As much as the public like to blame everyone else when things go wrong, the voters in UK general elections ultimately determine the leaders and decision makers, and therefore have only to look to themselves if things don’t work out.

For TCE, the spring of 2009 will be remembered as a period of time cemented in the mind albeit for all the wrong reasons.

As Alistair Darlings farcical April budget speech ended, the whole notion of Blair’s ‘Cool Britannia’ felt very distant and even the more ridiculous. For this was a seminal moment, the precise day, the precise hour, when the Chancellor described in the language of political spin, that we living in Britain, were %$*&ed.

In a year or so Britain will be entering the league of countries that impose super high income tax rates. Is this somehow meant to motivate the mid and high earners to keep paying for the growing sections of British society on the take? Surely many will simply leave the country?

Northern European countries like Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, manage a culture that appears to suit all bar the ultra high net worth. They have found that if taxes are spent on health and social wealth fare, as well as infrastructure, public transport, and leisure, that most remain happy to contribute and stay to enjoy the resulting higher standard of living. You don’t have to be a high tax country to enjoy a good quality of life as Switzerland admirably demonstrates, although within Europe it generally seems a common pre-requisite.

Taxes can only provide so much information about a country of course, and how they effect and are reflected, in the economy of a country. Taxation is a dynamic and for Britain higher taxes are being imposed out of necessity as a direct result of the Labour government’s mismanagement of the public purse. Britain’s debt mountain has been out of control for years and whilst in a recession, a severe threat to national economic stability. The S&P agrees having Britain on watch for a credit downgrade.

-No wonder then for those contributing to the economy that a persistent feel bad factor lingers in the UK.

In the 1990s New Labour took the political middle ground by looking after the super rich under directives from Tony Blair.

These non-domicile wealthy benefitted from Brown and Blair but ironically show no signs of leaving Britain en masse (arguably they have been the least effected as they have access to many tax rebate and offset schemes and only pay tax on money remitted or earned in the UK).

Recent fiscal actions are nonetheless unwelcome and needlessly sow the seeds of doubt regarding prospects for the future.

What is more obvious to the majority (i.e. those earning up to say twice the average UK income) is that the quality of life in Britain is dropping quicker than Gordon Brown’s credibility, and is just another piece in the puzzle of a Britain on the decline.

Although statistics to measure the quality of life are not perfect, where the research data is comprehensive, they do enable valid comparisons. The measures and the weightings often vary depending on the purpose of the research; however it is clear from those freely available, that Britain is also the sick cousin of the developed world offering amongst the lowest quality of life to its residents.

If we segment British society into three age groups, the young, the working, and the retired, the observations are quite sobering.

For the young;

According to a UNICEF study Britain’s children are rated as the unhappiest out of twenty one industrialised nations. They drink the most, smoke more, and have more sex than their peers. Using forty indicators including relative poverty, child safety, crime rate, amount spent on education etc, Britain and the USA are at the bottom of most of the ratings.

In a study a quarter of Britain’s young teens rated their health as fair or poor. The worst result for any OECD country. In the past decade the number of school age binge drinkers admitted to hospital has risen by over fifty percent, and across all age groups the number has doubled.

The number of children living in poverty (defined as less than 60% of the median household income) has doubled in the past thirty years and at its peak in the late 90’s, was the highest in the EU. In a 2008 report by London Child Poverty Commission, over 40% of children living in Greater London were living in poverty and 50% in inner London.

For the working;

Already with some of the highest marginal tax rates in the world and increasing, disposable income has dropped quicker than the value of the over priced houses that we British live in.

Ann Robinson, Director of Consumer Policy at uSwitch.com, said: “We may earn substantially more than our European neighbours but, when it comes to quality of life, we remain the ‘sick man of Europe’. Soaring food prices and inflation - not to mention high property costs - are placing the biggest squeeze on disposable incomes in well over a decade. With below average investment in health and education, it appears that we are getting a raw deal from the government for the fruits of our labour”.

UK motorists pay the highest prices for diesel in Europe around 18% above the average, and the second highest price for unleaded petrol, at 6% more than average. Brits pay over 40% per cent more for gas and 5 % more for electricity, making it the third most expensive country in Europe for fuel.

Sadly public transport is poor, often unreliable, and too expensive; so we can’t give up our cars just yet.

British private sector workers also suffer when it comes to holiday entitlement, typically enjoying 28 days a year (including bank holidays). This compares to the French, who receive an average of 40 days, well above the European average of 33. The Poles work the most hours per week (41 compared to an average of 37) but have nearly two weeks more holiday than workers in the UK.

