Lycraphobia

There's no doubt about it, cycling is a healthy sport, good for non impact muscle development and cardiovascular stimulation. However it seems some people do not wish to cycle as they do not want to appear weird...
Telegraph.

The fear or seeming “weird” is putting people off cycling to work, an academic study has found.

A three year research project has discovered that not fitting in, alongside “squashed helmet hair” and turning up “hot and sweaty” for meetings are the biggest deterrents for using a bike to commute.
Successive Governments have invested £150 million to promote cycling as an environmentally friendly way of travelling.
But there appears to be a long way to go before the public is convinced, according to the study funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
“I get called the bag lady, because I walk everywhere and I have quite a lot of stuff with me,” said Steph, a respondent from Leeds.
Lara, also from Leeds, complained: The helmet is a problem for me, because I just think it would make my hair a little squashed.” 

Meanwhile Joe from Leicester added: “I probably would cycle if I didn’t worry so much about image and public opinion – me arriving at a meeting hot and sweaty.”
Sally from Worcester observed: “You do get a sense of some people thinking oh, you’re a bit weird because you’re going up on the bike you know. A bit odd.”

And these are all valid points save perhaps for the turning up on a bike being weird. We have a number of guys here cycle to work, oddly enough though none of them are office staff, I rather suspect turning up to work in the office sweating buckets is somehow frowned upon, though there are shower facilities available, but then you have all the extra gear to carry and it just seems like you're doing your morning ablutions all over again. And helmet head is definitely not something a fashion conscious lady really wants to contemplate either.
So essentially the government is wasting £150 million of our money trying to get people to do what they just don't see the point of, cycling for pleasure, yes, cycling to work with a full shift ahead of you? No.
I can't see this changing a great deal in the future either, cars are just too handy if you want to turn up smart.

 

More about → Lycraphobia

Checks and balances

Before governments became so obsessed by what we think and do and all the unnecessary checks that the busybodies put into the systemwhen women who'd had a baby wanted to go back into the jobs market they could usually find a minder, often enough a family member, but occasionally a neighbour, essentially someone they trusted. Sometimes it cost them a few quid, but the whole point of doing it was so that yes they could work, but yes at the end of the day they had something to show for working. Even the registered childminders for all they weren't cheap, were still affordable, at least until health and safety regulations, followed by the now mandatory CRB checks came into force. The end result has of course been inevitable...
Express.

THE soaring cost of childcare forced 32,000 working mothers to quit their jobs in the past year, a study revealed yesterday.

Women working part-time and earning on average £8,557 are £98 worse off at the end of the month if they have to pay nursery charges.

Research by insurers Aviva found that 32,000 mothers left work to look after their children while their husbands become the sole earners.

The study also found that those in full-time work, earning an average of £17,513, have just £120 left over after paying for childcare, which can cost around £385 per month.

For children under two this soars to £729 a month.

Yep, if you can't find family or friends, you're buggered as the price you pay now goes way above what you earn if you're in the low paid sector/minimum wage area of the market. It means even if you want to work you're better off on benefits looking after your kids. Of course if you work you lose other housing and income support benefits too such is the system that has been foisted upon us.
The governments insistence on Criminal Record Bureau checks on anyone who comes into contact with kids has pushed the costs up as this cost is now factored into any payments working mums shell out, plus if you have a high turnover of staff, each new member needs a check, whether they were approved at their old place of work or not.

What the end result of this will be I do not know, it may be that more stay at home mums means better educated and behaved kids, it might even lead to the regeneration of our society back into a self help one. I doubt that was the original intention of the government though, it was all purely another attempt to dip their hands into our pockets. But as ever in these things, they've pushed it too far and some unintended circumstances has kicked in. They're losing workers in the jobs market, but kids are seeing more of their mums.
Might be a light at the end of the tunnel after all, only time will tell.

More about → Checks and balances

We're paying for this?

I'd never heard of the Government Art Collection (GAC) before, but apparently in the past they'ver managed to buy up (with our money) 13,000 works of art by British artists in a variety of media including paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs, textiles and video works, from the sixteenth century to the present day.
Artists represented in the collection include John Constable, William Hogarth, Lucian Freud, Paul Nash, Barbara Hepworth, Michael Landy, Bridget Riley, Emma Kay and Zarina Bhimji. And I suppose that because some of those have stood the test of time well and increased in value it could be considered a valuable resource, other than the fact that the government is unlikely ever to sell these things.
Telegraph.

If the art works hanging on a wall reflect the frame of mind of the residents, the current mood within Downing Street appears to be a mixture of gloom and dry humour.

Among the new works recently hung in the Prime Minister's official residence is Grim's Ditch, a dark, some might say depressing painting depicting a muddy, waterlogged ditch.

The enamel and oil on aluminium work by the contemporary artist Clare Woods, was bought for £11,985 by the Government Art Collection (GAC), which supplies art for ministerial offices.

