I wrote this last year, following the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes:

Sir Ian Blair was either not told of the error, or lied about it for 24 hours. Therefore he presided over a system where the boss cannot be told bad news, or one in which he believed a cover-up was possible. Either way, that is a chronic failure of leadership and he has to go.

I call this 'the Blair conundrum', Is he a liar, or incompetent.

Then we were told that de Menezes jumped the barriers. He didn't. Then we're told he ran at the officers. He didn't. Then we're told that he was nervous and agitated. None of the other passengers back up this version of events, nor does the toxicology back up the inference that he was high on cocaine at the time (he used it the night before, but frankly, so do lots of people). Indeed even his supposedly illegal work status was used to explain that which he didn't appear to do. It is suspicious that the CCTV footage was "lost" (#cough# Bullshit #cough#). The police clearly believe themselves to be the above the law and beyond criticism, even when they shoot an innocent man in the head. When found out, they all appear, from top to bottom, to be prepared to lie to justify their and their colleagues actions.

It is clear that the police have learned nothing - especially the counter-terrorist Gestapo created by New Labour. There was a leak of official Government information concerning immigration policy involving a junior civil servant who worked briefly in Jacqui Smith's office. If we are to believe the official sequence of events, this chain of evidence led to Damien Green MP. Now remember this is a police "service" who cannot be bothered to send an officer to the scene of a Burglary; this piffling leak, entirely unrelated to national security justified the deployment of 20 counter-terrorist officers to arrest a middle-aged man, search his home and constituency office and in an appalling breach of Parliamentary Privilege, his Westminster office. There are leaks consistently used by oppositions - and not least by the current prime-minister for whom Robert Peston has become the favourite recipient of such information, and no-one has ever been arrested before. It is at best an overzealous Police officer and at worst a deeply sinister attempt to intimidate the opposition and the civil servants who provide them information.

Only the speaker and Serjeant at arms, historically the defender of Parliament against the executive can authorise the deployment of police into the Palace of Westminster. Thus speaker Martin, a Labour MP, was informed of the arrest prior to the event. The Serjeant at Arms was also informed, and authorised the search of Mr Green's Westminster office. The Mayor of London was informed in his capacity of the chairman of the Metropolitan police authority. The leader of the opposition was informed. It stretches credibility therefore that The home secretary was not informed, since the investigation which led to the arrest originated in her department.

At this stage, it's probably worth saying a few words about parliamentary privilege. In order that Parliamentarians can safely do their job of holding the Government to account, they are exempt from arrest on civil matters like slander. They are exempt from interference, molestation, obstruction and intimidation. It is for this reason that the police do not investigate parliamentarians in the Palace of Westminster. Finally the 'public interest' means that information passed to an opposition MP by a civil servant is privileged if it should have been brought to the public's attention by the minister, as in Green's case. The Sargent at arms is supposed to defend this vital privilege, and is therefore traditionally a "Man of Arms" - usually a senior officer of the Armed forces. This means they may be "posh" and are usually male. This was 'discriminatory' - the ultimate sin in New Labour's theology, and the last traditional Serjeant at arms Major General Anthony Peter Grant Peterkin, was pushed out by the incompetent class warrior, Speaker Martin. In his place Jill Pay, a pathetic non-entity, was recruited mainly because she had ovaries. Would a Major General have so deserted his duty?

If Jacqui Smith can be shown to have lied, she's toast.

If there's any justice, the inadequate Jill Pay will go too.

Speaker Martin should resign immediately.

The Officers involved in the investigation should be disciplined for a gross error of Judgement.

The media need to take this story far, far more seriously than they are doing, because it cuts to so many principles of democracy and the rule of law, which have been undermined by Labour in office. There is the careless legislation: the new criminal offence every day, without thought to the potential interpretation of legislation. Thus the Regulation of Investigatory powers sanctions snooping by councils to enforce schools admission. Counter terrorist legislation is used against an elderly heckler at a Labour conference, an allied democracy and other inappropriate targets. There have been even more dangerous laws - the Regulation Reform Bill had the potential to be an enabling law. Which is where we are now. The Labour party have politicised the police and civil service and so abused the criminal justice system that anything of which the Government disapproves is probably in contravention of some law, and the police are only too happy to do the Government's bidding. The law against misconduct in public office, a 19th century common-law offence appears to have been strengthened by the Serious organised Crime and Police Act 2005 in order to prevent coppers using the databases to pursue personal vendettas - but is written for for potential extrapolation. There are so many laws, which have not been tested by courts that almost anyone can be arrested, searched intimidated and put on a DNA database. Most of the time, the charges are quietly dropped, or if they aren't the courts can still be relied upon - but for how long? The cost and time mean that the courts cannot prevent someone's life being destroyed by a charge. An arrest, extended detention, strip search and extended questioning for the 'crime' of publishing information about the non prosecution of a footballer in the Milton Keynes citizen is a punishment in itself. Even if they were eventually cleared.

The potential for abuse is staggering and this is why we are no longer free. Unity, writing at liberal conspiracy accuses the Right of Crocodile tears. But giving us details of the Green case. As is usual with a Unity post, he thinks 'to know all is to forgive all'. By nit-picking a detail, that "anti-terrorist police" were not using "anti-terrorism powers" he accuses the right-wing blogosphere of "giving itself a hernia". In this case he argues that immigration policy is not sufficient to exonerate Green from a charge of 'procuring', and, unbelievably says that this will be embarrassing for the Conservatives. As is often with Unity he fails to see the bigger picture. Try reading about Sally Murrer and Harry Kearney's treatment and tell me this is a free country.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

This is no longer a free country, and it is Labour who has enslaved us. Conservatives have been the major defenders of civil liberties, because that is something worth Conserving. You cannot claim that being Tory (and therefore authoritarian, according to pinko mythology) means speaking out on this issue is 'hypocrisy'. That's just putting up a straw man. Labour is the enemy of freedom. Just as predicted. It's time the left who claim to believe in individual freedom showed it by disowning this evil Government, or else stop using the word 'Liberal'. The Sunny Hundal, Polly Toynbee and Will Huttons of this world need to admit that for the left, the 'The end justifies the means' and a certain amount of 're-education' will be necessary to create socialism in one country.

Leftists will have to get rid of this tiresome 'freedom' nonsense if they want to achieve their ends, and it's time they admitted it to themselves.

The New Labour Project is complete. It's ironic that this happened on Sir Iain Blair's last day a Metropolitan Police Commissioner; the day on which we say "fuck off, you filthy turd, good riddance, I hope your retirement is short, painful and terminated by a particularly nasty cancer of the cock", he announces the final completion of his project to turn the police into the paramilitary wing of New Labour. It is now illegal to oppose the Government.

My guess: Jacqui "more tits than brains" Smith will not be able to survive the shitstorm this appalling act of political thuggery will kick up. With the pathetic lie that she had no prior knowledge of Damien Green's arrest, looking more ludicrous by the second. I'm looking forward to the nasty stupid fascist bitch getting a good skewering over this transparent dishonesty.

