Day 3391: Debate Night – WE RULE!

Thursday:

Live! From Personchester! It’s the quiz of the week, er, the first live tellybox debate between the leaders of the three largest UK political parties.

Your host is Mr Alistair Stewpot of Police,Camera,Action!

Prime Monster Mr Frown will provide the POLICE; Conservatory Mr Balloon will supply the CAMERA; and Captain Clegg, Leader of the Liberal Democrats, is the man of ACTION!

Here is Mr Stewpot

Stewpot: good evening, and welcome. We’re here at the first general election debate and we have very strict rules. Ladies and gentlemen you are live on Channel Three: please do not swear. Or applaud.

First let’s hear the leader’s opening statements:

Captain Clegg: Hello! I’m different to the Labservatives

Mr Frown: Remember, I just destroyed the economy but the Conservatories are really, really scary

Mr Balloon: Bleep. Thank you for purchasing the Leader-bot 500. I am programmed in over six million forms of public relations.

Stewpot: right. First question. Person in audience…go!

Ted Whitebread: I want to ask about immigration

Frown: immigration is evil. I want to stamp it out!

Balloon: I couldn’t disagree more. Immigration IS evil! I met a – uploading – a black man in Brighton once and he said: “are YOU thinking what I’M thinking?” That’s why I want to stamp it out!

Clegg: immigration is NOT evil. There is good immigration and bad immigration and we would try a different approach to try and prevent the bad while making the good work better

Frown: I agree with Nick–

Stewepot: I’m going to have to stop you there. Next question!

Valerie Victim: I’ve been burgled seventy-nine times this week, how can you stop it happening again?

Balloon: I recently met a – uploading – a victim of crime in Cardiff. Everything in her house had been stolen and so they set her on fire and burned her son to death. And those murderers were set free from prison after only one week of community service. That’s why we want to be tougher on crime!

Frown: we have increased production in the tractor factories every year for the last fifty years and that’s why we can put more police on the beat to beat up young people who might one day be criminals and take their DNA so that we can prove it when they do. That’s why WE are tougher on crime!

Clegg: the Labservative policy of just sending more and more young people to prison for short-term sentences just doesn’t work. Acting tough doesn’t work. We would have a different approach: community justice that WORKS.

Frown: I agree with Nick–

Stewepot: I’m going to have to stop you there. Next question!

Anthony Punter: Aren’t MPs all crooks?

Clegg: I’m afraid that some of them, the flippers and the tax dodgers have got away with it. Not one Liberal Democrat flipped or dodged tax.

Frown: we want reform – we’d let you sack your MP

Balloon: no, we want reform – we’d let you sack your MP too

Clegg: [springs elephant trap] You both SAY that, but then you both voted AGAINST it!

Frown: I agree with Nick–

Stewepot: I’m going to have to stop you there. It’s time for a commercial break. Oh wait: there aren’t any! Next question!

Simon Exam-Fodder: why is school so boooooring?

Balloon: I want more discipline! Spank me nanny! Bleep, disregard! I recently met a – uploading – a schoolmistress in Stockport. And she told me that all the school-kids today carry knives and beat up teachers and if they are expelled then the appeal panel sends them straight back to school. That’s why I’d sell off the schools to bizarre cults and let them expel anyone who questions their ways without any appeal.

Frown: we’ve doubled the production from the turnip farms every year for the past hundred years and that’s why we’re able to give every new teacher their own City McAcademy, where they can do exactly as they are told by the seven-hundred page guidebook provided by my colleague Mr Balls.

Clegg: [tears up rule book with bare hands] I’m not allowed to ask you questions, but you can just nod. Is it that you think that the school aren’t allowed to teach you anything interesting or creative? Yes? Well, we want to pass a law to STOP the Government meddling in schools all the time. That way, when we give an extra pupil premium to help the worst off pupils, the SCHOOL gets to decide how it’s spent, not some minister at a desk in Whitehall.

Frown: I agree with Nick–

Stewepot: I’m going to have to stop you there. Next question!

Professor Plum: I’m sorry but aren’t you going to do anything about the trillion pounds debt hole we’re all in?

Frown: when the global crisis was caused by events completely outside my control through the totally irresponsible lending by banks I had to stop telling you to keep borrowing from the banks in order to act to save the world, and that’s the only reason that anyone has any money at all left to for me to spend on hospitals and schools and police and tractor building…

Balloon: Mr Frown is trying to tell you he can protect hospitals and schools and police and tractor building. But because of the enormously huge deficit he’s created, he just can’t do that. Er, but I can! I recently met a – uploading – a leprechaun in Levenshume, who looked remarkably like Gideon Oboe, and HE said to me: “somewhere over the rainbow” and if I can find that pot of gold, I can give it to my chums, er, use it to fill the hole in the deficit.

Clegg: the Liberal Democrats are the ONLY Party to set out how we will pay for everything we say we will do and what we will cut to try and bring the deficit under control

Balloon: oh no wait! The Liberal Democrats want to promise you a seventeen billion pound tax cut. I’d LOVE to offer you a seventeen billion pound tax cut but I can’t pay for it–

Clegg: do you want me to tell you how I’d pay for it?

Balloon: er…

Clegg: I’d pay for it by raising the rate of capital gains tax so that it’s the same as the rate of income tax, and I’d make the benefit that rich people get for their pension contributions the same as the benefit that everyone else gets, and I’d bring in a mansion tax, and I’d tax polluters.

Balloon: er… er…

Frown: I agree with Nick–

Stewepot: I’m going to have to stop you there. Next question!

Nina Healthinsurance: can you spare a few coins for the hospital fund?

Balloon: Sorry, I don’t carry change. But I recently met a – uploading – a charming granny in Greenwich, and she had had to sell her house and all her possessions and her nine grandchildren into slavery just to pay for the drugs she needed, and I don’t mean BAD drugs either, but the good stuff. Bleep, disregard! The stuff she needed for her cancer, but we could CURE cancer if only we could make enough saving to not raise the NI and then spend the money that we’re not going to get on drugs… hang on… we’ll make the cuts and not raise the money and spend the money we haven’t raised to…no wait, I can work this out…

Clegg: How can people believe Mr Balloon when he promises to spend lashings of cash on the NHS when he’s also promised to slash the deficit and spend money on tax cuts for millionaires and married couples and house buyers. It’s just not credible.

We want to protect the services people want by rooting out the unnecessary bureaucracy and target culture and redirect that money to where it’s needed.

Frown: I agree with Nick–

Stewepot: I’m going to have to stop you there

Jonny Kilroy: why can’t my mates in the army get any proper helicopters? Or body armour? Or boots?

Frown: as I said to the Chilcot inquiry and subsequently had to correct, no request for funding by our brave soldiers was turned down, by which I mean provided it was submitted to me by our brave soldiers on the correct form signed in triplicate by myself and Tony and the American President and at least two of his parents or guardians. And that is why our brave soldiers had as many helicopters as they wanted, although we had actually sent them to Iraq for five years first and then we had to adapt them to the terrain in Afghanistan because obviously flying through the air makes helicopters very sensitive to the terrain and did I mention how brave our brave soldiers are?

Clegg: There are these brilliant people in my constituency make a thing that goes on the front of your tank to protect it from running over bombs. That’s brilliant and it’s British. The Americans use them. The Americans say they save lives. But we can’t afford them.

What our brave soldiers need – oh look, he’s got me doing it too!

We have two admirals for every warship, and a dozen Brigadiers for every Brigade. It’s time we spent money a bit better on a bit of that British invention.

And I’d scrap Trident and spend that money on things we actually need too.

Balloon: You can’t do that. I want Trident so I can nuke China.

Frown: I agree with Nick–

Stewepot: I’m going to have to stop you there. Next question!

Jemima Pensionfund: whose going to look after us when we all get old?

Clegg: I had a great answer for you, but then all the money got flushed down the big drain marked “banks” so instead I’ll turn my weakness into a strength and say that I’ve got some good ideas, and Mr Frown has some good ideas and Mr Balloon has some good ideas so I appeal for all politicians to all come together

Stewpot: Stop now! Goodnight!




So that was the debate, but who won?

Well, the ITV News poll called it for Captain Clegg.

And the Political Betting/Angus Reid poll called it for Captain Clegg.

And the Grauniad Blog responses called it for Captain Clegg.

…

And the Times/Populus poll called it for Captain Clegg.

And the Sky News/Fizzback poll called it for Captain Clegg.

And the Sun/YouGov… yes THAT YouGov… yes THAT The Sun called it for Captain Clegg.

…

And the Mail. The Daily Hate Mail. The. Mail. Called it. For. Captain. Clegg.


Much spinning in the aftermath. Most hilariously: after "Ask the Chancellors" the Tories were LOUD in their complaints that Mr Dr Vince had an UNFAIR ADVANTAGE because he was in the middle and seen to be DOMINANT

After tonight's debate, several "independent" sources (which means SOMEONE was spinning it to them all!) said "well, Mr Balloon was at an UNFAIR DISADVANTAGE because he was in the middle and seen to be under attack from both sides!"

To which an UNCHARITABLE person might say: well you DID ask to be in the middle! It's not anybody else's fault that your guys are RIUBBISH!


We were doing pretty well. We had a nice little lift off from the successful launch of our excellent manifesto. WE knew he’d be good in the debate.

