Sir Michael Lyons warns BBC would be left a 'pale and weak shadow'

Daily Telegraph:

Sir Michael Lyons, the chairman of the BBC Trust, has warned the BBC would be left a "pale and weak shadow" of its current self if the licence fee is amended or abolished.

Superb! Let's do that then! I'd especially like to see one of these 'pale shadows' that he's talking about.

Full article here

English Votes for Cameron? II

Confirmation of my concerns expressed on an earlier post.

From The Times, May 10th

David Cameron yesterday set out his plans to draw the sting from Scottish discontent if the next Conservative Government is forced to make big cuts in public spending to reduce the £700 billion of debt it would inherit from Labour.

Cameron will protect the scotch from the harshest cuts to public spending which he will be forced to make because of the financial incompetence of the clown Brown.

Click to view full article

The Grasping Scummers

In my opinion abuses of power in the seat of Government should be stamped on extremely hard, as corruption at the heart of the nation's Government has far greater implications than elsewhere. These are people who have the future of the country in their grasp, they must show that they deserve to have our trust. Their morals should be beyond reproach.

The current lot in Parliament clearly do not deserve that trust. They have created - deliberately or not - a lax system which is open to abuse and exploitation. A system which they then turned around and blamed when public attention was drawn its abuse. But they created it.

MPs are exceptional (ie different from the ordinary working public) in that they work in two different places: their constituencies and the Houses of Parliament. These places may be hundreds of miles apart. So it seems that they have a legitimate need for two homes.

The manner in which MPs have chosen to deal with this exceptionality really demonstrates that they are not fit to set rules for themselves for these exceptional cases. So they should either they follow the same rules as everyone else with no exceptions, or exceptional rules which only apply to MPs need to be set by an independent body.

All cases of expenses abuse should be investigated with a view to prosecution for fraud and for those cases where a guilty verdict is reached, MPs should face jail or at the very least loss of their seat in Parliament and permanent ban from running for a parliamentary seat.

DNA

The Government says it has to allow thousands of foreign criminals into the country because under EU law it can't refuse them. It then says that it can't deport terrorist suspects because it's against European Human Rights legislation. Yet the Government is prepared to disregard European Human Rights law on the issue of holding the DNA of innocent people. Seems like they'll either ignore EU law when it's inconvenient, or use it to legitimise their destruction of our civil liberties.

The True Cost of Housing

Am I the only one in the country who thinks the cost of housing is still insanely high? If the average wage in England is around £25,000[1], and a house should be no more than 3 times annual salary as was recommended by bankers and mortgage advisers in more sensible times, then the average house price should be around £75,000. Or alternately, if wages had kept pace with property increases, the average UK wage would be around £70,000!

After a year or so of falling prices, the average UK house price is still over £205,000! [2]. A massive £130,000 over what it should be. But it's not just £130,000 more.

I'm going to do a mortgage calculation for a couple of different scenarios using the mortgage calculator at mortgagecalculator.net.

First with Mr Lucky earning £25,000, and the house of his dreams costing a mere £75,000, let's go for a 25 year mortgage and assume that the interest rate is going to stay at 5%. He can afford a £10,000 deposit.

Total Amount Paid = £113,995
Total Interest Paid = £48,995
Monthly Payments £379

Scenario 2, with Mr Average earning £25,000, and the house of his dreams costing the average value of £205,000, keeping everything else the same, including a deposit of £10,000.

Total Amount Paid = £341,985
Total Interest Paid = £146,985
Monthly Payments £1,140

Right away, you can see that an extra £100,000 is paid just in interest. The difference in the cost of the houses is £130,000, but the difference between the Total Amount Paid in scenario 1 and the Total Amount Paid in scenario 2 is £227,000. How many years would it take Mr Average to not just earn that extra £227,000, but save it on top of his day to day expenses? He only has 25 years of course, which draws you to the difference in Monthly Payments, almost £800 per month for the lifetime of the mortgage. What else might Mr Average want to spend that money on?

Money spent on property is dead money, the only people that benefit are bankers, solicitors and real estate agents, but most people only buy one house (at a time) so only a few of those benefit – and who cares about solicitors, bankers and real estate agents anyway? Money spent on property is money that can't be spent on goods and services, holidays, having more kids, putting your kids through private education, buying a boat, putting more away for your pension, private health service ...

There's no real way to benefit from the ridiculous property prices, unless you're planning to flee the country permanently and use the money to keep yourself for the rest of your life in a country where property is cheap.

How can prices be made to fall? By decreasing demand - by taxing second home owners and buy to letters and forcing BTLs to provide a minimum standard of accommodation would be a start.

If the prices are to drop to what I'd call sensible levels, then some people will hurt, obviously, ie the people who have bought since the housing price bubble started. Those that bought near the top of the bubble will hurt most. However if prices don't fall, everybody who buys a house from now until eternity pays. Your kids, their kids, their grandkids and so on. All subsequent generations will face this millstone around their necks.

[1]statistics.gov.uk
[2]BBC News

Liberal Democrat Candidate Turns Tory

From the Daily Telegraph:

Liberal Democrat candidate defects to Tories

A Liberal Democrat election candidate Norsheen Bhatti [Nora Batty? - HN] has defected to the Conservatives, blaming Nick Clegg for abandoning his party's commitment to widen representation of ethnic minorities.

Ms Bhatti, the prospective candidate in Chelsea and Fulham, said she had decided to join David Cameron because he was doing more to get black and Asian people elected to Parliament.

Full story at Daily Telegraph
She has until very recently been critical of the Conservative Party, and if this Tory promise to put more BMEs in the Houses of Parliament is sufficient to make her switch alliegences, exactly how strong are her principles? From my point of view, not very. From my point of view, she switched parties because she's non-white and the Tories have pledged to help non-whites get seats in Parliament. It's a fairly shallow, unprincipled, self serving grab for power.

Haven't we already got enough politicians like that?

In the article she's quoted as saying that the Liberal Party 'is so very out of touch with everyday life and people in our country.' If anyone is out of touch with people in our country, it's Cameron. I think the people in our country are sick of having 'affirmative action' and 'equal opportunities' shoved down our throat. Affirmative action guarantees no improvements in performance whatsoever. Look at the women in Brown's cabinet. What a useless, brainless bunch of .. incompetents!

Cameron is still trying to out-Blair the Labour party, I've got news for you Cameron, the country has moved on .. for gods sake even the Labour Party has moved on.