I was going to make some long winded post about the whole financial crisis but there are just so many things that are just beyond me. So, please find following a few thoughts and pictures so I can get a few things off my chest.

• As much as I hate Gordon Brown could you imagine David Cameron in charge at the moment?
• Why have the government demanded Banks keep loans to homebuyers at 2007 levels? Wasn’t that the reason we are in this problem?
• This bail-out thing - when and how do we get our money back?
• Who the hell would put their life savings in an Icelandic bank for the sake of an extra .25% interest rate?
• How does Gordon Brown think he can stabilise house prices when they are still over-priced by 10-20%?
• Let me get this straight - the Government has given the banks MY money so they can lend it back to me with interest? (fact is stranger than fiction).
• If you are wondering where the money has gone, look no further than BP with profits of £1200 a second. So we privatised BP and nationalised the shitty banks. Thank God for politicians who obviously have brains the size of planets.
• If the Government want to pass on interest rate cuts to the public why are banks (some of which have had OUR money used to rescue them) still charging up to 30% interest on approved overdrafts and horrendous amounts on credit cards.

‘I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.’
Thomas Jefferson 1802

Lehman Brothers employees staging a protest

Sympathy for Wall Street

The new dollar bill

My eldest daughter started secondary school last week. Not the school we would have preferred, not the nearest and not the school where all her friends were going.
The reason we could not get our preferred choice is that over the last 2-3 years neither myself or Mrs Moose has gone to church. You see, our nearest school is what’s called a ‘faith school’ and the governors, with the help of the local church, set the admission policy and will openly discriminate against children whose parents don’t go to church.
‘But it’s a faith school, doesn’t the church pay the running costs?’ I hear you say. I used to think so, but the answer is no. You (as a taxpayer) pay. Faith schools are state funded for 80-90% of the costs and that means YOU and ME!
You hear a lot these days about racism, sexism and ageism but not so much about ‘faithism’ which is just as deplorable. The church talks it up big about inclusion, forgiveness and community spirit, and if I was to go down to the local church this Sunday morning I wouldn’t mind betting I would be welcomed with open arms and encouraged to attend more. BUT, if my children want to attend their local school they are denied. Not because of their parents faith but on the evidence of church attendance (trust me, the two are not mutually inclusive).
I therefore conclude that faith schools are nothing but a recruitment tool for the church.
We are constantly told of the dangers of global warming and are encouraged to walk to school and avoid the high polluting school-run but all the time kids who live miles away get priority over my local school. There are actually some people who must pass up to four other schools to get to ours.
In Northern Ireland they have learnt that segregating children on the basis of their parents faith is probably not the best thing and are taking steps to set up community schools like there used to be here.
You would not exclude children from a school over the colour of their skin and I don’t see why religion should be any different.
Religion in churches and education in schools - it is that simple!

Last week Zoom, the discount airline, went bust. They blamed high oil costs and the credit crunch. They didn’t, of course, blame the fact that they were so desperate to undercut the ‘big boys’ that the prices they charged their customers were simply not enough to cover their costs. I may be doing their management a great injustice, but isn’t it nice to have the ‘credit crunch’ to blame.
‘In debt, it’s the credit crunch’. It’s not because you have spent £1000’s more than have been paid, and chucked it all on your credit card at 2000% interest.
‘Alastair Darling is an arse’. Oh, hang on, he’s not - it’s just the credit crunch!
‘Chelsea failed to beat Tottenham’. It’s that bloody credit crunch.
‘My house has devalued by 10% in the last year meaning I have only made a 200% profit in 12 years’ Bloody credit crunch!!!
‘I am fat, my children are misbehaving and kids are being stabbed in the streets’. Guess what, it’s that dam crunch thing again.
Everywhere you look in Britain today the ‘blame game’ is going on.
The best one to come up recently is that, apparently scientists have found a gene that is passed on by your obese parents, which means that you too will be fat. It has nothing to do with your addiction to lard kebabs with extra lard sauce and your complete lack of exercise. It’s the fault of nature.
You’re out of work - it’s the crappy governments fault, not yours.
No one ever takes responsibility for themselves or their mistakes it always the fault of someone else, and if this continues we will never learn and if we never learn we will never better ourselves.
By the way if you disagree with any of this - don’t blame me!

‘Harriet Harman, the Equality Minister, defended plans to encourage firms to discriminate in favour of female and ethnic minorities job candidates.’
Just read that line again. Concentrate on the words ‘equality’ and ‘discriminate’. I don’t even know if it’s worth me having a rant over this one. Is this woman a moron?
Any form of discrimination should be abhorrent, but apparently if you are anything over than a white man you are going to get a leg up from Harriet (better than a leg over). After all, you couldn’t get a job on your own could you?
It’s a good job Labour are so far ahead in the polls that they can alienate white men. The BNP must have their printing presses working overtime informing people how ethnic minorities will get work over white people.
The fact is that dear deluded Harriet probably has her heart in the right place, but as usual (for a politician) has not really thought this through. Her argument is that, should you have two equal candidates for a job and you can’t decide between them, you should choose the black bloke or the woman. I am not sure who would win if you have both the black man and the woman. If she was to ask someone who has actually worked in the real world, she would find out there are never equal candidates. Two people can have the same qualifications, the same experience, the same age, the same everything, but you will eventually go down to who will fit in with your existing team the best or who is the more likeable. There will always be one person who has that little bit more to offer in terms of personality.
This is nothing short of degrading to ethnic minorities and woman because Harriet Harman is basically saying you are incapable of getting of a job in the world of bigoted, racist and sexist employers.
As a final insult I see nothing about positive discrimination for your lovable Moose.

That was the headline, the other day, when the HSBC reported a fall in half yearly profits. It sounds bad and the usual suspects are on TV and in the papers telling us how the credit crunch is getting worse. Oh my God! This is Europe’s largest bank and even they can’t survive, what will become of us. Images of money men hurling themselves out of windows comes to mind.
Then you read a bit further and realise the bank made £5.2 billion in the first six months of the year. The people in charge must be shitting themselves. How can they survive, what can they do? Over five billion quid in six months and this is a bad thing, yeh right.
They lend money to people who can’t afford the repayments, they make huge losses in North America, they run crappy little branches with queues to the next town and zero customer service (apologies to the people of Bombay) and they still make huge profits.
This is not doom and gloom. The headline should read ‘Crappy business makes huge profits - hope for us ALL’.