Top jokes of 2011

The top jokes of 2011 all came in the last few hours of the year. They are all in the form of what the left wing media jokingly call 'journalism'.

Andrew Lansley plans to stare at womens breasts. Nice job if you can get it.

Hospitals told they should 'speed up' treatment for the elderly. Presumably so that they can be counted for the hospital targets before the patients die.

Jeremy Hunt rejects calls for 'austerity' Olympics. It is a bit late now that they have spent £9.3 billion and sold all of the tickets for top prices to rich foreigners.

New Year honours list reflects my aims for 'big society', says David Cameron. So now we know what Big Society is all about - meeting the Queen to get a medal.

Patients with unhealthy lifestyles must be warned, say experts. Presumably lazy fat alcoholic smokers need experts to tell them that they are unhealthy. As if the doctor has not already done that.

And the funniest of them all:

Euro could become world's leading currency. That assumes that it is still around by the end of 2012.

And finally:

Labour attack BBC for pro-coalition bias. The Guardian happily printed the Labour party press release. Ed Miliband's low ratings have nothing to do with him being useless then.

Did nobody tell him that journalism is a joke in this country?

Let he who is without sin

The Pope used his Christmas message to call for an end to the bloodshed in Syria.

The Archbishop of Canterbury used his Christmas Day sermon to warn of the social damage and breach of trust caused by the summer rioters and the bankers who brought the country to the brink of financial catastrophe.

Who are these people who lecture us about moral values?




Today we learnt that Christian priests also like to indulge in a little rioting:



Jesus told us "Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone". I don't think he meant that as an excuse for priests to use broom handles to attack each other at the site of his birth.

What social damage does it do when the people who are supposed to tell us the meaning of God indulge in violence against each other?




I have already talked about how the leaders of the Church of England have no right to lecture us about the sins of the rich when they pay a salary of £300,000 + benefits.

Nor should they lecture the bankers when they themselves run a financial institution that takes from the poor instead of giving to them and avoids paying taxes on the profits.




Neither does the Christian church have the moral right to lecture us when their own report detailed 10,667 allegations against 4,392 priests accused of engaging in sexual abuse of a minor between 1950 and 2002 and yet they tried to cover up the scandal rather than punishing those involved.


Jesus also said "... go, and sin no more". If there are any Christians reading then please forward his message to your priests because they have lost their way.

Piers Morgan's doctored picture

Piers Morgan admitted to doctoring a picture at the Leveson enquiry. Is this the one?



Was he was laughing at Gordon Brown's joke or was Omarosa right about him after all?

France to veto the EU treaty?

Oh dear!

Sarkozy's plan to bully Cameron into vetoing the EU treaty so that he had somebody to blame for the fact that the treaty won't actually fix the Euro seems to have hit a little snag.

The next President of France, Francois Hollande, has just announced that he would renegotiate the treaty agreed just last week.

Hollande says that he feels that the contract negotiations between France and the Euro countries should not stand, and if (when) he wins the Presidential election next year he will renegotiate the treaty.

Hollande is demanding the introduction of Euro Bonds, direct intervention by the ECB and a much bigger emergency bailout fund. It is good to hear that the future President understands the issues at hand, even if the current President is a clueless German poodle.

Sadly the French presidential elections will not be held until April-May 2012. With France about to be downgraded by the ratings agencies and the markets getting ready to demolish the Euro his election will come too late to save the global economy.

Now we know that:

a) David Cameron will not support a treaty if our national interest is not protected.

b) Nick Clegg and the LibDems agreed the negotiating position that led to David Cameron vetoing the treaty if our national interest was not protected, even if they are not happy about the outcome.

c) Even France is not behind the treaty because it is not in their national interest either.

What we do not know is whether or not Ed Miliband would have signed us up to a treaty that was not in our national interest and which would not fix the Eurozone problems.

Clutching at straws

The latest news from the Euro Summit is that they are considering a plan to grant a banking license to the ESM bailout fund.

I'm trying to work out the real meaning behind their cunning plan.

Is their hope that by making the ESM a bank it could make fantasy finance instruments like CDSs and CDOs that American banks made so much money from before the first Credit Crunch?

