Nationalise Now For A Quick Fix

The deep recession is a Depression and for tough times it's time to cast aside political prejudice and bring strategic industries vital for the economy and jobs into full short-term public ownership.

As recent polls show, the public is becoming heartily sick of Brown's government floundering around throwing good money after bad, as he relentlessly pursues a doomed policy of trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear by borrowing billions to dig himself out of a hole.  

Steel-making is the latest casualty as Indian-owned Corus axed 2500 jobs in working class heartlands, already hit by high unemployment. Car manufacturing jobs too are being wiped out - both the first to go in the US Great Depression of the 1930s. The knock-on effect for firms relying on big industries is catastrophic. 

Both are symptoms of an economic breakdown as one day Brown will have to face up to reality and a country bankrupt. 

Brown's deputy Mandelson is due to make a statement today on aid for the car industry, but time and again the 'solutions' come from the old order with the 'borrow more and bail-out' mantra, using taxpayers' money to subsidise industry and finance institutions.

The days of borrowing are over. International investors are unwilling to lend to UK plc. And that will have a knock-on effect on the government's grand plans to boost jobs with a massive programme of public works. 

PFI schemes too, so beloved of the government to keep borrowing of the public accounts, are hitting the rocks as the borrowing cash dries up.

The answer still is to throw cash at the banks, the car industry or whatever moves. But this is borrowed cash and, with few controls, goes straight into the pockets of shareholders and foreign owners, saddling taxpayers with debt for years to come. 

It's all about jobs and so it should be. But why borrow cash and hand over a blank cheque to business, the banks  and industry to kick start the economy? That didn't work in the US Depression and it won't work here now. 

It's time to bury political prejudices and cast aside the past burdens of nationalisation and take into full public ownership strategic industries and financial institutions. After all, this would give the taxpayer a stake in the country's fortunes and future and remove once and for all the ridiculous mess of a country which doesn't even own the shirt on its back. 

This would be a short term fix, not a long term shackle, nor a move towards a big state controlled soviet. When the bad times are eventually a bad dream and the economy finally gets moving, politicians and the public can rethink the strategy. 

What caught the eye of the Orange Party was a recent meeting of the heads of Europe, debating a 'new world order' and the  future of capitalism. 

German chancellor Merkel deplored huge debts that governments are accumulating to spend their way out of the present crisis. French president Sarkozy, blamed financial speculators for encouraging a system fuelled on debt. 

Brown wasn't there but someone else was at the meeting of the great and good. Someone who called for a new financial order based on "values other than the maximum short-term profit."

"In capitalism of the 21st century, there is room for the state," said the voice at the front. 

That came from none other that former prime minister Blair, the guy who, along with his chancellor, sold off the silver and racked up billions of pounds in debt. 

Maybe he's had a change of heart. Or maybe he's in a confused state, mixing up state public ownership with taxpayer's state subsidies.  

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Scrap NHS IT Waste, Save £12.7bn

The biggest non-military IT project in the world is crashing down around the government's ears, yet ministers are steadfastly squandering billions of pounds of taxpayers cash on the useless NHS white-elephant. 

The government is happy to write a blank cheque for this enormous disaster, as time and again the commons watchdog warns of delays after delays. 

The NHS's Connecting for Health (CfH) computer system, has been dogged by problems since its launch in 2002 in the heyday of New Labour. The biggest non-military IT computer project in the world costs a staggering £12.7 billion and is already more than five years behind schedule. 

The whole project was born during chancellor Brown's boom years, when mesmerised ministers were quite happy to be strung along by slick IT salesman and consultants who promised the earth and delivered nothing. 

The government was hoodwinked by the promise of a revolution using the white heat of information technology and time and again the chickens came home to roost, as many of the big IT projects crashed and burned, ending up as embarrassing financial fiascos. 

Now MPs on the public accounts committee (PAC) have thrown fresh doubts on even a 2015 deadline for the disastrous NHS computer project. 

Its chairman said that even in trusts already using parts of the system, staff were unimpressed and the cost to the NHS was uncertain.

