Grey power rules, OK?

I am convinced that we need a Grey Power movement.

 

After all, the over-50s own the lion’s share of the national wealth – houses, savings, investments.

 

They are  the sector most likely to turn out to vote.

 

They are also most likely not only to be ignored by the political parties but also to be exploited by the government and generally put-upon. The media has been implying that we are  geriatric parasites who take up far too much of the nation’s resources for no return. We have a very high proportion of pensioners still in work (a bit contradictory, that) who keep younger people out of jobs.

 

We clutter-up the  aisles in the supermarkets. We block the pavements with our Zimmer frames, and yet young people shamelessly park in the disabled bays.

 

I recently witnessed a disabled old guy being told by a young couple to get his mobility scooter off the pavement. I didn’t quite catch his reply but I think it ended in ‘off’.

 

We have been under attack since Gordon Brown abolished tax relief on pension fund dividends in 1997, making shares less attractive, forcing down prices and costing retirement schemes hundreds of billions of pounds. My small share-holding is still only worth a third of its 1997  value.

 

At the 2009 Conservative conference , before the General Election, George Osborne told delegates: “Gordon Brown’s disastrous tax raid on pensions heralded the start of the age of irresponsibility. So we will reverse the effects of Gordon Brown’s pensions tax raid and get our country saving again. That saving will fund investment – investment in real business’.

 

We are still waiting.

 

Brown’s assault on pensions is worth about £8 billion a year to the Treasury, Since taking over, Osborne has further tightened the screw, cutting the annual amount that can be put tax free into a pension from £255,000 to £50,000  to £40,000. He has also reduced the lifetime allowance, i.e. the total amount that can be compiled tax free, from £1.5 million to £1.25 million.

 

Our pension schemes were once the envy of the world, financially sound and fully funded. Now scarcely a week goes by without a ruckus over a firm getting out of final salary schemes because of big deficits in the pension pot.

 

Despite our age we get harassed unnecessarily at airport security; taking of your shoes and belt when you are a bit unsteady on your pins or suffering from spinal stenosis or arthritis is no fun, unless you are a security jobsworth. The US has abolished this humiliating ritual for over-75s.

 

Stand by for further attacks on elderly benefits, such as cold weather fuel allowances, social care, and bus passes. And the Government  has not given up on its  plans to force you out  of your home if you have what they consider to be one bed-room too many.

 

In the US, ‘grey-power’ is a formidable political force.

 

We should do likewise.

Immigration: locking the stable door?

Enoch was right.

 

All those years ago he predicted that by the turn of the century immigrants in the UK would make up 8% of the population. Forty years on, it’s 8.5%.

 

And at this time there is a rough estimate that there are 600,000+ illegals, but the figure could be 800,000. These are people who have crept through the rat-holes left by our notoriously ineffective ‘Border Agency’, those who have overstayed their visas, and failed asylum seekers. Try finding and deporting that lot! Last year, the BA managed to get rid of 15,000. At that rate it will take 40 years to clear the backlog.

 

Immigration, which has been a political taboo since Enoch’s time, is back on the agenda with a new Immigration Bill.

 

It  will do away with the never-ending scandal of years-long appeals funded by the taxpayer ending in a ludicrous judgment in favour of the immigrant because he has a cat or some other totally spurious claim to ‘privacy and a family life’. There are 70,000 appeals a year. The only winners are criminals and lawyers.

 

Grounds for appeal will be reduced from 17 to 4; most of the ECHR loopholes will be blocked.

 

There will also be a power to deport criminals first and deal with their appeals later.

 

There will be a crack-down on abuse of public services (some action has already been taken under existing legislation to tighten benefit controls over immigrants who have no right to work in the UK). It is estimated that illegals cost the NHS £330 million  a year. In future, immigrants with temporary visas will have to make a contribution.

 

The regulations about EU immigrants will be toughened so that the right to reside as a job seeker will cease after 6 months if still unemployed  with no realistic prospect otherwise. That should take care of Romanian gypsies.

