Miliband’s fake High St listening exercise shown up for what it is

By way of an update to the last blog post, the Guardian’s Wintour and Watt blog has the full exchange between Miliband and the unemployed British man from Cleveleys.

What it shows, setting aside Miliband’s economic illiteracy, is a politician who talks about listening to people, then no less than three times stops the man from making his point as he played to an audience of mainly Labour party members who, with typical socialist compassion and receptiveness, jeered the poor bloke for his comments.

Having promised the man his say in return for a free run to deliver a sermon to the deluded faithful, Miliband ended the conversation without bothering to find out what points the man wanted to make.  That’s Miliband’s ‘One Nation’ narrative in action.  One Nation where the politicians are stuck in transmit mode, immune to any contrary opinion and determined to silence any dissent, even when they take to the streets for a ‘listening’ exercise.

Miliband is indeed full of shit.

‘Make me the prime minister and I will get you the job’

So said Ed Miliband, to a disgruntled unemployed man in Lancashire whose frustration at the effects of Labour’s open-door immigration led him to say of politicians, ‘You’re all full of shit.’

Miliband told the man that employers undercutting wages – rather than immigration – was the cause of the problem.

This is the Ed Miliband whose supporters never tire of telling us he has a Masters degree in Economics from the LSE.  Yet with that answer he demonstrates that he fails to grasp the most basic impact on price of an increase in supply, in this case a dramatic increase in the supply of unskilled and semi skilled labour.

Businesses exist to make money for their owners in return for the supply of goods or services, and the greatest challenge for most businesses is controlling their costs.

However, the fetish of politicians and bureaucrats for creating ever more regulation, combined with the financial impacts of government policy at EU and national level, the costs associated with running a business have been continually increasing.  So when an opportunity to reduce labour costs – typically one of the biggest expenditures in small and medium businesses – presents itself, why wouldn’t a business hire the migrant worker who is prepared to work for a lower rate?

Miliband supported the influx of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who increased the supply of cheap labour.  Miliband supported the scandalous borrowing splurge that has resulted in more pressure on tax revenues to service the spirralling debt.  Miliband supported and also directly implemented policies that have increased the costs of running a business.

Yet despite all this, Miliband has the temerity to blame employers for that unemployed Lancastrian being out of work and brazenly promises that if he is made Prime Minister he will get that poor man a job – presumably by further increasing the size of the unproductive public sector, thus further adding to pressure to increase the tax revenues taken from the wealth creating private sector.

That Lancastrian man was then schmoozed and flattered by a deceitful, delusional hypocrite to the point he exchanged a handshake with him.  That man was right the first time.  Miliband and his ilk are full of shit.

Cameron in Thatcherite shocker!

According to a piece in the Daily Wail, when asked directly whether he was a Thatcherite, David Cameron replied:

‘No… Other people might call me that. I think the label’s now… it’s slightly become… labels now don’t quite mean what they did then.

‘I was a tremendous Mrs Thatcher supporter… The battles she won were so important for our country, but there are now different challenges and things that need to be dealt with.’

The shock in all this?  That some idiot saw fit to ask Cameron if he was a Thatcherite in the first place.

A cursory look at Cameron’s dismal record, his limp behaviour in opposition, his failure to win an election against the most unpopular Prime Minister in living memory, a quick scan of his front bench at the wets he surrounds himself with – especially that treacherous, backstabbing, europhile quisling and plotter-in-chief who worked tirelessly to bring down Thatcher, Ken Clarke – the accelerating departure from conservative principles, the vacuum that exists where conviction should reside, the two-faced rank hypocrisy, and an absence of any connection or empathy with ordinary people… yet some witless fool has the stupidity to ask if he is a Thatcherite?

For crying out loud.

The Benefits of Smart Appliances

If you were worried this would be some geeky piece extolling the virtues of ‘smart’ fridge freezers, ovens, washing machines etc, then you can relax.  The benefits of smart appliances are not designed for consumers, instead they are designed for the convenience of the political class and corporate interests.  Richard puts it into context on EU Referendum.

Having long peddled the lie that renewable energy is the answer to this country’s energy needs, under a new order where the establishment has declared war on hydrocarbons as part of its deranged obsession with fighting climate change, the reality can no longer be contained.

The future of this advanced industrialised nation is not one of continuing progress – save for the corrupted definition of the word which means the diametric opposite – rather it is being structured to bring about the end of energy supplied on demand at the flick of a switch.  Under the new order control over how power is used is to be shifted to the corporations with power being rationed when the dangerously inadequate energy generating solution, pursued and implemented by the politicians, cannot deliver sufficient electricity to meet our needs.

America’s leaders are taking advantage of its shale gas to power its economy and drive down prices. China’s leaders are building a coal fired power station a week to power its economy and support its growth.  Germany’s leaders (inspite of EU strategy) is turning away from nuclear and building a raft of new coal fired power stations to power its economy and ensure adequate supply for the needs of its population.  Even Japan is starting a new dash for coal as part of its efforts to reduce reliance on nuclear power and still ensure affordable and adequate energy supply for its people and meet the needs of its people.

And the the UK?  Well, our political class, convinced within its self reverential bubble of its virtue and righteousness, is shutting down coal fired power stations despite there being no replacement for the lost generating capacity, is pursuing an approach that constrains exploration and exploitation of shale gas, is driving up prices through rising charges for carbon, and has a ludicrous strategy of building of inefficient and intermittant wind turbines at huge cost that cannot come close to meeting our energy needs or servicing industry.  To make this work they have a master plan.  Rationing power and controlling what energy private citizens can use in their homes by rolling out smart applicances and dressing these up as being of benefit – and charging us billions of pounds to make it happen.

