Middle Aged Dad

Kitchen Design

2011-03-14T11:18:00.003Z

Following a small series of post and discussions on Mark wadsworth's blog about good kitchen design, here is my tuppenyworth. Personally I reckon the previous examples were a bit too - urban? Here is our version of a kitchen in a house in the countryside. It is an 'action shot'. I was engaed in making toad int he hole, with roast potatoes, sauted carrots and cabbage with onion gravy.

Kitchen design....

"Facilities"....

2011-01-02T14:39:00.002Z

and/or...

As requested....

House Price Crash....

2010-10-26T12:09:00.000+01:00

House price crash presentation

View more presentations from TheSqueeze.

Proper Money - The Cobden Centre

2010-10-24T20:10:00.002+01:00

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

2010-03-30T14:40:00.003+01:00

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

2010-03-15T19:59:00.002Z

Someone pointed this out to me. Excellent. Thanks

Anti Politics

2010-03-02T23:24:00.006Z

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..

2010-03-01T13:04:00.003Z

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.......

2010-03-01T12:56:00.007Z

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?

2010-02-24T17:39:00.004Z

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'

2010-02-23T09:40:00.005Z

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

2010-02-22T18:19:00.005Z

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

2010-02-12T16:34:00.001Z

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

FSA - Again

2010-02-06T20:05:00.003Z

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

2010-01-23T18:15:00.004Z

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

2010-01-23T17:48:00.006Z

'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

2010-01-18T21:42:00.003Z

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?

2010-01-03T22:23:00.002Z

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?

2010-01-02T18:45:00.003Z

(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.

HMS Enterprise?

2009-12-30T16:32:00.005Z

Whatever the taxation arguments, the John Redwood post was really about enterpreneurialism.

Many people, and respondents on his blog, get confused between enterprise and entrepreneurialism. Essentially enterprise is a quality that most of us possess to one degree or another. Very few people though possess entrepreneurialism. To be an entrepreneur you need to see things in a new way. To spot the inefficiency or the opportunity for a new good or service. You need to be really creative.

This differentiation between enterprise and entrepreneurialism is evident in the employment statistics. About 4 million workers are self employed. But very few of those actually created a new business based on a new product or service idea. Many just do what they did for an employer on their own account.

Entrepreneurs are those that disturb the steady state economy and send it off in a new direction. Enterprising people are not necessarily entrepreneurs, but they can be very successful, and excellent job creators in their own field.

The point of this ramble is that it is genuinely possible to teach people to be enterprising, you just need self belief, energy and ambition; but much more difficult, and I contend not really possible, to teach entrepreneurialism.

The root of our problem is an education system designed to create bureaucratic jobsworths and to supply supplicant and pliable cannon fodder into the maw of the bureaucratic state. It also has the added benefit of not creating people who will challenge the bureaucracy.

I was fortunate I went to one of the last true Grammar Schools. Loads of Old Boys of that school showed enterprise and some genuine entrepreneurialism.

So if you want more enterprise, liberate education. Trouble is the turn round round time for the UK is therefore generational, not just a couple of years.

(This is an edited version of a comment made on Mark Wadsworth's blog here)

And Happy New Year to You...

2009-12-30T15:45:00.006Z

Well, that's it. Just been told by a contact that the Inland Revenue is not negotiating on tax payments for businesses and the self employed. Pay up now or that's it. 'Course they aren't. One, Brown has run out of our money and two, someone has to pay the IR staff. After all they don't pay any income tax themselves, do they?

Income tax is a terrible thing. It was foist upon as as a con job by a long past government probably to pay for a war on the basis that it would only apply to the 'rich'. But of course once out there the temptation of politicians to creep downwards with the limits was all too tempting until we now have the situation that even someone on minimum wage pays income tax. (Note. I do not support the idea of a minimum wage.)

And as far as State jobsworths is concerned it is just part of the mad money go round of the bureaucratic state. Since, as PAYE, income tax is a tax on employment it is the IR - part of HMG - that pays the employees tax, not the employee. And just where did the IR (or HMG) get the money to pay its employees? Yup, from the workers adding real value in the real economy. So the IR collects money from us, pays some of it to their employees and keeps back the rest. In other words it is just a saving on the employment cost of the state employee, as opposed to a cost for all of us private business employers. On top of that the profligacy of their pension benefits, at a cost of between 20% to 30% of salary roll means that this saving to us, wealth creators, is simply swallowed up in funding (or not fully funding) extremely generous pensions to state employees.

This mad money go round exposes the inequity of income tax. One, no state employee pays it. And two, it is a destroyer of employment in the non government employment sector - private business. On top of my New Year wish list is the announcement that one or other party recognises the massive unfairness and destructive nature of Income tax and will make an absolute commitment to abolish it by a certain time, say five years hence.

A first step is the introduction of a flat tax at a rate of about 20% starting at a higher threshold of about £15,000.

It won't happen. Will it?

Formula 1

2009-11-04T18:06:00.007Z

Toyota, and probably Renault, are getting out of F1. A basic knowledge of freedom and markets told me that this, or something like it, would happen, and that the 'compulsory budget cuts' - or in economic terms, price controls - proposed by the Max (now Jean) and Bernie were utterly fatuous.

F1's current situation is an object lesson in what happens without democracy, the rule of law and the indulgence of oligarchs. The FIA is an undemocratic dictatorship. It has handed a monopoly patent for all the 'commercial rights' to an oligarch. The FIA operates kangaroo courts to enforce these positions. This corporatisation attracts other cartelisers and mercantilists, like big corporations and autocratic governments. This, for a time, suits the oligarch as he can demand substantial commissions from competing mercantilist and totalitarian governments to bring the show to their town to lend them legitimacy and credibility of their own lack of democracy.

This excess spending filters down to the teams where international corporations are sucked into spending an awful lot of money to try and become winners. A lot of this cash is spent not on engineering and racing but on corporate entertainment and similar. Carmakers as a genral rule are only profitable on their core business one year in five (source: Warren Buffett) hence much of their F1 spend must also come from borrowed money. Keeping up in the bling competition is not cheap.

But, as one lady once famously remarked, 'you can't buck the markets'. Sooner or later the international investors and bankers that have been bankrolling much of the profligate circuit building, carmakers and other fellow travellers will call time on their largesse. The tsunami of cheap money that has sustained the F1 bubble will retreat and an awful lot of people will have been found to be swimming naked.

Max and Bernie have been stupidly trying to impose price controls and more and more detailed rules to try stop this happening. Listen you pair of idiots, price controls never work. As neither do excessive bureaucratic rule writing (which has the entirely opposite effect by increasing costs). But, the loss of Toyota and Renualt will immediately cut the cost of competing in F1. There will be people available. Their facilities will be on offer, cheap. The remaining teams will be able to pay less for everything. This is markets working. What is more important it will cut the barriers to entry for new teams. Small innovative ingenious engineering and ideas led teams. Efficient teams. Cosworth will be back. Why not other engine suppliers like AER?

Bernie and his CVC financiers will, hopefully, be worried sick. CVC's cashflow demands to service it debts are a bigger cash drain out of F1 than any other one thing.

My fervent hope is that the Toyota and Renault exit triggers a serious financial problem at CVC leading to it getting out completely. This may also trigger the exit of Bernie. And this may lead to the FIA resuming control over all aspects of F1. There is only one problem. Jean Todt. The man is an autocratic French mercantilist political operator. Without him there would be a vague chance that the FIA would massively reduce all the fiddling rules and cut the entry fee demands to a reasonable amount and reintroduce democracy.

Williams and Brawn have demonstrated that it is entirely possibel to compete on relatively modest budgets. So lets look for a new era of innovative and very competive garagistes to bring real racing back to F1. I am only sorry that there will probably never be another Ken Tyrrell. And lastly we can say a very welcome farewell to all the ghastly souless F1 facilities like Abu Dhabi.

Quangos Try to Kill You

2009-11-02T14:23:00.003Z

Not done much posting and reading of blogs for some months. I've been off work too. It'll be 5 weeks tomorrow. Hospitalised. Why? I've got endocarditis. How did I get it? See here .

I have had a not very well functioning heart valve for years. Diagnosed when I was 7 and rediagnosed when I was about 30 and told to me. So, for the last 27/28 years I have worked hard on keeping my heart fit and have done so. This regime also included prophylatic antibiotics before any dental procedure.

Consequent upon the NICE guidance my dentist asked me to check with my GP as to whether the prophylatic antibiotics should be discontinued. I asked him and he said that he had taken advice from a cardiologist and the answer was that they were 'required to take account of NICE guidance'.

I then proceeded normally, but without any prohylaxis,and had two or three minor dental treatments - check ups and cleans - and by Christmas 2008 my wife had noticed that I was not my usual self. I first noticed symptoms over the weekend of 30 / 31 May 2009. Endocarditis is very difficult to diagnose and it took until late September, by when I had become very ill, that Endocarditis was diagnosed in a consultation with a specialist that I had to pay for as the NHS could not provide an appointment until weeks later. I was immediately committed to hospital and put on a 6 week course of antibiotics.

I am incensed that some bloody bureaucrat should interfere in the professional relationship I have with my doctors and end up with exactly the wrong advice which has gone a long way to ruin all the keep fit work I have done for nigh on 30 years.

The moral of this story is that Quangos kill you. Always do exactly the opposite of what they tell you. My financial services business operates on exactly that principle and we've been proved right and the FSA wrong.

I am now going to read the NICE guidance thoroughly and send them a very straightforward letter basically telling them that they are a bunch of wankers and what are they going to do about an apology and compensation. Fat chance. Oh, and all the clinicians I have spoken to have remarked that there has been a spike in endocarditis cases since the NICE guidance.

Bastards.

Comedy Headline of the Day (only it's not at all funny)

2009-09-18T21:46:00.005+01:00

"Lloyds TSB fails FSA Stress Test"

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

If ever there was a case of the blind leading the semi-defunct, this is it.

We have one failed (as predicted by me) quango passing technical judgement on a failed bank (I've been a bear of bank shares since ooooo 2000/2002). I mean, really, you couldn't make it up could you.

(NB The first FSA stupidity with 'stress tests' was to force Standard Life to sell £17Bn of equities at exactly the wrong time, and on which crass cluelessness the admirable Scott Bell resigned)

FSA = Wankers

Lloyds TSB = Crooks.

PS No posts for a long time 'cos I've been sick. L.

The Good and the Great.

2009-07-15T21:20:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I went to a do at the local school celebrating the success of a committee that included Mrs Lola in creating a mgical school garden. Mrs L and her henchmen had decided to move on after nine years and hand over to new people. The do was to celebrate their success. About 100 people turned up. This is at a 70 pupil village school.

I chatted up all the pretty mums and did a bit of people watching. One common theme was that all those present did stuff and made stuff happen. These are Good people. The backbone of what makes England work. In fact they are Great people. They won't moan about Brown. (Well, they will. You can't not). But what they will also do is buckle down and sort out the mess he created. It won't be any action of the useless government that saves us from anarchy and penury, it'll be the 100 people at the party and 100's of others of the same type in little villages and small towns and bits of big cities that will get on and sort it out the mess Brown and New Labour have created. They will save money. They will cut costs. They will create the jobs. They will look round their neighbours and see who needs a little help. They will turn up at the school and help with reading classes. They will run the school kitchen garden and feed the kids with fresh food, all without any input from Jamie sodding Oliver.

Yet again it will be these people who, despite the bloody useless government, will do the stuff that make the stuff happen and sort out the mess.

And note well, this is just England. It'll be the same everywhere else. The average bloke and his knackered wife buckling down and doing it.

Why oh why don't the likes of New Labour get this?

Yeah Dad Yeah. Yawn. Boring!

2009-07-15T21:08:00.003+01:00

I know I'm boring. I'm a midle aged Dad for God's sake. It's what we do. We do the same old same old. 'Turn that light out'. 'That's a dress!'. 'And what did you hit this time?'. 'How much!'. 'Bloody Gordon Brown (shut up Dad)'.

But, the thing is, being middle aged dad makes you fireproof. You've seen it, mostly. And what you haven't seen won't surprise you when you do see it. You know how life works. You know pretty well all politicians and certainly all ministers are tossers. You know that banks are not to be trusted, as neither is HMRC. Luckily most older policemen are just like you, so as long as you don't get a young keen one you'll be OK.

You also have a very highly developed sense of humour. Unfortunately this suffers inceasing bypasses as more and more idiots in 'authority' spout increasing amounts of total bollocks. (Today we had Dan Waters of the FSA with some real pearls of wisdom, not. What a prize prick). See what I mean, can't laugh at the little shit any more. They don't half wear you down.

And it's not just me. It's all over the blogosphere. More and more weary middle aged Dads posting more and more weary comments on the peurile behaviour of the powers that be.

So what can be done about it? A revolution? A tax strike? What?

Fat chance. We're trapped by own success and responsibility. We have stuff. We do stuff. We make stuff happen and we look after our families. Manning the barricades would jeopardise all their futures, not ours.

So help me out here. How can a boring middle aged dad make a difference. What can we do to sort out this mess?

Student Finance

2009-07-13T21:40:00.003+01:00

My youngest daughter has been sorting out her student finance on the relevant direct gov website. I have just tried to log back in to put in my earnings details. Guess what? Can't do it.

This website is utter crap. Utter utter crap.

Please someone shoot Brown before his government fucks up any more of the UK and its once excellent civil service.

An Early Epiphany

2009-07-08T15:10:00.010+01:00

When I was about 14 or 15 and starting to get a vague handle on the workings of the world I was subject to a valuable learning experience.

I attended the local Grammar school that setted us for various subjects and consequently we were often in foreign classrooms.

On one occasion, first period after morning break I and my mates were treated such. I cannot recall the subject. The bloke I set next to and I used to race slot cars and we had spent the break discussing plans for the next hot shot scratch build and reading the new regs issued in an A5 sized paper pamphlet by the ECRA. We went into the lesson and I put all the books I had been carrying that were not relevant to the subject on the top right hand corner of my desk. We were sitting roughly in the middle of the classroom opposite the masters desk a couple of rows back.

