Monckton's Australian Mission

Just watching now a tiresomely biased BBC report on Monckton's mission to save Australia from the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on humanity, namely anthropogenic global warming (or 'man made climate change', as it's conveniently been redefined nowadays by the desperate pseudo-scientists pushing this horse manure. Not 'woman made' climate change, though, strangely).

Two things struck me about it, however, both of which actually provide some cause for hope in the titanic battle against this watermelon, millennial, misanthropist thought disease. The first is that Monckton has finally made it on to the supine, notoriously and unquestioningly warmist BBC in the first place. The second is that it's pretty clear now that Monckton's mission Down Under might have actually turned at least one major nation's population to the Good Side.

As Christopher Booker pointed out today, there's a hell of a long way to go before the world is rid of this massive, co-ordinated corruption (and the parasitic Trotskyists, with this, their perfect 'end of the world as we know it' Trojan Horse narrative, could yet prevail), but Monckton, thanks to his now-legendary zeal, wisdom and logic, might finally have at least won the first battle in what has become nothing less than an all out war for truth, good science and humanity.

We are in a very bad way, especially (primarily) in the West. But clearly, thanks to Monckton's successful Australian mission, there's still cause for hope.

"Gordon Brown Is A Dangerous Weirdo"

...Being the conclusion of Minette Marrin's superb analysis in her eponymous Sunday Times column. To me, one of the best quotes, among many others, is this:

The kind of bullying of which Brown is suspected is entirely different. It is the uncontrolled raging of a desperate man, driven in his frustration and misery to lash out randomly at anyone nearby.

If that doesn't perfectly illustrate Gordon Brown's deeply flawed, even dangerous, character, then I'm a socialist.

So please have a glance at the article, when you have a moment. It's wonderfully incisive, and serves further to nourish truth rather than smokescreen spin, and burn away Labour's increasingly delusional, insulting, deviant mythologising about the worst prime minister ever inflicted on our country.

Just for good measure (though, I trust, not to oversell the appeal), here's another little gem of Marrin's insider wisdom:

...the prime minister is without a doubt the strangest, most emotionally dysfunctional person I have met. We were together at a dinner once and I felt that his inability to behave remotely normally was almost pitiful.

Five more years, remember. If you don't vote intelligently, then you get five more years of this damaged oddball. As Hamlet and a fair few Yorkshiremen would say: think on't.

Frailty, thy name is Brown!

Brown To Wales: You've Never Had It So Good

Fraser Nelson, who finally appears to have twigged that another five years of Labour would probably be a Bad Thing, has posted on Brown's latest nonsense address to the Welsh Labourists. In it, Brown seems to be suggesting that Wales has never had it so good than under Labour, citing the creation of 100,000 phantom jobs and talking, laughably, about his own family's 'poverty', though he has to go back eighty-odd years to his grandparent's generation to find at least the suggestion of it. Nelson gives the lie very effectively to this complacent, vacuous claptrap, and to Brown's murky Welsh job creation figures.

Gordon Brown does not have much of a personal “backstory” but he does talk about his family. When he’s feeling guilty about something, he mentions his father. But today, speaking to the Welsh Labour Party, he again talks about a figure we heard about a few days ago: his grandfather.

“Like so many here I come from a family whose grandfather went without work during much of the 1930s. A grandfather whose small savings gave his son, my father, the chance of an education, the first in our family to go to university. And the lesson of those days is that even in the worst of times families helped each other, supported each other, came to the aid of each other through thousands of acts of friendship caring and support. And that reveals the most important lesson of all; that it’s not markets that create morals: morals spring from the compassion of our hearts”

Given how utterly unremarkable it is to have grandparents who had a tough time in the 1930s, one can only presume that Brown’s aim is to contrast this with Cameron’s grandparents. But playing the “poor family background” card really is pushing it. As a Church of Scotland minister, Brown’s father was in a position to give his family a very comfortable life. Brown simply does not have a poverty song to sing.

Most strikingly, Brown tries to tell Wales how good they’ve had it under Labour with 100,000 more jobs. But, as nationally, how many of these were imported? Surely matters is to what extent economic growth helped those on benefits in Wales. In its case, not very much – as the below graph shows (data from DWP)

On the one hand - the 1930s - I can confirm that Nelson is absolutely right. My great grandfather on my dad's side was a timber salesman in Cumbria. During the Depression, he could only afford to send one of his two sons to university. My grandfather, being the youngest, drew the short straw. Fortunately for him, however, he excelled in school and managed to win a place with the Civil Service, where he enjoyed a long and pretty illustrious career. The only hand-up he'd ever had was a decent education in a selective school. I wonder how he would have fared in Brown's Britain. Mickey Mouse GCSEs followed by Mickey Mouse A-levels followed by - well - followed by nothing. Britain has the highest levels of youth unemployment in Europe (see chart left).

Which brings us to Brown's second laughable claim, this time about Welsh jobs and how 'good' life is in Wales thanks to his largesse with taxpayers' money. The graph to which Nelson refers tells us all we need to know (see above). In terms of benefit dependency, things have only got worse in Wales. Nelson is also right about Brown's pie in the sky jobs figures. If they have been created, then they've been imported. While their numbers have certainly thinned over the past 12 months, and while I am very pleased to count some of them as friends, including my next door neighbours, the fact is that the torrent of Polish immigration to my own town sucked up any spare, low-paid jobs. Mind you, the real reason for this is, if the Poles I know are anything to go on, that they have a powerful work ethic entirely absent from the psychology of your average, undereducated young Welsh man or woman, and this syndrome is repeated throughout Britain.

Poles depend on work in the same way that a large portion of Welsh men and women depend on benefits. Brown and his ilk depend on the latter's votes - and straightforward lies - to maintain power, so the likelihood is that he will want to keep it that way, however morally bankrupt the arrangement clearly is.

So it's certainly time for change in Wales and while I am an ardent Conservative, I am also a realist. The Tories aren't part of the political landscape in this part of the world. They aren't even on the radar. So I will be voting Plaid Cymru in the general election. A tactical vote, I freely admit, but not a wasted one if it helps to kick out Labour from government, and Brown out of Number 10. I am also a bit of a fan of Elfyn Llwyd, who is one of the most impressive figures in Welsh (and Westminster) politics. And I'm a fan of Plaid generally, even if I can never agree with one or two of their policies concerning the future of the Principality.

