MP'S or Fatcats

[Tug]

for some time now i have been getting more and more disgusted at the way this country is heading. the price of fuel is extortionate, the food prices are rocketing, the gap between poor and wealthy is getting wider and the services, are getting poorer.

every year it seems that all the services from military to nhs to schools are being given less and less and expected to achive more and more

it feels to me like our government have been the proverbial nero's fiddling while the uk crumbles but what grates me most is the fact that these people whom we elect to represent us and to present our veiws and look out for us are in a position where they can vote themselves a pay rise, where they can employ there own family and pay them huge wages and they can claim ridiculous expenses for stuff that "normal" people regard as luxurys these so call peoples representitives can claim them on the tax payer.

rant over

[+Wanderer]

You are absolutely spot on! Education in UK is bloody shocking.

English...our language...our heritage...our contribution to world communication, yet half the population of our own Isles know less than a 6 year old in Udaipur about grammar, punctuation and spelling than Scottish people.

Truly shocking and thanks for your exhibit.

Rant ongoing...!

[+Gringo]

:thumb04:

Agree with all of the above. They are nothing but a bunch of incompetent losers and will take us taxpayers for a ride every time, no matter what party is in power. If they?d spend have as much cash on this country as they do on foreign affairs that have nothing to do with us we?d be world beaters by now.

[Glen Mhor]

Politicians inhabit a cosy little gravy train world with the media and the real voters don't get a look in. Even at elections these days the whole thing is so stage managed and seems designed to keep politicians as far away from real voters as possible. Political meetings used to be worth going to but now they just don't seem to happen. Any meeting featuring the main party leaders have been turned into a party rally with an audience full of party members, designed to look good on TV and to give the illusion of no opposition. Even local MPs seem terrified to be approached by a voter.

Is it any wonder that turnout in General Elections has been steadily falling in recent years ? It's about time politics and the political process was given back to the people.

[Caley Stan]

It's about time politics and the political process was given back to the people.

The people don't seem to want it. It's all very well for us to complain about the way the country is being run on internet forums or in pubs but when it comes to actually getting the finger out and doing something to change things, very few people are actually interested.

The vast majority of people in this country are very comfortable. We can afford to own our own homes, our own cars, most of us consume more food and drink and buy more clothes than is imaginable in most parts of the world, we go on foreign holidays and redecorate our houses every year.

The political system in this country depends on this grotesque wealth for its continuing existence. It is is therefore primarily accountable to the multinational companies that create such wealth rather than the man on the street.

As we continue to chase econonmic growth and encourage material consumption, the public services that Tug talks about are likely to shrink because they don't create wealth.

If you guys are unhappy about this then you should take to streets and demand that the country is run in the wider interests of its citizens - but before you do so you might want to consider that such action could result in the loss of your widescreen T.V.'s and 4x4's.

[The Mantis]

What Stan means is we're turning into Americans

[Tug]

The people don't seem to want it. It's all very well for us to complain about the way the country is being run on internet forums or in pubs but when it comes to actually getting the finger out and doing something to change things, very few people are actually interested.

The vast majority of people in this country are very comfortable. We can afford to own our own homes,the reality is though that more and more people are struggling to get on to the property ladder if they are not already on it and those that are on the lower end are finding the rungs more and more shaky our own cars, most of us consume more food and drink and buy more clothes than is imaginable in most parts of the world, we go on foreign holidays and redecorate our houses every year.

The political system in this country depends on this grotesque wealth for its continuing existence. It is is therefore primarily accountable to the multinational companies that create such wealth rather than the man on the street.so by that rationale then this country is not a democracy.we are basically whoring ourselves out to the highest bidder??

As we continue to chase econonmic growth and encourage material consumption, the public services that Tug talks about are likely to shrink because they don't create wealth.from a personal point of view being in the military i want to say rubbish but having been on various exercises where we have either been on a direct capability show to another country(direct sales pitch) or seen other countries along on our excercises(indirect sales pitch)i am not sure i can aggree on this one

If you guys are unhappy about this then you should take to streets and demand that the country is run in the wider interests of its citizens - but before you do so you might want to consider that such action could result in the loss of your widescreen T.V.'s and 4x4's.

in all honesty there is very little we can do realisticly. i was visited out here last week by angus robertson from the snp and raised several points with him but was still left at the end of the day with the disticnt feeling that you always get that the visit was more of a publicity event for him rather than actually caring about what we had to say.but thats where the trouble lies in this country there is far too much sway and power in the media (but thats for a different thread)

i have attempted through various means before now to highlight my growing dislike for the way this country is run however time and time again it is wasted effort and energy. i believe that i am also more than likely in the growing minority that bother to vote at every election as one it is a right i think that should be excersised but 2 its also the first step to changing the system.

