Ed Balls Promises The Austerity Undelivered By The Tories.

The Tory MP for Clacton, Douglas Carswell, tells us that there is no austerity and, of course he's right inasmuch as there is no austerity for him and his rich Tory pals. He's also right to point out that David Cameron and George Osborne, who have managed to increase the deficit by 20%, are depressingly stupid and incompetent. He proposes, therefore, to replace a stupid policy with the insane one favoured by wealthy parasites such as Francis Maude and Lord Ashcroft. Pauperise the plebs and insulate the useless rich and everything will automatically and miraculously get better. Ed Balls, who recognises the Tory policy for the self-defeating lifeboat mentality that it is, will have none of that. Rather, he tells us, what we need is real austerity not the ersatz variety that the Tories love so much. So, when Labour wins the next election, he will conduct a root and branch review of public spending and make sure that every penny is spent wisely. Oh goody! So does that means that Trident won't be replaced by an even more deadly and expensive weapon system, that rich will people will pay taxes, that bankers will pay for their own mistakes, that MP's will have to buy their own crisps, chocolate bars and £2 million mansions, that the Royal Family will have to rely on their own money and that India won't be receiving millions in aid to support their space programme? I don't know about you, but I'm not holding my breath.

The Turkeys Vote For Christmas

It is not often that you get to see an entire nation committ collective suicide but that is the effective result of the Greek elections. After a sustained attack by the banks who want the money they recklessly gambled away back and by European leaders more interested in their own careers than the welfare of their people, the Greeks cannot bring themselves to be rid of the Euro. They have clung to it like a child clings to its mother's skirts. They have been blackmailed, lied to and bullied unmercifully and, as Antonus Samaras said, "have decided to stay anchored to the Euro." Why anyone drowning would refuse to let go of an anchor is beyond understanding, but any real alternative was carefully hidden from sight. And there is an alternative as Iceland has amply demonstrated. It is possible to say "no" to the banks, arrest their directors and even impeach the politicians who have conspired with them to line their own pockets at everyone else's expense. After two years of dire predictions as to what would happen to Iceland if they didn't do as they were told, they have cast off the dead hand of the banks who are now queuing up to knock on that country's door and begging to be allowed to do business there once again. The world has been through 30 years of sheer economic insanity and, when the wheels came off, all our politicians could do was insist on more of the same. And, like sheep, most people have gone along with it. Entire countries have voted for austerity, inequality and poverty, frightened by two-faced politicians intent on protecting their own wealth and privileges. Some like France, however, have not. The stage is now set for a titanic struggle between the stupid and selfish on one hand and those with a better vision on the other. What happens next is up to us.

Where Has All The Money Gone?

"I'm afraid there's no money left," Liam Byrne told his successor at the Treasury as he left government. But what does "there's no money left" actually mean? Did it all disappear in a puff of smoke? Did it all leave for a holiday in the sun? No, it had all gone to the banks because they'd lost theirs. So what happened to it next? It was paid to shareholders and executives to reward their complete and utter failure. So where did this money to pay the banks for their incompetence come from? From you and me, from the ordinary taxpayer. In other words it was transferred from ordinary people to bankers who were utterly useless at their jobs in order to maintain their lavish lifestyles. Where is it now? Still with the banks who are hoarding it to protect themselves against the recession they caused in the first place. So why austerity? Because our governments are too incompetent themselves to get it back from the banks and because they really do not want to tax rich people to replace the loses. So, having made ordinary tax payers save the banks, they are now withdrawing support and services from the poorest in our society to make up the shortfall. The upshot of all this is that governements across world have been busily transferring money from the poor to the rich under the rubricks that "there is no alternative" and "we're all in this together." Enter democracy stage left. Ordinary people, unconvinced by the facile argument "there's no alternative," decided that they didn't want to give rich people all their money to fix a system that was broken beyond repair. So, in places like Italy and Greece, democracy was suspended and bankers were placed in charge as an "interim administration." In other words the banks were allowed to repossess entire countries. Of course there was an alternative to all this. The banks, who have spent the last 30 years lecturing us on the benefits of untrammeled capitalism, could have been allowed to fail like any other business that makes a serious mistake. But that would have meant that a lot of rich people would have lost their money as administrators called in all the debts. House prices would have collapsed, trade would have evaporated and most of us would now be out of work. Given then that the banking system had to be saved to avoid economic meltdown, what alternatives were open to governments other than pauperising the already poor? They could have fully nationalised the banks to take them out of the hands of reckless banking executives. As for austerity, they could have aimed that at the people who have gained more than anyone else out of the madness of the last 30 years - the rich. That governments chose not to do so nails the lies that "there is no alternative" and "we're all in this together." We, the people, have no money because they, the greedy and stupid, have stolen it all.