Guido has this Government summed up:


I challenge anyone with any respect for democracy, freedom, the rule of law, to find something positive to say about this Government. There are people, apparently sane enough to be allowed into the community, without the need to be supervised around sharp objects, who claim to be civil libertarians who are STILL thinking of voting Labour. Are you stupid, mad, ignorant or all three?

This is New Labour's state. Most 'crimes' are being dealt with by summary justice and the Government is continuing its assault on Trial by Jury. I mean you've got Journalists being arrested and charged for publishing true stories which come from a Police source. Unarmed men are getting shot in the head, then accused of crimes, because a trigger-happy policeman wants a headline that doesn't make him look like a cunt, and refusing to resign when they get found out. Finally, you've got opposition politicians being arrested - and I'm going to make an actionable allegation here - if not on the orders of, certainly with the prior knowledge of the Home Secretary. This is because they write laws badly. They legislate with all the skill with which they have run the economy: with all the deft and care of a man urinating after 15 pints.

Please. I urge anyone who has any respect for the freedom to call our elected masters on their many, many failings to do anything to get this awful Government out of office. You don't need a positive reason to vote Tory, and heaven knows they are doing a good job of not giving us one. The fact they are not New Labour will do, won't it?

Recently I have enjoyed a debate with North Briton Hunter, a Labour voter, from whom I wrung the following admission:

"I will be voting Labour, and partly because it means higher taxes for me. If I can afford more I should pay more"

This is the default Labour position, and if you agree with it, then one should indeed vote Labour. You will, however get called a 'cunt' by me. Here is why: The implication is that higher taxes on the higher paid are 'fair', because people who are rich "can afford it". That's a moral absolute delivered without argument, and an unsupported statement of utility.

Let's deal with the utility of higher taxes on the rich first. I am against most Government spending on principle. State spending is bad spending because it is people spending other people's money on other people, therefore it is not that interested in quality, and not that interested in price. If economics is the study of the application and distribution of scarce resources as efficiently as possible then the argument is simple for private sector spending where possible, as being more efficient. This is why low tax economies prosper and high tax economies stagnate.

By far the biggest spending department is social security: ie benefits. Few would argue with pensions, or jobseeker's allowance, but the ability to exist for an entire life on benefits, especially by the widespread abuse of disability benefits means that a fair proportion (10-15%) of the population choose (yes choose) that life. Secondly there are issues with the benefit system that actively discriminate against people who take the right course. The incentives are to catastrophically fuck your life up - teenage pregnancy and single motherhood for example guarantee a flat and income support. North Briton hunter argued that the Tories created the underclass. I argue that the underclass appeared on the Conservatives watch, but is a creature created ultimately by the welfare state.

The tax and benefit system being as it is, a person earning the minimum wage full time, pays tax. Because of the benefits and tax credit system, there are points in the income scale where very poor (single people particularly) face marginal tax rates of 90% or more. Many labourites are disgusted at high incomes by bankers. I find it revolting that someone on £10,000 a year pays any tax at all, and only sees 10p in the pound of any overtime. The treasury is so bureaucratic and the tax system so opaque that it costs a lot of money to collect all the piffling little taxes and police all the piffling little breaks and manage the credit system, which is just indefensibly bureaucratic. Mistakes are made and are devastating to the people on the wrong end, facing demands for thousands they cannot meet. That, to me is immoral and a creation of the Creature currently residing in N0 10. Trying to micromanage the economy and people's behaviour throught the tax and benefits has enormous unintended consequences, not least a massive disincentive to work amongst the very poorest. Without work, there is no escaping poverty. It is a definition of 'left' to disagree with almost everything in that paragraph - to simply deny that the welfare state is a disincentive to work.

So the current progressive system hurts the poor. What about the rich? They can afford to pay more? Well yes. If you earn £100,000, you could probably afford a tax-rate of 80% and still have enough to eat. The question is: why earn so much if almost all of it goes to the Government? This is the basis of the Laffer curve. That is the observation that if you set a tax rate at 100% you will earn nothing. From that flows the observation that if you cut marginal tax rates, then the tax take can fall. (note 'can', not 'will')The trick with taxation is to find the optimum level. Each tax has its own Laffer curve, which is dependent on the extent to which the tax is discretionary, the effort needed to avoid paying and other factors. A rule of thumb is that any marginal tax rate over 35% or so is probably on the downward sloping end though there is little empirical evidence to back that up (or, indeed to refute it).

If you earn £150,000, a marginal rate of 45%, the effort required to earn an extra £550 is not worth it, when it adds £450 to your tax bill. Therefore people don't bother. Secondly most people in this bracket will not be salaried employees of banks - they are going to suffer most in this recession and there will be far fewer people who will pay it through a PAYE payroll. Instead this will fall on business owners and successful self-employed who have much, much more scope to manipulate their income so that it falls below this supertax level. Therefore this tax will not raise anything like the £100m the Government estimates - I have seen estimates between £40 and £60m being more realistic. In the long run, by scaring highly paid employees off, it may actually cause a fall in total tax take, if for example there were 100,000 fewer highly paid bankers, who decided Dubai is a better place to set up shop in 2011, when the recovery comes. This means there are fewer jobs for secretaries, IT wallahs and cleaners too.

So if this tax will not raise very much money and may actually hurt the exchequer, and more acutely, the poor in the long run, why was it done?

This is where you get the moral argument for higher taxes - the use of the word 'fair', which is envy dressed up in Politics. This high marginal rate on 'the rich' was done to "send a message" that "those who have done best should pay more". I am paraphrasing from memory, but that was the gist of Darling's argument. It was done openly to appease the socialist headbangers on the Labour back benchers, who can now be persuaded to eat any shit thrown by Brown's team, now the Government is "taxing the rich". North Briton Hunter is happy to pay more tax. It's easy for him to say - I suspect he earns less than £150,000.

The idea that "the rich" are taking from the poor is only the case if economic endeavour was a zero sum game, which it isn't. So there is no moral component to being rich. Indeed we have a progressive tax system which sees someone earning £150,000 paying a greater share of his wealth to the tax-man than someone on £20,000. (There are too many reliefs, breaks and loopholes - that's an argument for a flatter simpler tax system, so let's have no mention of the Hedgefund managers paying less than cleaners, please - the problem is not the HFM's tax bill, but the cleaner's and that is Gordon Brown's fault too).

How is it fair for someone to have 45% of their income over a certain, arbitrarily ascertained figure, expropriated at gunpoint? (for that is one way of viewing tax), simply to appease some economic throwbacks for whom that person didn't vote. Or another way of looking at it: these rich people pay more absolutely than the poor. Their taxes supports a lot of government spending. It is not therefore unfair that they pay the same marginal rate as middle earners. Indeed because more of the Rich's' income is at the higher rate, they pay more, both absolutely and proportionately than the middle earners.

