Miliband’s fake High St listening exercise shown up for what it is

By way of an update to the last blog post, the Guardian’s Wintour and Watt blog has the full exchange between Miliband and the unemployed British man from Cleveleys.

What it shows, setting aside Miliband’s economic illiteracy, is a politician who talks about listening to people, then no less than three times stops the man from making his point as he played to an audience of mainly Labour party members who, with typical socialist compassion and receptiveness, jeered the poor bloke for his comments.

Having promised the man his say in return for a free run to deliver a sermon to the deluded faithful, Miliband ended the conversation without bothering to find out what points the man wanted to make.  That’s Miliband’s ‘One Nation’ narrative in action.  One Nation where the politicians are stuck in transmit mode, immune to any contrary opinion and determined to silence any dissent, even when they take to the streets for a ‘listening’ exercise.

Miliband is indeed full of shit.

‘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.

Tony Hall appointment at BBC demonstrates Tory corporate stupidity

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the utter stupidity of senior members of the Conservative Party.  When it was announced that Tony Hall was being appointed BBC Director General after the sopping wet Lord (Chris) Patten foolishly rushed in to fill the post without carefully examining other potential candidates for the vacancy, the Labour Party speedily showered Hall and the decision with praise and plaudits.

You would have thought Labour’s delight would have started ringing alarm bells in Tory HQ, but no.  Perhaps the problem is threefold.  Firstly you have the legendary idiocy of the Tory elite, which treats its members and the public with contempt while making all manner of balls-ups.  Secondly, perhaps Tories just possess incredibly short memories and therefore have forgotten about Tony Hall and what went on at the BBC while he was in cheif executive of BBC News and Current Affairs?  Let’s take a couple of moments to remind them.

Under his Tony Hall’s management, the BBC had an incestuous relationship with the Labour Party.  BBC staffers assisted Labour’s ‘rapid rebuttal unit’ by tipping them off every time a Conservative said anything that challenged Labour in the run up to the 1997 general election.  Former BBC journalists ran as Labour candidates (remember Ben Bradshaw who remained on the BBC Radio 4 payroll despite not working and instead campaigning to win the Exeter seat?) while Labour people went the other way into the BBC (remember Joy Johnson, ex-BBC PR professional who became Labour’s director of communications, then lost her job and was immediately re-hired by the BBC?)  What about the champagne strewn corridors of the BBC after Blair’s election victory and the BBC bias against the Conservatives that had Brian Mawhinney and Charles Lewington in red faced fury as the Patten-loving Major government was pulled to pieces?  It was under Tony Hall that the BBC effectively campaigned for Martin Bell in Tatton, without once challenging him on his motivation for standing or probing his behind the scenes relationship with the Labour Party.

Small wonder Labour has welcomed his appointment, and the corporate stupidity of the Tories sees them also welcome a man into a post far more powerful than the one he used to help to see the Tories ejected from office in 1997.  But what of the third possible problem?  Maybe the long stroll leftwards of the Conservatives, which has accelerated under David Cameron, has made the Tory leadership so indistinguishable from Labour they now share the same mindset enabling them to convince themselves Tony Hall is someone they can do business with.

The timing is incredibly ironic.  Here we are, mid-term of a somewhat unpopular coagulation government, where the Lib Dems are electoral dead ducks struggling to remain the third mainstream political party as UKIP catches and overtakes them in the polls; and the Conservatives are being painted as evil for supposedly trying to repair (badly it has to be said) the economic scorched earth of Labour’s insane tax, borrow, spend and borrow some more policies while continuing to fawn over the EU.  Labour is on top of the polls for simply not being Tories or Fib Dims, despite being led by an incompetent champagne socialist career politician who has never done a proper job in his life and who lives in comfort with a couple of million in the bank.  And now the man who gave Labour a free ride on BBC’s news output to help them win the election in 1997 is placed into an even more powerful role as head of the BBC, enabling him to ensure the BBC helps Labour to victory again in 2015.

