I thought I heard a report during the week that Sir Fred Goodwin had taken out an injunction to stop people referring to him as a "banker".
OK, fair enough. I can appreciate it's a nasty word, and nobody would like to be referred to in those terms.
We need to find something more appropriate for these people, something more politically correct.
How about "septic wart on the bloated arse of capitalism"?
Yep, that does it for me.
Showing posts with label profiteering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label profiteering. Show all posts
Sunday, 13 March 2011
Saturday, 19 February 2011
Monbiot Man
George Monbiot seems to have stirred up something of a hornets’ nest amongst tax lawyers and apologists for the Tories and Mini-Tories with his recent Guardian article about the proposals to change the way in which the UK taxes overseas profits of companies registered here. When it gets to the stage where people are blogging back atcha and calling you “Moonbat”, while simultaneously trying to suggest it’s no big deal, really, this tends to suggest to me that you’ve hit a nerve.
I don’t read The Guardian, and have absolutely no brief for Monbiot - the only letter I ever wrote him remains resolutely unanswered to this day - and I was only alerted to the piece by a tweet on Twitter that was re-tweeted by someone I don’t even follow, so I could well have missed it. As it was, I had to read Monbiot’s article a few times for the implications of it to sink in, but I freely admit that, as someone who failed O Level Maths, numeracy is not my strong point (or perhaps I should say, as Jack Straw did when having his collar felt over his expenses, “accountancy is not my strong suit”.)
Opinion seems divided over whether Monbiot has a point, or whether he is simply over-egging the pudding for effect. All kudos to him, I guess, at least for even bothering to read the adjustments the government is planning to the tax acts of 1988 and 2009! Personally, I glaze over faster than a lump of pork in cranberry jelly just thinking about it. Others have argued that it is just the UK bringing its method of taxing the profits of overseas subsidiaries in line with the rest of the EU. [I have remarked before that it never ceases to amaze me how we always have to harmonize with the rest of the EU, rather than them harmonizing with us, but let that pass for now.]
The net effect of the proposed changes will be to hand big businesses, multi nationals who can more than afford to shoulder the burden of their fair share of getting us out of this mess, a £100M tax break, just at the time when the Government is telling us we are all in it together. Clearly, some of us are “in it” more than others. Some of us are in it up to our necks and sinking fast, while others are allowed to skip gaily over the piles of ordure that lie in wait for the poor, the disadvantaged, the disabled and the unemployed, and continue merrily on their way.
And that is really the point behind all of this. What these companies are doing, aided and abetted by HMRC, may well be legal. But that doesn’t make it moral, it doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it right that libraries and swimming pools and community centres are closing left right and centre while for the bastards in stripey suits, it’s still “trebles all round”.
Any moral government, any government that even purported to care about the people of this country, would not be looking to add yet more loopholes to a taxation system that already resembles a moth-fancier’s string vest. They would be saying “these people can afford it, so proportionately, they should give more than a bloke on ESA in a tenement in Newcastle”.
This is what UK Uncut, with its excellent campaigns to blackguard and shame the tax avoiders into paying something more like a fair share, are all about, and more power to their collective elbow. I wish they were in Parliament, in opposition, right now, instead of the feeble and supine Labour Party.
But, whether Monbiot is wholly right or wholly wrong, or – as I suspect – somewhere in between, but definitely onto something, I suppose it comes as no surprise to find that the Tories are doing something divisive, unfair, and beneficial to big business. Something that was in no-one's manifesto, either, come to that. I do, however, remain amazed at how long the Liberal Dimwits will continue to allow themselves to be bitch-slapped by Cameron and Osborne. Talk about an abusive relationship!
Unfortunately for them, at the next election, whenever it comes, the electorate won’t believe they simply “walked into a door again.” They won’t believe anything the LibDims say. Vote Lib Dim, get Tory. Once bitten, twice shy, Lib Dims, bye bye.
I don’t read The Guardian, and have absolutely no brief for Monbiot - the only letter I ever wrote him remains resolutely unanswered to this day - and I was only alerted to the piece by a tweet on Twitter that was re-tweeted by someone I don’t even follow, so I could well have missed it. As it was, I had to read Monbiot’s article a few times for the implications of it to sink in, but I freely admit that, as someone who failed O Level Maths, numeracy is not my strong point (or perhaps I should say, as Jack Straw did when having his collar felt over his expenses, “accountancy is not my strong suit”.)
Opinion seems divided over whether Monbiot has a point, or whether he is simply over-egging the pudding for effect. All kudos to him, I guess, at least for even bothering to read the adjustments the government is planning to the tax acts of 1988 and 2009! Personally, I glaze over faster than a lump of pork in cranberry jelly just thinking about it. Others have argued that it is just the UK bringing its method of taxing the profits of overseas subsidiaries in line with the rest of the EU. [I have remarked before that it never ceases to amaze me how we always have to harmonize with the rest of the EU, rather than them harmonizing with us, but let that pass for now.]
The net effect of the proposed changes will be to hand big businesses, multi nationals who can more than afford to shoulder the burden of their fair share of getting us out of this mess, a £100M tax break, just at the time when the Government is telling us we are all in it together. Clearly, some of us are “in it” more than others. Some of us are in it up to our necks and sinking fast, while others are allowed to skip gaily over the piles of ordure that lie in wait for the poor, the disadvantaged, the disabled and the unemployed, and continue merrily on their way.
And that is really the point behind all of this. What these companies are doing, aided and abetted by HMRC, may well be legal. But that doesn’t make it moral, it doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it right that libraries and swimming pools and community centres are closing left right and centre while for the bastards in stripey suits, it’s still “trebles all round”.
Any moral government, any government that even purported to care about the people of this country, would not be looking to add yet more loopholes to a taxation system that already resembles a moth-fancier’s string vest. They would be saying “these people can afford it, so proportionately, they should give more than a bloke on ESA in a tenement in Newcastle”.
This is what UK Uncut, with its excellent campaigns to blackguard and shame the tax avoiders into paying something more like a fair share, are all about, and more power to their collective elbow. I wish they were in Parliament, in opposition, right now, instead of the feeble and supine Labour Party.
