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Brownies Backfire

Jeff Randall has an article in the Telegraph showing how Gordon Brown’s liesBrownies about cuts is spectacularly backfiring.  Of course this  is a surprise to no-one really, however Jeff does some good summing up of the issues such as

Smell the burning rubber; hear the screeching brakes. Watch in awe as the wheels fly off and the chassis crumples. Then avert your eyes, because the final crash is ugly. As the Prime Minister’s bandwagon of deceit slams into a wall of immovable realities, the Government’s casualties are piling up. Crushed in the wreckage are the careers and self-regard of Labour ministers who did not see it coming. It never occurred to them that the driver would lose control of their carriage. But he has – and there’s no escape.

This is the nub of the issue, Ministers who despite more than two years of warnings that the track they were taking was heading was out of control, just ignored the issue as they feared to stand up to Gordon and his minions. After his problems with the election that never was, it was obvious that they had chosen poorly and the coronation was going wrong. Despite this and all the following problems they continued to follow the track until now we are past the point of no return. Their are no points left to change track and only the buffers at the end of the track await the final resounding crash. All they can do is watch and wait to see how hard the crash is.

Jeff’s final paragraph’s highlight the endgame for this Labour Government.

“Fear,” said John Adams, second president of the United States, “is the foundation of most governments.” In the case of modern Britain, it is more like panic, caused by a fundamental disconnection between common sense and the First Lord of the Treasury’s fantastic numbers. Which helps explain why, against all his political instincts, the Prime Minister has been forced this week to begin manipulating the texture of Labour’s promises.

As if nobody would notice, key words are being replaced by more subtle substitutes. This is subversion by semantics, the politics of Animal Farm. From the Snowball guide to language and meaning, Mr Brown’s hard-and-fast guarantees are now “aims”, public spending commitments become “estimates” and the delivery of front-line services gets attached to several big “ifs”, including the generation of growth and finding efficiencies.

What we are witnessing is an inelegant retreat. No apology, of course. No admission of failure. Nothing vulgar, like humility or contrition. Just a cynical slip-sliding away from the main plank of Mr Brown’s message in last month’s local and European elections: “It is vital that people realise they face a choice between our commitment to investment and the Tories’ commitment to cuts.”

Having been rejected by voters, the vacuity of that proposition was exposed with comedic brilliance by the Prime Minister himself in the Commons on Wednesday. By admitting that “total spending will continue to rise, and it will be a zero per cent rise in 2013-14″, he gave us another of those YouTube moments for which his blunder-prone stewardship is deservedly earning a reputation.

For someone who was once the master of the selective statistic, Mr Brown has completely lost his touch. As he bumbled through the rest of his answer, the looks on the faces of his pom-pom girls, Harriet Harman and Tessa Jowell, were priceless: unbridled horror. Their days are numbered.

This is the brutal truth, it is not just the current liesBrownies that hase backfired but the whole unholy coronation of Brown. Whilst he is in charge we will have Government by panic as we await yet more of his follies to crash and burn.

Don’t worry though Brown has another Master Plan on the go. Now it is to blame the Tories for all the problems as they are being nasty to him and exposing his liesBrownies by telling the truth.  In this article from Channel 4 News he explains how the Tories are being nasty by exposing his liesBrownies

“If someone is called dishonest, there is an assumption that there is some wilful desire to mislead and that there is some corruption involved, I don’t think that is the case. What we are trying to do at the moment is to get the country through a very difficult period and the language of politics is sometimes not well suited to the need for the country to work together to get out of recession. There is a crudity developed in the language that people use in politics that people are now accepting as almost everyday language. People have got to think twice before they make accusations. I do not make personal attacks on people. I have tried to avoid doing that during my political career. But equally I understand that the language of politics can sometimes descend into people making quite crude accusations.”

Unfortunately after this he then goes onto say

He insisted that the decision to abandon the part-privatisation of Royal Mail was purely because the bids were not good enough, but opponents say he ducked fighting for the bill in parliament because of internal Labour opposition.

“We could go through months and months of discussion,” he said. “But if the investment is not there, then we are not able to implement that legislation. We are going to wait until we see if the investors are able to come along.”

“The Royal Mail has its own modernisation plan that they have got to push ahead with. Secondly we have got to look at means by which we can get investment into the Royal Mail. That is what we will be looking at over the next few months.”