The point is, all the people I've spoken to over the past year in this part of Carmarthenshire appear to have reached a similar conclusion. They're all ready to send Brown a powerful message about just how 'good' they think it's been under his trainwreck regime, and, in many cases, how totally betrayed they feel.

About time.

Libyan Health Service - Best In The World

He was wasting away from prostate cancer in a Scottish prison hospital, so the Scottish government, in a shady deal involving the Foreign Office, Lord Mandelson of Sleaze and flatulent nutcase Gadaffi's son, released the only convicted Lockerbie bomber on 'compassionate' grounds. He had an absolute maximum of three months to live, after all, said a couple of hired quacks. The poor man would have become an ex-bomber by the end of October 2009, so we were told (and didn't believe). Sorry to quote myself, but this was me back in November (three months after the Megrahi release):

Al-Megrahi: the convicted Lockerbie bomber might still not be dead as all the Labour stooge doctors and this Labour government ghoulishly promised everyone he would be (he's a full five days overdue now), but he's still about to come back and haunt at least one of them. Yes, you guessed it, the King of Sleaze himself, Lord Mandelson of Tripoli.

Now we learn from a number of sources that six months on, Megrahi is not only still alive and free, but he's actually recovering - and free. Clearly, something is amiss. Instead, however, of branding this whole, stinking affair a web of deceit motivated by a Big Oil deal and reaching right up to the highest levels of the British government, let's just praise the Libyan Health Service. Megrahi's almost miraculous cure in the capable hands of Libyan doctors offers pretty conclusive proof that Libyan health care is comfortably the best in the world.

Toby Young, however, is rightly livid about the whole, grubby, insulting episode, just as everyone else should be. He also argues - and I think this is very important - that Megrahi's conviction was absolutely safe, according to a relative of a victim who understandably took a very close interest in the trial.

Given the fact that Megrahi is a convicted terrorist, and given that thanks to these legendary Libyan healthcare professionals, he's now on the road to recovery, isn't it nearly time for him to be put right back in jail? We could even settle for a Libyan jail.

I suspect that that wasn't part of Mandy's backroom sweetener BP deal, however, so I won't be holding my breath.

Truly sickening.

Dodgy Polls

Labourists of all kinds - and the MSM, who are just gagging for the drama of a close run thing - seize on polls with tiresome haste that superficially show some kind of a contraction in the Tory lead. Immediately, after one of these polls is published, you get the usual, desperate crap from the schizoid left media about how they can win (and deserve to win, astonishingly) another five years of incoherent Labour vandalism, and the usual, desperate crap from the schitzoid right media that still can't work out whether David Cameron is a 'good Tory' or not. It's all just terribly sad - and terribly inaccurate.

Thankfully, though, we have Mike Smithson, who actually takes a genuine interest in how these polls work (because there's his reputation and real money at stake) - and has become, consequently, comfortably the most trustworthy source of wisdom on most things psephological around, especially when it comes to what can be succinctly put as the 'fudge factor'. Most polls are inaccurate, misleading fudges, given their reliance on generally untested, and/or deliberate bias-generating methodologies.

Take the latest MORI poll, for instance (which put the Tories just a handful of points in the lead). This is what Smithson has to say about it:

Just been looking at the detailed dataset from the the Telegraph’s Ipsos-MORI poll that came out late last night and in my view the underlying numbers are nothing like as good for Labour as the five point Tory lead might suggest.

After weighting for standard demographics we find that:

300 of those certain to vote in the sample said they had supported Labour at the last general election. Yet only 236 of everybody in the poll said they planned to vote Labour at the coming election.

229 of those certain to vote in the sample said they had supported the Tories at the last general election yet 274 of everybody in the poll said they planned to vote for the party at the coming election.

My simple calculation puts the 2010:2005 ratio for the Tories at 118.7% while with Labour it was 78.7%

So the MORI’s own numbers suggest that Labour is down more than a fifth on last time while the Tories are up by about a sixth. Given that the split in 2005 was L36.2-C33.2 then the latest poll, if it had had politically balanced sample, would have ended up with a lead a lot bigger than the reported 5%.

I know that this is me being mischievous and highly selective but it does show the massive challenge phone pollsters face - because of the systemic problem of the over-sampling of Labour past voters.

Ponder that for a moment, if you will. And then understand why it's a very good idea to put your money where your instinct is and back if not a Tory landslide (as I have) then a healthy Tory majority.

Whatever these dodgy polls say about Brown, the fact is that we, the British public, just aren't that into him - never have been, and never bloody well will be.

So one other thing I will savour from his total demise on May 6th (I think we can safely say now that that's when the election will be) is the prospect of the entire MSM and all the major polling houses being made to look like the mugs, charlatans and dinosaurs they really are. They all deserve to go as extinct as Brown come that fine day in early summer, this year.

Bullying Is A Serious Matter

Guy News is starting to get almost as good as The Day Today was. Well, almost. ("Yes, it's war!")

PS: Who thinks Emily Nomates is fitter than Cheryl Cole?

Update:
By popular demand (sort of)...

Recession v2.0

I still don't believe that the 'first' recession has ended yet, however, even if you allow for a brief period of taxpayer stimulated 'growth', the next collapse into contraction is only moments away. But don't take my word for it. That's according to this Guardian report (yes, Guardian report), citing the talisman trader, Jim Rogers' predictions.

Fears of a double-dip recession and a sterling crisis in the run-up to the election were raised last night amid news of collapsing investment in British industry and a warning from one of the world's leading financiers that the pound could plummet within weeks.

The pound fell sharply on the foreign exchange markets after a day of grim economic news which saw an admission from RBS that it had missed government targets for business lending, a downgrading of the UK growth prospects by the European commission and a warning from the CBI that consumer spending was likely to remain weak ahead of polling day.

Sterling, already down by a cent against the dollar following the release of official figures showing capital expenditure plunging by almost a quarter between late 2008 and late 2009, saw its losses doubled after Jim Rogers, the former business partner of speculator George Soros, said sterling was a potential "basket case".

The rest of the article hardly makes for happier reading, either, at least if you're a Brownite, I suppose. If you're a realist, (like Rogers - and lots of other people), then you'll know that after Brown bet the Bank of England on spending his way to the winning of, finally, a mandate to ruin govern Britain, there is now nowhere else to go for him, his party and for the entire country but down the debt plughole. Labourists, of course, will be reading the article too, and may be (maybe already have been) convinced that from here on in, with Labour somehow narrowing the gap in a few polls (though they'd be very foolish to trust them), things can only get worse.

