Do they think we are stupid?

 Rachel is busy looking to change the fiscal rules.  Currently the Bank of England's vast debt pile is part of the government's problem but Rachel is busy exploring divorcing from the Old Lady of Threadneedle Str so she isn't carrying the debt pile on her books. Who does the Bank of England lent to?  Either banks or the government. So the Government has borrowed TRILLIONS  from the BoE but isnt going to show this vast debt pool on it's books.  Let's start with the Banks. The Bank of England has lend vast sums to the banks following the financial crash of 2008.  What year is it now?  2024?  Hell!! -  that's nearly 20 years ago. Following the financial crash, the banks were required to retain a certain amount of money for liquidity. Where did they get this money?  The Bank of England. The banks weren't happy that they had to hold billions of cash on deposit so the Bank of England (ie tax payers) agreed to pay the Banks interest on the mone...

 Starmer keeps going on about his humble origins. He's the son of a "poor" toolmaker Yet he went to private school and is a public servant yet his declared net worth is £7.7 Million His house in Kentish Town is mortgage free and estimated to be worth £2M His wife is an NHS worker and reported to earn just £50k per year so the £7M is not from her. Kier Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions - a role than pays £137,179.  A good salary but certainly not one that would allow you to accumulate £7M in wealth. So how has Starmer managed to accumalate £7M in wealth?  Apparently he own 7 acres of land in Surrey which was part of his childhood home and is thought to be worth £10M.  Hang on his net worth is £7M not £17M?  Didnt he come from a "poor" family that just happened to own 7 acres of land in Surrey worth £10M.... In 2023 Starmer had an income of  £404,030 yet only paid £99,431 in tax.  How come? He should have paid £178,633 in ta...

 Ed Miliband and Angela Raynors at this weeks Labour Conferences pledged to end scourge of cold and draughty rented homes. This was clearly aimed at PRIVATE landlords and completely ignores SOCIAL and COUNCIL homes. Today Private landlords have to have a property that meets energy efficiency level of E or better.  There is no such requirement in England, Wales and Northern Ireland for COUNCIL or SOCIAL housing. Scotland does require targets to be met. There are 1.6 Million council homes in the UK There are 4.5 Million social homes in the UK  There are 4.6 Million private rented homes in the UK So over 58% of Tenants are living in cold draughty rented homes owned by the COUNCIL and SOCIAL landlords yet Labour ignore this.  This is yet another example of Two Tier Kier policies. Many councils have introduced Selective Licencing to ensure PRIVATE rental properties meet an acceptable standard.  There is no such requirement for SOCIAL or COUNCIL properties. I exp...

Labour have been in power now just 80 days. Phileas Fogg travelled the world in 80 days, saw new things and experienced new cultures. Like Phileas,  I've been on a learning journey for the past 80 days. The first thing I've learnt is how quickly a regime can change.  We've gone from a relaxed "laissez-faire" government to one that wants to micro manage our lives.  Not content with bashing Greedy pensioners, Starmer wants to interfere in Oasis ticket prices and just about anything he sees on a daily basis.  He's clearly one for rules and regulations - as long as he doesn't have to follow the rules himself. This interfering culture is creating uncertainty.  I am now unwilling to make any long term investment decisions since I don't know whether the rules will change on a whim. Taking this unwillingness to invest further I now realise I am very exposed to long term, difficult to exit investment decisions in the UK.   Belief in money is a human illusi...

 Today Rachel has apparently had a £10Bn windwall. Members of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) have said Threadneedle Street will shrink its balance sheet by carrying out £100bn of quantitative tightening (QT) over the next 12 months. I'm confused.  Let's start with the basics.  Tax income is about 33% of GDP yet the government is spending 45% of GDP. The 12% gap is basically £288 Billion of additional borrowing each year of top of the £2.7 TRILLION debt pile. The Bank of England sell bonds on behalf of the government to fund the government credit card. Typical credit card interest rates for UK gilt yields are between 3.5% and 4.25%. So an additional £12Bn each year of interest payments to service the debt.  The typical cost of interest payments today is £114 Bn per year and it will rise. So here's the confusion I have.  The Bank of England is saying it's going to contract money supply and not raise capital yet the budget deficit is not goin...

