Forget the Government what about the Champagne Socialists

With all the talk of the Coalition being out of touch you would think that the Labour front bench all grew up in deprived areas and struggled daily to make ends meet, after all the Conservative ministers are all toffs so of course they are out of touch - or so the Socialist Mantra goes.


Of course this article by the Spectator tells a slightly different story.

With Miliband sitting on a £2.3 Million pound house,
Margaret Hodge who with an £18 Million pound inheritance is reckoned to be the Richest Woman in Parliament and
Shaun Woodward selling around £30 Million of property in recent time.

Maybe the reason the Labour Front Bench disagree with the Coalitions "We're all in this together." mantra as they are worried it may mean that they have to give up some of what they have.

Of course a special mention has to go to chief recovery denier Ed Balls as not just is he a Millionaire Class Warrior but his vast wealth is all 100% Tax Payer funded.

"Labour :- Don't let the truth get in the way"

Miliband is a Threat to the Recovery

The title above isn't mine - although I do honestly believe what it is saying.

It is instead the headline of an article on the Front Page of The Times today, The article states that FTSE 100 chiefs have claimed that Ed Miliband is "risking the recovery by developing unpredictable policies" now whilst this will come as no surprise to anyone who has listened to Ed's hair brained, ill thought out schemes it is interesting that as the worlds business leaders arrive in Davos for some skiing an important economics conference. the issue being debated is the craziness of the leader of the opposition.

One of the FTSE 100 execs was quoted in the paper as saying "Ed Miliband doesn't give a toss about business, He will say anything to get elected [We] think it's economic vandalism."

I am just glad that this message is being spread, I honestly can not believe that Miliband is so stupid as to not have known that his words last week would have reduced the investment that the UK has in LLoyds and RBS, in fact I would go as far as to say that Miliband may even have purposely acted to bring down the share price so as to prevent the government from securing a profit for the taxpayer before the next election. it is very difficult for me to believe that a shadow cabinet made up of millionaires isn't financially intelligent enough to know what the effects would be.

Adebayor - The Master Plan Continues

Back at the end of Last Year I asked if not playing Adebayor was actually a master tactic. My tongue in cheek question was basically around the facts that whilst Ade was often the star of the first four months of the season come January he was often a little absent from the Score Sheet.

Now whilst I wasn't 100% serious it would appear that I may be getting proved right. Ever since Sherwood came in Adebayor has scored 6 times in 8 games, Hopefully this will continue to the end of the season instead of running out of steam in January, essentially giving us Adebayor at his best at the perfect time in the season. I'm going to be generous and say this was AVB's plan all along. (I doubt it was, but he is a former Spurs manager so I am inclined to go easy on him!)

the match itself was reasonably comfortable and showed real signs of the summer signings all starting to come together in what has been missing in earlier games, I am actually starting to feel slightly optimistic for the future (Normally a sure sign that a big defeat is around the corner.) Which coincides with the visit of Man City to the lane. I guess we will know better if we are "over the hump" better this time next week.

#CostofCameron More like #CostofMiliband

I Posted a few days ago about Miliband's ridiculous idea to make me change Bank Services Provider even if I am perfectly happy with who I currently use. I was wondering how bad for the Economy Miliband actually is so I thought I would look at the effects of his words.

The Twittersphere is awash with the #CostofCameron being pushed by Labour at the moment, essentially Labour pushing the myth that if they had stayed in charge then despite constant rises in the previous 13 years prices would have suddenly stopped going up somehow. And please don't be deceived in thinking that Labour want to keep down inflation, inflation in an economy is only used to reduce the size of government debt, therefore the party who is the biggest debt addict will also necessarily be the biggest inflation addict.

Anyway, as I said, I wanted to know exactly how bad Ed Miliband is for the UK economy, bear in mind this is only as "Leader" of the Opposition, Were Labour to get control of the economy this would only get worse.

Before Ed Miliband started to leak the details of his "Forced Bank Moves" policy then the UK top four Banks had a combined market capitalization of £617 Billion, After he had finished and the news had been discussed widely the Market cap had fallen to £608 Billion.

Therefore the #CostofMiliband is around £8.979 Billion per speech.

Now I know that many people may think that this is just the Rich being hit so why should we care, but don't forget that less than 1% of shares are held by individuals, If you have a pension, then Miliband just made you poorer.

Even more directly he has also reduced the value of the Government's investments (80% of RBS and 33% of Lloyds) the effect of Ed Miliband's speech on the coffers of the Government were:
Value before speech £38.533 Billion (Actually £38.533.518.240)
Value now £37.346 (Actually £37,346,059,216)

Therefore the Direct #CostofMiliband is £1,187,459,024 

To add some context, according to The Guardian this would be enough to build 23 Hospitals or 39 Secondary Schools - Or Heaven forbid, actually pay off some of the debt taken out by Labour in the first place.

So next time you hear that the #CostofCameron is £1,600 after three years in power, remember that Ed Miliband cost us all (Well anyone with a Pension, Savings or who pays Taxes) £8 Billion just by opening his mouth.

Just to make things more transparent, here are the figures I used.

Is Idea to Break Up Banks Milibands worst yet?

So Miliband has now come up with his latest anti-business idea and it really is the worst yet.

