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?

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.

Compare and Contrast…

…This:

A father-of-four has been left with a criminal record for overfilling his wheelie bin by four inches.

With this:

Islamic extremists could escape prosecution and instead receive therapy and counselling under new Government plans to “deradicalise” religious fanatics.

Now tell me that the Government haven’t completely lost the plot.

Blunkett’s Kiss of Death

Blunkett proves again that there are none so blind as those who will not see:

Gordon Brown’s government has “hit rock bottom”, but defeat over anti-terror plans would not be a “knockout blow”, ex-home secretary David Blunkett says.

He told Simon Mayo on BBC Five Live that Labour’s present unpopularity meant things could not get any worse.

Wannabet?

“Things could not get any worse” is not quite as catchy as “Things can only get better”. Blunkett has obviously been out of the New Labour Spin loop for too long. Shame on him.

Another fine mess

Way back in December 2005 I prefaced one of my own favourite blog posts with the following quote:

ENERGY giant Shell has slashed investment in its future North Sea oil drilling programmes by a third, blaming the doubling in oil production taxes announced by Chancellor Gordon Brown in his recent Pre-Budget Report.

Rather irritatingly, I didn’t keep a link to the original source.

From this, one could quite reasonably conclude that El Gordo cannot be completely absolved of blame for the current situation in the oil market. But fear not! From today’s Telegraph we read that Laurel and Hardy have leapt to the rescue!

Oil industry leaders are anticipating more North Sea tax relief after the first signs of a Government U-turn. Modest tax changes were announced yesterday as the Prime Minister and Chancellor intervened to try to boost flagging production.

Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling took the unprecedented step of making a direct appeal to oil industry leaders to increase output and accelerate developments. They took members of Oil and Gas UK, the industry trade body, by surprise by asking to join what was planned as a routine meeting of the organisation near Aberdeen yesterday.

They held out the prospect of regulatory and tax changes to attract more North Sea investment and provide the incentives to develop new discoveries which are little more than ‘puddles’ compared with the giant Brent and Forties fields.

Well, not quite. As is usual with New Labour, you have to dig a little deeper….

Crucially, the tax cut announced yesterday affects only older oil fields, which are covered by a separate tax regime, and does not reverse this new windfall tax.

This is hardly surprising. Over the past decades the North Sea has become one of the Government’s biggest corporate tax cows, generating more than £230bn in revenue since 1968. The Treasury is expecting to make around £10bn this year from oil revenues, though experts at Grant Thornton think this could rise as high as £16bn due to higher oil prices.

However, this windfall has come at a price. If, as thought, it is responsible for depressing production in recent years, it has helped make the UK a net oil importer two years earlier than expected.

This is yet another example of Gordon’s complete inability to think through the consequences of his punitive taxation policies. Stupid, grinning, one-eyed wanker!