Â鶹Éç

Perhaps the main danger to the alleged recovery in particular is that alleged austerity measures like the new means tested alleged " Universal " Credit ( or far from it ) will hit 1.4 million families allegedly. Its all part of the corporate Nazi Arch Plan, of which the eco-fascist inspired road fuel tax escalator is a key stone. The object of their exercise is to introduce carbon trading by the back door, road haulage are calling for a fuel duty rebate similar to that offered to regular timetabled bus services. With the likes of Stobbart not likely to go on strike as in any case it would be making all its money from warehousing, back in the early 1990s they were offering free transport into warehousing at Penrith from as far a field as central Scotland. It killed any road haulage competition favouring a far less efficient form of logistics at a higher cost overall to the consumer. All the big corporate customers have gone down that road, just give all your work to one big company when it was once the case that the suppliers would arrange their own transport direct to final destination. Gone are the days when you could load Fife spuds in the late afternoon and have them to Birmingham Market the early morning after for a decent rate.

Companies like Stobbart now mimic the UK railways in the 1960s, and I believe that their drivers are paid only bare 8 quid an hour, most smaller companies pay at least a tenner for far less grief. The thing is that the current Darling inspired RFTE is sooner rather than later put a whole bunch of companies out of business. Many haulage companies will simply pack up as the owner retires or is no longer willing to accept less than the minimum wage, a large coach company in Wales went insolvent last week ( they get no fuel rebate ). It all leads to less competition and therefore transport costs will rocket, thus putting yet more manufacturing companies in financial difficulty leading to closure in a kind of vicious circle.

The thing is that if a large proportion who thought that they could claim JSA find out they no longer qualify after paying national insurance all their working lives the result could be interesting. The thing is that if you live on a low income for any amount of time you loose all the indoctrinated emotion consumer confidence relies on and it could significantly damage their current rigged market.

Americans could be concerned about China because China has learned all of America`s old financial tricks...(including having no welfare state)....and is now doing what the USA did to us all through the last century...rip us off and asset strip us and get us into debt!

Many Americans know what comes next...and it would be poetic justice if there was any social justice in the USA!

Of course the real culprits will relocate to China and Singapore and the USA`s fourteen million unemployed will share the fate of our underclass... but without a welfare system to protect them.

The news seems to constantly feature the "plight of families" in the current economic crisis and to a much smaller extent the elderly.
Having raised a family with my husband and had to work for most of the time to pay for all the "extra's", I sympathise with all the families in the UK struggling with the current economic infaltionary problems, but they are not the only ones.
I have now "happily" divorced my alcoholic husband and put our two daughters through university on a very tight budget and as I've had to work every hour sent to do it with no time for a social life, I now live on my own, again quite happily. Considering there are a large proportion of 40, 50 and 60 year old single professional people struggling to make ends meet, like me, isn't it time the Â鶹Éç gave them some time in the spotlight.
I've taken several quite highly paid, very pressurised contracts since my divorce, which was fine until the latter part of 2008. Now I find fewer opportunities for less money and due to investments in buy to let properties, (on minimum deposit and maximum mortgage as a good investment should be), there is no state aid for me other than JSA at £64.50 a week which is only available for 6 months in my lifetime. For any other funds I've been told I have to sell a property even if it will only generate about £5000 after mortgage repayment, taxes and devaluation, and this is to be my pension.
20 years full time pension value in 2 large blue chip companies will only generate £206 total pcm at current value, a lot less than public sector workers will be getting on the same income as I was for that time, (less than £23K pa), for their pensions.
As a divorced person, I am not even entitled to the same allowances in death duties and only allowed to leave my children half what a married or widowed couple can leave their children, why, I think this is a case for human rights campaigners and hope it's being challenged.
Having paid for private schools, private medical care and private dental care as well as high taxes, I have not exactly been a "taker" from the state. Like a lot of my generation, I feel I have been slogging most of my life for others to benefit now and be impoverished or taxed out of existance in old age. Like a lot of others I wonder what this country is comming to and won't be letting the state have much more of my money. I aim to be happyily living abroad (looking ten years younger than actual age thanks to a tan and no stress, Benidorm here I come...not exactly)!I'll gladly pay taxes to another European country who will at least let me have a decent satndard of living with the money I will have.
Â鶹Éç, can you please give the whines of family hardship a break and look at the plight of single individuals, (not single parents who have family credits). We have the same mortgages, car expenditure and living cost bills as families. There is only you, one person on one salary to pay for it all as well as a fairly long time to go until retirement. The only real difference will be one eats a bit less, house size is your choice!
If you want to continue reporting doom and gloom, you could also do a programme looking at the wider implications of petrol increases on business in the UK in terms of labour skill issues. Lke the gentleman in Hampshire who packed his job in due to £300 a month petrol costs, I am also considering not going for a job in London connected to yourselves as the commuting costs and 4 hours a day travelling make a £45 - £50K job no better paid than a less stressful lower paid local job that will require 50 minutes a day travelling. I think there will be big recruitment probblems for companies moving forward that could severly impact on the UK ability to keep pace with our competitors.
Finally and apology to any readers of this blurb...
Â鶹Éç, can you also change your tack of wallowing in the troubles of the country and as most employers are asking, show a bit more of "a positive Can do Attitude" or as my daugher would say, Get a Spine. We all know the economic problems are horrendous. Spain for instance still has a light and happy side to it's TV and general broadcasting and they are in a much worse state than the UK. I think you should be boosting morale in Britain not pulling the country down all the time, you have a lot to answer for.
The Â鶹Éç should have a mandatory policy which states that at the end of every broadcast you should end with an UPBEAT and HUMOUROUS piece of news that is beneficial to the Country and your viewers.
Your news is so miserable and depressing, without any let up, you have now converted me to Sky News. Grow up Â鶹Éç and look at your marketing strategy and what you could do for the UK instead of knocking it and pulling it down all the time. It mightn't sound like it from this comment, but I'm a happy go lucky person and know there is always light at the end of the tunnel, you just have to find it.
Ah well off to job hunt again now!
Helen.
S. Oxfordshire

