Archive for June, 2009
Posted by michael on June 8, 2009
I suspect that the result of the New Labour MPs meeting that is going on now is that the Labour MPs are going to support Brown!
They don’t really have a choice. Labour cannot have another unelected Leader. They would be crucified by the people of the UK if they tried that again!
So whatever they think of Brown, they are stuck with him!
They could leave Brown as PM and give some MPs the job of managing him, effectively a puppet leader with the real power behind the throne!
New Labour is a sham. The object was to pretend to the UK that New Labour was no longer a socialist party. The pretence was that New Labour embodied all the elements of the Conservative party policies whilst still retaining socialist values.
This sham, which could only work if it had a dynamic, charasmatic leader, was successful whilst Blair was personally holding the house of cards together. Managing the press and the news media was an important part of the pretence.
When Blair left (had he seen the inevitable collapse of ‘New’ Labour?) he passed control over to Brown without an election! This was the first mistake. The second mistake was that Brown is totally the wrong sort of person to replace Blair.
In my view Brown could never have replaced Blair. Now the country can see for themselves that New Labour is simply another manifestation of the Emperor’s New Clothes.
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, credit crunch, debt, economy, Euopean Union, Europe, labour, Lib Dems, mp expenses, recession, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: abuse, brown, conservative, credit crunch, david cameron, debt, economy, expenses, gordon brown, government, greedy, household, labour, parliament, repossession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 7, 2009
The New Labour vote has collapsed. Perhaps it is because Gordon Brown’s handling of the UK economy is so poor. The UK economy is in a terrible state, the consequences are going to have to be massive tax rises to pay for the incompetence of those running the country.
The recent elections have hit Labour hard. They blame the expenses row. But the Conservatives have done very well in both the local elections and the European election. So have the Libdems. So it cannot just be the expenses mess.
Perhaps people understand that New Labor and Gordon Brown are responsible for the expenses problems!
All the Labour people on TV and the radio seem to think that there is no competent person in the party who could do a better job than Brown who has actually got everything wrong. Perhaps they are right!
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, council tax, credit crunch, debt, economy, energy, Euopean Union, Europe, financial, labour, Lib Dems, mp expenses, recession, UK Economy, Uncategorized, utility | Tagged: bankers, bankrupt, bnp, brown, conservative, credit crunch, david cameron, debt, economy, eu, Europe, gordon brown, government, labour, recession, repossession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 5, 2009
What an interesting day.
the UK seems to be in a strange position.
We have a government but nobody seems to want them. Does Labour, or do I mean, does Gordon Brown, have any credibility at all now?
The resignation of Norwich North MP Ian Gibson will now bring a by election which will be another test of Gordon Brown.
The UK is in an awful financial state. The one single person who is most responsible for this mess is Gordon Brown. His reputation is shot to pieces. He is totally discredited now. He was not elected as the prime minister and this fact alone rankles deeply with many people. But if he had done a good, or even reasonable job, then most people would accept him.
But he has not done a good job!
As chancellor he inherited a Golden Inheritance, an economy in really good shape. He took the credit for this, ascribing it to his good stewardship.
Clearly however, his good stewardship was not the reason that the economy was so good for many years. It is obvious now that the economy remained so healthy for the first years of Brown’s stewardship because did not actually change the policies of the previous Conservative government!
Then Brown and Blair went on a spending spree. They abandoned the policies that had kept the economy stable and blew the lot. Many people tell me that this resulted in good hospitals, schools etc and to an extent this is right, some of the money was indeed spent this way.
But we do need a proper analysis of where the money went. Because most of the new hospitals andnew schools etc seem to have been built on borrowed money. The UK built up debt to pay for these hospitals and schools. This debt is known as the Private Finance Initiative or PFI for short and is a massive amount of money.
Brown has redefined the UK debit levels to exclude the PFI as part of the UK debt.
