And the reason Plaid ...

... decided to ditch their traditional support in favour of courting the Lefty vote of Wales ...

... the two colour map of Wales !

... the Grey of no overall control (dominated by dissent, disagreement and cultural dreams), and the unambiguous red of the Labour Party.

Plaid thinkers and policy makers believe the only way to power is via the valleys of the South, fortunately for political Wales Amazon is subverting nationalism, other casualties of this subversion include the high street and out of town shopping !

Is this an example of economics controlling politics ?

If Piketty and Miliband are to be believed ...

... then all is lost, our suffrage an illusion.

Piketty wrote ...

"… inheritance will eventually matter a lot pretty much everywhere - as it did in ancient societies. Past wealth will tend to dominate new wealth, and successors will tend to dominate labour earners." (1)

... whilst Miliband writes ..

"the dominant economic interests in capitalist society can normally count on the active good will and support of those in whose hands state power lies."  (2)

Therefore all our politicians, no-matter what the colour of the politics, are not going to change the lot of the working man and woman.

 (1). Piketty, T. (2011) "On theLong-Run Evolution of Inheritance: France 1820-2050"

(2)  Miliband, R. (1969) The State in Capitalist Society. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, page 145).

... a lesson for Jones from North Carolina ...

... on how jobs are attracted !

The Jones boy could be our erstwhile First Minister Carwyn Jones, or  newly appointed Secretary of State for Wales David Jones, of the two David has the ear of Prime Minister Cameron so he could probably do more, yet some of the levers are in the hands of Carwyn and Co, so there's to do from each camp.

Back to basics ...

• In North Carolina, the city of Charlotte has become the new home to German engineering giant Siemens AG.
• The factory manufactures gigantic gas turbines needed to power new electric plants under construction around the globe.
• A few years ago, the factory and its 825 jobs might have gone to India, China or another low-wage country. 

This time, American workers won out, why ....

Siemens executives talk about public investments, the state-funded rail spur that runs through their facility,the city’s international airport, which recently added a fourth runway using $132 million in federal funds.

They talk about the Export-Import Bank, an independent federal agency that in January approved a $638 million loan to finance the sale of turbines to Saudi Arabia, helping Siemens beat bids from companies in Germany, South Korea and Japan.

And they talk about the quality of the workforce in Charlotte, where local leaders are retooling the public education system to churn out the engineers and skilled technicians needed to operate one of the most efficient gas-turbine plants in the world.

So could our politicians do the same, of course they could, unfortunately in Wales our politicians lack a certain vision, politicians have become accountants rather than visionaries, and that's all the political parties ............

A very small question at the back of my mind, why did the German economy lose out in this particular game of 5 card stud ..........

Sunday 2 - Apple dilemma, a cash crisis !

Not the usual cash crisis that the little people face when they are unable to feed their families, not the cash crisis of a company competing on an uneven playing field, this is the cash crisis of a company that has not paid its tax due to the US treasury ...

... currently a potential (estimated) $25 billion in back taxes.

For those not able to read the Sunday Times report by Simon Duke .......

APPLE’S CASH CRISIS*
The tech giant must find a way to spend its $117bn pile and deal with threats to its dominance.
With his dark jeans, open-neck navy blue shirt and matching sports jacket, Tim Cook had assumed the mantle of Silicon Valley kingpin with ease.