Describing the Tories as lemmings doesn’t seem to go far enough.

Harman again exposes Labour’s spiteful underbelly

One can excuse people who make disparaging remarks about others for whom they have real antipathy – provided the comments relate to the essence of the person’s character, integrity, honesty, ability or similar quality. After all I did just that about David Cameron yesterday.

But one cannot excuse those who engage in namecalling and abusive comments relating to someone’s personal identity or physical attributes. Such actions are the preserve of the mean spirited and the vicious.

Perhaps it is no surprise that Labour’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman, has engaged in such spiteful abuse by describing Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, a ‘ginger rodent’. What has Alexander’s physical attributes got to do with his politics or ability? Attack the man for being deceitful if he is, attack him for being incompetent if he is, but leave his ethnicity, skin colour, hair colour and the things he has no control over out of it.

There is a particularly nasty streak among many of Harman’s fellow travellers in the Labour movement. They have a habit of using a person’s identity or physical characteristics as a key element in the attacks they construct. It tells us a great deal about how their minds work and the depth of the contempt they have for people who deign to disagree with them. Is that really the kind of person we want as part of this country’s supposed leadership?

Lord Triesman continues Labour’s tradition of undermining England

As a football supporter I was mildly optimistic that England’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup could prove successful.  But then, I hadn’t reckoned on Labour Peer, Baron Triesman of Tottenham in the London Borough of Haringey.  The communist leaning Lord has maintained Labour’s tradition of undermining England, by making the kind of unsubstantiated wild assertions you might expect in a Labour election leaflet but not from a supposedly independent Chairman of the Football Association.

England’s chances of winning the right to host the 2018 World Cup have likely been damaged as a result of Lord Triesman’s arrogance and lack of discretion.  How ironic that a member of the most corrupt political party of the modern age should be undone by accusing rival bidders of corruption.  It can’t have been the first time he has run off at the mouth, seeing as the person with whom Triesman was speaking was equipped with recording equipment.  Clearly they expected him to say something controversial.

Northern Ireland parties back Lib-Lab pact in return for Celtgeld

The SNP in Scotland has already said it would work with Labour.  Plaid Cymru in Wales has worked with Labour before.  Now the DUP and SDLP in Northern Ireland have signalled they would side with a Lib-Lab pact on a case by case basis to ensure taxpayers’ money continues to flow into the province.  With Gordon Brown stepping aside, all the pieces are falling into place around Nick Clegg to prop up a new Labour Prime Minister. England, uniquely without its own national legislature, stands to suffer the consequences of this political stitch up.

It would be a broad, ramshackle coalition only made possible by tax pounds from England being poured into Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as an ongoing bribe in return for votes in the House.  In centuries past the people of what is now England paid the Danegeld – an Anglo Saxon tax to buy off the Danish invaders.  Here in 2010 the Labour Party are preparing to pay a Celtgeld raised from English taxpayers to buy off the nationalist parties in the devolved countries to keep a Labour administration in office.

New politics and national interest indeed.

Gordon Brown to resign. Lib-Lab pact? England to be ruled by celtic coalition?

It is no surprise that the smallest and least supported of the three main parties, the Liberal Democrats, have conducted their negotiations with the Tories while keeping back channels open with Labour.  Despite having the smallest mandate of the three main parties, the Lib Dems are now the most powerful force in British politics because they hold an inordinate balance of power.

It has become clear that the blocker to a Liberal Democrat coalition with the Labour Party was Gordon Brown because the Lib Dems do not like him.  With Labour’s naked thirst for power uppermost in its considerations, the comrades in dark suits have successfully manoeuvred Brown out of the way to increase their appeal to the Lib Dems.  The Lib Dem ransom demand looks set to be paid.

