Snouts in the Trough

Whenever there’s a major financial scandal, usually one of Britain’s “Big Four” accountancies (KPMG, E&Y, Deloittes, PwC) is involved. Of these, Deloittes frequently seem to be around when murky going-ons are going on.

Readers of this blog will know that in 2005, just after my book RIP-OFF was published, I was contacted by a senior forensic accountant from Deloittes who claimed he had evidence that Fred Goodwin (then running the Deloittes team doing the BCCI liquidation) and other execs had allegedly defrauded BCCI creditors of over £50m. (I suspect MPs Austin Mitchell and Keith Vaz know a bit about this). I reported this to the SFO and the Bank of England. In particular, I talked to the chief legal counsel at the BoE about whether Fred Goodwin was a fit and proper person to run a major bank if he was allegedly a fraudster. Ay the time, Fred was a great mate of Gordon and Tony, so the BoE did nothing and that decision cost British taxpayers £45bn. Fred Goodwin retired with his £320,000+ pension and the BoE’s legal counsel will also live and retire a very rich man at taxpayers’ expense. Anyone who says crime doesn’t pay is either a liar or a fool.

Then we had the largest bankruptcy in British history – Fred Goodwin’s RBS. Who earned tens of millions providing acountancy and consultancy to RBS? Yes, Deloittes. Just months before RBS’s crash, Deloittes signed off RBS’s accounts (if I remember correctly). Moreover, Deloittes’ figures and seal of approval were used by RBS to get shareholder backing for a massive share issue allowing RBS to buy ABN Amro. We now know RBS’s figures were total and utter horse shit. Thanks, Deloittes.

And now we have a huge scrap developing between US computer giant HP (Hewlett Packard) and British IT firm Autonomy which HP bought for about $11.bn. It appears that due to legal but creative accounting, many of Autonomy’s sales were not quite as profitable as was first thought. And who signed off Autonomy’s accounts just six months before the HP deal? Deloittes of course.

In addition, there have been several stories of allegedly corrupt Deloittes partners deliberately driving British companies into administration so Deloittes could pick up the generous administration fees and sell off the assets at well below market value to friends and associates with the loss of hundreds of British jobs. The story of David Fabb Industries is just one of these. There have been court cases, but what chance did bankrupt entrepreneurs have against the financial might of Deloittes?

So, if you ever get the stench of financial wrongdoing, it’s not improbable that our friends at Deloittes will be deeply involved.

As our military bosses start giving their troops their marching orders (P45s), it might be worth comparing the prospects of ordinary service personnel and their multimillionaire leaders.

Over the last 20 or so years, as the number of ordinary troops has declined, the number of officers has increased. The ratio of officers to lower ranks has gone up by about 30%. And this situation is about to become even more absurd – by 2020, the Royal Navy will cut 8,500 jobs, the Army 20,000 and the Royal Air Force 11,000. There is a plan to reduce the number of officers, but by nothing like the level of reductions in lower ranks. In Britain, we have around 490 officers of brigadier level and above for 180,000 troops – in the US Marine Corps there are just 86 for a force of 200,000.

And what do our officers do all day? The Navy has 421 officers for less than 40 fighting ships and submarines. The RAF has 26 Air Vice Marshalls, 90 Air Commodores and 330 Group Captains for around 820 planes. As for the Army – there are so many officers and so few regiments, we would put the Italian army to shame.

While ordinary troops collect their P45s and head off into a life of poverty, their officers are laughing all the way to the bank. The top 32 military bosses get over £156,000 a year each in taxfree housing allowances. A further 390 officers receive over £87,000 a year each.

As for pensions, most squaddies will get a pittance, particularly if military chiefs manage to give enough of them their P45s just before they accrue sufficient years service for a full pension. But their bosses can look forward to living the rest of their days as multimillionaires. Most top military will retire with pension pots in the £2m to £3m range, giving pensions of £70,000 to £100,000 a year. In addition, they get a taxfree lump sum of 3 years’ pension – so, well over £200,000. Plus they can make hundreds of thousands of pounds a year more by whoring themselves out to arms suppliers. Our troops may not be getting the best equipment, but their retired bosses are getting the best “bribes”.

Yes, it’s a grand life being one of Britain’s multimillionaire military bosses, but not so great if you’re a lowly squaddie being thrown on the scrap heap to save money so your masters can continue in the taxpayer-funded luxury to which they have become accustomed.

There are only about 29 months to go before a triumphant Ed Balls returns to Downing Street as our next Chancellor. Now you might say he’s not actually returning as he wasn’t Chancellor when Labour tried to bankrupt Britain. But remember, liar Brown was just physically and intellectually a one-eyed Scottish historian who has probably learnt less from history than any person alive. Balls, that great economic genius, was the driving force behind Brown’s supposed economic policies all the time.

Brown and Balls both claimed to be Keynsians. A key part of Keynes’ theory espoused by the worthless incompetent Balls was that during an economic downturn, governments should spend to mitigate the effects of the downturn. However, Brown and Balls apparently forgot the other half of Keynes’ theory – during an economic boom, government should spend less than it earns so that it has the resources to counter the inevitable downturn. For those two liars and buffoons Brown and Balls, government should spend (and waste) more than it earns during periods of economic growth and then spend more than it earns during periods of economic contraction. You don’t have to be a great economist like dumb butt-head Balls to understand that this can only lead to national bankruptcy.

