Shouldn't Union Pilgrims be taxed as a benefit in kind ?

The argument for taxpayers funding left wing Union officials to sit at desks full time and do what Unions do is that they help the smooth running of the organisation by faciltating worker demands etc.

So a benefit eh ?

Well when its private health insurance or other perks we get taxed on it. Shouldn't members of Unions in govt departments that have tax payer funded pilgrims be taxed on the benefit of having them also ?

Anyone ( who isn't an anonymous blogger ) want to as HMRC about this. ( Though hold on I bet they have pilgrims also -- ah its all becoming clearer now... )

On Ed Miliband's lukewarm condemnation of the teacher's strikes

I've just placed the following comment on Ed Miliband's blog in answer to his half hearted objection to strikers making him unpopular blog post here. Will it make it through the Labour censors ?

Ed, the problem I have with this post is that it seems to just be opportunist. You know that strikes holding children and parents to ransom will be very unpopular and anyone who associates with the NUT and ATL will be unpopular too. So your distancing yourself. ( It would be helpful if you condemn the moral failings of these Unions in using children’s education and parents ability to work to blackmail the government with. You might also pass on some home truths to public sector workers about the apocalypse in private pensions that the last government presided over and how there will never be the political support to condemn those who earn the nations wealth to poverty whilst the public sector gets fantastic pensions which are paid for by crush the poor private sector workers with taxes. )

The problem is you don’t recognise Labour’s culpability. Labour ran the structural deficit. Labour mishandled the financial sector. Labour bleed private sector pensions to death whilst turning on the fire hoses of spending on unreformed public services to buy yourself votes with. Labour placed us all in the terrible debt we now face. You need to confess that Labour were responsible for these massive failures and show you understand what went wrong. The Debt Denial policy and the cowardly refusal to explain where you would be forced to cut just won’t do.

Greece is the fate that awaits us under your current approach – lets hear some fresh thinking starting with a recognition of reality and some very humble apologies for the disaster Labour created and the Coalition is having to try and fix.

I suspect you’ll chose denial instead, but go on surprise me.

Afghanistan

So here it is, the "East of Suez" moment for withdrawal of the US Empire. ( Peter Oborne compares it to Vietnam - and there are nasty parallels, the worst of which will be the collapse of confidence in any anti-Taliban forces as they realise the last helicopter will be leaving from the Embassy roof without them. )

In truth its really the US East of Suez moment. They can't afford to keep this going, and if they do then the bluff they use to keep the rest of the world in line will be called. ( We would have more sympathy is the US hadn't been so ruthless in hastening the demise of the British Empire fifty years ago. )

So what did all our men and women die for in Helmand ? Because it hasn't been to stop the Taliban.

This has been a long time coming, as my blog post show. Its just been seen as very unpopular to say so:

• October 2006 "What is going on in Afghanistan ?"
• Oct 2008 "Is the Afghan campaign doomed to failure"
• Jul 2009 "Blogging on the Afghan war"
• Aug 2009 "40 more years in Afghanistan - I don't think so"
• Aug 2009 "Two enormous lies that are being told straight to our faces"
• Sept 2009 "The sunken cost fallacy on Afghanistan"
• June 2010 "The Afghan stabilisation war has stopped being in Britain's interests, if it ever was"

I can see that David Cameron has been looking for a way out for a while, and perhaps he helped swing Obama round to this.

Once everyone's home safe there needs to be the mother of all public enquiries and inquests into how Victory over the 9/11 supporting Taliban was allowed to go so wrong.

The West looks bust

Everyone knows Greece is bust, but no one is allowed to admit it. Why ?
Because if Greece is bust so are key French and German banks, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and probably Italy.

And if they are bust, due to loans and the banking sector then so are we.

Someone has to pay, hopefully without dying in the process.

It seems to me that the West is bust ( yes US I include you ) and those of us with pension funds etc perhaps are going to lose them.

Can denial fix this ?

Sent from my HTC

Where Manchester spends its money

Guido has this story as part of his campaign against tax payer funded Union activists.

