Where’s the politicians’ Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee?!
Posted on 15. Jan, 2010 by OHC in United Kingdom
The US government’s plan to impose $100bn of fees on banks cannot go down well. The Orwellian-titled ‘Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee’ is a mockery of everything that American government ought to uphold: freedom, fairness… the Constitution.
It will cost British banks $11bn, despite them manifestly having nothing to do with America. It’s retrospective: grabbing money off people without them having a chance to modify their behaviour. And, of course, it misses the point entirely. And that’s the financial crisis was caused by government.
The US government has already accepted that its own banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, lied about mortgages. The FDIC, the government’s bank insurance company has joined everyone with common sense and blamed the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy. And, of course, the FDIC itself was responsible for encouraging riskier borrowing than the free market would have tolerated. The same story applies in Britain, but with Brownian incompetence.
When you put it that way… where do the politicians get the gall to tax anyone else for ‘Financial Crisis Responsibility’? They should be footing the bill by paying the Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee: every last penny of it.
Getting some perspective
Posted on 10. Dec, 2009 by OHC in United Kingdom
Just checked out the Treasury’s guide to the regional effects of the Pre-Budget Report (Ed: it’s not a pre-election con, honest!). Funnily enough, they don’t mention in the effect on London the devastation that will result from the raid on bonuses in the City of London. Given the government’s anti-banker rhetoric, you’d think they’d want to highlight that.
But the sickest part is the irony of where that money has to go. It will raise £500m – a mighty 0.07% of the debt that Darling announced he’s accumulating – and threaten the future of an industry worth £102bn to the UK economy. And what do we get for that tax? 90% of the £500m is just to pay the NHS’s own increased tax bill.
Where is the sense in this money-laundering merry-go-round? And how the hell do we get off?
Ten Years On: A KRO Review
Posted on 19. Nov, 2009 by RK in United Kingdom
My sincerest apologies to Mark Wallace and colleagues at the Taxpayer’s Alliance to whom I had promised a swift review of their latest tome, “Ten Years On – Britain Without the European Union.”
In fact where as I had intended this to appear sooner, I was struck down by a deadly bout of man flu and forced to partake of nought but lemsip and season one of Boston Legal for the past week.
The text itself was described to me by an anonymous NGO head as,
“The culmination of the wet dreams of the entire TPA,”
An appropriate blurb indeed, fit for the jacket no less. But the book itself does in fact act as a frightening wake-up slap, as if to say to the reader and indeed the electorate, “You have sleep walked into this nightmare, and now you can’t wake up!” (Ed: Mmm, mixed metaphors.)
Ten Years On is also, however, a comedic and often hilarious self reflection of British-EU relations. This editor seriously enjoyed reading about the impending extradition of one Earl of Sedgefield.
A short, easy and gripping read, Ten Years On is an absolute must have for the libertarian, Euro-sceptic mind and can be ordered for free here. Don’t miss out.
KeepRightOnline rating (out of 10): Thumbs up! (Ed: What!?)
Where is our 5th November?
Posted on 05. Nov, 2009 by OHC in United Kingdom
Dan Hannan, on the European backbenches again after so very long, wrote a fine piece on the meaning of 5 November. Far beyond just the gunpowder, treason, and plot that we libertarian bloggers laud, it signified an embrace of our own way of life, and a rejection of foreign domination.
But only 83 years after the Gunpowder Plot was a considerably more important 5th November. The Glorious Revolution, the landing of the Protestant William of Orange at Brixham, was deliberately timed to coincide with the 5th November commemorations. He did this prove that the new reign of him and his wife Mary would mark a continuation of the British tradition, rather than the imposition of foreign ideas (Ed: sounds… oddly familiar…).
Before becoming monarchs, William and Mary accepted the terms of the Parliament, codified later in the Bill of Rights: the sovereignty of Parliament, judicial independence, taxation only through Parliament, a right to petition the government, freedom from a standing army in peace time, a right to bear arms, and freedom of speech being foremost amongst them. And where the fuck are our freedoms now?
