Five Times a Night !
I've just heard on the news that New Labour has a target to reduce targets in the NHS. Did I mishear this? There comes a point when every prime minister (and chancellor) has been locked up in Downing Street for so long that he or she loses touch with reality. Blair has always kept reality at arm's length, but his bafflement on Question Time about doctors' appointments just shows how little he now knows about what goes on in New Labour Britian. When he finally moves into his mansion in London W2 he will be able to catch up on things like pressing the redial for two hours to get an appointment for little Leo to have his jabs, then finding the car covered in parking tickets while he has been in the surgery, then forgetting to pay Red Ken's congestion charge. Perhaps he will try and start a company, he'll soon give up when he finds out about all the forms he has to fill in. But of course buying a house must have already taught him a lesson or two. The Brown Stamp Duty on his £3.5 million purchase would have cost him £140,000. And soon he will be getting his first council tax bill.
Why Blair and Straw are Quivering
This is what Jack Straw said on the day that the Attorney General's A4 ‘unequivocal’ legal advice on the war was published. (House of Commons, 17th March 2003).
"There is no question about the legality of the action that we propose to take." And:
(a second resolution ) "has never been needed legally, but we have long had a preference for it politically."
This is what the Attorney General had said in his equivocal secret advice ten days earlier (full web text on Downing Street site)
"26. To sum up, the language of resolution 1441 leaves the position unclear and the statements made on adoption of the resolution suggest that there were differences of view within the Council as to the legal effect of the resolution. Arguments can be made on both sides. "
Lynch Time
The public is a lynch mob and they saw Blair's sweat of fear on Question Time last night. One can't help feeling that it must be all over for Tony now. He will win the election, but surely he can't cling on as PM when he is so hated (and that's just by his own MPs).
But unfortunately, New Labour still has one trick up its sleeve. It will simply shed its 'New' skin and reveal a Brown one underneath. Brown was joint founder of the Tell It How It Isn't School of Socialism. Nics aren't a tax. Road maintenance isn't spending. The GDP figures have been fiddled more times than the Attorney General's advice on on The War.
Brown Labour will complete New Labour's greatest project: the modernisation of truth.
The Stock Market Gives It's Verdict on Brown
Tony Blair keeps telling us what a magnificant Chancellor Gordon Brown is. So does Gordon, and much of the media still repeats the line verbatim. But the stockmarket doesn't think so. At the start of the campaign, the FTSE had struggled to above 5,000, but as Labour cruises to victory, it has fallen back sharply. If the economy is safe in Labour's hands, why are people selling shares.? The truth is, it is business that will have to plug the black hole in the public finances by paying higher taxes. That means smaller profits left over for shareholders. Indeed, on current trends there is a good chance that the markets will celebrate the re-election of Labour on May 6th by pushing the FTSE all the way back to the 4,445 it stood at on May 2nd, 1997, the days Tony and Gordon moved in Downing Street. Eight years, with no movement in share prices. Maybe that's what they mean by 'stability' - but stagnation would be a better word.
Blair and the Devil
The LibDems latest 'positive campaigner' Brian Sedgemore (just defected from Labour) has written a piece in The Independent that is so good that we reproduce edited highlights here. 'Im renouncing Tony Blair, the Devil, New Labour and all their works. I don't do this lightly. I know that some of my friends will be angry, and I will be rubbished by the New Labour spin machine. Mad Dog [John] Reid will be set on me. John Prescott will say, "Brian? Brian who?" Why should people vote when they see increasing evidence of fraud in the postal ballot system created by the government which, said a judge, was a "disgrace to a banana republic"? The problem with Tony Blair is that he tells big porkies as easily as he tells little porkies, whether it is watching Jackie Milburn play football, or being certain of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He drags in the hapless Attorney General to back him up on the legality of the war. Lord Goldsmith says he was not leant on. The Attorney General can protest his innocence until the end of time, and people won't believe him, and neither do I. But Blair is shameless. He used to act at school and he uses that talent now; every time he speaks, for example, at the death of Diana, Princess of Wales you can hear someone saying, "Cue broken voice, quivering lips, dropped shoulder, tear in left eye".