The Conservative negotiation team that thought it held the best hand to win over the Lib Dems might find it has been playing a busted flush.  It might be about to find out just what a mistake it was to entertain the idea of a deal with the most treacherous and unprincipled bunch of politicians this country has to offer.  David Cameron could now find himself remaining leader of a huge opposition party.  The real danger is Britain’s economic outlook as any coalition including Labour will continue to increase the public debt at a time it needs to be dramatically reduced.  The real winner of this election would be the EU.

So what now?  The prospect of a Labour Prime Minister remaining in 10 Downing Street has dramatically increased.  The Lib Dems have held the country to ransom and will push the least popular agenda of the three main parties onto the business of the House, where a grateful but defeated Labour Party will vote them through as the price of keeping power.  There is a big question people should be asking now.  How do these political power games played out by the political class serve the interests of voters?

But the biggest question of all is this.  What would the Lib-Lab-SNP-PC coalition that’s being mooted mean for England?  The democratic deficit suffered by England due to it having no national legislature could dramatically widen into a chasm if such a coalition assumes power.  It would mean legislation is foisted upon England by a government comprised of Scottish and Welsh nationalists, possibly with the aid of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionists.

If Clegg and Labour agree a pact, how will England’s voters – who thought they had defeated Labour – react to being led by another Labour Prime Minister and having legislation imposed on them by MPs from other countries?  One thing we can be sure of, while Cameron would have been bad for this country, a Clegg-Miliband/Balls/Harman axis will be an utter disaster.

UK budget deficit warning on eve of election

An election present for Gordon Brown from the EU.  With polling set to begin in hours, this story says it all about Labour.  At the end of every Labour government the economy is revealed to be a basket case in need of dramatic and painful remedial action. Socialist economic incompetence underlined by damaging tax, borrow and spend, has saddled us with massive public debt for decades. 

As the world agonises about the financial crisis in Greece, the UK is shown to be in an even worse economic position.  The damage has been done by spending money we didn’t have on non-essential programmes we didn’t need.  What is almost as bad is that we will only get a piecemeal response from the not really Conservative Party, which will continue to pursue an approach that is ‘big government’ in all but name. Stuck in the middle of this dog’s breakfast, and footing the rapidly rising bill, is the poor bloody average voter, devoid of a voice and ignored by the political class.  It would be comedy if it wasn’t such a tragedy.

Labour’s obsession with dumbing down and celebrity

What is it with the Labour Party?  As a party that proclaims it is the most competent to form the next administration, it seems to have a stunning lack of confidence in its leaders.  That can be the only explanation for its reliance on the perceived popularity of entertainers and actors to try to win votes for the party.

Not content with focusing media attention on the dyed in the wool, politically illiterate, socialist transvestite comedian Eddie Izzard in recent weeks, Labour is now hoping the popularity of actor, Ross Kemp, will have soap and fly on the wall TV viewers thinking ‘Oh, that nice Ross Kemp supports Labour so I should vote for them’.

It seems Labour’s leadership is so aware that they repulse voters, they are desperately trying to assume support by association. It really underlines the dumbing down of politics.  Instead of senior Labour MPs standing front and centre in support of a genuine policy agenda and arguing the merits of their case on issues that matter to voters, Labour is leaning on millionaire celebrities to repeat ‘Janet and John’ endorsements containing nothing more than polished platitudes and sweeping generalisations.

The hope must be that over the last 13 years the population has become to riveted by trivia and fiction it will respond to people whose only qualification is being able to remember lines and repeat them for a camera in return for substantial earnings.  Perhaps Labour is hoping that the viewers will forget that these people are only known for the parts they play.

Being a stage comedian or an actor does not give someone any more authoratative insight into what is best for voters than being a blogger or a greengrocer.  It’s an insult to our intelligence.  But then, so is Parliamentary party politics in this increasingly undemocratic country.

Labour accepting money from violent criminals

More than any government in our history, this Labour administration has gone out of its way to create more offences that will criminalise more of us.  So you would expect it almost inevitable that the party will at some point hob nob at one of its election fundraising events with someone convicted of an offence.

