Public Sector Pay - the great lie

The graphic above is all the proof you need that the public sector is bloated, out of control and its unionised staff out of touch.

Public sector pay awards have easily outstripped the private sector since 1997. Teachers are on strike today demanding higher pay awards to keep pace with other graduate professions (their words not mine).

Reality check pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease! In the private sector you are pretty lucky to get even an inflationary rise every year, if you have polished your boss' turds enough over the previous year. Public sector workers get automatic increases on top of the significant % rises since 1997.

The teachers really need a reality check. They want parity with other 'graduate' professions. Firstly, how do you define 'graduate' in this age of degree proliferation from sub-standard polys. Secondly, no other graduate job I know of gets well over 10 weeks a year holiday!!!! More like 20 to 25 days if you are lucky!

So, teachers get paid accordingly. Lots of holidays, not long hours (go on moan about all your marking zzzzzzzzzzzz) & therefore they are paid the going rate, which is far more than the national average wage.

The market decides these things, even in a state funded area such as education. Teachers at independent schools don't get paid much more than their state colleagues.

Reality check needed - along with a concerted campaign against public sector statist unions and their unreformed commie activists.

St George's Day - answer the West Lothian question

Happy St George's Day! If the Irish can drink the black stuff & celebrate St Patrick's Day across the world in honour of someone who certainly wasn't Irish, the English should be equally allowed to celebrate our Greek/Turkish saint (!).

There is a bigger issue which is starting to be discussed this year. A growing English consciousness. A growing realisation that England subsidises the dole loving Celts who are protected by the client state created by Scottish & Welsh Labour MPs.

The arbitrary Barnett formula & dole money pouring north ensures over £11bn of extra spending in Jock land than in England.

The Scots are ungrateful. They have banged on for years about hating the English & grumbled about independence.

Well here is a suggestion. The English vote for independence from the Scots! Rebuild something like Hadrian's Wall along the modern border. Or, even better, line the border with explosives and float Jockland off towards Greenland.

I'll be drinking a few pints of good warm English ale tonight. And, I'll be praying that the SNP get their way. The sooner we get rid of the Jocks the better. They can take their share of the national debt with them - calculated, of course, on the basis of their large share of public spending thanks to the aforementioned Barnett formula!!

Cry God for Harry, England and St George!

Lembit & his Cheeky Girl - strange world of the Lib Dems

What is it with Lib Dems nowadays. There was a time when you could fit them all into a phone box & they had crazy leaders such as Jeremy 'murder, what murder' Thorpe.

Now they are stuffed full of celeb wannabe MPs. First came Charlie 'mines a double' Kennedy, then Sarah 'I haven't been shagged for years' Teather, then Cleggover, and now Lembit Opik marrying his Cheeky Girl bird.

Oh dear. Think of the children. She is a proper minger and he looks like he has been hit by the ugly stick. Repeatedly.

Olympic gravy train continues - £9bn budget!!

Surprise Surprise the Olympics are now forecast to cost more than double the original budget of £4bn. So that is a whopping £9.3bn at latest estimates and we are still 4yrs away from the event.

The whole idea is a nonsense. Sports which hardly anyone plays get millions of pounds worth of funding. Steroid induced athletes (can we really trust anyone who says they are clean after so many scandals!) will parade round a huge stadium that will be pretty much redundant after 2 weeks of use.

Politicians will prance around talking about regeneration. Nonsense. Name me one city that has reaped long term benefits from staging the Olympics (Barcelona at a push) and I'll give you numerous examples of cities burdened by debt & decaying stadiums

Montreal (1976) only paid off the final chunk of its debt in 2006. Sydney (2000) is still forking out some A$40m (£17m) a year to maintain its sporting venues. Londoners will have to find £20 per person per year for 12 years based on the original (!) budget!

Like the millennium dome the Olympics are a plaything for egotistical politicians and welcomed by people who partake in sports that no-one really cares about when compared to football, cricket & even that rubbish game called rugby.

