political commentator * author * publisher * bookseller * radio presenter * blogger * Conservative candidate * former lobbyist * Jack Russell owner * West Ham United fanatic * Email iain AT iaindale DOT com
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Pathetic Brown at PMQs
What a truly pathetic performance from Brown at PMQs today. Pathetic. So he thinks the tripartite regulatory system has worked. He thinks there is nothing wrong with the FSA. The man is delusional.
Cameron was hardly sparkling. I hate his: "answer this one question" questions. It's like Paxman, you just get annoyed with him asking it in the end. Would he really ask the question if he thought that Brown could answer it.
Don't think he has much choice other than to support it.There is no-one else he can blame.I think the end for Brown is definitely now in sight.Are his backbenchers in marginals prepared to go down with the sinking ship or will there be a mutiny to replace the captain?
Can you quote him saying that there is nothing wrong with the FSA?
If you can't say what he said to lead you to that conclusion, you should re-write your lengthy and illuminating piece to reflect more accurately what was said.
Otherwise one might think you delusional
I distinctly heard him say that there were lessons being learned, and adding that they were being learned around the world, not just in this country.
On another topic, Brown reminded us that the basic rtate of income tax is now 2% less than it was under the last Tory government (and before anyone bleats about the 10% band, that didn't exist under the Neo-Conmen of 1979-97)
You must have been watching a different PMQs. Cameron's questions were quite ineffective and Brown's responses were substantive, witty and devastating. Cameron ended up losing his way and stumbled in the middle of his prepared soundbite - giving away his lack of confidence on economic issues.
The pressure from the Conservatives in financial policy, John Redwood in particular, was for looser regulation of banking, not stricter regulation. The Conservative Party then endorsed the Government's reaction to Northern Rock's difficulties, only to do a u-turn when a passing bandwagon was spotted.
Conservative economic policy is meanwhile still undecided between the 'tortoises' arguing for caution, and 'hares' pressing for significant spending and tax cuts. The Conservative Party would have more credibility if it had a clear economic policy.
You'll get the usual die-hards telling you that their man wiped the floor with Cam and all the rest of the usual BS but PMQs are getting past a joke. Brown simply isn't up to the job, and there isn't much else to say, really.
Is there no mechanism for getting Gormless to admit that his statistics are out of date and in many cases just downright lies.
Tough as it might be is it not time for every question to be preceded by a statement of the errors in the statistics used the last time Gormless evaded an answer.
What a pity Cameron din't rustle up this damning quote about Gordon's ability with maths:
"Gordon Brown, the man who has run the country's economy for 10 years, says he was never any good at maths. He revealed his weakness when asked by a Manchester teenager if you had to be good at maths to be chancellor.
"I did maths at school and for one year at university but I don't think I was ever very good at it - and some people would say it shows," Mr Brown laughed."
And he said something like we have the lowest inflation in the world ?? I think he quoted 2%.As no one believes a word this liar says why doesn't he go the whole hog and just become a Saddam.
'Inflation is now -4% while growth is now 19%. My governments approval rating is 104% and my own personal hygiene and grooming is beyond reproach.
politics is the loser today. brown continues to delude himself that the economy is great and his stats page in teh book of answers will destroy teh conservatives. cameron missed the killer punch. the real problem is the way brown has failed to answer a question it just makes him teh governmnet and politics of all colours look bad
come on ian, i mean i'm not gb's biggest fan and even i can see that (by his standards) he didn't do too badly today. i like you for your objectivity and i agree with you on many things but today i think you just need a chill pill
Cameron should have nailed Brown to the floor but he failed miserably. Why didn't he mention Brown taking the 10% tax band away when Brown said taxes were coming down? Cameron should be hammering home week after week that New Labour is the enemy of those on low incomes and friend of the uber rich.
Not Cameron's best PMQ, to be honest - rather blown off course by the references to his lack of basic arithmatic (thanks for nothing, Freddie!).
But he does play the long game - by keep forcing Brown to fall back on the numbers no-one believes in. Inflation at 2%? Yeah, right, of course it is. Inflation feels as bad as it did in the seventies. This will do for Brown in the end.
