....Labour had a leader this incompetent, Michael Foot was in charge. And even the longest suicide note in history couldn't turn people off voting Labour more than the current occupant of Number 10.

Labour's fucked. Just imagine life in the number 10 bunker, as even someone as deluded as the one-eyed snot-gobbler realises he is probably the most inappropriate man ever to take the top job. He is more than 'just not up to it'. He's a pathological control freak whose grasp of the basic principles of economics is tenuous, at best. He's bankrupted this country financing a client state. He's entrenched benefit dependency, increased real poverty, whilst crowing about moving some people from one side of an arbitrary line to the other by forcing previously self-reliant people to beg for some of their money back using widespread means testing. In creating this client state, an army of apparatchiks punish those same hitherto self-reliant independent people for failure to fill in forms correctly. Life in the UK is now an attempt to hide from the ever widening glare of these functionaries lest you get charged for non-compliance with some piffling regulation and incur a fine, which is no more than highway robbery to paper over this government's criminal lack of fiscal discipline. Over fill your bin. That's £75. Or £265 if you complain. After all you're just a serf. In the Nu Lab mind your money is theirs, unless they graciously let you keep it.

So the result of Nu Lab's decade in power is people hiding like Winston Smith in the one corner of the bedroom which he thinks is not in Big Brother's view, in case the police kick in your door to try and up their numbers to meet their home-office sanction-detection target. After all, everyone's guilty of something. Labour's seen to that with a new crime a day for the entire decade they've been in power. Just in case you thought the Labour party was on your side, they are still trying to let the police bang you up for 6 weeks without charge. Just to rub in the fact that they're in charge.

So Labour's support is collapsing. The people (apart from utterly delusional cunts who still think Socialism is a good thing) have seen through the con.

Mwah ah ha ha ha ha ha. God, I'm so happy about this, I could shit.

According to Maia at 'Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty', there is no point sending people who kill their babies to gaol, because

"...it won't stop another caregiver of a small child doing violence under stress. It might have served as punishment, but whoever killed two babies of their own family is punishing themselves already. All that's left is vengeance, and no-one has a right to claim vengeance in those babies names".

Remarkably, she thinks that it doesn't really matter who inflicted the physical injuries because

"...capitalism and colonialism played a large part in those babies deaths"

Naturally this relativism only applies to... how do I put this?... non-white people. White people are responsible for their actions. Unless, of course they're working class enough to be in a union, in which case, it's all the bosses' fault.

Capitalism also kills anyone who can't pay their electricity bill. Of course, people who need electricity to breathe shouldn't be cut off, even if in this case they are this way because of morbid obesity. The electricity company was unaware of this fact, possibly because the medical opinion was that this 'victim of capitalism' wasn't in this 'do not disconnect' category, hence the discharge from hospital, and the reasonable requirement to pay an electricity bill. In the end, Folole Muliaga died because she was fat, not because her electricity was cut off by evil capitalists.

The opposite of free market capitalism is communism, and that political system killed absolutely nobody... nosiree. None at all. The fact is, Maia, you can name the 'victims' of capitalism. But then as the great man said, "one death is a tragedy..." There are no blog posts about any of the victims of the Gulag or any of the 40,000,000 or so Chinese who died during a period which is known to history, apparently without irony, as 'the great leap forward'. Indeed you could argue that in allowing the invention of artificial respirators, capitalism was instrumental keeping Ms Muliaga alive at all.

Because of these astonishing views, Maia has been

linked to by a couple of obnoxious right-wing blogs so I've turned off the comments on this post

Didums... Go and troll her, people.

Labour is broke. Intellectually, morally, spiritually and above all financially. And what's more, the constitution of the Labour party may see one Gordon Brown personally liable for some of the £24 million or so to which labour is in hock to its donors. Other people who may be re-mortgaging homes in the near future are Harriet Dromey-Harperson and which ever poor sod they rope into being General Secretary.

The irony couldn't be more delicious.

Those bastards who have been raping the economy (that's you and me, taxpayer) in order to finance the ever expanding army of worthless state apparatchiks whose job it is to keep the serfs in check, may now be in an even more precarious financial position than someone relying on a private sector pension, after Gordon Brown's been at it.