Both the Tories and Labour's left have seized on the project as another example of government waste and have called for the whole project to be scrapped, as minister's attempts to ram through a top-down, centralised, one-size-fits-all central NHS computer system come crashing down around their ears. 

Billions of pounds of tax-payers' money is just going down the drain and into the pockets of the IT consultants, leaving doctors and hospital chiefs trying to get to grips with an unworkable IT system, instead of looking after the welfare of patients.

PAC MPs heard that two out of the four companies producing the NHS system have pulled out and some hospitals have been forced to bring in their own software as they struggle with 'Choose and Book' and '18-week targets'.

Not a single trust in the North, Midlands and East had begun using software for 'care records'  as of the end of last year. Essential systems are late and estimates of local costs are still very unreliable. 

The Orange Party and others have flagged up the NHS computer project as one the most shameful examples of how the government has squandered away public cash. None are more vociferous than David Craig in his detailed financial analysis of government waste - Squandered.

With the country deep in recession, now is the time to take tough decisions on the future of this £12.7 billion waste.

Instead of wandering around in a bemused daze, wasting time launching yet another 'heathstyle initiative', health secretary, Alan Johnson, could do well to get off his backside and get to grips with the problem. 

If he doesn't the Tories will and use it as yet another example of the fine mess the government has got us all into. And who could blame them?

UPDATE 11.19am: Too late for the health secretary. The BBC reports the Conservatives are considering plans for a £100m cap on government IT contracts to prevent "white elephants" such as the NHS computer system.

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Downing Street Gets In On Gaza Act

Downing Street has jumped on the Gaza 'charity' appeal bandwagon, with the DEC advert splashed all over the publicly-funded website, making a mockery of parliamentary democracy and civil service impartiality. 

In a strange twist of logic, the appeal is the "top story" on Brown's personal propaganda website which already breeches every civil service code in the rulebook.

The Downing Street advert includes all the links to donate to the 'appeal' and comes as the row continues with both the BBC and Sky refusing to broadcast an appeal which is biased against Israel and would inflame moderate Arab states with Iran-backed Hamas atrocity propaganda.  

MPs are indulging in a spot of political posturing in the commons, with more than 90 trying to bully the BBC to broadcast. 

Culture secretary, Andy Burnham has already said the BBC is right to make its own judgement over the appeal but clearly that doesn't apply to his government. Now Downing Street is casting impartiality to the wind, in a pathetic attempt to woo voters.

Earlier the Orange Party pointed out that humanitarian aid is pouring into Gaza and urged the BBC to stand firm in what is a one-sided 'political' appeal.

Millions of dollars have poured into Gaza from the UN, EU and governments including our own.

Eager for any publicity, Brown's Downing Street website is at pains to point out: "Development Secretary Douglas Alexander announced an additional £20 million in aid as the Prime Minister joined an emergency summit on the conflict on 18 January." Bully for them.

So if millions of pounds are pouring into Gaza - why does DEC and now Downing Street feel it's necessary to urge the public to cough up more?

Political posturing, bully-boy tactics, pseudo-liberal bias and now vote-chasing adverts on a taxpayer-funded government-highjacked website.

Hat tip: Benedict Brogan 

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BBC Must Stand Firm On Gaza Appeal

Pressure is mounting on the BBC to overturn its decision not to broadcast a Gaza 'charity' appeal with more than 90 MPs piling in with political posturing. But the BBC must stand firm if it is to salvage any scrap of impartiality left in the corporation. 

The BBC decision has opened a can of worms revealing the split between BBC bosses, wary of its world-wide audience and international criticism and its own news organisation, bent on presenting the conflict with blatant anti-Israel bias and pro-Hamas atrocity propaganda. 

Today BBC director general, Mark Thompson, repeated that airing a 'charity' appeal would put the corporation's impartiality at risk and the BBC could not give the impression it was "backing one side" over the other. Sky too said today it will not broadcast the 'charity' appeal for similar reasons. 

