Hahahahaharman

Superb lefty bile and hypocrisy from Harriet Harman today.

Errr.. ad hominem attacks? Surely not. Not from the scientifically proven, open minded, liberal left.

The deputy Labour leader said there was "incredulity" at seeing Mr Alexander, the MP for Inverness, becoming "the front-man for the Tory cuts".

"Now, many of us in the Labour Party are conservationists – and we all love the red squirrel," Ms Harman said.

"But there is one ginger rodent which we never want to see again – Danny Alexander."

Ms Harman went on to attack Mr Alexander’s other party colleagues north of the border, telling delegates: "There’s something deeply unnatural that’s happened in Scotland.

"Without asking anyone in Scotland, the government has been carrying out a programme of genetic modification – political genetic modification.

"This mutation has contaminated every Lib Dem councillor, it’s affected every Lib Dem MP and Lib Dem MSP.

"They’ve all mutated into something alien to Scotland – Tories."

Ms Harman said: "There’s only one thing left to do – these political mutants must be got rid of next May at the ballot box."

It must all be a misprint. And the video on the BBC’s website must be a fake too.

AJ

Advertisement

All hail the new #Labour overlord

Now the games can really get underway.

AJ

UPDATE: Secret cameras captured Sunday lunch at Chez Miliband last weekend.

AJ

Ian Blair, delusional tool.

This comes via Tom Harris, who is somewhat taken aback at tacitly being branded racist by Ian Blair, formerly New labour’s Top Cop. Blair was forced out, ostensibly for being a useless, politically motivated sack of shit, by Boris Johnson in 2008.

Tom Harris’ gripe is that Blair implies that anyone in the Labour party who isn’t supporting (and funding) Diane Abbott for the leadership is racist.

How, for instance, can Labour Party members not be outraged about the lack of donations to Diane Abbott’s leadership campaign?

Never mind the myriad, perfectly legitimate, reasons for deploring Abbott’s bid, not least that she’s a hard left unilateralist and humongous racist hypocrite herself.

What caught my eye, though, was Blair’s next statement.

And how could London’s Conservative-run Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) announce recently that the Met is no longer affected by institutional racism?

Well, that sounded somewhat strange to me, because in February 2009, Jack Straw, then Justice Secretary said to the BBC:

"If you are asking me whether I believe the Met as a whole is still institutionally racist, the answer is no."

Yet in the same month, Boris Johnson, Conservative Mayor of London, and chair of the MPA, said:

“It was the anniversary of the death of Stephen Lawrence and we had a very nasty incident, the relic of a very nasty incident, in Belgravia, and this reminds us that racism exists, is alive and is vile and must be stamped out in the police service.”

So I hereby declare Ian Blair’s cretinously partisan piece in the New Statesman to be the epitome of lefty delusion and revisionism.

Happily, no-one whatsoever has to listen to a word the cunt says any more.

AJ

Another legacy of Gordon Brown

Once upon a time, there was the Inland Revenue, and there was HM Customs & Excise.

When Brown decided to merge these two behemoth bureaucracies, disasters were bound to occur, not to mention the cancerous reach of Customs & Excise being extended to tax collectors.

So it has proven.

We’ve already had overpayments of tax credits, which have been clawed back from those who can ill afford it.

“You shouldn’t have spent what you weren’t entitled to, so what do you expect?” go the cries from the collaborators. Ah yes, because after we’ve filled in a million pages of bullshit questions, and the government finally grants us a tax credit to increase income from below the poverty line to just above it, we should always think, “I’m gonna save half of that money, just in case the government wants it back.”

That has caused stress and misery to thousands of people, at the hands of a bureaucracy that claims to be all knowing and all seeing, until it fucks up, then it comes after you like you’ve just put a cat in a wheelie bin.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that HMRC have also fucked up PAYE as well.

Between now and Christmas 1.4 million taxpayers will receive letters telling them that they owe money. The total amount owed is £2 billion which means on average those people face a demand for £1,428 each. Some individuals could face higher bills.

So there we are – many will be ’caught out’. Well, I say ‘caught out’ – actually, they’ve done nothing more wrong than accept the tax coding assigned to them at face value. They will not have thought, any more than the tax credits people, “I’ll save a couple of grand of my earnings this year, just in case HMRC decide it belongs to them after all.

