Ramsay McBrown Addresses the Nation

I know Labour are broke and that they have a nasty habit of recycling old policies and passing them off as new ideas, but don't you think they've gone a bit too far with this latest election broadcast. I mean, whatever next?

First, Ramsay McBrown addresses the nation about the grave economic crisis:


And on a more personal note:

(They couldn't afford sound for that one. Charlie said no.)

Isn't it funny how all Labour governments end in a total economic shambles? Funny as in strange, not amusing.

Oh, and I do hope Brown isn't going get any odd ideas from this about trying to rig some sort of national government with him in charge (on the very slim chance that this election ends in deadlock).

There'd be fighting in the streets. And I'd bring the Molotovs.

Scrapping Labour's Tax On Jobs: All Good

So this evening we learn that the penny has finally dropped with George Osborne and he's announced that he'll be immediately scrapping Labour's crazy plan to hammer national insurance if they win a fourth term. Whatever the economic impact of this - and it will only be good in the sense that businesses will be able to breathe a sigh of relief and Joe Public will have a little bit more to spend next year, at a time when the standard of living is falling in real terms - Osborne's promise has just won the Conservative Party another million votes-plus. Don't believe me? Remember the '92 Tories? It was the campaign against Labour's tax bombshell that turned that election.

All Osborne has to do now is keep his promises on becoming Chancellor, unlike Norman Lamont, regardless of the economic situation. The only way government overspending can be brought under control is by cutting that spending, not by shafting middle (and low) earners and squeezing small businesses all in the name of propping up bloated, inefficient, poorly managed and often appallingly wasteful public services, which is all half Brown's laughable pledges meant anyway.

Whichever way you look at it, this seems like a firm, confident change of direction for the Tories - a change in the right direction, therefore. It's clear, blue water they're putting between themselves and Labour, and it speaks directly to the electorate. It says that they value aspiration and enterprise over punitive taxation and out-of-control spending. It says productive jobs, not non-jobs. It also says to people "we want to win", something I, at least had begun to wonder about. People back a team that wants the prize.

Many will think that all this has come if not in the nick of time, then not a moment too soon. To me, though, as they bring their policies further into focus, and as their message becomes clearer and voters' attitudes crystalise as they gain more confidence in that message, the Tories will absolutely annihilate Brown in the general election. Yahoo!

So, bye bye gold-selling, fake-boom-and-giant-bust, giant dithering weirdo Brown. You're going down, buster, and my God you damn well deserve all you get, and then some!

PS: Iain Dale's latest 7 Days Show podcast covers some of this policy ground, among many other things. It's well worth the listen (if you like that sort of thing). You can get to it via his blog here.

Giant Redwood

Thanks to Iain Dale's heads-up, I've just seen what I think should and could be a politically game changing post by John Redwood on his blog. I say that because it made me realise, to my shame, that I've been as taken in by the Labour revisionist narrative on the economics of the Thatcher years as virtually everyone else has (and I dare "everyone else" to say otherwise). It's potentially game-changing because, for one, rather important thing, it's all evidentially true.

One of the myths perpretrated by Labour and the BBC is that Margaret Thatcher came in and cut public spending. She did not – spending on the main services grew rapidly under her control. She did cut plans in 1981 to help the recovery, but the overall figures for total public spending including capital, current and debt interest were:

1978-9 (last Labour year) £71.2 billion
1980-81 (first full Cons year) £120.2 billion
1981-82 £130 billion
1983-4 £137.5 billion

(These are all cash figures taken from the Red Books of the day – they also represent rises in real terms, though on a much smaller scale than the cash increases)

She tackled the deficit and the need to fuel growth by asset sales in the middle and later years, and by better control providing better value for money. She also got the high rate of inflation down which she inherited, and put through crucial trade union and nationalised industry reforms.

Margaret Thatcher had no need to cut public spending by the £39 billion Labour now say they need to reduce it by,(or by the then equivalent) because she ran things more prudently and did not borrow so much.

I do wish the commentators and interviewers wouold look at the numbers and the published facts, instead of all this misleading spin. They could also point out that say a 10% per cent overall cut over 4 years is a very modest cut by private sector standards, and has been delivered by many private sector companies with no dimunution in quality of service.

