Conservatives want jobs

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has said that he wants Britain to have the highest employment rate of any of the world's leading economies.

Here are some helpful suggestions:

Abolish the Work Programme, and give the money back to employers in lower taxes.

Abolish overseas aid, and keep the money in this country.

Ensure that steps are taken to assist those on low wages.

Do not allow any foreign national to enter Britain to claim benefits.

Do not allow any foreign national to enter Britain to look for work unless that foreign national is capable of work which cannot reasonably be undertaken by a British national.

Take reasonable steps to minimise the likelihood that a job will exist which a British national cannot undertake.

As I currently expect that the government will implement not one of the above suggestions, then I also do not expect that the government will come close to achieving full employment.

Related previous posts include:
The Work Programme - still not working
The lawsuit of Mr O  (As an update, this lawsuit has now been granted legal aid.)
Dyson wants immigrants
The betrayal of the low paid
You pay for foreign crooks

A new dawn - but not for the Tories

What to write about today?  Homosexual marriages are now legal in this country.  Nigel Farage is widely perceived to have won his televised debate with Nick Clegg.  The Conservative Party appears to be rising in the opinion polls at the expense of Labour.

I have already made clear my distrust of opinion polls.  I prefer to base my expectations of electoral success on the outcomes of real elections, and in the most recent parliamentary by-election the Conservative Party's retained vote did not rise.  Neither did that of the Liberal Democrats.  The British National Party did see a significant rise in its retained vote, although it remains below fifty percent.

I am not aware of any parliamentary by-elections pending at the moment, and so the next big test of electoral fortunes appear to be the European and local elections in late May.

I have already argued that the rise in support for UKIP may not last.  Maybe it will. One thing I am certain of is that the Conservative Party could be enjoying far more support at the moment if it were not for the legalisation of homosexual marriage.  There are two reasons for this.

A lot of people are opposed to homosexual marriage.  Opinion polls suggest about one third.  The point is that people who oppose it may well decide not to vote Conservative as a result, whereas people who support it are not necessarily going to vote Conservative as a result.

The second reason is that parliamentary time given to the legalisation of homosexual marriage is time that cannot be given to something more important - and it is hard to think of anything less important.  Can't afford to pay your gas bill?  Homosexual marriage is the answer.  Is your neighbourhood blighted by vandalism?  Homosexual marriage is the solution - or so it seems.

Conservative Party supporters who fear an electoral meltdown in May should reflect that David Cameron's support for homosexual marriage is arguably a major cause of that meldown.  As for UKIP, they will not have my vote in May, but I expect they will manage pretty well without it.

Related previous posts include:
The return of the UKIP hamster
The weather, dear boy, the weather

Police failure on domestic violence

It is reported that thousands of people are in danger of assault or even murder because many police forces in the United Kingdom are not doing enough to deal with domestic abuse.

I will say nothing of the specific allegations, but I do have some points to make about domestic abuse.

First, I would be interested to know how many incidents of domestic violence are committed by immigrants.  What I know for certain is that I can remember a time when I had never heard the term honour killing.  I am not exactly sure what an honour killing actually is, although it does tend to be the murder of an immigrant by another immigrant.  In fact I'm not sure it is ever anything else.

Second, there has to be a link to the activities of evil communists.  (Is there such a thing as a non-evil communist?)  I have known of cases of British National Party members being attacked by communists in public, and in some cases while police officers stood by and do nothing.  I have also known of many cases where English Defence League marches or static demonstrations have been disrupted by violent communists.  In one case I can think of, the cost of policing the march was £800,000.  If communist thugs stayed away from EDL events, then the cost of policing them would presumably be much lower.

Police officers deployed to keep communists away from the EDL are police officers who cannot investigate domestic violence at the same time.  Communist thugs are the wife-beaters' best friends.

One thing that does stand out from the above link is that it quotes police chiefs as saying that domestic violence is a priority.  What exactly is a priority?  Surely the only way one thing can be a priority is if something else is not a priority.  My priorities do not include fat cat salaries for any police officers, not even the chief constables.

Cameron is no better than Miliband

I have just read a newspaper comment about Ed Miliband.  I don't need to supply a link, because there isn't enough substance in it to make that worthwhile.  Basically, the government has delivered its budget, which contains certain measures which the press consider to be laudable - and let's face it, it is highly unlikely that there would be absolutely nothing good to say about it.

So far as I can make out though, the only really good thing that the press can find in the budget is the fact that the government is allowing pensioners to take control of their own pensions.  Some press commentators are pointing to recent falls in the level of unemployment as evidence of the government delivering, but then consider this news item about fifteen hundred people chasing just forty jobs.

