End of year report 2011

We have had a costly 30 years of experiments in social engineering culminating the astonishing hubris-fest of the EU - which/who (who cares? It's a deceased laughing stock anyway) remain(s) in fundamental denial. If anyone still can't see that this did not work out well, then they really do deserve what's coming.

It's time we took into account the effects of instantaneous global communication. It has changed everything but politicians' ambition, greed and stupidity.

"Globalisation" was a phenomenon of the first phase of communication, where large companies rushed to take advantage of things like Indian call centres, but that was actually only a very brief period, before anyone with £10 a month was on the same page. But we are still stuck with the consequences of the bullying cartels of behemoths.

The shift from the old imperial 80/20 world to one where 50% of the countries control 50% of the wealth; but we have not really reacted to these challenges very intelligently yet. This suits global brands and companies who don't care about the social consequences of this type of tectonic shift - especially those emerging in BRIC nations. All they see are more customers, more easily accessible in more organised trading blocs.

But large anything is generally ultimately self defeating as the inertia and inbreeding overwhelms innovation; starting with the ancient empires. We can make an obvious start with the EU, but we need to chop absofeckinlutely everything back into smaller units where anyone can see a path to the top once more. Old-fashioned nations and countries make quite nice and obvious "units" for their own internal organisation and social strategies - and they can trade freely with other countries.

The UK has a particular problem with the BBC - which did sterling work up the Birt/Dyke era - but which now needs to be sliced up and operated as a federation of regional offices, and staffed with people recruited from the real world. And not allowed to re-congeal in the way that commercial local radio has lost the plot. Maybe the start of 24 hour rolling news in the UK (Falklands War?) also marked a point where our obsession with the media started to become unhealthy.

Education? Get a parent back at home until the kids are at least 6 years old. It's not as if the economy is awash with unfilled jobs; and working from home is now more practical than at any time since the cottage industries that fed the industrial revolution. Quite carefully contrived policies of social engineering have pressured both parents into working, so that the state indoctrination centres could set their kids on the politically correct paths. The education mafia knows full well that most frazzled parents haven't got the energy left to try and re-educate and discipline their kids in the real world.

Sorted.

A light at the end of the channel tunnel.

The EU began life as the "Common Market" - a very simple concept where countries agreed to cut out border controls and allow the free passage of goods between members. Thus trading barriers were no longer going to be used as a pawn in the games of politics between members.

The next obvious thing for any Frenchman was the creation of barriers for all those outside le club; and the relentless exploitation of the rules within to ensure that French interests (especially those dear to their Gallic passions of agriculture and fisheries) would prevail.



At this point the Germans were still feeling guilty about the war, and compliantly went along to avoid appearing awkward and disruptive. Besides, they were busy reconstructing their industry using the "new for bombed-flat" option - while un-invaded Britain was making do and mending all those hopelessly inefficient Georgian/Victorian factories and all the ancient infrastructure, whilst establishing itself as a theme park of former glories.


As the echoes of the Old Empire translated into the realities of the New Commonwealth - a situation forced on the UK by the USA of all countries in return for assistance during WW2 - so the Brits felt a bit "empty nest". Was there anything to lose in a Europe that appeared to have got over its tedious nationalistic squabbles (with the looming spectre of Russia's influence in the East help concentrate minds)  and was focused on economic progress - and safety in numbers..?

Free Trade? Surely there was no harm in that for the island nation that pretty much invented the concept of international trade and the allied banking services. The only worry for us was that its champion at the time was Edward Heath, who was never really quite "of this world", leading many to wonder just what the old goat had given away for the French to change their stance from De Gaul's hitherto implacable "non".

And then it happened. Obviously, free trade is only a good idea where that trade can be carried out on the basis that all those trading are working on a "level playing field" - where all companies and institutions must suffer the same overheads, or be at a competitive disadvantage. Otherwise, mass production must always drift to the lowest cost countries, which is not just labour costs, but also the whole cost of doing business. An economy where the government spends 40% of the budget is always going to be quite unable to compete with a country where government spends less, and interferes less.

The only alternative to the wildly overpaid politicians getting out of the way (which they would never do other than at the end of a gun)  is to impose the same costs (highest common denominator) on the other members; and the way to do that as the famously bureaucratic French knew along, would be to impose the same costly time-wasting directives and laws on everyone. And in the process, build a set of central institutions and the finest political gravy train the world had ever seen, that would suit their mentality and that of their Belgian pals down to the ground. And mostly paid for for by the other members.

However, while all this relentless social engineering and self-congratulation was going on in Europe, the world had not stood still. The population of emerging countries like China, India, Pakistan (indeed, most of the Islamic world) had grown 5 fold since the EEC kicked off. Thus these countries now represented serious markets in their own rights - and they were outside the EU club; so they were not hampered by the escalating costs of playing EU political games, and the vast gravy train that had been created by people who had mostly never ever created wealth for a living.

The curious and impractical response of the EU was to dive headlong into a monetary union with the Euro. There is no example of any country anywhere ever bucking the opinions of free markets (which is why the present Reichmarshalls of Brussels and Strasbourg needed to try and hobble the City of London). A far more practical form of conformity that would set Europe up on the global stage would be to acknowledge what has happened anyway (much to the chagrin of the French, who thought they had established French in the role at the outset) and adopt English as the standard language of business and government.
So what did the Americans make of this? They looked on the EU as some sort of European homage to the success of the US federal system that made it a lot simpler for US companies to invade 27 countries' markets through a single beach head and currency. And when the extant threat of Russia was downgraded, the US arms industry worked tirelessly to find new bogeymen that would ensure it would continue to live well off paranoia, plus provide a new crusade to bring democracy to all - and with it the opportunity to buy politicians for US commercial ambitions. The old tyrants had served their purpose for the US, and the game moved on to domination through commercial globalisation. However, if Uncle Sam wants to be consistent, he will need to invade the EU in order to re-establish democracy - because one thing is for dead certain, the people of Europe are not being asked to vote on anything now being done in their name.

The idea of a contrived currency - which is the ultimate expression of a nation's sovereignty - really was the last straw in the hubris-fest that is the EU. A currency that did not reflect the economic reality of the nation printing it was always doomed; it was and is an insult to even a modestly objective sentient being. The Euro always was a vanity project of idiots, and was conceived during a  time when it was demonstrably tricky to move money around the world; but technology fixed all that, as anyone with a plastic card knows. (The existing banking and credit card systems actually do a piss poor job, as witnessed by their own collapse, and the super efficiency of the gruesome Paypal - but that's another story.)