Furthermore, whilst a few people who will pay supertax do vote Labour, most do not. They have no say in the government announcing that they will pay an extra £5-10,000 in tax in a couple of years. They have to pay it, or leave. If they leave, and many will, we all lose their tax receipts. Not the extra £10,000 but the whole lot. North Briton Hunter is asking that someone else pay for state spending he is demanding. There's not a lot moral about that.

For this is not an economic tax, it is a political tax. It is no more moral, and done for the same base reasons as the Soviet murder of the Kulaks. The politics of envy is not moral. It is theft, pure and simple. Because we demolished the arguments in favour of the utility of the current tax system and the changes announced in the PBR, the moral argument falls apart too.

So what would I do in its place? Well pretty much what the liberal democrats suggest: Raise taxes on the rich, but do so by removing wiggles, breaks and loopholes from the system by making the tax system flatter and simpler - that is to undo 11 years of Brownism. I would aim to raise the personal tax free allowance to £12,000 or so, raise the basic rate to £30%, and keep the higher rate for the time being. I would hypothecate NI. This would have the added benefit of raising unemployment by 10,000 or so from the treasury. And then do what the Tories are suggesting - attempt to balance the budget, trim spending and eventually lower taxes.

So there we are. Any argument in favour of a steeper, more progressive tax system marks you out as an amoral, self-rigteous twat, with no more economic sense than, well Alastair Darling or his Stupid oaf of a Master, Gordon Brown.

Update: North Briton Hunter Responds

Tax as a moral issue part 1

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne gave a storming performance in the commons yesterday ripping Darling a new arsehole over his plan to bankrupt the country, and get all the pain blamed on the Tories. This morning, however on Radio 4 he stumbled over the simple question of what, if anything he would do differently. For reasons outlined before, he cannot say the truth: that there is nothing Government can do, beyond the automatic stabilizer, that isn't grossly counter-productive. Needless to say that Darling's plan was lunacy and can be dismissed as the rantings of a desperate politician; but Osborne's plan to have the Government force the banks to lend, underwritten by the Government won't work and risks storing problems up for the future: the last thing the banks need is more bad debt. Indeed it looked like a half baked plan that would never be put in place, made up on the spot to avoid saying what everyone knows to be the truth.

Basically he needs to have the guts to say "cut spending".

That means firing diversity outreach co-ordinators and similar wastrels en-masse, a hiring freeze in the civil service to bring numbers down. If there is to be pain in the Private sector (and there will be a lot) it needs to be shared by the public sector, who have grown fat under the Labour government. That means that admitting that unemployment and therefore 'poverty' as defined by this government, will have to rise, at least in the short term. Unfortunately after years of detoxifying the Tory brand, 'The Nasty Party' will have to come back, because the only medicine for the illness with which the country has been infected by Labour (again) is savage spending cuts.

Until the Conservatives deliver that message loud and clear, the support they get from this blog will be muted.

Mr Speaker, Here is Gordon's my pre-budget report, in full:

IT'S NOT OUR FAULT
GLOBAL
AMERICA'S FAULT
GLOBAL
(we're fucked, by the way, but if I say 'Global' enough, we won't be blamed)
NOT OUR FAULT
GLOBAL
NOT OUR FAULT
GLOBAL
TAX THE RICH
(but only after the Tories win the Election)
TAX THE RICH
('Rich' being defined as an income of £20,000)
TAX THE RICH
(vote for us please)

I commend this to the House etc....

And you could barely see Gordon's lips move.

So what does this plaintive wail of distress mean?

He's just forecast guessed that UK growth in 2009 will be between -0.75% and -1.5%, which seems a tad high, to say the least - most grown-ups reckon that Growth will fall by at least 2%. Despite this upbeat forecast, he's just admitted that borrowing will reach an astonishing 8% of GDP by 2009/10 and not reach surplus again until 2015. This, under the Government's economic forecasts which have a history of Micawberish optimism. The spending cuts are the discredited Gershon recommendations reheated, but just as useless as last time. The British public finances have NEVER been so out of balance, and it is only the fact that debt was just 30% of GDP, the lowest since WW1 (yes, 1) when they abandoned Tory spending plans in 2000, which has allowed them to get away with their profligacy for so long.

The Tories, by abandoning such insane spending plans is not a 'U-turn', as reported by Pravda the BBC. Not even the most rabid tax-cutting libertarian could have imagined such a grotesque parody of economic management from a desperate administration in a last gasp effort to buy sufficient votes to avoid annihilation. This is the clearest example of Labour's scorched earth - demolish the public finances so comprehensively that the Tories are forced to cut spending and raise taxes. Normally, Labour does this by stealth, but all this deficit spending is explicitly to be paid for by taxes raised in George Osborne's first budget. Labour is risking bankruptcy for the country for electoral advantage. This is the end of Brown's bounce. The British people are stupid enough to vote for this shit, while the times are good. When the ordure is flying, though, the real Labour party is revealed and the people will not fall for it for a very, very long time.

I've been predicting this since I started this blog in 2005. Gordon Brown, and now his useless sock-puppet are incompetent even by the elevated standards of Labour Chancellors. My contempt and loathing for anyone who even considers voting Labour after this dog-turd of a PBR knows no bounds.

Cunts.

Update. I've just seen the Prime Minister smirking. He's loving the crisis. I am going to enjoy seeing that smug grin wiped off his face at the next election.

...VAT is the wrong target. A 2.5% cut will have almost no impact on prices to the consumer, but any improvement on small business margins will be eaten up by costs such as reprinting stationary, reprogramming websites and changing systems. If you want a tax-cut, raise the fucking threshold. If you want it spent, do so retrospectively and write everyone a cheque.

Every generation or so, you need a lesson in the sheer incompetence/mendacity of a Labour administration. It has to be seen to be believed... I hate these useless cunts so very, very much. There's nothing to say except the only possible sensible response George Osborne could make to the up-coming pre-budget report, which I will be watching from behind the sofa with a cushion to protect me from flying idiocy, is to leap across the dispatch box and punch Gordon Brown's badger-faced sock puppet in the mouth, before using the mace to crush Darling's cock.

If you don't follow the polls closely, then you would be forgiven for thinking that Gordon Brown is enjoying a 'bounce'; that he is perceived to be 'handling the crisis well'.

This post is about perception, not about policy. Needless to say, I think the policy of insane deficit spending is, well, insane. What's more it's been insane for about 8 years.

At the moment, in meeja land there is a bit of "something must be done, this is something, let's do it" going on. Politicians get praised for decisiveness, whether or not the policy they espouse is the right one, or whether one is needed or not. In this case, I suspect the best thing the politicians could do is to let the country get on with having a much needed and long overdue recession, but they would be criticised, perhaps intolerably, were they to follow this path. So the media, which contains people of scant understanding of economics, slavishly follows the Government line that they are taking 'all necessary steps' which, when the economy inevitably recovers, will be hailed by some as 'saving the economy'. Of course there is no way of proving that the policies prevented or caused a recovery, which will have occurred anyway.

