Archive for July, 2009
Posted by michael on July 19, 2009
The state of the UK economy is highlighted in the latest desperate move of this Labour government to save money!
I cannot see any justification for the latest desperate action by Gordon Brown to get some money by cutting compensation payments for the vicitims of violent crime. Linking these cuts to those who have committed driving offences in the previous five years just makes the whole situation worse!
What planet are these people on? Of course Brown has approved this method of clawing money back from those who really do deserve it. They wouldn’t have done it without his permission! Or is he not of much importance in this government any more? Perhaps others are running the ship and Brown is just a figurehead?
The Conservatives have called this attack on people who have suffered violent crime ’revolting’. They are right.
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, credit crunch, labour, Lib Dems, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: compensation, conservative, credit crunch, david cameron, government, recession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on July 18, 2009
The White Paper outlining New Labour plans for provision of UK energy and plans for cutting emissions by 2020 have been released.
In essence there is nothing in these plans regarding electricity provision that would cause major political differences.
The announcement for the four new generation nuclear power stations has already been made. A new fossil fuel power station has already been given the go-ahead with the expectation that a working system to capture all hazardous emissions will be developed. So there will be more fossil fuel power stations! Of course there will be problems with storing this hazardous waste, but my personal view is that this is a minor issue compared to failing to provide power to the UK population!
What would seem to be the most crass decision imaginable is to fail to support the only UK company building wind turbines whilst announcing 4000 new wind turbines will be built (offshore and onshore). The result is that these orders will go to European companies and the jobs will be for people who do not live in the UK!
New Labour want to find 400,000 “green jobs” in the UK to help get out of the recession. What better way to support this UK company (which is apparantly going to close) and developing it into a national organisation to turn the UK green by 2020?
Posted in Blogroll, climate change, Conservatives, Euopean Union, labour, Lib Dems, recession, renewable energy, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: climate change, electricity, energy, fossil fuel, green, nuclear, power, renewable, renewable energy, UK energy 2020 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on July 16, 2009
I heard Gordon Brown during PMQs going on about there being enough helicopters for the troops in Afghanistan.
Mr Brown said
it was “absolutely clear” the heavy loss of life in recent weeks was not due to a lack of helicopters.
How can this be ‘absolutely clear’ ?? It isn’t possible to know. They didn’t have helicopters available so we don’t know.
But one could imagine that helicopters with thermal imaging could have detected the enemy troops before our soldiers got caught in an ambush.
One could image that gunfire from a helicopter could have kept the enemies heads down or even killed the enemy combatants without hand to hand fighting being involved.
Readers of this blog will know that I have campaigned against the use of snatch landrovers when the enemies main weapons are bombs. I have to question how many times a helicopter would have been used instead of a road journey if helicopters had been available!
In PMQs Brown was mixing current tense and future tense, such as
‘yes we have enough helicopters for our troops, new ones are being delivered after modifications are made’
In the way I use the English language this means ‘no we don’t have enough but we have ordered some and they will be available in the future’.
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, credit crunch, labour, Lib Dems, recession, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: afghanistan, brown, conservative, david cameron, debt, gordon brown, iraq, war | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on July 16, 2009
The Royal College of GPs has criticized the way that the swine flu epedmic has been handled. They are concerned that the GP surgeries have been flooded with calls from people who are worried about swineflu.
The calls from the public have increased by nearly 50% in the last week to 40,000 a week.
We were one of those that phoned with five out of six in the family down with swineflu like symptons. The NHS helps lines were just recorded messages – a complete waste of time for us – they were just statements of the obvious!
If people need to phone doctors surgeries with questions about swineflu, as many have done, then the calls are being handled by the receptionists. There is no reason why the NHS could not handle these calls instead of overloading GP surgeries.
Obviously the NHS staff can advise that people should contact their doctor where that is the right advice! This is all that the GP receptionists do.
The UK government says that it has deals in place with Baxter and GlaxoSmithKline for up to 90m doses of a swine flu vaccine by December. And Brown has announced a vaccination program starting in September (or did he say, from December – which could then mean anytime in the future).
Yet reading the press it would appear that it will take several months to test the vaccine before it can be used on people. And there does seem to be a number of different countries all apparantly with contracts to get the vaccine. Yet Brown is claiming that half the UK can be vaccinated in September (the start of the flu vaccine season) .
I would guess that those people who normally get a flu jab before the onset of winter will end up being vaccinated without the H1N1 vaccine, and have to go back later for the H1N1 strain. How much later I don’t know!