At first glance, two other works resemble a pair old newspapers – Financial Times: Billboard Wednesday, September 17 1986 and The Wall Street Journal: Billboard Saturday, July 15, 1985 – by Conrad Atkinson. But on closer inspection, they appear to hint at a sense of humour within Downing Street.

The lithographs, which cost £4,500 for the pair, are spoof versions of the newspapers, with headlines that include: "Premier Thatcher declares new campaign to send intellectuals into the countryside for re-education", "Sir Geoffrey Howe introduces Foucault texts on the nature of power & culture to a packed house," and "Kinnock and Raphael in bust-up about the meaning of beauty."
Another work recently purchased for the GAC includes the abstract work Fireeye Elevator by the artist Michael Stubbs.
The picture features a series of swirls and streaked lines, and came with a £9,500 price tag. It is made from household paint and tinted floor varnish.
Amid a stalling economy, public spending cuts and the threat of another recession, the Government might be expected to tighten its belt when decorating the walls of Whitehall.
But figures obtained by The Sunday Telegraph reveal that the GAC has cost more than half a million pounds in the last year.
George Osborne, the Chancellor, has decorated his office with an etching by Grayson Perry, the cross-dressing artist, aptly titled Print for a Politician.
It depicts a battle scene with warring tribes carrying labels such as "provincials", "agnostics" and "homosexuals".
The office of Ed Vaizey, the Culture Minister, is decorated with a cartoon entitled The Mystery of British Culture by Adam Dant, and two prints by Tracey Emin, Margate 1 Sand and Still Love You Margate.
The Government spent £541,000 on the GAC in the last year, and has faced criticism for continuing to purchase art, despite the economic downturn.

Most places of work don't spend their profits on art, only the public sector seem to have this self aggrandisement going on with raids on the public purse to decorate their offices and buildings with (so called) art work that frequently costs thousands of pounds and all coming from the taxpayer. In a time of austerity for all (supposedly) the government should not be wasting money on buying up cheap tat called art only because it has a thousand pound bill attached.
This is an area where savings could be made, in fact there are lots of areas where savings could be made, but yes, this is one of the more obvious ones. No, this isn't a tilt at modern art either, like with a lot of things, I know what I like and most modern art, particularly that which seeks to make some sort of political point leaves me cold, but there are some pieces I like too. That said, I wouldn't waste my money on any of them nor do I see any reason for the government to waste my money on them either.
Museums and art galleries often have "spare" stuff in storage, the government could request some of that to be displayed in government buildings if they want some new decor.

More about → We're paying for this?

Contraband

The government is currently tying itself up in knots over various policies in which it's trying to either raise revenue by increased taxation or social engineer us into taking better care of our health often enough by increased taxation and restrictions on where and when we can do certain things. The smoking ban and various on street drinking bans spring to mind along with the yearly above inflation duty increases that come with each budget. Of course one of the things that happens when prices go too high is that people will look for alternatives, even banning a product will not work, look at just how well prohibition worked in the USA to see a classic example of meddling with the market, consumer simply went to those who were prepared to supply them with what they wanted, in that case it was criminal gangs, which is where most drug users in the UK go as simply banning a product doesn't prevent people from getting what they want anyway.
BBC.

Twelve million counterfeit cigarettes have been discovered during a search of a warehouse in Gateshead.
HM Revenue and Customs officers said it took three lorries to remove the haul and a full day to count the cigarettes.
The haul, worth £2.2m, was found during checks on industrial sites in the area on Wednesday.
HMRC spokesman Michael Connolly said the find was "staggering" and the largest ever seizure of its kind in the North East.
"This was a staggering amount of cigarettes to uncover in one place and shows the scale of this type of crime," he said.
"Each year the British economy loses over two billion pounds in duty from the sale of illicit tobacco, money that is ploughed straight back into funding other criminal activity in our neighbourhoods."

 A classic example, the government makes the price too high by piling on the duty and the criminal element see an opening and sell people cheap cigarettes and no doubt make a large profit as there wont be much in the way of quality control or other checks. You also have the HMRC complaining about the loss in revenue and yet who is to blame for this situation? Well the pointing finger goes straight back to those who made the product too expensive in the first place, Her Majesties Government and the anti-smoking lobby who encouraged the authoritarian anti liberty ban and the various duty hikes, although the government has always used drinkers, smokers and motorists as cash cows anyway and didn't need much encouraging.
This, all in all is a classic example of free market policies, make something too expensive and people will look for alternatives. If the government want to increase revenue then it needs to lower duty to the point where people will buy the legit product and the criminals will move onto something else.

More about → Contraband

Or how about getting rid of it altogether?

VAT, a dreadful tax and a burden to both consumers and businesses and of course partly under the control of the EU. There are alternatives out there that would work better and be easier to administer, hell we could just get politicians to decide what the spending of the next financial year will be, figure out a universal tax rate to cover it and go from there. Even better, have it announced just before an election along with am alternative from all opposition parties and see just how quickly savings could be made.

Express.

