The Majority Blog

A lame duckhouse government

2009-06-19T07:55:00.004Z

We've all had a jolly good laugh and enormously enjoyed watching pompous MPs squirming in the glare of the most excruciating publicity, but if you lot were told that your employer expected you to claim £50k PA as part of your "compensation package" (we love that Americanism) and that there were virtually no rules - which one of you would not do it?

We thought so.

The righteous sanctimony is starting to smell just a little stale by now. By all means slaughter Broon for presiding over the latest censorship fiasco and he complete mishandling of the entire situation from the outset a very revealing episode that shows just how completely hopeless the Auld Fraud truly is when events move outside his legendary "control zone" - but we really need to get on and sort out the economy before we wake up and find that China has bought us all in a fire sale.

So - General Election, please! How about the press - who now pretty much universally have got the plot - campaign for massive public displays of dissatisfaction until the Auld Fraud is carried bodily from No 10. All that is needed is to guarantee a year's salary to all the many outgoing MPs - appalling though it may seem, that's absolutely and entirely what this has now come down to.

After the apocalypse? We're already here!

2009-06-17T08:41:00.003Z

We've all seen those cinematic visions of "after the apocalypse" where the machines have taken over and a few humans remain to scramble amongst the ruins?

Well, you might not have noticed, but it's happened. Possibly not quite as obvious and stark as in the Terminator's imagery, but happened it has: the faceless robots now in charge are the behemoth organisations that have been allowed to emerge through steady acquisition and consolidation in the name of "efficiency" over the past 20 years: massive national and supranational government agencies, collaborating cosily with the cartels of global companies entrenched in major and increasingly monopoly supply roles.

The most obvious proof that these commercial cartel members are unhealthy is that governments simply could not allow them to go bust - even after they had got their numbers disastrously wrong to the detriment of the entire planet.

It is a specific characteristic of these behemoths that that they only want to deal with each other. This has been the globalisation of the old adage that "no one ever got fired for choosing IBM". The implication being that the risk of failure of the product/service chosen would not fall on the decision maker, whereas had the product/service been chosen from a smaller "no-name" supplier, then the superiors of the decision maker would haul them over the coals when any blame storm erupts. It's a pernicious but effective tactic, and means that the behemoths can only ever grow, regardless of their fitness for task and competence.

So if you are not part of this cosy "system", then you are one of the remainder, scrambling around the ruins of the once-diverse economy for crumbs that fall from the tables of fat cats gorging on their unfairly protected cartel businesses - or waiting eagerly to catch the slops that spill over the lips of the many government troughs.

Despite the controversy over his appointment as Business Tsar, [include current honour here] Alan Sugar has a refreshingly old-fashioned view of the world, that includes a desire to wind the clock back 20 years (see the YouTube interviews) to a world where common sense prevailed before "the rise of mechanoids" rather more than it does now in Broon's Blighted Britain.

One acid test will arise his core passion for apprenticeship. The idea that any self-employed tradesman should take on a school leaver as an apprentice is now almost certainly going to be smothered by the enormous hassle and paperwork that 12 years of Labour's interminable process that means it's very unlikely to happen. Only one of the monster mechanoids that can afford to devote an entire department to HR will be able to find the time and resources to push the paper around to satisfy the rules.

As unemployment climbs, this has to change - and quickly.

The Broadband Britain Myth

2009-06-09T23:04:00.003Z

There is still far too much evidence of ignorance amongst politicians on the matter of broadband, IT and telecoms in general. Blair's admission that he didn't know how to switch on a laptop was considered acceptably jokey at the time. No one is laughing now when our leaders profess such woeful ignorance of the fundamentals for survival in the 21st century.

BT has defended its ancient investment in copper (and aluminium) network to the death and manipulated the government for nigh on 30 years. For various internal political issues, it utterly fudged the obvious opportunity to switch to fibre when we lead the world in the technology in the 80s and 90s.

Despite loudly protesting its innocence, BT has served its own monopoly interests all the way - having delivered a mostly sub-standard service (with institutional attitude) for years. Despite "de-regulation" it carefully waited and then kicked the stool out from under the eager but naive Mercury, which set down a marker to all UK telecom competition that BT was the 600lb gorilla not to be messed with. Don't bother about investing, because we'll spoil your day.

A few cherry picked services emerged to provide point to point services to obvious points of mass connectivity, but aside from an occasional noble disaster - like Ionica's failed microwave home service that failed when the leaves came out - no one has bothered to even try to take on BT in the shires.

But better than "adequate" bandwidth is a fundamental national infrastructure issue - the Queen's Superhighway, if you like.

Copper DSL is a crap shoot with its generally unpredictable performance, compounded by various analogue uncertainties - dependant on exchange routes with a maximum of about 6km before the signal fades out. Fibre is 100% predictable all the way, and could be used from far fewer core exchanges, spaced at 50km - so thousands of exchanges could be shut/redeveloped/sold.

Although the shambles that is Virgin arose form a completely botched cable TV industry, it is the only "in the ground" alternative to BT's copper hegemony. The chances are that Virgin will get the chance to fill in the bits BT has abandoned. Everyone hates BT throughout the entire IT and telecoms industry for its continual abuses of market dominance, it's relentless devious tactics and calamitous lack of vision.

Moreover, once we become a nation dependent on connectivity, then we need to seriously consider how we get not just one but two diverse "fail over" services into each premises. Any business reliant on connectivity knows full well just how disastrous even a minor outage can be - and the same will increasingly apply to consumer installations as government owned banks and post offices progressively shut their doors and tell their customers to use online alternatives.

If ever there was a topic that needed a Tsar to crack heads, this is it. Lord Carter has other fish to fry as he attempts squaring the numerous circles of new media and broadcasting, but let's pray he has the bottle to insist this subject is raised up the agenda and taken away from BT's deathly embrace. For once, TMP will (generously) not immediately assume that his willingness to sit in the Lords as a Labour peer disqualifies him from getting any credit for knowing what he is doing.

After all, the exception proves he rule.

The Minority Party: 5%

2009-06-08T08:22:00.003Z

The most significant (and obvious?) thing to emerge from the EU elections is that the Labour Party's awkward coalition of minorities has come apart at the seams in a big way. Just 5% of the electorate voted Labour - one in twenty - and now the Auld Fraud Broon is busy telling us that having torn up the manifesto of the last general election, and avoided an awkward election on his assumption of the role of PM, he's going to reform the nation. Without any sort of mandate; indeed in the face of coming 3rd in the most recent test of national opinion.

