Not abolishing boom and bust

The greatest economic mind of the last century ( ..ya Maynard.. ) argued many things, but he is best known for his insight that the capitalist economy is cyclically unstable. Government needs to stabilise economic activity by monetary and fiscal policy. To do that, it should balance the budget over the course of the business cycle. So it should build up surpluses when the economy is expanding in order to run deficits - beyond those that would normally arise from the contraction in output - and boost demand in a recession.

This obviously is not a description of what Gordon Brown did as Chancellor after 2002, because he disastrously believed he had abolished the business cycle. The share of public spending in national income rose from just under 40 per cent when new Labour took office to 48 per cent when the credit crunch arrived. That's an extraordinary figure for an economy that was growing briskly throughout that time.

Taken from Newmania in Lewes

....

Where's Gordon?

Anybody seen him?

Anybody read anything about him in the papers?

Has he vanished?

....

Updating Mr Brown's blog.

Sometimes, just sometimes, it's a good idea to revisit a 'defunct' blog and make sure the feeds are doing what you hope.

Mr Brown has a blog. It's here.

It doesn't contain very much, and the most recent post is dated May 07, 2010.

There are some useful sidebar links, including the Number10 twitter feed.

Here's more.

How, and why, did Mrs R find Mr Brown's old blog?

It's because she's doing a bit of a 'Where's Gordon?' sort of search, because she's wondering where he is. He hasn't been seen since he left Downing Street, wasn't in Parliament for the Queen's Speech and wasn't there for yesterday's PMQs.

But he is being paid to be the MP for the people of Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath.

....

Gold

If Brown had not sold much of Britain's gold, British taxpayers would be nearly £6 billion better off. Not to mention having an important monetary asset that might help protect the British pound as its sovereign debt faces a possible credit rating downgrade and fiscal deficits and red ink as far as the eye can see.

Having that £6 billion worth of gold reserves would mean that the pain that we all feel as taxpayers in footing the bill for the follies of the government and the banking system would be significantly less. And it would protect sterling from falling in value in international markets leading to inflation.

Quoting Nick Leeson in an interview with Mark O’Byrne at The Market Oracle

Read the rest, it's interesting.

h/t Demetrius in a comment at Anna Raccoon

....

Wrong?

Cherie Blair even took to sitting in on Cabinet meetings

*shakes head*

Says it all really.

Mrs R penned her usual few hundred rambling words saying more, but there's no point, except to say she thinks this seems to show that they really did treat the process of government with contempt.

And then, of course, they always found it so hard to tell the truth. It's habit-forming.

Thanks to Anna Raccoon we learn of one last lie. So,

we are to have another Ted Heath, a glowering, sulking, petulant, bad tempered presence on the back benches, demanding the right to ask questions and reeling out his tractor stats.

Great!

But really, did we expect anything different?

....

** Newsflash** Brown quits (according to Evening Standard)

At least that's what the Times blog says.

4.15pm Brown quits, reports Standard

The Evening Standard is reporting that Gordon Brown is to quit tonight and David Cameron to be Britain's next prime minister.

"Gordon Brown is set to resign tonight and allow David Cameron to be Britain's new Prime Minister," they report.

"The Labour leader's final desperate attempt to cling on to power with a Lib-Lab deal crumbled amid a rebellion on his own side and policy disagreements with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.

"This afternoon he retreated to No 10 to discuss his situation with senior ministers, friends and wife Sarah.

Mr Brown had planned to stay in power until the summer if the deal had worked, earning himself a place in history as the man who won a historic fourth term for Labour."

....

Why?

Why aren't the cameras being allowed into 10 Downing Street for press conferences and statements?

Talking in the street is, to say the least, unusual.

Picture Mail.

....

Take him home please.

It's time the people of Scotland recognised how much Mr Brown has done for them, and offered something in return.

He's clearly very happy on his home soil, where he is closer to his ancestral roots. Look at his chirpily cheerful smile - it's enough to melt the hearts of the dourest Highlander.

Now look what happens when he starts worrying about Britain, can't you see the stress it's causing the poor man? Can't you see how he looks older, greyer and careworn?