But when the criminal concerned is a well known gangster, recently released from prison after being convicted of using threatening behaviour towards business rivals while in possession of a samurai sword, the story takes on a very different complexion (Hat tip: Subrosa).  Once again, Labour’s troughing politicians demonstrate they will do anything and schmooze anyone to get their hands on some cash.  Politics doesn’t get much more squalid than Labour, especially when they deny information their own insiders confirmed as fact.

Phil Woolas skewered over immigration statistic denial

Labour Borders and Immigration Minister, Phil Woolas, claimed on yesterday’s Daily Politics show that immigration statistics, showing the increase of foreign born workers was only slightly smaller than the increase in the number of jobs that have been created while Labour has been in office, was an example of double counting and a statistical trick.  He gave an analogy that if 50,000 fans attend an Arsenal match in each of ten games, the number of people watching Arsenal would not be 500,000 because most of those going would have attended each game.

However on the programme today, Stephen Timms – Labour’s Financial Secretary to the Treasury – was forced into accepting that a labour force snapshot of working age individuals as issued by the Office for National Statistics in respose to a request from The Spectator magazine, could not have been double counting at all because it was the equivalent of a snapshot of the attendance at just one game.  Therefore by definition it shows that of 1.7 million jobs created, 1.67 million have indeed been filled by migrant workers.

Labour’s mendacious dishonesty and fraudulent abuse of statistics is finally starting to be recognised for what it is, a concerted attempt to deceive the electorate, hide incompetence and cover up Labour’s deliberate effort to transform the social fabric of this country for political reasons.  One day, two Labour flip flops.  Lord Mandelson will be so pleased…

Immigration is a topic of major importance to voters.  This is the kind of topic the main parties should be forced to talk about, but have tried desperately to avoid referring to in any detail regarding their approach to migration and what they will do to address the wishes of voters to significantly reduce the net influx of migrants.  But despite this story the main parties are only fighting over the numbers.  There is nothing about restoring the UK’s control over its own borders, sacrified as part of the price of being members of the EU.  Thus are we so ill served by the whole political class.  Despite this, they still come begging for our votes.  That takes a special kind of arrogance.

Labour flip flop over Stuart MacLennan

Just hours after Scottish Secretary, Jim Murphy stated to news organisations that Twitter twat Stuart MacLennan would remain as Labour’s candidate for Moray, the abusive candidate has been sacked by the party.

This is yet another example of Labour’s sure footed, joined up approach to everything (/irony), where the left hand doesn’t know what the far left hand is doing.  Jim Murphy looks like the fool he is having made his public utterance then having his legs cut from underneath him.  Labour HQ looks terrified of yet another failed media management operation exposing the contemptuous mindset that so many supposedly virtuous socialists hold.  The media corps gets its first ‘social media gaffe’ story of the election campaign that will run all day in order to give the impression this election is about more than National Insurance rises.

Meanwhile those of us outside the political bubble look on, bemused, at the self regarding political class and their media groupies haggling over pathetic non stories, while the issues that matter to us are kept under lock and key.  Oh the excitement.

Gordon Brown: Disconnected to the point of autism

‘I’m happy to answer questions at public meetings, but I was actually on my from one meeting to another.’

This, according to Gordon Brown, is justification for what you can see in the video above, as the Prime Minister completely ignoring a question put to him by a member of the public, Ben Butterworth, about the lack of decent schools in his area.

In the absence of a carefully spun sanitised answer and lacking the basic social skills to interact with anyone he cannot control, Brown demonstrates he is – to borrow the brilliant description used in political satire ‘The Thick Of It’ – disconnected to the point of autism.

Brown is incapable of speaking to anyone without the discussion being stage managed and the people being pre-screened by Labour’s spin doctors.  In any case, he treats Parliament with contempt, so it’s only to be expected that he will treat voters with contempt too.  He is without doubt the worst Prime Minister in modern times.