The sensible thing to do would be to issue revised codings for next year so the money can be recouped over 12-24 months. But I bet that doesn’t happen.

I bet they want everyone on correct codings next April, so they’ll send letters to millions of people demanding immediate ‘repayment’ (as if the money belongs to the fucking government in the first place).

Obviously, in dual income households, two people could get this letter.

Let’s consider the human implications of that for a moment. A couple, both working, with two kids that have just gone to school. In November, days after they’ve sat down and set a budget for Christmas, HMRC sends them not one but TWO menacing letters, demanding a total ‘repayment’ of nearly £3,000.

Do you think that family has savings to pay such a demand? Mrs has only recently gone back to work in earnest after having the kids. They were probably slapped by the tax-credits cock-up as well.

Even if, after hours on the phone and multiple letters, some kind of arrangement is agreed, the money still has to be paid back and lots of stress will be caused. The shine will be rather taken off the Christmas these people have worked hard to earn money for.

The government – and I can’t stress this enough – DO NOT GIVE A FUCK.

You’re gonna get it up the arse again, because AGAIN, they made a fucking mistake.

So next time you see some Labour supporting cunt or an apologist for Brown, thank them for this, won’t you… preferably with a branding iron.

AJ

UPDATE: As indicated by commenter Sad But Mad Lad, HMRC have confirmed that the money will be recovered by tax codes in 2011-12.

Nevertheless, as a commenter on the BBC points out, some people will be unexpectedly out of pocket by around £120 a month during the next tax year.

And what of those families who are pushed beneath the poverty line by this? Especially where there are two people in the household affected? Ah yes, of course. Tax credits. Pure genius.

Sold out to the over-reaching EU. Again.

I’ve been meaning to write a comprehensive post on the powers over matters of justice that we have handed over to the EU, including the European Arrest Warrant. Well, I say comprehensive, but I’m not a lawyer. I was just going to borrow extensively from excellent law blogger ObiterJ.

For a decent insight, read his posts:

• The European Arrest Warrant – an arrested development.
• The ever expanding influence of the EU in criminal matters
• The ever expanding influence of the EU in criminal matters – No. 2
• The ever expanding influence of the EU in criminal matters – No. 3

The evidence of the last Labour government selling the British people out is as comprehensive as it is frightening and infuriating.

So this immediately caught my attention:

Anger at Britain’s “gold-plating” of the controversial European Arrest Warrant is growing after it emerged that other EU countries have secured significant safeguards for their citizens that are not available to British nationals.

…

Although the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) was intended to operate in the same way in all 27 EU states, The Sunday Telegraph has established that many other European countries have given themselves “opt-outs” or conditions to protect their citizens.

It comes after this newspaper first highlighted concerns last week over the way that the warrant system was being used in Britain.

Holland will not extradite Dutch nationals under the EAW unless the accusing state agrees that they can serve any prison sentence in a Dutch jail. The Belgians have opt-outs so that the warrant does not cover abortion.

Abortion and “abetting abortion” are crimes in some EU states, including Malta, Ireland and Poland – Europe’s most active issuer of EAWs.

Birth control campaigners fear they could be targeted by antiabortionists under the EAW, even simply for running a British-based advice website accessible from abroad.

France appears reluctant to extradite its own nationals under the EAW and has stated in the past that they will not be extradited.

Europe’s largest country, Germany, has imposed a “proportionality rule” stating that only those accused of serious crimes can be seized under a warrant. The definition of serious is not given, but it would exclude large numbers of the trivial charges dealt with by the British extradition courts.

One Kent motorist, Patrick Reece-Edwards, spent weeks in a British jail awaiting extradition to Poland on a charge of possessing a forged motor insurance certificate. When he was finally extradited, the matter was resolved by the payment of a civil penalty with no criminal record.

So many people – mostly Poles – are extradited from Britain to Poland on minor charges that special fortnightly military flights are operated for them from a London airfield. The hundreds of trivial requests are also a serious drain on police, prison and court resources.

Britain has no such opt-outs, and campaigners say that British judges are too cautious in applying the overriding requirements of the Human Rights Act.

