The Count counts himself lucky not to be royal.

Politicians have decided that the cost of royalty is too high. They can wrap their tiny minds around tiny sums. But even the biggest headed of them can not wrap their big heads round big numbers. A tiny mind in a big head makes a lot of noise: it rattles around. To make a politician, all you need to do is to add a big mouth. Politicians can focus on the cost of a train journey (A rip off £500) but are clueless about the billions (£5 billion to rebuild 200 perfectly good school buildings while spending not one penny on the teachers: call it the City Academy programme and the MPs go to sleep and approve it). It would take ten million rip off train journeys to pay for the folly of the Academies. So if you are an MP you do the obvious thing: attack the train journey cost. Duh.


One thing is for sure. They are right about slime balls who pay themselves too much, have too many paid flunkies, offer no discernible benefit to society, insist on traveling first class, like to lord it over ordinary people, have luxury accommodationon and multiple homes paid for by the taxpayer, live in a security cocoon that protects them and leaves us to the mercy of thieves and terrorists and can look forward to a retirement with an indexed linked pension. This is a description of themselves that politicians avoid.

But hypocrisy is easier than honesty. Instead of attacking themselves, they attack royalty. The cost of Royalty, according to the politicians, is £37 million. This gives them plenty of scope to complain about a plane trip costing £12,800. The same MP who whinged and whined about the use of the royal train quietly took the taxpayer for a cool £250,000 in pay, pension and allowances. Throw in the cost of running Westminster, special advisers and special security, our MPs are blowing at least £200 million on keeping themselves in a comfortable lifestyle. Although they are very clear about how much the Royals cost, you can look high and low for how much Parliament costs. That's how to be a politician: complain loudly about other people's costs and keep very quiet about your own while you milk the system for all it is worth.

The politicians may know the cost of everything (except themselves) but they clearly know the value of nothing (except themselves: they think they are very precious). What is the value of Ian Davidson, who complained about the Royal train? And how does that compare to the value of the Royals? How many millions of tourists come to see Ian Davidson each year versus seeing the Queen?

The count would like to suggest a way of economising. Royalty can be funded by cutting out 150 MPs. They would not be missed: most of them have never even been heard of. We would not miss their missives to the local council about broken paving stones and housing waiting lists. We would not miss them legislating, regulating and bossing us around. We would not miss their pompous press releases. We would not miss paying their useless salaries and allowances.


£37 million is a small sum, but qualifies for the meadow mayonnaise awards. Let's do the count's three step:

1. The venal start: you know that there is going to no impartiality when the Public Accounts Committee is involved. They are not there to scrutinise expenditure and stop waste: they are there to score cheap political points and gain publicity for its anonymous, underachieving, time-serving members who dream of a junior ministerial job followed by a knighthood. Attacking royalty is risk free, because royalty never attacks back.

2. The Meadow Mayonnaise Moment. The cost of Royalty is £37 milliion (60p per citizen annually). This completely ignores the value of the cost; it ignores that much of this is the Queen's own income anyway; it ignores the absurd costs of the people doing the scrutinising; it ignores the costs and value of any alternative. But it does provide some cheap shots for cheap politicians.

3. The illogical conclusion is to cut costs of royalty even further. We could have them all living on the dole in a council house, but it would rather lose the point. Alternatively we could appoint Ian Davidson as Queen (is he a natural for this role?); or we could ask Mrs Beckham or Mrs Blair or any other washed up C-list celebrity to be queen/king president.

It is time the country woke up to the value of its heritage. All royalty and Counts deserve to be kept at taxpayers' expense in some luxury. It is the least we deserve.

Shiver me timbers, boy. $29 billion beats pieces of eight. It's time I sold my pirate ship and bought myself a pirate computer so I can sail the high seas of the internet and plunder lots of free software. I might even find myself a few free wenches disporting themselves for my pleasure at the right internet port.

All good pirates may be short on the required number of legs and eyes. But we are all long on our noses and can smell guano at fifty leagues distance. I smell guano big time. Count Kostov is going to do the three step dance to discover the guano behind the $29 biliion. This is difficult with one real leg and one wooden leg, but the Count leaves no stone unturned (or untripped over) in search of truth, wealth and wenches.


Step One: The venal start. So who is behind this research? Cue the Business Software Alliance. They are about as impartial as Dead Eye Dick when it comes to discussing who owns what. They are in business to show that there is a piracy problem.

Step two: The Meadow Mayonnaise Moment (on the high seas we call this the guano gambit). The BSA miraculously conjures up a figure of $29 billion. They claim this is how much is lost to software pirates each year. They conveniently forget that they charge such outrageous prices that most people in the pirate capitals of the world (China, India and poorer countries) could not afford to pay anyway. So there are no lost sales.

