Comrade Smith and her KGB

Andrew Marr might be starting to realise that his next boss will be appointed by a Tory government; he had the Stasi Commissar on his show this morning, and set about her reasonably firmly and unsympathetically.

Amongst other implausible responses, Comrade Smith said she did not sign off on the Damian Green phone tap, and then appeared to go very coy, very quickly. Andrew Marr mentally "bookmarked" the moment, and rather than continue to press her (she evaded most questions in the usual manner), simply confirmed (quietly) that she had said she did know about any phone tap.

Comrade Smith very poignantly then tried to back out by suggesting that Home Secretaries never comment on matters of that sort - but her body language suggests she realised she's stepped in it. I was disappointed Marr didn't also observe that this all happened when it was another good day to "bury news".

Top Marks also for Carol Voderman who was one of the Sunday paper commentators, and Gulam "no more immigration" Noon. The BBC must be getting concerned that there are no more safe and properly politically correct socialists left to put on their sofas, when even the immigrants themselves are starting to suggest such naughty things.

They'll have to place ads in the Graun to see if there are any left...

A clunking fist too far

TMP worries that it's impossible to use too much hyperbole and too many "scares" when describing Broon's government's behaviour. Jacqui Smith pretends she knew nothing of this action, but we can't wait to see the leaked evidence that she, and the other members of the Broon's inner cabal, did!

The news of the police state action against a Tory shadow minister will not surprise as many as it should, and if the BBC deal with this in the same way they trumpeted every scrap of Tory sleaze in the run up to Blair's media beatification in 1997, Broon will be trussed up in time for Christmas.

Consider this - the basis of Green's arrest:-

... the offence of Misfeasance in Public Office is committed by a public officer acting as such who wilfully neglects to perform his duty and/ or wilfully misconducts himself to such a degree as to amount to an abuse of public trust in the office holder, without reasonable excuse or justification

That's it then. We have all the excuse we need. We can safely arrest the entire government, starting with Broon and Darling. Who wants to get up a posse for a citizens' arrest? What possible defence can they put up? Insanity?

We don't believe that a defence of "fear of losing state-pensionable employment" is admissible ...yet!

Living in the present (contd)

It's typical of Guardian stalwarts that even the cartoonist remains firmly stuck in the past, although the editorial occasionally seems to accept that where we are now headed is rather more germane than where we have been. One of the accidents of birth of the Torytubbies is that they were still reading the Beano and watching as Nat Rothchild shoved portable toilets down hillsides, when some of the heinous VAT sins of their forebears were committed. However, both Broon and Darling were most assuredly present and preening when the Labour pledge on taxation was made - and now broken.

Cutting costs and generally being less profligate is something every person and organisation in the UK expects to have to do - other than those funded by the taxpayer. Please Graun, stop thinking about all the money you rake in from the endless procession of public sector recruitment. and start refusing adverts for fairyland jobs dreamt up by various the elves and gnomes of local government to decorate their bulging grottos with yet more pensionable irrelevance, eh? Thanks!

Living in the present

Everyone needs to stop living in the past, especially the "liberal left". For them, the ghost of the blessed Margaret Hilda still haunts just about every one of the writers and commentators in the left-leaning media, especially the Guardian and BBC. It would be pathetic were it not symptomatic of an ongoing and dangerous obsession which is denying the immutable reality of where we are today.

Now pay attention: barring scientific breakthroughs (which would be entirely possible if we invested as much in looking for them as we are in propping up dodgy financiers) there is no more cheap energy to pay for any "traditional" growth. All the opportunity to do some good in 1997 has been frittered away in Blair/Broon's vast ballooning of a pensionable client state.

Oil will reach $200 before we recover to the pre-crunch levels of prosperity. And Broon's £ will be worth 25c by then, anyway. The options we have now appear to be...

• No retirement while the quack says you can still lift a shovel
• A ruthless end to all forms of avoidable waste - especially in the black holes of education and health
• Much less pointless travel - we have networks and HDTV
• More investment in "proper" sustainable energy - like nuclear/hydrogen
• A steeply reduced population - are you watching Survivors, eh?

Paradoxically, none of that will be achieved through any form of socialist dream. The only way to shift attitudes sufficiently is to recognise basic human nature, and the bad news is that is most assuredly not "fair shares for all", because every incarnation of socialism anywhere on the planet to date has ended up with a unimaginative ruling elite ruthlessly exploiting an oppressed population to feather their personal nests and further their personal ambitions.

An expression that can perhaps win broad support is "fair rewards for all".