At a meeting of technology executives in late May, the chief executive of Apple made it plain he expects other West Coast traditions to be upheld.
Under Cook’s command, the culture of mystery that helped transform Apple from a basket case into the world’s richest company was to be strengthened. The iPhone maker would “double down” the air of secrecy created by his predecessor, the late Steve Jobs. And all the more so where takeovers were involved.
“We buy companies. We don’t like to make it public,” Cook told his high- powered audience. “If I don’t have to, I won’t.”   The 51-year-old has lived up to his word. Just two months after this bold declaration, Cook didn’t bother to release a press release when he splashed out $356m (£228m) on a company that produces fingerprint recognition technology.
For the typical chief executive, a deal of this size would be a serious gamble, garlanded with corporate spin to win over investors. Not for Cook. With Apple banking almost $1 billion a week, the takeover of Authentic ate up less than two working days’ profit.
Like a latter-day Croesus, he has almost limitless resources at his disposal; he could buy almost any company on the planet before hitting the bottom of Apple’s war chest. With $ 117 billion ( and counting) in the bank, the cash hoard is larger than the market value of Glaxo Smith Kline, one of Britain’s largest businesses and the 33rd most valuable company in the world.
Cook, it would seem, is sitting pretty a year after succeeding Jobs. However, he is facing a critical test next month with the launch of a new iPhone.
For the first time, Apple will be leaping ahead without the creative imprimatur of Jobs, who lost his battle with pancreatic cancer in October.
Cook cannot afford any slip-ups if Apple is to maintain its supremacy. Rivals are already making inroads — Samsung, the South Korean electronics giant, sold twice as many high- end phones as Apple in the second quarter. The two companies are now slugging it out in a Californian courtroom over a multi-billion dollar patent infringement case.
Cook has not been afraid to show an independent streak. Breaking ranks with Jobs, who was set against returning money to shareholders, he has launched a $10 billion share buy-back plan and sanctioned Apple’s first dividend since 1995. He is also showing a thirst for takeovers. Apart from the Authentic deal, Apple has held talks with Twitter about a significant investment in the short-messaging service.
Although Cook’s $117 billion piggy bank is the envy of the industry, a cash crisis has begun to afflict Apple. The bulk of its money is trapped overseas — out of reach of the tax-man but also the company’s shareholders. The shining star of America’s tech industry isn’t prepared to hand over some £ 25 billion in back taxes to bring its riches home. In a courtroom in down-town San Jose, the self-styled capital of Silicon Valley, a middle-aged man with long hair and an untidy, grey- flecked beard launched a tirade against a perceived enemy.
“We’ve been ripped off, it’s plain to see. It’s offensive,” he protested.
It may sound like a domestic dispute or a street robbery, but the furious attack in fact came from one of the most respected figures in the tech industry.
Christopher Stringer, a long-time Apple designer who worked on the original iPhone, gave his explosive testimony during the opening skirmishes of the lawsuit that Apple has brought against Samsung.
It has accused the Korean rival of copying iPhone and iPad designs and is seeking damages of $2.5 billion.
Apple’s design team is a group of 16 “maniacal individuals” whose job is to “imagine products that don’t exist and guide them to life”, Stringer said. When Samsung started to “rip off” his pioneering ideas soon after the 2007 launch of the iPhone, it was hard not to quell the anger, he told the court.
Samsung rejects the charges. “This is not some copyist, some Johnny- come- lately doing knock-offs,” its lawyer said.
The case is just one flank in a worldwide legal battle between Apple and handset makers that use Google’s Android operating system to win control of the booming smartphone market. In addition to damages, Apple is seeking to have copycat products removed from the shelves around the world.
The stakes are enormously high. According to documents filed with the court, Apple earns a profit of as much as 58% on each and every iPhone shipped. At an average wholesale price of $650, that means the company has generated earnings of nearly $100 billion from the ground- breaking smart-phone since 2007.
In the current year alone, the iPhone is forecast to bring in earnings of $ 30 billion — equivalent to two- thirds of Apple’s expected profits. By contrast, the iPad contributes a modest 15% to the bottom line.
With Apple’s fortunes so tightly tethered to the iPhone, investors were unnerved by the second-quarter results.
Operating profits may have jumped 23% to $ 11.6 billion between April and June, but that fell short of the vertiginous growth rates Wall Street has come to expect.
Worrying soft patches have emerged. Sales in China, for instance, tumbled 28% compared with the previous quarter. Though an estimated 270m people in China can now afford to own an iPhone or iPad, sales of cheaper Android handsets are becoming the staple in the world’s second largest economy.
Europe’s economic woes also took a toll. Sales in France, Greece and Italy were “particularly poor”, Cook admitted, while the historically resilient German market registered growth of mere “single-digits”.
Much of the disappointment can be attributed to Apple’s savvy customers. The company may officially keep its own counsel on the timing of its next big launch, but it ticks like a metronome. The iPhone is reinvented every autumn, so Apple fans hold back in the spring and summer before upgrading.
There are reasons to fear that this pattern may be disrupted. For one thing, rivals are finally catching up. By fair means or foul, the third version of Samsung’s latest Galaxy handset has become a formidable competitor to the iPhone. Although badly wounded by Apple’s domination, Nokia and BlackBerry are fighting back.
Whether the Californian behemoth can continue spewing out profits will become clearer on September 12, when Cook is set to unveil the company’s latest iPhone.
As well as a better camera, a higher-resolution screen and a more powerful processor, it is expected to work on new super-fast mobile phone networks that offer lightning- quick downloads on the move. Although these fourth-generation services won’t be launched in Britain until next year, they are being rolled out rapidly in American, Scandinavia, Germany and developed Asian economies such as South Korea and Japan.
Other factors are likely to work in Apple’s favour. The new iPhone will be widely available for the Christmas gift-buying season in the West and for the Chinese new year. More importantly, the combination of the iTunes and Apps stores is locking customers into Apple’s devices.
“The great majority of iPhone users intend their next phone to be another iPhone. No other brand has the same loyalty,” said Benedict Evans of Enders Analysis, the research service. STEVE JOBS offers an object lesson in how fast and fickle the technology industry can be. Apple, founded by him and Steve Wozniak in 1976, was floundering by the mid-1990s. Close to bankruptcy, the once pioneering firm re-hired Jobs as chief executive in 1997, 12 years after he had quit.
Within 12 months, he had overseen the launch of the iMac personal computer. The sleek desktop was a hit with consumers but greater successes were soon to come. The iPod and then the iPhone not only turned the music and mobile phone markets upside down but transformed Apple into the most powerful and richest company in the world.
Cook and Stringer, the design guru who has spent nearly two decades at Apple, know all too well that the tech industry is brutal and the lifespan of world-beating companies can be pitifully short. As the decline of Yahoo and AOL has shown, the apparently impregnable are in reality never more than one false step from falling into irrelevance or worse.
Apple at least has the comfort of a thick cash blanket to keep ahead of its rivals. After Facebook’s calamitous float, Cook’s interest in investing in Twitter has waned. His company has the means to buy a Hollywood studio, such as Disney, to bolster the television set it is rumoured to be launching next year.
Great riches, though, are rarely the panacea they seem.
About $80 billion of Apple’s wealth is held in a gnarly web of foreign subsidiaries, where it is shielded from the US tax-man. To bring it home, the company would have to pay an estimated $25 billion in back taxes.
Because of this enormous potential bill, the treasure is effectively trapped abroad, with Apple unable to return the cash to investors or use it to fund American takeover deals.
Unless Cook solves this conundrum, he could be crushed by the burden of inherited wealth.

