I’m a Pundit

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7421045.stm

I read this story on the BBC news site today, it raised one of those good ol’ moral dilemas.  This woman has HIV and will most likely die if returned to her home country.  She has already been treated here in the UK several times on our NHS at tax payers cost, despite being an illegal immigrant.

Now how do you weigh a persons life against your own cash?

The fact of the matter is that millions of pounds of tax payers money is spent treating people who have come to the UK for that sole reason, the NHS is a very large, complex and overall easily abused system.

The problem is if you treat one person, why not treat them all?

Every year we send back thousands of people who have come to this country to abuse our system, as nice as you make it sound they come here illegally simply to take what they want.

Others of course come here because they want to live in Britain, to contribute and to become part of our society.  There is a clear, if unmeasurable difference between the two.

How can we keep out those who are abusing the country and let in those who want to join England?

And how do you turn someone away who so desperately needs medical attention, whatever their skin colour, creed or religion?

While it would be nice to treat the world we simply cannot afford it, hell we can hardly afford to treat ourselves with the NHS’s drug boards regularly cutting important medication and treatments from what we get on the NHS.

I have to admit it is a subject matter I would not want to be the policy owner on.  Do you bankrupt the country or stand to be hit by claims of racism and hatred?

Maybe we should look more to other countries, ones that protect their own heritage?

Ones that are not afraid to stand and say, this is us, if you can contribute you can join but do not expect our country to bend to your will.

written by Oli \\ tags: Culture, Disease, England, Heritage, Immigration

The credit crunch has been a major part of the UK press recently. Due to the recent rise in interest rates the newspapers have suddenly took on a doom and gloom look on the UK Housing and Consumer Market.

Now first of this was predicted several years ago by many of us,  with many peoples earnings not being enough to buy.  But te real fact of the matter is that when people are having to borrow 8 x their earnings to buy a house a 0.5% interest increase is not going to make a huge amount of difference, it is the multiplier, not the interest rate, that is preventing first time buyers from investing at the moment.

On the BBC website today I saw the following quote,

“But 2009 is particularly difficult to predict at the moment as the credit crunch may last for two to three years.

“But this in turn may lead the Bank of England to cut interest rates sharply, which may help stimulate the market, especially as there is now pent up demand from would-be first time buyers.”

Now to me this looks like yet another pile of bullshite from the big boys. Now that the Public has become aware of the fact that people are having trouble affording houses, and there is no longer a ‘boom’ to cash in on there is little posibility of these companies promoting housing as a growing market.  Personally I believe we will be looking at a minimum of a 20-30% drop in housing prices (Enough to get to the 5x earnings barrier at least) before things start to settle, though this may take 3-4 years.

I particularly like the part where this representative states that  “there is now pent up demand from would-be first time buyers.” Of course there is a pent up demand for first time buyers.  The problem is that first time buyers are looking at around 8 to 10 x their annual income before tax to afford their first house.  It was not even fourty years ago that a single person could go out, get a basic job on just over minimum wage and still get a house at no more than 3x yearly earnings.  The social idea that you need to have a partner to buy a house is now quite ironicaly becoming reality after it was the topic of so many jokes in the mid 90’s.

As someone waiting to get in on the housing market and with very little debt I am personally dead on eager for this housing crash, recession and equalisation that has been making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

written by Oli \\ tags: Debt, England, Housing, Recession

The green candidate has announced that while she will not try and strangle London’s roads, merely try to remove four wheel drives.  Her second point was to raise London’s minimum wage to £7.20.  What… The… Hell???

Now is it just me that wonders here, what about the rest of the country.  In the countryside tax tends to hit harder due to increased travelling and across the board goods.

So why should the rest of the UK support a raise in the minimum wage that’s nearly £2 above the UK minimum wage.  This MP clearly needs a lesson in basic economics.  Another problem our country is suffering from is inflation.  Its nice to know that she can think inflation can be cured by feeding money into Just one location, which may help London from going bust straight away, but will make the rest of our country substantially poorer, while subsidising the luxuries of the big city.

Not much makes me angry, but a lot of the Green politicians really do have their head in the clouds.

written by Oli \\ tags: England, London, Minimum Wage, Taxes, UK Green Party

Worldwide there are millions of different charities, many of these do small local events, there are some however which occur nationally, or even internationally in each country. In the UK for instance there are around 17 national running events, some for no more than a mile. Each of these has swathes of members asking for sponsership, many asking the same people, who will feel guilty about not sponsering a person, especially if they have already sponsereed somebody else.

But I think I have got ahead of myself. What is sponsership? Initially it used to be a way of raising money and awareness for a charity by doing something hard, something special or in some cases something stupid. However it was something rare, it was not common and it was difficult. The person running would have to put a lot in, whether they ran a marathon or climbed Mount Everest.

In recent years however the charities have, at least in my view, started abusing this. They have started doing nationwide ‘runs’ that range from 1 to 5 miles, neither of which is hard to achieve. Of course the reasoning behind this is simple, the easier it is, the more people will do it, the more money will be raised. It does not take long for you to be inundated with requests from people asking for money.

Now I am not saying that charity is a bad thing, I have several subscriptions set up and do sponser people in events. However as the running season begins I have already had 7 requests from people running various runs, three for one mile, three for three miles and only one person running 5 miles. Now each of these has been sponsered for at least three pounds, the 5 mile one has been sponsered a minimum of £5. If I put lower than these I would obviously looka cheapskate, but by sponsering each one the minimum anyone else had then I would be looking at a cost of around £30. Bang this ontop of my subscriptions and suddenly im looking at quite a large bill to foot for a lowly office worker!

I hate to say it but the charities are to blame for turning sponserships from something that helped a good cause to something that many people dread.  We find that giving to charity is more of an obligation than a charitable act in itself, something that defies what the charities are founded on.

