Thoughts on a beknighted man

So, it's finally happened: Fred "the Shred" Goodwin has been stripped of his knighthood, to cheers and further vituperation from "the left". Some of the stuff I've read on twitter has been at least as offensive as any dole-bludger bashing I've ever read. Or indeed, written.

But let's have a look at the chronology of all this. Back in 2007, when RBS beat Barclays to the takeover of ABN Amro (which was effectively the deal that fucked RBS so hard that it will limp for the rest of its life) financial analysts were full of praise for Fred's hardball strategy. Even the notoriously milquetoast BBC said:

Barclays' failure to pull off the deal will inevitably raise question marks about its future strategy.

It was shortly after this that everything turned to shit, but at the time, everybody was impressed with Fred's perspicacity. He had made RBS the world's largest bank (by asset value) during his tenure. Now, you might well argue with the benefit of hindsight, but at the time, everybody was impressed.

He was knighted in 2004, by the Labour government, starring Ed Miliband, who is currently stroking himself into a coma at having convinced the dishfaced social democrat into revoking said knighthood. If he was that fucking outraged, why didn't the mongtarded fuckwit do something when he was actually in government?

Secondly, Fred's pension, which is now the target of such opprobrium from "the left" was agreed by Labour as part of getting him sacked and replaced by Stephen Hester, another name some of you might recognise as a bloke who is getting royally fucked over thanks to chiselling whingeing from "the left".

So, Labour, having agreed that Fred was a hero, knighted him, agreed to his pension to get rid of him and struck a deal with his replacement. Immediately they were out of power, they started using both of these people that they had been so generous to while in power, as whipping boys and ways to froth up public resentment (that didn't exist among Labour voters when they were in power, obviously!)

If the massively-foreheaded douchebag actually was a Tory, he would have turned around in the face of all this public fauxtrage and said: "These deals were agreed by Labour when they were in government and I can't understand why they're complaining now." And continued to honour the deals.

If he was an astute politician, he would have said: "These deals were a bad deal done by Labour and I'm calling time on them behalf of the hard-working taxpayer." At least that way, he would have still been a massive cunt, but he would have been able to garner some plaudits for his actions.

But because he's a slippery social democrat weasel who has nothing more in mind than to one day be able to say "I was Prime Minister, you know!" he has opted for the weakest possible option: to bow to manufactured outrage and use it as a diversion for some of his other unprincipled actions. It speaks volumes that the only thieving shit who is claiming any victory over this is Ed fucking Miliband!

If this sorry saga doesn't make you question your party allegiances and doesn't make you see why I can't tell the difference between any of the major political parties, then you are definitely part of the problem.

And if this little fiasco doesn't prevent any future businessman from running a state-owned business, then they really are stupid enough to deserve everything they get.

Elfin Safety

I gather from frothing on Twitter that iDave is talking about reigning in the lunatic madness of Health and Safety regulation. Predictably, tribal lefties are screaming about corporate murderers and how "the workers" will now be electrocuted, thrown into mills, and sacrificed to various frivolous profits.

The Daily Mail tendency are, of course, equally cheered. A triumph over the lunacy of elfin safety will now be won.

The truth is that both sides are wrong. iDave will tinker with the regulations but do nothing substantial.

Why the frothing from the left? Businesses have no particular interest in killing or harming their employees, because dead employees demotivate staff, reduce retention and cost in compensation - at the most cynical and heartless level. And of course, this ignores the fact that employers are human beings as well. So, I don't believe that it's in any way "good business" or profitable not to take a reasonable level of care for your employees.

But the other side of the coin is true as well: do employees not have a duty to take reasonable care of themselves? No person takes a job which says "one of your duties is to stick your arm into this tree shredder", do they? Do employees not have any responsibility in any industrial accident that may happen?

The problem with blindly relying on checkbox regulations is that people assume that they don't have to think about their own safety any more. I would argue that the mere presence of overweening health and safety regulation is that many people assume they don't have to think about their own safety any more.

I don't have a problem with each business clearly articulating the level of risk to each employee and letting them voluntarily transact. Some people have more of an appetite for risk than others. If the risks are crazy, employers won't find staff and will have to do something. But the massive burden of irrelevant, voluminous regulation that applies to all business is just a stupid cost.

Feeling troubled?

Just why, pray tell, can fucking politicians and civil servants never refrain from calling a spade a metallic professionally formed hole digging device?