MORE TO GAIN THAN LOSE - BUT WHAT IS THE CURRENCY?

Gus O'Donnell is fighting a 'see if I care' rearguard action, but whose rear is most at risk? Tony's or his?

Perfidious Albion at her best.

Yesterday, the Â鶹Éç spent all day telling us that it was the most miserable day of the year and that we were all depressed - in spite of bulbs coming up, grass growing, days getting longer and spring in the air.

Today you are all getting hysterical about inflation and claiming that everyone is broke and can barely eat due to "rising prices". You were wrong yesterday and you're wrong today. Have you thought of doing a bit of original research before you make these extravagant claims? (And that doesn't mean ringing someone on The Guardian to ask for the party line).

3 Good luck with the job hunt Helen...and your arguments are well made.
I would lurv to know who NN is targeted at...and sense it may not be Barrie Singleton....just guessing!

High inflation is Gordon Brown's fault for printing £200billion of funny money? Where is Brown by the way? Is he still alive?

LANSLEY SAYS HE IS 'DESIGNING THE SYSTEM' - IS HE GOOD AT IT?

We all know the NHS is really the NMS (National Mending Service) that returns damaged people to Mammon to pay more taxes to government while getting sick again. No one seems to want to realise that this is 'digging holes and filling them in again' while applying a ‘hole tax’ a ‘digging tax’ and a mender tax.

The cost in human misery is immeasurable.

Does it occur to Systems Designer Lansbury, that it is time we had an INTEGRATED SYSTEM FOR WELLBEING? Wellbeing - where have I heard that word before?

Dave'll fix it. (Does Andrew know about Dave?)

BROWN IS LIVING UP TO HIS NICK-NAME (#7)

Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw--
For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime--Macavity's not there!

T S Eliot

most of the inflation is the regular oligarch commodity tax on poor people and the carbon trading tax wealth transfer from the many to the few based on the delusional climate religion.

the lot of poor countries is that they have to make things to sell to rich countries. so we need to make things to export and aggressively prosecute those who try to steal patents and copyright.

Having read the so called "best speeches since WW2" - Neil Kinnock? Michael Foot? Ken Livingstone? Jimmy Reid? You have got to be joking!

Try reading this:

I never liked the man, but the late Robin Cook's resignation speech was pretty good.

11 Mistress

where's your man? still on holiday?

