Thank you so much for the comments you send me. Please feel free to post your comments directly onto the appropriate part of the site but in the meantime I thought you might enjoy some of the more recent thoughts, observations and exchanges.
Tony:
Headline in U.S.A. Today: Mortgage Collapse Started in Few Areas. They
have a map that says it all--and there are other stories out now on radio
and TV. picking up the thread. When you really crunch it, it was the
housing developments I pointed out in Southern California, central valley,
and in particular, Pahrump/Las Vegas that triggered the collapse. This
Paper was used to leverage on Wall St. Saw this years ago and told my dad to sell his Palm Springs crib--everyone saw this coming. ...The larger
consequences for the economy were sounded clearly by Paul Krugman and others.
On the national scene, half of the foreclosures are in only 35
Counties--the majority in California, Nevada.
Increasingly, it seems possible to pin this whole thing on hookers in
Pahrump who became real estate agents.
Brad.
Brad
I don't know if you're right but I love the idea of the hookers f…ing the
World rather than the other way around.
Tony
The following was addressed to me about my articles regarding the fast disappearing economy;
Another good one and so true. Slowly emerge step by step out of the madness and the chaos. I love your blogs....
Stevie
My article about “Family” provoked the following observations. I was especially moved by the wonderful and warm loving reactions of many members of my own family. I took the decision not to print their remarks since some stuff should remain personal. Suffice it to say I am proud of them and proud to share their love, which is entirely mutual.
I loved this blog.
I am going to send it to work colleagues and family!
Roz
That was really heartfelt and lovely, Tony
Marjorie
Bravo!!! Many more!
Neville
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Observations
Thank you so much for the comments you send me. Please feel free to post your comments directly onto the appropriate part of the site but in the meantime I thought you might enjoy some of the more recent thoughts, observations and exchanges.
Tony:
Headline in U.S.A. Today: Mortgage Collapse Started in Few Areas. They
have a map that says it all--and there are other stories out now on radio
and TV. picking up the thread. When you really crunch it, it was the
housing developments I pointed out in Southern California, central valley,
and in particular, Pahrump/Las Vegas that triggered the collapse. This
Paper was used to leverage on Wall St. Saw this years ago and told my dad to sell his Palm Springs crib--everyone saw this coming. ...The larger
consequences for the economy were sounded clearly by Paul Krugman and others.
On the national scene, half of the foreclosures are in only 35
Counties--the majority in California, Nevada.
Increasingly, it seems possible to pin this whole thing on hookers in
Pahrump who became real estate agents.
Brad.
Brad
I don't know if you're right but I love the idea of the hookers f…ing the
World rather than the other way around.
Tony
The following was addressed to me about my articles regarding the fast disappearing economy;
Another good one and so true. Slowly emerge step by step out of the madness and the chaos. I love your blogs....
Stevie
My article about “Family” provoked the following observations. I was especially moved by the wonderful and warm loving reactions of many members of my own family. I took the decision not to print their remarks since some stuff should remain personal. Suffice it to say I am proud of them and proud to share their love, which is entirely mutual.
I loved this blog.
I am going to send it to work colleagues and family!
Roz
That was really heartfelt and lovely, Tony
Marjorie
Bravo!!! Many more!
Neville
Tony:
Headline in U.S.A. Today: Mortgage Collapse Started in Few Areas. They
have a map that says it all--and there are other stories out now on radio
and TV. picking up the thread. When you really crunch it, it was the
housing developments I pointed out in Southern California, central valley,
and in particular, Pahrump/Las Vegas that triggered the collapse. This
Paper was used to leverage on Wall St. Saw this years ago and told my dad to sell his Palm Springs crib--everyone saw this coming. ...The larger
consequences for the economy were sounded clearly by Paul Krugman and others.
On the national scene, half of the foreclosures are in only 35
Counties--the majority in California, Nevada.
Increasingly, it seems possible to pin this whole thing on hookers in
Pahrump who became real estate agents.
Brad.
