When Will we need the IMF

.............to basically bail the UK out of bankruptcy.

I mean they did in 1976.

And personally if you look at the meaning of "bankrupt" and as per its meaning compare it to todays position i.e cash v cash out with assets .............you get my meaning......I think we are bankrupt now.

Well a report by the Tax Payer Alliance states that around £1.5 trillion of taxpayers' money has been squandered on an acceleration in Government spending fuelled by the economic boom, while another £1.5 trillion has evaporated in measures to tackle the recession, according to the research.

The authors claim that Government spending has more than doubled in real terms since 1997, to the extent that even if the next government tries to trim spending by 5-10 per cent, it will take years, probably even decades, to bring it back under control, and could cost upwards of a further £1 trillion.

One of the authors, Matthew Elliott, founder and chief executive of TaxPayers' Alliance, said: ''It would be easy to dismiss the figure of £3 trillion as being too big to contemplate or unreasonably high, but to do so would be to ignore the sheer scale of the financial disaster that 12 years of Gordon Brown's tax-a-lot and spend-more policies have done to the British economy.

''In the light of our analysis, £3 trillion is actually a best possible scenario and relies upon the UK making a far quicker recovery than most expect.''

Mr Elliott and management consultant David Craig say that by the end of the 2009-10 financial year, the present Government will have spent almost £1.7 trillion more in cash terms (about £1.35 trillion when adjusted for inflation) than would have been spent had Mr Brown and his colleagues kept public spending at the previous levels.

''Adding in more than £150 billion in Private Finance Initiative (PFI) projects and other schemes which the Government has kept off its balance sheet through various creative accounting techniques, you're almost up to £2 trillion in cash terms or £1.5 trillion after taking inflation into account,'' they say.

Mr Brown has taken public spending to the level reached by Harold Wilson and James Callaghan in 1976 - when the country went bankrupt and needed the IMF to bail it out, they say.

So what was that report about green shoots of recovery and coming out of recession last week.
Best get Mandleson on the case...............ooops cant he is still reading his gay porn.....see here

Who do we believe??

We have all seen the latest headlines over the past couple of days.

For eg
Car sales soar by 2.4% thanks to scrappage scheme
House prices rise by 1.1% in July

However,
The Bank of England today poured cold water on early signs that the UK's fragile economy is recovering as it extended its 'quantitative easing' scheme by £50 billion. The surprise move to extend the programme to £175billion shows that the Bank is cautious about an economic recovery despite a raft of recent positive figures.

So just to confirm the Zimbabwe type policy of just printing money has pumped £175 Billion into our economy.

And also to confirm the BoE can not just do that without it being rubber stamped by number 11.

At some point despite our outrageous levels of borrowing...........this 175 Billion has to be returned.

The Bank's ratesetters also decided to keep interest rates on hold at 0.5 per cent, as was widely predicted in the City.

In a statement explaining the decision, the Bank said the recession 'appears to have been deeper than previously thought'.

While the pace of decline has slowed and business surveys suggested the low point in activity was 'close at hand', money growth remains weak, the Bank said.
The news sent the pound down by almost a cent against the dollar.

Financial Secretary to the Treasury Stephen Timms said there was a 'growing sense of optimism' about the economy but conceded there remained a 'great deal of uncertainty'.

Timms......you have to be having a laugh with that statement. A group of experts have also warned that up to 400,000 households could default on their mortgages.

Another report says we could hit 3.5 million unemployed by 2011.

So who do we believe?

We are no where near the end of it despite what Robert Pestons Labour loving comments on the BBC state.
We are not even half way.

Northern Rock

Peter Brooke to the rescue again in view of the Northern Rock news this am.

A very insightful man.

Darling Gave It the Banks

Alistair Darling as seen at the meeting with the bank bosses yesterday.

Diageo

Yesterday 20000 people in a show of unit marched through Kilmarnock to protest at Diageo's plans to cut 900 jobs from two sites.

700 jobs are threatened in Kilmarnock, where the Johnny Walker brand has had a presence since 1820.

Opponents say unemployment in Kilmarnock could rise by 70 per cent as a result of the proposed cuts.

