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By  David Craig, on October 13th, 2012 In 2007, Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. We now know that most of what Gore and the IPCC claimed was a bunch of exaggerated claptrap using dodgy data and biased computer models. In 2009, Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize just nine months after becoming US president – basically before he had done anything to deserve winning it.
Now the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the undemocratic, wasteful, corrupt EU (EUSSR). The Nobel committee credited the EU with spreading peace and democracy. But the EU is a massive self-serving bureaucracy that ignores the results every time people vote against its efforts to create a European superstate ruled by unelected bureaucrats. That the EU should get the prize is beyond belief. Moreover, it’s more than blindingly obvious that it has been NATO’s military force, rather than the overpaid, overpensioned, expenses-fiddling, kleptocratic Brussels bureaucrats that have kept the peace in Europe for the last 67 years.
But the announcement was greeted with absolute delight by the Guardian.
So who is going to be next for the now utterly discredited Nobel Peace Prize? Jimmy Savile for his services to children? Andrew Mitchell for his dedication to promoting a classless society? Tony Blair for his success as Middle East Peace Envoy? Or perhaps the Muslim Brotherhood for spreading enlightenment and tolerance throughout the world?
By David Craig, on October 12th, 2012 Our overpaid, over-pensioned military leaders really are having a laugh at their troops’ expense. First they grovel to their political masters by sending troops into the Afghan war with no idea of how to ever get them out. Then they failed to provide our troops with the proper equipment and helicopters because military bosses preferred to keep helicopters back in the UK to fly them around to all their ‘important’ meetings. This led to hundreds of unnecessary injuries and deaths by roadside bombs. And now seven marines have been arrested for waging war in a way their bosses consider not to be politically correct. It’s beyond belief.
As the lying profiteers from British Gas once again push up our energy bills, please just look at the picture below which proves that British Gas are taking the p…
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By David Craig, on October 11th, 2012 As the Government puts up our taxes and cuts public services, one group is laughing all the way to their offshore banks. These are large international companies that pay pathetically little to no tax in the UK because our corrupt politicians let them get away with blatant tax avoidance schemes.
The consultancy Accenture earns about £2bn in the UK (much of this from British taxpayers), but only pays £3m in tax. Apple – UK earnings £6bn, tax just £10m. Google – UK earnings £2.6bn, tax £6m. Amazon – UK earnings £7bn, tax £0. Several of our water, power and rail companies are supposedly based in Jersey and the Cayman Islands. Result – little to no tax. Many large multinationals play similar games to avoid tax. But because many politicians and peers are highly-paid “consultants” to these companies, no action is ever taken against them.
Any tax only has a limited shelf-life. At first it raises money, but people and organisations soon find ways of avoiding it. In the past we’ve had hat taxes, beard taxes, window taxes, wig taxes and many others. When companies were based in one country, Corporation Tax was an effective way of raising revenue. But with international companies using tax havens, Corporation Tax has become increasingly ineffective. Our corrupt politicians know this, but as many of them are on the payroll of tax avoiding companies, nothing is done.
Here is a link to an article I wrote for MoneyWeek explaining why Corporation Tax should be abolished and replaced by a tax on all a company’s activities in the UK whether they claim to be based in Jersey, the Cayman Islands or on the Moon. https://www.moneyweek.com/news-and-charts/economics/uk/david-craig-scrap-the-modern-day-beard-tax-57636
It’s time for our corrupt politicians to stop the Corporation Tax avoidance farce.
By David Craig, on October 10th, 2012 I don’t quite understand what BAE are up to with their proposed merger with EADS. But there are three certainties. 1. BAE bosses will all pocket millions if the deal goes through. 2. A tie-up with EADS will wreck BAE’s US defence business causing thousands of job losses in Britain. 3. In order to provide ‘synergies’, sales, administration and manufacturing will be rationalised – given that the French and German governments will protect jobs in their countries, most of the job losses will be in the UK. But what do BAE bosses care? They’ll get rich and keep their highly-paid, highly-pensioned jobs.
We saw a similar situation about ten years ago, I think. BAE bosses made millions selling off their civil aircraft (Airbus) wing-manufacturing business. British jobs disappear, key British skills are lost, BAE bosses get rich.
Laughably, while talking about helping British industry and creating British jobs, our lying, hypocritical Government is backing a deal which will destroy British jobs. Defence Secretary Philip Hammond is busy lobbying other countries to get the deal done. No doubt a juicy, well-paid job with BAE awaits Mr Hammond, unlike thousands of BAE employees who will soon get their P45s.
Once again, it’s snouts in the trough for our rulers and sod the rest of us.
