Phew, What A Stitch-Up

A phone hack 'scandal' is rocking Cameron's boat in the dog eat dog world on the Street of Shame. Dirty Digger's in the frame after coughing up to gag the victims. Cameron's spin doctor is in the thick of it. It's payback time and New Labour cronies are milking it for all it's worth. This smells like a stitch-up.

A hairy old hacking hack's tale with a good dose of political bitching and a Fleet Street battle thrown in for good measure.

Blair's ex-spin doctor Campbell was in like a shot blogging for all he was worth while the Guardian "bombshell" was still hot off the press. The old hack couldn't contain himself - Gotcha. Methinks the man doeth protest too much.

At the centre is the shock 'revelation' that newspaper hacks on the News of the Screws went to illegal lengths a couple of years ago with phone hacks to try to dish the dirt on the high and mighty, all well-publicised at the time.

And to cap it all, there's the shock 'revelation' that NoW boss, Murdoch, paid off victims with a wad of cash to keep schtum.

How on earth does a hungry hack gets a scoop? Not by sitting on their bums all day. Hacking mobile messages is just the newest simplest trick in the book, making "thousands of calls" until you strike gold with an easily cracked voicemail PIN. Any tabloid hack worth their salt would give it a go - as long as the boss is shielded from any come back.

Hacking into voicemail messages at the centre of the Guardian claims is small-fry. GCHQ does much more with a massive eavesdropping operation. The Royal Mail has a special unit to intercept post. Spooks pass on juicy titbits to the tabloids when they fancy another 'Squidgygate'. If the government can get away with it why not hacks? As long as it's in the public interest not just to interest the public.

But hold the front page. Who was the News of the Screws editor at the time? Step forward Andy Coulson, now Cameron's right hand media man. It's McBride and Smeargate all over again. Or is it?

Shurley shum mishtake. McPoison was working alongside Brown while hatching a squalid plot to smear top Tories. Coulson? This happened years ago in his other life at the NoW before he was a twinkle in Cameron's eye.

Coulson quit when the newspaper got in a right royal pickle caught in the act in a hairy old hacking affair, saying he took “ultimate responsibility”.

As for the pay-off. More likely no-one wanted their dirty washing hung out in a public court case and this was a chance to make a fast buck on the back on a bit of dirt.

But quick as a flash Prezza got stuck in - calling for heads to roll and the Old Bill to get stuck in. The BBC was lovin' it, giving Prescott all the time in the world to rant away all a-huffin' and a-puffin' his way through his spin-doctor script.

Yates of the Yard has been called in do his duty with another pop at the nasty Tories. Not be left out, Mandy has joined the fray calling for a fresh police probe.

And this is the same Prescott caught lording it up at Dorneywood when he was supposed to be running the country (Mail), caught with his pants down with his secretary (Mirror) and caught on two loos (Telegraph). Having a go at the NoW he seems to have got his wires crossed.

Prezza and Campbell will no doubt keep pumping away. Others are jumping on the bandwagon in a game of ya boo sucks. After all, the mighty Murdoch empire is backing Cameron in the race for Downing Street.

The heat is on. But those calling for Coulson or Murdoch's head should be careful what they wish for. There's a lot of muck out there waiting to be raked up.

Cameron is said to be "relaxed" about the whole thing. Only hard evidence linking Coulson directly to phone hacking would bring about his certain downfall. Hacks cover their tracks.

But still smarting from the Guido/NoW McBride smearing scandal, revenge is a dish best served cold by a New Labour supporting Guardian in cahoots with the BBC. If the pressure is relentless and something truly fresh turns up, Coulson may have to go.

To its credit Murdoch's posh paper, The Times is reporting New Labour calls for Cameron to sack his trusted aide but it's no big deal at the old Thunderer. The Mail, Mirror and Telegraph? Let he who is without sin throw the first stone.

Spin doctor Campbell is no stranger to dirty tricks spinning for his New Labour cronies. He's there large as life in a wonderful expose by none other than author of the Guardian 'revelation' - Nick Davies in his book which blew the lid off Campbell's Fleet Street cajoling, Flat Earth News.

