Labour's Inflation Lie

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/articles/nojournal/CPI&RPI_basket_2006.pdf

I have some comments on the above for Mr Brown today. I hope he enjoyed his 3 week paid maternity leave and has also noticed how only MP's receive this. The rest of us mere mortals get one week plus one at £100 per week. Oh the joys of working in parliament!

This past year I have done well and received a handsome payrise of twice the rate of inflation. As such I should be feeling happy but instead I know I am poorer than before with less money left over every month.

A look at the CPI/RPI link above shows why. There is no mention of council tax or mortgage interest; yet these make up 35% of my monthly spend and pleaseshow me anyone who spends less than 25% on rent and council taxes and I will show you a millionaire!

Also household bills and telecoms make up 6% of the list. Yet I spend 20% on these a month, in particular I have seen gas and electric bills increase by 50% this year. This is a huge discrepancy; again where are all the people in the country who don't face these bills? Surely the under-20's and income-support army are not the vast majority in the country?

When I roughly factored in these changes my rate of inlfation comes out at 12%. And there is worse to come. For this year Mr. Brown has hugely increased the M4 money supply which will mean more inflation - more money in the system an it will lose its relativw value.

So overall we ar ein dark economic days which is not the spin coming from the treasury. I have thought about this and there are two obvious reasons, both of which the Tories should focus on in the next couple of months:

1 - The government is bending all the rules to demonstrate its economic credentials - yet these cheats can be exposed.

2 - The government needs an artificially low level of inflation to keep down pay settlements to allow for greater money supply to feed its vast spending projects at low interest rates; in effect a double tax on all of us earners hwo are suffering from higher inflation and lower wages at the same time.

I hope the opposition will take up this chalice

Work and Immigration

Today I wanted to briefly air my thoughts on immigration and employment in the UK today. The MSM have been reporting for the last few days on the large numbers of immigrants that the UK has accpeted since 1997.

In general they have tried to avoid giving any real insights into the issue and instead have taken simple ideological stances on the statistics produced. Some of the arguments put forward in the Times and Guardian have highlighted how few dependents have accompanied this expansion.

This entirely misses the point that husbands will come first and bring their families with them later. This was the lesson of the 1960's and 1970's. First come the workers which is a short term boon and then come the dependants. Look at the Pakistani community today in may deprived areas of the country and you do not see the fruits of success of the baby boomer immigration policy.

Another issue missed is that unemployment in the UK is rising; the notion that we need immigrants to continue the expansion of our economy at the moment is therefore bogus. The liberal idea that we should allow in the Romanians and Bulgarians because we have already allowed in the others is surely nonsense and economically suicidal.

Overall I strongly feel that immigration has become a political football for both sides and that decisions are now being made on a a points scoring basis and are ignoring the lessons of the past and the realities of the present.

Wading into Inigo Issues

I wanted to add my piece today on an issue affecting organisations at the moment.

There has been plenty of comment in the media, see Iain Dale for a fine example here,
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_iaindale_archive.html#115575532899341353#links

The issue raises a point for the modern business community as well as for the Free Speech/No speech that is discussed elsewhere. Notably;

- What should companies do when faced with external harrassement on issues of staff behaviour out of hours?


I am worried that the state in the past few years has sought to increase regulations on companies and with the increase in discrimination legislation has led to a more politically correct view of people's behaviour out of office hours.

Another example that springs to mind is the teached who was sacked for standing as a BNP council candidate.

We need to row back this attitude, people should be free to express themselves as they wish and not be worried by threats to their job out of hours. Even the courts will recognise this sometimes. Sales execs who lose their driving licenses are often reprieved by a judge if they say it threatens their career. This is far more extreme so how in Inigo's case can a company reasonably get rid of someone for publishing a blog which made no direct reference to the company. This is an issue for companies to stand up to, they need to ignore the advice coming from the HR departments and stick to their guns in syaing what employees do in their own time is none of thier business. The alternative is an orwellian nightmare where you can never define your own personality as it would always have to comply with work values....

First Day in the Bloffice

Hi all,

This site will be for useless City and Political commentary and it kicks off today.

Which is awkward as there is a lack of city gossip in the middle of August, given the propensity for many inmates to be serving out their two weeks in Barbados.

More tomorrow...