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By  David Craig, on February 14th, 2012 A new report shows that with high oil prices, Africa’s second richest country, Nigeria, is growing even richer. But while the country earns billions more, most of Nigeria’s people are becoming poorer. About 80% of Nigerians now have to survive on less than $2 a day. So where do the billions and billions go? Of course, they’re all stolen by corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, military leaders and their business cronies. Instead of being used to build roads, schools, sewage plants, electricity supply or providing clean water, Nigeria’s massive wealth is mostly being channelled into offshore bank accounts. Nigeria’s joke of a president has promised a crackdown on corruption. That’ll have most Nigerians laughing.
On Aljazeera, they covered this story with an extensive interview about how widespread corruption is destroying most Nigerians’ lives. On Aljazeera’s main news-broadcasting competitor, BBC World, the politically-correct cowards mentioned the report but said nothing at all about Nigeria’s corruption. Instead BBC World broadcasts a pointless series called “African Journey” in which Jonathan Dimbleby tells us what an exciting colourful place Africa is. Well, Mr Dimbleby, Africa is not so colourful and exciting for more than 100 million Nigerians forced into destitution by the greed and venality of their leaders! Maybe it’s time to save UK TV license-payers millions by shutting down the useless, cowardly, politically-correct BBC World Service.
By David Craig, on February 13th, 2012 Congratulations to the Daily Mail. Yes the Daily Mail. They’ve done some investigative journalism and found out that Health Minister Andrew Lansley’s supposed reforms, have actually been put together by management consultants McKinseys. Lansley has probably given McKinseys many millions of our money to come up with their great plan for the NHS. If the Lansley/McKinsey plans are implemented, McKinseys look set to earn many millions more. So is Lansley his own man? Or just a McKinseys whore? And after he leaves office, will Lansley be given a well-paid job by McKinseys?
Most Tories I have spoken to say that Lansley is an incompetent, ineffectual waste of skin. As far as I can see, the only “proper job” Lansley has held was at the notoriously useless DT&I (aka the Department for Total Incompetence). So what to make of Lansley’s great plans for the NHS? Necessary reforms or just a “get rich quick” scheme for McKinseys? And is Lansley just McKinseys’ whore?
By David Craig, on February 13th, 2012 We’re always being told that that the earlier we start saving for our pensions and the more we save, then the bigger our pension will be, These are, of course, lies repeated by greedy pensions companies who want our money and obedient financial journalists who are forever going on junkets paid for by pension companies. Say you start putting money in your pension fund when you’re thirty. Then the pension company (and any financial advisers involved) will be able to take fees and management charges and dealing charges for over thirty years. Pension fund charges in Britain are up to five times what pension companies in places like Holland and Denmark charge.
So what should you do? A simple rule of thumb Is that when you take a mortgage, you’ll pay twice what you borrow because of interest. So you’ll pay about £300,000 for a £150,000 mortgage. Now imagine that for the first 5 years of your mortgage you paid off an extra £2,000 a year instead of putting this in a pension fund. This £10,000 would actually save you £20,000. So you’re doubling your money by paying your mortgage off earlier – a much better use of your money than giving it to a pension company. Then when you’re in your late forties or early fifties, have paid off most of your mortgage and are hopefully earning enough to get tax relief on pension contributions at the higher rate, that’s when you should start shoving money into your pension fund. So you get the government adding 40% more to your contributions and the pension companies have less than 20 years to plunder your money. So, don’t believe the “start saving early” pension” lies!
By David Craig, on February 12th, 2012 I support the legitimate demands of the Greek protesters. These seem to be:
– Well-paid government jobs for life for all Greeks
– Fourteen months pay each year and ten weeks holidays a year
– Retirement on inflation-protected pensions (equal to full salary) at 55
– Nobody to pay taxes
– Everything to be paid for by stupid, hard-working, taxpaying Germans and cowardly Dutch and Austrians who always do what their German masters tell them
If these reasonable and legitimate demands are not met, we can expect to see more riots. The interesting question is whether Greek security forces will be able to cope with the coming social unrest or whether we will soon see German stormtroopers marching in the streets of Athens.
By David Craig, on February 11th, 2012 There is one certainty with every Third World disaster (earthquake, floods, tsunami etc) – about a year after the event, there will be a weepy BBC reporter, standing amidst the homeless and the destitute and bleating on about how many people are still suffering because one year on all the aid given has failed to reach those for whom it was intended. Usually the report will end with words along the line of “hundreds of millions were pledged, but one year on many of the worst-affected people have had little to no help”. This phrasing is very clever. It leaves the responsibility for the human suffering deliberately vague. Were hundreds of millions pledged by Western governments and then not given? Or was the money given, but stolen by corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and their business cronies? The reporter wants us to believe the first answer – that devious Western governments didn’t live up to their promises. And I’m sure this often happens. But governments and ordinary people do give hundreds of millions, so what happens to this money? The real problem is that study after study after study by the UN has shown that around 90% of all aid given to Third World countries is lost due to corruption and incompetence. Sadly most politicians, bureaucrats and businesspeople in the Third World don’t give a damn about their own people and just see each disaster as a heaven-sent opportunity to get rich.
I imagine there’s a BBC manual somewhere which tells reporters not mention the 90% loss of aid money as that will make us less willing to give in the future. Any BBC reporter would be risking their own precious career if they were honest and courageous enough to mention the rampant corruption which follows any disaster. And so we are deliberately being lied to by politically-correct, career-obsessed BBC reporters.
