Tearjerking Hypocrisy

Who said this and when?

And so here I am - working for this incredible country, while trying as far as possible to give my children an ordinary childhood

Some people have been asking why I haven't served my children up for spreads in the papers

And my answer is simple

My children aren't props; they're people

Clue here.

Today we get this.

The PM has been meeting people all day. But when we walk into the living room of the flat 'above the shop', there is someone else waiting patiently for his help - a small boy wearing a pair of cartoon pyjamas. 'The wheel's come off,' says John Brown, five next week, handing over a Transformers car. 'Fix it, Dad.'

Brown puts his jacket on the coffee table, where a stack of official papers are ready for tomorrow. Then, obligingly, he gets down on all fours on the carpet, his tie flapping, and searches for the missing wheel.

Stunning, but why should be surprised by the King of Brownies, supported by the Prince of Darkness

Brown is La-la - Official

Psychologist Lucy Beresford tells Daily Politics Gordon Brown is 'deeply insecure' and bringing Peter Mandelson back was "Freudian" bordering on "self-mutilating behaviour".


BBC NEWS | Programmes | Daily Politics | Brown 'psychologically insecure'

More La-La from Gordon

According to Gordon who was speaking from his home in La-La land

... he was working internationally to reduce the price of oil, and that he'd like to see the winter fuel allowance higher, were it not for the need to balance expenditure.“I’d like the winter allowance, frankly, to be higher, but we’ve got to balance off the need to do other things such as increase expenditure on the health service and meet all our targets on the health service.

“I’m trying to get the oil price down, and get the fall passed on directly to people at the petrol pumps and then on to gas and electricity bills. “We are determined that just as people pass on the rise, they pass on the fall when the oil price falls.“We want to see more stability – I’m talking to OPEC members and telling them that they must not cut oil production now…they must act in a statesman like way to help the rest of the world by having a stable reduction in the oil price.

Translation. I'm about to try and bribe the voters but I've just found out I left my wallet at home so you'll have to wait a few days. After Saving the world from Financial Meltdown, I am now sorting out the final problem of Oil Prices over which I have no control, I think God consults me and my Beatification is now complete.

Men in white coats are now talking to the Prime Minister to explain to him he is no longer in control of the future of the UK.

Update: Spectator has this as Gordon's Canute moment

Politics Home

MoD computer hard drive missing

Stunning a year after the major loss of Child Benefit data our government agencies and their contractors are still holding unencrypted data on portable disks that are either easily stolen or mislaid. In this case it is serving soldiers, many of whom will be abroad with little or no access to check if their id's are being used fraudulently.

What are they thinking about. Have they no brain, have they not ready anything about secure holding of data. Data such as this should be encrypted from birth to death and never stored unencrypted in any form for any reason.

It's not that difficult but it does require decent systems and processes. These are obviously missing despite the warnings and reports.

Yet again we have the same problem and yet again still bonus's will be paid and heads will not roll. Shocking and a disgrace to our serving forces.

BBC NEWS | UK | MoD computer hard drive missing

Join Gordon Brown in his La-La Land

The linked article in the Times is a must read for you to understand the fantasy La-La land our supposed Prime Minister is living in.

He is currently touring the country explaining to us how he has single-handily cured the world of all its financial ill's whilst inanely grinning at anyone who asks him a tricky question such as "What about the coming Recession?".

Now the Spectator suggests it's not even his own plan but comes from the G7/IMF World Bank Leaders.

He has obviously been told to look cheery in the face of the current crisis but his inability to work out what is appropriate during current times is beyond belief. This was again demonstrated at PMQ's this week when he managed to destroy any sense of the crisis staring him in the face by his inappropriate response to David Cameron's last question, when he was accompanied in his supposed joke by the braying donkeys of his supposed Government

As Gordon fêtes his five year 500 billion "stability and restructuring" plan, World Stock markets are dropping like stones for the seventh day in a row and countries, companies and our countrymen are going bankrupt at an alarming rate. Soon Gordon will not be able to sleep for his phone ringing as another company goes bankrupt, will he be laughing for much longer.

His inability to understand that the UK is uniquely badly placed to face this recession is now becoming a joke around the world. His belief that under his 10 years of stewardship of the economic well-being of the country he created a masterpiece immune to boom and bust has collapsed around him like the walls of Jericho but he remains convinced that it was nothing to do with him.

He has pissed the wealth of this nation down a drain of spending that we could not sustain whilst not even managing to sort out those problems his government promised to cure, back 11 years ago in the heady days of 1997. Now he is attempting to portray himself as Moses returned to deliver us from this Crisis of his own doing.

I am now seriously worried about our former great country, we have a leader who can't lead and is in a state of beatification, believing himself the great leader and curer of all ills, when in fact he is verging on delusional.

Our only hope, up here in Scotland, seems to be that Alex Salmond can bring forward his promise of Independence and we can lock Gordon away down in England. Time to vote SNP or have I now gone La-La as well.