Meanwhile outside the cosy Westminster village and the Street of Shame the public doesn't give a toss. They are worried about hanging onto a job, paying the bills and making ends meet.

Now thanks to Telegraph hacks they know which MP is spending their taxes living the high life with dodgy second homes deals. Now thanks to the stirling work of hacks and the blogoshere they know which fat cats are milking the system, screwing taxpayers for all they're worth.

And now thanks to leaks to the media they can see through the spin of this discredited government and economic mess. And decide for themselves who is best to run the country.

UPDATE 6pm: Yates of the Yard has ruled out a fresh probe into the hacking hacks.

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How Many Deaths Will It Take?

The government is pulling out all the stops with a shamelessly spinning charm offensive to con the public as troops are sent to their deaths in the Afghan killing fields. But that comes with a stark warning that more lives will be lost in the hopeless, unwinnable war. How many bodies will it take to force war-mongering ministers to stop the senseless slaughter?

Another soldier has been killed in Afghanistan bringing the total number of dead to ________ .

Death by numbers. Dutifully recorded by the media and graphically underlined when the names of those killed in the past week are solemnly read out in the commons.

A soldier from the Light Dragoons is the latest to be killed. That death is the seventh in a week. That brings the number of UK service personnel killed in Afghanistan to 176.

Few bat an eye lid. That's left to the grieving families. Now the public is being told by the government more lives will have to be lost. More poor souls will have to be sacrificed. More lambs to the slaughter.

The new Vietnam is living up to its legacy. In the end the US wasn't defeated by the Vietcong or North Vietnamese. It was defeated at home on TV when night after night an endless parade of boxes and body bags, finally turned public opinion.

As the government tries to face up to increasingly tough questions in the face of an increasing death toll, lowly new jobsworth defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth, has been given the hapless task of justifying this hopeless, bloody and unwinnable war.

Already dubbed by military chiefs as Bob "Aintworthit", he's way down the cabinet pecking order as he tries to win over hearts and minds for the new Vietnam and tries it on with another round of spin.

How on earth can anyone justify an unwinnable war against an invisible enemy with a meagre number of ill-equipped troops, struggling with woefully inadequate numbers of helicopters and properly armoured vehicles?

But justify it he will have to, as cheap-skate Brown is saddled with a mounting legacy as he begrudgedly funded Blair's wars and a mounting cost in both lives and equipment as he comes under fire from all directions.

One the one hand he's getting the flak for sending a paltry number of ill-equipped troops to their deaths on the one hand. On the other trying to justify another bloody war to the grass roots true Labour party members and increasingly sceptical public, who question what the hell he's doing sending troops out there in the first place.

There's little consolation even from commanders on the ground. Things will have to get worse before they get better, apparently. That cuts no ice with grieving families left to suffer a relentless round of spin and cuts no ice with an increasingly questioning public.

Every death brings renewed demands from the military top brass for a big increase in troop numbers, more helicopters, well-armed vehicles and better quality kit. Every death brings grief. Every death raises more questions. Every death brings fresh demands for a fresh approach.

All have their hands dirty. No one will come clean. But with no full defence spending review until after the election, Brown can neatly brush it all under the carpet and set a trap for the Tories to sort out the mess.

What is the purpose? Eradicating poppy fields, protecting gas and oil pipelines, propping up the huge US defence industry, halting the rising tide of fundamental Islam, propping up a corrupt regime or bringing rigged pro-US 'democracy' to a country which puts tribal loyalties well above an artificial state?

Current flavour of the month is "the front line battle against terrorism". Winning the fight against the shadowy Taliban is apparently "in the UK's national interest".

But time and again opinion polls show the public hasn't got a clue why the UK is in the country at all and have real doubts that this war is winnable. Political commentators and some MPs are starting to openly question what we are doing in Afghanistan and whether we should pull out now before being sucked in further to a bloody, hopeless unwinnable war.

It took a long time for the US to come round to the harsh reality that the Vietnam War could never be won. Here in the UK and in the US some politicians are starting to heed that dreadful lesson.

But if you are going to invade another country, then put your money where your mouth is, instead of the current New Labour spin trying to wage a piecemeal war on a peacetime budget in a country crippled with debt.

