Day 5288: Only Fools and Tories

Wednesday:

"No Income Tax, No VAT;

"No Deficit, No Guarantee."

Master Gideon would appear to have taken Steve Bell's gimp-suit-wearing cartoon of himself as a role model, judging by his justifiably-mocked announcements that he will be trussing himself up in legislation to stop himself doing things that he shouldn't ought to do anyway.

First, during the election, he promised to pass a law to stop himself raising taxes; then, in his Mansion House speech, he said he'd make another law that he would run budget surpluses in "normal times".

The fact that these two laws pull in opposite directions only adds to the madness.

Fiscal Rectitude, Steve Bell style (c) Grauniad

Swearing off ANY rise in taxes – particularly for a whole five-year term, when you've NO IDEA what's coming even in the next few WEEKS with the Greek bailout/crash out saga – is just silly. In fact dangerously silly.

When the books don't balance, you've got THREE* ways to address yourself to the problem: ONE, cut spending; TWO, raise taxes; THREE, a mix of the two.

Master Gideon's first pledge robs him of TWO of the THREE ways out of this mess.

(Full disclosure of wiggle-room here: he could raise taxes other than the "big three" of Income Tax, VAT or National Insurance. But no other taxes raise anywhere NEAR the kind of money those three do, not even Corporation Tax and he's very keen to keep lowering THAT one as well. So this law will stop any SERIOUS closing of the deficit through tax.)

So he's making it very much harder to run a surplus… at the same time as saying it's the law to run a surplus.

Minister, is this entirely wise?

Running a budget surplus is, in and of itself, not a bad idea. In fact, it's one that good old Keynesian Economics says we SHOULD do when times are GOOD (which they're sort of not quite at the moment, but they might still be the best they are going to get in this cycle).

But the way to run a budget surplus… is to run a budget surplus.

The way to not raise taxes… is to not raise taxes.

Who is going to enforce these laws? What are the penalties if Master Gideon breaks them?

In the last parliament Master Gideon promised to eliminate the deficit. For various reasons – some of them his own fault, but mostly things that are entirely out of his control (or possibly ANYBODY'S control!) like the Eurozone or the cost of energy shooting up and then crashing down when the Saudis forced the price of oil to drop – this he totally failed to do. Well, HALF-failed to do, anyway.

Mr Frown repeatedly broke HIS own "golden" rules too. Nobody came to slap HIM on the wrist either. Unless you count the SPANKING handed out by the global economic meltdown.

It's bad enough the Home Office pumping out SECURITY THEATRE without the Treasury starting to perform ECONOMIC THEATRE!


But, what is worse, they are a DIRECT ATTACK on a hundred years of democratic accountability and constitutional settlement.

Oh yes.

Because they're not really FOR holding Master Gideon to account. These laws are REALLY a BOOBY TRAP for Hard Labour.

If a future government, say a Hard Labour Government, wants to run a budget deficit – which they might have entirely good reasons for doing – they first need to repeal these "financial responsibility" laws.

One of the written bits of our unwritten constitution is the Parliament Act that says the House of Lords will not vote down a Government's Finance Bill, so that if a Party (or Coalition!) in the Commons can pass a Budget, then the Lords won't block it. But these "responsibility" laws are NOT Finance Acts.

(There's also the – unwritten – Salisbury Convention that the Lords will not block things that are in a winning Party's manifesto, but can you see "We Will Repeal the Financial Responsibility Act" making to ANY manifesto of a Party that expects to come out alive?)

So you can expect to see Conservatory Lords shamelessly delaying and derailing a future Government's budget, ignoring the Parliament Act on Finance bills under the pretext that the Government is "breaking the 'responsibility' law"; you can look forward to Conservatory millionaires getting their highly-paid lawyers to demand judicial-review of the repeal to drag things out further.

You can see that these "responsibility" laws are ACTUALLY an excuse to play fast and loose with BANKRUPTING the COUNTRY!

In other words, these are laws for the most appalling Financial IRRESPONSIBILITY!

PS

*OK, there IS actually ANOTHER way of cutting the deficit. But it's the one over which the government has very little control beyond crossing its fingers and WISHING.

If the economy is GROWING, then you will get more tax IN just because the economy is bigger. So long as the increase in tax is more than the increase in costs (i.e. so long as economic growth is more than inflation) then with no other changes next year the deficit will be smaller.

This is where Mr Ball's mantra of "the deficit falling as a share of national income" comes from; it's the "Hope that SOMEONE ELSE fixes the problem" approach from the Party of "Let's Spend Someone Else's Money" solutions.

To illustrate: the Bank of England currently estimates growth this year will be 2.5% and next year will be 2.6%.

Assuming that this translates straight into the tax take, that's worth about an extra £20 billion a year this year and next. ALSO inflation is currently next to nothing. (Good if you're shopping; not so good if you were hoping for a pay rise.) So tax coming in goes up and spending does not. Which means the deficit will be £20 billion LESS without Gideon having to do anything.

The Conservatories ACTUALLY want to cut the deficit about £30 billion each year – so £100bn last year goes down to £70bn this year, then £40bn, then £10bn and then into surpluses by the end of the Parliament. Honest, they really mean it this time! – which is why they need MASSIVE CUTS on top of the rest of the country providing growth.

It's more complicated than that because they are pledged (or even triple locked) into increasing money for pensions and the health service, so the cuts to other areas have to be EVEN bigger.

And it's even more complicated because cutting government spending (at least in some of the things government spends on) can slow down the needed growth, which cancels out your savings.

To an extent this is what happened at the start of the Coalition, when Gideon slapped up VAT and followed Alistair "Captain" Darling's plan and cancelled a load of capital investment.

This made it harder for the least well-off to buy "stuff" and at the same time took away a lot of jobs from people who might buy "stuff", and if "stuff" isn't being bought and sold – i.e. if there is less economic activity – then your GDP and hence tax receipts go down.

Slashing away at people's benefits – which is the Conservatories' preferred method of cutting spending – may well have a similar effect.

Which just makes it even more stupid to swear off raising tax!



(And tomorrow, we can talk a bit more about Mr Balloon and the Magic Money-go-Round!)

Day 5217: Church of Thatchianity Manifesto

Tuesday:

This is an ultra-quick skim through the prospectus of our erstwhile Coalition partners. Like Labour's effort yesterday, it has lots of pretty pictures.

The Tories' offer presents as very progressive, full of pro-active "our plan of action" bullets, promoting policies as positives (even when they aren't).

There are perfectly decent things. Unsurprisingly these are mostly lifted unblushingly from the Liberal Democrats: no income tax on the minimum wage; single tier pension and triple lock; apprenticeships; more women on boards; even "gay" marriage (a clue they still don't get "equal marriage").

But the more you read, the scarier it gets.

So I like the stuff at the start, up-fronting all the goodies, on investment and infrastructure. Maybe not the expanded roads programme, but better broadband and free wi-fi in public libraries (I'd go further in making free public wi-fi available; there are benefits similar to the introduction of the "penny post" in Victorian times). And devolution of investment and job creating powers to the North is bold and worthy.

And I like the promises on the NHS.

"ensur[ing] you can see a GP and receive the hospital care you need, 7 days a week by 2020, with a guarantee that everyone over 75 will get a same-day appointment if they need one"

is good policy, and it's long past time that the health service should offer more appointments at the weekend for people who are working all week. Though typically Tory putting pensioners first!

But then we get to the fantasy economics. Lots of spending promises; massive tax cuts, particularly for the better-off, particularly – it even gets its own chapter – for the dead rich in the South-East; and huge but undisclosed benefit cuts.

The one transparent claim…

"We will lower the benefit cap from £26,000 to £23,000 to reward work"

…doesn't even make sense! The rewards for work are at best disconnected from the benefit of benefits, but surely this will start to impact in work benefits, reversing the "rewards of work".

While disinterring the inheritance tax pledge is a certain signpost to this being a "if we could govern without the Lib Dems" manifesto; we diverted that money to better use in raising the personal tax allowance for a tax cut for the less-well-off.


Then we start to get to the "Nasty Party" stuff from Teresa May's briefs:

First Immigration, where they won’t give up blaming the immigrants for the problems of not addressing housing, services and jobs:

"Tougher tests for migrants before they can claim benefits"

"We will legislate to ensure that every public sector worker operating in a customer-facing role must speak fluent English."

"And to encourage better integration into our society, we will also require those coming to Britain on a family visa with only basic English to become more fluent over time, with new language tests for those seeking a visa extension."

…all address fictional problems in order to appear "tough".

And later, on Law and Order and Terrorism where they have become almost entirely negative:

"scrap the Human Rights Act"

"and curtail the role of the European Court of Human Rights,"

"so that foreign criminals can be more easily deported from Britain"

They claim they would "support victims" – but clearly not if those victims are victims of government and miscarriage of justice.

As for:

"tackle all forms of extremism, including non-violent extremism"
…that's the right to peaceful protest done away with!

