21/08/2009 by Steve Tierney.

If You Do The Crime …
Each and every one of us has decisions to make in their lives and once those decisions are made we must live with the inevitable consequences.  It’s called personal responsibility.  Some perpetual bleeding hearts don’t believe in personal responsibility.  Everything is somebody else’s fault, or caused by events over which the accused had no control.  I don’t accept that at all.  We each make our own choices.  Many people live in awful circumstances yet never become monsters. 
 
If ever there was an obvious split between the liberal (not necessarily Lib Dem) and Conservative viewpoint, surely the Lockerbie Bomber is it?  Turn on a radio talkshow and you can hear both sides expressed, sometimes eloquently, often passionately.  While I personally believe wholeheartedly in liberty, I struggle to understand the argument that says a terrorist mass killer should be able to claim (and receive) ‘compassionate’ release.  
  
Let’s just recap.  Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi is serving a life sentence for his 2001 conviction : blowing up PanAm flight 103 in December 1988, leaving 270 people dead, in the worst terrorist atrocity and the biggest mass murder in British legal history. 

Compassion is that last thing he deserves.
  
The idea that you can be ‘fair’ and ‘decent’ by allowing a horrific killer to jet home to a festival parade in Libya and spend his last months in comfort surrounded by his family is not compassion.  It is weakness masquerading as compassion.  I’m sure the people who lost family and friends in the original bombing would love to have a homecoming parade for the poor souls who were victims of this man. The fact that this cannot ever happen should have been all the legal system needed to know. 
  
Lock him up.  Throw away the key.  That would seem to be the obvious decision to make.

Instead, the wisdom of the Scottish courts is that Abdelbaset gets to go home and be a hero for what he did.  He’s terminally ill, you see.  And somehow the quirk of fate that delivered the illness means we should forget the two hundred and seventy people he killed and shed a tear for his condition.  Yeah, right.  There are a great many people in the world who are worthy of compassion and pity.  This evil lunatic isn’t one of them.  
  

England Untamed
I’ve just spent a glorious week in the New Forest.  In cohorts with a horde of other credit-crunched countrymen and women - my family and I decided to dodge the jet engines this year and instead to decend Southwards into one of the greatest stretches of wilderness our small island retains.  

In a log cabin nestled beneath the forest canopy three generations of my family had a truly fantastic time.  We barbecued at night under the stars.  My wife and I walked nine miles through scrub, marsh and forest, up and down steep hills, along lane and gravel track (getting quite severely lost for some time).  We saw a calf born.  We had to jump a bubbling brook and climb a sodden hill to get to a road that might help us get home before dark.  We stumbled for refreshment into a quaint wood-beamed pub and quaffed juice, real ale and homemade cider (not in one glass…)
 
We paid a visit to Bournemouth, to Poole and to a Theme Park near Southampton that was packed full of fun.  My son went on his first roller-coaster.  “That was great,” he said as it thundered into the slowdown lane at the end of the ride, and then plaintively: “Is it finished?”  My Mum refused to miss the log flumes despite a cracked rib sustained last week.  We trekked through the “Dinosaur Park” and imagined the roars from the bushes were real denizens of the Jurassic coming to hunt us down.

In the amusingly named “Sandy Balls” campsite we swam in the freezing outside pool, laughing and dunking and shivering.  My son made great use of the adventure playground.  We took the nature walks, following terrible maps to end up in places where I’m pretty sure we were never meant to go.  We biked along silent roads past ponies and cows and pigs and deer all free to roam.  We enjoyed incredible weather, hot day after hot day broken only by pleasant cool breezes and the occasional brief and exciting storm.  We laughed - a lot.  We ate, drank and made merry.  We lay on grass as the sun melted into night on a golden horizon. 

This, I think, is the stuff all great holidays are made of.  I hope you all had a wonderful summer too!
  

Posted in England, Credit Crunch, Conservatives | No Comments »

10/08/2009 by Steve Tierney.

Delusion On A Grand Scale
News from America was “good” this week.  Apparently, the increase in their unemployment rate has slowed.  249,000 lost their jobs in the U.S.A. in the last quarter which was much “better” than expected, being a lower amount of new unemployed than recent quarters. 