That $25 billion represents the stake that the US taxpayers have in Apple, this money rightfully belongs to the people, the little people who are the unregistered stakeholders ............

Sunday 1 - Ta ta to the TATA pension ...

... scheme, TATA STEEL has taken the first step towards closing the historic British Steel final-salary pension scheme.

... as reported by Karl West in today's Sunday Times :

Generous final salary scheme closed to new staff as losses at steel-maker soar to £846m.
TATA STEEL has taken the first step towards closing the historic British Steel final-salary pension scheme.
The move was revealed as the Indian group’s debt-laden European arm, including the rump of British Steel, racked up a pre-tax loss of £846m in the year to the end of March 2012. It lost £379m the year before.
Accounts for Tata Steel Europe said demand for steel had been hit by the deepening crisis in the eurozone. The company also raised the amount it invested in the business by 85% to £441m, including a further £74m towards rebuilding the No 4 blast furnace at Port Talbot, South Wales.
Karl-Ulrich Köhler, head of Tata Steel Europe, last month warned it may delay lighting the £ 185m furnace if the market remains subdued.
Tata Group is a big investor in Britain — it also owns Tetley Tea and Jaguar Land Rover. The Indian conglomerate bought Corus, the Anglo-Dutch giant that included British Steel, in a £6.7 billion deal in 2007.
The European steel operation is still weighed down by borrowings of £3.4 billion. It paid £424m in finance charges to service the debt last year.
Tata Steel employs 19,000 workers in Britain. It controls 46% of the domestic steel market, with 48% of the steel used in Britain being imported and 6% provided by other home-grown companies.
Union leaders have fought to keep the steel-maker's gold-plated retirement plan open to new entrants since Tata took over Corus.
However, the latest accounts reveal that from April 2014 new starters will be enrolled in a “nursery” pension arrangement. This less generous defined-contribution scheme will give new recruits the option of entering the final-salary plan at a future unspecified date, “subject to agreed conditions being achieved regarding the strength of the British Steel Pension Scheme”.
Sources said the future of the final- salary scheme would depend on how it performed.
Roy Rickhuss, national officer for steel at the Community trade union, said members of the nursery scheme would become eligible for the more generous pension if it has a funding level of at least 104%, or more assets than liabilities.
In March 2011, the scheme was valued at £11.4 billion. But, like many other former nationalised industries, the British Steel pension fund is paying out millions in benefits each year to 155,000 members, while only 18,500 workers are currently contributing to the fund.
This gave the scheme a funding level of 97% last year. The latest triennial valuation will be revealed within the next few months.
Rickhuss rejected suggestions that the nursery plan heralded the inevitable closure of the final-salary scheme.
“We would not have entered discussions on that basis. In our view it was a fairly good, sensible compromise,” he insisted.

The answer to TATA's problems in the UK might be alleviated if the 48% of the steel used in Britain that is currently being imported, had a "Green Tax" imposed, make it an economic imperative to make it where you intend to sell it ...

... of course energy pricing in the UK must be impacting TATA as it impacts the little people of Britain, but more of that later !

... Catalonia, an example why separatism is bullshit ...

... in the 21st century.

There is no accounting for failure, businesses fail, politics fail, people fail, but when you fail to the tune of ...

... €48 billion (£ 37 billion)

,,, and there are only 7.5 million people it gets tricky !

