Budget taxes but no flights of fancy

I knew we would be given the stick first and carrot second. It doesn't appear too bad all round. The Coalition should not worry about upsetting people. Most sensible people are resigned to the fact that the deficit needs to be removed as quickly and efficiently as possible. If anything is going to upset the taxation applecart it will be the media. They can't help trying to drive a wedge between the Tories and LibDems. It's OK for Harriet Harman to snipe away. That's her job as she sees it. But I think it's a bit rich for the BBC to harp on about who is sitting beside whom on the front bench etc, etc.

Given the media frenzy before the budget was even delivered I half thought Ryanair's chief executive Michael O'Leary was going to be chancellor for the day. £1 off this and that but VAT on breathing! As Michael Winner might say, "Calm down, my dears. Calm down".

The Coalition has its fans. I'm one of them. Better a coalition than a washed out Labour administration. If the prime minister is to get any trouble, though, it won't be from the opposition. It will be from some on his own side and from some in the media. I've noticed that Tories who favour the coalition call their LibDem colleagues "honourable friends" and those that don't call them "honourable gentlemen" (or ladies, of course!). It works equally well from the LibDem perspective. An easy way to spot possible troublemakers.

The media seem to be uncertain about coalition politics. It's taking their mindsets some time to adjust. They also have a difficulty with the opposition. Harriet Harman is sometimes described as the Leader of the Opposition and sometimes as the Acting Leader of the Labour Party. It all depends on what point is trying to be made.

Anyway, austerity times apart, I think it may well work out rather well.

Should Moody's be downgraded?

I saw Raymond NcDaniel, the Chairman & CEO of Moody's, being quizzed by the venerable interrogators of this financial committee, the FCIC, looking into the banking crisis and all things connected with it. When asked if any due dilligence was done over the subprime fiasco, McDaniel looked somewhat perplexed. After a bit of waffle, I think the answer was a basic no. It was likened to just going through the accounts of the Dairy Queen rather than sipping the blizzards on offer. Warren Buffet was sitting next to him, and Buffet owns the Dairy Queen.

Moody's have made a mint making rating the creditworthiness of other peoples' businesses their own business. They even take a considered opinion of the state of countries. They don't rate Greece too highly at the moment. They've just notched them down another peg. But what is the real purpose of Moody's and others like them? How come they were so undue in their own dilligence when it came to the subprime racketeers? Is it because McDaniel hadn't heard the word "derivative" before? This fancy word conjured up by bankers in order to turn bad money into good.

I like the way the questioning went, but I doubt it will do much. Both McDaniel and Buffet came across as completely devoid of any real sense that this financial disaster was much to do with them. And that's the problem. They don't really live in the real world. Far better for the committee to go down to the local Dairy Queen and ask the blizzard sippers what they would do to straighten things out. Now that's direct democracy for you!

Mutt and Jeff and Gordon Brown

So Gordon Brown says he "misunderstood" what the good lady said. If that's the case, he's quick to fly off the handle over something he's not sure about. Bit like the cabinet ministers who had the rough edge of his tongue. Misunderstood, indeed!

He said this in an interview with Jeremy Paxman. Plus this - "Please believe me, I have never been soft on bankers and I am not soft on bankers now and I have been very, very clear about what the banks have got to do in the future." So clear that the banks cannot muster any backbone for self-control. Sir Philip Hampton, the boss of RBS, is so weak that he has to cave in to his ultra-greedy employees (those who get the massive bonuses). "If we don't pay our top people (appropriately), they leave very quickly," he said. So these top people have no loyalty to the bank, no loyalty to the customers and no loyalty to the country (who bailed the buggers out). All they have is a craven desire to get filthy rich by making "profits" out of illusionary money. Most of it doesn't exist. It's all in some follow-my-leader account-hopping merry-go-round. They can make nothing into something. Must make an alchemist sick!

Gordon Brown hasn't done what he should do. Instead of bawling out Mrs. Duffy, why doesn't he get those bank chiefs in and tell them that it's straight jackets not flash jackets from now on. No funny money stuff. No hedging, no betting, no ducking, no diving, no derivatives, additives, sedatives, or laxatives. Just plain honest banking.

Any chance these modern day moneychangers might be able to clean up their financial temples?

Recession? The penny hasn't dropped yet!

Yesterday most financial commentators were beside themselves because Britain is still in recession. I don't give much credence to all their computer calculating and number crunching excercises. I prefer a more simple method of comprehending whether we are out of recession.

