So much for BJfBW

Brown’s promise of British Jobs for British Workers has been proven to be as useless as Labour’s economic policy.

A foreign company getting a British contract is OK if they generate local jobs.

But bringing in hundreds of foreign contractors on a floating barge is not only immoral but is also socially destructive.

Labour’s economic policy – keeping wages low through social dumping – has been exposed again at its worst.

Thankfully, UKIP have raised this issue – the Tories need to give their support to British Workers too… Or UKIP will do particularly well in the Euro elections.

In this recession, there is no room for complacency. Politicians need to defend our jobs – that is not protectionism, as both Tim Montgomerie (on Conservative Home) and the odious Lord Mandy incorrectly state, but is an economic necessity.

Good luck to the strikers. Revolutions never happen with rhetoric – only with action.

Stuck on the Marie Celeste

Got the 7.50 Stranraer (w. Scotland) to Belfast Stena HSS ferry.

Half an hour out, a lorry rolled and knocked the stern door out. Its trailer was left dangling; the driver had to jump …

We turned back and are now awaiting a crane, which will take another few hours. No one can get off the ferry as its exit is blocked.

Can’t blame Labour for this one.

Most passengers are asleep … It’s like the Marie Celeste.

Oh, it is a bit like the Government then.

Jiabao and Putin ‘tell it as it is’ at Depression Davos

China’s premier Wen Jiabao and Russia’s Vladimir Putin today used Davos as a platform to blame the US and UK for causing the embryonic depression by:

- irresponsible macroeconomic policies

- overexpansion and greed.

This was a damning and accurate critique – after all, as Prof Niall Ferguson has pointed out, the Great Depression in the 30s started in America too.

Slumdog Millionaire – brilliant

Had a bit of time free in Glasgow before meeting a colleague for a curry, so went to see Slumdog Millionaire. I couldn’t resist it, being an admirer of India and Indian people in particular.

The film is a feelgood movie for these tough economic times, which will make you smile, laugh, cry, and bring joy.

Set first in the Mumbai slums and later in a glistening call centre, the film tackles many tough issues – such as anti-Muslim pogroms, child exploitation, gangsterism – and also emotions such as love.

And yet it shows, in this depression, we must not shirk our poverty-reduction and international development responsibilities.

Indians’ entrepreneursialism and innovativeness will help them much – but so can we by continuing and deepening our trade, rather than shifting towards protectionism.

Dev Patel is superb as Jamal, as are all the kids and other teenage actors. Daringly shot in both English and vernacular Urdu/Hindi (with subtitles), it has a vibe running through it which makes it quite unique for an Oscar nominated, blockbuster film. Its central characters are Indian Muslims – none of the usual stereotypes here.

It is the best of Indian and British brought together and is well worth seeing.

How to eradicate Parliamentary sleaze

The allegations against Lords Taylor et al, while they think it was a perk of the job, signal the need to extirpate sleaze from parliament. How else to recover the electorate’s trust in politicians?

First, no cash from lobbyists and no dodgy directorships or consultancy.

In the Commons it’s worse. Ken Clarke, for instance, has tobacco links – directorships in the past, and consultancy now.

One way to stop this immoral and unethical practice, and the stunning conflicts of interest, is to ban frontbenchers in the Commons from having outside jobs.

If this results in the loss of a few frontbench MPs who are using their positions to rake in cash from ‘outside interests’, then it is a price worth paying.

As Labour melts down, more economic illiteracy from Lord Mandy

A stink of scandal hangs over the Lords – but it is not as pungent as the stink of economic illiteracy (and political naively) emanating from Lord Mandy.

Whilst he is happy for women’s jobs in retail to be sacrificed to the Brownian project, he is desperately trying to save UK auto, with its collapsing sales and market value, with a car bailout. To save some marginal seats…

Doesn’t he understand that the opinion polls – with those remarkable double-digit Tory leads – show that people don’t wish a return to the sclerosis of the socialist 70s? Or, worse, the depression of the 30s?

Labour should be easing its burdens on the dynamic SME sector, such as high-technology based firms, not bailing out UK auto.

Does he not care that never mind Woolies and other retailers, the high-technology sector is under considerable strain – with many likely failures, due to the withdrawal of credit by banks?

This is why the people wish Labour out NOW. I can’t blame them: can you?

++ Barratts and PriceLess into administration ++

Another 5,500 jobs are under threat as Deloitte has been appointed as the Administrator for both the Barratts shoe chain and for the PriceLess chain.

Brown’s undermining of the economy has sadly claimed yet more victims.

He can blame the “credit crunch” or the “downturn” all he likes, but at the end of the day we are, at best, in a Recession and, at worst, in a Depression if the economy contracts by 10 per cent from peak to trough.

