‘May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpit’.

Well, this blog has garnered a couple of hundred hits in its first three weeks, but the curious thing is there has only been a single comment and not one reaction. Does this indicate acquiescence or indifference?

There was a brief mention in the meeja of the Forgotten Man of Politics; I refer, of course, to G. Broon who is busily writing his masterpiece on financial management ‘How I saved the World, the Universe and Everything’, or words to that effect. Can’t wait. I thought that the above Arab curse suited the situation. I would also commend to him the wise advice of Tom Lehrer:

Plagiarize
Let no one else's work evade your eyes
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes
So don't shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize
Only be sure always to call it please "research"

So farewell, then, Deepwater Disaster. Is this ‘egg-on-face’ time for O and the gobby Senators who unwisely tried to tie it into Lockerbie? The latter have returned to the fray, demanding the medical records of Mehgrabi and the identities of the doctors. They know well that the Scots will tell them to go forth and multiply, so it can only be grandstanding, n’est pas? I reckon O should have handled it the English way:-

1. Fix the problem;
2. Hold a public inquiry;
3. Cover with whitewash;
4. Ignore the claims of the victims;
5. Carry on as before, leaving the miscreants in their comfortable positions.

1 above is optional. 3, 4, and 5 are mandatory. 2 is OK as long as the report is written first.

I strongly forecast that the merde is about to hit the air-conditioning big time, and it will be trebles all round for m’ learned friends for the next 20 years. We read that BP commissioned a safety audit on Transocean’s performance seven months before the disaster, which revealed a lengthy maintenance backlog. It says that 390 tasks were more than a month overdue, safety policy was not communicated, safety records were substandard, and there was a dearth of senior managers. However, Transocean says that even if it is found to be grossly negligent it is immune from financial penalties under its contract with BP. We shall see.

The truth is that accidents are rarely caused by a single event; most often they are the culmination of a chain of events that are not individually disastrous but taken together create a catastrophe. It is going to take a long time to unravel all this, which, at the risk of repeating myself, points up the folly of O rushing in with his gung-ho stuff about fitting up BP. Apportioning blame amongst the many actors in this drama will keep the lawyers prosperous for years to come. And the Ineluctable Law of Sod will see a major oil-spill by one of the US majors somewhere in the world. Will that be pay-back time?

It seems to me that much of the problem is not the event but its handling. It was Big O, not Big Oil, wot done it. Once O had declared Deepwater to be the worst environmental disaster ever in America, the media let rip. The Governor of Mississippi himself said that the biggest negative impact was not oil spillage but media exaggeration that gave the impression that the whole of the Gulf coast from Florida to Texas was up to its ocksters in the sticky stuff. This was what caused damage to the tourist industry rather than the oil. And as for environmental damage, we learn that only about 350 acres of oiled wetland was found whereas Louisiana loses about 15,000 acres every year from other causes.

To address your point about the apparent contradiction between the Government’s need to tax and to stimulate the economy at the same time, we have to revisit our old friend the Laffer curve. I believe this was drawn on a napkin in a restaurant, but is no less revealing for all that. It shows the tax take from various levels of taxation, from zero when the tax take is 0% to zero when the tax take is 100%. Basically, as you raise taxes you increase revenue to a point at which it peaks. After that the revenue starts to decrease because of the disincentives to work; people would rather not earn extra money by overtime or working harder or whatever if the tax gatherer is going to purloin too much of it.

Another serious consequence in this mobile age is that both firms and individuals are tempted to decamp to a more business friendly tax regime. Both scenarios are possible under the recently-introduced 50% top tax rate in UK. The Isle of Man Government is having a wobbly at this time because of EU pressure to abolish the zero rate corporation tax (the Brussels bullies see no limit to their jurisdiction, even small islands outside the Fourth Reich). A survey indicates that if a tax of only 10% is imposed the bulk of the financial services industry will relocate elsewhere – Singapore, BVI, Hong Kong or wherever.



If you lighten the tax burden you allow people to spend more of their own money which increases consumption which encourages investment which expands the economy which leads to higher tax revenues. The experience of the Thatcher years shows that the theory works. Before Maggie, top tax rates were in excess of 80%, waste swathes of the economy was nationalised and under-invested, there was stringent exchange control and various other socialist impositions that stifled the economy. Maggie halved the highest rate of tax, swept away all sorts of financial restrictions and gave people their money back. The economy boomed and the UK had many years of amazing growth until the onset of the Broon Terror.

Of course you know all this, but I thought I would explain it for the benefit of the economically illiterate, like George Osborne.

O’s economic policy clearly isn’t working, if job creation and consumer confidence are anything to go by. The US companies that seem to be doing well are those that kept the Feds at arm’s length and have substantial foreign earnings, like Ford. It has been well said that you can’t spend your way out of a recession or borrow your way out of debt. It is also reported that there are now millions of Americans who are not only out of work but also out of time on benefit. What happens to them? I believe that the strong American attachment to small government is correct, to reduce the Federal budgets and spending, and staff numbers, and consequently tax levels. O is going in the opposite direction.

