TIME TO REFORM THE LOBBY

According to Mandy's latest missive from behind the firewall:

“Mad, bad, dangerous and beyond hope of redemption… flawed, lacking perspective and having a paranoia about him… He’s like something out of the mafiosi… He’s aggressive, brutal…there’s no one to match Gordon for someone who articulates high principles while practising the lowest skulduggery.”

Now I'll leave it up to Guido to ask why Blair didn't remove him but it is clear that the Lobby as some serious questions to answer.

If you don't know, the Lobby is that group of journalists who hang around Parliament with their passes and the subsequent privileges - including the subsidised bars.

Westminster is known as the village and if you're in it - even just drinking in one of the pubs regularly - you become part of that village. Two-shags affair for instance was talked about in the bars and pubs for at least a month before the papers reported on it. And there are still things I heard ten years ago that are still verboten to the wider world.

Now couple this with patronage.

The Lobby is dependent on patronage. They all go as a huddle to the various government briefings, get asides from SPaDs and "insiders" - usually the minister themselves or his head of press - and generally get their copy from inside the Palace and the deparments.

Think about it - when was the last time there was a genuine exclusive from the Lobby?

There hasn't been one, because of patronage.

Patronage allows the politicians to control the Lobby. Once patronage is gone, it isn't long before you would be shunted to the local government desk by the editor.

So it needs to be reformed.

After all the Clegarons whitter on about transparency then surely this should also apply to the Lobby.

Now there are genuine cases where anonymity should be protected - hell there were a couple of stories I got which were dependent on hiding the leaker - but at the end of the day you have to ask...

Everyone knew that Gordo was a loon - why did it take Guido and the bloggers to push it fully into the public's eye? And why did the Lobby not examine this as it happened rather than allow the likes of Mandy to come out with comments like above unchallenged?

DEFENCE

Courtesy of Channel 4 Fact check

“The defence budget has been rising every year…. The only time the defence budget has been cut was in the 10 years before 1997″

Gordon Brown, Questions to the prime minister, 10 March, 2010

POLITICAL FOOTBALL

BBC turned down Gordon Brown for Match of the Day 2 appearance

Hahahahahahhaha - Brown's team will stoop to anything. However, I do think the majority of MOTD2 viewers would have been quite annoyed having him interrupting the analysis of that weekend's game

Pic ht: Awightman

BUDGET TIME

It's been announced. 24 March.

Usually the Chancellor's perogative but there you go.

So election should be 6 May so what sort of manifesto budget will we see?

Whatever Darling has up his sleeves, guaranteed that the budget will not be for the good of the country but for the political good of the Labour party.

Expect to see promises, promises, promises, just enough to take the economic narrative and control it whilst trying to squeeze out the Tories.

Should be fun but be warned, whatever Darling has to say at the dispatch box, there will be his helpers pickpocketing you as you watch.

THAI CLASS

From Taiwanese news, wait till about 30 secs in...



HT: Dizzy

Fairs fair

“Labour needs to ensure that the election is not seen as a referendum on the Government.”

Labour Briefing note

Erm, so what is it?

YEs I know it is YABR* for Labour but what is an election if not a referendum on a Government and its actions and policies?

It's an old saw but it is there for a reason - "Oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them".

How exactly is Gordo going to persuade voters that the last 13 years haven't happened? The mind boggles.

To quote John Redwood:

1. Why did he tax pension funds, and why are so few private sector funds now open for new members?

2. Why did he sell gold at the bottom of the market?

3. Why did he get so little improved service for all the billions he gave to public services in the last ten years?

4. Why did he allow such a huge build up of public debt before the Crunch?

5. Why did he approve the Basel bank regulations and the decisions of his new Regulator, which encouraged banks to overextend their balance sheets?

6. Why has he presided over a higher rate of inflation than target on average? Why did he change the inflation target to CPI from the commonly used RPI?

7. Why did he put so much money at risk in state supported banks, when there were cheaper options available to get us through the crisis?

8. Why has he allowed large banking bonuses to be paid by state subsidised banks?

9. Why has the balance of payments been so weak on his watch?

10. Why has manufacturing output fallen under Labour? Why has the UK economy grown so little since 1997?

11. Why did the UK economy stay in recession for longer than other major economies , and why is it so far making such a weak recovery, if all the actions the PM took were right?

I know Brown hates to answer any question truthfully, if at all, but these are teh quesstions that I would love for him to answer, let alone the few thousand more such as ID cards, Europe, Iraq/Iran, etc...

