Showing posts sorted by relevance for query saudi. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query saudi. Sort by date Show all posts

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Lords SFO Ruling Sucks Up To Saudis

The Lords ruling over the SFO probe into a Saudi arms deal, riddled with bribery and corruption, lets Blair and the players in this sordid business off the hook. In the US they wouldn't get off that easily.

The Senior Fraud Office (SFO) dropped its inquiry into the £43 billion al-Yamamah deal with BAe Systems when Blair and his Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, stepped in with the dubious claim that it would threaten national security. Apparently, the Saudi government had threatened to withdraw co-operation on security matters.

With a £500 billion Sovereign Wealth Fund just waiting to be invested in the UK, we can't do anything to upset the Saudis, now can we?

The High Court ruled that dropping the investigation was unlawful, but the Law Lords today reversed that decision on appeal.

Campaign group Justice said: "It is a sad day for the rule of law when a senior prosecutor bows to threats from a foreign government and our most senior judges will do nothing to stop it." 

But Blair, Goldsmith, BAe and the Saudis will not get off that easily. The US authorities are on the case. Two senior BAe executives were held by American authorities investigating corruption allegations when they flew into the US in May. 

With tough bribery and competition laws, the US won't let this matter rest.

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Sunday, June 22, 2008

Selling Our Soul To The Saudis

Brown is in Saudi Arabia to lobby its government over the world's oil crisis and try to sell-off our nuclear power industry. One of the few things we have left to sell. 

This modern day Faust, is hoping to persuade the Saudis to increase oil production to bring down the soaring cost of oil. But the Saudis will want something in return. 

They will want the UK to make it even easier for them to invest their Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) in the UK. To buy into the only UK companies we have left to sell, including our strategic and highly sensitive nuclear power industry.

You can't blame the Saudis. They are businessmen. They will only produce more oil if it is in their interests to do so. 

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) are the government investment funds of countries in the Middle East and elsewhere. Saudi Arabia is planning around £500 billion, making it the biggest in the world.

Some countries are worried that these governments could use their vast wealth to buy up key assets or exert political pressure. But that doesn't seem to worry Brown.

Interestingly, there's only one SWF in the West and it has decided to make ethical political judgements about the companies it invests in.

Our north European neighbour, Norway, invests all its North Sea gas and oil revenue in a £200 billion pension fund for the old age of its people.

Why didn't we think of that? Oh yes, of course, Brown sold off most of our gold reserves and raided the pension funds to prop up the ailing economy. 

Now apparently he's going to make it even easier for the Saudis to use their huge Sovereign Wealth Fund to buy up what's left to sell in the UK, including our most sensitive, secret and strategic nuclear power industry. Very Faustian.

If we had a Sovereign Wealth Fund like Norway, then Brown wouldn't have to run cap in hand to the Saudis. 

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Saturday, July 26, 2008

Not Everyone's In Love With Obama

The tightly controlled stage-managed Obama love-in rolled into town with the usual media suspects positively drooling over 'The Chosen One'. Yesterday we had to suffer the Independent front page. A huge messianic photo of Obama in Berlin with his adorning flock of activists and fervent followers. Today it was just his eyes.

Get real people. He was just in it for the photocall for the folks back home. Playing out to a pre-determined media grid, not seen in politics since the heyday of Blair and New Labour. 

Ordinary Americans are not so sure about this man. Sure, he can talk the talk. He's a good-looking guy (maybe a little too thin) but underneath the hype and spin there are many more questions than answers. What they're saying is - there's something not quite right about Obama.

Has he been manufactured to appear as all things and to appeal to all people? Are his speeches deliberately put together to mean anything, any which way you choose? 

Is he just an advertising man's dream, a PR composite? Is he, as the McCain camp are pushing, just too good to be true? 

The massive security team and media managers around Obama during the Middle East and European tour is unprecedented and part paid for by the US taxpayers. Yet this is just a presidential hopeful not the President nor even the official candidate. A hopeful who called it for himself in the US primaries as the Democrat candidate and has yet to be formally and officially adopted by his party. 

A hopeful who refuses to allow any European journalists in the press corps. A hopeful whose Berlin speech said nothing but got coast to coast media coverage in the States. A hopeful who allows just enough time for a photocall and chat with Brown and Cameron - after all, Berlin was job done - but also a big one with the familiar face of Blair, already doing the rounds back in the US. 