The government will continue to throw money at the Olympics until it is deemed a 'success'. But at what cost? £3bn would buy 158 new primary schools, 6 new 'super'-hospitals. £9bn is a disgrace and a total waste of public funds by the state sector gravy train.

10p tax rate - Darling & Cameron get it wrong

The uproar over the abolition of the 10p starting tax rate continues to gather pace. Quite rightly Labour MPs are giving Brown & Darling a good kicking over this. The problem is that they just don't get it. They think it is OK to take with one hand because they will just give it back by sticking more people on benefits & tax credits.

If Brown has achieved anything since 1997 it is to ensure that lots of tax accountants are getting richer. The tax system is ten times more complicated now than it was in 1997 thanks to tinkering and tax credits.

But I worry that Cameron doesn't get it either. The Chancellor is not actually wrong to abolish the 10% rate. He is wrong not to do so as part of a wider tax cutting agenda aimed at low and middle earners.

Abolishing the 10% rate simplifies the system. If it was accompanied by a hike in personal allowances to £10k no-one would complain. The Labour government has increased tax by the back door. No need to put up headline rates, when you can just stop the higher rate band level rising in the face of wage inflation. So thousands more people are now paying 40% tax compared to 1997 just due to the top band not being raised at a fair rate.

Cameron should say clearly that getting rid of the 10% band is correct but that it must be accompanied by a wider re-think of the tax burden. Just hitting the hard-working families and individuals is wrong wrong wrong & has nothing to do with social justice.

40 Year legacy of Enoch Powell

Lots of coverage for the 40Yr anniversary of Enoch Powell's infamous 'Rivers of Blood' speech which he gave on 20th April 1968.

There are several great travesties with this episode & Powell's career. Firstly a talented politician ruined himself with one ill-advised speech and will forever more be remembered for it rather than for any other contribution he made.

Secondly, his words were seized upon by racists & the far right giving them oxygen and support in some areas. Life was regrettably made very uncomfortable and threatening for thousands of immigrants who had arrived in the UK.

Thirdly, Powell's speech meant that the whole immigration, national identity and race-relations debate has been toxic for the last 40 years. Many people over-look this impact of Enoch's speech. The right of British politics has been petrified of discussing such issues after Powell. This allowed the left to propagate the idea of a multi-cultural society where Britishness (never mind the notion of patriotism) was seen as distasteful.

The result - a society with ghettos of racial groups in many northern & midland towns. Limited integration on the part of many immigrants in these areas and a society which has no idea what it stands for. Even Trevor Phillips the chair of the Commission for Racial Equality agrees that multi-culturalism has been a disaster.

This is the real horrid legacy of Powell.

Just as the West begins to face the threat from radical Islam to its very existence and the ideas & principles at its very roots, we remain hampered as a nation, unable to unite behind any notion of what Britain is or stands for.

Thankyou very much Enoch - your speech ensured that the very scenario you most feared came true.

Mara Carfagna - well done Berlusconi

Hurrah for Silvio. This is likely to be his new Minster for the Family. The old dog was spot on - right-wing women are far superior to mono-browed lefties like Ruth Kelly (urrrgh).

Ms Carfagna I am in lurve - almost as good as Bruni

Robocop soldiers - casualty rates, the expense of war

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7351314.stm

So the US military is pioneering robotic soldiers - the age of robocop gets nearer. Apparently these proto-type robotic suits enable soldiers to lift heavier weights & run faster with little extra effort, and presumably eventually to kill better.

