Tuesday, 26 July 2011

UK economy grows just 0.2pc, doubts over Plan A

Another load of Tosh (Courtesy of the Telegraph)

The only doubt worth talking about, is the doubt that would exist, if we had no deficit reduction plan in place to satisfy the shylocks. What does AAA rating stand for these days after the debacle these Rating Agencies had in place back in the dark days of 2008. Especially now inflation is heading off into the stratosphere.  A valve cap for removing the valve, bought yesterday £1.00. I’m flabbergasted, should have gone in the shed and made one.

  A big problem for the generation that went on a plastic spending spree back in the decade from ‘98 to ‘08 however, is the fact that realisation has yet to dawn. So the lessons which flow from that realisation have been swept under the carpet for the past three years by low interest rates and the printing of IoUs, briefly described as Quantitive Easing.

  For a while it can and did create a false dawn, but like all false dawns it will bring no respite when it comes to the hard-head bankers, intent on re-building the reserves and the bonus pool they believe themselves to be entitled to. The main reason for this mentality of course, is fear, as they lost control of their senses and jumped on the Blair/Brown, ♫It can only get better♫, bandwagon.

  Who knows what ghosts of past indiscretion still lurk in the deep dark recesses of the banking world’s ledgers of despair? Several well known economists have been urging them to ‘fess up’, be as honest as the day is long, ever since the day their profligacy was called to account, but are we any wiser as to the true obligations of their loan book.

  It’s practically impossible to know for they dare not reveal the true state of their obligations, though we know when we see the total public liability in round figures including maxed out credit cards, personal loans and mortgages that thousands of millions are outstanding, mostly supported by sky-rocketting property vales that still have someway left to fall, if reality is to prevail.

  It’s not over yet and though 0.2% growth is not brilliant, we need to ask where we might have been if the present shadow chancellor and his plan ‘B’ were in fact holding sway. It’s easy to say things could have been better but the truth is it could never have got much worse and anykind of growth in the present situation is to be welcomed. so we should be pleased to have a chancellor in place who will not waver.

Power to your elbow Rt. Hon. George Osbourne MP., Chancellor.

Watch this space, I’ll be back!

Tom

Friday, 22 July 2011

Tell me the old old Story


 Greek baleout is Default by another name

Restricted default? Is it bird, is it a plane? No its Super von Rumpoy and Barroso to the Fudge. Do they really expect the shylocks to believe all this guff? Deep down in their heart of hearts, I guess not, but what alternative do they have? Other than to Fess Up and  bring the whole Guacamole House of Cards tumbling down?

  Thirty maybe forty years to pay it off and to cap it all, a Euro version of the Marshall Plan but then all this has done is offer the Greeks a few months of leeway and that’s it. The basket cases already suffering austerity cuts and those queuing up to join the Euro without the slightest chance of making a fist of it, are living in a world of self delusion, which is not a and never can be, a world without end…..

  Huge amounts of money and the interest charges are at stake here for the shylock banks and institutions that piled in to buy these bonds in the first place. It would be good to know what the actual liabilities are if it all went belly up tomorrow, in the same provisional way they assess the viability of pension funds.

   Of course to a great degree, as long as the payment deadlines are met and it doesn’t matter where the dosh comes from, the shylocks will  hold fire. For the longer it drags on the better their chance to recoup a larger proportion of their outlay or stake. In reality that’s what it is, nothing more elaborate than a stake and a simple bet, Who dares wins with a first past the post mentality and the Euro Taxpayer as the lender of last resort.

  Where will it end who can tell? If as the chief cheerleaders of the EU stand up time and again to tell everybody and his dog they will do everything needed to turn the tide, they have to be the King Canutes of their day. The Emperors with no clothes or the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dam. Take your pick for it’s not a pretty sight.

  So when the House of Cards does finally come crashing down, as inevitably it must, we need to be on the other side of the world, even if we’re isolated and alone, So long as we have control of our own destiny and the power to set our own interest rates and distribute our deficit in the areas we’ve calculated are necessary to promote growth. We can soldier on, in the sure and certain knowledge that  we can leave the rest of the Euro Zone to stew in their own juice. For it is not too big to fail (TBTF).

  The EU can linger in the sick bay for as long as it takes the penny to drop and we can carry-on regardless rebuilding Perfidious Albion as the finest teacher the world has ever known. Protecting our Fisheries and Farmers, making our own laws and ensuring our City of London, remains the Clearing Bank of the world, in perpetuity.

Watch this space, I’ll be back!

Tom

Friday, 15 July 2011

Hackergate


As the world turns and the postmortem proceeds

Can this ever be anything more than the kind of witch-hunt we witnessed in our Westminster Parliament recently, fuelled by mass hysteria and other more obscure covert reasoning by politicians in mortal danger of being dumped, either by the electorate or their peers?

