This is the United Kingdom 2010. ‘Walking the dog’ is no longer the low-tech activity it used to be.

If you are lucky enough to avoid the marauding transvestites intent on introducing your Pekinese pooch to the finer details of alternative sexuality, then your next task is to find a suitable lamp post.

Assuming you are not in Dundee, where the lamp posts are a particularly lively hazard on account of the electronic bus timetables a cat loving council maintenance worker someone incorrectly wired up, then your next task is to find a patch of grass that appeals to your pet.

Fido could be caught short on this exploration, and deposit the spent remains of his Pedigree Chum on the pavement – what to do? Assuming the Pedigree Chum is not conveniently still in the can, (you should always endeavour to feed it to your pet out of the can) you may not wish to pick it up and put it in your pocket.

Fear not, the council have a man whose job is just that. He is paid by the other ratepayers. This is where it gets interesting. How do you contact him?

In the bad old days, prior to 2008, you would have searched in vain for a working telephone box, and then returned home and picked up your own telephone.

Stop! This is 2010. Your local council is fully committed to inclusive methods of communication that ensure the equality of all stakeholders and promises to engage younger members of the community suffering from low self-esteem and those with mobility problems, regardless of whether they are likely to have been walking a dog or not.

Turn on your computer! Yes, I know it is further away than your telephone and you could have made the call by now, indeed, you could have cleared the dog shit up half an hour ago, but bear with us.

Wait for windows to fire up. Right click on your bookmarks. And enter ‘Virtual Tameside’, whose potential ‘is vast’, rivalling only that of Amsterdam and Dublin. Sweep through the virtual library, the virtual citizen’s panel (which gives you a virtual sense of virtual inclusiveness in the council’s plans) and make your way to the virtual receptionist’s desk.

There is the potential for staff on the service desk to have a negative interaction with a service user, though […] actual physical violence is impossible unlike the traditional form of service engagement.

(Translation, if you have lost your virtual temper by this time, you can only virtually punch the receptionist on the nose)

Virtually ask the virtual receptionist to direct you to the area where you may find the virtual Tameside Street when your pooch pooped.

Click on the virtual pile of dog shit you will see on the sidewalk. (I am not making this up, honest!) this will redirect you to the tameside.gov.uk website, there you will be able to report the dog shit to the correct council department……

Yes, Tameside council had discovered ’Second Life’ the virtual on-line world! They spent £36,000 of ratepayer’s money buying themselves, amongst other corkers,  £4,800 on a virtual island on which to land their ‘teleported’ ratepayers in search of the council’s dog shit picker upper, £400 on a Black Knight on a horse (don’t ask!) and £6,150 buying an ‘Aquafer Museum’ (absolutely essential for the modern council).

The council were assured that this was money well spent to save ‘citizen carbon footprints’ when seeking to access the same information that was available to the 7% of Second Life users resident in Brazil, the 30% in the USA, or the 7% in Japan who had need of contacting the Tameside council’s dog shit scooper upper.

Unfortunately, Tameside council didn’t think to install a counter on the web site, so they have no idea how many people were daft enough to go through this rigmarole in order to contact them. They have now abandoned the scheme, no doubt to the total dismay of the many staff who had excitedly attended the £3,250 worth of workshops to teach them how to address a virtual ratepayer arriving at their virtual desk, and unable to virtually throttle them……

I am indebted to the perseverance of Tameside microblogger Liam Billington (@liambillington) who submitted the Freedom of Information request that uncovered this virtual madness, and Dave Higginson for pointing it out to me.

You couldn’t make it up, in the time honoured phrase.

Virtual Insanity. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

When I read things like this, my soul blossoms just a little:

“Fantastic,” says Sean Paige of the financial crunch that is slowly throttling public services in Colorado Springs. “I welcome it.” Never mind that a third of the street lights have been dark since February and the citizenry may soon be asked to take their own lawn mowers to city parks to trim the grass.

While cities across the US are struggling with diminished tax receipts and the ugly task of paring budgets, the situation is already much worse here in Colorado Springs. Or better, depending on your point of view. Because there are people here, Mr Paige among them, who think that the drying up of city coffers, while painful for a few, offers a broader opportunity. It’s time to get public servants out of public services. It is not unimportant that this town is home to Douglas Bruce, the gnarly hero of the small government movement here and author of Tabor – the taxpayer’s bill of rights that was written into law in Colorado and many of its municipalities more than a decade ago. It cripples public finances by forcing politicians to seek popular approval each and every time they want to expand taxes. It also includes a mechanism whereby they must return money to taxpayers if ever they start to run to big a budget surplus.

He contends that it is the perfect time for the city to get out of running things like parks, pools and community centres – he believes the private sector, charities and churches will do it better for less money.

This is what some are already calling the “Grand Experiment” of Colorado Springs, which is expected to face a revenue shortfall this year of about $28m (£18m) or 10 per cent of its whole budget, brought about in part by the recession and also by the strangulating effects of the Tabor laws. But if this experiment is to be embraced and pursued, then the question arises: how far should it be taken?

It is not just about lights and lawns. Buses no longer run at weekends or at night; services at community centres have been drastically reduced; at least two of the city’s six pools will be closed. The police department’s two helicopters have been pawned off on eBay. In the new spirit of volunteerism, taxi drivers must double up as amateur cops watching for crooks while traditional police patrols are trimmed.

