Tis the season to the hypocritical

The Guardian holds forth as the conscience of the nation, and wrings its hands over the way the Chinese have re-erected the Great Firewall now the Olympics blather has died down.

As usual, the leftish press is exposed as shameless hypocrites, since there are numerous comments by readers that have been deleted from the meandering diatribes of resident commissars Polly Toynbee, Jackie Ashley (Mrs Andrew Marr), Andrew Rawnsley et al.

If they can't take the heat, don't leave them open to comment. We will understand that their faith is being shaken a lot recently - after all, it's a bit of shock to find you've been barking up the wrong trees for years. This increasingly disreputable band of left-wing cheer leaders need to remember that they write for a chip-wrapper that calls itself (somewhat presumptively) "the Guardian". The Guardian of what? Free speech or their own (frequently pricked) dignity?

We'll take your preaching on the subject of censorship seriously when you deal with the Great Firewall of the Graun. Meantime if you choose to take a leaf out of the book of a rather larger Communist operation, then please don't use it to try and cover your own immodesty.

Dare Cameron give Gordon all the good ideas, again?

Labour apparatchiks chortle that they want to hear about policies?

Well, there's a pleasant change, since all the banal and pointless chanting is actually coming from Labour's benches, who endlessly chortle "do nothing Tories" in a last-ditch effort to persuade the feeble minded that doing anything, no matter how crass, injurious, pointless and dangerous, is somehow a better strategy. Too bad the Germans called that bluff, eh?

More bad news for a Labour spinner follows, I fear, since the alternative policies recognise Jim Callaghan's words of angst and wisdom:-

"We used to think you could spend your way out of recession by boosting government spending." ...spoken at the 1976 Labour party conference

SuperBroon's complete lack of understanding of the real world (remembering he is hampered by an Aspergers issue) extends to the fact that the moment he wedged up the banks with our cash, the LAST thing the banks wanted to do was let any of it go again. Most of them would not pass on interest rates cuts until Darling banged their heads together. And in reality, all that has happened is that prudent savers have been right royally screwed, and the chancy property vultures are having a field day.

Santander's recent and staggeringly crass threats to get mortgage holders to boost their equity ratios reminds us just how completely challenged these folks can be.

The reality we need to address is that bankers are, on the whole, very stupid people, employed mostly because they are utterly incapable of that most scary unbankerly attribute - an ability for independent and creative thought. An abundance of this quality can be a problem, which is why a handful of over-creative "Ponzi sharks" and toxic mortgage dumpers have swum rings around dumb bankers for years, ending with this current meltdown.

Cameron started to show his hand yesterday, much to many government apologists' delight/horror, and his growing willingness to see stupid bankers trundling down Threadneedle Street in tumbrels seems to stem from a realisation that we have to start any root/branch overhaul of the system by improving the quality of our top financial thinkers. Probably starting with the uber unimpressive Mervyn "moral jeopardy" King and his coterie of clowns that have presided over the process that got us where we are today.

Huge, massive, MAJOR reforms are required in all aspects of banking, finance and taxation - and Broon - the unelected leader of an unelected party (as far as England is concerned) - simply does not have the depth and breadth of social skills required to achieve them, when he can't even drag the Germans this far, even after telling them that he saved them.

It's possible neither does Cameron; but God Knows, we have to try something. Leaving Gordon Brown to continue to embarrass himself and the country is truly the "do nothing" option.

Why is Polly Toynbee ..?

TMP doesn't usually bother to single out specific hacks for consideration, but every now and again a truly outstanding piece of nonsense compels us to reconsider.

TMP feels it must draw a bead on the Graun's "conscience in chief" and explore just how she manages to keep the vitriol in her pen from eating through the plastic and burning her hand. Is there a more shamelessly and determinedly bigoted, wilfully ignorant, and prejudiced scribe in the whole of this land?

We have sad news for David Cameron, he might as well give up now and go and do a spot of peasant thrashing, for nothing he can say or do seems to be able to persuade La Toynbee from using anything he says or does to demean and belittle his efforts. He was simply born to the wrong parents.

PT's latest piece of priceless advice on economic salvation is that the first thing we need to do to "build a German-style industrial base".

So we must lose a war to the US and UK, get all ancient industry bombed flat (oops, they're all been turned into housing estates by now, sorry...) and rebuild it with new? There's a small catch here: the Germans sunk into recession before anyone else - because there are no customers left able to buy their wonderful goods - not even with Gordon's limitless supplies of his "funny money". Gong!

