Meanwhile, In Other News...

Dow crashes 1000 points in 15 minutes on Greek/EU debt crisis. Wall Street thought it was a computer malfunction. It wasn't.

Um...

Source: CNBC

Find Foot, Take Aim, FIRE!

See what happens if you're at work and you leave the blogs alone for a couple of hours? You miss something really big.

In this case, the sight of Calamity Gord "loose", as Sir Humphrey might say "in the building" (or, rather, the country) and the subsequent trail of devastation ending in a rail crash that follows soon after.

It's not so much Brown's rudeness and two-faced 'pretending to care' high/heavy handedness with, in this case, an everyday voter just like you or me (well, not like me actually. She is - or maybe come to think of it 'was' - a Labour voter until Brown branded her a 'bigot' behind her back), it's the rock-solid inevitability that if Brown is involved, no matter what it is, wherever it is, something is going to go horribly, horribly wrong.

But this time, Brown has really done it. It's his and his party's whole future that he's finally, permanently sabotaged. Poetic justice that is good for at least one, vital thing: this country's future.

The other parties will be wondering why they've bothered to expend so much time and money on elaborate campaigns and manifestos when all they had to do was sit back and watch the auld wrecker single-handedly alienate nine tenths of the voting public, two thirds of his own party and comprehensively depth charge any hope he might have entertained of becoming a legitimate prime minister. Oh, hang on, I remember why they bothered (especially the Tories) - not because they feel any particular entitlement to power, as with the Labourist Brownite inner circle, but because they genuinely care about righting Brown-Labour's wrongs.

One thing this latest Brown cockup is bad for, though, and extremely irritatingly, is that Brown and his ilk are, as Iain Dale has said, pushing ordinary white working class Labour supporters straight into the arms of the nationalist socialists, the BNP: one final piece of Brownian sabotage for which he should never be forgiven, even in retirement - or death.

It's that serious; he's been that bad.

Winning The Argument

It should not be seen as much of a coincidence that on the day Greek debt is downgraded to junk, a poll comes out that lends weight to the view that the Tories are winning the key argument in this general election campaign, the economic argument.

The only game in town is Europe at the moment, with Portugal and, somewhere further down the road, Spain, next on the list for the dreaded rating drop. Whatever the virtues of wonderful and exciting policies such as Michael Gove's brilliant education plan, which has already caused a Damascene conversion of former Fabian research chairman and now editor of the Jewish Chronicle (Martin Bright take note), Stephen Pollard, the vindication of the Tories in at least promising to focus urgently on Britain's own Brown/Labour-caused debt crisis is surely now unchallengeable. Brown and Labour can go on denying the seriousness of the crisis all they want, but that will not make it go away.

And that's clearly why people increasingly are now seeing that they must therefore make Labour go away on May 6th. The stakes have never been higher - for everyone. One thing's for sure, a hung parliament or, heaven forbid, five more years of Brown - though one could and most likely would lead to the other - and we would be the ones in the unfortunate Greeks' shoes next: 16+% government borrowing interest rates, a shattered credit rating and staring down both barrels of a titanic debt default and a bombed out economy.

But the message is finally getting through: Brown or Clegg mean economic crisis and meltdown. And only the Tories offer any hope of averting both.

Temperature's Rising...

This is what I like to see, and thanks to the superb Daily Politics for spotting it and blogging it so fast. Here we have a some real journalistic pressure being brought to bear by Adam Boulton, and even Nick Robinson, who's been marginally better of late.

One thing's for certain, it is, as the DP says, a trainwreck press conference - for Mandelson in particular. You know that when he adopts that menacing, patronising tone and starts telling reporters of Boulton's calibre to 'calm down', he's lost it.

When he was saying 'calm down' to Boulton, Mandelson was talking to himself. Have a peek:

A shocker for Mandy, the pair of Balls either side of him, and for Labour. You call that 'losing the plot'. More please!

Cyanide On The Doorstep

Eight More Days...

Rachel Sylvester, late of the Telegraph, is in fine form this morning in her Times column. Her article, headlined "Labour is learning it does not have the right to exist", speculating on the death of Labour as a dominant political force in Britain, is well worth the read.

It's also notable for a quote in amongst its insightful commentary from a Labour Party candidate, which sort of sums up their main problem:

“Gordon is cyanide on the doorstep,” says one candidate from the front line of the campaign in what was once — but is no longer — a rock-solid Labour seat. But parties get the leaders they deserve and Labour too is behaving as if it has run out of steam and ideas.

You do get the leader you deserve, and in this case, because they didn't have the guts to stand up to him when he stole the Labour party in a carefully orchestrated, long-planned palace coup, becoming anointed leader and unelected prime minister, and because they didn't have the guts to dispose of him when it was clear just how much of a total political liability he was not long afterwards, they are now going down hard with him, perhaps for a generation or more - and fully deserve that destiny, which they brought upon themselves.

“Gordon Brown is Labour’s worst leader ever,” another government minister says, according to Sylvester.

Yes, and it's the worst government and collection of MPs ever that put him there.

This Is How It Ends...

Not with a bang, with a bust-up.

The anti-Brown press - which is just about all of it, isn't it? - is turning the screw on Labour today. Apart from the Mirror, of course, but no one reads that, there are reports coming in all over the place of recriminations beginning for what has been a terrible Labour election campaign, of splits between several factions appearing and of maneuvering behind the scenes to replace Brown already starting.

So far, we have seen Brown flip flop over the Liberal Democrats in two - let's be honest for a minute here - generally dreadful TV debates for him, and during which he looked old and tired set against a pair of fresh-faced, would-be political assassins standing nearby, looking like peas in a coalition. Forget about what Brown said - (which was heard-it-all-before tractor stats in the main anyway) - it's how he looked that counted. And he looked awful.

But is his problem really that superficial? Is it really a case of no style, just substance? Well, of course not. He does have a style of sorts, it's just not a particularly pleasant one that usually involves swearing at people off camera and growling like some statistic-obsessed, gummy old circus lion while on it. Also, "style" - which I assume in this case means an awareness of the needs for certain kinds of presentational and rhetorical skills to communicate a message forcefully but attractively - does not denote superficiality, quite the opposite in fact. So no, Brown's problem is not just that he lacks the charisma or charm of a Cameron, it's that he lacks the debating skills, too. That's a talent gap and one that Clegg does not share with him, as we have learned.