Mr Salmond said: "Today's march and rally demonstrated that the people of Scotland stand behind Kilmarnock and the campaign to keep Diageo in the town.

Alex Salmond has been very critical of Diageo and has also made some very strong statements which cause me concern.

Firstly the Diageo descision leaves a lot to be desired here. I still can not see the economics clearly, but big Eck has not gone on record to state that public money could be used to save hundreds of jobs being axed.
Very honourable Eck. Indeed Mandleson made similar pledges for the car industry, also worth noting not a penny has been given to the car industry.

The Scottish Government could channel money through Scottish Enterprise to help the company avoid sacking a total of 900 staff at its Johnnie Walker plant in Kilmarnock and its distillery in Port Dundas, Glasgow.

Mr Salmond met Diageo chief executive Paul Walsh yesterday, along with Scottish Enterprise boss Jack Perry, for talks that were described as "constructive" by the First Minister.

Ministers, union officials and Scottish Enterprise are trying to form an alternative business plan for the company and hope to convince it not to shed the jobs.

Ok lets look abit further into Diageo shall we.

Diageo has offices in 80 countries
It sells in 180 countries
Its half yearly sales to the end of Dec 2008 were 6.7 Billion pounds.
It owns 101 different beer, wine and spirit brands.

Eck, do you really think you will change the mind of a company that big.

You can not pour a rake of public money into that company and somehow turn it into a political victory for yourself. You are giving away cash, you are being naive to think they are that interested.

Yes they are loaded cash wise. They are a huge powerful group.

And right now they hold all the aces. You piss them off they walk.
They were going to do that anyway.

I sadly can not see how this is going to be resolved. I fear greatly for Kilmarnock and Port Dundas.

Debt and Labour Lies

Within four years, almost 9p in every pound of tax paid by British individuals and companies will be spent directly on servicing the Government's debt, rather than on services such as hospitals and police, or the costs of running defence or the welfare state, according to new calculations. At present, the debt interest costs an average of around 5p for every pound in tax.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research said that costs of servicing government debt will rise from £25.6bn this fiscal year to £50.7bn in 2013/14, due to a combination of higher interest rates and a far greater debt burden. The warning underlines the cost facing taxpayers as the Government debt rises at the fastest rate in peacetime history.

Remember our last budget. Big Al stood up, Gordon in the background having written his speech for him and we held our breath, what is he going to say......

.....and following poured forth from his mouth.

He predicted that the UK would see growth of 1.25% next year and 3.5% the year after that.

He then based all budgetary consideration for the next five years on that assumption.

Did we rejoice.......NO
Did we think what a load of sh*t......YES

3.5% ....... in our hayday we only ever saw a growth rate of 2.9% max. So how the hell you go from zero to hero inside of 18 months made us realise that it was all just lies.

And the figures today just go to reaffirm that it indeed was just lies.

National Debt

In view of this mornings reports in various media streams on the fact that the government borrowed £13bn last month - double the amount of last June - to take total debt to a record high of £799bn.

And the heroic attempts by Tom Watson at The Open I felt this little ditty by Peter Brooke again to be a belter.

Although being honest do not really know why I am laughing when I look at it.
Its bloody criminal to be in this state.

Odd Fact......is it a coincidence

Ok we know we are in a bit of hole money wise in the UK.

Especially when we read things like this.

Spending cuts now recognised to be a definate no matter who is in the hot seat in a years time.

And despite the horse keek regurgitated by the PM in PMQ's when sparring with "Call me Dave" no one believes him.

But when we look at corporation tax losses due to failed comapnies, more people out of work, reduced taxation incomes due to slow sales we see that taxation blackhole as reported in the times.

But does anyone realise how big that number is or what it actually compares too?

Well currently that number is 90% of our 2009/2010 defence budget.

The Defence Budget

£million 2007-08 2008-09 2009-10 2010-11
Resource Budget 32,618 33,602 35,165 36,702
Capital Budget 7,404 7,871 8,187 8,871
Total Departm (DEL) 32,579 34,057 35,365 36,890
Of which near cash 29,411 30,763 31,921 33,628

So is that not a good idea to get the boys to come home????
Or am I being to simplistic??????

