George Osborne - Britain's Most Dangerous Chancellor!

George Osborne is the most dangerous chancellor Britain has ever had. He tells us the economy is on the mend, but on the mend from what? On the mend from his austerity policy which he deliberately inflicted on the economy slamming it into reverse at a time when it was already gently recovering from the worse global financial crisis for over 80 years?

Osborne chose to take this country down a blind alley in 2010, telling people if we didn't go where he wanted to lead us we would end up like "basket case Greece"! The only basket cases here was George Osborne and David Cameron - liars too! Thanks to Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, who managed to retain the country's triple A credit status throughout the financial crisis, the UK was in an exceptionally strong position to borrow cheaply. The average maturity of the UK's debt  was 14 years not 14 weeks, so Osborne's cynical lies about the comparison of the UK to Greece were risible and politically motivated. The UK was never anywhere near Greece, it was like comparing olives to a stone!

Osborne knew what he was doing, and he cynically exploited peoples fears at that time for his own political aims. Trying to fool people into thinking that this country's fiscal position was out of control by inferring that the previous Labour government had borrowed too much and overspent was not only deceitful, it was dangerous and purely political spin, untruths deliberately out out by Osborne's mates in the right wing press. In fact the national debt was lower in 2008 before the crisis hit than when Labour took office and the economy over from the Tories in 1997 and when Osborne took over the economy in 2010, borrowing was actually falling.

He took a reckless gamble with our economy and despite what he says now about a  moving from 'recession into recovery', he lost that gamble and he is now furiously trying to cover his tracks. The US who took the baton from Gordon Brown and continued with Brown's plan, has a strong recovery in place, although they know that they will face some tough decisions in the future they will be better placed to withstand the shock.

The UK is in a dire position, because Osborne took the wrongs decisions and despite this so-called "recovery" that this dangerous chancellor say is in place, the UK is in such a weak position that the slightest headwind will derail us! The only reason that exports and manufacturing has picked up slightly is that the Eurozone has settled a little and Europe (who also took the wrong road) is slightly recovered. It only needs another slight judder in the world and in Europe before we find ourselves back to square one and because of George Osborne's dangerous meddling in the housing market and his foot on the pump helping to over inflate the credit bubble, the true number of unemployed, high inflation and because of Osborne losing us our triple A credit rating, the country is teetering on the brink of another financial recession.

It all comes down to supply and demand and the brutal truth is that demand for British goods worldwide and within Europe despite a tiny blip is nowhere near enough and even that is in danger in another slight downturn. Despite what China tells the rest of the world, they cannot sell to us if no one is buying and the only reason they say their economy continues to grow is because they make cheap goods to export (we cannot complete) and even then China has massive Chinese ghost towns, newly built shopping malls and apartments that no one rents, yet still the building is continuing, and still China's gargantuan credit bubble is inflating and it is not if it goes pop, it's when - what then? India's economy is already slowing as attracting new investment will be tougher as the US prepares to rein in its stimulus. if the US slows slightly and India the great consumer continues to slow, this is going to affect the British economy. George Osborne knows this, so why is he still insisting on dangerously meddling with our housing market and allowing the credit bubble to over inflate again?

What happens if the UK starts bombing Syria and completely destabilises the Middle East disrupting fuel supplies and causing problems with Russia and China? We depend on trading with China to export many of our high end goods, we buy a lot of our gas from Russia (thanks to Thatcher). This country is in danger from this reckless politically motivated Tory chancellor.

For all those people who believe the hype that we have some kind of sudden economic revival and recovery underway, ask yourselves this one question; if Osborne was not now dangerously meddling with the housing market, underwriting deposits and mortgages for people who cannot afford them, and for buy-to-let landlords and blatantly using taxpayers money to do it, where would the economy be this very day? Would the minor upturn in manufacturing and the construction industry have produced the small 0.7% upward movement of GDP? It  is a sobering thought because of course the answer to this is they wouldn't, in reality we would have been lucky to get any upward revision at all.
In fact if Osborne had not meddled with the housing market then construction most likely would not have moved. George Osborne's dodgy economic recovery is based on the service sector and the housing market but can this country and our rising population really be sustained on low paid service sector jobs alone and a rapidly over inflating housing bubble? Short answer to that is of course - no! It is simply unsustainable! The reality is that our growth is still a full 2% LESS than where it was in 2010 when Labour handed growth of 2.7% over to George Osborne. The harsh reality is that Osborne;s austerity measures strangled our growth and put the country back into recession, we would have had a treble dip, if it were not for Labour winning and organising the Olympic Games. (One again Labour save the government, even though they are no longer in office!)

Since when has the housing market rising at its fastest rate for SEVEN years been considered a good thing especially in an economy that needs to re-balance its house prices and bring them down to affordable levels? Rising house prices is seriously bad news. Each time house prices rise homes are being put further and further out of the reach of first time buyers and the whole housing market's success depends upon first time buyers, so if the the first rung on the housing ladder is broke, how can we continue? By taking out a government underwritten loan for a deposit under the Help to Buy and Funding for Lending schemes and trying to step over the first rung?

The majority of mortgages are now being granted to buy-to-let investors! They were granted their highest number of loans since 2008 in the second quarter of this year as lower rates driven by cheap money from Osborne's Funding for Lending scheme were snapped up by landlords.
By the end of June, buy-to-let mortgages accounted for 13.3% of total lending in the UK, this was up from 13.1% in the preceding quarter and 12.9% a year earlier and it means that currently more than one in eight mortgages granted is now for buy-to-let!

It compares to just 9.4 per cent in the second quarter of 2007, fewer than one in ten, immediately prior to the credit crunch and start of the financial crisis.

Historic CML data shows the startling rise in the size of the buy-to-let sector during the credit boom. In 1999 there were just 73,200 buy-to-let mortgages outstanding, accounting for a tiny 0.7 per cent of total home loans. 

The sector has grown in every year since and last year there were 1,445,300 buy-to-let loans outstanding, accounting for 12.8 per cent of  total mortgages.

What happens when the Bank of England puts up interest rates and buy-to-let landlord who has several properties, how will they find the considerable extra income to pay for more expensive mortgages? Put the rents up? How will tenants who are already struggling pay increased rents? The government are now capping housing benefit for the low waged as well as those that exist on benefits, many are on part-time work the majority have no real way of increasing their incomes so this will almost certainly lead to mass homelessness as landlords evict tenants who cannot pay. Landlords could even default  have their properties repossessed. The problems being made and stored up for the future here are as immense as they are frightening.

Figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders showed 40,000 buy-to-let mortgages worth £5.1 billion were issued between April and July - the highest number, and value of loans since the third quarter of 2008.

Why should the taxpayer, the squeezed middle, the disabled, the unemployed and those unfortunate enough to be forced to live on benefits see their standard of living deliberately driven down by this government as well as be forced to fund private sector landlords business opportunities?  People are not only being forced to subsidise private landlords businesses through their taxes, stealth taxes and cuts to benefits like child tax credits etc, but those that are forced to rent their home from these private landlords are paying through nose to rent back a property they are already indirectly being forced to subsidise. It is absolute madness! Further, how long can this insanity last before the whole situation implodes?

Just as Margaret Thatcher created  the mass housing shortage we see today which is underpinning the huge problems we have in our economy by selling off council houses under her "Right to Buy" scheme, so George Osborne is creating catastrophic problems for the future with his own insane housing schemes.

Mark Carney at the Bank of England has tried to steady the market by saying they will not raise interest rates until unemployment has fallen to 7% and below, but it has left itself leeway to raise rates if inflation rises. It's precariously balanced to say the very least. The annual rate of inflation fell marginally from 2.9% to 2.8% in June to July, but the only reason it fell was because of cheap airfares and summer recreation, this offset the rise in fuel and diesel. How many real people benefited from cheap airfares? Many couldn't even afford take one holiday this year (unlike the PM who took four!) and dearer fuel would have made this even harder and squeezed living standards still further! Inflation still remains well above the 2% target rate! While inflation remains this high people's living standards will continue to be squeezed. Inflation actually rose the month before, what happens if it rises again? How long will it be before the Governor of the BoE is forced to raise interest rates?

Mr Carney has said that unemployment must fall to 7% before he will raise interest rates, but anyone with half a brain cell knows that the government are fiddling the unemployment figures and the real number of unemployed is over 4 million. Even by the government's fiddled standards unemployment is still higher now than it was in May 2010!

The government are falsifying the figures and bringing them artificially low by over use of zero hour contracts; government workfare schemes; low paid part-time work, self employed and public sector workers being reclassified as private sector workers. At the current rate in which this government are fiddling the unemployment stats Carney's figure if 7% will son be reached, much faster than most envisage too! So if Carney raises interest rates on the back of fiddled statistics this is going to have a devastating effect in the British economy! How will the true number of people unemployed live? What will happen to the British economy then?

