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