VAT must be slashed by at least five per cent to kickstart Britain’s struggling economy, chiefs of small businesses warned in a report yesterday.
The leaders of the nation’s small businesses – which make up 99 per cent of all firms in the UK – lobbied ministers after it emerged that business confidence has tumbled in the three months to June.
If VAT is not cut to 15 per cent Britain’s recovery will falter, said the Federation of Small Businesses.
Hard-pressed consumers are simply not spending as much when almost all purchases carry 20 per cent VAT.
The construction and tourism sectors in particular are suffering, as are car retailers.
The federation, which represents firms typically employing fewer than 49 staff, says such VAT cuts would help boost consumer spending and help to create new jobs.
Greater spending could make up for lost revenue to the Treasury. John Walker, chairman of the FSB, said: “The economy is still in a fragile state and these figures show the Government’s growth strategy is just not working.

Yes I know we can't really do anything about VAT at least not until we leave the EU (please, please) but frankly the whole tax situation in the UK is an utter mess anyway, it needs simplifying more than anything. Move all tax into one category, get rid of VAT, national insurance and any other extras and keep it simple. Same with benefits have one universal benefit/pension and run it via the inland revenue as a negative tax code. Yes you can have various levels in it depending on invalidity etc but these are additions via a tax code rather than a separate system. As for rates, go for a land value tax rather than council taxes, the more your land is worth, the more you pay.
It's way past time that the whole idea and implementation of taxation is looked at in the UK, it needs simplifying and streamlining and it wont happen whilst we're in the EU.
Just another reason to leave, really.

More about → Or how about getting rid of it altogether?

It pays to ask

There are times when I wonder if I'm the classic voice in the wilderness, or rather a minority voice in the wilderness as you can tell from my blog list. I tend to read quite a few other blogs not mentioned on the list too, though they are mainly what I call the "opposition" and it would be churlish to expect that they blogroll me. Nor do I see any reason to list them, particularly as they rarely have anything on to write home about, though if you do blog and have me on your blogroll and I don't list you, let me know, quid pro quo is the exchange of choice out here in the blogosphere.
In practice though we only tend to go where we feel welcome, so with a few notable exceptions most of my blogroll is of right, libertarian, Anglo-nationalist blogs, one of the few exceptions being Harry's Place which for all I don't tend to agree with them is always a damned good read.
Still, it's nice to know that my views on certain things echo with the public as a whole occasionally.

Express.

SEVEN out of 10 voters want Britain’s spending on foreign aid frozen or slashed.

And 43 per cent want to scrap it entirely, a new poll reveals today.

David Cameron has vowed to increase Britain’s foreign aid budget to more than £12billion by 2013 while ordering most other Government departments to make drastic spending cuts.

But 69 per cent support freezing the budget at its current level of £8.4billion a year, saving £3.7billion, according to the YouGov/ TaxPayers’ Alliance survey.

The poll also reveals support for cutting spending on the controversial high-speed rail project, trade union funding and a Green Investment bank.

Results found that 48 per cent support cancelling the high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester – a saving of £30billion.

And 51 per cent would like to save £67.5million by stopping the practice of paying full-time trade union organisers in large public sector organisations.

Matthew Sinclair, director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Ordinary families are facing higher taxes and huge pressure on their finances.

“There is strong support for cutting expensive projects like high-speed rail, which they don’t see as the right use of their cash.

“There is no way taxpayers’ money should be supporting thousands of trade union activists who are planning strikes and fighting very necessary cuts to public spending.”

Naturally enough the Tax Payers Alliance are going to have a sympathetic place in my mind, but it's always nice to know that somewhere out there at least half of the people (roughly) agree with a few of the things I have a go at, mainly that charity begins at home and that the government should not be a charitable giver, even to the point of not paying the way of union reps in public service.
There is a direct disconnect between politicians and the use they make of taxpayers money, they see it as their money to spend how they wish and it's not for us to tell them what to spend it on. Which is why I'm also coming round to the idea that Referism is worth supporting, after all if they know we'll get a direct vote on their spending, they'll make damned sure we'll like what they put to us (we can always hope) but most people who could be bothered to vote will at least know the economic realities involved. I can't see the powers that be going for it unless they have their hands twisted up their backs by the weight of public opinion, or more likely their heads in a noose.
It's always nice to know though that in the greater scheme of things, you aren't quite a small minority after all.

More about → It pays to ask

Taking the mickey

Seems our idiot government has decided that it might be a good idea to pay people who shouldn't be here to go home.

Express.

FOREIGN criminals have been handed up to £25million of taxpayers’ cash to go home despite having no right to remain here, it emerged yesterday.
State “bribes” dished out under the Home Office’s voluntary return programme were given to nearly half of all overseas prisoners removed in the past 16 months alone at a cost of up to £12million, according to leaked documents.
The figure is about the same amount paid out in the first three years of the scheme and shows how common the controversial handouts are becoming.
Just one in three prisoners deported in 2009 left under the voluntary programme. Last year that figure was closer to one in two.
The UK Border Agency defended the payments of up to £1,500, saying they help avoid costly deportation battles, but critics yesterday hit out at the idea of paying money to convicts, who include rapists and muggers.

