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By  David Craig, on September 16th, 2012 I would like to write about what is probably one of the most important issues facing us – how the West can live in peace with countries which follow a certain religion (which I dare not mention) when the aforementioned religion has not undergone an Enlightenment. But I want to be alive next week, so dare not write anything.
Instead, I’ll mention a total non-story – apparently the French have just discovered that women have breasts. Not only that, but the garlic-smelling, cheese-eating, arrogant, selfish, pompous surrender monkeys have also found out that female members of the British royal family have breasts. This is apparently causing utter consternation in France. Yet British Sun readers have known for years that women have breasts.
I’m not sure why it took so long for the French to make this discovery. Partly it may be due to the fact that so many of them are Mandelsonians. I don’ t like to show off, but I have known for many years that women have breasts. Nevertheless, I find the intrusion into the royal couple’s private lives despicable beyong contempt and would like to see the British press despatch an army of paparazzi to hound the publishers of the photos and take revealing private photos of them. Then this garbage wouldn’t be quite so smug.
Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the corrupt, drug-dealing puppet government continues to steal billions of our money while British troops get slaughtered for nothing. It’s a pity none of our greedy, self-serving, expenses-thieving politicians and our incompetent, overpaid, over-pensioned military leaders have the courage to stop the Afghanistan farce.
By David Craig, on September 15th, 2012 Studying the Royal Navy after the First World War, Cyril Northcote Parkinson (who developed Parkinson’s Law – ‘Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion’) noticed that in 10 years as the number of sailors was cut by 32%, the number of admiralty officials rose by 78%. This led him to understand that bureaucracies grow by 5%-7% a year ‘irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done’.
And that’s exactly what is happening in today’s austerity Britain – more bureaucrats yet cuts in frontline staff.
Osborne’s Treasury increased its spending on staff by £2.5m during his first year in office as he set up the utterly useless Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and equally pathetic Office for Tax Simplification (OTS). With the OBR’s help, our debt levels are heading uncontrollably upwards and the OTS gave us 2012’s catastrophically inept ‘omnishambles’ budget.
At Francis Maude’s Cabinet Office, staff costs also rose – by £1.7m – and the Cabinet Office was meant to be the department coordinating spending cuts. Ofwat, the hopelessly ineffective water regulator, increased spending from £11.5m before the 2007 crash to £17.4m last year – a rise of 10% a year. The cost of Ofgem, the equally worthless energy regulator, doubled from £38.8m before the crash to £78.7m. And so it goes on, in department after department – more money spent on pointless, ineffective, underperforming, overpaid bureaucrats.
A quick glance at the Guardian ‘non-jobs’ section (see diagram) shows hundreds and hundreds of unnecessary public-sector non-jobs still being advertised. There may be cuts in frontline services, but Britain’s bureaucrats have never had it so good.
By David Craig, on September 14th, 2012 As winter approaches, we really are heading for a crisis in the NHS – not enough beds. Twenty five years ago, there were 297,364 hospital beds in the NHS. Just in the last 15 years, the NHS budget has more than doubled from £45bn to over £100bn (plus more then £200bn of PFI hospitals). But we now have an astonishingly low 138,000 hospital beds. So where has all our money gone? A doubling in the number of bureaucrats: a doubling in the salaries of these bureaucrats: ten new NHS quango regulators employing tens of thousands of staff and costing billions a year: huge salary increases for our £100,000 a year doctors following the bungled new contracts for doctors (more money, less work): huge pensions for doctors: and of course £6bn or so wasted on the NHS’s worthless new computer system.
Compared to other developed countries, Britain now has shockingly few beds per 100,000 of population (see diagram). It seems our NHS exists for the benefit of its staff, not its patients.
By David Craig, on September 13th, 2012 It’s odd that the one common factor with two of the worst disasters in football – Heysel and Hillsborough – is that Liverpool fans were involved. On 29 May 1985, 39 Juventus fans died when they were attacked by a bunch of drunken, thuggish Liverpool fans at the Heysel Stadium. This led to a 5-year ban from European competitions for English clubs and a 6-year ban for Liverpool.
At Hillsborough, over 90 people died when fighting broke out between football fans. I’m quite sure that the situation was made worse by poor stadium design and an incompetent police response and I’d believe that the police tried to cover up their failings. But if drunken, thuggish Liverpool fans hadn’t got involved in fighting at both Hillsborough and Heysel, then there wouldn’t have been any problems.