We all know inflation is 28%, unemployment is 18 million, the pound's worth less than 10 cents, the nurses are lazy, the teachers can't do anything, property's fallen by 200% and the police spend an average of 8760 hours per year filling in forms.
Why do we stand for these liars?
Abolish government, let us sort ourselves out. My head dropped off the other day, and I didn't queue up with the losers for a hand-out, I sorted myself out.
well Cameron blew it again... an open goal and he misses... |Peopel aren't interested in FSA/Bank of England issues. Thats for anoraks. He needs to ask questions re cost of goods/inflation/rising taxes that people are concerned about
Shame you were so keen to get your highly partisan report out and were therefore too early to note that Paul "nanny state" Beresford MP, a (Tory) dentist, wants to poison us all with fluoridisation of our water supplies.
Tuh, silly me. It's just occurred to me that I have been terribly unfair to Brown, and to Bliar before him. I'm ashamed to admit that it was staring me in the face, but I was just too stupid to understand.
It's called 'Questions to the Prime Minister', isn't it. That means that people can ask the Prime Minister questions. Only if it were to be called 'Answers from the Prime Minister' would we have a reasonable right to expect to receive anything more that yards of flatulent, mendacious, self-serving, incompetent, partial, tedious, point-scoring drivel to which we have become habituated and inured. Dear God, when Gordy Broon starts to go through his pathetic routine of gobbling his words and repetitively stabbing the Dispatch Box with his left claw in a forlorn effort to impose authority and hypnotise us into believing his bovine ordure, I lose the will to live. Again.
Cameron keeps on missing yawningly open goals, in my view, but at least he has some notion of how to do public speaking.
Game set and match. As the webkids say, Cameron totally pwns Brown at PMQs. This administration is in zombie mode - it may still be walking but it is already dead.
Interesting Ian to see just how many nulab's are reading your blog now. All those testy replies mean one thing - you're getting right to the point and UPSETTING THEM - well done - keep up the good work - PS: try looking at Maguire's comments - no one bothers!!
"Lessons are being learned"? We seem to hear a lot of that on a whole range of issues, but don't see much evidence that it's true. It's up there with 'I would welcome a full debate on this issue...' as a statement of the complete opposite to the truth.
GB may understand basic arithmetic but he doesn't seem to take notice of it. And if Mr Boothroyd genuinely found any of today's exchanges 'witty' or 'devastating', well the mind boggles.
What do you think of Michael Martin's response to David Winnick's point of order, Iain? I think it's scandalous: he has the discretion to allow the issues MPs want to raise to be debated, and given the terms of the resolution on sub judice, I think his decision would be quashed as unreasonable and biased, if it were judicially reviewable like a ministerial decision. In my blog I'm now calling for Martin to resign.
Brownies galore at PMQs Fraser Nelson does a masterly fisking of PMQs over at the Coffee House. OK Brown may have got a little slicker at his rehearsed put-downs. But he is seriously disconnected from the public who increasingly see through his lies. And it was the parade of lies at PMQs that made him the loser today.
They're all such a waste of skin! Politics and politicians are a waste of everyones time and money. Freeloading, corrupt and compeletely pointless - they just feed off the rest of us. Where is the 'leader' and the 'party' that will reduce taxation, roll back the threat to our civil liberties, control immigration, sort out the health service and our Post Offices and get our troops out of these stupid pointless and costly wars? Hmm? I can't watch PMQs anymore because I want to throw the TV out a window!
Interesting that Clegg was claiming 100,000 housing repossessions but Brown said the correct figure was 27,000.
It looks like Clegg was confusing repossession ACTIONS with ACTUAL repossessions. Someone should explain to him that less than a third of actions result in actual repossessions.
"On another topic, Brown reminded us that the basic rtate of income tax is now 2% less than it was under the last Tory government (and before anyone bleats about the 10% band, that didn't exist under the Neo-Conmen of 1979-97)" James 12:48pm
Ever heard of fiscal drag? And taxes were lowered by the Conservatives in during the last Conservative government. Remember when the top rate was 98%?