[Guest Spectre]

I think there's a disconnect with the facts here.

Under Nu Labour public spending has been increased massively, so much so that now there's a need to do so most economists think any further increase is irresponsible. Much of this increased spending has created jobs that attract taxpayer funded final salary pensions. Already a significant proportion of council tax goes on pension costs.

Brown's policy towards business has been nothing short of disastrous. A succession of tax changes over the last decade or so with the result that many are voting with their feet - e.g. moving to Ireland. Those multi-nationals that remain are big big employers that pay a huge amount in payroll taxes to the exchequer.

House prices are falling and will continue to do so, almost certainly, for a couple of years or so.

[Caley Stan]

so by that rationale then this country is not a democracy.we are basically whoring ourselves out to the highest bidder??

Basically, yeah.

As for Labour, public spending, corporation tax etc. it's all pretty irrelevant to the wider state of the nation.

Whether it's Labour, Tories or Nats that govern us they are still subordinate to the demands of free market capitalism.

[Alex MacLeod]

We, the person on the internet forum or in the pub, are the people who cast the votes. Over half the countries voting population dont even bother. Of those making comment on this thread who voted at the last election? Be honest now. I did and have done every election, National, UK and local authority, since I was 18

Politics in this country has become totally one sided. There is no opposition. Only people, from the PM right down to councillor Bloggs, who are in it to meet their own needs and have no interest in the rest of us. And in excess of 50% of the voting public dont care.

[Tug]

We, the person on the internet forum or in the pub, are the people who cast the votes. Over half the countries voting population dont even bother. Of those making comment on this thread who voted at the last election? Be honest now. I did and have done every election, National, UK and local authority, since I was 18

Politics in this country has become totally one sided. There is no opposition. Only people, from the PM right down to councillor Bloggs, who are in it to meet their own needs and have no interest in the rest of us. And in excess of 50% of the voting public dont care.

im with you on this i have voted in every election i have been able to either in person or by proxy. i was once told a saying by my granny that has stuck with me

"if you dont vote you have no right to coplain because you have done nothing to try and change it"

i also wonder if an electoin is one with less than helf the population voting then is it really a majority?

[absent friend]

To reply to the thread heading - the problem we have is that the cats are NOT fat enough!!

We have the highest qualified people in government, on all sides, that we have ever had but they are paid the same amount as a GP and half the amount of a top consultant. Now for that money we, the taxpayers, expect top decisions, with no mistakes, on an ongoing basis, in areas that are new to the respective MPs.

The current banking situation has been compounded, in this country, because we, the taxpayer, are not prepared to pay top dollar to the brains to keep our country financially policed. The FSA, by their own admission, do not have the brain power to stop 'The City' from making capital as they cannot afford to employ the top people to compliance check them.

The prime mover in the banking fiasco was paid $1.5 BILLION bonus last year by his hedge fund employers.

It is like asking the Rothes keeper to pass judgment on the Chelsea training methods.

We require in this country really well paid civil servants, with the politicians being the figure head only of the departments, and the said civil servants taking the responsibility for any failings/overstaffing/overspending. Civil servants = job for life! Not in my system, pay them the right money but they are only as secure as their department allows them to be, a balls up and they are out, not the politician that has had 'responsibility' of that department for a short time as is currently the case.

[Guest Spectre]

The current banking situation has been compounded, in this country, because we, the taxpayer, are not prepared to pay top dollar to the brains to keep our country financially policed. The FSA, by their own admission, do not have the brain power to stop 'The City' from making capital as they cannot afford to employ the top people to compliance check them.

Blame Gordon Brown. The previous system worked not too badly - specialist regulators covering each part of the industry. For the two years before FSA and most of the time after, it's been a shambles. There was no need to re-organise.

A year and a half ago Bob Diamond (Barclays) came out and said there's a liquidity crisis coming. Typical New Labour response - play the man not the ball - oh you should manage your business better - next thing Northern Rock, B&B, HBOS are bust from liquidity mismatch - the one thing the Bank of England always regulated very tightly, but lost the ability to do so when Gordon gave the job of regulating banks to FSA.

[absent friend]

The current banking situation has been compounded, in this country, because we, the taxpayer, are not prepared to pay top dollar to the brains to keep our country financially policed. The FSA, by their own admission, do not have the brain power to stop 'The City' from making capital as they cannot afford to employ the top people to compliance check them.

