Posts Tagged Gordon Brown
Falling Down
The United Kingdom is still stuck in the biggest and deepest recession on record.
Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have revealed that gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 0.4 per cent in the third quarter of 2009, confounding analysts’ predictions of an increase of 0.2 per cent.
Now spanning six consecutive quarters – a first since the ONS started compiling GDP figures back in 1955 – the UK is currently experiencing its longest period in recession on record.
The economy has now been contracting since early 2008.
Output fell almost entirely across the board, with the industries of construction, distribution, hotels and catering, transport and storage, and business services and finance all recording a decline.
The Bank of England is however optimistic. Why? Who knows? Maybe the Governor got a bit of a telling off for his last foray in to the political field.
The Bank of England confirms that the UK economy has shrunk by 6% in 18 months. Although it does not use optimistic language its report remains highly optimistic.
This chart shows the Bank of England prediction trend line for economic growth. The Bank sees the economy growing by 2.1 per cent next year, an amazing and unprecedented growth of four per cent in 2011 and an equally implausible 3.5 per cent in 2012.
Even using those highly optimistic growth rates it will take until 2012 for the economy to return to the output levels of 2007/2008.
These assumptions are however weak. They ignore the necessary but painful budget cuts that will have to be made by the Public Sector over the coming years. Taxes are covering only £4 out of £5 being spent by this Government, the rest is borrowing.
Although there will be some reduction in borrowing from growth, that growth will not be enough to get the budget out of deficit.
Indeed, with a growing elderly population, changes made to the Pension Credit scheme, including a pre election boost to pensioners, will only continue adding to the bill.
The Government is already talking of cuts. Ed Balls has offered up £2 billion of cuts in the Education budget.
Tax rises are also going to be harsh. You can not cut £175 billion of spending without a dramatic rethink of the role of the State and that will not happen.
Everybody who lives in the UK will pay more for reduced public services.
This will impact on growth. A smaller pubic sector means less jobs. Increases in tax will hit investment.
Unwinding quantitative easing will not be easy. Yields on UK gilts will rise, which means increases in interest rates. The mini-bubble in parts of the housing market will therefore pop. To me that is probably one of the only good things. It was after all the housing bubble that got us in to this mess. The irony of the Labour years is that through Housing Associations, the Government spent billions on “affordable housing” and then gave billions to the banks to keep houses unaffordable. We need a different direction on housing.
So faced with even more tax rises, where do the jobs come from? Who knows. The UK is now deeply uncompetitive. Income tax rates are too high at too early a level, we should not be taxing those on minimum wage and we should not be treating someone on £35k as a top rate taxpayer. And although other Countries have a higher top rate theirs start at a much higher band.
Corporation tax is far steeper than in most of our competitor nations and the 2007 budget changes to screw over new businesses will not aid recovery. Small businesses have always been the fuel for economic growth.
The UK’s trend rate of growth prior to the recession was 2.75 per cent a year. That keeps the UK economy at below 2007/08 levels until 2015.
By that time almost every other large European economy will have outgrown us. Will Britain still get a seat at the table? Kind of explains why the G5 became the G8 and why it is now the G20.
With at least five years of hard slog to get back to where the economy in 2007, Cameron looks as though he will be picking up more than a poisoned chalice. The chalice itself is poison. It will be him and not Brown who will get the blame for the economic mess that will take a generation to recover. People have short memories and it is easy to blame the ones in power NOW for the damage done by a previous administration. The Republicans are already doing it in America. “New Labour” will start the blame game on day one.
Interesting times ahead.
Add comment November 14, 2009
There is one man to blame for the rise of the BNP
The BBC Question Time programme gave Nick Griffin the oxygen of publicity and he choked on it.
Jack Straw was useless. However, if you draw up a list of politicians who engage in Muslim bashing for cheap political points, Jack Straw is up there with Nick Griffin. After all it wasn’t Griffin that said he would not talk to women wearing a burkah.
David Dimbelby tried too hard. He wanted a posh version of the Jerry Springer show in order to boost ratings. His show invited a Nazi and Dimbleby just had to show that he was not a racist sympathiser.
The provocativability of the audience was guaranteed. The Mail is wrong. If you took any group of 200 people from Britain, the same level of disgust would be shown to the BNP.
The BBC did not as Peter Hain suggest, boost the BNP. He should look closer to home.
Poverty and fear drives extremism.
The house price bubble and lack of social housing.
Unemployment.
Taxes hitting the poorest.
“British jobs for British workers”.
MPs expenses.
The Government created monster of “Radical Islam”.
All of these were fostered by the man Peter Hain is happy to call his Leader.
Peter Hain – your Leader is helping the BNP. Gordon Brown the best recruitment tool for the BNP.