Every single last socialist "regime" has ended in personal corruption - even Tony Blair left office richer beyond the wildest dreams of most of his supporters, when most of the country suspected he and his cronies should have been questioned rather harder by the police on various counts.

As for the bleating about the meltdown of global capitalism, a trace run on the tsunami that overwhelmed the world's economies reveals that the source was Clinton's Democrats instructing US institutions to relax lending rules to appease voters. Pretty much what dopey Darling and calamitous King are doing right now!

There is an option for those who long for a dose of proper socialism: go and live in Zimbabwe, Cuba or North Korea.

Tax IS taxing

The Gaurdianista glee being expressed around the 45% tax rate (and don't forget to add the NI) fails to recall that it was this very regime that gifted Broon and Darling the wherewithal to prance around declaring "there will be no boom and bust". Tax take went up as top rates came down.

The total amount this hike will produce is negligible anyway, thus clearly identifying the action as no more than spiteful political gesture, designed to appeal to the likes of Polly Toynbee and Mrs Marr. This is a typical Broon budget - long on fiddling in the margins and deceit, short on substantial and imaginative moves. And so utterly confusing that hardly anyone can agree on the net effects on the population. Gordon's "mini me" learned his trade from a master of obfuscation and blather.

Amidst the hand outs (attached to a piece of elastic) some magnificent stealth taxes were ushered in under the cloak of the 2.5% temporary VAT cut. Those excise "duty" offsets are permanent!

And now the lamentable Mervyn King is suggesting full nationalisation of the banks to force them to underwrite toxic loans!! Let's hope he has a cunning plan to flog off that toxic debt to some gullible foreigners.

TMP prays Cameron doesn't fumble this opportunity. Please may we have Ken Clark back on the front bench ASAP? Since Gordon's boom went bust, Clark is once again the most successful UK Chancellor still active in politics. He sorted it out last time, and he's one of the better chances we have to pull it off again.

The root of all fiscal evil...

Of course this budget will be yet another disaster; but don't expect the establishment left at the BBC to face reality until income tax rises to 101p in the £. (Incidentally, on Darling's own numbers, even that would not pay off the National Debt he and Broon have managed to run up).

Broon is always so keen to start any conversation these days with the notion that the UK is the victim of a "global" situation - but Slick Willy Clinton admits the origin of the current crisis was actually US democrats "encouraging" Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to underwrite toxic mortgages to keep voters sweet. ie precisely what Broon and his calamity-prone Caledonian cabal are now doing for the UK!

This is a 100% socialist originated crisis - created by US Democrats playing politics; so quite how more socialists playing at more socialist politics can get us out of it, is a mystery.

Watch Slick Willy "fess up" on the YouTube clip!

(Also follow the other links on that page for more background)

...wait just a moment...

Hang about everyone...

Former ITV political editor John Sergeant has quit Strictly Come Dancing.

The popular contestant on the BBC1 entertainment show has pulled out following a storm over his continuing success, with judges such as Arlene Phillips questioning his commitment.

He said today in a statement: "I am sorry to say I have decided to leave Strictly Come Dancing. It was always my intention to have fun on the show and I was hoping to stay in as long as possible. The trouble is that there is now a real danger that I might win the competition. Even for me that would be a joke too far. I would like to thank Kristina and all those viewers who have been rooting for me through the series."

So it looks like TMP does have a magic prescient ability that actually intervenes to affect events, after all. Stand by while we work out how to use it for the benefit of mankind. Here's one to be getting on with, though:

"Gordon Brown resigns as the result of a nervous breakdown when it emerges that he was visited by the Ghost of Christmas Future, and was shown the effects of his disastrous policies on the families of the the UK..."

Bad News

John Sergeant survived yet again. This is the end of all hope.

A different approach

TMP is worried that everything we have predicted about the course of this wretched government and its assorted lackeys and acolytes turns out to be true, no matter how dire and improbable it may seem at the time the comments are made. It has started to concern us that this may be rather more than sheer prescience.

So let's see if the TMP "power" works, and that our predictions are indeed the cause of future events, not just a spookily accurate guess at the outcome. Here's the acid test of this power for today: we have identified what has become the most predictable "dead cert" of the week, and decided to turn it on its head. TMP fearlessly predicts that John Sergeant will at last get the boot from Strictly Come Dancing tomorrow (Sunday).

And if that works, we'll try out our power to affect the course of events on some more pressing matters facing the country (yes, there are more urgent matters than Strictly results, trust us.)

Gordon Brown lives in a cocoon of hubris, and his bullying nature prevents him from getting any useful input from those around, who he terrorises into subservient agreement; all the more so now that he believes in his own infallibity once again. Yet we have had plenty of evidence that Broon has no plan other than to shore up his own personal aggrandisement - perfectly enshrined in the phrase that must haunt him to his grave: "no more boom and bust".