The Cameron veto has been a huge distraction from the real issues. Anything the EU is doing now will not save the Euro; the markets have already begun to discount the end of the Euro. Sarkozy and Merkel are being criminally irresponsible by playing politics with the fortunes of all Europeans, and along with the rest of the present gang of EU pygmies, may ultimately need to be removed by an insurrection lead by realistic and sane people.

Once the Germans finally tell Merkel to give up and resurrect the mark, one amusement we have to look forward to is how the Germans cope with having a currency that is effectively worth double that of the failing EU states, compared to now. Germans will most likely buy cheap property around the failed economies of countries like Spain and Greece. But within a couple of years, a new and sustainable economic reality wiull have been established - and we will wonder what all the fuss was about, as the old status-quo re-emerges.

Most roads to hell are paved with good intentions, but the Euro was never a "good intention". The Euro was always part of a cunning plan to politically castrate the nations of the EU and control all budgets centrally without recourse to local democratic interference. The wizzened schemers behind the plot knew very well what the end game would need to be, and relied on a combination of inertia and the fresh faced idiots (every country has its Cleggs) to carry it along on a wave of idealistic EUphoria. As indeed they had done during the steady process of removing all vestiges of democracy from the EU.

If there is any justice, there will be 26 EU leaders and the various Eminences Grises in the dock at an international court, facing charges of economic crimes.

Oh yes, and that light at the end of the channel tunnel? Would it be too much to hope that it was Nicholas Sarkozy, spontaneously combusting?

Not the same old same old

The economy needs a total rethink and reset. Simply allowing the same ovine idiots that got us where we are to try and get us out again is complete madness. So then...

Print LOADS of money! After all, the world boomed happily in its ignorance through the early noughties under this illusion, and all politicians assured us that we never had it so good. This time we will do it with our eyes open.

We're going to have to do it anyway, but instead of giving it to wrong people (again) this time give everyone over the age of 30 who was born in the UK £150k, with the condition that this is first used to pay off all existing mortgages/loans.

And anyone over the age of 50 will have £50k of it compulsorily allocated to some form of creative pension fund that will be used to invest in UK businesses.

In this way, prudent savers will be rewarded for once; banks will be recapitalised - and those prudent types without debt will have a windfall with which get the economy going again like a train.

Obviously some smart thinking is needed to devise a framework that prevents grotesque asset price inflation and feckless spending on imported goods, .

A simple hike of VAT to 50% on imported cars and luxury goods would tax most of this back off the feeble-willed anyway.

Oh yes, and quit the EU. Obviously.

Lest we forget who got us where we are today

Well, TMP has to agree with Janet Daley as usual.

"The great irony of the mess we are now in is that this concept of a totally rational, perfect society which must be imposed on actual people, each with his own distinct experience and perception of life, was the same delusion that wreaked havoc in Europe for generations. From one Terror to another, Robespierre to Stalin, the enforced experiments ran their course. And virtually every one required the “temporary” expunging of democracy."

Now that the EU has been proved beyond all doubt to be a shambolic combination of towering political hubris and naive economic denial, this Big Issue is how to replace ALL the present political ruling classes in the UK and EU with something that is rather more reactive to the will of the people?.

At today's Cenotaph ceremony, not one elected front line politician on view had served in any one of the armed forces. How do those who lost relatives and limbs feel about this "parade" of twats going through the motions, I wonder?

It seems that be successful in politics today, you have to start the brown-nosing at a very early age that precludes the opportunity to attain any degree of experience of the real world. None of our leaders have ever had any experience of running any sort of "real world" enterprise either. Surely to God we are going to wake up and realise that it is supreme folly to keep on handing the nation over to this sorry lot to fuck up as they invariably manage to do?

Down the river: capitalism explained in one essay

Once upon a time there were ten farmers on the banks of the Nile, each using an irrigation pump, the last word in high technology at the time. Every year, on average, one pump would break, the farmer would lose his crop before it could be repaired, and he and his family would be destitute.

So the farmers agreed that each would hand over 1/10th of their own crop to whichever of them was unlucky. This led to endless disputes however, because not all the farms were the same, and the local wise man, Ali, was forever being pressed to mediate. In the end Ali said "Look, each of you can pay me a little money every month, and I shall decide who would be entitled to what and when, and I will insist that your pump is maintained, and I shall not be involved in your endless argument about who is marrying whose son to whoever's daughter or who stole whose ox, and I shall simply see that the scheme is fair - and I shall take a small cut."

The farmers agreed. And now they no longer had to keep funds back in case their pump failed and destroyed their crop, they all grew their farms, and the people of the Nile ate better, and the farmers grew richer, and Ali made money.

So well did this new idea of insurance work that Ali's two cousins, also called Ali, started similar schemes for the fishermen of the delta and the cattle farmers in the hills.

And Ali went to his farmers and said "Ok, now you no longer worry about your pump bankrupting you, how come you are still keeping money under your beds, and not putting more land under cultivation?"

The farmers shook their heads and explained that every generation or so the Nile would burst its banks and flood their fields, destroying the crop. And of course Ali's fund could not insure against that, because it would not have the money, since everyone would need it at once.

When Ali asked his cousins, he found that they had the same prblem - the fishermen could not be insured against storms, not the hill farmers against cattle diesease. So Ali suggested they each define and price the risk, and then sell it to each other. That way, if the cattle all died, the fishermen and corn farmers would back them up. After all, it was unlikley the Nile would flood and there would be a storm that sank the ships and the cattle would all die in the same year. So the Alis insured all their clients, and sold the risk to each other, creating derivitives.

Once again, because the farmers and fishermen had monetised their risks, they bought more boats, supported more cattle, and put more land under cultivation, and the people of the land were better fed, and richer, and happier.

So rich had the farmers become that they came to Ali and asked if he could build a vault and look after their money for them. So Ali built a bank. But he noticed that sometimes the farmers took out, and sometimes they put in, but there was always a large sum sat in the vault, because they all needed money at different times, and it averaged out. So he suggested they lend out half of the money for interest, and split the profits. The farmers agreed, and now they too could borrow money and expand their farms. And again more crops were grown, and everyone was happier and richer, the population expanded, less people starved, and the beggars found the townsfolk more generous.

