On the verge of ...

John Prescott today warns the Labour party that it is £20m in debt, "on the verge of bankruptcy"

John Prescott is, by the way, hoping to become Labour party Treasurer. The introductory piece in the Guardian is here, the main article here.

Mr Prescott seems to blame Gordon Brown for the Labour Party's problems, although he doesn't seem to condemn him for the state of the country's economy. He says,... the so-called "election that never was", in 2007, cost the party £1.5m in preparation costs ...

Prescott also thanks the various backers who are, currently, keeping the party afloat, namely,

... party staff and volunteers, trade union contributions, high value donations and the goodwill of the Co-op bank ...

Iain Dale highlights Unite's cost-cutting efforts, which somehow managed to increase the Union's 'surplus' by more than £9million in a mere twelve months - a truly astonishing sum of money in these cash-strapped times. And Bob Crow's salary has been increased by 12%. So it would seem that, at the moment at least, the Unions are flush with funds.

When an organisation is deep in debt it's easy for it to be pressurised by those with a bit of cash to push their way and because of this Mrs R thinks the next few months in the life of the Labour Party will be more than a little interesting. She thinks it's not only on the verge of bankruptcy, time will tell.

Mrs R hasn't the time to write more, so suggests you read what other bloggers have to say about this - John Ward in Medway "Labour almost Bankrupt" and Raedwald "Thieves operate in this area".

Edit : And Iain Dale has an idea that might help save Labour from bankruptcy.

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Germans prefer the Deutschmark.

According to this article a recent IPSOS poll shows that

A majority of Germans wants to scrap the euro and bring back the old currency

Comment, more information and some interesting graphs over at England Expects and something by Lord Pearson here

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General Strike? - It'd save money!

When workers take strike action they aren't paid by their employer, their unions give them a subsidy that's meant to make sure they don't lose out financially.

BA crew were paid a whopping (*sarcasm*) £30 a day whilst on strike. RMT probably pays about the same. This works out at £210 for a 7-day working week. For a 5-day week it'd be £150, for 3 days it'd be £90. (Yes, it's easy Maths, but it's handy to see the numbers written down.)

Back in May Thisismoney said Signallers ... earn up to £65,000 a year for working a three-day week, presumably this would be for controlling somewhere really complicated or even, say, the whole of the East Coast Line, which means that very few signallers would earn that much, but using that as an example it works out at an average of, umm, 52 weeks x 3 days = 156 days. Ooh, that's a bit more than £393 a day. So, even if either LUL or TfL gave the unions £30 a day to pass on to the RMT strikers it'd save quite a bit - maybe as much as £360 a day for the highest paid employees.

So Mrs R wonders if we could persuade all the very important union bosses to get their angry workers to go on strike - especially those whose wages are paid out of the public purse? It'd save a fortune.

Worried about the impact on local, regional, and national services? No need!

If the strikes are as successful as the two day walk-out by RMT we wouldn't notice very much, because according to the BBC

London Underground said there was no disruption to services again despite a strike by maintenance workers.

The action by the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union began at 1900 BST on Wednesday, in a row over proposed changes to jobs, pay and conditions.

Transport for London (TfL) said services operated as normal despite the walkout on the Northern, Piccadilly and Jubilee lines.

The action ended at 1900 BST on Friday.

So it looks as if the trains still worked and nobody really noticed. So, imagine, if you will, if certain high-earners in the public sector took strike action. Would Leeds, for example, grind to a halt without the services of the five-a-day regional coordinator? Would Calderdale be unable to function without the Corporate Marketing Officer? Would the NHS close its' doors to sick people without the protected learning time facilitators?

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Petrol?

It would seem that people are expecting a steep rise in either fuel duty or VAT - queues at the local garage, and 'empty' signs attached to most of the pumps.

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Forgemasters' government loan(s).

A factory's expansion plans ... have been halted after the government cancelled an £80m loan.

Oh dear, that doesn't look good. It'll probably annoy a few people.

Let's just, very quickly, look at a couple of 'tweets' about this cancellation. First from Edmund Conway who wrote,

... mandelson's big pre-election pr stunt

Mrs R recalls that there suddenly seemed to be an awful lot of spare money just before the election, a lot of things were promised but, in reality, Labour knew the country was broke, had said there 'would be cuts' but hadn't said where, and knew they were not going to be re-elected. So instead of things being widely publicised and then quietly dropped (as had happened during the previous 13 years) all the cost-cutting and all the cancellations were part of the poisoned chalice passed on to the next government.

Lord Drayson tweeted that this £80m was,

a real investment in low carbon jobs

Mrs R isn't quite sure how these would have been 'low carbon' jobs, because the money was intended to help the company to install a 15,000 tonne press to make large forgings for the nuclear energy industry. Mrs R understands that nuclear power might be 'low carbon' because it doesn't involve using fossil fuels, but steel production uses quite a lot, and tends to look a bit like this. (pic BBC).

The £80m was meant to help 'create' about

about 180 skilled jobs

And that, you see, is something Mrs R "'just doesn't get".

If jobs were so important to the last government, why they didn't make a bit more of a fuss or do something a bit more proactive that could have stopped other companies being bought out, with jobs vanishing from Britain for ever. There really are too many instances to list, but do include a lot of chocolate manufacturers including Cadbury's, with 400 jobs lost at Keynsham. Then there was Corus on Tyneside, with the loss of 1,700 jobs to India. The 180 jobs to be 'created' at Forgemasters is all well and good, it's a start, but is tiny by comparison with elsewhere. Were, for example, the thousands of Corus workers meant to be happy to be put on the dole scrapheap?

Looking back to 1998 the government didn't seem to do anything much when, according to Forgemasters own site

the company was sold in two parts to USA buyers - the aerospace business to Allegheny Teledyne, and the River Don and Rolls businesses to Atchison Castings.

It went a bit pear-shaped, and then the situation improved ...

Atchison's management failed to develop the business and in 2003 their whole enterprise went into liquidation. A major turnaround at River Don enabled local management led by Graham Honeyman to ring fence the business from administration.

After two years of negotiation to overcome major hurdles including a difficult market and pension problems, management was able to complete an Management Buy Out [under Dr Graham Honeyman].

who fortunately

... returned Sheffield Forgemasters International Ltd to profit in just six months when he took over the loss-making company in 2002.

Within less than three years turnover increased from £35m to £100m, rising from £83,000 to £150,000 per employee. Today the company is an internationally competitive business with investment in people at its core.

