THINGS ON THURSDAY

Like any of us would be alive by the time it gets to the border!

This is the flag that revolts Mark Smith (the guy who is impressed
with the way  that the Vietnamese get behind their king!...
you know, the one who was deposed in 1945,
so he's obviously up to scratch with things. Idiot!

Stirling Council's Tories have withdrawn their motion
to fly the union flag over their council buildings

They can't even kill defenceless badgers.
They have had to extend the time and reduce the targets. 

Thank heaven's this moron is nothing to do with us

After today's behaviour Lamont  too will be needing
 a place in Darling's arms. As Bernard Ponsonby said:
Not a good day at the office for Lamont

Estoy loco.

You think the future is uncertain in Scotland? Pffff.

Well, if you can't think of another reason, here is one that will
give a lot of satisfaction

Bye Liam, you odious little right wing git

It appears the media can no longer quote Billy Connolly as a supporter of the NO Campaign, Project Fear. He has said that it is not the place of a comedian to tell people how to vote. He said he spoke against devolution because it added another tier of government, but he has been in Scotland for a few weeks on holiday prior to some filming engagements and he says it has changed for the better. So NO, you should take him off your list.
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Channel Four News has revealed that costs for tribunals for benefit sanctions have risen dramatically. In 2012/13 the cost was £66 million up from £22 million in 209/10.  The number of appeals had risen by 66%. Liam Byrne apparently said that it's the fault of Atos which is spinning out of control. Well, there you go, Liam. You left no money and a Benefit system spinning out of control. Isn't Labour clever!
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According to the Guardian's Money Blog, to achieve their current pension on the open market MPs would need to save about £60,000 a year for every year they are in parliament. They actually only contribute £9,100, so they are getting a benefit worth £51,000 a year, or 75% of pay. Contrast this to IPSA's view of the value of the pension: it says it costs the taxpayer 20.4% of MPs' pay or £14,000 a year.

After the pay rise an MP with 15 years of service will get an extra £2,850 a year in retirement. On the open market this would need a pension fund of £100,000 to provide. Across 600 MPs this translates to about £60m of value.

So don't believe everything they tell you.... like you would!

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Danny...our man in America... sent me the following cartoons. The first was one of a series used years ago to explain to kids how the federal government of the country worked. The second is what happens now, as Danny says, since the radical right wing of the Republican Party decided that they preferred gridlock in Washington, because they hate the idea of government itself!

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If anyone is in the least interested, apparently hundreds of babies were successfully delivered all over Scotland today. In no case was the state broadcaster obliged to have a team of experts on hand to give a blow by blow account and there were no loonie's standing outside wearing butchers' aprons. But for all that mothers and babies are doing well... and fathers are playing their traditional role getting drunk. Munguin's Republic wishes them all well for their future, hopefully in an independent country.

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LABOUR OR TORIES... SAME MUCK, DIFFERENT PAIL

I was reading an article in the New Statesman about how Labour is trying to out-Tory the Tories on the benefits cap (something that really doesn't affect Scotland at all, but, because of massive rents in some parts of the south east of England [you can pay £18,000 for a very modest hovel in a bad area], is a red hot topic there).

The article is interesting and I have provided a link, but what I thought was interesting was this comment from a correspondent, a retired man who goes by by the nom de plume "Terryec".

I have reproduced it here, without his permission, but in the hopes that he won't mind.  It seems to sum up what I hear from a some ex-Labour supporters here, around town and at the gym.

I am an old socialist and make no apologies for that, I believe we pay our taxes and NI for a reason, and that is to protect ourselves and others who fall on bad times, I was lucky in life not to have any disabilities, bad illnesses or long stretches of unemployment, I am now retired and have a decent if not luxurious lifestyle.

I have seen the standard of living since just after the last world war improve greatly until about twenty years ago when salary caps and cutbacks have become the norm for all but the wealthy industrialists and bankers, very few have a better standard of living than they did in 2001 even after the so called boom years and a so called Labour party.

Labour has now become so far removed from the problems of the working class that they feel it is legitimate to allow the rich to avoid taxes while hitting those that need to rely on the state, don't misunderstand me If you can work it is beholden to you to work.