Thompson's comments come as more than 90 cross-party MPs back a parliamentary motion urging the BBC to screen the appeal, raising the ugly spectre of an authoritarian parliament bullying the corporation and trying to directly control and influence the output of the state broadcaster. 

Criticism over the decision has come from a host of usual suspects, as the appeal was swiftly whipped up as a 'cause' in a well-organised, stage-managed protest.

The so-called 'charity' appeal is a political appeal and the on-going row is sadly more about pseudo-liberal posturing politics and the fundamental Islam 'cause' than people.  

Humanitarian aid is already there in Gaza. Millions of dollars have poured in from the UN, EU and governments including our own. Now Hamas thugs are crawling out of the rubble to mount their own insidious PR offensive. 

How can anyone be sure any aid will go to all the people of Gaza and not just into the pockets of Hamas and handed out to its supporters or those poor souls brow-beaten by the authoritarian regime, while Gazans from rival Fatah are left to starve and scrabble around in the ruins. 

DEC's motives for the appeal are at best part of a do-good mentality, at worst politically motivated and highly suspect. 

Unlike Channel 4 and ITV, the BBC and Sky broadcast directly to the Middle East.

The appeal would rub Israeli noses in the dirt of the Gaza conflict, without mention of the destruction caused by Iran-backed rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. 

But the BBC also broadcasts into Palestine and moderate Arab states, as well as fundamental Islamic regimes in Syria and Iran.

It's difficult to see how such a 'charity' appeal could avoid using stock pro-Hamas propaganda TV footage and the testimony of women and children made under threat by the thugs standing behind them. 

The bias of the appeal would be too obvious if presenters didn't mention that Hamas was committing crimes against humanity by using Gazan civilians as human shields. 

Indeed, the appeal could be seen as highlighting the victims of fundamental Islamic aggression which wouldn't go down well in Tehran. 

More moderate Arab states would be outraged at an appeal for the victims in Gaza, without mention of Palestinian rivals Fatah, who are being routinely murdered and tortured by Iran-backed Hamas thugs in the wake of the conflict. 

Channel 4's decision to broadcast the 'charity' appeal on the other hand comes as no surprise. The channel's 'news' coverage of the conflict has verged on the fanatical and its biased output a bad joke. Channel 4 is desperately trying to use the appeal to get themselves off the hook and justify their shameful coverage of the conflict and blatant anti-Jewish bigotry.

No one would deny that humanitarian aid should override politics when innocent people are suffering. This conflict, like so many before, has been all about politics and power. But wading in waving around so-called liberal credentials is not the way to bring peace to the Middle East. 

Culture secretary, Andy Burnham, has said the BBC is right to make its own judgement over the appeal and there the matter should rest. 

The Orange Party is at the front of the queue when it comes to bashing first Blair's now Brown's biased BBC - but that applies in the main to its news output, not overarching decisions of the corporation. The BBC is making the right call on this one. 

Picture: A worker readies a shipment of relief aid to Gaza at the warehouses of the Jordanian Hashemite Charity Organization in Amman (Thursday Jan 22, 2009), from UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). AP Photo by Mohammad Abu Ghosh.

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How Many More Lords Of Corruption?

15 years after the Sunday Times exposed the commons 'cash for questions' scandal, the Insight team has blown the gaff on a 'cash for laws' scandal - this time with their sights on the 'untouchable' Lords and New Labour's cronies. Now only a deep clean will remove the stench of corruption filling the air.

In a sting worthy of the original Insight investigations, Sunday Times undercover reporters claim their lordships offered to help make amendments to legislation in return for up to £120,000.

The Orange Party finds it somewhat refreshing yet disturbing that out of the ten peers approached, only the New Labour lords went a-leaping, with three Tory, one LibDem and an Ulster Unionist having nothing to do with it. 

In the frame as reporters posed as lobbyists before making their excuses and leaving, are a former energy minister, Lord Truscott, Lord Moonie, a former defence minister, Lord Snape, a former government whip and Lord Taylor of Blackburn, pal of justice secretary Jack Straw. All the peers reportedly deny any wrongdoing.