It's a truly remarkable turnaround, and in such a short time too - from being in liquidation to making so much money. It's no wonder Mr Graham Aubrey Honeyman was awarded an CBE and all sorts of other prizes from the RAE and so on. Picture Yorkshire Post

It's strange that, such an important and successful man doesn't have a profile on Wikipedia, but that's by the by - he's done well, and there are people who are grateful to him and his business acumen.

Mrs R is more interested in that £80m government loan which's just been cancelled. You see, she's not too thrilled with that amount of taxpayer's money going to any private business, more especially one that's apparently so successful and which, she's fairly sure, could attract private investments and loans - leaving the cash available for smaller business and, maybe, even to pay for things that benefit the whole country. She wonders if it's a sort of sideways nationalisation, even though it was a 'loan' not a gift, but she could easily be wrong, because she's really quite ignorant about that sort of thing. And anyway, how would you go about nationalising, or part nationalising, just a small part of a multinational company? Anyhow, that aside, Mrs R does note that

The Government loan comes in addition to funds lent by other businesses including nuclear power firm Westinghouse Electric and the Sheffield office of the Lloyds Banking Group.

Errm, Lloyds? That rings a rather loud bell.

Would that the same Lloyds the Labour government pumped a fair bit of money into, so that now the British government is the major shareholder?

And Westinghouse Electric Company? It would appear that this company was bought, in 1999, by British Nuclear Fuels plc. And BNFL is owned by the UK Government.

So, to Mrs R's slightly ignorant eyes it looks as if the previous government had managed to push quite a bit of cash in the direction of by Sheffield Forgemasters - in a roundabout sort of way. She could, of course, be wrong - as she's already said, she's quite ignorant about this sort of thing.

Anyhow, while Mrs R was wandering around the internet learning about companies and loans she discovered that Sheffield Forgemasters was awarded a £2.7million R&D grant from Yorkshire Forward?

Yorkshire Forward is the Regional Development Agency for Yorkshire and the Humber, it was set up in 1999 after people in the north east voted against regional agencies and assemblies - and they got an assembly too, but nobody gets to vote for anybody who works there. There are regional agencies all round the country, and not one of them makes any money, none of them is a business, they are all funded by central government and via the EUs 'Regional Development Fund'.

So it does look as if Forgemasters might have done quite well out of the last government and, actually, there's nothing wrong with that if there's plenty of money to splash around, but there isn't because, as Liam Byrne said, "There's no money left!".

Mrs R wishes Forgemasters' management and all their employees well. She hopes they never find themselves in the same situation as other companies formed as a result of management buyouts, such as Ineos, who decided to base themselves in Switzerland because of the UK tax situation. But they might not have to do that, not with 'global' offices dotted around the world in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America.

Despite predictions of gloom from Pat McFadden and Dennis McShane The BBC says they'll manage okay without this cash loan, and quote Dr Honeyman, who said

"While the press would have placed the company at the forefront of civil nuclear manufacture, it is important for us now to focus on other elements of the company's development.

"The government clearly has a remit to reduce spending and cut the economic deficit and it is for them to decide how best to do that.

"Sheffield Forgemasters will continue to develop its significant involvement into civil nuclear, thermal and hydro power generation markets and seek other ways to develop the business."

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No idea what happened to this post, it was queued to be 'live' yesterday, but blogger disagreed - maybe the software decided it was too bitty and fragmented, and not worth publishing!

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If you have ...

Makes you think, for a moment.

Taken from here

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Threadbare socialists?

There's a muddle of tales in the media and blogosphere today that, in isolation, don't seem to have a common thread, but Mrs Rigby has managed to tie some stories together.

Let's start with Old Rightie who says, None So Blind .... As Those Who NEVER See. and

The only criteria a successful society should have is to ensure those from disadvantaged backgrounds with ABILITY and INTELLIGENCE are not passed by. Sadly, Socialists believe we are all the same, except when doling out the top Labour and Union jobs.

And from there straight on to the Mail, reporting that dear Arthur Scargill, ex-President of the once wealthy and which-once-had-187,000-members-but-now-has-only-about-1,600 National Union of Miners, is is threatening to sue his own Union.

He's doing this because the NUM has reduced his benefits, and he doesn't think it's fair. He's doing it because he's losing ... ... around £5,000 a year ... in 'perks', and reckons the Union is breaking a contractually binding obligation to keep his house nice and warm in winter.

Although he retired in 2002 Mr Scargill retains the post of "honorary president" of the Union. He's fortunate to have the use of three-bedroom flat luxury apartment at the Barbican in London - which costs the Union around £33,000 a year in rent and running costs. Mr Scargill's own home is a bungalow near Barnsley - a bungalow that's called a cottage and looks, to Mrs Rigby, very much like a big house (picture Mail)

Mrs Rigby wondered why the NUM might have made this decision now, especially as their membership (and income) must have fallen quite considerably over the years because there's so little mining in Britain. So she went to have a look at that Certification Officer site to see if she could find out a bit more.

Here's an example, which was chosen at random :-

North Staffs Federation of NUM has just one member - according to their 2009 return to the The Certification Officer. This branch of the NUM has, according to the return, zero income from subscriptions, zero income from members, but £7,500 from 'other sources' - listed as "monies received from solicitors for use of office costs and staff". Administrative costs are £8,914 - the breakdown is, to Mrs R's eyes, peculiar but it seems that the branch is being kept open to pay the wages and National Insurance contributions of one 'secretary' - and that's it. This individual is paid a wage, but doesn't seem to pay a Union Subscription.

Try as she might, and despite wading through the tortuous website that is NUM.org, Mrs R can find no indication of what an individual mineworker might pay to be a member of this union. However, according to the to 2009 NUM returns there were indeed a mere 1,611 members, with income from 'contributions and subscriptions' of £162,325.00 - which suggests that each active, paying, member pays about £100 a year.

The union does have other assets and receives investment income, which has reduced due to low interest rates and, presumably, the recession. But to simplify things let's imagine the NUM only uses membership fees ... to pay Mr Scargill's fuel bills would take the full subscription payments of 50 members, with another 330 subscriptions paying for his London flat luxury apartment. Which means that 385 people - almost 25% of the fee-paying members of the NUM - are paying their dues to ensure there is £38,000 a year available to maintain Mr Scargill's two-homes lifestyle and to keep him warm and cosy. That, Mrs R needs to remind you, is in addition to any pension/salary he may also be receiving, from the union.

Another 89 members' dues are needed to pay the wages of the single North Staffs NUM Federation employee - a 'wage' that equates to about a quarter of Mr Scargill's 'expenses' and/or 'perks'.

That's nice, don't you think? Don't you think all those NUM members are pleased to see their money being used so wisely?

