The Majority Blog

Something of a breakthrough

2008-05-11T19:15:00.006Z

The vote for Boris Johnson and the Conservative party in general suggests that we seem to be witnessing a sea change in the zeitgeist, as the unholy alliances between Big Money and cabals of misguided and inept minorities are starting to come apart.

Let us pray that this is the beginning of the end of rule by using exaggerated and irrational fear of anything the cabals can "bogeyfy" - ranging from terror to climate.

There appears to be a growing desire for the return of good old fashioned common sense.

Let's hope Cameron understands that he is mostly in favour purely because he could not be any worse than Gordon Brown, and that in order to secure the opportunity he needs to set about restoring some of the old-fashioned ideas that were sacrificed to spin. If you find yourself starting to feel any sympathy for the increasingly pathetic sight of Gordon Brown doing his sorry best to confess and promise to listen and try harder, then TMP has one word of advice: DON'T!

Brown always was grotesquely over rated as a Chancellor - he took a solid inheritance from the previous Tory administration, destroyed the pensions industry and built an economy on the shifting sands of dubious credit. It is supremely ironic but wholly justified that this all came home to roost within months of his assumption of the office of (sub) Prime Minister. And let's not spare the embarrassment of those idiots in the City and business that encouraged the New Labour disaster, and got their gongs (by hook or by crook). But it is too much to hope that they repent, and properly atone for their sins, since most have trousered fat fortunes built on Brown's phony property and credit booms, and are now wonderfully isolated from the cost of petrol, and the prospect of an impecunious old age.

It should be quite simple for Cameron to get the plot from here: the electorate has pretty much shown him what they want - genuine lo-nonsense conservative politics with a bit of an edge and glamour. The BoJo majority clearly doesn't care for political correctness, the ECHR or indeed the array of neo-Nazis Labour has invented, best exemplified by the Gestapo of Health and Safety.

Let's hope StanJo gets his son's vacated seat, and the undoing of the 12 years of the clearly failed New Labour Project continues, with a return to the old fashioned ideas of doing the will of the majority .

Hoo-bloody-rah.

We're all Browned off

2008-04-27T19:45:00.002Z

Vince Cable's modification of his assessment of Gordon Brown from Mr Bean to Mr Has Bean was typically insightful.

However, the problem that GB is quite so obviously now such a painfully "sub-prime minister" is very much the nation's problem, not just the Labour Party's. We have almost certainly reached that critical point where anything is better than the present encumbant, and most people are starting to suspect that it could be no worse with the PG Tips chimp in charge.

Although there is no real evidence to support the notion (yet) TMP has a sneaking suspicion that the boy Cameron might just turn out to be seriously good contender at a time when we need something well above the average to cope with the shambolic state of just about everything in this once great nation. There is nothing at all amongst the shambolic collection of politicos on the other side that even begins to look like a leader.

Don't have your say... we're the BBC

2008-04-12T15:10:00.004Z

The BBC's "have you say" bulletin board that discusses topical news and events is watched over by Auntie as thoroughly as you might expect, with every "debate" getting a fair number of rejected comments.

Despite the best efforts of the BBCs censors, the generally unsympathetic tone of the silent majority venting its spleen on the serial stupidity and foolishness of the PC left, manages to prevail; much to the chagrin, no doubt, of the Guardianistas that otherwise rule the output the BBC to try and ensure that it avoids populism as far as possible. But let's be honest, with a process of sanitisation like this, the only comments we're really interested in reading are the rejected ones, such as this that was sent to TMP the other day by a bemused poster who wondered just what rule had been broken:

"I was going to suggest that we should put Robert Mugabe in charge of the 2012 Olympic judging, then there's a chance we might win everything, and have a thoroughly entertaining time. But now it seems that even that old rogue can't fiddle the books for ever. Maybe instead we can introduce "postal judging", with the submissions opened in Birmingham?"

TMP is considering putting up a BBS system where BBC rejects can be guaranteed a place to post their messages...

We so told you so (contd)

2008-04-12T14:27:00.003Z

Once again TMP's prescience in warning of the scope of this extraordinarily mismanaged government's sinister intentions is proven. News that a local council has used the draconian RIP anti-terror laws to spy on an innocent couple over the matter of schools placement, highlights several of the points we have been making....

1) Local Councils employ far too many people with nothing better to do

2) The education system in Labour's Britain is now so hopeless and broken, that local councils assume that people will be will to break the law in order to try and obtain the best option for their children, and avoid the many "sink schools" that now exist.

3) The powers of local councils and many other petty officials to spy and engage in covert surveillance on members of the public have got completely out of control.

The conclusion we should all draw is that Islamic terrorists have won; they have clearly destroyed the traditional way of life in this country by scaring us all into allowing a largely unaccountable government to enact a series of measures - inspired by minorities - that would impress the Nazis.

Seig Heil! Gordon...

Enough of the people, enough of the time

2008-04-01T11:16:00.011Z

Politics relies heavily on the manipulation of human psychology, and stops just short of the tricks of the religious faith trade. However, politics and religion share the tactic that if the lie is big enough and restated frequently with sufficient conviction, some people will believe it.

This was of course neatly summed up in Abraham Lincoln's observation: "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." Honest Abe might also have added the thought "...and if you can fool enough of the people enough of the time, you will get elected".

And that, TMP suspects, is the sole motivation for politicians scrambling up greasy poles in the broken and discredited UK electoral system, and why an unelected House Of Lords remains a vital part of the nation's ability to question the type of inept elected government such that we currently possess.

Virtually assuring the end of the Lords, some of the people who could not be fooled all the time in the shape of it's weighty Economic Affairs Committee (whose members include two ex-chancellors and other Cabinet members) took eight months to consider government immigration policies, and declared them to be based on bogus assumptions.

Their Lordships made short work of the alleged "overall benefit" arguments, and stopped just short of accusing the government of the ultimate act of gerrymandering, by shipping in voters that are traditionally expected to favour the Labour Party, ever since the politics of bogeymen built on the myths of Enoch Powell that were drawn along party lines.

Their Lordships' remarks were most likely tempered by the expectation that the usual accusations of racism and intolerance would be levelled at anyone daring to question the sacred dogma of Labour's unfettered approach to multiculturalism - but the best estimate of the numbers involved in the random immigration shambles roughly equate to the apparent housing shortage. However, any focus on house prices needs to bear in mind that house prices are substantially fixed by land prices, which are in turn "fixed" by the rationing effect of inept local authority planning policies - and the policies of central government that seem perennially incapable of spreading the action in the economy beyond the South East corner.

The government's initial response came from one of Brown's B Team, Immigration Minister Liam Byrne, who said the report confirmed the government's assessment that migration had added £6bn to the economy in 2006. "That's important in any one's book".

That's about the amount that Gordon Brown wasted in the stroke of a pen when selling the country's gold reserves at the bottom of the market, plus annual parking fines; and a mere drop in the ocean of embarrassment that engulfed King and Darling in the Northern Rock fiasco. In the Great Scheme of Things, £6bn is bugger all when set against the problems we have now stored up for a nation that appears to be sailing into recession.

