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By  David Craig, on July 9th, 2012 Britain’s pathetically low interest rates have been a bonanza for banks like Barclays and HSBC. Firstly, they can take billions of our money, intended to be lent to businesses, and use it instead to speculate on commodities like oil and food, pushing up the prices and stoking inflation causing hardship in Britain and misery in the Third World in what one banker called “financial mass murder”.
In Britain, the banks have used their low interest rates to goad savers into taking their money out of safe, 2- to 3-year deposit accounts and put it into riskier investment schemes. One of the most blatant rip-offs being flogged by banks is what they call ‘structured products’. These usually have reassuring names like ‘Growth Bond’ or ‘Guaranteed Bond’ or ‘Capital Protected Fund’. Sadly, savers have put around £58bn into these schemes, earning the banks’ salespeople almost £2 billion of our money in commissions.
These products usually promise something like 120% of any stockmarket growth over 4 or 5 years plus guarantee the return of your capital if there is no growth. To sell these products, bank staff will usually trot out the line – “over the longer term, shares always outperform cash”. But this is a lie. The measure banks use for cash are government bonds, yet most 2- to 3-year savings accounts pay much more than government bonds. So the comparison of shares and cash is rigged to make shares look like a better bet.
Moreover, these products are scams because stock markets really don’t grow. Instead they move between two levels – for the FTSE100 the range is between 4900 and 6200. The real benefits of owning shares comes from the dividends paid each year by the companies whose shares you own. But these products don’t buy shares, so you don’t get the benefits of any dividends.
There is only one certainty with these products – most savers will lose money and all those selling these products will make a fortune from savers’ gullibility.
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By David Craig, on July 8th, 2012 Probably not many people know this – we have 109 (yes 109) government ministers in Britain. This is about twice as many as they have in France or Germany or even a joke country like Italy. About 90 of these ‘ministers’ are from the Commons and the rest from the Lords. This means that about one in every four Coalition MPs is a government minister.
Why so many? Do we need them all? The simple answer is ‘NO’. It’s just a scam used by politicians to pocket many millions more of our money while claiming that their MP’s salary of £65,000+ is really very modest. Being a minister ensures you’re actually getting about £100,000 plus your expenses, plus £30,000 to £40,000 for your wife, partner or whoever you claim is your assistant, plus the most generous public-sector pension in Britain plus the hundreds of thousands you can earn doing extra jobs.
Civil servants often complain that it’s difficult to find work for all these ministers and admit that they invent things for them to do, wasting millions, tens of millions, maybe even billions of our money on futile projects to satisfy junior ministers’ egos.
So next time those lying fools the useless coward Cameron and serially incompetent buffoon Osborne tell us ‘we’re all in this together’ or about the ‘difficult choices’ or ‘necessary cuts’ – remember it’s all a load of complete bollocks. Our MPs are ripping us off like there was no tomorrow, stuffing their pockets with our money. They’re all the same – lying, greedy, expenses-fiddling scum.
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By David Craig, on July 7th, 2012 Congratulations to Andy Murray, not just for his game at Wimbledon yesterday, but for how, through hard work and dedication, he has become one of the world’s best tennis players. All the media are blethering on about what a great achievement Murray’s victory yesterday was for ‘British tennis’. But, in my limited understanding of the situation, Murray’s success has little to nothing to do with ‘British tennis’. In fact, as far as I know, Murray has been successful because he, with the support of his family, stayed far away from ‘British tennis’ and took charge of his own training and development.
British taxpayers and tennis fans have given over £100m to the British Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) since the days of Tim Henman. This money was meant to go to developing a new generation of British tennis champions. Instead, all we’ve had are a bunch of serial underachievers who don’t have the skills, the motivation or the psychological strength to win anything and so (apart from some very rare exceptions) they tend to get knocked out in the first or second rounds of even the most minor tennis competitions. Meanwhile much of the money we have given to the LTA has been wasted on bureaucracy, big salaries for the head honchos and lavish expense accounts for Britain’s tennis bosses so they and their mates can hang out, wining and dining, at all the world’s major tournaments (flying first or business class, of course) without every having to pay a penny from their own well-stuffed pockets.
