Mark Zuckerberg had it all.

Most successful social media company in the world.

Umpteen-billionaire in his 20s.

Beautiful girlfriend.

And presumably a Philippe Starck Lemon Squeezer.

And then he got the Hippy, Hippy Shake, and innoculated himself with Social Management-Speak:

Personal relationships are the fundamental unit of our society. Relationships are how we discover new ideas, understand our world and ultimately derive long-term happiness.

At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.

People sharing more — even if just with their close friends or families — creates a more open culture and leads to a better understanding of the lives and perspectives of others. We believe that this creates a greater number of stronger relationships between people, and that it helps people get exposed to a greater number of diverse perspectives.

By helping people form these connections, we hope to rewire the way people spread and consume information. We think the world’s information infrastructure should resemble the social graph — a network built from the bottom up or peer-to-peer, rather than the monolithic, top-down structure that has existed to date. We also believe that giving people control over what they share is a fundamental principle of this rewiring.

….

We believe building tools to help people share can bring a more honest and transparent dialogue around government that could lead to more direct empowerment of people, more accountability for officials and better solutions to some of the biggest problems of our time.

By giving people the power to share, we are starting to see people make their voices heard on a different scale from what has historically been possible. These voices will increase in number and volume. They cannot be ignored. Over time, we expect governments will become more responsive to issues and concerns raised directly by all their people rather than through intermediaries controlled by a select few.

Through this process, we believe that leaders will emerge across all countries who are pro-internet and fight for the rights of their people, including the right to share what they want and the right to access all information that people want to share with them.

Ugh.

I would print some more,  but there’s 2200 words of the damned thing.

A punt on which to put your pension?

Cartoon Credit: Gaping Void, 2007.

Zuckerberg was on a roll … is a post from: Anna Raccoon

I saw something the other day, something utterly unremarkable in its banal common sense:

“Give tax breaks to manufacturing businesses in areas of high unemployment”

I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it? When there is high unemployment in an area, giving tax breaks to businesses that use “less-skilled” people seems like such a good idea.If you give tax breaks to these businesses and they can consequently employ more people because they enjoy the advantage of paying less tax. And getting people employed is much more desirable to people than the loss of tax revenue.

But why is manufacturing such a sacred cow? Do you not think call centres or legal practices might not employ people with low skills to perform low-grade administrative work?

And why, indeed, should these tax breaks only be offered in areas of high unemployment? If giving tax breaks helps businesses employ more people, why not give all businesses tax breaks?

Further, if tax breaks do indeed help businesses, which is pretty self-evident, why stop at giving them this relief or that relief? Why not absolve them from taxes altogether? Surely the more tax breaks they have, the more they can employ? And when a business does reach a level of “full employment”, the taxes levied are only borne by either the customers of the business (in higher prices), the employees (in lower wages) or the shareholders (in lower dividends, which often means lower pensions).

Businesses are a legal fiction, they cannot pay taxes, they can only distribute the taxes to other people who actually pay them.

There is a lot of emotive language about businesses evading or avoiding tax, but the truth of it is that these businesses are being kind to their employees, customers or shareholders. You know, actual people.

The idea of “taxing businesses” exists solely to hide the fact that government is taking more money from our pockets than we realise.

When we cry out for rash and importunate banks to be penalised, we’re actually begging the government to reduce the pensions we’re going to get one day.

When we chastise Vodafone for “sweetheart tax deals”, we’re also bemoaning our bigger pensions, our cheaper mobile phones, and people earning a better wage in a Vodafone call centre.

Doesn’t sound quite so unfair now, does it?

Tax breaks are a very good idea. There should be more of them, and not just for business. We also deserve to keep more of our own hard-earned money to spend on the things we believe are important. Things which I don’t believe are important are wars, PFI, endless layers of government bureaucracy or transferring money from me to Capita or EDS or whoever to make a shambolic mess of yet another useless government IT project.

Do you not think that you could spend your own money on welfare more wisely than some faceless bureaucrat? Do you not think you could do without the bureaucracy that requires yet another wasteful, grandiose IT project?

Consider these things the next time you hear people calling for more tax.

Tax Brakes? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Not political, not media, not anything else – I just like it.

Revolights are LED lights which fit on your bike wheel rim, and turn on and off as it turns, so as to give an arc of white light at the front, and a red arc at the back. I think it is probably a supplement to, rather than replacement for, traditional cycle lights – but I can see huge benefits in visibility from the side.

revolights. join the revolution. from revolights on Vimeo.

Here’s how they are put together:

What are Revolights? Revolights consist of 2 thin profile LED rings (white in front, red in back) that mount directly to each wheel rim (just below the brake calipers) using a series of rim specific clips. Power is supplied via a thin wire to the hub where a lightweight and slim, USB rechargable polymer lithium-ion battery is held in a special bracket. A small magnet is secured to the fork to provide speed and orientation information to the rings.

It is a project for which they are seeking $43,500 using the Kickstarter service; they have achieved almost $17,000 already.

The one obvious downside I can see is that they are slightly more difficult to put in your pocket than a normal light.

via Swiss Miss.

Revolutionary Cycle Light is a post from: Anna Raccoon

And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England’s mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

Is it not true that the United Kingdom is vastly overpopulated? All our resources stretched to breaking point, house prices crazily high because of a severe shortage and our precious pastures green under constant threat from unscrupulous builders?

Well, in a word: no. A brief examination of this rather startling document shows that actually, our precious pastures green are, if anything, far too carefully protected. Scanning through the various gatekeepers to development, the Environmental Stewardship Scheme leapt out as a particularly egregious restriction on our ability to provide affordable housing. If we did away with paying tax money to farmers to maintain fake “biodiversity” in what are basically built-up or near-built-up areas, we could have all the affordable housing we could eat.