Costly deportation battles? I'm sorry but they shouldn't be here and shouldn't even get the option to fight deportation, even if they've settled and have families. And, what's to stop them simply coming back after they leave? It really is simple, we should not be using taxpayers money as a bribe to get anyone to leave, nor should we be allowing them any attempt to appeal deportation for being here illegally. If you're caught, you're gone, simple as that and all your worldly goods other than the clothes you stand in are sold off to pay your fare and fine. This should especially apply to criminals if you're here illegally and break the law then your feet should not touch the ground once you've served your sentence, you have no right to be here and secondly you've broken other laws as well!
I would not have believed we would do something so stupid as to give criminals money to go away as little as even 15 years ago. Now it's producing nothing other than a tut and a typical comment from most around me.
Welcome to the mad house that is the UK.

More about → Taking the mickey

This is what happens if you make the price too high.

It's something that is well understood by the public but seems to be a bit of a blindspot for those in authority whether in government or utility companies. If you price a commodity too high or even attempt to ban it, then people will find a way around it legally or illegally. Happens with drugs, happening with cigarettes and tobacco and happening with alcohol. There are really times I am blessed by living 45 miles from Dover, I can make massive savings by doing a booze cruise as and whenever I need too, others will use "a man in a van" to buy their cut price ciggies, it happens all over the place and the righteous have only themselves to blame for trying to socially engineer out of demand something that the people clearly are not prepared to do without.
Now it's starting to happen with electricity...

BBC.

Criminal gangs are targeting people with electricity pre-payment meters in a doorstep fraud with hotspots reported in Kent, London and the Midlands.

Crimestoppers has warned people to be alert to the doorstep fraud and offered a £10,000 reward for information.

The fraudsters sell illegal, cut-price electricity top-ups by pushing a cloned key into people's meters to add credit.

Data from six energy companies has shown more than 120,000 people have been affected across the UK.

More than 5,300 incidents have been reported in Kent this year. Birmingham saw 6,978 incidents.

Across the country, customers have given the criminal gangs more than £7m, figures from British Gas, EDF Energy, E.ON, npower, Scottish Power and SSE have shown.

Over the last 13 years ever since governments got heavily into the climate levy scam, electricity and gas prices have risen well above that of inflation and this affects those particularly at the bottom end of the financial scale who struggle from week to week juggling their budgets and making decisions as to heat the house, top up the car or have something other than beans on toast as their main meal for once. So if someone comes along and offers a £10 top up for £5 what do you think is going to happen? Pretty much the same as what happens when someone offers cheap ciggies, booze or a half inched pay as you go mobile top up. No, I'm not saying everyone will do this, but if the government and by proxy the utility companied continue to squeeze us all financially then sooner or later people will look for ways around it. It will be unregulated uncontrolled and at times illegal and yes people will get caught, it won't stop others from doing it though and new scams will develop as the people doing it get more sophisticated. I rather expect that when the companies try to foist smart meters on us all that someone somewhere will develop a hack so they can't be controlled from outside or at least appear as if they are working when they aren't.
There's probably some natural law or formula out there to describe the phenomena of diminishing returns for price increases, the laffer curve I know describes it. Private industry know it quite well and it affects their pricing policies, however when governments become involved then this goes out of the window as they just raise prices and duties to fill their coffers without regard to the consequences. One of the consequences is of course that people will look for an alternative, happens every time, without fail legally or illegally. Prohibition in the USA shows what happens when governments interfere too much in the market, criminals step in to fill the gap because the demand doesn't go away it just goes underground.

More about → This is what happens if you make the price too high.

A never ending spiral

What is it about governments that they can only see tax rises as a solution to the rising cost of running the state rather than tax cuts to stimulate an economy? I suppose in one sense they are a bit leery of the public service unions throwing a kiddy tantrum and stopping vital services, though what's so vital about a lot of public services escapes most people, I doubt we'd even notice a strike by diversity co-ordinators after all is said and done, though I doubt they'll be the ones in the firing line, more likely it will be something a bit more irritating to the public though I'm damned if I know what or who.
Rising costs caused by tax or duty increases inevitably filter down to the public and non so quick as fuel duty...

Express.

FURIOUS motorists could set up crippling blockades over the soaring cost of ­petrol with prices set to hit £1.40 a litre, campaigners warned last night.

Professional and private drivers are facing huge rises in costs with duty and VAT increases adding 3.5p to the cost of a litre on unleaded over the next few days.

And experts warned that rocketing costs of crude oil, plus further tax rises could force prices even higher.

Yesterday, pump prices at many service stations across the country had soared above 130p a litre for petrol and over 135p for diesel.

David Handley, from Wales, one of the leaders of the 2000 lorry blockades which caused panic buying, said a protest was “on the radar”.