TV - RADIO - TRANSCRIPT - SPEECHWRITER

Charisma will trick you on TV, oratory on radio, and an accomplished hack writer, via all three.

Listen to the politicians when they are using their own words, unrehearsed. Only then might you know them. But they are still politicians. Better to look at the people they gather around them. Even when silent, THEY tell the truth.

This comment is relevant to yesterday, but I am not sure if people read the past pages as assiduously as those of the moment.
Yesterday I had occasion to visit various meeting venues in London looking for a suitable place in whch to hold an AGM later this year. In one such place, we were told we could not inspect one meeting room because of a "function". We already suspected something "interesting" might be happening because we noticed TV cameras etc outside.
The "function" turned out to be Cameron's speech on the health service. Why is the Government spending OUR MONEY on hiring prestigious venues in which to speechify when they have a perfectly good Palace of Westminster in which to prance in front of the cameras?

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

hey Brossen, have you seen 'Rap News' yet? Have a close listen, i think you'll like!

[sighs, good old Beeb]

attempted repost part 1:

----

Subject:
Tuesday 18 January 2011

Posting:
tut tut, am i mistaken or did NN show an incorrect graph on Mason's first report, the second graph displayed? It would be very interesting for NN to admit the error, and proffer the corrected report upon YouTube for viewers to freely view without worries to copyright. Afterall, the Â鶹Éç made the error, in an otherwise, as usual, superb report. I would wonder if this Conservative Govt would not lean on Â鶹Éç producers to do so, in fact, to maintain the Â鶹Éç's *globally* high reputation for honesty and accuracy in its reporting and journalism. The Â鶹Éç is a source of pride for many of us, and i'm sure this 'home values' Liberal/Conservative Govt realise that. No matter how ill-Liberal and /Radical the Govt is behaving.


the economic problems the UK is facing are very complex, John Redwood made some good points, but the TUC spokesman was generally correct. Combating inflation through cutting incomes or raising taxes on the general populace prevents the recovery that *must* come from economic growth, because wages and incomes are the driving force behind consumption in the economy.

also, as Paul Mason said, the inflation in the economy is NOT coming through actual growth (ie higher incomes leading to shortages in material leading to higher prices), quite simply because there *IS* no economic growth - measured in higher mode-average wages/incomes, which is the measure of the rise in incomes and purchasing power of the majority. Inflation is instead coming from higher costs in imported material, also enormously from the so-called "Quantitative Easing", ie printing notional money then handed to UK banks so they could "purchase" the worthless mortgages, the profits from this "purchase" has then gone on to be also thrown upon the casino behaviour of the laughably named "investment" banks... now often bank departments of banks you have saved in. In other words, the Pound is worth less, causing inflation because the last and this Govt have printed more of it, although *we* haven't seen any benefit because they just handed it to their yachting friends.

if then, as monetarists used to believe, you try to cut inflation by cutting consumer spending, through reducing wages for normal people (that is supposed to reduce demand), the intended effect on inflation simply will not happen - the inflation is not evidence of "overheating" through higher spending on the same resources, in fact most families are barely scraping by. There are different types of Inflation, and it is a mistake to regard them all as the same. China's inflation will require different remedies than the UKs.


btw, on interest rates: there are arguments both for and against raising UK interest rates. But doing so now will cause enormous hardship, and many will fail upon interest repayments, both on their homes and also their companies. The ones who will benefit are the mortgage banks, who will acquire property at knock-down prices usually to sell on (perhaps at preferential rates to their wealthiest investors), and the Corporate sharks, who will be able to buy what is left of british locally owned companies and services, or bankrupt the rest.

yet the interest rates must go up sometime, these rates are historically incredible, and will have benefited anyone who used the cheaper rates to pay off their debt held, whilst hurting those who saved. But this increase was known, and the effects planned for, a long while ago, which is worth bearing in mind. It is also worth bearing in mind, the 'young turks' of NuLabour created this mess eating savings and retirement, and the 'young turks' of the Tories are continuing it.

lets say a miracle occurs, and Milliband is elected PM, what do you think *he* would do?

one party state? You betcha..!

part 2:

- so the solution, as ever, is not short term fixes, but long-term planning by villages, towns and communities, building local sustainability and wealth retention.

try not to shop at corporate supermarkets, but at local shops and services, owned by local people, such as infinity foods or the corner shop. Invest in local savings mutuals, rather than the corporate banks.

