Safe and Secure

My life has changed and hopefully, I’ll be truly happy for a few more years.

So this blog has now been left in a state that anybody can read and not be embarrassed.  Unless of course you are perhaps a supporter of Gordon Brown.  And he needs those now!

I may post again.  But I probably won’t!

I’ve just got back from voting. 

I hope my vote puts another nail in the coffin of this useless Labour government.

WAG has become a term to mean wives and girlfriends of such as footballers, cricketers and other sportsmen.  Generally it has been derogatory!

Now it has a new meaning, Women Against Gordon!  Hell has no fury like a woman scorned.

Et tu Hazel!

Note that the woman scorned quote is not from Shakespeare, but from William Congreve.

The words rats and sinking ship seem to be surrounding Gordon Brown these days. Jacqui Smith, Beverley Hughes and Tom Watson are all stepping down, or is it going before they are pushed.

There will be a debate on whether this parliament should end next week.

Will all the other parties win the vote?

No!  But here’s hoping.

There is a hope though, as for the motion to be carried it will need a lot of Labour MPs to either vote against the government, abstain or just not turn up.

So why would they do that, as for many it would mean the end of their earnings as MPs? 

I’ll add an aside here! – I could add expenses, but I’ve met a few poor MPs and know that the expenses system we have now, has come about because they are not paid enough!  But some have abused the system!  And how!

Now at best some of the Labour MPs have a year to run as it is unlikely that they will be re-elected.  When this happens, they will get their severance pay and pensions.  But, in the meantime, they are getting abuse and hassle, that they don’t want. 

So would you hang on?  I might well take the money and run!

I have a couple of MPs and ex-MPs amongst friends and acquantainces and neither was happy when Michael Martin was made speaker in 2000.  The Independent describes the process here.

One of my friends, who was a Labour MP, felt that it was wrong that he was chosen, as it meant two Labour MPs would follow each other as speaker.  The other, who is not a Labour MP, thought Gwyneth Dunwoody should have been speaker, but Tony Blair would never have allowed the old battleaxe to have the job.

But the real trouble with Michael Martin or Gorbals Mick, was that he had no style. And when I first heard him on the radio, I knew he was a disaster, as his voice had no authority or distinctiveness. 

It is amazing how long he has lasted.

I do wonder how the expenses scandal would have different, if say Gwyneth Dunwoody had been Speaker.  A friend told me, that she would have run the House differently and she might just have steered everything into a more moral direction. 

I must admit though, that with all the investigation going on at the present, would you want to be Speaker of the House of Commons.  Just imagine, what the press would do, about that cheese sandwich you claimed for in 2003!

Let’s hope that the saying of goodbye to Gorbals Mick is a prelude to saying goobye to another ruddy Scot and his wretched government.

I listened to the budget as I drove along the coast from Belguim to the ferry to cross to Dover.

It was a typical load of rubbish from someone, who really isn’t up to the job.

The biggest fraud in the budget is the forecast of growth for 2009, 2010 and beyond.  If anything was designed by looking at what he could borrow, what he wanted to spend, thinking the number you first thought of and then asking Aunt Edna down the pub then this was Captain Darling’s growth statistics. Or at least his statistics bore no relation to those produced by other forecasters and economists, who been at it for years and have a proven track record.

As to all his other methods it all stank of Neroism or deckcharism on the Titanic.  Captain Darling and Admiral Brown are going down with the ship and they seem determined to take us all with them.

If ever we needed an e tu Brute moment, now is the time.  Come on you Labour MPs, do the deed!

But I can’t just be negative, can I?

If we are going to get the world out of the mess that Bush, Blair, Brown et al have got us into, we need to start thinking in a totally different way.

One of the problems today is that the average man or woman on the Clapham omnibus, is not spending their hard owned money, how the government would like us to, if at all.  So we get a scrappage tax to make us buy a new car.  In other words, I might scrap my dear Mini and get £2,000 off a new one.  Why should I?  It still goes well and is ideal around town.  This is all very boring and predicable and does nothing for the world’s problems.

We should bring in a policy of rapidly increasing energy prices and then taking all that money and giving it back at the bottom end of the income tax scales.  Coupled with this, any product that saves energy, should be reduced to say 5% VAT, so that we start to see a reconstruction of the country towards lower energy usage.  Only the profligate would pay, who persist in having cars that only do about 20 to the gallon.

The real losers in this policy would be road hauliers who are being serverly undercut by those from Europe, who buy their cheap fuel here.  But why can’t we impose an HGV carnet like Switzerland does, track trucks by satellite and bill them accordingly or at a simplest level give UK based hauliers a diesel subsidy, like some EU companies do.

