Can someone please remind me…

… What 50% of nothing is?

Goldman Sachs is reviewing its London operation, a move that could eventually see entire departments shifted overseas.

The bank is understood to be considering its options in the wake of the UK’s windfall tax on bankers’ bonuses, a new 50pc top income tax rate, and increased banking regulations.

The world’s most powerful investment bank has asked an internal team to examine various strategies, including whole divisions being uprooted and taken offshore.

A number of large of London based Hedge Funds have already relocated to Geneva with more predicted. You may not like the financial sector bonus culture, but the fact of the matter is, no matter how big the City bonus pot is, the Government will get its grubby mitts on 40%. Where do you think the burden will fall if the Goldmans of the world desert the city for more favorable tax regimes?

Swearing In The Name Of

They asked RATM not to swear? WTF did they expect. It’s a bit like asking Gordon Brown not to be a dour faced, money grabbing socialist wanker.

Spreading the Christmas Rage

http://www.ratm4xmas.co.uk/ It’s for a good cause after all… oh and Shelter will get some money as well

Testing

Time to resurrect this blog methinks

The Government set the surveillance society bar – are you really that surprised when the local councils follow suit?:

A survey of more than 180 local authorities found:

1,615 council staff have the power to authorise the use of Ripa.

21% (or 340) of these staff are below senior management grade.

Ripa powers have been used 10,333 times in the last five years.

Just 9% of these authorisations have led to a successful prosecution, caution or fixed-penalty notice

Monitoring Facebook

From the Telegraph:

“If national governments and law enforcement organisations truly believe that online criminals and international terrorists don’t know how to hide their online traces, then we have a bigger problem than we thought.”

Rik Ferguson, a security expert at Trend Micro

Stating the bleedin’ obvious, but sometimes the bleedin’ obvious needs to be stated.

Are you scared yet?

I watched this exchange on Question Time last night completely aghast:

Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon has said the government is prepared to go “quite a long way” with civil liberties to “stop terrorists killing people”.

He was responding to criticism of plans for a database of mobile and web records, saying it was needed because terrorists used such communications.

By not monitoring this traffic, it would be “giving a licence to terrorists to kill people”, he said.

It’s almost refreshing to see a New Labour Minister finally admit that as far as they are concerned our civil liberties are completely meaningless. At least now we know exactly where we stand with this lot.

Blears loses a laptop with restricted data

Very careless indeed (emphasis mine):

A personal computer holding sensitive documents relating to defence and extremism has been stolen from Hazel Blears’ constituency office in Salford.

The theft may mean the communities secretary has broken rules on the handling of restricted government information, the BBC has learned.

The machine contained a combination of constituency and government information which should not have been held on it.

“Nothing to hide, nothing to fear”? How about fearing a government that is both totalitarian and incompetent?

That is quite a dangerous combination if you ask me. It will be interesting to see if that annoying little chipmunk gets her neck on the block for this.

Irish reject Lisbon Treaty

Early days yet, but the Telegraph has announced the result already:

Three hours before the count was expected to be completed, Dermot Ahern, the country’s justice minister, predicted: “It looks like this will be a ‘no’ vote.”

Mr Ahern added: “At the end of the day, for a myriad of reasons, the people have spoken.”

At least they got a bloody chance to speak. Not like the good citizens in this effing excuse for a country.

Way to go Mr. Davis!

Hats off to a man who has suddenly made the British political landscape very interesting:

But in truth 42 days is just one, perhaps the most salient example, of the insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms.

We will have, shortly, the most intrusive identity card system in the world, a CCTV camera for every 14 citizens, a DNA database bigger than any dictator should have with thousands of innocent children and millions of innocent citizens on it.

We witness an assault on jury trial – that bulwark against bad law and its arbitrary abuse by the state, short cuts to our justice system will make our system neither firm nor fair and the creation of a database state opening up our private lives to the prying eyes of official snoopers and exposing our personal data to careless civil servants and criminal hackers.

The state has security powers to clamp down on peaceful protest and so-called hate laws to stifle legitimate debate whilst those inside Parliament get off Scot free.

Well said sir.