In general I refrain from commenting on the political and financial scene for fear of bursting a blood-vessel. But the events of recent weeks and days are so ludicrous that they merit notice in the Arena.
First, we had the NuLabour infighting and jockeying for position by the would-be ousters of GordiBroon, all of whom – not least the odiously reptilian Milipede – showed themselves as being eager to wound, but too timid to strike.
Then we had Gordi’s much-trumpeted reshuffle of the Downing Street deckchairs which – notwithstanding the surprise gimmick of Mandy’s return - aroused as much interest outside the
The spreading financial meltdown has exposed the sheer irrelevance of both their theories and their policies. And even more that of the boastful transatlantic champions of unbridled free enterprise in the Citadel of Capitalism who have been driven to “rescue” their improvident financial institutions from the consequences of their own folly at the double expense of the taxpayers, who first of all suffer from the banks’ reckless mismanagement and dishonesty in urging them to borrow loans they cannot afford, and then pay all over again to bail their tormentors out.
The same totally clueless policy is now being adopted here, with Gormless Gordon claiming [presumably as a first effect of Mandelsonian spin] to be the “global saviour” with his risible “rescue plan”. The fact is, as is quite clear from all the media comments, that it is unlikely to work in the long term, and that no-one either in government or the City has any clear idea of what to do in order to restore confidence and get the economy functioning again.
Far from being “Prudence personified”, the Prime Minister and long-time Chancellor cannot escape his responsibility for being “Incapability Brown” who not merely presided over, but actively encouraged, the decade of financial profligacy and recklessness which has resulted in this sorry mess.
Future historians are unlikely to award him the accolade for shrewdness and sobriety which he craves. Stubborn dimwittedness is more likely to be his political obituary. The sooner he is gone, the better.
Not that anyone more competent is likely to take over, more’s the pity.
20 comments:
And the irony here is that taxes collected from the people in general are going to fix up the gigantic mess the big evaders have organised, out of which they have got personal substantial gains.
Viewing the matter from the naive standpoint of an economic ignoramus, or Martian, it seems to me that what has occurred is that a horde of supposedly solid financial institutions have for a long while been recklessly trading insolvent. They have lent money they don't in fact possess to people who cannot afford to borrow it, including amongst themselves, and now when one [Lehman Brothers] is obliged to file for bankruptcy there is an immediate knock-on effect and the whole house of cards threatens to tumble to the ground, threatening millions of innocent small investors around the world with ruin.
Instead of clapping the culprits into jail, the US and European governments have reacted by using taxpayers' money - which they, in fact, don't possess but have summoned up from nowhere by increasing the national debt - to prop up these certainly incompetent and possibly rascally institutions. And they have done this in the form of interest free loans, euphemistically called investments, which will ultimately have to be repaid by the taxpayers at the prevailing rate of interest.
So we, the citizenry, not only see our own money used to bail out greedy scamps but we are going to pay interest to ourselves for having done so.
It is all totally topsy turvy.
And Gordon Brown claims he is a genius for being the only true begetter of this madcap scheme.
It is like weaning a drunk off wine by dosing them with spirits.
The lads at the Beeb are certainly giving the old boy the build-up, eh?
Meanwhile, at The Yard they are beavering away and erasing tapes and falsifying facts.
Dear old Met. 125 years ago it was Lestrade himself as was Jack the Ripper, says W S Baring-Gould, anyway....
I reckon if they just keep shoving air in the tyre faster than the leak, why Hell, they have her licked like a stamp. (Or, a trollop, depending on what one makes of 'Lord' Mendacity's private predilections.)
I kind of like airline lunches!
"Future historians are unlikely to award him the accolade for shrewdness and sobriety which he craves."
History is written by the victors.
Topsy Turvy world indeed and again as Karl Marx so well said 150 years ago about free capitalism.
The only likely victors in this one are the Chinese, so presumably the history will be written in Mandarin.
If you fancy airline lunches, YD, you evidently travel business class with the free champagne mob :)
Varying the metaphor, Brown increasingly reminds me of a self-important dinner lady bustling round school dining rooms telling the children what's good for them. He's clearly enjoying every minute of it - unlike most other folk.
Eat up yer greens .....
You sound like Jamie Oliver.
Eat up yer Reds under the bed !
All this is giving me the blues.
[Cue for Elton John to give his famous Donald Duck impersonation.]
Anitcant you were always a BLUE.
But I like it.
I've been called many things, Zola, but I can assure you I was never awarded my colours - they didn't hand them out for the sort of games I enjoyed playing....
But Anticant you can be awarded the leader of the backbenches which can sometimes be more powerful that the PM.
Some backbenchers achieve considerable influence, and a few have instigated legislation of lasting value - e.g. A. P. Herbert, Leo Abse - but they don't have real power against teh government - more's the pity.
Do not fret Anticant because power is also attached to both status and class.
We are all still strugggggling with this when we talk about a democratic way of life.
After the latest revelation of the link between child porn and terrorism, I thought you may like this one.
http://tinyurl.com/594ydl
Sorry, didn't Sir Andrew's granddaughter make a videogramme called Cybersluts From Hell & Outer Space, or something? And, hadn't she been 'dating' this poxey 'Radio 2' git? I think HER granther should do what my Swedish-American grampa would have done, namely to "slap her ass!"
The asses of everyone involved in this ludicrous brouhaha should be soundly slapped!!
If I really were PM, the last thing I would have done is to wade in with a pompous comment, as Broodigord predictably did [he thinks he's the bees' knees at the moment - tell me why?]
A quite likely possibility is that the whole story has been engineered by 'Prince of Darkness' Mandelson in order to distract attention from the far more important question of what skullduggery he was up to on those billionaires' yachts.
This altogether reminds one rather of O J Simpson, the ageing American footer layabout & quondam razor-murderer. His entirely not-individual domestic mess was paraded for years on the box, here, one thinks sometimes to keep folks' minds (sic) off of the federal massacre of the Branch Dravidian cultists, in Texas. (Among many other defalcations by the soi-disant 'powerful'.)
At any rate, not least through canny play of the race card, Simpson evaded conviction for capital murder thirteen years back, and pissed off loads of West Coast law and enforcement professionals.
So they seemingly set up a honey pot & inveigled the self-adoring old fool into stealing back some of his football trophies, which evidently he'd flogged to the mob for gambling money, at Las Vagas. These bibelots were on display in a kind of grubby little 'museum', for the cash-paying delectation of RV-driving heartland hakfwits, renegade Dutch-American Iowans and such, all convulsed with the perverse sublime fascinations & grim vicissitudes of negritude.
And the jury brought in a true bill, even though the videogrammed evidence quite clearly records participants describing the affair as matter of framing the old darkey! (It is the digital portrayal a greasy low-rent ensemble of the usual thumbey Nevada Italo-American 'types', rejects from Murder, Inc, now frowsting it as supernumerary staff of F-ck Ups By the Numbers, Ltd.)
Anyhow, in my hearing, for years, perhaps a majority of so-called 'adults', here at home in south-central Minnesota,talked over this rubbish (then and, again, now) as though it were the Second (and third) Coming of Pulius Feistersnap, Himself!
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