Snouts in the Trough

With so many pollsters polling and psephologists psephologising, I thought I’d run my own poll and psephologise over the results:

My independent poll of the public’s attitudes to David Cameron and Ed Miliband clearly shows that:

Cameron is 68% ahead in “pretending to recognise the needs of hard working families”, while Miliband is 44% ahead in “really recognising the needs of hard unemployed families and benefits-scrounging Third World immigrants”.

Cameron is 66% ahead in “mingling with rich capitalist hedge fund managers” while Miliband 82% ahead in “mingling with rich socialist trade union bosses”.

Cameron is 51% ahead in “having greater command of reassuring paternalistic platitudes” while Miliband is 39% ahead in “forgetting to mention anything apart from the NHS”.

Cameron is 56% ahead on “ring-fencing everything that people think is important”, while Miliband is 77% ahead on “spending more money on everything that people think is important but at the same time pretending he’ll make cuts to everything that people don’t think matters”.

Cameron is ahead by 73% in “feigning passion about everything that people think is important although he actually couldn’t give a toss” while Miliband is ahead by 46% in “claiming that he came into politics to address those things that people think are important while really wanting to do the things that he thinks are important” (like shoving socialism and multiculturalism down our throats).

Cameron is 95% ahead on “holding a referendum on whether to stay in or leave Europe because he’s afraid of UKIP” but can’t think of anything that would warrant leaving Europe whereas Miliband is 85% ahead on “disapproving of any decision to leave Europe” but, at the same time, does not want the views of the electorate to affect such a decision.

Cameron is 100% ahead in “remembering to button up his jacket every time he gets out of a car” because he believes it makes him look like a man of action even though he will unbutton it again within a few seconds as soon as he sits down (unless there is a tv camera) while Miliband is 75% ahead for “hardly ever being seen getting out of a car but often standing without a jacket in his second or third kitchen”.

Cameron is 84% ahead for “making difficult decisions” (which might simply be when to unbutton his jacket) while Miliband is 89% ahead for “managing to avoid revealing or even knowing what decisions might be made if he was Prime Minister” (at least not without checking first with the Unions and Nicola Sturgeon).

It is thanks to polls like this that the hard-working electorate are able to make the tough decision on who to vote for or whether to bother voting at all.

So, Labour have published their election manifesto. And a fine load of promises it is. It’s remarkable that such a document could come from the same people who ruined our country through deliberate mass (particularly *sl*mic) immigration and who bankrupted Britain during 10 years of financial incontinence, spending more every year between 2000 to 2010 than the Labour government took in taxes.

And as supposed journalists pore over Labour’s manifesto there has been much heat and noise over Miliband’s and Balls’s almost miraculous Damascene conversion to fiscal responsibility – unbankrupting Britain by cutting the deficit. Though, of course, Labour’s promises are worthless as they’ve started playing the games with “current” vs “investment” spending (but more on that at another time)

But the real threat to our country appears to have slipped below the radar almost unnoticed by the usual commentators. Labour’s election manifesto is 86 pages long. And on pages 63 and 69, there’s one short phrase that could mean catastrophe for Britain – We will give 16 and 17-year-olds the vote by May 2016.

Just imagine that Miliband manages to crawl into Downing Street leading a minority government temporarily supported by the SNP and possibly a few LibDem survivors. One of the new government’s first actions will be – We will give 16 and 17-year-olds the vote by May 2016.

At any time after that, Miliband could claim he needs a stronger mandate to put Labour’s policies into action and call a general election. Of course, 16 and 17-year-olds tend to be more idealistic than older voters. There’s nothing wrong with that. But running a bankrupt country in an increasingly dangerous world on the brink of a Third World War between civilisation and *sl*m requires gritty realism not naive idealism. Younger people will be pro-EU, for immigration, aggressively politically-correct, supportive of higher taxes and a larger public sector and they will put less value on Britain’s independence and traditions – in short, they will overwhelmingly vote Labour, LibDem and for the Greens.

The Tories will be decimated and UKIP will be wiped off the electoral map.

I predicted this months ago. And now it’s there in black and white on pages 63 and 69 of Labour’s manifesto.

It’s brilliant. It’s genius. How they must be laughing at Labour campaign HQ. Giving the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds will guarantee keeping Labour in government for decades. Ed Miliband may be quite an old man by the time he hands power over to yet another Labour leader when he eventually decides to leave Downing Street to write his memoirs of being Britain’s longest-serving Prime Minister.

This is the real nightmare scenario that should keep us all awake at night. Yet it seems to have almost slipped through unnoticed.