He said hauliers, farmers and other groups had been in discussions for “several months” about ways to ­revive their protests.

Hugh Bladon, of the Association of British Drivers, said: “We’re coming close to having some real civil unrest because of these rises.

“If haulage companies delivering goods to the shops are being drained of money by fuel costs, it filters down and the cost of living soars – it affects everyone.

“It wouldn’t surprise me at all if we saw more fuel ­blockades, and we would be sympathetic to the hauliers.

“There’s a limit to how much hauliers and motorists will take.”

One Leicestershire farmer, who asked not to be named, said: “There is definitely an appetite for a protest on a big scale. We need to make our voices heard.” On New Year’s Day, fuel duty rose by 0.76p a litre, while tomorrow VAT will go up from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent.

It is expected to add about 3.5p to the cost of a litre of unleaded, which had already hit a record high by the end of 2010. A further planned duty increase in April will add another 4p to a litre.

This is without any rise in the price of a barrel of oil either, fuel is a cash cow for the government, they've even put a green levy on the stuff officially to try and stop us  using uneconomic vehicles and methods of combustion, but in reality it's just another revenue raiser. But fuel is used to transport goods around the country so expect to see food and other prices rise too, then expect to see wage demands rise as people find that what used to last the month comfortably now just squeaks them through assuming they are lucky. Expect to find the demand for certain items nose dive and businesses start to go to the wall as people stop buying extras to their lifestyle. The high street already struggling with parking charges and out of town shopping could well be killed off altogether as they can't compete and no one can afford what they are selling. Taxi, train and bus fares will rise too, so getting about without your own transport becomes more and more prohibitive. The job you have which starts at an hour when there is no public transport for all it used to pay well now is a millstone of transport cost for you and you struggle to be able to afford to work there, never mind wonder why you took out a loan for a new(er) car. You here very desperate vehicle manufacturers claim magical fuel economy figures on new models which no-one can really afford any more. So unemployment starts to rise in the private sector as the public sector is cushioned somewhat by unrealistic pay rises again fuelled by increases in local taxes that no-one can afford so easily.
Yet it would be so easy to stop in its tracks, cut the state, cut the excess from the state like the private sector has done, channel the savings into a reduction in taxes and duty. Give tax allowances to private companies who create new jobs in the UK, not transferring jobs around the UK make the UK a good place to run an international business from, even if it's just an office, it will create jobs.
No, I know it's not as simple as I make out, but it is possible and it ought to be necessary, but I suspect it will take rioting in the streets and a march on the political classes leafy suburbs before they realise that it could be their necks in the noose if they don't reduce the cost of government. It's amazing how the thought of being hung can focus the mind after all.

More about → A never ending spiral

Can't pay, wont pay?

Seems local councils are out to pick the pockets of taxpayers again to plug a black hole in their pension schemes.

Telegraph.

Every household in Britain will need to pay an extra £200 a year to plug the black hole in local Government pensions, figures have suggested.
Latest research suggests the deficit in Local Government Pension Schemes in England may have more than doubled in the past three years to £100 billion.

It compares with a shortfall of £42 billion three years ago, according to the data published by pension consultant John Ralfe.

He suggested taxpayers and scheme members will have to pay some £4 billion extra a year into local authority pensions to plug the gap over the next couple of decades.

It equates to an increase of two-thirds in pension contributions, from £300 to £500 a year for every household.

Mr Ralfe attributed the widening gap to the performance of the stock market, saying pension promises of local Government could not be met without additional contributions from taxpayers.

This is the major problem in final salary schemes and it's not going to go away unless something is done to deal with it fairly radically. Not that I expect the various public service unions to react well to radically. Ending these schemes would be one way to tackle it, increasing members contributions too, increasing the retirement age for public servants would be another one, no pension till you're 65+ might just crack it.
The way they are going though is to tap into ordinary residents and pick their pockets in the middle of a recession. Guess how well that's going to go down.

Most people only want to pay for the services they see councils providing that are useful. Emptying the bins, lighting the steets, repairing the pavements, parks, leisure etc. They don't see the need to pay for town twinning trips, idiotic green initiatives, diversity co-ordinators, council propaganda (news letters), race relations initiatives, translation services etc. If they were scrapped and councils streamlined, perhaps the increases could be met from that.
I'm not going to hold my breath on that though. I'm just sick and tired of having my pocket picked for stuff I have no interest in paying for and council pensions is one of them I pay my own pension, why can't they pay for theirs?

More about → Can't pay, wont pay?

Picking our pockets in the name of Gaia

Motorists are going to get a discount if they buy limited range slow charging electric vehicles, guess where the discount is going to come from taxpayers?

Daily Mail.

The first nine plug-in electric cars to qualify for discounts of up to £5,000 are revealed today.

The 'green' emissions-free cars which can be charged up from household mains and deliver 2p-a-mile motoring, go on sale from the New Year with a Government 'Plug-IN Car Grant'.