The Orange Party has long drawn parallels between the war in Vietnam and the current bloody mess in Afghanistan. The parallels are deeply disturbing. But so far there has been no great 'troops out' movement as there was with the Iraq war.

Perhaps people don't understand or don't care about the true massive scale of the conflict and the bloodshed, or prefer to bury their heads in the sand.

Families of the dead and the wounded deserve better. What a sad state of affairs when only a mounting tally of the dead will force that change in the tide of public opinion and force politicians to sit up and listen.

Top picture: The coffin of Major Sean Birchall of 1st Battalion Welsh Guards is carried during his funeral from the Guards Chapel of Wellington Barracks in London today.

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Field Floors Brown In 10p Tax Revolt

A last ditch bid to scupper New Labpour plans to impose a 10p tax levy on the poor could mark time for struggling Brown, as he faces up to a fresh challenge to his lamentable leadership.

Today's 10p tax rebellion sees an unholy alliance of around 30 decent Labour backbenchers, Tories and Lib Dems, led by veteran campaigner for the poor, Frank Field, out for revenge after being frozen out in his bid to become speaker.

With his bid to take the speaker's chair dashed as punishment for leading last year's 10p tax revolt and Brown's humiliating climbdown, Fearless Field has made no secret of his distaste for a so-called "Labour government" which is hell bent on hitting the poor.

Revenge could be a dish best served in the cold corridors of Westminster. Delivering a parting shot as he stood down as a speaker candidate, Field made it clear: "It just might be that those people who worked so hard to keep me out of the Speaker's chair, when they see the next campaign on the 10p, they might wish they'd put me in it."

Now with the vexed issue of 10p tax compensation raising its head again, Field has issued a rallying call: "This is the last chance for Labour MPs before the General Election to deliver justice to the 10p losers", claiming 1.3m people are losing out even today by £1 a week as a result of the abolition of the 10p tax.

As MPs prepare to vote on the entire government budget, the cross-party bid may not end in government defeat but could well end in a round of fumbled concessions, arm twisting and blackmail which once again casts doubt on Beleaguered Brown's authority.

The so-called Labour 'rebels' are thoroughly fed-up with their fag-end government. With millions of people on low incomes worse off since the change, New Labour is paying lip service in a pretence to protect the poor. As the Orange Party has said many times before - one person's 'rebel' is another person's true Labour MP.

But Bunkered Brown is having none of it, as MPs seek to secure compensation for everyone left worse off by the controversial abolition of the 10p income tax rate.

In a bizarre move for a supposedly 'Labour' government, chancellor Brown's final shot was to scrap the 10p starting rate for the poor in his 2007 budget to fund a 2p cut in the standard rate of tax for the better off.

Field's July revolt forced Brown to suffer a humiliating climbdown and sparked a fresh wave of leadership challenges, as the government was forced to come up with fudged compensation for those who lost out by the decision to scrap the lowest tax band.

Beleaguered Brown is braced for a fresh backbench revolt. A humiliating defeat could block the entire budget, screw up income tax collection and throw all the carefully laid economic plans into chaos.

But the Orange Party isn't holding its breath, despite backbench support and opposition backing. The fag-end government failure will be pulling out all the stops to head off defeat.

All leave has been cancelled as whips muster the troops and twist a few arms to toe the party line. Once again Northern Ireland's DUP will be cajoled to prop up the government. With backs against the wall, no doubt government pork-barrel sweeteners will be passed around to keep the swervers sweetly in line. If all else fails, there's always blackmail and the frighteners of Armageddon.

Even if the threatened revolt fails or manages to wring out some concessions with another heady mix of fudged figures, the spectacle of ministers digging in their heels makes a mockery of the government's bid to paint the Tories as the nasty party of cuts with a New Labour budget which would hit the poor.

Born-again Brown needs today's commons revolt like a hole in the head. But once again the deluded Supreme Leader has made it even worse, with a hotch-potch of measures brought in to try to fix a problem of his own making.

Whatever the outcome, the threat comes just before MPs break up for the summer holds to spend more time with their plotting pals.

Today's events will leave a bitter taste in the mouths of many decent Labour MPs, already fed-up, angry and depressed. And careless talk over Battered Brown's flagging leadership of a fag-end government is bound to erupt once again.