Taylor is reported to have made a priceless comment to the Sunday Times: "The rules are meant to be bent sometimes". That does beg the question, just how many of their lordships are at it? 

Leader of the Lords, Baroness Royall, said she is "deeply concerned" over the allegations and if it emerged the peers had broken the rules, they would be "named and shamed". 

That's not good enough Lady R. These are allegations of corruption and that is serious. The House needs to be put in order to nip the 'cash for laws' in the bud.

 

Her hands are tied of course as their lordships are untouchable and can't be thrown out but what is required is legislation. Maybe Straw can make a start on a first draft, with help from Lord Mandelson? 

In 1994, the Sunday Times followed by the Guardian, exposed Tory 'cash for questions' scandals in the commons leading to the Nolan committee on standards, a tougher register of members interests and Major's government branded with 'sleaze'.

Blair famously declared an end to sleaze as the government beavered away creating peerages for pals, stuffed the cosy gentleman's club with its cronies (more than 370 in total) and came spectacularly unstuck with the greed-fuelled 'cash for honours' scandal.

What little public confidence there is now in the behaviour of their lordships can only be restored with a deep clean to rid the House of the Lords of Corruption and a full independent investigation of this disgrace, backed by prime minister Brown.

Picture: Flashback to 1997 and Private Eye's take on the Hamiltons and one of the original 'cash for questions' scandals, which helped bring down Major's nice 'n sleazy government. 

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Gaza Appeal Opens Can Of Biased Worms

The BBC decision not to broadcast a 'charity' appeal to raise funds for Gaza has opened a can of worms among UK broadcasters now desperately trying to use the appeal to get themselves off the hook and justify their shameful biased coverage of the conflict.

At the BBC in particular, it reveals the split between BBC bosses, wary of a world-wide audience in the face of international media criticism and its own news organisation bent on presenting the conflict with blatant anti-Israel bias and pro-Hamas atrocity propaganda. 

At the time of writing, the BBC is refusing to back down amid criticism of its decision, despite three rival terrestrial channels, ITV, Channel 4 and Five deciding to run the appeal.

Mark Thompson, the BBC's director-general, said: "The decision was made because of question marks about the delivery of aid in a volatile situation."

Unlike Channel 4 and ITV, the BBC and Sky,which is considering the request, broadcast directly to the Middle East including Palestine, Israel and moderate Arab states, as well as fundamental Islamic regimes in Syria and Iran.

The appeal would rub Israeli noses in the dirt of the Gaza conflict, without mention of the destruction caused by Iran-backed rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. 

The bias of the appeal would be too obvious if presenters didn't mention that Hamas was committing crimes against humanity by using Gazan civilians as human shields. 

Moreover, the appeal could be seen as highlighting the victims of fundamental Islamic aggression and the BBC would not want to criticise Hamas by broadcasting such an appeal. 

More moderate Arab states too would be outraged at an appeal for the victims in Gaza, which includes members of Palestinian rivals Fatah, who are being routinely murdered and tortured by Hamas thugs in the wake of the conflict. 

Earlier, ITV and Sky had agreed with the BBC that they would not air the 'charity' appeal but ITV later reversed its decision.

Channel 4's decision to broadcast the appeal should come as no surprise. The broadcaster is already in hot water after an insulting and offensive alternative "Christmas message" by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, at the height of the conflict. News anchor, Jon Snow, too for his offensive, comments over former President Bush. The channel's biased 'news' coverage of the conflict has verged on the fanatical and its output a bad joke. 

The issue of the appeal was swiftly whipped up as a 'cause' by the usual well-organised suspects protesting outside the BBC's Broadcast House, all carefully crafted to create pictures for the waiting media. 

A couple of lowly government ministers have waded into the row urging the BBC to reconsider, while the Archbishop of York speaks from the heart and soul of humanity. 

The appeal is by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella organization of 13 aid charities but there is no shortage of cash and aid for Gaza. 

Millions of dollars have poured in. The UN, EU and governments including our own have donated very generously. Aid is available locally and Israel has already lifted its ban on foreign aid workers entering Gaza. Many outside the cloistered world of the UK media have questioned DEC's motives for a 'political' appeal. 