 The thing about blackholes is they are invisible. They are so big that light cannot escape. In the case of Labour (and previous governments), they can't see vast swirling financial blackholes in front of them.  In the case of Rachel Reeves she managed to find the £20Bn blackhole simply because she created it by paying £9Bn in inflation busting wage settlements but so far she hasn't found the £5 TRILLION blackholes left but the successive morons running our country. In the case of one blackholes it is sucking £100bn per year mostly into foreign governments pockets.  Clearly £100bn is bigger than £20bn but eagle eyed Rachel hasn't spotted it.  Let's start with the basics.  Tax income is about 33% of GDP yet the government is spending 45% of GDP - and growing. Labour, and previous successive governments, are spending more than they are earning so they have been hitting the credit card.  This borrowing has accumulated to a massive £2.7 TRILLION bounds.  L...

 Starmer, in order to deflect news from his disastrous scrapping of pensioner winter fuel allowances,  claims Britain is business friendly and a great place for inward investment of foreign capital. Just how true is his claim? Let's start with corporation tax since it's highly likely a foreign investor would form a company if they wanted to create a business in the UK. The headline rate of UK corporation tax is 19% provided profits are less than £50,000.   The next headline rate is 25% tax if the company makes a profit of greater than £250,000.  Now the band in the middle does not have a headline rate - it's referred to as tapered relief.  The reality is the marginal rate of taxation in this band is a punitive 26.5% tax rate.   The average corporation tax rate across 181 countries world wide is 23.45% so Britain is actually a high tax country if the company makes a reasonable profit.  Contrast the UK's rate with that with the average corporat...

 Exit anti-Landlord Conservative - only to be replaced by the very anti-Landlord Labour.  Government attacks on Landlords are set to continue. This feels like this Zombie attack cannot die. Angela Rayner makes unqualified statements about their forthcoming equivalent to the Renter Reform Bill such as “rebalance the relationship between tenant and landlord.".   Really? The law favours the Tenant way more than the Landlord. I thought it would be interesting to go through just how imbalanced things have got and how easy it is for a Landlord to get fined and get a CRIMINAL record. Let's start with the basics.  If a property has gas then the Landlord has to have a gas safety certificate.  Failing to get a gas safety certificate is a £6,000 fine and  a CRIMINAL record and potentially 6 months in prison.  This is not if the system is unsafe or kills someone.  Simply to not have the paperwork.  Most home owners do not have annual checks on ...

Killjoy Starmer and his band of miserable [wo]men look set to inflict misery, pain and suffering on the hard working UK population in the Autumn 2024 budget.  This modern day Robin Hood will steal from the not so rich and give to the poor.  Not content with telling us how bad things are and how much worse it's going to get - he's set to make us all depressed on the 30th October as we head into the depressing winter. He's planning to kill off a load of conservative voting pensioners by stealing their winter fuel allowance for example. It's starting to feel like a Game of Thrones episode - "Winter is coming". Pensions are very likely to feature in the pain and suffering. I know from personal experience - the very lovely Gordon Brown merrily stole from my pension in 1997 claiming it was a windfall tax.  As it's a pension I was powerless to do anything. I am sure Killjoy has studied these tactics and will be busy planning similar raids.  Not content with steal...

 It's hard to point to anything tangible in Labour's election manifesto.  Probably the only tangible thing was to create Great British Energy - an electricity generation company to liberate the British public from high energy prices. Here's the headline on GB Energy website "Britain already has public ownership of energy – just by foreign governments. Taxpayers abroad profit more from our energy than we do. It is time to take back control of our energy." "A first step of a Labour government will be to set up a new publicly owned champion, Great British Energy, to give us real energy security from foreign dictators." Well EDF owns and operates our UK Nuclear power stations. Are the French foreign dictators?  I agree with the sentiment of reducing the UK's high energy prices.  They are artificially high due to levy's to fund supposedly economically viable infrastructure investment such as wind turbines. There are also dubious pricing practices - in...