In one sense this is a nice bit of 'lite news'. But it does have connections to a wider issue. Advances in weaponry & technology have vastly improved the ability of the military in terms of firepower. Alongside this, advances in battlefield medicine have reduced mortality rates among infantry. Therefore, conflicts such as Iraq & Afghanistan appear less expensive to the public & spinning politicians

For example, in World War II, 30 percent of wounds proved deadly. In Korea, Vietnam, and the first Gulf War, this rate hovered between 24 percent and 25 percent. But due to better medical technology, doctrinal changes that push surgical teams closer to the front lines, and individual armour protection for soldiers, this rate has dropped to 10 percent for Operation Iraqi Freedom for all wounds. For serious wounds that keep a soldier away from duty for more than 72 hours, the mortality rate is now 16 percent. Simply, a soldier was nearly 1.5 times more likely to die from his wounds in Vietnam than in Iraq today

Anecdotal evidence supports this. A friend of mine is a Lieutenant in the infantry & has served in Basra & Helmand. He took shrapnel which blew a big hole in his body armour. In previous conflicts he would have been dead or seriously wounded. As it was he walked away with bruising & thanks for his luck.

Full respect to the soldiers out on the front line. The wars may appear less expensive or deadly than previous conflicts if you look at mortality rates. A closer look at the figures shows that today's soldier is in as much danger as our fathers & grandfathers in Vietnam, Korea or on the battlefields of Europe.

In the Brown and in the USA

Gay Gordo is off to the USA on an official trip. I wonder if Broon will pray with Dubya just like Blair?

As he arrived in the US he was telling everyone who would listen that the economy is fine, and that people shouldn't be worried about their homes & cash over the coming months.

The delusional spinning of Brown & Darling on the state of the UK economy is getting silly. Brown is doing a good impression of an ostrich sticking his head in the sand while Darling does an impression of Corporal Jones and runs around shouting 'Don't Panic!'

Hopefully Bush will realise that Brown is on his way out, is a yellow belly over Iraq (key member of the Cabinet to vote for war, now running away in southern Iraq), delusional on the debt pile mess of the UK economy, and has most Labour MPs in marginals saying come back Tony all is forgiven!

Shadow Cabinet reshuffles

It is looking likely that there is going to be some form of Shadow Cabinet reshuffle over the summer. Cameron needs to ensure that he surrounds himself with individuals capable of effecting real change as government ministers. Otherwise the first year of a Cameron government will be wasted (just like Blair's first term!).

As ever my concern is the lack of real quality at the top level of our political parties. When Cameron surveys his team he will see lots of people just like him - i.e. with little experience of the business world or the world outside Westminster. Just like old Daveo himself.

I can think of a handful of up and coming Tory MPs with real experience outside of politics. Shadow ministers like Justine Greening have real world & business experience and will be excellent in government. Others are ad men, lightweights, and the usual collection of political nerds who have gone from university, to working for the party, to parliament.

Please Mr C, lets have substance in your appointments and not a bunch of camera loving lightweights.

Euro dreams over for Rovers

Bit of a disaster at Anfield on Sunday. The Rovers were out played & Liverpool deservedly romped home 3-1 winners. I hate to say it but we are a million miles away from them in terms of quality.

Next week we have ManUre so not much chance of any points there either. I'm pretty sure that after Saturday we will be ruled out of the race for a spot in the UEFA cup.

Some of our better players must be looking to move onwards & upwards. Bentley & Santa Cruz being the obvious 2.

The big worry is how long Hughes will stick around. We have over-performed for the last 3 seasons, but with little money in the kitty it is only a matter of time before Hughes decamps to a bigger club who can match his ambition.

Then we are in the brown stuff!

Stevie G & gangsters

Anyone else find the Steven Gerrard and Liverpool gangsters story a bit strange? There have been rumours for years about the relationship between Gerrard, his WAG Alex Curran, and various shady people in the north-west.

It turns out that Gerrard was being threatened with knee-capping by a notorious Liverpool gangster (i.e. criminal thug). So, he turned to John Kinsella, another Scouse thug, for protection.

All very strange.

The key question is why a gangster would have such beef with Stevie G. The best example of a box-to-box midfield dynamo in Europe when playing for Liverpool. Underwhelming bottler when playing for England.