Perhaps his troubles are to do with a slight conflict of interests, to do with that pledge he signed, back in 1988, called the 'Scottish Claim of Right". This is what it said :

We, gathered as the Scottish Constitutional Convention, do hereby acknowledge the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government best suited to their needs, and do hereby declare and pledge that in all our actions and deliberations their interests shall be paramount.

We further declare and pledge that our actions and deliberations shall be directed to the following ends:

* To agree a scheme for an Assembly or Parliament for Scotland;
* To mobilise Scottish opinion and ensure the approval of the Scottish people for that scheme; and
* To assert the right of the Scottish people to secure the implementation of that scheme.

(Further details and the list of signatories are here)

It all worked out too, and Scotland got its' devolution and its' Parliament. So you Scots have to recognise, and reward, the huge amount he's done for the country of his birth.

So Mrs Rigby can't emphasise enough just how deeply she believes the people of Scotland have a massive responsibility for this man's welfare. She believes you should acknowledge, and understand, how deep have been his personal sacrifices.

He has, after all, for thirteen long years, had to spend the greater part of his year in deepest London, where he's been surrounded by Cockney Sparrows and East End scalliwags who speak in tongues so very alien to the ears of someone born north of the border.

Mrs Rigby would therefore ask you to remember all this when it's time to cast your vote.

She asks you to consider how best to ensure that Mr Brown is able to spend his days close to the Manse in Kirkaldy where he spent his formative years and where he'll be welcomed with open arms.

....

The electoral equivalent of the norovirus.

"the electoral equivalent of the norovirus"

A description of Mr and Mrs Blair's contribution to the Labour Party's election campaign, by Paul Scott in the Mail.

Other gems odds and ends from the same article are :

[Mrs Blair] is free to lend support to the Labour Party in the election campaign, she has found her offers of help have been met with a deafening - and distinctly embarrassing - silence

Unfortunately - no, no, don't laugh.

Mrs Blair's diary is so blank that she has committed to attending a book signing to plug her memoirs at a literary festival in Swindon just three days before the election on May 6.

Given that the book in question has already been on the shelves for two years and sold the paltry total of 354 copies in the three months to the end of last year, it hardly seems a pressing engagement.

Champagne Socialists? The Blairs? No, no, it can't be true that ...

... the couple's eldest son, Euan, has just received a six-figure bonus from investment bank Morgan Stanley, where he has worked for the past three years.

Hmm, what was that about planned legislation concerning bankers and their bonuses?

Tony and Cherie already have a £3.7million London home in Connaught Square, a £5.75 million country home in Buckinghamshire and a £1.13million central London mews house that Cherie bought for their 23-year-old son, Nicky, last October.

and

[Mrs Blair] is [planning to spend] in the region on £1.5million on a London house for 26-year-old Euan because he is said by family friends to have 'outgrown' [his] £550,000 Islington flat

That'll be the Euan who just earned himself the six figure bonus, and can't afford to buy his own place. Goes to show he's really just the same as all the other young graduates who are struggling to pay off their student loans - to pay fees imposed by the government during his father's term as Prime Minister.

Mr Blair is estimated to have made in excess of £25million since quitting Number 10 in June 2007.

It's perhaps no wonder he doesn't visit Britain very often, Brown's tax policies would make a nasty dent in all that money. Odd though, that Mr Blair only donated, what was it, £14,000 or £40,000 to Labour's election campaign? That much will have been just a bit of loose change, cash down the back of the settee sort of thing.

Don't you just love it when you can see true Socialism in practice. Practised by all those rich people who are making absolutely sure they share their money around, who are helping out those who are poorer, who are pulling children out of poverty and such like, who are being true philanthropists ...

Ah, but that doesn't seem to be going so well either, because Mrs Blair has just 'donated',

... £250,000 to the Cherie Blair Foundation For Women, whose offices are located above a burger bar in London's Oxford Street, to help pay staff wages

It would also seem that

Mrs Blair ... has been riled by stories claiming her supporters are attempting to have her made a baroness with a seat in the House of Lords.

She's riled because she thinks it's all a smokescreen, devised by ...

... [Mr Brown who] wants to deflect attention from what are said to be his own private plans to make his wife Sarah a dame when he eventually leaves office.

Oh, but all this is just gossipy, over the garden fence sort of stuff. It's all in the Mail so can't possible be true. It can't be true that

Cherie's relationship with ... Gordon Brown remains as bitter as ever.