“We are engaged in an experiment here whether we like it or not,” says David Munger, a consultant and lobbyist who is on a committee examining a possible sale of the municipal hospital to raise cash. “It seems we are trying to find out how little government is enough government.”

Never one to hold back, Mr Bruce, 62, thinks he has the answer. “If we cut the city budget in half, that might be a reasonable amount,” he said in an interview. Rather than applauding the council, he derides its efforts at cuts. “It’s like performing liposuction on a whale with a teaspoon,” he says. In a variation on the old joke, he says it took four city employees to turn off each of the darkened street lamps.

How utterly wonderful! Citizens have the right to reject every proposed tax increase in a referendum? Tax-leeching wastrels have to cut their cloth according to the decisions of the people who pay? Communities see the consequences of the cuts and still yell: “Cut! Cut! Cut some more!“? Communities picking up the services that the state can no longer pay for, services that they regard as important enough to deliver themselves?

It sounds like a libertarian’s fondest dream come true.

Of course, not everyone agrees:

Just as sceptical is Brian Kates, a 38-year-old transplant from Boston who, as a city employee, runs the Meadows Park Community Center, located in a small converted shopping mall in a part of town that boasts modest, one-floor bungalow homes, not mountain-view mansions. After cutting his budget by more than 50 per cent, he has now been told to find a way to sustain its services without city help by the start of next year. It may or may not happen. The situation infuriates him.

“I feel like a peacock in a herd of penguins,” Mr Kates says of what’s going on in Colorado Springs. “Where I come from it’s not a question of ‘Do I personally need this service, it’s ‘What kind of community do I want to participate in.’ Pay the taxes, spread the wealth, don’t keep score. It’s not about ‘How am I doing and what services am I personally going to use?’ Some call this a selfish approach and others call it fiscal responsibility, depending on which end of the spectrum you are on.”

The people most hurt by the cuts – the people who patronise his centre – already feel too disenfranchised to speak up or try to resist, Mr Kates explains.

On the other hand, some might contend that Mr Kates is just worried about his job, after all, it’s easy to speak glibly about spreading the wealth when you’re on the receiving end, isn’t it?

And my experience of Americans is that no matter how “disenfranchised” they might be, they will never shut up about a grievance. So I suspect that there may well be a few people who do not like what is happening or may be disadvantaged by it, the overwhelming majority of the public either support it or aren’t fussed and are probably enjoying the tax breaks.

Meanwhile, there aren’t enough other people in the community willing to get angry. Take Tomm Mitchel, who has come to the anti-tax rally in the city’s tiny downtown Acacia Park to hear the messages about small government and oppression through taxation. As a resident of the city – he works nights in a warehouse in Denver – is he angry about the service cuts?

“I have no problem with them at all,” Mr Mitchel, 42, replies without pause. “They could close down the parks, I am not that interested in them.” That said, he has joined a citizens’ volunteer group taking over the job of emptying the rubbish bins in the parks.

The apparent equanimity of the wider population in the face of the service evisceration – some voters wrote to the council asking that more street lights be extinguished on environmental grounds – may partly have to do with where the city is and the old frontier history of the American West, Mr Kates suggests. “It’s the old mentality of lift yourself by your boot straps and ‘I am going to be self-sufficient,’ and that’s really how it was in the Western states in the beginning.”

The eternal cry of those brainwashed by the social democracy ethos that pervades Europeans is that we cannot survive without government intervention and that you cannot live in a libertarian society because it’s never been tried before. Here we see that it has, and it’s being tried again. Moreover, people are not only surviving it, they’re positively thriving on it.

People who don’t care about the parks are still prepared to help keep them tidy. People are taking back ownership of their community, working together in a common cause. There are no mass riots, no looting, no chaos. People are just rubbing along and making things better themselves.

Isn’t it time we tried this here?

Would that we could learn from THESE Americans … is a post from: Anna Raccoon

It won’t make a vas deferens now, but perhaps someone should have warned the young McBride that ‘cooking up’ stories with ‘tough as old boot leather’  Balls, he was liable to get his fingers burnt.

The Sunday Times today is printing ‘heavily denied’ allegations that Ed Balls was the mastermind behind the  “dark arts” operation by McBride to undermine colleagues.

The Sunday Times whistleblower, who has had a ringside seat on the power struggles inside No 10, claims that Balls:

— Engineered McBride’s move from civil servant to special adviser
— Repeatedly protected McBride when colleagues called for him to be sacked
— Was in constant contact with McBride, sending him up to 20 e-mails a day
— Instructed McBride to brief against cabinet rivals
— Exploits a weekly “strategy” meeting, which he chairs at Downing Street, to shore up his power base.

I had my money on Lord Mandelson, but he probably can’t whistle or was that just an urban myth put about by Ian Fleming?

Senior Labour figures have confirmed there is widespread anxiety about Balls’s activities. The revelations will fuel concern that the government is in terminal decline, with senior ministers more worried about positioning themselves for life after defeat than about rescuing the economy.

All credit to Guido for exposing mastur-gate, it has sent Labour into a frenzy of ‘re-positioning’ for life ‘after Brown’ at a time when the United Kingdom is in freefall.

Is there any chance that these Labour ‘troughers’ will get out of the kitchen, closet, or wherever, and get into the cabinet room, and start sorting out the economy? I don’t think so.