Immigration (however many there really are) over many years has changed the way of British life in many areas of the country where the settlers have chosen to "consolidate their communities" as a bolster against the need to become integrated with the rest of British society. A trip around Golders Green will remind us that has been going on for many years, and can be managed in a way that can provide delightful choices of ethnic cuisine and economic self sufficiency, but does not involve attempts to blow up London landmarks or murder British citizens. However, it is the unfettered immigration of Labour's past ten years that has enabled and encouraged fanatics who openly seek to destroy British society in course of a misplaced religious fervour that requires them to try and impose their own belief system - a whatever personal cost. And using our social fund cash in the process..!

Yet the mistreatment of the loyal Ghurkhas (and their handful of votes) who have served the country continues to produce examples of meanness of spirit that perfectly illustrates the curious autism being displayed by the social misfits now at the top of government.

Surely this discredited and inept administration cannot survive much longer? Can it...?

Why Majorities Matter

2008-03-29T13:12:00.003Z

The more traditional politicians talk about democracy, the less this moribund talent-free zone appears to understand the meaning of the term. Some probably think it means "one person (ie electoral unit) one vote", but nearly all are agreed that they don't want the will of the majority to prevail above their personal partisan judgement. Populism has become a dirty word in Westminster and Brussels, and is used by (delegated) politicians of all ilks as a term of exasperation when asked why they persistently refuse to do the obvious, when it is demonstrably the will of the majority.

Not surprisingly, a recent big issue decided by the usual EU cabal was the latest extension of treaty powers and impositions. Did you or I ever expect that the Common Market - sold originally to us an extension of a free trade area - was going to result in the imposition of a Eurostate and its many impositions on our personal freedoms and choices that we now have today?

Let's take the opportunity to update a classic Monty Python line: "We didn't expect the Spanish... French, German, Italian, Belgian, Irish, Greek, Portuguese etc. Inquisition..."

The manipulation of the majority by a conniving collective of minorities has been the outstanding feature of late 20th century politics. One thing that this motley gang of fellow travellers can easily agree upon is that a policy of "divide and rule" has delivered each faction a power and influence that is wholly unrepresentative of its absolute position in the popular vote. They even managed to con a gullible world into demonising all who question their sacred mantra of "inclusiveness" - despite inclusiveness being the antithesis of the will of the majority!

One signal consequence of this form of minority rule is the way that the West has allowed the actions of a few extremists dictate the policy that now goes under the guise of "anti terror" legislation. In order to address a "tiny minority" of disruptive terrorists, everyone is treated with equal suspicion and equally inconvenienced. Ironically, the line-ups for x-ray machines at ports may be the last vestige of democracy where we (nearly) all get the same treatment.

Is it too much to hope for a political party that offers to listen to the majority of the people, and then actually do what the majority asks - regardless of baggage, dogma and distraction? We certainly seem to have the technology to conduct rolling popular votes on just about anything.

Do you trust your fellow subjects to take the opportunity seriously and not be daft? It would certainly put politicians on their mettle to continuously present the arguments for consideration - they might even earn their salaries, expenses and pensions at last.

Slump? What slump..?

2008-03-23T14:14:00.003Z

TMP is still aware that many businesses and people do not yet really believe that there is a financial meltdown going on; after all, the chicken is still in the pot, and the cars are still on the drive (especially at the homes of traffic wardens, council bin inspectors and tree officers). So let's repeat the basics: more money has been pledged and loaned to bale out greedy and stupid bankers by the US and UK Governments so far this year than in the decade before.

Where does this money come from? This buck stops with the taxpayers, so MPs, get those fat expense claims in while you still can, the New Labour gravy train is running on a track that is likely to be swept away by a landslide of shocked voters once the reality finally percolates through, even before it dives over the traditional cliff that all previous Labour administrations have failed to detect when giving away everyone's money to buy votes.

The UK is already taxed beyond the hilt, and there is no margin for error or any other form of buffer. The terror with which Brown and his inept cronies regard the present situation is reflected in the quickening pace with which the Bank of England is willing to abandon all pretence of regulation and decorum, just to stop the slide into total chaos. Let's hope someone has the sense to bug George Soros' switchboard this time around.

Devaluing the currency is already happening, and a daft manufacturing sector chortles that this is good for their export business. Considering the tools they use, the raw materials they use and the energy they consume (and even the management they hire in a growing number of cases) are pretty much all imported, that seems like a bit of an own goal.

The emphasis placed by UK government on the vibrancy of financial services and it's love of wealthy nomads that are always to be found sniffing around large capital movements and accumulations has apparently bet the farm on a bunch of idiots and - as the cynical attempt to short HBOS shows - dangerous crooks. However, this industry probably has the least inertia in its operations of any, and the adjustment will be swift and severe. It is certainly vastly more reactive than the public spending and employment bonanza that the City has helped to fund through its taxes and other dubious "financial instruments".

So just when the country needed to incentivize brave entrepreneurs to start (and support) businesses in times of uncertainty and risk, Darling doubles the tax payable by successful long term business creators. And like it or not, any move that encourages those rich nomads to roll up their carpets and bugger off to more favourable tax climes is - to put it as mildly as possible - ill conceived and poorly timed. Also anyone with any accumulated wealth that they might once of risked on new business ventures in the UK has now been sent a further timely reminder of the avaricious ways of Old Labour that now dominate Downing Street. Buy that mansion in the US while the prices are temporarily depressed.

Who else has noticed that we are being lead and managed by complete twats..?

Whatever you do, don't be right... (contd)

2008-03-22T12:26:00.005Z

A wise old bird once advised TMP that most people were ready to forgive just about any failing in a human being from pinching the office paper clips to murder, except one: never, ever be proved right about any contentious matter. Otherwise widely interpreted as: "no one likes a smart arse".

So the sight of The Boy David cycling the wrong way up a one way street and sailing through a red light has probably boosted his street cred with many sections of the population who find the tedium with which our lives are micromanaged by Gordon's nannies needs to be offset by an occasional rebellion. Right on Dave; up the revolution! Squeeze your toothpaste from the top!

TMP still knows folks who insist that everything in Brown's garden is lovely, and that he is doing a wonderful job (yes Ron, we mean you - and you can afford to be in denial with that fat bank pension to loaf around on). After all, retail sales were up in February (food price inflation) and unemployment down (more bin inspectors). However, the lag between the reality of the financial market meltdown and the person in the street is massively buffered in this land of the eternal jobsworth, because so much employment is paid for from public (ie yours and mine) purses of one sort or another. Everything from the NHS to the BBC and your local council is nicely buffered from the immediate consequences of the real economic world, and inertia will take time to wind out.

However, costs will have to be cut, and the biggest cuttable cost of the lot is the public payroll. This is our opportunity to cull the millions in contrived job creation schemes and just leave the smartest and most capable, equipped with all the tools of modern technology.