There are several simple truths – it is possible to cut public spending by substantial amounts without sacking a single nurse, teacher, doctor, soldier. It is possible to cut some public spending and make things better by doing so. It is possible to greatly increase efficiency throughout the public sector, if only someone started to run it with the taxpayers interests at heart.

It is also an immutable law of public sector reform in the UK that Labour spin doctors and some BBC journalists will wish to keep alive the myth of the massive “cuts” of Margaret Thatcher, and the myth that all cuts are damaging if not politically impossible.

It's so obviously time for a new Conservative government because it's so obviously time to get on with reversing the dire consequences of the devastating new Labour decline. Watching that little weasel Liam Byrne on Question Time just now, the first part of whose incoherent outgas was to whine incongruously that it's time "to front up" to the economic disaster confronting Britain (that his party designed, facilitated and delivered), simply reinforces the fact that, astonishing though it might seem, his own second point was entirely correct, though not quite in the way that he intended (surprise surprise): we are faced with a "clear choice" between Labour and the Conservative Party in the general election. That choice amounts either to more of the same under Brown, or an honest attack on Brown's economic crisis under the Tories.

Not an especially tough choice, then, is it, actually?

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.

So When's The Real Budget?

From what I've read so far, 'trivial tinkering' is about as generous a term I could think of to describe what is, beyond all question, the most inept and irresponsible response to Britain's debt crisis that Labour could have managed, desperate as they are not to confront the consequences of Gordon Brown's economic car crash before the general election. We got the usual cowardly hammering of harmless drinkers and smokers, the usual mindless fuel duty increases (staggered, as if that matters during a devaluation) and the usual (from Labour, especially under Brown, but now under Darling) stealth tax increases, which are being deciphered from the small print by various sifters and sleuth bloggers as we speak.

The giveaways were pathetic too. Raising the stamp duty threshold to encourage first time buyers will have no such effect. It is, when put into perspective, a tiny tax break. Not being able to get a mortgage on decent terms, or a mortgage that any first time buyer with half a brain will know would become an unaffordable millstone with the first interest rate hike are the real problems. So, no help there. As for the attempt to woo the grey vote once more, well, it's nice for my folks to look forward to a winter fuel allowance again. But now that the worst of this winter is just about over, I can't see them being overly impressed with this straightforward bribe. They'll still have to stump up £2000+ a year for gas and electricity, a constant struggle for pensioners - who are hardly excessive users. See? Pathetic. And where were the cuts? Inadequate and slipped in under the radar.

In reality, therefore, this was a white noise budget with no clear purpose and no clear goal. I note with great pleasure that Cameron was especially thorough in his demolition of it, of Labour's latest ruin of Britain and of the man responsible for it all, James Gordon Brown. Five more years of this? You need your head examined if you seriously want that.

But if you really are as determined as I am to see the end of Brown and his ultra-corrupt government, but can't vote for Cameron for whatever petty reason, then just remember: If you do that then you will split the vote and you will get five more years of Brown. And you'll only have yourself to blame. Putting prejudice before country is as sure a way of letting these useless wreckers back in by default as actually voting for them.

I would have thought this burnt-out budget of a burnt-out government would have provided reason enough to wake up, smell the coffee, vote Tory and finally get them out.

Then, fifty days after that happy day, we'll have the real budget. You know, a Conservative budget that will begin the process of reversing the catastrophic damage long years of a Labour government has caused to the United Kingdom. Again.

Brown's Death Rattle

No matter what the increasingly irritating (is that possible?) Nick Robinson might think, quoting himself as usual - always a very bad sign - this was yet another trainwreck interview from Gordon "give me a chance to finish the job of destroying the country" Brown this morning. (Just remember, for instance, that when he growls that ridiculous phrase "continue the stimulus" he really means "continue adding to and Britain's, titanic, horrifying debt mountain".)



