'll try to blackmail the government by cutting real services rather than the pretendy makework jobs in the diversity co-ordinator sector.
I've been doing some looking around this week and as a result felt like I needed several showers on those days. Why. Well, by visiting the anarchist and hard left sites. The sites are awash with big talk. Talk of setting London a flame. Of bringing down the banks.
However they still choose to ignore the fact that it was Labour who did that in the first place.
Still you can't keep a good leftist loony down.

BBC.

Soon after 1330 GMT, a small group splintered off from the main protest and broke through a thin police line to head up Regent's Street to Oxford Circus where scuffles broke out and Top Shop was attacked, reported BBC correspondent Tom Symonds.

Many were wearing black, with their faces covered by masks and they were carrying flags. Some let off flares and fireworks were heard.

The police said light bulbs containing ammonia were thrown at officers.

And they accuse the EDL of being violent mindless thugs. Also, I couldn't help notice when the EDL marched in Luton the media repeatedly mentioned how much policing the event cost but no mention at all here.

Why these people did not protest during the 13 years of Labour just smacks of hypocrisy. Ok, no one wants to lose their job and it is terrible that people have to go through it. However, did the public sector speak out for the private sector when it was decimated in 2007/8?
So the march today is not in my name, if anything the government haven't went anything  like hard enough on public expenditure, they've tried to manicure when they should have been attempting amputation.

More about → Not in my name

Cuts

I was canvassed yesterday by the Labour Party in Medway, they wanted to know my opinion on Cameron's cuts. They went away when I asked where the £4 trillion debt came from, but they did leave me with this.

I had to retrieve it from the recycling hence the poor quality

Now apart from the sheer hypocrisy of Labour having a go at anyone because they are having to rein back the budgets due to 13 years of ruinous overspending and economic incompetency there is the problem that the last Labour government left the Medway area in that they had been stinting the local budget by gerrymandering John M Ward a fellow blogger has the details on the hows and why's but it boiled down in the end to Medway being Tory and unlikely to become Labour hence the massive shortfalls in their local government funding being channelled to Labour strongholds. Labour seem to do spite very well, yet scream blue (or should that be red) murder when the economic reality of their idiocy comes home to roost.
All budgets everywhere are being cut, there is some attempted blackmail going on by local councils threatening to cut frontline services rather than the "diversity co-ordinator sector" simply to try and squeeze more money to keep their political pets happy. So Labour don't want "Cameron" to rob us of the police, perhaps if they hadn't spent us into penury we might yet keep them, assuming this isn't scaremongering of which I wouldn't put it past them either.

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I don't think that was Labour.

Personal debt has risen £3.3billion in January to the extent that the consumers in the UK owe about £1.4 trillion.

Express.

HOW LABOUR LEFT US ALL OVER A TRILLION IN DEBT

BRITONS now owe £1.4trillion in personal debt – more than the country produced over the past year.

Total lending in January rose by £3.3billion, including a rise of £1.8billion in secured lending.

After more than a decade under Labour, the average UK household is now £8,416 in debt, not including mortgages and unsecured loans.

When mortgages are included, the figure is £57,635, the charity, Credit Action, said yesterday.

Debts led to 337 people being declared bankrupt or insolvent every day, the figures revealed.

Property repossessions reached 87 each day. Meanwhile, each day last year 474 new people had been unemployed for over 12 months.

Redundancies hit 1,589 people every day in the three months to the end of December. And debt is continuing to grow with 24.1 million credit card purchases daily, with a total value of £1.15billion.

Now I blame Labour incompetence for a lot of things from the pensions grab, the gold sell off, the green energy scam to underfunding the army. But I don't see how they can be to blame because people were silly enough to get themselves in over their heads in personal debt. Sure they made cheap credit available via their economics, but they didn't make people take out credit on anything, though they didn't help the economic conditions in which people have ended up out of work.
No this is down to personal choice, though many people will no doubt be coping or struggling, that's one of the risks of ramping up your debts whilst the going is good and often enough you can take out insurance which will help a little in hard times, though it's often only for 6 months, after that you're facing bankruptcy.
Even bankruptcy is nothing to be really feared any more, yes it blights your credit records, but you can recover if you keep your head down and simply save up and spend what you earn rather than buy things on credit. Plus there are often enough ways around getting stuff you really need if anything important breaks. About all that will happen is that credit will be a lot harder to get and more restrictions will be put on it, but that's the fault of going mad on spending money that wasn't really theirs, or at least those who are stuck with debts they can't pay back and who will have made it more difficult for others to get a loan or a credit card.

