I Don’t Think Prudence Will Call Alistair “Darling” Anymore!
I never took Alistair Darling seriously, as the name was given a very hard going over in Blackadder.
He at last seems to have shown some backbone in standing up to the that bully, Gordon Brown, in his memoirs according to many reports today. Here is the one from the BBC. I like this quote about Brown.
Gordon Brown was so deluded as prime minister that he was adamant one of the worst economic crisies in history would be over in six months.
How did NuLabor let such an idiot get the top job? I suspect that many saw the writing on the wall and Brown was holding the parcel when the music stopped.
The I Wouldn’t Do That Party!
Peter Allen on BBC Radio 5, used that nickname for the Labour Party.
But it is true! After all, Prudence got so much of our policies into a mess to buy votes generally or in Scotland. If they were in power they’d still be digging the hole in the budget like maniacs. After all in their view it’s better for the country if Labour is in power, rather than we’re all broke.
Luckily, most of the good people of the United Kingdom, have more sense than Prudence and his ilk.
Those That Live By The Shredder Die By The Shredder
It is often said that everything comes to him who waits. The partial lifting of the so-called banker’s, Fred Goodwin‘s super-injunction, shows that no matter how tight you jam the lid on a can of beans, eventually the pressure builds and it blows up in your face.
There are some choice headlines.
- Daily Mail – Sir Fred, adultery and the public interest.
- Independent – Goodwin’s affair at bank exposed after peer breaks gagging order
- Daily Mirror – No good in these gags
- The Sun – Fred the Bed
There’s a lot more.
The tone is set by this from the Daily Mail.
While RBS was undergoing the biggest collapse in British corporate history, he was busy carrying out an extra-marital affair with a senior colleague involved in the strategic direction of the bank.
Truly, there can be no doubting the public interest in disclosing Sir Fred’s conduct. The collapse of RBS, under his control, led to a £45billion bailout by taxpayers.
Thousands upon thousands lost their jobs and businesses in the financial devastation which followed.
If Fred had had an affair with a Page 3 bimbo, that wouldn’t have mattered so much to the bank and in the end UK taxpayers. The tabloids might have made us laugh as they did years ago with Ron Halpern, a long forgotten businessman in the 1960s or 1970s, but because he had an affair with a senior executive, it meant that his crazy policies were able to get through board and other meetings. I had problems years ago with a company, where I served on a technical committee that had a husband and wife on it. We all had to convince two people who slept together of the correct course of action. It was not easy and the company suffered.
Two people having a relationship in an organisation is rarely a good idea!
Fred Goodwin was knighted in the 2004 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for his services to banking. So at least we can’t blame that one totally on Prudence, as he wasn’t Prime Minister until four years later. It will be interesting to see in twenty or so years time, when the details of Sir Fred’s knighthood are released, what dicussions took place on his suitability for such an award.
If ever there was a case for a knighthood to be taken away, then Sir Fred is at the top of the list.
Scot Nats Sink Prudence’s Aircraft Carriers
It looks like Prudence’s jobs bribe to Scotland of the manufacture of two unnecessary aircraft carriers has been sunk by the performance of the SNP in the elections yesterday. Labour voters have deserted the party in droves.
I watched the most unusual double act this morning on the television when Alex Salmond of the SNP and Annabel Goldie of the Scottish Conservatives had a forthright discussion on their cooperation in the future.
Scotland has a lot of problems, like funding the NHS and universities, poor health, too much drinking and creating worthwhile jobs that will last.
I wish the new government of Scotland a lot of luck. They’ll need it.
I have said many times, that Gordon Brown will rank alongside Lord North as one of our worst Prime Ministers. It would seem now that his country and his supposedly loyal supporters there have deserted his policies.
Now Brown Wants to Bankrupt the World
It has been reported that Prudence wants to be head of the IMF. Talk about putting an alcoholic in charge of a brewery!
At least David Cameron appears to be trying to block the move according to this report.
Brown’s Aircraft Carrier Too Many
The Times really lays into Gordon Brown this morning about the purchase of a second aircraft carrier, which more than likely will never be used by any fixed wing aircraft.
This was what greeted Gordon Brown this morning from the front page of The Times.
Taxpayers will have to pick up the £2.6 billion bill for the controversial aircraft carrier that will never carry jets because Gordon Brown agreed an “unbreakable” contract designed to protect shipbuilding jobs in Scotland.
