POST OF THE DAYFraser Nelson needs a hug.
1. Dizzy explains how a Tory councillor became a terror suspect.
2. Tom Harris on when he will know his wife is going to divorce him.
3. Iain Lindley on the similarities between the Labour Party Conference and Eurovision.
4. Capitalists@Work have news of a new J K Rowling book.
5. John Cruddas is obviously in denial at the Labour Conference. It's all going swimmingly, he says.
6. Nadine reckons Gordon Brown has had Botox!
7. Tim Congdon on the UKIP blog has a Eurozone 'what if'.
8. LibDem Voice on the pointlessness of uniform swing calculations.
9. Jon Craig is predicting a reshuffle at the end of next week.
10. Red Box on what Deborah Mattinson told the Cabinet (and Charlie Whelan).
11. Jeremy Hunt reckons he knows why his local surgeries are so busy.
12. SNP Tactical Voting reckons new Scottish leader Iain Gray is the most boring man in Britain.
6 comments:
It'd not just Cruddas in denial - the conference seems stuffed with ringers who have swallowed Alice in Wonderland pills that magickly enable them to trot out the old spiel: there is no leader but our leader; Gordon is great; Gordon is his name; he is getting on with the job: he is right to do so - all of course said in a metallic monotone with little or no facial expression. Gordon and his liggers all seem to be in denial of the true state of the country and its finances. Worst of all, they seem to deny their own stakeholders.
The audience look disinterested or worse. There were empty spaces, both in the seating and in the frontal lobes.
During the work and pensions session, Purnell seemed to be on speed as he waxed lyrical and invited us to "imagine another 10 years" - thanks, no, not on your nelly! Moving himself with this reverie he went on to sitcom land with a tale of a working class family and what the "Fair Deal" had done for them. The background muzack though had gone missing. His words seemed hollow in comparison to those of the GMB rep.
Purnell sat next to a lady in yellow who apparently thought it was a good thing to laugh about the plight of the disabled Remploy employees. Another one in denial...
In another piece of denial, a vote on one of the motions which was clearly visible as "against" - due to the show of hands being in camera shot - was noted as " for" by the chair. This was a scandalous affair.
Earlier that day, Dolly Draper had obviously swallowed the same pills as Shaun Woodward a day or so previously. Most of the Labour staffers in the audience and those that got up and "delivered speeches" - using the words advisedly - were all repeating the same mantra as if the balance of payments were fine, there being no crisis in the financial markets, and as if they could happily afford to buy the overpriced beverages available at the venue, never mind the cost of the transport to get there.
The only note, and it was a pitiful one, of any sense of reality, came with two speeches on behalf of the 3,000 odd dispossessed Remploy employees (disabled).These two speakers, including one man from the GMB, spoke with passion and experience, suggestive of real world contact with the bitter aftermath of New Labour spin. They got much louder applause than the party faithful who were spouting the Brown mantra but sadly, their pleas were not heard.
Labour's denial of reality is systemic. The conference was no more than a staged PR exercise, that paid lip service to democracy and little if any service to the majority of the UK who might otherwise have expected their political knights to give a damn. Labour are disenfranchising their own electorate and the ultimate denial would be to assume that a change of leader will effect any change in the Party's fortunes, or in the country's.
Watervole -, buddy, art!
The future seems irretrievably grim for us but I shall endeavour to give some predictions (always a dangerous thing to do):-
1) Massive contraction of credit will have the following effect :-
A) You can’t get a mortgage and you can’t get a new car.
B) If you are employed by a small firm or company then your boss will be unable to get credit or an overdraft. Result - bye bye job.
2) If you are in the public sector then the glory days will be over. If your public sector job involves some form of qualified skill (e.g. solicitor or police constable) then expect it to be given to a new cadre of unqualified cheaper personnel (this process has already started).
3) All final salary index linked state pensions will be axed for new entrants.
4) The old private sector professions will simply be destroyed by a combination of laws allowing huge competition from the financial institutions (a move already legislated for, in the case of solicitors, by the Legal Services Act) and, also, the end of overdrafts for small firms . Only the largest solicitors, chartered surveyors and accountants firms will survive. Huge numbers of jobless solicitors, accountants and surveyors will swell the ranks of the new working class.
5) The NHS will be heavily undermined by a process of de-skilling. Expect Nurses to be given GP roles but not their salaries. The same thing will happen in the teaching profession. Class room assistants will take on teaching roles.
6) The actual effect of 2,3,4 and 5 will be utter destruction of the middle classes by a process of forced deprivation of jobs and proletarianisation of the remaining roles and a return to the 18th century world pre-industrial world of a few very rich and many very poor.
