Archive for January, 2010

You enter the New Year with hope in your heart and ready to face the challenges ahead with vigour. Then you remember we are run by a dishonourable, dishonest Government, intent on strangling wealth creation and continuing to feed a dependency culture and a public sector monster that could see Britain go broke.

It is also a monster so big, with so many voters reliant on Labour for their pay cheques, it could see this Government remain in power after the General Election. Now the Government can conveniently forget the record deficit. The phoney Election war has begun. It is not just a matter of not trusting the politicians; it is that so often they simply get it plain wrong. The decision to whack a tax on bankers’ bonuses was fiscally futile. While accepting that after our bailout narrowly avoided meltdown, banks needed to rebuild balance sheets to function properly, was it beyond the wit of Chancellor Alistair Darling to provide some copper-bottomed guarantees that banks would start lending again, albeit with more prudence than the years of sub-prime plenty?

Forget “official statistics”; ignore most recoveries which are from such a low base they are often misleading. Most business people I know, with robust proposals and impressive track records, cannot get the most rudimentary of loans without having to put their houses and families on the line with a Personal Guarantee.

Being risk averse is one thing; but with no risk at all, there will be nobody of any competence left to create jobs and restore the economic reputation of this country. Yet, as we must never let the Government or the lending institutions forget, it is our money we are attempting to ‘borrow.’

While there have been casualties of the recession who were cavalier to the point of recklessness and deserved to fail, there are those who went under through little fault of their own and PGs were called in. Many have got up off the canvas, determined to rebuild, only to find there are no building materials on offer unless they promise the lender their next born child. It is the bank of Rumpelstiltskin. The Bankers Grim indeed.

If there is superior life on Mars – invade now you’ll find no opposition – the Martians will be looking down on what is largely countryside, not the urban sprawl the CPRE spin doctors would have you believe. They will see there is an acute housing shortage, but through a combination of inertia, incompetence and vested interests the builders are not allowed to satisfy this demand and what little they are able to build has to be greener than a Martian, no matter the cost.

They then see the Government is paying the best part of £20 billion a year in housing benefits, in some cases picking up rent bills when buying the family a house would be cheaper.

You can be preaching hatred and terror; insulting our soldiers and you are not marched to the nearest prison or airport, if they can clear the runway of snow. No, you are given Government handouts. You could not make it up.

You just get over being repulsed by Gordon Brown’s jaw wobble or Darling’s eyebrows, when you are assailed by Tony Blair in tennis shorts and perma-smile, making millions on the after-dinner circuit and, beyond satire, working as Middle East peace envoy. Blair was the architect of Britain’s downfall; Brown the contractor.

I feel better now.

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