If we carry on like this we are heading for a catastrophic crash and all because George Osborne is trying to buck the housing market by over inflating the housing bubble and the credit bubble in the hope that people will overlook his abysmal mismanagement of the economy and vote for them again. In effect what Osborne is doing is using public money to buy votes for the Tory party.

Where is this country heading under this Conservative-led coalition? As far as I can see there isn't even a medium term plan let alone a long term plan. All I see under this supposed economic recovery is more problems being created and older problems being swept under the carpet.
Nowhere in his plans does the Tory chancellor have anything new, all he has done is dust down Margaret Thatcher's failed monetarist policies give them a new name and reimpose them on our already fragile economy and is now helping us tip towards economic Armageddon.

Assuming our young people can get a decent job paying a decent wage (which is highly debatable) where in this government's plans for the future generations of this country are the policies that will enable our grandchildren to be able to buy their own houses? If they cannot do this, where is the provisions being laid right now that will ensure they stand a chance of living in decent accommodation and paying a decent fair rent? Where is the thousands of social housing homes being built that this country desperately needs? Where are the plans for the future of this country?

We know now, in fact we have known for some time that we just cannot carry on with the same MO, the same capitalist system, the same people running the same banks, now taking the same huge bonuses as they were before the crash, yet this government and particularly Osborne and Cameron have no answers. They are too afraid of upsetting their party funders the bankers, shadow bankers and big business to do the things that need to be done.

Ed Miliband is the only party leader who has the gumption to stand up and point out to where we went wrong and where we are going wrong again, to point to the bankers and big business to tell them we have to change as a country. He is the only one who seems to understand, if we do not change now, then we are heading for the worst kind of disaster yet again.

Only this time our young will face a lifetime of austerity, but with no state education and no NHS and a private police service and this is thanks to the Tories who are privatising everything and selling everything off, just like Thatcher did and look how much we are now forced to pay for rail fares, gas, electricity and water. How will people manage on poor standards of living and low wages?

Unless we want our children to work in cafes, bars, McDonalds Tescos and pay through the nose for everything in a country where the rich get richer and the poor are getting poorer, we had better listen to Ed Miliband, at least give our future generations a decent chance.

Carrying on with George Osborne as chancellor  fills me with dread, what he is doing to this country is criminally insane!

Who Reports on the Reporters and who is Rowena Mason?

Who is Rowena Mason? She calls herself a journalist and political correspondent, ah well, "self praise is no recommendation" and that's true enough in Rowena's case I suppose.

Ms Mason previously worked for the Telegraph newspaper where below the line comments revealed she wasn't particularly popular, but then the Telegraph has been taken over by 'Ukippers', (whose members are former Tory foot soldiers the prime minister refers to as "swivel eyed loons") so anyone transgressing from the Ukip message (whatever it is today) would be suitably abused.

Ms Mason has now been employed by the Guardian. I suspect that this is because she displays 'Liberal Democrat tendencies' and we all know how the Guardian loves a Liberal Democrat, it's just a pity none of them can define what one actually is!

Since taking up her position with the Guardian, Ms Mason seems to be behaving like a Exocet missile programmed to attack the leader of the Labour party Ed Miliband.  Wherever Ed goes Rowena goes! At first it was puzzling,  but now it just alternates between being infantile and vindictive, or vindictively infantile (children can be like that sometimes). Still I suppose her limpet like quality came in useful when she copped a load of the egg meant for Ed Miliband which was hurled by the 'cerebrally' challenged egg thrower Dean Porter at the East Street market in Walworth last week! The story for Rowena here (which she missed) was to get to Porter and ask him if he had considered that blindly hurling eggs with force into a crowd could have struck a baby or child causing them serious injury? Eggs when thrown with force can cut and bruise and they hurt and if by some freak accident they had stuck a child on the head or between the eyes they could have fatally injured that child. But apparently Rowena's mission was as blind as Porter's "get Ed" at all costs, at least Dean Porter had stupidity on his side, what excuse did Rowena Mason have?

I wonder did the Guardian employ Rowena Mason as some sort of weird blue Liberal Democrat concubine or did she come as the complete package with her own "get Ed" agenda after being ousted by the Telegraph as they cut their editorial staff? Does Rowena feel she has something to prove in what she views as a "mans world" and has tried to make herself look all "Jeremy Paxman"and  has decided that she must become the female equivalent to the ignoramus Nick [gob almighty] Ferrari?

It's a puzzle, why would someone who obviously wants to be taken seriously as a hard hitting journalist and political correspondent (nothing wrong with that if that is what she wants), risk harming their own career by carrying out a series of unwarranted personal attacks in a bizarre vendetta in order to try and end someone else's career? Surely Ms Mason is savvy enough to realise that there is a difference between hard hitting journalism and just plain petty juvenile behaviour which is not even backed up by the barest of facts?  Even more bizarre is the question; 'why is the Guardian a once well respected newspaper, which has received several accolades for serious investigative journalism allowing this kind of Rowena written trash to fill their pages'? A cursory look below the line in many of Rowena's vendettas articles and  some of the many other "Ed Miliband bashing articles" that the Guardian have been recently running, would show that this kind of petty vindictive and wholly unnecessary character assassination of Ed Miliband is beginning to seriously harm the Guardian's reputation as well as "hack-off" loyal "Guardianistas"and regular online users. With the Guardian copy sales now falling faster than a stone is this a "luxury" they can afford? Or are is the Guardian out to try attract Sun readers who refuse to pay to view the Sun online since it has gone behind a pay-wall? Or maybe it's a combination of things?

During the 2010 general election campaign the Guardian infamously came out for the Liberal Democrats, much to the disquiet of many of its regular readers, this caused many readers to stop buying the paper. Pretty soon the shine slipped from Nick Clegg and he was quickly exposed as being liar-politician all along. Under fire from its less than impressed readership, instead of quietly admitting they got it wrong in supporting the Lib Dems and tailing their support off gently, the Guardian started publishing several online articles a day all about how "wonderful" Nick Clegg and the Liberals were and how well they were doing, when all sane people could clearly see they were in the government to make the Tory numbers up. As they persisted with their Nick Clegg 'love-ins' so the criticism of them increased and has it would seem, continued to increase with every Clegg article ever since. It appears from below the line comments that most Guardian readers seem to vehemently object to the narrative their newspaper is trying to force feed them, and instead of taking the hint the Guardian has stubbornly intensified its insistence on trying to rehabilitate Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats with the public. They were told repeatedly it wouldn't work and it hasn't worked, in fact, all the Guardian seems to have done is manage to alienate still more its readers! Did the Guardian editorial suddenly realise their "Clegg agenda" wasn't working and decided to replace it with their "bash Ed Miliband" campaign? Try and attract back to the Liberal Democrat fold all the voters that have deserted them for Labour, hopefully damaging Labour's poll lead in the process? Bungling Guardian editorial staff must feel pretty desperate to save face by going to such extreme lengths to try and ensure that there is another Conservative - Liberal Democrat coalition after the 2015 general election! However, the Guardian hasn't got enough circulation to do this on its own so is it in cahoots with the Tory supporting right wing press who would rather see another Tory-led coalition than another Labour government? I'm not given to conspiracy theories, but this one seems to be gaining ground and doesn't appear to be too far beyond the realms of impossibility either!

What has been happening to Ed Miliband in the press lately and especially in the Guardian, is an absolute disgrace to good investigative journalism, in fact personally I wouldn't call it journalism because it isn't, it's plainly bullying. I wrote a blog about the bullying of Gordon Brown a few weeks back and mentioned then that I thought the same may be happening to Ed Miliband and now I am sure it is.

I have no doubt Ed Miliband doesn't need me to fight his corner for him, he seems more than capable of standing up to these people and fighting for himself and has himself has proved he can tough this out, it must drive them nuts when he totally blanks them,  he is obviously a lot stronger than these mealy mouthed spiteful journalists have given him credit for. I would say that they'll continue to underestimate Ed Miliband at their peril, but I am not so sure they are underestimating him, maybe after throwing everything at him including 'eggs' and the kitchen sink and still they haven't managed to knock him down and ruin Labour's poll lead, that they finally have the measure of Ed Miliband and have realised that  allowing him to get in front of real people, those people really like him, they take to him and that is the real danger and a threat! This is probably why "Cowardly Cameron" refuses to reveal if the live leadership debates during the next general election campaign will take place (he is trying to get out of them), all this ridiculing of Miliband is because they fear him and the Guardian who want another God forsaken hideous Tory-led coalition fear an "I agree with Ed" moment, which with Labour's poll lead would put Ed comfortably in Downing Street. However, Ed Miliband would do well to remember that the Tories and their friends in big business, the banks and right wing press often take the facts which they then twist and distort out of all recognition and this they use to induce fear in people in order to push through their own agendas. We have seen it clearly with the Tories blaming Labour for the Global recession and banking collapse as an excuse to push through their right wing ideology which will in the end suit bankers and business.
Obviously Ed Miliband doesn't do this and prefers the truth and honesty, but as the last few weeks have shown, this will not stop his enemies from lying about him and deliberately misleading people for their own agenda, political or otherwise!
I suspect that it is also part to do with the Leveson recommendations, they fear if Ed Miliband gets to be the next PM, he will do what the majority of the public want and implement them. The Labour party are the only party of real opposition, they are fighting two parties of Government and are now it would seem fighting a supposedly left leaning newspaper.