there is more explanation and concrete strategies in the excellent "Transition Towns Handbook"



but in essence it comes down to this: fiddling with interest rates is going to hurt some, benefit others, help certain parts of the economy, and harm others, but it is only through a major reorganisation of the banking sectors and entire economy that we will see real, and really *sustainable*, economic growth.

growth comes through higher household incomes, increasing demand, and increasing savings. Growth does not come through wage freezes and job cuts. It is a shame that TUC spokesman had not been included in NuLabour's "Economic Government Of All the TalentS', or 'Goatse' as it was sometimes referred as back then amongst people who could google.

New Labour? I almost feel nostalgic now.

oh, another btw on interest rates - the UK raising them will not affect Sterling(£), because the other central banks will follow. This largely contradicts the notion of raising interest rates being a beneficence to the UK economy.

part 3:

on last night, i found the Conservative Minister's concern for the human rights, freedoms, political liberties and all the other things Conservatives stand up for, so obvious in his support for the liberation struggle in Tunisia, against a brutal and authoritarian tyranny that has oppressed the Tunisian people for decades. It was heart-warming, to constantly hear how the Tories and their NuLabour cohorts, "talked" about human rights, apparently endlessly "talking" about human rights to these States they sell advanced weaponry and surveillance equipment to, selling the helicopter gunships, tanks, "crowd control equipment", bombs and torture techniques to. Whilst *DEFINITELY* talking to these dictatorial abusers about human rights.

and whilst it was very interesting to hear why PM Cameron thought the privatisation if the NHS was "a good thing", it is puzzling to me why Waffle-Ed has not spoken out in brimstone and fire at this destruction of this basic plank of the welfare state, the society that takes care of the citizens and not just the rich?

could it be he secretly agrees with it?

there has been far more accurate and piercing criticism from the Tory backbenches than have emerged from this latest scion of Lord Meddlesome, people infinitely more worth to vote for than this craven excuse for an Opposition Leader. Until Cameron spoke last night on the health reforms, i would more readily have voted for *him* than Milliband.

what a waste of space he is.


---thought ricky gervais was amusing as [ever] at the award ceremony, boo-hoo that he might never get invited again. But then, Hollywood has never *really* been about "Free Speech" - only when they agree with what is said. Sound familiar?


its SO cool to be British, and we can do that sort of thing and get away with it!!! :D

barry #8: lansley's designing it perfectly - as long as you accept the assumption that Health Services are primarily a way of generating profits for Corporations, with any actual Health benefits to normal people more in the oratory than the practice. If however you question the notion that we are all to be owned lock, stock and barrel by the Corporates and their middle-managers we vote between come 'elections', if you are old fashioned enough to believe a State has a duty to improve the lives and health of its citizens, as our grandparents did enough to fight for the creation of the NHS, if you believe in justice and democracy, or indeed if you are just sickened by the constant parade of corrupt, two-faced lying gits intent on deliberately causing incredible amounts of suffering and misery either for their own self-interest or ideology, then you will probably reject these heath 'reforms'.

for all they can do is force over-worked GPs to 'out-source' management to those very same corporate groups that have presided over the dismantlement and privatisation of other parts of the UK, first charging little, and then raising the cost tremendously.

David Cameron: you can still save your position, by firing Osbourne and the Thatcherite radicals, and following the Heath route, working with the unions, and unifying the Country in these times of trouble. You were brave enough, and earned the admiration of the world, to change course and apologise to the NI people. Now it is time to stand up to Bilderberg, and come stand shoulder-to-shoulder with your people.

if your economic package works, then these changes can be tried later (slowly, with trial areas, as proper, *sensible* Govt does). And if your economic packages do NOT work, the absolute last thing the UK needs is to have its health service in the iron grip of savage, uncaring Corporate raiders.

better a u-turn now, than a slow train-wreck of a Govt that will leave the UK in the position of a one-party NuLabour State later. LISTEN to your rebellious backbenchers!!

ahhh, can't edit an earlier post.



the Internet is a terrible place.

don't google "goatse".

Mindy`s Housemate....can you please take over Britain and the Â鶹Éç for a few months and liberate us all from Planet London treblespeak?

