Carry on Minister

Harriet: '...the Financial Services Ombudsperson'.

Dunky: 'You CAN'T!'

Miss Harman, grimly: 'Oh yes I can. Sorry, Mr Speaker, it just slipped out.'

From Letts.

Note to PM: reasons you will lose, nos. 94-99

Thus Boris (by email):

We've started the New Year at City Hall with a laser-like focus on getting all Londoners through the economic downturn. To help pensioners travel to hospital appointments, I've extended the Freedom Pass to 24-hour operation. To help those looking for work, I've granted a half price discount on buses for those on Income Support and Job Seeker's Allowance.

Now more than ever, politicians need to do everything they can to help. Just as Londoners have to tighten their belts, so must we. My budget for this year will find over £100 million of savings across the GLA group, enabling me to freeze the council tax for the first time in 8 years and still deliver 500 extra police officers, improve local parks and trees and maintain investment in public transport.

So up yours, Ken. Oh - and yours, of course, Gordon. Wouldn't want you to feel left out.

Competition

Who is this?

Horrible filthy degenerate one-eyed, lavender-marriaged, warmongering bastard and shit-eating, bad-tempered, cock-sucking, drugged-up maniac who couldn’t, scrabbling with his nail bitten fingers, count the small change in his own pocket and come twice to the same sum, the useless, pampered, inadequate babyman, freak of nature and psychobastard. Source.

Suck it up, Kinnock

Does this ring any bells, your Lordship? Remember 1992?

Well, how does it feel when an employee of your beloved NHS, no less, writes these words, so evocative of your worthless self, not about your enemies in the Conservative Party but about being ruled - no, betrayed and abused - by your dangerously deluded, incompetent, destructive, cynical, self-serving, utterly corrupt and fucking traitorous 'Labour' Party, currently comprising a bunch of semi-educated, lard-arsed wankers who are forced to suck (oh, how they suck) on the public teat because they would fucking well die if their survival depended on their having to do any actual labour and who represent only themselves to the extent that their former election fodder is increasingly looking to the neo-fascists for representation?

You must be so proud.

I warn you that you will have pain – when healing and relief depend upon payment.

I warn you that you will have poverty – when pensions slip and benefits are whittled away by a government that won’t pay in an economy that can’t pay.

I warn you that you must not expect work – when many cannot spend, more will not be able to earn. When they don’t earn, they don’t spend. When they don’t spend, work dies.

I warn you that you will be quiet – when the curfew of fear and the gibbet of unemployment make you obedient.

I warn you that you will be homebound – when fares and transport bills kill leisure and lock you up.

I warn you that you will borrow less – when credit, loans, mortgages and easy payments are refused to people on your melting income.

I warn you not to be ordinary.

I warn you not to be young.

I warn you not to fall ill.

I warn you not to get old.

And all because the nation forgot you, Kinnock - you and your cheap marxoid oratory and your track record of actually doing fuck-all, laughably standing on the 'achievements' of your party during the 1970s when even enslaving us to your Union masters brought us nothing but chaos and failure and shame - and voted Labour once again.

But maybe for the last time, eh? Well, in your lifetime, anyway.

Still, chin up. It's only politics, ha-ha. Here's to the Socialist International and the old EU Pension, eh?

Bastard.

Government abolishes currency

Quick lesson in currency-economics here.

'Impending tempests charge the sky'

I commented as follows over at PB.com (151)

*********************************************************8

(In talking about Lib-Dem/Labour pacts and other everyday party-political goings-on...)

We are rearranging the Titanic's deckchairs, blithely assuming that the political fundamentals of the past 100 years are still in place. I don't think they are, and Brown's period of humungous delusional damage is only part of it. Unthinkable economic and political circs are coming at us fairly fast. What’s more, I believe Brown knows this and is petrified but dare not let on. Well, it would account for some of the rumours. Amazingly large social bills, originally due for payment a very long way down the road will be called in much earlier than expected, especially if any major pension funds should actually fail. The grey generations will revolt in fury as they are beginning to do in Iceland. Then the 'students' and the rest of the non-accidentally-uneducated/unintegrated class war conscripts will be marshalled by the hard left. But it will just be part of - let’s call it political climate change. All our political parties will be altered internally and realigned externally. Current bets, if [political gamblers] will pardon the expression, are already off. We just don't see it yet. I fear for a real surge of the BNP, the SWP and their EU counterparts, and on the streets, not in the polling booth. We know Cameron will have to face down serious union muscle but comparison with the 70s and 80s will be very short-lived. As they say in China, chaos is very much closer than you could possibly believe. Still, you gotta larf, eh? *****************************************************

Actually, I am in a very bleak mood today.

Points!

To this bloke:

... for sticking it to Mrs Dromey. In a manner of speaking.

And to Guido, too, from whom I nick Dunky's golden words (splitting them up a bit, to make handy bite-sized chunks):

There has been a sudden delay in the Political Parties and Elections Bill. Will the right hon. and learned Lady tell the House why that has happened?

Given her close personal links with the aristocracy, is she not doubly ashamed by the apparent conduct of her four Labour colleagues in the Lords? May we also have a debate on cash for influence in this House?

Does not the House of Lords pale into insignificance, given that, because more than 90% of the Labour party’s battleground funding comes from the trade unions, the party remains a wholly owned subsidiary of an interest group with its own policy agenda?

The latest forecast from the International Monetary Fund suggests that, contrary to the Government’s mantra that the United Kingdom is well prepared to deal with the downturn, the UK is actually facing the worst recession in the world. Can we therefore at last have a debate in Government time to allow the House to express its lack of confidence in the Government’s handling of the economy, or is the Leader of the House worried that this is yet another issue that would leave the Prime Minister, as reported yesterday, “tearful and dewy-eyed”?

It would appear that the Prime Minister has lost confidence in his own Cabinet and, it would seem, even in himself. He has complained that his Cabinet members are ducking interviews and leaving him to look like the Minister for the recession, yet today, curiously, we have learned that Labour MPs have been instructed by the Whips not to talk about the economy at all.

So who is going to win the parliamentary BAFTAs—the “Glumdog in Despair” in Downing street or the Basil Fawltys on the Back Benches shouting, “Don’t mention the recession”?

Put simply, when is this country going to get honesty from the Prime Minister about the severity of our plight?

