Posted by
on July 01, 2010
Public finances have in common with astronomy the incomprehensibility of its numbers. Can an average human being visualize £7 trillion for instance?
Quoting a confused minister talking to Malcolm Tucker: I don’t know what level of reality I should be operating on. The UK government does. It knows exactly how much money it recognises as debt. Which is significantly less than the liabilities that it currently holds:
- Public pensions £3.3 trillion
- Lloyds and RBS bail-out £2.6 trillion
- Official National Debt £1.0 trillion
- Nuclear decommisioning £0.1 trillion
- Public Finance Initiative debt £0.1 trillion
Source: Burning our money – Lastest on National Debt
Public Finance Initiative is an euphemism for contracts for builders and infrastructure consultants.
Posted by
on June 25, 2010
The Office of Fair Trading found 103 building firms infringing the law in cover pricing in projects in the UK. The very British practice involve builders disclosing to one another or agree upon what price they intend to quote for building projects across England. The inflated quotes mislead the client (mostly authorities and councils) about the real price of their projects.
The OFT found projects worth in excess of £200m, including schools, universities and hospitals, between 2000 and 2006. This is where building firms submit quotes for jobs that are not actually priced to win the contract, so the client gets a misleading idea about the real extent of competition.
Kier Group was fined £17.9m, Interserve was fined £11.6m and big names like Carillion, Balfour Beatty, Galliford Try, Ballast Nedam, ISG Pierce and Crest Nicholson, John Sisk & Son, Connaught, Concentra and Durkan Holdings and Bowmer & Kirkland all more than £5m.
The Chartered Institute of Building also found that cover pricing was a widespread corruption practice across the building industry.
Posted by
on April 26, 2010
- The nose-diving currency exchange rate of the sterling turn Britons into residents with no spare cash to spend
- Most Britons bought cheap flats on the conspicuously over-concreted costas that do not have a way back to the market anymore
- The increasing defaults of British expats with low incomes that can not pay their mortgages weight on the provisions that Spanish banks need to raise to meet banking standards by the Banco de España
Continue reading…
Posted by
on February 19, 2010
This blog does not bear ill against the UK. This country however would benefit greatly if so many people were not living in denial. The line up of the UK as the weakest economy in Europe is offuscated by commentators by diverting the attention to other troubled economies.
Instead of admitting that the chances of a colossal economic cataclysm are alarmingly high, many comentators rubbish the recent financial situation of Ireland, Greece, Spain, Italy, etc.
The probable collapse of the debt burden and the sterling in 2010 calls for a reality check, pronto. The UK is a little country clinging to, but ignored by, the US. Berating the EU bureaucracy is cynical and pointless. The corruption of the UK political class and the burden of its gigantic public service (7 million public servants) should suffice to start sorting out its own house before criticizing others.