More Financial Services Authority Revelations

Been doing a bit of digging around.

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

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

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

Sants has been very quiet recently.

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

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

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

Fairness

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

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

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

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

Well, he shouldn't.

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

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

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

What do we think would happen?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Surely that's even more 'fair'?

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

Billy Bragg Tax Protest

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

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

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

Thought Control?

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

This is risible for two reasons.

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

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

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

There. Easy isn't it.

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

Who tells you what to do?

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

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

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

HMS Enterprise?

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...

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?