If you push the politics of fear you get the politics of hate.
Add comment October 24, 2009
Come on Gordon. Why not discuss social mobility.
Labour want a battle on social mobility. Give them one, this goes for the Lib Dems as well. The Liberal Democrats have a real opportunity of beating Labour next year and they need to grab it.
Labour wants the next election to be a battle on social mobility.
Social mobility under Labour has all but gone. If you are in a Labour poverty trap there is no way out. No real right to buy, no chance of a meaningful degree, no chance on the property ladder except through fabricated mortgages which have all but dried up and they helped create the burst bubble we will be paying for for the rest of our lives.
Large ineffective increases in public expenditure that meant services were delivered according to performance measures and not not actual service delivery, funded by a neo con boom in property, that left part of the economy -the housing market, addicted to inflation, while real wage rates were frozen. It was always going to end in catastrophe. Never mind the abolition of boom and bust.
Those Labour Members of Parliament that made it out of poverty need to look back and see what they have done. The yob culture exists because there is no way out for them.
New Labour did not just kick the rungs from under the poor, they set fire to the ladder. So come on Labour, battle on social mobility.
Add comment October 1, 2009
Gordon Brown A Saviour?
Can we replace this Gordon Brown, self professed saviour of the World with this one?
Xavier Gordon Brown is the youngest person to ever to get an A* at GCSE. In mathematics. Something the Saviour Gordon appears less than good at.
Add comment August 27, 2009
Sion Simon is Scum Part 2
Sion Simon the Labour MP for Birmingham Erdington who attacked Susan Boyle, ran a stupid smear against David Cameron that completely backfired and got Cameron even more support, called Labour Party rebels “deserters” and then backed an early campaign to oust Tony Blair, has now been made “Minister for Creative Industries”.
Why? Well it can not be for his support for those creative industries. After all, Susan Boyle was seen as a national treasure, he is simply a joke.
It can not be because he is good on tv.
(By the way here is blog this idiot runs, that he is says he not interested in (he does not allow comments) – and he may learn too late the way you could have kept a Labour Government was not to point out the opposition – but to run the Country well, something his Party singularly failed to do).
Hmm – must be something to do with this crappy voting record then.
Voting record (from PublicWhip)
How Siôn Simon voted on key issues since 2001:* Voted moderately against a transparent Parliament.
* Voted a mixture of for and against introducing a smoking
ban.
* Voted strongly for introducing ID cards. votes, speeches
* Voted very strongly for introducing foundation hospitals.
* Voted strongly for introducing student top-up fees.
* Voted very strongly for Labour’s anti-terrorism laws.
* Voted very strongly for the Iraq war.
* Voted very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq
war.
* Voted very strongly for replacing Trident.
* Has never voted on the hunting ban.
* Voted moderately for equal gay rights.
* Voted a mixture of for and against laws to stop climate change.
He is also another MP who likes to expense it up. He claimed his stamp duty, and even a MacBook Air and all the accessories on expenses. A £399 laptop, obviously would not have been good enough for him. Who is the young person who keeps getting expensed and was that a legitimate claim for the student/teacher edition of Microsoft Office either to Microsoft or the taxpayer? Perhaps an explanation is due for all the money expensed to Susan Hayes? Who is she, what “strategic” advice was given necessary to his work as an MP?
The Labour MP, who was once happily in the pay of Rupert Murdoch, now gets to decide in the run up to an election year, what regulations are imposed on digital media.
Add comment August 9, 2009
Please Minister, May I Have Some More?
Of late, quite a few public officials have wanted to volunteer how especially useless their job is. This is of course good, who ever takes on the reigns of British Government after the next election will indeed face many many challenges and appalling public finances. After all, the Government will want to strip out services areas that have become the Department of Silly Walks.
Step forward, Gill Fine. “Director” of “Consumer choice and Dietary Health” at the Food Standards Agency. Of course as this is a Government Department, her role actually means getting rid of food choice. Her service is consulting on just how to do this right now.
The Government, wants the British public to buy fewer fatty foods and sugary drinks. An admirable aim. The NHS employs people with the same admirable aims, they are called dieticians, but never mind, a little bit of Government duplication is fine.
The British public have not however been buying fewer fatty foods and sugary drinks. That is of course their choice. Well not according to Ms Fine.
English people and that includes me, are all such fat ugly people we can not make up our own minds. In fact we are so fat and unable to do anything by ourselves, we must be forced to do it.
Cakes are easy to deal with. Cut the saturated fat. Tesco has already managed to remove 110 tonnes of saturated fat from their cakes. I would not want to see what that looked like. Of course, it does not tell you how much sugar went in to replace the fat (therefore making it less suitable for diabetics), nor does it tell you of what the increase in food waste was, given that the fat was for shelf life. Anyway thumbs up to Tesco for having slipped past the fact it is selling low fat versions of their full fat cakes and no one noticed.