Is their hope that by making the ESM a bank it will be a candidate for bailouts? The ECB has said that it will not pay into the ESM (and actually it is probably not allowed to by law) but they thought it might pay into the Bank of ESM.

Is their plan to move the ESM to New York or London to get the American FED or Bank of England to bail it out like other banks?

Thankfully even Germany's Angela Merkel realises that this one is just too silly and has vetoed it.


Also rejected:

- making the EFSF and ESM run simultaneously (the ESM is supposed to be a permanent replacement for the temporary EFSF).

- common Euro bonds (Germany does not want to pay for the Euro, but the Euro can't continue without it)


The grasping at plastic drinking implements continues...

Occupy the North Pole

Finally, there is an Occupy event that might be worth supporting:



The 99%

The elves currently “occupying” the North Pole are previous toy makers now protesting their sole reason for existence. Elves claim Santa’s corporate influence must end. He “undeservedly” gets to be the poster boy for Christmas while they do all the work. Thanks to the Occupy elves, Santa’s workshop is on the verge of shutting down and Christmas Spirit has hit an all-time low.

The 1%

Santa Claus works tirelessly delivering goods and services across the globe without the slightest hiccup. What’s more, he works for the approval of well-behaved children and will only accept a few cookies and glasses of milk as compensation. Regardless, the Occupy North Pole elves claim he is the epitome of the greedy 1%. To them, Santa is little more than a jolly fat-cat who takes off every year in his luxury reindeer-utility-vehicle to enjoy an exotic, one-night vacation.

Personally I'm with Santa. What the elves don't realise is that he has no money because he gives it all away in the form of presents to avoid paying taxes. It is all perfectly legal.

On the other hand, the followers of Jesus only work one day a week yet earns million from their investments while they avoid paying taxes by claiming to be a charity.

Finland kills the Euro

David Cameron asked for a Big Bazooka to save the Euro. Is Finland about to deliver a Big Bazooka to kill it?

Germany is arguing that restating the Maastrict stability rules for the Eurozone constitutes the fiscal union that others had been demanding. Well, that is a clear lie, but lets put that aside and look at Euro member Finland's opinions on another Euro rescue bid - the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

The ESM is a pooled fund that is intended to stop the spread of fiscal contagion from the failing periphery of the Eurozone. All Eurozone members contribute into the ESM (Labour signed the UK up to it but thankfully Cameron got us out of it) and the money is lent out to failed states like Greece to stop them defaulting on their debts and brining down the whole Eurozone economy (and the global economy too).

The ESM is very unpopular in Finland, where they fear the plan could jeopardize their control of their own government. To overcome those objections Finland insisted on adding a clause in the ESM that would force private sector involvement in any future bailout.

That would mean private sector banks taking a loss whenever their taxes were lent to bailed out countries. That in turn would risk the economies of France because it would put their AAA rating at risk because losses by the banks would need to be paid for by nation states bailing out the banking system.

To head off such interference in their Eurozone rescue plan, The Beast has insisted that ESM will be subject to majority voting, so are denying Finland's right to a veto.

Eliminating Finland's power to veto ESM agreements would infringe on the rights of Finnish taxpayers and be against their constitution.

Fiscal Union requires that member states give up power over taxation. Wikipedia describes fiscal union as:

Fiscal union is the integration of the fiscal policy of nations or states. Under fiscal union decisions about the collection and expenditure of taxes are taken by common institutions, shared by the participating governments.

For example, in federal nations such as the United States, fiscal policy is determined to a large extent by the central government, which is empowered to raise taxes, borrow and spend.

Thus, if the Eurozone was a fiscal union then the Eurozone would take decisions on tax matters, which is against the constitution of Finland. The Finnish people would be unlikely to accept such an unpopular move.

This is why Fiscal Union requires Political Union. Political Union replaces the sovereignty of the Eurozone member states and creates one single nation with one constitution. It is the only way that the majority of citizens of the Union can overrule the interests of the minorities in rich countries to save the whole system.

The Beast has already tried this. They created a European Constitution and it was rejected by the people of Europe. They brought the same Constitution back as the Lisbon Treaty and passed it, but they do not have Political Union or Fiscal Union which are essential for a single currency to work.

It took lost referendums by the French and Irish people to kill the EU Constitution.

