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By  David Craig, on June 22nd, 2013 (My thanks to one of my readers for pointing out the stunningly obvious that none of the “experts” seem to have noticed)
If you put your sunglasses on and look up at the Sun, you’ll see it’s quite small. Smaller even than your finger nail. But the Sun is actually rather big – 1.3 million times bigger than the Earth. Here’s a picture of the solar system with reasonably approximate planet sizes: (nb the distances are not to scale otherwise the picture wouldn’t fit on the website) (click on picture to see more clearly):
If you take the whole solar system, the Sun accounts for 99.86% of all the mass. That means the rest of the planets and asteroids only weigh 0.14%. Of the remaining 0.14%, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune account for 99%! So the Earth is quite small really.
And here’s another surprise. Well, at least it’s probably a surprise for the dopey, deluded warmists. The Sun is rather hot – about 27 million degrees at its core, but a mere 10 million or so degrees on its surface.
Looking at this picture, you have to decide what is likely to make the Earth hotter during one of its regular phases of warming – a few methane-loaded cow farts, people driving cars and Chinese coal-fired power stations? Or maybe that absolutely massive ball of fire (the Sun) which is worryingly close (eight light minutes away) to the Earth?
The warmists would have us believe it’s the methane-farting cows, cars and Chinese coal-fired power stations and that “warming” is nothing to do with the Sun, but man-made. Yet I think that anyone with just the tiniest amount of common sense, looking at the scale picture of our solar system, might tend to attribute changes in the Earth’s temperature to variations in the amount of heat and radiation produced by the ginormous ball of fire known as the Sun.
Which do you believe? Lying politicians and bogus government-funded “climate change” scientists or your own eyes?
“Global warming” is just another excuse for politicians to tax more and to exert their power over us. It’s time to call an end to this scam.
By David Craig, on June 21st, 2013 
Here’s a brief explanation of how the British political system works:
Voter votes for politician.
Politician says to voter, “You were paid £600 this week – give me £300”.
Voter: “Why should I?”
Politician: ” Because I’ll give you lots of wonderful public services. And think of all the underprivileged people you’ll be helping. And anyway, if you don’t give me the £300, I’ll send you to prison”.
Voter: “OK then”.
Politico takes the £600: gives £280 back in public services: keeps £50 for himself and his mates in the ruling elites: gives £100 to people who can’t be arsed to get up in the morning and go to work: hands over £100 to useless over-paid, over-pensioned, corrupt, incompetent civil servants: slips another £100 to his cronies in the banking industry (partly to bail them out from the results of their greed and incompetence and partly to pay off the interest on the money the politician borrowed from them): stuffs £60 into the pockets of the hordes of immigrants moving to a better life in Benefits Britain: sends twenty quid to the corrupt wasteful EU and gives a tenner to corrupt multi-billionaire Third World kleptocrats in countries like Pakistan and pretty much anywhere in Africa.
Ods bodkins! The politician has spent £720, but only taken in £600. So he has to borrow another £120.
Politician then thinks – “I want more money, the bureaucrats want more money, the bankers want more money, immigrants want more money, the EU wants more money and corrupt multi-billionaire Third World kleptocrats want more money”.
Politician then goes to the voter and says: “You were paid £600 this week – now give me £350”
Voter: “Why should I?”
Politician: ” Because I’ll give you lots of wonderful public services. And think of all the underprivileged people you’ll be helping. And anyway, if you don’t give me the £350, I’ll send you to prison”.
Voter: “OK then”.
Voter then votes for politician yet again.
Politician rubs his eyes in disbelief at how stupid the voter is.
(Many thanks to the couple of people who bought a copy of my latest book GREED UNLIMITED yesterday – if I can keep on selling the book at this rate, I’ll be rich in only 12,000 years)
By David Craig, on June 20th, 2013 Here’s some “scientific proof” that the earth is getting warmer:
Well, this is as scientific as the complete balderdash the corrupt, grant-seeking, figure-fiddling, self-serving warmists have been feeding us for the last few decades.
