"Arbeit macht frei"—May doubles down on the fascist state

I see that Mrs May is determined to double down on the fascist inclinations she displayed so shamelessly in the Home Office...

The Conservatives will use the power of government to "restore fairness" in Britain and spread prosperity more widely, Theresa May has said.

Well, that doesn't sound like a recipe for disaster at all, eh? Higher taxes and more interference in business all round then. And note the use of the word "power" here.

The prime minister told the party's conference the UK must change after the "quiet revolution" of the Brexit vote, urging people to "seize the day".

Labour were now seen as the "nasty party" and only the Tories would "stand up for the weak... up to the powerful".

It seems to me, Mrs May, that the entity that is most "powerful" is the state—it certainly has the monopoly on violence.

So, Mrs May, who is going to stand up to you and your ilk, I wonder...?

The state should be a "force for good" to help working people, she argued.

Fucking hellski.

The Glorious Leader goes on...

"If you're one of those people who lost their job, who stayed in work but on reduced hours, took a pay cut as household bills rocketed, or—and I know a lot of people don't like to admit this—someone who finds themselves out of work or on lower wages because of low-skilled immigration, life simply doesn't seem fair."

Hmmmm. What about if you are—and I know a lot of people don't like to admit this—someone who finds themselves out of work because of the National Minimum Wage (or National Living Wage, or whatever the hell it's called these days), Mrs May?

You know, the kind of person whose human capital is so low, that they will never get a job? Like, I don't know, a young person with few qualifications?

How will you use the "power of the state" to "restore fairness" in the face of this particular piece of government stupidity? Will your government stand against the power of your government...?

What's next—compulsory National Service for all citizens?

She stressed the importance of the role of the state, the need for government to be a force for good. She promised a new industrial strategy and enhanced workers rights. It was a very different message from that of previous Tory leaders who have sought to reduce state intervention and roll back the size of government.

So, if I think that reducing state intervention and rolling back the size of government is a good idea, who the fuck do I vote for?

Political choice in this country just became even narrower.

UPDATE: the ASI peeps have responded rather more coherently...

"If only Theresa May was serious about ditching ideology in favour of pragmatism and evidence – she’d have to abandon most of her main policy planks.

"Take energy price caps. We have evidence that these will lead to lower investment [PDF], lower production and more brownouts or even blackouts. Eventually, these policies may lead to electricity rationing [PDF] and nationalisation. High energy prices are mostly caused by high wholesale prices, and energy firms are not generally more profitable than other large firms.

"Or look at the employee representation on company boards – which is better described as union representation. Here, the evidence is that giving unions this sort of power can turn boards toxic, as happened to Volkswagen, and these rules have reduced the value of German firms by 26%. Other academic evidence suggests that board representation is just about the only bad way of giving workers more say in how their firms are run. So why on earth is this the policy that supposedly-pragmatic May is proposing?"

[...]

Ah yes—I had forgotten about May's lunatic idea for energy price caps. Once again, a government wants to intervene and disrupt the market—in order to fix a problem that the government has created. For fuck's sake...

I can only assume that Mrs May is planning to "restore fairness" in the Venezuelan way—by making everyone equally poor and deprived.

The motto of Mrs May's government must surely be Forwards to Fascism!

And so it goes on...

As the laziness of the festive season has started to wear thin, your humble Devil has woken up and noticed that the Coalition have quietly pledged to implement some spectacularly stupid policies.

The first of these is the Vickers Report which, amongst other pointless remedies, suggests splitting the retail and investment arms of banks. Despite the fact that this ignores the fact that the collapse started amongst the government-guaranteed retail arms of said banks, the government has said that it will press ahead with the recommendations in full.

The second piece of colossal stupidity is Cameron's reported commandment to implement minimum alcohol pricing: this suggestion really grips my shit for a number of reasons—not least that it won't work, that it will be illegal under EU law, that there is no drinking problem in this country, and that the massively-foreheaded twat has finally shown his true colours.

Most irritating of all, of course, is that we know that Tory aides read many blogs voraciously—and that, therefore, CCHQ are aware of all of the above. And they know that we know that they know. As such, they are pissing into our open mouths.

As such, I feel that some of these issues need to be addressed by your humble Devil—if only for my own catharsis. But, it is late, and so this post is a bookmark, an aide memoire for myself and a menu of things to come for my remaining readers...

An easy question

Iain Dale is soliciting people's answers for his LBC radio show tonight—I suggest that this might be an easy one...

7PM Coalition: Tomorrow is the first anniversary of the creation of the coalition. I want to know what you want to see the coalition do in its second year.

Well, I'd like to see them do what they promised in their first year—especially the restoration of civil liberties, cutting of red tape, slashing of the public sector and the shrinking of government.

Added to that, I would like to see elected police chiefs, the major reform of the NHS, the cutting of the tax burden, simpler taxation, the abolition of the Climate Change Act, the cessation in the persecution of smokers and drinkers, the reform of planning laws, more leaving people the fuck alone and Cameron telling the EU to fuck right off.

That'll do for starters. Next...?

Do the shake and E-Bac and put the freshness back

Steve Baker MP has been discussing the English Baccalaureate with some of his constituents and has subsequently tabled a question about expanding the scope of the subjects contained within it.

So, what is the English Baccalaureate?

In most European countries school students are expected to pursue a broad and rounded range of academic subjects until the age of 16. Even in those countries such as the Netherlands where students divide between academic and vocational routes all young people are expected, whatever their ultimate destiny, to study a wide range of traditional subjects. So we will introduce a new award – the English Baccalaureate – for any student who secures good GCSE or iGCSE passes in English, mathematics, the sciences, a modern or ancient foreign language and a humanity such as history or geography. This combination of GCSEs at grades A*-C will entitle the student to a certificate recording their achievement. At the moment only around 15 per cent of students secure this basic suite of academic qualifications and fewer than four per cent of students eligible for free school meals do so57. So to encourage the take-up of this combination of subjects we will give special recognition in performance tables to those schools which are helping their pupils to attain this breadth of study.

Which is all very laudable. But part of the problem with GCSEs—and, indeed, all exams in this country—is that the standards have become deliberately debased for short-term political gain.

Thus, not only have schools pushed their pupils towards easier subjects but the means of passing any subject has become far easier: exams focus on "soft" questions of opinion rather than enunciation of facts; papers concentrate on empathy rather than deduction.

The results is that schools teach to the test, not in order to educate their pupils—after all, their funding depends on the number of passes, not whether the children leaving those schools are actually have the knowledge to thrive at university or to get a job or even to understand the subject that they have spent 11 years learning.

Even on the simplest measure of literacy, Britain has dropped from 6th in the world in 2000, to 26th in 2003 (although the headline rate of literacy remained the same). We also have only 19.1% of adults on a high literacy level, whilst 50.4% are considered to have low literacy.

The challenge for the government, then, is not to ensure that more schools get more "passes", because such scores are fundamentally meaningless: the aim is to ensure that children are educated to the highest possible standard. And one way of doing this is to ensure that the exams test practical ability and are not debased in order to massage a creaky government's education statistics.

And this is why the English Baccalaureate is so misnamed, its title evincing the International Baccalaureate. Because the whole point of the International Baccalaureate is that it is international—an international, non-govermental organisation.

As such, it is not subject to the political whims of politicians and that is why it is recognised—internationally—as a good educational standard of attainment.