Step three: The illogical conclusion. Get ready for the heart rending pleas of poverty from Bill Gates. Software pirates are seriously damaging his wealth. We should immediately get Indian peasants and chinese labourers to give Bill hundreds of dollars for software whose marginal cost is a few cents. Microsoft needs the cash. They are only making about 30% net margin, despite being hugely inefficient and producing insecure software which is full of bugs.

By now, it is clear who the real pirates are: Captain Bill and the pirate ship Microsoft that is raiding homes and businesses across the world. The best rip off comes when they combine efforts with Captain Mike of the good ship Dell. They make unsuspecting victims pay for the Microsoft software on the Dell computer. When you replace the computer, you can not transfer the software to your new computer. You have to buy the software all over again. You pay far too much for the software first time around, and then they make you pay for it a second time around as well.

It's enough to make my parrot weep.

£690 billion for Count Kostov's old age should come in handy. It might pay the champagne bill. I might even upgrade from Tesco's Transylvanian fizz to Krug. And don't mention Dom Perignon. That is drunk by peasants who have been watching too many James Bond films. They also think that a martini (shaken not stirred) is the hieght of sophistication.

But someone has stolen my little nest egg for old age.

If you want to find the biggest thieves of all, look no further than government. Legalised theft is still theft from ordinary hard working families and from layabout aristocrats alike.

This time the theft comes in the shape of the public sector pensions black hole. First the government pays civil servants to make our lives a misery. And then it pays them to do nothing for the rest of their lives. The cost of the the black hole is estimated, by our friendly useless actuaries, to be about £690 billion. (See BBC News Feb 15th 2005). The useless actuaries are Watson Wyatt who spent a great deal of time, effort and money telling us what we already knew: we are well and truly screwed paying for the post dated pensions cheques which the government has been signing off in order to buy a few more lousy votes and stay in power.

The scale of this theft is huge. Even the great fraud and robber, Maxwell, could only get hold of £400 million his pensioners money. A thousand Maxwells would still be dwarfed by the government's pension theft. Even one Maxwell took alot to dwarf, let alone 1,000 of them.

If this debt takes 25 years to pay off, that comes to about £28 billion a year we will be paying as the price of past promises. That is nearly £1,000 for every household for the next 25 years. If anything, the black hole is going to get much worse before it gets much better.

At some point the children of the idle baby boomers may decide they can't pay, won't pay for the profligacy of their parents and past generations and governments. Then the chickens truly come home to roost.

Meanwhile the government gets all pompous and lectures private companies on their pension failings and life companies on pensions mis-selling. This is the same governmetn that is raiding £5 billion a year (£40 billion so far and counting...) from private pension plans in extra tax. It then wonders why private pensions are in trouble. But the private pension mess is a storm in a tea cup compared to the public pensions mess. The difference is that anyoen who works in the private sector is screwed: first the government will wreck the pension with its £5billion a year tax on it, and then when the pesnion fund goes bust, the pensioner will be left high and dry. In contrast, the public sector pensioner will be bailed out of the bottomless black hole by the bottomless pocket of the taxpayer. The final twist is that the government now wants private sector companies to bail out failing pension funds. The consequences are obvious:

- dodgy pension funds get bailed out by good funds. This gives no incentive for the dodgy funds to clean up their act. But it gives every incentive for companies to run a mile from any involvement in pensions provision: it costs enough to pay for your own pensioners, let alone anyone elses. So the result is that company pension schemes, (at least the final salary sort which the public sector enjoys so much) are disappearing faster than the self-destruct Mynah bird can squawk "kitty kitty kitty" to the nearest cat.

Meanwhile, Count Kostov would like to suggest some simple solutions which emanate from his glorious homeland.

First, the pensions crisis can be solved completely for the benefit of society once you realise that dead peasants make very good compost, especially for the rose bed.

Second, uncle Joe Stalin was a little suspect on some things, but he was pretty good on law and order. The first to be shot are not the lawyers or bourgeois running dog capitalists: it should be the actuaries who should first calculate precisely how long it will take the shot to leave the gun and pierce their heads (heart shots would not work as a crucial part of actuarial training is the removal of the heart. They also remove any part of the brain that deals with common sense).

Let's add another £130 billion to the Kostov coffers.

Blink and you will miss the billions flashing by.

Today's billions are the cost of the pensions black hole in the UK: £130 billion reported in Personnel Today. Gripping reading for Count Kostov. Nearly as entertaining and as factually accurate as Harry Potter.