You cannot believe word one of a man who thinks that by saying he's 'cutting the deficit', he'll fool people into thinking he's actually tackling the terrifying debt explosion that he, personally, created. They are not the same thing, and this appalling man, who caused the recession in Britain to be far worse thanks to years of hopeless economic mismanagement, is doing what he always has done: telling the country - and the world - a pack of absolute lies. If he does somehow hoodwink - or even bribe - the people of this country into letting him sneak back into power, the rest of the world will deliver its verdict in short order. The economic crisis that would follow would make Brown's first, record-breaking recession look like the good old days.

But I'm pretty confident that, thankfully, the British electorate won't be fooled again. Far from the twit-Robinson's idea that this was somehow an 'assured' performance by a man pretending to be some kind of latter day Churchill, this is Brown's political death rattle. It was the last, desperate diatribe of a very desperate man clinging on to office for dear political life. I'll give him this, he doesn't sell it cheaply. The unelected fraud, who, so it goes, 'thrives' in a crisis - and therefore causes one wherever he goes and with whatever he touches - will soon be gone, gone, gone, thank God.

Hard though it might be to take for some, it is time for the Tories to come back, once again to clear up a Labour government's economic catastrophe. It's time for the medicine.

And it's way beyond the time for us to be able to say 'good riddance' to the remorselessly dishonest, politically and nationally corrosive influence that has been and will always be James Gordon Brown, the worst prime minister ever to have been inflicted upon this nation.

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.

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.

CRASH ! Ah-Ah

Destroyer of the economy.
CRASH! Ah-ah...
He's a mentalist.
He hates every one of us, can't stand any one of us...
He'll steal every thing we've got from every man, every woman, every child,
He's a clown, he's Crash!

With deepest apologies to Queen.

Anyway, you get the idea, I hope. It's inspired (if that's right word) by this latest Randall demolition job on Crash Gordon's devastatingly terrible economic record to date. A taste:

We learn from a new book – Where Power Lies: Prime Ministers v The Media, by Lance Price, Labour’s former director of communications – that this Prime Minister is obsessed with controlling hour-by-hour media coverage and is prone to temper tantrums, shouting at staff and kicking furniture when a story runs beyond his spinmeisters’ control.

If true, Number 10 advisers might care to bring out the Ritalin and buffer the chaise longue with bubble wrap. Britain’s financial performance under Mr Brown’s stewardship has mirrored that of his local football team, Raith Rovers: a Premier League side in the 1990s, but now languishing in the bottom half of the division below.

Delicious. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The ruination nutcase-Brown has brought down upon this nation since he and his fellow nincompoops conned their way into power (three times - somehow) is truly epic. Read the article, where Randall gives what I feel is a pretty abridged list of the major Brown damage. It seems it's down to the electorate to elaborate - and vote accordingly.

Just so what's left of Queen don't get too upset, here's the original Flash Gordon ditty:

Er, I know. Camp doesn't begin to describe it.

The Real Deniers

Bishop Hill has highlighted this extraordinary, extraordinarily complacent and utterly dishonest press conference by someone who I believe is one of the most corrupt individuals on the face of the earth.


I recognise that Bishop Hill's blog is a serious, wonderful, scholarly front line against the industrial level scam that is climate change. But mine isn't. I'm a private blogger who just has his view, and little else.

In this case my view is pretty simple: you can't engage in a serious debate about anything with people who are palpably as dishonest (and that's proved) as Pachauri. That he's still part of the IPCC network is bad enough; that he's still its leader tells you all you need to know about the depth of the corruption associated with that institution.

But it goes further than that. I see this as an emergent behaviour of a political class. We see every day the same kind of casual, habitual, insulting assaults on the rationality of ordinary people by this Labour government. We hear, for instance, the laughable lie that Labour will increase spending this year, at the same time as liars like Mandelson are simultaneously announcing massive public spending cuts this year. We hear, as well, that this disastrous government has wasted untold billions of notional future money trying to curtail housing repossessions. And yet, though the previous Tory government spent nothing (because they wisely knew that such an effort would be futile) to that aim, this government has managed to waste billions and still has seen more people lose their houses than in 1995, the low point of the last recession that was soon followed by extraordinary, and sustainable, sound growth - until the excellent Clarke was replaced by the moron Brown, that is.