It's because people like James just keep spouting spurious statistics to prove their point that Cameron and Co have to keep reminding everyone that Brown has been the architect of his own forthcoming demise.
Did anyone catch the BBCs 6 o'clock news? Dave definitely won the war of today's PMQs according to the BBC edit. It got top billing and highlighted DCs best soundbite (One Prime Minister plus One Chancellor equals Economic Incompetence). I expect Gordon is now frothing at the mouth and getting in a serious complaint about BBC bias. Has the tide turned?
Just seen frederick Forsythe on BBC's The One Show, and he says that he never said that David Cameron had "no basic grasp of arithmetic", or at worst he was deliberately misquoted.
Forget the politics of PMQs - the real issue is the functional uselessness of Browns tripartite regulatory system. System? Hah! Don't make me laugh. I work in retail financial services and the whole FSA/FOS/FSCS is rotten to the core. It's a corrupt system that is basically nationalisation lite led by moronic apparatchiks of the Nu Liebour junta. I have met and talked to many FSA foot soldiers and by and large they are Good Blokes' Generally because they are using a stint at the FSA as part of their career ladder. But the top management have been utter plonkers. A load of time serving self serving honour seeking clowns. Clever yes. Smart, oh yes. But clowns nevertheless.
Finally their is a lot of evidence now coming to light that the the FSMA 2000 (under which this whole regulatory stasi was set up) conflicts mightily with the Human Rights Act.
Friends of Brown trying to defend him miss the point (no surprise really)
As others have said the very fact of watching him open his mpouth looses labour votes.
If Cameron spent his time picking Brown up on his lies and disesmbling he would never have breath to ask another question.
Most people only connect with PMQs via the 20 second snippet shown on the news. The danger for Brown is the opinion of his own back benchers, not the viewing public. If their flesh starts to creep they will begin to search around for a complient optometrist .
And as for the comment by 'James' about income tax, of course he totally misses the point about not indexing allowances, a classic stealth tax.
Gordon Brown today "the right hon. Gentleman simply does not understand basic arithmetic. The basic rate of income tax is going down to 20p. Let us look at our record. Inflation in Britain is 2.5 per cent"
Draw Primarolo on the DH website 6th March "Prescription charge increases will stay below the rate of inflation"
Prescription charges will rise 3.6% next Tuesday so who really doesn't understand arithmetic? And who's the bigger liar, Dawn or Gordon?
"Just seen frederick Forsythe on BBC's The One Show, and he says that he never said that David Cameron had "no basic grasp of arithmetic", or at worst he was deliberately misquoted."
From the Times, in a piece quoting a seies of letters from Forsyth to the Telegraph and Express:
"August 2006 I know Master Dave has a degree in PPE, but could someone give him an arithmetic primer, a pad and a stub of pencil?"
RE - "You've posted that when PMQs was barely half-over.
You're becoming a parody of yourself. Go back to running a bookshop."
Hmmm thats more Gordon Broons level, in fact what an idea!, let Broon run the bookshop and Mr Dale can be Prime Minister of England!, oh no you are right...mr Dale would not qualify as he is not a lying, inept traitorous anti-English communist Jock!.
Cambo and GB both landed blows but none of them hurt. Cambo appears to have lost some of his slickness but GB has improved his performance. Cambo perhaps has the edge but by so little as to make no difference, especially when it comes to economics of which he obviously knows little.
On the other hand, the Cambo soundbites are doing well on tv news but that has nothing to do with your post.
The last boy scout got it wrong! Frederick Forsythe said he didn't remember saying it, but might have done, though the context might well have made it sound different.
Delusion reigns in the Neo-ConMen parochial kingdom.
Diablo -
Fiscal drag - are you referring to the enormous growth in GDP which has brought so much wealth to those of us who can be bothered to put clothes on and go and work for a living?
That growth has certainly increased the tax take,perhaps not raising thresholds in line with RPI has too but I'd rather pay the HMRC 40% of a lot than 10% of nothing.
Sorry you lot have missed out on the good times - maybe it's the bitterness of losing Maggie"VAT"Thatcher that's held you all back?
Chris A said... "In reply to anonymous they both cannot be correct. Inflation is either the CPI or RPI, but not both whenever it suits the government."
