Other things

I could not be bothered with the Darling statement just felt deep sorrow that the country has been so let down.

The comments from the Archbishop of Canterbury reported this morning, for example http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/6792088/Archbishop-of-Canterbury-Labour-treats-us-like-oddballs.html in the Telegraph.

News flash for Dr Williams, in allowing an male actively gay Bishop to be consecrated and then inviting him to the UK, then allowing an actively gay woman to be elected Bishop, on top of Women priests and the whole weak kneed liberal bent of the current church lack of leadership, you have not only turned the government against you but a bulk of the population as well.

Its not the government, whose social programs you have actively supported in the past, that has made you irrelevant, its you stupid. You are so far out of touch with those of us who refuse to attend church anymore that you have achieved the height of irrelevance by having Prince Charles refuse to countenance you.

Just go away you silly man with a beard go away you are not wnated nor needed, the Pope will give us the lead.

Leading the horse to water

There are two articles that caught my attention in the first scan of the daily papers and both illustrate fully the gap between what the politicians think and the broader reality of what the electorate expects in the longer term.

But firstly I have been known to rail at the lack of leadership from the political classes and the lack of politicians with the strength and moral fibre to do the right thing, that is to lead from the front. In the two articles one might argue that I am being disingenuous and that these cases show two politicians in the very mold that I describe, the difference between these cases and a statesman like act is simple. Statesmen in the past, and one trusts the future, have acted from a deep seated set of moral and political beliefs not as in these cases from a desire to respond to the media driven day to day populist agenda.

Case 1; The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, no doubt driven on by Jonah Brown, wants to be seen as a strong leader, with a sound grasp and control of the countries finances, so he takes a strong and fierce stand against the countries Bankers being paid the bonuses that they have earned from their employers, but at the same time needs to get the country out of the recession it is mired in.

So what we need are funds for the private economy to try and get that moving and so increase the tax revenues, note that the tried and proven tax cuts are anathema to him, but he cannot loan any money because no one wants to loan any more to him. So he will now ask the banks to get creative and loan money to marginal companies but what ever you do do not reward those who get creative with bonuses. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/894a346a-e37e-11de-8d36-00144feab49a.html and to make it even better lets ask the foreign banks as well to be good citizens while we talk about taxing them to death. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/budget/6754828/Pre-Budget-report-Foreign-banks-urged-to-lend-to-UK-businesses.htm.

Now some might say this is carrot and stick at its best but this chancellor does not have the intellect to try that.

Case 2

On the other side of the Atlantic we seem to have a President who genuinely hates his country. With the Indians saying they will not accept any binding resolutions from Copenhagen and the very science on which Global Cooling er no Global Warming er no Climate Change is based on being shown to be possible manipulated, this idiot gives himself the powers, through an unelected body, to give his countries economic advantages away.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6755201/Copenhagen-climate-summit-Barack-Obama-given-power-to-cut-greenhouse-gases.html

So as not to be left out our Jonah, who loves to spout numbers, goes even further and makes the usual total fool of himself http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6756467/Copenhagen-climate-summit-Gordon-Brown-wants-EU-to-cut-emissions-by-30pc.html

You cannot tax the world

It remains a source of absolute amazement to me how little the political class learn year on year, or for that matter decade on decade. Take the current UK government, handed a healthy economy on election day they have succeeded in once again making us one of the poor men of Europe if not the world and how do they propose to get us out of the mess??

Well what they will do is tax high earners, those who created and continue to create the wealth, at levels that will force a brain drain and no not just a brain drain this time but a corporate drain that could well kill the golden goose that is the city.

During the 1970's under and earlier Labour Government the recipe for financial recovery was to tax the wealthy and then when capital flight started to happen clamp down on the amount of money you could take out of the country and then had to interfere in the amount of money you could earn by limiting salary bonuses and raises, does this sound familiar. I arrived in the UK at the height of this stupidity and nearly left when the company I was working for could not give me the salary we had agreed because of the government, we eventually worked around it using offshore accounts. Sound familiar??