Challenged that the government has retreated on policies like an Iraq war enquiry, ID cards and Royal Mail because the prime minister does not have the authority to push them through, Gordon Brown said: “Our policy is to get growth into the economy, to get jobs, and to build better public services for the future.”

This is of course just another huge Brownie. He knows that all of these once touted policy mainstays of his government have no chance of becoming law as he can no longer pass them through Parliament without huge resistance and further challenges to his leadership, so instead be hides behind his Brownies and blusters on.

Brown’s biggest  issue now is that no-one believes or has confidence in him, not his ministers, not his MP’s, not the electorate, not Business  Leaders, not World Leaders.  Trying to play the poor bullied boy is just a nonsense, this is the man who employed the likes of McBride to stab people in the back rather than take them on in public.

The real question is do  we want Honesty, Openness and Transparency or do we want to continue with Brown’s Lies, Deceit and Underhand tactics.

Gordon Brown’s attack on Tory cuts has backfired in spectacular fashion – Telegraph.

Gordon Brown has effectively killed off any hope of Andy Murray winning Wimbledon by wishing him all the best and saying he is “awesomely skilful”. Watch as Murray is doomed not to win Wimbledon

PoliticsHome | Videos | PM: Whole country behind “awesomely skillful” Murray.

Scottish Parliament

It was supposed to be a celebration of 10 years of Holyrood, instead we had the sight of  empty seats as nearly half of the SNP’s MSP’s failed to turn up for what should have been their celebration. As the Times puts it.

What a lamentable affair. A day that should have been rich in ceremony, and joyful in celebration turned into a limp and vacuous occasion, with more than a third of the MSPs whose role we were meant to be applauding, simply absent. The tenth anniversary of the Scottish Parliament, snubbed by its own members, turned into an ill-mannered comment on the democracy they represent.

Quite what the Queen made of it was hard to see. Her voice was distinctly croaky, her expression inscrutable. She peered through her spectacles at the empty seats wondering, just possibly, whether she had got the date right. The Duke of Edinburgh looked round him with cheerful resignation, as if to say: you chumps have made a bit of cock-up, haven’t you?

The Queen added a touch of reality to the proceedings by saying

“Your challenge … is to ensure that [the Parliament] continues to reflect the priorities and aspirations of all Scotland’s people (her emphasis) and to retain the public’s confidence and trust.”

Maybe a slight dig there at Alex Salmond and how many people really want Independence.

Alex Salmond also made a speech, according to the Times

To add insult to injury, Alex Salmond, in his speech, had the temerity to mock Westminster. He suggested that the Queen might find some “words of encouragement for another parliament elsewhere” – a bad joke at the best of times. Any suggestion that Holyrood enjoys some moral superiority over the House of Commons was wiped out yesterday. Over the Queen’s face, as Mr Salmond made his comment, there passed the merest shadow of a grimace. Some of of us felt something far worse.

All in all it sounds like a very poor celebration.

Want to know why the MSP’s couldn’t attend have a look here for the full details.

Makes for interesting reading on what our MSP’s are up to. By the way I’m interpreting Constituency Business as “Couldn’t be arsed to turn-up”.

My local MSP, Mike Rumbles, is apparently on holiday in Italy, though the Dordogne seems to be the favoured hidey-hole of MSP’s taking advantage of cheap prices before the kids are on holiday.

The SNP appear to have 7 MSP’’s who had “no reason” not to be there. An appalling indictment of their commitment to Holyrood.

Strangely it is the Conservatives who have the best attendance record, pehaps this more because of the respect they have for the Queen rather than for any other reason.

Truly a poor show from all our MSP’s on what should have been a celebration day.

Bad jokes and worse manners play to empty seats – Times Online.

Gordon Brown has a bit of a train wreck whilst being interviewed by “Toenails” Robinson  The tetchiness starts at about 1m 55secs into the interview when he squeaks

I’ve always told the truth, I’ve always told the truth

which is surely one of his biggest ever Brownies. After this he just turns into a bumbling fool. Watch and squirm at the inappropriate gestures and smiles throughout and then at the end realise that this man is truly our worst ever Prime Minister.

Gordon Smiles

The Independent calls it another dark day for Gordon Brown, for me, these days this seems to be the norm. Whilst its rather warm outside and the sun is shining, back at No 10 it will be another dark day.

