There is a City saying: “Sell in May and go away.” This year it needs to be amended to read “Sell in May, pray hard and come back in the middle of October.”
The fourth of the seven principles of a Free Society, as espoused by The Freedom Association, is limited government. My own favourite is ‘individual freedom’ and as a capitalist working in the City (my politics are let’s create wealth by individual initiative and let’s debate the distribution of the wealth created) I have tried, through TFA blogs, to bring to public attention the financial regulatory chaos which threatens the UK’s recovery from recession.
Things are going to get much, much worse.
a) Between mid-July and mid-October MPs will sit for just 12 days.
b) At a presentation by Transport for London on the impact of the Olympic Games their spokesperson said that “we have a moral obligation to get the competitors to and from the stadium: they have been training all their lives for these games.” This will be achieved by turning London (from mid-July until mid-September) into a police state. The chaos in London this week when the police closed West London so her Majesty could reach Parliament is just a foretaste of what is to come (and, of course, forget early June as we celebrate the Diamond Jubilee).
c) In early autumn politics will be dominated by the Party Conference season (Lib-dems: Brighton: 22 – 26 September. Labour: 30 September – 4 October Manchester. Conservatives 7 – 10 October: Birmingham).
d) The business impact of the Queen’s speech was dire (CityAM referred to “fiddling while the economy burnt”).
e) The ludicrous success of Wonga.com in launching its business loans up to £10,000 at rates approaching 2% per week is a dreadful indictment of the empty rhetoric of the banks and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills who are not supporting British business.
f) A report by Civitas has slammed the Financial Services Authority (FSA) calling it a ‘closed shop’ because of its inertia in approving applications from start-up banks.
g) A report from the Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) says that City bonuses have fallen to their lowest level for fourteen years. That may not get much public sympathy but it should be translated into reduced revenues from the City on which our economy so depends.
My son and daughter-in-law have just announced that in 2013 they are emigrating to Ipswich, off the Gold Coast, in Australia: their application has been given provisional approval. I’m staying to fight on. I do wonder which of us has got it right.
By Tony Drury
TFA Supports Better off out
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