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  tax in france, from a correspondent

beta edition - all figures not fully confirmed.

About 25% of those working in France, ‘work’ for the government.
This does not include those on the dole or those in undemanding, ‘post-schooling’ education.

Marker at abelard.org

I sent in my tax declaration today. *%$&# government bastards - they steal my money in at least six different stages.

Let’s all stop for two minutes hate!

  1. They steal from my employer the equivalent of 45.5% of my nominal salary, before paying me.
    This absurd level of theft not only means that nominal salaries are bizarrely low in France, but also it means the companies are much more reluctant to hire new people than in other countries, leading directly to France’s high unemployment rates.
  2. They steal from my remaining monthly salary (part 1): ~19.3%.
  3. At that point, they steal another ~3.6% from my ever-dwindling monthly salary (part 2 - they make a new total after the first theft and apply this next theft to the new total).
  4. At the end of the year, they steal a further ~7% from what’s left.

And they haven’t finished yet.

  1. They steal from me for pretty much everything I buy (sales tax): 19.6% for most things.
  2. They steal from me again when I try to sell the thing from which they stole from me when I bought it (no.5): usually the same as the sales tax.

Then we come to sundries.

  • Say 115€ for a TV licence.
  • Heaven knows how much tax on petrol.
  • 80€ if I don’t notice one of my car lights have blown.
  • I hope that I don’t inadvertently break a speed limit, or that’s more to their coffers
  • And then I may wish to buy a house. If I take out a mortgage, they’ll grab another 2 or 3% tax on the mortgage. The estate agent will have to pay another 6 to 7% on the price of the house (it hides the tax better that way). If I sell the house, another 6 to 8% will be swallowed up in the cracks. If the house is less than five years old when I sell it, They’ll charge V.A.T. on the sale - yes, nearly 20%, believe it or not. No need to wonder any longer why the French tend to rent.
  • At least 30% of any medical bills must be paid directly, or you’ll need private insurance to cover that bit.

There’s yet more, but I won’t bore you with it.

The Fisc (French government tax thieves) really know how to pluck the goose here!

The high unemployment rates are made worse by the laws that make it extremely expensive and difficult to fire people. Basically, the people who have jobs are protected by the system and those that don’t are cheated by the system.

In other words, France protects the well-off and swindles the poor - the absolute opposite of the dishonest claims for this ‘wonderful’ socialist ‘utopia’.

I’m OK because I’ll never have trouble getting a job, but the law is supposed to be more to protect the unable, not people like me! Sick.

“I’m alright. why should I give a damn the poor are being cheated by this totally stupid system?” It’s this attitude prevalent in France that means nothing is likely the change anytime soon. You could almost claim the suburb rioters have a case to make.

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summary of first bush speech since leaving white house

[Apparently no transcript is available because recording was prohibited.]

“Just like freedom is going to prevail," Bush told the 2,500 members of the Economic Club of Southwest Michigan, "our economy is going to be the envy of the world.”

“ There I was, the former president of the United States. With a plastic bag," he said. "Picking up that which I had been dodging for eight years. Life was good."

“The former president's remarks drew loud applause and laughter throughout, but his largest and longest ovation came in response to a question on his legacy. A woman asked Bush how he hoped her 12-year-old daughter and the rest of her generation would view his presidency.

“ "I hope it is this," Bush said. "'The man showed up in the office with a set of principles and he was unwilling to sacrifice his principles for the sake of popularity.'" ”

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on proportional representation (p.r.)

socialist ‘new’ labour now desperate to change the voting system as they sink

“Up to 100 Labour MPs have expressed interest in electoral reform, putting the Health Secretary at the forefront of a popular party campaign.”

pr in europe between the two world wars

FPTP=first past the post
PR=proportional representation
STV=single transferable vote
SNTV=single non-transferable vote
This is a list system. For example, there may be ten candidates with voters having three votes, the three top-scoring candidates being elected.
Double ballot=a form of PR,
where voters whose candidate was eliminated in the first ballot, can vote for one of the two remaining candidates in the second ballot.