The reasoning is hilarious, as well. On the one hand you have a Labour housing minister suggesting that a family losing its home is a 'good thing' (but which shouldn't have happened with the billions spent, should it?) - and in that displaying a level of high-handed, out-of-touch complacent incompetence Ken Clarke never could have been (and never has been, even by Brown) accused of. And on the other, you have this extraordinary, angels-on-a-pinhead, nonsensical Labour counterfactual - "If we hadn't spent all your money - and your children's money - then it would have been twice as bad as it was in 1995." Oh yeah? Who says!

With the former, minor housing minister dumbness, you can put that down to the old "don't really give a shit" factor. But with the latter - with the Brown/Mandelson mixed, though equally dumb, messages, you are faced with a level of economic, political and basic dishonesty that will delay any recovery in this nation almost as long as a continuing Labour government would. Two things: first, spending all that money has achieved nothing on the issue of repossessions, and second, all that meaningless expenditure has guaranteed a double-dip recession - with all the further attendant pain for mortgage-holders and savers alike.

Brown caused this recession and Brown's utter incompetence and dishonesty is prolonging it. On inheriting Ken Clarke's golden legacy he was heard to comment, as well everyone knows:" You want me to write a fucking thank-you note?"

Like Pachauri, another Labour creation, his lies have finally caught up with him, but he's still in total denial about it (again, like Pachauri).

Tell you what, where Brown failed to send Clarke a thank-you note for leaving him with a Golden Legacy (achieved by hard work, honesty and wisdom), when Brown is finally ejected from the office he never earned, Clarke should send him a note of his own - and it should be polite. Something like: "thank God you're out of all our lives. Thanks for the double dip recession (you moron). Don't expect a peerage."

I think Ken Clarke would be pretty justified in sending a note almost identical to that one, but with a little more swearing.

All hands on deck!

Hello to friends of denverthen. 'Estimologist' here. My brother has roped me in to his one-man effort to get the Communitarian revolutionaries out of Downing Street, with a piece of flattery that probably isn't true. But if it turns out I'm an idiot, I hope I'm a useful one!

The purpose of this blog, as I understand it, is to try to help our struggling country to its feet again, in whatever small way we can, so I'll try to keep it along those lines.

I'm not sure if this recessionary situation we're in is in fact the Big One that people have been rumbling about since the 18th century, starting I suppose with Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, and in our own era 'The Limits to Growth' (Club of Rome, 1972) and latterly many scholarly (and many more totally useless) articles on the internet about subjects such as Peak Oil. (I've not read these wiki articles thoroughly, they are offered as a starting point for the more interested digger, but one I find interestingly general and enlightening is a paper called 'How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse' by a chap called J M Greer.)

If it is (the Big One), and it's not entirely Gordon Brown's fault, there is probably absolutely nothing that any number of well-intentioned rants by me is going to be able to do about it, but hey, it might not be, and even if it is, maybe it won't be so bad as all the Twenty-twelvers are saying. (Notable physicist and author Fred Hoyle thought that living in a dark age, post-catastrophe, would not be too bad, and that it might even be an age of liberty and innovation).

That said, the most effective approach I can think of to the Big One scenario is to try to make as many people as possible believe that this is it, on the basis that they will adapt their behaviour to avoid it, and maybe make it a bit less of a bother if it does happen.

One thing Mr Cameron is right about, either way, though: We can't go on like this.

~Estimologist.

