The Madness of King Gordon

And so the sales start in earnest. Thousands of shoppers jostling each other around, in search of discounts on cheap, yet overpriced tat they don't actually need, on credit they cannot afford, with no thought about how the debts are ever going to be repaid when their jobs have disappeared into the ether.

The government, too, is keen to promote this lemming-like behaviour, the same behaviour that led us into this debt crisis, inspired by the government that set off the whole sorry chain reaction. Let us recall the terrible decisions taken by Brown that led us into this trap; The creation of a regulatory regime too cumbersome to do its job, the removal of house price inflation from interest rate decisions, the raid on pensions, the discouragement of savings, and the encouragement of debt, led by none other than the arch debtor and irresponsible borrower himself: Gordon Brown. Let us not forget, the Prime Minister led by example, running up big government debts during the boom when he should have been saving for a rainy day. Yet Brown's stealth tax on savings clearly demonstrates he has no concept of saving for a rainy day.

Now Brown pins his hopes on a pseudo-recovery, a false and temporary blip in consumer confidence underpinned by a pretty ineffectual and short-term cut in VAT, which will be reversed long before the pain has subsided and the real recovery begins. His chancellor, Darling, trots out over-optimistic forecasts of recovery in the second half of 2009, criticised, derided and even ridiculed by economists and commentators. Their vain hope is to engineer some kind of temporary blip, no matter that it will make the long-term situtation even more grave than it already is. If Brown and company can somehow engineer enough false hope, however brief, it will give them a small window of opportunity to call an election in which they might not do as badly as some have suggested. If enough gullible voters can be persuaded that there is light at the end of the tunnel, perhaps they can even engineer an hung parliament. The rest of us will already have identified the light at the end of the tunnel as an oncoming train - the British economy, driven by Gordon Brown, and picking up speed as it heads straight towards us, completely out of control. The brakes were removed years ago, allowing Brown to boast of the lowest rates for a generation.

The madness of King Gordon must go on, at least until the election is called. Spend, spend, spend! Borrow, borrow borrow! The piper must be paid, but why worry about next year? After all, you could get knocked down by a train tomorrow.

How to Avoid Taxes on Booze

The government makes a fortune on alcohol taxes. For 1 litre of vodka 40% ABV the duty is around 8 quid.

We don't have to put up with this, it takes no more than 20 minutes to knock up a gallon of very nice white wine (plus a few weeks to ferment). That's about half a dozen bottles. The cost is about £1.30.

I like to have a few drinks maybe 3 or 4 nights a week, and by brewing my own I save hundreds of pounds every year in duty alone. Money that used to go to Gordon is now earning interest for me in building society accounts. On top of that, there's no VAT or expensive brand-name advertising to pay for, so I'm saving a good 4-figure sum in total, every single year.

All you do is dissolve a 1 kilo bag of sugar in water, then let it cool and pour into a sterilised demi-john. Add a 1 litre carton of cheap orange juice, a teaspoon of yeast and a teaspoon of pectolase from Wilko. Top up with cold tap water and leave for a couple of months.

Believe me, it's as good as anything you'll buy in the supermarket and you're paying 20p per bottle instead of £2.99. Best of all, the chancellor isn't getting his hands on your hard-earned money.

German Finance Minister Rubbishes Brown

Herr Steinbrueck is correct. Having inherited a golden economic legacy handed to him a little over a decade ago, Brown has as good as bankrupted the UK. The savings ratio has collapsed as savers have been discouraged and reckless borrowing positively encouraged. Property prices trebled in a few short years before the bubble burst, and Brown ran up a budget deficit during the boom, claiming he didn’t need to set money aside for unforseen problems as he had abolished the economic cycle. “No more boom and bust” was his oft-heard cry. How hollow that now sounds.

Debt - both public and private - is out of control and Brown has no desire to exercise fiscal discipline while he has a general election to fight, in a little under 18 months or so if, and it’s a big if, he survives that long.

Passing on Cuts to Savers

While driving home from a Christmas shopping trip this afternoon, I heard a news item on Radio 4 which stated Gordon Brown was going to force banks to pass on rate cuts to customers. Not borrowers, you understand, but customers. In fact, by passing on cuts to borrowers banks have to pass them on to savers too, or they lose money. Brown knows this, but he doesn't really care much for savers, as his record shows.

Next time your building society or bank cuts your savings rates, you know precisely who is to blame.

Brown Ignored by Overseas Media

Here's something interesting.

Gordon Brown and his friends are trying to present him as the economic saviour of the world, the man to whom other world leaders are turning in their hour of need.