More reason to believe Guido's mysterious BBC source, then, who said that the election will be called this weekend.

Bring it on (finally).

Diane Abbott Exclusive: Gordon Brown Isn't Mary Poppins

"Everybody knew that Gordon Brown wasn't Mary Poppins", said the truly insightful Abbott on This Week - just a few minutes ago. Let's check:

Mary Poppins:



Gordon "Forces of Hell" Brown's first cabinet meeting, Westminster, 2007:



Yup, Diane was right for once. No Mary Poppins he.

(Did you spot Harriet Harman shrieking her damned political heart out in Brown's satan metal band, btw?)

Randall On Darling

Jeff Randall has done it again. In his latest piece for the Telegraph, he considers his recent, possibly game-changing interview with Alistair Darling, which produced arguably one of the most memorable quotes of the Brown years. You know, the one about the 'forces of hell' being 'unleashed' - by, er, the son of the manse himself. Randall is at his sparkling best in this piece, as this hefty taste will, I hope, demonstrate:

Renewed allegations about Mr Brown’s bullying had surfaced at the weekend, when The Observer published extracts from Andrew Rawnsley’s new book, The End of the Party. The Chancellor knew that he would be facing a few bouncers on the subject, almost certainly on the way that Number 10 had tried to intimidate him in the past, especially after he had predicted in the summer of 2008 that Britain’s downturn would be the worst for 60 years.

Mr Darling was not caught off guard by me. He and his adviser, Catherine Macleod, had had plenty of time to formulate an appropriate response to the issue of Mr Brown’s bad temper. In the event, they went deliberately for the explosive option, a decision that would have been endorsed by the delightful Maggie Darling, the Chancellor’s bubbly but determined other half.

This was revenge at its most delicious: a platter of cryogenically modified resentment. From now until the election, and almost certainly beyond, Mr Brown’s cabal of slime merchants will be branded as the doers of the devil’s work: Forces of Hell, the Inferno’s Enforcers, Satan’s Storm troopers. The son of a preacher man has, it seems, been employing the wrong crowd.

After the interview, Mr Darling and his Treasury team accepted my offer to stay on for a few drinks. Over a glass of chablis and a bowl of Doritos, he chatted confidently about the task of reducing the United Kingdom’s unprecedented deficit. As we discussed the choice between lower spending and higher taxes, Miss Macleod’s BlackBerry was glowing like Chernobyl. The fallout had begun, yet the Chancellor seemed entirely unbothered.

I inferred from Mr Darling’s equanimity that he has accepted his fate. For him, the Downing Street game is nearly over. Even if Labour were to pull off a remarkable election victory, securing another overall majority, the chances of him being invited to remain as Chancellor are slimmer than a collection of Mr Brown’s witticisms. In the unlikely event that the Prime Minister finds himself back in charge, you can be sure that only loyal Yes Persons will be rehired.

Thus, Mr Darling has nothing to lose. He is unsackable before the election but, in political terms, unemployable after it.

This is why I like Randall so much, not just because he is always clear, illuminating and knows his own mind (a mind I more often than not totally agree with), but because he is fair, tough-but-amiable and, above all, lays almost 100% of the blame for grinding the British economy into the ground squarely at the door of the self-aggrandising weirdo wrecker, Gordon Brown. And rightly so.

Anyway, I won't go on - read it for yourself; it's certainly worth it. But be warned, Randall ends the piece on an ominous note about the true state of the public finances and the real scale of the Brown catastrophe that awaits the next government:

When near-bankrupt companies are taken over at the 11th hour by fresh management, it is often the case that their numbers are far worse than we had been led to understand. In desperation, dodgy directors try to hide the full extent of the horror in the vain hope of bluffing their way through. That is what Labour is doing to UK plc - and very soon its bluff will be called.

So don't believe the hype anybody (not that you do, of course). Whoever wins, things can only get tougher.

False Alarm?

Guido has just posted one of his all-headline-and-no-meat teasers with a story that I suppose might be true, but which, sadly, after the last one (which was about two weeks ago or so, if memory serves), surely isn't.

"BBC Source: BBC News Team on "Red Alert" for election call," trumpets Guido.

All I can say is, I hope he's bloody well right this time. But past experience of ditherer McDoom should tell us that this is just another false alarm sounded by The Party to keep its propaganda arm, the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation, on its collectivised pinkies.

I suppose we'll just have to wait and see. But if we have to wait, say, three months to see, then Guido should know that he certainly won't be able to count this one as an "exclusive".

But, you know, more power to him for sticking his neck out - I guess.

==Update 21.38==
This could be a little sliver of evidence in support of Guido's assertion. Bishop Hill has blogged about the general election's possible imminence, though in the context of the climate change scam, naturally. In his own update, however, he says:

Richard Drake in the comments notes that yesterday, after taking evidence from Sir John Beddington, Select Committee chairman Phil Willis bid the scientist "farewell" in the following terms:

"This is likely, Professor Beddington, to be the last time we have the pleasure of you before our Committee. Could we thank you very strongly indeed for all the work you have done with our Committee and indeed your predecessors."

Given that Sir John is due to appear in front of the committee on Monday to give evidence on the CRU affair, it does rather look as if our suspicions may be correct.

Curiouser and curiouser. Maybe Guido's right after all.

Diversity, Pt 63: Gender Psychology

More workplace humour...

Darling Puts The Boot In

This pretty strange report in tomorrow's Telegraph, about an interview with Alistair Darling in which he claims that "Brown unleashed the forces of hell" on him for predicting the recession, suggests that at the very least, as Iain Dale says, he's just signed his own "political death warrant".

In an frank interview, the Chancellor said that people working for Mr Brown tried to damage him because he told the truth about the economy.

His remarks follow reports in a new book by Andrew Rawnsley that Mr Brown’s aides tried to undermine Mr Darling after the Chancellor forecast the worse economic downturn for 60 years.

In a Sky News interview, Mr Darling confirmed that No 10 worked against him. Mr Darling made his 60-year prediction in an interview in Scotland in the summer of 2008. Afterwards, No 10 aides briefed journalists that he had harmed the economy and should be sacked.