It's horses for courses. Sometimes CPI is the most appropriate measure, other times RPI.
It was Norman Lamont who decided that it suited his purposes better to use RPIX instead of RPI for defining the inflation target since it excludes mortgage interest payments.
My State pension is about to increase by 3.9% - based on the RPI in September 2007.
To be honest when Cameron started on the economy I thought he was in for a bit of a PMQs beating. However, despite saying all the right things about inflation, unemployment and interest rates under the Tories I thought Brown was pretty flat. He must be kicking himself, an opportunity to wipe the floor with Cameron wasted. His line about Cameron's adding up was poor but Cameron's quotes hardly set the world alight.
Cameron was hardly sparkling. I hate his: "answer this one question" questions. It's like Paxman, you just get annoyed with him asking it in the end. Would he really ask the question if he thought that Brown could answer it.
ReplyDeleteYou've posted that when PMQs was barely half-over.
ReplyDeleteYou're becoming a parody of yourself. Go back to running a bookshop.
Watch the deepening gloom on the Labour benches as the ship drifts further and further from its moorings.
ReplyDeleteDon't think he has much choice other than to support it.There is no-one else he can blame.I think the end for Brown is definitely now in sight.Are his backbenchers in marginals prepared to go down with the sinking ship or will there be a mutiny to replace the captain?
ReplyDeleteThe best way to deal with PMQs these days is to record it, then fast forward through Brown and the nodding donkeys on his back benches.
ReplyDeleteI'm no Labour fan, but the story of PMQs today was that Brown comfortably won.
ReplyDeleteCan you quote him saying that there is nothing wrong with the FSA?
ReplyDeleteIf you can't say what he said to lead you to that conclusion, you should re-write your lengthy and illuminating piece to reflect more accurately what was said.
Otherwise one might think you delusional
I distinctly heard him say that there were lessons being learned, and adding that they were being learned around the world, not just in this country.
On another topic, Brown reminded us that the basic rtate of income tax is now 2% less than it was under the last Tory government (and before anyone bleats about the 10% band, that didn't exist under the Neo-Conmen of 1979-97)
You must have been watching a different PMQs. Cameron's questions were quite ineffective and Brown's responses were substantive, witty and devastating. Cameron ended up losing his way and stumbled in the middle of his prepared soundbite - giving away his lack of confidence on economic issues.
ReplyDeleteThe pressure from the Conservatives in financial policy, John Redwood in particular, was for looser regulation of banking, not stricter regulation. The Conservative Party then endorsed the Government's reaction to Northern Rock's difficulties, only to do a u-turn when a passing bandwagon was spotted.
Conservative economic policy is meanwhile still undecided between the 'tortoises' arguing for caution, and 'hares' pressing for significant spending and tax cuts. The Conservative Party would have more credibility if it had a clear economic policy.
Iain,
ReplyDeleteYou'll get the usual die-hards telling you that their man wiped the floor with Cam and all the rest of the usual BS but PMQs are getting past a joke. Brown simply isn't up to the job, and there isn't much else to say, really.
I thiought the PM did OK. Good joke he did about arithmetic from the PM. The tory leader did OK too though.
ReplyDeleteIs there no mechanism for getting Gormless to admit that his statistics are out of date and in many cases just downright lies.
ReplyDeleteTough as it might be is it not time for every question to be preceded by a statement of the errors in the statistics used the last time Gormless evaded an answer.
What a pity Cameron din't rustle up this damning quote about Gordon's ability with maths:
ReplyDelete"Gordon Brown, the man who has run the country's economy for 10 years, says he was never any good at maths.
He revealed his weakness when asked by a Manchester teenager if you had to be good at maths to be chancellor.
"I did maths at school and for one year at university but I don't think I was ever very good at it - and some people would say it shows," Mr Brown laughed."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6589263.stm
And he said something like we have the lowest inflation in the world ??
ReplyDeleteI think he quoted 2%.As no one believes a word this liar says why doesn't he go the whole hog and just become a Saddam.
