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By  David Craig, on March 30th, 2013 It’s not much fun being a Cassandra – making dismal prophecies that nobody believes. But our ruling elites (politicians, journalists, bureaucrats and bankers) are so incompetent, self-serving and dishonest that someone has to try to tell the truth.
When I wrote PLUNDERING THE PUBLIC SECTOR I attacked New Labour for wasting £70bn of our money on consultants. In particular, I lambasted the £10bn NHS IT project and predicted it would end in utter failure. At the time, I was summoned to a meeting with Sir John Bourne (then head of the National Audit Office – NAO) and told in no uncertain terms that an NAO report had found that the NHS IT project was well-managed and would be a success. Seven years and over £2bn later the whole mess was abandoned.
In SQUANDERED, I predicted that Gordon Brown would waste over £1trn of our money. This was at a time when the sycophantic press were still telling us that Brown was an economic genius whose prudence was legendary. Few people believed me. But now we know that Brown was financially incontinent, a recidivist liar and probably the worst chancellor Britain has ever been cursed with.
In my blog, I used the fact that there are over a million Romanians and Bulgarians in Italy and a similar number in Spain, to predict that well over a million will come to Britain. Our politicians are talking about just 50,000 a year. In a few years, we’ll see who was right.
And now I cannot come to any other conclusion other than that Britain is going to face a massive financial crisis somewhere around 2017. The problem is, of course, our ever-rising debt – £700bn in 2010, £1.15trn now, £1.4trn in 2015, £1.52trn in 2016, £1.64trn (120% of GDP) in 2017 and so on. We cannot go on like this. It has to end in tears.
 Our debt as a % of GDP (vertical axis) is almost as high as Portugal, Ireland and Belgium. But more worryingly, only 3 countries – Spain, Ireland and Greece – have a higher deficit (horizontal axis). The deficit, of course, is the rate at which our debt increases.
Our politicians and newspapers are keen to tell us all about the problems in the Eurozone, particularly in Greece, Spain, Italy and Cyprus. But by the time of the 2015 election, Britain will be in a worse financial state than some of the most bankrupt Eurozone countries.
What will happen? We can’t go on printing electronic money to buy our own debt. So at some point markets will lose confidence in the British government, the interest we pay on our debt will shoot up to £80bn or more a year and our government will be forced by rising interest costs or by the IMF to take drastic action. As Labour will be in power, there won’t be any serious cuts to benefits or the NHS. So there’s only one thing the Labour government can do to raise money – punitive taxes on our earnings, savings and pensions and capital controls to prevent us moving our money abroad – similar to what we’ve seen in Cyprus.
Think this can’t happen in Britain? Well, the Bank of England issued a report in December 2012 where it recommended confiscation of savings, even below the supposedly guaranteed £85,000 in the event of a major bank collapse https://www.economicsfortherestofus1.blogspot.ca/2013/03/the-usa-uk-and-eu-are-planning-to-take.html
By David Craig, on March 29th, 2013 Here’s a photo of a polar bear apparently stranded on a tiny ice floe due to man-made global warming melting Arctic ice:
This is the kind of photo ecofascists tend to use to warn us about the destructive results of their supposed “man-made global warming”.
And here’s a table showing the frightening decline in polar bear numbers due to man-made global warming. Whoops, sorry. Polar bears are thriving. Their population has shot up from somewhere around 5,000 in the 1950s to above 25,000 by 2005. Some experts even think there may now be 32,000 polar bears
And here are 10 reasons not to worry about the survival of polar bears.
https://polarbearscience.com/2013/02/26/ten-good-reasons-not-to-worry-about-polar-bears/
In fact, the most drastic declines in polar bear numbers have been due, not to melting ice, but during periods when there was too much ice preventing them reaching their main food source – seals. And some experts believe the biggest threat to polar bears now is that there are too many all competing for the same food resources.
If the ever-increasing number of polar bears knew that all the handwringing, bleeding heart, misguided ecofascist greenies were predicting their imminent disappearance, I imagine they’d be rather surprised.
By David Craig, on March 28th, 2013 Here we go again. A spell of cold weather and our mostly foreign-owned energy companies slam up their prices claiming they are having to pay more for their gas supplies. Lies, lies, lies, lies.
Here are just a few real facts and figures:
1. Our often foreign-owned energy companies make four to five times as much profit in the UK than they are allowed to make in their properly regulated home markets.
2. They are so profitable in the UK that Scottish Power’s Spanish owner Iberdrola recently lent its American subsidiary £800m leeched from its UK customers, as the American subsidiary needed the money to meet investment commitments it had made to US regulators
3. Last year SSE (formerly Scottish and Southern Energy), Britain’s second biggest energy firm, saw its profits increase by 32%. Meanwhile SSE’s eight million customers saw their fuel bills rocket by 9% (well above the rise in inflation), adding £119 to the average yearly bill. All the other energy companies reported increased profits last year of between 25% and 35%.