My personal view is that this is just deceiving the people about the state of the UK economy. There are some other debts, huge amounts of money, that are also excluded from the UK debt levels. (I do get wound up when I hear Brown on the tv saying that the UK has the low debt levels because he is choosing to ignore these other debts.)
So when the economy went into a nosedive following the global credit crunch problem (caused by the banks and financial institutions not being properly regulated!), the consequences of the bad stewardship of Brown come to the forefront.
The UK is in an awful financial mess. The policy of going into debt to spend huge amounts of money to get out of a recession caused by debt levels has to be questionable.
Simply because we then have another massive problem of having to pay the debt back!
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, credit crunch, financial, labour, Lib Dems, mp expenses, recession, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: brown, conservative, cost of living, credit crunch, david cameron, debt, economy, government, labour, recession | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 5, 2009
It is fascinating how quickly a government can fall apart.
Does it happen because of panic? Or betrayal by colleagues?
Suddenly many of the colleagues and friends(!) of Gordon Brown are coming into the public eye and telling us how bad he is and how he needs to go for the good of the country!
The background to all of this is Labour’s standing with the electorate. I don’t know why there are no poll forecasts this time, but the initial official poll results seem to show some sort of Labour meltdown.
Labour would of course have taken their own polls. These must have shown that the Labour vote was collapsing which is why people are panicking. The government ministers who have resigned over the last few days have done so presumably because these poll results have been so poor!
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, credit crunch, economy, Europe, labour, Lib Dems, recession, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: abuse, borrowing, brown, conservative, credit crunch, david cameron, economy, gordon brown, government, recession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 4, 2009
Well, well, well! The honourable members of the New Labour party are behaving very much like the Old Labour party. Perhaps that little word ‘New’ was only added to to make Labour acceptable to more voters – the same people, the same politics but a different image!
Looks like a plan, a well worked out plan, by the colleagues of the Prime Minister to turf him out.
So will that mean that another, un-elected leader of Labour is going to appear and run the country without a mandate!
I don’t think that the UK electorate would stand for that. They will want an election not a new leader.
Who says politics is boring? How can people not be interested in on-going collapse of New Labour?
Posted in benefits, Blogroll, Conservatives, council tax, credit crunch, Euopean Union, Europe, financial, labour, Lib Dems, recession, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: abuse, banker, bankers, brown, conservative, credit crunch, david cameron, debt, economy, government, recession, repossession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 4, 2009
Now might be the last time that I can remind Gordon Brown about the action he still needs to take over the ‘excessive’ pension of Sir Fred Goodwin, the retiring RBS chairman.
Gordon Brown was very upset about this ‘payment for failure’.
Harriet Harman, the deputy Labour leader, described the pension settlement – agreed by the RBS board – as “money for nothing”. She said ‘the former Royal Bank of Scotland chief Sir Fred Goodwin should not “count on” keeping his full £650,000 a year pension.’
She could not have been more clear. She said
‘The sum was unacceptable in “the court of public opinion,” and the government “would step in”.
Ms Harman declined to say how the government would achieve this but made it clear it would not tolerate the award as it stands.
“The prime minister has said that it is not acceptable and therefore it will not be accepted,” she added.
Even in political double-speak this intervention by the Labour government was unprecedented. They echoed the feelings of many people in the UK.
There may not be very much time left for Gordon Brown to actually fulfil his promise, (and I would certainly call it a promise) to the people of the UK. However my personal view is that Labour were just trying to look as though they empathised with the UK voters and did not intend to do anything.
To be kind to Brown, perhaps he did not understand that he was powerless to act when he promised that Sir Fred would not keep the pension!
It could also be argued that Brown misunderstood the feelings of the majority of people in the UK over this matter. I think that most people were genuinely upset by the size of the payoff for what was seen as failure.
These feelings boiled over in the issue over MPs expenses. Brown had promised that he would deal with this pension payment that upset so many people. He failed to do so and the public got their own back when the MPs were seen to be getting too much money for what was also seen as failure – the recession!