But the farmers tended to take out their money in the Spring and bank it in the Autumn, whereas the other two Alis had quite different patterns. So the Alis started lending to each other, and that way all of them could lend more money to their customers. And once again, now retail banking and interbank lending had been created, the farms expanded, more boats were built, everyone ate better and grew richer.

Once again Ali went to the farmers and said, "OK, you have credit facilities, you are insured against natural disasters, but even now you have huge tracts of land not in use, and there are people who would love to work for you begging in the streets - what holds you back?"

The farmers explained that some years corn was expensive and they made money, and some years it was cheap and they did not. They needed to keep money back. So once again the three Alis got together. They agreed to buy part of the farmer's and the fishermen's output at the most likely price months in advance - at a discount of course. And then they sold those futures to each other, so that no one of them was exposed to a bad year in one product.

Yet again the Alis grew richer, the farmers and fishermen expanded their industries, the land was better used, and everyone ate better and was happier.

Ali went to one of the best and richest farmers and asked him "If your farm was triple the size, would you make triple the money?" The farmer laughed and explained much of the time his capital equipment was idle - if his farm was triple the size he'd make five times the money, but he simply could not afford to borrow the money to do it. So Ali suggested he divide his business into shares, explain how he planned to grow it three times over, and invited the rich merchants in the town to buy some of the shares. So he did. And the farm grew hugely, and became much more efficient, and made much more money. And although not all of the money was farmer's, he was still richer. As were the merchants. And, of course, Ali, who had handled the floatation. Because the land was now better used, the people ate better too. Soon all the farmers were at it, and people began to trade theshares in the stock exchange. Thus people who had no desire to farm or fish could invest in corn and fish.

Abdi was not a very good farmer, although he was a clever and energetic man, because he prefered to hang around the town gossiping in taverns. The value of the shares in his farm did not rise, but those of his neighbour did. Eventually his neighbour was able to buy the shares by selling only some of his own, and took to running Abdi's farm himself much better, causing the shares to rise again. So the land was better used, everyone ate better, everyone became richer, and everyone was happy.

The next time Ali saw Abdi, Abdi was, far from impoverished, looking very affluent indeed. He asked Ali if he remembered a man who had come to the bank with a new design of water pump, wanting to borrow money to make it. Ali knew nothing of water pumps, so could not tell if it was better or worse, and had sent him away. Abdi though had spent twenty years cursing water pumps, and could see that this was a far superior device. So he had loaned the young man the money he needed in return for half the profits, and now every farmer was buying their pumps. Abdi had switched from being a farmer to being a venture capitalist, and once again more food was being produced and everyone was better fed, richer, and happier. Soon, thanks to Abdi's support of promising ideas, carts would be getting better, threshing machines improving, and resource use improving by leaps and bounds.

Abdi was making money faster than he could invest it. Fortunately, he knew all about the farms, and he knew all the individual farmers and their flaws, so when he invested it in shares he made money faster than anyone else. Soon Ali came to him with a proposal. He would ask Abdi to invest his money for him in the right shares, and pay Abdi to do it. So well did this work that many of Ali's friends did the same. So now Abdi was a fund manager. Of course, Abdi's specialist knowledge was pushing money in the diretion of the best and most efficient farms, which then had the capital to grow. So one again the crop expanded.

For a few years, each Summer, Abdi gave Ali a big bag of coins. One year however he arrived crestfallen and explained that, thanks to a war in Numidia, it had been a bad year for farming and, even though he had picked all the shares that did best, they had still all lost value. Ali was sympathetic - he expected to win some years, lose others. Abdi was upset to find though that many of his investors wanted safety, and had withdrawn their funds. Then Ali had an idea. If Abdi had bought shares in a good farm, but agreed to sell shares he did not yet own in a bad farm, then he would still have made money. If the market overall had stayed flat, his "good shares" would have gone up, so he would have made money. But his "bad shares" would have gone down, so he could now buy them for less than he contracted to sell them for, so he would make money there too. If the market had gone up, then we would have made lots of money on the "good shares", and lost not as much on the "bad shares". And if the market had gone down he would have lost money on the "good shares" but made more on the "bad shares".

"Look at it This way Abdi - you want to bet on your specialist knowledge of the individual farms, not on how farms will do generally. "Hedge your bets - bet on how farms do against each other, not overall, and offer that fund to people who want to play safe."

And thus Abdi and Ali invented the hedge fund, once again bringing out money into the world, where it could be used to direct resources, instead of lying idle under a mattress.

Then Ali asked Abdi about his water pumps - how come the factory was still quite small, and the pumps hence so expensive? Abdi sighed. The trouble was that the farmers were now such big companies they could demand a year or more of credit. And, locally, they were now really just three giant farms, each buying hundreds of pumps a year. Abdi dare not let his business partner expand the company further, because if even one of those farms went bust it would send them bust in turn.

Once again the three Alis got together and found they all had the same problems. So they created, and traded, Credit Default Swaps, effectively an insurance against a specific company, with which they had nothing to do, going bust. Once the pump maker, and the shipwright, and the animal feed merchant could buy those, they were happy to ramp up production of pumps, boats and animal feed.

So, again, resources were used better, more food was grown, more people were employed, and the people were better fed, employed, richer, and happier. Happiest, best fed, and richest of all was Ali, and the fact that a small number of badly dressed, underachieving ignorant people failed to understand that they lived off the taxes he paid and wanted to burn down his bank bothered him very little.

Epilogue:

If you live by a lake with a river flowing in and out, and sometimes the lake floods your house, you might well build an embankment round it to keep you dry. But if there are dams up river, and some idiot opens all the gates at the same time, not only will your embankment burst, but it will have stored up more water with which to wash away your house. If that happens, whom do you blame? The people who built the embankments, or the idiots who opened the gates of the dams?

The embankments are of course the derivatives, futures, CDSs, insurance, and all the other financial instruments that should have protected us all. The water is the credit, the dams are liquidity ratios and central bank interest rates. And the idiots who opened them are our political masters.

Next week I'll show you how the Pharaoh started to use the three Alis for his own purposes and, in the end, bankrupted them, along with the people of the Nile.


Unashamedly stolen from Louis Dobson:

http://probablyworsethanyouthink.blogspot.com/2011/09/on-banks-of-nile.html

Licensed to print money

If all £75bn of the latest QE fairy money gets lavished on the NHS and feeding all the usual socialist sacred cows and filling the black holes of public employment that only dissipate wealth - then we truly will have learned absofuckinglutely NOTHING from the past 60 years.