Welcome to your progressive future.

And they call this ‘government’

As the BBC reports, Iain Duncan Smith has said that wealthy elderly people who do not need benefit payments to help with fuel bills or free travel should voluntarily return the money to the authorities.

The Work and Pensions Secretary has told the Sunday Telegraph that he would ‘encourage’ people who do not need such financial support ‘to hand it back’.

Well that should do it!  Thanks very much, Iain.

For decades the political class in this country has served its own interests, with naked bribes to voters in return for being able to enjoy the trappings of power.  The cost of welfare and the other promises that make up many of these bribes is largely responsible for the staggering level of borrowing and the horrific debt this country simply cannot repay.

Once again reality meets political expediency and instead of doing the right thing by British taxpayers Ministers are trying to do the best thing for their own electoral prospects while doing contortions to appease the plethora of bodies constructed by the transnational overlords and follow rules everyone else avoids.

Collectively this is why the government doesn’t get serious about only spending our money on essential services and supporting the vulnerable people in our society.  This is why our money gets spent supporting overseas based families of migrants who have contributed barely anything to the pot in the short time they have been in the UK.  This is why now hear the government enthusiastically ‘plays by the rules’ in forking over hundreds of millions of pounds for healthcare costs for UK nationals treated overseas, while permitting the NHS to fail to keep accurate records of foreign nationals treated here under the services British taxpayers fund, so we only get back a fraction of what we are due for use of our overstretched resources.

The government could slash taxes, but instead it chooses to hoover up our money so it offer some of it back in credits and benefits in return for votes.  Too many voters don’t understand that while they are being given these bribes with one hand, they are crumbs from the table as much more is siphoned off and wasted on administration and diverted for spending on things people do not support.  The government could rejuvinate the economy and reduce borrowing dramatically if it simply let people keep more of their own money and spend it on what they want, rather than fritter it away on boondoggles, wheezes, special interests and these disgraceful, self serving bribes.  But it won’t because if it controls the money it controls everything.  It can  build the insipid client state and increase the size of government to justify the ever worsening kleptocracy that has developed.

Voting for any of the political parties is an endorsement of the continuation of this scandalous behaviour.  Voting for any of the political parties props up the faux democracy that exists in this country.  It does not result in change.  It results in the electorate and taxpayers continuing to be treated with ever more contempt.

What we need is not a reshuffle of the deck chairs, nor a rotation of faces who are all committed to perpetuating the same corrupt system that holds sway in this country.  We need a complete overhaul of the system, to bring about real democracy where control and decision making rests with the people and where the executive serves the people rather than dictates to them.  We need a genuine revolution.  The potential alternatives to this, borne of desperation and anger, are too awful to contemplate.

We need real change.  It will never be realised by playing the political class’ game and using their rules – and that includes the charade of traipsing to polling stations to vote for the least worst option in the certain knowledge that on the major, substantive issues nothing will change.  They will continue to take their steer from unelected, unaccountable, self selecting entities instead of us, the people they are supposed to serve and whose wishes they are supposed to execute.  It is time for people to assert themselves and take the power back.

We have to define the game and set the rules that should be used.  We have an outline of how they should look.  Now we need people to consider how they can be realised.  In the meantime, while that discussion takes place and the approach is refined, we need to withdraw our consent by refusing to play their game and refusing to heed their desperate attempts for validation as they plead for people to use their vote.  Don’t feed the beast.

Want to get into Gold and Silver?

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• Why buy gold or silver?
• Grading of gold and silver
• Pricing, premiums and taxation
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• Gold and silver bars
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“We are the State” but it needn’t be so…

Guest Post by Andy Baxter

The current system of public protection was updated (there has been a ‘Public Guardian’ to protect the vulnerable for a very long time) by the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and its provisions which tightened the legislation regarding mental incapacity (supposed more stringent tests to determine capacity and removing the ‘enduring’ power that was being abused in many cases to one of ‘lasting’ power that could be automatically revoked on demonstration of capacity) all this took effect in legislation 1st October 2007.

Being an IFA and reading of this sort of issue constantly in my trade press and having come across it many times in a long career it forms the foundation of financial planning where protection is concerned for my clients.

I am reminded of one particular case (from our trade press) where a farmer who suffered an accident and went into a coma where his wife approached the public guardian to seek the power to manage the affairs of the farm and her husband. The court sensing mega bucks refused this power to his wife!!! On the grounds she was not qualified to make these decisions despite having been involved in the management of the farm and their personal affairs for decades.

A court official was appointed and her husband lingered for over 7 months in a coma before eventually dying. The court official sold some of the farm’s land to meet the fees of the court and its agents! completely against the long term financial interests of the farmers wife and the family, this also created a tax burden that she then had to meet from his estate! The wife is on record as saying and I quote “it was a relief when he died for then I was able to take back control of our affairs once more under probate” her comments regarding the ‘service’ and ‘costs’ of the court are unprintable.

The situation described could have been avoided totally but for the expenditure of a few hundred pounds to create Lasting Powers of Attorney (LPAs).

These documents if completed correctly totally remove the States power to determine not only the financial decisions regarding someone who loses mental capacity on their money ‘financial and property’ affairs but also removes the State’s power to determine ‘health and welfare’ issues even and up to including decisions regarding ‘life sustaining treatment’.