So no, on this the Express is wrong, Labour might have set up the conditions where cheap credit was on offer, but they didn't make people borrow, that was purely down to the people themselves.

More about → I don't think that was Labour.

Is America Slip Sliding into Decline?

By Alan Caruba

“Slip sliding away, slip sliding away. You know the nearer your destination, the more you're slip sliding away.” -- Simon and Garfunkel

The song keeps running through my mind as I watch America lose its former influence in world affairs as well as its economic power. Both are slip sliding away. In the wonderful world of punditry, a lot of us are trying to figure out where the nation is going and for now how events in the Middle East will play out.

As always, history provides a template by which to judge present times. A similar period occurred when the British Empire began its decline. At its peak it was so vast it was said “the sun never set” on it. By the 1920s, a quarter of the Earth’s land mass and its population composed the empire.

And then it all began slip sliding away.

Britain was among the winners of World War One. Its empire expanded into the Middle East to incorporate parts of the former Ottoman Empire. Britain, however, had lost the cream of an entire generation of its young men.

By the end of World War Two, England’s wealth and yet another generation had been severely diminished. Former colonies clamored for independence. The Empire shrank as independence was granted to India, Burma, and former African colonies.

.Other forces were at work to undermine the influence of both the United Kingdom and the United States. In the 1950s, a military coup in Egypt stirred ideas of an Arab confederation of states. It ultimately failed, but it set in motion ideas of nationalism.

In 1945, Winston Churchill was unceremoniously replaced by Clement Atlee, a socialist and a leader of the Labor Party. For the next six years Labor nationalized the nation’s coal mines, civil aviation, cable and wireless services, gas, electricity, railways, road transport and steel. The National Health Service, comparable to Obamacare, was introduced. In short, the British destroyed what was left of their economy by embracing the worst system for creating wealth known to man.

While Great Britain and America recognized the Soviet Union as the great threat to freedom after World War Two, both nations continued to incorporate socialism into their governmental structures and systems. In the U.S. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would swallow up and redistribute vast portions of wealth until they represented half of all the spending at the federal level. As government grew, the growth of civil service unions drained the coffers of State treasuries.

The people of the Middle East, under the sway of various monarchies and despots, developed a deep resentment of the West in general, but initially for the British. Entire nations, new colonies, had been created in the Middle East to ensure access to its huge reserves of oil and natural gas.

America did not become an empire in the British sense of the word, but it did become the world’s policeman, its navy keeping sea lanes protected and open, engaging in a series of conflicts during and after the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Our Navy that in 1998 fielded sixty ships now has only twenty actively at sea.

In the 1950s, the conflict in Korea ended in a stalemate. In the 1970s, Vietnam became the first major defeat the U.S. had experienced. Too many casualties, no end in sight, Congress finally pulled the plug. It altered the way other nations perceived the world’s only superpower. Military successes in Iraq have done little to improve our standing in the world as the war in Afghanistan drags on in a fashion reminiscent of Vietnam.

Responding to environmental claims, America began to restrict access and use of its vast national reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas. Prosperous nations are those that use the most energy in many ways, but the U.S. not only stopped the building of new refineries, the development of new coal mines, and exploration of new oil fields, but also thwarted the growth of the nuclear power industry. By February 2011, parts of Texas were experiencing rolling blackouts.

In a thousand different ways, an ever growing matrix of obstacles and regulation encumbers American industry, agriculture, and the development of new business enterprises with high technology was an exception. Its hardware, however, is made in Asia, not America.

The American economy was being hollowed out from within and beyond its shores with a combination of illegal immigration and “out sourcing” of jobs in an effort to remain competitive.

Largely unnoticed until the 1979 Iranian revolution, an Islamic fervor was growing in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere among its 1.3 billion adherents.

It exploded in America on September 11, 2001 though the U.S. had sustained many earlier attacks on its embassies and on the USS Cole.

It is exploding in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen, Libya, and Bahrain. If history is any guide, these rebellions will be put down with a brutality that is also endemic to the region. The notion that these nations should be ruled by Sharia law is appalling, opening the door to a barbaric, ancient system of law more suited to the 7th century than the 21st century.