By David Craig, on February 10th, 2012 With savings interest rates at almost zero and likely to stay there for several years, many savers are being tempted to put their money into unit trusts in the hope of better returns. But when you buy into a unit trust, you can quickly lose a lot of money. First there’s the initial cost – about 5% (can be avoided if you use a funds supermarket). Then there are management and dealing charges of about 3% a year. Then when you take your money out, you lose another 5% due to the difference in the price you bought the units and the price you have to sell them. So, over 5 years, you can lose 20% to 25% of your money. Of course, the trust managers will claim they can grow your savings. But over the last 10 years stock markets have not gone up at all and over the next 10 years growth is likely to be about the long-term average of 1% to 2% a year.
So, this is what you should do. 1. Find some unit trusts you like. 2. Look on their websites and see which are the main shares they hold. 3. Buy those shares directly yourself. 4. Hold on to those shares for a few years, reinvesting your dividends in more shares of those companies. In this way, you get the benefit of the unit trust managers’ experience without having to pay them a penny. At the end of 5 years you’ll have 20% to 25% more than if you’d used a unit trust and at the end of 10 years you’ll have 35% to 40% more. Simples!
By David Craig, on February 9th, 2012 Our latest failed Chancellor, George “I haven’t a clue old chap” Osborne has apparently been working hard to reduce Britain’s deficit. Result – the deficit has increased pretty much every month he’s been running the shop. We now spend more each month on interest payments than we do on education or defence. It seems Osborne has been about as prudent as Britain’s worst ever Chancellor, the liar Gordon Brown – the man who managed to waste over £1 trillion on increased public spending without any increase in services. The problem is that public-sector bosses believe that austerity if for everyone else except them. So they carry on wasting over £150bn a year of our money. The Guardian “non-jobs section” is still bulging with unnecessary and highly-paid but pointless public-sector positions. If he is to reduce the deficit, Osborne has to tackle the stupidity and profligacy of the public sector.
For a start, he should put all administrative government departments on a 4-day week. After all, would we notice any difference if all the penpushers at the Department of Health or Education only worked Monday to Thursday? He should shut down the ludicrous Equality and Human Rights Commission (saving £70m a year) and another twenty to thirty similarly useless quangos. He should set a maximum public-sector pension of £25,000 a year. If civil service bosses want more, they should save into a pension scheme like the rest of us. Only measures like these will make our free-spending public-sector realise that the days of Brownian waste are over.
By David Craig, on February 7th, 2012 Couldn’t believe my eyes yesterday. There was an article in the Guardian praising Gordon Brown for his courage, leadership and understanding of complex economic issues during the financial crisis. Who writes this kind of crap? And perhaps more importantly, who actually reads it? The liar Gordon Brown was probably the most catastrophic Chancellor in British history. At a time when the whole world’s economy was booming, this idiot, instead of paying down Britain’s debt, went on a massive borrowing spree. He then took over £1 trillion of our money and wasted the lot on increasing public spending without achieving any improvements at all in public services. Most of the money was wasted on bigger salaries for managers and bureaucrats. So when the economic cycle went inevitably from boom to slowdown, Britain was caught with its pants down around its ankles as one of the most heavily indebted countries in the world. All of this achieved by one man – the great liar Gordon Brown. Though, of course, he was helped in his ambition of bankrupting Britain by acolytes like Ed Balls and his lady wife.
But now, apparently Guardian readers believe that Brown was a great man. Well they would, wouldn’t they? After all, he hugely increased the salaries and pensions of the kind of people who read the Guardian. It hasn’t occurred to Guardian readers that while they have enjoyed Brown’s largesse with taxpayers’ money, the rest of the country has been ruined.
By David Craig, on February 7th, 2012 As the Queen celebrates sixty years on the throne, she must have thought about retiring and handing over the throne to the next generation. Unfortunately, first in line is the snivelling, self-obsessed, idiotic, spoilt, adulterous fool Prince Charles. If this arrogant idiot ever became king, the monarchy might never recover. Incredibly, this buffoon has spent millions on getting good PR and yet only readers of the Daily Mail and OK haven’t realised that this excuse for a man is a complete waste of skin. If Charles became king, Australia and Canada would probably become republics. The last thing they would want is Charles’ stupid face on any of their currency. And even in Britain, the monarchy would become a laughing stock.
So Queenie has to soldier on in the hope that by the time she pops her clogs, William will be ready to take over and the preposterous a–hole Charles will never get a chance to ruin the monarchy in the same way as he has ruined everything else he has come in contact with.
By David Craig, on February 6th, 2012 It has been reported that David “Give Me Money” Miliband pocketed about £500,000 last year. But if Miliband was working tirelessly to represent his constituents and to fight for his political beliefs, he would only have been paid his MP’s salary of about £65,000, plus he could probably have fiddled another £30,000 by cheating on his expenses. So how did Miliband make so much money? The answer, of course, is that Miliband couldn’t give a flying f—k about his constituents or any “political beliefs”. Miliband is in it for himself and for the money. Although Blair was a piece of human excrement, he at least had the decency to give up his parliamentary seat when he went off to make his millions. But Miliband knows that without his place at Westminster and the probability that he will be a senior minister in the next Labour government, he would just be a nothing. So he needs his position as an MP if he is to get rich.
So all you stupid voters in South Shields. At the next election are you really going to support a greedy, self-serving, pompous turd like David “Give Me Money” Miliband? Or will you have the intelligence to get rid of this arrogant creep and let him find out how “easy” it is to get a job in a country he helped Gordon Liar Brown to bankrupt?
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