The Glorious Revolution of 5th November 1688 deserved its name, and deserves its celebration by freedom fighters every much as the Gunpowder Plot does. But that heritage has been forgotten and trodden. Those freedoms have been eroded and cast aside. Where is the Bill of Rights now? Where is our William of Orange?
Not hard to place the blame…
Posted on 30. Oct, 2009 by OHC in United Kingdom
For London being overtaken by Singapore as bankers’ second-favourite financial centre. The Bloomberg poll is slightly biased across the board in favour of New York by virtue of limiting itself to Bloomberg terminal subscribers, but coming behind Singapore is an outrage. Not that we need to editorialise to blame Brown for it. Bloomberg does that for us:
The ascent of Singapore and the decline of London reflect the rise of specialized financial centers that cater to specific segments of the industry. Many hedge funds have left the British capital because of a new top income-tax rate of 50 percent for higher earnings and regulations planned by the European Union that restrict the amount they can borrow.
Brown’s taxes and the European Union’s planned post-Lisbon regulations are to blame. Labour is killing London as a world economic player, and the Lisbon Treaty will deliver the final blow. But I’m sure Brown and Darling still think this is a global crisis.
Gordon’s stealthiest tax rise yet
Posted on 29. Oct, 2009 by OHC in United Kingdom
So the USA’s economy has grown by 3.5% annualised between July and September, smashing analysts’ forecasts. This compares quite strikingly with the UK’s contraction by 1.6% in the same period. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. So much for us being best placed to weather the recession.
But we’re missing a trick here. Whilst those of us with economics degrees from the fourth-best university in the world (Ed: you’re such a wanker) will immediately notice the significance of the GDP growth gap between the UK and its rivals, we at KRO don’t think it resonates with the population. Just as talk of effective marginal tax rates doesn’t connect with people until you talk about those working to get off benefits keeping just 4% of their earnings, so talk of GDP growth doesn’t really get our engines going either.
Let’s put it into context. In the last quarter, the UK economy shrank at an annualised rate of 1.6%, compared to growth in the US of 3.5% and the Eurozone of an estimated 3.6%. The gap, of 5%, cannot be blamed on the world economy – that’s the gap that makes us best-prepared to recover from the global crisis, remember! That 5%, with a GDP of £1,443bn, corresponds to £72bn.
Over the course of the year, that £72bn will be gone. It will never be earned. It will never be produced. It will never be paid in wages. It will never be spent on what families need to buy to get by. It is as if the government taxed us £72bn, and then, instead of spending it on essential services or putting it towards filling in our world-beating £175bn budget deficit, burned it in an Viking-style orgy of rape and pillage.
A £72bn raid on hard-working families. Why are we not talking about that?
Quote of the Day: Deutsche Edition
Posted on 25. Oct, 2009 by OHC in Quote of the Day
This comes from the coalition agreement just signed between the Christian Democrats (Ed; boo, hiss!) and the Free Democrats (Ed: Yay? Ish) in Germany. Take a peek and tell us it’s not sound.
Wir werden erstens die Motivation und Leistungsbereitschaft der Arbeit nehmer und Arbeitgeber in unserem Land schnell und deutlich stärken, in dem wir sofort damit beginnen, die Steuern zu senken, bürokratische Hemmnisse abzubauen und mehr Anreize zu schaffen, damit sich reguläre, sozialversicherungspflichtige Arbeit in allen Bereichen lohnt.
Which, in case you don’t speak the language of Goethe, Schiller, and Hitler (Ed: you’re worse than TTT), broadly translates as:
First, we will strengthen the motivation and incentives of the employee and the employer, quickly and clearly, by immediately lowering tax, reducing bureaucratic obstacles, and creating more incentives, whilst making regular employment worthwhile for all those on social security.