Looking at the rest of the balance sheets it suggests that between 2007 and 2008 the NUM took quite a hit financially, with more going out than coming in - and so there was less money at the end of the year than at the beginning. Hardly surprising really, when you think about it, and hardly surprising that they're trying to take steps to cut their spending and balance the books.

Let's change tack, and quickly whizz over to the current issues with "Unite" - the Union chosen by many of British Airways' cabin crew - and staying with the Mail which reports that

Britain's best-paid flight crews – with the most senior staff earning up to £56,000 a year – are questioning the wisdom of signing up to a ... summer of strikes

because

'Many ... simply can't afford to go out on strike

Mrs R recalls, back in April, that Unite imposed a compulsory fund-raising levy on its branches, aiming to collect £700,000 towards a strike fund. At the time the union was 'paying' striking staff the grand sum of £30 a day - £150 for five days, which would not cover living costs for most people and is less minimum wage ... which in itself generates all sorts of state handouts because it isn't enough to live on. It's also almost exactly half as much as Mr Scargill gets, or was getting, in 'perks'.

Another Mail article suggests that BA has won the battle, that staff are demoralised and "Willy Walsh has won". If this is true it's possible that BA staff could have realised they were being taken for mugs by their union bosses - one of whom tweeted the proceedings of Acas arbitration discussion, whilst another who earns £122,000-a-year (courtesy of union members) decided to go off on holiday - using EasyJet.

It's also possible that some of the BA staff recall the 'striking' 1970s. Mrs R's blog isn't the place to discuss the rights and wrongs of these 'famous' strikes - but will say that the industrial action overseen, and seemingly encouraged, by Mr Scargill caused a lot of heartache, upset and discomfort for many, many, working-class people who had no dispute with their own employers and who were themselves struggling to make ends meet at a time of rising prices and recession.

Mrs R hasn't a clue if anybody predicted that the strikes, which included a no-maintenance agreement that extended to not pumping water out of mines, would result in mine-closures and almost all Britain's coal being imported - but that's what happened and as a result whole towns and communities suffered for very many years, and we now pay miners in other countries to extract the coal that is used to make our electricity. The people who weren't hurt too much by those strikes were the union officials, safe with their subscription-funded salaries and nicely useful 'perks' which, it appears, at least one very important ex-union official continues to enjoy - even in retirement.

So, let's imagine for a moment what would happen if, as a result of ongoing strike action, BA were to fold. It wouldn't necessarily affect the whole country, and probably wouldn't affect whole towns and communities in the same way as mine closures did. But, if BA were to be sold abroad and the company was rebranded, restructured, and based at an airport elsewhere in the world there would be significant British job losses in a huge range of associated services. This would have a knock-on effect in local communities (reduced income for shops, clubs, small businesses etc) which could be devastating. It would affect many, many, more people than the few striking BA cabin crews but would be unlikely to touch the lives of those who are encouraging the strikers -  the few very important Unite Union officials who will continue to receive their salaries and any associated perks, because they work for the union itself.

It would seem to Mrs Rigby that going on strike at the wrong time in the modern world only seems to hurt the strikers themselves, and their friends and neighbours.

And maybe that's where a bit of education, a bit of reading, a bit of logical thought and an element of caution might just come in handy, especially when you compare Mr Scargill's current situation with that of the BA strikers - part of whose dispute with BA relates to their contractual 'perks', as does his with the NUM, hence his complaint that ...

'They agreed I should rent a local authority flat during my period in office and following my retirement that would carry on until my death. There are many people who have two homes.'

Mrs Rigby wonders if, maybe, Mr Scargill should take unilateral strike action, and withold his services as honorary president until the union capitulates. That, surely, would be the thing to do rather than resorting to using solicitors - because, after all, that's what he told/encouraged his union members to do all those years ago - and most of them only ever had one home, and their homes could have looked something like this. (Picture Sunniside Local History Society)

Socialism eh! All the same, all in it together, and all aiming for a common cause - to help ... actually, Mrs R wonders to help just who, precisely?

Is it to help the poor, downtrodden 'working man'* battle against punitive, dangerous or unfair working practices, or is it 'these days' merely to help massage over-inflated egos of a few self-styled very-important-people who see their own empires crumbling along with falling union membership?

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*

As an aside - Mrs Rigby wonders how many 'top' union officials are women?

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Ainsworth interview

Coventry North East MP Ainsworth, who spent the 11 months up to the General Election in the cabinet, was rarely able to secure one-to-one meetings with Mr Brown and when the two did get together Ainsworth says his views on defence policy were generally ignored, he has revealed.

“It’s no secret that Gordon and I are not each other’s greatest fans,” he explained. “I found him very difficult to work with. Impossible really.”

Makes Mrs R think, "Aww, poor Bob.

Then she read this :-

In his first major interview since resigning as Secretary of State, Ainsworth admits he is struggling to get used to “normality”. He’s gone from a cossetted life, whisked around the world with first class travel accompanied by a retinue of support staff and armed security guards, to the role of a backbench constituency MP.

Why on earth did he, or indeed any government minister, need all that? It does, though, help explain this profligacy. Since 2008 (Fausty)

£178 million [spent] on MPs' pay and perks

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Benefitting from the long game.

The blogosphere has been awash with comments relating to David Laws' 'exposure' in the Telegraph. Some think it was a good thing, some think it was the right thing, some think it was mean and some think it was downright cruel.

Mrs Rigby's problem, when trying to write about this, has been because she roundly despises those who cheat - any of them, anywhere. She thinks those who abuse a system should be punished, and should stay punished, which is why she was a bit annoyed when she learned that Sir Ian Blair was to be ennobled along with the pieman. You see, she thinks the rules only seem to apply to decent people and, for them, they're rigidly enforced - which is why Mr Laws came off so badly.

She'd like to know a bit more about what's happening to those who should be on trial at Southwark Crown Court - but the media has kept very quiet about them and their court case, and have instead been distracting us by tearing into the Lib Dems.

Last week, when Alastair Campbell had a go at David Laws at the end of Question Time (and showed everybody a photo to make sure we all knew who he was talking about) it seemed that 'something' else might happen to the man. After all, nobody is allowed to spurn dear Alastair, he's a very important "Communicator . Writer . Strategist" - at least that's what he calls himself on his blog - and was closely involved in all sorts of governmental things, including getting us into the Iraq War, even though nobody ever voted for him, not even once. Mr Campbell had already written forthright comments about Mr Laws on his blog, and denigrated both the coalition and the Liberal Democrats, so QT seemed perhaps the last strategic assault before the final, killing, attack.