We need an election. We need a proper government.

We need to stop stirring the soup and start serving up a government fit for consumption.

We need parliament to find the balls to take a vote of no confidence in this government.

Cooking with testicles available here………

What every young McBride should know before marriage…… is a post from: Anna Raccoon

More than 4,000 alcoholics are claiming full-time disability benefits in Greater Manchester – landing taxpayers with a £10m annual bill.

Just in Manchester alone!

They show a total of 4,220 people were claiming Incapacity Benefit (IB) or Severe Disablement Allowance (SDA), where alcoholism was listed as the main `disabling condition’.

The weekly bill to the taxpayer for benefits paid out across the region is between £250,835 and £373,490. Disability benefits are state handouts aimed at those who can’t work because of disability or illness and are worth up to £84.50 a week. They unlock further benefits, such as support with council tax and housing bills.

On 18 October 2007, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that certain benefits, including disability living allowance (DLA), carers allowance and attendance allowance, were exportable to other EEA states.

So stay permanently p*ssed, register as unable to work because you are permanently p*ssed, and you can then move somewhere more salubrious and sunny, where the tax payer funded alcohol is cheaper, and relax – no need to worry about work.

A spokesman for Addaction, Britain’s leading addiction charity, said: ‘Alcoholism is certainly an illness. It is hugely debilitating.’

Not as debilitating as supporting alcoholics is for the tax payer.

Please will someone ask their MP to enquire as to the total amount tax payers are shelling out to support alcoholics nationwide?

Edited to add link I was too stunned to include in the original piece…..here is the link to the FOI request which got this information….

Taking the p*ss out of Taxpayers is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Idly watching the parliament channel after Andrew Neil had finished today, I found myself engrossed in a sub titled programme covering the difficulties faced by migrants in Europe.

Eventually the discussion moved to Scotland and the heartbreaking plight of migrants there who were ‘forced to rely on charity’ – to avoid starvation, death and a life of vice on the streets.

The programme makers were at pains to point out – helpfully displaying the full act on the screen - how legislation, namely the Worker Registration Scheme,  passed in cruel London had foisted this situation on the normally charitable Scots. (???) It seems that EU workers must register under this scheme and work for one year before accessing benefits and housing paid for by the tax payer.

It was beginning to sound like  a very good idea to me. The Tax Payer is only responsible for supporting those who have contributed something? Excellent.

‘Destitute and vulnerable single mothers’ were interviewed who explained that but for the inflexible rules in the Workers Registration Scheme, they would have been bringing their children up to be honest, concerned citizens, instead they were starving and helpless……..body and soul only kept together by the donations of widows and orphans to a charity called ‘Four Square’.

Mindful of Devil’s Kitchen’s Fake Charities campaign, I did a little research.

‘Four Square’, in the most recent accounts I can find, 2007, are funded by:

Statement of financial activities for the year ended 31 March 2007.
2007 (£)
Incoming Resources
Donations                                                                                                       33,149
Local Authority Income                                                                  2,345,717
Grants from Public Bodies                                                                   244,348
Rent and Housing Benefit                                                                     145,383
Bank Interest                                                                                               77,218
Other Income                                                                                                  1,166
Total Incoming Resources                                                           £ 2,846,981

That’s an awful lot of tax payers/ratepayers money in relation to the minuscule amount of donations, especially when you consider that Four Square list as major partners and funders the following, some of whose contribution, like RBS, would come under the heading of donations.

City of Edinburgh Council • Royal Bank of Scotland • The Polish Consulate • The Community Fund • Supporting People
Fife, East, West & Midlothian Councils • Scottish Enterprise New Futures Fund • Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland
Scottish Executive ‘Transforming Waste’ and ‘Strategic Waste’ Funds • Castlerock Edinvar / Dunedin Canmore Housing Associations
Cairn Energy PLC • Volant Trust • Quartermile • CLAN

Were it not for Devil’s Kitchen I would never have thought of looking into this charity and would have assumed that these migrants were being denied tax payer/ratepayer funds. They are not, they are merely getting them under a different, less transparent, heading. Nor are these asylum seekers fleeing torture, rape, and hoards of locusts, they are EU citizens who chose to come and work in the UK. EU citizens that the legislature has, in open debate, considered are not entitled to expect the support of British workers – but who are now being supported behind the cloak of ‘charity’. Why?

What could be the motive behind this programme? Could Four Square’s empire be threatened?

The key may be in this further document:

At the time of writing, the announced level of cuts to Supporting People funding is 7.6%. We and all other voluntary sector service providers in receipt of SP monies have been warned that this figure may need to go higher. As it is, without an inflationary increase, this is equivalent to a 10% cut.

With the expected launch in March of the new Edinburgh Homelessness Strategy 2007-2012, comes a proposed 2-year commissioning plan and performance framework for putting all voluntary sector homelessness services out to competitive tendering.

Competitive tendering, cuts in funding? No wonder they are having an attack of the vapours, and we are being treated to an emotive programme – who paid for the programme to be made, I wonder?

A Charitable assumption……… is a post from: Anna Raccoon

The news this week that the state was handing over £3million a year to Weight Watchers, and Slimmers World, to persuade the ‘deserving poor’ to shed some of their lard, incensed me.