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, credit crunch, economy, Euopean Union, financial, labour, Lib Dems, mp expenses, recession, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: abuse, bankers, brown, conservative, credit crunch, david cameron, debt, economy, gordon brown, government, greedy, recession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 3, 2009
it is being reported on Sky News that an email circulating amongst Labour MPs is asking Brown to resign now so that a new leader can take Labour into the next election
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, credit crunch, labour, Lib Dems, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: brown, conservative, credit crunch, david cameron, debt, economy, gordon brown, government, labour, parliament, recession | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 3, 2009
It has come out that half of England’s comprehensives did not offer physics, chemistry and biology GCSEs last year.
Separate or “triple” science GCSEs in physics, chemistry and biological sciences are the norm in grammar schools and independent schools.
But it would appear that, on average, only 46% of comprehensives entered at least one pupil for separate sciences. In a couple of local authority areas no pupils did separate science!
The ‘good news’ from the schools minister is that ‘the number of pupils taking triple science has increased significantly since 2007 and we are investing £6m over the next three years to double this number.’
So it must have been even worse before 2007! Another example of Labour not doing the job properly in the first place and having to fix the system afterwards, perhaps!
There must be a lot of kids who could have achieved good results in science up to 2007 but were not able to because of the system.
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, credit crunch, economy, labour, Lib Dems, recession, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: education, gcse, school, schools, science | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 3, 2009
The Prime Minister told MPs during PMQs that he has no intention of quitting. He said that he intended to get on with the job of fixing the expenses scandal, and to get the country out of recession.
However Mr ‘Fixit’ does not seem to accept any responsibility of being in charge of the country whilst these problems actually occurred!
It could be said that the Labour government actually brought in changes to the expenses rules that have subsequently caused such problems! Even if he can claim that it was not his fault, he is in charge and his government did not understand the potential problems with the procedures in place.
The same for the recession. Brown goes on and on about how he can get the UK out of recession. But Brown should not have allowed it to go into recess in the first place! Even if the UK has been caught up in a global recession, we appear to extremely badly placed to cope with it. The UK can only spend money by borrowing it and of course we will have new and increased taxes over the next 20 years paying it all back!
Why cannot we have a Prime Minister who understands what is going on in the UK and the global financial systems, and is able to correct potential problems in advance of having a national crisis which has resulted in so harm to so many people.
I don’t want a Prime Minister who only seems able to react to problems once they have occurred.
And, in most cases, I don’t believe that the people get things wrong in the first place are the people who should then sort it out. If they couldn’t get it right to start with then why should they be trusted to get it right once it had gone wrong!
They certainly shouldn’t get any credit for not getting it right in the first place!
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, credit crunch, Euopean Union, financial, labour, Lib Dems, recession, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: abuse, bankers, borrowing, brown, conservative, cost of living, credit crunch, debt, economy, gordon brown, government, labour, recession, tax increases, UK Economy | 1 Comment »
Posted by michael on June 3, 2009
One wonders whether Brown’s cheesy grins are in direct proportion to the desperation he feels!
I have never seen him try to smile so much!!
There is this continual clash between Brown and Cameron with the PM insisting that Cameron announces Conservative policies for the UK; as though the leader of the opposition is in a position to implement their policies!
Brown appears to believe that he can pursuade people that Cameron’s silence mean that he has no policies. But most people would acknowledge that the Conservative policies, of which I am sure they would have spent a lot of time on, are not relevant simply because the Conservatives are not in power yet.
Invoking a discussion about the Conservatives policies during PMQs would take the pressure off Brown and the disasterous state of the UK economy.
So Cameron is right to stay quiet and keep the focus on Brown and the collapse of the UK economy after 12 years of New Labour.
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, council tax, credit crunch, debt, economy, Euopean Union, Europe, financial, labour, Lib Dems, recession, UK Economy, Uncategorized, utility | Tagged: abuse, banker, banks, borrowing, brown, conservative, cost of living, credit crunch, david cameron, debt, economy, gordon brown, government, greedy, labour, parliament, recession, repossession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
