First Predictions for 2009

Well, it's that time of year when we make foolish predictions about 2009. And they don't come much more foolish than those made by our friends at the Treasury - return to economic growth by the autumn, public borrowing of 'only' £120bn in fiscal year 2009/10 (excluding Northern Rock, Land Rover, etc., etc.....)...

And what of the likely reality? Well, here's a go...

1. With the UK economy going down the toilet, Brown calls early election on back of his bounce in the polls. Tories fail to provide proper alternative, saying that they won't cut spending to cut taxes and that 'rolling back the state isn't an option'. Muppets vote Brown back in.

2. Run on the Pound (even more than already) - how about £1 = 0.75 Euro?

3. UK can't refinance all of its debts as well as new borrowing. IMF called in.

4. UK economy completely fucked.

I think that about sums it up. Time for everyone who can to leave for the exit...

OR...

1. Cameron comes to his senses and makes the Tories a low tax party; or luck intervenes (seems more likely...) and the IMF are called in before Brown dares hold an election.

2. IMF forces 'savage' (all of 10%) cuts in UK spending in return for structural adjustment lending. Surprise, surprise - the sun doesn't fall out of the sky and the world goes on...


And this is the point. Although a recession will be painful - no foreign holidays for some (oh, the pain, the pain...) and no job for others (but they're in the private sector, so this is good news for our Labour Masters - more welfare clients...) - it may force the changes that the UK needs:

• It will be pretty easy to squeeze health spending by 10% - just cut the national tariff which determines prices. Together with wage freezes for the doctors who have done rather nicely under Labour (43% of additional health spending under Labour has gone on wage increases). Let's end the fiction of an NHS dental service (other countries leave it to the private sector - lightly regulated to prevent abuse of market power). A lot of public health spending can be cut without affecting health - e.g. anti-alcohol and 5-a-day campaigns.
  
• Cut down on wasteful spending. That means abolishing the Dept of Timewasting & Interfering (now called 'BERR' for some pathetic reason). It means no more 'lesbian co-ordinators' and the like, a ban on outside consultants being paid more than their civil service equivalents without specific sign-off by a Secretary of State (making them accountable for showing VfM) fewer special advisors, a hiring freeze across Whitehall and the rest of the public sector (with the exception of those who can show that they will generate cash savings, e.g. people who know how not to get ripped off buying IT services), wage cuts outside London to reflect the true difference in the cost of living rather than one that's made up, no more new furniture and IT kit at the end of the financial year, etc. And the House of Commons can show it's sharing the nation's pain by taking a 10% wage and allowance cut and losing its drinks subsidies. It's symbolic, y'know...
  
• All civil servants to be required to suggest a way of saving money in their area in order to receive a higher box marking, be eligible for future promotion and avoid a pay cut - we need to encourage a culture where efficiency is the norm, not the exception. Suggestions to be published, so that senior civil servants and Ministers can be held to account if they block their implementation.
  
• Abolish tax credits - whether for 'working families' (just cut taxes) or for R&D (ditto). Simplify tax system, introducing flat tax. Measures together will save billions in Revenue & Customs salaries, fraud / overpayment and firms having to spend much less on their tax returns.
  
• Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland to receive same per capita spend as regions of England with equivalent levels of GDP per head. If they want more, they'll have to pay more tax. We can also save some money by reducing the number of MPs from those areas to reflect their population size and the fact that Gov't is devolved...
  
• Unilateral UK withdrawal from the Common Agricultural Policy, together with the concommitant cut in the UK's EU budget contributions. We gave up our rebate for nothing - now we'll get something. :-)
• Prison spending to be held steady - 2 at least to a cell (Human Rights Act to be disapplied to criminals), no more playstations, day trips for feral youths, etc. will fund new prison places.
  
• All existing Gov't funding for the Turd Sector / Charities to be ended. If they want to campaign against Gov't policies, they'll have to find private individuals to fund them. Those who want to implement (new, tougher) Gov't policy and can produce credible plans for doing so, can bid for funding against cr&p public sector authorities such as Haringey.
• DFID's budget to be cut. It's stupid for the UK to borrow money it can't afford to pay for corruption in the developing world. Spending that remains only to be given to countries that help themselves by adopting sensible policies. But as we're no longer in the CAP, they can export their farm produce to us without restriction (helping them and us - lower food prices for us, more secure markets for them).
• No national ID scheme (a bigger waste of money than David Bentley...). Olympics to be given to Paris.
• Education spending to be slightly cut by abolishing LEAs and ending nonsense like payments to students to do A levels. Vouchers to be introduced across the board to drive competition a la Sweden. I'm sure there's loads more that could be done - quality hasn't gone up with spending over the last decade...
  
