POLITICS CORNER

[Bruff]

No amount of the good Lord's money would convince me...

As I noted a few months back, quite irrespective of one's political beliefs the current Hon Member for Pendle is a believer in the magic properties of water being as he is a signatory to Mr Treddinick MP's Early Day Motions on homepathy and its availability on the NHS. (Folk may recall Treddinick's quite the guy - he charged to the tax payer through his expenses the purchase of a software programme that linked health interventions to the phases of the moon. He's also a great supporter of radionics, which readers will be fascinated to learn is healing via psychic remote control. One wonders as to the sensibilities of those voters who secure his majority in Bosworth).

Frankly, any support for this level of scientific illiteracy (not to say rank idiocy) should make any sane person question why the current Hon Member for Pendle should be let anywhere near the National Legislature. But that said, if we wish for MPs to be 'more like us' then paraphrasing Roger Scruton, we should expect a fair number of clever dicks but also a fair number of blithering idiots. It's just a shame I guess when 'you're' lumbered with one of the latter - and you can check whether your village has its idiot at the sceptical voter webpages.

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

Richard, I had forgotten that! Thanks for reinforcing my anti-Tory prejudices based on long experience and observation. I have stopped fuming about our current incumbents public pronouncements which are basically support for motherhood and apple pie and the Party Line. Every 'good news' and populist bandwagon is boarded immediately while the troubling subjects like the increasing gap between the rich and poor and the continuing fall in disposable incomes on the lower 50percentile are ignored. I was struck by a new campaign announced by the local Tories called 'fair deal for Barlick'. The main plank of this protest at the moment is that money has been allocated in Colne to replace the recently closed recycling centre. Barlick already has a functioning recycling centre and I would have thought that, despite the cuts in council funding, the fact that Colne was going to rectify this deficiency would be a good thing. No mention in any of this about the current council cuts and who initiated them.
The reason why I am so exercised about these things is because they are a microcosm of what is happening nationally. Due to Coalition policies (Pure Tory DNA actually) the stresses in society are building up and a fault line will develop sooner or later. History teaches us that this short term management for purely political purposes always leads ultimately to a dénouement when the pigeons come home to roost.
It was said of the Great War that Europe 'sleepwalked' into it. As generalised pronouncements go, this is reasonably accurate. I see the UK at the moment as sleep walking into a very troubled future and the sooner the electorate wakes up to this fact the better. Where better to start than at home, after all, 'All politics is local'. I fear for the legacy we are leaving to our grandchildren. Jumping on bandwagons and ignoring the fault lines will not do I'm afraid. Problems must be faced and addressed.
Look back at the trillions spent on Iraq and Afghanistan. Consider the two useless aircraft carriers and Trident which do nothing but signal our desperation to preserve international status and the ability to 'punch above our weight' (what a stupid aspiration that is!) and then consider what a difference it would have made to our current state if these decisions and that made by Labour to throw all the money at the banks had not happened but had been invested in our social services and infrastructure. Go back further and note what we did with the windfall of North Sea Oil. Do we never learn?

[Tizer]

Richard, I wonder if the `current Hon Member for Pendle' has also bought some shares in that wonderfully clever machine that the Egyptian army has invented for detecting and curing AIDS and hepatitis by waving it at the patient? And which is said to be based on a bomb detector...and sounds suspiciously like the `detector' sold by the conman from Yeovil?

Stanley, at election time I usually find I have to vote on the principle of `the best of the worst' but I worry now that when the next election comes round I don't have any party to vote for, even the best of the worst isn't good enough. Yet I believe in the importance of voting. What am I to do - and I'm sure I'm not alone in facing this predicament.
Yours,
Troubled of Tunbridge Wells

[Thomo]

No Tizer, you are not alone. We live in a situation where whatever good done by the current Government Is derided on principle by the opposition, and were the roles to be reversed could be even more devastating than previous mistakes made. Gut feeling may be more beneficial than what one was brought up to believe.

[PanBiker]

Stanley, at election time I usually find I have to vote on the principle of `the best of the worst' but I worry now that when the next election comes round I don't have any party to vote for, even the best of the worst isn't good enough. Yet I believe in the importance of voting. What am I to do - and I'm sure I'm not alone in facing this predicament.
Yours,
Troubled of Tunbridge Wells

You could "spoil your paper" Tiz, not the ideal strategy but does satisfy the need to make your mark and will still be counted and in a bizarre way more closely scrutinised by the candidates. All spoilt papers are counted and looked at by the candidates to see if they can claim a vote from them, no so with an open and shut mark in a box. I have felt the need to do it once and did not feel disenfranchised when leaving the polling station.

[Stanley]

I agree with you about the dilemma. I'm afraid that in a general election I simply go back to my roots and vote Labour of the grounds that someone has to do it and give them half a chance to climb out of the hole they are in. Pathetic I know but at least it enables me to avoid any other course. The 'least worst' principle....
Public Health Warning. Don't read this week's edition of Private Eye.... It will not do your blood pressure any good. Give PE their due, they do the digging and present the facts, vary few publications are doing that these days. And before someone comes up with the canard about their unreliability, ask yourself why they are not sued every week and why politicians, particularly the awkward squad like Margaret Hodge, quote them frequently.