You may also have noticed that “full fat” drinks have had the amount of sugar they contain reduced, supplemented by Rumsfield’s poison gift to the World, Aspartame. (TM Dr Death). It will be this Department that has encouraged such changes in recipe. (Or as they call it “reformulate”).
The Food Standards Agency is supposed to be independent, set up in the wake of the outbreaks of BSE and foot and mouth disease. So it is of no surprise to learn that Lord Rooker (previously Jeff Rooker), the former food minister, during the Foot & Mouth crisis, is head of it.
He will be paid around £55k a year and will need to work 8 days a month on this quango.
They cannot reformulate chocolate. In Belgium, chocolate is chocolate. The Europeans do not really like what the British call chocolate and thus they ensured that chocolate had to contain some chocolate product as a kind of starting point. The Belgians were the most vociferous about this. The Belgians, who make really bloody good chocolate, tried to ensure that the British product was called something like cocoa based non animal fat sludge product. One thinks that would not have done much for sales. Of course, Ms Gill would have been happy. However I doubt that the Cadbury family would be too happy.
The Ministry of Funny Walks has a solution to that. Make the chocolate companies give us less. Even though I personally could choose to buy less. Who cares about personal choice. Manufacturers will be told to shrink portion sizes. The appropriately named Ms Fine, wants chocolate-based snacks such as Mars bars to be no bigger than 50g compared with the current 58g size and bars of chocolate to be no larger than 40g. Reducing the size of the Yorkie Bar down by over a 1/3rd.
These are some of the current size
-
Mars bar 58g to lose 8g
-
Snickers 58g to lose 8g
-
Dairy Milk 49g to lose 9g
-
Galaxy 46g to lose 6g
-
Yorkie 68g to lose 28g
Remember you will probably still pay the same 
I do wonder if those in the Ministry of Silly Walks know that these sizes can be purchased in “fun bags”?
Anyway these people have form. The Ministry of Funny Walks tried this in 2004. They attempted to ban King Size products just before the last General Election to show Ministers it was actually doing something. Of course they made a complete failure of it andpeople just laughed. Mars kept selling a King Size product, but conveniently provided it as 2 3/4 length bars and renamed it DUO. The good ol’ baby burning French Nestlé, just ignored the Government.
If the aim of the ban was to ensure that stupid people who were unable to break in half the King Size Bar, were now given more freedom by having it broken for them, the Ministry of Silly Walks won. If it was to cut down on the number of king sized chocolate bars – they did so only if you count a name change as abolition.
Even better, the Ministry of Silly Walks wants canned drinks reduced from the standard 330ml (33fl oz) that they are now to the nice airplane stubby 250ml (25 fl oz) and those 330ml fruit drinks reduced to 250ml as well. After all, you would not then buy a 500ml bottle, or two smaller cans if you so chose.
The problem for this official, Gill Fine, is that this thing is about as popular as Gordon Brown selling the Congestion Charge to residents of Kensington and Chelsea. The last time they tried anything like this, it was in the papers for weeks, with Government Ministers putting their names to all the documents. This time the Press Release is left, to the “Director of Consumer Choice and Dietary Health”. Not even a Ministerial rent a quote on the Press release. Of course that press release is amusing.
Ms Fine, declares “We recognise the excellent work already achieved by some food businesses to make healthier eating easier. But to make even greater progress it’s important that everybody gets behind our recommendations on saturated fat, added sugar and portion sizes.
“The food industry regularly reviews its ingredients and processes, as well as portion sizes, and the aim of this proposal is to encourage them to consider how they can play their part in improving public health and helping consumers to maintain a healthy weight.
“What we are not doing is telling people what to eat! What we want to do is to make it easier for people to make healthier choices – to choose foods with reduced saturated fat and sugar – or smaller portion sizes.”
Of course not Ms Fine. Just remember when people make a choice there has to be a choice. Stopping choice is not “enabling” it is not “making it easier” (well it is in kind of a way). It is nannying.
If people want more they will get more. They are not dependent on the Government to make that choice. Therefore the 58g Mars bar instead of becoming 50g becomes 100g. Unless you control how much we buy. Just a few steps away.
I seem to remember a very famous film scene, in which a young boy became somewhat unsatisfied with his “healthier choice”, yep,
this
Add comment July 29, 2009
Labour Considering Banning BNP Teachers.
I can fully understand that the Police ban BNP members, they are able to abuse powers that they hold and the chance of a citizen being able to do anything about that abuse is minimal at best.
