From the Summit of the Moral High Ground

Taken from "Tales Of Plunder - Pirates & Privateers"  (Italics are quotes from Cyril) The paperwork (right) appeared through my letter box in August 2013: Take a close look at this alleged ‘charge sheet’, who is Mr Cyril Vibert? It certainly is not me, I was not christened Mr by my parents, neither did they call me Mr, Mr is a fictional construct, a title, a legal person, It is not a human being. There is a box for a signature why is it not signed by the Constable or one of his Centeniers? Why is no one prepared to take responsibility for this document? Indeed the only thing in this box is the company seal of the Parish of St Helier, are these agents saying that I have a contract with this body corporate?  I would very much like to see this alleged contract. Oh that’s right, there isn't one. Why didn't the agent of the court, Mr Mourant, sign instead of write his title and surname?   We’ll look at the answers to these questions later. This so ca...

Jim Willie, is one of the primary sources for this blog, all his previous forecasts are readable by clicking on the link to the left. Back in late 2004, my father had a conversation with me on his front porch. He was concerned about a negative streak in my perspective and a critical slant in my analytic work.  He actually helped me in writing style, not content, like to correct errors in sentence construction. He pointed out lack of parallels, dangling modifiers, vague antecedents, and competing imagery. Many smaller discussions had taken place about a broken economy, absent industry from offshore efforts, debt buildup, enormous imbalances, the war machine emphasis, banker corruption, and unsound money itself. He always was concerned about the federal debt, citing it many times, and was alarmed later in 2006 when informed that foreigners held more than half our debt. He challenged me to produce solutions to the current difficult situation in the United States, an in...

In Part One we looked at how aid can be used to support corrupt governments rather than provide a better life for the people of Africa. How bi-lateral Aid from Western countries may be used primarily to secure resource rights or to ensure that 'enemies' do not secure those same rights. At how poor governance in these countries leads to the financial benefits being restricted to an elite government whilst the poor souls are left in the same level of poverty as they ever were. Today we are going to consider Jersey. In terms of governance the system of aid provision is instead replaced with taxation and services, whereby public monies are collected by the agents of their elected representatives and these monies are used to provide public services. It is intra rather than inter area Aid. The recipients of this 'aid ' are twofold: 1) The people who work for the public to provide the services and 2) The people who receive the 'aid' in the form of old age pensi...

Ok, for people with a really short attention span, my quick answer is “Enslaved” at least most of the time. That’s what I’ve come to after six months and three books on the subject. When thinking about international development aid, I think there are two separate but related questions.  The first is whether the aid money actually works to promote development.  The second is whether citizens of the recipient country really want us to help them develop or would prefer we all go home. On the first question, it’s clearly not an unequivocal “yes” and some would argue that aid retards rather than promotes development.  This is the argument in Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian born economist who has worked at Goldman Sachs and consulted to the World Bank.  Her thesis is that aid is almost always a bad thing and she spends most of the book suggesting alternative and healthier ways that poor co...

So the time has come around again to report Q4 for 2013 to the States Statistics Unit and the results we shall we say interesting. So let's start simply with the good news 2013 represents the best year to date. As a quarterly comparison the takings in the shop were down by about 34% this is largely due to not making two £5,000 sales in October this year which we made in 2012. Both November and December saw gains on a monthly basis. But the real growth came largely on the internet and largely as a result of translating our web offerings into French, German, Italian and Spanish with phenomenol sales to Germany in particular. What conclusions can we draw? Locally whilst we had more actual customers, the amount that each customer spent was reduced. This is hardly surprising given the continuing escalation - not only in the rate of taxation but in the differential between the growth in wages and the growth in the cost of goods. With real inflation running at around 9% each ...

Can't we all just get along? "What upsets me is that I am now being labelled 'a victim'. My pride rankles at not continuing to fight to the bitter end, but my reason says I did the right thing." I enjoy being part of the Politics Jersey group on Facebook recently the group has been troubled by one or two mavericks who have been disrupting the group leading one of the admins to make a blog post " Don't be a Blockhead ".  What is Cyber-Bullying? Examples of what constitutes cyber-bullying include communications that seek to intimidate, control, manipulate, put down, falsely discredit, or humiliate the recipient. The actions are deliberate, repeated, and hostile behaviour intended to harm another. Cyber-bullying has been defined by The National Crime Prevention Council: “When the Internet, cell phones or other devices are used to send or post text or images intended to hurt or embarrass another person." A cyber-bully may be a perso...

We have had a fantastic response to the previous blog posting and I am most grateful for the suggestion of a far easier method of calculating the effective rate of taxation suggested. For this calculation we use different source material the budget for 2014 , draft budget statement for 2013  and the  2012 Financial Reports . Budgeted Taxation Income Tax      £474,965,000 Impots -             £55,191,000 GST -                £81,955,000 Stamp Duty -     £27,402,000 Island Rate -      £12,032,000 Other Income -  £21,926,000 Total Income    £673,471,000 INCOME TAX The 2014 Draft Budget shows there were 39,740 households in Jersey paying tax on 2011 earnings and in 2012 Income tax from individuals was collected in the sum of £354 million pounds and that £80 million pounds was paid in Company tax in the same period. If we apply this same s...

Despite repeated request to the members of the States of Jersey and the States Statistics unit they profess that it is beyond them to work out what the effective rate of taxation is. So I have decided to calculate it for them. I am going to walk through the calculation of what percentage of your earnings goes to the government of Jersey. At the last election I estimated it to be around 40% but many have been incredulous at this amount and so I am going to walk through the calculation with you now. Definition of tax: Anything which the government collects from the 'members of the public' it serves. As a member of the public for example you are joint owner of the public roads. Paycards for example make a charge on you for using your own property and therefore are a tax. At the last election I limited consideration to income tax, social security, GST and Impots/Duties. We are using the States of Jersey's own figures: The most recent income and expenditure survey ...

Last year I took the most unexpected decision and blocked international sales to none other than the United States of America. The business case for blocking this jurisdiction was clear an unassailable; increasing fraud, issues to with customs due to government shut-downs and a general downturn in trade with the United States meant that internet trading was simply not worth undertaking. In spite of what the American government will publicly tell you; it is a place in severe economic decline. Yes the stock market is surging, but then the pattern nearly matches that of 1929 immediately prior to the big crash. But a surging stock market does practically nothing for the 'real' economy... especially when the consumer is increasingly tapped out?! The rich own stocks and the poor own debt. Working on the assumption that a major crash in share prices will occur sometime between 23rd December and the 21st January led also to another decision - don't sell any gold. Not only do ...