Yet I've been reading a fascinating article in the Washington Post about the G20 meeting. Fascinating not because of what is in the article, but because of what isn't. As one might expect, the countries in attendance and their world leaders are mentioned in the piece, but there is one very notable exception: Gordon Brown. The article runs to 2 pages, yet the man who claims to be running the show and leading by example isn't mentioned once when practically everyone else is.

Perhaps the G20 meeting isn't the Gordon Brown show after all. Perhaps other leaders are not so keen to take advice from a man who is dealing with a much bigger debt burden than any comparable economy. Maybe the narrative in this country's media is a little out-of-touch with reality and is due a correction - rather like the economy, some might say.

The article, for anyone who might be interested, is here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/15/AR2008111500902.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2008111500904&s_pos=

Hazel Blears' Comment Moderation

The other day, I posted a comment on Hazel Blears' blog. The text went like this:

"This does sound a trifle patronising.

In my experience, young people just want somewhere to hang out, smoke cigarettes and drink the white cider they bought from the dodgy off-licence down the road. Talk to them about "community cohesion" or "taking ownership of their communities" and they'll think you're absolutely stark-raving bonkers, especially if you use language like that. Well, those that don't listen to Cliff Richard will."

Today, I received an email from the webmaster asking if I would like to rephrase it. Apparently, the term "stark raving bonkers" is deemed too personal.

What?

The Axis of Ineptitude

Congratulations, Obama.

In 2 months or so, one half of the axis of ineptitude - George Bush - will be gone for good. His administration will be swept away by the tidal wave that is Barack Obama. With that, we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief.

Let us not forget, however, that the other half of this axis - the Brown half - is still in office, and intends to cling on as long as possible. If we are lucky, Labour will depose him in a leadership election in 2009. If we are not, we will have to wait until the middle of 2010 before he is removed.

Change is definitely in the air. Speak to people on the street, even in safe Labour seats, and you realise there is no mood for continuity. Brown represents that continuity; the failed policies, the old dogma, the inability of an administration to admit to its own mistakes by putting them right. The Labour Party needs to wake up and smell the coffee, or it risks losing by a landslide when the UK electorate finally gets its say on the decade of debt, the invasion of Iraq, and other failures of the past.

Until Brown goes, one half of the axis of ineptitude remains in place.

Brown's Culture of Debt

Shortly after taking office in 1997, Gordon Brown handed the task of determining interest rates to the Bank of England, charging it with keeping inflation down. Back then, the government's official inflation figures were based on the reliable Retail Prices Index. One might have expected this to mark the end of political interference in interest rates, but that was not the case. In 2003, Gordon scrapped RPI as the MPC's inflation target index, and replaced it with the Consumer Prices Index, or CPI. In effect, he was telling the Bank of England not to concern itself with ever-rising house prices and consumer debt, and to concentrate on little more than the price of goods in the supermarkets.

This was a highly significant act calculated to force rates down. In 2005, Labour's election campaign ran several posters boasting about the how cheap it was to obtain credit. The message was clear: spend, spend, spend and don't worry about the consequences. People did just this, and personal debt burst through the £1 trillion mark, and kept on rising. Personal insolvencies soon hit 100,000 per year, by far the highest numbers ever recorded. What did Gordon care? So long as the debt bubble kept growing, his faux growth figures made it look like the economy was still doing well. Accordingly, the government kept on spending money as if it were water, with no regard to what might happen in future. Eventually, the whole house of cards had to collapse, and so it did in 2007 with the first run on a British bank in more than a century. The credit crunch was upon us.

The mess that Brown has made of the UK economy will take years to clean up. Far from being in a good position to weather the storm, the UK is in an uniquely bad position to deal with the economic situation. The recession will hit Britain far harder than most comparable countries. Of course, infamous as he is for being unable to own up to his past mistakes, Brown won't admit to any of the damage he has caused, and still insists on trotting out the same tired old lines. This is why he is unlikely to restore RPI as the Bank's inflation target. To do so would be tantamount to admitting he messed up badly.

Oh dear.

We are now into what looks likely to be a very deep and long-lasting recession. What's more, the government seems intent on compounding the terrible decisions it made which brought us to this place with even worse ones in a doomed attempt to get us out.

Increasing public spending is the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time, and will inevitably make the situation far, far worse. We've been down that road before, and the consequences were pretty horrific. Even Jim Callaghan knew you couldn't hope to get away with what Brown is attempting, but then hindsight is not something that troubles Brown, who famously listens to no-one. He has persistently ignored best advice, which is why the country is in such a poor position, and why it will continue to get worse until he starts to see sense, or is removed from office. My money is on the latter.

