Crash Gordon's Failed 'Future Fair'

The struggling Supreme Leader has been let out of the bunker and sent to Coventry to rally the old faithful with the election slogan "a future fair for all". Just what is failed Crash Gordon's 'future fair'?

"A future fair for all" without the courtesy of a comma. Is that the best a gaggle of goatee gurus and focus groupies can come up with?

Flash Crash Gordon's retro-future funfair of rocket-powered dodgem cars, GM candy floss and hook-a-lame-duck prime minister.

After 13 years, the 'people's party' has suddenly woken up and smelt the fair-trade coffee.

But even with Truss's cute comma inserted where it hurts, "a future, fair for all" is fraught with reminders of New Labour's 13 years of total failure to make the country fairer.

Fairness? Try telling that to devastated Corus steelworkers. Shame on you Mandy and shame on you Brown.

Borrowing Brown's Big Day has been served up with the usual dollop of Brown sauce.

But the public is starting to feel edgy and insecure, knowing full well hard times are ahead whoever lands the No 10 job.

Reading the sic 'fightback' speech on Brown's BBC, there is even a begrudging plea to forgive past sins, making a pitch for the middle ground.

But those who flocked to the Party in droves to follow the hyped-up Blair dream are now deserting the fold. The politics of false hope and optimism are so last decade.

An edgy public turns into angry and frustrated voters uninterested in carefully crafted nuances of policy and meaningless slogans.

'Fairness' means so many different things to so many different people. Its use as an election slogan disappears in a fog of fudge.

An unhappy public, worried sick about jobs, blames the status quo. They are crying out for change. And that means a dose of reality and real change from the current government.

What does failed Flash Crash Gordon do after wooing them with his future fair funfair free-for-all? Eats, shoots and leaves.

Bottom picture: Private Eye

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Media Mourns Loss Of Pin-Up Purnell

The media is in mourning after the 'shock' departure of Blairite pin-up boy Purnell, quitting at the election and seemingly leaving a Party in shock. The Orange Party's glad to see the back of him.

With his boyish looks and Blair credentials, Purnell's shock resignation has sent shockwaves through stunned media classes hoping for a reincarnation of born-again-Blair.

Another expenses rat jumping the sinking ship? Even that isn't shocking.

Many in a deeply tribal Labour party have quite a different take, giving the fly in the ointment a flea in the ear.

The 'shock' departure of the very ex-cabinet minister is a welcome relief as much as if perma-tanned 'Liberal' Hain finally decided to quit.

Labour's tribal politics are at their best during cat fights and tearing itself apart. The Party is fighting a general election and hoping to win back at least a few deposits.

Borrowing Brown's spin over recovery is in overdrive moving into top gear with a little help from pals at the BBC.

The last thing they want is for a snivelling little oik to steal Brown's thunder and highlight the all too obvious divisions in the party. As Labour MP Bob Piper blogs: "Bloody good riddance".

The mere mention of the name Purnell leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of many who have not forgotten nor forgiven him for his resignation stunt last year coming hard on the heels of the local and Euro wipeout.

The chattering classes may miss Purnell, but for many Labour activists this was an unforgivable attempt to destabilise their precious cosy government.

Purnell was cast adrift in parliament. Trying to forge a joke 'dream' ticket with left-winger Cruddas fizzled out before it has started, leaving Purnell to wander about in his dreams. A hard place to be for any politician who craves attention.

The Party had its fun with the usual knockabout comedy of Brown coups, knocked on the head by Mandy. Now for a Party so close to an election, loyalty is everything.

Blair-boy's weak comeback to Tory co-ops fell flat on its face. Too much uber-Blairite claptrap.

But you cannot keep a young Blair dog down. He's at it again inflicting damage just as the election bandwagon moves up a gear for Bunkered Brown's Big Day.

For many in the grassroots Party, Purnell represents everything which is wrong with Labour - another Blair prop along with Johnson.

Purnell belongs to the breed of social democrats who hijacked a Party which died with Smith. No wonder media luvvies love him. Now the pin-up boy is set to be airbrushed out of history - along with his fake photograph.

And what of the future? He could always morph into a LibDem, as Piper suggests. Or Owen's social democrats. Or join up with Cameron's conservatives.

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Biased BBC Plays Politics Over Economy

Auntie is showing her political knickers in a blatant party puff, backing New Labour's highly charged political stance on spending cuts. The Orange Party suspects someone has been popping the 'happy pills'.

The Orange Party noted yesterday how the shocking state of Borrowing Brown's debt plunging to record breaking depths was buried in the BBC bulletins.

Today Brown's BBC has pulled out all the stops, reporting an FT letter from 60 odd economists backing New Labour electioneering narrative.

"More than 60 senior economists have have signed two open letters that back the chancellor's decision to delay government spending cuts until 2011," reports the BBC.

