One rule for the ruled, another for the rulers

Oh dear it looks like dear Lyn Brown has been caught out. Despite campaigning for an increase in the minimum wage, when other people have to pay, if the money is coming out of her own pocket she prefers not to pay anything at all.

The UK debt problem is between Ireland and Greece

One in the eye for deficit deniers. The Economist has a chart showing how many cuts are needed to get government debt under control and back to safe levels, it is not pretty. The UK is way up the chart between Iceland and Greece, both of which are already bankrupt, which tells you how hard it will be to get the country back on an even keel, and so how vital it is to start now.

The EU wants kill the financial industry as well

After the member states governments spent billions trying to keep the interbank lending market going the EU is going to kill it. They want to place a tax on all financial transactions which will make a large chunk of all low margin trades, like the millions of daily trades that keep the interbank mark going, unprofitable. The prospect of a profitable industry brought to its knees by government taxation is making the usual suspects on the left mastibate itself into a frenzy.

Of course the EU does not really care about any of the lefty wibble spouted by the Transaction Tax’s usual supporters, they are just after the money. The EU has been desperate to get more taxes under its direct control and so increase its direct income. It wants this to make it less reliant on the member states. They are just jumping on the bandwagon because it is going in a direction they like, the direction of higher taxes. The fact that this tax is not aimed at destroying the EU financial industry won’t mean that that will not be the result. I’m sure that estate agents on Bern will be rubbing their hands with glee, if this law goes into practice a very large chunk of the European financial industry is going to up sticks and move to Switzerland.

How the Cookie law crumbles

The EU has an amazing ability to lay waste to anything that it touches. Everything from fisheries to economies; once the EU gets hold of them they die. The next target for the EU's hug of death is the internet. The EU has specified that all websites that have users from the EU (which means basically all of them, no matter where they are based) that use Cookies (which means basically all of them) must get explicit consent from the users before placing the Cookie. Yep, the EU looked at common websites and decided that what they really needed was a blizzard of pop-ups that had to be clicked through before the site became usable. Being an EU directive this gets pushed though the beaurocracies of the members states without the democratic elements of their governments being able to look at the proposal and tell them that they were talking out of their collective arseholes. The directive has been pushed through the British beaurocracy in the normal way and was supposed to have already come into force; however nobody was ready, not even the Information Commisioner who is supposed to enforce the law, so it was delayed by a year.

Information Commissioner's Office is now compliant with the law that they were supposed to enforce and a Freedom of Information request has been issued for their statistics. The result is striking, after getting in line with the EU's directive there was a 90% drop in the apparent usage of their website. Of course we have no idea whether this is because these people opted out, or whether they simply left to go elsewhere because having to click through a blizzard of pop-ups is nobody's idea of good web experience. For web shops this is dangerous as this is potentially a large number of customers going elsewhere. For advertising funded sites this is disasterous as this is 90% of their revenue evapourating overnight. Thank you EU, can we leave yet?

Finally some sense on Greece

Finally somebody there is a politican talking sense about the Greek debt crisis, and it is Boris Johnson. Greece is bankrupt, so it should go bankrupt. Greece, like the UK, has no option other than to cut the size of its state because nobody can spend more than they earn year after year. Greece cannot grow its way out of trouble because being shackled inside the Euro it is going to continue to loose competitiveness. It should therefore get out of the Euro so that its currency can float downwards to the level that is appropriate for their economy. Even if it could start growing again it will never pay back the loans that it has, so it should not take on more loans that it will not pay back either. Before this crisis is over there is going to be a lot of pain for those holding Greek debt, but delaying things will only make it worse as the debts will be larger. Therefore it should just hold up its hands and admit that nobody that anybody stuipd enough to lend it money is not going to get that money back before the outstanding debt that it is going to default on gets even larger.

Not that this will happen though for three reasons. If Greece defaults cause huge problems for France and Germany. It will bankrupt the European Central Bank. Plus it will destroy the myth that european integration is inevitable, and without that myth to fall back on Eu-philes don't have many arguments left to support their dreams. The EU elites will not allow such an obvious hole to get blown in the side of their project. Instead of the correct option there is also a second option, the EU (meaning Germany) could keep bailing Greece out for as long as it cannot pay back its loans and since Greece is bankrupt that means throwing money at Greece forever. For this they will expect some say Greek financial policy in return, so that they can claim that Taxpayers money is being not wasted (which it is), and so the wheels of EU integration continue to grind onwards lubricated by blood on the streets of Athens.

Labour wants to give the Army to the EU

The Tories might be rather wet when it comes to the EU, but they are still the least worst of the major parties. Don't believe me? Even they would think twice before handing over our armed forces to the EU, which is exactly what Labour want to do. However insane this policy was probably inevitable as it manages to get a hat-trick of lefty ideological prejudices:

Deficit denial, check.

Dislike of the British armed forces, check.

Selling out to the EU, check.

Policy proposals based on blind ideological prejudice are probably what should be expected from an opposition at this part of the electoral cycle, but this really takes this to a level that shows they really don't care about winning the next election.

Spleen venting in progress

Ed Balls wants Plan B, but is that plan B for Balls or plan B for Bankruptcy. At least he has admitted now that there will probably not be a double dip recession, though I’m sure that certain lefties are going to continue wibbling on about how it is inevitable. He has also finally learned that if you want to help the economy tax cuts work far better than state spending. Not that he would ever continence less state spending, being a lefty. Unfortunately there is no money left to spend, Labour has already spent it all.

Labour not only spent all the money the state has, they spent all the money that the state could borrow, and then printed more money and spent that. The money has all been spent, its gone, the deficit needs to be cut and the only way to do that is to cut what the state does. Thanks to Labour’s massive overspending the only choices are cutting the bloated state down to size, and cut by more than the fractions of a percent that George Osbourne plans, or the state going bankrupt.

Then there is Jeff Randall of the Telegraph who has woken up to the fact that the Bank of England is trying to stealthily default on the massive debt that Labour created through inflation. Hello! It really took you this long to figure that out? The Bank of England spent the entire last year of Labour’s term of office printing money simply to stop the government going bankrupt. Of course there has been lots of inflation, and of course there will continue to be lots of inflation. Lots of inflation is what always happens when the state starts printing money to sustain itself, and under Labour the state printed a lot. Only once all of that money has worked its way into the system and reduced the value of money until it balances with the amount of value in the system will we go back to more normal inflation rates.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out Bob

Some good news from the coalition, which doesn't happen very often. They are going to try and make sure those earning more than £100,000 a year loose their subsidised council houses, so they can be used for people that actually need them. The lefties will squeal, but then lefties always squeal whenever anybody even thinks about the state spending less money no matter how close to bankrupt it is. What I want to know is why it took so long to make such an obviously correct decision? I understand why such fabulously rich people were able to get council housing, it was so that well connected lefties (such as Bob Crow and Ken Livingstone's mate Lee Jasper) could live high on the hog at tax payers expense. That is what always happens when the left get power. What I don't understand is why Cameron's first act as he got through the doors of Number 10 wasn't to throw the sponging scum out and let them pay their way like everybody else.