Oppositions are presented as 'unhelpfully partisan' or of 'talking down the economy' in a crisis such as this, should they criticise the 'Necessary steps'. Whatever the rights and wrongs of policy, the real policies coming from #10 in a crisis is more interesting and important than bleating from the opposition, who are always going to lose coverage under these circumstances.

The media narrative is not reflecting reality - Gordon Brown is not enjoying a bounce. He has recovered from a slump sufficiently well to avoid defenestration. However the Tories remain on track for a comfortable victory, polling as they are consistently over 40%. Even the worst poll for them - Mori recently had them on 40%, just 3 points ahead of Labour. When the Labour party polls well, it is usually at the expense of the Liberal Democrat and 'Other' share. That Mori poll had the Liberal Democrats on just 12% probably because they don't weight by past voting and had a disproportionately small number of sandal-wearing respondents. Secondly some of the Bounce is due to the 'Likelihood to vote' adjuster. Labour voters have reported an increased likelihood to vote as they hear words like "nationalisation" and the prospect of bankers getting the sack and they feel a spring in their step. This serves to entrench the Labour core, but without making any headway in the 'key marginals'. Finally, Labour is broke, financially but also morally. It has few councillors in England and it is these who form the backbone of the Electoral effort. It is likely that the Tories and Liberals will get more footsoldiers into their key marginals and outperform polling - there will not be the mythical uniform swing.

A statistical outlier, with serious flaws in methodology gets a lot more coverage than one with shows a continued healthy lead for the Conservative party. For this reason, I expect to see a poll, probably one conducted by a less than reputable organisation without an affiliation to the British Polling Council, which shows a small Labour lead getting a lot of coverage in the next few months. This will be picked up by a newspaper, who do not have any interest in or understanding of the statistical business of polling - for the simple reason that Brown - the Comeback kid is a better story than 18 months of giving him a kicking.

Secondly there's the Osbourne non-story. Of course a Shadow Chancellor is going to find it tough to get a message across when the media is slavishly following the Government spin, but there's no dissatisfaction or whispering campaign. A few UKIP nutters on Conservative home does not a rebellion make. But it is not difficult to see what will happen. Gordon will slip up, the economy will get ever deeper into the mire, and speculation will build then be dashed about a 2009 election, leading to a media narrative of 'Gordon blew it (again), allowing the Conservatives to make all the running once more as the economy sinks into the depths of recession. Labour must be hoping that the recession is a distant memory in the summer of 2010, but know in their hearts that they will lose the next election quite badly.

Whatever one thinks of the Conservative party or their front bench, just remember priority number one must be to get this appalling, incompetent, viciously illiberal and economically profligate scum out of office. However useless Osborne may be, he will be better than the overconfident monocular cunt who's been bankrupting this country since he abandoned basic economic sense Conservative spending plans in 2000.

Is up over at Mick Fealty's Telegraph blog, and focusses this week on the Government's plans for tarts and their clients, with which it doesn't seem anyone agrees.

I've regularly been nasty to the BNP. I think they're a racist party, with stupid, knuckledragging supporters. But I would not call for the party to be banned, because I don't like constraints on freedom of speech on principle. Or if that's too high-minded, the simple reason that the advantages the BNP get for being legal means they keep their public pronouncements on the right side of the law against incitement will do. To make them illegal would drive them underground where they would be more dangerous. The left, who claim a monopoly on public morality, on the other hand think being on a leaked list of BNP members should be enough for someone to lose his job. This reveals the left for what it is: Authoritarian, and intolerant of dissent. David Semple, for example (via) finishes his post:

Now it’s time to take this list of BNP members and their professions and use it to expunge BNP members from public services, where they are meant to be ready to serve all colours equally. If they can’t do that in their private life, I see no reason to suspect that they would be able to do it in their professional life?

Why should someone who thinks that the country would be better off if it were more ethnically and culturally homogeneous be unable to separate the abstract from the personal? Class warriors on the left can admire old, white aristocrats with a straight face, and deal with middle class people with civility in their professional life. Why can't racists do the same? Indeed he gives an example:

Yes everyone has stories of that dotty old aunt, eighty years old, who thinks that all Pakistanis should go back where they came from...

Just like my Gran: she disapproves of "the blacks" but makes an exception for, well almost every black person she's ever met. (she's in her 90's. I blame the daily Mail...). Sure: membership of the BNP raises questions, but if there is no evidence of discrimination, then there should be no lost job on the basis of membership of a political party, which remains legal.

What about members of the Communist party of Great Britain, also containing people who advocate violence, though on the basis of class rather than skin colour? Extreme left wing parties also contain holocaust deniers through their strange allegiance to extreme Islam, and there are many who deny the Gulag, which for some reason is seen as an eccentric rather than evil view? If you ban the BNP why not the Communist party? There is no ban on Police members being members of Hizb-ut-Tahir, who have primary allegiance to an Islamic caliphate and extreme views on women's rights and homosexuality. Why not?

Sure, there are issues of Vetting. I would be uncomfortable if, for example, paid up members of the BNP, or Communist party for that matter were working in the Security services and I can see the point of there being a ban on BNP members from serving in the police. But I ask again, surely this should also apply to members of extreme Islamist and Left-wing groups whose stance on many issues is remarkably similar.

Fair? I don't think so - but there is no doubt cunts like Semple think be BNP is a special case, without considering the underlying arguments. In this he's making a simple appeal to prejudice - which is exactly what his ilk will accuse the Sun or Daily Mail of when they talk about immigration. On what grounds would you fire a BNPer, and on those Grounds, why not fire a Communist too? Rather than firing them, why not do what I do, which is to lump all extremist nut-jobs together and have a good laugh? That's far more dangerous to the loons, commie and facist alike, than any ban, job loss or official discrimination.

That would require the left to tolerate dissent from their world view, though. And that ain't going to happen. BNP and Extreme left: both equally authoritarian in thier own special, nasty little ways.

The BBC is gleefully reporting a Tory U-turn because they have announced that they will spend less than Labour following an election. The pledge "to match Labour spending plans for 2 years" was made in the expectation of a 2008 election. Thus the wriggle that the Tories had been using was that it did not, in fact commit them to anything should there be a 2010 election. It was a useful pledge to shield themselves from charges of "Tory Cuts". Dishonest for sure, but not egregious by the standards of politicians.

No-one expected that the Labour party, under pressure would so catastrophically abandon any sort of fiscal responsibility. Anyone who said that the moment the economy slowed a bit, the British Government would be running a 4% budget deficit (forecast to rise to 7.5%) and be planning an even more massive spending splurge than during the boom, whilst simultaneously offering a transparent giveaway via a tax-cut, would have been called a Tory fantasist. To be offering this absurd policy, whilst simultaneously calling anyone offering funded tax cuts as "imprudent". What is even more surprising is that the people (if the polls are to be believed) seem to be eating Gordon's shit. On this, more later.