The big challenge (boringly oft mentioned herein) remains what these displaced folks will actually do, once rumbled. Blair started inflating public employment (his infamous "project") to reduce the number of claimants on the principle that the net cost of employing the extras needed to support our wastefully inflated layers of local government - who in turn pay tax on their sinecures and VAT on their spending - was probably about the same as keeping people of such limited ambition and skills on the dole. But vastly better political value on the employment stats.

The history of the world has learned many times over that the best way to mop up employment quickly is through a vibrant economy of small and flexible businesses. However, in the UK that economy is now largely in the hands of immigrants who cleverly only employ other immigrants, because the indigenous British have been educated to do anything but work for a living ...and vote Labour. A building firm comprised of hard-working Polish plumbers and Jamaican decorators would have little use for a redundant council bin inspector, who would in any case spend all day twittering about risk assessment and health and safety. Mind you, any displaced public employee could almost certainly make a cracking cup of tea.

Yes, it's a very big bullet indeed, but someone has to bite it before it bites us.

Hmmm.... bullet? There's an idea! How about a return of conscription to plug the gaps in the front lines of the government's misguided foreign adventures.? Now there's a vote winner if ever TMP heard one...

We told you so...

2008-03-18T22:21:00.006Z

In contrast to the traditional self effacing moment at times when those who have forcibly expressed contentious views are proved to be painfully correct, TMP feels no pain or sorrow when reporting that its two years of observations and predictions for the fate of New Labour's scandalous and corrupt mismanagement of the UK, seems to have been proved entirely correct.

Although the Conservative party still seems reluctant to contemplate the possibility of forcing an early election through circumstances, TMP suspects that the demoralised and discredited Labour Party cannot last a full term when its stultifying arrogance and stupidity is personified by the gurning idiocy of Ed Balls and his patronising "So What?" riposte in the House of Commons to Cameron's proposition that "Under Labour, Britain is more taxed than at any point in its history". Ed Balls' debating skills could make Michael Martin seem like a heavyweight intellectual.

So yet again, the Conservative Party faces the thankless task of fixing up a Labour economic disaster; and then being turfed out for their troubles by an amnesic electorate. By definition, no incoming Conservative Party has ever inherited the type of golden financial opportunity and stability that Blair enjoyed courtesy of the hapless Major administration, and the inflation crushing consequences of the emerging globally networked economy.

The only task from hereon should be to focus on repairing the ten years of insidious damage caused by the dogmatic destruction of British - and in particular, English - society. But it will not be easy without addressing most of Labour's systematic brain-washing through influence on the educational system, and the infiltration of so many of its fellow travellers into the BBC and other positions of media influence.

One of the more pressing challenges will be unwinding the relentless creation of so many publicly funded non-jobs that we simply do not need and now plainly cannot afford. If the spending options were to be listed and the public asked to vote, just how many of Labour's numerous contrived jobs for the otherwise not gainfully employable would remain with any sort of priority when the NHS is still - after countless billions - still not fit for purpose, and our national transport system simply cannot cope?

But where will this army of the estimated 1-2 million pointlessly employed find employment when added to the inevitable outcome from the temporary employment created by the growth of our sub-prime education culture? This now ensures that even the most inept student can go to "university" before settling down to a life of telling travellers to take off their shoes, inspecting dustbins for evidence of rogue recycling, resetting speed cameras or just claiming incapacity benefit.

Labour's regime of relentless and pointless political correctness, backed by armies of jobsworths who couldn't get proper jobs in a productive economy, means that the old-fashioned ways out of recession are not presently available to many as options. It is bloody hard to get a "proper job" these days, mostly because the burdens and responsibilities of being an employer are vast and growing every time a politician opens his or her mouth.

Precious few entrepreneurs are willing to risk or can afford the outrageous costs of setting up any sort of new business under this yoke of red tape and witless legislation. An accountants' rule of thumb suggests that you need to be prepared to kiss goodbye to around £20k before opening the door for any sort of business, if you are to comply with all the necessary employee, fiscal and workplace legislation.

Ironically, Labour's Scottish heartland, land of publicly funded employment, rewarded the Westminster party by inviting the SNP into the luxury parlour so expensively provided by the English. With its once-feted financial industry in disarray, Scotland looks like being an even bigger basket case and burden on the largely English-funded economy.

Yes folks, it's all a huge Ed "So what?" Balls-up. There is no talent to be found anywhere in this benighted government; micro managing Gordon Brown has no idea of what he is doing or why, Alistair Darling just wishes it would all go away; and Teflon Tony Blair is quietly pissing himself.

Move over Darling

2008-03-13T15:37:00.004Z

As widely predicted, the witless Chancellor's first budget was an indifferent affair delivered by a non-entity without much sign of ever having had any vestige of any plot that was likely to steer the UK economy away from the shambles that Gordon Brown so carefully and boastfully constructed during his ten years in the job.

TMP's tireless efforts to warn you all away from a sheep-like encouragement for anything faintly green has lead to a situation where all manner of tax milking efforts that can be thinly disguised as environmentally responsible are being imposed in the sacred name of the environment.

The biggest polluter of all is power generation, and the government is solely responsible for the policy that affects this. Given the state of the oil market, all else pales into insignificance, yet HMG simply cannot do the only sane thing and start a dash for nuclear power.

Even if road transport contributes significantly to CO2 at present, it won't when we are all in electric vehicles being recharged at every lampost.

What do we have to do to get rid of these dangerous buffoons?

No surprise

2008-03-06T18:37:00.003Z

A referendum? We're terribly sorry - but this is a representative democracy where MPs are paid to make the complex decisions that mere voters are not fit to decide for themselves; so piss off.

This government embraces new technology when it suits them: the many, many facets of New Labour's surveillance society; eagerly switching services traditionally dealt with at Post Offices to online forms; online tax returns. You name it, when it suits them, New Labour is rolling the mouse around and clicking frantically.

But the idea of using technology to extend the reach of democracy to allow the people to participate more closely in the decisions of government..? You must be kidding. The Stone Age suits us just fine.

Meddling with the traditional voting process only occurs when the outcome is going to provide a gain to Labour, as exemplified in the postal votes fiasco.

The level of corruption and dishonesty now rampant in this government is approaching levels that would cause the dictator of a banana republic to check his Swiss account and warm up the Learjet. The real problem is that Brown is autistic enough to believe that he is doing a good job, or at the very least, a better one than anyone else could.

Marx Brothers (and Sisters)

2008-02-18T10:36:00.006Z

It's probably fair to make the generalisation that many of the Labour front bench have been Marxists in their student days in the 60s and 70s. But it's now undeniable that Brown's government has descended into the sort of farce that Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo and Gummo would have relished.

Alistair Darling just needs paint on that moustache to match his wondrous eyebrows; (a younger) Gordon Brown already scarily closely resembles Chico (top), David Milliband just needs the curly blond wig. Zeppo (bottom) could easily pass for David Cameron, which is a bit unnerving.

