Totting up the cost of Government incontinence and Banking incompetence
If I seem like a dog with a bone about the new EU thieving construct (the one that went from one-off via template to Law in three months flat) it’s because of four things:
1. We all stand to be wiped out unless we stand up to it now.
2. Even if every citizen on the planet was shaken upside-down until skint, the bailin process would add up to peanuts compared to the total Western world sovereign debt and banking derivatives threat.
3. We have already brought the world economy to a halt to save sovereign central and private local banks. The triumph of this scheme will only convince their political friends that they can do anything they like, but it will stop global consumption in its tracks. It will make the situation worse, not better.
4. Purely selfishly, I’ve been given a 50% haircut already. My barnet’s short enough, thanks: I’m not giving the bastards any more.
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I’m well aware that what follows will evoke the usual politics of resentment, but that will earn no apology from me for having done well and worked hard. If that offends you – or you imagine I just ‘exploited’ others, or was ‘just lucky’ or ‘had it easy’ – well fine, take your self-pity over to the Labour Left site, and enjoy the sight of people mouthing off but doing nothing. But what I’m about to show readers is nothing more than one example of how disgusting the Sovbank axis of lies, greed and theft is. Laugh if you like at someone in the Squeezed Middle getting it in the neck, but remember: next time, it’ll be your turn.
Right, after that tediously necessary throat-clearing, let me lay out for you how manipulation, fraud and profiteering have destroyed 65% of my income – and slaughtered 41% of my capital – since 2002. That, by the way, doesn’t take any inflation into account.
Misdeed Cost £
Mis-sold Investment Bond by Scottish Widows 47,000
Bear notes negated by Bernanke/BoE QE 42,000
New DSS rules about SIPP withdrawals 24,000
Zirp return on investments 18,000
Lost spending power of £ in Europe 8,600
Gold market rigging 23,000
Help2buy effect on UK property affordability 56,000
TOTAL £222,600
Now all those steps were taken by financial services providers and central bankers, under the watchful eye of budgetarily illiterate Government and their allies. But for those who think me staggeringly well off, let me now explain how an income in 2002 of £30,000 a year from all sources has shrunk to…a few quid over £13,000. That is just over half what people at the higher end of benefits might get: I’m not saying they shouldn’t, I’m just pointing out that it’s a damn good job I did manage to sell the UK property, because otherwise I’d be racing through what’s left of my capital already.
Assuming I’m lucky and have another fifteen years left, I will be destitute before I die…even if the guzzling classes do nothing more. I was in the top 3% of UK earners pretty much non-stop from the age of 28 onwards. So tell me, o naysayers, how is the retired bus driver going to make it through?
From yesterday’s post here (which, encouragingly, had the highest hit-rate for more than two months) it’s sadly very clear that the bottom feeders intend to do far more, and behave even more badly, in their panic-stricken rush away from taking any responsibility for their actions. These were, in summary:
1. Overspending Government budgets year in year out from 1989 onwards.
2. Central bankers and finance ministers not getting hold of the credit bubble in 2003.
3. Pathetically poor overseeing and regulation of investment banking after 1985.
4. Adoption of global mercantilism and asset stripping after 1981.
Now I don’t know about you, but I had nothing – zero, zilch, nowt, bugger-all – to do with any of that insanity. In fact, I spent much of my adult life criticising it in the marketing press; and – since 2004 – blogging about it on a daily basis. As to the politicians involved, I didn’t support Thatcher, Big Bang, Major, Blair, pro-City New Labour or Brown, and I loathe Camerlot almost as much as the jabbering weasels hiding behind it.
So I’ve more than paid my whack. I didn’t screw up Britain by staying in the EU for far too long, I didn’t blow £23.2bn on connecting for health, I didn’t cause the negative equity of the 1988-91 period, I didn’t hide £450bn of bad debts off balance sheet, I didn’t collapse the entire banking system, and I didn’t save banks which should have been let go to the wall.
But I have seen my country’s public finances shattered, I am watching the poor and old about to be ruined by the Co-op Bank bailin scam, I do watch as HS2 becomes Cameron’s White Elephant in the room, I can spot that no politician in the last twenty five years has done a bloody thing to rebalance our economy, and I am watching my health services being eroded because no more than 40,000 idiots in banking and 33,000 greedy Mandarins have between them doubled the National Debt liability projections.
Thus – unlike the strangled at birth attempt at a common front three weeks ago – I’m going my own way on this one. I am SAYING NO TO BRITISH BANK BAILINS – but not by carrying a placard. I’m going to do it by starving the beast:
1. They’re not getting another penny out of me in tax. In fact next April, I’ll be asking them for a rebate by becoming a non-dom. And it won’t be cushy non-dom either: I’ll have to bum around quite a bit and spend a lot on travel to do it – money I don’t have. After that, my attitude will be “Catch me if you can”.
2. Within the next fortnight I will withdraw all my UK deposits and put them (a) elsewhere in the world and (b) into things, not fiat bogpaper. They can take their thinning scissors and shove them up somewhere at the rear: they won’t get any of my loot – unlike them, I earned it. Of course, sooner or later one Government or another will come after the properties – and yours – and place a tax penalty on the car – and yours – but that’s a way down the road. And like I say….first of all, they’ve got to catch me.
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Those of you with a legal bent (and I can’t think of a better word to describe the legal profession) will be quick to tell me that encouraging others to follow my lead is illegal, and so of course I have no intention whatsoever of doing that. Instead, I will simply point out that – as the signs become so obvious even Wayne and Waynetta notice them – lots of others will do what I’m doing. And then the Government will limit bank withdrawals to around £200 a week….which they will of course do in the end anyway – shortly after banning private sales in gold.
So, many people might say that you’d be an idiot not to do what I’m doing. They might say that, but I couldn’t possibly comment.
Instead, I will leave you this misty morning with a quote from that loveable old favourite of Ali McAlpine’s, the Prince Machiavelli:
“If you need to hurt a lot of people, it’s never a good idea to hurt them all at once”
Machiavelli, of course, was seeing it from the viewpoint of an amoral government spin merchant; and indeed, this is precisely the policy that the Conservatives are following at the moment. But if you’re a member of the Resistance, then hurting the buggers all at the same time is by far the best plan of action.
So, in turn, many very sensible people would say that this is exactly what we should all do starting on Monday. But that will be a matter for them, not me. You may choose to believe the blubbering stream of lies that have poured forth from the pervert Osborne’s disgusting lips throughout the course of this post-Crash interregnum. He may seem to many a man fond of the nasal snowstorm, a humbug, a self-obsessed yanker of the pink oboe, and a sniffer of the Bermuda Triangle. To others he appears to be a man who couldn’t organise even the simplest electoral bribe without cocking it up, or perhaps even one who practically had to bite pillows in order to tempt the Royal Canadian Mountebank into Threadneedle Street. Whether you agree or not, that is entirely a matter for you.
Rather, you should simply look at the evidence I have presented in the last two days, and go away to consider your verdict of Guilty. Ithangyoo.
This last bit written in fond tribute to the immortal Peter Cook
The Slog 