From January 1, 2011, motorists buying the first three of the named electric cars will get 25 per cent off, up to a maximum of £5,000.

The electric 'plug-in' discount comes as the Government also announces more places around Britain where the cars can be charged up when out on the road.

The taxpayer hand-out aims to kick-start the market for electric vehicles, which are exempt from the London Congestion Charge.

 I don't see why I as a taxpayer should be subsidising anyones buying preference, particularly when the vehicles involved are absolutely no use to me whatsoever. They have limited range, drive at night, in fog or just have the heater going it can get a lot less, large charging times and what they don't tell you is limited battery life with the power pack having to be replaced after 5 or so years at a coat of... you guessed it £5,000. OK if you're just knocking about town occasionally, even then watch your power bills go through the roof too. You might not be buying petrol, but you will be buying electricity.
On top of this usual green madness is the fact the government is handing over taxpayers cash to subsidise this, I'm sure the usual reasons will be trotted out, investing in our future, prices will come down if more are bought, emerging technology etc. Still picking my pocket to do it though.
Can't imagine what will happen when the lights go out in 2012 when the power stations start closing down, doubt the windmills will keep this lot going.

More about → Picking our pockets in the name of Gaia

Not real money

Whitehall waste is in the news (again) as Sir Philip Green owner of Topshop and Bhs who was tasked by Cameron to check on government department spending made his initial report. The report surprised no-one by stating that "staggering" amounts of money could be saved by renegotiating contracts and monitoring outgoings, even to the point of video-conferencing rather than booking hotels for face to face meetings.

Telegraph.

The billionaire owner of Topshop and Bhs found that the Government could save hundreds of millions of pounds if it renegotiated contracts with mobile phone and stationery suppliers.

Sir Philip said ministers could cut swathes of waste from public services after uncovering a “staggering” waste of money. 

He said that the Government’s buying practices were “appalling” and that central Government would be “bankrupt” if it was a standalone business.

The retail chief was asked by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, to carry out an external efficiency review of Whitehall departments in August.

In one example he found 138,000 civil servants were able to spend up to £1,000 a month on special procurement cards with little accountability.

He said: “People are allowed to spend up to £1,000 on stationery, travel or whatever from their normal suppliers.

“There is £1billion spent on that card. Is it spent efficiently? Respectfully, it can’t be because there will be a variation of prices that are getting paid.” 

Sir Philip found that taxpayers paid for 400,000 hotel nights in London last year, costing £38 million.

The prices of the rooms ranged from £77 to £117. “Have they not heard of video conferencing? It is just unacceptable,” he said.

Sir Philip highlighted details of un-coordinated spending, with departments paying wildly different amounts for the same services.

In one instance a department was paying £1.31 a leaflet, compared with a market price of 26p - an 80 per cent difference.

In another, departments were paying anything between £8 and £73 for a box of paper and between £86 and £396 for printer cartridges.

The report revealed that the price of a cup of coffee ranged from £1.45 to 90p, a 38 per cent difference, across Whitehall.

One of the biggest areas where savings could be made was fixed line telecoms, which costs the Government £2 billion a year.

Sir Philip estimated that this could be 30 per cent to 40 per cent cheaper and called for an urgent review of costs.

The annual cost of 105,000 mobile phones, mostly with one provider, was £21million Sir Phillip said it was “inefficient”.

The prices paid for its laptops varied from £353 to £2,000. Sir Philip said that one of his team found the same laptops online for £800.

There are no real surprises there, the civil service have always been fairly crap at awarding contracts and dealing with costs because at the end of the day their "company" can't go bust and they lose their jobs. That's the wonder of the taxpayer funding, until now and FOI requests they've been pretty much able to hide their excesses from the public gaze and just trough away at our expense. Now they are in the spotlight and it doesn't make for a pretty sight. The sheer waste as well as the dodgy practices are unacceptable even in times of economic growth, never mind austerity as Sir Philip said, "central Government would be “bankrupt” if it was a standalone business"
At the end you got the usual Labour spokesweasel claiming they'd been making efficiency cuts, but wanted more details and "fairness" which is the usual gobbledygook phrasing from the bunch that allowed such largesse to carry on under their regime. Fact is, they did it with our taxes and spent a fortune mostly unchecked by a decent audit/accounts dept, because they knew they could, there were never to be any comebacks as the taxpayer fountain would never run out and they probably still believe deep down, it never will.

More about → Not real money

Skimming

Like a lot of people these days I have little or no time for the big public service unions such as Unite or the teaching unions, seeing them more as a barrier to change and reform rather than looking out for the interests of their members. That isn't to say I don't see the use or value of unions, just that they should occupy their correct niche in society and look after their members interests, rather than the interests of the union and its senior organisers and full time staff.