Brown's answer to the economic hardship for which he is largely responsible is to lurch to the left, yet this it no time for outdated and discredited political dogma. Instead, he should just cut taxes and stop throwing away the money that this seriously indebted country does not have. The economy needs a stimulus, not another mortgage.

The Old Ones are the Best Ones

John Prescott, Charles Kennedy and Gordon Brown were stuck on the roof of the House of Commons in a thunderstorm. The rain was lashing down, and all three were worried that they might get struck by lightning at any time. Suddenly, the ghost of John Smith appeared in front of them. "Fear not," the apparition said, "I will act as your guardian angel. All you need do is jump off the roof, shout out what it is you want to land on, and you will descend safely and gently to the ground below."

Well, the three MPs were unsure at first, but none of them had much choice. John Prescott was the first to take a leap of faith, shouting "Meat pies" as he leapt from the roof of the building. Sure enough, he drifted slowly towards the ground, and landed in a pile of warm meat pies, which he started to devour.

Without a moment's hesitation, Charlie Kennedy was next. "Whisky!" came the cry, and he too glided gently down, landing in a vat of whisky below. Charles was in heaven.

This was too good an opportunity for Gordon Brown to miss, he was but a leap away from restoring his party's finances, and maybe the economy and his party's fortunes in the opinion polls too. As he contemplated which word to shout out, he lost his footing and tumbled head first from the roof.

"Shhhiiiiiittttt!!!!"

Leaked ID cards document

Apparently, this is the leaked document on ID cards, annotated by that the No2ID campaign. I have to admit to being completely opposed to Brown's ill-considered scheme, and reading through this document did nothing to ease any of my concerns - although some of No2ID's points seem to be reading between the lines somewhat. Of course, this is all assuming that the document itself is genuine, although I have no reason to believe otherwise.

Why Peter Hain Must Go

Another day, another scandal. This time Peter Hain is under mounting pressure to go. At first we were told he had not declared 17 donations to his failed deputy leadership campaign amounting to more than £103,000. As more details emerged it became clear that these donations were made in a rather bizarre manner, via a newly set-up think tank. Then we were told that not all donors were told that money they had given to that think tank was to be diverted to Hain's campaign fund. The think tank involved, known as the Progressive Policies Forum, has no staff and has not undertaken any work as its funds were diverted to Hain. It would be cynical to suggest that this think tank was set up specifically for the purpose of hiding the source of donations to Hain's campaign, and as such we have to give Hain the benefit of the doubt. Nevertheless, given the current administration's track record, this thought is bound to cross the minds of many ordinary voters. It is not necessarily the wrongdoing that is damaging, it is the suspicion that we only ever see the tip of the iceberg, and that there is far more going on than meets the eye.

In the UK we have become accustomed to sleaze in politics. Under John Major's administration there were certainly sleazy individuals. It was possible to find the odd rogue MP prepared to ask questions in the house for cash, and quite a few were caught with their trousers down, but they were acting individually. However, under Blair and Brown and Blair the sleaze has become systemic. Why bother paying for questions to be asked in parliament, when following a substantial donation to the Labour party one could actually become part of the upper house? This time corruption isn't simply a case of a few selfish individuals with their snouts in the trough, although that in itself would be bad enough, under the present administration there appears to be a culture of sleaze running from top to bottom. It's as if corruption has become unofficial government policy, and whether that perception is right or wrong, it does far more damage to the government specifically, and to politics in general, than a few bed-hopping Tories ever did.

Gordon Brown has been part of the New Labour government for the past decade, and continues to preside over systematic rule breaking for which nobody has yet resigned. When Brown assumed control in the Summer of 2007 he promised change, an end to spin, and a different approach. Things would be different on his watch. One could argue that he has achieved this in one sense, as Labour party interests are now deemed paramount, and certainly more important than the national interest. Under Blair ministers would occasionally resign - grudgingly, mind you. Under Brown nobody resigns because it might damage the party. It has even been rumoured that Wendy Alexander, Labour's leader in Scotland, considered her own position untenable after it emerged she broke the rules regarding party donations, and wanted to resign. The story goes that Gordon Brown forced her to stay on because this might have weakened his own position.

It is an appalling mess, and Gordon Brown is ultimately culpable for the whole sorry state of affairs. Never mind Peter Hain, it is Gordon Brown's head that should be on the block for allowing this situation to continue. We need a PM who is prepared to root out and remove those individuals who are caught out, and insist on resignations when required. Gordon Brown, it would seem, is not that man.