It all depends on whether our friends in the Union movement stump up the cash. If they do, then they'll demand a pound of policy flesh for their gold, dragging the Government sharply left. This will reduce the appeal to middle England voters and will increase the Tsunami of anti-Labour tactical voting to come and Labour will be wiped out. If the Union barons don't, Labour will not be able to finance a successful election campaign and labour will be wiped out anyway.

Ha!

This could well accelerate Labours fall into oblivion - a mere footnote to history. Britain's century long dalliance with socialism is coming to an end. It enjoyed one phyrric decade of victory, long after the war was already lost. Who is going to donate to a party which will inevitably be out of power for a decade or more and which may never again find itself in a position to trouble the UK? Unless it's the unions, then no-one.

It's a market for people's money as well as votes, which gives us, the serfs, some small power over Politicians. Don't let them take that too, with state funded parties....

Do these wankers really think they're helping the cause? Check out the sinister one who looks like Trotsky on the stairs...

Via

Like Matthew Sinclair, this enraged me. It had me fantasising about following the camera round with a weapon of some description - I'm torn between a lump hammer and something more... efficient, and laying about the federasts, so when the camera pans back over them after they've done their bit, all you see is a bloody corpse. That would improve the video no end.

Unfortunately they all survive to the end.

"Some say ... Conservatives will fight us"

You got one thing right, Frenchie.

Labour has crashed into a tree. As is normal when looking at the scene of an accident, one wonders what has become of the occupants. The driver, a scotch joyrider by the name of Brown is dead at the scene. But what about the passengers?

Well there are members of the labour party blogging, and they all stumbling around, not quite sure whats happened. While they appear lucid, they are, fact suffering from concussion and can't quite see straight. Sunder Katwala, for example at Guardian CIF says, A bolder Brown

remains the Labour figure best placed to reassert his party's claim to be the party of fairness. This is what he came into politics to do. It is also now the agenda on which his and his party's political future depends.

"fairness", naturally, involves increasing taxation. A horrific divisive and even racist campaign by Labour in Crewe and Nantwitch was not a problem... The fact is, a "toff" is no longer threatening. It's the spivvy oiks of New Labour who are unable and unworthy to wield power. The Patrician Old Etonian by contrast is at once admirable and comic...

Mike Ion at least admits the Labour party shot itself in the foot.

Historically it is a fact that rather than Labour has been far better at defeating itself than the Tories have, the recent 10p tax fiasco is clear evidence of this....

Ignoring the fact that Labour has been a lousy electoral machine over the years. Nevertheless, he makes the assumption that the Centre left is the natural ground of Government in the UK.

Since becoming Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his team of advisers have been seeking to trade on a reputation for economic competence. The problem with this strategy is that history also shows that centre-left governments invariably have to do more than this. Labour governments need to persuade people that there is a task for government, that collective endeavour really is a strength as well as being a virtue. For this reason alone the best prospects of future success for Labour lie not in defending the status quo of what is still a highly unequal Britain, rather it is in legislating to help rid our nation of some ugly realities such as child poverty, endemic inequalities in both health and education and in clearly articulating why these areas warrant state action.

As I've pointed out before the people are seeing through Gordon Browns strategy on Child poverty. If you use the tax credits system to move some people from one side of an arbitrary line, 60% of median earnings, to the other, you haven't really raised people out of poverty, especially if the number living on less than 40% of median earnings is growing. The cause of this deep and growing form of poverty is welfare dependency. This is not amenable to the redistributive tinkering that Brown favours. Instead the people, especially the working poor deeply resent subsidising lazy, fat scum who can't be bothered to work. And tax-funded public services are unbelievably expensive. People are seeing through the con, and demanding their money back. After all, one definition of "fair" is keeping some of what you've earned. Not that the Labour party see it that way.