But here’s the thing: everyone was saying that he only had to turn up in order to come away a winner. But we all really KNEW that if he’d just “turned up”, if the papers could call Mr Balloon the winner – like they EXPECTED too; heck, like HE expected them to – or even if they could call Mr Frown the winner, then the story would all have been about that with a footnote page 94, “also present was Captain Clegg of the Lib Dems who did jolly well for trying”. We knew he really had to WIN.

And he WON.

I believe this is called a GAME CHANGER.

Because before this, the Labservatives were lovebombing us because they were a little bit scared. After this, they will be bombing bombing us, because now they are a LOT scared.

.

Day 3339: Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall, Who has a Future Fair For All?

Sunday:


Once upon a time, there lived three lovely pantomime characters:

First there was HARD LABOUR ROSE, aka the Big Brown Wolf. She huffed and she puffed and then allegations in the Observer brought the house down on her head.

Then there was AIRBRUSHED WHITE and the seven Old Etonian Dwarfs: Hopeless, Clueless, Worthless, Useless, Pointless, Sleazy and Bankrupt.

Last but not least there was GOLDILOCKS, who tasted the other bears' porridge and found that one bowl was TOO RIGHT-WING and that the other bowel was TOO RIGHT-WING too! So she made her own porridge and that was JUST RIGHT.

Though, funnily enough, the poisoned apples turned out to be for Goldilocks… and I think the magic is wearing off my metaphor!


There's been quite a lot of FUSS in FAIRYLAND this weekend about whether Hard Labour Rose, i.e. the Prime Monster (©ME and NOT the Scum), Mr Frown, is a bully or not, with allegation and counter-allegation thrown about like mobile phones in the Cabinet Office… er…

It's a SERIOUS issue, and deserves better than being reduced to a political ping-pong ball. The way that the country is run from the top – and BAFTA-award-nonimated "In the Loop" is funny because we BELIEVE that all of that shouting, swagger and I know best-ness is TRUE to life – works its way down into the FABRIC of the nation. And it makes us a less kind and gentle place.

It's about treating politics like a game of MONOPOLY where you win by CRUSHING your opponents.

The Conservatories are just as GUILTY of this sort of thing, playing doggie-in-the-manger over cross-party talks to solve the problems of care for the elderly or the number two high-speed link to Birmingham because they'd rather score points that actually solve problems.

Only politics ISN'T a game of monopoly: you're supposed to be SERVING people, not treating them as commodities or tokens, and the only winners should be THEM.

Anyway, it's all rather overshadowed the re-launch of the Hard Labour election strategy.

Their new slogan: "A Future Fair For All" is EASILY PARODIED – A Future Free-for-All, I suggested; a Future Freefall for All, thought Mr Stephen of the Glenn; a Future Fun Fair For All, suggested Auntie Caron; and so on… (Hang on, wasn't "The Future Fayre For All" supposed to be inside that Big Tent in Greenwich?).

With the many parodies of the Conservatories' INEPT poster campaigns coming out thick and fast, clearly Hard Labour fell under the DELUSION that people mocking Mr Balloon were somehow FOR Mr Frown. Oh how very wrong they were.

But Hard Labour have been in power for THIRTEEN YEARS. Why hasn't the future arrived yet? Could it be because they were "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich"? Or because they arrogantly assumed that they had achieved "no more boom and bust?

Looking at Mr Frown's big speech, it certainly seems like HE has NO IDEA how we got here, how many FAILURES have stacked up on his watch.

In fact, he begins by looking back with VERY rose-tinted spectacles to an alternative history of triumphs without disasters:

"The NHS renewed"

…but don't mention the huge wasteful bureaucratic target-culture or the vast cost of PFI's still to pay off.

"Jobs created"

…but don't mention that they were lost again.

"Schools built"

…but don't mention the crushing of a generation under tests and student debts.

It's very much a "but apart from that, how was the theatre, Mrs Lincoln" view of Hard Labour's term in office.

"…dreams achieved, ambitions realised, hopes fulfilled, lives changed…"

…endless petty crimes created, ASBOs breached, DNA stolen, personal data lost, or left on trains, Middle Eastern countries INVADED, LIVES LOST and BILLIONS and BILLIONS of pounds SQUANDERED.

Still, as he says, "elections are not verdicts on the past – they are choices for the future". So that's handy.

What ARE his plans for the future, though?

"First, we must secure the recovery, not put it at risk."

Which is nice, but who's going to argue against that?

"Second, we must support new industries & future jobs."

Which is pretty much the same as the first point, isn't it?

"Third, as we reduce the deficit by half, we must protect and not cut frontline services."

Interesting that you assert you can do both simultaneously. Any ideas how?

"And fourth, we must stand up for the many not the few."

Which is jolly rousing but means what, precisely? Planning on standing up for the many against few when the few are, say, police demanding powers of stop and search? Planning on standing up for the many against few when the few are the controllers of your I.D.iot card database? Planning on standing up for the many against few when the few are MEDIA GIANTS against downloading of music? Planning on standing up for the many against few when the few are American-backed tyrants who boil their opponents alive? Planning on standing up for the many against few when the few are bankers refusing credit to small businesses and reposing homes?

No, Mr Frown, I think you are FIRMLY on the side of the FEW whenever the FEW are from your own little ELITE or Lord Sideous (Darth Mandlebrot's) chums.

It's certainly clear that he hasn't LEARNED any LESSONS from his decade of MIS-MANAGEMENT. He's as convinced as ever of the GOODNESS of the bankers and the City.

Mr Frown says he's concluded…

"that the very values that made our country are the surest foundations of our future success."

So I'm guessing that the value that he means here is PIRACY.

Seriously, the GLORIOUS Great British Empire was built – a little bit – on the proceeds of our BOLD BUCCANEERS, robbing Spanish Galleons of the gold that they themselves had stolen from the Mexicans.

You see, "Markets are essential," continues Mr Frown. And those wide-boy City Traders love to tell us that are the NEW Buccaneers and what better pirate cove for their stacks of gold and jewels than Little England?

"They help us grow as a nation,"

says Mr Frown,

"they give us the resources to fight poverty, ignorance, disease"

…and FRANCE, presumably.

But then he needs to ABSOLVE himself of blowing the economy on the gaming tables of the banking world.

"It is now more clear than ever that markets need morals. Without that they go astray and can lead us to focus on the price of things, not the value of things."

Our Mammon, Who Art in the Square Mile, Lead Us Not into Temptation, But Deliver Us a Fourth Term, Forever and Ever. Amex.

"We have restructured our banks and are ensuring they have the capital they need."

As thought this doesn't mean "given them as much money as they wanted with no more than the mildest slap on the wrist for trollying the economy.

"And we are now discussing with other countries the prospect of a global levy on banks which would help achieve our domestic objectives as well as tackle global poverty and climate change."

Though we're certainly NOT going to do anything unless EVERYONE else agrees to it!

"We are making these changes because Britain needs to rebuild."

After your decade of triumph? How come we need to rebuild?

"And that is why we have decided that as a nation and a government that we will back British scientists…"

…by SLASHING funding to UNIVERSITIES and putting an end to blue sky research…

"…invest in renewable energy…"

…by allowing Great Britain's only windmill factory to go BANKRUPT and CLOSE…

Which reminds me:

"Only Labour who have a plan to make Britain a world leader in a four-trillion dollar market for green, clean energy goods and services, opening up the prospects of 400,000 new green jobs for the British people."

Only? Only! Now he's just plain FIBBING.

It's less than a WEEK since the Liberal Democrats proposed creating fifty-thousand new jobs by turning disused shipyards into wind turbine production centres. That's a REAL, CONCRETE proposal rather than Mr Frown's dreams of castles in the sky!

He goes on in this vein for a while, making up policies for the other parties – well partY actually, he's back to not deigning to mention US; so much for the lovebombing – and then saying how BAD we are because of them.

"Government is not a game," fulminates Mr Frown finally – like he hasn't just been scoring CHEEP POINTS – bringing us back to where I came in. But it's not a "Choose you own Adventure" either – except for the way the Prime Monster does it: re-writing history and choosing a new random Historic Destiny™ every week.

Which, of course, is the real irony.

Because the REAL problem with Hard Labour's new slogan is that they are all YESTERDAY'S MEN; and with ninety odd (some VERY odd) Hard Labour MPs jumping ship ahead of the General Election, it's clear that they realise this themselves.

The REAL problem with "A Future Fair For All" is that Hard Labour doesn't HAVE any future, doesn't have any future AT ALL.


.

Day 3320: Are we AV-ing a laff? Or: What would a REAL New Economic Model look like?

Tuesday:


First thing, Mr Frown is going to ram voting reform through the Cabinet today and force it down Parliament's throat next week. But being Hard Labour his idea for "fair votes" is actually LESS fair.

Second thing, Master Gideon says he'll be bench-pressing the UK into a "new economic model" which looks suspiciously like the OLD economic model of "free-market capitalism with a hint of Government intervention".

Third thing, an e-mail from the POWER2010 people pops up saying that their 25,000th contributor has posted his vote for "None of the Above".

Funny thing: all these things are TOTALLY interconnected.


This urge to REJECT the entire political establishment, to vote "None of the Above", arises out of the perception that "all the parties are the same".

But that perception is driven by exactly the sort of language that Master Oboe uses today: dancing on the head of a pin so that he can say that HIS policies are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT to those of Hard Labour which in turn are completely different to those of the Liberal Democrats, when in fact everyone – yes even us – are offering relatively unimaginative VARIATIONS ON THE SAME THEME.