It came hard on the heels of a government report lambasting ministers for spending vast sums of money on “ineffective and possibly damaging” interventions which they hope will force lifestyle changes on the public, without carrying out the most basic research to see if the programmes make any difference.

The Health Select Committee said: “More public money must not be wasted on ineffective and possibly damaging interventions”.

Yet within days we hear that valuable NHS resources are going to a private company, apparently on the advice of the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence, who recommends that GPs send people to free slimming classes, because it was cheaper than weight loss pills or stomach stapling!

The NHS is in the business of saving lives. There is a justification for preventative medicine. The dental checks that were once commonplace were an excellent example. Weightwatchers is not a check-up however, nor is it a ‘cure’  – it is an incentive to taking the cure, as are weight loss pills and stomach stapling.

The  ‘cure’ comes free – eat less, exercise more.

I was about to write the words – ‘this is a bribe, nothing more nothing less’ – when a little more research turned up this gem……

In January NHS managers in Kent faced criticism after it emerged they were offering people ‘bribes’ of up to £425 if they managed to lose weight.

The Pounds for Pounds scheme run by Eastern and Coastal Kent Primary Care Trust offered patients cash prizes as part of a diet competition, which paid out £70 to participants who lost 15lbs, a further £90 for 30lbs and £265 for those who shed 50lb.

Those who are still managing to work in these straightened times should not have to pay out extra taxes to bribe these selfish blobs. During the same week we also heard of a family of four with a combined weight of 83 stone saying they are “too fat to work” and need more than the £22,000 they currently receive in benefits.

Fat cat bankers and Fat blob chavs – we cannot afford to support you both.

One of you is going to have to go ‘cold turkey’ and less of the turkey ‘twizzlers’.

Get off the Taxpayer’s back – you’re too damned heavy.

Fat is not a political issue. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Way back in the murky past, I did an inordinate amount of research for a paper entitled The Quiescent Cadaver.

Bless them, I was shocked to discover they have no legal rights at all.

Surprisingly, they live lives pretty much like the rest of us; they get married, they have sex, they have babies. Today we learn that some of them become Benefit Cheats in their old age.

The Government paid out £73 million in state benefits to dead people last year. The Department for Work and Pensions confirmed that it is trying to claw back some of the overpayments to almost 200,000 dead people.
But it admitted that £27 million of the money will never be recovered due to a lack of funds in the deceased’s estate.

Now by virtue of all my research, I consider myself better qualified than the average person to tell you what cadavers can get up to – and I am confident that they cannot nip round to the local cash point.

If £73 million has been paid into their bank accounts, then £73 million is still sitting in their bank accounts – either that or ‘someone’ has helped to remove it. Whyfore then, is the Department of Dodgy Statistics telling us that £27 million can’t be recovered? Is that £27 million in Scottish bank accounts? Is that the problem? Have Scottish Cadavers discovered a way to pop into Yates’ Wine Lodge for a few quick Stellas on route to their next scam?

It wouldn’t surprise me. We appear to have a Scottish Cadaver running the country at the moment – is there no end to their talents?

Photo courtesy of Mary Roach’s Publishers.

The Quiescent Cadavers…… is a post from: Anna Raccoon

On Monday 9 March 2009, the Channel 4 Dispatches programme broadcast How They Squander Our Billions, a documentary on government projects including the NHS’s National Programme for IT (NPfIT). The NPfIT had an initial announced cost of £2.3bn which rose to £6.2bn and later £12.7bn. A key objective of the NPfIT is the introduction of something known within the NHS as the Spine which is part of the NHS Care Records Service (NHS CRS). Check out the NHS Connecting for Health Spine Factsheet which includes the following information:

What is the Spine?
The Spine is part of the NHS Care Records Service, which is creating an electronic care record for all England’s 50 million plus patients.
Each patient’s electronic NHS Care Record comprises full local records, held on computer where treatment is provided (such as the GP surgery or hospital) and a summary record of important details both demographic (eg: name, address) and medical (eg, allergies, medication, test results) held on the Spine.
The Spine is a national, central database where summary patient records are stored. When fully implemented, local records will automatically upload important information to the summary patient record on the Spine.
Why have a Spine?
Once the NHS Care Records Service is fully implemented, having each patient’s summary record stored on the Spine will mean that wherever and whenever a patient seeks care from the NHS in England, those treating them will have secure access to summary information to assist with diagnosis and care. The summary record will also point clinicians to where full local records are held. This should provide safer, more joined up care.
What will the Spine do?
The Spine will:
• store personal characteristics of patients, such as demographic information
• store summarised clinical information which may be important for the patient’s future treatment and care, such as allergies, visits to A&E and adverse reactions to drugs
• ensure the security of systems required to restrict access to the national and local systems
• provide a secondary uses service, using anonymised data for business reports and statistics for research and planning purposes
• interface with all the local IT systems within the National Programme.
And so on.

Less than a year ago I attended a training course on this very system designed to ‘interface with all the local IT systems within the National Programme’ in order to provide ‘safer, more joined up care’. Well, it all sounds lovely and efficient, except that I have worked enough years and in enough different departments of the NHS to know that trying to get the countless and different in-house IT systems already in use within the country’s hospitals, clinics and surgeries to ‘interface’ in the way described above remains a very long way off.