I welcome the unequivocal abandonment of a political line which had served its usefulness. It frees Tory politicians to talk about what is actually needed to deal with the economy - which is to fire diversity outreach co-ordinators and similar parasites across the whole of Government, cutting spending and headcount. That is to cut taxes, and cut spending in order to do so. Thus the next election will be an old fashioned profligate Labour party versus a Conservative party which will be steeling itself to clear up the mess left by a decade of socialist lunacy.

The Tory front bench should welcome the polls such as the recent Ipsos Mori poll showing the Tory lead down to 3%. This may tempt Brown into calling an election. The Tory share is holding in the 40-43% range. The Labour share is volatile, and trades at the expense mostly of the Liberal Democrats. Further more, most of the rise in the Labour share is as a result of Labour voters declaring an increasing certainty to vote, rather than more people saying they'll vote labour. If Labour is doing anything, it is piling up votes in its heartlands whilst not really making headway into the Marginal constituencies. It needs to do this to survive the next election. On the polling, the Tories will outperform a uniform swing, (Tories polling consistently in the 30s should make the Conservatives worry), and should win a comfortable working majority even if this poll is accurate.

Watching Prime ministers questions as I write this, I am amazed at the doublethink on display from the Labour party shouting CUT CUT CUT at David Cameron. Does anyone think that public spending should continue on its profligate course? Only those ignorant tribal buffoons on the labour benches think the public will believe that a tax-cut now would be anything other than a pre-election giveaway, because they cannot get it throught their soviet-issue, steam-driven brains that the taxpayer is not a bottomless money pit.

Once again, cheered on by stupid Labour Backbenchers, for whom a Labour Government can do no wrong, the Government has spent all the money, leaving nothing left to deal with the crisis. When asked specific questions, on the currency particularly, he failed to give an answer and retreated into a bunker of petty partisan points scoring, accusing anyone asking the question of "talking down the pound". When asked about policy, the Prime minister seems to think that "cross party support" means "everyone must agree with me". He seems to think that repeating the Lie that this is an "international crisis, which started in the USA" and therefore is not my fault, will be believed if repeated often enough. Well, 60% of the electorate doesn't believe him.

The outcome of the next election is certain - a Tory victory. Let's have a policy platform which will actually help this country: Sacking parasites in the Public sector and offering a package of small tax cuts, starting with raising thresholds to help the low paid. The Conservatives are in opposition - this is the opportunity to call the Government on what it has done wrong and what you will do differently - change is not just a new face in #10, but a new way of doing things. This is the opportunity you have to solidify your right flank and attack the Government to your left and do so by offering the right policy.

The policy is simple enough for The Sun "Cut taxes AND spending". Let's hope the polls are good enough for that coward, Brown to call an election now. Let's hope he is rejected with the Lanslide he deserves.

I know, it's a terrifying ordeal for the crew and their families. It is a huge amount of oil, and may have served to arrest the slide in the crude price. It is a symptom of a failed state, with all the human misery that brings. I know, but the news that Pirates hijacked a ship with millions of tons of (black) gold has my inner 8-year old boy shouting "COOL!" and secretly hoping for a daring rescue mission by Royal Marine Commandos of the SBS...

I can't help thinking that whilst the Blue-water navies in the region can condone piracy when it is restricted to tramp freighters carrying guns and urm... tanks, but they must deal with the hijacking of something so vital as the MV Sirus Star. Thankfully for my concience, and all involved, this sort of thing is normally dealt with as "just another cost of doing business" and will be dealt with by wads of cash from insurance companies rather than flying lead from fellows in Black.

On the other hand...

In a breathtaking display of hypocrisy, Gordon Brown accused George Osborne of breaking a convention to not talk down the pound, and even more astonishingly is accused of breaking a promise to support the Government over the financial crisis. Let's look at these two charges shall we?

There is no convention that Shadow Chancellors don't talk about Stirling. In a democracy, the opposition is there to question government policy, especially a policy as reckless as the one being persued by this Government. There was no promise broken. The Labour Government's charges are merely deflecting the public gaze from the train-wreck of the economy. This is why the Government's statement in response to Osbourne's comment contained such blatant ad-hominem, without addressing what was said. That means Osbourne was right.

What is actually going on? Well the Pound has fallen to its lowest ever level against the Euro and the lowest for some time against the Dollar. Whilst this is not a problem in itself, it is mildly inflationary, and means the fall in Oil is not passed on in full to UK consumers, but may help exporters; it does reflect the world market's opinion of the British economy's relative performance. Contrary to the Ex-Chancellor's assertion that "the UK is well-placed to weather the storm", the markets clearly think we're more fucked than other developed economies. I know who I believe. We're in a worse position for reasons pretty much laid out by Osbourne - that the stimulus package won't work because it just raises long-term interest rates. Osbourne's charge that the stimulus package is nothing but a "scorched earth" policy is nothing new. Conservatives have been saying this since Gordon Brown's first budget as Prime Minister (I know that's not constitutionally the case, but does anyone believe Darling is anything other than a sock-puppet?).

Osbourne may be politically weak following the Oleg Deripaska affair, and the feeling that he's not making any running on the economy now that the wheel has come off has led the more excitable elements of the Tory party to call for his head. Gordon Brown presenting himself as some sort of economic Yoda is a piece of political sophistry of some skill, but the truth will out, eventually. The media has lapped up the narrative presented by Labour, but Osbourne should be praised for sticking to his guns - safe economic management does not entail massive deficit spending, yet the electorate still has not made the leap to demanding the swingeing spending cuts that everyone knows is going to be nessesary, whether or not tax-cuts are delivered. If he started saying what was needed, he would jeapoardise the "de-toxification" of the Tory brand. He has to tread a very fine line between offering tax cuts that make sense (he has not really achieved this) and advocating spending cuts, which will be presented, apparently without Irony as "Tory Cuts" to pay for them.

He also has the problem that in 2010, he will have to do what he says now. That is not a problem which faces a Liberal Democrat, or even Labour politician. George Osbourne is doing a OK job on policy, has the broad strategy right, and just needs to get the short-term Brown Bashing on target too. My guess is that this will come. It is, after all, a big target.

Is over at Suz Blog

This spat between Iain Dale (Tory blogfather and wannabe MP) and Bob Piper (Old Git, Labour Councillor, and one of the top Labour Bloggers) is telling for what it shows the Labour mind to be.

Dale's post was relatively measured, criticising Brown for the Automaton he is, and failing to judge the mood of the country, and basically saying that Cameron was right to raise the question, and demand an independent enquiry, an opinion with which the Government agreed, because Cameron got the review he was demanding later in the day. Bob piper disagrees, in a frankly illiterate rant he says

"There are those who thought the Tory anguish play-acted out by David Cameron at PMQs was a genuine concern over a real social issue, and that Brown read it wrong. The despicable scummy connotation thinly disguised in what Iain Dale has written this evening exposes the Tory mouthpieces for the shameful hypocrites they are."

This is a Labour failure, in a Labour Council, by a profession which votes en-masse for Labour which was subject to a Labour-ordered review after an equally horrible failure, several years earlier. None of this was mentioned by any of the Conservative-minded commentariat, nor was the fact that this was a Labour council mentioned by Cameron at PMQ. (Contrast with the parade of bleating about "Tory cuts" from Labour MP's with Tory-controlled councils at every PMQs).