We appear to arrived at the moment when if HM decided it was time exercise her power and dissolve parliament, it's unlikely that many would complain.

Labour has long be a fundamental contradiction in that it appeals to best and worst instincts: the lofty altruism of social justice and fair shares for all, and that rather darker contract with its "grass roots" supporters that amounts to selling its soul to the lowest common denominator by promises of soaking the rich to pay for an endless public employment gravy train.

And such a perfect opportunity missed to hold a cost-effective referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Although we suspect that idea is now irrelevant, since the question of the Tories' referendum will be a rather more fundamental return to the original Treaty of Rome and reprise of the free markets - without the increasingly unloved and irrelevant social engineering agenda. After all, that's what we actually voted for in the first place.

Whatever, we continue to live in interesting times.

We do not need PR

2009-06-06T16:17:00.000Z

There is once again a familiar call for the introduction of proportion representation as the way to fix British Politics. Oh no it won't...

Everywhere it applies, PR means professional politicians doing cosy deals amongst themselves in order to stay nose down at the trough.

By all means let's reform the FPTP system so that we get genuinely elected Prime Ministers - and key manifesto promises on matters such as referendums and tax rates can only be abandoned - after holding a referendum.

Maybe we should have a PM elected by a simple majority of the UK vote - without anything contrived like electoral colleges to fudge around the possibility that the "wrong" person might get selected by sheer populism, as far as the "establishment" was concerned. Let's trust the people to make the decisions for once - the politicians' gentlepersons club has properly cocked it up when left to its own devices for too long.

PR means that the ruling clique will be able to pick/choose elements of an amorphous fudge of policy, and never be held properly accountable - ever again!

PR is not any sort of solution, it will only compound the worst aspects of "professional" politics.

It's now S'real: Official

2009-06-05T09:28:00.000Z

News that Sir Alan Sugar is being rewarded for his stalwart support of Gordon Brown - through thin and thinner - rounds off a surreal period in British Politics with a moment of pantomime. This would appear to be the political equivalent of calling the faithful sub off the bench in the last minute of extra time in the cup final so as to get a reward for their long and loyal service.

Let's pause a reflect:

"No more boom and bust"
"Best placed to deal with the downturn"
"A weak currency is a sign of a weak government"
"British jobs for British workers"

The Damian Green affair, the toxic McBride affair. The pathetic response to the expenses scandal. The grinning loon on YouTube.

What more does anyone need by way of proof that Gordon has been an unmitigated disaster as (unelected) PM..? Why is there even the slightest delay in getting the Auld Fraud perched on his bike, and taking the High Road home?

TMP's advice to voters

2009-06-04T14:43:00.004Z

And you thought the amateur dramatics at Westminster were bad? The EU is farce performed by professional con artists and fraudsters on so many levels, that it's difficult to know where to start on the subject of reform.

Many people that take the trouble to understand the issues don't see any point, benefit or reason for closer political union; most of us clearly don't want to be told what to do by Brussels when the parliament is elected and operated as a self-serving Ruritanian farce.

Notwithstanding, we quite enjoy not having to juggle Johnny foreigner's colourful but confusing cash when travelling; we like the idea of common trading areas. And thanks to plastic cards and ATMs that really doesn't seem to matter much more anyway. Plus the intervention of the internet now means that a "common global market" is pretty much inevitable.

We used to actively seek something a bit different when travelling abroad - so why try and turn all Europe into one amorphous Centre Parcs or Holiday Inn?

Most other attempts at practical/cultural unification are farcical anyway (phone sockets, mains plugs, rip-off energy suppliers - and even their windows open inwards!)

The inescapable reality is that there is no rational or worthwhile reason left for the EU to exist, other than to perpetuate the jobs for the boys and girls that it has created. Technology has obviated virtually all the originally stated purposes; so in reality, the EU exists now purely for the benefit of global companies and their manipulative lobbyists (that darn Bilderberg Group at it again?) plus, of course, gravy train politicians.

Many Brits appear to be increasingly united on their suspicion of European politics and politicians, so why don't we just tell Brussels to shove all those aspects of the EU that we (the people) don't want where the sun shineth not..? It's just too bad if that means the number of fat sinecures for retired and failed British politicians is reduced.

It's no bad thing that UKIP has managed to blot its own sleaze copybook quite so clumsily - since although there is a temptation to protest vote, on balance it's probably better to stick with the most likely next UK government party, and make your feelings known to your MP at every opportunity.

What is the purpose of the EU ..?

2009-05-27T17:00:00.001Z

Can anyone please explain to TMP what useful purpose the EU now serves? The Commons expenses fiasco provides a useful jumping off point for the biggest rotten apple in the European political barrel.

The European Parliament and its various agencies and institutions now exist for the systematic abuse of power and the laundering of money, for the maintenance of its own interests and those of its overpaid apparatchiks. It shamefully remains unauditable and unaccountable.

It was thought up (like so much else) in the pre-internet age, when information and markets were barely accessible to any but "insiders"; which is utterly different to the globalised world of today. Europe was emerging from a world war when Germany decided that third time was unlikely to be lucky, and instead sought a pact with its neighbours whereby it's economic power could prevail without attracting the same sort of controversy as a Blitzkrieg. The Germans rightly thought that as the largest country in Europe, and with a pretty good track record of being organised and able to make all sorts of stuff, they would be in the economic box seat most of the way.

The French, pragmatic as ever, went along, comfortable in the knowledge that they would simply ignore anything they didn't want or like. The other states were pretty much frog marched along, although most generally managed to convince themselves that this inevitable outcome was actually going to be good for them.

Huge bribes were offered so that the French and Germans could develop the more backward states as better consumers of their products. And at the same time, external barriers were erected and the rules set out to ensure that there was a level playing field inside the EU, by hanging the same millstones of social policy around each others necks.

But above all else, and at all times, the political classes took care of themselves as never before in the history of mankind. This was to be the gravy train to end all gravy trains.

Is enough, enough?

2009-05-23T15:21:00.003Z

Some people are starting to ask if the Westminster Follies has run for long enough. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury has been moved to call for a truce, pointing out that the humiliation is complete, and perhaps it is now time to take stock, and start to try and restore some dignity to Parliament.

