Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Ed's tax policy: soak the rich!

Bash the banks. Hammer the rich. Squeeze the wealthy until the pips squeak. That seems to pretty well sum-up Ed’s entire fiscal policy if his recent effusions are anything to go by.
 
By convenient timing the Sunday Times has just published its ‘Rich List’. What becomes clear immediately is that the people at the top of the pile are industrialists, manufacturers, retailers and other wealth-and-job creators. The idle rich are nowhere to be seen.
 
So who will Ed target? The deserving or the undeserving, the workers or the drones? Or all of the above?
 
There are some fabulously wealthy people around who neither make nor create.
 
There’s the young chap who plays the fastest computer game aka Formula 1 motor racing. He’s worth a cool £88 million. But he’s a tax exile in Monaco, so you can’t catch him, Ed.
 
Then there’s the footballers earning between £150,000 and £300,000 a week to kick a plastic ball around a field for 90 minutes a week. Top of this league is Wayne Rooney, worth £86 million, although to be fair, his missus chipped in £14 million.
 
A guy who is British when winning and Scottish when losing has amassed £48 million from hitting a little white ball over a net, but Ms Sturgeon will take his tax donation. And there’s the Irishman who has £38 million in the piggy bank from hitting a smaller white ball around a field full of holes. Ed won’t get any of his wedge either because he is domiciled in the USA.
 
Top of the Premier League is Becks. He trousered £30 million last year to add to his £240 million pile.
 
So are you going after Rooney, Ed, or does he live in a Labour marginal?

Friday, April 24, 2015

As in Britain, so in America......


A description of political life in the UK could equally be applied to the USA. There is growing resentment, discontent and alienation toward politics and politicians of any label.
 
One commentator responding to why so many people don't vote here remarked that such voters see no reason to elect individuals who seemingly have no interests in constituent concerns. That sums it up pretty well. National, state and even local politics have taken on a life of their own that is completely independent of democratic fundamentals.
 
Politicians are playing the system for all its worth and to their own personal ends. They cater almost exclusively to the wealthy classes who in turn are experiencing manifold increases in their collective wealth while middle and lower class incomes have actually declined in terms of purchasing power.
 
Income distribution is becoming a key campaign issue. True, the issue is largely given lip service, but it does underscore a disturbing public concern. A key aspect of responding to this trend is that one is quickly labeled a socialist if income inequity is too vigorously attacked. In this manner, vested interests are able to keep critics at bay.
 
And those critics who carry on anyway probably are socialists or at least quite far to the left. Een in discussions with lower income people, there is a strong tendency to condemn socialism and by association any talk of income redistribution. Meantime, the rich keep getting richer to the point where our income demographic looks alarmingly third worldly; the rich and the poor.
 
It has often been wisely said that the real strength of the USA lies in the middle class. Representing the majority in classic bell curve fashion, the middle class became the flywheel of American society and because of its strength in numbers, could easily overwhelm the extreme right and left. Simultaneously, the very few percent of people who were extremely rich or poor could be absorbed through welfare on the one hand and through respect on the other. Then two things happened.
 
The few percent who were poor expanded exponentially and the few percent who were rich contracted in the same manner. We are looking at nearly a third of our population living below the poverty line and welfare ranks and numbers of people on disability have mushroomed. We have, over the past two or three decades, created a dependent class born into and entirely comfortable with the dole.
 
The super rich number less than one percent of the population. These are people who literally have money to burn and by most standards are motivated by sheer greed and compulsive accumulation of wealth. They are richer than the often cited captains of industry who are credited with job creation income generation among the working classes.
 
The super rich are capable of and actually do finance political campaigns to the tune of billions of dollars and are highly influential among lawmakers. Not surprisingly, the majority of our elected officials cater to the super rich and in turn are rewarded in some manner or other. This may be through campaign contributions, retirement work, gifts or simply recognition.
 
Far too many Americans are frustrated and upset with contemporary American life and at the same time feel both helpless and clueless to do anything about it. We are teetering on the balance between status quo and public reaction and the powers that be are unable to and not interested in legislating reform or changing their own political behavior.
 
Complicating this situation is the association of poverty with minorities. Further complicating matters is the recent increase in attention given to civil strife that is often in the form of white police officers shooting and sometimes killing black suspects.
 
Race relations in the USA are worse now than they have been in the past few decades. After making substantial progress in civil rights matters, the antagonisms between white and black, haves and have nots, is increasing.
 
 
Some blame the President for this partly because of his willingness to expand welfare and disability rolls and establishing a social group characterized as having entitlements. In the process, he has also expanded the number of loyal followers which in turn aids the democratic party in prolonging its power base.
 