Although it’s virtually certain that the repulsive, leering, economically incompetent Balls will soon be running Britain’s economic policy, amazingly there hasn’t been a single article in the press speculating what the fool Balls will actually do. So here’s my take on events. Following Labour’s victory in 2015, there will be a collapse in the value of the pound and a leap in the rate of interest the Government pays on its debt. This will give Balls the typical Labour excuse of blaming capitalist speculators, rather than Labour’s economic incompetence, for Britain’s problems. Balls will then launch a crushing tax grab to try to avoid national bankruptcy. Under the banner of “fairness” Balls will try to get hold of a large amount of the £3.5 trillion Brits have in savings – including about £800bn in private pension funds. At the same time, Balls will make Britain’s economic situation much worse by giving huge pay rises to public-sector workers to satisfy his public-sector union paymasters.

The only comfort from the economic horror facing Britain is that Balls will be forced to clean up his own economic excrement. When the useless Tories took over in 2010, national debt was about £700bn (80% of GDP). By the time Balls takes over at Number 11, it will be £1.5trn (120% of GDP). There is a certain satisfying irony that the huge steaming pile of suppurating economic excrement inherited by the loathsome lying creature Balls will be entirely of his own making.

As the Tories try to cut back on Britain’s benefits culture, the usual handwringing brigade are spouting off about the Government’s cruelty to the poor. Of course, we should feel sympathy for those who through no fault of their own lost their jobs since the 2007 crash. But the handwringers never mention what happened before the crash. They never mention that about 2 million new jobs were created during the 1997-2007 Brown boom and that around 1.77 million of these jobs went to foreign workers because about 1.77m Brits couldn’t be arsed to get an education, couldn’t be arsed to get some useful skills and couldn’t be arsed to get a job when they could have a much better life on benefits.

Mad mut Mitt Romney may have said some stupid things, but he did risk telling the politically-incorrect truth that a country is doomed to economic collapse when about half its citizens expect to live comfortable lives paid for by others.

In Benefits Britain, we have somehow come to believe that having a home, three large flatscreen TVs, a Sky subscription and a couple of holidays a year are basic human rights that the idle and feckless should be able to enjoy while others pay. Here’s an email doing the rounds where a 21-year old dares question Britain’s benefits culture. It’s difficult not to have some sympathy with the sentiments expressed:

Put me in charge of benefit payments. I’d get rid of cash payments and provide  vouchers for 50kg bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese, basic sanitary items and all the powdered milk you can use.
If you want steak, burgers, takeaway and  junk food, then get a job.

Put me in charge of local authority housing. Ever lived in military barracks?
You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair.
Your “home” will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried.
If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place. 

Put me in charge of compulsory job search. You will either search for employment each week no matter what the job or you will report for community work. This may be clearing the roadways and open spaces of rubbish, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find  for you.
We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your dooff dooff stereo and speakers and put that money toward the “common good”.

Before you write that  I’ve violated someone’s rights, realise that all of the above is voluntary.
If you want our hard  earned cash and housing assistance, accept our rules. 

Before you say that this would be “demeaning” and ruin someone’s “self  esteem,” consider that it wasn’t that long ago that taking someone else’s money for doing  absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem. 

If  we are expected to pay for other people’s mistakes, we should at least attempt to make them learn from  their bad choices.  The current system rewards those for continuing to make bad  choices. 

AND While  you are on benefit income,  you no longer have the right to VOTE!  
For you to vote would be a conflict of interest….. If you want  to vote, then get a job.

Lord Hutton, where are you? As our corrupt government and corrupt, self-serving institutions set up ever more inquiries led by eminent judges to prove that our corrupt, wasteful, self-serving bureaucrats are as clean as fresh snow, our country urgently needs people with the skills of Lord Hutton.

Remember Hutton? It was he who (implausibly in my opinion) ruled that Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell were honest men and that there had been no “dodgy dossiers”. With so many new inquiries, we need more Lord Huttons.

There are 2 or 3 or 4 inquiries running at the BBC. Surely only a very skilled judge will be able to conclude that the BBC’s thousands of overpaid, overpensioned, incompetent managers never knew nothing about Savile’s paedophilia.

Then there’s the worthless Ofgem. Since 2006/7 Ofgem’s cost to us has more than doubled from £38.8m a year to over £78.7m. Yet in its 25 very expensive (for us) years existence, it has never once occurred to Ofgem to question why so many foreign companies want to own UK power companies and why these foreign firms can make 4 times the profit in the UK than they can make in their own properly regulated home markets. Now a whistleblower has revealed that power companies have been rigging the wholesale gas market, the useless Ofgem has reluctantly agreed to start an inquiry. Will Ofgem also need to appoint a judge so that its supposed inquiry reaches the necessary conclusion that our energy markets are cleaner than clean?

And there’s the FSA. In 2006/7 the FSA was costing about £260m. Last year this had shot up to £526m. As US authorities chased our banks over moneylaundering, the FSA did nothing. As US authorities chased our banks over fixing the Libor rate, the FSA did nothing. Now our banks have been implicated in fixing energy markets, the FSA has reluctantly announced it will set up an inquiry. Once again, the FSA will need a skilled figure to prove that the utterly useless, self-serving bureaucrats at the FSA are really highly effective regulators and that our banks are really nice and friendly and have never rigged anything ever, honest guv.

And there’s also an inquiry into whether a previous inquiry into abuse at a children’s home did its job. So we’ll be getting a cover-up of a cover-up. Maybe in a few years there will be an inquiry into an inquiry into an inquiry.

Still, at least all these inquiries provide well-paid work for Britain’s every malleable legal elites.