When I was younger I quite liked doing sponsered events, I would, with great zeal go and collect signatures and promises of payment from the surrounding neighbour hood. At the time I failed to notice the slight wince in their faces as they opened the door to yet another schoolchild from the same class asking for money for the exact same thing.

With the coming of the internet things have become even worse, requests for sponsorship are now being delivered electronically.  While this is an aid to convenience it now also means that people will ask for money from people they barely know.  In an even more entertaining stance many just take the money instantly, not waiting to see if the sponsored event is nifact completed.

However there is light on the horizon Several websites now make the donations 100% anonymous, allowing peolpe to donate what they want to who they want without the social pressures involved with conventional sponsorship schemes.  Hopefully these things will take off in the near future!

written by Oli \\ tags: Charity, Donations, England, Sponsorship

It seems as if the new English Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is currently looking to be incredibly short lived in his post.  Today he revealed he was going to disregard the advise of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, set up specifically for the role of classifying drugs and their risks on society.

So if Gordon Brown is going to disregard the advice of those who actually know about the subject (Rather like Tony Blair in the recent wars we have entered) Why are we paying hundreds of thousands to keep these bodies in existence?

Now don’t get me wrong, I like the people in charge to have strog opinions and convictions. I think its a good thing that we have people with a strong sense that tehy are doing the right thing in charge.  However I do think these people should look at information presented to tehm and base their stance according to that.

This year I will be voting conservative.

I quite liked Scott Adams take on the current presidential candidates in the US.  In it he reports how every presidential candidate is backing Ethanol in fuel.  However every major scientific group is pointing out that Ethanol, which cannot be piped, so needs to be flown or driven to destination, is responsible for massive rainforest destruction (Since 20% of american farms now use their farms for feul production more rainforest is being cut down to accomodate), and gives out as much pollution as normal gasoline per distance travelled is actually not such a good idea.

If you are voting in people who are that ignorant how in gods name do you expect them to make informed decisions on important issues?

written by Oli \\ tags: Conservative, England, Environment, Gordon Brown, Labour, Maerica, Politics, Voting

The Government released a report this week that stated

“Teenagers are drinking 44 bottles of wine or 177 pints of beer a year each, a new study into under-age alcohol intake and violence shows.

The figures relate to 15- to 16-year-olds in the North West of England and stem from a study of 9,833 such youngsters.”

It’s nice to know that the government was shocked by the results, even nicer to know is that the idiots who have been looking into this failed to realise that your average 15 to 16 year old is going to massively overstate his achievements.

However binge drinking in the UK is apparent in many situations, whether it is actually a problem is debatable.  The level of drinking in the UK has remained steady for a hell of a long time.  We drink pints, we drink tehm fast and we have a great time.  And yet according the our newspapers it causes violence and antisocial behavior.

While I would agree that people lose their inhabitions after several pints  I dont think taxing alcohol is going to reduce the problem, since  lets face it, most of the nob ends who start fights in town tend to have something wrong in the head, they don’t need alcohol to start trouble.

The government has responded to this threat by raising the tax on beer by 4p, and it is going to reduce this duty by 6% above the rate of inflation every year for 4 years.

Jesus christ I hate our government.  Not only are they heavily taxing one of the few luxuries we enjoy in our repressed and recessive nanny state, they fail to realise that the trouble is more likely to come from the cider drinkers, especially with the young binge drinkers.

Beer - £2 - £2.50 a pint ($4-$5 )

Cider - £1 ($2) for two litres (Around three to four pints)

The ones who tend to cause trouble on a night are from low income families, they drink the cheaper drinks.  the governments new tax on beer willbring in over half a billion pounds ($1,000,000,000) per year from this yeas tax increase alone.

Go figure why the government decided to tax beer drinkers over the cider drinkers.

written by Oli \\ tags: , Beer, England, Politics, Tax

The UK government has decided to change the way games are classified in the UK, htey give many reasons for this, the main one being that parents are confused by the current ratings system.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7314751.stm 

The current video games rating system in the UK is based on an age, with a plus sign beside it, meaning it is recommended for that age and above.  Sureley anyone who doesn’t understand that is on a par with the American trailer trash or the UK Jade Goody (You Yanks Don’t know how lucky you were to avoid her).  However due to parental ineptitude by a minority the decision on suitability has been taken from the hands of the obviously irresponsible parents and will now be controlled by the government.

Fairly soon it will be illegal to sell or supply games to underage children,m the government have confirmed.  Britain truely is becoming a nanny state when basic entertainment is restricted by law.

written by Oli \\ tags: England, Law, Nanny State, Politics, Video Games

So today the English Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy got together to discuss a great relationship between the two countries. This may have been sparked by our sudden wish to buy nuclear power stations from them, or maybe the fact that we are heavily subsidising French farmers.

But whatever the reason for this olive branch of frendship the two glorious leaders of the once conflicted nations have brought in some fantastic new ideas to bring the two countries across the channel closer together.

First off, they are going to put some serious money in scanning for nuclear material being transported across the French and English Border crossings. This is great news for the Dutch who will now enjoy a boom as all the nuclear bombers that flock to England every year will have to find another route.

Tightening the immigration controls of Calais was also on the menu. Nicholas Sarkozy even went as far to say they may build a fence around the port.

A greater pooling of military resources was being discussed, this will greatly increase Britains ability to retreat under fire, or more likely giving more cover for the French to retreat under.

All in all this meeting seemed to promise a great deal of fuck all, the French will however be helping us Brits out by showing us how to deal with nuclear technology. Therefore expect unannouced missile tests to happen off our coasts in the near future.

written by Oli \\ tags: England, France, French, Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, Politics, Prime Minister