It's not just Brown who's been shown-up in his true light- hiding from the public throughout his so-called campaign, talking to small rooms full of T-shirt-wearing die-hard Labour loyalists, leaving TV viewers with the impression that he's actually talking to himself - using an autocue(!) - it's the disunited team full of second raters behind him too. What twit put Ed Miliband in charge of the manifesto? What fool put Peter "Divide and Rule" Mandelson in charge of party unity? What idiot put wee Dougie Alexander in charge of the coffee and cream cakes? That is a role call of mediocrity if ever I saw one ( have I got those roles right? They seem to change so often these days). And Labour has them coming out of its ears and we're fed up to the back teeth with them.

Now, I know you will disagree with me about Mandelson, but before you do, just think very carefully and ask yourself what, exactly, he has achieved in his time in office that warrants the kind of respect and lavish praise he receives all the time? Is it because people are frightened about what he'll do to them if they don't toe his line? Of course it is. But to me, that's no measure of political success - or of great service to your country. No, poisonous he may be, and an effective Labour party heavy and paid-up Euro goon too, but true statesman he ain't and never will be. Remember, the answer to all of the above "What idiot..." questions is not just "Gordon Brown", it's "Peter Mandelson", too. Seems he slithers out from under the charge of incompetence, though, because that's what he does. Brown, fortunately, doesn't. The full tidal wave of disapproval is about to reach landfall and swallow him up, before spitting him out hundreds of miles from Number 10. Mandelson already has a lifeboat standing by, with the EU logo stamped all over it.

It's hard to tell how bad this defeat will be for Labour. Just like Boris Johnson, I hope it is one of those earthquake moments where their deceit, mediocrity, anti-democratic behaviour and general, total failure leads to their final demise, with the Lib Dems taking over the mantle of official Opposition to a Conservative government with a working majority. One thing is pretty clear to me: the final leaders' debate is an irrelevance. It's sort of like the final Test in a dead rubber. You go to see it because you like the sport, and someone might do something interesting. But nothing can change the fact that (from Brown's perspective) the series has already gone. In other words, once again, I think the polls are flattering them and I firmly believe the defeat for Labour will be shattering.

For forcing the unelected, unelectable, utter disaster Brown on us for three years, that would be less than Labour deserves. As it is, they've run out of ideas and run out of options. All we will see from here until election day is the sad old fraud making bigger and bigger speeches in front of smaller and smaller rooms of loyalists, perhaps even after the election is over and the counts have come in. But he'll keep on going, not willing to believe that the game is finished and the crowd's gone home. Someone from Sky News watches on a monitor; the live feed was pulled hours ago. The producer signals to the cameramen to get ready to pack up - it's time to go - as he reaches down and flicks the switch on the monitor and, for the last time, turns Brown off. Click.

And then he was gone.

EUseless!

Not Iceland - This ash is dangerous

So the Telegraph is reporting what quite a number of stranded holiday makers have no doubt suspected for quite a while, namely that the EU organisation that plunged the entire continent into the pre-Wright brothers era so emphatically was basing its decision on yet another dodgy Met Office computer model. As the chairman of the International Air Transport Association, Giovanni Bisignani, told Radio Four earlier on, "This is a European Embarrassment and European Mess".

Only, he didn't mean that exactly. What he meant, precisely, is that this is an EU embarrassment and an EU mess that is rapidly developing into a full-blown EU disaster. Why, then, exactly, is our equally useless, soon-to-be-booted-out government sitting on its backside listening to this horse manure about engine-devouring ash, which has now pretty much been proved as just that, equine effluent, and not simply saying, "Up yours, Delores, our planes go up!"?

Answer? Obvious. Aside from being useless, they couldn't even do it if they wanted to. The ban was made possible by treaty and as such is legally binding, meaning that anyone breaching it, from any nation, could be fined by the EU to the tune of millions and without any democratically elected national government being able to stop it short of dropping out of the EU or going to war.

The EU, in its infinite stupidity has, thanks to its epic bureaucratic blundering, turned a minor volcanic eruption in a peripheral European nation into a crisis the scale of which can scarcely be conceived. Remember, closing Europe down directly affects the lives of 400 million people 'home' and indirectly the entire globe, one way or another. "Monumental" doesn't begin to describe it. But it certainly doesn't auger well for Britain's future if we permit a repetition. But how do we avoid a repetition, I hear you ask, when Gordon Brown has signed away our right to object without even consulting us, probably at the behest of the most dishonest man in the entire world, Peter "Lord" Mandelson?

Hmm, well now, I would imagine we could avoid a repetition, at least in Britain, by reclaiming control of our own government, regulatory systems, businesses or, at the very least, next time there's a lunatic, suicidal order from the EU, to, say, shut down the entire electricity grid of Europe because a lousy CICO computer model from the bloody Met Office has told them that there's a 34% probability that all the pylons are about to come alive and eat us all, they just say NO!

Meanwhile, I watch with increasing suspicion as our airline industry is made to implode as a result of bad science and even worse supranational, unelected government, the reaction of the alarmist lobby. You have Plane Stupid, the watermelon, single issue fanatics and misfit band of dropouts, layabouts, anarchists and other assorted activist oddballs who want to send us all back into the 14th century - not that I have anything against the 14th Century, I just don't want to live there - starting with the abolition of flight. As you might imagine, they're loving this:

So, Eyjafjallajokull, you may have an unpronounceable name and an odd smell, but nonetheless we thank you for giving us a brief glimpse of life without planes. And for demonstrating that, despite what the aviation industry would like to have us believe, a world without air travel could well be a very happy place indeed.