I think however a ban on BNP teachers just allows them to become political martyrs. It will not help bring back to Labour the working class vote that felt aggrieved enough to swap their vote from New Labour to the British Nazi Party. (Where is the social housing you promised Mr Brown?).
Perhaps rather than banning membership of one Party, ban membership of all Parties for teachers. This is done for senior Civil Servants and Senior Local Government Officers.
Party politics is not for the classroom. If you are going to ban teachers from a political party then ban membership of all parties. Politically restricted posts exist within the civil service already and it would ensure that they could not use victim status in the European Court of Human Rights. Where they may even gain a compensation payment.
Courtesy of Gordon Brown playing every stupid bigoted dog whistle to the white working class base of the Labour Party and then failing to deliver, we now have two of them in Parliament.
No matter how offensive they may be, they are a legal party as their election confirms. This is not a way of dealing with the problem.
http://www.labourhome.org/forum/?p=6034
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/21/bnp-teac… )
Add comment June 22, 2009
James Purnell Quits
He has done a Geoffrey Howe. Only in these days of 24 hour media, he did not wait until he could get his chance at The Commons.
How long before an election?
From The Times
Gordon Brown was dealt a devastating blow tonight as James Purnell quit the Cabinet and told him to stand down to save the Labour Party.
The Work and Pensions Secretary’s sensational decision, given to the Prime Minister shortly before polling ended in the European and local elections, left an already damaged Mr Brown in grave peril. He told Mr Brown to stand aside and give Labour a “fighting chance of winning”.
The departure of such a talented minister in a crucial reforming role raised immediate questions over whether other ministers would follow, and whether Mr Brown had the authority to complete his Cabinet reshuffle.
He was a troughing hoon anyway and will probably lose his seat to the Lib Dems.
His Letter
Dear Gordon
We both love the Labour Party. I have worked for it for twenty years and you for far longer. We know we owe it everything and it owes us nothing.
I owe it to our Party to say what I believe no matter how hard that may be. I now believe your continued leadership makes a Conservative victory more not less likely.
That would be disastrous for our country. This moment calls for stronger regulation, an active state, better public services, an open democracy. It calls for a government that measures itself by how it treats the poorest in society. Those are our values, not David Cameron’s.
We therefore owe it to our country to give it a real choice. We need to show that we are prepared to fight to be a credible government and have the courage to offer an alternative future.
I am therefore calling on you to stand aside to give our party a fighting chance of winning.
The party was here long before us, and we want it to be here long after we have gone. We must do the right thing by it.
I am not seeking the leadership, nor acting with anyone else. My actions are my own considered view, nothing more. If the consensus is that you should continue, then I will support the government loyally from the backbenches. But I do believe that this question now needs to be put.
Thank you for giving me the privilege of serving,
Yours
James Purnell
As pointed out in the comments, with the announcement of the providers for the “Flexible New Deal” coming is there a new job in the offing and was this more about ensuring that his nest was protected from any future Government?
Feathered nest or political valour? We shall see.
5 comments June 4, 2009
A Euro MP Win For The BNP Would Be A Victory For Gordon Brown.
Gordon Brown has a lot to be condemned for
The 10p Tax Rate fiasco
The Economic collapse
The Banking Crisis
The Gurhas mess
The abuse of Parliamentary expenses
The abuse of 10 Downing Street to run smear campaigns
Poverty getting worse under his stewardship of the treasury
There is a lot of justified anger. He has managed to make George Bush and Tony Blair look competent.
It is clear that the coming European elections will produce an electoral disaster for Brown, not seen by the Labour Party for years.
He can not however escape the deserved electoral mauling, but can survive the political fallout – if people vote BNP in sufficient numbers to win them just one seat in the European Parliament.
If the BNP wins a seat, the press will not cover the electoral wipe out of Gordon Brown. You can already see the headlines on the front pages of the newspapers. The BBC would follow. His loss would not be the big news story, it will be hidden. The morning after the Euro Elections, angry Labour MPs will find that story hidden somewhere other than the front page. The front page news story will be the BNP and as a result, Gordon Brown will escape the axe that he so richly deserves. With the story hidden on page 2, the initial outrage felt by Labour MPs ast such a disastrous result would be assuaged, replaced by a mighty proud condemnation of how stupid the electorate in whatever area votes them in. Thus, giving Zanu Labour a chance to recover, unreformed, unchanged, ready to screw the County again for another term.
If you are going to have a protest vote, make it a protest that counts. Vote Green, Liberatas, Jury Team, UKIP. Anyone who actually could make a difference in Europe. Do not vote BNP and as a result save the career of the worst Prime Minister ever.
VOTING BNP IS THE MOST IDIOTIC PROTEST VOTE EVER.
1 comment May 18, 2009
