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By  David Craig, on February 25th, 2015 Some years ago, before I was blacklisted for writing two books (RIP-OFF! and PLUNDERING THE PUBLIC SECTOR) exposing stupidity, greed and waste in the management consultancy industry, I was sent to a Southeast Asian country to work on a project in the maintenance division of their national airline. I won’t give you the name of the airline or show any pictures of their planes. But there may be more than a hint in the title of today’s post.
The airline had a bit of a problem. Following a number of exciting in-flight incidents covered up by pilots, the airline risked losing its FAA approval to fly into US airports. That could have led to a ban from European airports as well. So this would have been a disaster both for the airline and for national pride.
There were two parts to our job. Firstly, to knock the maintenance department into shape so that there were fewer life-threatening events. But there was also what management consultants like to call a ‘vision’. This was to make the maintenance department so effective that other airlines would subcontract some of their major plane overhauls to this airline as its labour costs were much lower than those for the major carriers.
On my second day on the first phase of the project, I accompanied one of our aircraft maintenance specialists to check the stock of spare parts. Armed with long lists of items like wings and landing gear, worth many millions of dollars, that should have been there we set off through the blazing tropical heat for the stores building. It was huge and rather empty apart from a lot of large hairy spiders who seemed most displeased by people disturbing their afternoon nap. Clearly the spiders were not used to people coming into the stores building.
As for all the spare parts that should have been there – well, who knows? Part of the problem was that due to the national habits of laziness and administrative incompetence, many parts may have been used but not marked off on the stock lists. But there is also a thriving market in aircraft parts, and it looked like the maintenance department managers had been hugely enriching themselves by flogging off wings and suchlike. Moreover, some parts marked as ‘new’ were clearly not new at all. Probably the new parts had been flogged off and replaced by much cheaper refurbished ones, making somebody very rich in the process.
But when we reported our findings to the directors of the maintenance division, there was obviously a bit of a problem. They were the ones getting rich from the aircraft spare parts scam. As you might have expected, within two days of our final report, we were all on a plane home (thankfully not with that airline) as the directors of the maintenance division had no intention of letting anyone spoil their lucrative criminal enterprise.
Britain is corrupt – as Mr Straw and Mr Rifkind have both helpfully confirmed. But our corruption is small beer compared to the widespread venality in most developing countries. The West clearly has some economic problems at the moment and the pundits are forever blethering on about the rise of Asia. But corruption is so endemic in most Asian countries that everything they do will always be affected by it.
Some Indian company has recently announced it will be constructing the world’s tallest luxury residential flats building in Bombay (Mumbai) at 117 floors:

So, what can we expect? Substandard steel supplied by corrupt contractors and approved by corrupt building inspectors? Substandard concrete supplied by corrupt contractors and approved by corrupt building inspectors? Well, you get the picture. After all, would you fly in a passenger jet made by Indians or Pakistanis?
So, the supposed experts’ predictions of the West’s demise and the coming “Asian Century” may be a little premature. Corruption will always be Asia’s Achilles Heel.
By  David Craig, on February 23rd, 2015 As the EU’s favourite soap – Greekenders – was entering its fifth season, we wondered if the writers had run out of ideas.
Of course, we still had all our favourite characters – tough, tight-fisted housewife Mrs Merkel, miserable old sod Mr Schäuble, suntanned, crocodile-skinned fashionista Ms Lagarde and stylish, suave Italian lothario Mario Draghi:

But with the endless austerity and falling viewing figures, we wondered whether Greekenders was on the way out as Europe’s favourite evening entertainment, whether we were heading for what we in the TV business call a “Grexit”.
Thankfully the Greekenders writers have responded to public concern about the series becoming a bit too repetitive with the introduction of two original and exciting new characters.
There’s the flamboyant young second-hand car dealer Alexis Tsipras with his flashing smile, filmstar looks and smooth sales patter:

And there’s the new accountant – Yanis Varoufakis. But the new Greekenders accountant is not some boring, besuited nobody. He’s a young, shaven-headed, motorbike-riding smoothie with a Mediterranean charm and a way with the numbers that might even put a bit of fire into the cold, stone-like hearts of grim misery-guts Merkel and the perma-tanned but fragrant Ms Lagarde.
Yup, just when we thought Greekenders was on the way out with an explosive Grexit, the show is back on our screens and in our papers again.
So, what can we look forward to in this seemingly never-ending saga of life on Athens Square?
Will the suave second-hand car dealer Alexis Tsipras manage to flog one of his dodgy, clocked, hastily repainted, clapped-out motors to mean, penny-pinching hausfrau Angela Merkel? Can the rock-and-roll motorbiking accountant Yanis Varoufakis ever be friends with grumpy old Mr Schäuble and maybe even take him for a ride? And could there be romance in the air between crocodile-skinned Ms Lagarde and Italian stallion Draghi as they share their passion for ever closer monetary and political union?
Hurray! It looks like Greekenders will run and run providing many more years of entertainment for all the family.
But don’t get too excited. It could still all suddenly end in tears if the money runs out.
(by the way, I think the comments function is working again. To leave a comment or read comments, just click on the title of today’s post)
By  David Craig, on February 22nd, 2015 One of the examples usually given by the supposed ‘experts’ of the dangers of deflation and economic stagnation is Japan. The economic pundits are forever talking and writing about “Japan’s lost decade”. But do the ‘experts’ really understand what has has actually happened in Japan over the last 10 years or so?
Here are a couple of relevant data points:
1. People’s spending decreases after they enter their mid fifties:

(click on charts to see more clearly)
Although this chart is from the US, it applies in almost any developed country – after people pass the age of 54, they tend to spend less money on “stuff”.
2. Japan has an ageing and declining population:

This means that the Japanese are likely to spend less. Therefore any decline in GDP may not be proof of “a lost decade” but just a natural result of changes in demographics.
We also have an ageing population in Britain. But our rulers have chosen to deal with it by opening the borders to a tsunami of immigration – 46,000 people every month (one million every two years) – about half of them unskilled benefits scroungers from filthy, corrupt, crime-ridden, violent Third World hell-holes who just happen to hate us and everything about our society apart from our over-generous welfare system, free healthcare, free schooling, free housing, free everything. This has led to a rapid population increase in Britain, overcrowding and a virtual collapse in the NHS and our schools. Meanwhile, our rulers have borrowed and spent £100bn a year to pay benefits, housing and public services for all these millions of immigrants and claimed “look how much our economy is growing!”
The Japanese, on the other hand, have decided to not let their country become an overcrowded, heavily-indebted Third World sewer and so their population has peaked and even started to go down as has their GDP. Is that a bad thing? Less congestion. Less overcrowding. Less pressure on housing and public services. Less borrowing.
Yes, the Japanese do have issues to deal with, in particular how to care for so many elderly.
But maybe there hasn’t been the “lost decade” the economics experts like to shove in our faces when warning us about the supposed ‘dangers’ of deflation. All we’re seeing in Japan might be the natural decline in spending as a population ages but doesn’t allow itself to be invaded by millions of people who would have no interest in Japan’s values and would absolutely refuse to integrate into Japanese society.
So, which route would you have preferred for Britain? The one chosen by our rulers which is turning our once green and peaceful country into a crowded, concrete-covered, violent, bankrupt Third World cesspit? Or the one chosen by Japan’s rulers – keep the borders closed and manage the gradual decline in population and GDP?
Personally, I’d much prefer Japan’s solution. I believe Japan hasn’t had a “lost decade” at all. But we have definitely lost our country and we can never get it back.
For most of my life, I was too busy trying to earn a living to question what I read in the papers or heard on TV. It’s only since I’ve been blacklisted as a whistleblower and started writing books that I’ve realised what total and utter b*ll*x many supposed ‘experts’ feed us. This is why I write the blog – to try to tell the truth the mainstream media never mentions about what is really happening to our country.
(Apologies, the Comment function still seems to be blocked by spammers. A pity as I’d have loved to have read the comments on some of the articles over the last few days. Until the problem is fixed, if readers wish, they can email comments to me at david.craig54@yahoo.co.uk and I’ll post them in the blog)
By  David Craig, on February 21st, 2015 For months, the business and economics sections of the serious newspapers, have been running ‘doom and gloom’ articles about deflation. “Deflation stalks Eurozone” and “UK risks falling into deflation” and “Oil price fall tips world into deflation” are typical of the headlines. In almost all cases, deflation is presented as something terrible which will harm both the economy and ordinary people.
The problem is that all these economists and other supposed experts have studied on similar economics courses at university and have all read the same economics textbooks. Their knowledge about deflation is taken from the 1930s Depression and few of the ‘experts’ have the intelligence or imagination to think new thoughts and see why what is happening today is far removed from the 1930s deflation.
To generalise slightly, we could say there are two main types of deflation – benign deflation and recessionary deflation:
Benign deflation – this is what we are experiencing now. With the fall in the prices of many major commodities, especially oil and gas, we are seeing slight falls in the main inflation index (CPI). Moreover, technical advances also help fuel deflation as we either pay less for products with a technical content (computers, smartphones, washing machines, cars, TVs etc) or else get more functionality for the same price.
This benign deflation – maybe 1% to 2% a year – is great for most of us. We can afford to buy more or save more. It’s particularly beneficial for those on fixed incomes like pensioners. With 25,000 to 30,000 old people dying each year from conditions related to being unable to heat their homes properly, any fall in power bills will reduce this appalling death rate. Moreover, for those with savings, deflation is wonderful. If we have deflation of say 1% a year, then even a bank account paying a miserable 1% interest is actually giving us a real return of 2%
Recessionary deflation – this is the big bogeyman. The theory here is that if people see prices falling or if they fear for their financial future, then they will delay buying things. This will cause a fall in demand. Companies will be forced to fire workers leading to a further fall in demand and so on in a downwards spiral of economic collapse. Here’s the textbook version (click to see more clearly)