Instead, the charge of "party politics" reveals the Labour party and its leader to think that any concern shown by a Tory is crocodile tears. The belief that Labour have a monopoly on compassion and Tories are just "for the rich" is deeply held by labour people. In this world view, Labour failures are only ever the result of "underfunding" never Labour policy. Tories, on the other hand, think "there's no such thing as 'society'" and think babies should be eaten by the poor. This thinking means that Tories raising any social issue is "hypocrisy" and "party political" but a Labour member doing the same is "standing up for constituents/hard-working social workers" (delete as applicable).

Bob Piper's poorly-written bile is not therefore party political cant, it just shows that he's not at home to Mr Self Awareness, and should be ignored for the tiresome old trot that he is.

There is going to be a lot written about this horrible case, and what it says about Britain, social services and modern families. Much of it will be hand-wringing. Some of it will shed light. The fact is people have always and will always act in appalling ways. There will always be inadequate mothers with sadistic boyfriends. The most dangerous person a child can meet is a stepfather. It has always been thus.

I normally try to avoid talking about individual cases - certainly in a political context, fearing that hard cases make bad law. Instead I try to see through the fog of detail and emotion surrounding a individual case and try to see a bigger picture. But this, and previously the poor little Victoria Climbie fill me with a deep sense of revulsion and sadness. How can someone use a child as a punchbag? How?

What went wrong in this case? Social workers failed to spot bruising because the child was covered in chocolate and anti bacterial cream, and fell for the mother's deception. That is a human failing - weakness and lack of thoroughness for which they will suffer for the rest of their lives, but will probably be better Social workers as a result. A paediatrician, on the other hand failing to spot a broken back and eight broken ribs because a child, on the 'at risk' register was "cranky and acting up" is just criminal negligence.

Clearly 'the system' failed (they always do from time to time). Clearly there were individual failings, and it is not inevitable that there is any deeper cause than that. Social Workers not doing their jobs properly, and there may have been too many agencies, but none with the confidence to make a decision. If Dr Sabah Al-Zayyat is still practising at the end of her GMC hearing then there is something wrong with that system too. But ultimate responsibility must rest with the Boy's mother and the two Men with whom she shared her home.

Certainly it offends decency, if not fact, that the head of the Haringey social services attempted to defend her department and staff. The public will demand that heads roll: Whose, though is up to the enquiry. Who should be in charge of that enquiry? Certainly not the person who may be deemed to bear professional responsibilty. Which is why this became political.

Which brings us to yesterday's exchange in the commons . David Cameron was right to bring this up. The Prime Minister's mealy-mouthed responce was telling. The man has no ability to think on his feet, nor does he have sufficient empathy to see what was needed to be said in this case; so he reached for the House of Commons debate equivalent of Godwin's Law and accused Cameron of "party politics" (of course it's party political. It's the fucking Commons!). Cameron was right to call the Prime Minister on this - Cameron knew exactly what he was doing. The Prime Minister is a creature of the Labour party and sees everything EVERYTHING in the light of advantage against the enemy. To him, it is axiomatic that the conservatives are evil. That shone through like a beacon yesterday in the house, and the Leader of the Opposition did what he is paid to do and expose the character flaws in the Leader of the executive.

Yesterday's PMQs was more telling than four questions in a futile exchange of statistics on the economy. We know Labour are institutionally useless at managing the economy. What David Cameron did was not "punch and Judy politics" nor is it "irrelevant" to the "real issues". This is the argument of the side whose front man is falling on his arse. PMQs are a bear pit and it is designed to expose flaws in our leaders. In the case of this Prime minister, those flaws are cynicism and a lack of empathy; a narrowly party political brain and scant understanding of the world outside parliament. Cameron showed a political judgement and maturity in taking the prime minister to task, and he may have shown himself to be in tune with the feelings of the nation in a way that Gordon could never be. In doing so, he achieved the policy which he thought was right.

The Government did exactly what the Conservatives were demanding, almost immediately after PMQs.

In the end, once all the enquiries are gathering dust, there is nothing that will stop every disfunctional family torturing children and we cannot end all child abuse. We cannot make a child's life risk free, nor should we try. What we can do is try to keep the number of children killed and harmed to a minimum within the principles of privacy and fairness. We must continue to assume innocence, and support families where nessesary. Finally we must reform the welfare state so that the financial incentives and access to social housing do not encourage unfit mothers to have children, nor discriminate against couples when they do.

Whatever the enquiry says, we must not give social workers all the powers they think they need for the same reasons we must not give the police all the powers they think they need. In the clamour to 'do something' we must remember that this is a free country and in an attempt to prevent a tiny number of bad people doing evil things, we must not allow the country to become a something it doesn't want to be.

There are many, many words being written on the national debt. The Tories, and many on the right will say things like "Britain is in a worse position than equivalent countries" and the Government will say "Britain's national debt is lower than equivalent countries, so we're in a better position than other countries" They are both right. Britain's national debt is 43.4% of GDP (37.9% excluding Northern Rock), better than France, Italy, Japan, The USA, Switzerland, Canada and Germany to name but a few. But this tells only half the story.

First of all, let's look at what is and is not included. I'm happy to ignore the liabilities surrounding Northern Rock and the banks' bail-out, which cumulatively raise the Debt to over 50% of GDP. This is likely to be repaid fairly quickly and Northern Rock, for example is ahead of schedule in repaying Government money. The unfunded public sector pension liabilities on the other hand, are not included, but represent a huge drain on future tax-payers. Furthermore there are the liabilities surrounding the Private Finance Initiative. However. Schools and hospitals are actually built and if it is a choice between the PFI scheme and the Government going bust, which do you think it is that will carry the can? Furthermore the spending on these contracts is included in Government spending plans, and much of this spending would have happened anyway, it would have just taken another form. If you have a contract with a firm who employ cleaners, it is not wildly different to employing those cleaners yourself so let's give the Government the benefit of the doubt there. Likewise public sector pensions liabilities - there is likely to be some contraction in the number of drones in Whitehall and there isn't a country in the world without a similar problem. Let's take the government at face value, and ignore that too.

So yes. Gordon is right that British National Debt is one of the lowest in the developed world. Well done him, right? No.

Remember the Micawber principle? "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery"

So when Gordon says that he paid down the National Debt, he's half right. Let's look at what actually happened during Labour's years in office. Let's take 2000 as year zero, because that is when the Labour Government abandoned Conservative spending plans. Gordon Brown inherited public finances in unbelievably good shape. Debt was falling because the Government spent less than it took in taxes. The economy was booming and tax-take was rising. The National Debt fell from 1997 to 2001 - to less than 30% of GDP a level not seen since before the first world war, as the country posted surpluses as a result of Conservative policies.

Then Gordon turned the spending hoses on.