It's difficult to see how such an appeal would not use stock pro-Hamas propaganda TV footage and the testimony of women and children made under threat by the thugs standing behind them. And can a presenter give a balanced and unbiased account of the events leading up to the suffering, without giving away their anti-Israel credentials. 

How can anyone be sure any of the aid will go to all the people of Gaza and not just into the pockets of Hamas and handed out to its supporters or those poor souls brow-beaten by the authoritarian regime, while Gazans from rival Fatah are left to starve and scrabble around in the ruins. 

No one would deny that humanitarian aid should override politics when innocent people are suffering. This conflict, like so many before, has been all about politics and power. 

Unlike the humanitarian aid already there in Gaza, the so-called 'charity' appeal is a political appeal and the on-going row is more about pseudo-liberal posturing politics than people.  

Picture: Foreign aid distributed in Gaza from the BBC website

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Recession Will Turn To Depression

The doom and gloom of recession is finally on us but it's time to move onwards and downwards. It won't be long before the recession turns into a deep Depression and then we'll really have something to worry about. Time to dust ourselves down, pick ourselves up and start all over again - with a new government.

The Orange Party has never bought into this recession definition - two or more quarters of reduced GDP. When you are up against statistics, it's so easy to sprinkle a little bit of financial fairy dust around to stave off the day of reckoning. 

A recession is easy to spot. The country’s economy enters a period of negative growth, real income declines, unemployment rises and industrial production wavers. Sounds familiar? It should. It's been happening for ages, probably since last April. 

Brown's BBC has been a bit too keen over the months to ram a downturn down our throats. And when those two get together, you can smell a rat. 

So today we finally got used to the R-word and the BBC finally changed its downturn logo and used 'UK recession' - something ITV News has been running with for weeks. 

The BBC is trying its best at political bias with a sycophantic interview with Brown on the Today programme and BBC on-line "news" doing its best to avoid political balance with hardly a Vince or Dave to be seen. 

What next for the spinners to try to wriggle out of? They've already got their eye on the D-Word, Depression, which strikes fear into the heart of the government. That will have to be handled with kid gloves. 

So for a  goverment so beloved of its tick box culture, here's a handy check box for a Depression: 

Abnormal increases in unemployment, restriction of credit, shrinking output and investment, numerous bankruptcies, reduced amounts of trade and commerce, highly volatile currency devaluations, price deflation, people forced to dispose of tangible assets to fund every day living, declining business activities, falling prices, public fear and panic, despair and despondency.

And all that too sounds eerily familiar. We're heading for a Depression of gigantic proportions.

The most infamous Depression was the Great Depression, which began in the US in the 1930s after years of a debt-fuelled boom. Recovery took decades.   

Then the public's spirits were lifted by the stars of the silverscreen and feel-good musical movies. Fred and Ginger tried to pick everyone up. Obama cribbed Dorothy Fields' lyrics for his inauguration speech:

Nothing's impossible, I have found,


For when my chin is on the ground,


I pick myself up, dust myself off,


Start all over again.

Don't lose your confidence if you slip,


Be grateful for a pleasant trip,


And pick yourself up, dust yourself off,


Start all over again.

The best cure for recession depression is a breath of fresh air, a change of scenery and a large dose of confidence. Or in this case, a change in government, which the country can confidently unite behind, to start to get us out of this mess. 

If there was ever a time for a general election, to dust ourselves down and start all over again, then this is it.

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BBC Lifts Brown's Recession Spirits

The BBC is doing its bit to lift Brown's recession depression, kicking off with a toadying Today interview by one of New Labour's luvvies. 

At the stoke of midnight, Brown's downturn turned into a recession pumpkin, so the deluded prime minister gave a party political broadcast, aided and abetted by the Beeb's Evan Davis.

The recession is finally official as GDP fell by 1.5% in the last three months of 2008 after a 0.6% drop in the previous quarter. The biggest quarter-on-quarter decline since 1980.