But are the political and media elites beginning to back away from their Man-made Global Warming religion? A few days ago, it was reported that Mr Slippery (aka David Cameron) “has hinted he would like to cut green subsidies that force up energy bills, after questioning the “sanity” of onshore wind farms”.
And on the BBC’s breakfast programme this week, the reporter actually said that the link between Climate Change and human activity was not yet proven. Whooopps. That’s after the BBC has been insisting for 15 years that the science was settled and human activity was to blame for the earth getting warmer. For fifteen years the BBC has deliberately ignored the fact that the earth’s temperature hasn’t changed since 1998 in spite of CO2 emissions increasing dramatically.
But let’s not get too serious. Here’s a short (just over 1 minute) and hilarious interview with some “expert” or politician or someone of that ilk at a climate change conference in Germany trying to explain that Europe’s colder winters are the result of Global Warming https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_hcz0NwtU7Q
These are the kind of people that are forcing the West to commit economic suicide by doubling energy prices while the US and Asian countries look on in amazement at our utter stupidity.
These people truly are utter and total nincompoops.
By David Craig, on June 19th, 2013 To avoid any accusations of racism, all figures in today’s blog are taken either from the Office for National Statistics or from the Guardian – the bible of the bien pensants, professional handwringers and overpaid child molesters at the BBC.
There are an estimated 250,000 Somalis living in the UK. But the real figure may be higher as many Somalis with Dutch residence permits and passports are believed to have moved to the UK because of the higher benefits paid here compared to Holland.
Unemployment amongst Somali men is believed to be around 65%. As you’ll see from the diagram, this is many times higher than any other ethnic group. In fact it’s so far off the scale that I haven’t been able to include it (click on chart to see more clearly):
If we just play with a few imaginary figures: let’s assume that the 250,000 Somali population includes 60,000 men of working age and that of these, 65% (39,000) are each claiming about £20,000 a year in benefits (unemployment, jobseekers’ allowance, housing benefits, child benefits, council tax benefits and so on) for themselves and their families. If we could bring the unemployment rate for these Somali men down from 65% to the 15% for all black Africans, then another 30,000 Somali men would be in work and we’d be paying around £600m less a year in benefits
The problems with the Somali community are not just in the high levels of unemployment. In our schools just 33% of Somali students passed five GCSEs, compared with 59% for students from other African communities and 80% for Chinese students.
The handwringing, socially-responsible, politically-correct Guardian blames the British government for the problems with the Somali community claiming it is responsible for “the immense harm caused by this continuing social dislocation” and “the figures for educational attainment of Somali students are shameful for a government which prides itself on its commitment to equal opportunities” and “the government needs to recognise the Somali community is a resource to this country, not a problematic burden”.
But a cynic might wonder whether the problems caused by high unemployment and low educational achievement amongst Britain’s Somalis could possibly maybe perhaps have something to do with the cultural attitudes of the Somalis themselves. After all, many other ethnic groups have come to Britain and even thrived here.
(Oh dear, nobody bought a copy of my latest book GREED UNLIMITED yesterday. Maybe that’s because I’m a nasty person who writes nasty things. Much better for people to spend their money voting on fixed supposed TV talent shows – hello Mr Cowell – than on serious things that will affect their futures)
By David Craig, on June 18th, 2013 The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has recently produced a report claiming that immigration has improved the economies of most advanced countries. The OECD concludes that migrant workers tend to make a net contribution to the countries they move to because they tend to be younger and more economically active than the average of the wider population in their new country, a population that includes more very young and very old people.
Here are the OECD’s laughably biased figures showing the effect of immigration on countries’ GDP both including pensions paid to immigrants and excluding them (click on chart to see more clearly):
But can we trust the OECD’s politically-correct conclusions?
