Archive for October, 2009
It isn’t fair
Well we had a board meeting a couple of weeks ago and I put forward a new proposal.
Any other business:
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
1. Review of expenses – formalize the process.
As there is a recession and the winter is coming along, I thought it right and proper that Directors, (not the hoi-polloi) should be permitted a few official breaks as we worked so hard and no one else does. Goodness, we even have to turn up for work from time to time.
It just didn’t seem reasonable to me, that I should be expected to travel for an hour by car to get in to work, so felt that we should introduce a second home allowance for any Director who lived more than an hour away, by foot, as this seemed a reasonable commuting expectation.
My colleagues pointed out that most staff travelled in further than that. Mere detail I pointed out and carried on:
I proposed that the Company should pay for my furniture for my new home, along with cleaning bills, gardening, White-goods and electronic equipment and general upkeep, which of course if I had any tax liability, then the company should pay the cost of this to my off shore bank account, as a ‘consultancy charge’ through my other shell company based in The Cayman Islands.
The open mouths that gazed at me told me all was going well so I continued:
Because I would be staying in a Second Home during the week, I think the company should pay my food bills, after all I had to fill the fridges and cupboards in two houses, surely they could see the sense in this.
I pressed on:
I think it only fair that as I am the person who is expected to suffer by having to have a second home, it is only fair that I keep the sale price of the home the company paid for, but I should have the option to decide which home I should be able to claim expenses on a week by week basis, just to make sure it was all value for money.
Well my fellow directors were getting in to the swing of this, I could tell by their ashen faces, in fact a couple of them began whispering to one another:
I then suggested we put this to the vote and I couldn’t believe it when the decided this was not a good idea, even worse an emergency shareholder meeting was called and I was kicked out.
Now to cap it all, I have been billed for the expenses I had been claiming for years. I went to talk to my solicitor and sure enough she confirmed, those claims were not against the rules. Nowhere in the rules did it say I couldn’t claim for having a weekly sauna, decorators, tax advice, second home, or even third home for that matter. In fact I could have claimed for a private jet and yacht as they were not against the rules.
It isn’t fair.
Oh and by the way, my new book ‘how to claim expenses – no questions asked’ will be out soon, published by ’scum’.
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Bloggers behind the rocks
I was a little upset, mildly speaking, when a twitter user @pickledpolitics, who appears to write for The Guardian posed the question,
How does blog hosting impact your legal situation?
and quoted a so called ‘important’ political blogger on UK politics, who goes by the name of Guido Fawkes.
These two people set themselves up as relevant and important bloggers in the UK. Pickledpolitics – Sunny – has, to his credit actually got off his arse and attended a climate camp demo. But as far as I am aware that consisted of the Greenwich, happy clap demo in September, where even the Police got bored.
Paul Staines- Guido Fawkes – who knows what he has done apart from set up a barrier against prosecution, apart from this possible relationship
I digress a little…..
Pickledpolitics posed the question, should bloggers be worried about legal consequence and he was impressed that Mr. Staines had a convoluted legal set-up which protects him from legal action.
Unfortunately the convoluted process is too difficult for Mr. Staines to follow.
‘…Factual correction: I am not legally the publisher. I also mispoke in that interview, the publisher is actually in Nevis, which is not that far from the Caymans. Got offshore entities muddled.
Nor am I “always mostly in the UK” as, so far, unsuccessful plaintiffs have discovered.
Incidentally, I have a mirror site on standby in a fourth jurisdiction. The URL itself is registered in a fifth jurisdiction after the Merrills / Northern Rock memorandum domain registrant based legal attack. I live and learn.
At the end of the day, you have to have the resources and be prepared to fight….‘
Mr. Staines has to retract, he isn’t even the publisher of his articles, so can be absolutely discredited as a blogger and he doesn’t quite understand Geography, but sees fit to pontificate on the UK.
Far beyond this, a genuine blogger stand by his/her posts, many have died or ended up in jail for their beliefs and comments. The whole post that Bloggers need legal protection stinks of tails up the arse, that is not blogging, that is a corporate gig.
They pretend they are important individuals, but eventually the truth comes out, they don’t publish their own articles, they don’t know where the website is based and they really are not too sure about anything, other than their arses are safe.
Anarchy in the UK is published in the UK, by a UK national who is prepared to take any libel action thrown at it.
With absolute disdain and contempt for bloggers on the corporate gig and more interested in their own tails than actually standing by what they write.
This post is filed under bureaucrats, as in arrogant tossers who are not spending their own money.
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MPs errors
Anarchy in the UK is, a regular readers will be well aware, a comment on the state of the UK as it stands.
I do not hide my absolute contempt for Democracy and many British institutions be they state bodies or large private enterprise. This contempt is a result of the complete contempt with which these large corporates and Government bodies treat the population or the customer.
anarchy in the uk
I wanted to turn my attention to MPs expenses and the apparent disconnect between politicians and the public. People make mistakes and I don’t have an argument with this; people rip other people off, this is a fact of life; people lie, this happens. But when we have a situation of these three events coinciding with a group of people who make the laws which affect our everyday lives, there is a problem.
David Cameron
It is not good enough that Cameron has paid back his ‘error’. He wants to be the political head of this country, but he is either too thick or too corrupt to know what is happening in relation to his expenses. How is he meant to run a country if he can’t manage a simple expenses claim.
I used to run a medium sized business and I expected staff to understand how to make an expenses claim, I certainly wouldn’t promote an idiot who didn’t know how to follow a simple procedure and I would fire anyone who tried to be clever with false claims and that was in a medium sized business.