Yesterday at Wimbledon was another great day for Andy Murray and his family, but it was a stunning indictment of the greed, incompetence and parasitism of Britain’s self-serving, over-paid, over-expensed, over-pensioned tennis bosses.
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By David Craig, on July 6th, 2012 When the big-spending, big wasting (in my opinion) liar Gordon Brown didn’t want to pay for too many more real police, Labour came up with the idea of ‘plastic police’ – PCSOs (Police Community Support Officers). They’re the often fat ones in uniform you sometimes see waddling down your high street, rolls of blubber bulging out of their fine uniforms. They’re the ones who are afraid to go into a foot or so of water to save a drowning person or child as they feel they haven’t been trained to take such a huge risk. They’re the ones the yobs, drunks and thugs laugh at and insult with impunity as they know they’re powerless to do anything.
Now the Tories have taken Labour’s idea one step further. While protecting their own jobs, huge salaries, expenses and pensions – the average MP costs us over £300,000 a year, enough to pay for almost 20 squaddies – our leaders are to make drastic cuts of 20% (20,000 troops) in the army. But do not fear. The MoD will be doubling the size of the Territorial Army (TA), giving us many more part-time, much cheaper soldiers.
Whereas our ‘plastic police’ really are a complete waste of an awful lot of skin, I have nothing but admiration for the courage and self sacrifice of TA troops. But are 20,000 TA part-timers really going to be as effective as 20,000 fully trained soldiers? And hey, if we had 300 less MPs, we’d save enough money to pay for almost 6,000 full-time, fully trained soldiers. I’d rather have 6,000 full-time soldiers defending the country against some mad fundamentalist maniacs than 300 lying, expenses-fiddling, thieving, self-serving, multi-millionaire MPs.
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By David Craig, on July 5th, 2012 I didn’t watch Bob “Bulls–t” Diamond run rings around our useless, corrupt, expenses-fiddling MPs (I was watching the tennis) but I imagine it was pretty cringeworthy. If I understand correctly, Bob “Bulls–t” claimed he only found out about the Libor rigging a month or so ago. What? The financial regulators in the US must have been investigating this for at least a year. And Bob “Bull-s–t”claims he didn’t know about it! The words ‘pull, other one and bells’ come to mind. As for our MPs – pathetic, intellectually-limited, reduced to trying to score political points, grandstanding, corrupt fools. No wonder they became MPs. Who else, apart from British taxpayers, would be stupid enough to give each of them £250,000 a year in salary, pension and expenses?
And we’re apparently going to get another ‘inquiry’. We’ve alread had the well-rewarded Hutton’s (in my opinion) whitewash of Blair’s illegal invasion of Iraq costing us millions. We’ve now got the pointless and hugely expensive Leveson inquiry into press standards which will waste millions telling us what we already know. Will we now waste millions more to find out that our bankers are lying, greedy, self-serving, rate-manipulating, recidivist mis-selling thieves? I could tell you that for free.
Inquiries are wonderful for kicking tough issues into the long grass, for muddying the waters and for hiding the complicity of politicians, bureaucrats and bankers in filling their own pockets at the expense of the rest of us. So why not ditch the pointless inquiry and get on with prosecutions for fraud, conspiracy to defraud, obtaining money by deception, false accounting, knowingly running a business that was insolvent and much more? And then confiscate the assets of those involved. Mr Diamond’s £120m or so, £10m to £20m from Fred Goodwin and hundreds of millions from the few hundred others involved would make a welcome contribution to paying off the national debt. But, of course, there won’t be any prosecutions and there won’t be any confiscation of assets. Just inquiry after inquiry after inquiry.
