Dithering Darling Is Out Of His Depth

Darling sits on the horns of a dilemma. Does he nationalise the banks or face the dire consequences. Or does he pray for an economic miracle. What is becoming increasingly clear is that he's out of his depth. 

The stock market plunged deeper into the red today, punishing dithering Darling's commons non-statement. Here is a man without an economic plan - or if he has one, he's keeping it very close to his chest. 

As markets crashed round his ears, Darling was clutching at straws, making a worthless and totally uninspiring commitment "to do everything necessary to solve the crisis." 

He needs to be bold. He needs to be decisive. He needs to restore confidence and stability otherwise the economy is doomed. Sadly, not words we associate with the chancellor or his prime minister.

The High Street banks could go bust. Without government help they may fold. Darling's decision boils down to whether to nationalise the whole banking system. 

The chancellor and prime minister Brown are under increasing pressure to guarantee depositors' money, as in Ireland and elsewhere. 

But protecting the bank's liabilities in this way, means putting them under state control. Putting government money into the banks means the taxpayer, not the bank shareholders, would be taking all the financial risk. 

Shareholders would still own the banks which would be free to make huge and risk-free profits, as well as paying themselves handsome dividends.

With smoke and mirrors accounting, no-one knows the true scale of bank debt. It must runs into trillions of pounds. Adding such a sum of money to the precarious national balance sheet would be unimaginable. Printing more money is fraught with danger for the whole economy.

And saving the banks comes at a cost. How can the treasury hope to to raise sufficient funds on international money markets to pay our national debts. 

In the US, the much-vaunted $700 billion Paulson bail-out was the final desperate act of the Bush administration and it looks as though all of that taxpayers' money made no difference.

Over the last 12 months, Brown and Darling, have been caught out and exposed as just a couple of sharp whizz kids, riding on the back of the economic boom but unable or unwilling to cope with the bust. 

A chancellor and prime minister who take risks with the economy and people's livelihoods, by using taxpayers money to prop up their pals in the banking system, are heading for political suicide.

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Obama's The Loser In Down and Dirty Campaign

With much of the media fawning over Obama like a bunch of demented high school kids, the McCain campaign has finally come out fighting and Obama has fallen into the trap. 

The campaign is getting down and dirty. McCain is having to do what the media should have been doing a long while ago - holding a candle up to the characters of both candidates and probing for weaknesses. 

Until now, the Obama campaign has kept its cool. Generally they've risen above the claims. 

Links with terrorist, Ayes, black power pastor, Wright and crook, Rezo were cast aside as lies and smears. And, with the media backing, they go away with it.

Palin's attack, accusing Obama of "palling around" with unrepentant former Weather Underground terrorist, William Ayers, brought a swift rebuttal. That's to be expected. But they then followed it through with counter-claims. A bad move from the Obama camp, it played into McCain's hands. 

It was a weak attack. McCain was one of five senators investigated 20 years ago by the Senate over Arizona tycoon Charles Keating, who was convicted of fraud after his bank collapsed.

But McCain's Keating and Palin's own 'Troopergate' are spot news. Headlines today, forgotten tomorrow. But it gives the McCain camp the excuse to hit back even harder. And Obama has more to lose.

It was observed here a while ago that the McCain strategy is all in the timing. First talk up the strengths of your candidate's character - a Vietnam war hero - then demolish the character of the opponent. 

With a month to go and flagging in the polls, the McCain team can unleash its final shots in a tightly controlled campaign grid. 

Links with Ayers and the Annenberg Foundation was the first shot, despite the media's best efforts to play down Ayres as just a "hippy radial". 

This was a Weatherman - a domestic terrorist whose bombing campaign struck fear into the heart of the US establishment at the time of the Vietnam war. Obama served on a charity board with Ayers. His links to him are much more than "a guy who lives in my neighbourhood.’' 

More of Obama's dodgy Chicago characters won't be far behind. Attack-dog Palin has already said voters should pay more attention to Obama's relationship with his former church pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. By voters, she means the McCain campaign.

Expect more on Obama’s key role in Ayers’s Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), his two-decade membership of a Black Power church and his relationship with fraudster, Tony Rezko, along with Obama's true source of funding and most importantly, his background and eligibility to run for president. 

Counter attacks with revelations over skeleton's in both Palin's and McCain's cupboards pale into insignificance. 

Both sides are getting down and dirty and that's just how it should be when you are about to elect the most powerful person on the planet. 

Tonight both presidential candidates square up for round two of their TV debates. 

This election will be decided on the trust and the strength of character of both candidates in the closing few weeks of the campaign. 

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Palin Digs Heels Into Obama's Terrorist Links

Disturbing revelations over Obama’s background and terrorist links have been brought out into the open, as part of McCain's campaign to expose weakness in his character and fitness for US president, as the race for the White House enters its final month.