 

Using money for propping up banks to keep interest rates low is a real conundrum. Forcing banks to lend isn't going to happen - they are far too skilled at conniving their way around any "deals to stimulate small businesses"; the government needs to get cash directly to the economy, and forget the paralysed banks for the time being. The people of the US are getting ready to lynch the financial wizards of Wall Street - the suppression of this news suggests that other countries' media have been asked to avoid coverage for fear of a global copycat reaction. In light of the UK riots, some all-too-credible conspiracy theories suggest that the outage of Blackberry network was the result of RIM being ordered to put measures in place to switch it all off instantaneously - if the call to arms goes out as a BBM.

However, the egg throwers of Turkey did manage to make it to the BBC News channel with this priceless moment, when a presenter nails the "triple pun of the week" trophy:

 

It is obvious that something - anything - needs be done, and fast; so TMP has a cunning plan!

Sadly, TMP's bank has yet to acknowledge the £20bn we decided to quantitatively ease into to our account; this is most unsporting of them, since we want to help out Eddie George, and do our bit to re-energise the UK economy.  After all, if the idea is that economy gets moving again when money is spent, we PROMISE not to allow the cash to sit on any bank's balance sheet for a moment longer than it take to drive the van round for the readies.

Whereupon, TMP will be commissioning new buildings, expensive yachts, important Works of Art and hiring all manner of small businesses to do all sorts of useful stuff in the PRIVATE SECTOR. And every one will be a British Business providing work for British workers; in fact, we might just decide to restrict our scope to helping Essex, just be sure it goes to good homes.

 

We would make one condition for this support - that any company we deal with had no more than 50 employees, and had taken on (net) one additional member of staff in the past month, because the only sector of the economy capable of employing people in the numbers required are the micro/small businesses - some 9 million enterprises.

 

If they were all encouraged/bribed to take on one more member of staff - who would be self-employed to save paperwork - by subsidising them with at least the job-seekers allowances being paid - and told that all costly and distracting EU-inspired employment law was suspended until the crisis is sorted out, the immediate problem COULD be solved.

 

Another key issue concerns the games played by young female staff, so any employee with less than 5 years service that gets pregnant can be replaced immediately without any costly nonsense about keeping the job open. And as for all those new-age fathers that need paternity leave, they can also be replaced by people who understand that the unaffordable socialist fairyland created by the EU and Labour over the past 25 years has been put back in the cupboard while the consequences of the EU and 13 years of rampant New Labour stupidities are being sorted out - so their parents' pension might be paid.

 

We need to bring back the post-war reconstruction spirit of the 50s - for a while at least. And despite the current catch up to reality, as SuperMac once observed: "you have never had it so good".

The Usual Suspects

OK, enough. TMP has watched the UK party conferences (God Help Us) and here's the deal:

Together with the embedded financial system and the civil service, this is "the establishment" and these are the people that have "run" the country since WW2, and they have dumped the UK in the biggest financial crisis of all time. They chose to ignore many warnings, obvious precedents and stark reality in pursuit of political power above all else.

Why on earth should we believe that will not continue to do just the same for as long as we, the majority of the people, are willing to let them?

Thanks to the coalition shambles, David Cameron has been obliged to become barely any different to Gordon Brown - his policies aren't very different although since he has PR training and is not a raving sociopath, it will take us all a litle longer to catch on to the fact he his running this country for the benefit of the Establishment, not the people.

Cameron's refusal to hold the promised referendum was the first and biggest clue that he was already a victim of the "Bildeberg" establishment - big multinational businesses and the banks are still all fundamentally in love with the EU and Euro - why would they not be? Remember that the FT was once the most vehement supporter of Britain entering the Euro (along with the BBC, of course) .

Cameron's recent Internet porn filtering announcement may well be a smokescreen to try and bury the fact that the systems are now in place to filter anything out that Big Brother does not want us to see. And maybe the Blackberry crumble was a result of RIM being obliged to test schemes to blackout its userbase "under orders". After all, the BBM is probably "terrorism's" communication method of choice.

TMP didn't ever really expect to find itself in a position of feeling that the only way out of the mess that we find ourselves mired in is a major change in the world order, but the vested interests of the "Bildeberg community" need to be made far more (?democratically) accountable to the people whose lives they affect - and latterly - wreck.

Grrr...

A cunning plan, after all?

So Apple is now worth as much as all euro zone banks..?

There is not nearly enough discussion of what is going on in the Eurozone and where this has GOT to end up. The Europhiliacs at the BBC continue to be in a state of terrified denial, and even Sky News is avoiding the subject in case recession mania causes everyone paying the ~£50 monthly sky tax to consider FreeSat instead.

The Ancient Greeks ironically warned us 3000 years ago: "In a democracy, the people will always vote to spend all the money on themselves". And they never forgot how...

Is is inevitable that the Eurozone will be transformed either into the Fourth Reich (quite possible, we know the Germans enjoy their beach vacations) or chopped back up into a series of discrete "happy go lucky" economies where the industrious and wealth creating rich go for a good time, with the unfortunate occupants of those countries being dragged along in a world in which they are simply not financially or temperamentally equipped to compete.

But fortunately for the rest of us, during most of the period since Ancient Greeks, there was no"democracy". Instead a bunch of human rights denying despots that understood the basics of gathering wealth and empires, by nicking it and keeping it of the hands of those who would waste/spend it.

Maybe the Western allies' moves to force "democracy" on the fabulously wealthy oil states is so that the occupants of those states will start spending the money on themselves and boosting the global economy. There may not be so many gold and marble palaces built, huge offshore bank accounts accumulated or £20m horses bred, but a lot more goods will be bought to keep trading nations ticking over.

Mostly though, has anyone got a better idea?

Attention Rich Bastards leading comfortable lives:

We are where we are, and setting fire to your own neighbourhood is the act of criminal morons, not class warriors and social savants. Plus the BBC, of course, is handing out enough excuses and angst to keep the flames well fanned.

RIP Broken Britain..?  You went soft on discipline.. You went soft on immigration You went soft on crime.. Parents were told.. 'No you can't smack the kids'....Teachers were prevented from chastising kids in schools.. The police couldn't clip a troublemaker round the ear.. Kids had rights blah blah blah.. At worst we have lost a whole generation, but at best we have a vast resource of presently unproductive labour that just might be turned into productive citizens, with a bit of thought and cunning.

