Nasty!

This little vignette from Donal Blaney is typical of the man's humour but leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth!

Preparing for the coming storm

Unlike Gordon Brown who failed to mend the roof in the good times, Diablo (pictured left) has begun working on re-modelling this blog so it will be better placed to add to the assault on this abysmal and failed Labour government over the next few months and drive it out of office. What more noble enterprise can there be?

It might take a little while before you see any significant changes but the new layout is a start. Hang in there! Things can only get better! (As someone once said!)

The truth about Hamas - in their own words

Despite the immense harm and bloodshed that is being inflicted by Israel on the people of the Gaza Strip, this clip is required viewing for anyone in any doubt about the true motivations of Hamas.



You will notice that the Roman Catholic church and its followers get a fairly prominent mention in the long list of "enemies" of Allah. So that's Ireland, Italy, Spain and most of South America that are going to be wiped off the map after Hamas has dealt with Israel.

EU to take "power" from the UK?

Whilst I am not a supporter of UKIP or Nigel Farage, their leader in the EU Parliament, this piece by him is most concerning.



If what he says is true about the Commission trying to 'mutualise' the UK's natural gas and oil supplies under the guise of the yet unratified Treaty of Lisbon then this must surely be the time when we all say "enough is enough".

Sarah Palin - aah! Bless her.

She's a misunderstood lass!

Print - and be damned!

Ruth Lea provides a salutary reminder in this post of just how bad the economic position is for the UK and just how badly placed we are to weather the storm.

She makes the point that "as people in the private sector lose their jobs, the public sector continues to expand. Indeed it is government policy that it should continue to do so – even though the public borrowing figures are appalling and the productivity record in the public sector is frankly disgraceful, thus dragging down the overall performance of the economy.... In the third quarter of 2008 public sector employment rose by 14,000, compared with a fall of 128,000 in the private sector. Given the substantial increase in public sector employment since 1997 (it was 5.2 million in 1997 and is currently nearly 5.8 million), there should surely be room for cost savings and belt-tightening, which could help finance tax cuts and stimulate the wealth-producing private sector. But our Prime Minister doesn’t see it that way."

One of the commenters on Ruth Lea's post (Steve Tierney) makes a telling point: "Could I draw everyone's attention to the 2008 Banking Bill which proposed the abolition of the weekly return: 'Section 6 of the Bank Charter Act 1844 (Bank to produce weekly account) shall cease to have effect'. The effect of this change was essentially to make it unnecessary for the bank to publish details of new printed money. Interesting minor change in the Bank Charter Act that dates back to 1844, isn't it? I wonder why they did it? Hmmmm."

Can you hear the whir of the printing presses?

Time to give George Osborne some credit?

This speech given by George Osborne to Policy Exchange today is one of the clearest examples of the Conservatives detailed responses to the "do-nothing" tag that Brown and his sad band of acolytes have been trying to pin on them.

It's about time that some of the more sensible members of the Labour Party who slavishly follow the Mandelson/Campbell spin to stop and think: "actually, the Conservatives' ideas have the merit of being more likely to shorten the length and reduce the depth of the recession than the current hotch-potch of knee-jerk reactions we've had from Brown and Darling and which are failing to address the central problem of lack of credit in the economy".

Of course, what will happen is that Brown will delay and dither and then pinch the basic ideas and dress them up in other words. But, in the end he will fail yet again to understand the basic principles that underlie them. All he is interested in is his electoral prospects.

Nissan sheds 1200 jobs but you can still get a GCSE with fries

This report by Jim Pickard on the FT.com/Westminster blog contains a quote from that very self-confident John Denham, Secretary of State for Skills only last December: "We know that companies that invest in training are two and a half times more likely to survive a recession than those who don’t. I would urge any company, large or small, which is considering short working to follow the example of Nissan... to talk to their local FE College or LSC to see what training they can offer their staff during downtime. Companies like Nissan...tell me that they can already see improvements in their business as a result of the training.”

Not wishing to minimise the devastating effects that the announcement by Nissan will have on individuals and families in Sunderland and those supplier companies that will be put in jeopardy, I have to say that the Labour Government seems to be more concerned with protecting their electoral prospects by plying the line that the Conservatives did nothing in the early ’90s recession to get people back into jobs.

I was made redundant in that recession and was overwhelmed with the support I was given to get back into work. I had training opportunities coming out of me ears as well as advice about how to 'market' myself and build up a network of contacts. Needless to say I was back in work within a few months with a better salary and a career ladder.

But it must be remembered that a feature of that recession was that there were still major structural changes going on in the old ’smoke stack’ and heavy engineering industries. Now, the world is a very different place and yet it is still necessary for McDonalds to offer so-called “apprenticeships” (at a £1,000 subsidy per employee by the Government) simply to get them through GCSE English and Maths! Why should it be necessary to spend taxpayers' money on giving these young people the education they should have received while at school? Why? Because this Labour Government has created a web of deceit and concealed the truly devastating destruction of our educational system whilst they have been in power.

If there was any justice in the world, Gordon Brown (and Tony Blair) would be swinging on a gibbet in front of the Houses of Parliament whilst the baying mob chant “Education, Education, Education”!

Some day soon that other Labour disaster, Ed Balls, should also be left hanging by a particular part of his anatomy. A bit extreme? So what!

Brown getting ready to print more money?

According to Joe Murphy's blog in the Mail OnLine the Government will print more money if the next drop in interest rates does not work.

'We are looking at the issues,' a senior Treasury source told London's Evening Standard. 'No decisions have been taken.'

Yeah, of course they haven't, Gordon!

Brown drives people out of their homes!

Fantastic! Now local councils are driving families into homelessness by their draconian rules on unpaid council tax at the same time that Gordon Brown makes great play of his efforts to persuade banks to be more lenient on mortgage defaulters.

In this report from the Times which says that "Thousands bankrupted over unpaid council tax" the real incompetence of his government is exposed once again. It is said that pensioners and poor families have had to sell their homes to meet huge legal costs arising from bankruptcy orders that dwarf the original debt.

This is happening under the man who says he is guided by a moral compass. This is the man who claims he gets up every day thinking about how he can help people to weather the economic storm. What kind of world does he live in?