House Price Crash....

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Proper Money - The Cobden Centre

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The Truth Really isn't in Them, is it?

A friend of mine, in the FS business, writes occasional articles for the trade press, who frequently censor them. Here's a recent piece I thought you'd like to share, in its unedited form.

For the last six months I have been involved in a dreary correspondence with Paul, Lord Myners, via my own MP, regarding Myners June 2009 submission to the Joint Committee on Human Rights regarding the surreptitious removal of the 15-year longstop defence.

Readers may recall that the Committee decided that the matter was not of sufficient importance and this was primarily due to Myners advising them that, “The FOS rules were consulted on extensively before they came into force on 1 December 2001”. He also stated, “The Limitation Act 1980 does not apply to the FOS, a point that was discussed and considered when the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 was being debated by Parliament.”

This January he again chose to re-write history and complained, “My letter (to the Committee) does not refer either to Parliament debating the removal of the longstop or to the FSA entering into extensive consultation on the issue.”

His latest missive, dated 14 March, asserts that, “The FSA consulted, in parallel, on the detailed rules including those covering the Ombudsman. I note, for example, that the question of time limits for making a complaint to the FOS was discussed in the joint FSA/FOS consultation paper CP33.”

The words ‘truth’ and ‘economical’ do not do justice to this ongoing fiction and he must gratified by the knowledge that non-elected Ministers cannot be deselected or pushed out by the electorate.

A scrutiny of his various points is clearly in order. CP33 did indeed consult on time limits for complaints but not only was the 15-year longstop never discussed, it was not even mentioned. The feedback statement, CP49, was published in May 2000 and contained an important proposal at s173. “Alignment with the English law of limitations in respect of the time limit for making a complaint to the Scheme after the act or omission giving rise to the matter in question.”

Again, there is no specific mention of the longstop, but a crystal clear proposal that the FOS time limits would reflect those of the court system.

A policy statement was published in December 2000 and, no surprise, no specific mention was made of the longstop. A subtle wording change emerged at s1.13 where it stated, “As envisaged in CP49, the time limits for bringing a complaint to the FOS broadly mirror the law of limitation in respect of bringing actions to court.”

The question is, are we dealing with semantics or are we being subjected to downright lies? No doubt you will draw your own conclusions.

So, did Lord Myners tell the Joint Committee that the disapplication of the Limitation Act was discussed and considered by Parliament when debating the bill? Yes. Did this actually happen? No.

Did Lord Myners state that the FSA consulted extensively on the FOS scheme rules before they came into force? Yes. Did this actually happen? Yes and no – the FSA did consult and as we have seen they did propose that the time limit rules would mirror those within English Law but they did not ever mention the removal or retention of the longstop. Furthermore, within the minutes of the FSA Board Meeting, dated 18 September 2003, the then CEO, John Tiner, stated unequivocally, “”We did not consult on having a 15 year limitation period when DISP was consulted on.”

None of this is accidental. Financial firms have been duped and maybe even laughed at. A rich vein of disingenuity can be located throughout this unsavoury episode. Untruths, vagueness, hints, suggestions, subtle adjustments and outright porkies have all been on display. Is it any wonder that such people are despised?

At a recent meeting, Michael Fallon MP Chairman of the Treasury Sub-committee expressed disquiet regarding the removal of advisers rights. These verbal shenanigans should be of equal concern and it is to be hoped that Lord Myners is called before them to explain his elastic terminology.

Ed - Call me Goebbels - Balls

Someone pointed this out to me. Excellent. Thanks

Anti Politics

All my life I have been interested in politics, but not truly interested, if you know what I mean. Look, I am very engaged with the fight for continuing freedom from the dark forces of the left and the right, especially the left. By I cannot be arsed with 'politicking' as you might say. All that endless manoeuvring and sitting in committees and plotting about power. But, in all that time my adversaries, who have been mostly lefties, have been not just willing to do all this, but actually find it fun.

Perhaps this is the problem in the lefty vs freedom battle. Freedom is essentially anti politics. It has lots of stuff much more important and more fun and creative to do than sitting about in endless committees not really achieving anything real. There is no enthusiasm for politics, unlike with the lefties who find it all utterly absorbing.