While independent journalism and alternative points of view (in entertainment as well as factual) will be further curtailed with an arbitrary swipe at the BBC licence fee, claiming they will

"freeze the BBC licence fee, to save you money"

or (if they were being honest) to strangle the organisation and let Murdoch have free reign.

The "Big Society" returns from wherever we thought they'd buried it, with their new, rushed-out promise to grant three days "volunteering time" to workers (that is, have business pay for people to cover the charities people can no longer afford to support, but that the government needs to cover the services they've withdrawn), and a scheme to "expand National Citizen Service", i.e. put more kids to work cleaning the streets so we don't have to pay for proper road cleaners.

Speaking of kids, on education, the Govian madness continues, with:

"…primary school place for your child, with zero tolerance for failure"

"turn every failing and coasting secondary school into an academy "

"and deliver free schools for parents and communities that want them"

How about delivering schools to every community that wants them, not just the buy-your-own free-schools if they want and can afford them? How about spending money to turn failure around (say… a pupil premium!)?


On the environment, very little "green crap" that isn't actually the work of Ed Davey, but glaringly they toss in:

"halt the spread of subsidised onshore wind farms"

…which surely contradicts their other aspirations of "cutting carbon emissions as cheaply as possible," "and ensur[ing] your homes and businesses have energy supplies they can rely on"?


Finally, they manage to have two whole sections on the constitution – on the United Kingdom and Europe – that miss almost the entire point of why people are crying out for big changes to how we are governed and represented, where instead

"give English MPs a veto over matters only affecting England, including on Income Tax"

and

"give you a say over whether we should stay in or leave the EU, with an in-out referendum by the end of 2017"

are together a short cut to constitutional chaos, and the breaking of our Union at home and abroad, with the most successful partnership of nations in history (England and Scotland) and the most successful trading bloc on the planet (Europe) tossed aside to get on the populist UKIP bandwagon.

(And telling that they would give income tax but not dare to share full budget control with Scotland; especially when they will devolve budget spending, but not income tax, to the "Northern Powerhouse".)


Overall, in spite of the "Let the Sunshine in (encore)" rhetoric, the attack on welfare and basic values of justice and tolerance, coupled with the rolling out of private provision from education to the media even to charity through their "volunteering" wheeze, paint this as a terrifyingly full-blooded Thatcherite manifesto that has abandoned any of the 2010 efforts to detoxify the brand.

And that is even before we get to the biggest clue: the resurrection of Mrs T's signature "Right to Buy" policy, extended to Housing Associations (with no doubt further devastating effect on the social housing stock). It is, as they say, a pretty blatant clue.

It's clear that the Tories are going to put to the test their insane theory that they only lost last time because they were not right-wing enough.

In fact, it proves more than ever how much the Liberal Democrats have done in Coalition to take the better (or only the least worst) Tory ideas and produce a modern, progressive government.

And how desperately important it is that the Liberal Democrats are returned with enough strength to do that again.




All emphases my own; original document here (contains pdf)

Day 4096: Ask Not For Whom the Road Toll, it Tolls for You!

Monday:



This is starting to get SILLY. Apparently we're now proposing to privatise the roads.

So buying large public works on the never-never is BAD when it is Hard Labour's crazy PFI schemes but FINE when it's giving the nation's vital road infrastructure over into the fluffy feet of MAMMON, is it?

Because we're all so PLEASED with the way that the OTHER privatised monopolies have worked out.

(So long as by "we" we mean "the foreign companies who now own our utilities".)

It's not QUITE up there with slashing disabled people's benefits, but it is a VERY Conservatory-led policy.

If we want a JOBS and GROWTH strategy, wouldn't it be a BETTER idea to keep the key underpinnings of our civilisation in public ownership?

And for a government that is supposed to be obsessed with NOT lumbering our children with debt the way Hard Labour did, do we really want to be using some of Hard Labour's Enron-style OFF-BALANCE SHEET accounting to spend money now and pay later?
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Day 3783: Police Action! aka Correcting Conservative Contradictions on Constitutional Change

Wednesday*:


Doesn't it seem EXTRAORDINARY that sections of the Conservatory Party are crowing about last week's rejection of AV while AT THE SAME TIME trying to implement a HUGELY BIGGER change to the way we elect our public servants than ANYTHING the Alliterative Vote might have done: namely replacing APPOINTED police authorities with ELECTED Wild West Marshalls, er, I mean Police Commissioners!

I mean, our coalition partners couldn't be MONSTROUS HYPOCRITES could they. So they must mean that the "No2AV" vote is ONLY a rejection of a not-very-good electoral system and are keen as mustard for MORE FAR REACHING REFORM.

Certainly anyone who claims that Constitutional Change is off the agenda for a thousand years (or thereabouts) is clearly an opponent of Mr Balloon's REFORM AGENDA, and so not at all to be taken SERIOUSLY.

And that is why it CAN'T be right to suggest that the Conservatories are fighting tooth and nail to STOP any locally elected presence overseeing health, when they are clearly GAGGING FOR locally elected oversight for crime! I mean, that would be like suggesting that they want to rig up a system of elections for HANGING and FLOGGING (where Conservatories think of themselves as STRONG), but not for CARING and SHARING (where Conservatories might think Hard Labour would be more likely to be the election-winners)!


Liberal Democrats are, of course, IN FAVOUR of giving more power back to our bosses, the people of Great Britain. That's why it's right there in the Coalition Agreement that:

We will introduce measures to make the police more accountable through oversight by a directly elected individual…

Though we might just have to put a steadying fluffy foot on our partners to restrain their FERVOUR to overturn the constitutional status quo and remind them that that sentence finishes:

…who will be subject to strict checks and balances by locally elected representatives.

That's why it is QUITE RIGHT that Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords stepped in to call a pause to this ADMIRABLY RADICAL race to change to our DEMOCRACY.

Call us OLD-FASHIONED, call us CAUTIOUS if you must, but we thought – as with Mr Andrew Landslide's Health Service Reforms – it might be better to GATHER EVIDENCE and RUN TRIALS before diving in with all four fluffy feet into an UNTRIED and UNPROVEN policy.

For example: we asked one Police Commissioner about his SUCCESS in reducing crime through a policy of allowing a BARKING MAD billionaire-in-tights to go vigilante on his city's ass, but, being fictional, Commissioner Gordon declined to comment.

There is, of course, as much evidence for the existence of BATMAN as there is for the benefits of the Conservatories' policy.

So, while we are VERY GRATEFUL that the Conservatories want everyone to know that "No2AV" means "Yes 2 REAL CHANGE", let's do this in a MEASURED and EVIDENCE-LED way.

In fact, I think that – since he is the MAIN MAN in charge of guiding constitutional change – Captain Clegg needs to step in, take this reform away from the Home Office and make it part of a PROPER LOOK at local democratic representation, perhaps linking it to greater accountability in HEALTH as well.

Best of all would be to make it part of a LOCAL REPRESENTATION ACT and introduce reform to the whole of local government elections – starting with using British PR for council elections.

I'm sure that that is JUST what the Conservatories want! It's certainly what they DESERVE!

PS:

*Thanks to Google gobbling up all the diaries on blogger yesterday, this is a REPOST. So, sorry to all of you who were experiencing some DÉJÀ VU!
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Day 3695: What's WRONG With a Big Society?

Saturday:


Well, obviously it's the wrong idea at the wrong time and it's got a silly name.

The SAD thing is that with a bit more THINKING, and a bit more PATIENCE, Mr Balloon's big idea might be quite a GOOD THING.

This Parliament HAS to be about fixing the economy. That means CUTS and PAIN and lots of UNHAPPINESS. But those cuts, you see, are a result of – and done by! – BIG GOVERNMENT.

THAT is the message we should be putting over: BIG GOVERNMENT BAD!

NONE of it should have ANYTHING to do with the "Big Society".

So why is the Prime Monster banging on about it so much?

Well, clearly, Mr Balloon wants to be seen as a Prime Monster with political BOTTOM. He wants to have a PHILOSOPHY in the same way that Queen Maggie had a philosophy (you remember: it was called "the SITH"). He wants people to think that his policies come FROM somewhere rather than being cobbled together by Oliver Leftwing and Auntie Maude on the back of an old manifesto with the words "Are You Thinking What We're Thinking" hastily scribbled out.

So they rolled out the "Big Society" last April in their "Invitation to Join the Government" to universal cries of "Huh?"

But the ROOT of the idea is, to put it optimistically, a trust that people are ABLE to make their own decisions about the important things that affect their lives, whether that is running a jumble sale for the local cubs or organising a street party for the Olympics OR (and this is where it gets radical and scary) setting up a new free school, choosing your own treatments from the NHS, or running the local library.

Hard Labour HOARDED power, and tried to convince people that they were POWERLESS, that they had to RELY on the almighty State for handouts and services and tax-credits and rights. Typical "we know best" Socialist thinking. This at least is trying to hand power BACK, to tell people: actually YOU have the power, not us. And that's GOOD.