The single currency that goes with it will be killed by the people of Finland (and Germany who also have a constitution that forbids fiscal union) to kill the Single Currency.

The Beast

The picture above was stolen from zerohedge, but it was so good I had to take it.

The name of the Beast is Drakozel. It represents both the beast that created the economic mess that we are in and the only power that can get us out of it.

The name Drakozel comes from the three most important people in Europe right now:

- Mario Draghi - head of the ECB
- Nicholas Sarkozy - French President
- Angel Merkel - German Chancellor

Sarkozy was elected by about 19 million votes in 2007 (53% of eligible French voters)

Merkel is the leader of the German CDU party which won about 13 million votes in 2009 (13,852,743/32.0% constituency and 11,824,794 votes/27.3% party list), although she is in coalition with two other parties (CSU and FDP).

The EU has a population of about 500 million, of which I estimate the electorate to be about 350 million, so the two elected heads of the EU achieved power with 5.4% (Sarkozy) and 3.7% (Merkel) of the EU voters.

Draghi was not elected at all. He was appointed by the other two, but he holds the purse strings.




It is not as if there is no kind of democracy in the EU. The European Parliament of 736 MEPs was elected by the voters of the EU (or at least the 45% of them who bothered to vote).

The European Parliament is sham democracy to cover up the fact that Europe is really undemocratic. They have no control over the actions of the Beast.

Not only is the Beast undemocratic, it actually eats democracies - just ask Italy and Greece. It is anti-democratic.

When the Euro was created the British Conservative party said that it cannot work without political and fiscal union.

There is no political union. The EU is now being run by a three headed Beast which only 9.1% of the European people voted for.

They are not creating a fiscal union, despite their claims that repeating the Maastrict rules will create one.

As predicted the Euro does not work and will never work until the day it collapses or the Beast is slain.

Generous bankrupts

Yesterday we saw how the Bundesbank is out of money to bailout the Eurozone.

Today we hear that the IMF is broke too. It needs $120 Billion in its reserves to help finance countries facing potential cash shortages.

The US Congress is making plans to block any new American loans to the IMF. The UK has said that it could be willing to lend a few billion to the IMF but it is up against a hard limit on lending and the Conservative party would probably block any increase in that limit.

China was asked to contribute to the EFSF and refused, saying that it should be up to the IMF.

It is not looking good for the Euro.




Meanwhile, the European Investment Bank (EIB) is busy giving out money. It is funding the building of a water desalination plant in Israel at a cost of EUR 120 million. This is not the only desalination plant that it is funding in Israel either.

Last time I checked Israel was not in the EU-17 or the Euro-27.

It is not as if the project is being built by European companies to create jobs for unemployed Europeans. The loan is to Mekorot Development and Enterprise Ltd, an Israeli company.

Israel is a fairly rich country - their GDP per head is $28,500 where ours is $36,100. That is higher than the poorer European countries like Poland ($12,200), Portugal ($21,400), Greece ($26,900) and just below Spain ($30,500). The difference is that Israel is growing (4.7% in 2010) where the Eurozone countries are entering a recession.

The EIB is also funding the building of solar power plants in India.

It seems that while both Israel and India can afford nuclear weapons they both need European money to help build water and power supplies. In effect the EIB is subsidising their nuclear weapon programs.

No doubt the Eurozone countries will be holding out their begging bowls to India soon.




Lets step back a minute and look where this crazy financial system has gotten us:

The IMF is asking for money to bailout the Eurozone.

The Eurozone is asking for money to lend to the bankrupt Eurozone countries.

The bankrupt Eurozone countries need money to give to their bankrupt banks.

The bankrupt European banks are lending money to the EIB.

The EIB is funding projects in foreign countries.

The foreign countries are using the money they save to fund nuclear weapons.


So, basically, the IMF is asking for money to pay for nuclear weapons. It is laundering the money through the Eurozone and at each stage there is a (probably bankrupt) bank taking a cut in transaction fees.

Brother, spare a Euro?

In a very technical post on the voxeu.org website they have some worrying news. Germany has run out of money to lend to Europe.

The Bundesbank, Germany's central bank, used to hold billions in assets that borrowers had deposited in return for loans.

