Co-op Capitalism
Some years back Guido had lunch with Alex Hilton of Recess Monkey (R.I.P.) fame. Paying for lunch Guido brandished a card issued by the Co-operative bank. The monkey spluttered in indignation “what are you doing banking with the co-op?” as if it was an unlibertarian thing to do.
Co-op’s are neither socialist or capitalist necessarily. Most hedge funds are co-ops, owned by the partners with the profits shared by the workers. Many law firms are co-ops, luxury apartment blocks are run by self-selecting co-ops, huge agri-businesses are run by co-ops of rich farmers, mutual funds are a form of co-op, the list is endless. Lefties might want co-operatives to be non-profit, organic wool knitters but the most successful ones are not. They do this because they are smart and don’t want a third party to profit at their expense. Co-ops have nothing to do with top-down state socialism as designed by Fabians. Guido imagines that a lot of middle-class parents will set-up cooperatively run “free schools” under the Tories education reform plans.
Jesse Norman, the ex-investment banker turned Tory candidate in Hereford, has been banging on about co-ops for years and he even set up the Conservative Co-operative Movement and wrote a book Compassionate Economics. As far as Guido can tell in 2 years it hasn’t actually done anything but proselytise yet…
The main characteristic of most of our co-op stores is that the staff all go and hide in the stockroom when more till operators are required – This does not bode well for our public services!
Ever been to a John Lewis or a Waitrose and wondered why the service is so much better than any other retailer? That’s the model the Conservatives have been using.
And the till girls are prettier in John Lewis stores.
In Tesco they’re all fucking minging.
We’re all owning our public sector enterprises together.
Guido
MPs to be forced to repay profits on 2nd homes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/16/mps-repay-profits-second-homes
Introducing the “MP’s Death Tax”, it will be the only way to get it out of them.
We could wipe out Labour’s budget deficit if we imposed a Lie Tax on MPs. If the Treasury levied just £ 100 per lie on every Labour MP, B£iar would owe us about £ 200,000,000 and Gordoom would have to find about
£ 300,000,000.
There ! That’s ONE day’s excess government spending over revenue eliminated !
Mandy could wipe out roughly £ 3,500,000,000 = one week’s Labour overspend !!
I hear Cameron is about to announce a new thinktank based policy on renewing the Unions with a Conservative makeover and a new Conservative appointed Unions Trust and Unions Tsar.
Which is why it’s handy that Unions are really histrorically Conservative constructs and Libertarian with Mrs Thatcher secetly loving them. Bankers have a Union, so do journalists and even those who make luxury cars and yachts.
Guido has always been a fan of Unions since he had lunch with Andy Couslon saw a picket line outside the resteraunt and screamed ‘Up the workers!!’ to Coulsons bemusement.
In fuckin tesco’s your served by children who ask adults for ID..but then again, the woman that owns/runs the local coop its a little wizened old witch…who askes adults ID
And bloody lippy and chippy…and thick. And, round where I live, either foreign (admittedly the politer ones) or slatternly British–females who hate the work and want you to know they hate the work.
The same brand food is more expensive in the Co Op, not to mention John Lewis,Er what purpose do they serve?
The idea that partnership and ownership is a good one. It only works if each partner has one vote. This is the problem of the “share owning democracy” most companies have the stock and voting rights concentrated into a few hands, this is why large corporations no longer listen and do as they please, making ridiculous bonus payments and taking needless risks.
Ohhhhhhhhhh matron!!
Everyone’s a tw@t!
I still haven’t been elected as a Tory PPC!
Sexual innuendo no. 45234!! lol
Matron come get me
Not the model from what I’ve read. John Lewis may be a partnership but it makes profits. Hence the motivation to give good service. The Conservatives have banned profit from their new schools and reports yesterday said the same about their half-brained ideas for the rest of the public sector.
All this talk of co-ops is meaningless.
The problem with government budgets and waste is that government departments and agencies and quangos are all penalised if they do not spend their budgets.
This leads to departments at year end wasting money on purpose if they have not used up their budget allocation because if they don’t then they will receive less money the following year. This in turn leads to inflation in the public sector and encourages waste of public funds.
We must stop encouraging failure and punishing good book keeping. If a department saves money in one year it must be allowed to roll over that saving to the next. End of problem, end of waste.
All this talk of co-operatives completely misses the point.
We spend ours on a piss up and call it staff training,how to stagger home safely
Or else it is spent recruiting staff that are not needed or printing leaflets that will never be read or organising unnecessary events or wasted on taxis etc.
This discussion on co-operatives is all very well but it is basically a long winded policy diversion that would take years to implement. Rolling over budgets would save money from year one and could be implemented immediately.
It would also lead to an immediate freeze on public service recruitment so further savings would arise from public servants retiring which would force the remaining public sector to working harder and smarter. We would of course also be paying less money towards public sector pensions which are unfunded and unaffordable. It would also perhaps be a good idea for public sector workers to pay a more realistic contribution towards their pensions. A further deduction of 5% would not cover it but would be a more affordable proposal for the taxpayer.I they refused to pay their way then a new pension contract should be enforced on a take it or lose it basis.
If we followed such policies the state would become a leaner and more efficient operation. The private sector has carried the dead weight of the unions for too long, it is no longer affordable for private workers to fund the public sector with wage and pension terms superior to the ones they themselves receive.
Simpler solution is that a percentage of budget not spent goes in bonuses to the staff. That will encourage them to keep a tight lid on their spending. No surplus, no bonus.
Balance this with performance metrics to ensure they’re doing what they should be doing.
The problem with that is it would encourage departments to reduce services because they would make a personal financial gain.
A rollover of budgets would encourage prudence without having that effect as their would be no personal gain to be made by slashing services.
The reason I suggest introducing an additional 5% pension levy on public sector workers whose salaries who, let’s say, are being paid more than 30K is due to the fact that they are receiving overly generous payouts that they have simply not contributed enough money into. Any reasonable public sector worker will understand that is the case so the ones who refused to sign new pension contracts would be the dead wood or time servers and it would be a good opportunity to get rid of those under performers and parasites.
Such a policy would also counter the current attitude of the councils who merely add on whatever the unaffordable cost of their pensions is to the council tax payments. At least it would mean money would be returned to public funds and that would effectively make council tax payments less costly by 5%.