*Yet Another Bloody Relaunch

Pic ht: GOT

BULLY

PREVENTING and tackling bullying remains a priority for this government. We have committed around £3.7 million this year to anti-bullying programmes.

Gordon Brown, 13 December 2009

ht: Old Holborn

PROTECT AND SURVIVE

Some very important information prior to the outbreak of hostilities...






HT: GOT

IT'S ECONOMICS STUPID

Treasury loses as top earners dodge 50p tax

Lord Myners cast doubt on whether the Treasury would recieve the £1.13 billion expected for 2010

High earners will cost the public purse hundreds of millions of pounds through tax dodges as they avoid the new 50p rate of income tax, a minister indicated yesterday.

Lord Myners, the City Minister, said that the Treasury had “significantly reduced” its estimate of the revenue to be earned from the historic change

Erm...well...duh!

Anyone who has an inkling of how tax revenue works could have told you that.

Y'see there is a thing called the tipping point. It is the point where the cost-benefit of tax avoidance outweighs paying the tax.

And it works in reverse - if tax is low enough then there is no cost-benefit to avoid paying the tax.

In other words, if you tax at an appropriate level you can get a nice sychronicity where the tax payer is happy to pay and the Treasury gets its income.

(NB: This excludes the seriously stinking rich for the most part as they are almost all habitual tax avoiders)

So if you tax too high, income goes down. If you tax just right then government income actuallly increases.

Guess which way the Scottish Historian and his neighbour went?

BUY NOKIA

Gordon Brown will give evidence to the Iraq Inquiry before the general election, the BBC understands.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahhaha...ah

Buy Nokia shares, there'll be a few replacements needed at Mr Chicken's house!



( yeah I know the pic is of an i-phone but images used are for illustrative purposes only...er or summat!)

GORDO's BOTTLE

I am amused by the latest revelations from Former Labour General Secretary Peter Watt that Gordo bottled the election.

Not only did they have 1.5m leaflets printed but had a fleet of limos circling Parliament Square to whisk ministers away to campaign.

However, anyone who was in the village or knew people in the village in 97 have their own stories to tell about the farce that was the election that wasn't.

For instance I know of at least four PR professionals who had already started being paid retainers and had been granted absence of leave for the election.

Also there was one poor constituency that was ordered the morning of the expected announcement to ditch targetted leaflets and posters that had costed them £100,000 to produce.

And that constituency happened to have a cabinet minister as its MP!

TOGs

So fair thee well Sir Terrence. Enjoy the semi-retirement

Just one thing to note tho' - you'd think the Gord could count after being Chancellor of the Exchequer.

In his vote for me pleeeease,...I mean warm, message to Sir Tel, he said: ""Five decades at the very top of British broadcasting is a towering, indeed an unparalleled achievement."

Um, Sir Terry started on the beeb in 1969 - which is 40 years, four decades, and took on the breakfast show in 1972.

Ah well.

JONAH CURSE

On a lighter note Guido Fawkes does the occasional amusing "Curse of Jonah" about the death-touch of Gordon Brown but he seems to have missed a very high profile hit -

David Beckham's football academy in south-east London is "very likely" to close by the end of the year, site owners AEG Europe have confirmed

BBC News 27 November 2009


10 January 2008

(ok I know Beckham is claiming that it is to go mobile but heh)

GORDON

I am not going to comment on Brown's latest gaffe as I don't think an attack on a one-eyed person who writes in felt-tip is fair.

What I do find interesting is that Labour have really lost it. Mandy has led the charge by accusing the Sun of acting with a political interest (NSS).

The old Mandy would never have done that. Indeed the old Mandy would have realised that if Brown was to call and apologise then there would be an attack on him and the call would be recorded.

Whatever your personal views on Labour in the last 12-15 years, there is no denying that for the first 10 years the political machine was incredible.

From getting the public to think of the Tories as sleeze to avoiding the same damage during Teflon's era was with one of the best political messaging management teams ever.

Now though that's gone and like The Office, I am now beginning to cringe at each disaster: - from this letter, to looking bored and disinterested at the Festival of Remembrance to not even bowing at the Cenotaph.

BNP pt2

A quick appendum to all the BNP stuff. As I wrote below, BNP support is coming from Labour as this YouGov/Channel 4 poll shows.

So what you going to do Gordon?



H/T: To Political Betting for putting this up again

Trident

So Gordo is offering to cut one of the Trident subs then?

Great...if it doesn't affect the UK's defence capacity...

But this is Gordo - calamity Brown...

So it probably will...

Oh and cut the bull, this is an economic decision in reality not an issue about proliferation. No country that now has nukes will even consider giving them up.