Which is why I was entirely unsurprised last Autumn that my mother’s cancer care was interrupted for 6 weeks while her paper records were transferred from one NHS Trust to a second NHS Trust, via a central records depot in a third NHS Trust, before her details could be entered onto the second NHS Trust’s local IT systems and management of her disease could be recommenced at her new address.

If there’s a better example of how easily the NPfIT is providing this safer and more joined up care after 6 years and so many billions of pounds, I’d like to see it.

Skeletons in the cupboard. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Sir Paul Judge, a millionaire Conservative donor, is setting up his own political movement called ‘Jury Team’ that aims to get more independent MPs elected.

My initial response was ‘why’? Why would a Conservative donor become so disillusioned that he wishes to finance an entire new political system?

In an article in yesterday’s Telegraph, he said that his aim was to break the traditional party leaderships’ control over the political process, which sounds suspiciously like a disgruntled ‘backer’ who was unable to get his way with the present leadership.

Judge complains that “the way the mainstream parties select their candidates and whip their MPs is “about as undemocratic as it gets”. He went on to say that the new movement will work by raising money and mobilising support behind independent candidates with a strong interest in certain issues but no party allegiance – and Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the Liberty human rights group, is one possible candidate.

Is this a case of one powerful backer who was unable to get his favourite person a ‘hot seat’ and now wishes to fragment the miniscule voting public even further? Sir James Goldsmith did just that with his Referendum Party, and Sir Paul Judge is not in his league financially.

Sir Paul says that “We think independent people can make good decisions. We use that model for juries. If you put a group of sensible people together and show them the facts, they’ll make good decisions.”

The present political parties profess to start governing with an agreed agenda as to how it should be done, and proceed to fight like ferrets in a sack until the next election – it beggars belief that starting with 646 disparate souls whose only agreed agenda is that they need not agree would not be a recipe for anarchy.

Given the cult of celebrity that has overtaken the British Isles, we would have people being voted in on the strength of their particular following. In the case of Richard Taylor MP, his following was the staff and patients of the threatened Kidderminster Hospital, and it was sufficient to get him elected – a good job he has made of it in the main. He, however, was a Hospital Consultant, and he has applied all the education and integrity that lies behind that statement. Could the same be said of Jade Goody, or Max Clifford, were they to stand? They may well get the votes, and no doubt an increased vote given their notoriety, but to what effect?

We don’t need a new ‘party’, we need a new level of accountability and transparency. We need less government and more respect for our own ability to organise our own lives. What is wrong with the present politicians is not the ‘party whip’ but the fact that we, the electorate, do not get the opportunity to apply the whip until the next election, by that time we are so brassed off with them that we dither between stocking up on piano wire or voting for the ‘other’ party just to get our own back on them.

Let’s have Prime Ministers Question Time repeated 646 times round the country every week. Let every MP stand in a draughty Hall for a minimum 2 hours a week and be pelted with rotten questions by the people he serves. Make it a ‘misfeasance in public office’ to refuse to answer questions, punishable by removal of their expense account – totally.

Women are extremely good at worming the truth out of errant husband’s, we withdraw all the benefits of marriage, and if that fails, we divorce them with all the financial penalties that implies. Some quite ridiculous specimens of ‘husband’ have been rendered serviceable by this method – use the same system on MPs, and I’m sure we could make a decent, say, 20 or so, out of the present 646 incumbents, and encourage les autres.

Judge and Jury is a post from: Anna Raccoon

The intrepid class warfare contestants seem to be meeting themselves coming backwards over the past week.

We have Billy Bragg in the Guardian telling us that:

With 25 years’ hindsight, Maggie’s bitter victory over the striking miners unleashed forces that led directly to this economic crisis.

Apparently it was Thatcher’s achievement in giving council house owners the same right to invest in property as other mortals that created the housing bubble – the inference being that we would have been so much better off if we had kept the class divide between the ‘have own homes’ and the ‘have nots’.

The housing bubble that has been source of so many of our recent difficulties, was kickstarted by Thatcher.

Then again, had we kept the class divide between those who could call on a powerful union to blockade bankrupt businesses – like for instance, the Liverpool Docks – and demand that the tax payer continued to employ them, as opposed to those who were subject to market forces and merely lost their jobs when a business was non-viable…..:

Without powerful unions to protect them, the wages of ordinary workers were held in check while the cost of housing began to spiral upwards. As it became increasingly difficult for first-time buyers to get on the property ladder, a newly deregulated banking sector began offering ever more “attractive” loans.

I am indebted to you Mr Bragg, until I read your article, I had honestly believed Gordon Brown’s statement that the financial meltdown ‘began in America’; to think it was all Margaret Thatcher’s fault for ridding society of some of the class divides. Tsk!

Isn’t it Labour policy to ‘equalise society’? Or is that my imagination?

Then again we have Gordon Brown telling Labour activists in Scotland that he wants:

“regulators to insist that banks take a more “prudent” approach to capital reserves, setting aside more money during years of growth to protect them against possible slumps in the future. [...]

Whilst we must retain the benefits that open financial markets bring to the world economy, international financial market regulation must be toughened,”

Wasn’t it Gordon Brown who gave the direct orders to adopt a ‘light touch approach’ to banking? Lord Turner, the head of the Financial Services Authority, said:

Gordon Brown helped fuel Britain’s banking crisis by pressuring the City regulator not to intervene and stop reckless lending,

Gordon Brown has so far evaded any responsibility for the current global recession, despite being the Chancellor of the Exchequer since 1997, and its current prime minister. He has evaded taking responsibility for the lax regulations in London’s financial center, the City, since he established its regulatory regime at the end of the 1990s.

