Doubtless you will have read the Chancellor’s latest blockbusting best-seller by now, the catchily-titled “Pre-Budget Report November 2008”. No? You haven’t bothered to wade through the 237 pages of treacly prose to find out how much extra tax you will be paying to bail the government out of the self-inflicted mess they have created? I will save you the bother. Here is my summary.

Firstly, there is a cracking sub-title “Facing global challenges: Supporting people through difficult times”. As mentioned before in this blog, we are not in a mess of our own making – we are in a global mess, so there is always someone else to blame. Also, the only people that are being supported through this budget are those people who will be on the receiving end of state handouts, rather than those of us who work and get a ludicrous amount of our income stolen as tax. But let’s move on past the first half of the front cover…

…to the bottom of page 1. £45? They think they can charge forty-five quid for this report. So that’s how they are going to ask us to spend our windfalls, by buying copies of the PBR. But here’s a hint guys: if you want to charge for something, don’t put it on the internet for free.

Let’s power on to the Overview section and highlight some of the ways that Darling and Brown are going to give our economy the emergency CPR it needs.

VAT is going down by 2.5% to 15%. In a move widely published in Monday’s newspapers, thanks to a controlled leak from No. 11, the price of the average £300 LCD telly will now be about £293. Not exactly going to get you rushing down to Dixons, is it?

£3bn of capital spending, including “a green stimulus supporting low carbon growth and jobs”. WTF is that all about? Again, as mentioned in this blog, the government is believing all the green hype and making policy decisions based on dodgy science, whatever the green stimulus happens to be – maybe it’s a poke with a bamboo cane? Apparently, one of these green stimuli is the “early” delivery of 200 railway carriages. Is that part of the 1,300 extra railway carriages that are already supposed to be trundling along the rail network, of which only 453 have so far been delivered?

Then we get to the “eat the rich” items that have grabbed many headlines: “restricting” personal allowances (why can’t they be honest and say “reducing”?); introducing a 45% tax rate for high earners and increased National Insurance payments for all employees/employers. After 11 years of “not” raising tax, Labour finally shows its true colours and is proposing to tax the wealthy (typically the business owners and wealth creators).

Darling also followed up last week’s call for a reduction in fuel by slapping extra duty on a litre of petrol and diesel, claiming that the price of oil is now so low, we can afford an extra couple of pence on each litre. Not that it will be used for road building projects of course. It will be used to borrow money to prop up UK Plc. As will the additional air passenger tax that will be imposed. How about “not” building runway 3 at Heathrow if you want to curb air travel, rather than penalising those who have to fly for their job?

There is also a laughable section in the Pre Budget Report where the Treasury sets out its forecasts and assumptions for the economy between now and 2014. How on earth can a government that as recently as Gordon Brown’s last budget in March 2007 was predicting growth for the next 5 years, now be trusted to forecast the years ahead, especially when it has got previous forecasts so spectacularly wrong?

And what have our gallant opposition MPs had to say about all this? Not a lot really, and they won’t get the opportunity to debate it either because since it is a “pre”-Budget, it is not a real budget and therefore does not need to be approved. And as if MPs are not intransigent enough about the future hock that Labour are putting us into, they are all having a 5-day weekend from this Thursday, since no parliamentary business can be conducted before next week’s speech by Her Majesty. Laughable, if it wasn’t so serious.
 

David “Dave” Cameron has asked his people to find ways of saving money in Whitehall in order to fund potential tax cuts. Here’s my back of a blog packet starter for ten:

1. Pull out of Europe. That will save a few MEPs salaries and expenses, not to mention the thousands of civil servants who support them.

2. Close down the Met Office and Office for National Statistics: nothing that either of them produce is accurate.

3. Make the BBC a commercial station and float it as a public company. That will raise a few quid in the short term and save us money in the long term.

4. Pull troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

5. Re-negotiate all NHS drug contracts and every governmental IT contract.

6. Scrap the Olympics.

7. Remove at least one tier of management in every government department, especially the NHS and Education.

8. Remove final salary pensions for all new civil servants from 2010 and scrap the MPs John Lewis list.

9. Devolve power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland properly. We either have a Scottish government and no Scottish MPs, or no Scottish government at all; ditto for Wales and NI.

