Darling upsets almost everyone The Chancellor's pre-Budget report got a distinctly mixed reaction from business and technology groups. Although tax cuts for companies focussed on research was welcomed, no-one welcomed the hike in National Insurance. The Federation of Small Businesses welcomed the delay in the 1p increase in corporation tax for smaller firms …
I may be mistaken but UK patents do not cover intellectual ownership (basis: an idea cannot be owned only a physical process or ... ) nor do they cover software.
It would appear that 21st century ways of doing things have yet to impact on UK patents?
On the other hand apologies if I be mistaken.
Remember Maggie (in the UK) introduced by law practices that mean stuff has to be bought from the cheapest supplier?
Well, I contend that represents an attack on the British working classes.
So here are possible extensions:
+ for UK health to be provided by the cheapest provider even if that means flying people to Central Europe (civets NHS, spectacles, eye surgery, hearing, posture, disabilities … )
+ for local government to go to the cheapest provider even if that means outsourcing strategic and executive management and front line delivery to, for examples, India or Estonia (in other words the senior management will not be retained within the UK but will also be outsourced)
+ for central government to go to the least expensive provider. So if Latvian MPs get the job done better and cheaper well, we displace UK MPs and let ... (well you know what I mean for sure)
The idea about above is to
1 - demonstrate to you that outsourcing measures (mostly made into law) disfavoured UK workers and these workers tended to be in low paid jobs anyway effecting at attack on UK subjects
and
2 - to show that extending similar notions to other sectors that tend not to be UK working class subjects is likely to meet with hostility
Thus, I hope, demonstrating the inherent dislike UK political parties have of their own people and sadly enough, those whom they wish to represent.
Now if we also introduce Law, policing and prosecution into outsourcing think how much improved service will be, destroy or at least mostly negate the 'old boy' network and return huge savings as well.
But, it ain't gonna happen is it (see earlier post for my view why extending outsourcing ain't gonna happen)
His tax increases and spending cuts are all scheduled for the FUTURE. What he's doing NOW is running huge deficit spending which props up the GDP figure, but does not create real genuine growth.
He cannot cut the spending because the GDP would drop sharply and that would be BAD just before an election.
Yet he can't fund it with borrowing, UK is already at the stage where nobody wants its debt and Bank of England is buying government debt by printing money.
He cannot fund it with taxes, because that would kill what little business the UK currently has.
So he needs to convince people that this is temporary, and that, yes, they will fix the deficit problem SOON, in the near term (2010/11) or he risks a run on the pound.
His numbers don't add up, and his actions don't even match THOSE fake numbers.
----
Myself I would like them to JUST CALL THE F***ING ELECTION and stop making decisions that have more to do with getting elected than fixing the economy.
As for patents, perhaps he imagines the next bubble as a patent bubble. Instead of the city buying and selling betting slips on mortgages, they'll buy and sell millions of overlapping claims to be an inventor of whatever passes for inventions these days.
Who knows, perhaps they'll create derivatives of these, leveraged up 38 to 1. Bets on whether the patent lawsuits will payout or be duds.
A nation of patent trolls and gamblers who bet on patent trolls.
A deeply unpleasant prison country , where people are treated like criminals, watched with CCTVs, monitored, receive secret background checks, the guards can search their cells at any time for any reason, background checks, and pat down searches in public, lock down at 11:30. An evil, sad, diseased, society.
CALL AN ELECTION!
Populist measures take effect before the election, like the "bingo tax cut" and increase in pensions/child benefits, the really bad stuff happens after the election. Expect more scorched Earth policies in April, when their bleak future really sinks in.
So Labour seem to have finally resigned to the fact that they can't win the election, and are merely scrabbling for cheap votes in order to avoid being relegated to 3rd place (or worse!)...
Bankers are leeches, they cannot really create useful wealth, only the money which has the appearance of wealth. In fact what they do is confiscate wealth from those who actually do produce stuff. Wealth is created by adding value to something and then selling it at a price higher that your costs.
The reason our recession is so much greater than ever other countries is that we've neglected our manufacturing sector and built our castles on the sand of a debt based economy. History shows that nations who allow the banks to get too big and powerful end up in trouble. There's a reason why all the major religions (wisdom of the ages) prohibit usury. As one chap I heard this summer said, "if you run your hand against the grain of nature you'll get splinters", and the grain of nature in this case is that true wealth comes from hard work. Banking allows us to create unjust wealth without hard work, and this denial of the nature of true wealth has come around and bit us on the ass.
This country would be better off in the long run with a smaller banking sector that serves our needs as an enabler of wealth creation, instead of being central to our economy as it is now.