Der Spiegel got the Obama/Berlin take right. A presidential hopeful who is more interested in being a world superstar than talking about the ailing economy back home. We had one like that here. He was called Tony Blair.

In the race for the White House, all the washing is hung out. Politics is a dirty and dangerous business. That's expected when you are voting for the most powerful person on the planet. 

The cartoon of muslim Obama and his black power wife in the New Yorker was justified by the magazine as satire. But the US doesn't do satire. That cartoon was designed to call his bluff and to bring the very issues of race and religion which Obama himself plays up to, out into the open. He even subtly played his race card in his Berlin speech. 

Now, the lack of any substance in both domestic and foreign policies, is beginning to show him up. 

So far he could afford to be a one ticket presidential hopeful - a promise to pull out of Iraq - but even that's just a vague timetable. Afghanistan, mentioned in Berlin, was left wide open to interpretation. Back home there are unresolved issues surrounding his funding, an alleged forged birth certificate and his links with dubious Chicago politicians. 

That funding has been spun as grassroots internet donations but there are strong rumours circulating in the US that the cash is actually coming from powerful sources in Saudi Arabia. 

It was just such a dogged investigation which 'followed the money' once before in a presidential funding scam called Watergate.

Obama can talk the talk but now he's gonna have to walk the walk.


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Sunday, August 03, 2008

Obama's Star Starts To Fade

Cracks have started to appear in the tightly-controlled Obama campaign, exposing the Chosen One as the product of a slick Chicago marketing machine.

For the first time, some of the respected Main Stream media have started to question Obama's self-promoted superstar status.

Questions about Obama were highlighted by the Orange Party here three month ago, while most people were starstruck. But it was the recent European tour which caused a turn in opinion.

Dana Milbank's article, in the Washington Post, captured the tone, with talk of a "presumptuous" rather than the "presumptive" candidate.

It's all a far cry from the early days, when the US Main Stream media entered into its Faustian pact with the Democrats to push for Obama, no matter what. A pact, similar to the deal struck between Blair and the Murdoch media empire back in the 90s.

Fed-up with the oppressive behaviour of Obama's spin doctors and advisors, questions were asked about his 'Audacity Of Hype World Tour'. Notably a planned publicity stunt to US troops, a well-orchestrated mass 'rally' in Berlin and the Obama camp spin over his prayer note left in Jerusalem's Wailing Wall.

Most of all, questions about a man, more interested in celebrity. As Laura Meckler and Amy Chozick in the Wall Street Journal point out.

It's all been played out in the media and for the media. For the moment, both camps are lobbing TV ads at each other, with the McCain camp hitting on celebrity and playing up the 'underdog'. Both sides playing around the race card.

But behind the scenes, journalists are frustrated that they've being denied the chance, by the Obama camp, to do what they've always done before. Hold a light up to the candidate and probe for policy and weaknesses.

Opinion polls suggest the public are starting to dislike Obama-superstar. The candidates are now neck and neck in the polls. Maybe that's sour grapes. But maybe he's getting just too big for his boots. The 'a-word' is starting to appear - arrogance.

Bearing in mind Clinton has not actually conceded defeat, only suspended her campaign, she may even keep her name in the hat at the Democratic National Convention.

The US blogsphere is rife with people digging behind the scenes. His Saudi source of funding? Links with dodgy Chicago politicians? A false declaration on his Bar application? A forged birth certificate?

Obama's downfall may be his own vanity. Some of our fawning media should take note of this shift in opinion. Politicians should heed the warning signs, before they ride too high on the back of Obamamania.

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Obama's 'Mad', Mad World

The world is holding its breath for what the Messiah will do next in his first 100 days. So much false hope, so many dreams to shatter. And so little time to walk the walk, talk the talk and fool some of the people, some of the time. It's tough being a snake-oil salesman from the Windy City.


Obama's BBC fan club is kindly posting an on-line daily diary of the Great Man's every move. Everything's there except for the comfort breaks but maybe the Chosen One doesn't choose to go.

Channel 4 News, "blessed is the Blessed One", managed to slip in a quick Obama info-commercial during a recent news bulletin, with stock footage from
National Geographic showing 'The One' on Air Force One - ordering dinner from a menu. Even the Messiah has to eat sometimes.

Thank goodness for the mad world of Mad Magazine.