10. Scrap road tax and link it to the duty on fuel.

Dave, feel free to get in touch…
 

Regular readers will realise that I am little, shall we say, sceptical of the concept of climate change, or global warming as it is also known. So I was intrigued by an article in the Torygraph this weekend titled “The world has never seen such freezing heat”. (URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml)

Seemingly, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is one the bodies that monitors earthly temperatures, declared that October 2008 was the hottest on record. However, there was a teensy-weensy problem with the data they used to calculate this figure: they used September’s data, which had already been used the month before. Therefore the double-counting of a relatively warm month gave rise to wild headlines that we are all about to die in a tidal wave caused by melting ice caps, ridden by surfing polar bears sharpening their teeth on our first born. Well, maybe not quite that hysteric, but it was enough to cause individual governments and the EU to declare that we needed to step up efforts to reduce man’s effect on the climate.

Except that they used the wrong numbers. So, despite the fact that there were reports during October of record snow falls in places as diverse as the US, China, New Zealand and Scotland, GISS applied the data, came up with a startling result and decided to publish it without checking their figures. Not only was the published, head-line grabbing outcome wrong, the repeated use of a month’s data made GISS believe that a new “hot spot” had been found above Russia that had not existed previously. But it didn’t. Keep applying the same high number to an average, and the average rises, presumably to the point where’s GISS’s fancy software tells you that there is a “problem”.

Even though the statistics went contrary to the reality of actual, measured weather reports from around the globe, GISS declared that there was a new hotspot. But satellite images showed that Arctic sea-ice was recovering from its annual melt at a rate 30% higher than in 2007. However, since this was good news for the planet (and bad for climate change proponents), it was casually ignored in the rush to declare that the planet was on the point of boiling, with Russia being the source of most heat.

Didn’t anyone in GISS think to check why the October figures were so high? Or why Russia, not a traditionally warm country, should so suddenly start to develop a hot spot? Apparently not, as it is not in their interest to have climate change and global warming declared a myth, since they would lose millions in government funding, as well as their jobs. GISS stated that the double application of September’s data was not their fault as they only fed into the system the data that was given to them. An amazing admission, from a group that is publicly funded and whose output is splashed across headlines with irritating regularity. And who knows how many more mathematical errors have been made?

What is most concerning about this is that governments around the world use data from organisations such as GISS to set policy. Not only hyperbolic policy about wanting to reduce carbon emissions, but fiscal policy that directly affects the pound, peso, euro or dollar in your pocket. For example, the UK government intends to expand its emissions-based vehicle duty programme from 2009 (possibly to be postponed to 2010) to charge up to £950 per year for the highest emitting vehicles. Richmond Council in London charges drivers of vehicles in the existing Band G, £300 for the privilege of not driving their cars, but for parking them.

Climate Change? Yes, the climate changes, almost every day. Does man cause it? Maybe, but there are many more factors than GISS can calculate and we should not be taxed for something that cannot be proven. Should we change our ways? Maybe… walk or cycle a couple of times a week, fly less, turn the TV off at night. Dump the Land Rover or give up foreign holidays? No thanks.

Global Warming? No, not if weather reports are to be believed (and they are readings of actual facts). Europe is gearing up for a record skiing season. The ice caps are recovering. The planet does not appear to be heating up.

Here’s my proposal: shut down GISS and the other three bodies that have charged themselves with reporting on climate change. These people are using very dodgy “science” and have been consistently proven wrong in their calculations and findings. The bad reporting of the October data is the final nail in the coffin. Divert some of their funding to CERN, a relatively independent body who have some of the smartest minds on the planet. Let them tell us what is going on with the world’s weather. In the meantime, Darling et al can stop using Climate Change as an inconvenient excuse to tax us for driving or flying, especially when the money is used for nothing related to reducing emissions. As for the rest of the funding, use it for genuine good causes such as reducing world poverty and famine, things that we can impact.
 

Please vote for me as the Best New Blog at the 2008 WebLog Awards:

http://2008.weblogawards.org/nominations/best-new-blog/

You don’t need to register and nominations can be anonymous.

Thanks in advance.

 

George Osborne is in the headlines yet again for more misdemeanours against the political system. His crime: daring to oppose the government’s tax and spend plans to stave off the recession.

No sooner had the dust settled after this summer’s shenanigans on an oligarch’s yacht, than the Shadow Chancellor finds himself defending his speeches that have allegedly got the power to cause a “run on the pound”. George has been told by the Labour party that his loose lips are causing damage to Sterling’s reputation and further devaluing our beleaguered currency.