And here’s a more straightforward view:

But to get recessionary deflation, prices would need to be falling by at least 5% a year or more. And we’re nowhere near that nor are we likely to be. Greece is probably the only European country with recessionary deflation.
So don’t be taken in by the “doom and gloom” supposed ‘experts’. A little bit of deflation is good for most of us.
Governments – the only people really harmed by deflation are incompetent, financially-incontinent, overspending governments. When you have inflation of say 2% to 3% a year, governments (like the useless Coalition) will happily borrow borrow borrow and spend spend spend, knowing that in 10 years the massive debts they’re accumulated will have lost 20% to 30% of their value. But with deflation, these debts increase.
That’s one reason why the Bank of England has been set a target of keeping inflation at around 2% – the Government is trying to reduce our spending power each year in order to reduce the value of its own borrowings.
But for the rest of us, deflation is great. Enjoy it while it lasts!
(By the way. I have a feeling that the ‘Comment’ function might not have been working for the last few days. I think what is happening is that a spammer has blocked access to the ‘Comments’ function and is trying to fill it up with ads [which I delete] selling anything from fake Nike shoes to fake religious artifacts. This spammer is preventing anyone genuinely making comments. I’ll try and get this fixed on Monday)
By  David Craig, on February 19th, 2015 (I’m leaving this post up for a second day as I believe this really is the “big issue” confronting us)
In 2001, there were about 1.6 million M*sl*ms in Britain. By 2011, this had shot up to 2.78 million. By 2014, at 3.2 million, there were twice as many M*sl*ms in Britain as there were just 13 years earlier. With Britain’s M*sl*m population doubling every 13 years, by 2030 there will be over 7 million M*sl*ms in Britain.
Our rulers and the politically correct will argue that as M*sl*ms only make up around 5% of the population, they aren’t a threat to our way of life even though within 15 years M*sl*ms will account for over 10% of the population. But what the ruling elites, the politically correct and the bien pensants deliberately overlook is the concentration of M*sl*ms in certain areas which gives them massive political power, well in excess of their percentage of the population as a whole.
Although M*sl*ms only make up about 5% of the population overall, in many cities where M*sl*ms are still in a minority M*sl*m births are far outstripping births of the ethnic British:

(These figures are from the 2011 census. Due to uncontrolled immigration and M*sl*ms’ higher birth rates, the percentages of M*sl*ms will have increased considerably in just the last 4 years since 2011)
In some local authorities, M*sl*ms account for around a third of the population:

(These figures are from the 2011 census. Due to uncontrolled immigration and M*sl*ms’ higher birth rates, the percentages of M*sl*ms will have increased considerably in just the last 4 years since 2011)
Once M*sl*ms are close to 30% of the population in any area, thanks to tribal loyalties, coercion to vote for M*sl*m candidates and extensive postal vote fraud, that essentially gives the M*sl*m community total control over those areas.
Thanks to the shenanigans in Tower Hamlets, we can already see that M*sl*m political control will bring us all the most colourful aspects of political life from those beacons of democracy – Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Somalia – voting fraud and voter intimidation; widespread corruption leading to massive enrichment of M*sl*m political leaders and their business cronies; Trojan Horse takeovers of schools resulting in segregation and oppression of girls, and religious indoctrination replacing the teaching of science and technology; female genital mutilation; polygamy; a huge growth in first-cousin marriages giving an increase in birth defects and a decrease in overall IQ levels of 10 to 16 points; complete failure to accept or adopt any British values and, of course, low educational achievement leading to unemployment (economic inactivity) levels of over 50% for men and 95% for women, poverty, criminality and social unrest.
In addition, as Rotherham, Bradford, Halifax, Oxford and many other cities have shown, crimes by M*sl*m men such as gang-rape, gang-sodomisation and torture of non-M*sl*m girls will be tolerated and covered up in the interests of ‘social cohesion’ with M*sl*m policemen keeping the perpetrators well-informed about any potential police action against them should the police even dare to confront such problems
There’s the well-known question: How do you eat an elephant?

So, even though British M*sl*ms only account for about 5% of the British population and violent *slam*sts may only account for say 5% (60 million) of the world’s 1.2 billion M*sl*ms, British M*sl*ms and *sl*mic militants and are ‘eating the elephant‘ – taking over our country and the world bit by bit.
In Britain, our M*sl*ms are taking control of at least 10 local councils and some major cities. In the Middle East, ISIL already have large parts of Syria and Iraq and have now moved into Libya. They’re also active in Egypt and the Yemen and will soon move into Jordan and the Lebanon. In Africa, Boko Haram are spreading outside Nigeria into Cameroon and other neighbouring countries.
So, we should give thanks to Tower Hamlets, Rotherham and ISIL – they have all helped show us what the future for our country and the world looks like. And I, for one, don’t like what I see and feel obliged to speak out against our rulers’ cowardly capitulation to the *sl*mist takeover of our country and our world.
Am I really the only person who can see what’s happening?
By  David Craig, on February 18th, 2015 Greece: There are two sides to every argument:

1. Make them pay back the money they’ve borrowed and wasted
The Greeks are only victims of their own corruption, greed, stupidity, nepotism and economic mismanagement.
For decades the Greeks have been siphoning off EU money for crops that never existed, for roads that were never built and for all sorts of other regional development projects that were outright frauds.
The huge flow of EU and borrowed money into Greece has enabled most Greeks to avoid paying any taxes while funding a massive over-paid, over-pensioned bureaucracy, that no other EU country could ever afford.
Greece joined the Euro so that it could reduce its borrowing costs on the back of being in a currency union with disciplined Germany. However, while they wanted unbelievably low-cost borrowing, the Greeks didn’t want the kind of fiscal discipline that goes with it. So, instead of being so belligerent, perhaps they should eat a bit of humble pie and take responsibility for the whole mess, instead of suddenly and insultingly demanding belated war reparations from their major creditor.
Perhaps if the Greeks weren’t in such a rush to get back to the policies that got them their huge debt, then there might be room for negotiation. But the Greeks want everything. They want to stay in the EU and the Euro but ignore the ECB and their major creditors and expect to get their own way on everything.
Conclusion 1: Sod them! Make them pay!
2. The Greeks are in a debt spiral that continued deep austerity will only worsen. Something must change
How can more austerity help? Let’s look at the figures so far: one million people have lost their jobs; there has been a 38% salary reduction and a 45% pension reduction; GDP has shrunk 25% and 30% of all businesses have closed. Household income is down 30% and construction a staggering 84%.
Let’s look at what has gone up: 43% increase in child mortality; public debt up 35.5%; unemployment up 190% (1 in 4 people are out of work, for the 18-24 age group, over half have no work); 272% increase in depression; poverty rates 98% up; 2 people commit suicide every day. All this would have been worse except for mass migration.
Greek and EU leaders gladly allowed Goldman Sachs to construct some ludicrously-contrived deal with derivatives so that it looked like Greece qualified to join the Euro in order to drive their dream of creating a great EU superstate.
For over twenty years EU officials have known that Greece was running an average budget deficit of 5.2% GDP. Meanwhile it was receiving approx. 3.3% GDP in EU aid every year. So that makes an average deficit of around 8.5% GDP. But nobody said anything about this economic madness while the EU economy was growing and all the EU officials could get rich while claiming the EU and the Euro were huge successes. And now everything has gone t*ts up, everyone is blaming each other and nobody is accepting responsibility for anything.
Conclusion 2: It’s time for a change, for debt forgiveness and time to reflate the collapsing Greek economy to address the social and financial misery being imposed on the country
What to do? I know a lot of readers would agree with Conclusion 1 “Sod them ! Make them pay!”. But in business there’s the concept of ‘sunk costs’ – costs that have been incurred and can never be recovered. When dealing with sunk costs, the best strategy is to write them off and move forward making the best of a bad situation.
Personally, I believe the hundreds of billions that have disappeared into the pockets of corrupt Greek politicians and their business cronies and that have paid for Greece’s ‘retire at 55’ delusion are ‘sunk costs’ and it’s time for Conclusion 2 – debt forgiveness and reflate the collapsing Greek economy.
But clearly most European leaders believe they should stick to Conclusion 1. As Einstein said “insanity is repeating the same thing and expecting a different result”. EU leaders can never admit to ever being wrong about anything or ever having made a mistake. This forces them into behaviours that closely resemble insanity as defined by Einstein.
By  David Craig, on February 17th, 2015 While we in the West grovel every time some bearded lunatic from a primitive death cult masquerading as a religion makes demands on us to give up our traditions and freedoms, the Chinese don’t appear to be as politically correct as us.
There’s a story doing the rounds about a Chinese crackdown on the mad mullahs in one of its most rebellious (M*sl*m, of course) provinces. Here’s the story from two different sources:
China has forced the imams of Xinjiang to dance in the street, and swear to an oath that they will not teach religion to children as well telling them that prayer is harmful to the soul.
In China, imams are being forced to dance, at the same time being made to make an oath to keep children away from religion – public servants are forced to brandish the slogan that “our income comes from the CKP (Chinese Communist Party) not from Allah”.

The imams of the mosques in the Xinjiang (East Turkestan) have been forced to gather in a square dancing en masse. State Chinese news have said that in the name of “civilization” the imams have been forced to dance in the town square. At the same time they were forced to chant out slogans such as “peace of the country gives peace to the soul”. Many of the imams were forcibly given Chinese flags – the same demonstration also included university students.
During the speeches, young people were told to stay away from mosques, and that the prayer was harmful to one’s health and instead were encouraged to dance. Female teachers were instructed to teach children to stay away from religious education and made to swear an oath that they will keep children away from religion.
https://defence.pk/threads/china-forces-imams-to-dance-in-street.359474/
(Apparently, these sorts of large group exercising sessions are popular in China. I guess they’re a kind of political and social control. But, of course, they’re humiliating for mad mullahs as dancing and music, like just about everything enjoyable in life, is ‘haram’:

Here’s the second source:
Rabat – In the Muslim majority district of Xinjiang on Monday, imams were forced by the Chinese state to dance in the street holding banners that read “our income comes from the CKP not from Allah.”
The imams were also made to swear an oath that they would not teach religion to children on the grounds that prayer “is unhealthy and harmful to the soul”. Teachers in the district were forced to take a similar oath, also swearing to teach their students to stay away from mosques.
In addition to the banners, the imams were also made to chant statements exalting the state such as “peace of the country gives peace to the soul.”
This latest indignity comes after over half a decade of oppression by the Chinese state in the Xinjiang region, known by activists as East Turkestan, which has been autonomous since 1955 and is home to Uighur Muslims, a Turkish-speaking minority. Recently, China has increased its religious repression in the region, with human rights groups claiming that China has been using anti-terrorism as an excuse.
China has gone so far as to ban religious practices and icons, including clothing, in government buildings and to ban women in hijabs and burqas from using public transportation, as well as make it illegal for students and government officials to observe Ramadan
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2015/02/151682/imams-forced-dance-street-religiously-repressed-xianjang/
He-he-he-he! Ha-ha-ha-ha!
Pity our rulers don’t have the guts to tell “British” M*sl*ms to accept our traditions or get out. “Fit in or f*** off!” should be our policy. After all, there are about 54 M*sl*m countries in the world “British” M*sl*ms could move to if they don’t like the way we do things in Britain.
The only trouble is that they’re almost all violent, dangerous, poverty-stricken, corrupt, stinking, crowded, excrement-covered hell-holes without Britain’s wonderful benefits system, free schooling, free healthcare, free housing, free speech (for M*sl*ms only), free everything.