Public sector workers fair considerably better than their private sector cousins in the UK (i.e. the bit of society that actually pays for everything and creates the wealth). Not only do they enjoy higher average salaries but also have higher holiday entitlement and better retirement schemes in the form of final salary pension schemes.

Recent scandals regarding expenses for MPs has highlighted the scale of the abuse of the public purse in the civil service, and across local authorities in general.

No surprises to see workers in Britain sit below most countries in Europe (even Poland) when it comes to a variety of quality of life measures.

For the retired;

You would think that things would somehow improve for the retired British, but alas this does not seem to be the case.

Private sector workers in Britain not only have to suffer the shortest holiday entitlement whilst working, a week below the European average, but also has the third highest retirement age.

The UK government spends around 8% of GDP on healthcare, well below the European average of 8.6%, with life expectancy at 78.9 the third lowest.

According to another study that compares the economies of 183 countries, Britain does not even make the top 40 in the list of hospital beds per 1,000 people.

So not only have the British retired worked longer when they retire, they are looked after relatively poorly thereafter.

In summary:

It is fair to say that for Brits it is much easier to find aspects of British living that negatively affect the quality of life.

Even if British workers had the extra holidays to take they would have to go travel overseas to enjoy some extra sunshine. The UK has some 17% fewer hours of sun than the European average

The Brits have not been oblivious as they have been voting with their feet for years with tens of thousands across all skill levels leaving annually, emigration increasing at a rate of some 5% per annum. Maybe the weather is important, after all Spain gets the most sunshine with 50% more hours than the average European average!

Unfortunately in mass immigration Britain tends to attract the lower paid from poorer countries, the net effect of which is to take employment away from the local UK workforce. The benefit system in Britain is much to blame as immigrant families tend to stay as they receive much better provision than their homeland should they fail to find work. Britain kindly paying benefits back to their homeland!.

There must be something good about Britain? Is loyalty to the Crown reciprocated?

Well of course not.

The armed forces have been recruiting Gurkhas for several generations because of their tenacity in battle, yet they have found themselves denied residency.

This disgraceful situation finally righted with the help of a very tenacious Joanna Lumley, the government embarrassed into finally addressing this outrage.

Britain is broken and sadly without a timetable for the many fixes needed.

If you are a civil servant, an immigrant from a poorer country, a refugee, or part of the rich non domicile set of course you’ll stay. For the rest of us, the attractions have been fading for a decade, the British government relying on apathy to keep Britons here rather than seeking a potentially better life found elsewhere.

The death of a young mother is always sad, but some how the culture of celebrity has allowed the media to turn an irrelevant, uneducated, and foul mouthed individual into some sought of icon. Now that is sad.

As a ‘reality TV star’ Jade Goody’s was a business not of reality, but fantasy. Her final few weeks in the spotlight were spent entirely without dignity to keep the till in the Goody household ringing. All in all a very good final month for her and her crack PR team.

The real pity is that whilst the media perpetuates the notion that reality is the absolute pap they push, deserving people that actually contribute in the real world go unrecognised. The UK also has thousands of terminally ill, but PR agents can’t make any money out of them, so they won’t be appearing in public anytime soon.

As a politician that once forgot to correctly declare his earnings, no one will be surprised by Mr Livingstone’s colourful rhetoric after the embarrassment caused by the recent ‘train ticket malfunction’ when travelling out of London.

TCE can’t help but see the irony alongside millions of other Londoners, who had to put up with Livingstone’s cronyism, deceit, and hypocrisy, during his tenure as Mayor.

This little bit of publicity must be difficult even for a man driven so much by spin and self promotion.

Men should really stop whineging about how bias society is towards women. All they need to do is take co-ordinated action and replicate the methods successfully applied by women, and then with time, balance will be restored.

The promotional skills of the fairer sex have indeed resulted in bias at all levels and bizarrely this would not have been possible without some passive collusion from men.  For example, in the past decade employment laws have made it very unattractive to hire women into senior positions because of the inherent risks of being sued when employment does not work out for whatever reason. Yet senior women are still hired by men. The outlandish payouts female workers have achieved in the City for example, a testament to male persistency in hiring woman almost regardless of their ability.

Courts have the uncanny ability to make it seem that the employer is at fault, so inevitably it’s often easier to agree some sought of payoff rather go down longer and even more expensive routes. Women have multiplied their redundancy payouts on the premise that employers had hired no other women hence demonstrating sexual discrimination. In many cases no woman had actually applied for positions.

In TCE’s experience women are mainly hired in the City to create a natural balance in the work place. 90% of the applicants for meaningful City jobs are male, although if Harriet Harman had her way employers would be obliged to hire the female candidates regardless of merit.

