Step 1) leave the EU?

Silly puff piece in the telegraph that completely ignores the elephant in the room... namely the EU.
Telegraph.

Osborne: Britain must up its game to compete in global economy Britain has lost its sense of ambition and optimism and has allowed “the bits that were great” to wither, George Osborne has said as he called on the country to “up our game”
The Chancellor said Britain had become “defeatist” and had to improve in the face of the economic challenge posed by the “staggering” rise of China. He criticised Ed Miliband for dismissing China as a “sweatshop” economy, and said that Britain had to change its attitudes to the communist state. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph as he prepared to leave China after a five-day tour, Mr Osborne also disclosed that he is poised to break up the Royal Bank of Scotland in order to separate an estimated £50-60 billion in “bad” assets from the bank in order to help it return to the private sector.

The biggest problem the UK has in competing within a global market is the trade cartel that is the EU. The UK has to make products that comply to a whole raft of EU regulations and not tailored to the market we sell too. Trade is of course a two way street and the EU puts price tarrifs on various goods sold to us from abroad to protect its own internal market. The Common Agricultural Policy being a festering boil on the EU which prevents cheaper food from abroad being imported and keeps African farmers poor as they cannot get foreign currency as they can't sell to Europe.
So the first step to upping our game must be to leave the EU? Surely?
Not that the Telegraph mentions this anywhere, not that Osborne mentions it. Yet the answer to upping our game is to remove the deadening hand of the EU on our trade and industry.
It would also solve the immigration problem with the Roma and others that people have a problem with too.

No, this wont work either

Apparently from Saturday the price of some beers will be up to 50p cheaper if they have only 2.8% abv (alcohol by volume) and apart from wondering what's the point of drinking something that will be flushed out of your system by numerous trips to the loo before you can get any sort of effect I do think that the wishful thinking going on in the paper that this will invigorate the pub trade rather misses the elephant in the room.
Mail.

Cash strapped drinkers and people looking for a low alcohol beer will have more choice from this weekend as new ranges of tax-busting beers are introduced.
From Saturday, a new rule will mean that beers with less than 2.8 per cent alcohol by volume will be taxed less, leading to possible savings of 50p for some drinks.
With local pubs closing at an alarming rate and government promoting responsible drinking, beer lobby groups have welcomed the new tax break.
Dubbed the 'people's pints', many brewers have already started selling lager and ale with lower alcohol contents but more are likely to follow suit.
Carlsberg UK has already announced that it will reduce the strength of it's Skol lager from 3 per cent to 2.8 per cent to take advantage of the new tax break.
The Campaign for Real Ale says it hopes the lower price and alcohol content will provide a lifeline for thousands of pubs threatened with closure.

God alone knows why Camra thinks this will help, the stuff mentioned is hardly real ale after all and Carlsberg Skol barely escapes classification as drain cleaner in my book of beers to avoid at all costs.
The elephant in the room of course is the smoking ban whereby the state took it upon itself to tell people what they could and couldn't do with a legal pastime on their own property, rather than leave it down to personal choice. That decision is the one which sounded the death knell for so many pubs, not expensive beer, but the fact that many of their customers (and non smoking friends) decided they no longer felt welcome in the pubs and decided to just meet and drink at home instead.
Try getting a politician to admit this though and it's like trying to get blood out of a stone, a very few have, but by and large they seem to live on a different planet to the rest of us and cannot see the cause and effect factor at work.
If they'd just left us alone and not tried to legislate away our freedoms, then perhaps the pub trade (and the country) wouldn't be in the mess that it is.

Biting the hand that feeds you

I had a wry smile at an Express article today on Ed Millipede and his reluctance to condemn unions for planning to bring the country to a halt over public sector pension reform. Don't get me wrong, it would be interesting to see Millipede E grow a pair, but the Express also seems to be forgetting just who is bankrolling the Labour party and Millipede E is not stupid and will avoid shitting in his own nest.
Express.

LABOUR leader Ed Miliband ducked the chance yesterday to condemn unions for planning to bring the country to a halt over public sector pension reform.
With fresh talks due today aimed at resolving the dispute, he refused either to attack or support the unions’ planned day of action on November 30, saying only that the Government must negotiate “in good faith”.
Several unions are preparing to ballot for strikes with a view to coordinated action, which some leaders have threatened could drag on to next summer.
In an interview on the eve of the Labour conference, Mr Miliband replied when asked if he would support November strikes: “I’m not going to get into hypothetical's about a strike that may or may not happen.”
Asked if unions should strike, he insisted: “The unions have to make their own judgement about what they do. We’re not at 30 November. I’ll make a judgement about that if we get to that.”

There is no chance that the Millipede is going to tell the people who are paying for his party's upkeep that going on strike is a wee bit naughty, even if he suspects it might be a bit of a losing situation. Going against the people who put up the money for your organisation requires courage and leadership qualities, something that none of the current leaders of the big 2 and a half have in any abundance so tied as they are to the policies of centralism that they have forgotten that the main ethos of being a leader is to lead, not react, not administer and not play favourites or power consolidation. Yet all the Leaders of the Con/Lab/Lib parties look like a bunch of interchangeable clones, each could be slotted into the other parties team and I doubt we'd notice the difference, they'd simply change the buzzwords as they appear to be politicians first and foremost rather than principled men.
And that sadly until it is resolved is the root of the problem.

Money for nothing

Once again the looters as Richard North of EU Referendum calls them are making off with our hard earned cash without any regrets or shame.
Mail.

Quango chiefs are pocketing payoffs of up to £250,000 each as their discredited agencies are wound up.
Nine bodies set up to boost local economies are to be scrapped next year after being criticised as wasteful and bureaucratic.
Figures obtained by the Daily Mail reveal the generous deals for senior executives at the Regional Development Agencies created and championed by John Prescott.
Advantage West Midlands admitted that one unnamed official received £200,000 to £250,000. The body’s corporate director Tim Gebbels also walked away with £109,512 when he left.
To date, 15 senior quango executives have received payments of more than £100,000.
Seven of the quangos have so far revealed that they have laid off 799 staff at a total cost of £23.4million, equal to almost £30,000 each.
But the top officials are getting much more. Stacy Hall, director of communications and tourism at One North East, received £120,890 when she took voluntary redundancy last September.
Stephen Peacock, enterprise and innovation director at the South West RDA, was handed £113,701 in a taxpayer-funded deal. In many cases, senior staff appear to have been given the equivalent of a year’s salary.

 One thing the Mail fails to mention is that many of these looters then move onto another well paid sinecure at another Quango or local authority and the whole ghastly process of robbing the taxpayer begins again.
What they seem to forget is names are being taken, faces remembered and lengths of hempen rope and/or piano wire being imagined around their necks for the inevitable day our patience breaks and our wrath is forthcoming. Every day brings it closer and the more they rob us the greater it becomes.
All we need is a powercut during the X Factor final and we'll have the bastards...
Well I can dream can't I?