Archive for December 2011
Merry Christmas
It’s been a quiet blogging year here this year but I’ve been very busy on Bloggers4UKIP and my councillor blog, Stuart Parr for Brookside.
Let’s have a look back at 2011 …
January saw two sports presenters lose their jobs after secret recordings of a private conversation in which they made sexist comments were made public and the protracted revolution in Egypt which kicked off what came to be known as the Arab Spring.
In February the Northern Irish MP, Ian Paisley Jr, spoke out against an English Parliament even though it’s none of his damn business and consultations started on changes to hospital services in Shropshire.
March was the month UKIP had its best ever election result beating the Tories to second place in Barnsley, the Welsh voted for more devolution in their second devolution referendum (two more than we’ve had), the Scottish government abolished prescription charges leaving England the only part of the UK paying for prescriptions and the far left organised anti-government riots.
In April one of our neighbours and his daughter tragically died in a house fire, the census police were out and about telling lies, GPs in England were told to halve the amount of medication they put on their prescriptions to bring in more money, Telford & Wrekin Council put on an excellent St Georges Day event (Google ignored it) and Nick Clegg said that it’s right English students should pay £9k a year in university tuition fees whilst the rest of the UK doesn’t pay anything despite a broken manifesto promise to abolish them.
May saw the long-overdue death of Osama Bin Laden, my election to Stirchley & Brookside Parish Council and I published my proposal for a British confederation.
June saw teachers striking for special treatment and the British Olympic Committee causing outrage in Scotland, Wales and NI claiming their FA’s support a Team GB football team.
In July the Guardian journalist, Kia Abdullah, showed the true face of the nasty left by making fun of the death of three teenagers killed on a gap year in Thailand and surprise, surprise the racist university tuition fees charged for English students studying at Scottish universities resulted in less English students studying at Scottish universities.
August was the month that thieving former Labour MP, Jim Devine, was released from prison after serving just a quarter of his sentence for stealing from the taxpayer, Iain Stewart MP argued against an English Parliament, a Scottish doctor suggested English students could sell a kidney to pay for their university tuition, the EDL came to Telford and failed to cause mayhem, I reflected on how the British have lost Wales and an opinion poll on the Daily Mail website said 72% support English independence.
In September the Conservatives came close to being disbanded in Scotland and an excellent 89 year old letter warning of imminent doom from global warming was published in the Shropshire Star.
In October I made the conscious decision not to support the Poppy Appeal for the first time, the British government put the recession to one side to sort out the vitally important business of the sexist line of succession and HMRC demanded a voluntary tax contribution off Mrs Sane.
November saw Virgin Money snap up Northern Rock for a song, I explained why we don’t need a British Bill of Rights and Speaker Bercow spent £37k on a painting of himself and a coat of arms.
Finally, in December Jeremy Clarkson was pounced on by money-grabbing unions for poking fun at the BBC, the wicked witch of the left, Harriet Harperson, demanded the BBC stuff its Sports Personality of the Year Awards with women in the name of equality, I found out I need a hearing aid, the South Americans want a pissing contest over the Falklands and the British government have given the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish a £30m gift of English money because the British have spent money for their Olympics in London.
So, we started 2011 in the EU dictatorship, the only country in Europe without any form of self-government and ruled by a bunch of crooked politicians and we’ll finish 2011 in the same state. I lost a grandad and auntie this year (they died, I didn’t misplace them) but it’s been a good year overall – I have the best wife a man could wish for and four brilliant kids to be very proud of.
I’d like to wish a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all my friends and enemies.
£30m Olympics bribe for Scotland, Wales & NI
On Wednesday the British government finally announced the West Lothian Question commission that they promised over a year ago, yesterday they gave a practical demonstration of why it’s so desperately needed.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have negotiated a £30.2m bonus from the British government because the British government have spent money in London for the British Olympics. No extra money will be spent in the rest of England where local authorities are facing cuts of about a quarter over the next few years.
The money is being handed over because of what is called Barnett Consequentials – the technical name for giving Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland a big wedge of cash just because the British government have spent some money in England. Barnett Consequentials are part of the balancing mechanism to ensure Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland continue to get the same outrageous level of subsidy at England’s expense no matter how much capital investment the British spend in England.
