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Terrifying
The Treasury’s policy of “Continuity Brown” means we look set to borrow more money in this Parliament than Gordon Brown managed in 13 years.
I’ve long since stopped trying even to estimate the number of times I’ve said this, but this ConLib Cobbleition government really is as bad as Labour, arguably with the additional down side that if the whole house of cards has to come crashing down before it can be unfucked and rebuilt Labour’s incompetence in general and Gordon Brown’s lunacy in particular might have brought that day a little sooner. The Cobbleition seem to be there with the purpose of prolonging the agony in the hope of winning power and prolonging it for another five years, and for that I despise them.*
* Actually I despise them for quite a lot of other things, all of which they share in common with Labour. But tonight it’s just the insane profligacy.
Cuts, Spanish style vs British style
Click images for links.
The northeastern region has been ordered to rein in its deficit and has embarked on a series of stringent austerity cuts.
The latest edict issued by the region’s ministry of education instructs state schools to cut “excessive consumption” of toilet roll among pupils and limit the quota to a maximum of 25 metres per child per month.
This most recent penny saving measure comes amid widespread cuts to education budgets across Spain that has led to regular protests in the streets by teachers.
Okay, not nice, and even though you can always give your kids some bog roll to take into school with them toward the end of the month I can’t help feeling there’s probably a better place to make savings than on bog paper. On the other hand they are at least trying, whereas…
Officials in the Department for Transport have found the extra cash from other spending along the 100 mile £32 billion proposed route.
The change to the plans will mean that a final decision on whether to give the green light to the HS2 project will now be delayed from this month to mid-January.
The High Speed Rail 2 connection, which would be built between 2016 and 2026, will cut the journey time between the two cities by 35 minutes to less than 50 minutes.
To save half an hour? Why not bin the fucking thing and save £32 billion? Is Gordon Brown still running the country? Because the amount of government profligacy makes it fucking look that way.
Doesn’t add up
Douglas Carswell shows us exactly how bad governments involving all three main British political parties have been at primary school level arithmetic.
Here’s a thought; spending to prop things up cost us £390 billion we do not have. Abolishing corporation tax entirely would have cost the Treasury less than half that amount – £140 billion – in lost revenue over the past three years.
Or it could have been of personal taxation or a mix of things. Either way people would have had money in their pockets to spend on things they needed or wanted. Instead of which a few banks which should have gone down the swanney survived.
Whoopee.
There are no winners, only victims of the security state
Via Longrider at his own place and at the Orphanage a couple of days ago, news that Muslims Against Something That Ended In The Thirteenth Century were leant on by Her Majesty’s Home Secretary and Official Speech Permission Granter, Teresa Maybe, is being banned for being not nice enough. Longrider points out an obvious problem, though clearly not so obvious that Teresa Maybe was able to see it.
Home Secretary Theresa May is banning Muslims Against Crusades, a group planning an anti-Armistice Day protest.
Despicable though this group is, abhorrent as its message may be, their liberties are our liberties and holding a protest no matter how distasteful, is a basic civil liberty. In banning them, May hands them a victory without them lifting a finger, she does their work for them far better than they ever could.
Agreed, and via Trooper Thompson I see that this has been followed by a mass arrest of English Defence League members, for… well, since the now banned Muslims Against Historical Catholicism weren’t there as planned absolutely nothing at all as far as I can see.
Scotland Yard said the group were detained “to prevent a breach of the peace” at a pub near the Cenotaph in Whitehall.
Doesn’t this seem a bit like crushing your car to prevent speeding? Technically they can probably do this if this is anything to go by.
A breach of the peace is not in itself a criminal offence, but the police and any other person have a power of arrest where there are reasonable grounds for believing a breach of the peace is taking place or is imminent. The Court of Appeal defined a breach of the peace as being ‘an act done or threatened to be done which either actually harms a person, or in his presence, his property, or is likely to cause such harm being done’ – see R v Howell. This power of arrest will, of course, be closely scrutinised in connection with [The European Convention on Human Rights] Article 5 (the right to liberty and security), Article 10 (the right to freedom of expression) and Article 11 (the right to freedom of assembly and association).