Where this has all gone wrong is that it should be about ALLOWING people to do these things, but in the age of austerity it comes across as REQUIRING people to do these things.

That's why Mr Balloon's "Big Society" is so easily TRADUCED as a cover for spending cuts: the allegation that the Coalition want volunteers to do for free what the Government won't pay for.

Really, the "Big Society" should have been put, well not on hold, but kept out of the limelight for the duration of this Parliament.

It would have been far better for the Conservatories to keep their proverbial powder dry: work away quietly at encouraging people to do more of what they want to; chip away at the unhealthy idea that you HAVE to get support from the State if you ever going to do anything; reawaken those British virtues of self-reliance, invention even eccentricity.

And then at the NEXT election, go to the electorate with a proposal that says: look at what you've achieved for YOURSELVES; you don't need the Government to organise street play or community gardening – YOU'VE done it and you can be PROUD of what you've done. Now, here's how it forms a COHERENT part of our policy, and here (now that we've fixed the finances) is how we can offer support where you might choose to take it.


Obviously the NAME really does not help. Conservatory thinking has evolved (from primordial slime) in response to and in direct opposition to Hard Labour's nanny state "Big Government"; hence the "Big" in "Big Society".

Which is FINE, but you'd be better off by defining what your idea IS (and why it's GOOD) than by what it's AGAINST!

And you can't help thinking that the "Society" in "Big Society" is in there as part of the Prime Monster's patented, brand-detoxifying formula: look, look, we're NOT like we used to be; we DO believe in such a thing as "Society" now!

It's a pity, because put the two words together and they're just horribly CLUMSY. Society covers all the people that are around, the idea that it might come in "big" and presumably "small" versions is obviously daft. And it doesn't even SOUND pleasing, instead being the sort of clunking management-speak that only a committee suffering from focus-groupthink would end up with.

The fact that it sounds silly is actually quite important; an idea has no chance if people won't give it serious attention because they've already dismissed it.

Lord Blairimort was a dab hand at coining a convincing sound bite; this inaptitude on Mr Balloon's part is one of the few areas where he is no "heir to Blair".

PS:

Apologies for diaries being a bit thin on the ground; Daddy's work has been heavy going for the end of year accounts and he's been doing a weekly trip to Basingstoke to see his Mum too.

Day 3256: The Zachary Goldfinger Tax Dodge… Why Did He Fess Up Now?

Monday:


You cannot have failed to notice the revelation that Conservatory golden/green poster-boy and anti-Liberal Democrat candidate Mr Zac Goldfinger, son of millionaire Bond Villain Sir Jammy Goldfinger, has been caught out avoiding tax.

In particular, Daddy Alex is VERY CROSS about Master Goldfinger saying we should be GRATEFUL for his CHARITY*!

But I've been wondering why this news should leak now?

Meanwhile, ENTIRELY COINCIDENTALLY, Monday 30 November was the deadline (now extended to January) for UK citizens to tell Mrs the Queen's Customs and Revenue about any pots of cash that they have squirreled away in OFFSHORE TAX HAVENS.



The Conservatories have worked VERY HARD to push the idea that ANYONE should be allowed to stand for Parliament and you shouldn't hold someone's BACKGROUND against them. This all sounds very EGALITARIAN, but actually it's a pre-emptive strike to say: "ooh, you beastly oiks just CAN'T make politics out of the fact that Mr Balloon / Master Gideon / Miss Nancy Mogg / Mr Goldfinger / etc has inherited a HUGE fortune and never done an honest day's work in all their life! How rotten!"

Well that's nonsense!

Candidates should be judged by the ACTIONS, and that includes whether they have chosen to pay their FAIR contribution in tax in this country like the people they CLAIM they want to represent, or whether they have chosen to take advantage of tax loopholes to keep their UNEARNED, INHERITED riches for themselves.


(*Hat tip, Mr Paul Burblings too!)



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Day 3201: No, Mr Oboe! Reading Mr Vince's Pamphlet does NOT count as having a policy!

Tuesday:


Master Gideon has demonstrated a NEW talent: reading aloud. Who'd have thought?

A couple of weeks ago, Mr Vince "the Power" Cable put out a pamphlet spelling out some of the PAIN we will have to suffer because of Mr Frown's economic mistakes. He got NO COVERAGE.

Now, Master Oboe cherry-picks the passages that will play well to Conservatory Conference and he is treated as the New Messiah*.

In which case, I have here a novel called "Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol by Millennium Elephant" that I should like to sell you for a couple of million dollars please.

A public sector pay freeze; a cut in tax credits for people earning over fifty thousand… it all sounds EERILY FAMILIAR. Mr Dr Vince himself has already described Master Oboe's proposals as "Lib Dem Lite".

But surely the Conservatories have been announcing POLICIES GALORE all week. Just look at these examples…

Make the sick work!

Make the old work!

Make the public sector work… for LESS!

Make the bankers, er, not have to work… for MORE!

Hang on… is it just me or do the Conservatories STILL only have one policy? It's just the SAME policy over and over and over, going on and on and… oh corks!

When I see Master Gideon, I am reminded of James Bond villain Monsieur Le Chiffre. No, I realise that that is not a flattering comparison… for Monsieur Le Chiffre. But bear with me. I'm NOT saying that Master Oboe weeps BLOOD and has people TORTURED in his spare time. What I am ACTUALLY thinking of is the scene in the MOVIE of Casino Royale where Mr James discovers Le Chiffre's "tell": the baddie WINS the hand with three deuces, but – as Mr James explains – he only got the winning hand on the turn of the last card. Until that point, he had NOTHING.

Master Oboe's economic hand is JUST LIKE THAT.

Until the recession turned up, the Conservatories had NOTHING; they've been dealt a winning card by purest chance, and it tells us that their management of the government finances will be, at best, Casino Economics and at worst an arm-wrestle with a One-Armed-Bandit.

At the Liberal Democrat conference, just a fortnight ago, we were having debates and arguments and even out-and-out scraps about which of our MANY well-established, long-standing, democratically approved, POPULAR policies we could STILL AFFORD to place front and centre in a manifesto.

It was PAINFUL. It was DIFFICULT. It was what REAL "tough choices" actually looks like.

The Conservatories, by contrast, have NOTHING.

There are NO policies that they have had to say "we can't do that"; there were NO polices there in the first place.

(Well, with ONE exception and for fluffy's sake, Master Gideon is even STILL going to do THAT: giving a big tax cut to dead millionaires – something that will benefit only 3000 people, one of whom is of course the Baronet Oboe himself.

And, incidentally, if we're REALLY "all in it together", will Master Gideon be handing over his own inherited unearned windfall to pay down some of the Nation's debt? Well, let's just say I wouldn't take Monsieur Le Chiffre's bet on it!)


The STRENGTH of Liberal Democrat economics is that it is ADAPTABLE: if you want to make the tax system simpler and fairer you need to understand how it works, and that understanding means you KNOW what can and cannot be done when things get difficult.

The WEAKNESS of Master Oboe's position is that it is both REACTIVE and REACTIONARY – he responds to events rather than preparing for them; and his approach is to return to the failed dogmas of Thatcherism rather than grasping the progressive alternative.

Conservatories want to CUT investment NOW when times are bad. Cutting programmes that would help us build our way out of the recession is EXACTLY what caused the prolonged downturn of the early Eighties, turning a Winter of Discontent into a profound economic downturn that saw a million unemployed rise to THREE million unemployed and annihilated large chunks of Great Britain's industrial base leaving us dependent on the very MBaster…s of the Universe in the City who have so recently CRASHED and BURNED the economy all over again.

Liberal Democrats would invest NOW to save the economy, while controlling current account spending like payroll and pension costs. Investing in CAPITAL programmes doesn't just keep people in work (and never mind paying taxes, they will be buying goods which keeps OTHER people in work too) it is also an investment in readying the economy for more growth in the future, and it is only with GROWTH that we will be able to restore the balance between Government income and Government spending.

Conservatories insist that burden of closing the budget deficit should fall on public spending; they refuse to talk about the tax issue, apart from the big savings for those who inherit a fortune. It's a return to TRICKLE DOWN economics, where the rich get to "trickle down" all over the poor!

Only the Liberal Democrats will address the FAILINGS of the Tax System. Shifting taxation from the lowest earners to the highest isn't just FAIRER, it's GOOD economics – because you will have a larger number of people with a little more disposable income stimulating spending rather than saving, which is just what the economy needs.


What it comes down to is this: you have a CHOICE, a choice between one Party that has policies based on principles, that is willing to take decisions, even painful ones, to meet those commitments AND repair the damage Mr Frown has done to the economy and another Party that has wasted it's time coming up with bad policies for deregulation and millionaire-friendly tax perks and at the last minute written down someone else's ideas on the back of a (B.A.T) fag-packet.