Wait, doesn’t that last part sound familiar? If Gordon Brown still thinks the Conservatives are isolated in Europe just because they condemn Downing Street’s neo-socialist economics, he obviously can’t read German.
Something Rotten in the State of Britain
Posted on 02. Oct, 2009 by OHC in United Kingdom
Something’s definitely rotten if the (soon-not-to-be) governing party’s candidates think that the government should be tracking all alcohol and tobacco purchases with Drinkers’ Licences.
‘Orwellian’ is an overused term, but this is just that. It is an attempt to track and control everyone’s everyday life, with scant justification except by waving vaguely at the promise of more efficient delivery of government services that ought to be efficiently-delivered as a matter of course. In this case, it’s the NHS. The government already makes £8.5bn a year off alcohol duty (on top of which, VAT, pub licensing fees, fines…). The nanny-statists wail that alcohol costs the NHS £2.7bn, and so MUST be more stringently regulated, including with minimum prices. I’m sure you see the arithmetic fallacy in their argument.
Perhaps it’s all just an indictment of the worship of the NHS, rather than of personal responsibility. Is the world really so cowardly that it submits our entire society to making the irreconcilably inefficient NHS the teeniest bit more efficient? We don’t support military conscription to boost the flagging armed forces (Ed: and rightly so), so why on Earth do we support enslaving our citizenry to save the NHS a fraction of a penny on the pound?
For the second time today, online Labourites are launching an attack on a free society. For the second time, we will say NO! (Ed: hey, that sounds familiar…)
Selling the family silver
Posted on 21. Sep, 2009 by OHC in United Kingdom
Not content with backing university top-up fees, Nick Clegg’s assault on liberalism, Baggers’ rant against capitalism, the Lib Dems continue to attack everything they supposedly stood for (Ed: they’ve given up lying?). Now, they’re changing their tune on another policy: council tax!
But it’s worse than that. Instead of council tax being partly set by local government, and partly funding it, they want the proceeds to go to central government. How about that?! Lib Dems support council tax and even greater centralisation of power in this country.
If you think the £1m amount is too high to truly matter (Ed: wasn’t it a matter of principle before?), consider the sums involved. They think they can raise £1.1bn out of the 250,000 homes they claim are worth more than £1m (Ed: where does the other £16bn they claim to be raising come from?). Almost all of these are homes of families or the retired. At £2m in value, a family can expect to have their council tax trebled. At £4m in value, they will have to pay nine times what they’d currently pay for a Band H.
As for the super-rich? Well, they’ll just leave Britain, Clegg, you absolute idiot, saddling the rest with even higher bills. And all to close less than 1% of the budget deficit! The Lib Dems can scrap as many Northern Ireland Offices as they want, but the people of Great Britain will suffer if they adopt these ridiculous policies.
Lib Dems: how can we stand a party that doesn’t stand for anything?
This much we know…
Posted on 17. Sep, 2009 by OHC in United Kingdom
… Michael Caine is an absolute legend! We missed this in the Observer last Sunday, but, given it’s the Observer we’re sure nobody else picked up on Michael Caine’s stonkingly sound piece in their regular This Much I Know series.
He cited Ayn Rand’s libertarian epic The Fountainhead as his most abiding literary favourite:
The book I return to is Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. My first daughter was named after its heroine, Dominique Francon.
He then lambasted high taxes, credited Thatcher with his return back to Blighty’s shores, and said only his family will keep him here despite Brown’s impending tax increases:
I moved to America when they put the tax up here to 82%. I said, “I’m out of here,” and I never came back until Maggie put it down. Now I think it’ll go up again, but I’ve got a grandson here – so I can’t leave.
And he even had time to pour scorn on politicians:
It’s not true my mother was a cleaner at the Houses of Parliament. It’s much too dirty for my mum to have ever been a cleaner in there.
A true British legend, on screen and off.