Finished

No more shall be seen from me I am usually to be found commenting on Hopi Sen Iain dale Cicero`s songs and whatever takes my fancy Bob Piper , Croydonian Raedwald Finkelstein the Speccy are all regular drive-by's Duncan`s Economics Blog is tremendously annoying in a good way but if I had to pick one it would be Hopi ( lefty though he may be )

Have a look at them.

Trident

I remember Nick Clegg telling Chris Huhne that without Trident we would be out of the Premier league ,and no-one would listen to us ." I have talked to these people I know" he said
Clearly in the interim he has decided that a second flight nation is what we are and he may well be right . As a Liberal he probably cares little and looks forward to the day when our foreign Policy is run from Brussels anyway. David Milliband recently informed the New Statesman that was already the case .
Iran makes the unpleasantly telling point that North Korea is treated quite differently because it has a nuclear capability and I doubt Clegg has changed his views on what is a statement of the bleedin’ obvious less bombs =less respek . Huhne only dissented from to appeal to his ex CND mung-bean munching constituency. So why does he now say we should drop Trident ?
Partly it is a recognition of fiscal reality and the dubious strategic imperative to retain cold war weaponry. Partly because the suicide note Manifesto in which Michael Foot promised surrender to the Soviet Union has faded sufficiently to allow a little freedom . Mostly he picks on this spending cut to make it difficult for the Conservative Party to do the heavy lifting without having populist identification of Trident ( a drop in the ocean) with stuffy war mongering thrown at them . You keep Trident but take our skoolz asnd ospitals sort of thing . Actually if we are cutting defence spending overall then we have to cut commitments which Nick`s do gooding internationalists will not like . Meanwhile he is oddly silent on cutting Public Sector pay , well not so oddly ewhen you remeber the Lib Dems are the most Public Sector supported Party and by the least useful on the biggest pensions .
Overall I think Trident should go but Clegg is not being honest about why he has performed a flip flop[.For him this is not hard choice its an easy choice , and a deviously political rabbit punch as well. Nonetheless I fear he is right and we are indeed heading for the Blue square Conference division thanks to New Labour

The Rise of The IFS

In 1998 Gordon Brown announced spending increases in these words, “ Under the previous government the increase for the last three years was £7 billion. For the coming three years I am announcing an increase in health service funding of £21 billion".There were other similar give-aways adding up to £56 billion.The Sun said, “ The Gord giveth “, The Mail said ,“ Brown goes on Summer Spree”.
In fact Browns spending on health was to rise from £37 billion in 98/99 to £46 billion in in2001/2 . That’s makes £9 billion . What he did was add in the extra £3 billion for 99/00 ,£6 billion for 2000/1 and after extra money for Scotland Wales and N Ireland ,not included in Conservative figures .That made £21 billion. Then he did not adjust.
The little known Institue of Fiscal Studies pointed out that in real terms spending would rise 3.6% over five years ,whereas under Major it had risen 2.5% . The 1.5% difference is the equivalent of £460,million per year or £2.3 billion over the lifetime of the Parliament . Even this paltry sum did not turn up .
This misuse of numbers became endemic in New Labour and it is clear that on many occasion the intention is so patently to deceive that although nothing actually untrue has been said it is a lie. Over time the media became wary of double announcing and the whole shady bag of tricks, but at the time Gordon Brown was doing something quite new .Back then Brown’s trick worked . The Press took months to work out what was going on and the people were quite unused to a Chancellor behaving like an old style second hand car salesman . Times change
When Brown and his superannuated lackeys ,notably Hain ,lied about spending commitments in his budget the IFS ( Director Robert Chote ) identified 7% of cuts the next day .Whithin a few days the line collapsed notably when Ruth Lea eviscerated Hain on QT. Now the Parties are in a race to be the most frank about cuts and rifts are opening up between Balls and Mandy on whether the Tory cuts motif has legs. Brown who can no longer get away with the outrageous deceptions of his earlier career .In a little over ten years the Institute of Fiscal Studies have become the starting point for any factual debate about budgetary commitments and the Chancellor reduced to a hired liar to be decoded .