You have a choice between Mr Vince, who can read the tea leaves and tell you which way the wind is blowing, and Mr Oboe who can only read Mr Vince.



*No, seriously he IS a very naughty boy!

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Day 3199: Substance Abuse in the Conservatory Party – Fatty Clarke speaks out!

Sunday:


Or, as the former Chancellor, actually put it:

"We realise we have got to present some substance, a bit more seriously."


All right, maybe that's not QUITE as exciting as my headline, but everyone was EXPECTING Mr Andy Marrmite to follow up his question to the Prime Monster:

"So, Mr Frown… what pills are YOU on?"

With a question to Mr Balloon of:

"So, Mr Balloon… what pills are YOU on?"

Instead it was a terribly OLD-FASHIONED interview: Mr Marrmite asked perfectly reasonable questions… and Mr Balloon refused to answer them. He really DOES thinks he's Prime Monster already!


Nevertheless, a lot of Conservatories have complained about the unfair treatment showed to Mr Balloon.

With the Irish voting "yes" to Lisbon in their referendum – and both the Poles and the Czechs saying it's quite likely that they will ratify the treaty soon – Mr Andy wanted to know if Mr Balloon would give a guarantee that we will have our own referendum on the treaty? Like he promised?

Mr Balloon's answer to that question appears to be: "I'm not going to answer that question because even though the Poles and the Czechs saying it's quite likely they will ratify, they haven't ACTUALLY ratified and that gives me a gnat's whisker of breathing room that I'm going to cling on to because I don't actually know what to do when they actually do!"

Or, as Mr Marrmite FINALLY put it: "You SAY, you know you're giving the rhetoric of a referendum - I want a referendum - but actually when you look at the detail you're NOT offering a referendum."

"I couldn't have described it more clearly," admitted Mr Balloon.

So that's Mr Balloon's final word on the subject: he SAYS he's offering something… but he's NOT really.

But blow me if Mr Marrmite didn't have to keep asking him again and again and again in order to get there!

I mean, just because he's spent the last four years sneering that the Government promised a referendum and then didn't give us one (never mind that the Government promised a referendum on a DIFFERENT treaty, the Constitution which failed) it hardly seems fair to ask Mr Balloon if he's going to keep his own promise to hold a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, now does it?

I mean, if you are the sort of person to demand over and over a straight answer from the other Parties, then you really really shouldn't have to GIVE straight answers as well, should you?

I mean, boo hoo hoo, it's not FAIR!

Of course, Mr Balloon's problem is that, having convinced the slathering hordes to let him FRONT the Conservatories (mainly by jumping into bed with latter-day Nasty Parties from Eastern Europe and Royally pi…bad-word-ing off some REAL European politicians like Ms Angular Meercat and Monsieur Sarcastic, as Germany's Europe Minister spells out), most of them now WANT him to say that he will have Mrs the Queen break HER word, and go back on a Treaty that we have already signed even if it's already the law.

Unfortunately, it would be a bit DICEY for him to come out and SAY this.

That's why they've come up with this formulation of "we only have one policy at a time"… and of course we all know that at the moment their ONE policy is "tax breaks for dead millionaires"… no, that can't be right?

Seriously, though: less than a year away from possibly being the Government themselves, does it not strike anyone as a bit ALARMING that the Conservatories are essentially refusing to have a Plan B for something that is entirely foreseeable as happening before Christmas?

How exactly is this supposed to give us confidence that they are going to handle the country well through the tricky and unpredictable weather of the post-recession dark times?


Mr Balloon himself, of course, rises to the occasion by becoming petulant and whiny:

"I think people at home will also be wondering well are they going to ask me questions about anything else," he sniveled at one point.

To which Mr Andy could quite reasonably have replied: "Well, I can ask you another question when you give me an answer to this one!"


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Day 3001: Mr Balloon's Sorry Policy

Friday:


Even before the weekend's slightly public SPAT between Mr Ken "Fat Duck" Clarke and Mr Gideon "Tuck Shop" Oboe (over whether spending three billion quid on a bung for DEAD MILLIONAIRES was their most completely useful and important spending priority) it was dawning on people that Conservatory tax policy didn't make any sense.

If the GOOD times mean we get to "share the proceeds of growth", Mr Balloon and Mr Oboe seemed unusually RETICENT about admitting that the BAD times mean "sharing the PAIN of recession".

The Conservatories are caught in a CLEFT STICK. On the one fluffy foot, it is PAINFULLY OBVIOUS to everyone in the country how they FAILED to see the banking crisis and the recession bearing down on them like a cartload of manure labelled "DOOM!" But on the other fluffy foot they have absolutely no idea how you run an economy even when the wheels HAVEN'T fallen off.

Writing a typically BREEZY piece for the Windypendant, Mr Balloon put it like this:

"In the long term, we will control spending by reducing the demands that the broken society makes on the state… That's why far from retreating from our plans for school reform, welfare reform and strengthening families, we are as committed to them as we have ever been."

So, essentially, Mr Balloon's position reduces to "things have CHANGED MASSIVELY; that's why we're going to EXACTLY THE SAME as we said before."

This is not just economic illiteracy, this is MADNESS.

Patching together a couple of soundbites that are simple enough for Mr Oboe to remember them together with a figleaf of a Daily Hate Mail-pleasing tax cut is EMBARRASSING when the finances are SOUND; in the depths of a crisis it looks INSANELY DANGEROUS.

Mr Oboe himself slipped over the wall behind the bike-sheds again over the weekend, only to be caught on the The Today Programme by economic super-guru Mr Evan Davis.

"I get bombarded by paper planes from your desk with press releases scrawled on them," said Mr Evan, "and they're all pretty negative about the Government having done this wrong and made that mistake… do you actually HAVE any plans of your own?"

"Oh yes!" said Mr Oboe. "Everything's going to be lovely. That's MY plan!"

"But how are you going to pay back all of this debt? Won't you have to cut spending?"

"Don't ask me about THAT! I'm copying my answer from Fatty Clarke and he's not finished thinking it up yet!"

The Conservatories claim that they want some HONESTY about the economy. Well, they could START by being honest THEMSELVES. For example, less of this "we left Mr Frown a golden legacy" when in actual fact, they did EXACTLY the same as he is doing: borrowed a mountain of debt and came up with unbelievable made-up spending plans… which to everyone's HORROR, Mr Frown actually followed for five years until the debt was paid off. THAT was "fixing the roof while the sun shone"; and remember, it was the Conservatories who blew the roof off in the first place.

Mr Frown was saved by three pieces of luck: a windfall tax; a raid on the pensions (from which they've never recovered); and auctioning off the 3G telephone licences for so much money that is caused the dot-com crash. Where does Mr Oboe (Fatty Clarke!) say that THEIR luck is going to come from?

It is NO BALLY USE the Conservatories issuing self-serving mealy-mouthed APOLOGIES for "not warning enough about the dangers of light-touch regulation and borrowing"; they were not warning AT ALL about borrowing, and everyone knows they were positively pressing for MORE light-touch regulation (aka light-THE-BLUE-TOUCHPAPER regulation) not less!

An apology requires saying what you got WRONG and then saying what you are going to CHANGE to put it RIGHT.

Saying "we're going to do just the same" means the Conservatories may be a SORRY BUNCH but they aren't ANY kind of sorry for their part in this DISASTER.


And then Mr Balloon was back with a fresh bout of "THE SAME BUT MORE SO!" in the Spectacularlyrightwing , launching his new wheeze: "the post-bureaucratic age".


Because everyone knows that the BANKERS would have been FINE if they hadn't had all those BUREAUCRATS holding them back and trying to, you know, REGULATE them and stuff.

Anyway, it's REALLY important to him. You can tell because it's a short article and he mentions it nine times in seventeen parpagraphs.

He's not TERRIBLY big on detail, of course. I mean he spends the whole first page TELLING us he's had a brilliant idea. Again.

Then he spends the whole second page telling us why only Conservatories HAVE brilliant ideas. And by the way, isn't the Internet WHIZZY!

And his third page is how Hard Labour have failed to improve social mobility and failed to clean up the environment.

And his fourth page says "…so there you have it!"

Hmmm, I think the DOG may have eaten some of his HOMEWORK…

So, Mr Balloon's FAIRY-TALE vision is of a society where modern technology MAGICALLY means that everyone is WELL-INFORMED and EMPOWERED to make their own decisions. Quite how everyone GETS this information WITHOUT an army of bureaucrats to collect, sort, input and maintain it all seems to have been trimmed for space. Quite how "modern technology" does NOT mean yet another MASSIVE, EXPENSIVE, and ultimately FUTILE Government IT programme seems not to have made the cut either.

Mind you, he did find room to try and recapture the spirit of his old near-forgotten "Let the Sun Shine In" days:

"While those on the political Left are essentially pessimists, believing that people will do the wrong thing unless told what to do by government, we on the centre-Right are optimists: we have faith that most people are good and will do the right thing if only you trust them"

Oh, I SEE!