During the lesson my pile of books slipped a bit and my eye was caught by a note on the cover of the ECRA rules and I idly looked at it and then pushed it up under the book pile. Whereupon the master yelled at as to what I was reading. The usual 'nothing sir' 'yes you were' exchange then took place and a demand was made for me to hand over the pamphlet, which I was reluctant to do given this masters reputation. He kept yelling and I said 'OK sir, but I was not reading it and you will give it back to me at the end of the lesson won't you?' 'Yes' he said. Took the pamphlet and tore it up.

This made me a bit cross, and I told him he had lied, which as you might imagine went down like a lead balloon and the latter part of the lesson deteriorated a bit.

There was then a bit of a discussion. I told him he'd lied. He denied it. I told him he had no right to destroy my property and an apology and replacement was required. Things got more heated. It was suggested that I bend over. I told him to get stuffed, as I don't take orders from liars. 'How dare you call me a liar' he said, 'I am the law here and you will do as I say'. I told him he wasn't the law, he was in authority and as subject to rule of law as the rest of us, and he'd lied and destroyed my property.

By this time things were getting very out of hand and I was marched off to the deputy head master (an excellent bloke). The master told his side of the story and and explanation was demanded of me.

I said, 'Mr Liar here has destroyed my private property for no good reason and I want him to replace it now'. As you might expect this was not what they all wanted to hear and it was again suggested to me that things might get hot. By this time it was shit or bust as far as I was concerned. I had got to that reckless stage where I realised that there was nothing they could do or say that was going to phase me.

The Deputy Head (a good bloke) sent the offensive lying shit on his way and told me to report to the Headmasters study that afternoon after school. I refused. This wasn't a good idea as it made the deputy head very cross. So I was immediately marched off for judgement to the Head.

The head was a prick. I thought he was a prick at the time and I still do. 'Bend over boy, I'm going to beat you'. 'Nope'. There was a bit of struggle out of which I came off best.

I was then threatened with suspension. 'Yes please'. 'And you will do detentions for a week.' 'No, I won't. Well, not unless Mr Liar does too.' Stand off.

I was sent outside and the Deputy Head (good bloke) and the Head (prick) had a discussion.

The upshot was I was put in detention for week. I never went to one of them.

I demanded my restitution. It never happened.

I never called the lying master Sir or by his name again.

The lesson I learned from this?

That authority is not law. That the authorities are just as subject to the rule of law as the rest of us. In this case Mr Liar had flouted the rule of law not me. The deputy head knew it, and he knew that I'd figured it out.

So what is this all about?

This is all about Gordon Brown and the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 and the FSA, FOS and FSCS.

These totally failed outfits completely confuse their authority with the rule of law. The way Brown set them up allows them to make law. Erm, excuse me, but how is that?. The UK is a representative democracy and law is made by Parliament or by the courts interpreting Parliament. Parliament is Sovereign. This means that we the voters are Sovereign. Yet the FSA has arbitrarily decided that the well established principle of a 15 year long stop to protect professional advisers of all types from stale claims should not apply to IFA's. Clearly the FSA is confused as to the difference between authority and the rule of law.

It gets worse. The FSA has a lot in common with the GDR Stasi. As communism imploded and the authority of the Stasi waned it gave up any pretence of discretion and just resorted to shooting people. The FSA has failed and, quelle surprise, it's fines tripled last year. It's metaphorically just shooting people.

The same problems apply to the FOS and FSCS. These carry on like extra statutory bodies making up rules and law as they go along. These are not the authorities. These are authoritarians.

This mad bureaucratic socialism of which the FSA/FSCS/FOS are just the manifestations in my part of the commercial forest has completely abandoned the rule of law and set up an authoritarian or even totalitarian series of apparatchiks outfits to enforce its will on all of us. The law just doesn't come into it. The FSA operates like the manager of a nationalised industry and creates prescriptive rules under which the industry must be run. Sounds like nationalisation to me.

At the same time, like all Socialist regimes throughout history New Labour sees the rule of law as either an inconvenience to be ignored or something to be manipulated in pursuit of its totalitarian agenda. All of the quangos they have established have this 'we are the law attitude'. They have to be re-educated.

In the last few weeks we have seen the publication of two more bureaucratic agendas, the RDR and the banking regulatory reform white paper. Both of these are bureaucratic socialist totalitarian publications and neither has anything at all to do with improving the rule of law. They are both about more authoritarianism.

This must be stopped.

Blogged Out

2009-07-07T19:57:00.002+01:00

I've noticed a decline in the frequency and ire in the right (as in not wrong) wing blogoshere over the last month. Either it's because the weather has been good and like all right thinking people right (as in not wrong) wing bloggers know that there is more to life than continuously holding the not right (as in wrong) wing government to account, or....there is blogging weariness setting in. We know that we are right and that we've won the arguments. All we can do now is continue sniping at the shit Brown and his henchmen in the hope that we may claim one or two scalps, but we know he's doomed and it's just a question of time.

Rail Franchises

2009-07-01T22:11:00.002+01:00

Is it just me or does anyone else think that this whole sale by Government of rail operators franchises for a premium is just another way of taxing passengers?

Ignoring for the moment the appalling level of subsidy enjoyed by Network Rail it seems to me that this franchise fee stripped out of the operating profits of the traincos is just another tax levied on the poor bloody travelling public. How much better if Network Rail simply charged for the service of providing functional and reliable permanent way. Or better yet privatise the railway properly.

Defence - Another Epic New Labour Failure

2009-06-27T07:53:00.007+01:00

Another excellent article here from Max Hastings.

Mr Hastings makes the observation that the Tory's don't attack the Government on their failures in defence as most voters don't care. I flatly disagree with this. If the truths of Labour's mean spirited and deceitful mismanagement of our armed forces were brought into the open the public would be rightly outraged. Politicians have a habit of not realising just how much public support the armed forces enjoy. Cameron could capitalise on this.

But, as a voter am I at all interested in the political capital available to Cameron in this area? Well, no, I'm not. All I care about is that our Armed Forces are properly resourced for the roles we expect them to play. Those roles must not be diminished. We need Armed Forces in sufficient quantity and capability to be able to be an effective ally to the US, as despite the worst that Obama can do, the US and the UK (and The Commonwealth) have been the most consistent promoter and guarantor of Global freedom and democracy. This means that we have to be able to project force Globally and this means, among other things, aircraft carriers.

At the same time as maintaining capital expenditure we must increase the quantity of people. And this means more infantry.

There is no cheap way of doing this. So, whilst massive spending cuts are on the way for most of the State Bureaucracy and Quangocracy this must not be the case for the Military. My personal view is the defence spending needs to rise.

One of the ways that this could be achieved would be to take the cost of the Nuclear Deterrent out of the defence budget. The Nuclear Deterrent is an entirely political tool, although it is operated by the military. By recognising this and keeping the existing defence budget intact and finding the Trident funding elsewhere would release funds to be spent on, for example, aircraft carriers.

But whatever way we cut it if we want to maintain credibility as a Global beacon for freedom and democracy our defence budget will have to increase.

Squaring that circle will be one of the next governments - if it's the Tory's - biggest challenges. If New Labour is re-elected or if there is a hung parliament we can kiss goodbye to more of our personal freedom, let alone acting a beacon to other countries even less fortunate than ourselves.

Maxwell Brown

2009-06-25T22:28:00.009+01:00

The more I think about it the more Brown reminds me of that other fat crook, Robert Maxwell.

Browns entirely flawed tripartite regulatory 'system' for financial services was constructed especially to stop any one part knowing what was going on in the other parts. Only Brown knew the whole story. Maxwell managed his businesses in the same way, by confusion and division.

Brown's accounting system for the UK is an elaborate fiction with massive off balance sheet borrowings and complicated financial arrangements between different departments, each funding the deficits of the other in the manner of pass the parcel. Maxwell did exactly the same, borrowing on company A and then lending the money to company B in the same robbing Peter to pay Paul way.

Maxwell was a bully. He employed yes men. He treated many staff very badly. But he employed useful people on high salaries to neuter them. Many of them journalists previously hostile to him. He was also a sycophant, garnering acquaintances with useful movers and shakers. Brown is a bully. He employs a crew of yes men, many of dubious character and rewards them well. He is just as sycophantic; his courting of Obama for example.

Maxwell was a stranger to the truth. Need I say any more.

Brown's raid on pensions must have been learned from Maxwell. Maxwell bought companies purely to access the target company's pension schemes funds. He simply switched the members to his Headington Investments scheme and then cashed in the ceding schemes surpluses for his own use and to keep his group afloat. He also loaned pension scheme stock as security for company borrowings within the group. The trustees were place men - his sons. Brown has taxed the bejeesus out the UK pension schemes. He has mortgaged the assets in which they invest to foreign investors.

Maxwell had no respect for the rule of law. Neither has Brown. Brown sees law as a vehicle for social control and the advancement of the socialist program.

Maxwell conned many ambitious and greedy bankers. Brown did the same.

In the end the whole edifice came crashing down around his head. He knew the game was up and took a ride on his yacht, off which he fell, or was pushed. The chaos left behind was epic, but was only company sized. Brown's game is also up. Brown has destroyed the wealth of a whole country. But he has not yet had the grace to fall off his yacht, and no-one has yet had the courage or opportunity to push him overboard.

Brown is waiting for two things. One is the Irish Lisbon treaty referendum. The other is an event. This time he's doomed. The next event will be his Maxwell yacht moment.

PS. Intriguingly Hitler used exactly the same techniques of divide and rule and fear.

I'm Bored....

2009-06-19T19:15:00.003+01:00

I've got flu (manflu according to Mrs Lola). I've been on and off work for two weeks, and as it's my business there's no sick pay is there? I can't think straight, too much pain (!). Ladies think that childbirth is bad, well, let me tell you it's got nothing on manflu.

But worst of all I'm now very bored. Can't do anything. Nothing much vituperative about McMental on the blogoshere that's new.

I've looked at all the Brands GP in car videos on youtube, ready for my next visit in early July (I AM going to be fit for that).

I've watched so much crap TV I think I'm cured.

My family won't talk to me - they reckon I'm rude and grumpy - but we all know that I am always a little ray of sunshine. Even my mate, Rowley the Dog, gives me sideways looks. I think he think that since I am at home he should get more walks.

I'm cold as well. Got the bloody heater on the sitting room.

And there's a family dinner tonight. That's 8 (6 being female) of them plus me, including Mrs Tactful (Mrs Lola Snr). That'll end in tears for one of them when she points out some shortcoming 'Have you put on weight, dear? Luckily I can feign extra illness and escape early.

I've read as much as I can deal with on my new economics books and I've skimmed through Autosport. There is the Torygraph crossword, but, I am, of course, so ill, that I'll struggle.

I don't do online Porn - it's even more boring!

So what's next? Paper aeroplanes?

God I am so bloody BORED!

Class War Politics

2009-06-19T12:45:00.005+01:00

I was listening to Denis Healey on Desert Island Discs today and he made an interesting remark. He reckoned that the reason that people were becoming increasingly disengaged from politics was because the parties no longer represented separate classes.

Now, it has always seemed weird to me that Labour was for the Workers and Tories for the Bosses. Even as a kid in the 60's and 70's I just could not square this simple branding. To me it seemed that Labour was for Socialism and that the Tories weren't. I could not see why 'class' came into it at all. This may be because I've never been very good at 'class'. The quality usually aren't and the workers are frequently ladies and gentlemen. In other words, folks is folks. Clearly there are some really desperate oiks out there but you are as likely to find them at Eton as the local Comp.

One of the great successes of the exchange free market economy is the opportunity it gives to everyone. The pent up demand for personal advancement was undammed in 1979 and millions were liberated to find their way. Self employment has gone from 750,000 to about 3m (2001) (see here for a good article). This rise in meritocracit achievement, which ignores class, has fundamentally changed the political landscape. It is now no longer class that divides politics and parties but government policies. One lot offer high taxes high spending and low liberty, and the other lot should offer the opposite. But they don't and that's the problem. That's why people are bcoming disengaged.

It is not the absence of the class argument that has turned people off its the fact that one lot say we'll tax and spend 50% of your pay and the other lot says we'll tas and spend 49% of your pay. People have given up. No major party stands up and makes the anti tax n' spend case, but the voter knows that this is what is required. So who does he vote for?

So I am saying two things. One, class is an out of date blind. If anyone bangs on about class he's just stupid. Two, the Tories are failing to capitalise on Labour's epic failure because they lack the courage and foresight to make the case for the small state. And without a well argued case voters have no choice, so they stop voting.

An Epitaph For McMental

2009-06-15T12:23:00.004+01:00

Matilda told such Dreadful Lies,
It made one Gasp and Stretch one's Eyes;
her Aunt who, from her Earliest Youth,
Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth,
Attempted to Believe Matilda:
The effort very nearly killed her,
And would have done so, had not she
Discovered this Infirmity.
For once, towards the Close of Day,
Matilda, growing tired of play,
And finding she was left alone,
Went tiptoe to the Telephone
And summoned the Immediate Aid
Of London's Noble Fire-Brigade.
Within an hour the Gallant Band
Were pouring in on every hand,
From Putney, Hackney Downs, and Bow.
With Courage high and Hearts a-glow,
They galloped, roaring through the Town,
'Matilda's House is Burning Down!
'Inspired by British Cheers and Loud
Proceeding from the Frenzied Crowd,
They ran their ladders through a score
Of windows on the Ball Room Floor;
And took Peculiar Pains to Souse
The Pictures up and down the House,
Until Matilda's Aunt succeeded
In showing them they were not needed;
And even then she had to pay
To get the Men to go away!

It happened that a few Weeks later
Her Aunt was off to the Theatre
To see that Interesting Play
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray.
She had refused to take her Niece
To hear this Entertaining Piece:
A Deprivation Just and Wise
To Punish her for Telling Lies.
That Night a Fire did break out--
You should have heard Matilda Shout!
You should have heard her Scream and Bawl,
And throw the window up and call
To People passing in the Street--
(The rapidly increasing Heat
Encouraging her to obtain
Their confidence) -- but all in vain!
For every time she shouted 'Fire!'
They only answered 'Little Liar!'
And therefore when her Aunt returned,
Matilda, and the House, were Burned.

Banks, Mortgages and Business Lending

2009-06-13T08:18:00.004+01:00

A new bank manager was foisted upon us about 2 years ago when our old manager retired. We arranged a meeting and she turned up. My heart fell. 'Oh God', I thought on seeing her, 'we're going to have trouble with you' and so it has proved.