TMP leaves its fans to look up Gummo and decide if he might make a suitable Gorbals "Air Miles" Mick-alike. If the Tories had a sense of humour, one of them would sneak a motor horn into the chamber for the next time David Milliband stands up to speak.

Big is ugly, but expedient

2008-02-16T14:09:00.004Z

The demise of Microsoft and Windows has been predicted for a long time, but this particular Titanic gets away with striking numerous technology icebergs because the boat has always been big enough to sit quietly on the bottom of the ocean with the bridge (and especially the Purser's cabin) above water. It's true that many of the passengers have drowned on the lower decks during the voyage, but Gates and Balmer still manage to strut the bridge unaffected by the chaos their Windows software is wreaking throughout the civilised world.

As any user of Microsoft software on desk top computers and laptops will be painfully aware, each week sees a rash of new "updates": the euphemism for "bug fixes", as Microsoft fights a never ending battle against the consequences of poor design and even worse quality assurance. Updates/bugs range from potentially catastrophic breaches of security (which is most of them) to trivial updates that ensure Microsoft keeps tabs on your wallet.

That Microsoft is allowed to monopolise personal computing in this way has been and remains in stark breach of just about every notion of monopoly market manipulation ever enacted in law, yet still they get away with it, apart from a couple of wrist-slaps that amount to small change. And no doubt as the cheque was reluctantly written, someone in the Republican and Democratic parties wondered if that it was going to mean $100m less for the political donation fund. Of course Microsoft's immunity from monopoly legislation has absolutely nothing to do with political donations or other efforts to buy immunity through heart-rending PR such as The Gates Foundation.

Only a paranoid conspiracy theorist could imagine such a silly thing.

Why does a company with over 85% of the world's desktop operating system software already in its pocket feel the need to produce costly updates, just when its last paid-for upgrade has reached a plateau of stability after exhaustive beta testing by a billion users? The only possible answer is to take money off the gullible; and because Microsoft fixes it so that retailers that PC World are curiously unable to sell the previous stable version of the operating system on new computers.

This tactic ensures sufficient neophytes are lumbered with something as awful as Vista that the rest of industry is strong-armed into having to follow suit and make itself compatible with Redmond’s latest abomination. It's like releasing a new strain of flu into the world means that vaccine makers are obliged to adapt their products to meet the challenge.

A lot of the reason for the Vista release was an effort to lock-in media owners and broadcasters with ever more convoluted copy protection schemes within the Windows Media environment. Ironically, the impossible complexity of maintaining even the most inept of DRM solutions makes the product unworkable for many, and users tried even harder to get hold of DRM-free content that doesn't mess with their players. So the industry is gradually starting to accept that if people want to pinch a tune or video, they will do so, DRM or not, so give the customers what they want at last. Quite why it has taken content owners quite so long to remember that radio and TV has been broadcasting easily recordable content for the best part of a century is a mystery.

This has lead to a healthy situation where recorded music is becoming promotional material for live performances - the live music scene has never been better, which is a great encouragement to real talent versus the manufactured talent that manipulative producers can invent and control. And the market fixing around CD and DVD pricing has collapsed.

It's another example of consumer benefit of the world of "open systems" and the power of communications diversity to enable and encourage innovation at the cost of a largely malevolent establishment that had thought it had sewn it all up long ago.

TMP suspects that there must also some way to review the UK's sinister supermarket hegemony and find ways to allow the benefits of "open systems" to protect consumers from the consequences of supermarket monopolies, and the ultimate absence of all choice and shops in town and village high streets. However, much retail consolidation arises from impossible volumes of (mostly EU) legislation that affect retailers, and to treat Tesco and Joe's Village Stores the same may seem second nature to the assorted jobsworths at the numerous enforcement agencies.

But don't hold your breath, since it's much simpler for government to "deal" with a handful of Tesco-sized HR departments than thousands of self-employed traders.

The Court of Common Sense

2008-02-10T12:39:00.000Z

TMP is concerned that one of the shining examples of common sense law and politics in the 20th Century may become one of the first constitutional disasters of the 21st.

It is ironic but not coincidental that this is occurring at the same time as the woefully misguided Archbishop of Canterbury has lost his few remaining marbles and even more of his followers with absurd suggestions around the acknowledgement of Sharia law in the UK. In the 1920s, Turkey was struggling to reconcile the many factions arising from its decaying position as a very long established empire power at the crossroads of Asia and Europe after backing the wrong side during the first world war.

The Turks were lucky to have found a genuine leader and visionary of the sort that scarcely exists in modern politics in the shape of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who had perfect grasp of the situation facing a Nation in desperate need of unification and realignment to a new world order, where Islamist religious discord had the potential to wreck any attempt at unification by adherence to its fundamentally medieval practises and concepts.

As the redoubtable and occasionally reliable Wikipedia says: "The goal of Atatürk's reforms was to create a modern, democratic, secular nation-state, one guided by contemporary educational and scientific progress and based on the principles of positivist and rationalist enlightenment." However, the new Turkish government has removed a ban on women wearing the symbolic and now provocative headscarves of Islam that was imposed in 1980 as part of an effort to reassert the separation of state and religion that was at the core of Atatürk's reforms.

Most educated Turkish folk regard this as the thin end of very dangerous wedge being driven by a cunning politician manipulating the superstitious. Many thinking people in Turkey have protested as this is the first time since the new constitution that the State has had the nerve to become so directly engaged in a clearly calculated attempt to reignite religion as a divisive factor in modern Turkish government.

The bad news is that the government performing this mischief was voted in democratically by the people of Turkey, who had a pretty good idea of what was being planned by it's overtly Islamist leader. Hitler was also elected democratically, and it is not at all clear at which point he lost the active majority support of the German people - although almost certainly not until after several million people had died under his "democratic rule".

Such events cause TMP to constantly review the axiomatic assumptions of the benefit of majority rule, and look for ways to ensure that TMP's proposed implementation can avoid its cause being hijacked by fanatical populists. Not allowing governments 5 year terms without further input from the electorate is a good start.

Education, and the communication of free speech and ideas -technology's core achievements of the last 20 years have clearly enabled aggressive Islamic fundamentalism to gain an ever increasing foothold in the feebly tolerant West - whilst being violently suppressed in the homelands of Islam in the regions around Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The Turkish move was immediately hailed as "progress" by the region’s chief mischief maker and all-round agent provocateur (and we are not talking frilly knickers here), Iran. Once again TMP is obliged to point out that religion (and its bedfellow, tribalism) remains firmly entrenched at the root of many of the world's biggest and most dangerous evils.

Atatürk's achievement was to replace a thousand years of contradiction , superstition, bigotry and religion that had ensured that most Turkish people lived in the Dark Ages, by a very slim volume of common sense law. The UK and EU with its 40 tons of mostly pointless legislation could learn a lot from the idea that when a nation goes through as much change as we have in just the past 20 years, it's better to make a clean start.