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Taken For A Ride In Quangoland

Taxpayers are being taken for a ride in quangoland. Now the Tories are hoping to sweep some away with another "bonfire of the quangos". But it'll be a tough job lighting the bonfire when the tentacles have spread everywhere.

In quangoland, the unelected and unaccountable face of New Labour touches everyone's lives with a worthless, useless and wasteful quango or three.

Cameron is promising to cut back the powers of unelected quangos to save cash and increase accountability as he tries to get to grips with post-election public spending. But a roaring bonfire is unlikely. More likely a few will be picked off to stoke up the public spending cuts fire.

He would not be the first opposition leader to call for a "bonfire of the quangos". Way back in 1995, bushy-tailed Brown, as shadow chancellor, famously promised a "bonfire of quangos", until that incoming government realised what a useful tool they were to mask public spending, hand out jobs for their pals, pass the buck and squander billions of pounds of taxpayers' cash.

The Tories won't fall into the trap of empty promises but sacking or reducing the numbers of quangos is a small step. Cost and accountability are equally important. Every little helps. But it's not just the size and cost of these nightmares to New Labour. At the heart is the issue of democracy, where the unaccountable are run by the unelected chosen ones.

Who's in charge in quangoland? Elected ministers hide behind unelected, unaccountable quangos knowing full well this arms length approach gets them off the hook. Stuffed with New Labour cronies at the top, ministers usually have an easy ride while the quango rides rough shod over people, passing the buck instead of sorting out problems.

Nowhere is this more shamefully and starkly evident than with schools secretary, Ed Balls, hiding behind faceless bureaucracy over the SATs fiasco and Baby P scandal.

In biology that would be called a symbiotic relationship. In a democracy it is called a disgrace leading to widespread cynicism and anger about the state of our public affairs.

Everyone's been quangoed. Officially there are a staggering 790 quangos in England and Wales squandering £34 billion. But that's just the tip of a masssive quangoberg. Where is the public scrutiny?

Hiding behind the organisation’s strange acronym, any kind of questioning is treated as meddlesome intrusion. People are fed up of being bossed around and patronised by arrogant and pompous jobsworths, not least by people with questionable levels of competence and changing goal posts.

Equally galling is the cosy relationships between the quangos and the big-name consultants and the way money is splashed around on life's little lavish lunches and luxuries.

The solution is simple. Cut out the expensive quangos and delegate responsibility straight back to local authorities, which are democratically accountable and tightly audited, overseen by a now sidelined civil service.

But adding 1,000 jobs to the civil service is not a "good thing". An increase in 1,000 quangocratic jobs goes at worst unnoticed and at best applauded.

Quangoland is a cure all for all the government's ills. Whatever the problem, if in doubt set up another quango. Inevitably the problem gets worse. But with a quango, a minister can show action with yet another body with a strange-sounding name and costly logo.

Keeping tabs on the rise of the quangos and getting to grips with the sheer numbers is no mean feat. A dirty job but someone had to do it as the government continues to stoke the quango fires.

Back in 2005, Dan Lewis from the Economic Research Council made a start with his Essential Guide to British Quangos.

Quango duplication is common. In 2005 Lewis estimated there were 529 "useless" quangos that either did very little or duplicated each other. That's on top of quangos that are working is direct opposition to each other in the crazy world of quangos.

But the main problem with quangos is not that they waste money but that they suppress democracy. The quango has developed into a tool to support the ruling political class where time and again the top jobs with obscene salaries and pension perks are handed out to government cronies knowing they'll toe the line.

At last there are signs of a proper debate on quangos, highlighting those that come up to scratch and those that do not. And if some do get the boot, all the quango-bashing will have been worth it.

Not to be outdone by the Tories, chief secretary to the treasury, Liam Byrne, reckons the government would review quangos to try to "make sure every penny of public money goes to frontline services". At a stroke that totally misses the point.

Quangos are an expensive and cumbersome extra layer of bureaucracy. What is needed is a less centralising and shadowy government that has more faith in local democracy and governance.

The government will do nothing to solve the problem, because at its heart New Labour prefers to rule by cronies, rather than democracy.

