Gordon Brown can't spend his way out of trouble

Telegraph:
".....Gordon Brown's improvident, cretinous, wasteful, cynical, desperate, prodigal, incontinent response to the financial crisis."
" Labour has spent an additional £1.2 trillion since taking office. During 12 years of strong growth, low unemployment and high tax receipts, it none the less contrived to run the largest deficit in the world after Hungary, Pakistan and Egypt."
"Gordon Brown isn't borrowing because of some wrong-headed economic theory. He's borrowing because the money has run out. He has given up on winning the next election, and is happy to leave his successors with a country more indebted than at any time since... well, since the last Labour government."

Lord Mandy, his murky friends and the debasing of our democracy

Daily Mail:

"The influence over the British political system by a relatively small and, in some cases, corrupt group of super-rich individuals is the single most poisonous legacy of Tony Blair's decade in government.

It is well-documented that he allowed the corporate elite to dictate government policy and buy access to senior ministers - including the prime minister himself.

Shamefully, Blair's priority was to put private greed above public duty."

'I'll be more careful about who my rich friends are' writes Mandelson as he admits he knew Russian oligarch for years

Daily Mail:
"It emerged yesterday that Lord Mandelson had been seen with Mr Deripaska at a Moscow restaurant in 2004, after being appointed EU trade commissioner but before taking up the post."
"Lord Mandelson is also facing scrutiny of his championing of the tiny Adriatic nation of Montenegro.
Aluminium tycoon Mr Deripaska has invested heavily in the country. Financier Mr Rothschild also has interests there."

'Worst financial crisis in human history': Bank boss's warning as pound suffers biggest fall for 37 years

Daily Mail:
Britain's economic output slid 0.5 per cent - more than twice the decline expected by the City;

• Markets tumbled around the world, with leading UK shares losing almost £50billion;

• Sterling had its worst-ever week against the dollar since 1971 and hit a record low against the euro;

• The oil cartel Opec cut production, a move likely to increase petrol prices up to 5p a litre;

• Experts warned that hedge funds are facing disaster, with billions likely to be wiped off savings and pension funds;

• Hundreds of jobs were axed in the insurance, cosmetics, haulage and textile industries.

So has the Brown bounce turned into the dead cat variety?

Telegraph:
"If there's one group that doesn't seem to be buying into the notion that the bank-rescuing Gordon Brown is the new Messiah, it's the voters."
Guardian:
"Labour fails to win poll boost from banking crisis Guardian/ICM poll shows Labour and Tories unchanged since last month in spite of international praise for Gordon Brown"

Tories get tough on immigration

Daily Mail:
"The Tories today issued a new call for tougher curbs on immigration as they warned that more than 80 per cent of migrants to Britain since 1997 came from outside the EU."
"...... official figures showed that 2.3 million people have moved here since Labour came to power. Of these, 1.96 million, or 84 per cent, came from outside Europe, where migration can be controlled, while only 374,000, or 16 per cent, had come from the EU."

Public borrowing soars to highest level since 1946 after Darling pledges: 'I'll spend my way out of the recession'

Daily Mail:

"Public borrowing has soared to its highest level since Britain was being rebuilt after World War Two.The Treasury borrowed a massive £37.6billion between April and September, outstripping the entire total for 2007 in just six months, to hit its highest level since 1946.A record £8.1billion was borrowed in September alone as the credit crunch tightened its grip. Analysts had predicted it would be nearer £6billion.The data, coming 24 hours after Chancellor Alistair Darling pledged to spend his way out of a recession, proves the Government's targets for borrowing are now in tatters."

Brown was not the author of the current plan

Daily Mail 18/10/08

"..But Brown was not the author of the current plan. The technical and crucial side of it was the responsibility of senior officials at the Bank of England. The Treasury lacks the required expertise.

After the emergence of the Brown plan, the clumsy political inserts have shown up all too plainly. Requiring the banks to forego paying out dividends to shareholders may please the public in its anti-bank fervour.

But it also means that shareholders, many of whom are company pension funds heavily reliant on dividends, have either sold their stock or are expected to do so.

This has been a principal cause of the plunge on the stock market in the wake of the rescue. Not very clever.

The other aspect which suggests that the Prime Minister has still not got the point lies in his announcement that, in return for Government help, banks must set out to lend on the same scale as they did in 2007."

Gordon Brown's idea (not)

Gordon Brown's idea (not) - I urge everyone to have a look at this article in the New York Times:
Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way ,


Now tell me Gordon Brown did not 'borrow' this idea and peddle a version of it to all.

