Guilty! Brown will leave us a legacy 20 years of hardship

I saw this over on Denverthen’s site pinched it because, whilst it’s all true, there’s more to the decisions we make than this.

We know that as things stand, even with the massive boost that the Liberal Democrats got from Nick Clegg’s appearances on the “I’m a political leader; Get me out of here” show, either the Tories or Labour will form the next government.... on Friday, perhaps with official or unofficial support from minority parties.

Labour has left the finances in a worse state than any time since the 1920s’ 30s’ crash and the great depression, and we’ve all been fooling ourselves to date about how it ‘hasn’t really hit us’ and ‘it’s not been that bad’.

Well, I suspect that it’s about to, and we are all going to learn just how nasty life can be without all the things we have got used to, regardless of who wins.

It is easy to forget with what massive enthusiasm after 18 years of Thatcher and then Major the country greeted to downfall of the Tories, and in particular of some of their major players, just as we will all over again on Friday.

The economy is in such a mess that even the Tories won't be able to fix it; at least not under Dave, who seems to have a a bit of a heart and some conscience, not to mention a bunch of no hopers around him.

Some people say ‘bring back Maggie’. If fixing the economy is the name of the game then we need someone who will care as little about the old and the sick as Ste. Margaret did, but who will, with her steely determination, carry on regardless cutting things in the way that the Greeks will have to, and that the Irish and the Icelanders have had to.

VAT to 25%, cuts in pensions and benefits including Incapacity Benefits, no new claimants for any form of DLA; massive cuts and salary reduction in the Civil Service and slicing of the final salary pension fund, the only one not affected by Brown’s butchery; 10% reductions in salaries for police, doctors, teachers too. .... no further investment in roads and rail (forget Crossrail London), and the closing ceremony for England’s Olympics will be old Cliff croaking “Congratualtions”.

Otherwise, after all the sneering that people have done at Greece and the Euro zone, we will have to call in the IMF too, and then who’ll be laughing.

Retirement homes will have to scale back, people will have to take their old and their sick into their own homes and look after them instead of the state doing it for them; women/men will have to stay at home and look after their kids unless they can afford to pay for childcare (gone the days of the lassie in Tesco earning £6 an hour and paying £10 an hour for child care).

What else can we do?

Reduce the fantastic number of politicians, particularly in the massively overpopulated old people’s home part, and the Commons down to 300 and double their constituency size so that they won’t have time to take on half a dozen outside jobs.

And a referendum on Europe. We should come out, as that would undoubtedly be the result. Everyone hates it. (It has foreigners in it you see!) That would save the massive subsidies we pay to keep it afloat. Without England it would probably crash and burn.

Then they could get rid of Scotland too, because they keep it afloat too. What a wonderful place London is, and with Scotland and the rest of Europe to support, no wonder it’s in such a mess!

WHO SHOULD CHOOSE A CIVIL SERVICE CAREER? SOMEONE WITH THE HIDE OF AN ELEPHANT PERHAPS

It is beginning to look like the “In the Thick of it” image we have of Whitehall (the English and Union Civil Service) is really a lot more realistic than the sedate “Yes Minister” of yesteryear.

Today, following the “Gordon Brown is a bully” allegations which have dominated the news, Peter Baume, general secretary of the First Division Association, which represents “top” people in the Civil Service alleged that bullying is rife across Whitehall and that staff had little power to respond to abuse by politicians and their special advisers.

He said he was not commenting about the Andrew Rawnsley book but confirmed that he knew of a number of cases where staff had been bullied. The victims had, he said, little option but to tolerate it or resign.

"Too often politicians have little idea about what is acceptable in a modern workplace and the behaviour of some ministers and special advisers falls short of what is acceptable on occasions," he said. "Every Government department has clear and unambiguous anti-bullying policies. In theory these should cover ministers. However, in practice no civil servant is likely to make a formal complaint against a minister. Instead, concerns about ministerial behaviour are dealt with through informal channels."

Mr Baume went on to say that if these channels failed, there was nothing the member of staff could do. (I’m not sure what he means by “informal channels”. Could it be that ministers are above the law? I’m not sure why. As Robin Day once said they are “here today and gone tomorrow” functionaries.)

David Cameron responded to the allegations of bullying by asking for an inquiry. He has suggested that Philip Mawer, who is in charge of policing the ministerial code, be asked to look into it.

However, Mr Mandelson, First Secretary, ruled out an inquiry, saying the allegations were "acquiring a slight odour" of being politically motivated.

I don’t know the politics of Andrew Rawnsley, or whether his book was politically motivated. It sure as hell will be motivated by political gain when Cameron has grabbed it and is running with it all the way to the line. But Brown and Mandleson really need to see that you can’t turn on tears for family tragedy, and follow up with tears for your dead mother, and rub your hands with glee as your opponents slip 4 points in opinion polls, and then expect that they won’t seize every opportunity to get even. To such depths has London politics sunk. But if you can’t take it don’t dish it out.

We have discover this last year just how much our MPs have been fiddling. We have seen the tip of the iceberg about how much the Lords are stealing. We are seeing what Anon calls “beeboids” are allegedly entitled to for doing a recreational job, and most recently we discovered that council chiefs are ashamed to let us know how much they pay themselves for fear of reprisals given the appalling quality of service they deliver in return.

Now we are finding that ministers treat staff like punch bags and that there are no formal way of dealing with this..

What on earth is this Union about?

You should read this article over on J Arthur MacNumpy's blog. It's spot on about the current level of political debate.

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