The Calais booze cruise is part of life in the south east of England where you can catch the ferry over the channel for a few quid and bring back a boot load of cheap booze from a hypermarché for half what it would cost to buy it here.  Elsewhere in England coach companies run organised booze cruises and groups of people get together to share transport costs for their own booze cruises.

Booze cruise costs are prohibitive for a lot of people but what if your booze “cruise” was a drive across the Welsh or Scottish border where minimum pricing won’t apply?  It would only cost me about a tenner to drive to the Welsh border and back where I could buy cheap booze that isn’t subject to the British alcohol unit tax.  My annual alcohol consumption is roughly what your average binge drinking teenager would consume in a weekend and Mrs Sane drinks infrequently so a boot load of cheap Welsh booze would last us a year.  What incentive would there be for me to buy booze from a local supermarket or off licence?

Retailers in the south east are already losing out because of British taxes on alcohol and tobacco and they’re increasingly losing out from people travelling to France and Belgium to fill up their lorries, vans and even cars with diesel which is currently about 15% cheaper than in England.  Naturally it’s the English that lose out most from repressive British taxes due to our colonial status but not exclusively so.  The Northern Irish border is dotted with petrol stations on the Irish Republic side of the border reaping the benefits of low fuel duty which of course costs Northern Irish retailers on the border a great deal of money.  The Northern Irish do have the pay-off of cross-border trade the other way as food and clothes are cheaper in Northern Ireland so they are in a slightly better position than England.

All four home nations lose out because of the misguided big state, high tax policies of the British government under any of the LibLabCon parties but the English disproportionately so because we’re under the direct rule of a fundamentally anglophobic British government.  The sooner we take control of our own affairs from the British the better.

When Saint Robert of Peston whipped up a frenzy of consumer panic with his misleading reports on Northern Rock’s request for an emergency credit line from the Bank of England (misrepresenting it as a loan rather than the offer of a loan if they needed it) he caused a run on the bank which deprived it of its working capital.  The inevitable happened of course and the Northern Rock ran out of cash and was nationalised.

Northern Rock has now been sold to Virgin Money at a minimum loss of £400m but possibly as much as £653m on the amount the UK Treasury spent nationalising the bank.  Those of you who have taken an interest in the Northern Rock affair and with good memories for these things might be getting a touch of déja vu at the mention of Virgin Money and Northern Rock in the same sentence because Richard Branson tried to take over Northern Rock before it was nationalised and on much better terms for UK plc than what has just been agreed less than a fortnight after Saint Robert of Peston embarked on his career-making hatchet job on the bank.

The original Virgin Money offer was to buy Northern Rock’s entire operation, pay back £11bn of the £25bn Bank of England emergency loan that Northern Rock was forced to take immediately with the balance to be paid within 3 years.  The UK Treasury hadn’t spent any money nationalising the bank so the taxpayer’s exposure to Northern Rock would have been repaid within 3 years, Northern Rock’s operations would have remained intact, Northern Rock’s investors would have had a chance of getting a return on some of their investments and the ripples that Northern Rock’s collapse and nationalisation sent through the banking sector could have been avoided.  The UK Treasury instead chose to nationalist the bank, costing the taxpayer billions and contributing to the virtual collapse of the UK banking sector.

Whilst I hold Saint Robert of Peston significantly responsible for the collapse of Northern Rock, some of the blame has to fall on the EU because Saint Robert wouldn’t have found out about the credit line if it wasn’t for the EU Monetary Abuse Directive (MAD) that required the Bank of England to publicise the fact that it had been offered.  The previous governor of the Bank of England, Eddie George, said at the time that if he was still governor when the EU MAD was brought in he would have resigned over it.

Ed the Millibeast has had a pop at George Osbourne about him selling the Northern Rock off at such a loss for no apparent reason but it turns out that he had no choice because the last Chancellor, Alistair McDarling, had to agree to sell off Northern Rock within 3 years to get permission from the EU to nationalise the bank.  And which government department did Ed the Millibeast work in at the time of the Northern Rock nationalisation?  Erm, that would be the Treasury – he was a minister in the Treasury when his boss agreed to the 3 year restriction on the nationalisation!