  In a multi-billion dollar publishing and broadcasting empire, can the men or women at the top, the managers ever have really have known anything about what went down on the street, as the hungry wolf-pack sought the inside track to their next big story?

  Unless these managers were down there on the street, in amongst the men or women, who made all this happen, it’s highly unlikely. Such matters were most probably concealed from them and they probably only became aware of it when revelations of what had been going-on, became public knowledge. In which case, they could do little more than react to events.

  Events, claimed Harold Macmillan our PM in the late fifties and early sixties, were the thing he feared most of all when in office. Why? Because everybody and his dog expected the man in charge to know the ins and outs in detail, of things that had already occurred. That he should just by virtue of his position have known all about it.

  These are things, which unless you were there on the spot when they happened, are probably the most difficult to know with any certainty, for the very reason, that you could not have been there at the point of delivery and had to rely on hearsay. So it’s only after the event when people, look at every tiny scrap of evidence in detail, that it soon becomes apparent that to know what really went on is highly improbable.
  So there’s little more you can expect them to say, other than they did not know anything till it all began to emerge. That’s about the top and bottom of it and in all probability was the perfect truth. Of course they have the facility to quiz the people who should have known, but probably didn’t get very far with that one, for a reporter’s sources have always been held to be sacrosanct.

   So if wrong doing was afoot the management can always claim immunity from this point of view. What goes round comes round and it is highly unlikely that even a judge led enquiry can uncover what really went down on the street, for as Piers Morgan revealed in his recent book, it needed only a four letter code and open sesame, hey presto. The world of instant communication is your oyster.

  This apart, if you have a phone which can accessed remotely, it is relatively easy to protect it from this practice of hacking, though most people do not bother to do this. All it takes, even if you do not use this remote facility, is a password which will prevent unauthorised access.

  So as all and sundry scramble onto the compensation bandwagon, a question needs to be posed as to how and why this practice of hacking escalated to become so widespread as appears to be the case.
 Mainly of course it all it boils down to a few simple facts:-
  1.  If it can so easily be done, there people out there, who will seek to do it for personal gain.
  2. Can the picture emerging, ever be the true actuality?
  3. Has hacking really been achieved on the massive scale claimed?
  4. Will we never know the true back story?
  5. Can the people who authorised the hacking be made to confess?
  6. Are the people who actually achieved it, prepared to spill the beans?
  Without these simple truths coming to light, it will remain a long dark tunnel and people will realise they could have been a little more circumspect, for with hindsight they could have easily protected themselves from this practice. 
    
Watch this space I’ll be back!

Tom.

Wednesday, 13 July 2011

The Day Mr. Murdoch threw in the towel?

 BSkyB bid shelved and papers may be sold?

Why the question marks you may well ask, as major parties unite against the famous media tycoon Mr Murdoch. Oh! the power of parliamentary privilege. Where you can stand up and slag off whoever and whatever takes your fancy with no repercussions. Though you should not for one moment, believe this opening salvo, is set in stone.

  I s’pose in a way, the parliamentary system wouldn’t work too well, without such a device, though there is a safeguard, allegedly. The abuse of such, whereby a member can be dragged over the coals and made to produce an abject apology. Which in full view of all present, with the full knowledge of one’s contemparies, must be as daunting as a needle sharp cold shower.

  Nevertheless a skilful operator can make use of arcane rulings in the chamber and use the system to divert attention from their own shortcomings. In this sense the recent assault on our eardrums, by the leader of the opposition Red Ed, is as disingenuous as it is misleading. He is attempting to assert his authority over his party, by trying to hi-jack the moral hi-ground and cast aspersions at the reputation of his sworn enemy, ‘Call me Dave’.

  How does all this relate to the goings-on at News Corp and BSkyB you might well ask too, as a supplementary query, Well it all goes to add fuel to the fire, in respect of the way MPs go about their business and use breaking events for political expediency. They do it to divert attention from their shortcomings, by trying to rubbish the reputation of their opponents.

  This is a technique adopted by the former occupant of that well known area known as the ‘Darkness’, inhabited by the so-called Prince of this Darkness who used it to startling effect in the 1990s to turn Tory Snob into a dirty word and make it stick. That it should be wheeled out again in such haste, as the main tool in the re-launch of a stuttering, unhinged, Union backed, ineffective leader of the Labour Party, is about the level we have come to expect, of these so-called Spin Doctors or Manipulators of the Media.

