George Osborne to watch fuel prices 'like a hawk'

The eyes have it!

It's good to hear that the windfall tax on oil companies announced in the Budget will not be passed on to motorists in higher fuel prices.  George Osborne says ministers will be "watching like hawks" and will be wanting to "make sure" the tax rise is not passed on to motorists. I hope his talons are sharpened. A visit to his manicurist may be in order.

The Budget was like a curate's egg. Good in parts. Still no mention of clawing back the tax that large corporations just don't pay. Maybe the hawks have diplopia like me. In which case a good pair of spectacles might help or a hawk with gimlet eyes!

Budget taxes but no flights of fancy

I knew we would be given the stick first and carrot second. It doesn't appear too bad all round. The Coalition should not worry about upsetting people. Most sensible people are resigned to the fact that the deficit needs to be removed as quickly and efficiently as possible. If anything is going to upset the taxation applecart it will be the media. They can't help trying to drive a wedge between the Tories and LibDems. It's OK for Harriet Harman to snipe away. That's her job as she sees it. But I think it's a bit rich for the BBC to harp on about who is sitting beside whom on the front bench etc, etc.

Given the media frenzy before the budget was even delivered I half thought Ryanair's chief executive Michael O'Leary was going to be chancellor for the day. £1 off this and that but VAT on breathing! As Michael Winner might say, "Calm down, my dears. Calm down".

The Coalition has its fans. I'm one of them. Better a coalition than a washed out Labour administration. If the prime minister is to get any trouble, though, it won't be from the opposition. It will be from some on his own side and from some in the media. I've noticed that Tories who favour the coalition call their LibDem colleagues "honourable friends" and those that don't call them "honourable gentlemen" (or ladies, of course!). It works equally well from the LibDem perspective. An easy way to spot possible troublemakers.

The media seem to be uncertain about coalition politics. It's taking their mindsets some time to adjust. They also have a difficulty with the opposition. Harriet Harman is sometimes described as the Leader of the Opposition and sometimes as the Acting Leader of the Labour Party. It all depends on what point is trying to be made.

Anyway, austerity times apart, I think it may well work out rather well.

George Osborne's Counting House

I am still wondering how Britain will get out of the financial mess. The government seems fairly certain it will mean tough times. But for whom? Are we to rely on the bankers to get us out of the mess? If so, it's more funny money and a greater catastrophe down the line.

Britain is no longer a manufacturing country of note. OK, some things are made in the UK, but mostly we import things we want "others" to make. These being mainly dragooned Chinese workers. Globalisation is a kind of empire strikes back. It is also significantly unpatriotic. Even bordering on high treason. Export the jobs, import the cheap merchandise. Everybody is happy. We now live in some kind of wonderland fueled by collective denial and financial amnesia. I do no exclude myself from joining in the scrum. Very soon the Chinese workers will demand better conditions and then what do we do? Connive with the politburo or cave in to their demands?

Some say each man, woman and child owes £22,000. Some put it as high as £35,000. The debt counter on this blog has it just passing £33,000. Who really knows? The thing is most people don't earn £22,000 so they will have to get some form of easy payment plan going. It's commonly called taxation. But if everybody draws in their horns and doesn't buy as much, VAT goes down in revenue take. David Cameron talks about wastage by which he means people as well as things. We've just got 3000-odd HIPS surveyors thrust onto the dole. A prime example of cutting back. But will it save any money. We can sack all and sundry in those jobs we think are useless but where are these people going to earn money?

The stark reality is that all this grandiose talk of scaling back in order to reduce the deficit means diddly squat unless the country PRODUCES something that other countries want to buy. Proper goods and proper services. Anything else is akin to moving the deckchairs around on the Titanic.

Nick Clegg plays Robin Hood today

Some say the party conference season is just like a series of pantomimes. Well, if that is so, the Liberal Democrats are putting on Robin Hood with Nick Clegg in the starring role as Robin of Locksley himself. Vince Cable, as Friar Tuck, is the Treasury spokesman of the LibDems. He is all for a 0.5% annual levy on the most expensive homes in Britain, raising £1 billion in extra tax. This would apply to the extra value over the £1 million mark. Are there that many million-pound mansions in the country? The Lib Dems say about 250,000 property-owners would pay about £4,000 a year each on average mostly in the South-East of England. The tax would be based on Land Registry valuations. That includes quite a few properties worth considerably more that £1 million.