(by the way, my latest book – THE GREAT CHARITY SCANDAL – is now available in paperback for just £4.05 https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1872188117?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwconsulting-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1849012865 )

Our country will probably never recover from the economic devastation wreaked on us by the financially-incontinent, economically-illiterate recidivist liar Gordon Brown.

He not only set the scene for disaster through a ruinous orgy of wasteful public spending while in power, but by massively increasing salaries and pensions of public-sector workers and with over £300bn of catastrophically expensive PFI contracts lasting for up to 30 years, he has burdened us with huge liabilities into the future. Hence our national debt has now hit £1.5trn and will have topped £1.7trn (100% of GDP) by the middle of the next parliament, whoever crawls into Downing Street on 8 May.

However, Scotland may have now produced a politician even more economically-illiterate than the worthless Brown. On Radio 4’s MoneyBox yesterday, there was an interview with some idiot who was deputy leader of the SNP and the party’s economic expert. This buffoon explained that the SNP would demand “an end to austerity” as a condition for supporting a minority Labour government.

(One might be tempted to wonder how a government spending £90bn a year more than it takes in taxes and increasing our debt by over £5,000 per second could be called “austerity”)

When questioned by the presenter, Paul Lewis, the SNP’s economic spokesman explained that their proposed economic policy would allow both an end to austerity and an increase in public spending, funded by borrowing, while at the same time reducing our deficit and national debt.

Hopefully, I don’t need to explain what is wrong with the Scotsman’s grasp of the meaning of the words ‘deficit’ and ‘debt’?

With total incredulity, Paul Lewis asked how the national debt could be reduced if we still had a deficit.

For a moment the great economist from the SNP was baffled by the complexity of the question, but soon recovered and replied that what he meant was debt would fall as a percentage of GDP even if it increased in real terms.

This is beyond ludicrous. Our current deficit is about £90bn. That’s about 5.3% of GDP. So, our national debt is rising by around 5.3% of GDP each year. If the brilliant SNP managed to “end austerity” while keeping the deficit at £90bn a year (heaven knows how they could do that), then the economy would have to grow by more than 5.3% a year for debt to fall as a percentage of GDP. The British economy has never grown by anything like 5.3% a year and never will. But if the opinion polls are right, this idiot might end up working with the equally clueless Ed Balls running our country’s economy.

You might have thought that Scotland could never produce a politician as financially-illiterate as the awful Brown. If so, you were wrong. The SNP’s grasp of economics is even worse than Brown’s. Interesting times ahead.

Sainsbury’s have just announced they’re halving the number of Nectar points you get for shopping in their stores. You’ll now need to spend a hefty £500 to get just £2.50 of vouchers – equivalent to a discount of 0.5% as a ‘reward’ for your loyalty.

That may not be great value. But at least, when you spend your £500 in Sainsbury’s, you know you will always get something in return for your loyalty. Similarly with the loyalty schemes at Waitrose and M&S. You know that there will be some reward – however paltry – for your continued custom.

But what about the airlines’ “Airmiles” schemes. Do we ever get anything back from them when we faithfully choose the airline with which we have a card? In the 1990s, I used to fly twice a week and so accumulated and used a fair number of airmiles. And many schemes still seem attractive allowing customers to accumulate impressive-looking tens of thousands (and even hundreds of thousands) of airmiles.

But a lot of airlines have tightened up their rules making them considerably less generous than they used to be. So, I suspect we are now being right royally conned and most of us will find that we get nothing at all back for the tens of thousands of airmiles we have carefully built up.

I have tried, and failed, to use my airmiles with three airlines recently:

1. BA – having been on a round-the-world trip with BA/Quantas, my wife and I had earned sufficient BA airmiles (or Avios points or whatever they’re called this week) for a return trip to Europe.

But  when I tried booking a “free” return flight to Nice, after the usual almost interminable wait (15+ minutes listening to dreadful music and being told my call “was important” and “will be answered as soon as possible”) I found out that my “free” BA flight from Gatwick to Nice was more expensive than flying with EasyJet. The reason – while BA gave my wife and I a “free” flight for our airmiles, the supposed taxes that I had to pay were more than the full price ticket with EasyJet (including taxes).

