Fireside Listening

Listen while you browse.  Realise how our leaders - elected and unelected -  continue to use us to feather their nests.  We're chattels in their world.

Thanks to Cpt Ranty

Update:  The embed has been removed at Youtube, but if you follow the link you can see it there.  My apologies.

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An Honest Labour Politician

In recent years my respect for Frank Field, labour MP for Birkenhead, has steadily grown. Not only because he seems one of the few who refuses to put party before country, but his proposals have substance.

He was sacked earlier on in this administration because his free thinking on deep and difficult issues couldn't be tolerated - in particular his determination that means testing has to be stopped. Not only did he rightly say it was degrading, but it was ethically corrosive (people are rewarded for making themselves worse off, or for misrepresenting themselves as worse off than they really are) and both situations are expensive to administer.

That's the past. Today it is reported Mr Field calls Gordon Brown's economic policies 'Alice in Wonderland politics'.

"Our country is in such a state. We've printed money to buy our own debt. It's real Alice in Wonderland politics. We have to ask the world to lend us money. If we can't shift the debt, we're finished".

Isn't it refreshing to hear a politician spell out the present state of our economy. Nothing about recovery of course, because there is none, although the Mad Hatter wants us to believe the opposite.

A report published today from the Institute for Fiscal Studies also damns Gordon Brown's management of the public finance.

It said the last seven years of labour control had been characterised by "fiscal drift', leaving Britain with "one of the largest structural budgets deficits in the developed world".

Not a perfect start to Gordon Brown's week.

source

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Who Can Steal Your Money?

Although the video is American the message is the same.

Thanks to Obo

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The IMF Reveals Just How Bad It Is

The above graphic key isn't easy to read but this article by Fraser Nelson explains all and includes a download link to the IMF report. A must read.

According to the IMF the recession is far worse than previous ones. Page 22 is given to the 'Potential Spillovers from the UK Financial System to the Rest of the World' - worrying data.

I shall leave any analysis to readers who enjoy numbers and statistics.

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WHEN THE PEERIE STOPS

Now that the great and the good and the not so great and the not so good have left, the dissection of the G20 communiques begins.  The best analysis I've read so far is from Wat Tyler at Burning Our Money. It's written with knowledge but in simple English for those of us who are just weary of endless financial non-words being spoken to us each day. Craig Murray also has a post which fits with my view.

I posted this photograph to remind you of the meaning of hero worship and the phrase 'the cat's got the cream'.

For a definition of the Scots word peerie look here but it does have another meaning in the Western Isles.  

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The UK Economy (or what's left of it)

These are the two men responsible for the economic mess in the UK, particularly the one on the left.  He's the man who was in charge of the Treasury for 10 years and continually told us how well off we were, and always would be, in his hands.

There's an excellent article in the Economist but one sentence caught my eye.

'Britain has suffered its first bank-run since Disraeli was prime minister in the 1870s.' 

Hopefully that fact will be added to Brown's legacy.

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