Another Thatcherite disaster comes back to haunt us

 In 1968 the then Labour government sent up the national girobank which was a basic banking service run through the post office.  This gave a national banking service available to everyone in a post office near you.Remember that there were a lot more post offices then so they really were near you.

 As a publicly run service Mrs Thatcher had to privatise the service and it was sold to the Alliance & Leicester building society and girobank eventually  vanished. The Alliance & Leicester has also now vanished, bought by Santander so now it is not even British, It says a lot about the Tory party that it is so against Europe but is happy to see all out assets sold to European companies!

 So now the government is keen that we all have bank accounts so that they can pay us cheaply, no cheques or cash, just bank transfers. They try to claim that this is so people get used to budgeting and other good healthy practices but it is nothing of the sort. It is just cheaper, like trying to make everybody do everything on line.

 The post office has just announced a new set of bank accounts to provide for the people, so come bank the girobank. How much money has been frittered away by privatising it in the first place. I am sure those in the city made lots of money out of the privatisation of the girobank in the first place and then the sell off to Santander. remember

"its the rich what gets the gravy, its the poor what gets the blame"

Old people and their costs

 Yesterday I spent some of my time in a group of people all over 70, that includes me.  As often in such a group  quite a lot of time is spent discussing ill-health it happens when you get old.

 Also people moan about the economy and the modern world,  some of them even read the Daily Mail so there views of the world are somewhat distorted.  If you try to point out that at least half of our welfare budget goes on payments to the elderly, the argument is that they have paid for them.  That is indeed true but all unhappily all governments just spend the income from National Insurance and so have to rely on current taxation to fund payments to the elderly. The obvious conclusion is that if we are not increasing our GDP and the number of people drawing pensions is increasing then we have a problem.

  The other big expenditure is health, 40% of all spending on the NHS is on people over 65. So when we discuss the state of the economy and public expenditure it is the elderly who eat up most of it, over a quarter of public expenditure goes directly on the elderly So it is the responsibility of the elderly to make sure that taxes are fair and collected, that people have decent jobs so that they can contribute to the economy and stop blaming other people for the ills of modern society. we were the ones who laid the foundations in the 80's and 90's for the current problems that society is now facing.

  We need some clarity of thought in what we want to happen. To claim we want less regulation but to blame Gordon Brown for the banking disaster because there was not enough regulation is inconsistent, especially when its roots were in New York!

Farage & UKIP

 It was very disappointing to see how well UKIP did in the election. But one thing cheers me up a little, of those voting 75% did not vote for UKIP and the imposter Farage.

  Let us consider what he is selling himself as, anti-Europe and anti- immigration and as a man of the people. He is almost certainly descended from immigrants, a name like Farage does not sound terribly English. Perhaps he should like me be proud of his immigrant background.  I still recall n MEP proudly proclaiming that all 16 of his great-great grandparents were born in Norfolk. What was there to be proud of, that his family were unadventurous and very boring. People who have made significant contributions to the world have largely travelled and explored other places.

 Then he claims to be a man of the people, but his father was a stock broker and he went to a public school. He then worked as a trader in the City, the group of people who have brought the financial crisis upon us. He is really much more like Cameron than either admit, which is probably why the do not like each other. They sell themselves, which they are quite good at but what they sell is just the same as what the bankers sold us, a lie which will line their own pocket.

  Is he really anti-Europe, he sits as an MEP and his second wife is German, so what doesn't he like about Europe. Probably like most Tories what he doesn't like is the protection that European legislation has given to workers, especially women.  It was European legislation that made employers give the same rights to part-time workers as full-time ones. This was hugely beneficial to women who made up the bulk of the part-time work force. The working hours directive, which in this country seem to be misunderstood, but who wants a doctor who has been on duty for 48 hours treating you. We don't let lorry drivers do it so why should doctors be allowed to. Unfortunately we fought off attempts to stop firms in Britain selling "ice cream" that has no cream! Is that really a triumph?

  However our so called free press devotes many column inches to telling us how bad Europe is but very few to telling us that good things come out of Europe. Why would I say "so-called" free press. Because the national press is dominated by a few very rich men, most of whom do not live in Britain and hide away in tax havens. There only concern to is to protect their wealth, they have no interest in the long-term welfare of the citizens of Britain.   The rich always want less interference and lower taxes
as it might damage their wealth. They want the right to lie and cheat you, I wonder if Mr Farage believes that publicans should be allowed to water their beer. After all it is only government interference that stops that happening.

  Perhaps that should be the slogan "Vote UKIP for watered down beer"