Just a Coincidence...

...that the latest batch of Parliamentary expenses were released at 0600 hrs this morning, the morning after the Pre-Budget Report. No plan there at all. Just a coincidence.

The Politics of Jealousy

I have always thought that jealousy is without doubt the most unattractive of all human emotions. It is totally negative. It has no redeeming features. And, ultimately, it is utterly pointless. Has jealous behaviour ever stopped a partner or friend from misbehaving? No.

But for the last few months we have been engaged nationally in a monumental act of petty, pointless, vindictive and hypocritical political jealousy on a massive, industrial scale. Politicians and the media have been queuing up to bash bankers. The international political class at various summits have been queuing up to do it too. The French, socialist to their finger tips, have been in the vanguard of pushing for EU action to punish bankers and take away their bonuses.

Tomorrow, Mr Eyebrows will publish his Pre-Budget Report and, we are led to believe by the usual heavy trailing in the media that politicians now go in for, he will enshrine this jealousy into policy and no doubt promise legislation to enshrine it into law as well.

This is all just absolutely ass numbing madness. Let me explain...

1. Political dishonesty - We are in the midst of an enormous 'blame shift' operation being carried out by the political class, led by Gordy's Government. Once again for the Lefties, the stupid and those that have forgotten, the banking crisis was caused by regulation that was too lax. Who regulates? Government. Did the banks adhere to the regulation? Yes, to the letter. Thus who is to blame? Duh!

Let me explain this another way. Suppose you belong to an organisation which has some rules. You keep to those rules to the letter. Then the organisation implodes. Is it the fault of those that ran the organisation and its rules or those that worked within it and kept to the rules?

Now do I think the banks should have spotted that regulation was too lax? Yes, of course. We all should. Some did. Not enough, sadly. But the overwhelming major culpability rests with Government. But they don't want to be blamed, so by tapping into our jealousy of those more rich and successful than us, they have shifted the blame to the banks. As ever, once the media agenda was set, the banks have just had to soak it up. (This behaviour is similar to how the police behaved after the that moronic McPherson Inquiry conclusion that the Met was institutionally racist. Once the media agenda was set, everyone queued up to self-flagellate themselves that they were institutionally racist because (a) this tapped into our first world, post colonialism guilt and (b) it was good for your career prospects because that was the prevailing orthodoxy).

2. Economics for dummies - Supply and demand, children, supply and demand - aka the market rate. If you tax entrepreneurial rich people more than they think is fair, they fuck off. They are already doing it: companies moving to other countries (viz Shire Pharmaceuticals, UBM, WPP, Yahoo), hedge funds moving to lower tax states (viz Amplitude Capital, Odey Asset Management, Guy Hands) etc.

If you tax UK bankers more than their foreign counterparts or bankers from certain selected UK banks (that happen to be part owned by the Government) more than their competitors, then they will fuck off to other banks, other financial institutions, other countries. In fact, they already are. 1000 RBS staff have already jumped ship. QED.

And the loser? The freaking taxpayer you numpties! You muppets tried this in the 1970s, remember? Didn't work then, won't work now.

3. Pissing away our unique international positioning - Banking is an absolutely critical part of the UK economy. It attracts massive inward investment. It is one of our key selling points internationally. Dick around with that at your peril.

What message are Gordy and Eyebrows giving internationally? That we are targeting bankers comparatively more aggressively. That we are going to tax the rich harder than other countries. Hmmm. Good for inward investment, d'ya think?

4. Cutting off your nose - Large salaries and bonuses are taxed, shortly at 50% (but that's another story). If you don't pay them, then the Chancellor's tax coffers further diminish just when he needs more cash. Duh! (Where's both my feet. Ready. Aim. Fire.)

All this nonsense is just the politics of jealousy. It is always popular with us Proles to tax the rich more. We're just jealous of their success and their money. It is for politicians to rise above this base stupidity, see the bigger picture, take their own fair share of the blame, and not pander to us dumb Proles.

But then again, I may as well just piss into the wind.