Last week we had a Labour MP (WTF) Danczuc felt it was OK for a Tory proposal to stop benefits for a further week on people who lose their job bringing them up to 4 weeks without money, I could get by on that as could Danczuc, who gets £1000 a day advising PFI companies, and you wonder why these companies got a grip during the Labour years, but people who get next to nothing can't, how out of touch is that from a "LABOUR", I said a "LABOUR" MP

And this is what we have, as soon as they join the Westminster bubble they forget why people voted for them, it seems it becomes a scramble for as many paid consultancies as they can muster and become different people, what’s the answer, but I do know a lot of people won't be voting Labour again.

I also thought that this was an interesting article from the same magazine.

Iain Duncan Smith's plans will probably not only not save money, but they will COST money whilst making life immeasurably harder and more miserable for poorer people.

All this from a man who lied on his cv about having been to a prestigious Italian university, founded by the Pope in 1308, and having graduated from a management college in England, when in fact, he went to a foreign language college in Italy (a bit like EFOL course here) from which he gained no qualifications and did not even finish his exams, and he attended, as part of his job, a few short course at his employer's staff training department. (Acknowledgement to BBC Newsnight)

Additional Photograph

Found on Facebook with the caption: IDS with his medals for lying

THIS MAY COME AS A SURPRISE, BUT THE GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN LYING ABOUT BENEFITS...

For some time I have wondered about the claim from Iain Duncan Smith that people can be better off on benefits than in work....a claim widely accepted now as the truth (although in fact not), the acceptance of which leaves him free to reduce these benefits and and vilify those on them.

I thought, surely if it were true people would leave low paid, unsatisfying work in droves to take advantage of life on the Costa del Unemployment.

I feel somewhat justified in my assumptions having read this article (below) by Mark Serwotka taken from the New Statesman. (Lifted with full credits but without anyone's permission.) 

What it shows is that IDS, Osborne, Cameron and indeed Liam Byrne and Ed Balls are wrong about this, and are playing to the Daily Mail reader who needs to hate several things before breakfast just to get through the day.

The policy of the Tories is to engender in the public a hated of the unemployed in general, (and the sick and disabled) so that it is justified in taking away their benefits leaving them and their kids hungry and cold. Instead of being shocked, the taxpayer, in turn, feels justified in rubbing their hands together and wondering how long it will be before the top rate comes down to 35%. 

After all, these people are wicked skivers, aren't they?

Never mind the facts of course: Around nine million people looking for proper full time work, and very very few vacancies. 

Well Mark has done the research and they are...simply put...lying. Read on...

Earlier this month work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith and chancellor George Osborne claimed their changes to our welfare system mean, "no longer will it be possible to be better off on benefits than in work". The prime minister wrote the same in the Sun, calling it a "crazy situation".

The government's line, as it very gradually rolls out Universal Credit from today, that it is "making work pay" has cross-party support. "We would make work pay," promises Duncan Smith's mini-me Liam Byrne, while shadow chancellor Ed Balls affirms that "it must pay more to be in work than live on benefits."

My union's members, tens of thousands of whom work on the benefits and tax credits system, are confused. A jobcentre worker told me: "All the calculators that we use in jobcentres are designed to show that you would be better off in work."

So if politicians are telling us all that you can be better off on benefits, and jobcentre advisers are telling claimants that they would be better off in work, someone is being lied to. But who? Iain Duncan Smith should come clean. But not being one to look for pots of gold at the end of rainbows, I asked my union researchers to look into it.

They found the DWP’s "tax benefit model" – data which showed how much better off people out of work, in a range of circumstances, would be by moving into employment. Publication of this data was, intriguingly, abandoned in 2010 – just after the coalition government was elected, but a similar calculator is still used by DWP staff. It shows what would happen if someone moves into work for 30 hours per week. Even on the minimum wage, the legal minimum, benefits only deliver 79 per cent of what you would be paid in work.

We looked again to see if the same was true for only 16 hours of work – after all there are 1.4 million people working part time because they can’t find full-time work. This time benefits were only worth 81 per cent of a working income. Jobcentre advisers tell me these figures closely match the ones they use today.

For verification, we checked against data collected by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on all major countries’ welfare systems, including the UK’s. Like the DWP calculator, it factors in housing costs and benefits, and it assesses what is called the "replacement rate" for moving from benefits into work for 30 different household types – and in not one single case would a household be better off on benefits.

