I’m a Pundit

Let me summarise the following text for those who are busy and cannot read this report on the incoming VAT changes but increase ni NI contributions

There is no immediate change in the main rates of class 1 employers and employees national insurance from 6 April 2009. However, a large rise in class 1 national insurance is proposed from 6 April 2011 to 11.5% for employees, to 13.3% for employers, and the additional rate payable above the upper limit is to increase from 1% to 1.5%. This would bring in a significant amount of additional revenue for the Government beyond 2011.

Class 3 national insurance is a voluntary class normally paid by people who want to top up their NI contributions in order to receive the full state pension. This voluntary rate is increasing from £8.10 per week to £12.05 per week from 6 April 2009. So if you need to top-up your NI contributions it would be best to do this while the rate remains at £8.10 per week.

This overall increase in taxes is a huge jump on every single British citizen, god knows how the government can justify its 4.5% inflation figure when it jumps the basic class 3 national insurance contributions by near 50%

It gets even worse when you realise that Labour have already signed a document declaring that when the VAT gets returned from 15% it will infact be raised to 18.5% to help the deficit caused by their own incompetence.

Argh!

written by Oli \\ tags: Budget, UK, VAT

I was browsing some of my blogging hangouts this morning and found what can only be described as one of the funniest summaries of the economic climate I have seen so far.

The quote comes direct from I am Livid, a fantastic British blog by the disturbingly anomynous, and scarily hairy, Mr Angry.

I have fond memories of the recent men’s 100 metres final in Beijing. Usain Bolt put in a performance that quite literally, made track and field history.

Then I look at the state of the country today, with rising inflation, falling house prices, banks on the verge of collapse, recession looming large on the horizon, and a feeling among many that things are about to take a significant turn for the worse.

Then I look back to just over three years ago to the Live 8 concerts, and I wonder if the Government completely misunderstood the stated aim of Making Poverty History. Because right now, it looks like they could be about to do just that.

written by Oli \\ tags: Depression, Economy, Funny, Government, Humor, Humour, Live 8, Poverty, Recession

For a lot of people the recession brings tidings of woe, house values are dropping like stones, business are going broke and people are suffering from bankruptcies. There is however a silver lining to the recession.

It has been more than acknowledged in passing that house prices in the UK are insanely high. Not even 60 years ago a house could be bought for 3 times annual earnings, hence why mortgages have usually been given at 3 times annual earnings. Today however people earning around £20,000 ($40,000) a year are expected to spends between £200,000 ($400,000) and £500,000 ($1,000,0000) on a home in Britain. How can people afford this?

Well quite simply they can’t, interest rates will keep increasing what is owed to such an extent that nearly a fifth of new mortgage buyers are expected to never pay off the loan themselves, instead leaving the remainder as something for the kids.

For this reason the incoming recession is a good thing, house prices should be brought back into the realm of the reasonable and affordable. Houses that once cost £15,000 shouldnt, half a century later, cost £150,000.

As recession bites strings will need to be tightened, but a lot of things that have grown in price will fall, while the basics become more expensive. It does however need to happen, for too long Britain has stood in the shadow of a false economy, a problem which has haunted it in a million different ways.

written by Oli \\ tags: Depression, Economy, Recession

Despite multiple cash injections around the globe the stock markets finally slumped as the major banking institution Lehmen filed for bankruptcy. While the global economy crisis itself is not unexpected it seems amazing to me that those in charge remain so blind as to the effect it has on the world.

Hell American Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said today that;

“Americans could remain confident in the “soundness and resilience” of the US financial system.”

Now excuse me for just a second her, saying the American Economy is resiliant is like saying the George Bush is going to be President again, completely unrealistic.  Seriously the US economy has been floating on thin air for a long time, and it has been long overdue for a crash.

The first step to fixing problems is admitting tehm, and this seems to be something that neither the American or English Governments are willing to do yet.

written by Oli \\ tags: Crisis, Depression, Exconomy, Gobal, Recession

I have just read a story on Fox News about how the Canadian Government will be giving out free heroin to addicts.  Now from a generic viewpoint this has been put in place to reduce HIV, overdoses, death and crime. 

Ok I can see where they are coming from, give them free clean heroin and you remove the problems.

I have another idea, for every convicted felon for burglary we should give a government stipend of $5000, this way they wont need to rob people and they wont injure themselves when they are ‘working’ 

Maybe they should set up an online application for people who were thinking of becoming criminals ‘sign up now and we will send you money not to commit crimes!’