But, whether Monbiot is wholly right or wholly wrong, or – as I suspect – somewhere in between, but definitely onto something, I suppose it comes as no surprise to find that the Tories are doing something divisive, unfair, and beneficial to big business. Something that was in no-one's manifesto, either, come to that. I do, however, remain amazed at how long the Liberal Dimwits will continue to allow themselves to be bitch-slapped by Cameron and Osborne. Talk about an abusive relationship!
Unfortunately for them, at the next election, whenever it comes, the electorate won’t believe they simply “walked into a door again.” They won’t believe anything the LibDims say. Vote Lib Dim, get Tory. Once bitten, twice shy, Lib Dims, bye bye.
Monday, 25 January 2010
The Week's Good Cause
And now on Radio Four, a special appeal for the victims of the Goldman Sachs disaster.
It is all too easy, these days, when our TV screens are full of pictures of lazy Haitian people, lolling indolently amidst the ruins of their shanty towns, expecting people to fly half-way round the world merely to provide them with whimsical luxuries such as food, water and medical supplies, to forget who the REAL victims are, the TRULY unfortunate people in our society today.
Gerald is an investment banker, formerly in charge of a thriving, luxurious hedge fund. Unfortunately, in the autumn of 2008, owing to a staggering combination of greed, overconfidence and sheer brass neck of a kind only seen maybe once every fifty years, Gerald's hedge began to wither, and when harvest time came, Gerald, and many others like him, were unable to pick the juicy bonuses which were their staple diet, and on which they had, in previous years, gorged themselves to the point of gluttony.
Sadly, Gerald is not alone in his plight. His colleagues Tarquin, Peregrine, Toby and Ambrose are all in the same predicament. Each of them is heavily reliant on aid from the taxpayer, and down to their last Ferrari. (Except Tobes, who has a Lamborghini. Yah!)
Please give generously today, as much as you can afford. Even a donation as small as ten pounds would give Gerald the much-needed ability to re-light his cigar, while twenty pounds would allow him to resume his acquaintance with Columbian marching dust, and give up Shake N Vac. Fifty pounds would provide him with something to stick down the knickers of a Polish lap dancer, and two hundred pounds would provide him with some welcome refreshment, in the form of a bottle of his favourite vintage bubbly!
Please send as much money as you can, preferably in a wheelbarrow, and let us put some of the sparkle back into Gerald's existence, so he can once more resume his rightful place as a wart on the bloated underbelly of capitalism.
Thank you.
And now, the weather...
It is all too easy, these days, when our TV screens are full of pictures of lazy Haitian people, lolling indolently amidst the ruins of their shanty towns, expecting people to fly half-way round the world merely to provide them with whimsical luxuries such as food, water and medical supplies, to forget who the REAL victims are, the TRULY unfortunate people in our society today.
Gerald is an investment banker, formerly in charge of a thriving, luxurious hedge fund. Unfortunately, in the autumn of 2008, owing to a staggering combination of greed, overconfidence and sheer brass neck of a kind only seen maybe once every fifty years, Gerald's hedge began to wither, and when harvest time came, Gerald, and many others like him, were unable to pick the juicy bonuses which were their staple diet, and on which they had, in previous years, gorged themselves to the point of gluttony.
Sadly, Gerald is not alone in his plight. His colleagues Tarquin, Peregrine, Toby and Ambrose are all in the same predicament. Each of them is heavily reliant on aid from the taxpayer, and down to their last Ferrari. (Except Tobes, who has a Lamborghini. Yah!)
Please give generously today, as much as you can afford. Even a donation as small as ten pounds would give Gerald the much-needed ability to re-light his cigar, while twenty pounds would allow him to resume his acquaintance with Columbian marching dust, and give up Shake N Vac. Fifty pounds would provide him with something to stick down the knickers of a Polish lap dancer, and two hundred pounds would provide him with some welcome refreshment, in the form of a bottle of his favourite vintage bubbly!
Please send as much money as you can, preferably in a wheelbarrow, and let us put some of the sparkle back into Gerald's existence, so he can once more resume his rightful place as a wart on the bloated underbelly of capitalism.
Thank you.
And now, the weather...
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Nicker Vicar?
Father Tim Jones of York preached a sermon recently where he said that, if you were in desperate straits. and you were faced with a choice of burglary, prostitution, or shoplifting, in his opinion, shoplifting was morally less of an evil than the alternatives.
Needless to say, he was pilloried for it by the likes of the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, to the extent that even his Diocese felt the need to distance themselves from his words by posting a slightly inaccurate version of what he said on their web site.
Well, I am afraid I have to disagree with them. I think he should be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. For the record, here is the full transcript of what he said:www.yorkpress.co.uk/
...As you will see he actually says that for those in desperate straits, shoplifting is the least morally damaging option when the alternatives are suicide, burglary, or prostitution.
he says:
Let my words not be misrepresented as a simplistic call for people to shoplift. The observation that shoplifting is the best option that some people are left with is a grim indictment of who we are.
But why let the facts get in the way of a good story, eh?
He's right though. The dichotomy between the glittery, gleaming, gadget ridden, food-stuffed consumer M & S advert Christmas and the grim reality for people on the dole or homeless is obscene, and it IS a grim indictment of society's values.
And these supermarkets who are bleating about it today, such as Asda in York, who described Fr Jones as being "one prayer short of a sermon", would they be the same supermarkets who regularly SKIP huge amounts of "waste" food because of sell-by dates, and would they be the same supermarkets who are ######ing up the planet by flying in dwarf beans from Kenya? Motes and beams, mate, motes and beams. Good luck to Fr Jones, I say, at least he's put it higher up the news agenda, despite every paper reporting it in precisely the opposite way to what he intended.
It would be better if the supermarkets, instead of bleating about the words of an Anglican priest, channeled some of their huge profits back into bolting on an extra "leg" onto their existing logistics network, which already exists and is geared up for the overnight transport of consumables, so that the stuff which currently ends up in the skip at the back of the shop, goes back in the otherwise empty delivery lorry instead, once it's been unloaded at the shop, to a central depot or depots and thence into a separate distribution network run in conjunction with, say The Salvation Army to those who need it.
Funded by the supermarkets. Then people wouldn't need to shoplift out of desperation (though I agree some may still do it for other reasons) which in turn cuts down some of the supermarket's need for CCTV and security, and associated costs etc etc. Win-win.
The only "supermarket" I regularly shop at these days is the Coop attached to the garage in Brockholes, which doesn't stock cats, which is just as well, because they would have to remain unswung if it did, but even so, I would happily forego my divvy for a few years or indeed forever, if the money went into such a network instead.