The problem is rooted in 40 years of a messed up education system that was stripped of value in the holy name of social engineering in the 70s, and fatally fooked over during the last Labour government which made the already tough process of social (and actual) mobility so much worse by adding VAST heaps of red tape and process that hampers all aspects of education and business.

The gap between richest and poorest grew considerably, largely as a result of Labour's witless efforts to grow and maintain a dependent client state.

But all that does not begin to excuse organised "extreme shopping trips" by the ill-disciplined and amoral underclass; a better answer is to think through a credible social strategy, and then peacefully occupy the streets outside the homes of the witless MPs who are so obsessed with irrelevant trivia like celebrity phone hacking.

So then, here is TMP's suggestion:

Attention Rich Bastards leading comfortable lives: it's time to do your bit. Many of you have taken advantage of the stupidity of Labour's asset bubble and casino economics over the past 15 years.
So pay a reward to anyone turning in a looter. The witness intimidation is likely to be stellar, but this lot come from a culture that will do anything for money. Double bonus for anyone shopping their own granny.

Above all, find ways to ensure that these cretins have something valuable to lose. I am not suggesting the full "Tradings Places" treatment, although that movie contains a very interesting message for our times.

The reward doesn't have to be cash to be spent on crack, but a form of community grant to begin to address some of the underlying issues that are complained about. Money for education; starting businesses...

You're a smart lot, now prove it.

Lord Sugar and the Dragons could very usefully lead this from the front.

How about it?

Mr Patel's Army ..?

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

It's easy to say TMP saw this one coming. If you look back through the archives you will see we have consistently predicted the reality and undercurrents that shape UK society in the past few years.
 Sprinkle on the recent humiliation of all forms of traditional authority resulting from the MP expense fiasco, and then the high profile police resignations around phonegate, and we have a recipe for insurrection. Or do we?

The London riots were all about greed and looting; there was almost no political relevance. There has been no real effect yet felt from so-called "cuts". The rioters were not "protesters" as the BBC controversially insisted on describing them; they were street kids who believed that they could get "free stuff", and that the police (and public) were too scared to stop them.

We have all now seen that the politically neutered Police have not got a chance of dealing with trouble on this modest scale - so there will now have to be organised citizen defence groups, and the best  thing we can do is to accept the fury of "the majority" and channel it into something approaching a modern "Home Guard" to assist the police, and deter the troublemakers at source.

The Turks who defended areas around Hackney have not featured on the "official" news anywhere. is this because the establishment has told the media not give people ideas - after all, we have seen how effective the BBC has been when inciting the riots in the first place by helping spread some notion of entitlement to protest, when a known drug dealer got caught up in an "incident".

It seems undeniable that the whole thing kicked off in the one-parent West Indian community - once the traditional object of fear and disdain by "responsible citizens" because of the undeniable connection between this community and London street crime. But fear of the West Indian gangland community was largely overtaken in the "public bogeyman" stakes by concern for Islamic terrorism.

It moved from these bored schoolkids to include "any old scum" when the BBC implied that there was a consequence-free time to be had looting apparently unpoliced areas. Is it really too much to expect that the BBC (and Sky) could have put up regular notices listing the potential sentences, and warning the (very stupid) rioters that you WILL be caught, and you WILL be jailed, and the goods you have stolen WILL be traced.

Now a big fear for the Met Police must be that the traditionally more coherent and responsible family ethnic/religious groups like Seikhs, Muslims and Hindus are already organising themselves into defence groups. Like the Turks of north London, they are not going to sit by and watch their businesses raided and torched.

This shambles was not the result of a "tiny" minority, but it was the result of a minority that could very easily be outnumbered by relatively small proportion of the responsible communities where they are based that was determined to put a stop to it.

Don't let the fluffies deter you; maybe their 15 year rule or irrelevant social engineering is over at last, and the common sense of the people can prevail once again..?.

Direct action...

Too much fringe social media is used by extremist factions to gee themselves up with "positive feedback", while "normal" people on sites like Facebook shy away from using what is generally a broad and moderate cross-opinion platform for political (or religious) debate.

If you have friends on Facebook whose political views are so at variance with yours, that telling what you believe to be the honest truth, causes friction because you cannot agree to disagree, and then deal with a grown up debate - you have discovered why so many PC-obsessed societies have been unable to hold proper debates and discussions about the onslaught of the breakdown of discipline and self discipline after years of misdirection by irresponsible social manipulators.

It is because we have been manoeuvred into being lost in "PC denial" - thanks to the efforts of the architects of political correctness: Tony "show me the money" Blair and his ghastly wife; Shagger Clinton and his even more dangerous missus, Hilary - plus the entire establishment of the EU - that we are where we are: properly fooked.

Of course it's not the rioters' fault

The problem seems to be that our society is at an end point. The gathering financial storm simply has to recognise that Broon used up all the quick fixes when he tried to buy the last UK general election, and there is no escape from our situation of "no money".

The witless social engineering fluffies that managed to dishonestly finance themselves and their dogma for the past 30 years with fairy money have - without regard for circumstance or relevance - systematically distracted every walk of life by imposing their skewed notions of "accountability" procedures, processes and political correctness that stifles initiative, common sense and any desire to "take responsibility".

The legions of our growing entitlement and benefit culture eagerly leverage this fundamental weakness, and blame everyone and anything but themselves when things go wrong.

Community "leaders" predictably are now saying love, understanding and money needed to rebuild ... Wrong. Leave Tottenham as a smouldering monument to remind us all that the "free social money party" is over, so especially don't shit on your own doorsteps. Instead, you need to defend them and disarm  those who try and disrupt your community.

Maybe we can spend a little cash to erect a razor wire enclosure to keep them all in while they contemplate what they have done - and allowed to be doine. Evil prevails when good men do nothing.

Where now for News International?

TMP accurately predicted the day after the Dowler story broke that Murdoch would have no choice but to shut the NotW. With such proven prescience under our belt, what next for the sly old fox?

If you were Rupert, and you wanted to create a distraction in the UK press, what might you do? How about give the mostly useless Times and Sunday Times to its workers - with a heady incentive that's hard to resist of the first year's expenses in the bank? It's bugger-all use to him as it stands, and his generosity has won him few brownie marks - apart from a small band of people who really don't matter any longer.