For you maybe. But then you're a weirdo so forgive me if I ignore you from now on. Ordinary people like to use aeroplanes and they like to travel. Air travel does not harm the environment (although poorly located airports, like Heathrow, certainly do). It's all in your imagination, hairy man, stirred up into a fever by that self-same, God awful menace of a Met Office, with its useless modelling and man made warmist obsessions. Hang on a minute, Met Office gives a warning based on dodgy science to unanswerable EU body with power to shut down every airport and ground every plane on the entire continent. All aircraft are grounded. Enviro-fascists everywhere united in common approval for the Met Office's and the EU's responsible opportunism in taking full advantage of a little volcanic ash and enabling what Copenhagen could never do, bring the aviation industry, already weakened by Brown's bust, to its knees. Good heavens, I never thought they had it in them.

Well, that's the point, they don't. Between them, the EU, the Met Office and AGW nutjobs who now infest them all, couldn't organise a conspiracy of that complexity in the space of a couple of days. No, all the Met Office was, as usual, is incompetent. All that Brown did, as usual, was dither.

And all the EU is, always and forever, is completely useless - catastrophically and expensively so.

Anyone who wants five more years of Brown so he can complete the process of transforming this country into the arse end of the EU donkey wants his head examining. But this is exactly what you'll get, and more, if you vote for the Labourists or, for that matter, the Libdums. I suppose these losers all have one thing in common: all they're interested in is their own, pathetic political agendas, not the interests or the desires of the people, whether of the UK or of "Europe".

Oh Dave, Dave, if only you'd promised that referendum. The election would be over by now, and you'd be in Downing St sticking two fingers up to the EU and getting our planes flying. I trust. Why, oh why? I'll always be pondering that one right up until the day I pass on through the great ash cloud in the sky to the heavens beyond (go on holiday to Thailand, in other words, assuming we still have an aviation industry left by then).

Er, that's enough. (I'm just putting off doing some real work ;)

Hometime, I think!

Blair Knew

I nearly missed this extraordinary piece buried in the business pages of yesterday's Telegraph by half-decent economics commentator (and there aren't many of those) Edmund Conway. The thrust of the piece, supported by an interesting flashback to the days when Blair was, apparently, Labour's City spokesman, just when the '87 bubble burst, is that a series of FoI requests have revealed that Blair knew about Brown's mega housing bust as early as 2004, possibly before. Said Conway:

So concerned was the PM back in 2004 that the housing market was turning into a bubble that he asked the Treasury for a full briefing note (in fact he was prompted by an FT column by Martin Wolf, warning: “Nobody knows when the bust will come. But come, I believe, it will”.)

Fine, but nothing, as everyone no doubt recalls, happened. Why? I think we can guess. Conway continues:

Now, it probably isn’t a surprise to hear that the Treasury dismissed this view in its document, which PricedOut has attained under a Freedom of Information request. But I was surprised by the length of the document (eight chunky pages) and throughout its length a sheer unwillingness to countenance the possibility that the housing market would crash. It underlines the simple fact that the Treasury under Gordon Brown was blind to the possibility that things could go horribly wrong – even within the confines of Downing Street. It turns out no-one was allowed to challenge the “end to boom and bust” trope – even Tony Blair himself.

Blair's role in this debacle simply demonstrates how weak a prime minister, and person, he actually was. And, of course, it shows how far he would go to keep the title. He knew and yet he did nothing. If he'd had a spine, he would have fired Brown when he had the chance. But he didn't, and should be judged accordingly.

As for Brown. My God! Is it any wonder that I hate him (and I mean hate) and all he stands for? Is it really that surprising that I, and millions of others, believe he is the worst man ever to have held high office in this country? Should it really be that much of a shock that I am 100% sure that if this unelected, incompetent, vainglorious oddball is somehow given a mandate this year, the damage he will do to this country afterwards would make terrible harm he's caused so far look like the good old days?

At least the politics are therefore very straightforward: you vote Labour in your constituency and you will get five more years of the lying economic wrecker. Vote Tory, you don't.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a moral duty to vote Conservative this time around, and all that that implies if you don't. That what's at stake here. The documentary proof in Conway's article provides the proof, as if more were needed.

And now, just for a bit of extra entertainment, and in case you can't be bothered to click through to original article, is that video of Blair in '87. Who'd have thought a wet-behind-the-ears political unknown, who'd never had a proper a job in his life, would one day be prime minister.

Well, so much for David Cameron. But it is interesting to see Blair back then...



...about the same as he looks now, only less suntanned and without the Yank accent.

Finally, Some Real Perspective On Darling's Larceny Budget

Jeff Randall, as usual, has said precisely what needed to be said (ie: the truth) about the implications of Labour's latest act of political violence against the country we somehow collectively permitted it to ruin once again. Now don't get me wrong. I'm a grown-up (sort of) so I can take a bunch of socialist tax rises and spending lunacy on the chin. I'd expect nothing less from these power-hungry economic illiterates.

What I will not tolerate, at all, however, is the prospect of future generations having to pick up the bill for their rank electioneering and amoral, scorched earth economic blitz. Randall explains how and why this is precisely what will happen if the current voting generation really is stupid enough to allow the Labour fraud to work come the general election.

I'm no longer in the habit of lifting whole pieces from other sites (it breaks one of the ten blogging commandments that I take pretty seriously these days), but there are exceptions. This is most certainly one of them, because it's too important to ignore:

If you want to know what would become of Britain were Labour to win another five years in power, turn to page 189 of the Treasury's Budget book. Before you do so, however, slip into a straitjacket and gulp down an elephant tranquilliser. Prepare to feel like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest as he was administered huge electric shocks.

In Table C3 – Current and Capital Budgets – there's a line showing Public Sector Net Debt, ie how much we, as a country, will owe our creditors (not including personal borrowings). Now, cast your eyes over the column
"2014-15". Pow! I bet that hurt. Have another go: it's not a printing error.

Yes, according to the Treasury's forecasts, the United Kingdom will nearly double its indebtedness from £776 billion (in 2009-10) to £1.4 trillion. Even in Gordon Brown's devalued, debased and degraded system of accounting, that is still a poleaxing sum, equal to about one year's national output.

It gets worse, because this unprecedented and unimaginable debt projection is based on Alistair Darling's optimistic assumption that, from 2010-11, the UK's economic growth will bounce back to 3-3.5 per cent, well above long-term trend. If you are feeling confused, don't worry, you are meant to be.