Nevertheless, Tom Miller picks up on Mike Ion's post

This is spot on. The big problem for me is that the solution mike proposes is an ambiguous one, which centres around what 'reform' is to mean. Take tuition fees. Mike advocates 'reform' to avoid the Tories implementing 'charges' and creating social injustice. With this one 'reform' (I prefer 'deform'), we have created both. We must be careful, not because we are opposed to 'change', but because progressives should be opposed to going backwards

Forward, not Backwards: surely the most vacuous election slogan in history. Tory cuts... Arrrgh. Social Injustice.... Horror! Naturally Tom rejects any reform of public services which doesn't involve increasing taxation on the rich and naturally he rejects introducing market solutions to public services. Instead he thinks that such "Rightward gestures" are what

caused the campaigning movement [to be] significantly haemorrhaged before this latest lack of confidence...

if the party had been running on the 1983 manifesto, the party workers would have been enthused, turned out in droves and the people would have welcomed the New Labour dawn, eh Tom?

So what's to be done? Well Mike Ion favours the scorched earth policy in order to make

...its progressive agenda irreversible; changes that can’t be rolled back by a future right-wing Tory government that wanted to dismantle much of what has been achieved...If we fail to continue with the reform of public services then the Tories could soon be back in power hell-bent on demolishing the very ethos on which they were built – with more charging, less investment, good services just for the well-off, second class services for the rest.

This is just partisan charicature. Of course no Labourite would ever admit that the "public service ethos" is part of the problem - this chimera only exists in the fevered imagination of the socialist. As a result, nothing at all has been achieved at great cost over the last decade. If the public service ethos existed, why would you need target, Mike? In any case, market solutions do not need to be unfair to the poor.

But most of all, Labourites fail to understand that only the rich can afford socialism. The reason Thatcher was popular amongst the Working classes (ie those who actually work, not the benefits classes who are often given that moniker) was that she gave them independence and dignity, and most importantly, some of their bloody money back. New Labour by comparison sees the working poor as mere serfs. Ballot fodder who should be jolly grateful for their tax credits, and pay up. By taking them for granted in this way, the Labour movement may have dug its own grave.

The big state has been tested to destruction, and the people are demanding changes. Not tinkering round the edges of an expensive system, but something that can really benefit them: tax cuts and a shrinking of the state. Labour has failed.

You guys pull your party to the left. Just like the car crash, that's where the accident is.

Here at Suz Blog.

David Cameron described the C&N result as the "end of New Labour". It could, if we're really lucky be the point at which the Labour party goes into its final death throes. Having been a poor election winning machine over the years (no, really. The last decade aside, they've only ever had one previous decent working majority), it may not recover from the thumping it is about to receive. After all, the progressive left has somewhere else to go. And the Tories are finally making headway in the heartland where the Yellows have also been successful. If the Liberal Democrats ever look like pulling level at any point in the next decade, then the argument that "only they can stop the Tories" will have resonance, especially given the total hash the labour party's made of it every time they've got a sniff of power. Think how bad it was for the Tories during their wilderness years, but they have no opposition on the centre right and were therefore given time to recover. The last time the Labour party was this unpopular, the Liberals were busy merging, splitting and generally annoying the electorate. Unless the Lib Dems are totally incompetent this time round*, it is now time to start writing the obituary of the Labour project in it's entirety.

Historically, this project has been to create a socialist utopia, at first on Marxist lines and when this proved (murderously, more often than not) unworkable, they attempted to create a kind of big state social democracy which attempts to tax and benefit the inequality out of the income distribution and provide solutions to all life's ills in the warm embrace of Nanny State's bosom.

How have they done?

Their original project, state ownership of the means of production and industrial planning, was less than successful. The state-run provision of services ushered in by the post-war Labour government is still with us, but the benefits are at best, mixed. The NHS is far from being the envy of the world of left-wing imagination, and yet that's the state social service that runs best. The worst examples are mere wastes of resources and means of employing "graduates" from the "new universities" at the expense of the Taxpayer, to box tick, interfere and generally make a nuisance of themselves to all right-thinking, self-reliant folk. Socially however the socialist attempt to break the British culture of deference was successful beyond their wildest dreams.