Back to the topic of tax havens, the local press report a bust by our FSC minders concerning two wealthy Texans, to wit, Charles and Sam Wyly. They have been working with the Feds since the 1990s on an insider-trading scam involving a sum not unadjacent to $550 million. Contributions to the Republican Party are now likely to be diminished. No Hiding Place when these Manxies get their teeth in. They have recently sent a wealthy old geezer on several years’ of a porridge diet for money laundering with an accomplice in New York. The silly old bugger had the stash in Switzerland where it was perfectly safe. For reasons not disclosed at the trial he transferred it to the Isle of Man where it was immediately pounced upon. I tell you, this is not a good place for tax dodgers and financial hanky-panky.

Here in La-La land, I predict a short life for the Brokeback Coalition.

Our Home Secretary, Kitten Heels May has managed to enrage her Tory chums twice in a few days. She has nodded through the European Investigative Order which enables foreign police to require UK cops to divulge information even in respect of matters which are not an offence in the UK. This information includes DNA records (the UK has 5 times as many as any other European country because of the activities of the NuLab stasi in the reign of terror, including the retention of DNA samples from people – the majority – who have never been charged, let alone convicted) bank transactions, etc. Previous examples of minor criminal offences already pursued around Europe include a carpenter who fitted wardrobe doors and then removed them when the client refused to pay him, and the Polish authorities requesting the extradition of a suspect for theft of a dessert.

She also activated the Equality Act of Mad Hattie which had an immediate application of the Law of Unintended Consequences. It was thuswise. A Tory MP declared that he would not hold a surgery with anyone wearing the niqab. The Equality Commission immediately threatened to prosecute him under the new Act for discrimination. Hopefully, he will say ‘see you in court’, they will go ahead, his defence will be that he would refuse to see anyone whose face is covered, and if the defence fails it will open up the most enormous can of worms e.g. how about banks that refuse to admit anyone wearing a motor cycle crash-helmet and visor for security reasons? I foresee an early bath for the lady.

‘Slasher’ Osborne is expecting massive cuts in the defence budget in the middle of a war, and promises to put the Minister ‘back in his box’. The Minister will resign. There will be a punch-up between Osborne and St Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, and Cable will resign also. The coalition is having an easy time right now because the Labour lot are lacking a leader. Come September Labour, either Tweedledum or Tweedledee Miliband will be driving wedges into all parts of the Government, exploiting the fact that the coalition is less than popular amongst the LibDem rank-and-file, especially since their poll ratings have been hurtling south since May.

I notice that Quest on CNN is now sporting the tie of Garrick Club, the exclusive London hangout for luvvies. Welcome to the Establishment, Richard. I was once taken to lunch there and it was like being in Central Casting. He did an ‘In Depth’ piece about the demise of the boss of HP. I have difficulty in following the logic. The apparent reasons for his removal were a piffling sum in expenses (nothing to compare with our Honourable Members who remain unscathed) and a spot of rumpy pumpy (ditto). Here is a man who turned around the company after Carly screwed up. In a short space of time he vastly increased shareholder value and profitability.

Ah, say the terminally self-righteous, it was a breach of ethics. Why is it unethical in an electronics business to have a bit on the side that merits dismissal when it is OK for a Deputy Prime Minister and other highly-placed people too numerous to name? Ethics is supposed to be indivisible, so why did not the Pope resign over kiddy-fiddling priests? (Private Eye said that boys used to go into the priesthood; now it’s the other way round). Do the same rules apply to major competitors in India, China and the rest of the world? I am clearly missing something here. Obiter dicta of that wise old bird Lord Justice Denning was that nobody’s sex life could withstand close scrutiny.

Are the stockholders and employees of HP ecstatic about this show of corporate morality?

In ‘Global Warming and Other Bollocks’, Stanley Feldman does a fine demolition job on the ‘ethics industry’. He says ‘The ethics industry has nationalised morality. An individual can no longer make a free choice as to what is right and what is wrong. It is a matter of ticking boxes. If sufficient ticks are in the right box it becomes ethical. It destroys the fundamental difference between man as an individual and man as an animal in a herd. He can no longer choose according to his own conscience but must conform at all times to the diktat of authority’.

Quite so. Why is it unethical for a barrister to advertise but not for a solicitor? Until a few years ago no lawyer of any stamp could advertise. So if it was unethical then, why not now? Can it be because authority says so? Is it unethical to buy from a sweatshop or unethical to put poor people out of work by refusing to do so? As an Aussie colleague was wont to say ‘Everything’s a racket – unless you’re in it!

Thought for the day; would Dr Spooner have described Broon as a shining wit?