I've seen lots of comments like this on various websites, but I didn't expect it here. I normally think the readers of El Reg are reasonably intelligent, but you are obviously a moron. The reason banking is important to the UK is we're good at it. It delivers a huge amount of money into the economy. If the bankers were to f*ck off the economy would drop by 30%, is that what you want?
Banking is a highly complex global business which you obviously don’t understand at all, maybe that’s why you don’t work in banking and don’t get to enjoy the benefits.
If you’re mates in manufacturing want to compete with China go for it, but I bet they don’t want to work for a dollar a day 7 days a week.
Maybe you should think of the implications of what you ask for rather than spouting jealous bile.
Anyone who thinks that the tories or any other party are going to be any better is deluded.
ALL politicians have contempt for the electorate.
They only ask us to vote every 5 years because they have to, this is shown by the way it is left to the last minute.
I am no fan of labour, but give it another 10 years and we will be saying the same thing about the tories and the pendulum of failure will swing back.
Time for a new system where they are more bound to our wishes, we are the people, the electorate and it is our country afterall!!!
This sucks. For some government workers, myself included, a freeze in wages will hit, but won't kill us. However, local government workers have had a below inflation pay rise for the last 8 years.
That is 8 years of effective pay cuts.
Now to freeze wages in an environment where things are supposed to start bouncing back next year ... the people who are at the bottom end of the earnings scale and are already struggling to keep their heads above water ... will likely drown thanks to Darling.
Will a segment of government workers thus become known as the Darling Drowners?
As opposed to our chief exec, however, who came in five years ago on a salary of about £90k and is now on about £135k ... a pay rise of so close to 10% for five years that it doesn't matter. As for his bonus ... don't ask; he would have ended up on Gordon Browns list, except for some accounting shenanigans.
Yes it has been in the local press already, so I'm not risking my neck. But the public seem to care on the one hand, and not on the other. Also, some of our number appears to have been blogging about this state of affairs for more than a year. http://midsussexmadness.blogspot.com/
Mine is the one with the lack of common sense in the pocket, 'cause there is obviously none left in this country.
Last one out, please turn off the light.
@AC, you turned the job down in the private sector because of security ? Don't you mean you turned it down because you knew you'd have to work a lot harder?
I've worked in both the civil service and private sector in a technology capacity, easiest time I ever had was in the civil service.
Let's be honest AC, life in the civil service is a nice cushy life. No real pressure, you can skive off taking those sick days as holiday, great pension scheme. It was the least stressful environment for me of any organisation I ever worked in.
'Populist measures take effect before the election, like the "bingo tax cut" '
Oh he's cleverer than that - he whacked up the tax on bingo AT THE LAST BUDGET. The 'cut' actually still means bingo players will be paying more money than a year ago, but the tabloids will give him a break because it looks like Darling cares about their readers.
As for public sector workers - didn't you get the memo? The public sector is the great class enemy. In the last couple of weeks politicians have come to believe that the bankers who got us into this mess are a vital part of the Great British economy and we mustn't be too beastly to them otherwise they might leave the country. Teachers on the other hand...
So if you're in the public sector you're going to get hammered by whoever's in charge because even if you're a cardiac ward nurse you're politically indistinguishable from an Islington Council seasonal diversity empowerment officer. The Tories know you won't vote for them and Labour know that too.
Well, boo hoo. You think you're overworked and underpaid in your little public sector bubble, awww and only a 1% pay rise for a couple of years, my heart bleeds it really does.
Try working in the private sector, how about for a company that instead of promising you a 1% pay rise wants you to take a 5% pay cut instead, which would take your wages to below what it was when you were hired several years earlier. Think you're overworked having to do the work of two people, try having the work of two people to do when you're friends and colleagues are made redundant, oh wait, another quarter is over, you've now got the work of three...four...five people to do.
If you've a nice cushy pension, a guaranteed pay rise and have never had to book a days holiday in to catch up on work you've got nothing to complain about.
Socialism is financially incompetent. Public redistribution of money, is by its very nature wasteful, because lots of 'middle-men' civil servants take their cut, especially when management, Quangos and NGOs get involved, and they keep wasting more, with each new regulation!
It would be far cheaper just to tax people less, but that would mean many civil servants would lose their jobs, and they can't have that!
See:
http://mises.org
and see the bone-headed Socialist legacy of Marx, Engels, their Fascist equivalents, and the Fabians explained!
I regard most political parties as Socialist; the left and right wings labels are a distraction, and only specify which branch of Socialism people think they are biased towards.
I want nothing to do with these Political Class crooks!
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