What’s gone wrong today. According to the Independent

Gordon Brown suffered a wounding double blow to his authority as he abandoned moves to sell a stake in Royal Mail and was defeated by Labour rebels over plans to clean up the Commons after the expenses scandal.

The fresh setbacks came after he endured bruising clashes with David Cameron over spending plans and faced ridicule from Tory MPs after he spoke of a “zero per cent rise” in budgets.

The retreat over part-privatisation of the Royal Mail was blamed by Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, on the struggle to attract buyers in the recession. But the opposition parties claimed the climbdown had been forced by the growing opposition to the sale among Labour MPs and trade unions.

It came a day after Alan Johnson, the new Home Secretary, watered down the Government’s plans for identity cards and a fortnight after Mr Brown performed a U-turn over holding the Iraq war inquiry in public.

So what would have been a disastrous day for any other Prime Minister has, for our worst ever Prime Minister, just become yet another dark day on the ever darkening path he is leading our country on towards utter bankruptcy.

As a matter of interest former Cabinet ministers John Reid and Margaret Beckett were among 25 Labour backbenchers to rebel against the Government tonight.

Another dark day for Gordon Brown – UK Politics, UK – The Independent.

It had to happen, Gordon Brown having been caught out with his Brownies or lies all over the place is now starting to alter the facts to meet his version of the truth. Fraser Nelson calls it back-pedalling, I just call it the typical dishonesty of Gordon Brown. Fraser has this to say in his article

Keep your eyes on this, because we could have a new distinction. Soon we’ll be told that Brown misspoke in the Commons when he listed those spending totals, and in fact they’re not spending totals at all. In fact, those Labour cuts – he’ll say – were all imaginary. The problem for Brown is that he can’t change anything until the Pre-Budget Report. And, by then, everyone will have stopped listening.

As I said earlier today,

the Brownie is then used for long enough, often enough and against all the facts until the lie appears to become the truth

Now it has started  to come true as the truth is altered and facts are changed to attempt cover-up the fact that we have a lying toad for a Prime  Minister.

When the Government attempts to alter the facts and attempts to rewrite history you know that your country is really up shit creek without a paddle, and in our case we have a dangerous and dishonest helmsman who is ignoring all calls to change direction to get us pack onto the right course.

The back-pedalling begins in earnest | Coffee House.

Another day when Brownie Central was in overdrive, after Monday’s instantly forgettable launch of Brown’s longest ever list of things he cannot and will not ever be able to guarantee or enact amusingly titled Building Britain’s Future, we had a day when it seemed like all his ministers where only able to tell Brownies.

Just as a quick aside ,I was looking for some information on the Gordon Brown relaunch No. 94 on the BBC website, but found no stories about it to link about. So after two days the relaunch has already sunk and disappeared without a trace, so you will have to live with the Labour Propaganda masquerading as HMG’s policy.

Back to the real story, of course a Brownie should never, in polite or at least political, circles be referred to by its real name a “lie”. A lie implies in some way that a politician might be in some way dishonest or perhaps even not telling the truth, whereas a Brownie is just a twisted and tortured look at the world from Gordon Brown’s point of view where anything that might hurt the Tories becomes a “truth”. The Brownie is then used for long enough, often enough and against all the facts until the lie appears to become the truth.

Onto yesterdays political fantasies that Brown’s Ministers were spinning. First we had Mr Balls,  who certainly lives up to his name, judging by the amount he was churning out yesterday on every available radio or TV programme, trying to shore up Brown’s disintegrating relaunch. Unfortunately he soon became embroiled in a wee spat with Fraser Nelson of the Spectator. This came after Fraser was not quite Politically Correct and called Balls a Liar,  here is what Fraser had to say

Here is the Balls Lie on the Today programme this morning.

• LIE no1: “We have acted in the downturn, that will mean that the economy is stronger, we’ll have less unemployment, less debt…”

Less debt? No, this was not a mistake. He repeats it here.

• LIE no2: “Alistair Darling in the budget set out plans which show the deficit coming down, national debt coming down.”

So today, a new Brownie – no, okay, it’s a downright lie – is born. Labour wants us to believe that debt is coming down. Let’s look at the Budget 2009 plans for debt.