We HAVE to have a SERIOUS rethink about all this stuff. Since the banks went mammaries uppermost, we are NOT in Kansas anymore.
Now is the hour. Now. We have to start thinking along the lines of SOCIALLY USEFUL CAPITALISM, hopefully with the consent of those enterprises who want to be seen as having corporate social responsibility to the community that gives them their profits. The yardstick is not how big your share is, but how much you can share. There's a song in that somewhere...
Needless to say, he was pilloried for it by the likes of the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, to the extent that even his Diocese felt the need to distance themselves from his words by posting a slightly inaccurate version of what he said on their web site.
Well, I am afraid I have to disagree with them. I think he should be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. For the record, here is the full transcript of what he said:www.yorkpress.co.uk/
...As you will see he actually says that for those in desperate straits, shoplifting is the least morally damaging option when the alternatives are suicide, burglary, or prostitution.
he says:
Let my words not be misrepresented as a simplistic call for people to shoplift. The observation that shoplifting is the best option that some people are left with is a grim indictment of who we are.
But why let the facts get in the way of a good story, eh?
He's right though. The dichotomy between the glittery, gleaming, gadget ridden, food-stuffed consumer M & S advert Christmas and the grim reality for people on the dole or homeless is obscene, and it IS a grim indictment of society's values.
And these supermarkets who are bleating about it today, such as Asda in York, who described Fr Jones as being "one prayer short of a sermon", would they be the same supermarkets who regularly SKIP huge amounts of "waste" food because of sell-by dates, and would they be the same supermarkets who are ######ing up the planet by flying in dwarf beans from Kenya? Motes and beams, mate, motes and beams. Good luck to Fr Jones, I say, at least he's put it higher up the news agenda, despite every paper reporting it in precisely the opposite way to what he intended.
It would be better if the supermarkets, instead of bleating about the words of an Anglican priest, channeled some of their huge profits back into bolting on an extra "leg" onto their existing logistics network, which already exists and is geared up for the overnight transport of consumables, so that the stuff which currently ends up in the skip at the back of the shop, goes back in the otherwise empty delivery lorry instead, once it's been unloaded at the shop, to a central depot or depots and thence into a separate distribution network run in conjunction with, say The Salvation Army to those who need it.
Funded by the supermarkets. Then people wouldn't need to shoplift out of desperation (though I agree some may still do it for other reasons) which in turn cuts down some of the supermarket's need for CCTV and security, and associated costs etc etc. Win-win.
The only "supermarket" I regularly shop at these days is the Coop attached to the garage in Brockholes, which doesn't stock cats, which is just as well, because they would have to remain unswung if it did, but even so, I would happily forego my divvy for a few years or indeed forever, if the money went into such a network instead.
We HAVE to have a SERIOUS rethink about all this stuff. Since the banks went mammaries uppermost, we are NOT in Kansas anymore.
Now is the hour. Now. We have to start thinking along the lines of SOCIALLY USEFUL CAPITALISM, hopefully with the consent of those enterprises who want to be seen as having corporate social responsibility to the community that gives them their profits. The yardstick is not how big your share is, but how much you can share. There's a song in that somewhere...
80 MPs are appealing (not from where I’m sitting)
My flabber has been gasted once again by the news that 80 MPs may be considering appealing against the assessment of their expenses by Legg.
How many times do I have to say this?
Welcome to the REAL world, MPs. The world where the REST of us live, where things get changed arbitrarily and retrospectively, and we just have to put up with it and lump it. Welcome to the real world, members of parliament, for a much-needed dose of reality up the jacksy. Welcome to the world where, if you are late with your CT600 Corporation Tax return, the HMRCE fines you £500, and you can't get away with writing a letter saying "accountancy isn't my strong suit". Welcome to the real world. wake up and smell the coffee, shut up, stop whining, and get on with running the country.
If they have the brass nuts to try and claim for moat cleaning, duck houses, and bell tower repair on the public purse, they deserve EVERYTHING coming their way. If they want respect, they should shut up and earn respect, instead of whinging about "having to live on rations". As to their pay, a) most of them have several other jobs and b) if they don't like it, they can shove off and join the poor unloved bankers who are going to throw their teddy out the pram and all move to New York or Geneva. I'll do their job. I'll be an MP, for that money. Three times what I earned last year, before tax. Yes please.While there is still ONE homeless person in Britain these cold nights, I would REQUISITION MPs' second homes for emergency accommodation, and make them sleep on cardboard boxes in a sleeping bag under Westminster Bridge, until they do something to end it.
And as for the bankers, I've already said what I would do with those ######s. Tax their bonuses at 150%. Their bonus is that they still have a job, and we allow them to continue breathing until such time as they have paid us back.
How many times do I have to say this?
Welcome to the REAL world, MPs. The world where the REST of us live, where things get changed arbitrarily and retrospectively, and we just have to put up with it and lump it. Welcome to the real world, members of parliament, for a much-needed dose of reality up the jacksy. Welcome to the world where, if you are late with your CT600 Corporation Tax return, the HMRCE fines you £500, and you can't get away with writing a letter saying "accountancy isn't my strong suit". Welcome to the real world. wake up and smell the coffee, shut up, stop whining, and get on with running the country.
If they have the brass nuts to try and claim for moat cleaning, duck houses, and bell tower repair on the public purse, they deserve EVERYTHING coming their way. If they want respect, they should shut up and earn respect, instead of whinging about "having to live on rations". As to their pay, a) most of them have several other jobs and b) if they don't like it, they can shove off and join the poor unloved bankers who are going to throw their teddy out the pram and all move to New York or Geneva. I'll do their job. I'll be an MP, for that money. Three times what I earned last year, before tax. Yes please.While there is still ONE homeless person in Britain these cold nights, I would REQUISITION MPs' second homes for emergency accommodation, and make them sleep on cardboard boxes in a sleeping bag under Westminster Bridge, until they do something to end it.
And as for the bankers, I've already said what I would do with those ######s. Tax their bonuses at 150%. Their bonus is that they still have a job, and we allow them to continue breathing until such time as they have paid us back.
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
No Expenses Spared
I can’t believe some MPs are still thinking of contesting and quibbling over the amount of their expenses they are being asked to pay back.