Nice. Balls of steel. Allegedly.

What?

Ten per cent of people serving in the British Army are foreigners. (BBC R4, 5pm today - not on the news website yet.)

Ten per cent?

A moment's thought and I am not surprised. The Army needs bodies, but has no place for semi-feral illiterates with no experience of obedience nor any inclination to take responsibility for themselves or anyone else.

But... blimey.

Stevie's song for Gordon

He's a man With a plan Got a counterfeit dollar in his hand He's Misstra Know-It-All Playin' hard Talkin' fast Makin' sure that he won't be the last He's Misstra Know-It-All

Makes a deal With a smile Knowin' all the time that his lie's a mile He's Misstra Know-It-All

Must be seen There's no doubt He's the coolest one with the biggest mouth He's Misstra Know-It-All

If you tell him he's livin' fast He will say what do you know If you had my kind of cash You'd have more than one place to go [Davos this week. He's told Badger and Milipede to stay home.] Any place He will play His only concern is how much you'll pay He's Misstra Know-It-All

If he shakes On a bet He's the kind of dude that won't pay his debt He's Misstra Know-It-All

When you say that he's living wrong He'll tell you he knows he's livin' right And you'd be a stronger man If you took Misstra Know-It- All's advice

He's a man With a plan Got a counterfeit dollar in his hand He's Misstra Know-It-All

Take my word Please beware Of a man that just don't give a care He's Misstra Know-It-All Can this line Take his hand Take your hat off to the man who's got the plan He's Misstra Know-It-All

Every boy Take your hand To the man that's got the plan He's Misstra Know-It-All

Give a hand To the man Don't you know darn well he's got the super plan He's Misstra Know-It-All

If we had less of him Don't you know we'd have a better land He's Misstra Know-It-All

So give a hand to the man Although you've given out as much as you can He's Misstra Know-It-All

Check his sound out He'll tell it all Hey, you talk too much - you worry me to death He's Misstra Know-It-All

Spot the similarity

What do you mean what do I mean?

Maybe everyone but me knew this, but I just found out that the White House's guest quarters are called Blair House. Heh. I'm just saying.

Warning

The Radio 4 continuity bloke just said: 'The following programme contains scenes of a sexual nature and the music of James Blunt'.

Yep. He really said that.

Rights of the indigenous majority?

There is one law for those whom the Trots favour and another for their enemies (us). They have inalienable rights which do not apply to us because that would be racist. Clear?

Thanks, Timmy.

That light at the end of the Tube tunnel

... is Bob Crowe, incandescent with rage. One thousand employees of London Underground are to be laid off. Ooh! His boys, those are. Bob's ASLEF boys.

If any of the old class warlords has been waiting in the wings for someone to light the blue touch paper, it's Bob Crowe. Phone cradled in his collarbone as he chats to the Socialist Workers Party's Agit team, he'll be ordering his placards and counting his braziers even as we speak. Gordon.

I am lost

... for words, and faint with admiration.

Put your coffee down before you savour more like this:

FREE VAZOSAURUS COMPETITION. Win a coupon exchangeable at your local waste disposal facility for a five-gallon container of poisonous oily rubbish. Simply smirk, sit in your chair and pour it over your head to create your very own OILY VAZ-SLICK, see decent people slip and slide, finally choking to death on the toxic atmosphere which surrounds your every oily, dishonest, self-centred, greedy act. Say aloud “I am an MP/Peer/Lawyer/Banker/Surgeon and you can’t touch me.”

V for... venerable age?

Icelandic chap on the wireless says that most of the demonstrators currently chucking paint at their government buildings are middle class, middle aged and elderly: thrifty, responsible citizens whose life savings have gone down the swanee and who face punitive taxes from now to doomsday.

Says he expects it to happen here before long, with the same sort of folks out there and doing it.

See you on the barricades, then. Anyone think Gordon will turn the hoses on us?

Wun, to, free, for...

The Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons has published a report into literacy levels in the UK and on the 'action' the 'government' is taking to improve a dire state of affairs.

The Committee interviewed the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills and the Learning and Skills Council. Not the Department of Balls, I note, which has a big job on its hands (no, please, don't - the images are too horrible...) given that the root of the problem falls bang in the middle of its remit.

Chappie on the radio this morning explained that he had been illiterate into adulthood but had rectified the situation himself and now, in his twenties, felt confident end enjoyed proper books and newspapers. He is looking for work and might even start his own business one day.

Wonderful! Good stuff, my old fruit. One more saved by his own efforts from the hopeless, tragic mire that is the the curse of the gangrenous 'teaching' classes. You know, those bastards of the left-establishment who have successfully Gramsci-ed our education establishment in order to control the stunted minds of the young and the recently-young and have consigned more than half the working age population of Britain to slavery under the Brown State system. Victory to the marxoids.

Chappie squarely blamed his school teachers. He said they had nothing to say to his class if they had forgotten to bring their teacher's textbook into the classroom. Nothing.

Now, you may call me old fashioned which of course I am and proud of it, but I remember ...

When We Were Very Young... sitting in the babies' class at the age of five and being taught to read by an elderly nun who, strangely, did not use a textbook. We, sitting at our tiny tables on our tiny blue, yellow and pink chairs, were the ones with the books - Janet and John. All Sister had was her knowledge of how to teach children to read using a lot of Big Letters on cards which we ran around the room sticking on the walls, a few coloured paper stars and (this is quite important) her experience of turning out a class of 30, EVERY year, who could ALL read and loved reading 'cos now we could have stories any time we liked.

And then...

Now We Are Six... in this class, we all (yes, all) became very sophisticated. We advanced to 'I before E except after C' and such highfalutin notions. It was written on the blackboard. I can see it now.

And that was the end of our learning to read. Oh - no tests. None.

From that point on, reading was something we just took for granted. In our third year (aged seven) we all read a proper book. It was Heidi. The following year, we all read Black Beauty. In the year we sat our Eleven Plus (we all passed) we read A Tale of Two Cities. No, I am not kidding. It was our Set Book that year. Terrific stuff.

We had a 'Library' - in fact, a large-ish book shelf - in every classroom, and you could take any book you wanted, any time. And take them home to read in bed.