We must lead the world to financial stability | Gordon Brown - Times Online

MSPs approve tartan register bill

Just so you know how MSP's spend their valuable time at Holyrood and how well our money is spent in this time of Crisis. Maybe this is why Gordon Brown has an inane grin on his face.

Surely this sort of thing should be done by the manufacturers and makes of these products and not at our expense.

BBC NEWS | Scotland | MSPs approve tartan register bill

Aberdeen Schools - £120m scheme 'funded by Iceland'

The BBC are reporting that the current project to refurbish 10 Aberdeen schools is being funded by money from a collapsed Icelandic Bank.

The Icelandic government seized control of Landsbanki earlier this week. So far the council has not commented on the impact of the Landsbanki collapse on the project or the extent of the bank's involvement in the deal.

Aberdeen City Council signed a public private partnership agreement with a consortium in February. The deal involved the consortium designing, building, financing and operating the schools over 30 years. Under the project, two new secondaries and seven new primaries will be built, with another primary being refurbished.

Aberdeen council are of course so cash strapped they couldn't actually afford to have money invested in the banks unlike other councils in Scotland who may have lost substantial amounts of money.

What the impact of this is on the schools and on current schools, some of which are under construction, remains to be seen.

BBC NEWS Scotland North East/N Isles £120m scheme 'funded by Iceland'

Gordon's (call me Joe) Five Year Stability and Restructuring Plan

Tomorrow at 7am Gordon or his sidekick Alistair will announce his 5 Year Stability and Restructuring Plan. This plan had better be good. But it is a huge gamble and is a result of the ten years of Gordon and Labour's stewardship of our economy.

As Damien Reece says in his article

Of course, gambling on banks could produce spectacular returns but at least Darling and Brown seem, finally, to have realised that they can no longer sit on their hands and wait for the financial crisis to abate. But they may have severely underestimated how much a US-style bail-out will cost.

The IMF provided a rather shocking figure to answer that question yesterday: £115bn – equivalent to the entire health budget or a one-off payment of around £2,000 for every man woman and child in the country.

If ever there were a finer illustration of how catastrophically exposed Britain is to the financial crisis, this must be it. The UK followed the mantra of “spend first, think later” for so many years that we forgot it would all have to be paid off eventually.

Few if any countries are immune to the crisis, but Britain is facing a proportionally bigger bill than most, largely for one specific reason: the regulation system set up by Gordon Brown in 1997 did not clamp down hard enough on those responsible for the current crisis.

The final bill for this manic clean-up operation will be enormous and future generations will end up paying, not just us. But this is no time to quibble – it is time to tackle this crisis head-on and put the building blocks in place for an eventual recovery.

Let us hope that Gordon and Alistair have for once got the numbers and decisions right.

We need more than Darling’s £50bn gamble to stave off recession - Telegraph

Don't Panic - We're Doomed?

Martin Wolf writing in the Financial Times has the following to say

As John Maynard Keynes is alleged to have said: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” I have changed my mind, as the panic has grown. Investors and lenders have moved from trusting anybody to trusting nobody. The fear driving today’s breakdown in financial markets is as exaggerated as the greed that drove the opposite behaviour a little while ago. But unjustified panic also causes devastation. It must be halted, not next week, but right now.

That's great but what do you do if your savings are in Icesave?

All I can say at the moment is that Alistair Darling had better pull his finger out tomorrow morning and announce something that will stop the panic and not just another bit of dithering.

By the way who does Captain Mainwaring remind you of?

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - It is time for comprehensive rescues of financial systems

42-day detention dropped as unworkable

What a waste of all our time and money. This unworkable bill will be dropped just as Gordon Brown will be dropped at the next election.

The only good thing is that Gordon Brown wasted so much of his political leverage on this bill. He has only achieved much bad feeling amongst his own party. This was supposed to be the clunker showing the strength of his hold on Labour.

It is typical of Labour that this bad news is buried on "Brown" Monday.

42-day detention dropped as unworkable - Times Online

The Curse of Jonah hits Mandy

According to the Sun

PETER Mandelson was recovering this morning after being rushed to hospital last night with a mystery health crisis.

The new Business Secretary was taken ill as he dined with health minister Lord Darzi.

Sources refuse to confirm it was a heart-related condition.

He was whisked to St Mary's hospital, Paddington, from the west London restaurant.

Today government sources refused to give details of Lord Mandy's illness.

But a source said: "It isn't life threatening."

Lord Mandelson was having dinner with health minister and world-renowned surgeon Lord Darzi to discuss NHS reform.

The fact that the internationally-renowned surgeon was with him and unable to assist suggests it was a serious attack.

Sources say the Business Secretary will have to return to hospital for treatment.

But the scare means he will miss the inaugural meeting of the new National Economic Council this morning.

Update 09:50: According to the BBC he will need an operation.

Peter Mandelson's late night dash to hospital | The Sun |News

What's a Mandelson

According to David Cameron the definition of a Mandelson in Conservative circles is the time it takes between meeting Mandelson and him being rude about Gordon Brown.