But that in turn is because those policies are driven by the choices of the electorate, or rather a very small sub-section of the electorate whose opinions are HUGELY MAGNIFIED by the DISTORTED calculus of the electoral system. Anyone who wants to get elected is FORCED into a very narrow range of options to satisfy a very narrow range of people: in short, swing voters in marginals.

And that, ultimately, is why we NEED a reform of the voting system that opens up politics to HUGE change.



Now, saying we want to vote for "None of the Above" is a SYMPTOM of people's disaffection, but as a solution it's nowhere NEAR good enough. In fact, I'd say it was both MEANINGLESS and it's LAZY.

Meaningless, in part, because it doesn't tell us WHY none of the above satisfy the voter. Did they want a candidate who was more socialist or more capitalist? Or more liberal or more authoritarian? Or more female or more male? Or more local? Or more famous?

"None of the Above" adds together all of the splinters of people not satisfied with what's on offer and artificially adds them together. And it would STILL probably be fewer than the votes cast for real candidates because it's not the lack of a "none of the above" box that causes people to NOT BOTHER TO VOTE.

People don't vote through a combination of "they don't think they can change things" and "they don't think things need to change (because they ain't that bad, really)".

But much more than that "None of the Above" is meaningless because what actual EFFECT is it supposed to have on the election?

It's just an "I turned up but didn't vote" box. Now, a "Re-open Nonimations" box, that comes with REAL power – i.e. if "RON" is elected they HAVE to re-run the election with new candidates – that maybe has some merit. Some. Maybe. But just giving people a chance to stick two fingers up at the candidates seems totally pointless.

And it's also LAZY because it's saying "I see a problem here and I refuse to try and solve it"; it is expecting someone ELSE to come along and present you with another option. Well, why SHOULD anyone be bothered if YOU can't be, eh?

And it's not like people AREN'T presenting you with other options.

IThere already ARE lots of choices beyond " the Above", because I'm assuming that by "the Above" what you really mean is "the three nationwide parties (oh all right, four, if you MUST count UKPnuts just because Mr Bob "elected-as-a-Conservatory" Stink sits for them these days… and in Scotland and Wales add a smattering of nationalists) who have representation in the House of Commons".

From Anarcho-Communists to Anti-Abortionists to Sickly Greens to British Nasties to Vanity Candidates to Respect the Leotard Gorgeous Pussycat George Supporters to Monster Raving Loonies… you have got a lot of choices.

But, comes the protest, they don't get elected.

That's partly because they don't have the support and partly because of the system. And those two things do feed off each other too. Our current system biases the results in favour of very large Parties or very concentrated-in-one-place Parties and completely ignores Parties with support spread out across the whole country. Under first-pass-the-port, you can of course get 49% in every seat in the country and still get no MPs at all.

In fact, it's the very geographical POLARITY of the two red-blue Parties – one in the urban strongholds of the industrial and post-industrial North, one in the Home County retreats of the moneyed South-East; neither can really be called broad based anymore, and both suffer from nasty inflammations of the Core Vote Strategy – that contributes to their unhealthy stranglehold on the Government and, more cogently, the DISTORTED importance of those few seats where swing voters can pick which of them will win.

So either organise a revolution and change the system or get involved with the Liberal Democrats and change the system. Or you can always start your OWN political movement to try and capitalise on that big wave of we-reject-all-the-other-parties that you think is out there. And see how far you get.

Anything less is just WHINGEING.

Which, quite naturally, brings me to Master Oboe.

His idea for a "new economic model" includes his eight-step programme of:

• Ensure the whole country shares in rising prosperity – by raising the private sector's share of the economy in all regions of the country, especially outside London and the South East (as thought the Government can actually DO this… does he mean he'll actually REDUCE the public sector in areas where private investment isn't matching London?)

• Get Britain working (well who doesn't want that?)

• Ensure macro-economic stability (well who doesn't want that?)

• Make Britain open for business (well who doesn't want that?)

• Reform public services to deliver better value-for-money (like EVERYONE says they'll do)

• Create a safer banking system that serves the needs of the economy (no, do you think?)

• Build a greener economy (gee, an original thought… when everyone else had it five years ago)

And

• Create a more balanced economy – presumably with both more motherhood AND more apple pie.

So, basically it's a recipe for BUSINESS as USUAL.

The Government (Hard Labour OR Conservatory… or even Liberal, if you credit the idea we could win) will raise most of its money from a not-very-graduated income tax and a regressive sales tax and then spend a third of it on pensions and benefits, and another third on the health service and schools and the army, and the rest will go on lots and lots of little things that are all important to SOMEONE.

(And remember, this system benefits a relatively narrow range of people, i.e: people on slightly better than moderate incomes who want their health care and pension paid for don't want the unemployed actually to starve but don't want to pay more tax to see them "dossing about" and would quite like various things, from the Arts Council to continuous supply of electrical power, to continue without them being bothered about the details, or more succinctly, voters in marginals again.)

Saying you want a Britain built on "savings, enterprise and exports" is saying you want them exactly as they are… but a bit better. It's really NOT a new economic model.


A GENUINE, but still MODERATE, change would involve actually addressing some of the things that the Government DOES.

For example, the NHS. Make it a separate corporation, like the BBC, paid for by a health insurance that would not be much dissimilar to the licence fee or a subscription. But oh yes, that's the great HOLY COW of British Politics and tinkering with it is as unthinkable as GOOSING Mrs the Queen!

Or the benefit system. Pay every UK Citizen over the age of 16 a Citizen's Income of £100 per week, paid for by an income tax rate of, say, 45% on all other earnings (abolishing employee's National Insurance), and abolish all other benefits. Depending on how much Employer's NI generates, it even raises money for the Treasury. And there would be a bit less bureaucracy. In theory EVERYONE on benefits is quite a bit better off and NO ONE has to be humiliated with means tests or medical exams ever again. But it's crazily difficult to work out how it impacts people on tax credits and of course everyone earning over about sixteen grand is going to be slightly worse off. That's not even average national earnings, so you'd never get THAT past those marginal voters!

Of course REAL change to our economic model means looking at the factors that are limiting our freedom and doing something about them. The BIG limiting factor is ENERGY. If we can greatly increase the supply of energy we can actually increase people's freedom too. This happened in the Industrial Revolution when we moved from person-power to machine-power, unfortunately fuelled by, well, fossil fuel.

("Unfortunately", because not only is it running out, and not only are we as a country increasingly having to import our energy supply but of course we now know that we are seriously damaging the planet that we happen to be STANDING ON!)

What we need in order to achieve a step-change is to invest in a new and more abundant energy source… if we can FIND one. (The obvious candidates would be hydrogen fusion – if it can be made to work like it hasn't for fifty years – or solar power – probably based on orbital platforms, which requires not just a lot of engineering but a lot of international co-operation too – or something from the exploitation of Outer Space – so we'd better not cancel the Moon Base… oh dear.)

The truth is, though, that GAME-CHANGING revolutionary developments like that tend to be EXTERNAL to the Government. To an extent, the best you can hope for is to LIMIT how much Government HOLDS BACK innovation – which certainly means stopping Lord Mandelbrot intervening to decide what universities should be studying! Because Government tends to be a conservative force even when the Conservatories AREN'T in power.

ALL Government is based on COMPROMISE – not just democracies, though there it becomes obvious, but even dictators have different power blocs to balance – and ANY compromise between change and status quo will take the edge off the radical, blunting it, even turning it back.

Ironically, the so-called "strong governments" generated by our first-pass-the-port system are in fact MORE compromised, more small-c conservative, more, in fact, WEAK, because there is a NARROWER number of people to whom they owe their majority.

That is why we have had conservative government for the last THIRTY YEARS, preserving the status quo for large business interests in the City at the expense of real progress; that is why Hard Labour turned themselves into rouge Conservatories; that is why when they said "things could only get better" things DIDN'T.

That's why everything comes back to electoral reform. And it's why Mr Frown's proposals don't go nearly far enough.

The Liberal Democrats favour STV, or Single Trunk Voting, because it gives most power to the VOTER – you get to choose between parties AND between members OF those Parties, so you can choose Orange Booker or Soggy Liberal, local candidate or high flyer, man or woman whichever you want. And we think it should promote MORE diversity because Parties will naturally favour MIXED slates leading to more women and minority candidates getting elected.

The AV system that Mr Frown proposes is really kind of like first-pass-the-port only MORE SO. The Parties RETAIN control over the candidates standing in each constituency, rather than giving the voter the chance to express a preference, and it REINFORCES the effect of local polarity, with a chance of making safe seats SAFER.


On the one fluffy foot, AV IS pretty similar to STV with single member constituencies. And once you've convinced people of the benefits of ranking the candidates – as opposed to systems with LISTS where the candidates are just RANK – then the move to multi-member constituencies is as simple as of grouping them by fives. Your five constituencies still have five MPs; you just have a better chance of having one you voted first preference for. You might even be able to use the results of the AV election to map out what an STV election "might have done", to show people how easily things could be different.

But, on the other fluffy foot, it's not always the BEST idea to accept compromise as your "first step". I mean look just at the House of Lords Club… we took the first step to reform in 1911 and compromised and STILL the buffers hang on!

And you know, even STV isn't some magical solution. It's not ENOUGH.