The self-righteous bleating and complaints by relatives of those who died at Hillsborough and, no doubt, their coming claims of massive compensation to be paid by taxpayers are sickening in their hypocrisy. I once went to a match at Liverpool. The experience was so frightening that I vowed never to go to another football match and never to take my children to one.
So, as the relatives of the Hillsborough victims try to empty our pockets to fill their own, please ask yourself – how can it be that Liverpool fans were at the centre of two of the worst disasters in football if all Liverpool fans are sober, calm, sensible and always innocent of everything?
By David Craig, on September 12th, 2012 This Monday was a bumper day for over-ambitious TV journalists looking to boost their careers by producing wildly exaggerated scare stories. On BBC1 Panorama warned us that almost everyone over 65 was heading to a premature end because they were drinking too much. On BBC2 Horizon predicted thousands or millions or whatever would die from antibiotic-resistant bacteria. On Channel 4 Dispatches panicked about how poor quality school meals were consigning our children to an early grave. Then a couple of hours later Food Unwrapped sought to terrify us by revealing the horrors that are put into mass-produced food.
If I remember correctly, forty years ago a new Ice Age was going to wipe out millions. Then there was BSE – that should have killed millions too. And we had SARS – again millions were meant to have died (about 30 people actually did). Plus in 2010 there the supposed Swine Flu pandemic – millions should have died, less than 20 people popped their clogs and most of those were in poor health prior to getting the flu. Meanwhile, in our papers, after the most dismal summer in history, a national newspaper predicted that thousands of Brits would die each year because of summer heatwaves.
There’s a great book Scared to Death by Christopher Booker and Richard North where the authors show that time and again over-ambitious journalists and self-serving politicians deliberately exaggerate supposed threats in order to further their own careers, often causing massive costs, economic disruption and job losses. But the journalists and politicians couldn’t give a toss as long as they personally benefit.
Now we’re killing Western industry and crushing consumers with all kinds of completely unnecessary ‘green’ taxes and restrictions because supposed ‘man-made’ Global Warming is supposedly going to kill us all. It’s all rubbish, of course. The earth’s climate changes, mainly due to the effects of solar activity. But once again the only voices we hear in the media are from those whose self-interests are served by yet again bigging up a non-existent threat.
By David Craig, on September 11th, 2012 Our leaders have given us many supposedly convincing reasons why Greece should stay in the eurozone – Greece leaving would provoke a banking crisis; Greece leaving would lead to contagion in Italy, Spain and Portugal; Greece leaving would shake international confidence in the euro; etc etc etc.
But there is one thing our euro-loving leaders never dare mention. What if Greece was to leave, reintroduce the drachma, devalue its currency, become competitive and quickly start to grow its economy as its weaker currency made it a very attractive destination for holidaymakers and investment?
If that happened, then ordinary voters in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Cyprus and Ireland would look at the Greek success and start to wonder why they should be suffering Brussels-imposed austerity and crippling levels of unemployment. Then they would vote in their millions for any political party that dared to defy the unelected fool Barroso and his unelected commissars. That would threaten the power of our EU-loving leaders, so it cannot be allowed to happen.
As far as our leaders are concerned, come hell or high water, Greece must be kept in the eurozone, even if this destroys the Greek economy. Setting Greece free would open Pandora’s Box as others realised that they too should try to escape from the crushing oppression of the euro. Maybe this is the real reason Greece is being forced to stay in the eurozone?
By David Craig, on September 10th, 2012 I had a very interesting conversation with a lady who lives in Egypt. Of course, we tend to call conversations ‘interesting’ when we talk with people who confirm our prejudices. But in this case, I’d like to think that what I was told was more than just a reflection of my own personal narrow-minded views.
Apparently Egypt’s former President Mubarak managed to steal over $80bn during his time in power. Then when you add in all the money stolen by his cronies, you’re probably up over ten times that, say $900bn – about $10,000 for every Egyptian. The lady described how anyone with a successful business or valuable land or property would find that everything they owned could be confiscated by Mubarak and his cronies. Naturally, Egypt’s corrupt juduciary supported this blatant theft. Or else, people had to pay huge bribes to avoid confiscation of their assets.
