FFA or and bust

Following their remarkable win, the SNP is now pushing for Full Fiscal Autonomy (FFA) for Scotland. Broadly speaking, this means that Scotland runs its own economy—being able to spend cash and raise money as they please.

The supposed driver for this is that Scotland is a "more socialist" country, willing to pay more tax in order to stave off the tyranny of austerity. This narrative is, of course, bollocks: were it not, the SNP (also the dominant party in Holyrood) would already have used the tax-raising powers that the Parliament has—up to 3p in the pound extra in income tax, if I recall correctly.

Instead, when these powers were granted at devolution, the proposal to use them was attacked as "a Tartan tax". Indeed it may be but one that, if the SNP and other Scottish commentators are to be believed, one that would be welcomed by the austerity-loathing Scottish people.

The fact that the extra tax has not, actually, ever been levied leads one to re-examine that old economics truth of "revealed preferences", i.e. watch what people do, not what they say.

Of course, raising income tax by an extra 3% probably would do little to help the Scottish budget—the projected deficit under FFA is nearly £8 billion (around 10% of Scotland's GDP). In fact, most commentators think that Scotland's Full Fiscal Autonomy would be as disastrous as HP's adoption of Autonomy (yeah—that was a tech world joke (if an old one)).

So, why on earth are the SNP lobbying for FFA—a policy that will, as Alex Massie points out, surely lead to cuts in Scottish public spending that make "austerity" look like the most extravagant fiscal splurges of the more insane Roman emperors?

A clue to what the SNP might be thinking comes from SNP MP George Kerevan, in an article for The National [Emphasis mine—DK].

It is now inconceivable that David Cameron can reject Scottish demands for greater home rule, given that all three mainstream Westminster parties – Tory, Labour and Lib Dem alike – have minimal legitimate authority in Scotland in the wake of May 7. The general election was not a mandate for a second referendum – a point reiterated time after time by Nicola Sturgeon, whatever contrary hares are set running by the battered and bruised Westminster establishment. Nevertheless, the SNP’s electoral success is undoubtedly a mandate for going far beyond the hastily conceived ragbag of new powers contained in the Smith Commission documents.

The SNP maintains that the Smith Commission does not actually give Scotland enough powers (although many English people might argue that the Smith Commission gives the Scottish Parliament a great many powers, with very little responsibility). The Grauniad has summed up the main points, which I reproduce below.

• The Scottish parliament will have complete power to set income tax rates and bands.
• Holyrood will receive a proportion of the VAT raised in Scotland, amounting to the first 10 percentage points of the standard rate (ie with the current standard VAT rate of 20%, Scotland will 50% of the receipts), but cannot influence the UK’s overall UK rate.
• It will have increased borrowing powers, to be agreed with the UK government, to support capital investment and ensure budgetary stability.
• UK legislation will state that the Scottish parliament and Scottish government are permanent institutions. The parliament will also be given powers over how it is elected and run.
• Holyrood will have power to extend the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds, allowing them to vote in the 2016 Scottish parliamentary election.
• It will have control over a number of benefits including disability living allowance, the personal independence payment, winter fuel payments and the housing elements of universal credit, including the under-occupancy charge (bedroom tax).
• The Scottish parliament will also have new powers to make discretionary payments in any area of welfare without the need to obtain prior permission from department for work and pensions.
• It will have all powers of support for unemployed people through employment programmes, mainly delivered at present through the Work Programme.
• It will have control over air passenger duty charged on people flying from Scottish airports.
• Responsibility for the management of the crown estate’s economic assets in Scotland, including the crown estates’s seabed and mineral and fishing rights, and the revenue generated from these assets, will be transferred to the Scottish parliament.
• The licensing of onshore oil and gas extraction underlying Scotland will be devolved to the Scottish parliament.
• The Scottish government will have power to allow public sector operators to bid for rail franchises funded and specified by Scottish ministers.
• The block grant from the UK government to Scotland will continue to be determined via the operation of the Barnett formula. New rules to define how it will be adjusted at the point when powers are transferred and thereafter will be agreed by the Scottish and UK governments and put in place prior to the powers coming into force. These rules will ensure that neither the Scottish nor UK governments will lose or gain financially from the act of transferring a power.
• MPs representing constituencies across the whole of the UK will continue to decide the UK’s budget, including income tax.
• The Scottish and UK governments will draw up and agree a memorandum of understanding to ensure that devolution is not detrimental to UK-wide critical national infrastructure in relation to matters such as defence and security, oil and gas and energy.

Your humble Devil submits that this is very close to FFA, whilst admitting that there are some constraints on how the Scottish Parliament may act. One might argue that a great many of these constraints are there to stop the Scottish Parliament bankrupting its country. Your mileage may vary.

However, the SNP is arguing for Full Fiscal Autonomy. That means that Scotland is entirely responsible for its own economy, right?

Well, you might think that: and now we'll return to George Kerevan's comment [Emphasis mine, again—DK]...

The constitutional ball is well and truly in David Cameron’s end of the field. Cameron’s opening gambit may well be to offer Scotland fiscal autonomy, in return for termination of the Barnett Formula (a mechanism that matches per capita spending changes across the UK constituent nations). We all know that in present UK economic circumstances a fiscally autonomous Scotland would face a significant budget deficit.

For Scotland to accept fiscal autonomy without inbuilt UK-wide fiscal balancing would be tantamount to economic suicide. However, all federal systems have mechanisms for cross subsidising regions in economic need by regions in surplus. To deny that to Scotland suggests a disingenuous Mr Cameron is hoping to derail any move to Scottish Hole Rule within the UK.

Wow. Yes, that's right: George Kerevan—and, we must assume, he is a proxy for the SNP—is seriously suggesting that Scotland be given Full Fiscal Autonomy except when it doesn't have the money to afford it.

Just sit back and admire the chutzpah—George is saying that the Scottish Parliament should be given free rein to run things as it likes. Except that when the Scots overspend, rack up debts, or just go batshit wild with the cheque book, the rest of England should have to bail them out. Kerevan is proposing that English taxpayers chuck another £7 billion a year at the Scots before they've even started turning on the spending taps (because who, genuinely, thinks that they won't?).

What the SNP are holding up—as an expectation—is a total lack of any responsibility. Kerevan is proposing is that no matter how much the Scottish government screws up—no matter how fecklessly Holyrood runs the national finances, or shamelessly its parties bribe their voters—the people of England should be expected to bail out the Scottish nation regardless.

There really is only one answer to this, and its very simple: fuck off.

David Cameron, in concert with Miliband and Clegg, has already betrayed England by his shameless capitulation—a.ka. "the promise"—to the Scots after the Independence Referendum: it is entirely possible that this spineless Buttered New Potato will sell us down the river by agreeing to this shit too.

If he does, we might finally see the anger of the English people burn hot enough to march down Whitehall—parading Cameron's massive, shiny head on a fucking stick.

And not before time, frankly.

UPDATE: have the SNP been monitoring the Kitchen for suggestions...?

Spinning idly in the wind

One of the chief architects of our destruction: "I don't care about energy bills, because I don't pay mine—you do, you fuckin' mooks."

Christopher Booker's latest piece in the Telegraph should have every person in Britain gnashing their teeth at the rampant stupidity of this Coalition's energy policy—specifically the utter lunacy that is embodied in off-shore wind farms.

