2041 days ago
As you may have gathered last Tuesday, Malcolm’s long-suffering wife reckons that he has been spending too much time in The Punter’s Return and so has organised a holiday in Denmark, Sweden and Russia where Mr Stacey hopes to discover the magic money tree and an updated theme for his next novel. We left him landing in Russia and having a spot of bother at passport control. In the last chapter of this series, our senior reporter has now updated us on his progress since…
2139 days ago
I am confused. This morning the Peter Tatchell Foundation run by the great and heroic civil liberties campaigner Peter Tatchell has launched a new report and sent out the following tweet. Of course Tatch is right that any tourist spot that is homophobic is kicking itself in the gonads and it is also acting in a way that is morally unacceptable. However it is the claim that the LGBT community has far more dosh to splash than we poor straights that interests me.
2213 days ago
I take mental health very seriously and would never trivialise it. My mother killed herself when I was 8. I have suffered from bouts of severe depression and have been open about having a serious breakdown some six years ago when everything went wrong and I just could not cope. That I met the woman who is now my wife at my lows as I considered diving into the abyss I thought I faced, may well have saved my life. I do not joke about or trivialise such matters.
2458 days ago
The Mrs is of the view that while she and her fellow public sector workers slave away with inhumanly long hours, myself and the rest of the productive sector, the private sector, the wicked bastards who earn less and have less job security than the State employed saints and who risk their capital to fund the Government payroll, sit around all day watching cats on the internet. Just to reinforce the view from underneath the great Money Tree, below is a quite awesome video of a cat from the internet. Cats are just the coolest creatures on this planet are they not?
3229 days ago
I keep having this odd image of Malcolm Stacey. He lives among the heathen celts of Wales and is a self confessed money tree worshipper, an older man with white hair - he is Getafix, the druid from Asterix the Gaul. Getafix heads off into the woods with his sickle to hack away mistletoe to make potions. Malcolm heads off into the woods to hack away at the money tree and then brews up a potion.
He stands over his cauldron and as Delphic type vapours emerge he intones "I know, buy Advanced Oncotherapy, add more Tertiary Minerals." Sometimes it works and he enjoys a good night at the Punters Return. Other times it does not work and Malcolm realises he took cuttings from the wrong tree. Getafix mutters to himself "but the Money Tree realy does exist" and trudges back into the woods with his sickle to continue his quest. I digress.
In today's podcast I discuss whether money is important to me and whether I am really an alcoholic, look at Trap Oil, Quindell, Slater & Gordon, Red Emperor, Sefton and the POS Mosman Oil & Gas
3716 days ago
No folks there is no mistake in the headline. And no, I have not been infected with the mad lefty virus following my brief visit to the Socialist benefits paradise that is Wales. You read it here first: The Guardian has on one issue got it bang on the money, the British Chambers of Commerce is just wrong. The issue is youth unemployment.
I start with the pantomime villains, or should that be clowns, that is the small business organisation.
3719 days ago
I have noted before that Oxfam is a charity not fit for purpose – it really does spout nonsense on a monumental scale. The latest clanger came on BBC Radio Oxford earlier this week – the link is here and the outbursts start at about even minutes in.
The Oxfam spokeswoman was one with two very stupid women – one from UKIP and a Lib Dem. Needless to say the Lib Dem woman agreed meekly with everything the Oxfam loony said. The UKIP old bag was again saying that the UK foreign aid budget should be diverted to help deal with UK floods. I have note before (HERE) how this is errant wolf-whistling economic claptrap. But her idiocy was easily surpassed by the Oxfam old trout.
She started by saying that the UK had plenty of cash to spend on the floods, after all Call Me Dave says “money is no object.” When a country has a deficit of £100 billion that is patently not true but if our PM (who is meant to be a conservative) is a Money Tree believer one cannot really be surprised that the deluded lefties of Oxfam are also Money Tree worshippers.