It would seem then that freedom is always on the defensive. It has to stay alert for the next assault and seek to stop it. Dead. Trouble is this takes time away of doing more important stuff and it is very wearying. You just want them to go away and leave you right alone. It is far easier to keep on the attack if it is your enthusiasm than it is to defend against that energy if it is not.

This will always be the problem for the major party of freedom in the UK, the Tories. Not that the Tories are very freedom conscious, they are too latently oligarchical for that. They exist as the only major not politics political party. But if they stay as they are now as a sort Labour Right it will get harder and harder for them to achieve electoral success as there is no clear differentiator between them and New Labour. To be successful they may have to move more to the right, or in my terms further to the centre, to more freedom, or bluntly towards Libertarianism. This philosophy, which is in itself a sort of anti- philosophy - should take us towards the top of the circle, to freedom, and let the lefties and righties slide down each side into irrelevance.

And if this is the case and it does succeed what's next? Where does the effective opposition come from? Well, maybe it will come from an alliance between the parties of right and left. After all they both have totalitarian aims, it's just that they get their by slightly different routes.

Whatever, freedom lovers still have a problem with their own apathy, well not apathy but real, justified and commonsensible aversion to wasting their lives in smoked filled rooms when they could be doing other much more important things, like, for example, walking the dogs in the fresh air on a spring morning.

Oh No! And I thought Engineers were sensible..

Now the Engineers are at it. Stealing MY money. This is a feature in NCE magazine about how to fund infrastructure. To save you wading through the whole load of bollocks, I'll extract this classic:-

"...It added that proceeds from the sale of the government’s share in bailed out banks and from the auction of carbon permits could also be channelled to the bank..."

WTF! It's is not, repeat not the Governemnt's share in the banks. It's the TAXPAYER's fucking share you arrogant corporatist dolts.

And if the project can't be funded commercially it's probably not viable and should not be built.

Just as I have been predicting.......

The Financial Services Authority has decided to triple its 'fines'. This is exactly mirroring the Stasi's behaviour in East Germany as Bureaucratic Fascist/Communism imploded. The Stasi's ability to control the public by State sanctioned Terror evaporated, so they reverted to type and just simply shot dead more people. The FSA can't do that, yet. But as an out of control utterly unaccountable totally failed bureaucratic Quango they're going to have to make do with the next best thing and set about bankrupting anyone who contravenes their arbitrary - and as we all now know - useless rules. Separation of powers, you say? Don't make me laugh. This lot are judge jury and executioner.

This is exactly what I predicted years ago.

Bastards.

What's Wrong with this page from the IR Website?

Look at the table. What is the heading in the pink row? CUSTOMER group. CUSTOMER! Customer. I am not a bleedin' customer. I am poor beleaguered TAX PAYER.

This sums up all that is wrong in New Labour's totalitarian bureaucratic Britain. To misquote No6 'I am not a customer! I am a taxpayer!'

Fuck me pink.

The NHS at 'Work'

Referring to my earlier posts where I describe how the State tried to kill me, I have now had some follow up stuff, including a planned appointment with the cardiologist, a Good Bloke.

First I arrive at the appointed time and am kept waiting for over one hour. Luckily I'd put enough of the hard earned in the automatic cash confiscation machine so that I wasn't over parked.

Then we get to the appointment. Doc has a trainee cardiac nurse in with him. "Is this OK with you Mr Lola?" "Of course Doc"

We make the usual pleasantries, and the 'phone rings. He answers and is dragged into long consultation with a colleague, mouthing apologies to me. 5 minutes goes by.

Whilst he is engaged in that there's a knock on the door and a Junior colleague comes in with a a huge file and a question. He hangs around.

Doc asks me if I mind if he gets shot of junior colleague before we carry on? "Nope", I say, "you go right ahead".

As he's doing that there is another knock on the door and a nurse/administrator pokes her head round the door, then comes in and asks if it is OK to put another call through. 'It's a private matter'.

By now the Doc is looking a bit pressured, so the 'phone decides to ring again. he ignores it and turns to me and says 'look, I think it's best if we deal with you first'.

All the audience hangs around whilst he asks me a couple of questions and writes out a scrip. We shake hands and off I go.

Now, be clear, I am not at all precious about myself. Shit happens. But this is bonkers. This is the NHS doing what it does best. Complete fucking chaos and complete disregard for patients and their wants and needs. I had no chance to ask the questions I wanted to and I am not all as informed as I want to be.