Some estimates suggest that as much as 99.9% of current law has been devised and refined to deal with just 0.1% of obscure circumstances that cannot be easily managed by good old-fashioned common sense. There is now so much pointless law that it quite frequently criss-crosses and stumbles across itself, giving the opportunity to prosecute many offences under any one of several statutes.

Thanks to the fruits of technology, a fresh start would enable many more of the people to have a say in the process of judging the exceptions, and not just leave it up to a couple of old buffers in horse hair wigs, who are primarily bent on preserving the exclusive obscurity of the ultimate in self-serving professions. Hands up all in favour of The Court of Common Sense..?

A talent free zone

2008-02-07T17:33:00.000Z

Gordon Brown has a reputation for being a control freak, and suspicions that he would appoint a team of no hopers on the principle that when he wanted their opinons, he would give them to them, seem to have been proved correct.

There was bugger-all talent in the Labour Party when elected way back in 1997, and there is even less now. Such talent as there was tended to be regarded as awkward and disruptive (Robin Cook, Mo Mowlem, Frank Field) since they allowed pesky prinicples to guide their political judgement. Something that no Labour leader that has ever survived an election has ever managed to do.

TMP is lost for words that are sufficiently dismissive to describe the collective talent of the present government, and can best point to the Peter Hain affair. A minister with not one but TWO portfolios is allegedly caught with his hand in a till that he didn't realise existed, honestly. The permatanned transpolitico (he was once a Liberal) Hain has a history of violent protest as student activist and was even tried (and acquitted after an alleged "frame up") for bank robbery in his native South Africa in 1976.

And now the Archbishop of Canterbury endorses the idea of adopting Sharia Law into UK law in order to appease moselms. Just try telling Saudia Arabia to enshrine English Common law, and see how long your infidel head and shoulders remain attached.

What on earth is going on in this benighted country?

Pay peanuts, get monkeys..?

2008-02-07T15:53:00.000Z

The present fuss about parliamentary expenses and allowances has lead to suggestions that MPs are not paid enough to attract the quality of candidate we need in these challenging times, when compared to the rewards available industry and even town halls.

On the other hand, looking at the EU where MPs are paid a lot more, there is no evidence of any more competence or less slease and corruption; merely a better dressed class of monkey driving more expensive cars.

Whilst China, India and Russia are on the up, we appear to have leadership that is still fighting the battles of the previous century, weighed down by irrelevant experience, and lashings of pernicious and dangerous dogma.

And we all know what happened to the poor saps left in the trenches when Cavalry Generals faced tanks and machine guns for the first time.

Gordon Brown's Britain

2008-01-30T18:51:00.000Z

We can't see the webmaster, outsource manager, feng shui advisor or diversity consultant - but they are probably all off on an inclusivity training course somewhere.

Now what?

2008-01-20T13:23:00.000Z

TMP takes no great delight in being proved right. We would have preferred our leaders to pay attention somewhat sooner to the warnings from this page (and countless others) and start to do something to prove TMP wrong, but that is clearly not going to happen. Arguably there is nothing they could have done about Billy-Bob's mis-sold mortgage in Tennessee, but they could have handled the Northern Rock situation with more commercial aplomb, and less costly sanctimony.

And they certainly could have ensured there was just a little slack in the UK system when it was so obvious for so long that the country was living way beyond its means. Saving the half of the NHS budget that most health care professionals now agree is being wasted, would be a good start. A responsible government that was aware that both the US and UK economies were built on sand, should have begun to throttle back on a lot of the other state-funded irrelevance that is currently producing a fresh round of tax hikes and employment impositions. UK businesses need extra costs piled on top of the energy price hikes imposed from utility owners in France and Germany like a hole in the head. Meantime the US administration is planning on handing back £400 to each taxpayer in an effort to stave off recession.

It seems possible that a large part of the immediate problem the UK now faces is attributable to Gordon Brown having reached the point where he was ready and willing to do ANYTHING in his battle to oust Tony Blair. He took the eye off the economic ball immediately after the last election was in the bag in order to concentrate on railroading Tony out of No. 10. The news that his long term deputy and "doer of his bidding" Alistair Darling - Gordon's "mini me" - is in charge at treasury is additionally disquieting. At least in the Blair/Brown days there was a frisson that kept them both on their toes, but now Gordon has all the levers of government, his micro-management style and circle of hand-picked yes-people is unlikely to tell him too many home truths. So TMP will do its public duty instead:

The credit-fuelled party is over, and like everything else these days, the ensuing troubles are now on a global scale. Once upon a time, previous spendthrift Labour administrations were able to resolve the local difficulty with the UK economy and balance of trade by going cap in hand to the famous Gnomes from Zurich and blaming them for the unpopular measures that followed. Gordon thinks bigger, and goes cap in hand to make nice with the Chinese to see if they want to own the UK economy as a lever that is handily located between the USA and Europe.

So we may yet be grateful for Brown's past as a communist student agitator if that helps him reassure the Chinese he is one of them at heart, and they take pity. Maybe they'll sell us a "slightly used, one careful owner, never raced or rallied Olympic Games" at a fat discount..?

The sight of Brown sucking up to China and conveniently not asking too many awkward questions about human rights contrasts with his increasingly uneasy diplomatic spats with Vladimir Putin. The inexorable rise of the Russia with its enviable energy wealth under the control of the unreconstructed KGB Tsar is a constant worry, given that the present UK administration is so desperately short of anything approaching experience of earlier cold war moments.

The prospect of our schoolboy foreign secretary up against Vlad the Impaler is more alarming than a gunfight between The Milky Bar Kid and Desperate Dan (the original, non-PC version before the fluffies got to the Dandy).

Even left wing stalwarts at the BBC may eventually give up trying to spin this nightmare government out of the shambolic mess of its own creation, into which it has sunk.

Energy prices: treasure island plundered again

2008-01-06T15:16:00.000Z

Following hot on the heels of sub-prime financial industries and our government's failed attempt at claiming it was "not our problem, guv", a further example of the sacrifice made by this badly mislead nation on the altar of globalisation is the price increase announced by foreign-owned energy cartel operators.

Our French and German providers stockpile fuel surpluses in the summer, then subsidise their home markets, and make up the full price with increases on the gullible Brits. And God knows what the Russians have got planned for us.

The notion that foreign ownership of strategic British businesses is somehow good for us in a global economy needs explaining to TMP. We appear to be Luddites who cannot grasp the macro economic principles of encouraging foreign commercial and political interests to own and control us.

Might it have anything to do with the UK government then be able to wring its hands and claim that the price of energy isn't their fault - in much the same way that this government passed control of interests rates to Bank of England? Happily claiming credit for anything that was perceived as a positive outcome when inexperienced City scribblers heaped praise on Brown's management of the Tory financial legacy - but obliged to get embroiled in the denouement of the Northern Rock debacle...

Another UK interventionist response is nevertheless on the stocks - it will be a leaf out of the French books, and a return to state-planned nuclear power, albeit about 10 years too late. Meantime, perhaps we could chop up and burn otherwise useless structures such as the Big Brother House and the Scottish Assembly building, along with Brown's almost entirely wooden administration, and lash any remaining MPs to treadmill generators.