Stressed MPs - many of whom may be facing criminal investigations although they all felt they were part of the "nod and wink" scheme that made up for their relatively low basic salaries - are talking of possible suicides; but this farce needed to run and run, because for a long time many of the Westminster villagers simply refused to "get it", because they had become part of a 12 year "project" by New labour to use it's vast majority to install a centralised and "presidential" style of administration, with political animals (paid from public funds) like Damian McBride, threaded through the service as never before. Now we can look back over the 12 years, perhaps "conspiracy" actually says it better then "project" ..?

Blair's vacuous babes were emblematic of his "Stepford" Administration, where inexperienced and wholly inappropriate individuals were controlled through programmed responses that took away the need for anyone to weigh up arguments and think for themselves, because the debating chamber became almost completely irrelevant under the junta. The fact that 75% of UK legislation now emanates from Brussels also engendered a sense of futility and pointlessness where those who found themselves sidelined and politically irrelevant found they had more time to spend flipping their mortgages and dealing with their domestic expenses.

Like so much else that has gone wrong with Britain today, this entire affair sits squarely on the smug shoulders of Tony Blair, who was ready to do and say anything to get into power and stay there. He pretty much came from political obscurity, with no respect for any of the great traditions of parliament or democracy. Despite his obviously toffish family and background, he correctly calculated that he could get nowhere as such a raw neophyte in the Conservative party, and set about using his lawyerly skills for wooing the defeated and demoralised Labour party, looking for a new Messiah. And like Blair, ready to do and say anything to get back into power.

His biggest enemy from the outset was always going to be "common sense" and that sense of rectitude that the British understand as "fair play". Blair (and his chief svengali, Alastair Campbell) wanted unquestioning enforcers and vapid lobby fodder. Even 80 year old lifelong party members were to be ejected from triumphant gatherings like the Labour Party conferences, at the first sign of dissent.

Another part of Blair's poisonous legacy is that all parties saw how he had got away with such a lightweight background, an absence of any skill or gravitas - and decided that it was safe - necessary, even - for them also to have candidates that were camera and sound-bite friendly professional politicians, with no life experience to speak of.

TMP believes that the overriding issue of the past 12 years is the substitution of "good old fashioned British common sense" by process, belief in various forms of entitlements, and crude undemocratic diktat. The fact that Labour's "project" has involved importing large numbers of people as cheap labour to fuel the phony boom (and also mostly vote in their favour) meant that it would be necessary to try and eradicate the "British" dimension from Britain, in order that the new workforce should not feel awkwardly excluded from the society that the British believe themselves to be part of - which is a very distinct existence from that of many European countries that have been variously invaded, conquered and carved up many times over the past few hundred years.

The latest news that the UK birth rate is now the highest since 1972 is a very mixed blessing. Despite the issues of an aging population, the planet doesn't need more consumers of resources, and the fact that 24% of all births in the UK are now to mothers born outside the UK, is significant. This news only adds to the belief that no one in government is listening to the people who would have liked to have been consulted rather more closely before their society was changed in so many fundamental ways. But maybe if Westminster sits with its ears shut for long enough, the majority of the "people" will have born to parents from overseas anyway? Perhaps then government will start to pay attention to the English native minority…

This refusal to engage in a debate about the nature of Britain without name-calling and presumptions of prejudice gives the BNP their once-in-lifetime opportunity. Although it seems that the BNP contains too many fundamentally stupid people for the movement to ever take a proper hold - not least thanks to that innate British sense of "fair play", so admirably shown during Joanna Lumley's Ghurkha campaign. But there will be trouble. One of the responsible parties needs to take ownership of the concerns that are apparent throughout the country that England (especially) has been re-engineered into something the English didn't ask for - and don't want - through the process of unfettered immigration.

The present expenses shamble has shown the entire population just how completely corrupt and untrustworthy a large part of the government and parliament has become. If it can display such bad manners, poor judgement and crass stupidity over matters such as porn TV and phantom mortgages - just what else have they mishandled? Of course the only way forward is to hold an early general election and re-examine each and every candidate; those who have not previously been MPs will have the advantage that their lives up to that point will be a good deal less transparent - and there is going to have to be a good deal of weight placed on the argument for the "Devils you know" to support existing MPs who have not taken the proverbial in their expense claims.

But even then, any MP "excused" or "pardoned" is going to lack moral authority, and we have created the most enormous dilemma for the country.

The Boy Dave endorsed the value of basic common sense in his various protestations at the sheer crass stupidity of the Grandees and their presumption of entitlement concerning such obviously tasteless expenses as moats and duck houses. The lack of judgement displayed was stellar, but the opportunity this provides to flush out the worst of the old fossils, is probably very welcome. So far at least, most of the excusable and potentially useful Tory babies appear to be capable of being filtered from the bathwater. From a glance at the league table of expenses, Labour has a rather bigger problem since a minister is always going to face a higher bar of expectations and responsibilities.

Gordon Brown's curiously differential treatment of Hazel Blears' naughty mortgage manipulations seems quite inexplicable if you don't bear in mind that the Auld Fraud is himself slightly bonkers anyway. It is always quite pointless to try and attribute rational behaviour to the unhinged. And since Broon was looking distinctly wobbly before all this broke, just imagine what the torture by Telegraph as been doing for his state of mind over the past couple of weeks.

One of the good things to emerge will be a complete reappraisal of just where the surveillance society has taken us. Technology made it possible for the mole to sneak out the documents - probably on a memory stick or mobile phone memory card. We can either carry on in the knowledge that nothing is safe, or we can start to contain the technology that is increasingly containing us. For many years, executives in US corporations have been reluctant to use email for anything but the most bland and inconsequential purposes, since they know the power of disclosure is total, and it can quickly becoming unreasoning and unremitting.

Nixon's infamous White House tapes were a sign of things to come and had little to do with modern IT - it didn't exist; and most of the MPs' expenses remained hidden for long because they were hand written on old-fashioned bits of paper - but then duly scanned into retrieval system.

On the matter of a return to "common sense", please show TMP anyone happy to have all their private correspondence and communication thrown open to public comment and ridicule, and we'll show you a desperately sad and boring individual. The wonder is that we have yet to get any juicy Mistress scandals from all this. What a tediously boring and dowdy lot these MPs truly are.

