What's the betting that none of them receive a bail-out cheque from Mandy. Unemployment figures spread across the country will not have the same effect on local voting as say, erm, a large car maker?
Public sector managers see their first duty as covering each other’s backs while paying lip service to hospital patients, school pupils, crime victims and children at risk.
And the only response from the likes of Haringey children’s welfare supremo Sharon Shoesmith and sulky Jacqui Smith is a glare with resentment – as if THEY are the victims.
What we are seeing today is the arrogance of a buck-passing, secretive political class who see criticism as tantamount to treason.
That’s how the Home Secretary justifies her department’s anti-terror squad rummaging through the love letters of an innocent man whose “crime” was to expose her ministerial incompetence.
This raid, seen initially by gleeful Labour as an embarrassment for the Tories, has blown up in their faces.
Now it threatens to overshadow the Queen’s Speech to Parliament on Wednesday and could signal the end for Speaker Martin.
Gordon Brown should apologise quickly – before voters decide he is a ruthless control freak willing to accept any abuse of power to harm his opponents and stay in office.
The Sunday Times is reporting that the Electoral Commission is to investigate whether, in breach of electoral law, Ed Balls continued working for Gordon Brown while on the payroll of the Smith Institute charity before becoming an MP.
The government has decided to set up a holding company, UK Financial Investments Ltd, to own and manage all the shares in banks and building societies the government is accumulating at enormous expense to the taxpayer.
Why doesn’t the government just say they will hold the shares direct but leave the management of each bank to get on with it without Ministerial involvement? I guess they have ruled that option out for two reasons. Firstly, they do want to intervene, but need an intermediary or conduit to do it quietly. What better than a well paid quango company acting as the buffer and the prod to the banks? Secondly, they probably reckon the left in their party would not put up with a policy of complete non intervention. What is the point of a nationalised bank, the left would correctly ask, if it does the same things, imposes the same charges, withdraws the same facilities and pays the same bonuses as a private sector bank? UKFI allows some flexibility when answering the left’s criticisms behind closed doors. The plan is to have studied ambiguity, so the left can travel in hope, whilst markets are reassured.
The government has already had to modify three of its proposed interventions. It stated at the time of the original deals with RBS, HBOS and Lloyds that there would be no dividends, no big bonuses and maintained lending at 2007 levels. Now we learn there can be dividends once the Preference chares are repaid – a lower threshold to jump. There can be bonuses to senior people not on the Board – a good reason for some to resign directorships or to refuse them. There seems to be some retreat from the idea of artificially boosting lending to the levels of the boom, when there could be a shortage of takers for new loans on offer.
Criminals on probation have committed 120 murders in the past TWO years. I do wonder how the do-gooders in the Howard League for Penal Reform and their fellow apologists for violent criminals can sleep at night.How many of these people had been released early by the government, a government too mean to spend the billions in tax revenues purloined from us on new prisons?
John Hutton has become the first defence secretary to back a French plan for a European army, branding those who dismiss it as “pathetic”.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Sunday Times, he said: “I think we’ve got to be pragmatic about those things. Where it can help, we should be part of it.”
Traditional lessons in history, geography, drama and music could be cut from primary schools amid fears timetables are too "cluttered".
Under the move, schools would be encouraged to merge subjects together. It will give schools more time to explore themes such as healthy lifestyles, multiculturalism and personal development.
You have been sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, GO!
"I want you guys on the green," said the man from the Labour Party. "There will be six or seven guys with guns who will keep you away from her. You may be shot and then it won't be my problem."
In the best Stalinist manner, DEFRA informs us that there has been 'A Record British wheat harvest' and further that "Results show a record wheat harvest of 17.5 million tonnes, an increase of 32 per cent on 2007, mainly caused by a record yield of 8.4 tonnes per hectare, combined with a 13 per cent increase in wheat area to 2.1 million hectares. Excellent planting conditions in autumn 2007, as well as strong cereal prices and the reduction to 0 per cent set-aside, contributed to the high wheat area planted".
SHE was supposed to be Labour's secret weapon, but Sarah Brown ended up being so "secret" yesterday that no-one from the press was allowed to ask her any questions.
It was clear from the moment she arrived in Cardenden to campaign on behalf of the Labour Party that she was not there to speak to the ordinary members of the public. The Prime Minister's wife was instead there to be seen to speak to ordinary members of the public.
Then came the most extraordinary piece of control freakery of the day. "I want you guys on the green," said the man from the Labour Party. "There will be six or seven guys with guns who will keep you away from her. You may be shot and then it won't be my problem."
Gordon Brown claims that the expropriation was necessary because Iceland planned to default on British Icesave accounts. How he got this impression is a mystery. Iceland's finance minister made clear in meetings with the British authorities that depositors would be paid. The Prime Minister, Geir Haarde, said in public: “We will immediately review the matter together to find a mutually satisfactory solution. We are determined to make sure that the current financial crisis does not overshadow the important and longstanding friendship that we have with the UK.”
Brown's response? To seize the UK assets, not of the bank that ran Icesave, but of a wholly unrelated bank, Kaupthing, thereby collapsing it.
Follow the money my mind keeps telling me, follow the money. Where does government money flow. It flows not only to Local Authorities, but to NGO's, to Quangos, and to the thousands of shady 'Charities' and 'Registered Companies' that NuLab have pumped taxpayers funds into.
And why has Brown gone for Nationalisation of Banks rather than just pumping in liquidity as the experts have advised?
Then on Wednesday of last week a single act added luminescence to that dust ball. The use of Terror legislation to seize the assets of foreign banks.
The questions have been asked, why? The press has been speculative, the government dismissive, the opposition parties silent.
It was that single event that triggered a thought, that misuse of terror legislation that made me ask why? When terror legislation is used, the government can claim that it was invoked in the national interest, it can suggest that for 'security' reasons, we must never know the real truth.
What was the urgency within the Cabinet Office and the Treasury that an 8 man delegation needed to visit Iceland to put the strong arm on the Icelandic government.
What is the truth here? Well we dont know, but we will ask the question:
Is it possible that government or corrupt officials have been running for the past 10 years a massive money laundering scam with taxpayers funds through NGO's, Quango's, Local Authorities, Charities and 'Registered Companies', a scam so big that the financial crisis was going to scupper and expose it, that the beneficiaries were going to lose the money or even worse get found out, or was it that receivers and auditors would be able to unravel it, and that only Nationalisation and the use of terror legislation could keep it under wraps.
