So, Gordon Brown came up North for a painfully stage-managed forum with a choice group of people, where questions were vetted and there was no room for debate.

And what did we take away from it?

Almost nothing.

A token gesture, from, to quote the questionable Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan, “the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued Government”.

When pressed on the issue of ‘frontloading’ by Parviz Shasva, owner of Rooms Nightclub, the PM suggested, “we could ask for an agreement among the retail trade and talk to Tesco and so on but then a number of shops may keep outside of that.”

“Could?”, “Ask?”.

Forgive me, Gordon, I’m a bit confused here. Aren’t you the most powerful person in the country? The leader of the country? And then clearly the best placed person to tell companies to change their practices if it is in the best interests of the people who you represent?

From Margaret Thatcher to date, power has become increasingly centralized in the hands of one person, the prime minister. And yet, his answers are feeble. He sounds powerless.

Unfortunately, I’m not surprised. The Guardian reported last week (22^nd October) that Lord Myners, the City Minister “insisted… that the government could not use its stakes in the bailed out banks, RBS and Lloyds Banking Group… to stop bonus payouts.”  £1.3trillion of taxpayers money has been pumped in to banks to keep the sector a float, and yet, it appears that our elected representatives cannot stop a practice that has rightly infuriated the public.

Lord Myners urged the banking sector to address the bonus issue itself in a bid to not “bash the bankers”. Ask them nicely not to give themselves lots of money?

One can’t help but compare this with MP’s ability, or not, to self-regulate. Richard Garside, a local estate agent asked of Jacqui Smith’s regretful plea in the House of Commons following her home ‘flipping’ that gained her more than £100,000, “can any employee caught stealing from his employer expect that an apology will suffice?” For the average employee, the answer is no.

So, do you get a bonus if you look after people as a nurse, and reach all the targets? Do you get a little extra if you get all the kids you teach through all the ludicrous testing forced upon you by central government as a teacher? No, you don’t.  You are just doing your job.

So why then, when these people are just doing their job, and even when they aren’t, are they allowed to take home thousands of pounds in their already unfairly large pay packets?

Are some people above recrimination?

Lord Myners is addressing high street banks that have taken government money. Not even the investement banks that got us into this trouble in the first place.

The Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has come out with some headline catching rhetoric, but with little believable policy. He actually plans to cut cash bonuses while still giving rewards in shares. One can only look on in disbelief.

Maybe Mr Brown would have felt better with an easy question at the forum, like “what is your favourite biscuit”, a question posed to him at an audience with mumsnet. An easy question, that took him two days to answer.

Incidentally, it’s a choc-chip.

By Kirsty Styles

GRUMPY Man faded out towards the end of last year. But now I’m back, and “by popular demand” which is something I’ve always wanted to be. “Popular demand” means I’m admired, loved and adored and that I bring a smile to John Crossley’s face. Hopefully. Continue Reading

It’s the paper that brought hundreds of criminals to justice, exposed sex scandals, tapped Royal phone lines and relentlessly stalked celebrities.

The current situation at News of the World needs little introduction. But for those recently returned from Mediterranean beaches, African safaris and trips to Mars, here goes…

Refusing to learn their lesson from 2006- when Royal Editor Clive Goodman and accomplice were jailed for tapping royal phone lines, and then-editor Andy Coulson (now “PR aide” to David Cameron) resigned- NOTW continue their covert operations to find out what we all need to know. Continue Reading

Opportunity, fairness and equality. This was the core ethos when New Labour came to power in 1997.

Blair promised that everyone in Britain will be given a fair chance to succeed and Brown promised to eliminate the ‘boom and bust’ culture. But a surge of wealth and opportunism had to come at a price.

Fast forward 12 years and we’re deep into a recession, a culture of overspending and over borrowing has left the country in economic hangover and the people in charge seem oblivious to it all. We’re experiencing the bust morning after the boom night before.

Forecasts have even been made, predicting it’ll be the year 2032 until the debt levels return to a sustainable level. It’s probably because the phrase “green shoots of recovery” is tossed around so casually that when signs of them actually do appear; we tend to play it down as more hot air from politicians. Instead, given the severity of the recession, the public want to see an economic orchard emerging before they believe the worst is over.

Admittedly, Gordon Brown is a far less media savvy Prime Minister than his predecessor at number 10 and neither is he videogenic in comparison to Blair. It tends to be the armchair political commentators who feel the need most to vent spleen at the Brown believing he single-handedly caused this economic downturn.

