My budget

As a (not quite) moderate (enough) drinker and a smoker once again I'm fucked. This is the second major whack we've had this year. When the government temporarily dropped VAT rates to 15% they upped the alcohol and tobacco duties so that we sinners didn't benefit. And when the rates went back up to 17.5% in January they didn't unstitch the increase so the price of a pint went up 5p and my baccy about the same amount. I reckon I have to go to the pub tonight to get a last jar or two at a mere £3.05!

The green shoots of recovery!

There is a shoe shop in Bromley that has, for roughly the past 24 months, been advertising its "Going Out Of Business Sale". This evening on the way home I noticed that the large placards have been taken down and they are advertising their new "spring range"; possibly circa 2007.

He's also not giving back Checkers

Disgraced, but not impoverished, former RBS chairman "Alright! Said" Sir Fred Goodwin is refusing to return one red cent of the £16,000,000 pension pot he clearly didn't earn during his 10 year stint at the helm of the now foundering, if not grounded, bank.

This means that over the decade he "worked" at RBS the company put in roughly £133,000 a month; approximately the annual salary of about five of the bank's frontline workers. Should Sir Fred suddenly discover his honour, an admittedly unlikely event, and return his ill-gotten gain perhaps the bank could use the funds to keep about 600 of the 20,000 RBS workers about to get the sack in employment for an extra year. Or maybe not.

All right said Sir Fred

I'm doing something wrong. I'm obviously not incompetent enough. This cunt works for ten years at RBS, drives into nationalisation and at the age of 50, younger than me, ends up with a £16,000,000+ pension pot returning him £650,000 a year!

Finally we know!

The credit crunch is not the fault of greedy bankers as those capitalism hating Euro-socialists would have you believe. It is the fault of Bromley and Beckenham local hero David Bowie; or at least that is what The Daily Mirror would have us believe.

Sometime in the next half hour or so...

...the Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling is set to announce a reduction in the standard VAT rate from 17.5% to 15%; an announcement that will send financial controllers up and down the country, often accompanied by their sales and marketing staff, in search of their IT support staff to ask the following two questions:

"Can we deal with this in the next 6 days?"

and

"Can we do it properly?"

The answers in virtually all cases will be "probably" and "probably not".

I await the approach of my local finance folks with bated breath.

I must be prescient

I had completely forgotten that, way back in July, I had reserved a copy of The Gods That Failed: How Blind Faith in Markets Has Cost Us Our Future before the Gods really failed! I've just picked it up. I'll let you know how it is.

Now if I could just pick horses!

Just taking the piss

The Royal Bank of Scotland was gracious enough to accept £20,000,000,000 of taxpayer money to refill the coffers but that won't stop them from shelling out huge amounts of dosh in the form of discretionary bonuses to their (dis)investment bankers who were largely responsible for the emptying of the coffers in the first place. Kudos to Vince Cable of the Lib Dems for calling them on it!

Meanwhile in Cloud Cuckoo Land

The American Taxpayer is poised to pour $700,000,000,000 or more into the country's failing banking industry but the news of the failure of the banking industry hasn't yet reached the payroll departments of said banks as somewhere around 10% of that money is going to be immediately siphoned off into the bank accounts (probably off shore) of the banks' top staff. Money well spent I'd say.

Of course before we get to high and mighty about this on my side of the Big Water we should probably note that the bonuses are still bubbling up in The City.

I think I gotta get me one of these "jobs".

From the department for hubristic cojones

Lloyds TSB Bank may yet scupper the British bail out deal as it negotiates for easier repayment terms for the tax payer money it is begging for. I am certain that there are tens of thousands of Lloyds TSB customers out there who are eager to share their pleasant and satisfying experiences in obtaining "easier repayment terms" on their mortgages, credit cards and overdrafts. Right?

And the Lord saw socialism...

...and decided that it was good. Elsewhere this year's Economics Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman decides that Gordon Brown wears his pants on the outside.

Praise the Lord - the petrol price crisis is over!!!

In the past fortnight the last chance Texaco I pass on my walk from the station to work has dropped its price for unleaded petrol from £1.199 a litre to 1.119 a litre. The crisis is over! Get the Chelsea tractors out of the garage!

Note: to Americans this new, low price translates to roughly $8.45 a US gallon so stop fucking whinging will you.

How to guarantee panic buying

Step 1: as the head of government tell the public not to panic buy a certain commodity.

Step 2: there is no step 2.

From the department of "nice work if you can get it"

As the British, European and world economies follow the battered American economy into troubled waters it seems as if there has never been a better time to be a big wig in the City of London as City bonuses reach a new record approaching £13 billion. Unfortunately I am not a big wig and I don't work in the City. Damn!