What we have at the moment is a BIZARRE system, where our representatives talk to THEMSELVES to make decisions. One where the lobbyists and the vested interests are all hidden behind the scenes and all we get to see is a weekly pantomime at Prime Monster's Questions. What we NEED is a system where the MPs SHUT UP and listen to US.

We need a Parliament that is open to EVERYONE to ADDRESS. We should not have to sit quietly in the Visitors' Gallery like good little children lest someone cry "I spy strangers"! WE should be the ones making the speeches, for and against. We're the ones it matters to! Raise a petition, get enough support and you should be able to take it to Parliament and have them vote on it. We shouldn't be beholden to the Great and the Good – more often the Mediocre and the Malicious – to decide what laws are good for us. WE should be in CHARGE.

We can't just TINKER round the edges. We need to EXPLODE our politics – that's in a METAPHORICAL sense, dear MI5 reader, no ACTUAL explosions – so that we let in the daylight so that everyone can see and let in new ideas so that everything can change.


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Day 3293: Snowstorm in a Teacup

Wednesday:


Sometimes that Mr Balloon has all the luck. He's all ready to launch the Conservatory election campaign when he falls flat on his airbrushed face because he forgets his own Party's policy on tax and marriage (it's one of, what, four that he has to remember?).

And no one's going to notice because the very next day two of the so-called Big Beasts of Hard Labour decide to shoot the Prime Monster in the foot. Again.

And you've got to ask how badly off ARE Hard Labour if their "Big Beasts" are Mr Buff Hoon and Ms Patricia Blewitt?

I mean, for all this talk of Conservatories preparing posters, images of that pair beside the slogan "even THEY think we can't go on like this" are less likely to provoke a revolution than baffled cries of "who?" from the general public.

Just WHAT did the conspirators think they were DOING? Talk of this being the "last window of opportunity to change the leader" is blithering nonsense – the last window of opportunity was six or seven MONTHS ago, before the Party Conference season (so the new leader can have one big platform speech and then go directly to the country). The election campaign has ALREADY BEGUN. Once you've ACTUALLY started to cross the CHASM it's a BIT TOO LATE to start hacking at the ropes holding the bridge up.

I mean never put it past people in public life to do something BRAIN MELTINGLY STUPID, but surely even a heartbeat's consideration by ANYONE would lead you to notice that this couldn't have ANY POSSIBLE good outcome. IF they DON'T hold a vote, the Prime Monster is frit, and it reminds everyone that he's never faced even an INTERNAL election to get his current job; if they DO hold a ballot then too big a victory and people will claim it is a fix (thanks to his Mr Stalin reputation) and too narrow a victory and people will claim he's lost his mandate. And he might just LOSE…!

In which case who, pray tell, did they think could take over? Postman Pat and his black and white DRUGS POLICY? One of the MILLIPEDES (it's too early to say which)? Mr James the Scarlett Pimple-purnell?

And incidentally, this surely HAS to be the end for any ambition that the senior Millipede has to lead his party. This is the third time he's been led up to the bring of showing some BOTTLE and EACH time he's fumbled the decision. As candidate to be ditherer in chief, a Mr Frown II (this time without the gravitas), that's fine, but is that REALLY what the defeated and demoralised Hard Labour fraternity will look for in their next, er, Big Brother?

But then the catalogue of second-raters and also-rans crawling out of the Cabinet woodwork to off the Prime Monster their full support reveals just what a WRECK of his Party Mr Frown is going to leave behind when he finally goes.

I realise that this kind of ATTRITION is almost INEVITABLE in Governments that go on way too long: the Conservatories under Mrs Queen Maggie had the same problem, as one by one she saw off the Grand Figures of her Party like Mr Willie Whitelaw, Mr Michael the Hessleswine or Mr Nigella Lawson or even Mr Sir Gerffey Howe, leaving behind the distinctly B-Team likes of Mr Major Minor and, well, most of his Cabinet.

But the only figure of ANY substance – even if it IS mostly SHADOW – is First Lord Sideous (aka Senator Mandeltine).

Speaking on the Newsnight Show, the First Lord High Everything Else told Mr Paxo: "I don't need to threaten anyone in the Cabinet," before adding: "They all already know that I know where they live."

After him we've got puffed-up, over-promoted maroons like Mr Johnson & Johnson, the hilariously invisible Mr Benny Hill or the sinister minister Mr Jack Man'O Straw. And that's without even mentioning Nectarine-tinctured Non-entity Mr Peter Vain.

The idea that a CABAL of Mr Bob Aimless (Defence), Mr Wendy Alexander (International Development), Mr Jim Murky (Scotland) and led by Ms Harriet the Harminator could topple Mr Frown isn't even SATIRICAL. Does anyone even know who these people ARE?

Lord Sideous again: "The whole Hard Labour Party are united in wanting Mr Frown to lead us into the next General Election."

But that's really not the point: the HARD question is do they really want Mr Frown to lead them for the four years AFTER a General Election. Obviously not.

Hard Labour are finished and they know it. They're not even waiting for the General Election to BURY them before starting to FALL APART.

Like the Conservatories before them, Hard Labour are probably over for a political generation.

That means it's up to the Liberal Democrats, once again, to be the EFFECTIVE Opposition.

Because if Mr Balloon has all the luck, then that's bad luck for EVERYONE else!


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Day 3235: Mr Frown – an apology

Monday:


That so-called “newspaper”, “the Scum” has found a whole NEW way to be OBSCENE. They’ve taken the hurt and anger of a grieving mother and USED it, used HER, as an excuse to attack the Prime Monster… for his HANDWRITING.

We KNOW that Mr Frown cannot see from one eye and has problems with the other. We KNOW that fiddly handwriting is DIFFICULT for him. Nevertheless, he – quite RIGHTLY – takes the trouble to PERSONALLY write to the families of each fallen soldier.

You can UNDERSTAND Mrs Janes’ anger. But what does “The Scum” get out of it?

Is it their point to criticise Mr Frown for not thinking much of the soldiers whose lives are lost in Afghanistan? That seems to be a particularly CRUEL twisting of the facts: he does something that is personal and unmediated – un-SPUN – and for him actually quite physically difficult. It would not be the same if he got someone else to write it, or to check it or, worst of all to TYPE it – yes, I know that’s what Mrs Janes asks for, but she is angry and hurting and being used.

Is it a legitimate question about Mr Frown’s Afghanistan policy, a policy that looks increasingly difficult to UNDERSTAND let alone support, in the light of the election fiasco? “The Scum” certainly don’t seem to be addressing any of the REAL issues: are we helping or hindering the Afghan people; does this “war” (or “occupation” really) make Great Britain safer or in fact more dangerous; can we actually WIN against the Taliban without TALKING to them; do our soldiers get the support and equipment that they need to do the job we ask of them?

So is it just MOCKING someone for making a spelling mistake? (And in fact, Mrs Janes criticises his spelling of “comfort” claiming Mr Frown wrote “cumfort” when clearly it actually a POORLY-FORMED first letter “o”, not a misspelling.) Because surely there would never ever EVER be a TYPO in the pages of “The Scum”? Oh wait…!

It is a TERRIBLE SHAME that Mrs Janes has felt insulted by what was meant to be a gesture of comfort. You can see how it must be awful for her, and how she could react with ANGER to even a kindly meant letter. Mr Frown has now phoned her to apologise and I hope this helps her pain.

I wonder though that “the Scum” does not feel the urge to apologise too. Because they’ve only made things worse not better.

PS:

In best Doctor-Who-companion style, Daddy Richard has twisted his ankle. It has BALLOONED up like… well Mr Balloon’s opinion of himself, and all he can say is: “Dear FLUFF, how did Auntie Jennie stand the PAIN!”


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Day 3194: Flash Gordon, I love you, but you've only got 14 hours to save the world… again!

Tuesday:


Mr Frown the Prime Monster has addressed the Hard Labour conference, brought to you from the DEATH STAR…


Ladies, gentlemen, Lord Emperor Mandletine, we're here to short change the world all over again. WE broke it! YOU bought it! I'm here to tell you we can break it one more time.

As Mrs Bucket told the Newsnight Show only last night, it's always at least ten years before any changes you can make start to have an effect on the economy so only now are we reaping the rewards of my masterful handling of… hang on, who wrote this?

No, look: since 1997 my Government (not Tony's) has achieve many things: two wars (er, lost), Magna Carta (er, abolished), promises on tuition fees and electoral reform (er, broken), the economy, oh god, the economy…!

No, no, look: no one could have foreseen that the economic cycle of growth and recession that has persisted for four-hundred years wouldn't have come to a completely unprecedented end just because I said so.

And no, Vince Cable doesn't count because he's a Liberal Democrat and they DO NOT EXIST! They do NOT! They're not like the FAIRIES that are going to give Chancellor Sooty the PIXIE GOLD he needs to make his budget balance. They're NOT REAL! There's no such thing as Macra Liberal Democrats!

No, no, no, look: when I said "no more boom and bust" I was misquoted; what I actually meant "no, MORE boom and bust" and I've delivered on that! You've had the biggest boom and the deepest bust since the Age of Steam!

This country faces not only two Parties… er, I mean it DOES only face TWO Parties, there isn't a THIRD Party, just that it it's not ONLY facing them…er, not only two Parties but two directions!

That's why you need Hard Labour! We have TWO FACES!

No, no, no, NO, look: You need a Party that will take ACTION!