The Guardian has allowed its message to become confused and muddled, what does the newspaper stand for these days? Is it no longer a paper of the left? Has it lurched to the right like so many of its readers and former readers have accused it of? If it is now a right leaning newspaper supporting the Tories and the orange Tories the Liberal Democrats then it has a duty to its remaining readership to tell them exactly where on the political spectrum it is, so they can make an informed choice.

One thing is for certain though, the Guardian in using their privileged position as a newspaper to try to batter a person into resigning and effectively ending their career by allowing their journalists to abuse their position using lies, smears, innuendo, half truths, petty spite and deliberate misrepresentation, is not only willful distortion, it's dirty shameful politics and dirty shameful embarrassing journalism. What on earth does the Guardian newspaper stand for these days? What is it and who is it actually for?

It seems to me that not only has the Guardian lost its way and lost its integrity as a newspaper, it has also lost its soul. 
(That's what you get for allowing yourself to become compromised by the blue and orange Tories)

Now the Government and the press points at You & YOUR family!

Many of us who have tracked this Tory led Coalition government from the beginning spotted immediately the emergence of the old  "divide and rule" tactic. Pretty soon David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg, Iain Duncan-Smith, Chris Grayling, Danny Alexander were all taking to the airways and the press playing the division game. They used stereotypical terms such as: "feckless, idle, shirkers, skivers, malingerers" etc to describe the unemployed and those unfortunate enough to be in receipt of benefits. Pretty soon banner headlines similar to "Unemployed Man Buys Flat-Screen TV" and "Immigrant in receipt of £100,000 in benefits" appeared in right wing newspapers like the Sun, Daily Mail, Express etc, which were subtly placed to help perpetuate the myth that all unemployed are somehow to blame for being unemployed and all immigrants were illegal and scroungers and shouldn't be here.

We have all read these headlines, have all heard them repeated on radio programmes like BBC Radio5Live and Radio 4 and seen them on TV, but the majority turned a blind eye or agreed with the government and did think the unemployed are all feckless, lazy scroungers. It was all too easy for the government aided and abetted by their right wing friends in the media to demonise people and blame them for the predicament the found themselves in. it was also helped through by the Liberal Democrat party (the biggest turncoats in the political history of this country). Some of us tried to warn people that this government viewed us ordinary folk as useful only at election times and that they were deliberately pandering to people's fears and base instincts in order to divide and rule their opposition to make it easier to implement their right wing ideology. We said that pretty soon this government would come for 'you' and your family, and when they did we hoped there would still be enough people around to care and with enough fight left in them to help try and stop what this Tory government is doing to our society. That day is looming ever closer!


Today Nick Hurd, the Conservative MP for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, who has led a life of privilege and who attended, public school at Eton and Oxford university decided to blame all unemployed 16 - 24 year olds for being unemployed, stating that they "lacked grit and determination, social skills and discipline" and this is why they can't get a job. This is the man who is a 4th generation Conservative MP following his father, grandfather and great grandfather to be elected to the House of Commons. He is the eldest son of Conservative Life Peer, Douglas, Lord Hurd a former Conservative cabinet minister.

Nick Hurd is the man who apart from representing a British bank in Brazil once has spent his entire adult working life cocooned in the safety of the Conservative party. I wonder how many jobs he applied for and not get? Obviously parachuted into a safe Tory seat and his working life mapped out for as long as he wishes. His one business venture was when he set up the Small Business Network to advise the Conservative party on business policy! Hurd was also a member of the Bullingdon Club that prime minister David Cameron, Chancellor George Osborne and London Mayor Boris Johnson also once belonged to. This is the notorious club that trashes restaurants (where your son or daughter may hope to work) and burns £50 notes in front of homeless people as a stung to be admitted to their club! This is the club that the man who calls himself the prime minister and his friend Boris Johnson the London Mayor and would be PM belonged to, so out of touch are they! Chancellor George Osborne and Boris brother Jo Johnson also belonged to the Bullingdon club, where money is no object and they could smash up as many places of work as they could and mummy and daddy will write a cheque for the damage and sod anyone they actually put out of work while the place was closed down being repaired!


According to Nick Hurd, youth unemployment  has nothing to do with the government's failing policies and fiddling of the unemployment statistics and the fact that the number of youngsters not employed or in education or training (neets) has risen sharply to 1.09 million under this government's watch, no, it's all these youngsters fault (and that is your family member they are now aiming their insults at by the way). So next time you see nasty banner headlines screaming something at you from the newsstands, don't be surprised if its the Mail or Sun on their high horses condemning your child/relative, inferring they are nothing but idle feckless scroungers too lazy to get a job, even if you know differently, even if you know it is not the truth, even if you know it is deeply unfair, it won't matter because the damage will be done by this one nasty disingenuous stereotypical banner headline and suddenly it will be your turn to have the finger pointed at your relatives and it will be their turn to be on the end of nasty unpleasant comments from members of the public who just read the headlines and think everyone is the same and think that this qualifies them to pass judgement on your son or daughter or grandchild etc!

Look at the way the Daily Mail write this:

And at a time when there are 529,000 job vacancies – up 56,000 in a year – it is estimated that some 640,000 Neets have never worked at all.

Look at the way the Mail has presented the figures, there are supposedly 529,000 job vacancies and the Mail is suggesting that 640,000 neets are to blame for never [bothering] having a job at all. However there are 1,09 MILLION youngsters chasing 529,000 job vacancies. Of course all the vacancies will not be appropriate, they will be regional, they will be too far from some to travel and be economically viable and some will be in the next county or half way across the country, the majority will be calling for experience which these applicants simply do not have because they can't get a job in the first place. But nevertheless  the Mail are subliminally suggesting that its the youngsters who are at fault because they are not applying for jobs! It is typical example of spurious disingenuous reporting. Nick Hurd could not have picked a worse time to make his comments, as tomorrow thousands of youngsters who have worked and studied hard for their GCSEs get their exam results, they and their parents must be seriously worried what the future holds for them and could well do without these despicable comments from this out of touch Tory government minister.

Of course it's unfair, it is seriously unfair, but do remember only 'last week' you were being encouraged by the Tory government, and the right wing press to condemn and to believe that all  unemployed northern men bought a flat screen TVs with their benefit cheques and smoke and drank all day instead of going out getting a job and doing a hard days graft *like you*.
Remember the comment George Osborne made about peoples blinds being closed?

George Osborne
What the hell does he know about working life?

"it's a delusion to think that taxes will solve the problem. It is unfair that people listening to this programme going out to work see the neighbour next door with the blinds down because they are on benefits".

 That was then, this is now and this Tory government is now pointing their collective fingers at your child and casting aspersions on the integrity of your son/daughter/grandson/granddaughter etc!  Maybe 'yesterday', it was the turn of  immigrants to be singled out and plastered all over the press and unfairly accused of taking all our houses and jobs and not paying rent and using our NHS without paying anything in. It's all completely untrue, these papers find one or two examples and then tar everyone with the same brush, it doesn't matter to these spurious journalists and their editors that the vast majority of immigrants work bloody hard, pay tax, NI and contribute to the British economy, just as long as they can point the finger at them and get away with it, just as they are now pointing the finger at your son or daughter. Who will it be on the receiving end of it tomorrow? Perhaps you personally? Maybe you'll lose your job next week and become unemployed? Maybe you or your wife or your husband or mother or father will fall ill or have an accident and become sick or disabled and the papers encouraged by this government will plaster all kinds of scurrilous nonsense about the sick and disabled all over the front pages and  make out that all sick and disabled people are malingerers who could work if they wanted to?  The nastiness and unpleasantness of divide and rule has definitely begun, but where will it all end?

Blaming people this government have made homeless for becoming homeless? Blaming unfortunate situations on the people caught in the middle of it all, while allowing the bankers, the shadow bankers and corporations to get away with the problems they created? Incidentally, many of these City bankers and corporations donate to the Conservative party.

We are all witnessing full-scale demonising, undermining and rubbishing the welfare state making it out to be something terrible, when all the while it is one of things that made this country one of the best in the world. Our welfare state and the NHS defined us as a nation , it said, look we are a rich country and we look after our people from cradle to the grave. This is how civilised responsible country behaves towards all of its citizens, rich and poor, sick and well, indigenous or settlers. And we are a rich country and don't let this lying cheating corrupt Tory government tell you differently, despite Osborne losing us a ranking and sliding from 6th richest country in the world to 7th, we remain rich and we should be looking after our people, not bullying them, intimidating them and forcing them to live in fear of their own government and making them feel shamed because despite trying everything, they cannot get a job.