Brad
I don't know if you're right but I love the idea of the hookers f…ing the
World rather than the other way around.
Tony
The following was addressed to me about my articles regarding the fast disappearing economy;
Another good one and so true. Slowly emerge step by step out of the madness and the chaos. I love your blogs....
Stevie
My article about “Family” provoked the following observations. I was especially moved by the wonderful and warm loving reactions of many members of my own family. I took the decision not to print their remarks since some stuff should remain personal. Suffice it to say I am proud of them and proud to share their love, which is entirely mutual.
I loved this blog.
I am going to send it to work colleagues and family!
Roz
That was really heartfelt and lovely, Tony
Marjorie
Bravo!!! Many more!
Neville
Friday, March 6, 2009
PLANESTUPID
In the UK today we were cursed with a series of acts that were plane stupid.
Outside a London "low carbon" conference at breakfast time a protestor threw a container of green custard in the face of British Government Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson.
She was later discovered to be Leila Dean and she was protesting about the proposed third airport runway at London's Heathrow airport. That additional runway is long overdue and despite the Government's support is still many years and endless hearings, protests and legal hurdles away from completion.
"While I'm prepared to take my fair share of the green revolution on my shoulders, I'm less keen on it in my face," he said after the scare.
"When democracy is failing you have to resort to any means necessary as long as it is peaceful and does not harm other human beings," she said.
"Peter Mandelson is the same person who effectively bullied Ed Miliband and other members of the Cabinet to accept a third runway that nobody wants, a third runway that no one was consulted on and no one is able to say no to.
"It's not right that someone like Peter Mandelson can stand up and talk about being green."
Speaking later where the incident took place Lord Mandelson said: "I don't think anyone should overreact. Ifs there's a security issue it's for the police and others.
"In a democracy people can have their say but I'd rather people said it to my face rather than throw it at my face."
The young woman who threw the custard is a serial protest veteran who comes from a campaign group called PLANE STUPID, which tells you everything you need to know for they do indeed live up to their name.
At the conference the Prime Minister made jokes about the attack as if the whole thing were just a bit of whimsy. I think he was attempting to whistle in the dark, to demonstrate the British bulldog spirit; but all he succeeded in demonstrating was complacency and stupidity.
British politicians have a naive belief that democracy allows them to be complacent and cavalier about their personal security when all the evidence indicates that they should be aware of the potential of threats from many quarters. Imagine if the woman had acid in her container or had decided to kidnap a Minister. Our security apparatus must heed this stark warnings before someone is killed. If we don't protect ourselves and our leaders we are all just PLANE STUPID.
Outside a London "low carbon" conference at breakfast time a protestor threw a container of green custard in the face of British Government Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson.
She was later discovered to be Leila Dean and she was protesting about the proposed third airport runway at London's Heathrow airport. That additional runway is long overdue and despite the Government's support is still many years and endless hearings, protests and legal hurdles away from completion.
"While I'm prepared to take my fair share of the green revolution on my shoulders, I'm less keen on it in my face," he said after the scare.
"When democracy is failing you have to resort to any means necessary as long as it is peaceful and does not harm other human beings," she said.
"Peter Mandelson is the same person who effectively bullied Ed Miliband and other members of the Cabinet to accept a third runway that nobody wants, a third runway that no one was consulted on and no one is able to say no to.
"It's not right that someone like Peter Mandelson can stand up and talk about being green."
Speaking later where the incident took place Lord Mandelson said: "I don't think anyone should overreact. Ifs there's a security issue it's for the police and others.
"In a democracy people can have their say but I'd rather people said it to my face rather than throw it at my face."
The young woman who threw the custard is a serial protest veteran who comes from a campaign group called PLANE STUPID, which tells you everything you need to know for they do indeed live up to their name.
At the conference the Prime Minister made jokes about the attack as if the whole thing were just a bit of whimsy. I think he was attempting to whistle in the dark, to demonstrate the British bulldog spirit; but all he succeeded in demonstrating was complacency and stupidity.