Political class playing their political games

More evidence of the disconnect between the political class and the human race today from the Press Association, as we are informed that:

Gordon Brown would not find it “impossible” to work with the Liberal Democrats if the forthcoming general election produced a hung Parliament, an ally of the Prime Minister said.

Wow. Never saw that coming did we? This is the political class all over, playing their insular games and hyping up faux intrigue. All that matters to them is the sweet seduction of other parties who are trying to win votes at their expense. What about them serving our interests instead of their own?

Just how are we served as a nation by this pathetic posturing? Perhaps the best we can hope for as a people is that the political class is so busy navel gazing it won’t find time to intrude further in our lives and strip away more of our freedoms and privacy.

Update: If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the image below is worth a complete book. (Hat tip: Radio Free Britain)

‘A matter of taste but essentially the same thing.
If you knew what the ingredients were, you wouldn’t buy either.’

Home repossessions up by 15%

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has revealed that 54,055 people had their properties repossessed during 2009, an increase of more than 15% on the 46,945 properties repossessed in 2008.

This must be a red letter day for Labour’s Housing Minister, John Healey MP.  You remember him.  He was the Minister who in February, during an interview on BBC Five Live, said with breathtaking flippancy that in some cases repossession is the best thing for the people who are struggling with those mortgages.  But let’s stick to the numbers issue for now, which Healey also covered during the interview when he said:

‘The important thing is that people are informed about the help that’s available, able to deal with their lenders, confident that they know that the lenders must only use repossession as a last resort because of the rules we’ve got in place and so that’s part of what we’ve been doing in government… a campaign to make sure that people know there’s help available and can get it.’

Clearly that is absolute tripe.  A 15% increase in repossessions is an indictment of the failing big government approach Labour loves.  It is the consequence of the economic devastation brought about by high tax-high borrowing-high spend policies and a needless increase in the size of the public sector at the expense of the private sector.  Under Labour, which repeatedly spins that its policies are helping people (at great expense to the taxpayers), things are getting worse, not better.

UK ‘hidden joblessness’ one of the highest in Europe

Labour’s economic miracle is revealed for all to see thanks to Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) analysis of official Eurostat data, which found the UK accounts for one in seven of Europe’s entire hidden jobless population.  This hidden jobless are defined as people of working age who are not active in the jobs market but are willing to work.

According to Eurostat only five EU countries – Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Austria and Poland – registered higher rates of this type of economic inactivity than the UK, which reported a rate of 5.9 per cent in the third quarter of 2009.  Britain’s performance was particularly poor in relation to male unemployment, where only eight member states exceeded the UK’s male jobless rate of 9.1 per cent.  Dr John Philpott, the CIPD’s chief economic adviser, said:

“The UK may draw comfort from having lower measured unemployment than the EU average but in truth we are no better than a mid-table performer in the EU jobless league.

“Taking hidden joblessness into account makes the UK’s relative performance look less impressive still, and once again highlights the scale of the macroeconomic and employment policy challenge that awaits us in the next few years.”

This just goes to show Labour can massage the figures and spin statistics all they like, but the truth will out.  Now the real extent of our job market weakness compared to the major European nations is laid bare, added to our declining education standards and increasing reliance of people on welfare – where the cost is increasing by billions each year – we can see the mismanagement of the country by this pathetic and spiteful government is harming our competitiveness and storing up long term problems for us.

Labour’s answer is to keep spending other people’s money and to borrow like mad to ‘stimulate’ growth. That is the socialist way.  But footing the bill for welfare payments and losing out on the tax receipts that would be collected if these people were in work, is unsustainable and ruinous. It failed in the 1970s and Labour is failing again. The only thing that is unknown is the size of the debt Labour will leave for future generations to pay off once Brown and his politburo are finally ejected from office.

What does the EU have in store for Britain?

