Posted by michael on September 5, 2009
International finance ministers are meeting in London today to find way to curb excessive bank bonuses.
Gordon Brown has been the chancellor and then the Prime Minister for more than 12 years.
He turned the ‘Golden Inheritance’ of the Conservatives into a recession and left us with huge debts for the many years to come.
Why does he think that his opinion on financial matters is of any value? Except perhaps as a warning of what not to do!
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, credit crunch, debt, economy, Euopean Union, financial, UK Economy | Tagged: credit crunch, david cameron, debt, G20, government, recession, UK Economy | 2 Comments »
Posted by michael on September 4, 2009
Some of the train companies have announced record increases in fares. The government took all the trouble to regulate peak fares to keep the cost of travelling by train down.
Peak fares which are linked to the inflation rate, and this has been coming down so peak fares have been falling as well.
What does not surprise me is that the government failed to link the off-peak fares to the inflation rate. Why didn’t they put this link in place? Did they even consider needing to regulate off-peak fares?
Or were they happy for off-peak fares to climb by as much as 143% !!!!
Incompetence? or planned? Either way most people are going to blame Brown and New Labour!
So, more cars on the roads now. More fuel burnt, more carbon and other poisonous fumes for us all to breathe in!!!
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, credit crunch, economy, Euopean Union, financial, labour, Lib Dems, recession, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: abuse, conservative, cost of living, credit crunch, david cameron, debt, families, government, greedy, green tax, recession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on July 30, 2009
So the Iraq enquiry may last into 2011. Does that surprise me? NO!
Gordon Brown was the chancellor whilst the Labour government under Blair was pushing the country to go to war in Iraq. From memory, Brown stayed very quiet on the subject of going to war. He kept out of the public view and I don’t remember him giving any statements supporting going to war.
Blair gave a number of justifications for going to war. They were all very weak, as far as I was concerned, and if they were now given as an excuse to going to war then I believe the people in the UK would not accept such weak justifications for war!
I believe, it’s my view folks!, that Blair saw himself as some sort of world saviour and ‘freeing’ Iraq from Saddam was part of some vision of greatness that he had. Remember that Blair had taken our soldiers to war in other countries before Iraq!
I would guess that the last thing Brown wants now in the build up to the next election is for the people of the UK to see that the justification for the Iraq war was almost non-existant. I don’t actually believe that Saddam ever had any weapons that could threaten the UK. The ’40 minutes to being bombed’ was never anything that could have been done by Iraq.
The fact that a high school paper that had been on the internet for quite a while, was then claimed as the ‘intelligence’ that exposed what Saddam was up to, was just a con trick on the British people!
Remember when Blair had tanks at Heathrow and around London? Why were they there? In my view it was simply to scare the British public into accepting his claims that we had to go to war!
The result of Blair’s actions? The UK is now threatened by Islamic terrorists. We have to have extra security in place at all times in our country. The actions of New Labour under Blair were, in my view, the reason why this has happened.
It’s my view that Gordon Brown cannot afford a really open and full inquiry. He could not afford to have the enquiry results before the next election!
Posted in afghanistan, Blogroll, Conservatives, Euopean Union, iraq, labour, Lib Dems, military, soldiers, UK Economy, war | Tagged: afghanistan, conservative, david cameron, gordon brown, government, iraq, iraq war, labour, UK Economy, war | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on July 21, 2009
So the UK gets a recession which was allowed to happen by this lamentable government with it’s complete failure to regulate the financial industry in a proper manner!
Of course, our government knows how to get us out of recession! Borrow, borrow and borrow and use the money, mainly, to take public ownership of the UK banks and building societies who got themselves and the UK into trouble!
The conservatives said that this was the wrong thing to do! But they are not in power at this time so there was not a lot they could do. (But Brown still rubbished the Conservative’s lack of plans to get the UK out of recession.)
Now Brown and New Labour have to justify to the people of the UK the debt levels that they have built up. These debt levels are not insubstantial! The total aamount of UK debt is £799 billion (56.6% of UK GDP).
This debt amounts to an average of £13,000 per person in the UK. What is staggering about this is that each person in the UK has to pay £13,000 of tax in order to clear that debt.
And it must not be forgotten that interest accrues on this debt. The longer it takes to pay off, the higher the amount due to be paid!
And this the background which Brown claims that there will be no tax cuts in public services!
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, credit crunch, debt, Euopean Union, financial, labour, Lib Dems, recession, tax, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: conservative, credit crunch, david cameron, debt, families, gordon brown, 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 June 10, 2009
First, just to be definitive on this, I do not like the BNP and I do not like what they stand for.
But I cannot abide the extremists who are attempting to break up all BNP meetings and news conferences etc.
I don’t care how bad political parties are! We are in a democracy and they have a right to be heard! The law exists to stop all political parties from extremist behaviour!
Those extremists who are anti-democracy and who want to stop the BNP from holiding political meetings and even holding press conferences are worse than the BNP (or at least as bad as them!).
Free speech is a hard-won freedom. Many people have died fighting in wars for our right to have free speech! No one should be allowed to take that away from our democracy or we will lose our freedoms and our democratic society!
It is not good enough gor these extremists to justify suppressing free speech and attacking a political party because they don’t like their policies!
What next, perhaps the Members of Unite Against Fascism might decide that the Conservatives or the anti-European parties are not good for the UK.
Perhaps I or my family could get pelted with eggs and attacked in the streets because I dare to question what these extremists do!
Is there really a difference between members of Unite Against Fascism and the BNP? They come from the opposites side of political ideals but they are both extremists and they both bad for a democratic society!
And both views should be allowed to be heard!
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, credit crunch, economy, Euopean Union, labour, Lib Dems, recession, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: abuse, bnp, conservative, david cameron, extreme, extremist, extremists, gordon brown, recession, UK Economy, unite against fascism | Leave a Comment »
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 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 »