The Orange Party would even take issue with "backing the chancellor's decision". Delaying cuts, whatever, is a political hot potato even within the higher echelons of government. With Brown Balls on one side and Darling Mandy on the other.

So why is the BBC going so heavy on that letter?

20 top economists writing an open letter to the Sunday Times urging rapid cuts to the £178 billion deficit must have really got up the nose of spinners determined to keep up the 'good news' economic recovery bandwagon.

The Orange Party and many others concluded 20 top economics cannnot be wrong.

Another day and another gaggle of economists coming out with a diametrically opposite point of view. How neat is that.

Among them the usual suspects including David 'Happy Pills' Blanchflower who made his mark as a "happpiness guru" in another life. And economist and New Labour peer Maurice (Lord) Peston whose son is of course - BBC business editor Robert Peston.

No wonder election weary voters are left a tad confused.

Headlines splashed over today's Times and Telegraph don't look good for Borrowing Brown with the government on course to run up a higher budget deficit this year than basket case Greece. The first January deficit since records began in 1993.

Economists playing politics is nothing new. But this close to an election? In collusion with the BBC? Kinda takes the biscuit.

The country is clinging on by its fingertips on the brink of disaster living on borrowed time as 'recovery' spin goes down like a lead balloon.

The Orange Party suspects a dose of crony electioneering false hope and misguided optimism creeping in after popping the happy pills. But the Tories need not worry about economic catfights. They've got nakedly ambitious Beardie Branson on their side.

Update 3.23pm: The BBC is still running with the same bloody top story. Meanwhile back in the real world and a devastated North East with Corus steel workers thrown on the scrap heap: Shame on you Mandy. Shame on you Brown. And shame on you Tata.

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Brown's Deficit Lead Balloon

Borrowing Brown's binge knows no bounds, for the first time borrowing £4.3 billion more last month than clawed back in taxes. The country is clinging on by its fingertips on the brink of disaster as 'recovery' spin goes down like a lead balloon.

£4.3 billion in the red and still counting. Upwards. And that's in the plentiful month of January usually heady with a healthy surplus.

Another record breaking triumph for Borrowing Brown. The Orange Party can feel a bout of 'double dip' recession depression coming on.

Not the sort of 'good news' narrative to adorn Brown's BBC. Bury it in the bulletins, old boy. Far too busy bashing Israel's Mossad Menace. BBC economics guru Pym tried hard with a sober take: "The sorry story of the public finances has reached another depressing chapter."

But 'Happy Pills' Pym soon lapsed back into Brown-speak: "The recession has wreaked havoc with government finances in all the leading industrialised nations - but even so the UK's annual deficit is one of the highest."

Claptrap.

The government is on course to run up a higher budget deficit this year than basket case Greece, reports The Times after gruesome public finance figures showed that it borrowed £4.3 billion more than it received in taxes in January.

And that's the first January deficit since records began in 1993.

Some analysts had forecast a surplus of £2.8 billion, which went down like a lead balloon when the figures came out, leaving quite a few with more egg on their faces.

The Orange Party suspects a dose of crony electioneering false hope and misguided optimism creeping in after popping the happy pills.

Never before has the government borrowed money in January, usually a bumper month for tax receipts and corporation tax to line government coffers.

Revenues have collapsed but a steep rise in interest payments to cover government's debt is at the heart of a desperate Treasury forced to borrow even more cash to balance its books.

Despite the relentless spin, the country's recovery will be painfully slow and tottering on the edge.

The only thing stopping the moneylenders from coming down heavy with a credit downgrade is a Tory victory hitting the ground running with a tough emergency budget.

But pricing in a Tory win lets Borrowing Brown off the hook. How easy to cast aside the woes, fire up the printing presses with £200 billion of funny money and borrow like there is no tomorrow - because there isn't.

Delaying the election date can only make things worse. But the cabinet is too busy sailing off into the sunset, swanning around the country at taxpayer's expense on government monkey business, making hay while the sun shines in a desparate bid to squeeze a few votes.

Carry on borrowing. Carry on spending. Let the nasty party pick up the pieces and take the blame while the country lives on borrowed time.

As the Orange Party noted on Sunday, it seems 20 top economists urging rapid cuts to the £178 billion deficit are right and a handful of wrigglers are wrong.

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Cabinet Makes Hay While Sun Shines

Cash-strapped New Labour is 'making hay while the sun shines' with blatant taxpayer funded electioneering dressed up as cabinet 'awaydays' and government monkey business. Using Pennies From Heaven is a disgraceful bid to squeeze a few votes before strict election laws kick in.

Complaints are piling up on the desk of civil service head honcho O'Donnell. But short of a stiff rebuke there's little that can be done until Bottling Brown finally calls time and names the day.

