gordon brown

...a society made up almost entirely of mendacious megalomaniacal psychopaths, do declare that the causes of the current economic crisis are basically nothing to do with us:

3. During a period of strong global growth, growing capital flows, and prolonged stability earlier this decade, market participants sought higher yields without an adequate appreciation of the risks and failed to exercise proper due diligence. At the same time, weak underwriting standards, unsound risk management practices, increasingly complex and opaque financial products, and consequent excessive leverage combined to create vulnerabilities in the system. Policy-makers, regulators and supervisors, in some advanced countries, did not adequately appreciate and address the risks building up in financial markets, keep pace with financial innovation, or take into account the systemic ramifications of domestic regulatory actions.

4. Major underlying factors to the current situation were, among others, inconsistent and insufficiently coordinated macroeconomic policies, inadequate structural reforms, which led to unsustainable global macroeconomic outcomes. These developments, together, contributed to excesses and ultimately resulted in severe market disruption.

God it makes me sick. Lying miserable tossers. Understand this well. Maintaining low interest rates, in order to get more people borrowing more to put into a land price bubble which would enable others to borrow to spend our way out of a mini-recession at the beginning of the century was DELIBERATE PUBLIC POLICY. Deliberate public policy the effects of which were to make the poorest and weakest in society attempt to take on unacceptable levels of debt and risk just to prevent themselves from being ripped off even more in the future.

Not only that, but they knew at the time it would lead to problems later (Eddie George said: "My legacy to the MPC, if you like, has been 'sort that out',"). They simply hoped their successors could get us out of those problems. I think we should take their prescriptions for recovery with all the salt in the world's oceans.

When Gordon Brown came to power last year he promised a "government of all the talents". A year or so on and with what, 45,000,000 adults to choose from (most of whom of course would not touch his government, probably any government, with a very long barge-pole), one has to wonder just what talents he had in mind to bring this motley crew together:

Come to think of it, there's probably not one talent between them. These three, and this choice by the "dear leader" to bring them into government, just highlights for me how hopeless the very idea of state government is. There is no way that these people are somehow uniquely capable, any more than anyone else in the country, to make the momentous decisions we stupidly cede to the state to take on our behalf.

Apparently Gordon Brown's plan to micromanage British sport for the next four years is hitting trouble...

...but I can't see what all the fuss is about personally. After all, the British Lions combined rugby team does not jeopardise the competitiveness of the various home nations' independent rugby international teams does it?

Mind you, if they do keep on tinkering with the sporting bodies themselves don't they stand a chance under IOC rules of getting the entire team GB banned from the next Olympics. Wouldn't that be somewhat embarrassing. On the other hand, if they ban us now, perhaps we can stop spending all that money on a hole in the ground in East London... :-)

...to think that, in a few short weeks , it looks possible that party activists of all political colours will be expected to trudge the streets once again asking people to believe a lot of spin, unachievable promises and heartfelt apologies and vote for for a "change", or maybe that should just be "vote, for a change".

Actually, I tell a lie, it doesn't completely overwhelm me. Sometimes there is a little frisson of excitement at the possibility that the people of Britain might just once collectively call time on this comfy carousel of political clap-trap. Just say no! as the song went...

No, Gordon! No, Dave! No, Jack, Hillary, Harriet or whoever! No, not even you Nick!

We've had quite enough for these past decades, nay centuries, of being shunted up the gary glitter by folk who think they know better than us but whose ambitions so clearly exceed their abilities.

What would happen if we all got up one "Good Morning" Polling Day and simply voted "no"? At what point would the Westminster clique conclude they had completely lost our confidence and call a halt to their corruption and crookery? Or at what point can we refuse, with impunity, to submit to their authority?

And then, how do we create a new, bottom up, rather than up its own arse, democracy? This has much to commend it.

I've often thought how extraordinary a person must be to be able to feel competent to "run" a country of tens of millions of people. Of course, personally, I don't believe anyone can. The cult of leadership is unhealthy for society. The notion that one person is somehow supremely capable above all the rest of us to make decisions affecting us all as comprehensively as the tentacles of government reach into our lives is repugnant to me.

But clearly blogging John Prescott buys in to this cult of leadership:

So, wait a second; we have a former postie in charge of a £100bn plus budget, including, ultimately, decisions of life and death importance and he's still lacking a certain "je ne sais quois". We have a trained lawyer who's held more of the great offices of state, and cabinet posts traditionally associated with the senior minister - Lord Chancellor, Lord Privy Seal, Leader of the House of Commons, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Secretary of State for the Home Department - and still hasn't the "skills and experience"?

Of course we can all see that the incumbent whom Prescott holds in such esteem has been promoted beyond the level of his competence anyway. But the idea that there is some step change in skills and experience between Prime Minister and other ministers is just bonkers. Don't get me wrong, I hate the man with a passion, and this is a backhanded complement at best, but at least Tony Blair had the skills and helpers to spin his way through, to sound convincing and to persuade people, but he had no practical ministerial experience at all.

Of course, nobody has such skills, and perhaps especially those who have surrounded themselves in the political system for most of their adult lives. As the concentration of power into the hands of the Prime Minister in the UK has continued apace ever since Walpole was first in office so the world has become immeasurably more complex and fast moving, making it all the more ridiculous to expect one person to be an adequate representative for so many of us in so many aspects of governance and diplomacy. I daresay that, when the House of Lords in 1741 decried the idea that any minister should have primacy over others' departments, the daily work of those departments probably could have been handled by one person. Now, it is completely impossible and we should ditch the whole edifice.

I just listened to a BBC report on the launch of the Labour party's local elections campaign. It majored heavily on the police's Neighbourhood Action Groups where every neighbourhood is supposed to have police on the beat and everyone has instant access to them by email, mobile phone, even perhaps telepathy.

Sounds nice? Yeah, but, dare we point out the minor flaw - nobody voting on May 1st will be voting for anyone who can do remotely anything about this policy since it is controlled by the unelected Police Authorities. Their budgets are unaccountable to local people, uncappable by the communities secretary and, as the "Hapless Band of Staff and Regulars" noticed last week, can impose a huge cost on helpless local tax payers.

But I suppose it is at last a belated admission that ASBOs are not the answer so much as eyes on the street. Such as most of us had been saying since the Crime and Disorder Act of Labour's first year in power. Ten years to achieve something - hardly what I would major my local elections campaign on.

Tory cartoonists seem to think so too:

ConservativeHome's Mr Bean posters:

There are more where that came from .