Surely they were the best of friends, so it can't be true.

Can it?

....

Oh really? Gordy and Mandy?

The Security and Intelligence services keep on file indiscretions, however politically sensitive, of crown servants, MP's etc - An example of that would be the sexual encounter that occurred between Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson (interrupted accidentally by a member of Michael Meacher's staff) in Gordon Brown's office at the House of Commons while in opposition and is still only known to a very select number of Commons and Whitehall hierarchy.

Gosh!

Who'd have thought it?

The mind boggles.

Haven't a clue if it's true or not. Mrs Rigby first read it on Corrugated Soundbite, who found it on Democratic Deficit where there's more stuff to read.

... And they found it somewhere else, where there are even more words - but you'll have to follow the trail for yourself, and up make your own mind.

....

“I don’t know him as a human.”

“I don’t know him as a human.”

Ben Brogan quoting Mr Brown when asked about Mr Cameron.

Makes one wonder who belongs to the alien species.

....

Not a good Friday?

The day after Mr Brown

praised Catholicism for often being the "conscience of the nation"

it is reported that

Britain’s most senior Catholic admits ‘evil’ clergy abuse has led to ‘great public humiliation’ of [the] Church

and

the cover-up of “evil” paedophilia by senior clergy “brings shame on us all”

Phew.

Cranmer perhaps explains the timing of the church's announcement, by suggesting that

Christians endure what Josephus referred to as ‘that most wretched of deaths’ on Good Friday because of the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection: it sustains them through the despair.

So, maybe, the Catholic Church is trying to do the right thing by letting this announcement be published on Good Friday, the most holiest of days.

On the other hand, Mrs Rigby doesn't think Mr Brown's words are more than a cynical attempt to garner votes from a section of the population, and a cynical attempt to link with what he knows has been bad news for the Catholic faith. Mr Brown was, perhaps even hinting they are the epitome of evil Britishness - he tends to do things like that, and says things that can be taken in more than one way.

Mr Brown is, as are his wife and children, a member of the Calvinist Presbyterian Church of Scotland. He worships at St Bryce Kirk in Kirkaldy, where his father, Rev John Brown, was a Minister.

Mrs Rigby thinks Mr Brown should remain true to his religious persuasion, even in public life, to do otherwise suggests a lack of confidence in his belief.

....

How to make up a Prime Minister.

How to make up a Prime Minister in four easy steps

1. Transparent Brush. Foam all over.
(This is believed to be an illuminating foam to give the PM's face that certain glow.)

2. Small pot under eyes, dimple, creases, blend in.
(This refers to the use of concealer to smooth out facial bumps and blemishes.)

3. Clinique. Super balanced make-up.
(All over again, like painting a wall, and ears. Shut eyes over lids then with make-up pad smooth over liquid. This tells the PM to trowel foundation over his whole face.)

4. Powder (dark brush) terracotta Guerlain, all over.
(Slap on fake tan bronzer.)

No no, don't shake your heads in disbelief. This is real, even though today is April 1st.

A pile of documents was left in a taxi way back in May 2009. The taxi driver, naturally, passed the documents to the Sun, who wrote an article and then passed the file back to the Prime Minister, who persuaded a "No10 spokesman" to say:

"The bag was accidentally left by a junior member of staff. We thank The Sun for returning it. The PM, like everyone on TV, is required to wear make-up."

But is everybody who goes on TV expected to wear quite as much?

Found via Iain Dale

....

Ambiguous radio news.

Heard on a news bulletin in the car :-

"Mr Brown is appealing to middle class voters."

He can appeal all he likes, but most people earning more than the magic £16k do not find him in the least appealing, unless they're getting something the rest of us aren't.

It would also be nice, wouldn't it, if he would stop using the BBC to broadcast his electioneering messages.

....

Contract for a Cabinet Minister.

"I will set out a clear and public annual contract for each new Cabinet Minister, detailing what I expect them and their department to deliver to the British people, and that their continued appointment is dependent on their delivery just as it would be in a business or any other organisation."

Said Mr Brown.

Does this sound like somebody who is in post as a result of a democratic process?