Look bad as it is bad. What this shows is socialists hurting the poor to score political points and keep themselves in power. This is who they are.

The rich man's train

H/T TPA

This is the counter to the class warfair campaigning on the cheap being undertaken by left wing thugs in Mancester ( and probably funded by the tax payer also ).

The only argument I'd have with it is that it will be the ruling class ( ie MP's civil servants ) who will benefit most from high speed rail.

The sun being turned down, and the heating bills up with no industry to pay for them

Newsnight was at it Pravda like best last night trying to square a potential freeze from forecast reduction in solar activity with the need for world socialist government, windmills, industry exported to China & India, as demanded by the EcoFascists

Man made global warming is still the big issue for them. But I don't think the voters are going to agree when they freeze with only hyper expensive energy bills in a ruined economy to support them.

There's a massive political bandwagon leaving soon - anyone want to jump aboard ?

The Coalition Government has shown weakness and will soon pay the ongoing price

The climb downs and U-Turns have been piling up. Most of them are a direct result of a lack of conviction by Lib Dem MPs and ministers ( many of whom know they are doing the wrong thing ) and the Conservative leadership in No10.

This is already having consequences.

The demands from each special interest group have gone up in volume.

They can't all be dealt with by appeasement and passing the debt onto our children.

Now here come the Unions to do what they do best - strike.

They need to be faced down.

But is the coalition strong enough to do it ? The very asking of that question encourages those who want to continue the Ed Balls flat earth approach to economics and keep on piling up the debt. ( And let us not forget the poverty that those taxpayers who work in the private sector are looking forward to in their retirement. No guaranteed benefits backed by the terror of the state to extract them from their fellow citizens for them. )
The battle coming up is critical - but I'm afraid David Cameron is more Ted Heath than Margaret Thatcher. The war may last for 10-15 years, and the next battle be lost due to insufficient resolve. There consequences for all the people of the UK will be very unpleasant indeed.

I hope I'm wrong here.

Further: Daniel Korski is warming to the same theme over at the Speccie Coffee House.

Strike !

Here we go - the public sector Unions are gearing up to blackmail the people who pay for there high salaries and gold plated perks ( ie the poor private sector tax payer), when Gordon Brown destroyed private sector pensions and his economic incompetence destroyed salaries.

They should expect nothing but contempt from the members of the public that pay for their public sector life style. Everyone has had to make sacrifices due to Labour's economic road crash and failure to reform the public sector - and its time the public sector shared in the pain that's being going around for over 5 years with the rest of us.

The eight hundred million

So Guido and Old Holborn are declaring victory in their campaign against subsidising India by £800million per year. After all its help the Indian's don't ask for and they do have more nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers (with aircraft !) than we do.

But David Cameron is equally not being put of the idea of borrowing money to spend in other countries and is backing, wait for it £800 million (well £814m according to the BBC, but who's counting) for child vaccination in the third world.

What to think ?

Well vaccination is a cheap way of buying lots of benefit on a human scale, as long as food and other resources are available. It also helps economies grow to a state where they can afford our products and services ( so a little self interest there also perhaps - but it rather assumes that we'll be the ones providing the things people want, and you could easily see other people doing that ).

It also shows our government addicted to spending other people's money.

I hope and pray this money is well spent.

Anonymity is better than deceit

This blog is written under a pseudonym, but I would like to reassure readers that I am not a Syrian Lesbian or dodgy graduate student from Edinburgh ... The truth is no where near as interesting.

Visualising twitter

Getting a view on what's happening on twitter can be hard. This is an interesting tool that lets you add a word ( in my case my twitter ID ) and see what keywords have trended when.

Go here to see my current Twitter visualisation.

For Ed Miliband, David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Debt follow the links.

Worth a play if you've a few minutes to kill. ( It requires Java runtime environment. )

The DeadEd society swings into action

Those of us on the right have been going easy on #RedEd over the last few months,

Why ?