However, with Sir Alan Sugar set to climb aboard Brown's sinking ship, ministers could take Siralan’s lead. Time to say to some of the quangocrats, “You’re fired”.

Top graphic: Taxpayers' Alliance

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On The Right Track

A glimmer of hope is on the horizon for the country's costly railways shambles with the government stepping in to take over the troubled East Coast main line franchise. With jobs on the line, discredited rail privatisation in chaos and the country in the grips of economic recession depression, a little bit of nationalisation is a welcome relief.

With paper franchise holder National Express facing losses around £20m in the first half of the year, the East Coast main line has been offered a life-line from an unlikely socialist savour in the shape of transport secretary, Andrew Adonis, one of Blair's 357 political peers.

Casting MPs and parliament aside, unelected and unaccountable Adonis banged the drum for nationalisation, popping up bold as brass on BBC R4 to tell listeners the government is to take it into public ownership for "about a year" because he was not prepared to bail out the struggling rail operator.




Time and again the government has said it won't bail out rail franchises during the recession but rejected nationalisation. That always begged the question: what if a rail franchise came to breaking point?

National Express agreed to pay the government £1.4 billion to run the East Coast main line after it won the franchise from GNER. All part of a very dodgy banking deal, laid bare by the BBC's Robert Peston.

Since then cuts have been made in shareholder dividend and pay-outs, while 750 jobs have been lost.

Only recently the firm started to mug passengers with a new profiteering con to charge 'customers' £5 to reserve a seat, on top of the already astronomical fares.

National Express, Virgin Trains and their fellow train operating monopoly conspirators have plumbed the depths in their quest to wring every last penny from rail travellers.

But the government dismissed rail nationalisation, harking back to the bad old days of BR and a "joke" railway which became a laughing stock.

Tell that to passengers crammed for hours on a train that reeks of urinals, forced on to replacement buses during a never ending round of maintenance, with meaningless reliability targets using every trick in the book to fiddle the figures.

Of course the railways have to be "modernised" since BR was scrapped. But that shouldn't mean immoral reductions in quality and reliability in return for sky-high fares and a whopping taxpayer subsidy.

So why stop at the East Coast main line? Beardie Branson is making a fat personal profit from his unique guarantee against competition on the West Coast main line. Why should one railway be propped up by taxpayers and another allowed to milk passengers for profit and Beardie live in the lap of luxury?

The Orange Party has long been a supporter of public ownership for strategic public services. Setting up not-for-profit companies can work for the railways. As long as a government which couldn't run a whelk stall isn't in the driving cab.

A long-term solution to the chaos of discredited rail privatisation is staring the government in the face, not least for the future of the country's railways and lucrative franchises.

Time and again rail nationalisation comes up as an issue which would get public support. The Post Office and Royal Mail too could be transformed into not-for-profit companies. Investing in the future with public ownership would lift the spirits of economic recession depression.

Top picture: The Flying Scotsman BR publicity poster, 1962

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It's Still All In Dodgy ID Database

ID cards have bitten the dust in a whisper of lies, as the government clears the decks of controversy on the sinking ship. But only the compulsory plastic goes on the scrap heap. The sinister database, which lies at its heart, is sneaking in through the backdoor.

Determined the poisoned chalice of the home office won't be his graveyard, new home secretary, Alan Johnson, slipped in the scrapping of the compulsory ID card almost as an afterthought.

At a stroke, the government's hugely expensive and highly controversial scheme now joins the doomed Royal Mail sell-off and Trident left in limbo, as the fag-end government throws policies on the back burner in the run up to the election to take off the heat.

A welcome retreat but only half a U-turn here for the man who would be leader of Mandy's Party. The sinister database behind the scheme is left unscathed with moves to use passports to push in the scheme through the backdoor.

Johnson has left himself wide open to attack from Tories, LibDems and civil liberties groups with the most costly and controversial part of the scheme, the national identity database, alive and kicking civil liberties where it hurts most.

The big issue with ID cards was never about the cards themselves, it was the issue of compulsion and the massive database lurking in the background snooping around.

A database which has become a disturbing feature of the Big Brother state and the unrelenting quest for control over the individual.

