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wharfgirl

Listed below are comments made by wharfgirl between Wednesday, 1st April 2009 and Sunday, 10th May 2009.

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Parliament's reputation brought low 5:34pm on 10 May 2009 Don't kid yourself the corruption is all on the government side. (And I say this as one who has never voted for them) It's endemic to the professional class, inside and outside politics and has been for years.

Back in the 70s when I first joined ITV as a young journalist I was taken aside and my expenses claim form handed back to me. I had mistakenly assumed that expenses were reimbursents for money spent necessarily on doing the job. Turns out I was wrong. There was a set level of weekly expense and I was letting the side down by being too stupid and naive to claim it. A good many people who went on to very senior jobs in broadcasting were living entirely off their expenses and banking their salaries every month. And I duly followed the herd, although I never really had the enthusiasm or creative talent the work of expense claiming really needed.

This isn't a party political matter. In all parties, as in any group of human beings, you will find out and out stinkers, people who will take every penny they can screw out of the system short of crossing the line into criminality - (well actually quite a lot of them will do that as well.) Then there's the herd - people who go along with it cos it's an easy and more comfortable life. And then there are the very few truly good people, with genuine principles who put what is right above what is possible. The one bit of good news to come out of this publishing of all the details is that we now know who some of those few good and principled people are.

I think we should be calling for an immediate election. We should be voting out anyone whose dealings appear to have been corrupt, even where no technical rules have been broken. And we should be voting back in those who have proved themselves straight dealing folk, whatever their political party. (eg Hilary Benn) Cleaning the Augean stables should stand above party politics. It must be done and soon.

Don't let us have come through all the misery and stress of the last two years, just to go back to buisiness as usual. The world has to change for the better! Please, God.
Making banks safe 4:06pm on 28 Apr 2009 Of course we need to go back to basics and redesign not reform. You say the old system would have left us poorer. Let me turn it round the other way. The wealth we thought we had these past few years, we never really had in the first place. We just spent the future. And we can't put things right by deceiving ourselves that we can go on spending it, because the more of the future we spend, the poorer we'll all find ourselves when we get there. We were never as rich as we thought we were. It was all a con. Now we have to pay it back, go back to the standard of living we really have achieved and build from there.

The point you make about banks big and small and insurance companies too all being prone to the same mistakes is a fair one. But surely the sensible way to approach this is to recreate the old tortoise and hare, retail and investment banking division, revive a version of America's Glass Steagal Act. High street banks should simply be forbidden from certain investment activities. Yes they'll give a lower return. But they will offer safety. For those not content with that, let them chase higher returns with investment banks and their fancy products. But let them understand that, if those banks get into trouble they WILL be allowed to fail. That way banks will not be able to hold us taxpayers to ransom again.

Oh and speaking of cons, has anyone else heard of this South African ponzi scheme that collapsed today leaving loads of British investors bankrupt? The man who ran it has been arrested. Apparently it involved loaning money to the Salvation Army short term at high rates of interest, only the Sally Army were never actually involved and the loans never really took place. A friend just found out he lost everything.
Why tax the rich? 8:42pm on 27 Apr 2009 404 Casseroleon

Brilliant post. Really made me think. Where do I find this article 'The Rediscovery of Social Man'
Why tax the rich? 4:40pm on 26 Apr 2009 274 Hodgeey

I don't think we are that far apart in principle. The Taxpayers' manifesto is all about INDIVIDUAL FIRST, STATE SECOND, via a substantial reduction in taxation of all kinds and, obviously, a commensurate reduction in state spending. More room for private wealth creation and private responsibility, because without the efforts of individuals we cannot get out of this mess.

You simply want to go further than I guess we would think achievable, while still maintaining the sort of society, we would all want to live in - ie one where our children are decently educated and our elderly and sick decently cared for. Even if one were to cut benefits for all healthy adults of working age, bar some kind of short term unemployment benefit cushion, we do not believe this basic standard can be achieved without some form of tax on income. We just want to see it reduced to far less burdensome levels -a sentiment that seems to be echoed by many contributions here.