A report by Iain Dey of the Sunday Times paints a very bleak picture :

WORLD markets are set for a rocky week after it emerged yesterday that a second Spanish region is on the brink of asking Madrid for help.  Catalonia, the region that includes Barcelona, is said to be days away from requesting an emergency loan. It is unable to pay the interest on € 48 billion (£ 37 billion) of debts, according to reports.
Markets tumbled on Friday after a rescue deal for Valencia — site of some of the worst excesses of Spain’s property boom — was unveiled.  An emergency loan of an undisclosed size will be made by the Spanish government via an €18 billion rescue fund set up two weeks ago to deal with struggling regions. Spanish reports claim that six other regions may need help.
Spanish shares suffered their biggest one-day drop in two years on the back of the news, falling 5.8%. Germany’s Dax dropped 1.8% and France’s Cac plunged by 2.1%. The FTSE 100 closed more than 1% down on Friday at 5,655.04. The interest rate on Spain’s 10-year bonds jumped to 7.28%, a level that most economists say is unsustainable.

News of the Valencia bailout came as eurozone ministers ratified a bailout worth up to €100 billion for Spanish banks. The final figure will be known only after a review of the loan books is completed by the auditors PWC, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and KPMG.

And the corruption that is politics ...

Sources close to the review claim that Spain’s central bank is pressuring the auditors to ensure that they produce nothing that could even hint at the possibility that Spain’s three main lenders will need capital. The government has insisted that Santander, BBVA and La Caixa are sound.

I wonder if similar words were used in Greece when they were preparing to join the Euro ....

Fortunately for the poor saps of Catalonia the Spanish people as a whole nation, all 47 million of them, will pool their resources, and go without during the hard times, to pay the exorbitant 7.28% interest rate and bail out the devolved administration, and there are another six other regions needing help, poor Spain .......

So when the separatist agenda talk the talk that small is best, think of Spain, we all share the incompetence that is politics, and when we have to share the legacy of incompetence, the more the merrier is a better clarion call, think of Catalonia.  To see the illusions of Grandier, look no further than the Welsh Assembly!

behind every ...

... great fortune lies a great crime, Honoré de Balzac.


And what a crime, $21 trillion (£13tn) crime, a crime as big as the combined economies of the USA and Japan.  Fortunes created on the backs of populations pushed beyond the reach of taxation, beyond the reach of the societies that created these buckets of coin hoarded by such a very few people.

In the USA there is the Apple Corporation that holds its wealth offshore, it avoids paying the taxes that could pay for healthcare for the poorest in its society, in the UK we have similar crimes where companies and individuals establish off-shore vehicles to avoid passing back to society a share of the wealth created by the little people in the form of taxes.

The misconception is the owners of capital are wholly entitled to every penny of the surplus (profit) a business makes, this conveniently avoids any responsibility for poverty level wages that require redistributed government expenditure (taxes and borrowings) to pay for subsidised housing, healthcare, education ....... the list is endless.

All profits, as with income, should be taxed at source where it was made .... that way every fortune will have avoided the stigma that ...

... "behind every great fortune lies a great crime".

... and the taxes will help the little people that they might live without the poverty that seems to accompany great fortunes !

These crimes are not restricted to the USA and the UK, the people of Germany, Canada, France, Australia, Japan, China, India ............ are all losers in this great crime of "cheat the people of their dues".

Don't blame us for not dying.

A letter from Jane Reed of London in today's Times.

I got old by not dying. And now, with all this talk of the soaring costs of caring, how elderly demographics are reversing the improvements in public financing, of job-hogging, I feel “not dying” may have been an irresponsible choice ( £ "Time to target over-60s’ benefits") written by David Budworth.

My generation grew out of the aftermath of war. We lived through two major recessions where income tax soared to 85 per cent for some and we worked by candlelight. The houses we saved for became valuable — an inevitable result of supply and demand economics in a small island. The pension I built up over 50 years is quietly diminishing. My savings produce little or no growth, and I am happy where possible and when called upon to be the family banker, like so many of my contemporaries.

I feel for younger people suddenly faced with back-sliding living standards, but we are where we are and blaming my generation for not dying is not the answer.

Is this a line in the sand that politicians fear to tread I wonder.

94% of us ...

...believe there should be an investigation ...

It's not a small majority, it's overwhelming, and the topic is ......... oil.

The problem seems to be another distortion of facts to manipulate the market price for oil, and who is in the frame :

• ... banks
• ... hedge funds
• ... energy companies

I expect the political left wing to assign blame to Capitalism, but like the Libor scandal it is a failure of morality and ethics of individuals.  In fact this particular markets is unregulated, it relies on the most basic of traits we expect of those in positions of responsibility, "honesty".

This is one of the major concerns raised in the G20 report, published last month by the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO).

In the study for global finance ministers, including George Osborne, the regulator warns that traders have opportunities to influence oil prices for their own profit.

It points out that the whole market is “voluntary”, meaning banks and energy companies can choose which trades to make public.

IOSCO says this “creates opportunity for a trader to submit a partial picture in order to influence the [price] to the trader’s advantage”.

In an earlier report, the regulator concluded: “It is open to companies to report only those deals that are in their own best interests for the rest of the market to see.”

The price reporting agencies, Platts and Argus, argue they employ journalists to weed out false data submitted by oil traders

Could this be a reason why we are paying such high prices for fuel at the pumps ......