  It is so blindingly obvious, for it beggars belief that they can think of nothing more original than try it on, all over again. Was it to succeed, is it possible another bout of Labour’s free-spending attempts to turn UK Plc into some kind of Fabian  Socialist Police State would be foisted upon us. Though how it could in any way benefit our historic nation, is a moot point?

  We need Freedom, Choice & Opportunity and a re-allocation of the priorities available to the great unwashed. Those in the full flush of ambition and endeavour, attempting to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, but denied opportunity by the reprehensible decay that has beset our education system, with the advent of Comprehensive Education.

  This is a system not so far removed from the ideals that led some mis-informed postwar leaders to create the European Iron & Steel Federation and use it as a movement to build a Federal European Superstate, with a one size fits all mentality. Something which in the present endgame is proving to be unsustainable. So thereby lie the fault lines, in both Europe and Comprehensive Education and the sooner we free ourselves of these shackles, the sooner we can make progress and emerge once more on the World Stage, as a nation that can civilise the world by example.

  Long live a Free and United Kingdom, as we shake off the shackles of serfdom at the hands of unelected unaccountable Eurocrats and the Comprehensive Education System, which has shackled the innate skills and abilites of post WWII generations. We need a Grammar School and Technical College in every town and city in this Great Britain, in perpetuity.

  What we need as a nation most of all though, is a long and sustained bout of FREEDOM, CHOICE & OPPORTUNITY and an end to the MEDDLING, COMPULSION & INCOMPETENCE of new Labour and its successors.

Watch this space, I’ll be back!

Tom

Sunday, 10 July 2011

Hackergate - Is it all about muzzling the Press?

Rolling News Channels and Yesterday’s News
News Corp’s multi £bn bid to seize full control of BSkyB on the rocks, as the deal comes under attack from Ed Miliband and a number of prominent Liberal Democrats? Claims the Mail.

  If that’s the best the opposition to Mr Murdoch can muster, as they wriggle and squirm to get out from under their own Armageddon, It looks like the Digger has little to worry about, as he keeps faith with his closest lieutenants and declares,  ‘Rebekah is my priority.’

   It’s good to see someone backing his coterie of close advisors and managers under the onslaught of all these nearly men. But in essence if they are telling the truth of what they knew at the time, there should be no problem in coming through it.

  Yes mistakes have been made, but in retrospect, it appears everybody and his dog is guilty of that, as they jump aboard the various bandwagons, claiming it would all have been so different if they had been taken notice of me.

  So, with all these former hacks and yesterday men, being rolled out by the instant news channels on a minute by minute basis, confusion reigns supreme. Can truth prevail amidst this sea of allegations, it has to be doubtful at best?

 Watch this space, I’ll be back.

Tom.

Saturday, 9 July 2011

Phone hacking morphs into who rules Brit TV as Ofcom wades in

Time for a Root and Branch Clear Out?

Time to make a brushfire of British TV and start all over again writes Tom Stack  as the Telegraph’s Katherine Rushton, Telecoms, Technology and Media Correspondent, speculates that Rebekah Brook’s time may be up? In ordinary times, Ofcom is a strict observer of protocol, she wrote and its chief executive Ed Richards eschews fiery statements or any ongoing dialogue with the press, in favour of rigid timetables and only speaking up when asked.

  This article is mostly gobble-de-gook, invention as a reporter sets out to establish credo, but inadvertently pinpoints an opportunity for a root and branch clear out of all the vanities. Speaking personally I never got roped into the News Corp thing, either buying Mr Murdoch’s newspapers or his Sky TV racket.

  I could never understand how people think it’s a good idea to pay to watch adverts twice over with a licence fee and a donation of as much as £50 per month to ‘Believing in Better’, which is mostly tripe and possibly the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the great unwashed.

  TV in it’s entirety has developed in ways that defy logic, the BBC especially, with its now infamous mantra of a left wing propaganda organ of dubious merit. The people who developed and refined the Beeb from it’s inception to pre-eminence across the world are long gone and the standards and independence they nurtured, sacrificed on a bonfire of indeterminate pedigree.

  This has happened by stealth, till we reached a plateau where the Beeb has fallen in to total disrespect. It’s a crying shame for all the great broadcasters who went before and it seems that at government level we lack the interest in using it for anything than other than a – ‘Jobs for the Boys Roundabout’.

  It’s time it was privatised, put out of its misery and launched into the real world. My long trumpeted suggestion is that the licence fee should be turned into a subscription based voucher system, where people could chose whether to use this voucher to decide what to watch – ITV, Sky TV or a privatised Beeb TV. This should share out the £3.5bn licence fee in a quite equitable way, with the Beeb freed up to advertise or not and the entire world of TV subject to the ultimate sanction satisfying the viewer.

With myself as the Fat Controller.

Watch this space I’ll be back!

Tom