• Defra and MoD to lose all industrial policy responsibilities and spending. No money to be directed towards the countryside over-and-above spending elsewhere - the cost of living is higher in cities, so why should taxpayers there subsidise those who live in the country?!
• Scrap RDAs - another complete waste of money.
• Police targets to be abolished. Local police chiefs elected - if they don't deliver real cuts in crime, they'll get voted out. All the bureaucracy introduced over the last 30 years to be at least halved.
  
• End welfare as a way of life (TM). Anyone that claims benefits fraudulently will lose entitlement to benefits permanently (and fuck anyone that says, 'but what about the chiiiiildreeeeeen?'). Anyone on benefits will not receive extra benefits for having more children. Nor extra housing. No-one under 25 to receive a council flat / house - that might encourage some responsibility... With tax thresholds massively increased, there will be no excuse not to work if you can - I don't care if that means cleaning the streets or public toilets (which are so disgusting that they can only be carrying large numbers of vacancies).
  

That's just a start. I bet everyone who works in the public sector can suggest many more.

But I needed to get it off my chest.

And 2009 may turn out to be not be so bad after all... but the start of something good.

Wanker of the Week - Christmas special

Dear Reader,

A very belated Merry Christmas to you.

The Bishop had a wonderful family Christmas - made all the more wonderful by the news about Harold Pinto. I celebrated with a special bottle of communion wine from my friends at Ridge Wines. [And, no, I don't get paid to endorse them - they're just the best wines in the world, in my humble opinion.]

However, the Christmas day festivities were interrupted by a 'special' edition of Top of the Pops, which featured Leona Lewis mauling (given her Aslan-like looks - and, no, that wasn't intended as a compliment - a good choice of word, methinks) the wonderful Snow Patrol song, Run.

Now, the Bishop isn't particularly wivvit, innit when it comes to the X-Factor and other shite beamed into the Sheeple's living rooms, 1984-style, by ITV and the BBC (yet another reason to rip up my TV licence and tell them to fuck off, as if I needed one...). But I have not only heard Run being farted out by Leona Fat-Arse as previously mentioned, but also Leonard Cohen's wonderful Halleluja being vomited out by some other piece of choir-fodder, who, I am told, rejoices in the name 'Burke'. How appropriate.

Well, I could make these two transexual wannabes my joint Wankers of the Week. And it's not that they don't merit it - fame-hungry, money-grubbing chav-fodder that they are. It's just that, well...

There is a cunt of the highest order that has for many years produced this kind of junk music, aimed at teenage girls and their mothers / grandmothers, all in the name of making money. Not that there's anything wrong with making money. But the Bishop wouldn't choose to do so by trafficking women from Eastern Europe to work as prostitutes, say, or by selling weapons to Hugo Chavez. And crimes against music are - to these ears, at least - pretty much on a par with such reprehensible activities...

And his name is Simon Cowell. The man who gave us Sinitta and Grease is the word (where is the puking smiley when you need it? Ah... here - ).

And. He's. A. Cunt. A Christmas Wanker if ever I saw one.

So, Simon, go fuck yourself right up the arse with the longest bargepole in history. And when you die, I hope your own personal Hell is to be forced to listen to Sinitta et al for eternity. And that might, just might make us even.

In the meantime, I will give you a tiny taste - although probably not nearly as minuscule as your cock must be, given how you obsessed you are with fame, money and all that they bring at the expense of taste, family and love (what else would explain his sense of inadequacy?) - of what I think about you by making you the first Christmas Wanker of the Week.

Wanker of the Week

What kind of cunt thinks that a murderer is a hero, an icon, someone we should look up to?

Not many people are that stupid.

But those that are - well, they usually vote Labour... or their equivalents abroad.

And the Nameless Libertarian and the Devil have identified a particular arsehole of the species. The name's del Toro. Merda del Toro. Or, at least, that's what kids at school called him...

And he's a complete cunt. As are all the feeble-minded sheeple who wear 'Che' t-shirts. Or listen to the opinions of actors as if they are some breed of geniuses, simply because they pretend to be other people in films.

So, del Toro - you're my Wanker of the Week.