When the high cost of your heating this winter arrives, just remember who was in charge when our French and German "partners" were allowed to buy up UK energy companies. Also remember just how tricky it is for foreign companies to own utilities in France and Germany...

TMP's 2008 New Year's Message to the Nation

2007-12-23T14:52:00.000Z

Most of us live in a country where the rising price of beer and heating a house is more immediately pressing than the impact of distant financial cock-ups in US trailer parks, but Waynetta and Billy-Bob's mortgage arrears are clearly now our problem as much as theirs. 2007 will be remembered for the phrase "sub-prime" as much as anything ; while the sinking state of the UK employment and bankruptcy barely causes a flicker on the global trade seismometer.

Yes indeedy, the tectonic plate shifting antics of greedy US financiers and their dumber disciples means that your livelihood is being squeezed, and those who live outside the considerable cocoon of our massively inflated public employment sectors will find it harder to turn a pound in 2008.

Having now been oversold all the "benefits" of globalisation by banks and other "big" companies assuring us that it's good for us to plough through a 5 minutes phone interrogation in order to talk to someone with a barely discernible accent, we know that it actually means that a mortgage scandal in the trailer parks of the US that can lead to a run on a UK bank, adjustments of interest rates around the globe, and the probability of a worldwide recession.

In a country the size of the US, many bankers will be stupid and ovine, but they ain't all going to be stupid, and some of them have made a lot of money from selling junk to the gullible. Moreover, amongst the various gullible "chicken roosts" are numbered Chinese financial institutions on whose goodwill the US and the rest of us are completely dependent. Should they ever decide they have had enough of providing a home for the junk dollars funding their trade surpluses and our deficits, you should immediately electrify the garden fence and plant potatoes in the hanging baskets. "Ugly" is not the word for what will be happening.

Globalisation means that although the exposure of the UK finance industry was relatively small to the sub-prime problem, the consequential matter of confidence and the credit squeeze in a country like ours that is addicted to funding through credit and government deficit rather more than than any other in the EU, is almost certain to lead to a recession. The supercilious and supine nature of our financial institutions, exemplified by the Bank of England's fumbling of the Northern Rock crisis, virtually assures it.

In times of recession, people and businesses are required to focus on what they really, really need. Do they need high streets packed with £3 a cup coffee shops, £5 a sandwich shops and phone shops that sell the most overpriced services on the planet? What on earth is the point of a bank or building society having a costly physical presence any longer? And the rest of shops are struggling to ship piles of Chinese-made products, before they are all inevitably overwhelmed by online traders as their ever physical increasing overheads have to pay for an army of mostly pointless local and national government work creation schemes, that devise impositions that few other countries' business communities have to face.

If you work for a large "globalised" business that still has a presence in the UK rather than one of the EU tax havens like Ireland, then bear in mind that the previous experience of recessions is that multinationals protect their home markets first. All business travel slumps, and global operations dump their foreign marketing adventures which they feel they can manage from afar. And never before has it been so simple and attractive to manage anything from afar.

Remember that the US business ethos that forms the core of many globalised businesses has a scant heritage of respect for their "foreign workers" that began with the cotton industry. Most other countries that now house global companies such as Korea, Russia, Japan and China are also a bit short on historical evidence of generosity towards stupid Europeans who are down on their luck. And TMP cannot imagine India feeling warmth towards the mother country that will soften any hard financial choices that they may face.

Long before sub-prime mortgages, a US establishment, jealous of all that pink on the map, had asset-stripped much of the UK and required us to pawn the family jewels. It began in earnest when the US required the dissolution of the British Empire as the price of "saving our sorry limey asses" in WW2, yet, ironically, if we hadn't been obliged to concede the outrageous US terms and impositions in order to eventually drag them into the war in Europe, Germany would have had the A bomb first - and the means to deliver it. The US would now be speaking German along with the rest of us; and David Irving would probably be in charge of rounding up the remaining Jewish bankers and sympathisers on the streets of New York.

Without an empire or a role, the UK drifted and declined largely rudderless through the 50s, 60s, and 70s, living on heady combinations of nostalgia, debt and hope; but we did have some world class innovators left in our industrial base, as well as media and entertainment. Plus above all else, we had the English language, without which we would have been completely stuffed in the swinging 60s. TMP doubts if "Elle vous aime" would have caught on quite as effectively as "She Loves You", and "Je ne peux obtenir aucune satisfaction" would have certainly bombed for "Les pierres de roulement".

So let's not forget the proprietor of that precious language, HM the Queen - whose timely appearance on YouTube is a seismic event in media for those paying proper attention. God bless you Ma'am; but don't you wish the BBC has shown the wit to use its early dominance of the web to achieve what Google has since managed?

Sadly, the BBC's bloated and subsidised presence on the web did the same to the fledgling British online industry that it's earlier decision to support Acorn computers did for the UK's personal computing industry - it broke it. Don't forget that a Brit - Sir Tim Berners Lee - is grudgingly accepted even by (most) Americans as as the father of the web, and BT actually had an interesting patent concerning hyperlinking that any American company would probably have sued to success long before now. Instead, BT rather clumsily chose to include Prodigy and AOL in the test case in 2002, and New York District Judge Colleen McMahon duly delivered the traditional result when a foreigner sues a US company in a US court. Doh...

If an American could have laid claim to the English language, you can be certain that they would have managed to copyright it in some way that meant anyone speaking or writing it anywhere in the world would be paying a fat royalty in perpetuity, but we Brits simply aren't that cute. Instead, they canny yanks waited for the right moment and then tried it on with the next best thing - the lingua franca of computing. So now we have the MS Windows Tax; for the time being at least ...

The post-war period of UK decline witnessed many world class British economic disasters as the result of political expedience, interference and social engineering in the shape of the mismanaged and misguided nationalised industries, and especially the pantomime of British Leyland which has only just about run its course, symbolically ending up in Chinese and Indian hands.

For a period in the 80s and early 90s we were actually in danger of leading the world in personal IT until the BBC dubiously continued to back the arrogant and presumptuous Acorn in the face of a resurgent and inevitable IBM - and our own Amstrad/Sinclair. An action that condemned more than a generation of UK school kids to largely irrelevant computer teaching that allowed the rest of eh world, particularly the US, to catch up and overtake. But Acorn's genes were not entirely wasted - the success story of ARM (Acorn Risc Machine) processors is another Great British case of what might have been, if only more City support had been forthcoming at the right time. But as the result of incentives that favour risk-free asset stripping and property speculation, the UK City simply doesn't do technology innovation.

Latterly, massive advances in database and communications technology (exemplified by the emergence of Google) have meant that a lot has happened in the past 5 years that has completely altered the character of way the world works - and especially the way it advertises and markets itself. The world has changed fundamentally as the result of "because we can computing", which in the UK's emerging police state especially, has led to pervasive surveillance and whole host of consequences around the toxic notions of extended disclosure, risk assessment and due diligence.