Listen to the assurances of Mr Brown – that his ministers are acting to "halve the deficit" – and you might be forgiven for thinking that there's a credible plan to reduce our national debt. In fact, the very opposite is true.

Labour's plan, if one can so dignify it, involves a viral proliferation of state borrowing. In effect, the Government has turned the country into a home-owner whose mortgage is too onerous. Interest obligations are increasing faster than our ability to repay. Money goes out of the national account every month, but the capital owed is ballooning.

Consider this: the UK's deficit (annual shortfall) is scheduled to drop over the course of the next five years to £163 billion, £131 billion, £110 billion, £89 billion and £74 billion. But total state debt in the same period will rise to £952 billion, £1,095 billion, £1,218 billion, £1,320 billion and £1,406 billion. At that point, the Treasury's Debt Management Office will be humming like a Guangdong sweatshop.

In his Budget speech, the Chancellor was reserved, cautioning that there is nothing "pre-ordained" about our exit from recession and "there are still uncertainties". But when it comes to inventing numbers to suit his political agenda, the calculations are sexed up with a Panglossian twist.

It makes no sense to warn that Britain's fragile recovery could not possibly withstand the rigours of the Conservatives' tough love, while at the same time attaching to it an assumption of turbo-boosted expansion for next year and the one after. As Ed Balls would not say, this a non-sequitur.

Never mind, let's for argument's sake accept that Mr Darling's wonderland becomes reality and everything in the Treasury's crystal ball turns out to be true. How much will we, Britain's taxpaying classes, have to fork out annually for the pleasure of holding £1.4 trillion of debt? Go on, have a guess.

Well, next year the bill will be £43 billion on £952 billion of debt, an implied interest rate of 4.5 per cent. Apply that to £1.4 trillion and by 2014-5 those who contribute to the Chancellor's coffers will be forking out £63 billion a year in interest. That's 150 per cent of our current defence budget and three times what we will spend next year on industry, agriculture and employment.

Time for another happy pill, because the real outcome will almost certainly be more painful than that. For a start, the OECD rejects Mr Darling's growth prediction, insisting that Britain's economy will expand next year by only 2.2 per cent. Without a drastic slowing of Labour's spending binge, weaker growth will inevitably necessitate even higher levels of state borrowing.

Then there's the cost of servicing that debt mountain. Today's rock-bottom interest rates are unlikely to be on offer come 2014-5. Add these factors together and it is not unreasonable to conclude that Britain's annual interest bill could be approaching £100 billion five years hence.

This is legalised theft, a national disgrace. Under the bogus banner of "fairness", the Government is stealing from our children's tomorrow in order to buy votes today. It's bad enough that the current generation of university students – including those at third-rate former technical colleges – will emerge with an average debt of £23,500 (see last year's survey on push.co.uk), but they will also have to compensate for their forefathers' profligacy.

When he was in opposition, Mr Brown lambasted John Major's government for "the costs of failure", by which he meant the bills for unemployment and debt interest. He was right to do so. Unfortunately, on this Prime Minister's watch, those very same costs are rocketing out of control. His steadfast refusal to contemplate affordable spending has created an island of debt junkies: economic vandalism.

And for what? Clearly much of that extra funding for education – lots of nice teaching assistants – isn't working, otherwise Mr Brown's little helper, Mr Balls, would not be so angered by the success of grammar and private schools. Next year, the Government will spend £89 billion on education (an 80 per cent increase in 10 years) and yet our best universities are being strong-armed into accepting comprehensive-school pupils with sub-standard A-levels, in order to make up for a state system that is failing the poor.

If we are to extricate ourselves from this dung hill of Labour's making, Britain has three choices. We can default, an option not even Mr Darling favours. We can raise taxes, and that is already happening. But to knock a hole in that £1.4 trillion, punitive taxation would need to extend so far down the food chain that even dinner ladies would be heading for Zurich.

That leaves fiscal responsibility. We can stop pretending that the state is a machine for ever-increasing mass entitlement and, instead, align public-sector spending with our ability to pay.

The trouble is, while Mr Brown remains in charge – and the latest poll in the marginal constituencies suggests he may yet survive – this will never happen. He will always use the public purse as a tool for his party's advantage.

Professor Philip Booth of Cass Business School sums up the problem: "Almost every Budget measure [on Wednesday] involved a spending favour for some small group or other, or some tax relief for a group that the Government hopes to sway behind the Labour Party at the election."

Thanks to Channel 4's Dispatches, we learned this week that the daily rate for former Labour ministers "on the make" is £5,000. Perhaps we should pay the entire Cabinet that rate to clear off for good and save ourselves a fortune.

Five more years of Labour? Over my dead body.

Where's A Semi House-Trained Polecat When You Need One

Earnestly deploring a strike is quite different from dispatching a semi
house-trained polecat against the pickets to save a business and its workers’
livelihoods.

This is a David Blackburn quote about Brown's latest bout of dishonest dithering, this time over a real doozy of a conflict of interest for Labour over the BA/Unite dispute. The dishonesty is not all on Brown/Labour's part, however. Both Unite and the BA management appear to have been trying to outflank each other for months, and, insodoing, (by behaving like Brownite Labour cabinet figures rather than professionals, in other words) have buried any trust that might have been possible between the two sides, and probably buried the company with it. Bad management and aggressive, untouchable unions. It's 1977 all over again.

Meanwhile, Brown is paralysed - as usual. He can't intervene because 'Unite', one of bankrupt-Labour's life support machines will...well, who knows what they will do. Try to take over, probably. He also can't not intervene, because, if these strikes go ahead, then there's a real chance our loss-making national carrier will be doomed, just like KLM and JAL in the past 12 months or so alone. The job losses would be horrendous, and that's before we mention the national humiliation. (I feel a bailout coming on. Pardon me).

All this merely serves to illustrate with absolute clarity why, in a time of economic crisis, you cannot have a government as weak, contaminated and compromised as this one in charge of anything - anything at all. They are powerless to make policy, and if they do make policy, they are then powerless to enforce it. Brown's government is knackered, and Brown himself has been politically neutered. You need a new government, mate. Immediately.