That would be a nice way of further tucking up the smug and fast failing Observer and the preposterous Independant, and give the chattering bubble classes something to waffle about on the tedious BBC2 NewsNight.

Milliband: he doesn't like it up him...

After being set up for a drubbing, Cameron handled PMQs very convincingly, and then kicked off the debate on the media pretty well; and in one leap, Milliband was on the back foot, desperately rummaging around in the long grass. And like all his small-minded colleagues, painfully and tediously "tribal". 

So it seems that just as his colleagues feared when they voted for his brother (remember, it was the Unions What Won It for Red Ed), Ed confirms that he is an unremittingly small minded operator, and to the tories' relieved delight, plainly not up to the job.

Not that this troubled BBC News' tireless effort to provide Labour with a platform for carping, and thus provides the growing band of BBC reformers with a handy opportunity to corner them, and start to take action. (Laura Kuenssberg in particular needs to be de-smarmed and bundled off to Manchester).

We have recorded all the files of the committee and commons discussions with both Sky and BBC News "commentary" pieces. It's a relief to be able to watch them at 2x playback speed, with frequency compensated audio…  hoorah for VLC!  From a study of these it is apparent that the BBC still seem to be determined to try and exhume socialism before the generally clumsy Milliband properly inters it; but they have their work set out....

The selective reporting - and admitted bias - is one thing, but the bigger issue has now become the BBC's obsession with "bubble" issues in spite of the chronic world economic situation. The interests of the nation are not well served by this obsession; and the necessary reform can be part of, ironically, the very process now being set in train to examine political-media relations; the BBC clearly has the most opinion-formative position in the market. Like many other over-large behemoths, it obviously needs to be "broken" up into smaller chunks, whose chief execs cannot complain their empire is so vast they thay must be excused when the troops veer off the rails.

So then, how about splitting news/online  and "other " (more traditional) programme making operations at the BBC? Other broadcasters, notably ITV have worked that way, although ITV's feeble news operation has mostly been compromised by the bottomless BBC resource. We should also use this one time opportunity to reinforce the BBC "rump's" regional  remit with "a divide and rule" strategy and give the new Manchester palace the "North of Birmingham Hub" remit, and then London can deal with South of Brum.

Maybe the sacked NotW staff (over which Labour has of course wrung its hands) could be hired to run the de-coupled BBC News units?

Ho ho!

The Malady Lingers On

Phonegate has now moved into new territory and now knocks on the door of much bigger questions around the hopelessness of anyone trying to suppress any information ever again in the age of google and total disclosure.

This all began in the heady days of Alisatair Campbell, Ian Blair, invasions and dodgy dossiers when "means to end" became the accepted mantra of manipulative politicians and media.

So the conversions of Milliband et al typically reek of opportunism, sanctimony and breathtaking cant.

Our money is still on Murdoch & Co. throwing a few more curves into the frenzy, and can't wait for the DCMS interviews. Ultimately, a series of moves based on mutually assured destruction are entirely possible.

At the present rate of Met resignations, a PCSO will be have to be Commissioner in about 54 days.

Mind how you go...

And now for the Bigger Issues..?

Smile for the cameras, you Auld Fraud.

Brown's raging sanctimony is typical of the man as he seeks to blame everyone and everything but his own flawed character.

Don't forget that the utterly discredited Scottish Banks used to be feted and schmoozed by Broon and his Caledonian Cabal of the last Labour government.

And just look at the disaster of Broon's cocktail party where he schmoozed the idiot Victor Blank into gambling Lloyds TSB to save Broon's fellow Scots from their grotesque imprudence. Broon would have been briefed by the security services on every aspect of anyone he was getting embroiled with. Either he took personal responsibility for the calculated decisions based on political and personal expedience - or the security services are dangerously less competent than Inspector Clouseau.

Let's hope someone there is ready to blow the whistle on what the politicians actually knew.

The Murdoch Mess is merely emblematic of the problems of letting any organisation grow too big, arrogant and powerful.
Overbearing and manipulative global organisations and companies like Microsoft, Google, Tesco and the rising legions of Chinese and Indian companies all need to be kept at arm's length from government and regulators. And the BBC is clearly far, far too big and influential for the good of our public life.

The arrogance of scale applies not just to commercial companies, but also government. Smaller and better distributed government needs to be a part of a cathartic process going forward - and the technology of the Internet can be intelligently deployed to create "mesh" organisations where capable talent can be given more autonomy on a local basis.

They're all as bad as each other...?

As the front row gets its knitting out to await the arrival of the tumbrel bearing the board of NewsCorp, we should at least acknowledge that Murdoch hasn't been subsidised from public funds and has created a lot of UK employment.

The gorily sanctimonious Guardian-BBC has enjoyed the past 14 years being publicly funded through the direct patronage of the Labour Party in government, and its traditional bloating of its client state recruitment. (The Guardian's hypocritical tax avoidance is nicely exposed by Guido Fawkes).

Apparently not bloated enough for some state employees, since it seems we also had a "Pay as you Go" Police Service to keep bunged.

Arguably the damage done by that unholy alliance has cost this country a £trillion as 1997's comparatively "fixed finances" were progressively squandered by Broon with everything from the preemptive pensions raid, to selling gold reserves off cheaply, to the asset bubble he created to fund credit to buy a phony feelgood factor - and then his parting gift of £8bn on pointless aircraft carriers to appease Scottish voters. And let's also recall Labour's super-cynical honours "appointments" - have given the other guilty parties a handy "they were all at it" excuse when nailed on the potential cash and favours for honours opprobrium.

The BBC has clearly used public money to curtail real markets in everything from home computers to digital media. Neither the BBC nor the Graun can make a living in the real world once that public funding has been withdrawn. So TMP suspects there are questions to ask and answer about the relationships between Guardian hacks and Labour spin doctors.

So if we are to use this "event" as the catalyst for a much needed clean up of all aspects of political press relationships, then no one and nothing should be "overlooked".

In terms of the vested interests of those baying loudest, the GMG faces early commercial oblivion. Its one hope may be to bring down the government and force and election which it assumes will return an eternally grateful Milliband.

BUT are we (the people) actually better off dealing with reptiles whose motivation is as crude and transparent as money, or shadowy schemers with social engineering agendas, led by Blair's legacy of sleazy political spin doctors, doing endless dodgy deals behind closed doors..?