The attack comes from Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, who has highlighted Obama's links with unrepentant former Weather Underground terrorist, William Ayers, which has been an open secret in the US Main stream media for some while. 

Palin's aides said the time had come to take the gloves off and dig the heels in. Expect more in the coming weeks. 

The US blogsphere is rife with details of Obama's links with Ayes which, with exceptions such as the Wall Street Journal, have been given only a passing reference by much of the Main stream media, which has firmly nailed its colours to the Obama mast and accepted him at face value.

The attacks on Obama's character chimes with TV ads by outside groups, questioning Obama's ties to Ayers, convicted former Obama fundraiser Antoin 'Tony' Rezko and Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Attack-dog Palin accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists" because of his association with the former 1960s radical, stepping up the campaign's effort to portray Obama as unacceptable to American voters.

Palin's reference was to Ayers, one of the founders of the group, the Weather Underground. Its members took credit for bombings, including non-fatal explosions at the Pentagon and US Capitol, during the Vietnam War era. 

Obama served on a charity board with Ayers several years ago and has been at pains to play down this relationship, dismissing Ayers as just ‘a guy who lives in my neighbourhood,’ and ‘not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis.’ 

Palin told a group of donors, "Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." She also said, "This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."

Ayers, the former Weatherman, became a professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He founded the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) in conjunction with $50m funder, the Annenberg Foundation. Obama was brought in to be CAC's first chairman of the board. Trinity United Church of Christ, headed by Pastor Jeremiah Wright, also received funds. 

In the Wall Street Journal, Stanley Kurtz, writes that documents in the CAC archives make it clear that Ayers and Obama were partners in the CAC.

Kurtz has also been trying to discover just who appointed Obama to the CAC board.

One unsettled question is how Obama, a former community organiser fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation?

Kurtz here adds that Obama has sought to obscure the role Ayers played in choosing him to lead the CAC and also details how the CAC tried to obstruct Kurtz’s inquiries by blocking his access to the records.

Nor is the relationship with Ayers the only question-mark over Obama’s associations with organisations specifically designed to put Obama in the White House, as WorldNetDaily and Global Labor and Politics reveal.

Questions over Obama's background and links with dodgy Chicago characters, have been raised by the Orange Party on a number of occasions. What is startling is that if any other candidate had even a fleeting relationship with Ayers, his presidential bid would have ended before it even began. 

Yet details have emerged about Obama’s key role in Ayers’s CAC and its funding of radical groups, his two-decade membership of a Black Power church and his relationship with fraudster, Tony Rezko.

Melanie Phillips, who has given a detailed account of Obama's links in the Spectator, sums it up well: 

"Obama appears to sit on a nexus between Marxist revolutionary activists, unrepentant former terrorists, Black Power racists, Chicago mobsters – oh, and a Saudi who is trying to buy up America. And yet despite all of this, virtually no-one in the mainstream media is asking any questions. Has there ever been a more staggering, surreal and scary race to the White House?"

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Brown Keeps Enemy Close As Mandy Moves In

Arch Blairite, uber plotter, architect of New Labour and all round bad egg, Peter Mandleson, is back in the cabinet after a few years plotting behind Brown's back in Brussels and making sure his man Tony gets the top job of the EU presidency.

As Brown rearranges the Titanic's deck-chairs  with a cabinet shuffle, Mandleson's appointment to a beefed up business job, comes as a shock and much of the media, including Murdoch's Cameron supporting Sun, and the Mandy bashing Daily Mail will have a field day. 

With 'Mandy' Mandleson, it's a case of Brown keeping his friend close but his enemies even closer. But he should watch his back.

There's no love lost between Brown and the Prince, now Lord of Darkness, who was plotting behind the scenes and out in the open, in the Blairite leadership challenges to Brown. Brown even tried to prise Mandy out of his EU commissioner job, only to be told he had no authority to do so. 

To ease the pain of Mandleson and as a sop to the Party, popular left-winger, Jon Cruddas was at one time being spun as tipped for 'promotion'. 

But Cruddas, who wowed delegates at the Labour Party conference and is seen as one of the few true Labour voices that could mount a serious challenge to the New Labour gang, has been kept out of the loop.

It's third time lucky for Mandleson, as he said himself this afternoon but third time unlucky for the rest of us. The disgraced minister was in and out of Blair's government like a yo-yo. He held two cabinet posts before quitting over dodgy dealings and was finally given the plum job as EU trade commissioner.

The feud between Brown and Mandelson goes back years, ever since the odd couple fell out, when Mandelson backed Blair for the Labour leadership in 1994.