And anyway, what does it mean? Probably yet more unattainable targets decided by A. N. Other, and put into place without the means to meet those targets but involving a huge amount of paper shuffling and list-making. That seems to be all they're good at - making lists and looking at them.

....

Manufactured decline.

Over at Scunnert Nation there's part of the Politics Show where Barry Weir asks Mr Brown about the loss of manufacturing jobs in Stourbridge, and asks what he is doing to stop this decline in manufacturing. He's very polite.

Two things Mrs Rigby would like to point out, the first is the expression on Mr Brown's face at the beginning of this clip - and he's there with people he hopes will vote him back into office.

The second is, well ... Mrs R has written several draft blogs about Mr Brown's words during this programme, but they all ended up too wordy. She's tried writing about how he didn't seem to be able to grasp the difference between manufacturing jobs lost now and the urgency of the situation for those who are out of work. He referred to retraining - in literacy and numeracy - and 'research and development' programmes, advance engineering of the future, and apprenticeships, but nothing now, nothing to help the adults who might well be breadwinners and who don't seem to have a future because there's nowhere for them to use their existing skills.

It was as if they don't count any more, that they were ignored, their problems sidestepped, as if it doesn't matter too much when grown men lose their livelihoods.

Anyhow, watch it for yourself and see what you think.

....

Similar backgrounds?

Just trying to balance things.

Taken from a single article, in the Telegraph

Gordon [Brown] [born 20-02-1951] attended the [private] nursery school, taught by a Miss Bogie, in two rooms of her flat, where he met Murray - now Lord - Elder, who is still a close friend today and who was chief of staff to John Smith, the late Labour leader.

When Gordon was four he enrolled at Kirkcaldy West, the local primary school, ... Gordon excelled at sums and was set increasingly difficult tasks by his teacher, Aileen Mason.

At 10, he joined Kirkcaldy High, an ancient school ..... selective in its intake and its 1,200 pupils were given a "hothouse" education. .....

In April 1962, aged 11, he wrote an article about a church campaign in favour of television commercials against the twin demons of alcohol and tobacco. Gordon concluded his piece with a typically opinionated flourish: "Let us hope that this plan will be a success and that the sale of drink and cigarettes to the younger and older generation will fall when these [commercials] against drink and cigarettes are shown."

At 14, he passed nine O-levels and just after his 15th birthday Gordon took his Highers, the equivalent of A-levels, securing five grade As, including maths, English, and history.

Gordon was part of the E-stream - the E stood for early - a pioneering scheme for fast-tracking the brightest 16-year-olds to university. ...

At university, ... he took a first in history [at Edinburgh, founded 1582 - 4th oldest in Scotland]

There do not appear to have been complaints about the school breaching confidentiality by giving out the details of the academic background and achievements of a former pupil.

Now for Mr Cameron, cobbled together from this this article and this one, both in the Telegraph

David Cameron, [born 09-10-1966] the Tory leader, [had] 13 classmates at Heatherdown prep school

..... So quick was the future Conservative leader’s ascent through the academic ranks at [...] school that he entered its top academic class almost two years early.

A school report emerged ... showing Mr Cameron ranked last in the elite sixth form [current Y6] at Heatherdown Preparatory School [...] following poor results in Latin, maths, geography and French. ... James Edwards, the former head teacher, told The Daily Telegraph that only the brightest boys were allowed to enter the elite form ....

Mr Cameron was as much as two years younger than the boys against whom he was competing, after teachers marked him out as “very bright” and promoted him up the school.

"To suggest he was a dunce is rather unfair because you would expect a younger boy to be behind chaps who had already sat their scholarship exams to [sic. secondary school],"

Cameron passed 12 O-levels and 3 A grades at A-level, and a '1' in the scholarship exam for PPE .... went on to achieve a first class honours degree in philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford [founded c.1188 - 3rd oldest in Western world]

(Aside - In the south it was common for a year group to be called a 'form', it certainly was when Mrs R was at school, but further north she became a little disorientated to be placed in a 'year' - which is now used nationally, although there are still 6th Form colleges.)

So you could say, couldn't you, that the educational backgrounds and outcomes were similar - both men were fast-tracked through school, spent their time in classes labelled "E", both attended selective secondary schools, and both achieved first class degrees in 'proper' subjects at very good Universities - and they both went through Higher Education when it was paid for by the state.