Plans to make the cards compulsory have been dropped. Plans to foist the cards on airside workers and some pilots have been scrapped in the face of threatened industrial action.

The lame excuse that the cards would be a powerful weapon in the fight against terrorism? Forget it - that was a "mistake" anyway, blurted out a beaming Johnson.

But it's business as usual for the £5 billion project. Now entirely voluntary and a complete waste of taxpayers cash.

The Tories say they will kill off the cards and delete the database.

For all Johnson's politicking trying to win over support, he’s offered nothing to grass roots members who hate his guts as a Blair prop.

But what he has offered on a plate is a big stick for the Tories to beat the boys from the New Labour brand and renewed vigour for campaigners fighting for an end to the disgrace of the database.

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'Shrinking' Violet In Gordon's Rosy Garden

Government spin on the end of the slump has been slapped around the chops with a wet Wall Street weekly, as financial wire-service Bloomberg spells out the horrific state of the economy for all the world to see. For the first time in half a century UK output shrank by a scary 2.4%, according to official figures. Everything in Gordon's garden may be coming up roses but in the real world it stinks.

Today's grim figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) paints an horrific picture of Gordon's garden. The decline in output was more severe than earlier estimates of a 1.9% fall and worse than the Brown sauce from the spinning ship, with construction and manufacturing taking the big hit.

As Bloomberg points out, the quarterly drop was the biggest since the year Michael Jackson was born.

And the biggest since Tory prime minister Harold Macmillan rallied the Party to the call: “most of our people have never had it so good.”

And that was at a time when the post-war economy was in and out of recession, ending in a 2.6 percent slump in the second quarter of 1958.

Translated into English and the real world that means more jobs are on the line. Another nail in the coffin of crap and more bad news for consumers ahead. With no real cash in the kitty there's not a cat in hell's chance of a real kick-start. The country's triple-A credit rating looks decidedly dodgy.

There are choices out there for a rocky road of recovery. Those tough choices should be made now. The country cannot afford to wait around in New Labour la-la land until after an election. The public can take a Tory line, a LibDem line or the government's fishy line.

Today's stark figures come hard on the heels of the other grim warning from leading economic think tank, OECD, that the country is in a miserable mess. With the biggest budget deficit in the world, a severe recession to come and dire times ahead, the UK is predicted to sink further into the red than any other major developed country next year.

And still in the land of grim, Bank of England boss, Mervyn King, called for tough action to tackle the "truly extraordinary" deficit. Firing off a broadside, useless Darling was urged to get a grip on his huge deficit and the debt-ridden borrowing binge.

All in stark contrast to bouncy Brown and deluded Darling’s heady optimism. Only last year the Laurel and Hardy pair told the public the economy would be on its uppers by this July. But that was a political recovery not a real one. Trying to hide the fine mess they'd got the country into, a gullible public was expected to fall for it hook, line and stinker.

Buried in the report is the revelation that the economic recession depression began much earlier.

The ONS now says the recession began during the second quarter of 2008 rather than during July to September. So the recession has been running for a whole year.

So why did we have to wait until January before it was officially confirmed? Why did the government and Brown's BBC string the public along for so long with a cute little downturn? Why was it only at the stroke of midnight the beloved 'downturn' turned into a pumpkin and the nightmare of recession depression?

Sprinkle financial fairy dust and ministers didn't have to get off their backsides and do something about it. They could play politics, dupe the public, burying their heads in the sand, live in cloud cuckoo land, pretend it hasn't happened and pray it will blow away.

A bit of planning not petty politics wouldn't have gone amiss. The patient is poorly, cry some politicians and dry-eyed economists. But it's worse than that, he's dead Jim.

A dose of mother's ruin is all that's on offer. Borrow billions and leave a mountain of debt.

Will this discredited government of lies and deceit ever wake up and realise it's not just the ONS, the OECD, the governor of the Bank of England, Saint Vince, uncle Tom Cobley and all who can see see through the smoke and mirrors accounting and the heady mix of lies, deceit and dishonesty over the economy?

Probably not, so it's back to the bad old ways trying to fool some of the people some of the time until bunkered Brown has the guts to call an election.