In the subsequent 7 years he spent over and above the increase in taxation - the greatest rise in peacetime in British history - and during an economic boom, when tax take would have risen anyway. He inherited a low-tax economy where the state took 37% of everything you earn to one which that figure is now nearly half. He presided over a gross inflation in headcount across public services which has delivered very little in terms of improvements in those public services. Despite this massive rise in taxation, borrowing soared to the 37-43% of GDP outlined above. The fiscal deficit - the difference between what the Government spends and what it takes in tax is now running at terrifying levels - the Maastricht criteria for example suggest that the fiscal deficit must not run to more than 3% of GDP. It is presently running at 4.4% of GDP, and we are heading into a recession which looks to be of some ferocity. Tax take will plummet and spending on welfare will rise. As a result, it is forecast that the Government deficit could reach over 7% of GDP. June, for example was the worst month since 1946, and things have got worse since then.

Basically the charge that Gordon Brown, seemingly believing that he'd abolished "boom and bust" has ensured that Britain's finances will deteriorate to the situation that National debt is over 50% of GDP and the fiscal deficit is at 7%. What happened last time this happened? Britain needed an IMF bail out. Who was in charge then? Labour.

Labour think that the tax-payer is a magical money-tree, and that nurses' salaries are more important than how it is paid for. The truth is that Labour is the political equivalent of their client state: they, like their chavvy scum "core" voters stand in front of Price-drop TV and think "I'll buy that on the Never Never". The Labour client state is buying cheap gold jewlery, and the Labour Government is buying votes. This is a lesson to anyone thinking that the Tories are no better than Labour. They do not bankrupt the country every time they're given control of the train set. They do not increase taxation - indeed they have a pretty good track record over the last 25 years of shrinking it - whatever the pledges made. They also do not destroy ancient civil liberties with quite the reckless abandon of the current shower of useless cunts infesting the great offices of state. But there's a reason the Tories aren't promising big tax cuts: they can't. I wouldn't offer them now, because I'm a grown-up with some understanding of Economics.

At the moment, the pound is collapsing, bond yields are rising (despite the expectation of falling interest rate) because such borrowing is inflationary. It devalues the pound. It makes everyone in the UK poorer. This borrowing is attempting the same thing that Bob Mugabe attempted in Zimbabwe, and Hugo Chavez is attempting in Venezuela. It is also the same trick Regan and Bush pulled in the US, but the US dollar is the world reserve currency in which commodities are bought and sold. Who said life was fair? Gordon's turning the money taps on will have the Zimbabwe/Venezuela result, not the Regan/Bush result. The next step for the UK is wage restraint across the public sector, and we know where that leads...

I've been saying this ever since I started writing this blog. Labour's economic policies have seen to it that this country is bankrupt. Again.

So what should be done? That is simple. Fire civil servants, local government officials and Quangocrats in their hundreds of thousands. Swingeing cuts across the entire public sector, with the emphasis on back room staff. Massively increase the dole queue at the expense of the public sector and offer some small tax-cuts for business with the savings. The stimulus should be targeted at the private sector. If the Government is to spend, It should spend on infrastructure while construction is cheap - to the benefit of business: road and rail capacity for example. It should invest in new electricity capacity and stop fannying around. This Government looks like causing the lights to go out in 5 years or so - another effect of a decade of Labour incompetence as they refused to allow investment in a new generation of Nuclear power stations, for example (unpopular with the core) or conventional (not very green).

I'm not going to pretend that the country is in worse shape than in the 1970's. Nor do I think the UK will need an IMF loan again. Borrowing could comfortably reach 50 or 60% of GDP, the Maastricht criteria allow for this and the UK would be coming into line with much of Europe. But at some point there needs to be a change in the way the Country is run because just because we can stand it, doesn't mean it is good. At some point the Government needs to stop spending. It can do so now, and offer some tax cuts, or it can do so later and retain the leviathan state condemning the UK to another 30 years of economic sclerosis. Spending needs to start to fall Now, not after the next election.

This manifesto is simple. It is just not easy, and Labour lack any capacity - intellectual, moral, political to achieve it. The Labour party is institutionally incompetent and should pay the electoral price, so we need an election. Now.

I mean a "sub-par" Murray never the less dispatched Andy Roddick in three sets, apparently with some ease. Then there's that Hamilton Character. Winning heroically on the last corner of the final lap of the final Grand Prix of the season. All this On top of an astonishing Olympic performance.

It's not very British, is it?

So it is with some relief that I realised you can rely on the England Cricket team. The best paid team in the world, Humiliated. This time by mere club pros in Mumbai.

That's more like it. As number 29 said: Back to normalcy.

It may as well happen sooner rather than later. The Conservative party will form the next Government, so their plans deserve some scrutiny, and I had better get used to nonsense coming from the them in Government and give them a hard time about their piffle. The Tories are proposing an National Insurance rebate for Businesses who "take someone off the unemployment register" of £2,500, funded from the "£8,000 it would have cost to keep them on the register [for a year]."

Well. I suppose as a tax cut it is at least a sensible tax-cut, aiming at the right place. 6/10 plus a gold star for effort, Cameron. But why the stipulation that someone must have been on the register for 3 months? Surely that means that business have an incentive to delay hiring. Surely it creates discrimination against those self-reliant people who only sign on when they've run out of savings?

Why not just make it a "thank you" from the Government for hiring at all? Make it for all newly hired workers to avoid any perverse incentives (and simplifying administration, allowing the firing of a few Local Government, and inland revenue drones).

Of course tax cut is not "paid for" by not spending £8,000 in JSA. It is a choice between not getting £2,500 in tax, and spending £8,000 out of increased borrowing. The way to "pay for" this tax cut is to fire a Diversity outreach co-ordinator on £32,000 per year losing £8,171.71 in Tax and NI revenues, and costing up to £8,000 should the Diversity outreach co-ordinator remain unemployed for one year, but saving the balance of £23,828.29 - a net saving of £7,656.58. One fired Diversity outreach co-ordinator should therefore "pay for" 3 newly hired workers in the private sector.

This saving would be raised if that Diversity outreach co-ordinator spent less than a year on the Rock 'n Roll, and was productively re-deployed in the private sector, where their tax would be a net gain to the exchequer. Of course he, or she (thank you, Brian) would have to learn skills which are actually useful, rather than bully on order to NuLab's PC agenda, and this level of re-skilling might not be possible without re-education camps. Perhaps better to assume they merely rot on the dole, eh?

Tax cuts are pointless unless they come with fired Diversity Outreach Co-Ordinators. A Point I shall continue to bore everyone with in the coming months and years.

First is Mr Eugenides' triumphant return from... urm... moving house and getting internet installed - Britblog roundup number 195.

And Secondly Heresy Corner brings us a brilliant demolition of Paul Dacre (editor of the Daily Hate, I had to look it up too) and a defence of the right to privacy against the Lynch-mob mentality of the gutter press, and there's some catullus too. I think the Daily Mail's argument that "Freedom of Expression" means the press should be allowed to print whatever titillates its readers, misses the point of the "Freedom" bit, as the Heresiarch says:

"does it not occur to Dacre that "freedom of expression" - in a private, sexual context - was precisely what Max Mosley was exercising that day in March?"

