Archive for November, 2008
Posted by michael on November 30, 2008
I don’t know how most people view the Damian Green being arrested becaause he received leaked information from a government department.
I cannot help being very concerned that this whole situation shows that New Labour are happy to withold information from the public on the grounds of protecting their reputation!
The government is saying that they did not know that police were brought into the case. But that indicates to me that they are not in control of the civil servents who appear to be able to act as they choose to! The government should have known, they should have been required to give permission to involve the police.
How much more information is still hidden from us? This is not secret or sensitive data we are talking about.
It is standard information we would normally expect to see in the public domain, but New Labour are witholding it because it puts them in a bad light, maybe even going so far as to show New Labour as being unable to achieve their stated goals and ambitions.
Surely this is no different to a minister telling the public a pack of lies about how well their policies are being implemented; except that thay are hiding the truth by not telling anything!
I feel that this whole episode is very important from the perspective of a democratice government which has a duty to the people of the UK.
Posted in Blogroll, UK Economy | Tagged: civil servent, conservative, green, labour, leaks, minister, shadow, whistleblower | 1 Comment »
Posted by michael on November 19, 2008
The government are again talking about building projects to inject cash into the economy. They want people to spend the money, not to save it!
But there seem to be some flaws in this proposal. First the lead time in planning, designing and getting projects to the point where building can start is likely to be quite a long time. But for importantly, the government is unable to restrict the available jobs to people who are resident in the UK!
We have already seen the UK flooded by European workers all happy to work at low rates and all of them happy to take their earnings back to their own countries!
A large amount of the money spent on jobs will not be used to get the UK economy going again, instead it will be used to help the economies of other European countries!
Of course the citizens of the UK will end up paying back all this borrowed money! I doubt that there will be too many people from other European countries sending us money to repay this debt!
Posted in Blogroll, credit crunch, debt, economy, financial | Tagged: building project, cash, recession, stimulus, UK Economy | 2 Comments »
Posted by michael on November 11, 2008
The PM has just (11-nov-2008) said that the UK has low debt levels and therefore it is acceptable to borrow more money to fund the attempts to get out of the recession.
But the PM is redefining the definition of ‘debt’ that he refers to.
Basically he has decided that the definition of UK debt that he will refer to does not now include the money spent on Northern Rock, on Bradford and Bingley, on the bank bail out and the PFI debt.
So it seems to me that Mr Brown is saying that provided we don’t count a lot of the debt that the UK has, then the UK does not have a lot of debt and can therefore borrow more!
Now, on that basis, I can ignore that fact that I don’t have a high income and can borrow money on credit cards and loans and purchase anything I want! Well, why not? If I simply ignore all my debts then why shouldn’t I borrow more?
The UK government is doing just this!
Posted in Blogroll, credit crunch, debt, financial | Tagged: credit crunch, debt, economy, recession, uk | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on November 11, 2008
The PM has just (11-nov-2008) said that the UK has low debt levels and therefore it is acceptable to borrow more money to fund the attempts to get out of the recession.
But the PM is redefining the definition of ‘debt’ that he refers to.
Basically he has decided that the definition of UK debt that he will refer to does not now include the money spent on Northern Rock, on Bradford and Bingley, on the bank bail out and the PFI debt.
So it seems to me that Mr Brown is saying that provided we don’t count a lot of the debt that the UK has, then the UK does not have a lot of debt and can therefore borrow more!
Now, on that basis, I can ignore that fact that I don’t have a high income and can borrow money on credit cards and loans and purchase anything I want! Well, why not? If I simply ignore all my debts then why shouldn’t I borrow more?
The UK government is doing just this!
Posted in Blogroll, credit crunch, debt, financial | Tagged: credit crunch, debt, economy, recession, uk | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on November 9, 2008
Recently the government have been very certain in their plans to borrow a huge amount to spent on building projects. The PM has been adamant that this is what needs to be done.
The opposition have said publicly that this would be wrong because it would not work and would leave a legacy of debt that would need to be repaid in the future.
It is now being revealed that the government has changed it’s mind and will be introducing tax cuts in an attempt to revitalise the economy.
I trust that they will publicly acknowledge that this was the stated policy of the opposition.
What I want to see the government do with the tax cuts is to only provide them to households with an income of less than, say, £30K per annum.
Why?
- Because these are the people who need the money.
- These are the people who are being squeezed financially with increased costs for most things that they have to buy.
- These are the people who will need to spend the extra mony (those who can afford to live without extra handouts will simply save the money and won’t help the economy be spending it)
Those on benefits should also have a share of this spending power although this will need a decision by them to make money available to the benefits system. But they need to make this decision simply on compassionate grounds.
Posted in Blogroll, financial, Uncategorized | Tagged: benefit, benefits, economy, tax, tax cuts, uk | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on November 7, 2008
Base interest rates have been cut by 1.5%
So that should reduce people’s mortgages and loans and credit card payments. But the banks seem to be trying to keep the higher rates in place whilst taking advantage of reduced base rate.
The fact that Lloyds TSB and Abbey have said they will pass the cut on in full means that every other bank could do the same if they wanted to!
Unfortunately the banks seem to want to get their profit margins restored. In my view this should not be allowed to happen. The banks failed the people of the UK by their greedy rush to make as much money as possible over the last ten years.
Record profits have been announced. Huge payouts in bonuses and incentives have been given to those who run the organisations.
But this has, in my view, been at a great cost to ordinary people and businesses. We are threatened by recession, many people have lost their jobs and many business have folded often at great cost to those who set them up in the first place.
The banks should not be allowed to go back to paying huge bonuses for directors and senior staff. They have had their day, the feeding frenzy should now be stopped!
The regulatory bodies, who themselves have failed by allowing the banks to behave in such a greedy way, should now step in and dictate the limits that the banks are allowed to charge the public and businesses for their services.
