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Gordon’s daft decision to go on holiday to Southwold (aka Chelsea on sea) stems from the same kind of lunacy as Bill Clinton doing a public opinion poll on where he should holiday. It’s a pathetic piece of pandering to show himself as English, patriotic and carbon clean.
It also shows he wont have a holiday because he’ll be constantly on view, pestered and photographed, in touch with London at all times and transferring his problems from Downing St to the east coast which is a pretty grotty place at the best of times (I once holidayed in a caravan there). No rest to be had there.
Cancel your British holiday Gordon. Let Harriet and Jack run the show in a kind of dual monarchy. They’ll love it. Go off to the US as you used to. Cut yourself off from everything. Sleep. Rest. Recharge batteries and enjoy (insofar as that’s possible for Presbyterians) and come back refreshed and reinvigorated having read ,learned and thoroughly digested my long letter telling you what to do now. You ignored my last, which told you to go to the country in September 2007 and it’s been downhill ever since so taking the advice I’ve sent you now is your last chance not only to win the election but to retain my loyalty and support which is more important.
Go Gordon. Enjoy. Get away from it all and for Christ’s sake don’t come back saying “Crisis. What crisis?” Come back saying “What a crisis. I’m going to lead us out of it”. Adding “on the lines of the Mitchell plan” is entirely optional.
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Next week the Bank of England makes its monthly decision on interest rates. The Bank has allowed a credit and a liquidity crisis to develop. It has encouraged a debt bonanza. It has tolerated the disastrous explosion of hedge funds, Special purpose debt vehicles, neo banking irresponsibility. It has issued no warnings about irrational exuberance, debt explosion, or the vulnerability of over-lent financial institutions and left the responsibility for clearing up the mess by nationalising Northern Rock to the government while chuntering on about moral hazard, and not rewarding the irresponsible to maintain its own reputation for moral rectitude.
For an institution with that record which has crippled growth by interest rates higher than they should be and a grossly overvalued exchange rate to suit the purposes of finance to now keep interest rates as high as 5% is a betrayal and an indication that the Governor and the entire MPC are totally unsuited to the job. Fire the lot. Make Blanchflower Governor. Give the power to fix interest rates back to the government. Give old Merv a new job as lecturer in moral theology at Auchtermuchty theological college and nationalise the Bank pf England.
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Barack the knack did well out of his Obamamania tour of Europe and the battle states on “O Force One”. In Germany “Ich bin ein Obama echoed Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Binliner”. In France Sarkozy kissed him. But in Britain everyone did better out of the visit than our Gordon, who should have got a sprinkle of star dust out of it. Cameron put him on Web-Cameron. Tony Blair came back from the dead and was more photographed with him than Gordon. He wasn’t allowed a press conference. Only a little speechette stood alone in Downing St. Then off. As if he was the Prime Minster of Latvia. |