This was a tiny, insignificant school (now disappeared entirely) in a poor North London suburb. It was not a hothouse. Just a school. All the parents were working class or lower middle class. We had a couple of small grandees, one whose father was a GP and another whose father was a scientist in a local factory. (They had cars!) Not a toff in sight.

But back to Chappie. He left school unable to read... you know, words... afraid of newspapers and magazines... and yet he left with seven GCSEs.

In 2003, an estimated 75% of the adult population of working age had numeracy skills below the level of a good pass at GCSE and 56% had literacy skills below this level. At that time, based on data collected in 1996, OECD assessed the United Kingdom as 14th in the literacy and numeracy international league tables, with relative levels of illiteracy and innumeracy some three times that of the Scandinavian countries. More recent figures are not available [Why? No-one capable of doing it? Something to hide?] but, despite improvements in the number of pupils leaving school with literacy and numeracy skills, many still complete their formal education without GCSEs in English and maths.

Eh? So, we have improvements in 'literacy skills' levels but children can get seven GCSEs without being able to read well enough to pass an English exam at the level at which they do pass in other subjects... my head hurts...

Such 'qualifications' are worthless. The entire eduction system is a vast fraud against the children, their parents and society at large.

One of the [...] biggest challenges is reaching people in the workplace who lack skills. One part of the challenge lies in getting employers to recognise the benefits to the business of raising the skills of their workforce.

Oh, they recognise it, yeronner, as I know only too well having been one of them, and the truth of it cripples many a business - but why should they, and why should our universities (or institutions calling themselves such when in fact they are nothing of the kind) have to train people to read?

Our schools are no more than essential holding-pens for the restraint of children below 'working' age lest they become destructive en masse. They are prisons offering nothing to inspire or nurture the minds and hearts of the unfortunate young inmates, so many of whom can be found swanning around shopping centres instead of at their lessons, and frankly who can blame them?

What is the point of making children attend an institution which bores, depresses and shouts at them when it is not earning their contempt by patronising them?

Our 'school system', the poisonous, cynically political replacement for education because real education is dangerous, represses children's innate talents and offers them nothing that will equip them for life as a free and independent person, but instead indoctrinates them into believing that personal responsibility is a relic of a shameful past, independence is antisocial and prosperity the preserve of the class enemy, excellence is permitted only in areas like sport where intellectual attainment is irrelevant, high culture is abolished in favour of 'street culture' and work is unnecessary now that everything is provided by the State in a world delineated by fantasists like Will Hutton and liars like Al Gore, and proudly trains them to report their parents to Controllers at the local council for non-compliance with Orders.

Shakespeare said 'hang all the lawyers'. No, teachers will be much higher on the list when I finally emerge from this cave to lead you all out to the barricades on The Day.

Well, maybe not me personally. But the Day will come and there will be A List and I nominate this bloke as our leader. He has the necessary level of anger and writes better than I do so we'll get better pamphlets.

Hang all the fucking teachers and educational theorists, along with the useful idiot clip-board wielders of the Department of Balls and the class war academics who control the training colleges. They think they have convinced us that they can fatten a pig by weighing it at age five, seven, eleven and sixteen whereas we know that their true aim is to enslave us to themselves by controlling our children's minds so that future generations will never know what it is to be free.

Bastards.

No, I don't blame this Labour Government. I blame the entire fucking Labour Movement. They're all on the list, from Polly Toynbee and the Scott Trust to every taxsucking Labour peer. Especially them. They are rewarding themselves - richly, mendaciously, and out of my pocket - for having done the seminal damage to generations of school children. Their heads will be the first on the spikes.

Well, well.

Every day since his inauguration, President Obama has called on his fellow Americans to act with 'common purpose'.

What could he mean?

Brown's pact with the devil

Flattering or what?* Nick Cohen obviously reads this blog. Well, all right, maybe he doesn't..

Still, it's good to know I'm not alone in thinking that Brown cynically let it all rip with the financial institutions so that he could tax them.

* I'll go for 'what', come to think of it. It's the man Cohen we're talking about.

Argh

You nip off for a quiet weekend and look what happens. A million blog posts in my Must Read Whatever Happens folder, and half a million of those from Fraser bloody Nelson alone. Hyperactive bastard. Gimme a break, will you? This is going to take a week...

Tsk, I dunno. Bent Labour peers as far as the eye can see. Knacker ignoring Parliamentary privilege again. Gorbals Mick in the shite again. Brown making an arse of himself on the wireless with Evan. Prescott commenting on Mrs Dale's. (WTF?) Labour down and out in the polls. (Which means it's time to deploy the immortal Eric Morecambe's joyful: "Heh-hey!" ) Cameron on the box with Jeff. And, of course, bloggers to the left of me, bloggers to the right of me, all strutting their unmissable stuff re. the above.

Look. Will you all kindly get a life and stop bloody well blogging until I have caught up? No? Well, sod you, then.

Nope.

Can't see it, myself. Can't see reality dawning, let alone self-criticism. Still, where there's life.

Pic-nicked from Tractor Stats.

You're too kind, your lordship

Adair Turner is trying to spread the ordure around thinly enough that no one person gets too stinky.

The far bigger failure - shared by bankers, regulators, central banks, finance ministers and academics across the world - was the failure to identify that the whole system was fraught with market wide, systemic risk.

Then, having take care to echo Gordon's 'It's global, I tell you!' he spells out the extent of that 'bigger failure'

The key problem was not that the supervision of Northern Rock was insufficient, but that we [ see, that's him being too kind again ] failed to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of a large UK current account deficit, rapid credit extension and house price rises, the purchase of UK [sic] mortgage-backed securities by institutions in the US performing a new form of maturity transformation, and the potential for irrational exuberance in the market price of credit.

Now tell me, whose job alone is it to pull all those disparate elements together and make sure that they work together for the British common weal? Who is paid to take care of all the above?

Come on, come one. There is only one job description covering all that. Only one in which the cry of 'I was not told!' can be nothing more than a gruesomely self-serving, inadequate attempt at arse-cover.

Ah, yes. Chancellor of the Exchequer.

And which delusional derelict held that position during the critical run-up to the crisis? Which historian of Scottish socialism, dishonestly claiming to be an economist, took all the credit for the apparently beneficent outcome of his stewardship?