The English Baccalaureate—despite the misleading name—is nothing of the sort. It is, essentially, a diploma based on a few compulsory GCSEs: it does not actually raise the level of attainment for any particular subject, it merely ensures that pupils take subjects that the government of the time happens to favour.

If you want to introduce a rigorous, broad and internationally-recognised diploma, then why not adopt the International Baccalaureate?

If, on the other hand, you have particular prejudices about which subjects should be taught in schools but want to keep the actual standards in those subjects so low that you won't be hideously shamed by the piss-poor state of education in your country's schools, then why not make up your own shit and hook its name to that of a rather more credible institution?

As should be obvious, the English Baccalaureate is the latter and is—not to put too fine a point on it—a pointless fucking waste of everybody's time.

In the meantime, another generation of children are completely failed by politicians, teachers, unions and parents. But who gives a shit, eh—as long as those "passes" keep rolling in, who cares?

Whilst the kids might be absolutely incapable of grasping basic mathematics, the educational and political establishments are more than capable of understanding that the children are most valuable as exam statistics breathlessly regurgitated in positive headlines by a docile media...

Andrew Lansley is an utter bastard

Andrew Lansley: an utter bastard, authoritarian thug and all round scumbag.

Do you remember how NuLabour used to talk about "voluntary" rules for certain industries? And yes, if the industry did not comply voluntarily, these vermin would then say, with a deep note of fake regret in their voices, that they had no choice but to legislate because evil businesses would not ruin their markets themselves?

Usually it was over some perceived vice—such as drinks companies advertising their wares—or some non-existent scare, such as that over salt.

Well, it seems that the Coalition in general, and Andrew Lansley in particular, is doing exactly the same thing.

Restaurants and work canteens will put calorie counts on menus and food manufacturers will promise to cut down on salt and artificial fats under a set of agreements to be announced today.

The three voluntary “responsibility deals” agreed with the food industry are aimed at helping the public to eat more healthily, in a drive to tackle the growing problem of obesity among both adults and children.

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, believes that firms will be more likely to set ambitious targets for themselves if they are negotiated on a voluntary basis.

Rather than a “nanny state” approach, he is keen to arm the public with the tools they need to cope in an “obesogenic environment,” where people are bombarded with adverts for unhealthy food.

What, in the name of fuck, is an “obesogenic environment”? And why the bastarding hell should I—a 6' tall, 10 and a half stone man—be lectured at by Lansley and his fat fucking fellows?

Might I remind everyone that salt—in this case, sodium chloride—is absolutely essential for nerve function? If you do not get enough salt, you will die: if you eat rather more salt than you need then... Well, it does nothing much at all.

Furthermore, you need to have fats too, although I don't know what Lansley would class as "artificial fats".

But I bet that he also means to include that evil steroid, cholesterol—the great demon of the "fatty food" world. Like salt, cholesterol is absolutely vital to life, being...

... an essential structural component of mammalian cell membranes, where it is required to establish proper membrane permeability and fluidity. In addition, cholesterol is an important component for the manufacture of bile acids, steroid hormones, and Vitamin D.

This is what so annoys me about this bollocks: politicians legislate on the basis of rent-seeking obsessives waving false fucking information in their faces—such as the five myths about alcohol—and then they do active damage to people's lives because the average MP is so screamingly pig-ignorant about anything other than being a total cunt.

And quite apart from the rightness—or otherwise—of Lansley's policy, why the fuck should the food industry be forced to build the altar on which they are to be sacrificed? Because that is what is going to happen...

If firms break their promises, the Government will however consider taking compulsory measures.

Ah, yes, of course. The food firms totally understand that these are voluntary agreements. Unless, of course, they don't agree—in which case they will be compulsory.

Is anyone else ashamed at the fact that Lansley and his ilk claim to represent us?

And just in case Lansley's approach is not clear to you, here is a nice little illustration from Perry at Samizdata.

Imagine you are walking down the street and a man in a suit walks up to you holding a large cudgel...

"Excuse me," he says, "I have seen you walk down this street on a daily basis wearing a tee-shirt and in future I would like you to wear a suit and tie to raise the tone of the neighbourhood."

"Er, no," you reply, "I am happy dressed the way I am."

"I see," the man replies, "well I would rather not have to threaten to hit you with this cudgel if you do not do what I say so I want you to voluntarily agree to wear a suit and tie."

"But you are threatening to hit me with that cudgel!" you point out.

"No," he says, "I will only threaten to hit you with this cudgel if you don't do what I want voluntarily."

And some people thought that the Coalition might bring more freedom...

Pollbomb

nicked from bella gerens

All right, all you readers out there. Time for a pollbomb.

At publicservice.co.uk (Public Sector & Government News), they're running a weekly poll in which the question is:

Should public sector workers have to pay more to maintain the value of their pensions?

You won't be surprised to hear that the 'No' votes are winning.

Can we round up enough 'Yes' votes to make them think pubic sector workers are all in favour of paying higher pension contributions? It would save the rest of us money, after all. And they deserve our spiteful little tricks.

Join me! Vote for higher pension pay-ins for pubic sector workers. The poll is on the home page, in the right-hand sidebar.

Blue Meanies

The Conservatives' National Citizen Service is based on successful precedents set in other countries.

One does wonder what the fuck is going on in Tory HQ—occasionally they mutter about personal freedom but, whenever they announce a policy, it seems to be about the Conservatives' freedom to tell us what to do.

As a case in point, let's take this little article by Tim Loughton, headlined...

Our plans for a National Citizen Service...

... are a National Fucking Disgrace? Seriously, what the hell is going on here?

Since 1997, Labour has, true to its roots, concentrated on building big government. Gordon Brown’s unremitting control-freakery has peppered public services with targets and processes, regulation and paperwork. The result has been a bigger state.

We want to reverse this.

OK, I'm not going to argue with that. So, what's your solution, Tim?

Are you, perhaps, going to roll back the big state by cutting the number of things that it tries to run, slice public spending down to sustainable levels, enact a Great Repeal Bill to restore the personal freedom and civil liberties that have been stolen from us and generally get the fuck out of our lives...?

We want to breathe new life into public services by making them more genuinely public – we want public sector workers to have a much greater say over what they do and how they do it.

What the fuck? As The Englishman says, we do not want "public sector workers to have a much greater say over what they do and how they do it"—we want public sector workers to do what we, the public, tell them to do and to do it in the way that we, the public, tell them to.

In the vast majority of cases, we'd like them to fuck off down to the Job Centre—and line up in front of the tills, not sit supine behind them.

We want to make it easier for people to contribute to the lives of their communities in the ways they see best. We want a bigger society.

Oh really? Well, what if I don't want to be part of your "bigger society", Tim? Can I opt out?

No, of course I fucking can't.

This mentality drives one of our most exciting proposals for young people—the National Citizen Service. This will offer all 16-year olds the opportunity to take part in a three-week social project in the summer after they’ve finished their GCSEs. First and foremost we want young people to experience a challenge—we’ll take them out of their comfort zones on a residential team-building course of a week or more.

Ah, you're going to offer them "the opportunity" to do this are you? When you say "opportunity", could it be that you actually mean that you are going to make it compulsory? Timmy thinks that it's entirely possible but it is certainly true that when Cameron announced this policy in a Sun article of September 2007, it was stated that it would not be compulsory in law.

Experts say that would be the wrong way to encourage the 650,000 16-year-olds each year to participate. Instead, they say the scheme should become so attractive it will become a natural part of growing up.