Pundits and experts <cough> were rolled out to hail that the American economy was “past the worst” and had “turned a corner”.  Well that’s okay then.  Time to go out and get a few more credit cards and a personal loan, I suppose. 
   
You have to wonder if the 249,000 American new unemployed are excited about the recovery they are experiencing? 
   
The idea that a massive fall in the amount of people paying taxes (and an increase in folk on welfare) is somehow good news because its not as massive as last month is whistling in the dark of the worst kind.  By that same logic if you reached zero employed that would be good news, because every month thereafter there could be no “new unemployed” at all and that would surely mean the depression recession was over.

Only in the special moon-pie and fairy-lights land of Quantitive Easing, Trillion Dollar trade imbalances and being in hock for everything you own including the shirt on your back to growing Eastern giants does a quarter of a million new unemployed equal anything other than more absolutely horrible news.
  
Meanwhile, here in the UK, all is apparently well.  The papers continue to find new “green shoots” every week, regaling us with stories of how we’ve “past the worst”, “reached a plateau” and are looking at excellent prospects of returning to “growth” in the last quarter of 2009.
  
The evidence for this bout of good news?  Some banks made some money.  The pound gained a little ground.  Houses prices didn’t fall again.  A couple of sectors showed some slightly higher figures than expected.  The FTSE has risen somewhat.
  
Funny so few choose to mention some other useful facts:-

1. UK Production levels are below the levels of 1998.
2. Unemployment continues to rise - frighteningly fast.
3. Tax receipts have fallen off a cliff - requiring ever greater government borrowing.
4. The highest levels of government debt ever recorded by this country.
5. Trade balance of goods and services remains negative.  We are still consuming more than we produce.
6. GDP remains negative.

Anybody in the manufacturing industry (you know the people who actually make things to generate wealth for the country) will tell you just how “green” the shoots look.  A moldy dark green.  Like you find under an old fridge in a squat.

Any sort of brief ‘upturn’ there might be right now is the result of the government inventing money from thin air and using it to fund its activities.  All those billions had to trickle into the economy eventually.  If this seems like a good idea now, wait until the effect of the initial £125Billion and last week’s new £50Billion fully settle.  This undermining of sterling is a stealth tax of the worst kind and it will be coupled with a need to repay the interest (and capital, we can only hope) of a debt mountain unlike any we have ever experienced before.  And don’t get me started on the coming inflation…

Meanwhile, some estimate the country already owes £1Trillion Pounds.  Add in the personal debt of the citizens and we might have another £1.5Trillion on top of that.  The figures are so large they lose their meaning to many of us.  But their meaning will become all too clear in due course. 

The Labour Party have presided over a SNAFU so large that the seventies look almost tame.  Gordon Brown is always telling us this is a global crisis.  It feels pretty damn local to the people who have lost their jobs, watched their savings crumble or tried to keep their struggling businesses afloat. 

(Hat-tip Cynicus Economicus)

Posted in Labour Party, Recession, Credit Crunch | No Comments »

29/07/2009 by Steve Tierney.

Hitchhikers Guide To The Public Sector
Genius science-fiction author Douglas Adams, who wrote the classic Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy series, managed (through a convoluted and extremely clever storyline) to populate prehistoric earth with refugees who crash-landed there, consisting mainly of service-sector employees - marketing types, management consultants, telephone sanitisers, as Douglas Adams pointed out.  As it turned out in his story these were all “useless” professions who leeched from the productive classes on their original world and that their own planet had gotten rid of by shipping them away under the illusion that the world was ending.

Today we are told a billion pounds is to be spent on creating tens of thousands of “soft” public sector jobs for unemployed people including dance assistants, tourism ambassadors and solar panel engineers. The taxpayer-funded jobs are being created by councils, quangos and charities under a desperate Government scheme to remove people from the unemployment register over the next two years.   Apparently the public sector is not yet big enough or expensive enough so we need to fatten it up a little more.  We can always print the money to pay for them…

But let’s look on the bright side.  When the country is struggling under the burden of ever higher debt and ever lower tax  revenues, when millions more are unemployed, houses are being repossessed and businesses closed - we wil least know that our handful of tourists will have plenty of guides, that our solar panels will be secured with precision and that we’ll all be able to dance like Fred Astair.

Douglas Adams, born in Cambridge, may have written mostly humorous speculative fiction, but it’s surprising just how prophetic he seems to have been.  I can’t help but think we might be needing a starship of our own soon. 
   