Even the Guardian newspaper lists Gordon Brown at No4 in their list of the 25 people who brought Britain to the brink of ruin – and Mrs Thatcher nowhere.

Gordon Brown doing a U-turn on financial regulation, Guardian writers trying to blame Thatcher for the economic crisis; it would be hilarious if it wasn’t for the genuine pain that tax payers and their children will suffer to pull us out of this slough of despair.

The Laddie’s not for turning…. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

The original Darien Scheme was an unsuccessful attempt by the Kingdom of Scotland to establish a colony on the Isthmus of Panama. Almost every Scot who had £5 to spare supported it. It came a mighty cropper. The financial loss to Scotland amounted to nearly a quarter of its liquid capital, and is believed by many to be the reason that the Scots agreed to a Union with England.

The Royal Bank of Scotland debacle has resulted in virtually every person in the United Kingdom investing a lot more than £5 in supporting the Scottish economy.

So it comes as some surprise this morning to learn that the Shadow Scottish Secretary, David Mundell, is using a private member’s bill to be debated this Friday, to force shops in England to accept Scottish banknotes. The Royal Bank of Scotland, the Bank of Scotland, and Clydesdale Bank all issue the banknotes.

Have we not had enough of Scottish banks, and Scottish ministers. Are we now to be forced to barrow a cartload of Scottish bank notes to the corner shop to buy our loaf of bread?

The Darien Scheme revitalised? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

The February edition of HMRC’s thrice-yearly “Employer Bulletin” normally contains a CD of software designed to help small firms deal with their tax obligations. There should be an employee database, tax calculators and automatic form generators. “Install Immediately”, the taxman’s packaging urges. The CD is updated and mailed out twice per year.

This year ‘hard working British payroll administrators’ received 16 CD audio files with titles such as Zwei Ordentliche Kinder (Two Tidy Children), Der Flohzirkus (The Flea Circus) and Gespenster (Ghosts). Each features a kindly-sounding woman reading a short children’s story, Jackanory-style.

Software Logistics managing director Barry Hurley said a mix up had occured in the manufacturing process which meant CDs of German children’s stories were printed with the HMRC label and so wrongly packaged. “We aware of the situation. It’s a very rare occurrence,” he said.

“It’s of course regrettable and we are working with HMRC to ensure replacements are sent out as soon as possible.”

Remember this when the tax man accuses you of telling him fairytales…….he probably won’t, mind you, your name and address will be on the CD he sent out to hard pressed single mothers in Germany – that’s if it didn’t get left on a train on its way to the Post Office.

Hat tip to Chris Williams

The tax man is telling fairytales…….. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Vince Cable has tabled a parliamentary question challenging the Treasury to reveal the contents of a Treasury dossier submitted in evidence to the Competition Appeal Tribunal last December by the Merger Action Group who were opposing the Lloyd’s – HBOS merger.

The document set out the reasons why Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, and Lord Mandelson wanted to ride roughshod over the normal competition law.

Mr Cable’s parliamentary question asks if the original still exists, and if so whether Mr Darling will now reveal its contents. He said:

“There appears to be a lot of murky dealings surrounding the Lloyds TSB takeover of HBOS, involving the Government and the Lloyds board. It is important, both for taxpayers and shareholders, that we have more transparency about what actually went on when the takeover was being pushed through by the Government.
Now that the takeover has gone through and we know the extent of HBOS’s losses there would seem to be no longer any need for secrecy and that is why I am asking for this document, which was a key element of the Government’s case, now to be made public.”

Keep shinning that light Vince, there be rats lurking in those corners. 

Another sexed-up secret? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

I had not thought I should write in support of Sir Fred Goodwin, nor any other banker, but the sinister orchestration of media voices baying for his blood has brought out my mothering instincts. 

Leave Freddie alone. No one, so far, has alleged that he has done anything criminal. He signed a contract  which seemed reasonable to those who offered it to him.  He is entitled to expect that contract is honoured.  

It is easy to whip up a clamour for his ritual stoning, tarring and feathering, when you are asked whether it is reasonable that the tax payer should be asked to stump up £33 million for his pension.  It is a ridiculous sum of money.  So are all the other sums of money that the tax payer is being asked to pay.   However, I don’t see the banking crisis as being Freddie’s personal fault. He was just the monkey,  doing what he was asked to do –  and I am deeply suspicious that it is the organ grinder and his henchmen who are behind this constant drip of innuendo designed to paint Freddie as personally culpable.     

You don’t change the off side rule half way through a championship match, and that is what is being suggested should happen to Freddie. Gordon Brown has been scrupulous in his choice of words regarding Banking bonuses – ‘we shouldn’t reward failure’ – we never have done, nor is it proposed that we do so now. What is being proposed is that someone be denied the reward they earned for what was considered success at the time. 

Gordon Brown, the micro managing Chancellor of the Exchequer, presided over the changes to the banking system that allowed the bubble to burst. He presided over the FSA who should have been drawing attention to the fact that it was a bubble. Freddie happened to be the last person invited, nay hired, to blow into the ballon, according to the rules at that time.  He was offered a lot of money to do so because it was believed that he was likely to do so more effectively than anyone else. He did.  It burst. 

