I see that while the police weren’t able to keep a crowd of yobbos away from the Prince of Wales, they were able to put the fear of all holy fuck into a 12 year old boy who wanted to picket his constituency MP, David ‘Heir to Blair’ Cameron, over the closure of local facilities.
Click through, and once you’ve digested the main thread of the story, steel yourself for a masterpiece of self-serving dissemblance from the Thames Valley Power Rangers.
AJ
My fingers were crossed for a triumph of hope over experience.
Today:
Theresa May, the Home Secretary, will today announce she plans to sign up to the so-called European Investigation Order (EIO), The Daily Telegraph understands.
That’s it, then. The honeymoon is absolutely 100% over.
Liberties endangered, powers given away to the EU, without a referendum.
Slow hand clap for Cameron and May, everybody.
AJ
Actually, it pleases me.
Because if it wasn’t for the Girl with the Gordon Touch, the poor old dear may have fallen down the stairs.
Eat fail pie you lefty muppets.
AJ
… was my plaintive cry, should an adult arbitrarily clip my young lughole.
“Just in case” was the inevitable response.
In that spirit, I bring you the ghost of Nanny State’s future. David Nannyron.
Much appreciation to twittist @ToryRascal
You’ll be seeing more of her, I’m sure.
AJ
I smelled a rat when I read this:
What are we vetoing, Dave? A new treaty? An amendment to Lisbon? Ah. No.
Despite Dave’s determination to give it star billing, however, Merkel was at pains to play down the idea of a new treaty, stressing that it was "early days" as yet, to be considering such changes. This low-key approach was echoed by yesterday’s meeting of a "taskforce" of EU finance ministers under the chairmanship of EU council president Herman Van Rompuy.
French finance minister Christine Lagarde suggested forgetting about the treaty and concentrating on the "deliverables", while her German counterpart, Wolfgang Schaeuble, advised his colleagues to do what could be done without treaty changes and then to examine the options. Nobody was proposing any treaty changes in the short-term, said Van Rompuy.
In the meantime, Richard North also reveals that:
That didn’t stop little Georgie Osborne laying down the law to the colleagues about disclosure of "national budget plans" and the need for elected members of the House of Commons to be told about them first. Given that budgets are now routinely cleared with the Commission before they are publically announced, this reinforced the growing conviction that little Georgie really is as stupid as he looks.
No-one’s fooled.
For the time being, though, the "tough talking" is playing well enough to the gallery, sufficient at any rate to blur the details of last Wednesday’s humiliation, when Osborne was obliged to accept the new rules on hedge funds, without even the opportunity to address the council meeting.
It certainly allows "Call me Dave" to tell his faithful that he is protecting the national interest, and some of them are still gullible enough to believe him … the great "eurosceptic" who is really "engaging" with Europe and telling them what’s what.
And we haven’t even gotten into things the Eurozone countries can do, that Dave can’t stop, even though they’ll cost us money.
AJ
We’ve already had the bin thing today.
Now this. 13th May:
Within 24 hours of taking on the portfolio he confirmed the new administration would bring in a "fuel price stabiliser" which would see the taxes reduced if the price of oil rises sharply.
However fuel duties would rise if the cost of petrol and diesel fell.
…
Mr Hammond, who drives a Jaguar, sought to underline the new Government’s motorist-friendly credentials confirming a manifesto pledge that there would be no Whitehall cash for new fixed speed cameras.
All good – fuel duty stabiliser and death to speed cameras, right? Wrong.
Today:
Conservative plans to cut fuel duty when oil prices are high have been abandoned, leading to fears that motorists will be targeted.
Meanwhile:
TFI Drinkipoos time.
AJ
You have a party full of tools, David, and a whole cabinet full of spanners.
What tool do you want from me? Might I recommend the Irish Screwdriver?
AJ
From Paul Waugh:
Very good. I presume it’s the closest four letter word recognisable to Geordies.
AJ
An unfortunate turn of phrase.
AJ
Encore un fail.
When I first saw the new Tory poster over at ConHome, the first thing that struck me was that it’d be quite hard for me to produce the above. They made it hard for a repeat of the previous jollity with Tory posters to occur.
They didn’t make it anywhere near hard enough. Probably no way they could when the intermong is awash with graphic designers and Photoshop experts.
Enter consummate Tory-hataz, bloggerheads.com.
Click for full size & have at it, boys and girls.