I used to be proud to be British, now I look around me and I worry what kind of society my grandchildren are growing up in, a society that doesn't care, one that forces people to live on a pittance, drives down wages in order to please multi millionaire businessmen and corporations causing poverty and extreme hardship and ever increasing numbers of people relying on food banks? One that blames the poor and ordinary for being poor and ordinary? This country is not going forward it is regressing to a time of poverty and that is nothing to feel proud of.

Now that finger of Tory divide and rule is pointing at you - is this what you really want?

Who Would You Rather Lead The Country- Honest Ed or Dodgy Dave?

An ICM poll out for the Daily Mirror today is a really amazing piece of work, not only for its bizarre set of results but also for its timing!

After two and half years of being constantly undermined and personally attacked, followed by the last few weeks of being intensely battered and negatively spun against and blamed for just about everything imaginable by the Tory press, the Tory broadcast media, and their newest recruit to this bastion of  bullying right wing fiefdom, 'the Guardian' (see: The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Guardian); the Daily Mirror in their infinitive wisdom decided to pick this precise moment in time to commission an ICM poll to gauge how popular the Labour leader Ed Miliband is?!!! I know it's like wearing hobnail boots and purposefully stamping the hell out of a person's bare foot then asking them if it hurt, and by the way, do you like me? I mean what answers did they expect?

Apparently horrific images being beamed around the world of  people being forced to jump from their burning homes when the country was under siege from arsonists, rioters, looters and murderers in the summer riots of 2011 and the prime minister, David Cameron and the entire Tory led coalition cabinet were out of the country on holiday refusing to return home (because the PM had a Blackberry) pale into complete insignificance against the leader of the opposition, Ed Miliband's utterly "irresponsible" attitude in taking a summer holiday in the parliamentary summer recess with his young family. I mean the nerve of Ed Miliband, who on earth does he think he is? How dare he be unavailable to comment on the PM's snide attention seeking publicity drive and any other nonsense dreamed up by the right wing press in "silly season"? And surely everyone realises that the PM having a tennis coach flown out to his luxury Tuscan villa to help with his game and his photo opportunity with a Tuscan waitress (who he previously refused to tip) were far more important than returning to his country in serious trouble and where the police had lost control?

It must be silly season and the Mirror has bugger all else to publish as it afforded an entire page to the results of the poll and the Tory biased Sky News has been running this the whole day, must be of vital importance because Sky placed the ICM poll on Ed Miliband above the plight of unfortunate Egyptians being murdered by their own interim government.

1)..Apparently only 45% of Labour voters are happy with Ed Miliband against 31% who aren't and 24% who don't know. I know maths is not my strong point, but doesn't this mean that the majority of Labour voters *are* satisfied with Ed? But if the Mirror and Sky News ran with "the majority of Labour voters satisfied with Ed Miliband" it wouldn't make such a good headline would it?

2)..Should Ed Miliband lead the Labour party into the next election? 46% Labour voters said yes and 40% of NON Labour voters said No ... Er another positive, move along nothing to see here!

3)..Then they ask if Ed should lead the party and make much out of only 28% Labour voters said yes and that only 16% ordinary voters said yes. What Sky doesn't do is put the question in context, as the question was a tick box where seven other Labour names appeared and still Ed came out on top....again move along nothing to see here.

4)..Should Ed get more help from his colleagues? 72% Labour voters said yes, so did 46% of ordinary voters ... again nothing surprising.

5)..Which of the three main party leaders do you trust? a) On the economy, b) to make tough decisions, on c) foreign affairs, Cameron came out on top, but Miliband was not that far behind so it was hardly a ringing endorsement, in fact don't know was the biggest winner by far. This actually is very bad news for Cameron NOT Miliband, as it is Cameron that is PM and Cameron who is constantly in the public eye taking these decisions etc, it is notoriously difficult for any opposition leader to break positive in these kinds of questions and they are not the one taking the decisions. Why would the public look to Ed Miliband to make these decisions? This kind of polling is a nonsense.
In d; e and f of the same question (5) comes even more bad news for David Cameron. d).To help society's poorest; e).to be honest with voters; f).to understand what life is like for ordinary people, Cameron 11%; 14% and 11% against Miliband's ratings of 35%; 22% and 26%  respectively. So on the question of being in touch with ordinary people, being honest and having compassion ed Miliband beats Cameron hands down.
But Sky News wouldn't tell you that!

Similarly:

6)...Which of the parties do you think is most likely to act in the *WHOLE* country's interests? Labour 24% Tories 19% Lib Dems 8%. AGAIN on one of the most important questions in the entire poll, Labour and Ed Miliband win, but Sky News doesn't mention it I wonder why?

7)..Which of the main political parties do you think has the clearest set of policies? Con..25% Labour 15% Lib Dem (the party in power don't forget) 8% Again why would anyone think the party of opposition should have clear policies, they are not the government, they are not even an alternative government at this point, they do not need to have policies, this only happens with opposition parties closer to a general election!

8)..Which of the parties is most united? Labour 21% and Con..21% Lib Dem 7% Score is level and hardly surprising after the last few weeks of constant 'Ed Bashing' and the has-beens and no-hopers and Blairites nitpicking and still they failed to knock Ed Miliband down!

9)..If your car broke down who would you like to come to your aid? Miliband 20% Cameron 18% Clegg 13%..... Again Miliband wins!

10)..Which leader would you most like to have a drink with? Cameron 23% Miliband 21% Clegg 14% (If you do have a drink with David Cameron make sure you remind him to take his daughter home with him and not accidentally leave her down the pub!)

So on closer inspection and after years of "Ed bashing" which has greatly intensified this past few weeks, it comes down to this, the public do not really see Ed Miliband in anymore negatively than they would any leader of the opposition at this point in the parliament, in fact this poll holds out far positives for Miliband than it does the incumbent Cameron and gloomily for Clegg it shows him as an "also ran". Ed Miliband scores positively on all the questions that really matter!

What it really boils down to is this one question:

Who would you rather have running the country a decent honest person with integrity as well as intellect and who refuses to lie to voters for political gain, or a lying political spiv PR man like David Cameron?

After all the negative spinning, the lies and the constant carping against Ed Miliband and Labour the concerted right wing dirty tricks campaign has still not managed to fatally wound Ed Miliband, he is a lot tougher than people give him credit for and Mr Miliband still has his party ahead in the polls:

YouGov today has Labour 7 points ahead 

The latest ComRes has Labour 11 points ahead.

Ipsos Mori has Labour 10 points ahead.

Anyone who can stand up to the constant barrage of negative spinning, be persistently lied abut and called infantile names etc and be egged by an idiot in a market when out meeting real people and listening to real concerns and worries of real people (whereby Cameron and Clegg only go to pre arranged destinies and only answer pre scripted questions they have been given the answers to) and still command a Labour lead, is tough and knows what he's doing. Ed Miliband is being constantly undermined and underestimated.

Of course the only poll that matters is a general election and from the look of the ICM poll results, I bet Ed Miliband is secretly praying Cameron will bring it on early!

I wonder if the polling company ask people to tick in order of importance; honesty, integrity, compassion and the asked who has all those qualities out of Miliband, Cameron and Clegg what the answer be?

Also when is someone going to press David Cameron for an answer about the live leadership debates in the next general election? George Osborne is saying no, there are not going to be any, David Cameron is saying if they go ahead then they will be held weeks if not months ahead of the general election.

Why isn't the press pinning the Cowardly Cameron badge on the prime minister?

The debates are supposed to help people choose between the leaders, what use are they months ahead of the election?

Lunatics Have Taken Over The Guardian!

In the last couple of weeks when the Guardian newspaper has strangely allowed itself to become obsessed with bashing Ed Miliband and Labour, sometimes publishing several different online "EB" stories per day, (quite often variations of the exact same story) they took their eye off of ball. So caught up in their bizarre Ed Miliband bashing obsession were they, that they missed a true political hot potato! One of those kind of stories that stick in the voters minds as well as their craws.

Obviously the Guardian thought it more important to try and break down Labour's poll lead by using a string of unsubstantiated fatuous stories from a never ending stream of has beens and never heard ofs in order that the Liberal Democrats could help form another coalition government with the Tories after the next general election than be bothered publishing proper news stories. Thus far they haven't managed to raise the Liberal Democrats polling by one iota, all they have succeeded in doing is making this once great newspaper look infantile and petty no doubt managing to lose a few more readers in the process. Still never mind, judging by the quality of below the line comments it looks as if they may have succeeded in picking up a few former Sun readers who find themselves at a loose end since their favourite newspaper went behind a paywall!

Through clenched teeth I have to say that the Daily Mail breaking the story about the former midwife Joan Edward's bequest being misappropriated by the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrat party was tip top investigative journalism, but credit where it's due I suppose. If the Guardian, once noted for its own excellent investigative journalism, had not taken its collective journalistic eye off of the ball, they themselves may have spotted that Miss Edward's will contained no mention of "political parties" and clearly stated that the Government of the day should be the beneficiary of her estate to dispose of as they see fit. Which clearly did not mean these two spiv party leaders trousering her hard earned money to spend in their election campaigns.