Last week, the BBC ran a series of reports by its science correspondent, David Shukman, on the Government’s plan to ring our coasts with vast offshore wind farms.
The nearest thing allowed to criticism of this policy came in an interview with the Oxford academic Dieter Helm, who we were told had “done the sums”. What, Shukman asked, had he come up with? The only figures Helm gave were that the Government’s offshore wind farm plans would, by 2020, cost £100 billion—scarcely a state secret, since the Government itself announced this three years ago—plus £40 billion more to connect these windmills to the grid, a figure given us by the National Grid last year.
Helm did not tell us that this £140 billion equates to £5,600 for every household in the country. But he did admit that the plan was “staggeringly expensive”, and that, given the current extent of “fuel poverty” and the state of our economy, he doubted “if it can in fact be afforded”.

Even shorter on hard facts, however, was Shukman’s report on a monster new wind farm off the coast of Cumbria, where a Swedish firm, Vattenfall, has spent £500 million on building 30 five‑megawatt turbines with a total “capacity” of 150MW. What Shukman did not tell us, because the BBC never does, is that, thanks to the vagaries of the wind, these machines will only produce a fraction of their capacity (30 per cent was the offshore average in the past two years). So their actual output is only likely to average 45MW, or £11 million per MW.

Compare this with the figures for Britain’s newest gas-fired power station, recently opened in Plymouth. This is capable of generating 882MW at a capital cost of £400 million—just £500,000 for each megawatt. Thus the wind farm is 22 times more expensive, and could only be built because its owners will receive a 200 per cent subsidy: £40 million a year, on top of the £20 million they will get for the electricity itself. This we will all have to pay for through our electricity bills, whereas the unsubsidised cost of power from the gas plant, even including the price of the gas, will be a third as much.

Booker also points out—reinforcing what your humble Devil has been saying for years—that wind power is inherently unreliable and, as such, we would need to build a MW of conventional power for every MW of installed wind power.

Or, of course, the lights go out.

This would be stupid enough were we forced to duplicate our power capacity at gas- or coal-fired prices; that we must build wind farms at 22 times the cost of conventional power plus the gas- or coal-fired power stations is nothing short of insane.

And, ultimately, we are going to have to pay for all of this. And we are going to pay through the fucking nose.

The trouble is that the government knows damn well that people will not stand for massive rises on energy taxes; as such, the government and the EU have forced the power companies to carry much of the cost—thus making the energy companies out to be total fucking demons*.

As Matthew Sinclair points out in this superb rant to the Freedom Society (whilst promoting his book, Let Them Eat Carbon), most people are simply not aware of the vast costs being imposed on the power companies by our Lords and Masters in the name of the discredited Climate Change scam.



It does appear that the energy companies are, however, protesting somewhat. Bishop Hill recently submitted a Freedom of Information request on a meeting between the government and the Electricity Retailers Association (ERA).

Here's an odd thing. Some weeks back I noticed that Gregory Barker, the Climate Change minister, had met with representatives of the Electricity Retailers Association to discuss "information on consumers' bills".

To me this seemed rather odd - why would electricity retailers need to discuss the information on bills with ministers? Perhaps Mr Barker wanted to insist that some information was passed on to consumers?

An FOI request later, I discover that the meeting was at the request of ERA itself—it appears that they asked to speak to ministers about a number of issues—Fuel Poverty, the Green Deal, the Community Energy Saving Programme and the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target. Putting this together with DECC's record that "information on consumers' bills" was discussed, I conclude that ERA wanted to make the costs of these government programmes transparent.

Unfortunately, I can only infer this because according to DECC, no record was kept of the meeting.

The Grauniad recently ran a fucking ludicrous story about how climate change might lead aliens to eliminate us because our carbon emissions would lead them to assume that the human race was "out of control".

Personally, I think that these self-same aliens might well kill us all.

But only because they would look at the fucking colossal idiocy enacted by our governments (and the rampant apathy of their citizens) and decide that the human race is too fucking stupid to be allowed to live.

* Alright—worse demons than they actually are.

Let's sue academics

When a private company makes a claim that cannot be proven, then we are allowed to censure them: where they make a claim that can be absolutely proven to be a lie, then we can sue the fuckers.

So, why can we not sue academics—and the institutions that sponsor them—when they needlessly scaremonger and, yes, lie like sons of bitches?

This question—found via Bishop Hill—is one that Professor Mike Kelly ponders in a letter to the Taranaki Daily News...

Can I plead for temperate language in this debate as trillions of dollars are at risk of being misinvested?

I am involved in another area of controversy, namely nanotechnology, and when you add in controversies in biomedicine, there is enough around to suggest that the scientific process is being corrupted, and is in need of reining in. You will see my views on this when the Royal Society publishes the evidence it receives in its study of ‘Science as a Public Enterprise‘.

Engineers take legal liability for their work, and can be sued if they are wrong. This should also apply more widely to those who pronounce in the public domain on matters of policy. This would then confine statements to a more measured and nuanced standard.

I would like to make this absolutely clear: I believe in the rule of law, and that means that the law applies to everyone—including academics. If they back certain public policy decisions that have a cost, they should be sued when those benefits do not arise.

Take, for instance, the BSE scare: scientists predicted death tolls in the tens—maybe hundreds—of thousands. The measures taken in respect of this advice cost the farmers of this country many millions of pounds.

The estimated deaths failed to materialise—unsurprisingly, since the consensus science had (and still has) the vector wrong—and so the farmers and everyone else harmed in any way from this scare should be able to sue the scientists involved.

The same thing applies to climate change academics: since we have now, apparently, gone beyond the tipping point, if the promised destruction fails to arrive, can we sue the living shit out of these lying cunts? I believe that we should be able to.

Indeed, can anyone tell me why we shouldn't?

Would anyone like to join in a "class-action" suit against the scientists who promised a BSE* armageddon? And then, once we have won that, to wage war against the lying bastards perpetuating the CACC scam?

I believe that this would bring a whole new dynamic to our scientific and political lives: one of honesty. Or, to put it in the words of Professor Kelly, scientists might "confine statements to a more measured and nuanced standard".

At the very least, it would confine scientists to science, rather than making political prognostications that they bear no harm for when once they are found out. The politicians (sometimes) bear the blame when the public realises that they have been sold a pup (through the joke that is the ballot box): the evil scientists themselves simply carry on—as they increasingly so—using the media to scare us into the politicians giving scientists money.

These fuckers are charlatans—snake oil salesmen—and they should be tarred and feathered and run out of town.

And, of course, this needs to be extended to politicians: if their promised goodness does not arrive out of their policies, why should we not be able to sue the cunts for making us poorer and more miserable than we were before?

Or, in the words of your humble Devil, they might stop being a bunch of lying sacks of shit with no more excuse to live of this Earth than a fucking alien weevil.

* Yes, I know that the human form is CJD: I just couldn't be bothered to explain it in the middle of a rant.

The monarchy

Strange though it might seem, many of my views have become less trenchant as time wears on*. Personally, I blame you fuckers: no sooner do I think that I know what the hell I think than some commenter pops up with a reasonable objection. It's fucking annoying: how the hell am I going to turn into the traditional Bufton Tufton if I'm not allowed to continue holding outmoded views in the face of all reason, eh?

Anyway, one of the institutions that I have mixed feelings about is the monarchy. I have, in the past, defended the role of Contitutional Monarch, and for much the same—entirely practical—reasons that Obnoxio has today.

It's crucial that I explain why. A constitutional monarchy is not the endgame objective of any Libertarian. It is profoundly unlibertarian that someone can rule over you by accident of birth. However, through happy accident, it transpires that having a ruling monarch that is required to give assent to laws, along with two strong chambers of debate is a pretty good mix for reasonable governance in a democratic, rather than an anarchic state.

