Insurance companies in need of a painkiller

Chris, Fee and KJ discuss the eye-watering cost of false personal injury claims

Read More

Debt debate

Discussing austerity Britain, Chris and his wife inadvertently fan the flame of protest in their daughter

Read More

Neither admit nor deny wrongdoing - when nobody is responsible, anything is acceptable

One of the stellar successes of the internet has been the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (MMORPG). Improved internet line speeds, enhanced graphics, thick clients, multiprocessors, and games like “World of Warcraft” have contributed to multiverses of fantasy and mayhem that suck millions of people and billions of productive hours out of the real world. The great attraction of these virtual worlds is that you can take on a new incarnation. You can be what you’re not, dare what you don’t, and smoke in public places. In these worlds you are Super Sized in every way – weapons, skills, appendages - and create the sort of mayhem you only see in the movies. Perhaps the greatest attraction of these virtual worlds is that you take no responsibility for what you do. You can be reckless, you can be stupid, you can be really really bad (the sort of thing even your own mum wouldn’t forgive), and there is no comeback. Burn a village or two; kick a goblin when he is down; type really rude words that you saw someone else type. You are immortal – get “killed”, and you are back in action within seconds. And when you’ve had enough for the day, you just brush your teeth (unless you’re really pumped up with adrenalised recklessness), rub on your creams, and snuggle up in bed to dream about tomorrow’s mayhem.

A world where you can get away with what you like, destroy, lie, cheat, steal, and have to take no responsibility. Who would have thought it could be possible!

“Bank of America Corp., the No. 3 U.S. bank, was fined a record $10 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission because it lied to the regulator during a probe into trading by the bank and a former employee…….[Bank of America] neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing, and neither the bank nor the SEC named the employee whose records were at issue.”

“Morgan Stanley agreed to pay $102 million to end an investigation in Massachusetts into unfair lending practices….Under the terms of the settlement, Morgan Stanley admitted to no wrongdoing.”

“JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay US$153.6 million (£95 million) to settle civil fraud charges that it misled buyers of complex mortgage investments just as the housing market was collapsing. JP Morgan did not admit any wrongdoing.”

“Goldman Sachs to Pay Record $550 Million to Settle SEC Charges Related to Subprime Mortgage CDO…Goldman agreed to settle the SEC's charges without admitting or denying the allegations.”

Read More

Glastonbury braced for U2 tax protests

U2 'tax dodge' is not pro bono … neither are the Glastonbury protesters

Read More

Numeracy skills a challenge for universities

Only the numerate among us go to university … or is that the other way round?

Read More

Gove's Law

All politicians pretend they have more knowledge on a subject than they actually do, but one man trumps them all

Read More

Benefits Fraud: would the taxpayer save money by giving every citizen their due, not a penny more, not a penny less? Actually, it would cost £12.7 billion EXTRA!

[UPDATE OCT 2015: £13bn in benefits were unclaimed in 2013-14, according to employment minister Priti Patel. Charities say the main reasons are the complexity of the system, as well as pride and shame. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has studied the low take up of benefits and found that lack of knowledge was often to blame. Even where people were aware that a benefit existed, often they did not know they were eligible - let alone how to claim it. Meanwhile, in communities with a strong work ethic and pride in self-reliance, people are particularly unwilling to claim benefits. And the demonisation of benefits claimants in Parliament and the media means people are too ashamed to claim the help they need - and are perfectly entitled to. A study of free school meals in Scotland, for example, found that when eligibility was briefly extended to all children in a particular age group, take-up also increased among those who had already been eligible for free school meals - because they no longer thought their children would be bullied for receiving school meals.]


Moral outrage is about something that doesn’t affect you personally. If someone pulls the leg off your teddy bear, it’s not moral outrage you are feeling – just rage. (No, really, I forgave you years ago. You know who you are!)

Moral outrage is all about the principal. And is magnified more by how close the offender is to you than by the magnitude of the offence.

• Morally Outrageous:            Someone who is about the same as us, same habits, same social group, doing something naughty. Outrageous because they are getting away with something we could get away with, if only we could be a bit more immoral:
• Jumping the queue
• Driving like an idiot
• Benefits fraud

  

• Just Damn Annoying:            Someone very different to us: e.g. a celebrity, top company executive, or banker. Less outrageous, because their naughtiness is something we could only aspire to in our dreams/nightmares:
• Getting let off by the police for extreme bad behaviour, including assault and substance abuse
• Taking multi-million bonuses while wrecking the world economy
• Asset stripping companies, and throwing pensioners onto the streets

When Ed Miliband, the leader of the UK Labour Party, wanted to give his outraged morals an airing in a speech earlier this month, he picked on two sets of bogeymen.

1)      A man he had met who “hadn’t been able to work since he was injured doing his job. It was a real injury, and he was obviously a good man who cared for his children. But I was convinced that there were other jobs he could do.”

2)      The executives of “Southern Cross care homes - where millions were plundered over the years leaving the business vulnerable, the elderly people in their care at risk and their families feeling betrayed.”

Miliband went on to say “We must be once again the party of the grafters” rather than, as before, of grifters. And continued “..there is a link between the man on incapacity benefit and those executives at Southern Cross. What is that link? That these are people who are just not taking responsibility - and the rest of us are left picking up the pieces.”

How did a “good man who cared for his children”, claiming £71.10 a week in incapacity benefit while looking pretty fit to Miliband, find himself in the whiffy company of unashamed slash-and-burn executives who pocketed an estimated £500million at the expense of pensioners?

The sad truth is the thought of some individual scamming us taxpayers out of £71.10 per week in incapacity benefit while actually being capable of flipping hamburgers for minimum wage is enough to blow all our other troubles away. We will soon forget about Southern Cross, but the bitterness for benefits cheats will stay with us.

No matter that we can’t afford a proper armed forces or a health service, we need to hand our schools to private companies, have to work until we are older and get less pension. Misfortunes caused by avaricious bankers who were let off the leash, self-serving politicians who got rid of the leash, and incompetent regulators who wouldn’t know how to use that tricky-dicky catch on the leash even if they had a leash and the inclination to use it.

What we need to do, we are told by politicians to the left and to the right, is tighten up on the benefits system. Make sure that everyone gets just what they are entitled to, not a penny more and not a penny less.

But would tightening up save us any money? The figures show that it would actually cost us billions.

Read More

Liebrary: Financial Services corporation tax makes a major contribution to overall UK tax

Financial services companies and their bag-carriers warn of dire consequences if they were regulated and taxed more. They threaten to leave the UK, and move to more accommodating countries, and take all their corporation tax with them.


Reality: Financial services corporation tax only contributes 2% of UK tax revenues.

Corporation tax contributes less than 10% of tax revenues. 

The Financial Sector, the greatest of the rippers-off of us Britons from cradle to grave, is lionised for paying 20% of all corporation tax. But 20% of 10% is a measly 2% of all tax revenues.

Read More

Beating the baggage allowance

Fee considers extreme measures to increase her baggage allowance on budget flights

Read More

Googling an economic recovery

Chris and KJ wonder if the Bank of England's plan to study Google searches will yield results

Read More