In one of the very few articles the Guardian wrote covering this story, instead of pointing out that the Tories hived of £420,000, the lion's share of the £520,000 bequeathment while the Liberal Democrats received £100,000, they decided instead to try and divert attention away from that by mentioning that the Labour party receives  payments from the unions, like this is news, and that trousering an elderly person's half a million estate is not! They could have also reported that Miss Edward's left her estate to the "Government of the day" in 2001, when there was still a Labour government and that given what the Tories and Liberal Democrats have done to the NHS since coming to power in 2010, if she was making her will now it may have a completely different outcome! Instead  though  the Guardian editorial team are behaving like a gang of pathetic bullies who have even belatedly missed pointing out the hideous irony of these two greedy leaders in pocketing a former midwife's money!

What made the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrat party think even for one nanosecond that a former nurse/midwife who spent her life working in the NHS would want the two creators of its impending fragmentation and privatisation which are leading to its eventual demise to use her money to lie to people about the NHS in their future election campaigns?

The Guardian could have also pointed out that Cameron and Clegg's denials about knowing about this do not ring true, meetings must have taken place about this money because a way and an agreement in which to share it out among the two parties was reached! I find it totally unbelievable that the two sets of legal teams which work for the Tories and Lib Dems, both "conveniently" missed that wording, not only that, the solicitor of Miss Edwards also missed that wording? Poppycock, of course they didn't. I would hazard a guess that the three legal teams did in fact bring this to the attention of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats and they decided to take the money anyway, which leads me to ask the question, who gave the go ahead for it to be accepted?

They say that Ed Miliband has a ruthless streak, perhaps it's time for him to show it and start doing some reverse "Ed bashing", at every chance he gets, he should simply ask:

Who agreed how the money was to be shared? When did the leaders become aware of the bequest? Were they consulted about how “they saw fit” to spend the money? What led them to the decision that their parties' own coffers were a fit use of the half million?

He will keep reminding people of this for the next two years. Every question on party funding should be answered with “Joan Edwards”. Every critique of the Government's priorities should have “Joan Edwards” as an addendum. It is the neatest, most direct and understandable reminder of the fact that the Coalition is hopelessly out of touch, ruthlessly self-interested and shamelessly immoral. Quote By   Alex Andreou - New Statesman

Tory Led Coalition Helps Foreign Companies to Rip Us Off!

If Thames Water get their way and Ofwat agree as from 2014 millions of households will have an £29 surcharge added to their water bills. This will be on top of  any planned increases on water bills. A spokesman for Australia's Macquarie Group the company which owns Thames Water said:

 "We have had a tough time financially as a company because of increased costs"

Haven't most people had a hard time financially these past three years, why should we be forced to bail them out when they have made huge profits already at our expense?

The company give a number of reasons why they want this extra money from their customers and the company quotes the biggest reason is because they want £273 million extra to acquire land for the construction of the Thames Tideway Tunnel, (which is a major new sewer development) and also:

1. They want to purchase the land now before the cost of land in London rises still further.
2. The cost of operating private sewers transferred to Thames water by the Government in 2011.
3. To subsidise the company for other customers who fail to pay their water bills.

Water privatisation was undertaken by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government in 1989, when she partly privatised the ten previously publicly owned Regional Water Authorities (RWAs) in England and Wales through the sales of publicly owned assets to foreign investors.

When the Australian owned Macquarie Group purchased Thames Water, it didn't just come up with a plan overnight to build the new Thames Tideway Tunnel, this would have been in the original purchase agreement and have been many years in the planning, so they should have costed for it, not suddenly force the consumer to pay  for their profit making ventures because the price of property and land in London has risen! 

It beggars belief that the company are applying for this £29 surcharge when Thames Water revenues in the last financial year rose to £1.8bn! Putting it in context still further, the Tory chancellor George Osborne at the Treasury has allowed Thames Water to avoid paying corporation tax! Meanwhile giving permission to Thames Water to increase their bills to consumers by an inflation busting 6.7 per cent!  

This isn't all Osborne has allowed this company to get away with either! 

Thames Water has been allowed to offset loans they took out outside of this country in order to purchase one of Britain's publicly owned companies against tax bills accrued inside this country! So not only does this foreign owned company, the Macquarie Group, pay no corporation tax, they also pay hardly any UK tax! 

On 1st October 2011, water and sewerage companies in England and Wales became responsible for private sewers which were previously the responsibility of property owners. This was meant to be a good thing, but all the company has done is pass on this cost to the consumer. For all their talk about helping the public to keep the cost of utilities down, once again we plainly see that this snidy Tory-led coalition government is firmly on the side of the multinational companies and is helping them while driving down our standard of living.

A breakdown of the £29 surcharge shows that £16 of it is accounted for by increases in bad debt - fuelled, of course, by the economic turndown. So it is not really for their so-called "super-sewer" the vast majority of this £29 is because the company wants all the gain and profit without taking any of the risks, they are passing on the risk to the customer forcing them to underwrite the companies bad debts!

Thames Water has recently paid their shareholders £1.4bn in bonuses and have also raised their customers water bills by £100 per year, this has allowed them to collect an extra £1.4bn - exactly the amount Thames Water have paid out to their shareholders in bonuses!

Water companies literally have people over a waterbutt and unlike gas and electric, customers cannot change their water supplier, so they are hostage to anything these foreign owned companies can get away with charging them and they seem to always get what they want as OfWat is toothless!

In 1988 Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative Government covered up the Camelford water pollution Incident because they feared that prosecution would "render the whole water industry unattractive to the City" and because Thatcher may have been unable to sell off our water industry to foreign investors.

Since Margaret Thatcher privatised and flogged off the country's water supplies, a 2001 study carried out by the Public Services International Research Unit revealed:

• Tariffs increased by 46% in real terms during the first nine years.
• Operating profits have more than doubled (plus 142%) in eight years.
• Investments were reduced
• Public health was been jeopardised through water cut-offs for non-payment (this was made illegal in 1998 by the Labour government along with repayment meters and 'trickle valves'.) 

Margaret Thatcher claimed that privatising water would produce greater efficiency and reduce prices, she was wrong. Thatcher and her Conservative government also claimed that privatising gas and electricity would produce greater efficiency and reduce prices - wrong again!

Conservative PM, John Major privatised the Railways claiming greater efficiency and reduced fares, totally wrong! In fact this Tory -led coalition government are currently allowing a rail fares hike of at least 4.1 per cent and on some lines the price hike could be as much as 9.1 per cent as other costs are factored in. There has not been greater efficiency, trains are packed, people cannot get seats, amid cancellations and delays.

• Food prices have risen by 6% and will rise a further 4%; 
• Rail fares will rise by at least 4.1%; 
• Despite making huge profits, gas and electricity companies prices rose by between 7% and 10.8% in 2012-13 and set to rise again in 2014. 
• Companies are blaming the Government's ne ECO energy efficiency scheme and as usual the privatised companies are passing on the costs to the consumer. So this is an indirect stealth tax imposed on us by the Tory-led government.

Companies like Thames water, Centrica, British Gas, Eon etc are milking the lifeblood out of us, they are draining every last penny from our pockets.

I wonder, does Thames Water also makes use of the government's 'Workfare' placements scheme? If they do this would also give them free labour and considerably reduce their payroll costs, so they win again, because not only are they not paying corporation tax, or UK tax on profits, their payrolls would be subsidised by the British taxpayer as slave labour workfare placements do not receive a wage from the company, they are just forced to work for £52 per week JSA!

Does Thames Water use zero hour contracts and short time contracts?

David Cameron, George Osborne and Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg are stealthily privatising what Thatcher and Major couldn't do and they are aiding and abetting companies like Thames Water to make vast profits off of our backs and pay hardly anything into the British tax system.

Study closely the effects of privatisation on your standard of living and quality of life, because the Conservatives are now privatising the NHS, education and the police service. Ask yourselves, can you really afford  a Tory government?

With Tory privatisation whether it is in the utilities, the NHS, education or the police service, will result in poor quality service at increased costs. Do you really want our NHS to end up in foreign private health companies hands? Companies like this who have already been given NHS contracts by this government and private companies that are not legally bound to show us their accounts, despite being given billions of pounds of NHS contracts?

Foreign companies have already bought up our rail, gas, electricity and water companies and look how we are being forced to pay the price, and now this current crop of Tories aided and abetted by the Liberal Democrats, are selling off the rest of our public services to foreign investors. They have already awarded UnitedHealth Europe contracts to take over your GP surgeries, how long do you think it will be before we are being charged for our healthcare? Already there are mutterings about how we should be charged to see our GPs! These private companies that the the Conservative government are bringing to buy and run our public services are not doing this for altruistic reasons, they are doing it to make a profit out of our NHS, education police service, prison service and probably fire service too etc etc and it is Cameron, Osborne and Clegg who are doing this, just like previous Conservative Governments under Thatcher and Major before them.