And of course the ECHR being the pale imitation of a Bill of Rights that it is, doesn’t really seem to prevent this either. Article 5 guarantees no deprivation of liberty except for various reasons including (my bold)…
“c. the lawful arrest or detention of a person effected for the purpose of bringing him before the competent legal authority on reasonable suspicion of having committed an offence or when it is reasonably considered necessary to prevent his committing an offence or fleeing after having done so;”
… while Articles 10 and 11 both say freedom of speech and association respectively is guaranteed unless it’s felt necessary to restrict it. These are the worst kind of rights: positive rights, permissions to do things as long as someone says you’re allowed. They aren’t liberties, they’re just lip service to the idea of liberty. So with the ECHR being as much against you as for you, all the police need in order to arrest people who’ve done nothing for nothing is a semi-plausible story that it was “reasonably considered necessary” to prevent something they might have been going to do.
So this is liberty in modern Britain. Where NuLab started the Cobbleition has carried on, and in order to prevent you from damaging it your freedom is taken and locked in a cage. But at least they’re doing to everybody, so that’s alright, isn’t it?
In short: fuck, no!
Tip of the Akubra also to Quiet_Man in the comments at Trooper Thompson’s for the Telegraph link.
Another Gordon Brown chicken comes home to roost
And to no great surprise rather than being the kind that maybe provides a few eggs it’s a chicken of the shitting everywhere and possibly giving everyone bird ‘flu variety. Well, what else could we expect when it’s enjoyed Brown’s faecal Midas touch.
[Health Secretary] Andrew Lansley says he has been contacted by 22 health service trusts which claim their “clinical and financial stability” is being undermined by the costs of the contracts, which the Labour government used extensively to fund public sector projects.
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Under the PFI deals, a private contractor builds a hospital or school. It owns the building for up to 35 years, and during this period the public sector must pay interest and repay the cost of construction, as well as paying the contractor to maintain the building.
However, the total cost of the deals is often far more than the value of the assets. As a result, Mr Lansley says, the 22 trusts “cannot afford” to pay for their schemes, which in total are worth more than £5.4billion, because the required payments have risen sharply in the wake of the recession.
Well done, Labour, and well done, Gordon, you shower of epically incompetent cunts. It worked well as an idea to help you spunk money into things so you got nice headlines along the lines of ‘Government announces new £X million hospital for Anytown’ while also being a way for you to be less than open about the full scale of the debts you were running up in the country’s name. But it was a bad deal and I struggle to believe you didn’t know it, because if the papers can work it out surely someone in the Treasury spotted it as well.
Earlier in the year, The Daily Telegraph disclosed the extremely poor value offered by many PFI schemes. Taxpayers are having to pay more than £200billion for schools, hospitals and other projects whose capital value is little more than £50 billion.
And this leaves the Cobbleition with having to find ways to make payments. They don’t want to make cuts, which is just as well since contrary to popular belief among the hard of thinking they haven’t made any, and I get the feeling they don’t have a clue how to. My bet is they’ll borrow because the mandarins who run things don’t know any other way and today’s politicians don’t have the balls to stop it or the vision to privatise or charity-ise (if there’s such a word) almost everything the British state does and let the whole fucking lot stand or fall on its individual merits. Christ, they’re barely getting to grips with trimming some of Labour’s fat.
It also emerged last night that the Coalition was expected to announce it is abandoning Labour’s calamitous £12billion NHS computer scheme. Ministers will dismantle the National Programme for IT, a “one size fits all” project started in 2002 which has never worked, and relace it with regional schemes.