It's also interesting to note that their ancestral backgrounds are remarkably similar :

Genealogists at Ancestry.co.uk, a family history website, have studied the  1841 census, the first complete record of Scotland’s population, and found  the two men’s direct ancestors. They were tilling the same hard soil only  150 miles from each other.

John Brown, born in 1806, a 35-year old agricultural labourer living in the tiny village of Balmullo in Fife; Ewen Cameron, born in 1781, appears in the census as a 60-year-old farmer living in Inverness.

John Brown of Balmullo, Fife, had a son, John, who became a farmer;

Ewen Cameron’s son William is listed ... as a farmer at Upper Muckove, outside Inverness near Culloden.

Simon Harper, of Ancestry.co.uk, said ... time was a great leveller of class.

“Cameron is recognised as coming from a line of blue-blooded stock and Brown is seen as working-class, but not so long ago their ancestors were living near each other and doing the same thing,”.

And now for some differences :-

At age 11 Mr Brown had decided to wage war on both alcohol and tobacco - even though whilst at university he suggested taking empty cans beer to parties so he didn't have to contribute. At 16 Mr Cameron was, allegedly, punished for smoking cannabis.

Mr Brown, before the age of four, was taught by a lady who lived, and taught, in her flat (- imagine the furore from the agents of the state if such a thing were to happen today -) whilst Mr Cameron went to a boarding school.

According to the articles (you'll have to read them yourself) many of Mr Brown school chums have risen high within the state sector - funded by taxation; those of Mr Cameron have risen within the private sector - funded by enterprise.

Pictures of the day.

No, it won't go away if you cover your eyes. Picture from NotW

That little plaque, and those alongside it ,demonstrate the reality of the war in Afghanistan It also perhaps demonstrates the effects of cost-cutting and penny-paring that, according to Mr Brown's statement to Chilcot, did not happen.

Picture Daily Telegraph

Pictures taken during Mr Brown's public relations, vote-hunting, "surprise visit to our frontline troops in Helmand" show him displaying the result of his Kit Kat and banana diet.

He didn't seem to realise that the soldiers might have had something better to do than show him around their 'camp' - a camp that does not resemble Butlins.

Whilst he was trying to look important in his overstuffed shirt, two more soldiers lost their lives.

Even the loyal BBC can't hide the truth. There is a page showing the faces of the decent, honest, loyal, patriotic men and women who have lost their lives - and who may not have died if Mr Brown had been willing to spend taxpayers' money on up to date equipment instead of making sure taxpayers funded the lifestyles of the idle and feckless.

Look at them

Let's hope Mr Brown has no nightmares, that he counts sheep when he tries to sleep instead of seeing the faces of the young men and women he has helped send to war, underfunded and underequipped, whilst the people of the Met Office, whose wages come out of the MoD budget sit in their offices and are paid bonuses for getting the weather forecast wrong.
...............................................

Oh, and this was clinging at straws type of stuff too ...

... one of the Prime Minister's officials telephoned the British embassy in Kabul before the Conservative leader visited troops in Helmand Province in December to request that it did not co-operate with him.

"The aide made clear that Cameron's trip should not be a success," says my man in the Number 10 bunker. "He said there should be no 'media availability'."

Mrs Rigby is particularly irritated by the governments behaviour towards the military because some young men she has watched grow from infancy have decided it might be a good idea to join the Army. They are old enough, they think they are wise enough, they know they will be well trained, they do not believe they will be either injured or killed - that is the nature of youth, they know they are invincible.

These young mens' parents know otherwise, but what can they do apart from being afraid.

....

Gordon Brown's abstemious schooldays.

Taken from a newspaper mini-biography :-

... Gordon concluded his piece with a typically opinionated flourish: "Let us hope that this plan will be a success and that the sale of drink and cigarettes to the younger and older generation will fall when these [commercials] against drink and cigarettes are shown."

It sounds rather like a political campaign, or a submission to an inquiry that eventually resulted in the banning of tobacco commercials.

Actually though, it wasn't.

The clue is in the title.

