Zero to Hero the UK's flexible economy

News this week that there may be as many as 1 million workers on ‘Zero Hours’ contracts in the UK has come as a bit of a shock to the liberal elite.  A Zero Hours contract is where the employee signs up to an employment contract, which has no guaranteed pay or hours of work, these contracts are used by retailers and hotel industry, which need a ready supply of unskilled workers without the risk of taking on more fixed costs. 

Less is More More or Less

Three years ago many were expecting the worst from austerity, how could we possible keep the lights on whilst slashing public expenditure - crime would soar, schools would fail and there would be rioting on the streets.  But how different things look now, a new light now shines on the old problems and there is a shake up to the accepted liberal order.

BBC News Glamorizes Terrorism

Yesterday's attack on an off duty soldier in the London suburb of Woolwich is a truly shocking event.  The two deranged men hacked the man to death in broad daylight and then stood around proclaiming "god is great" and other medieval nonsense until the police arrived to deal with them. The press have been quick to tell us that this murder has all the hallmarks if an al-Qaida inspired attack, the terror organisation has apparently migrated to low tech "lone wolf" operations to reduce the chances of being caught by the security services.  The two assailants remained on the scene until armed police eventually arrived up to 20 minutes later, how long does it take to respond to a terrorist incident in central London?  Surely not 20 minutes!!  Scotland Yard's police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, said officers from the counter-terrorist unit were leading the investigation into the "shocking and horrific" incident.  "We have launched a murder investigation, being led by the counter-terrorism command. Two men have been arrested in connection with that murder." There is a simple and chilling message that this sick crime is trying to communicate to other terror-curious Muslims - "anyone can be a terrorist now".  Given the scale of latent anger that exists within our Muslim communities and the lack of an alternative positive narrative for disaffected young Muslim men we should be concerned.  We should be concerned that inside our boarders we now have a pan-religion anger management problem that will certainly spill more innocent blood.  Solving the global problem of coexistence between our modern society and unreconstructed fundamentalist with Dark Age belief systems is going to be a long term project and the UK is on the front line.  Clearly the worst aspect of this incident is the violent death of an innocent man and the loss inflicted on his family and friends.  Insults has been added to this tragedy through the appalling coverage of this horror event by all the news media and particularly the BBC.  To have to watch the BBC news and Newsnight last night, where they gave these loony religious zealots airtime was one of the worst editorial decision in the BBC's recent history and that is saying something.  To broadcast the murderer, with blood all over his hands and the body lying in full view, was a gift to terrorism and a gross affront to the victim and all right minded viewers.

What class are you?

In the old days it was petty straight forward to work out how you fitted into British society, you were either working class, middle class or upper class.  

Well in principle it was simple,  the reality was somewhat more complicated as no-one wanted to be middle class and the aristocracy didn't want to be lumped in with the upper class and the working class seldom did any work.

Your good health! Or not?

Of all the fatuous surveys here's one to rank alongside the  survey of popular dictators between conducted in 1950 which went:

From this list of current and past dictators, which leader would you trust the most : Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Moa Tse Tung, Joesph Stalin, or The Emperor Hirohito.  And the clear winner was Moa (he had the biggest fan base)!

In the same vain some numpty has run a survey of 'much loved' British institutions and has concocted a result that has our national health service (NHS) as the clear winner.

Let us remember that this is the same NHS that currently has some £17bn of clinical negligence claims outstanding and where mistakes and incidents of poor care are common - you should read this article in the telegraph!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9800807/Dementia-sufferers-abandoned-says-Jeremy-Hunt.html

Its also interesting that whilst scraping the bottom of the barrel the BBC made a spirited entrance at number five.  I think I know why the NHS won - about 1 in 3 people work for this poorly run organisation!  Over the last 10-15 year it has been impossible (politically incorrect) to criticise the NHS and this oversight is in part responsible for the dramatic decline in standards of care.

 

THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL

Her Majesty's Opposition - The BBC

Making a mash of the numbers.  Stephanie Flanders is fast becoming the only serious opposition the government have in economic policy, Ed Balls is a spent force and RedEd has nothing new to say.

Her main tactic is to cloud the issues with convenient statistics - (just to remind everyone her job is to clarify the situation for the licence paying public not just make things look as bad a s possible).

She keeps the focus on the deficit as a % of GDP and whilst the UK is borrowing less than in 2010-11 Steph tells us, austerity so far has still only reduced the deficit by 0.5% of GDP to  4.3% of GDP.  The important number is the £59bn reduction in spending and the fact that the annual deficit has been cut by a quarter.

I would have thought its obvious that if you cut govt expenditure you have to grow the private sector by the same amount to stand still (Govt spending is 50%+ OF OUR ECONOMY) - so in a low growth economy where there is no inflation the % of GDP deficit reduction is going to be very small. 

The government were silly to think that they could grow at 2% whilst cutting gov spending at 3% annually - and Steph is making them pay. 

Her slot on the News at 10 tonight was a low point in biased reporting!