And while a lot of libertarians resent the land-ownership of the hereditary peers, the fact that they weren't all from the grasping, venal classes actually made them quite good custodians of our rights. If you look at the regime of New Labour, for instance, the official opposition was utterly useless in the Commons and all the serious defence of the common man ironically came from the Lords. And if we look at the rapid increase in common petty theft in the Lords, is it any surprise that it has all come about since Labour started throwing the money out there to be taken and then appointing people from the grasping, venal classes?

I'm not saying the Lords were saints before, but because they were disinterested and there wasn't really anything in it for them, they tended to either not bother at all or take it seriously for its own sake. Sure they could influence big deals for their own back pocket, but they weren't inspired to enact draconian laws because they'd get a chunk of cash for pitching up and then being "whipped" to vote.

Whether you regard it as class, or breeding, or just some kind of good sense and disinterest, the peers have acquitted themselves much better than our elected representatives, who do not represent us, but rather the interests of their party. And really, for this to work properly, you do need a stronger monarch.

And that's all well and good because what we are really interested in is the best way of governing—and the best method of government is one where numerous executive factions all shit on one another and thus pass no laws whatsoever.

But the trouble is that, whilst I can and will happily defend the theoretical role of the monarch (or hereditary head of state), the simple fact is that the Queen has done a fucking awful job; it is not only the Scary Clown that points this out, but Dr Eamonn Butler of the ASI too (in a passage from his new book, The Alternative Manifesto**).

I hate to say it, but as a constitutional monarch, she has been pathetic. Over her reign, she has allowed government politicians to accumulate frightening power. She has merely stood by as they cast aside all restraint, including the basic rights, liberties and institutions that were fought for precisely to protect us from arbitrary authority.
At first, of course, they were intended to protect us from the power of absolute monarchs. In time, though, Parliament replaced the monarch as sovereign; but these same rules worked equally well at restraining politicians too. Ministers knew that they were only the temporary custodians of the public trust; and that their power was checked and balanced by MPs, the civil service, and the courts.

Indeed, the monarchy itself became one of these balancing institutions. It may seem bizarre in a democracy that the monarch is notionally the head of the government, the church, the peerage and the army; but the reason we keep it that way is not so that monarchs can wield power, but so as to keep unlimited power out of the hands of politicians. For most of the time, our monarchs have had a better grasp of the mood of the people, and of the importance of their rights and freedoms, than have ministers: so this has proved a useful arrangement.

The key constitutional role of monarchs today, then, is to stop politicians from usurping power and turning themselves into an elected dictatorship. But the Queen – perhaps confusing the exercise of this role with political interference – has allowed precisely that to happen. With Magna Carta, the Queen’s distant ancestor agreed to fundamental principles such as our right not to be held without trial, and to be tried by a jury. Yet in her own reign (starting perhaps in 1971 with internment in Northern Ireland, but escalating fast in the last dozen years) these rights, and more, have simply been signed away.

The constitutional role of an unelected, hereditary monarchy must be limited. But it does have a constitutional role, and must exercise that role as a necessary counterweight to the otherwise unbridled power of an executive that – through its majority and its patronage – is in complete control of Parliament.

In other words, the Queen has done a fucking awful job—and her utter failure has not only destroyed the credibility of the role itself but, more egregiously, consigned the citizens of Great Britain to servitude under a tyrannical Executive.

And, let's face, Charles is going to be about 20,000,000,000,000,000 times worse. Before his reign is over, that cunt will have us bowing to Mecca morning, noon and night, with a fucking windmill shoved up our arseholes.

So, one of two things needs to happen: either we get rid of the monarchy and replace it with a President with Executive power, or we get rid of the current bunch of jokers and stage another Glorious Revolution.

And you know what? I'd look pretty fucking good in a crown...

* Also, I'm bored with blogging at the moment. I've become so fucking earnest, it's like I've turned into the most tedious type of left-wing arsehole. Plus, of course, othing interesting is happening***—we're all just waiting for this spectacularly shit but walking dead government to shuffle off this mortal coil so that we can welcome in another slightly-less-spectacularly-shit government to come in and bugger us backwards for yet more cash. It's incredibly fucking depressing.

** I drink colossal amounts of the ASI's booze: the least I can do is plug their books...

*** Except, of course, that I've been proved right about climate change alarmism. That's good, but what's now to fight for?

Quote of the Day: after Socialism

A socialist and his victim, yesterday.

Via the wife (who has more on this), The quote of the day comes from a lecture given, last week, by Dr Alan Kors at the Students for Liberty Conference at the University of Pennsylvania Drexel University in Pennsylvania.

Socialism means the abolition of private property, profit, and voluntary exchange. It means the organization of the production and distribution of goods and services—that is, of the fruits of human invention, innovation, thought, risk, talent, and labor—by political planners who allegedly know both what people need and how to satisfy that need. It means the expropriation and allotment of wealth according to those planners’ sense of value. Socialism may be understood by any child. It is taking other people’s stuff. It is also the rash and ignorant slaughter of the goose that lays the golden eggs.

That seems like a perfect description to me—for socialists are like children. They believe that they have a right to anything that they like and—just like a child—they have absolutely no appreciation of the effort, intelligence and sacrifice that goes into producing the toys that they demand.

As such, it is not libertarians who are childish (as this prat at Liberal Conspiracy contended), but socialists. Libertarians are the ones who are adult enough to realise that nothing comes for free and that to steal—or to compel others to steal on your behalf—the fruit of another man's labour is wrong.

It is the socialists—kicking and screaming for toys, regardless of price—who are the children. And they are not even nice, well-behaved children: no, they are more like Spoilt Bastard—content to ensure that others work themselves to death as long as their own needs are satisfied.

They are entirely stupid, immature and evil. And they win, because they are the worst part of all of us and giving in to envy, bitterness and irrationalism is so very easy: as The Smiths sang, "it takes strength to be gentle and kind"...

That Question Time script in full...

Constantly Furious has kindly transcribed the whole of that Question Time session just for all of those cannot bear to watch the smug awfulness of the actual broadcast. I recommend that you read the whole hilarious transcript, but here's a sample for your delectation...

And what a night it was. A glittering gallery of all the key figures, the big beasts, in British politics: MP Chris WhoHe of extremist minority party the "Lib Dems", Jack 'thought he'd retired?' Straw for Labour, Sayeeda WhoShe for Conservatives and Bonnie Greer, a random American writer, filling that vital role of black-person-sat-right-next-to-nasty-Nick-ha-ha.

Through his contacts with the BBC (you just press '1' on the remote), CF is able to bring you a full transcript of what was probably the most tedious controversial Question Time yet.

Dimbleby: "Good evening. I'd like to welcome our panel tonight. Well, all of them bar one of course"
[audience laughs nervously]
Griffin: "I .."
[audience boos, ecstatically]
Dimblebore: "That's really quite enough from you, Mr Griffin"
[enthusiastic applause. Cries of 'quite right']
Dumbledore: "First, I must just apologise for the screaming and breaking glass you may be able to hear. I'm told that the UAF have peacefully stormed the building and are now peacefully smashing the place up".
Dumbledore: "and so, to our first question. Gentlemen with the cross face.."
Angry Asian: "Nick. Is it that you love Churchill and hate Muslims, innit?"
[applause]
Nick Griffin: "I didn't.."
Baroness Wassup [interrupting]: "Yes, you do, don't you, you do"
[prolonged applause]
Dumbledore: "Moving on now. I've got photos' Mr Griffin, of you standing near a man from the Klu Klux Klan. Does the very existence of these photo's not prove, beyond doubt, that you'd very much like to strap a black man to the front of your pickup and drive all round the bayou at high speed?"
Nick Griffin: "Well, I.."
Bonnie Greer [interrupting]: "Don't you try to tell me about no KKK. I'm American."