We are now almost at the situation where all our utilities and public services  are going to be owned and run by foreign Equity Groups.

This is what happens when we have a PR man for a prime minister running the country, he can talk the talk, but cannot walk the walk, he can flog everything off, but he has absolutely no idea of the consequences or the harm he is doing to this country for future generations and what is more he doesn't care.

The Conservatives promised us that our bills/fares etc would go down under their privatisation, they haven't they rocketed, we are paying more for our gas and electricity and water in this country so France, Germany and Russia etc can all enjoy cheaper bills at our expense!

As Osborne is poised with his foot on the pump and is furiously over inflating the housing and credit bubble, artificially bucking the market with taxpayers money and  using our money for Tory re election purposes, he is priming us all for another "Tory boom and bust" and when the bust comes as we all know it will, how will we sustain ourselves when this government have sold off every last piece of our industry and public services to foreign investors?

The Conservative party is not a proper political party, it is just the political wing of big business, banks and multinational companies, it is the  party of the City establishment. It is NOT for us ordinary folk, it is about making money and milking us for every last penny it can get out of us and giving us absolutely nothing in return. If that means taking benefits away from our poor, sick, disabled and vulnerable to achieve this, then so-be-it! If that means keeping people barely existing on low wages, forcing our unemployed to work full-time for about £65 per week and driving down the living standards of the "squeezed middle" too just to make these huge companies even richer and forcing people to use food banks and pushing children and whole families into poverty having to make a choice between heating their homes or eating, then that's OK too. If the Tories whole ideological agendas' success depends upon driving a wedge between friends and neighbours and turning the public against one another until everyone hates and loathes the very sight of  their neighbours, or even strangers as well as each other, then this is what the Conservatives will do. In fact they are already doing it! They are doing under our very noses, while PR man Dave lies to your face like a snake oil salesman!  This Tory government is turning this country into a cesspit of steaming hatred and resentment of each other. Sending vans into areas with high immigrant population telling them to "go home".  Such hideous situations can only end in tears - ours!

And never forget - the Tory led coalition government could NOT do any of this if they were not being enabled to do so by the Liberal Democrats!

Bullying, The Sun and David Cameron

Today David Cameron is trying to make political capital out of cyberbullying.

I would point to Mr Cameron, that he, George Osborne and the entire British right wing press and broadcast media bullied former prime minister, Gordon Brown, viciously and relentlessly for over two years. Mr Brown was openly and continually lied about, negatively spun against and personally and psychologically abused in one of the worse cases of political bullying I have ever seen. It was an absolute disgrace and embarrassment and slur on the reputation of this country, especially as Gordon Brown is held in very high esteem everywhere else in the world! It is only in this country he is constantly castigated and ridiculously and bizarrely blamed for the global recession and banking collapse. I'd remind the Tories and their mates in the right wing press that it wasn't Mr Brown that lost this country our triple A credit ratings from two major credit agencies was it? In 2009 at the time this country was battling through the effects of the worst *Global* recession for over 80 years in what felt like a economic tsunami, and the *Global* problems were causing turmoil in all financial services in all countries, George Osborne decided to play politics, talk the British economy down and calmly announced that being placed on negative watch by the credit agencies  was grounds for calling for a General Election!

Osborne 2009 

"It's now clear that Britain's economic reputation is on the line at the next general election, another reason for bringing the date forward and having the election now...For the first time since these ratings began in 1978, the outlook for British debt has been downgraded from stable to negative."

So he thought it was pretty serious, so serious in fact Osborne was calling for an early general election! Then perhaps he and his bullying lying PM and the bullying lying right wing press could explain why two years later they didn't think that it was that serious that his (Osborne's) measures lead to this country's credit ratings being placed on negative watch? The same measures and negative credit watch that finally lead to the loss of our triple A status from the two largest credit ratings agencies a year later! Apparently this wasn't important at all well not when George Osborne was to blame anyway, but if it were Gordon Brown, well we would have been measuring the press response on the Richter scale!  So why didn't David Cameron call an early general election on the basis that his chancellor has lost us our triple A rating? Especially as Osborne specifically asked to be judged on him keeping our AAA ratings.

Now we are all supposed to rejoice that Osborne has pulled off some kind of economic "miracle" (so we are told) because he has managed to restore 0.6% of growth of the 2.7% growth he inherited from the Labour government in 2010 and subsequently lost sending the country into a double dip recession. We are also currently being primed to forget about the taxpayer funded credit and housing bubble that Osborne is currently pumping up for Tory election purposes, and told that the very thing that helped nearly push the global economy off the edge of a financial cliff in 2008 is a "good thing"! (You really couldn't make this up)

Let's not forget either that the bullying of Gordon Brown was encouraged by David Cameron, in fact it was CCHQ that supplied the right wing press with much of their tittle tattle.  The Sun newspaper ran a campaign where they literally whipped up hatred for Mr Brown over troops overseas. The newspaper got Britain's most highly decorated soldier, Johnson Beharry to give them a story about how he refused to shake the hand of Gordon Brown and how he felt like punching Gordon Brown in the face. Mr Beharry said it was because Mr Brown could not look him in the eye, no of course he couldn't because Mr Brown is partially sighted, he has a false eye and the vision in his remaining eye was deteriorating something the Sun "forgot" (accidentally on purpose to inform Mr Beharry of). But this didn't stop the Sun exploiting Mr Johnson Beharry, they actually took that story from Mr Beharry almost a year earlier and sat on it and brought it out and published it when they thought their bullying attack on Mr Brown could cause maximum damage to him! This is despicable dirty journalism. I often wonder what Mr Johnson Beharry makes of what David Cameron and the Tories are now doing to the military!

The Sun ran a vicious campaign aided and abetted by Cameron over our troops, despite the fact that Mr Brown and the former Labour government tried to provide them with everything they needed. Why hasn't the sun exposed that since becoming PM, David Cameron has reneged on every single promise he made on our armed forces, from the supply of Chinook helicopters to making thousands of troops redundant by email?

When in opposition Cameron slated the Labour government for not providing enough Chinook helicopters to troops in Afghanistan, he promised if he became PM he would increase the number but what Cameron actually did when he became prime minister is slash the number of Chinooks the former Labour government *already had on order* from 22 to just 14. Cameron also axed troops by email, forze their pay, scuttled our only aircraft carrier in a devastating attack on our military. Where is the Sun's campaign to expose how David Cameron smiles in the faces of our troops while stabbing them in the back? Why doesn't the Sun newspaper expose the shocking treatment of our troops over the Tory government's bedroom tax?

Where are the news stories to point out that actually Mr Brown both as chancellor and PM, tried his level best to treat our troops properly and that all the good the previous Labour government have done, is now being undone?

At the time that Gordon Brown was PM the Sun was always running a deeply personal nasty campaign on Gordon Brown about one thing or another, they ran what they called "exclusives" over the most ridiculous petty things as well as more serious issues, they used the drip, drip drip subliminal suggestion method to get into the psyches of their readers.  Once they ran a really vicious campaign because Mr Brown, insisting on a writing personally to a mother who had lost her soldier son, instead of letting an aid send a standard duplicate copy letter, it was a deeply personal thing to do, yet because Mr Brown is partially sighted in his one remaining eye he made an error and mistook the name Janes for James and because of this he was castigated for days on the front page of the Sun and was the subject of relentless bullying by this vile newspaper, bullying that David Cameron not only encouraged, but joined in with.

Over the past three years, the Sun newspaper (and other right wing newspapers) have constantly spun that Gordon Brown makes money from his speaking engagements since his return to the back benches. Yes he does, he makes a lot of money from speaking engagements, (his talents are appreciated elsewhere if not in his own country), he makes a lot of money from his books etc, but what the Sun newspaper and the Daily Mail *DELIBERATELY* negate to tell you, is that Mr Brown and his wife Sarah, donate every single penny they make to charity. They live on his MPs salary. I wish that previous PMs were so conscientious from Thatcher and Major to Blair, they may have helped improve the public's opinion on our politicians instead of damaging it still further.
What the right wing press also didn't say in their newspapers is that when Gordon Brown was PM he used to get up hours earlier than need be in order to write a book about the loss of his baby daughter Jennifer, to try to reach out to others going through similar grief and again he donated all the proceeds of his book to charity.

The Sun newspaper also splashed across its front page the medical history of Sarah and Gordon Brown's son revealing to the world that the lad suffers from cystic fibrosis, despite the fact that they had tried desperately to protect their son from press intrusion. Gordon and Sarah were forced into revealing this by then then Sun editor Rebekah Brooks, who they thought was a friend in order to maintain some control over what Brooks was going to publish anyway.

Turns out that Rebekah Brooks was no friend of the Browns, sensing that Labour were going to lose the 2010 general election she had dumped the Browns and gone onto pastures new and had become the friend of the Camerons, and had joined forces with David Cameron to bully Gordon Brown, using anything, even the medical history of Mr Brown's little boy to get at Mr Brown so Cameron could have his job as PM.

