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By  David Craig, on July 2nd, 2013 Over the past few days there have been several articles in the press by MPs and sycophantic Westminster journalists trying to justify giving our useless, underperforming MPs a £10,000 pay rise. The arguments they rehash are always the same: if MPs “only” get £66,000 a year, then only the rich can afford to “serve”: if you want quality people in parliament, you have to pay a decent wage: and it’s not the MPs who want a pay rise, it’s the supposedly “independent” IPSA that is recommending the pay rise.
So let’s look at a few facts:
1. With the EU making about 75% of our laws, we don’t need 650 MPs any more – 200 would be quite enough. Remember, the US only has 435 members of Congress for about 300 million people
2. As their workload has gone down over the last 15 years, the number of people in the political classes has almost doubled. MPs’ staff numbers have gone up by over 30%. Moreover, in addition to 650 MPs, we now have 129 MSPs in Scotland, 60 members of the Welsh Assembly, and 108 politicians in Northern Ireland. They too have huge numbers of secretaries, advisers and hangers-on
3. One good scam our MPs have is the “Government Minister Scam” – in Westminster there are an incredible 90 supposed government ministers. This gives Britain around twice as many government ministers as Germany, France, Spain or Italy. Why so many ministers? Because it gives MPs salaries of from £89,435 (33 parliamentary secretaries) to £92,000 (20 whips) to £98,740 (29 ministers of state) to £134,565 (21 cabinet ministers). Top civil servants have been known to complain that they can’t find enough things for all these ministers to do. One parliamentary committee wrote a rapidly-buried report “What do ministers do?” recommending a cut in the number of paid ministers.
4. IPSA (Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority) is not “independent”. A couple of years ago, Cameron threatened to abolish IPSA if it didn’t become more “MP-friendly”. Since then, IPSA has increased MPs’ allowances and loosened expenses rules so that MPs are now claiming around £40,000 each in tax-free expenses more than they did before the expenses scandal broke
5. One of the major concessions IPSA made under pressure from MPs was to increase MPs’ allowance to pay staff from £115,000 to £137,200 (and £144,000 for London MPs). Many MPs hand around £30,000 a year of this to wives, partners, children, friends, friends of friends and so on
6. MPs have long being lobbying for a salary increase from around £66,000 to closer to £90,000. IPSA bureaucrats had two choices – either they could oppose MPs’ pressure for a pay rise and lose their well-paid, well-pensioned bureaucratic jobs. Or they could cave in to pressure from MPs and recommend a pay rise. It’s hardly surprising IPSA decided to keep their jobs and give more of our money to our thieving MPs
7. As the EU and regional assemblies make so many of our laws, our MPs have less and less to do. Ten years ago, they “only” had 90 days holiday a year. Because of a lack of parliamentary business, this has been increased to over 100 days a year
8. Our MPs have so little to do that many have second, third and even fourth jobs earning many of them hundreds of thousands of pounds a year each
9. If we look at the result of our MPs’ work, we’ll see their incompetence. Our debt is increasing by £120bn a year and we’ll soon go bankrupt – how can MPs who achieved so little demand ever more money?
Sadly, there is nothing we can do to stop this new attack on our money by our utterly corrupt, hypocritical, self-serving, thieving MPs and sycophantic political journalists. But as our MPs appear on the media justifying bigger salaries and bigger expenses, please remember – they are not worth it and most of them are not even necessary
(To find out more, a few people could buy a copy of my latest book GREED UNLIMITED. Maybe?)
By David Craig, on July 1st, 2013 When we read the Money sections of our weekend newspapers, I think most of us hope we getting reasonably impartial reporting. We don’t expect that some of the supposed “articles” are actually written by scumbags just trying to sell us something while pretending to be journalists.
However, one personal finance journalist recently admitted “Personal finance is almost as corrupt. …Financial institutions and PR companies target millions of pounds from marketing budgets at a few dozen business journalists, and almost anything goes. Some journalists boast of lifestyles that are little more than perpetual junkets.”
But rather than throwing around possibly unfounded accusations, let’s look at a specific example – the Sunday Times “Money” section from Sunday 23 June.
On the front page, there was an article which ended by recommending readers put their money in a unit trust run by a massive firm called Neptune. Coincidentally, just a few centimetres away, there was a nice big expensive ad for funds run by, you guessed it, Neptune.