Elsewhere, most of the cry babies in the cabinet look to have kept their top jobs after threatening to quit en masse if Brown tried to move them. And Ed Miliband, tipped here as a possible chancellor, is climbing up the greasy pole, heading up a new energy and environment super-department. 

A tinkering at the edges sees a few other insignificant changes of insignificant faces as Brown tries to head off the increasingly powerful challenges from both within his own government and from the Conservatives and SNP.

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PC Blair Plods Off At Last

Publicity-seeking politically correct policeman, Sir Ian Blair, had a ball playing politics and that was his downfall. He's quit but the Force won't go with him.

Since he was shoe-horned into the top job by his namesake, Blair has been instrumental in helping the Met become just another puppet of the New Labour propaganda machine. 

The dislike for Blair in the Met was widespread and rampant. The only real question is why did it take him so long to be forced out. 

Announcing his resignation after three years in the job, Blair said he would stand down "in the best interests of the people of London and the Metropolitan Police Service". Add to that in the best interests of democracy and he would be getting closer the mark. 

Blair became just too political, cosying up to his government masters and making quite a few gaffs and enemies on the way. He just got too big for his policeman's boots. Everyone saw him as Blair by name and Blair by nature. Secretly taping conversations with the attorney-general was just a bit too Nixon.

That may be fine in a banana republic where the police and politicians are one of the same but it not the function of the police in a modern democracy.

Blair was fingered for his handling of events surrounding the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. And was at the centre of a very public spat over a racism row involving the Met's most senior Asian officer.

On top of that, he is at the centre of an inquiry into awarding contracts to one his pals. 


The silly man is still playing politics. Blaming it all on London mayor, Boris Johnson, saying he'd lost his backing, is a pathetic and lame excuse for his own aloof arrogance. Johnson had the guts to stand up to him. 

Now he's going to quit, the question is who is going to replace him. It's time for a copper's copper, someone who will try to put some clear blue water between the police and the politicians, not the Watergate tapes guy in the cartoon.

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Where's A Post Office When You Need One?

Savers were scouring the country today, looking for an elusive Post Office to fully guarantee their nest egg. But with the government bent on closing them down, they're a bit thin on the ground. 

Save our Post Office has become save at our Post Office with savers switching to the Post Office, which is run by the Bank of Ireland, after the government there guaranteed 100 percent of their savings would be safe. 

Here, only nationalised banks Northern Rock and National Savings offers the same protection. But now Brown's BBC reports Northern Rock has cut its savings deals to new customers to stop any competitive advantage.

What spoil sports. First the government closes Post Offices, ripping the heart out of local communities, then they force savers to use only the banks run by their greedy pals in the City. 

Around 1.2m people have more than £35,000 in savings and around half more than £50,000.

The government argues that it won't raise its current guarantee ceiling of £35,000 (up to £50,000 in a couple of months time) as that would result in unfair competition. Since when has this government been bothered about fairness? 

What was fair about closing the Post Offices? What was fair about letting the banks get away blue murder for all those years, duping the public to get deeper in debt?

And, if you've saved up a few bob or had a bit left from Aunt Maude, you'd put your money where it's the most safe.

Spread the risk says the government. But who wants to give their hard-earned cash to the greedy bastards who caused the financial mess in the first place. 

Savers are thankful some of the luck of the Irish is rubbing off on them. 

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The Sun Shines On Cameron

Brown might as well start packing his bags - it's all over bar the shouting and the voting - the Sun has called it for Cameron.

In a fiercely worded editorial, Murdoch's newspaper has finally nailed its Cameron colours to the mast after a conference speech which received (almost) universal acclaim.

The Sun leader chimes with many of the views expressed here yesterday, that Cameron does indeed have a plan to be prime minister and is ready to govern.

But while many still suspect a vote for Cameron is a vote against Brown and New Labour, the Sun is in no doubt that Cameron is the man to lead the nation. 

And it would be the nation - there is no way Cameron's Conservatives can make any inroads in SNP Scotland. 

But the Sun has no such doubts - he's the man and he's ready, willing and able:

"This was a powerful, coherent speech, addressing hard economic questions with sensible solutions ... Far from looking like a “novice”, Mr Cameron delivered the most confident and compelling speech of the political season ... But with this nail-hammering performance, he showed he is more than qualified to give it a try."

You could see it coming. Sun leaders and editorial comment have been getting more and more fiercely critical of Brown and his government.

But this is not about Brown or any of the smug arrogant prats that make up his government. They deserve derision. Any leadership challenge from anyone, except Cruddas, would make no difference to this doomed Party.

The mythical 'man on a bus' is replaced by 'Sun readers' but the outcome is still the same. Anyone who thinks the Sun doesn't matter is either naive or too blinkered with Party loyalties. 