After the European Central Bank (ECB) was created the Bundesbank's role as Germany's central bank was partially taken over. It still held hundreds of billions worth of assets that were collateral for loans to financial institutions. When Greece and the other PIIGS were bailed out the Bundesbank ran down those assets to find money to lend to the PIIGS.



The blue line is the Bundesbank's loans to financial institutions.

The purple dashed line is the Bundesbank's bailout lending to the PIIGS.

The yellow line is the Bundesbank's gold. There is no way it will sell that.

In 2010 the Bundesbank became a net borrower from financial institutions for the first time.




Germany is down to about 21 billion Euros worth of assets that it can liquidate. That means no more easy bailouts for the PIIGS.

Worse, the European central banks have an agreement to lend to each other should there be a run on the central banks of any single country. In the past, say the markets did not believe that Greece could pay its way then Greece could borrow money at short notice to protect their system while formal bailouts were arranged. The whole system was protected by easy access to emergency liquidity from Germany. Now that liquidity has gone.

In 1992 it was the Bank of England running out of liquidity that forced Britain out of the ERM. If the markets decide that the political solutions to the Eurozone problems will not work (very likely) then European central banks will have real problems fending off the markets. Now the markets know this which will make it more likely to happen because it makes betting against Europe a one way bet.

Going Postal

Zero Hedge have a graph showing that although US postal prices have increased exponentially over the years they have remained fairly constant in real terms since the 1960s.



I did a little research and here are the cost of UK first and second class stamps since 1971 (I couldn't go back further because of decimalisation).



And in 2011 prices:



If you here people complaining about the price of a stamp now you can tell them that it was worse in 1975.




The trend in real prices is fairly flat, but there are some noticeable trends.

Prices seemed to fall in real term in the 1990s and rise again from around 2004.

I the first is due to an increase in number of letters sent, and the second due to the rise of the Internet, e-mail and text messaging.

If you look at the number of letters sent through the post (the red line on the graph below) then historically they grew with the economy, but since 2000 it stopped growing and since 2008 has actually been falling.



The trend does seem to be accelerating as inflation takes off and the recession stops people sending all but the most important mail.

As the number of letters fall the prices goes up to pay for the postal system. As the price goes up the number of letters falls further. The postal system is in a downward spiral.

In America they are talking about reducing the frequency of deliveries. As the total number of letters decreases then I wouldn't be surprised to see the same happen here.

If there are any postmen reading then here is a message for them:

Have a Merry Christmas Mr Postie, because your new year won't be quite as happy.

Update March 2012

OFCOM have announced an inflation busting rise of 14p to the price of both first and second class stamps.

They seem to have taken the decision to raise prices instead of cutting services. Of course, that will hit demand even more over the long term. Eventually services will need to be cut.

The big problem for the coalition is the black hole in the postal worker pensions inherited from the last government.

If the Royal Mail cuts staff to cut costs then those ex-postmen will still be entitled to pensions, but with less payments going into the system.

George Osborne has taken £37.5 billion of liabilities and £28 billion of assets from the Royal Mail and added them to the government debt - a black hole of nearly £10 billion.

So, if you want to complain about the government raising stamp prices, remember that the money is mainly going to give generous pensions to postal workers. No doubt those pensions will be delivered electronically in the future, not via the Royal Mail.

Good news from America?

Some good economic news at last? The US jobless rate has fallen to 8.6% from 9.0% as America created 120,000 new jobs in November. The US unemployment rate had been stuck at between 9.0% and 9.2% since April, so the US economy is finally turning the corner.

Yahoo news paints an even better picture. They say that Unemployment rate falls to lowest since March 2009.

That is not good news. That is great news!

Or is it?

Over on the zero hedge blog they tell the real story.

The number of Americans in the work force has fallen from 64.2% to 64.0%, which is the lowest level since 1983:



The number of Americans looking for work rose by 192,000 to a record 6,595,000:



The average time spent unemployed rose from 39.4 weeks to a record 40.9 weeks:



President Obama has failed to sell his job saving plan. Instead, he is resorting to cooking the books to make it look like he is creating jobs when in fact he is hiding the real unemployment problem from American voters.

I wonder where he got that idea from?