Women, we are led to believe by women, are down trodden and deserving of extra special treatment because of society’s systemic bias towards men, and yet evidence only exists to the contrary.

In recent headline divorce cases women have managed to extract scandalous amounts of cash from self made men who have not relied on their non working wife’s ‘contribution’ in any way. In many cases the marriages were short and typically started years after the wealth had been generated. These poor ladies of leisure had ritually sacrificed their own ‘careers’, we were told. The courts normally ruling that the ladies should be set for life with settlements many times realistic career earnings. After all, they have to maintain the lifestyle gifted to them by the man in the first place.

As Britain has passed somehow seamlessly to the systemic and extreme bias in favour of women, the likes of Harriet Harman ‘Minister for Women’, remain unsatisfied. The anti father campaigner, will do her best to further society’s drive against men. But take heart men, she’s flailing; first the loan scandal,  the anti stab vest bungle in Peckham, and the Sir Fed Goodwin rant on TV, have removed what little credibility she had left.

Men, insist on the election of a ‘Minister for Men’, insist on equal retirement age for men, insist that women campaign on causes like cancer for both sexes not just the type that hits them, insist that men can actually bring up a young family if they were financed in the same way as women, tell the world that looking after children is a great deal easier than earning a living (looking after children is simply a repetitive, dull, and less skilled occupation).

Simply insist that equality is returned, and that politic correctness is not simply a term created by women to ensure that society favours them.

Karl Marx would be truly intrigued by the Labour party, for in government they have succeeded in making things so bad for the average Brit that communism would actually bring some light relief. It is as though the Labour party read Das Capital and decided it would become the basis for a script ‘Britain; the Blair and Brown Years’. 

The past twelve months have seen corporations and private individual’s finances collapse under the burden of excess debt , coinciding with the worst recession in the UK for decades.  This, along with the total mismanagement of the public purse by the Labour government, has created the ideal scenario for furthering communism (as outlined in Karl Marx’s work) in the UK.

However things may not be so clear cut.

TCE felt that when RBS outbid rivals for the very average Dutch bank ABN at the top of the equity market in the latter half of 2007, that the RBS Board, and in particular, Sir Fred Goodwin, had gone completely mad.

The recent media frenzy surrounding the subsequent bailout and the firing of Mr Goodwin has been completely overshadowed by the ‘scandal’ of his pension entitlement. Ms Harman (Labour’s Deputy Leader) during a 1^st March television broadcast implied that steps would be taken to ensure that the former CEO does not take his £650,000 per annum pension even if the retirement deal was valid in law. “The Prime Minister has said that it is not acceptable and therefore it will not be accepted” said Ms Harman on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show.

The morality of such a payout is perhaps debateable and Fred Goodwin’s legacy is one of arrogance and incompetence. But the message that Gordon Brown sends with such dictatorial statements should normally be of grave concern, however since communism theoretically implies an egalitarian and democratic social structure, communism has absolutely no chance whilst this Labour Party is in power.

Is TCE the only one who thinks that football is now more than ever detached from the real world? When Joe Punter moans about the state of the economy caused by rich bankers spending his money, he manages not to mention the overpaid manager or player at his favourite team; burning his cash and racking up unserviceable debts.

Football is a financial folly of the highest order in which only the outsiders (the vast majority) are foolhardy. The insiders at the PFA and the FA feel the need to massively overpay themselves, mainly because overpayment is expected and hence normal in football culture. Typical upper division footballers get paid multiples of those that decided to get an education and to be in the top 0.1% of a university, to go through rigorous selection procedures at financial firms, to pass, and then to train for many years to be at the top of their respective leagues.

Let’s not pretend that football is a meritocracy, after all Chelsea has spent tens of millions of pounds paying off woefully underperforming managers, making most bankers severance packages look like a bargain.

So Mr Capello, what did attract you to the highest paid management job in football?

Obama has little public history on which to be judged, but now as President, and also post honeymoon, his successes and failures will be very public.

In TCE’s opinion he’d be wise to address the vast wealth imbalances that exist in the USA. He surely would have to be judged a success on leaving office if the burgeoning number of poverty stricken underclass (that die annually) in the USA had access to basic medical provision without relying on charitable handouts like a third world nation.

If Obama were to leave a decent economy and a controlled national debt, his place in a Hollywood script would surely be assured. The problem is that the numerous problems facing America are real and vast. California is basically bust, and New Orleans an embarrassing reminder of his country’s priorities.

Given the scale of these problems TCE thinks that Obama has little chance of achieving these ‘minor’ moral or economic goals; he’ll be too busy stopping the US dollar turning into the next Argentinean Peso.