British politicians have a naive belief that democracy allows them to be complacent and cavalier about their personal security when all the evidence indicates that they should be aware of the potential of threats from many quarters. Imagine if the woman had acid in her container or had decided to kidnap a Minister. Our security apparatus must heed this stark warnings before someone is killed. If we don't protect ourselves and our leaders we are all just PLANE STUPID.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
BeingQuantitativelyEased
Being Quantitatively Eased sounds like something someone might do with a plunger for a very high colonic. Perhaps that is precisely what is happening to us in the British body economic?
Today the Bank of England announced that they are undertaking their first steps into the world of quantitative easing. OK, let’s put it another way that we can all understand, they have decided to print and put through the system an initial additional £75,000,000,000 and if that goes as they would like they will follow this with another £75,000,000,000 put that total into dollars and you are talking about printing $210,000,000 Well, like the nurse would say, “that should clear madam’s system nicely!”
I have taken to using the zeros so that we can truly grasp the size of these amounts of money being pumped into our economic systems. The reason for this money “printing” exercise is to allow the government to buy such things as corporate bonds from blue chip companies and possibly some toxic bank debts. As Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesman said, “Quantitative easing is a dangerous game as it can quickly cause inflation. However, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.”
The sad and frightening truth is that none of us knows how this will work out. If the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee had done nothing today as we drift ever closer to another huge economic depression led by deflation they would stand forever accused of not acting decisively when they should have known better. Today we see the result, since at the same time as announcing this very substantial measure they also reduced the rate of interest down to the historic low of 0.5%. It has never been at this level in our economic history and remember it was only six months ago that the rate of interest was hovering along, seemingly set at 5% for the longer term.
I’ve heard descriptions of the months following the declaration of war by Britain against Germany in 1939. At first nothing much seemed to happen, and then all hell broke loose. Something similar is happening now; we all know that the flood waters of this huge recession is coming ever closer to the sandbags we have tried to build around our homes and businesses but we know that anything we do might not be enough. We see governments and central bankers who clearly don’t know more than us about how to rescue this situation and naturally we are terrified.
I am also an occasional academic and I use this analogy when dealing with students facing a potentially very difficult examination. Don’t see what’s coming at you as a tidal wave from which the only salvation is to grab hold of something in the hope that the water will wash over you and there’s a chance you’ll have survived the flood. It is much better to see the challenge ahead as a mountain trail you have to climb. Make sure you prepare as well as you can and then start taking short strides, one at a time, and you will not only survive but you can reach the summit.
The people that will get through this economic disaster will either be lucky enough to already have a steady job, which they can hold onto or they will be the kind of people who are ready to plan, adapt and plan again.
The one thing that is for sure now is that nothing will be for sure again for the foreseeable future. Be prepared to wake up to shocking news and still move forward. There has never been a situation like this one and there are no means to measure what will happen next. The best-case scenario is that the measures being adopted by our leaders will work quickly and effectively and the banks will unglue the lending pipes and this will happen without releasing us into a gigantic inflationary cycle. That would be a case of the medicine being worse than the potential of the deflationary disease.
The only country where anything similar did happen was Japan in the early to middle 1990’s and that country still hasn’t moved forward from its “stagflation” problems, despite having record exports and huge balance of payments surpluses. Our situation is immeasurably worse, but we, as individuals have to hope that our leaders are a whole lot brighter now than they were when they allowed this situation to develop.
It would be unwise and hopelessly optimistic to forget that Obama and Brown said nothing negative during the last decade about the banks and the regulators when everything seemed perfect and prosperous in our seemingly robust economies. Pointing their collective finger at others now does not distract me from reminding them of their own silence then.
As for you and I, let’s get our warm clothes and hiking boots on, we have a long way to climb out of this mess!
Today the Bank of England announced that they are undertaking their first steps into the world of quantitative easing. OK, let’s put it another way that we can all understand, they have decided to print and put through the system an initial additional £75,000,000,000 and if that goes as they would like they will follow this with another £75,000,000,000 put that total into dollars and you are talking about printing $210,000,000 Well, like the nurse would say, “that should clear madam’s system nicely!”