And who still does - except on paper - even as his criminally insane, cackling claims turn to ashes in his mouth?

And let us never forget that the same Chancellor's compulsive and diarhorreic spending of public money, coupled with his improvident refusal to maintain sufficient reserves of capital to defend the country during the 'bust' he mendaciously claimed to have abolished, the mad bastard, was for the most part funded by his taxation of the very financial sector which he now blames and calls 'criminal', but whose bloated and collapsing condition is attributable to his personal actions, to his purblind and destructive policy of rapid, experimental social(ist) engineering, and to his personal neglect of his duty and of all probity.

He fed them, like his personal fois gras geese, so that he could tax them - tax and spend. Double incontinence economics.

The man should be impeached and jailed.

Cupid Stunt, MP

The 'Honourable' Member for Brent.

Knock Knock

From Wat Tyler - gawd bless the man.

Knock knock.

Who's there?

I M F.

I M F who?

I em efraid we've come to repossess your public services, your pensions, and your standard of living for the next twenty years.

Love it.

Rioters go after Iceland's Prime Minister

From here:

People protested again today in Reykjavik. First at the govemnet house - where the prime minister had problems driving away. Police had to assist him, and eggs and other stuff where thrown at his car. You can see a video of that here in a Norwegian news page. Then the protesters continued protesting at the parliment building. Parliement work was suspended today, after the protest yesterday. Protesters made fires around in front of the parliement. Police, had trouble putting the fires out. They are still downtown protesting. Peopel are still demanding the resigantoion of the goverment and central bank CEO.

Listening, Gordon?

Woo-hoo!

Caught up with Evan Davies on the box last night. Illuminating on the banking unpleasantness, with Part 2 next week. Must catch Part 1 on the iPlayer.

Nice gig for Mr TT, too. New England beauty spot as background, the Ginza ditto. Really, really necessary, on my licence fee, old chap? But nice bike, Evan, very nice. Jolly nice leathers, 'n all. But get those feet! Size 12? 13?

*************************************

Update:

Well, I found it illuminating because I know a lot less (actually, it's scary how much less) than Tyler, who didn't. Hee-hee... the sage noticed the locations and the threads, though.

Last night Davis spent most of it - and I promise I'm not making this up - clad in tight-fitting leathers astride a big Yamaha, Gay Biker of the Year style. Why? We don't want a personality show about Evan Davis; we want a serious programme and time to understand exactly what the players have to say for themselves.So there we have it. A lightweight - and by the look of it, expensive - showboat from the tax-funded BBC, vs quality grown-up coverage from the free-market Murdoch. [ He means Randall. And he's right. ]

Making Labour government policy

From the ever-excellent Sam Jones at FT Aphaville

Darling would like to keep the short selling ban in place for two reasons:

Firstly, because by and large the national media does not understand short selling and prefers to label it as some kind of destructive speculation: banning it is a policy move taken straight from the tabloid songbook.

Secondly, because even if falls in bank share prices do not necessarily make the banks any more likely to collapse, they do get people talking about them as if they are (just look at all the fevered talk about nationalisation that has preoccupied the commentariat this week). This in turn puts pressure on the government - who naturally want the banks’ shareprices to be a bit more stable so it looks like they’re handling the situation well and so Simon Jenkins writes nicer things about them. This is thus a policy move taken in response to the broadsheet songbook.

Ladies and gentlemen, please be upstanding...

... for the Right Honourable James Gordon Brown, MP, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Lucky Winston

Churchill. Not Dutch - and dead. Were he alive in the Nertherlands today, the cowardly and Dutch government would be putting him on trial alongside Dutch MP Geert Wilders.

From brave old 'Mad' Mel:

As has been pointed out elsewhere, in The River War published in 1899, Winston Churchill wrote this:

How dreadful are the curses which Islam lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property‹either as a child, a wife, or a concubine must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Islam is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

During the 1930s and World War Two, the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine – from whom, incidentally, Hamas are directly descended – were the allies of Hitler. Heinrich Himmler observed:

Muslims responded to the call of Muslim leaders and joined our side because of their hatred of our joint Jewish-English-Bolshevik enemies, and because of their belief and respect for, above all -- our Fuehrer.

And Churchill wrote in turn:

In truth though, just as the British stoicism recalls the same from 65 years ago, so too, there is a deep and instructive similarity between the Nazis and the Islamic-fascist forces that attacked then and attack today. The fact of the matter is that even more important than invoking the famous British ‘stiff upper lip,’ to fight this current war to victory requires understanding and accepting the similarities between the Nazis and the Arab-Islamic terrorist armies.

Labourspeak

Redwood rips into the NHS 'Constitution' which is, as one would expect, a work of highly comical and meaningless PC speak.

For example.

Item One in the document tells us “it has a wider social duty to promote equality through the services it provides, and to pay particular attention to groups or sections of society where improvements in health and life expectancy are not keeping pace with the rest of the population” – a fine aim. Yet Item Two tells us “Access to NHS services is based on clinical need” which would be blind as between people from different social backgrounds with differing life expectancies.

Yadda yadda yadda...

In every sense of the word

As the bloke in the pub keeps saying, we can all see now that Gordon has been a complete banker all the time.

At the simplest level, Gordon is just a banker: an ignorant and hyperactive ditherer with delusions of competence, as is now clear even to his colleagues in the Unbelievably Bloody Stupid Labour Party.

The Banker's golden rule, in banking as in politics, is Take Action! Never mind all that nonsense about thinking things through and due diligence. No. Take Action! is what substitutes for coherent policy, in everything.

Over many months, the morose, slack-jawed and sober-suited Gordon the Banker was criminally negligent about a growing economic and banking crisis because he was too busy saving his sorry arse and trying to dish an increasingly popular Opposition. But suddenly, boring Gordon Brown ripped off his business suit to reveal his cat-suit underneath. In a flash, he bought three banks. He forged your signature on an IOU and did not enquire into the banks’ actual condition – but he acted. Action Banker!

The first bank was in a place called Labour’s Heartland but the Gordon the Action Banker’s decision had nothing whatsoever to do with that, nor with the fact that the bank happens to employ a lot of his party’s voters. It did not matter to Action Banker that the bank had lent money to millions of people who won’t pay it back, nor that Northern Rock was (and is) suicidally indebted to a lot of foreigners who want their money back.