Indeed you are, Bonnie, and your impeccable right-on credentials were proved when you talked historical bollocks to Griffin—attacking him whenever you were able.

Then, Bonnie, you courageously shut the fuck up whilst the vile Establishment politicos happily chuntered away about the measures that their mainstream parties were taking to ensure that Americans like you, Bonnie, would not now be able to enter this country—let alone be able to stay and patronise wall-eyed loons on TV. Still, I shouldn't imagine that you are any stranger to hypocrisy, eh, Bonnie?

So I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability, Bonnie Greer: truly, your ability to stand up to one man's bigotry, discrimination and injustice is to be applauded. What a pity that you, the Deputy Chariman of the National Museum, found yourself unable to stand up against bigotry, discrimination and injustice when it was advocated by your paymasters.

Yes, it was a pity—but hardly a surprise.

What the fuck is the point of the MSM?

Rachel Sylvester: miserable, pointless twat.

Rachel Sylvester is wibbling on in the pointless fucking way that so many MSM columnists seem to.

The rows over Europe matter because they reinforce the view that these are the “same old Tories” who are self-indulgently obsessing about their private concerns.

Look, you stupid fucking bitch, the rows over the EU matter because the EU is not some "private concern". Let me spell it out for you, since you are obviously far too stupid to work it out for yourself.

The EU is an entity that generates laws.

Parliament is an entity that generates laws.

As has been tested in our courts, EU laws have primacy over those created by our Parliament.

Therefore, the EU is more important than our Parliament. Get it?

Seriously, what the fuck is the point of you, Rachel? Why don't you fuck off and buy some shoes or something...?

Quote of the Day...

... comes from The Heresiarch's discussion of Polly Toynbee's proposed resignation speech for Gordon Brown.

There's very little connection between the size of the state and the quality of the services it provides. A big state can be every bit as squalid, penny-pinching and mean-spirited as a small one. But the impact of its penny-pinching and mean-spiritedness on ordinary life will be considerably worse.

As an illustration of this mean-spirited penny-pinching that has an effect on everyday life, your humble Devil was in a pub in Coalville, near Leicester, this afternoon (I was doing a presentation to a potential client).

Talking to the barman revealed a whole host of stupid fucking crap that has emanated from the local Nazis council. For instance, the pub holds lots of live music nights and has got nice vinyl posters done and pinned to the boards outside the pub. Naturally, a council jobsworth insisted they be taken down.

OK, maybe they might cause some driver to crash or something. Right? And yet that same jobsworth asserted that the pub was allowed to fill its windows with posters, advertising precisely the same shit.

Or, again, the pub holds an annual weekend of live music at which 52 bands play half hour sets over the two days. They normally hold this in a marquee in the car park. This year, despite having obtained all of the licences, etc., another jobsworth showed up on the eve of the event and told the organisers that they couldn't, in fact, hold the event outside because it might cause "noise pollution".

"No wonder," said the barman, "that the BNP do so well around here." I nodded in agreement.

"If you think about it," I added, "voting for a moronic, far-left, collectivist bunch of racists is a pretty big 'fuck you' to whichever twats are in power, eh? You are basically saying, 'I would rather vote for a bunch of knuckle-dragging, racist, nationlist fuckwits than you. Yes, it's a pretty big fuck you..."

Dangerous words, really: I could almost find myself persuaded to vote for the BNP simply on that basis. Almost.

Anyway, I'm rambling: do go and read the Heresiarch's article, which is an excellent analysis of why NuLabour have been such a colossal fucking disaster (as if you need telling again).

But, let's face it—even when NuLabour are deservedly consigned to electoral oblivion, their evil, mean-spirited, penny-pinching brethren will still be infecting every local authority in the country.

Burn them: burn them all...

'Tis a pity she's a whore crook...

Via the LPUK blog, I come across this Tweet from jumped-up fuckwit Mirror journo Kevin McGuire.

Nick Clegg's told me he thinks Baroness Scotland needn't resign. Depressing if one of the few Black women in public life must walk

I do like Kev's capitalisation of "Black": it makes it absolutely clear that we are playing identity politics here. It's unfortunate that Kev's tweet doesn't make it clear whether that second sentence is his own opinion or Clegg's but, ultimately, that is irrelevant.

My own reply would be that it is depressing that "one of the few Black women in public life" is such a fucking crook that the public should think that she needs to walk.

In fact, it is depressing that "one of the few Black women in public life" has so little sense of honour that she has not already walked.

Nevertheless, it is a fact that Baroness Scotland—"one of the few Black women in public life"—has a record of hypocrisy and dishonesty that would shame even the other members of her professions, whether lawyer or politician.

Do Nick Clegg or Kevin McGuire think that Baroness Scotland should be able to get away with theft, dishonesty and corruption because she is "Black" or because she is a woman? Or perhaps they think that Baroness Scotland shouldn't have to walk because, in their eyes, the silly cow has done nothing wrong?

It might be argued (though not by me) that we need more "Black women in public life" but we definitely do not need more thieving, arrogant hypocrites—of any colour—in public life.

As such, why doesn't Baroness Scotland just fuck off?

Questions, questions...

One thing that can be said for sure is that Nick Clegg is not the man to clean up Parliament. But then we know that none of the three main parties are actually going to do anything significant in that department, don't we?

And we know why: because they are all up to their dishonest little eyeballs in fraud and infamy, and ably assisted by the scum who work in the media—scum such as Kevin McGuire.

Let us hope that the new media does kill the old: without the MSM's conspiracy of silence around the antics of our elected representatives, it will be much easier to rouse the country into setting fire to the fucking lot of them.

Red sky at night, cyclists' delight

A little while ago, I let off some steam about the dangerous driving of many motorcyclists in the London area, and alluded to the assumed guilt of car drivers.

The only thing that worries me is that car owners are almost always blamed and that they feel in some way guilty for causing accidents.

I have always felt—given how the war on motorists has been progressing—that, sooner or later, the law would be changed to ensure that motorists would be assumed to be automatically responsible for all accidents.

Now, via an appalled Iain Dale, it seems that it is being proposed that motor vehicle drivers would, indeed, be assumed responsible for any accidents.

MINISTERS are considering making motorists legally responsible for accidents involving cyclists or pedestrians, even if they are not at fault.

Government advisers are pushing for changes in the civil law that will make the most powerful vehicle involved in a collision automatically liable for insurance and compensation purposes.

What the fuck? So, if some idiot runs out in front of me and I am—despite travelling at or below the speed limit—I should be held legally responsible when I hit them? Or when a cyclist whizzes gayly through a red light into a stream of traffic, I should be responsible?

Fuck. Off.

Look, leaving aside any partisan affiliations here, drivers are sometimes careless. But so are cyclists and pedestrians—especially since they often do not obey traffic signals or even behave rationally around roads. In short, everyone does stupid things and sometimes those little stupidities end tragically.

In assigning blame, we have systems like... well... courts, and juries and judges. These oh-so-archaeic institutions, as well as others like them, look at all of the facts and, from the evidence, work out who—if anyone—should be to blame. That is because we have tended to base our legal system on a presumption of innocence (and where we have not, e.g. libel laws, we are able to se just how perverting the assumption of guilt is).