Obama reached out to the Muslim world, choosing a Saudi-owned satellite TV network for his first formal television interview. He asked the Arab World for forgiveness and told audiences that some of his relatives are Muslim. Strange that throughout the campaign that was the one issue Obama kept well under wraps. That and the fags.

Meanwhile there are reports that Iran is almost ready to declare itself a nuclear power, with enough enriched uranium to blow Israel off the face of the earth.

In Obama's war, the 'enemy' is being softened up on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border with an increase in drone attacks ready for a massive US troop surge as part of the hopeless and unwinnable war in Afghanistan.

Gitmo is to close within a year we are told, yet the actual executive order gives the president plenty of wriggle-room over what to do about the detainees and when to do it.

And there's that $825 billion bail-out coming up soon which "will save or create three to four million jobs over the next few years". Where have we heard all that before? Obama's favourite community group ACORN, under investigation for voter registration fraud, will be eligible for billions.

But don’t despair, President Barack Hussein Obama, is there to fix all the problems, the leaking roof and restore confidence in America.

Well isn’t this all wonderful! He may have captured the hearts and minds of the media liberal luvvies but in this mad world, he sure as hell scares the pants off the Orange Party.

Top picture: Mad Magazine

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Saturday, January 17, 2009

A Shaky Cease-Fire In Gaza

Israel's unilateral Gaza cease-fire has thrown the ball firmly back in the Hamas court, with a warning that Israel will reserve the right to return fire, if Hamas continues to fire rockets into the South.

The Israeli cabinet voted for an Egyptian-backed 10-day cease-fire deal, ending the three week long Operation Cast Lead, after a cabinet meeting in Tel Aviv this evening. 

But the Jerusalem Post reports IDF forces will remain in Gaza until it's clear Hamas has ended its rocket fire into Israel. 

Hamas leaders have repeatedly warned they will not respect any cease-fire as long as Israel remains inside Gaza. Asked about Hamas continuing its rocket attacks, the Israeli prime minister warned "he wouldn't advise them to try it". 

Prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said the aims of the Gaza operation had been "met in full" and the cease-fire would start from 2am Sunday (local time).

Israel's operation had been at least a year in the planning and training, with the objectives of taking out Iran-supplied Hamas rockets launched from Gaza and ending Iranian weapons smuggling through the Egyptian border tunnels, before the start of Obama's US presidency. 

EU leaders, including prime minister Brown, had offered help to end arms smuggling into Gaza. The cease-fire was agreed by the Israeli cabinet after talks with Egyptian intelligence chiefs, according to the Israelis. 

Meanwhile, Iran's proxy war against Israel was confirmed at an Arab summit, where Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal, rejected Israel's conditions for a truce and called on all Arab countries to cut ties with the Jewish state, backed by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syrian president Bashar Assad. More moderate Egypt and Saudi Arabia boycotted the summit.

With Hamas launching a rocket attack on Israeli civilians during the cabinet meeting and in the hours afterwards, the signs are it won't be long before any fragile peace is shattered. 

Picture: The Israeli cabinet meets at the defence ministry in Tel Aviv, Saturday night.

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Sunday, July 27, 2008

End Of A Spanking Good Yarn

Not since the trials of Oscar Wilde in the 1890s has the Old Bailey seen a show quite like this. It had everything. Celebrity, sex, intrigue, surprising twists and turns and important issues of press censorship and morals. 

No royals this time but everything else, including hidden cameras, MI5 and the new Miss Whiplash. The Greatest Show On Earth, from Formula One boss, Max Mosley and the News of the World, didn't disappoint.

This case, while not libel but a privacy case, centred on Mosley, son of 1930s fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, and his sadomasochistic sex sessions. The News of the World had said Mosley had taken part in a "sick Nazi orgy". Mosley said there was nothing 'nazi' about it.

Apparently Mosley had been at it for years but not the Nazi uniform bit and we were given all the details. There were some disappointments though. 

A woman secretly filmed the sex session with Mosley with a camera hidden in her bra. True to form she was known only as the mysterious 'Woman E'. Why couldn't she be called Madame X? Maybe that name's already taken. 

And she couldn't come to court because of her "emotional and mental state". But there's a happy ending. She's now made a full recovery and the family-friendly Daily Mail has a few photos of her and there's an interview on Sky News and one today with her husband, James Bondage, in the Sunday Times. The newspaper calls him 'Paul' (not his real name).