One party wanted to "do nothing" – the Conservatory Party of Britain. They are consistently wrong all the time: on the economic call of the century they called it wrong… we know… because they AGREED WITH US!

Light touch regulation! Being extremely relaxed about people getting stinking rich! THOSE are the policies of the Conservatory Party! They were OUR policies TOO!

Remember how people queued for their money while we DITHERED over Northern Rock! Remember how much was wiped off the stock market while we DELAYED over saving the banks! Remember how we are STILL PUTTING OFF acting on bankers' bonuses!

Only Hard Labour takes action like this!


The next election will be the biggest chance for CHANGE in a generation! Just THINK how things could be different if only we had a LABOUR government instead of the current shower!

Under Hard Labour, there will be no I.D.iot cards!

Under Hard Labour there will be a referendum on electoral reform!

Under Hard Labour there would be investment to SAVE our Post Office not close them!

And if you think about "antisocial behaviour" just imagine what Hard Labour might have done about it! Criminalising all young people for just "having nothing to do"; police checking all parents for "wanting to look after kids"; keeping DNA databases on anyone who the police "happen to think looks at them funny"; locking people up at random without trial or even telling them what they've done is… THIS is the antisocial behaviour of a Hard Labour Government! Literally ANTI-SOCIAL: used to tear apart the social fabric of our county, to grind down our people's trust in each other and to bulldoze our traditional rights and liberties!

And with a Hard Labour Government I WOULD HAVE THAT POWER!!!!!!


Forget the broken promises of the past! I offer you NEW promises that we will break in the FUTURE!

This election will be about YOUR future not MY future… because I haven't GOT a future!

Comrades, as the poet said: dream no small dreams… for I have insomnia and I have to move house!

Morituri te salutamus, and good bye!

[Cue music: M People's "Throwing On Up"; crowd reluctantly rises to feet to begin applause accompanied by choking gestures from Emperor Mandletine and gasping and wheezing from doubting Tomas in cabinet]

[Frown pauses and abruptly returns to microphone]

Oh, and in answer to the cheeky beggar who wanted to put the question to the First Lord Sideous, er, I mean Emperor Mandletine…

…it may LOOK like it's full of holes and only half hanging together but I tell you this is a FULLY ARMED and OPERATIONAL Labour Party! Prescott, you may fire when ready!

[sound of comedy engine stalling and dying; former Minister for Magical Accidents appears looking embarrassed; Emperor Mandletine facepalms]



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Day 3082: Oh so NOW he believes in Electoral Reform! (UPDATED!)

Wednesday UPDATE: 13.30

Well, I HOPED that Captain Clegg would ask the Prime Monster to agree that Parliament should cancel their hols until reform of politics is sorted out...

...and call me a GIRAFFE if that isn't exactly what Captain Clegg did! Yay! Go us!

(Bobbins, Mr Frown said "No!")

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Day 3082: Oh so NOW he believes in Electoral Reform!

Wednesday:


It is Prime Monster's Questionable Time today and I hope that Lib Dem Leader Captain Clegg will take the opportunity to WELCOME Mr Frown's late arrival at the Reform Club, remind him that ALL Parties say that the time to SEIZE the opportunity is now, and therefore ASK if the Prime Monster will join him in calling for Parliament to cancel their summer holidays and stay sitting until reform is really, really sorted.

It's a GENUINE offer; a chance for the Prime Monster not to look like a numpty and a splendid way to drag Mr Balloon along too.

This is our chance to TAKE BACK POWER!

I was very depressed at the thought that Mr Frown's salvation meant that the reform agenda's goose was cooked, but this latest WHEEZE to reinvent himself as Mr Progressive MIGHT just open the door to fair votes, whether Mr Frown intends it or not. It's all about taking the INITIATIVE and getting some MOMENTUM behind the project so that, with public support, it becomes deeply EMBARRASSING for Mr Frown OR Mr Balloon to be seen to be holding it back.

We've got to watch out for the OBVIOUS efforts of people who want to DERAIL the reform process too.

I've heard people say we shouldn't have PR because that was to blame for the two BNP candidates getting elected to the Euro Parliament in the vote last Thursday. Well presumably they would say that the three BNP local councillors who ALSO elected last Thursday mean we shouldn't use First Pass the Port EITHER.

Face it, the BNP got elected because a LOT of people chose to vote for RACISTS, and A LOT MORE people DIDN'T BOTHER to vote at all. Beating the extremists should NOT be about putting a FIX on the election with a bad voting system; it should be about persuading people that it matters that they vote so that we can beat them IN A FAIR FIGHT.

Though throwing eggs at BNP Leader Mr Nick Slytherin is very funny quite, quite wrong. Ahem.

So let us go out there and see if we cannot convince the Prime Monster that reform isn't just INEVITABLE, but very much something that HE CAN BE A PART OF!

And then later this afternoon we can vote to have a General Election anyway!

PS:

I did wonder, the other day, if Mr Johnson & Johnson hadn't done some kind of DEAL with Mr Frown where Mr Frown agrees to some (limited) electoral reform for a General Election next year in return for which Mr Johnson & Johnson agrees to be Home Secretary and not force a General Election next WEEK!


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Day 3080: The Gordinator – but is it Judgement Day or Salvation?

Monday:


After terrible results in the local elections and terrible results in the European elections, today the Hard Labour party will take a good long look at itself and realise that they cannot win the next General Election. And knowing that, they will think about getting rid of Mr Frown and decide: "why bother?"

If they were GOING to do it, they would have done it last Friday; they bottled it, just like the Prime Monster did two years ago.

The IRONY is that Mr Frown has done SO BADLY that there's now no point in getting rid of him.



Ask yourself: why WOULD they go through all the pain of doing the deed – and a well thrown mobile phone can really HURT if it gets you! – only to install some luckless lacklustre schmoe (naming no names but it would be Mr Johnson and Johnson) who promptly holds a general election and is annihilated.

I suppose it might JUST ABOUT ease Mr Frown's burden if he knew that the NEXT fellow would be Prime Monster for even shorter than him, but he can still have that pleasure if he waits until May 2010, so where's the incentive to go now?

What does this mean for reform? Well, it's a bit of a DISASTER really. Mr Frown is dead set against making fair votes, and even if he DID – supposing he's maybe done some DEAL with Mr Johnson and Johnson to introduce some AV+ in exchange for Postman Pat laying down his career by moving from Post Office to Home Office – no one is going to BELIEVE in any reform that they bring in. The Conservatories and reactionary Hard Labour peers in the House of Lords Club will find a way to block it; Mr Balloon will wave his hands and say Constitutional Reform is a sideshow and there should be a General Election instead; and there's no longer the year-and-a-day needed to Parliament Act it through over their heads.

It is looking more and more like there will have to be a fluffy elephant handcuffed to the gates of Parliament when it comes to MPs holiday time!


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Day 3076: Frown… and out?

Wednesday:


The rats are no longer even forming an orderly queue to get off as the doomed ship Gordtanic steams headlong towards the electoral iceberg.

First the Second-Home Secretary, Ms Jacquie Spliff, left to spend more time with her family and their video collection; now the insanely perky Secretary of State for Communists and Illogical Government, Ms Hazel Smears, is getting back to her roots.

On top of that, it looks increasingly like Mr Frown will lose ALL of the holders of the "great offices of state".

Chancellor Sooty looks certain to go – he's the man who does the ADDING UP for the Nation and he has just admitted that he got his own sums a BIT WRONG. And even if he hadn't, the Prime Monster's long-term homunculus, Mr Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancer, has coveted Sooty's job for, well, almost as long as Mr Frown coveted Lord Blairimort's! At Prime Monster's Questionable Time, Mr Balloon repeatedly asked the Prime Monster to say if Sooty would still be there next week – repeatedly Mr Frown refused to say yes. Is this the black spot, or what?

And apparently Lord Mandelbrot, Fractal of Darkness and currently the (Murky) Business Secretary, has his eye on taking the role of Foreign Secretary from Mr Millipede. People are saying that "it's what he's always wanted". I don't think that can be true – what Lord Mandelbrot has always wanted is… well, isn't it about time we had another Prime Monster from the House of Lords Club?

Funnily enough, I had a talk with Daddy Alex about this just at the weekend. I thought that if he was GOING to reshuffle off a lot of his Cabinet AFTER the election, he might as well do it NOW ahead of one: a few judicial SACKINGS – both Ms Spliff and Ms Smears have been guilty of egregious expensives claims; knocking off Mr Geoff "Buff" Hoon and that nasty squit Mr Purnell at the same time wouldn't hurt either – would help his authority, putting it off only looks like more DITHERING.

Daddy put the other side: ministers going NOW would look like the Government was IMPLODING.

Well, we've put it to the test and it turns out Daddy was RIGHT and I was WRONG!

This is APPALLING for the Hard Labour Party: there is wall-to-wall coverage that Mr Frown has lost it. Even the Grauniad is calling on him to GO! (Subtext: go, Mr Frown, so we can say "vote Labour" again.)

As Captain Clegg put it in the House:

"It is clear that Hard Labour is finished; the only choice is between the Conservatories and the Liberal Democrats!"

That's PARTICULARLY appropriate for these European elections, where the Liberal Democrats have fought a strong and positive Euro campaign, proud to declare that we are STRONGER TOGETHER; the alternative is a variety of Parties (red, blue or green) playing the Nationalist, Protectionist, Little Englander card.