If his new best mates on the world economic stage actually believed the old Caledonian fraud was speaking the truth and good sense, then how come they are all dumping our currency on such an alarming and epic scale? Thanks to the efforts of the dangerously misguided Mervyn King, the deeply flawed Gordon Brown and the generally inept Alistair Darling, the £ is now a mickey-mouse player in global economic terms. Why would would any sane country want to hold it?

The present slide in the value of the £ will have far more serious consequences than our one-eyed emperor imagines. We assume he's doing it so that his effort to raise the necessary £billions to fritter away on public spending will look cheaper at €1 to the £ than it did at €1.50. Brown's gamble with the entire national currency and inflation makes anything those naughty bankers managed with toxic loans seem like a viacarage whist drive.

So let's all pray that John Sergeant gets the hoof - then TMP can start to wield its awesome powers on more important issues.

Have our say, not yours...

The BBC pretends that its "have your say" feedback section on its news website allows the public (anywhere, not just the license payers) to post their comments on subjects carefully chosen and spun by BBC staff. As you would expect, the process ouses political correctness from every oleaginous pore.

Most discussions are "moderated" according to set of (pretty obvious) published rules; but this is not actually what goes on. However, most thinking people are insulted when the BBC calls what they do "moderation" - it's much more than that.

It's a combination of blatant censorship based on their own internal agendas (not published) and the BBC's tireless efforts at "social engineering".

The most potent weapon the "moderators" possess is simply to delay releasing postings. The posting is time stamped when it was originally submitted. So it does not go to the "top" of the list when released, but could appear some 50 or more screens deep in the discussion, and is thus effectively buried from view. The BBC knows very well how to manipulate reactions by burying those views that do not perfectly reflect their own way down in the noise.

Frankly, this is an effective way of burying dissent that would have be approved by Goebbles or any other totalitarian ministry of misinformation.

It's such a pity - the BBC used to be a truly great institution and organisation until about 15 years ago. What on earth happened? No wonder so much of the press now seems out to see the BBC emaciated and not just "reformed"; but with insulting hypocrisy at every level from functionary to top talent, the BBC has been the primary instigator of its own eventual demise.

Gordon's Genius Revealed ..!

News of Germany beating the UK to the "R" word was not a surprise. Their problem is they have an economy based on the old-fashioned Victorian notion of manufacturing and exporting to create wealth, as opposed to the City's sophisticated process of manipulating numbers. So when the world economy tanks, no one can afford to buy anything, and the Germans can't sell anything. You don't have to be John Maynard Keynes to work that one out.

However, then it suddenly dawned on me why Gordon has been telling everyone we are better equipped to deal with the recession than anyone else. Doh... Gordon, you are indeed a genius after all ! It is so obvious!!

There was nothing more we could lose: we already have no resources left; we already have no manufacturing industry, we already have a rapidly devaluing currency, we already have no friends...

But with our legendary financial prowess and peerless City skills, we will obviously be perfectly set up as "Receivers and Liquidators of the Western World" when the Koreans, Indians, Chinese and Arabs turn up for the auction. Gordon, I take my hat off to you.

Now just remind that mad Jowell woman that you saw this coming all the time, and had spent 11 years planning this uber-cunning strategy before she tells anyone else it came as a total shock and a complete surprise, and of course we wouldn't have wasted $9+bn on feting drug-addled foreigners in 2012 if we had known.

Let's see if Boris can put on his wretched Whiff Waff show using all existing venues for an austerity budget of "just" £1bn and get the mood and expectations sorted out.

Sterling Crisis

It is traditional that a Labour government will destroy the UK economy and drive the country into a full-blown sterling crisis. With new depths being plumbed on all fronts, surely it cannot be possible that anyone can be capable of voting for Gordon to have another 5 years to finish off the job?

Brown's claim that the UK was well placed to weather the financial storm have been proved (as most of us suspected) to be a complete pack of lies, although if he seriously believed what he was saying, his delusion is more terrifying than his dishonesty.

Why should any of the world's leaders now want to listen to more advice from this discredited old fraud? His 15 minutes on the world stage really ought to be all over by now.

No time for novices

This is certainly no time for novices, Gordon. But despite all the practise, you still can't tell a convincing lie.

Surely Gordon Brown and his puppet Darling are too deep in the economic mire to be hauled out this time..? The IMF now warns that UK economy is far, far deeper in distress than Brown has been protesting, and effectively confirms that Broon's febrile assertions about it being well placed are yet so many more unctuous lies to add to his already outstanding litany of deceptions.