Profit is actually a synonym for meeting a real social demand that was in shortage.
No profits = Shortage.
Too many profits = Exploitation. It is the middle ground that best serves the customer.
Too much profit may be good for shareholders and the company but it strips out value for the customer.
Take BT for example, it wants an ever increasing number of customers but not happy with volume it also seeks to increase profits and so it employs less staff. The result of that is it takes an hour to get through to an operator at BT.
That is not of benefit to the customer.
I swear by Waitrose Deliver as I am unable to shop. Nothing is too much trouble for them. The customer is always right. I am teased mercilessly for using this shop… People who don’t use it think it is necessarily expensive, or is somehow ‘posh’. Just not true! I also know the firm has a big charity input, supports its staff well, allows them to go on courses, etc and together with John Lewis are all round good eggs. No wonder they regularly get voted best for customer service. I agree this is the co-op model Cameron must be using, and not that shabby fly blown place on the corner offering indifferent service and poor quality goods we know and have no love for.
It’s because there is a customer that can go elsewhere.
A co-op that’s extortion funded will be just a slightly more opaque extension of the state. See quangos.
The banking crisis has proved your statement to be false. You argue in favour of capitalism but against regulation. Without regulation as sure as eggs is eggs buyouts will lead to cartels being formed.
Your arguments do not add up AC1.
I was watching this mime artist in town today.
He opened an imaginary window, picked up an imaginary suitcase and walked against an imaginary gale.
As the crowd clapped and he passed round the hat, I was suitably impressed enough to chuck in an imaginary fucking fiver.
Good Morning
After months of quantative easing, you must have had a wallet full of ‘em.
Don’t know where you found a fiver, imaginary or not.
They’re as rare a hens’ teeth as you can’t get them from cashpoints.
sure as Knight is Day, get lost
Is there divi on that?
My mothers divi number from the 1960′s was 12773
she would always say dont forget the divi when she sent us to the shops !
Co-ops are generally a good thing provided they don’t fall out among themselves, and the good old Divvy was something to look forward to.
However, they MUST be in the management and ownership of, and for the benefit of the main participants. It seems doubtful that any government, of whatever stripe, will not meddle and interfere.
Co-ops don’t work with dirigisme by Central Government.
Too true
Why Not? – take the example of Credit Unions – legislation provides the framework and safeguards, but members of the Union determine what happens. Provided that relationship were maintained,it could work -it would need a major culture change in government and the Civil Service but at least Labour have proved it is possible in the last 13 years, although they have managed to introduce inefficiency, demotivation and higher costs.
If we don’t try something new,where exactly will things go?
My first thought was “Who will carry the can?” when a co-op serving say the NHS fubars, say when the toilets don’t get cleaned properly and a dozen die from infection. A contractor can of course lose a contract, and a hospital may be better for it. But the question would also be moot as seen from inside the coop – and that invites some thinking about “corporate responsibility”. My experience tells me only a minority of managers or workers have such capacity, the majority being far too feeble to resist falling into stereotypical behaviours, such as “workers” and “managers”, or narcissism, or toadying, etc.
But if playing the lumpen proletariat victim will comfort the nu liebores, the Tory education reforms will make them squeal and howl for years, I suspect. I certainly hope so: it is one thing for Hitler Balls and his cronies and lackeys to try and pull the wool over the eyes of adults who retain vestiges of thinking critically – it is quite another to indoctrinate and pollute formative minds of children with political myths and gonzo science.
That’s because in the NHS Stalinist model ill-People are costs, not customers.
Until users of the NHS are customers with a choice, there will be the continuous fail of the National Death Service
That is true AC1 but it is also true with an unregulated capitalist model.
You are arguing against yourself. Again.
Co-ops are great for basic services but as the management is of £ 50k/year quality the depth and imagination of their product range is usually a bit lacking. Good place to get your credit card. Bad place to manage your investments.
I bought a bottle of red wine in a co-op in Brittany once labelled Chateau Rochdale.
It was shit.
Mind you, the Co-Op idea is a stonker. You won’t find too much waste if the buggers are responsible for their own budgets.
The Co-op’s chicken Satays are a fucking abomination of processed meat n sawdust
but their organic ale in bottles is a thing of wonder
Yes yes. but people bury murder victims under their regional HQ’s, its this kind of thing wot marks the Co-op out as shit
Anybody who uses the expression ” as different as chalk and cheese” has never tasted Coop Wenslydale
Well said Grommet. Nothing quite like a bit of Wensleydale.
What’s the latest on Robert Green, Lord OH?
Anyone?
See today’s P&J, at least they are reporting something
There are a whole load of talks on this matter by Robert Green on YouTube.
thats cos you want everything from a box.get your wellys on and grab a spade
517377. And that’s after mindyerownbusiness years.
Approximately 2445 years
This fascist concept of local people running local services is an outrage to me Socialist comrades in the techin onions
Techers! Men the berricaeddes, fight the T
Well said Commissar!
My soviet hospital is the best in the world because it is run by the workers, for the workers. Long live Comrade Cameron! Long Live the Revolution!
According to the radio yesterday Labour have had these co-op’s for Ten years !
That’s the line Alaistair Campbell’s been feeding them:
http://www.alastaircampbell.org/blog.php?id=339
Read through his post carefully and you can hear the sound of the evil spin doctor shitting himself.
Thanks for that, I feel somehow dirtied by the whole experience. Off for a shower or ten….
The comments on his blog seem to be moderated.
Gutless shithead.
Scum sucking Tory pigs!
I will be invesyigating who wrote that. I just wrote Tory!
It was not Mrs H so it must have been the baby.
Hello?
Hello… I seen you on the tele last night.
Thanks suckers. I have now had enough clicks off that link to publish everyone is deserting Guidos site to mine.
Well you didn’t get my click you lying scumbag of a human being, instead I’ve got a hundred odd paracetamols you might like to take all at once!
Komrade Kameron is a leading member of Labour.
Long Live the Revolution! Long live the Glorious Leader!
John Lewis is a co-operative my husband and I fully support.
Do you “have a little list”?
Libertarians shop around. The Co-op Bank credit card advertised ‘lowest interest rate’. No-brainer. Co-op capitalism works like any other sort.