In fact this is another example of a need for a regulatory body that is divorced from the industry under scrutiny.  The public needs protection.

3 years ago you needed £800 million ...

... to get in the top 50 of The Sunday Times "Rich List", now the top 50 have too amass a minimum of £1,400 million to sit at the top table.

If during the past three years these fortunes have increased by over 40%, why are there so many people unemployed, why did 128,687 people need help from Trussell Trust food-banks last year (2011-2012), just wondering ......

...... after wondering about such a thought provoking question, I needed a little music :

Politics in wales ...

... is a little like the inside of a teenagers head !

Woolly, without substance or a credible plan, that moves in a circular manner ......

So where do you throw an idea, not an original idea, a borrowed idea from another part of the world that fills a very urgent need in "Business UK".

Do you share it with our regional political parties, our Welsh Assembly Government .........

... Labour in power, do we send a note or email to ( correspondence.edwina.hart@wales.gsi.gov.uk ) the Business, Enterprise, Technology and Science minister Edwina Hart Assembly Member ((MBE, OStJ, that's a fourth grade award that could match her political abilities, yes she has taken to adding her medals of honour); unfortunately this politician pays lip-service to the world of commerce, she is on record as proposing re-visiting the world of Karl Marks.  So Wales is sidestepped and off to Westminster we go.

After leaving the rarefied world of left wing Wales politics it comes as quite a shock to walk through doors to The Palace of Westminster, only to be met by a veritable wall of confusion, inside this confusion the hubris shown by the politicians of Westminster beggars belief, they constantly try to make sense of (British) life in order to impose its narrow political view on the peoples (of the United Kingdom), and most recently the government has failed at every turn because it was forced to compromise.

If politics fails, where next ?

Going right to where I began ...

... the Valley Orchard black mission figs, the Scharffen Berger chocolate or the organic garden mint, I chose each ingredient to compliment and enhance the natural goodness of Laloo's ® Goat's Milk Ice Cream.

... how would "Dai the Drag Bevan" (a work colleague from Swansea), a lifetime vegetarian, finance his Cwm Tawe (Swansea Valley) Goat's Milk Ice Cream Company, where would he go for finance that would fit in with the very seasonal nature of his idea ?

... he might consider  :

                                                ... to be continued !

... if you want wind power, then dam the countryside !

... a call to build a series of dams to store power from wind farms could see parts of national parks being submerged, writes Jonathan Leake of the Sunday Times £link.

Britain’s last remaining wildernesses could be hit by a network of huge hydroelectric schemes, designed to store green energy from wind farms when power is plentiful, and release it when the wind fails, under proposals from a government scientist

The schemes, which would see dams built in mountainous regions of Wales and Scotland, are being proposed by Professor David MacKay, chief scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

Speaking at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME) last week, he suggested that several such “pumped storage” systems could be built around Snowdonia in Wales and up to 13 in Scotland. Most of the energy generated would be supplied to England.
The idea will infuriate environmentalists. MacKay has suggested some of the schemes could be built in national parks such as Loch Lomond.

The proposal’s attraction, however, is that it is a well-proven technology. Britain has four pumped storage systems, of which the best known is at Dinorwig, in Snowdonia.
It works by pumping 247m cubic feet of water from one reservoir into a second, 1,600ft higher up. When demand surges, this is released to generate hydroelectric power.

Last week’s meeting was private but MacKay has also set out his ideas in print, where he said the new schemes should be much bigger than Dinorwig. “We are interested in making much bigger storage systems . . . We have to imagine creating roughly 12 new sites, each storing 100 gigawatt hours — roughly 10 times the energy stored in Dinorwig,” he said.
Why might Britain need so many new dams? The answer lies partly in the unreliability of wind but also in the scale of Britain’s commitment to green energy. The government has said that by 2030 Britain should have about 8,000 wind turbines with a maximum power output of about 10 gigawatts — roughly an eighth of what the country currently needs at any one time.

The problem is that if wind becomes such a big part of Britain’s power supply, it will have to be backed up for times when winds fail. One answer would be to keep lots of fossil fuel power stations on standby. However, a much greener and perhaps cheaper alternative would be to store energy from low-carbon sources, such as wind or nuclear power, when they are producing a surplus, in pumped storage systems.

In the latest edition of his book Sustainable Energy, Without the Hot Air, MacKay says: “Certainly, we could build several more sites like Dinorwig alone.”

In Scotland he suggests that a huge scheme could be built using Loch Sloy and Loch Lomond, which are already linked by a hydroelectric power system. This would involve raising Sloy’s existing dam by 130ft. He suggests the mountains could easily provide 10 sites for similar projects.

MacKay also proposes even more ambitious schemes. One would see dams constructed across the mouths of “hanging valleys” around Britain’s sea cliffs. These could then be filled with seawater. Another would see a huge chamber constructed three-quarters of a mile beneath London, with water generating power as it pours in from a ground-level reservoir then being pumped out when power is in surplus.