Employers will take note of those who include NCS work on their CV.

Oh, they will, will they? Will that be made compulsory in law? Or is it possible that employers will look at a potential employee's competence, rather than whether they have participated in the Tories' fucking Summer of Slavery.

Students will qualify for a cash award on completing their course.

Oh, I take it back—students will be paid, so it's not slavery. It will, in fact, prepare them for the world of work: it will give them the thrill of getting a paycheque that has been honestly earned!

I remember how good it felt to get my first pay packet—not only was it a reasonable sum of money but it felt amazing to know that I had earned every single penny of it through hard work and skill.

These young people will learn that hard work brings rewards!

Half of it will go to the organisation with which they worked. The other 50 per cent will be donated to a charity of the individual’s choice.

Oh, no: I was right the first time—it is slavery. Not only that, but the Tories are teaching sixteen year olds that it is wrong to work for your own profit, that it is far better and more worthy to subjugate your talent and your hard work to the will of others, and that working hard will bring no reward to themselves.

Ayn Rand would have a fucking fit. And I'm none to pleased either.

And, of course, it is a fool-proof and ostensibly worthy way of funnelling taxpayer funds into the Tories' favoured vested interests. Not the evil vested interests, you understand, but the good vested interests—like the unions.

After that they will be sent back to their own communities to consider what they think they can do to help meet their area’s needs. They will then draw up plans for social action projects which they will set up and keep going with volunteer work in the following year. This will be inspirational hard work giving every young person the opportunity to rub shoulders with others from very different walks of life and work with them to build better societies and communities.

For fuck's sake...

Equally we need to build better rites of passage for young people in this country. At the moment too many of the perceived markers for adulthood are negative – getting drunk, smoking, having underage sex – NCS is an opportunity for us to offer the youth of today an indication that society will value them by what they put in, not what they take out.

And what of the kids value of themselves? Should all of our worth be dictated by what other people think?

Unsurprisingly, I think not. But then I am pretty damn sure of my own worth.

And, given that, I cannot be bothered to look at the last two paragraphs of this boilerplate bullshit—I have better things to do with my time than to fisk, in their entirety, the stupid vacuous ideas of stupid vacuous men.

But, seriously, fucking hellski...

Quote of the Day...

... comes from Shuggy, talking about NuLabour's attitude to law in general and education in particular.

From the Queen's speech we learn that children in England are to be given legal rights to a good education. Blair may be gone but the Project lives, its essence distilled in this proposal: why actually do something when you can pass a law that says something must be done, instead?

The rest of Shuggy's post is worth reading to, but the above quote so neatly sums up this government's attitude—the corrosive idea that legislating for something automatically makes it so. It's not only incredibly fucking delusional but it makes for bad law, severe miscarriages of justice, and an unprecedented constriction of liberty.

Why won't these dreadful little turds just fuck off—now?

Barking

Via Timmy, I see that M'Lord Mandelson is interfering in a car company.

In a move that reflects the deep concerns within Government about the threat to UK jobs and the viability of Magna's plans, the Business Secretary hired PwC to scrutinise the arrangements separately from a German study.

PwC, one of the "big four" accountancy firms, is believed to have confirmed Lord Mandelson's fears that Magna's restructuring proposals for General Motors Europe are not the most commercially viable and that a buyer taking a fresh look at the business would pursue a different approach.

So, the NuLabour government—having examined an offer to buy an ailing car company—now believes that someone, anyone, else would be better for the great British worker and the once-great British economy.

You know, there's something really familiar about this situation and I just can't think what it is...

Clueless, starring Kezia Dugdale

Kezia Dugdale: not to be confused with Kezie Ostrich. The latter is very common roasting on a barbeque at the Edinburgh farmer's market (on Castle Terrace) of a Saturday morning; the former is just common and currently roasting in The Kitchen.

A couple of weeks ago, your humble Devil horned in on a debate between @keeprightonline and @keziadugdale (the latter being some sort of NuLabour apparatchik of the Scottish persuasion).

My main contribution to the debate was this:

@kezdugdale Re: the tax problem, would you lobby for a higher personal allowance—£12,000, say? Then those on MNW would pay no income tax...

I thought that this would be a no-brainer. After all, surely the point of socialist policy is to ensure that the poor are not so... well... poor?

OK, I admit it: given NuLabour's continued hammering of the poorest in our society, I fully expected to get some excuse explaining why taxing the lowest-earners in our society is absolutely tickety-boo.

And I wasn't disappointed, for Kezia promptly got onto her Soapbox.

Labour’s MSP for Glasgow Shettleston, Frank McAveety is hosting a Members' Debate tonight on the campaign for a Living Wage – a campaign that I fully support.
...

Anyway, @DevilsKitchen soon got involved as well. He said if I was so concerned about poverty, why didn’t I support raising the personal tax allowance so that no one earning the national minimum wage would pay any income tax.

I disagree with that idea because I think that sends the wrong message about the national minimum wage. Branding it as more of a benefit than a right.

For fuck's sake...

[Cue Devil speaking slowly and clearly, as though explaining a simple point to a small and slightly doltish child.]

Kezia, your mission is, supposedly, to redistribute wealth so that the poorest in society are able to feed and clothe themselves—this is the desired, or at least professed, outcome of your economic engineering policies. It is not to make those people feel good about the fact that they are living off charity; which the National Minimum Wage (which uses the force of the law to net workers more money than they would otherwise have) most certainly is.

Now, one can argue that we, as a society, have decreed that x amount is the minimum that someone should decently earn. We can even say that we, as a society, benefit from them earning this minimum wage because it provides an incentive for people to work rather than lie around, rotting on benefits.

However, as Timmy pointed out at Comment Is Free, if we—as a society—think that people should earn a minimum wage then we, as a society, should pay the price.

Rather, it is that if we as a society decide that a certain price is immoral, then we have to pay for that price to change. As you can see from the numbers above, the burden of the minimum wage falls on three groups. Those who employ low-skilled labour see their profits shrink. Those who buy goods made with such labour see the prices rise. And of course many low-skilled workers lose their jobs (or have their hours reduced). But if we really think that wages of below £5.73 an hour are immoral then we should all be dipping into our pockets to increase wages to that sum. That means that we all get taxed and the money redistributed.

In other words, we should not force one particular group—in this case, business shareholders—to pay for our collective conscience. The price should be paid by all of us, through the redistribution of taxes (of everyone earning more than our positied minimum).

So, Kezia supports something that she calls the Living Wage; she does not explicitly state what amount she considers this to be, but I think that we can make an educated guess from the following section.

If we’re talking about tackling the poverty of those in work, I’m utterly convinced that a living wage is the answer.

700,000 Scots are low paid. Some facts:

• Around 70% of workers in the hotel and restaurant sector earns less than £7.00 per hour. Three fifths of these are women.


• Almost 60% of workers in the retail and wholesale sector earns less than £7.00 per hour. Again three fifths are women.


• 20% of directly employed staff in the public sector earns less than £7.00 per hour with over three quarters of these being women.

Now, I am not going to get into the equal pay based on sex debate here—that has already been comprehensively covered elsewhere.

However, I think that we can conclude, from the list cited above, that Kezia's Living Wage would be £7 per hour. So, let's do the maths on this, shall we?

1. A full-time worker on the current National Minimum Wage earns £5.80 x 40 hrs per week x 52 weeks in the year = £12,064. Your humble Devil would like to see this entirely untaxed, and so the net yield for the worker is £12,064.