TPA. (Pdf)   

In other words our taxes both local and national are paying the union officials rather than the subs of their members. This is on top of the Labour Party scam of the Union Education Fund which took taxpayers money and more or less matched the contributions the unions made to the Labour Party funding.
More interesting is the fact that the unions themselves are heavily involved in lawmaking in the EU, something our own parliament can do little about as they don't have the ability to veto EU legislation, merely letting it through on the nod without scrutiny.
From my point of view, if the government wants to look to make savings, this is an area where they may find rich pickings, it would also have the bonus of hitting Labour in the pocket too by restricting union influence and money coming to them from the taxpayer rather than the union members themselves. It might also have the added benefit of putting the union leaders under scrutiny for their profligate lifestyles.

Metro.

Bob Crow, head of the transport union the RMT, takes home £105,679 a year.
The average Tube driver earns £40,000 a year and station staff £26,000 but Mr Crow wants his members to launch a ‘class war’ in the wake of a two-year public service pay freeze.
While the average civil servant earns £22,850 a year, Mark Serwotka, head of the PCS union which represents them, earns £111,112. The average teacher takes home £32,630 annually but NUT head NUT Christine Blower takes a salary of £124,483.
Derek Simpson of the Unite union lives in an £800,000 grace-and-favour house with his second wife while taking a salary of £120,328 from his members.

Nothing like seeing how the other half lives and how it's the supposed guardians of the working class who are robbing us blind.

More about → Skimming

Fingers crossed

Tax, seems the inland Revenue have made a bit of a blunder and both undercharged and overcharged the taxpayers of the land in their ever voracious grasping into our wallets and purses.
Seems some people could owe £1500 whilst other could be owed £418. I must admit I hope I'm in that group, or the group who owe and are owed nothing at all.

BBC.

Nearly six million people in the UK have paid the wrong amount of tax.

About £2bn was underpaid via the Pay as You Earn (PAYE) system in the past two years, with about 1.4 million people owing an average of £1,500 each.
But £1.8bn has also been overpaid and some 4.3 million people will get a rebate because they have paid too much.
Treasury minister David Gauke said that in the current financial climate, the government was not in a position to "just wave goodbye" to the money owed.
He said the government had inherited the problem and the PAYE system - which was created in the 1940s - was struggling to cope with modern working patterns.

A new computer system introduced by HMRC in 2009 has allowed more discrepancies to be identified.

As a result millions of letters will be sent to taxpayers across the UK informing them of errors in their contributions.
The first 45,000 are expected to arrive on Tuesday, with 30,000 informing recipients they are due a rebate of on average £418.
The remaining 15,000 letters will tell taxpayers they have underpaid and will have their tax code altered next year to recoup the money.

Times are hard for many folk at the moment and the last thing they need is an unexpected tax bill, particularly when it isn't their fault but that of their employer or HMRC.
Perhaps if people were more responsible for their own tax there would be fewer mistakes, then again PAYE makes it easy, although it puts the onus on employers rather than the people to pay their tax. Someone once posited abolishing PAYE and everyone gets a tax (local and national) bill on the 5th of April, Elections are then held the week after, they reckoned it would reduce bills and eliminate waste as councillors and politicians would move heaven and earth to be re-elected including providing true value for money.

It's worth a thought anyway.

More about → Fingers crossed

Knock on effect

In their desperate scramble to rob us blind by more taxation the government usually opt for various easy marks such as alcohol, tobacco and fuel. The rest is usually just a moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic exercise as what appears to be a lowering on tax is matched by raising it elsewhere.
One of the biggest problems is of course the knock on effect, particularly with fuel, it doesn't just hit us in the pocket at the petrol station as a lot of people think, it also pushes up food and goods prices as it costs more to transport them, add into this a pound weak against the dollar (oil is bought with dollars, this is a major future problem for the USA if OPEC change currencies) and all of a sudden the reason the price of fuel keeps going up is revealed. For all the price of a barrel of oil has gone down since the gulf wars, the exchange rate hasn't been particularly kind to the UK, nor has the economic idiocy of Labour who have blown the overspend on wasted public spending and have left us with a generation of debt to pay back, assuming we can.
Part of the problem as well is all the main political parties play this game too, so reform is unlikely and regaining control of the public purse is as unlikely under the Tories as it ever was with Labour. Yet reform of public finance is exactly what is needed to get us out of this mess. We cannot keep going on printing money to pay our way, we need to massively trim back on public spending, we need to encourage private initiatives and businesses to expand and create the wealth to pay off our debts.

What we wont do is any of that by keep raising taxation, we wont do it by raising NI, nor will we do it by keeping NI the same.
The Tories and Labour are just fighting over the scraps on the table, none of their plans will repair the economy because they are fixated with transferring our money to their pockets to pay the debts (or in the case of Labour keep their client state happy) What really needs to happen is that we leave the EU, use the money we pay them to waste on themselves to cut fuel duties and business taxes and start trading with the world. Invest in our few remaining world class businesses, encourage the city to make money (and pay taxes on it) Make it economic for employers to employ people (scrap the minimum wage) and get our country balanced again where the private (profit making) industries dominate rather than the public ones who simply leach our wealth away.