Richard Branson’s purchase of Northern Rock is only for the “good bank” – the “bad bank” was merged with Bradford & Bingley which was also nationalised.  The “bad bank” is still slowly paying back the billions of pounds it owes the taxpayer.  What happened to the Bank of England loan is anyone’s guess.  Northern Rock has cost the taxpayer a lot of money – a lot more than necessary so far and the Virgin Money takeover will cost hundreds of millions more.  The mismanagement of the economy and the banking crisis is nothing short of criminal.

The whole Northern Rock saga started with gross incompetence and unnecessary wasting of taxpayers money and it’s perhaps a fitting end for the Northern Rock brand that it will finish with a loss-making sale to the bank that tried to buy it before it cost the taxpayer billions of pounds and precipitated the near collapse of the banking sector and at a snip of the price offered in 2007.

Come the revolution there will be a special part of the wall marked out for Saint Robert of Peston, Alistair Darling and all the other criminally incompetent and irresponsible idiots that have cost us so dearly.

Some things never change. Like Labour.

The theory is that by ringfencing high street banking operations, the investment banking arms of those banks can’t gamble with (and lose) the money that ordinary customers put in their accounts and if the investment banking arm collapses, the high street bank can continue operating as normal.

Nice theory but completely and utterly bonkers.

It costs money to administer a bank account, to run a branch, pay for cashpoints, process cheque and card payments, etc.  Unless you’ve chosen a bank account with extra benefits that attracts a monthly fee, you don’t pay for any of that yourself.  I have a bank account that has a monthly fee attached to it and the value of the benefits I use (which is probably 1/10th of what’s available) far exceeds the fee I pay – it’s subsidised by the bank.  So where does the money come from to subsidise the cost of administering your bank account?

It costs money to pay out interest on your savings.  Even if your bank is only paying a nominal 0.1% interest, it’s still costing them money.  So where does the money come from to pay interest on your savings?

The money comes from the profits the banks make on investments and which bit of a bank makes the investments?  There’s a clue in the name.  Sure, the high street part of the banks make money from interest on loans and mortgages that it gives out but it just doesn’t compare to the billions of pounds the investment bankers are playing with daily.

When Northern Rock collapsed it was because of a run on the bank caused by the Bank of England being forced by the EU Monetary Abuse Directive (aptly shortened to “MAD”) to disclose that it had offered (not given, just offered) an emergency credit facility to the bank.  Robert Peston, who at the time hadn’t been elevated to sainthood by the BBC and was only useful for talking about exchange rates and zero balance credit card deals, got wind of this, made it seem like Northern Rock was about to collapse (it wasn’t) and caused mass hysteria amongst the general public.  The rest is history, I’m sure we all remember the news footage of Northern Rock customers queueing up to withdraw their money and deprive the bank of all its capital.

Had Northern Rock not over-extended itself with high risk mortgages with low deposits, they probably would have survived because they’d have had cash from mortgage deposits and the collateral for inter-bank loans but as it happens, at the time of the run they were basically a poorly-funded, badly-secured high street banking operation.  This is what will happen to all our banks when their investment arms are separated from their high street operations, particularly if their mortgage lending operations are lumped in with their investment banking operations.

Separating retail banking operations from investment banking will cost the banks billions.  You might say “good, they deserve it”, especially if you read the Guardian or listen to the BBC but those costs will be passed on to consumers.  Free bank accounts will be a thing of the past, interest rates on loans (and mortgages if they’re kept as part of retail banking) will go up, interest payments on saving will go down, branches will close, free transactions will end.  Look at the table of charges for a business bank account – that’s what we can expect when the retail banking operations of our banks are starved of the cash their investment banking arms feed into them.

Back to the official reason the British government are giving for the separation.  The theory is that it  will protect the retail banking operations so taxpayers won’t have to bail out banks and customers’ money isn’t being gambled with and lost.  The implication there is that the investment arm of a bank will be allowed to fail if it gets into trouble.  If you listen to the Guardian or the BBC (or most politicians in fact) then that’s no great loss but we’re talking about the companies that are investing your pension fund and provide hundreds of thousands of jobs.  The city accounts for about 10% of the entire UK economy, can we really afford for investors to lose confidence in our financial sector?