With these documents properly completed and then registered with the ‘Office of the Public Guardian’ an attorney YOU trust appointed by yourself duly endowed with such legal powers to make decisions as if they were YOURSELF to protect financial, property, health and welfare issues can then give the proverbial two finger salute to any officials or agents of the State as they have the legal power to act as if they were yourself.

Want to know more about how one can protect yourself and your loved ones from an interfering State? And for a cost thousands of pounds below what a solicitor would charge and with no VAT either?  e-mail me (work) at andy[at]wmifa.co.uk (replace the [at] with @)

What a load of old pony

Some may not know that ‘pony and trap’ is Cockney rhyming slang for excrement. But if they have the misfortune to read the increasingly detached Peter Oborne writing in the Barclay Brother Beano, they will no doubt reflect on the piece as just that.

Here we are just days after the funeral of the last radical political leader this country had, with the eulogies and the reflections on the transformation she brought about to the competitiveness and standing of the UK, still fresh in our minds.  Yet Oborne, in the style so beloved by the vacuous cabal of media sycophants, presents a ‘nothing new under the sun’ review of Nigel Farage which leads him to a typically brown-nosing conclusion in support of David Cameron and counsel not to ‘lurch to the right’ that stretches the bounds of credibility well beyond breaking point, which includes this:

I think Mr Cameron’s best bet is to stay where he is, and to fight on his record as a brave, competent and radical prime minister. Adopting such an attitude will take nerves of steel, and could lead to his premature exit if the parliamentary Tory party – that increasingly tremulous body – panics, as it probably will.

Brave, competent and radical? Cameron?

Only a shameless sycophant could describe Cameron in such a way.  What Oborne labels bravery is what most people recognise as insufferable ignorance, a refusal of Cameron to be swayed from the destructive path laid out by his masters in the EU and a plethora of international governance bodies.

Competence? A man who declared his war on deficit and debt has barely scratched the surface of the first, while presiding over a terrifying explosion of the second.

And radical?  There is nothing radical in being a lapdog for a self selecting global bureaucracy that has snuffed out anything resembling democracy and perpetuated the slow burn decline this country has experienced since the neo-social democrats wets removed Margaret Thatcher, and who along with their ideological soulmates but rivals for the illusion of power in the Labour party, commenced the reversal of this country’s recovery and the state’s coup over individual liberty, personal freedom and privacy.

But that’s the dumbed down poodle media for you.

We are the state. We are public servants. You will comply.

Via a story in the Daily Mail a light has again been shone on police state Britain and the disturbing and sinister way citizens can be treated by the authorities.

We do not know the full story, but we do know that Wanda Maddocks was imprisoned for contempt by a judge sitting in the Labour-created ‘Court of Protection’ in the High Court.

Her crime?  She refused an order to not remove her ailing father, John Maddocks, from a care home, where the local authority – Stoke-on-Trent city council – decided he should be placed and should remain.  The Mail reports Mr Maddocks was in the care home against his family’s wishes, kept there under the Mental Capacity Act.

The wishes of Wanda Maddocks and her family, who were concerned about her father’s welfare in the home because he was unhappy, confined to the building, barred from going out on trips with this family and even attacked by another patient, were ignored.  The state, in the form of the local authority and the Court of Protection, decided it knew what was best for Mr Maddocks and rejected the family’s wish to care for him.  When Wanda Maddocks took matters into her own hands and took her father away, Judge Martin Cardinal jailed her for five months for contempt of court.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, it happened in secret, behind closed doors, without Wanda Maddocks even having legal representation.

If this is not an example of state power running out of control because of the establishment’s desire not to be challenged by the people the state is supposed to serve, then what is?  The local authority has sought to justify its behaviour thus, with Councillor Gwen Hassall, Stoke-on-Trent city council  cabinet member for social services, saying:

‘This is clearly an extreme case, but one that the Court of Protection supported the council on. It was the court’s decision to issue a custodial sentence to Wanda Maddocks.

‘Our chief concern was always centred around the welfare of her father, who was suffering from a deteriorating condition and required 24-hour supervision in a stable environment.

‘This was a decision reached by medical consultants, geriatricians, social workers, community psychiatric nurses, dieticians, consultant health and nursing professionals and others who were involved in assessing his needs.

‘This decision was also ratified by the Court of Protection, which carried out its own  independent assessment of his needs.

‘Unfortunately safeguards had to be put in place to ensure he had the support of a stable environment because there were no signs that this could be provided otherwise.

‘Safeguards also had to be put in place to protect the care professionals who looked after Mr Maddocks.’

One wonders what safeguards were put in place to protect John Maddocks, who was assaulted in the home despite supposedly being under 24-hour supervision in a supposedly stable environment.

When the state can behave in this way, holding secret trials, not giving defence lawyers an opportunity to represent their clients, handing down custodial sentences for upsetting the court when people guilty of violent offences stay on the streets, and affording itself the power to do all this without the permission of the British people, it proves we are no longer citizens, we are slaves to the self selecting establishment.

We need genuine change in this country. We need to shift the balance of power by taking it back.  We need nothing short of an intelligent, well planned revolution to change the way this country functions.

The media’s powerful reputation for accuracy… again

Another one for Lord Justice Leveson.

This time it is Reuters demonstrating that oh-so powerful reputation for accuracy that so impresses Hacked Off’s favourite judge, hizzoner Leveson LJ.  The corporate news provider states on their video report on wealth safe havens, by hack Tara Joseph, that gold has slumped to its lowest price in 30 years!  (I would embed the video if anyone can tell me how to do it on WordPress).

Let’s see if Reuters are right, shall we?  We won’t even go back 30 years, we’ll go back just 10.

The sad thing is, people still trust the mainstream media.