Summarising Proust

2009-05-19T17:35:00.002Z

Those who came here looking for Monty Python's famous sketch can find it here... but the task for TMP to round up the past week in politics is on the same scale, given that the Telegraph claims to have been given a million pages of documents by its mole.

It seems that the people of Britain have been woken up at last. Not by the numerous despairing attempts of us doomwatchers trying to point out the constant creep of surveillance and invasion of the mind snatchers from Blair/Broon's nanny state - but by the sound of yelping as MP fingers have been caught in the public till after the telegraph and its moles slammed the drawer shut. And there are fingers strewn all over the floor!

The gravy train just ran over a cliff, but only after 12 years of the relentless erosion of liberty by Blair's presidential style and disdain for parliament and the unelected Brown's simple "unfitness" for the job. The "system" they are all apologizing for and desperate to change was controlled by the champagne socialist dynasties and cliques, that believe they know better than the pesky people who get in the way of their grand plan. And it is now apparent that the compliance of backbenchers in the cynical sidelining of parliamentary process was being bought at wholesale rates by a culture of "nod and wink" expenses. All presided over by their own dodgy pick of Speaker, who was installed in a very crude act of disdain against all the traditions and expectations of parliament. But it now seems that many MPs were too busy flipping their property and speculating to be bothered to attend parliament and find out what was going on.

The full list is published here on BBC News website. Although all parties have found the imprint of their members' snouts in the trough, the majority of those snouts belong to labour MPs, Ministers, even. The dreadful Jacquie Smith kicked this all off with her husband who was caught with his dick in hand (he is also paid for by the state, remember) and his porn TV channel claim. You could not make it up, could you? The Home Secretary, of all people, responsible for some of the most insidious invasions of privacy and destruction of liberty in a thousand years was first to find out what it was like to have her own privacy invaded! Except that it wasn't actually a private matter if it was paid for with public money.

And all this coming so soon after the MPs harangued the dodgy bankers and extracted the "S" word from the next least popular category of sanctimonious, incompetent and bullying trough divers in the land. All we need now is for someone to nail that last bastion of sanctimonious hypocrisy - the news media itself - and we will have the full house.

However you cut it, that the motley collection of shifty characters that have been given carte blanch by three landslide majorities to do what that pleased with the UK for the past 12 years, have been caught on the hop; and how! Every single one of them has been sheepishly apologizing and making excuses including many who would have done nothing wrong in the minds of reasonable people, if only it had been better managed the instant it became obvious what was going to happen.

These people are mostly shown to be political pygmies, whose moral authority to tell the rest of us what is good for us, has just evaporated and can never return. TMP was pondering whether or not to add the word "Blears" to its online spelling checker database, but we don't think we'll bother now, because it is soon (with any luck/justice) unlikely to ever be heard again.

Indeed, TMP got a great sense of amused satisfaction when typing the labels for this post: "deeply flawed Gordon Brown, sleaze, corruption, unlawful expense claims Hazel Blears, Jacqui Smith " Now you lot please go and get the same sense of satisfaction by demanding a general election, and then voting those MPs whose years of sanctimonious preaching onto the dole.

But there must also be some account made of the degree of the sin, based on the position of the miscreant and the size of the piss-take. Normal life would quickly be intolerable if every speed camera was suddenly to be set to trap anyone doing 30.01 mph in the spirit of New Puritanism. But a lot of the stress of modern life after 12 years of relentless Blair/Brown project is that most of the grey areas and general discretionary "slack" of life has been repealed, and is now policed by squads of the otherwise unemployable in they shiny peaked caps. Which employee has never tried it on with their expenses, or not helped themselves to the office pens?

It was the sheer lack of any evidence of "good taste" that has dumbfounded the voters, themselves facing paying for this government's ineptitude over the next 20 or 30 years. TMP is surprised that there isn't more of an effort going into a campaign to get some MPs to be made criminally bankrupt under this government's ironic "proceeeds of crime" legislation.

But it is quite clear the atmosphere was one one of "it's an entitlement because the basic salary has been artificially restrained - and they're all at it, so we might as well join the fun". That means the biggest responsibility must rest with the government itself, and micro-managing Brown in particular. But any preaching minister with an error of judgment of more than £1000 is obviously is toast; any humble backbencher with more than £10k of hard-to-explain claims is probably also a gonner.

Now only a general election that explores all these issues and returns MPs who have shown they "get it" can start to rebuild the essential confidence in parliament that has been so clumsily lost by the grinning mismanagement of Broon, ably aided and abetted in his foolishness by his Caledonian Comrade and fall guy, Gorbals Mick.

The banking scandal in microcosm

2009-05-16T14:00:00.000Z

We don't think I've seen anyone yet draw the stark parallel with New Labours "nod and wink" relationship with some of the more conniving turncoats of the City and financial services industry, and what went on at Westminster. Talk about a mess of pottage.

Looked at overall, we can see the familiar pattern of trough-diving socialism of the type that has always rotted through any socialist administration. Sly deals being done with the purse keepers - and the comforting group excuse and belief that "they're all at it anyway".

The worst of this is the revelation that we have allowed our nation and its sovereignty to be taken to the brink of the economic and political abyss by a collection of least desirable white-collar criminals ever to walk the streets. What else have they got wrong and done wrong in pursuit of personal agendas?

However, someone has to stand up and call a halt to the fun in order to resume the struggle with the monster of Brown's slump - but now it clearly cannot be Broon or any of his trough-diving colleagues.

Blair was left the Clark/Major legacy of contained inflation as a basis for future growth which it now seems was squandered on wide boys and girls of the Scottish financial services industry to help fuel the fantasy property-lead boom that provided taxes to fuel the fantasy welfare state - but just what on earth is Brown leaving to his successor?

A shoebox stuffed full of worthless IOUs.

Still no ideas, Will?

2009-05-10T17:24:00.001Z

The Guardian writer and BBC's favourite jouryneman economic guru, Will Hutton, is still stuck bemused in his cosy socialist world where the fairy money once grew on trees, and is still struggling to come to temrs with a world that is collapsing around his ears. Like everyone else, he can offer almost no useful and practical suggestions.

"We need to create a network of public/private banks to support industrial and infrastructure investment and we need a wholesale transformation in the short-term, risk-averse way in which British banks have treated manufacturing companies for more than a century."