This harm obviously has nothing whatsoever to do with Darling and Brown’s mismanagement of the economy, to the point where we have spent £37bn of potential tax revenues on propping up banks and now propose to give away £15bn in “tax cuts” to stimulate a recovery. (Actually, they will not be tax cuts, but tax fiddles and tinkerings that will give tax credits to dole queuers, funded by those of us with jobs; seemingly the logic goes that the poor will spend any extra money they get, whereas the rest of us will squander it in a high deposit savings account for a rainy day).

However, when someone has the temerity to point out that all this spending has to be funded somehow, they are treated as a heretic and there are calls for the warming up of a stake.

David Cameron was similarly pilloried last week for calling for an urgent and far-reaching inquiry into the situation that led to the death of “Baby P” in Haringey, just years after a similar case in the same council social department. Dave was castigated by Big Gordo for not helping the situation. Let’s not forget that Clunking Fist Brown has recently called for inquiries into Osborne’s party going on summer hols, as well as the foul-mouthed antics of a pair of Radio 2 DJs. Not really in the same league as an inquiry into the failings of social care that have caused the deaths of two children (so far).

Startling news from Tessa Jowell that the UK would not have bid for the Olympics in 2012 if the government had known that a recession was around the corner. She also admitted that the budget as presented in 2005 was sceptically received by the Treasury.

Ok, so now we know that we are in a slump, we should change tack with the whole project. Look at alternatives: are Paris still willing to take it on? (Answer: Maybe, but probably not) Can we cut the cost from £9.3bn? (Answer: Yes) Can we re-use existing facilities throughout the UK and make it a UK Olympics, rather than a London Olympics? (Answer: Yes).

It is time to be honest; we don't have £10bn to spend on the luxury of watching people running about and throwing things. We can't even afford to heat our homes or fill our cars with fuel. Sack all the consultants and hangers-on. Use Lords, Twickenham, Old Trafford, the Millenium Stadium, Wembley. Implement a scaled-down plan. Most people will appreciate that.
 

I see that "gas" prices (as our US cousins refer to petrol) have fallen by about 25% at the pump since I was there in July this year.

Why are we still paying so much in the UK? When will Gordon Brown put his money where his mouth is, and really kick-start his failed economy by cutting fuel duty?

If this was a truly global recession, as Gordo keep reiterating (Note: the UK is not in a recession; it is in a Global Recession), then our economy would be more linked to changes in world commodity prices. However, we also have to carry the burden of the government’s misuse of our fuel duty to prop up its own pensions and plasma TV purchases.

At this rate it will be cheaper to post your car to its destination.

PS: I should be applauding the Chancellor’s not-quite-announcement that he is to postpone the planned changes to VED that would eventually see almost four-figure sums for some in road tax. But I won’t. Because (a) it’s only postponed for a year, not canned and, (b) why does he expect a pat on the back for not introducing a policy that no-one wanted in the first place and which has irreversibly driven down the values of second-hand cars.
 

Paul Clark, the Transport Minister (apparently, never heard of him, must have snuck in the back door during Mandy’s re-re-entrance into the Cabinet), quietly announced a trial into road pricing yesterday.

This is despite the fact that the government announced last year that it had abandoned national road-pricing. However, this same government is now trialling the scheme with a view to applying it to congestion charging, bridge tolls and using new motorway lanes (which we have already paid for via our tax…). It won’t be long before all these local schemes add up to one big national scheme. But since Labour play fast and loose with the English language – trains are not overcrowded, they are acceptably loaded – this is not the same as national road pricing.

What started with the Iowa caucus in January (was it only January? It seems like a decade ago), finally came to an end this morning with the US election result being declared. In case you hadn’t noticed, and it was difficult not to, what with half of the UK’s journalists currently on junkets in America, the United States has elected a new president.

At last it will be safe to turn on the news and not hear about caucus’ (whatever they are), Sarah Palin, Hockey “moms”, electoral colleges and running-mates.

…Jeremy Clarkson, who had the cheek to refer to lorry drivers as habitual murderers of prostitutes on last Sunday’s episode of Top Gear.

Look, Mr and Mrs High-Dudgeon of Tonbridge Wells: JC was presenting a piece about trucks and decided to make things a bit more humourous by making a massively sweeping generalisation based on the slimmest of facts that maybe, once or twice in the past, a lorry driver has been convicted of murder. Just because someone says something, it doesn’t make it right, or the truth. Humour is about taking information and twisting it to suit.

The Taleban have been driven out of Afghanistan and Iraq and are currently editing The Daily Mail.

At least no-one has yet complained about his reference to “pikeys” in the same episode…