The trouble with a high energy policy is the government would lose the next election as people are selfish and are addicted to large cars and wasting energy.  How many for instance still have a deep bath every day, when the latest showers are not only better, but a lot cheaper in terms of energy.

But Darling will rue one thing in his budget.

He has put up the tax on high earners.  Actually it doesn’t bother me one way or the other, as I leave my earning in the company and when I need to retire, I’ll probably sell it all and go around the world for a couple of years.  When I find the right man (and I might have), I’ll do it.  (But don’t apply or expect me to wear steel and leather all the time, as I’d certainly travel very light!)

Now quite a few high earners will be just those, who will have to sell all those junk bonds, that he needs to finance the country.

They will extract their pound of flesh!

Gordon Brown’s spin-meister, Damian McBride, has had to go, as he’s been spreading porkies about MPs in other parties.

Has politics come to all this, where the rubbish you print about the others has to be more sleazy than the others and that is what will get you elected?

Perhaps it has!

But it doesn’t really affect how people will vote.  It just makes them more certain that they want to get rid of this odious government.

If you want to read more about it, go to the blog that broke the story, Guido Fawkes.

By the way, I’ve just seen a picture of McBride on The Times web site.  He looks like someone, who’s eaten too many pies.  Not my sort of man, at all!

This is title of an article in today’s Independent. 

It sounds fine, but then the people won’t want it, even if I think they should have it.  Try getting someone to swap his large Mercedes for a small two-seat electric car.  Even electric cars like the Tesla, which have the performance come at an unbelieveable price.

We have to be really smart and cut our energy usage.  Last night for instance, in the pub, I was accused of wasting energy with a pool.  It then turns out, that I spend less than my neighbour, who doesn’t have the high levels of insulation I have.  And remember I have a heat pump in my pool.  I also adjust everything most days to suit what I’m doing.  I’ve just switched everything off, as I shall be away.

What I’d really like is a Windows interface on my computer to everything in my heating system, so I can set the temperature individually and for a few days ahead.  As it is, I have smart valves on the radiators, which upstairs for a lot of the time are set to just stop the room freezing. 

But does the Windows system exist?  Not that I’ve found one yet.  But then I know nothing about that sort of technology, except as a user.

These are the sort of developments that we should do.  After all, what percentage of homes now have a computer with a wireless network?

I was a bit lonely tonight, so I went down the pub on the corner.

There has been a lot of discussion today in the press, about a request from Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, for a minimum price to be applied to alcohol.  One of the best articles is in The Times, which argues that it is not a bad thing and that it is going with the trend seen in pubs in Manchester.

This was born out by the crowd in the pub tonight.  Not a good sample I know, but as the proposal puts a minimum price on a unit of alcohol, none of the drinks in the pub would be any more. The landlord was all for it, as perhaps higher supermarket prices would stop people getting drunk before they turned up.  I should say that this doesn’t happen very often, as the pub is very much geared to the discerning drinker!

So why is Gordon Brown, so against the proposal?

He’s just worried about losing votes.  In fact, he doesn’t have a clue.

My son was worried that the American voting system would let Obama down, but then he does tend to look for conspiracy theories.

I’m glad that he’s come, but whether he’ll be able sort out the mess that the US is in, only time will tell.

I’ve just read the review in the Guardian of a new film called I. O. U. S. A. This is the first paragraph.

This thoroughly admirable picture by documentary film-maker Patrick Creadon takes the driest subject in the world – America’s national debt – and makes you deeply ashamed of not having been worried about it before now. Its thesis is that America’s crack-cocaine-style debt addiction is a more serious problem than either terrorism or global warming. The budget deficit of the US has risen to an eye-watering $9tn; its trade deficit is $738.6bn; its political leaders are casual about waste, and its feckless, want-it-now citizens buy stuff on credit and have abandoned the habit of saving, drummed into them by their provident parents and grandparents.

Before anybody points it out, Britain is just as much in hock under paper-Chancellor Brown.

I tend to go along with the premise that debt is the worst of the problems, but will Obama be able to do anything about it.  He’s come in on a wave of goodwill and it will be political suicide to bring in unpopular policies to attempt to cut back the debt.

I do feel though, that in other areas we might see some progress.

Will for instance, Obama be more active in trying to sort out the problems of Africa, where there is no US economic interest. Zimbabwe, DR Congo, Somalia and several others need something more than platitudes. And a lot of their leaders need to be given comfortable cells in The Hague.

Then there is Israel and the Palestinians. But then no US President has ever upset Israel, by making them do the things they say they will.

If there was one thing, I’d like him to do then it is to end capital punishment. It is barbaric and actually non-productive and expensive too, but it’s abolishment would send a message of a more humane America to the rest of the world. It would also remove America from a club, where the major members are China, Iran and North Korea.