“Nobody likes the sort of briefing that goes on,” Mr Darling said, “the forces of hell were unleashed”.

It might sound like Darling is getting his own back for Brown's desperate disloyalty when the bust came, which he knew was all his fault and not Darling's, but I'm not so sure. If past experience is anything to go on, Darling, if challenged, will simply issue another humiliating "clarification" tomorrow and say that Brown has his "full support" and always has, clearly total rubbish though that now certainly is. But there was more in the report about Brown's henchmen, one of whom is still in business, bankrolling the Labour Party with the membership funds of the union he's been given to play with (Charlie Whelan):

Asked if he believed Mr McBride and Mr Whelan had briefed against him, Mr Darling said: “Of course you have people saying things.”

In a reference to Mr McBride’s resignation last year, the Chancellor added: “My best answer for them was: I’m still here and at least one of them is not.”

During the summer of 2009, Mr Brown planned to remove Mr Darling from the Treasury and replace him with Ed Balls, a long-standing ally.

The plan to oust the Chancellor brought a new confrontation between the two men.

But, as I said, I think Iain Dale is right, this could well be a step out of line too far given the current coverage Brown is (quite deservedly) receiving, clarifications or no clarifications. However, for the time being, I suspect it will be business as usual in the bunker, at least superficially, mainly because Darling, for all his genuine niceness, is as much of a politically self-interested jellyfish as any other Labour MP or minister.

But, in putting the boot in to Brown, Darling was not trying to perform some sort of a public service (perish the thought!). He was indulging a minor act of political revenge that merely provides us with further proof of the factionalism and mutual loathing that's always existed at the rotten heart of this Labour government, but especially so under the utterly disloyal political thug that is Gordon Brown. Darling offers conclusive proof - as if we needed it - of two things. One, that the facade of government unity under Brown, peddled by the likes of the slimeball Mandelson (et al), for reasons of personal aggrandisement and vanity, has always been just that, a complete myth. Brown's government is one of the most factional and dysfunctional of all time. Second, that working under Brown is hell.

Given that the future of the country is (or "was" - it might well be too late) at stake, this calamitous state of affairs at the top of the government is a lot more serious than a mere case of bullying. This is a major case of a man promoted way beyond his abilities (Brown or Darling - you pick). What's crystal clear is that when Brown is finally ousted, the kind of revelations that come out about his behaviour while in politics, let alone while in charge, will ensure that his historical reputation will lie in total ruins. Couldn't happen to nicer man.

No wonder he's so desperate to cling on - preferably, no doubt, without the inconvenience of the democratic process.

Taiwan News: Brown Bullying Computer Simulation

This is the way Taiwanese news covered the McMentalist bullying scandal. (Courtesy of a commenter on hat tip Guido...)



I particularly liked the left hook and the cartoonish sounds effects, including the blood curdling scream from the computerised version of the secretary Brown assaulted. Priceless.

Looks like nutter Brown is a laughing stock in the Far East too now. Welcome to the club, guys.

Oh Sh**!!

A colleague just sent me this. Made me giggle a bit.

A Simple Concept Checking Tool
Or, when it's perfectly acceptable to use a swear word.

And, of course:

F***!!!

The True Cost Of The Labour Years? Unquantifiable

The British electorate trusted Labour to inherit the most stable and competitive economy in Europe and to invest wisely for the future. Yet over 13 wasted years our public finances have been squandered and our economy is in a dire state. The damage they have done is so extensive it is hard to quantify.

So writes John Major in an excellent article in today's Mail on Sunday. And who with half a brain could disagree with that? But, as he goes on, the gulf between reality and Gordon Brown's increasingly desperate political narrative nevertheless just keeps on relentlessly widening.

The Prime Minister feeds the public with a diet of nonsense, telling us that tackling the deficit is his priority, while promising increased expenditure for popular services. The disconnect between the Prime Minister's fantasy and the real world becomes ever wider.

And yet he continues to make claims that are easily contradicted by the evidence. How can trust possibly be maintained? And how have we come to this?

The former Prime Minister therefore raises three key points, which he does make some effort to answer in his piece, but not fully. First, he suggests that the vast damage caused to Britain in 13 years of this disastrous government will be very hard to quantify. Well, that could be the case - the damage is massive, in terms of our society, the law, education, productivity, the economy and so on and so on (ad infinitum - nearly) - but quantify that damage the Tories must, if there can be any hope of putting at least some of it right. The first thing they will have to do, once they have begun to bring Brown's debt chaos under control, is embark upon a great national audit, just to establish how deep in Brown's manure we have been left.

Second, he asks about trust. It's a good point, that, but it should be remembered that there is nothing wrong with parliament - never has been. The system of expenses, for instance, relied upon the integrity of MPs to function correctly. No one could have expected that fully 80% of those MPs had no integrity to speak of. Finding replacements that do, and then simply having a blanket cap on what they can be paid beyong their salaries in these years of austerity will provide an effective solution. As for Labour, its endless lies, spin and arrogant, shameless abandonment of the principles of ministerial and collective responsibility must be ruthlessly reversed by the next Tory government. Moreover, because of the vast assault on accountability - and the subsequent democratic deficit - by Labour with their creation of an enormous, extraordinarily expensive quangocracy, the third job for a Cameron government, if it hopes to repair the damage done to parliamentary democracy in this country by Labour, is to make these organisations democratically accountable (at the very least) and seek to abolish a large proportion of them. The former (democratic accountability) could be achieved, short term, by taking the 'N' out of QUANGO. Bring them under direct ministerial control; make them directly accountable. The 'quasi' bit, then, which has become meaningless under Labour, would then regain some sort of a truth value. Abolition and/or merging of these things could then be achieved more efficiently, and with fewer job losses in the long run, which is desirable in a broad sense. Ultimately, the savings to the taxpayer will be truly vast. A quote from wiki, for instance, on the subject:

In 2005 Dan Lewis, author of The Essential Guide to Quangos, for example, claimed that the UK had 529 quangos, many of which were useless and duplicated the work of others. In August 2008 a report by the pressure group the Taxpayers' Alliance, claimed that £15 billion was being wasted by the regional development agencies, quangos set up with the stated goal of encouraging economic development in their respective English regions.^[7]

There's clearly scope for the abolition of, say, half of these so-called - in government circles - "NDPBs" (non-departmental public bodies), which cost a staggering £100Billion+ in 2008 to run, according to the Times, most of which was poured down the drain. It's not just about slashing budgets: there is a point of principle here, too, and it should be trumpeted by Tories from now on: not one pound of taxpayers' money should be spent without democratic scrutiny ever again. Otherwise, we will simply have more of what we have now, vast amounts of our money funding unelected special interest groups. It's not so much that we can't go on like that, but that we just bloody well won't.