I see that the man with the massive forehead has come out with some fucking bollocks about sorting out "troubled families". These were previously known as "problem families", i.e. the feral cunts that no sane person wants to live near. You know, the cunts who play bangin' choons till 4 AM, puke in your garden, shit in your fishpond, beat your kids up for the hell of it and collect ASBOs for fun. And the whole clan joins in the fun, making the lives of everyone around them a fucking misery.

And what, pray tell, you fucking incompetent socialist fuckwit, is wrong with calling these utter shitstains "problem families"?

They are a fucking problem for the entire community that they live in. They make everyone's lives less pleasant. They are families that are a problem. They are not troubled. They are a fucking problem.

But as ever, the heir to Blair is hugging hoodies, and preparing to spunk out more of our hard-earned on some "eye-catching initiative" to show us how much he cares.

Look, Dickface, it's fucking simple: mealy-mouthed, wishy-washy language does nothing to solve the problem. It's clear that unwinding the mendacious bullshit of Labour is beyond you, but do you really fucking have to add to it?

Three line whip

A three-line whip is a strict instruction to attend and vote, breach of which would normally have serious consequences. Permission not to attend may be given by the whip, but a serious reason is needed. Breach of a three-line whip can lead to expulsion from the parliamentary political group in extreme circumstances and may lead to expulsion from the party. Consequently, three-line whips are generally only issued on key issues, such as votes of confidence and supply. The nature of three-line whips and the potential punishments for revolt vary dramatically among parties and legislatures.

It seems quite curious to me that people still regard representative democracy with such fondness. Any representative has to balance the aggregated wishes of his community with his own beliefs, at the very best of times.

And here, in a matter where there is a broad belief in the "community" that the EU is not something we have universal love for, we encounter the true balance of power in the sham of our "representative" democracy. David Cameron has ordered a three-line whip to deny the British people a referendum on something that affects our lives every day, often in ways that British people do not want or agree with. I understand that Ed Miliband has done the same. The largely Europhile LibDems will be pretty much in the bag anyway.

This means that a handful of politicians effectively do get to decide things on our behalf, expressly rejecting the "democratic wishes" of the majority of the population. Cameron was democratically elected, and now has the ability to be a dictator on things that matter to him.

Even though a number of MPs will ignore the three-line whip, Cameron can be quite sure of his team of lobby-fodder sheep backing his wishes, and with the Labour Party whipped to deny us the referendum as well, he can be quite relaxed about those who disobey the whip. It all makes it look like there is actually democracy in action and the will of the majority has prevailed.

Cameron clearly has no desire to do anything to rock any boat, even though getting us out of the EU would probably get him re-elected by a landslide. He is clearly hoping to follow Blair into some other, grand, post-PM role and as an urbane member of the social democratic group, he probably quite likes the idea of having some grand political folly. Hence his three-line whip, hence his denial of a perfectly reasonable referendum. Behind that bland face and enormous forehead is the mind of a typical authoritarian cunt who knows better than all of us and is prepared to blatantly fuck us over to keep us in line.

Three-line whips are a test of the mettle of our politicians. I am quite certain that they will be found wanting. Again.

Update: I've just heard that the LibDems will be imposing a three-line whip. Why are our politicians so terrified of the will of the British people regarding the EU?

Smell the smugness...

The nation that gave the world Tiananmen Square expresses its approval of Call Me Dave's views on the internet.

I feel unclean.

Ban Twitter!

Tory MPs, earlier

Call Me Dave has responded to the riots and violence in a way that any Fabian would approve of: he has called for the ability to shut down BBM and Twitter to prevent violence from happening.

This is despite the fact that in other countries, twitter and so on are considered (by fucking Call Me Dave!) to be good for democracy.

Typical fucking politician, cheering something that looks good when it happens to someone else, but quick to shut it down when he thinks it's bad for his proles.

This despite the fact that a zillion people used BBM and Twitter without fucking needing to riot.

Is there anything in iDave's fucking bullshit posturing and hypocrisy that would not be familiar to a student of New Labour? Of course not, they are all the fucking same, apart from the tie colour.

Thieves, cunts, bullies and fucking fascists. Hang the lot of them.

Post script: more appropriate response from the wonderful, infalling, completely trustworthy state.

Fucking cunts.

Fuck you

It made me laugh...

Monbiot: wrong as usual

*sigh* Here we go again:

The obscure adjustments the government is planning to the tax acts of 1988 and 2009 have been missed by almost everyone – and are, anyway, almost impossible to understand without expert help. But as soon as you grasp the implications, you realise that a kind of corporate coup d'etat is taking place.