But then it got worse. Oxfam says that since 2008 UK bankers have received bonuses of £70 billion which is about £10 billion more than we have spent on foreign aid) so the UK bankers can afford to pay. Where to start
3741 days ago
20 miles down the road from me vast tracts of land are underwater. Flanked by the local MPs (a double barrelled Tory upper class twit nonentity and a beardy weirdie Lib Dem wearing wellies over his sandals), minister Owen Patterson visited this week. Yup, shake down the money tree the feckless rich are to be bailed out with your cash.
I am hard on those on welfare who talk of rights without taking any sense of personal responsibility. No-one dares level the same charge against the feckless rich of Somerset but here I go.
The odd household of the 500 or so cut off by water or flooded comprises born and bred locals who have been happily married to their cousin, sister or aunt for years. The vast majority are incomers who have bought privately, often paying an arm and a leg. This is not a place just anyone can afford to live in.
When they bought they were fully aware that once in fifty or a hundred years they would get flooded. But flooding is like tossing a coin. Your two floods in 50 years could come 50 years apart or (as is the case today) in consecutive years. That is the way of nature and the folks knew it when buying.
Would I like a lovely farmhouse next to a fish filled river on the Levels? Yes I would love it. But I would want to pay a stack less than I would for an equivalent property in the hills where I know that I will not be swimming in sewerage once every few decades. In other works you pay for what you get.
The folks on the levels might have bought in relatively cheaply because they took this into account. Or they might simply have overpaid. But it was THEIR call. Now they are demanding that the rest of Britain spends millions on dredging (unproven) and on installing mammoth new pumping systems so that when the next floods come (whether that be 2015 or 2065) they will not be affected. This will naturally make their properties worth more.
If the folks ignored the flood risks and overpaid they are feckless spongers if they now expect the rest of us to bail them out and add to the value of their homes. If they got in at a discount price accepting flood risk and now demand we bail them out so increasing the value of their homes they are also scroungers.
These folks need to accept that they must take financial responsibility for their own decisions and not get bailed out by the rest of us. The fact that the posh folk of the Levels would be the first to condemn the residents of Benefits Street - who also talk of "rights" without accepting personal responsibility for their own actions and decisions - makes me feel even less sympathy for them now.
The taxpayer has an obligation to open up roads by draining off water. After that the folks of the Levels have got to live with the consequences of their own economic choices and if that means going to stay with granny in Taunton until the waters subside so be it.
The hard pressed taxpayer has no obligation or responsibility to bail them out.
Of course no politician will dare say that. All three parties still believe in the Money Tree.’
3912 days ago
In the 1950s the Tory Party had 3 million members. When Call Me Dave was elected leader it had 258,000 members. These days the Tories won’t say how many members they have but it seems that the number is sub 100,000. And with an average age of almost 70 and each year seeing Councillors (the main local recruiters) lose seats won during the hated Labour Government that number will carry on falling.
Some blame call Me Dave for pissing off traditional Tories
3954 days ago
I was tempted to lead on the news that a Tory MP who I had never heard of was given a standing ovation and embraced warmly at a meeting of his local association this week. For saying that the EU was a joke? That he believed in low taxes, reform of the welfare state or that he took a tough line on law and order? Be serious this is Call Me Dave's new look Tory Party and so it could only be one thing...Daniel Kawczynski outed himself as the UK's first openly bisexual MP. Great..like we give a damn who you shag but it would be kind of pleasing if you could cut the deficit/stand up to the EU, etc.
Now if an MP were to out himself as the UK's first MP not to fiddle his expenses that really would be something. Anyhow it has made Dave Cameron happy. Whatever. But instead I turn to red blooded heterosexual MP William Hague, aka the foreign secretary who would like to be a real macho man ( a great song by those other neo-Cons the YMCA) and get us all involved in the war in Syria. Wow after all the success we have had with our interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Egypt (in flames this weekend) lets make it five straight wins and send lots of weapons (paid for by the UK Money Tree) off to the Islamofascist rebels in Syria.
Please post your captions to this picture in the comments section below by 9 AM on Friday.
For what it is worth my entry is:
