There’s one real conservative in the Tory Party ‘top 5′

ConservativeHome highlights that the currently most powerful Tory in the land, Boris (more powerful than even David Cameron), is a true conservative because he has condemned Labour’s new 50p tax band.

In the mania of Brownomics and the lunacy of Clownomics (K Clarke/ GBrown), the 50p tax rate is all right because a certain proportion of the electorate think it is right to “tax the rich”, when actually what they don’t know is that it will disincentivise entrepreneurs and wealth creators and make the UK (and, indirectly, said electors) poorer.

Boris is right to say (in today’s Telegraph) that the Tories should have opposed the 45p band. A failure to oppose the wealth-destroying and job-destroying 50p tax band will be a failure of leadership is one that we will all suffer as a consequence.

So how much will the UK economy contract in 2009?

In this week’s budget, Alistair Darling based his predictions and assumptions upon a contraction in the UK economy of 3.5 per cent in 2009.

And yet, the UK economy has actually contracted by 1.9 per cent already in the first three months of the year. Which means that we are more likely to see a contraction for 2009 of 7 – 9% (or worse):

 

Source: BBC News website

In fact, the recession is even more painful already than the recession of the 1990s. So what planet is Alistair Darling on? Why has he launched a budget based on a false premise and two days later he has been exposed as using dubious economic forecasts?

The truth is that the Chancellor simply does not have a clue. He is as bankrupt as this country is.

A shameful budget by a discredited Chancellor

I was in the gym during my lunchbreak – no one else was there at that time, so I switched the TV over to the Budget and caught most of Darling’s speech and all of Cameron’s reply.  It’s the first time I’ve done a one-and-a-half hour workout, but it was compulsive viewing.  

Compulsive because of the shocks. The 50 per cent tax rate. The public finances and the £606 billion debt over a few years. The paltry measures designed for Labour to win – or at least squeak through – the next general election.

John Redwood has highlighted in his speech and on his blog that this was the Damian Mc Bride Memorial Budget, which through, “Bank nationalisation, a violent cycle, and grotesque excess in public spending,” has decimated the public finances.

All in all, it was a shameful budget by a discredited Chancellor. Labour has presided over a dreadful economic collapse – the inevitable result of the boom-and-bust policies that are Brownian (dis)economics.

In order to pay for the bank bailouts and associated largesse, we are all going to suffer. Darling said ‘we have to do something’ but it is not clear that the billions he committed to his ‘measures’ will do very much. In fact, it is difficult to see how any of these measures would actually stimulate the economy.

So what we have is not only a discredited Chancellor and his Sub-Prime Minister (don’t get me started about the Second-Home Secretary and the rest of them) who have created an economic disaster. But who also don’t know how they can possibly get us out of it because they have dug us deeper.

There were measures there for jobs and houses, but they won’t do much to stop the devastation.

And the economic predictions were based on cloud-cuckoo-land assumptions that the economy will all be rosy in a few years’ time. After the election, when we have to make tough decisions to get Labour back in to keep making a mess of things…

… while the signals are being sent to the wealth-creators and innovators that they’ll be paying for much of the tax spend required to pay off the debt …

… which will naturally send many of them away to sunnier climes with lower tax rates … 

And, when the rest of us (assuming you, like me, aren’t considering moving abroad) are left here, it will be our taxes – if we have one of the few jobs that are left, after the job-creators go and many of the other jobs are taxed out of existence – and our children’s taxes (if there are any jobs left then) that pay for Labour’s big mistakes.

Now it’s 2.1 million unemployed … And as for the budget …

The unemployment figures out Today, perfectly timed for the budget, show that they rose further until February to 2.1 million.

That’s what you get for almost 12 years of Labour misrule. That’s the inevitable result of Brownian (dis)economics.

And as for the budget … We shall see later …

How many more skeletons in the Labour closet?

The skeletons are coming out of the Labour closet and it’s not pretty. As a result, it’s hardly surprising that two opinion polls this weekend give the Tories a lead of 17 – 19%. The G20 bounce, if there every was one, has deflated thanks to McBride and the general stench of sleaze around the Labour Government. It’s the ‘final nail in Brown’s coffin’, says the Daily Mail. Check out the neat graphic from the Mail – I link to its url below, rather than reproduce copyrighted material:

Jacqui Smith’s scams and the Greengate affair have hardly helped. Nor have the Metropolitan Police’s handling of the G20: the RUC became the highly respected PSNI through the ‘Patten report’ – maybe Patten should facilitate the abolition of the police-state-politicised Met with something more supportable?

Yet, there are more skeletons to come and it simply will not be nice. Another year or so, though, and this Labour Government will be history.

Labour poll ratings collapse again. Here we go…

Conservative Home has details of the new Sunday Telegraph poll which puts the Tories 17 points ahead of Labour; and Labour, at 26%, only 5 points ahead of the Lib Dems.  So Labour has a 5 point lead over the Lib Dems, whereas at the 2005 general election they were about 3 points clear of the Conservatives.

Source: Conservative Home

It just goes to show that the Great British Public have had enough of Gordon Brown, Jacqui Smith, Damian McBride, and the whole rotten Labour lot.  It’s time for a chance and, while Labour might pick up a few points again, it is clear now that Labour is in for a serious kicking in next year’s General Election.

After all, while the Lib Dems are benefiting in terms of gains, it would still put Mr Cameron into Downing Street with a sizeable majority. Time for Mr Brown maybe to think about stepping down, methinks, but he’s in for the long run — and for a Tory landslide.  Bye, bye, weakest links of the Labour Party.

Green vindicated, Smith should resign

Damian McBride (Lab, Downing Street) has been sacked.

While Damian Green (Con, Ashford) will not be charged for a crime he didn’t commit. The keystone kops that are the Met have been overruled by the Crown (not the Smith/NuLab) Prosecuting Service.

With Green vindicated, it’s time for Second-Home Secretary Jacqui ‘my husband does porn’ Smith to resign. The Wilted rose has called for her scalp before but it will not be forthcoming. She didn’t resign over Rhys, or over her expenses, so why would the shameless Black Country scutter resign now? Why, indeed.

Housing market ‘momentum’ is just a mirage

According to surveyors and mortgage lenders – who have a vested interest in house sales – the housing market is starting to see ‘real momentum’.

Surveyors have been among the most optimistic when predicting the turn in the market, and have been reporting interest in property from people who are failing to get much interest from other investments.

The survey backs up the latest home loan figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), which suggested that the number of mortgages handed out was rising.

This is yet more spin from surveyors and mortgage lenders who are trying to convince (currently wise) first time buyers to purchase an over-valued property and so they can issue a mortgage for said property.  

The housing market is far from recovery, as is the economy, so don’t fall into the trap of believing the tricks played by estate agents, surveyors, and the like.  You will live to regret it, particularly if you buy a property this year which is worth 10 – 20% (or worse) by next year.

McBride’s scalp is far from the last.

The Wilted Rose is only a minnow compared to the great bloggers, Guido Fawkes [www.order-order-com] and Iain Dale [www.iaindale.blogspot.com],* but the blogosphere, Mr Fawkes in particular, has claimed the scalp of the odious and despicable Mr Damian McBride. While TWR is not a Tory blog given its author’s Londonderry, Ulster roots, I nonetheless praises the centre-Right bloggers for giving the slanderous Labour faux-bloggers a good kicking.

I first met Mr Dale when I was chairman of Wolverhampton SW Conservative Association (don’t ask how I ended up in that position, when I wasn’t even a member of the Tory Party and was only someone who had agreed to deliver leaflets and help in the campaign) and Mr Dale was David Davis’s chief of staff.  I’ve never knowingly met Mr Fawkes but I am facebook friends to both of these gentlemen.

The scalp of McBride surely isn’t the last.  There’s yet mr Draper, who was a recipient of the emails, and others who were allegedly involved. Are we so stupid that we believe that mr Brown wasn’t involved? That he was passive in the actions of the dirty tricks/black arts of mr McBride. I think not. Yet, mr Brown has escaped censure – and resignation – for wrecking our economy and pumping huge sums of public money (i.e. our future punitive taxes) into deeply flawed bailouts. No, mr Brown’s scalp will not yet be claimed.

But the electorate might just deal him and his filthy Labour party a deathblow in just over 12 months, because of this and many other “incompetences”. We look forward to such a Red-Indian-style scalping, ably assisted by the great centre-Right bloggers, by the great British public. 

* Excuse the lack of hyperlinks but the ever-unreliable WordPress lacks this facility today, for some reason.

I’ll be back on track asap

I’ve had an intense, very busy few weeks. Yet, I am seeing things more clearly now and see the importance of combating the Labour threat – for the sake of our children (not that I have any yet, but if I ever do then obviously I care too…)

I can see clearly now, even though I have just arrived in Belfast from Londonderry rather too early for my liking.

This blog will be back on stream, despite its recent hiatus, over Easter with much criticism of the Government. I have sharpened my claws.