It does not feature in either the DWP's or OECD's models, but work might not pay for those who work very few hours in low paid jobs. But the irony here is that Duncan Smith has himself actually made this more likely by increasing the number of hours people need to work before they receive working tax credits.

The "better off on benefits" fallacy has become common. In truth, there has always been a clue that it is an urban myth: no one who claims it exists has ever actually given up work to live the benefits high life. And why not? Probably because deep down they do not believe it, but it is also true that even when the benefit of working is highly marginal, most people want to work. As unemployment climbs above 2.5 million, and 6.8 million counting as underemployed, the reality is there are fewer than half a million job vacancies. The real issue for the government is not making work pay, but making work exist.

PCS members working in jobcentres face a bullying management driving down their own living standards and setting targets that staff are told to deny exist. Low pay is so endemic that up to 40 per cent of the DWP’s own staff will be eligible for Universal Credit themselves. It is grim, far worse than when I started working for the DHSS in the early 1980s. Back then we helped claimants and took as long as was necessary to get them the benefits to which they were entitled.

On the other side of the counter (or more likely now on the other end of a phone) it is even worse, with claimants subject to more and harsher sanctions, unprecedented demonisation from ministers and a Pavlovian press trained to foam at the mouth at the mention of scroungers and skivers.

As well as challenging ministers’ myths, we have a duty to challenge their hatred-inciting rhetoric. So the next time Iain Duncan Smith – or anyone else for that matter – claims people are better off on benefits, hand him a pen and paper and ask him to show you how.

Mark Serwotka is the General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union 

*Illustrations are mine as are the red emphasis in Mark's text.

HANG YOU HEADS IN SHAME, LABOUR

Yesterday New One Nation Labour did something shameful.

It agreed to an emergency session in parliament to change the law ex post facto in order to ensure that some of the UK's poorest people were done out of a payment to which the law said they were entitled. And then, whilst not voting with the government Labour ordered its members not to vote against them, allowing it to pass with ease. A few decent Labour MPs who remember what Labour used to be about defied the party and voted against the Tories.

The DWP failed in their responsibilities to explain properly the slave labour element of Workfare programmes, in which unemployed people are sent to work for nothing for certain down market grasping stores, and the penalty for refusing to do this work, or being dismissed from it, is sanctioning and removal from entitlements. 

The Court of Appeal in London found this to be illegal and clearly the unemployed people who had been sanctioned were entitled to reclaim the money that had been taken from them illegally.

Approximately 230,000 people were owed on average around £550 each.

With help from Labour, the government were able to get rid of that particular debt and deal with the judgement that it had broken the law...  by changing the law retrospectively.

When I started work in the employment business in 1996, there was a Tory scheme called "Project Work". It took long term unemployed people from the register for three months during which they were paid a "training allowance" (the same as their JSA +£10) and, following two weeks' induction, put them into "work" for 18 hours a week. 

Major's Tories had wanted to put them into factories and shops, but the unions, and Labour were resolutely against this, on the basis that a post filled by someone still on the dole, denied that post to a genuine jobseeker and subsidised the company by providing it with free labour. 

If a business required workers it should recruit them and pay them, the thinking went. As a result of this, work experience in 'Project Work' had to be in charities, churches and the likes.

Clearly New One Nation Labour no longer care about that. I can't help but think that it is time that the unions looked hard at how much they want to keep supporting this party.

Ironically, perhaps, the decision to back this, while it must have been backed by "Red" Ed!!!, came from Liam “I am afraid there is no money. Kind regards – and good luck!” Byrne, the man who rented an apartment at £2,400 a month plus £400 a week for food, and tried to add room service to his expenses bill.

On a wider, and much more frightening level, the UK government has just crossed the Rubicon. With an unwritten constitution, parliament has set a precedent. Whatever displeases it can now be removed with retrospective legislation. The possible consequences of this are incredibly frightening.

The sooner we are out of this undemocratic union, the better.

THIS, THAT.... AND THE OTHER

I read a headline in the local paper on the way home tonight. It seems that a local bank clerk misappropriated £7,000 over the last year from his employers. He has been sent to prison. 