 I would say trust is probably the number one thing in a successful marriage/relationship. This year we ended up in a new relationship with the Labour government - OK it felt like an arranged marriage but nevertheless it was a fixed term union of the people and Labour. Killjoy Starmer started off on the 5th July 2024 saying positive things about this marriage.  Here's some extract from  Killjoy's wedding vows:      "Country first, party second"      "When the gap between the sacrifices made by people and the service they receive from politicians grows this big, it leads to a weariness in the heart of a nation, a draining away of the hope, the spirit, the belief in a better future" [this was aimed at the outgoing Conservatives - not the weariness that Killjoy is inflicting upon us.]           "Now this wound, this lack of trust, can only be healed by actions, not words."      "I know that, but we ca...

 Labour seem to have it in for those with the "Broadest Shoulders". I thought it would be interesting to see who these people are with the "Broadest Shoulders".  Multi-millionaire Killjoy Starmer seems to have sloping shoulders himself - so it won't be him. Looking at HMRC data from 2022, there were 31.5 million tax payers in the 19/20 tax year.  27.8 million of these were basic rate tax payers so 2.7 million were higher rate tax payers. And 629,000 earned more than £100k per year and paid the then higher rate tax. Allegedly the UK population is 67 million  so there are 35.5 Million people who do not pay any tax. There are approximately 15 million children to age 18.  And another 17.5 Million - presumably Labour's Greedy  pensioners, people on benefits, people in prisons and a bunch of other people. Anyway more people dont pay any tax than do pay tax. Let's take a higher earner with a nice salary of £150k per year.  This person pays £53,703 in tax, £50...

 Assuming there are still Landlords renting to tenants when Labour's equivalent of the Renters Reform Bill becomes law - expect rents to rise. Labour is set to introduce a range of measures to punish Greedy landlords. We already know that the real winners are Banks, the tax man - everyone except tenants and landlords. Labour is planning to do two things Introduce rent controls - ie cap the amount rents can increase each year When you evict a tenant a judge can decide if they would be worse off if you evicted then and force you to keep the tenant One of the few things I have learnt in life is "Measurement drives behaviour". These are measurements which Landlords now need to be very aware of. Let's take the second one.  Let's assume your tenant has been living in your property for a number of years.  They have been paying rent on time and you think they are a good tenant so you decide as a good landlord (not a greedy landlord)  not to increase their rent each year. ...

 If I cast my mind back to 1997, Tony Blair entered government to  fanfare of positivity.  His adopted anthem of D:Ream Things Can Only Get Better echoing through the corridors of power. Tony was always positive, smiling.  I can't say I remember him fondly.  I'm still spitting feathers over Tony's then Chancellor Gordon Brown stealing £60k from my pension claiming I was the subject to pensions windfall tax for holding BT shares - annoying as BT was our biggest customer hence the company pension fund bought into BT.  Still at least Tony was smiling when he stole it from me.  Not once did he call me greedy. Anyway - the general population was upbeat despite Robin Hood Blair stealing from the not so rich and giving it to his Labour buddies (cronies nowadays). We genuinely believed things could get better. Then Miserable Brown came to power from Grinning Blair. He was always miserable.  Then things got worse as he trashed the economy.  We all bec...

 Well it seems that Labour will provide no shortage of material for this blog which is called "Do they think we are stupid?" The latest is Labour MP Lucy Powell who claims that Pensioner 's winter fuel payments were axed to 10 million pensioners to stop a run on the pound. Thank heavens Labour have stopped the economy crashing by stopping these greedy pensioners in their tracks. So who is Lucy Powell? She's 49 and has been an MP since 2012 (so since age 37).  She started in Politics in 1997 (aged 22). She went to University so has never worked or had any real world experience.  She has spent all her life in the Westminster bubble. She studied Chemistry at Oxford University. A quote from her is "University of Oxford Made Me Feel Totally Thick".  I feel like adding to this " so I went into Politics where it's normal to be Totally Thick". Let's look at Winter Fuel Payments. Winter fuel payments are worth between £100 and £300.  The average is ...