It looks like a Depression is what we are in, and if Brownian (dis)economics had not created a boom, and later a depressive bust, by encouraging the UK population to borrow unsustainable levels of debt, we would not be in this mess…

…and workers in Barratts and PriceLess would not be fearing for their jobs.

Broadsheet readers most against Labour

Another Opinion Poll Monitor nugget from the recent IPSOS-Mori poll in The Times, Jan 20, 2009 which showed a 14% Tory lead over Labour (Con 45% (+5), Lab 30% (-5), LD 17%).

Whilst 38% of readers of tabloids (so inevitably skewed by The Mirror with its vast readership) would vote Labour, 44% would vote Conservative.

Meanwhile, the broadsheet readers favour the Tories by 45% to 27% for Labour.

Doesn’t that tell us a lot?  It was the broadsheet readers, after all, who put Bliar in in 1997!

++ 2,500 jobs to go at Corus ++

Corus, formerly British Steel and one of our biggest industrial employers with 24,000 jobs in the UK is rumoured, according to the BBC, to be cutting two and a half thousand UK jobs.

Although the unions deny knowledge, an official announcement will be made at 9.30 on Monday.

These job losses at Corus, also owned by Tata of Jaguar Landrover infamy, are not surprising given the mess of the economy made by Brown – and the depression we now find ourselves in. So much for the weak pound helping exporters!

More families will suffer thanks to Brownian (dis)economics.

Labour peer allegations

The allegations that have been made against 4 Labour peers are disturbing.

They are accused of agreeing to accept money to change legislation.

There should at least be a police investigation. If these allegations are true, we need justice.

If true, it’s Labour being true to form, as usual.

Lord Myners should admit Brown is to blame too

Lord Myners, the City Minister, (another one of Brown’s scapeGOATS (Government Of All the TalentS), has today announced that the banks are to blame for the Brownian Depression.

The BBC’s, at least, now calling it a Recession.  But that’s not good enough – it is, in fact, a Depression, but that won’t be official for a while.

So why is Myners wrong to blame the Banks?  Clearly, they’ve done some silly things – but what happened to the role of Government and the Regulators as overseers of the banking sector?

Brown was so out of touch and so unstrategic, with his Brownian (dis)economics, – stoking up a Boom (and thus a Bust) on a mountain of debt, – to win a few elections (the 2nd and 3rd Labour terms), that he let the banks do whatever they wished.

What of the FSA?  Ah, forget it, its head, Lord Adair Twister (sorry Turner), was one of Brown’s Great and Good who chaired commissions, e.g. on healthcare.

As is Dick Lambert, head of the CBI, (who wrote the notorious Lambert Report on innovation), and … even old Lord Jones of Brum was brought into the big tent, another scapeGOAT.

The banks are easy scapegoats (notice, lower case) but it’s Brown who’s to blame for it all rising to a Boom and crashing down to a Bust.

They can try to blame the banks all they like, but the buck stops at Number 10.  

Now, let’s get us out of this Depression, by having some sensible policies which don’t involve wasting £12billion on VAT and stoking up more public debt to bail out banks.

Capitalism, entrepreneurship, and innovation are the solution.  Not socialism.

Electronic goods prices to rise

We learn that the price of electronic goods may rise, thanks to the strength of the Yen.

Solution to that? Easy. Don’t buy electronic goods until the Japanese manufacturers or UK retailers discount them.

After all, these are non-essential, aren’t ‘needs’, have elastic demand … And you know what happens when you wait – big price cuts.

Brown really did Talk Down the banks!

Over at Coffee House, James Forsyth has an absolutely shocking graphic showing the market value of the banks in 2007 and today, in 2009, which I reproduce below:

 

The Brown Effect (the Sub-Prime Minister)

 

 

All I can say is that it doesn’t help when the Sub-Prime Minister of the UK, Mr Gordon Brown, talks down the banks with his pronouncements (and policies) about bailouts, toxic assets/debts, and bad banks.

“A weak currency arises from a weak economy which in turn is the result of a weak Government” – Gordon Brown.

Edmund Conway, on p 21 of today’s Telegraph, quotes Brown when he criticised the Tories in 1992 at the time of the disastrous Major/Clarke/Lament era…

Brown was right to say this then, and the quote is even more apposite today.

It’s just a pity he didn’t live by it, and has made even bigger mistakes than the Tories did then.

Today we are officially Recessionary

The official figures released today show two consecutive quarters of economic decline or contraction.

Which will stop the ‘downturn’ lie …

… But also remind us what a sorry state Brown has got us in.