We are a small financial advisory business and only owe money to our bank in the shape of an overdraft facility, the requirements for which are reducing and within about a year will be very small and a BDL that we use as a rolling facility for major IT upgrades.

Overall our debts are less than 25% of sales - and reducing.

Our manager has just written to us with demands to reduce the debts more quickly than we'd like to.

On the other hand I have had a couple of clients approach us for mortgage work, which we do do, reluctantly.

OK, so lets compare and contrast.

Client X has a new lady love and they want to buy a house together. Together they earn about 150,00 per annum and each has existing property. The gent has a main residence free of mortgage plus three buy to lets in negative or nil equity. The lady has a house with a mortgage of about 17% LTV.

Neither of them have any real cash savings and in fact the gent has spent a lot of cash capital over the last five or six years.

They are looking to remortgage the main residences using BtL loans to release the maximum equity and use that cash as a deposit on the house they want taking out a personal mortgage for the balance. This will take their overall debts to about £800,000.

And I have found various banks that are very happy with this scenario.

The question I have to ask is this.

How come I am struggling to convince my business bank to stick with us whilst we repay 30K overdraft down to 10K in one year supported by a business that has guaranteed monthly service fee and investment management fee income, which broadly covers all its costs, and is increasing, and in which I have employment opportunities, whilst there are banks happy to lend 40 times as much to a couple who have only wages to what is effectively a 100% mortgage?

All this cash being locked up in property when there are potentially 40 businesses out there that would benefit from the cash and who would create employment.

There is definitely something very wrong indeed with our banks and business financing models in this country when it comes to this pass where money is being lent that just does nothing to promote true wealth creating and is instead used to finance the self indulgence of over-ambitious putative homeowners and BtL investors.

Something must be done, but what? Well, IMHO step one is to remove the ability for BtL 'investors' to claim the interest on their loans as an expense. This would create a level playing field between owner occupiers and BtLetter's.

But that only tackles one part of the problem. How can the banks be encouraged to look to business for their loan business? Why are all the banks really only now mortgage companies?

Tory 'Cuts'?

2009-06-12T10:56:00.003+01:00

I posted the following on 'Dizzy Thinks' and as i am conceited enough to think it is one of my better efforts I reproduce it here.

I really think the tide is turning on the essential bit of this debate. The essential bit is not cuts/no cuts but government spending good/government not spending bad.

People are not stupid. They know that Brown has been a hopeless PM and Chancellor and they know that there is epic waste in government spending. No-one I ask about this from any walk of life thinks anything else.What they do find hard to understand is the connection between their take home pay and the money Brown spends. They still seem to think of it as someone elses tax money being spent. But when a lucid explanation is given they now listen and learn. Well, except Labour Tribalists of course who reckon that if you taxed 'the rich' at 80% there would be plenty of money, but as we now know that they, the tribalists, form about 15% of the electorate they're not a problem.

The low taxer/small staters can now move this argument on. There is no need to be worried with the closed hospitals/dead babies nonsense. The door is open for Dave & Co. to simply say:

"Brown has blown all the money he took from you since 1997 and spent very badly [i]n the wrong [way]. There's no more left. Taxing you more will destroy more jobs because you're own spending will have to go down.

The State is consuming massive amounts of tax revenue and to compound the problem it is epically badly run. That is no criticism of the many hard working and capable people employed in the State sector, they have been as badly let down by Brown and his idiotic policies as everybody else.

It is clear that this epic mismanagement is going to have to be sorted out, something Brown will never do as that would be an immediate admission of his failure. And sorting this out will require massive cuts in public spending or massive rises in tax and massive cuts in your own spending.

Do you or do you not want massive tax rises to give the Government more money to spend badly?

Vote us in and we'll set to to sort out this mess and we will make some promises, with one caveat.

We'll promise that we'll do our very best to make sure that health care is a priority, and the same with education.

We won't cut Defence if at all possible, as the primary duty of Government is national security.

To keep the basic essential level of services that we all agree is necessary to shelter the vulnerable, we will need some very creative thinking as to their funding and delivery, and as we are only a few blokes in London with no monopoly on wisdom, we will welcome ideas from anyone who has a way for doing more for less. The door is open to you for your ideas and proposals.

We will also make sure that Sterling is run on strict and sound principles, you need and deserve a trustworthy currency. No more printing money. The banks will be sorted.

The caveat? We have not yet seen the books. If the horrors are even worse than we can currently discover, all bets and promises are off."

Love All Non New Labourites.

Question Time 11/06/09

2009-06-11T23:14:00.003+01:00

Derek Simpson. '...the failure of New Labour's free market...' Eh? What. New Labour free market? Nope. And the free market hasn't failed you pompous old fart. The free market has succeeded and passed an accurate judgement on New Labour's failed experiment with Socialism by regulation.

Peter Hain. '...you don't understand that if we [the government] don't invest [spend] now it'll take longer to get out of the recession...'. Pete old son, you are deluded. The money you spend is taxes. You've taken those taxes from citizens by coercion and they now cannot spend that money themselves. So, no net increase in spending then? And your capital projects take years to come on stream whereas we/I could use the money immediately to buy a meal out or build my porch all of which creates an immediate job demand. (BTW have you noticed how the orange shit always interrupts other speakers?).

Really, what can one do with such epic mendacity from these two lefties. I don't mind them being lefties but why do they lie like they do? Why do they use such flawed analysis?

Whilst on about this can anyone direct me to a detailed and costed argument as to why letting the banks go bust would not have been a problem? I know, on the free market case, why it would have been correct to let them fail, and I am aware of the case for forced debt for equity swps, but I just wonder if anyone has worked out an written about a likely scenario?

QT again. Libdem blokey (Huhne?) on about 'picking winners'. Admittedly in the anti case. Why just he doesn't say 'picking losers'.

Help Needed

2009-06-10T22:48:00.003+01:00

Someone help me out here. John Denham MP and Philip Hammond MP are on Newsnight arguing about how Labour and Tories will NOT be cutting public expenditure, and in fact increasing health spending.

Is there anyone in the country anywhere, who is not a Labour tribalist, that thinks that public expenditure can continue at the current level?

And Denham is boasting that they have doubled public expenditure, that is doubling taxes, since 1997. Same question. Is there anyone out there, excepting Labour tribalists, that still thinks this is a Good Thing?

It is transparently clear that we cannot as a Nation go on taxing, spending and borrowing to support out standard of living, so why, just why, cannot we move this debate on to an argument as to how we can do all this stuff for less fucking money? Why have New Labour been allowed to get away with setting the terms of the argument?

This is so depressing. We are getting stuck in a box between a choice of party A that wants to carry on spending truly epic amounts of our money badly and Party B that wants to spend a slightly less epic amount of our money badly.

It's no wonder that UK industry is so high cost when 50% of our income is spent by the State and of which I reckon at least 50% is wasted.

PS. I realise that the Tories 'increasing spending on health' is not at all the same thing as saying 'increasing spending on the NHS'.

MP's and State Employees Shouldn't Pay Tax

2009-05-31T12:42:00.004+01:00

This MP's expenses fiddle thing should make us think about the nature of income tax.

It is a fact that no MP or other state employee or Quangocrat pays any income tax at all. The income tax notionally deducted from their pay is in reality simply a rebate to the rest of us, the non-state employed wealth creation sector.

An excellent double bubble benefit could be achieved from the fall out of the MP's tax fiddles by recognising that they and there cohorts don't pay tax anyway and making paying all state employees on an income tax free basis. This would achieve two things. It would keep Joe public always and forever right on the case of public spending as it would reveal the true price, and two it would ensure that such public spending was reduced year on year as every party would only get elected on the promise to do that.

I appreciate that this ignores the ludicrously expensive pensions promise enjoyed by all state employees, but such state employees pay reform would go hand in hand with reform of state employees pensions. It is a given that the defined benefit schemes would all be replaced by defined contribution (money purchase) schemes and that pensions tax relief would be abolished.

..and the answer to the Parliamentary Crisis is....More Regulation!

2009-05-20T08:21:00.006+01:00

Below is a post I made onto John Redwood's blog and a Telegraph blog (I cannot remember which one!).

"I heard Gordon Brown on the radio banging on about the need for ‘independent regulation’ of MP’s expenses and remuneration.

I flatly do not want this. ‘Regulation’, and the excess of it, is what has got us into this mess in the first place. This universal misplaced faith in ‘experts’ is symptomatic of all that is wrong with New Labour’s ghastly idea of how to organise society. Organise it along the lines of some settled idea created by ‘experts’. It is clause 4.4 by regulation.

What I want is men, and women, of independent mind and capable of making professional judgements about what is correct and what is not correct. I want Parliament to be and remain sovereign in the country. I do not want MP’s to be continually engaged in a box ticking compliance culture that has so bedevilled my area of business and directly led to the failure of banks and the collapse in savings.

Experts only know what is the current consensus. The rest of us operating in a free market are always ahead of them, testing and challenging the status quo and developing a new paradigm. Experts, as used by New Labour, are all about limiting our freedoms and making us fit an idealised, and completely unworkable idea of what about 300 labour MPs think is the way we will operate.

The whole New Labour project was all about forcing this agenda and designing a society that made election success for them guaranteed. It had nothing to do with running the country properly or making sure that public money was spent wisely or that troops were properly equipped for actions that New Labour got them involved in, but all about ensuring a continuing New Labour success at election time. And the main weapon they used to implement this agenda was the unelected unaccountable quango ‘regulator’.

Stop them doing more of this in Parliament. Stop them now."

This slavish idea that more regulation and hence more bureaucratic rules will make anything better or here less likely to be corrupt is simply risible. All that will happen is that MP will have endless negotiations about what is 'allowed' and have to employ staff to do lots and lots of lovely box ticking.

In the real world it is patently obvious that an excess of 'regulation' is precisely what has causes all the current problems. Regulation has taken over from common sense. Brains have been disconnected. Thinking for oneself has stopped. Well, of course thinking for oneself is a complete anathema to a bureaucrat. It is completely outside their control. It means that they have to fit in with us. Oh dear. What a shame. It's what you're for, you bloody fools.

So imposing an 'independent regulator' on MP's is probably the stupidest idea I have yet heard.

Failed State Bureaucracy Resorts To Coercion

2009-05-16T21:21:00.002+01:00

The FSA are trying to prove that they have a right to exist. This link to a Telegraph article shows bankers being denied the right to work on the whim of a Quango. WTF! You can bet your bottom dollar that if that was another industry group deciding that certain workers were trouble and that it was wise not to employ them there would be a major stink about rights and fredoms.

Be very clear, the FSA is a major problem in financial services. Its current behaviour of chronic persecution and coercion has everything to do with diversion tactics from its own epic failures and nothing to do with 'making financial services better'.

Eight Pointless Things...

2009-05-16T19:16:00.002+01:00

1. I have two dogs named Rowley and Albert (Bertie to his friends). Walking dogs is a joy, if you live in the country, which I do.
2. I once shot my mother in the bum with an air pistol - deliberately.
3. As I have a wife, four daughters and a widowed mother (her widowship is in no way connected to point 2) I manage a fleet of seven cars.
4. I go to bed early and wake up early.
5. For reasons I cannot fathom, as I am no twitcher, the song of the blackbird lifts my spirits like no other sound on earth.
6. I am big on freedom, with responsibility of course. Consequently I am appalled by New Labour's cavalier treatment of our hard one liberties.
7. My children can all argue for England. Entirely my fault.
8. Altruism is an illusion.

F1 Grand Prix - My Recipe for Success

2009-05-15T15:13:00.011+01:00

I have been meaning to apply some simple economics to the financial problems of F1, in the sense that I do not think it has any.

There is much talk among the rulers of F1, basically Max Mosely and Bernie Ecclestone, that F1 is 'too expensive' and costs 'must be capped'. My contention, as I hope to show below is that the costs of fielding a team in F1 is not the problem at all and is no threat to its success.

A teams costs cap is nothing more than a price control. A study of economic history will show you very quickly that price controls do not work, ever. Price is a signal. If that signal is confused by political interference it will lead to malinvestment. Usually a price control is introduced to mask other problems. For example the minimum wage is set by reference to an arbitrary measure of poverty, not for the value that can be added if the worker is employed, hence jobs are destroyed and employment opportunity is reduced.

The problem with F1's costs lies in its governance and ownership. In essence the absolute ruler of the F1 country, Max Moseley has given a monopoly patent to his favourite oligarch Bernie Ecclestone. This is simple mercantilism and protectionism.

Max rules the FIA. He loves that. It is what he does best. He builds up its power and works hard to ensure its world domination as rule setter (analogous to the creation of law). He outsources the commercial management of his series (analogous to say, the Navy in Pepys time) to Bernie. Bernie is an oligarch. He takes his monopoly power and controls the circuit operators and the teams. He makes them do what he says and shares with them just enough money to keep them onside and makes sure that they fight amongst themselves (rather analogous to pre 1914 UK foreign policy towards Europe that is was best for us to keep it divided). Bernie is then able to grow his franchise and then sell it for a huge amount of money to a foreign power (a private equity group) but still maintain day to day control, because he is indispensable. By this arrangement Max and Bernie can keep their show on the road and hawk it around to more and more rich snobs who want the kudos of holding a Grand Prix. This pushes the traditional hosts in Europe into offering more and more money and so on as the whole scheme perpetuates itself. As an oligarch employed by a dictator Bernie can do this endlessly.

Meanwhile this monopoly induced price inflation works down to the competing teams. And the ever more restrictive rules drive out innovation, which again drives up costs. Creativity and original thinking are an anathema to a regulator as each change makes challenges their rules and their authority. It's a culture clash.

So there you have it. A dictator, working through an oligarch and a captive and restrictive regulatory bureaucracy. No democracy, no free market and too much regulation by an entrenched bureaucracy. Freedom and markets and the absence of regulation create real wealth for all. The opposite does the opposite, destroys wealth.

Now, I think that there has be only one F1, or preferably Grand Prix, championship and series. But I also think that other organisers should be able to offer competing championships. This will keep F1/Grand Prix honest. So what structure would work to lower costs in F1?

I have a four point plan.

1. Democracy. The FIA has to be reconfigured to give a bigger say to the interested parties. It needs more democracy. National MSA's, GP Teams, circuits need a say. Not sponsors as they are represented by those they sponsor. The FIA should not make a profit or surplus on its sporting activities.