Jack Straw was simply not up to the job. David Blunkett saw himself as some sort of deified demi-god, issuing new commandments on a daily basis for the six o'clock news. And then there's poor Charlie Clarke, a bit of a chump preaching the politics of fear who was dealt a cruel hand by Blunkett over the Terrorism Act. He is keeping very quiet during this election campaign for some reason. Charles was the housing chairman in Hackney when I was the MP and to describe him as bloody useless would be to heap high praise on him. Some say I should have stayed for things to change under Gordon Brown. The "Iron Chancellor" has a massive intellect but no backbone. He stayed carefully away from the difficult issues:- the nature of parliamentary democracy; the illegal war; the denial of trial by jury; Belmarsh, the control orders and pass laws.'
War Lord
Lord Goldsmith’s ‘unequivocal’ advice on the legality of the War appears to have had six ‘quivers in it after all. Mail on Sunday Proof Blair was told the War was illegal. We have set out the whole sequence of events in our Scandal Sheet 'War Lord'
Perhaps more sensationally as far as the public is concerned, Blair told Paxman last week: "I don't believe we had any option, however, but to disclose his name."
He was speaking of Kr. Kelly and New Labour did not 'disclose' his name but leaked it.
Blair has always denied any prior knowledge of the leak.
Seeing Brown with Rage
Gordon Brown has given the Institute of Fiscal Studies a tongue lashing for daring to calculate the £12 billion black hole in his finances. He also laid into the IMF a few days ago for delivering the same truth.
Let’s hope his wrath was not completely unfettered. Brown is of a man whose fury knows no bounds, or so says Tom Bower in his new Biography of the Great Scot who wants be our PM. Flash back to 1994. . Brown has bowed out of the leadership contest for the Labour Party. That evening, he sits with a group of friends watching the evening news:
Are You Disappointed With Local Relationships? You Can Find Your Love In The Other Country With Our International Online Dating Service FirstClickFriend.com. | Sing Up Now And Get Your Extra Money With Our New Pay Per Profile Affiliate Program | We Have The Biggest Collection Of Funny Riddles For You To Laugh On Funny-Jokes-Portal.com ‘At the end of the ITN report, political editor Michael Brunson stated that Brown’s withdrawal was not an altruistic sacrifice for the party; he withdrew because he would have lost. Brown began to shout at the television. The shout became a scream. He lost all self control. He rushed into his private office. Slamming the door, he furiously kicked the furniture, ranting a stream of obscenities. He was outraged by the truth.’ The ‘truth’ is not something that Brown likes to hear too often. New Labour has often used the Wanless report into the NHS to justify upping National Insurance Contributions in 2002, despite having all but ruled out such a tax rise in the election a year earlier.
(Brown of course continues to deny that Nics are a tax, and Clinton did not have sex with that woman, and Saddam had WMD).
In fact Wanless's message was not so much 'spend, spend spend', as' reform, reform, reform'. He said that the NHS was bedevilled by falling productivity, undermined by New Labour targets, and in the long term should be funded in a different way. When Wanless presented his report, at Number 10, this was the scene (writes Bower):
`Just 10 minutes after Wanless began, Brown and (Ed) Balls started speaking loudly to each other. Wanless halted, stunned by the interruption. Blair was embarrassed. He recognised Brown’s tactic to destabilise someone who was delivering an unwelcome opinion. Wanless resumed…. Brown continued his animated discussion with Balls.’ We can only extend our sympathies to the IFS and the IMF.
For more on Brown v Blair see our Scandal Sheet: New Labour's Longest Running Soap.