So what to do. Well, in order to get some time and privacy and pick his brains, I am going to have to pay for a private consultation again aren't I?

My immediate response is to refuse to pay my income tax. And when I do send them a cheque I am going to deduct these costs and see what happens.

The real tragedy is that the NHS fails because it denies the freedom to the staff to do the job properly. It's not money. It's structures. These people, the clinicians, whom I have found to be generally good, are unable to do their job well because of the endemic chaos of an entirely producer captured monopoly.

More Statist Bollocks

I am being bloody minded about my self assessment tax payment due on 31st January. In essence I am delaying paying the bastards anything until the last possible moment. I know I'll have to pay interest and penalties, but the price is worth it just to not give that bastard Brown any more money to fritter away.

Anyway, to the point of this post.

Just got a letter from the Inland Revenue. Sentence 1 reads as follows:

"Nine out of ten UK citizens pay their Self Assessment tax on time, funding the public services that we all benefit from".

W.T.F?

Talk about spin.

For a start that means that 10% don't, so I'd be a damn' fool to pay mine on time then?

Next. There are what, 32m people in employment in the UK. Of which 8.5m turn up for the state every day. Only about 3.0m of those do any 'work', e.g. doctors, nurses, military etc. and probably half of those could do their work in the private sector. So there arer 7m are just doing what exactly? Well, not paying tax for a start seeing as how any income tax notionally deducted from their turning up money is just a rebate to the rest of us in private business.

Then there is the bloody implicit message that public services are automatically a Good Thing. No they bloody well are not. 50% of these 'services' could be better delivered by the private sector where I could choose whether or not to pay for them, all the fake charities for example, or having my bins collected. And anyway they don't deliver services, they ration them. And, and, some of these services don't just take your money and spend it badly, they try and kill you! I have personal experience of this.

Fuck me. That sentence in that letter has made me very angry indeed.

Trouble at the (Fed) - Bank of England / Treasury

See this link to a Von Mises institute blog post. For Bernanke read King Darling Brown Balls.

FSA - Again

I am being forced to look at the Stasi FSA website again. I came across this classic:

"These pages are for you if you are a financial adviser and want to find out how the FSA regulates you and what’s going on in your sector."

What! I know exactly what's going in my 'sector' you bunch of bureaucratic fuckwits. It's you that has absolutely no idea what's going on - anywhere in any sector. And if you do turn up and find out what is going on, you just fuck it up.

Wankers

More Financial Services Authority Revelations

Been doing a bit of digging around.

The CEO of the FSA is a bloke called Hector Sants. Look him up on Wikipedia. According to my contacts he is also very New Labour (why am I not surprised) suave, genial, clever and pretty sure of his own wonderfulness.

Sants took on the FSA job in 2004 and was allegedly very disappointed that it did not automatically come with a Knighthood.

Once the Tories announced that they would be scrapping the FSA if/when they got into power Sants made two or three rather political, anti Tory policy speeches, that I understand did not go down well with the Dave and George show. So they got clever. It seems that when (if) the Tories get in and sort out FS reg-yew-lay-shun they are going to need more very skilled people at the Bank of England and I am told that certain grades of staff automatically qualify for a 'K'.

Sants has been very quiet recently.

Now, how many of you have read the Sword in the Stone? Sir 'Ector is Arthur's guardian. When Arthur pulls the sword from the stone Sir' Ector falls to his knees and acknowledges his Liege. I often wondered whether the Legend of Arthur has been misinterpreted. Is it possible that Arthur is a paradigm for the Common Man. That when the Common Man gets power all the lords will kneel in front of him?

So Mr S, knowing that you are a pretty self satisfied bloke I should be very careful if I were you. Becoming Sir 'Ector will always make me think of Arthur's sovereignty - the sovereignty of the Common Man.

To quote another popular hero of the Common Man, "I'll just put your name in my little black book, and come the revolution, up against the wall; bang bang bang."

Fairness

'Fairness' is a word much used and abused by New Labour, or lefties in general. Of course this is a nonsense as what they mean is that they have a monopoly on deciding what's fair, even though you and I might (would almost certainly) think that whatever they think fair as very unfair.

Take income tax for example. A good choice for this time of year. Firstly income tax is a very bad tax. It is at best a tax on employment and at worst a tax on life, i.e. time. And since no State employee pays any income tax at all, since what is notionally deducted from their pay is simply a rebate to the rest of us in private business, why should anyone else?