Bouncing into the fray came the Daily Telegraph, with their much delayed story about David Laws' expenses, which also, coincidentally 'outed' him as a homosexual. And that, Mrs Rigby thinks, was a touch cruel but par for the course for some journalists.

It also appears that, had Mr Laws been willing to share the details of his private life, he could quite legitimately have claimed a heck of a lot more money. But that's by the by. We're now being told that rules is rules, no exceptions. Nobody's entitled to keep their private life private these days, especially not if they're quiet, unassuming, and very competent politicians.

The media is hinting that, because the last lot were so bad and managed to walk away with both their pompous dignity and stuffed wallets intact, the new ones mustn't be allowed to do anything at all - nothing. Zero. They mustn't have done something wrong three or four years ago either, and we must give them no quarter, we must not allow them to make any excuses and they must instantly fall on their swords to prove their honour and probity.

There's so much to say about this, it's hard to explain Mrs R's opinion - (that's what blogging is about isn't it ~ sharing your own, or your family's opinion) - but she's going to start off the easiest way and link to others who've already said things, and done it far better - less muddled, more concise and more to the point.

Tory Bear says it was a Bad Day for Country, Coalition and Telegraph

Mark Reckons is "... so angry about David Laws having to resign"

Nábídána compares costs

Prodicus discusses "Vindictive, vicious, destructive and hypocritical press harlotry"

The Slog admits his own mistake and then tells the Telegraph to stop this vindictive cynicism

Fausty seems to find themselves in the same situation as Mrs R - wanting to be furious with Mr Laws, but can't quite manage it because of what others have already got away with, and so condemns both the media and accuses those to the left of the political spectrum of hypocrisy

Man in a Shed writes about political assassination

Tom King writes "That David Laws felt he could not reveal his sexuality is a damning indictment of our society"

Cyberborisjohnson discusses how religion can tear your soul in two - something so very few people seem to realise 'these days', when religion is so passée. (Mrs R's words) They also condemn the Telegraph.

The thing is that Mr Laws was only the first target.

Once they'd 'got rid of him' they started on his replacement, Danny Alexander, by telling how he'd 'exploited' a loophole over a house sale. A 'loophole' that is nothing of the sort. They did it remarkably quickly too, like a well-oiled machine, and when it didn't work too well they moaned about how Danny Alexander's wife has benefitted from MP's family travel allowances - again all, apparently, within the rules as 'family travel'.

Maybe these journalists don't like any of those rules any more and want parliament to change them? If so, why now? Why not when the other lot were milking the system - and got themselves off the hook by, smilingly, waving cheques around. Why were they satisfied that Mr Brown (and any government minister) could hire a private jet - but the Queen couldn't keep the RAF Queen's Flight, which government ministers previously had access to? Why were journalists, at least some of them, pleased to see Generals being told to use 2nd class travel, but not ministers - because the important government ministers might be attacked by terrorists, and so needed a fleet of cars and police outriders too?

It looks as if the media don't like the Liberal Democrats now that they're in government, and they don't like the coalition either, because they're telling us (ably assisted by a Miliband) that by joining forces and making concessions they've each 'betrayed' their supporters - us. We're their supporters. To prove to us wrong-voting mugs how bad these people are they're going pick them off, one by one, by using old news that they've already got lined up, and because there isn't any new news that they want to talk about.

The country?

Do these journalists care about that?

They still write about what 'SamCam' wears, comparing it to dear Sarah Brown in her Michelle Obama lookalike outfits. They bemoan 'SamCam' wanting to upgrade a nineteen-sixties kitchen, because it was good enough for Sarah's 'homely menus'. They want to know why Messrs Cameron and Clegg are wearing plain, unpatterned ties. All terrifically important stuff, far more important than the economy or trying to claw our way out of a deep credit crunch recession. Far more important than acknowledging that the last lot left nothing in the bank except a load of I.O.U.s because, like the greedy pigs they were, they'd turned the country inside out with their snouts in their hunt to find and consume (and/or sell/give to their chums) each and every trace of useful material, which left in their wake little more than a mess of barren soil.

As an ordinary person Mrs R can remember few details of the fall of the last Conservative government, but she does recall Black Wednesday and all the tales of 'sleaze'. Sleaze that was awful then, but mindblowingly trivial when compared to the last thirteen years of lies, obfuscation, behind-closed-door deals, lost manufacturing jobs, cheating, character assassination, nepotism, bullying and corruption that ended in a general election that left Commonwealth observers more than a little bemused, and the electoral commission facing complaints of being useless. (Read this about Birmingham, then pick your chin up off the floor.)

But, the media don't want to talk about all that. They don't want to talk about it at all. It's as if they've drawn a line under it and, instead, want to intensely dissect the new lot - who must be clean, absolutely clean, no skeletons in the cupboard and not a trace of dust under the carpet.

It's all cock-eyed. Or is it? Are they playing a long game, with their own rules?

Mrs R wonders if all these journalists and reporters are, with their faux new-puritanism, planning to (or already have) carefully inspect(ed) the character and personal life history of each individual in the coalition, and if when they find the slightest thing that can be condemned then they'll attempt to whip up a frenzy of indignation so great that we, the public, will not even imagine trusting their policies. After all, how can you trust a man who isn't light-hearted enough to wear a patterned tie to the office?

At the moment it won't work. Once people (other than 'Party' activists) had slept on the news and got over their initial, "OMG! Shock!" many found themselves wondering what all the fuss was about because, you see, we do remember the last thirteen years.

Having a new government - any government as long as it's not Labour - is enough to give us a bit of hope, a breathing space from the continuous onslaught by frowning, ill-tempered, arrogant, harassing, politicians who kept telling us what to do (or else you'll be punished) without offering the means to achieve anything, and all set out as finely defined 'targets' in their good-for-you and good-for-the-country and good-for-the-everybody else's-children three/five/seven-year plans.

Having new politicians who speak to the cameras without glaring, without facial tics, and who speak the same without-political-cliché language as most ordinary folk is refreshing. It's so refreshing that we aren't really listening to what they're saying, and we don't really care too much, because we did the right thing when we voted and didn't give any single party enough power to do exactly as they want. We forced them to compromise and stopped them from being party political idealists and that, for the moment, is enough.