New Labour abandoned the economic dogmas of Marxism, realising that Thatcher was actually 100% right, though the labour party never had the grace to admit this publicly. They did instead attempt to moderate the perceived injustices of the free market system, by redistributing wealth using the tax and benefit system. Their much vaunted attempts to take people out of poverty since 1997 have merely moved people from one side of an arbitrary line - 60% of median earnings - to the other, by giving them just enough cash to achieve this. The proportion living in real, dire poverty - less than 40% of median earnings for example have increased in number. Why? Because this form of poverty is an effect of widespread benefit dependency - the real cause of poverty in modern Britain. So the tax credits nightmare is not motivated by a desire to help the poor, but to meet an arbitrary target, to allow the Government to crow about this "Achievement". Finally the fiasco of the 10p tax rate shows what the Government really thinks of the low-waged. They may have increased the minimum wage, but most of this is clawed back in NI contributions and tax creep rather than benefiting those it was supposed to help, and filling the exchequer. It also created a hurdle for the very poorest - those who have never worked to jump over before they get to the labour market. It makes more intractable the poverty trap. Labour is attempting to buy the votes of a perpetually out of work underclass using money from the working poor. Its the poverty of aspiration and spirit which is so distressing and so immune to Labour's approach to the problem.

The great blairite belief that education was the route to social betterment led to Sure Start, which is a waste of resources, delivering no measurable benefit. Neither is the mass herding of youths to university to study degrees of questionable worth. Instead of asking "did you go to university", employers now ask to which university did you go. The Russell group and a few others have maintained standards. Most have not and have simply achieved what you always achieve when you increase the supply of a resource (in this case, Graduates): Inflation. Quality graduates who can spell are rare and get paid a lot. The rest are considered to have wasted their time and are paid less than their friends who got 3 years work experience. A degree in Media studies from the southbank University has the same worth as a Zimbabwean Dollar, and for the same reason. Having removed every fucking Grammar school, they have, in fact removed a ladder for bright working class youngsters into higher education and conned them into debt for worthless qualifications instead. As a result, Social mobility has declined under this Government, if your parents are poor and ill educated, the chances are you will be too. Sorry. Meanwhile the upper echelons of society are more dominated by the Public schools than ever before. This is BECAUSE of Labour's attitude to education, not despite it. The reaction to this: They want to destroy the bit that works! Remarkable, really what spiteful, useless mediocrities they really are...

The economic legacy too is lamentable. Everything that I said about Gordon Brown's stewardship of the economy 3 years ago (See here) has happened. He has overspent and now we're paying for his profligacy. If he'd spent less, there would be money in the kitty for some tax cuts to stimulate the economy. But he didn't, there isn't and it won't be. I don't want to bang on about this, but it's obvious to anyone of even passing familiarity with the basic tenets of economics that Gordon Brown is a cunt.

Where this Government will be most damned by history is in its half-baked, self serving constitutional reform. Devolution was undertaken with no effort made to answer the West Lothian question and the political structure was almost designed to maximise the Labour representation. Nevertheless, the party to benefit was the SNP, which means the Labour party may have broken the Union.

Lords reform has merely reduced trust in politics by making the appointment of Lords overtly political, and leading to allegations of "cash for Honours" and reduced the influence of the revising chamber to no great benefit to representative democracy. It's merely entrenched the 5-year dictatorship of the executive.

If there was any Government which needed checking its the abortion's turd we've endured for the last 11 years. They've introduced a crime a day (yes every day) since they've been in power. They've curtailed civil liberites and granted the police so much power they don't know what to do. In return for the power, the police have subjected themselves to the same appaling culture of targets which so distorts the delivery of the Governments poverty agenda. The police in adhering to targets end up harassing the law abiding whilst turning a blind eye to the misbehaviour of the underclass, over whom they have precious little leverage. The middle class by contrast are easy, co-operative collars to feel. The culture of targets allows the political elite to further undermine the public trust in the police by setting an agenda which few agree with outside the Guardian reading salons. The result: the alienation of the public from the police, and a gross erosion of civil Liberties. But you always needed a police state to enforce the behaviour demanded of Soviet man, didn't you?

In short the post war socialism which I admit was inadequately resisted by the Conservatives has given way to a velvet fascism of bureaucratic state control of, well, more or less everything. It is miserable, cloying and it's becoming oppressive. Furthermore it's expensive and we're broke.

The Labour party is an Expensive failure. They are going to be thwarted in their attempt to introduce totalitarianism by stealth. You're lucky you woke up in time Britain, You'll know better than to ever vote for the cunts again.

*Oh. Hang on.....

Today, I appealed against a parking ticket. I paid up to 12:31 instead of 13:30 and had to buy another hour. Having paid the full amount, albeit in 2 tickets, and having left a note to that effect, Naturally I received a penalty charge notice anyway.

The offence is of "failure to display a valid ticket" so naturally I will probably not be successful in my appeal. If you work in parking enforcement, you are an officious cunt, worthy of all the misery and abuse life throws at you. "It's just a job", you may bleat, but I'd sell my arse in an AIDS hospital before you caught me doing it. So my message to you is "fuck off and die, you're beneath contempt".

Every month I Pay over £100 to the FSA and the FOS for the pleasure of being allowed to work. I'm also legally obliged to by PI insurance (with the ludicrous excess of £10,000). The FSA is auditing my firm for their TCF fetish, checking not whether I do in fact treat my clients fairly (I do) but whether I can prove that I do. Needless to say checking all the endless forms designed to leave an audit trail has created an enormous workload, which combined with the fucking RBS rights issue have conspired to see to it that my clients are not being talked to as often as they'd like.

That's it. Because of the FSA, client service is harder. The FSA is using procedures clearly designed with IFA's in mind. IFA's sell the products such as insurance or Unit trusts that pay the best trail commission best suits the clients needs. The ludicrous 8-page documents which must be sent out every time they sell anything are just arse covering, as is the requirement that some clients divulge personal information such as income and assets to me if they want advice - they can no longer opt out (thanks MiFID). The regulation doesn't make client outcomes better, nor does the training and competence regime actually create competent brokers or financial advisers, it merely checks whether you've attended a money-laundering presentation recently. It should ensure you read the "black swan" by Naseem Nicholas Taleb and "where genius failed" by Roger Lowenstein, but it doesn't, nor is there any check that you actually know what you're talking about. It's just dry, tedious box-ticking.

The FSA is not going to spot where the next disaster is coming from. It and its predecessors in the regulatory regime were quite happy with the selling of Zero's as Low Risk investments, it was quite happy with endowment mortgages and quite happy with equitable life. Until the stockmarket fell for 3 years on the trot, which was way outside the Value at Risk calculations. Northern Rock's business model was an unspotted risk, because no-one thougt funding would dry up. The next crisis will be a surprise too. The regulators are useless. In fact, they are worse than useless, because they give the appearance of being in control and making things "safe" for clients. And I'm paying for the pleasure of being fucked by these bastards, wasting time that could be spent helping clients.

Now the FOS, whose fucking wages I pay too, are a means of resolving complaints. Should a client ever complain to this organisation, it will cost me £300 whether or not there is any merit in the complaint at all. That's almost masochistic in its unfairness. So, If you work in business prevention compliance or for a regulatory body, you're little better than a fucking Parking attendant.

I paid a £114 tax (well NI, but who thinks this isn't a tax?) bill too. Great!

So every interaction I've had with the state today has been malign- all in all I've paid out over £1000 to agents of the state and none of them will benefit me in the slightest. How did we get to this?

The quangocracy employs over 700,000 people, in addition to the 580,000 civil servants and the countless gits working in what is laughably called "local" Government - all of them are taking money out of the productive bits of the economy. All of them are providing services which could be provided cheaper by the private sector, or could be dispensed with entirely: the regulators could be replaced by proper deregulation and competition: ie a proper functioning of the market. Let's take banks. They are so tightly regulated that the costs involved with compliance are so huge that only very large organisations can cope. It is therefore anti-competitive. Let me explain. The regulation imposes a barrier to entry for a small start-up, which means the big boys do not face a destabilising threat from a smaller competitor. If such a threat arises, one of the big boys will simply buy it, as they have boutique private banks and internet operations. You're left with an incestuous oligarchy full of fat businesses which are too big to fail. This means government sticks its nose in to try and prevent failure, usually by demanding that the business take steps to prevent the last catastrophe. They are, it goes without saying, totally blind to the next one. Regulation merely makes big business merely an arm of the state.