Paying Barnett Consequentials because of the Olympics is a bloody liberty though because they’re not the English Olympics, they’re the British Olympics. England doesn’t have a Olympic team and the British government’s investment in London is for their Olympics, not for London or for England. Some of the facilities that are being built for the Olympics are going to be relocated to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and some of the events are even being held in those countries. They will “benefit” from the British Olympics as much as the rest of England.
The British government shouldn’t have paid any Barnett money to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for the British Olympics but there was nobody at the meeting representing English interests. As a consequence (excuse the pun), £30.2m of English taxpayers’ money is going to be handed over to the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish for no other reason than because the British spent some money in England for their Olympic vanity project. This has only happened because there is no English government to represent English interests, saying “no, this is your Olympic games, we’re not paying your bribes”.
There are no details as yet on who will be on the West Lothian Commission, what they will consider and whether an English Parliament will be ruled out immediately or when they report in 2013.
South Americans want pissing contest over Falklands
The South American trade group, Mercosur, has banned Falklands-flagged boats from docking in their ports in solidarity with Argentina.
Uruguay proposed the ban and and the other three members – Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina – agreed. There are less than 40 boats registered in the Falklands so it doesn’t affect a huge amount of people but that’s not the point, it’s an attack on the Falkland Islanders.
The Mercosur nations are ganging up on the Falklands for no reason other than to cause a nuisance. They know that the Falklands belong to the UK, that the Falkland Islanders want to remain a British Overseas Territory and that the British government has pledged not to hand over the Falklands to Argentina unless the islanders wanted it. They know that all they’re going to get out of this is a pissing contest.
That said, we have no aircraft carrier and most of our deployable armed forces are already deployed in the Middle East and Africa so if Argentina did decide to invade the Falklands again, we’d struggle to take them back again. And don’t think our “allies” in the EU will help us – especially the French who Cameron stupidly decided we should enter into a military alliance with – because they won’t. The president of the Falklands Chamber of Commerce has already had a thinly veiled pop at the EU, saying:
If we were Palestine, the European Union would be up in arms
If it didn’t involve the UK and the former Spanish & Portuguese colonies then they’d be up in arms. We can’t rely on our supposed “allies” in the EU to stand with us (they gave Spain jurisdiction over Gibraltarian waters, remember) and we certainly can’t rely on the French to provide us with the aircraft carrier we’re supposed to have an agreement for if it means going to war with their southern neighbour’s allies. Or going to war with anybody for that matter, the cheese eating surrender monkeys.
If the EU won’t impose a retaliatory ban on Uruguayan, Paraguayan, Brazilian and Argentine goods then the British government should impose a unilateral one. If the British government doesn’t have the balls (they won’t) then we boycott them ourselves!
Mutton Jeff
Whut?
I went to the ENT clinic at the hospital yesterday to see if they could figure out why my hearing is so bad and came away being told I’ve got to have a hearing aid. I’m 33 years old for god’s sake, hearing aids are for old people!
I must say, I wasn’t expecting to have a diagnosis (of sorts) and a cure (of sorts) on my first visit. I’ve got to go for an MRI to make sure there’s nothing wrong with my head and I’ve got to get fitted for a hearing aid some time in the new year. Which is nice.
My knees are buggered, my eyesight isn’t great, I get eczema and rosacea, I suffer with a bad back on and off, I’ve had asthma for years … I’m a wreck!
If I was an animal they’d put me down.
Reward sports personalities for talent, not for having tits
Poor Harriet Harperson has got her unisex undergarments in a twist over the BBC Sports Personality of the Year panel not including any women in their shortlist of sports personalities.
No jokes about odd shaped balls please
The man-hating Shadow Minister for Equality and Women has demanded that the BBC include some women in the shortlist immediately and criticised the BBC for including the editors of lads mags in the panel.
The panel of newspaper and magazine editors from publications with an interest in sport chose the shortlist for the BBC and came up with the all-male list.
There are undoubtedly many fine sportswomen – Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington for instance or England women’s rugby player Fran Matthews who should surely win an award just for playing a brutal sport and managing to look pretty hot rather than like Fatima Whitbread. But the panel chose an all-male shortlist and it’s not for a failed politician like Harriet Harperson to demand that their decision is overturned and the list stuffed with women in the name of equality.
The BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards are supposed to reward sportsmen and women for talent and hard work, not for having a pair of tits.
Jeremy Clarkson apologises to unions for poking fun at BBC
Jeremy Clarkson has caved in and apologised for making a joke about the anti-government strikes.