Posted in Labour Party, Credit Crunch | No Comments »

07/07/2009 by Steve Tierney.

Hard To Please
My council colleague from the Liberal Democrat side, Nichola Harrison, has written a new blog post: “Very good is not green enough.”  As usual it is well-written, interesting and cleanly-presented.  But its basic premise is that the council is not being ambitious enough with its ‘green’ agenda because it is planning to build a new school using an eco standard that is very good.  Not “poor”.  Not “lacking”.  Not even “could try harder.”  Very good.

Huh? 

You might be forgiven for re-reading that and wondering if I had mis-typed.  “Surely a ‘Very Good’ Eco Standard is an achievement?” you might ask. 

If my young son came home from school with a report card that said he was “Very Good” my wife and I would be cracking open the champagne (he can be a little <ahem> naughty boisterous, you see.  But he’s a wilful four-year-old boy and you know what they are like!) 

If, having just cooked dinner for my family, I asked: “How was it?” and they rubbed their tummies and said: “Yum yum, very good” I think I’d consider it a job well done.

But not Cllr. Harrison.  Not a bit of it.  Nichola you are one very hard to please lady!  I suppose you could generously look at it as demanding higher standards.  As part of the opposition party that is her job.  But really, would it kill the Lib Dems to be positive once in a while?

Just imagine a young lad coming home to his mum after sports day and telling her he’d won a gold award for achievement after winning three out of his four events.  “Look at my trophy!” he says, brandishing it enthusiastically.
“Only three out of four?” Comes his mother’s stern reply.  “That’s not an achievement son, that’s failure in my book”. 
“But Mum, my gym teacher said it was Very Good?”
“But not excellent, boy.  Not outstanding.  Only very good!  Now to bed with you and no supper for a month!” *see note at bottom

Nichola’s argument, you see, is that although we went for the “Very Good” standard, there is a higher “Excellent” standard.  Apparently they have even now introduced another level “Outstanding”.  Presumably next year there might be “Astonishing”, “Super-Human” and “God-Like” for people who are prepared to build houses out of regurgitated straw and heat them with starlight and fairy-breath.

Now I accept I’m poking a little fun here.  Climate change is a real issue and one that concerns many people.  But so is the recession.  If it were cheaper and easier to reach high eco-levels then even the most difficult stuck-in-the-mud petrol-heads would do it.  But it isn’t, it’s generally more expensive in the short-term. 

Since we are in the middle of a deep recession there isn’t a lot of money floating about.  It doesn’t grow on trees (and even if it did the Lib Dems would certainly want to protect those trees).  Pay extra money for one project and you must take it from another.  It’s not our money we are spending, it is the taxpayer’s money, so we have to balance ’saving the world’ with paying for vital services and find some sensible middle ground.  No matter which way you look at it, upside-down, diagonally, or from behind, Very Good is Very Good.  It’d be nice to see that recognised, though I wont hold my breath.

*Note: For the record.  I do not condone or approve of withholding food as a means of punishment.   It was a metaphor for goodness sake.

Posted in Global Warming, Liberal Democrats, Cambs. County Council, Credit Crunch | No Comments »

20/06/2009 by Steve Tierney.

Pothole Buster ™
If I had to name one thing that annoys the people of the Roman Bank & Peckover Division more than any other I’m pretty sure I’d end up using the ”P” word.  Potholes.  Of course there are many other issues, plenty of them more serious than the rugged surface of some of our roads.  But there they are every day, rattling your suspension as you bump and grind over them.  If you talk to the council officers they assure you that they are doing loads of repairs - that they are out there all the time patching up the problems.  If you talk to the people of the division they say they never see anybody and potholes stay untouched for months on end.  Everybody understands that the last winter took its toll on the roads and that its not cheap to repair hundreds of miles of tarmac. 

On reflection I really think there is truth on both sides of this.  It is fair to say that the council agent’s are working hard to fix all the damage.  It’s equally accurate that some places remain unrepaired for long periods. So here’s my
Pothole-Buster ™ idea.  (I’m not serious about the trademark, it just makes me chuckle.  Pay no attention to it.)  I’d like to ask anybody who lives within my ward (Wisbech Peckover, Leverington, Newton, Gorefield, Tydd St. Giles) to report any significant pothole in their road by email or phone to me.  I’ll then drive down, take a picture of it, and report it to the county agents for you.  I’ll post the pothole report, the picture and the status on a webpage on this site so everybody can see what potholes have been notified to us, where they are, when the council were told about them … and hopefully when they are repaired.