Allowing the investment banking arm of a major bank to fail would devastate the city and lead to the collapse of our entire financial sector.  Hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost, billions would be wiped off the value of pensions and investments.  The knock on effects would be catastrophic – the big companies like supermarkets and manufacturing companies that invest money in and through banks to boost their balance books and pension funds will lose billions and their share prices will fall through the floor resulting in more job cuts and companies failing.  There won’t be enough money in the economy to financially support all those people who’ve lost their jobs so the Bank of England will have to print more which will lead to a further devaluation of the pound which means it’ll cost even more to import the things we need (we are far from being self-sufficient).

The pound is worth less than an Albanian Lek and you’ve lost your job and home but at least those bankers got what was coming to them, eh?

According to the British government, £45bn per year is “lost” through unpaid taxes although lost is the wrong word because that would imply that they had the £45bn in the first place which they haven’t.  And where does this £45bn figure come from?  If they know who isn’t paying their tax, why aren’t they making them pay it?

The British government has entirely the wrong idea when it comes to tax.  Their approach is “we need more money, what taxes can we increase?” when the best way to increase tax revenue is to lower taxes.

Not convinced?  It’s quite simple.  People pay taxes on the money they earn and the money they spend.  To earn money you need a job.  There aren’t enough jobs to go round so you need to create new jobs.  To create jobs you need someone to sell your products to.  For people to buy your products they need money.  The more money the British government takes off people in taxes, the less money they have to spend on stuff so the less the companies produce and the less staff they require.  It’s not rocket science, it’s just a variation on the “give a man a fish and he will feed himself, teach a man to fish and he will feed his whole village” line that charities use in their begging letters.

But it doesn’t stop there.  When Labour introduced the socialist wet dream otherwise known as tax credits, they abolished tax allowances.  Some people ended up better off, some people ended up worse off, most people were no better or worse off than before.  The side effect of removing tax allowances and replacing them with direct payments as full or partial refunds of tax paid is that two systems are now required where only one was before.  Instead of paying one lot of people to use one set of computer systems to collect tax off people, our taxes now pay for two lots of people and two sets of computer systems – one to collect the tax and the other to give it back.  All it did was create a load of unsustainable jobs, further complicate the tax system and increase the number of people who rely on the benevolence of the state (yes, I’m being sarcastic) to pay the bills.  There is no sense in taxing somebody and then giving them some or all of their taxes back – don’t collect the tax in the first place and it works out much cheaper!

But that’s still not the end of it!  When people have more disposable income they spend more on frivolous items which attract VAT.  The more people spend on commodities, the more tax they pay.  The more shiny things people buy, the more tied into the work ethic they get and the less likely they are to give up working and sponge off the state.

Reducing taxes will help shrink the size of the state as less people are required to enforce the extortion of half of every worker’s income.  The people who are no longer required to work for the state can fill the private sector jobs that will be created by the increase in disposable income.  People will have more money in their pockets to spend on “stuff” which will generate the income the slimmed-down state needs to provide essential services.  And the best thing about it is that it’s a self-perpetuating system because the lower taxes are, the more money people have, the less they need someone else to pay for things for them which means taxes can be lowered and people will have more money and the less they need someone else to pay for things for them which means … you get the picture, right?  So why don’t our politicians?

Well, isn’t little Georgy Porgey Osborne a clever boy?  He’s decided to means test for family allowance to stop the well off from getting money they don’t need but being the clever boy that he is, he’s dropped a bit of a bollock.

The means testing is being done by taking family allowance off anyone who is in the higher tax bracket.  This means that if either parent earns over £44k they won’t qualify for family allowance.  And rightly so, there’s no need for someone earning £44k to have family allowance.

But here’s the clever bit: if two parents earn £43,999.99 each – a combined household income of £87,999.98 – they will still be paid family allowance.

Genius.