Like the dismantling of the NHS and the sale of public forests, no one voted for this measure, as it wasn't in the manifestos. While Cameron insists that he occupies the centre ground of British politics, that he shares our burdens and feels our pain, he has quietly been plotting with banks and businesses to engineer the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle to the ultra-rich that this country has seen in a century.

Oh, the drama! Oh, the horror! Oh, the disgust! What could the eeeeevil Tory toff be doing now?

At the moment tax law ensures that companies based here, with branches in other countries, don't get taxed twice on the same money. They have to pay only the difference between our rate and that of the other country. If, for example, Dirty Oil plc pays 10% corporation tax on its profits in Oblivia, then shifts the money over here, it should pay a further 18% in the UK, to match our rate of 28%. But under the new proposals, companies will pay nothing at all in this country on money made by their foreign branches.

Foreign means anywhere. If these proposals go ahead, the UK will be only the second country in the world to allow money that has passed through tax havens to remain untaxed when it gets here. The other is Switzerland. The exemption applies solely to "large and medium companies": it is not available for smaller firms. The government says it expects "large financial services companies to make the greatest use of the exemption regime". The main beneficiaries, in other words, will be the banks.

But that's not the end of it. While big business will be exempt from tax on its foreign branch earnings, it will, amazingly, still be able to claim the expense of funding its foreign branches against tax it pays in the UK. No other country does this. The new measures will, as we already know, accompany a rapid reduction in the official rate of corporation tax: from 28% to 24% by 2014. This, a Treasury minister has boasted, will be the lowest rate "of any major western economy". By the time this government is done, we'll be lucky if the banks and corporations pay anything at all.

Hurrah! There are a number of reasons to applaud this:

1. Companies don't actually ever "pay" tax. They simply claw it back out of money they could pay to their staff (you know, the working stiffs) or they pay their shareholders less (you know, the pensions of the working stiffs) or they gouge it out of their customers (which means that the working stiffs pay more). Companies are legal entities, not living, breathing things. Don't fucking pay attention to the legal fiction, pay attention to the employees, the shareholders and the customers. You know, actual human beings. Think about the consequences to them.

2. Lower taxes will almost certainly increase the tax take as larger corporates will look to move back onshore, or move here anew precisely because the tax regime is so competitive. And this is all apart from the Laffer Curve, which shows that when tax rates are too high (and they definitely are in the UK!) then decreasing the tax rate actually increases the tax take.

So, Cameron and Osborne should actually be applauded for taking small steps in the right direction, rather than being pilloried by economic illiterates.

And just to show how fucking stupid this twat is:

These measures will drain not only wealth but also jobs from the UK. The new legislation will create a powerful incentive to shift business out of this country and into nations with lower corporate tax rates. Any UK business that doesn't outsource its staff or funnel its earnings through a tax haven will find itself with an extra competitive disadvantage. The new rules also threaten to degrade the tax base everywhere, as companies with headquarters in other countries will demand similar measures from their own governments.

OK: so we're drastically lowering our tax rate AND offering tax-reducing measures not available anywhere else in the western world, and this is going to chase businesses away? Yes, Mr Banker, you don't want to base your business in Britain, where you will pay less tax. You don't want the prestige and convenience and facilities of the Square Mile AND lower taxes, do you?

What a fucking idiot.

I'm ambivalent about the issue of driving jobs abroad -- it may drive a handful of jobs abroad, but I suspect that most headquarter jobs will need to be in the headquarters, so more companies headquartered here will mean more, better paid jobs here.

So, overall, Monbiot is, as usual, completely fucking wrong in his economic analysis, although this won't stop lefty tossers short-stroking themselves into the Guardian's comment pages today.

The only thing that I see as wrong is that some of the perks only apply to "medium to large business", although off-shoring probably doesn't make economic sense for smaller businesses anyway. So, more corporatism from Blue Labour (there's a surprise!) but at least it's better corporatism than New Labour's.

Oh, how I laughed ... again ... again

Having watched what David Cameron actually said, I can only laugh. The only "crime" he committed was to say that multiculturalism wasn't working.

This is a matter of opinion, personally, I don't have a problem with people retaining their culture here, all that irks is when minorities get preferential treatment just because they're minorities.

But apart from that, Cameron said nothing racist or nasty, yet the headlines and tweets seem to indicate that Cameron practically said "Darkies go home" or something. I'm fairly certain that none of the frothing twats have actually listened to his actual words.

He said nothing that Blair or Brown would not have said, nothing that any Labour or Liberal Democrat MP would not have said, save that he attacked the sacred word "multiculturalism".