Now, much is made of the fact that income tax is 'fair' as it is a 'progressive' tax. That is that those earning more pay more. Erm, why is this fair? Assuming a percentage rate based tax, why should person A earning £100,000 pay proportionally more than person B earning £50,000? Surely that's grossly unfair? Just because you earn more you are expected to pay more. Why? Food and fuel aren't priced like that. Why should government be?

Well, this policy of progressive taxation is designed by lefties to demonise higher earners in the eyes of lower earners and to make earning a lot of money a Bad Thing. The assumption is that Person A only has a lot of money because he stole it from person B. This is stupid as we all know. Person A is simply more skilled or lucky or determined than person B. Mostly person A is simply more skilled and harder working and more committed to creating wealth than person B. So why should he be coerced by the state under the ultimate threat of violence and the loss of his liberty to pay proportionally more tax?

Well, he shouldn't.

Supposing we changed the income tax rates so that people earning up to say £12,000 p.a. (roughly the minimum wage) paid no tax.

Then those on earnings between £12,000 and £50,000, say, paid tax at 20%.

And then on earnings over £50,001 the income tax rate was nil.

What do we think would happen?

Well, first off it is a clear signal that we are going to encourage high earning.

Second we are making it very clear that earning a lot of money is a very good thing.

Next it recognises that it is very unfair for anyone to pay proportionally more tax than anyone else.

I am also certain that this would encourage so much wealth creation that UK plc would benefit hugely.

It would go a long way to killing the envy culture fostered by lefties, hence it would be a blow for freedom.

As a companion to this there must also be a massive cut in what the state actually does so that State employees can be reduced to the minimum. Because they still won't pay any tax.

The end game of this is of course the scrapping of income tax altogether. This would be the fairest thing whilst we have a large-ish state employing people. Once income tax is scrapped all those in private business will then be taxed at the same rate as those employed by the State.

Surely that's even more 'fair'?

PS. For the avoidance of doubt I think the military should be exempt from income tax anyway. But not the police.

Billy Bragg Tax Protest

Just signed up with Billy Bragg's tax protest on Facebook. Here. Feel a bit of a prat for doing so really. I mean, he's right that RBS shouldn't be paying bonuses, but he's got it arse about face as to why they are.

Thing is, Billy old son, the first mistake New Labour made was to bail them out in the first place. There were a number of other routes that could have been taken to make the banks including RBS liquid again. Debt for equity swaps for example. Secondly having bailed out all these banks New Labour have created a cartel. And what do cartels do? Exploit their customers and everyone else. So paying out mega bonuses was always on the cards.

Now I agree that Brown Darling could stop all this but since they've made a complete fist of 'running the economy' (by the way 'running the economy' is the usual lefty delusion, economies run themselves pretty well if left to get on with it) what makes you or anyone else think that they could 'run' the banks? Quite.

Thought Control?

I notice that New Labour are setting up another thought conditioning experiment on the young. They are requiring schools to teach 'financial capability' as part of PSE lessons. They are going to teach children about bank accounts, how to set up a DD, how to write a cheque and well, all about lots of other bits of what is just administration.

This is risible for two reasons.

1. New Labour being the most financially inept government ever, has no credibility at all when it comes to financial capability.

2. If they wanted to teach children something useful they could drum into them two simple facts. (a) Don't trust banks. And (b) Don't trust governments.

The admin they can sort out for themselves when they get there.

There. Easy isn't it.

(Have you seen the equally risible NatWest Ads? There's one of their female bods in a school going on about all this admin. If I was a teacher I'd ask her to explain to the class how they made such a first class mess of their business, went bust, and tried very hard to take the whole country with them. Now that would be a useful lesson).

Who tells you what to do?

(A) Lefties, including New Labour (or just Labour) , Lib dems, BNP / Socialism: The 'get in everyone's bloody way party / philosophy'.

(B) Righties, including LPUK, UKIP, Tories (Unless they get seduced by paternalistic oligarchism and homeownerism) / Libertarianism: The 'lets get out of everyone's way party / philosophy'.

Which is likely to not just work better, but to work at all? Do YOU think they know what's best for you? Do YOU always want to be told what to do? No, me neither.