What does the European Union have in store for us next?  Let’s take a quick look…

In a story about further delays to defendants in criminal trials having effective translation services available, we get confirmation of the bigger picture of the EU’s ambitions:

“Today we are taking a first important step towards a Europe where justice knows no borders,”
- EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding

Elsewhere in the Brussels nest occupied by the cuckoo chick, greater tax and budgetary co-ordination is the order of the day as next month will see a communication designed to start a debate to:

“correct the imbalance of what was not agreed at Maastricht.”
- anonymous EU Official

When the Euro currency was being planned there were warnings that ‘imperfect labour mobility and the lack of a European political union could pose problems’ for the new currency.  It seems the EU wants to address this ‘imbalance’ by increasing labour mobility and driving forward ever closer political union.  That means completely open borders and more power shipped off to Brussels from Westminster.

With Peter Mandelson promising it’s a matter of when not if Labour scraps the pound sterling and adopts the Euro, and Labour’s EU sycophants signing up enthusiastically to every sovereignty sacrificing treaty or agreement stuck under their nose by the Brussels bureaucrats, we have a clear view of what will be forced on us next.

David Cameron’s slow self destuction is only making it increasingly likely that Labour will get another five years to make this nightmare a reality.  Ruled Britannia it is then.

Take a second look at Labour said Gordon Brown

So I did and I am grateful for the delusional one’s urging.  For I remembered that Gordon Brown’s Labour government wants to impose a so called Tobin tax on bank transactions and for political cover is trying to get the world’s other major economies to follow suit.  I was reminded that the Association of British Insurers thinks the scheme is ridiculous, describing it as unworkable and counter-productive.

I was also reminded of the ‘Labour way’ by Brown’s refusal to listen to any dissenting voice and ignore any criticism.  Brown was pressing ahead regardless because of the desperate state of the UK economy that has been wrecked by Labour’s financial mismanagement.  He was claiming the world’s top economies were close to agreeing this international levy on banks and that a deal could be thrashed out during a G20 summit in June.  It reminded me that Brown’s great delusion is that he saved the world and that he is some great economic brain that all other nations turn to.

Naturally I wondered if I was the only one with doubts about Brown’s supposed brilliance.  But then I stumbled across reports that those wonderful Canadians are opposed to Labour’s global bank tax plan for the world’s major economies.  As the Wall Street Journal explained, the Canadian’s decision to go public with their opposition is in part based on irritation that Mr. Brown is painting a picture of a global consensus, one that exists only in Brown’s mind.

Having been invited to take a second look at Labour and being reminded of Labour actions such as throwing open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a “truly multicultural” country, repeated raids on our pension funds, the refusal to give us the promised referendum on the Lisbon Treaty… not to mention the record £1.2 trillion public debt run up with nothing to show for it, decline in education standards, increase in violent crime, surge in the size of the welfare state, record number of economically inactive UK citizens, lies about the evidence for the invasion of Iraq, criminalisation of ordinary people with over 3000 new crimes created etc, I think Gordon Brown has made a huge mistake.  All he has done is ask people to remind themselves of the spite and incompetence that has characterised the Labour party.  That should secure a well deserved Labour defeat at the polls (unless David Cameron snatches defeat from the jaws of victory).  Cheers Gordo!

Losing their home is ‘the best thing’ for some people

So says John Healey MP, Labour’s Housing Minister.  In an interview on BBC Five Live today with Victoria Derbyshire (available for 7 days, interview starts at 1:07:40), he was reeling of a raft of impressive sounding figures in an attempt to tell listeners just how much this overbearing and wasteful government had been able to help people who had fallen behind with their mortgage payments, by throwing huge sums of our money at the problem.  During the discussion, listeners heard this exchange:

VD: So why do you think 46,000 homes were still repossessed last year?

JH: Because in some cases there is no way around that. And in some cases it is the best thing for the people who are struggling with those mortgages. Erm…

VD: Is it?

JH: What I want to make sure…

VD: Sorry, did you just say that, it’s the best thing for people struggling with their mortgages, to lose their home?