When he leaves office next (or perhaps this) year, Gordon the Action Banker will leave his banks with you as his parting gift. His successors will arrive on your doorstep asking you to make good the IOU which he signed with your name. Which you will find, ah, a little difficult, shall we say.

You will have to raid your children’s piggy bank and stop their pocket money and you will have to tell them that Gordon the Action Banker has spent all your money and all the money they will ever make because when they are grown up they may be lucky enough to get a job, if they can actually read after years of what Gordon the Banker calls ‘education’, but they will never be able to pay back all the money you both owe and they may never be able to get a mortgage or have a plasma TV or an Arsenal season ticket and that Gordon the Great Banker has actually murdered Father Christmas and you will make your children cry.

Which just goes to show that if you voted Labour, you are a stupid banker, too, because you knew all along that they are a bunch of bankers.

Labour governments always, always ALWAYS end in economic disaster.

• Ramsay McDonald - economic disaster
• Clement Attlee - economic disaster
• Harold Wilson - economic disaster
• Jim Callaghan - economic disaster
• Blair/Brown - economic disaster

See? See the pattern?

Gordon Brown is also an Utter Banker. He threw out the regulations which, over many centuries, had enabled British banking to earn a well-deserved golden reputation. The Utter Banker thought he knew better than the Governor of the Bank of England and all his advisers. Against their advice the Utter Banker invented his own personal, very flawed regulatory 'system'. It is the Utter Banker's Rules under which banking has been conducted in this country ever since. It follows that it is the Utter Banker’s fault that (a) no-one had a clue that some banks had gone quite mad because (b) the Utter Banker’s Rules encouraged them to do so.

At the highest level of all, Gordon is an Absolute Banker. The Absolute Banker fixed the parameters by which Bank Rate would be determined by his appointees and, just for fun, he told everybody he was giving the Bank independence. This was to disguise the fact that he, the Absolute Banker, was in fact a Central Banker all the time. The Absolute Banker told everyone to borrow and rack up unpayable debts - and for eleven years he has set a fine example by doing the same thing himself. He told us that tomorrow would never come because he had abolished Nature, and he believed it.

What an Absolute Banker.

We now have a frightening economic crisis as a result of terrible decisions made by Gordon Brown, Absolute Banker. It compounds the unprecedented banking crisis which is many times worse than it might have been because of the ignorance, actions and negligence of the vain and delusional Absolute Banker. We face commercial collapse, social upheaval, fear, sorrow, poverty and pain.

The Absolute Banker is on the prowl day and night, obsessively Taking Action! lest by actually stopping to think he give the impression that he is 'doing nothing'. He runs from room to room, moving desks about, shouting and throwing telephones out of windows. Everyone in his vicinity is on Sharp Object Alert.

It's really only a matter of time... Please God we shall soon have an end to this and a sane government in office.

The new Chairman of the Financial Services Authority - not a man to be trifled with and especially not in present circumstances – says:

• parts of the Gordon Brown made-up regulatory system are seriously deficient
• governments banks should be forced to build up capital during good times, so they could more easily weather an economic downturn
• take away the punchbowl before Gordon’s insane profligacy the party gets out of hand.

Funny how exactly these remarks seem to apply as much to Brown government as to Brown banking.

So which of Lord Turner’s remarks, I wonder, does Gordon Brown think do not concern an absolute banker like himself?

No reason

Just because I like it.

Good night.

Good start by Gordon's NBF

Families are tightening their belts, and so should Washington.

- President Barack Obama, Day One.

No, he's not Brown's NBF. That's just what he wants you to believe. He's lying.

V - the Iceland Tour 2009

Worried, Gordon?

What I don't understand is...

Why there isn't a universal popular outcry, led by the Opposition and the newspapers in unison, for Gordon Brown's head on a spike overthrow of the government in Parliament followed by an early general Election.

The state of both economy and sterling is dangerous, frightening and the government's fault. Brown is flailing about him, completely at a loss. He knows he is finished with his reputation beyond salvage and is now going for scorched earth.

Hello? Is everyone asleep?

Or maybe I am a bit previous and it will happen - just, not now.

Meanwhile

Over at Coffee House, I wrote this:

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The first part of this slogan has been adopted by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge as a module, whole and entire in itself, of their philosophy first degrees.

Its adoption will enable significant saving of both academic time and cost, and relieve students of the tedium of acquainting themselves with obsolete arguments about the source and meaning of life which may have interested philosophers during Classical times and the Renaissance but have no place in modern thought, given that the official philosophy of academe is that life has no meaning. Students are advised that there is no place in academe for deviation from this position.

The use by any student of the archaic terms 'academic enquiry' and 'academic freedom' will be taken to indicate that the individual concerned is probably insufficiently mature to benefit from a university education. He or she will probably not find university life congenial in the longer term and will, therefore, be advised to consider urgently what alternatives may be available.

The second part of the slogan may be found in the welcome letter received by all students on entering our two greatest Universities, along with a catalogue of drinking and dancing establishments in their respective cities.

Allegedly.

It's that elephant again

Saith Jackart (my emphasis):

If there is a measure of Gordon Brown's fiscal irresponsibility it is the fact that the UK is probably going to lose its AAA rating from Credit agencies - the fact this is even being discussed should trigger a vote of no confidence in the Government.

This is not because of the "global financial crisis", though that is the proximal cause. The real reason is that Gordon Brown oversaw an economy which kept interest rates too low, because the wrong measure of inflation was chosen in order to "align" the British economy with that of Europe.

I'm still too emotional about yesterday, so...

... thank God for a balanced view of the events of the Historic Day of Healing.

Those who do not learn from history...

Any day now, Gordon Brown may (for political reasons) nationalise the world's largest and third largest corporations in balance sheet terms - RBS and Barclays.

Together, they are worth many multiples of the UK's entire economy. How many? Oh, I forget (waves hand airily). I have read so many eye-watering figures in the past week that I can't even blink, now, rather like the Chancellor on speak-your-weight mode in the Commons the other day when Hon. Members slept through his droned announcement of... something or other that was utterly unthinkable and had a lot of noughts in it.

But not to worry, eh? According to the FT, Britain's debt has been just as high before, without Britain defaulting into actual bankruptcy. Last time we did that was, apparently, in the Dark Ages.