Fraser, as is his want, these days then rips into the whole lies about debt, cuts vs investment that Labour is peddling as the truth.

Now Fraser after calling Balls a liar was on the receiving end of a phone call from the man himself shortly after this, complaining about being called a liar.  In the phone call Fraser said that Balls who was hopping mad did the following.

He instructed me to “take that post down now”. I thought he was joking: has there been some change to the constitution where ministers now have power over the media? But he was deadly serious. “You should not call me a liar,” said Balls. I told him that if he doesn’t want to be called a liar, “he shouldn’t tell lies”. His defence is that his point about debt is a Brownie, not a lie – okay, he didn’t put it quite like that. But when he said “debt” he referred to the “ratio of national debt to gross domestic product” which is forecasted in the Budget to start falling in eight to nine years time. Now the Budget, of course, has a “horizon” running out in 2013/14: there are literally no plans beyond that. It is a lie to suggest otherwise.

Fraser of course did not take the post down and it has been the subject of some mirth out in the blogosphere particularly after Fraser made the very good point that

If you’re reading this, Ed (and I suspect you will be) then we have a serious point to make. Five years ago, you could lie like this on the radio and get away with it. Space is tight in newspapers, no one would devote hundreds of words and graphs – as we did – to expose a lie for what is. But the world has changed now. Blogging has brought new, hyper scrutiny. Blogs have infinite space, and people with endless energy, to expose political lying – no matter how small. Your claims can be instantly counter-checked, by anyone. If you stretch the truth, you can be exposed – by anyone. And if you plan to base a whole election campaign on a lie, as you apparently intend to do, then you’re in for a rude awakening

Balls, of course, as the Education Minister doesn’t quite get what all this new fangled technology is all about, he doesn’t yet realise, along with his fellow ministers, that today we can find out facts in a fraction of a second from almost anywhere. This ability destroys the concept of the the political lie as it can be exposed almost before the liar has even finished uttering it.  As the Sunday Times put it

“We don’t care if the commentators or the economists turn against us… This is all about shoring up the base in the northern heart-lands, which we lost in the European elections. We don’t want or need them to understand the nuance of the argument. We just want them to hate the Tories again.”

Enough about Balls and Brownies and onto some Bull as dumped on us by Labour Leader in waiting Alan Johnson. Having been put in the Merry Go Round position of Home Secretary he has discovered the toxic issue of ID cards and immediately realised what everyone but Gordon has realised, that it is not a vote winner, and it certainly isn’t going to protect us from Terrorism.

So in a grand fudgeannouncement Johnson has said that ID cards will no longer be compulsory. Sounds great but what does this mean. On the 4th July 2007  Gordon Brown said

Gordon Brown has affirmed his government’s commitment to identity cards as he called for all-party action against terrorism. In his first prime minister’s questions since assuming the leadership, Mr Brown urged MPs across the House to back the government’s anti-terror proposals.  He voluntarily confirmed that he would continue to push for ID cards as the backbone of any anti-terror policy. There had been quiet speculation the new prime minister would abandon his predecessor’s controversial plans for a national identity database and ID cards.Instead, he called on MPs across the house to approve planned ID legislation, amid repeated calls for a unified response to terror. It is “vitally important” the “message is sent out to rest of the world that we will stand strong, steadfast and united in the face of terror,” the prime minister said. ”

So a  Backbone of any anti-terror policy has now been diluted to a policy of it might be useful for young ‘uns to get served in a pub. What does this say for Brown’s Integrity and Vision?

However, and there always is a however with one of Labour’s announcements, it soon became apparent after this was touted across the airwaves that the central bone of contention about ID cards was not being removed. The National Identity database was not being phased out but would now be fed by Passport data and any other sources they see fit to use.

This is a typical Labour sleight of hand. Appear to be sorting out something but actually down the back passage they are sneaking it in via the back door, just so much more bull from the least transparent and honest government we have ever seen.

Asked whether he was prepared to go into the next election with the Conservative party proposing public spending cuts while the government pledged to increase spending, Cameron replied:

“I don’t care what the government does any more. They can announce cuts, they can announce increases, they can set out whatever they want. Set the whole thing to music and do a karaoke. I have lost faith in a prime minister who stands up and says black is white. We will make our own decisions about what’s right for the country.”