So while the fatheads who now hold sway with our innovative industries have used this technology to lead the world in speed cameras and dustbin surveillance, Google has been laying the foundation of massive businesses around the exploitation of BT (no, not that lazy monopoly with the phones and slow broadband, I refer to the practise of "Behavioural Targeting") with "adwords".

The summary of all this is that the UK at the end of 2007 is presently royally screwed without an obvious escape plan under the present lacklustre leadership. However, TMP suspects that there really is something worthy about the bloody minded Britishness and inspirational creativity that still manages to come up with ideas like "Strictly Come Dancing". For what it's worth, there is yet another huge opportunity just around the corner for the UK media (and in that we must include events) industry - but hardly anyone seems to have noticed. It's all to do with satellite TV.

The BBC once lead world TV technology, and was still leading most aspects of broadcast innovation when its worthy fluffy-luvvies decided to disband its Research and Designs departments; then by pure accident we lead the world of direct satellite TV for a brief moment with the clueless BSB.

And now thanks to BT's skill at bamboozling politicians, our lack of investment in vital fibre infrastructure means that the UK has been a showcase for the immensely successful Sky platform. This nicely illustrates the efficiency of a monopoly lead by a dictator, versus a quango comprised of space-filling time servers, and a collection of media dinosaurs whose mentality had not changed from the days when ITV was once described in the 50s as a "license to print money".

The latest opportunity we as a nation may be about to fumble is called FreeSat. It's being billed as Freeview via satellite - but it is actually so much more than that. Freeview terrestrial TV is severely limited by cost and technical reality. There will never be more than 100 channels available - if that - and marginal coverage issues remain largely unresolved. In contrast, FreeSat delivery is 100% predictable and has the potential for 5000+ channels, each at about 4% of the cost of Freeview channel. Whilst we all hear about broadband delivery being the future of video, the available capacity is at least 5 years away from being able to providing an alternative to live HD satellite broadcast.

The bad news - possibly catastrophic - is that Freesat is a consortium lead by an unholy alliance against Sky's domination by the BBC and ITV, who have been buoyed by Freeview's accidental success. Furthermore, Freesat's coverage could easily spill over to Europe and beyond.

"Good grief, where on earth do you find content to fill 5000 channels?" they all ask.

Sky has proved that the major differential element that people are willing to for pay for is live event broadcasting. The Brits and Europeans have a different perspective on "live" to the USA: we live in 2 time zones that for practical purposes can be treated as one. The Americans cannot, and thus combined with the confusion of cable, they will be late into the game.

And YouTube shows once again that the media game is all about content - punters are happy to watch any old UGC (user generated crap) when there is nothing better to look at. But when something better turns up and word gets around, everyone flocks to see.

Maybe now is the moment to sort out the UK video content industry and get it adequately funded to take on the otherwise unstoppable Google; if all that BBC, C4 and ITV content was organised and made available through "UKTube" (and we took a leaf from the American book and sued everyone that attempted to upload any content to one of the US dominated sites) then we might just about have the beginnings of sustainable media plot.

You and I already own most of that prime content through our licence fees; it's in the bank, and until the past 5 or so years, it was generally way, way better than anything the US could cobble together. Let's also take full advantage of the fact that despite Blair's best crusading efforts, the US remains considerably more reviled than the UK, and is scarcely credible as a cultural powerhouse. Best of all, what damage has been done to the UK is probably more easily fixed by a world tour of some of our Royals than a flypast by George Bush. Especially all those formerly pink bits with their sons and daughters at our universities.

So then, 2008 could be a really interesting year. Let's demand that it is used to leverage our position in the one remaining industry where the UK stands a chance of influencing: English language learning and entertainment. Much of the world was once turned pink at the end of a gun boat barrel; but now it is time to lay down a barrage of super-prime content from a combination of satellite and online, and steer attention back to the UK as the source of all worthwhile visual media - while YouTube mostly offers a volley of Americans lighting their own farts, and dogs on skateboards.

Happy 2008!

Two legs good, four legs bad, one eye: hopeless

2007-12-16T14:35:00.000Z

George Orwell's 1984 is more frequently wheeled out as an allegory for modern life than Animal Farm, but TMP believes that pretty much the entire story of 1984 has been played out to an extent that even Orwell would find surprising, and there is nothing left to intrigue and shock as far the invasion of the state's growing legion of mind and body snatchers is now concerned. The UK has clearly become a surveillance state where the political elite do pretty much what they want in terms of prying into the private affairs of anyone, under the ever thinner guise of "anti terrorism".

Never mind the tawdry affair of Labour's dodgy donors exposing crass naivety in high places, public money is regularly used to fund advertising campaigns from the Central Office of Information with a specific political purpose, attempting to associate the nation's "moral agenda" with the notion of a certain political party's own nannying dogma. The invasion of rampant political spin advisers to twist the agendas of supposedly neutral civil servants in Whitehall has reached an unprecedented level, yet the result is a growing shambles.

Just how many wheels has this wretched government got left to come off?

In Animal Farm, Orwell explores the notion that power corrupts. A pliant electorate imagines (for a while) that it has been liberated from some previous tyranny, dutifully obeying their liberators, until the ruling class decides that it knows a better way to run the show than boring old democracy. After all, you can't trust the people to do the right thing, so why take a chance? The recent railroading of the EU constitution/treaty is the crowning achievement of Gordon Brown's Stalinist tendencies, and it is a big mistake to try and soften his image as an unreconstructed authoritarian centralist socialist monster, by comparison with the bumbling antics of Mr Bean.

Gordon is busily tipping an entire nation and its economy over on its side, not just a Reliant Robin. By any measure of honesty and competence, Brown's administration is mired in duplicity and stupidity. The inability of ministers to know what is going on in their chaotic departments is endemic - the notion of accepting responsibility and following through with a resignation is now unheard of.

But the bigger issue lurking under the systemic stupidity and sleaze is the question of the government's fitness to have and control so much data on every subject in the land. Browns' baseball cap wearing YTS staff at HM Customs and Revenue apparently now wield more power to pry and gather data than the Gestapo, Stazi and KGB put together. But this situation will not be undone unless we, the people, specifically set out to undo it.

The instant availability of so much information - anywhere at any time - is far more important and significant than most people dreamed possible 10 years ago. Smug talk of Britain's leading role in the "knowledge economy" has evaporated as more politicians are realising that Google and its kin are empowering more than just the City of London. Moreover, in the UK in particular, the information technology revolution has not been used very effectively for the good of the people, instead it has been and is being used to suppress the people.

TMP asks its ardent followers to ensure that this time around when the government changes, to watch carefully for the tendency of oppositions that get elected to gratefully accept the various tax and liberty impositions their predecessors have foisted on the electorate, and avoid returning any cash or the many aspects of liberty and freedom of choice that have been eroded and ceded during preceding administrations.

This time round, when Gordon and his B-Team are sent trundling down Whitehall in the tumbrels, we will need a lot of the past 10 years to be rolled back, and in some cases beyond, and the misappropriated freedoms and individual choices returned to the people.