George Osborne didn’t even manage to take a break from his routine tongue lashing of Labour to actually try and present a substantial alternative to Darling’s list of proposals in his budget response. The message was focused on what The Tories would have done to avoid the recession and what errors the Government have made in trying to bring about economic recovery.

It seems as if the opposition are trying to milk votes without presenting an alternative to this mess. If either of the two major opposition parties had an actual plan then why didn’t they create some kind of mock-budget to show how they would provide an alternative solution.

When a nation becomes disenchanted with their government, the tendency is to assume that the grass is always greener on the other side. Perhaps we’re supposed to take that literally now that The Conservatives have ‘reinvented’ themselves with an eco-friendly image. Such tactics have included; the new Conservative party logo of a scribbled tree and David Cameron’s laughably contrived bike rides to work…whilst having his shoes and brief case chauffer driven behind him ! Yet Cameron felt compelled to berate The Chancellor’s car scrap scheme for its miniscule carbon footprint!

However, it was Liberal Democrat’s Treasury Spokesman Vince Cable gave the most sober interpretation of the budget. He asked voters not to dwell on the past and even told politicians to “Stop the childish bickering over whose to blame.”

Quite a bold, yet humbling statement from Cable, given he was the one who’d been constantly warning The Government about a potential recession years beforehand. He could have quite easily spent 5 minutes preaching “I told you so”.

Instead he outlined a realistic road to recovery. Cable mentioned that the government could spread the burden of tax more fairly rather than taxing low and average earners. He also fingered out the legal tax dodgers living in tax havens saying: “British tax payers pay through the nose while the Union Jack flies above many of the world’s tax havens.”

It’s just a shame that Britain’s archaic first past the post voting systems means that the Lib Dems never get fairly represented in parliament to help mitigate the bi-partisan bickering between Labour and The Tories. The often forgotten third party had received 25% of the total votes in the 2005 general election but received 10% of parliamentary representation. Meanwhile in the same election, Labour received 35% of the total votes but managed to hold onto 55% of the overall seats.

When the last Conservative government began to look tired in  the mid-nineties, the media took it’s usual pot-shot but it was ultimately Blair’s vision, leadership and PR skills in a new age of rolling news which helped him formulate a strong manifesto to appease voters from both the left and right.  Now that The Daily Mail, The Express and Telegraph have their tongues firmly sewn into Cameron’s trousers and The Sun flirting with the idea more and more, support is being rallied behind an visionless alternative with no solid policies.

David Cameron just tells the public that if The Conservatives got in power, the road to recovery would be long and hard… just as Labour as tells us. It’s not unsurprising of him to lack answers when he is inept at asking questions. Every Wednesday he phrases the questions in exactly the same way at PMQs, always beginning.

“Will the Prime minister admit…” or if he’s feeling adventurous: “Will the Prime minister confirm…”

This is his standardised set-up of closed-down questions in an effort to expose Brown’s stubbornness by not answering questions in a straight manner on Labour’s failures. Shame that Cameron doesn’t practice what he preaches whenever he’s asked by journalists… Will Mr. Cameron admit that he has taken cocaine?

When Cameron won the leadership contest in 2005 he promised an end to ‘Punch and Judy’ politics. Even at the time, most took this statement with a pinch of salt and The Tories reaction to the budget has augmented the taste of the sodium based condiment (at least in my mouth) even more.

Brown has in fact eliminated the textbook recessions of the past which always came with high inflation and high interest rates. It’s quite obvious that The Conservatives are taking the ‘kick ‘em while they’re down’ approach rather instead of outlining a clear vision of the road to recovery, as this would include taxing the wealthy and invariably upsetting their own core voters!

By Nick Townsend

What a decade! As New Labour staggers to its timely death, this could be the most telling week we, the people, have had since the demonstrations against the Iraq War. Hopefully this one will actually make a difference.

Continue Reading

Depending on you main source of news, the G20 protests passed off with debatable success.

After weeks of anticipation and planning by the protestors, police, residents of London and workers in the City, it’s all over. And despite the media planning, perhaps more than anybody else, they’ve still failed to tell us exactly what happened. Continue Reading

These extraordinary times. Her voice echoes out from the TV screen. A news reporter is gravely explaining the next victim in an ever-lengthening line of businesses- banks- queuing for Government hand outs. Continue Reading

The economy is in meltdown.

Investment bankers the world over have been gambling on the future. And have lost.

But nobody realized it was going to happen. Apparently. Continue Reading

A proposed change in the law on organ donations, supported by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, would mean that everyone in the country would automatically be considered a donor unless they opt-out. Or relatives object. Continue Reading