America’s influence is slip sliding away because it is presently led by a weak and hostile President, increasingly believed to be either a Muslim or sympathetic to Islam; a Marxist, ruefully acknowledged to be a complete enigma with no available documentation regarding his past or legitimacy to hold the office.

It is also under an entirely new kind of warfare. Its financial structure has been attacked and the crisis of late 2008 gives evidence of that.

Weakness or the perception of weakness invites attack. America is a great, but wounded nation being led by a president who shrinks from its superpower responsibilities and wants to spend its way out of debt; an impossibility. He must be endured for two more years while the Republicans in Congress neuter his ability to do more damage.

When it repairs itself, renewing its fundamental values, restoring its Constitutional limits, America will still have to stand guard against the forces of darkness within and beyond its gates.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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Charity begins at home, surely?

Well were probably heading into the double dip recession that pretty much everyone was forecasting except whoever was in charge of the government at the time be it Labour or Conservative. Not just a recession, a depression, a slump and probably a downturn all rolled into one. Though you wouldn't think so from the way the government throws our money around, particularly in the foreign aid budget, which was ring fenced so didn't face the usual cuts that everyone except the NHS and political expenses faced.
Still I'm at a loss still as to why we're giving £1 billion over 4 years to a nuclear power with a space program and who also gives aid to Africa. Yes I know India has over 450 million poor and I know that foreign aid often comes with strings attached about buying UK goods, but at this time with people here facing real hardship it's about time we looked to ourselves.
Charity should begin at home, keeping our pensioners warm and fed, repairing our infrastructure and encouraging firms from outside to invest in us and provide jobs to take on people from the public sector which became so bloated under Labour.
Mind you, we could easily recoup that by leaving the EU, but they wont do that either, too busy still feathering their own nests, but the tide of anger is rising and people are feeling the pinch all over now, save of course in those who believe they rule us.
I hope they get their Ceaucescu moment soon.

More about → Charity begins at home, surely?

Tough for some...

It was the Tory Chancellor who said we're all in this together, the UK faces VAT rises from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent on January 4, along with a battery of rises to fuel duty, insurance premium tax and a bank levy. Spring could mark the moment of maximum industrial and economic dislocation for the Coalition. The trade unions are targeting the period between Easter (which falls late this year, on April 24) and the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29 for industrial action. Street violence can be expected – April being the month when welfare cuts start to bite and public sector pay is frozen. Sure Start maternity grants will be restricted to the first child, child benefit frozen, local housing allowance rates capped, the enterprise finance guarantee (which provides emergency finance to small businesses) will be scrapped. The threshold at which tax credit withdrawal rates operate will be slashed. Put these together with the tax rises introduced in January, and many families will be facing massive cuts We're all going to be hit in our pockets, so you'd expect that politicians might be a bit circumspect about flashing the cash... Actually, what the hell am I going on about, these are politicians and those who read my blog know that I have a very low opinion of politicians, probably as low as your own, though in certain cases possibly not as I'm fairly non violent, though the rage is growing over their antics, still I wouldn't weep if others were to hang a few from lampposts pour encourager les autres.

Daily Mail.

Senior MPs were accused of ‘highly insensitive conduct’ last night after celebrating the New Year with lavish holidays or by sipping champagne at an exclusive Commons fireworks party.
Among them were Chancellor George Osborne, who defied austerity Britain by taking a luxury break at Prince Charles’s favourite ski resort, Klosters. Ironically, it was Mr Osborne who coined the phrase ‘we’re all in this together’ when calling for massive cuts to get the country out of the red at the 2009 Tory Party Conference. Meanwhile tycoon MP Zac Goldsmith was reportedly sunning himself at a £8,000-a-week villa in the Caribbean over the New Year – in contrast to David Cameron, who scrapped plans for an expensive holiday in Thailand for fear of sending the wrong message to voters.
And in London, Speaker John Bercow hosted a star-studded champagne New Year’s Eve party on the Commons riverside terrace, giving MPs a prime view of the capital’s impressive fireworks display. Among the revellers was Prisons Minister Crispin Blunt, an embarrassment in light of the fact that at the same time a riot was brewing at Ford Open Prison in Sussex.
Guests at the party, including pop singer Duffy, EastEnders actor Ross Kemp, soprano Lesley Garrett and the Speaker’s Labour-supporting wife Sally, danced the night away to a rock band.