Karen Todner, one of Britain’s leading extradition lawyers, said: “It is typical of us not to have given ourselves proper protection.

“British judges apply the EAW treaty to the letter and these massive injustices come about because the Government hasn’t thought this through.

“There are a lot of quite simple things we could do now to mitigate the harm done to British citizens, which could be done quite quickly through a simple administrative decision.”

British citizens sent abroad under the EAW are also at a serious disadvantage. Since foreigners are regarded as flight risks, bail is often refused and pretrial detention, even for minor crimes, can last for years.

I really don’t know where to begin.

What on Earth could those responsible for this situation have been thinking? Were they negligent, incompetent, acting out of complete disregard for people or what?

The ConDems say they’re looking at our extradition arrangements, but I very much doubt they have the will or the ability to right this massive and self-evident wrong that was yet another fantastic bequest from Labour. Perhaps more to the point, the same civil servants who lovingly gold-plated the whole thing in the first place are now, presumably, in charge of reviewing the arrangements.

Blunkett, who first signed off the EAW is unruffled about the perverse outcomes:

Mr Blunkett said: “I was right, as Home Secretary in the post-9/11 era, to agree to the European Arrest Warrant, but I was insufficiently sensitive to how it might be used.”.

This is just another reason why I just loathe Labour, and every single one of their supporters, for what they have done to the country I was born in.

I’ve already written to my MP about this, and as soon as Parliament is back in session, I’ll be hounding him for a response.

Do the same, make some fucking noise.

AJ

UPDATE: I wonder why I fucking bother, when DK comes along to remind us why he’s a leading libertarian blogger & I’m a useless cunt with copy & paste buttons.

Better late than never

Prompted by a report from the IFS, Conservative Home and The Spectator have woken up to the implications Harriet Harman’s much vaunted Equality Act. Just like some of us did about 6 months ago.

The paradox of Hattie’s little scheme is that the result will be the diametric opposite of equality and the total opposite of tolerance and forbearance. As minority after minority take their grievances of perceived prejudice, disadvantage, offence or discrimination through the courts, a hierarchy of protected minorities will emerge. The result will be an acceleration of the balkanisation of society that is already well established under this Labour government. The very divide-and-rule approach to control that has deprived the British people of their ability to just rub along together, brushing off perceived sleights.

• Gay rights will trump Christian rights.
• Muslim rights will trump gay rights and women’s rights.
• Women’s rights will trump men’s rights (except Muslim men).
• Pedestrians rights will trump those of cyclists.
• Cyclists’ rights will trump those of motorists.
• Mothers with baby buggies will trump the rights of pedestrians, especially if they’re breast-feeding at the time.
• Children’s rights will trump those of parents, except mothers, who are a protected group.

This way lies madness. Can anyone not see that?

Okay – perhaps the full implications didn’t quite fall into place back then – specifically that the..

law opens a government to judicial challenge over virtually anything that it does.

What that means is that, as Theresa May pointed out earlier this month,

… cuts in the budget could widen inequality in Britain and ran a "real risk" of breaking the law, a letter leaked to the Guardian shows.

The letter was sent to George Osborne on 9 June, less than a fortnight before his emergency budget, and was copied to David Cameron.

May wrote "there are real risks" that people ranging from ethnic minorities to women, to the disabled and the old, would be "disproportionately affected".

May urged that steps be taken to avoid breaking the equality laws, warning that "there is a real risk of successful legal challenge".

How?

Paragraph 32 of Harman’s Act states that any individual is not prevented "from bringing judicial review proceedings against a public body which  has not considered socio-economic disadvantage when taking decisions of a strategic nature". So if anyone makes cuts which Jo Blogger thinks hit kids with special needs, they can have the decision subject to a judicial review. And, perhaps, try to claim legal aid for so doing. The Treasury might claim this is baseless, but they may end up being sued nonetheless – it will be great fun for the unions to find out how far they can go.

Oh dear…

In this way, Labour transferred power from parliament (where it was about to lose power) to the courts (where the lefty judiciary reign supreme). Their calculation was that if they did this quietly enough, and in technicalities, the Cameroons would not wise up to it because of their aversion to detail. Cameron should have repealed the Equalities Act instantly.