When Gordon Brown was over-gulping on the air and telling us that he had abolished boom and bust I regularly spotted coins dropped on paths and pavements as I walked about. Outside the post office, in car parks, by the telephone kiosk, outside the boozer and so on. I once picked up a pound! Then we had the start of the credit crunch and the pennies stopped dropping from heaven or wherever. I still peer at the ground. Once in a blue moon I spot a coin. But it's a rare occurrence.

When those coins start being dropped again with gay abandon and caution being thrown to some economic growth wind I will believe that we are out of recession. Until then, it's just a hard slog and a determination not to say too many rude things about bankers and Brown!

The Borrowers

As human beans, we are being slowly put into the bean counter to maximise our worth to a profligate government that sees borrowing as a means to an end. Paying back is someone else's business. Gordon Brown may as well be a tiny person living under my floor boards. He appears to have tiny minds living under loads of floor boards, all over the country, popping out to borrow stuff from us human beans.

We now live in a country where most of the top corporations are crazed in their devotion to "driving down costs" and "reducing prices". We have banks that are so big that they have the government to ranson. They have become like an emboldened Oliver Twist, completely assured that they will get some more. Mr. Bumble the Beadle has buzzed off! Angela Knight, ex-Tory minister and persuasive moral blackmailer of the British Banking Association - she continously stresses that if banks don't get what they want, they will buzz off to Switzerland or the Cayman Islands or somewhere - is unperturbed by criticism. And we have a workforce wondering if their jobs are safe.

So on the one hand we have a situation where the tax take is diminishing and on the other where the borrowing is being stratispherically increased. Is there an accountant out there who knows how to join the dots up?

John Prescott and the Beanstalk!

Pantomime Land? Well John Prescott's well and truly strutting the stage with his one-man fantasy that Gordon Brown is a Giant! Prescott has said the prime minister is a "global giant" who can win the next election. He said "everybody" outside the UK believed Gordon Brown had "turned this global economy round" and dismissed his opposition rivals as "pygmies".

Everybody? That's including the camp known as "the jungle" outside Calais, I suppose. They know a "global giant" when they see one. It's all a load of twaddle. To think that this is the stuff of high level politics.

Come to think of it, if Brown has done so well in turning this global economy round, he did it without the help of tax evading bankers. The Panorama programme tonight shows just what a bind he really is in. Caught in the headlights of a runaway bank juggernaut with the headlights searing into his brain.

If he's such a giant, he must have done his stopping around with velvet slippers on his feet.

Major warns Brown that the UK's credit rating could collapse!

Sir John Major spells it out to cloth-eared Brown "If they continue with this huge deficit, at some stage our national credit rating will collapse".



At least one former Cabinet member has realised the fudge game is up. John Hutton says, "I don't think you can go on saying we can continue to spend as if nothing has happened in the last year or so - people know something big time has changed." And even that implies the average voter is thinking through a headful of custard!

Alistair Darling, though, appears to have adopted the custard thinking process. "Gordon and I have many discussions and both of us are absolutely clear our priority now is to build our economy, to resume with great vigour the drive to make sure this is happening in other parts of the world because our future depends on that. I am very clear that things like education, health, transport, these are important matters. But as I have said time and time again, all of us are going to have to make our choices, all of us are going to have to set our priorities and the public will judge." What on earth is all that about? Waffle and piffle!

Truth will out, Darling!

We want honesty and transparency in politics

The political elite in Britain have long been used to treating the electorate as morons. Somehow it is seen as an electoral own goal if a politician tells the truth. Lying is not encouraged but spinning the truth to such a degree that it only vaguely ressembles its original status is. Also encouraged is the black art of the political double entendre and the equally absurd habit of deliberately not answering a straight question.

Gordon Brown has been saying recently how much he recognises the public's desire for transparency. Yet he seems incapable of admitting any fault other than to suggest "we are all to blame". Even now he is encouraging his ministers to denigrate the Tories about "swingeing cuts". Everyone knows that the UK is heavily indebted. They know the banks and the government are still sitting on toxic debts. So why, when there is no public money to talk of, the Prime Minister insists that he is going to invest more money. What money? There is no money. He is just gambling on the future tax take of generations to come.