Perhaps I'm whistling in the wind, there may be good reasons why we can't. But the old system is broken and we and our children face crippling debts because of Labours financial mismanagement unless we can kick start the wealth producing areas of our economy and we can't do that under the EU or the current system

More about → Knock on effect

Fearmongering and desperation

One thing the politicians that make up the Labour government don't like is accountability. They particularly don't like it when it constantly focuses on one area that they are not very good at namely the economy. This is why Labour do not like the Taxpayers Alliance, because they highlight the waste and inefficiency of government spending, something that Labour excels at. This is also why Government in general like Quango's simply because it bypasses accountability and allows the Quango to go ahead and do stuff that the government know they'd be hauled over the coals for.
So, instead of producing facts and figures to show how wrong the Taxpayer Alliance are and also how efficient government departments and spending are what the supporters of the Government do is go for personal attacks.

From the Grauniad.

Taxpayers' Alliance admits director doesn't pay British tax

The Taxpayers' Alliance, a campaign group that calls for tax and spending cuts and claims to represent the interests of taxpayers, has admitted one of its directors does not pay British tax.
The Guardian has learned that Alexander Heath, a director of the increasingly influential free market, rightwing lobby group, lives in a farmhouse in the Loire and has not paid British tax for years.
The admission, made by Matthew Elliott, the TPA's chief executive and founder, is potentially embarrassing for the Conservative party, which has close links to the group that claims to be "the guardian of taxpayers' money, the voice of taxpayers in the media and their representative at Westminster".
At the Conservative party conference in Manchester this week, the TPA's influence was underlined when David Cameron and George Osborne followed its recommendations for freezing public sector pay and capping civil servants' salaries at the level of the prime minister, unless approved by the chancellor.

Now my first reaction is so what, so Alexander Heath lives in France, does that mean as an EU citizen he's not allowed to work for a UK company? Do I envy him living in the Loire? Hell yes! Do I think where he lives has any bearing on his ability to hold the UK Government to account for waste, no, not at all. This is just a personal attack by Government supporters to try and make the Taxpayers Alliance appear to be something they aren't. Yes the Taxpayers Alliance have influence, but that's only because the way Labour have run the economy into the ground, people know things are going to get tougher and one way of easing things on the public is to go after waste and inefficiency. Public spending has soared out of control during this Labour administration, it needs to be reined back and a pay freeze coupled with budget cuts is the easiest way to get control of the situation back.

Senior Labour figures said the admission that a TPA director does not pay British tax "should ring alarm bells" about the group's influence on the debate on tax and spending. The group has also campaigned against green taxes, quangos and town hall pay.

Why should it ring alarm bells? Other than the fact that senior Labour figures can't make his life a misery by taxing the living daylights out of him.

"The least we can expect for an organisation that purports to represent the interests of British taxpayers is that it is run by people that pay British tax," said Jon Cruddas MP, who said he is one of many Labour MPs concerned about the TPA's growing influence.

Again why? Labour have set up Quango's that are  affecting my life that I have no influence at all with and they live and work in this country and who appear to be accountable to no-one.

 "When it emerges that one of the directors doesn't [pay British tax], their motivations seem questionable and alarm bells should start ringing for anyone who comes across the TPA."

Only if you're wasting taxpayers money, but no doubt Mr Cruddas doesn't believe Labour do that.

He said the organisation's backers suggested there was "a revolving door" between Tory donors and supporters of the TPA, although the group denies it is a front for the Conservatives. The TPA's financial backers include Sir Anthony Bamford, the owner of the JCB digger company, and Tony Gallagher, the owner of Gallagher Estates, both Conservative donors, who with 32 other businessmen have donated about £80,000 to the group through the Midlands Industrial Council.

Ah, hear we have the nub of the grievance, they have rich backers who are also Tory Party donors. In other words they are a Tory party front (wonder what Mr Cruddas thinks of Unites contributions to Labour and the influence they have in the Party)
Now the Taxpayers Alliance don't strike me as a Tory front, far from it, I've no doubt they'll be just as tenacious attacking what they see as wastes of money no matter the government and I doubt that their sponsors will go away if the TPA attack the Tories after all, it's in the interests of the sponsors to see low tax rates, not a Tory Government in power.

The TPA's links to the Conservatives include monthly meetings where speakers have included Eric Pickles, the Conservative party chairman, Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, and Daniel Hannan, the Tory Eurosceptic MEP who recently claimed the NHS was "a 60-year mistake".

Ah the politics of spite, got to have the Dan Hannan jibe in to sate the leftist sense of grievance despite the fact that there is monumental waste in the NHS and that no other country in their right mind would copy it.

All in all just a desperate Grauniad smear for Labour against a group who rigorously hold them to account and have the temerity to believe as do most of the right that the best people to decide on how their money is spent are the people who earn it, not the wasteful overtaxing Labour Government.

More about → Fearmongering and desperation