Planning Permission Audacity Where to Build 01

That, in turn, got me thinking: do we even want affordable housing in the UK? Having lived in several different countries in my life, it strikes me that housing in the UK is remarkably expensive, for what you get. And it seems to me that the cycle of incredible boom and bust in UK house prices is not apparent in many other countries. “Getting a foot on the housing ladder” is not merely the symbol of settling down and having your own home (albeit heavily mortgaged for decades). It’s potentially your pension pot and also a handy source of refinancing “income” when times are good. It is, in a strange way, a bit of a business that almost every Briton can aspire to. In many other countries, there doesn’t seem to be the same aspiration for home-owning, precisely because it is more about a place to live, than your own magic money machine.

The whole system is built on false foundations. The reason why housing is disproportionately expensive is precisely to support people who already have houses. Strict planning regulations prevent people from building sufficient houses for everyone. Builders like this, because they can build more profitably, or at least, they can charge a higher sticker price. Existing home owners like this, because their asset appreciates and they get to treat it as a kind of money-making machine.

If we had the double advantage of not paying for faux biodiversity and access to approximately six times the current area to build homes, house prices would fall dramatically. Pretty much everybody would be able to afford to buy a house and the decision to buy or to rent would be taken without the additional consideration of rent-seeking that currently mars the market. All of this could be done without affecting the green belt, or any area of scientific interest or forest or any genuinely arguable protected area.

Imagine how nice it would be if you were paying 25% or 30% or possibly even 50% less on your mortgage or rent. think how much more you’d be able to spend on other things, or save or do something useful with.

But governments have taken the tiger by the tail now. They can no longer reasonably strive for any sensible or near-market housing policy without dispossessing and outraging the millions of existing home-owners. Reducing house prices to actual demand and supply requirements without false constraints on supply mean that we spend much more on our housing than we need to, while a significant number of vested interests coin it by pressuring government to maintain strict regulations to maintain their financial advantage.

If it were Tesco or (heaven forfend!) a bank indulging in this kind of blatant racketeering, we’d all be screaming blue murder.

But in this case, the rent-seeking scum who insist on the maintenance of these corrupt practices is, well … us.

And was Jerusalem builded here, among these dark Satanic Mills? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

There’s a brilliant visualisation of the US Government Debt, in $100 bills, starting with a single bill and ending in a comparison of a trillion dollars with a jumbo jet, over at with wfynoway.

The pile above is $100m. It is surprisingly small, and will fit on a pallet.

If I have my facts right, it is also not too far away from the amount of cash earned by both John Major (made it) and Tony Blair (well on the way) since leaving office as Prime Minister.

And it would all fit in a small white van. That’s fitting, somehow.

What does $100m look like? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Thanks to Fraser Nelson for pointing out a world-class piece of carpet-bagging by Ed Balls MP, the Shadow Chancellor.

In his “Speech for the Alternative” the Sorcerer’s Apprentice Economic Wizard showed how he was resolute when he was running the economy in the late 1990s:

I would say that:

- setting out tough fiscal rules just before the 1997 election and sticking to Tory spending plans for the first two years;
- delivering Bank of England independence;
- ensuring that in 1999 all the proceeds from the 3G mobile license sale were used to repay the national debt;
- and resisting UK membership of the Euro;

…they all show that I’m not someone who shirks tough decisions.

That’s us told.

The cv is a little inconvenient, though. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was a wonk, according to his official biography:

He was economic adviser to the then shadow chancellor, Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, 1994–97; secretary of the Labour Party Economic Policy Commission, 1994–97; economic adviser to the chancellor of the exchequer, 1997–99; chief economic adviser to HM Treasury, 1999–2004; and a research fellow at the Smith Institute, 2004–05.

and he wasn’t elected an MP until 2005.

The New Statesman have the full speech, and the critique over at the Coffee House is worth a read.

Do you remember that Backbencher chap – Grout? Brout? Born? Brown, was it? I mean the one who used to be Emu to Ed Balls’ performance Rod, when Ed used to run the Government.

Good job he’s not around to disagree with any of this.

Matt Wardman blogs at <a href=”http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/”>The Wardman Wire, on media, politics and technology, in addition to writing at the Raccoon’s burrow.

Ed Balls in Fantasia is a post from: Anna Raccoon

The FIFA soap opera continues, and Placido Domingo, Johan Cruyff and Henry Kissinger have been drafted in to save world football.

As Sepp Blatter put it:

“These gentlemen are more or less advisers, they are not the experts but advisers and what they should be also is the kind of council of wisdom which my executive committee would not like because they think they are the council of wisdom,” Blatter said.

“I have also contacted the Spanish singer … help me with the name.”

“Prompted with Domingo’s name by interviewer Alex Thomas, he went on: “Placido Domingo will be part [of the committee]. He is happy, he is proud that he is part – as Kissinger also! People say he [Kissinger] is an old man, but he is a wise man.”

That reminds of a nursery rhyme:

Rub-a-dub-dub,
Three men in a tub,
And how do you think they got there?
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick-maker,
They all jumped out of a rotten potato,
‘Twas enough to make a man stare.

Given that these three weren’t aware that Sepp Blatter had dropped them into the tub before he announced it, it’s hardly surprising that at least one of these is being slightly hesitant:

“Kissinger has also poured cold water on Blatter’s attempts to fast-track him on to the committee, telling the BBC on Sunday that he would wait to see the terms of reference before agreeing to join.”

I’m stuggling for an analogy, but the best I can do is that somewhere there is Caligula in the background, and that Sepp Blatter is the horse.

So where next for FIFA? And how to achieve it?

Or do we go back to cricket?

Matt Wardman blogs at The Wardman Wire, on media, politics and technology, in addition to writing at the Raccoon’s burrow.

Septic Blather is a post from: Anna Raccoon

It’s all going to be so wonderful…Our brave new Coalition government is a government of movers and shakers. Yes Sirree! They are going to take the tax and benefit systems, and shake them by the scruff of the neck, so all the crap falls out, and make them fair!  Fair, do you hear?  So they will save billions from benefit scroungers, and billions from tax cheats, and billions from cutting HMRC’s staff, and cut the Holy Grail — sorry! — cut the deficit. But — and this is the important bit — there will be no losers.  Also every day will be the first day of Spring.