The problems run far deeper than giving Gordon another 5 years to "finish the job" by squeezing a few pips. And let's once again remember, this whole toxic loan fiasco started when Clinton's democrats (aka the USA's very own NuLabour party) forced US financial institutions to support democrat voters with just the sort improbable loans Broon wants to see British banks doing. Slippery US bankers then gift-wrapped these fairy money loans and dumped them on gullible investors around the world.

This whole mess is directly attributable to socialists meddling with long understood rules of financial probity in order to buy votes. But don't worry, TMP is not expecting even a Smith-like apology from Ms Toynbee, nor any promise to mend her misguided ways.

FYI - here is the background to this tireless class warrior...

Polly Toynbee (born Mary Louisa Toynbee on December 27, 1946) was born on the Isle of Wight. After attending Badminton School, a girls' independent school in Bristol, followed by the Holland Park School, a state comprehensive school in London (she had failed the Eleven Plus examination), she read history at St Anne's College, Oxford... Toynbee was the second daughter of the literary critic Philip Toynbee (by his first wife Anne), granddaughter of the historian Arnold J. Toynbee and great-great niece of philanthropist and economic historian Arnold Toynbee after whom Toynbee Hall in the East End of London is named'

(Wikipedia)

We should add that Polly was also once the BBC Social Affairs Editor. So then, pretty much your average champagne socialist; maybe we should be more understanding of her increasingly irrational ranting at the sight of her beloved Labour Party going down in so many flames?

TMP saves the UK, and the world...

The recent elections on Sark have drawn the attention of sections of the world's press (especially the sanctimonious "we know better than you" Guardianistas and their ilk) to the morality of tax havens, a large number of which are UK protectorates of one sort or another - despite the fact that tiny Sark is barely involved any longer in what was always a device of Guernsey accountants anyway - or so m'learned friend advises us.

Tax havens are undoubtedly used to shelter funds from activities such as drugs and extortion (the stock in trade of most banana republic despots) , so this seems to be a handy hook upon which to hang a noble crusade; but the absolute inescapable truth is that no government spends any money a fraction as wisely as those that earned it in the first place, It never ever - in the history of history - has ever happened even once. Not even slightly.

So here's an idea. Broon has seen to it that the UK is financially fooked for a generation or two (please don't anyone with the intelligence to work out how to post here kid me that they believe an iota of his present blather - he's lying his - sorry - our socks off. Goebbels would have been immensely proud of such a massive show of brass neck).

We need a really bold and massive agenda to sort this out. We have to start from the position of "put on your oxygen mask first before you start worrying about the rest of the passengers"; and that means not worrying about the EU, and especially the sanctimonious (but depressingly correct) Germans.

So we re-engineer the decaying London City as the biggest "business haven" on planet on the basis that we charge 10% flat rate across the board on all taxable profits - income or capital - with a vast range of write-offs to encourage innovation and proper risk taking, then - after careful preparation on a "Mission Impossible" scale of cunningness - we will move in and shut down all the offshore havens, and compensate the natives to enable them to adjust their economies to tourism, call centres - whatever.

If there is indeed $25 trillion sloshing around in these havens, it will come here and be put to good use. What is found to be the proceeds of international crime will be "frozen", and we will "look after it" on behalf of the democratically elected governments of the territories of origin. If there are no democratically elected governments, we will let the population be aware that $x trillion is waiting in their name, the moment they manage to get an elected government in place (and keep it there for at least 2 years?)

Mostly though, we can let those that earned it keep most of it and use it - whether it goes back into the economy as investment in green technologies, employing households of butlers and gardeners or to purchase mink-plated stretched limos, isn't the business of government.

It's plain we have to devise employment for the 5m or so not otherwise gainfully employed in saviour Broon's fairyland. These people are never going to get work in the anal corporations/councils of process-crazed utopia, and there are plenty of less fulfilling ways to eke out an existence than doing the gardening for some delightful stately home, or cooking for some rich bastards that can't be bothered to microwave a ready meal. Instead, our present regime has condemned all such folks to the margins of daytime TV and other forms of zero self-esteem.

If other governments found themselves forced to follow suit and compete with our business-friendly environment, wouldn't it be terrible that countries like the US and Russia would no longer be able to afford colossally costly military exploits and over-bloated governments?

discuss...

A good week for majorities, at last!

TMP commends to all those interested in democracy and rare moments of populism at work, the recent story of Sark, and the defeat of the bullying tactics of the billionaire Barclay brothers, who arrived uninvited in this tax haven, built a monstrosity of a fortress, bought up businesses and property - and then set about trying to change the laws to favour their interests.

With the collusion of the UK government (which does not want feisty, self-opinionated and self-determining tax havens in their portfolio of empire remnants) they then forced the island community to dump their immensely efficient and successful 1564 constitution, expensively adopt the ECHR (despite the fact that Sark had the good sense to stay outside the EU), and adopt "democracy".