Sky News Blog Comment:
"....is 100% right and the Brown master plan has been copied virtually exactly from the Swedish action when their property bubble burst and their own banks failed.

A slight but very important difference is that Brown and Darling still wish to somehow protect shareholders and that is hardly feasible. Sweden baldly told the bank shareholders that it was bad luck. One super wealthy family dug into their own pockets and recapitalised their own bank which was profitable again with one year. The rest went into public hands and were eventually sold by public flotation. The nett cost to Sweden was, in the long run, very tiny.

Here we have bank directors and executives scheming and screaming to retain some value in their own shareholdings, often acquired free as bonuses.

Time to be hard on these careless gamblers, not always on the innocent taxpayer who trusted this government."

Sky News Blog comment:
"The info on the (itsfaircomment.com) web address and links is so relevant, problem is very few voters will visit this (sky news) blog. The question is how do you get through to the average man in the street many of which are undecided voters.
Unfortunately most are too worried about their immediate financial situation than how they got into it... Mass media has to be the answer but again how do you get them to put it out, especially as they are supposed to be politically unbiased..."

Greed that fuelled the crash : £37bn of our money bails out bankers... who last year took £17bn in bonuses

Daily Mail:
"But startling figures showed Mr Brown's bank bail out will mean the biggest increase in debt by any peacetime government, equivalent to £10,000 for every man, woman and child in the country or more than £40,000 for every family."

The day the House of Lords died of shame

Daily Mail:
"While Gordon was going through his 'we shall fight them in the hedge funds' routine, stage left his new best friend was slithering into the House of Lords."

"While Gordon is strutting his stuff, posing as the saviour of the world banking system, please, please, please don't forget the cynicism and contempt for decency which went into his rehabilitation of Milly Molly Mandy.
This administration is beyond venal. Far from being a model of rectitude, Brown is just another selfish, dishonest chancer on the make, with unparalleled disdain for any vestige of principle and propriety."

As £170,000 a year is spent on an Afghan single mother... A story that sums up the howling insanity of modern Britain

Daily Mail:
"If ever a single news story summed up the howling insanity of Brown's Britain, this surely has to be it. It's difficult to decide on what precise level this lunacy is most outrageous."

"Gordon Brown has hosed them down with our hard-earned cash. Government spending has more than doubled in the past ten years.

And when it looked as if the money was going to run out, Gordon just went on a borrowing spree - which is one of the reasons the International Monetary Fund says Britain is uniquely ill-equipped to cope with the credit crunch.

Officially, there are another 800,000 on the public payroll under Labour, but add in those 'working' for quangos and you can bet it's well over a million."

Labour heading for electoral disaster: poll

Yahoo News:
"A survey of marginal constituencies for the News of the World newspaper suggests that with current levels of support, Labour could lose 164 of its 349 MPs at the next election, and the Tories would have a 78-seat majority."

Arise, Lord Sleaze: Brown resurrects Peter Mandelson ... the disgraced Prince of Darkness

Says it all really....

Daily Mail: 4.10.08

Malignant, malevolent, mendacious - this creep is a cancer on British life

Daily Mail : 4.10.08

"Trust me, this was the act of a madman. Brown came into office promising to draw a line under the spin, sleaze, dishonesty and division of the Blair years. It was always nonsense, but enough people fell for it. Yet he has now recalled into his Cabinet the living embodiment of all that is rotten and disreputable about New Labour."

"Putting this odious, discredited creep back into one of the great offices of state is an affront to any definition of decency. "

Ed Balls 'begged' PM not to appoint Mandelson : Yahoo News
"Schools secretary Ed Balls has been reported as begging the prime minister on Thursday evening not to reappoint Peter Mandelson to the cabinet and is said to be furious at the decision to bring him back."

Rant in the North

While most of us are worried over the economic crisis and keeping a roof over our heads, a little ray of sunshine sent me a reminder on missing an important message from our 'diva in residence' up here. To correct that omission may I direct you to it here. It is from the pen of Judith O'Reilly, known for eloquence,wit and vivid word portraits of her Nothumbrian life - and the odd 'porkie pie'..... It must be supposed that this is the tone that passes between her and and her technically absent husband behind closed doors......

Caution: contains foul language,and is highly unsuitable for children to read. Worse still, Judith also threatens to write another book, let us hope it will be 'Two years in Tuscany'.