By David Craig, on October 9th, 2012 As the last of the three party conferences adds to global warming with all its hot air and general flatulence, it’s perhaps worth remembering that our politicians are having a very expensive laugh at our expense.
Labour, of course, wrecked the economy. During the Brown/Balls boom of 2000-2007, tax revenue went up by an amazing 75%. If Brown and Balls had just increased public spending by 70%, they could have paid off all our debt and wasted huge amounts on pay rises for unnecessary public-sector bureaucrats and thousands more politicians and hangers-on in the regional assemblies. But Brown/Balls more than doubled spending so our debt went from £320bn to £750bn. By the next election it will be £1.6trn – we are pretty much bankrupt as we cannot pay this back in our or our children’s lifetimes.
Cameron talks about necessary cuts. But when he became PM, he immediately made 117 of his cronies into peers so they could steal over £6m a year in supposed expenses for the rest of their lives using the House of Lords SOSO (Sign On Sod Off) system.
Osborne talks about necessary cuts. But when he became chancellor, he set up 2 new pointless quangos – the Office of Budget Responsibility and the Office of Tax Simplification (well-paid jobs for Osborne’s chums) – which cost us over £4m a year to do what the Treasury’s 1,500 bureaucrats should already be doing.
Clegg talks about necessary cuts. But he wasted £80m of our money on his AV referendum and would have wasted over £100m more on a new vote counting system if AV had been introduced – just to get a few more LibDems into Parliament. Then Clegg tried to change the Lords by having an incredible 450 elected peers (the US senate only has about 100 senators). This would have cost us another £200m a year – just to get a few more LibDems into the Lords.
Meanwhile, our MPs have watered down rules on their expenses and are each claiming on average £40,000 a year more in expenses than they did before the expenses scandal broke.
Incompetents, liars and thieves the lot of them.
By David Craig, on October 8th, 2012 Will they never learn? First the dumb Argentinians vote in the useless, corrupt, self-aggrandising fool Christina Kirchner. Now the stupid Venezuelans re-elect the buffoon Hugo Chavez who has used the last ten years to impoverish his oil-rich country in his pursuit of creating a socialist utopia for himself and his chums. South Americans deserve to be reduced to destitution by their leaders when they keep voting for such human excrement.
Perhaps we’re lucky in Britain – Cameron and Miliband may be incompetent, self-serving, greedy liars and hypocrites. But they’re not quite as utterly worthless as creatures like the pantomine villains Kirchner and Chavez.
By David Craig, on October 8th, 2012 We’ve had the public-sector unions’ whore Ed Miliband bleating on (46 times in one speech) about Labour being a ‘one-nation’ party. Now joke chancellor Osborne and incompetent arrogant buffoon and liar Cameron are claiming the Tories are not ‘the party of the rich’. So, while the rest of us struggle with stagnant wages, rising prices, increasing taxes and job insecurity, it’s perhaps worth remembering that the rich, very rich and mega-rich have had a very good recession indeed (see diagram).
The fact is, all our politicians, whatever party they come from, are all in this together – all filling their own pockets with our money, pandering to the wealthy and screwing the rest of us. Lying, thieving, hypocritical, self-serving, arrogant scum the lot of them.
By David Craig, on October 7th, 2012 We now know that at least 5 BBC luvvies – DJs, presenters, singers and staff were involved in paedophile and rapist Jimmy Savile’s sex ring. Though the real number is probably over twenty. But we’re getting conflicting messages from the left-wing, permanently-biased BBC. Some people admit that the paedophilia and rapes were a well-known ‘secret’, while BBC bosses claim that nobody knew nothing.
At the centre of the scandal is a certain Esther Rantzen. She now admits that she had ‘heard rumours’ but was powerless to do anything. Pull the other one Esther. At the time of Savile’s sexual predation, Rantzen was one of the most powerful women in British TV and was married to Desmond Wilcox, Head of General Features at the BBC from 1972-1980. A cynic might conclude that Rantzen was just a selfish, publicity-seeking hypocrite, eager to cover herself with glory and get a peerage or OBE or whatever it was she was after for her work with Childline to protect abused children, while she turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to what her chums at the Beeb were up to.
As for the BBC’s new Director-General, George Entwistle, despite about 19 years at the Beeb, he apparently ‘knew nothing’ and has been ‘horrified’ by the revelations. Hold on George, you were once editor of Newsnight and it was Newsnight which recently did an investigation into Savile’s paedophilia and rapes – an investigation that was never broadcast. But you knew nothing! I believe you George Entwistle, but others might not.