Transparency ought to win every time; we'd rather know they were just after our money, than suspect they were scheming to curtail our liberty.

The Real News of the World

If you were Rupert Murdoch and you wanted to shift your operation away from ever more costly print and onto digital delivery, what are your challenges?

The biggest challenge so far is that the competition might well imagine it can persist and sell print - especially if one of the biggies like Murdoch decided to abandon the medium.

However, you also have a rather handy digital platform called "Sky" that is, effectively, a nicely growing monopoly of commercial TV where you control the manufacture of EVERY interface box, and increasingly significant in broadband delivery, where the only competition comes from the witless  ITV, and the smug BBC - still too far up itself busily wasting money, and no threat to advert-driven media as long as the BBC and ITV companies curiously continue to hide FreeSat away in a cupboard.

You've seen that the iPad and smart phone revolution has proved the possibility of a paperless future rather more suddenly than many expected. So then, one way or another, you want to wean your audience off print and into your digital domain.

How do you make life difficult (better still, impossible) for those who persist in print, and who you are certain will be running out of money as the UK economy continues to shrivel up??
Try this for a cunning plan...

You find yourself caught up in a mess, where one of your papers has been hounded by the Über-sanctimonious Guardian. You detect the public and political mood is for the blood of reptilian journalism, so you decide to make a really bold play, and allow the NotW to be at the centre of a wave of public revulsion that allows you to sweep in an dramatically shut it down, as an example of bold leadership and repentance.

You have already tasked "your people" with the job of chasing down every misdemeanour and dodgy tactic used by every other paper (because you already know there are so many other skeletons rattling away in those cupboards; and you have already listed some anyway http://bit.ly/n4xpgQ "So let us remember that it was the Guardian that knowingly, deliberately and illegally forged a cabinet minister's signature to get an exclusive story."

You also continue digging into the backgrounds of those careless politicians who have shown themselves to be less than deferential and friendly in the course of this hounding.

The result is that the traditional press is reduced to a shambles, with the police now fully committed and obliged to arrest half of fleet street and subpoena VAST swathes of electronic records for every case going back 7 years? Can you imagine the enormity of the investigation that they are going to be obliged to pursue - or rightly stand accused of selective justice?

Your Sky TV and broadband network delivers the news and advertising (effectively for free in comparison to print) to the growing legions of screens and cheap tablet devices - using a virtual workforce that could mostly be based in a well-behaved and leak-proof enclave in the Bahamas, for all the readers know (or care).

Job done. Pour yourself a large Scotch....

Decline and Fall

How is anyone surprised that Broon's financial clusterf*ck could do anything but undermine pensions and reduce them a level of worthlessness that reflects a country with no money whatever, and a nigh on trillion pound deficit?

It seems to be an inevitability that all empires/societies get to a point where the vested interests of the civil service class close ranks to obscure and resist any effort to change, innovate and move things forward. Under Labour teaching has been politicised along with the rest of the "client civil state" - ie that vast part of the workforce that does not create wealth, but has been allowed - encouraged even - to feel endlessly entitled to dissipate it - and is part of a much bigger problem than just their unaffordable pensions.

What is now germane for any of us are the actual results of our efforts - the means to the end counts for very little with brutal competitors like the Chinese; there is no more opportunity to hide from the competitive world in any aspect of life - especially now we are just mere tax fodder the EU. For a while longer...

The UK educational system is not currently able to turn out a "proper workforce"; just a handful of high fliers who become bankers, but mostly a bunch of rudderless kids who had no idea what they wanted to do/be when they picked their GCSEs, but got steered by the received wisdom that any degree is better than getting out into the real world. And the more compliant are hustled directly into teaching, activism and politics without any experience of a "real job", just to help perpetuate the system.

Of course all parties will tend to politicise education, but Labour politicised it to a whole new level with the help of its (now almost dead) "house journal" to manage the communications and "marketplace".  OK, there are some nuggets in a pan of mostly sludge; but the world rankings make depressing reading. Government today has a horrible job of sorting out such a monumental mess with no money, and now even an unexpected population surge to deal with. Albeit the kids of immigrant families seem to be generally harder working than the indigenous entitlement culture products.

And throughout "public service" the proportion of the budget of time and cash spent on the consequences of Labour's substitution of common sense by PC and process is vast, although coincidentally there was news today about a return to some common sense on H&S in schools.

We love the way that some wholly inexperienced kids find work in publicly funded and contrived roles that were formed in a golden age when they were once the hobbies of self-funded Victorian adventurers, experimenters and mature students with time on their hands (for various mostly legal reasons, like pillaging Johnny foreigner) - because what else can you do with a 23 year old PhD geography student, other than have them present "theme park Britain" on TV shows like Coast?

Most countries in this state of decline resorted to a decent war or revolution to restart the recuperative process. We will certainly not escape the unaffordable spiral of "public servant entitlement" and decaying infrastructure without blood on the walls, somewhere.

Events, dear boy.

Well, there TMP was, thinking it was going to have a relatively quiet time observing the coalition set about trying to undo 13 years of Labour misrule; and trying to turn the nation around from the "client state" of misplaced socialist dependency into one that remembered that no one owes anyone a living - least of all the rather more sophisticated world that has rushed past us while Labour pissed all our wealth away when buying 3 elections.

The problems we face have just got a lot bigger - since the anti-nuclear lobby will now be hugging trees and bunnies with renewed fervour. But the Japanese problems were most probably avoidable: the reactor construction withstood the earthquake pretty well by all accounts - and cooling systems pumps and electrical gear that failed under the tsunami deluge could easily have been made fully waterproof with a bit more anticipation and thought. Maybe submarine construction techniques could have been used.

Count up the numbers still killed annually in the coal mining industry and compare to the numbers actually killed from nuclear power accidents. You will be surprised.

Simple fixes are the best

Would everyone kindly stop complicating the problems the UK faces?

Reduce ALL public employment by 50% (it really is that overbloated cf Parkinson's Law) and put ALL the money saved into boosting private sector employment in companies employing less than 50 people. Reduce all tax reference to a max of 250 pages, and tell the EU "we'll get back to you when we can afford to".

Give the Post Office a combined eBay and PayPal role; carve a chunk off the BBC to take on Google search and advertising. Devolve BT to local control (could the dickheads running councils cope? probably not) and consolidate all street works to get real broadband installed.

Simple. So what's the catch?