Allow business to be free, even if it means a small bank going to the wall once in a while (naturally without the state propping the fucker up) and you could fire much of the Quangocracy, swathes of the civil service and deliver a hugely stimulating tax-cut. We've had 2 million unemployed before. The dole is cheaper than a quangocrat's salary and they're not interfering with private business while they're (ahem) retraining. So everyone wins. Even the Quangocrat who no longer has to admit to his worthlessness at parties.

Gordon Brown is not just a useless bastard, he's also a cheapskate. If you're going to bribe the electorate, £120 to about 10% of them is useful in the same way that a chocolate teapot is useful. I.e. It isn't and it's messy.

There is one country where the populace is thoroughly bribed, to the extent that it could be considered a trial of the Citizens basic income, a policy favoured by some libertarians. The country is Libya where the good Colonel pays each household about £800** a month from oil revenues for the pleasure of being governed by a man who takes his stylistic cues from 1970's pornographic movies (up to and including the make up of his personal bodyguard...)

Gordon Brown: not as good as Mu'ammar Qaddafi.

An interesting aside is, like an Officer in the Highlanders' dress*, there are so many variations of spellings of Gadhaffi's name that (37 at one count) that one never knows whether you're correct or not in spelling it Gadaffi or Qadaffi. All the ones used in this article have have appeared in mainstream media.

*Number 37 dress, for example consists of Long socks, empire builder shorts and Hawaiian shirt and a Pith helmet and is known as 'Barbecue order'.

Dear all and welcome to the (unfortunately delayed - I massively underestimated how long this takes) Britblog Roundup, the first held here, hopefully the first of many! Without further ado, Let's get underway...

Blogging about blogging

Beating up on those idiots in the Mainstream media, Matt at the Wardman wire points out that

The Commentariat (as represented in this podcast) seem to be having a few problems getting to grips with the blogging medium - in particular coping with the diversity...

which he blames on a lack of understanding of the aggregators (including the BBRU) and feeds available. Naturally Guido's "profundity of the Punditry" meme gets a mention. However I feel that there are great writers in the dead-tree press. Writing to order may mean they aren't brilliant all the time, but who is? Every medium has its time servers, it's just they're easier to ignore in the Blogosphere.

Politics

Let's kick off with Green Issues this week with Adrian at "Green reading" getting first mention with his welsh water mills. It's a start I guess. He doesn't like nuclear, and something has to be done, but I can't help thinking that they're just a bit, well, small to replace fossil fuels. They're certainly pretty though.

There's a lot from Lib Dems, including this offering from "Just 474 votes to win" which mentions My current rugby club, Hampstead. It's a shame that sporting culture has led us to football, rather than rugby, whose fans I think would have reacted better than those Rangers fans at the Battle of Picadilly. Rangers fans may have a reputation, but a technical failure of the big screen which led to the Manchester riots is being blamed by Blood and treasure at least, squarely at the door of the Manchester city council.

If you’re going to invite tens of thousands of Glaswegians down to Manchester on a promise of all day drinking and the big match televised live, then technical failure is not an option

Quite. While we're on the subject of football, Liberal England brings us the story of the Murder of Aston Villa's Tommy Ball by a deranged policeman.

Chris Dillow at Stumbling and mumbling comes out in favour of Private education in General and My Alma Mater in particular, which is strange but welcome coming from a Marxist.

Meanwhile at the other end of the economic spectrum, Freeborn John gives us a more complete denunciation of the mercantilist fantasy that Tim Worstall, is so fond of alluding to. Basically wealth is access to goods and services, not Gold and Silver, which represent merely the means to pay for them. Hoarding gold is no good if it's inflationary (ie buys fewer goods and services). This is why Spain got poor despite the Inca gold they stole: It didn't increase the amount of grain available. Likewise exports are merely the result of the work we as a country do to pay for the Imports, which are what really make us rich.