 

It will be easier to identify illegals through checks at the point of embarkation, fingerprinting and cracking down on phony marriages. And there will be new powers to make it more difficult for illegals to live here, by bank account checks, making landlords check the immigration status of their tenants, and revoking driving licences on visa expiry.

 

Too little, too late, perhaps, but it’s a start.

 

There should be no problems with the passage of the Bill; the Labour Party supports it. It even wants to strengthen it.

 

I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth………………..

Obama's debt: the Fat Lady don't sing yet..........

A bunch of selfish extremists aka the Tea Party shut down the US because they oppose Obamacare, which just happens to be the law of the land. Right?

 

Wrong.

 

Acting alone, the Tea Party does not have the clout; it does not hold the balance of power. The shut-down was fairly and squarely the action of the Republican Party as a whole, and we shall see in the Mid-terms the extent to which the American people liked it. Latest polls show a big loss for the GOP. But another suggests that large numbers of voters want most members of Congress of both parties thrown out in the next electoral cycle.

 

A plague on both your houses, then.

 

The Government played it nasty, and the media played it for sensation; the shut-down was targeted at the most high-profile, sensitive and newsworthy aspects. National Parks were closed, crippling the small businesses that depend on visitors. War memorials were fenced off, or they were until the veterans simply dismantled them.  The video camera at the panda enclosure in the zoo was switched off. The White House was closed to visitors.

 

None of these would have saved real money. They were aimed at targeting beastly Republicans. They missed. The opprobrium fell on the Administration.

 

Every news-cast carried ‘heartbreak’ stories about the legless veteran who couldn’t get his pension; the cancer patient who couldn’t get treatment; the small girl ‘dying’ because her experimental medication had been stopped.  

 

The financial and economic impacts were minimal. In fact, share prices rose by 2%. As to the deficit, in 2009 it was 10% of GDP. It is now 4%, the largest drop in 40 years.

 

Notwithstanding the shut-down, 87% of the Federal Government was still working. And if push had come to shove, Treasury officials might have increased the debt ceiling regardless under the 14^th Amendment which says that the UDDS debt is not to be questioned.

 

So all that has been achieved is kicking a great big can down the road to February.

 

Then there is the ‘sequester’ (which means ‘confiscate’ not ‘cut’) that reduces the obscenely bloated defence budget by 10% and research and development by 5%.

 

At the end of the day it was a lose-lose situation, so who lost most?

 

It was Obama; of that there is no shadow of doubt.

 

Failing to attend the ASEAN conference in Bali was a catastrophic error. The message he would have sent back to Congress if he had attended would have been clear. The problem sits with Congress, not the White House. This would have shown Presidential dignity and aloofness at which Ike would have excelled. He might have taken a bit of soon-forgotten stick from the media, but he is not up for re-election, so what!

 

But of much greater resonance which will be felt far into the future is the damage to America’s standing in the world, its influence in the Far East, its containment of an over-mighty China, and its prospects for a satisfactory conclusion to the Trans Pacific Free Trade Agreement.

 

It left Xi Jinping to ooze his way around South East Asia, impressive in his aura of authority and doing deals all the way. Obama opened the door for China to greatly increase its standing and prestige at the expense of the US. America will come to rue the day.

 

The Constitution of the United States ,the democratic institutions, and  the two main political parties are the oldest in the world. They are showing their age. The Constitution is an 18^th Century construct that is designed to separate powers so that no part dominates, preventing  absolute monarchies and oligarchies which were the norm in Europe.

 

The system depends on compromise. The Democrats and the Republicans hold diametrically opposite views, so that compromise is essential if the system is to work.

 

The former stand for higher taxes, more borrowing, higher Government spending, and more business regulation. Red Ed would be quite at home.

 

The GOP stands for tax, borrowing and spending cuts, and less regulation.

 

Enter extremists like the Tea Party and the system begins to crumble. Holding the country to ransom in order to frustrate  the Obamacare law is the antithesis of democracy, sheer blackmail.

