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.

Our Traffiquistas need to bone up on Hans Monderman

As traffic flow arguments abound  

Varied and interesting comments appear in the Sunday newspaper comment columns today, especially on the subject of Motorway speed limits. A lot of them ill-informed so it appears, but the legal limits on motorways mean little till you get nobbled. Cars frequently sail past at 80+mph on most motorways, assuming of course, they don't get nicked for indecision on metrication.

Is it mph or kph and who decides Whitehall or Brussels?

If we need to speed up traffic flows, something must be done about traffic lights. How much fuel is wasted there? Part time lights and filtering on a red would I reckon, save a fair few Supertanker dockings at the oil terminals.

We don't seem to have any statesmen of vision these days. We’re surrounded by a shower of wannabes with peripheral blinkers and an army of pen pushers. Seven million odd at the last count, doing everything in their power to protect their jobs and rile the public at large. With their officious dictat on wheelie bins, speed cameras, road humps, bus lanes, pinch points, cycle tracks to nowhere and any other arcane instrument of fiscal torture, they can conjure up.

We're suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous electoral misfortune at the hands of a population denied their say in the only referenda that matters. Whilst the Redtops today are saying speed limits are to be lowered to save fuel. Seems to me the left hand does not know what’s what. In fact it could be we’re being ruled by an army of one armed bandits.

Watch this space, I’ll be back!

Tom.

MEPs a waste of time and space?

 What are they meant to be for?

Time and time again, I’ve asked myself this question and I’ve known a few of these MEPs personally. Mostly they seem to be full of their own self importance, several have finished up in the slammer, which in some ways says it all.

 The UKIP explanation for contesting Euro elections was that they needed MEPs to access the Euro funding to set up a nationwide chain of offices from which to expand their empire and their influence. But, when it came down to the nitty-gritty it was just a job creation scheme for a chosen few. Nothing more than a cushy little cosy office number, where they could go for a chinwag and a few brews of PG, to while away the hours to another EU handout. But of course before you can access any Euro funding you have to be part of a group.

 So all these misfits created their own little cabal to access the Euro unding, an outfit the UK’s  Supine Snobs belonged to for a while, till it began to rub against the grain, with Dave’s Europhiles in their midst. They were rubbing shoulders with UKIP and in the end they had to duck out. But all these so-called UK opponents of the Euro Dream appear to all intent and purpose to have gone native these days. Oh they stand up and spout off now and again, about the inconsistencies and injustices of the system and the Eurowide international fraudsters with their million Euro subsidy rackets and VAT scams, but in the end only one mantra holds true.

 So if you haven’t sussed it out yet, I can spell it out in CAPITAL LETTERS, in a nutshell. It’s two words separated by a hyphen SELF-INTEREST. I’ve heard it said that if an MEP doesn’t manage to trouser €1,000,000 over the period of a Euro Parliament, he’s not up to the mark. So you can easily see why they keep going back for more, as dotage looms. It’s like a cast-iron, self-administered, gold-plated, copper-bottomed, individual, pension plan.

 In addition, I don’t know if they’ve managed to set up separate pension rights for themselves so far. But you could bet your last Eurocentime that if not, there’ll be a working party somewhere inside that sprawling Empire from Brussels to Strasbourg, figuring out how to pull it off.

 Watch this space I’ll be back!

Tom.

In the meantime if you’re stuck for a good read, checkout the ebooks at:-  http://amzn.to/f2Cbqx.

The Party's Over

Well for Lehman Bros it certainly is, though in reality did it ever really start?

Some party hey, more like a 13 year session at the Monopoly Board! Whatever, now we are getting to see who’s swimming naked, maybe it’s also time to sort out a few other aspects of our national identity?

The clearly defined Schleswig Holstein dilemma, alternatively known in this country as the West Lothian question, boils down I’d say, to much the same thing. Who is taking who for a bunch of mugs? Look north to Edinburgh, south to Belgium or west to Cardiff or Belfast and the answer is pretty much the same.

Ever since the Highland Charge was defeated by superior military tactics, to the times when Edward Heath shoehorned us into this European three card trick and a former Treasury Secretary dreamed up his so-called ‘Barnett Formula’, we’ve been taking it on the chin from North of the border.

It's time the music stopped and we found out who really should have the seats, in our English Houses of Parliament?

For the moment the only thing in our favour is the fact that these Fabian Socialists have not realised as yet, that what they thought was bedrock, will turn out to be a huge sea of shifting sand. This ‘I’m saving the world mantra’ peddled by the member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath is nothing more than a blatant attempt, seized on by the plonkers, to grasp at nettles they could only previously dream about. Total nationalisation of every aspect of our daily lives in the guise of bogus schemes more suited to a bunch of Oxford Street Bunco Artistes, is what brought us to the brink of 'boom and bust' ruin.

So a slip of the tongue maybe,  was all it needed, to ignite our backs to the wall indefatigability and a sure and certain end to this misery they sought to impose, for all time. We need to be sure no more silly social experiments, are presented to us as a ‘fait accompli’ and assurances that a few simple steps with a printing press will put serious situations to rights, are seen for what they are.

We're in drastic need of fundamental corrections to the way our finances are organised and an end to this funny money regime, based on plastic cards, how do I know all this? I know it because my ancestors came south, maybe in train with the so-called Bonnie Prince Charlie. Though they had the gumption to realise, as I’m sure he did that by the time he got to Derby, his cause was lost. In no way therefore were my stalwart ancestors prepared to be taken on a trek back north, in furtherance of a  lost cause. They realised as a result of this experience, that the best thing to come out of Scotland was the road to England and here we stay!

So, if aspects of this treatise look elusive and you feel a new political party could be the only answer. An English Movement for Democratic Change could soon come tramping over the far horizon.

Watch this space, I'll be back!

Tom