We live under a regime where almost all forms of individual discretion have been replaced by some witless process that has been devised and enforced by a legion of civil servants for whom initiative and discretion are alien concepts. In determining what information is extracted, stored , manipulated and then lost in the post - the watch phrase has become "because we can", not "because it is necessary".

It's time that all government information gathering was restrained by a strict need to know policy, and that access to the data was managed in such a way that anyone can find out just who has looked at what information, at what time and for what purpose. This is technically possible with very little extra effort or cost, so don't believe any suggestion to the contrary.

Crucially, at fantastically important and formative times like these, we need an inspirational leader who will listen to and answer questions - and connect with the people. Yet at every press conference and interview, Gordon Brown still displays a complete indifference (bordering on autism) to answering questions. Instead he continues to attempt to ram home an agenda which is becoming less relevant by the day, and suggests a dangerous degree of denial. His stage-managed and contrived efforts at connecting with the people are at best, cringe-making. His flunkies must be near suicide by now.

Brown now faces very real prospect of being hounded out of office with the sort of ignominy that he could never live down in a thousand years. There are even sufficient question marks about his stability to cause some us to wonder if he really should be left in charge of the big red button.

However, your consciences are probably clear. Only very few of you in Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath actually voted for him; and only the 350 or so members of the Parliamentary Labour Party actually voted for him to become our PM.

The dishonesty of telecoms providers

2007-12-04T14:26:00.000Z

There are a number of candidates for the wall outside TMP HQ when the great day dawns that the Great British Public see sense. At the head of this queue is the Chief Executive of Orange - whose micky-mouse phone service is a blight on the nation.

In fact, if I was a Russian subversion strategist seeking to disrupt the UK economy, I would probably get the Order of Lenin if I had managed to sucker so many British people into relying on a cellphone service that simply doesn't work in large areas of the country. After all, lacing a victim's coffee with Polonium is a bit too brash and selective - buggering up millions of people's ability to communicate effectively whilst kidding them they're getting a great service is a far better wheeze.

However, Orange are not the only operators deserving of a swift execution. Moving a number from Orange to another network (O2) technically takes seconds, instead of course it takes a week if you are lucky - in our case, nearer 14 days. If O2 was allowed to start charging only after a successful porting of the number, I rather suspect the delay would be minimal.

But try calling Orange on the phone to complain. Indeed - try calling any one of the new age telecoms or Internet companies with call centres manned by browbeaten automata to complain about anything. For a start you'll be paying through the nose on an 0871 or 09XX number if you are calling to complain your phone doesn't work, and thus by definition, you are being denied service!

The decent into dire customer service over the past 10 years seems due to a combination of offshoring and what operators claim is "fierce competition" that doesn't enable any of these poor impoverished souls to make enough money to provide a proper service any longer.

So one of the first laws TMP will enact after our landslide victory will be that all complaint services are made available on 0800 numbers; all calls will be recorded and posted on publicly accessible urls, and companies that do not answer within 3 minutes will be obliged to pay the caller 50p a minute for waiting, rising to £1 a minute after 5 mins.

Edewkayshun, edukayshen, educashone

2007-12-04T13:38:00.000Z

Well done Tony & Co. All those billions spent on the UK educational system enforcing diversity, inclusiveness and sufficient political correction to create a generation of Stepfordesque New Labour voters incapable of a practical thought, have done the trick.

These new voters won't be able to spell "sleaze" or "corruption", never mind understand enough of the issues to vote against it. Latest reports on world rankings in Education are summed up in the Daily Telegraph headline: "Britain nosedives in education league tables". It goes on...

"In reading, 15-year-olds in the UK dropped from 7th in 2000 to 17th, behind countries including Estonia and Liechtenstein. In maths, pupils fell from eighth to 24th - placing them below the international average. In science, secondary school students in the UK dropped from 4th to 14th. "

It's actually quite hard to find words to describe just how damaging and serious this is for the nation at a time when we have no other assets left other than our brains. In our so-called knowledge economy, 10 years of badly managed educational policy have placed us all on the brink of bankruptcy.

And then we all woke up and sniffed....

2007-11-28T12:50:00.000Z

Some TMP readers suggested that we have been a tad extreme in our early assessment of Brown's administration - unfairly condemning them without much evidence. Well, we think we have called this one pretty accurately, so of course we will now indulge in a fat gloat.

TMP's concern now is that there are still so many voters willing to put up with this pantomime. Labour's relentless ten years of outrageous gerrymandering by creating a client state, ruthlessly appeasing their heartlands, fixing the Scottish parliamentary fodder, and allowing their "natural" supporters to turn up and sign on - largely unchecked - has worked pretty well for them.

However, there comes a time when the combination of sleaze and incompetence is so inescapable that even the most ardent supporters and apologists have to give up in despair or become completely tarred by the same messy brush. Given that the Conservative Party has made no secret of its intentions to dismantle the no-longer-impartial BBC, watch out for the BBC bigging up the LibDems in an effort to find any friend that might help stave off the prospects of a majority Tory administration.

The interesting times continue. Tony Blair must be wetting himself with glee.

Things can only get better ..?

2007-11-15T12:27:00.000Z

You will recall the anthem used at the 1997 General Election victory parade by Tony & Co.? Well, it's time to download it from iTunes once again, because we will need reminding eventually. However, it might be a few more months before it is actually viable, as we still have a way to go when exploring the depths of greed and stupidity of the world's leading banks over the "sub prime" affair.

Next time a banker of any sort tries on their usual air of sanctimonious superiority, feel free to remind them that just about everyone in their trade from the lowly doorstep loan salesmen to the chairmen of global banks have been proved to be at the very best stupid, and in many cases, probably criminally negligent.

The affair also highlights that even the vast, vast swathe of legislation that the industry and public have been forced to swallow over the past ten years of Enron and other "affairs" makes not a blind bit of difference. It is still perfectly possible for a string of stupid bankers to undermine entire economies; and as yet, no one has been charged with any criminal act. Hardly anyone has resigned.

The UK Bank of England and Chancellor's response has been generally regarded as clumsy at best; the loan from the taxpayer to Northern Rock is climbing up past £24bn, and now Gordon Brown is doing his bit to deflect attention from this and the incompetence of his very third division Home Secretary, by announcing a string of travel and other impositions on 99.9%of British subjects to try restrain the 0.1%.

Although it's being done in the holy name of anti-terrorist measures, it's also clearly now going to be about a fine mesh screening process coupled to just about every database in government that is designed to catch anyone who once put a tin can in a recycling bin marked "plastic", if they dare to travel on public transport or pay by credit card.

In response to the outcry, he may ease up on a few of the impositions, and we'll all think that "gosh, what a reasonable chap" he is.

Wake up.

There is still no evidence whatever to disprove the widely held view that he and his creaking administration have "lost it", and are now in terminal decline. Everything Brown talks about involves more control, more central databases and the continued erosion of liberty. No wonder he chews his nails.