I have taken to using the zeros so that we can truly grasp the size of these amounts of money being pumped into our economic systems. The reason for this money “printing” exercise is to allow the government to buy such things as corporate bonds from blue chip companies and possibly some toxic bank debts. As Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesman said, “Quantitative easing is a dangerous game as it can quickly cause inflation. However, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.”
The sad and frightening truth is that none of us knows how this will work out. If the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee had done nothing today as we drift ever closer to another huge economic depression led by deflation they would stand forever accused of not acting decisively when they should have known better. Today we see the result, since at the same time as announcing this very substantial measure they also reduced the rate of interest down to the historic low of 0.5%. It has never been at this level in our economic history and remember it was only six months ago that the rate of interest was hovering along, seemingly set at 5% for the longer term.
I’ve heard descriptions of the months following the declaration of war by Britain against Germany in 1939. At first nothing much seemed to happen, and then all hell broke loose. Something similar is happening now; we all know that the flood waters of this huge recession is coming ever closer to the sandbags we have tried to build around our homes and businesses but we know that anything we do might not be enough. We see governments and central bankers who clearly don’t know more than us about how to rescue this situation and naturally we are terrified.
I am also an occasional academic and I use this analogy when dealing with students facing a potentially very difficult examination. Don’t see what’s coming at you as a tidal wave from which the only salvation is to grab hold of something in the hope that the water will wash over you and there’s a chance you’ll have survived the flood. It is much better to see the challenge ahead as a mountain trail you have to climb. Make sure you prepare as well as you can and then start taking short strides, one at a time, and you will not only survive but you can reach the summit.
The people that will get through this economic disaster will either be lucky enough to already have a steady job, which they can hold onto or they will be the kind of people who are ready to plan, adapt and plan again.
The one thing that is for sure now is that nothing will be for sure again for the foreseeable future. Be prepared to wake up to shocking news and still move forward. There has never been a situation like this one and there are no means to measure what will happen next. The best-case scenario is that the measures being adopted by our leaders will work quickly and effectively and the banks will unglue the lending pipes and this will happen without releasing us into a gigantic inflationary cycle. That would be a case of the medicine being worse than the potential of the deflationary disease.
The only country where anything similar did happen was Japan in the early to middle 1990’s and that country still hasn’t moved forward from its “stagflation” problems, despite having record exports and huge balance of payments surpluses. Our situation is immeasurably worse, but we, as individuals have to hope that our leaders are a whole lot brighter now than they were when they allowed this situation to develop.
It would be unwise and hopelessly optimistic to forget that Obama and Brown said nothing negative during the last decade about the banks and the regulators when everything seemed perfect and prosperous in our seemingly robust economies. Pointing their collective finger at others now does not distract me from reminding them of their own silence then.
As for you and I, let’s get our warm clothes and hiking boots on, we have a long way to climb out of this mess!
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
TheAfPakThreat
With all of the awful issues confronting our leaders it is not the huge economic mess that we’re in that is their biggest problem. In the same week that President Obama met Prime Minister Brown we saw the awful news pictures of the Sri Lankan cricket team being attacked by terrorists in Lahore, Pakistan on their way to play sport.
Masked men opened fire, killing six policemen escorting the Sri Lankans and a driver. In addition seven players and an assistant coach were wounded.
The team later flew back to Sri Lanka. There is no word on the identities or motives of the gunmen, who melted into the city and escaped.
Pakistani officials stated that the incident bore close similarities to deadly attacks in Mumbai in India last November.
This is another of those all too familiar attacks that we see, sigh then shake our heads. We have become totally anaesthetized about the sheer horror of such events. A bombing in a restaurant in Tel Aviv, a bus in London, a shooting in Mumbai, jets being flown into skyscrapers in New York, carnage in Malaysia, a Jewish community centre in Argentina being bombed, trains and hundreds of Spanish commuters in Madrid blown apart or thousands of other cowardly assaults on innocent civilians anywhere in the world.
