This year’s UK General Election will very much stretch the creativity of the three main parties’ PR machines as they each attempt to make their own package of necessary cuts sound less unappealing than their opposition’s packages of necessary cuts.

There is not the cash available to fund any meaningful new ”initiatives” and there is not the option to raise more tax than is currently required to repay debt without crippling the economy from the bottom up.

Vote against the incumbent but in the least radical way and invest a modest amount of money in a musical instrument you don’t know how to play but would like to be able to. Without the aid of tutors, learn to play the instrument.

This year no political party has any good news. There is genuinely nothing they can do to right the wrongs of the Brown era other than sit with the rest of us watching the clock hands turning and flipping the calendar pages while we wait.

It will be a very long wait and not a very happy one for many people. All we have seen so far of the economic crisis has been the banks going pop and taking the most fragile of enterprises down with them.

More will follow, albeit in a more dignified fashion, over the next few years as companies find the future will not match their projections.

Surrey County Show pics posted to

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11056653@N03/ 

following corruption of the upload facility to the gallery here.

The show must go on!

If average house prices rise more swiftly than average earnings

the standard of accommodation available to successive

 generations becomes lower and lower.

 

A Government that encourages house prices to rise faster than

earnings is acting to lower the standard of living of all persons

 who have not yet bought a house.

Sun

Rain

Cloud

Sun

Floods

and Fog

Make a British summer.

Great.

From the Green Book
”
1.3 Fundamental Principles
In July 1995, the House agreed to adopt the Code of Conduct for Members of Parliament – this can be found on the internet athttp://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmcode.htm – which includes a number of general principles of personal conduct. These are based on concepts of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. The broad principles set out below are derived from the Code of Conduct and underpin the allowance regime. When making claims against parliamentary allowances, Members must adhere to these principles

[Bullet Point 5]

Members must ensure that claims do not give rise to, or give the appearance of giving rise to, an improper personal financial benefit to themselves or anyone else.
”
This rule has been broken, as has the first general principle of personal conduct, that of selflessness, after which the adherence to any of the subsequent, more detailed guidelines becomes irrelevant.

Click here to read The Green Book for yourself.

Even with the Chancellor plucking his growth projections from the far side of Fantasyland the outlook for the UK economy remains bleak. The citizens existing within it will be giving up their hard earned cash for some while to repay the loans the Government made to banks to gloss over the fact so much of the country’s recent prosperity had been entirely imaginary, having arisen from nothing but the sleight of bank accounting hands.

If two suppliers satisfy a finite market, one supplier must suffer a decrease in sales for the other to enjoy an increase in sales.

In a finite economy, one market must suffer shrinkage to enable expansion in another.

However many suppliers there are to however many diverse markets there are within it and however complex it might seem when studied closely, an economy becomes more or less active according to the frequency and value of transactions taking place within it but it cannot grow in overall value unless it acquires wealth from another economy.

When two economies trade between themselves they become a larger but still finite economy so if one enjoys growth the other must shrink. Now worldwide trade is the norm and every nation is trading with every other nation, whether directly or indirectly, there exists a truly global economy and there is no earthly possibility of all the individual economies within it genuinely growing at the same time.

The method bankers use to create the illusion of growth within a finite economy is simply explained in cash terms:

Imagine you have two million cash pounds and I have a thousand cash pounds. I spend my thousand pounds on a safe and you put one million of your pounds in it while you spend the other on a year long trip around the world. While you are away I take your cash out of my safe and give it to someone else who promises me they will return it before you get back. If all goes well and the money gets back in the safe in time you will be none the wiser.

I take a fee from you for keeping your cash in my safe while you were away and a fee from the other person for not keeping your cash in my safe while you were away. I have become a successful banker. Had you returned unexpectedly early from your travels and discovered my safe to be empty of your money I would have been a thief. It is a fine line.

Had you encountered the someone on your travels and won the million pounds they had in cash on them in a bet and sent it to me to put in my safe until you returned, rendering them unable to give it back to me, I would be stuffed, too. You would come back expecting to find your winnings alongside your original million cash pounds and be rightly disappointed to discover the money you won *was* your original million cash pounds.

For as long as you refrained from looking in my safe I could maintain the pretence of there being two million pounds of cash in it for you.  A few very big safes which were thought to contain a vast amount of cash recently have been found to be empty.

The Sunday Times Rich List published last weekend indicates the huge proportion of some individuals’ wealth that was imaginary. The IMF estimate the total amount of imaginary money that will be found to have existed in the system to be in the region of four trillion dollars.

Property values in Dubai have fallen by 41% over the last quarter.

A quarter ago we heard they had fallen by 8%

Making 45% over six months.

Impressive numbers.

But negative.

Bankers, aptly rhyming named,

With slender penpush fingers

Masturbate our money

Watch it grow and drink the spill

Then write us shakey handed notes

To say theirs is the cream and ours

The flaccid shrinking numbness.

[© 1990 John (Po) Barrow first published by Boxfile]

The Pope calls for believers in witches and spirits to join his club.

These are the people his club used to set fire to 

The economic outlook must be bleak!