We want to get this debate about taxation going now, because we all know this week's budget was a FRAUD. The situation cannot be coped with simply by upping taxes on the rich to over half their incomes, even if it were morally right in a free society to do so. The truth is that, as soon as the next election is over, taxes for everyone are going to have to be raised in a most painful manner and/or fairly swingeing cuts will have to be made. (see this week's Economist for a comprehensive and pretty devatsating analysis of where we are post the Budget)

Which way Britain goes will be down to us. It is our choice. It is the single most important thing we will be voting on in a year's time. So what exactly do we want collectively? Are any of the parties providing answers we can trust? Can any of them be nudged or pressured into doing so? That is what the Taxpayers Party stands for.
Why tax the rich? 5:23pm on 25 Apr 2009 We are sick to the stomach with all parties’ reactions to the budget and accordingly propose the formation of a new political party to be called the Taxpayers Party, pledged to debate the issues with honesty, fairness and intelligence.

Our manifesto would be as follows:-

1. We believe in taxation. Those who can create wealth should share it with those less fortunate in any civilised society. It is the basis of our democracy.
2. We believe in progressive taxation. Those who earn the most should pay the most.
3. But we believe in the primacy of the INDIVIDUAL over the state. (Without sounding redneck about this, it is what separates market based democracies from communism and is therefore the very basis of our system.) We believe in it for pragmatic reasons – states do not create wealth, they merely distribute it. Therefore a healthy economy must have the room for the private sector to do its job. But we also believe in it for reasons of principle. To take half or more of any individual’s income is to reduce him to working for the state, which is an erosion of individual freedom.
4. Accordingly, we believe that the individual must be allowed to provide for him or herself and family in first position out of any income. Only once this has been achieved should the state begin to tax the surplus.
5. The tax free personal allowance is the way to achieve this. At the very minimum, that means that the personal allowance today should be raised immediately to the level of some kind of living wage. TEN THOUSAND POUNDS seems the minimum reasonable starting figure. (Ideally it would be closer to £15,000, but that is obviously unaffordable.) There would be additional allowances to provide for children and those within the family in full time care of those children (or dependent sick or older family members.)
5. These allowances would not be able to be withdrawn from someone whatever his or her level of income. They would be a universal right.
6. These personal allowances would be index linked and a law passed to preserve that index linking. Thus any future government wishing to reduce the relative value of personal allowances could not just let them be eroded automatically by inflation as has happened for the past 40 years. It would have to pass an act of parliament and warn of its intention to do so in its manifesto, so we could all vote on it.
7. Beyond the personal allowance, there would be progressive tax bands applied to any surplus income. The levels of these should be a matter of public debate but, for arguments sake let’s set them at 20% up to £40K, 30% beyond that up to £75K and 40% above that level. 40% would be the maximum anyone could be asked to pay on their marginal income, since indirect taxes would already take that dangerously close to 50%. No individual would be expected to pay the majority of their earnings in tax.
8. We believe that taxation levels should never be set to pander to popular envy of the successful. Nor should they serve the function of punishing those (bankers) who have gained their wealth at the expense of the economic health of the country. The law is the way to deal with those transgressions, not the tax system. For anyone convicted of fraud, assets could be confiscated. You do not punish wrong doers by penalising everyone who adds to the wealth of the nation. Were we elected we would actively pursue those responsible for the banking crisis for fraud. We would tighten up regulation of banks beyond what has already been suggested, and amend legislation so that retail and investment banking were properly separated as in the past. We would also encourage the recreation of a healthy mutual sector within the banking industry and we would do so by returning those banks currently in state ownership to their former mutual status as soon as they have been nursed back to financial health. There is the argument that these changes could threaten our financial competitiveness. But as the present crisis has proved, safety of the finances of the many has to be the first consideration. Sometimes the price for being the ‘world number one’ is too high to be worth paying.
9. Back to taxation. In summary, we believe that our proposed changes will combine to trim back the scope of the state and are a very over due ‘weeding’ of our economic garden. They will create the space for private enterprise to flourish as it needs to do, if we are ever to recover.
9. However, there are obvious costs to our policies. The tax take under this system will be substantially reduced. We gladly acknowledge this. We believe for too long too many have relied on the state to do too much and have had a false idea about what sort of level of provision could be afforded. There is a tendency for citizens to campaign for government money for anything and everything. We should look to the government only for basic need, which cannot otherwise be met. For the rest, we must look to ourselves. We the Taxpayers’ Party would urge a public debate to determine what is worth spending the fruits of our collective hard work on. This money is OURS and we need to be tight with the purse strings.
10. Again simply to kick off the debate, we would agree that health and education are the priorities. Every opinion poll shows these are what the public wants above all else. We never want the health service or our schools and colleges to sink to the level of decay and disrepair we saw in the Thatcher years. BUT this may well mean that we need to redefine exactly what ought to be free at the point of need and for whom. Nothing ought to be sacred or beyond debate. (A further section of this manifesto will be published later with radical questions about aspects of health and education)
11. Beyond this, we seek for the present only to provoke a public debate about what should be cut. But this has to be in the context of acknowledging that those cuts will need to be substantial and there is no point in deceiving ourselves about this. So we need to ask some pretty tough questions, questions which may well lose votes in some quarters. We believe it is time politicians stopped treating voters like children who must be constantly bribed with sweets. The time for honesty is now. If not, we will simply drift into a situation that may well be the worst of all worlds.