Q: Where is the effective demand for the goods and services produced by all of these new enterprises? And BT is a private firm, how would a government "devolve it to local control"?

A: Where is the demand for the goods and services of the 50% of state "lard" we can safely cull?

And they're not new enterprises. It takes far too long to set up new companies, and failures are far too high amongst startups - we think this is only turbocharging the "get banks to lend" proposition.

China is quite quickly going to become increasingly uncompetitive as their home markets grow staggeringly quickly - and overnight if they were forced to adopt EU level H&S and employment practises.

BT has broken so many laws and rules over the past ten years that if all those who had been screwed were invited to complain and be heard, it could be tied up in regulatory legal hassles for ever. They'd have to settle.

Q: Obviously the demand for goods and services provided by the public sector is ineffective - not every individual could afford to pay privately for municipal, emergency services, healthcare, policing, etc.

A: We really can lose 50% of the public sector costs without affecting any of that lot. Really we could. Trust us, we are NOT politicians. With 50% less non-productive, tea-swilling, work-creating state to pay for, just imagine the tax cuts possible. Everyone would be able to afford Bupa and their own pension plans.

The biggest problem by far with this idea is that the 50% of state employees will need completely reprogramming in order to able able to resume a productive role in the community after years of institutionalised lead swinging. Hence pumping all that cash to bribe employers to do the gruesome task.

Q: Have you heard of the concept of transfer payments? The idea that low paid workers, the unemployed, the disabled, and pensioners would be able to pay for health insurance and the rest...

That sounds like another term for subsidies and the bureaucracy required to administer them. TMP needs people to earn and keep their own money, and make their own decisions with it. Nowhere in the history of the world has a bureaucracy spent money more wisely than the people that created the wealth in the first place.

We don't have the time or inclination to study fad political/economic trends and theories. They are a large part of what has screwed this country and most of the world where the political class has become grotesquely over self important since the 60s. As one economics professor observed, the questions for economics degree exams remain the same, only the answers change. They are no longer our obedient servants, they are George Orwell's Animal Farm pigs, writ large.

A big part of the solution is the resurrection of the family; this is one thing we could learn from many immigrant (religion/respect based) communities. Cameron's much derided "big society" - that for some reason is being systematically undermined by the out of control BBC who fears its grip on the social engineering agenda may be slipping , is a way to try and replace the nanny state by re-asserting family responsibilities.

Commuting strangles our pathetic transport infrastructure, but our new homes are the smallest in the developed world by some margin - so every new home should be built with a proper office and a parent annexe for starters. Our bonkers home costs are a factor of abysmal planning and population mismanagement over many years.

A solution to our present mess is much simpler than work-creating civil servants and politicians imply - but it's a revolution in modern terms, and needs proper leadership. So what is the political class currently gripped by? The debate over a voting system that would most likely guarantee paralysed leadership in perpetuity.

PayPal: The global chugger

TMP is moving beyond "basic" politics to explore any topics that impinge on "the majority", and deserve to become part of a broader public awareness and debate. The impositions of globalisation are behind many of the ills that afflict the UK in particular - because we tend to be passive, supine and compliant as a nation -  and the world in general.

But why do Brits tend to be so unquestioning and obedient in the face of nonsense from the likes of Brussels and global brands? Simple! From the 1600s to the mid 20th century, Britain lead the world in so many ways we did not need to think too hard about much that was handed down to us from above. It was pretty much guaranteed to be in the "national interest", and the ultimate interest of the people. On the other hand, of course Mr & Mrs Johnny Foreigner were right to be suspicious of just about everything anyone tried to impose on them - after all, the Brits had probably raped their great, great grandparents, and pinched all their natural resources. However, corporate America is now the steamroller of imperialism, and it behoves us all to pay closer attention.

Now then, would PayPal please stop trying to kid us that it is a benefit to mankind by trying leech cash from its users, and thereby blag a place in heaven at the expense of others? I am heartily sick of getting spammed with begging messages like this:-


Dear Mugged Punter,

Time is running out for you to give 100% to Oxfam and let PayPal pick up the bill for running costs.

• What's the deal? – PayPal are paying Oxfam’s running costs on your donations
• 100% Giving – Every penny of your money goes directly towards fighting poverty
• Only 11 days left to give – The chance to make 100% impact must end February
So what's stopping you?

Well, have you got a few hours? PayPal is part of an absolutely feckin' enormous US controlled operation that specialises in scalping punters who have absolutely no viable choice. The way the banks have allowed PayPal to exist without competition is one of the internet's greatest shames, and something every government should be addressing by setting up national postal services as competition. The country postal services de facto is obliged to have "peering agreements" around the planet, and ought to be the perfect place for rooting such an activity.

In the UK, allowing our very convenient but moribund Post Offices to become universal payment gateways could throw them a much needed lifeline. Especially if they also had the wit to become eBay packing/despatch and collection centres.

Bottom line, I am so annoyed by the recent Oxfam campaign on PayPal that I shall now never ever give anything the Oxfam in any shape or form. Instead, I shall buy a Big Issue form the next vendor I can find, for a fiver.

We're all doomed

As the client state is unavoidably dismantled, the complete absence of any discernible incentive to create and maintain new businesses employing people, and the BBC-Guardian's continued efforts to pretend that it's all Cameron's fault, is going to lead to big trouble.

When those tipped out of work run out of money and benefits - and cannot find a generous local council still willing to offer non jobs - there is going to be indignation and trouble. As everyone starts to take it ever further up the arse from Broon's inflation legacy, things are going to get really grim. 

The UK has got absolutely nothing in reserve, except 2 million unneeded state employees, and a brief glance around the rest of the world really does underline that the party is over as 13 years of socialist disaster has left the UK with precious few ways to escape a decade of decline. 

Letter to David Cameron

TMP is obliged for this brilliant suggestion:

Dear Mr. Cameron,

Please find below our suggestion for fixing England's economy.

Instead of giving billions of pounds to banks that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan.

You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:

There are about 10 million people over 50 in the work force.

Pay them £1 million each severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire.

Ten million job openings - unemployment fixed

2) They MUST buy a new British car.

Ten million cars ordered - Car Industry fixed

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage - Housing Crisis fixed

4) They MUST send their kids to school/college/university - Crime rate fixed

5) They MUST buy £100 WORTH of alcohol/tobacco a week .....

and there's your money back in duty/tax etc

It can't get any easier than that! 


Just don't worry about the inflation consequences.