This is the Gordon Brown who sat by whilst the sub-prime scandal exploded around him. Yes it started in America, but it was British banks who were up to their eyeballs in the lending racket. He implies now that he never thought to ask a question. Not one ounce of inquisitive vibes left his body. We must therefore understand that he was either incompetent or a calculating character who hoped it would all blow over.

He never qizzed the bankers, he sought to delude the public, and he blamed others. Now he is acting as an invester with a philanthropic heart. It's all balderdash. He knows it and we know it. Ed Balls is a man where the disingenuous remark is always available. "The Tories are ideologically wedded to cutting spending to fund tax cuts for the few," he warbles. Old style rubbish politics.

George Osborne is right to say that the public wants the truth. We want to know how much the country owes and what taxes have to be raised to pay back our debts. Unless we know, we will not be able to have confidence in the future. That future could be one of selfishness now leaving future generations saddled with a third-world existence or it could be one where we really tackle the root problems and create an economy that is vibrant and entrepreneurially virile!

It's in our hands and it lies with our votes.

Ron Paul’s Economic Theories Winning GOP Converts

This qualifies for an entry in the Wonders Never Cease Category. It was only a year ago that Ron Paul was being denounced as a nutter and a troublemaker by fellow Republicans. Now they think he's the bee's knees, or at least some of them do. Come next year and the whole party will be transformed into Paulista thinking.

Michele Bachmann, the representative from Minnesota, is so taken with the ideas of Thomas Woods, a conservative writer in the Ron Paul mould, that she felt she had to question Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner about economic fundamentals. I bet they were ill-prepared. The more the merrier. Quizzing these cash diverters about how dodgy dollars could possibly make America great again has to be a patriotic duty I'd have thought.

More here, from the Washington Independent.

Darling's daring budget?

I sincerely hope that Alistair Darling recognises in his budget that we are in a mess but that we are all keen to get out of it as soon as possible. The time has past for yah-boo politics. We need to draw a line in the sand and move on. No more cover-ups, financial denial or blaming others.

He should explain, without spin, all the detail that is going to help the economy. Pure facts and not spun statistics. And he needs to keep Gordon Brown well away from it all.

If we are to get government plans, such as a car scrappage scheme, let him tell us honestly what it will cost and how it will work. We have been promised mortgage rescue schemes, business loan schemes, etc. All seem vague and wishy-washy. The funding detail is never properly disclosed.

A budget without spin or subterfuge will benefit us all regardless of our political views and our personal circumstances.

GM Chairman Says Bankruptcy Looms

It doesn't seem to be getting much better for the car industry. GM Motors teeters on the edge looking bankruptcy in the face. I would have thought it best to let them fall off the cliff. The wreckage will be a lot less difficult to salvage than it would be to keep the present show on the road.

It's not as if Americans won't buy cars again. They just don't want the ones that cost too much to buy and to run. A new phoenix rising from the tangled mess will be a far better beast. Perhaps a couple of phoenixes or more.

People will only buy cars if they feel good about it. At the moment they don't. But as the Indians have shown, if you price it right you will keep the market. And we should not forget that Sam Walton (pictured above) got rich driving old bangers about and wearing Wal-Mart clothing!

The Ups and Downs of the UK Housing Market!

Who do you believe?

The Nationwide (Giant Gobbler of the Dunfermline BS), which says house prices went up in March or the Halifax (Toxic Debtor partner of the Bank of Scotland), which says they went down.

Two sides of a coin or just a load of bankers? Surprise Bounce versus Downward Drop!

Obama asks "Where's my dinner?"

Obama hits town and London is bracing itself for a possible riot. Not necessarily because he's here. In fact, he's like royalty and showbiz rolled into one, so his adoring fans will be out there. No, the possible riot is because the G20 leaders are all going to sit down to discuss the world's problems. Problems which they never saw coming and for which they are reacting to rather than trying to be pro-active. Let's hope pro-action gets a look in.

Today bank staff are being told to dress down. Isn't it bizarre. At least they now realise they have made themselves unpopular but it must be some sort of recognition that they have to look "ordinary" (that is unkept and untidy!) in order to blend in! What would Captain Mainwaring think? "What's this, Pike? You're dressed in a very casual outfit. This is a bank, you know! Go home and smarten up, immediately!" "But Mum told me to dress down in case I got into any bother." "Stupid boy! There's a credit crisis on - who is going to get us out of this unless we all pull together!" The great irony is that we would not be in this mess if we had had proper bankers and not the corporate money shifters who were running the show.