Tim Fox, head of energy and environment at the IME, said MacKay was forcing Ed Davey, the energy secretary, to confront uncomfortable issues surrounding the green energy agenda. “There has been a step change in the DECC understanding of engineering since MacKay arrived,” he said.

Craig Dyke, strategy development manager at National Grid, said the demand for power would increase sharply by 2030 under government plans to replace most petrol and diesel cars with electric ones by 2025, and to heat buildings with low-carbon electricity rather than gas. “We are going to see the demand for power varying a lot more than it does now, so energy storage systems will be important,” he said.

The idea that parts of Britain’s remaining countryside should be sacrificed to Britain’s power industry angers environmentalists. Helen McDade, head of policy at the John Muir Trust, which campaigns to protect Britain’s last wildernesses, said: “These new dams would just be storage systems for wind energy, which is itself inefficient and highly subsidised. This agenda is driven by energy companies who have become subsidy junkies.”

 I guess if we want to be green, this is as good a way as any, begs the question "why not build them instead of using turbines, a prettier solution".

Peacocks, KPMG and an Indian ...

... textile and clothing company, the way forward for the Far East.

With the realisation that outsourcing the manufacturing of clothing and other textile products, to places such as India and China, is no longer the most effective (£link) and efficient method of production, what is happening behind closed doors at KMPG should come as no surprise to observers of economic trends.

As reported in todays Times ...

... to salvage Peacocks from administration (Marcus Leroux writes).  S Kumars Nationwide (SKNL), a textile and clothing manufacturer based in Mumbai, was last night locked in talks with the administrators KPMG. It is believed to be in the driving seat after interest faded from Edinburgh Woollen Mill and Alshair Fiyaz, a Pakistani clothing magnate. In 2009 SKNL, which turned over 51.8 billion rupees (£667 million) last year, bought Hartmarx Corporation, an occasional tailor to President Obama, and Emeresque Brands, a British investment vehicle.

KPMG refused to comment. 

...  following on from paragraph 2 ...

... the need to adapt quickly to changing fashions has prompted River Island to bring its manufacturing back to Britain.

The clothing chain, one of the country’s largest, said that rising labour costs in China were also making production in Britain more viable. It has increased the number of items produced at home by 50 per cent in the past 12 months and says that the changes have paid off.

Ben Lewis, the chief executive, said: "It has allowed us to get new fashion to our customers much quicker than we were able to, and as a result some of those products have become absolute best-sellers. We can get more of them and work closely with the factories."

The Far East recognises the symptoms and have come to Britain, not for the benefit of Britain, but to lock the British consumers into their production .....

..... does Cameron and our home grown Jones realise what is happening, there needs to be an incentive to encourage manufacturers to imitate River Island, zero business rates and a 10 year free corporation tax for returning "prodigal manufacturers", and similar for those that remained.

Both Cameron and Jones, between them, have the means to see the repatriation of manufacturing to Britain .......

Sunday came early, and Wales is waking ...

... to the realisation that the Westminster coalition are right.

We might not like the personal effect that jobs lost have, those who work in the private sector are well used to the uncertainty of industrial life, now the public sector are feeling the effects of cutting our cloth to meet the countries real needs as jobs disappear, they were never real jobs, they were the political largess of previous administrations.

The police, fire service, ambulance, nursing, those that keep our homes clear of refuse and streets clean of the detritus the less than caring strew as they go about their business, these and others are people who make up this army and feel the true costs of the needed financial adjustments of government.  There are the retired whose savings have shrunk in real terms because interest rates have dropped so low, the annuities that halved almost overnight, the rising costs of living in an unfeeling world.

There are there are those that place the blame entirely on the shoulders of modern day witches (bankers) and their familiars, the witches black cat of old was replaced by a sales pitch that promised never ending credit with a payback date so far in the future that it was irrelevant.  And this credit was used in the pursuit of unbridled spending, unfortunately we were buying goods and services from the Far East; goods of dubious value.

There are those who seem to escape the effects of the economic rebalancing act, in the front of this army of corpulence are the politicians in opposition, followed by the politicians of devolved administrations, the lawyers, the leading civil servants et al, they have a common denominator, they cause the spending of our taxes, they play with the ultimate "big boy toy" that is humanity.

Yesterday at Walesonline there was an article that poured journalistic and political scorn on the current economic rebalancing of the British economy for example, Shadow Wales Minister and Llanelli MP Nia Griffith said ...

"...the cuts were "sucking the lifeblood out of the Welsh economy" and warned that reductions in tax credits, changes in public sector pay and pensions and the hike in VAT could have "catastrophic" consequences for businesses.

The reality however is somewhat different, people left comments with the story, those who support Nia Griffith scored a negative -57 whilst others recognised the reality of poor government scored a positive +77.

Someone who writes as "dogsbody" submitted ...

... you would think we in Wales were taking all the brunt. All the economy is doing is rebalancing the waste of the last 17 years. Too much public sector soaking up resources and not enough done for real job creation.

