+++Sarkozy Threat To G20, Brown+++

Cute Baby Frogs

Hooray! I never thought I could kiss a Frenchman until I read this breaking story in The Times.

You know, between Merkel and Sarkozy, there might be a slim chance of heading-off the calamity of stagflation printing more money will invariably cause, at least until the next UK General Election - when we will dispose of our current, bankrupt regime and hit the spending brakes.

The fact the leaders of France and Germany are Conservatives should not escape people's notice. At least David Cameron is more or less singing from the same hymn sheet.

Remember, these people are our only hope. (God help us.)

Stimulus Hacks

Toilet Paper Money

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues it here, wild Will Hutton elsewhere (see earlier blogpost) and now another consistent advocate of looninomics, that true Brit, Anatole Kaletsky is full of the same kind of internationalist manure you'd expect to hear from a dyed-in-the-wool Trot.

I'm beginning to wonder if this whole economic crisis isn't just a really smart - and I mean really smart - plot by business hacks to take over and enslave us.

That's the only reason I can think for them wishing hyperinflation and ruin upon the entire population of the western world. Mind you, the extremist, bailoutist Yank and Brit governments seem to want to take us on the same road to hell. So maybe the hacks are just the Comical Alis of this latest little human catastrophe.

Or it could just be that they want Gordon Brown's babies because they just love the way he talks. It floats their boats.

Looninomics might be contagious, of course. And they hang around the loonies a lot, you know. Well, who actually knows (that's the point)?

I'm not sure which motive or cause is the more weird, to be honest. I am sure that only anarchists and the postmodern economists who got us into this mess agree with these three vapid visionaries. Mind you, my guess is it's who they read - or read. A sad love-in, then.

(Stagflation here we come.)

Tiresome money hacks. Shut-up.

Boot Filling

It seems there is nothing much to learn directly from the MPs allowances document released today, apart from the fact that MPs all seem to take full advantage of the so-called second home allowance - even the multi millionaires, of whom there are many. Fair play to them I suppose. Just obeying the rules (they make-up).

There was one little tidbit in the rightly underused Column 7, "Staff Cover and Other Costs", which deals with absence and illness.

The highest figure in this column (by miles) ? The entry for one Blair, Rt Hon Tony.

Click on the the naff snapshot to see for yourself:







Very odd, seeing as he'd long left his office and the country by then. Yes, yes - he was still an (awol) MP. But he was also PM - according to the previous General Election.

My theory: since the absent member of staff was Blair himself, he claimed the allowance and gave it to Brown for being his "cover". (A sort of 'supply PM').

Shocking ;)

High Tide

Dusk on the coastal path...
Long exposure - not great quality.

Renegade Economics

Another gem from Fred Harrison....
link

Response to Hutton's Latest Lunacy

...in the Grauniad

I've left it here so I've got a copy - before it's deleted, lol:

None of the things you have kindly transcribed here from a Downing Street email can possibly be achieved at this oversized junket, Mr Hutton - even if they were desirable. But it'll make a difference all right. It'll increase the national debt by another £300+million quid. All in the name of Brown's vanity. That's a high price to pay just to beef-up yuor mate's image (his reputation and credibility being beyond repair, naturally). But I guess that's chump change in Brown's weird world of endless zeros.

Yet anybody who suggested a year ago that so much could have been achieved would have been asked what they were smoking.

What are you smoking! Nothing has been 'achieved'. Banks have been nationalised and the taxpayer has been screwed for generations with the tab. We now borrow our own money at interest. Some achievement.

this is the first international summit to make substantive progress regulating global finance since 1944.

How on earth does this absolutely ridiculous assertion (the party hasn't even started yet and the signs - at least in the real world - have not exactly been promising so far) follow-on from this:

and few reporters or commentators will want to risk the accusation of being the patsy who declared the summit an unexpected success.

You'd better take a look at this, Mr Hutton.

It really does tend to suggest the total opposite to this wild assertion of yours:

In 2010 the rise in the stimulus put forward by Germany will be among the largest of all.

Whatever your motives, and there is still much doubt in my mind as to what they actually are, to pretend that there is some sort of international consensus about saddling the entire developed world with an even more titanic mountain of debt, (provided by whom, exactly?) on the off chance it might stimulate short-term growth is total insanity.