You remind me of what I always imagined MP`s/journalists would be like if we got out from under the oppressive toxic smog of drivel and debt that drifts across the Atlantic from Marx Brother`s America!

GRANDIOSE DAVE IS A POSEUR (#15)

He is truly the heir to Blair.

WE HAVE GOT OURSELVES ANOTHER ONE.

#3 Helen looks as though you are right!



Pensioners have a finite income, they can't earn more, and lose on any savings they have. A family is young and is capable of work and earning more money, but the governments mantra is help families and the poor, now would that poor be mainly new immigrants?

PRIDE IN THE Â鶹Éç (#18)

Have you been sleeping upside-down again Mork?

When NewsyNighty 'did' great speeches, and drifted into sound-bites, they played a clip of Blair's gauche delivery of the 'hand of history' and we clearly heard him say: "on OUR shoulder". Matt Frei then allowed to Campbell to read (with stumbling) his 'diary' using "on MY shoulder". Perhaps a graph would have served better.

That's infotainment.

Ah, Mindy the NHS is done for it will be privitised, slowly and deliberately it will go bit by bit.

Remember we are now an immigrant nation, just like the good 'ole US of A, you pay for everything there or go without, the same will happen here, how can you have a cohesive society, when most of the work is give to foreigners?

IN THE MIDST OF LIFE . . . (#19)

First hunter-gather to second hunter-gatherer: "What's an economic cycle"?

Surely 'grawth', by its very nature, requires termination (bust) to allow more of the same?

Perhaps small IS beautiful, because the cycles are too small to impinge, to any detectable degree, on the business of living?
Shroedinger's Cat never said a word about cycles.

And another "elephant in the room"

When do the english stop being english? We are a fifth foreign now, when do you cease to be a nation? I notice all the schools on TV are now foreign, when did this happen, where have I been, in cloud cuckoo land it appears!

'NATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR PARENTING SKILLS' - NOW WHICH NINNY WILL RUN THAT?

I now realise what a poor story-teller Lewis Carroll was. With each successive Westminster installation, this poor, beleaguered group of rocks, becomes more bizarre in its aberrant behaviours.

Will it EVER occur to our incestuously selected leaders, in the Westminster Citadel, IT IS THEY WHO NEED COACHING? Surely government is 'in loco parentis' (I could add 'de facto' but it would exhaust my Latin). Manifestly their governing skills are minimal, and a training course is urgently required. Meanwhile, we should put UK into Special Measures; I suggest under the control of Norway.

24..Is it just possible that Dave and Ed and Nick are in the hands of the sort of PR types who have made American politics part of the celebrity entertainment industry...and that they are as much victims of it as us?

Going back over the last thirty years I felt more than a hint of anxiety when Keith Joseph took Margaret Thatcher over to HQ to meet the Neo Liberals...... whose ideas have really been dictating "our" progress/decline as a nation ever since....regardless of which farcical "party" happened to be pretending to govern Britain at the time.

The first thing any politician who wants to "govern" Britain (on behalf the USA) has to do is get himself down to the US embassy and swear alleigance....then make a complete prat of himself wearing a baseball cap at funfairs .....and droning on about his lurv of everything American..... and all his visits to the wonderful US of A...etc etc etc.

The very LAST thing he must do is say anything remotely "socialist" close to an election .....or that suggests we might actually take a rational self-interested look at how being tied to US foreign policy (including the EU and mass immigration and Afghanistan)really benefits Barrie,Jim and the others...that would be suicidal!

So Dave`s surroundings as he spouts the latest barmy idea from the USA is not really a sign that he`s a hypocrite...it`s all par for the course for ANY politiician who doesn`t want to seem disloyal to the USA .....like the doomed Gordon Brown did when registering a tiny bit of unmodified socialist thinking as he took over from Uncle Sam`s trusty chum Tony Blair.

(However loyal Brown was to the Mandelsonian Masterplan he was always teed up to be the fall guy for the inevitable fall from grace of the New Labour project).

ADVERTISING STANDARDS (#29)

I have just been informed, by the ASA, that it is OK for the Commando to show only painless stuff, in their TV adverts, "because everybody knows you get maimed and killed". (Well - words to that effect).