Discreet seems to have fallen away from the vocabulary of the political/chattering classes along with various "D list" celebrities. We're going to pay for the incompetence of the previous administration and yet they just can't help themselves, though the Bercow party doesn't surprise me one bit as he was part of the previous administration supposed independent or not. The daft thing is, the Labour party will be the one which will probably benefit from this as voters are hit in their pockets despite the fact that it was their incompetence which caused the problems in the first place, yes I know it's a global recession, but it could have been a lot less worse for the UK if Labour hadn't bolloxed up the economy by profligate overspending.
Politicians still don't get it, the worse things get, the more likely extremist groups will rise promising jam tomorrow if we only do x, y, z, after all it worked for the Nazi's. On top of all this nests the spider of the EU costing us billions for few benefits that we couldn't do for ourselves if we were free of it anyway.
 So people everywhere in the UK are going to be hurting, was it too much to ask that our politicians at least acted like they cared?

Then again, these are politicians we're talking about...

More about → Tough for some...

I owe my soul to the company store

It's an old Tennessee Ernie Ford song about the days when mine owners would only pay their workers in chits which could only be redeemed at the company store, the prices were of course inflated and by the time pay day came along they owed money to the mine owner, a vicious and self perpetuation situation where they could not escape their debts.

Express.

NEXT week’s VAT rise means Britons will have to work three extra days before they earn enough money to cover their annual tax bill.
The Adam Smith Institute predicts that “tax freedom day” would fall on May 30.
It means the equivalent of every penny earned by the average worker for the first 149 days of the year will go to the Treasury.
The think-tank said it is six days more than in 2009 and three more than this year.
It is almost entirely down to the extra revenues the Government will rake in by increasing the sales tax from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent on January 4.
It will be the longest period for the milestone since 2007 when it stretched into June and has led to calls for targeted tax cuts next year.
Tom Clougherty, the Institute’s executive director, said: “The fact that we spend almost five months working for the state and only seven months working for ourselves is a shocking indictment of big, wasteful government. Britons are still desperately overtaxed.” 

5 whole months before anything you earn actually becomes yours! 3 days longer because of the VAT hike imposed to try and reduce the debt Labour saddled us with! A government which is still spending more of our money because it refuses to grasp the nettle and reduce its size and scope. A government which pours billions of our cash daily into the EU who still after 15 years can't get the auditors to sign off its books. A government which ring fenced £9 billion of foreign aid whilst pensioners were hit with higher fuel bills and died in the recent cold snap. A government which ring fenced Health Care whilst wages went up and productivity went down. A government so incompetent that they only managed to slow down borrowing rather than get it paid back.
And the Tories used to boast about being the party of small government!
Liars, cheats and economic incompetents!


Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man's made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store



Bastards!

More about → I owe my soul to the company store

This is what climate extremism has brought us too.

Fuel bills are high in the UK, some of it is down to the fact that foreign ownership of UK energy firms is used to subsidise foreign fuel prices, but a lot of it has to do with the climate levy that's added on to every household and industrial bill to "save the planet from climate change." The higher costs to industry also mean that higher costs of other services are passed on to us, it's a vicious cycle. What it means in reality is that people, particularly the old and vulnerable die as they count the pennies and make decisions on the grounds of stay warm or eat.
One of the measures of civilisation is how we treat our old folk, in the UK, it's not terribly well.

Express.

THOUSANDS of pensioners died from cold-related illnesses last winter as heating bills soared and temperatures plummeted, official figures reveal.

The number of deaths linked to the cold between December and March reached 25,400 in England and Wales, with another 2,760 in Scotland.

The figures are equivalent to nine deaths every hour.

The total gave Britain the highest winter death rate in northern Europe, worse than much colder countries such as Finland and Sweden.

There are fears the death toll could increase this year following energy price rises which may frighten elderly people into not turning on their heating.

Michelle Mitchell, of Age UK, said: “It’s unacceptable that tens of thousands more older people die in this country every winter from the effects of the cold weather. The fact that the UK has one of the highest winter mortality rates in Europe makes it clear this is very much a home-grown problem.

“Behind these statistics lie deep-seated social issues, such as one in three over-60s living in houses which fail the ‘decent home’ standard.”

 According to the weather forecasts we're in for a particularly cold winter, though as they struggle to tell us what the weather will be like the day after tomorrow such predictions can be taken with a pinch of salt, or not, only time will tell, though I do reckon we're overdue a bad winter.