BBC narrative on ‘homegrown’ Boston bombers falls apart

During this morning, NBC News in America has been reporting that the suspects in the Boston Marathon twin bomb attacks are brothers of Chechen origin.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, born in Kyrgyzstan remains on the run while his brother who was killed in a shoot out with police is being named as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, born in Russia.   Sky News has also been carrying this information, along with news media around the world.

Meanwhile (at the time of writing) on the BBC, despite the time that has elapsed there is still no mention of the names or nationality of the bombing suspects.

Having pushed so hard the idea of ‘homegrown terrorism’ by Americans on American soil, by people who presumably hate the United States as much as the BBC does, it is as if the BBC cannot now bring itself to acknowledge and report that the authorities have identified the main suspects as foreign nationals who originate from a region well known for its Islamist fundamentalism and terrorism.

Of course the BBC will likely say they were waiting for more confirmation in order to be ‘accurate’ in their reporting, rather than first with the story.  But once again, on a major issue where the BBC has form for grudging reporting of the facts, they seem to be last to the party when the story fails to validate what their worldview expected it to be.

The BBC is becoming concerned with news and more concerned with agenda setting and propaganda.

(Update: Shortly after this post, the BBC has updated their news page with the details, well behind the other news media.  Anyone relying on the BBC for information spent more time this morning being less informed than users of other outlets.)

Demand for physical gold and silver contradicts the market

The doom and gloom mongers who gaze upon the fantasy world that is a commodity market where people buy and sell fresh air in the form of heavily leveraged futures, have been out in force in the media, parroting the line that gold is finished as a safe haven / investment / store of wealth (* delete as appropriate).

There was an objective to last week’s raid… and a lot of people are making a convincing argument that it was designed to stop investors turning their back on the dollar and moving into wealth into such safe havens, while making millions on the side into the bargain.  If the bankers could scare people out of gold, the thinking went, the people would put their money where the Fed wants it, into the dollar.

Meanwhile in the real world, away from the investment banks who encouraged their sheep-like clients to dump their paper gold to force a dramatic drop in price that also, err, enabled investment banks to buy the real physical product more cheaply to squirrel away in their underground vaults, we see that people around the globe aren’t buying the establishment line that gold is over – indeed they are buying it as fast as they can.

From Zero Hedge:

We noted here that the plunge in the paper price of gold (and silver) had prompted considerable renewed demand for physical and now it seems the scramble among the “more stable investor base” is increasing. The shake out of ETFs and futures has left the Australian mint short of deliverables and Japanese and Chinese gold retailers seeing a “frenzied” surge in demand. The customers are not just the ‘rich’ or ‘elderly’; in China “they tend to wear water shoes and come directly from the market…;” in Australia, “the volume of business… is way in excess of double what we did last week,… there’s been people running through the gate,” and Japanese individual investors doubled gold purchases yesterday at Tokuriki Honten, the country’s second-largest retailer of the precious metal. The panic selling by a weaker ‘imminent inflation-based’ investor base has sparked physical shortages – “there’s been significant sales made as people see this as great value.” It seems our previous discussions of a rotation from paper to physical were correct and this physical demand will eventually leak back into the paper markets.

The piece goes on to give more specific reports of surging demand and buying activity from China, Australia and Japan.  These are the people who understand they are only in gold and silver if they own the physical metal, not pieces of paper that give title to a quantity of gold to multiple people.  With prices down significantly with the biggest single drop in decades, to sit their lowest level for three years, there is value to be had and the next few weeks look like an excellent time to invest a proportion of your money in gold and/or silver.

To help people, who have not invested in precious metals before, to understand their options, AM’s short guide to Getting into Gold and Silver is nearly finished and will soon be published.

The short guide is designed to provide a quick, simple launch pad that caters for British small investors who want to invest in gold and silver but don’t quite know where or how to start, by compiling some relevant and basic information in one single place so buyers can choose the right products for them and where to purchase them without paying over the odds.  It will pay for itself many times over with the money you will save.  The guide covers:

Why buy gold or silver?
Grading of gold and silver
Pricing, premiums and taxation
Your options – physical ownership, ETFs, Futures and Stocks
Gold and Silver Coins
Gold and Silver Bars
Regular investment in Gold
Where you can buy
Where you can sell

If you are interested in buying a copy of the guide, via Amazon or direct, just drop me an email to register your interest.

Conservatives cost you less, do they?

From Richard at EU Referendum we have a story about the growing power of the European Parliament, relative to that of the European Commission.  But what the story also does is give lie to the often made claim by Conservatives that they cost you less.

The story is about the European Parliament rejecting a Commission plan to force up the price of so-called carbon credits, by delaying the auction of a variety of credit denominations until the end of the 2013-20 period, known as ‘backloading’.  The cost of carbon credits are passed on to consumers, driving up the cost of energy and goods.

But it is the background to the story which should be more interesting to British voters, as it demonstrates that the publicly stated concern of David Cameron and his crew of neo-Social Democrats about the energy prices people in this country pay, is a deceitful sham.

It transpires that David Cameron instructed Conservative MEPs to vote for the Commission’s proposal, in favour of forcing up carbon credit prices.  No, you did not misread that.  The official British position was to support the Commission’s attempts to ramp up the carbon price.   Some of the Tory MEPs rebelled and voted against, contributing to the rejection of the proposal by a mere 19 votes.  Think back to Cameron’s very public concern about energy prices for the hard pressed consumers and threats to legislate against the energy companies to force them to put customers on their lowest tariffs, then consider what happened in Brussels, and we have (more) hard evidence that Cameron is a duplicitous fraud and the claim that Conservatives cost you less is a blatant lie.

