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Barclays plan new bank robbery! Barclays is ripping us all off again!

Today’s story is all about the uselessness of our regulators, the sycophancy of our financial journalists and the arrogance and greed of our banks – in this case Barclays.

The utterly corrupt Barclays has been involved in scandal after scandal after scandal. There’s PPI mis-selling, of course. The LIBOR rigging. Massive bribes paid to Middle […]

Old European jokes?

Here’s an old European joke:

Some years ago a small rural town in Spain twinned with a similar town in Greece.

The mayor of the Greek town visited the Spanish town. When he saw the palatial mansion belonging to the Spanish mayor, he wondered aloud how on earth he could afford such a house. The […]

Sunday Times “Money” section journalists’ deceit and don’t waste your cash making unit trust managers rich

I’ve blogged on this before http://www.snouts-in-the-trough.com/archives/5748 There were some amazing “coincidences” in the Sunday Times Money section yesterday. In an article written by one of their key journalists, Ali Hussain, a financial adviser recommended savers put money in a unit trust called the Old Mutual UK Select Mid Cap Fund – a UK-focused fund that […]

How much do porn stars get paid?

At www.snouts-in-the-trough.com, I’m always keen to provide readers with hopefully useful information. With much talk about pornography going around at the moment, I did wonder how much pornstars actually got paid.

For a mid-range actress, the rates seem so be something like:

$800 for a girl-girl scene $1,000 for a guy-girl scene $1,200 or more […]

Are they planning euthanasia for ageing Brits, so we can pay for immigrants?

By an extraordinary coincidence, there have been no less than three reports published in the last month claiming either that immigration is good for Britain or that old people are a burden for Britain or both at the same time.

First was a report by the OECD which laughably tried to prove that immigrants contributed […]

Don’t waste your money on the overpaid, over-pensioned penpushers at the BBC’s “Children in Need” charity

A couple of days ago, I blogged about the extraordinary number of supposed “charities” in Britain and suggested that the 874,829 employees and 945,278 trustees at Britain’s 180,281 charities probably did a lot better from our £58.65bn in donations than anyone actually needing charitable help http://www.snouts-in-the-trough.com/archives/5980

Since then, I’ve been looking at the average employee […]

How much/little of the money Oxfam gets from us actually goes on charity?

I’ve been trying to make sense of Oxfam’s accounts to see how much/little of our money actually goes to charity. Here are some first thoughts.

Oxfam’s total income last year was £385.5m. But only £286.5m was actually used for what Oxfam and the Charity Commission call “charitable expenditure” – a reasonable, but not impressive 74.3%. […]

Should the royal baby be called Mohammed?

There are many good reasons why the royal baby should be called Mohammed:

1. Looking on Mumsnet for the 100 most popular boys name in Britain, I found that Mohammed came in at number 19, Muhammed was 22nd and Mohammad was 63rd. This probably means that a boy’s name based on the name of the […]

Is it time for a clear-out in Britain’s bloated, self-serving charities?

Charities in England and Wales raise and spend about £58.65bn a year. Of this, around £51.94bn (88%) is used for what the Charity Commission (the regulator for charities in England and Wales) classes as “charitable expenditure”. Looks good, doesn’t it? But let’s pry a little deeper into some more figures about the charitable sector.

There […]

Has our benefits system become a massive scam for the idle and feckless?

As the Coalition makes a few feeble efforts to slow the rise in benefits spending, we’re getting all the predictable howls of protest from the professional handwringers at the BBC, the Guardian and the Independent. So, who is right? Are all benefits claimants good, honest, highly-educated people who would like nothing other than a job? […]