So Obama hits town. They will all settle down to a grand dinner in No.10 for food cooked by Jamie Oliver. Well, he'll be overseeing a few other chefs, I suppose. They better get some fans blowing in the kitchens. He can get temperamental under heat. He's cooking for Obama & Co, not Harry Truman! Oliver's wife is expecting a baby any minute and he's told Gordon Brown that if the baby comes tonight he'll have to get another chef.

I was in Sainsbury's last night, looking over the "reduced items". During a conversation with another customer and the price reducer it was revealed that the store gets rid of £2000 of food a night. What a waste! My fellow customer said "You could feed the third world with that!". Well, not exactly, but if one tots up ALL the supermarkets in the UK the food wastage must be dire in the extreme, and the Third World would welcome some of it.

Jamie Oliver has had his run-ins with the supermarkets and he is not afraid to speak his mind. The G20 is getting all hot and bothered about money but it should be about the proper stewardship of money. In recent years it seems to have been equated with water. Turn on the tap and out flows MONEY!!

So, it needs to be a meeting of minds. If it gets too hot in that kitchen it won't be the ghost of Harry Truman getting to Oliver, it will be the current conflicts in his mind. It could end up with the dinner being cancelled!

"Where's my dinner?" asks a surprised Obama. "Dinner's off, mate! I've got a few things to sort out." replies the cheeky chappie in a rush.

Gordon Brown gets a roasting! Devalued all round!

This is great! Daniel Hannan MEP tells Gordon Brown he's a devalued prime minister. What a speech. See it on the internet, because this speech was withheld by the BBC. It was censored! But I would have thought such a dressing down was top political news. Not at the BBC, Sky or elsewhere.



Nigel Farage MEP has also given Gordon Brown a few home truths. This You Tube presentation is a UKIP one and I'm not necessarily promoting UKIP, but Farage tells Brown exactly what's what. Nice how the schoolboy grinning of Brown shows up.

Ron Paul on the AIG bonuses

Here's Ron Paul talking to CNN about the AIG bonuses. What gets me is the way these presenters keep asking him questions as if he's a bit odd and the system is just having a temporary blip. Why don't they get to grill some of these quacks in Congress that seem to think money grows on trees?



What we have now is legalised crooks being bailed out and the illegal crooks (some kind of oxymoron, I know!) get to go to jail. What's the difference between Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and the ponzi crook, Bernie Madoff? Not a lot, I say.

How come it's OK to bundle up cash into so-called "investment vehicles" and get these vehicles to run around town on a heady high octane gas, crash them into a wall and then find out the vehicle is made of recycled toilet paper. There never was proper money in some cases. However, we are constantly being told we can't let the banks go bust. Why ever not? They are bust now. We are just pouring money into old coffers.

The Bible tells us you can't put new wine into old skins. So why are most Western governments doing just that?

"Can I help you, ATOL?"

The answer, if you are a customer with the failed travel group XL, is no. That is, if you paid by credit card. The ATOL protection scheme only protects up to a point. The get out clause for the CAA is that credit card companies have an obligation to pay out to customers under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. So that gets them off the hook. Customers who paid this way are not happy. However, they should get a refund from the card issuer.

My concern is that there are going to be quite a few crashes and collapses this year. We've had all manner of mixed messages coming from administrators about who will or will not be paid as creditors. As the government lurches from one fantasy to the next, perhaps a touch of reality should hit them. There needs to be a firm set of rules and regulations covering the position of creditors so that people know exactly where they stand. For example, it is no good one set of adminstrators paying up on gift vouchers and another not. Tightening the rules won't solve everything but it will give a bit more confidence back to a shattered public.

"Je ne regrette rien", Gordon Brown tells Americans!

Gordon Brown is going against the advice of fellow ministers. He regrets nothing, except maybe the 10p tax fiasco. But that was only a slight problem. Brown blames the bankers for the mess we're all in. The same bankers he cosied up to all these years. He seems to have been in their company with cloth ears. See no evil, that sort of thing.

Whilst he goes around like some kind of amateur pied piper looking for followers, others are beginning to give him grief. One such is John Kingman, the chief executive of UKFI, which manages the taxpayer interest in the part-nationalised banks. He hinted that he believed the tripartite system of regulation had not been a great success. Kingman got a verbal bashing from John McFall, the treasury select committe chairman. I think McFall is beginning to set these polecats against each other with significant flair. The truth is being weedled out of them.