2. A full-time worker on £7 per hour earns £7 x 40hrs per week x 52 weeks in the year = £14,560. Given Kezia's original answer to me, one can assume that she would levy tax on this, so the net yield for the worker is £11,970.05.


3. In this specific instance, the policy of the eeeeeevil right-wing libertarian would ensure that our worker was better off by nearly £100 per year, compared to the policy of the bleeding-heart socialist.

Of course, there are a number of papers that have researched just what the minimum living wage should be—one of the most recent (and comprehensive) was that published by the very-definitely-not-eeeeevil-right-wight Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

A single person in Britain needs to earn at least £13,400 a year before tax for a minimum standard of living, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) says.

Note, please, that the JRF's estimate is pre-tax: after tax, the net yield is £11,169.65. The conclusion here, of course, is that both Kezia and I are being far too generous.

And such generosity does, of course, have unintended (though quite predictable) consequences: workers get laid off, or their hours are reduced and suchlike. Or, of course, the business goes bust.

None of these consequences are mentioned by Kezia in her fascinating post—and nor is the provenance of the money to pay for her proposal. However, since she wishes to tax the income of our toiler, one can assume that she means to make businesses pay the higher wage rate—please bear this in mind as we continue dissecting this truly extraordinary post.

Ensuring that more workers receive a living wage will not alone end income inequality, but it will provide some justice for those who work in essential jobs, ones that everyone relies on, but which few people value.

And that's the point, Kezia: these jobs are low value. They require little training, no degree and, as a consequence, any monkey could do them. As such, they are low-paid jobs.

And it's not just about individuals and poverty—it's good for business.

Oh, this is going to be good...

Employers in the private and public sectors who pay a Scottish Living Wage will help lift the pay of thousands of low paid workers and increase an employer’s productivity, reduce staff turnover and absenteeism, meet Corporate Social Responsibility standards and contribute to boosting the economy more generally.

And how the fuck is all of this going to happen, precisely?

1. Businesses do not exist in order to "help lift the pay of thousands of low paid workers": they exist to provide a return to their shareholders. In fact, the directors of the business have a fiduciary duty to provide as good a return to the shareholders as possible. And if they don't do this—through making a profit—then they will cease to be a business and their workers will be workless.


2. And how, exactly, does forcing a business to pay its workers a higher wage for the same outcome "increase an employer’s productivity"? It doesn't: in fact, it does the very opposite. Quite obviously, paying a worker more for doing the same does not increase productivity—it decreases it.
   
   One could argue that the worker will work harder if promised a higher wage but even this falls down in this case. For when said worker knows that the employer must pay this higher wage, by law, then the worker sees the higher wage as his right: why should he work harder and thus be any more productive?


3. And the idea that a higher minimum wage across the board will "reduce staff turnover and absenteeism" is absolute crap. It won't reduce staff turnover in the slightest; if someone leaves a company to go to another one, it will often be because that company is offering higher wages. Upping the minimum that companies are reuiqred to pay does not reduce the incentives to find a new job at all: how could it when the current minimum wage has not?
   
   And reduce absenteeism—how? Again, all employers must pay the same legal mimimum, so staff are not likely to be any more inclined to show up for work. If they don't show for work, then they will be sacked. In many jobs, this would represent a cost to the employer in training new recruits but, as we have already pointed out, these are low-value jobs.


4. And who cares that employers "meet Corporate Social Responsibility standards": this is just more government-imposed red tape—red tape that stifles job creation.


5. Having been through the above, I think that we can dispense with the idea that the Living Wage will "contribute to boosting the economy more generally".
   
   What it will do is to make goods and services far more expensive for everyone, thus wiping out any possible gains for the £7 an hour worker anyway. Plus, of course, fuelling inflation.

So, having concluded that Kezia has fuck all understanding of economics, business drivers or worker psychology, let us plough on manfully to the end of this missive.

None of this is an attack on the national minimum wage or what it has achieved. In fact, there has not been nearly enough recognition of the fact that Labour has increased the national minimum wage year on year since 1997. Gordon Brown pledged this week at the TUC conference that he would continue to do so.

And for the reasons that I have outlined above, the National Minimum Wage "achievement" should be thrown as Gordon—along with the rotten fruits and turds—when he is finally driven out of Downing Street.

And the unemployed should be on the front line because, of course, the NMW has had another effect: someone whose labour is worth less than £5.80 per hour will now never, ever get a job. And that means that they cannot get either the experience or finance to better themselves—and that means that they are condemned to a life rotting away on benefits, a seam of potential destroyed.

And Kezia's Living Wage would destroy yet more lives, for there will be far more people whose labour is worth less than £7 per hour. That's yet more thousands of people consigned to the scrapheap of life, thanks to Kezia Dugdale.

Some people might say that is "in spite" on the current economic difficulties. I would say that it is even more important that we increase the NMW "because" of the recession.

Then you are a moron.

Particularly as low paid workers face more risk during this time. They are more likely to be less secure at work, face a higher risk of unemployment and have fewer resources to fall back on. Whether that may redundancy pay or personal savings.

Uh-huh. So, tell me, Kezia, do you think that forcing cash-strapped businesses to pay workers £7 per hour will make said workers' jobs:

1. more secure, or


2. less secure.

If you answered "1", then you really are a complete idiot. If you answered "2", there may just be a small sliver of hope that you might actually understand what I am talking about—all hope is not lost (unlike the poor souls that you Living Wage would fuck up).

It just makes sense and it requires bold and confident governance from the powers that be.

Kezia Dugdale, ladies and gentlemen, pushing compassionate policies for a more bankrupt and miserable Scotland. It's almost worth moving back to the 'Burgh, just so that I can spend my time hunting Kezia through the streets and wynds of Edinburgh, that I might pelt her with neeps, turds and tatties.

Fucking hellski.

UPDATE: on this subject, the lovely Bella has constructed a simple model showing how Kezie Kezia's £7 per hour might impact on a factory owner.

Worst-case scenario? My partners and I sack our 100 employees and sell the factory. My employees are now earning £0/hr. My partners and I go off to teach maths to left-wing dunderheads who, despite our efforts, will never understand that occasionally, just occasionally, raising the costs of a business means it is no longer worthwhile to operate that business.

Excellent...

A drink or three

The egregious wibblings of John Cowan stirred something in the copious brains of your humble Devil; I seemed to have written about such limiting factors in drinking before.

Oh yes...

I am rather behind with this, but that is because I thought that I had better calm down first. Then, whilst having a few libations (considerably more than three) with Witchibus last night, I realised that I still haven't calmed down, so I may as well write about it anyway.

ONE of Britain’s leading surgeons has called on the government to introduce curbs on the sale of alcohol, limiting the amount that customers can consume per visit to a pub or bar.

John Smith, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, believes that such restrictions would be the logical next step to improving the nation’s health following the ban on smoking in public buildings.

John? John, are you there? Can you listen to me now, please?

John, you are a sodding surgeon. You are President of a bunch of surgeons. Surgeons are here to patch people up, OK? They are not here to make politics, so why don't you take your drinking limit and shove it up your arse? And then you can FUCK OFF! The last thing that we need is interfering busybodies like you giving this bunch of fascist wankscum ideas. I bet some fucking lightbulbs went off in the Labour policy unit when you came up with that idea, John.