2. Ownership. Max has to repossess the commercial rights from Bernie. The PE group behind Bernie sucks out too much cash that should go back into the sport. Bernie and F1 Admin are toast.

3. Freeing up the Market. Any circuit anywhere in the world should be able to bid for a grand prix. The fee to the FIA should be modest. Just enough to fund the FIA to make all the necessary checks for safety standards, general quality, financial resources and to assure themselves that the FIA's F1 franchise brand and sporting values are being properly upheld. Teams should either form a collective to negotiate for a share of the circuits income or better, should negotiate individually for start money. The FIA's rules will require a minimum number of bone fide Grand Prix teams as starters for the race to qualify as part of the F1 championship. This will ensure that teams of all standards of success are invited. TV rights should be let locally, and the income distributed among the teams. The FIA should also offer to the pen market a TV franchise on, say, a five year renewal basis. It will be in their deal with the circuit that this must be permitted and the feed could be sold to broadcasters in countries that wish to show the race. That income should be shared with the circuits and teams. Global motor manufacturers should have no special say in F1. It is a sporting challenge, admittedly technical and expensive, but not a commercial one.

4. Reducing Regulation. The regulations under which cars are designed should be hugely relaxed and simplified. This will encourage innovation and that, contrary to what you might think, will reduce costs. If one team spends millions and wins all the time, the gate receipts will go down, F1 will wither and the team will leave. It will be self correcting. For example, Ilmor's rotary valve concept would not have been banned. It was cheaper to make than poppet valves as there are less moving parts, but non - rotary valve engine makers would have had development costs. As nothing is truly secret the only extra costs would have been the higher salaries available to the engineers who had learned how it was done. In a couple of years everyone would have had rotary valve engines and the consequent mass development would have driven down the unit costs. Creative destruction works.

A simple plan, I think. And logical. But, it means that Max and Bernie lose income and power. Are they likely to do that voluntarily?

Update 16/05/09

Just been reading Mark Hughes column in Autosport. The revelation that Ferrari have a rules veto since 1998 simply reinforces my arguments. Now we have a dictatorship, in league with an oligarch countenancing a cartel. My arguments are even more valid. To cut costs in F1 weneed more deocracy, more freedom, less rules and more free market.

More Epic Cluelessness from New Labour Apparatchiks

2009-05-15T13:33:00.003+01:00

They really do not get it do they?

Shahid Malik from the BBc website: "Less than an hour before his resignation was announced, Mr Malik went on the offensive to claim endless media stories about expenses was in danger of "decimating" democracy." Er, no. This is democracy working you plonker.

This is same cluelessness they use when they say that the current financial crisis is the failure of markets. Er, no, again. This financial crisis is markets succeeding and passing judgement on failed politicians and policy.

Freedom and markets. Doncha just love them? And the best bit? They are at last doing for Brown and the whole deceitful New Labour project. (Anything or anybody that makes a 'project' out the electorate, and me in particular, deserves... well, death's too good for them really.)

Harman Says that MPs 'Get it'.

2009-05-15T06:48:00.002+01:00

Harman,. No. You. Don't.

You are clueless about what is needed. Your answer, more rules, shows just how stupid you are.

We do not want or need more rules.

What we want and need are genuinely honourable men and women in Parliament working on our behalf.

It is you and you ilk, professional politicians, that have brought Parliament to this condition. You who have entered politics for personal advancement. In particulr your deceitful and now exposed as endemically corrupt government.

Stop using the social worker mantra - 'I undertsand' - and just go. Resign. Call an election.

Because what the country wants is the opportunity to throw you and your party out. That's what you need to understand. We want you gone. Now.

Dear Mr Cameron

2009-05-12T18:03:00.003+01:00

A Cottage

A English Village

Somewhere in England

12 May 2009

The Rt Hon David Cameron

Westminster

London

England

Dear Dave

Now listen here sunshine, I am somewhat pissed off with your lot. The thing is, you really need to understand that, given the historic (and some would say undeserved) electoral success of your party, it is about bloody time you did some serious opposing.

You have been stuck in opposition for 12 years and I have been waiting, in vain, for your lot to get up on your hind legs and have a real go with real counter arguments - for freedom and low taxes - to this tawdry useless shower of shit New Labour that has the immortal rind to consider itself worthy to be a government of the UK. But you haven't.

And now we know why. Your lot are as far into the trough, up to your elbows in graft, as New Labour.

Do you realise that you were the last hope we had for rescuing an ancient democracy and to restore freedom and fiscal competence? Do you realise how very fucking badly you've let us all down? Do you have any fucking idea at all what to do now to get this sorted, as, God help us, you are still the only real hope we have?

I am right at the point of serious civil disobedience and I am not alone. Be very clear that you and you cronies are as much up the scoured arses of us poor proles as New fucking Labour and we have had enough. Finally, we've had enough. I really am seriously angry, and I want it sorted. Now.

And I am not repeat not paying any more tax. You are going to sort this economic mess by slashing every quango and apparatchik you can find. This will liberate them to find real wealth creating jobs in private business. You are going to get super tough with scroungers. And you are going to get areas like Northern Ireland and the North East of the public tit. And you're going to have to do that the hard way old son. It'll mean reduced standards of living for many of us, but to encourage private wealth creating business and restore international competitiveness so that we can pay our way we need to savagely cut the costs of the bloated state and the 'benefits' it pays.

So, Dave, me old mate, things look tough for you now. But let me down and just see what happens........

Regards

Lola

PS The next time that deceitful self promoting shit Blair lands in the UK have him arrested and seize all his property. L.

PPS I leave it to your imagination just what to do Brown.

IEA Analysis of Brown's Bust

2009-05-12T17:57:00.002+01:00

Go here for the best and most truthful analysis I have yet seen on Brown's Big Bust.

Proposed Lettings Regulation - OMG!

2009-05-05T12:11:00.004+01:00

I could not believe my ears. There on Today this a.m. was a bloke that heads up some private letting agents trade association - ARLA I think - banging on about wanting more government regulation to drive out bad landlords. WTF!. There he was with a free market solution sitting in front of him that he heads up that was already providing potential tenants with a set of standards by which they could judge their proposed landlord and be certain that minimum standards of professional behaviour were being applied. And he wanted government; i.e. me and you, to underwrite tenants deposits! WTF2! He had already arranged an insurance scheme for his members to give tenants confidence. Why the bloody Hell does he need any more regulation by the State? He's already doing it. His ignorance of simple free market economics was total. I despair. How are we ever going to have an efficient and free society if witless wankers like this are representing the most carnal of free market people - estate agents. Good Grief. My mind is boggled.

Did anyone hear the piece? If you did and can remember the witless berks name let me know what it was. Someone needs to point out just how stupid he is being and how his actions will encourage a bloated state bureaucracy to get in and screw up a functioning free market.

Cars - Do them Beautiful, please?

2009-05-04T09:47:00.008+01:00

All I want car makers to do is to make beautiful cars. Alfa always seem able to do it (igonre the Arno), as does Jaguar.

To my mind cars reflect their national heritage. Mercs always seem to be missing something - a turret. BMW's - three autocannons, one firing through the engine. Fiat - the best small cars for the people on the planet. Alfa - as stated above, cramp inducing gorgeousness. Ferrari - gigolos in waved hair and reflecting sunglasses. Audi - VW Golf's and Passats in party frocks. Renault - no nickers. Any Amercan car - a personal drive in burger maker in the dash board. Toyota - Suchi on wheels. Volvo/Saab - No sense of humour (well, to be fair I loved the old Saabs and the pre-boxy Volvos). Rolls Royce - All that was wrong with Empire. Porsche (only the pre 1990's 911 and the race cars) - all that is right with Germany. And Jaguar - sexiness, in a particularly English way. The enthusiatsic and subtle abandon of the vicars attractive daughter. Slightly rounded in the hips, emphasising that peculaliarly English Rose voluptuousness. And a racing heritage that no-one can deny.

Ask yourself, which motor company now tries to produce and succeeds in producing beautiful cars? They all seem to try to be Damian Hirst's on wheels. Except Jaguar. Jaguar has had an awful time and battled through the motor wars with poor equipment, waiting for its Spitfire MK IX moment. Creating a machine with looks and engineering that can take on the best. Now, I know that the XF divides opinion but really, in a true beauty contest who comes close? The XJ, older looking but aluminium and slim - a sort of Joanna Lumley of cars. XK - a budget Aston?

So there you have it. Please Mr carmaker - make them beautiful.

Mais ou sont les handsome cab gas lamp fitters d'antan?

2009-05-01T22:19:00.002+01:00

Well, where are they? The handsome cab gas lamp fitters? Where have they gone? Nowadays they are working or Chrysler. Or RBS. Or LloydsHBOS. Once upon a time they would be gone as the world moved on, and no-one would have missed them. I mean, do YOU miss handsome cabs? So why would you need handsome cab gas lamp fitters? And when the handsome cabs went were there unemployed handsome cab gas lamp fitters? No there were not. They went and did something else. So why wouldn't that be the case with the jobless workers at RBS, LoydsHBOS and Chrysler?

Dear Mr Osborne

2009-04-30T15:35:00.002+01:00

The Cottage

A Small Village

England

George Osborne MP
Westminster
England

Dear George

Re: The 50% Tax Rate

In his final act of financial idiocy Gordon Brown and his lackey Alastair Darling have imposed a 51% tax rate on the incomes of high earners as well as ludicrousy complicated rules on pension contributions for the same class of taxpayer.

It is well understood throughout the whole world that high tax rates collect less tax than low ones.

I urge you to make this argument with force, logic and evidence and on taking office to immediately reverse the imposition of this confiscatory rate.

At the same time restore the equity to pension contributions that acknowledge that pensions are deferred pay.

Regards

Lola

Everybody's doing it....

2009-04-28T21:12:00.006+01:00

First Job. Paper round for local newsagents.

First Real Job. Driving a delivery van for an electrical outfit in Sunderland. That is if you ignore the temporary nursing auxiliary on a gynie theatre as a work experience / holiday job.

First Role in Politics. Never done anything in politics, unless you count working for Barratts - the most politcal company I've had the misfortune to work for.

First Car Mini Moke. Did over 100,000 miles in it in all weathers.

First Record. Let it Bleed, Rolling Stones.

First Football Match. Local derby Ipswich v Norwich at Norwich. Bloody boring and full of louts. Never been to another one.

First Concert. 'Free' at Colchester. Excellent.

First Country Visited. Switzerland. Lived there as a kid from 1962 to 1963. (In a sanatorium. I am asthmatic).

First TV Appearance. Managed to avoid that fate. But I am on youtube!

First Political Speech. School class debate for faux election aged about 14. I won!

First Girlfriend/Boyfriend. Ahhh. Sigh. As in first 'real' girlfriend. A very enthusiastic blonde with long legs and a lovely bum.

First Encounter with a Famous Person. Bob Stokoe holding a door open for me when I had my hands full delivering electrical stuff to Sunderland football ground. I couldn't give a stuff but my van oppo was gobsmacked.

First Brush With Death. Various motor car related lucky breaks, but I think being nominated aged about 14, as the pilot for our home made rocket powered soap box cart with home made rockets (yes really) was probably fairly high up there. There were more home made explosive, soap box cart, pushbike incidents that I could list, but...

First House/Flat Owned. Love nest three bed semi in Ipswich with my lovely wife.

First Film Seen at a Cinema. Davy Crockett (part of) but first full film was ....Goldfinger!!! - Briliant, and still is.

First Time on the Radio. I've done various pieces on financial services on BBC radio Suffolk, but I cannot remember which was first.

First Politician I Met. Tim Yeo. Not impressed.

First Book I Remember Reading. Sorry. Cannot remember. I have always read an awful lot. Maybe 'Jennings Little Hut'. First book that had a big impact was The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler's opus - which I was inspired to read by an edited comprehension piece that I worked on in my English lessons.

First Visit to the London Palladium. I've been but I cannot remeber when.

First Election. 1970. Voted Tory for a bloke that seemed to understand money who immediately went and died!

Pensions

2009-04-26T08:58:00.020+01:00

As you may know I work at the sharp end of retail financial services. As part of that we do pensions work.

Now, we all know by now that the various schemes in which state employees (including especially the BBC) accumulate their, generally, unfunded entitlements are bust. Or rather we - taxpayers - are bust because of them.

These schemes are all of the defined benefit (aka final salary) type. The final pension you get is linked to your pay and length of service. This is lovely for those on these schemes as it is easy to work out what you'll get and when you'll get it. But it is very difficult for members to work out just what these benefits cost, or what they represent in capital terms. At the same time the cost of the pensions wipes out the income tax notionally deducted from the state employees. That 'tax' is of course nothing of the sort. It is just a rebate to the rest of us in the wealth creating sector.

Furthermore there is absolutely no connection whatsoever between the level of benefit enjoyed by public servants and the success of UK plc at creating and preserving wealth. That is there is no clear and obvious incentive for any state employee to do anything that improves the chances of the UK plc's wealth creating process. There is a complete disconnection between benefit entitlement conferred and wealth created.

It may surprise you to learn that as a financial adviser I am rather anti pensions of all types. I am though very much pro capital accumulation. The reasons for this are various but one of them is what I have termed above, 'connection'. If you have managed to accumulate a good pool of capital invested sensibly in shares, bonds, property and cash, and you can actually see it and what it will pay you as an income, then you will be very keen to see UK plc do well so that your capital at least maintains its value or preferably grows and certainly pays you an income.

But at the same time I recognise that many less clever, lucky or fortunate people do not have the ability, opportunity or personal circumstances that make such capital accumulation easy. And this is where an employee sponsored and contributed to pension scheme comes in.

At the same time the rest of us can play our part by permitting pension contributions to be treated as deferred pay and not taxed until the benefits are taken. (Please note Gordon Brown) and (Yes, I also know that in my ideal world there would be no income or capital gains tax not to not tax).

The economic and fiscal catastrophe that is New Labour has more than ever exposed these inequities. The public will now exists for reform which gives a political opportunity to lance this boil once and for all. We have a once in a generation opportunity to reform these profligate, disconnected and wasteful state employees pension schemes.

Here is my outline recipe.

1. Make all final salary schemes illegal. Or rather withdraw all their tax and other privileges making them not at all viable.