Australia (FPTP) 1944
Austria (PR) 1920
Belgium (PR) 1920
Britain (FPTP) 1911
Canada (FPTP) 1940
Denmark (PR) 1907
Finland (PR) 1907
France (Double ballot) 1905
Germany (PR) 1927
Ireland (STV) 1911
Italy (PR) 1919
Japan (SNTV) 1936
Netherland (PR) 1916
New Zealand (FPTP) 1930
Norway (PR) 1906
Sweden (PR) 1934
Switzerland (PR) 1924
US (FPTP) 1935
Spain also had a form of P.R. at the breakout of the Civil War in 1936.
[Note: dates indicate when the country concerned had the electoral system listed at that time. They are not start dates.]

Between the wars, essentially all advanced, large countries using PR ended up with weak, or dictatorial, governments. Those with First-past-the-post elections managed to maintain their stability, despite the great stresses of the times.

“Generally, FPTP electoral system was contested in UK. STV was narrowly defeated in 1916 and the alternative vote passed the House of Commons in 1928 only to be vetoed by the House of Lords. (Steed 1975, 43-49) Most importantly, all three parties were internally split over STV.” [Quoted from allacademic.com]

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the tearing apart of the intellectually shallow obama and his leftist democrats gets under way - cheney transcript

Obama is giving Iran time to build nuclear bombs

“Has President Obama inadvertently given Iran the green light to develop an atom bomb? I only ask because it appears to be the logical conclusion to be drawn from his announcement this week that he is giving Iran until the end of the year to decide whether or not to co-operate with the West over its controversial nuclear programme.”

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  gordon brown’s impressive leadership?

“If Margaret Moran was not toast already, she definitely is now. The FT has caught her using her Commons office to promote her husband’s firm “EQN”. Then they caught her lying about it.”

“When EQN bids for funding were unsuccessful, Ms Moran repeatedly used Commons-headed paper to intervene with local authorities and Whitehall departments to express her “concern and amazement”.”

“A statement authorised by Ms Moran in response to the FT stated that “Margaret has never written any letters for EQN on parliamentary headed notepaper”.

“However, the FT has seen copies of letters written by Ms Moran in 2007 on Commons-headed paper supporting EQN funding bids and personal invitations to EQN events sent to businesses on Commons headed paper.

“ Cameron sacks MPs before dawn when the evidence shows them to be red handed. Gordon just dithers.”

Gordon is part of the problem. Of course he doesn’t sack his cronies.

And, of course, they dont have the sense of shame or honour that leads Tories to resign.

Brown the Clown would have resigned years ago if he had any sense of honour or responsibility, or his hangers-on would have long ago seen him for the dope that he is, and removed him.

Incompetence is inherent in socialism. There are direct and rather obvious consequences that flow naturally from that fact.

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in among the dross, a writer who is not clinging to the past as the UK parliamentary storm rages

“But whether this system has advantages or not is irrelevant - because the information revolution makes its continuation impossible. The replacement of the monolithic mass media with a much messier, much freer market in information changes everything. The media is fragmenting and taking Parliament with it.

“The future of politics in the open era is thus looser, much less whipped, and characterised by the impossibility of anyone cornering political information and keeping it to themselves. There will be more referendums, public consultations, petitions and the like. There will be less central accountability and more individual accountability for politicians. The spotlight now being shone on the behaviour of individuals will not be turned off again.”

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interviews with oz ex-pm

A series of five video interviews with former prime minister of Australia, John Howard. Howard was a member of the Australian House of Representatives from 1974 to 2007. He was prime minister from 1996 to 2007, the second-lonest serving Australian prime minister.

The fourth in this series of interviews is the most interesting:

“John Howard discusses the origins and implications of the global financial crisis.”

Interview onetwothreefourfive

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on being a statesman

Context, from a correspondent:
“What the economic policies of the Thatcher / Reagan era have created is amazing soloists who find extreme difficulties
performing as an orchestra.”