And the £130 billion is a low estimate: it only includes company pension schemes. The public sector is totally screwed with promises of index linked pensions. Those pensions will only be paid through one of the greatest acts of intergenerational theft ever: today's kids (tomorrow's taxpayers) will find themselves supporting the elders but not betters through ever bigger taxation. It used to be that parents looked after kids. Baby boomers enjoyed all that, and now they want their kids to look after them. Who says crime does not pay? Call it a public pension plan and show pictures of grannies and suddenly all sense disappears. Granny is an idle thieving sponger who should have saved for her retirement: but the lure of cheap package holidays and the summer of love was more interesting than put pennies aside for the future. So now her childrend and grand children can cough up for her while she regales them with stories of how tough it was in the days before GameBoys.

In any event £130 billion qualifies for the Kostov coffers. As ever we will go through the Kostov thre step to see what this is all about:

Step One: The venal start. Who is going to be behind a study like this? Look no further than the ACA (Association of Consulting Actuaries). These are the people that were recommending pension holdiays for firms a few years ago so that firms could artificially boost their profits, artificially boost the share price and then the CEO could walk away with huge and undeserved profits on his share options. The same dickheads now say there is a crisis because the funds they were plundering don't have enough money left in them. Duh.

Step Two: The Meadow Mayonnaise Moment. Show that there is a huge problem (£130 billion gets my attention) which gains maximum publicity.

Step three: The illogical conclusion. First you pay the actuaries a fortune for advice which ruins your pension fund. Now they want you to pay them another fortune to figure out how to rebuild the pension fund.

Actuaries are people who are catastrophically wrong, to eight decimal places.

Actuary joke one: an actuary is an accountant without the charisma.

Actuary joke two: you can tell an actuary from an accountant easily. When talking to you an accountant looks at your shoes, and actuary looks at his shoes.

Count Kostov is in business: this time its fruit and veg.

The cost of wasted fruit and veg is £11 billion, or £420 per household each year. Farmers throw out 20%, because it does not meet supermarket standards. Supermarkets throw out another 10%. Of the 70% remaining, we throw out another 40% because when push comes to shove we would rather not eat up our greens before diving into the bannoffee pie and cream. So only about 40% of what is grown gets to our guts. (Do the maths: 70% times 40% results in 28% etc..)

There are several ways of looking at this. One is that the supermarkets are mean and nasty. Another is that we are fat and idle. And there is just a small possibility we might want to be grateful to the supermarkets for saving us from deformed carrots and beetroot. Anyone who saves the planet from beetroot deserves a medal.

The easy way to find out what is going on behind the numbers is to do Count Kostov's test of all such research:
- look for the venal start
- find the meadow mayonnaise moment
- reach the illogical conclusion

For the venal start, we need look no further than the sponsors of the research: The Soil Association. They are not exactly friends of the big supermarkets, so we all know what the research is going to have to prove: the big and nasty supermarkets are callously exploiting the doughty British farmer. This victim of the corporate industrial machine valiantly gets by, hiring hundreds of illegal immigrants to pick fruit and veg in the Lincolnshire priaire because no Brit can be arsed to work so hard for so little when a giro and crack are easy alternatives.

Now the meadow mayonnaise moment: 30% of our crops are thrown away, and as much wasted in the home. And its all the fault of the supermarkets who won't buy crap from farmers.

The illogical conclusion is, in this case, highly illogical: there isn't one. We are simply left to feel morally superior to the supermarkets and go tut tut over our bran and raisin breakfast while we read the Independent. There could have been some conlcusions. How about farmers selling their product direct or establishing alternative channels to market? After all, they have vast amounts of "free" product to dump. Given supermarket prices, they should be able to undercut the big beasts by miles. £1.99 for 150 grammes of watercress or rocket, which grow like weeds, should not be hard to beat. But it is easier to believe in a supermarket conspiracy and farmer victims.


And Count Kostov has not even started on the cost of the Common Agricultural Policy......

The Americans are causing me a great deal of stress.

They are beating us at the "cost of" game by a mile, or 1.6 kilometres if we want to keep our euro standardisation fascists at bay.

We Brits think stress costs us a puny £11 billion a year. The yanks think it costs them about $300 billion (£170 billion) a year. If there are six times as Americans as us (we are counting numbers of people here, not bodily weight) then stress costs the average American 2.5 times what it costs us.

The reaction to the terror attacks might be something to do with it. The yanks are still in a panic about 9/11. The Brits have got on with life. The tube does not work, but then it never has done anyway. So life carries on. By being normal, we won and the terrorists lost. By being stressed out and in a panic, the Americans gave the terrorists an undeserved victory. So they should chill out and have fun. That would really upset the terrorists: happiness is revenge.