It is no coincidence that this return to the 18th Century will mark the end of the period of Anglo-American dominance that started in that century. We have been spoilt and we are going to have a very nasty shock indeed when the Chinese start flexing their muscles. No special favours for us.
Politically this new nightmare will have drastic consequences. I predict that they will be the following :-
1) An end to governments having tenure for ten years. Expect a succession of one term governments.
2) The rise of extremism of both the far right and far left.
3) The collapse of the E.U. and the Euro.
4) The re-absorption of Georgia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia into the Russian sphere of influence. Expect Turkey to join them too (There is huge Russian investment in Turkey).
5) The end of American military activity in Europe and the probable consequent extension of Russian influence to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Germany, the Low Countries, Hungary, The Czech Republic, the former Yugoslavia, Austria and Italy.
6) A military union between the U.K., France and Spain. The U.K. and France being the only military powers capable of dealing with Russia and Spain being in the right place geographically.
7) Huge economic migration from U.K. to Canada and Australia. The former is going to be an extraordinarily wealthy country, once the newly developed technology to efficiently exploit the oil sands comes on steam. The latter has huge mineral resources which will enrich them. Expect the migration to be on a par with the Irish migrations of the late 19th century. This will further enfeeble U.K.
8) Expect the Royal Family to relocate to Ottawa leaving a Viceroy in the U.K.
9) Once the professions have been replaced by badly paid unqualified people and the brightest and best have left for Canada and Australia then expect massive corruption on an epic scale and the effective end of the rule of law. This will be followed by military or totalitarian rule. The laws which would allow a coup by the military or an extremist party are already in place.Public sector pensions will long since have stopped being paid and all penisoners will be impoverished.
I hope that I am very wrong about all this but this is not just apocalyptic self indulgence. We are not manufacturing anything. We are not producing anything. Our service sector is heavily dependant on a financial system that has just been shown to be little more than a Ponzi scheme of pyramid selling. Our main ally, the U.S., is clearly not going to be in a position to police the world or even help us financially. The new power, China, will have no need of us. How are we going to keep afloat?
I’ve never forgot a conversation I had 14 years ago with an Old Etonian barrister. One of his friends got into the Thatcher cabinet. The friend told the barrister that in 50 years the whole system in the U.K. would collapse.
I would encourage all bloggers who read this blog to vociferously dispute my predictions with facts and, thereby, cheer me up.
My sojourn in my working class job has come to an end. Probably just in time, as it involved enormous amounts of work for “The Masters of The Universe” from all four major U.S. banks and, also, people from various hedge funds.
I will always remember them on the brink of catastrophe but totally insouciant. The huge houses, the manicured lawns and the empty lives. Snatched desperate telephone calls to their mothers, on their mobiles, from the more junior and endless tirades about performance from the more senior. Not tirades about my performance but tirades to anonymous underlings about third parties who had not made the grade in their trades. These were the bankers.
The hedge funders were mostly glassily arrogant. They would ignore you whilst communicating with boyfriends or girlfriends by telephone or whilst discussing “Noo York” and their children with each other.
I wonder where they are all now. Probably tearing out their hair. Contemplating ruin.
One set of people were irate even before the crisis. The non-doms. How they loved Mr Blair for keeping their sacred tax free status. Or, in the case of Americans, allowing them to pay tax to Uncle Sam and not us. How they hated Mr Brown. They found they were stuck in multi-million pound London houses which wouldn’t sell.
Then there was the real shock of the summer. My most recent trip to Bulgaria. Recently joined to the E.U. but now heaving with rich Russians and, consequently, still undergoing a property boom. The Russians are back and the British were nowhere. Some Germans were still around, however. Food and fuel inflation ridiculous but large numbers of new model cars on the road, a by-product of the boom. So much for the global recession so beloved of Brown.
I lay on the Black Sea beach re-reading Iain’s “what if” compilation about British politics. There will be an extraordinary “what if” book about Gordon Brown in future. “What if” he had had that election?
One essay was very prescient. It suggested that the Conservatives would have lost their reputation for economic competence if they had won the 1964 geneeral election. Try replacing the word Conservative with Labour and the year 1964 with the year 2005.
Watervole :
If you can find any Labour cabinet member who hasn't learnt the credit crunch bit by heart you can claim Iain's £50
Don't worry Mr Dale, your cash is safe. They can all spout it in unison.
All together now...
"The Credit crisis, that started in America,has led to some difficulties for working families but Gordon Brown is taking the right long term decisions for the country"
Dear Bill Quango,
I'm afraid, especially given today's performances, that Dale's £50 will be safe for a while yet. Though perhaps not after Glenrothes....
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