Posted in Blogroll, debt, financial, Uncategorized | Tagged: bank, banks, control, regulatory bodies | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on November 4, 2008
The Prime Minister seems determined to go ahead with spending his way out of the recession by borrowing a large amount of money to spend on large, presumably labour-intensive, building projects.
He said: ‘The responsible course of action is for borrowing for the investment that is necessary both now and for the long term – and for borrowing to fall as a proportion of national income as the economy recovers and as tax revenues rise again.’
The idea would seem to be to provide jobs for the people involved in these projects, and then expect them to spend the money thus helping shops and businesses. This would infer that the bulk of these jobs would be in the building sector.
But it would seem to me that there is an inherent problem with this approach.
Basically the government is unable to restrict the available jobs to people who are resdent in the UK!
We have already seen the UK flooded by European workers all happy to work at low rates and all of them happy to take their earnings back to their own countries!
A large amount of the money spent on jobs will not be used to get the UK economy going again, instead it will be used to help the economies of other European countries!
Of course the citizens of the UK will end up paying back all this borrowed money! I doubt that there will be too many people from other European countries sending us money to repay this debt!
Posted in Blogroll, economy, financial, recession, Uncategorized | Tagged: borrowing, economy, recession, uk | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on November 4, 2008
A European Commission six-monthly report has suggested that the European Union itself was in, or was close to, recession. They also say that:
Britain will be hit the hardest by the recession compared to the other European leading economies.
Only Estonia and Latvia will suffer deeper recessions than Britain!!!!!
This contradicts the UK government statements that Britain is ‘well placed‘ to withstand a recession!
So why are we getting these contradictory reports? Surely The European Commission has the full facts of the state of the UK economy. Surely the government doesn’t have a ‘second set of books’ which they use to run the UK economy.
It doesn’t make any sense to me that the European Union officials will have a different view of the state of the UK economy than the government since both sets of people are working from the same data!
Posted in Blogroll, Euopean Union, Europe, financial, UK Economy | Tagged: economy, recession, uk | 1 Comment »
Posted by michael on November 3, 2008
It is hardly surprising that many people are very concerned about the government’s plans for huge databases holding all our personal information and identity details.
For a start there is the ‘can we trust a future government not to enslave us’ concern. This is a serious concern. Once all our details are online then it just takes a click of a mouse to deny us access to our bank accounts, to put false information into our police records or to remove our identity altogether!
But at this point of time the question is ‘can the government keep our identity details safe and secure’? And the answer seems to be a resounding ‘NO‘!
The Daily Mail reports the Prime Minister saying that
It is important to recognise that we cannot promise that every single item of information will always be safe because mistakes are made by human beings.
(3rd November 2008)
This is an admission that everyone who has said that the State should not be holding all this private and personal data on huge computer systems is in fact correct! The Government seems to have enough trouble keeping secure and safe the information on us that it currently holds.
Recent blunders with people’ identity details include:
- A memory stick holding passwords which allowed access to the Inland Revenue tax and child benefits Gateway website was found in a car park.
- The loss of a computer hard drive containing personal details of approximately 100,000 members of the Armed Forces was lost.
- A memory stick containing details of approximately 84,000 prisoners was lost.
- A ‘top secret’ report on Al-Qaeda was left on a train by an intelligence office.
And don’t forget the classic loss from HMRC of two computer discs whch contained the details of everyone who recieved child benefit. That was approximately 25 million people!
And in case people think that these ‘losses’ are unavoidable where human beings are managing the data then of course they are right. What compounds the problem is that huge amounts of data can be stored on very small devices which can fit in pockets or bags.
They can easily be mislaid or stolen. In fact it is often difficult to know which it is, and this means that these losses always have to be treated as though the worse case scenario has occurred.
So who wants to trust any government with massive computer systems which hold all our personal identity details?
Posted in Blogroll | Tagged: computer systems, identity theft | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on November 1, 2008
I came across this blog. well worth a read.
http://johnibii.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/specter-of-deflation-lurks-as-global-demand-drops/
As dozens of countries slip deeper into financial distress, a new threat may be gathering force within the American economy — the prospect that goods will pile up waiting for buyers and prices will fall, suffocating fresh investment and worsening joblessness for months or even years.
By Peter S. Goodman
The New York Times
The word for this is deflation, or declining prices, a term that gives economists chills.
Deflation accompanied the Depression of the 1930s. Persistently falling prices also were at the heart of Japan’s so-called lost decade after the catastrophic collapse of its real estate bubble at the end of the 1980s — a period in which some experts now find parallels to the American predicament.
Definition: Deflation occurs when prices are declining over time. This is the opposite of inflation; when the inflation rate (by some measure) is negative, the economy is in a deflationary period.
http://economics.about.com/cs/economicsglossary/g/deflation.htm
Annd another definition
Investopedia Says:
Declining prices, if they persist, generally create a vicious spiral of negatives such as falling profits, closing factories, shrinking employment and incomes, and increasing defaults on loans by companies and individuals. To counter deflation, the Federal Reserve (the Fed) can use monetary policy to increase the money supply and deliberately induce rising prices, causing inflation. Rising prices provide an essential lubricant for any sustained recovery because businesses increase profits and take some of the depressive pressures off wages and debtors of every kind.
A general decline in prices, often caused by a reduction in the supply of money or credit. Deflation can be caused also by a decrease in government, personal or investment spending. The opposite of inflation, deflation has the side effect of increased unemployment since there is a lower level of demand in the economy, which can lead to an economic depression.
http://www.answers.com/topic/deflation
Use the link above to read the whole article.
Posted in Blogroll, debt, financial | Tagged: deflation, employment, johnibii, unemployment | Leave a Comment »