The government is doing what it should be doing in this crisis. How well it does it we shall see. But we have now various people saying how wonderful it is that the government is actually doing it’s job!
The public are not really interested in the government doing it’s job. No plaudits there, it’s what they are paid for! The public will judge the government on how well it does the job.
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, labour, Lib Dems, national health service, nhs, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: brown, conservative, david cameron, gordon brown, recession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on July 15, 2009
Lord Mandelson, who seems to be in charge of everything despite not being an elected MP, has said that Britain is facing a decade of public spending “constraints” in order to “rebalance” the country’s finances.
A ‘constraint‘ in public spending is not technically a ‘cut‘ in public spending but it definately means that less money will be spent on public spending!!!
So we now know that less money will be available for public services, which is anyone’s book is a CUT.
If the politicans want to ringfence, say, the NHS and defence, then there will be even LESS money available for the remaining public services. Yet Brown continually says that the NHS will not be affected.
Lord Mandelson said there would be “less spending in some programmes”, but “sustained investment” in areas like healthcare and defence would continue.
He also said the recession was “coming to an end,” but the effects of its “severity” were “not yet behind us”.
Why do you think that New Labour has delayed its planned review of future public spending from April 2010 until after the next general election! (I have learned to be cynical about what this government says!)
The Tories say ministers are hiding the true scale of cuts that are needed.
David Cameron has accused the government of refusing to commit to a spending review before the next general election “because they do not want to own up to the cuts they are planning”.
Look at the language the government ministers are using!
“spending choices” would have to be made’ – which means that some services will get reduced money no money!
a decade of public spending “constraints” in order to “rebalance” the country’s finances
Of course we will rebalance public finances in the medium term
the recession was “coming to an end,” but the effects of its “severity” were “not yet behind us”
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, credit crunch, debt, economy, energy, energy bills, financial, labour, Lib Dems, national health service, nhs, recession, tax, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: banker, bankers, banking, brown, conservative, credit, credit crunch, david cameron, gordon brown, government, recession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on July 13, 2009
Brown is claiming that the Afghan battle going on at the moment is a key battle, but I don’t think that it is! Trouble is that Brown is in a position where he cannot say anything else!
The simple fact is that our troops are fighting an enemy who are an integral part of the the society there. The taliban can put their weapons down and merge into the background.
I heard one soldier saying that the taliban can walk through the frontline at will, without weapons they are just civilians, and get behind them. They don’t know who the enemy is unless they are pointing a gun at them!
We have already captured this area once before and cleared out all the taliban fighters. But it is too big an area to keep free of combatants. And now we are fighting for the area again.
But we cannot keep this level of troops in the area for ever!!! Once the fighting is over the taliban will just walk back into the area and take it over again, and the cycle will repeat again, and again!
The Taliban don’t actually have to fight our troops, a couple of bomb attacks a week causing deaths and injuries is all they have to do!
We might get some short term victories but the war will not be won without coordinated global action. The UK is a small country with an almost bankrupted economy. We cannot keep spending the money that is needed to support our troops properly. Something has to change!!
One question Brown needs to ask himself is ’where are the taliban getting their weapons and their bombs from?’. Especially the sophisticated armour piercing explosives. Someone is selling these weapons to the taliban.
Why are we allowing the enemy soldiers to be supplied with the weapons they need to fight our soldiers?
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, labour, Lib Dems, recession, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: afghanistan, conservative, david cameron, debt, gordon brown, government, iraq war, recession, soldier, soldiers, UK Economy, war | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on July 12, 2009
Remember this quote from our prime minister Gordon Brown?
The UK is one of the best prepared countries to deal with swine flu and “all action necessary” will be taken to stop its spread (april 2009).
So did Brown take ‘all action necessary’ to stop the spread of swineflu? Clearly not since we have the virus running freely throughout the UK!
Was it possible to stop the spread of swineflu? I don’t know, I am not an expert! But Brown made these claims to make himself look good, to look like a PM in control of events, a PM who can make a difference, unlike the lightweights (as he calls them) in opposition.
In reality we are now the third worst country in the world with swine flu and the government itself has now said that there will soon be a rate of 100,000 cases of people a week catching swineflu. Quite different from ‘all action necessary will be taken’. So who is the lightweight now?
There will be a vaccine available soon, it is due to be released by the end of the summer, just in time for the round of flu injections that the elderly and susceptible people (of which I am one – susceptible that is!) receive every year. Will it help? Probably.