Only the Liberal Democrats are offering the country LEADERSHIP on Europe, on the Economy, on reform.

The polls are ERRATIC at best, but if anyone has the momentum, then it's US, with at least three polls showing we will come SECOND in the elections tomorrow, ahead of the Government. And funnily enough I've heard from CONSERVATORY voters that this is even tempting them to support Liberal Democrats to push Hard Labour into third in the hope that this will finally push Mr Frown out of the window.

Getting rid of the Prime Monster isn't ENOUGH… but it's become NECESSARY. Like Mr Speaker of the Housemartin (seen at PMQ's today desperately threatening to cancel playtime if people didn't listen nicely to his friend the Prime Monster), Mr Frown has become a ROADBLOCK to REFORM.

What we NEED is a RENEWAL of our political system.

That means a new Constitution and a General Election.

And the only way to get there is first to get a new Labour Prime Monster – hmmm, new Labour… nahh, it would never work – possibly Mr Alan Johnson & Johnson, the No More Tears Secretary. If Mr Frown were to step aside, then his replacement could quickly convene the House, pretty much along the lines Captain Clogg set out to take back power, to agree the independent system for MPs expensives, fix the length of Parliaments, change the electoral system, introduce an elected House of Lords, and HOLD A GENERAL ELECTION.

That's what we NEED… but it's NOT what is going to happen. Mr Frown is NOT going to go willingly; he's not interested in putting the good of the country ahead of his own selfish interest.

Mr Frown will hang on by his bitten fingernails. There will be no prompt election – the vote for the dissolution of Parliament will unite Hard Labour – it will be another year. There will be NO constitutional reform, or any reform will be TAINTED by his TOUCH OF DEATH, and Mr Balloon will win a General Election and kick any reform into the long grass for another decade.

Mr Frown's ONLY legacy (unless by some miracle he's persuaded to go on Friday) will be to entrench corruption for another generation.


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Day 2985: Humility or Humiliation?

Wednesday:


So, it was Mr Frown's big day. He got to address a joint session of both houses of Americaland's congress. This is, apparently, an honour previously only bestowed on two MANIACS, a NOTORIOUS DRUNK and the man who managed to lose a general election despite polling the most votes Hard Labour has ever won.

So he was understandably PEEVED that Chancellor Sooty had another of his inconvenient bouts of HONESTY and said that maybe a little HUMILITY was called for, and maybe the Government should admit to getting a few things WRONG.

"Will I ARSE!" was Mr Frown's reply.

…I PARAPHRASE! Speaking on the The Today Programme, what the Prime Monster ACTUALLY said: "There's always a need for humility and there's always a need to accept collective responsibility."

Before going on to say: "I'm just not going to accept that any of this is MY responsibility." Okay, I made that up too, but it was the ESSENCE of his reply.

"I don't think I would run away from responsibility for what happens," he asserted. Before doing EXACTLY that, blaming the banks, the world economy, the Secret Conspiracy of the Illuminati and the DOG for eating his homework.

"No, no, the sub-prime mortgage lending happened in America, not here," said Mr Frown; "and I think you'll find that ABM Amrose, that was in Holland, not in Great Britain at all. You're not pinning THIS one on me, sonny."

Well, I seem to recall that the Northern Rock – or Northern On the Rocks – managed to gamble and lose on the money markets with no help from anyone. Their business plan relied on cheep lending always being available, overlooking the most basic "interest rates can go up as well as down" rule of banking. And the Halifax managed to get quite heavily into its own sort of sub-prime lending, as the British property market went through the stratosphere like an overheated balloon… right up to the point where the bubble, and the balloon, burst.

But setting aside the geographical quibbles, is it not the case that Mr Frown WAS the man in charge of the economy for the last DECADE? Wasn't he terribly, terribly PROUD of this fact? More to the point, didn't he spend much of that time courting, wooing, positively sucking-up-to and encouraging the banking sector to do pretty much all of the things that got it into so much trouble?

The CULTURE of banking in Great Britain is defined from the top down. It's a culture FERMENTED by the Hard Labour attitude of "being intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich". And it leads to the sort of WILLY-WAVING where "Fred the Shred" is egged on to buy a busted bank just so that he can shout: "Phwoar! Just look at the size of my… pension!"

Later Lord Mandlebrot appeared on the Newsnight show. He was in Washington at the Ambassador's reception – mmm, nice chocolates – but his shadow was able to join Mr Paxo in the studio to defend the Hard Labour record on regulation. Great Britain, he told us, had had excellent regulation, but it was overwhelmed by an unprecedented event. And the airbags worked perfectly until the car crashed too.

Mr Frown does not suffer from an excess of humility. HUBRIS, on the other fluffy foot…

It we are going to LEARN anything from where we've got to after the last ten years, if we are going to build a BETTER FUTURE from the rubble of the economy, then we've got to face up to the mistakes that were made. Too much easy borrowing; too little restraint; too much money spent on useless things, from management consultants to middle-eastern wars; too little investment in returning opportunity to ordinary folks.

It's no good living in DENIAL – you only get BITTEN by de CROCODILES.

It's a pity Mr Frown didn't say THAT to the US Congress.


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Day 2877: We're Not Out of the Bretton Woods Yet

Sunday:


So Mr Frown struts the world stage, master of all he surveys, and brings us a world summit pledge to "restore growth" (also, presumably, cure Cancer, achieve World Peace and above all resurrect the Golden Goose returning things to normal).

All jolly good as far as it goes. The only problem being it hasn’t actually GONE anywhere yet; all of this TALK is JUST TALK.

The summit HASN'T arrived at any agreement.

The economic indicators are still all set to BLEAK.

And the bankers are still paying themselves BONUSES while foreclosing on businesses and homeowners.

This ain't over yet!


As the late and much lamented Humph could have put it: now as the last REINDEER of GOVERNMENT DEBT is hitched to the SLEIGH of the Bank Rescue Package… and as we hunker down in the SNOW DRIFT of recession watching the HAZARD WARNING lights of the Bank of England blink away the last electricity in the battery of the economy… it's time to look at the final scores.

Graham and Tim have got the Bretton Woods agreement, to stabilize exchange rates and ensure free trade; establishing the gold standard, later replaced with the Dollar as reserve currency for the World; and setting up the World Bank and International Monetary Fund with the power and the ready cash to intervene to support economies in difficulty.

While Gordon and Mandy have got, er, a statement from the G20 that they will continue to make VIGOROUS EFFORTS.

Riiiiiight…

Meanwhile, back in the REAL World, with Japan, Germany and indeed the whole Eurozone already in recession, I think we need to admit that we are in recession here too.

(Yes, I KNOW that it takes "two consecutive quarters of negative growth" before the Government has to admit it, but just because we haven't had the statistics YET doesn't mean that we can't be IN the second of those quarters.)

The STAGGERING news that Citibank is to cull seventy-five thousand bankers worldwide, many of those jobs being in their Stump at Canary Wharf, merely comes on top of a week of many other redundancies, including ten thousand jobs lost at BT.

While, as young Master Gideon could tell you – indeed it's hard to shut him up! – the pound has taken an, er, pounding on the money markets.


Inflation is A BIT LESS out of control than last month (though "bizarre" doesn't begin to cover the newspapers describing this as a "fall" in prices when prices are "merely" increasing by more-than-twice the Government's preferred rate rather than last month's two-and-a-half times). In fairness, the price of petrol and some food HAS come back down a bit, but the figures simply do not suggest we are deflating yet!


You can't even DREAM your way out of the recession with the news that the Premium Bond prizes are being cut.



So what's to be done?

Well, clearly the BIG problem is Americaland.

Bretton Woods was achievable because America was in the driving seat: economically virile and yet with huge moral authority; they were able to press for a system that supported international trade because there was no political pressure to put their own national interest first. (Plus they still REMEMBERED that nations putting their own interests first led directly to the Great Depression.)

They had the will and wisdom to push through what was right, what was good for everybody.

Today, that's not the case. America is in a dire economic strait and has all the moral authority of Mr Russell Brand addressing the Concerned Mothers of America.

And the pressure towards protectionism is high and growing. The cries of "save us! save us!" from the US car dinosaurs are merely the first.

President Elect Barry O wasn't AT the G20 summit, saying "America only has one President at a time". Unfortunately, with the Monkey-in-Chief lamer than a duck that's gone hunting with Darth Cheney, it seems that America doesn't have ANY Presidents at this time.

I think that he SHOULD have been there, if for no more reason than APPEARANCES, but my SUSPICION is that his people and the Monkey-in-Chief's people couldn't come to an agreement that one or other of them would endorse the other's position. Think about it, Barry O is NOT going to continue with the policies of the Monkey-in-Chief; but the Monkey-in-Chief isn't going to take orders from his successor. So Barry CAN'T go the summit because he's going to be thinking he may have to reverse some of the positions that the dying administration takes. And as a consequence, the American government ends up doing NOTHING for three months.

With both China and Saudi Arabia declining the offer to shore up the world economy, we NEED someone to step up to the task of putting the pieces back together again.


Step forward, Mr Frown… oh, maybe not.

What Mr Frown is doing ISN'T leadership.

He took a few PANIC MEASURES and because he took them first, and they looked OK, other people started taking them too. That's not LEADERSHIP, that's just being the first LEMMING in the queue.