A time for tough questioning one would have thought. Instead, with no signs of John Humphreys, Brown and the BBC's former economics editor cuddled up for a cosy early morning chat, leaving many to choke on their cornflakes.  

In a well-staged interview, Davis had the gall to say: "I don't want to blame you for these problems ... I am not going to blame you..."

And, reading from his Downing Street briefing paper, Davis continued : "A lot of people credited you with the recovery plan - I think that needs to be recognised - around the world..."

The recession figures were much worse than forecast. Analysts had been expecting a 1.2% decline in GDP which would be the worst performance since the third quarter of 1990 but the fall in GDP was much steeper.

Mistakes? Did Brown have a few? Well if he did they were too few to mention - he blamed it all on the banks:

"But what we didn't see - and nobody saw - was the possibility of complete market failure, that markets seized up across the world".

So that's it then. Blame it on the banks, blame it on global warming, blame it on everything and everybody except the fact that Brown has presided over the UK economy for the last twelve years. One would have thought he could have seen it coming? 

Any growth and the government gets the credit. Recession? That's down to everybody else. Boom and bust? That dear, mere morals was a different sort of boom and bust.

In a week dominated by bad economic news with ministers scrabbling around vainly searching for elusive green shoots, yesterday the Orange Party warned that with a bit of financial fairy dust, the UK has only narrowly avoided the technical recession definition. Now  they cannot continue to bury their heads in the sand.

In Downing Street it's spun as confidence boosting. In the real world it's called vote boosting and for the BBC that should mean political balance. 

But in all the doom and gloom there is some good news. The BBC has been forced to finally removed its cute little downturn logo and replace it with a UK recession (above).

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Get Ready For The R-Word

At the stoke of midnight, the 'downturn' so beloved of Brown and his BBC turns into a pumpkin and a nightmare recession. With a bit of financial fairy dust, the country has narrowly avoided recession depression. Now they can't bury their heads in the sand.

It's not as if the recession isn't already with us. The US and Germany are already in recession. Here the official name has been spun around for "technical reasons" and used by some and not by others - as if the mere mention of the word 'recession' will send down a plague of locusts and frogs.

The public are big enough to take it. Indeed most folk would welcome someone who gave it to them straight. We can only all pull together when everyone knows which direction and just how hard to pull.

So why be so coy? The answer lies in borrowing Brown's dogged determination not to own up to anything and that includes his part in creating a debt culture and getting us into the economic mess in the first place.

To admit recession is to admit failure, as the country officially slides into its first recession since 1991.

Downing Street in collusion with the BBC in dreaming up the downturn, would have us believe talking down the economic crisis would undermine confidence. International investors could pull the plug on lending. So a 'downturn' is a soft landing.

But the international money-men have a bank of plasma screens all showing the state of financial markets around the world, including this from Bloomberg on Wednesday:

"Britain had a 14.9 billion-pound ($20.5 billion) budget deficit in December, the second highest for any month since records began in 1993, as the deepening recession pummelled tax receipts and jobless claims climbed."

At home it's spun as confidence boosting - or rather vote boosting - from a prime minister and his deputy Mandleson who live and breath the election.

Cameron in a speech today hit the nail on the head: 'This recession doesn't vindicate big government; it hammers the final nail in its coffin."

The recession is due to be confirmed tomorrow when output figures for the fourth quarter of 2008 are released. A 'technical' recession is defined by two successive quarters of negative output, as anyone with an Oxford First in economics will tell you.

The contraction in the UK economy for the final three months of the year follows a 0.6% decline in GDP for the third quarter.

Some economists are forecasting a 1.2% decline in GDP which would be the worst performance since the third quarter of 1990, some much steeper.

The week has been dominated by bad economic news. Inflation as measured by the government's Consumer Prices Index (CPI) down again to 2.6% in December, leading to further fears over deflation.

Unemployment as measured by government's benefit claims in November was 1.92 million, highest since New Labour took power in 1997.

This week has left ministers scrabbling around looking in vain for elusive green shoots.

Now presumably the BBC will have to scrap its downturn logo and replace it with ... "UK Recession". That's something ITV news has been running with for weeks.

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