But Brown has put himself in a position where he is dependant on other people to rescue the situation, in this case those people are in Germany I believe (which is where the vaccination against the virus is being prepared).
Brown does seem to be politically very naive. He makes statement that often sound OK but they are often soundbites only, they are clearly not thought through. And then he gets caught up with trying to salvage the situation which tends to make him and the government look incompetent.
Lets hope that these people ouside the UK who are preparing the vaccine can get it to us in sufficient quantities before the flu season arrives.
(vaccine won’t affect me, whole family had swineflu last week, not over it yet!)
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, health, labour, Lib Dems, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: brown, conservative, david cameron, families, gordon brown, health, nhs, swineflu, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on July 11, 2009
The government is about to announce plans to scrap Daily Living Allowance (DLA) and attendance allowance (AA) according to a report in the Guardian.
The newspaper claims that a green paper was due out in June which proposes to convert DLA and AA into means tested ‘social care grants’ which would be spent by social services. However, the incoming DWP minister Yvette Cooper wanted some breathing space before launching the controversial new proposal.
Under the plans, DLA and AA would be scrapped, with the money saved being handed over to local authorities to administer as discretionary grants to provide care for the sick and disabled.
The grants would be means-tested and the local authority would decide what they could be spent on. This would be likely to be for services such as a personal assistant to help with getting out of bed, washing and dressing.
The government has claimed that any changes to DLA and AA will not affect current claimants.
But how could it be otherwise? At the moment many people on DLA and AA are cared for by their relatives. Some of the carers are able to claim Carers Allowance for more that 30 hours caring during a week. But most carers are relatives who do not get paid for caring.
Under the new system it would seem that paid council employees (or employees of sub-contracted companies) will now care for all people who need care.
This alone would surely cost more than the country can afford (which in reality is not much because the UK is as good as bankrupt under Labour!).
With thinking like this, it is a short step to stop anyone getting all kinds of benefits. After all who needs to give claimants money? The state could deliver the food that they want those on benefits to eat. The state could buy the clothes that those on benefits are to wear!
Or is the whole issue that the UK cannot afford to support disabled and sick people any more?
Posted in benefits, Blogroll, Conservatives, debt, economy, energy, energy bills, health, labour, Lib Dems, nhs, Uncategorized | Tagged: benefit, benefits, brown, conservative, david cameron, disability, disabled, economy, gordon brown, government, labour, sick, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on July 10, 2009
So far the government has refused to hold a public inquiry into the use of snatch Land Rovers in Iraq and Afghanistan. In my view there are no good reasons for refusing an inquiry other than they are concerned about the outcome!
These lightly armoured vehicles have been used despite that fact that they offer little protection to bomb blasts, even though these roadside bombs are the enemies main weapon.
The High Court heard that 37 soldiers had died in Iraq and Afghanistan while using the vehicles since 2005 and have ordered a judicial review into why the government have refused to hold a public enquiry into the issue.
Hopefully these are the first steps in banning the use of these vehicles in this type of warfare.
Posted in Conservatives, credit crunch, Lib Dems, Uncategorized | Tagged: afghanistan, bombs, brown, conservative, david cameron, gordon brown, iraq, snatch landrovers | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on July 8, 2009
Alistair Darling announced Labour’s plans for a new council to oversee the ativities of the Treasury, the FSA and the Bank of England. But he has kept the current system of regulation.
In the House of Commons, Darling said that financial institutions needed to be better managed. But he and Brown were the the people responsible for managing the financial services to prevent anything like the Credit Crunch from happening!!!!
Why was this announced when Brown was out of the country at the G8 meeting? He was actually the man in charge throughout the, first as chancellor and then as PM. Surely he should have been the person to announce the government’s plans to control the financial institutions? Or doesn’t he like owning up to getting things wrong!
Darling added, “We need a change of culture in the banks and their boardrooms, with pay practices that are focused on long-term stability, and not on short-term profit”. Does he mean that in the last 10 years there has been no long-term stability and that the focus was on short-term profit?
Shadow chancellor George Osborne said the Conservatives would abolish the current system and give supervision powers to the Bank of England.
I liked the response of the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable. He said ‘This is not so much a White Paper as a blank paper’.
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, credit crunch, debt, economy, financial, labour, Lib Dems, recession, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: abuse, bank, banker, bankers, borrowing, brown, conservative, credit crunch, david cameron, economy, gordon brown, government, labour, recession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