Nick Clegg says, "I think people, even at the top end, now accept we need to try and rebalance things a bit so that everyone moves together - the whole of society moves together. This is a small correction which I think will make a big difference for people who are really struggling to make ends meet." I am all for helping people out but "rebalancing a bit" is surely not going to help matters much in the struggle to pay back our National Debt.

He says the reason for the new tax was "fairness" and rebalancing "one of the most unfair tax systems around". Granted, but we need a powerful hedgecutter to trim things back, not a puny pair of secateurs!

VAT will have to go up. Bank bonuses will have to be curtailed. Corporation tax will have to go up. Public spending will have to be seriously reduced. It will hurt, but this is the time to take off the rose-tinted specs and get a pair of glasses that gives us 20/20 vision!

We want honesty and transparency in politics

The political elite in Britain have long been used to treating the electorate as morons. Somehow it is seen as an electoral own goal if a politician tells the truth. Lying is not encouraged but spinning the truth to such a degree that it only vaguely ressembles its original status is. Also encouraged is the black art of the political double entendre and the equally absurd habit of deliberately not answering a straight question.

Gordon Brown has been saying recently how much he recognises the public's desire for transparency. Yet he seems incapable of admitting any fault other than to suggest "we are all to blame". Even now he is encouraging his ministers to denigrate the Tories about "swingeing cuts". Everyone knows that the UK is heavily indebted. They know the banks and the government are still sitting on toxic debts. So why, when there is no public money to talk of, the Prime Minister insists that he is going to invest more money. What money? There is no money. He is just gambling on the future tax take of generations to come.

This is the Gordon Brown who sat by whilst the sub-prime scandal exploded around him. Yes it started in America, but it was British banks who were up to their eyeballs in the lending racket. He implies now that he never thought to ask a question. Not one ounce of inquisitive vibes left his body. We must therefore understand that he was either incompetent or a calculating character who hoped it would all blow over.

He never qizzed the bankers, he sought to delude the public, and he blamed others. Now he is acting as an invester with a philanthropic heart. It's all balderdash. He knows it and we know it. Ed Balls is a man where the disingenuous remark is always available. "The Tories are ideologically wedded to cutting spending to fund tax cuts for the few," he warbles. Old style rubbish politics.

George Osborne is right to say that the public wants the truth. We want to know how much the country owes and what taxes have to be raised to pay back our debts. Unless we know, we will not be able to have confidence in the future. That future could be one of selfishness now leaving future generations saddled with a third-world existence or it could be one where we really tackle the root problems and create an economy that is vibrant and entrepreneurially virile!

It's in our hands and it lies with our votes.

Browned off with bailouts?

I've just seen Gordon Brown on television, with Alistair Darling giving appropriate backup. The two are still convinced that throwing money at the problem is the only way out. Some agree, but many more I suspect are either in disagreement or are highly uncomfortable with it all.

Brown looked tired and drawn. If he doesn't get it right soon, he may have to do an Anthony Eden on us. He still blames the banks. He is angry. Well we all are, but he has had access to information we didn't. In August 2007 the sub-prime fiasco blew up in our faces. Ever since, he must have been asking some questions, surely? He just seems to be following events rather than anticipating them or even asking simple questions.

He needs to get those bankers in and put a financial pistol to their heads. And he can bring in Angela Knight in too, of the British Bankers' Association. She was Conservative MP for Erewash and was Economic Secretary to the Treasury in John Major's government. She seems to think more roses are growing in the garden than most of us can see!

We need Ron Paul over here to give us all a pep talk!

Gordon Brown to nationalise free enterprise!

Prudence has nothing to these days. She's definitely like Mr. Rochester's wife! Stuck in the attic, wondering what became of her. Gordon has taken up with a flibberty gibbet by the name of Gay Abandon!