The three of them – Darling, Osbourne and Cable – were utterly unconvincing and short on ideas.  Darling and Osbourne were more interested in getting their catchphrases out whilst ignoring Cable who actually came across as the most credible person there which isn’t saying much.

On one occasion, a Scottish doctor in the audience asked if they would guarantee no cuts would be made at his hospital.  Not one of them asked him where his hospital was but answered his question anyway – if his hospital is in Scotland, they have no control of the health budget covering his hospital.  They also talked about social care but failed to mention England once throughout the entire programme.

The Channel 4 poll finished as close as their policies – Darling 33%, Osbourne 33%, Cable 34%.  The Tory Twitterati and bloggers and the Daily Express claimed victory for Osbourne, Liebour and the Mirror claimed victory for Darling and the Guardian (there isn’t a Twitterati or bloggerati for the Limp Dims) claimed victory for Cable.

If the programme proves anything, it’s that the election won’t be won on the strength of economic policy and certainly not by the Chancellors.

Gordon Brown has plumbed new depths of diplomatic incompetence and financial illiteracy with the announcement that the UK will contribute £1.5bn to a £6.5bn fund for “poor” nations to combat climate change.

The pre-budget report this week set out the bleak outlook for the economy – taxes are going up, £30bn of extra pre-election vote buying, tens of billions of pounds of extra borrowing – but the chosen one has found a spare £1.5bn down the back of the sofa in Number 10 to spend on adverts showing drowning puppies and polar bears in the Seychelles.

But setting aside the idiocy of borrowing £1.5bn to give away to some corrupt, third world tinpot dictatorship to spend on guns and gold plated Mercedes, why are we paying one fifth of the amount being pledged in the name of the European Empire when there are another 26 member states who are supposedly out of recession?  No wonder the economy is in such a state when the person holding the purse strings thinks 6½ divided by 27 is 1½.

The British Bankers Association says that the transaction tax is a bad idea.  A spokesman for the communist charity, Oxfam, which receives millions of pounds of funding from the British government, says it’s “a major step towards clearing up the mess caused by their greed”.

Communism has been tried in many forms over the years and has resulted in economic devastation, starvation, war and millions of deaths.  Communism is evil and El Gordo, Obama the Marxist and the EUSSR must not be allowed to inflict it on us.

The chief exec of BA says that revenue was down 13.7% in the last 6 months and next year it is likely to be £1bn less than last year.  On top of this, they are facing more strikes from staff unhappy at attempts to cut costs and introduce efficiencies that might stop BA going bankrupt.  It’s like British Leyland all over again.

Still, there’s some hope of assistance from the British government – a new tax came into force on the 1st of November which will add an extra £300 onto the cost of flights for a family of four to holiday to the Carribean.  The extra cost will mean less people can afford to fly and … oh dear, it’s not looking hopeful for BA is it?

Today’s budget was a proper socialist budget – people who work for a living are going to see their tax burden go through the roof while unemployed people and the dregs of society will be getting money thrown at them.

There’s the obligatory “green” taxation of course – nearly £2.5bn on green measures and a target to reduce carbon emissions by 34% by the year 2020 at an unspecified multi-billion pound cost to businesses and taxpayers.  Like Canute commanding the tide to turn back, El Gordo and Darling will pass new laws to command billions of years of climate change to stop what it’s doing and spend billions enforcing their new laws.  The cost will no doubt be recovered by taking dragging Gaia through the courts for not reducing her carbon footprint to an acceptable level.

High earners will have to hand over half their earnings over £150k in state theft income tax to try and raise a bit of cash to pay for the glorious revolution.  In reality it’ll drive high earners abroad or into the hands of tax avoidance specialists who’ll help them legally launder their wealth through trust funds and limited companies.  Co-incidentally, a cabinet member’s salary is £141k, just shy of the new tax bracket so the only minister who might make be making the sacrifice is Comrade Brown who’s on £194k per year.
Statutory redundancy pay is being increased by £30 per week, under-25′s who’ve been out of work for over a year will be offered a job or training with extra benefits on top of the benefits they get for unemployment and training and an extra 54,000 sixth form places will be created to keep kids in education a bit longer costing the taxpayer money instead of working and paying taxes.