The result – there was no incentive to start businesses or to invest in building anything. So there were no jobs, the economy stagnated, over half the population were unemployed and corruption was rife. I found this to be a useful description of how rampant corruption can crush economic growth. And what happened in Egypt has been repeated time and again and again and again throughout both Arab and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Many Arab and African countries (Libya, Tunisia, Sudan, Congo, Nigeria, Zimbabwe) could be some of the most prosperous nations on earth. Instead they are poverty-stricken, disease-ridden hell-holes. But their poverty is not due to their geography or lack of resources or weather – it’s purely due to the corruption, greed and incompetence of the ruling elites. And, under the leadership of the utterly corrupt and incompetent ANC, South Africa risks joining this miserable bunch.
This is such a waste of human potential and human lives – but our gutless politically-correct BBC and our gutless, politically-correct politicians never mention Arab and African corruption, greed and incompetence because they are terrified of being acccused of racism.
By David Craig, on September 9th, 2012 When Madeleine McCann was abducted, the normally lazy, incompetent, corrupt Portuguese police sprang quickly into action. But not to find the missing girl. Instead their prime concern seems to have been to protect their tourist industry. So they ignored any evidence that might have helped them locate the girl and instead concentrated all their efforts on trying to pin the blame on the British parents.
So how will the French police handle the shooting of a British family near Lake Annecy? Will they try to find the real killers? Or will they try to pin the whole affair on a family member to save their tourist industry? After all, the last thing police in countries like France, Portugal and Spain want people to know is that there are gangs of heavily-armed Eastern European criminals roaming freely across their countries mainly preying on holidaymakers and expats. The large number of British expats who have been attacked in their French and Spanish homes and beaten till they handed over all their valuables will attest to that.
Talking of lazy, corrupt, incompetent Portuguese, apparently our President, Mr Barroso, has come up with a great new idea for increasing his power over us. In addition to the utterly corrupt European Parliament, Barroso is reportedly thinking of creating a new Eurozone parliament for just the 17 Eurozone countries. So, more politicians, more of our taxes being stolen and wasted, more power being taken from national parliaments and handed over to Barroso’s cronies. No doubt ‘Barroso’s whore’ (in my opinion) Nick Clegg will wholeheartedly support Barroso’s great new idea. After all, democracy is untidy as people have a habit of voting the wrong way. Much better to have a puppet parliament that will do what you want to save their own well-paid jobs and almost unlimited expense accounts.
By David Craig, on September 8th, 2012 Public spending is now almost half of our GDP. Repeated studies have shown that once public spending goes over 40% of GDP, taxes have to go so high that the economy cannot grow. The incompetent Tories have promised cuts. But instead they have increased spending – more bureaucrats, more government ministers, more expenses for MPs, higher salaries for public-sector bosses.
In 1997, the NHS got £45bn a year – now it gets £105bn a year plus another £229bn of PFI hospitals. Like most of the public sector, the NHS is drowning in our money – yet NHS bosses claim they don’t get enough of our cash. So what is Labour’s solution? Borrow more, tax more, spend more, waste more. Here’s a pictorial reminder of how Brown and Balls almost bankrupted Britain. Soon Balls will be back to finish the job.
By David Craig, on September 7th, 2012 When told that the people were suffering due to widespread bread shortages, French Queen Marie Antoinette, was claimed to have said ‘let them eat cake’ – suggesting she was slightly out of touch with the lives of ordinary people.
After 2 years of a shrinking economy, our government of multimillionaires has finally come up with a way to grow the economy – relax planning laws so we can all build conservatories. I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. Of course, this great economic growth plan will benefit our MPs. They’ll all be able to build nice big conservatories and probably make us pay for these by putting them on expenses as supposedly building offices in their homes.
But it seems unlikely that the two and half million unemployed and the thirty million in work, who have seen their earnings stagnate while prices have shot up by thirty to forty per cent, are all going to suddenly decide to build conservatories. This joke of a government with its PR spiv PM and its work experience chancellor goes from bad to worse to truly awful. No wonder they’re going to get deservedly thrashed at the next election.
Tomorrow, I’ll deal with Ed Balls’s strategy for reviving the British economy/ bankrupting Britain (delete as appropriate).
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