I wondered as I read it (in the shop, because I'll never buy another D C Thomson publication after they took a full page ad from the Wiggy-Trump man) if it was entirely fair that this poor lowly-paid guy should go to prison for stealing £7,000, while Fred and his mates at RBS, Halifax, Northern Rock, etc, ad infinitum, cost us tens of billions of pounds ...and they all got bonuses and pay rises and Fred got a pension that would feed a small African country. Not a lot of justice here, is there?
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Liam "Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there's no money left. Kind regards – and good luck!"  Byrne, author of the staff handbook "Working with Liam Byrne", and so, self evidently, a complete prat, has announced that if Labour come to power in 2015 in the UK (or whatever may be left of it) they will cut welfare. 

I doubt there will be any to cut so vociferously have Osborne and Duncan Smith cut, so I wish him luck trying to take war widows pensions. because that's all there will be left. 

Oh,and as Dean so rightly says, it's Social Security". Welfare is a patronising term designed to make the recipients feel like beggars. That's why they all use it.
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The Right Honourable and Noble Baron ffoulkes, that aristocrat of noble lineage dating back as far as, ohhhh....2005, has used his place in the House of the Living Dead to announce that Alex Salmond is a liar, and that he is guilty of "transgressions".

That drew gasps, apparently, even from the fossil life found in that chamber. When asked to elaborate on the nature of the "transgressions" Mr Foulkes became coy and coquettish and said he would tell the questioner later.  Bet he can't wait!

Now it is possible that Merry Baron had had rather too much liquid with his last meal, or possibly in place of it (he has that kind of reputation), but surely there is someone in the chair, the Presiding Officer, maybe, or whatever it's called in aristocratic terms, who is still alive and listening to the "debate". 


Is it not their place to point out that whilst parliamentary privilege allows you to say whatever you want in parliament without the fear of being sued, you really have to carry it through; not just say "I know some terrible things about...." 

So do tell us, George. 

Has he eaten all the children, or painted a Saltire over the front of Holyrood palace? 

This is pathetic campaigning delivered from hatred, and it's just the kind of unpleasantness that will result in divisions after 2014. The Better Together team need to do ...erm...better. A lot better.
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To their eternal shame, Labour politicians and activists – members of the so-called ‘Scottish’ Labour Party – are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Tories, the party of Margaret Thatcher and the current Cabinet of multi-millionaire Hooray Henrys (and the spineless Liberal Democrats), in a united front aimed at preventing Scots from running our own country.

By their actions, the Labour Party in Scotland – every single member who takes part in the ‘Bitter Together’ campaign – are stating, without equivocation, that they would rather see the Tories continue to govern Scotland from London than allow Scots to elect their own government in an independent country.

Let’s be absolutely clear about what the Scottish Labour Party is saying: they would prefer David Cameron governed our country by remote control from Westminster, than have a Labour First Minister in an independent Scotland.

The Tory-Labour-Lib Dem partners in the anti-independence campaign have nothing positive to say about their British Union. Their entire agenda revolves around waving the Union flag, arguing that because we have much in common with the people of England we should just let whoever they elect run Scotland, and attempting to scare Scots into believing that, alone amongst the peoples of the world, we are the only ones incapable of governing our own country.

So says Scotland's Socialist Voice. And it's true. These Crypto-Tories  must all be hoping for seats in the House of Lords. Heavens, if it gets any bigger they will have to get rid of the Commons to accommodate them. Think of the loss that would be!

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I was reminded, reading Scot Goes Pop just now, that I should have, and meant to include a link to Wings Over Scotland's post about becoming a professional site. The Rev Stu tears the Better Together argument up, and flushes it without trace, in a way that I can only dream of doing. He spends a vast amount of time researching and writing his pieces, like the professional journalist he is. But that takes time, and as a freelance journalist, he has to do other things to pay his mortgage and put food on his family (as George DubYa would have it). I don't agree with all that he writes, and I wouldn't expect to, but there is no doubt at all that he does a first class job. I've happily donated, as has Munguin (out of his pocket money). Respect to both Rev Stu and James, for sterling work for independence.

MORE SLIPS THIS WEEK THAN THE BLACK RUN AT KLOSTERS

For a long time the Tories have been waging war on the number of Quangos that the British state appears to need, and so before the election, and indeed since the election, much has been made of the plan to have yet another ‘bonfire of quangos’.