Then there was Andrew Marr debacle on the BBC who during a televised interview ambushed and bullied Mr Brown on air asking if he suffered from depression and if he was on antidepressants - absolutely appalling.

The personal attacks and bullying of Mr Brown were relentless and they were aided and abetted by David Cameron, George Osborne and the Conservative party.

The press and the Tory party have completely airbrushed history and that what actually happened as a result of the global recession and managed to blame Brown for it. In truth if it were not for Labour's Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, who came up with a plan to rescue the world's financial markets at the eleventh hour, when every single other country remained clueless and stumped about what to do about the ensuing financial disaster just hours away, then goodness knows what would have happened. Yet somehow the Tories and their banker mates who all donate to the Conservative party and their friends the shadow bankers etc (who were the real culprits and to blame for this mess) and the right wing press, have managed to blame Labour for the problems in the global economy! It just isn't true Labour were not to blame and because Osborne and Cameron, the banks and the right wing press have occluded what really happened from us, we are now hurtling towards another economic catastrophe - who will they blame for this one?

What a sad indictment on us as a society that we allow the rat infested sewer right wing press and Conservative party to spread such malicious unfounded gossip about a man, whose only fault was to be human and completely ignore the huge successes Gordon Brown had as chancellor (10 years of stable growth ended only by greedy profiteering bankers) and the immense amount of good he did for the ordinary working person of this country and how we have allowed him to be bullied, intimidated, abused and insulted.

Now the right wing press and David Cameron are repeating this process and are trying to do exactly the same to leader of the Labour party, Ed Miliband. What has happened to Ed Miliband over this past 2 weeks simply because he was on holiday with his family is just tantamount to lying distortion of the truth misleading and plain bullying. Where was the press asking where Cameron was when he took two months unscheduled time off from parliament immediately prior to the House rising for the summer recess? When he missed 8 PMQs? Why are they castigating Ed Miliband for taking two weeks scheduled holiday with his young family?

It's bullying - pure and simple!

If David Cameron wants to stamp out bullying, then he needs to look closely at himself before he  looks anywhere else, or does anything else, because without doubt, Mr Cameron is the most unpleasant deceitful, lying, bullying misogynistic prime minister this country has ever had and until he cleans his own act up, he should shut up about others because he is just as bad, if not worse!

David Cameron's Gone To The Dogs!

I prefer the one on the left, he is honest, loyal and doesn't tell lies!

Today as part of his attention grabbing overexposure on TV and in the newspapers, the prime minister, David Cameron has gone to the dogs, when he visited Battersea Dogs and Cats Home supposedly to welcome their 1000th volunteer. (We all know that the real reason was to have a photo opportunity with a few dogs.)

Great isn't it that Mr Cameron can go along to Battersea with press and film crews in tow to publicise that  he was associating himself with animals (as he and Lynton Crosby know we are a nation of animal lovers), but on the other hand Cameron had to be cajoled week upon week before he would visit a food bank in his own constituency and even when he did eventually go he refused to have film and press crews present!

So what is the difference?

Battersea and other animal shelters cater for animals and Cameron knows we are a nation of animal lovers

so doesn't mind being associated with cute cats and dogs with big sad eyes, while food banks on the other hand however, cater for human beings suffering from Cameron's government driving down wages, driving down living standards, cutting benefits and people being pushed into poverty without enough money to feed their families or heat their homes, cook their food or pay their ever increasing water bill. (Use of foodbanks has soared since the Tory-led coalition government came to power)

So when it comes down to it there is absolutely no contest,  animals with big sad eyes win precedence over starving poverty stricken children with big sad eyes each and every time, after all being photographed with some of the children the Tories have pushed into poverty wouldn't be a very good photo opportunity would it? The fag, booze and private medicine promoting Lynton Crosby, definitely wouldn't like that!

Welcome to Tory Britain 2013, where the government couldn't give a stuff not even about animals (it's all for show all for the cameras) and where the Tories and Liberal Democrats are dividing the nation into haves and have nots and pitting them against each other in some kind of 'war of superiority', ergo, I have money and material things and a job so therefor I am better than you, you "unemployed benefit scrounging poverty ridden scum"

Is the prime minister aware that people have been forced to give their dogs up for rehoming or worse still have them put down or turned them out because they can no longer afford to keep them, or they have been forced into living in accommodation where they cannot take their dogs with them because of the Tories vile bedroom tax!

What a pity staff at Battersea didn't take the opportunity to throw Cameron in a one compartment cage, (so he doesn't have to pay bedroom tax) give him a bowl of water which they will charge an increased charge for (as the Tory privatised water industry prices rise) and bung him a few cold  out of date tinned scraps from foodbanks making him live just the same as he and his government are forcing the poor, unemployed, low waged and disabled to live, who the Tories blame for being poor and sick!

Will You Answer My Four Questions Mr Carney?

I'm not an accountant, I'm not an economist, I'm not a stats boff and I don't profess to be,  like a great many other people I am just ordinary and readily admit to being a bit of a "numbers simpleton", however, I don't think that this should disqualify me (or anyone else) from  asking questions of this government. Someone must ask the obvious questions because it's plain that the Tory supporting right wing press and broadcast media are not going to ask them.

People like me can have an advantage over economists and statisticians, because we can sometimes clearly see  the "bleedin obvious" which is usually staring us in the face and is missed by people that quite simply know too much. We do not have all the data and counter data floating through our minds and cluttering them up, preventing us from seeing the trees for the woods!

Mark Carney, the new Governor of the Bank of England (put there by George Osborne) has said that he will do nothing about raising interest rates until unemployment falls to 7% (it is currently 7.8%). This is crucially important because interest rates govern the costs of our mortgages, loans and credit cards etc.

So if I could ask Mr Carney a question it would be:

• As he is basing his entire 'forward guidance' policy for the economy on the number of  unemployed falling to 7% from 7.8%, which set of unemployment figures is he using to base all his calculations on?

Is he going by the government's preferred number of around 2.5 million unemployed, or the real number of unemployed which some analysts estimate as over 4 million?

This is not point scoring this is a deadly serious question, if Mark Carney is going to use the government figure which is currently 7.8%, (around 2.5 million unemployed) then his entire calculations are wholly incorrect from the outset. Far be it from me to contradict the new Governor of the Bank of England and call me a cynical old pedant, but I'd still like to know the answer to this question.

The Office National Statistics (ONS) are not disputing that hundreds of thousands of unemployed people are being forced onto various government workfare schemes and  are not counted on the unemployment register, in fact the ONS have confirmed this.

Zero hour contracts are not few in number as some Tory MPs who are also company directors whose firms are benefitting from zero hour contracts would have us believe, they are being heavily abused and there is estimated to be over one million people on them and this figure is creeping up each week, as more unscrupulous firms cash in on cheap unfettered labour. People stuck on zero hour contracts are not counted as unemployed, even though they may not have any work, so this is another way that the government are manipulating the unemployment statistics.

Self employment is also another area where the workforce is being abused. Jobcentre are using self-employment as a means to keep people off of the unemployment register, these people do not receive JSA (job seekers allowance), so again they are not counted as unemployed.

Part-time - The number of people now being employed in low waged part-time positions is soaring, once again these people are not on a sustainable income, but crucially for the government are not counted as unemployed.  Likewise the rising number of people employed in temporary positions are transient and may have long periods between work, but the government has now increased the length of time they must wait before they can claim unemployment benefit (JSA) and if they cannot claim they cannot be registered as unemployed, which is a yet another way this government have found to distort the unemployment figures.

The government is rolling out workfare on a massive scale 

Tens of thousands of forced unpaid work placements have already taken place. 

The government intends 250,000 workfare placements on the Work Experience scheme alone. If each placement is 8 weeks of 30 hours work, this is 60 million hours of forced unpaid work. 

850,000 people were expected to be referred to the Work Programme by the end of 2012. However, due to the “black box” approach the government uses with the private providers, it has so far refused to publish how many of those are being forced to work without pay. 

The Mandatory Work Activity scheme was expanded in summer 2012 to a capacity of 70,000 places a year

Taking all of this into consideration even the real number of unemployed which has been estimated as around 4 million is looking like a very conservative figure, it's probably a lot higher and if this is the case, then our economy, far from being in recovery, is in a very bad way, we are just not being told about it.

Mr Carney has also said it would require 750,000 new jobs to bring the unemployment figure down from 7.8% to 7%. This seems a remarkable small figure and it must be a figure which has been based on incorrect unemployment data. The government has been telling us each month for almost three years that millions of new jobs have been created. Are these so-called "new jobs" that have been miraculously created in a recession really new jobs, or just mainly public sector jobs being reclassified as private sector jobs and as such is Mr Carney going to go by the official number of new jobs created, or the unofficial number - the real number? Is Mr Carney going to be using reclassified public sector to private sector jobs in his calculations? Or is he once again basing his calculations on a set of figures that mathematically and economically do not exist, or only exist politically in the minds of the prime minister and the chancellor? I want to give Mark Carney a chance, but I'm finding it difficult to do that when he seems to be starting from a point where he too is trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes.