THAT is why the Conservatories want to lay out rigidly defined rules with which local government must comply if they are to receive CENTRALLY-DICTATED support for freezing their council tax – or else punitive local tax rises will soon see them kicked out or the ungrateful locals reduced to beggary.

THAT is why the Conservatories intend to BRIBE people to stay in loveless marriages – they TRUST that GREED and a few quid will work like a sticking plaster and they don't trust that people know whether staying married is right for them.

And THAT is why the Conservatories keep banging on and on and on about BROKEN BRITAIN, because only their NATURAL OPTIMISM enables them to see a knife-wielding hoodie lurking in every doorway or a binge-drinking benefit scrounger collapsed on every village green. If only they could liberate these people to behave the way MR BALLOON THINKS THEY OUGHT TO!

Mr Balloon is talking total bollards! Conservatism has always, always, ALWAYS been fearful of human nature! Was it not Mr Gladstone, the Prime Monster who invented the BAG, who once said:

"The principle of LIBERALISM is trust in the people, tempered by prudence;
"The principle of Conervatoryism is MISTRUST of the people, tempered by FEAR. "

Finally, Mr Balloon links his two thoughts in one sentence that GIVES HIMSELF AWAY:

"Just giving people more information, more power and more control over their lives makes them more responsible."

Responsible TO WHOM?

Responsible to THEMSELVES? Or to Mr Balloon and his ideas of right and wrong, of right and responsibility?

Because we KNOW that Mr Balloon believes you should take away the "rights" of people he says don’t behave "responsibly" – you know, those who are irresponsibly too sick to work, or irresponsibly too poor to live in the right catchment area.

Mr Balloon, you give power BACK to the people to make THE GOVERNMENT more responsible – and more responsive – to THEM. NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

It's all too clear that Mr Balloon cannot get out of the old AUTHORITARIAN mindset. He JUST DOES NOT GET IT.

In his mind, Conservatory AUTHORITARIANISM is the opposite of Hard Labour AUTHORITARIANISM. In REALITY they are just two sides of the same BLUDGEON.

Because basically the Conservatories are JUST THE SAME as Hard Labour. And how can you trust people like THAT with the economy… again?


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Day 2970: Conservatory Local Plans mean MORE Centralisation

Tuesday:


More BLACK MAGIC from Ms Caroline Spell-person, Conservatory spokesperson for turning local councillors into eunuchs, with her plan to "give more power to local government" by, er, taking their powers away and giving them to mayors.

This promises to do the OPPOSITE of what it says on the tin.

The proposal to increase accountability will actually DILUTE it; the promise to return power to people will really move power IN to a new centre that is less representative and more remote; the plan to free local government from central government control will, in reality, SHACKLE local councils even further.

In short: a perfect example of how the Conservatories have adopted Hard Labour SPIN techniques (aka Newspeak).

First, accountability: where you might have three councillors representing one ward, a mayor represents the whole borough, town or even city – it's difficult to see how one mayor would have as much time for each constituent as a score of councillors. And the London Mayor has shown how totally unaccountable he can be, with Hard Labour's Mayor Ken and now Bojo the Clown cheerfully batting aside or laughing off any attempt to question them or their various cronies who have come under suspicion of corruption, racism or old-fashioned incompetence.

Second, representation: a mayor (no offence to Ms Dorothy) is LESS representative of the community not more, because there can only ever be ONE WINNER. There's no way of having a PROPORTION of Bojo the Clown be Liberal while the rest is Conservatory (Red or Blue flavour). We've seen from London that even the BEST Liberal voices are shut out of the mayoral contest, and we're the THIRD BIGGEST party in the country – supporters of (No)Respect, UKPnuts or the Natural Law Party have ZERO chance of having their voices heard at local government level.

Of course, what the Conservatories have seen is that there are big benefits – TO THEM – in a winner-takes-all election, particularly one with such a huge electorate that their money can buy a significant strategic advantage. It pretty much guarantees that they or their identical twins the Red Conservatories of Hard Labour will be in. It's a step backwards to the old cosy consensus of two-party politics that has does so much to leave Great Britain in an economic DARK AGE.

The completely selfish attitude of the Conservatories was exposed most nakedly by Ms Spell-person herself on the The Today Programme, when she was asked why the change of heart from Queen Maggie's policy in the '80's of centralising every local government power she could.

"You've got to understand, the landscape of Local Government has completely changed: back in the Eighties there were far too many Loony Left Councils; nowadays WE control two-thirds of them."

So, er, you give the powers to Councils so long as the "nice people" are back in charge… and presumably take them away again if anyone else gets in!

And of course, because all their power has been taken away, local council elections now reflect the national political scene more than local issues – so the Conservatories control of councils is less about whether or not they are value for money (they aren't) and more a reaction to the fact we have a Hard Labour Government nationally.

But third, what about the MONEY? Mr Balloon says he wants to give people a referendum on the Council Tax if the rise is more than 5%. He says this will make Councils more responsive to people. But that's just not true.

I mean, on a superficial level, it will put them in fear of MISERS, certainly, but what about people who want the Council to SPEND MORE on meals-on-wheels, or lollipop ladies, or places for kids to hang out that aren't street corners, or health visitors or just filling in potholes in the pavement? Will they get to call a referendum if the Council Tax is too low? Clearly not.

But the REAL stealth tax here is that the BIGGEST CAUSE of Council Tax increases is… Central Government giving the council a low rise in its grant. With 75% of Local Government money in the gift of Whitehall – not to mention all the things that local government has to pay for but has no control over, like nationally agreed teachers salaries – all it takes is for a minister to make a small cut and the council is over a barrel.

Suppose we actually had inflation of 2%, the Bank of England's Government-set target (and remember it's higher for wages than goods, and that even as the recession bites it's still only fallen to 3% this month). Cutting the increase in central government grant from a raise of 2% to 1% means the local council has to put up the Council Tax by a whopping 5% just to stand still, and instantly put them in the "referendum DANGER ZONE"!

And we already know that the Conservatories plan to use this stick to control local councils. Mr Oboe's so-called FREEZE on Council Tax, a policy that will rewards Councils that are "good" (i.e. do exactly what they are told by CENTRAL GOVERNMENT) and penalises anyone who dares to do differently.


Other aspects of the new Conservatory wheeze include:

• Encouraging NIMBY-ism by abolishing regional planning (while, presumably, still retaining central Government's SHINY new QUANGO with powers to bulldoze anything they fancy)
  
  
• Giving local authorities the power to levy a business rate discount (how do you LEVY a DISCOUNT???), another example of only giving Councils the power to take less in tax; why not just let them control the business rate full stop?
  
  
• Requiring Councils to publish details of "perks and expenses" online – so this week Mr Balloon is in favour of openness about how the public money is spent… oh the IRONY of Westminster telling local government it should reveal it's expenses!
  

Giving Councils control of a FAIR local income tax, with the ability to adjust the rates themselves as they choose; returning control of business rates to local council control; allowing councils to share in the benefits of granting planning applications and rezoning decisions; putting the money back in the hands of real people, not some TV personality that you've parachuted in with his team of faceless, unaccountable "advisors" who really run the show… THESE are the ways that you return power to local government. Putting local schools and local health care back in the hands of local people, THESE are the ways that you restore communities and empower people.

Obviously these are LIBERAL DEMOCRAT ideas.




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Day 2915: Tangerine Book - The Puzzle Page

Christmas Eve:

Millennium is TRAPPED in the MAZE of Conservatory policies… can you help him to find his way out?

Mr Balloon's Not so Amazing

Day 2879: Tory Policy on Cuts: Cut the Policy!

Tuesday:


First Mr Balloon warns of the Labour's Tax Bombshell… catchy, now where've I heard THAT before? …and then he ditches another promise.

Sigh. It's not as though they have THAT many policies TO abandon!


Hopefully that's the end of all that "the cupboard is bare" nonsense, now that Mr Balloon has discovered the ACTUAL cupboard stuffed full of juicy spending commitments.

But he's opened himself up to death-by-salami-tactics again; now that Conservatory Cuts are back on, Mr Frown will be doing the REVERSE-PRIME-MONSTER'S-QUESTIONS again with tricky one like:

"So, uhh, are you going to be cutting the NHS, then?"

"Absolutely not; no way, Jose."

"Is that an, uhhh, guarantee, you just gave there?"

"Umm, look,"

"Just answer the question."

"Crikey!"

"So, uhh, is it the army, then? Slashing the defence budget, depriving our boys of much needed protection?"

"Flip! This is harder than it looks!"

It's not that there ISN'T room for cutting SOME of the Government's bloated spending on testing and prying and collecting every private bit of data we have and the LOSING every private bit of data we have and then INVESTIGATING what happened to the data and which civil servant to sack for leaving it on the 18:42 to Woking…

Mr Frown's Government is an enormous machine for wasting money.