You could have options to change your stipend, 

‘Will you or do you

a) Rob houses for upto $10,000 dollars per month 

b) Rob or steal Items of upto $5,000 dollars value per month

c) Mug homies of other gangs yo innit for a poppin $1000 a mo in that right mutha f*ker’ 

Do you kinda see what I’m getting at here?

Of course the guy leading this campaign seems absolutely oblivious as to how ineffective this campaign will be, and even more worryingly the Vancouver chief of police no less is supporting this because, and I quote 

“I’m not a medical expert, this is not my field. I’m an expert in public safety,” Graham said. “And if this will help reduce the crime rate — I’m all for it.”

If I may say so someone who is meant to be in charge of public safety has a very short sighted view of what will happen if the number of heroin addicts increases. (Which will happen if there is no removal of dependancies, fewer deaths etc, Darwin explains the survival of the fittest scenario!)

This program is in my eyes abominable, I do not know how any government, let alone the fairly level headed Canadian government can condone it.

written by Oli \\ tags: Addiction, Drug Use, Government, Heroin, Methadone, Mistake

I have been following the push of Carbon Credits quite closely.  Carbon Credits basically are an extra tax on any business that goes over a certain level of carbon emissions, based on things such as electricity usage and so forth.

What amuses me slightly is that

The Green Party are pushing for the Carbon credit tax and have arrived at a value

The industrial lobby have been lobbying for business rebates to avoid bankruptcies due to high energy bills.

People are complaining because their energy bills are already high enough, and there is a very real possibility that they will be hit hard by this (Energy producers create a great deal of carbon, the cost of paying this would be passed onto the consumer)

The Government has suggested that out of the estimated 7 trillion dollars raised, 1 trillion is sent to government debt, some is spent on energy efficiency research and the rest is sent back to the tax payer as a rebate.

Ok, so I look at this and what do I see, half the money going back to the industry, half the money going back to the tax payer, a whole load of red tape and extra burden on industries who will have to employ people to figure out their carbon usage, survive the gap before they get their research and so forth.  Meanwhile the taxes will increase by around the extra amount the energy companies have to pay (around $22 a tonne) but that alright because the consumers will get a regular rebate giving them their money back.

Does anyone else see the complete pointlessness of this latest environmental debacle.  I cannot believe there are serious political contenders out there who would consider such a farce in the current recessive economic climate, let alone a strong one.

I think I may move to Australia, last time somebody tried to introduce a red tape tactic there they were sent to jail for a minor offence of treason and damaging the economy, why does that not happen here or in the US?

Politicians are destroying our economy for their own selfish and misguided ideals which they have shrouded by their own self illusion.  Yet even when incompetence is proven there is no backlash, no fines or punishment, half the time jobs are not even lost.

It scares me.

written by Oli \\ tags: America, Carbon Footprint, Europe, Global Warming, Political Fiasco

As an ongoing penchant of the EU to run with the Global Warming Debacle they have once more made another uninformed and politically ridden piece of legistlation to try and increase costs to car users who drive cars with poor fuel emission ratings.

This is a move which has severly handicapped disabled and older people, as well as the agriculture industry and people who live in rural areas.

Many older or people with slight physical difficulties require larger cars, and the agriculture industry is on the verge of being reduced back to the ‘horse and cart, ox and plough’ era as tractors are announced to be non environmentally friendly.

But its nice to know that a European Conference of some of the worlds greatest minds spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of EU taxpayers money to decide that since requiring fuel efficiency to be included in advertising was not having the desired effect it should infact take up a minimum of 20% of the advertising.

Now did it ever occur to these people that many people need larger cars, whether its because tey have a family to move about, friends to give lifts to, goods to transport, people need big cars and no matter how large your advertising is it will not change the fact that a person looking for a people carrier will still buy a people carrier and a single person living in the city will probably buy a smaller car.

Don’t get me wrong, fuel efficiency is important and useful information when buying a car, but automobile advertising accounts for a massive percentage of western advertising, outflanked only by credit cards and followed closely by mobile phones.

Now imagine if these car companies are suddenly forced to  increase their advertising space by 20%, thats 20% more paper used, 20% more trees cut down.

This is scarily close to another recent move on Ethanol, a fuel only transportable by vehicles, where it was decreed by those up on high that gasoline/petrol created for road use must contain at least 5% ethanol, the governmetns even subsidised ethanolproduction world wide.

The result?  The speed the rainforest is being cut down has increased dramatically, with rainforest being burned down (Not logged) at an alarming rate for Palm Oil crops. Transportation of this fuel has greatly increased pollution in these areas and since 20% of worldwide farms are now given to Ethanol production third world countries have seen food prices rocket.

