Happy New Blog General Ramblings 07 January 2008 Happy New Year to all. It won`t be, but one can always hope. Hope will be in overdrive this year. Performance in low gear. Read more...   Bleak House Diary House Magazine Diary 07 January 2008 Misery, gloom, doom, despair and the worst Christmas I remember. Lousy weather. Miserable mood. Low morale. Wife gets Christmas cards from David Cameron and Alex Salmond. I don`t even get one from Tommy McAvoy. Every poll shows us heading for disaster. All economists predict recession, repossessions, rising unemployment, falling house prices, a more miserable mess than even Norman Lamont managed and only Tony Blair`s speech fees keeping the balance of payments from total disaster. I began Christmas feeling things can`t get worse. They do. Read more...   Memo to Jacqui General Ramblings 04 January 2008 Memo to Jacqui     You`re forgetting a basic law of politics. DON`T FIGHT THE FUZZ. Read more...   Grimsby Taxes and Worship General Ramblings 13 December 2007 North East Lincs. taxes church attendance.  Attending last Sunday's Christmas carol service at the Salvation Army Citadel on Duncombe St, your's truly was amazed to get an £80 parking fine for parking on the Duncombe St car park without a pay and display.  On Sunday!  At 6.15pm! Read more...   Helen Clark Speaking at the House of Commons News Flash 13 December 2007 Helen Clark Prime Minister of New Zealand since 1999 will be speaking to MPs, New Zealand Labour Party members and interested New Zealanders at the end of her forthcoming visit to the UK. Read more...   Spitting in the wind General Ramblings 07 December 2007 The Bank has failed the test.  A quarter point reduction in the face of rising recession is spitting in the wind.   Instead of getting in control of the situation they`ll be dragged behind it quarter point by quarter point, always too little too late, like bailing out the Titanic with a bucket.  You`re running a failing economy, Merv, not an academic seminar.   * * * Read more...   The only website Gordon relies on General Ramblings 03 December 2007 The only website Gordon relies on. David Miliband, the Foreign Office and our Khartoum Embassy have been as useless as usual in defending our Teddy Bear naming teacher. They`re far too politically correct to send a Teddy called Mohammed to every child in Darfur. At the very least, they could have demanded consistency from Sudan`s crazed courts. Why not chop off the hands of every child who voted to call the wretched bear Mohammed? * * *   Read more...   Blair Sunday, not quite Brown Tuesday General Ramblings 27 November 2007 Sunday. Watched Blair`s Apologia Pro Disaster Suaon BBC. Soft questioning by David Aaronovitch (son of Sam) but Blair came across as absolutely right in his terms, however wrong in the long view. The real problem is why weren`t the Cabinet, the Party and Parliament able to restrain him? Why did no one warn of the mess we’d make? Why is power so centralised that one man was able to create such a disaster and feel virtuous and right to do so? For Sale: Two CDs sent me anonymously in a TNT jiffy bag. Sounds like Radiohead to me. Offers? * * * Read more...   Forgotten but not gone! General Ramblings 19 November 2007 I used to be invited to the Spectator Awards every year while I was still alive. Not this year. But I didn`t miss the small attendance, Mathew D’Ancona’s unfunny speech, John Reid`s boring speech (though he didn’t head-butt anyone) or the singularly undistinguished (and mainly Tory) set of dull winners. Read more...   Blog 14th November General Ramblings 14 November 2007 Government failed both last weeks’ tests. The Governor wants to make us all miserable and deflate the economy and the housing market. Gordon’s programme is doubtful for housing. Nowt for the people. A hard time lies ahead. * * * Read more...   Big Tests General Ramblings 06 November 2007 Big Tests this week. Government’s First SAATs. For Gordon Is he Blair heavy? Or Labour? Indications so far are that triangulation lives on, as does sitting on the middle ground, pinching Tory policies. Read more...   Letter to Mervyn King November 2007 Monetary Policy 06 November 2007 Dear Mervyn We recommend that the Monetary Policy Committee should reduce its base rate by l% this month. Our last recommendation was for a reduction of one half per cent. This month the reduction needs to be greater because it`s clear that the Bank does not realise either the seriousness of the credit squeeze being imposed on the country or its consequences. Indeed after the Bank’s mistakes in August over liquidity and the Northern Rock there appeared to be a touch of sulky defiance about last month`s refusal to budge or to follow the wiser stance taken by the Fed and the Eurobank. Read more...   Eurotrash General Ramblings 22 October 2007 We lost the rugby. But at least Sarkozy was forced to watch a totally Commonwealth contest. Read more...   Over - the - Honeymoon General Ramblings 15 October 2007 Gordon’s honeymoon has been the shortest since Mrs T. The commentariat has tired of us so they`re taking it out on Gordon. Read more...   The Brown Bottling Blog General Ramblings 15 October 2007 Roller coaster ain`t in it. Two weeks ago Gordon Brown was Master of the Universe. Today a deflating lilo, seven points behind, drifting helplessly on a Tory tide. Not only has the election I wanted vanished, but we`re going to lose the next. Mein Gord. Read more...   Election That Never Was Is Not General Ramblings 08 October 2007 The election`s off. The Tories who feared it and the media who advised against it are now yelling that Gordon`s frit. Balls. Read more...   High Noon General Ramblings 03 October 2007 High noon at the last chance saloon. Make or break time is Tuesday. Announce a 1 November election then, Gordon, or forever hold your peace. Don`t go early and there`s little point in going next May or October. Might as well sit on into 2009. If things don`t look good then May 2010 for the bitter end. Read more...   Gambling for Growth: Speculating for Stability General Ramblings 03 October 2007 French intellectuals agonise about national identity. Mundane British counterparts preferred to worry about our ailing economy, a pessimism more debilitating than the French because it’s a phallic failure not an anxiety: the once workshop of the world can`t make it. Yet today while French anxieties remain obsessive ours are gone. Prophets of economic doom are silent just as Britain is embarked on a series of economic gambles instead of attempting to build long-term economic strength as doomsters urged. Read more...   Letter to Mervyn King October 2007 Monetary Policy 01 October 2007 Dear Mervyn No point in recriminations about the Northern Rock crisis, though if it dents images of omniscience and demonstrates the virtues of sympathetic flexibility it can serve a useful purpose. Our last submission warned of the need to boost liquidity and to reduce both interest rates on interbank lending (as the Fed did to relieve the constipation of the system) and interest rates generally to relieve the pressures on the borrowing public and particularly on the sub-prime sector in its British form. Read more...   Conference: Beta-Gamma General Ramblings 27 September 2007 Bad Conference is degenerating into a trade fair. The unions supinely gave up their power. They didn’t trouble the leader with votes. Conference was castrated. No bookshop. No ideas. Everything passed to the Policy Forum. Which is useless. Ruthless management of the old Stalinist style without the Blair charm. Read more...

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