Welcome to the real world, the world the rest of us are forced to inhabit, where the goalposts are moved daily, with no redress.
For instance, if you were someone who had been unfortunately overpaid by the CSA owing to their ineptitude, you would have already been in receipt of threatening letters from the DWP telling you to repay those benefits or risk prosecution. This is the sort of shit your constituents have to put up with, day in, day out.
It’s not even about the money. You can bloody well afford it. Most of you have got two or three other lucrative jobs alongside being an MP.
Look. How can I put this nicely?
Just deal with it, and move on. You have got off lightly. Stop whinging, shut up, pay up, and get on with running the country. You haven’t got a Legg to stand on.
Welcome to the real world, the world the rest of us are forced to inhabit, where the goalposts are moved daily, with no redress.
For instance, if you were someone who had been unfortunately overpaid by the CSA owing to their ineptitude, you would have already been in receipt of threatening letters from the DWP telling you to repay those benefits or risk prosecution. This is the sort of shit your constituents have to put up with, day in, day out.
It’s not even about the money. You can bloody well afford it. Most of you have got two or three other lucrative jobs alongside being an MP.
Look. How can I put this nicely?
Just deal with it, and move on. You have got off lightly. Stop whinging, shut up, pay up, and get on with running the country. You haven’t got a Legg to stand on.
Friday, 19 June 2009
Gordon Broon's Blackout Book
I haven’t written much blogstuff lately. Partly it’s because I’ve been busy, partly because, to be honest, the political scene has now become so surreal that it’s very difficult to parody or even make fun of. It has passed the “duck horizon”, that point in any news story where ducks are first mentioned, after which it just becomes progressively more and more surreal, to the stage where you literally could not make it up.
No sooner had we digested the debacle of the European elections, with the triumph of UKIP and the BNP, two parties who are not known for their pan-European aspirations, than we were plunged into the reshuffle. By the mid morning it was like one of those offensives in the First World War where if you managed to survive until lunchtime you were likely to find yourself in command of a battalion!
James Purnell resigned, Jacquie Smith resigned, Caroline Flint resigned, Hazel Blears stormed out of 10 Downing Street via Humphrey’s cat-flap, a few others resigned too, I may have missed them. One woman resigned before I even realised she was in the Cabinet. I still don’t really know who she was. Kitty something. She may actually just have been a market researcher who happened to knock on the door of Number 10 to ask them if they’d ever considered changing their electricity supplier and got sucked into the general maelstrom. For a while, people were resigning faster than Broon could actually appoint them, and you got to the stage where it really seemed that at 9am tomorrow it would just be Broon, running round answering all the phones, and some guy who originally called in to fix the photocopier, but ended up as Foreign Secretary.
And over it all bestrides Gordon, like a colossus, and about as deft and flexible. I have no idea who is in the Cabinet now, and I am not sure that Broon does. Except that we have got Alan Sugar, God help us. Because parodying yourself on reality TV is of course a perfect qualification for kick-starting a broken economy. What next, Clive Sinclair as minister of transport?
But still, at least, the Government was getting to grips with the idea of the need to reform expenses, and even the Telegraph was starting to run out of steam, having failed to find a match for Douglas Hogg’s moat. So all Gordon had to do was to basically institute some reforms which would mean that MPs were no longer robbing the taxpayer, and then turn the focus on to the opposition and start asking them some awkward questions about their plans to cut public spending.
But no. Instead he diverted us down some bewildering avenue of his own choosing about constitutional reform, this presenting Cameron with a few more free open goals. We don’t need constitutional reform. A thieving crook who has been elected by proportional representation is still a thieving crook. All we need is for the people who have been elected not to rob the people who put them there. All that was needed was sorrow, contrition, apology, and restricting people’s expenses to things like folders from Rymans, envelopes, and toner cartridges.
But no. Just when the whole thing was starting to die down and maybe even heading towards the first step on the path to getting sorted, the Government goes and publishes the same expenses that the Telegraph published, but with anything useful blacked out! What mastery of the public mood! What skill! If you could have done one thing to ignite the whole scandal again and simultaneously make it seem to voters that you were totally cynical and didn’t care; that you thought they were complete idiots who would swallow anything; or that you weren’t actually in control of the situation anyway, this was the way to do it.
So, the whole thing has re-ignited once more with a mighty ka-boom! The Telegraph has gained a new lease of life, pointing out that Lembit Opik claimed £19.99 for a comedy wig (and I always thought that was his hair) Ben Bradshaw, technology minister, claimed £20 for a service engineer to plug a cable into his TV, and some nameless Tory apparatchik claimed 1p for a mobile phone call. Once more, we’re in “you couldn’t make it up” land, Toto, and we’re a long way from Kansas. OK, so we are not quite yet in the same league as Iran, where thieves broke into Ayatollah Kharmonyhairspray’s palace and stole next year’s election results, but by God, we’re getting there.
And now Inspector Knacker of the Yard is taking an interest, it’s only a matter of time until one of them does the perp walk. Still, at least Cameron was forced to pay back some of his mortgage, so it’s not all bad news. But given the easy ride he’s been getting from the Gay Gordons of late, he’s still laughing all the way to the bank. Me, I am off down to William Hills to put £25.00 on Humphrey the Cat to be Chief Whip by Monday. True, he’s dead, and he’s a cat, but he’s still got 101 more uses than any current member of the Cabinet.
No sooner had we digested the debacle of the European elections, with the triumph of UKIP and the BNP, two parties who are not known for their pan-European aspirations, than we were plunged into the reshuffle. By the mid morning it was like one of those offensives in the First World War where if you managed to survive until lunchtime you were likely to find yourself in command of a battalion!
James Purnell resigned, Jacquie Smith resigned, Caroline Flint resigned, Hazel Blears stormed out of 10 Downing Street via Humphrey’s cat-flap, a few others resigned too, I may have missed them. One woman resigned before I even realised she was in the Cabinet. I still don’t really know who she was. Kitty something. She may actually just have been a market researcher who happened to knock on the door of Number 10 to ask them if they’d ever considered changing their electricity supplier and got sucked into the general maelstrom. For a while, people were resigning faster than Broon could actually appoint them, and you got to the stage where it really seemed that at 9am tomorrow it would just be Broon, running round answering all the phones, and some guy who originally called in to fix the photocopier, but ended up as Foreign Secretary.