My position in this fiasco is clear, global warming has been proven to be part of a natural cycle caused by the Earths relation to the Sun.  It’s a simple fact that the Earth is in fact leaving an ice age, so bound to be warming up, its also a simple fact that carbon released by the sea increases as it warms up (Creating a nice relational graph, you can do an experiment in a lab to prove this)  and its also true that the graphs and data used to support global warming were debunked well over 25 years ago.

The money spent so far on ‘reducing carbon footprints’ numbrs in the hundreds of millions, and the new EU fund proposed on tackling this looks set to massively increase that.  This is money that could be used to help Britian pull itself out of recession and bankruptcy, it could be used to build new recycling plants, finally researching ways to make them more effective.

It could even be used to feed all those starving families in thirld world countries who have been condemmed to death by western incompetancy.

It seems however that we will just see more insane laws and advertising teling us to be ‘green’ while more and more of us fail to pay mortgages and thirld world countries slide into oblivion as they cannot even afford to eat.

written by Oli \\ tags: Carbon Footprint, Debacle, Environment, Global Warming, Government, Politics, Recycling

Today all the papers were in uproar about the 2p increase in fuel taxes in England (Which several months ago they were thanking gordon brown for postponing till later in the year).  Gordon brown proceeded to say that taxes were not the problem but that the cost of Fuel Globally must be tackled.

Now, hang on a second Gordon. The average price of fuel in 2007 was 95.1p per litre, thats high yes, but not as high as the 63.7p Duty which is included in that cost.

Without Gordons tax, which at one point drove Fuel Duty to 81.5% of fuel cost, we would be paying a measly 31.4 pence per litre in fuel.

Now What Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling do not seem to want to take into account is that the myriad of taxes in this country has stifled our economy.  Fuel Costs especially have destroyed many businesses as their costs have rose above customer income.  Taxis, once a fairly good way of getting around have seen prices sky rocket, and transportation companies are failing nationwide.

But yet despite the current take government is getting from Fuel, well over two thirds of what you pay at the pump, high fuel prices are apparently not Gordons Fault.

Think of it like this,  if everything you took to the till tripled in cost when you paid for it would you be happy?

Hell No!

When you looked at the price on your goods and then asked the cashier why the cost was 3 times that of the actualy price what wouldyou think if she said it was the basic cost rising, even though she was the one who put the cost up by so much?

While I am not a vindictive person it is fairly obvious even to me that the people running the UK need to take a good long hard look at themselves and then jump off the nearest cliff.

written by Oli \\ tags: Alistair Darling, Gordon Brown, Politics, Tax

The BBC today reported on how rent has risen by aroun 10-11% while house prices are expected to drop by 20%.  When they interview landlords on this they give reasons such as increased market (People selling houses and renting for a while)

Of course they avoid the major issue on this.

The Reason Rent is rising so dramatically in some areas is because Buy to Let investors are in serious trouble.  Many of them have found rent not covering rather significant mortgage increases, and with few other places to turn they are placing the burden on their tenants.

The Reason Property owners are admitting this to the press is that it would be an admission of their own guilt

By admitting they are raising rents to keep up with mortgage prices they are admitting it is their fault, they stretched themselves too thinly over debt and failed to keep enough money in reserve to cover high interest periods.  For that reason when times get tougher they have no choice but to massively increase rent, despite the fact it carries a significant risk of putting them out of business.

Despite the facct that there are a huge amount of unlet properties currently on the market as people return to house and flat sharing the Landlords will continue to spout their bullshit to remove any possible blame to themselves, in the end however a lot of them will go bankrupt as the market normalizes

written by Oli \\ tags: Depression, Housing, Lettin, Renting

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson today announced that he could see the end of the US Credit Crunch being in the very near future.  This has raised a lot of skepticism from economists and pundists around the world who ask the question, should someone with such an obtuse view of the US economy really be in charge of it?

Currently the US economy, along with the UK and several other EU countries is under a period of normalization to bring living costs back into line with wages.

Henery Paulson seems blissfully unaware of this fact as he tried to stall the depression recently with a government rebate to his country.  If he thinks a hundred or so dollars is going to stop the increasng number of bankruptcies he really is in trouble.

He mentions the recovery of several lending agencies, however he does not point out that the collapse of these was due to ‘loss of faith’ that saw the Northern Rock Bank Nationalised in the UK in 2007.  The credit agencies will still suffer as people in the countries become poorer and find it increasingly difficult to maintain a lifestyle they hope for without becoming heavily in debt.

written by Oli \\ tags: America, Credit Crunch, Debt, Economy, US, USA