If my arithmetic is correct, then each one has just under a three percent chance of success.  Anyone who thinks that unemployment is caused by people not wanting to work should consider that these forty jobs are poorly paid supermarket jobs, and that nearly forty people are chasing each vacancy.

Meanwhile the government continues to hurl billions of pounds of our money each year at overseas aid, which basically means taking money from the British public and putting it into Swiss bank accounts.  Anyone who has any doubts on this matter should reflect upon the fact that I am quoting Imran Khan.

If it is a good idea for British people to control their own pensions, then why can we not also be trusted to control our own charitable giving?  If Cameron's government of lunatics were to abolish overseas aid, then they could give the money saved back to the people in tax cuts.  We could then decide for ourselves how much of our money we want to give to charity to help develop the third world, and could even choose which charities - if any - will benefit from our donated money.

The national press are absolutely correct when they deride Ed Miliband as an incompetent politician.  They are wrong however if they suggest that David Cameron is any better.  David Cameron is a clown, and I confidently expect that he will be seeking a change of career after the next general election.

Previous related posts include:
LibLabCon failure on youth unemployment
Shapps and the northern renaissance

The death of a hated man

Amidst the press coverage of the death of a fashion designer, it is pleasing to note that at least some coverage has been given to the recent death of Fred Phelps.  What I find distasteful however is the bile and hypocrisy surrounding his demise.

For those who do not know about him, Phelps was a church minister, and for many years was involved with the Westboro Baptist Church in the city of Topeka, Kansas.  Over many years this church has organised huge numbers of public demonstrations, often targetting funerals.  Their message has been one of hatred.  If I've got it right, one of their central beliefs is that the deaths of American soldiers in foreign wars are God's punishment of the USA for daring to tolerate sodomy.

Press reports tend to be restrained in their criticism of him, but the comments are another matter, with people wishing him in hell.  Nevertheless Phelps was a far better example of a Christian minister than most of the vermin who pass for clergy in Britain today.  I suspect that that comment probably applies equally to clergy in the USA and many other countries as well.

I do not agree with the message preached by Phelps, and it is quite possible that surviving members of the Westboro Baptist Church would regard me as hell fodder.  Nevertheless The Bible does condemn sodomy, and anyone who dares to mention that is arguably a better Christian that someone who tries to gloss over that fact.

Millions of people in the USA - and the United Kingdom - vote in elections for warmongers.  Who are they to judge Fred Phelps?  At least some church leaders in this country have been known to appear in public standing shoulder to shoulder with Muslim leaders.  Does The Bible exhort Christians to respect the beliefs of non-Christians?  Does it?  Can anyone supply a reference?

Also, Muslims are required by The Koran to destroy Christians (9:30) and to regard them as the worst of creatures (98:6).

A man who described Barack Obama as the antichrist must have been doing something right, and I for one will not join in the condemnation of the late Fred Phelps.

Related previous posts include:
Christians could do more
David Cameron on Islam
Your Muslim faith - really?

Paxman on war, Hastings on Russia

Once again I find myself writing about war, and once again I am sure that a lot of people will disagree with me.  Some may even be offended, as if I care.

Jeremy Paxman has recently argued that our present society is too hedonistic for Britain to be able to mobilise the kind of army it sent to war in 1914.  Doubtless there is something in that.  Back in 1914 it was a different world.  Pretty well everyone, including the upper classes, lived in poorly insulated homes, with the result that pretty well everyone froze in winter.  Tough lives produced tough men.  Nowadays it is easy to go jogging on a cold day, knowing that you have a nice warm home to return to.  It is even easier to be a couch potato.

I like to think that Britain will never again go to war on the scale of some of our past wars, but at the same time I hope that Britain will never again take part in any war that does not concern us.  The Great War and the Second World War did not concern us.  We entered both wars without good reason.  We were the aggressors.

Britain did not take part in the Franco-Prussian War.  The death toll in that war nudged two hundred thousand, and yet the death toll in the Great War was approximately ONE HUNDRED TIMES GREATER.  That difference is surely due in part to British involvement.

At the moment, Britain has no plans to go to war against Russia, and yet Max Hastings argues for an attitude of belligerence towards the government of Vlad Putin.  I do not like Putin, but I will not condemn him for seeking to incorporate the Crimea into Russia.  There has after all just been a referendum in the Crimea in which ordinary people voted for such an incorporation - or reincorporation, seeing as how the Crimea was part of Russia within living memory.

Hastings is doubtless right when he talks about the fragile state of our armed forces, but we should all be clear that our armed forces exist to defend us from aggression.  They do not exist to take part in illegal wars for the benefit of global capitalism.