And over it all bestrides Gordon, like a colossus, and about as deft and flexible. I have no idea who is in the Cabinet now, and I am not sure that Broon does. Except that we have got Alan Sugar, God help us. Because parodying yourself on reality TV is of course a perfect qualification for kick-starting a broken economy. What next, Clive Sinclair as minister of transport?
But still, at least, the Government was getting to grips with the idea of the need to reform expenses, and even the Telegraph was starting to run out of steam, having failed to find a match for Douglas Hogg’s moat. So all Gordon had to do was to basically institute some reforms which would mean that MPs were no longer robbing the taxpayer, and then turn the focus on to the opposition and start asking them some awkward questions about their plans to cut public spending.
But no. Instead he diverted us down some bewildering avenue of his own choosing about constitutional reform, this presenting Cameron with a few more free open goals. We don’t need constitutional reform. A thieving crook who has been elected by proportional representation is still a thieving crook. All we need is for the people who have been elected not to rob the people who put them there. All that was needed was sorrow, contrition, apology, and restricting people’s expenses to things like folders from Rymans, envelopes, and toner cartridges.
But no. Just when the whole thing was starting to die down and maybe even heading towards the first step on the path to getting sorted, the Government goes and publishes the same expenses that the Telegraph published, but with anything useful blacked out! What mastery of the public mood! What skill! If you could have done one thing to ignite the whole scandal again and simultaneously make it seem to voters that you were totally cynical and didn’t care; that you thought they were complete idiots who would swallow anything; or that you weren’t actually in control of the situation anyway, this was the way to do it.
So, the whole thing has re-ignited once more with a mighty ka-boom! The Telegraph has gained a new lease of life, pointing out that Lembit Opik claimed £19.99 for a comedy wig (and I always thought that was his hair) Ben Bradshaw, technology minister, claimed £20 for a service engineer to plug a cable into his TV, and some nameless Tory apparatchik claimed 1p for a mobile phone call. Once more, we’re in “you couldn’t make it up” land, Toto, and we’re a long way from Kansas. OK, so we are not quite yet in the same league as Iran, where thieves broke into Ayatollah Kharmonyhairspray’s palace and stole next year’s election results, but by God, we’re getting there.
And now Inspector Knacker of the Yard is taking an interest, it’s only a matter of time until one of them does the perp walk. Still, at least Cameron was forced to pay back some of his mortgage, so it’s not all bad news. But given the easy ride he’s been getting from the Gay Gordons of late, he’s still laughing all the way to the bank. Me, I am off down to William Hills to put £25.00 on Humphrey the Cat to be Chief Whip by Monday. True, he’s dead, and he’s a cat, but he’s still got 101 more uses than any current member of the Cabinet.
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
Motes and Beams
Like everyone else, I guess, I have been gobsmacked by the way members of Parliament of all persuasions seem to have been taking the piss with their expenses, going back not weeks, not months, but years with their claims for faux-Tudor beams, foaming moat cleaner, spare tyres for their cat's butler's granny's Aston-Martin, etc etc contd p.94.
Yet, on reflection, I suppose, I have always known - we have always known - that the political class have a featherbedded lifestyle, cushioned from the harsh realities of life, so it shouldn't really come as a huge surprise that, coupled with extremely lax standards of accountability, a certain amount of abuse must have taken place.
But what is staggering is the scale of the problem. As I have said before, I generally deplore chequebook journalism, but you have to say here that, in this instance, the Barclay Brothers’ chequebook has, at least for once in its life, and no doubt to the surprise of any resident moths, been deployed in the public interest. The fact that the owners of the Daily Telegraph, and people such as Rupert Murdoch, probably avoid far larger amounts in tax than the MPs have jizzed out of the taxpayer, is sort of beside the point, for once. As is the assertion that journalists also fiddle their expenses. Yes, we know. But that argument descends quickly to the level of “whataboutery”. So what? Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Anyway, as I was saying – the sheer scale of it. We all know about David Cameron’s mortgage and Jacquie Smith’s bath plugs, for instance, but this current scandal is like putting your hand through a small hole in a wall somewhere in the dark and feeling what you thought was a small tassel on the end of a leathery bell-pull, and then discovering to your horror that you are actually holding an elephant by the tail. You sort of think on the one hand it might be prudent to bow out now and let it go, but on the other hand the sheer impressive bulk of the pachyderm deserves a grudging respect.
Elephants, of course, have their uses. While alive, they can haul timber, or carry Nabobs and Mahouts around the Indian jungle, thus saving the rest of us the trouble. Translated to the elephants’ graveyard, they provide useful umbrella stands and excellent piano keys. I’m not sure if anyone is currently working on a publication called “101 Uses For A Dead MP” but if they are, it’s likely to be a slim volume, up there with the Taliban Joke Book and the Spanish Guide to Donkey Welfare.
Because they are going to get slaughtered. Not literally, of course, this isn’t France, where if a similar scandal came to light, their equivalent of Parliament Square would be crammed with burning lorries, rioting students and CS gas, in roughly equal proportions. No, this is England, where we shrug our shoulders and say “mustn’t grumble”! But slaughtered they will be, electorally speaking. This is the problem with repressed anger, of the sort that is seething below the surface of (it seems) the entire voting population right now. It sometimes manifests itself in strange, perverse, unexpected and frankly, sometimes unjust ways. So, all over the UK, come the local elections, hard –working councillors, who conscientiously go to meetings, actually try and help the people who elected them, juggle a workload that would stun an ox, and claim little or nothing in the way of expenses, will get voted down because of the loons at Westminster, because people want to vent their anger and protest, and that process will of course inevitably benefit the demagogues.
In fact, this is probably what makes me angriest about the whole thing. Instead of saying “sorry” about the money – or at least as well as – and coming out with their cockanamie lame excuses about mistakes, oversights and accountancy not being their strong suit, they should also be apologising for undermining the very fabric of democracy and handing victory to the fascists on a plate. Because undoubtedly the beneficiaries of this fiasco will be the BNP and UKIP. It is very easy for the likes of the BNP to do now, in the UK, what the Nazis did in 1930s Germany. Denounce the existing administration as incompetent and corrupt (check); promise to make things better (check) promise to put British workers first (check – they mean white British workers, of course); promise to make the trains run on time (check – well, the only opposition was Lord Adonis, so that was a slam-dunk); and blame scapegoats (in Hitler’s case it was the Jews, in the BNP’s, it’s the Muslims and immigrants). What fascists never tell you, of course, is that once they’ve made the trains run on time, the terminus is always the death camps.