As for the M*sl*m practice of gang-raping, gang-sodomising and torturing non-M*sl*m girls. If they did that in China, they’d get a bullet in the back of the head. But in Britain they’re encouraged for decades by social workers, the police and local politicians who desperately protect the rapists against discovery, prosecution and punishment in the interests of social harmony and promoting multi-culturalism.
By  David Craig, on February 16th, 2015 As we rush towards the 2015 general election, I’ve tried to prepare some simple infographics to illustrate the utter absurdity of the two main parties’ appeals for our votes.
First, the Tories who have managed to double our national debt from about £750bn to around £1,500bn while pretending to be implementing austerity and claiming we can trust them with the economy:

Then Labour. Well, they don’t mention the economy or debt any more – for fairly obvious reasons. Labour just tell us how much more they’re going to spend without making it terribly clear where the money will be coming from:

As for the LibDems – hopefully they’re going to be wiped out in May. So, who cares what they’re promising?
The trouble is, that with 91% of voters not understanding the difference between “deficit” and “debt”, the two main parties will get away with their lies. When asked about the Coalition’s original plans for cutting the deficit by £350bn, a truly amazing/horrifying 70% of voters thought this would also mean the national debt would fall by £350bn and an equally worrying 21% believed that if you cut the deficit, then the national debt would stay the same. Only a pathetically small 9% of voters understood that as long as there was a deficit, national debt would rise:

Only UKIP can put a stop to this madness! Interesting times ahead!
(By the way, 21 Christians have been beheaded by our M*sl*m friends in Libya – https://news.yahoo.com/says-beheaded-egyptian-copts-libya-193850727.html – no screams of outrage from all the politically-correct, *sl*mophiliac lefties who vilify Israel every time it tries to defend itself. Oh, and the fragrant, corpulent Baroness Warsi seems to be uncharacteristically quiet at the moment too)
By  David Craig, on February 15th, 2015 (As it’s the weekend, something a little less serious today – a day on which, like on every other day our national debt increases by a mere £274m as our financially incontinent rulers borrow ever more money to waste https://www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk/ )
Apparently our magazines are full of articles by supposed ‘relationship experts’ telling us why people are attracted to each other and what’s the basis of a stable long-term relationship. Though, in today’s society who knows what ‘long-term’ now means – weeks? months?
But one thing I suspect these relationship experts seldom if ever mention is ‘shared morality’. By that I mean, people who believe that you should be decent to others and try to get with them will gravitate towards others with a similar morality while people who believe others are to be used, trampled on and then cast aside in their rush to further their own careers – total utter bastards (TUBs) – will similarly gravitate to others with those kinds of beliefs.
I don’t mean that TUBs consciously say to themselves ‘I like using and discarding other people and so need to find a partner with a similar approach to life’ but rather that TUBs will naturally feel more comfortable with partners who are also TUBs.
I worked for many years in management consultancy. There are two main types of people in management consultancy. There are the footsoldiers (what we used to call ‘billing foodder’) – fairly decent people who would happily work for £1,000 to £1,500 per week and who could be charged out to our useless clients – big companies and incompetent bureaucracies like the NHS and Ministry of Defence – at £7,000 to £10,000 per week, producing endless streams of money for the consultancies’ partners and directors.
As in any walk of life, where there are huge amounts of money to be earned extremely quickly by those of quite modest talents provided they are sufficiently cunning, consultancy attracts quite a lot of TUBS – people who will lie and cheat and stab you in the back and slander you and claim credit for things they had nothing to do with and make sure someone else was in the way when a project went t*ts up and a scapegoat was needed in their desperate attempts to grab huge amounts of the cash that was rolling in.
At our annual summer and Christmas parties at various castles and luxury hotels in Britain and abroad, you’d meet the TUBs’ partners, who were generally as arrogant, snobbish and unpleasant as the TUBs and would spend most of the time boasting about their numerous houses and fabulous holidays and brilliant children going to the most expensive schools etc etc.
But while the TUBs’ partners enjoyed the benefits of being with a money-grabbing TUB, they often didn’t seem to realise that there might be a downside. because a few years later, at the next company bash, while the billing fodder would turn up with the same partners, you’d find that the TUBs were frequently with a different, usually younger and more attractive partner, the original partner having been unceremoniously dumped when the TUB could get his or her fingers into a better model.
My wife kept contact with a few TUBs’ former partners and a common theme we found was the shock and surprise that they felt when their TUB behaved like a TUB towards them rather than towards other people.
So, if you or anyone you know is thinking of getting together with a TUB. Read what it says in the tin. And if it says ‘TUB’, while there may be temporary advantages in being with a TUB – money, social position etc – a TUB will always behave like a TUB and that makes the TUB’s partner just another person to be used and thrown aside. Remember – once a TUB, always a TUB.
By  David Craig, on February 14th, 2015 We all know the official narrative: Britain is recovering from the 2008 financial meltdown thanks partly to the Government’s policy of keeping interest rates near to zero – (ZIRP – Zero Interest Rates Policy). This makes it cheaper for businesses and those with mortgages to borrow. So, fewer companies have gone bankrupt and fewer people have lost their homes than would have happened if interest rates had remained at a ‘normal’ (3% to 5%) level.
However, the main beneficiaries of ZIRP are not ordinary people, but governments (like the British Government) that are borrowing and spending too much and which would be bankrupted were interest rates to rise to ‘normal’ levels.
And, of course, while helping those who have borrowed too much, low interest rates also harm some groups, particularly those with savings:
1. Savers – due to low interest rates, savers are losing roughly £24bn a year as they’re not getting any real interest on their savings. As savings are taxed at a rate of 20% (or more for higher earners), this means HMRC is losing perhaps £5bn to £6bn a year in tax
2. Pension schemes – Perhaps the more serious effect of low interest rates is one we seldom hear anything about because it ‘s probably far too complicated for most journalists, even supposed financial journalists. Low interest rates result in pension funds earning less than expected on their money in bonds and cash and therefore being unable to meet their liabilities.
The number of companies facing pension deficits – meaning the assets in their schemes will be insufficient to meet the pensions that are to be paid out – rose to a fresh high of 5,175 in January, according to data compiled by the Pension Protection Fund (PPF).
The aggregate balance of those schemes took a further dive, falling to a deficit of £367.5bn, compared with just £46.4bn a year earlier.”
So employer pension schemes are being driven into the red by the Bank of England’s loose monetary policy, requiring firms to pile ever more cash into their funds. UK companies are having to find another £320bn+ of pension contributions from somewhere..and that in a single year! I wonder what effect that is going to have on their wage, staffing and profitability levels going forward? Not a positive one, you can be sure of that.
And as companies are forced to plough ever more money into their failing pension schemes, their profitability will fall resulting in a reduction in the tax take leading to an even greater deficit
We’re seeing the same thing in public sector pensions. According to the OBR’s last Fiscal Stability report, public sector pension liabilities increased by £166bn last year too…..also thanks to lower rates. At some point taxpayers will have to make good this gap between liabilities and assets
It’s probably true that, given the financial incontinence of our rulers (Labour and Coalition), a ZIRP policy was the only way of saving the economy from a 1930s style collapse. But there are many hidden effects of ZIRP that have yet to manifest themselves.
The failure of our rulers to cut public spending has forced them to keep interest rates low and has allowed governments to kick any real reforms a long way down the road so they can concentrate on important things like legalising gay marriage and fighting supposed ‘global warming’. And, of course, ZIRP has allowed our useless Coalition to more than double our national debt from £700bn to £1.5trn while hiding behind the smokescreen of “we’re cutting the deficit”. Meanwhile we continue to be ripped off by overpaid bankers and greedy energy companies, while large multi-national firms laugh at the idea of paying any tax in the UK.
Or as the wonderful ‘Mad’ Max Keiser puts it: “This might have been blindingly obvious to others, but I finally caught on to the dismaying reality: the only purpose of central bank monetary policy is to keep the bloated, corrupt, inefficient and self-liquidating vested interests of the state-cartel crony capitalism from having to suffer the consequences of real reforms”
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