There's no doubt though, pensioners will die this winter due to the cold, it could be worse if we have a flu epidemic on top of it too. However government and environmentalists are adamant that better insulation rather than cheaper electricity and gas is the way to go, though few pensioners can afford either. Of course there's the suspicion that some environmentalists want a cull of the human race anyway, though pensioners is the wrong target group, still I suppose it would reduce the pensions deficit too from a strictly pragmatic government view.

A large majority in the UK now either totally disbelieve man made climate change, or think it doesn't matter, it's time the government caught up with this view too. Remove the green levy and keep our pensioners warm this winter and bring prices down elsewhere, give us all a break from the holier than thou environmental movement who should never have been put into a position to influence policy on this scale ever.

More about → This is what climate extremism has brought us too.

Not in our interests?

Ireland is in deep shit trouble over it's economic overspending, almost 32% of its GDP is going on servicing and paying its debts. In short unless the IMF or the EU steps in they're going down the Swannee. Problem is, if the EU steps in, despite the fact we aren't in the Eurozone, we will probably get stiffed with part of the bill as they do like to share the pain whilst reaping the bureaucratic benefits.

Express.

BRITISH taxpayers could face a bill of up to £10billion to bail out the Irish economy, it emerged last night.

Ireland was yesterday locked in negotiations over a £70billion EU rescue deal - with the UK required to underwrite some 10 per cent of possible losses, which could amount to £7billion.

The Royal Bank of Scotland, which has billions of pounds of exposure to Irish loans, is also underwritten by British taxpayers, adding a possible £3billion burden on the public purse.

As concern mounted over Ireland's debts, the government in Dublin is understood to have held preliminary discussions with the EU about an aid package.

Irish ministers have stressed they could manage their finances, but governments across Europe have expressed concern that a bail-out may be required as earlier as this week.

£10 billion, on top of the other payments we make to the EU! Apparently it's not in our interests if the Irish economy goes tits up down, however it's my opinion that handing over £10 billion isn't going to do our economy a lot of good either. What happens after Ireland though? Spain and Portugal maxed out their cheap credit tied to the German economy too, I doubt they can pay back their debts and when they can't, guess where they'll come knocking too.
It's time we got out of that money sucking black hole aka the EU, time the Tories got off their arses backsides and got rid of Cast Iron Cameron and put a real EUsceptic in charge, before the next country after Ireland, Spain and Portugal is the UK!

More about → Not in our interests?

Blackout

The Health and safety lobby are about to clash with the recession, in that a lot of councils have decided to switch their street lights off after midnight to save money. Cue, strong language about the probable carnage on our streets etc, etc.

Express.

FATAL road crashes will soar as cash-strapped councils switch of street lights to save cash during the dark winter months, safety experts warn.

Thousands of miles of roads and motorways are to be plunged into ­darkness as town hall chiefs reign back their spending – hit hard by the ­coalition’s cutbacks.

So far, 36 councils are to implement a “black out” on roads during the early hours of the morning. Others are dimming lights to save electricity costs. 

The Highways Agency also plans to turn off lights on some stretches of motorway from midnight to 5am.

Critics yesterday slammed the money-saving measures, claiming dark roads, coupled with the harsh winter weather, could spell disaster.

The AA said: “Statistics show that more people are killed or seriously injured in the dark, so switching off street lighting at any time of day has safety implications and accidents could potentially increase as a result.

“Councils must monitor the impact of the scheme and be prepared to switch the lights back on if there are any changes to accident trends.”

A survey by ­Halfords found 1.9 per cent of road accidents on major roads are fatal where there are no lights, compared with 1.3 where lights are on. On smaller roads the figures are 4.9 per cent for dark roads, compared with 3.1 per cent when the lights are bright.

The switch off comes as the clocks went back an hour yesterday plunging Britain into evening darkness.

Yes, I suppose there's a chance of more accidents, however it's not like they are planning to switch them off at 6 pm is it? One of the strange things you notice when driving about at midnight should you have too is how few people there are about and how few cars there are. You also notice that your car has lights and that they illuminate the road in front of you. Certainly there is an increases danger, but I don't believe for a second that it's going to be anywhere near as bad as the health and safety experts say, after all these are the guys who hammered on for years about speed cameras making roads safer only for Swindon Council to prove that no they don't.
By all means switch the lights off after midnight, switch them off totally on motorways too, save at junctions. They aren't needed particularly, an exception could be made on New Years Eve I guess, but again people would manage,

Would be nice to get rid of some of the light pollution over this country and give people a chance to look at the stars again.