So it's time travel, folks, backwards. Fasten your seat belts because we shall be travelling very fast.

Our first stop will be the 1970s, with nationalised means of exchange (and soon, of production... who actually needs a Clause Four?), shortages, public sector strikes, breakdown of essential services, power cuts, a currency collapse, arrival of the IMF and all the joys of modern Labour government.

We skip past the 1940s and rationing, going directly to the 1930s, with mass unemployment and homelessness, a dysfunctional banking system and the all-round heartbreak one associates with a Great Downturn Depression. Buddy Can You Spare a Dime will top the charts.

After that, the 1920s, with no functioning public services to speak of, a decent education for a lucky few, medicine for those who can afford it, high child mortality rates from lots of interesting diseases, the doctors owning all the cars because no-one else can afford them, and finally a General Strike and hunger marches when the electorate decides it won't take it any more. Oh - and inter-racial violence.

We may pause for a while around 1914, as the odd revolution and a few wars break out in Europe. We'll see when we get there. Let's hope that not too many millions die.

Our last-but-one stop will be the 1800s - the last time Britain's national debt reached Brownian levels. This is the heyday of the stews of London and raging pox, wars with France, bloody revolutions - oh, and slavery. Lovely.

And our last stop, ladies and gentlemen, will be the Britain of the Dark Ages, the last time this poor bloody (sic) country of ours - a very different place now which, I'm afraid, you will not like at all - defaulted on its debt.

So thank you, Labour, and good night.

But before we go, let us have the invaluable Wat Tyler spell it out for us once again, lest we forget.

Labour governments always always ALWAYS end in economic disaster.

• Ramsay McDonald - economic disaster
• Clement Attlee - economic disaster
• Harold Bloody Wislon - economic disaster
• Jim Callaghan - economic disaster
• Bliar/Brown - economic disaster

See? See the pattern?

What's the French for 'ever closer union'?

Gordon Brown havers over support for the 'British' motor manufacturers for fear of what Brussels may say about it. Frau Merkel, worried about the creation of impossible competitive conditions for German car companies, glares blackly across the Atlantic at the new American government lest they make similar moves over there.

Meanwhile, in France, the communautaire spirit in the soul of the nation which dreamt up the EU and presses us all constantly for 'ever closer union' asserts itself in the traditional manner.

Viva la France, I say.

Obiter dicta

We will extend a hand to those who unclench their fists.

I made a note of that and, ah me, this:

We will harness the sun, the winds, the soil... we will roll back the spectre of a warming planet.

What is he - a Greek legend or an American politician? Finally, I did like this:

Your people will judge you by what you build, not by what you destroy.

Hm. Are you listening, Hamas, Ahmadinajacket? Convinced? Converted? No, I thought not.

The future ex-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom speaks

I am determined to stand with President Obama in the years ahead.

Hahahahahahahaha...

Well, well. And he thought of Diana, too

Donal Blaney.

Some of the ceremony was so cringe-worthy I could barely watch. That poet was awful. [ And let us not speak of Aretha Franklin. ] Obama demeaned himself by attacking Bush in his inaugural address. And the final benediction was self-indulgent, divisive and even a little sinister.If you aren't black and are not a liberal, listening to Obama today it was as if he doesn't want to be your President.

More than just the oath fluffed, then.

The One Speaks: Back to Basics

Well, I'm bored now. But I get it. America (he means him) is going to do it all.

Oh, Mr President, you forgot to mention the Buddhists. And the Bahais. And probably someone else. But I guess that, like all socialists, you mean well, and no man can do everything.

Have a nice evening, Mr President, and good luck.

Omens

Diana's crumpled wedding dress.

Obama's garbled oath of office.

Gordon Brown - banker

Wat Tyler at Burning Our Money is coruscating today. He muses on (among other things) why Brown has snuggled up to the bankers over the years.

Here's what I wrote on BoM.

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Why did Brown snuggle up to the bankers? Well, your reasons of course, but also to wipe out the memory of the Foot/Kinnock years and because it was a sure-fire POLITICAL way to persuade conservative-ish voters, warily familiar with that roll-call of disastrous Labour governments, that the next one would be different:

This time, they said, you will see that we have truly learned the value to society of capitalist markets and institutions. We happily break bread with bankers. Often. We are even going to scrub Clause Four to show you that we will not even be a socialist party in any meaningful sense. Trust us.

They would set up black propaganda about Blair being a closet Tory, to reinforce the subliminal message. Anything you want. Snake oil in all flavours - New Labour’s speciality. It was a great fat political lie concocted for one reason: to gain power. Nothing more. The biggest political lie of the 20th century after Arbeit Macht Frei. And once in power, the lie was repeated, to retain that power.

The reality of the markets remains a mystery to Dr Brown, socialist historian and economics amateur. His deep incomprehension of how capitalism works, intimately connected as it is with his tribal hatred of capitalists, has been his undoing.

When the markets are rebuilt as they will be, it being the way of things, Brown will be no more than a chastening and rather unpleasant chapter in a history book which future Labour power-seekers will forget to read.

Guest list for the Obamalamadingdong

Will Obama's illegal immigrant Kenyan auntie be on Capitol Hill this afternoon?

I merely ask.

Cheering here, Matt

When Gordon Brown has lost the general election, and it emerges from diaries and media confessions by those no longer terrified of the man that he was from the start an appalling, raging, dithering, laptop-throwing typhoon of aggression, paranoia and insecurity, would those many in Westminster, Whitehall and Fleet Street who will soon be sharpening their quills to write that, of course, they knew it all along, please ask themselves why, in that case, they don't write it now?

When the decision is taken irreversibly to go for the nuclear generation of electricity in Britain in a really big way, could all those in the political and media class who are at present sitting on the fence, kindly admit their former indecision, and spare us their thoughts on how there was “never” going to be any other way for Britain to abide by our green commitments?

Matthew Parris. Cheered me up no end, looking forward to a time when the present unpleasantness will be in the past - if I'm spared, as me grannie used to say.

God Bless America

I have always been a very great admirer of the Founding Fathers of the United States, of their philosophers' love of liberty, their trembling dreams for their new nation, their inspirational oratory and writings, their integrity. The United States stand on firm rock, thanks to those great and brave men.