 

But they don’t care. They have no fear of the voters. Gerrymandering of electoral districts means that most politicians will keep the seat for life. Unless, that is, they get deselected, and such is their fear of the TP that the majority of Republicans dance to its tune in case it puts up opposing candidates for the ticket.  

 

The fat lady hasn’t warbled yet.

Lardbutts and the NHS...........

The medical chatterrati are a tad confused about fatties.

 

We have doctors saying that the current plague of obesity should not be regarded as a sickness but as an aberration. NICE is saying that doctors should not make a big issue out of it for fear of damaging the patient’s ‘self-esteem’ (if they had any, they wouldn’t be obese).

 

The Chief Medical Officer says that today’s generation will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. There is an opinion that goes further; that this will be the first generation to be outlived by its parents.

 

The real cause is a simple one - gluttony.

 

People get overweight because they eat too much.

 

If you stuff in more energy that the body uses, the body piles it on.

 

There is no such thing as ‘junk food’; there is only food. But the body needs more than burger and chips. If your diet is largely carbs you will continue to feel hungry because your body is looking for other stuff, such as fruit and veg. Another feed of revoltingly slimy, carb-rich KFC and on goes both the weight and the vicious circle.

 

We are told that the cost to the NHS is in the region of £500 million a year. Ambulances must be strengthened; stretchers and operating tables have to take a weight of 55 stone – yes, one-third of a ton. There was a recent case in which the Fire Brigade had to cut through two walls to extricate a monster who was 63 stone.

 

Never mind the nurses who have to lift and turn.

 

And it is common to see young people heading for a hip replacement in their early 30s.

 

Is anything to be done?

 

Probably not, in the short term.

 

The answer lies not in medicine but in social attitudes. Extreme obesity needs to be seen as socially unacceptable, much like smoking. Fatties should be given a diet sheet, not medication, as if gluttony can be countered with a pill. Parents of obese small children, a frequent sight, should come under the severe scrutiny of Social Services.

 

In the long term the problem will be solved by premature death.

 

 

 

Miliband vs. The Mail: what's the back-story?

Do you remember the disgusting reaction of the Left to Maggie Thatcher’s death? The vile t-shirts, the ’dance on her grave’ slogans? The celebrations by Trade Union fatcats?

 

And did we hear condemnations from  Miliband and the Labour glitterati? Denunciations from the BBC and the Guardian?

 

Not that I remember.

 

But we now have the spectacle of Miliband starting a PR war with the Daily Mail over a long piece about his old dad and – shock, horror – taking a pic of the old fellow’s grave in Highgate Cemetery, last resting place of his great hero Karl Marx.

 

I was sitting outside ‘The Royal George’ on Saturday afternoon, enjoying a pint and the autumn sun when someone gave me a copy of the Mail (I mention this important piece of information because I would not like people to think that I actually spent money on Dacre’s organ). I pounced on the large spread about Miliband Snr. hating Britain, hoping that there would be some revelations about how he converted Ed into a Commie who would keep the Red Flag flying over the whole nation.

 

And what did I find? That as a 17-year old refugee, Miliband Snr. wrote in his diary that he found his adopted country ‘nationalistic’. Which, of course, is correct. We were solemnly informed that he was a North London  (code for Jewish) Marxist academic, as if we didn’t already know. That was it; a total waste of space.

 

So why Ed has embarked on this public row over a pathetic piece of non-journalism needs some understanding. He may feel that staying on the front page is always a good thing, that the only bad publicity is no publicity, or that this is an opportunity to gather sympathy and public support as a ‘victim’ of the Tory press.

 

In my almost-daily dealings with the media, I had a golden rule of never replying to knocking copy. Unless, of course, I wanted it to run and run.

 

The effect of Ed’s war on the Mail is that millions of people will have read the story who otherwise would not have done so. If that was his intention, he succeeded.

 

And we must not forget that it was Ed himself who put his late dad in the public domain by all that guff about his father being an ‘inspiration’ to him. The public might be interested to know  how  the Leader of the Labour Party was ‘inspired’ by an unreconstructed Marxist.