(And for the record, before some Lefty tosser emails me, I am not a banker).

Oh, the Irony, the Irony!

1. Having hurled our tax payments at the public sector, ripped out of our pay packets each month for the last 11 years, resulting in civil servants, council officers, doctors, teachers etc - not to mention MPs - earning six figure salaries,

2. Having grown the public sector headcount by 17% since NuLab came into Government,

3. And having presided over public sector productivity actually declining over the last 11 years despite 1 and 2 above,

Today Gordon Brown had the fucking balls to say:

"...I can announce today that the senior civil service pay bill will be cut by up to 20 per cent over the next three years to release savings of £100 million a year...In the wider public sector, some senior pay and perks packages have...lost touch with the reality of people’s lives. Money which should be spent on health, on schools, on policing, and on social services is in some cases going on excessive salaries and unjustified bonuses far beyond the expectations of the majority of workers...It cannot be right that taxpayers fund 300 local authority officials who have salaries over £150,000, or that in total over 300 staff across public sector bodies are paid more than £200,000."

Un-fucking-believable. The brass neck. The balls of the fucker. No shame. Will no one rid me of this troublesome NuLab priest?

Where Weak Governments Seek Shelter

Three wonderful examples from today's media of desperate news management by 'right on' weak politicians:

1. Child Migrant Apology - A totally manufactured 'crisis' over apologising for sins past. Always a good one, this. The pathetic media, always desperate for a contrition story as it serves the current societal appetite for being outraged over nothing. Why apologise to all these ex-British Australians now? Why not in 1997? Or 1998? Or 1999? (I could go on). You have had a number of years to so this, Gordy. Such a desperate attempt to regain control over the news agenda and play Gordy as a brilliant compassionate leader, it's pathetically transparent. Pah!

And while we are on the subject of style over substance political apologies, where do we draw the line? Where is the apology from the Norwegians for raping and pillaging? And for that matter the French for invading Britain in 1066? And what about the Italians for letting Julius Caesar come over here and start the first road building programme? Trendy lefty governments love this sort of crap. Pointless political bullshit, which the media should ignore but suck up like lap dogs.

2. Pointless Summit - A summit that achieves nothing substantial but a photo op (funny how Obama is always there) and a 'really strongly worded communique', viz the APEC summit. I have opined about summits before (here, here and here). Can we all grow up? We Proles can see through the bullshit, you know.

3. Scapegoat-itis - Always blame someone else for your mistakes. Blameshift is a well recorded political tactic. Thus politicians, who have I recall been raping the taxpayer on pay, expenses and benefits in kind for decades, are still desperate to blame the evil bankers and their fat cat bonuses for our financial woes. Again, you fuckwits, it was a failure of Government regulation not a banking failure or greed on the part of any bankers.

I might as well piss into the wind.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

...or to translate the words of Juvenal, the famous Roman poet and satirist: who will guard the guards?

We have an absolutely fundamental problem in our democracy. The mission creep of the executive, started by Thatcher, accelerated massively by Blair and topped off with supreme disdainful arrogance by Brown, is now the rotten core of our governance system. Examples from just the last 24 hrs alone:

Yesterday's PMQs - A set piece, weekly moment in holding the executive to account has been transformed into the PM refusing to answer any direct question and lying on the record about the executive's own policies.

The Chancellor's Mansion House speech - Despite the banking regulation system created by the executive being demonstrably inadequate, with the Governor of the Bank calling for it to be changed, with the US Government strengthening their system, because it would seem to be admitting incompetence, the executive toughs it out and refuse to change things.

The fake Iraq war inquiry - A chorus of disapproval, now joined by Lords Butler and Hutton - both past chairmen of war-related public inquiries - reigns down on the executive and its cover up operation of what has been without doubt the most outrageous and expensive (in terms of human life) botch up during NuLab's period in power. The executive just arrogantly ignore the criticism.