Blame the man at the top. Gordon Brown, don’t fall for the politics of envy. The stories being fed to the papers at the moment are on a par with ‘Freddie Goodwin ate my pension’, they are manufactured propaganda, designed to take your eye off the real culprit.

Shredding Freddie……. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

On Sunday, Jacqui Smith said that a new points based system will be used to “raise the bar” for highly skilled migrants to curb the numbers coming in.

The move is part of an immigration crackdown to be unveiled by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith tomorrow to “put British workers first” – and increase the BNP share of the vote.

The Home Secretary has been rattled by a blizzard of damaging statistics in recent weeks, which have blown a hole in Gordon Brown’s promise to deliver ‘British jobs for British workers’. Earlier this week, the Mail revealed how foreign workers are taking a greater share of British jobs than at any time in history. They now hold 3,819,000 jobs or 13 per cent of the total. Two-thirds of the foreign workers (2,647,000) are from outside the EU.

Employers will be forced to advertise vacancies in the Jobcentre Plus network before filling them with migrant labour under a series of measures to be announced.

This should have an unexpected silver lining to the cloud, as the Royal Opera House is forced to advertise in the Sheffield Jobcentre for Italian speaking Tenor sopranos, GCHQ for Russian speaking Data Analysts, and the Melli Bank for an Iranian speaking auditor……….. naturally none of these jobs will appeal to the huddled masses round their braziers, but it will allow politicians to say that there is ‘no reason’ for high unemployment in the UK – and point to the soaring numbers of jobs advertised in the job centres.

The elephant currently squatting in the cabinet room is the the slag heap of professional benefits claimants who have never done a stroke of work in years, if ever – both migrant and home grown. Creating a series of hurdles over which The London Philharmonic must jump in order to bring in a third violinist is ‘smoke and mirrors’ magic tricks - we deserve better from the politicians who created this mess.

Tenors on a fiver an hour? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

In The Sunday Times today (22^nd February 2009) we read of Mr. Brown’s intention to rubber stamp – “as part of a blitz of initiatives designed to save the banking system” measures including “Permission for the Bank of England to begin £100 billion of “quantitative easing” — in effect printing money — to encourage banks to resume lending.”

This is a marvelous idea, as long as all the new money printed is so radically different in design that it stands out a mile when it hits our wallets. 

So, go on Gordon, print the stuff, print at least £100 billion of it, but print every note of it in vivid scarlet with a lovely funereal black border, decorated with illustrations of the Monopoly flat-iron, the scottie dog, the top hat, the old boot and (in a nod to current feeling towards politicians, banks and bankers) perhaps a nice roll of piano-wire.

That way, we’d all know which notes to stash into our mattresses and which red and black notes to use for our loan repayments; which notes to keep for our children’s future and which red and black notes to put by for them to pay their crippling tax bills; the bankers would also know which green, brown, purple or orange notes to issue themselves in loans or bonuses, wouldn’t they?

After all, it is “part of a blitz of initiatives designed to save the banking system”, isn’t it?  

The ‘Old Lady’ splashes out on a new wardrobe…….. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

The Sunday Mirror  is standing in the icy water of voter disillusionment with Nulabour governance this morning, fiddling with its flies and trying to hook a Grayling. A knee jerk reaction of partisan politics at its worst; ‘they’ve got our ‘Second Home Secrecy’ Jacquie Smith, on the hook, we’ll have a go at theirs’.

Back in 2001, when he first became an MP, Chris Grayling  bought a studio flat in Westminster. I know the block well, I sold my own flat there to Keith Stainton MP many years ago, he bought for the same reason I imagine Grayling did – office accommodation for MPs in those days was dire and cramped, having a private office within sound of the division bell where you could also sleep after late night sittings, essential. Here’s a suggestion for both parties – buy the entire block and keep it as a hotel for MPs who need late night accommodation. 

Unable to conflate Graylings ‘second home’ with Jacquie Smith’s claim that staying with her sister two or three nights a week constituted her ‘main home’, they have resorted to whining about the possible capital gain to be made on a future sale of this property.

Blair swept to power on a ticket that appealed to many women, that of a ‘third way’, consensus politics. It has since fallen by the wayside. Women are not enamoured of the macho ‘my Dad’s bigger than your Dad’ style of traditional politics, with the contestants spraying testosterone up the door posts as they slug it out, supported by their partisan media.

Women are less concerned with the political process than with the outcome and delivery of policies. Deborah Mattinson, of the political research and consultation firm Opinion Leader Research, says. “It may sound old-fashioned,but I think that women especially are looking for politicians to be public servants.”

While men hurl abuse and scorn on the ‘opposition’, and then vote for the same party time after time, the women’s vote is much more likely to swing towards candidates that offer honesty, dedication and representative government.   

I don’t see such a candidate on the horizon, just endless mud slinging that alienates 50% of the voting population.

Wake up boys!

Coarse fishing for Grayling…… is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Er, no, not to you…..don’t be daft!

The Times on-line is reporting that RBS, which is 68 per cent owned by taxpayers after a £20 billion government bailout, is offering its staff loans against the bonuses that they are owed but which have been deferred until 2010 under a deal with the Government.