The move, intended to encourage greater take-up of environmentally friendly modes of transport, is likely to anger some drivers, many of whom already perceive themselves to be the victims of moneyspinning speed cameras and overzealous traffic wardens.

And some will think, "wait a fucking minute? Why the fuck should I be held guilty when it wasn't my fucking fault? Isn't there something wrong here?"

Many will argue that it is the risky behaviour of some cyclists—particularly those who jump red lights and ride the wrong way along one-way streets—that is to blame for a significant number of crashes.

Quite. And, combining an "it'll never happen to me" attitude with knowing that they will not be held responsible, cyclists will do these things more and more.

In short, this law will have unintended but entirely foreseeable consequences. And the only people who will get fucked over are the eeeeeevil motorists.

So that's alright then.

However, policy-makers believe radical action is required to get people out of cars and onto bicycles or to walk more. Only 1%-2% of journeys are at present made by bike.

You mean that the prime motivation for this this shit isn't even to reduce the number of crashes—but to get people out of their cars? Just how fucking warped in the head are these cunts?

Perhaps these shit-stick bastards would like to cycle my 27 mile each way commute for me? No? Thought not.

What kind of mad, twisted, evil, monomaniacal little cunt would suggest such a gross distortion of our entire legal principles? Oh, look—it's a fake fucking charity...

Phillip Darnton, chief executive of Cycling England, an agency funded by the Department for Transport (DfT) to promote cycling, said four key policy changes were needed. “I would like to see the legal onus placed on motorists when there are accidents; speed limits reduced to 20mph on suburban and residential roads; cycling taught to all schoolchildren; and cycling provision included in major planning applications,” said Darnton.

Yes, that's right: it's the government handing our hard-earned money over to an "an independent, expert body" so that this absolutely-not-independent-in-any-way organisation can lobby the government for more curbs on our freedom. These bastards make me fucking sick.

Such proposals will be seen by some as part of a battle for control of Britain’s roads between motorists, cyclists and pedestrians.

One would have thought—since only one of those groups actually pays for the fucking roads—that the battle should be pretty one-sided, eh? Apparently not.

Still, I wonder if there are any other authoritarian authority figures with a vested interest in such a measure?

Last month Harry Wilmers, 25, a mental health support worker, was killed when his bicycle was hit by a lorry in Manchester. Wilmers was the boyfriend of Rebecca Stephenson, the daughter of Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan police commissioner.

Well, that's it: motorists are fucked then.

Even were I not a driver (by necessity), I would be fucking disgusted by this proposal—it should be struck down and the fuckers who proposed it punched repeatedly in the face. But instead it will be made law.

Fucking hellski.

"Democracy does not work"

Cunt though he is, Twenty Major is pretty darn good at getting succinctly to the heart of a subject.

Democracy does not work

Give people the chance to vote they vote for cunts. When the cunts get giddy with power and become even more cuntish the people still vote for them.

Only when the cunts become catastrophic cunts will we see a change. For cunts who are more or less the same as the cunts you’re voting out, they just haven’t had a chance to prove it yet.

Quite. Not to mention that only cunts would vote for other cunts.

Unless, of course, it is all some kind of strange cuntish double-bluff and, actually, I am only dreaming that the entire world is run by and for cunts, egged on by an entire population of cunts.

Any minute now, I shall surely wake from this nightmare. On the count of three.

One. Two. Three...

Change? We spunk on change. And fuck improvement.

Once upon a time there was a tedious, corrupt little cunt called John "Socialist Shitbag Masquerading As A Tory" Bercow.

Mister Bercow had some unfortunate experiences with some "expenses": essentially, he quite happily, and with malice aforethought, took the taxpayer to the cleaners and ran away laughing. Because he's a corrupt cunt.

Last month, The Daily Telegraph disclosed that Mr Bercow “flipped” the designation of his second home between London and his constituency when he sold two houses in the space of a year, enabling him to avoid paying capital gains tax (CGT) on the profits from either sale.

He denied any wrongdoing but said he would pay £6,508 plus VAT to HM Revenue & Customs to cover the tax he could have been asked to pay on the sale of one of the homes.

The Tory MP for Buckingham also claimed almost £1,000 for the cost of hiring an accountant to fill in tax returns. Members of the Government were criticised for submitting similar claims because it was rare for members of the public to be allowed to reclaim accountants’ bills as a legitimate expense.

Not only did John Bercow use "the rules" to avoid tax that any of the rest of us would have to pay but, as Guido so helpfully points out, he also maxed out his allowances in previous years.


In other words, John Bercow is a filthy fucking trougher who is never happier than when spending our hard-earned cash on... well, whatever he fucking fancies, frankly. He is a disgustingly corrupt, unpleasant little cock-weasel with dumplings for testicles.

I just want to make this absolutely fucking clear, because it has a bearing on what follows: John Bercow is a corrupt little fuck who has not only maxed out his expenses account with our money, but he has also bent the rules to within breaking point in order to avoid the taxes that he is happy to impose on us—the taxes, in fact, that fund his lavish lifestyle through his fat fucking salary and his ludicrously high expenses claims.

I would also like to point out that the Speaker of the House of Commons resigned because not only had he happily presided over the raiding of the public purse by MPs, and not only because he did his level best to stop any of the details coming out (using lawyers paid for with our money), but also because he himself was incredibly corrupt—bending the rules to within breaking point (sounding familiar?) and maxing out his expenses claims.

So, the Speaker has resigned.

At this point in time, the reputation of our Parliament is at an all-time low; rarely has the entire institution been held in so much contempt. This is because those who occupy the House—those who plonk their well-padded arseholes on the well-padded seats—have abused our trust, lived above the laws that they make to control us, raped our wallets and bankrupted the country.

And now this institution needs a new Speaker—the previous Speaker having resigned for being, basically, a corrupt, Glaswegian fucknuts.

So, what MPs should do is to elect a reasonably uncorrupt person to be Speaker, don't you think? Especially since it is the Speaker who oversees the MPs and ensures that they stick to the rules (such as they are).

After all, these very same MPs have been telling us how ashamed they are, how they realise that their actions were wrong, how they understand the people's anger. As such, they surely must want to elect an untainted Speaker who will be able to summon some moral authority when bringing reform to the system of allowances benefits-in-kind.

No. These corrupt little bastards have elected another corrupt little bastard as Speaker.

The only good thing about this whole sorry episode is... at least they didn't elect that fucking horse-faced cunt, Margaret Beckett.

Medicos: still not shutting the fuck up

To borrow a fine phrase from my colleague, The Filthy Smoker, there is still no cure for cancer—but it's still great to see that, nevertheless, the medical profession is not pissing about wasting our time and money.

Yep, once again the medical establishment comes together in order to fuck ordinary people up the ringpiece—and all in the name of science. Isn't that sweet?

CHOCOLATE should be taxed in the same way as alcohol to tackle the obesity crisis, Scottish doctors will be told next week.

Dr David Walker, a Lanarkshire GP, will warn many people eat their entire daily calorie requirement in chocolate, on top of their normal meals, raising rates of obesity and diabetes.

He said increasing the price of products containing chocolate would help reduce consumption and bring in more money which could be used by the NHS to deal with the health problems caused by obesity.

I'm really sorry, Crippen, but I am shortly going to join in the government's slating of your profession because they are all such fucking creeps.

The sooner we reduce the majority of GPs to begging in the streets—before their arses are hauled off to debtors' prison for non-payment of their ridiculously low medical school fees—the better, frankly.