Lies, Cuts and Party Politicals

We've just been treated to a ten minute, free Party Political Broadcast on behalf of the Labour party, shown simultaneously on the BBC and Sky News. In it, the man who by-now people everywhere must be thinking is the prime minister, Lord Mandelson, accused the Tories, among other things, of having economic policies that were in "disarray" were "unravelling" and were "confused". We all know that this is a fine example of the familiar Mandelson mendacity technique: strike out at your opponents by accusing them of suffering from your own weaknesses. Just to be clear, it is Labour's economic policies that have been "confused", have been "unravelling" and have been in "disarray" ever since Brown's mega-bubble was pricked and burst all over him (and us) in 2007. We've been in recession for 18 months, a post-war record, following ten years of debt-fueled growth and now the "signs of recovery" that Mandelson slimed and slithered about are either in areas that have been artificially boosted with deficit spending (will vanish, in other words, when the cash runs out) or simply aren't there. Manufacturing overall kept shrinking in the last quarter, for God's sake. And Mandelson has the barefaced cheek to lecture the Tories on economy. But that's the point, he is that brazen. But he is not unbeatable, even if the Tories are that pathetically scared and/or in awe of him. For one thing, when Mandeson is pinned down on detail, as Ken Clarke proved the other day, or on philosophy and underlying principles, he squirms and looks very dodgy indeed.

But there are two other points to make about this: if Sky and BBC are going to collude with Mandelson and his Labourist media managers in abusing the law of the land over party political broadcasts, then they should face sanctions. If they have merely been duped into covering - live - what they were presumably told would be a policy announcement but then turned out to be an utterly partisan assault on the Opposition (and Cameron personally more than once) and, as such, was a clear breach of rules, then someone needs to be disciplined or fired for being so damned stupid. And Labour need to be brought to book instantly for it. This must be nipped in the bud. The BBC, particularly, is not Labour's personal advertising service. And neither, for that matter, are any other channels. Given the huge surge in government advertising since the New Year, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this Labour government was really a giant, publicly-funded advertising agency, rather than merely a bunch of socialist incompetents desperate to cling on to power, and who will stop at nothing - and break any rule - to do just that.

Speaking of socialist incompetents, that brings me to the second point. David Lammy was on the BBC just after Mandelson had wound up his ten minute Labour party political special. His brazen lies about university cuts were worthy of the lizard lord himself. He talked about 5% cuts - and then decided that wasn't a big enough lie so he then contradicted himself and said that spending on universities was, in fact, still going up in this "growth cycle". There were other, equally awful, exchanges with Lammy accusing the universities (and the media, laughably) of "scaremongering" over the potential loss of 200,000 university places this year, as a direct result of government cuts, claiming, absurdly (175,000 failed to get in last year), that places were going up! He had the usual dig at Major's Tories ("leaky roofs") in spite of the fact that universities were booming by the time he was shown the door - but that's ancient history now.

But Lammy was lying - and I have proof. My own university, for whom I work and in which I study, has had to up its projected level of cuts for this year from 15% to 17.5% as a direct consequence of government policy. It has already fired a number of senior lecturers, suspended building projects, abolished an entire department but must go much further to meet the enforced target. The university must find other ways of meeting these desperately deep spending cuts, though, and one of them is by expanding its private operations and income. It does this by opening its doors even wider to foreign undergraduates. By bringing in more and more and more overseas students (one third of the student body is now foreign, it is thought), however, post A-level British pupils are left at a severe disadvantage. Hence the fears that 200,000 British young people will not be able to find a place this year.

So it's not scaremongering, as liars like Lammy would have you believe, you see. These fears are grounded in harsh reality, a harsh reality of a stealthy squeeze on spending by Labour, which, quite simply, they have lied about and are lying about. So you see, the real, Mandelson-style "choice" is between Labour cutting and then lying about it, and Conservative cutting - but telling the truth about it. Deceit versus honesty; mistrust versus confidence; and, in the end, failure versus success - Labour versus Tory. Simples!

"Now for change"? You bet. And, in point of fact, given the total invisibility of Brown this weekend, it looks like there's already been a change at the top of the Labour party. Mandelson will be the face of the campaign and their chief target will be David Cameron. In which case, Cameron should relax and start smiling again (I used to like him when he smiled). If Labour want to name-check him every other sentence, then who's complaining? It's a sign of real desperation, on Mandelson's part especially, that the best he can do is drone on about his soon-to-end car scheme thing and then wildly claim that David Cameron would wreck the recovery by taking it away (at least, that's what I thought I heard him say).

For sheer bloody nonsense, that one was hard to beat. But then came Lammy...