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By David Craig, on July 4th, 2012 Our enemy Pakistan has decided to let the US run supply convoys through Pakistan to Afghanistan in return for $1bn or so in supposed ‘military aid’. So who will actually get this money? First in line is Pakistan’s much loved President “Mr Ten Percent”. Then come all the other corrupt Pakistani politicians, then all the corrupt Pakistani military leaders and finally a few mega-rich Pakistani families that control much of the country’s wealth. And, of course, if any money is left over, it will probably be used by Pakistan’s security services to supply weapons and training to Afghan freedom fighters. They can then use the guns and bombs that our money helped the Pakistanis buy to quite legitimately kill and maim the American and British soldiers who have invaded their country and are propping up a corrupt, drug-dealing puppet government that will collapse three and a half minutes after the foreign soldiers eventually leave after more than twelve years of the most pointless war in modern times. Meanwhile, Karzai and his mates will scamper off to their bolt-holes in Dubai to spend the billions they have stolen from us.
Pakistanis hate us and Pakistan is our enemy. We should be cutting diplomatic links, stopping all direct flights and halting all immigration from Pakistan.
As for Afghanistan – the people killing and maiming our troops are not ‘terrorists’ and ‘rogue soldiers’ – they are freedom fighters trying to throw out foreign invaders and they will succeed and we will fail. We should bring our troops home immediately and leave the Afghans to a hell of their own making.
Meanwhile, back at Wimbledon, Boris “Boom Boom in a Cupboard” Becker has been hired by the useless BBC as a commentator. Only problem is – Boris hardly speaks any English. So whereas British, US and Australian commentators can help us understand and enjoy the tennis by explaining the tactics and giving information about the players,” Boom Boom in a Cupboard” Boris just gives the occasional guttural grunt. Go home Boris. And, dear BBC stop wasting our money on supposed commentators who can’t string a sentence together.
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By David Craig, on July 3rd, 2012 Barclays’ (in my opinion) utterly corrupt boss, Bob “Bulls–t” Diamond has finally decided to go and spend more time with the money he has taken from us. In his leaving statement, this creature claimed “I know that each and every one of the people at Barclays works hard every day to serve our customers and clients. That is how we support economic growth and the communities in which we live and work.”
What?!?!? This is the bank that cheated thousands of older customers of much of their life savings by mis-selling them crap Aviva investments. This is the bank that has driven hundreds of small businesses into bankruptcy forcing them to sack thousands of workers. And this is the bank that may have made thousands of people lose their homes through manipulating interest rates.
Bob “Bulls–t” Diamond is (in my opinion) a liar. How can he say that a bank which has a culture of recidivist mis-selling and fraud works to “support economic growth and the communities in which we live and work.” Lies, bull-s–t, sanctimonious crap from a (in my opinion) master liar. When will this creature be prosecuted? Oh, never? Because he will be protected by his friends Cameron and Osborne. Plus, if I remember correctly, William Hague’s wife works for Barclays. So, I imagine, not much chance of any action against the (in my opinion) “master of mis-selling”, the “king of fraud”, the “liar of liars”.
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By David Craig, on July 2nd, 2012 Give Liar Cameron an Oscar. Look how well he’s acting the part of an innocent politician outraged by the dishonest behaviour of his very close banking friends. And one for Mervyn King too. What acting skills, what a convincing delivery. Perhaps Mr King has forgotten that in 2005 I reported Fred Goodwin to the Bank of England by informing a very senior BoE official where he could get documentary evidence which suggested that Fred Goodwin was involved (in my opinion) in a £50m fraud and therefore was not a fit person to run a bank. But what did you and your colleagues do, Mervyn? Nothing! In fact worse, you all protected Fred Goodwin, because he was a good mate of Tony and Gordon, and lost British taxpayers £45bn and counting.