MPs expenses - Today the feeding frenzy begins all over again. Standby for days of more coverage. There will be more scalps; NuLab minister Shahid Malik is clinging on by his finger nails and will surely go soon but there will be more. The whole legislature, including the executive, are sullied. And the response of the executive has been pitiful, more interested in covering up the detail and using distraction techniques (even today, funny that Fred the Shred's pension deal should be leaked today, huh?) than shedding light and promoting openness.

All these demonstrate the fundamental problem of our democracy: we have an executive that is so powerful that it now listens to no one, has no shame, and does exactly what it wants.

To answer Juvenal's question, no one is guarding the guards. They are out of control.

More Proportional Bullshit (Thu 12 June)

So Gordy has gone public on some amazingly and woolly idea about introducing PR, none of which will happen before the next General Election. A desperate distraction technique wrapped up as an ill thought through, back of the fag packet initiative. Need I say more.

Prediction

Last time I predicted something - that Speaker Martin would not resign....on the very day that he resigned - I got it spectacularly wrong. The Great Iain Dale commented on that post along the lines of "sucks doesn't it", which made me laugh.

Well here I go again: I can see no way that Gordy will either resign or call an election anytime soon, despite the media frenzy and The Sun's Paul Kavanagh saying he'll be gone in a week.

Why? Well, apart from the political editors of the dead tree press, he is under no real pressure to do so. Are there any plots being detailed, day by day, in the press like all through the latter years of Blair's premiership or even last summer when Milliband bottled it? No. Are there Labour backbenchers charging around calling for him to go? No.

The NuLab big hitters don't want the poisoned chalice now, preferring a run at it after the forthcoming General Election. The myriad of backbenchers who will lose their seats are not suddenly going to behave like turkeys voting for Christmas.

So, I see no real pressure. Yes a few deadbeat ministers have resigned before they were ritually slaughtered but so what?

(So that will be him resigning this afternoon and Mr Dale's comment inbound, then).

Wednesday Games - Game 1

Who might gain from Gordy being ousted post the disastrous Euro/local election?

Option 1 - Any likely successor, who would take on the absolute fag end of this Parliament and then face certain death in a few months in a General Election

or

Option 2 - The media who would be guaranteed acres of coverage for months

Hmmm. I wonder who is stoking this story?

What The Fuck Do I Know?

Well I couldn't have got that more wrong if I'd tried!

So, farewell then Mr Speaker. But what gives? Why resign as an MP as well?

I think Gordy must have pulled the rug from underneath him behind the scenes, in a "you're dead meat, we will give the no confidence motion Parliamentary time, go now so that we can begin to draw a line" sort of way. Hence, Martin thinking..."Hmmmm, how to get my own back. I know. A by-election for Gordy right now will fuck him badly." And indeed it will.

The last by-election was also in Glasgow. Horrible day at the office for Mr Brown, that one. This one will be worse. Either stand by for an SNP whitewash or for an anti-sleaze, independent candidate: Martin Bell, again? Ester Rantzen in Glasgow, I think not? A Scottish business type?

But for Gordy it just gets worse and worse. Think what's coming:

• HoC official expenses detail release
• Daily Torygraph and other media outlets pouring over the detail and comparing entries
• Inspector Knacker arrest of various MPs, followed by rumour and counter rumour for months
• Euro and local elections horror story
• New speaker election
• NEC and local party de-selections
• Kelly inquiry announcements
• Glasgow by-election loss

And all this on top of monthly unemployment mounting up. More business failures. Possible IMF help needed. OMG. It just gets worse and worse.

Brown Is Dead

No, calm down. He's not dead yet. But he is absolutely dead politically. The evidence? Well not what all the media are raging about. As ever, they are miles off target.

It's not his various policy U-Turns, every day a new one it seems.

It's not that he had to dump McBride and is considering a Night of the Long Knives cabinet reshuffle.

It's not his restless doomed cabinet, who all are so pathetic that they can't bring themselves to plunge the knife in and so resort to the modern politician's old favourite: the well trailed one remark in an otherwise dull speech or interview, which they can 'clarify' later.

It's not that he and his team are completely out of touch with public sentiment (think Gurkhas).

