I read this morning that Ian Duncan Smith has jumped on the criticisms of the Benefit Cap that will limit the amount available to the families of the un-employed. Claiming that the principle that it should always be more rewarding to work than claim benefit is one that everyone will support.

However it suggests that claimants are exercising a choice over whether to work or claim benefit, to in IDS’s words ‘work hard and commute long hours’ or presumably sit on their arse’s watching daytime TV. As if £35k jobs were in abundance! I’m sorry but it’s the same old nonsense and distraction that runs well in the tabloids. It sets people against each other to obscure what lays at the heart of the problem; how money is created.

The Benefit Cap is about moving the un-employed out of high value city centre properties to reduce costs as the house price bubble that has continued grow even in tough times shows no signs of shrinking and bringing relief to the government’s Housing Benefit burden. It is however a burden of their own making.

Why do property prices continue to rise when it’s plain that prices have moved beyond many people’s ability to buy? The answer has less to do with demand and more to do with where the money comes from in the first place.

The modern banking system has developed in such a way that 97% of all the money in the economy is created by Private Banks. You’d be wrong if you thought the Government or the Bank of England creates most of our money as the BoE prints around just a measly 3%.

What’s more banks don’t need to actually have the money you apply for to extend you a loan or a mortgage. The bank just creates digital money out of thin air for you to make your purchase albeit a car, holiday or a home. It’s simply a matter of creating numbers in your account.

As banks control how most of the money in the economy is used they inevitably choose the safest bet. Property for the banks is a no brainer… Simple, automated credit checks enable decisions to be made quickly and if in the end the borrower can’t meet the loan the bank can repossess. Consider for one moment the position of the bank in this scenario. The bank created the money for your mortgage out of thin air but if you can’t keep up the repayments they get the very real asset that was your home!

In the last decade the money supply created out of property debt has ballooned dwarfing the money available to the productive economy. While banks have fuelled a property price boom the money made available to businesses continues to be rationed.

For years we have been fed the myth that rising property prices are beneficial, creating wealth, jobs and a sense of wellbeing. Looking around it’s not hard to see why we’ve been robbed. As property prices rise, essential but marginal businesses start to disappear. When the value of the village bakery is distorted by what it could fetch as a country home it soon becomes history together with pubs, petrol stations and independent stores. In towns, workshops and small industries disappear along with anything else that is more valuable as residential or commercial property. Historic places of work like wharfs and canal side workshops become ‘waterfront properties.’ Rising property prices are as destructive of community as they are a sap on the productive economy stealing places to work and marshalling money away from the things that generate real prosperity and diversity.

In the past a blend of social and private housing ensured that even in cities there were necessary homes for key workers and the low paid who helped to fulfil necessary functions. Today, the Benefit Cap is just another step along the road that Margaret Thatcher began with the sale of Council Houses; from mixed communities of incomes, skills and backgrounds to segregation along the lines of ability to pay, to convenience for those with money and increasing commuting for those who can’t.

The power to create a nation’s money supply endows the Banks with tremendous power and it is clear that they influence many government decisions including financial regulation. The banks have acted in their own interest for too long and clearly in way that has created many distortions in the way things are valued. Government cannot scapegoat scroungers, the work shy unemployed, immigrants or whatever else they can dream up to cover the reality that they are complicit in a allowing private corporations to create our money.

There is an alternative way and I would urge you to begin to understand the monetary system… it’s not as complex as they would have you believe. For real change to come about depends on how much our current government has vested in maintaining the status quo … the level of privilege, wealth and connections in the current administration suggests that change won’t come easy!   Ken Finn

Read/View/More Info

http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/

http://www.neweconomics.org/

George Monbiot reported on a tax heist by this government which was dissed by the BBC’s Robert Peston… The above is a good rebuttal

The original by George, ‘A Corporate Coup Detat’ is a compelling read – Read it Here

What if Gadaffi Survives?

If the Colonel looks to recent history he may take heart from the events of June 4th 1989 in Tiananmen Square. Slaughter on BBC News
The blood was hardly dry from the slaughter of nearly a thousand pro democracy protesters by the Chinese Army when Conservative Trade Minister Micheal Hesteltine headed the largest Western business delegation to ever visit Beijing. Then as always trade was promoted as the way to strengthen the liberal movement within the hard-line regime.

So what if Gadaffi wins back control in perhaps a short but bloody strike on the protesters? Will the Middle East Peace Envoy, Mr Blair be hugging the Colonel once more, will BP be lobbying for a return to business as usual?

The World’s leaders are lining up to condemn the man but in two years time will they be lining up to do business with him?

Boris Johnson jokingly said that he was in favour of Sharia law to deal with bicycle thieves after getting his nicked.

Extreme as it seemed even in jest, cutting off the hands of bike snatchers didn’t even stir the ex-Synod members, retired Generals and Brigadiers, the likes of whom who called for the sacking of the Arch Bishop of Canterbury for even discussing something altogether milder.

These last weeks I’ve been wondering if Boris is as enthusiastic about Sharia Law as he was having been caught hiding over a Quarter of a Million in donations received from wealthy individuals to his campaign coffers. That and taking a rent free office from a property developer needing help with a local planning issue in Westminster.

As a candidate for Mayor of London this guy is a joke. It pretty much sums up the state of politics that he is the best man the Conservatives can field for the job of running the Capital. Ken must be quaking in his boots!

While the London Evening Standard does it’s best to trash Livingstone’s hopes, Boris does a pretty good job on himself.  You should check out some of his gaffs on You Tube, I especially liked the football tackle. What a prat!

On the bicycle affair, Paul Merton put it beautifully, “If he can’t look after his bike what chance has he of looking after London!”

Of late there’s been much talk about our ‘broken society’ from the likes of David Cameron and the Arch Bishop of Canterbury. According to them the glue that binds society is breaking down and our sense of community is in decline.

I would agree that we are becoming disconnected from one another and our true nature but if anything is broken it is our political system. It’s a system broke of ideas. It’s one that trots out the same agenda election after election regardless of party. So homogenised that it hardly seems worth voting.

If society is disconnected its no surprise when parliament is inhabited by a bunch of schizophrenics. Climate change is now regarded as our biggest threat and yet while piloting a bill through parliament to control emissions this government plans for more runways, roads and coal fired power stations.

This week members of parliament were indignant that one of their own should be bugged while talking to a constituent in prison. However the following day Gordon Brown found it appropriate to make it easier for the security services to bug the rest of us.

And while just about every week a politician is embroiled in one kind of a fiddle or another the government launches a benefit fraud campaign. It invites the general public to shop their neighbours with a confidential hot-line. If there’s one thing that divides people its fear and suspicion. So while the politicians talk of the need to mend society; to build bridges it turns neighbours into snoopers. Catching fraudsters should be police business.

Crime and Justice will no doubt be high on the agenda in the forthcoming election campaign. Governments love prisons and and while they’re busy building more they hardly seem to question why they don’t work as a deterrent or deliver reform. They love long sentences too, as long as it doesn’t apply to them.

Having been grassed up for paying his son money for work he was less than entitled to, Conservative MP Derek Conway is hardly repentant. His penalty is hardly draconian either; he will have to pay back just £13,000 of the £40,000 he scammed from his bit of HP Benefit Fraud. It doesn’t look like he’s going to do time other than a ten day ban from the Houses of Parliament, hardly porridge. Meanwhile a single mother-of-four has been jailed for eight months for illegally claiming half that. The council spooks caught her living a ‘high life’ on Burger King money while claiming benefit.

While politicians live in their disconnected world the policies they put forward will continue to miss the point. To be pointless and without benefit… Benefit Fraud