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

This mad, mad election.........

This election is the politics of the booby-hatch.
 
The campaign is being dominated by the odious Sturgeon who is a Doppler of Rab C Nesbitt’s missus and not even a candidate, but claims that Wee Eck will dance to her tune in Westminster closely followed by Miliband. She threatens to cancel HSR2 which goes nowhere near Scotland. She says she will paralyse the defence budget if she doesn’t get her way on abandoning trident, for which she will have no support from the main parties. Having made a mess of the NHS in Scotland she now proposes to do the same in England, although this is no business of the SNP. Higher taxes, more welfare give-aways; And on and on!
 
The major parties offer a fresh bribe each day. They are now cross-dressing with Dave chanting the Socialist mantra of welfare from the cradle to the grave, and Ed calling on assistance from old Auntie Prudence.
 
Disraeli said of Robert Peel when as a Tory he adopted Whig policy on the  Corn Laws
 
‘The Right Honourable Gentleman caught the Whigs bathing and walked away with their clothes. He has left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal position, and he is himself a strict conservative of their garments’.
 
How true of both  major party leaders today.
 
At a time when the world is more dangerous than at any time since WW2, there has been not the slightest mention of defence or foreign affairs, so we can be pretty certain that both major parties intend to cut the military budget below the 2% of GDP that just a short time ago Cameron was exhorting the other members of NATO to spend.
 
Right now they are wringing their hands over what to do about thousands of boat people arriving in Italy from Africa – or, rather, not arriving. Common-sense says that there need to be long-range naval patrols to prevent the immigrant boats from leaving in the first place, or at least being turned back early. But this is not feasible when the Home Fleet of the RN probably consists of two Sea Cadets in a pedalloe.
 
Britain no longer ‘punches above its weight’ in foreign diplomacy. Its budget has been slashed so deeply that the F&CO is almost dysfunctional.
 
The response to both sets of issues should be to abolish the Department for International Development, reassign its functions to the F&CO as in the Thatcher days, redirect 50% of the foreign aid budget to defence and diplomacy.
 
Nothing will be done, of course.
 
Meanwhile, the nation faces the prospect of a Labour/ SNP coalition. This is so awful to contemplate that it may just frighten enough English voters to vote Tory in sufficient numbers to give Dave a working majority.
 
Or it may happen that Parliament will be so hung that it can do nothing. As a diseased gut may recover through a period of starvation, this might be all to the good!

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

'Right to buy; Dave's goody bag!

‘It was the day the Conservatives launched their manifesto and revealed a planned extension of the right to buy’, trumpeted the Telegraph. except nothing was ‘revealed’. The policy was publicized in January, and has been the subject of a tidy amount of media comment, especially from sniffy hacks in their suburban villas. ‘Extending the right to buy is economically illiterate and morally wrong’ wrote one double-barreled woman. The lower orders should know their place, eh?

Try telling that to any of the nearly 2 million tenants who benefitted from Maggie’s  opportunity to get out of council tenancy and into home ownership. Together with the preferential sale of shares in privatized industries to small buyers, it was a major shift towards the ]property owning democracy that was one of her core beliefs.

There were two main criticisms of the original scheme; that valuable assets were sold below their market value or replacement cost, and that the houses largely fell into the hands of buy-to-let operators and ended up being tenanted again but at higher rents.

There is some justification in the first. A major doctrinaire error was to forbid councils from reinvesting the money in new build. It could only be used to reduce the debt on the housing account.

There is little evidence to support the second point. It is likely (but unproven) that property companies bought up the appalling 1960’s tower blocks and renovated them to become desirable down-town accommodation. It is noticeable that horror stories about ‘slum towers, hotbeds of crime’ have not been seen for many a year.

What is conveniently forgotten is that there was a moratorium on selling within five years of purchase. There was no ‘fast buck’. In addition, the latest scheme requires a new rental to be built for every house sold.

The discounts took into account the length of time the tenant had occupied the house so as to recognise the rent paid over the years. The discounts were probably too generous and still are, at 60% for a house and 70% for a flat. Maggie though so, but lost the argument in Cabinet.

It is said that the sale of Housing Association properties will make the housing shortage more acute. But this is wrong. The housing shortage is not supply led; it is demand led.

And the main reason for this is immigration.

Between 1991 and 2011 the immigrant population of the UK rose by more than 4 million.

Be that as it may, Cameron is going to find privatizing 1.3 million Housing Association properties a rather more complex task than with Council houses.

Housing Associations are private, not-for-profit entities. Some careful legal drafting will be needed. Some key questions will need to be answered.