We the Taxpayers Party welcome you to the debate.
ITV: Change of cast 3:18pm on 23 Apr 2009 The problem for ITV is that it's business model hasn't worked for some time and, in a multichannel and internet-ed up universe, is probably never going to work again.

Commercial shows, the ones that get high ratings - like so called 'shiny floor' entertainment (X Factor, Talent, I'm a Celeb etc) and dramas with high profile casts (eg Martin CDlunes, Julie Walters etc) - now cost so much to make that ITV have not turned a profit on them for years.

In addition, their own production arm doesn't actually make most of their peak time successes. Indies do. And those independent companies enjoy a fabulous deal whereby the whole cost of their shows is covered in exchange for just a licence for two UK transmissions. So unlike the BBC, ITV don't even own most of the top shows they broadcast. So they can't make up the deficit via overseas sales.

Management has tried putting pressure on commissioning editors to commission more shows from ITV Productions, but the Comm Edds know they will be measured in ratings and critical success, and fear that the in house producers won't deliver to the same standards the outsiders do. So they just ignore the pressure.

So basically ITV are left with only one real way to make money - from UK advertising. Which leaves them in a vicious circle. If they spend the money they need to get ratings, they fail to earn it back. But if they cut their budgets and make cheaper shows, they risk losing even more viewers and driving the advertisers away.

All this they have made worse by systematically getting rid of most of the people who actually understood popular television, starting with the old drama department, to most recfently the Head of ITV Productions.

Now, with the size of their borrowing against a tiny shrunken capital base, they are technically BUST.

My own best guess is that, once takeovers become commercially and politically possible again, some foreign interest (possibly with some UK front of house names) will hoover up the shares, will ditch the public service committments, merge the channel probably with Five, retrench to a diet of soaps and reality shows and the ITV we all grew up with will be no more.
Gilts shock 4:45pm on 22 Apr 2009 This was a political budget, designed to win an election, not to get us out of a hole. And in that respect, it probably did as good a job as anyone could expect.

The great British public don't really understand about government debt or the consequences of it. What they'll see and hear is that things don';t seemed to have changed all that much. If anything slightly for the better. If they're jobless they can expect training and help with the mortgage. If they're pensioners, they get a heating payment and a tiny bit more on the pension. If they want to save, they'll get all of £42 a year, (if they can find an ISA that pays 3%) on the extra £1400 cash they're allowed to put in. If they want a new car, there's even money for that. There are no huge cuts apparently. The gvt seems to be investing more left right and centre. And no worries cos the so-called, newly demonised 'rich' are going to pay for it all. I reckon it's enough to give them a reasonable shot at an election, especially as Cameron didn't really muster much apart from going on and on about the debt. And he was skewered by the 50% tax. Does he repeal - in which case he's just the rich toff we all suspected - or stick with it and alientate a lot of his own people? People will onnly care about the country's debt when it personally affects them - when they too are patying more in tax or losing srvices or both. Till then, if the gvt says we're OK and wants to keep paying out, who are they to object.
Tories to break up banks? 7:27pm on 08 Apr 2009 While I agree with Osborne that there is such a thing as too big when it comes to banks, it's not all about size. Function and regulation are the key things. We need to think very seriously about legislation to keep investment banking and retail banking separate. And we need far stricter reviews of the banks capital bases. It is also worth thinking about whether the mutual model needs to be revived as it existed prior to the 1986 legislation. Most of the big mutuals were fine - until they were privatised. Why not restore the Rock to mutual status? And break off the old Halifax and mutualise that too? I'm not sure why there has been no debate about this? Can anybody tell me the arguments against?
G20: Sticking plaster not cure 8:45pm on 01 Apr 2009 ... oh and #110 to throw out capitalism would be to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

It's not the system of providing a product or service for a profit that is at fault. It's the collapse of moral values around that activity.