The strange thing about this is that they used pretty much the same words as the Labour government used when they came to power 14 years ago.

I wonder if the Tories stopped for even a second to ask themselves why it was that Labour had made no progress whatsoever in the matter...

Well, either they didn’t or they thought that they were simply cleverer than Labour (an easy mistake to make), for, on taking up his post as a minister at the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude set about the quasi autonomous non-governmental organisations with his hatchet and dust pan and shovel.

No planning, no preparation, just right in there with the axe...

So it must have come as a bit of a blow to the poor old fella when he read the report of a parliamentary committee, with a predominance of Conservatives and chaired by Conservative Bernard Jenkins, which said that the whole thing had been botched and badly managed, and that rather than saving money (Call Me had promised savings of a billion a year), the whole thing was likely to cost money.

The truth is that most of what is done by quangos, is done so because it needs to be done, and it is best not done by Whitehall, directly under the control of politicians. So, in setting light to them, it is necessary to ensure that the essential parts of their work be taken over by others. Effectively many of the changes made by Maudie, amalgamated quangos, or took them back under the wing of a government department (which a few months down the line will mean calls of unfairness, partiality and political interference). Even his own side thing he’s a pratt. Ooooops. Liam Byrne, his shadow, said: "I like a plate of soup at lunchtime", as if anyone cared.

Now, on the subject of pratts, I seem to recall that the then shadow chancellor, Porgy Georgie Osborne was outraged at the bonuses given to bankers under the last regime, after the banks brought the country to its knees. Indeed the deputy prime minister reiterated Mr Osborne’s sentiments as recently as last week.

So it must be pretty embarrassing for both of them that Robert Peston is reporting that the banks will make SMALL reductions in the payments this year, and that much of the bonuses will be paid in shares which cannot be immediately cashed. (This is to encourage longer term strategies where trading is concerned: bankers will, it is hoped be encouraged to think long term, because their shares can go up or down). However, the cunning old sausages have got round that little problem by giving themselves 50% increases in fixed pay... so if the banks do crash again because of their stupidity, the bankers will have most of it stashed in salary. Even less reason to think about the future. "They are looking for some words from us that prove that the negotiations have achieved something," said a senior banker. "I fear however that there may be more spin than substance to what we say."

Well Gideon... remind us, what was it you were going to do? Ooooops

PS... then there's daft Nadine! Oooooops.

Pics: (1) Maudie, in a government of knobs, he stands out as a real knob. (2) Georgie is getting to be a chunky wee thing now he’s got all the Treasury money as well as his own. (3) Now this is what Dave does best, dressing up in clothes the rest of us just don’t have. (4) Laim Byrne (no spelling error) He’s not relevant to this story, but boy is he spooky. (5) Mr Peston. Do you think he was a singing teacher in another life? (6) When the words disaster and Tories are in a story you can bet that Mad Nad won’t be far away. The poor old thing’s having another yet fling, now that she’s not got her expenses to keep her warm. Well, she's a bit chav isn't she?

JIM MURPHY HA HA HA.... ICELANDERS THE MOST CONTENTED PEOPLE IN THE OECD

The Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) an international organisation of those developed countries that accept the principles of representative democracy and a free market economy has published a list of countries whose populations are content with their way of life. The top 12 are illustrated to the left <== (click on pic for larger image).

Now I don’t know how this organisation gathers its information, but I imagine that it is in as respected a statistical form as would be expected from a world body and no more or less so that the well known polling companies in the UK. (The ones that predicted a hung parliament with a Liberal/Conservative coalition.) The figures relate to 2009.

So, in view of that, I was interested in three things about the figures... and I thought that maybe Jim Murphy might be interested in them too. As a supposed socialist, after all, he should be interested in ordinary people’s satisfaction with life, rather than the state of the nasty Tory markets (snigger):

• His beloved UNITED Kingdom, with its supposedly wise and prudent government, steering us through the economic downturn with Mr Prudence Brown at the helm, does not appear on this list, suggesting that after 13 years of benign Labour rule, the people are not as content as he would have had us believe;

• Ireland appears as number 7 on the list. Despite Mr Murphy insulting Ireland’s economy and by association its government, the people of Ireland are 7th most content of all the OECD countries;

• The country at the top of the list is Iceland. Mr Murphy fair got ladled into Iceland; the failure of it, the basket case nature of it, backward looking and so on... and his boss Dr Brown, perhaps spoiling for a war that he might just win, used anti terrorist laws against this country, because an Icelandic bank’s English subsidiary, registered in London and regulated (or not as the case may be) by the FSA, went broke.... Well anyway, its people, despite the financial meltdown.. and an errant volcano or two, or three.... are the happiest in the OECD.