With a crippled Labour government limping along, lurching from one crisis to the next, it's becoming clear for all to see that the unions see this as their latest big chance to undermine democracy and seize a sizable slice of power for themselves. They've done it before.

All the more reason why Blackburn is right. The semi house-trained pole cat would no-doubt have all his crown jewels in tact, and be free to act independently. He would be ready, willing and able to tear into the old trots of the unions, more interested in the dictatorship of the workers than those workers' livelihoods as they are, and make sure they're made to remember once more that, for better or for worse, the government that we elected runs this country, not them.

Lord Tebbit: over to you, sir.

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.

Understatement of the Year (So Far)

Nick "I know which side my bread is buttered" Robinson, BBC-Labour's tame political pundit, after the start of the UK's so-called economic recovery (0.1% to be adjusted is not exactly Darling's "trampoline" recovery now is it, especially after squillions in printed inflation-fuel has been chucked at it?), has just concluded on his hyper-moderated blog:

...some voters may note that we are still not securely out of the longest and deepest recession since the war and may conclude that the current custodians of the economy can no longer be trusted to finish the job.

You think?

The fact that Brown and his cohort of economic nincompoops and ne're-do-wells, whose now-legendary incompetence is only just about trumped by their compulsive mendacity, have managed to bankrupt the country in search of some sort of theoretical, artificially stimulated recovery that, as these figures show with devastating clarity, has utterly failed to materialise will not have gone unnoticed by the general public.

So, toenails, my old china, for "may conclude," read "decided a long time ago," and for "the current custodians of the economy," read "the Brownite, Labourist liars and wreckers," and for "can no longer be trusted to finish the job," read "are going to be lucky to get away with not being hanged en masse from the nearest tree, never mind an election defeat, for the cataclysmic economic harm they've managed to do to Britain, not to mention the desperate harm they've managed to do throughout British society, during their overlong period in office."

This is no time for understatement, you see!

But it is time for a Tory government. And if you read between Robinson's BBC-approved lines, even he knows that most sane people have known that for quite some time.

Obama Torpedoes Brown

Seems that Obama's speech on banking regulation has finally put paid to any remaining pretence that Brown was in any way 'leading the world' in this area. It has, perhaps predictably, sent the government into a tailspin, with no co-ordinated response to the plans and, it seems, very little idea of what to do with the new information. According to Iain Martin:

So, since Obama spoke British ministers have been in quite a spin. The Chancellor’s office said Britain would not be following the U.S. but Number 10 said, rather nervously, that it is studying the plans.
“I think what the president is doing is very much in accordance with the direction we’ve been taking,” said a Number 10 spokesman. But that’s simply not true. Obama’s plans are not in accordance with the direction the British have been taking. A plan to break up the megabanks and inhibit proprietary trading is not at all what the Treasury wants. It wants the UK’s megabanks - RBS, and the Lloyds-HBOS monster it created mid-crisis - to trade their way out of their poor position and into safety so that taxpayer money can be recovered.
The Number 10 spokesman mused some more: “Obviously one of the issues in the banking world is that you have different circumstances in different countries.” Sorry, I thought a co-ordinated global response was supposed to be the priority?To further cloud the issue up popped Lord Myners of the Treasury. He said there is no way Britain will follow the Obama lead on this. But… “I think the important thing is that there is a globally co-ordinated response taking place here.”
Again, no, there isn’t a globally co-ordinated response. I repeat: Obama acted unilaterally on Thursday in making his biggest post-crisis reform proposal.
What there is here is a mess created by a serious breakdown in global policy-making. In a panic after his party’s Senate defeat in Massachusetts this week, Obama has decided he needs to be much tougher than he has been.
And it creates a serious difficulty for the current British government, which wants to appear in line with a president who popular on this side of the Atlantic and is taking on finance. But he is proposing to do what the Treasury and Number 10 do not want to do: he wants to break up the big banks
For the Tories this is a gift. They have advocated G20-wide policies similar to those now promoted by Obama - so they get to be on his side (a boon in Europe) and lined up against big banks the government here won’t break up. No wonder George Osborne sounds delighted this weekend.

While I very much doubt that Obama was thinking too much about Gordon Brown's political credibility when he decided to get tough with the megabanks (for better or for worse - probably worse since he's got just about everything else wrong since he took over), there can be no doubt whatsoever that Iain Martin is right and this is a disaster for a prime minister who, in his own fevered imagination, believes he - and only he - has the credentials to 'save the world'.

And Martin is right to say it's a gift for the Tories. It is, and for Britain too. Anything that helps to prick the Brown ego bubble and correct his (and Labour's) utterly dishonest narrative on his role in the economic crisis (for which he himself as Chancellor was largely to blame) can only be a good thing. Why? Because it hastens the useless old fraud to the political grave he so richly deserves and to which his passage is now long overdue. Two cheers for Obama, then.

Billy Bragg Mashed

I thought the Daily Mash's reporting of Billy Bragg's principled hypocritical tax protest and celebtivist posturing was rather bloody funny.

DEFICIT REDUCTION WAS BASED ON SALES OF 'BETWEEN THE WARS', ADMITS DARLING

19-01-10

CHANCELLOR Alistair Darling has been forced to scrap his deficit reduction plan, admitting it was based entirely on sales of Billy Bragg's Between the Wars EP. Bragg says some RBS executives can now afford to buy a house as big as his Britain's 14th biggest pop-folk shouter is withholding his income tax in protest at Royal Bank of Scotland's continued insistence on being a bank. Bragg said: "The RBS bonuses echo the kind of backstage rider demands I never get to make at the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival. I just hope I can make a difference before the Murdoch press hires someone to assassinate me." But the Treasury warned it will be forced to make even deeper cuts in public services, including those council-sponsored equality and diversity festivals where Bragg turns up and makes BMW-owning management consultants feel like students again for 20 minutes. Tom Logan, chief economist at Madeley-Finnegan, said: "This is potentially very serious. Five year gilts are currently being sold on the basis of guaranteed revenue streams from William Bloke and the ones he did with Wilco. "We don't want to have to use up the tax revenues from the Kirsty MacColl version of New England. We need that in case we go to war with China." Other left-wing musicians have supported Bragg's stance, with Paul Weller only declaring income from his last three solo albums and all that Style Council rubbish. Weller added: "But not Stanley Road or All Mod Cons. I'm not some fucking mug." A spokesman for the Inland Revenue said: "I've actually got a copy ofTalking With the Taxman About Poetry. Maybe he should do a new album called Talking With the Taxman About Spending 18 Months in Jail for Being a Marxist Twat." Meanwhile Bragg demanded that all banks should be run like the Co-operative with its green investment policy, fair trade mortgage refusals and the ethical way it charges you thirty quid whenever you go 1p over your limit.

