Tuesday, September 02, 2008
What Lies Behind Alistair Darling's Blether?
Having just watched two interviews with Alistair Darling by Nick Robinson and Gavin Esler, I got the impression of a man completely on the edge - at the end of his tether. The body language was astonishing. He flitted from one thing to another, sounded as nervous as I have ever heard a Cabinet Minister sound in an interview of this nature and he blethered for Britain. Anyone would think he feared for his job.
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16 comments:
As ever, he couldn't answer the basic questions.
I trust the OECD more than I do Gordon Brown's Treasury.
I rather warmed to Darling as a result of his interview - but his performance since has been so clearly controlled by his neighbour that the strain is showing. I just hope he has the guts to do a Geoffrey.
As you say. The nervous eyes, the sweating brow, the hesitant voice, the complete lack of confidence or authority....
It was frightening to behold.
This is the Chancellor of the Exchequer as we go into a recession.
And just look at who is PM!
You are joking? Esler and slaphead. They couldn't savage a dead rat.
Did you see Tom Bradbury on ITV? He really gave it to the jock loser.
No Beeboid gives a Nu Liebour nazi party member a hard time.
I watched the Comrade Chairman McBroon on the news bulletins earlier.
Despite the BBC and Sky spin about "refreshed after holidays and ready to lead the fightback, blah, blah, blah", McBroon looked anything but. Face puffy and jowly, clearly ill at ease, he reminded me of Nixon in his final days.
Did any one notice his facial muscles twitching when pressed to clarify his comments regarding the appalling Wendy Alexander?
It looked like he was grinding his teeth to me.
It scares me to think that these morons have control of the levers of power AND the Nuclear Button.
Please could we have a General Election.....right now.......as I don't think we can take much more of Labour before people take the law into their own hands and start to lynch the self satisfied, smug Labour Ministers like Hazel Blears, Yvette Cooper and Blinky Balls.
Iain,
Any comments on the interview Hazel Blurs - I mean Blears gave on Radio 4's Today to Sarah Montague. You know, the one where she wants young couples to mortgage themselves to death with Government "help" to support the "dream" of owning a wasting asset?
The angry and/or critical response of over 90% of contributors to BBC's Have Your Say on is a clear indication of how this package will be viewed by the public.
The most recommended posts:
"NO NO NO! Stop giving away my tax money to buoy up markets. People should only be buying what they can afford! This sounds like they want to keep property prices artificially high. I'm sorry if anyone ends up in negative equity, but then you knew the risks.
Anon, Bristol"
"Why is the fall in the housing market a bad thing? Its exactly what first time buyers need to get onto the market, not an abatement of tax or another loan scheme. Let prices crash for all I care."
"The best thing the government could do is let house prices continue to fall, so that they become affordable."
"Why is this government using taxpayers' money (my money) to prop up the housing market!!"
"This whole thing is no more than smoke and mirrors.It hasn't been designed to rescue the housing market, it's been designed to rescue Gordon Brown's reputation as a PM.
It won't work Gordon - you're a dead man walking. Keep walking...."
"When I was paying 16% interest rates on my mortgage in the 1980s, what help did I receive from the government? Nothing!..Why should my taxes go towards paying to help the housing market now?"
"Surely all this will do is encourage people once again to borrow more than they can afford in the hope their property increases in value before they are forced to sell? Except this time it's all us taxpayers that lose, rather than the banks?"
"On the whole I'd prefer it wasn't revived."
"If you have so little wriggle room in your finances that 1% of the value of a property is what is stopping your from buying, then you can't afford it anyway"
"I suppose these "loans" are to be made with yet more imaginary government money and to be repaid with honest peoples' real hard-earned cash."
"I cannot believe that the tax payer is now going to be liable for 5 year loans that can only be spent on with large property developers.
I would like to know what happens if this fails to 'revive' the over heated housing market and these properties are worth 30% less in 5 years time when the loan is to be repaid."
"Do we not learn anything? Cheap uncontrolled loans have caused the problems we are now suffering."
Wasn't it nice to hear him say that "things are going to get tough but we will get though it"!!!!!!!!!
Isn't that nice to know! We will get though it!
Isn't that like telling someone they are up for a fight which they will get battered & brusied & maybe even end up with brain damage but they will get though it?
That's just it isn't it?
There is nothing Labour can do to help us now because Labour never trained us up for the fight we are about to enter!
Any chance of a link to the interviews? I don't usually enjoy the theatre of cruelty but in this case I'll make an exception.
He was nervous because he had been sent back by his master to rectify the balls up of the Guardian interview, and he thought he would screw up again. The Guardian interview was Brown spin, cocked up by Darling by not emphasising the global origins of the downturn enough.
Perhaps he simply had a sore bottom?
Let's face it, even if his job was threatened, this cautious Scot would not have gone anywhere near mentioning a cabinet reshuffle as he did in the Guardian interview, without the approval of GB. The PM was behind it all.
I never set great store by 'body language'. Darling may just have been feeling the effects of a surfeit of lampreys, after all. What he said, or didn't say and his general attitude is much more relevant.
He is in a job much too big for him. He has been sort of protected so far by the fact of Brown telling him what to do ie he has been carried so up till now. But now he has to go into the limelight and lead from the front he reveals he knows nothing of the basics of the economy and finance.
A London civil servant I spoke to says it is just like that. Its all smiles and smooth sailing nowadays at the Treasury with Darling as nominal head 'cos he is very benign. He is easy to work with/for since he doesn't know anything. Which is a great relief since Brown was Chancellor. There is a deliberate Treasury policy of not telling him too much and he doesn't know enough to know he should know more.
Thats how he came to be on hols in Majorca in August 2007 unaware of the credit crisis.
Latest Private Eye says Darling was in International Marxist/Trotskyst Fourth group in his uni days. When he was at Lothian Regional Council he wouldn't set rates as he thought it could bankrupt the council (he opposed Mrs T's rate capping). Scottish Labour asked George Galloway to remonstrate with him as his refusal to set rates would lead to massive job losses. He denounced Galloway as a moderate.
It's worse than you all think, folks!
"When I was paying 16% interest rates on my mortgage in the 1980s, what help did I receive from the government? Nothing!..
That says it all, and you are right to remind us auntie flo' that it
was a Tory Govt. that deliberately destroyed industries and their associated businesses, communities and lives, then turned it's back and left people to rot.
I know which Govt. I prefer when the going gets tough.
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