Mrs Rigby is quoting from an article entitled "The Making of Gordon Brown", carried in the in Daily Telegraph dated 9th June 2007. It's a lengthy piece well worth revisiting, and was written by Andrew Pierce and Richard Alleyne " ... who hear[d] the recollections of family and friends - many speaking for the first time - about the extraordinary talents and moral purpose of the young Gordon ..." who was, on 27th June 2007, to take over the role of Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

So when did he use speak out against the evils of both tobacco and alcohol?

In April 1962, aged 11, he wrote an article about a church campaign in favour of television commercials against the twin demons of alcohol and tobacco.

Makes you think, doesn't it.

At age 11 in 1962 most boys were still in short trousers, they played  cowboys and Indians,or perhaps reinvented WW2 whilst mimicking Biggles.

According to the more senior Rigbys, in 1962 televisions were still uncommon in working people's homes -  they had to make do with their old radiogram for quite a while longer and when they got one viewing was stricly limited, regulated by the number of shillings needed to feed the electricity meter under the stairs.

Oh, and in case you're interested, the first UK commercial was shown at 8.12 pm on Sept 22 1955, it was for toothpaste.

The commercial owed its prime placing to chance. The Gibbs advertisement had come first in a lottery drawn with 23 other advertisements, including those for Guinness, Surf, National Benzole, Brown & Polson Custard and Summer County Margarine.

....

Anderson Shelters for Haiti.

Carefully reported on the BBC and in and in some of the Scottish newspapers (but not so far in any "English" papers) are details of Mr and Mrs Brown's attendance at a poetry fundraising event at Westminster Hall in London.

Whilst there Mr Brown announced that he had bought all the corrugated iron in Britain - all 5,700 sheets of it, worth £35,000. He's taking that money out of the £20 million 'pledged' by the government in aid, and is sending these sheets of metal off to Haiti where they will be used to provide up to 2,000 "hurricane-proof" shelters. It seems that this might be the first thing Britain is sending to Haiti.

Bear with me, because the rest of this post rambles on a bit, and wanders off at disjointed tangents.

These sheets of corrugated iron are to be taken to Haiti on the RFA vessel Largs Bay. It's a "landing ship dock", so should be able to unload almost anywhere there's a beach - one of the more sensible decisions that's been made, as explained by The Yorkshire Ranter . (It's worth a read)

The BBC points out that around 1.5 million Haitians are now homeless - their homes are heaps of rubble, some of which covers decaying human remains.

Britain is sending these people (who have survived devastating earthquakes and many of whom suffered terrible injuries and are at risk of cholera and other diseases) bits of metal (no mention of timber to build supporting structures) that will make the equivalent of Anderson Shelters - something British people would never consider living in, not even during wartime. People in Britain would now never consider living under a tin roofed house either, not even one with proper walls - it would be too hot when the sun shines, and too noisy when it rains, so it wouldn't look nice enough and probably wouldn't be environmentally friendly either.

Sending this corrugated iron seems slightly  hypocritical and seems, somehow, to lack respect too, and respect is sadly lacking in the media's portrayal of Haiti - as pointed out by Andy Kershaw in an excellent article in the Independent. Please read the article, it'll make you think.

All this, along with other snippets that have been recently highlighted by other bloggers, has left Mrs R in something of a quandary, and has made her ask a few questions she can't easily answer.

One of the things she can't answer relates to the moral responsibility of aid-givers at the time of a serious national disaster, especially when our own government's aid-givers seem very slow to help people within our own country who are in desperate need - after flooding, during heavy snowfall etc - when private individuals have been left to their own devices and told to use 'community spirit' to keep themselves going.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation lists what British people think they need in order to maintain the most basic standard of living, and Raedwald recently pointed out that, according to Save the Children, British children are "living in poverty" if they don't have, amongst other things :-

Dressing Gown - 1
Jeans - 3prs
Jumpers - 4
Jumpers - 3 (different?)
Pants - 10prs
PE shorts - 2prs
Swim shorts - 1
PE tops - 1
PE 'T' shirts - 2
Plimsoles / trainers - 1 pr
Polo shirts - 6
Pyjamas - 2
School shoes - 1pr
School socks - 5prs
Shorts - 3prs
Socks - 10prs
Tracksuit bottoms - 2ps
Trainers - 1pr
Trousers - 4prs
T-shirts - 5
Vests - 10
Waterproof coat - 1
Wellington boots - 1
Winter Coat - 1
... more items are listed on this spreadsheet, which runs to several pages

If British children need all these things they also, presumably, need somewhere to put them - so have to have wardrobes and or chests of drawers. They also need a means to keep these things clean, and a decent enough building in which to put everything, complete with closable windows and lockable doors to keep out thieves and inclement weather. In Britain we might get frost, snow and heavy rain, but we rarely get hurricanes strong enough to blow our sturdily-built homes away.