This simple confirms in my mind that Jonah and his Darling are not third rate intellects they are fifth or sixth rate if that. Jonah is supposed to be a fan of history but I guess that little mess was read with his left eye in the dark.

My fear is that by the time we get to vote this unelected prime minister out of office we do not have the Maggie character to replace him with. Cameron looks far to populist to me and is currently treating his core with very little respect and risking losing them.

What is the solution, if I knew I would be making a lot more money than I am now, but I know that unless we unfetter capitalism and let wealth creation restart, this country is finished.

Climate and Rugby

Not quite as angry today but still a slight bit of steam issuing from the ears. The Indian Government have now said that they will not accept any CO2 binding agreements that will compromise their economy, wise people, even the great Al Gore has now said that Copenhagen is pointless but Jonah Brown continues his pointless act. The Nasa falsification of data has reared up again. There was a nice little exchange on the BBC yesterday morning where two people got to at least challenge the BBC approach which turns out to be the same old rant of the "science is proven" NO ITS NOT.

If both Nasa and East Anglia have, and it still has not be proven they did, falsified their data then the entire edifice come down.

The afternoon was very nice spent as it was in middle England, well the brother in laws rugby club, which was supposed to be playing youngest sons school old boys. That got rained out, but prior to the match there was a lunch well attended by ex and current players, I even played a few games for them one season, but that's a long and boring story. We has a nice lunch but the banter and spirit in that room was what has made and can make Britain great. These are the people who fought the wars and conquered and built the empire. Mainly god fearing folk who will stand by their friends and fellow players to the end. We had to settle for watching the Springboks, thinly disguised as the Barbarians, beat the All Blacks at Twickenham, with not an English player in sight.

Talking with these people, I would hesitate to elevate myself to the level of peer, has a curiously calming effect on me, helped on by a few pints of bitter, its not that we are in lockstep with our beliefs its just we all get a fair hearing. These are the people who are very close to saying to Whitehall and Westminster that's enough we want our country back. These are the lawyers, labourers, policemen, bankers, entrepreneurs, workers and businessmen, who pay the bulk of the taxes in this country and who look at the wasteland of the midlands, where the money gets spent keeping this government in power,and are slowly coming from despair to real anger at the government and what is perceived as an effete ruling class. David Cameron and his ilk ignore these people at their peril.

just got mad

I have not kept this blog up that well, to be quite honest I look at the quality of the blogs around the place and its a bit intimidating, but this morning has got me all riled up so here goes.

The British government continues to show its sheer incompetance, in all things finacial especially. News this morning that I linked to on Twitter of
1: the ammount of money made by the banks, the people who exacerbated the problem, from the government, who caused the problem, as advisory fees to solve the problem they created. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/6721206/Bonanza-for-City-lawyers-accountants-and-advisers-as-Treasury-pays-for-crisis-advice.html
2: Having announced in the queens speech that they were going to cut the deficit by 50% the Chancellor now says well not right now, in other words he does not know how to solve the issue, quell surprize. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8cf0ff68-e04f-11de-8494-00144feab49a.html
3: The banks who have recieved finacial support from the taxpayer have not met their lending commitments but at the same time are not foreclosing on commercial properties, no connection of course, but by not foreclosing on the commercial property markets they are delaying the second dip into recession. Some of the banks who would foreclose on you or me in a heartbeat are not even testing the covenants as they know what will happen then. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/075d5426-e05b-11de-8494-00144feab49a.html

If that batch of stupidity was not enough, the governement has reduced itself to calling names at anyone who is not in lockstep over global warming, er cooling, er climate change even after it is clearly shown that the scientists have been lying, NASA and East Anglia University for starters, about the data. To add to that the chancellor of East Anglia gets on TV this morning and says well even if they did it doesn't matter neatly sidestepping that the bulk of the arguement for the change is based on the data these bozos fiddled with and then neatly lost.