Despite Armageddon, we still seem to be up to our arses in bankers, bankers and financial this-that-and-the-others. Doubtless because of Will's "form", this would all be much better under state management and control, since all he has to offer are some historic references to deluded irrelevant precedents.

"British banks [around the time of WW2] were cajoled into supporting new industries and restructuring old ones."

One thing Hutton gets right is to observer that this mess is still mostly about confidence. And by far the biggest problem is the long term crisis of confidence brought on by the government's denial of the presence of the mammoth in the room: far too much public spending and unbelievably huge amounts of public debt.

Inspiring confidence is generally about leadership, a quality that is currently absent in every sense of the word in government, and scarily also in wider society. Brown's period of "leadership" is clearly over, so no one is taking him seriously any longer - especially as his own party jostles for position in the inevitable leadership contests ahead.

The media and the electronic communication age have discouraged anyone of any quality from sticking their head above any parapet - especially when they can see examples of how easily even great talents such as Hutton [yes. we are being ironic], can be exposed to scrutiny and ridicule - and made to look naive and foolish. The present humiliation of MPs' expenses is possibly the single biggest and most sustained exposure of clay feet in the history of mankind.

Current UK "leaders" (in all walks) are almost entirely talent-free, and seem driven by nothing other than their towering greed or hubris - or both. Amongst all the banking disasters, Lloyd's Chairman, Victor Blank, stands out as a fine example of how this double jeopardy can play out.

Anyone of any quality observing the current leadership crises in finance, government, the metropolitan police and just about anywhere else that long lenses, email and Google can pry, cannot be blamed for not wanting to get involved. Yet we are headed into a puritanical frenzy of transparency and accountability that would probably be able to find and dish the dirt on St Francis or Mother Teresa. Only those who have never done anything faintly interesting in their dull grey lives will be able to survive examination under the arc lights of the New Inquisition.

So overall, this seems to be a rather bigger issue and problem than even a bloke of Hutton's immense talents and track record in solving the nation's problem can cope with.

The leaders that got us out of holes in the past tended not to be motivated purely by small scale money like fiddled expenses. Rarely did they allow a bean-counter's take on the world to get between them and their visions. Quite often, these people were obsessive about proving a point and willing to risk everything.

Stopping the gravy train

2009-05-10T14:42:00.004Z

We paid peanuts, we got monkeys. Sly, artful and self-serving monkeys, perhaps, but monkeys all the same. The current furore of MPs expenses - however its exposure has been motivated - has reminded us of the challenges of being ruled by a cabal of small-minded jobsworth with no experience of anything other than being cogs in bigger machines, that religiously claim their expenses.

This comes about because of a stupid decision made a long time ago to avoid the embarrassment of increasing MPs salaries to match those of (allegedly!!) similarly skilled and responsible jobs - so that MPs get paid substantially less than a huge number of relatively trivial local council managers. Instead, a less politically sensitive way to bolster the earnings was devised to provide a "generous range" of "expenses allowances", as we all now know. The relentless exposure of this crass exploitation of loopholes sets a useful example to Labour's new regions of high rate tax victims looking for way to avoid paying all but the barest minimum for Labour's mismanagement.

It's a pity that this pathetic Labour junta has pretty much confirmed the jaundiced view of the electorate that they aren't worth even minimum wage, but something needs to be done fast to try and restore some respect to our leaders who are an unprecedented laughing stock and devoid of all respect at a crucial time like this. After the demise of the Tories in 1997 over the issue of handful of comparatively minor exposes of political sleaze, there will be quite a few deposed Conservatives looking up how to spell "schadenfreude".

There is much to be said for MPs who do not need the money and for whom politics is not a tempting gravy train for the otherwise unemployable, but a genuine opportunity for public service - and something that you get into only after you have some obtained some experience of how the world works in the real world of real wealth creating employment.

And there is NOTHING in any form of education that comes close to the experience gained from employing and managing people who are spending YOUR money.

Apart from nannies and cleaners, what experience do any Labour Ministers have of such a crucial element of the way the world works? Bugger all, we suspect, judging by their chronic nativity and reliably appalling judgement. Something we suspect that they have in common with Labour's assorted BBC and Guardian flag bearers who simply have no experience of life outside the UK's publicly funded soft-left media and luvvie bubble. (TMP would point out that the Guardian seems to be largely funded from advertising public sector jobs ands services...)

Although anything has to be better than Broon's pantomime administration, the Tories are not what they once were. Mrs T. was possibly as effective as she was because she plainly didn't need the money like the present collection of simian ministers all seem to. Far be it from TMP to imply that she was a kept woman, but her husband Dennis was not short of a few bob, and the need to pay the mortgage was never going to cloud her judgement.

Tory spokesman Dr Liam Fox speaking on BBC TV said it would be a pity if only the "independently wealthy" were able to afford to take part in politics. But after 11 years of rule by the independently poor, could it be any worse?

Real policies to tackle a real recession

2009-04-25T16:22:00.003Z

Let's park the ideology if we can, and think through the options; although any solution must start by removing the Auld Fraud and his discredited junta to where they can do no more harm.

The FIRST THING we have to do is work out how to employ 2 million - possibly 4 million once the truth unwinds and the myriad of Labour's non-jobs are excluded. Let's anticipate the problem is actually 3m.

At an average of £100 pw, this is directly costing us £300m a week, or £15bn a year. The indirect costs is almost certainly the same again in terms of other costs such as potential tax payments and contribution to the GDP. What other single element of the crisis is worth so much in cash and social consequences? (The 50p top rate may raise up to £7bn, although so estimate that anything over £5bn would be unlikely as all sorts of complex avoidance schemes once again become the preoccupation of the high earners).

But all "large" organisations are now so completely smothered in process, risk assessment, form-filling, and general arse-covering that the process of employing anyone is not HUGELY more complex and tedious than it has ever been. Especially thanks to the legislation introduced in the past 11 years mostly by the Westminster and EU socialists who have never run a business that employs people in wealth creating functions in their lives.

The only way we can do this is to make the creation and operation of very small enterprises - under 20 people - much simpler, cheaper and less onerous. This means undoing just about everything that has been over the past 30 years to create a centralised command and control state, and leech away the liberties and freedoms that were once managed under the heading of "common sense".

Some paranoid Americans have a fascinating conspiracy view on what's really going on with the shadowy and sinister Bilderberg Group - well worth watching...