4. Since 2006-7, the useless UK regulator Ofgem’s budget increased from £18.6m to £32.6m and yet due to Ofgem’s pathetic efforts, the UK is one of the most profitable energy markets in the world. Ofgem has estimated that energy companies will triple their profits this year but does nothing to protect consumers from predatory pricing.
5. As you’ll see in the diagram below (I apologise that I have used this before), our energy companies claim they only increase prices when wholesale prices rise, but actually keep pushing up prices whether the wholesale prices they pay rise or fall.
Btw it would be gratefully appreciated if just a few people would buy some copies of my latest book GREED UNLIMITED. I feel it would be a shame to have to pulp the remaining copies
By David Craig, on March 27th, 2013 The Tories refuse to tell us how many Romanians and Bulgarians are likely to move to bankrupt Britain. Meanwhile Labour and its official media arm, the BBC, bleat on about how immigration has “increased Britain’s cultural diversity”. So maybe I can help give some facts and figures.
Spain and Italy have not had restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians. So let’s see what has happened there. Currently there are about 920,000 Romanians and 170,000 Bulgarians in Spain. In Italy there are about 997,000 Romanians and over 70,000 Bulgarians. Britain has much more generous benefits and more jobs than Spain or Italy, So the absolute minimum number that will be moving here will be well over one million. Probably it will be closer to two million.
Now, let’s look at some other figures. Unemployment amongst Romanians and Bulgarians in Spain is 36.4% – that’s about 396,760 immigrants who are unemployed. So we can expect somewhere in the region of 400,000 Romanians and Bulgarians to be claiming benefits for housing, council tax and unemployment here in Britain.
Let’s look at more figures: Romania and Bulgaria are miserable dumps run by mafias not real governments. A worker in either country will probably only earn about £175-£200 per month. So what happens if a Bulgarian or Romanian moves to Britain?
The Department for Work and Pensions says the average claimant (across all nationalities) receives £390 a month in housing benefits and £65 a month in council tax benefits. They can also claim £88 a month for their first child and £58 a month for any child after that. Then there’s about £300 a month unemployment benefit. It means someone with three children could collect £960 a month in benefits. So a family with three children will get in benefits in Britain about five times what they can earn working in their own countries. If they have five or six children, they’ll be pocketing what for them would seem a fortune. So you have to ask the question – why would any of the 29 million Romanians and Bulgarians remain in their own countries, when they can live what will seem to them a life of luxury here?
Of course, not all the people will leave Romania and Bulgaria. Those with good jobs and houses will stay. But for the poor, the unemployed, gypsies, the workshy, the feckless, the criminal and the low-skilled, they would be completely crazy to stay.
Let’s be clear – we have handed over control of our borders and our benefits system to Brussels. There is nothing we can do to prevent the inevitable arrival of well over a million Romanians and Bulgarians. And there is nothing we can do to deny them access to benefits, schooling, healthcare and housing as that would be “discrimination”.
Our politicians spout garbage to cover over their own impotence. I’ve tried to give you the facts and figures. The arrival of over a million (probably two million) mostly low-skilled, poorly-educated people is going to have a catastrophic effect on our education system, the NHS, housing and our economy and will cost us at least £30bn a year (£1,000 from every taxpayer). That’s £30bn we don’t have. This is the truth the politicians and the BBC are afraid to tell us.
By David Craig, on March 26th, 2013 Hopefully most people have realised that virtually every time our politicians move their lips, they lie to us. This has especially been true with immigration.
Around 2000/1 Blair came under pressure over the rising number of asylum seekers. So he promised to take action. The chart shows the result.
Blair reduced the number of asylum seekers – but only by throwing British citizenships (and British passports at them) to hide the problem rather than solving it. And now David Liar Cameron is talking tough on immigration. But. of course, it’s all verbal flatulence and nothing will change because we’ve handed over control of our borders and our benefits system to the EU
In theory, to get British citizenship you must have spent at least 3 years in Britain and either have studied English for one year or else passed the “Life in the UK” test. Although it’s multiple choice, this test is far from easy. Here are sample questions: “What is the role of the National Trust?” “How often are you required to take your vehicle for an MOT if it is over 3 years old?” “What must a candidate have in order to become a local councillor?” “What are National Insurance contributions used for?”
So I would like to thank one of the readers of this blog for telling me what really happens at citizenship ceremonies:
“I have witnessed many citizenship ceremonies in an area of ********. Here are some observations.