2. Close to new members all state (including all quangos and the BBC) final salary schemes.

3. Freeze the benefits of all existing members of these schemes, but for equitable reasons allow the accumulated benefits to grow in line with pay until the member retires and then honour the promised - and contractual - increases. In other words honour the contract.

4. Instigate simple money purchase schemes (personal pensions) for all new members and deferred existing members.

5. Contributions to be capped at 10% employer and 20% (I am happy to allow larger one offs) employee.

6. Outsource all the work connected with the money purchase schemes. (I'll do it, and I'll do it very well and very cheaply). There would be no charge caps or any other price controls as they never work, but as there would be a lot of people (Hallo! me too) bidding for this work the price would settle at a market price.

7. The fund choice would be entirely open and each member would be expected to take advice. This advice could be paid for by an employer or costed within the scheme.

8. Retirement ages - that is minimum age at which you can draw your benefits would be 50. If you'd accumulated enough capital for you to live on then as its your money you should be absolutely entitled to take it and go.

9. All add on benefits DIS, ill health etc must be costed and paid for within the contribution limits set above and would be menu driven.

10. Keep the existing rules on the manner in which benefits can be taken, that is annuity or fund withdrawal, but do away with compulsory vesting at age 75 and allow the full fund (if not vested in an annuity) less a tax charge equivalent to basic rate income tax to pass to your beneficiaries on your death. (There will of course be no IHT or CGT by the time I instigate these reforms and flat income tax will be heading towards 10%).

You could also, of course, link in general ill health claims. For example if someone needed health care at a young age they could draw on the fund to augment the health care wealth re-distribution vouchers that I may allow myself to be persuaded to introduce.

The purpose of the above is not just to control costs. Its main purpose is to connect everyone to the process of wealth creation. It will encourage all public servants to think very carefully before they introduce policies that destroy wealth.

What's not like? Have your say, please.

PS. I would scrap all pensions for MPs. Make them all self employed contractors, and shut down all the expense and allowance scams and treat them like any other s/e person.

Local Authority Parking Services

2009-04-23T23:27:00.002+01:00

My town has a new 'parking service', for which read an outsourced traffic wardens. They've got several nice Transit Connect vans all nicley decked out with "****** Parking Service". All looks nice and friendly and civic.

Why then are the 'wardens' dressed like Nazi Panzer Division tank crews?

You'd think Brown was dead in the water, but...

2009-04-23T23:11:00.005+01:00

Late last year, before the credit crunch really hit home and the Tories were well in the lead in the polls Tory supporters were predicting a Brown meltdown. I was not suer and cautioned that Brown would hang on like grim death hoping for an 'event' to sae him. And he got one. Complete with a fall guy. The failure of RBS and Fed Goodwin. And he profited from this, despite all the problems being entirely Brown's fault.

We are now again in the same position. We are very pleased that Brown is bust and labour is sinking like a torpedoed freighter, but we could yet have another 'event' from which he will seek to profit. He is a very devious politician and very determined.

The question then arises what might this event be? A Gilt strike? A visit to the IMF? A major run on Sterling leading to a hyper-inflation? Who knows. But I would not put it past Brown to call a state of National Emergency and try to manipulate the democratic process by some devious method.

Makes you think.

But luckily I also think that this would be one 'event' too far and both the opposition parties and some of his own MP's would not stand for it. Well, that's the hope anyway.

Here we go again...

2009-04-20T18:29:00.011+01:00

Another gem from the FSA here.

And just in case you'd like to see it on here...

I can not tell you in how many ways this sort of thing incenses me. OK, I'll try.

1. All the herberts as speakers are the same herberts who got us into this mess. How the fuck are they in any way to be trusted to get us out of it.

2. The title. 'Ensuring a sustainable mortgage market for the future'. Gawd Almighty. The answer is simple. It does not need a conference. It needs two things. Sound money, and the Market.

3. And why haven't they invited a bloke like me to speak? We know more about what works and what is right and wrong then any of these smug gits.

4. The price. For me £395 plus VAT is a lot of money. Plus I lose a days work.

Regulation and Coercion

2009-04-10T10:15:00.005+01:00

Let me tell you a true story. It’s a lesson for the times we live in.

About 3 years ago all retail financial services businesses were required by the FSA (under another one of their ‘initiatives’) to issue each and every client with a ‘menu’. This was a prescribed document set out in a very specific way with specific wording. There was a separate menu for investment business and mortgage business and the mortgage business one had two sub-divisions. I had the responsibility of creating ours and automating them in order that we could store and use electronic versions.

Now, we are a fee charging consultative financial planning and advice business. We do not use commissions. We do not sell product, although clearly products are often recommended and implemented as part of our advice process. And in the case of mortgage business this means, in effect, getting people into debt or more debt.

Our approach has always been in essence “are you absolutely sure you want to borrow all this money and buy this house?”

The menu, which we are forced to use has a choice of tick boxes as to what type of service we are offering clients.

Box 1 had the descriptive text “We will offer you a range of mortgages from which you can select the one that suits your needs”

Box 2 had the descriptive text “Having assessed your needs we recommend that you take out this mortgage.”

As independent advisers we were required to tick box 2.

I object to this, strongly. Why?

Well, in all my financial advisory life I have never ever recommended that anybody should take out any mortgage. To be accurate as to how we work, Box 2 should have had the following as descriptive text:-

“Mr & Mrs Client, we have discussed at length your ambition to buy this house that you really cannot afford but despite our best advice you are persisting in proceeding with the purchase and in which case one of the small selection of mortgage deals we have found for you, after considerable research, will probably be your least worst option. However you will need to be very aware that if interest rates double all the affordability evidence that we have indicates that you could be in real trouble”

Fair enough, you may think. That sets out pretty well what we do, and means that I could not be hung by agreeing to the flawed wording in the FSA prescriptive menu.

So I telephoned the FSA and was put through to a young lady, whose name I cannot recall. This is roughly how the conversation went.

Me. “Hallo Ms X. Firstly, how good is you philosophy?”
FSA. (Giggle). “Why?”
Me. “This menu. I can’t use it. It makes no sense”
FSA. “Yes it does, but tell me what’s the problem?”
Me. Well, it’s this box 2 I have to tick. I can’t because it’s not what we do, and have never done”
FSA. “Well tick box one then”
Me. “Can’t do that either. We’re independent advisers. Box 1 covers banks and building societies”
FSA. (Slightly nettled) “Oh alright, tell me more what the problem is then?”
Me. "Look, what we do is advise….. (I then set out the bit about the way we work and how my preferred Box 2 text would be accurate for what we do but that the prescribed box 2 text just looked to provide the FSA with hanging material).

We batted this backwards and forwards for half an hour and eventually she said:

FSA “Hmmm. I see what you mean. Look, I hadn’t seen this before and I’m not senior enough to carry this forward, I’ll get Charlie to call you”
Me. “Who’s Charlie?”
FSA. “He’s the top bloke on the menu”.
Me. “OK. I’ll look forward to his call and thanks”.

About an hour later the telephone rang. Our admin passed me the call.

Admin. “It’s the FSA for you”
Me. “It’ll be Charlie”
Admin. “It is! I’ll put you through. Have fun!” (She was in earsight of all this)
Me. “Hallo”
FSA Charlie “Mr Farrall?”
Me. “Yes”
FSA Charlie. “I’ve been talking to my colleague about this and really what you have to do is what we say otherwise you’ll have to stop doing mortgage work”
Me. “What! You have to be kidding. Everything I am doing is right and proper. It is consultative transparent and fee based. We give proper advice and we never get people into positions of unaffordable debt, and you want us to stop doing it.”
FSA Charlie. “I can only repeat that you do as we say or stop doing mortgage business,”
Me. “So if we don’t do exactly as you say you’ll shut me down?”
FSA Charlie “Well, we would necessarily go that far but you could end up subject to enforcement if you persisted in mortgage work without using our menu exactly as we have written it”
Me. “…despite the fact that it is a compete nonsense?”
FSA Charlie. “It is not nonsense”
Me. Yes it bloody well is. And you know it is!”
FSA Charlie. “Nevertheless, do as we say or stop doing mortgage work”
Me. “No. This is what I am going to do. I will use your menu. I will add in a codicil explaining that it is total bollocks and referring to this conversation and you threat to shut us down. My clients will have all this explicitly explained to them. I will also change the header wording from ‘The FSA is the independent regulator..’ to ‘The FSA is the GOVERNMENT regulator…’ and quite frankly you can swivel on it.”
FSA Charlie “I cannot accept that attitude and we would consider that you were bringing the FSA into disrepute and carry out enforcement action.”
Me. “OK. Fine. But I am telling the truth about this and you aren’t – and you know it”

There was some exchanges on the nature of freedom and the grand conceit of regulation – all conducted amicably – and we hung up. We used my version of the menu and to this day I will not describe the FSA as ‘independent’.

However within a short time the whole menu fiasco was modified and is not now compulsory. And the offending boxes were removed.

The lesson from this though is the coercive culture that exists in these out of control quangos. It’s not me that suffers, it’s you the client.

And of course the FSA has failed spectacularly. And guess what? Yes, they are getting ever more coercive.

Bloody Hell!

2009-04-04T07:00:00.002+01:00

Seen this have you?

So, the softening up has begun. This government has bust us and now it's getting ready to go off the IMF for a sub. Apparently this is no longer a stigma.

Well, sunshine, let me make this very clear. It is a stigma. It is evidence of abject failure. The rule of life is that you do not live above your means. Of course I am quite happy for someone to live above thier means as longs as they are ready to take the consequences and not to drag others down with them.

Brown, you have impoverished us all.

Sooner or Later they'll Have to Admit it -Tax is a Bad Thing

2009-03-31T18:32:00.003+01:00

Telegraph article here.

Darling has - sort of - scrapped the proposed hike in business rates. He said that this would valuable help to businesses in this time of crisis.

Listen you stupid prat - tax destroys returns and excessive tax destroys businesses. This is important because businesses create wealth. You don't create wealth. You destroy it.

So if cancelling - sort of - a tax rise is good for business clearly that applies all the time whatever the state of the economy.

You really are a bunch of Muppet's aren't you? If you weren't you'd have cut taxes by now on all of us.

Later

Bit of an edit in response to MW in the comments.

Sorry, yes!

I know that business rates is the 'least bad tax'. The point I am making is that all tax is bad and its take should be minimised if we want a successful and wealthy society.
At the moment the lefties have been able to sustain the argument that tax is a Good Thing. By cutting business rates, VAT etc what they are now tacitly admitting is that tax is a Bad Thing. Of course they still couch these 'cuts' in terms of 'benefits', as if it was their money in the first place!

If you are going to want a proper economy you will need to raise some tax, for defence, law and order etc etc. But you could do that without taxing the beejesus out of wealth creation. Maybe LVT is the answer - I am not tax expert enough to know - but what I do know is that excess overhead and bureaucracies kill wealth creating businesses. Bloated states and their bureaucracies are paid for by imprests on wealth creation. This has to stop.

Anti Labour is not Tory, Necessarily

2009-03-27T19:38:00.007Z

We've moved on from Labour / Tory wars, despite New Labours determination to keep this phony war going. Whilst I concede that Cameron's henchmen are still 'Tory' as in having a propensity to trend toward oligarchical totalitarianism, many people who support his party have moved on, and if he gets elected will move him and his henchmen on as well.

What we have now is Labour / Anti Labour.

Labour, and New Labour in particular, are the party of big government, big tax 'n spend, big bureaucracy and big control. They trend to statist totalitarianism. They are anti freedom.

The opposition is now coalescing around a disparate and amorphous group that represent the opposite traits. In particular they represent freedom. They believe in small government, low taxes, small bureaucracy and the responsibility of the individual. But they also believe in the state as insurer and lender of last resort. They could be labelled compassionate libertarians. This coalition has been enabled and nourished by the shrinking of time and space provided by the Internet. Nowadays I don't just go down the pub to argue I can sit at my laptop in my kitchen and reach across national borders and develop global connections. This exchange of views and ideas is driving the new opposition to the Statists / Oligarchists.

However such a loose alliance is very difficult to deploy into a national parliament. You cannot stand on a party ticket and get party funding. Yet. But maybe, just maybe that could happen. And why not? Socialist International has been a movement across borders. Why not a new political movement shaped to fit the 21st century and the Internet age? A looser more individualistic independent movement with members sharing principles but standing as independent? Representing anti -Socialism, anti - Tory oligarchism, anti -cartelism, pro - freedom and responsibility.

You may think this unlikely, but witness Hannan's video. Does he really need the Tory party any more? His views are shared by millions he'll never meet from here to Timbuktu. He may have more in common with David Davis than Cameron. Why shouldn't they ally outside the Tory agenda and seek their funding and support from the Internet generation?

I think that New Labour sort of realise this. I could see it in the recent comments from Draper on the tellybox. He was determined to revert to the old classist common room wars of yesterday. Determined to keep this Labour / Tory war going. I've witnessed the same desperation on other lefty blogs and politicians as they start to realise that the game is up.

But the fight is not yet won. We still have to make this new paradigm work. It will take time and effort and resources to pull the world back into an era of renewed freedom and responsibility.

Are you up for it? I am.

Whilst I Remember

2009-03-26T22:25:00.002Z

Listening to the sainted Hannan it struck me that he only had time to attack Brown on th debt failures of his tenure. The other terriffic failure is Browns taxation and wanton destruction of capital.

In may ways this is even worse than his debt binge. The economy needs capital. Capital is used to multiply the efforts of labour. It makes them more productive. Destroy it and productivity goes down. Browns tax 'n spend policies majored on stealth taxes on capital.

Dear Mr Darling....

2009-03-26T21:39:00.006Z

Ipswich

26 March 2009

Dear Mr Darling

I trust that you are well and busy. It always good to have something useful to do I say.

First some family news. Since I last wrote much as changed at chez Lola. Miss Lola 1 has been working for an advertising company for some years now and very successful she and her company have been. But with the recent savage downturn her position looks more precarious by the day. And it's not cheap living in London. Miss Lola 2 is pushing hard to develop her book keeping business but having lost one client, a building company that recently failed, her main client now also looks dodgy. It's an entertainment business that has seen its turnover drop by 30% since January. This really looks like a savage recession. Miss Lola 3 is in shipping. All looks OK at the moment as she is in booze, but well, you never know. Miss Lola 4 is about to go to uni. I don't know if you've seen the costs recently? The tuition fees and accommodation costs are just eye watering. The poor kid will leave Uni with a shed load of debt.