What do all of these terrible attacks have in common? Militant Islamic terrorists conduct them all. Whatever name they use, the Taliban, Al Quada, Hamas, Hezbollah or a thousand other little known similar organizations, they are all the same and their aim is our destruction.
Whether you’re Nick Berg in Iraq or Daniel Pearl in Pakistan it doesn’t much matter what label your Islamic terrorist has when he is hacking your head from your body.
The current and recent attacks on the Indian sub-continent are especially worrying for a series of reasons that are both inescapable and very scary. It is clear that the insidious and evil reach of the Taliban has infected more than the lawless borderlands running between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In fact the Pakistani government recently allowed its own Swat valley to become Taliban territory although it is nominally still part of their country.
The Swat valley is an administrative district in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan located about 100 miles from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. This once princely state with its high mountains, green meadows, and clear lakes, was once popular with tourists as "the Switzerland of Pakistan". In December last year most of the area was captured by the Taliban insurgency and Islamist militant leader Maulana Fazlullah and his group Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi that have banned education for girls and bombed or burnt more hundreds of schools for girls and many other government-owned buildings.
The result is that there will be no education for the girls of that benighted place. The Taliban in Afghanistan continue to attack girls who still dare to go to school and recently threw acid in the faces of many of the girls who dared to want to be educated.
I have never understood the loony left wing liberals who espouse furiously against anyone they dislike but who think its cool and fun to wear T-shirts that say, “We are all Hamas now!” Now the Taliban are killing and maiming the women of their own nation where are the left wing protests against these acts of barbarism?
Instead we are urged to understand the plight of the various Islamist populations and their motivation for hating and killing us or anyone else that they take a dislike to. Personally I don’t think the world is helped by this attitude. The vast majority of Muslims in the world hate these terrorists as much as anyone else. But they must make this known not only by their words but also by their actions.
The current and festering danger is that the entire region of Afghanistan and Pakistan is being terminally destabilized and this will continue and escalate unless and until there is a clear strategy to combat and contain this menace emanating principally from the USA and supported by the EU, China and Russia. The reason for this being so vital is obvious, Pakistan is a nuclear state and there can be no more terrifying image than a Pakistan run by the Taliban having at their disposal weapons of mass destruction. The rest of the world is severely threatened as this situation degenerates.
There are many sweetheart deals being done by various nation states to placate or mollify the growing terrorist menace I describe. There is no question that the aim is to “buy” a quiet life in the forlorn hope that their turn to be beheaded will never arrive.
This is not far fetched and cannot be allowed. There must not be any more bending of the knee to the world wide terrorist threat. You do not achieve peace by appeasement you achieve defeat.
We are fighting with one hand tied behind our back in Afghanistan whilst most of our allies with the noble exception of the Americans do little or no real fighting at all. This cannot continue. It is time we burned the poppy fields and attacked the Taliban where they live and where they hide, on the borders of Pakistan. If we have to pursue terrorists across borders we have to do so. There can be no safe havens for our deadly enemies.
Such Islamic holy warriors publicly state that their idea of compromise is the world’s surrender to an Islamic caliphate; failing which they want us dead. We must not allow such lunatics the levers of ultimate power and weapons of mass destruction. We must widen the fight against the terrorists now, while we are much stronger than they are, or we will live to regret our hesitation.
Masked men opened fire, killing six policemen escorting the Sri Lankans and a driver. In addition seven players and an assistant coach were wounded.
The team later flew back to Sri Lanka. There is no word on the identities or motives of the gunmen, who melted into the city and escaped.
Pakistani officials stated that the incident bore close similarities to deadly attacks in Mumbai in India last November.