A £2k scrappage allowance is being introduced for people buying new cars and part exchanging a 10 year old car.  The taxpayer will contribute half of the £2k allowance and the car industry – which is asking for bailouts itself and in the case of Jaguar/Land Rover has already been given a few billion by the European Empire – will have to fund the other half.  This will, apparently, stimulate the motor industry.

There’s a 2p increase on petrol as usual, to start in September.  That’s 2p on fuel duty, plus 15% VAT plus the increased price of pretty much everything that you buy in the shops because of the increased cost of transport.

But it’s ok because Darling – whose qualification for running the economy is that he’s a marxist solicitor – says that after a 3.5% shrinkage of the economy this year, the economy will grow by 1.25% next year and 3.5% the year after.  And let’s face it, he’s done such a stirling job this last year and marxists have done a fantastic job of running ruining economies over the years that we could never doubt Comrade Darling’s wise words.

Technorati Tags: Budget, Alistair Darling, Gordon Brown

It was surprising that the Treasury didn’t bail out the Dunfermline because most of its branches are in El Gordo’s constituency.  Not so surprising is the fact that the Treasury is going to take on £1bn of toxic assets, allowing the new owner to take on the profitable part of the business.

The Chairman of the Dunfermline is having a whinge about the Treasury not doing more to keep the building society independent.  The SNP, desperate not to lose another one of “oor banks” (yes I know it’s a building society, not a bank), has offered financial aid to the Dunfermline but the Treasury has apparently blocked the offer.

Technorati Tags: Dunfermline, Peston

The irony is, the Conservatives today announced that they will abolish all the regional quangos if they win the next election, including the regional development agencies.

Today I wrote the following to the four Conservative MP’s in Shropshire (there’s no point writing to the Labour MP, David Wright, any more as he rarely replies and when he does it’s usually spin or he answers a question you haven’t asked) as follows:

When I got home tonight and picked up the paper, Daniel Kawczynski was on the front page again, this time in a similar vein to Mark Pritchard last night. How am I supposed to keep up!

The reference to “Wrekin” is Wrekin Construction, a local construction company that has just gone bust with the loss of around 1,100 direct and indirect jobs. Despite having £40m of orders on its books for this year and enough money coming to them to pay their £2.8m overdraft off by the end of the week, the Royal Bank of Scotland refused to give them a few days extra to pay it. The Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform – an English department of the British government – will now have to pay £5m in redundancy payments because the company is in administration. Yet in the same week, RBS pledges to spend £1.7bn on loaning new mortgages in Scotland – as is usually the case: Scottish first, British second.

RBS is, I imagine, keen to reassert its Scottish credentials now that the “English” government owns most of it.  How ironic that the Royal Bank of Scotland is using money from the Bank of England to finance mortgage spending exclusively in Scotland.  How wrong that the Royal Bank of Scotland is using money from the Bank of England to finance mortgage spending exclusively in Scotland.

I wonder whether the Scottish Chancellor had a hand in the decision.  Let’s find out shall we?

Well thank fuck for that because printing a few billion extra pound notes just isn’t an option.  Darling has already handed over £50bn to the biggest banks and £200bn to the Bank of England for short-term loans – we didn’t have enough money to pay for the bail-out in the first place, we certainly can’t afford another one.

El Gordo is quite happy with the outcome of the bail-out even though the banks still won’t lend money and the subsequent devaluation of the pound is causing a double blow to the taxpayer.  In fact, he’s so confident that everything is going swimmingly, he’s planning a Keynesian-style public works programme that he claims will create 100,000 jobs including 20,000 in the construction industry repairing schools.  He doesn’t give any indication as to where he’s going to find the money to pay for the work that’s going to support 100,000 people but then he really hasn’t got a fucking clue what he’s doing anyway so I wouldn’t expect him to have any idea where the money was coming from.

The BBC reporter, Robert Peston, has made another one of his groundbreaking predictions.  He reckons that the British government are going to start guaranteeing bank loans in an attempt to get the banks lending again.