So what are we going to do with these MPs, eh? Those public-spirited stalwarts, who all agree now, in the celebrated quip by Andy Hamilton, that the system was so rotten and so abhorrent they could scarcely bring themselves to milk it dry? Is it enough just to apologise and pay it back, even in those cases where amnesia seems to have shaded over into actual fraud? [On the subject of paying it back, by the way, I don’t really see the sense of this. The Government will only go and blow it on something frivolous like an extra Eurofighter or Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension. I’d rather they gave the equivalent of the overclaims on second homes back as a donation to Shelter].
Is it enough that, in the most widely telegraphed downfall since King Kong brandished a screaming Fay Wray at the passing Curtis Jennys from the top of the Empire State Building, a charmless and unpopular speaker of the House has been sacrificed in the hope that it will throw us off the scent? No. It isn’t.
In real life, of course, it’s no defence to say I’m sorry, I forgot. But we’ve already established that these people inhabit a different reality to the rest of us. If you forget to tell the DSS about a change in your benefit circumstances for instance, you are likely to find yourself being interviewed under caution, forced to pay it all back, and probably fined and or prosecuted to boot. But MPs live in a different world, and I am not holding my breath for any prosecutions. I am, however, and I remain, incandescent over the double standard. Not so much moats and beams, as motes and beams.
Much has been made of the argument that MPs were given tacit signals that it was OK to fill your boots on this tax-free gravy train of a system, because this in some way compensated for a supposed shortfall between an MP’s “basic” pay and that of the grades of equivalent public servants such as head teachers, civil servants, brain surgeons, etc. If that is the root of the problem, then maybe the solution is as simple as – give them a basic pay rise, but take away their expenses. Apart from legitimate business ones. I’ve no objection to them buying a folder from Rymans, but having your moat treated is taking the piss. Seriously.
In addition, I’d also take away their right to vote on their own pay increases, and give it to an outside body instead, perhaps composed of CIPFA, the Office of National Statistics, and maybe even citizen representatives from say a dozen randomly-typical constituencies throughout the land, on the proviso that these people are not members of any recognised political party.
Furthermore, if they do put in an expense which is disallowed, subsequently, then that should be retrospectively taxed as a benefit in kind. Their claims should also be published, in full, in the public domain, at least annually. Finally, to this I would add (to which I return yet again, like the dog that returneth to its vomit) a residence qualification. If you want to represent the good people of Lower Snodbury in Parliament then you should damn well buy or rent a house in Lower Snodbury and go and live there, and have lived there for a number of years before you are even allowed to stand.
The people who point out this disparity – supposed disparity, I should say – also often use this as a plank to support the argument that unless we pay MPs “what they are worth” you will only get rich people being able to afford to run for Parliament, and those of modest means will be excluded. Well, I would just like to say, here and now, that I think £64,000 is a massive sum of money. It’s three times what I earned last year before tax, and I would jump at the chance of being Ancient Geek, MP. There’s only one thing stopping me standing, which is the £1000 deposit. Get rid of that, or reduce it to a nominal amount, then you might get some people who actually want to make a difference standing for Parliament. People who aren’t just in it for the money. True, by-elections and indeed general elections would suddenly sprout whole lunatic fringes of monster raving loony candidates and people like Wing Commander Boakes, of recent memory, who used to campaign by sitting in a deck chair in the fast lane of the A40!
But to me, you see, that is all part of the rich tapestry of democracy. It keeps the big parties on their toes, and it gives the protest vote somewhere else to go, other than straight into the arms of the fascists!
And, it would send a very loud, very clear message to those present incumbents at Westminster, whose idiocy might even now just have let the Hitler Youth into the Reichstag by the back door, that there is more to the governance of this great little country of ours than just turning up every so often and signing for your expenses.
Yet, on reflection, I suppose, I have always known - we have always known - that the political class have a featherbedded lifestyle, cushioned from the harsh realities of life, so it shouldn't really come as a huge surprise that, coupled with extremely lax standards of accountability, a certain amount of abuse must have taken place.
But what is staggering is the scale of the problem. As I have said before, I generally deplore chequebook journalism, but you have to say here that, in this instance, the Barclay Brothers’ chequebook has, at least for once in its life, and no doubt to the surprise of any resident moths, been deployed in the public interest. The fact that the owners of the Daily Telegraph, and people such as Rupert Murdoch, probably avoid far larger amounts in tax than the MPs have jizzed out of the taxpayer, is sort of beside the point, for once. As is the assertion that journalists also fiddle their expenses. Yes, we know. But that argument descends quickly to the level of “whataboutery”. So what? Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Anyway, as I was saying – the sheer scale of it. We all know about David Cameron’s mortgage and Jacquie Smith’s bath plugs, for instance, but this current scandal is like putting your hand through a small hole in a wall somewhere in the dark and feeling what you thought was a small tassel on the end of a leathery bell-pull, and then discovering to your horror that you are actually holding an elephant by the tail. You sort of think on the one hand it might be prudent to bow out now and let it go, but on the other hand the sheer impressive bulk of the pachyderm deserves a grudging respect.
Elephants, of course, have their uses. While alive, they can haul timber, or carry Nabobs and Mahouts around the Indian jungle, thus saving the rest of us the trouble. Translated to the elephants’ graveyard, they provide useful umbrella stands and excellent piano keys. I’m not sure if anyone is currently working on a publication called “101 Uses For A Dead MP” but if they are, it’s likely to be a slim volume, up there with the Taliban Joke Book and the Spanish Guide to Donkey Welfare.
Because they are going to get slaughtered. Not literally, of course, this isn’t France, where if a similar scandal came to light, their equivalent of Parliament Square would be crammed with burning lorries, rioting students and CS gas, in roughly equal proportions. No, this is England, where we shrug our shoulders and say “mustn’t grumble”! But slaughtered they will be, electorally speaking. This is the problem with repressed anger, of the sort that is seething below the surface of (it seems) the entire voting population right now. It sometimes manifests itself in strange, perverse, unexpected and frankly, sometimes unjust ways. So, all over the UK, come the local elections, hard –working councillors, who conscientiously go to meetings, actually try and help the people who elected them, juggle a workload that would stun an ox, and claim little or nothing in the way of expenses, will get voted down because of the loons at Westminster, because people want to vent their anger and protest, and that process will of course inevitably benefit the demagogues.