Clarke-Mandelson

It's not exactly Frost-Nixon (not least because Jon "Red" Snow is involved, letting Mandelbum basically do whatever he likes), but it is compelling, and it is a complete victory for the most effective, honest and no-nonsense post-war Chancellor of the Exchequer this country has ever had. That'd be Ken Clarke.
Part 1:

Part 2:


Smart people and people who remember will understand why Clarke won that confrontation hands down. Everyone else won't be certain. They won't know, for example, that Mandelson is one of the most dishonest men ever to have held - been fired from (because of that dishonesty) - held again - and been fired from again (again, because of his habitual dishonesty) - a cabinet post. But nonetheless, despite his desperate record of deceit, he now holds the second highest office in this land - to which he has never been elected. I'm astounded Ken Clarke gave him an audience.

Mandelson is the epitome of (New) Labour - but is, sadly, proof that Labour, even after its monumental lies, failures and inadequacies, are nonetheless still dangerous. Mandelson - and Labour - will stop at nothing to stay in charge of a country that no longer wants them, and an economy that desperately needs them gone.

Ken Clarke is a man that demands - commands - your support. And, regardless of his strange, undying European fetish, he still totally deserves it.

Guy News Classic

This from Guido Fawkes earlier on bears repeating. Over and over and over again.

Some Labour-loving, myopic hoon calling himself "Fraser1701" commented on Guido's YouTube channel underneath this upload "I prefer optimism". Well, Fraser, old boy, unless you really are a myopic Labourist hoon, then I imagine you must mean "as opposed to wildly dishonest, outrageously massaged and risibly inaccurate economic predictions that consistently bear no resemblance to reality whatsoever". In which case, I have done you a disservice because you're going to express your preference for optimism by voting out the worst government in this nation's history. And, as we know, the only way to do that is to vote Tory, like it or not.

I suspect, though, that "Fraser1701" did not mean this and that he's really just another pathetic Labour stooge paid to trawl through the sensible and effective anti-government blogs, like Guido's, leaving little rat dropping comments like that one to further some desperate plan to reverse his party's massive - and unstoppable - decline in credibility and popularity.

Earth to Fraser: with Brown in charge, mate, it'll never happen! So keep him right where he is.

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.

The UK's Future: Social Unrest - and Better Music

I thought this conversation was fairly interesting, especially the parts where American former trader, Max Keiser, talks about the free market capitalism/democracy relationship and the major disappointment that is Barack Obama ("he's not a politician, he's a celebrity"). He's pretty good on the impact on our purchasing power of the explosion in money supply, too.

Whatever happens, 2010 will be one of the toughest years the UK has ever faced. The only silver linings, at least to me, are that Labour and the evil Brown stain, who caused the catastrophe in the first place and then prolonged it with a fake recovery (which has yet to materialise), will be kicked out of power, preferably forever - and popular music is likely to improve in inverse proportion to the social dislocation caused by the ongoing deterioration in the British economy, (otherwise known as The Clash Coefficient).

Pump Price Dislocation

I've been watching the oil price with some interest over the past few weeks, not least because there has been some speculation that it is entering a very bearish period - for traders, that is, not for consumers - due to oversupply (Iraq is coming back into the equation, for instance, combined with the fact that many companies 'parked' huge quantities of crude offshore in tankers to keep the price artificially high during 2009 and that has added to the glut now, especially in the US where demand is still relatively weak). The NYMEX price fell for the eighth consecutive day today to hit $69.63 - and the trend is still downward, not least because of a stronger dollar.

Now, I fully appreciate that the pound's relatively weaker value on the foreign exchanges and other factors, like the delay between the commodity's price fluctuations and price movements at the pump is normally around three weeks, but this does not explain why I am still being forced to fork out anything between 108 and 114 pence per litre today, given the significant recent falls in the price of the black gold. Those are $110 a barrel levels. By my back-of-an-envelope reckoning, even taking into account pricing delays and currency devaluations, I should not be paying much more than 98p per litre, perhaps even less. So what the hell is going on?