After Liam Muppet Byrne giving the Liberal-Conservative government an excuse for tax rises by admitting that he had left them not a penny piece in the Treasury, today it is the turn of Jim Spud Murphy to eat crow.

Liam Blunder Byrne strikes again..........

I always thought Liam “Espresso” Byrne was a complete toss pot. Anyone so completely up his own backside as to write and circulate to his staff a piece called “Working with Liam Byrne” could hardly be anything less.

Apparently it is normal for outgoing ministers to leave, for the person taking over their post, a short note outlining anything that they might feel was worth the new minister learning, and which they fear perhaps that the Permanent Secretary might not pass on. Even at a change of government: I imagine that, unless you are a sore loser, the country comes before your wounded pride.

So David Laws, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, was not surprised to see an envelope on his desk from the previous incumbent of the post. He was surprised though when he opened the letter to find the idiot Byrne had written one line: “Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left”.

Mr Byrne claims that the letter was supposed to be funny. Ha, bloody ha! “My letter was a joke, from one Chief Secretary to another,” he said. “I do hope David Laws’ sense of humour wasn’t another casualty of the coalition deal.” Oh dear Liam, sour grapes that they didn’t do a deal with your lot methinks, oh, and to be strictly accurate, it was from an EX -chief secretary to the Chief Secretary.

Liam seems to think that it is a matter for humour that the government of which he was a member, and indeed a minister in the Treasury managed to leave the country in a state where, in fact, there is not only no money, but there is more debt than at any time since the end of the Second World War... and ironically that debt was only just paid off a couple of years ago.

Our Liam is one of these people for whom 'foot in mouth' was invented. Indeed this is the second time in a month that the loose-mouthed MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill has made a gaffe. During the election campaign, Byrne was caught swapping notes with Yvette Balls, the Ex-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, complaining that an event which they were attending was "second tier". Well, you know Liam; it says something for the state of the Labour party that a couple of third rate politicians like you and Mrs Balls were allowed to go to a second tier function. All the second raters must have been busy that day.

Never mind, now you’re a big fat nothing, you won’t get invited anywhere, except perhaps Hodge Hill Bingo and Sale of Work... should suit you nicely.

Working with Liam Byrne.... or NOT working with him any more actually.......LOL LOL LOL!

Pic: Liam the lovely..... being escorted from the premises... and just looking lovely again. As Spooks would say.... wee shame, isn't it.

THEY DON'T HALF HATE EACH OTHER, DO THEY?

It seems that many of Labour’s leadership don’t want to do a deal with the Liberals, possibly because they know what is coming and want to avoid being in charge when it hits.

Jack Straw, the man who has made so much of a mess of every cabinet post he has ever held, is said to be the most senior of the cabinet members opposed to the possible but improbable deal with the Celtic parties tacked on to the English based Labour and Liberal coalition. He is said to be incandescent that Brown resigned to try to get a deal with Nick Clegg. I wonder if he throws Nokias too.

But now Burnham, he of the hospitals where people lie and die in their own excreta so that targets can be achieved elsewhere in the building, has come out against it. Old Blunkett has already described the Liberals as “every kind of whore” as they horse trade with the two main parties in order to get a deal for their nearly 7 million voters. Lord knows he should know about that. Didn’t he twice have to step down from Cabinet positions over... erm... problems? Another has-been who seems to have had, and failed at, every job in the government, John Reid, has said the public will never forgive Labour if they join forces with the Liberals. He seems to be under the illusion that the public will ever forgive Labour full stop.

To add to the list, we have other no-hopers like Bob Aint-worth a halfpenny, the War Minister who couldn’t run a pretend war with toy soldiers, said to be against, and the comical Liam 'Espresso' Byrne, of “Working with...” fame also opposing the deal.