Liberal Conspiracy deals with Mad Nad Dorries and the Abortion debate, subjects Matt Sinclair and Chris Dillow have dealt with elegantly too and their posts get a mention. Unlike LC, Stroppyblog is definitely not uncommitted and neither is Cruella. These are all interesting posts, but I for one hope the debate never reaches the poisonous level found in America.

Gaian Economics compares the money spent on Northern Rock, suggesting it could be better spent subsidising loss-making state-owned businesses keeping post offices open. For the record, I wouldn't have subsidised the crock either, but people think that they're clever with sniggers like

...worthless assets (euphemistically known as 'mortgage-backed securities')...

Demonstrating the writer to have no real understanding of the financial markets, PhD notwithstanding. They're not worthless, they're just worth a bit less than was paid for them, and there's a lot of it about, and no-one wants the risk as everyone'e being wrong together (it's called "panic"). The Old Lady of threadneedle street might even turn a profit on these "worthless securities" in time... The real reason, however the post office is bust is because of European competition directive in what should be a natural monopoly taking the profitable (business delivery) and leaving the unprofitable (nationwide delivery to everywhere for 26/31p). Complain about democracy all you like, there's nothing the Westminster crowd can do so save the Royal Mail.

At the other end of the spectrum, Central news is going on about anti-white racism of the PC brigade, and something about MMR. I thought that debate had been closed?

Miscellaneous.

Dr Roy at Early Modern Whale deals with his Tricycle fetish. There was a theme in the inbox of architectural interest: Peter at Unmitigated England tells us of the Sound Mirrors at Denge Marsh in Kent, Philip at English Buildings tells us of Herefordshire's Arthur's stone

The Daily Maybe gives us her take on the BBC Dr Who Knitting pattern copyright theft. She thinks the BBC used a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Mazz was bullied by the corporation into taking her designs down but the fight is not over and, supported by the Open Rights Group, Mazz hopes that the killjoys will relent once they realise their error. That will only come about if the "public service" BBC come to understand that one enthusiast with a very strange hobby is not about to bring down the "brand" but is actually adding to its value.

I'm inclined to agree.

Finally 'My London Your London' Reviews the Blood on Paper: Art of the Book at the V&A. We may have started with the Blogosphere vs the MSM debate, but the real revolution was the Codex book millennia ago, which made writing portable - everything else is just changes the means of conveying the writing. Bloggers should remember The medium is not the message, it is the written word, and the freedom to disseminate it which is important. Having read the review, I want to go to the exhibition. Writing: the means to change someone's opinion, at a distance. Something Natalie Bennett as achieved here at least.

Toodle Pip!

Right... That took ages despite it being a small haul this time. I will, I promise leave a little more time for the next time I am asked to do this... Next week we're over at Suz Blog. Nominations to the usual address: britblog [at] gmail [dot] com.

No.

But they would have left more money in your pocket to help you cope.

It really is that simple.

"The fairest and most effective way" to help the low paid is to raise tax thresholds by £600 rather than the Government's preferred approach which is to take all their money and make them beg for some crumbs in the form of tax credits, said the Chancellor in a statement today. He went on to claim that this was "in no way" a complete U-turn on a decade of Labour policies to combat poverty. "Honest, guv'", he added for emphasis.

We've been saying that for ages, you stupid Badger-faced cunt. Let's have more of the same. In the meantime go and tell your one-eyed boss to stick this up his arse and fuck himself to death.

TravelGall's post on banking regulation misses one major downside of excessive regulation of the financial sector: Only very large organisations can afford the subsequent regulatory burden. This means that even when a small bank, like Northern Rock fails, it becomes a major political issue as the economy can seize up as a result of the banks' retreat from risk and the widespread and sudden withdrawal of credit, in part as a result of the surviving banks' fear of the army of bureaucrats which are advancing, clipboard in hand towards their balance sheets. In order to prevent the total seizing up of banking system, the Taxpayer took on a massive exposure it does not fully understand in Northern Rock- it would have been better to broker a good deal for beardy, and be done with it but the Labour party cannot countenance anyone making money out of an opportunity.