Related previous posts include:
A reasoned approach to war
Questions for the warmonger Gove
The west should stay out of Ukraine

Sensational news: people can be nasty

There have been a couple of items in the national press today about Nigel Farage, the leader of UKIP.  I do not care to repeat these allegations, as I am not in a position to comment on their veracity, but this is nevertheless a good opportunity to inform the reader of a few basic facts.

Politics can be a very dirty business, as I know from my own first-hand experiences.  Time and again I hear stories about politicians - usually famous ones - being bullies or womanisers or even crooks.  I cannot know for certain whether or not specific allegations are true, but they do not surprise me.

For most politicians, nothing matters more than winning elections.  Winning puts you in power, and can often be lucrative for the person who is lucky enough to be elected.  Councillors nowadays often receive salary-type allowances, while MPs and MEPs are paid large salaries and also have access to expense accounts.

When you are the leader of a political party, you are under pressure to achieve results, and it is only to be expected that occasionally you will be tempted to cut corners, cheat, lie, cajole, threaten - or indeed do all of the above.  The general public are unlikely to object, because the general public are unlikely to find out what you are up to.

Of course the allegations about Nigel Farage are all part of an ongoing smear campaign against UKIP in the run-up to the elections in May.  I confidently expect that UKIP will poll well in those elections, regardless of what is printed about them in the meantime.  I expect also however that their support may not last long.  I may be wrong, but I do not expect that they will win a single seat in parliament in next year's general election, and I expect also that their support will largely evaporate thereafter.

For many people, a UKIP vote in May will be a protest vote, and that is perhaps the main reason why the smear campaign against UKIP is unlikely to dent their support.

Looking ahead, there will doubtless many times in the future when rumours circulate about politicians being crooks or bullies or whatever.  When you hear such rumours, do not rush to believe them.  They could be malicious.  Equally though, do not be surprised.  Even outwardly friendly people can behave badly at times, and politics is an occupation which has an uncanny ability to bring out the worst in people.

Update: in case any reader of this site is having difficulties with regard to membership of a political party which is poorly led, then the most helpful thing I can do is to point out that the last line of accountability in any party is to resign if you are unhappy with the way things are going.

Time and again when writing this blog I have urged readers to join a political party, but I am careful never to recommend a political party.  This is intentional.  Maybe the best political party for you to join is one that does not yet exist.

Related previous posts include:
Demon words aimed at UKIP
Nigel Farage is still a coward
A tale of two scumbags

UKIP and crime

UKIP leader Nigel Farage has spoken out about biased press coverage.  He gives the example of the LibDem councillor whose conviction for racially aggravated assault was reported in the local press.  Farage quite reasonably comments that:

If this had been a UKIP councillor, or even a far removed ex member of UKIP, it would have been splashed across the pages of all the national newspapers and covered by all the main broadcasters.

I was surprised to read Farage say that his party does not allow membership to people linked with the communist terror group Unite Against Fascism, but it is well known that his party also does not allow membership to former members of the British National Party.  Some years back a BNP member was convicted of a racially aggravated assault (which he denied, and which was based on no firm evidence).  He was jailed, and an appeal resulted only in a reduction of sentence.  Compare this with the fine handed down to the LibDem councillor.

It is interesting to note also that the communist thug who recently hit Nigel Farage has been convicted of common assault.  By contrast, not one of the communist thugs who attacked Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons on College Green in 2009 were prosecuted.  In fact I'm not sure if any of them were even arrested.  It is of course normal for people who attack members of the British National Party to escape arrest, but I do not hear Nigel Farage complaining about that.

Then again, I don't hear many ordinary people complaining about it either.  In fact I don't hear many people complaining about the fact that street crime is on the increase, which is not surprising given that far too many of our police forces are run by communists who care more about their fat cat salaries and pensions than they do about serving the public.

If you want the police to spend more time on actually preventing crime, then maybe you should join a political party which has sensible policies for crime reduction - but will you?

Related previous posts include:
Demon words aimed at UKIP
Another attempt to smear UKIP
Our fellow-travelling national press
Police priorities

Cameron visits Israel

David Cameron has visited Israel, and has made a speech in its parliament.  Before I continue, please take a moment to watch this video about the frontiers of Israel.

Did Resolution 242 really say that Israel was entitled to new frontiers?  More importantly, where is the admission that this country is a terror state?  Israel was born in terror, and has expanded its frontiers through terror.

I wonder what will happen when advances in military hardware create a greater threat to Israel than exists right now?  Will Israel demand even more territory at the expense of neighbouring countries?  Time will tell.

