Election Winner To Be Out Of Office For A Generation

According to the Governor of the Bank of England whoever wins the next election will have such a tough time enforcing austerity that it will be out of office for a generation.

Except if it's Labour, of course, because if they get in they'll make sure they can never be removed by election again. You better believe it.

How Gordon Brown Fucked Your Pension

The man who stole your old age: How Gordon Brown secretly imposed a ruinous tax that has wrecked the retirements of millions.

Labour to create veterans' ID card

Defence Management

No end to Labour's authoritarian wastefulness, it seems.

The Labour Party have pledged to provide free ID cards for forces' leavers if re-elected to government.

The pledge was made in the party's manifesto, launched on 12 March.

"A veterans ID card will help veterans access their improved benefits and will be free to service leavers," says the manifesto. "We will continue to strengthen mental health provision in partnership with the Combat Stress charity, and roll out our Welfare Pathway to give personnel and their families better support and advice."

The manifesto also reiterates promises made during the last parliament, including pledges to cut waste within the Ministry of Defence.

"We are reforming defence procurement," states the manifesto, "making further reductions in civilian staff, and cutting lower-priority spending on headquarters costs, travel and consultancy."

'Free' to service leavers - I like that. 'Free', as in 'free - until it becomes necessary'.

Bankrupt! But Don't Talk About It In Front Of The Electorate.

Don't let the voters know we face bankruptcy - Telegraph Christopher Book on the crisis which our politicians won't face up to in public.

And this, of course:

A third, closely related shadow which the political class has been only too keen to hide away has been the still barely understood extent to which it has handed over the running of our country and the making of our laws to that vast and mysterious new system of government centred on Brussels and Strasbourg. Nothing better exemplified how our politicians are caught by this system, like flies in a spider's web, than the shifty means whereby each of the three main parties weaselled its way out of keeping the manifesto promises of the last election that it would give us a referendum on the EU constitution, otherwise known as the Lisbon "reform treaty". Here was another great surrender of Parliament's power to decide how our country is run, and the MPs of all parties were not only happy to agree to it, but treated us all with contempt as they lied about it.

As I have often observed before, one of the consequences of this abdication of their responsibilities by our politicians has been the way in which vast tranches of policy-making which used to be the stuff of debate have simply passed into a limbo, where they are no longer properly discussed or even explained. Farming and the countryside, the fate of our fishing industry, our immigration rules, our laws on employment and how businesses are run, on the environment, on food safety, the regulating of our financial services, including the operations of the City of London – the key decisions in all these areas, and many more, have been handed over to a form of government which is unconcerned with our national interests and almost wholly unaccountable, with consequences which in almost every case have proved disastrous for Britain.

Yet on all these hugely important issues our political class remains virtually silent, because it no longer has any power to decide what happens. All our political nonentities are left to bicker over at election time is that ever shrinking area of policy-making still under our national control: schools and hospitals, crime… that's about it.

BBC Labour Bias In Little Ways...

Comment by Biased BBC on this morning's interview with Sir Stuart Rose of M&S:

It seems to me that like Labour, the BBC does not understand why an increase in NIC is a tax on jobs.Perhaps Statism erodes the capacity for clear economic thinking but I listened in amazement to the BBC "Today" interview with Sir Stuart Rose, he of M&S fame. When Rose pointed out that the NIC increase with Brown and Clegg think so virtuous is a direct impediment to business growth, he was ignored on the substance of that argument and instead presented with the Labour attack line that IF government does not jack up NIC it will have to increase VAT. A false choice and talk of reducing Government efficiency was dismissed. Rose rightly pointed out that if VAT did rise, it would be a tax on consumption and therefore one has the choice to avoid it by limiting expenditure whereas an NIC increase hits all, this was met with silence. Then, most disgracefully, Humphrys suggested that Rose was saying these things because he would be offered a peerage to the Lords. Rose denied this but the impression was aimed at listeners, not Rose. More BBC attack dog stuff dressed up as news.

I caught a little of this exchange and was pissed off to hear the tit of an interviewer (whoever he was) asking Rose if he wasn't being selfish criticising the government yet not coming up with any alternatives himself. Rose rebuffed him quite robustly, but I would have added that it's the job of government to come up with alternatives. That's what we pay the useless bastards for.

The BBC, Those Pesky Rapist Jews And The Silent Palestinians

Robin Shepherd Online » Post Archive » A tale of Israeli “rapists” that has enraged the Palestinians but won’t make the BBC

An interesting story via Biased BBC.

Baroness Scotland Couldn't Be Lying, Could She?

Baroness Scotland, who broke a law she had been instrumental in introducing, has been accused of lying:

The Attorney General was accused of lying yesterday when she gave evidence at the trial of her cleaner.

Baroness Scotland falsely claimed to have seen a passport and Home Office letter showing that her Tongan maid had the right to work in Britain, a court heard.

But according to the Tongan's barrister, the Labour peer saw no such documents - and her claims that she had done were a lie.

The astonishing accusations were made repeatedly at the first day of the fraud trial of the cleaner, Loloahi Tapui.

Baroness Scotland was only fined half the full amount applicable under the law she herself steered onto the statute books.

She also kept her job.

Baroness Scotland is unelected.

Baroness Scotland votes Labour.

Tories Stop Cider Tax

A smidgin of good news among the horse-trading badness of it all:

The Conservative Party last night forced Labour to drop three planned tax rises in a victory on the first day of the month-long election battle.

The 10% increase on a pint of cider will be scrapped, with prices dropped again on 30 June.

Plans for a new 50p tax on phone lines to help pay for rural areas to receive improved access to broadband were also dropped.

These measures were announced by chancellor Alistair Darling just weeks ago in his Budget.

Plans originally announced last year for tax relief on holiday homes were also scrapped. The plans would have put the tax treatment of furnished holiday lets on a par with that for other property rental businesses. The travel industry had warned that the changes would have cost tourism millions of pounds with the loss of thousands of jobs.

The Labour party needed Tory approval to rush through the finance bill before the dissolution of parliament. The bill turns the Budget into law. The Tories would not sanction the fast-tracking of the legislation unless the three tax hikes were abandoned.

Phillip Hammond, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said it was a ‘major victory for businesses and consumers across Britain’.
The scrapping of the taxes marked a coup for the Tories on the day that prime minister Gordon Brown sought approval from the queen to hold the general election on 6 May.

From citywire.