In fact, this is probably what makes me angriest about the whole thing. Instead of saying “sorry” about the money – or at least as well as – and coming out with their cockanamie lame excuses about mistakes, oversights and accountancy not being their strong suit, they should also be apologising for undermining the very fabric of democracy and handing victory to the fascists on a plate. Because undoubtedly the beneficiaries of this fiasco will be the BNP and UKIP. It is very easy for the likes of the BNP to do now, in the UK, what the Nazis did in 1930s Germany. Denounce the existing administration as incompetent and corrupt (check); promise to make things better (check) promise to put British workers first (check – they mean white British workers, of course); promise to make the trains run on time (check – well, the only opposition was Lord Adonis, so that was a slam-dunk); and blame scapegoats (in Hitler’s case it was the Jews, in the BNP’s, it’s the Muslims and immigrants). What fascists never tell you, of course, is that once they’ve made the trains run on time, the terminus is always the death camps.
So what are we going to do with these MPs, eh? Those public-spirited stalwarts, who all agree now, in the celebrated quip by Andy Hamilton, that the system was so rotten and so abhorrent they could scarcely bring themselves to milk it dry? Is it enough just to apologise and pay it back, even in those cases where amnesia seems to have shaded over into actual fraud? [On the subject of paying it back, by the way, I don’t really see the sense of this. The Government will only go and blow it on something frivolous like an extra Eurofighter or Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension. I’d rather they gave the equivalent of the overclaims on second homes back as a donation to Shelter].
Is it enough that, in the most widely telegraphed downfall since King Kong brandished a screaming Fay Wray at the passing Curtis Jennys from the top of the Empire State Building, a charmless and unpopular speaker of the House has been sacrificed in the hope that it will throw us off the scent? No. It isn’t.
In real life, of course, it’s no defence to say I’m sorry, I forgot. But we’ve already established that these people inhabit a different reality to the rest of us. If you forget to tell the DSS about a change in your benefit circumstances for instance, you are likely to find yourself being interviewed under caution, forced to pay it all back, and probably fined and or prosecuted to boot. But MPs live in a different world, and I am not holding my breath for any prosecutions. I am, however, and I remain, incandescent over the double standard. Not so much moats and beams, as motes and beams.
Much has been made of the argument that MPs were given tacit signals that it was OK to fill your boots on this tax-free gravy train of a system, because this in some way compensated for a supposed shortfall between an MP’s “basic” pay and that of the grades of equivalent public servants such as head teachers, civil servants, brain surgeons, etc. If that is the root of the problem, then maybe the solution is as simple as – give them a basic pay rise, but take away their expenses. Apart from legitimate business ones. I’ve no objection to them buying a folder from Rymans, but having your moat treated is taking the piss. Seriously.
In addition, I’d also take away their right to vote on their own pay increases, and give it to an outside body instead, perhaps composed of CIPFA, the Office of National Statistics, and maybe even citizen representatives from say a dozen randomly-typical constituencies throughout the land, on the proviso that these people are not members of any recognised political party.
Furthermore, if they do put in an expense which is disallowed, subsequently, then that should be retrospectively taxed as a benefit in kind. Their claims should also be published, in full, in the public domain, at least annually. Finally, to this I would add (to which I return yet again, like the dog that returneth to its vomit) a residence qualification. If you want to represent the good people of Lower Snodbury in Parliament then you should damn well buy or rent a house in Lower Snodbury and go and live there, and have lived there for a number of years before you are even allowed to stand.
The people who point out this disparity – supposed disparity, I should say – also often use this as a plank to support the argument that unless we pay MPs “what they are worth” you will only get rich people being able to afford to run for Parliament, and those of modest means will be excluded. Well, I would just like to say, here and now, that I think £64,000 is a massive sum of money. It’s three times what I earned last year before tax, and I would jump at the chance of being Ancient Geek, MP. There’s only one thing stopping me standing, which is the £1000 deposit. Get rid of that, or reduce it to a nominal amount, then you might get some people who actually want to make a difference standing for Parliament. People who aren’t just in it for the money. True, by-elections and indeed general elections would suddenly sprout whole lunatic fringes of monster raving loony candidates and people like Wing Commander Boakes, of recent memory, who used to campaign by sitting in a deck chair in the fast lane of the A40!
But to me, you see, that is all part of the rich tapestry of democracy. It keeps the big parties on their toes, and it gives the protest vote somewhere else to go, other than straight into the arms of the fascists!
And, it would send a very loud, very clear message to those present incumbents at Westminster, whose idiocy might even now just have let the Hitler Youth into the Reichstag by the back door, that there is more to the governance of this great little country of ours than just turning up every so often and signing for your expenses.
Monday, 13 April 2009
Don't Wash the Bankers! (Spoonerism alert!)
Gordon Broon's receipe for helping us climb out of the credit crunch cesspit, into which we all plunged up to our armpits at the back end of last year, when his imaginary floor gave way beneath our feet, as at some latter-day Synod of Whitby, is that we should give up bashing the bankers.
Enough is enough, he cries, it's time to forgive and forget, they have suffered for too long, ect ect, chiz chiz.
I'm sorry, but that is bollocks. In the words of the late Margaret Thatcher, "No, no no no, no, NO!" They haven't suffered nearly enough. True, a few thousand lower level employees have been sacrificed by those who caused the mess in the first place, to try and invoke some general sympathy for the banking sector, and I do feel sorry for these people, because they know find themselves unemployed as a result of the actions of their supposed superiors and betters, who seem to have treated them in what is called in management jargon "the Mushroom Method" (keep them in the dark, then drop them in the shit).
But the rest of them? Have they suffered? Apart from a perfunctory, fingers-crossed behind the back apology in front of a House of Commons Committee? Have they buggery! And in any case, these banks in general are the people who saw fit to treat us, their customers, with such arrogance and such disdain in the past, with their megolamaniac demands that we identify ourselves and their snarty little letters that charge us £20 when we might have gone overdrawn. Well, no.
I'm sorry. We own their sorry asses now, and the boot is firmly on the other foot. My foot. Like all bullies, they can dish it out, but they can't take it. Well, tough. While I have got the boot, I will continue to apply it to whatever tender regions of their anatomy I can find, until someone starts to say sorry, and to treat me with some respect.