But having just spent the whole year telling us that absolutely you could TRUST a Conservatory Government NOT to cut spending, it turns out that a whiff of a crisis and actually, sorry, you COULDN'T trust them and they WOULD cut spending.

And apparently they won’t tell us what they would do instead. So, helpful.


And when he talks about borrowing now meaning tax rises in the future he's obviously forgotten (or worse, NEVER UNDERSTOOD) his own MANTRA about "sharing the proceeds of growth".

Borrowing NOW can be repaid out of FUTURE GROWTH in revenues… or at least it CAN so long as you get the economy GROWING again and don't kill it STONE DEAD like the Conservatories did in the Eighties by, er, cutting spending when a recession hit.

The worst of it is, this ditching of basically their ONLY economic policy reveals that, at a time when things are pretty TOUGH and Great Britain NEEDS people to be putting their best ideas forward, Mr Balloon hasn't got any ideas at all.

As Mr Clogg says: "the Conservatories have NO solutions to today's problems."


Previously, I considered Chairman Humph pondering the question of Mr Frown's economic future. But today it is clearly Mr Balloon who is saying "I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue!"

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Day 2872: Mr Balloon's Pledge – I'll Protect Your Jobs… By Making It Cheaper For The Corporations To Employ Someone Else!

Tuesday:


Last week, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, who is calling* for tax cuts for average earners, asked Mr Frown if we should follow the Leader of the Free World, who is calling for tax cuts for average earners, and try to rescue the economy by offering tax cuts for average earners.

And, amazingly, Mr Frown is hinting that he might do just that!

This leaves the Conservatories with a DILEMMA. Will Mr Balloon stick to his PRINCIPLED (if wrong) position that "The Cupboard is Bare", or will he jump on the passing bandwagon?

Oh, what do YOU think?


(* and has been calling for months

You know, just to make the POINT that some people can have PROPER thought out economic rescue plans that DON'T require last-minute back-of-a-fag-packet spur-of-the-moment guesswork.)


What is PARTICULARLY bizarre is that Mr Balloon has chosen to hand over fistfuls of cash to BUSINESSES rather than giving the money back to PEOPLE.


Well, at least in keeping with his "principle" of: "Look! Rich people! I say, chaps, have some free money!" (see also: tax cut for dead millionaires)

But this is NOT a very good use of the money.

Remember, the KEY danger to the economy is that growth has stalled.

For some years, the British economy has been kept afloat by people who kept on SPENDING because they had easy access to money through cheap BORROWING. The Credit Crunch has put a stop to that, so in order for people to KEEP ON SPENDING the Government needs to put more CASH into their POCKETS.

Cash going into BUSINESSES is more likely to be used for SAVINGS, or rather REDUCING BORROWINGS, especially with loans being difficult to obtain at the moment.

Reducing the COSTS of businesses (labour in this case) is more likely to increase their profits, paid out in dividends which, again, is more likely to go in SAVINGS (most dividends being wrapped up in pension funds).

All of which is to say that business tax cuts is money straight into the banks (ha ha ha) and not out on the high street oiling the wheels of the economy.


Now, getting jobs for people who want to work is a good thing in itself, and no doubt Mr Balloon has some vague hope that if more people are in work then they will have more disposable cash and spend a bit more and start up some growth.

But times are tough and this is a DREADFULLY inefficient way of going about it.

Not least because, as Mr Chris Dillow points out, many businesses will take on staff anyway – and so get free money for nothing!

(And a hat tip to Mr Tristan)


Having WARNED Mr Frown against the DANGERS of making tax cuts without knowing where the money is coming from you would expect the Conservatories to have WATERTIGHT proposals for how to fund their own tax cuts.

Oh, you wouldn't?

Well, of course not. The money for their little cashback wheeze will come from "savings in unemployment benefit".

Just THINK about that for a moment: in order to stop unemployment going up, Mr Balloon is going to spend the money that he wouldn't have had to spend if unemployment hadn't been going up.

Let me just be clearer: if unemployment goes up, the Government will have to spend EXTRA cash.

Instead of spending that extra money on benefits for the unemployed, Mr Balloon wants to spend THE SAME EXTRA money on benefits for businessmen.

He isn't saving ANY money at all; he's just SPENDING MORE differently.

Sooooo, how does this work? The plan involves giving £2,500 in readies to Mr Fat the Business Cat TODAY which Mr Balloon SAYS he can afford because he won't have to give Ms Worker her £60.50 this week*… hang on, that's not right.

(*yes, we know that Benefits are paid fortnightly.)

Mr Balloon CLAIMS that it costs the taxpayer £8,000 when someone goes on unemployment benefit. Perhaps this is some sort of average over all time ever, or perhaps he is counting in costs of administering them coming into the system. But since his scheme only applies to people who have BEEN ON UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFIT FOR THREE MONTHS, he can only make savings from the ONGOING COST of remaining on JSA.

So even if we're talking about MITIGATING the impact of higher unemployment, rather than ACTUAL cash-neutral tax cuts, you'd STILL only make this add up if Ms Worker WOULD HAVE BEEN unemployed for another TEN MONTHS.

And that's assuming she's over 24.

And that the job she gets isn't so badly paid that her wages need topping up by one of Mr Frown's Working Family Tax Credits.

And that the benefits don't taper off after six months… which they do.

And on top of that, everyone knows that the longer you are out of work the less likely you are to get employment; so, conversely, the people who DO get jobs are less likely to be needing public support for the sort of long periods that Mr Balloon needs to make his figures add up.


But never mind all of that, here's the kicker: what is to stop Mr Fat from laying off twenty workers from his factory in West Slaving and then hiring twenty "completely different" workers doing "completely different" jobs (terms and conditions apply) at his factory in East Slaving?

He trousers fifty grand and has no extra workers to pay.

Oh I am quite sure that Mr Balloon has thought of all sorts of checks and balances (or CHEQUES and balances) that might make it difficult for a small business with few employees to get away with that, but large companies that hire and fire ALL THE TIME will be almost impossible to police, and will certainly start to coin in free cash for doing no more than they would have done already.

In fact, Mr Balloon is INCENTIVISING them to sack existing workers and replace them with cheaper labour.

So much for this week's promise to "protect British jobs".

"The Conservative Party will not stand aside and allow unemployment to claim livelihoods and destroy lives," said Mr Balloon. "We will not walk on by while people lose their jobs..."

"...We will go over there and MAKE SURE they lose their jobs," he might have added.

As Daddy Alex says: it's an excellent soundbite, but soundbites are not enough to live on!

Mr Balloon's latest shabby scheme does NOTHING WHATSOEVER to protect existing jobs but in fact endangers them as well!

I guess that promise goes the same way as Mr Balloon's promise "not to offer tax cuts".

If you want to fix the economy, you need a BETTER ANSWER.

Day 2834: Might a Euro Referendum Backfire on the Conservatories?

Saturday:


With my Daddies driving off to attend the hetero-life-partnering-event of their friends Mr Peter and Ms Lynsey (hooray!) , I was left being baby-elephant sat by Cuddly Cthulhu (which is fine, 'cos he's normally asleep) and listening to Mr Andrew Yawnsley's "Beyond Belief Westminster".

This week's episode: how the Conservatories finally have a UNITED policy about the European Parliament: they want to SPLIT from EVERYBODY ELSE.

Now, Conservatory Shadow Secretary of State for Places they Hate, Mr William Vague says they'll resurrect the Lisbon Treaty just to hold a referendum so that people can vote it down all over again in spite of it already being deader than his follicle count.

After the Irish voted "no", this is a deceased treaty, it has ceased to be. It is a treaty not so much pining for the fjords as pushing up the daisies, it has gone to meet its maker (who would be Monsieur Giscard D'Estaing); this is a treaty that Mr Vague wants to nail to its perch merely to give it a right good thrashing… hang on, I've confused my Cleese-isms…

In further comedy-connections mood, Mr Yawnsley's panel – who included Mr Peter Piddle of the Daily Murdoch, Ms Caroline Jackboot MEP and Mr Dale Winton, presenter of Hole in the Wall, a gameshow about where Master Gideon Oboe thinks money comes from – the panel made the suggestion that the Conservatories could be the ones to make Progressive Policies for Europe.

This is of course LAUGHABLE on three counts: they're NOT progressive; Mr Balloon is against having ANY policies; and the Conservatories will reject ANYTHING that is "FOR Europe".

Nevertheless, it is obvious that this fig-leaf-over-the-policy-gap of offering referendums on treaties from beyond the grave is going to be played pretty hard by the Conservatories at the Euro elections next year… but might such a promise come back to bite them on the fluffy bottom?

After all, there is ZERO chance of them getting a referendum on this dead treaty for so long as Mr Frown remains in Downing Street. Which means that they will be looking at fulfilling this commitment some time in their first term government.

I know… we ALL know… that Mr Balloon is not very GOOD at fulfilling his promises, especially where Europe is concerned. Remember that, in order to get elected Conservatory leader, he promised that he would pull the Conservatories out of the centre-right group, the European People's Party. A promise he has kind of still not fulfilled… though he's promised that he WILL after the NEXT Euro elections.