Darling to hide Labour cuts

The Times reports that Chancellor Alistair Darling is not going to have a Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) this year, I assume, because it would expose the huge Brownies of his boss Gordon Brown. According to The Times

The move is designed to wrong-foot the Conservatives who have conceded that they will cut spending if they return to government.

The delay in producing detailed figures will anger the government’s critics, who have accused Gordon Brown of lying over Labour’s true intentions. This will be seen as a further example of government dishonesty.

Of course this is all part of Gordon Brown’s Honest and Transparent government. As my better half commented on Political Betting last night

They deserve to lose the election for this reason alone. This is a classic example of this government’s incompetence and lack of leadership in a nutshell. Way back in the Autumn of last year, I warned that Brown’s last and only chance of salvaging his premiership, was to level with the voters. If he had taken the lead back then, given an honest appraisal of the country’s finances, and declared that he would take the tough action needed to rebalance the books,  he might, just might have got some of the credit and looked and sounded like a leader for the tough times ahead. As it is, he has made himself look and sound shifty and dishonest, lacking in any ability to take tough decisions. He isn’t a leader, and has left that vacuum to be filled by the so called novice and his team. Big mistake.

I could not agree more.

The Times also has another interestingly titled article.

Tell us the truth, Mr Brown, in which they try to answer the question

Would he lie to us? Extracting a candid answer from the prime minister isn’t easy, especially on public spending

The answer of course is Yes, often and in anyway he thinks he can blacken the name of the Tories. The trouble is that nobody is now believing Gordon.

So why would we expect honesty from Gordon on his spending plans in the run up to the election. He knows that they are a disaster with UK PLC on the brink of bankruptcy, so far in debt that it will be our children who will have to pay off his debt.

Instead of the CSR all we are likely to get will be vague pledges over schools and health-care in the chancellor’s prebudget report, but silence on areas such as defence, transport and crime where the axe will have to fall.

To replace the CSR we will get the Gordon’s laughably entitled document, Building Britain’s Future, which will offer such things as a “guarantee” to all parents that if their children fall behind in maths or English they will be provided with private one-to-one tuition paid for by the state.

This is the part of Gordon’s 999th relaunch as a new person after the last attempted coup when he promised to “change”  so he will, this week, attempt to open a new front in the debate over spending with the launch of his long awaited “national plan” for public services.

This will, as usual, fall flat on its face within a day or two of the launch, forgotten and unloved, and become forever part of the waste that has been the trademark of Gordon Brown period in government.

Finally I can only assume with this abandonment of the CSR that Labour’s final budget will be the usual pre-election giveaway, one wonders what they will have left to giveaway by next March.

Darling tries to hide Labour cuts from voters – Times Online.

RAF Nimrod

Following on from my post on “Slow Bob” Ainsworth’s brownies over the crash of Nimrod XV230, I see The Press and Journal has  a story about local Moray MP Angus Robertson challenging the New Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth to respond to a claim in the Commons that he said Nimrod surveillance aircraft have been made safe – despite being warned it was impossible to be sure this was true.

The charge was delivered by Moray MP Angus Roberson, SNP defence spokesman, following reports that defence consultants Qinetiq had said that

“no statement can or has been made to this effect”.

According to the Press and Journal Mr Robertson told Commons leader Harriet Harman that Mr Ainsworth told him and the families of the 14 servicemen who died in the crash in Afghanistan in 2006 that the plane, based at RAF Kinloss, had been made safe despite being warned it was impossible to be sure.He said:

“We were repeatedly told that defence consultant Qinetiq agreed that the aircraft was safe to fly despite the company warning, and I quote, ‘no statement can be made to this effect’.”

He called for a debate to establish which version was correct. Ms Harman said that because Mr Robertson had not warned her in advance she could not make a detailed reply but would refer the issue to defence ministers.Mr Robertson said afterwards:

“When I am told in the Commons as an MP something in black and white terms which then turns out not to be the case, that is a huge problem. That is why the MoD needs to clarify why the secretary of state said what he did which was at total variance from the report produced by their contractor, Qinetiq.”

It will be interesting to see how “Slow Bob” weasels his way out of this and even more interesting to see what the independent inquiry into the Nimrod by Charles Haddon-Cave QC says when it is published in October.

Defence chief challenged over ‘Nimrod safe’ claims – Press & Journal.