What did emerge was that she's the wife of an MI5 officer. MI5, whose offices are in that big Soviet style building on the Thames close to the, er, basement flat where 'it' all happened. What on earth is MI5 doing mixed up in all this? Spooky. Is he really called James Bondage? Maybe that's just normal behaviour after an all-boy's public school and Cambridge?

Madame X (or Woman E, or even Michelle) said: "I can only apologise for what has happened but it is not going to take back all the damage that has been done." Presumably she didn't mean to Mosley's bottom.

The whole show was conducted by Mr Justice Eady, who has a track record, according to Private Eye, of protecting, in the English libel courts, a certain rich and powerful Saudi, from books about him that are only published in the US. 

That's why big English libel and privacy cases are so good. You can't make it up.

In the end it was down to the dastardly EU and their cunning human rights laws wot did it for the NoW. That, and maybe the fact that Mosley's dad was a member of the English aristocracy who don't like their dirty washing hung out in public. 

The judge ruled the Nazi uniform bit didn't stand up in court and so the paper had breached his privacy, according to these EU driven laws. Mosley, already damaged, was awarded more damages. 

So it's all right for an elected official to get up to all sorts of hanky spanky panky as long as everyone first takes off their uniforms. 

And it's all right to report it all on the BBC 6 o'clock news before the kids go to bed. At least we now know that S&M isn't some High Street store selling cheap clothes.

Many moons ago, this reporter filed a story for the News of the World about a top Tory's links to a neo-Nazi,  para-military organisation called Column 88. Despite the hard evidence, NoW lawyers refused to clear it. Then a photo of this guy turned up wearing a Nazi chamber pot style helmet, standing in front of a swastika. Bingo! Off we went. The NoW never learns does it.

Picture: The Bleacher Report

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Friday, October 09, 2009

Barry Gets A Joke Shop Gong

And the winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize is - a slick, snake-oil salesman from the Windy City, for doing sweet FA. The politics of false hope are alive and well and living in the audacity of hype of Obamaland. What a joke.


Out of a record 205 nominations, including Zimbabwe's prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai and a Chinese dissident, the top peace prize went to the Soapstar Superstar who's sending US troops and marines to their deaths in the Afghan killing fields.

Perhaps it was awarded to the new Messiah for blowing up innocent civilians with drone attacks on Pakistan and Afghanistan so the commander-in chief doesn't get his hands dirty.

Maybe for 'reaching out' to Iran, bent on blowing Jews off the face of the earth.

Or an award by proxy to the media and marketing men who sold the soap power dream.

Asked why the prize had been awarded to Obama after just a few months in the job, Nobel committee head Thorbjoern Jagland explained: "It was because we would like to support what he is trying to achieve".

Spout on about hope and dreams ad nauseam and get a gong for your trouble. This was a prize for dodgy politics, not peace.

Americans are starting to see through the sham of Obama Superstar. The shine is beginning to wear off the Chosen One who promised the earth and delivers nothing.

But reality kicked in a little too late for the Nobel committee who apparently made up their narrow little minds just a couple of weeks after the Great Man was sworn in.

The received wisdom is that this should be regarded as "more of an encouragement for intentions than a reward for achievements."

Don't go encouraging the guy, for Christ's sake. If he's got a decent, honest bone in his body, he'll hand it back.

Using 'hope' to dupe voters into living in Obama La-La-Land is soo last year. Worthy ambitions always easier said than done.

The citation reads like a schoolboy essay on doomed diplomacy: "Founded on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population". Throw in a few 'stakeholders' and a 'New World Order', why don't you.

But he hasn't done anything yet! It's not like Barry's had a long and distinguished political career before or since he took office.

The guy couldn't even bring the Olympics to the Windy City despite all his hot air.

Obama has been given a gong for turning into Bush in disguise, propping up rotten policies on human rights, civil liberties, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East, Gitmo and rendition.

But not everyone's had the benefit of an expensive Harvard education, Saudi backers and a fawning media who sold its soul to buy into the land of dreams and suck up to the Chosen One.

It's not what you do, it's the way that you don't do it. Next up the Nobel Prize for Literature and Barry's Bumper Book of Hype, ghost written by his old pal Bill 'bomber' Ayres.

The cult of Obama elevated him to saint-like status. He's now aimlessly wandering around, grandstanding on the world stage and getting into an almighty pickle with the folks back home.

The world's most famous and prestigious award has been reduced to a tacky trinket from a joke shop. A nod to celebrity, competing with the Oscars. Awarded to a two-bit actor before he's even made a movie.