JH: Well sometimes it is impossible for people to maintain the mortgage commitments they’ve got. They may…

VD: But you’re saying it’s the best thing.

JH: I’ve said it may be the best thing in those circumstances. The important thing is that people are informed about the help that’s available, able to deal with their lenders, confident that they know that the lenders must only use repossession as a last resort because of the rules we’ve got in place and so that’s part of what we’ve been doing in government… a campaign to make sure that people know there’s help available and can get it.

VD: Right, I’d be interested to hear from people who have had their homes repossessed if they did think it was the best thing for them.

This should tell any voter what they need to know about Labour and its mindset.  If this government can throw taxpayers’ money at a problem and it goes away for a while, it is considered a success, demonstrating how capable and effective the government is.  When simply throwing cash at the problem doesn’t fix the long term issue, then the terrible, distressing consequences that follow are ‘the best thing’ for those people.

Perhaps Healey is with his Marxist friends in resenting those who stepped onto the housing ladder and feels satisfaction when they come a cropper.

Perhaps he is longing for days gone by, where public bodies owned most of the houses and most people were trapped into reliance on the state for the provision of poorly maintained identitkit housing on sink estates where tenants were kept in deprivation.  To Labour it didn’t matter so long as the people knew their place and the elite determined what everyone else would be entitled to.

If the state can’t fix your problem by getting involved and splashing the cash around, then you’re not worthy of saving.  What Healey doesn’t mention is Labour’s massive contribution to people losing their homes by encouraging them to buy now and pay sometime later.

Many homeowners were seduced into thinking boom and bust had been abolished, the good times were here to last and borrowing more than you could afford wasn’t a problem because there’s loads of credit and it’s dirt cheap.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Yes people are responsible for their behaviour, but they took their steer from the government that said have your jam today and the bill will be easy to deal with tomorrow.  Therefore the responsibility must be shared, but the government is absolving itself of blame the role it played.  Its behaviour is an absolute disgrace.

Communications Capabilities Directorate aka Snooper Squad

It might seem unfair of me to criticise the media (with the notable exceptions of The Register and ZDNet) for not reporting about the government’s new snooper squad, the Communications Capabilities Directorate (CCD), given I am only turning my attention to it four days later.  But the journalists are paid to investigate and report this kind of stuff as their day job, whereas I’m not.  But for many journalists such as enviropropagandist Louise Gray, unless ‘news’ is fed to them by way of press releases to cut, paste and publish, nothing is happening in the world that’s worth covering and they are content to sit around with their thumbs up their bums and their brains in neutral.

As The Register explains, the Communications Capabilities Directorate comprises the same civil servants who have been working on the Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) since 2007, but now the group has a defined structure even though it has not been added to the Home Office’s list of directorates.  One for our honourable MPs to get their teeth into, methinks.  The sole aim of the CCD is online surveillance of us, namely the interception and retrieval of all our internet activity, giving the government and law enforcement access to the details of who contacts whom, when, where and how via the internet.

Despite substantial disquiet about this huge invasion of our privacy, the cost to internet service providers (ISP) of maintaining database archives of everything their customers do online; including sending and receiving emails, use of social networking sites, web browsing history, financial transactions and making voice calls through computers, the Home Office is pressing ahead with the scheme at a cost of at least £2bn to taxpayers, plus the costs that ISPs will pass on to customers.  Many people believed the plans were on hold until after the general election after the Home Office’s consultation saw ISPs strongly criticise the plans.  But the Home Office has been quietly pressing ahead with its scheme to turn all web users into criminal suspects and harvest our data.

It might have been nice if the media had, you know, taken notice and reminded people what is being done to us ‘for our own good’ by our noble public servants.  After all, with so much pressure on the government to reduce spending on non essential, non front line services, one would think cancelling this voyeuristic, £2bn socialist wet dream snooper squad dedicated to exerting control over the population would be far more beneficial for the general public than keeping it going.  It’s nice to know what Labour’s priorities are.