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Mandy Manifesto With Dollop Of Brown Sauce

Another day and another relaunch from the crazy world of Gordon Brown and the boys from the New Labour Brand. The public does not want another born again Brown relaunch, it wants a general election. Until that happens, all the political posturing is pointless. Hollow promises and hidden cuts are like water off a duck's back.

The joke dish of the day is the mouth-watering document 'Building Britain's Future' - or 'Building Brown's Future' which has the paw prints of Mandy, aka PM, all over it. A pie-in-the-sky election manifesto served up with a dollop of Brown sauce.

Setting the country on yesterday's road to a new tomorrow, the blueprint for a sharp exit sees the struggling Supreme Leader trying to find a few crumbs of comfort for his legacy and shore up his position ahead of what could be September's leaving party.

But Zombie Brown and the Prince of Darkness can churn out all the eye-catching initiatives they want and dress them up in faded, jaded pink ribbon jargon. In the end it's a coda from the Living Dead.

As the Orange Party has pointed out so many times, the problem for Brown is that he's stuck in the past and the problem for the Labour Party is that they're stuck with him.

So bleary-eyed voters are sent to sleep with another big relaunch and another dishonest damp squib. Today's initiatives tell more about years of failed policies than the shock and awe of an election manifesto to set the country alight.

Trying to breath some life into a corpse, it's a sad admission of 12 years of failure in key public policy areas of health, housing and education and an indictment of a discredited target culture at the root of many of the ills.

Stand by for some shockers. After over a decade in power, the government is now promising a 14 day turnaround to see a cancer specialist which should happen anyway to nip it in the bud. After years of suffering an education fiasco, parents will now get help for kids over basic numeracy and literacy skills which should be a basic cornerstone of any education policy.

And local residents are promised housing priority in a 'British homes for British residents' ploy to try to win over core voters coupled with building more 'social' homes, when everyone regardless of citizenship or residency should be entitled to a roof over their head.

The measures are so basic the public can be forgiven for thinking they should be happening anyway. And just how will the government pay for it all?

Add to that silly mix a stark admission that years of a target-based culture has been a dismal failure and at best this is a damn disgrace.

After years of fannying around, the NHS mainstay of centrally-imposed targets is being ditched. A sure sign the target culture which has been defended so robustly and suffocated the country for years was just a deceitful device used as a ministerial cop-out.

Just what has the government been doing with all the cash for all these years?

The public can see through the sham. The country is being saddled with a mountain of debt for generations to come. Something has got to give. Come clean and tell it straight and voters will be eternally grateful.

Instead it's a game of cat and mouse and more smoke and mirrors accounting from a fag-end government which can't bring itself to own up to its past incompetence and monumental mistakes.

And to cap it all Mandelson has finally admitted there'll be no Whitehall comprehensive spending review this side of the election so no one knows what the hell they're doing, voters will be kept in the dark over spending costs and Brown can pile on the lies. What a mess. All dubbed by Cameron as "a relaunch without a spending tag".

Cameron is chipping away at the lies, deceit and dishonesty and every blow is a further nail in the coffin for beleaguered Brown. The latest wheeze revolves around the revolving door of spending money earmarked for the future that the country won't have anyway. Bring it forward, bring it on and hey presto an 'investment' miracle.

Years of power have bred a culture of smug arrogance.

If only the government would own up to the economic mess and pile of debt. Then there would be a stark choice over what to cut and what to keep and more importantly who do you trust most to keep their word.

Those choices depend on a political point of view and make for a healthy political debate which voters would buy into. They pays their money and makes their choice. if only they were given the choice and the chance.

In the dying weeks and months of the government, nothing today will see the light of day before that election. There are no Big Issues like Trident or the vexed Royal Mail sell-off plan. Scaredy-pants. It should be treated with the contempt it deserves - just election propaganda bullshit, selling the electorate short.

The public deserves better. The empty posturing will only end when voters are finally allowed to have their say.

General election dividing lines are being formed. That will probably boil down to who voters trust rather than old tribal loyalties. Honesty versus lies, trust versus deceit. Today a heady mix of fudge, fakery and failure has been thrown into the mix.

Mid picture: Gerald Scarfe, Sunday Times

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