Brown only believes in spending
Inadequate regulation exacerbated the recent problems, writes Bruce Anderson. That is Gordon Brown's fault. So is the high level of public debt. There is nothing wrong with a bit of Keynesianism: a high-ish public sector borrowing requirement when the rest of the economy is sluggish, sharply reducing when the private sector is growing fast. Everything should roughly balance out in the course of an economic cycle. As George Osborne puts it, borrowing from President Kennedy, Chancellors should fix the roof when the sun is shining. Not with Gordon in charge. He does not believe in balance, economic cycles, or mending – only in spending, spending, spending. Bruce Anderson The Independent
Full article: Time to expose Brown's negligence 
State pensions will bankrupt us
Public sector workers pay taxes, too, but there are six million of them compared to 21 million other taxpayers, says Philip Johnston. This pension problem has worsened because the public sector has expanded mightily under Gordon Brown, with about 800,000 more employees than in 1997. They mostly have gone into jobs with unfunded, final-salary pension schemes. Moreover, people are living longer. Recent data show that, as recently as 1990, the average employee lived for 15 years after retiring; now he will survive for 25 years, with obvious consequences for long-term pension commitments. Mr Brown has built a voracious client state which is being fed with the hard-earned wealth of the taxpayer and defended to the death by the powerful public sector unions, who also happen to be the paymasters of the governing party. Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph
Full article: Why should I pay for MPs to have a comfortable retirement?
Global finance is absurd
For most developing countries, the moral of the 1997-98 Asian crisis was to ensure sufficient capital reserves to avoid ever being vulnerable to the IMF thugs in their pinstripe suits, writes Madeleine Bunting. India, Korea, China: all have huge foreign reserves, often in US treasury bonds. It is the safest form of insurance in a global economy in which the flows of foreign exchange are so huge they can destroy a currency in a matter of hours. But for a developing country to tie up most of its capital abroad is ruinously expensive; this capital should be invested in the country's own development - roads, for example, and schools to produce engineers, scientists and IT technicians. Once again, who benefits from this absurdity of the global financial system? The West - in particular the US, whose current account deficit is funded by the sacrificed futures of millions across Asia. Madeleine Bunting The Guardian
Full article: A crisis sparked by the world's rich will have the poor paying the highest price
Business Pages: Asian markets continue recovery
Opposition in crisis
David Cameron went along with the PM's overblown Churchillian rhetoric, conscious that to do otherwise would make the Tories look unpatriotic and unqualified for the eventual task of government, says Matthew d'Ancona. Shrill, knee-jerk hostility to Brown's rescue plan is, after all, exactly what one would have expected of a "novice". So the Tory leader bided his time before renewing hostilities. The response to his speech illustrates the quandary of being Opposition leader at a time of crisis. William Hague was never allowed to forget his spectacular misjudgment of the public mood after the death of Diana: a national spasm that enabled Tony Blair to present himself as Therapist to the Realm. Iain Duncan Smith stood shoulder to shoulder with Blair over Iraq. Michael Howard took a more sceptical approach. Both were heavily criticised. Matthew d’Ancona Sunday Telegraph
Full article: Gordon Brown won't be a Spandex-clad superhero for ever
The Mole: Why Cameron had to get tough with superhero Gordon
Class, not race
Now the recession is on us, communalist politics could turn far nastier, writes Nick Cohen. Britain ought to be able to offer common compassion to the swelling ranks of the unemployed and struggling households. To use old-fashioned language, they will need a class-based politics which regards the relief of poverty and enforced idleness as national priorities. But the bureaucracy barely talks about class, while the Labour government cannot see what is wrong with Harriet Harman's euphemistic plan to 'positively discriminate' against white men. We have bureaucrats who fund support groups for the black unemployed or Hindu unemployed but never for all the unemployed. We have a government which thinks it progressive to tell employers that they can favour the privately educated daughter of an Indian steel tycoon over the state-educated son of a council estate single mother. Nick Cohen The Observer
Full article: Let's talk about class rather than colour
Don't forget our critical climate
If you go out for a picnic and the temperature rises by three degrees, you take off your jacket, says Johann Hari. But if your body heats up one or two degrees, you get sick and take to your bed. If it heats by three degrees and doesn't go back, you die. The ecosystem isn't a picnic; it's more like your body. Small variations in global temperatures have vast consequences. The last Ice Age was only six degrees colder than today. A global rise of just 0.8 degrees has melted the Arctic. Soon, we will have belched so many warming gases into the atmosphere that a two-degree rise will be locked-in and certain. That condemns Bangladesh and the islands of the South Pacific to drowning. If we go beyond two degrees, there's no turning back. Johann Hari The Independent
Full article: Don't kill the planet in the name of saving the economy
In Brief
Princes in Africa
There remains something inherently distasteful about the two princes and their 80 or so fellow-bikers parading such gaudy, polluting totems of Western consumerism as their 230cc Honda CRF machines across one of the most scenic but poorest parts of the world. Such, alas, seems to be the hold over the princes' imagination of trans-Africa petrolheads Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. Simon O’Hagan The Independent
Full article: Next time, lads, forget the engines
The death of Sats
Every year, around 100,000 children end their school days illiterate. And this year, too, the General Teaching Council for England said we may be haplessly paying as many as 24,000 incompetent teachers to wipe away kids' life chances like chalk from a blackboard. Now, who really wants to rejoice about the death of Sats? Peter Preston The Guardian
Full article: Meddle with them, not us
Dealing with disability
Prattling on about fulfilling lives, Paralympians, Stephen Hawking and the rest of it makes us belittle the terror and self-disgust of a fit young person, paralysed. No amount of pious wittering about the Disability Community should blind us to that psychological impact. Libby Purves The Times
Full article: It's time for a clear policy on euthanasia
Kinnockio
Anyone who refers to leading political figures with a slang version of their name or tries to pun on their surname, is not worth listening to. References to Thatch, Dave, "Kinnockio", Dubya etc are clear signs of what the police call an unreliable witness. Worse is someone who refers to the former Prime Minister as B. Liar or Blatcher, or invokes something called Blatcherism. Michael Gove The Times
Full article: B. Ad idea
Other men’s bodies
When women write about female beauty, their sexuality is never in question. It's open season for all women - gay, straight, old, young, gorgeous, ugly, bitter - to bang on about each other's hair, lips, eyes, cheeks, neck, breasts, stomach, legs, thighs, feet, nails, clothes and make-up. They do it publicly and behind each other's backs. They do it fearlessly. Jon Canter The Guardian
Full articles: Your testicles are terrific
Realism, at last
Will the war on credit outspend the war on terror? Or will one crash bring an end to another? Washington, London, Baghdad and Kabul last week saw concerted moves by the West to disengage from its seven-year war on militant Islam. When it comes to stupefying public spending, even super-policemen cannot walk and chew gum at the same time.
Simon Jenkins Sunday Times
Full article: Realism fires its first shot in this mad war
Posts