Boring Barry has come over all 'umble. Obamamaniacs will no doubt rejoice with renewed 'hope' and a sad something to cling on to. Everyone else is left scratching their heads. What a sham. What a shame.


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Sunday, October 05, 2008

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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Sunday, November 16, 2008

Are We Ready For A Captain Sensible?

The dogged determination of Brown to recklessly borrow his way out of recession, leaving a legacy of debt, should be a gift to the sensible ones. A golden opportunity to become the voice of financial sense and sensibility. But is the country ready for a Captain Sensible or happy with Brown's Flash Crash Gordon

The current economic woes reveal a stark contrast between two polarised camps of political and economic thinking. 

Conservative, LibDem and true Labour voices are urging caution and common sense in the interests of the country as a whole. That is at odds with a short-sighted government chasing petty political advantage, hell bent on wrecking lives for generations to come. 

Taking the Captain Sensible approach takes courage. It means refusing to cow-tow to the reckless spending fuelled by borrowing which Brown is determined to foist on the country. It means braving New Labour scare-mongering over cuts at an election.

Borrowing and debt have become embedded in the country's psyche with a culture of greed. For a decade people have been cushioned from reality along with the banks. The government too has been happy to follow that recipe for disaster. It take a brave and courageous soul to risk sticking their political neck out to burst that bubble. 

Faced with huge bills, the answer had been to borrow more. Ridiculously cheap imports lulled people into a false sense of security. People were encouraged to buy what they couldn't afford. Now it's impossible, to pay off the debt.

Captain Sensible faces a huge uphill struggle to change the habits of a decade.

Brown wants to lead the world and set off on a massive spending spree taking the country down with him. 

Putting our money where his mouth is, means tax cuts and spending have to be funded by billions of pounds of extra borrowing. For that to have any real effect, the borrowing has to be huge, around £15 billion, and on top of the huge debit already piling up.

Brown is in a strong position. He has the backing of a weak Bank of England governor, easily manipulated by the government. New Labour is well on its way to re-capturing much of the media, in particular the BBC state broadcaster, after the fall-out of the Blair years. 

Time and again Brown and his chancellor are portrayed as action men but they are only acting not solving the global crisis. Caution and real prudence are falling on deaf ears. 

Out of touch with reality, Brown is lovin' it, strutting around the G-20 world stage, quick to pour scorn on shadow chancellor, George Osborne, who is adamant he's doing his job "to tell the truth about the economy" and voice reasonable concerns.

Brown and the economy are out of control. The government is in denial about the true nature of the economic mess. 

Away from the government spin, the amount of real government debt is mind-boggling, following a decade of reckless borrowing and spending and despite the best effort to keep much of it off the public balance sheet. 

Last week Brown, Cameron and Clegg threw themselves into a topsy-turvy tax cutting bidding war. All are agreed over tax cuts and tax breaks but that raised the billion dollar question - just where is all the extra cash going to come from? 

All this should mean the recession is a wake up call, a time to tighten the belts and austerity management. 

The Orange Party has to be dragged screaming to echo the views of Thatcher but the 'housewife' approach of balancing the books of income and expenditure makes sense. And to balance the political books, the last true Labour prime minister, Jim Callaghan, eventually came round to thinking you cannot spend your way out of a recession by just cutting taxes and increasing government spending. 

There is not an unlimited supply of credit out there. Borrowing comes at a price. Eventually we'll be forced to go cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund, Saudi Arabia and China. That puts us at the mercy of others. Taking a begging bowl to beg for credit means they'll want something in return.

The alternative is to make sure we pay our way. That means cuts. But not in the way the government would have us believe. 

Scrapping ID cards, the useless NHS computer and ending disastrous foreign wars along with reigning in the billions squandered on ridiculous government waste and failed pet projects would give much of the savings needed.

Cutting back on spending means sacrifice but if people are asked to make sacrifices then the same should be true of government, with a start on those highfalutin' projects.

What is not clear is whether a new mood of common sense and sanity has really caught a willing public imagination nor whether there is a politician strong and brave enough to stick to the sensible and risk an almighty media backlash whipped up by the entrenched New Labour government.

It means not acting selfishly for short term political advantage by inflicting a terrible burden of debt on future generations which will leave a lasting legacy for decades to come. 

Look hard enough and you can find Captain Sensibles in some Tory, LibDem and true Labour politicians.

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