And in all that, Labour's abuse of parliament, Labour's vast, as-yet unquantified, abuse of public money, the abuse of the expenses system (worse by Labour than the Tories), Labour's abuse of the elecorate, and, most appallingly, two Labour Prime Ministers', in their different ways, utter contempt for and abuse of their office - not to mention a whole string of ministers' abuse of theirs: in all that lies the answer to John Major's third question: "How have we come to this?"

The challenges for Cameron are staggering; the scale of the destruction wrought by a corrupt, corrupting Labour government almost unimaginable. And that's all without even mentioning Europe, or the many dodgy wars. If Cameron has the stomach for the post-Labour reconstruction job, then he's a far better man the me!

I think he does, though, - and should certainly be given the chance to prove it with a clear mandate, which I am certain he will win.

Nutcase Brown

If any lingering doubts remained about Gordon Brown being, at least psychologically speaking, utterly unfit to be a manager of any description, let alone the most important manager in the realm - Prime Minister - then this Mail on Sunday report will surely dispel them all. The Observer has yet to publish its Rawnsley revelations online. I think we don't really need them any more, though, do we? It's become absolutely clear:

Gordon Brown is a total nutcase.

And a pathological liar, to boot (as if we didn't know), if his Channel 4 interview today is anything to go by - among many other examples.

Hat tip:Iain Dale

The Party of Everyone

I think this [pre-emptive] counterpunch from Cameron against Brown's intelligence-insulting waffle, bluster and lies today is brilliant. Readers might disagree, but whatever you think about it, it's powerful politics that puts Brown firmly in his place. As Tory Outcast says, if nothing else, it is a perfect deconstruction of what appears to be Labour's only line of attack.


If I were a Labourist watching this, I would be very, very worried, not least because Cameron is sincere, comfortable in front of the camera and is starting to move with conviction on policy, whereas, by stark contrast, Brown looks tired, overwrought and increasingly desperate. He sounds shrill, unconvincing and seriously unpleasant. His negative, anti-Tory, campaign - and it looks like that really is all he has to offer - simply cannot compete with Cameron's earnest, though cautious, optimism. It's not even in the same division, politically.

"Britain is still great but badly damaged" after thirteen years of Labour failure and misrule is a powerful message that will be very, very difficult for Labour to challenge, given the scale of the economic disaster we are facing, thanks chiefly to Brown. (A 10.1% structural deficit, for instance, is unprecedented and has nothing to do with the recession, and everything to do with economic incompetence on a truly astonishing scale.)

When Brown laughably growls about the desperate need for "change" it plays right into Cameron's hands, as we can see from this webcast, because millions of people are likely to reach the same conclusion, given this government's cataclysmically terrible record on just about everything with which it has fiddled and meddled, and kick Brown and Labour decisively out.

Checkmate.

Airbrushing Purnell

This photograph of a shadowy figure (right), thought to have been murdered (politically) by the most wicked dictator in British history, Gordon McStalin (centre), an act carried out by his right hand henchman, the evil Baron von Mandeltov (left), and hitherto forgotten after the final fall of the 13-year oppressive Labour dictatorship (a period now known as "The Great Error"), was unearthed from recently discovered archives yesterday by celebrated political historian Prof Sir Arthur Weevil of Oxford University. He said:

"I believe it's a minor commissar named Nicholai Burnell, or something like that. References show that he was initially a run-of-the-mill, almost invisible apparatchik but turned to opportunism and self-promotion when McStalin was approaching his downfall and was in a severely weakened state following The Great Bust of '09. I believe he resigned in that year in an ill-judged attempt to seize power. He hadn't counted on the scheming and shifting loyalties of Mandeltov, however, and was left isolated when Mandeltov fell in behind the ailing dictator.

"After that, not much is known about him. Oh, there are a few documents lying around, some of which he even wrote on his own. It seems he fancied himself as some sort of political philosopher, but I've found no evidence of any book or what could be regarded as a legitimate academic paper written on the subject by him anywhere, so I think we can dismiss that as mere self-promotion too. The media of the day, especially the non-Party approved, dissident press, appeared to swallow it quite readily, however, which is rather curious, don't you think, given that he disappeared from the political limelight altogether soon afterwards? Some believe he ended up in the oil business, but I suspect he came to a more, shall we say, colourful end (he went into broadcasting, just like Count Mickael Portillov, of the Old Dynasty, before him). It's ironic, really, that he should have been airbrushed out of a McStalin picture in this way, since he was well-known for airbrushing himself in to pictures when he was late for appointments (which he often was, apparently). You see the irony there, don't you? No? Oh dear."

The airbrushed, published photograph looked like this:


Prof Sir Arthur Weevil again:

"Do you see what McStalin has done here? He's erased Nicholai Burnell entirely from the picture. I'm not sure exactly why he used to do this, but apparently he would spend hours and hours by himself removing people that he didn't like from pictures throughout the entire three-year period of his dictatorship. In fact, he became something of a master at doctoring photographs, among many other things, in the final months (known, as you will no doubt recall, as the "Months of Madness"). Apparently, in between his increasingly frequent rages, this would help to calm him down. Sometimes, he would even become lucid enough for Mandeltov to allow him out in public. In fact, it would be fair to say that without the soothing activity of scratching out his enemies from pictures all the time, which seemed to carry some sort of important symbolic significance for McStalin, he would have fallen far sooner than he did, more's the pity."

When asked whether he thought McStalin was actually mad, Prof Weevil replied:

"Well, it's not a very scientific term, but the answer is, oh yes, most certainly, especially towards the end. As a march hare."

Election Speech That Said Nothing

"I hate Tories - er, that's it"

Just finished the excruciating task of listening to Brown's God-awful 'election' speech. It was billed as a "major policy" speech by the BBC. Huh? How does that work? All I heard was "Tories bad - Labour good" over and over and over again. Zero policy. It was truly appalling. He looked what he is: tired, false, uncomfortable and burnt out. He sounded, simply, awkward and uncertain about his words, struggling to read his autocue as he was.