How inciteful of Lord Peston of Threadneedle Street.  Was his prediction based on his in-depth knowledge of business and finance?  Was he tipped off by a Treasury insider?  Or could it be the fact that Alistair Darling announced that the Treasury would be setting up a loan guarantee company with £250bn of taxpayers money back in October?  Still, I’m sure the BBC will make the most of Peston’s “prediction” when the loan company is set up (if it isn’t already).

We’ve seen what happens when a nominally socialist government tries to run a capitalist economy, now we’re going to find out what happens when a nominally socialist government tries to run a Keynesian public works programme.  God help us.

Technorati Tags: Alistair Darling, No Mandate Brown, Reobert Peston, Economy, Keynesianism

RBS had another bumper rights issue as part of the deal with the devil Alistair Darling to get their hands on a few billion more of our hard earned cash. The idea was that they’d get loads of money of the taxpayer and then issue a few million shares to dilute the taxpayers stake in the bank to make sure the UK Treasury was a minority shareholder. Which would have been quite clever if it wasn’t for the fact that the bank is insolvent and the shares quite obviously so high risk as to be worthless as evidenced by the fact that hardly anybody has bought any of the new shares.

The upshot of this is that the UK Treasury now owns 57.9% of “oor bank”. That should please Alex Salmond.

Technorati Tags: RBS, Economy

All of which is good news to those people struggling to pay the stupid mortagages on their stupid houses that they can’t afford to pay.  Assuming, that is, that the banks pass on the full 1.5% rate cut and soon.

Dropping the interest rates is a proven way of giving the economy a nudge when it’s looking a bit poorly and if and when the rate is passed on it might just ease the decline into recession slightly.  It won’t stop it happening, it’s too late for that, but it will probably help.

Of course, it won’t do anything unless the banks pass the rate cut on to us plebs which raises an interesting question – will the Treasury use the golden shares it’s brought in the main high street banks to force a cut in the interest rates if they are unwilling to take the hit on their earnings?

Technorati Tags: Bank of England, Economy, Recession, Interest Rates

All of which means we need to tighten our belts and when I say “we” I’m including the state.  We can’t afford to throw billions at banks but Alistair Darling has done it anyway.  But it might not end there – El Gordo told the world that they’d look at letting banks that have had taxpayers money paying dividends after 12 months after investors told him what a crap investment a bank that can’t pay dividends for a couple of years is.  But then Federal Europe poked its nose in and said that the banks can’t pay a dividend for 5 years otherwise they’ll class the money the banks have had as state aid and then the British government will get fined and the banks will have to pay the money back as a penalty for having been given the money before Federal Europe decided to move the goalposts.

But it’s not just bailing out banks by the Treasury that has got to stop – local authorities spend billions collectively and they need to do their bit to save cash as well.  There was a story in the Shropshire Star last night, next to the story about Daisy the cow going missing (don’t worry, she was later found in farmer Jones’ field), was a piece on Telford & Wrekin council’s accountants warning the council that they’re facing a funding gap fo a couple of big projects.

Telford & Wrekin have committed to part funding a rail freight terminal to the tune of £3.6m.  They intend to fund this by selling council-owned property.  It’s a lot of money but they can comfortably dispose of £3.6m worth of property, even though the property market has fallen on its arse.  But they’re also ploughing ahead with a massive “regeneration” programme from the Borough Towns Initiative which requires an investment from the council of £21.4m to be funded almost entirely from selling property and topped up with a load for about one and a half million.

You can see where this going can’t you?  Shame the council doesn’t seem to be able to.

There are several large house building projects under way in Telford and they’ve all scaled back building to almost nothing.  The council owns lots of land and property that’s ripe for housing or commercial development but the housing market has dried up and companies aren’t splashing out on new buildings because nobody has got any money.  To raise that kind of money through property and land disposal is going to mean selling a damn sight more than they would have done as little as three months ago and in doing so they will have sold assets at a cut down price that will, in all likelihood, return to their previous value in a year or two.

