Long term chaos

Not so flash Gordon has been making the rounds of the TV and Radio studios recently to try out his latest mantra: "busy making the right long-term decisions". You needn't ask what long-term decisions he's referring to. You see, busy making etc is one of those catchall phrases carefully tailored by Gordon's script writers to cover virtually any eventuality. Worried about the state of the economy? Well, stop worrying. Big Gordy is busy making the right long term decisions about the economy that will see this country through the global downturn that is currently affecting not just us but everyone else in the world, too.
Just as worried about violent crime, especially knive crimes involving teenagers? Well, guess what, our Gordon is busy making the right long term decisions to reduce violent crime in our country, as well. Ditto the problems facing the education system, the NHS, the Forces, untramelled immigration and just about anything else people worry themselves sick about.
Now, NSF Gordon is nothing if not steadfast and determined. In fact, according to every Brown profile , those have been two of his defining characteristics since he was a schoolboy in Fife. During the 10 years he spent as Blair's Number 2, his constant refrain was that he was the real power behind the throne. His was the clunking fist on the tiller guiding the great ship of state through choppy economic waters; his vast intellectual power that was brought to bear on such thorny subjects as whether or notto join the Euro. It was his vision of a fairer, more prosperous Britain that Tony Blair played the front man for between 1997 and 2007, before Gordon finally elbowed him out of the way and became the official resident of Number 10 .
Leopards, as they say, do not change their spots. The Gordon of 1997 was the same anal-retentive obsessive that we have to suffer today. So now, 10 years further down the line, the country we live in is almost certainly the product of Gordon's long-term thinking. The pension system for everybody but a select few is knackered; destroyed by class-warrior Brown in one of his first acts of fiscal incontinence. Pensioners are so poor they are having to choose between eating and staying warm in winter. Almost 500,000 of them are eligible for additional credits but find the system of claiming them either so confusing or demeaning - or a mixture of both - that they choose to go without. Meanwhile, with British pensioners on the bread line, we are exporting over £30 million in child benefits to Poland and other east European countries - even though the officials administering the scheme admit they have no way of checking that the kids being claimed for actually live abroad, belong to the parents making the claim - or even exist.
The Jesuits have a saying: "Give me the boy at seven and I will give you the man." Whether you live in a city, small town or village look at the teenagers you see around you. They are ill-educated, over-indulged, undisciplined and, frequently, pissed out of their brains; girls just as frequently as boys.
Eighteen years old now, they were seven when Noo Labour first came into power. Their values, their outlook, their violence, their ignorance and lack of education are a direct result of the social engineering pursued by Labour from their first day in office. They are, in every sense, Brown's children.
Doesn't exactly fill one with confidence, for the long term,does it?

The Humming Chorus

Despite the title of this blog it has nothing to do with Puccini or opera - unless you regard the long-running saga of the Brown administration as a soap opera in itself. Personally, I am more inclined to regard it as a cross between a Farce and a Tragedy.

The Humming Chorus refers to those old stagers on the Labour Front Bench - Straw, Harman, Brown, Browne, darling et al - who really, really know the game is up but stubbornly refuse to accept the fact. Every time they get caught in a lie or face a difficult situation,they behave like children; hugging their knees and humming loudly to shut out an awkward parent or teacher. Yesterday, for instance, a group of fairly savvy Peers with not inconsiderable experience of running companies and countries, delivered its verdict on the net effect of immigration on the UK. They did so having studied the subject in some depth for the previous six months and taken evidence from various groups, officials and academics who specialise in immigration. Their considered view was that immigration has zero beneficial effect on the economy of this country; that, indeed, for many working people it has a negative impact because it is their jobs and small businesses that the flood of cheap labour threatens. And that, contrary to the government's claims that immigrants contribute £6 billion to the economy, once the cost of housing,educating and caring for them is factored in, we are probably paying them for the privilege of their being allowed to live and work here.
Guess what. No sooner had the report been published than up popped Liam Byrne on the radio to provide the government's answer. He did so in the now time-honoured fashion of any Labour minister caught out being economical with the truth - he put his hands over his ears, refused to answer any direct questions and then repeated the self-same £6 billion claim that their Lordships had so comprehensively demolished in their report.

Little Liam was followed by Hummer Number 2; that venerable bass baritone Jack Straw, of whom it has frequently been said that no man was more appositely named. Straw was there to put the government's position on law'n'order. A stream of callers made it clear that they were both frightened and bemused by the levels of violent crime in this country. Straw's response was - you guessed it - to clamp his hands firmly over his ears and start humming a string of statistics that proved the complete opposite. It didn't matter which part of the country the caller was from, Straw had the statistics to prove that their town, parish, borough, manor, demesne or county had never been so crime-free;its citizens able to walk the streets in perfect safety, leave their front doors unlocked and their children unguarded.

That this was utter bollocks was proven most effectively next day by pictures of Harriet Harman (or should that be Harperson?) walking the streets of Peckham, accompanied by a set of beautifully diverse police officers, but still sufficiently frit to be attired in a Kevlar stab vest. This act, surprisingly enough, did not have the reassuring effect her advisers had told her it would. In fact, many Peckham residents probaly wondered where they could obtain their own police escort and stab vest so that they could stroll just as insouciantly through their native borough. Of course, once the idiocy of this stunt had been explained to the dim-witted Ms Harman - presumably by another adviser with more than just pea-soup for brains - she hurriedly did the rounds of the radio talk shows to explain her actions. When it became obvious that she had made a prat of herself and no one was going to be persuaded otherwise, she did the hand over ear thing and started humming somewhere in the register between alto and tenor.
By the end of the day,there was such a hum coming from my radio that it had started to sound more like an old crystal set than a state-of-the-art DAB digital. Fortunately, the whine disappeared altogether once the last politician had gone about their business.