It's not that he has lost a vote in the House (think Gurkhas).

It's not that all his polling is downhill.

It's not that the recession still has more drip, drip, drip bad news for many months to come.

No. It's U-Tube. Watch it again....



Fact 1 - Gordy is a shit public speaker; no rhythm, no delivery, no projection, no humour, no charisma, no character. Nothing. Null. Zero.

Fact 2 - Gordy has no bedside manner. He has no empathy with his audience. When he speaks, he is alien to you. He is like a nervous junior bank clerk who retreats behind formality when telling you that you can't have a loan.

So who the fuck thought putting him on U-Tube would be a good idea? Even Fatty Prescott is mocking him!

The truth is that anything he says is now openly mocked by his own side and the media. He cannot get a good headline anymore. So the strategy is to bypass the media and go direct to the voters on U-Tube, also hoping to make him look cool and hip and relevant by using yoof media (tip - this doesn't work in a buttoned up suit, duh!).

No, this is an act of incredible desperation. The No 10 Bunker has run out of ideas. They are bereft. They have a totally unmarketable product and are having to think of ludicrous ways to market it.

Gordy is dead. It is almost awful to watch. But so much fun.

Drapergate 2 or McBridegate 1?

So the delicious story of No 10's dirty tricks department is building to its crescendo. Guido has two tasters here and here, as well as being on Sky today (so much better than the debacle on The Daily Politics, Guido, good work). The Great Iain Dale, also on Sky and BBC today, has opined as well. Dizzy has uncovered the embryonic Red Flag site and Tory Bear has made us all laugh.

Like all of us I am sure, I am salivating at the wonderful Sunday reading awaiting me. The story will unfold for the next 24 hrs in all its glory. I guess McBride will be sacked. Draper already looks as if he has been edged out. Many bloggers will chitter chatter over the next few days, but what are the lessons learnt, particularly for Dave and his incoming tribe?

1. Political parties and their politicians, like all leaders, need to have integrity. And integrity is important. You cannot command respect without it. And like virginity, once lost it can never regained.

2. As a leader, claiming you did not know what your close advisers were doing or that whilst unethical 'it's OK because it's within the rules' just won't wash with the floating vote. The tribal vote will always overlook problems, but they don't win elections.

3. If a staff member has shown a complete lack of integrity, you sack them and - here's the lesson for NuLab - never employ them again as leopards tend not to change their spots. Draper is a proven lying shit and always will be. I am sure Lord Manbypanby will blow up in their faces at some stage too. (Dave - think Jeffrey Archer, think Jonathan Aitken, think David Mellor. Don't ever go there.)

4. The politicisation of the civil service needs to be reversed. Civil servants should be neutral. Political advisers are party animals. They need to be kept entirely separate.

5. The dead tree press will forever more follow the blogosphere. It's been easy for Dave in opposition. It will be harder in Government, and he needs to think now how to keep ahead of that change.

NuLab Spin Watch

G20 £1.1 trillion - Which turned out to be almost all reheated previous announcements.

Less stigma for IMF bailout - Mandelson and Timms preparing the ground for Brown's IMF begging bowl.

Treasury got it wrong - Darling preparing ground for a truly horrible budget.

Campbell, Balls, Whelan, Draper may have moved on but old habits die hard.

The Old Disease: Scape-goat-itis

I'm terribly confused about the global recession.

Our illustrious PM assured us repeatedly it was all America's fault with all that sub prime madness. Or though, he didn't seem too keen to repeat this when Nick Robinson asked him about that view in one of the many Gordo and Obamo press conferences over the last few days. Now he seems to be sucking off St Obama every other nanosecond.

OK so not America, really it was those evil bankers seeking fat cat bonuses through reckless lending. Oh and in particular that nasty Mr Fred Goodwin (boo, hiss, stone him). All out for themselves, the bastards. Seize their bonuses. Sequester their pensions. Sell their wives and children.