David Cameron has opposed sanctions against Israel, although he apparently does not condemn the late Mrs Thatcher, whose government maintained sanctions against South Africa.  Did South Africa bomb other countries and murder innocent civilians?

He also mentions nuclear weapons, but does not explain how any country can hope to build what does not exist.  It is reported elsewhere that he also supports cruelty to animals.

David Cameron does not need to visit Israel, and I wonder who he is trying to impress by going there.  Maybe he should have stayed in this country and gone to visit a food bank instead.

Related previous posts include:
Denmark joins the renegades
The Red Shield versus Syria
Jew couldn't make it up
Four YT channels

The sordid truth about far too many young people

Channel Four is currently airing a documentary about strippers, and it appears that a large number of strippers nowadays are students.  The documentary was filmed in Scotland, where the financial assistance available to students is more favourable than in England.  Nevertheless we cannot expect students ever to receive large amounts of state funding, and so we should not be surprised if many students have part-time jobs during term time.

Meanwhile, a female student at Duke University in North Carolina is working as a pornographic film actress.  Miriam Weeks was raised in a Roman Catholic family and attended a Roman Catholic school.  Duke University was founded by Methodists and Quakers. I merely observe those facts.  Her fees are five thousand dollars each month.  I merely observe that as well.

Miss Weeks has no regrets about working in the porn industry at the moment, but that may not always be the case.

I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that we live in a society which is obsessed with higher education.  I accept that many people see it as a means of self-improvement, and there is doubtless something in that.

Nevertheless there is surely a lot to be said for avoiding a situation which is likely to result in building up debt.  Surely it also makes sense for young women to avoid a situation which is likely to result in them entering a profession which they later have cause to regret.

A stripper is not a prostitute, but many of them are treated like they are prostitutes.  I remember once reading the testimony of a lap dancer who was pleased to be earning around five hundred pounds per week.  I subsequently read in a newspaper that a lot of lap dancers were working as prostitutes because they earned only around five hundred pounds per week from lap dancing.

Let's get this straight.  A supermarket checkout operator earns maybe eleven thousand per year; a call centre operative earns maybe thirteen thousand per year; and a lap dancer earns maybe twenty-five thousand per year.  How many checkout operators and call centre operatives also work as prostitutes?

Maybe we should elect a government which will make it easier for young people to leave school at the age of eighteen (or younger) and find a job within a matter of a few weeks at most.  That way our young people will maybe feel under less pressure to go to university and end up either in debt or working in a dubious occupation.

Update: an American woman called Lea Grover has recently told of her experiences of working in the sex industry while at college.

The minimum wage and prices

If all low paid workers are given a rise will not prices increase to put them back to where they were?

This question was asked recently on a patriotic forum, and I promised to answer it.  So here goes.

There are many factors which influence how much money a given company pays in wages to its staff, and the minimum wage law is just one of them.  Other factors include the skills required of the employees, the cost of owning or renting a home in the vicinity of the workplace, and of course how much turnover the company actually has.

Consider a company which pays each member of its staff at least five percent more than the minimum wage.  If the minimum wage is then increased by exactly five percent, then the company will have no need to increase any of its salaries as they will already be complying with the law.

By contrast, consider the unlikely case of a company which pays each member of its staff exactly the minimum wage and no more.  If the minimum wage is increased by five percent, then the company will have to increase its entire payroll by that percentage.  Nevertheless that would not increase its costs overall by five percent, unless of course the entire costs of the company were made up of its payroll and nothing else.

For example, a company whose payroll makes up forty percent of its total costs would need to increase its costs by no more than two percent (five percent of forty percent) in order to meet a five percent increase in the minimum wage.

Then again, it is perhaps fair to say that every cost is a labour cost.  Most companies will have a stationery bill for example.  If the minimum wage increases, then companies which supply stationery may have to increase their prices as a result, thereby pushing up costs for their customers.  Almost everything a company spends money on represents somebody’s labour somewhere along the line.  Can anyone think of any exceptions to this?

The only exception I can think of is that a lot of the goods purchased by British companies are produced abroad, and therefore are not affected by this country’s minimum wage law.

Another factor is the pay differential.  This is the difference between the wages of two or more people.  Suppose the office junior in a given company is paid £6.31 – the current minimum wage – and a clerk is paid £6.81.  The differential is fifty pence.   If the minimum wage law pushes up the office junior’s salary to £6.61, then the clerk will then have a pay differential of just twenty pence, unless of course the clerk’s salary is also increased.

The United Kingdom has had a minimum wage since 1999.  The Labour Party promised a minimum wage at the 1992 general election, but it remained in opposition.  I think I am quoting Lord Archer here.  In the run-up to the 1992 general election, Labour’s shadow chancellor John Smith told a businessman that he did not have to worry about the proposed minimum wage because the trade unions had said that they would not seek to push up differentials.  The businessman replied that he needed differentials to run his business, but did he?

