Frances Maude - The Gerry-can Jerk of the Tories

Francis Maude, 58, is among a number of Government ministers amassing vast, taxpayer-funded nest eggs.But while the millionaire can look forward to a potential £43,000-plus a year income in his old age, he is cutting schemes for nurses, teachers and public sector workers. The Tory minister ruthlessly slashing the pensions of millions of public sector workers could be in line to pocket a £731,000 retirement pot.

The shocking sum is almost eight times the average £5,600 civil service employee’s pot.

If anyone thought that the planned strikes were nothing more than an inconvenient regarding child care that day or just public sector workers crying ‘Wolf’ over their pension changes then they need to think again.

We have in this collation government a collection of millionaires, members of the aristocracy and wealthy business people waging an all out war on the British workers. David Cameron him self is worth £30M and George Osbourne £5M but he will inherit a lot more. Nick Clegg and his Spanish lawyer wife and simply loaded and so far removed from the day to day financial crisis most people face daily.

Now whether these workers are highway engineers, dustbin men, nurses, teachers or headmasters; they are being targeting for the mistakes of the bankers, hedge fund managers and others in the financial sector.

Good public sector pension are in the front line of the battlefield to be overrun then they will move on to the conditions in work place. 

As the Business Secretary Vince Cable and the Chancellor George Osborne announced that the Government intends to start the dismantling many of the hard fought and long-held employment rights won over many years so that companies could have a more ‘flexible’ and ‘dismissive’ approach towards their employees; i.e. to make it easier for bosses to sack there workers. If these measures gets on the statute books then every employer will be able to tear up their HR policies and replace them with the simple phrase:- "Do as you are told or you are fired". This is just another example of the government being paid by business and applying policy for business needs only. These changes will make it harder for hundreds of thousands of workers to bring cases of victimisation, unfairness and bullying at work and these changes will affect all of us today and our children and grandchildren tomorrow, with all the hard won advances in the working environment starting to evaporate as uncertainty and insecurity become the norm in the workplace.

The rich will get richer and the poor poorer and those in the middle will end up working harder and longer for less. But just to rub salt in the wound, no one voted for this and no one offered it at the last election. Cameron and Clegg have just decided that past mistakes must be paid for and by those who had no part in the making of the crisis!

These are the words of the Governor of the Bank of England and he’s probably a Tory too!

Cameron, Osbourne and Johnson but a few!

A budget for austerity or one for the aristocracy?

As we all look forward to the budget on Wednesday and wonder if it will be one about austerity or one for the aristocracy?

We now have George Gideon Oliver Osborne and Old Etonian as chancellor who is the son and heir of a 17th Baronet and perhaps when he assumes ownership of that Baronetcy he would like to see the return the country to as is was a few centuries ago with a few wealthy ruling Barons and a sea of peasants trapped in poverty, uneducated and living in poor housing conditions.

The Prime Minster David Cameron is also an Old Etonian also but he has married into the aristocracy, with Lord Astor is his father-in-law. Again so far removed from the lives of ordinary people but he and his elitist cabinet will decide the lives of so many people.

At the top level of society Chancellor George Osbourne seeks to continue to divide and rule as a member of the aristocracy, as he attacks the public sector workers and there terms and conditions stating that the private sector needs to be able to compete with the unnatural higher wages in the public sector.

I think we all know that the private sector is driven by profit and share dividends for the few and we any need to look at the disasters that the private care homes have caused in or see the private health care responses to the poor quality breast implants undertaken. No rush to sort out the problem only a rush to protect profits and any costly liabilities!

It’s the same old tactic of divide and rule with the ‘sound byte’ taxpayers money should not be used for union work! But on the other hand it’s OK for many private companies to be supported by the taxpayer either during startup or the expansion phase; and many given National Insurance holidays and tax breaks for taking on staff.

No one likes to see taxpayers money  being used inappropriately and so one should cast our minds back a few years to the ‘Expenses Scandal’ when David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne were in opposition and acted with greed as both are fabulously rich with David Cameron having in excess of £30m, and George Osborne estimated worth is £4m and will inherit a great deal more as heir to the Osborne baronetcy. Yet these two men had structured their personal affairs so that British taxpayers financed mortgages on their second homes of about £300,000. Neither needed to have mortgages on their second home, and neither man needed to claim the second home allowance from the taxpayer, yet they both did they ‘milked’ the situation. 

These changes to many in the public sector are being progressed by a Chancellor and Prime Minster born into a life so privileged and one wonders what the full impact was with the Rupert Murdoch supporting the Conservative party together with all the captains of industry, all singing from the same hymn book that free market forces and private investment is the only way forward.

The rich have inherited the Earth and soon a camel will be able to pass through the eye of a needle!

Shame on those people who did not vote and more shame on those who voted Liberal Democrat.

Whose Horse Will David Cameron Ride Next?

I must scream hear we go again as what we have in David Cameron is a Public Relations Prime Minister following an endless of PR stunts . This time around its the Tory Math’s guru Carol Voderman added to his team of millionaire advisors, Carol is most famous for Countdown but less well known for all the lives she destroyed with her consolidation loans (sub-prime lending), remember those nasty adverts for Firstplus loans fronted by Carol Voderman. As a mathematician she must have known that the last thing people in debit need to do is borrow more! They were  many financial commentators begging her to stop fronting the FirstPlus remortgaging and consolidating home loads bank. All this with a third class engineering degree, my how standards are falling! But I am sure her bank balance grew nicely.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Education said: "We want the vast majority of young people to study maths up to 18 within a decade to meet the growing demand for employees with high level and intermediate maths skills. 

"We are undertaking a root-and-branch review of how maths is taught in schools, attracting the best maths graduates into the profession." 

The study which was originally commissioned by the Tories in opposition as part of the ‘scare tactic’ they used to oust New Labour, warns that English pupils are already around two years behind peers in the Far East and are less likely to study math’s to a high standard than in most other developed nations. 

But hold on a minute, how are you going to get the best maths graduates when public sector wages and pensions are under such a concerted attack; gone are the teachers ‘gold plated’ pensions, “aren't they?” And don’t teachers have too much time off with many inset days and long school holidays, I mean we all know they only work 9 to 3:30 each day!

However on 2 March 2010 Carol Vorderman publicly launched her new commercial venture of an online mathematics coaching system for 4 – 12 year old children under the name of the MathsFactor. Here in Chard we are often subjected to a glossy Carol on Car Insurance flyers; she sure has a love of figures, especially whose with ‘£’ in front of them.

She is par of a long line of Tory Guru’s that our PR Prime Minster roles out; with James Dyson the Technology Guru; he sees himself move up the ‘Rich List'; probably helped by the shedding over 800  UK  jobs to Maylisa. Is this the way ahead for British manufacturing as Dyson cleans up!

Then we have the Welfare to Work Guru Emma Harrison who recently stepped down amidst financial irregularities, not going empty handed as she was pain £8.6 in dividends last year.

You only need to look at who funds the Conservative party to understand the drive to cuts corporation and top earners 50p tax. It will be interesting to see if Clegg and Cable can win the argument of lifting the tax threshold for the low paid or will they suffer other defeats the like AV vote and Tuition Fees and be blamed for the NHS reforms which they failed to get the required safe guards.