Milliband To Pledge To End “Fast Buck” Culture
According to this report, Milliband is going to pledge to end the “fast buck” culture.
Ed Miliband will vow to end Britain’s “fast-buck” culture and ensure the “right people” are rewarded, in a speech to Labour’s annual conference.
The Labour leader will say later that the country needs “a new bargain based on a different set of values”.
Unfortunately, the get rich quick ideas have always been with us at all levels of society. As an example, the only shop I can see from my house is a betting shop. If I go down Dalston High Street, it is a sea of similar shops and pay-day loan companies. And look at the success of those legalised loan-sharks, Wonga.
In fact, it will be much easier to curb, the “fast buck” culture in the City, as many responsible people I know, steer well clear of the more dodgy practices that brought us some of the very high risk financial instruments, that took a lot of banks to their knees. It used to be in the city, that when you invested in Lloyds and similar companies, if it all went wrong you lost everything. Consequently, the risk management was a lot better, proving Dr. Johnson totally right about hanging.
Incidentally, I was urged to join Lloyds and didn’t! Why? Because it’s my money and I like to have some slight control over what happens to it.
Thinking after what I have just written about Lloyds, wouldn’t it have been better to have put the various bad banks like HBOS and Bank of Scotland into receivership, rather than use them to poison Lloyds TSB. After all, they were very much a victim of Milliband’s “fast buck” culture. But NuLabor made the mistake of saving them. And who was at the centre of that process?
What’s In A Name?
There are reports that Staines is going to change its name to Staines-upon-Thames.
Will it make any difference to the punchline of so many jokes. It’ll probably create a few more.
It got me thinking about whether your name makes any difference. For instance if your first name was Eustace, would you ever get elected to parliament. If you were no good, you’d probably get called “Useless Eustace”!
Prime Ministers have also had names with a certain gravitas or style; Churchill, Callaghan, Cameron etc. Even Thatcher and Blair aren’t names without style. But look at the two main Labour figures now. Balls to the man in the pub will always talk bollocks and Milliband is one of those names with milli or very small in it.
So I don’t think that they will get elected, unless they change their names.
How NuLabor Fiddled The Books
Two papers today; The Times and the Daily Mail have a story from an updated edition of Anthony Seldon and Guy Lodge’s book, Brown at 10, that Ed Balls asked Treasury officials to produce economic forecasts that Brown would like. The report in the Mail is here.
According to The TImes, a spokesman for Mr. Balls said it was all “absurd and untrue”. In other words a load of old balls!
Project Management – NuLabor Style
When I read stories like this, I get very angry.
The new fire control centres didn’t benefit anybody and cost everybody in the UK ten pounds.
I hope the idiots who put this forward were fired. But I suppose if they were, they probably got a gold-plated pension.
I also hope that the company who didn’t deliver the computer system, don’t get another government contract! But they always do!
Do 50% Tax Rates Work?
I don’t think so, except for financial advisors and accountants.
When the rate gets too high, people see an increasing amount of their money going in taxes and do something about it.
I remember, an accountant once told me of a client, who asked him to cut the amount he paid in tax. The client by the way had a small but successful manufacturing company. He told the client to leave some of the money he didn’t need in the business and invest it to make the business grow. The tax bill went down, but the wealth of the client’s company grew. I just looked it up on the Internet and its even bigger. Sadly the accountant carried on smoking like a chimney and died of lung cancer.
So I’m in favour of reducing the tax rate and removing the loopholes. This incidentally, is what Mrs. Thatcher did and the tax take rose. It also made a lot of accountants and financial advisors unemployed.
You could argue that we need a very simple tax system, that everybody on the Dalston Omnibus could understand.
But no government would ever do this, as they’d have to deal with large numbers of irate civil servants.
I Don’t Think Prudence Will Call Alistair “Darling” Anymore!
I never took Alistair Darling seriously, as the name was given a very hard going over in Blackadder.
He at last seems to have shown some backbone in standing up to the that bully, Gordon Brown, in his memoirs according to many reports today. Here is the one from the BBC. I like this quote about Brown.
Gordon Brown was so deluded as prime minister that he was adamant one of the worst economic crisies in history would be over in six months.
How did NuLabor let such an idiot get the top job? I suspect that many saw the writing on the wall and Brown was holding the parcel when the music stopped.
The I Wouldn’t Do That Party!
Peter Allen on BBC Radio 5, used that nickname for the Labour Party.
But it is true! After all, Prudence got so much of our policies into a mess to buy votes generally or in Scotland. If they were in power they’d still be digging the hole in the budget like maniacs. After all in their view it’s better for the country if Labour is in power, rather than we’re all broke.
Luckily, most of the good people of the United Kingdom, have more sense than Prudence and his ilk.
A Wonderful Phrase – Meretriciously Obscurantist Techno Tosh
Roger Ford in Modern Railways today used this phrase to describe a letter written from Theresa Villiers about the new IEP train or SET (Super Express Train).
At the end of his article there is this paragraph entitled, Official VTAC figures for SET.
When you need reiable technical details you want an engineer on the job. So I am indebted to my Hitachi chum, Koji Agatsuma, who sent me Network Rail’s official Variable Track Access Charges (VTAC) for the Super Express Train just as this column was going to press.
With the driving pantograph car coming in at 10.95p per vehicle mile and the motored car with underfloor diesel engine costing 13.05p, the total VYAC for a nine-car bi-mode would be £1.07 per mile. So how did the DfT (Department for Transport) get £1.13 per mile for the five car bi-mode?
I would assume that civil servants and politicians can’t do arithmetic. I once met a senior advisor in the Treasury. He lived alone in a terraced house in Surbiton, couldn’t drive, ride a bicycle or swim and had as much real experience of British life, as the man on the Pyongyang omnibus. But he had got a first class degree from Oxford!
Mrs. Robinson Cleared
It would appear thast Mrs. Robinson has been cleared of any misconduct according to this report on the BBC.
But the Alliance Party weren’t happy! I’m not either and I agree with the use of the Alliance Party of the word; railroaded.
But then I’ve never understood Ulster politics! So what do I know? Nothing!
How Do I Get Prisoners To Paint My House?
I have a cupboard in my bedroom that needs stripping and painting. Obviously, some might think I’m the sort of person who should benefit from some sort of scheme, as I’m a widower, who has had a stroke.
After all Jacqui Smith, the former NuLabor Home Secretary got two prisoners to do some painting at her house according to this report in the Guardian.
But then as I said, I’m a widower and I’ve had a stroke. I’m certainly not sick or mad enough to want to be a Member of Parliament.