Much of this will be due to the introduction of RTI — Real-Time Information . This is a brand-new wheeze, dreamed up in some opium den by a taxman’s think-tank. But now, Cameron and Duncan-Smith will wave their wands and it will all come true. (Though obviously, if it goes wrong, it will be Cleggie’s fault).

Employers will have to make monthly , rather than annual returns to HMRC of employees’ payroll details. Hmmm… let’s see… that means twelve times as many returns, doesn’t it? Or possibly thirteen, if “monthly” means “four-weekly” as it often does. That’s a lot of extra work, isn’t it? Especially when you remember that the government is going to require the banks to give the taxman all the details of our bank accounts. My monthly statement sometimes goes to two whole pages . Times that by (say) twenty million…

Still, HMRC’s staff ought to be able to cope… even though they’re due to be cut by about 15% … that’s after having lost thousands of staff in the Brown years. And even though they already have a backlog of thousands of cases. And are two months behind dealing with letters. And are frightened to answer the phones. Not that morale is down, you understand. Well, not a lot. There haven’t been many suicides. Yet.

Still, they’ll be helped by the wonderful new computer systems being installed, mainly by a company called “Aspire“, with whom they spent £765 million in 2009/10. Aspire is a word meaning “Cross your fingers and hope”.

The systems at present running in HMRC and DWP are to be improved/merged/linked/collided (delete where applicable) so that the taxman can check that the earnings our employers put on their monthly returns is the same as the earnings we declare to DWP when we claim for all those benefits we’re on. Well, nothing’s going to go wrong there, is it?

After all, it’s completely simple and straight-forward. It’s not as if HMRC ever cocked anything up before. Apart, obviously, from the 1.9 million cases of underpaid tax from 2006/07 which only this week they decided to write off. Plus the millions of underpayments which they are currently harrassing the population about. And all the multiple Coding Notices their computer spewed out, causing chaos, confusion and concern to taxpayers already bamboozled by science. Oh! — and all the cheques giving refunds which bounced recently, and had to be re-presented while the red-faced taxmen cringed in embarrassment.

But that’s all in the past. From now on, the taxman is going to adopt a “customer-centric” approach. We are at the threshhold of a New Age. No more cock-ups. Not a single one. Ever.

And no tears before bedtime.

Tears Before Bedtime. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

The telephone disturbed the afternoon peace a few minutes ago. The line echoed in the manner of a Skype call; I had answered in French naturally, and the caller sounded hesitant.

‘Ms Raccoon’ said he – well, no actually, but you get the idea!

‘Yes’.

‘I am with HSBC security division and I need to ask you a few questions.’

He had an accent honed in foreign lands that coupled with the echoing line put me on my guard.

‘I need to ask you to confirm some security questions.’

You know the sort of thing, date of birth, mother’s maiden name, which paw your dog has a bunion on….

‘Why?’ said I.

‘There have been some changes to your account, and I need to confirm that you are Ms Raccoon’.

‘How exactly am I supposed to confirm who you are, never mind who I am? I have no intention of giving you my security details over the phone.’

‘If you could just answer these questions, I could explain, but first I need to take you through these questions.’

‘Fine’, I said, ‘e-mail me in the normal way and give me a number that I can confirm and I will call you.’

Sure enough, two minutes later an e-mail arrived. Correctly addressed to my true e-mail. Given that my details have recently been plastered all over the Internet, I still wasn’t satisfied. I studied the e-mail carefully. An unusual header.

Za**arizu**u**ipli@hsbc.com.my – (note the unusual domain ending) on behalf of ********validation@hsbc.com .

Not even from hsbc.com directly. It asked me not to respond to the e-mail but to call ‘this’ number, quoting a three letter code.

Nice try I thought, but not a chance flower!

I immediately telephoned my branch to report this. Well, not exactly immediately – I telephoned the branch, waited the usual ten minutes as the voicemail went through all the options, entered my ten digit secure number, pressed the hash key the requisite number of times, went through the voicemail options yet again, entered yet another security number, and finally I had ‘telephoned my branch’ – God help you if you are dyslexic or elderly or in a rush to report something!

Finally they answered, ‘Good afternoon Ms Raccoon’ said the bright young thing, and ‘how may I help you?’ The wonders of modern technology!

‘Could you confirm to me that you have an employee Za**arizu**u**ipli? I carefully spelt the name out, unable to pronounce it with any confidence.

‘Certainly’ she said, ‘I’ll check our records.’

‘No, we have no one of that name listed’.

I explained to her the mysterious call I had just received.

‘Oh you did the right thing! And you say they wanted you to give out the answers to your security questions over the phone, you should never do that.’

‘Whoever it is has my e-mail address too.’ I read her over the e-mail that I was ‘not’ to respond to, just phone ‘this’ number.

You’re waiting for me to tell you that I caught a Nigerian scammer in the act, aren’t you? Except that I didn’t.

Two minutes later she had finished checking my account and announced that someone from validation had indeed phoned me at exactly 3.25 – it was there on my records – but hadn’t been able to get through. Could she put me through to them?

‘Yes, OK?’ said I, looking forward to giving them an absolute roasting. I was thwarted, whoever it was had left the office and she couldn’t get a reply…….

I am gobsmacked, speechless.

It seems that this was a genuine call from the security division of an internet bank who seriously expect to phone people out of the blue and ask them the answers to their security questions over the phone? Then send them an e-mail that they cannot respond to from a different e-mail address to the normal one? From an employee who isn’t listed in their internal directory? Who promptly leaves his office?

Utter madness. Insanity. Lunacy.