Then on Page 3 there was another article, this time proposing readers put their money in a unit trust run by a massive firm called Jupiter. Yup, coincidentally a few centimetres away there was a big expensive ad promoting funds run by, you guessed it again, Jupiter. (Though it might have been the other way round. Unfortunately someone threw away my copy)
There are over 6,000 unit trusts marketed by over 100 unit trust companies, so if Sunday Times “journalists” were genuinely unbiased, the chances of them recommending precisely the products sold by their biggest advertisers would be pretty low.
In my experience, while researching my book PILLAGED How they’re looting £413m a day from your savings and pensions, Daily Mail personal finance journalists are really very good and genuinely try to serve their customers rather than the firms who put the most advertising in their newspaper. But time and time and time and again, I’ve found that supposed “journalists” at the Sunday Times have a tendency to recommend the products by the companies which place advertising in the “Money” section.
So, if you ever get the chance to be invited to the champagne-quaffing, caviar-guzzling VIP sections at Wimbledon or Royal Ascot or a Chelsea football game, don’t be surprised if there’s a journalist from the Sunday Times “Money” section there living the high-life paid for by the companies that advertise in the Sunday Times and whose products that “journalist” ends up recommending to unwitting readers.
By David Craig, on June 30th, 2013 For over 30 years, I have paid National Insurance (NI) contributions. Like millions of others, I have paid these on the understanding that I would be entitled to a full state pension and that my wife would be entitled to 60% of the state pension because of my NI payments. I realise that there has not been any written contract between people paying NI and the Government. But the rules have remained pretty much the same for all my working life.
But our national debt is increasing by £3,800 per second £228,000 per minute, £13,000,000 per hour, £312,000,000 per day. Our leaders have two possible choices for dealing with our ever-increasing debt. They could cut spending – reduce the salaries and pensions of our greedy, thieving, incompetent bureaucrats, stop showering benefits on immigrants and the workshy and stop wasting £30bn a year on the EU and foreign aid. Or they could carry on spending and fund their financial incontinence by taking even more money from people who work and contribute. Our expenses-fiddling, overpaid, over-pensioned masters have decided to do the latter – carry on spending and wasting our money and take ever more from those who work and pay tax.
The latest government trick to take from working people has been to change the rules for the state pension. Up till now, if you or I paid full NI contributions and had a partner who had not, our partner would have been entitled to 60% of the state pension. If I understand what is happening, our leaders have just changed the rules so that people will only get a pension if they personally have paid NI. Now, my wife will get nothing even though I have paid full NI. That means my wife will lose an income in retirement of just over £3,000 a year. With annuity rates for an inflation-protected pension at a little above 3%, I will now have to pay £100,000 into my wife’s pension fund to give her the miserable £3,000 a year which the Government has just taken away from her.
Millions of other people will have been affected by this change in the same way as my wife. But nobody seems to have noticed and nobody has protested.
Of course, pension rules for those on public-sector, gold-plated pensions have not changed. So their partners will still be entitled to at least 60% of their massive pensions when they die. The title of my most recent book “GREED UNLIMITED How Cameron and Clegg protect the elites while squeezing the rest of us” pretty much describes what is happening in Britain today and why many of us (though not the elites) are going to be an awful lot poorer as a result.
By David Craig, on June 29th, 2013 Let’s imagine a friend or financial adviser called you up and suggested you invest your life savings in a company called Great Britain Ltd (GBL).
Your first question might be, “could you tell me a bit about GBL’s management?”
“Well”, your contact replies, “the CEO used to work in the PR department and has never run a major organisation or even department before. But he’s a really nice guy and very popular. The Financial Director is one of the CEO’s closest chums, but has no financial qualifications – in fact he’s a history graduate with no real work experience”.
“What about the management team? Surely they know what they’re doing?” could be your next question.
“Umm,” your contact hesitates for a moment, “actually most of them have been caught fiddling their expenses and using company money to pay partners, friends and children as supposedly working for them. And they’ve been pushing for more generous expenses and a 30% to 40% pay rise even though GBL’s results get worse every year and its share price has fallen by about 40% compared to similar companies”.
By now, you’re not feeling too excited about the prospect of investing your cash in GBL. But, just in case there’s something you’ve overlooked, you ask, “what’s GBL’s financial situation like?”
