Saturday, October 31, 2009

Victims Of High Taxation

2am: 8 September 2009 - thieving scum help themselves from a shop in HuntingdonThe Village Postmaster and his family are still recovering from their 1am encounter with the robbers who smashed into their shop. Needless to say, the police have yet to apprehend anyone. The gang were after cigarettes, and it turns out this was one of a huge number of such robberies taking place right across the country. Just in the last few months, small...

Friday, October 30, 2009

Bubbling... Down The Plughole

The news that the US has emerged from recession has been welcomed around the world.Well, not in Downing Street obviously, but certainly the financial markets liked it. The UK now seems to be the only major economy still mired in the slough.So will we ever escape?Last night Tyler attended a talk by an eminent and respected financial journalist. We won't identify him, because he seemed nervous of having his views reported. But we discussed bubbles...

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Migration Update

Following the shocking revelation about Labour's secret plan to transform our culture through mass immigration (and "to rub the Right's nose in diversity"), we've taken a look at the latest migration statistics.According to the ONS, a net 2.7m foreign migrants came here during Labour's first decade (1998-2007 inclusive). Which is getting on for 5% of the population.Of those, just 270,000 comprised the famous influx of Polish plumbers and Czech waitresses...

The Real Lessons Of Nimrod

More victims of government failure"We are working hard to ensure we capture lessons from incidents and inquiries to improve our safety. As an organisation the MOD is changing its culture and approach to put safety first."So says the lamentable Bob Ainsworth.How many times have we heard that? How many times have we heard some government minister telling us that lessons have been learned and changes made? And how many times have we been let down? And...

My Life Sucks Big-time

Multiply is the new emotional haven slash rant site for me, because only a few people are here and most of them have no time to even browse this anymore because of the Facebook mania. And thanks to that fact, I could share my big-time ruckus slash perpetual problem in this subtly without the other people involved reading this (luckily I didn't add them nor they have Multiply). So where was I? Oh yes, I kinda figured out that my life sucks and I'm not going anywhere with it. Basically, the term appropriate for my situation is DOOMED. Yup. Make that...

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Ofsted are coming - we're doomed!Autocratic regimes always employ legions of government inspectors. Their job is to tour round the various outposts of the centralised state and put the fear of God into local bureaucrats - to remind them who's boss.It was back in 1836 that Nikolai Gogol wrote his classic comedy about how the Czar's inspectors terrorised the officials of provincial towns in Russia. The play's joke is that the government inspector...

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Big And Stupid

According to a poll in this morning's Independent, two-thirds of voters now agree that "government has grown too big and needs a major overhaul to make it smaller" (see here for full poll results).Well, hallelujah. After 12 grim years of rule by Socialist Commissars, British voters have once again shown they're not quite as dumb as the ruling class like to think.Of course, that's not the way the Commissariat running dogs and lickspittles see it....

Monday, October 26, 2009

Who Pays Our Taxes?

Following our post on whacking the middle class, we've refreshed our memory on who actually pays our taxes.We can get some idea from the latest ONS analysis of taxes paid directly by households. They account for around three-quarters of total taxes, the remainder mainly being paid by businesses of one kind or another.In 2007 (the latest data available), of the government's £500bn total tax revenue, £360bn was paid directly by households (including...

Whacking The Middle Class

The middle class isn't so docile everywhereTo paraphrase Willie Sutton, the reason Chancellors rob the middle class is because that's where the money is.Sure, politicos like to wave their arms and pledge to tax the undeserving rich, but in reality that never raises enough cash. For one thing, there aren't enough undeserving rich to go round, and for another, the rich have an anti-social tendency to move their cash out of harm's way. For example,...

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Violent crime now even worse than unthinkably thought in 2000*Returning from a couple of days sans broadband, we've been catching up with the Village Postmaster.He and his family have suffered what's officially categorised as a high trauma crime - robbery in their own home. But we're pleased to see they're back up and running, and they've clearly had huge support from their customers and the local community. After 50 years of soft criminal justice...

Thursday, October 22, 2009

好きだから

I usually write in Multiply about this person. Especially when Summer of 2008 was still around and the fleeting happy moments with him are present. Back then, I only had his Friendster account and with that I couldn't even leave a single comment. I used messaging, but then it seemed worthless. He was in love with someone else and so as they thought I was and so we couldn't be together. It's more like a one-sided love by me as always. I never had been this blatant in talking about my feelings for him. I guess I wouldn't add him up here in Multiply,...

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

We still need a lot more of theseAs we know, sub-postmasters are in the frontline against violent crime.Last January, we blogged the shocking murder of Craig Hodson-Walker during an armed robbery on his family's post office/general store in the Midlands. Later the same month we blogged another armed robbery on a post office in Berkshire during which the postmaster was badly beaten.Now today, BOM's old friend the Village Postmaster has been robbed...

Splitting The Megabanks

The idea of splitting our megabanks between their high street and casino components is fast becoming mainstream.We've blogged this many times of course (eg here), and last night the Governor of the Bank of England amplified his own call for such a split. Calling our open-ended taxpayer guarantees "the biggest moral hazard in history", he says:"Anyone who proposed giving government guarantees to retail depositors and other creditors, and then suggested that such funding could be used to finance highly risky and speculative activities, would be thought...

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Pol Makes A Good Point

So bad, it's fallen off the official chartToday's horrific public borrowing figures underline the need for drastic action. So far in 2009-10, Brown's government has borrowed £77bn, which puts us well on course for busting through £200bn over the year as a whole (the budget forecast was £175bn).Even setting aside Brown's much hyped capital spending programme, the current deficit year-to-date is £61.5bn - so big, it can no longer be accommodated on...

Monday, October 19, 2009

No Safe Way Down

Recently, Mr and Mrs T nearly traded up to a new house. It came on to the market in early summer and the Tylers made what they considered to be a most reasonable offer in these post-apocalypse days - to wit, 16% below the asking price.The offer was rejected outright. The owners said at that price, they'd rather not sell at all.Several months went by, and no other offers emerged. To show willing, the Tylers even nudged up their own offer a few percent....

Latest On Real National Debt

And they thought things were bad then...The last time we calculated the real national debt - including all those off-balance sheet Enron items - we got to a figure of £1.8 trillion. But that was last year, and things have moved on since then.Now Brooks Newmark has updated the numbers in a pamphlet for the CPS. He calculates the current figure at £2.2 trillion, or £86 grand for every single British household.Here's how he gets there:So the next time...

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Breaking The Bank

The original bank breaker was 91 when he filmed thisWhat about those bankers, eh? What are they thinking of? No sooner do we bail them out, then they're stuffing their pockets again.As we've blogged before, we have no problem with highly paid bankers.Highly paid bankers, we like. As far as we're concerned, they can pay themselves as much as they can stagger home with.It's just their huge subsidy we don't like. We don't see why we should subsidise them to make a fortune at our expense.To reiterate (see here for fuller version), our bankers have...