Under a 15-year agreement signed with BAE Systems, the Labour Government guaranteed work for the company’s shipyards on the River Clyde and in Portsmouth.
This included the £5.2 billion contract to build two new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy, which David Cameron revealed this week that he was unable to cancel.
When the coalition looked at axing one of the carriers to save money, BAE responded that the Government would still have to pay shipworkers to do nothing for the remaining 12 years of the deal. However, at no point did Mr Cameron’s ministers seek to renegotiate the shipbuilding agreement with BAE, according to the company.
It looks like game, set and match to BAE!
As I said earlier, big contracts are too important for politicians to get involved.
What is also interesting is that despite all these bribes to his friends in heartland constituencies and trade unions, Brown still lost. So we’re all having to pay for the idiot’s bribes and mismanagement!
It’s about time, politicians were made liable for some of their disasterous decisions and purchases.
Why Politicians Should Keep Their Sticky Fingers Out of Government Projects
The aircraft-carrier fiasco is a classic project, where politicians have tried to be all things to all men and quite a few women as well.
Surely, if France can make do with just one carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, then why do we need two. And surely, we should have an Anglo-French aircraft manning both,as quite a few projects between the two countries work well.
But that more affordable option would have been bad for NuLabor in its Scottish heartland.
The Scots are good at many things, but over recent years they have shown that they are not very good at politics with an English dimension or one with a great amount of project mangement.
I’ve just read this piece from Robert Peston’s blog. The highlight for me was a comment from Wee Scamp, who as you see describes himself as a non-voting Scot.
As a non Labour voting Scot I am quite sure that Gordon Brown set up the carrier contract to ensure Scotland – and particularly Glasow – would vote Labour in the May election.
My logic for believing this is quite straightforward. Most importantly, the design of the new carrier is very badly flawed in that they’re not nuclear powered, do not have an angled flight deck and aren’t equipped with either a catapult or arrestor gear. In other words they are limited to using VSTOL and/or helicopters but couldn’t carry a conventional jet and will be limited in range due to their dependence on needing a refuelling tanker or access to dockside refuelling facilities.
In other words, if we really needed these carriers they would have been properly designed. In fact though they are just a job creation exercise and Brown couldn’t have really cared less what they were or weren’t capable of.
Indeed, politically the only error he made was ensuring the contracts can’t be broken. If they had been then both carriers would have been cancelled and the boost to Labour would have been huge. Not surprisingly though he couldn’t even get that right.
Yet again Prudence shows himself to be an even worse Prime Minister than Lord North.
Bank Margins
The margins banks are charging on lending are being criticised. And rightly so!
It’s actually all our fault. We borrow too much to on things like credit cards and always go the conservative route about how we borrow and invest. We also don’t shop around with our banking and change when we should!
So don’t complain about the banks, look for sensible alternatives.
As I’ve said before, I lend money through Zopa. I also know of people, who’ve used the company for a loan. I’ve not heard any complaints yet. So it does appear there are alternatives out there! But be prudent! It’s just a pity that Prudence wasn’t, or we’d all be in a better state.
Sarah Brown is an Optional Extra at £12,800
I do find it very tasteless when former useless Prime Ministers tote their services as speakers on the after-dinner circuit. Books are one thing, as you have the choice about buying them and they may contain some interesting nuggets, but who’d pay Prudence about £64,000 for a speech. Perhaps, an arse-licker of the first level might, but I prefer to kick arses rather than lick them.
What however got me about this story, was that Sarah Brown is an optional extra at £12,800 and she will present a prize for that! Most of the women, I know would consider this a supreme insult. C would be laughing like a drain at the ludicrous nature of it all!
Would a Private Firm Ever Buy Anything with Something Like PFI?
It’s grim reading about the problems the NHS is facing over bloated PFI deals.
No-one with any sense would ever have locked themsaelves into such deals. I’m sure people like Tesco have probably used design, build and maintain for stores and depots, but they wouldn’t have ended up paying six times the cost of the building. They’d have also used standard designs to save building costs. I bet each hospital is very different.
The problem is not with PFI, but with the politicians, civil servants and administrators, who pushed these deal through. In a banana republic, I would be smelling the pungent smell of bungs, bribery and favours. But here it’s just bad economics and incompetence. And who was in charge of the country’s finance at the time? So add this to a list of his big mistakes, like pensions, banks, renewing Trident etc. Gordon Brown must rank as the worst Prime Minister any country in Europe has ever had. let lone the UK!
The Anonymous Widower 