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Here you will find all of Austin's articles listed in chronological order. To view a particular section, please click on one of the links to your left.
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General Ramblings
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Wednesday, 03 February 2010 13:25 |
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Next week we’re to vote on a referendum on electoral reform but only on the alternative vote. That is, change for those who don’t want change. It doesn’t change anything much. It’s right to consult the people but not on something they don’t particularly want.
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General Ramblings
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Wednesday, 03 February 2010 13:22 |
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It’s impossible to tell what the Tory party policies are. They change so often.
Sure Start: First scrap them. Then cut them. Now keep them.
Spending cuts: First massive and immediate. Then less and more drawn out. Since Monday apparently none for a year.
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General Ramblings
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Monday, 01 February 2010 15:09 |
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Hardly surprisingly that the Labour’s years in power have made the UK more liberal in social attitudes but less socialist economically.
We’ve not preached the virtues of greater equality and efficient state regulation. We’ve preached the virtues of the market, rewarding initiatives and attracting talent and business on a world market.
The Conservatives couldn’t have done it better
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General Ramblings
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Friday, 22 January 2010 16:25 |
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Where is the money coming from for the big Tory election campaign now prematurely launched in Grimsby & Cleethorpes? There’s a confetti of leaflets, big posters telling us the Tories are coming (next week bubonic plague) and flights over the town to film the rubble it’s been reduced to by years of Labour neglect. From that height you can’t see the new Sure Starts, schools, medical centres, the auditorium or the Riverhead shopping centre.
My guess is it’s coming from Belize through the vast coffers of Lord Ashcroft. It’s illegal for political parties to receive donations from individuals not on the UK electoral register. Only companies registered in the UK can make donations, subject to some provisos. The Electoral Commission is now investigating Lord Ashcroft’s contributions to local Conservative associations through Bearwood, which effectively disguise the real source of money.
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General Ramblings
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Wednesday, 13 January 2010 15:12 |
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HOUSE DIARY
AUSTIN MITCHELL
Happy New Year. Though it won`t be. It’ll launch my new record “Things can only get worse” (on the Legg Label - all proceeds to the Fees Office) but it already has. Linda’s got breast cancer. I’ve had a begging letter from Legg, Shakedowns Inc. Gordon’s getting missives from suicide emailers. And there is no health in us. Not in me at any rate. Bad cold. All it needs now is for Gordon to produce a new plan for halving the deficit in 12 weeks and we’re finished.
* * *
Saturday l9 December To Hull to complete the filming of our living in a tower block programme. Letters to the newspaper in Grimsby recommend that I should go to Hull and stay there. Hull opinion is that I should get the hell out because envy will cloud my vision.
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General Ramblings
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Wednesday, 13 January 2010 11:00 |
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Tory Terror
Quiz: Why are the Tories painting such a terrifying scenario of deficits, debts, defaults and downgrading that is so frightening I want to emigrate?
Answers:
1] To destabilise Labour. Their simple formula is – How do you restore ‘confidence’? Get a Tory Government. How do you get a Tory Government? Shatter confidence.
2] To scare Labour so much that Darling overrules Gordon and cuts stimulus spending to revive the economy which would take us back to growth. Only growth will eliminate the deficit problem. Now we will get less. |
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General Ramblings
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Wednesday, 06 January 2010 17:56 |
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Hammer Horror
It is difficult to decide why Hoon and Hewitt have decided to tread sour grapes now. They’re going on to better paid jobs outside Parliament. So why leave a dose of Chie en lit [as De Gaulle would have put it} in it? It is either going into Pantomime or a preplanned April Fools day joke. Three weeks for a ballot. Then it takes four weeks to trundle Labours doomsday electoral machine into motion to find an alternative. Which takes us to April 1st, ready for the election on May 6th. That’ll teach us to get rid of Tony. |
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General Ramblings
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Tuesday, 05 January 2010 17:04 |
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Doubts on Debt
The Government’s daftest Bill of the Decade is introduced today. The Fiscal Responsibility Bill subtitled the Political Irresponsibility Bill.
It requires borrowing as a percentage of GDP to be reduced each year and halved by 2013/14.