And now Mervyn and Cameron and the head of the FSA are all (in my opinion) pretending they knew nothing, that they are very angry indeed and that they will maybe consider making new laws sometime in the future to close the stable door after the horse has bolted. As far as I can see, criminal acts have been carried out and those responsible should be prosecuted and have their very considerable assets seized. With Goodwin – what about knowingly running a business when it was insolvent, false accounting, misrepresentation and defrauding shareholders? Just these would be a good start for the police. As for the Libor manipulators – there could be obtaining money by deception and fraud. So Cameron and King shouldn’t be hiding behind the excuse of needing new laws – our existing laws are quite sufficient to bring prosecutions and seizures of assets
But, of course, there won’t be any prosecutions and there definitely won’t be any seizures of assets because our politicians, bankers and regulators are all in this together. So let’s hand out a few Oscars to Cameron, King, Turner and many others as they (in my opinion) brilliantly act as if shocked and horrified when (in my opinion) most of them probably knew what was going on all along.
As for RBS, they claim to have sacked a few traders for the rate-fixing scam. But did they really sack them? Or did they give them millions of taxpayers’ money on condition they left quietly and didn’t tell anybody how deeply RBS bosses were involved in this and other scams?
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By David Craig, on July 1st, 2012 What does a government do when they are despised by most people, when their economic policies are in ruins, when their banker friends have been caught stealing billions from us and when they are widely believed to be totally incompetent? That’s the question facing Cameron and his useless thieving cronies. Somehow they have to distract the country’s attention away from their own uselessness and unite people in some common cause. Of course, we have the Olympics – that massive waste of around £9bn of our money that will make Mr Coe and the other olympocrats even richer than they are already. But much better would be a war, preferably against a pantomine villain. Sadly Gaddaffi has gone – he would have been perfect for the role. So Cameron and the Cowards need someone else.
Thankfully they’re got the clown masquerading as a president – Assad of Syria. Syria’s shooting down of a rusting old Turkish military jet may have given Cameron and the Cowards the excuse they need to start yet another war. At this week’s NATO meeting, our cowardly, self-serving, expenses-fiddling leaders will try to convince us that Syria’s shooting down of the Turkish plane was ‘an attack on all of NATO’. They will then use this as an excuse for a bit of sabre-rattling and may try to provoke Syria into further supposed ‘aggression’ against NATO. Turkish armour is already heading towards the border with Syria. With any ‘luck’, a couple of Turkish tanks will stray into Syrian territory, Syria will blast them and Cameron and the Cowards will then have the excuse they want to escalate the situation into yet another pointless Middle East war.
When are our lying, cowardly, self-serving, thieving leaders going to realise that killing each other is the national sport of many Arab countries. We should not be intervening, We should sell them the weapons to create a few British jobs and let the Arabs get on with it.
Please Mr Liar Cameron – we don’t want your pointless war – let the Arabs slaughter each other, it’s what they seem to enjoy.
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By David Craig, on June 30th, 2012 Liar David Cameron and Liar George Osborne have both told us “we are all in this together”. So what did they do as soon as they were elected? Cameron shoved 117 of his friends and cronies into the House of Lords so they could start stealing our money in expenses claims for the rest of their lives. As for Osborne, he immediately set up two new, utterly useless quangos to waste ever more of our money. There was the laughably titled ‘Office of Budget Responsibility’ which produces forecast after forecast – all of them hopelessly wrong. Meanwhile public spending and our debts climb remorselessly higher. And there was the Office of Tax Simplification which probably helped incompetent Osborne produce possibly the most farcical budget the country has ever seen with it pasty tax, caravan tax, granny tax and a host of other stupidities.
Moreover, Cameron has loosened the rules on MPs’ expenses so they can now claim much more money than ever before.
As government spending rockets while tax revenues plummet, we really are in it – at least up to the eyeballs and probably higher. But if you’re a friend or chum of Cameron or Osborne, you can happily keep on siphoning off huge quantities of taxpayers’ money into your own pockets till the end of your days.
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