So that's the policy, folks - and the message - and it's pure Brown, and pure manure, namely "we've made mistakes, but the Tories will always be evil." Truly, truly pathetic (and that kind of "look at the alternative" message certainly didn't work for Major in 1997).

But I really think that is the best he can do, in which case, Mandelson and Campell are going to have to come up with an extraordinary campaign where the person who should be the 'star' of the show - the Prime Minister - is kept off the stage as much as possible. That'll be a first.

What's clearly evident, though, after two really unpalatable Brown performances in two days, is that Labour can't go on like that.

Labour's Death Tax: Evil Economics; An Insult to the Elderly

William Roach might be a famous actor who never seems to age (on screen), but he's also a very decent, lovely, ordinary, 77 year-old man (it strikes me). Here he explains why turning back the clock to the Nineties, when the Conservative government of the day's sound economic management created the best-funded pension system in the entire world (public and private), is a far better option for the 2010s and beyond than the insulting, uncosted and unworkable, policy-on-the-hoof, disgusting current Labour alternative.



Let us never forget who destroyed Britain's once legendary pension arrangements, which were bullt up during the 1980s and 90s thanks to carefully designed, delicate, intelligent financial strategies, by the (Conservative) governments of the day, that genuinely benefited not just the few, but the many. The person who destroyed all that brilliant hard work, and has left millions of pensioners exposed as a direct consequence now, was Gordon Brown. Now those people, still working back then during the "sound years", when Brown arrogantly decided, all by himself(!), that Britain didn't need Tory prudence (and deft brilliance - which is what people like Ken Clarke delivered) on funded pensions any more, are facing ruin thanks directly to his destruction of the system the Conservative government built and upon which so many millions of hard-working souls were depending. Brown has spent their pension money, and then some. He's spent mine as well. But, far worse, he's spent our children's pension money too. That's just utterly infamous, especially for a (useless) politician like Brown.

Hang on! Do I really need to add anything to that to convince people that Gordon Brown is the most disastrous, useless, (though still utterly arrogant and convinced of his own weird righteousness), individual ever to fill (barely and by default) the office of Prime Minister, in this nation's history?

Anyone who isn't convinced by that single point, but among so many others, of Brown's total incompetence, either doesn't get out enough or, quite understandably, doesn't care (or works for the mentalist himself - but that can't be too many people, surely).

Just this, though, to anyone and everyone reading this: Brown, however much you might loath (or like) him, can only be understood from one perspective: he hates (his idea of) Tories. He hates Tories - and that's it. That's all he knows because that's the way he was brought up. He's as irrational as he is outdated.

To any sentient British human being, Brown is as utterly locked into his dusty, a-historical weird tribe of sub-Trot Scots Labourism as Cameron (or anyone else, for that matter) represents our hope, our future and our liberation.

I look forward to playing my small part in Brown's downfall. So should you all!

Incoherent Brown's Latest Smears Fool No-One

So today we have the first counterpunches from the sputtering Brown smear machine, on the back of some dumb remarks about Labour's debt crisis and out-of-control deficit spending by a bunch of tame Keynesians in a brace of suspiciously timed letters to the Financial Times. Well, more power to them but I prefer to listen to the previous day's crop of economists who rightly warned that we need to bring Labour's economic chaos under control now, or risk an even deeper crisis going forward. And as for Lord Mandelson of La La Land's latest slimy nonsense on the BBC a few minutes ago about businesses telling him that cutting the so-called stimulus now would be 'daft', well, Sir Richard Branson's comments two days ago pretty much shoots that drivel down in flames - and he's a pretty good businessman! Oh, and top work over Redcar Corus, Mandy. That was really slick. What a useless piece of vastly overrated spinning nothingness Mandelson really is.

But Brown. My God, this man is a piece of work. Let's just have a quick look at some of the latest, increasingly desperate claptrap coming out of his gawping piehole today. His claim, first of all, that this crisis was caused by the banks, suggests that he's retreated into the kind of cowardly, "bunker" mentality that caused people to realise how unsalvageably flawed he was, and totally unsuited to the office he took by default, in the first place. For the record, it was his policies and his light-touch, hopelessly inadequate system of regulation that allowed the banks to behave with such recklessness in the first place. It was his actual encouragement of the property bubble and the massive personal debt bubble that left people so exposed when the bust came. His behaviour, and blinkered, hateful arrogance in suggesting that he had 'abolished boom and bust', virtually guaranteed that when the bubble burst, Britain would be the most exposed major economy in the world and the British people would be the biggest losers. The point is, his ridiculous claim that this was 'all the banks' fault' is palpably ridiculous - and was proved as such long ago.

But that's just he start of it. Instead of stopping the digging while the hole wasn't too deep, he brings out the JCB. This is the Telegraph's report of his, quite frankly, lunatic remarks:

2010 must be the year of growth. It must not be the year when the economy dips back into recession.

''Instead of admitting the mistakes of private banks and institutions in causing the recession, the well-financed right-wing are not only trying to blame governments for the crisis but trying to use legitimate concerns about deficits to scare people into accepting a bleak and austere picture of the future for the majority, and then to use what's happening as a pretext for public services to be marginalised at precisely the moment they should become smarter and more personalised.

''They are using the talk of action on debt to conceal the hard fact that their real position is that they remain wedded, as they have always been, to an ideology that would always make government the problem and deny people the helping hand that government can be.''

While seeking to ''frighten'' voters about the scale of the debt, Conservatives failed to mention that growth would automatically cut into the UK's deficit and bolster investor confidence, said Mr Brown.

''Instead of helping the recovery in our country, Conservative dislike of government, bordering on hatred of government action, would risk recovery now,'' he said.

Never had I really understood how unhinged this guy actually is until I heard this stuff. Aside from the truly awe-inpiring level of economic illiteracy on display, there's the spiteful reference to the 'hatred' of the 'right'. With the former, someone needs to bellow this at the fraud relentlessly: it's not rocket science, Brown, it's basic economics: rising debt means rising inflation; rising inflation means interest rate hikes; interest rate hikes mean higher credit costs with the inevitable consequences of increased business failures, personal insolvencies, higher unemployment, worse public services and, you guessed it, a recession. Not growth, Brown, a r-e-c-e-s-s-i-o-n. Do you think it'd get through that four inch thick skull of his in the end? No, me neither.