But he won’t, probably because the DibLems won’t let him, and we’ll have years of legal wrangling while any ability to slash the deficit is mired in legal red tape.

Of course, no mention of the Equality Act could pass by without the Wimmin wanting some of that action, via their favourite fake charity:

Fawcett launches legal challenge to government budget

The Fawcett Society has filed papers with the High Court seeking a Judicial Review of the government’s recent emergency budget. (1)

Under equality laws, we believe the government should have assessed whether its budget proposals would increase or reduce inequality between women and men.  Despite repeated requests, the Treasury have not provided any evidence that any such an assessment took place.  (2)

Even a top line assessment of the budget measures show 72 per cent of cuts will be met from women’s income as opposed to 28 per cent from men’s. This is because many of the cuts are to the benefits that more women than men rely on, and the changes to the the tax system will benefit far more men than women.

ORLY? Well, let’s have a little think about that. Or we could let Anna and DK take care of the thinking.

Ed West is on good form too.

AJ

Born to be an MP

It’s uncanny.

A newly elected MP who was spotted using her mobile phone while behind the wheel of her car was today banned from driving for six months.

Yasmin Qureshi, MP for Bolton South-East, was also found to have no car insurance when stopped by police, Bolton magistrates heard.

The former barrister and human-rights lawyer had been elected as the constituency’s new MP on 6 May but four days later was caught by police while driving through the town talking on her mobile.

…

The Labour MP, who was not in court, apologised to magistrates through her solicitor, who said she would now have the "inconvenience" of having to use taxis and public transport.

Poor lamb. And for a single offence to.. oh.. wait…

the MP already had nine points on her licence when she was stopped shortly before 3pm on 10 May by police…

She had committed a previous offence of using her mobile phone while driving, in 2008, and two speeding offences, one in 2007 and the other last year.

Hmmm.. female Labour MP, former human rights lawyer, charged with using a phone while driving, already had points for speeding…

Remind you of anyone?

The minister was fined £350 and ordered to pay £75 costs and a £15 victim surcharge after her lawyer entered a guilty plea at City of Westminster magistrates court. Her driving licence was also endorsed with three points.

…

The court heard that Harman already has six penalty points on her licence after being caught speeding in a 30mph zone twice. The first incident happened in April 2007 and the second in April last year.

Might I suggest the strongest commonality is the conviction that the laws they make for the little people don’t apply to them.

I’ll be watching Ms Qureshi – further entertainment is almost inevitable.

AJ

Prize-winning audacity and unparalleled delusion. Labour in a nutshell.

You couldn’t have scripted this shit:

Question: who said the following about which administration?

"…the greatest advances in civil liberties of any post-war government…"

Any guesses?

The answer is almost too unbelievable to be true…

They’re right, you know.

The above quote is taken from former Home Secretary and retiring Blackburn MP, Jack Straw’s endorsement of David Milliband yesterday (full text available here). It refers, incredibly, to the government of which both he and the Labour leadership contender were members.

Jack. Straw. ?! Thinks the New Labour government brought about "…the greatest advances in civil liberties of any post-war government…" !?

That’s right readers; the government which:

• Introduced, then fought the ECHR for, the indefinite retention of innocent DNA profiles
• Introduced the Identity Card and National Identity Register
• Tried and failed to increase the length of detention without charge to 90, then 42 days
• Introduced the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, to allow bureaucrats, councils and quangos to spy on people
• Empowered the police to conduct random stop and searches under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act
• Introduced authoritarian programmes such as control orders, the intercept modernisation programme and the e-borders scheme
• Created a dizzying number of large and unstable state databases from ContactPoint to the Summary Care Record system

In fact, it was none-other than Jack Straw, who tried to remove the right to trial by jury during his time in the Home Office.

Those are some advances, Jack.

By Dylan Sharpe

For further analysis of Straw’s speech and Labour’s record, check out Full Fact’s article here.

Where do these people get the sheer brass nerve to make such assertions with a straight face?

Oh well, bye Jack – don’t hurry back, you wretched old bastard. I’ll pray for you tonight while I’m advising God of the people who need an immediate dose of brain cancer.

