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.