More about → Blackout

Bastards!

To cross from Essex into Kent (and vice versa) on the M25 you have to pay a toll, it's currently £1:50 for cars, but free between 10pm and 6 am. There actually shouldn't even be a toll, because back in 2003 the crossing was paid for, but the toll was kept on by the DfT as a congestion charge and the additional monies were supposed to be used for road improvements in Kent and Essex.
Of course the government, both local and national see motorists as a cash cow, so I'm not surprised at this, but I am damned angry.

BBC.

Toll charges are set to be increased for the Dartford Crossing between Kent and Essex, it was announced in the government Spending Review.

Under the plans, the charges could rise from £1.50 to £2 next year for cars, before rising to £2.50 in 2012.

The Department of Transport (DfT) said the money would be used to explore ways of improving traffic flow.

RAC Foundation director Professor Stephen Glaister said motorists would be "very nervous".

Chancellor George Osborne has unveiled a package of spending cuts in the Commons aimed at tackling the country's deficit.

The Dartford Tunnel and Queen Elizabeth II bridge cross the River Thames between Dartford and Thurrock.

The crossing forms a link in the M25 motorway, carrying about 150,000 vehicles a day.

The DfT said the increased toll charges would be subject to consultation.

It said the decisions were "difficult but necessary" to maintain investment in transport infrastructure projects.

Mr Glaister said: "The 150,000 drivers using the Dartford Crossing each day will be very nervous about the planned hike in the toll, though moves to improve traffic flow might soften the blow slightly."

The toll was due to end in 2003, but was kept on by the DfT as a congestion charge.

The DfT said an independent report in 2001 showed that without charges, traffic would increase by 17.1%.

In November 2008, motorists protested when the charge was increased from £1 to £1.50 for cars.

There is no charge to use the Dartford Tunnel and QEII bridge between 2200 BST and 0600 BST.

 I am truly sick and tired of successive governments picking my pocket to pay for the economy, I'm a fairly easy target as I drive a car and need it to get into work. I've looked at alternative means, but they just don't work too well for 12 hour shifts and early starts. No, I don't use the crossing for work, but raising charges still rankles quite a bit as I do occasionally cross the river to go to Essex to visit relatives.
Why can't politicians just keep to their word? The charge was supposed to end when the new bridge got paid for and they kept it going, not as a congestion charge (though that's what they claimed) but as a source of government revenue and politicians are obsessed with having cash to pay for their follies as well as the necessary parts of government. Also I believe a lot of the congestion is caused by the toll booths themselves, remove them and I'd expect more traffic, but I'd also expect traffic flow to improve too, not that I'd expect the government to even admit this possibility, they're too concerned with getting their hands on motorists cash.
It's like road tax, the vast majority taken in by the government doesn't go on roads, same I suspect with the toll charges on the crossing, it's just another form of income to the state going into one big pot. Yes I know the economy is in a mess, yes I know the state has to find some way to pay for Labours mishandling. But I am just sick and tired of being hammered by the government because they see me as an easy target. All it will do is make motorists start using alternatives such as the Blackwall tunnel which is free but congested most of the day anyway.
Problem is of course, even if the economy gets back on track, will we see a price reduction?
Yeah, right, they'll just find something else to spend the excess on.

More about → Bastards!

They never learn

Tax and spend has gotten us into this current mess where the previous government ended up spending more than it brought in, raised taxes and then decided it was a brilliant idea to print more money as well.

Telegraph.

In his first major speech after Ed Miliband made the surprise decision to give Mr Johnson the Treasury brief, he said Labour would raise more from taxes than planned by the Coalition.

The Opposition is now advocating a percentage split between cuts and tax rises of 60-40, having previously committed to 70-30. George Osborne, the Chancellor, will go further when he announces this week that spending cuts will make up around 70 per cent of the savings needed to tackle the deficit.

Mr Johnson, who has no economic background and has never held a Treasury job for Labour, also attacked the 35 business leaders who have signed a letter to the Daily Telegraph backing Mr Osborne’s plans.

Outlining why he believed Mr Osborne was wrong, Mr Johnson said: “"Our policy remains to halve the deficit by 2013-14. But I have looked again at the way in which we deliver that reduction, at the balance of tax and spending.

"My view is that specific, targeted tax changes need to do more of the work."