The BBC says ministers are considering plans to guarantee up to £20bn of loans to small businesses to help them survive the downturn. This in effect would mean the taxpayer coughing up for every defaulted loan. Could make Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac look like amateurs!

The Conservatives say that every child born into the country starts off with a £17,000 debt. Guarantee schemes are OK if they are there to help the entrepreneurial activity of the country, but this is just bailing out failure.

The country needs to be reassured, because confidence is what it is all about. Most people are not confident, and no amount of posturing will help until money flows in the normal way. People need to be able to part with a pound in the reasonable knowledge that it won't be their last.

Ron Paul on Fox Business News

Just before I turn in for the night, this gem from Ron Paul on how not to solve a credit crisis! More for the moral victory, I think.

Out with the money changers!

Most of us are familiar with the money changers being summarily thrown out of the temple, as described in the New Testament. This current episode of the goings-on of greedy money changers has only one aspect different. Instead of God's House being defiled, it is our own country that has been defiled. However, the results are not too dissimilar.

The Daily Mail had a good headline today. As I went into my local newsagent this afternoon, it was staring up at me from the rack. It screamed at me about bonuses. We have been forced to hand over £37 billion to bankers who have been inept, injudicious and ill-informed. They, in turn, gobbled up £17 billion in bonuses last year.

Now what sort of business loses money, other peoples money, and still has the affrontery to claim justification for such arrant greed?

Gordon Brown is a man with a large vocabulary in his body language. Recently he has taken to impersonating a toothless man attempting to chew gum when confronted with difficult questions. When asked why these people should not repay their bonuses for the good of the nation he simply took on this new aspect of body talk. Again, when asked if anyone was going to be investigated for possible criminal activity (as in the US), he repeated the impersonation.

If these bankers had an ounce of moral fibre they would hand back SOME of this largesse. However, what we find is the sort of behaviour like that of Sir Fred Goodwin, lately of RBS, pleading well into the early hours for his cup to runneth over even now. Some knight!

In all my disgust at their behaviour, I agreed with someone this morning who said, on the radio, that the banks were not wholly to blame. We as borrowers could have said NO. That is very true. However, whilst personal responsibility is usually limited to within the family, corporate responsibility goes much wider.

By taking in the toxic loans, repackaging them, and flogging them off to the next fall guy in the pack, they have destroyed the financial system as we know it. They may not be crooks as a judge would know them, but they have been judged crooks by the outside world.

What's the point of voting McCain?

Even before the election has happened, John McCain has allowed his staff to fold their tents in many states. In Michigan, they've pulled up the stakes, at least, and are no longer campaigning there, barely a month before the US presidential election. Surrender in some states is "inevitable" says his political director, Mike DuHaime. Have you ever heard of such a thing before?

What's the point of further debates with Obama? "I heard you threw in the towel, John!". How will McCain respond to such a comment?

Not only that, but John McCain has come out with some muddled thinking over this bail-out plan. He votes for it in the Senate, but says he wants to rein in Wall Street. He voted to give tax breaks for the top 1-2% wealthiest people running around after these toxic loans. That probably included Henry Paulson when he was chief bottlewasher at Goldman Sachs.

The Republican Party has got itself into a sorry state. If only they had believed in Free Enterprise and not Corporate Greed. With free enterprise everyone should be in a win-win situation. With corporate greed only one side wins.

I reckon that every American is in this to the tune of $10,000 each. That includes penniless beggars. They of course won't or can't pay. You can bet your bottom dollar the fatcats won't being paying either. It's just like Kevin's dad in the Wonder Years used to tell his kids, "It's the average guy that ends up paying the bills!".

Congress is oblivious to it all says Ron Paul

Listen to this! Ron Paul outlines what's wrong with the present situation. Makes a whole load of sense, I think. No wonder those morons want him sidelined!

Ron Paul on the Global Financial Crisis 9/18/08

McCain's taxman v. Obama's taxman! Taxing times ahead?

John McCain's senior economic adviser is Doug Holtz-Eakin and Barack Obama's senior economic adviser is Austan Goolsbee. The BBC had the grand idea of putting them head to head.