All part of the cunning strategy to capture the media narrative and force a daily diet of meaningless Downing Street drivel down the throats of an election weary public to brownbeat them into submission.

Ministerial rules are being blown apart in blatant electioneering stunts. But only when an election is called will a legal eye be cast over the governing party's use of taxpayer-funded resources.

Meanwhile weary voters face weeks of Bottling Brown clinging on until the bitter end. And a BBC willing to kowtow to the New Labour spinning 'good news' narrative.

For months civil servants have been beavering away at their master's behest.

The cabinet goes off on a jolly electioneering wheeze. Backbench MPs twist civil servants arms to come up with reams of stats on constituencies. Viewers have to suffer an endless round of shameless party political plugs dressed as public service adverts on the telly.

The Times has blown the gaff on the latest wheeze, revealing New Labour’s cunning cabinet tour of the country is being used to stage party events ahead of the election.

As Brown takes his election roadshow to the North East, it was revealed wannabe leader Harman, used a publicly funded trip to Exeter to hold an election meeting with activists.

Now Big Sis faces an investigation after admitting £650,000 spent on New Labour 'awaydays' were at the taxpayers expense. Government monkey business dressed up to drum up votes.

Meanwhile New Labour continues to highjack the airwaves, with taxpayer funded blatant political propaganda dressed up as government 'information' as part of the sham to prop up a good news feel good factor. A few were even slipped in during the break of the Brown/Moron Crying Game shame.

Tories have got wind of the sham demanding Hattie's head over her potential breach of the ministerial code. For Tories it's all deja vu, already revealing spending on biased and misleading bids to blow the trumpet for failed New Labour policies with backdoor electioneering cost taxpayers a record £214m.

Bunkered Brown is notorious for hiding away when the going gets tough. But has no problems criss-crossing the country desperately trying to pick up a few votes.

Battlebus Brown and his ministerial cronies are clearly planning to use every trick in the government book and squeeze out every ounce of taxpayers cash in the dying days of a fag-end government.

Meanwhile back on the cabinet election battlebus. It's Wednesday. It must be another marginal:

From the hustle and the bustle of the city

We'll become a pair of country folks

In a little cottage sitting pretty

We'll be Mr. and Mrs. Doakes

Take me where the daisies

Cover the country lanes

We'll make hay while the sun shines

We'll make love when it rains

Lyrics: 'We'll Make Hay While The Sun Shines' (Nacio Herb Brown/Arthur Freed). Cover: 'Pennies From Heaven', BBC/Dennis Potter.

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Media Hit Squads Hit Israel

The media's going in for a spot of Israel-bashing after a hit-squad with fake UK passports took out a Hamas leader in a Dubai hotel room. That murky Mossad is at it again - or maybe it isn't.

The assassination of gun-running Hamas commander, al-Mabhouh (above), has all the ingredients of a le Carre spy-thriller. Spielberg is already rumoured to be working on the movie. And the Orange Party has lost count of the number of times "Israel" pops up in BBC reports.

With trained precision, tennis shorts, wigs and fake UK and Euro passports, the 11 strong hit-squad took out the gun-running go-between accused of channeling Iranian weapons to Gaza Strip thugs.

Even Bunkered Brown has been roped in calling for a full investigation, telling LBC listeners: "The British passport is an important part of being British and we have to make sure everything is being done to protect it."

Give it a rest.

The six British-Israelis on the suspects' passports (pictured right) are all suitably 'shocked', saying they had nothing to do with the murder of murderous al-Mabhouh.

Salford-born Mr Hodes, 37, who lives in Israel, said he was 'in shock'. "I don't know who's behind this. I am just scared, these are major forces," he told Israeli television.

A 'shocked' Mr Barney, 54, told the Daily Mail he had undergone a quadruple heart bypass and was "not exactly spy material".

The Orange Party's favourite is a 'shocked' Mr Mildiner, 31, who told the Jerusalem Post: "Clearly it isn't me. It doesn't look like me. I went to bed with pneumonia and woke up a murderer."

LibDem Ming the Magnificent has called for sweet FO to summon the Israeli ambassador, amid "suggestions Mossad agents had used the fraudulent passports to enable them to enter Dubai and carry out the killing." But who is making the 'suggestions'?

BBC Middle East correspondent, Katya Adler, is fuelling the 'Mossad Menace': "Israel is alive with rumour as to whether Israel's intelligence service, Mossad, murdered Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh."

But who started the rumour?

Israel is keeping tight-lipped about the killing. Dubai said that while it believes a foreign state may have been involved in the murder, it has not fingered Israel.

Hamas, for its part, is convinced that Israel was involved and has already vowed revenge.

Officials in Dubai, who have issued arrest warrants, said the team appeared to be "a professional hit squad, probably sponsored by a foreign power."