Following the vote the price of credits dropped to an all-time record low and the carbon market finds itself in a fair bit of trouble.  You might think this is good news and the end of the matter.  But there’s more.  Because to compound Cameron’s cynical actions we are reminded of something rather important by Richard :

Sadly, though, Britain does not get the benefit of this market collapse, Mr Osborne having already decided to add to the cost of the carbon credits, with an additional £4.94 in carbon tax. This, while continental industry and electricity consumers will be paying something like £2 per ton of carbon dioxide produced, the British equivalents will be paying about £7.

With the UK government committed to driving the carbon price up to £18 in 2018, to £30 in 2020 and to £70 in 2030, using the carbon tax mechanism, we now face the spectre of the EU’s carbon market collapsing completely, leaving the UK as the only country in the EU handicapped in this way.

As this blog always encourages people, ignore the spin and the weasel words and judge politicians by their actions.  We have the high borrowing, high taxing, wasteful spending antics of Labour and Liberal Democrat incompetents and, with this story, yet more evidence should any be needed that the Conservatives are absolutely no different.

Assuming in your area the Conservatives still have sufficient members to go door-to-door canvassing ahead of the County Council elections, if you want to have a little fun, share this story with them and ask them to explain how Conservatives cost you less.

Take advantage of the corrupted market

The media has made much of the news that the price of gold has just experienced its biggest fall in over 30 years.  The price of silver has experienced a similarly dramatic decline, to which we can add falls in oil, copper and other commodities.

Talking heads have been emerging from the woodwork since gold and silver started turning south in recent weeks, spouting the establishment’s nonsense that gold is finished, it isn’t a safe haven, its collapse proves the government can print money without consequences for the wider economy etc, etc.

But what we have seen in recent days is a classic bankster raid as part of a governmental war on alternatives to the dollar.  Doing the Federal Reserve’s bidding, the investment banks and big institutions took advantage of a modest decline in gold and silver prices over recent months to attack the market. The dollar must be preserved at all costs, so the US government’s financial industry puppets have stepped up to use Fantasy Commodity paper to

After Goldman Sachs last week advised clients to close their gold positions (‘paper’ gold futures), on Friday the dealing team at Merrill Lynch apparently dumped a futures sell order of around 4 million ounces or 124.4 tonnes of gold, worth approximately $6bn.  Ironically this is the same Merrill Lynch that in September last year said it could see gold soaring in price to $2400 per troy ounce by the end of 2014.

You can be sure Merrill – and Goldman Sachs – still believes gold’s price will soar, which will explain their physical gold buying.  This market manipulation through worthless paper to drive down the price serves to enable the likes of Goldman and Merrill to buy up much larger quantities of gold in anticipation of the longer term price rise, while persuading their dozy investors to part with the illusion of owning gold and pump their money where the US government wants it – into equities and US bonds.

‘The scale of the selling was massive and again underlines how one or two large banks or hedge funds can completely distort the market by aggressive, concentrated leveraged short positions,’ wrote the Got Gold Report.  It’s clear the markets have become so badly corrupted it is now common to see billions of dollars wiped off the value of a commodity by way of a paper exercise.

Thankfully there are still people who have their wits about them and have been seizing the opportunity to buy gold and silver at a lower price.  They can see the unchanged financial fundamentals that make gold a safe haven, namely:

• spiralling national debt becoming increasingly difficult to service
• huge inflationary pressures waiting to burst into the open as a result of reckless printing of money
• an overpriced stock market ripe for a crash where share prices have inflated because of the increase in the money supply
• interest rates that will eventually break out from the efforts to hold them down
• additional tax hikes to fill the gap between receipts and ever growing public spending
• governments that have quietly changed the law to enable confiscation of bank deposits at arbitrary levels

When one sets aside the fantasy paper trading of the banksters that has given the media and uninformed people the idea that gold and silver have lost their value, and instead looks at the real, physical market, one will see quite a different story…

When the economic effects of government policy kick in – and they will despite the lengths to which they are going to suppress the consequences of their actions – all that ‘smart money’ that is diving out of worthless paper gold and silver at the current low price following the advice of Goldman and Merrill will be looking for a safe haven.  They will want to get into physical gold and they will find the price rising, low supply, and the people who advised them to get out of gold sitting atop of a huge pile of the real stuff in high security vaults, bought cheaply by way of a grotesque manipulation of the market.

My tuppence worth of advice is don’t wait for the lumpen herd, get in now and protect some of your wealth from the economic mess that is coming over the hill and set to hit all of us head on.

Another Patriots Day, another murderous attack

It was unsurprising to see the BBC news team on Radio 4 executing the usual contortions this morning in their efforts to play up the possibility of ‘home grown’ domestic terrorism that stems from hatred of the US Federal government being behind the twin bomb attack at the Boston Marathon.

Memories of Waco and the Oklahoma bombing were dragged up as part of the BBC effort to enjoin people to not jump to an immediate conclusion that the bombing was the work of foreign or religiously inspired terrorists.

Even more curious was the attempt to conflate the timing of the attack with shooting massacres carried out by gunmen who were clearly insane or plain evil, and had no motivation or cause, save murderous destruction of human life.

If the BBC’s disciples of apologism had stopped to think for a moment, they would have realised that Waco stemmed from a desire by David Koresh, a religious fanatic, to resist the state’s efforts to interfere in his affairs – albeit many of them being criminal in nature.  Further, the Oklahoma City bombing was a direct attack on government structures, with Timothy McVeigh’s target being a Federal government building in the city.