But now the blame caravan seems to have moved on once again. Now - and forgive me as I have missed the logic here - the G20, who are all led brilliantly by the able and wise Mr Brown, have fingered those evil, Nazi sheltering, international crime riddled tax havens. So naughty have they been in fact we're going to.....name and shame them (oooh, awful, how will they cope with the shame).

Just remind me. When exactly did tax havens create the global recession? Was I asleep or something? I'm pretty sure that if they were responsible that nice, balanced and unexcitable Robert Peston would have been whining about it every night for weeks.

No, as ever, the politicians are (a) looking for their latest scapegoat and (b) using the cover of unrelated announcements to roll out their own political dogma.

What exactly have tax havens done? They have operated within the law to assist people pay less tax legally. So nothing wrong so far, then.

Remind me. Who sets the law within which they operate? Oh yes, it's those sanctimonious wankers who want to blame them and curtail their totally legal activities. Let's just recap. The recession was caused by:

1. Too lax a system of government regulation within which banks operated.

2. This allowed them to lend too easily, thus stoking up markets, and the residential market in particular, to crazy, totally unsustainable levels of growth.

3. They also lent too easily to people who could not afford the loans.

4. In fact, governments pushed banks to lend to poorer people so they could boast that they were "attacking social injustice" and "creating social mobility".

5. And just to add incompetence on top of imprudence, governments - ours in particular - built up their own unaffordable debt burden to carry out all their social engineering policies. The regulators had gone native.

6. When the cycle changed, as it always does, there were too many debts, not enough cash and hence recession.

7. Despite Gordy's ridiculously hollow boasts, we are worse off than most and well into IMF territory - according to the IMF - because during the good years NuLab spent more than it earned. Put simply, we were already up to our national overdraft when our tax income began to collapse.

So not America, then. Not actually bankers, who all operated within the laws set by governments. And not really tax havens, who frankly played no actual role in the debacle at all.

In fact, it was shoddy government regulation.

Huh. Haven't heard the brilliant Mr Brown opine much about that, have we?

Wonder who the next scapegoat will be?

Annoying Things - G20 NuLab Love In

Fresh from his cheesily pathetic attempt to achieve some reflected glory from St Obama two weeks ago, now standby for some truly teeth-sucking, butt-clenching G20 awfulness that will be all about Gordy desperately trying to look statesman-like, surrounded by wall to wall NuLab spin with their media pet poodles lapping it up. Ghastly.

Fred

Am I the only one who can see sense? Is the media totally bloody blind to what is going on here? Are the dead tree press so craven that they just suck up the latest piece of Government spin without question.

Put aside for a moment the following:

• your natural British prejuidce of those that are successful
• your natural British prejudice of the rich
• your natural British prejudice of top businessmen being paid lots of dosh
• the ins and outs of 'who knew what and when' about Fred's payoff

Now - clear headed I hope - read this:

The Government is managing to carry off the greatest blame shift in bleeding history and all the media can waffle on about is one bloke and his rather exorbitant pension arrangements.

This is the most incredible piece of spin we have ever witnessed. The balls of it are just breathtaking. The spin men of Whitehall are totally locking us all onto a complete and utter distraction so that Gordy can get away with daylight fucking robbery of us the taxpayer. I've lost count of how much the Government have spent now. I used to think a million quid was a large sum. Now tens of billions seem minor stuff.

Captain Bloody Prudence and his one eye is doing what all Labour PMs have always done. Hurling taxpayers' money around like confetti, trying to spend his way out of any tight spot. Our children are going to be paying for this for years and years. Decades. Old Fred will be dead and forgotten, his pension long since drawn, whilst future chancellors are still trying to fathom how we can pay off the incredible debt created 20 years ago or more by a long discredited ex PM and his one eye.

And what are the media all focused on: Fred and his pension. Please, please, please someone write about what's really going on. Forget bloody Fred.

But if you really need a villain, add up the huge salaries, exorbitant expenses and outrageous final salary pension arrangements of Gordy, the eyebrow man and all the other assholes at the Bank of England and the FSA that actually got us into this hole. Trust me, it will make Fred look like a lightweight.