Each week I’ll chase the council agents and ask about potholes which have not been fixed, pointing to the date I notified them and the evidence on the website as it accumulates.  What I very much hope is that this will demonstrate just how quickly and how often repairs are done and vindicate the council a little.  Of course, it may go the other way, in which case we’ll be able to keep track of the problem and make a judgement of how best to proceed.

In the end you may laugh: “What’s a website and a bunch of phone calls going to do?”  And perhaps it will be a difficult task in the current climate, although I like to think otherwise.  Whatever the case, it certainly can’t hurt can it? 

My challenge to all readers is this: don’t just moan about a pothole and presume you can do nothing about it.  Notify me and let’s get to work, together, encouraging and cooperating with the council to put our roads to rights.  Pothole-Buster(tm) style!

Report Potholes to:- me@stevetierney.org  or leave a text on 07831 616127
Remember to state your name and phone number, the road and area where the pothole is.

*  Your right to contact the council directly is not affected by this request.  This is purely my own individual idea to try and get something done in a slightly different way.
**PLEASE - Only residents of my division.  I can’t do anything for people in other areas - but I’m sure your own local councillor will be pleased to help.

Recession - The Action Movie
Our country is in big trouble.  Not because of the much-vaunted ‘Broken Society’.  Not because of crime and antisocial behaviour.  Not because of the bloated, cannibalistic public sector.  Not even because of the cumbersome mass of the welfare state which successive parliaments have consistently failed to have the courage to address.  It’s because of the wasted, starving economy.  But wait!  Before you yawn and tell me to change the channel because you’ve heard this script before - consider this:

Here’s the problem with talking about the recession right now - if you say: “There is no way we’ll see any serious recovery this year” people accuse you of talking down the economy.  So all the commentators are harping on about “Green Shoots” here and “positive changes” there and even how we’re “past the worst.”  The trouble is that the government has been borrowing (and printing) money like there’s no tomorrow and sooner or later that money was going to trickle into the system and result in what economists call “greater velocity of currency” and what you and I probably call “lots of shopping.”  People are spending all this borrowed and freshly-minted cash and this creates the appearance of slight recovery.  These green shoots are an illusion, like a bright red apple hanging from a branch but full of squirming maggots within. 

In a movie of the current crisis we are somewhere near the middle of the story.  We’ve done the character development and had a few car chases to keep the excitement up.  But the plot is getting serious now.  At some point down the line - and we’re not talking about very far down the line here - the government’s desperate attempt to borrow its way out of debt is going to come to an extremely messy end.  Maybe the sale of bonds will fail when international lenders refuse to buy any more until they see some chance of a return on their investment?  Maybe the dollar will crash when China decides to start divesting itself of the currency and causes a run on it - with the knock-on effect of crippling the pound?  Maybe money will continue to gush into the many public sector black holes while unemployment keeps spiralling up until a critical mass is reached?  There are so many weak points in this particular card castle that its hard to say precisely which way it’s going to come tumbling down - but tumble down it shall.  At this point in a movie you’d really hope the ‘heroes’ of the piece would be taking action, right? 

What everybody should realise is that inflation is coming.  Perhaps we can keep putting it off for a bit longer if Mssrs. Darling and Brown are allowed to pursue their profilgate borrow and spend policies.  But do not trust the government or the media’s talk of green shoots.  They want to keep the masses calm in the face of economic armageddon for as long as possible.  They are, in fact, the villains of this story.  The twist at the end would be a diabolical prime minister chuckling: “Yes, yes!  My plan is complete!” as he contemplated the ruin of the nation.

Even at this late point it is not too late to save the day.  In our action movie, when the evil mastermind’s plans have resulted in the country teetering on the brink of destruction you might expect a dashing, square-jawed musclebound hero to arrive in the nick of time.  Now I’ll agree that David Cameron’s Conservatives are probably not very dashing and certainly not musclebound.  But the Conservatives are the only party with the will and the experience to fix this horrific Labour mess.  After all - they’ve done it before.  In fact I’d guess this movie is a sequel.  Let’s hope it has a happy ending.  And if we get though it intact, please let’s make sure it never becomes a trilogy.
 