There is no evidence to support the BBC’s desperate attempt to play down the possibility of an Islamist or Middle Eastern dimension to what happened by linking the attack in Boston to domestic terrorism directed against the US Federal government.

The signature has all the hallmarks of a planned and coordinated attack on a soft target, designed to kill and injure people and sow terror, in the manner so ruthlessly employed by Al Qaeda and their affiliates.  That doesn’t mean it can’t be an individual or group copying Islamist methods, but the effort to make people think this twin bombing is somehow comparable to Waco and Oklahoma City is a red herring and a disservice to the public.

The thoughts and prayers of this blogger are with the innocent victims and their families.

An economic storm is gathering

Quite recently, and rather belatedly, I started to take a more serious interest in the economy.  In January I read an article that laid bare the real extent of this country’s debt burden and what history shows us happens when such a situation arises.  The rest of the world fares no better and compounds the parlous nature of the economy globally.

Having gone on to spend the last few months researching, then starting to invest in gold and silver, and writing an almost complete short guide about how to do that most effectively as a small investor, a piece on Bloomberg about billionaire investor, John Paulson, losing more than $300 million of his personal wealth as gold fell to its lowest price in almost two years, caught my eye.

Anyone who has an interest in precious metals will be accutely aware that their cost has fallen rapidly in recent weeks.  A lot of people are falling for the establishment propaganda that has seen comments and actions by George Soros presented as a rationale to abandon gold and silver and pour money into the dangerously inflating stock market bubble.  Goldman Sachs has joined in this week, urging its clients to sell out of gold.  That was the cue for large scale selling by individuals and organisations that has sent gold below £1000 per ounce and silver below £17 per ounce.

Yet the backdrop to this is the likes of Soros maintaining a huge position in gold, Goldman Sachs looking to buy physical metal on the cheap as their clients dump their paper options for unallocated metal which largely doesn’t exist, and governments/central banks dramatically increasing their gold reserves while telling everyone else that they need to be in equities where their monetary investments can be taxed and depositors can be given ‘haircuts’.  As always it is a matter of the establishment saying one thing and doing another.

The fact is the health of gold and silver is anything but poor.  Demand for physical metal is soaring and has even resulted in mints rationing sales of bullion coins and dealers finding it difficult to acquire stock – and with the sudden price change on Friday now taking the decision to suspend sales, knowing they would be overwhelmed by demand for the cheaper gold and silver and would not achieve the mark up over the price they paid.  For ordinary people the price of gold and silver only matters if you need to sell it to liquidise assets.  While the price may fluctuate, the physical metals still have intrinsic value that makes them more valuable than devalued currency that is being eroded by inflation.  John Reade, a partner and gold strategist at Paulson & Co, is one who is refusing to be taken in like the sheeple:

“Federal governments have been printing money at an unprecedented rate.  We expect the strengthening of the economy and stock market to cause money supply to rise more than real growth and eventually lead to inflation. It is this expectation of paper currency debasement which makes gold an attractive long-term investment for us.”

Goldman Sachs and the central banks know this all too well and are simply encouraging people to sell assets, worthless or valuable, to drive down the price so assets can be picked up on the cheap to make the long term investment even more valuable to them.  People who listen to them will be left high and dry as the investment vehicles being recommended fall apart as part of the monetary crash that will come.  ZeroHedge calls is right when in response to the Paulson story Tyler observes:

As for gold as an inflation hedge, here Paulson is certainly correct. The only question is when will the price suppression scheme of gold as an alternative currency finally end. Since various official organizations (such as the Troika) are currently doing all they can to buy the sovereign gold of insolvent nations at firesale prices, it is likely that the period of artificially suppressed prices may continue.

Which, incidentally, for all those who lament the recent price drop in gold, is a good thing: for those who see gold as an alternative currency to fiat, all the recent sell off (as well as alleged or real downward price manipulation) does is provide a lower cost basis for accumulating hard monetary assets. Which is something to be welcomed and not mourned, especially if one plans on holding on to said gold (or silver) as a currency, instead of merely converting it back into fiat at a higher price point, and thus as an asset (something all those who bought BitCoin at $260 and sold at $50 appear to have completely forgotten).

Dr Paul Craig Roberts was the US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and an associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.  He knows how the system works.  Just over a week ago on his website he put some context around what we are currently seeing in a piece that everyone should read.  He can see the writing on the wall.  The video below builds on the article (h/t Silver Doctors):

However, the establishment’s effort to prop up western currencies by encouraging people to act in a way that drives down the price of gold and silver to make these devalued currencies look more appealing, shows that the economy is in dire shape – and is a huge opportunity for ordinary people.  Pushing the price down to prop up the dollar in particular, has made it cheaper for ordinary people to acquire gold and silver before the price takes off upwards.

This week I have taken the opportunity to add another 2oz of gold bullion and 3kg of physical .999 fine silver bullion to my vaulted assets, along with some more 22ct Gold Sovereigns, and silver bullion coins in the shape of .999 1oz American Eagles, 1oz Canadian Maple Leafs, 1oz Austrian Philharmonicas and 1oz Britannias, all purchased legally without having to pay VAT and now safely stored in a secure, non-bank facility that I can access 7 days a week if I choose.  The more that government and the likes of Goldman Sachs try to get me to part with my assets, the more I am convinced to hold on to it.

