Labour's Plan to Spike Your Pensions and Make Them Worthless.

In the King's speech, Labour set out a plane to make serious changes to pensions management in the UK. 

The Pension Schemes Bill is being fanfared as a scheme to boost the pension pots of individuals who have small pensions.

But as we all know, when government get involved in anything, the reality is far from the original intention of the legislation.

For instance government intends to sweep up smaller pension pots and amalgamate them into one single mega-fund. On the face of it, the economies of scale sound good: the mega-fund will cost less to administer.

However, it's the management of the fund that is the issue. Government are hinting in the legislation that they will be using the money to invest in pet projects like net zero etc. 

Also your money will be invested in the UK only. The rules will be it will not be invested in growing economies where the likelyhood of a decent return is higher.

Instead your pension money will be invested in a failing economy, managed by a failing government, in yet another attempt to prop up a reduction in GDP, just like the importation of immigrants improves GDP, but reduces GDP per capita.

In other words a classic way to lose money. The goal being funding pet projects and not investing money in places where it's guaranteed to make a profit. As we all know, Government are not financial experts. They believe their own propaganda that money sinks like net zero, carbon capture etc. that have never returned anything like the money invested in them will suddenly become profitable and boost these enslaved pension pots. 

So your pension money is going to be spunked on unprofitable pet government projects with no expectation of a return and worse still, no likelyhood of a return or anything close to a profit.

In effect the government will piss away your pension pot.

Are you happy about that?

Are you happy about the government appropriating your pension for their own political ends?

The Liverpool Attack Gets More Complicated. Snipers?

There is now video on the internet showing two snipers on a rooftop at the same time as the Liverpool attack.

Looking at the "snipers", their clothing and their weapons, I'd wager they were a couple of kids with air rifles made to look like something beefier. 

Except there are a few details that are not right from the point of view of being a couple of kids thinking it's funny to pretend to be Police Snipers and there are things that say they are not official Police/Army snipers. So who are they?

Of course the video could be a set-up: the video taker could be in league with the so-called snipers and they were making a video for content and clicks on Twitter.

Police/Army don't generally wear hoodies. Police will be easily identifiable and Army may not be as identifiable, but will not be wearing hoodies.

The barrel of at least one rifle appears to be a very small calibre. The use of a lightweight tripod suggests you're not expecting much in the way of recoil. The tripod user's rifle looks like an air rifle or at best a .22 calibre. The kneeling sniper's gun looks a little more robust, like a Barrett .50 Calibre. Not sure why a Police or Army sniper would be using such a weapon in a Western city where the threats are not thousands of yards away. The tableau presented on Twitter shouts "airsoft" at me.

Not only that. both hoodie-wearers have guns. Neither of them are spotters. Having no spotter and wearing hoodies blinds you to other threats. Or people on a higher rooftop taking a video they then post up on Twitter. Not very stealthy if you're Special Forces. Of course you could be the reverse-intuitive special forces that are looking like numpties by design, but I'm not convinced.

So that's why I'm sceptical and err on the side of a couple of numpties larking about that got caught by someone with a mobile phone.

How is The Reform Party Doing in Local Government?

From the deafening silence from the media, pretty good it would seem.

After all, if there were any mis-steps in Reform's governance, the media would be passing it round like a hot potato.  We would know about it, it would be plastered all over the newspapers and the TV news in a nanosecond. 

The lack of finger pointing tends to suggest that Reform are just getting on with it, quietly abandoning the excessive expense of net-zero targets, DEI targets and Diversity targets, all of which add to the local government budget for no appreciable gain.

Hopefully they'll also cut the budget to supply advocates disguised as interpreters for foreign nationals that don't speak English. 

After all, why should someone who is here from another country be given help to navigate the system when people that live here aren't? Where's the equality in that? Supply advocates for one, supply them for all. Or none at all. 

Anyway, looks like we're on for a Reform government at the next election. If they are this sound in local government, more and more people will lend them their vote when it comes to national government. Especially if those areas released from the shackles of excessive unproductive expenditure start to thrive.

Definitely not Learning The Lessons From Southport.

The strange case of the Liverpool car driver continues.

There is now more speculation because it appears from online sources that the "53 year old white man arrested at the scene" may not be the driver. Video evidence shows the driver to be younger than 53.

The 53 years old white man is alleged by many online to be one of the crowd attacking the driver.

Such is the low threshold of trust with the Police and their ability to lie to forward an agenda, it's quite believable that they arrested a white geezer for attacking the car and then went public about that in order to hide the true identity of the driver.

"Arrested at the scene" does not make him the driver. Nice try at obfuscation, Merseyside Police.

It's getting to a pretty low point in public services when everything they say is qualified, everything is filtered towards a particular narrative. The truth is never spoken by these people. Whether it's Police, Military, Civil Service or Politicians, you know they are lying when their lips move.

It used to be a matter of pride, a matter of obligation  to tell the truth in Public Office. What has changed? Why can't official sources tell just the plain truth any more?

Maybe they think we can't handle the truth. Maybe they can't handle the truth themselves. 

Or more likely, they can't handle the aftermath of the majority finding out the truth.

Right now, Merseyside Police need to come out with the truth. Identify the attacker. Confirm his age and ethnicity. If they told the truth, then it wouldn't be hard to quash rumours, would it?

UPDATE:

The BBC are describing the 53-year-old man as the driver. It's possible he is, but the video of the driver taken on the day doesn't appear to be a 53-year-old. 

We'll see I guess.

Not Quite Learning Lessons from Southport.

The Police have thankfully released details of the driver of the car in the Liverpool atrocity. 

I still think that the general details like age and ethnicity could have been released the evening of the incident in order to quell tensions.

The issue was the delay in getting the information out in the public domain. The Police's natural response is to not release information, which is wrong-headed. It's not like releasing general information would prejudice any future trial.

As it is, the unsaid information does allow speculation.

Was the 53-year old white man (note the specific mention of the skin colour) of a certain religion known for driving cars and trucks into crowds?

Was the 53-year old white man from a country like Ukraine maybe?

Was he Russian?

Was he an aggrieved football fan?

Or was this a case of extreme road rage?

The problem with releasing so little information is the public cannot assess any risk that may happen in any future event. It's incumbent on the government and the authorities not to hide information or even worse lie, so the public can asses risks. 

Its also necessary for the authorities to release as much information as possible so that the public can also decide on what policy they would like the authorities to take going forward and if necessary vote on when the opportunity arises.

Anything else is pure manipulation.