The reclusive Barclays were confident that they had bought the election result they wanted - but instead "got their arses kicked" when the islanders decided enough was enough, and by an overwhelming majority returned a ruling body that is not going to do what the Barclays tell them. And the islanders were well aware that by voting against the interests of the elderly Barclay twins, they would likely suffer reprisals - which arrived in a startlingly petulant manner when all the Barclay's interests were shut, and the local staff laid off, the moment it was clear that the election had not gone their way.

Also add the Manchester congestion charge referendum result, and this has been a very rare week indeed:

Voice of the People 2 - Overbearing Autocracy Nil.

New Labour, old currency crisis

Dear God, how TMP wishes it was not quite so consistently prescient. We warned that Broon was going to trash the currency, and by Jove he has! Surely the country has seen more than enough by now to realise that following no more boom and bust/ best placed country for the recession he is a pathological liar and an abject incompetent. Apparently with a superhero complex.

We wouldn't be too surprised to see David Cameron at last lose his cool in his frustration to get a straight answer to simple questions, and lay the old Caledonian fraud out during PMQs.

Never mind Woolies, it's high time New Labour had its own closing down sale.

The essence of Britishness

As the Damian Green affair reminds us, Britain floats on a raft of vague laws - and an unwritten constitution that has (over many centuries) created a understanding of how to interpret and compromise between all parties about the way things work. Dare we call it "the essence of Britishness"?

It has survived thus far because good men have generally not done nothing when push came to shove, as in the current Green farrago. However, it is very vulnerable to the growing jobsworth culture of forms and process that has put more power in the hands of those who either don't understand, or see it (as many of the brain-cleansed senior plod now seem to) as an opportunity for a spot of front line social engineering.

Gorbals' replacement of a very well-attuned toff by a mediocre but compliant civil servant is a good example of how such a system can be perverted. And it's good to note that HM's instincts were perfectly sound, as usual.

However, this perverse but precious nature of Britishness is something even a generally socially dysfunctional character like Broon has started to wake up and realise is something that doesn't necessary instill itself by osmosis once a person steps across the border.

The big fix for this increasingly unnerving state of unBritishness is going to be tricky. In the short term it is best solved by dumping Baron Mandelson's puppet government in a skip, and clearing up the worst of the mess before we can usefully move forward.

Al Murray for PM?

Power for pennies?

Model of a NEREUS 10Mwe power plant.

Scale 1:25 10 x 10 x 10 meters

The crisis we face is essentially about energy costs and energy politics; Broon's woefully inept and increasingly totalitarian government continues to ignore the long term run down of the main UK generation plant - and we don't trust those direct debiting French and German owners of out power industries to worry about it, either.

That joke about the last person to leave Britain turning out the lights is redundant; the lights will be out long before he's buggered off on present form.

But with electricity available for 1p a kWh, everything has changes again. So why are we ignoring the only practical solution that's out there?

It's time to club together with you mates and raise ~£10m to install a bite-sized nuclear plant for your town. Town-sized reactors are nothing new - basically the sort of thing that powers submarines and warships - has been proposed as the core of a land solution

Many councils have "widdled" larger sums down Icelandic drains lately, so it's not exactly outrageous money. Do the sums and this makes a world of sense - plus overcapacity gets sold back into the grid. So, can the safety issues can be confronted? But when the choice is this - or going "cold turkey" on civilisation as we know it - TMP suspects a lot of people will realise that there are simply not enough bunnies to go round for us all to hug to keep warm.

So bad, she makes him look good

TMP wonders if continually pointing out the manifest shortcomings of Jacqui Smith is actually a good idea?

The ever-paranoid and bullying Broon probably regards the fact that this woman is so quite breathtakingly incompetent as "usefully nonthreatening" - much like his puppet chancellor, and Jack "how the f*ck is his still drawing a cabinet minster's salary?" Straw. Today, Ed Balls-up reminded us yet again that Labour administrations across the country are smug, self-satisfied, process-bound and utterly inept ...from the ground up.

Commentators are starting to suggest that even those people that briefly believed that the Broon/Darling miracle might work are starting to realise that his self anointment as the global saviour was no less phony than any other of his "no more boom and bust" lies. The latest stalled economy numbers suggest that it is pretty much all over bar the shouting.

Wake up Cameron, watch Obama at work - why not start holding forth at press conferences as the PM elect..? Such is the perversity of the electoral system in the US that you could (just) be in power before him!! (But please don't appoint Cherie Blair as Secretary of State, eh?)