By the way, if you put one up somewhere, you can embed it in comments here using the img tag.
AJ
As outlined previously here, and reinforced by Obo and Charlotte Gore, the election campaign, now it is underway, has left me profoundly underwhelmed.
Dave’s not doing a bad job in stating his case, and what he lacks is much more than compensated by the revulsion imbued in me by the hysterical screeching preferred by the left, from Gordo all the way down. So there’s hope for the Tories yet. Perhaps Simon Cooke’s words yesterday had a persuasive effect on me. Or maybe the whole thing is just wearing me down.
I do know this: Having spent yesterday in the clutches of first the NHS and then HMRC, I have had a visceral and deeply unpleasant reminder of just how little the state, as Labour has shaped it, gives a fuck about us little people, and how much power and control is invested in the Napoleonic functionaries who sit their side of the divide. All with our money.
And I make no apologies for feeling entitled to more than average indignation, since I pay significantly more than an average amount of tax for a whole bunch of services that either I don’t use, don’t work, or are aligned contrary to my interests as a citizen, salary-earner and private individual.
This evening I shall mostly be reading my copy of the Spectator, and pondering the Dave question. Again. It shouldn’t be this way.
Adios.
AJ
Come on, Dave, you shiny faced cunt, what’s in it for me?
First he punitively taxes me and my job.
Now this:
How about a fucking tax break for me then, Cameron?
You know, the one who has private pension, healthcare and income protection? The one who doesn’t have brats at school, who doesn’t want a goddamn fucking thing from the wretched government?
I’ve just looked at how much tax and NI I paid in FY09.
Fuck Pay As You Earn. Time for Pay As You Use.
Communist shithole.
AJ
The mask slips, and the cunt-tree side alliance will like what they see.
I’ve never been hunting, nor have I ever wanted to, but I don’t want to stop anyone else just because it’s not my bag.
In a frank interview the Conservative leader talked freely of his love of the countryside and said he was taught to shoot rabbits by his father.
Confirming that he would allow Tory MPs a free vote on decriminalising hunting with dogs if he were to become prime minister, Mr Cameron said: ” I always thought that the ban was a mistake because I think it is very difficult to enforce.
Gawd bless his diffidence and pragmatism. How about the ban on possession of cannabis, Dave? Enforceable? In the public interest?
I think the hunting ban is appalling because it is laden with blatant class warfare and leftist bile-spitting, regarding matters about which they are determined to remain wilfully ignorant.
I think the ban on possession and consumption of cannabis is appalling because it is a self-defeating prohibition of a herb that has, at worst, a zero-sum outcome and at best displaces alcohol as drug of choice and reduces injuries, deaths, crime and public disorder. But I’m happy for Dave to ditch it on grounds of pragmatism and political expedience. As if.
So I come back to my starting point: Dave is a statist Blue Labour twat.
AJ
This is errr.. very depressing indeed. Even if it’s precisely what I and many other have been saying for years now.
Bleak.
Incidentally, no surprise to see Blair is Cunt of the Day.
AJ
H/T The intermong.
Much jollity today about ‘Cunto di tutti cunti’ Blair coming to the aid of Labour’s election campaign.
I think there’s something wrong with that strapline. Specifically that the inverted commas are around with word ‘failure’ and not around the word ‘modernise’
What I think they mean by ‘modernise’ is ‘transform into a mealy-mouthed, politically-correct, social democratic Labour-lite irrelevance’.
Hence my confusion about how that strap-line is parsed. Because when it comes to Cameron transforming the Conservatives into a mealy-mouthed, politically-correct, social democratic Labour-lite irrelevance, he seems to have succeeded in spades.
If Blair manages to convince me that what we have here is the same old Tories from 1979, I’ll vote for them in a heartbeat.
AJ
Last month:
This month:
I’ll probably watch. Or at least record for later viewing through fingers at x16.
AJ
UPDATE: Well that wasn’t much to write home about – but it was at least better and more balanced than Brown’s ‘Tears for Piers’ performance. The Samantha Cameron sex tape didn’t get enough airtime, which is a shame.
Tim Montgomerie has a more grown-up analysis here.
There – I said it. Let’s have a quick run through the facts.
Ladbrokes are giving 10-1 against Labour securing an overall majority. I’ve just put a big chunk of change on it.
And if Labour lose, hey – I won’t feel too sad about the cash. If they win, though, my bet will pay for a couple of years of tax increases and inflation. Or a one way ticket to somewhere far far away. You hope.