There’s a long silence, then finally your contact admits, “unfortunately GBL spends £720bn for every £600bn it earns, its debt is rising by £120bn a year and markets will soon lose confidence in GBL’s management. In just five years from 2010 to 2015, GBL’s debt will rise from £700bn to £1.4trn and soon the company will only be able to borrow money at almost extortionate rates of interest. Unless GBL’s management do something pretty drastic and do it quickly, GBL may go bankrupt”.
Hearing this, you politely suggest that there’s no way you’d consider putting your hard-earned money into a seemingly obvious disaster like GBL.
“Ah,” your contact quickly replies, “it’s not as bad as it looks. There’s a very strong rumour that a new management team will be taking over GBL in May 2015”.
By this time, you’re pretty doubtful this will improve the situation. But nevertheless, out of politeness, you ask, “what’s the new management team like? Have they a better record than the current bunch?”
“The person likely to be the next CEO is quite young and was most people’s second or even third choice for the job. He was very close to the previous Financial Director who got booted out 3 years ago when GBL got into severe financial difficulties. He has little to no experience and isn’t really that impressive. In fact, most people think he’s a bit of a nerd,” your contact hesitatingly reveals. “And the next Financial Director was a key and influential member the last management team. During a time when business was booming, they unfortunately more than doubled spending while revenue only increased by about 60% and they doubled GBL’s debt from £350bn to over £700bn even though sales had never been so good. This meant that when business conditions worsened, as they always do after a period of unusually strong growth, GBL got into real financial trouble and the whole of the previous management team was replaced”.
“So,” you ask your contact, “you’re telling me that key members of the team responsible for wrecking GBL’s finances will soon be back in their management roles?”
“Yes,” you contact replies, “but although they won’t admit to making any major mistakes last time they were running GBL, they’ve promised to be a little more careful if they take over in 2015. So, it’s a great investment with a great future”.
Being a rather cynical person, you’re not convinced and decide to put your money elsewhere.
Now, I don’t know whether comparing a company with a country is valid. But what this little parable tells me is that I should be getting out of sterling, as neither of the two management teams likely to run Great Britain has a track record of success. And neither has either the ideas or the courage to solve Great Britain’s financial problems.
What are you going to do?
By David Craig, on June 28th, 2013 As our useless Government pretends to be making an effort to cut our completely unaffordable benefits bill, let’s look at the huge amounts we shower on people who come to the UK and British people who have never contributed anything.
Even if you’ve never worked in Britain and have never paid a penny in National Insurance, or if you’re British and have never contributed anything, these are the kinds of benefits you may be entitled to, thanks to the extraordinary generosity of stupid British taxpayers:
- Attendance Allowance
- Child Benefit
- Council Tax Benefit
- Disability Living Allowance
- Guardian’s Allowance
- Housing Benefit
- Income Support
- Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance
- Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit
- Carer’s allowance
- Reduced Earnings Allowance
- Severe Disablement Allowance
- Statutory Sick Pay
There may be others that I haven’t found yet. Who knows?
Here’s how the total benefits bill breaks down (https://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/jan/08/uk-benefit-welfare-spending#zoomed-picture)
In most other European countries, you have to have made some contribution to get the above benefits – but not in Benefits Britain.
You can get these benefits if you:
- are British
- are a refugee
- have exceptional leave to enter and remain in Great Britain
- have humanitarian protection or discretionary leave to remain in the UK
- are a national of the European Economic Area (EEA) who has recently been employed or self-employed in the UK (just a few months is enough)
- are a member of the family of a national of the European Economic Area (EEA) who has recently been employed or self-employed in the UK (just a few months is enough)
- have been living in a country that has a social security agreement with the UK
- are an Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian or Turkish national lawfully working in the UK
- are living with an Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian or Turkish national who is lawfully working in the UK
- left Montserrat after 1 November 1995 because of the volcanic eruption
- have been deported to the UK.
Yippeee! Welcome to Benefits Britain! There’s plenty of money for everyone! Except for British people who have worked and paid taxes all their lives and are now seeing their entitlements to a state pension being cut, so those who have contributed nothing can get more, more, more!
By David Craig, on June 27th, 2013 – Is your family originally from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh?
– Do you have relatives still there who’d rather like to come and live in Benefits Britain?
– Are you a bit worried that even Britain’s hopelessly relaxed and rarely applied immigration rules might be a problem?
