Look Over There - Squirrel!

 Is there a lot of distraction techniques being used at the moment?  We look in one direction and are told to look in another.  We've got a row brewing over Ukraine and we are distracted towards that.  The TDS is surprisingly big in the UK, I cannot fathom out why because surely we can take a better look at the USA and see what actual home problems they have and are dealing with?  We worry about out £3 Trillion debt - have a look at theirs. 

I quite like the idea that we are providing assurances over securing the borders of a country that is 2000 miles away when we cannot even secure our own borders less than 60 miles from London!  Shocking stuff and to my mind, it seems a little hollow.  This government and many of its members were happy to see members of our armed forces prosecuted for carrying out orders of their government.  So why would anyone go to war for these people?  I like that someone suggested that if they do that all politicians should give up their children first to go fight and show us a good example.  It was also interesting to see how many would fight if it came to it and there's very little appetite for it.  

Whilst our man is trying to appear all statesman like and diplomatic he's overseeing the destruction of his own country and still we shake our heads and watch the car crash continuing.  Draw all the snippets of economic news together for yourself, the MSM won't tell you and in fact are still toeing the party line on many areas.  Look at food inflation, energy prices, sales of vehicles and general sales, savings and investments and job figures.  All you can see is that every action is having the opposite effect that is wanted.  The Laffer Curve in full observational view and statistics and data are beginning to mount up.

Why can a layman see this?  I think it is that these people are too near the problem and are trying to fix a problem at the coal face not doing the big picture stuff.  It was my biggest learning coming away from a technical problem solving person to a manager.  As a techie I could see the problem and I could fix it at the macro level.  In general terms that's what is happening here but a fix here will have an unwanted outcome elsewhere.  

The big picture should allow you to see the whole problem, the impacts and risks involved in taking a certain action.  Mitigating actions, likely outcomes, you know, good management practice.  And yet they don't appear to have approached this like that at all.  They weren't expecting the level of push back the impact on jobs and prices.  Their lack of vision will badly affect us all and their parochial approach will be their undoing.  

I recall the last Labour Government and their IR35 assault on contractors and businesses.  We altered our business to fall outside these measures and worked out an exit plan so we maximized our business for a short while and then shut it down and did something else.  It killed off thousands of businesses and meant that prices went up, tax income went down.  Good people left and went to work abroad draining us of some elite IT people.  That's what it is like.

The lack of incentives to build a business, employ people, pay tax etc will change our behaviour, it must do, what's the point in taking a business risk if someone just comes along and takes your money from you?  Not worth it is it?  My little business, now severely under threat, will not employ anyone in this country at all given the new laws coming in nor will we use contractors in the UK.  The normal admin required can be brought in from abroad at a decent price and low risk.

So whilst we are all looking this way, something else is happening in the other direction.... 

SQUIRREL!