This is another of those all too familiar attacks that we see, sigh then shake our heads. We have become totally anaesthetized about the sheer horror of such events. A bombing in a restaurant in Tel Aviv, a bus in London, a shooting in Mumbai, jets being flown into skyscrapers in New York, carnage in Malaysia, a Jewish community centre in Argentina being bombed, trains and hundreds of Spanish commuters in Madrid blown apart or thousands of other cowardly assaults on innocent civilians anywhere in the world.
What do all of these terrible attacks have in common? Militant Islamic terrorists conduct them all. Whatever name they use, the Taliban, Al Quada, Hamas, Hezbollah or a thousand other little known similar organizations, they are all the same and their aim is our destruction.
Whether you’re Nick Berg in Iraq or Daniel Pearl in Pakistan it doesn’t much matter what label your Islamic terrorist has when he is hacking your head from your body.
The current and recent attacks on the Indian sub-continent are especially worrying for a series of reasons that are both inescapable and very scary. It is clear that the insidious and evil reach of the Taliban has infected more than the lawless borderlands running between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In fact the Pakistani government recently allowed its own Swat valley to become Taliban territory although it is nominally still part of their country.
The Swat valley is an administrative district in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan located about 100 miles from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. This once princely state with its high mountains, green meadows, and clear lakes, was once popular with tourists as "the Switzerland of Pakistan". In December last year most of the area was captured by the Taliban insurgency and Islamist militant leader Maulana Fazlullah and his group Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi that have banned education for girls and bombed or burnt more hundreds of schools for girls and many other government-owned buildings.
The result is that there will be no education for the girls of that benighted place. The Taliban in Afghanistan continue to attack girls who still dare to go to school and recently threw acid in the faces of many of the girls who dared to want to be educated.
I have never understood the loony left wing liberals who espouse furiously against anyone they dislike but who think its cool and fun to wear T-shirts that say, “We are all Hamas now!” Now the Taliban are killing and maiming the women of their own nation where are the left wing protests against these acts of barbarism?
Instead we are urged to understand the plight of the various Islamist populations and their motivation for hating and killing us or anyone else that they take a dislike to. Personally I don’t think the world is helped by this attitude. The vast majority of Muslims in the world hate these terrorists as much as anyone else. But they must make this known not only by their words but also by their actions.
The current and festering danger is that the entire region of Afghanistan and Pakistan is being terminally destabilized and this will continue and escalate unless and until there is a clear strategy to combat and contain this menace emanating principally from the USA and supported by the EU, China and Russia. The reason for this being so vital is obvious, Pakistan is a nuclear state and there can be no more terrifying image than a Pakistan run by the Taliban having at their disposal weapons of mass destruction. The rest of the world is severely threatened as this situation degenerates.
There are many sweetheart deals being done by various nation states to placate or mollify the growing terrorist menace I describe. There is no question that the aim is to “buy” a quiet life in the forlorn hope that their turn to be beheaded will never arrive.
This is not far fetched and cannot be allowed. There must not be any more bending of the knee to the world wide terrorist threat. You do not achieve peace by appeasement you achieve defeat.
We are fighting with one hand tied behind our back in Afghanistan whilst most of our allies with the noble exception of the Americans do little or no real fighting at all. This cannot continue. It is time we burned the poppy fields and attacked the Taliban where they live and where they hide, on the borders of Pakistan. If we have to pursue terrorists across borders we have to do so. There can be no safe havens for our deadly enemies.
Such Islamic holy warriors publicly state that their idea of compromise is the world’s surrender to an Islamic caliphate; failing which they want us dead. We must not allow such lunatics the levers of ultimate power and weapons of mass destruction. We must widen the fight against the terrorists now, while we are much stronger than they are, or we will live to regret our hesitation.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
GordonBrownDeadManWalking
Psst, heard the one about THE TEST?
A man is drowning in a torrent of floodwater.
He fights for his life, trying not to be taken down with the debris.
You move closer... the man looks familiar...
Suddenly you realize who it is... It's Prime Minister Gordon Brown!
You notice that the raging waters are about to take him under forever.
You have two options:
Either save the life of Gordon Brown
Or shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, documenting the death of the country's most powerful man!
