Discovering The Real World.

Those who pretend to run our country and our economy have been talking about their amazement at discovering the real world this week. Mark Carney, the head of the Bank of England, started it all by coming to the incredible conclusion that it might be a good idea if criminal bankers are punished instead of rewarded. "It suddenly occurred to me that bankers are just like ordinary criminals," Mr.Carney told our reporter, "and, like ordinary criminals, will stop being criminals if they are punished for their crimes instead of being handed billions of pounds of taxpayers money to support their film star lifestyles. A radical thought, I know, but perhaps worth considering." Such is the power of radical thought that David Cameron paused for a moment in his headlong rush to punish poor people for the crimes of wealthy bankers and thought about the impact of the world economy on the domestic economy. "There are red lights flashing on the dashboard of the world economy," he warned Parliament. "Although the last Labour government claimed that the recent recession was caused by the banking sector committing collective suicide I had no idea that economic conditions in the rest of the world could really have an impact here in Britain. Of course it was still all Labour's fault, but I've now realised that my own complete and utter economic failure can be blamed on some one else. Phew, what a relief! Luckily for me the answer to another recession caused by a mindless programme of austerity is yet more mindless austerity." Meanwhile, from the world of entertainment, Myleene Klass has been talking about her sudden realisation that being taxed out of your home might be a bad thing. "I've heard about poor people moaning that they have been forced out of their homes by the bedroom tax but, until now, I thought it was just a bunch of benefit scroungers whinging. The mansion tax, however, has made me realise that rich people like me might have to pay taxes as well and force us out of our humble £2 million hovels. This is outrageous since rich people are far more important than poor scum." Still, as the police have found out this week, looking at the real world is not always a good thing especially when it comes to counting recorded crime. As a police spokesman told our reporter; "The problem with counting all crime is that it puts the crime rate up and brings into question our effectiveness as a police force. In order to combat the rising tide of crime while enhancing our reputation it has become increasingly necessary to ignore most of it."

Mark Carney Calls Time On Osborne's "Recovery".

Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, has issued a warning to George Osborne over his so-called recovery. The booming house market poses the "biggest risk" to Britain's economy, he told Sky News, while the fundamental problem remains that not enough houses are being built. This undermines the central, indeed the only, plank in Osborne's fake economic recovery. Essentially there is no recovery with GDP stagnant apart from the increase in the notional value of housing which feeds into the figures. The wealthy might be smug as they borrow against the "value" of their houses and create a slight boom in luxury goods, but the vast majority have found that their income, based upon real work and not a largely fictional increase in the value of their assets, has shrunk. This, in turn, is denting demand in the real economy and putting the brakes on production, threatening the long-term interests of the nation and undermining any prospect for a real recovery. The Tories claim that unemployment is falling as their "recovery" takes hold but the truth is that they have massaged the figures, failing to count those they have forced off benefits or forced to take up low-paid, zero-hour contract work. They remain unconcerned about such things, concentrating instead on the privatisation of national assets so they can line the pockets of their rich mates and take the backhanders that they call "donations" but are, in reality, bribes. All this corruption is taking place against the background of a sustained and deliberate assault on the poor, sick and unemployed unprecedented in British history and yet the Tories retain the support of nearly one third of the electorate. Why? As John Stuart Mill, the great 19th century liberal philosopher, once observed; "Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."

Carney Pricks Cameron's Bubble.

Things were looking good for Cameron and the bunch of conmen he calls a government this week. Their campaign to deny benefits to those out of work was magically translated into "falling unemployment figures", ignoring the cuts in benefits to those in work was magically translated into "rising living standards" and the re-inflated property bubble was translated into an "economic recovery." Meanwhile Iain Duncan Smith was trying to kid us that his vicious attack on the most vulnerable in our society was the modern equivalent of William Wilberforce's campaign against slavery while wittering on about the Tory party's "historic mission." The IMF obliged the Tories by claiming that Britain's growth this year would be the best in Europe, conveniently ignoring our ballooning national debt and the fact that most of this "growth" would be in the purely notional value of houses in London. The truth, studiously ignored by the media, was left to Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, who quietly backtracked on his promise to raise interest rates if unemployment falls below 7%. He knows perfectly well that the government has been massaging the unemployment figures and is not prepared to raise interest rates on the basis of pure fiction. Not wishing to underline this he claimed, instead, that his decision would be based on the strength of the "recovery", which, without putting too fine a point on it, was both weak and also largely fictional. The truth is that Mark Carney does not dare to raise interest rates since that would immediately deflate the property bubble and bring the non-existent nature of Osborne's "recovery" crashing to the ground. The Governor and the Chancellor are now locked into a game of denying reality and hoping against hope that somehow their fantasy views of the economy will magically come true. This is voodoo economics at its most outrageous and its most forlorn.