AJ
Tweeted by many fine folks.
The claim
“The defence budget has been rising every year…. The only time the defence budget has been cut was in the 10 years before 1997″
Gordon Brown, Questions to the prime minister, 10 March, 2010Cathy Newman checks it out
Gordon Brown has been under heavy fire from the top military brass in the last few days for starving the Ministry of Defence of resources. Today he returned fire. Labour has been at war five times since it came to power 13 years ago. And the PM is adamant that during his time as chancellor, and since he got the keys to number 10, the military have got everything they asked for. His claim at prime minister’s question time today that the defence budget has risen EVERY year since 1997 was impressive. But even before he’d left the chamber, FactCheck had got to work to find out if it was true.Background
Gordon Brown is accused of squeezing defence budgets at a time of war. Just this week Sir Bill Jeffrey, the most senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, told the Chilcot Inquiry the forces were kept short of funds when Brown was Chancellor.David Cameron today took up the baton, accusing Brown of fighting “two wars on a peace time budget”. The PM retorted that the defence budget has been rising every year since Labour came to power.
A Downing Street spokesman reiterated the prime minister’s claim, saying: “The government has a strong record on defence spending. Defence spending has risen by 10 per cent in real terms since 1997, and on top of a rising defence budget £8bn was spent on Iraq and so far £9bn have been spent on Afghanistan. Every additional request for funding for Iraq and Afghanistan has been met.
“As Chancellor, Gordon Brown’s successive spending reviews provided for annual average real terms growth in the defence budget.
“Exact outturns on those budgets can vary for a range of reasons, including the cost of operations, departmental underspends, and additions over and above budgets in these periods. But there can be no doubt about the government’s commitment to resourcing defence.”
The analysis
In real terms – i.e. taking account of inflation – Gordon Brown is wrong. Figures given to us by the Ministry of Defence (see table below) show the defence budget fell year-on-year in real terms on four occasions since 1997 when Labour came to power – in 1998, 1999, 2002 and 2007.Worse, the defence budget also fell below 1997 levels (again in real terms) on four occasions – 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2002.
“Near cash”
The MoD says Gordon Brown wasn’t talking about real terms growth, but was instead referring to “near cash” rises in the defence budget. “Near cash” is the simplest form of the military budget, the most basic cash figure – without inflation or depreciation taken into account.According to the Institute For Fiscal Studies, inflation has to be factored in to make spending comparisons meaningful. So Brown was at the very least playing fast and loose with the figures by ignoring inflation.
Wrong again?
However, Gordon Brown also stated today in the Commons that the “expenditure of the Ministry of Defence has been rising in real terms under this government”. Taking him absolutely literally, “this government” was elected in 2005. But here he is also wrong. As we’ve seen just now, spending fell in real terms in 2007.FactCheck likes a belt and braces approach, so we called several experts – including Mark Stoker, a military economist at the International Institute For Strategic Studies.
He pointed out NATO also provide accounts on defence budgets, and he reckons these numbers are more accurate.
Still falling
Looking at the NATO figures, the defence budget fell from £34.4bn in 2007 to £32.8bn in 2008.“If you look at Nato’s figures Gordon Brown’s statement is incorrect,” says Stoker. “Either way, both sets of data indicate that the budget has not risen every year.”
Cathy Newman’s verdict
Defence spending has gone up in “near cash” terms, but it’s fiscally illiterate to use this measure, and the former chancellor knows it. The government is on firmer ground when it points out that the departmental budget is 10 per cent higher this year than in 1997, but FactCheck has established that Gordon Brown’s central claim that the defence budget has gone up every year is fiction.
Source: MoD. Figures are calculated using the latest (4 January 2010) GDP deflator which is updated quarterly by the HM Treasury. The agreed figure of 1.5 per cent for the average annual real-terms growth over the comprehensive spending review period was agreed with the Treasury in 2007/08 and was calculated using the 2007/08 baseline (£29,411k).
Why does Cameron not have this intelligence to hand when he walks into PMQs?
AJ
UPDATE: Follow-up from the same site.
![article-1285009-09F2C744000005DC-748_634x666[1]](https://aljahom.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/article128500909f2c744000005dc748_634x6661.jpg?w=440&h=462 "article-1285009-09F2C744000005DC-748_634x666[1]")
Al Jahom's Final Word 