Back in October 2012, Cameron and Osborne told us that a million new private sector jobs had been created since the Coalition had come to office, it simply wasn't true, it was a complete lie!  In fact at that point, 200,000 of the jobs they were claiming as "newly created private sector jobs" already existed in the public sector in Higher Education - they just relabelled them!  It is not only in Higher Education that we see this reclassifying of labour titles,  in 2012, the number of public-sector workers declined in a variety of sectors; the armed forces were down 10,000, the police 28,000, the civil service 63,000, the NHS 42,000. (As time has passed these numbers have increased)
Now this practice is now picking up speed, as companies like Virgin Care and other private health companies like H5  the Private Hospital Alliance (David Cameron's lobbyist election strategist Lynton Crosby's client) are taking over the running of huge swathes of our NHS, hospitals, care homes, walk in centres, clinics etc and all the staff  who were previously classified as public sector employees are now  being reclassified as private sector workers. This is another political stunt and sleight of hand being used by George Osborne, he wants us to believe that the previous Labour government "bloated the public sector" and that the Tories have slimmed down the public sector at no extra cost, as well as keeping unemployment down, it is a huge lie, the public have been deliberately deceived, all that has happened is that public sector employees have been bullied into becoming private sector employees and have had their working rights stripped and their pay lowered in the process.

So are these the newly created jobs that Carney is talking about? If so, his figure of 750,000 has already been surpassed, as Cameron and Osborne tell us that the number of private sector jobs newly created increases by at least one million on a quarterly basis, so will Mark Carney be adjusting interest rates to try and stop rising inflation? Inflation being stoked by this chancellor interfering in the housing market and deliberately over inflating the housing bubble to make it look like the economy is recovery  when it really isin't, all  that is happening is that the chancellor is "bucking the market" and even his heroine Margaret Thatcher once famously said "you cannot buck the market".

 Another puzzle is that the figure Mr Carney says may trigger action on interest rates has already been surpassed and he has done nothing about it - why?


Basically what Carney is doing is keeping interest rates low on the back of unemployment, because he thinks that the UK economy may be recovering but not quickly or strongly enough. He has also given himself caveats which allow him to go in and change interest rates if need be. Looking at the way both sets of inflation figures are rising and at the way the chancellor is over inflating the housing bubble, if I were thinking of taking out a business loan, a personal loan or a mortgage, I would be very nervous. Quite how his actions are being portrayed as good for loans and mortgages etc when he has the option to change it all at a drop of a hat is being completely over-egged.

I cannot believe that a man in Mr Carney's position with all of his know how would make such a basic schoolboy errors, so this brings me to this last question:

Does Mr Carney know something that we don't? Has George Osborne and Liberal Democrat Danny Alexander known the true number of unemployed and the true number new jobs creation all along and provided mark Carney with these figures? I hope not, because if this is true it makes Mark Carney complicit in a lie and in the deliberate deception and misleading of the British people by their government.

Mr Carney has also failed to even mention the housing bubble that George Osborne is creating. Even the outgoing Governor of the Bank of England who spent most of his time kowtowing to George Osborne and David Cameron, warned against Osborne's Help to Buy scheme and the problems it was likely to cause and Mr Carney says nothing -  why?

Is it because he knows only too well that an economic recovery based on lies and deception, slave labour, zero hour contracts, a housing bubble and consumer credit and mounting debt is not an economic recovery, it is a massive economic deception and a huge gamble? If Carney is now a part if that gamble, I would like to know if he has been brought in to explicitly clean up the mess that Osborne's previous gambles with the economy has caused? In which case he'd better be aware of this saying "don't go throwing good money after bad". When this Osborn gamble fails (and it will), it is not only his reputation on the line, it is now that of Mark Carney's.

According to a report from the European Commission, the UK's ratio of debt to gross domestic product (GDP) is still climbing and is out of control, from a projected share of 95.4% this year to 98% in 2014 and any relief from debt hangover may have to wait until 2016 and if things continue as they are even that is highly unlikely!

The national debt and the deficit is rising and Osborne will be forced to borrow at least £248 billion more over the course of this parliament than Labour did in their entire 13 years.

With the madness going on in the  housing market right now, thanks mainly to Osborne's 'Help to Buy' schemes where he's using taxpayers money to underwrite private sector loans to the construction industry, inflation is rising, it is hard to see how Carney will be able to avoid raising interest rates in the very near future as living standards in this country are already at a historic low and we are now 5th from the bottom in Europe, above only countries like Portugal, Spain, Greece etc. If inflation is allowed to increase unchecked then living standards will be further eroded and this will have a detrimental effect on consumer spending and confidence. This is what happens when idiots like Osborne are allowed to buck the market, drive down living standards to create a false impression of an improving economy, pretty soon the wheels start coming off!
Am I the only one to have concerns over Help to Buy? Apparently not, read what Allistair Heath of City AM has said:

The Coalition has responded to an overvalued, broken property market by subsidising credit further, nationalising risk, artificially bolstering the number of housing transactions and pushing up prices, while failing to liberalise the market to allow the increase in the supply of properties that is so badly needed. No wonder many existing homeowners are feeling happier – boosting their wealth and allowing them to remortgage and spend is clearly at the heart of Osborne's re-election strategy but it will only make the inevitable day of reckoning even more traumatic.

Can Mark Carney explain his feelings about the chancellors Help to Buy schemes and what their effect is going to have on a housing market where house prices were already grossly over valued? Cameron and Osborne have spoken much about the British economy needing to re-balance and the British economy is based on it's housing market, how can it rebalance if Osborne is helping to artificially raise house prices still further? If this government and the Governor of the Bank of England really did want to help first time buyers, they would limit the value of the property involved in the scheme to considerably lower than the £600,000 it currently is. Now all it is, is free for all taxpayer underwritten loans for rich people to buy bigger houses, EU property developers to buy British property to let to Brits at an inflated rents and for the construction industry to use taxpayers money to gamble with. Once again this so-called economic recovery is shown to be a massive deception with Osborne's help to buy at the e centre, is Mark Carney now allowing himself to be part of this deception? How is this not going to have a detrimental effect on inflation? How is this is any way shape or form going to increase the number of houses built this country desperately needs?

Help to Buy should really be called Help to Sell, as the main winners will be developers and existing homeowners who will find it easier to sell at inflated prices. Pumping more money into a housing market with chronic undersupply has one surefire outcome: house prices will go up. At best it may help a small number of new buyers, but it will mean housing becomes more expensive for all those who follow.

All of which raises the thorny issue of when to stop Osborne's house-buying schemes, does the government have an exit strategy, if so when will it be implemented?  Has Carney pencilled this into his factors for 2016?

Then there is the even thornier issue of Quantitative Easing, which is the only thing that is helping Osborne pay down some of the deficit, without that it would be rising out of control. So when does Carney plan to stop QE?

The only people who will gain from the Help to Buy schemes are the private sector construction industry who are now in receipt of taxpayers money to help rebalance their books, if this was happening in the public sector, there would be "outraged meltdown" in the Tory supporting press. It will be interesting to see all these right wing journalists all scrabbling around trying to find ways of saying they predicted the inevitable crash (when in fact they have been toadying up to the Tories) and trying to find a way to blame Labour for the catastrophic mess which is in the process of being created, when this all goes pear shape - and it will!

It really is a mystery, why is Carney going to sully his reputation by becoming involved in George Osborne's attempts to pump up the market causing a pre-election credit boom just in time for the next election? Is it just for the money?

Labour may win that election, if so they should be now pointing out exactly what Osborne and Cameron are doing, so they do not get saddled with the blame for things that are not their fault (yet again). Because as sure as "eggs is eggs" we are heading for an almighty crash shortly after the next election (if it doesn't start happening before).

Osborne and Cameron really are taking the mother of all gambles with the economy, they really are gambling recklessly with the livelihoods of the British people, while making those least able, with least money pay the stakes for their gamble.

Anyone who thinks this country's economy is in recovery must reside in the same place as Osborne and Cameron - La La Land, postcode DEN 1AL.

Carney is the Tory prodigy of the fiscally illiterate Conservative chancellor George Osborne, that alone fills me with foreboding, I can't help it, it just does, most likely born out of the fact that everything Osborne touches ends up in tatters. I do not trust anyone who tries to dig George Osborne out of his political hole, the chancellor is a pillock - pure and simple, oh he may be nice to kittens and small children, but he's still a pillock.

That said I would still like Mark Carney to answer my four questions, in my opinion, the whole British economy is dependent upon them!

• Is he going by the government's preferred number of around 2.5 million unemployed, or the real number of unemployed which some analysts estimate as over 4 million?
• Has Osborne and Cameron supplied Mr Carney with the true number of jobless?
• Is Mr Carney going to go by the official number of new jobs created or the unofficial number?
• Has Mr Carney made allowances for when Osborne's house-buying schemes end? Because when they do this could tip the economy back into recession (if we ever came out of it)