You’ve been in office for 16 fucking months, you feckless cunts. Is this all you’ve got to show for almost a fucking year and a half’s work? You’ve worked out that scrapping one of Labour’s hare-brained, over priced vanity projects – one that should have been killed before that fucking Labour drone and, judging by the fresh-from-a-come look he sometimes wore, possible rohypnol victim Andy Burnham had even left the fucking building – will save you a few quid.
Well, that’s a relief. I thought for a moment Britain might have been in trouble.
‘Kinell!
Cobbleition out-Labouring Labour for the second time this week
It was less than 48 hours ago that I was sitting here abusing the Cobbleition for being as bad a bunch of bastards as Labour was because, like Labour, they’re sticking the details of innocent people into a police database. Now I’m going to have to do it again.
This is Chancer of the Exchequer George Osborne speaking in 2006 on the then Chancer Snot Muncher McDoom’s decision to impose a stealth tax on private pensions shortly after Labour came to power nine years earlier.
George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, said: “Gordon Brown’s pension raid was one of his first and worst acts as Chancellor. Pensioners will be paying a heavy price for many, many years to come.”
So I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say to justify this news:
George Osborne, the Chancellor, is considering a £7 billion “raid” on middle-class pensions perks.
[…]
Discussions have begun at the Treasury over the move which would see the axing of tax relief currently paid out on pension contributions by people who pay income tax at the higher rates of 40 per cent and 50 per cent.
[…] The Sunday Telegraph understands that the plans for ending so-called “higher-rate” relief have restarted as Mr Osborne targets immediate cash flow savings as easy “wins”.
[…]
Some Conservative MPs expect the axing of higher-rate relief to be merely the first stage in a more extensive and radical plan which would end up with all tax relief – including on contributions made by people paying the basic 20p rate of income tax – being abolished, saving £22 billion a year in total.
So, Gordon took £5 billion a year and it was, according to The Boy George, one of his worst acts as Chancer and one for which pensioners would pay for years to come, and now the hypocritical shit is thinking about taking £7 billion – which is more or less exactly the same fucking amount after adjusting for inflation (38% since 97). Like I said, I’m looking forward to hearing how Georgie justifies this. I mean, what the fuck is he thinking of by even considering it? I know the country has money problems, thanks in no small part for the profligate spunking away of other people’s money by the aforementioned connoisseur of nasal effluence, but you know what, George? You could try maybe spending less fucking money instead. The Telegraph even tells you how.
Saving £7 billion a year would be the equivalent of axing three government departments – Energy and Climate Change, whose budget is £2.9 billion a year, Environment Food and Rural Affairs, also £2.9 billion, and Culture, Media and Sport, (£1.5 billion).
Depending on your point of view one of those departments has a track record of incompetence that would have seen it chopped long ago had it been in the private sector, another appears to be so busy plotting Britain’s economic destruction that it can only save a fortune in the long run by abolishing it now, and the third appears not to be a fucking government function anyway. Alternatively you could make the supposed bonfire of the QUANGOs into an actual fucking bonfire by getting rid of the fucking lot, rather than the entry level Foreman Grill of the QUANGOs that still left billions being spent on rent seekers and time waster. And the EU, oh George, do we even need to go over yet again how much money Britain’s membership of this Debt of the Month Club is costing everyone in the country? It’s not even just the regular annual cost these days but the additional costs of the bailouts and loans to other member nations whose creditworthiness is considered too risky for them to be able to borrow money from the usual sources.
Lots of options, George, but the one that seems to find most favour at the moment involves screwing yet more money out of Britain’s dwindling stock of economically productive citizens. That you’re going for the well off, people who’ve on salaries far larger than I’ve ever been lucky enough to earn, is neither here nor there. The message is coming through loud and clear, George: if you’re a high earner you’re better off not earning it in Britain, because the government is eyeing your fucking wallets again. Once again I’m singing the same depressing chorus – it’s like Labour never really went away, isn’t it?
Fucking exactly like it.