Of course, though, we know the ulterior motive here. Brown does not give hoot-one about the catastrophe his "policies" would cause over the next few years, all he cares about, in his fevered political calculations, is the time when he finally, finally!, has to face the electorate. He thinks he can buy votes and sod the future. We are, quite simply, with Brown, back to square one. It's 2008-9 all over again. The guy is incapable of any other mode of thought or operation.

Only this time, with this horribly divisive speech, he's shown a little more of the true, tribal, irrational, Tory-hating core that we know is what fundamentally defines this appalling man. And this is where we see the incoherence:

...their real position is that they remain wedded, as they have always been, to an ideology that would always make government the problem and deny people the helping hand that government can be

This is a smear, obviously, but the scale of the misrepresentation is only topped by the scope of its implausibility. It hardly warrants scrutiny (it certainly doesn't bear any). However, I'll have a crack - again, just for the record. Clearly, as with most smears, it's what's omitted that's most revealing. For instance, it's not 'government' that the Conservatives have ever seen as 'the problem' (as far as I can discern, Tories aren't anarchists), it's big, inefficient government. Further, though, you notice how he confuses (and I don't believe this is deliberate - I think he actually might not understand the distinction, which, if true, is most revealing) the term 'government' with the term 'state'. Government makes policy and enacts law accordingly. The instruments of government (like the MoD), and taxpayer-funded institutions of public service (like the NHS), of which there are many, are what is generally understood, at least in the real world, to be 'the state'. When the instruments of government, public service institutions and government itself have been permitted to become so bloated, inefficient and unaffordable that they begin to cause, overall, more harm than good, then yes, they must be pruned, reformed and reset so that once more (or, in the case of some state institutions, 'for once') they can fulfil their putative functions. To deny any of this is to defy rational thought. But that's what Brown does, in choosing smear and mere narrow-minded tribalism over common sense and, simply, the truth. Plus ca change? Not really: this is Brown we're talking about.

The only difference this time is the incoherence. We're used to the Tory-hating smears - they go with the Brown territory. But combined - and total - confusion over the economy and the difference between government and state is something fairly new, at least to me. I can understand the economic incoherence. Given the state of the British economy after a decade of Chancellor Brown and three further years of him as First Lord of the Treasury, it's not hard to see where that comes from. But this government/state thing: I feel that he really, genuinely, doesn't see a difference; he thinks they are one and the same. Government is the State; people are merely units of that State whose sole purpose is to service it in order that it can provide for them.

Oh my God! Brown really is a socialist! So that's what's been bugging me all this time...

New Labour might have fooled some of the people some of the time, but Brown is fooling no one. His brand of state socialism, masquerading as some kind of government altruism, is not what Britain needs just now, thanks very much (did it ever?). Bring on the election so we can have done with it.

Tory Lead Ticks Up As History Repeats Itself (Again)

After a day which saw the worst government borrowing on record for the month of January, causing severe pressure on sterling and the markets, and bank lending to businesses and prospective housebuyers to tank once more, at least there was some good news today, from a Conservative perspective and, therefore, by implication (as far as I'm concerned) a national perspective. Reliable new pollsters, Angus Reid (courtesy of PoliticalBetting) place the Tories a full 14 points ahead of Crash Gordon's Labourists.

However, not everything looks rosy for David Cameron. Jeff Randall, nobody's fool when it comes to the not-so subtle relationship between business confidence and political leadership, has written a powerful comment piece for tomorrow's DT, ahead of his Sky interview with the future Prime Minister next Monday, which suggests that Cameron could well be facing some awkward, but nonetheless timely and utterly vital, questions about how he plans to rescue Britain from Brown's debt disaster. It's well worth the read. For instance:

History has much to teach us in today’s financial crisis, not least that we have been here before in one form or another. The economy is in a mess, government spending is out of control, and our currency is being devalued. Desperate ministers, fearing disaster at the polls, seek to denigrate opponents by labelling them “toffs”.

Put another way: “Our finances have been brought into grave disorder. No British Government in peace time has ever had the power or spent the money in the vast extent and reckless manner of our current rulers... no community living in a world of competing nations can possibly afford such frantic extravagances... the evils which we suffer today are the inevitable progeny of that wanton way of living.”

This analysis, crisp and incontrovertible, could have been penned last week by David Cameron to sum up Gordon Brown’s shambles. It comes, however, not from the current Tory leader but Winston Churchill in the Conservative Party’s manifesto for the general election of 1951. Much has changed since then, yet the immediate political challenge facing Mr Cameron is not dissimilar to the task Churchill confronted 59 years ago.

There's much more to the article, however, good though this part was (and quite surprising the first time you read it, too). Randall ends it with a virtual crib sheet of substantive policy questions that he'll put to Cameron on TV next Monday. Cameron must not fluff his lines. He must not obfuscate or indulge in the tired, divisive political rhetoric that characterises 13 years of this dishonest and finally disastrous Labour government. He must answer honestly, clearly and with passion. He must punch the weight of his party, which has won the argument on the economy and must now win a strong mandate to put right Labour's many crimes. And do you know what? I believe he will.

But if he does need to call on the wisdom of an historical figure to bolster his political resolve and help him to steel himself for the massive challenges, that we all face, ahead, he could do far worse than to invoke the memory of Churchill (or, for that matter, another post-war Conservative PM who saved us from the grievous distress caused by a previous Labour government, and to whom Randall also refers in his excellent piece).

Conservatives Resurgent

Springtime for Britain and Cameron

The Spectator's David Blackburn has written this revealing piece on the recent so-called Tory "wobble". Now, I didn't see it quite like that. Admittedly, there were some mixed messages over cuts, but ultimately, at least to me, it was not so much of a wobble as the inevitable backlash from the vast, almost universally leftish mainstream media when Cameron finally came out fighting on policy in January. The "right" media, that sees itself as some kind of torch-bearers of what they imagine to be "real" Conservative values, enjoyed fanning the flames, too: the ridiculously conflicted and editorially rudderless Telegraph does it from both sides at once these days. (It's quite novel, that.) But they - people like Simon Heffer - just don't like Cameron, and never will - mainly because he's not Margaret Thatcher, I assume. But he never will be Maggie. There's only one Margaret Thatcher - and Cameron, at least, knows that.