Posted in Wisbech, Gorefield, Pothole Buster (tm), Leverington, Newton, Credit Crunch, Tydd St. Giles, Conservatives | No Comments »

04/04/2009 by Steve Tierney.

“I’m Just Nipping Down The IMF For Some Milk & Cheese”
In the 1970s, the Labour Party had so thoroughly trashed the economy of Great Britain that we sat on the verge of bankruptcy.  Strikes plagued our nation.  Working hours were curtailed while people struggled to pay their bills in the face of rising unemployment and hardship.  The Labour government, shame-faced and craven, stumbled weakly to the International Monetary Fund with their begging cap in hand and asked for help to bail us out.  It was an embarrassing, desperate fall for a country that had once been the most powerful trading nation in the world.  It spelt the end of Labour’s reign, paving the way for Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives to sweep in and quite literally save the country from destruction.  To this day some sections of society loathe Thatcher and this is because she had to make very painful and radical decisions to ‘fix’ the economy, cleaning up the mess left behind by her predecessors.  But fix it she did and Britain was returned to prosperity.  It wasn’t perfect, of course.  We had problems.  But we could afford to buy our groceries and pay our mortgages again.

Flash forwards to 2009.  After more than a decade at the wheel Labour have presided over yet another financial disaster.  It’s true that some elements of this one are global in origin.  But where is our manufacturing base?  Where are our entrepreneurs?  Where are the wealth-creators that are necessary to ride in on their white horses and save the day?  They’ve been taxed and over-regulated and demonised into oblivion.  It is not good enough that Labour always want to blame somebody else.  They have been in power since the last century! They have had ample opportunity to prove that a progressive left government can work and they have failed.

For the last few months I, and some other sceptical commentators, have been suggesting that Britain’s finances are even more dire than the government would like us to believe.  We’ve said that the country is already slipping into a state of technical bankruptcy, that we have been for some time, and that it is only a monumental credit bubble and some complex spin operations which have covered this up.  Time and again spokesmen and media have assured us: “This is not the case”.  Only a couple of months ago Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown both laughed off the idea that a new visit to the IMF would be necessary for the United Kingdom.

This week the Daily Telegraph has a story with the headline: “Britain should not fear asking for IMF cash.”  Following a briefing from a senior Labour cabinet member it argues: “Britain should not be afraid or ashamed of taking money from the International Monetary Fund.”  Apparently, the IMF is all different now.  There should be no ’stigma’ attached when one of the once-richest countries in the world has to beg for help.  Again.  It’s just a loan after all.  Another loan.  So, there we have it.  Full circle.  The Labour Party have mismanaged their way back to bankruptcy and begging and they are trying to fool the voters into thinking it doesn’t mean anything.  It’s just a little household shopping trip, apparently. 
“Darling!  I’ll be back soon.  I’m just nipping down the IMF for some milk and cheese.  Do we need anything else?”

We do need something else.  A new government.

Posted in Election, Europe, Recession, Parliament, Credit Crunch | No Comments »

03/04/2009 by Steve Tierney.

G20 Hype
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s all about the G20. Obama this and gazillion fiscal stimulus that. It’s very exciting, all the stocks are riding high on the optimism of it and yet its still almost completely worthless. What we needed was some good old-fashioned common sense, a little protection for the poor, some belt-tightening and a bit of community spirit. You know, the stuff the British used to be good at. Famous for, even. What we got was yet more great buckets of cash poured down whatever black hole fund the IMF fancies next week. And where will all that new money come from, because most countries sure as hell don’t have it? The printing press. Of course. What scares me is that the current leaders of the free world don’t actually seem to have any ideas between them. Well, none that don’t involve conjuring up money that you and I will have to find for the next decade or more. It’s a sad day when I thank the French for having the common sense to say “non” to Yet Another Massive Global Stimulus, but that’s where we are. Of course, it’s all just a huge media stunt anyway. Gordon Brown Saves The World again. Just in time for his specifically-delayed budget to bribe his core electorate and a few floating voters to gift him another ‘bounce’. If it wasn’t all so horribly predictable it might almost be funny. For Gods Sake get this madman off the levers of power. He’s like the Wizard Of Oz, all flashing lights and impressive colourful shows … covering a grand illusion. When the curtain comes down it’s just going to reveal a sad man, bereft of any true strength, fighting to retain the pretence of power that was never truly his to command.