UPDATE: so as not to take any more stupid emails yes I am aware that the defence budget is not ALL being spent in Afghanistan. Good god.

Viva Le' France

I did this post yesterday on some Frenchy types who by virtue of terrorist style threats where basically holding Renault and Peugeot to ransom.

I made comment at the end about maybe and improvement in standards.

Well guess what.

Another group of French folks were doing something similar at both Nortel communications and a construction company called JLG. And.............yep thats right, the companies caved in to these threats and the companies agreed to its redundancy payment demands.
Construction firm JLG which makes platforms for cranes, wanted to lay off 43 workers.

Staff responded by placing four cranes worth £216,000 in a car park, and surrounding them with gas canisters and kindling.

The firm caved into the demands and agreed to give each worker £26,000 euros in compensation.

"It's a shame that we reached this point. If management had wanted, we could have avoided this tough conflict," said union representative Christian Amadio.

No I am despite my glib comment of yesterday a bit troubled by this. You know what, its like, give someone an inch and they take a mile, but when then do these tactics actually come to a stop. Its reported the govenment did not want to send the police in thereby are they actually condoning these tactics...................so they stop when what......somebody gets killed!!!!!!

In Typical French Style.

No I am not refering to Chablis.
Nor Escargo
Nor Rachida Dati

I refer to the usual French method of sticking 2 fingers up to the establishment and going hell for leather to get what you want.

It transpires that in Châtellerault, in central France, 336 laid-off workers have been occupying the New Fabris car parts plant since it went bankrupt in May. They have rigged it with acetylene and butane gas bottles, and are demanding car giants Renault and Peugeot – which provided most of the firm's business – give them redundancy pay.

If not, they say they will ignite the gas and destroy the factory.

Staff warned they would destroy the New Fabris plant in central France if they do not receive compensation for their lost jobs by July 31.

New Fabris was declared in liquidation in April, so the workers stand to get no redundancy money, although they are entitled to draw state unemployment benefit.

They want Renault and PSA Peugeot Citroen to pay 30,000 euros (£28,500) for each of the 336 staff at the factory - about £8.6m in total, in return for its remaining stocks of equipment and machinery.

"The bottles of gas have already been placed at various parts of the factory and are connected with each other," CGT trades union official Guy Eyermann said.

"If Renault and PSA refuse to give us that money it could blow up before the end of the month," he added.

A delegation of the workers has a meeting on Thursday with Renault, which had no immediate comment.

Police also declined to comment on the threat by the workers, who are occupying the New Fabris factory at Chatellerault, near Poitiers.

The company is the successor to Fabris, founded in 1947 and put into liquidation in 2007. It was later acquired by Italian firm ZEN.

The case is the latest example of sacked French workers adopting militant tactics in order to improve their payouts.

The practice of 'bossnapping' - where managers are held hostage in their offices - has become relatively common during the economic crisis in France.

See the full story here.

Now I am certainly not advocating terrorism tactics but I do sometimes feel we roll over a bit too much here. I kinda feel maybe a bit more of this attitude over here and we might find our services are a damn site better.

Northern Rock......Is it about to go for good.

So it transpires that Northern Rock is deep in it again.

It is estimated to have lost more than £500m in the past six months, putting it in breach of regulatory rules even after they were relaxed for the nationalised lender last year.

Despite breaching every rule on capital requirements in the book, the Financial Services Authority is allowing the bank to continue writing new mortgages and taking deposits. While rivals are subjected to punitive new capital standards, the key measure of financial strength, the City watchdog has agreed to ignore the rules for Northern Rock.

The FSA had previously agreed to waive its rules by allowing Northern Rock to include tier two capital, a less secure form of financial reserve, to meet its regulatory minimum. However, the bank said yesterday that, even with the waiver, its “capital base has now reduced to a level below its minimum regulatory capital requirement”. As a result the FSA has been unable to extend the waiver, which expired on June 30.

So Grodon.
Despite all you said about saving the bank, all you said about tighter regulation.
Despite you shoving my cash at it, it still flouts the rules, is in deeper smelly stuff.

What do you suggest Mr Party of saving tha banks, another huge tax payers windfall to give it the much needed cash it needs................I bloody well hope not!!