The point is that I certainly didn't feel that there was any improvement whatsoever in Incapability Brown's performance in January. Besides, even if there were some kind of progress made on his part, it was, past experience teaches us, bound to be torpedoed by his unmendable and all-encompassing shortcomings sooner or later. It was sooner. Having said that, in the end it was really Conservative policy that cut off his little dead cat bounce, and that should be a cause for celebration. Blackburn sums it up quite well:

The sudden devastation wrought on Labour by the Tories’ co-operative policy is evident in James Purnell’s waffling riposte. The validation of Tory economic policy, such as it is, from 20 leading economists and Sir Richard Branson provides a substantive alternative to the voluble, brilliant but wrong incantations of David Blanchflower. Cameron has returned to form at PMQs and Gordon Brown is reduced to giving lachrymose interviews to his friend, Piers Morgan. Resigned to defeat and ideologically exhausted, ministers hurl bland invective at Conservatives via Twitter. And even a Com Res poll indicates that the Tories are on the up, polling at 40 percent with an 11 point lead. The Conservatives were truly awful in January. They awoke to the New Year as staggering drunks; it’s mid-morning now and their hands have stopped shaking.

It looks like the "Conservatives were truly awful in January" idea has now become received wisdom. It doesn't matter, though and I suppose I can live with this little Mandelsonian propaganda triumph if I have to - mainly because January is over. The world and David Cameron have moved on. Only the bankrupt parliamentary Labour party and its dwindling numbers of diehard supporters don't seem to have grasped that. They still think it's Burns Night. Meanwhile, the Tories are resurgent, which is good news for everyone in the long countdown to the most important general election since 1979.

Make Labour History

Tony, whose Cogito Dexter blog won my sincere admiration many months ago, has asked us all to join him in his campaign to Make Labour History.

He has my full support to that end. If you really do want to secure a prosperous, free, pluralist and debt-free future for your children, in the finest traditions of our great country, Tony should also be able to count on yours.

I promise that I will do as much as I can to bring about that desirable, and, for everyone in Britain, and for the nation itself, that desperately vital outcome in this Year of Change, 2010.

Bottom line: if you want to save yourselves, your economy and your nation from total socialist destruction, then Vote Conservative - and make Labour history. After thirteen years of hurt, it's very much more than Labour deserves, and it's what we and our country so desperately need.

(Tony: sterling work, compadre. Outstanding.)

"I've Never Voted Tory" Campaign Rattles Labour

If the truly limp and, naturally, totally dishonest anti-Tory attack video below is anything to go by, then the - and pretty slick - "I've Never Voted Tory" campaign is causing some mental anguish to feeble Labourist campaigners.



If specialist Labour YouTube loser, Sion Simon, wasn't involved with this latest lame leftie propaganda-manure, then I'll eat his baseball cap!

Hat tip: Telegraph blogs.

Caption Competition: The Piers and Gord Edition

They seem to think the sensitive-side relaunch went really well. It didn't.

So speculation about what these two idiots actually said to each other here is most welcome.

Hat tip - and link to a superb, far more incisive, blog post on this matter: John Ward.

Seems Like Yesterday

I just think this 1996 gig is just, well, incredible. I don't especially mind if you disagree. That's your thing.

I totally understand :)

Carry On - Regardless

I think, finally, together we've collectively clocked the hopeless strategy of both this crippled Labour government and this rumbled, desperately passe, climate change perversion that normal people are currently trying to shed.

But I think I've found the tune that might speak to this transition period. It's pretty ironic (inevitably) - and all the more brilliant for it!



Wonderful :)

Entire Continental United States Sees Snow

Watts Up With That is covering an AP story that's just broken about an extraordinary (possibly unprecedented) event: all 48 contiguous states of the USA (plus Alaska) currently have snow on them! Only Hawaii doesn't.

It is amazing, frankly. And combined with the fact that 1180 new snowfall records have been broken in the past week, (not to mention the catastrophic, statistic-busting winter that's being suffered all over north Asia, too), I simply can't believe the kind of abject, truly denialist, insulting, watermelon claptrap still emanating from the left media.

Now, I can tell you from experience that snow in Denver and its environs is unlike anything you have ever seen, snow-wise (unless you're from Siberia - or Colorado, I suppose), so certainly don't expect that Florida is currently experiencing the ten-foot-deep variety of snowfall that is pretty much the norm for the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains. But the very fact that Flordia (Florida!) has had any snow at all is truly remarkable.

Point is, if this is one of those "extreme weather events" we've been told about by the alarmists, then sure, I admit it, the climate is changing.

Yeah, numbskulls: it's getting COLDER. Well, double duh!

Gordon Brown is "Sociopathic"

Big tip of the hat to the peerless Barking Spider for unearthing this extraordinary assault on Gordon Brown by, of all people, George Galloway. Now, I know this could be a big case of pots and kettles - in the sense that there is clearly a heck of a lot of history between these two old Scots Labourists, and clearly one hell of a lot of bad blood - but even so, the very fact that Galloway could feel he could frame some of the things he says about Brown in the way he does in this interview really must give one pause. For one thing, it doesn't sound especially political but very personal - and seems to come from personal knowledge.

Add to that the deluge of rumours and revelations of one kind or another about Brown's mental health and general behaviour and anyone would be justified in wondering whether there is at least some substance to them; whether, thanks to some anti-democratic stitch-up in 1994 between Blair and Brown, Britain has been left at the mercy of a leader who is completely unfit, mentally, socially and professionally, for the role. At the very least, it hardly inspires confidence. Unlilke Galloway, however, it doesn't inspire pity either, at least in me. Just bloody outrage that a man like that could have risen to the position of the two highest offices in the land, by, effectively, at least in the case of his current job, cynically exploiting what amounts to a serious constitutional loophole. "Undeserving", "dishonourable" and "incapable" are the three words which I think best describe the man, consequently; "unforgiveable" the word to describe the behaviour of the parliamentary party that put him there.

Anyway, have a listen. It really is, well, extraordinary!


I'm not entirely sure whether we can really trust the utterances of a coiffured, oily old Trot like Galloway, but what he says nevertheless adds more substance to the overall image of Brown-as-angry-depressive-and-general-weirdo, his (real?) tears in a hideously soft interview with a self-publicising old buddy notwithstanding.

This mud is coming thick and fast. An awful lot of it is sticking, too. Good.