April Fools

Well it's a new month and new financial year and the school bullies (Cameron , Clegg , Osborne , Ducncan- Schmidt) have chosen the easy targets again (anyone on benefits). You can imagine them at school each September picking out the apparently weakest new pupils , then running home to mummy if they ended up with a bloody nose.

I'm lucky that I have a job and a house so am personally not affected , but was severely attacked under Thatcher , recieved no support when I had a hundred mile return commute when my daughter was severely ill in the Royal Manchester Childrens Hospital. I was helped through that by my bank manager at the Midland Bang in Tarleton who gave me the extra money I needed for petrol and said we'd sort when my daughter was better , which we did . The government gave no help at all bar still allowing the NHS to exist.

The current re organisation was tried fifteen years ago under the tories and failed then. It is designed for "private enterprise" to cherry pick profitable bits (often made profitable by tying the NHS intp extortionate contracts) . The last three governments don't seem to understand the concept of services and utilities.

The mass privatisations have just resulted in spiralling costs paid for by the electorate.

The government continually attack the low paid, the disabled and people on benefits while actively encouraging large corporations such as Starbucks, Amazon , Google  NOT to pay tax on monies earned in this country.

Benefit Fruad in this country is estimated ate 1.1 Billion though this site reckons it is more like 5.5 Billion. Corporation Tax avoidance (that we know about) is between 8 and 14 billion (see here) , yest this is not being addressed at all by this government . It's the school bully mentality , go for the easy target who cant fight back , and probably you will find that those companies are contributing to the government coffers. So even in the worst case scenarion Corporation Tax avoidance is 60% than benefits fraud.

I am not condoning either , but cutting benefits is the bullies answer. Providing living wage jobs and actually targetting fraud would mean that cuts would be minimal.

Snow Still Here

Front Window

Across The Road

 Just thought I'd let you know that we have lots of snow. My next door neighbour made a snowman. It is melting but so much came down the garden still has a white carpet.






The snow is still everywhere , covering the gardens , footpaths and lots of the local hillsides and parks.

Whickham

Trees at the back

Was quite funny, in my local William Hill's two old numpties going apoplectic because the weather had caused the cancellation of Newcastle Races . I'm not sure whether they were blaming the Government , the Council or the betting shop manager



It was quite an amusing interlude. These are the same guys who try and push you out of the way to put a 25p each way bet on the greyhounds!!

 
Anyway it almost feels like Christmas ..... but it's nearly March!!

4:49 Sunday Morning

..and I've woken up , or rather been woken by an annoying tickly , chesty cough, In an Alan Bennett-esque piece of situationanist observation I'm sure I made myself a LemSip , well Boots own brand equivalent last night , but can't finsd any trace of it, and I'm still wondering whether I imagined it!!

Anyway it's one of those times where it's too early to get up and too late to go back to sleep. There's a thick carpet of snow outside and though it started to melt , it's now freezing , so not driving weather and the roads are very, very quite.

Was listening to an album of protest songs last nightfron the 40's and 50's from the likes of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and many others about the oppression of the average man by a combination of banking and government. It's funny how banks and governments should be there to serve us , but in fact just exploit us. I'm one of the lucky ones in that I am keeping head above water , but lots of people arent so lucky, with fuel and food prices rocketing and wages either staying static or jobs just going and then people expected to take minimum wage jobs.

In yesterdays paper there wasreported a push by the Tory right to curb union power by not allowing strike action unless 50% of the members turn out. Be interesting to apply similar criteria to bills but through Parliament . Nothing gets passed unless 50% of MPs turned up. Can you imagine a company functioning with it's members have such a blatant disregard for their work and responsibilities?

Also yesterday the UK's triple AAA credit rating was downgraded to AA by the banks , who , don't forget put the whole world in this mess AND were bailed out by the governments of the world. George Osborne said that was justification for continuing austerity measures (ie tagetting people on benefits and the pensions of those on minimum wage). Yesterday the Inland Revenue was trumpetting the success of it's anti tax avoidance measures , apparently a Liverpool hairdresser and a Northumbrian Pipe Fitter were the top ones recovering about £20K. Letters of congratulation were probably sent to Amazon , Starbucks and Google. I am not getting at those companies for legally avoiding tax , I'm accusing our governments (and this goes back a long way) for facilitating this: Check this article on tax avoidance (which remember is legal and encouraged and facilitated by goverments all over the world)  and here are some telling figures:

• 1% - Income tax rate reportedly available to members of the legal K2 tax scheme used by Jimmy Carr.  Source: The Independent
• 98 – Number of FTSE 100 companies operating out of tax havens. Source: ActionAid
• £25bn – Estimated annual cost of tax avoidance, according to 2008 research. £13billion of this is lost to individuals and £12billion to the 700 largest corporations. Source: Tax Research UK and the TUC
• 10% - Average rate of tax paid by top earners, according to a confidential HMRC study seen by George Osborne. Source: The Telegraph

Plus a few telling figures from  1227 QI Facts:

• In 2005, the 54 billionaires in Britain paide less that £15 million in income tax between them. £9 million of that was paid by James Dyson. To put it in perspective it's like me and you paying less than 10p a month on our earnings.
• In 2011 only 9 of the 62 owners of apartments in One Hyde Park, London (the world's most expensive block of flats) paid any council tax.
• Over 600,000 companies are registered in the British Virgin Islands (populaton < 29K)
• In 2009 Exxon posted $19 billion profits and received a $156 million federal tax rebate from the US Government

So you can see goverments and big business are still in cahoots , taking profits for themselves and leaving us to pick up the tab. Anyway it's time to go back to bed now...

How The Government Effectively Fuels Us

I see a lot of folk rightly complaining about the latest price rise on fuel , but I'm lucky , mostly I'm indirectly affected. However I filled up my car at the weekend and immedietly doubled its value (the write off value is £50 , which is what it now costs to fill up).

unusually the villains of the piece are the oil companies , who let's face it DO deserve most of the flack they get but think on this. David Cameron , that brilliant responsibilty dodger (Nick Clegg knows)  is the latest in a long line of politicians not really taking responsibility just the financial fruits of a captive market. . After the petrol company and garage set their price of about 54p the government adds on fuel duty and VAT which result in another 170% being added on to the price you pay (around £1.40).

So when the goverment say they cant't do anything about the price of fuel , you what they are talking . It's an easy win for them , and will do until they can find a way of taxing the air that we breathe!!

Here's where I got some of the figures from.

This song is vaguely connected and makes me feel good , the good old Foos!!