Still working out how we got here...

2009-04-24T13:03:00.000Z

Please don't blame anyone but Labour for the sheer enormity of this mess and the lost opportunity.

The most significant advances of the past century all piled into the last decade - and the start of this one, as ubiquitous telecoms and networking transformed the way we all interact.

No government started to begin to "get it" until around 1995 when the first dotcom boom heralded the arrival of globalisation and unprecedented transparency in trade - which filtered all the way down from multinationals to the bloke on the number 9 bus thanks to things like Google and eBay.

And it was Labour who have held power for pretty much the whole of the critical period, with a PM who was proud to boast he knew nothing about computers to the end. And it seems Gordon Brown is still using an early copy of Visicalc that gets the decimal point in the wrong place.

The Labour government wasted a lot of time faffing about with dogma and scared cows like devolution (of all the divisive and wasteful things!) , the House of Lords "reform", and of course, the vital issue of foxhunting. And they left BT to get away with what BT is best at doing - as little as possible for as much money as possible. Only a big effort in the past 4 years has moved broadband along at all - but the key opportunity to fibre the entire nation for £12bn back in 1997 was ignored.

And for 12 years now, a vast raft of legislation has been dreamed up by those who had never run a business employing anyone in their lives. This has piled the agony onto employers and made the creation and operation of small businesses increasingly stressful and unrewarding. It's no surprise that many are taking the excuse of the recession to trim their workforces at a time when everyone has been softened up to expect it.

Any way ahead starts with flushing the present administration down the toilet of history - and hoping that no "floaters" re-appear. We arrived at that crucial point where absolutely anything must be better, some time ago.

A budget for sabotage, treason and sedition

2009-04-23T10:09:00.002Z

We all knew the budget would be horrible, and even so were we surprised by Darling's sheer depravity of purpose. It was simply a collection of politically inspired land mines, very specifically designed to blow the limbs off the next Conservative government.

The Damian McBride affair exposed Broon's dirty tricks department and gave yet more substance to the suspicion that Auld Fraud's reputation for personal vindictiveness knows no bounds. The stories of how Broon hounded Blair out of office abound, and the evidence that he is several sandwiches short of a picnic mounts daily - even before the sight of a grinning loon on the Number 10 website promising to restore the dignity of politicians confirmed that he is now probably a picnic short of a picnic.

All the Caledonian Calamity now seems to care about is clinging on for as long as possible in order to leave Cameron with the worst possible legacy and the narrowest possible room for manoeuvre. After the Budget from Hell, it's obvious that labour has no expectation of winning any elections soon, and that all that can happen now is yet more carefully laid ordnance designed to inflict maximum damage on Cameron's government. Manifesto commitments mean nothing, roughing up an MP doing his job means nothing, having an unelected PM means nothing - Labour has been about as discredited as it is possible to be with its clothes on.

So fighting fire with fire, surely Cameron would appear to have every right to turn the screw, and make a dramatic move to bring home the seriousness of the situation to the people in an unprecedented move..? For the sake of the nation, Cameron surely has to try and do something dramatic to stop even more of Brown's H-bombs from wrecking even more of the nation's future prospects? (H for Hubris, by the way...)

Why not tell Brown that unless he resigns within 28 days, the next Conservative administration will pursue the entire cabinet on charges of conspiracy, sabotage, and treason - and make certain that everyone knows he means it..?

The LibDems could easily back up such a move - they will probably win a bunch more seats as Labour gets wiped out - and they'll never be in government and in a position where the opposition can try the same trick on them.

Up that creek, with ever fewer paddles

2009-04-18T15:45:00.006Z

Never mind long suicide notes, Polly Toynbee's latest Guardian piece may be the longest resignation submission ever, from her role as a fervent paddler of the Labour Party canoe as it disappears ever further up "a certain creek".

The redoubtable Ms Toynbee may once have been a "heavy hitter", but she is now in simple denial - or while she dallies in Africa, maybe she's just up "de nile"? I never thought I'd say this, but it's time to feel sorry for her.

Polly's personal credibility as a political commentator has been hitched to that of the most bullying and unprincipled politician this country has seen in a very long time. Probably ever. It now seems like a supreme irony that caring Polly ends up as another victim of the (unelected) Auld Fraud as he continues to collapse under the weight of spin-sleaze, scandal and simple old-fashioned greed, embarrassing apologies, and towering incompetence.

Never mind feet of clay, Gordon Brown has possibly only one single thing about his body now that is not apparently made of clay, and I'll leave you to work that out.

Polly has used her considerable influence (surely only explained by her family connections, as with many other New Labour apparatchiks) at the red end of the media spectrum for many years - and has been in a position to leverage her authority and "call" the hegemony of this Government many times, but very consciously chose not to do so. After all, she's had more than advice from CiF in recent times.

She sold her soul to New Labour a long time ago, and has been living in the hope that Beelzebub Blair was going to be replaced by someone in touch with her "Old Labour" instincts. Her embarrassing and effusive eulogies for Brown must surely only provide her with humiliating memories. Did she really say:

"Standing at the dispatch box, the towering superiority of his brain ..."

Yes, she did - she really did.

It was obvious that the "principles" of New Labour were miles apart from Polly's simple if old fashioned "soak the rich and give to the poor" lefty ethos as Blair and Brown crudely courted money in the shape of Blair's Bargain Lordships, and Broon's Scottish finance cronies, bought by his mostly "looking the other way". The many subtle but ultimately catastrophic "initiatives" of "the Project" that have created a disastrous client state were miles apart from her simpler angst-driven agenda of social responsibility and fairness.

We know too well that Polly has a personal agenda based on a laudable commitment to social justice (even if she has never managed to produce any ideas or evidence of how to achieve it), and with that in mind she might have looked into the darker recesses of the souls of Blair and Brown rather earlier. There she might just have spotted "power at all costs, never mind who we tread on in the process".

She was Dorothy to Blair's brainless scarecrow and Brown's mechanistic tin man. Cameron was the pussycat pretending to be a lion when he came along, apparently in need of the courage to face down the warring factions of the Tory party. A less blindly dogmatic old girl than our Polly might have worked out which of these towering intellects might actually belie the more principled politician, and she might just have done the deal of the century to finish the terminally tainted Labour party, and provide Cameron's Conservatives with the courage of her convictions.