Enough is enough, he cries, it's time to forgive and forget, they have suffered for too long, ect ect, chiz chiz.
I'm sorry, but that is bollocks. In the words of the late Margaret Thatcher, "No, no no no, no, NO!" They haven't suffered nearly enough. True, a few thousand lower level employees have been sacrificed by those who caused the mess in the first place, to try and invoke some general sympathy for the banking sector, and I do feel sorry for these people, because they know find themselves unemployed as a result of the actions of their supposed superiors and betters, who seem to have treated them in what is called in management jargon "the Mushroom Method" (keep them in the dark, then drop them in the shit).
But the rest of them? Have they suffered? Apart from a perfunctory, fingers-crossed behind the back apology in front of a House of Commons Committee? Have they buggery! And in any case, these banks in general are the people who saw fit to treat us, their customers, with such arrogance and such disdain in the past, with their megolamaniac demands that we identify ourselves and their snarty little letters that charge us £20 when we might have gone overdrawn. Well, no.
I'm sorry. We own their sorry asses now, and the boot is firmly on the other foot. My foot. Like all bullies, they can dish it out, but they can't take it. Well, tough. While I have got the boot, I will continue to apply it to whatever tender regions of their anatomy I can find, until someone starts to say sorry, and to treat me with some respect.
Saturday, 28 March 2009
Housey Housey
When I was young (yes, I was once young) we used to go on seaside holidays to Withernsea or Kilnsea, in a succession of bleak rented caravans. Or to Butlin’s at Skegness, in good years. The highlight of these holidays, for my parents, was always playing bingo. Personally, I never saw the appeal, but then, as I say, I was young. I guess now, looking back on it, that it was the cheap visceral thrill of unexpectedly supplementing the drudgery of your daily economic grind with some unearned, untaxed income, in a setting outside of the four walls of your own home.
So I can, to a certain extent, understand the antics of Tony McNulty and Jacquie Smith in claiming thousands of pounds in second home allowances, in circumstances that someone less charitable than myself might have described as “questionable”.
The sheer brass face with which these allegations have been “rebutted”, and the fact that it was felt acceptable to claim these allowances in the first place, though, speaks volumes on the contempt with which politicians currently view the electorate who put them there. They obviously think we are blind, or stupid, or both.
The justification for this behaviour is apparently that “they broke no rules”. If this is indeed true, then the rules need changing. It’s as simple as that. There is no way on God’s green earth that we should be paying for MPs’ second homes anyway. I have long argued that there should be a residence qualification for an MP before they can stand for a certain constituency. If you want to be the MP for Lower Snodbury, you should move there, buy or rent a house there, and live there for at least a couple of years before you are allowed to have a go. That way, we would only get people who were either committed to that area or indeed, actually from that area, standing. And the money saved from the payment of second home allowances to already well-off MPs could be put into something socially useful such as feeding, clothing and housing the homeless.
So I can, to a certain extent, understand the antics of Tony McNulty and Jacquie Smith in claiming thousands of pounds in second home allowances, in circumstances that someone less charitable than myself might have described as “questionable”.
The sheer brass face with which these allegations have been “rebutted”, and the fact that it was felt acceptable to claim these allowances in the first place, though, speaks volumes on the contempt with which politicians currently view the electorate who put them there. They obviously think we are blind, or stupid, or both.
The justification for this behaviour is apparently that “they broke no rules”. If this is indeed true, then the rules need changing. It’s as simple as that. There is no way on God’s green earth that we should be paying for MPs’ second homes anyway. I have long argued that there should be a residence qualification for an MP before they can stand for a certain constituency. If you want to be the MP for Lower Snodbury, you should move there, buy or rent a house there, and live there for at least a couple of years before you are allowed to have a go. That way, we would only get people who were either committed to that area or indeed, actually from that area, standing. And the money saved from the payment of second home allowances to already well-off MPs could be put into something socially useful such as feeding, clothing and housing the homeless.
Sunday, 30 November 2008
VAT was the question again?
The more I think about it, the more I remain unconvinced that the cut in VAT announced by Alistair Darling will do anything to help put money into people's pockets.
I think big retailers will just quietly pocket the extra percentage and not bother to reduce prices, on the grounds that in three weeks, no one will notice. Sure, they will lose some sales because there are people who do shop around, but given that the difference is probably about £4.50 on a £250 purchase (a laser printer, for example) they know that with a gross profit margin of 30% you can put your prices up 10%, lose 25% of your customers, and still make the same gross profit, and they ain't gonna lose anything like 25%.
If you are a major office supplies organisation, mentioning no names, with an annual turnover of £114M, then keeping the prices the same and pocketing the difference is worth £2.1M pa to you, whereas individually in one-off consumer purchases, they will hardly notice they are going to be ripped off.
I suppose in a situation where big high street names are feeling the pinch - Woolworths has gone, PC World Dixons Currys are posting profit warnings, we should be grateful that the extra turnover might tip the balance and safeguard some jobs, but even there, I hae me doots.
So, tinkering round the edges and unlikely to work. Especially since the duty on fuel will be increased to compensate for the VAT cut, and the energy companies will carry on bleeding us white. At least Dick Turpin wore a mask.
I think big retailers will just quietly pocket the extra percentage and not bother to reduce prices, on the grounds that in three weeks, no one will notice. Sure, they will lose some sales because there are people who do shop around, but given that the difference is probably about £4.50 on a £250 purchase (a laser printer, for example) they know that with a gross profit margin of 30% you can put your prices up 10%, lose 25% of your customers, and still make the same gross profit, and they ain't gonna lose anything like 25%.
If you are a major office supplies organisation, mentioning no names, with an annual turnover of £114M, then keeping the prices the same and pocketing the difference is worth £2.1M pa to you, whereas individually in one-off consumer purchases, they will hardly notice they are going to be ripped off.
I suppose in a situation where big high street names are feeling the pinch - Woolworths has gone, PC World Dixons Currys are posting profit warnings, we should be grateful that the extra turnover might tip the balance and safeguard some jobs, but even there, I hae me doots.
So, tinkering round the edges and unlikely to work. Especially since the duty on fuel will be increased to compensate for the VAT cut, and the energy companies will carry on bleeding us white. At least Dick Turpin wore a mask.
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