But you can be sure that he'll be keeping THIS promise, because the alternative is a CIVIL WAR on the Conservatory Back Benches that would make the Maastricht Rebels look like the Celebrity Love Island.

Which means that, on top of all the things that they say NEED to be done to fix the "broken record society" they'll be including the VOODOO legislation to raise the ZOMBIE treaty for no reason other than to gather the villagers with their pitchforks and flaming torches.

Expensive, jingoistic and an enormous waste of time, you might very well think.

However, with a COMFORTABLE majority even that might not be a problem, but the polls have not been looking so optimistic for Mr Balloon recently.

Suppose he's got a TIGHT majority, with the after-effects of the current economic crisis still lingering, that's going to mean that there are a MAJORITY of people in the country who are both anti-Conservatory AND anti-Government: the reverse of the very same "give-the-bas…badwords-a-kicking" consensus that means any Euro referendum would be lost NOW.

Mr Vague no doubt thinks that calling for this pointless referendum will play very well on the doorsteps… and he might well be RIGHT… but consider the IRONY: The Conservatories are tremendously keen on this referendum lark because they know people always use them to bash the Government, because they LIKE bashing the Government. But they can’t yet imagine that THEY might the Government being bashed; the fact is, they cannot see themselves in Government.

Could this promise actually turn out to be the single best way to get a Pro-Europe Referendum where the Great British people say "YES!"? 'Cos that would be VERY FUNNY.

Day 2831: Is it too much to ask the "man with the plan" to tell us just what the Plan IS?

Wednesday:


Mr Balloon says he's got the judgement and character. Specifically the CARTOON character.

His message: vote Conservatory or I'll shoot a TELLYTUBBY.

Now in fairness, I'm sure he's been feeling very deprived what with all the world's media inexplicably finding his pointless, policy-less preening somewhat less newsworthy than the impending financial apocalypse.

The Conservatory spin was that last week the Labour were only talking about themselves to themselves; this week the Conservatories are talking to… well nobody.

In fact, the only coverage they've had at all this week has been ten seconds (we counted them) on News at Ten and all the mentions that Mr Nick "mate of Dave" Bobinson could get in.


Actually, Mr "And Here's to You Mrs" Bobinson is getting a bit SAD: his BIZARRE assertion this morning was that "Dave's" conference had been overshadowed this year… for the SECOND YEAR RUNNING.

Errrr, right, so that would be the Conference last year that got wall to wall coverage for Mr Oboe's reincarnation as a living saint for proposing tax cuts – terms and conditions apply, millionaires only – the conference that turned around the Conservatories polling position and that scared Mr Frown into his most famous dither: the election that never was. Would THAT be the conference that was overshadowed, Mr "Mate of Dave"?


This comes on top of the impartial political editor repeatedly pushing the Conservatory spin-machine's pitiful excuse for not having an economic policy: "the cupboard is bare".

I mean EXCUSE me but when the Government is spending six-hundred-thousand-million pounds a year… that's not EXACTLY "bare" is it? I mean were not reaaaaly up against it, are we?

And the Liberal Democrats can find a few savings! But not, apparently, the Conservatories who think all the Labour's spending is BAD but wouldn't cut a penny of it!

This year Mr Balloon was delivering his speech from a LECTERN in order to look more SERIOUS than he had last year when he got so much coverage. At least that's the spin, and of course it would be VERY wrong to assume that the real reason is that Mr Balloon can only do that trick when he's had months to memorise the speech. I am sure he is QUITE capable of walking and talking at the same time without the need for practice. Might need to think twice about CHEWING GUM though.


So, the Conservatory leader felt that he had to answer the Prime Monster's JIBE about experience. He chose to remind the audience how all the experience in all the great Offices of State of… Mr Major Minor led the Government to disaster… er, no that's not the answer on the card. Queen Maggie's eleven year's of experience… nope. He's gone back nearly THIRTY YEARS to the last resort of all Conservatory Scoundrels, the Winter of Discontent.

Poor old Big Jim Callaghan: Mr Balloon, a man not fit to carry the Chancellor's bags (as he proved on Black Wednesday), spent a good while dissing him and then said "for all his experience, people got rid of him for Queen Maggie, and thank goodness."

Yes, that's right: Mr Balloon recommends taking an unpopular Prime Monster who's suffering under heavy bombardment from chickens coming home to roost, and replacing him with a swivel-eyed megalomaniac who will go on and on and on and go madder and madder and madder. Good call, Mr Balloon, though I'd be less keen on taking the staring role in THAT little psycho-drama.

Mr Balloon clearly DOES have some experience: his time at ITV Digital has taught him that CHANGE means a hundred channels, all of them exactly the same.

So he claims to be "a man with a plan". The actual aphorism is: "A Man, a Plan, a Canal: Panama".

So Mr Balloon's view is that what we need right now is a REALLY BIG HOLE… and he's the man to start DIGGING.

There IS a difference between a "miracle cure" and a "plan", but Mr Balloon can't even get THAT right. The difference is that one of them involves magic words, waving of hands, a call for belief… and NO ACTUAL OUTCOME.

I'd rather have a plan that includes an ACTUAL PLAN.

Day 2829: the Lesser of Two Evils? More like the Lesser of Two Eejits!

Monday:


So, Mr Evan Davies gave a good SPANKING to both Chancellor Sooty and Master Gideon on the The Today Programme on the radio this morning.



Far be it for fluffy little me to think that Sooty's MYSTERIOUS unavailability to talk about the IMPLOSION of another British Bank until after 8am was some insanely inappropriate SPOILER TACTIC for Master Gideon's big interview, but… presumably the Labour were assuming that when Sooty INEVITABLY shot himself in the foot, he might wing Gideon at the same time.

As it was, Mr Evan played the "Vince Cable" card and trumped BOTH of them.


Anyway, they're both MORONS.

For a start, Sooty has decided to split up the assets and the liabilities of the Badly and Bungling Building Society Bank.

I have to admit that Daddy Richard is being driven slightly NUTTY by all the reporting of this: in the first place, they keep taking about the bank's "savings business" and it's "mortgage business" as if these are not the front and back end of the same PANTOMIME HORSE. You wouldn't say that Tesco has a "getting food from farmers" business and a "selling food to people" business, now would you?

Sooty has clearly encouraged them in this by treating the assets and liabilities separately. Which is why HE is an eejit. He's essentially left the bank with a whole load of loans to collect, but no savings end means no new business means, in the end, no bank. It's like cutting a WORM in HALF. You do NOT get two worms, you get one half of a dead worm and ANOTHER half of a dead worm. Eejit.


But then, the reporting keeps implying that it is the GOVERNMENT that is getting the bank's LIABILITIES – saying that the taxpayer will be "responsible for £41billion worth of mortgages" – while they are handing over the bank's £20 billion of deposits to the Spanish as if these are ASSETS.

Quite obviously, the mortgages that the government is keeping are the ASSETS (i.e. the mortgages are money that is OWED to the bank and represent a future cashflow INTO the treasury coffers). And what they are handing over are the LIABILITIES (i.e. the liability to repay all the deposits that the bank owes back to its savers).

Now, you would have to ask, why would anyone "buy" the exciting right to have to repay twenty billion bucks?

The answer is because Sooty is going to pay them twenty billion bucks to do so. (This is a win for the Spanish, because most banks will have debts way larger than what they have in READY CASH; so although their debt goes up, the cash they get in exchange is a much bigger proportion of what they had on hand. This is called "improving their gearing" by smart City types who talk JARGON to stop you understanding that they don't know what they're talking about.)

So it LOOKS like Sooty has just had all of us, the Great British public, settle ALL of Badly and Bungling's debts at a stroke. Except… EXCEPT… actually, what has happened is this: the bank went BUST so the brand new bank-insurance-against-going-bust scheme ought to kick in. Except, begin brand new, it hasn't had any time to accumulate reserves and so, ironically, if it paid out then it would, er, go bust. So Sooty has "loaned" the insurance scheme the money to pay out to the Spanish. It's fiendishly complicated, this.

So what we are left with is RISK – not a bill right now, but the RISK that those £41 billion worth of mortgages are not worth £41 billion pounds.

As Mr Dr Vince "the Power" Cable pointed out, there's always a chance that they might actually turn out to be a GOOD deal for the taxpayer; those mortgage assets could be worth a lot MORE than we're going to pay for them, assuming that most of the people who borrowed the money manage to keep up with their repayments.

Nationalisation is BAD because Governments are not very good at running businesses. Although it turns out that sometimes businesses are much, much WORSE at running businesses.

Accepting that it is only a LEAST WORST option, though, a temporary Government ownership can be a safe harbour whilst the tempest passes.