But some sections of the media community don't like it and, in time, perhaps all the petty trivia they publish will begin to overcome our enthusiasm and we'll start seriously listening to the reporters and journalists who are telling us what we think. We might even think it's a good idea to try to use some of those new laws we'll have that will give us, the people of Britain, a bit more power and we might, perhaps, demand a vote of some sort that could actually risk the country's gradual progress towards financial stability and which could push us towards the increasingly dodgy-looking Euro and everything else it stands for - because there are very powerful people who think it's a good idea. They like the big-state idea, and the like the idea of trans-world regulation. Who knows that there might be a vote that we didn't really ask for, and didn't really want, but one that would be as carefully manipulated as the one a few months ago that 'demanded' a change to the voting system - when all most ordinary people wanted was a voice for England.

Maybe we're all pawns in a long game? If so, perhaps we do need to be very careful what we think we wish for. Perhaps we should stop and think, for a little moment, about how important it was, in the whole scheme of things British that never-really-expected-to-be-in-government Mr David Laws, who had only wanted to keep his personal relationship secret from his family, was 'outed' as a homosexual by a very British newspaper in the worst possible way.

This is the same Mr Laws who was "investigated" by the Telegraph, the same deeply investigative newspaper, back in May 2009 and all they could come up with then was

David Laws claimed £950 per month rent for his second home in London. Also claimed council tax, utilities and food and £80 for a vacuum cleaner

Compare that, if you will, to Douglas Alexander who claimed "more than £30,000 doing up his constituency home" and remained in office, or "Gerry Adams and four other Sinn Fein MPs claimed more than £500,000 over five years even though they refuse to attend Parliament" and were re-elected, or Michael Martin, the disgraced Speaker who was swiftly elevated to the peerage.

And whilst thinking about those men, consider how the Telegraph managed to suddenly, almost instantly, take a picture of Mr Laws' home and his long term partner and get it into print - and they managed to do it the day after Mr Laws had failed to appear on QT. And less than 24 hours later Mr Laws had resigned.

The thing is, we ordinary folk can play the long game too, and turn it to our advantage. But first of all we need to work out what we want from the so-called political class.

Do we want those who are best for the job, yet who may have made mistakes and then done their best to rectify them - and rectify them immediately, and with great personal sacrifice - or do we want those with an unblemished past? Because in the real world the two rarely go together.

If we want? ... Actually, no, it isn't 'want' ... at the moment the media seems to tell us that we are 'demanding'.

Politicians, collectively, are meant to be 'just like us' – there should be politicians who are rich, poor, thin, fat, average, smart, nice-but-dim and so on - because collectively, in Parliament, they're meant to be able to relate to our problems and represent our interests, whatever our walk of life. And in the real world people make mistakes and are forgiven.

But, if we voters/citizens/people of Britain demand purity of background from all those in public life, then our own lives should must obviously be the same – always, so our politicians can truly mirror us. It is, otherwise, unreasonable that we demand standards of behaviour that we, or our families/friends/neighbours, do not think should apply to us.

Let's imagine what it would mean … it would mean that from moment we're born our lives should be without awkward episodes we'd prefer to forget, or which we might try to conceal. There should be no drunkenness, no 'had a go with weed but didn't like it', no joining clubs that are fun at the time, no silly pictures on Facebook, no naughty sex at a party, and no divorce.

And we should also be able to predict changes in the law during our lifetimes, and we should tell no lies ever, not even white lies intended to protect our friends and families. And we should do this because otherwise none of us could ever become politicians, not even at the lowest, very local, level.

Can't do it can we? At least Mrs Rigby couldn't (but she's not going to tell you why) and nobody in the whole Rigby 'clan' could either – we've led terribly degenerate lives and have each done at least one thing we wouldn't want to see printed in the newspapers.

So, what we should really want (demand?) is that politicians are treated the same as us.

If they are decent people and make a relatively small mistake they should get the same chance that either our families or the law would offer us – and should get the chance to remedy things, and to show contrition by apologising. And no, not a Mr Brown sort of 'sorry' that was huffed out because he didn't think apologising applied to him because he was too important.

It is not unreasonable to expect the public services to treat politicians as they would us – break the law and face the consequences – equal consequences. That means if a politician is caught using a mobile phone whilst driving, they lose their license and have to travel by bus/coach/train or whatever alternative they can afford. It didn't happen during the last thirteen years, but we can make sure it happens from now on.

If we aren't prepared to do this, if we aren't prepared to be 'reasonable' then none of us should ever imagine being a politician because we've set them apart from ourselves, and we've also set them unreasonable standards.

We are the ones who have to accept contrition and forgive. We are the ones who have to say 'enough is enough'.

And after all that, and for a change, Mrs Rigby is leaving almost the last words to the BBC

[Mr Laws] said his wish to keep his sexuality private was influenced by the fact he had grown up at a time when homosexuality was still regarded as "wrong or shameful" and said "the further time went on the more difficult it seemed to be to tell the truth".

When the rules changed in 2006 preventing MPs from claiming expenses on properties leased from relatives or partners, Mr Laws said he should "probably have changed our arrangements".

"I have paid a high price for trying to keep my sexuality a secret. Losing your privacy, your Cabinet job and your perceived integrity within 48 hours isn't very easy.

and

Mr Laws said he intended to "get back" to his work as MP for Yeovil as soon as possible, a job which he said he "loved".

But he added: "Over the weeks ahead, I will want to understand whether I still have the confidence of my constituents, without which it would be difficult to continue my work."

There, Mrs Rigby thinks, goes a very decent man.

And she thinks we each need to stand, for a moment, in his shoes.

....

Debt

In pictures, from BBC

And, according to the Telegraph

The global credit system is flashing the most serious warning signals in almost a year on triple fears of a Spanish banking crisis, escalating political risk in Asia, and a second leg to the US housing slump.

So maybe UK journalists have stopped being distracted by the new government, and the period of apparent calm between the election and yesterday's Queen's Speech. At least they're now catching up with the blogosphere and are writing about the financial situation that will affect us all.

But it might not, eventually, be all gloom and doom, as Simon Heffer says

... we may indeed be about to see an economic debacle of unprecedented proportions in the recent history of the developed world. We shall just have to steel ourselves for it. It may, though, have the legacy of ending the neo-sovietisation of our continent, and allowing a resurgence of democracy in Europe and among European peoples; which would prove, at last, that every cloud does indeed have a silver lining.

....

Children's money

The media tried hard to whip up a storm of indignation about the demise of "Child Trust Funds", former Home Secretary David Blunkett even said that scrapping the funds was 'an act of betrayal' - although he didn't say who was being betrayed.

The storm didn't really happen. Let's see why.

The payments started in 2002 and a nice website in nine languages made sure everybody knew their entitlement. All ...

Eligible children born on or after 6 April 2005 will receive their £250 voucher shortly after Child Benefit has been claimed and starts being paid.