Mr Goolsbee said, "Barack Obama's tax cuts for ordinary Americans are three times larger than John McCain's. The way that John McCain's package ends up being three to four trillion dollars more is that they give humungous tax cuts to high income people and large corporations." One in the eye for McCain.

Mr Holtz-Eakin told the BBC, "In this economy in the past six months with over 400,000 jobs lost we've seen the small businesses - those with less than 50 employees - add 283,000 jobs."

He underlined the importance of not damaging those small businesses. "Keep them in a position where they don't have onerous health care costs and mandates to provide expensive benefits to their employees." Which basically implies that Obama would stifle enterprise.

I think the only way to get out of this mess is for BOTH business and individuals to feel that they are succeeding. Just favouring one only will just cause more problems.

Listen here to the debate.

Ron Paul!! You were wronged by the wrong!

I wrote just a couple of posts ago that George Bush got drunk. I'm still figuring out what his intoxication is exactly. As far a counting the pennies he's botched that one up big time. He entered the White House with a budget surplus and is due to pass on to his successor a deficit of $482 billion. Let's round it up to $500 to be on the safe side. This is a staggering amount. It is more than a $1000 for every person that breathes air in the USA! That's the actively employed to the bedridden and the incarcerated. Exclude everyone who isn't working and the message hits home. Every American is working two months out of twelve, not to pay legitimate taxes, but to pay back the spendthrift behaviour of a man who thinks others "got drunk"! Forget the regular taxes, they come on top of this whopping great headache.

If ever this is going to be rectified it will need half the penpushers running government agencies to be put out to grass. In any country it cannot be right for the bulk of the citizenry to be sweating their guts out to pay for the extravagances of politicians who take a cavalier attitude to the problems of government. Ron Paul had a message to cut the stifling bureaucracy that may one day bring the United States to her knees. He was cruelly sidelined by the snout-troughers and brown envelope brigade. Liberty will get down from her plinth and cast them aside I hope. The Ron Paul Revolution is not dead. It is alive and breathing and will grow. Then ordinary people can take back what they thought they were getting in 1776. Representation in order to decide taxation. And it will stop the Founding Fathers spinning in their graves!

Mean Labour in a fantasy tax world!

Ed Miliband, the thrusting younger brother of David Miliband, says of the 10p tax band abolition, "It's a matter of regret that some people lose, but overall more people gain than lose as a result of this Budget. The biggest gains go to the poorest people in society, particularly people with children." He must be doing all this on the back of an envelope! 5.3 million people will be worse off. They are the poorest in society. This represents about 10% of the taxpaying public.

Of course, Mean Labour doesn't know how many people will be affected, because they are in denial. Jane Kennedy was on Newsnight last night boasting almost that she was the most unpopular minister in Britain. She couldn't answer the question about how many were affected. The woman's a total disaster!

David Cameron is right! "We will be stepping up our campaign to get the government to think again on abolition of the 10p tax rate. Now is absolutely not the time to be hitting 5.3 million people with an extra tax burden. The government is kicking people when they are down. We are looking carefully at what we can do in the Commons to get the government to think again," he said. Conservatives, at their best, have always looked after the poor, whilst being firm with inflation and positive with enterprise. To be fair, the Liberal Democrats and a lot of Labourites are also very keen to see this attack on the poor overturned.

New Labour has the air of the zealot about it. It appeals to those with a chip on the shoulder, and this leads to mean-spirited action. I can't wait to see the back of them!

New Labour kicks back at the poor!

Whatever I may think of the New Labour regime, I always imagined they might keep some semblance of socialist thinking in their brains when it came to helping the poor. Under Blair, this wretched party grovelled around dubious millionares, sought the affections of pop stars and celebrities, and generally got about the business of making sure their own troughs were full first.

But watching John Hutton on television trying to say that the decision to abolish the lowest income tax band wouldn't be that bad, I thought I can't wait to see them put out to grass. Hopeless is not the word for them!

Low income families are going to be hard hit. They are going to have to face up to annual income losses of between £50 and £300. Some kind of socialism! It stinks and Hutton should be ashamed of himself.

Just a ridiculous mean and petty-minded action. New Labour? Mean Labour more like!