What will be the discount? Or the purchase price? Will the valuation yardstick be market value, building cost or asset value in the capital account?

Will the Associations be bound by the 2012 requirement – sell one, build one? If so, how is this to be funded when the discount will mean a shortfall between the purchase money and the new-build cost? What will be the cost to the tax-payer?

As to the justification for the policy, back in 1980, Michael Heseltine put it very well: "There is in this country a deeply ingrained desire for home ownership. The Government believe that this spirit should be fostered. It reflects the wishes of the people, ensures the wide spread of wealth through society, encourages a personal desire to improve and modernize one's own home, enables parents to accrue wealth for their children and stimulates the attitudes of independence and self-reliance that are the bedrock of a free society."[4]

Janet Daley in the Telegraph said of potential buyers  ‘It is fundamental to their understanding of themselves and their possibilities: they are no longer grateful supplicants who are being provided with a home by a charitable authority. They are fully-fledged, self-determining grown-ups who are willing to take responsibility for their own little piece of the community’.

The main difference between the Thatcher policy and Cameron’s is that hers was principled. His is opportunistic.

 

 

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

'Vote early, vote often!........'

One certainty in this most uncertain of General Elections is that there will be vote rigging on a large scale, especially in constituencies where there is a concentration of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Tower Hamlets must be the most corrupt of all in a very competitive field that includes Blackburn and Oldham.
 
This is yet another part of British life that was corrupted by the Blair regime.
 
Before 2004, the British electoral system was the envy of the world. The procedures were such that it was impossible to cheat the system. The Returning Officer had total personal responsibility for the conduct of the poll. He was answerable to no-one except the Home Office. If he got it wrong the consequences could be dire; it was clear where the  buck stopped.
 
Postal and proxy voting was strictly limited, mainly to the bed-ridden, voters who were absent on duty from the constituency on Polling Day, and a few others.
 
Very few were issued; maybe a hundred or so in the average constituency. When the postal ballots were opened on polling day they would be verified but not counted until mixed with the papers at the main count. They would be carefully scrutinised by the candidates’ polling agents. Even if a few dodgy ones escaped the net they would be too few to have any impact on the result.
 
Blair opened the floodgates. To encourage a higher turn-out voters could get postal ballot papers almost on demand. There are now more than 7 million postal voters. All the fraudsters need to do is to collect the papers from the voters and mark them at their leisure. Cynics might say that Labour was not bothered by this since almost all the rigged votes would go to them.
 
The outcome was foreseeable and immediate. There was a major scandal in Birmingham in 2004. The first election court since the 19th Century investigated. The judge said that the poll ‘would have disgraced a banana republic’. Birmingham Chief Executive Lynn Homer was Returning Officer. She had to resign (she popped up shortly afterwards as head of immigration, then as CEO of the Borders Agency. She is now boss of HMRC).
 
In 2010, the police had no less than 50 vote rigging investigations going on simultaneously.
 
It will be no different this time around. Nothing has been done to put matters right in the last five years.
 
Does anybody care or is there a  general belief that the whole political system is rotten?

 

 

Monday, April 13, 2015

The mummy returns.......

The politician from hell is back on the prowl. I thought, perhaps wishfully, her health had deteriorated to the point where she would not run for election.
 
 
I was wrong. Hillary is back with a vengeance having introduced her campaign via video tape played on the social media in order to better control her demeanor, appearance and speech. I wonder how many re-takes she and her minions made before the final cut.
 
I did not watch the video, but only saw some stills. She looked much younger and lighter than other recent photographs that continue to infiltrate the media like vermin. Those media that represent her opposition go to great lengths to select those images of Hillary which are most unflattering.
 
 
It is already all-out war and we still have more than a year and a half to go before the election.
 
So far, Hillary is the only announced Democratic Party candidate.
 
 
The republican candidates, by contrast, are popping up like lemmings. Every indication is that, like the last presidential election, the republicans will commit mass political hari kari by slaughtering each other and poisoning themselves through heated and vitriolic debates.
 
 
One result of all this is phenomenally popular fodder for the mainstream liberal media. The main theme of the 2016 presidential race may well be vilification of professional and career politicians regardless of their party label.
 
To date, the only republican candidates to have officially announced their candidacies are self-proclaimed libertarian Rand Paul and constitutionalist tea party favorite Ted Cruz. Both have moments of brilliance and mass appeal that is inevitably  shattered by statements of an extremist loony variety.
 
 
Ted walks hand in hand with God while Rand could easily be mistaken at times for a democrat. He is admittedly testy in interviews and appears to have no policy anchor for his campaign.
 
 
We shall see.