As well as the Child Trust Fund (CTF) voucher, children in families with lower incomes will get an additional payment from the Government.

Those on lower incomes (and receiving benefits) were eligible for an additional £250.

Then, at age 7

Your child will get a £250 Age 7 payment. And if you were receiving the maximum amount of child tax credits, (or its equivalent, if you claimed Income Support or income-based Jobseeker's Allowance) when your child had their 7th birthday, your child will get an additional £250.

So, if the parents were receiving state benefits their child would get £500 at age 7, but those whose parents were paying income tax would only get £250 - seemed a bit unbalanced really.

The theory behind it was, of course, a noble one - give a child a nest egg and parents will be encouraged to add to it, but back in 2005 Barry Collins described opening an account with the voucher as a paperwork nightmare.

We Rigbys always thought it was a bit mean that babies were being given money for being born whilst at the same time older 'children' were being forced to pay whopping amounts of money to go to university and pensioners were having their pensions payments taxed.

So, they've gone. And good riddance? It would seem so, according to Tony Hazell

I never saw why I should effectively be asked to write a cheque for £250 to someone else's child.

On a professional level, CTFs are a jaw- dropping waste of public money, poorly targeted and not even popular among those they are aimed at.

How else can you explain that almost a quarter of people - 23 pc - couldn't be bothered to cash their voucher and had the money invested by the Government on their child's behalf?

Then there is the prospect of a generation of 18-year-olds being handed a cheque to do with as they will - a great deal for used car dealers and publicans, but a crying shame for the rest of us.

Sections of the investment industry were doing well out of them, charging 1.5 pc a year for basic tracker funds.

CTFs were saddling future generations with £320 million-ayear of debt - plus interest on the cost of borrowing the money.

In effect, Labour was handing out gifts of borrowed money to children then leaving them to foot the bill.

So, good riddance then, to another bad scheme.

....

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

....

Money pits and poison pills.

It was the Times that broke the story, in their 'Politics' section with the headline "Labour hid ‘scorched earth’ debts worth billions".

Billions of pounds in public money was committed in the run-up to the election campaign in a deliberate strategy to boost Labour’s chances at the ballot box and sabotage the next government.

One former Labour minister told The Sunday Times: “There was collusion between ministers and civil servants to get as many contracts signed off as possible before the election was called.”

One former adviser to the schools department said there was a deliberate policy of “scorched earth”. “The atmosphere was ‘pull up all the railways, burn the grain stores, leave nothing for the Tories’,” he added.

Nothing, so far, in the Telegraph, the Sun, Express, Mail, Mirror, Guardian/Observer, Star, Independent, but today NoTW carries "What a mess they’ve left behind" and the issue has been vaguely covered by the BBC report on Mr Cameron's 'Andrew Marr' interview

Okay, so what's the point in Mrs R saying anything at all about this when there are others with both more financial acumen and better political knowledge who can do better? Well, there are lots of things Mrs Rigby isn't, and she hopes that one of those things isn't nasty. She hopes she's seen by some as being 'concerned' by some of the cheap political tricks that might now be being uncovered - cheap tricks that aren't even new and that have, in the past, been akin to sleight of hand or even gerrymandering. Tricks that hurt ordinary people, people who deserve so much more.

Rigby Town is fairly close to a 'Big City' whose seats were quite narrowly won by Labour, and last week she had cause to go to a fairly deprived part of that Big City. Whilst she was there she met some local people who were absolutely delighted that, at long last, some of their community buildings will be upgraded - including demolition of leaky-roofed old ones. These, they said, are to be replaced with state of the art, brand new buildings - that will be built 'on that bit of waste ground, over there'.

At the time Mrs R's heart sank, because she was fairly sure she'd seen, read, and heard about this sort of thing before. But she didn't say anything, it was neither the right time nor the right place.

Mrs R was shown the plans and the artist's impression - which looked fantastic, a truly wonderful thing for this area, where people have to live with the bird-scarers, several stories up in their tower blocks. She was told the "money has been guaranteed" - they were sure of that.

Then Mrs R was told it was a bit of a last-minute decision that happened not long before the election, even though it was something local groups have been campaigning for for years and years. They've been campaigning because the existing buildings were falling apart, with some sections cordoned off as being unusable and unsafe.

So, let's backtrack a bit, because Mrs R recalls, a year or so ago, how some colleges found themselves in a bit of a muddle. These places had been 'given' money to expand, had demolished old buildings and had barely started construction when they were told they weren't going to get any money after all, even though the building programmes had been approved and all the right forms had been signed - including the PFI loans.

They were told they'd been silly to build, or start building, on a promise, rather than waiting until they had their cash in their hands. It was, Mrs R thinks, Mr Balls who told them off - so she's looked it up. Here's the BBC report, 16 July 2009.

MPs have condemned the "catastrophic mismanagement" of a college building scheme in England which could cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

The Learning and Skills Council, which ran the scheme, and the government are criticised in a report by the committee which deals with further education.

The LSC encouraged colleges to bid for funds and approved projects it did not have money for, their report says.

All this was, it seems, allowed to happen because LSC was to vanish. Maybe they thought the loans/debts would also vanish?

The MPs said that at the time building projects were being approved, the body had been preparing to be disbanded and "wanted to go out with a bang", and had encouraged colleges to "big up" their plans.

But there was no process for prioritising bids and by last November, when the alarm was finally raised, 144 colleges had together invested tens of millions of pounds in preparing bids and getting approval from the LSC.

Recently, it was announced only 13 of those projects would go ahead this year.

Committee chairman Phil Willis, a Liberal Democrat MP, said: "It really beggars belief that such an excellent programme which had showed real success in transforming the further education experience for students was mismanaged into virtual extinction.

"Warning signs were missed and even worse, ignored. LSC didn't notice as the total value of the projects it was considering began to overshoot the budget and a review which could have prompted action was shunted around committees and policy groups."

It would seem that this gung-ho approach to finance might have continued right to the end of Labour's time in office. Get people/schools/businesses/local groups to spend their money putting together the right sort of funding claim, which put money into consultants pockets and, in these instances, took it away from education - where it was most needed.

Money was there 'for the bidding', and promises were made, but nobody seems to have taken the time to sit down and add all the numbers together - but it didn't matter too much, because somebody else's name would soon be on the office door, somebody else could deal with the mess. And nobody had thought it might have been wiser to spend some of the consultation money on renovation and extension - because they were told things had to be new.

That, to Mrs Rigby, epitomises what Labour has done to Britain. It promised, and failed to deliver. It raised hopes, then secretly withdrew promises. It told people they were silly when they were upset, that it was their own stupid fault when things went wrong.