Youth Activism
Where are the Young People engaging with politics? It’s never been a ‘youth’ activity per se, but each year that passes the die-hard faithful get scarcer and, quite frankly, they get older too. Despite the fact that they have been campaigning sometimes for several decades, they still provide all the verve and the passion in local politics. Political parties must get younger people involved. By that I don’t just mean the Camerons and the Cleggs - the people who are in politics as a career. I mean the earnest, hard-working people who leaflet and canvas and debate simply because they care about where their nation is going and want to be part of the solution… whatever that might be. When the brave ‘old guard’ are no longer able to fight the good fight, who is going to be active in politics then? Those brave politicos will leave a gaping void if nobody has come up behind them, learning from them, gaining wisdom from their association. Sure, each of the main parties has its ‘youth group’. Most colleges and universities have active political scenes. But we need more than the ideologists and the intellectuals, we need the youths from normal working families, small towns and villages across the country. It’s called balance. It makes a difference.  Some people seem to think that the death of old-fashioned party politics and ‘tribal’ voters is a good thing.  They think that the way is paved for some new political nirvana.  If that’s so I have yet to see the evidence.  Rather, we seem to be sliding towards a miserable world where nobody cares about anything except their ‘five minutes of fame’ or their latest fix of reality TV.  A world without a passion for freedom and good governance doesn’t sound like heaven to me.  It sounds horrible.

Dan Hannan
Many people will have seen MEP Dan Hannan’s excellent speech from a week or so ago. It became an internet phenomenon literally overnight. That’s partly because Dan said things to the Prime Minister that many of us have wanted to say. It’s partly because Dan is a good speaker with charisma and gravity. But mostly it’s because he clearly means every word he says. He’s genuine. It’s so refreshing in these days of spin and glitz and fakery that people feel drawn to it. This is how politics sounds when it’s done right. And by right I do not mean that I agree with his comments (although I do.) I mean that politicians must have the surety and the integrity to mean what they say and stand by it. Too often, of late, people doubt that is true. If a change is coming then politicians like Dan Hannan will be at the forefront of it.

Posted in Europe, Recession, Credit Crunch, Conservatives | No Comments »

28/03/2009 by Steve Tierney.

Basic Rate Tax Increase
There are some rumours flying around that there may be a rise in the basic rate of tax coming as part of Gordon Brown’s forthcoming ‘Bribery Budget’.  The gist of it is that, in order to try and regain some of his lost popularity he might throw some tax cuts and other sweeties at the public to get them back onside.

My response that is “Good. That’s a fair thing to do.”  My question though is Could We Afford It Now? If Gordon hadn’t blown all this money on one silly scheme after another, maybe we could. In which case, I’d applaud the prime minister (which would feel really weird.)  Trouble is, we can’t afford it. So if he does it then its got to come from increased taxation elsewhere, borrowed money, or printed money, or cuts.

Now let’s be honest , it’s not going to come from cuts because Gordon is more scared of that word than the word “sorry.”  If it comes from increased taxation I guess it’ll be the rich who they try to get to pay. Good luck with that. There are a lot of highly paid accountants who might think otherwise.

If it comes from borrowed money then first you’ve got to raise it with gilts (not as easy as he thought, that) in which case its more money for our kids’ kids’ kids to pay. Well done Prime Minister. Your party want to rob from the grave AND the womb. Talk about taxing the candle at both ends.

Of course there’s always the printing press to fall back on. More false economy, devalue everyone’s money with your monopoly currency, then give it back and claim its a gift. Kinda like an evil version of Santa Claus who steals the children’s toys then repackages them and gives them back… broken.

I know I’ve made my dislike of the Prime Minister and the Labour Party clear in the past but each day I am amazed at the new levels of revulsion they make me feel.  The public won’t fall for Gordon’s gamble, even if the rumours do turn out to be true.  Will they? 

Posted in Labour Party, Credit Crunch | No Comments »

25/03/2009 by Steve Tierney.