And whilst Brown is swanning around chatting to anyone who will listen to him, it is said that Fred Goodwin's pension has gone up by another ten grand! It's a whole new meaning to the concept of inflation, isn't it.

Ron Paul out of the wilderness!

Yesterday I was posting about horses bolting. Today it's about the fact that a lot of folks in America think they bet on the wrong horse. All those GOP primary votes wasted on the likes of Giuliani, Huckabee and Romney. Ron Paul is the horse now favoured by the punters. Everyone is coming up to pat him saying they always knew he had fine ideas. Blah, blah! Where were they when they were needed most. Even Fox News is all over Dr.Paul like a rash. And they did their level best to keep him in the margins as a quack doctor peddling some herbal remedy. Now they can't get enough of his tonic!

So, guess what? Ron Paul supporters, from the Campaign for Liberty, turn up at the CPAC 2009 shindig and find that everyone is talking his language. Ron Paul went down very well so we are told. David Weigel, writing in the Guardian, a paper not known for its sympathies with the right, says of Paul's surge in admirers - "What's changed in two years? It's not only that Republicans have lost an election – it's that Republicans do not yet understand why they lost. They are not willing to consider that they lost votes because Americans wanted more social democratic policies. The official explanation for their loss is that Republicans spent too much money and lost touch with their values. It only makes sense that Paul, who has been arguing for years that the GOP needs to get back to the values of pre-New Deal America, should be winning over young hearts and minds."

Winning over young hearts and minds. It will be these who will be paying off the trillion dollars going everywhere and who do not want anymore financial nonsense to carry on.

90 year old takes to the road on a mobility scooter!

Shocked drivers spotted 90 year old Stanley Murphy trundling along at 3mph while cars and lorries sped past at up to 70mph on the six-lane A27 at Shoreham, West Sussex. A bit like Road Runner on Valium! Police said "he was obviously confused and it is unlikely we would take any further action". This remark got be thinking. There are so many confused people today. Plenty of them running the country.

Sir Fred Goodwin is morally confused and won't be taking any further action.
Lord Mandelson is LDV confused and won't be taking any further action.
Lord Myners is actuarily confused and won't be taking any further action (because he can't!).
Gordon Brown is cerebrally confused and won't be taking any further action with regard to an admission of Credit Crunching.
David Miliband is also severely confused regarding extraordinary renditions or as someone put is so well, tourism for terrorists. He is desperately trying to take no further action.

I could go on. The list is full of characters who are confused, driving up the wrong road, whilst we all see the impending obstacles and crashes. Surely there should be some way to get those causing the problem to be changed with those who know how to cure the problem. Or is that a fantasy? Am I confused? Of course, the only sane people are the government ministers who see no problem in pouring money into companies without asking questions. So let's carry on with it all!

Robert Peston said it was all mindboggling. It is. But surely we can't have people with boggled minds running the country. If you had Gordon Brown and Stanley Murphy in a bag and you pulled Mr. Murphy out to be Prime Minister, would we see any difference? I think we might. He's a retired builder. What we've currently got is a retired banker squabbling with a soon-to-be retired government minister. Both are actively demolishing the good name of this country.

So I'd put the builder before the demolition gang any day!

"A light touch - that's all that's needed!"

Gordon Brown is sounding a bit like a man caught with his trousers down in a brothel. "Prostitutes? Surely not, officer. They're such fine women! I've been severely misled as to the nature of this establishment". Likewise, he's blinking in the sunlight, trying to suggest to the nation that he knew nothing about Sir Fred Goodwin's pot of gold.

We now have the ridiculous situation of the prime minister trying to make Fred the Shred cave in under some Calvinistic brow beating. Maybe he should summon up the ghost of John Knox to pay a visit at Chateau Fred. Somehow I can't see the ex-banker shifting much cash from his coffers to the Treasury's.

If Brown pushes it we'll have the mother and father of all court battles. "It's a light touch, your honour", says the hapless QC for the Government. "We could have this over by lunchtime. Just a light touch....." And they drift off into pantomime land, with the dame, the ugly sisters and a baddy. "It's Fred the Shred!" "Where?" "Behind you!".

What we need is a heavy touch. Gordon Brown needs to feel the hand of the electorate on his scheming shoulders. No rough stuff, you understand, just a firm hand to guide him to the back door of No.10. The days of his New Labour Light Touch Brigade are over. We can't wait until next year. Go now!