I shall be forwarding a copy of this article to my bank manager – I would phone her, but since she is in a different country to me and I have to pay for the bally time I spend going through the voicemail option and laboriously tapping in my security numbers, I can’t be bothered. She can forward it to the security division by way of explanation as to why they can’t get any co-operation from Ms Raccoon.

HSBC – Love ‘em or Leave ‘em? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Single malt petrol? Certainly, sir!

I need to start this off by saying that I really don’t believe in man-made climate change. I quite firmly believe that the climate changes, but I don’t believe that man’s scratchings on the face of the planet have a measurable effect on the climate.

But having said that, I am very much in favour of efficiency and of finding innovative ways to do more and waste less. So I was quite thrilled to read this:

Edinburgh Napier University has developed a new biofuel made from whisky by-products.

Not only that, but:

The team focused on the whisky industry to develop biobutanol, the next generation of biofuel which gives 30% more output power than ethanol.

It’s a win-win situation. Something that was just going to be poured down the drain winds up not only fuelling cars, but fuelling them better. It’s not clear how much fuel this will actually make but it’s an inspiring way for people to start thinking about using waste in new and useful ways.

So I think tonight I might just raise a wee dram of Glenkinchie in their honour!

Make mine a double! is a post from: Anna Raccoon

It's a crime!

Another day brings us another nimble U-turn from the “Coalition of the Willing (to be just as bad as Labour)”. In opposition, everyone was vehemently against Labour’s plans to means test benefits that are currently universal. Now that the Tories are in power, they’re suddenly calling for universal benefits to be means tested. The Liberal Democrats have never been in favour of means testing and now they’re in power, they suddenly are.

People of a socialist inclination are suddenly outraged by this (and so is anyone who is expecting any kind of consistency from the government.) Of course, I find curious that left-wing voters were not up in arms when their team proposed this, but in my opinion, anyone who is dim enough to vote for socialism is dim enough to swallow any line peddled by the government.

In a nutshell, universal benefits are simpler (and therefore more cost-effective) to implement. Since they are universal, they are not likely to put people in a position where going to work will be discouraged by withdrawal of benefits. They don’t require a massive state infrastructure to manage and they are not subject to people who have “brilliant ideas” for “making it work better”.

But I suspect the real story here is not the faux outrage peddled by the left, nor is the real story here that middle-class people who fund or have funded so much government waste are going to lose their wafer-thin slice of the welfare pie.

The real story here is who truly benefits from making previously universal benefits, means tested. The real story here is which organisation is powerful enough to sway the government, who have had very clear policies about universal benefits, and was powerful enough to sway the previous government away from universal benefits, which were almost imprinted in its DNA.

This powerful, shadowy and increasingly blatantly “in charge” organisation is the ironically named “Civil Service”, of course. Increasingly arrogant and uncivil, hectoring and bossy and of course, in no way serving the public (although they could certainly be seen as servicing the public!)

It is a tautology that powerful vested interests will form in a “corporatist” society, a society where there is an unholy alliance of hidden, unelected “autonomous” bodies that drive civic life and political parties that are dependent on big business or wealth for their continued success.

This means that a relatively small number of people will have to interact to decide on “how things will be done”, something easily done through “workshops” or “events” or even “dinners”.

Heavily regulated big business is always campaigning with exactly the right people to bend regulation that might actually help people into regulation that makes it more difficult for competition , the only thing that will really keep them honest (and also ensure that the implementers get it “right”.) Politicians are always dealing with exactly the right people to extract funding from to keep them in office or just one step away from it, while ensuring that their “on the same page” as the people who actually make things happen. And of course, quangocrats and bureaucrats are continually supplied with ideas that they can implement to increase the size and scope of their empires.

It’s what you might call “win-win-win”.

Of course, there has to be a loser somewhere.

Have you worked out who it is yet?

Means testing is a post from: Anna Raccoon

He would be so proud

There is little I can say that can convince you of the blind stupidity and wasteful cost of government as well as this little tale can:

In hidden vaults across the country, the US government is building a stockpile of $1 coins. The hoard has topped $1.1bn – imagine a stack of coins reaching almost seven times higher than the International Space Station – and the piles have grown so large the US Federal Reserve is running out of storage space.

$1 coins? I didn’t even know they made $1 coins.

The coins began to pile up in 2007 when a law went into effect creating a new series of $1 coins commemorating dead US presidents.

How did this happen?

Congress passed the law creating the coins despite evidence that Americans never liked the $1 coin in the past.

You could knock me over with a feather! Politicians creating something that nobody wants, in the face of strong evidence to the contrary?

In a 2002 report, for instance, the investigative arm of Congress described “public resistance to begin using the dollar coin” despite a three-year, $67m (£42m) effort to promote the previous series.

Since the presidential coin programme began, the US government has spent an additional $30m to promote them but they still have not taken hold.

Let me get this straight: they have spent $100,000,000 trying to get people to use these coins, and they still aren’t interested? A hundred million dollars?

Well, at least it’s pretty clear that they’ll stop now, won’t they?

Yet the piles have continued to grow because the law requires the US Mint to issue four new presidential coins each year even if most of the previous year’s coins remain in government vaults.

Of course, you know it’s going to get better, don’t you?

In addition to the millions spent to promote the coins, shipping, storing and guarding the excess inventory costs money, though how much is unclear.

A perfect example of why the government can’t even be trusted with the elementary task of coining money, let alone anything more complex like directing monetary policy. They have created a product that no-one wants, and instead of stopping production and firing the person who came up with the product so that he can’t do any more harm, the government will continue to make this coin that nobody wants, even though Obama should have no problem stopping what must be one of his unpopular predecessor’s “pork barrel” projects.

This complete folly is costing the US millions in continued minting costs, storage costs and protection costs and yet the monster of government continues on and on, pouring money down a limitless pit.

But why should the government care, really?

It’s not their money they’re wasting.