THE QUESTION
Here's the question, and please reply honestly...
Would you select high contrast color film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?
The tipping point of a political leader comes not with their first hesitation or self-doubt; rather it arrives with the first titter of disdain. With the first joke about a leader comes the warning of their political demise being not too far distant.
Before Gordon Brown forcibly succeeded Tony Blair there was talk of his clunking great fist of authority. I addressed him as the man who thought he was the reincarnation of the Lord Protector, the leader of Britain’s brief Republicanism, Oliver Cromwell. Now I think of Brown as a bad joke. Sadly he’s about the only man who doesn’t get the humor.
We can imagine the day when Blair decided he had enough of Brown demanding his turn at the helm of the ship of state. It was precisely the moment when Blair calculated Brown was doomed not only to fail; but also to fail with ignominious and disastrous consequences. Brown reminds me of the character that knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Blair’s reaction to this must be a good deal of schadenfreude as he watches his old political foe struggle with the political and financial storms swirling around his suddenly old, tired, gnarled and ravaged head.
The Prime Minister arrived in Washington today ready to create sound bites with President Obama who is a man with very sensitive political antennae. You can bet big money there will be limited photo opportunities and scant time afforded to Brown. He still seriously believes that he is the man who saved the world from the present financial crisis.
I have some bad news for Gordon; he hasn’t saved the UK from this crisis, let alone the world. No one knows how this is all going to be resolved but one thing is for sure, Mister Brown will be long gone from his Prime Ministerial role at that time.
Heard the one that sums it all up?
If the 'Midas touch' is defined as someone of good fortune, for whom everything they touch "turns to gold".
Gordon Brown must have the 'Toilet tissue touch.'
A man is drowning in a torrent of floodwater.
He fights for his life, trying not to be taken down with the debris.
You move closer... the man looks familiar...
Suddenly you realize who it is... It's Prime Minister Gordon Brown!
You notice that the raging waters are about to take him under forever.
You have two options:
Either save the life of Gordon Brown
Or shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, documenting the death of the country's most powerful man!
THE QUESTION
Here's the question, and please reply honestly...
Would you select high contrast color film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?
The tipping point of a political leader comes not with their first hesitation or self-doubt; rather it arrives with the first titter of disdain. With the first joke about a leader comes the warning of their political demise being not too far distant.
Before Gordon Brown forcibly succeeded Tony Blair there was talk of his clunking great fist of authority. I addressed him as the man who thought he was the reincarnation of the Lord Protector, the leader of Britain’s brief Republicanism, Oliver Cromwell. Now I think of Brown as a bad joke. Sadly he’s about the only man who doesn’t get the humor.
We can imagine the day when Blair decided he had enough of Brown demanding his turn at the helm of the ship of state. It was precisely the moment when Blair calculated Brown was doomed not only to fail; but also to fail with ignominious and disastrous consequences. Brown reminds me of the character that knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Blair’s reaction to this must be a good deal of schadenfreude as he watches his old political foe struggle with the political and financial storms swirling around his suddenly old, tired, gnarled and ravaged head.
The Prime Minister arrived in Washington today ready to create sound bites with President Obama who is a man with very sensitive political antennae. You can bet big money there will be limited photo opportunities and scant time afforded to Brown. He still seriously believes that he is the man who saved the world from the present financial crisis.
I have some bad news for Gordon; he hasn’t saved the UK from this crisis, let alone the world. No one knows how this is all going to be resolved but one thing is for sure, Mister Brown will be long gone from his Prime Ministerial role at that time.
Heard the one that sums it all up?
If the 'Midas touch' is defined as someone of good fortune, for whom everything they touch "turns to gold".
Gordon Brown must have the 'Toilet tissue touch.'
Monday, March 2, 2009
FearForTheFuture
Sometimes you see something so scary that you can’t quite believe it. Yesterday was just such a moment. On Britain’s Andrew Marr show, broadcast Sunday morning on the BBC the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman was a principal guest.