In fact, the sooner that we privatise medicine and doctors realise that people are now free to take their money elsewhere, the sooner those GP cunts will stop pissing about in things that don't concern them and get back to doing some actual healing. Or they will starve: I don't mind which.

Hey, medicos! Shut the fuck up and get on with patching up patients. Oh, and just in case you didn't get it the first time—shut. The. Fuck. Up. You. Arrogant. Cunts.

Slight rest

Your humble Devil must apologise for the silence, but I appear to be suffering from a bout of blog fatigue, induced by watching the calamitous collapse of the economy and our civil rights. What is the fucking point?

Still, even with all of that, I do feel the need to point out a few things of interest. First up, via Obnoxio, what the fucking, fucking, cunting fuck is this fucking shit?

Foreign drivers will have to pay on-the-spot fines of up to £900 for flouting traffic laws under new legislation to be introduced next month.

If they do not have enough cash or a working credit card their vehicles will be clamped until they pay — and they will face an additional £80 release fee.

What the fuck? Nine hundred fucking quid? Has anyone normal got £900 kicking around spare in their bank account? Or on their credit card, for that matter?

After all, the only credit card that I have ever possessed had a maximum limit of a gigantic £300—a third of what one of these cunts would fine me. Isn't there some law about fining people beyond their ability to pay? I'm sure there is.

But it's OK, because it's only those filthy foreigners, isn't it?

The law will also apply to British residents who cannot prove at the roadside that they have a valid address in Britain.

Oh. That's just fucking great.

And what kind of document would you have to show to prove your address, I wonder? An official ID Card, perhaps? Yes, that might do it. But we were told that we wouldn't have to carry them on us at all times: after all, we don't have to carry our driving licence. (And tell me, since MPs have just voted to conceal their constituency addresses, will they be exempt from this law? You betcha!)

There is a reason that any policeman will give you a certain amount of time to present your driving licence after an incident—because it is incredibly silly to carry your fucking licence (or your passport or any other secure document) around with you. And yet now you are going to have to because otherwise these shitstains might clamp your car if you cannot produce such a document there and then. What the fuck?

Oh, wait! I know: they cannot do this because the principle that you cannot be fined without court representation—as enshrined in the 1689 Bill of Rights, I believe—was upheld. They can't do this.

Oh, but... That was the case with parking fines and they simply called them "administration charges" instead. So...

The fines will be described officially as “deposits” when introduced on April 1 because the money would be refunded if the driver went to court and was found not guilty.

Well, fuck me ragged: isn't that a surprise?

The AA said that the new law was long overdue because British drivers had been paying on-the-spot fines on the Continent for many years.

The AA should shut its fucking face. Seriously, we used to laugh at the fascist rules that the Continentals had to endure (when we weren't actively fighting the rulers), not sodding well emulate them.

OK, fuck this: I was going to have a rest but I'm absolutely fucking pissed off now...

Chris Huhne: fuckwit plagiarist

A little while ago, we looked at Chris Huhne's article that basically said "civil liberties are really important, except when I decide that they're not."

And now, via NeueArbeit Macht Frei, your humble Devil sees that Huhne has once more taken up his pen to lecture us on civil liberties.

The Liberal Democrats are determined to resist the slow death by a thousand cuts of our hard-won British liberties. George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was a warning, not a blueprint. Yet the Big Brother society that he satirised is growing before our eyes. Our forebears who fought so hard for the rights we have had stripped away would be shocked at what we've lost.

That is why we have published our freedom bill, detailing how we intend to roll back the draconian laws passed by successive Labour and Conservative administrations.

Well, isn't that a coincidence? For, as you might remember, LPUK organised a campaign to send a copy of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four to every MP in the House.

Participants were urged to send a copy of the book to an MP, and inscribe it with the words "this book is a warning, not an instruction manual".

Isn't it nice to see that Chris Huhne seems to have taken the message on board. It's a pity that he didn't feel the need to attribute it, and it's even more of a pity that he is about as libertarian as Stalin, but "slowly, slowly, catchee monkey", as they say.

Although, they never seem to say what you should do once you have caught the monkey. In the case of Chris Huhne, however, I think that we should just set fire to him. And his fucking monkey.*

* Nick Clegg.

MEPs and their big, fat perks

The Taxpayer's Alliance have a new report out on MEP expenses. The first part consists of the Galvin Report into MEP corruption, which was kept in a locked room and only allowed to be read by a few select EU personnel.

You won't find the following on the above link, but it appears in the press release circulated this evening...

The Galvin Report, named after Robert Galvin, the Internal Audit Official whose name is on its front cover, was written at the end of 2006 as an audit of the expenses and allowances claimed by a sample of more than 160 MEPs. The existence of the report was kept secret until February 2008 when news of its existence was made public by Chris Davies MEP. Even then, its contents remained secret and a select group of MEPs were only allowed to read the report individually in a locked and guarded room. Now published for the first time by the TaxPayers' Alliance, its findings include:

• Serious and repeated anomalies in payments for office assistance and services, including money being paid to seemingly irrelevant firms (including a creche and a company engaged in "the trading of wood"), and to companies which on further investigation did not exist, were untraceable or had registered no financial activity in their accounts. Some MEPs were found to be paying out their full assistance allowances, but had no assistants accredited or registered with the Parliament.


• A culture of huge "bonuses" being paid to staff members or handling firms at the end of the financial year, ranging from 3 times to 19 and a half times the employees' monthly salaries. Large "layoff" payments were also made to MEPs' staff without justification being provided.


• Loose rules which allow payments to be made without invoicing, and only require bills to be provided 12 months after payment. The audit found that less than 5% of audited accounts actually submitted the required documentation by that 12 month deadline.


• Widespread failure to comply with tax, company and social security laws. 79% of transactions that should have been subject to VAT displayed no evidence of either VAT payment or exemption. 83% of the companies through which MEPs paid their allowances for office services failed in their legal obligation to register with the Belgian national company database. 90% of contracts for self-employed staff had no evidence of legally required social security payments being made. 26% of assistants and 64% of paying agent firms used to employee staff displayed no evidence of social security payments being made.


• Evidence of MEPs using their allowances and expenses to bankroll their political parties is also revealed. Many MEPs make set monthly payments to their own political party for secretarial support, but receive varying numbers of staff in return, which raises questions over whether the payments are really simply donations. Some MEPs are found to be claiming for projects such as web sites that are actually promoting their political party rather than their work as an MEP.

Given the amount that our MPs defraud the taxpayer, these revelations about MEPs—whom we have always suspected of living high on the hog far in excess of their national counterparts (and that's saying something)—are hardly surprising.

Depressing?—yes. Appalling?—yes. Surprising?—absolutely not.

And on to the second part of the TPA report, which discusses the vast pay rise which MEPs can expect after the next Euro-elections.

How an MEP can become a millionaire, and their planned 47% pay rise

New research for the TaxPayers' Alliance and The Great European Rip-Off reveals that MEPs stand to get a 47% increase in their take home pay this year. Through a combination of increasing pay levels, a new lower tax rate for all EU officials and the plunging value of the Pound to the Euro, politicians in Brussels will see their pay rise hugely despite the rising unemployment being suffered by their consituents. As well as their soaring pay, the new book demonstrates that over and above their salaries an MEP can personally earn a further £1 million during a typical Parliamentary term through their generous allowances and expenses. The research note can be read here [PDF].