Heads they win, tails you lose is a post from: Anna Raccoon

My attention was drawn to an article in the Spectator, well, not so much an article as a graph, really:

And what does this graph show us? Well, the red bars are what the debt would have been if Labour had won the election and the blue bars are what the debt will be under the coalition. For all the sanctimonious talk of “fiscal consolidation”, the true state of the government’s spending plans become apparent. There is no intention of reining in the runaway horse that is government spending.

The plan to conquer the deficit is a bagatelle, all that is going to do is reduce interest payments, it’s going to do nearly nothing to slow down the juggernaut of state spending.

“But”, you might say, “why is that a bad thing?” Well, yes, it is.

The government’s debt burden is going to exceed one trillion pounds in less than two years’ time: £1,000,000,000,000.00

The first thing that should worry you is that of course, ha! ha! the government doesn’t actually have any money of its own, ha! ha! No, all that debt means that every man, woman and child in the UK today is on the hook for approximately £16,000 . And if that doesn’t make you giggle nervously, then ha! ha! well, I have to point out that of course not every one of those people is economically active and that ha! ha! only about a quarter of those people actually work, meaning that if you are a tax-payer, well, ha! ha! you’re on the hook to the tune of £64,000.

And at some point, those debts are going to have to be settled. But because the state is addicted to spending, there is going to be precious little of that.

Faced with a situation like this, the government would be well advised to take a different position by asking what the state absolutely essentially has to provide. They should restructure the government to do these things and simply dismantle the rest.

We are not all feeling the same pain here, despite what Mr Osborne says and despite the bleating of the progressive commentariat. There are allegedly 15 million people officially gainfully employed in the UK. 6 million of these are employed by the state, these 6 million are a nett drain on the economy, because even if they are providing useful services (which is by no means always the case!) they are still not as efficient as the private sector in delivering those services. If we removed the burden of paying for even half of those people from the 9 million who actually generate wealth, it would be like lifting an enormous yoke from the shoulders of those who are productive. And even if those people were immediately just placed on the dole, it would still be a nett gain, because they wouldn’t cost the people who generate wealth as much money and the government would have to scale back the regulation and red tape that frustrates so much of life.

Furthermore, I’m convinced that there are many people stuck in the rut of a depressing, soulless public sector job who simply need a rocket up the rear to get out there and follow their dreams.

And finally, what about all the “services” that would be destroyed? Well, if there is a genuine need for those services, then commercial enterprises could step in to provide them more cost-effectively and more innovatively than the state can. And people with experience in those area may well find themselves in demand for delivering the services. And if there is no genuine need for those services, well, then we’re all better off without them, aren’t we?

It’s time to be a lot braver than the coalition appears to be.

Not exactly “Crocodile Dundee” these cuts, are they? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

I have been otherwise engaged battling the forces of darkness in Court, the subject of a more considered post mid July.

So I have only just got round to George’s efforts at sorting the insolvent Government we have. Can I underline this, the Country is not insolvent the Government is. We, the Country, have Billions and Billions of assets and cash. Out of a population of twenty million working adults how many are responsible for this unholy mess ?

Most families have to match income with expenditure with a bit of judicious borrowing; when it comes to other people’s money there is no restraint, no sanction, no accountability.

Right! Lets treat HMG as an insolvent business in desperate need of rapid turn around.

The last thing you do is put your prices up (VAT) to your customers (you and me) and keep the wallowing wage bill in place, and at the same time reduce your service levels.

I agree with minimal taxation on consumption in place of  direct taxation on salary, but this sends out all the wrong signals and will not endear the public to see this through. It is a collective punishment for something that most of us did not commit. Unrestrained spending. Do not drag the public into the appalling behaviour of  Government, the problem is not us it is you the political elite !

Secondly you do not punish savers and investors with increases in CGT, you reward them for saving and investment.

Before dragging us into their insolvent mess a few pointers on how to achieve a turn round.

Start selling unused assets. The State has billions tied up in land and buildings it is not using. Get rid of them at heavily discounted prices to raise cash now to pay off debt. Grant planning permission on these pieces of land irrespective of the maw of the suffocating planning laws. This will encourage building houses and get construction workers earning a living instead of being on the dole.

Get rid of the Banks the State acquired, declare them insolvent, and break them up into myriad regional banks that lend instead of rob their clients. Sell them to the highest bidder. All Banks to be licenced  and supervised by the Bank Of England. Any former Director of these banks to be refused work in the industry for the next fifteen years.

Start closing down unnecessary Departments of State and Quangos. Start with Business, Innovation and Skills, the public sector has very little knowledge of either three. Close every Quango irrespective of function. Prince Andrew will have to get another job to fund his international golfing fix – International Trade Consultant be damned!

All other departments to be made redundant and made to reapply for their jobs. Brown gave us an extra 1 million public servants, they need to go and Government savagely reduced. George Osborne is aiming for 25% reduction, it is not going to happen, even under Thatcher’s  Government spending kept increasing.

Stop all wasteful and unproductive activity – Start with Afghanistan we marched in  march out. Stop all foreign adventures on behalf of the USA – The special relationship is bunkum. The BP saga has proved this.

There is nothing other than Defence and Foreign Affairs that cannot be done better and cheaper locally and privately.

George when you get serious about the National Debt, by making former Government Ministers accountable personally, like District Councillors, I will then start to believe your rhetoric, but so far I am not convinced you are going to reduce the State. If you cannot do this, your figures don’t add up George.

©Andrew Withers

Deputy Leader Libertarian Party

You cannot be serious ! is a post from: Anna Raccoon

The finest British hardware for the finest British soldiers

There is a paradox facing those who have responsibility for equipping “our brave men and women”. Our soldiers are braving death and disfigurement on our behalf and they deserve to be properly armed and protected as best we can. The deserve to have decent equipment, appropriate armoured vehicles and decent logistical support.

Even in the best of times, money is not always in plentiful supply. Imagine what a crisis is facing those decisionmakers now.

