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Written by Austin Mitchell
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10 August 2006 |
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Tony should go on holiday immediately and stop sitting around in London pretending that he’s exerting influence in a world which isn’t going to listen to poodles when the leashholder is going to be forced to do something.
Bush cant afford to let the killing of Lebanese civilians and the destruction of their environment go on to give the Israeli’s time to defeat Hezbollah because they can only achieve that by destroying Lebanon. He’s forced to listen to swing states such as the French and Turkey, not to a poodle whose going to jump through any hoops Dubya wants. In any case, staying on in London to denounce militant Islam is only going to infuriate cabinet colleagues and those in the Labour Party who never go on holiday, into a rousing reply of “We wont be fooled again” Long guitar refrain.
The Fed, which alone among central banks has to pay attention to the health of the economy as well as the inflation which obsesses other central banks, isn’t raising American interest rates. It is concerned because the economy is slowing quickly while the other central banks, including ours, regard any increase in growth as a reason to clobber the economy.
This makes the Bank of England’s folly of increasing rates even worse because it guarantees that when the dollar comes down, as it will, we aren’t in a position to take advantage by getting the pound down, investment up, and demand boosted. It could be that they just want to damage Labiour though on the other han d its more lkklely also be simple stupidity. Either way neither the MPC nor the commentators have pointed to the fundamental truth. Policies which favour the bankers damage the people, their jobs and the economic growth which improves their lot. Perhaps Gordon Brown didn’t realise thus when he set up a system of regulation by finance for finance and in the interests of finance, but its pretty clear that his goverment aint going to succeed unless he does something about it.
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TV news makes it look as though Florida is awash with Cubans demonstrating they joy at the imminent death of Fidel Castro. It aint going to happen of course but I’ll guarantee two things:
l) Castro isn’t going to come to the US for treatment as other dictators do because he can get better treatment at home.
2) The demonstrators have no intention of going back anyway. Unless the US revokes their rights once Castro is gone. That would really terrify them.
In my role as page to Good King Wenceslas I decided to tread in the footsteps of the master and visit the shrine of his Murdoch-Fest at Pebble Beech. It’s a very exclusive place - $475 to play a round of golf and $8-75 just to drive round the sacred road. Paying up I asked the toll keeper if she’d seen Tony Blair, who’d gone there straight after signing his pact to combat global warming with Schwartznegger. ”Oh Yes” she said, ”we were late home because all the traffic was held up until his big black SUV went through.” |
