The Gurkha Welfare Trust , last year, paid 3500 Nepalee Rupees per month to it's pensioners. That was about £26. The Trust increases its payments to its pensioners in line with inflation, plus 5%, so this year the amount will be about 3700 NR.
But is this £27.03 I hear you cry.
No, it's not.
It's actually nearly £32.50 - or an extra £800,000 this year. The why, of course, is that despite Nepal being amongst the poorest countries* on earth, with more than 50% of the population unemployed, the Great British Pound ( better placed than anyone else... you know the rest) has fallen against the Nepali Rupee.
Read it and weep.
Or alternatively, make a donation here, however small.
* Nepali GDP per capita last year was about £350 cf UK per capita GDP of about £23,500 ( and compare that with the present £33,000 Brown's government has saddled us all with.
Showing posts with label Britain's decline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Britain's decline. Show all posts
Friday, February 20, 2009
How to destroy the middle classes
Chris Dillow on Stumbling and Mumbling has an excellent post today ( not that they aren't always, especially those with pictures of well endowed young ladies with a minimum of clothes).
I did my economics a long time ago, and I had forgotten that borrowing and saving are two halves of the same coin - someone can't borrow unless somebody else has saved.
So the explosion in Government borrowing should not be a shock. We are all saving or paying down debt in one way or the other ( either through thrift or because the banks won't give us any money) so the Government is the only body that can borrow to balance the equation.
PoliticalBetting has a copy of the Mail's headline today, mentioning £2 trillion as what the UK Government now actually owes. This is quite scary as the Yanks, including all their present bailouts, only owe about £7.5trillion - and their economy is considerably more than 4 times bigger than ours. In effect we are over 100% of GDP and the US still only about 75%.
I was speaking with a person who is a real spook recently, and he was saying that he had been astonished at the vitriol that was being poured over this government and Brown in particular. In a narrow sense I suppose the thought was that people tend not to blame in quite the way they have recently.
But on further reflection, and ignoring all the spin ( or lies depending on your point of view), what Brown has done is reduce lots of people to near-penury. Even at the worst point of the last recession, there was quite a large middle-class band that was doing OK. Brown's profligacy, and subsequent taxation policies, has reduced that band considerably, with many falling out of it altogether. As lots of other posts today have pointed out, everything was going along just fine whilst Blair and Brown stuck with the inherited Tory budgets and policies - it was only subsequently that it began to fall apart. I doubt those middle classes will ever vote Labour in the same numbers again. I believe that after the next election the political landscape in the UK may change forever- and I don't mean we will have a permanent Conservative government, but the growth of radical parties across the spectrum.
In my view the critical bit of language/spin was Brown's forever mentioning his "investment" in various areas.
In fact, of course, this was just one more lie. The investment made was largely dead expenditure - whilst real investment was conducted under PFI. It's rather like taking £250 cash out of the hole in the wall, blowing it all on a party, then borrowing £10 to pay the interest on the money spent.
It's Brown wot did it. And because he did it, millions more thought it was OK for them to do it too.
Unfortunately.
I did my economics a long time ago, and I had forgotten that borrowing and saving are two halves of the same coin - someone can't borrow unless somebody else has saved.
So the explosion in Government borrowing should not be a shock. We are all saving or paying down debt in one way or the other ( either through thrift or because the banks won't give us any money) so the Government is the only body that can borrow to balance the equation.
PoliticalBetting has a copy of the Mail's headline today, mentioning £2 trillion as what the UK Government now actually owes. This is quite scary as the Yanks, including all their present bailouts, only owe about £7.5trillion - and their economy is considerably more than 4 times bigger than ours. In effect we are over 100% of GDP and the US still only about 75%.
I was speaking with a person who is a real spook recently, and he was saying that he had been astonished at the vitriol that was being poured over this government and Brown in particular. In a narrow sense I suppose the thought was that people tend not to blame in quite the way they have recently.
But on further reflection, and ignoring all the spin ( or lies depending on your point of view), what Brown has done is reduce lots of people to near-penury. Even at the worst point of the last recession, there was quite a large middle-class band that was doing OK. Brown's profligacy, and subsequent taxation policies, has reduced that band considerably, with many falling out of it altogether. As lots of other posts today have pointed out, everything was going along just fine whilst Blair and Brown stuck with the inherited Tory budgets and policies - it was only subsequently that it began to fall apart. I doubt those middle classes will ever vote Labour in the same numbers again. I believe that after the next election the political landscape in the UK may change forever- and I don't mean we will have a permanent Conservative government, but the growth of radical parties across the spectrum.