So when the political pundits speak of "socialist Wales", they are not quite right are they !
So when the political pundits speak of "nationalist Wales", they are not quite right are they "

Wales is still that non-conformist liberal land that doesn't have a voice ........

........ for the record Plaid doesn't offer that voice, although Dafydd Elis-Thomas wearing different clothes might come close, the others without exception are FoS.

I guess Vodafone is amongst the robber ...

... baron companies of the world that steal taxes from countries in which they operate.

Nicholas Shaxson in his "Treasure Islands" (£8.99 from Amazon), subtitled "Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World", explains what is wrong with global finance  ...

... he write, while many might dismiss tax havens as offshore homes for spivs, money-launderers and the odd celebrity, in fact they help big companies and the super-rich to avoid paying tax, tax that totals "$1000 billion" each year.

... that's a trillion dollars, a trillion dollars unspent in the countries that the wealth is created, a trillion dollars that should be underpinning the health and welfare of the little people who have no voice in this unjust world.

Update on my entry for yesterday ...

The dispute has severely dented India’s reputation as a safe place for foreign companies to do business. Many are facing similar tax cases that could be affected by the judgment, including Cadbury, GE, Vedanta, AT&T, Sanofi-Aventis and SABMiller. The companies declined to comment on the decision, although one representative said: "Clearly, it does provide some encouragement."

... recognise the household names that are siphoning off the taxes from India through the use of offshore tax havens or countries that give advantage to business.

Time to create a level playing field that includes "justice" in the rules of the game.

The bullshit that is both India and Vodafone, and ...

... throughout the world.

The narrative, courtesy The Times 21 Jan 2012, there is more if you pay the tariff £ .....

It has taken four years of fighting but last night Vodafone was celebrating a landmark legal victory after the Indian Supreme Court ruled that it would not have to pay a £3.1 billion tax bill.

The ruling centred on Vodafone’s £7.1 billion acquisition of Hutchison Whampoa’s majority stake in Hutchison Essar in 2007 and was declared a “thumping judgment” by Harish Salve, the company’s lawyer. It is expected to open up the region to more foreign investment.

The Indian Government had claimed that it was owed tax because the assets bought had been bought in India. Vodafone argued that both the buyer and seller were based overseas and the deal had been conducted via offshore holding companies. It also said that, since it was the buyer of the asset, it should not be liable for a tax on the profits from the sale.

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that “Indian tax authorities had no jurisdiction to tax Vodafone”.

The Supreme Court of India is of course a Logical Ass.

My reasoning relates not to ownership, but to location, if a business is located in Delhi, then the business as an asset should be taxed in Delhi, without exception.

This type of nonsense occurs in the UK, an offshore company owns assets and pays little or no tax because of domicile.  If politicians were not spineless creatures, there would be an alternative Davos where such practices would be by common agreement outlawed throughout the world, there is no logic in failing to tax a process other than where the process happens.  If you sell it here you pay the taxes here ...... simple.

If companies are able to avoid paying taxes to the country it creates its wealth, then the politics of that country is probably corrupt, if the politics is suspect might not its Supreme Court be also suspect, there is an enormous smell wafting from the East.  But it is not just from the East that smells waft, our very own tax collectors let the very same Vodafone off the hook to the tune of a £6bn tax bill, we need to remember the efforts our very own HMRC are using to claw back taxes from the little people of Britain.

From the desk of Larry Edelson ...

... "It’s the hidden dangers that matter most" ...
No matter what scheme Europe’s leaders come up with this weekend, the euro is toast. It was destined to fail right from the beginning.
You see, way back in 1998, I told everyone who would listen that Europe’s attempt at a single currency would fail. I even pegged the year 2012 as the period when the euro would breathe its final breath.
The problem is simply this: The euro was ill-conceived to begin with. The European Union left all the national banks in place, like central banks. They left all the individual countries’ debts in place and failed to create any semblance of a fiscal unity.

Further, they failed to reform tax and labor laws, leaving a hodgepodge of rules and regulations in place, none of which supported any foundation for a single currency.

Perhaps worst of all, they failed to recognize the many different cultures in Europe, not to mention the 28 different official languages spoken.

In short, Europe’s leaders created a disaster, and now the world is paying the price.

The latest proposal, if enacted this weekend, will make matters worse for the euro. Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy are pushing hard to rewrite the European Union’s main treaty to give it power over the national budgets of the Union’s members.

That simply will not work. It amounts to asking countries such as Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Ireland — to give up their sovereignty and place their destinies in the hands of the stronger countries in Europe, namely Germany and France. Fat chance of that going well.

The truth of the matter is
that as ill as Europe’s currency is,
the U.S. dollar isn’t faring much better either.

For one thing, the U.S. dollar is also riddled with unpayable sovereign debts and obligations to the tune of $145 trillion. That’s 25 times worse than the combined debts of all European Union member countries.