There seems to be a serious dislocation here - and we are being hammered because of it. Why? No idea, but it's inevitably not going to be a good reason in ripoff Britain, although I'm sure Treasury ministers and their oil company chums will have some patronising, soundbite excuse. So I expect any falls, which are long overdue anyway but might not be coming at all, to be swallowed up by the return to the very expensively, temporarily suspended 17.5% VAT rate. If the falls don't come in the next couple of weeks, why then, in January (unless oil prices fall substantially further, which is unlikely), we in Britain will have to cope with further forecourt price rises. Unbelievable!

I'm sure it'll make the watermelons happy but, Brown and Darling, this is no way to start an economic recovery. Idiots.

I wish we didn't sometimes act in this country like so many sheeple - me included.

UK Debt: Junk Bonds?

Today, the international (and all-powerful) New York credit rating company, Moody's, warned that thanks to Gordon Brown's disastrous financial policies over the past decade, which has left our public finances in a catastrophic condition and still worsening, UK government debt could be tested in the very near future and downgraded from AAA to A1. This would make government bond sales - its out-of-control borrowing, in other words - much more expensive and, as a consequence, would put Britain firmly on the road to debt default. In terms of the long term future of the British economy, however, this prospect is a serious but minor detail when compared to the scale and the cynicism of Brown's scorched earth policy in his attempt to dupe the population into thinking there is some form of economic recovery in his attempt finally to get elected. He's willing to risk the downgrade - and will go on spending us into oblivion - just to secure a mandate.

If the UK does emerge from recession this quarter - and, after today's terrible manufacturing figures, there must remain some doubt about even that modest hope - it will be a fake recovery fuelled by astonishing and, as the Moody's announcement today says in no uncertain terms, a totally unsustainable level of borrowing. My view? Well, it's difficult to express how troubled I am by polls which suggest that Brown's utter, utter dishonesty, delinquent economics and vicious political tribalism might somehow be starting to turn people's heads. But I suspect that that is more to do with the re-emergence of Alastair "David Kelly" Campbell and his narrative of triangulation, expediency, smears, spin and lies, which were all-too evident at last week's PMQs with the use by moron Brown of that ridiculous 'Eton' jibe.

Even if Campbell thinks he can lie Labour all the way to a fourth term, (and that's all he's ever achieved, beyond poisoning and corroding British politics during his terrible career - namely, to lie Labour's way into power three times) one thing even a complete stranger to reality like him can't do is spin his way out of a debt default, a currency collapse and a total meltdown in the public finances. He might have been able to lie his way into a major war, and out of responsibility for Kelly's suspicious suicide, but even Campbell can't mask a cataclysm of the scale of Brown's economic bust. Can he?

Finally, as is my wont, I'll quote David Blackburn's post earlier this evening on the subject of Brownomics and the credit downgrade in full. Because it's rather good.

Moody’s AAA sovereign monitor was published today, and whilst the UK’s AAA status remains ‘resilient’ the situation is far from rosy. The report states:

‘The UK economy entered the crisis in a vulnerable position, owing to the (overly) large size of its banking sector and the high level of household indebtedness. Both continue to weigh on economic performance. Net bank lending to the UK business sector has continued to contract through Q3 2009, and repairs to household balance sheets (i.e. the rising savings ratio) may weigh on demand for some time to come.

The depth of the crisis has been mirrored by the ongoing deterioration of public finances (with gross debt/GDP having risen from 44% at the end of 2007 to an estimated 69% at the end of 2009). It also raises considerable challenges going forward, as the downward adjustment of potential output during the crisis will result in a recurrent shortfall in tax revenues, which, if not compensated by a parallel adjustment in expenditure, would leave the government with a permanent deficit.’

First into recession because of Brown’s profligacy, Britain’s recovery is stunted by continued spending and the government’s inability to address the credit freeze. Moody’s assert that Britain’s AAA status will be endangered unless fiscal retrenchment is implemented soon, something that global bond markets are relying upon too. Moody’s assert:

‘While assumed capacity for fiscal adjustment currently supports the maintenance of the Aaa rating of the UK government, this assumption will have to be validated by actions in the not-too-distant future to continue to provide support for the rating.’