But what really seems to be a major issue is the jingoistic calls to “buy British” to deliver the “best” weaponry to our soldiers. Now, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have noticed several news reports pointing out that our troops have got the wrong vehicles for the terrain, they haven’t got enough helicopters, our threadbare Nimrod surveillance planes are asphyxiating their crews, etc., etc., etc.

The problem, of course, is that our military shoppers are bombarded with outrage at the merest idea that you might want to buy any of our equipment from outside the UK. Yet we could buy three American helicopters (that actually work in Afghanistan) for the price of one British or European one (that doesn’t). We could easily buy “off-the-shelf” military vehicles that are properly armed against improvised explosive devices, rather than wrapping Land-Rovers in two layers of extra thick Bacofoil while “British engineering genius” tries to get the vehicles we ordered a decade ago to travel further than 200 yards before they conk out.

Dozens, if not hundreds of people are dead today because of government fear of not “buying British.”

When people are literally dying because of some outdated dogma, is it not time that we should ask questions?

Biting the bullet is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Already the cracks are appearing. Every now and then, the hint of a scandal appears and then swiftly, almost eerily, it disappears. Enormous sums of money are at stake, often more than the GDP of small countries, so it’s hardly surprising that this should be so.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that politicians are once again complicit in these scandals. They have enormous influence, whether it be formal or informal, just knowing the right person can be worth diamonds.

Sometimes it’s pretty direct, like David Geffen’s meeting with Peter Mandelson being followed, by the most amazing of coincidences, with draconian new anti-file-sharing legislation appearing on the horizon just weeks later. I’m sure nothing as vulgar as money changing hands was involved. But Mr Geffen now owes Lord Peter a decent favour, and Mr Geffen knows lots of media types, which might be handy if Lord Peter wanted lots of media visibility for something in his future. It might not even ever be collected, but it’s there. Maybe it will be traded for something from someone else in the future.

Who knows?

But more often the dealing is much less overt. Nondescript firms with anonymous names like Bell Pottinger or Bergmans or some arbitrary collection of letters like PLMR spend years hovering around the political process, acting as “Special Advisors” or bag carriers for MPs, building their networks of connections, buying people drinks and getting ready for that all-important move out into the private sector, where they can sell their relationships with key players and “nudge” politicians in the “right” direction.

Worryingly, some of these people dip in and out of the political system, working to ensure an ever greater degree of influence over the political process. Three names have already appeared in the coalition government as being very close to the edge of probity: the first is Caroline Spelman, who narrowly (and quite inexplicably) escaped serious censure over her dealings with her nanny has already attracted some attention for the fact that her husband is a lobbyist in the agricultural sector, headed up in the government by … Caroline Spelman!

The second name to attract attention was Gerald Howarth, an MP with a long list of “generous” interactions with arms lobbyists who was in line for head of … Defence Procurement! Mercifully, he got shunted aside, but he’s still in the MOD.

And then there’s the enviro-crusading MP Tim Yeo, who, purely by coincidence, has directorships in any number of “green” companies.

But these incidences of self-interest or “mates’ rates” are a mere bagatelle when compared with the lobbying of, say, the pharmaceutical companies. As recently as this week, it was revealed that the authors of the WHO report that incited the swine flu scare had all made money off the manufacturers of Tamiflu and Relenza, the main anti-flu drugs. The UK alone stockpiled £1billion of totally useless and unnecessary drugs. We’re still trying to get out of the contract, because our civil servants were led like lambs to the slaughter by these “experts”.

And defence, long an area of incredible “spend” by governments around the world. Insane amounts of money are poured into defence procurement, yet somehow our troops are not properly equipped, our ships are late and over budget, we’re spending vast sums on a Eurofighter that is already obsolete and it hasn’t even been delivered yet! Why should this be? It couldn’t possibly be because lobbyists are suggesting that the MOD has to “buy British” and because the people paying the lobbyists want complex, big-ticket sales with extraordinary cancellation conditions. Could it?

But even these two examples are quite tame compared to the one that truly does get my goat: “third-sector” lobbying. In the old days, this would have been called “charity”. You know, you took your old clothes to Oxfam, and a team of volunteers would sort and sell your clothes and the profits would go to helping needy people abroad. At some point, that all got badly corrupted. “Charities” have now become “the third sector” of the economy, much like quangos but with the appearance of being totally independent of the government. However, most of their income is actually derived from the state, either directly or via other “third-sector” sources.

Ultimately, when Don Shenker, Deborah Arnott or some other killjoy appears on TV or in the national press telling you how you have to live your life and advising the government to “do something”, they have taken your own money from you to do so. At least when BP lobbies for piffling fines for any oil spill that may occur (say), they are doing so with their own money. Third sector “charities” take your money, spend it promoting their beliefs and values and just to put the cherry on top, are exempt from paying tax as well.

Mark my words, when this boils over it will make the MPs’ expenses scandal look like cheating at Scrabble. There will be blood.

I hope.

Lobbying, the next big thing is a post from: Anna Raccoon

There is nothing so likely to induce a murderous rage in the most mild mannered of people as sibling rage over a last will and testament. Many a family can cite feuds going back over generations, centuries even, which commenced with the reading of the will.

As children we prise precious pennies out of our parents in the form of pocket money; it is never enough to encompass all our dreams of ownership. It might stretch to the Action Man Kit – but not to the full range of available extras. We dream of the day when the family piggy bank will be under our control, and somehow, we never grow up.

We reach 50, 60, and still we imagine that the money and property our parents accumulated should really be ‘ours’. We deeply resent anyone else having a say in how it should be spent. Especially siblings.

We can just about cope with the notion of our parents having the right to go on spending their money on food and a roof over their head – but just let social services step in and demand that the money be handed over to a care home and the high pitched wailing starts. ‘That’s my inheritance, mine I tell you. The state should be feeding Mum and Dad, not my inheritance.’ The nursery tantrum surfaces.