1 At least 30% – possibly more do not speak English as is a requirement
2 Less than 2% can’t attend on the set day because they are working. Those working usually pay for a private ceremony to fit in with their work commitments. In this area we take 1 public ceremony with a maximum of 30 attendees – the majority do not have a problem attending because they don’t work.
3 There have been instances of women taking citizenship in a full burkha and reluctant to be identified
4 There are a number of ‘bodies’ that act as intermediaries for new applicants, for a fee. It cannot be coincidence that these citizens are the ones with limited knowledge of English language.
5 Less than half sing the national anthem (but how would they if they can’t speak English?)
6 There is no requirement for a new applicant to have worked or contributed to our society
In short – for a few hundred pounds – a new citizen not only gains a British passport but access to many hundreds thousands of pounds in benefits, education and healthcare – not to mention the state pension which is slowly being moved out of reach for the natives of UK who have worked all their lives.
Citizenship needs exposing for the gravy train that it is”
So, please don’t believe a word recidivist liar Cameron says
By David Craig, on March 25th, 2013 I wonder if anyone remembers one of the man-made global warming cheerleaders from the useless Climate Research Unit at that joke of a university, the University of East Anglia, Dr David Viner warning us in March 2000 that due to man-made global warming “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is”.
In an article in The Independent ominously titled Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html the prescient Dr. Viner also warned that winter snowfall will be “a very rare and exciting event”.
Well, Dr Viner, as the country grinds to a halt under millions of tons of snow in the coldest winter/spring for forty years, could we please have an apology? And could we also have an apology from The Independent? No. I thought not. Warmists never apologise for anything, they just fiddle their figures so they can carry on getting huge research grants.
By David Craig, on March 25th, 2013 To try and prevent bank runs in the other Club Med countries, our political leaders have been busy reassuring us that the levy on bank deposits in Cyprus is a “one-off” and a “special case” and will not be repeated in any other country. So we can all relax knowing our savings are safe in Europe’s banks. Oh, that’s alright then.
Hold on a minute! Here’s a story that doesn’t seem to have been reported in the British national press. In 2 to 3 weeks, the Spanish government will be imposing a levy on all deposits in Spanish banks. In Spain it will not just be on deposits over the “insured” €100,000. It will be on all deposits.
https://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/news-brief/3569661-spanish-banking-levy-will-collect-3bn
Of course, Spain is not quite as bankrupt as Cyprus. And the Spanish levy is much smaller – only 0.1% to 0.2% of all deposits. The Spanish have about €1.5trn in deposits and the levy is expected to raise between €1.5bn and €3bn. The Spanish government will not be cutting the money directly from people’s accounts. Instead it is the banks who will pay the levy. But where will the banks get the money for the levy? By paying lower interest to depositors. So, the Spanish levy is more subtle than the one in Cyprus. But it amounts to the same thing – government desperate for money takes money from depositors.
By David Craig, on March 24th, 2013 …and it will have gone up by over £3m by the time I finish writing this blog. We are in a hopeless situation, with our debt shooting up by £3,800 per second, £228,000 per minute, £14m per hour, £329m per day. This, of course means ever-increasing interest charges and ever less money for public spending. So, if we had politicians with just the slightest interest in what was good for the country, rather than their own lousy careers, what would they do?
There is only one answer – completely eliminate the deficit and start paying down debt within one year. This would mean finding about £130bn through cutting spending and raising taxes. Can this be done? The answer is “yes” and here’s how:
Declare a state of “National Economic Emergency” and do the following:
1. Implement a 4-day week for all public-sector managers and bureaucrats. After all, who would notice if the DoH or the Equality and Human Rights Commission (£70m a year!) only worked Monday to Thursday? This would save around £100m a week (£5bn a year). But it would also change the mentality of our wasteful, incompetent public sector and make them realise they can no longer go on squandering our money on non-jobs and stupid projects. After 3 months, many of these people could go to a 3-day week. Total savings could be £15bn a year
2. Pay all public-sector pensions of over £50,000 a year with government bonds redeemable only when government debt goes down to 20% of GDP (about £220bn). I haven’t done the numbers, but this might save another £5bn.
3. Abolish Corporation Tax and replace it with retention of part of VAT charged by companies. This would mean that companies operating in Britain would pay tax whether they claim to be based in Jersey, Cayman Islands or on the Moon. This would also make it less attractive for venture capitalists to buy up successful, cash-producing companies, load them with massive debts while paying themselves hundreds of millions in special dividends and then using the interest payments to reduce their tax liabilities. I would think this would increase tax revenue from the £40bn currently raised by Corporation Tax to maybe £60bn
4. Reduce the maximum housing benefit ceiling by 20% – this would force down rents. Also, no housing benefit should be payable to anyone under 25 if they have a living parent they can stay with. This would make it less attractive for young girls with no career prospects producing children to get a council home and maybe save us about £5bn
5. Only pay child credits for the first two children. If people want more than children then they should think about whether they can afford it. I haven’t done the numbers, but savings might be around £2bn
6. Extend the restriction on Romania and Bulgaria for another 7 years. This would not save us any money immediately. But by my calculations, 1 to 2 million Romanians and Bulgarians coming to Britain would cost us about £30bn a year in housing, policing, education, healthcare and benefits. We can’t afford this.
