‘Make me the prime minister and I will get you the job’

So said Ed Miliband, to a disgruntled unemployed man in Lancashire whose frustration at the effects of Labour’s open-door immigration led him to say of politicians, ‘You’re all full of shit.’

Miliband told the man that employers undercutting wages – rather than immigration – was the cause of the problem.

This is the Ed Miliband whose supporters never tire of telling us he has a Masters degree in Economics from the LSE.  Yet with that answer he demonstrates that he fails to grasp the most basic impact on price of an increase in supply, in this case a dramatic increase in the supply of unskilled and semi skilled labour.

Businesses exist to make money for their owners in return for the supply of goods or services, and the greatest challenge for most businesses is controlling their costs.

However, the fetish of politicians and bureaucrats for creating ever more regulation, combined with the financial impacts of government policy at EU and national level, the costs associated with running a business have been continually increasing.  So when an opportunity to reduce labour costs – typically one of the biggest expenditures in small and medium businesses – presents itself, why wouldn’t a business hire the migrant worker who is prepared to work for a lower rate?

Miliband supported the influx of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who increased the supply of cheap labour.  Miliband supported the scandalous borrowing splurge that has resulted in more pressure on tax revenues to service the spirralling debt.  Miliband supported and also directly implemented policies that have increased the costs of running a business.

Yet despite all this, Miliband has the temerity to blame employers for that unemployed Lancastrian being out of work and brazenly promises that if he is made Prime Minister he will get that poor man a job – presumably by further increasing the size of the unproductive public sector, thus further adding to pressure to increase the tax revenues taken from the wealth creating private sector.

That Lancastrian man was then schmoozed and flattered by a deceitful, delusional hypocrite to the point he exchanged a handshake with him.  That man was right the first time.  Miliband and his ilk are full of shit.

What a load of old pony

Some may not know that ‘pony and trap’ is Cockney rhyming slang for excrement. But if they have the misfortune to read the increasingly detached Peter Oborne writing in the Barclay Brother Beano, they will no doubt reflect on the piece as just that.

Here we are just days after the funeral of the last radical political leader this country had, with the eulogies and the reflections on the transformation she brought about to the competitiveness and standing of the UK, still fresh in our minds.  Yet Oborne, in the style so beloved by the vacuous cabal of media sycophants, presents a ‘nothing new under the sun’ review of Nigel Farage which leads him to a typically brown-nosing conclusion in support of David Cameron and counsel not to ‘lurch to the right’ that stretches the bounds of credibility well beyond breaking point, which includes this:

I think Mr Cameron’s best bet is to stay where he is, and to fight on his record as a brave, competent and radical prime minister. Adopting such an attitude will take nerves of steel, and could lead to his premature exit if the parliamentary Tory party – that increasingly tremulous body – panics, as it probably will.

Brave, competent and radical? Cameron?

Only a shameless sycophant could describe Cameron in such a way.  What Oborne labels bravery is what most people recognise as insufferable ignorance, a refusal of Cameron to be swayed from the destructive path laid out by his masters in the EU and a plethora of international governance bodies.

Competence? A man who declared his war on deficit and debt has barely scratched the surface of the first, while presiding over a terrifying explosion of the second.

And radical?  There is nothing radical in being a lapdog for a self selecting global bureaucracy that has snuffed out anything resembling democracy and perpetuated the slow burn decline this country has experienced since the neo-social democrats wets removed Margaret Thatcher, and who along with their ideological soulmates but rivals for the illusion of power in the Labour party, commenced the reversal of this country’s recovery and the state’s coup over individual liberty, personal freedom and privacy.

But that’s the dumbed down poodle media for you.

A frank assessment and reality check

Some people might consider the op-ed in Germany’s Spiegel less frank and more brutal.

Either the commentary from a rabidly pro-EU newspaper on the continent offers a reality check for the UK’s doggedly pro-EU Prime Minister, and the deluded Conservative rump which continues to kid itself and others that they can secure the return of a handful of largely meaningless powers to the UK and launch complete restructuring of the European Union into the bargain:

His party still hasn’t forgiven him for failing to clinch an absolute majority in the last election. They see the coalition with the Liberal Democrats as a humiliation. The EU is their way of exacting revenge on Cameron for that. It’s part of the reason why Cameron sees Europe mainly as a party political problem.