'Inflation is now -4% while growth is now 19%. My governments approval rating is 104% and my own personal hygiene and grooming is beyond reproach.
politics is the loser today. brown continues to delude himself that the economy is great and his stats page in teh book of answers will destroy teh conservatives. cameron missed the killer punch. the real problem is the way brown has failed to answer a question it just makes him teh governmnet and politics of all colours look bad
ReplyDeletecome on ian, i mean i'm not gb's biggest fan and even i can see that (by his standards) he didn't do too badly today. i like you for your objectivity and i agree with you on many things but today i think you just need a chill pill
ReplyDeletesorry to have to disagree with you Ian.
ReplyDeleteCameron should have nailed Brown to the floor but he failed miserably. Why didn't he mention Brown taking the 10% tax band away when Brown said taxes were coming down? Cameron should be hammering home week after week that New Labour is the enemy of those on low incomes and friend of the uber rich.
Eloquent Dale on PMQS:
ReplyDeleteWhat a truly eloquent analysis from Dale on PMQs today. Eloquent. Always the first place I turn to for insight. The man is visionary.
Not Cameron's best PMQ, to be honest - rather blown off course by the references to his lack of basic arithmatic (thanks for nothing, Freddie!).
ReplyDeleteBut he does play the long game - by keep forcing Brown to fall back on the numbers no-one believes in. Inflation at 2%? Yeah, right, of course it is. Inflation feels as bad as it did in the seventies. This will do for Brown in the end.
We all know inflation is 28%, unemployment is 18 million, the pound's worth less than 10 cents, the nurses are lazy, the teachers can't do anything, property's fallen by 200% and the police spend an average of 8760 hours per year filling in forms.
ReplyDeleteWhy do we stand for these liars?
Abolish government, let us sort ourselves out. My head dropped off the other day, and I didn't queue up with the losers for a hand-out, I sorted myself out.
well Cameron blew it again... an open goal and he misses... |Peopel aren't interested in FSA/Bank of England issues. Thats for anoraks. He needs to ask questions re cost of goods/inflation/rising taxes that people are concerned about
ReplyDeleteBrowm 3 Cameron 2 Clegg 3
Shame you were so keen to get your highly partisan report out and were therefore too early to note that Paul "nanny state" Beresford MP, a (Tory) dentist, wants to poison us all with fluoridisation of our water supplies.
ReplyDeleteTuh, silly me. It's just occurred to me that I have been terribly unfair to Brown, and to Bliar before him. I'm ashamed to admit that it was staring me in the face, but I was just too stupid to understand.
ReplyDeleteIt's called 'Questions to the Prime Minister', isn't it. That means that people can ask the Prime Minister questions. Only if it were to be called 'Answers from the Prime Minister' would we have a reasonable right to expect to receive anything more that yards of flatulent, mendacious, self-serving, incompetent, partial, tedious, point-scoring drivel to which we have become habituated and inured. Dear God, when Gordy Broon starts to go through his pathetic routine of gobbling his words and repetitively stabbing the Dispatch Box with his left claw in a forlorn effort to impose authority and hypnotise us into believing his bovine ordure, I lose the will to live. Again.
Cameron keeps on missing yawningly open goals, in my view, but at least he has some notion of how to do public speaking.
To me Brown was as useless as the FSA he's doing nothing about.
ReplyDeleteOne would have to be ignorant of the facts or grinding an axe to conclude otherwise.
What the hell is wrong with your blog these days ? It seems to 'freeze' on loading, and whenever you try to navigate to another post or comment.
ReplyDeleteHave you tried to load up too many frills, bells, whistles and widgets ?
Time for a bit of spring cleaning and housekeeping methinks..
Brown could never admit he got his sums wrong!
ReplyDeleteCameron sounded weak and acted as if he knew he was weak.
I am afraid that the Tories do need a kick up the backside. Stop messing about and go for the jugular.
Brown is always happier talking about economics. Just let the whole mess collapse around him. He will have nowhere to hide then.
I think the Tories need Hague.
Game set and match. As the webkids say, Cameron totally pwns Brown at PMQs. This administration is in zombie mode - it may still be walking but it is already dead.
ReplyDeleteDidn't Gordo mention something about 'off balance sheet liabilities'?