As for the other stuff: the only way to get some sort of "regulatory architecture for global finance" (whatever that actually means) is through some form of international government. Even if the former were desirable - not to mention possible - (and there's been no clear argument for it so far), the latter is just utopian claptrap.

And we've been hearing a lot of that utopian claptrap from old Brown n' Bust lately. The whole damn world has on his ridiculous tour, during which he preached a lot and listened not one bit.

So I'm pretty sure what we'll see next week, really, is that the whole damn world, which apparently he's bringing back with him, is absolutely fed-up to the back teeth with him and his banal platitudes and blame-ducking. Obama seems to be....he's already planning a 'Summit Mk 3' in Washington or some other city, in anticipation of the likelihood that Brown's will be a total shambles.

And us poor saps - the UK voter - will just be left behind to clear-up the broken glass. Oh, and the little matter of voting-out this total catastrophe of a government led by the worst Prime Minister ever inflicted upon us.

White Wash?

My dog










Great comments under Mike White's appallingly self-satisfied hatchet piece on Dan Hannan in the Grauniad.

Here's a good example:

It's interesting how the left have chosen to deal with the lighting conductor impact of Dan Hannan's speech.
They seek to betlittle ( only an unknown Tory Euro MEP but now famous ), the smear ( Tory boy, Oxford Union type - like many public school educated Labour people - see Harman and Blair), to misrepresent ( only a few people looked ), to use ploys to hide from any criticism ( Well Tom Watson did this on his blog ), to misrepresent what was said and try and spin the facts ( see Labourpist by Dolly ).
The speech was fantastic. Many people, millions of people, have been dying to tell Brown what Dan did.
The BBC/Guardian establishments reaction is predictable, depressing spin wanting to put the population back on the prozac of articles such yours.

From a chap called 'ManinAshed'.
Well done that man (in a shed).

Disturbing Trends

Learnt today from a friend that the college where I used to teach is cutting 87 jobs this month. It's not so much the cuts - if the funding isn't there and the overseas student revenue dries-up (that's been happening for 12 months now) then staff losses are unavoidable - it's the fact that senior managers will not be the ones facing the chop.

Like all county colleges over the past 20 years, this one has gradually been 'brought under management' meaning a whole tier of professional managers have been collected, from Principal down to campus office, who are divorced from the teaching profession yet completely and overwhelmingly remain 'in charge' of its highly trained practitioners - and the way they practise. It's never seemed to be a particularly logical arrangement to me, to put it mildly.

I don't object to a teaching institution being profitable one little bit - quite the opposite. And I don't even object to (realistic) target-setting in the name of 'standards' (as long as they are not ideologically motivated pseudo-standards, which, sadly, they invariably are).

I do object to the idea that teachers and ancillary staff are somehow expendable when times are tight but the council employed 'executive' class who've taken over tertiary education always appear to be completely bullet proof.

I suppose that because they are merely an extension of County Council authority in reality, it's inevitable they will behave the same way county councillors always have: with high-handed indifference to the people they are ostensibly put there to serve. It's a corruption of a noble concept which runs through this country from top to bottom. The NHS is the most stand-out example, of course.

If only we could rid ourselves of them somehow, once and for all, so the productive people can finally take over. Publicly funded career managers infiltrating the public professions en masse are palpably counterproductive and a terrible drain on national resources.

Maybe we could go for the Golgafrincham option.

Anyone know how to build a spaceship?

In the meantime, I just feel sorry for former colleagues now finding themselves under heavy sentence for a crime they did not commit.

Brown Gives His Response to Hannan

"W***er!"

Hardly a high-browed rebuttal of the great speech, but exactly what we've come to expect from our devalued, cuckoo PM.


Superb comment from an American Youtuber underneath the Hannan video:

"There was once a great bumper sticker in California when Pat Brown was running for Governor "if it's Brown, flush it""

I think I might get a few of those printed-up.

A New Hope

Slightly encouraging, really. When times get tough and the liars are in charge, someone with some bottle and some brains emerges. Dan Hannan is that man!

The coverage this superbly crafted and expertly delivered piece of timely rhetoric has received stateside is going to break through the leftwing editorial barriers over here tomorrow - and how!

The vox polpuli seems to me to be like a river: it inexorably finds the path of least resistance to be heard.