Business is good for me. We have picked up a lot more work from clients who have seen a massive destruction of their capital and income in the last 11 years and are now desperate to preserve what they have left. It's not easy. Our turnover is down though, as a lot of it is geared to the capital markets, that have hugely, well, tanked recently.

Mind, that's enough of my problems. How are you getting on? It looks like you are having trouble with the neighbours again. I know that they are your friends and so on, but really the way that they have treated you. By the way, have you sorted out what you are going to do about the money? It was very handy you being able to walk into his job, a nice position in normal times, but it all looks a lot more challenging now. I thought you said that he had so sorted it all out that you were looking forward to a nice two to three years peace and quiet building up your pension and then, whoosh bang, you were off? Do you think that you'll be able to get the full service for your pension now? I must say from here it looks less and less likely.

Just going back to the money, have you, er, actually said anything yet? I know you said you were going to, but have you? I noticed that your mate Mervyn had a gentle go. Did you put him up to that? It had your gentleness about it.

I must say though it all seems so unfair. I've always thought that being the nice bloke you are, you would end up being put upon by someone. I know, I know, I don't mean to sound pitying, but you really should stand up for yourself a bit more. Now would seem like a good time to do so, don't you think?

Anyway, must dash. I have to empty the dishwasher and write some letters.

Look after yourself.

Regards

Lola

An Apology

2009-03-25T22:56:00.002Z

I am sorry I am not erudite and witty like Stanislav.

I am sorry that I don't have Guido's ferreting and blogging skills.

I am sorry that I cannot write gossipy prose like Iain Dale.

I am sorry that I am not as clever and as educated as John Redwood.

I am sorry that I mispent my youth with cars and women - actually no I am not at all sorry about that - it was glorious. But I am sorry that I didn't learn what I should've when I had the chance.

I am sorry that lacking these skills I can only write poorly (mind you I can write a demon business letter).

But, dear reader, I am not sorry that I am inflicting all this on you. What else can I do?

When you get to the state of apoplectic fury that I have been driven to by the deceitful, witless, moronic, venal, arrogant, self serviving, sanctimonious, sleazy, thieving, lying, ugly, shrill, illiberal, controlling, centrist, nannying, finger wagging, hypocritical gits that masquerade as political leaders from the Labour Party and who are stealing my democratic power from me there is little else I can do but add my poor voice to the collective scream of the traditional English two word phrase, more excoriating as a multi useful expletive than possessed by any other language known to man; New Labour - fuck off.

"We'll do whatever it takes"

2009-03-25T22:53:00.002Z

Every time Brown spouts his mantra "we'll do whatever it takes" I am waiting for someone to state the bleedin' obvious response....

Answer "Well then, since this is all your fault, and if you really want to do 'whatever it takes' why don't you fuck off and die?"

Please watch the Video!

2009-03-24T20:06:00.001Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eorder%2Dorder%2Ecom%2F&feature=player_embedded

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/Daniel_Hannan

Update

Of course this won't make a blind bit of difference especially when the BBC nor any other lefty broadcaster won't cover it - the distorting, propaganderising shits that they are. Hannan's moment will live on in the blogoshere, but how many of the great unwashed will see it? Well, bugger all really.

Christ it pisses me off. The lies and spin, the traducing of democracy. These New Labour shits don't just deserve to lose and election they deserve something a lot worse. And I'm not saying the current crop of Toryists are any better. They are cast from the same class mould - the political calls. Perhaps Marx or Mao were right. We need a continuous revolution to keep these shits in check.

An Excess of Money Cannot be Cured by More Money

2009-03-20T11:42:00.009Z

Two things have come together this week to concentrate my thoughts on Brown's abject failures in economic and fiscal management.

One, on Wednesday I attended an investment conference and two, I have been writing our investment policy statement.

At the conference one of the best speakers was the bloke doing the fixed interest bit. The simple message was that the rates of return available to investors on fixed interest securities, both Sovereign and corporate, did not provide adequate compensation on instruments with durations greater than 12 months. Short dated bonds of AA quality or better were the only things to buy as investments. This is essentially an anti inflation argument. Inflation being the excess of money supply.

We have decided that the Risk Free Rate of Return will use is RPI. RPI is the nearest proxy I can get for inflation, as in the excess of money supply. Really I would prefer a more comprehensive measure that took into account the increase in broad money supply, but the RPI seems to us to be a reasonable proxy.

These actions and consequential thoughts got me thinking about money supply. Clearly, and now undeniably, the cause the the current economic woes is an excess of money supply. Here, in the US and elsewhere in the world. Money supply has boomed. And suddenly it all stopped. Why did it stop? The 'market' stopped it. Not Brown, not Obama, the 'market'. That is blokes like me and you said, 'That's it. No more. I don't believe what I am being told. It's all gone Pete Tong and I'm off'. 'I'm not going to put any more of my wealth into money or investments until all the existing excess of money has been washed out of the system'. 'And what's more any more money that I do get will be used to rebuild my balance sheet by reducing debt - and in consequence increasing the amount/value of my equity'. 'So stuff it'.

'I am not going to invest until I can be sure that this excess of money has been washed out of the system.'

(Of course one of the most bound and certain ways of destroying this excess money was to let the likes of RBS and LloydsHBOS go bust.)

Given the above, how is Brown's policy of tipping Billions of new (poor quality) Pounds into the economy going to help us get rid of this excess of money and encourage investors and others to spend their, devalued, money?

Afterthought.

Clearly this is market success. The markets are passing an accurate judgement on the failures of proto-socialistic policies of global lefty or mercantilist governments. They daren't admit this of course. It's be curtains for them all.

Tessa Jowell - Useless

2009-03-19T23:10:00.002Z

Watching QT. The odius, sanctimonious and clueless Tessa Jowell again trotted out the 'appalling self regulation under Tories that failed' mantra. Listen you fat headed old bat, I have run a financial services business under all regulatory regimes from 1989 and it is not the case, and never was, that self regulation 'failed'. It did not. I grant you that there were a couple of problems with pension transfer sales and endowment mortgages, but the costs and possible losses from these are miniscule when compared to the catastrophic losses created by the failed over regulation since 1997 and specifically from the the coming into law of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.

Zen and the Art of Aga Maintenance

2009-03-08T09:31:00.021Z

Late last week our oil fired Aga went out following a very windy day. Sometimes happens as fumes back up and trigger the fire control valve. So I set to and relit it. Over the next couple of days it became obvious that something more fundamental was wrong. It would not get up to temperature. On Friday night I let it go out and spent sometime on the interweb researching all I could find on Aga issues. I found one very useful site here, which I recommend.

Saturday morning bright and early and full of no tea following a breakfast of bread and Marmite and water I set to get it sorted. Now, I am quite a capable tinkerer and taking it apart and carrying out all the checks and repairs was quite pleasurable. The fault turned out to be the usual oil Aga problem of carbon build up in the base of the crucible and the consequential restriction of the oil supply line. Once cleaned and properly reassembled the Aga lit easily and was up to full temperature this morning, despite being set at 3 and a bit on the thermostat as opposed to the 4 ish that I had been using.

Whilst engaged in this therapeutic exercise I was musing on the world and it seemed to me that in the saga of the Aga there was a lesson. Normally the Aga functions well. It just goes on in the background ready to take on any form of cooking, always hot. Quiet and efficient and providing a source of heat for drying clothes or comforting the dogs or guests as well as being ready to cook bacon or kippers with no smell. It has no external controls, it is only regulated for heat. By one simple control.

The supply of oil.

Too much oil and it overheats and shuts itself down. But the oversupply of oil cannot be fixed until it has cooled down, which will take hours. And once you have fixed it - reduced the supply of oil - and got it going again it will take hours to warm up. Too little oil and it signals that it needs a little maintenance. That a blockage has occurred and needs clearing. If you ignore it and do nothing it gradually it goes out and the cold returns. But at least you can attend to it immediately as it is already cold. And consequently the time it takes to get it going again is half the time it takes following overheating.

Aga's and Oil. Money and Markets. It's a Zen thing.

Brown Cannot Reform

2009-03-08T09:07:00.004Z

The causes of this economic crisis are now self evident. Excessive cheap money created by Brown together with excessive taxation of private business and the cash hosed at bloated unreformed public 'services'.

The cures are therefore a reduction in the amount of money, the reduction in taxation on private business and individuals, and the genuine reform of the public 'services'.

Reform of public services can only start with huge redundancies. There are about 7 million people engaged (I cannot say working) in public 'services'. Of these about 1.3 to 1.5 million are at the front end of the health, education, law and order, defence and the HMRC, which leaves 5.5 million doing what exactly?

Everyone knows that this is the case. Everyone knows that these jobs are not really jobs and need to go. Even Gordon Brown knows it. So why doesn't he get on with the redundancies.

He won't do it because he wants to leave it to the next government, whom he also knows will be the Tories. Why? So when he, or more likely his party is in opposition it can use the mantra of 'Tory cuts' to discredit the government.

Trust me, he ain't going to sack a single civil servant, unless the IMF turn up and tell him. It'll always be someone else's fault.

QED - we are doomed to impoverishment.

Told You So!

2009-03-05T14:50:00.000Z

Go here to see why.

A System of Natural Liberty

2009-03-02T17:01:00.003Z

That's it. I've found my short phrase to describe 'capitalism'.

A System of Natural Liberty.

Isn't that lovely? And who coined it? Adam Smith of course.

As some of you may know I had sort of tried various things leading to

'Anglo saxon libertarian free market capitalism with thrift resposibility and compassion operating under the rule of English Common Law'

Not a very good word smith am I? Not exactly up there with dear old Adam.

And you don't have to disect it do you? You just have to get on with it. Oh joy.

Market Failure - Not

2009-03-02T16:27:00.003Z

I swear, if one more loony lefty trots (sic) out the 'what you are seeing now is the failure of the markets' line I will be straight out to the shed and measuring off lengths of piano wire and searching for suitable weapons.

For one more time listen. What you are now witnessing is markets working brilliantly to smash up all the statist leftist meddling and messing about over the last, well, 20 years ish.

A perfect example of this is the FSMA 2000 whose bastard child the FSA has so comprehensively cocked up. As anyone who works in financial services could (and we did) tell you they would. Why? Because their rule book is an eight foot high tome of bureaucratic minutiae, most of which is just train spotting. It is nationalisation by regulation. And we all know what nationalisation does to any industry don't we?

How though do we get this out on the MSM? The BBC is completely corporatist and knows its own future depends on the continuing deceit of the lefties? Murdoch will go with whatever makes him money and power. The Internet does not yet have the penetration to influence public mood.

If anyone has a good idea, just marginally short of full insurrection, I'd be pleased to hear it.

Fred Goodwin

2009-02-27T22:48:00.013Z

Since everyone else is on about Fred's pension I thought I'd have my say. Now let's think about this for a bit.

Firstly it is important to understand that pensions are deferred pay.

Let's say that Fred started work at aged 22. He's now 50. He joined RBS in 1998. So he has about 28 years pensionable service in various employments in private business. (See his biog on Wikipedia). Of the 28 years, 18 were in employment before RBS. According to his letter published on Guido Fawkes he transferred the accumulated benefits from these previous employments to the RBS scheme. This would have included benefits arising from both personal and employer contributions.

During his employment with RBS he again accrued pension benefits and these probably arose from both employee and employer contributions. These were made from the profits (however illusory) of private business.

So up until he was forced out of RBS the pension benefits he had accrued were entirely legitimate and proper and proportionate to his income.

I would also guess that he was in a defined benefits schemes and I am going to assume a normal retirement age of 60 - common in bank schemes.

We now come to the nub. When he was forced out what actual deal did he do or was he offered?

My guess is as follows.

Having renounced all his contractually payable termination benefits, and with his reputation in tatters, he is probably never ever going to be able to get a fat salary ever again. And as he still has a high degree of self esteem he probably feels that he deserves a fat income. In which case he was probably negotiating hard for an immediate early retirement (age 50) pension, and not actuarially reduced. In other words the full benefits earned to that date, but not necessarily enhanced to age 60.

As a rule of thumb for every 10 years early you draw your pension the cost roughly doubles. In Fred's case the £8m fund he had accumulated would need to be £16m to pay full, not reduced, benefits from age 50. In actual fact it may not have been necessary to actually pay £8m into his scheme, but merely to guarantee to make the pension payments. It is this guarantee that Myers was too witless or too complicit in making that is the problem for the Government.

So, can it be recovered? Well, under current pension law, with difficulty. Firstly it would be necessary to calculate a cash equivalent transfer value (CETV). To be fair it would be necessary to do that for benefits earned pre RBS, they would have the transfer in value figures of course. Having done that it would be necessary to work out what proportion of of the CETV was attributable to his personal contributions and what to RBS' contributions. Then it would be necessary to take a transfer payment and return the funds to RBS, and they would be treated as a trading receipt and taxed. His own funds he is entirely entitled to keep. It is his money, properly earned. Also please note that none of these funds arise from taxpayer subsidy.

Alternatively they could renege on the promise of the full benefits at 50 and actuarilly reduce the pension. This still leaves complications with the pre RBS benefits transferred into the RBS scheme. My guess is that Fred would then sue.

So whatever they do, it's a mess.

This brings in the political dimension. Would a court action suit the government? They may be pleased in that it would work in favour of their diversion tactics and keep the hate for Fred in the public eye. Or they may think that it could end up with Gordon Brown being hauled in as a witness.

What's my view? I reckon he should keep the pension. It has been properly agreed and is a contract. Overturning the contract would set a precedent leaving everyone's pension benefits at the mercy of the whim of the government and its officials. None of us would be safe. Overall the government has cocked up - quelle surprise - and they are going to have to find a way to live with it. As much as I despise Fred for his failures driven by his alleged arrogance and sense of self importance, I wish him the best in his fight.

The Housing Bubble USA - There as Here

2009-02-25T22:42:00.005Z

Below is part of a recent article from the Mises Institute.

The Housing Bubble

Our housing bubble is an excellent of the malinvestment and over consumption caused by credit expansion. Perhaps as much as $2 trillion or more of capital has been lost in the construction and financing of houses for people who, it turned out, could not afford to pay for them. The housing bubble was financed by the creation of
$1.5 trillion of new and additional money in the form of checking deposits created for the benefit of home buyers.