I envy Americans the freedom they have inherited, to proclaim their love of their country without dissembling or blushing, defiance or irony.

It was like that here once, before the Great Destruction. Before the Great Sadness. Before the Socialism which I and many others fear is to be quietly sown like tares among the wheat in America's fields.

Poor, poor America.

Perhaps I'll go for a walk.

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The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. - The Bible, Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 4.

What it May or May not mean

At CoffeeHouse, Fraser Nelson is asking what Teresa May's promotion means.

I posted this reply to his question. I've added one or two rudenesses here which I didn't think they would permit, CH being a gentlemanly sort of place. It's not up yet - and it may never be, being a rant and only tangential to Fraser's intent. Update - It's up.

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For a start, it means Dave doesn't get how annoying May is to the average TV viewer. Keep her off the box, Dave. She is a rentagob, patently not a listener but a facile talking machine - and incidentally a destroyer of TV sets because I have to hurl heavy objects in her direction whenever she pops up on QT purporting to represent Tory thinking.

She is a debating disaster. She could not get the ball into an undefended goal if you wheeled her across the line in a bath chair with the ball in her arms.

Far more importantly, it means that Dave does not realise how incredulous many Tory supporters are in seeing, still on the front bench (give me strength), the patronising stupid woman who inflicted all but lethal damage on the party when she gratuitously branded us 'The Nasty Party' on prime time TV (FFS - Y?) to the eternal gratitude of Blair, Brown, Leninspart, Toynbee, the entire Labour Party and the BBC.

With that one phrase, May did more than anyone else, inside or outside the entire political class, to keep the Conservative Party out of government after 1997.

Imagine Pepsi changing its name to Horsepiss. Would you buy or sell Coca-Cola shares? And would the Pepsi bosses promote or fire the genius who suggested such a 'bold' move, in a televised plenary session of the Beverage Industry Annual Convention with Coke's marketing boys and the entire editorial team of PR Week grinning up at her from the front rows? Hello, Dave? I thought you were a PR man, FFS?

Until Cameron’s absolutely Herculean effort to erase memory of it (partially... it's by no means over yet) that phrase of May’s has rung out over the years every time a Tory has opened his or her mouth in public. It has coloured both policy development and every statement from the party since it clanged to the floor of the conference centre.

Not because she was right. She was not, but such a priceless gift to the chattering classes could only become common coin. It was a brand both in marketing terms and in the sense that the label is burned on the forehead of every conservative politician facing a camera or an interviewer.

‘Nasty Party’ became the background to everything the Party has done and will do for a couple of generations. Gee, thanks, Teresa. Good job! Here – have a pay rise. WHAT?

May's two major achievements are to hand Labour another election victory and Brown the keys of Number Ten. (Yes, I know Number Ten does not have keys…)

Mrs May has never apologised to the party nor even acknowledged making the political error of the decade era and she never will because she does not get it. She is always right.

May is a vote loser who should be fired pour encourage les autres, not promoted.

In an earlier age, I would have been demanding her head on a spike.

Saviour of the world, January 2009

Pic stolen from CoffeeHouse.

Love it!

Name them and shame them

The following is lifted whole from Iain Dale.

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On Thursday MPs will vote to against the very transparency they impose on the rest of us. If, in the course of my work, I spend money which I then reclaim from my company I am expected to provide a receipt.

For some reason, MPs feel they should be above that sort of thing and not be obligated to prove to the taxpayer what they are claiming back from that very same taxpayer.

They are, after all, honourable gentlemen and ladies. But let me not fall into the trap that many journalists all too readily fall into. They do provide receipts for some expenditure for many items, but not all.

Some MPs, like Ben Wallace and Douglas Carswell, have voluntarily published the entirety of their expenses.

On Thursday MPs will in effect vote to overturn a High Court ruling which said that all receipts had to be published retrospectively.

LibDem MP Jo Swinson has tabled a motion urging "ministers to block or repeal the order in the interest of MPs' and peers' accountability to members of the public". It is endorsed by Tory MP Richard Shepard and Labour's David Winnick.

And quite right too.

This vote is happening because Harriet Harman did a volte face. The vote is scheduled on a Thursday because she thinks MPs won't bother to turn up.

The Guardian says that some MPs are changing their diaries in order to be present and vote down Harman's order.

The My Society Website TheyWorkForYou has started an online campaign to put pressure on MPs to turn up and vote against the order.

You can join a Facebook Group to protest, or you can email your own MP and give them your opinion.

Alternatively visit They Work For You and follow the suggestions.

The Government will try to whip its MPs into line to support this measure. And there will no doubt be some Tories who go along with them.

Each MP who votes for this order will be named and shamed. Not only on this blog, but I hope a lot of others too.

PS If you have a blog, no matter what your political allegiances, please do highlight this issue. *******************************

Go on - do your bit.

Say what?

Wimmin's Hour, yesterday. Opera producer Wasfi Kani in conversation with Janet Daley.

Kani: “I grew up in London’s East End, very poor. We were your typical Muslim family. You know, parents on at you, ’You will work hard, you will come top of the class...’ 'Yeah yeah OK Mum, I’ll come top of the class,' so... dah-de-dah... you work hard and you come top of the class and…”

Appreciative murmurs all round, another five minutes' conversation, then:

Daley: “Muslim families remind me so much of Jewish families including my own… you know, parents driving the kids to study hard and succeed…”

Kani: “Hey, wait! How can you SAY that? You can’t GENERALISE about ‘typical Muslim families’… “

Gordon's legacy to Cameron?

This sort of thing on the streets of Britain?

Brown knows he has no chance whatever of surviving the general election and that Cameron will be in Number Ten.

We are in for years of 'negative growth' and cuts in everything, the like of which Britain has not endured since WWll, and the British people will not like it. Not at all. Brown knows that too.

He is flailing about him to no avail whatsoever in order to look busy and responsible. His only objective is to salvage what he may of his reputation for, oh, anything, really, while attacking his Tory enemy with everything he can lay his hands on, from catapults to nuclear missiles, knowing all the while that whatever he does or does not do, he is going to bequeath Cameron an impossible and very terrible task.

The polls indicate, increasingly convincingly, that Brown is past the point of recovery. On the way down and out. He can no more damage Cameron now than he can salvage the British economy or his own reputation. He has been rumbled.