I wonder what they will say if I point out all the over-illustrated leaflets, from official bodies and service providers, are disproportionately 'ethnic' in the grinning-people cohort - going forward? Perhaps they will simply reply: "EVERYONE KNOWS . . . ?

Might it be that government has NEVER known how to do it? (See my #30)

32..Barrie...we were always a nation that talked in fine sentiments and went around grandly ending slavery and exploitation and fighting wars "to make us free and build a land fit for heroes" etc etc

BUT we didn`t become rich by spouting fine words......we became rich by using usury and piracy and slavery and regime change and war....... and spreading a religion that was (like us)full of fine sentiments which in reality we completely ignored in our greedy exploitive lust for riches and power.

The only reason that we had the party political pantomime of socialist versus capitalist post war politics was that by then we were a busted flush as a nation and America had taken over from us as Mr Greedy and Nasty.

AMERICA IS A SWEET-SHOP MALL THAT JUVENILES CAN'T RESIST (#31)

With you there Jim. Those who had eyes to see (a diminishing number) observed Little Boy Blair, UTTERLY DAZZLED BY DUBYA BUSH AND ABSOLUTE POWER. We watched with incredulity and saw him return a changed man, even doing the Dubya Walk. (Since then he has been 'confirmed' as illustrated, to my HORROR, in that YouTube clip* where his accent is indefinably weird.)

Blair was then, and still is, immature - a needy child. The Westminster system of selection and installation, followed by elevation, will always give us more of the same.

* Can anyone find the clip of 'returning hero Blair, talking to Sedgefield in that Pythonesque manner? I can't. Have the Faithful expunged it? How telling.

Breaking out of the pattern we are now trapped in looks impossible. And now we have a terrifying alliance of Davies and Straw tilting at a diversionary windmill. Brokeback Quixote.

Mr GREEDY and Mr NASTY (#33)

If wishes were horses then beggars would ride; politicians accountable - they'd all be inside.
Were anger gunpowder, Westminster would fall; but the Citadel ramparts feel nothing at all.

Take heart Jim - no prisoner will get the vote in England's brown and desolate land. Hurrah!

MANDY’S KRAFTY DEAL

There's a rumour that Mandy is eyeing up some sort of role with Lazards investment bank and according to the FT the bank has not denied the speculation. Still one good turn deserves another. Lazards advised Kraft during their controversial buying of Cadbury - something the previous government didn’t block.

Guess who was the Business Secretary at the time?

IT'S THE SAME WHEN YOU FLUSH A TOILET (#36)

What goes around, comes around.

'Cheese' and 'cheesy' are widely used as terms of distaste.

Looks like a Civil Partnership made in (among) curds.

Mindy #19

Your transition idea can never happen with current high and rising fuel prices speaking with the experience of going through the fuel price doubling in the 1970s on the front line. Corner shops were once supplied by a fleet of small lorries, which when the fuel price doubled in the 1970 were no longer economic and hence the move towards supermarkets. A car was then essential if you had a small shop to collect stock from cash and carry, but now the supermarket with deliveries by 40 ft semi-trailers are just as cheap as any cash and carry. In fact shopping at a supermarket is very much like going to cash and carry in the 1980s.

Transition Town eco-fascists are probably working on the Corporate Arch Plan theory that all low income people will have been economically cleansed from smaller towns. Rich people can afford to shop locally, the poor don't count as they will be safely locked up in the larger town ghettos an struggle to survive.

The alarm bells should start ringing when the TUC promote policy in the interest of the stock market parasite speculators. No mention of the damage done to industry by high and increasing fuel taxes or the cost of oil in general. Perhaps Barber is more interested in his forthcoming fat cat pension pot.

38 Brossen ...Until we can make Barber find looking after our interests more beneficial than sorting himself out a "fat cat pension pot" we are wasting our time with politics in its present form...including AV tinkering.
Politics is the art of the possible in an age of global capitalist power and career politics....and it hasn`t been "public service" since MP`s had huge private incomes.........mind you ...perhaps it`s all coming full circle!

Paul's analysis was all there, but I think the risk in raising interest rates is HUGE and in many ways to BoE MPC has painted itself into a corner whilst at the same time deluding themselves that they have any effective control at all.

WHY do we believe that the symbolic move of +0.25% would do anything to the UK economy, when Market interest rates are nowhere near 0.5% - try 5% in the real world for new loans - TEN TIMES base rate - and the globalised financial services industry can simply move cash from one country to the next to exploit lower borrowing costs and higher rates to consumers?

