The bigger they are...

Gordon and the Brownies bleat that the present economic shambles is not their fault, citing "global factors", implying "not me guv". Do not under any circumstances let them get away that assertion, it is the consequence of their labours over the past ten years.

Brown and his acolytes are all as guilty as sin of supporting and promoting the notion of economic growth based on the fairy money of improbably inflated house and land values, and the "partnership" of globalised financial markets and companies.

Do you recall those early days of the Blair regime when the same businesspeople that once feted Mrs Thatcher for sorting out Labour's previous shambles then flocked to support the Blair fraud (and contribute to the Labour Party), in return for the policy of "light regulation" that would allow the City to become a global financial hub?

Let's not forget one of Blair-Brown's other keystone economic policies over the past ten years is the unfettered immigration that helps keeps average wages down by flooding the economy with "cheap labour" (and likely Labour voters). With unemployment now about to lurch, there will be troubles ahead once there are no more of Gordon's "British Jobs for British People".

Yet the mass of the UK is probably still not feeling the pinch - thanks to the creation of millions of non-jobs, paid from fast depleting public funds, that will be amongst the very last to go. As TMP followers will know, this economic crisis is not a huge surprise to everyone; it was an inevitability given the poor quality of the politicians in control of stupid policies, and even worse execution. The Police and Health services have both had humongous additional cash thrown at them over recent times, but does anyone really think either has improved measurably?

And still no one has learned anything about scale and globalisation: the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Instead of learning that there is strength in diversity, the present panic to consolidate teetering behemoths is doing the opposite, and creating even more vast institutions that they apparently have to be pseudo-nationalised in order to preserve any hope of financial stability. The chances of those institutions being returned to the private sector in the foreseeable future is virtually nil.

And what possible chance is there that any government could allow the proposed merged HBOS-Lloyds to fail? Everyone will assume that however badly run it might be, it will be saved in the same way that Northern Rock was saved, there is no choice.

The frustration for those of us that know better is that the internet has provided all the tools required to create a robust distributed economy, based on a network of small self-managed units. It's time consider the possibilities of de-globalising and splitting these unmanageable monsters into a number of much smaller autonomous units that could be allowed to go bust if run by the sort of impotent idiots we are watching emerging in their droves.