ReplyDeleteDoesn't he have rather a lot of these in his own government's accounts?
Interesting Ian to see just how many nulab's are reading your blog now. All those testy replies mean one thing - you're getting right to the point and UPSETTING THEM - well done - keep up the good work - PS: try looking at Maguire's comments - no one bothers!!
ReplyDelete"Lessons are being learned"? We seem to hear a lot of that on a whole range of issues, but don't see much evidence that it's true. It's up there with 'I would welcome a full debate on this issue...' as a statement of the complete opposite to the truth.
ReplyDeleteGB may understand basic arithmetic but he doesn't seem to take notice of it. And if Mr Boothroyd genuinely found any of today's exchanges 'witty' or 'devastating', well the mind boggles.
What do you think of Michael Martin's response to David Winnick's point of order, Iain? I think it's scandalous: he has the discretion to allow the issues MPs want to raise to be debated, and given the terms of the resolution on sub judice, I think his decision would be quashed as unreasonable and biased, if it were judicially reviewable like a ministerial decision. In my blog I'm now calling for Martin to resign.
ReplyDeleteBrownies galore at PMQs
ReplyDeleteFraser Nelson does a masterly fisking of PMQs over at the Coffee House. OK Brown may have got a little slicker at his rehearsed put-downs. But he is seriously disconnected from the public who increasingly see through his lies. And it was the parade of lies at PMQs that made him the loser today.
They're all such a waste of skin! Politics and politicians are a waste of everyones time and money. Freeloading, corrupt and compeletely pointless - they just feed off the rest of us. Where is the 'leader' and the 'party' that will reduce taxation, roll back the threat to our civil liberties, control immigration, sort out the health service and our Post Offices and get our troops out of these stupid pointless and costly wars? Hmm? I can't watch PMQs anymore because I want to throw the TV out a window!
ReplyDeleteInteresting that Clegg was claiming 100,000 housing repossessions but Brown said the correct figure was 27,000.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like Clegg was confusing repossession ACTIONS with ACTUAL repossessions. Someone should explain to him that less than a third of actions result in actual repossessions.
"On another topic, Brown reminded us that the basic rtate of income tax is now 2% less than it was under the last Tory government (and before anyone bleats about the 10% band, that didn't exist under the Neo-Conmen of 1979-97)"
ReplyDeleteJames 12:48pm
Ever heard of fiscal drag? And taxes were lowered by the Conservatives in during the last Conservative government. Remember when the top rate was 98%?
It's because people like James just keep spouting spurious statistics to prove their point that Cameron and Co have to keep reminding everyone that Brown has been the architect of his own forthcoming demise.
Did anyone catch the BBCs 6 o'clock news? Dave definitely won the war of today's PMQs according to the BBC edit. It got top billing and highlighted DCs best soundbite (One Prime Minister plus One Chancellor equals Economic Incompetence). I expect Gordon is now frothing at the mouth and getting in a serious complaint about BBC bias. Has the tide turned?
ReplyDeleteJust seen frederick Forsythe on BBC's The One Show, and he says that he never said that David Cameron had "no basic grasp of arithmetic", or at worst he was deliberately misquoted.
ReplyDeleteAnother own goal for one of Brown's punchlines?
Forget the politics of PMQs - the real issue is the functional uselessness of Browns tripartite regulatory system. System? Hah! Don't make me laugh. I work in retail financial services and the whole FSA/FOS/FSCS is rotten to the core. It's a corrupt system that is basically nationalisation lite led by moronic apparatchiks of the Nu Liebour junta. I have met and talked to many FSA foot soldiers and by and large they are Good Blokes' Generally because they are using a stint at the FSA as part of their career ladder. But the top management have been utter plonkers. A load of time serving self serving honour seeking clowns. Clever yes. Smart, oh yes. But clowns nevertheless.
ReplyDeleteFinally their is a lot of evidence now coming to light that the the FSMA 2000 (under which this whole regulatory stasi was set up) conflicts mightily with the Human Rights Act.
The whole thing needs scrapping. Now.