The truth is that the MPC's role in setting the UK base rate is symbolic only - THEY HAVE NO REAL POWER AT ALL since markets were deregulated and at the moment moving the base rate lever in either direction is pointless and probably counter-productive.

We also know that virtually all inflation at the moment is imported price rises - real living standards are falling, not rising - so how would further cutting the living standards of the working population in anyway reduce inflation - if anything it would harden workers' attitude to demand higher wages, or force employers to offer higher salaries to skilled people to keepp them - i.e. stoke WAGE inflation!

Because mortgage rates are so low, even a small rise in the percentage is a big rise in the repayment - i.e. a 0.5% base rate rise on a 4% loan rate puts up its monthly cost by over 10%.

So what would happen if the monetarists get their way and rates do go up?

Firstly the housing market would crumple - secondly a hell of a lot of small businesses will fold or simply stagnate - and thirdly the banks who already enjoy a spread on rates that is as close to racketeering as I can imagine would simply pocket the money - I can't see savers getting a bean.

Why is Sterling so weak?

Because UK PLC is in hock up to our eyes to bail out the banks and to try and bridge over the recession the credit crisis caused by Wall Street, the City and the rest of the greedy b*st*rds who have now had £40,000 from every man, woman & child in the country to bail them out.

We've just seen the unemployment figures come in this morning - the private sector isn't delivering the 2.7M NET NEW JOBS the OBR says it must create to stop the deficit growing out of control as it did in Eire.

Meanwhile probably a million public sector jobs will go shortly - followed by an million construction jobs. The huge hike in university fees combined with the ending of EMA will see a steep rise in NEETs next year - young people not in education, employment or training - probably another million...

I now know what Cameron means by the "BIG SOCIETY" - a society with REALLY BIG PROBLEMS - millions out of work, falling living standards and a collapse in the housing market and an economy in free fall after slashing £1Tn of aggregate demand.

Think 5M+ unemployed - think a tidal wave of new welfare claims - think a plummeting Pound and the £5 litre of fuel and the £5 loaf of bread.

WHERE IS THE ELECTORAL MANDATE FOR THIS SUICIDE STRATEGY?

The Labour, LibDem and nationalist manifestos ALL PROMISED not to rush through such huge spending cuts so quickly - that's well over two thirds of the votes cast.

The Libertarian mantra of public=bad and private=good, that the state is "the road to serfdom" needs to be balanced with the concept that smashing the state is "the road to penury".

TRADE is the issue - we need to stop the denuding of British companies and jobs to overseas and start taxing imports of goods we could make here.

And if we don't do this, the fall in the value of our currency will simply cut our living standards until we balance the flows of money in and out of our economy - and we will all be poorer.

So as the "masters of the universe" whose job was supposed to be investment banking for our economy have bet their shirts, lost and diappeared in a puff of blue smoke, then it is only government that can do anything to rebuild UK PLC's manufacturing base - the retail banks are on strike in terms of new lending and expecting them to deliver is a delusion.

Imagine what will happen if we don't do anything - millions of people dependent on minimal welfare payments, unable to move to find work living in an increasingly fragile and violent environment, dragooned into "workfare" projects run by private sector "barons" who make their money out of keeping the lid on the poor.

A nation of serfs in other words.....

Helen, admire your energy but don't be too hard on the Â鶹Éç, watch Sky News if you want but if you want the pure, unbridled truth even if a little bit depressing (the truth can be like that)then stick with the beeb, I have seen most of the world and lived there and I have yet to see a media outlet that is as honest as our national broadcaster......

nice for the coalition to tell us who our head to state will be? suppose this happened in iraq or afghanistan [son of karzai]? the yapparrazzi would be going on about corruption etc?

#28 barry: no, economic growth does not need a boom/crash cycle, although cycles are built into the nature of evolution. In a well run economy (based upon mutuals, cooperatives, transparency and accountability), there are cycles of slower and faster growth. Crashes come due to distortions in the market economy, usually due to excessive profiteering and monopolistic control.

nor is immigration a real economic problem, every immigrant bring skills, and has already had the cost of education paid in another country. The problem is a badly run economy that cannot absorb even the educated in this country, which is hardly the fault of an immigrant. Would we blame British emigres to Spain for causing *Spain's* economic worries???