And, indeed, it seems that they did. In fact, the connections obviously went off in your humble Devil's head, because I then wrote the following post.

Now, obviously, there are very many pubs, so restricting people to three drinks in one would be a stupid idea; people will just decamp to another pub. However, imagine if, every time that you bought a drink, then you had to produce some kind of credit card type thing, which you would put into a machine and it would count the number of drinks that you bought in a day. If you were over your limit of three drinks, then you could not buy another. A database of that sort would not be difficult to build (the logistics of communications might be more problematic, but Switch seems to work it OK. Generally).

You could of course, get around this: a friend of yours doesn't want to go out, so you get a lend of his card which you use after your limit has run out. Unless the card was personalised in some way.

You know, like an ID Card or something...

All that was back in December 2005: obviously John Cowan has a long memory.

And he's still a cunt.

It's one law for us... #1

Baroness Scotland: fucked.

The Lady Scotland affair rumbles on, with the noble Baroness having dodged paying tax on her housekeeper's wages.

A Mail on Sunday investigation has discovered that Britain’s most senior lawyer flouted a series of basic regulations.

We can reveal that she failed to deduct income tax from Loloahi Tapui’s wages for the first ten weeks of employment. And Ms Tapui claims the Peer did not give her payslips or a formal employment contract.

The Baroness first faced calls to resign after it was disclosed that she had employed Ms Tapui, 27, without correctly checking her immigration status. She avoided the sack but was fined £5,000 by the UK Border Agency.

Now our inquiries have prompted fresh questions about her judgment.

Baroness Scotland wrote Ms Tapui’s weekly pay cheques to the housekeeper’s husband, solicitor Alexander Zivancevic, from her Coutts bank account.

Ms Tapui asked her to do this, saying she did not have a bank account, which should have made the Peer suspicious of her employee’s immigration status.

Ms Tapui also claims she was never given a written contract or wage slips, contravening the Employment Rights Act 1996.

She adds that the Peer only clarified her tax position after the MPs’ expenses scandal broke in May.

Let me make it quite clear—again—why these breaches are significant (because, let's face it, your humble Devil does not think that cheating the taxman is of any moral significance): first, it is because Lady Scotland is the government's top legal adviser and, second, because she has helped to draft and push through many of these laws.

These laws have been used to harass and punish many ordinary, hard-working men and women of this country.

And because our law-makers must—must—live under the same laws that they make for us. We already know that they have given themselves exemptions from some laws—this is absolutely beyond the pale but, alas, entirely legal.

So, where they have broken laws that do apply to them, as well as us, they must be hounded and harried with exactly the same fervour as we would be.

This is not purely out of spite (although, I'll grant you, there' s most definitely some) but because, if the laws are bad, then these bastards might be moved to change them and thus benefit us all.

That is the general argument.

In the case of Lady Scotland in particular, her inability to abide by the law—presumably, we assume, out of ignorance—throw serious doubt on her ability to do the job of Attorney-General.

And the news of two high-profile cases of government illegality—in the share capital case and in the video rating system—provide further evidence of her unfitness for the job.

Baroness Scotland has got to go—for reasons that are both ideological and practical.

Baroness Scotland: breaking the law is like "overpaying the congestion charge"

Oh, look! Via Guido (who also reports that the ugly baggage has been reported to the Bar Standards Board), Baroness Scotland is on the TV!

"... that I got caught." [Alright, I made that bit up. Convenient break in the video though, eh?]

I'll bet that the Attorney General is sorry after being found guilty of breaking a law that she brought in—she has been fined £5,000 (half of the possible maximum).

Attorney General Baroness Scotland has been fined £5,000 after being found to have employed a housekeeper who was not legally allowed to work in the UK.

The UK Border Agency said she took steps to check Tongan Loloahi Tapui's right to work but had not kept a copy of documents, as required by law.

Opposition parties say her position is "untenable" but No 10 said it was an "inadvertent" mistake.

She apologised for the "technical breach" and said she accepted the fine.

Shut. The. Fuck. Up. This is not a fucking "technical breach": this was—and I'll say it again—a breaking of the law that you introduced. It was a hideous, spiteful law that should never have seen the light of day and not only did you help bring it in, but you have also—somehow—weaseled your way into being the government's chief adviser on legal matters.

At the very least, you are an incompetent fuckwit who is not fit to hold such an important job, my dear Baroness; at worst, you are a lying, hypocritical, law-breaking shithole.

Given her position, Baroness Scotland should have been fined the full £10,000; since she cannot possibly have been ignorant of a law that she introduced, one can conclude that she deliberately flaunted it and with deception aforethought.

In a statement, Downing Street said: "The UK Border Agency is satisfied she did not knowingly employ an illegal worker. She examined documents of her status. She paid tax and National Insurance on her earnings. She employed her new cleaner in good faith.

"But regrettably she did not retain copies of the documents proving the right to work she was given. As a result she is paying an administrative penalty."

It added that breaches of the law were taken "seriously" and the PM had consulted the cabinet secretary about whether the ministerial code had been breached.

But because she had not knowingly employed an illegal worker and had checked documents Mr Brown believed "no further action" was necessary.

So, the only proof that she saw these documents is... Oh, wait: there is none. Nada. Nowt. Nothing.

Never mind, I am sure that the Devon farmer I posted about a while back—who was given an on-the-spot fine of £10,000 per worker—will be treated equally leniently, eh? No further action need be taken, I imagine...?

Still, thrilled as I am to see Baroness Scotland fined—though not, it appears, humbled—I believe that one of the best posts about this comes from Jackart. [Emphasis mine.]

She wanted to work, and indeed pay tax. Which makes Loloahi Tapui a more valuable citizen than 15% of the native-born population who sit on their fat arses watching Jeremy Kyle and reading the Sun (those who can actually read), and who don't get their doors kicked in by uniformed thugs in the pay of the state, which instead subsidises their idleness through a complex smorgasbord of 51 different benefits which ensure that no-one born in the UK has to work if they don't want to, and indeed get punished with marginal withdrawal rates of 90% should they even try.

Borders are an affront to human dignity, as is the welfare state.

Quite: that last line is succinctly put, and quite correct. But then, governments have never really been worried about human dignity—especially not the current crop. After all, would someone who possessed dignity go around pilfering petty cash from the taxpayer...?

Speaking of which, my dear Baroness... About that £170,000 that you stole...

UPDATE: I love this piece of logic from The Nameless Libertarian...

So, she broke a law that she helped to draft. And she has been fined for it. Yet, according to Gordon Brown, she doesn't have to resign. It really does beg the question of what the fuck someone has to in order to have to resign in the world of Gordon Brown. Unless, of course, the law she broke doesn't need to be adhered to. In which case is this law strictly speaking necessary? And if not, then surely the person who helped to bring it onto the statute books should resign?

Can't say fairer than that, eh?

Now, really... About that £170,000...

More booze bollocks

Yes, the Scottish Parliament is continuing with its insane policies regarding drink.

The Scottish government wants to end cut-price alcohol deals in supermarkets in an attempt to tackle the country’s booze culture.

The alcohol Bill is expected to set out a minimum price of 40p per unit — a controversial proposal that has drawn protests from the drinks industry.

The Scottish Conservatives are opposed to minimum pricing, but Labour has softened its position in recent months and is now expected to back the idea.