AJ

H/T Dick Puddlecote

The result is in: ConDemFail

16th July:

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

13 years to put this right. Did they? Could they have?

Ask Ed Balls what went wrong. I’m sure it’ll all be the fault of the Tories for their disastrous 13 years out of power.

Sir Mike Rake said the telecoms giant binned almost a quarter of all applications made for a new apprenticeship scheme because candidates appeared “completely illiterate”.

Many young people now fail to have the basic skills needed to get by in the workplace, he said.

The comments represent the latest in a series of attacks on the education system by Britain’s leading businessmen.

Sir Terry Leahy, outgoing chief executive of Tesco, has criticised the “woefully low” standards achieved by many schoolchildren and Sir Stuart Rose, head of Marks & Spencer, said many young people were “not fit for work”.

Sir Mike said 26,000 applications were made for 170 places on BT’s apprenticeship programme starting this autumn, but 6,000 were not worthy of consideration.

I actually feel really sorry for kids who’ve been through the state education system in the last 20 years. Its parlous inadequacy is the single biggest betrayal of British people in my living memory.

Oh and sure, Labour didn’t fix things, but neither did the Tories. The rot set in long before 1997, thanks to a vast tranche of swivel-eyed ideologues in the teaching profession, the objectives of whom were not to equip children for lifelong learning and inquisitiveness, but to effect social engineering on a scale unheard of outside communist countries.

Still, when I left school, men of 50 were being thrown on the scrapheap as flexibly, hungry youngsters emerged to work in a way more fitting to the times.

If the education system continues to turn out such stunted individuals, I foresee no such worries for when I’m 50 myself.

AJ

Fair comment

Voltaire invoked:

As I’ve written before, it would be deeply hypocritical of me to condemn the man for his eccentric views.

Of course, to me and many others, the perceived consequence of Thatcher being wiped from history may be stark and alarming.

Now put the boot on the other foot.

I’d put on a tuxedo and go to the opera of Blair and Brown being gunned down by an irate taxi driver in 1996.

To me, that would wipe out a multitude of national disasters in one fell swoop. To many on the left, it would mean the loss of 13 years of welfare, hosing the NHS down with money, replaced by poverty, pestilence and plague.

The Labour leadership ‘battle’ is so comically anodyne, with clichéd dog whistles aplenty, I hope this McDonnell chap makes the cut, if only to inject some much needed colour into the contest.

AJ

Is it time to switch allegiance?

It’s becoming clear that Balls is doomed. So I wonder if it’s time to take a proper look at Diane Abbott.

Happily, over at DK’s place The Filthy Smoker has done some excellent groundwork.

A vote for Diane Abbott is a vote for

• Eye-rolling
• Interrupting
• Saying one thing and doing another
• Inexplicable self-satisfaction
• Patting Michael Portillo on the knee
• Obesity

For too long, politics has been dominated by a privileged elite. Diane Abbot represents people like you—normal, everyday wealthy Cambridge graduates who send their children to public school and who have never had a proper job.

If you’re one of the 50% of Britons who don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Abbott will make your voice heard.

If you’re one of the 19% of population who indulge in rank hypocrisy, Abbott knows how you feel.

If you’re one of the 8% of the population who conduct conversations with your eyes closed, as if talking to a six-year old, you must vote Abbott for Labour leader.

Do read on…

AJ

Has Ellie Caught Gordon’s Deathly Touch?

Gordon Brown’s Jonah syndrome is well documented. It’s as if anything and anyone he endorses is doomed.

It’s not yet clear by what means his curse is transmissible, but proximity seems key:

What makes me think this? First, Ellie launched Gordon Brown’s General Election campaign. I think we all know how that turned out.

 

Well, last week, Ed Balls seemed a shoe in to at least get enough nominations to run for Labour leader, and enough Unite muscle to win.

Enter Ellie.

Exit Ed.

Ed Balls is struggling to gain enough support to challenge for the Labour leadership, it was claimed last night.

A well-placed Labour source said Mr Balls was having difficulty in winning the backing of the 33 MPs needed to secure his nomination.

The former schools secretary, who launched his campaign this week, has only 20 declared supporters among Labour’s 258 MPs.

This disappoints me. I wonder how Diane Abbott is doing.