And the devious, hypocritical, tax-happy, thieving shower of cunts call themselves Conservatives? Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Cobbleition out-Labouring Labour yet again
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Oh, here we fucking go again. Another fucking government, another fucking initiative involving another fucking database. I’m getting so fucking dog sick and fucking tired of repeating this, but it really is like Labour never went away, isn’t it?
The Police National Database, which will be launched by ministers next week, will hold the records up to six million apparently innocent people, including every victim of sexual assault and domestic violence.
[…]
According to official figures a total of 9.2 million people in the UK have criminal records, which means the new database will hold information about up to six million people who have not committed an offence.
Up to six million innocents? Orly? Because as bad as that sounds, and I think it sounds pretty fucking awful, I suspect it’s actually much worse. Because we’re told that the majority of crime – sometimes 80 or 90 percent – is committed by a hard core of persistent offenders numbering somewhere in the region of 100,000 or so. With me so far? Good.
Now count the fucking zeros.
No, I haven’t missed one, that is one hundred thousand. And 100,000 subtracted from 15 million leaves rather more than six million innocent people on the database. The only way to pad out 100,000 career criminals to 9.2 million plus six million innocents is to add more than 9 million other people who are technically not quite pure as the driven slush. You just know who’s going on there, don’t you. I’ll take a punt on everyone who’s ever been given a police caution for absolutely fucking anything from a pub brawl a dozen years ago to allowing smoking in a pub last week, everyone who’s done a week or two inside for protesting about council tax or TV licensing by refusing to pay up, everyone who’s been convicted of any victimless crime or a purely technical offence and especially everyone who’s ever fallen foul of any of the three thousand plus laws the Cobbelition’s predecessors and partners in weapons grade cunticity, New Labia, brought in during its thirteen years of savagely fucking the country into a ditch.
Advocates of the database claim that it is the nature of police intelligence that the records of people without convictions would be held.
Why? Give me one good fucking reason why. Oh, I can think of convincing reasons – too much effort to remove the non-crims plus the assumption that lying with dogs gets people fleas so there’s the prospect of a few easy collars in the future – but they’re not what I’d call a good reason.
More than 12,000 approved police officers and staff will be able to access the database when it is launched next week.
And with the track record of epic cuntishness and bastardry in modern governments we can expect that to be 24,000 a year from now, not all of whom will be police. In five years I bet there will be more cops and various level state drones able to access the database than there will be career criminals on the fucking thing.
Let me take you back to early last year. Let’s have a little reminder of things some of the key players said in the run up to the election (my bold).
“If you care about our liberties, if you want people to be free from the clutches of an overbearing state, and if you want a government with liberal values, vote Conservative.”
Said the dishonourable member for Beaconsfield and Attorney General for England and Wales, Dominic Grieve.
”Whether you’ve been a Lib Dem voter or a Labour voter or a Green voter – if you care about the environment, if you want action to improve your quality of life, if you care about civil liberties, if you care about people power, if you want a clean break from the past – vote Conservative.
“If you have a view that we need to do more on our environment, more on civil liberties, more on quality of life there is now a modern Conservative Party that can get things done.”
And that would be the dishonourable and discharging member for Witney, the Right Wanker David Wliiam Donald Cameron.
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Well, you’ve really fucking delivered, haven’t you, you disgraceful pair of hypocritical, deceitful, authoritarian suppurating cunts. Fuck your Cobbleition, fuck its twisted ideas of liberty, and fuck you all. Fuck you deep and hard and right in the lungs.
I wish I could honestly say this comes as a shock
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Not for the first time I find myself saying that it’s just as if Labour had never left.
Twats.
After you, Dave.
According to The Teletubbygraph David Cameramong is shortly going to be talking about freedom.
British Muslims must subscribe to mainstream values of freedom and equality, David Cameron will say as he declares that the doctrine of multiculturalism has “failed” and will be abandoned.
…
He will also warn that groups that fail to promote British values will no longer receive public money or be able to engage with the state.