During an interview on the One Show, Clarkson was asked what he thought of the strikes to which he replied that they were brilliant, he could dart around London and there was no traffic and it reminded him of the 1970s. He then went on to joke that because it’s the BBC there has to be balance and said that he would take them outside and shoot them and would have them executed in front of their families.
The joke was actually at the expense of the BBC and its charter obligation to remain balanced and impartial which sometimes makes for bizarre statements from newsreaders and chat show hosts. The unions, however, were consumed with mock outrage with UNISON actually going as far as taking legal advice as to whether he could be reported to the police for incitement to hatred!
Clarkson has now apologised to the unions for making a joke at the BBC’s expense and UNISON have magnanimously accepted his apology and won’t be trying to get him arrested for being funny.
Just in case anyone from any of the unions is wondering, if I was in charge I wouldn’t have you executed, I’d take your leaders and agitators and put them in a hard labour camp until they stopped being such bloody stupid pricks. When people like Dave Prentis (UNISON), Mark Serwotka (PCS) and Bob Crow (RMT) hand over some of their huge salaries (they all have pay and perks of £100k+) to set an example they might deserve some respect but until they do, they deserve all the contempt that’s directed at them, the useless champagne socialist troublemakers.
Apparently the BBC received a large number of complaints which they believe have been made as part of an orchestrated campaign (no doubt organised by the unions). I have made my own complaint tonight at the BBC’s decision to apologise to the unions when they were obviously taking the piss for publicity:
I am disgusted that the BBC and Jeremy Clarkson have been forced to apologise to the unions over Clarkson’s joke on the One Show. No offence was intended and none was caused – the unions were expressing mock outrage at a joke that was made at the expense of the BBC, not the unions and not strikers. The BBC should have told the unions to grow up and do something useful, not waste everyone’s time pretending to be offended by a joke aimed at the BBC for publicity.
A dose of reality for the “have not’s”
The London Evening Standard had a story back in 2007 which I’ve only just seen about a cleaner who pays 22% tax on her part time wages while the people who own the company she works for only pay 10%. It’s old news but it’s pertinent in today’s climate of fierce jealousy of anyone rich and successful.
First things first, it’s possible to reduce your tax liability through legal avoidance but not to the extent where you pay no income tax. If you earn a wage here you pay tax on it. What counts as a taxable income can be bent but you can’t earn the sort of money that give you a £260m personal fortune without paying tax on it. But let’s go with what the London Evening Standard says anyway.
In the case of this cleaner and the financiers behind the company she works for, she’s paid £225 per week and pays £26.58 per week income tax and National Insurance (NI). Her evil capitalist employer pays £11.88 per week Employers NI. That’s £1,382.16 per year that she pays in tax and £617.76 her employer pays in Employers NI for the privilege of giving her a job.
Assuming her evil capitalist scum employer avoids all his income tax liability (which is impossible) and he only pays 10% Capital Gains Tax (CGT) on his earnings, he would have to earn only £117,000 to pay the same amount of personal tax as the cleaner which isn’t a lot for a devil-worshipping evil capitalist fat cat is it? And his company is paying for the privilege of employing her as well as paying tax on its profits.
In more general terms, there are calls every day from the left for rich people to “pay their fair share”, fair share being entirely undefined but more than what they pay now. The fact that the top 5% of earners contribute something like a quarter of the UK’s tax income is lost on these people who are motivated by jealousy, not common sense. But who contributes more to the Treasury? One man earning £200k a year or 10 people earning £20k a year?
The 10 people earning £20k will all have a tax free income of £7,475 each, the person earning £200k will have no tax free income as it reduces by £1 for every £2 earned over £100k. So that’s £149,500 of untaxed income for the 10 people earning £20k each.
The person earning £200k will pay income tax at 22% up to £35k, 40% up to £150k and 50% thereafter. The people earning £20k will pay £4,038 each in tax and NI in a year which totals £80,760 in gross contributions to the Treasury. Most of the people earning £20k will also be entitled to tax credits and someone taking £50 per week in tax credits will be receiving £2,600 per year back from the Treasury.
The person earning £200k will pay £82.959 in tax and NI on his income over a year and will get nothing back from the Treasury. So one person earning £200k contributes more in direct taxation than 10 people earning £20k each and the gap widens the more the high earner earns and more in indirect taxes (such as VAT and fuel duty) because they have a higher disposable income.