You can read Billy Bragg's pile of disingenuous horse manure here, if you really want to. Some of the comments underneath it might make it worthwhile, I suppose. Like this one from 'unionjackjackson':

I similarly am withholding my tax from HRMC until we have a tory government and my money will be spent wisely.

unlike these labour tossers pissing it away.

Or this excellent one from the multi-posting Lefty-basher 'stevehill':

I'll visit you in prison Billy. Maybe.

Starving schools, hospitals, pensioners, benefit claimants etc of funds to make a protest is a particularly infantile form of toy throwing.Most bank staff are on or below the national average wage, their bonuses will be in the order of £1,000 or so, and they depend on this to pay their bills. The bank's assets - which you and I own - are essentially its people. They walk out of the door every night. You seem to accept that you can't veto HSBC or Barclays or Goldman Sachs bonuses. So how do you plan to stop the best people at RBS joining their rivals, causing the bankruptcy of RBS, the loss of 141,000 jobs, and a total write-off of the taxpayers' investment?

No, you're not an anarchist. But you're not being very smart.

Perhaps there is hope for Britain after all - so long as we all club together now to ensure that Bragg and his ilk never have any influence on the running and the future of our country again!

Then we can deal with the bankers properly. They'll keep.

Inflation Spike - The Double Dip Begins

No one likes hindsight very much, but it really should have gone without saying in the first place that when you print 200Bn quid of unreal money just to keep going month to month, are running a record structural deficit and have public debt exposure approaching 1.5 Trillion, then you are running the severe risk of diluting your currency's value to the point where it begins to hurt the entire economy - and hurt a lot. With inflation having spiked by 1.0% in one month, which is the largest jump on record, hitting 2.9% just as the first signs of recovery were (allegedly) being detected, then no amount of spin can disguise the fact that Britain is in big, big trouble.

There is, of course, some suspicion that this is all part of Brown's 'plan' (if that is what it can be called): bankrupt the country now in order to buy some kind of election victory and then inflate away all the debt regardless of the huge amount of damage that that will do to the prosperity of private citizens, especially those who are wealth creators, self-sufficient (prudent), and savers. It will also impact heavily on home ownership, of course - which is why I suppose there has been all the clamour on the left for a return to council housing recently. All this is naturally a socialist's wet dream - and it is precisely the total basket-case calamity that Thatcher had to confront in 1979.

But if it really is that ruinous old bastard Brown's intention to turn back the clock to the 70s, with low or no growth, high debt, high taxes and high inflation (aka: stagflation), then even someone as self-serving and cynical as he is (beyond any shadow of a doubt) is in for a severe shock. First, it won't work because people are on to him: no amount of attempted vote-buying is going to win him the mandate he has never, ever deserved, particularly if his 'plan' is to catapult Britain thirty-five years into the past, back into the economic dark ages (although some might say he has already done exactly that).

Second, it won't work because of the sheer scale of the crisis. It is unprecedented, relatively speaking, not just in the history of Britain, but the history of any major economic power, in terms of the scale of the exposure to a possible economic tempest. QE, as Fraser Nelson (one of the very few MSM journalists who have been warning us about the inflation crisis following swiftly on from the damp squib that was deflation) has said time and again, is uncharted territory. It's a nuclear option; a highly experimental and untested method of dealing with a crisis the nature of which is most likely not completely understood. It is also a one-shot deal. If, as increasingly seems to be the case, Brown and Darling have, in fact, completely failed to plan for rapidly rising prices (or, rather, a rapidly deteriorating purchasing power parity), then whatever stimulated (fake) recovery they were hoping for will be choked off in short order. The danger of a double dip recession, that little old I (for one) starting talking about last May for heaven's sake, is now not so much a danger as a certainty. But while it's a familiar story so far as Labour is concerned, what is unfamiliar this time, as we roll our eyes muttering 'here we go again,' is that we will be entering the second recession with literally less than nothing left in the kitty. What must follow, regardless of Labour's lies, and thanks to their terrible economic mismanagement across the board, is a rapid fall in the overall standard of living. The rest of the world will not prop us up for much longer - and we have no more bullets in the gun.

Third, Brown's plan to inflate away Britain's debt won't work for the simplest reasons of all - the real-world economic ones. Let us say that by some satanic twist of fate Brown won the election, thus enabling him to continue to get away with QE for a bit longer (and that can be measured in weeks now rather than months), what are the eonomic realities that will hunt him down and expose him for the utter fraud and socialist economic illiterate that he is?

The simplest point is about levels of public spending. (I know you know this but writing it down helps me to get it clear in my own noodle!) As inflation continues to rise and money is worth less (expressed as price and wage hikes), people can buy less, economic activity is hampered because businesses are starved of cash and crippled by ever-increasing pay demands, and, of course, rising interest rates (as the BofE tries desperately to control the collapse) and, following on from that, the social security bill increases as a result of rising unemployment, an increase in income support costs (as more and more people fall into the poverty trap) and, as the spiral gathers pace, the subsequent increase in debt further devaluing the currency - leading to more inflation and even higher interest rates. Nothing personal, you see. It's just how the world works - no matter what your politics!

Point is, do not believe any of the propaganda from any of the politicians, but especially the socialists (many of whom quietly wish this calamity upon the nation for their own, peverse political reasons), because the signs are that these economic realities are already here.