Key Findings:

• After the European Elections in June 2009, British MEPs stand to get a 47% increase in their take home pay. MEPs currently earn the same as a Westminster MP, £63,291, on which they pay British income tax of 26%, leaving them £46,835 in take home pay. Three crucial changes in their pay arragements will increase their salaries sizeably:
  
  
  1. After June, all MEPs will move to a new, standardised salary of €91,980—at 2008 exchange rates, that is a pay rise of 16% to £73,584.
  
  
  2. At the same time, they will cease to pay British income tax and will instead pay a new, reduced EU tax of only 15%, boosting their take home pay to €78,183. At 2008 exchange rates that means their after-tax pay will increase from £46,835 to £62,546—a 33% rise.
  
  
  3. The new MEPs' salary will be paid in Euros, which have gained greatly in value against Sterling since 2008. If exchange rates stay at around €1:88p, then MEPs will gain a further increase in take-home pay to £68,801. Going from earning £46,835 in take home pay currently to £68,801 under the new arrangements is a 47 per cent rise.
  
  
• It has been calculated that due to the generosity and laxity of the MEPs' allowances, expenses and pensions system, it is possible for an MEP to personally save enough money to become a millionaire over their 5-year term.
  
  

I think that it is time for a rallying cry and, as they go, I think that one of my bus slogans was rather good...

Our leaders are corrupt, useless cunts.
We are losing our jobs: it is time that they lost theirs.

Am I the only one sick to fucking death of these talentless fuckers dipping into our pockets the whole time? Surely not.

When is the revolution?

Chris Huhne: what a complete hoon

Chris Huhne: "don't listen to me. Seriously. I'm a total cunt."


Chris Huhne's snippet (it's not really an article) in The Independent has caused an outpouring of contempt amongst my libertarian colleagues not seen since Gordon Brown last opened his fat, droppy gob.

Freedom of speech is our most precious freedom of all, because all the other freedoms depend on it.

OK, so freedom of speech is pretty fucking essential, Chris. Yes, I agree. And because "all other freedoms depend on it" that means that when you suspend free speech, you suspend all other freedoms, yes?

What with you being a Liberal Democrat an' all, you would never advocate suspending our freedoms, would you? Oh...

The decision to stop people from exercising this fundamental right must never be taken lightly.

Um... So, it's bad to suspend freedom of speech, except when it isn't...

Neither should a decision to ban people from visiting this country. As a result, I have in the past defended people with some particularly odious views, such as the recent case of the Australian Holocaust denier Dr Frederick Toben.

OK... Chris Huhne is deploying an argument similar to that of the guy who claims that "many of my best friends are black": you wonder what bigotry you are about to be subjected to.

So, what turd is Huhne about to drop into our laps? Ooh, can you guess...?

In a civilised society, however, there has to be a dividing line between the right to freedom of speech and when it topples over into incitement to hatred and violence.

No, there isn't. Look, Huhne, you utter fucknuts, either you have freedom of speech or you don't; and "freedom" means the freedom of people to say things that you don't agree with.

If someone says something that you don't like, well, tough. If someone then goes and beats someone up, that is when you prosecute. Do you understand this, you tit?

Obviously not. And obviously, the freedom of speech that Huhne claims "is our most precious freedom of all" is not freedom of speech as I understand it. As I understand it, freedom of speech means the freedom to say anything; to Huhne, it does not.

In my opinion, Geert Wilders' revolting film Fitna crosses this line, as its shocking images of violence and emotional appeals to anti-Islamic feeling risk causing serious harm to others.

"In your opinion..."? Fuck your opinion, you cunt; why the fuck is your opinion any more important than mine, fuckface?

If it was my opinion that everyone over the age of 16 should be made to take Ecstasy, would you accept that? No. So why the fuck should I rate your opinion?

This is, quite simply, Cuntface Huhne using the law to enforce his personal opinion. Just like all of the other politicos do. Fuck you all, you cunts.

Ach, the man bores me: go and read The Nameless Libertarian for a more extensive and clinical filleting of this wanker.

UPDATE: on this subject, Bishop Hill points out that excluding Wilders was probably unlawful (see here, here and here), and then wonders if Liberty (the pressure group) is a complete waste of time, space and money ("yes" is the answer) and whether, at the very least, the humourless Shami Chakrabarti should resign.

David Davis is a politician and has presumably made a political calculation that he has little to gain from speaking out in favour of Wilders' coming to the UK, and a great deal to lose in terms of his future career (we assume that he will eventually seek high office again). We expect little else from politicians and can write off the LibDems on the same grounds.

Chakrabarti has no such excuse. She is the head of Liberty, a body that exists solely to speak out in favour of civil liberties. She has failed miserably to do so. Her silence over Wilders is not unprecedented either. She has made it abundantly clear that she doesn't feel that freedom of speech extends to nasty people; her words on Question Time last week can have left nobody in any doubt about that. She also has previous form on the "disappearing act" she has performed in the last few days, notably when Liberty maintained a determined radio silence over the Sikh play Bezhti.

Chakrabarti has demonstrated over the years that she will not stand up for those whose views she deems unacceptable. She will not defend unpleasant views. She will not speak out for unpleasant people. She hates racists so much that she will allow fundamental British freedoms to be trampled underfoot in order allow these views she detests so much to be crushed, regardless of the importance of the freedoms that are lost with them, and regardless of the duties entailed in her position.

What is the point of the woman?

There is no point to her: she should resign and take her smug face and charisma-bypass back into the obscurity from which she has somehow managed to struggle. But she won't resign as president of Liberty because, as far as I can make out, Liberty exists solely to provide Shami Chakrabarti with a salary.

Shami is a fucking twat. And Davis can get to fuck too. The both of them are fair-weather civil liberties campaigners, just out for what they can get out of it, i.e. personal fame and wealth.

Fuck 'em, and Chakrabarti especially: at least Davis has a sense of humour...

Tell us something we don't know...

It seems that Lord Digby-Jones has been reporting back, to a committee of MPs, on his experiences as a junior minister.

The ex-CBI chief described being a junior minister as "one of the most dehumanising and depersonalising experiences" anyone could have.

Lord Jones spent a year as a minister as part of Gordon Brown's original "government of all the talents".

Lord Jones said he applauded the practice of bringing outside specialists into government by making them peers and called it "an excellent idea".

No shit. Nice to see that the magic of a peerage continues to ensure that the man is grateful.

He described the civil service as "honest, stuffed full of decent people who work hard".

Yes. And...?

But he added: "Frankly the job could be done with half as many, it could be more productive, more efficient, it could deliver a lot more value for money for the taxpayer.

"I was amazed, quite frankly, at how many people deserved the sack and yet that was the one threat that they never ever worked under, because it doesn't exist."

Well, I think that we all knew that, frankly. Most of us know, or have known, people who work in the Civil Service and whilst (for the interesting posts) you have to be quite clever to get in, it is generally absolutely impossible to get sacked (unless you're a blogger, of course).

Furthermore, from the experience of friends that I have in the Service, they seem to spend so much time stabbing other people in the back whilst simultaneously attempting to avoid having a blade slipped between their own ribs that I am astonished that they manage to get any work done at all.

The Nameless Libertarian looks enviously on...

The threat of the sack doesn't exist. Sheesh. Proof, if any further proof was needed, that the public and private sector are not just worlds, but universes, apart. As so many people look down the barrel of a gun marked called "redundancy", I can't help but look at jobs in the public sector with a degree of envy. And the phrase "if you can't beat them, join them" is swimming through my mind.