Firstly, you can't Ignore the fact that if Miliband did look at breaking up the banks it will lead to many years of legal battles as the people whose investments are affected will no doubt sue the government - and before you think "oh well it's just the rich" don't forget that the non-government parts of the banks are about 70% owned by pension funds, so the people affected are anyone with a pension.

There is also the issue that I am with my bank as I like my bank. I had an account I wasn't happy with so I changed my bank, now Miliband wants to decide for me that I should change again. I don't understand how he thinks it will help me as a consumer to remove my personal choice? He wants more competition but surely this is about helping people identify the best account for them, not forcing them to join a different bank regardless of what they want. Additionally if a bank excels themselves by being better than the rest then in a free market they will get more customers but under this system you surely no bank would try and give a better product than their peers as they will be broken up - Labour punishing success again?

Finally, Miliband thinks that this will increase competition but the simple fact is that the government don't increase competition, customers do, there are alternatives to the big banks and if people want to use them, they can. If people don't want to use them again that is up to them. If Labour want to increase competition they need to make it easier to run a bank not try and disable the banks that are already there. But then at the end of the day challenger banks will only come from customers who want to change. If my account is moved to a different bank I will simply close my account and move back again which may cause the bank to hit the government's cap again, I can only forsee a never ending cycle of bank changes for no other reason that Miliband decided that if he weakened the banks (and lost the country millions) then the coalition wouldn't be able to off load the shares labour bought. Once again making the people of the UK suffer for political greed, it's just the Labour way.

Benefits Street - Propaganda or Real Life

There is a great deal of debate going on about Benefits Street and what the show is trying to show. Channel 4 say it is a "fair and balanced observational documentary". whilst commentators on the left claim it is about Demonizing those claiming Benefits.

Now I hadn't planned on having a view on this as I have simply never seen the show and so don't know what the fuss is about. but I have read a great deal of the opposition about it and it appears to me to break down along the lines.

1) Benefit Claimants are not like this

From the things I have read about being shown, then I have to say that SOME are, in my time as a local Councillor and even more so simply from my time living in a deprived neighborhood I have heard nothing about the residents that I find shocking. Whilst I would never say that everyone on Benefits is "Playing" the system or "up to no good" I have met enough of them to know it isn't an isolated occurrence.

2) All Residents of James Turner Street are crooks.

The first I heard about the show stated that the street had 90% claimant rate, I assume this would have been challenged if it wasn't true so assuming this is right they are still saying that 10% do not receive any benefits. Also to argue that most people on Benefits are not unemployed (Including Pensioners and Low Paid) is fine but is there evidence that people claiming benefits were purposely ignored for the show? Maybe there is but I haven't seen it.

3) It tries to show that ALL benefit claimants are crooks.

One thing I have never heard claimed is that Benefit Street is a typical representation of ALL claimants and if anyone did (other than a few mupwits on twitter) I would refute that, as just as I have experienced many people the likes of which seem to be represented on the show, I have met many who are simply trying to do the best with the situation they are in, and it is these people who should feel the most anger to the people featured as it is not the TV company who make people on Benefits look bad, it is the people on Benefits who act badly.

4) People were mislead to appear

I have heard this many times (Although never with a direct quote) but from what I understand the name of the show and the focus on benefits was known to everyone who was filmed. Even if we assume that the premise of the show was kept secret then I still don't think that the film company would be responsible as surely all they did was point a camera at the people, they didn't make them go out and steal (And if they did the person being filmed should have said no, after all if they asked them to jump of a bridge would they?)

So whilst I think that this show sounds like gross examples of the Benefit system for the Left Wing Commentators to pretend it doesn't exist explains why they never tried to get a handle on the issue, personally I think this is a lot more to do with the fact that all the Champagne and Idealism Socialists are angry because their argument of 100% or benefit claimants belonging to the Noble Poor doesn't stand up to scrutiny of placing SOME of them in front of the camera, at the end of the day the Daily Mail could try and Demonize the Poor all day long but it will never be as efficient as letting the people who are taking advantage of the system Demonize themselves.

FINAL NOTE - I just wanted to stress one last time, before the hate mail starts coming in. The views here are based SOLELY on MY experiences with living in a deprived area and meeting SOME people like the ones portrayed as well as SOME who were not. I do not believe nor do I claim that it was ALL people either in the area I lived or ALL people who claim benefits.

UK Inflation falls to 2%

So after being told we were going to have a triple dip recession it turns out we didn't even have a double dip.

After being told we would lose our AAA credit rating we were marked down by only one of the three agencies.

And now after being told that we would have unrestrained inflation we have - Inflation back to the 2% target.

Now obviously I wouldn't expect  Labour at any time to actually admit to being wrong, wrong and wrong but at least the economy is on the mend.

I guess at least they can still talk about the cost of living crisis and pretend that prices today would be the same as in 2010 had they stayed in power - of course I am not sure quite how this claim works as prices were going up at quite a rate before 2010 but at least this is one of Labour's claim which can't be shown up as scaremongering.

p.s. I hadn't planned on this being an anti-labour post more about the good news for the economy, the trouble is that pointing out Labour lies is just too much fun (and quite easy)