‘Cooperative’ the only form of capitalism which is acceptable to left wingers, as, in most examples, it clearly has a values-based foundation. Individual entrepreneurs are assumed to be selfish and brutal exploiters of humanity. It is assumed that the same people working as a group convert into caring mild-natured beings who love their fellow men.
It’s Adam Smith’s fault. He wrote that entrepreneurs were selfish and only the Invisible Hand (of God presumably) turned their efforts to the Common Good. Left Wingers decided to add to the effects of the Invisible Hand, which has caused entrepreneurs in Britain to become cautious.
Yet with ventures of high risk, which require constant change and fast reaction to it, single entrepreneurs are often more successful than cooperatives.
That’s because lefties either think they are God (Stalin, Tony Blair) or they build the State into this enormous idol that they believe can solve all societies ills.
I (correctly) misread your post.
“—-They build the State into this enormous idiot—-”
Co-Ops are pure Thatcherism. Everybody is a stakeholder.
Scum sucking Tory co-ops.
I did not write that, I only wrote co-op.
I will be investigating. It could have been Max the mini gorilla
Thatcher destroyed the Soviets, why are you sullying her name by suggesting that she was secretly a Soviet?
Or are you parroting what Comrade Cameron has told you?
You missed the main point of Guido’s post didn’t you? “As far as Guido can tell in 2 years it hasn’t actually done anything but proselytise yet.” In other words something with “Conservative” and “Co-op” in the same phrase will not work, it cannot work. Wake up! Can’t you see the way that our great party is being taken over by the left? Even Labour will be making cuts in the bloated spending of the NHS, what is Dave doing? He wants to *increase* NHS spending! And then he wants the NHS to be a group of workers’ collectives so that a trolley pusher will be able to say when your surgery will be scheduled! Cameron is nuts!
Long Live the Glorious Leader! Long Live the Revolution.!
Apart from the five and a half million unemployed Thatcher created. Funnily enough, they didn’t feel that they had much of a stake in Britain.
As opposed to how many “official” unemployed now, and god knows how many idle buggers getting disability benefit when they could be working, and all the other workless people who are off the radar due to guvmint number massaging. It would be interesting to know what the real unemployment figures actually are.
Instead Gordon employed the 5 million as transgender 5 a day outreach coordinating facilitators – using money borrowed from the future – and precipitating a big bust after his artificial boom.
We now have 10 years of payback.
And you thought Thatcher was bad for wanting real jobs
Under Thatcher from 1979 to 1987, NHS spending rose from £8 billion to £21 billion. Please come back Maggie your country needs you.
What a woman. Controlled, poised but lethal. Even with Alzheimers she’s better than the rest of them put together.
Guid with Fuid.
a Co-op government next what
Guido with Fuido.
Chicks with dicks
And she should know…..
Comrades beware – I live in a town where the co-op has a monopoly, two supermarkets and three small shops. Caring, sharing they are not and crafty pricing structures in each outlet. Guido please don’t try and pretend there are any co-ops left with socialist principles out there!
Socialist Principles!! What is that? Steal, oppress, cheat, lie?
Tax,tax,tax.
I’ll name that town in one John.
Scum sucking Granville co-ops.
I did not write that, except Granville, it was clearly Jane the mini gorilla.
I will be investigating!
socialist principles = Rent-seeking.
Another manifesto commitment
We will bring back Green Shield Stamps
AUSTERITY AUSTERITY AUSTERITY
You are way behind the times, sonny boy. It’s all goldfish points, airmiles and Tesco loyalty cards points nowadays. Green shield stamps have morphed into something far more sexy but still leave a nasty taste in the mouth. Now wriggle back to the No. 10 bunker and tell them about evolution. Oh, and get some yourself.
So eloquently put my glorious Leader.
Austerity has to be the key word in the Conservatives vote losing campaign
Just wait until todays inflation numbers hit 3%
Oy Vey
4%.
Inflation’s not 3% but 3.5%!
Gordon Brown’s legacy = stagflation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation
3.5% is a temporary number soon it will be 5%
But Merv says said “the inflation rise was “temporary”.
Yeah… temporarily at 3.5%, then in a couple of months, 4.5%, 5.5% etc. ‘Twas ever thus.
From the previous Labour disaster.
“The economy is improving. The rate of inflation is not increasing as fast as it was.”
We are still waiting for Pravda to announce revised GDP figures of 0.2% growth with the headline “Growth doubles under Labour”.
Yes, my local co-op has a monopoly and is an utter rip-off.
The problem is the monopoly, not the co-operation.
No the problem is the idea of ownership without investment, and this is what Dave’s suggesting. He’s saying that the trolley pusher in your local hospital can take over the running of the hospital. Management buyout is a good thing, trolley pushers being given an asset for no investment is something completely different.
trolly pusher? I am a porter. your all on my list
Their policy of buying up independant small grocery shops in rural towns and villages, is very bad news. They buy small places that tesco’s can’t be arsed with, staff them with utterly disinterested kids and stock no local produce, just junk processed food. However that creams off enough of the mass market to make it more difficult for proper local independants to survive.
Welcome to uniform blight and the labour dream of the lowest common denominator prevailing everywhere.
We don’t mind.We will loot any shop
I doubt if your local dole office will ever be run as a co-operative of happy, smiling workers, getting in early to clean the windows themselves in the morning because it saves money and sharing the rewards of their good practice. The main points of this pledge are that it can won votes, because most people in the public sector, I guess, hate the constant random misery coming from ‘head office’; and it frightens the central-control obsessives on the left.
A theory – the Left’s obsession with control arises from anxiety about impotence or the menopause.
Managers in State enterprises are driven by massive inferiority complexes.
They forever hide behind the bureaucracy and avoid any exposure which might pass judgement on their decisions.
Credit for good decisions is snatched upwards to the highest feasible level, blame for mistakes is shoved downwards to the lowest feasible level.
It always amuses me when the people paid enormous salaries because of their “responsibilities”, turn out not to be responsible whenever something goes wrong.
“It always amuses me when the people paid enormous salaries because of their “responsibilities”, turn out not to be responsible whenever something goes wrong.
Regrettably the situation at the BBC is very far from amusing.
you really are a twisted fucker.