Borrowing isn’t a problem in recession. It is a solution. Our historic debt is low by EU standard. Debt can be quickly reduced by growth. As Labour did in 1997-2000.
But you can’t know what level of borrowing is necessary until you know the state of the economy. Who is to know what growth we can get by 2014 or how much we will need to stimulate the economy before then? What about PFI debt? And who is to answer if we don’t reach the target? Do we castrate the Chancellor?
Difficult to vote for a mess like this. Barmy Bill. |
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General Ramblings
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Tuesday, 05 January 2010 16:57 |
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Is the Election Over Yet?
Welcome to the Great Election Campaign. Kicked off on 4th January with a fusillade of figures which nobody understands. Lapsing into total boredom by 5th January.
Bart Simpson told me that politics is where every body lies to everybody else. It looks from this as if he was thinking of us. How long can we stand it? |
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General Ramblings
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Monday, 04 January 2010 13:42 |
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Manufacturing is Our Future
John Mills & Austin Mitchell
With debt, deficit and default dominating the political stage all parties are girding loins and policies for cuts, kindly or crude, pay freezes and deficit reductions. A gloomy prospect made doubly depressing because the slash and burn agenda ignores the more basic problem. Britain is becoming unviable .We’re well down the road to disaster.
This problem is not one of deficits or borrowing. In a recession these are solutions not problems and easily dealt with as growth returns. The real disaster is that that growth may now be impossible because we have built a towering financial sector on a shrinking industrial base battering manufacturing so badly that it can neither pay the nation’s way or support the jobs and superstructures of an advanced society. Growth now comes from financial bubbles not the real productivity gains others enjoy. |
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General Ramblings
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Wednesday, 30 December 2009 15:38 |
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The Liberals need you
Two hundred years since the birth of the other Grand Old Man William Gladstone and a hundred and ten since he stood down as Prime Minister.
A great Prime Minister and a towering intellect but the praise today is not so much for him but a way of doing down Gordon Brown who’s not so good at saving candle ends and David Cameron who’s better looking but hasn’t got an idea in his head except winning power.
Gladstone’s were the politics of high principle ours are about management and minutiae.
Gladstone took firm decisions whatever the cost on Civil Service and electoral reform and on Ireland.
But then he didn’t live in Lilliput. We do
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General Ramblings
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Thursday, 17 December 2009 15:13 |
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Merry Christmas to both of my readers!
Parliament has packed up for Christmas. MPs due for a Legging have put in their unappealing ‘appeals’ or got second jobs to pay it. I am off to the real world. Which is very cold. Physically and personally.
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General Ramblings
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Tuesday, 15 December 2009 15:55 |
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The Price of Europe
Did you know that half of our huge trade deficit goes to pay the cost of Europe? Why aren’t we cutting that? |
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General Ramblings
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Monday, 14 December 2009 14:09 |
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Lord re-elect us; but not yet!
The media are running panic alarms about a March election.
“No chance. And that’s official” says A. Mitchell speaking for G. Brown Esq.
The idea sprang from the apparatchik chaps because Labour’s running out of money but it is still daft. We need more time for the gap to close and for Tory sterility to emerge. Plus we need an election on the same day as the councils to save what few Labour councillors remains by a bigger turnout. Q.E.D. |
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General Ramblings
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Thursday, 10 December 2009 16:12 |
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Budget schizophrenia
Darling’s Curate’s Egg was part addled. Good to increase benefits. Bad to forecast increased taxes and wage cuts if we win.
He should have kept the VAT cut, preferably by introducing a luxury rate and cutting the basic rate of tax more.
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General Ramblings
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Tuesday, 08 December 2009 17:05 |
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Misery rains at the Fun Factory as we await the publication on Thursday of our last year of claims under the Additional Cost allowance.
Got mine form the parliamentary web. I will be using it as evidence for my forthcoming divorce. My wife’s spending makes it clear that she is insane. No doubt other spouses are finding the same. At least the incidence of divorce mill stop the Tories proclaiming that marriage is the basis of society.
Double tragedy because it keeps the public anger alive, boosting it just in time for 20th December.
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