Blame Gordon Brown. The previous system worked not too badly - specialist regulators covering each part of the industry. For the two years before FSA and most of the time after, it's been a shambles. There was no need to re-organise.

A year and a half ago Bob Diamond (Barclays) came out and said there's a liquidity crisis coming. Typical New Labour response - play the man not the ball - oh you should manage your business better - next thing Northern Rock, B&B, HBOS are bust from liquidity mismatch - the one thing the Bank of England always regulated very tightly, but lost the ability to do so when Gordon gave the job of regulating banks to FSA.

The real problem however, was the bank's thrust to make as much profit as quickly as possible and they lost their banking 'prudence' by so doing. They should not have required any regulator to see what the future held for them, but finance/profit does blind even the most prudent of bankers, it would appear. I would submit that blaming the change of regulator, or the government for so doing, is shifting the blame from the guilty parties. However, I do feel that even the Bank of England would have some difficulty in recruiting the 'bright young boys' on the enormous salaries, to police this!

[Guest Spectre]

Well you are obviously correct to say that the banks are directly to blame for their losses, but recognition of that tendency is the purpose of bank regulation. Otherwise why bother with Basle I, Basle II, CAD, MIFID and all the rest. It is exactly the point of bank regulation to ensure their existence in future scenarios. The problem is that the regulators became obsessed with small easy problems and ignored the hard big ones. I know this from my experience as a compliance officer.

But the point about 'bright young boys' is an entirely erroneous excuse for failed regulation. The really high earners in banks are not the so called rocket scientists but the salesmen, who are, on the whole, no cleverer than the average joe graduate, just more motivated and with better sales skills.

In any event, whilst there are some highly esoteric areas involving extremely advanced maths, the vast majority of products and risks can be understood by, say, any reasonably able maths or physics graduate or indeed most other people. Even toxic instruments such as CDO Squareds are capable of explanation in a few minutes.

And the FSA has been able to recruit people from the industry, c.f. Hector Sants.

[dead_ball_specialist]

Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit"?P J O'Rourke

If you want to find out what our local representatives are up to here's a good place to look...

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/

http://www.order-order.com/

Edited November 14, 2008 by dead_ball_specialist

[Caley Stan]

I'm not a fan of O'Rourke's but this quote chimes with some of things i was saying earlier in this thread:

"Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us".

Good links dbs - we can't make these cnuts represent us, but that shouldn't stop us from trying to hold them to account.

[SMEE]

This is the ONLY area i admire the French. If they dont like the price of fuel, they go out en mass and protest and get things changed. In the UK, we tend to mump and moan about it, then continue to allow ourselves to be walked over. If we grouped together and sed, change it or your out of power, things would change. We are the ones that put them in power, we can also remove them.

The other way i look at it......I wouldnt be that bothered being voted out of govt, as ad still be on a shedload of dosh for being an MP.

[absent friend]

Well you are obviously correct to say that the banks are directly to blame for their losses, but recognition of that tendency is the purpose of bank regulation. Otherwise why bother with Basle I, Basle II, CAD, MIFID and all the rest. It is exactly the point of bank regulation to ensure their existence in future scenarios. The problem is that the regulators became obsessed with small easy problems and ignored the hard big ones. I know this from my experience as a compliance officer.

But the point about 'bright young boys' is an entirely erroneous excuse for failed regulation. The really high earners in banks are not the so called rocket scientists but the salesmen, who are, on the whole, no cleverer than the average joe graduate, just more motivated and with better sales skills.

In any event, whilst there are some highly esoteric areas involving extremely advanced maths, the vast majority of products and risks can be understood by, say, any reasonably able maths or physics graduate or indeed most other people. Even toxic instruments such as CDO Squareds are capable of explanation in a few minutes.

And the FSA has been able to recruit people from the industry, c.f. Hector Sants.

If it was so easy to work out the nature of the problem why in the first instance did the internal compliance officers not pick it up at an early stage?

With the number of checks in place to establish that a commercial/ mortgage proposal satisfys the lending criteria of the bank concerned, before money is released - why was the money source not underwritten in this same manner?

Hector Sants, poacher turned gamekeeper, with a history of millions of pounds of regulatory fines being imposed on CSFB, whilst he was the vice chairman, is not quite what I was thinking of as a BYB regulator!

His approach to the hedge fund industry was to 'suggest' a less light touch to their regulatory requirements as the industry had the potential for wrong doing! He also 'suggested' they supply more info to allow ''more effective supervision''.