Friends of Brown trying to defend him miss the point (no surprise really)
ReplyDeleteAs others have said the very fact of watching him open his mpouth looses labour votes.
If Cameron spent his time picking Brown up on his lies and disesmbling he would never have breath to ask another question.
Most people only connect with PMQs via the 20 second snippet shown on the news. The danger for Brown is the opinion of his own back benchers, not the viewing public. If their flesh starts to creep they will begin to search around for a complient optometrist .
And as for the comment by 'James' about income tax, of course he totally misses the point about not indexing allowances, a classic stealth tax.
Gordon Brown today "the right hon. Gentleman simply does not understand basic arithmetic. The basic rate of income tax is going down to 20p. Let us look at our record. Inflation in Britain is 2.5 per cent"
ReplyDeleteDraw Primarolo on the DH website 6th March "Prescription charge increases will stay below the rate of inflation"
Prescription charges will rise 3.6% next Tuesday so who really doesn't understand arithmetic? And who's the bigger liar, Dawn or Gordon?
"Just seen frederick Forsythe on BBC's The One Show, and he says that he never said that David Cameron had "no basic grasp of arithmetic", or at worst he was deliberately misquoted."
ReplyDeleteFrom the Times, in a piece quoting a seies of letters from Forsyth to the Telegraph and Express:
"August 2006 I know Master Dave has a degree in PPE, but could someone give him an arithmetic primer, a pad and a stub of pencil?"
Says it all really.
"Prescription charges will rise 3.6% next Tuesday so who really doesn't understand arithmetic? And who's the bigger liar, Dawn or Gordon?"
ReplyDeleteThey are both correct. One is referring to RPI, the other to CPI.
In reply to anonymous they both cannot be correct. Inflation is either the CPI or RPI, but not both whenever it suits the government.
ReplyDeleteRE - "You've posted that when PMQs was barely half-over.
ReplyDeleteYou're becoming a parody of yourself. Go back to running a bookshop."
Hmmm thats more Gordon Broons level, in fact what an idea!, let Broon run the bookshop and Mr Dale can be Prime Minister of England!, oh no you are right...mr Dale would not qualify as he is not a lying, inept traitorous anti-English communist Jock!.
Decided to give balance a day off then, Iain?
ReplyDeleteCambo and GB both landed blows but none of them hurt. Cambo appears to have lost some of his slickness but GB has improved his performance. Cambo perhaps has the edge but by so little as to make no difference, especially when it comes to economics of which he obviously knows little.
On the other hand, the Cambo soundbites are doing well on tv news but that has nothing to do with your post.
The last boy scout got it wrong!
ReplyDeleteFrederick Forsythe said he didn't remember saying it, but might have done, though the context might well have made it sound different.
Delusion reigns in the Neo-ConMen parochial kingdom.
Diablo -
Fiscal drag - are you referring to the enormous growth in GDP which has brought so much wealth to those of us who can be bothered to put clothes on and go and work for a living?
That growth has certainly increased the tax take,perhaps not raising thresholds in line with RPI has too but I'd rather pay the HMRC 40% of a lot than 10% of nothing.
Sorry you lot have missed out on the good times - maybe it's the bitterness of losing Maggie"VAT"Thatcher that's held you all back?
Chris A said...
ReplyDelete"In reply to anonymous they both cannot be correct. Inflation is either the CPI or RPI, but not both whenever it suits the government."
It's horses for courses. Sometimes CPI is the most appropriate measure, other times RPI.
It was Norman Lamont who decided that it suited his purposes better to use RPIX instead of RPI for defining the inflation target since it excludes mortgage interest payments.
My State pension is about to increase by 3.9% - based on the RPI in September 2007.
Currently the indices are:
CPI 2.5%
RPIX 3.7%
RPI 4.1%
To be honest when Cameron started on the economy I thought he was in for a bit of a PMQs beating. However, despite saying all the right things about inflation, unemployment and interest rates under the Tories I thought Brown was pretty flat. He must be kicking himself, an opportunity to wipe the floor with Cameron wasted. His line about Cameron's adding up was poor but Cameron's quotes hardly set the world alight.
ReplyDeleteI scored it at 1-1