Nobody in government ever put up their hand and admitted they were wrong, nobody ever admitted a scheme or policy was flawed - the most that happened was that 'flagships' were quietly disappeared, and replaced by a distractingly shiny new one, in the hope that nobody would notice.

The Labour government spent millions on putting together plans that were never brought to fruition, they spent millions on rebranding departments and creating pretty logos that, ultimately, only led to public confusion over who had responsibility for what 'thing' - because they even changed the names of the 'things' so we didn't know what they were talking about.

And in the meantime the coffers were running on empty and, because they were all scurrying around thinking up new ideas, neither Government nor Unions seemed too bothered, not really, that Cadbury's was being sold, nobody seemed too bothered that Corus was bought by some Asian chaps, nobody seemed too worried about the demise of Jaguar - none of it mattered because the redundant and unemployed would be able to claim benefits.

There was never a consideration that every single penny of the money to pay those benefits originated within the private sector, which was rapidly disappearing, and no consideration that some people prefer to go to work, and not be dependent on state handouts.

And, nobody seems to have cared much about the community in 'Big City', who have patiently waited, for almost the whole term of the last government, for their building to be either renovated or replaced - because they believed their MP. This community's high hopes may be dashed because his last minute promises of funding for their sparkling new building are likely to have been empty promises, that would have vanished even had Labour been returned to office - because that's the way they were, building castles in the air. People didn't count, just politically expedient promises to ensure personal advancement and a seat in Westminster.

....

And the Euro?

in a letter to clients late last week, Morgan Stanley warned that Germany may leave the euro and the EMU and that investors should be prepared for this event.

Read the complete article here

To force a consensus on the Greek bailout

Sarkozy demanded a "commitment from everyone to suppport Greece...or France would reconsider its position in the euro," according to one source cited by El Pais.

and

"Sarkozy ended up banging his fist on the table and threatening to leave the euro...This forced Angela Merkel to give in and reach an agreement."

So, perhaps Morgan Stanley was wrong?

Mrs Rigby hasn't a clue what's going on, because there doesn't seem to be much in our newspapers, everybody's distracted by the new coalition government.

....

Delusional?

Great I get a Tory Government and my Income is still taxed at 50% and if I sell my holiday home, any of my funds or my business the gain gets taxed at 50% too . Oh and I'd better not die as my kids inheritance will taxed to the max as well. And now VAT is going to 20%.

So much for the party of lower taxes. I was better off before last Thursday!

So says commenter THX1138.

This person may be 'real' or not, may be 'troll' or not, but let's take this statement at face value - because that's what they seem to be hoping.

It indicates an ostrich-like quality of ignoring, and failing to accept or understand, the cataclysmic economic legacy left by the outgoing government. In short, it is delusional.

Mrs R believes that, had Labour been re-elected, their redistributive policies would have continued, and escalated. Holiday homes, whether a one-bedroom flat or a luxury dwelling, would have been targetted as being unfair - after all, how could anybody reasonably have have two homes whilst some are homeless, or living in single room B&B? Would holiday homes, perhaps, have become illegal?

As for income? The direct and indirect take from earned income would have continued rising and rising, with documentation becoming ever more complex and long-winded, so much so that it would be barely comprehensible to the layman. The ability to reclaim a few quid in 'credits' would have become an even worse administrative nightmare - deliberately - so that the main beneficiaries would have been those tasked with administering the process, who earn minimum wage.

Inheritance tax would have remained, set at £300k which barely covers the price of either a small terraced house or a semi in many parts of the country - hardly the realms of the super-rich.

Added to IHT would have been the flat-rate death surcharge of £20k - charged on every single estate - claimed to be to fund elderly care, whether or not it had been needed.

THX1138's financial nest egg, or whatever they might choose to call it, would have been well and truly scrambled.

And those were only the plans we knew about.

....

Saturday muddle

It would seem that Mr Brown might have messed up his chances of dealing with Mr Clegg because, well, because they don't like each other.

Way back, when the party leaders were called in to be talked to about the expenses 'scandal', Mr Clegg was not amused by the way he and his party were expected to do Mr Brown's bidding. It was clear then that they could not work together and today, according to reports, this animosity has continued.

Earlier the BBC carried a report from Jon Sopel saying that a telephone call between Mr Brown and Mr Clegg was less than constructive. Mrs Rigby regrets not keeping a copy, because she can no longer find the article. It is, however, still in the Telegraph, which says,

The source told the BBC's Jon Sopel that during the leaders' conversation last night, the tone went "downhill" at the mention of resignation.

It was claimed Mr Brown's approach was to begin "a diatribe" and "a rant" and the source said the Labour leader was "threatening in his approach to Nick Clegg".

Mr Clegg was said to have came off the phone assured that it would be impossible to work with Brown because of his attitude towards working with other people.

Naturally this has been downplayed by Labour

describing the chat as "constructive"

Yes, of course it was, very constructive. Messrs Brown and Clegg are the best of friends.

Fast forward a bit to the VE Day ceremony in London, some noted that Mr Brown failed to sing the National Anthem.

"Nick and Dave both proudly singing the national anthem in harmony with each other; Gordo looking glumly on, sullen faced, silent."

Remember, Mr Brown is currently the Prime Minister of Great Britain - at least that's what he is claiming by remaining at Number 10. And it's a faux pas of the highest order, especially at a national event marking the anniversary of the end of War in Europe and honouring the lives of those who died.

Every picture tells a story, this says quite a lot. (From the Mail)

Also from the Mail

This from the Spectator

Somebody, probably a Constitutional expert, seems to have made a decision that placed Mr Cameron in in the middle. Possibly because it is the Conservatives who have the highest number of seats in Westminster - something Labour seems to have forgotten in their cries of, "But they didn't get a parliamentary majority". (They've also forgotten that the country has, politically, 'swung' the furthest since 1931, which is no mean feat for any political party.)

When laying their wreaths at the cenotaph all three party leaders stepped forward together - indicating that nobody is in control of government, and nobody is in control of Britain and nobody represents all of us.

And now, according to a 'tweet' from Iain Dale (via CF) Mr Brown has gone to Scotland.

This afternoon, with Mr Brown safely out of the way and therefore not even remotely involved, there's been a handy, hastily organised, little demonstration in London calling for a 'fair' voting system. It is truly amazing how they managed to get Police consent so quickly, when it can take weeks!

The demonstration was, seemingly, spontaneously organised by an apparently decent group calling itself 'Take Back Parliament' ... which appears to be linked to another 'campaigning group' which has the blessing of Communist Billy Bragg, who likes to call everybody "brother" or "comrade", and who Mrs R has mentioned before.