Because we realise the monumental mistake Labour has made in allowing another unelected leader ( if you ignore the Unions ), and specifically Ed Miliband to become leader.

The game has been not to rock the boat too much before Red Ed can become a two term leader of the opposition.

However it seems the Balirite wing of the Labour party don't intend to allow things to go on that long (shame that). The slow motion assassination of another Labour leader has started. The finger prints are unmistakable - the leak of the highly damning Ed Balls papers. ( Frankly those of us without scales in front of our eyes always knew Ed Balls for what he is now proven to be and didn't need any leaks to tell us. ) If this had been from Conservative sources it would have happened when it was too late to replace #RedEd before the next general election.

Now the Guardian and Observer are getting a whole raft of the "time is up for Red Ed" type articles, and his brother leadership acceptance speech ( which he didn't need thanks to the fraternicide ) has appeared in the Times ( aledgedly since the Times disappeared from the world a while ago into its own little bubble ). Labour members can read what leadership would have looked like by the brother that doesn't hand out blank bits of paper as policy ideas or apologies for the past.

Can Labour save themselves ?

Personally I hope not - I'd rather see an ongoing civil war with no clear victor. But its going to be entertaining anyway and they have bought this on themselves just as they have brought ruin on the heads of everyone in this country.

I will be getting my bowl of popcorn ready for the show ...

The TB GB's part II rated 18
(Those of a delusional left wing nature may find a lot of what's about to happen very upsetting - look away now Polly Toynbee .)

Update: This article by Dan Hodges is worth a read - I have to say very hopeful for those of us who dispise the waste and destruction that Labour governments always bring.

And for Sunday there's reports of the Ed vs David fraternicidal relationship.

The bad press is piling up - see Guido using the Dead Ed meme with his summary of Labour's car crash Sunday press.

The question is being asked how many years Labour are going to be in navel gazing mode for ( please let it be > 20 ! ).

Time for Labour to come clean about its taxpayer funded money laundering ?

Guy Fawkes' blog has a good point today. Add the 'Union modernisation' fund to the charge sheet and we might be getting somewhere.

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How to reform high street banking

Here's a simple idea:

Let me take my account with me to my new bank.
including:

My bank account number & sort code
My account history
All standing orders

That is to say make high street banking a commodity service.

They won't like it. They'll squeal. There will be IT issues and it might take years to implement.

But in the end if I can keep my mobile and home telephone number when changing suppliers I don't see it as that much harder to move my account.

This would open up banking to real competition and create real service.

I expect the banks to hate it.

England's industrial death wish

The progressive establishment's green fantasy has reached the point that its starting to kill of the industry in our country. ( Or export it to countries that don't have such mind boggingly stupid people in charge. )

We are told that the economy needs to be rebalanced away from financial services back to manufacturing. But the extra energy costs and carbon taxes are strangling it.

Those with the wisdom of a PPE degree at Oxford tell us that the new "green industries" will emerge to compensate for these loses. But in reality studies have shown that for each green job created 3.5 are destroyed. And anyway why do our industrially ignorant rulers think that England will be manufacturing any green technology if we lose our capability in other areas of manufacturing ?

The French have signalled they won't be joining us on the Clifton suspension bridge for our industrial suicide bid, and that you can forget Kyoto 2 as far as they are concerned.

But we have that national disgrace Chris "I haven't been sacked because I'm a Lib Dem" Huhne announcing ridiculous "carbon reduction targets that are to be placed into law.

This has gone beyond husky hugging triangulation to mindless industrial suicide.

Add to this the fact we know much of the Global Warming industry have been lying to us and you end up thinking what we need is a few psychiatrists in govenrment to help our PPE Oxbridge wonders work out why they hate the country so much as to want to destroy it like this.

H/T to David Blackburn's article on Coffee House which some of this is based upon.

Further: "Currently, four out of the UK's eight refineries are in a sale process and all are under pressure from high-volume, cheaper rivals in Asia, which are not subject to the same £1bn green taxes on the industry." - Rowan Mason - Energy Correspondent at the Telegraph here.