Well, that sounds a nice idea, Dave. I’m all for the state not funding any groups promoting anything at all, much less those promoting things that go against British values – if they can’t get funding from people who see things their way then they sure as hell don’t deserve a penny of taxpayers’ money.* And I certainly won’t argue that the whole multiculti dream has created more problems than it solved or that those who don’t like living in a free country and refuse to adapt are, ironically, free to leave it. But I have a question for you: when are you going subscribe to the values of freedom and equality you’re lecturing others about?
No, I am deadly serious. Britain is a country where speaking your mind risks legal action if other people don’t like what you say, which means that there is no freedom of speech – say the wrong thing and someone may use the courts and the legal system to silence you. The same courts protect slebs and shag-happy bootfallers from having their embarrassing lives discussed in the media, and while I have no interest in reading about them anyway it means that there’s no freedom of the press either. While in theory law abiding citizens have the right to defend themselves against violent attack they are in practice denied almost all means of doing so effectively, so the freedom to defend oneself is extremely shaky. Even aside from the ridiculous detention of people for taking photos and buying tobacco or because the police can’t remember the difference between a suspect and a witness, there is no freedom from malicious arrest or from cruel and unusual punishment since UK police forces, when they’re not delaying the proles for the convenience of surgically enhanced minor slebs, may be required by foreign law enforcement to arrest British citizens or residents with little in the way of prima facie evidence and for offences that need not be crimes in the UK.** If you are of a religious persuasion and hold certain disagreeable views about homosexuals you are not free to allow them to influence the way you choose to do business or with whom, which means Britons do not have freedom of religion or association either and are not free to exercise property rights. The drugs laws mean that people aren’t free to decide what to put in their own bodies and the persistent belief in the state as moral guardian and arbiter means that those with vaginas aren’t free to use them to earn a quid from those without one. For heaven’s sake, even consensual sex requires an IQ test now. And don’t get me started on how completely not-at-all-like-being-free it feels to fucking fly anywhere these days because I might not stop for a while.
Want me to carry on, Dave? Want me to look at the lack of freedom British citizens have when it comes to being heard over Britain’s EU membership despite the promises of both Cobbleition parties? Or the apparently shelved, or at least vastly watered down, Great Repeal Bill that you promised would be used to sweep away much of the most pointless and egregious legislation put on the books by previous governments? Or the way the promise that that would be open to public consultation was broken almost as soon as it became clear that many people wanted the smoking ban reconsidered? Freedom to for business owners and patrons to choose for themselves – no, can’t have that, can we?
And it gets worse.
Entering the debate on national identity and religious tolerance, the Prime Minister will declare an end to “passive tolerance” of divided communities, and say that members of all faiths must integrate into wider society and accept core values.
To be British is to believe in freedom of speech and religion, democracy and equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality, he will say. Proclaiming a doctrine of “muscular liberalism”, he will say that everyone, from ministers to ordinary voters, should actively confront those who hold extremist views.
See what I mean? To be considered properly British in Cameramong’s Britain you have to believe in mutually incompatible ideals. You have equal rights subject to them clashing with someone whose rights are more equal than yours. You have freedom of speech provided you don’t say anything unacceptable. You have freedom to believe in whatever god or gods you like and practice which ever flavour of religion that appeals to you providing you don’t believe in the bits that the British state aren’t comfortable with. And what the fuck is “muscular liberalism”? I’d really love to know because it sounds awfully like a doctrine of the state being free to exercise force against citizens until they are made to see things its way, and if so I don’t think there’s anything remotely liberal about it.
These freedoms are fucking absolutes, you hateful authoritarian prick. You are at liberty or you have restrictions. You are free or you are not. It’s that fucking simple, Dave, and if you can’t or won’t practice what you preach then I rate you as little better than those you have the chutzpah to lecture about it.
Bastard!
* Since I’d hold libertarian organisations to that principle I’d sure as fuck say it applies to any group that exists to tell other people what to do and how to live. Get by on voluntary donations or get lost.
