Digger on the Ropes

Now for a sensible answer to thorny problem

As just 5% of viewers back the Digger’s takeover of BSkyB and the consequent further erosion of the televiewing available FREE TO AIR, a new solution is called for.

What baffles me most of all though, is the way people cough up £30+/month subscriptions on top of the TV licensing fee  to watch puerile advertising slogans. It’s bad enough having to suffer it on Freeview, as the big switchover takes off.

So I’ve conceived a cunning plan. We bring the TV licensing fee now going to the BBC into line for all renewals from 1st Jan 2012 then turn the Beeb into a subscription channel using the TV licensing fee to give the viewer a choice of which service they wish to view.

It needs a strict ceiling on what a subscription channel can charge, so we finish up with a level playing field and a wide variety of services to choose from.

It makes no sense to pay a licence fee and a further subscription on top to watch Commercial Satellite Subscription channels and this would be an appropriate answer to those fearful of too much TV broadcasting being concentrated in the hands of one big spender.

The programming studios can then be floated off as purely commercial, film, news, entertainment and sporting venue production companies (IPOs -If you see Syd tell him) and all transmission accomplished via satellite.

Job Done and remember where you read it first?

Watch this space, I’ll be back!

Tom.

 

EU time to wave it goodbye?

                                                The People’s Pledge

BBC partly funded by EU, wrote a recent blog commentator, on a Daniel Hannan Blog? That's a new one on me, I have to admit. But with an income approaching £3.5 Bn the Beeb should be able to move at warp speed to lead the TV world, if it was doing the things it was set up to achieve, instead trying to be the conscience of a left wing Utopian Society. But it's bogged down by all kinds of introspective claptrap, to the extent that it appears not to have any idea if it's coming or going.

Surely it’s time to put it out of its misery and compel it to compete in the real world, as a subscription channel without the compulsion. Then we'd really see how much of this £3.5Bn it could justify on the basis of rating figures.

Whatever, it's no kind of argument for being hamstrung by an EU which is dead set on dragging us down to their level. It's time to get out of this failed experiment that’s well past its sell by date. The only way is out, in much the same way as the best thing that came out of Scotland was the road to England. (circa 1707, the Act of Union).

We led the world by example and we can do so again by regaining our Independence. We have to stand on our own feet doing the things we do best, the four Fs - Farming, Fishing, Finance and Free Trade, where the only way is UP.

Bring on the IN or OUT referendum Dave,

You know it makes sense and watch this space, cos I'm watchin' you!

Tom.

An Economist at the Bank of England

 Must have something of significance to say, in respect of our present situation 

The claim to have saved us from a great depression rings a bit hollow, for if that is the case, as the Governor of the Bank of England lays claim to it in today’s Telegraph interview. Why could he not have saved us from the deficit deniers of New Labour as well? An economist at the BoE in fact, says all I need to know about why the BoE can lay no claim to being fit any purpose, other than in the interests of Bankers per se. That a person who knows nothing of the vagaries of being in business, on his own account, should oversee the nation’s financial health, could be precisely why we are in this mess.

  Another anomaly that springs to mind almost immediately is why an appointee to this position should be subservient to the Chancellor to the extent that the Chancellor alone should have the power to decide who governs the Bank and the uncertainty which followed his indecision and dithering over whether continuum was in his own interest.

  Subservience by the Bank it was, which contributed largely to the enormous £3 trillion national debt, bequeathed to future generations by our erstwhile ultimate Boom and Bust deniers of all time. A liability for future generations to paydown. What also beggar’s belief in no small way, is how the separation of various liabilities into off-balance sheet accounts was allowed to go on unchecked, when Chancellor Brown was piling up liabilities, twenty five years into the future.

  It smacks of the kind of thing the Emperors of Enron used in their special entity vehicle ruse, which allowed them to restate false profits as a sop to the markets, to massage the share price by several hundred percent. About the only difference being, that Enron did not have the taxpaying public as their lender of last resort and In the end the market found them out, as inevitably it always will in any free market society.

  In this instance however, the PFI industry which grew and was shaped on the Enron principle, will however in the midst of the debacle that has arisen over this profligate spending, have the ultimate backstop. The taxpayer is liable in respect of returns on their investment. No doubt these questionable assets have been sliced and diced by the money market's  financial engineers and bearing in mind the lender of last resort principle with the taxpayer’s in harness they are unlikely to be defaulted on.

 Well not least in the way that AIG’s Cassano bonds imploded, to call in the Credit Default Obligations (CDOs) issued by AIG without the wherewithal to cover the substantial claims that arose. It's always possible of course that a nation can default on sovereign debt. It has happened in the past in many second and third world countries, but in what is probably the fourth most economically developed nation in the world behind the USA, Japan & China, not forgetting of course the export driven economy of Germany.

  Though the Germans are still recovering from being re-united East & West and the lorry loads of Dmarks they ferried to the East when they exchanged their Dmarks for Ostmarks one for one, when the true exchange rate was closer to twelve to one or indeed the handfuls of Begrűssengeld (Welcoming Money) 250 Dmarks to anyone who produced an East German Passport at the counter of a West German Bank on weekend after weekend, in mid to late ’89 as they waved them all over, in their bid to demolish the Berlin Wall.      

  There have been numerous attempts over the period from the end of WWII to the present where an incoming Labour administration has set about trying to disenfranchise the nobility which they so fervently despise. In part this has to be driven by the fact that a huge proportion of this present day Labour Party; are so beloved of the Fabian Society Dictat.

 So it might be relevant here to look at the scenery through a different optical contraption, more suited to the myopia of the thirty to sixty odd percent of the electorate who do not vote. But that is for another piece in a future blog. For I have no intention to bore the pants of anyone who may venture this way. My object is merely to acquaint the public at large, with a few pertinent facts they may have overlooked.

Watch this space, I’ll be back!

Tom.

Barnsley Central an astonishing result for UKIP

They managed at last, to beat the BNP

But what exactly were the electorate of Barnsley Central trying to tell us. Well not exactly the entire electorate just the 37% who bothered to turn out and vote.  Do they want more of the two Ed’s ridiculous policies? It beggars belief that so many people can fall for their guff again and again. There can be no case for yet more of the stuff that got us into this diabolical mess. Though perhaps in Barnsley Central, they don’t think it’s real money, especially when it comes down to rolling the printing presses in Threadneedle Street.

   With a turnout of 37% though it must say a lot about why Barnsley Central is one of the poorest constituencies in the UK. You could be forgiven for thinking after the profligacy of the Blair/Brown years a little largesse might have been scattered on this outpost of poverty in the new Labour explosion of spending, which racked up a triple trillion of national debt, the biggest ever in our history. To be paid off by this and several future generations.

  It could be the economics of all this is beyond the Labour voters of Barnsley. It’s quite probably home to a big majority of client state participants, who depend on benefits for their poverty stricken lifestyle. Though it's hard to envision what an Army Officer turned politician can do about all this. The last one I ran into was cringe making, he thought he was still in battle dress.  

  Nevertheless it’s no reason to give up hope, for once the redistribution of the huge Labour deficit is carried through and the bold measures Big Eric is putting in place for local accountability. It might even sink in at Barnsley, that the way forward for Old Perfy Alby (that’s Perfidious Albion for the uninitiated) is now in safe hands.

  It is definitely not via a re-incarnation of new Labour at the hands of the two Eds with their tax ‘n’ spend mantra in full swing again. For on the available evidence, it looks like it did the good folk of Barnsley little good, the last time round.

Watch this space, I’ll be back,

Tom.