By trying to satisfy his radical backbenchers with the referendum pledge, he’s launched into a game he can’t win. The EU’s other 26 governments won’t let him opt out of parts of the existing accords because that would prompt others to demand concessions of their own. The Europe-haters in Cameron’s party won’t be satisfied because the leeway they want from Brussels isn’t politically achievable.

Exclusively among the constituents of the EU only Cameron, his europlastic lobby fodder amd the majority of the British media believe in his fantasy renegotiation narrative.  The tragedy is they have come together and taken advantage of the wishful thinking of a largely uninformed public to con them into believing it is real and achievable and the only option that results in ‘less Europe’ and maintains access to the single market.  As Spiegel points out somewhat unhelpfully for the dreamers:

The important questions still haven’t been answered. What exactly does Britain expect of Europe? What laws and regulations does Cameron want to change? What parts of the treaty does he want to opt out of? And above all: How in heaven’s name does Cameron propose to persuade the German chancellor, the French president and all the other European leaders that he should get to pick the raisins from the cake while everyone else gets the crumbs?

The truth is Cameron has no idea.  His speech was a gambit to stop the leak of Conservative members to UKIP and arrest the groundswell of anti-EU sentiment among a frustrated public.

Nothing that Cameron can achieve will negate the issues that have been turning an increasing number of people against EU membership.  Power will remain in Brussels, laws and regulations will still be handed down for the British to implement, billions of pounds will be sent elsewhere within the EU at the expense of the vulnerable in this country, unfettered migration of low skilled, low earning EU nationals will continue, British economic interests and trade deals will continue to be compromised and diluted to suit the ‘common’ interests of other EU states.  In short, the UK will not belong to the British.

Dr Michael E Mann – hoist by his own petard

Dr Michael E Mann is the high professor of rabid climate alarmism, a co-creator of the Hockey Stick with a dogged determination to hide data and emails, and a master of the delete button on Facebook and Twitter if anyone has the temerity to question him or critique his claims.

But today Dr Michael Mann stands humiliated, exposed as a liar at worst, or self aggrandising fantasist at best.  He has been hoist by his own petard, constructed on a foundation of arrogance, ignorance and self delusion.

As readers of ‘Watts Up With That’ will know, Dr Mann – a Professor and Director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University – has filed a defamation law suit against National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, along with named writers Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg.

In setting out his case Mann has desperately tried to appeal to that old chestnut ‘prestige’. He wants people to see him as so grand and prestigious that his work must be considered to be beyond criticism. For people like Mann, what could confer more prestige than the claim that he has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with other members of the International Panel on Climate Change? Mann used his Facebook page to announce the law suit in which he included this claim:

‘Dr. Mann is a climate scientist whose research has focused on global warming. In 2007, along with Vice President Al Gore and his colleagues of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for having “created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming.’

He even proudly displays a citation from the IPCC in his office window for all to see, only the citation makes clear he was not awarded the Nobel prize, rather he only contributed towards its award. Even that is a spurious claim, created by the IPCC without any grounds from the Nobel Institute for doing so.  But now it has got even better.  Mann’s claim to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize has been rejected by Geir Lundestad, Director, Professor, of The Norwegian Nobel Institute, who has made it clear Mann is not a Nobel Laureate, by emailing Tom Richard the following information:

1) Michael Mann has never been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
2) He did not receive any personal certificate. He has taken the diploma awarded in 2007 to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (and to Al Gore) and made his own text underneath this authentic-looking diploma.
3) The text underneath the diploma is entirely his own. We issued only the diploma to the IPCC as such. No individuals on the IPCC side received anything in 2007.

Mark Steyn had already been mocking Mann for his claim, but having this clear statement from the Nobel Institute has nailed Mann for what he is.  He is clearly incapable to dealing with evidence and facts right that sit right under his own nose, or on his office door.  One wonders what Mann’s highly paid lawyers now think of being the counsel for a man who is so cavalier with the truth and seemingly has only a passing acquaintance with reality.  You can read all the instalments of this story over on Watts Up With That.

Irrespective of what happens in the legal action, the question raised here is one of personal and professional integrity. If Michael Mann is capable of fraudulently conferring upon himself awards in this way and providing false information in a claim to a court, what is he capable of when it comes to scientific research, data and findings? Can he ever be trusted or considered a reputable scientist?  Mann it seems has just outed himself as a Walter Mitty character in a science department office at Penn State.