There is nowhere for Brown (fortunately) or us (sadly) to hide any more.

A massive, unprecented, 1% inflation spike in one month is just the start of it. Batten down your financial hatches folks. This is going to be one hell of a storm.

Lame Duck Crippled

This is fun.

Brown Confident of Labour Victory

Or, at least, he was in 1992.



What a great call, Gordo!

Lame duck Brown: wrong then; wrong now. Wrong about nearly everything. It was with good reason he was dissuaded by Mandelson and Blair in '94 to stand for the leadership. They already knew what a loser he was, so they gave him the British economy to screw around with for a decade instead, until he managed to stage a coup of his own in 2007, after a long-running, deperately divisive and deceitful campaign against his boss, Blair. But if the last three years of his unwanted, undeserved and unearned premiership have proved anything beyond a shadow of a doubt, it's that the man is still a total loser.

If they could be honest with the public for ten seconds, Darling and Mandelson would be the first to agree with that summary, if recent events are anything to go by. That's why, in one, final, desperate throw of the dice before the general election, they've taken over - leaving the loser to his thoughts.

I think it is safe to say now that it won't work. All they've managed to do is to create a paradox. Everyone knows that keeping the loser in place simply means to most people that if they vote Labour, it probably means five more years of Brown. So they won't vote Labour. Game over. If they did get of Brown now, then people would conclude that Labour is utterly divided (we know that anyway, but it would then be 'official'). So they won't vote Labour. Game over. I suppose one could speculate - and I wouldn't put it past them - that there might be some sort of calculation there that in the event of a hung parliament, which is the best they can really hope for barring a miracle, Brown would 'retire' soon after as part of some dodgy deal with the Lib Dems.

But back to now - and, perhaps, reality. The fact is that Darling and Mandelson have stripped Brown of his authority, fearing a total meltdown for Labour had he been permitted to go on lying and spinning - and misleading a wised-up electorate - on the economy while trying to run just another negative, ineffective (remember Crewe?) Brown-Ballsian smear assault on Cameron's Conservatives. Their eyes are on the future, yes. But not the future of Britain, the future of Labour. They've neutered Balls, before he and his fellow left wingers have a chance to mass their forces, to head off a post-defeat bloodbath before it starts. Whatever I might think about Mandelson, he's certainly got game.

However, I don't think people can forgive the depths of his cynicism, the tedious naval-gazing and vanity driving Labour's endless infighting, or with what increasingly looks like a faked coup effectively leaving a technically legitimate Prime Minister with no authority, a prisoner of his own cabinet. In fact, there was a real coup - and it was successful. As I said, unelected Mandelson is now in charge of the UK. As this begins to dawn on people over the next few weeks, I reckon the horribly decayed state of the Labour party, and their attempts to mislead people about this reality, will begin to register in the polls.

So the Tories are dead right: this is all about Labour when it should be about the country. After these events, the country desperately needs to be permitted to grant a fresh mandate to govern - doesn't matter who to - and to do it immediately, preferably with the first thaws.

A point for Labourists to bear in mind? The longer you wait, the angrier people will become, and the bigger your defeat will be. But hey, I know you'll go on burying heads in sand (or snow). Fair enough. But don't say you weren't warned when you're clearing-up the rubble of a total collapse in your popular vote at the general election. I can't wait.

(Thanks to ajs41 for another great clip.)

Labour's Winter of Discontent

Given the sorry outcome for lame duck Brown of Labour's Winter Coup, Patrick Blower's recent animation seems quite apt. It's quite entertaining, too. As Blower says, it's Labour's winter of discontent. He goes on, by way of introduction:

Some members of the Labour party see their leader as an old boiler they'd rather trade as part of the proposed scrappage scheme

Borrowed from The Guardian.

Lame Duck Brown

Brown: Game Over

Now we know the price for Brown of Wednesday's attempt to oust him. According to this morning's Times exclusive, Alistair Darling, in cahoots with Mandelson (naturally), has announced to the country, laughably, that we face "the toughest cuts for 20 years if Labour continues in office". Conclusive proof that Brown has lost the policy argument, but not to Darling and co, though, who went along with him for so long, but to the Conservatives. But Brown's lost a lot more besides.

The article says, tellingly:

The remarks suggest a big victory for Mr Darling and Lord Mandelson after the attempt to bring down the Prime Minister. Gordon Brown has apparently been dissuaded by two of his most powerful Cabinet colleagues from adopting a simplistic “investment versus cuts” election campaign associated with his close adviser Ed Balls.

Brown is a lame duck now, a prisoner in his own party who must ask permission of his Chancellor and Mandelson before he can do anything. Any speech he makes, any interview he gives and any Cabinet meeting he chairs will have to be given the green light by these two before they happen.

In other words, Operation Hoon was a 90% success; all but the last bridge fell: Brown's forced resignation. Why they didn't go the whole way and get rid of him was initially beyond me. That they kept him on as a puppet PM, as a hollowed-out figurehead, spoke to their bad judgment - and to their cowardice. They're all desperate not to be tainted with almost certain defeat. And then the penny dropped. That's why they kept Brown in place, neutered but responsible, so that he can carry the can and then disappear into US speaker-circuit obscurity. Silly me.

And clear proof of how low Labour has sunk. Pathetic.

And what of the lame duck? Well, Darling's words in particular will sting Brown most:

The next spending review will be the toughest we have had for 20 years . . . to me, cutting the borrowing was never negotiable. Gordon accepts that, he knows that.

Game, set and match, Mandelson/Darling. The coup was a success after all. Brown is no longer Prime Minister in anything other than unearned, undeserved title.

A momentous revelation, indeed. Not least because Labour, their depthless, delusional arrogance in thinking the country will stomach this finally emerging in stark relief, have just signed their own general election death warrant.

The one thing people like less than a divided party is a divided party without a real leader. Oh, and Mandelson is Prime Minister now, unofficially. This totally unelected serial liar is in absolute command of Britain for up to six months.

Dear God.