The problem is the erosion of our principles and our emotional intelligence. Instead of treating others as we would wish to be treated ourselves, we have seen others as simply a means to make a buck. You see it everywhere, from businesses going over to 0870 numbers and deliberately making us hold on the line, or rolling over direct debits without asking us, to the cynicism of MPs expecting to live off expenses and refusing ever to resign when they have done anything wrong. And from there, it was only a small step to conning ourselves that we could have anything we wanted, borrow what we wanted and never have to pay it back.

It would be just as easy to blame welfarism for our present plight as to attack capitalism. For at least with raw capitalism, bad decisions and deeds have real consequences. In the world of cradle to grave social security they have none.

But I don't blame welfarism either. I blame something more profound. Now don't think I've turned into a raving nutter for saying this - but I believe the collapse of Christianity has much to do with this mess.

We're in a nominally Christian society, but the vast majority of us don't actually believe the narratives. Can you say you are a Christian if you disagree with the bible about homosexuality, sex outside marriage, contraception etc. If you don't really believe in the Virgin Birth or the resurrection, never mind the legend of creation and the old man up there in a white beard.

Throughout history religion has always evolved as society has changed. Christanity hoovered up a lot of pagan traditionds and gave them new meaning. But somehow religion seems to have stopped evolving. And so, as we've stopped believing the narratives, we've started to think we've outgrown the idea of religion itself. It disturbs me how many of my son's generation see religion as anything from naff, to sexually exploitative to outright evil because of the wars and hatred it has fuelled.

But the failure of religion in this society is deadly. If there's no old man with a beard, we conclude there's no God at all and therefore no consequences. We can do whatever we want and the end will just be oblivion. No reason to be good or bad, faithful or unfaithful, selfless or selfish. It's profoundly sad that we ever needed to be whipped into behaving in a moral fashion by the threat of hell. Profoundly sad that without that threat we do not feel compelled to abide by rules and standards that may cost us personally from time to time. But we need to learn that it is actually impossible to be happy without being moral. That there is no such thing as something for nothing. That one gets only by giving - and by giving with no hope or expectation of receiving.

Until we rediscover the compelling power of values,we will not espace from this mess.

End of rant.
G20: Sticking plaster not cure 8:17pm on 01 Apr 2009 Well it was all a bit of a damp squib today down here at the Wharf. They'd had us braced for death and destruction with notices in the lifts about locking the doors and reporting suspicious packages. So I went out for my morning coffee hoping for some fun. Couple of cafes closed in cowardly fashion. Lots of ambulances parked around the place and sniffer dogs. Lots of policemen and paramedics standing round having a smoke in the sun at the taxpayers' expense. And of course the transport was ****ed up cos they closed Bank Station AGAIN. Apart from that - zip.

I have a ringside seat on the Excel Centre from my front windows, so maybe tomorrow will provide more sport. But I doubt it. Personally I don't think things will get seriously ugly till savings get used up, unemployment hits 3 mill, taxes go up and money starts to inflate away into the ether. Then look out for some trouble.

Those in power shouldn't let the relatively small numbers on the streets today make them complacent. Most Brits probably don't identify with anarchists or the more extreme anti capitalists. But they do have a huge reserve of pent up anger at the establishment. This week alone I've talked with four old friends, none of them any longer in full time work but they'll never be part of the unemployed statistics since they would never sign on. None has worked for longer than four weeks in the last six moths. All are motoring through their savings at an alarming rate with no idea what to do next. And the language they used about everything from Fred's pension to Jacqui's porn would turn the air blue.

They believe everyone in power is simply feathering their own nests. No one has the guts, the intelligence or the princples to find a way out. All anyone cares about is holding on to whatever power or money they have got. That level of cynicism is a destructive force for our society. Everyone knows that something big has to change.

One day soon the anger is going to come out.

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