If Mum and Dad have departed this mortal coil then their final words in the form of their last will and testament bite deep. Proof positive bubbles up that they really did love little Johnny more than me – look he’s loaded and they’ve left him the money to buy the Action Man accessories – it’s not fair….Waaaaaah! Christmas Cards cease to exchange, cousins cease to kiss, and yet another family is rent apart.

There is another scenario, relatively unusual, which can cause even more hurt and upset. It was the first one which came to mind as the meagre details of the Cumbria shootings first emerged.

He shot his brother and then the family solicitor? His brother and the solicitor were ‘drawing up a will for his Mother’? His Mother had suffered a number of strokes and was ‘unwell’. The hackles rose on the back of my neck – was a ‘Statutory Will’ in the offing?

I don’t know, I am merely speculating, I have no inside information that leads me to believe that it was thus. It does however, give me the opportunity to beat you over the head yet again, and discuss the ramifications of a Statutory Will for those who have not yet given in to my nagging and protected themselves from the effects of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

The idea of a Statutory Will was well intentioned. Let us take a ‘for example’. Young Tristan is gay. He fell out with his parents long ago and left home to live with the nice young man who manages Curry’s. He is convinced the Curry’s manager is his partner for life and makes a will leaving him his Dolly Parton wig and all his worldly possessions.   So far so good.

Unfortunately, Tristan is hit by a bus. He doesn’t die, but survives as a severely brain damaged individual who requires support and supervision for the rest of his life. Young Master Curry doesn’t fancy the job and departs for pastures new. I make no condemnation of this action – it happens all the time, regardless of who the partner is. It is a very difficult thing to do – to nurse someone who bears no resemblance to the person you fell in love with. Eventually Tristan is declared physically fit to leave hospital, and who comes to the rescue? His parents usually. Past enmities forgotten, they collect Tristan, reorganise their home, neglect the rest of the family, and devote themselves to Tristan’s complex needs. For the next 20 years or so.

Is it right that Tristan’s original Will should stand when he does die? Had he been able to make another Will, he hopefully would have recognised that his allegiances had changed, that the family quarrel was over and done with, that young Master Curry hadn’t been seen for 20 years, and perhaps leaving his worldly goods to his family might be more appropriate now.

That is one side of the Statutory Will – but peek underneath and you will find a darker side.

It is the responsibility of the ‘Deputy’ to word the new will. The court merely approves or disapproves the contents. They don’t put forward suggestions as to who the beneficiaries might be. It will approve it unless drastic evidence comes forward to persuade it not to.

We must look at who is the ‘Deputy’, and how and where could ‘evidence’ come from.

The Deputy could be a member of the family. A brother, a twin brother, a son, daughter or parent. One of the most difficult situations arises when the ‘Deputy’ is in fact the Mother or Father of a child who has reached the age of maturity. Imagine having to write a will for your child – which you must then post off to an anonymous ‘court official’ telling them that with your ‘Deputy’ hat on, you wish your child to leave all their money to ‘you’ – with your parent hat on. People agonise that they will be thought greedy or grasping, when in truth the ‘court official’ is a monumentally bored civil servant who has processed several such applications that week and has no ‘opinion’.

The ‘Deputy’ could equally be an older brother or sister who has strong views regarding the behaviour of other siblings. Have they perhaps not pulled their weight in caring for the person concerned? Are there old ‘scores’ to be settled? Do they have a lifestyle which is disapproved of – heavy drinking, gambling – is writing this will a chance to gain control over their life?

Since the court doesn’t normally meet any of the people concerned except in very rare circumstances, they rely on the reports which may have been written by the Lord Chancellor’s Visitors to evaluate the fairness of the proposed new will.

Only some 20% of the ‘patients’ of the court will ever have been visited by the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor, and the report will have been written many months if not years beforehand – certainly not with the knowledge that a Will may be based on the information contained in it, excepting very, very rare circumstances.

If we return to the example of Tristan, it could be that young Mr Curry did stay by his side and has nursed him devotedly. It could be that he was never mentioned in the original will, or that there was no original will. If the parent’s are the Deputies, the system relies on their honestly and integrity to tell the court that – much as they disapprove of their son’s relationship – they believe if their son was able to make his own will today, that he would want to reward young Mr Curry’s devotion. Is there any system in place to ensure that they do act with integrity and honesty and say that?

No.

Which is why, when I heard that Derek Bird had shot first his brother, then his Solicitor, in a dispute over a will, despite his Mother still being alive following a devastating stroke, I wondered. We have been told that Derek lived at home and his Mother had given him substantial sums of money. We have heard that he drank heavily and dealt with his money unwisely. We have heard that his twin brother was the ‘sensible’ twin and close friends with the unfortunate solicitor……

And I wonder.

Testementary Testosterone. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

I am profoundly shocked this morning. Yet again a thoroughly decent man has been hounded from office by the paranoia and narrow minded venality of the media and the electorate.

I find it hard to credit that in the 21^st century we can show no more compassion towards David Laws than we displayed with the witches of yore.

We are so fixated on our narrow definition of morality, drawn from the mystical books of our Gods, that we lose sight of the very human requirements for warmth and comfort in our life. In our insistence that those human needs are acquired in one way and one way only, we have denounced possibly the most able Treasury Secretary we could have had.

The media are at their sly best this morning, pretending that Law’s downfall was due to a gay witch hunt that belongs to a bygone era.

When the stark truth is that the ‘avarice that dare not bare its name’ was to blame.

Can we not accept in the 21^st century that the mere fiddling of expenses is not sufficient reason to part with a Treasury Secretary? That having the keys to the nation’s handbag is not good enough reason to deny a man the right to the warmth and comfort of dipping his hand in the till occasionally?

The laws that condemned a man to hide his love for another man were changed 30 odd years ago and yet the media crusade for us to condemn another love.