Murdoch was the man who boasted he clinched it for Blair when the newspaper finally came out in support in the 1997 landslide election and Blair left us with his hand of history on our shoulders. Just pray the Sun doesn't make that same mistake again. 

But for many voters in England, with the Sun and the Times, it will be a case of follow my leader.

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Cameron, A Man With A PM Plan

Cameron is a man with a plan, striding forward, looking backwards. The Tory conference threw up a rare beast - a politician who spoke with conviction, spitting out his disgust at the government which has wrecked the economy and people's lives. He's hungry to govern. But did he convince voters he's the Chosen One?

This was a very different Cameron from a year ago, a Cameron who then persuaded the Tories to ditch their old ways and put on a caring face. Here he was not afraid to praise the old guard of Howard, Duncan-Smith and of course Thatcher.

Cameron didn't feel the need to have the young turks behind him - Osborne and Hague were all he needed. And here was someone who acidly pointed out that even when Brown gets it right - he also gets it wrong. If nothing else, that was a clap-line most of the country would agree with.

And someone who, at last, managed to cast off the heir-to-Blair image that has haunted him. He could barley hide his disgust for Blair as a man of all style and no substance. 

It was time to reassure voters about the slogan 'Plan for Change'. He had a plan, not a Blair "miracle cure", to mend the broken society and finally get to grips with the economic mess of years of New Labour. His was a government-in-waiting.

The Party faithful of course lapped it up. But in the streets, in the pubs, in the shops and around the water-cooler, they are the people who he has to convince. He thinks he's ready to govern but do they?

One striking fact came across from today's conference speech. Voters may not agree with all the broad brush stroke policies and a manifesto is some while off - but you could trust him to deliver - with passion. 

In the pub, after watching the conference speech, a lefty bloke remarked: Well, I'd vote for him. Anything is better than the smug arrogant bastards we have at the moment. And that's from someone who would spit on Thatcher's grave. And that probably sums up the mood of the country.

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A Bad Case Of Economic Fatigue

There's nothing like a world economic crisis to get the heart a-throbbin' and the brain a-tickin' and this was nothing like the economic meltdown we were led to believe as today everything is looking hunky dory, according to the BBC.

It was scary but it's all over. You can come out from behind the sofa. What do you mean it wasn't real? You should have read the warning. This was fantasy violence with some strong language and no sex. Everyone had a headache and now a bad case of economic fatigue. 

Traders were shouting frantically on the floor and those computer screens turned red. But that's what market traders do - shout and make big bucks for their clients. And red, why red, danger? If you had a wad of cash you'd be looking out for the gorgeous red bits to buy up and make a killing. 

But Bush and Brown said this was really important. Important for them maybe. Still, two losers on their way out,  making a mountain out of a mole hill, is better than starting a war to boost the poll ratings. 

What started out as a 'rescue package' soon turned into a 'bail-out', despite the best efforts of the Bush administration and Brown's BBC to keep everyone on message.

'Rescue package' just doesn't have the same cute ring about it. A bail-out, handing a fat blank cheque to Paulson, does and it's more accurate. 

Democrats and Republicans were spitting blood - well, spitting at each other. With an election around the corner and some of their seats up for grabs soon, who can blame them for making some capital out of it on Capitol Hill. 

And it couldn't have been all that bad - they all skipped off on holiday yesterday.

Elton John would be proud. Stock markets crumbled but Wall Street didn't tumble - they're only made of clay. But the love-in between the government and the City is here to stay. 

Journalists had a field day. Was this the worst time since Black Wednesday, the Great Depression or the South Sea Bubble? And how do you spell Armageddon?

A chance to make up some good headlines though. Though nothing can beat "Bush's Bummer Bail-out Bill Bombs" - that's because it won't happen again.

Did we get the Great Depression? The only people depressed were the public having to listen to all the crap night after night. Still, we got a wartime spirit going with Cameron's call for a coalition government. 

And the political big wigs were summoned to Downing Street for a summit. Only they forgot to invite Vince and he was left out in the rain and made it late. That's a shame. He's the only one worth listening to and the only economist. 

And the media? TV personality anchors were summoned to Brown's bunker - how could they refuse in a time of global warming - to suffer the Great Man droning on and on. Then they had to spoil it all and broadcast it on TV news. 

Still it did give everyone a chance to catch up with some bedtime reading. JK Galbraith - now there's a smart guy, a bit of a liberal economist but worth reading.

Let's face it, no-one on Main Street or the High Street gives a bugger. Soaring prices, rampant inflation, debt coming out of your ears, looming unemployment - now you're talking. 

But a bunch of fat cats who are just getting their comeuppance after years of living on the back of other people's misery and a couple of so-called 'world leaders' who just sat back and let it all happen, now that's something to make your blood boil. 

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