However, the repulsive paedophile and rapist Savile may have done us all a favour. His antics have exposed the BBC as a rotten, bloated, self-serving bureaucracy, paying massive salaries and pensions to its managers and ‘stars’ and always out to protect its own. I believe the BBC has lost sight of its purpose – to provide a public service. The BBC should not be trying to compete for viewers with the commercial channels. They are there to produce ratings-obsessed trash. The BBC should be complementing commercial channels, not duplicating what they do.
Perhaps it’s time to halve the bloated BBC’s budget. Then the BBC can close the rubbish BBC3, sell off its ‘hit shows’, let its multimillionaire ‘stars’ go and work for the commercial channels and refocus our money on quality news, current affairs, documentaries and drama. It’s time to cut the bloated, paedophile-protecting Beeb down to size and stop it wasting our money. And George Entwistle, perhaps you should resign your well-paid, well-pensioned job and tell the police what you really did know.
By David Craig, on October 6th, 2012 This has been an awful week for Guardian readers (yes there are still some). But it started so well. At the beginning of the week, the Guardian was wetting its pants in delight as the public-sector unions’ whore Ed Miliband threw away his short trousers and suddenly became a man. Guardian readers (most being public-sector employees) must have been scouring the property pages as they salivated over the huge pay rises they’d get when Miliband and Balls took over in 2015. But then things went tits up in Guardianland.
First we found out that a sex-abuse ring had been operating for decades at the Guardianistas’ beloved BBC (which buys most copies of the Guardian) aimed at procuring under-age girls to be raped by DJs, popstars and BBC staff.
Then Mitt Romney wiped the floor with the Guardianistas’ hero Obama. Without his autocue, Obama the great orator turned into a lump of quivering, inarticulate jelly. While Romney, supposedly the king of gaffe, launched a prolongued and articulate assault on America’s do-nothing president.
And finally, another of the Guardianistas’ heroes – the repulsive, hate-filled, benefits-scrounging bag of excrement (in my opinion) Abu Hamza – was finally thrown out of the country. Handwringing Guardian journalists were left bleating inconsolably about how appalling US prisons were and how unfair it was that someone who loathes Britain and all Britain stands for should be sent to trial in the US.
But don’t worry, dear Guardianistas, you may have just had a bad week. But Cameron is such an arrogant, lying, incompetent fool and Osborne is such a pathetic joke that your man Miliband will almost definitely win in 2015. Then Miliband and Balls can finish the task that liar Brown so successfully pursued for 13 years – bankrupting Britain.
By David Craig, on October 5th, 2012 A few years ago I was being interviewed on Radio 4 by John Humphrys. When I claimed that most top civil servants were utterly incompetent, he slapped me down and said that many were extremely talented. In book after book, I have detailed the stupidity, arrogance and profligacy of the overpaid, overpensioned fools at the top of the public sector. So my thanks to the Department of Transport for proving me right by wasting up to £300m of our money on their West Coast Line cock-up. Though that’s small change compared to the £3bn the Ministry of Defence blew on Nimrod, which is less than the £6bn the Department of Health squandered on their failed computer system, which is less than the £100bn the public sector has overpaid on its £300bn of PFI projects (which have a real capital value of only £56bn).
I once had a meeting with a procurement boss for Scotland. The person had been one of those responsible for spending over £400m on the Scottish Parliament building compared to a budget of £45m. When I dared suggest that improvements could be made in budget control, the official said “oh no, there’s no way anyone can fool us canny Scots”. At the Home Office, I asked a senior official if any of their computer projects were in trouble. His reply, “most of them are complete disasters, but I’m not going to risk my career and pension trying to sort out the problems”. And when I spoke to a very senior official at the Bank of England in 2005 to tell him that I had evidence suggesting that Fred Goodwin was not a fit person to run a major bank, he laughed off my concerns and refused to look at the evidence. That decision that day by this total idiot to do nothing cost us taxpayers over £45bn.
Being interviewed about the West Coast Line cock-up, former boss of our utterly incompetent, not-fit-for-purpose Civil Service, Sir Gus O’Donnell laughably claimed that the only way to improve performance was to pay civil servants more of our money. This is rubbish. Most top civil servants are pocketing over £150,000 a year. The have jobs for life. They are never fired, however incompetent they are. When they retire, they get 3 years’ pension as a taxfree lump sum (about £250,000 each) plus pensions of over £70,000 a year till the day they die.
Soon Sir Gus, the man who presided over the Civil Service during much of the time that Brown wasted £1.6trn of our money, may become the new Governor of the Bank of England. So it could be huge salary increases for BoE bosses – but God help the rest of us!
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