Marr was questioning the senior parliamentarian about the huge pension of Sir Fred Goodwin, which we wrote about in this column a few days ago.
In that column I wrote:
“This is epic hypocrisy by the most inept and injudicious British government ever.
Of course Goodwin should never have received one penny, in fact he should never have been in a job he was clearly not capable of doing. But he was in that job and he did negotiate a deal with those ministers and they all signed it willingly. There is no justification for a country to break a contract of its own devising. This would be both illegal and amoral. Of course a government could change the law retroactively to stop the knight getting his pension but that would be an act of petty venality that even this bankrupt leadership couldn’t justify. If that kind of thing is to be allowed we have entered a very dark tunnel indeed”.
When I made that statement I was more than half joking. I never thought that a senior minister would seriously suggest that the government were prepared to enact a retroactive law to negate a contract it had supported, allowed and in fact rubber stamped just a few weeks ago. Andrew Marr gave Harman several opportunities to slide away from her assertion that her government, led by the Prime Minister, simply would not allow Goodwin to retain these payments. When Marr reiterated that they would be breaking the law to break this contract whatever they thought of the morality of the situation she persisted that this man would better understand that he should not plan his future taking this pension into account, as he would not be receiving it!
I repeat, for the record, that I don’t like Goodwin, and never did. But I didn’t work with him or negotiate his contract or his departure, the government and the almost totally state owned bank did that. But whatever I think of him or them, and for me it’s a curse on both of their houses, you can’t simply dishonor a contract or force anyone else to do so in a law abiding country which is run with our common acquiescence to the laws, rules and regulations that we all accept. This is especially the case when you represent the law as our elected representatives do.
I will fight for the right for that bastard Goodwin to get his pound of flesh, because that is his legal right and no one should be able to take away the selfish man’s money.
If this government does succeed in their Robert Mugabe like interpretation of laws and justice and stops Goodwin from getting his ill gotten pension then people like me, who treasure freedom and democracy will have to fight or leave the country; the time for silence is gone.
Marr was questioning the senior parliamentarian about the huge pension of Sir Fred Goodwin, which we wrote about in this column a few days ago.
In that column I wrote:
“This is epic hypocrisy by the most inept and injudicious British government ever.
Of course Goodwin should never have received one penny, in fact he should never have been in a job he was clearly not capable of doing. But he was in that job and he did negotiate a deal with those ministers and they all signed it willingly. There is no justification for a country to break a contract of its own devising. This would be both illegal and amoral. Of course a government could change the law retroactively to stop the knight getting his pension but that would be an act of petty venality that even this bankrupt leadership couldn’t justify. If that kind of thing is to be allowed we have entered a very dark tunnel indeed”.
When I made that statement I was more than half joking. I never thought that a senior minister would seriously suggest that the government were prepared to enact a retroactive law to negate a contract it had supported, allowed and in fact rubber stamped just a few weeks ago. Andrew Marr gave Harman several opportunities to slide away from her assertion that her government, led by the Prime Minister, simply would not allow Goodwin to retain these payments. When Marr reiterated that they would be breaking the law to break this contract whatever they thought of the morality of the situation she persisted that this man would better understand that he should not plan his future taking this pension into account, as he would not be receiving it!
I repeat, for the record, that I don’t like Goodwin, and never did. But I didn’t work with him or negotiate his contract or his departure, the government and the almost totally state owned bank did that. But whatever I think of him or them, and for me it’s a curse on both of their houses, you can’t simply dishonor a contract or force anyone else to do so in a law abiding country which is run with our common acquiescence to the laws, rules and regulations that we all accept. This is especially the case when you represent the law as our elected representatives do.
I will fight for the right for that bastard Goodwin to get his pound of flesh, because that is his legal right and no one should be able to take away the selfish man’s money.
If this government does succeed in their Robert Mugabe like interpretation of laws and justice and stops Goodwin from getting his ill gotten pension then people like me, who treasure freedom and democracy will have to fight or leave the country; the time for silence is gone.
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