So of course the battered £ is also sliding away from view, and a full-scale sterling crisis is once again around the corner. The once unthinkable - parity with the Euro - now seems inescapable.

Labour does it yet again, as we said it would. Sometimes it would be wonderful to proved wrong when predicting the depths of the next disaster that Blair and now Brown have taken this country to, but in all the time this blog has been running, it has yet to happen.

If they can be caught so flat footed by the banking crisis and then smugly tell so many unmitigated lies and untruths about the state of the economy, why should anyone believe anything this this wretched and discredited government has to say?

For all our sakes, go now.

Why Democracy Sucks

The US electoral circus begs an important question for all "Democratic" processes based in medieval origins. After the dust settled and after an alleged $5bn up the wall, months of name calling and yaa-booing, the protagonists were jolly nice about each other. Then they rolled up their carpets and went quietly home.

There's an assumption that those supporting political parties must do so on the basis of blindly supporting the entire manifesto. "Collective responsibility" means that there seems to be very little room for anyone to think for themselves and criticise anything about their party of choice, because the "other side" will pounce on any evidence of dissent and bang on about it like schoolkids.

And there's plenty of evidence that the ability to think for oneself and honestly express a contrarian moral viewpoint (aka a maverick) didn't do a lot for the careers of folks like Mo Mowlem, Robin Cook and Frank Field. Or Dr David Kelly.

If we cannot tolerate unvarnished honesty in public life, then we must be forcing once-honest politicians to deny their natures. So it is little wonder that so many of them turn out to be amoral liars and all-round shits, quite incapable of answering a straight question with a straight answer..

Nevertheless, the art of compromise is generally forced by the reality of office, and much of the impossible manifesto melts away like the snow in spring. Those who criticised the now-absent elements are not generally warmly welcomed and told they were right along. (You can be excused almost anything in this life, except being proved right - and boy, I should know.)

All governments seem to end up as disappointments, having been elected on a variety of false promises - especially as now, where our PM was only "nodded through" by around 400 sycophants. At least the losing party doesn't have to deal with the consequence of ANY of its unelected policies (the reason why the LibDems have lasted this long?) .

Overall, democracy as we know it, sucks. It was devised in the days when it took days to get between the cities of the UK, and has not changed noticeably since.

Are we not now sufficiently technologically advanced to have a list of propositons to vote for in regular refernda/plebiscites so that we can explore the best of all parties' and individuals' ideas, and cancel the hare-brained stuff without wasting further time, energy, money..?

The process of running the country could then be delegated to an effective "chief executive" which should ensure we really do the get the best talent. Presently such folks are too horrified by the awful media process to want to play politics. Whatever else happens, we should never again gift the job to a filibustering/gerrymandering old Caledonian fraud, living off a dishonest voting system.

Why he may not be Oblairma....

5m votes from a population of 300m is hardly a landslide, and that means there are going to be a great many Americans who are going to be feeling seriously disenfranchised once the dust settles, and they realise that they have no sustainable influence of any sort left at any level of Federal government, apart from the technical ability to filibuster in the Senate.

Comparisons with Blair are valid at some levels, but Tony Blair had the advantage of 10 years worth of Tory financial preparation to squander when he bowled up all teeth and rhetoric. Oblairma has nothing in the Republican kitty but more challenges ahead. However, he does have a vastly more attractive wife and family, and a deputy who is not a boorish Neanderthal loose cannon, albeit Joe Biden appears to be most boring sort of career politician.

Oblairma is also a democrat masquerading as a democrat - Blair's first move as leader was to bury scary Old Labour, showing that he was fundamentally ashamed of the party, and willing to anything to get elected. Commentators say reassuringly that Obama knows what he doesn't know, and knows how to handle advisors; as history shows, Blair actually knew almost nothing about anything and relied on Mandeslon and Campbell to pull the strings while he left Brown a completely unfettered run at the economy.

McCain and Palin are not the sort of tedious "do nothing, say nothing edgy" career politicians that we and the US seem to be saddled with these days. Both had interesting backgrounds, but it's more than understandable that the yanks felt the reps had been given long enough and the country was in a mess. If Sarah Palin gets an education and an insight into evolution and the ways of the world, she may well be an interesting future prospect - but with McCain at 72 years old, the Reps were plainly stretching their credibility past the limit.

So, the very best of British to Obama. The world desperately needs a credible and respected USA and President once again, and whatever anyone thinks, Obama was always far more likely to get off to start with global goodwill than the alternative. It will be interesting to see how he gets "tested" by the usual suspects; and let's hope the kevlar does its stuff.