#27 Lizzy: the NHS is only done for if we let it be. The British Public can run Cameron and crew out of the country if necessary, it is hardly rocket science why the Tories are looking at Tunisia, and shaking in their boots.

#33 jim: no, 'we' did not "become rich" through the exploitation of the world, the majority of Britons, just like the Skandis and other 'normal' North European populations, became relatively wealthy due to our own hard work, and primarily because we rose up (or threatened to) against our oppressor classes and demanded to keep some of the wealth we produced - and that some of the Nation's wealth be used upon Comprehensive education, free Health Care, pensions, investments in social housing, and welfare benefits. The enormous growth in Western economies since then, has been primarily because of these measures, boosting incomes, boosting consumption, spreading the wealth and raising living standards. It is the palace and mansion dwellers who benefited from the raping of the Earth, the ones who are still benefiting from the grotesque poverty in Africa and other places. Given the right conditions, there is absolutely no reason why there could not be near-Scandinavian-level living standards for ALL.

the British Empire did not benefit the British People - the same people oppressed us both, and now their current offspring are trying to suck the UK dry to maintain their own insane life-styles off our backs.

#36 DJ: such behaviour has not stopped since Thatcher opened the "privatisation" water-cock in 1979, although i suspect that the corruption of the Labour years will once again be paled into insignificance compared to this new Tory regime. Not that the Murdoch/Corporate press will report it.

#38: brossen, i get your worries, and about the currently primarily middle-class focus upon sustainability, however i cannot see any other way that the UK can pull itself around. It might take time for such measures to be able to be implemented in the UKs ghettos and 'sink' estates, but even there having locally owned businesses, local skill-shops, local mutual societies (instead of Corporate banks, or other blood-sucking loan-sharks), and schools designed to educate their children, not to prepare them for a life of unemployment, or at best trolley collection at tescos, are absolutely essential tools to provide for local economic activity, community wealth retention, and the sheer HOPE for a better future.

the high costs of oil are because of peak oil. Whether or not you believe in it, and it is a fact that traders and dealers are pushing the price up through speculation, it is a simple economic reality that oil is going to continue upon its upwards spiral, and apart from blips will not be dropping. This is hardly the fault of the TUC, even Murdoch would have a hard job pushing that line!

"In fact shopping at a supermarket is very much like going to cash and carry in the 1980s."

i was thinking that very same thought recently! Warehouses filled with cheap goods sold bulk in medium-to-high prices. The handbook has some examples and possible measures of how to turn back from this almost ant-like, ugly mass conformity, and regrow local services, and local democracy. Even if you are cynical about the Green movement, surely rebuilding local economies, energy security and local government are worthy objectives?

#39 jim: AV is a bad joke, the rotten egg thrown at the starving peasants by the perfumed and gloved hand of the 'Carriag'd Dandy', a mockery of democracy, an insult thrown into the faces of the British Public who want REAL change, not deck-chair re-arrangement. In fact, the point when the Liberals (lets face it, there is no SDP left in there) started sucking the Tory [pyramid] openly, was when they cravenly came out one by one and shamefacedly told us that they didn't ACTUALLY want a form of Proportional Representation, AV+ was what they had entered politics to achieve. The writing was on the wall right then - especially as they also followed Clegg's lead and supported the Tories changing the Constitution, making it harder for Parliament to exercise its basic Right to expel a Govt, the Executive, and force a General Election. The kind of barmy crap you might expect in a third world dictatorship, or somewhere under US military occupation.

oh, wait.... o.O


#40 richard: yes.

43...Mindy`s Housemate!
Gosh! You are a powerhouse of ideas...if only you paused long enough to reflect on what people are really saying I think you might make a wee bit more sense.

Maybe it would help if I explained that I was referring to "we" as the nation and not "us" personally you might get my point?

Also...can I just ask whether you fancy the idea of coming with me and putting your general case to an audience of British unemployed people on one of our many sink estates.

I think I would enjoy the spectacle of you developing your general argument to the sort of folk you seem to be concerned about.They might get very excited about your ideas about importing all those skilled immigrants to drive the taxis they are too idle to drive themselves.

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