They lick the windows at dole offices…don’t know what cleaning is…
Interesting theory but I believe it is to do with a combination of two factors: an aspiration towards being completely average and an appetite for adopting new ways of thinking which steer the individual towards finding a reason why something can’t be done as opposed to finding a way to do it.
There could be an enthusiastic take-up from communities, which have been deemed too small to warrant their own school (particularly primary).
If I had kids of school age, I’d home educate every time.
We’re better qualified than the teachers.
88 out of 346 Labour MPs are not standing again. 1 in 4 rats have already abandoned the sinking ship.
They will not, however, be leaving destitute.
having said that I cannot wait for one of the mongs to fill his car up with petrol and then discover that he cannot put it on expenses.
Ditto the new washing machine, laptop, mp3 player, weekly shop, council tax, fill of heating oil etc.
Maybe then they will realise why they are detested.
There may be a lot of mileage in this idea.
One of the way in which industry (largely but not exclusively manufacturing) has been transformed has been through the concept of “pulling” products through the production process rather than stuffing them in at the start. These ideas (JIT, Lean manufacturing, TPS or “Toyota Production System”, TOC etc etc etc) have been the basis of most of the management fashions and fads of the last twenty years or so. They decimated UK industry before it woke up (No you NuLab wankers it wasn’t just Maggie) and are loathed by old fashioned socialists because they are an anathema to its beloved command and control ideas.
The idea of a school being able to pull demand for places from parents through the quality of its output appeals to me.
The relationship between the Local Authority and the schools would be reversed, the LA becoming in effect a supplier to the schools rather than its master, providing materials and services. The school cooperative would presumably be able to shop around for its suppliers and by exerting control over their revenue would control their quality.
I really like the sound of that, but don’t expect a lot of support from the Neddies in the town halls.
More manufacturing jobs have been lost under Blair than under Thatcher. FACT.
Provide some evidence for this ludicrous claim.
Ludicrous is it?
Labour lost one million manufacturing jobs in the ten years from 1997 to 2007.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/apr/29/economicpolicy.labourparty
Then came the credit crunch and many many thousands more were lost.
When you hear a labour politician talk about “investment”, what they are talking about is borrowing money to fund public sector employment.
THe claim was that more manufacturing jobs have been lost under Blair than under Thatcher. You have supplied a figure that is irrelevant to the claim made. This does NOT provide evidence for the claim made.
“The idea of a school being able to pull demand for places from parents through the quality of its output appeals to me.”
Naive, I am afraid. Look, it is simple. If you want a good education for your kids you send them to a grammar school (or as Dianne Abbott did, you pay for them to go to a private school, which is the same thing). If Dave wants to improve education he would bring back grammar schools. Simples.
This idea of co-op schools is nonsense. It is nonsense for one simple reason: we have to work, so we don’t have the time to run a school! Who do you think will be running your co-op school? Will it be the successful car dealer, or solicitor, or factory owner? Of course not! Running a school successfully is more than a full-time job, so anyone who has a successful career will not have the time.
Is Eton run as a co-op, with the pupil’s parents going in and giving the odd lesson? Is Harrow? St Pauls? Westminster? No. The fact is the co-op school idea will only work on a small scale in the few villages where village schools have closed down. Not many kids involved there. For the rest of us we will have to endure the crappy inner city one-size-fits-all comprehensives and academies under Dave that we have now. Bring back grammar schools and things will change overnight, but spineless Dave simply cannot ever do the right thing.
One-size-fits-all grammar schools seem to me just as bad an idea as one-size-fits-all comprehensives. The liebores academies were attempting to escape that straitjacket, an impossiblity under a dirigiste regime and a Hitler Balls figure.
As for the running of a school, I believe the real clients/stakeholders should have more involvement. Why not let the kids interview prospective teachers and have an input into their selection? Why not let kids themselves be have an input on discipline and thus general morale? These things have been tried in the USA, in deprived areas, and the results were not what one might cynically expect.
So forget about hiring young teachers… they never have the confidence or expertise to discipline children anyway.
Use the huge untapped talent and experience of all the over 45s who’ve been made redundant and can’t find another job, ex-service people etc. The cut off point for teacher training is 50 which is plain ridiculous when most people are active and compos mentis well into their 70s.
I know about 10 people who would make marvelous teachers — degrees, good careers cut short, sitting around at home, when they could be educating either part or full time.
Just lurve your name.
I have a mystery….I was watching BBC1 last night – peak time – between 8 and 9 – and there was a programme about “cars, cops and criminals”. There was much proselytising about how useful all these security and number plate recognition cameras are, and, the programme featured the work of immigration officers with the arrest of lots of illegal immigrants in vans, and, unusualy,the confiscation of the white van of a member of the travelling “community.”
Can anyone explain why this might be?
It’s called governement propoganda, the beeb supproting it’s masters. It must of worked because this programme was screened between 9 and 10 last night.
Since the whole idea of “Green Taxes” (allegedly) is to stop you using petrol/oil, there will be a catastrophic and inevitable drop in tax revenue.
Cue “congestion charging” – so when we all drive electric hairdryers the ANPR will allow the Treasury to tax you just as much as driving a conventional car. Expect some fluff about how drivers are used to paying high taxes or some such shite.
Just laying out the groundwork in advance – look how wonderful it is, catching Eastern European onion pickers. No mention of what it WILL be used for.
And all this extra green electricity to run the nation’s transport (not just trains, but cars as well) going to come from wind turbines?
Labour pre-empting criticism of the surveillance society with a Pravda broadcast.
when that ANPR first came out their website showed a car with the reg plate highlighted that an RAC check showed it belonged to a moped.
They just want you to know that they are protecting you from the scum sucking gipsies and vietnanese.
The interesting bit was the Indian guy who grassed himself up so he could get a free plane ride back home.
My new APPLICATION DENIED stamp is very hot
I can’t get to recessmonkey.com.. it goes straight to recessmonkeytown.com
Bizarrre
thats because we snaffled the domain and pointed it at ours,thanks for all the free traffic
Yup, Now what?
Disappointing but predictable to see the lefites standing by David Wright. There will always been a place for liers in the Labour Party.
more con’s from the liblabcons
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rqH4fUbko2U/S3ku6pQqCkI/AAAAAAAAQHU/VKb1I8fdoos/s1600-h/posterTombstone.php.jpg
Inflation for january = 3.5%. Much higher than anyone thought. Proof that Labour cannot be trusted with the economy and that the massive deficit is going to strangle all chance of future recovery.