So where is the Israeli connection? Not surprisingly only Hamas has directly accused Israeli agents of killing him. The UK media has a history of being easily duped by Hamas propaganda.

The hit squad flew to Dubai on European passports and took a room in al-Mabhouh's swanky hotel. All in the full glare of an airport and hotel festooned with CCTV cameras, with footage swiftly released to the international media. Reports out of Dubai variously say he was strangled to death or poisoned. So where were the bodyguards?

Sure the Israeli secret service, Mossad, has form using fake foreign passports and stolen identities to carry out its missions, sometimes spectacularly successful and sometimes totally botched. Who hasn't seen Spielberg's Munich and the Black September aftermath?

But would Mossad really be so daft as to screw up its covert operation pointing the finger at innocent Israeli/European citizens?

"It is possible another country masterminded the attack, designing it to look like a clumsy Mossad operation," says a Mossad insider. Or maybe it was the CIA, Palestinian rivals Fatah, Saudis with no love for Hamas or Iran, Hamas itself as a neat way of stabbing Israel in the back, or our very own 007 with a licence to kill.

New Labour's commons foreign affairs chairman, Mike Gapes, said the "sophisticated" assassination was either carried out by Israel "or someone trying to make sure it looks like the Israelis". Well knock me down with a copy of The Ladybird Book of Spying.

The guy had his fair share of enemies not least in the Arab world. A Hamas source was reported yesterday as saying that al-Mabhouh had been imprisoned in Egypt for almost a year in 2003, and that he was wanted not only by the Israelis, but also by the Jordanians and the Egyptians.

Two Palestinian suspects were being questioned about the murder. Police said they had "fled to Jordan" after the killing.

The relatively moderate UAE has no love for an agent of Iranian-backed Hamas. Or perhaps al-Mabhouh was the victim of Hamas infighting?

And what if it was Israel's Mossad who finished off a murderous Hamas thug. Shome would say Kol HaKavod!

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'Underemployed' Unseen Face Of Recession

The unseen face of recession has raised its ugly head with the ranks of the 'underemployed' swelling to a staggering 2.8 million. The stark figures blow out of the water hyped-up spin of 'recovery'.

Total unemployment stood at 2.46 million for the three months to December, down 3,000 on the figure for the previous three months, reports the BBC with glee.

Is there anyone living in the real world who would take the latest unemployment figures at face value? The stark figures mask a grim reality.

The Downing Street Job Centre and BBC are still banging the drum with a headline 'UK unemployment falls for second month in a row'.

BBC economics cheerleader, Flanders, offers a gem, trying to lull folk into a false sense of security: "...but we can draw some comfort from the fact that this decline in full-time employment is the smallest since the recession began."

Well that's all right then. Only it isn't.

2.46 million people are on the dole. Long-term unemployment is the highest since 1997. The number of people classed as 'economically inactive' reached a record high of 8.08 million, more than 21 per cent of the working age population, reports a level-headed Telegraph.

The only reason why the UK jobs market can be spun with a healthy glow is because of an increase in the number of people forced to settle for part-time or temporary work.

The Orange Party has warned before that employment has been fuelled by the 'underemployed', with bosses forcing workers over a barrel with low pay and shorter hours in return for a precious job.

Riding on the back of today's official figures, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed on Tuesday there was a rise last year in the number of 'underemployed' workers.

2.8 million who don't make it to the 'official' unemployment figures. Almost a tenth of the workforce scraping a living, working fewer hours because jobs are not there for them.

'Underemployment' has increased sharply during the recession, according to the ONS, but, as the FT highlights, the trend began three years before, rising from 6.6 per cent of the workforce in 2005 to 9.9 per cent in 2009.

"Good news' unemployment figures may kowtow to New Labour's 'recovery' narrative but brings with it a false sense of security. Insecure and low-paid jobs are now the norm at the expense of fully paid up secure work. And that is not good news for workers or the economy.

'Underemployment' confirms what ordinary folk know is happening in the real world as employers brought in short time working, four-day weeks and unpaid leave. Private sector workers have been forced to be 'flexible', accepting fewer work hours and lower pay, instead of enforced layoffs.

But so far the public sector has been cushioned and protected by the backdrop of the general election. Only after the election will the recession finally hit home and people finally know which queue to stand in.

Dole queues will continue to lengthen even with a lifting of recession depression, as employers take off the brakes and increase the hours of existing staff instead of hiring new staff.

Voters are starting to feel edgy and insecure, knowing full well hard times are ahead whoever lands the No 10 job.

Edgy voters turn into an angry and frustrated mob uninterested in carefully crafted nuances of policy and party politicking. An unhappy public worried sick about jobs blames the status quo. And that means the government. Bottling Brown take note.

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