There She Blows
From some time the sceptics amongst us have believed that Gordon Brown’s economic experiment was shortly due to end in tears.  Many of the things I (and others) predicted months (or in some cases years) ago have come to pass.  Quantitative Easing (Money Printing), spiralling unemployment, plunging sterling and more.  The most significant predictation had notable failed to materialise though.  Until today.  The latest U.K. Gilt Auction failed spectacularly.  What does this mean?  It means that the government’s latest attempt to borrow a huge sum of money from lenders around the world met with a fairly clear and resounding: “No.”  This may have failed to make the headlines of our newspapers but make no mistake, it is a very important development.  It means that unless something dramatic changes, we will have to offer much more generous terms if our country wants to continue borrowing money.  We may not be able to source funds at all.  Gordon Brown has applied for a new “credit card” and the lenders have told him that they don’t consider him credit-worthy.  This affects us all.  How is the prime minister going to meet some, or even any, of his many spending promises if he can’t borrow the money to do so?  More money printing?  The U.K. is looking less and less solvent by the day.  This is a desperate situation and unfortunately the people responsible for it are the same people still in charge.  It’s a tragedy. 

Leaflets, Leaflets, Leaflets
I’ve been out over the last few days in Leverington delivering the first batch of the new Conservative “In Touch” leaflets.  These have to go all the way across the county division in which I will be standing (later this year) for a county council seat.  Walking for miles hand-delivering thousands of leaflets have shown me two things.  The first is that the people of my division are as passionate as I am about local politics.  I’ve enjoyed many personal and telephone conversations with them while en route.  The second thing, sadly, is I’m not as fit as I thought I was!  All this walking has made me feel like my bones are made of glass!  Time to start putting some hours in on the treadmill again, I reckon!  And maybe cut back on the bacon sandwiches a little!

Posted in My Campaign, Leverington, Credit Crunch | No Comments »

12/03/2009 by Steve Tierney.

Chocolate Prohibition
Apparently, a Scottish doctor is recommending we tax chocolate.  It’s ‘bad for us’ and we need to be ‘protected’ from its evil influences.  Just like alcohol, cigarettes and the like, he feels the government needs to wade bravely in and (for our own good, of course) help us make ‘the right choices’ in all matters dietary.  I can’t believe even the Labour party would be stupid enough to try this.  “How to lose half the vote overnight” a young lady colleague of mine commented today.  She was joking, but it was one of those growled, piercing-gazed jokes that don’t brook argument.  Visions of a chocolate prohibition bring to mind enclosed “sweeteasys” where very angry women gather to sell contraband and plot the overthrow of the establishment.  It would make the credit crunch look like a cakewalk!

The Great June Election Debate
You might think, by following discussions via the media, that it’s now a foregone conclusion that Gordon Brown will call an election sometime in 2010.  Not so!  A great many folk are still of the opinion that the Butcher of Threadneedle Street  and his Cabinet of Sock Puppets are hatching a devious plan.  It goes something like this:-

• Pretend I’ve Made Deal With Obama
  Spin The Obama Thing, Hope For Bounce
  Pretend I’ve Led Massive New Plan At G20
  Spin the G20 Thing, Hope For Bigger Bounce
  Massive Giveaway Budget Using Printed Money
  Spin Giveaway Budget, Hope For Megabounce
  Call Snap Election In June 2009

Gordon is surely being advised that going the “long route” to an election risks utter devastation of the Labour party.  His MPs must be pressuring him to go earlier - to limit the political bloodbath.  He’s had “bounces” before.  If his plan works he might just be able to kid enough people that something is being done that they’ll give him another.  If the G20, plus the new president of America, seem to be following his lead on the much-touted ‘global new deal’ then it’s not out of the realms of possibility that a gullible and frightened public might fall for the line.  Of course, its a house of cards that’s going to come tumbling down in spectacular fashion, but if that can be held off until after an election is won then what does the Prime Minister care?  The ruin of a nation is a small price to pay for another four years in charge of the economic wasteland that will remain.

Of course, what we hope and pray is that the British People know the spin and lies for what they are.  It’s not as if we haven’t seen enough of it to recognise the pattern.  Come June, if a snap election is called, let’s just see them gone for a long, long, long, long time.  Pretty Please, with sugar and chocolate on top.

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