A spokesman for the SNP administration said: “The UK’s four Chief Medical Officers all back minimum pricing, and the BMA, Royal College of Nursing, the police, the British Liver Trust, and indeed the licensed trade association, all support the Scottish government’s proposals — which would stop high-strength beers and ciders being sold for pocket-money prices, while not affecting premium and quality products such as Scotch whisky.”

Look, it doesn't really matter how many scum civil servants or filthy fake charities back this idea: it is illegal under EU law—as Timmy points out.

Having a minimum price per alcohol unit goes against the Single Market rules. For it could potentially discriminate against low cost alcohol from outside Scotland in favour of high priced from within.

In fact, both The Times and The Grauniad reported that this was the case back in March.

So, given that this is common knowledge, how much taxpayers' money has the SNP deliberately poured down the fucking pan-hole in researching (poorly) and drafting (no doubt even more poorly) this piece of crap legislation?

And, as Nigel Farage points out in The Groan, just how can so-called "progressive" parties possibly support this shit?

Minimum sales prices for alcohol are a startlingly bad idea. As with excise duties, the effects are regressive. The poor would be forced to pay more for one of life's simple pleasures while the rich would not notice: they are already imbibing the good stuff that costs far more per unit than these suggested 40 or 50 pence per unit minimums.

It's difficult to see that this idea passes any sort of test for being progressive: or even fair come to that. As to the suggestion that alcohol costs the NHS £3bn a year, given that excise duties on the stuff already raise far more than that I think we've got that covered as well.

If one is a subscriber to the economic idea of "revealed preferences" then I think that we can most definitely say that the SNP, LibDems and Labour hate the poor, don't you?

You stupid fucking cunts: it is none of your business how much I fucking drink, OK? If you are worried about people getting punchy when drunk, arrest those people—do some proper fucking policing. And stop punishing the innocent for the crimes of the guilty, you disgusting totalitarians: just stop it.

The only good bit of this debacle is that the whole incident might highlight the power of EU law to ordinary people; the downside to this, of course, is that the silly sods might embrace the EU as being a good thing.

In fact, if I credited the SNP with that much intelligence, I might think that this was the entire point of this ridiculous exercise...

For the record

Your humble Devil replied to this silly post at Liberal Conspiracy. Given that my comments there often get tampered with or deleted (because Sunny, like many Leftist demagogues, isn't too keen on people questioning his judgement), I thought that I'd record it here for posterity.

If I wanted to be charitable to Hannan, I’d say that his position is that we’ve got to decide one way or the other: either we let people come to the UK but without benefits for doing so, or we limit immigration and we enforce our laws properly.

Everyone is talking about "immigration" and "immigrants" as though there were only one type. There aren't.

There are two types of immigrant to this country: EU citizens and non-EU citizens.

EU citizens—through EU law—must be allowed all of the same benefits as the natives. That means that they can claim the same benefits, use the same services, etc. and have complete freedom to move or settle in any EU country.

As some people may know, over the last six months or more, I have been dealing with the British government's disgusting and inhuman attitude to the second set of immigrants—the non-EU citizen.

Non-EU citizens are not allowed any benefits, despite paying full taxes. Non-EU citizens are often not allowed to stay in the country if they have no job—the most common Tier 2 visa is tied to an immigrant's job: if they lose the job, they have to leave the country immediately (it doesn't matter whether they can still support themselves, through savings, etc. They have to leave).

The problems that we have are not with the latter group: it is not they who are putting a strain on public services. The problem is with the EU citizens, mainly from poorer parts of the EU, who we must treat as though they were natives.

Now, whichever of the two approaches above you consider to be right (or, like me, you might consider that the both of them are completely stupid) doesn't tremendously matter—but any debate on immigration must acknowledge the fact that not all immigrants are equal in this country.

DK

Regular readers will know, of course, that your humble Devil proposed his own solution to the immigration problem.

So, here is my proposed solution, and it is a solution designed to be implemented tomorrow—that is, it assumes that we are still in the EU, etc. So, here it is: no immigrant may claim benefits until they have been working—and contributing tax (i.e. cash in hand work will not count)—for four years.

But wait! The EU will not let us treat EU citizens any differently to British citizens. Great! The same thing applies across the board, for British citizens too.

When National Insurance was first implemented, you had to have been paying in for a certain amount of time—and earned your "stamps"—before you could start getting payouts. To an extent, this is still the case, but other benefits are not, theoretically, part of the National Insurance system, so they are paid out without any requirement to have paid in.

This should stop, right now.

So, everyone—regardless of where they are from originally—gets treated in exactly the same way: no one shall receive any benefits until they have paid tax into the system for four years (an arbitrary number—we could make it higher, if you like, or lower—four years seems a reasonable time to me).

In this way, we can stop paying for people's lifestyle choices (including encouraging the feckless to have children); we can diffuse the resentment based on the "bloody immigrants, coming here and stealing our benefits" argument; we give people an incentive to pay tax rather than do cash-in-hand work; we stop people coming here with massive families in order to soak our ridiculously generous benefits system (and thus reduce immigration); we can remove these spiteful bars to non-EU immigrants working (and thus allow private companies to hire who the fuck they want); it will provide us with an incentive to ensure that our schooling is up to scratch (since natives will be competing with immigrants on an equal footing); it allows us to open our borders to those who want to come and work here (and neutralises Hayek's problems with doing so whilst a Welfare State exists); and, of course, we will substantially reduce our social security bill.

This seems to be a sensible solution to me, and it stops the disgustingly racist separation of non-EU and EU citizens (yes, it is racist, since it is based on where you come from and thus your race) that is inherent in our two-tier immigration system.

Oh, yes: and it stops hard-working people who want to remain here from being kicked out of the fucking country by a bunch of inhumane, jack-booted shitstains who, frankly, make our country look like some kind of fucking authoritarian's pleasure-ground.

Oh, wait...

The telescreens don't have an off-switch...

Blinky Balls: does he really get off on watching chavvy women having a shit in their own bathrooms? Only Yvette Cooper can tell us...

... although I wish to god that Ed Balls did, the winky-eyed cunt. Have you seen the nictating bastard's latest intrusive scheme?*

The Children’s Secretary set out £400million plans to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV super-vision in their own homes.

They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.

Private security guards will also be sent round to carry out home checks, while parents will be given help to combat drug and alcohol addiction.

Around 2,000 families have gone through these Family Intervention Projects so far.

But ministers want to target 20,000 more in the next two years, with each costing between £5,000 and £20,000—a potential total bill of £400million.

You know what? Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to send these fuckers a copy of 1984 each—although we did inscribe, in big fucking letters, this is not an instruction manual.

Still, you have to hand it to Blinky Balls—he's responding to a very real problem. Oh, wait...

Ministers hope the move will reduce the number of youngsters who get drawn into crime because of their chaotic family lives, as portrayed in Channel 4 comedy drama Shameless.

Yes, because real life is just exactly like "comedy drama Shameless" and, given that, putting people under permanent CCTV surveillance in their own homes is absolutely the most proportionate response, isn't it?

No, it isn't! What the fuck is going on?

Sin bin projects operate in half of council areas already but Mr Balls wants every local authority to fund them.

He said: “This is pretty tough and non-negotiable support for families to get to the root of the problem. There should be Family Intervention Projects in every local authority area because every area has families that need support.”

Putting people under 24 hour surveillance isn't "support", you wonky-eyed cunt—it's fucking totalitarian.

Pupils and their families will have to sign behaviour contracts known as Home School Agreements before the start of every year, which will set out parents’ duties to ensure children behave and do their homework.