[Guest Spectre]

Well that's why you have to have effective external regulation - internal compliance officers have only one real sanction - to resign, and frankly nobody cares when they do. Just go out and find another.

There are laws in place - specifically market abuse - that should have been properly enforced, but weren't, or ineffectually. For example a trader who was fined ?750k by FSA (eventually) relocated to Switzerland and raised $5bn in a few months. But everyone knew what he'd been doing for years.

There's a limit to the point of regulating hedge funds, apart from the market abusers, but you can regulate the people who lend to them properly - i.e. the banks, because that's where the trouble ends up - nobody cares too much if a hedge fund goes bust (well apart from market contagion as per LTCM).

I'm not sure what you mean about the banks - lax lending practices (Ninja mortgages anyone) have been part of the problem.

[absent friend]

Sorry being a bit vague, I was making the point that I do not see lending being lax, in fact at this time it is maybe too tight, my point being that the laxness was related to the buying in of the money, off the money market, with eyes etc being shut, as they saw more profit on the way!

Enjoyed your input!

[latviaman]

Sorry being a bit vague, I was making the point that I do not see lending being lax, in fact at this time it is maybe too tight, my point being that the laxness was related to the buying in of the money, off the money market, with eyes etc being shut, as they saw more profit on the way!

Enjoyed your input!

All serious stuff and thought provoking.

We have a govt in Latvia, who at best have moderate secondary education(nothing against secondary schools) they enjoyed massive inflation a few years ago, lived on the back of it, and now go with a begging bowl to the IMF and say we are broke, yet they are building a new library at vast cost to keep building workers employed!

I cannot understand the logic!!

The largest employers are the govt. Massive buildings, too many muppets doing menial tasks, but it keeps the employment record looking good, hence the employment stats look good to IMF.

Mrs L works for a bank, and last night we went to a concert sponsored by the Govt with no cash!! I was introduced to the Finance Minister, who purports to speak English, it was like talking to a muppet, ie " our country will prosper again" if IMF money does not come, we Latvia will survive!!

My application to Ryan Air is in the post

[Yngwie]

The largest employers are the govt. Massive buildings, too many muppets doing menial tasks, but it keeps the employment record looking good,

You've just described Scotland. Smallest private sector in the developed world. And that was even before the flagship RBS turned out to be a sham.

[Canada Bob]

The problem is the people who at one time went into politics either Town Hall to Whitehall were often motivated to better their country or their community, folks who had honest intent. Now we have folks who will fly any flag to get their noses into the public purse/trough.

They might say they are Socialists or Capitalists to charm a vote out of you, but the only thing you can be sure of is the b*stards are Opportunists, out for nothing other than their own gain, after that they just don't give a ****.

When r soles like that nulabour Minister has the nerve to go on a chat show talking about how "MP's expenses are a

cause for concern" {when on about that woman MP claiming housing expenses for her sisters house}, while knowing all the ****ing time that he was doing the same thing, it beggars belief, I wouldn't want his NERVE in my tooth...

It's no wonder that folks aren't bothering to vote, it seems that year on year, Town Hall to Whitehall the voter turn out is close to being abysmal.

I reckon that there will be a turning point though, right now it's like voting in one Mafia family rather than the other, at the end of the day they all shyte on us from a great height.

Party's don't get voted into power now, they get voted out of power. To me it's just a matter of time before people vote them ALL out, replacing them with some radical regime, whoever they might be, probably won't be any better for our comminities or the country, or us, but at least it will get rid of the leeches that have been bleeding us dry, while the Establishment prospers.

Who knows what the next generation will be, maybe the BNP or worse, who knows where that will take us, but radicals come out of the woodwork when the vacuum of dissent invites them.

I think things will get a whole lot worse, for many years to come, before things get any better for the average guy, the only thing on the upside is... The maggots that have been feeding off us for generations, or some of the "New Rich" will lose much if not all of what they've salted away. I'd like to know what Good Qqueen Lizzy and the members of her tribe have lost in the last 12 months. Be nice to know how much those Prima Donna footballers, managers and other "celebrity" maggots have lost as their investments go up in smoke.

If yer sat with just a few quid in yer pocket or in the Bank right now, you'll soon have company as the "mighty" fall.

Back to "Square One" won't hurt most of us, but those who thought they were better than the rest of us because they had more money will get a rude awakening, and I'm all ****ing for it.

Edited March 27, 2009 by Canada Bob

[MrsICTFC]

Can someone explain why politicians earn so much money, how is it worked out?