I am now in the market for a nice little island, not at the Gallapagous as change is not permitted there now, not at the very place that proved that a species under stress will mutate and evolve to deal wit the stress http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/galapagos/6719680/Wildlife-of-Galapagos-Islands-devastated-by-ocean-warming.html, to retire to.

Its your fault stupid

As if there is not enough going on we now have to teach the Chancellor of the Election how the economy works.

Having spent recklessly over the last 12 years to make sure that they held onto power the current Chancellor and Prime Minister are now trying to avoid reaping the whirlwind of their own mistakes by blaming everyone else. This morning its the banks those nasty naughty institiutions that we could not live without, neccesitating the expenditure of large sums of money to prop them up, but who have turned all ungrateful and are not throwing money away on small business simple because the Government asks them to. This is the Government who have shown how to lose money propping up well nothing really other than the employment rates in the civil service, these boys know how to buy votes if nothing else.

The reason we have low base rates, 0.5%, but high lending rates, 5 to 15 percent is really quite simple. The people with money to lend are looking down the road to see what returns they will need in the future. Because the Government has for the last 14 years, yes the Torys were not the best at the end either, spent like there was no reason for repayment to ever be considered.

Now comes the problem, with the economy in collapse, and the reasons are various but generally cyclical in nature though not helped by some devastating greed, the money needed to simple stay in place is simple not there, as revenues from Tax and Customs collapse but the costs, in terms of social payments to the unemployed plus the money so recklessly spent on attempts at stimulation added to a war that is going to keep on costing more, are rising steeply.

The IMF, the World Bank and the ratings agencies have seen through the problem and are warning that the perfect storm is about to descend on the economy and the smart money has already read the script.

The only way out now is inflation and the inexorable rise in interest rates that accompanies it. If the spread at this point is between 4.5 and 14.5 percent you can see where we are going. Risk money over a longer period is costing over 15% meaning that we can expect interest rates to climb as Government borrowing increases but the Governments ability to repay the borrowings is severely constrained as the economy is severely weakened and unable to sustain the borrowings.

And we are not out of the woods yet, I am willing to bet that the Prime Minister will attempt a short term stimulation and increase further the number of civil servants reminding them at the same time that the opposition will reduce payrolls without adnitting that he will have to do so as well.

These are the times I fear for the country.

Where are they now?

The death of the last Tommy from the First Great War starts a thought train that leads so easily to today's problems and solutions.

In the first and second world wars we had as today we have a generation who through either the thirst for adventure, or nationalism, or in a effort to improve themselves financially and socially saw enlisting in the army and fighting for their country as a way through and as today they werelet down by a demogogic ruling political class who seem to be more interested in what they made for themselves rather than what they can do for their country.

Flanders fields cost us a generation of leaders and several generations of leadership, a situation that was exacerbated by the Second World War where once again those who were driven by nationalistic pride with its inevitable attachment of a sense of duty were the bulk of those lost.

To my mind, politically, those generations saw their peak with the resignation of Lord Carrington over the Falklands Crisis and war, the actions of a man of principle.

Then we have today, a Prime Minister too scared to go to the country and putting his personal vanity and greed above the national interest leading a political party that now puts its aims and personal funding again above national interest and when one Minister, Purnell, resigns over principle he is mocked and scorned and our beloved leader proceeds to bring back to government those who have been rejected, indulged in what can only be called corruption, or are party hacks, Kinnochio, whom Gordon is scared of.

While this sounds like I might want to go and top myself there is a bright light in the tunnel, its to be hoped its not a train going the other way but rather is the first signs of a new spring. To talk to my sons friends who are in the army and to listen to the new MP for Norwich North makes me think that this just might be the next Great War generation who will lead us out of thew wilderness and back into a world of principle and discipline. God knows we need it.