Or what? What will happen to them, precisely, Ed? You'll spy on them all day?

Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you? I bet that's what you do all day, isn't it? I can imagine you, Ed, your eyes bulging (even more) at the screen as you watch that dirty, dirty, dirty slapper Ms Smith showering lasciviously in front of you—you rubbing your cock through your pockets (because to touch the flesh would be a sin) whilst Ms Smith is rubbing her ample and dirty, dirty, dirty devil's dumplings with the soap. Grrrrrr, get an eyeful of that, eh, Ed...?

Bugger off, you authoritarian little shit: seriously, fuck right off and go dogging or something...

UPDATE: as John B points out in the comments, it seems that my caveat* was justified and the whole CCTV in their own homes thing seems to be a total fabrication by The Express. This should not be taken as any kind of confirmation, or otherwise, as to whether or not Ed Balls gets off on watching women having a poo.

* OK, this is The Express, but I'm going to take it at face value for now.

Harriet Harperson—bigoted and wrong

A few days ago, Harridan Harperson—the Worst Person on the Planet™—decided that the whole banking crisis had been caused by too many men in the banking system.

Asked whether the financial crisis would have arisen if more women had been in senior positions, Ms Harman referred to the US bank that collapsed and prompted international turmoil.

"Somebody did say... that if it had been Lehman sisters rather than Lehman Brothers then there may not have been as much," she told GMTV.

Riiiight. So, can I look forward to this fucking evil little witch eating her own words?

"What?" I hear you cry.

As you may know, one of the very dodgy financial instruments that brought the whole banking system crashing down was the Credit Default Swap (and these have made it particularly difficult for the banks to assess precisely how much debt they are holding, and the quality of that debt).

And now, via @gareth_e_clark, it seems that it was a woman who invented these jolly little bundles of fun.

You won't find her on Fortune's list of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business but Blythe Masters may go down in history as the woman who is responsible for the 2008 collapse of global financial markets. You can't get more powerful than that.

When I started researching credit default swaps --the financial vehicle that Blythe Masters is credited/blamed for inventing and which Warren Buffet described in 2003 in his annual letter to shareholders as "financial weapons of mass destruction", my image of its originator was definitely not pink.

So sure was I that the culprits were testosterone-driven venture capital types that before I had the facts I had already begun my mental argument of why a woman would never have come up with a scheme that could bring global markets to their knees.

So much for fact-less based arguments.
...

As recently as September, Ms. Masters was defending the credit default swaps in an email exchange with The Guardian.

"I do believe CDSs [credit default swaps] have been miscast, much as poor workmen tend to blame their tools."

NC Painter has a short article written by Blythe Masters in 1997 where she describes how the credit default swaps will revolutionize banking. NC Painter added the bold italics.

By enhancing liquidity, credit derivatives achieve the financial equivalent of a free lunch, whereby both buyers and sellers of risk benefit from the associated efficiency gains."

Ms. Masters obviously isn't a devotee of TANSTAAL—"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch,"—an acronym made popular in the 1966 novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, which, according to Wikipedia, discusses the problems caused by not considering the eventual outcome of an unbalanced economy.

Oh dear. It looks like Harridan Harperson needs to shut the fuck up and crawl under a rock somewhere and die. I mean, obviously I thought that was the case before I stumbled across this little gem, but this has merely strengthened that feeling.

Bugger off, Harperson, you bigoted, sodding loon.

P.S. HowStuffWorks has a rather interesting way of describing how Credit Default Swaps work. Or, rather, what happens when they don't.

Imagine that you could purchase your friend Jimmy's health insurance policy from the company that issued it. Everything's going smoothly; you're raking in the dough as Jimmy makes his monthly payments. But things take a sudden turn for the worse after Jimmy's legs are crushed in a car wreck. Jimmy can't afford the healthcare costs, but luckily he's insured—by you.

You find nothing but cobwebs in your savings account and realize that you can't pay for Jimmy's health care. Jimmy's still insured (he's faithfully made his premium payments), so who pays the hospital bills? The insurance company sold the policy to you, and you owned it when Jimmy's accident happened. You were caught with the hot potato.

Jimmy's hospital realizes his insurer won't cover his costs and releases him, but he still requires care. So Jimmy sues you to pay up, but you just blew all of your money completing your collection of Pat Boone albums, which suddenly doesn't seem like such a good investment. Even worse, a trove of Boone's albums was discovered in the estates of some recently deceased collectors, and the market value of your collection plummets. You sell the collection for half of what you paid for it and put it toward Jimmy's health care costs, but it's a drop in the bucket. Ultimately, you're forced to declare bankruptcy.

Yup, that's as clear an explanation as I've seen.

Cameron says a naughty word (or two)

I was listening to the Cameron interview on Absolute Radio this morning and—when Call-Me Dave wasn't wheeling out the platitudes, I rather enjoyed it. One exchange in particular made me laugh out loud.

"Politicians do have to think about what they say," said Mr Cameron.

“The trouble with Twitter, the instantness [sic] of it, is I think that too many twits might make a twat.”

Apparently Cameron has now been forced to apologise for this, and for using the phrase "pissed off" in relation to how people felt about MPs' expenses—a somewhat mild reflection of public opinion, I'd say.

Anyway, here's reporter Krishnan Guru-Murthy commenting on Twitter.

Oxford Dictionary says twat means either women's genitals or a stupid/obnoxious person...so Cameron was either a bit offensive, or very.

I think that my comment on all of this can be easily distilled into a few characters. In fact, it was—in my reply to that po-faced, MSM twankunt.

@krishgm On the other hand, no one who isn't a complete twat gives two shits about it. #naughty_words_exist_grow_up

I can't believe that these people have driven me to defending David fucking Cameron.

Fucking hellski.

Big fucking numbers

There's an illuminating article in The Telegraph today, pointing out that... well... pointing out that the government is spending our future at an alarming rate.

Treasury figures show that welfare payments will exceed income tax receipts by almost £25 billion. Normally, income tax receipts comfortably cover the benefits bill.

In 2008/09, gross income tax receipts were £152.5 billion. In the same year, social security benefits cost the Exchequer £150.1 billion.

In 2009/10, the Treasury is expecting to take in £140.5 billion in gross income tax receipts. Social security benefits are projected to be £164.7 billion.

The disparity between tax revenue and welfare costs was identified by Andrew Brough, a fund manager at Schroder Investment Management, who suggested that the amount of money spent on social protection could soon exceed that raised from both income tax and national insurance.

According to an official Treasury forecast, benefits will cost £170.9 billion in 2010/11. That is equal to what the Government will spend on the NHS, schools and universities combined.

Fucking hell. Seriously, what the fuck is going on? Oh, hang on: let Charlotte Gore tell you...

It’s this ignorance of the ‘opportunity cost’ of money taken from the private sector and individuals by the Government that continues to baffle and amaze me. I’ve said before myself, the Government now spends more in a year than the entire wage earners of Britain earn combined. If you think about it, that sort of figure—over 700 billion—is the equivalent of 28 million private sector jobs. That’s 700,000,000,000 divided into the average wage of £25k. 28 million jobs. More new jobs than there’s people in the country to do them.

Yet it actually buys us a mere 5 million public sector jobs. And the biggest reason given for protecting Government spending? It’ll cost jobs. Ha. Good one. What… wait? You’re serious? This is really happening?