As with the Northern Rock-and-a-Hard-Place Bank – to which these mortgages will probably get added – if the government just holds onto them for a while until the economy starts to swing up again, they SHOULD be able to sell them for good value. After all, people are always going to need houses.


Master Gideon, of course, is against this. It's not JUST that he is in opposition, and so against what Sooty is doing just because. No, he thinks that the Badly and Bungling should be sold privately. This is because (a) obviously people are just gagging to buy a bank that the market has valued as worthless; and (b) clearly there are just so many banks out there flush with cash at the moment anyway…

Or maybe he's an eejit too.

Take his idea to have the Bank of England "step in" whenever they think that a bank's lending is getting a bit risky. Can you, in fact, think of a clearer signal that a bank is going down than that? The minute the Bank of England says ANYTHING, the City goes into headless-chicken mode, the share price flatlines and the bank is as dead as Master Gideon's fashion sense.

Then there’s his WHEEZE to FREEZE: celebrating the Conservatories policy of returning power to local councils by, er, imposing on them a centralised, Big Government decision overriding their power to choose the level of their own Council Tax. Behold the Joined-up-Government in waiting.

But as if that wasn't bad enough, he's now going round writing articlessaying:

"We can no longer afford an economy built on debt"

"An economy built on debt is not an economy built to last"

It sounds like a good sound-bite, doesn't it?

And yet, if you take him at his word, it betrays a FUNDAMENTAL and TOTAL lack of understanding about how capitalism works.

Everything, EVERYTHING about our economy depends on the idea of DEBT.

What is MONEY itself, but a "promise to pay"? It is a note of a DEBT owed, that we use in order to swap our debts about. Does Master Gideon expect us to go back to BARTER?

You work for a living? The boss OWES you a DEBT for every minute that you work. Yes, even when Googling on FaceSpace. You LEND him (or her) your services and that debt is settled at the end of the week or the month.

And who could possibly afford a house without using DEBT to match the payments for your home over your working life?

(Although, these day, practically nobody can afford a house anyway, and for that matter the banks seem to have given up lending.)

But at a higher level, debt is what makes INVESTMENT possible.

If you want to start a business you have EXACTLY two options: (A) be very rich; (B) borrow some money.


Responsible is a word that Mr Balloon suddenly likes. RESPONSIBLE lending means advancing money to people who are able to repay the debt AND make a bit on top.

This allows people who have got good ideas and hard work but NOT Mr Balloon's inherited fortune to set up in business. This is how ALMOST ALL the businesses in Great Britain start, businesses that make and sell things, that pay taxes and even grow to employ other people.

A responsible level of debt is exactly what we need. It is the GRIT in the capitalist OYSTER. It is the OIL that lubricates the GREAT MACHINE.

It is the very HEART of the Credit Crunch Crisis that we have gone from FAR TOO MUCH debt to ABSOLUTELY NONE AT ALL.

It's like going from a hundred-and-ten miles-an-hour on the motorway to nothing (and that is a good analogy because a hundred-and-ten miles-an-hour is irresponsibly out of control, and nothing will get you nowhere): the only way you can achieve this is with a NASTY CRUNCH.


Far be it for fluffy little me to remind everyone that Mr Dr Vince was saying for quite some time that we needed a careful and cautious but above all MANAGED reduction in overall borrowing to a RESPONSIBLE level… so I'll just remind you that Mr Evan told everyone that this morning.

Day 2828: Bankrupt Again!

Sunday:


What with the financial crisis and all, Daddy Richard decided PRUDENTLY to split his savings between several banks. This, however, turns out merely to increase the chances of getting hit!

So, today we learn that a second of his banks has bitten the bullet and gone to the great Stock Exchange in the Sky.


Meanwhile, also bankrupt (morally if not financially) is that scion of Stock Market gamblers: Mr Balloon.

Every time Mr Frown has managed to convince me that he is the WORST PRIME MONSTER EVER… up pops Mr Balloon to show that he would be EVEN WORST-ER!


For starters, he was on Mr Andy Marrmite's sofa, telling him that "RESPONSIBLE" is the new "PRUDENT".

All of us, it seems, are "responsible" for the Credit Crunch for borrowing too much money. And the Labour, they are "responsible" for the Credit Crunch for not regulating enough.

"What about the banks?" Mr Andy invited, "don't they bear some responsibility too?"

"Er…" said Mr Balloon. "Well, if the bonuses, the package might have, er, been an incentive to take risks then, er, we would have to look at that too…"

So that's a DECISIVE: "no, actually, I won't be asking the banks to behave responsibly with other people's money, even though they've just gambled it all away!" from the Leader of the Conservatories. "Especially after it's just emerged that we Conservatories get a lot of wonga from those hedge funds who've been making a fortune by driving down the share price of banks."

So as usual, no accepting of his own "responsibility" at all from Mr Balloon.


And then there's his "plan" to have a special committee to tell the Chancellor when he's being NAUGHTY.

What ACTUAL power would MR Balloon's financial QUANGO have to stop the Treasury from borrowing? The power of EMBARRASSMENT, that's all. So, pretty much like the current arrangement, with Mr Frown's fiscal rules: Nothing.

But then get this.

Challenged by Mr Andy over the assertion that the Conservatories at last year's conference were in favour of LESS regulation (until Northern Rock hit the, er, northern rocks), Mr Balloon said "oh, but that was just a report; we didn't accept that."

Soooooo… when his new "Office of Budget Responsibility" – or "Office for Irresponsibly Passing the Buck" – when they give him a "report" that says Master Gideon is borrowing too much, what's to stop him just saying "Oh, well, I don't accept that report, either!"

Another toothless talking shop from the man infamous for setting up "policy" commissions that even when they do report don't REALLY become Conservatory policy, so there's nothing Mr Balloon can ever be caught out as "responsible" for.

Someone in the MEE-JA really OUGHT to skewer Mr Balloon on this one: EITHER he has got no policies at all, or he cannot just keep saying "ah, but that was only a report". As it is he squirms between one option and the other as suits him and then has the CHEEK to call other people LIARS for innocently believing that what he called a policy last year will not get turned into "just a report" this.


And while we're at it someone in the MEE-JA really needs to check up on the level of borrowing under the Conservatories last Chancellor, Fatty Clarke. (A clue: even with his maxing out of all the credit cards, Chancellor Sooty still hasn't reached the level of wild over-borrowing that the Conservatories ran up just to keep the economy working until the General Election!)


Now, we have to decide what to do about what's left of Daddy's savings. One thing is for sure, we won't be banking on anything Mr Balloon has to say!

Day 2779: Where are the Conservatories going to PUT all the people they want to lock up?

Sunday:


Abandon the presumption of bail? Oh yes, VERY Civil Liberties.

Day 2758: Now it's the Labour's turn to Kick the Sick

Sunday:


"Claimants should work for benefits," says Mr James Deathknell.


"Claimants should work for benefits," says Mr Balloon.

Day 2749: Halting Price and Howdoo

Friday:


Well Done to Mr Davis David for winning his seat back with only five-hundred-and-sixty-three votes FEWER than the Liberal Democrats got at the last proper election.

In fact, the total turnout was only about a thousand higher than Mr Davis David's own vote last time. So it's POSSIBLE – in spite of (or because of) the long string of LOONIES and less serious candidates – that Conservatories were the ONLY people out voting.

It is a bit SAD, though, that Mr David's magnificent gesture has become rather muted thanks to the Labour giving him quite another sort of Great British Gesture.

"Vanity" says Mr Tony McNutty, the Labour Minister for Bravely Mouthing Off From the Sidelines rather than Facing the Test of Public Opinion.


The FT claims that Liberal Democrats, by not standing, allowed the Labour to duck out too.

But this is obviously to overlook the fact that there probably wouldn't have BEEN a by-election if we'd said that we would stand.

The Greens, with only just over a TENTH of Mr David's total, did not make much of a fight of it. And anyway they were standing on a platform of "he's not Liberal ENOUGH!"

The announcement of the result has not made much of a SPLASH. Not least because, without the Liberal Democrats standing this is a very safe Conservatory seat. "Mr Davis David elected" therefore isn't even in the "dog bites man" league of newsworthyness. And besides, the Labour have very successfully moved the news agenda on from "42 Days" to a whole NEW raft of policy disasters and backbench rebellions. Er…

So while it is quite TRUE that Mr David has a big new mandate to campaign for civil liberties, will he be in any position to capitalise on it?

Mr Balloon has described Mr David as "a strong figure" (the bas…bad-word) who may "contribute in the future" (to the foundations of a motorway overpass).

So clearly, Mr B has plans for Mr David to be side-lined up for head of one of those "commissions" that go away to think about policy and don't come back are given SERIOUS consideration when they have proposals to ignore consider. This will leave Mr Balloon free to indulge in some BACK-SLIDING on this issue (or more accurately a return to form for the Thatcherite Poster Boy) in line with his new policy of TACKING to the RIGHT.

As Mr Clogg puts it:

"The Conservatories are a long way from being defenders of liberty."