Gove Betrays Us All

I rarely post anymore but I have to register my fury, if only into an echoey tunnel , at Michael Gove. This morning ,on Marr, he informed us he will be giving in to the NUT, and allowing them to avoid any accountability for their behaviour, by scrapping SATS at Primary level. I have to think very hard to recall any Conservative talking such mendacious bilge.
Teachers do not like SATS because they allow parents to judge whether the school is performing adequately or not. Local authorities do not like SATS because the knowledge that a local school, is failing does not help them herd children, like worthless cattle, into whatever box suits the bureaucrats.People like M Gove do not care ,because his brood will either attend Prep school, or his house/s (!!!) will be in a such a salubrious area it ceases to matter.
For those of us not as insulated we need the facts .Gove's suggestion that it would be possible to track back secondary school results to the school is the teenisest of fig leafs. If, by any chance ,this was true then what would be the point ? Presumably school would continue to ,"teach the the test" ,by which "Teach at all " is generally meant .
Some Secondary schools test whithin weeks of entery, but are these tests homogenous ? Will it really be possible to work out which Prinmary school is performing ? Not a chance; and if it did , see above ,as they say .SATS furnish invaluable information invaluable because it is nationally comparable and straighforward .
My own young children are sequentially entering Primary school and those parents who cared and understood, wanted to talk about years of SATS results in detail. The headmaster at the school we chose told us exactly what measures had been taken following a poor year, and was able to reveal the as yet unpublished improvements . We absolutely cannot do without this .
Cameron knows the whole Public Sector from teachers to bin men are going to have to take a hit on their pensions and salaries .He will therefore be looking for anyway to appease them that does not cost money . Well I am sorry but my children are not paying .I hope you have got that Gove.? My children are not paying for a plot to keep the Unions sweet. Furthermore ,as we are all paying for your children it is even harder to listen to you sounding like an oily New Labour apologist
I will compromise on most things but not this . Never this

Adieu

I have spent the last three years blogging on and off and commenting . The result of all this is that my mind has become a exquisitely honed weapon able to disembowel a socialist in blur of blade , fur and flesh .My encyclopaedic store of detail required for New Labour apologist hunting is rightly feared and my Sisyphian press cuttings system fills half a room . There can be little doubt that , cerebrally speaking, I am close to perfect . ….(ahem)
Sadly a man is not composed of witty rejoinders and devastating retorts alone , he is also corporeal and I have also put on about two stone . We have three small children and my work is increasingly demanding ( a good thing ! ). I have cut out PE to make time for monging around the interweb and become ,lets face it ;fat .
I am too fat to wear the means Streets Leather Jacket that was once my dearest love , I am too fat to walk around a swimming pool without the almost imperceptible backward lean that generally denotes a “Delicate state”. I grunt like when I bend , wobble repulsively , and , worst of all ,my face is a macabre reflection of what was once me, as if in the back of a spoon .My optimum lighting is ,….perpetual night !
OK lets get the facts on the table here . I played rugby at about 11 and a half stone , my late twenties were spent at about 12 stone and during my thirties I was fit as a flea spending an unhealthy amount of time in the gym .Good god I cycled thirty miles a day for a year and hardly broke sweat . Now I get palpitations lifting and especially well filled sandwich to my dribbling gob. I do nothing but shift sweatily from one overripe buttock to another at my desk and scoff chocs when I get home . I am now fourteen stone .Fourteen stone , that’s like carrying an infant around on your stomach for Christ`s sake !“Its disgusting , unclean and sinful .
Thus in the interest of producing the all round perfect human being I am going to withdraw from this virtual world until late july when I will return from our holiday (in Cornwall) a svelte gorgeous sexy deity , with a bottom composed of steel orbs and a stomach you could play like a glockenspiel
I will be starting tomorrow with a sharp run on the Downs and some fruit , I may eat a rice cake or stick pins in my eyes depending on which seems the least pleasurable .Forged from fires of suffering the new men shall resemble the Silver Surfer but with hair and some clothes…

Adieu .