** As the case of the Natwest Three showed us, it’s not always even necessary for any offence to have taken place in the jurisdiction that asked for the arrests to be made.
Idiots.
I’m sure there are some people happy with the Cobbleition over this:
BRITAIN said it would cut the number of non-EU migrants allowed to work in the country by a fifth to a maximum of 21,700 a year, as it seeks to radically slash immigration levels.
Home Secretary Theresa May also announced plans to tighten student and marriage visas, as the government seeks to cut migration from the current level of hundreds of thousands of arrivals a year, to tens of thousands.
Oh dear. Look, I’m aware that I court some controversy by being in favour of open borders at least in principle, though I’m always careful to put a few conditions which I believe are absolutely essential prerequisites such as no taxpayer funded handouts, no free housing, no language assistance and no modification of the local culture. That’s not an exhaustive list either, but you get the picture – the circumstances in which I’d support open borders are vanishingly unlikely under a government of any of the UK’s main parties. All the same I’m still in favour of the ideal of free movement of money, goods, services and people, but even it’s not even necessary to accept that much to see what a dumb idea a hard limit is. What do you do when your cap of 21,700 migrants is full halfway through the year? Tell applicants that they’ll have to wait ’til the following year, perhaps. Okay, but it could be that among those number 21,701 and up is the world’s most naturally gifted brain surgeon who suffered the misfortune of having been born in some war torn despotic shithole, and that they intended to leave the place and settle in Britain, dedicating their life and skills to the NHS. So what are they going to do when they hear, “Sorry, come back in six months?” They’re probably going to go to another country rather than wait, and so Britain loses that talent maybe to here or New Zealand or Canada or whatever country is smart enough to welcome skilled migrants without shutting the door when an arbitrary number is reached. Doesn’t even need to be a brain surgeon. It could be the stereotypical corner shop entrepreneur – doesn’t matter as long as they’re putting in. Why the fuck would any country want to limit the number of people who want to come in and work and contribute? Frankly it makes little more sense than NuLab’s long term policy of inviting in every fucker who knows to get off the plane holding a hand out, palm up.
And on the subject of NuLab, or UnNuLab or whatever we’re going to call them now, they’re not to be out-fuckwitted by a bunch of Tories and LibDems. Oh, no.
As he embarks on a review of the party Mr Miliband, labelled Red Ed during the leadership campaign, warned his party not to expect, what he described as a quiet life.
In an indication of the tax policy he wants Labour to pursue, he said the 50p top rate of income tax for people earning more than £150,000 should be permanent.
Even dafter than Teresa May and the Cobbleition, and showing no greater understanding of the idea that people are free to move. Keeping out people who want to come in is hard but it’s not a patch on keeping in people who’ve had enough and want to get out, and the more monied someone is the easier it is for them to leave one country for another. Either Red Ed is too thick to realise this and too ignorant of recent history to know that lower taxes increased revenue for Nigel Lawson, or he’s simply a Laffer Curve Denialist who assumes that you can tax people to the point they simply stop working and still somehow get tax off them.
And this is precisely the kind of thing that keeps me opposed to both parties (I’m counting the Cobbleition as one party for the time being, though I sometimes count all of them as a single party with three wings). In their separate ways they’re both equally committed not just to the big state and further loss of liberty but to continued stupidity as well. Dimmer leaders for a dumber Britain.
‘Kinell.
They spent how much?
And they spent it on what?
The Coalition has spent more than £200million in just five months on consultants, PR and marketing, new figures show.
I’m so sorry to keep banging on about this, but surely it’s clear to just about everybody by now that Britain may have changed the conductors but it’s still the same bloody music and to a large extent played by the same band.
Among other spending, UK Trade and Investment distributed grants of £550 to a motorsport company and £500 to a private detective agency.
It also gave out £1,100 to a pet products firm and £881 to a yoga company.
Oh, sweet Jesus, make it stop. Just make it fucking stop.
Altogether now:
It’s not your fucking money!!
The Angry Exile 