Perhaps this is why Mann is doing everything in his power to prevent data and emails, that have been collected and created at the expense of the taxpayer in the US, from being released into the public domain.  Many people may very well think that. Of course, one couldn’t possibly comment.

The debt crisis Osborne says has been dealt with

It’s high time that this mendacity was exposed for what it is. Government has done very little about its spending, has appropriated three-quarters of all gains in economic output for its own use, has carried on piling up debt – and has tried to pass all this off as ‘responsible austerity’.

Those are the words of Dr Tim Morgan, the global head of research at financial traders Tullett Prebon, as reported in the finance section of the Failygraph. While the UK media prattles on in inane fashion about the ‘cuts’ – and retail the government line that they are addressing the structural deficit – the reality is that public spending is higher than it was when the coagulation formed this God-awful managerialist administration.

Don’t take my word for it, the official figures from the Treasury show the facts:

This is what Ministers have insisted is public spending being cut at a rate not seen since the Second World War.  But the total managed expediture has risen year on year, funded by ever higher taxation and, crucially, continued borrowing increasing the national debt.  This is the fact of the matter. All that has changed is how the money is being spent.

Yet against the backdrop of this reality we see the utter delusion of the political class, as exemplified by George Osborne on the day Britain announced a £10bn guarantee to the International Monetary Fund on 20 April 2012.

Dealt with the debt crisis?

Spending is up. Debt is increasing. Taxes are rising. Borrowing is continuing. Yet the Chancellor of the Exchequer tells the British public that the government has dealt with the debt crisis. This is not even parody, this is a claim that warrants Osborne receiving urgent psychiatric attention.

There was hardly any analysis in the media to get under the veneer of Osborne’s comment and tell the public the facts.  This leaves us with lies compounded by stupidity resulting in mass ignorance.  And it takes a bond trader to speak out before the media will take notice and run a small piece that is barely noticeable compared to commentary about the outfits worn to various events by celebrities.

They treat us with contempt. We should treat them altogether worse.

A man devoid of any principle

I am sceptical of those who claim to draw the answer to every problem from a loud ideology,

It must have been incredibly easy for Cameron to write those words for the Failygraph given he lacks any ideology and is driven only by the desire to attain office for its own sake.

It is the clamour among the likes of Cameron in the political class to plant their flags in the mythical ‘centre ground’ of politics – to dispense with the challenge of adversarial politics in search of the easy comfort of unprincipled consensus, and construct a uniform and hubristic front that holds the line against the wishes of the electorate – that is accelerating the rejection of politics and the political process.

Because of his arrogance Cameron believes he knows better than everyone else, which is why he professes to know the message people are sending through the election results.  Apparently the people are telling him to focus on what matters, deliver what you promise and prove yourself in the process.  ‘I get it,’ he declares.  He draws this conclusion because it is the one he wants to be able to draw, irrespective of reality.

Cameron doesn’t want to acknowledge or accept the fact that the issue is elected representatives failing to represent the wishes of the people.

Once elected, councillors and MPs become the tools of the party whips and agenda riddled civil service, putting party and bureaucratic agenda before the issues that matter to the electorate.  Their interests are not the same as our interests.  Cameron’s message of delusion and deception makes clear he intends to continue to thumbing his nose at the country – and the fools in the Conservative party who have propped him up as he has systematically stripped its policies of anything approaching conservative values.

If Cameron’s piece in the Barclay Boys’ Beano is valuable for anything, it is that Cameron has signalled his intent to continue treating the public with contempt.  And he will do it with the help of the rest of the political class notwithstanding the trivial differences between them, because he is a man devoid of any principle.

Europlastics? A explanation through analogy

Over on his blog The Boiling Frog, in response to yet another tribal Tory appeal for genuine Eurosceptics to support the pro-EU Conservatives, uses a great football analogy to explain why the Tory ‘Eurosceptics’ are nothing of the sort:

I have supported my team for over 25 years, in that time I’ve criticised players, managers and the board but every year I still renew my season ticket. That makes me a supporter not a sceptic. And the same is true of Tories, despite the criticism of some aspects of the EU, when that EU season ticket renewal comes up they gleefully renew. They are supporters not sceptics.

It is a superb explanation of the Europlastics.  Anyone who declares that genuine Eurosceptics – those people who want the UK to leave the EU – have a home in the Conservative party is either deluded or plain dishonest.