Cameron can’t understand that cutting wisteria is not a legitimate claim and it took the Daily Telegraph to bring him to book. Is he really fit for purpose? No, get rid of him, is is evidently incompetent as he can’t quite manage a simple expenses claim form. How is he meant to deal with issues of state? I certainly would not recognize the moron as competent, any more than I would Brown.
Gordon Brown
Dear old Brown, is a man who lives in a grace and favour property, but apparently felt that paying his brother for a cleaner for a ’second home’ (for goodness sake you and I are paying for his first home) was acceptable. This is the man who managed to claim twice within six months for the same plumbing job, but it was an ‘inadvertent mistake’, no wonder he keeps re-announcing the same policies year after year as new initiatives, oh and by the way you and I also probably paid for his Sky Sports. But of course those self serving MPs refused to permit scrutiny of their expenses, claiming that the Freedom of Information Act shouldn’t besmirch their hallowed ground and this issue over sky sports remains under wraps. Speaking of television, Jacqui Smith, ‘made a mistake’ in claiming for porn films for her husband.
The whole of the House of Commons is littered with unacceptable claims and anarchy in the UK will remind you of the contempt with which politicians held our money as we move forward to the election.
As I said, I accept errors are made, which do not require, in many instances more than a written warning, but there are positions of responsibility which means that an error is unacceptable.
MPs sit in that spotlight, these are people who are entrusted, by those who bother to vote for the idiots, to scrutinize legislation. If they can’t work out that claiming a Remembrance Day wreath is unacceptable – finger pointed
Boris Johnson
directly at Boris Johnson, is just repugnant, then it gives me the horrors that they are in a position to make decisions about anything other than their own life. I would not employ anyone in any capacity who ‘made the mistake’ so many of our MPs, Mayors and Local representatives have made, they are not fit for office.
But aside from that, exactly how much has the Thomas Legg audit cost me? I don’t recall reclaiming audit expenses. His bill must be charged equally amongst the MPs he audited, why should you and I pick up the bill. MPs decided they didn’t need to be audited, I see no reason I should foot their audit bill.
Anarchy in the UK refers to the corruption, arrogance and incompetence within this country and the British Democratically elected Houses of Parliament is perhaps the epitome of anarchy in the UK.
I will of course return at another time to the point that a Democratically elected Government in the UK has for the past twenty years been opposed by over 70% of the population. But hey Democracy is all about the money in the wallet isn’t it?
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Mandelson the arrogant
The US Government decided that bailing out the global General Motors brand was chasing good money after bad so pulled the plug on the whole idea and have left General Motors to mainly sort out the mess it had got itself into.
In the interim a Canadian company- Magna, largely funded by Sberbank from Russia agreed a buy-out of the European operation, potentially safeguarding something of Vauxhall in the UK and Opel in Germany. Magna asked for some additional assistance in the finalisation of the process, approaching both the German and British Government for support. The Germans, through their State and
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National Government Structure came up with in the region of £1 billion in support, providing them with a 20% stake in Opel, the British Government looked in to the pot of money Gordon Brown had set aside during the years of plenty and found £0.00 in support of Vauxhall.
So the US Government threw their hands up in horror, Magna a private business bit the bullet as did Sberbank and the German National and State Government, but Mandelson thought it was a bad idea, so the British Government took the same decision as the US (and I am not taking sides on the decision).
I only add that five months later, when Magna are deciding on where to retain an investment going forward, up steps Mandelson to suggest he is trying all he can to secure the future of Vauxhall in the UK, but Magna are not in the least bit interested.
The Government, of any hue in this country are so fixated with their own dogma and really seem to believe that the world owes this country.
Lets look at some recent appalling legacies of the UK - Israel (The Gaza strip will be fine), Disputed Kashmir (Just a couple of Nuclear states still fighting over this), Zimbabwe (not our fault), Chagos Islands (leases go wrong and anyway so what if a few thousand people lost their homes) Northern Ireland (It will be fine), Nepal (so they fought for the UK who cares) to name but a few.
What exactly does this country think the world owes to it? Magna does not owe the British Government a cent and when they asked for support the British just turned away. Why exactly should Magna give a rats?
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UK Police licensed to Kill
The decision by the British Courts today that the Police Officers involved in the death of De Menezes in London should face no further action, have far wider implications than just on the activity of these police officers.
Killing innocent members of the public by British Police officers in the ‘line of duty’ have now effectively been ruled as acceptable. There is little doubt from the information available, regarding communication failures and incompetence that there should be culpability. Yet the officers involved in the incident are being provided with a defence that the Nuremberg Trials deemedinadmissible, ‘following orders’.
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The Police Officers have been able to defend their actions by passing the buck to higher authority, justifying their actions that they were only doing what they had been told. There can be no doubt that DeMenezes was killed on that fateful day by officers who pulled the triggers. They should be tried in open court.
It may well be that their actions were defensible against a murder charge, I would not pre-judge the verdict in such a trial, but to decide they should not be tried, simply because it isn’t expedient and the officers involved were only following orders, is unacceptable.
We have a police force which is under fire from the General Public and a State apparatus which increasingly appears determined to defend them against any open investigation.
While the UK witters on about other countries across the world, where murder by state clandestine operations is endemic, we are in danger of slipping in to that position ourselves.
Where is the result of the Tomlinson G20 death? WHy is it taking so long to actually bring this case to a conclusion.
One only has to look at investigations carried out by the IPCC into police actions in connection to the death of members of the public, to see there is no accountability. The De Menezes case may be a high profile incident, but it is far from isolated. Prosecutions over deaths of members of the public at the hands of the police are few and far between, this can not be a healthy position.
The purpose of an open trial with Judge and Jury, is meant to be the bedrock of the British Justice System. This Labour Government has already started to erode the concept, justifying it by attempting to re-write history. Now the Judiciary are also culpable in the erosion of the very Justice System they are meant to defend.
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