Might be the Worlds greatest something but 'Newspaper' is arguable

The Daily Express, never shy about blowing its own trumpet, has a blazing headline claiming that over 150000 have signed an anti immigration petition. Oh Wow !  Its own figures claim a readership of approx 1.2million on sales of 537,743 so it's not such a big number on the petition given the mindset of Express readers. And when you further consider that there are about 42million people over 19yrs old who describe themselves in the census as 'white British' the number becomes insignificant. 

Tory lies

Whenever there is an audience George Osborne sounds off about clamping down on unreasonable tax avoidance having brought in the General Anti Abuse Rule (GAAR) earlier this year. But it is not true. 'Private Eye No 1349 ' [20th September to 3rd October] devotes four pages to reporting on an investigation jointly with Panorama shows that the UK has now become one of the largest 'tax havens' in the world. What is even worse is that the HMRC has a mountain of evidence on tax evasion – which is illegal – only one very wealthy offshore tax dodger has been prosecuted. But more than 600 builders, plumbers, doctors etc have been nailed for cooking their books and of course all the Tory focus and that of its supportive press is on benefit cheats. No one condones benefit cheats but even handed & cost effective enforcement – no way. And before anyone questions the veracity of Private Eye remember how many times it has been sued. Nowadays it is very very careful. Finally it seems that the Government is trying to pretend it can't afford a scabby 1% pay rise for NHS workers. Perhaps if it tried a bit harder not to lie about taxing the rich such a rise could be more than afforded.

It's putting policies into practice where the Government really screws up

Conservative Party Chairman , Grant Shapps MP, has barely been able to contain his rage at a UN inspector who criticised the so called 'bedroom tax'. She obviously touched a nerve. Without getting into the argument over the merits of the ' tax' David Cameron told his party conference in 2011 that 'We're bringing back the right to buy and using the money to build new homes'. Fine if it were actually happening – but it's not. The right to buy scheme was re-invogorated in April 2012 by bigger discounts to tenants since when some 8000 homes have been sold but only about 1000 new ones built. Rent is included in the capped Universal Credit. So where are people expected to downsize to? Into a totally unregulated private rental sector? It should come as no surprise that the National Audit Office describes the policy as being over ambitious & badly managed. Housing Minister, Mark Prisk, bangs on about building homes at a faster rate than for many years. Not actually difficult when next to none were built in recent previous years.. He makes less noise about having to call Britains biggest house builders to a meeting [FT 7th Sept] to try & accelerate affordable housing construction. There is nothing wrong with a POLICY of merging six benefits into one but so many of the coalition policies have been wrecked by breathtakingly crass & incompetent implementation. Keeping housing out of it – at least for the time being – and merging six benefits into two would have been good progress & saved a load of grief.

I'll tolerate most abuse but I do get very angry at being taken for an idiot

UK Dividend payments have risen by one fifth. Chief Executives of FTSE 100 companies saw their median earnings rise by 31% to £3.5million in 2013. This is on top of one in four of them getting a 41% increase in 2012. Archbishop John Sentamu notes that “ The holes in millions of pay checks [for ordinary workers] are being plugged by in work support to the tune of £4bn a year” [of taxpayers money]. He quite rightly asks why is government having to subsidise businesses who don't pay their employees enough to live on. Meanwhile the EU haters & the Daily Express are getting all excited that the EU requirement to give equal rights to temporary employees is costing British business ' up to [notice the qualification] £1.5bn'. That sum is rather trivial I relation to the other figures quoted here. We are being treated as idiots by being asked to believe that this 'imposition' from the EU is harming our businesses? Some might say that if were NOT for the EU, Chief Executives & the Tory Party would be even more gleefully grinding the faces of us ordinary mortals into the dust.

Public pressure on corporate tax can work.

The good news is that public opinion is making several multinational companies adjust their tax avoidance plans. We should also note that Section 172 of the UK Companies Act 2006 requires directors to act in good faith in what is normally understood to be the business imperatives but also to have regard to : " the impact of the company's operations on the community" and " the desirability of the company maintaining a reputation for high standards of business conduct".  So within existing law there is scope for HMRC to get a lot tougher with its approach  & the Government could resource HMRC to allow it to do that whilst the much more long winded & difficult task of getting international agreement grinds on.

It's not the EU we should be banging on about. It's flogging the country to foreigners

On 13th April 2012 the Daily Mail published an article [extracted from Britain For Sale: British Companies In Foreign Hands by Alex Brummer, published by Random House Business Books ]. It pointed out that we’ve lost our taste for ownership of our own economy and public services — from once-great manufacturers such as ICI to most of the companies that deliver our electricity, water and gas. The Government is even happy to consider letting a Russian firm, the one behind the Chernobyl accident, run some of Britain’s next generation of nuclear power stations. In fact, to date, we’ve sold off more than half our assets to foreign owners. Boots, Cadbury, our steel industry and much much more. In the face of political indifference, foreign companies acquired £30billion worth of British enterprises in 2009. In 2010, that rose to a value of £54.5 bn. Less than half of our Premier & Championship football clubs are British owned. 52% of all office properties in London's main financial district and 60% of all new homes in central London are owned by foreigners. There have been disastrous consequences for UK employment & skill base. No other country is quite so stupid. India has bought UK enterprises such as Jaguar Rover but it won’t allow British firms to take full control of Indian companies. Most other countries, including the USA have restrictions on who may own key assests. YET ALL UKIP & THE TORY RIGHT CAN DO IS BANG ON ABOUT THE EU. Do we still have any brain cells?

Too much hype & little substance

What justifies the extravagant hype all over the media about UKIP causing a 'Sea change' in British politics and all the rest of the exposure of Nigel Farage on TV and Conservative panic? So UKIP have a bigger share of the popular vote but under our crazy electoral system that is nothing new. It is 'seats' that matter. Plenty of Tory & Labour Governments have been elected on a minority popular vote. So let's look at some facts:

• 9836 candidates competed for 2360 seats on 35 English Councils on 2nd May 2013
• Liberal Democrats fielded 1756 candidates; UKIP fielded 1734
• Liberal Democrats won 371 seats; UKIP 147
• Liberal Democrats are represented on every Council except Staffordshire; UKIP have no representation on 12 of the 35 Councils
• More than half (80 in fact) of UKIP's seats are in just six councils: Cambridgeshire 12; Lincolnshire 16; Norfolk 15; Hampshire 10; West Sussex 10; Kent 17. Note that these Councils are in just two geographic clusters in the South.
• In Cambridgeshire (14) and Hampshire (17) Liberal Democrats have more seats than UKIP

So there is very little to justify the fuss. Just a protest group in localised pockets with no responsibility.