And you're joined by anyone that thinks that celebrities' opinions are somehow something that others should take notice of, just because they are celebrities. Yes, Gordon 'end of spin' Brown - that means you, too. Cunt.

The blogosphere

I've had a bit of time to explore a few more blogs - and add some to my blogroll.

I particularly recommend this post by Nightjack. As well as making a lot of sense - the sheer damage that has been done by Government creating Welfare as a Way of Life (TM) - anything that winds up lefties has to be a good thing...

Inspector Gadget's book, Perverting the Course of Justice, has it in more detail. Well worth a read, although it made me more angry than a year's worth of Daily Hate-Mail stories about chavs living the high life (literally, in many cases...) on the backs of Gordon's 'hard-working families' and the rest of us. I needed to knock back a tub-full of statins to prevent the heart rate reaching the stratosphere...

Especially as I'd just read Takeaway, written by Adrian Li - which details just how much Gordon's taxes and the Chavs he funds them with have conspired (fortunately, unsuccessfully in this case - although not in many others, I fear) to try to fuck up the lives of one of his 'beloved' ... 'hard-working families'.

Taken together, they demonstrate just how much Nu-Liebour have fucked over, rather than helping hard-working families and individuals.

Which is why Labour Bollocks is an essential read for the 30% + of the population that, if the polls are to be believed (a big 'if', surely?!) are still planning to vote for the Prime Mentalist, rather than consign him to Hell (although that would be too good for the monocular Scots wanker-of-microphone-stands).

God, Gordon Brown is such a cunt.

Wanker of the Week

Well, it's been a while. And so many candidates!

- All BBC employees (as per every week - too easy)
- All civil servants (except that bloke at the Home Office who's been helping Damien Green. Do the others all support Gordon the Moron?!)
- Social workers from Haringey and wherever it is Oop North where Shannon Matthews lives
- Michael Martin

But the Bishop has decided not to target the usual suspects - at least, as left-wing 'liberals' (i.e. socialists - who are anything but liberal) would stereotype them.

...

Had you for a second!

Of course, it's Michael Martin.

Should never have been a Speaker - like his fellow Scottish MPs, he has no appreciation for the importance of Parliament to English freedoms. And he's too thick.

And no, I don't give a fuck about his background - his Catholicism (obviously...), his metal-bashing career (I bet he was shit at that too!), his trade-unionism (although that's usually a giveaway for stupidity and selfishness - nothing must ever change in case someone might have to change jobs), or even the fact that he joined a Party that has infantilised Scotland and now the rest of the UK, all in the name of staying in power for no apparent purpose other than to stick its collective snout in the trough.

He isn't up to the job. Simple. And if he had any shred of decency or honour, he would resign.

But he's a wanker who is addicted to the perks of power. And that's why he's my Wanker of the Week.

Why Gordon wants to replicate Mugabenomics

To his shame, the Bishop was struck not only be the sheer horror and awfulness of the latest news from Zimbabwe about cholera, but also by an unpleasant thought about what Gordon the Moron might have in store for the UK.

As many others have pointed out the similarities between events in Zimbabwe and those in the UK recently, I won't waste your time repeating them. But the question many have asked is why. Why would Gordon want to do this to us?

Well, some suggestions include:

- He's mental. Well, duurrrrr! But to suggest that another mentally-challenged PM would wreck the UK's economy deliberately is, I feel, unfair. After all, John Major thought Edwina Currie was attractive. And yet the economy did relatively well under his government - after White Wednesday, that is.

- He thinks that Brits are more likely to vote for him if there's a crisis. There are enough apparent morons who would do this, if the polls are to be believed - who the fuck would vote for Labour after the last 11 years? Well, 30% + of the population, apparently! Hmmmm, a great argument for democracy... not.

- He hates the Tories so much that he's willing to do anything to hurt them - including destroying the country by laying waste to our economy. This was the Bishop's favourite explanation for his decision to follow Mugabe's example.

However, the latest from Zim suggests a more fundamental reason.

A Sky News broadcast this week showed Zimbabweans in hospital in South Africa, being treated for cholera.

Apart from the obvious suffering, one thing that was slightly alarming was the bright green adult nappies which many of the patients were wearing.

And then the Bishop remembered the story about Gordon's nursery-based activities.

And, suddenly, there was light - if the UK follows Zimbabwe into a cholera-ridden hell, then it will become 'normal' to wear adult nappies. And Gordon will then - at least in his own warped, sick mind - be 'normal' too.