Differentials exist for a reason, but it is easy to exaggerate the benefits of paying one person more than another.

Suppose two companies are in the same business, and both pay similar wages to their staff.  Both are forced by an increase in the minimum wage to pay more money to at least some of their staff.  One company also adjusts the wages of all of its employees to ensure that differentials remain the same, while the other company allows its differentials to decrease.  The result is that the second company now has a lower payroll relative to the first company, and therefore can perhaps charge lower prices than the first company, thereby allowing it to win customers away from the first company.

Employees of the second company may grumble about the reduction in their differentials, but at least their jobs are secure.  By contrast, employees of the first company still enjoy their differentials, but their jobs are perhaps less secure.

The costs of a company can be neatly categorised as taxation, payroll, and other costs.  The company’s profits represent its turnover less costs.

An increase in the minimum wage will probably increase the cost of the payroll, and may also increase some of the other costs.  Assuming that the tax bill remains the same, then the company will have to choose to accommodate its increased costs either by increasing its prices or else by reducing its profits.

One of the arguments that is sometimes offered in defence of the minimum wage is that it cuts the cost to the government of tax credits or other in-work benefits.  If this is true, and there is probably some truth in it, then an increase in the minimum wage could result in the government lowering taxes on the basis that it requires less money.  In this case, companies which see their payroll and other costs increase when the minimum wage increases might at some point see their tax bills fall.

In conclusion, it is not inevitable that an increase in the minimum wage will result in an increase in the prices of the goods we buy.  Also, if an increase in the minimum wage results in an increase in prices, then the increase might not be as much as we might expect.  Economics is a complex subject, and any generalisations we might choose to make could easily prove to be inaccurate.

This post follows on from an earlier post:

Should we increase the minimum wage?

Demon words aimed at UKIP

This post is a commentary on three recent news items.  The first is a comment by a communist idiot, published in a supposedly Tory newspaper.  He labels UKIP as extremist and racist, and reveals that his sense of humour is seriously deficient by describing some inoffensive jokes as racist.  Does he think that Irish jokes are racist?

The second is the news that a Liberal Democrat handbook alleges that racism is a characteristic of at least some UKIP voters – or perhaps all of them.  It is unclear.

The third is that a Tory MP has described UKIP as literally akin to the Nazis.  Apparently this is part of a change of strategy for the Tories, who are now increasingly likely to be confrontational when dealing with UKIP.

Let us examine the words used here.  Extremist is a meaningless word.  An extremist is not a moderate – that much is obvious.  But who is to say who or what is extremist as opposed to moderate?

The word racist is fairly close to meaningless.  Suppose a crime is racially motivated.  It can then be termed racist, in which case racist is simply a synonym for racially motivated.  However a lot of actions or beliefs could realistically be described as racially motivated, and therefore also racist.  This might seem obvious, but the problem arises that the word racist appears never to be used except pejoratively.  Is being racially motivated really of necessity a bad thing?

Nazi, like fascist, appears to be a word which communists tend to use about people they despise.  It is always or nearly always the case that these words are used pejoratively.  It occurs to me however that someone once labelled a political party as Nazi because it wanted to protect manufacturing.   Was the word used pejoratively on that occasion?

Leaving aside the question of what these words truly mean, it appears that their true meaning is generally subservient to their negative connotations.  They are demon words, aimed not at identifying the truth, but rather at stifling genuine debate.

The Nazis bombed other countries, and yet our Prime Minister David Cameron also bombs other countries.  Does Robert Halfon MP think that David Cameron is akin to a Nazi?

Another important observation is that for many years now communists and their fellow travellers have used words like extremist and racist and Nazi about the British National Party, and yet so far as I am aware the leadership of UKIP have never sought to distance themselves from such irresponsible behaviour.  Now that such words are being used about themselves though, I wonder if they would care to rethink their point of view.

My final observation is that the people who are now seeking to demonise UKIP may have gone a step too far.  The more that pejorative language is bandied about, the more likely it is that people will tire of it.  Maybe the enemies of UKIP should rethink their approach.

I do not support UKIP and will never vote for them, but all the same I recognise that the Labour Party and the Conservative Party have ruined the lives of millions of ordinary people with their repeated failures of government.  Maybe it would help matters if Labour and Tory and Liberal Democrat politicians owned up to their own failings before they dare to use strong language about UKIP or any other party which has never been in government in this country.

Related previous posts include:

UKIP get some things right

The return of the UKIP hamster