One minister, who is obviously not courageous enough to put his name to the statement, is said by The Times to have described the proposal as "obscene" and that Labour had to "get real" while another equally brave soul said, "It strikes me this is all about giving Gordon another six months in the job". Oh how they love their leader. He is still leader isn’t he?

As the days slip by and time wears on Jon Cruddas, a backbencher pointed out that the Unions and the national Executive would have to agree any deal. So...three to four weeks to organise a secret ballot and ....erm.... postal votes...

More trouble at t’mill appears to be coming from ex-minister Kate Hoey who said that people were looking at the negotiators, Mandleson, Adonis, Campbell, and saying “we were elected, they weren’t, why are they doing the deals?” Actually Kate, you self important little woman, WE, the public have been wondering why these same people were running the country. (Oh, don’t tell me you thought it was Brown.) But it’s OK till they are standing on YOUR toes, is it?

I couldn’t help laughing at old Paddy Pantsdown, who, only a few days ago warned against a ragtag coalition, and has now said that while he still held that view, a minority Lib-Lab coalition could provide stability. Yeah, whatever Paddy.

In the meantime Cameron looks less and less statesman like as he considers for the first time in a couple of years that he may NOT be prime minister of England and a tiny bit in the south of Scotland in a few days.

I also have to say that I cannot for the life of me, think of a good reason why Alex Salmond would want to align himself with London parties in anything but the loosest possible way. In, in fact, the same ways that these English based parties align themselves to him in the Scottish parliament.

I dunno... British politicians put to the test of trying to form a government and ending up doing what they do best.

Failing.

Pic: Jack Straw looking incandescent about something with David Miliband looking on and Spud looking ....well, like Spud. Daft.

............................

Better bring me a double brandy with that cappuccino

That daft wee Liam Byrne has been at it again. Here’s a guy who just can’t get it right. He was the one on the parliamentary committee for the 2006 Road Safety Act, which increased fixed penalty fines for driving while using a cell phone then got caught, was fined £100 and received a fixed penalty notice for using a phone while driving.

Then of course there was his idiotic suggestion that "British Day" (can’t type that without laughing) should be held on August Bank Holiday, when Scots are hard at work. What a prat!

The funniest of all was his 11-page memo sent to all his staff and called "Working With Liam Byrne". It listed his demands like: cappuccino on his arrival in the office, an espresso at 3 PM, and soup between 12:30 and 1 PM. His instructions to tell him "not what you think I should know, but you expect I will get asked." And a warning: "Never put anything to me unless you understand it and can explain it to me in 60 seconds... If I see things that are not of acceptable quality, I will blame you” Arrogant little man. Well what follows is not of acceptable quality and I blame him.

His latest boob is that he announced on radio that no new tax rises would be needed to fulfil the government’s commitment to pay down the deficit. He also ruled out a rise in Vat. However, today he had to row back from that position when he admitted that taxes may well have to rise if Labour wins the election.

When he was asked by the BBC about whether he stood by his comments about ruling out a Vat rise, he had to stutter and splutter his way through a withdrawal. Clearly Darling has given him a sound thrashing!

The Quotes (taken from the Times):

11 March:

BBC: Are you telling us that you can get to a fifty percent reduction in the deficit with the tax increases we already know about?

Liam Byrne: Yes.

BBC: You don't need anymore?

Liam Byrne: No, we've set out exactly how we will find that £19bn, and we set that out in the Pre Budget Report

BBC: So there will be no need to increase VAT to, say, 20 per cent?

Byrne: We don't see a need to do that because we've made some difficult decisions about National Insurance contributions.

16 March

BBC : And you ruled out a VAT rise and you still do that I take it?

Byrne: No, I mean Chancellors reserve the right to come back to tax matters at every budget.

BBC : But when you were pressed, and I’m going to do it again, on whether beyond that there would be more beyond the election if you win the election, you said no.

Byrne: I said that I had spelt out very clearly how we were going to raise 19 billion in tax now of course every chancellor reserves the right to come back at every budget and make decisions about tax and you’ll forgive me for not giving away the budget on Radio 5 this morning.


What a twerp he is!

Pic: The Cappuccino Kid ... mighty pretty, ain't he?