Right. I'll stop pointing you to Heresy corner, when he's in everyone's blogroll, and you all read him every day. You got that?

Now Darling and his puppet master, Brown have spend the last 11 years rubbishing anyone who offers unfunded tax cuts. As soon as they run into a spot of economic bother, what strategy do they propose to save the country from depression? You guessed it... Unfunded tax cuts. Watching them squirm as they are read their own arguments about Tory cuts, back when the country could actually afford them, will be one of the motifs of politics 2009.

Well when I say "unfunded" I do of course mean "Funded by taxation raised by the Conservatives, when they form the next Government".

We know benefit claims are going to go up. Tax receipts are going to fall, this is after all a recession. Are these tax cuts going to be matched by cuts in Labour's client state? is the near doubling of the civil service going to be reversed? Are the Guardian Jobs page parasites going to be fired? No. A tax cut is welcome, but only when I see diversity outreach co-ordinators standing in line for the fucking dole to pay for it.

Is this tax cut going to have any effect on the depth of the recession? No.

So Gordon has abandoned "prudence" at the first hurdle, because he is, at heart a tax and spend economic illiterate with shit for brains. He has sold his economic "theory" by which he got elected for a mess of pottage - a few votes that he otherwise would not have, but will have no effect on the overall result, which will be a Tory Landslide. I hope this is mere panic, but I suspect the real reason to be more sinister. This is part of Gordon's scorched earth policy: Store up so much trouble for the incoming Conservatives, that labour can paint the inevitable tax-rises and spending cuts as Tory Boom 'n Bust. Basically, the one-eyed thief is reckoning that he can make it so bad that the Labour scum return after just 4 years.

I hate him, so very, very much.

Canoeing with my Brother at the weekend, he complained of a strange smell in his thermal undergarments as we were getting ready to go on the river.

"What's that? Mildew? Body Odour? " I asked (Canoeing thermals often remain unwashed in the bag for several days Months).

"No, Fabric Softener" he replied.

He got married recently. It changes your life in so many unexpected ways.

Heresy Corner is on top form, putting his opinion on the Blears' speech to the Hansard society in which she opined that Blogging was too negative (and unsupportive of the Labour party perhaps?). There's nothing new under the sun: is the Labour assault on civil liberties the great reform acts of the 18th century are being undone?

It was Peter Mandelson, a decade ago, who suggested that the "era of representative democracy might be drawing slowly to a close". In its place, I suppose, we shall see a system of "managed democracy", in which elections continue to be held and public opinion is consulted - and, where possible, told what to think. Real power will be exercised out of sight by people who owe their jobs to patronage and cannot readily be removed.

It sounds a bit like the 18th century. With ID cards and RIPA.

To which I'd add the Lib dem's fetish for PR. Go read the whole thing

There is nothing which makes me more miserable than happy lefties. For 3 months, we've had to endure ignorant pinkos pontificating on a subject on which their political beliefs ensure they entirely ignorant: Business and economics. The "capitalism is dying" and that Nationalisation (in the current form) or state support are in some way "socialist" memes are gaining widespread traction, despite there being precicely no truth in them at all. This is not a crisis of the Free market capiatalism as that barely existed. It is a crisis of corporatist, tightly regulated markets with grossly skewed incentives. The solution being offered is the same as that offered to a heroin addict: more regulation. A savage bout of short-term regualtory tightening representing sort of business methadone. Business is merely undergoing a particularly savage recession. It does not support your calls for a planned economy. Recessions: They happen from time to time.

You will hear ignorant lefties saying things like "no-one thinks 'less regulation' is the answer". I do. So do lots of people who argued against some of the regulations which contributed to this mess. I also, if you noticed, was not wildly enthusiastic about either TARP or the Bank Bail-out.

No-one seems to accept that even the most tin-foil hat wearing libertarian loony thinks that one of the proper functions of Government is to act as a lender of Last resort, along with roads, street lighting and defence. This is not a crisis of the libertarian, or even the Conservative philosophy. It is Governments, whose tinkering with regulation conspired unwittingly to make this disaster so... well disastrous. Mark to market accounting ensured panic in debt markets. Government encouragement of "access to markets" for the "disadvantaged communities" enabling them to "own their own property" has not been accepted by the left for what it is: Government encouraging, nay requiring, banks to lend to poor credit risks. True, banks should have seen something so predictable as a house-price crash coming, but the blame can definately be shared with Government.

In the UK, the government is acting as a robber barron, forcing banks down, then forcibly picking up the equity at knock-down prices - to the terrible detriment of shareholders and pension funds. This wishful thinking that this crisis represents the triumph of the state has developed into a received wisdom, ensuring the same mistakes are made over and over again. And after His Holiness, St Barack of Obama's victory in the US presidential election whose election rallies with their weeping, extatic supporters remind me of Nurenburg, comes the final straw: Glenrothes.

How can a man who as chancellor presided over the greatest rise in peace-time taxation in British history, who decided that unfunded spending (over and above the punitive taxation) during a boom would lead to "stability" be lauded as one who has "led the world" out of its current crisis, when in this country at least he is clearly culpable of exacerbating it?

The media prior to the by election was of a "Brown Bounce" - and in terms of a solidification of the Labour base, they're probably right. Not yet enough to look like winning an election, but strong enought to fight on for another 18 months as Prime Minister. Glenrothes confirmed it, aided by a skillfully negative campaign by the local labour party (which is already in opposition) and some brilliant expectation management - a loss, as expected would not have been a disaster, but victory so unexpected allows further gushing editorials from Journalists, who love to have a narrative to hang their reporting of news. Items which reinforce the Narrative get reported, and items which don't, don't.

That is why I am so fucking depressed this morning. There now is no hope that Brown will go soon. We will have to endure his swinging dewflaps on the news every day and eat the shit he spins about how his "leadership" will be the best thing for stability. And like a whipped cur, the media pack will lap it up.

What we need is an election. Political depression and drearyness feeds through into economic drearyness. Remember the euphoria of 1997? Bit of a boom after that. Look accross the pond to the elation that the US is feeling now. Will that translate into a few more washing machines, cars and houses being purchased? Probably. In this way Obama will help the US economy. Whether this is enough to offset the loony protectionist urges he feels is moot. This is one politician I hope is lying. Here in the UK, Brown the dour technocrat is precicely what we don't need.

God we need some inspiration. Brown - the only thing he inspires is despair. Clegg? Hahahahhahaaa. Salmond? Far too smug. I don't even know who the leader of Plaid Cymru is. Farage? If only his party weren't such a bunch of swivel-eyed loons. Which leaves Cameron. Depressing isn't it?

I'll be back to my up-beat savagery next week. I'll write a rousing post - the enemy is to your left. Carry on! But right now I can't face 18 monts of Brown; of Labour. Somebody inspire me that there's hope for freedom and prosperity in this sceptered isle.

Please!