I could not put it any better

Inveterate blog reader that I am, I love A Very British Dude, partly because it often talks sense, and partly because it’s so funny. An excerpt from one of its recent posts:

“Which leads me to the IMF, who said that whilst the world economy is "fucked", Britain is going to endure the economic equivalent of a roasting by John Holmes, Rocco Siffredi and Ron Jeremy with the Sunderland association football team standing ready to take sloppy seconds.

“Why, Gordon, is the UK facing a worse recession than any other major economy? Because the people and businesses of this land do not have any spare money to invest in anything more complex than a new label on a bag of gourmet choccies (which are delicious - they're available at Selfriges). Why is that? Because you've fucking taxed it all? And before you blame the banks, all banks around the world are enduring similar write-downs. The UK is not alone in enduring a property crash. And what have you done, Gordon, with that tax? You've wasted it on Diversity outreach coordinators' salaries in order to prop up your filthy party's electorate. And is that tax all you spent? No it isn't, because you were borrowing heavily even when the tax income was at boom levels. Even the most stupid of people must realise that you should be running surpluses when the economy is enjoying "15 consecutive quarters of growth". Failure to do so invites trouble when the inevitable bust comes. Oh... what's that? You've abolished boom 'n bust? Did you honestly believe that? It appears you did...

“It's simple. The reason Britain is in a worse position than any developed economy, is because of a decade of Gordon Brown's economic mismanagement. Right now, the only thing which could shorten the recession is his immediate resignation and suicide.”

Love it.

January Catch Up Rant

I'm back. Had a rest from blogging over the Christmas break and then a business trip to the US.

Where to start. So many thing are pissing me off:

Giving taxpayers' money to the UK car industry – madness which didn’t work last time (see 1970, British Leyland etc)

Giving taxpayers' money to the US car industry – more madness but on a much bigger scale (see above)

Manufactured PC outrage at Prince Harry using the 'paki' word – aged over 60 and ’paki’ and ‘nigga’ are purposefully insulting but many see them as acceptable, between 25-60 and the thought police win and these are unacceptable words, under 25 and these words are used all day long by the children of the very people who tell you that these words are unacceptable. Language evolves (see Coolio in da Big Bruvva House, Man)

Economic migrants claiming benefits paid for by the UK taxpayer – so they’re not leaving after all. No, I’m paying for them

People falling over themselves to eulogize about Heath Ledger, the drug addict actor who killed himself taking drugs – he took drugs, he died, the end. Moron

The media still letting Gordon Brown get away with (a) ruining the economy in the first place, (b) rolling out a half-baked recovery plan without pulling it apart and (c) not criticising the 'jobs road show' as just another Labour PR blitz – we’re all off to hell in a hand cart

Whopping accommodation allowances for senior civil servants – unfucking believable

Lack of media condemnation of Palestinian rocketing of Israel – not pro Israel but let’s show some balance. Arab world hates Israel, a legal democratic entity. Arab fanatics threaten and attack Israel regularly. Israel invades ‘occupied territories’ in 1967. Much toing and froing since but in essence Israelis won’t leave occupied territories until they are sure of no further threat. Attacks continue. Israel defends itself using its well documented policy of ‘massive retaliation’. Policy has meant Syria, Egypt and Jordan no longer threaten Israel, so what don’t Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran get exactly?

Russia waging energy war on Europe – it is a war, make no mistake

Tory hype and media over a minister saying that economic ’green shoots’ are here – which is actually true, as it was when Norman Lamont said the same in 1991

BBC News items pretending to be news but which are in fact trailers for BBC programmes later that day – ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Do they think we are thick and don’t notice? Where’s Ofcom when you need them

MPs trying to ban the anti God bus advert – so it’s OK to spread religion but not OK to criticize it. Must be Blair/Brown Britain ‘thought police’ logic

It's Not Just Me

So the great Irwin Stelzer, economic comentator to the stars - well, Rupert Murdoch anyway - agrees with MC. Read it here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3703785/Gordon-Brown-must-blame-himself-not-the-USA.html