Yes, I am afraid so. And I'm afraid, my dear Charlotte, that your lovely LibDemmy type people are not going to curtail this madness by even one iota. But that is another (fairly fucking short) discussion.

Anyway, it isn't jobs that we are generating here: it is free money for poor people. Oh, and people who decide to have children that they can't afford to pay for, and people who can't be arsed to work, and piss-poor plays that no one wants to watch, and crappy artists that no one wants to fund, and the fucking rest.

Your humble Devil pays just under £600 per month in income tax and NICs and gets... what? Oh yes, I get to be dictated to by a bunch of morons and party lapdogs. Thank fuck: I thought that I was being milked into penury for no good fucking reason whatso-fucking-ever.

I pay over £200 a month in petrol, of which about £160 is tax. Fan-fucking-tastic!

I pay another £138 a year—£11.50 per month—in car tax. Bonus!

I pay another £80 per month in Council Tax. I love it!

I pay 15% on just about everything that I buy. Whoopee!

Not including VAT, tax on cigarettes and tax on booze, I am being taxed at 35.5%: seriously, which is a fair old chunk. And I am not a high earner—I am only just above the median wage level.

This year, motorists will pay £26.6 billion in fuel duty. At the same time, the Government will pay out £27.2 billion debt interest to the investors who hold Treasury bonds.

Debt interest payments are growing rapidly. Grant Thornton, an accountancy firm has estimated that by 2013, debt interest will cost £58 billion, exceeding Government spending on education in England and almost as much as the Treasury raises from VAT.

The rising cost of welfare payments and debt interest represent a political embarrassment for Gordon Brown, who has described such spending as the "costs of failure."

Delivering his 2000 Budget speech, Mr Brown made clear that money spent on debt and welfare was money lost to the public services. He said: "Our promise was to reduce the costs of failure - the bills for unemployment and debt interest - in order to reallocate money to the key public services."

Well, it is the cost of failure, yes—except that it is not money lost to public services, it is money lost to the people who have earned it. It is a lost opportunity cost—what might those people have done with their money had they kept it?

They might have invested it, they might have spent it, they might have started businesses with it; they might not have got into so much debt, they might have been able to put down a decent deposit for a house, they might have sailed round the world. They might have used it to build wells in African shitholes, or donated it to those less fortunate in their own country. All of these things—and more—might have been done, and will now not be.

Some will, of course, say, "well, the government might have done these things too"—but that is to miss the point. The point is not simply that the government would have done these things inefficiently, but also that it is not the government's money—the government has no money except what it extorts from us at the barrel of a gun.

To return to the example of my own finances, once you throw in VAT and everything else, I am probably handing over half of everything that I earn to the government so that they can piss it away on people who decide that they want to have children, or decide that they want to get so fucked up on booze that they end up bothering A&E; Charge Nurse on a Friday night.

The state is spending some £150 billion on benefits: if we accept the face figure of about 2.2 million unemployed, then each one of those people should be receiving about £68,000 per year.

Except that there are another 2.5 million on incapacity benefit. OK, well, even so, each one of those people should be receiving some £31,900 per year.

What's that? Of course they don't because there are other benefits? Well, yes: but why? Benefits should provide a safety net for when someone is out of work—or absolutely cannot work. Now, I'm pretty sure that they are not receiving £32k a year, so where the fuck is the rest of my money going?

Actually, most of the money is probably going to pay Civil Servants £40k a year in order to administer a system that doles out £3k a year to those who are out of work.

This really has to stop. And no, I am not in any way impressed by the main parties' squabbling over a billion here or a billion there—it is small change frankly. After all, the Tories aren't even proposing to cut government spending in real terms: they are only proposing to cut the rate of spending.

We simply cannot afford such footling crap from our politicians, and most people in this country understand that. As Eamonn Butler wrote at the ASI some time ago...

If the government sector had grown only in line with inflation, rather than far above it, taxpayers would be £200 billion better off—enough to abolish income tax, corporation tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax.

Eamonn reiterated this in the Telegraph this week...

If spending since 1997 had risen no faster than inflation, we would be spending a third less than we do now, and could abolish income tax, VAT, and council tax entirely.

The entire article makes depressing reading, laying out the full scale of the government's plofligacy—and the terrifying way in which NuLabour seem unable to grasp that they cannot simply carry on spending more than they take in tax: it's utterly unsustainable.

Eamonn does have a few sugestions as to how we can stop this insane spending spree, and try to bring the state books back into some semblance of order.

The task is to reduce public expenditure without it showing. A freeze on spending and recruitment for a couple of years, then pegging it to inflation, would be surprisingly effective at re-balancing the books. (If spending since 1997 had risen no faster than inflation, we would be spending a third less than we do now, and could abolish income tax, VAT, and council tax entirely.)

Another useful move would be to publish online every cheque the Government signs, so we can see what it is spending and where. Private firms would be able to show what they could do more cheaply. And citizens could point out where they think their money is being scandalously wasted, as with the £300 million on departments’ service contracts, wasted through bad management, or the £200 million lost through bad procurement of hospital buildings.

Then there are the IT projects, such as the NHS records system, that are billions over budget and months or years late (the Department of Employment alone spent £59 million on a computer system that did not work). Exposing such wasteful incompetence would help eliminate it. And do we really need to spend tens of billions on ID cards?

Along with the Royal Mail, we can privatise the Tote, Channel 4, BBC Worldwide, air traffic control and various utilities, which would bring in a handy £20 billion. And we can get rid of central bureaucracy by measures like simply handing head teachers their bit of the budget and telling them to get on and spend it as they see fit, rather than as Whitehall bureaucrats think they should. The same could go for health – give the budget to patients or their doctors, not to layers of bureaucracy such as the strategic health authorities. And the quangos need to be culled again: they have grown in number, cost and power under Brown. For what gain?

Meanwhile, dozens of local government officers are now paid more than £100,000 and retire on generous index-linked pensions – something now almost unknown among the private-sector employees that work to support them. As this newspaper reported yesterday, PricewaterhouseCoopers claims that 96 per cent of companies regard final salary schemes as unsustainable.

About a third of Child Benefit is little more than pin-money for the middle classes. It should be given to the poorest. By taking everyone on the minimum wage out of tax entirely, we would see a stampede into work by those who we presently make better off on benefits.

Another huge saving would be to speed up the plans to raise the pension age, reflecting improvements in health and longevity. This is by far the largest spending change one could make. Yes, many people would not like it – though others would be delighted to avoid forced retirement at 65. But it would be hugely symbolic – a return to honesty in the public finances, and an end of the idea that we can all live at someone else’s expense. If this recession has taught us anything, it should have taught the politicians that.

But this is only trying to fix the economic damage that NuLabour has wrought—the damage to Civil Liberties has been almost as egregious and just a frightening.

Make no mistake: this country is in a very fragile state, and I do not see any of the main three parties advocating the tough measures needed to right it.

The best that my Tory supporting friends can say about Cameron and his merry men is that the country will (probably) be slightly less fucked if the Tories get in. It's not an assertion that fills me with confidence.

When will the politicians wake up and smell the bankruptcy?

Statement of the fucking obvious

In terms of quotes, this one from the trap-mouthed Vince Cable has to rank as one of those moments in which an MP seems to get it.

"We have to be much more honest with people than we have been in the past."

Oh really, Vince—ya think?

Still, it's nice to see a politician admitting that he and his colleagues have been lying through their teeth for the last god-knows-how-many years...