> Much higher than anyone thought.
Anyone?
Co-operative is just the lefty word for partnership. All the commies in the media are up in arms because Call me Dave is nicking their smug self-satisfied ‘brand’. Like that that loathsome term ‘progressive’, the Norf London lefty types are very precious about words, but not so precious about content or effect.
O/T – can someone explain to me in plain English way BBC bum boy Ray Gosling hasn’t been arrested by the cops yet, despite having ‘confessed’ to killing a former lover? If it were you or me or Joe Soap plod would have us up before the beak on a charge in an instant.
Is there one law for MPs and trendy media types, and another for the rest of us.
The BBC = the government’s propaganda department. They are too useful to the Project to be arrested. They get away with consuming vast quantities of Coke. They get away with murder.
True…true… It’s called the John Lewis Partnership…
Le Jonah’s curse:-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-sexism-blamed-for-attacks-on-baroness-ashton-1900548.html
61 a double yolker
Not speaking French is the least of her problems:
Just thinking, ” How can the French be accused of sexism, without knowing Aston’s sex”
Quite right Dan boy. She’s a bum sucking ugly pig.
Very reassuring though. 3 Presidents and a unilingual, not over bright foreign sec hardly instills fear of an imminent Brussels dictatorship.
I did not write this, it was Ety, the alien rabbit and I will be investigating!
The only reasons the Commission love Baroness Ashton is because she’s a Marxist, thick as shit and won’t be able to follow what’s going on.
Maybe McBroon has a sense of humour after all, sending this hapless old bat over into Europe? And given CMD a good idea for when he gets in? Subvert the EU by dumping all our surplus idiots on them… Common Purpose dead in its tracks – come to think of it – send McBroon when he’s out of a job. We don’t want him moping around outside schools for the next few years. Should bollox them for a generation or more…
Parents and most teachers would (and can) turn out well educated balanced offspring if supported “when required” without so called education experts and obsessive government social tinkering.
These experts seem to have collectively buggered up years of schooling for a great many and lost the UK a great talent, which is not surprising when you consider most so called experts never had a proper job from the day they left school themselves!
I’m sure most of these can produce long lists of qualifications granted to them by other like minded academics who’s main aim seems to be proving how clever they are, so if they are so clever how is it they have so spectacularly failed the majority in favor of the few.
Fuck support.Fuck off and leave us to do the job
Yes that’s the attitude.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/7231396/The-schools-chances-were-snatched-away.html
coz ive bettr thngs 2 do wiv my life
Great strategy by the LAbour party activists yesterday. They aren’t going out to meet any real voters. They are just going to send tweets to each other! That will win them the 4th term they so richly deserve.
They might be 11% down in the polls, but they all tweeted yesterday and even got a trending topic. Aren’t they clever?
My God I want to shoot something
CPI 3.5%
Labour’s combination of higher prices and low interest rates is screwing savers.
Fucking right. I am angry.
I think Coop shops which ‘sponsor/subsidise’ Labour MPs should be made to put a picture of them in the front window of every premises showing where the money goes, rather than kid punters that they get all of their profit back in the divi.
So there!
Nothing wrong with J Lewis style co-ops, but the formal Co-Operative movement in the UK is socialist in the extreme. I never use them unless it’s the last resort.
The British cooperative movement formed the Co-operative Party in the early 20th century to represent members of consumers’ cooperatives in Parliament. The Co-operative Party now has a permanent electoral pact with the Labour Party, and has 29 members of parliament who were elected at the 2005 general election as Labour Co-operative MPs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative#Co-operative_party
“29 members of parliament”
Including Ed Balls. Guido is a Balls supporter!
That makes him a Jock-strap!!……..
Which is why Cheese Lover refuses to support them. And then there’s the matter of the historically poor management a few years ago which allowed some senior managers at the co-op bank to extract £10M or so for a time, until they were caught.
“Alistair Watson, who is also a Glasgow Labour councillor, stood down from Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) on Monday for health reasons.
It comes after documents obtained under Freedom of Information showed SPT officials claimed more than £100,000 between 2006 and 2009. ”
Extrapolate this across all Quango’s/public bodies etc and potentially there could be a huge misappropriation of public funds.
Potentially?
The thought of being caught and jailed causes him to have heart problems.Well heres a reminder arrest,jail,have a fucking heart attack you robbing bastard.
It should be a sore neck from the piano wire.
“Strathclyde Partnership for Transport”
Sounds like a co-op to me.
“Extrapolate this across all Quango’s/public bodies etc and potentially there could be a huge misappropriation of public funds.”
It’s already happened – the clue is in the word ‘quango’.
Bank of England governor Mervyn King is writing a letter to the Chancellor to explain why inflation is more than 3%.
“Dear Darling, I have never voted Tory before, but….”
Dear Darling,
It’s all your masters fault.
Love and Kisses
Merv
Dear Darling,
Stop spending and borrowing SO MUCH money.
Merv.
Darling,It’s over.
The party’s over.
It’s all over my friend.
I`ve pissed myself again.
I’ll write the fucking letter if you like Merv.
Dear Darling.
regarding inflation in excess of 3%.
What the fuck did you think was going to happen when you printed 200bn quid? Don’t you read newspapers? Is the cause of Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation a fucking mystery to you?
You Jackass.
Regards,
Merv (Up the Villa).
Up the arse!
Oooooh !!
PS Barclays Cap done rather well out of it.
EAGLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The weakness of co-ops is the weakness of the committee.
A committee’s functionality declines directly in proportion to the square of the number of people in it.
Co-ops with a large number of members have to concentrate on streamlining the decision making process, which means delegating many decisions to individuals chosen by the members.
On a fairly small scale, that can work very well. The problems start to multiply as the size of the co-operative grows, but the John Lewis Partnership proves that it can work on a medium to large scale.
It’s very hard to see how the idea could be made to work for, say, the whole NHS, but implemented for individual departments within a district general hospital, it may have some merit. People like to feel that they have some say in their own business, and there is little more demoralising than feeling controlled by the dead hand of unseen (and unaccountable) bureaucracy. Removing that may unleash new enthusiasm.