7. Impose a “one-off” tax of 5% on the £550bn we have in bank accounts. This would raise £27.5bn
7. Impose a “one-off” tax of 3% on the £850bn we have in pension funds. Another £25.5bn
8. Declare all energy, water and airports as being “Strategic National Assets” (permissible under EU rules) that can only be owned by companies based in Britain for tax purposes. Allow their current foreign owners 3 years to sell them. This won’t produce any immediate revenue, but will start to bring in money within a few years.
8. Impose a “one-off” tax of 0.3% on all land (I don’t know the value) and property (value £5.69trn) – I imagine this would raise another £30bn
9. Put large electronic screens up in major city centres and outside the offices of the BBC, Guardian and TUC showing our national debt increasing by £3,800 per second, £228,000 per minute, £14m per hour, £329m per day. This would make it more difficult for people, particularly BBC supposed “journalists”, to claim that we didn’t face serious economic problems.
All this would give the needed £130bn to eliminate the deficit and start paying down debt.
But, as you’ve probably noticed, £83bn of my £130bn come from punitive “one-off” taxes. Whoops! I think we’re well and truly scr***d
By David Craig, on March 23rd, 2013 There’s a new phrase we had all better learn very quickly – “financial martial law” or “economic martial law”. We all know what “martial law” is – democracy breaks down in a crisis, the military is put in control and can impose whatever draconian measures it wants, one of which typically is a curfew with anyone breaking the curfew being shot on sight. Under martial law, there are no courts, no human rights and no rule of law.
Cyprus is bankrupt. Unlike Britain, Cyprus is not bankrupt from government overspending. The main cause of the island’s financial woes is the losses sustained by its banks on the money they loaned to Greece. However, Barroso, Merkel and their chums have decided that ordinary people in Cyprus should pay for these losses and they have forced the Cypriot government to impose “financial martial law”.
Although the final details haven’t yet been decided, it appears this “financial martial law” will include confiscating part of ordinary people’s savings, maybe nationalisation (stealing) of people’s pension savings, restrictions on how much money people can withdraw from their bank accounts, possibly a freeze on all bank deposits over 100,000 euros, restrictions (or even a freeze) on people moving money out of Cyprus and so on.
All this is pretty horrible to watch, it must be really dreadful if you have savings in a Cyprus bank.
But the big question for us must be – “Could this ever happen in Britain?”
As we all know, during an economic boom Labour managed to increase our national debt from about £350bn to over £700bn by more than doubling public spending. Unfortunately for us, the Tories have failed to make any meaningful cuts in public spending, so our debt will hit £1.4trn by the time of the 2015 election, £1.52trn by 2016, £1.64trn by 2017………
Of course, this can’t go on. At some point we must eliminate our deficit and start paying down our debt. But if our government (Labour or Tory) is afraid to cut public spending, it will have to find the money somewhere else.
We have about £4trn in savings and pensions. There are trillions more in shares and in the value of our homes. This is where our future chancellor Ed Balls will find the money he needs to satisfy his financial incontinence. We should be grateful to the people of Cyprus. They have shown us what happens when a government gets desperate for money and imposes “financial martial law”. At some point over the next 4 to 5 years, we can expect some kind of “financial martial law” in Britain.
Laiki Bank’s acting CEO Takis Phidias said;
By David Craig, on March 22nd, 2013 I should write about the budget – a totally pointless exercise in futility by our pointless, futile chancellor. But what is there to say? Most of the measures announced don’t start for another couple of years and his “big idea” to put £130bn of our money at risk trying to prop up an overpriced housing market is beyond the bounds of stupidity. If the buffoon wants people to be able to afford to buy a home, he should let house prices fall to an affordable level as they have done in most other recession-hit countries. The budget does nothing to stimulate growth and it does nothing to deal with our ever-increasing debt – £1.5trn by 2015, £1.62trn by 2016, £1.74trn by 2017 leading to financial crash, run on the pound and bankruptcy in 2018 (if not before).
So to cheer us all up, here’s a video of Hitler finding out he’s lost 10% of all the money he had stashed away in Cyprus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5R2JyU_MKg
Here’s Hitler doing his version of Gangnam Style
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxIQqLr2cF4
And here’s a secret UK government video showing how the new High Speed Train project was planned
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7AXskSxxMk
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