Not that the Crock was big enough to really harm the global or even national economy, but it was a major employer in a region where Labour was under threat from the "Liberal" "Democrats". That of course had absolutely nothing to do with it. Nosiree. In addition to their lamentable handling of the crisis, the guarantee handed out, without apparent thought, to depositors removed the risk from seeking the highest interest paying banks in the UK - actively encouraging some forms of risk-taking by banks in order to encourage deposits to bolster ratios.

Northern Rock is a minnow; the economy is, however exposed to the business models of a few extremely large banks. This is not a black swan risk - it is more of a Grey swan as it is clear that should Citigroup or HSBC fail, then the counterparty contagion would be immense, dwarfing the scale of the current crisis or anything seen previously. These leviathans are too big to fail. At least regulators can focus on the balance sheet of these enormous institutions. What regulators cannot do is focus on the events which could lead to the collapse of these institutions. Something like LCTM, run by people far cleverer and better remunerated than those regulators; regulators who as public 'servants' are mostly just failed bankers with a chip on their shoulder. They are not better risk analysts than the people they police. Box ticking, which regulation eventually boils down to, is never going to spot the sucker punch which is always around the corner, however "principles-based" it is.

Neither, frankly are the big boys of the Global banking system.

It would be far better if a healthy deregulated competitive market saw a sick bank go to the wall once in a while rather than JP Morgan, or HSBC succumb and take the global economy with it. Regulation encourages huge institutions. It should encourage competition instead. So all regulation achieves is a massive concentration of risk to the global financial system into a banking oligopoly for the transient benefit of the appearance of stability.

This is bonkers.

Many cities ban public drinking. BoJo has decided to do likewise, at least on the tube. It goes without saying that I think this is a stupid policy: it is a policy which criminalises even the majority who drink responsibly. Consider who the tube drinking ban is aimed at: piss soaked tramps and large groups of young men in football shirts: the constituencies at which every ban on public drinking around the world is aimed. But it criminalises anyone enjoying a glass on the train on their way home from work, or those on their way to a party, getting a bit of groundwork in, which if done whilst wearing red moleskins and a tweed jacket is called high spirits, but is otherwise "antisocial behaviour" which is nulab speak for 'anything of which the Daily Mail disapproves'.

Consider a ban on drinking on park benches:

What about a couple cracking a bottle of bubbly after he's proposed; what about a Builder drinking a can of Stella after a hard day's work, or a Gentleman of the road drinking special brew? What's the difference? They're all just enjoying the sun! It's the same on the tube. Your reaction is simple class prejudice.

This ban on drinking on the tube will not be applied with tact, nor will it be applied fairly or consistetently. The gentleman with the Merlot will be hassled, the 20 abusive drunken Chelsea supporters with bull necks, union Jack tatoos and stella will not: too much effort for the petty jobsworths who will be enforcing this legislation, who delight only in bullying the otherwise innocent, rather than making life better for all. This ban is a bone thrown to the dried up bitches who read the Daily Mail, and they will not consider that their husbands would ever fall foul of the high-viz vesties who'll enforce it. No this is simply another assault on a simple liberty where proper enforcement of existing laws against threatening or abusive behaviour will do far better. People should be allowed to enjoy their alcohol, and be punished when, and only when they step out of line. Even if they are wearing football shirts.

You're better than this, Boris.

I have returned from Canada, leaving the 3ft of virgin powder which fell overnight the day we left unskied, which is a crying shame. Travelgall has entertained you royally in my absence, I trust? He's now been promoted to international editor in chief, with additional "calling Gordon Brown a cunt" duties. Thanks Travelgall for all your hard work, there's 200 Marlborough Lights courtesy of Calgary Duty Free for you next time I see you!

I've decided I like Canada. It's a big, beautiful country, with fewer annoying people than America and HMQ on the currency. The skiing's fantastic, the resort was deserted. On the last day's skiing, having climbed up above the last lift for a couple of hours, we skied fresh tracks for nearly an hour and a half, non stop. Anyone jealous?


Anyhow... I am doing the Britblog Roundup for the first time on the 18th, so any nominations in the comments or to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com.