Nick Clegg has said that David Law’s privacy has been ‘cruelly shattered’ – and it is true. The love for a few shekels of the tax payer’s hard work has been exposed to view; it should have been allowed to remain in the privacy of his accountant’s office.

What goes on between a human being and his expenses sheet, should, in these enlightened times, be private, and remain between those sheets.

James Forsyth has described the events as a ‘disaster for our public life, the coalition and the nation’s finances’ – he says it was ‘hard not to well up’ on reading Law’s resignation statement. Scarcely an overstatement of the disgrace the nation must feel this morning – a man forced to hide his true love in life behind the perfectly legal activity of homosexuality.

Iain Dale writes in the Daily Mail ‘it just goes to show that if you go into politics nowadays and are not open’ about your private predilections they ‘may come back to haunt you in a big way’.

Of course, the millionaire Mr Laws could have chosen financial celibacy as a way of dealing with his proclivities. He could have denied himself the stolen pleasure of that £40,000. As Iain Dale point out ‘what his critics are saying is that in 2006 he should have moved out of the flat he shared with his partner when the parliamentary rules changed to ban financial relationships between spouses and partners’ – I think not Mr Dale. What the critics are saying is that he should have stopped claiming the money actually. Then he wouldn’t have been forced to invoke the pink tafia to put up a smokescreen to hide his illegal proclivities.

Dale goes on to say:

“Are we really insisting that if all our politicians aren’t whiter than white, they should quit? It’s a very strange logic. If that rule had applied in the 20th Century we would certainly have been deprived of the services of both Lloyd George and Churchill.”

Quite right Mr Dale, the British are inherently troughophobic. It must be stamped out. Troughophilia should hold its head up high, and not hide its shame and shelter behind the beard of homosexuality.

It is a sad fact that without the ‘gay’ element, this story would not be so big.

Who introduced the gay element Mr Dale? Up until now, only Law’s constiuents, friends and familes knew he was gay – someone decided that everyone should know – why? Could it be that the person caught with their fingers in the till decided that it was a reasonable excuse? They could have stopped claiming when the rules changed, could have decided that their privacy must be preserved.

Men in powerful positions have succumbed to the pleasures of ‘helping themselves’ for thousands of years, deceitfully so, without being able to tell their Mothers. They have been forced to take gainful employment as a cover for their secret vice. They have agonised over the fear of exposure, been afraid to take annual holidays for fear that the company accountant might unravel their sordid secret. It has to stop.

Surely the British public is big enough to cope with a trougher at the heart of the Treasury?

We must outlaw troughophobia; and the practice of shouting ‘thief’ at those who practice a totally natural desire to have more than they are entitled to. Children must receive education at a tender age to stamp out the abhorrent bullying they endure when they filch Johnson minor’s pocket money. No longer will we stand for thieves being excluded from positions of trust and fidelity.

Poor David Laws – from Closet to Cabinet and back to Closet again – via the Till. Now forced to wish his Lundie’s in public.

Ronnie Biggs for Chancellor say I.

Wishing Your Lundie’s in Public. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”

- Cicero, 55 BC

Evidently nothing.

What Have We Learned in 2065 Years? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

"Drive the corruption from the land ... "

And so it has come to pass that the EU has agreed to bail out the Greeks:

A bailout, however, does nothing to fix the misguided policies that have generated Greece’s existing debt and ongoing deficits. Bailout therefore merely postpones the day of reckoning. Worse, bailout both rewards Greece’s bad past behavior and encourages such behavior in future. Greece will never change its misguided policies if the E.U. and IMF infuse it with new cash, just as no teenager who has overspent an allowance will reform if the parents merely expand that allowance.

Thus bailout merely transfers resources from other nations to Greece. This is presumably beneficial for Greece in the short term because it postpones painful adjustments like lower salaries for government employees. But a bailout harms the citizens of these other countries, who did not live beyond their means. And a bailout harms Greece in the longer term by delaying adjustment of the fundamental flaws in its economic policies.

The negatives do not end with the current bailout. Greece will be back for additional bailouts in short order, since under a bailout it will not fix its underlying problems. And once the EU and IMF have bailed out Greece, they will find it impossible to resist bailouts for Portugal or Spain. As the recent downgrading of these countries’ bonds suggests, they (perhaps along with Italy and Ireland) are also at risk of default in the near future.

A bailout, however, does nothing to fix the misguided policies that have generated Greece’s existing debt and ongoing deficits. Bailout therefore merely postpones the day of reckoning. Worse, bailout both rewards Greece’s bad past behavior and encourages such behavior in future. Greece will never change its misguided policies if the E.U. and IMF infuse it with new cash, just as no teenager who has overspent an allowance will reform if the parents merely expand that allowance.

Thus bailout merely transfers resources from other nations to Greece. This is presumably beneficial for Greece in the short term because it postpones painful adjustments like lower salaries for government employees. But a bailout harms the citizens of these other countries, who did not live beyond their means. And a bailout harms Greece in the longer term by delaying adjustment of the fundamental flaws in its economic policies.

The negatives do not end with the current bailout. Greece will be back for additional bailouts in short order, since under a bailout it will not fix its underlying problems. And once the EU and IMF have bailed out Greece, they will find it impossible to resist bailouts for Portugal or Spain. As the recent downgrading of these countries’ bonds suggests, they (perhaps along with Italy and Ireland) are also at risk of default in the near future.

It looks like no-one has learned any lessons from the bank bailout. By bailing out the Greeks, we create moral hazard, where people misjudge a situation and then learn that no matter how badly they misjudge the situation, someone else will tidy up their mess.

Actions should have consequences: putting your hand on a hot stove causes pain, the pain teaches you to be more careful. But if you didn’t feel any pain and didn’t have any other consequence from it, why would you be more careful?

Time after time, we are told: “This is too big to fail. If this fails, the consequences will be devastating.” And so fewer and fewer successful things prop up more and more failing things.

What happens when the last successful thing fails?

A Greek tragedy is a post from: Anna Raccoon