Are those football chants about Curran, prang, parentage and gangsters all a bit close to reality?

Of course Mr Rover would never insinuate such a thing, or believe idle gossip, and puts the word allegedly after all such sentences.

Immigration Amnesty & London

Lots of comment around today on the support shown by all 3 Mayoral candidates in London for an immigrant amnesty. Guido has a convincing piece here http://www.order-order.com/2008/04/boris-is-right-tories-are-wrong-london.html

I'm unconvinced but persuadable. I agree that it seems unfair to penalise hard working migrant families just because they don't have a scrap of paper. But an amnesty would just encourage more illegals to try and enter. It screams 'Don't worry old chappy from Romania, in a few years time you'll get an amnesty and bingo!'.

People are using Reagan as a model, given his amnesty. But his legislation has not stopped mass attempts by Latin Americans to get into the States. So much so that McCain & others support another amnesty.

I could be convinced to support this if we denied all newcomers access to the welfare state until they had worked for a set period of time; mandatory deportation for all migrants breaking the law irrespective of how many children they have here or how many years they have been settled; and a significant reduction in people allowed to legally arrive.

We are a small island. It doesn't take a genius to work out that we cannot keep accepting thousands more immigrants every month for ever. Yes, those who come to fill gaps in the workforce are welcome, as are genuine political refugees.

Everyone else really isn't.

Oh my Darling - in denial again

Alistair Darling is deluded. He says that the UK economy gives him "grounds for optimism". I nearly choked on my 11am chocolate biscuit when I read that.

We have the highest debt levels across Western Europe. Gay Gordo & now Darling have used the boom years to flush billions of pounds down the drain. Most sensible people would say that in the good times, pay off debt & create a surplus to see you through the bad times, then invest.

This lot of cretins have spent like money was going out of fashion. We now have huge national & personal debt & a huge deficit. If the USA looks shaky in the current climate, then the UK outlook must be very poor indeed.

What do we have to show for 10 years of huge investment in public services? Not much. The NHS admits that most of the extra cash they have had has gone to fund pay rises for Doctors & Nurses. Schools continue to decline with grade inflation and horrendous pupil behaviour. Local councils are struggling under the burden of gold plated public service pension liabilities.

The sound of chickens coming home to roost gets louder.

And FFS what are going on with Darling's eyebrows????

Diana Inquest and Nutters like Loughrey

This sad individual called John Loughrey has sat through every single minute of the Diana Inquest. Everyday for over half a year he has sat in the gallery - he gave up his job & home to do this.

Is it just me, or does anyone else not get this Diana mania? Even in 1997 I didn't get it. People who had never met her wailing and throwing themselves around in distress. It brought out all the mentalists.

I don't particularly like the royals - I believe in meritocracy - but if I had power I could find a million and one things to legislate on rather than getting rid of the blood sucking greek/german house of Saxe-Coburg (lately Windsor).

So I really don't get why anyone cares about the death 10 years ago of a publicity seeking, minor aristocrat who married a prince then shagged half of London, who died while on holiday with her latest boyf after leaving her children in some god-awful buggery loving boarding school.

I definitely don't get why Royalists care about her - she took the House of Windsor to the brink.

Total mentalists - lets all cry and hug in public & feel each others pain - bollocks.

Tibet, China and the tarnished Olympics

What a great photo. Here we have protesters being man-handled by the London police force as track-suited Chinese goons look on. So much for human rights and freedom of speech. Whatever happened to the 'ethical foreign policy'?

Brown and his New Labour cronies (and Bliar before him) bang on about human rights. We removed Saddam because he was very bad and did horrid things to his own people (good excuse after we couldn't find WMDs).

Yet we invite Chinese diplomats to London, court party officials in Beijing and celebrate (!) the Olympics being given to them to host.

Let us not forget the Chinese regime is authoritarian, brutal, Communist in name, anti-democratic, and border-line genocidal in many of its dealings with ethnic groups within China (such as Tibet).