For another, our fearless leaders in Washington know full well that our debts are patently unpayable.
That’s why Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke never hesitates when it comes to printing up more money. He knows that the only possible way out is to inflate away the debts, by devaluing the dollar and paying off the debts down the road with cheaper dollars.

It’s also why I believe President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner are lying to you.


I know, that’s a bold statement. But they’re not idiots. They are steeped in the history of currency devaluations. And they too know that the only chance the United States has to potentially defuse the ticking U.S. debt bomb is to shift the blame to China by accusing Beijing of maintaining policies that support an undervalued yuan.

But that’s nothing but political cover for what President Obama and Secretary Geithner really want because ...

A rise in the value of the yuan, by default,
means a decline in the value of the dollar.

I know it’s hard to believe that Washington is selling you out. I know it’s hard to believe that I’m forecasting further dollar devaluations when hardly anyone else is and when nearly all eyes are glued to Europe and its implosion.

But I’ve never let that stop me. I always tell it like I see it. And I learned long ago that it’s not the obvious that matters most when it comes to your investments — like Europe disintegrating.

Quite the contrary, it’s the unobvious that matters most. It’s the hidden dangers that can wreak the most havoc on your wealth.

Earlier this week, I showed you a chart of the U.S. Dollar Index and how miserable the dollar’s performance is. I will show it again for a third time and please, study it carefully.

Despite all the talk about the U.S. dollar benefitting from the European debt crisis, the Dollar Index remains well below important resistance on this chart. You can clearly see it.

I suggest you print it out and keep it handy. Because when the Dollar Index breaks the low point on the right side of the chart, it may be too late to fully protect your wealth.

Don’t wait until that happens. Take the necessary steps to protect and grow your wealth NOW, before it’s too late.

One of those steps should be viewing my video on the looming dollar disaster. It’s well worth your time. By watching it in its entirety (only about 35 minutes), you’ll be able to download six free profit guides that I’ve designed to help you protect your wealth.

You can view the video now by clicking here.

Best wishes,
Larry Edelson

Mr. Edelson has an agenda, he wishes to sell his services, but the message of fear ..... how much is truth ?

Right to buy, here in Wales ...

... the politicians will probably say no to the people.

Across the boundary that was Offa's Dyke David Cameron and Nick Clegg will reveal details on Monday of their vision to democratise housing further, Margaret Thatchers flagship programme of council house sales is to be upgraded to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

The average £26,000 discount for a council home is set to jump to about £52,000, with tenants in London and the South East saving even larger sums under the new scheme, additionally first-time buyers will be eligible for 95 per cent mortgages, similar to those available at the height of the property boom five years ago, and underwritten by the government.  Will the new loan guarantee result in lenders providing mortgages with deposits of only 5 per cent, compared with the 20 per cent or more that has to be paid at the moment?


Mr Cameron will also confirm plans to release thousands of acres of public land owned by hospitals, schools and the Ministry of Defence to allow, in theory, up to 100,000 homes to be built.

Good news?  Probably, it has every chance of working, the right ingredients are ready to put into the mixing bowl, unfortunately for the peoples of Wales mainstream politics is firmly embedded in the politics of the last century so the scheme is unlikely to migrate westwards ..............

.............. yet we all pay the same taxes ?

Subsidies, the taxpayers curse ...

... and the litmus test for any business, and that includes farming in Wales.

Today's report that farmers in Wales receive £280 million in subsidies (this amount equates to 80% of their income) is a cautionary indicator to those who generate the base wealth of Britain, it means farming in Wales has become an economic junkie, unable to function without its next "financial fix".

If our farmers (all the British farmers) need so much money from the British taxpayers, and EU money arriving in Britain is British taxes, then the businesses are probably not viable and should be allowed to sink with all the other insolvent businesses (including banks).

Government subsidies hide reality.

... a story from the Far East made me think ...

... of the responsibility we might have for the effect our consumption has on the environment and its peoples on the other side of the world, to wit lead pollution on the young people of Zhejiang province.

The assumption I make is that the Health & Safety of people working in industry in the UK is more rigorous than found elsewhere in the world.  In other words, we should pollute ourselves because our pollution will be less than those less protected.  In the case linked above in paragraph 1, we should only use the batteries we produce.

A major player in the battery market is the US company Johnson Controls Inc ...

Due to increasing global demand for high-quality automotive batteries for environmentally friendly Start-Stop technology, Johnson Controls is investing $100 million to build a Start-Stop vehicle battery plant in China........ the company also announced ......... "We project that China will continue to be the fastest growing market for automobiles through the end of this decade".

Nothing wrong there, the business has forecast its best future rests on mainland China so there it invests its capital, but, there is often a "but", there is sufficient anecdotal evidence to suggest the people of  Zhejiang province and elsewhere are not sufficiently protected against a process based on the lead industry, a metal that has catastrophic effects on people.

The moral dilemma is, should we use products in the knowledge that people elsewhere are being hurt by our consumption, made in China might be problematic .........