But Count Kostov digresses.

The $300 billion is classic "cost of" meadow mayonnaise. It goes through all three stages of bullshit:
1) The venal start. Who commissioned the work on stress? You guessed it already: the American Institute of Stress
2) The Meadow Mayonnaise moment. The AIS got what they wanted: a huge figure for the cost of stress.
3) The illogical conclusion. In Europe, the illogical conclusion is that the state should spend more money on dealing with stress, and should introduce anti-stress regulations and laws. In the land of the free, the state butts out and it is left to market forces (cue the friendly helping hand of the AIS for a very modest fee) to help businesses deal with stress or get sued for $100 billion for the stress caused by letting the coffee machine run out of raspberry and hazelnut flavoured moccachino.

Count Kostov is thinking about taking up American citizenship.

Anything we can do, they can do better. We true blue Brits, even we are from Russia, can find £250 billion of costs out of the most costly wastes in society (see yesterday's blog). We are rank amateurs compared to the yanks. They can waste $759 billion (say £420 billion) on socialising alone according to CNN. http://edition.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/07/12/wasted.work.reut/index.html

We need to retaliate. What is the cost of tea dirinking for us? It must be more than the cost of tea drinking for the yanks. They threw the tea into the harbour not because of taxes, but because their tea is so bad. Boston harbour water still tastes better than American tea. Tea drinking has never recovered since that time.

Given the tea problem, perhaps we are better off over here.

Count Kostov has been counting the cost of everything. We are at £250 billion annually, and counting.

Here are the current top ten costs:
1. Crime: £60 billion
2. Unemployment: £40 billion
3. Ageism: £34 billion
4. Mental ill health: £32 billion
5. Congestion: £20 billion
6. Road Accidents: £16 billion
7. Stress: £11 billion
8. Air Pollution: £11 billion
9. Absenteeism: £11 billion
10.Back Pain: £5 billion

So back pain costs are in the same league as smoking (£1.7 billion) plus alcohol abuse (£3.3 billion) plus obesity (£2 billion) combined.

In total it comes to about £250 billion every year. That is over £8000 for every household in the country. Count Kostov wants his £8000 back.

So who are these people who produce these estimates? In nearly every case it is a familiar pattern:

1. Venal start: special interest group wants to prove that there are huge costs associated with the problem they sponsor.
2. The meadow mayonnaise moment: research is commissioned which conveniently proves the point the sponsors want.
3. The illogical conclusion: more money must be spent on the problem, preferably by channelling it through the special interest lobbyists who can keep their verminous careers going.

Count Kostov invites you to submit the following ideas:
1. Any more "cost of" studies which deserve a mention and possible nomination for the annual meadow mayonnaise awards?
2. What punishment is suitable for these vermin? Like the Mikado, we "let the punishment fit the crime."

My Name is Count Kostov. My friends call me Boris. I would like to remind my numerous enemies that they should call me Count. They should remember that "Count" has an "O" in it.

I hope to create many more enemies as a result of this blog.

I suffered for many years when the my glorious fatherland was ruled by a peasant from Georgia. Never let peasants run anything. None of my family's peasants could even run a bath. They made feeble excuses for this, like being too poor to buy a bath. No wonder that peasant Stalin could not run a country.


So I came to the West in search of freedom, wealth and the truth. Sex and drugs and rock and roll were also quite attractive. They are better than the salt mines. Except for Oasis.

I tell people I came above all in search of truth. Years of being fed Pravda and news bulletins which covered every minute of the deputy secretary's speech on iron production in Siberia meant that truth was a rare and valuable commodity. We had never heard the truth.

So now I am spitting my blood, which is deep blue, at your filthy vile journalists, politicians, businessmen, lobbyists and generalised hangers-on and vermin that twist and distort the truth. They claim the cost of everything is huge. It is their way of getting attention and publicity and support. They think it is in a good cause. But then they complain that no one trusts them any more. Scientists complain that no one believes the cretinous research they produce for their paymasters. You can see them dancing like puppets on their sponsor's wings.

So over the coming weeks we will expose these people who are corrupting the truth and taking us into a capitalist version of communist truth where nothing is what it seems.

You are welcome if you are fed up living on a diet of meadow mayonnaise produced by these vermin. We should open up salt mines for them specially. Or make them listen to Oasis . You are even more welcome if you spot some bovine watse in what are laughingly referred to as your newspapers. You will see the reports about "the cost of....absenteeism, traffic delays, obesity, red tape".

If you are a politician, lobbysit, lackey, servile scientist, journalist or peasant then call me Count and may Oasis come and play in your living room for all eternity.