It also works for John Lewis because they have a niche of the market that is prepared to pay extra cash for superior products and services. Or put it on expenses.
That works fine if you’ve got plenty of disposable income but not so well if you don’t. Hence no John Lewis or Waitrose in (say) Dunfermline. They do however have an M&S. But we all know that their quality has gone down the shitter over the years too.
The most important thing is to have a customer with choice.
That’s why the NHS is an utter failure.
CPI up to 3.5% Here we go – I want to get of this merry go round please.
Guido
If you offered to buy me lunch with your coop card it would make me feel regurgitational (is that a word… it is now)
So I would pay instead with a flourish of my coutts card.. Cheers!
I would’nt give a shite,unless it was a good curry then I’d have one,but I would happily let you pay anyway you liked. Tar
Coutts cards do not have the same cache ( don’t know how to find accute accent) since they opened a branch in Liverpool.
i know it is a bummer but they do have a hub cap repository
AltGr + vowel = acute-accented vowel on a PC.
áéíóú
véry clévér
geek
Coutts do dont de doh
Coutts have seen it all before… a relation of mine was a mate of John Bonham the Led Zeppelin drummer who had an account at Coutts.
He turned up at the Strand HQ and demanded to see his bank manager… the receptionist gave him some twaddle about having to make an appointment when Bonham said, “Listen darlin’, if I don’t see that fucker right now, I’m going to take a piss in your fucking fountain beside your desk — get him down here!”
You don’t need an accent to spell cachet correctly, you Scouse crétin!
As someone who switched from the Private to the Public sector, by far the greatest problem will be changing the mindset. The concepts of ‘cost’ and ‘savings’ are ( understandably, in fairness ) completely alien and in my staffroom, the words ‘market’ and ‘profit’ has people running for the exits.
profit was obviously alien to you too . Thats why you had to leave the private sector.
The Co-op owns Summerfields now. its now known as the Chav-op
Sellafield as it know in our household
They’re doing BOGOFs on irradiated fuel elements. Pop a couple in the central heating boiler and save on the gas bills.
Yes. Get in! CPI 3.5%, RPIX 4.6%! I told you Torture&GenocideBritain would lead the world! Britain is booming!
And a knighthood to the Brit skier who came 38th. 38th! How fucking good is that! Ten million taxpayer quid spent on salopettes and the fucker gets 38th! Bargain!
70-odd BBC fuckers on a freebie to Canada and they didn’t even show his run on the live coverage!
Mind you, I’d give Claire Balding one…
I think you will find that she bats for the other side
They’ll be telling us next that banking is ethical.
It’ll simply be more emotive grunting
I will pay for Ray Gosling to visit that sick bloke at 10 Downing Street.
Will “doing a gosling” now enter the lexicon for murdering your Aids infected lover.
Guido, a topic we actually agree on.
I don’t care whether the Tories or Labour or a mixture of the parties introduce co-ops around the country.
Historically they always succeeded. The principle is crucial. Power in the hands of the people running the service. Not central government. An ability to change it, and then of course benefit from it. The motivating factor not only being service-led but ownership and reward.
Fine if we can have co op law and legal services as I want the fucking state out of my life. I don’t want car tax, seen the roads.oh yeah and co op cops as well
I have been involved in a private industry that went through the transformation from a centrally controlled, inefficient, production led behemoth, to a locally controlled, market led ‘co-operative’. The increase in efficiency, morale and business performance was quick and remarkable. As was the decrease in sickness absence. And everybody shared the increased profit. It became a joy to work in and your actions had a direct impact.
The right way to go, but a warning. Once the spring is tightened it must be kept tight. The natural order of human nature is to once again create a centrally controlled, inefficient, behemoth. Combine such a transformation with getting shod of the people at the top who have created the over-complicated, bureaucratic mess. They are the cancer. Oh, and start with Brown.
Not sure about the last line. In politics I think you should accept when another party has the right idea/policy/approach. The philosophical difference between the two parties is hardly noticeable these days. They are all administrators, far more than principled-ideological politicians.
“I have been involved in a private industry that went through the transformation from a centrally controlled, inefficient, production led behemoth, to a locally controlled, market led ‘co-operative’. The increase in efficiency, morale and business performance was quick and remarkable. As was the decrease in sickness absence. And everybody shared the increased profit. It became a joy to work in and your actions had a direct impact.”
But the above paragraph is the exact reason for less government, more power and ownership to the people providing the services.
Agree although my second paragraph, albeit confused by my hatred of all things Brown, was about senior management in said organisations and not meant to refer to politicians.
An observation on organisational behaviour from my experience of industry and how it (pro) reacts to change. Always easier to get people to take on more responsibility than it is to get those to relinquish it. They become the bottle necks and the ‘cancer ‘ to which I referred. My point was that it is not just a case of setting the ‘new’ organisation structure. Those within have to be scrutinised and as necessary, changed.
“Those within have to be scrutinised and as necessary, changed.”
As always – something that is clearly not happening now, in the public sector especially, or maybe over-scrutinised so they feel stifled.
With ownership and shared-profits people take responsibility themselves without being asked, without being made and without being ordered.
Hence the failed principle behind ‘public-ownership’ of utilities, transport and other services. If the ‘power’ structure is centralised and distant, people just becaome apathetic and robotic.
Nope, power in the hands of a customer and choice of suppliers is crucial to wider societal gains.
Other wise the co-op is just another inefficient rent-seeker.
I have always banked with the C0-0p, free banking, invest elsewhere as their financial advisers are crap !!
Fuck the Co-op, Gay Fawker. Merv King and I are working like fecking blacks to print all the dough for your bankster pals. Too bad the fecking proles are goona get roasted by Weimar inflation. Ah well, as we say in
Golders GreenBelfast, fuck ‘em! Love and kisses, ‘paddy’ boy.Two guys are admitted to the hospital. They are in the same room but too weak to speak, they sleep for days.
After two weeks, the first man gets the strength to point to himself and say, “American.”
His roommate says, “Canadian.” Exhausted, they pass out.
Two weeks later, the American summons the strength to speak again. “Shawn,” he says in a frail voice.
“Dave,” his roommate squeaks. They both fall back into a deep sleep.
Two weeks later, Shawn rouses himself enough to speak. “Cancer,” he says.
Dave clears his throat and says, “Sagittarius.”