Such a seismic event would probably have forced the Labour Party to examine it's dishonestly disastrous time in power more urgently and deeply than anything Polly can now achieve by hiding away in largely irrelevant tributaries of foreign policy as set out here. All the damage is done, and anyone pretending to support this government will end up with that same gangrene that is consuming Brown's zombie junta.

After the next election, Polly might as well retire into obscurity and be done with politics, because it will be many, many years before "her" Labour party gets a look in. Maybe he African adventure is setting out the stall for her next career..?

G20: leaders, words and gestures

2009-04-03T14:14:00.010Z

Some hacks are bemoaning the absence of a bout of decent tub-thumping rhetoric to match the urgency of our times - but when the emotive words are so widely misused and misunderstood by modern politicians through years of abuse and misuse, what's the point?

Was Hitler's Germany really "fascism" or just strong but woefully misguided leadership?

What happened in Russia until recently seemed pretty much like "authoritarian hierarchical government" (the dictionary definition of fascism) yet it was given the antonym of "communism" and even held up as an "aspirational" system by most of the left wing parties around the world. It was originally imposed to shoot a few toffs and get the trains running on time, then extended to slaughter a few million dissidents, and ultimately chug on as an autocracy as the apparatchiks found they rather liked the perks. "-isms" can be unhelpful and misleading things.

Even "war" isn't what it once was. These days we have "conflicts", "shock and awe", "rendition", "insurgency" and all manner of terms that reflect the fact that it's not possible to have good clean war, and blow the full-time whistle any longer.

Overall, TMP suspects that Obama comes across as young, black Regan on his way to becoming Morgan Freeman - thus doing dear old Ronnie's journey in reverse! But we hope we're wrong.

As well as words, there is also "gesture rhetoric" where strong actions speak louder than any words - so if we are after a real show-stopping gesture of leadership and solidarity at this time, what's to stop HM Brenda inviting her new New Best Friend Michelle Obama to front the US joining the Commonwealth and put the "special" right back into the relationship ..?

We're prepared to overlook that little local difficulty back in 1776 if you are, and then the US could enjoy a role with the remnants of the Empire that it once so desperately envied that it bankrupted the UK during WW2, to ensure that we let it go.

Here's the clincher: the Commonwealth countries have the capacity to produce all the food that its member nations would need for the foreseeable (including climate change) future. The UK alone and EU most certainly does not, and on the evidence of the way that the French and German energy companies have played their hand when "sharing" restricted resources recently, TMP really wouldn't want to be left to deal with them when the sh1t hits the fan.

However, we'd never again top the medal league table at a Commonwealth Games, but that's a small price to pay.

Jacqui's Tax Advice Column

2009-03-30T11:20:00.004Z

With the tax year coming to a close, TMP trusts we will all now be taking advice from our leaders, and like the Home Secretary, claiming relief for everything from kitchen sinks to porn subscriptions, as these are plainly required to help us survive our "employment" as the milch cows of the Exchequer..?

However, even TMP would draw the line at admitting to have watched Ocean's 13 once, never mind twice. Although the opening line in the trailer voiceover starts:

"what does it take to steal 500 million...?"

So perhaps he was simply researching the causes of Broon's Busted Boom...?

Protesting the Presumptions

2009-03-30T10:38:00.005Z

The protests running up to the G20 gathering have brought "them" out in their droves.

Ms Jackie Ashley (aka Mrs Andrew Marr) and the usual Guardianista suspects continue to jump to the conclusion that capitalism is dead. But she (and they) needs to take note that we still have no proper analysis of what happened. We continue to meekly accept the analysis from the guilty parties (both political and financial) that toxic mortgages are worth nothing. If there was any security involved, then they should not be worthless, even if that security is minimal.

If it transpires there was never any security, then on the face of it, a massive fraud has been committed and the rules/laws are already in place to prosecute the guilty - however cleverly it was wrapped up - and all the people involved need to be tried and if found guilty locked up. Ask Nick Leeson.

If Clinton's Democrats did indeed tell key US financial institutions to break rules in order to appease their voters, then those politicians may also need to be locked up, including the Vice President's husband. Such a thing seems quite possible, given that one of the Auld Fraud's initial delusional responses to his busted boom was to tell the voters that he was ordering the bailed-out banks to abandon the established rules concerning mortgage repayments and loan granting.

So then - call yourselves journalists? Don't extrapolate unresearched assumptions simply to allow the presumptions to hold out the hope of fulfilling long held fantasy desires to write off capitalism to make way for the halcyon times, when that egalitarian and banker-free Socialist future can be ushered in.

As you say, there is much confusion amongst the ragbag of demonstrators who feel compelled to protest about anything that is tainted by the "establishment" because they feel let down and disenfranchised after the past 30 years, during which time all politicians seem to have become increasingly amorphous "all things to all voters social democrats" as they climb aboard the gravy trains that they have expensively constructed for themselves in Westminster, Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Brussels ...and hand in their expense claims.

If we want the future to have any credible foundation, then we must trace this all the way back to the one shack in Alabama that started the cascade of dominoes, and let's see precisely who was involved at every stage of the process - and hound them as surely as any UK bank chases down any defaulter on a £50 overdraft.

And still no one knows what happened

2009-03-21T18:45:00.003Z

Lord Turner's effort at excusing bankers and politicians has failed to properly address the underlying issues. We all know what happened, but we still have yet to hear why or how. We still don't know what security all those securitised debts is associated with: the UK might own the whole of Louisiana and Alabama for all we know.

The best analogy TMP can come up with is a car crash.

Brown's instant reaction has been to blame the lamp post for jumping out in front of him. Then blame the maker of the car, and then the provider of the petrol - while most normal people traditionally tend to suspect drivers who accuse jumping lamp posts, of being pissed.

Then there's also the matter of misleading the road signs. This all kicked off because Slick Willy Clinton directed the US financial industry to buy the Democrats some quick votes using loans and mortgages for people who had no hope of repaying them.

This is also the first IT "Microsoft Office Recession". Ever since spreadsheets were invented, accountants and financial analysts everywhere have believed in their infallibility. Even when it was obvious to an averagely intelligent normal person that the decimal point was in the wrong place.

There have been all manner of solutions proposed concerning the nature of the car, the octane rating of the petrol, the placing of the road signs or even the lamp post. But these seem to be missing the main point - TMP's suggestion would be to breathalyse the driver of the wrecked car, and lock him away for a long time where he can do no more harm (and in the case of the Auld Fraud, especially if the boozometer said he was perfectly sober...)