So, all those enthusiastic people waving their banners should be very careful what they wish for. They might think our voting system is unfair, they might not like FPTP as it stands and they could be right - because constituency boundaries do seem to have been drawn to favour just one party. But these demonstrators probably have absolutely no idea that they're being used by those with their own agenda, and whose agenda is not in the national interest.*

The most important thing at the moment is not the voting system and it is not the egos of politicians. The most important thing at the moment is the British economy.

Sterling and the FTSE have taken a dive, if there are no announcements by Monday things are likely to get worse. The rest of the world is looking, and the man who claims to hold the balance of power - because he can - has gone to Scotland.

The party leaders may have been granted an unusual 18 days to organise a coalition or power-sharing agreement, but the country cannot afford them to take so long. It is urgent, and it's important, it needs a quick decision.

Either that or let's have another election, and we will decide.

..........
*
Mrs Rigby notes that the demonstrators are wearing purple - the same purple as the ties Mr Brown seemed to prefer.
Coincidence? Chance? Or deliberate?

....

Is it all about money?

Read this comment (no 88) at Political Betting where they're discussing whether Mr Brown's temper may have blown a deal with the Lib Dems

FPT - Ted - “… does strike me that if there is a Cameron Government the Labour Party Campaign Dept run by Mr Murphy no longer has use of taxpayer funded initiatives or “information adverts”. Labour will go into Scots elections with no outside help and, other than councils, no part in governance of Scotland. Mr Murphy himself will presumably be Shadow SoS for Scotland so still be involved in campaigning but Labour high point might well be this year, a year early for their hopes in Scotland.”

and

The Scottish Labour Party have just lost a multi million pound free (taxpayer funded) campaigning organisation: the Scotland Office. The significance of that fact is hard to underestimate.

Interesting, because if that principle is applied to the whole of the UK it means that, if Mr Brown can't organise a coalition then Labour has to rely solely on party finances, private donations and money from the Unions - because the plug would be pulled on all the 'government information' initiatives that have painted them as so benevolent.

It also means that the country will no longer be having to pay for all those posters, booklets, newspaper and TV adverts - so will be saving significant amounts of cash - which has to be good, surely.

Labour cannot remove Mr Brown now. Perhaps they should have done so when they had the chance, instead of letting him (and Mandelson) decide who was in control of both the party and the country. Perhaps these two men between them will, ultimately, be Labour's downfall, and perhaps the inaction of the rest of them shows a significant weakness in the party and party organisation.

And in the meantime the rest of us wait. We wait for them all to finish their discussions and their wheeling and dealing - throwing away electoral promises to get, or keep, the reins of power.

It's quite dirty really, tawdry.

....

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?

....

Labour's fake £50 notes

Spotted here


(That picture doesn't seem to want to work, it's here http://twitpic.com/1fqmyv)

And here's his Lordship standing alongside the 'good idea' that's meant to make the Tories ideas look silly.



(That picture doesn't want to work either, it's here http://twitpic.com/1fql8g)

Both pictures from Niall Paterson, more on his Twitpics.
h/t Guido

The wording suggests that the box contains £200,000 that "The Tories will give away to the richest 300,000 estates".

Odd, don't you think, that the Labour Party would print pretend money and take pictures of it, and try to pretend that it's real money?

Let's hope they made it absolutely clear to all the reporters that it was fake cash, and let's hope all the reporters make clear that it was fake cash when they write about this 'photo op' because, according to the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981

14.
Offences of counterfeiting notes and coins.
— (1) It is an offence for a person to make a counterfeit of a currency note or of a protected coin, intending that he or another shall pass or tender it as genuine.

....

Dollar bonds to solve national debt?

"[The government] will this month launch a multibillion-dollar bond in the US in its hunt for new investors, selling itself for the first time as an emerging market country as demand for its debt dwindles in Europe."

No, not the British government, the Greek government.

Read more over at The Tap (where Mrs R found this story) and on Business Week

Remember that the current British government has been printing money to buy its' own bonds - pushing cash round in circles in a pretend marketing exercise, British national debt is at an all time high, and productivity is low. Then read this, also from Business Week:

“I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of reception from people who have a lot of history with sovereign defaults and near defaults and IMF packages,” said Jim Craige, who oversees $12.5 billion of emerging market debt at Stone Harbor in New York. “You’re going to get a fairly skeptical audience.”

And from CNBC

"Despite the recent statement by the European authorities that 'a solution has been found,' nothing has been achieved mainly because of very conflicting rhetoric out of Berlin and Paris,"

That Germany and France still won't let go of the European purse strings is almost as disconcerting as realising that the Euro experiment might be coming to an abrupt end.

Tucked away in the vaults of the Bank of England are lots of lovely Euros that that nice Mr Brown bought when he sold British gold at a rock bottom price.

What, Mrs R wonders, is the market value of scrap currency? A double dip for Britain's financial reserves?

And Labour, naturally, sidesteps the issue of financial management in its' manifesto.

The economy, and the country's finances, should be at the top of the election agenda, because unless the country's financially solvent it can't do anything at all. It can't spend on military, can't spend on healthcare, can't spend on infrastructure and it can't spend on civil service wages, not even if they're called quangos, charities or agencies - because any spare money will be spent on servicing debt. But Labour, and Labour-supporting media, won't let this debate happen. Labour, through their minions and placemen, control the pre-election agenda and they want us to talk about what the leader's wives wear, and make an in-depth assessment of the various leader's parents' lifestyles. How puerile is that?

The country deserves the truth from those in government - not vote-winning rhetoric.

People need to know that there can be no more rises in benefits, there can no longer be generous government hand-outs to anyone, not for years - because there's nothing left in the coffers. They've even sold the dead moths, and the British National Lottery is now run from Canada.

It's time the red ostriches, currently strutting the streets and attempting to glean a few votes from the remains of Labour's failed harvest, faced up to the grim reality that, whatever the outcome of the election, the country will be living with the rotten results of Brown's monetary policies for the next two or more generations**.

Thanks solely to Mr Brown's mismanagement, there has, truly, been an end to boom and bust. We're left with bust, bust, bust.

When the hidden books are eventually opened after the election and we see, for example, the true cost of PFI, there will be nothing but red numbers on the balance sheets - perhaps a fitting epitaph to a political party sporting the red rosettes.

Greeks bearing gifts? Perhaps the Greek economy will, ultimately, prove to be Europe's Trojan Horse.

**
Generation, in terms of ancestry, is 25 -> 30 years

....