Well, it isn't running through my mind: working for the Civil Service sounds like absolute hell. Not only are you spending most of your time playing internal politics, but you are also doing piss-all of any worth; and what substantial work you are doing is contributing to the erosion of the freedoms of your fellow countrymen.

Fuck that for a game of soldiers. I'll stick with my small private company whilst putting forward all of my powers to ensure that it is as efficient as possible and that it survives through these difficult times.

In the meantime, I think that we have found the reason why government never seems to be able to cut state spending: you see, you actually have to sack people and concentrate the minds and resources of those who are left...

Improving choice by bans

Councillor Clyde Loakes, Labour leader of Waltham Forest council and big, fat, fucking hypocrite.

Via The Englishman (from whom I also pinched the title), it seems that the state is renewing its fight against obesity.

Local authorities are resorting to more aggressive policies to combat junk food in schools amid signs that government efforts to combat childhood obesity are failing.

As are, apparently, government efforts to combat councillor obesity.

Anyway, why is the state so bothered about childhood obesity anyway? Surely it is a good thing if people die young since, despite its promises and the 23.8% taken from our salaries, the state can't afford to pay for our old age anyway.

A London council is to become the first in the country to ban new fast-food outlets from opening within 400 metres of schools, parks and other places where young people gather.

Oh, for fuck's sake...

Waltham Forest council, in East London, aims to limit the number of fast-food outlets that can be opened in town centres and shopping parades, and to restrict their opening hours.

Clyde Loakes, leader of the council, said: “We have too many fast-food outlets in this borough and we've had enough.

Who's this "we", pale-face? Obviously your residents don't think that you have too many fast-food outlets because otherwise you wouldn't have so many fast-food outlets.

What's that? Why? Because, Counciller Loakes, if people didn't want fast-food outlets, they wouldn't buy stuff from said outlets and thus you wouldn't have so many. Do you see?

We don't want to tell people how to live their lives—...

Oh right. What's the next cliche that you're going to wheel out, you fucking tit: "this hurts me more than it hurts you"?

... but at the moment residents simply don't have enough choice because of the amount of fast-food takeaways.”

Hang on, Councillor: what you are saying is that all of these fast-food outlets are crowding out shops selling healthier food, and so young people are actually unable to choose a healthy option: is that right?

So, when they are given a healthy option, what happens?

Research suggests that the Government is failing in one of its key battles against obesity, with children bingeing on junk food even when healthy options are the only item on menus.

So, you are going to close down fast-food outlets and replace them with... what? Nothing? Will there be derelict shop fronts? Will newsagents be allowed to open there, but not allowed to sell chocolate?

Let us say that it is your wish that healthy food shops open there: who the fuck is going to buy stuff from them? Or will we see wonderful, state-subsidised health-food shops? And will their results be as wonderful as the latest tractor statistics...?

Seriously, what the fuck is going on in this country?

Paying for old age

As it is a new year, I would like to start off with a light-hearted and amusing story. Unfortunately, I can't find one worth bothering with so, via Timmy, let's kick off with a coronary-inducing article instead.

Every adult could be forced to take out private insurance to cover the cost of their care in old age under plans being considered by the Government.

Taxpayers would have to pay hundreds of pounds in premiums every year while working, and would receive payouts if they later have to move into a nursing home.

The radical plan is being considered by ministers as a way to tackle the system of long-term support for the elderly in England, which is widely considered to be unfair, underfunded and too complex.

You fucking what? Look, you cunts, we already have a compulsory insurance system; it's called, entirely intuitively, the National Insurance system. We workers pay 11% of our salary into it, and our employers pay another 12.8% on top; over the next year, this is projected to raise £104.56 billion pounds [PDF]. Plus, of course, that felcher Brown, and his badger-faced sockpuppet, are planning to raise both sets of contributions by 0.5% in 2010.

So, where the fuck is my payout?

Oh, there isn't one, is there? Great. And now you cunts want me to pay privately, on top of that which you steal from me under threat of force? Fuck you, you shits: fuck you right in the ear.

I have been saying for some time that National Insurance is a massive fucking Ponzi scheme: people are told that their contributions is going to be invested over a long time, and the payouts used to pay for various benefits.

Lies. Stinking fucking Lies. The whole thing is a fraud.

Now, John B has previously pointed out that no one really believed that is how it worked.

I don't understand why taxing today's workers to pay today's retirees is viewed as a Ponzi scheme.

If we're going to get hardcore libertarian, then sure, I shouldn't be taxed to pay Sid and Doris Pensioner their gbp144 a week.

But if we think pensioners deserve rewarding for the time they spent working (and paying tax), then taxing me and DK to pay them doesn't seem like an obviously insane use of money.

The trouble being, of course, that now the government are feeling... well... a bit like Bernie Madoff did a few weeks ago, I imagine. They have taken all of this money and simply used the income to pay out early investors—and now they don't have enough money to pay out to the newer investors.

Whoops.

Isn't anyone else tired of the government lying to them about NICs? Isn't anyone else tired of seeing what is ostensibly their old age insurance being spunked up the fucking wall on fucking NI databases and subsidised bars for MPs? Because I am fucking raging...

Fine: I shall take out insurance for my old age: but I want the government to stop fucking taking my money every month and to return what I have already paid in. I will then happily sort out my own insurance over and above what I already do, of course.

For I already have a private pension (which I need, admittedly, to up the payments on), private medical insurance and private unemployment benefit. And I have signed contracts for them, so I know what my obligations are, what the insurance companies' obligations are, and what I can expect to get.

I have signed no such contract with the government. So, the state forces workers to make contributions—under threat of violence—and then simply decides to change the terms of the contract whenever they decide that they cannot be bothered to honour it; or when, having pissed all of our money away, the state decides that it cannot afford to pay for those things that it said it would. And, of course, with there being no actual contract, one has no recourse to the law.

It's a fucking shocking state of affairs. Over the years, this government in particular (but previous ones almost equally so) has wasted billions of pounds of our money—and now they are not even going to live up to the most basic of promises that they made.

They are an incredible bunch of fucking wankers.

UPDATE: the Whited Sepulchre is among a number of people who think that the US system is the same. [Emphasis mine.]

Here's Tim Slagle, writing in the December issue of Liberty magazine:

Here’s the reason why a private insurance program will always be a better option than Social Security: there was a slump in the market this week, but it will recover. Almost all the value it had will come back in time. On the other hand, everything you have ever paid into Social Security has been spent. It’s gone. Social Security is completely bankrupt, and trillions of dollars in debt. If it were a private corporation, its administrators would all be in jail.

So if you had your choice, whether to put 15% of your income into Social Security, or the stock market, where would you put it? And in a free country, shouldn’t you be entitled to make that choice?

First off, the total bankruptcy of Social Security has been brought to you by the same people who think they can regulate the stock market. But, I digress.

Let's take Mr. Slagle's statement a few steps further... Given the total lack of accountability in the Social Security system, I think that all of us—Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, members of the Green Party, and the Flat Earth Society—all of us would've prefered to put all of our money into the stock market from Day One, and do without Social Security altogether, right? There is no money at all in the S.S. fund. It's now a troubled Ponzi scheme. Surely we can agree on that much.

But what if you were only given the choice of withdrawing all of your contributions to Social Security and putting it into the market on the day before the recent financial meltdown? Would you still do it?

Of course you would. Unless we immediately open the border to a jillion Mexican teen-agers, there simply aren't enough people coming into the workforce to keep the current Bernie Madoff-style Social Security scheme afloat. It's doomed.

Quite.