"Man flees burning car after badger crash starts fire"

Spotted by JuliaM in the York Press:

A MAN had to flee his burning car, in a fire that is believed to have been caused by a collision with a badger.

The 20-year-old raised the alarm after running out of his Vauxhall Corsa just before it burst into flames on a road near Leavening, close to Malton, at about 10.45pm on Friday. The side of his face was slightly singed but he did not suffer any other injuries.

North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service said the fire is thought to have started because the impact of the collision with the badger caused hot brakes to become loose, igniting flammable parts of the Corsa’s engine.

Tautology of the day

From Alistair Darling's Budget Speech of today:

"When the world economy was plunged into deep crisis in the 1930s, the response, both nationally and internationally, was too little and too late. This failure to act turned a serious downturn into a prolonged depression. We will not repeat those mistakes again."

"Buy-to-let properties to flood market as investors cash in"

The Goblin King & The Badger came up with this CGT wheeze last year to stave off the property price crash, but their Day Of Reckoning has now arrived. As widely predicted.

But who's going to lend people money to buy them? Not Northern Rock, First Direct, Lehman Brothers, London Scottish Bank or various other smaller building societies. And probably not Halifax/HBOS* either.

If anybody knows of any more lenders that have stopped lending, please leave a comment!

* Via Growler at HPC.

"New car tax rates for 2009"

Great! Let's have some jealousy surcharges that will achieve absolutely nothing as follows:

1) If you already own a 'gas guzzler', and decide you don't want to pay the higher charge, you can always sell the car. But the second hand value will be depressed by the fact that the purchaser assumes the liability for the higher rates. So you have already lost your money, and you might as well stick with it.

2) Second hand values are now falling faster than normal because consumers are tightening their belts a bit, so no doubt the price of new cars will fall slightly as well to maintain the equilibrium. As to 'gas guzzlers', if the list price is £30,000 now, then once the new rates come in, the showroom will have to drop the price by about £770 to compensate the purchaser for the additional VED in the first five years or so.

Finally, once a car is on the road, the actual cost of petrol is only a fraction of the overall running costs, so having decided to stick with your old car (scenario 1) or bought a new car for slightly less (scenario 2) you might as well continue whizzing round in it.

Disclaimer - I do not own a car and don't believe in all this 'man-made-climate-change' nonsense, it's the middle of March and it's still bloody freezing!

Caveat - the fact that this tax will raise money without changing people's behaviour is, I suppose, A Good Thing (a bit like Land Value Tax), but they are still hypocrites of the highest ordure.

"Northern Rock to be nationalised"

"The Chancellor said the public would gain after the market improved"

Well, yes of course we will gain after the market improves ... after losing ten or twenty billion before the market improves.

Badger cull (2)

Whoops, sorry chaps.

Put away your rifles with night sights, your cooking pots and your shaving kits. And your wattle and daub. There's not going to be a cull after all.

No reason not to gas this bastard though.

Badger cull

If farmers really reckon that culling badgers will help reduce TB in cattle, then so be it. The argument has been rumbling for years and I suppose the only way forward is to give it a try and see what happens.

But don't forget to do this one as well.

Capital gains tax (1)

The Goblin King knows that a large part of economic growth over the last ten years was fuelled by the house price & credit bubbles, so he is now in a bit of a panic over signs that the bubble has reached the top of the eighteen-year cycle and is now starting to deflate.

This is the Goblin King's fourth desperate throw of the dice in shoring up property prices:-
1) The idea that your pension fund can have buy-to-let properties (an idea which was strangled at birth).
2) Introducing REITs to funnel money into commercial property. Didn't work, REITs shares are down by "20% to 30%" this year.
3) Restricting supply by introducing HIPs.
4) Encouraging buy-to-letters to hang on until next April 2008 before selling - if they sell now they'll have to pay up to 40% CGT, if they wait six months, they'll only pay 18%.

But it won't work. Look at the USA, Ireland, Spain and the residential and commercial property markets in the UK. And heaven knows where else.

Goblin King, you one-eyed lying bastard, this thing is far bigger and more powerful than you! There is nothing you can do to stop it! It will crush you!

The other bit was this legend that private equity chaps don't pay enough tax, which is bollocks actually, as I have explained here.

And so The Goblin King and The Badger came up with this idea of harmonising CGT at a flat rate of 18%. Of course the losers in this are people who expected to pay 10% on the sale of their businesses, who are now whining that their CGT bill will increase by 80%, which is mathematically correct.

Two more things that are mathematically correct are:
1) An entrepreneurs after tax proceeds wil fall by 8.9% (they'll keep £82 for every £100 gross gain, rather than £90).
2) When The Goblin King took over, CGT was a flat 40%, although there was something called retirement relief for older people who sold their businesses.

* As it happen, if it were up to me I'd scrap CGT completely, as part of a wide ranging reform and simplification of the tax and welfare system. That is a whole 'nother topic.

Northern Rock (2)

Good to see that my ideas are being taken seriously by HM Government: on the front page of today's FT I read this ...

Among the options in yesterday's consultation paper was an administration system for insolvent banks...The proposals would allow administrators to sort out problems more quickly ... An administrator could take over client accounts, with depositors given higher priority [than] creditors. "This new regime would mean depositors are insulated from a bank that has failed, greater compensation for them, and certainty their compensation can be paid out quickly," Mr Darling said.

You read it here first!

"Inheritance taxes cut for couples"

Pretty cunning counter-move by The piece-of-shit Badger; allow married couples/civil partners to pool their IHT nil-rate bands, which is something that you can do now, but it involves all sort of legal expenses to set up, trusts and stuff.