Hat tip to Raedwald who points out that there has been zero coverage of the riots on the BBC. Strange, huh?

Don't DEnationalise the Post Office - INTERnationalise it

Right, Mandy?

The perfect elision of old fashioned socialist internationalism and modern Eurocracy.

Oh, wait. They're the same thing.

Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Politician

On Desert Island Discs, ballroom dancing champion and LibDem treasury spokesman, Bertie Bott Vince Cable was asked to choose one luxury to take with him to the island.

He mused that, because he would be unobserved on the island, he could be as politically incorrect as he liked and therefore would have an Aston Martin and drive around at high speed. Were there no metalled roads, he would make do with a very fast horse. Pushed to choose one or the other, he went for the Aston. As would your humble servant, I should add. You tend not to fall off an Aston and anyway most horses can't do 190 mph.

But I do not claim to be a devotee of the New Religion. I do not preach the salvation of the world through the enforced reduction of carbon emissions, unlike the political party of which Vince is leader manqué.

Not being a Liberal Democrat, I do not have to change my 'scientific judgement', my politics or my religion depending on my audience at any given moment.

It's obviously neither a matter of science nor of principle with Vince that one must reduce one's carbon emissions to save the planet. It's not as though it's a bad thing to pollute the atmosphere or anything. No, no. It's absolutely fine to belch out clouds of CO2 in the middle of the Pacific - or anywhere, really, as long as no-one can see you doing it.

But what the hell - good luck to you, Vince. Go ahead, mate. Have the Aston. I would. We are as one in the matter of cars and speed. And I am cheered to know that we are as one in believing that the New Religion is, in fact, a load of arse whose only purpose is the control of other people.

To be clear: no other people around means no-one to control and therefore no need to lie to them nor to pretend to believe in the New Religion. Right, Vince?

But sorry, Vince old chap - there is one tiny difference between us. You peddle Bertie Bott's LibDem Snake Oil in whatever flavours and colours you think will please whoever's buying - Tory, Labour, floating voters - whereas I am not a fucking hypocrite.

Brutal facts

The system is devouring itself and no amount of manipulation can change that... because manipulation is why the system is collapsing. When the correcting mechanisms of markets are not permitted to work, it is like never allowing forest fires to clear out dead wood. In the end all you do it store up problems for later.

Guess what? Later is now.

Let it burn.

From here.

In the long run, you are powerless, O Great Gordon. And the truth hurts, no?

Dear MP,

Please be kind enough to note my incredulous disgust at the Government's move to suppress detailed disclosure of Members' expenses despite having undertaken to do so for the avoidance of both abuse and the suspicion thereof, and in particular Mr Straw's intention to alter the law in order to facilitate this. There is no legitimate reason, notwithstanding the thin protestations of the Leader of the House, that Parliamentarians should be exempted from the duty laid upon all other public servants to account to taxpayers for your expenditure of our money for your personal benefit. This inexplicable and dishonourable decision unavoidably prompts even more suspicion of abuse than in the status quo ante. The House has brought discredit upon Parliament and upon Members of Parliament, and done our nation's political integrity grave disservice. I hope I never again hear a politician complain about the apathy of voters or express mystification at the low esteem in which you, as a class, are held. In this matter, your own deliberate action as elected Representatives prompts general derision.

The remedy is in the hands of yourself and your Honourable and Right Honourable colleagues who may care to reflect upon who it is that employs you, and for what. You are uniquely privileged in being able to determine your own conditions of employment without reference to your employers. Nevertheless, you would do well to remember that your employers observe you and, drawing their own conclusions, will, in their turn confer or withhold their approval without reference to you.

I do not know how you, personally, intend to vote in this matter so, for now, I give you the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately for you the public at large will not distinguish between Members who vote honourably in this matter and those who do not. The inevitable upshot is that suspicion of abuse and consequent obloquy will fall upon you all.

Yours sincerely,

Prodicus of Ceos

cc. David Cameron, MP

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WriteToThem.com

Drapery latest: Offend the bloggers at your peril

Iain Dale has discovered a spoof site called Labourist which mirrors Draper's LabourList content in every last detail, only with decent design and functionality, and free comment.

Do, do check the Labourist WHOIS entry @ http://www.whois.net/whois_new.cgi?d=labourist&tld=org

It gives the site owner's address as 10 Downing Street.

Then there's the Labourist 'About' page (NOT copied from LabourList) - it's truly excellent:

We are, however, uncomfortable with the close relationship between LabourList.org and members of the Labour establishment. Its editor, Derek Draper has a long and colourful history with leading Labour figures, consequently independence from the Brown government unlikely. There is something deeply troubling about this quasi-official site, where content is provided by members of Labour Government, edited by a former Labour party employee and where comment is encouraged and indeed allowed only by the chosen few.

The purpose of reproducing the LabourList.org content on LABOURIST is to ensure that the public is provided with an open forum where the heavily spun output of LabourList.org can be debated free from biased comment moderation and censorship. At LABOURIST, we believe the press should be free from political interference.

You know, this may be an all-round blogwars first. Let battle commence.

Congrats to the Labourist creators - and do get yourselves a lawyer.

Dolly, all you have to do is stop calling your advertising website 'a blog', and stop telling the world it's open to all. And don't mix it with big bloggerboys like Tim Ireland.

DIY therapy. Seriously.

Via Iain Dale I popped over to Tim Ireland - something I wouldn't normally do because life is short and I find leftie blogs deeply tedious.

There are some exceptions, though. For instance, the correspondence between Ireland and Draper is toothsomely comical. Ah, when lefties fall out...slurp... Still, Ireland is yer actual blgger which, as he shows in gruesome detail, Faker Draper is not.

Aside from all that I noticed that Draper gives his contact details as

[Derek Draper] http://www.labourlist.org/ http://www.flowvideo.co.uk/ http://www.diy-therapy.com/ 020 7486 2400 MIND Journalist of the Year (Ha! Really?)

"DIY Therapy dot com"? Is he serious? But, oh dear.

Must be because he's too busy fixing up his risible 'mass media' (sic) website (and no, it is not a blog, as Ireland makes clear) to maintain his DIY Therapy site. Which would seem to be a pity, you might say.