New Balls!

"iTalk" has been at it again - a full blown attack on George Osbourne in the Daily Mirror. Let's look at what he had to say :

What matters most when times are hard is whether the government is trying to shield you from the storm, or leaving you to fend for yourself.

When Osborne or his Lib Dem lackeys say: “It’s all Labour’s fault, we inherited a mess” .... what they’re really saying to the British people is: “We’re not ­responsible: don’t ask us for help.”

Well, that's all very well, Binky, and it makes a nice soundbite. Where was your government when the shit was hitting the fan? Oh, out spending money we hadn't got because you emptied the coffers. You created this mess. You were responsible or we would not have the scale of problems we have, so to accuse the coalition of not trying to sort it shows a distinct lack of grip on reality.

And "LibDem lackeys"? That's just downright insulting. Name calling is the last resort of an immature mind.

The Tories say that because Labour was not tough enough in regulating the banks, the economic crisis is our fault.

They forget that every time the Labour government tried to tighten regulation, it was the Tories who protested we were strangling enterprise with red tape, and David Cameron who accused Gordon Brown of being The Great Regulator.

There goes that grip on reality again. Labour destroyed regulation of the banks. Balls himself was the very man calling for a 'light touch' in dealing with financial regulation. The regulation Labour tried to tighten was on small and medium size business who were destroyed by a sea of red tape. It was this red tape that Cameron was referring to, not the banks. Labour let the banks get away with murder. In fact, the first thing Tony Blair did when he left office was to join the board of a merchant bank.

The Tories want you to believe Labour spent too much money on services like schools, hospitals and the police, and that is why we have today’s budget deficit.
That way they can justify drastic cuts in those services in order to bring down the deficit, and say it is all Labour’s fault.

If you define 'too much' as money we don't actually have, then that's exactly what Labour did. Cutting spending and raising taxes is the only way to reduce a structural deficit.

Cameron has been forced to match some of Labour's spending plans in some areas because this is a COALITION, Ed. The LibDem 'lackeys' do actually have some say and are actually more left wing than the Conservatives. It's called prioritisation and compromise, something you seem to know little about.

When the financial crisis hit, we were badly affected by the loss of tax revenues from the City, and we had to inject huge sums of money to protect people’s mortgages and savings and stop the British banking system from collapsing.

On top of that, we cut VAT for a year, introduced the car scrappage scheme, funded apprenticeships and job ­creation schemes, and subsidised mortgages – all to stop people losing their jobs, homes and businesses.

That is what caused the deficit, not spending on schools, hospitals and the police.

You didn't regulate the banks properly, then you had to bail them out. The money you threw at the economy was to buy votes. Spending actually did make the deficit worse. That's not even economics - it's called basic housekeeping.

Every time they take an unpopular decision, the Tories say the same thing: it’s not our fault, we inherited a mess.

In reality, they inherited an economy which was beginning to recover strongly, with unemployment falling, interest rates at historic lows, and the public finances better than the Treasury’s forecasts

Actually, the Coalition say that we need to sort it out. The economy was recovering, but not strongly and interest rates at historic lows has crippled the very people who have the disposable income to boost the economy - people living on their investments. It has also helped inflation to rise. It appears we learnt nothing from the Japanese experience of punitively low interest rates.

And just because the public finances outperform the Treasury forecasts doesn't necessarily mean that they are performing well, does it?

The Labour Party has a responsibility to stand up for millions of Mirror readers across the country who are already being hit by rising unemployment, rising inflation and the rise in VAT.

Bank lending has strangled investment and caused job losses. That includes the banks you bought and then failed to control. Low interest rates and taxes introduced by you have cause infation to rise, coupled with the false readings in the figures when VAT went back to 17.5% - and let's not forget that you were intending to raise it to 19%. Oh, and then there's those fuel tax rises you introduced. They had no effect on inflation, did they?

You can read his full article by clicking here, but in the words of the song "You say it best when you say nothing at all"...

READ MORE » New Balls!

Wheel out the starving kiddies

"Do they know it's Christmas time at all...?"

Too fucking right they do! It's that time of year when the chuggers come out in force - bombarding your TV and newspapers with adverts, banging on your door and thrusting direct debits under your nose, driving round in a flatbed lorry with a plastic Santa on the back and a ghetto blaster, demanding that you put money in their buckets...

And have you noticed that the film crews and photographers always seem to wheel out the poor starving kiddies suffering in poverty in the third world? It's simple really. Children will tug at the heart strings and soak up money like nothing else.

So let's take a look at some of this relentless barrage :

Wateraid, Oxfam, UNICEF, Cancer Research, Care (who?), Dogs for the Disabled - to name but a few - all want your £2 monthly direct debits. Or £19 for the Salvation Army. Or a once off £15 for the NSPCC. Or why not adopt a jaguar? That's £3 a month, so they're clearly worth more than kids!

And the newspapers are never slow to jump in either. The Guardian, Telegraph, The Times - all upper class you notice, because their readers can afford it more than others, can't they? Well, fuck that because I can't afford a newspaper anyway...

And then there are the charity Christmas cards - which incidentally vary terrifically in how much they actually donate to the named charities concerned.

Here's a message for you all : Thanks to the Credit Crunch my income dipped this year by around £300 a week mainly due to dear Gordon raiding my pension fund and lowering interest rates on my savings to two thirds of fuck all. I've got no spare money, so don't bother to fucking ask. And you can bring a starving kid with you if you like so I can tell you both to fuck off!

And can you please send 'Age UK' around so I can ask them how much they are going to give me...

READ MORE » Wheel out the starving kiddies

Charity begins at home

OK - I accept that this not going to be a popular post and I am going to get slagged off for it.

Nevertheless, I pledged to cut the bullshit and tell it like it is, so here goes...

I am sick and tired of charities knocking on my door carrying - no, not the rattly tin - clipboards and direct debit mandates.

This is the new unacceptable face of charities. Some bloudy bright spark somewhere - probably a highly paid consultant - has worked out that collecting a few coins in a tin is not an effective way of collecting money. Far better if we can get people to sign direct debits and get them to make a 'small' regular monthly contribution.

In the last month, I have have had no fewer than 7 (yes, s-e-v-e-n) spotty faced irks in charity T-shirts knock on my door and ask me to sign a direct debit. I have refused them all. One young man even told me that if I did not sign, then I might be perceived as a "tight fisted old Scrouge". Well, perceive away...

These people might not have noticed, but we are having a recession. The country is in deep do-do. I am retired and living on my savings at a time of record low interest rates. They should be giving me money, for Christ's sake!

And now, just when I thought it couldn't possibly get any worse, I have tonight received an unsolicited telephone call from yet another charity asking me to donate "just a small regular amount" by direct debit.

This was a completely blind call. I have an ex-directory number and the caller confirmed that he did not know who I was and that the number was computer selected at random.

I swore at him until he hung up...

READ MORE » Charity begins at home