Britain cannot sustain this level of debt. We near an Ireland-style downgrading followed by an era of ruinously expensive borrowing. Labour’s political and economic strategy dictates that fiscal adjustments will not be undertaken until 2011. Tomorrow’s Pre Budget Report will contain time saving measures, in the form of further cheap, low yield gilts and perhaps more Quantitative Easing, to allow the government to execute its strategy, borrow cheaply and prepare for future retrenchment. Will the markets wait that long?

The need for a new Conservative government has never been more desperate - at least, not since 1979 and the last Labour economic implosion. Let us pray that Cameron knows how to make that case. But because he's now up against forces so cynical and so calculating, that job just became a lot tougher. Perhaps a credit downgrade, in the long run anyway, could end up being just the reality-checking medicine an electorate, still hoping against hope that Brown's crisis (if not Brown) will just magically go away, now requires.

Perhaps, in the long run, it's be the best thing that could happen to the UK, if nothing else than to snuff out Brown as a political possibility and save us from the total horror story five more years of his economic nihilism would guarantee. The stakes are that high.

Ben Bernanke Bashes Brown

One of these two knows what he's doing

Having flailed around in my last blogpost banging on about some sort of 'new phenomenon' where there wasn't one, really, (I'll leave it for others to decide, but I reckon it was not my best effort to be brutally honest), it comes as something of a relief to see the Spectator doing what it does best and putting the boot in to old "saved the world" Brown himself. And all they had to do was flag up Bernanke's testimony to a Senate hearing about Brown's ultra-useless tri-partite banking regulation system. Here's what the report says:

Gordon Brown’s much heralded tripartite regulatory system failed the first time it was faced with a financial crisis, proof that taking away regulatory powers from the Bank of England was a massive mistake. Now, Ben Bernanke — who is trying to secure a second term as Fed Chairman and keep the Fed’s regulatory powers intact — is citing the Brown model as what not to do, telling the Senate banking committee:

"[O]ver the past few years the government of Britain removed from the Bank of England most of its supervisory authorities. When the crisis hit - for example when the Northern Rock bank came under stress - the Bank of England was completely in the dark and unable to deal effectively with what turned out to be a destructive run and a major problem for the British economy.”

As Paul Waugh points out, George Osborne and his team are rather pleased with this effective endorsement of their position by the Fed Chairman. Bernanke’s quote does rather show that Brown isn’t leading the world in quite the way that he likes to claim.

Very gently put by James Forsyth. In reality, what Bernanke is saying here is that Brown himself - personally - through his moronic regulatory mishmash, directly caused - not contributed to, mind, caused - the 'destructive run and the major problem for the British economy' we are all having to suffer through now. Namely, the worst peacetime recession in modern British history. That's how cognitively dissonant the Brown-Labour narrative is on the banking crisis and recession for which, I and many others maintain, Brown is directly responsible.

I'd say Osborne is absolutely, champagne cork-popping cockahoop tonight, and about a dozen Nokias have been obliterated on the bunker walls. It seems Bernanke and Obama alike are distancing themselves from the tainted loser that is Brown, just like that little French gnome Sarkosy did yesterday.

For them, at least, the penny really has dropped. They've abandoned Brown long before we'll get the chance to do precisely the same thing, in 2010.

Brown's Memory

At work, but heard PMQs on the internet an hour ago. I thought Cameron was good - pretty forensic and challenging - and hitting all the right notes about Brown, the Prime Minister with such a short memory that he can't remember making a guarantee two weeks ago to start withdrawing British troops 'sometime in 2010'. He can't remember that he didn't abolish Boom n' bust, or his claim that Britain was best placed to weather the storm of (his) bust and subsequent recession. He can't even remember his own party's legislation on inheritance tax. Extraordinary. However, I thought, unlike a number of other bloggers, that while Brown was fairly good, he in no way 'won' the exchange - as if that's what it's all about.

The main reason? Well, the even more extraordinary lapse of memory from this putative chairman of the G20 that meant he didn't even know who's in the group he's supposed to be chairing. He thinks Spain is a member. He's forgotten (maybe) that it isn't and the major bloggers are consequently having a bit of a field day, but only Guido saw it coming.