When I asked BA how their supposedly “free” flight could be more expensive than EasyJet’s ticket, I was first told that EasyJet didn’t fly from Gatwick – I pointed out that this was untrue. Then I was told if I had a complaint I should contact the BA complaints department and the BA employee put the phone down

2. EVA – I have just tried to book upgrades from economy to premium economy (what EVA calls its “Elite” class) for my wife and I to the Far East with Taiwanese airline EVA Air using their airmiles loyalty scheme . What I found was that if we wanted to use our EVA airmiles, we had to buy full-price, relatively expensive economy class tickets and then use a pretty stunning 25,000 airmiles each way per person for the upgrade – 100,000 airmiles in all. However, the full price economy ticket was more expensive than the EVA “Elite” class ticket I could buy from companies like TrailFinders, Dial-a-Flight and Flight Centre. So, for getting an upgrade, the EVA airmiles were more than useless and little short of a complete con

3. Virgin – if I remember correctly, a few years ago I tried to use our Virgin airmiles for my wife and I to get an upgrade from economy to premium economy and we encountered the same problem as with EVA. To use Virgin’s airmiles for an upgrade, we had to buy expensive full-price economy class tickets direct from Virgin. And these were much more expensive than the discounted tickets we could get from the main travel agents.

Conclusion – I suspect that if you are a regular business traveller who can accumulate hundreds of thousands of airmiles, then you can get some long-haul tickets that are cheaper than tickets from the likes of TrailFinders. However, if you only travel a few times a year and just get sufficient airmiles for a possible “upgrade”, then I suspect your airmiles are next to useless and you’ve been scammed by the airline.

(by the way – a couple of days ago, I wrote a piece showing how many of the problems in the NHS with access to GPs and A&E waiting times were due to the dreadful new contracts with GPs that New Labour agreed with the BMA in 2004, reducing GP working hours while giving them a 60% pay rise. So, I was pleased to hear in Labour’s election broadcast the day after the claim “they can’t go to their GP so they end up going to A&E”. Yup. Pity Labour forgot to mention that Labour are mostly responsible for people not being able to see a GP)

Perhaps we should admire Ed Miliband? After all, he’s running a reasonably effective general election campaign on just thin air and lies and may even manage to crawl into Downing Street propped up by the welfare-dependent Scots.

Miliband can’t talk about the economy as it was Labour – the financially-incontinent, economically-ignorant Gordon Brown ably assisted by the equally useless Miliband and Balls – which wrecked the British economy in the first place.

And Miliband can’t talk about the public’s other main concern – immigration – as it was Blair who came up with the idea of opening Britain’s borders to every piece of Third World garbage in order to rub the noses of the middle classes in multi-culturalism (basically an *sl*mic invasion).

So, what does that leave for Miliband to campaign on? Just the NHS.

Miliband’s two main criticisms of Tory management of the NHS are:

1. People have difficulties seeing their GP

2. Waiting times in A&E are too long.

It’s lucky for Miliband that few people read newspapers and even those who do seem to have very short memories. Otherwise voters would remember which party is responsible for the current pressure on the NHS – none other than Mr Miliband’s Labour.

The main drivers for the NHS’s current problems are immigration – over seven million people moving to Britain since Labour opened up the borders in 1997 – and the new GP contracts Labour ‘negotiated’ with the BMA in 2004.

The new GP contract allowed GPs to scrap their responsibility for out-of-hours cover – evenings and weekends – in return for a pay cut of £6,000 a year. However, this cut of £6,000 was insignificant as the new contracts also included a huge increase in payments to GPs which led to a pay increase of 60% cent in three years to more than £100,000 with some GPs earning up to £250,000 a year.

One of the men at the centre of the contract negotiations has admitted they were shocked when the Government let them drop their out-of-hours cover in return for such a tiny pay cut “It was just stunning. Nobody in my position had ever believed we could pull it off but to get it for six per cent was a bit of a laugh.”

He went on to reveal “We weren’t expecting it at all because we knew it would be very difficult for [ministers] to sell it to the public” and to confess “I’m not hiding the fact that doctors are making a lot of money – a 60 per cent rise over three years.”

Since the 2004 contract started, nine out of ten practices opted out of providing out-of-hours care. Many used to provide Saturday morning surgeries and were on call in the evenings. One health expert commented “BMA negotiators must have thought it was Christmas when they were offered relief from out of hours, I’m surprised it got through both the Department of Health and the Treasury. It shows they were pretty short-sighted.””

Primary care trusts now have responsibility for patients in the evenings and weekends, and have brought in walk-in centres and private companies to fill the gaps.

But the clearest result of Labour’s new GP contract getting rid of most out-of-hours care has been a massive rise in people going to A&E, often with relatively minor complaints:

So, you have to hand it to Red Ed – he’s lying and lying and lying and he’s getting away with it too.

Moreover, the Tories daren’t expose Miliband’s brazen NHS lies as that would mean them admitting that the NHS is buckling under the strain of mass immigration (which the Tories pledged they would control) and that it actually is difficult for people to find a GP who will do any work in spite of the huge amounts GPs are now paid.

And as for Labour’s Andy “Mid-Staffs Murderer” Burnham becoming the next Health Minister in charge of the NHS – that would be like putting Jack the Ripper in charge of a girls’ boarding school.