These days, when the UK's mainstream TV press experiences ideological, but more importantly editorial, capture, that path is now demonstrably the still-free internet.

But it's taken Americans online, frankly, to illustrate that reality conclusively with their overwhelmingly positive response to one great speech - and from a Brit, no less. Of that I am sure. The comments beneath the Youtube upload also demonstrate that American and British people alike are crying out for decent leadership. That's a bit more worrying.

Anyway, well done indeed Mr Hannan for setting the debate alight. Worldwide.

Sadly, as is the fate of all people who prefer the head of piss to the clarity that only sobriety can bring, I have once more let myself down. Though not without wit, nor without, and I'm the judge of this, a little bit of offensive charm.

I'm embarrassed but unapologetic: Here's the link:

Guido

To think, I should be thoroughly ashamed. My scatological intervention was neither apposite nor well-timed. I promise never, ever, ever to make a negative political comment on a politics blog ever again. I'll just repeat what's offered in the spirit of tittle tattle and gossip, seeing as that's what's expected of the punters. We're NOT to think for ourselves under any circumstances.

Fair enough and I'm just so far out of my depth, man, anyway. I might as well sow my own lips to my mouse hand. That'd kill the creative political urge - oh yeah. Stone dead. Excellent.

No. I jest. I do enjoy taking the mickey out of the politicians of this world. But it's always light hearted.

Er...

Banking Donkeys

These are the donkeys they've put in charge of - what is it now - £300bn of our treasure and rising?

*speechless*

Universally Challenged

'Romeo' the French Donkey (2006)

I've never been a huge fan of the BBC's version of University Challenge for two reasons. First, the huge ass that is Jeremy Paxman and second, that they allow post grads to compete, some of whom have no hair.

But as if that wasn't enough I now learn that the British Bolshevik Cooperative can't even tell whether the participants of their flagship (only) student quiz show are actually students - or can't be bothered to find out.

I have three quickfix solutions to this shocking shet of shircumstances:
1) Fire Jezza and bring back Bamber Gascoigne - even if you have to dig him up.
2) Only let undergraduates compete.
3) Abolish the BBC

Sorted.

Boom Labour Bust

Telegraph:

"David Buik of BGC Partners pointed out that the FTSE 100 is now lower than when Tony Blair won the 1997 general election.

'What a waste of a decade that was,' he said."

No kidding.

Rant on the Grauniad last night

This annoying government has gone so far down the road to out and out fascism that I'm seriously worried we might not be able to salvage anything without tearing down the system and starting over. I'm not talking about some sort of ideological revolution, just total reform of the entire political/democratic/constitutional arrangement. Easy!

The economy is in crisis because of the breakdown of parliamentary government, and not vice versa.

Read the dull editorial

My typically bilious reaction was:

God these people make me sick.

Call a bloody election so we, the people can decide if we want the post office to be privatised, pulvarised, abolished, saved or sold to Iceland for a pound.

Call a bloody election so we, the people can say whether or not we want our children's futures mortgaged to the hilt to bail-out, buy-out or blow-up banks mismanaged by mates of the ruling elite (including Mandy, Harriet and, of course, "elite"-mate-in-chief, Brown).

Call a bloody election so we, the people can decide if we want to be subjected to unlimited state spying and ever-expanding police power through laws made by substandard, squalid ministers routinely pocketlining from the public purse.

Call a bloody election so we, the people can decide if we want - or ever wanted - Gordon Brown to be prime minister during the most disastrous economic crisis this country has ever faced - and that he played a huge role in creating.

Nothing less than political fascism is emerging in this country right now and only a general election - right now - can at least begin to restore democratic principles so appallingly undermined since catastrophe-Brown took power and, before that, Bomber Blair was given it.

We must have a government with a fresh mandate to govern in the new landscape - if nothing else than to begin to arrest the nightmare decline of British democracy.

This woeful public spat between Mandy and Harriet, two equally arrogant and ambitious autocrats, is merely fresh evidence of a dead government.

Why? A government elected in good faith on manifesto pledges now universally defunct is a government that's lost all authority. A government with no authority can't maintain discipline and cannot function. A government that can't maintain discipline and can't function can't command any confidence.

A leader of a government with a defunct mandate, no authority, no discipline and no confidence must resign. For the good of the country Brown must go. Right now.