All these 'essential' things are provided for British children via their parent(s) - out of salary if the parents work, via the benefits system if the parent(s) won't or can't work. Nobody in Britain is left without, it's a social contract.

Britain as a nation, and using money collected via taxation from every person who spends money, is sending 5,700 sheets of corrugated iron to Haiti. Corrugated iron is the most basic of roofing materials - and is to be used to make 'shelters', it is not described as being suitable to make 'homes' or houses. The Haitian hurricane season usually starts in May, and Haitian hurricanes can blow away homes.

It's been well documented that there are temporary "tent towns" in Haiti. These temporary towns are home to, so far, around 500,000 people near Port-au-Prince alone. The tents - some are high quality, stormproof affairs, others are very temporary and are little more than plastic sheeting supported by posts - have mostly been provided by charities and are emergency relief that's already in situ. This emergency relief includes the Rotary Club's excellent ShelterBoxes - which have been paid for by online donations, street collections - all voluntary giving.

Let's carry on looking at these ShelterBoxes. Each one contains a 10-person tent, 10 sleeping bags, cooking equipment, cutlery and so on. The boxes themselves are huge (I've seen one), need two people to carry them and are large enough to be used as a crib, sturdy enough to be used to carry water and when covered by the lid could easily be used as a temporary table.

More than 1,500 (and rising) of these boxes have already arrived in Haiti - that's 1,500+ tents providing emergency accommodation and basic living equipment for at least 15,000 adults. Look at the pictures here and you'll see how successful, and how neat and tidy it all looks.

Reading around the internet it seems that Haitians don't actually like living in these tented towns, but they've got no choice because there is nowhere else to go, and there is such a lot to do before they can return to the areas destroyed by the first, powerful, earthquake and the lesser aftershock. They are grateful for the aid, grateful that things arrived so fast, disappointed that food etc wasn't distributed more quickly - but acknowledge that it wasn't easy because the poor transport and communication infrastructure had been made worse by the quakes and because Haiti is a poor country it didn't have the heavy machinery to move things from the airport to where it was needed.

To help the people of Haiti, who are mostly living in temporary accommodation, our government is sending, on our behalf, enough corrugated iron to make approximately 2,000 temporary roofs - which is only 500 more temporary roofs than have already been provided by ShelterBox, which is a fairly small charity.

There is no suggestion that there will be anything whatsoever to go beneath these temporary tin roofs - at least not yet - no beds, no tables, no chairs, no clothes, no wardrobes - all those things so essential to British people, so this shipload of stuff doesn't seem to be the best use of public money and nor does it seem to be particularly forward thinking - in terms of long-term need and long-term help, just a temporary fix that probably isn't exactly essential.

So here are the unanswerable questions ...

What right does our government have to buy up all stocks of any material, effectively depriving British people of this item in order to make a 'gesture' - because a temporary roof is little more than a gesture.

Has our government decided that, because some of the people who've lost their homes used to live in shanty towns, they neither need nor deserve anything better than what they had before the earthquake stuck?

Do the children of Haiti need, or deserve, the same as British children in terms of belongings and accommodation? If not, why not, and if yes - is it our responsibility to intervene at a time of crisis to ensure Haitian children get what they either need or deserve, or should we sit back and hope somebody else does it, or hope that somehow the surviving adults will manage to provide these 'essentials' all on their own - something they would never be expected by British have-nots.

At what point does "giving overseas aid" amount to interference or meddling with another country's affairs?

I've absolutely no idea how to answer these questions, but it's something to think about - and it all started with 5,700 sheets of corrugated iron and how they compare to some nice-looking tents.

As an aside - it will be interesting, don't you think, to see if Mr Brown offers to help rebuild the Presidential Palace.