Let’s start with the basic facts. Since 1997 over 4 million people have moved to Britain legally and maybe a million or two illegally. That’s more than 330,000 per year – more than a town the size of Milton Keynes or Derby every single year.
Now let’s look at things the grovelingly politically-correct OECD report didn’t consider.
1. In the Brown boom, about 2 million new jobs were created. Of these about 1.77 million went to immigrants. Assuming that a million of these could have been taken by British workers, that’s a million breadwinners on benefits. If these million Brits are claiming say £20,000 a year in benefits, housing allowances, council taxes etc then that’s £20bn in benefits – oooh, that’s 1% of GDP which more than wipes out the 0.5% of GDP that immigration is supposed to have contributed. Whoops!
2. We have had to provide housing for these more than 5 million immigrants. That has pushed up demand while supply has been limited and, of course, has pushed up prices. This has forced many younger Brits to rent instead of buying as they can’t afford the UK’s hugely-inflated house prices. If we crunch some numbers and assume that one million Brits are renting, when they’d like to buy and that they’re paying £500/month on rent, then that’s £6bn a year that’s being taken out of economy. Whoops, bet the OECD didn’t think about that.
3. Of the 2.3 million immigrants from the EU a worrying 24% (551,000) are not working and 6% (146,000) have never worked. I wonder if the OECD considered all the benefits they’ve been claiming?
4. About 150,000 British citizens emigrate from the UK every year. If we assume that one in four leaves because they’re unhappy with the UK’s immigration free-for-all and that these people spend £25,000 a year each in the countries where they settle, then that’s about £1bn a year the UK economy is losing.
But it’s not just the financial impacts that are important. There are quality of life problems with increasing the already overcrowded UK’s population by over 330,000 every year – pressure on transport, the NHS, schools where classes are mostly made up of children for whom English is not their first language, policing and other public services:
OECD says “immigration has been good for Britain”. Most people with any common sense would probably say “that’s total bull’s pizzle”.
(Oh, how I dream of the day that just a few people will buy copies of my latest book GREED UNLIMITED)
By David Craig, on June 17th, 2013 These are Sunnis (or they might be Shiites):
These are Shiites (or they might be Sunnis):
This is what happens when Sunnis and Shiites get together:
I believe most people in Britain haven’t a clue which are which: why they hate each other and why Britain should get involved in their internecine slaughter.
But our great leaders, David “Winston” Cameron and William “Winston” Hague, are salivating at the prospect of sending British arms to help one lot kill the other lot. Also, British troops are apparently in Jordan on “military exercises” and I’ve no doubt that Cameron and Hague are hoping to manufacture a “provocation” that will give them the excuse to send British troops into Syria. Then they can have their own Middle East war and become “great international statesmen” just like their hero Tony Blair.
At the moment the US is claiming it has evidence Assad has used chemical weapons. So, here’s a picture of Colin Powell from about 20 years ago assuring the UN that Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons:
Oh, and remember this?
Cameron and Hague, we don’t believe your lies and we don’t want your war. Let the Sunnis and Shiites slaughter each other over their differing interpretations of the Koran. Who knows, maybe in a few hundred years they might realise that they’ve been wasting their time and the whole thing was totally pointless? But in the meantime, it’s none of our business – it’s up to the Arab League to sort out the mess.
By David Craig, on June 16th, 2013 Like most people I just glance at the weather forecast. But this weekend I gave it particular attention as I’m up in London watching the tennis at Queens. On Friday, there was a great day’s tennis with four quarter finals including players such as Murray, Tsonga, Cilic, Hewitt and Del Potro. So, I thought I’d quite like to go and see the semi-finals, particularly as Murray was playing Tsonga.
I checked the weather forecast produced by the Met Office’s 2009 £30m supercomputer which can do 1,000,000,000,000 calculations per second. This is a supercomputer:
The forecast was for a dry day with the possibility of some light showers by late afternoon. So, I went onto the Queens website to buy some tickets. But before spending my £200, I looked out the window. For anyone who works at the Met Office, this is a window:
It’s a kind of hole in the wall, usually with glass. A window usually costs less than a £30m supercomputer and you can use it to see what the weather’s like.