The thieves in Thatcher’s time were the union shirkers, a state within a state that cared for nothing but themselves. You could call them an orchestra, just as you could call a mafiosi an orchestra. You could call big pharma an orchestra - they innovate, but are also riddled by corruption. Unions, and big pharmaceutical companies, and many other ‘unions’, are conspiracies against the public interest. But you do get new medicines.

Those medicines are ultimately produced by dedicated people in laboratories, most of whom have little time or interest in concerning themselves with sales etc.

Government’s job is not to run ‘orchestras’, it is to mediate between them with law. Unfortunately, so many governments, like the present one in Britain, are corrupt and more interested in enriching themselves. They are more interested in gaining funds for their party orchestra and burying their snouts in the trough. So big pharma, and dozens of other orchestras, pay MPs to make ‘laws’ in their favour. And the politicians sell out. For the scale of the problem, and the corruption in US politics, see Dick Morris’s three books.

Only an honest statesman like Thatcher will take on the unions and damn the consequences of collecting fleas that will ever bite. You will never get that honesty, let alone sanity, from the Left. Even Thatcher held back from standing against the middle-class unions like the medics, lawyers, teachers etc.

Anyone who takes on the Left’s state, stuffed with dependency clients, will suffer continual self-centred whining and personal attack, just as Thatcher has never been forgiven by the union free-loaders.

You do not really become universally popular by being honourable and effective, by tackling the vested interests. When do you see the Brown-Bliar Broadcasting Corporation interviewing real scientists? Most people will not understand them anyways. Instead you hear ‘spokesmen’ and captains of industry, or professional popularisers like Dawkins.

David Cameron has a job to do cleaning up after the latest devastation by socialism. Most of the ‘advice’ I hear is just more of the vested interests hoping to gain an edge. Let’s hope that Cameron will be more independent-minded and do what is right. However, his power will be limited by the nature of human folly, just as Thatcher’s power was limited.

And in the end, if he does what is right, he will also be plagued by the fleas just as Thatcher was and is.

The political and media fleas tried to get rid of Cameron before he could recover the Conservative Party from John Major’s internal socialist coup, just as they managed to get rid of Ian Duncan Smith. Presently, the hacks in the leftist fossil media never stop carping.

Anyone who expects statesmen to have an easy life does not study human foolishness.

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having no degree is an essential qualification to lead socialist ‘new’ labour - livingsommat

‘New’ Labour broadcasting prepare 2010 socialist manifesto:

“He added that among leading Labour figures only he, Mr Johnson, and former deputy prime minister John Prescott, had not gone to university.”

[Translation from SocialistSpeak in green text.]

We need uneducated leaders, says ex-mayor.

“On working-class voters, Mr Livingstone said: "Alan speaks their language. If you want to undermine the BNP, Johnson could do that." ”

Our main opposition is the BNP, says failed mayor.

“In her article for The Observer, Ms Blears said the public did not believe many government policy announcements.”

Most people know we’re lying now says the screecher.

“She suggested leaving "slick presentation and clever soundbites" to the Conservatives.”

We have to appear thick if we are to win. That shouldn't be difficult, says this dumbo.

“She wrote: "Promote your message via YouTube if you want to. But it is no substitute for knocking on doors or setting up a stall in the town centre.”

Down with this new-fangled technology, says Luddite.

“ "We need to have a relationship with the voters based on shared instincts and emotions." ”

We need emotionalism, brains are out. That’s let’s me in, she says.

“Ms Blears, a strong supporter of Mr Brown's predecessor Tony Blair, said the government's handling of the Gurkhas issue had put it "on the wrong side of the British sense of fair play, and no party can stay there for long without dire consequences".”

We must pretend to care. I have a caring face.

“She said Mr Brown would lead the party into the next election, but that the government must appear more "human" to defeat the Tories.”

We can still fool some of the people. Even I can manage that.

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