He said he would work with the Government on "targeted tax rises that do not affect low and middle income families". 

Mr Johnson claimed that the banks should be paying an extra £3.5 billion a year in taxes to offset cuts in investment. He said that the Government's plans for a bank levy were “inadequate” compared with the pain being inflicted on children and families through public spending cuts.

The business leaders who signed the letter said that the private sector would be able to provide the jobs for those who lose out in the public sector because of the cut backs to Whitehall services. But Mr Johnson disputed that.

The shadow chancellor said the Tories' plans to eliminate the structural deficit in four years represented "a huge gamble with growth and jobs". And he warned that the private sector recovery could not be "taken for granted".

Johnson like most politicians seems to have forgotten a few key rules of life.
1) When in a hole, stop digging.
2) You can't keep spending what you haven't got.
3) Sooner or later the money you get in simply pays the debt and leaves nothing for anything else.
4) It's not your money to play with it's the taxpayers!

Politics, particularly the politics of the left seems to attract the hard of thinking after all, socialism is supposed to provide all the answers, despite the fact that everywhere its been tried, its failed miserably (and no the Scandinavian countries aren't beacons of socialism, they have high income tax but low business tax)
So, considering we're in a recession, possibly heading for a double dip recession, what is Labours answer? To carry on with the failed policies that put us there in the first place.

You really couldn't make it up, then again a definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result Perhaps they new politically correct definition of an insane person should be "socialistically inclined"

More about → They never learn

They seek her here...

One of the things the EUphiles hate is the fact that the UK gets a budget rebate from the EU, it currently stands at £3 billion, it used to be a lot more but successive prime ministers since Thatcher have allowed it to be whittled away usually under the influence of our treacherous foreign office mandarins who seem to want this country to be totally subsumed by the EU and turned into faceless regions rather than a homogeneous whole.
So it's not entirely too surprising that the EU foreign affairs supremo baroness Ashton managed to contrive not to be at the meetings where the budget rebate was discussed, being at a luxury hotel in Mauritius at an anti-piracy meeting.

Express.

SENIOR Eurocrat Baroness Ashton came under fresh attack last night after failing to attend crucial talks about the future of Britain’s £3billion EU rebate.

The EU foreign affairs supremo was at a summit on the luxurious island resort of Mauritius when other European Commission chiefs were discussing axing the annual repayment.

Her absence has enraged critics at Westminster, who argue the £231,000-a-year bureaucrat is not standing up for Britain in Brussels. It meant there was no British representative present to argue against ending the rebate and imposing more EU taxes on the UK.

Tory MP Bill Cash, chairman of the Commons European scrutiny committee, said her non-attendance would be raised in Parliament next week.

“She can’t be everywhere at once but unless there is a profound reason it is regrettable that she has not attended,” he said. Lady Ashton has been criticised since becoming the surprise choice of EU leaders last year for the foreign affairs post, created under the Lisbon Treaty.

The Labour peer, effectively number two to EU President Herman van Rompuy, is seen by some as the world’s most influential female politician. But critics say she is not up to the job.

EU leaders are pressing for the scrapping of Britain’s rebate, won by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984. Rather than attend a discussion on the issue on Thursday, Lady Ashton was at an anti-piracy meeting at the Grand Baie, Mauritius.

She also missed another meeting earlier this month. On both occasions, her Commission seat was filled by James Morrison, her British chief of staff, but he was not allowed to speak.

A spokesman for Lady Ashton said: “She has absolutely promised to be present when the budget review proposals are finalised on October 19.”

I honestly don't know why Cameron didn't sack the useless old bag the minute he became Prime Minister, well not unless of course he is sympathetic with the EU cause, something I and many other bloggers on the right and left suspect. At the minute though Cameron has the excuse that domestic troubles with the recession are taking up his time, but losing a £3 billion chunk of the budget will blow that out of the water. The EU is the fault line in the Tory Party between it and the Lib Dems, if UKIP hammer the Tories in the next EU elections or even solidify their votes into a solid second place it could force a referendum on the place of the UK in the EU, the in or out vote that no politician or civil service mandarin wants as it's highly likely that we'll vote to leave.
In one sense Baroness Ashton is helping this along, her idiocy strengthens the EUskeptic cause, but the damage she does to the UK outweighs this as her weakness allows the other members to railroad through legislation that needs far more scrutiny than this remarkably dim woman can give.

Can we just leave? Now!

More about → They seek her here...