Stealth Taxes
Blair told Paxman last night that New Labour put National Insurance up by 1%. Yes, on employees. He forgot to mention the other 1% on empoloyers' contributions, and the rise in the upper limit for Nics. That added up to stealth tax the equivalent of 3% on income tax. In 04-05 we paid £78 billion in Nics - up from £47 Billion in 96-97.It was only one of many New Labour Stealth Taxes
Red Hawk Down - Brown / Blair Missing
A few days ago, the billionaire Barclay brothers decided to close down 126 Index Catalogue shops with the loss of 3,200 workers. Presumably, Brown and Blair are still planning to land in a red helicopter outside each Index Store and dish out a multi-million package to soften the blow. But there's no sign of that red election attack 'copter yet. Unlike the 5000 Rover workers, the Index people are not concentrated around marginal constituencies. A net total of 11,000 people joined the unemployment register in March. No red helicopters for them. Manufacturing jobs are at new record low of 3.23m after another 85,000 posts were lost in the quarter to February compared with a year earlier 83% of the net jobs created last year were in the state sector. And New Labour is fighting this election on the economy....
Good News for House Buyers
It is too early to concede defeat, but it doesn't look like we are going to succeed in our goal of toppling Blair, Brown, Prezza and co this time round. But there's a sliver lining in every cloud. A Labour victory means that the long awaited housing crash is now a certainty. All that extra spending, borrowing and taxing will tip the balance. Interest rates are on the way up. And now unemployment is heading the wrong way. If you want to buy a home, you should be able to get one 30% cheaper this time next year.
Confused by the polls?
New Labour began the campaign by accusing the Tories of planning £35 Billion in spending cuts.
The Tories' rating started to rise in the polls.
Labour jumped on a speech by the Tories' Howard Flight implying that his party wanted to make deeper tax cuts than they had announced. The Tories and Labour were almost neck and neck. Tory leader Michael Howard sacked Flight and began to speak too often about immigration.
Labour started to pull ahead. Now New Labour is attacking the Tories' plans to pay people half the cost of an operation if they go private.
Expect gap between Labour and the Tories to narrow again.
If the Tories start talking about their plans for school vouchers - so that parents can send their children to private schools - they would do better still.
Taxes - Lib Dems The Biggest Fibbers of All
The election is clouded by a widespread misunderstanding of how tax works. The Lib Dems are probably the worst offenders. The 'honest' Lib Dems claim they can fund their spending plans by putting the top rate of income tax up to 50%. Putting up the top rate of tax will not raise a single penny more in revenue for the Government. Of course Stealth Socialists like the Lib Dems don't like this truth. We can be sure that 50% income tax plus 11% National Insurance is above the point that will yield more money for the national coffers. It's been proven time and again, and the Lib Dems know this, but they won't be in power, so they won't have to eat their words. But by fuelling this misconception, they help New Labour imply that their stealth taxes will help pay for the NHS. In fact, revenues flowing into the coffers of the Treasury have been much lower than Gordon Brown predicted. Why? He put up taxes in 2002 (having promised not to in the 2001 election). The economy then grew more slowly than he predicted. Only he was surprised. (see The Economist ('Did I Get Away with It?') The hated Mrs. T cut tax and raised more revenue, so smashing Socialist delusions. So did Reagan. And if those examples are too right wing for you, Kennedy did the same, as did the Socialist Government of the Netherlands. And Denmark. And Ireland. There are many other examples. See the Adam Smith Institute's article, Soak the rich: Cut taxes ! Ibn Khaldun, a 14th century Muslim philosopher, wrote in his work The Muqaddimah: "It should be known that at the beginning of the dynasty, taxation yields a large revenue from small assessments. At the end of the dynasty, taxation yields a small revenue from large assessments." Maynard Keynes compared putting up taxes to a shoemaker, who finding he isn't selling enough shoes, puts up his prices. In other words, the idea is a load of old Cobblers. The Laffer Curve: Past, Present and Future by Arthur Laffer.
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