Don’t worry. The BBC’s Asian Service can help. They advise you to use what’s called the “Surinder Singh” route to bypass British immigration rules https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23029195
The BBC’s advice goes something like this:
1. New immigration rules covering family members and dependents were introduced in July 2012. These made it slightly more difficult to import umpteen members of your family and extended family into the UK
2. However, EU immigration rules supersede UK immigration rules and EU citizens have stronger migration rights than UK citizens when it comes to bringing in family members from outside Europe.
3. So, all you need to do is go and work in another EU country for just 3 months (Ireland is particularly popular as they speak English there, sort of) and then you qualify under EU rules rather than UK rules.
4. Then it’s really easy to bring family, extended family, people pretending to be extended family and pretty much anyone else into Britain to stay for the rest of their lives.
Come on! Bring you family and friends to Britain using the “Surinder Singh” route (as recommended by the BBC’s Asian Service) and they can all live happily ever after – at British taxpayers’ expense, of course.
And when your family members reach Britain, don’t forget to get them all copies of this helpful booklet available from the nice people at the DWP in any language you wish – no need to speak English:
It tells them about all the wonderful benefits they can claim from the moment they arrive in Benefits Britain. Bring them all to Britain – you know it’s worth it.
(Tomorrow – a look at all the loverly benefits you can get when you come to Benefits Britain)
By David Craig, on June 26th, 2013 I’ll keep it short today.
Here’s a brief (1 min 30 secs) YouTube video of some Syrian “freedom fighters”. No, this time they’re not eating internal body parts of dead government soldiers. Here they’re celebrating the 9/11 attacks and the large number of Americans and others killed in the attacks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsq5ZRir-0k
These are the people to whom Obama, David “Winston” Cameron and William “Winston” Hague want to give guns and missiles and explosives. And when that isn’t enough, there’s no doubt that our “brave” leaders will find some excuse to send British soldiers to be slaughtered by British weapons given to people who hate us.
Why can’t our masters accept that the Syrian conflict is just a continuation of the 1,300-year-old struggle between Sunnis and Shiites over their slightly differing interpretations of the Koran? It’s not our problem. I believe that the vast majority of the British public think we should just let these animals get on with murdering each other and then, maybe in a couple of millennia, they’ll come to their senses and realise the whole thing was a bit of a waste.
A message to the well-paid, well-pensioned Cameron and Hague and Lord Hutton and all the Times and Telegraph journalists eagerly beating the war drums from the comfort and safety of their London offices – we don’t your war. You want another pointless Middle East war? Go fight it yourselves you cowardly, self-serving, greedy, expenses-fiddling, thieving, self-important, arrogant, hypocritical scum.
(Tomorrow – advice from the BBC on how to bring everyone you know to live in Benefits Britain)
By David Craig, on June 25th, 2013 A few years ago, the Government reduced the number of years NI payments needed to qualify for a state pension from 40 years to 30 years. This was intended to help many women, who might have taken a few years off work to bring up a family, still be eligible for a pension.
But now our leaders, with their gold-plated, inflation-protected pensions, have found out that we can’t afford to look after those who’ve paid NI all their working lives. So they’ve started to change the rules. Assuming you’re not killed in one of Sir David Nicholson’s and Cynthia Bower’s filthy, slaughterhouse hospitals, will you get anything for your lifetime’s NI contributions?
Let’s quickly look at the main changes:
1. While politicians and bureaucrats will still keep an early retirement age of around 60 for their generous pensions, the retirement age for the state pension will be going up towards 70 and even higher to reflect increasing longevity
2. The number of years NI contributions to be eligible for a state pension has been increased from 30 to 35 years
3. Previously, if you had paid sufficient NI contributions, this would have qualified your partner for 60% of the state pension. Now your partner will be eligible for nowt. They will have to have made their own NI contributions.
4. If I understand correctly, those who have paid for an increased state pension with SERPS and things like that will soon get nothing at all in return for their extra payments – everyone who is eligible for the state pension will get the same flat-rate pension of about £144 a week
5. Next, the Government is going to means-test universal benefits such as free bus passes, winter fuel allowances and free TV licences.
This may save a billion or two. But with our national debt heading towards £1.5trn by 2015, Britain will still be bankrupt. So, the really big question is whether, at some time in the future, in the name of “fairness” or something like that, our overpaid, over-pensioned masters will means-test the state pension. If that happens and you have a small private pension and/or say £50,000 in savings, you may find that you get absolutely nothing for your lifetime’s NI contributions.