In my view the critical bit of language/spin was Brown's forever mentioning his "investment" in various areas.
In fact, of course, this was just one more lie. The investment made was largely dead expenditure - whilst real investment was conducted under PFI. It's rather like taking £250 cash out of the hole in the wall, blowing it all on a party, then borrowing £10 to pay the interest on the money spent.
It's Brown wot did it. And because he did it, millions more thought it was OK for them to do it too.
Unfortunately.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Mandelson's little difficulty.
John Redwood has a particularly good article today on the present strikes. In essence, he says this government has fudged all EU directives, telling us that either it won't have an effect or making a stand and then winning an immaterial concession. This is then hailed as a victory.
As he says :
"When people fear a law or think it is stopping them working they want their elected politicians to take that seriously and to be able to amend it. When the law comes from Brussels, the government is no position to do that. The government has honestly to tell the strikers that there is no point in them striking, because even if the government wanted to change the law in the way they would like, it cannot do so without the agreement of most other EU countries, which looks extremely unlikely on this issue."
Mandelson has been all over the TV and radio saying that the Company statement says it's all OK, but what has actually happened is that the UK contractors that tendered had workers wanting, for example, £20 per hour. The Italians will do it for eg £15. Its no use trotting out the line that there is a minimum wage and it has to be adhered to, as we are well north of that figure.
What is happening is that the Government's spin and general line about" it's fine, trust us" has finally been rumbled.
Never mind Labour's inability to do the housekeeping, they always end up with a winter of discontent. This is because , despite the rhetoric about " difficult decisions" they never take any, twisting in the wind to curry favour.
As my children will testify, I frequently say, it's no use being nice to people. The point is to tell them the truth and shame the devil. Alternatively, if you are nice to them, do it in expectation of no thanks or reciprocation.
No one may like it, but at least they know where they stand.
As he says :
"When people fear a law or think it is stopping them working they want their elected politicians to take that seriously and to be able to amend it. When the law comes from Brussels, the government is no position to do that. The government has honestly to tell the strikers that there is no point in them striking, because even if the government wanted to change the law in the way they would like, it cannot do so without the agreement of most other EU countries, which looks extremely unlikely on this issue."
Mandelson has been all over the TV and radio saying that the Company statement says it's all OK, but what has actually happened is that the UK contractors that tendered had workers wanting, for example, £20 per hour. The Italians will do it for eg £15. Its no use trotting out the line that there is a minimum wage and it has to be adhered to, as we are well north of that figure.
What is happening is that the Government's spin and general line about" it's fine, trust us" has finally been rumbled.
Never mind Labour's inability to do the housekeeping, they always end up with a winter of discontent. This is because , despite the rhetoric about " difficult decisions" they never take any, twisting in the wind to curry favour.
As my children will testify, I frequently say, it's no use being nice to people. The point is to tell them the truth and shame the devil. Alternatively, if you are nice to them, do it in expectation of no thanks or reciprocation.
No one may like it, but at least they know where they stand.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Trashing an inheritance
There's a great quote by Ian Cowie in the "Your Money" section of the Daily telegraph today.
The whole article is worth reading, but the stand-out sentence encapsulates all that has gone wrong with what used to be GREAT Britain.
Cowie has written " It took many centuries for Rome to turn into Italy, but little more than a decade for the United Kingdom to turn into Little Britain"
Strangely this coincides with the period that the present government ( OK I know it wasn't led by Brown all the time) has been in power. I'm reminded of the old joke, how to make a small fortune. Answer: start with a big one.
Blair and Brown inherited a Great Britain.
But LITTLE Britain we have most definitely become.
The whole article is worth reading, but the stand-out sentence encapsulates all that has gone wrong with what used to be GREAT Britain.
Cowie has written " It took many centuries for Rome to turn into Italy, but little more than a decade for the United Kingdom to turn into Little Britain"
Strangely this coincides with the period that the present government ( OK I know it wasn't led by Brown all the time) has been in power. I'm reminded of the old joke, how to make a small fortune. Answer: start with a big one.
Blair and Brown inherited a Great Britain.
But LITTLE Britain we have most definitely become.
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