From Mervyn King
to: Alastair Darling
cc: Huhne
Dear Al,
I am writing to inform you that the level of inflation has risen rather sharply this month to 3.5%. The reason for this is…………………………………………………….
GORDON FUCKWIT CYCLOPS LUNATIC MR POISON GENES BROWN.
We would expect to see this figure reduce gradually over the next 3 months then fall sharply. The reason for this is……………………………………………………..
MCTWAT WILL BE GONE
I hope this clarifies the current situation Darling.
Mel xxx
Noted also and predictable and deliberate. Inflation could be near double digits by mid summer. 5%+ over 5 years mean they want to lock in your money in what will become a ‘low’ interest rate. These adverts started to appear over 6 months ago.
Aye. But if they’re paying you 5% imagine what they’ll be charging people to borrow the money. 7 – 8%. How’s that going to work for folk who’ve been used to mortgage rates at 3% or 4%?
Monthly mortgage payments doubled in the next year or two. Meanwhile the jackasses went and bought a new car (on Hire Purchase natch) in order to ‘save’ 2000 quid on the scrappage scheme. And Brown got his 0.1% of ‘growth’.
This recession hasn’t even got started yet.
From Merv’s actual explanation….
where pay
growth has been weak – the average weekly earnings measure of pay has increased by around 1% over
the past year.
That’s the average increase. Now we can be sure that the public sector didn’t get a mere 1% increase last year so that means that the private sector took a pay cut. And that was even before inflation trashed their savings and buying power. The private sector is being wilfully trashed by Brown as the cost of supporting all those over-paid, public sector non-jobs he created but we cannot afford.
He’s squandered well over 800bn quid so far just to buy those votes (and the votes of their husbands/wives/civil partners) and he’s not about to let them slip away just for the want of totally destroying the UK economy or printing 200bn quid. Let it not be said that Brown wasn’t prepared to take the tough decision to borrow another 20bn quid just to buy those votes.
Sorry. Let it not be said Brown did not take the ‘tough decision’ to borrow another 200bn quid just to buy those votes.
For those with credit cards (unsecured lending made easy) it is already happening and, as the saying goes, the only way is up.
Somebody is going to have to take the bull by the horns very, very soon because there is a limit to the amount of toxic debt that is being sucked up by the ‘government’ on our behalf to stave off the evil day.
/www.thisismoney.co.uk/credit-and-loans/article.html?in_article_id=499725&in_page_id=9&ct=5
Yeah. I’m reluctant to put any money away at 5% for five years as we can’t be sure that the interest rate may not have risen to a more respectable 7.2% (which I obtained on a one-year bond not so long ago).
Must invest in a crystal ball…
You can get shorter term bonds (2 years) paying 3.90% (call it 4%). A mixture of shorter and longer bonds might be the way forward here.
Or Gold.
Cheap at any price with this bunch of jackasses at the helm.
and silver,it’s more negotiable after the fires go out.
By way of a public service announcement for those with modest savings, suggest you open 2 vantage accounts with lloyds TSB – they pay 4% on sums between 5k – 7k. Only catch is that you have to put in 1k per month but it need only stay there for 24hours, then move it to your second vantage account for 24 hours and then back to original account. Not widely known but worth a look perhaps?
At the end of Callaghan’s reign, you could buy a 20 year guilt paying 15.5%
Ray Gosling didnt mean to kill that bloke. Its just that when he had him on all fours biting the pillow a stronger than usual hip movement from Go Sling made him swallow it. Choked or what?
Guido, according to Browns grasp of the animal kingdom, we should be attacking the ‘troughing sheep’ rather than the ‘troughing pigs’ as Downing Street reveals he was sent a roasted sheep rather than a roasted pig from a Middle Eastern country.
Easy mistake sheep/pig, pig/sheep. Obviously been taking lessons from his Foreign Secretary
Democracy is 2 wolves and 1 sheep deciding what to have for dinner.
Lasagne?
Sorry Oxford.Cambridge with a bonus of 10 can you answar it.
Has Downing Street clarified the roast pig was in fact a roast sheep now?
Let me guess. This was not Brown’s fault. he had been told it was a roast pig and so merely recounted the tale. His massive intelect did not skip a beat to query a bunch of Arabs sending him a roast pig. No sir. He was merely repeating what he’d been told.
The only other possibility is that the Maximum Imbecile made a mistake but since he is infallible (as evidenced by the doubling of tax on the poorest) then that cannot be the case.
Surreal.
Swift response only took ‘em 36 Hours.
No wonder our foreign policy initiatives in the region seem to get nowhere.
Sorry chaps, that was indeed a bit slow. Someone mislaid our copy of Janet & John Visit A Farm and we were a bit stuck without it. It can’t have been Gordon – too many long words for him.
So much has been written about JG Broon’s “towering Intellect”
Strange that there is absolutely no evidence of it. In fact quite the opposite. In reality he is an intellectual pigmy fuck-twat.
Baaaaaastards!
Mind you, since the only time the Cretinous Caledonian Cyclops normally encounters sheep is in the dark with his wellies on, it must be an easy mistake to make.
RIP ?
Recess Monkey is “the acclaimed children’s band from Seattle, WA”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Hilton
Does’nt say he’s dead,maybe wishes he was
scumbag backpedals
http://www.politics.co.uk/news/legal-and-constitutional/-scum-sucking-tweet-embarrasses-labour-whip-$1360547.htm
Couldnt Lord Paul advise the Tories .He has been very helpful to Gordon
Give him time, he’s over 70 and his reflexes are not as sharp as they used to be.
which ways the wind blowing
Please Jonah, wish Man Utd well tonight.
No word on the Winter Olympics? A Yank who comes in 15th for Britain in the luge and a 38th placed downhill skier. £10m+ lottery/taxpayer money well spent? The Brits are shit if not on a £1m+ bike or some posh boy in a dinghy. At leas tin my did we did it as amateurs, not handout-scrounging useless wankers.
shaddup twat. wot are you a fucking brit taliban
And do Croydon a favour by popping in to Brum on your way back.
People doing stuff for themselves, how the socialists must hate it.
“This morning, David Cameron and I set out why people should not vote Conservative for the first time.
Luckily, no one believes a word you say Eric, so Labour are still fucked.