He actually made a bad mistake there, in my opinion. If he'd not attacked the holy word, he would have said something that no fan of tribal politics could actually attack.

But seriously, you fucking wittering clits: listen to the speech, bleep out the word "multiculturalism" and tell me if he's wrong.

PS The thing that really made my stomach churn was his statement that the reason this happened was because "we have not provided a strong vision for them to follow". Dave, we know you're a totalitarian fuck, but take your strong vision and shove it up your bleached anus.

Thanks.

*Sigh*

So there's this, very funny, ha! ha! Gurnadia lives up to its name, etc., etc.

But what is the actual story? The Regional Development Agencies got shitcanned for being a total fucking waste of taxpayer dosh. Instead of an unelected, unaccountable bunch of timeserving tossers sitting there pissing our money away on the ideals of the Labour government, we're going to get ... an unelected, unaccountable bunch of timeserving tossers sitting there pissing our money away on the ideals of the LibDem/Tory coalition.

What the fuck is wrong with British politicians? Why is the answer to every problem yet another quango?

And I can't wait for Kingbingo to wander along and tell me how different and how much better this is all going to be from Labour's idea of a quango.

Oh Jesus Christ ...

... give me fucking strength:

‘It [the Big Society] is about decentralisation, but without giving more power to county councils. It is not necessarily about charities or even the private sector. It’s about collective action.’

Next stop: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" ...

Cunts.

Spot the difference

I've had Tory loyalists tell me all kinds of shit about how David Cameron "can't frighten the horses", and how radically different his ideas really are when compared to Labour's tired shenanigans.

So I was amused to read this over at "Tory loyalist", Dizzy.

Well, at first, anyway.

But when you read the articles, it's abundantly clear that even at the detail level of where the money is going, there really isn't a hair's breadth of difference between the two schemes.

So will Tory tribalists please just stop spouting this bullshit about how much better iDave is and how different Tory policies are? And especially, stop fucking telling me that the Tories are the only way to achieve a more libertarian future. Your esteemed leader has a flagship policy which is identical to something that the fucking one-eyed madman tried on before.

On which planet does stealing money from people's bank accounts constitute fucking libertarianism?

The man is a cunt, and this iteration of the Tories is entirely undistinguishable from Labour and the LibDems. Something I've said since forever, and something which gets proven over and over again.

Manic depression

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

But the lesson of previous prime ministerial honeymoons is that once the novelty wears off, and the floating voters drift away, a leader needs his party to feel it really owes him and would die defending his honor in a crisis. I wonder if Mr. Cameron can be sure the bulk of the Conservative party feels that way about him.

-- Iain Martin

The end of the war on the motorist

I distinctly remember iDave promising this, to great cheer and delight. So what was the first thing these cunts did for the motorist? Yes, that's right, they tried to introduce a blanket 20MPH limit in built-up areas. So it was left to the useless fucking civil service to finally grow a set and tell Norman "Twat" Baker to fuck the fucking fuck off:

Calls by parliamentary under-secretary of state for transport Norman Baker to reduce all urban speed limits to 20mph on safety grounds have been dismissed by his own department.

Baker was quoted in the national press saying that ownership of urban roads should be 'shared by motorists, cyclists and pedestrians'. He cited studies and test schemes which had seen significant reductions in pedestrians and cyclist casualties who are hit at 20mph are less likely to be killed than at 30mph.

However a spokeswoman for the Department for Transport said there were no plans to change the 30 mph default speed limit.

"To do so would have huge resource implications and place additional burdens on local authorities who are already free to implement 20mph limits where they decide it is appropriate," she added.

Can I just add a message of my own to Norman "Twat" Baker here?

Norm: go fucking fuck yourself, and then fuck the fucking fuck off. You fucking fuck.

The heir to Blair

Oh, how we will come to rue this slimy fucker one day:

I suspect that David Cameron wouldn’t shed any tears if the AV referendum passed.

Politicians drive policy for their own gain. In the case of Tony Blair, he focused his efforts on becoming seen as a world leader with an eye to a (very!) lucrative life on the lecture circuit. Imagine being able to charge £100,000 for an hour-long rambling monologue of "third way" management speak cuntwaftery and bollocks? Well, he does have huge mortgages to feed.

Gordon Brown focused his efforts on screwing up the economy so that he could spin his "save the world" schtick. He wasn't anywhere near as personable as Blair, so it's been a total waste of time for him. But he wasn't in it for the long game: he was in it to remain in power until he died.

