Sunday, January 31, 2010

Profoundly Dangerous

Another warning from historyAccording to Climate Commissar Miliband:"There are a whole variety of people who are sceptical, but who they are is less important than what they are saying, and what they are saying is profoundly dangerous. Every­thing we know about life is that we should obey the precautionary principle; to take what the sceptics say seriously would be a profound risk."It is the cry of commissars since the dawn of time - do what I say or risk destruction. It is the same profoundly dangerous arrogance that throughout history has unleashed...

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Cuts: 57 Varieties

Let's not go thereThis  morning on BBC R4 Today, Evan Davis asked Darling why he won't tell us what he's going to cut. In the light of the ongoing Greek lesson, surely that would be the best way to retain market confidence?Darling repeated his recent claim that he's already told us: £57bn of cuts already announced. Sounds pretty impressive, and Davis failed to challenge him. But as we blogged here, that £57bn relates to annual...

Friday, January 29, 2010

Credit Card Government

Hope you've got those scissors ready GeorgeIt looks very much like the Cradle of Civilisation is going down. According to this morning's FT:"...anxiety over Greece rose in financial markets, driving Greek bond yields up to 7.25 per cent, closing on Hungary, a non-eurozone state bailed out by the EU and the IMF in 2008.Greek yields have risen by more than one percentage point this week and by three percentage points since October. George...

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Talent

We've just taken a quick look at the National Audit Office's new report on the BBC. They've probed the costs incurred in covering major sports and music events, and they come up with some interesting stats.How many BBC staff went to the bunfight in Beijing in 2008? A staggering 491 - even though all the main pictures (including that fake opening ceremony) were supplied by Chinese TV.Glastonbury - 277The Proms - 145But as always, the really interesting bit is what they choose to pay the... er, "talent". And as always, the tax-funded state...

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.As you may have already seen, the world's biggest and most influential bond manager has just passed a further and even more terrifying judgement on our precarious financial position (see this blog for previous warning). He now says:"The UK is a must to avoid. Its Gilts are resting on a bed of nitroglycerine. High debt with the potential to devalue its currency present high risks for bond investors. In...

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Politics Of Envy - Latest

Never mind about them - it's the poor we need to sort outFor this morning's edition of BBC R4 Today, there was only one possible lead story: a new report on inequality commissioned by Commissar Harperson (but paid for by us). And to give you a flavour, here's how the BBC's print edition (aka the Grun) headlines it:"A detailed and startling analysis of how unequal Britain has become offers a snapshot of an increasingly divided...

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Flat On Its Back

Whoops"I would be astounded if the UK did not grow in the fourth quarter of 2009 and would have to seriously consider giving up economic analysis and forecasting."So said a well-known City economist yesterday, on the back of a City consensus predicting robust fourth quarter GDP growth of 0.4%. Given that the ONS has now released its official estimate of 0.1% growth, it looks like he gets to stay on. But only just. The reality is that the...

Monday, January 25, 2010

15% Gets Wasted - Official

We've just had a very interesting new estimate of public spending waste (HTP Matt Sinclair). According to a detailed study of spending in London, 15% of what taxpayers spend on public services gets wasted. In London alone that amounts to £11bn pa, and if extrapolated across the entire country suggests total waste is running at £75bn pa. Now, here on BOM we've quoted a number of overall waste estimates over the years,...

Getting this guy away from the controls would be a good startI've just read George's piece in today's Times, How to stop Britain going bust again. And you know what? It's good.He says we must turn away from "the failed model of debt-fuelled growth that led us into this mess", and develop "a new British economic model that learns from the mistakes of the past". Yes, of course, talk is cheap. But here's what we like:First and foremost, the "new...

Sunday, January 24, 2010

You Don't Say

Public sector pay and benefits have always featured heavily on BOM. Which is hardly surprising, given that the bill is now running at over £200bn pa, and pay levels in some parts of the public sector have escalated so astonishingly under Labour. In 2007, the TaxPayers' Alliance started a campaign to publicise top public sector salaries, collecting data via published quango accounts and hundreds of FOI requests sent to local authorities....

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Surprisingly, there was no January 2010 blog post on this longest running blog that I have. I found it quite inappropriate because I wanted to have all the months shown on the archive. So even though today’s the 23rd of February, thanks to Windows Live Writer, I was able to set the date for this post—thus the title. Anyway, I’m already moving to Blogger. I already created this account before and now I think I will update it side by side with WordPress and FS (I was thinking if it would be redundant). My Multiply blog will contain separate posts...

Lowest Class - Vicious, Semi-criminal

Always with usThe Major has long believed in the criminal class. That is to say, he believes there is a criminal class, and it carries out most of our crimes. As you may imagine, this week's headlines have given him the opportunity to remind us all of his bracing views:"You do realise the scumbag who robbed Mr Hussain had 50 previous convictions. 50 for God's sake! And they still haven't locked the bastard away! We should...

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Power Without A Plan

The grim facts from Mr McKinseyAs Benedict Brogan reminds us this morning, if Cam has a secret plan for government, he is keeping it damned quiet. We still have no idea how he and George plan to deliver the massive spending cuts required to fend off financial and economic melt-down. And just to put our plight into its broader horrific context, take a look at the somewhat dense chart above (click on image to enlarge)...

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The East Is Red

New sky-scrapers: old fearsYou may have missed Piers Morgan does Shanghai last night, but the message was pretty clear: not for the first time in our history, we 're about to succumb to the yellow peril. The Chinese can now do pretty well everything we can, except 100 times bigger, 100 times better, and 100 times cheaper. We are well and truly Pek Ducked.By a strange coincidence, the Governor of the Bank of England also spent last night fretting about our relations with the East. Only he presented it as "Soduku for Economists", which...

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Inflation Tax Kicks In

Here we go againRemember when the massed ranks of the left and much of the economics commentariat told us that Britain was on the brink of a deflationary black hole, and that the only way of saving ourselves was to slam the printing presses into overdrive?Hmm, yes, well, this morning we heard that CPI inflation has gapped up by the biggest monthly increase since records began (1996). RPI inflation has increased by the biggest monthly amount...

Monday, January 18, 2010

Big Brother Watch

Mr and Mrs Tyler have just returned from the official launch of Big Brother Watch. As you probably know, this is a new campaign set up by the same people that brought you the TaxPayers' Alliance. It aims to fight intrusions on the privacy and liberties of ordinary Britons, and speaking as someone who has been stopped and searched three times under s44 of the 2000 Terrorism Act (eg see here), Tyler says it's come not a moment too soon.In truth, Big...

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Yesterday the Major had another of his increasingly frequent seizures. Comrade Brown claiming to be the champion of the middle class was just too much:"How dare he! He's spent the last 13 years hunting us down like dogs! He's taxed us to buggery, destroyed our pensions, stuffed us with debt, banned our children from the top unis, dishonoured our womenfolk, seized our lands, burned down our golf clubs... and now he has the sheer...

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Without Touching The Sides

Worth £30 mill of anyone's moneyWhen cuddly Alan Sugar was chairman of Tottenham Hotspur, he precisely captured the big problem with football club economics: all the money gets pooped out to overpaid prima donna players, passing straight through the club "without touching the sides". Which is why one of the key "metrics" employed in analysing football club finances is the wages/turnover ratio. During Sugar's time at Tottenham the average...