Thursday, April 19, 2012

Abucockup: what a mind boggling shambles this government is turning out to be.

This latest Londonistan fiasco seems all to believable. It seems that the European legal process requires the UK to offer this poisonous preacher "his rights" when this same government has allowed the US to come and grab UK citizens on vastly flimsier pretexts.

However, TMP's man at Westminster insists that the root problem is that the last Labour government gave employment to a diverse and inclusive array of generally barely competent civil servants in national and local government (plus the BBC of course) who were (and remain) unemployable in any situation that has responsibility to proper shareholders – and thus eagerly willing to carry out insane and stupid policies. Furthermore, this dumb but gratefully compliant workforce is lead by carefully indoctrinated and highly political factions within the civil service and unions, who are in effect “sleeper cells” left to carry on the Great Project after Labour’s inevitable removal, and resist all effort to impose a new regime of accountability and competence.

Thus the coalition steadfastly appears to be two ends of a pantomime horse – neither of which has any sentient capability that we have yet been able to discern. In other words, one cheek more than Gorgeous George Gallaway’s proposed fundament.

Words fail us.

Sunday, April 08, 2012

Hoorah for George Galloway ..?

Just as there came a moment when the "Big 5" terrestrial TV broadcasters realised their game was up, and the broadcast hegemony was doomed by the arrival of "digital", so British politics changed forever when George Galloway came from nowhere and was swept along on a tide of frustration and despair.

None of the usual parties have anything to offer any of the electors, other than seemingly random imposition of ever more austerity, and ever more sinister, stupid and pointless regulation - and worst of all - yet more politics and politicians, in form of the many further gravy trains of devolution that play to the old ideas of "divide and rule".

So can the Internet do for British politics what digital TV did for broadcasting, and organise an audience that is spread across a thousand channels of opinion into a electable proposition?

We might as well accept now that Cameron is clumsily and hopelessly tainted and has missed a whole fistful of golden opportunities. The cabinet of millionaires and chums - barely any of whom have done a real day's work in their privileged lives - has turned out to be such a disappointment.

Cameron is evidently not the bloke for the job of PM, and George "don't call me Gideon" Osborne is to economic and political strategy, what the BBC is to objective, unbiased and "value for money" public broadcasting.

It seems like time for real change. And we need to be careful that is the right change, and not just change for change's sake - which is likely to be the fate of Ghastly George Galloway's futile proposition.

Friday, April 06, 2012

Do you want to live in the third world or not?



Avoidance: Google and Amazon have minimized their exposure to the UK tax authorities

Since we have completely run out of money- tax avoidance has suddenly become the same sort of wickedness as tax evasion in the minds of the same expense-fiddling spendthrift politicians that wasted the entire reserves of the UK, and then another TRILLION quid. And mostly on hare-brained schemes designed to buy votes for their respective parties.
Although the Daily Mail has picked on Amazon and Google - with passing references to Microsoft and Apple, let us not forget those other stateless bucaneers that have very effectively "stuck up" bricks and mortar business that pay taxes and rates - eBay and PayPal.

But to focus on tax avoidance and fat cats is to precariously miss the point.

US - or should we say - Global? - online corporations that don't pay the same taxes as native businesses is just the start; they tend to source the cheapest skilled labour from the cheapest countries.

As to the “fair game” argument, it has consequences. The US would certainly not allow UK companies to have invaded their commercial life in the same way; they have re-written copyright and patent laws to suit themsleves, and now set about imposing them by turfing foreign citizens from their beds in their own countries at 4am to face extradition.

Ultimately customers who buy the products are going to be victims: when you choose an Apple Product, you are voting to accept - in the inevitable long run - the same type of working and living conditions that apply in the countries of manufacture. Use Google and look up “apple manufacture china scandal”.

Moreover, once a big US player is in a market, it is impossible for a UK (or any other) entrepreneur to get any sort of venture funding for a product or idea that it perceived to be even slightly competing in a vaguely similar market, because the venture money assumption is that the behemoth will steamroller the market sooner or later.

This is a crucial and fundamental issue and deserving of a proper Mail crusading effort; our utterly useless governnment and opposition do not have a plan or a clue how to deal with it, and the sight of Dave & Gideon sucking up to Google and rest without a plan, is simply apalling.

So then, consider the consequences of reducing UK corporation tax to 10% - and telling the EU and US to swivel on it? We really don’t have much time left to turn this mess around for the benefit of the UK.