If they means-test the state pension, the winners will be those who have saved nothing and so will get a full pension and those who have never worked as they will get NI credits for every year they have spent on the dole. The other winners will be immigrants, who have nothing, as they will get social security payments which may be almost as much as the full state pension. The losers will be those who have paid NI and/or have saved up a bit
Just something worth bearing in mind.
By David Craig, on June 24th, 2013 A few weeks ago, our useless (obedient) journalists were all giving their “valuable” opinions about whether or not single-sex marriage (SSM) should be allowed. What none of them dared tell us (presumably under orders from their bosses) was that the reason SSM was being hurriedly legalised in Britain and France was due to a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights www.snouts-in-the-trough.com/archives/5210 Our masters were terrified that if people knew this, there would be a massive surge in support for UKIP in the UK and the Front National in France.
Now we hear with amazement that, having attacked the Coalition for cutting too deep and too fast, Miliband and Balls have had a sudden Damascene conversion to sound budgeting and will apparently keep to the Coalition’s spending plans.
Our great insightful journalists attribute this complete change of direction to the two Eds’ desperation to get elected. The accepted narrative is as follows: Labour had hoped to bribe their way to power in 2015 by promising generous increases in spending. But, after years of seeing that the public trust Cameron and Osborne with the economy more than they trust Miliband and Balls, the two Eds have realised they had to change their tune if they are to gain the confidence of the voting public. This all sounds reasonable. And I’m sure there’s some truth in it.
But there’s something else the journos have “forgotten” to mention – the EU Stability and Growth Pact (SGP).
The SGP commits all EU (not just Eurozone) countries to achieving a budget deficit of no more than 3% of GDP (Britain’s is 9.4%) and a debt level of under 60% of GDP (Britain’s is over 85% and heading rapidly towards 100%)
You probably didn’t know this (at least I didn’t till yesterday) that 24 of the 27 EU countries are in “excessive debt procedures”. This means they are subject to massive fines by the EU if they don’t put clear plans in place to meet the 3% deficit and 60% debt targets. Only Estonia, Finland, Luxembourg and Sweden are not in “excessive debt procedures”.
Oooops, I wonder why no journalist has seen fit to mention that the UK is in “excessive debt procedures” and could soon be subject to sanctions by the bureaucrats in Brussels? Could the journalistic silence have anything to do with the fact that our leaders know that people would be horrified (and move their support to UKIP) if they realised the extent to which we’ve lost our economic sovereignty?
The full horror story is here: https://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-11-898_en.htm
By David Craig, on June 23rd, 2013 Obviously, one has to be very careful when writing about a very rich individual. So I will be very careful as I’m very poor and don’t want to become even poorer – if that’s possible.
We now know that Mr Saatchi has accepted a police caution over what he called a “playful tiff” that was photographed at a London restaurant.
Some newspapers seem to suggest that this is not the first time Mr Saatchi has been involved in an incident or incidents that could be construed as being somewhat similar to what he called a “playful tiff”.
In 2005, the Guardian newspaper reported: “The court was told Mr Saatchi used “distortion, intimidation and evasion” tactics during a dispute over the use of communal spaces. During a row over the use of a disabled toilet, Mr Saatchi was said to have gone into a “deep rage” and demonstrated how he would grab a company director by the throat.” https://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/oct/21/thesaatchigallery.arts
Possibly commenting on the same incident, another newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote: “During the case, the court heard allegations that Saatchi had gone into a deep rage and grabbed a Cadogan company director, Peter Caselton, by the throat in a row over the behaviour of a security guard.” https://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/case-closed-as-saatchi-is-shown-the-door/2005/10/24/1130006057526.htmlDuring
I would like to quote some of the things I believe to be written on pages 37, 38 and 39 of a 1996 book – Saatchi & Saatchi The inside story by Alison Fendley. But the excerpt I found on Google seems to have disappeared and I can’t find it on the other main search engines. So, until I buy the book, I will have to avoid quoting what seem to be several witnesses of Charles Saatchi’s behaviour as the material I saw on Google yesterday may or may not actually be in the book.
My father once advised me that “you hold a wine bottle by the neck and a woman by the waist”. Perhaps in his dotage, Mr Saatchi mistook his wife for a wine bottle?
On a more cheerful note, it has been brought to my attention that the year Global Warming stopped 1997, was the year Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were first elected. What can this mean? Did these two (IMHO) self-serving, lying fools destroy Britain’s weather as well as its economy? That’s something for the conspiracy theorists to get their teeth into.
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