And now we have the unscrupulous, amoral leader of the Tories not really giving a shit about a policy that is complete anathema to his party. He doesn't really give a flying fuck what policies or behaviours it requires, as long as he gets to cling on to the levers of power.

He certainly isn't a small-state Tory, if you look at Osborne's "cuts", they are nothing of the kind. All that is happening is that the state is growing at a slightly lower rate than it would if the "drunk, monocular sailor in port for the first time in a year" was still in charge.

Cameron will endure anything to remain in post. He may not have his eye on the long game like Blair, almost certainly because he doesn't need to. But the consequences for us, who have to endure whatever goes on to keep the cunt in power, will almost certainly be no better for us than the consequences of Blairism were.

More shilling on behalf of the government

Here we go: David Cameron is a weapons-grade cock-end:

The news comes on the back of confusion about what last week's ballot actually meant, making a curious affair even curiouser. But, whatever the case, this outcome should take much of the sting and urgency out of the situation – even if it still leaves some backbenchers aggrieved at how David Cameron went about things in the first place. And as for the Tory leadership, the question now is whether any of this was really worth it.

Way to go, Dave. Two weeks into your job and the back benches already hate you as much as they hated Blair after a fucking decade. That's gonna really help your agenda, isn't it?

Twat.

Update: Fraser Nelson unrolls his tongue and shoves it right up iDave's arsehole.

Update 2: Iain Martin asks: WTF?

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

New boss:

David Cameron’s move to neuter the 1922 has been pulled off with great tactical skill. He sprung the move on the party and then called an instant ballot, denying any rebellion time to gather strength.

Old boss:

Leftwing Labour MP John McDonnell is set to launch his Labour leadership bid at the PCS Union conference in Brighton.

I've had a chat with him and he's hopping made about the way the NEC rules give just four days (next Monday to next Thursday) for candidates to collect the crucial 33 nominations from fellow MPs.

Just as well this Cameron chappy isn't some autocratic arsehole who's going to ramrod his diktats though and ignore his cabinet and back benches like that awful Blair, eh?

The 55% solution?

Hm. Well, this was an interesting issue. The Lib Dems have evidently found more common ground with the Tories on fixed-term parliaments than on proportional representation. in order to make it more difficult for the sitting Prime Minister to call an election at an opportune moment rather than the end of the fixed term (when they could be at the mercy of "events"), the Lib Dems have proposed that such a call for an early "voluntary" dissolution would have to attract the support of 55% of the Commons.

In other words, by accepting this, Cameron actually makes it harder to call an election at a time that suits him.

But either because they're stupid or because they're tribalist baboons (or both), lefties have been screaming blue, sorry, red murder about Cameron trying to stitch up democracy. Maybe they're already thinking ahead to the time when they might be in charge again and how this would fuck them over, but I doubt it. It really looks like straightforward FUD-spreading to me, trying to tar Cameron with a gerrymandering brush.

Look, you don't need to make shit up. Cameron's got more than enough flaws that you can slaughter him for that you don't need to make shit up. Pick on the things he's actually doing wrong and you'll get more sympathy. Here's some stuff to be getting on with. How liberal does that yellow-tied twat sound now?

At the moment, you just sound like a bunch of angry, desperate losers. Yes, Tom Harris, I'm looking at you.

Assuming iDave is honestly casting the Limp Dumbs a bone here, one thing that nobody has explained to me is: why do we want fixed-term parliaments anyway? What is a fixed-term parliament going to give us that we, as voters, actually want or care about? How often do we have a substantially shorter than 5-year parliament anyway and what difference would it make to us if we always had a 5-year parliament?

This sounds like changing the rules for the benefit of some politicians, certainly not something that's going to help us at all.

Update: This.

Time for the LimpDumbs to hang tough

So, from what I've seen today, I reckon the most painful short-term outcome is the best. LibLab coalition along with 17 other parties causing a national upchuck. People will look at the resulting clusterfuck and take a massive shit on the idea of PR. Markets will tank. The IMF will be called in. The government loses vote after vote. Eventually another general election is called.

Labour will be crucified even further, Limp Dumbs will be flushed down the toilet and hopefully Dave will realise that this social democratic shit doesn't fly any more.

Either that, or the Tories will apply the boot and we'll get a proper economic Tory. Because fuck all the other shit: a serious evisceration of government bloat is what we need above all.

So, my heartfelt plea to the Limp Dumbs: reject Dave's offer, even though he's offering exactly what the Gorgon will offer you ... if you're lucky! Get into bed with the people you feel most comfortable with. Go on, do it.

You know you want to.