The creation of these deposits rested on the readiness of the Federal Reserve System to create whatever new and additional supporting funds were required in the form of bank reserves. In the three years 2001-2004, the Federal Reserve created enough such funds to drive the interest rate paid on them, i.e., the Federal Funds Rate, below 2 percent. And from July of 2003 to June of 2004, it created enough such funds to hold this rate down to just 1 percent. The end result was a substantial reduction in mortgage interest rates and thus in monthly mortgage payments, which served greatly to increase the demand for houses.

Government also greatly contributed specifically to loans being made to homebuyers who were not credit worthy. It did this through its various loan-guarantee programs, carried out by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development; and by means even of outright extortion, though the Community Reinvestment Act, which required banks to make sufficient such loans as would satisfy local "community groups."

In physical terms, the result of credit expansion was the passage of literally millions of houses that represented capital to the firms that built them, and to the banks and others that financed them, into the hands of consumers who not only had not contributed anything remotely comparable to the wealth and capital of the economic system but also had no realistic prospect of ever being able to do so. The further result has been that many of the builders of these houses are now ruined as are many of the banks and other investors that financed the construction and sale of those houses. And because so many lenders have lost so much, the business firms that depend on them for loans can no longer obtain those loans, and so they must close their doors and fire their workers.

The growing problem of unemployment that we are experiencing and the accompanying reduction in consumer spending on the part both of the unemployed and of those who fear becoming unemployed is the result of this loss of capital, not of any sudden, capricious refusal of consumers to spend or of banks to lend. Indeed, the kind of consumer spending that so many people want to revive and encourage, by means of "stimulus packages," played a major role in the loss of capital that has taken place and now results in unemployment and impoverishment.

During the housing boom, millions of owners of existing houses thought that they were growing rich as the result of the rise in the prices of their homes and that they could actually live to a substantial degree off the accompanying increase in the equity in their homes. They borrowed against the increased equity and spent the proceeds. This consumption was at the expense of capital investment in the economic system, which was rendered correspondingly poorer by it. And when housing prices collapsed, and fell below the enlarged mortgage debts that had been taken on, the effect was to add to the losses suffered by lenders. This was the case to the extent such equity-consuming homeowners then walked away from their homes, leaving their creditors to lose by the decline in the price of their homes.

Says it much better than I can. The full article is here.

Moral Hazard

2009-02-24T16:28:00.005Z

I had been thinking about 'moral hazard' and how it applies just as much to Gordon Brown as to the banks he falsely blames for the current crisis of money. Serendipitously I came across this article from the Mises institute.

Bailing out the banks is morally hazardous, and the future will show us that it has been a major policy error. But, what else could Gordon do? His 'success' - in fact the success of all western governments with a monopoly of money - is bound up with the banks. They are simply a highly regulated and complicit cartel supplier of a monopoly product.

But, there is also the moral hazard to tempt governments who have the monopoly of money. And boy, do they get tempted to use it. If you give politicians the monopoly of money they will exploit it to increase their power and reduce our freedom. In fact they have done so in spades. We are enslaved in a new feudalism where we get a job, get a mortgage and have to stay in the job to pay the mortgage which means that we can be taxed by the government.

As the article says:

We need to consider what government wants — more power and revenue — and the means available to attain it.

This process also destroys the family, I quote again:

By fueling the exponential growth of the welfare state, fiat inflation fosters the decline of the family. Families become degraded into "small production units that share utility bills, cars, refrigerators, and especially the tax bill." The welfare state drives the family and private charities out of the "welfare market."

All of this exposes both the ignorance and deceit of Gordon Brown and socialism.

The sooner that both are consigned to history the better.

The article says it all much better than I can. Read it well and remember it. And someone, please tell Gordon Brown and New Labour.

Who Pays for 'Mis-selling' and FS Regulation?

2009-02-23T13:57:00.009Z

Another priceless gem from the financial services regulatory 'system' here.

So, With Profit fund surpluses are being used to settle mis-selling claims against insurers. In other words successful compo claimants are being paid out the reserved profits from their own fund to settle their claims for not running the funds properly. (I know. I know. Compo is for 'mis-selling' - as in advising wrongly. But no client I have ever dealt with has ever contemplated a claim for anything else other than apparently poor investment performance).

Let's break this down.

One. There is no such thing as 'mis-selling'. You either allowed yourself to be pursuaded to buy an unsuitable product or you were subject to professional negligence. In the first case caveat emptor, buyer beware, applies. It's tough. You made a mistake. Live with it. In second professional negligence case you can claim from the advisers PI policy as he failed as an expert in giving you the correct advice.

Two. All financial services compo costs are ultimately paid by the compo claimants or their companion policyholders. The industry does not pay. These costs are either added to the investment / insurance company operating costs and incorporated in the policy charges or they are taken out of capital within the client funds and hence destroy the returns for both current and future populations of policyholders. In theory you can charge the shareholders but all that does is to drive down the share price which, as these shares are held by the managers as investments, drives down the returns for policyholders.

Three. All fees and expenses and FSA 'fines' paid by FS companies find their way to the costs charged to the client. Our FSA fees are paid by our clients. Competitive pressure keeps us honest and our prices in line with our competitors. All our competitors pay FSA fees. Therefore we all add the fees to the costbase against which we assess our overheads and hence our pricing.

Four. Money released from the sales of capital assets is transferred to successful compo claimants who in about 90% of the cases (based on our own experience) just spend the cash. This increases the broad money supply and drives inflation (inflation being defined as the increase in quantity and reduction in quality of money). It must be understood that the capital assets - shares, bonds, property - sold are only priced in money. They are sold, that is converted into cash, and this cash is then released back into the economy. A lot of the cash used to buy these assets is borrowed.

The solution is easy.

One. Add a simple fee to all products sold. Like VAT (yukk). Make it compulsory to set it out as a specific charge. This would be the 'Investor Protection Levy'. Make it possible to opt out. Investors could then see the price they are paying for FSA/FOS/FSCS and compensation and make a choice as to its value to them. It would make them think.

Two. Scrap 90% of the FSA/FSCS/FOS which would reduce the costs to the FS industry, or rather their clients.

Note. In 15 years we have had about 5 actual complaints to us of which two were endowment related. Both were opportunistic and failed. We have seen about 15 or so complaints through our business of which about 12 were successful and only one that I can recall actually used the money to pay down the mortgage. Most of the rest bought cars or had holidays on the windfall. We have had one complaint through our office that I considered showed serious failings on the part of the previous adviser - from Hambro Countrywide - and the FOS could not be of any help as they held that the claim was stale. Although they will happily adjudicate on endowment policies more than 15 years old. Justice or 'fairness' it ain't.

Oh God no!

2009-02-22T22:29:00.006Z

Just read this in the Telegraph on line.

Can you really believe this bunch of witless idiots. Look, try something once and it doesn't work, try something different. Trying the same thing again is just bonkers. Trying the same failed things three times is just stupid.

Listen you bunch of mindless jerks - CUT TAXES AND GOVERNMENT SPENDING NOW.

Then there's the stuff about 100% mortgages. Just what has it got to do with Brown how much a bank lends to a customer? The real laugh is that I did a radio spot a few months ago where my opinion was sought on how first time buyers could be exepected to 'get on the housing ladder' now that '100% mortgages were no longer available'. It was on the local BBC channel as well.

Update. Someone more significant than I has finally got to the hysterical stage with these fools.

Working Tax Debit

2009-02-22T08:38:00.005Z

On many occassions a useful way of testing the sense of something is to try and phrase the obverse. F'rinstance, 'common sense' could become 'common nonsense' or 'uncommon sense' or if you really wanted to be pedantic - 'uncommon nonsense' - but that sort of cancels itself out.

How about 'working tax credit'? This would become 'working tax debit'.

This is very enlightening. It exposes income tax for what it is. A tax on work, not on income. Income tax is therefore a tax on your time. Or a payroll tax for employers; a cost of employing you.

Of all the taxes that we are forced to pay, I consider income tax - which I shall now call 'working tax debit' - the most despicable, especially so since no State or local government employee pays any income tax at all. The notional deduction for PAYE shown on their payslips is, in reality, just a rebate to the rest of us.

A Treat from the Mises Institute

2009-02-19T16:01:00.003Z

I found this which is one of the best of its kind.

I should declare an interest. I am a Jaguar owner (well, strictly it's Mrs Lola's car) and fan.

FSA - Light Touch Regulation?

2009-02-19T10:22:00.003Z

The FSA rule book, if printed out, stands 8 feet / 2.440 metres high.

If nothing else that nails the lie of light touch regulation.

Update:

Regarding my response to MW comment you can find how the FSA/FOS/FCSC admitted it can 'create law' here

“We do not have to pretend to ‘find’ what the law is. We unashamedly make new ‘law’”, boasted Walter Merricks in a June 2001 speech to the Financial Regulation Industry Group

How can a Quango be allowed to make new law? How can it be allowed to be applied without Parliament approving it? Is it at all compatible with freedom for the Government to empower Quangos like this?

FSA - Again

2009-02-16T16:00:00.004Z

The FSA is admitting that it made mistakes in regulation that may have made a difference to the severity of the banking failures. Yeah, right.

The only way that the FSA 'regulation' could have had a chance of preventing the banking crisis was to regulate upwards, to the Bank of England the Treasury and The Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Once a government with a monopoly of money starts on the unsound money route the country is doomed. The FSA would have had to stop Gordon Brown from printing money, it would have had to make the Bank of England ignore the spurious CPI price index measure and make it take more heed of broad money supply and it would have had to stop the Treasury sanctioning profligate government spending and off balance sheet borrowing.

Financial services 'regulation' does not work from the top down. It has to work from the bottom up. We, the people, have to make sure that the governments we elect know the principles of sound money and macro economic management and how to spend our money wisely and miserly.

We failed with New Labour.

A = B x C

2009-02-10T18:22:00.006Z

A = B x C

Where

A = economic meltdown

B = Bankers

C = Chancellor of the Exchequer.

It's simple sum and it works like this:-

I listened to an edited version of the parliamentary committee interviewing the Bankers today.

I am sorry but I have seriously lost my sense of proportion when it comes to Bankers. They've always been too big for their boots. They adopt the same assumptive superioty of languange and attitude beloved by that other alledgedly useful commercial class, estate agents.

Let's get this straight, banking is a very simple business. It has two bits of work to do. One, it operates as your fiduciary by offering an account management service. A clerking job. Two, it takes the money you deposit and acting as your intermediary it lends it out to someone. The difference in price between what they pay you and what they charge someone else is their commission. Right, having set that out I will concede that this simple model can get more complicated in action, but the essential model is as simple as I have set out.

Now then, in the past about twenty years, there has been a consolidation of banking businesses such that there are now about 6 actual banks. They all offer the same service at the same price. There is zero differentiation. They are a cartel. A cartel supplier of a monopoly product.

What is the monopoly product. Money. In the UK that's Sterling.

So who makes this product? Yep, the UK government, currently under the control of the well know one eyed Scots idiot.

So, suppose you are supplying this monopoly product and the manufacturer massively increases the amount he supplies and slashes the price? What are you going to do? How are you going to make money storing this excess product? You can't. You have to sell it on. And sell it on in vast quantities.

In short then, however nice it is to hear the multi eyed not necessarily Scots (althgough one of the banks was) idiots apologising, when are we going to get the real grovelling mea culpa from the other key player in this disaster?

You tell me.

Inflation. The Evidence?

2009-02-10T12:09:00.005Z

This is a graph based on data from the World Gold Council. Now, I am not saying that there are not other factors at work here (do we know whether we have discovered all the gold fields yet?). But it seems to me that there is a correlation between the exit from the Gold Standard and inflation. I am assuming that the Misian definition that inflation is the growth in money supply plus its reduction in quality, applies here. In other words the temptation is for Governments running monopoly fiat money to inflate away their self induced problems at our expense.

Just a thought. Happy to be argued with.

Why Bailouts - Neither Here nor Over There - Won't Work

2009-02-09T11:02:00.008Z

The following snippet was copied and pasted from Dimensional Fund Advisors website. (My business is a committed and, for our size, a big user of DFA passive funds).

Jan 28, 2009Essays
Bailouts and Stimulus Plans - Addendum 1/28/09
by EUGENE F. FAMA
In his NY Times blog Paul Krugman attacks my piece on the stimulus plan.
Again, here is my argument in three sentences.
1. Bailouts and stimulus plans must be financed.
2. If the financing takes the form of additional government debt, the added debt displaces other uses of the same funds.
3. Thus, stimulus plans only enhance incomes when they move resources from less productive to more productive uses.
Are any of these statements incorrect?

[Eugene F Fama is a financial economist and renowned for his work on efficient investment]

They Still Don't Get it

2009-02-09T10:02:00.006Z

Guido Fawkes pointed me to a book review here.

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the Left From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning Jonah Goldberg Penguin £9.99, pp496 Nick Cohen finds much to admire in a blistering attack on liberalism.

It's a book I shall buy.

The reviewer for the Guardian a Mr. Nick Cohen cannot bear to let the right have the win and his last paragraph is:

Liberal Fascism is a bracing and stylish examination of political history. That it is being published at a time when Goldberg's free market has failed and big government and charismatic presidents are on their way back in no way invalidates his work. Hard times test intellectuals and, for all its occasional false notes, Goldberg's case survives.

Classic. Look, sunshine, we've had big government for yonks. And we've had charismatic (and useless) leaders in recent times. It's them that have failed. The present difficulties are free markets succeeding and passing judgment on just the sort of Statist fascist tendencies the book you've reviewed has warned us of.

Plonker

Thought for the Day

2009-02-04T10:51:00.004Z

I copied the following from an email from a colleague of mine. It deserves to be shared:

(Galt Capital a Virgin Isles based Investment Advisor).

"Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy—a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind's fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.
Just as I support my life, neither by robbery nor alms, but by my own effort, so I do not seek to derive my happiness from the injury of the favor of others, but earn it by my own achievement. Just as I do not consider the pleasure of others as the goal of my life, so I do not consider my pleasure as the goal of the lives of others. Just as there are no contradictions in my values and no conflicts among my desires—so there are no victims and no conflicts of interest among rational men, men who do not desire the unearned and do not view one another with a cannibal's lust, men who neither make sacrifices nor accept them.
The symbol of all relationships among such men, the moral symbol of respect for human beings, is the trader. We, who live by values, not by loot are traders, both in manner and spirit. A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. A trader does not ask to be paid for his failures, nor does he ask to be loved for his flaws. A trader does not squander his body as fodder, or his soul as alms. Just as he does not give his work except in trade for material values, so he does not give the values of his spirit—his love, his friendship, his esteem—except in payment and in trade for human virtue, in payment for his own selfish pleasure, which he receives from men he can respect. The mystic parasites who have, throughout the ages, reviled the trader and held him in contempt, while honoring the beggars and the looters, have known the secret motive of the sneers: a trader is the entity they dread—a man of justice.

John Galt
Atlas Shrugged

Oh God! He's Off On One Again, Please Someone, Tell Him How it Works...

2009-01-31T19:41:00.003Z

I listened, no, I couldn't avoid hearing, Brown banging on again in Davos. The BBC have an article here.

Basically he is saying that we need a whole load of new 'regulations' that set out how we should all deal with each other, and that all the old models have failed.

Now listen you gormless git, the old ways have not, repeat not failed. What's failed is government. Your government for one. You have failed to uphold the basic responsibilities we have entrusted you with. You have failed to run sound money. You have failed to keep taxes low. You have failed to properly supervise banks (NOT regulate - simple supervision) of the most dangerous, irresponsible and incompetent institutions in free market capitalism. You failed to stop meddling in things that are beyond your comprehension. You have failed to engender free trade, resorting as ever to lefty mercantilism. You failed to provide moral leadership. You failed to uphold the rule of law.

All we need you to do is do what has always worked. There is no need at all to invent new ways to control us. We are all free men. We can sort out our own lives as long as the government, your government stops meddling and just does the things that are your responsibility.

Update

Seems that I am on the same sort of wavelength as the Adam Smith Institutes Dr Eamonn Butler.

Green Tory's? How Exactly?

2009-01-31T00:38:00.018Z

Conservatism, well my sort of compassionate free market anglo saxon libertarianism, is green. I know that'll wind many of you up, but let me explain:-

1. The Trabant. The product of leftyness. Crap car. Really a sort of death trap pollution machine. Still produced in the 1990's. No significant development for 30 years.

2. The Ford Cortina Mk 1 and The Ford Mondeo. The lineage of the current Mondeo can be traced back to the Mk1 Cortina - the first true repmobile / family car. The Cortina was launched in 1962 and ended its production run as the MK4 version in 1982. Replaced by the Sierra which in its turn was replaced by the Mondeo. The modern Mondeo is efficient, safe, recyclable, low emmitting, economic, reliable (my 1996 version is still going strong at 160,000 miles with no major component change - cross fingers) engineering marvel. Luxury and comfort at low cost. The product of capitalism.

So, working on the evidence it is clear that capitalism conserves resources. It developes efficient products and solutions. That's the point efficient. Driven by competition and ingenuity.

Banks? They are good for what, exactly?

2009-01-29T12:14:00.003Z

Classic snippet from a Money Marketing leader that I cannot resist sharing with you:

No-one is phoning their bank to get an opinion as to whether their IFA will survive. As any adviser will tell you, it’s the other way round.

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Lay off State Workers and Save Money

2009-01-28T18:35:00.004Z

A headline I read somewhere recently, said that public spending would rise this year since the tax take from employment taxes would reduce as layoffs increased and consequentially benefits payments would increase.

In the recession of the early 80’s unemployment rose to at least 3 million. These mostly represented redundancies from the old model state supported industries. These industries were inefficient, overmanned and produced products that no-one wanted to buy, or simply rationed supply to sustain employment, hence suffering endemic producer capture. In other words the jobs occupied by the redundant workers were not wealth creating jobs at all. The workers were already redundant, they just didn’t know it.

The result of this forced (and painful) restructuring was that most of the UK’s manufacturing sector and private business generally became efficient and not over-manned.

This time the same failed quasi socialist policies have created the same approximately (probably at least) 3 million non-jobs in the direct public sector. The client state has been transferred from non-jobs hidden in inefficient uncompetitive industrial organisations to equally, or more probably even more inefficient and overmanned, direct public employment. The workers are still not gainfully employed, and again they just do not yet know this.

This time, laying off these already redundant public sector employees will not increase the visible costs to the state. It could well reduce them.

If we assume that each of the 3 million public employees is paid at the NAE rate of approximately £24,000 per annum and that total on-costs are factored at 3* times pay the total costs to the taxpayer is £216 Bn. Once these workers are laid off we can assume that the total benefits may well equal NAE plus an administration cost of say 25%. This gives a cost of £90 Bn. In other words a saving of £129 Bn. per annum. (I accept that these figures are approximate, but it is the case that the costs of benefits are less than the costs of employment).

Furthermore many non-jobs are sustained on the taxpayers purse through the vehicles of alleged charities and Quangos. More of the same savings are available here.

Every way I look at this current crisis I see two complimentary factors. One massive over-employment in state bureaucracies and their associated tame charities and Quangos funded by confiscatory levels of taxation which deprives private individuals and business of spending power combined with a complete absence of responsible fiscal management resulting in massive increases in money supply, that is inflation.

If these factors cause the problem, the correction of them will by definition cure the problem. That is massive reductions in public expenditure brought about by releasing millions of state employees to find more productive wealth creating jobs in private business resulting in massively lower taxes on private business and individuals.

* I realise that the income tax notionally paid by public employees nets out but I have added back a factor of 30% for pension costs.

Enemies of Freedom and Markets

2009-01-27T15:43:00.004Z

Another excellent piece from the Mises institute. Will expand this post later.

Later:

Reading the above took me to a piece by Mises himself. I quote:

There is no use in arguing with people who are driven by “an almost religious fervor” and believe that their master [Keynes] “had the Revelation.” It is one of the tasks of economics to analyze carefully each of the inflationist plans, those of Keynes and Gesell no less than those of their innumerable predecessors from John Law down to Major Douglas. Yet, no one should expect that any logical argument or any experience could ever shake the almost religious fervor of those who believe in salvation through spending and credit expansion.

The highlighted last sentence says it all really. Why, just why does Brown and New Labour think it'll work this time, when all the evidence of history denies it?

'Oh My Good Gawd' - Arthur Daley

2009-01-25T15:00:00.004Z

Quote from BBC website from Andrew Marr Show:

"Speaking on the same programme [as Ken Clarke], Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said there was a "crisis of confidence in Britain PLC". Nick Clegg: 'We must retain optimism'. He said the economic model of the past 20 years, driven by minimal regulation and subservience" to financial markets, had been swept away and only the Lib Dems could offer the radical changes needed to address these problems. "The future is going to look dramatically different than the past in terms of how we run our economy," he said.

What a complete plonker. Listen and learn Cleggy.

1. Financial regulation has become over-weening and burdensome. It looks, is implemented and managed like nationalisation lite. The FSMA 2000 is the problem, not the solution.

2. There is no need to 'run' the economy. The economy can 'run' itself. As long as it gets the rule of law, government as umpire not player, sound money, the right to enjoy private property, freedom.

3. The 'crisis in confidence' is in inept and nannying and interfering government.

4. We, the people, just do NOT need YOU to RUN anything.

Bugger That...

2009-01-25T14:29:00.007Z

Excellent Matthew Parris piece in Sunday Times here.

I agree with all of it except the last paragraph. There absolutely no reason at all why the UK should slip quietly into the second league of nations. The 'managed decline' so beloved of post war civil servants.

All countries can avoid this. All of them. But we are better placed than most with our outward looking history and a proclivity for trading.

All it needs is the energy, and the absence of politicians and crucially the removal, or at the very least the severe reduction, of the welfare state. If people have some fear they will try. Pay people to do nothing and they will do nothing, it's rational and I for one would join them if the pay was high enough. So would you. I'd get bored though and go and do something. Now, when I do that something, I am coerced into paying tax at confiscatory levels to support (I calculate) about 12m people either doing bugger all or not more than 25% of what they are capable of. Remove that dead weight overhead and our costs would reduce and we will be able to compete with anybody. Our workers (anyone at any level who turns up and does something productive, whether managing director, dustman or even a merchant banker) are as good as anybody's and work just as hard, but those in the private wealth creating sector are burdened with a huge overhead to support.

Managed decline. Pah!

What's Wrong with Financial Services Regulation?

2009-01-24T20:17:00.008Z

To answer the question posed in the title of this post go here. Just keep clicking on the links on the right and make up your own minds.

Done that?

Now, whose diseased brain could possibly be behind such a thing?

Moses needed just 10 rules. Works for me.

Update

Since drafting this yesterday I found more supporting evidence for the scrapping of the FSA and the whole 'regulatory' structure born out of Brown's Bonkanomics.

First, an excellent article in the Telegraph from Philip Booth here.

Second a linked post from the ever excellent Adam Smith Institute here.

Both of these pieces exactly mirror all that I have been saying about the complete fatuousness of the current regulatory system since, well, since it was created. Working within it and meeting and speaking to its apparatchiks over the last 9 years demonstrated clearly to me just how hopeless it was.

My business works on the basis that if we do what is right for the clients and adopt good practice as to how we document and record what we advise, compliance will be automatic. Experience has taught me that the reality is that the FSA needs to work out how to comply with us.

We are now in an endgame. There are two possible outcomes. One, a future of dispiriting, unfair and immoral bureaucratic capitalism, or two, a bright future of freedom and responsibility with massively smaller bureaucracies and government.

The FSA realises this and is now resorting to ever more Draconian and coercive behaviour towards market participants as it desperately tries to rebuild its collapsed credibility, shift the blame for the financial failure away from itself and hence justify its continued existence.

To anyone working in financial services (with the exception of the Bankers) the FSA's wish to ever recover its credibility is deluded. Trust, like virginity, can only be lost once.

As to whether we are condemned to a cartelised, bureaucratic, dispiriting and hopeless future depends entirely on us. Our vote, when Brown deigns to allow us to exercise it, will decide on that, or possibly not given the current crop of pathetic statist politicos of all creeds.

It's My Money and I can Always Make Better use of it than the Bloody Gummint

2009-01-23T18:03:00.004Z

Lovely Ludwig von Mises quote to share:

...There is need to emphasize the truism that a government can spend or invest only what it takes away from its citizens and that its additional spending and investment curtails the citizens' spending and investment to the full extent of it quantity...

Shove that up your stovepipe New Labour.

The Banks - Bust Since When!?

2009-01-23T12:48:00.007Z

Very interesting piece of analysis on the Banks published by Bedlam Asset Management here. This is Bedlams most recent investment bulletin, you can ignore the writing and just look at the table if you like.

Basically, the Banks are bust.

Since their launch in 2002 Bedlam have said that they have never owned a western bank share.

If Bedlam knew these ratios, and knew the problem (a problem I also suspected), why did this not occur to the bloody gummint and it's provisional wing the FSA?

The words 'swords' and 'falling on now' spring to mind as to how the FSA and gummint should behave. How likely is that? Not very.

"O brave new world, That has such people in't!"

2009-01-21T22:44:00.009Z

Welcome to the New World Order. Erich Honecker would have been pleased with my day. He would have smiled at the intransigence of the apparatchik I confronted. He would have known that all would have been well in the supervision society. The police state could rest at ease knowing that it could inflict misery and loss on the citizen. That power was where it should be, in the hands of the State.

Today I accidentally suffered a bank charge. My operational account is with Natwest, that is RBS. Funnily enough, seeing as how they are bankrupt, I don't trust them and do not leave much headroom in that account and because I got confused about the collection date of a DD and did not have enough funds in the account they bounced it. Fair enough. But what they call the 'service fee' was £38 -thirty-eight quid. Please note I cannot remember the last time I had a penalty charge. So I went and asked for my money back.

Bearing mind that we now own this crock of shit masquerading as a viable business, and that each of us has handed over North of £20,000 to keep it, well trading is not the right word, but you know what I mean, and hence saved all the little smug childish tossers that turn up at these places daily to get in the way, from losing their jobs, one would have thought that a little gratitude was to be expected. Not the abject grovelling gratitude that we actually deserve, but at least a bit of humility.

But, of course, nope. Just arrogance and supercilious smugness. Clearly the clerks have cracked that they are civil servants now and there is no longer any need even to pretend at some small demonstration of customer service. Here we have the first inkling of the kind of State bank we are going to get as Gordon the Moron's meltdown gathers speed.

I console myself by imagining them in the guise of the marketing department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, a bunch of jerks who were first up against the wall when the revolution came.*

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

(PS. I WILL get my money back)

*See the 'Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy'.

Good Grub for Blokes

2009-01-20T19:53:00.005Z

Mrs Lola is on a mission tonight. Hours march away. So cooking for self. I like to cook. In truth I like to eat. Furthermore a lesson learned young was that one of the most certain ways of earning sexual favours from the delicately nurtured was to cook for them.

Tonight I was in invention mood and the result was very successful, so being of a generous disposition I thought I'd share it with you. By the way it is based on the 'usie uppie' principle.

Ingreedyents

4 modest sized thick sausages
1 rasher smoked back bacon
1 red onion
1 half red chili de-seeded (or not - Some Like it Hot)
1 can plum toms
enough new pots.
Mushrooms -several
Red Pepper small and sliced.
Paprika 1 teaspoon ish.
Salt pepper
White wine splash plus.
Italian seasoning.

Wash and chop to medium sized new pots. and boil until soft-ish.
Cook sausages until done then chop into 20 mm lengths - ish.

Meanwhile chop onion and chili and soften in saute pan in 1 tbsp olive oil until golden ish.
Add red pepper and cook for 5 mins
Add bacon and brown
Add white wine
Stir in paprika
Add can plumb toms.
Cook for 5 mins
Add cooked sausages
Add potatoes
Add 1 tsp Italian seasoning
Season to taste.

Cover and place in moderate oven for 15 mins.

Take out and dish up. Accompany with a nice red. Beaujolais works for me.

Now feeling happy and relaxed with coffee percolating away.

I even had a fleeting sympathetic thought for Gordon Brown. But only very fleeting.

I'm moving to China...Possibly

2009-01-20T17:14:00.002Z

Excelllent daily thought piece here by the Ludwig von Mises institute comparing China and the USA. The same comparison applies to the UK. Read it and weep.