Categories: uncategorized
Date: 14 April 2008 13:27:00
As many of you will know, I am a great lover of politics; in the majority of cases I do not support the same party as most other Wibloggers. I am of course RIGHT and you of course AREN'T :-)
We seem to be getting into a right mess at the moment. We have a leader with the charisma of a dead lettuce, who claims to be a financial wizard. This is evidenced by the fact that he can make billions disappear - see the Private Finance Initiative, ID Card scheme and countless failed IT and defense projects.
We are facing a "correction" in our financial markets because the regulators are unable to do their jobs properly and because no one actually watches the wheezes that they pull to make a few extra million. We've had Enron, Parmalat and Worldcom scandals that have started abroad but enveloped the UK banks and accountancy firms. The financial wizardry they pulled off in hiding losses in shell companies, that were "off balance sheet", are the same practices that the government uses to hide PFI schemes and the Northern Rock debt.
The government have increased taxes with no visible return to the taxpayer. They have increased the complexity of the UK tax system and gone after small taxpayers but let corporations, and non-domicile residents, get away with their tax avoidance. Now they want to remove the 10p starting rate which will hit the lower paid - those who need the most protection.
We have a "prudent" ex-Chancellor now leading us who has spent money that he doesn't have as though it came from a bottomless pit. He laudes himself with priase for the great job that he's done but is now watching his financial chickens come home to roost.
He is happy to appear on US TV, promising to spend £200 million on mosquito nets. I whole heartedly support this initiative. What I don't support is the money that his government have wasted on consultants advising African countries how to privatise their water supply or on air traffic control systems that they don't need, but are made by BAE Systems.
In addition the aid budget is being put into the hands of a former governm,ent hedge fund. They invest it in Third World industry but all their profit is sent offshore so that the local governments see nothing in tax revenue. Yet ex-civil servants are earning multi-million pound bonuses and salaries at their expense.
It is time that something was done about all this. We should be used to being lied to by ALL political parties but it always seems worse when it's a party that, supposedly, represents the "working class" and poor.