Yet we welcome them with open arms, while we bomb the shit out of Saddam's regime and have him hung.

Guess that is Realpolitik - one has a huge army & nuclear weapons, the other just pretended to have them.

Shame on those ministers (such as Jowell) trying to justify this debacle

Livingstone's family life

I can't stand King Newt Mr Ken Livingstone. He is useless. A self-publicist, an unreformed 70s socialist who thinks Chavez and Castro are role models. He is the worst type of populist leftie.

But - all this newspaper focus on his private life is wrong. His personal life should be private as long as he isn't being a hypocrite. As far as I am aware he has never run the 'family man' type of election campaigns. If he had - then he deserves all the scorn. I can't stand hypocritical politicians.

As far as I am concerned he can be gay or straight, family man or player it is irrelevant. Churchill was a border-line drunk, MacMillian probably a repressed gay just to name 2 decent PMs of the 20th Century (well one great one and one half decent one!)

Many of our past & present leaders have had or still have less than perfect private lives. It is irrelevant.

What matters is that Livingstone is a useless piss poor Mayor.

Blair gets it wrong... again (this time on religion)

Tory Blur, or plain old Bliar, as I like to call him has gone and got it wrong again. Tonight he is going to make a speech at Westminster Cathedral on his Faith Foundation. The old Bush cock slurper is going to say that 'failure to engage with religious groups will drive believers to apathy or fundamentalism'.

Utter bollocks.

Mr Rover is no fan of organised religion despite his parents best efforts to have him indoctrinated (shurely shome mishtake... don't you mean educated) in the christian tradition. Mr Rover reserves particular wrath for the Catholic church (don't use a condom even if not doing so means you might get HIV all you Africans who are dying in your millions from AIDS , just abstain - FFS), but he also can't stand puritanical Prods and defo not nutter Islamists.

Look at all the suffering in terms of war, conflict, abuse of women, abuse of non-believers, persecution of alternative lifestyles all done in the name of religion.

Bliar has form on talking to the religo-nutters. Not only was he taking a length from 'born again' Bush, but his government funded (and they continue to fund) various dubious Muslim groups such as the 'moderate' (don't make me laugh) Muslim Council of Britain.

He also thought nothing of chatting away to the IRA/Sinn Fein/Loyalist leaderships in Northern Ireland like they were old buddies & then releasing all the odious little murdering shites from prison.

The man was a disaster in sooooo many ways, and he still remains a grade one prick.

Bentley on the move???

Noooooooooooooooooo! Bentley has made it quite clear that if the Rovers don't make Europe this season, he will be off to one of the Big Four. I suppose it was always on the cards. He is the best player outside of those 4 very rich teams.

It just shows that while the leading 4 teams are the equal of the great European sides, the rest of the Premier League cannot compete. We will end up like the Scottish league with the title revolving between a couple of teams.

A few years back players like Bentley would stay at lesser teams & they could then build a side to challenge for trophies. No longer. Just look at how quickly Rooney decamped from a side as big as Everton to ManUre at the first opportunity.

Oh well - if we get £15m it'll soften the blow

golden oldies

So not only do the OAP's get lots of final salary pension schemes, state pensions & winter fuel allowances, now they get free bus travel anywhere in the UK!

So who pays for it.... you guessed the working age population like me. Yes, not only do we fund the OAPs income & cushy lifestyle, now they are going to be swarming all over public transport.

By the time us youngsters get to OAPdom there will be nothing left. No final salary schemes, little state pension. Why? Because we have our demographic timebomb of an ageing population in which OAPs will very soon outnumber those of working age - meaning we can't afford to support them.

Of course the politicians don't have the cojones to deal with the problem & just tinker with small rises in the retirement age.

When the UK & Western Europe are full of the blue-rinse brigade, then watch the vibrant young states of China, India, Brazil et al storm forward to take dominant positions in the 21st Century - we have been warned!