The population of the UK are going to change their views of Brown, Blair and New Labour once the consequences of this failed government start to effect them.

The estimated cost to BP of £2bn is in my view quite low. I would expect a clear up cost of at least double that, and then there are going to be penalties on BP.  BP could also lose the future earnings of the contract.

It is going to take a long time to re-establish the damaged/destroyed ecosystems so there could be loss of earnings for all the local businesses for years to come.

Perhaps a general lesson for the future (not a comment on this BP incident!!) is for all projects, on land or in water, to fully understand all the local ecosystems and to take steps to protect them from accidental damage/destruction.

It will be interesting to compare the way that the Americans deal with this BP incident with the way that the Union Carbide gas leak was dealt with in Mumbai in India in 1984.

The release of this gas killed 5,000 people that night and 15,000 more in the following few weeks!

This site has still not been cleared up after 23 years, and there are many children still being born with birth defects.

It would be good if this environmental disaster also resulted in some attention being paid to the plight of thousands in Mumbai.

I can only think of one reason for them to do this and that is because the UK is in such a bad financial mess, obviously much worse than we can imagine!!

Otherwise there would be no need to conceal the details of the UK economy from us.

This is the first election I can remember when people do not seem to be bothered about the economic mess that the government of the day has left the UK in! They seem far more concerned about how well the candidates come over on TV!

I find this amazing. The next government could be in power for five years. What they do will effect people’s lives. Yet this election could be about nothing more than looking good on tv.

How dumbed down has the UK become in the last fourteen years?

It looks like they want to break up the tax-funded Health Service and replace it with a social insurance system!!

I believe that means that those who can afford to pay get a better treatment.

So will there be different levels of service? Those with the least insurance have limited treatment,  or at least not as good treatment, as those who can afford more.

The French healthcare system is funded by the working population.

Employees pay  20% of their gross salary, the self-employed pay more, all deducted at source.

Fancy being forced to pay 20% of your gross salary??

Why is simple common sense and good sanitary practice being sacrificed on the alter of appeasement to Islam????

The poor, lower paid have of course been the focus of the the last 12 years of New Labour in government?

Actually NO! Labour have failed to look after the lower paid. They have failed to support their union friends.

Living standards for the poor are worse now than 12 years ago.

Child poverty, despite the money spent on it, is as bad as it ever was.

Education standards are lower in state schools!

New Labour like their millionaire friends, to have (several) expensive houses, to be photographed with important people, to jump when the USA tells them to!

New Labour have no right to claim that they care for the poor. The traditional left-wing Labour MPs appear to have been sidelined!

Blair and Brown and many of their ministers would appear to be only interested in living the high life! Now the chickens are steadily coming home to roost and New Labour are beginning to understand that they have isolated themselves from almost all areas of society.

An example of Brown and Labour putting themselves before the country is the refusal of this government to stand down now and have an election.

The UK is in desperate straits. The finances are shot. The debts are huge and will take years to pay back. Public Services are being cut. Decisions are being taken by a government whose focus is on surviving the next six months.

How can that be good for the UK? We need decisive action and long term decision making. Whilst New Labour hang on to power looking for ways to survive, they are putting the interests of the UK after the interests of the country!

Moronic or drunken yobs can attack houses and property, terrorise individuals, sometimes on a daily basis.

These tend yobs focus on the weaker targets.

The police don’t bother with it, they won’t turn out.

All these excuses – too busy, don’t have the officers available, etc. Someone might turn up a few days later!

But if the householder or the person being attacked actually fights back, then van loads of police are there in minutes and arrest the victims of the yobs.

New Labour have failed the people of the UK. Low level crime affects more people than any other crimes but the police do not have the resources, or the political will, to do anything about it

Brown can say what he wants and make as many promises as he wants during his speech today, but it has been his policies over the last decade that have caused all these problems!

The NHS needs cuts, that is clear. It needs changes to the way it works as the demand for services for the elderly increases, let alone the financial problems of paying for the wide range of new drugs becoming available!

Gordon Brown is trying to pretend that the NHS will not have cuts in services.  He is trying to get a political advantage over the Conservatives, who have a more realistic approach to the bankrupt, debt-ridden economy of the United Kingdom.

It would seem, in my view, that Brown thinks that the people who normally vote Labour are too stupid to know what is happening to the economy. I have even heard someone blaming Thatcher for the bankrupt state of the UK economy!!!

So Gordon Brown seem to expects that saying ‘the Conservatives will cut the NHS, we will not make cuts in the NHS’ is actually going to be believed by enough people to get him back into power!

So why has Gordon Brown invited consultants to come up with proposals for how savings could be made in the NHS? Or does he not equate the word ‘savings’ with the word ‘cuts’ (after all they are spelt differently!)

These consultants, and others it appears, were given terms of reference so they knew what they were supposed to do. This means that their proposals to cut 10% from the NHS workforce over the next 10 years would have met their terms of reference and that is what the Brown wanted them to do!

If Brown is that surprised by their report then they have not done their job properly and should be fired without receiving payment!

Gordon Brown is saying that the Conservatives are the ‘party of cuts’ and implies that New Labour are not.  But the truth is  that New Labour policies have brought the UK to it’s financial knees and even Brown cannot keep the NHS safe from significant cuts that will affect us all!

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!)