E. Balls, A. Balls, PIMCO and Gilts

I was just skimming through the comments beneath Jeff Randall's latest all-out assault on Labour's epic economic incompetence when I stumbled upon something rather interesting of which, in my ignorance, I knew not (thanks to the poster "BD MATHERS," I do now). The European portfolio manager (chief buyer) of the biggest bonds and gilts dealer in the world, PIMCO, is none other than one Andrew Balls, Ed Ball's much smarter little brother.

"So what?" you may well ask. Well, for one thing, PIMCO holds $183Bn of assets and, as such, is the biggest company of its kind in the world. What is more, it's playing a vital role in keeping the British economy's head just about above water, for now - (or, at least, keeping the Labour shipwreck afloat). However, PIMCO announced yesterday that it will be withdrawing from both the US and the UK markets. The US will just about be able to cope with this since it has many other options open to it. Not so the UK, a far smaller economy where debt dependency means we are orders of magnitude more leveraged than the States. As the "economic voice" blog says:

In what amounts to a massive vote of no confidence PIMCO has announced that it will cut back on its UK and US government debt holdings. They see government borrowing rising and the central banks no longer buying through quantitative easing, which will push the supply / demand balance into negative territory for them. They are expected to move into European government bonds as these have not had the same level of government support. If a flood of UK Gilts are dumped on the market we could see yields rise (prices drop) more than anticipated.

This leaves the questions of where will the government raise the circa £180 billion it needs for the next year? And how much more of a premium in the form of increased bond coupons (interest) are we going to have to offer before investors are happy to take the risk of buying new Gilts? Also, when will the Bank of England be able to sell its accumulation of Gilts back into the markets without suffering a massive loss?

Next stop the IMF?

Indeed. This is a very, very serious development which has all-but been drowned out by all the noise coming from Brown's latest pathetic leadership crisis over the last 24 hours or so, although some bloggers, most economists and some broadcasters did pick it up. It is a stark truth, but Jeff Randall is absolutely right: Britain is broke; the coffers are [worse than] empty. He was wrong, however, in his assessment that both main parties are too scared to talk about managing this calamity. As I said earlier, Philip Hammond was refreshingly candid, forensic and solid in appraisal of the Labour-led crisis in the PBR debate today. It's only Labour that's delusional about the scale of the problem, in particular the Prime Mentalist himself - oh, and one Edward Balls.

Which brings me back to the theme of this post: the embarrassment the Balls brothers connection might (should) cause the government. Why? Guess who will be steering through PIMCO's dumping of UK gilts. One Andrew Balls, European portfolio manager. The "economic voice" again:

Apart from the economic repercussions for Britain, it also embarrassingly appears that Andrew Balls (younger brother of Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families) will be overseeing this withdrawal as head of PIMCO’s European investment team.

But in a huge, gobbledigook in-house interview posted after Christmas on the PIMCO Europe website, Balls Minor puts a bit of English on what the company calls its "European Cyclical Outlook and Strategy" (aka, its "Get the hell out of the UK as fast as possible" plan).

...there is more uncertainty around the forecasts than usual, and it is even more difficult to identify the turning point in the economic cycle because larger, secular changes are also underway. Over the long term, we expect to see a major shift to lower growth in the developed economies, higher growth in the emerging economies and greater government intervention and regulation overall. PIMCO calls this new economic reality the New Normal.

Compared with the core eurozone countries Germany and France, we see the UK as having a more difficult adjustment to make to the New Normal due to weaker initial conditions, greater ongoing need for deleveraging and, in the household sector, the need to rebuild savings, which are low compared with the savings rates you see in Germany or France.

However, the UK has benefited from more aggressive policy interventions and related to this, the depreciation of the British pound versus the euro and the dollar. We also consider the UK a more flexible economy than Germany or France. That is a benefit for the UK in terms of handling the big shocks we have seen hit these economies.

Taking all these factors into account, the growth forecast ranges are similar for the UK and the eurozone as a whole, and their outlooks are broadly similar, but the midpoint for the UK is a little bit higher than that for the eurozone.

Another important point is that while we see unexciting growth at the eurozone aggregate level, we expect to see considerable differentiation across member countries because of weaker initial conditions and greater deleveraging requirements in some countries.

Get that last bit? "Weaker initial conditions and greater deleveraging requirements in some countries [in Europe]." For 'some countries,' read the UK. For 'weaker initial conditions,' read Gordon Brown's total cluelessness in his decade of lunatic spending into a massive property bubble that he helped to create and fuel. Seems spinning the facts could therefore be in the Balls family genes. To be fair to A. Balls, though, he is stuck between a very thick rock (filial loyalty to an older brother - and sister-in-law - who helped cause the UK's current economic chaos) and a very hard place (doing his job). It seems he plumps for the latter in the end, though, in his assessment, stating (in econo-nerd speak, naturally) that:

In the UK there is also uncertainty over what the Bank of England (BoE) will choose to do with the stock of gilts it has bought during 2010. The BoE has bought gilts across the curve, whereas the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing purchases have largely been focused on mortgage-backed securities. So there is a bigger question mark over the exit strategy here for the BoE, whether it will continue to hold these bonds or whether it will at some point try to reduce those holdings.

Because the eurozone does not have large-scale quantitative easing programmes to unwind, we remain moderately bullish on eurozone duration. We also remain positive on covered bonds in the eurozone. The impact of ECB purchases of covered bonds is very minor compared with the quantitative easing programmes in the UK and the US...

This is why his bosses have told him to dump the UK (and US) and buy European debt instead. He goes on (boy, he goes on!)...

On the UK side, in addition to the risk associated with the end of quantitative easing, there is also political uncertainty surrounding the elections, most likely happening in May, and the implications there for fiscal retrenchment and for fixed income markets. The chance of renewed pressure on the British pound remains a source of tail risk, a risk that poses a market crisis or systemic event that can severely hurt portfolio returns, in the UK.

In other words, the UK is the most likely candidate for basket case status in the entire continent of Europe. I wonder if Ed knows what his brother's been up to? Andy knows what Ed's been up to, that's for certain. You know what, I think Britain ended up with the wrong Balls in the government.

Anyway, that's enough of that. It's all just too unspeakably depressing for words. My God this country has been fubar-ed by Labour. Again.