What I saw, made me decide that it wasn’t worth buying tickets after all. Anyway, to cut a long story short. At about 13.15h the rain started bucketing down in London and continued till about 17.30h. This delayed the tennis from the scheduled 13.00h start to around 18.00h. Saturday was basically a washout.
On Saturday evening, I checked out the Met Office’s website for the finals on Sunday and noticed that the Met Office had their latest Saturday forecast available. In spite of the fact that it had rained cats and dogs in London from 13.15h to 17.30h, the wonderful Met Office were still predicting a dry afternoon with the possibility of a couple of light showers late in the afternoon. Just about exactly the opposite of what actually happened.
Our politicians seem to trust the Met Office’s predictions of Global Warming over the next hundred years or so. But as far as I can see, the hopeless, hapless, “barbecue summer” Met Office can’t even get their forecasts right even after the weather has happened.
But don’t worry, the Met Office has a plan. They want to buy yet another £30m supercomputer. I suggest they just try looking out the window every now and then.
By David Craig, on June 15th, 2013 Thomas Jefferson once said: “A government afraid of its citizens is a Democracy. Citizens afraid of government is tyranny!”
If we look at Britain’s useless over-paid, over-pensioned bureaucrats, the most distinguishing thing is that they are not afraid of us, the people who pay their massive salaries and pensions.
At the Bank of England, greedy (IMHO) buffoons Mervyn King, Paul Tucker and Charles Bean said nothing and did nothing as Brown and Balls wrecked the British economy by wasting more than £1.3trn of our money. But these three suposed “economic experts” became rich and will all retire with pension pots of £4m to £5m each, thanks to our enforced generosity.
At the NHS, we have the repulsive (IMHO) Sir David Nicholson:
He was apparently resposible for over 1,200 unnecessary deaths. Nicholson also seems to have had a very fat hand involved in spending million of our money to gag anyone who has dared try to blow the whistle on appalling neglect of patients in the NHS. The NHS also gave us the utterly useless (IMHO) Cynthia Bower. Bower was head of the strategic health authority that was responsible for the mid-Staffordshire hospital where some of the worst abuses took place. Laughably, she was promoted to head of the Care Quality Commission – responsible for patient care throughout the NHS.
At the BBC, a shameless succession of bureaucrats and fools have made millions while mismanaging the organisation and presiding over several billions wasted on useless computer systems and the farcical move to Salford. Now the pathetic chairman, Chris Patten, admits there has been massive greed and waste but brazenly claims that it would be “dangerous” to cut the bloated BBC’s bloated budget. And worse of all, this (IMHO) greedy, self-serving joke is taken seriously.
Two supposed regulators – Ofgem and Ofwat – have also distinguished themselves by doing nothing at all to regulate the energy and water markets while increasing their own budgets, salaries and bonuses every year including every year since the 2008 financial meltdown.
At HMRC the former boss, Dave Hartnett, seems (IMHO) to have been excessively keen to cut “sweethart deals” with big tax-avoiding companies and then left to join Big Four accountancy Deloittes, a company most associated with helping businesses and companies avoid the tax that Hartnett was supposed to collect while being generously paid by us.
Then there’s the extraordinary Lin Homer, former chief executive of Birmingham City Council. Ms Homer ran Birmingham from 2002 to 2005, when she was responsible for 57,000 council staff. But her period at the council was marred by a postal voting scandal which led a judge to order fresh elections in two Birmingham wards. Election judge Richard Mawrey said fraud in the city “would have disgraced a banana republic”. Ms Homer ran into fresh difficulties when she became Director General of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate and allowed hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to come to and stay in Britain. And now she is the new Permanent Secretary at the Department for Transport, earning £155,000 a year.
