The Sunday Halloween Ramble

It’s Halloween this week, when spooky things happen as the darkness of winter begins. Can you imagine politicians going around Westminster doing ‘trick or treat’? Who would they select to do it? Iain Duncan-Smith and George Osborne would be scary even without masks.

Could you imagine seeing Miliband’s face when you looked through the security spy hole in your door?

That is scary…  This week the leader of the Labour in Scotland resigned because he told her not to oppose the ‘bedroom tax’ until after he had ‘made up his mind about it’. The bedroom tax was originally a Labour daft idea and so we can’t really expect them to do the democratic thing and listen to the people on the subject. The people know the bedroom tax was a bad idea and oppose it. It does nothing to relieve the housing shortage and causes misery.

The problem is the likes of the three stooges, Cameron, Clegg and Miliband don’t have homes; they have property. They pander to the middle classes on the property ladder. As soon as the middle classes have some spare discretionary income, rather than going on a shopping spree, they start looking for a new and better house. A bigger and better house, means a higher status. They can brag about it at the golf club and then move onto that overseas holiday swimming with dolphins that they put on their credit card. These people don’t have homes, they have a position on the property ladder. The game isn’t all ladders though, if they aren’t careful they can land on a snake and lose everything. Not just their property, but their spouse and even their kids in a messy divorce.

I think education has something to do with their thinking. Miliband studied economics. Maybe they just learn about the numbers and the ‘value’ of property. Perhaps at Oxford and Cambridge they don’t teach the value of a stable home, they churn out upper class gypsies that move wherever they can take a step up on the ladder of ‘success’.

Everyone has ideas about how the country could be run better from the comfort of their armchair. How about you? Are you smart enough to advise the government? According to the Guardian in 2013 the government income from taxes, etc was 612 billions. It spent 720 billion. Giving a deficit of 108 billion. Now this is my question. If there are 30 million people working in the country, how much is each one paying the government in taxes, etc., on average? I think average incomes are around 30,000 a year, so you could also work out how much they have left after tax. Then you can work out how much extra they would have to pay to solve the deficit problem.

No, I’m not doing it for you. Get your calculator out…

Incidentally, we are paying 51 billion interest on the debt. You might like to remember the governments quantitative easing programme when they just printed 375 billion of money and bought their own debt back with it…  I thought I would mention that because there are people who think they could print even more.

Oil

I had a bit of excitement this week when rumours went around the stock market that they had stuck oil at Horse Hill near Gatwick Airport. It was only 3 million barrels, a drop in the ocean the way we use the stuff. The oil price has dropped to $80 a barrel too. It’s hardly worth pumping it up for 240 million dollars… Anyway, they are still drilling and hoping for gas, lots of it. I’ll hang on to my shares in Solo Oil, just in case…

Empire building

You probably know I live in the Black Country. The Black Country is north of Birmingham, but is definitely not Birmingham. A local Labour daft idea, is to make it part of Greater Birmingham. The people are opposed and democracy is people power. Right? So Labour should listen to the people? Right? They still have delusions of grandeur despite all the cuts and austerity. They think  we all want to go to Birmingham and shop in the monstrosity they call the Bull Ring or use their new library. Which planet did they get that from?

I put my clocks back last night and even remembered to change the time on the heating. I wonder whose idea it was to try to ‘save daylight’? I think we should bring back the window tax, so the Tories can scream ‘daylight robbery’! Lets see how they like being taxed on the size of their mansions. How many windows does IDS have in his wife’s 5 bedroom mansion?

Don’t forget you can comment or follow me on Twitter even.

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