I’m all for regeneration and god knows some parts of Telford desperately need it.  I expect the promised regeneration of the estate I live on is all hanging on this Borough Towns Initiative money but we simply can’t afford it.  The previous Labour administration pioneered the scorched earth policy they seem to have adopted nationally increasing spending, cutting council tax and spending a third of the council’s cash reserves once they realised they were going to lose the next election.  There is very little money in the kitty, the economy is on its knees, the cost of borrowing is high and committing the council taxpayers of a borough with a mere 160,000 residents to £25m of spending on the day the governer of the Bank of England admits we’ve entered into recession is bordering on criminally irresponsible.

Technorati Tags: Recession, Economy, Telford, Bank of England

First of all there’s this one in the Shropshire Star, in response to the council announcing that they’re going to put in average speed cameras on one of the safest roads, relatively speaking, in the borough:

Then there was this deliberately provocative letter in the Scotsman, in response to all the whinging letters about “Scottish banks being given to the English”:

Finally, there’s this cheeky one in the First Post in response to some muppet who thinks the deputy editor of Prospect Magazine will be responsible for the Scots leaving the union because he upset them with an article about RBS:

They should get a few people worked up.

Technorati Tags: Letters, Scotland, England, SNP, Shropshire Star, Scotsman, First Post, Speed Cameras, HBOS, RBS

Landisbanki was nationalised by the Icelandic government last week and its UK arm closed down leaving customers here unable to access their money.

The Icelandic foreign minister has responded to the economic problems there – national debt at 500% of GDP and their top 3 banks nationalised – by saying that their long term goal is now to join the EU and the Euro and get bailed out by the European Central Bank.  No, that’s not a joke.  He said:

In the short term, out defence is co-operation with the International Monetary Fund and in the long term EU membership, adoption of the euro and backup from the European Central Bank.

So what he is, in fact, saying is that the English taxpayer will be bailing out one of their now state-owned banks and then bailing out the entire country if it joins the EU and becomes a net recipient of EU funding.  Not what I would call a good deal for the English taxpayer and if they do go down the route of joining the EU, not a good deal for Icelanders.  Their economy is up shit creek now but if they join the EU their paddles will be confiscated and given to a French farmer to use as kindling to set fire to his fields.  The Icelandic economy was, until recently, reliant on fishing, banking and services.  Banking is a no-brainer from now on, services are looking a bit dubious but fishing will at least let them feed themselves.  But not with an EU fishing quota though – they’ll end up throwing more back in the sea than they take home and that’s assuming the Spanish don’t get the quotas first like they did in our waters.

I wonder if the Icelanders have an equivalent phrase for “out of the frying pan and into the fire”.

Technorati Tags: Iceland, Landsbanki, IMF, Federal Europe

But now the arse has fallen out of the economy and he’s spent a decade’s worth of slush fund on bailing out banks, he suddenly wants fuel prices down.  The one-eyed wonder of wankistan decided to take five minutes off from rearranging deckchairs to feign concern for us peasants who are spending an increasing percentage of our income on electricity, gas and petrol.  Hypocritical twat.

The price of oil is down to almost $80 a barrel but the price of petrol has only crept down ever so slowly and nowhere near in line with the drop in the price of oil.  Of course, El Gordo wouldn’t think about dropping tax on fuel.  Something like 80% of the price of petrol and diesel is tax but why would he care?  He gets a chauffeur-driven limo paid for by the taxpayer.  Thanks to Federal Europe we’re getting charged VAT on gas and electric but why would he care?  He gets his gas and electric paid for by the taxpayer.

Reducing the cost of fuel will give the economy a bit of a kick but it won’t work by itself.  Throwing taxpayers money at banks, paid for by increasing taxes, isn’t going to fix anything.  What is needed is a wholesale cull of taxes and government.  So much money is wasted shuffling round bits of paper and moving money from one place to another when what is needed is to get back to basics.  Government has become like a cancer, multiplying at a terminal rate and spreading throughout society.  Less government, less waste, less legislation, less tax.  That’s a message that will stimulate the economy but until this bunch of faux-Marxists are dragged kicking and screaming out of Westminster, it’s never going to happen.

Come the revolution …

Technorati Tags: Petrol, Fuel Prices, Oil, Gordon Brown, Economy