AJ

Mature debate

Love this:

Councillor McKay compared the latest controversy with the SNP’s criticism of the £1 million spent by the then Labour administration on converting the former James Hamilton Academy in London Road into the council HQ.

She said: “Some of those outraged supporters are the self-same people who have now spent an equivalent sum on the council debating chamber alone. They plan to watch themselves perform on You Tube. In the West of Scotland this is a phrase that has another meaning and it certainly applies to this coalition.”

That’s right. Labour councillor called the SNP & Tory councillors dicks.

The more I see and hear, the more I’m convinced Labour is the party of the emotionally stunted and terminally immature.

S’not fair!

AJ

H/T Rab

ROLF

Teh words. I has none.

Henchman and campaign manager Trap-Jaw said: "Skeletor is a strong, decisive leader and unlike Balls and the Milibands he doesn’t look like a vaguely confused hotel concierge."

I’m still backing Balls.

AJ

Burn the witch

It looks like the mess left behind (are we surprised?) by Gordon Brown and his crew could stick to them in fine style.

Following the link:

the emerging story of Labour’s ‘scorched earth spending spree’ has to be the smoking gun that convicts Gordon Brown’s ‘evil regime’! According to John Pinar BBC 5live Chief Political Correspondent, evidence is emerging that ‘Top civil service chiefs lodged formal protests at decisions by Labour ministers to spend millions in dying months of Lab gov’.

…

On Monday David Cameron instructed all of his ministers to go back to their departments and list all of Labour’s spending commitments signed in the immediate run-up to the General Election. This task will be performed with relish by those who endured years of torment from Labour’s front-bench in the House of Commons. With the almost certain guarantee of possible criminal charges for the most serious abuse of government powers, many in the Conservative party baying for a McCarthy-style red-witch-hunt will get their wish.

That sounds like fun!

More anon, I’m sure.

AJ

UPDATE: More.

I’m backing Balls

Good news people.

If you want to help ensure that Labour are mangled beyond all recognition, do this:

You may be asking, “WHY THE HELL WOULD I DO THAT?”

Quite rightly, too.

The reason to do it is that you’ll get a vote in the forthcoming Labour leadership election. For the princely sum of a quid. One pound.

Who to vote for? Well, I for one, am backing Ed Balls.

Once Balls is duly installed, tear up your membership card and walk away. Job done.

AJ

Via Old Holborn – Obo’s also on the case.

More of other people’s stuff

Because, having done the stuff I needed to do, I now have CBA syndrome.

I heard Ali Darling on BBC news earlier, spouting the same old lines. Mr Eugenides sums up my response nicely (but do read the whole thing):

Hear this, Darling. You have destroyed the public finances and demeaned the nation’s governance. You have scorched the earth for your successors and ploughed salt into the ruins. You have fucked us so hard, Darling, that we will be walking bow-legged for a generation. How dare you put your mortician’s face above the parapet. Have you no shame?

Fuck off, shut up, and leave us alone. We do not wish to hear from you, ever again.

Meanwhile, Jeff Randall performs a field-autopsy on Brown’s legacy.

Well, we kinda knew that already, Jeff, but do go on…

Despite its record of fiscal incompetence, constitutional vandalism and disregard for Middle England, Gordon Brown’s administration ought never to have collapsed. It had, after all, created for itself a client class of supplicant voters. As part of a grand plan for permanent office, more than one million immigrants were handed British passports (80 per cent of first-generation arrivals vote Labour) and 900,000 workers added to the public-sector payroll.

More pernicious still, Mr Brown and his ministers were delighted to overlook a grotesque distortion in the make-up of parliamentary boundaries, which meant that a 30 per cent vote for Labour produced about 300 seats, whereas the same percentage for the Conservatives delivered only 200 seats. In short, just about everything that could have been done to bend the system in New Labour’s favour was in place by the time the election was called.

The problem, however, was that the project had been constructed upon a moral cesspit. The party’s membership had been taken prisoner by a gang of desperadoes who clung to a conviction that honesty and integrity were disposable luxuries, and substance an unwelcome substitute for propaganda. The upshot was a dystopian regime in which Lord Mandelson and Alastair Campbell were recalled from ignominy to orchestrate a campaign of lavish deceit.

Meanwhile, the twatteriti are complaining about having a “feckless fop” like this running the nation’s finances:

I know what they mean. Anyone who could afford a shave back when everything was still black and white were toffs, cads and idlers.

Far better for things to be run by the provisional wing of the David Bellamy fan club.

Why can’t these bitter lefties get over the class thing? I was brought up on the breadline, in the North, in a staunch Labour household, yet I don’t appear to be equipped with the same chip as these people. Perhaps it’s because I stopped moaning, got off my arse and did something to put half of Hovis between me and the breadline.

Perhaps.

Said twitterist asks, in his profile, “Why should I face years of austerity when there are so many wealthy folk about?”

To which I reply, “Because you voted for the government that caused these years of austerity. I didn’t. Actions have consequences.”

Old Holborn has a nice compare and contrast post on this matter:

If a Libertarian doesn’t like guns, he doesn’t buy one.
If a Fabian doesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a Libertarian is a vegetarian, he doesn’t eat meat.
If a Fabian is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a Libertarian sees a foreign threat, he thinks about how to defeat his enemy.
A Fabian wonders how to surrender gracefully and still look good.

If a Libertarian is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a Fabian is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.

If a black person is Libertarian, they see themselves as independently successful.
Their Fabian counterparts see themselves as victims in need of government protection.

If a Libertarian is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A Fabian demands someone take care of him.

And there’s more… read on.

AJ

It’s all over. Bye bye Gordo.

Don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out.

I’ll never forget what you did to my country, you deluded maniac.

AJ

Chaos Theory

This post-election period has been a sublime frottathon for game theorists.

For my own part, two statements I’ve made over the last few days:

Friday:

The pressure will be on, though, for something to be in place before the markets open on Monday morning. The Pound is down against the Euro(!) and things aren’t going to be pretty if we still don’t know by Monday morning.

I was wrong about that. The rescue deal for the Euro pulled off last night gave rise to a rally of markets worldwide.

Tomorrow, though, is another day. As Brown made this evening’s announcement, the Pound took a hit.

17:41 "A Lib-Lab coalition would be a big negative for sterling," Ian Stannard at BNP Paribas says. "The Government will be unstable and not have the ability to drive through the cuts required."

17:30 Pound is now at $1.4866 against the dollar, compared to $1.5056 earlier in the afternoon. Still falling too.

17:23 Euro has risen by more than half a cent against the pound following Brown’s statement. Markets really spooked by prospect of more uncertainty.

17:14 Reaction to Brown’s statement and subsequent fall in pound from Jeremy Cook, chief economist at World First:

It’s pretty clear that the market wants certainty and that the news that Clegg is dilly-dallying between Labour and the Conservatives have not gone down well. I’m surprised that the markets haven’t hit sterling hard today, the EU plan has taken a bullet for us. As soon as that become old news however sterling is once again in the firing line.

Now, something I said yesterday:

This leads us to a nightmare scenario – albeit a remote one. But we are in uncharted waters, with some of the most calculating and devious bastards in history squabbling for the helm of the vessel.

Others have written that a Lib/Lab coalition with Brown, or A N Other unelected leader, would so enrage the electorate that they could never win a referendum on voting reform and would thereafter be savaged at the next general election.

So, suppose the Lib Dems went into a coalition with Labour, Postman Pat installed at the helm.

They all want PR. Once they have it, their ‘progressive consensus’ will be de-facto obtained.

If they don’t need a referendum, why on earth would they hold one? Remember the Lisbon treaty?

Okay, I was wide of the mark with PR – Brown appears to be offering AV without a referendum. But Brown going as part of the deal? Hmm. Suits me, sir.

I don’t know if it’s any comfort that Tom Harris says the Labour MPs won’t let that through the commons. It’s perhaps a mark of how little influence Tom has in his party that he makes this point, addressed directly to senior Lib Dems, on his blog. His frankness is refreshing nevertheless.

So on his way out, Brown has thrown a spanner in the works that will almost certainly have a negative impact on the markets.

I wonder if I’ll ever get another chance to use this:

Just be gone, you psychotic, monocular luntatic.

AJ