When the economic storm eventually hits, the value of fiat money plummets, government raids bank account deposits a la Cyprus, at least I will have the comfort that I have no debt, bar what’s left to pay on my mortgage, and that a good proportion of my assets will not lose their value – indeed they will almost certainly be significantly more valuable than today.  Best of all, the government and their banker agents won’t be able to get their hands on it as it is kept outside of their system.

How do you solve a problem like Dave?

It was interesting today to speak to three people who generously supported my Borough Council election campaign back in 2007.

These were Tory stalwarts, always willing to leaflet, canvass, buy raffle tickets and support events.  When I resigned from the Council and quit the Conservatives they were still there, plugging away, doing their bit to further what they believed to be conservatism.  I lost touch with them when I withdrew from party politics, but hadn’t forgotten them.

With the county council elections coming up, I asked them how the campaigning was going.  I admit to being shocked to find that they had all left the Conservatives two years ago.  There are people in every party that one can look at and think, ‘their heart’s not in it, they’ll pack it in before long’.  But these three were not people one could ever have imagined as capable of being so disaffected as to walk away.  Enough, it turns out, was enough.  Everyone has different motives for their actions, so naturally an enquiry was made about why they had all quit (they are all unrelated but long standing friends of each other).  The answer in each case was… David Cameron.

It transpires true blue, ‘instinctive eurosceptic’ Dave has managed to alienate members so much that these hardcore, grassroots supporters who are the engine room of election campaigns, had turned their back on the party.  They cited Cameron’s hypocrisy over EU membership, his refusal to cut spending so only the essentials are funded,  and his indecent haste to jettison conservative principles in favour of Lib Dem and consensus fudges that suit no one but the establishment.   And, they were adamant, they are not going back.  They have come around to sharing my view that Cameron isn’t conservative and what is on offer is materially no different from that advanced by the Lib Dems and Labour.

If this is indicative of the sentiments of conservatives who have left the Conservative party in their droves in recent years, it is hard to see the party continuing to function as an electoral force within a few years.  Nominal members who don’t campaign are nowhere near as important as those who gave their time and money to support candidates – and it is these who appear to be walking away.

Thanks to Cameron’s arrogance and the existance of a vacuum where his conviction and principle is supposed reside, the Tories are in serious decline.  The party is swiftly becoming representative only of the muddled views of its small cabal of power brokers and it is losing the very people who it relies upon at election time to secure support and get out the vote.

The problem the Conservatives have is that there are too few conservatives left in the parliamentary party.  So fixing a problem like Dave looks to be an impossible task.  If he is replaced in an effort to rejuvinate the party’s electoral fortunes, it will only be another stuffed suit taking the helm with the same immunity to the notion of representative politics, the same craven complicity to the global governance agenda, the same anti democratic pro-EU position, and the same reluctance to tackle the admittedly herculean task of reforming the economy and reducing the size and scope of government.

Voters have increasingly seen this and stay away from the ballot box in increasing numbers.  But now Dave and the other rent seekers are finding their legitimacy is being questioned by their own party members.  The foundations are crumbling.  But until there is a fundamental reform of the way government is controlled and run in this country – as per the demands promoted by the carefully developing Harrogate Agenda campaign – the elite will continue to pass power between themselves and become ever more distant from the real world outside the establishment bubble centred on Westminster.

The Only Way is Harrogate.

Margaret Thatcher RIP

Everyone knew the day would come eventually.  But when the death of Margaret Thatcher was announced it didn’t lessen the impact of the moment.

I wasn’t always a fan.  When I was young, being conditioned by the prevailing attitudes in the solidly socialist Labour area where I was being brought up, to denigrate Maggie Thatcher was not only the norm, it was expected.  ‘Thatcher the milk snatcher’ was a familiar refrain in my school when she took office in 1979.

My mother was a Labour borough and county councillor and my father was an engineer at British Airways and senior trade union official in the TGWU as it then was.  There was little love for Maggie, but my parents were old school and despite their absolute rejection and dislike of Thatcher and the Conservatives they didn’t resort to name calling, abuse or vitriol.

The turning point for me was when as a teenager my class won a competition at school and the reward was a trip to the Houses of Parliament.  Coming from a political family I relished the trip, which was taking part on a Tuesday – Prime Minister’s Questions day.  The trip around the Palace of Westminster was led by the Conservative MP for the constituency in which my school was.

For me the visit was magical.  The history of the place and the events that had occured there, the sense of power that filled the corridors and meeting rooms, seeing famous faces of senior politicians walking past, entering the House of Commons from behind the Speaker’s Chair (and sneaking a quick sit down on the government’s front bench right in front of the dispatch box, just so I could say I had sat on a seat of power), and seeing just how small the chamber was compared to the impression pictures have constantly given.

But the highlight of my day was when the MP secured several tickets for the public gallery and I was given one.  When Parliament convened and Prayers were being said I raced up the stairwell as fast as I could.  I still remember the frustration as security checks delayed me getting into the gallery.  But eventually I was in and took a seat just as Neil Kinnock rose from his to ask his first supplementary question of the session.  He was on the attack about defence and Thatcher, in characteristic fashion tore him to pieces.  For a young teenager this was exciting, heady stuff in a rarefied atmosphere in a forum that mattered.

Rather than find myself in agreement with Kinnock’s argument, I found myself agreeing with Thatcher’s position.  I could not fault her logic, reasoning or the force of her argument.  That was the day when I learned to evaluate an argument on its merits, not assume a tribalist position just because that’s what my side’s position happened to be.  Mum and Dad were delighted that I started to debate them and challenge their thinking, and respond to their challenges with reasoned thinking of my own.  I’ll never forget that day; Mum said to me that she would respect any viewpoint I held, including and especially those that opposed hers, so long as it was an informed one that had been developed by carefully examining the arguments on both sides.