You’re too fat, you great lardball.
From yesterdays poor search result to todays, but still nothing under news.But the names are out there so fuck injunctions won
http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&source=hp&q=Terry+Major+and+Sherriff+Graeme+Buchanen&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=&fp=a73fa2ac306dd28e
But THIS is what Brown and Mandelson are doing for businesses! IE, nothing of any use…
Labour minister caught lying, Brown knows he is unpopular and Brown still stuffing businesses
A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.
A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
B billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
C billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
D billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
E billion Pounds ago was only 13 hours and 12 minutes at the rate Gordon Brown is spending it.
Supoib.
brilliant can we tell the chaves
The roof’s caving in, the wolf’s at the door and the termites are burrowing into the wet-rotted foundations.
Phew! What a relief that the Tories can back-burner all that and concentrate on the important tinsel like co-ops tomorrow.
Yer man Fawker’s doing a fine job of distracting the cretins. Bonuses all round.
Of course, it all started in America. No more boom and bust! Oops, perhaps I should have asked the bankers, before I came out with that bollocks.
I went around the hol*c*ust display at the Imperial War Museum yesterday with my son.
Interesting to see how other governments scapegoated a section of the community to hide their own fuckwittery. Interesting too to see the part played by official propaganda in nurturing that hatred.
They even had an ‘Enabling Act’ passed too.
well done to that man educating the young.Now take him around the barren wastlands that used to be manufacturing.
Where’s the “Unionworld” display?
Congratulations to all at Barclays. You made better decisions during the boom years than other banks, did not sponge off the taxpayer for corporate welfare and have made a big profit. Enjoy your big bonuses but – a word to the wise – business customers will remember how you treated them in the recesiion.
Just loving the Westminster North story.
Plenty more where that came from.
Jesse Norman is, without doubt, on the right track.
Didn’t she sing with the divine Freddie Mercury at the Barcelona Olympics? Under Pressure… I Want to Break Free… It’s a Hard Life… I’m Going slightly Mad… Hmmm… Then she was a large black lady with a glorious voice and not…
I suppose its like Austin Healy’s really not being a person but a car, James Cameron’s being a superb journalist and not a crap director of mindless 3d juenile ‘epics’ and… and so on…
Wonderfully expressive soprano voice, too.
My best mate’s wife went out for a pint of milk last week and never came back!
she’s been gone days.
I saw him yesterday and asked him how he was coping.
He said ” I’m using that powdered stuff”
Yeah, I bet you’re on the powdered stuff as well you fucking crack head.
I have never voted conservative, but with the size of my property portfolio I like their Inheritance Tax thing.
Me too.
I have never voted conservative, but after the last 13 years someone has to muck the stable out.
Another real life example of my compassionate conservatism
Who needs a job when you can just get that 20 quid your Alzheimers’ suffering dad owes you every half an hour?
Get rid of these fucking jokers Guido, that’s 3 in a row now, and they’re all fucking shite.
Me and a friend have started a workers co op recently – we’re quite lefty but intend to be successful and make a profit. We’ve made our animated banner and look forward to seeing our advert here soon. Our co-operative is based upon the idea that a worker owns a share of the business – we expect pride and quality will be reflected in our products. The Tory idea of a co-op seems quite bizarre – an efficiency drive or bonus scheme where the staff choose who gets the chop. I suppose it could be fun sacking your boss… We did that to the Tories quite some time ago.
I was going to get mark and rich to do my cartoon this week but then thought better of it. I can do my own just as equally badly
http://political-graffiti.blogspot.com/
your right your just as shite.but I like your point er no I don’t
The attacks on Dr Pachauri, led by London newspapers and activists such as Lord Christopher Monckton, have stirred post-colonial sensitivities in India. The Renewable Energy Minister, Farooq Abdullah, compared Dr Pachauri to Mahatma Gandhi because, like India’s independence leader, he was being ”targeted for his good work”.
And like Dr Pachauri, Gandhi’s chief opponents were British, Mr Abdullah said.
Dr Pachauri told an Indian newspaper he was an easy target because he represented ”the poor and the most vulnerable” and alleged the money available to climate sceptics was far more than that available for ‘’saving the planet from climate change”.
Large Indian businesses stand to make very. very large amounts of money out of the carbon dioxide cult. Really offensively huge sums. I mean, if you were very, very greedy indeed you might still feel that the amounts of money large Indian companies have already made and are likely to make in the future from this scheme were a trifle excessive. The amounts of money large Indian businesses could make if they can keep the CO2 show on the road would puzzle even Gordon Brown to spend. Without wishing to labour the point, Indian businessmen who are already very rich (and do not give a stuff about the starving beggars at their gates) hope to become stupendously richer by engineering transfers of funds from taxpayers in the West.
Each day brings us closer to the end of this wretched and corrupt government. Brown’s pitiful interview with Morgan won’t have done him any favours. “I said we should get married soon, please. And she said yes, thankfully.” How romantic. How authentic. How badly rehearsed. Herr Campbell should have spent more time prepping Gordo on talking about his “romance” with his beard, sorry, wife.
Did’nt I teach him anything
A marriage is being arranged, would you like to attend?
“Here’s the deal.”
Fuck it we may as well come right out with it. Theres too many of you and not enough to go around. Most are lazy go the shops pyjama wearing pot smoking coke sniffen smack jackin alcho poppin lager guzzlin chippy munchin tracky suited trainer footed half witted shit brained no good low life space wastin Gobshites
“he even set up the Conservative Co-operative Movement”
Does it have any members yet?
you fucking member jimmy
Its that this particular Co-Op was the first to ban hunting on its lands, bunch of labour loving oinks that they are, never been near one since and never will go near one.
In France , many of the health care professionals are self employed – check a comment in the Spectator .
Don’t the Co-Op fund the Labour party to the tune of millions? Isn’t Gordon himself technically a “Co-Op Party” MP?
You are right and at one time the Co-Op Bank was subject to close surveillance by the Bank of England because it was held to have loaned excessive amounts to Labour, in relation to its’ capital base, and breached the prudential policies which required it to operate a balanced loan book.
Is that surveillance still continueing?
[...] even learned this week that Guido banks with the Co-op. You really couldn’t make it [...]
New blog:
Gandhi Speaks! :: Uncooperative Quangos