ITV moves in with the BBC

2009-03-16T14:17:00.003Z

Not quite a trial marriage yet, but the BBC is to cooperate with ITV to allow independent regional news in England and Wales to keep going. The BBC will share facilities, and some content in order to save ITV around £7m a year.

But let's be clear here: scheduled broadcast media is dead. This is more about deckchairs being reorganised than any realistic commercial future.

The BBC was doing a pretty good job until the 90s when it became overtaken by Common Purpose's subtle but insidious PC ethos, and thus a useful tool for social engineering for the "champagne socialististas" of Blair's "project".

The problem seems to be that it was allowed to grow and become ever fatter when the costs of broadcast technology dramatically dropped in the 80s/90s. Ironically, the result was that the luvvie-heavy management slashed the BBC's own world-class technology development operations and bought in cheap foreign solutions. The savings were not passed onto license payers but immediately "reinvested" in vast empire-creation projects, and especially the new digital media experiments that stunted the UK's crucial commercial media industry.

And so the BBC's dependence on government patronage grew with the inevitable consequences that various oleagenous political creeps have been allowed to get away with outrageously cynical behaviour in public office for as long as they have. A familiar corrupt face is making headlines again today in the "free press" - but will the BBC cover the story adequately, I wonder? The website doesn't seem to have noticed.

When Auntie underpaid the market rate, it developed and held on to its considerable wealth of home-grown talent through loyalty and dedication, not just cash; but now its deep trough can attract the gadarene swine of the world of "meedja" as they pass by. Some of the better talent simply gets weary of the left-ist bias and departs without making any sort of public fuss. Any BBC employee that is willing to go public with attitudes that are not on message quickly learns that there is no future for them.

The way that the "have your say" section of the website is moderated in the effort to suppress off-message comment and PC comment is laughable. The social engineering efforts of a decade do not seem have worked as well as expected, and management must be distraught at having to provide a platform for the very views that it spends hundreds of millions pounds to try and engineer out of British society.

Let's not underestimate the scope and depth of the technology revolution that has empowered creative talent and has enabled anyone with £10k to produce TV programming that competes with the best in the world. Yet still "olde worlde" budgets are thrown at shows like Dr Who and a cast of thousands of luvvies are hauled in and hyped to the rafters, and even the costly regional diversity box get ticked along the way. And still too many people accept the arguments about the cost of producing such shows.

Of course the old guard is not interested in proving that they can do it on 10% of the budget and set a dangerous precedent - but the world has changed fundamentally, and there is no way to stuff the many geniis back into the bottle, no matter how hard the BBC is bent on keeping its gravy train running at full steam.

Overall, this announcement means no more than ITV needs a cut price way to avoid breaking its licence terms and this is the cheapest solution; and the BBC is probably anticipating picking up the pieces when ITV finally tanks, since such a fractured organisation would probably be a lot less attractive to any potential purchaser of ITV. Although an alternative view might be that this also makes the BBC operations easier to commercialise when the time comes and all scheduled broadcasting becomes web deliverable.

Brown's guaranteed penury

2009-03-10T19:07:00.002Z

The news that the so-called "government backed" loans to businesses are only available where the directors of those business also personally guarantee 100% of the loan is a further example of just how little this government actually knows or cares about life outside the Westminster media village.

Real businesspeople are correctly furious that these terms are being determined by the very same catastrophically failed bankers who have been bailed out by the rest of us, and kept in work without themselves risking a single penny of their salaries, pensions or personal wealth.

Maybe the government and all persons participating who get paid from public coffers should now also provide bottomless personal guarantees on the performance of all aspects of government?

Chickens and heads reunited

2009-03-09T15:54:00.006Z

Everyone slow down for a moment and allow the chicken and head to reunite. What actually changed between 2007 and now? The oil price shot up and scared a lot of people; and several industries reliant on cheap oil (agriculture especially) shat themselves.

Nothing else really changed with the fundamentals, other than the world is now being expected to only purchase what it can afford to pay for with cash. The oil price is back down, (even if utilities like Eon are still subsidising their EU customers from mugging UK punters).

The most obvious consequence of the global banking fraud is that people cannot still have what they want the moment they want it - thanks to the end of hitherto easy credit. This probably puts a 2-3 year hiatus in sales of cars; which is hard on the supply industries and countries like Japan, Germany and France (we're not weeping) that still own substantial car manufacturing industries. Countries producing the endless tat that we don't actually need will suffer; maybe the more industrious will be tempted to make their own birdtables instead of buying them at £50 from a garden centre. Maybe people will plant 10p seeds instead of buying £10 potted plants..?

Is this really so terrible as a way of life?

Few will weep for those luxury brands who sell goods for 10x the price of virtually equivalent quality merchandise from unknown sources.

For most of the world where currencies have not also been trashed by an persistently inept socialist government, nothing much has changed, other then a bunch of reckless criminal frauds and charlatans have been exposed in business and politics. And we have been given a nudge in the direction of finding replacement energy sources that are better under our control; which has probably done us all a bit of a favour in the long run.

There may be some reasons to be cheerful; none of which are in any way down to the skillful management Gordhelpus Brown and his worthless junta. So don't let the Auld Fraud in Chief take any credit for anything that might accidentally go right.

However, if you are a prudent British saver staring at 1% return on your dwindling cash (at best) you are entitled to be pissed off. And if you are a Lloyds shareholder, TMP hopes that you will support one of the group initiatives to put the old pals act of Broon and Blank in the dock, and make them pay for their cocktail party shortcut to poverty.

TMP shows the way

2009-03-06T12:36:00.004Z

Right at the start of this crisis TMP offered the world's politicians the simple way out, but no one listened.

We proposed that the US paid off Billy Bob's mortgage by printing money to employ him on public projects and thus crucially allowed the status quo to continue, while the toxic mess was sorted out and villains of the piece were identified and expunged.

Now EVERYONE is going to be forced to print money in a desperate attempt to stave off depression - except that vastly more money is now being poured on a bonfire that need never have been allowed to get to the size of conflagration we are now witnessing.

Obviously TMP would indeed have saved the world (sic) a lot of bother if only anyone had bothered to listen. But no one ever gets thanked for being right, do they?