Happy days – short lived

I am less angry today than I have been for sometime. I had a glorious couple of days with ‘the one’. Findon Sheep Fair was duly attended a blissful day among the livestock.

However, Dave and his chums do seem to have the knack of keeping me where I apparently belong. The doldrums.

Two brief posts for today, rolled into one. Travelling to work today Classic FM announced that the government was to impose stiffer penalties for benefit cheats. This could, we are reliably informed by auntie BEEB, lead to 10 year jail terms for those who claim without merit. Ummmm, if there is so much cell space in Her Majesty’s hotels, why are burglars, murderers and rapists not locked away for a decent amount of time? Me thinks that this may need to be reviewed in the fullness of time. Or, will they just amend the legislation allowing a maximum term of 10 years then issue sentencing guidelines which will tie the hands of the judiciary and force short sentences, with an automatic third off if they behave, oh and the third is calculated off the half at they are expected to serve. ??????

Yes, sentence to five years serve 2.5 and get a third off that if you are good.

The other thing I have noticed, trawling the BEEB’s website, the chancellor who is in charge of the countries money was happy to pay 73.6p for Lloyds shares. The government are thinking about selling 6% of there shares. The current share price is 77.36p. The chancellor is pleased that this is beyond his break even figure of 61p.

I am no mathematical genius. I do know though that if I pay 73.6p for something and I sell it for 61p I have not broken even. I have received no value from the stock in the way of dividend, the government saw to that, I have received no payment or utility of any kind from owning the shares, so I must be out of pocket 12.6p per share.

Indeed at the time the government paid 73.6p per share, the shares were selling for 61p. So we, the people, paid 12.6p over the odds for shares that the chancellor was happy to lose another 12.6p on when he sold! No wonder the country has gone to the dogs.

And indeed why should he

I see today that our glorious leader, ‘Dave’ wide boy Cameron for those who hadn’t grasped the fact that he is not some second hand car salesman, is once again supporting the big cheeses.

Yesterday he distanced himself from debates concerning the Recommendations of the Leverson enquiry. He must be afraid that he won’t be able to carry on his cosy relationship with the Murdochs and their minions if he does.

However, today he has come out to say that he rules out the naming and shaming of large multinational companies who fail to pay their fair share of tax in Britain. Strange, Jimmy Carr was named and shamed but of course, he is just an individual, a little man when compared to the income potential through tax of the likes of Google et al.

Amazon, Starbucks and Google have been mentioned as corporations against whom there ought to be a more aggressive approach. The comments were made as a report was released by the Public Accounts Commitee saying that offenders should be named and shamed by the government as well as being prosecuted rather than being offered ‘sweetheart’ deals.

What does the government get out of this? Do the country benefit? I wonder if the money spent chasing benefit fraud is able to recoup as much as a similar amount spent chasing even one of the global players.

Mr Cameron said, ‘An important part of our tax system is taxpayer confidentiality.’ I heard not a single breast being beaten when Jimmy Carrs name came out. Not that I think he is deserving of any sympathy at all.

It’s the rich wot gets the money, it’s the poor wot gets …

To mis quote the well known bawdy music hall song.

Mr Mervyn King, champion of the poor (bankers) has come up with a wizzard wheeze lets lend money to banks at 0.25%, yes a quarter of a per cent, so they can lend it to non financial institutions.  It would seem more of our money is to be loaned to  the banks at a knock down rate so they can lend it to us.  No news about how much it will cost to borrow this stash of cash from the benevolent banks but the same article heralds some banks already cutting their rates to below 3% which probably means 2.97% or similar. So more taxpayers money being given to the banks so they can charge us more money for borrowing it back. Come on Mervyn, do something radical. Lend it to us for .25% and let the banks use some of their own stockpiled money to lend to each other. Even better legislate that they should use their money to lend at .25%.

Ooh cloud cuckoo land again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19068444