What do these (IMHO) sleaze-bags. self-serving fools and incompetent a**eholes have in common? They’re not afraid of us, the people they are meant to serve. They have power over us, they can do what they want, waste as much of our money as they want, steal as much of our money as they want and there are never any consequences. In fact, incompetence is always rewarded by promotion and huge wealth.
We have a new tyranny – the tyranny of the bureaucratic classes who are no longer afraid of us.
By David Craig, on June 14th, 2013 Most people know that youth unemployment in some European countries is approaching catastrophic levels (click on charts to see more clearly):
The problem for those now jobless is that, by the time the economy improves (7 or 8 years after the 2008 crash), a new generation of school and university leavers will be coming onto the jobs market. So, many of those currently unemployed may never get the jobs for which they are qualified.
The situation in Britain is not as bad as in other European countries:
But something worrying has happened in the British job market: the number of “over 65s” in the workforce (blue line and scale on the left) has gone up by 600,000 from 400,000 to 1,000,000. At the same time, the number of “16-24s” employed (red line and scale on the right) has fallen by about 600,000 from just over 4,200,000 to just above 3,600,000:
Two days ago, on this blog, I proposed we should be giving student grants to any “16-24s” who sign up to a practical, vocational course in bricklaying, plumbing, carpentry, electrician, car mechanic etc. Getting about 100,000 “16-24s” on these courses would only cost us about £1bn. The UK has just increased foreign aid by £2.6bn from £7.9bn to £10.5bn. If we just cut foreign aid (most of which gets stolen by corrupt Third World kleptocrats anyway) back to £9.5bn (well above what it was last year), we could get an extra 100,000 young people on courses that would give them skills for life and virtually guarantee them jobs for life. Surely they’re worth it?
By David Craig, on June 13th, 2013 The new governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carnage moves into his luxury offices in a few weeks. Carnage spent 13 years with Goldman Sachs in its London, Tokyo, New York and Toronto offices. His progressively more senior positions included co-head of sovereign risk; executive director, emerging debt capital markets; and managing director, investment banking. He was involved in Goldman’s work with the 1998 Russian financial crisis. Goldman’s role in the Russian crisis was criticized at the time because while the company was advising Russia it was simultaneously betting against the country’s ability to repay its debt.
Here’s a picture of Mark Carnage:
And here’s another one:
Obviously there are several things Carnage can do to get Britain out of its debt death spiral. But his choices can be simplified into two main themes: Does he hurt the ruling political and bureaucratic elites? Or does he cause huge losses to ordinary taxpayers?
Let me explain briefly. Carnage could try to hold the pound’s value, slowly increase interest rates to a “normal” level and force the Government (Coalition or Labour) to put through the kind of budget cuts I suggested in my blog yesterday. This is what Canada did in the mid 1990s when it cut its debt from 68% of GDP to 29%. But this would be unpopular with and painful for the ruling political and bureaucratic elites.
Carnage’s other option would be to hold interest rates at near zero, print loads of money, keep on buying ever-increasing amounts of the UK’s ever-increasing government debt and do this to the value of the pound:
This would push up prices for ordinary people, who don’t get paid as much as Mr Carnage, our politicians and top bureaucrats. But this would also help inflate away UK government debt. letting whatever government keep on spending and wasting our money, mainly on itself.
And this is what a “low interest rates plus high inflation” policy would do to our savings (blue car on the left) and pensions (red car on the right):
Meanwhile, as Carney does this to the pound:
His former chums at Goldman Sachs could make billions from shorting sterling, just as they did when “advising” Russia.
I think I know what Carnage will do. So, it will be party time for the ruling elites and Goldman Sachs bankers with their massive salaries and inflation-protected pensions and close to disastrous for the rest of us.
(I’ve reduced the price of my latest book GREED UNLIMITED – and there are “only” 900 left of the 1,000 I printed – so hurry hurry if you want a copy)
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