Remember how you cheered when you heard that Gordon Brown was going to stop tax payers money being used for cash bonuses?

Indeed it is not; it is being used for loans, just like Gordie wanted……..to bank staff who should have got a cash bonus…..

The Banks are lending again! is a post from: Anna Raccoon

It has been a spectacular few weeks for that endangered species, the Whistleblower.

First up was Paul Moore, who had patiently bided his time and delivered a broadside under parliamentary privilege to the Commons Treasury Committee, securing not only the scalp of his former boss, Sir James Crosby, but delivering a nasty wound to the backside of the Prime Minister.

Then neighbours of ‘Second Home Secrecy’, Jacquie Smith, successfully twitched their curtains and blew the unwelcome wind of scrutiny by the toothless Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, John Lyon, up her skirt.

Yesterday, a Venezuelan financial analyst, Alex Dalmady, was revealed as the finger on the trigger which blasted Allen Stanford’s billion dollar Ponzi scheme out of the water.

In all three cases there were highly paid professionals staffing regulatory agencies, respectively, the FSA, The Standards Commissioner and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which exist solely to uncover these scams. They are not required to prosecute scams, that is for the Police and FBI – their function is merely to use their ‘superior’ knowledge and experience to notice when something is going wrong.

Yet all these scams would still have been firmly beneath the water line without the bravery and initiative of relative amateurs.

Hat tip to Cityunslicker who has added another twist to this tale; highlighting whistle blower Graham Milne of Lloyd’s TSB, and the ironic detail that Carol Sergeant who was awarded the CBE and made a Trustee of the charity Public Concern at Work (motto: Making Whistle-Blowing Work) had previously been the Managing Director of the FSA that had dismissed Milne’s allegations – and subsequently became the Chief Risk Director at Milne’s old employers…….Lloyd’s TSB.

Whistle a happy tune…… is a post from: Anna Raccoon

The stampede of heavyweight Scots, puffing and bellowing their way down the Carlisle line to create havoc in London is creating a back lash on the Internet and the main stream  media.

Alistair Darling has now been accused of ‘doing a Jacquie’ – a phrase which is fast becoming common currency to describe the act of fleecing the taxpayer whilst remaining strictly with the rules of the Fees Office – and benefiting by £70,000 from declaring his Edinburgh home his second home.

Both of Scotland’s major banks, HBOS and the Royal Bank of Scotland, have had to be rescued, the former by Lloyds TSB and the latter by the British Government itself.

The Bank of Scotland (now HBOS) was founded in 1695, beating the Royal Bank by 32 years and creating a centuries-long hostility that has regularly trumped Scottish caution. The reason the latter acquired the tag “Royal” was that it was given a charter by the English King George I after the Act of Union between Scotland and England in 1707. The Bank of Scotland was entirely Scottish and supported the Catholic Jacobites’ attempts to overthrow George I. No doubt Gordon will be reminiscing on those glory days when he meets the Pope on thursday. 

The two banks have been sworn enemies ever since. In the early days they declined to accept each other’s banknotes and the Royal Bank nearly bankrupted the other in 1728 by hoarding a pile of Bank of Scotland notes then demanding repayment in full.

There’s no better nurser of grievances than a Lowland Scot and it could well be that the recent follies were the result of a disastrous expansion race between the two that started more than 10 years ago. Bear in mind that two other major global banks, HSBC and Standard Chartered, were both started by expatriate Scots in the 19th century and are both relatively unscathed by the global financial crisis.

In 1999 the Bank of Scotland scrapped a controversial US deal with right-wing evangelist Pat Robertson. That blew up after Robertson described Scotland as a “dark land overrun by homosexuals”. Whatever gave him that idea?

Last June, UK ministers wanted to bring in measures aimed at improving financial stability and protecting depositors. They would require banks to lodge funds with the Bank of England to cover the value of their notes seven days a week. But a deal was struck which allowed Scottish banks to continue printing their own notes. First Minister Alex Salmond described the U-turn as a “victory for Scotland and its financial sector”.

“This is great news,” he said. “I’m delighted the Treasury have dropped their ludicrous proposals that threatened the very existence of Scottish banknotes”.

Great news for Salmond maybe, but we have since had Scottish Banks and Scottish Ministers threatening the very existence of the Bank of England.

How perspicacious of the Scots to issue a £100 note to celebrate  ’Homecoming Scotland 2009′. First Minister Alex Salmond said: “Homecoming 2009 is shaping up to be the biggest celebration of Scotland yet and our great contribution to the world”.

£100 may just buy a can of Carlsberg by the time the Bank of England have finished printing English banknotes in a desperate attempt to stave off the melt down caused by the meddling, mendacious, megalomaniac Scots.  

The chill wind of incontinence must be blowing up some of their kilts though; a leading Scottish kilt-making firm Slanj has written a clause into its hire terms requesting that underwear is worn at all times. The companies have introduced the clause because of the habit of some men to return extremely soiled garments. Another company, Davison Menswear and Kilt Hire, said:

“We’ve had customers who have absolutely no shame whatsoever, with soils front and back”.

In future the answer to the age old question of ‘what does a Scotsman wear under his kilt’ will be - either underpants or a nappy, but definitely something.

“The Lying Scotsman” has a leaky undercarriage….. is a post from: Anna Raccoon