As years passed my dislike of Margaret Thatcher was replaced with respect and admiration for her.  Some people, those who detest Thatcher, wonder why. So I’ll explain.

My East End family lived on an urban council estate, tenants in a council house.  While honest, loving and hard working, the pay wasn’t great and Mum and Dad sometimes struggled to make ends meet.  As good parents do, Mum and Dad went without to ensure me and my siblings had what we needed.  My earliest memories were of power cuts and the excitement of having candles lighting the house.  Two things in my youth transformed our fortunes.  Council house right to buy and privatisation.

Thanks to her principles and convictions – two things the preening, identikit lightweights that have infested Parliament since do not possess – Margaret Thatcher saw to it my family was able to climb out of reliance on the state and become stakeholders instead of clients.  Mum left the Labour Party, having been sickened by policies that trapped people in dependency.  Dad too left the party, and the union, but went further and switched his vote too.  At last, hard work started to be rewarded in a way it hadn’t been before.  Aspiration was no longer something to be sneered at or viewed with suspicion, it was something shared by many.

I saw and experienced how my family was presented with the opportunity to take personal responsibility and enjoy the freedom to better ourselves.  My parents found they could do so much better with the state off our backs and more of their money in their pockets to spend as they saw fit.  Labour resented it and opposed it at every turn, desperate to re-apply the stranglehold that had kept us down for so long.

Margaret Thatcher’s policies contributed directly to my family’s emancipation from the waste, spitefulness and harm inflicted by socialism.  What she put in place has directly influenced my life and career.  For that I will always be grateful.

It’s no surprise seeing the hatred and bile now being hurled by those whose viewpoint is the opposite of mine.  Maggie did more than any other British leader to liberate this country from the socialist mentality that smashed our economy, saw the population held to ransom by unions, and was characterised by the demand for subsidies by (at that time) inefficient industries still wedded to socialist ideals despite overseas industries embracing efficiency and tackling costs to be more competitive.

Socialism is a vicious ideology, so naturally it follows the behaviour of its supporters can be relied upon to be equally hateful.  The sickening glee with which the death of an aged woman who transformed this country for the better wouldn’t be any surprise to the Iron Lady.  It would simply reinforce and evidence everything she said about socialism.  No doubt she would dismiss their behaviour with the contempt it deserves and simply point out they don’t know any better.

We have lost our last principled conviction politician, a Parliamentarian who had a guiding philosophy and who was motivated by a desire to improve this country rather than service a narrow self interested agenda.  We will never see her like again, much to the detriment of this country.

Thank you, Margaret.  Rest in peace.

Collectivism, statism, authoritarianism…

Call it what you will, no matter how you dress this up it shows the disturbing, even dangerous, mindset of socialists (h/t Liberty Blitzkrieg).  Speaking as a parent of two children, the message in the clip below is utterly appalling.

When people like Melissa Harris-Perry want to take responsibility for the education of your children you’ve got to ask why, what’s in it for them?  Clearly they want to dictate the way the child will think when he is older.

For socialists it is too much of a risk to let a family influence the way the child might think – after all, the chilld might not accept the distorted, fallacious secular shibboleths that underpin the authoritarian, statist creed the collectivists cling to. Parents cannot be trusted to indoctrinate the children with the ‘correct’ viewpoints.  Free thinking and independent, critical analysis that might lead someone to question or challenge the statist orthodoxy cannot be permitted.

So confident are these people, they don’t even try to hide their nefarious agenda any more.

Danny Alexander wears confiscation of our money like a badge of honour

What kind of world has this become where a government minister, Danny Alexander, tries to out-do his (current) political opponents by declaring the rich have paid more in tax under the coalition than at any time under Labour?

This is just the latest example of the wrongheaded thinking that infests the political bubble, boasting that under this profligate, social democratic coagulation the all-powerful and unrepresentative state is managing to strip from the population more money than the other lot of incompetents, as if it’s something to be proud of.

Taxation would not be an issue if the government took the bare minimum necessary to maintain essential services and infrastructure, ensuring the protection of the population and support of the vulnerable in society.  But that isn’t what happens.  Despite public spending continuing to spiral out of control, fuelled by increased state theft and unaffordable borrowing, the necessary services the British people have paid handsomely for are actually being run down. Yet the lumpen masses who, to use their corruption of language, ‘celebrate’ ever rising taxation as ‘fairness’.

Many actively endorse and demand the kind of tax inequality that see local authorities charge a household of six people in one street the same amount of council tax for services as their single next door neighbour, who, if lucky, might be forgiven a mere 20% of the charge.  In the event that person is paying more for the services than the family next door.  But suggest that the charges should be applied based on the number of people in a household rather than the arbitrarily derived property value banding, and rioters take to the streets.  So much for fairness.  What we have is envy and jealousy where people who don’t earn as much as some others resent that good fortune and want to see those individuals punished for being better off, by government taking more of their wealth from them.  Redistribution sounds great until all the barriers are removed and it happens to you.

Government’s attitude is to take as much as they think they can get away with, then allocate large portions of the money to propping up the organs of our supreme government in the UN and the EU, while squandering billions more on vanity projects and ideologically driven idiocy that benefit special interests rather than ordinary people as a whole.  It is the warped spending priorities of successive governments that have driven this.  It will not change until the day when people are asked to approve the government budgets and ministers are forced to justify their spending priorities.  Until that day people are perfectly justified in doing all they can to legally minimise the amount of money seized from them.