What we need is someone to give a BOOT up the fluffy BOTTOM to the Banking sector to get them lending again. A recession is bad enough without perfectly GOOD businesses going to the wall because they just can't get the same credit that they used to. Using the banks that the Government controls (Northern Rock) or soon WILL control (all the others) to DRIVE the market by offering attractive and sensible loans seems a logical place to start.

The irony, of course, is that in the LONG TERM we don't need ONE great big World Bank to save us; we need lots more SMALLER banks, spreading the risk and being closer to their customers so that they better understand the people to whom they are lending. We need to build a new infrastructure that supports SMALL and discourages the sort of massive super-banks and super-corporations that are both impossible to control and unthinkable to let fail.

Mr Frown, with his encouragement for bank MERGERS and increases in CENTRAL Government spending is heading in exactly the WRONG direction.

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Day 2830: Did the Turkeys Just Vote for Christmas? Or will the Dead Cat-Monster Keep Bouncing?

Tuesday:


It was quite a SHARP INTAKE of BREATH moment when the American Congress voted to reject the multi-billion dollar "Bankers' Unaccountable Rescue Plan" (or BURP) put to them by the Monkey-in-Chief and Secretary Hank "trust me I'm a banker" Paulson.

Now, the Senators of Americaland have accepted the Monkey-in-Chief's revised BURP (now with added slap-on-the-wrist and time-on-the-naughty step).

But will the Congressmen choose to follow their lead or are they going to remain focused on hanging onto their slender majorities the righteous anger of their constituents at a plan that lets the bankers get away with ruining the economy?

To an extent they've got to, because a failed bailout is actually worse than no bailout at all.

You see, the PROBLEM with proposing a plan like the Monkey's BURP is this: once you've SAID it, the greedy fat-cat-monsters of the Stock Exchange and Wall Street start to EXPECT it as a RIGHT.

So think about this before you float the notion that you might add an extra digit to the national debt to buy up all the TOXIC WASTE that they've been pretending is lovely yummy goodness:

BEFORE you mention it, they will be grumbling and griping and worrying. And maybe one or two are actually in danger of failing.

But AFTER you make the suggestion… and then threaten to take it away again, even though they never had it, they throw a tsunami-class tantrum, fling their toys out of the pram – and more importantly, fling their shares out of the window – and before you know it they've trolleyed the entire American economy.

And the Asian economy.

And the European economy (well… not so much, actually).


But here is a THOUGHT: just looking at London, rather than Americaland, in the last two or three years (2005, 2006, 2007), thousands (in fact reports say at least THREE thousands) of people working in the City got BONUSES of over a MILLION POUNDS.

This year, it turns out that they did NOT REALLY deserve them!

So, if they all gave the money back… that could be (3 x >3,000 x >£1,000,000 = ) nearly ten thousand-million pounds to help out the banks that they have caused to collapse.

You can see why people are QUITE CROSS with the City banking types. That may not be QUITE as much as the Monkey-in-Chief's three-hundred-and-eighty thousand-million pound bailout bonanza… in fact it's not even enough to buy the twenty-five thousand-million pound Busted and Bungling Building Society… but it's a sizeable step on the way!

And as you can imagine the same is true on Wall Street. Which is why the American Congresspersons are getting bombarded by e-mails from ordinary Joes and Jos saying "oi!"

(And when (millionaire) Mr Balloon makes silly statements saying "we're all in it together" that is why some people might think "well, mate, some of you are more it together than others".)


In a lot of ways it is the INJUSTICE that most sticks in your fluffy throat. After all, these losers were gambling with OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY.

That is why Mr Clogg is quite right to call for a guarantee for all savers that their deposits will be safe.

And that is why Mr Frown is – typically – rubbish for refusing to agree.

"I'll do anything to save the economy…" says Mr Frown "…but I won't do THAT!"

Does he think he's MEATLOAF?

Greater protection for savers is also one of the changes that were added to the BURP to make it more acceptable to Senators, along with a larger public stake in the banks that their money is used to rescue, and stricter regulations… along with some pork-barrelling stuff like tax cuts for small businesses.

House Dumbocrats would apparently also like to add some measures to protect people against losing their homes. Homelessness is terribly destructive of lives and families, and the whole community suffers when you turn potentially productive contributors into welfare claimants, so this is obviously a GOOD IDEA. The Replutocrats are against it such measures on principle.

Who knows what is going to happen?

When TWO-THIRDS of Replutocratic Congresspersons are willing, eager even, to vote against their own Monkey-in-Chief, when the contribution of the Replutocratic Candidate for the White House is thought to have made matters worse even by his own side, and with the markets reacting badly to pretty much EVERYTHING that Washington says, then ANYTHING might happen!

And frankly, it probably will!

Day 2823: "…and here is my husband who's going to talk about not using his family as props"*

Tuesday:


*Yes, this is the cartoon in Wednesday's Metro, but it doesn't half sum up Mr Frown's self-serving double-talk.



Mr Frown has made his speech to the Labour Conference, and people are describing it as "the speech of his life". Which just goes to show how many BAD speeches Mr Frown has made.

He starts with an apology… no, sorry, I've actually READ the speech now, rather than just heard the SPIN. He DOESN'T start with an apology: he starts by blaming everyone else for hurting his feelings over that thing where he put poor people's taxes up by 100%.

"So what happened with 10p, it stung me because it really hurt that suddenly people felt I wasn't on the side of people on middle and modest incomes"

So just let me get this right: the 10p tax rate rise was bad because it stung… Mr Frown?

Suddenly people "FELT" that he wasn't on their side?

This is the Portillo-language of "people THOUGHT the Conservatories were arrogant".

People THOUGHT the Conservatories were arrogant because the Conservatories WERE arrogant, Mr Frown and – sting you though it might – people FELT you weren't on their side because YOU WERE NOT ON THEIR SIDE.

YOU took money from the lowest earners to give a tax cut to the better off – those on middle AND top incomes – because you thought you were being jolly clever and because you thought it would help you win an election.

And the Liberal Democrats TOLD you what you had done. The time to APOLOGISE was immediately after Sir Mr the Merciless's reply to your 2007 budget; the time to fix this was then, eighteen months ago.

So you're still not sorry, you are still arrogant and you still refuse to listen to what people tell you. Believe me, Mr Frown, this sort of story NEVER ENDS WELL for the lead… particularly when you’re a rubbish leader.



Continuing his speech, Mr Frown then takes some time to address the APPALLING CATACLYSM that has engulfed the economy but which is absolutely in no way his fault in spite of his being in charge of regulation of the banking industry for the last eleven years.


He starts by putting things in perspective:

"In truth, we haven't seen anything happening like this since the industrial revolution"

Er, sort of in perspective. In the sense of "lost all". But no, be fair, apart from the World War, the Russian Revolution, the Great Depression, the collapse of the Gold Standard, the OTHER World War, the Oil Shock, the Three Day Week, The Winter of Discontent, The Eighties, the Collapse of Communism, the Stagflation that almost destroyed the Japanese, Black Wednesday and the Dot.com Crash… no, we've never seen ANYTHING like this before.

So with that in mind, he tells us what the Government is going to do:


"Let us be clear the modern role of government is not to provide everything, but it must be to enable everyone."

…which is why the Labour are legislating to BAN EVERYTHING!

No, sorry, what he ACTUALLY says is that he has a five point plan to solve the Credit Crunch Crisis. Hilariously, it's been written by Ms Do As I Say Not Do as I Do.

Here's his plan:

"First, transparency - all transactions need to be transparent and not hidden"

Because wouldn't it be NICE if the Government DIDN'T keep resisting Freedom of Information requests, and what about some proper inquiries into the Al Yamama arms deal, and that small Adventure in the Middle East.


"Second, sound banking, a requirement to demonstrate that risks can be managed and priced for bad times as well as good"

Oooh, so do let's see your risk assessments for, I don’t know, all of those ATOMIC REACTORS you have decided to build. And what are the risks of selling them all off to the French? Or the environmental impact assessment of a Third Heathrow Runway.


"Thirdly, responsibility - no member of a bank's board should be able to say they did not understand the risks they were running and walk away from them"

That would be like Mr Frown actually taking responsibility for the War in Iraq and taking ACTUAL actual responsibility for the 10p Tax Rise. You known, as opposed to saying how people had HURT HIS POOR FEELINGS by their reaction to BEING ROBBED.


"Fourth, integrity - removing conflicts of interest so that bonuses should not be based on short term speculative deals but should be a reward for hard work, effort and enterprise"

So that would be the equivalent of, oh say, the Prime Monster giving up his arbitrary power to call a general election based on the short term speculation about the opinion polls.


"And fifth, global standards and supervision because the flows of capital are global, then supervision can no longer just be national it has to be global too."

'Cos our standing is SOOOO high in the World at the moment, we could really DO with setting the global standards. Presumably they would involve things like everyone agreeing to play by the United Nations rules and then maybe actually STICKING to the United Nations rules rather than going it solo when we didn't like what everyone else said?

I could sit here and do this all day. The simple fact of the matter is this: DON'T, just DO NOT start laying down the law when you are not willing to stick to the same rules yourself. Put your own house in order first, Mr Frown.



Having put the world to rights – with a wave of his magic wand – he then goes into a bit of a SELF-JUSTIFYING reverie:

"You know some people say that there's an inevitable political cycle in this country - as sure as night follows day.

"I don't agree."