[Stanley]

Well worth listening to George Soros on Today this morning. His opinion must be worth something and he sees trouble coming for the EU because of the disparity between the rich nations and the poor which means that sanctions will continue to be applied against them to 'improve their economies' but in fact this will hold them back. He says it is impossible for them to get back into the mainstream. The consequence of all this he thinks will be unrest and a possible shift to the right in politics. Not a cheerful forecast but it makes sense. Incidentally he says that at the moment the UK has the best of both worlds, membership of the EU but not of the currency union.

[Tizer]

Likewise, the BoE's Mark Carney is predicting that no matter how well we might be doing in the near future it'll be the trouble in EU countries that drags us down.

There are troubling ripples in China at the moment with a company saying it won't be able to pay off its bond holders. It's not one of the biggest Chinese companies but there are worries that it might spread to the bigger ones. In the past China has bailed out companies but it looks like they are leaving this one to fail and that could suggest they've changed their attitude. The Times considers it a sign of possible major trouble coming soon.

[Stanley]

"it'll be the trouble in EU countries that drags us down."
That was the point that Soros was making. I have always said that the Euro currency was the major problem and we all know the historic reasons for that, basic economics was ignored in the interests of a surface unity. He went further by saying that he feared the law of unintended consequences could kick in and lead to unrest and a possible shift to the Right.
One thing is certain, the original hard line being adopted by the Central Bank/Germany was modified when it became obvious that there was a real danger of default particularly in the Mediterranean and money was pumped in to avert this. Remember Cyprus? A basket case if ever there was one but all of a sudden the danger receded. Once Merkel had consolidated her political position in the elections last year she had the clout to continue the bail-out process. I am convinced that everything we see reported is smoke and mirrors, only the good news is allowed to surface. Behind the scenes acres of sticking plaster has been applied to hold the Euro together and this is beginning to become apparent in GDP figures and the parity of the Euro. This is a slow process and I suspect that the game plan is to hold the project together until full federalisation can be achieved.
Meanwhile, another major smoke and mirror exercise in the UK polishes the image of our economy and the US rising triumphant from the debacle of 2008. No mention that, like the original boom, it is all based on debt. No mention of the increasing disparity between the top of the economy and the bottom. No mention of the dangers to society this will entail. No real reorganisation of the financial sector and even Mark Carney warns 'that the recovery is unbalanced and not sustainable".
Switch back to the EU and the wider global economy and remember what Harold said about "Events dear boy". I don't see how we can avoid such global events and that's where the real danger lies.
The lesson of 2008 should have been that our present model of global unrestrained capitalism and the tyranny of the market is flawed. Friedman style economics and the Chicago School which have driven economic thought on the Right for over 30 years is discredited but survives because it was designed to allow the great capital holders to make profit even from disaster. Read Naomi Klein again and recognise that her concept of "The Shock Doctrine" is not only viable but almost certainly the truth. I don't normally go for conspiracy theorise but I can see the sense in this one. Remember also that this model is politically attractive because the massive flows of funny money produce easy tax revenues and was so attractive that it was called 'The New Economy". The politicians loved it and from their perspective they are looking for a similar successor, there is no incentive to innovate.
I get boring I know, I could go on and on. It's the biggest mess I have ever seen and Marx predicted it in 'Das Kapital'. Problem there of course is that people associate him with the worst aspects of Communism. In fact 'Das Kapital' has nothing to do with that, it is pure, innovative economic philosophy. How many have actually read him and understood?

[Stanley]

Well done Margaret Hodge! See this LINK for her latest blast on the miserable record of government and the Civil Service with outsourcing contracts to private industry. Time and time again we have seen contractors run rings round the government. Examples are too numerous to mention but many of them have clauses in them which mean that it is uneconomic to get out of them.

[Bruff]

Lord Lawson was arguing this morning that The Chancellor should do something about the increasing numbers of people in the 40p tax band. Nothing surprising in that.

What is surprising is that we didn't have a climate scientist on telling him he was speaking absolute nonsense. For balance, you see. I don't expect the climate scientist to 'argue' with him. Just say it's rubbish. That's enough, and what passes for rigour and enquiry these days....

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

I know I'm slightly eccentric in some of my views but in all the time I was in low paid jobs and paying tax it never worried me because I had this old-fashioned belief that it was necessary to fund the things that really mattered to me, education, health care etc. It seemed fair that I should pay my share. All this at a time when we were surviving, rearing kids and living hand to mouth. The difference was that I had a secure job with fair pay and conditions and we were used to cutting our coat to suit our cloth. It was hard, but we didn't feel oppressed.
It's different today for the lowest 50% who are struggling on low wages and watching inflation reducing their disposable income week by week. Everything should be done to help them. However, I have very little sympathy for what it is fashionable to call 'The Oppressed Middle Class', if their income qualifies them for the 40p band why shouldn't they pay it? Surely it is fair to spread the load of taxation to finance the country?
What is worse is the number of 'high net worth' people who can afford to pay clever lawyers and accountants to manage their affairs so that they escape the worst effects of legitimate tax demands. If there is unfairness in the system I suggest that instead of advocating cuts which will be politically effective in attracting voters the tax avoiders should be attacked first because what they are doing is ethically and morally wrong.