How the f*** will they enforce it? What about widower who is thinking of marrying a widow, will they be able to double up yet again to arrive at a £1.2 million nil rate band? Or will they only keep the £600,000 each if they don't get married? What about Islamists with four wives, will they get a £1.5 million nil rate band - it'd be pretty un-PC no to? And what about couples who can't or won't get married for innocuous reasons? What about a Catholic who doesn't want to get legally divorced from a spouse, but wants to leave everything to his or her new partner?

Well, it's all grist to the tax-planning mill, I suppose.

"Chancellor to signal tax changes"

I shan't hold my breath on IHT changes, but the f***ing piece-of-shit Badger has trotted out more "plans to target private equity bosses' tax loopholes".

Putting Employer's NI to one side (a totally evil tax that ought to be phased out - which only UKIP say they would do) these chaps don't get any tax loopholes!!!

If UK employee makes gain of (say) £100,000 from unapproved share options in a UK company, £40,000 income tax is due. If the employing company complies with the rules in Schedule 23 FA 2003 (which are relatively straightforward), it can claim an equal and opposite corporation tax deduction of 30% of £100,000 = £30,000.

HM Treasury nets £40,000 minus £30,000 = £10,000.

If wicked private equity guy* organises things so that he only pays £10,000 capital gains tax on his £100,000 gain, then the target company (e.g. Boots) gets no tax relief.

HM Treasury nets £10,000.

I struggle to see any fundamental difference between £10,000 and £10,000!
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UPDATE - The piece-of-shit Badger has just replaced the 10% rate of CGT with a flat rate 18% on all capital gains In future expect people voluntarily to pay the 40% rate on share gains in unquoted trading companies (i.e. most of those owned by private equity funds - in this case there's no Employer's National Insurance) in order to enable the target 'employer' company to get the 30% rate.
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* Sure, if WPEG is offshore, HM Treasury doesn't even get the £10,000 - but lots of UK source income is exempt from UK tax - that is a different topic and easily fixed.

Chancellor calls top of housing market

The Badger successfully called the top of the credit bubble a week ago. He called for a return to responsible borrowing and lending. Two days later there was a run on the Northern Rock.

The Badger said in The Times this morning (scroll down to last paragraph):
“I take the view that the slowing of house prices and ensuring that they are based on reality is not a bad thing. It is in no one’s interests for house prices to go on rising year after year after year when that is not justified.”

Thus successfully calling the top of the housing market a week later. Expect to see a forest of 'For Sale' signs go up over the weekend.

Look chaps, I think Vince Cable is the only policitican or journo who seems to have dimly realised that there maybe is a link between NR collapse and high house prices. There's not just a link, they are TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN. You can't have a credit bubble without an asset price bubble and vice versa.

Macavity's not there (2)

We all remember the pictures of Nigel Lawson on Black Wednesday, admitting he'd fouled up (despite he hadn't actually, sterling was doomed the minute we went into the ERM).

Let's assume that this whole Northern Rock thingy is roughly on par with that for incompetence (altho' again, it must be emphasised, this is just the last ten years' chickens coming home to roost).

Having stuck His Ugly Head briefly above the parapet earlier this week, The Goblin King (who was the one who forced Mervyn King to do a U-turn*) has disappeared again and, surprisingly, hasn't even offered up his Chancellor, The Badger, as a sacrifice, nope, he's re-directing the blame onto Mervyn King, who was indeed "Only obeying orders".

Despicable, really.

*In their position, I'd have done the same.

Macavity's not there (1)*

I was just watching BBC News 24 to put myself into a bad mood, when up pops The Goblin King, yapping on about "The economy is strong, we will continue to create jobs, your money is safe with us".

Wot?

Oh yes, it was in the context of the whole Northern Rock thingy. Oh God I hate and despise The Goblin King, skulking around, stabbing backs, proferring up The Badger to make inane comments like "It is, I'm afraid, yes" when asked whether his reputation was on the line. What reputation? What reputation for what? What line? What about the Northern Rock employees, what about their jobs?

The Goblin King was silent for five whole days since The Badger called the top of the credit bubble. Now that it seems to be calming down a bit, up pops His Ugly Face to spout some more lies, no doubt to retreat to His Underground Lair again until the next crisis is over ...

*It is spelled 'Macavity', it's a play on words on 'cavity', it is not a Scottish name like 'MacCavity'

The Cats 22 Question ...

... will The Goblin King reintroduce Claws 4 as well?

(via Christina Speight)

Chancellor calls top of debt bubble

Ah, the delicious irony and hypocrisy of it all.

The Badger has told banks to start lending more cautiously, and borrowers to think harder about what they can afford to repay.

The words "IT'S A BIT LATE NOW, MATE!!" spring to mind*.

The Badger "made no suggestion government would intervene with tighter regulation of lending". Golden rule - if a politician denies that something is going to happen, then it's probably going to happen.

Full Daily Telegraph interview here.

*The collapse of Northern Rock a day or two later sort of makes this all a bit 11th hour, surely he must have known about it, horses, bolts, stable-doors and all that?

British workers getting poorer

Average wages growth to July 2007 3.5%

RPI inflation to July 2007 3.8%

Update:

Simon Clark has asked whether the 3.5% is after adjusting for inflation. Methinks not. If you go to the ONS report and scroll down to the bottom, it says:

"In the year to July 2007 consumer prices increased by 1.9 per cent, which is below the rate of earnings growth"