…and that's why I'm abolishing elections… oops, did I say that aloud?

And his raison d'être. FAIRNESS. (Translation: I wanted to be Prime Monster all these years and it's turned out to be too hard. IT'S NOT FAIR!!!!!)


"And why do we always strive for fairness?"

Is it because no one in the right minds would admit to striving for UNFAIRNESS, Mr Frown?


Quite seriously, the idea that Conservatories' aim is deliberate UNFAIRNESS is both stupid and a lie. Obviously the Conservatories' IDEA of what fairness MEANS is DIFFERENT to the Labour and different again to the Liberal Democrat one.

The Conservatories, it seems to me, believe that it is FAIR to let people KEEP what they have – even if that means that people with a lot keep a lot and people with nothing get zippo.

The Liberal Democrats believe that it is FAIR to give people the very best chance in life and to let them make what they can of that, even if it means that some people succeed and some do not, and we accept that your definition of success is different for each individual.

But the Labour, and only the Labour, believe that it is FAIR for THEM to decide what each person deserves based only on the WHIM of who the Prime Monster thinks is good (hard-working families and little tiny babies, at the moment, apparently) and who is bad (people who are single, or differently familied or believe that life is too short to waste every waking moment slaving for the minimum wage, and/or everyone else).

Mr Frown might call that "fairness" but I call it FEUDALISM.


Oh, no, hang on, I am wrong, apparently it's because Mr Frown has "fairness DNA". I'd be FASCINATED to hear what Mr Professor Richard thinks of THAT!


"For me fairness is treating others how we would be treated ourselves"

Oh, so THAT's why the tax and benefit system seems so curiously well tailored for a married couple with young children living in central London on around a hundred grand a year. It's just Mr Frown treating all the rest of us the way he would treat himself. As indeed he does.



"For too long we've developed only some of the talents of some people – but the modern route to social mobility is developing all the talents of all the people…"

Which clearly explain why the Prime Monster has spent a DECADE making it so FRIGHTENINGLY EXPENSIVE to go to University that no one without wealthy parents DARES to run up the debt gambling their entire future on it. The Labour far from developing the talents of all the people has killed social mobility STONE DEAD.


"...helping those who are working their way up from very little and lifting up those in the middle who want to get on. It means supporting what really matters – hard work and effort and enterprise"

Where by "rewarding" the Prime Monster actually means CRUSHING them with a student loan, CRIPPLING them with some of the longest working hours in Europe in the name of so-called productivity, and ENSLAVING them in a hire 'em and fire 'em economy… which then goes bankrupt thanks to the unregulated GREED of those at the top who you have been actively encouraging for the last ten years in order to big up the City of London.


"And fairness is why Harriet Harpic is introducing the first ever equalities bill."

…about ten years late…

"Fairness is why Ed Miliband is ensuring that community and third sector organisations can play their proper part in every neighbourhood."

…so that we can dump our responsibilities on the voluntary sector…

"Fairness is why John Denham is extending university access,"

…if not ability to take up the so generous offer of a lifetime of indentured servitude…

"why Ruth Kelly has introduced for the first time free bus travel for pensioners,"

Would that be in any way similar to the Freedom Pass scheme that gives free travel to Londoners over sixty? The Freedom Pass that was introduced in 1974?

And then I find that the Government announced this policy not in 2008 or 2007 but in 2006… and that a scheme of this kind existed in Wales before then.

Daddy Alex asks if this is me suggesting that Mr Ruth Kelly is HISTORY? The answer, it is YES!

"and why John Hutton and our Labour Members of the European Parliament but are fighting to free agency workers from the scourge of exploitation."

…by any means that avoids granting them human rights like proper citizens.


But MOST egregious of all:

"And it is why our whole party is leading the fight against the British National Party."

Cough, splutter, choke.

You want to "lead" the fight, you do not and I mean this, you DO NOT issue leaflets that suggest that Liberal Democrat policies are "pro-immigrant" as though this is a bad thing; you do not make false claims that inflate the British Nasty Party's prospects which ironically then see them get elected; and absolutely above all you STOP treating people as bad ONLY because they are from ABROAD. You can make the case for managing immigration responsibly but there is no excuse, none whatsoever for automatically treating people, human beings, as criminals. Your refusal, for example, to grant citizenship to women who have been trafficked for prostitution is nothing short of shameful and by policies like that and others, and by the language you use in description of refugees you make the British Nasty Party's case for them.

"the other side of welcoming newcomers who can help Britain is being tough about excluding those adults who won't and can't"

Those are the words of the Prime Monster. In this very speech. As he promises to keep out the immigrants just the way Australia does.

Mr Frown, the Labour is leading the fight FOR the BNP. And again I say, put your house in order.



And then we get to the barfworthy bit. Little tiny babies, I'm telling you.

"For me, the fairer future starts with putting children first…"

See?


"…and so I pledge here today in Manchester starting in over 30 communities, and then over 60, we will, stage by stage, extend free nursery places for two year olds for every parent who…"

…can only make ends meet by going back out to work before they've even had time to get to know their child. The real TRAGEDY here is that Mr Frown cannot even see how MONSTROUS he is being. He thinks he is doing GOOD – just like the paternalistic Victorian moralisers who threw children into the workhouse. But it is NOT good, is it? It cannot be good to EXPECT parents to leave their children in the hands of others.

When did we GIVE UP on hard-working families actually BEING families?

"That's the fairness parents want"

You know, I really don't think that it is, Mr Frown. And if you came out of your BUNKER more than once a year for a set-piece speech, if you actually TALKED to people the way Mr Clogg talks to people week in, week out, I think you would know that too.

"And so today I announce my intention to introduce ground-breaking legislation to enshrine in the law of the land Labour's pledge to end child poverty."

So, er, the Labour are going to make child poverty… illegal? What, people are going to be ARRESTED for letting their children be poor? That bit I said about workhouses, I didn't mean it LITERALLY! And yet, Mr Frown, it seems, does…


Anyway, never mind the economy, never mind being hard up, Mr Frown promises to spend money like water to make things good for the children (won't somebody think of the children). It's not that they aren't good things – catch-up tuition in reading, wireless internet access – or at least not bad things – arbitrary pledges of rights to have your school overhauled if it's failing – but money has to come from somewhere and not just J K Rowling.

That's not ME saying that, that's MR Frown in this very speech. And yet how QUICKLY the Prime Monster does forget:

"But you know, when it comes to public spending you can't just wave a magic wand to conjure up the money - not even with help from Harry Potter"

Oh, Jo… sighs.

Anyway, for the rest of us he's also going to find a cure for cancer, abolish prescription charges and phase in immortality on the NHS.



In the final part of his speech, Mr Frown turns on those people who are to BLAME for all the BAD THINGS. It's not a spoiler to tell you that it's POOR PEOPLE and THE TORIES.

(Yes, I know that’s OBVIOUSLY a contradiction; don't blame me, I'm not the terminally confused sulk-meister who thinks he's Lord Blairimort!)


"Our aim is a something for something, nothing for nothing Britain"

"the dole is only for those looking for work or actively preparing for it"

"Fairness demands that we both punish and prevent"

"Nobody in Britain should get to take more out of the system than they are willing to put in"

This is Mr Frown in VENGEFUL OLD-TESTAMENT PROPHET mood. Obviously, the Labour crowd LOVED this bit.

It is OF COURSE the WICKEDEST form of selfishness: it's the assertion that the poor deserve to be poor; they shouldn't get help if they won’t help themselves. Even at the height of Queen Maggie's power, the Conservatories would have shied away from saying THAT sort of thing. At least in public. How vile and low to hear it from a Labour Prime Monster

If I might go all Senator Joe Bidet on you for a moment:

You start with far-fetched faith in big city bankers. Your policies are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, misplaced, IRRELEVANT to the real needs, and you end in the GROTESQUE PARODY of a Labour Prime Monster – a LABOUR Prime Monster – scuttling round telling poor people facing an economic meltdown OF HIS OWN MAKING that it's all their fault!

And Mr Neil Knock-Knock APPLAUDED Mr Frown's speech.



And of course, there was the ROUSING attack on the Conservatories – not us, Liberal Democrats, of course. Easier to pick on Master Gideon, whose ineptitude on the economy is fast becoming legendary. I believe the phrase addressed to most BULLIES is "why don't you pick on someone your own size, Mr Frown. His name is VINCE."

Then there was the most famousest line of the speech, the sound-bite that really hit the MEE-JA's spot.

"I'm all in favour of apprenticeships, but let me tell you this is no time for a novice."

What an enormously SELF-SATISFIED GRIN plasters itself across Mr Frown's face at that moment. He is unable to contain it, a genuine emotion at last: SMUGNESS – smugness at just how clever he thinks he is, how cleverly he thinks he can diss both Mr Balloon and Mr Millipede in one sentence. What a piece of work. And don't think that Mr Millipede – applauding at the end of the speech for all of five whole seconds – didn't notice.

One final little rally:

"The Conservatives say our country is broken - but this country has never been broken by anyone or anything."

This IS a great line, great for attacking the Conservatories, anyway. Imagine, attacking them from the RIGHT… on Patriotism.

Of course, resorting to Patriotism is also the last refuge of a scoundrel. But I think we all know Mr Frown is WAY past that point by now.



This wasn't a good speech. This was an evil speech.

Mr Frown will stay on as Prime Monster because the Labour are blind to that. And he will destroy them all.