[Bruff]

Wasn't defending Lawson, simply making a sly point regarding his egregious views on climate science.

Would agree - never botherd me paying tax, or paying a lot of tax, or paying for things personally I would never directly benefit from. (I don't have children but begrudge not one penny of mine going torwards their healthcare, childcare, child benefit, education and so on. I'm hardly likely to be flooded but given that during these floods the affected didn't cry out for the 'big society' to ride to their rescue, I begrudge not one penny of this money of mine that is 'no object' going to them).

The quid pro quo of course, is that these folk don't for example see me as a scrounger should I sometime have to rely on the state for support. I know that if this Government has a narrative it's probably 'effing scroungers everywhere'. But the reality is there really, really aren't.

Richard Broughton

[plaques]

One of the things that really annoys me is the reply given to Ed Balls proposal to limit pension relief to 20% on earnings over £150,000. If you disagree with it, fine, that's a good enough reason but to say that the clever accountants will only find loopholes round it therefore we shouldn't consider it smacks of excuses. I agree any future government should be giving priority to closing loopholes. Will we see it from the Tories. I doubt it.

[Tizer]

Wasn't defending Lawson, simply making a sly point regarding his egregious views on climate science.

I enjoyed it Richard, thanks.

[Stanley]

I must be slowing down Richard. I clocked the allusion but missed the point! Will try harder in future......
Watched Cameron biting down on his prejudices and managing to find a form of words that worked in his obligatory tribute to Wedgie Benn.
This surprised me: LINK. Michael Gove criticising the number of old Etonians in the Cabinet.

[Stanley]

I see there is every chance that Ossie is planning some sort of give-away to alleviate the 'hardship' being suffered by those who have been caught in the 40% bracket. This is the wrong priority, if there is any slack in the economy it should be directed to helping the poorest as flagged up by this morning's Oxfam report. Apart from being economically and politically sensible in that it reduces the long term effects of the depression it is heartless. There is room in politics for compassion, not a lot of it about at the moment.

[Stanley]

I think this comes under the heading of politics. See this LINK for the latest disturbing reports that raise suspicions of destruction of documents which could link serving officers to corruption. This raises other disturbing thoughts as to how widespread this practice is in the corridors of power. The Met say they are 'looking into it', to quote WSC, "Action This Day!"

[hartley353]

Perfect examples of power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Honesty is a very rare commodity in todays world.

[Stanley]

Looking at the budget, I'm glad I had to buy an annuity in 2000. I was lucky and got one that increased 3% each year. I note that I am now getting about 50% more than the original figure. Guaranteed for life of course so God knows what I'll cost them by the time I'm over 100 years old! Good bet.
As for the rest of the budget, no relief for the 50% who aren't sharing in the economic miracle and 60% more cuts to come. Ossie has to claw back his give-aways from somewhere. Not good news. Also I worry when the finance experts applaud the freedom to take a pension pot as cash, could it be that they see the opportunity for getting their sticky little fingers on some of it? One thing seems certain, annuities will be more expensive.

[hartley353]

I have settled for an annuity on my windfall pension, yesterday they paid the lump sum into my bank account, and I received a letter breaking down the amounts due to me with the annual increases it is obvious that the amount backdated to 2009 is substantialy less than I will receive for this year,and I can see its growth over the interim years. From the figures it is apparent that it has not come close to inflation, there could be a lot to be said for folks cashing it in and finding a better investment.

[Bruff]

Nice intervention from Conservative Party Chairman Mr Grant Shapps, AKA Mr Michael Green, AKA Mr Sebastian Fox (as of writing, I don't think he's any other pseudonyms) championing cheaper beer and bingo for the workers.

There are some uncharitable types who say Shapps is only holding the high(ish) profile role he has to ensure the PM is not the dimmest member of the Party on regular show. They are wrong of course - Duncan-Smith serves that purpose. But I have to say, Shapps's interventions generally give the impression of a man who is out-foxed by both his backside and his elbow never knowing which at any one time.

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

Lovely post Richard! And yes, I agree with you. I have long held the opinion that the biggest problem we have an many spheres of life is simple incompetence. I know that this statement lays me open to accusations of arrogance because it implies I am more intelligent but when you look at some of the utterances and actions of our leaders you have to wonder whether their brain is ever in gear. See Mr Cameron and his lamentable choice of friends and colleagues. How many of them are currently on trial in the courts?

[plaques]

Is this what the Conservatives (Tories) really think of the hard working people. (Working Class)?

[Whyperion]

I thought the Gamblers and Drunkards were the City Mile Bankers.

In some fairness bingo halls do provide some employment , cutting the duty should increase their profits , subject to CTax.