Osborne To Outlaw Keynesianism.

Britain's leading economic ignoramus and the Tory party's idea of a genius has set out his plan to outlaw Keynesianism during his Mansion House speech. For those of you who don't understand what Keynesianism actually is it was the method by which the Depression of the 1930's was ended and works because it stimulates a floundering economy by putting money into the hands of those who need it the most - the poor. This is in contrast to the preferred Tory method of cutting taxes for the very rich who then proceed to hoard their money hoping that things will get better all on their own. It was this Tory method, now called "austerity", that prolonged the Depression of the 1930's for the entire decade and destroyed the lives of millions to benefit a tiny minority of the rich and greedy. Now George Osborne wants to pass this economic insanity into law to benefit himself and his rich mates and to ensure that, in any future economic downturn, it will be the poor who will pay for it. The rich, during times of boom, will get richer and, when they screw it all as their natural propensity for criminality is given free rein, it will be the poor who will be forced to pick up the tab. As such it is nothing more than the usual "heads we win, tails you lose" ideology that the Tory party favours. That they will get away with it reflects two unfortunate political realities. First, there is no real democracy in a Britain where 63% of voters did not vote for this sorry excuse for a government and, second, because the British people will completely fail to understand any of the issues involved. Osborne is also eagerly awaiting the response from the Labour party to his carefully laid trap. If Labour agrees with this idiocy Osborne will have completely neutered the opposition, forcing them to accept what will amount to a new economic orthodoxy. If they don't agree he will gleefully paint them as "economically irresponsible" and, once again, saddle us all with his "heads we win, tails you lose" confidence trick. Having lost our soul to those who have turned the war against poverty into a war against the poor, we are now being invited to lose our wits.

Football, Corruption, The Couch Potato And Business.

Football is essentially a mindless pastime with adults playing a children's game for vast amounts of money watched by other adults with nothing better to do. Because of this, in our upside-down topsy-turvy world, it has grown into an industry worth billions. Players, most of whom find it difficult to articulate a meaningful sentence, are paid more than brain surgeons to bounce a ball from one end of a football pitch to the other. Fans will pay huge amounts of their income to watch this inane spectacle and will travel the world insulting local populations as they go while often remaining utterly ignorant of the local culture. With this amount of boneheaded, knuckle-dragging ignorance amongst football fans it is hardly surprising that corruption is a way of life to those organising it all. After sixteen years in charge with absolutely zero progress being made in stamping out graft, bribery and corruption, Sepp Blatter has yet again been re-elected as the president of FIFA. A bunch of crooks have put back in charge the man who has allowed their criminality to go unchecked. Not really so surprising given the level of corruption and racketeering in the rest of the world's business community from international banking to local market stalls selling fashion "knock-offs". Andy Burnham, in his campaign to win the leadership of the Labour party, has described businessmen as "heroes". This would be true if said businessmen were the entrepreneurs of yesteryear, men risking their own capital in pursuit of a dream of excellence. Unfortunately business today seems to consist all too often of slick confidence tricks, double-dealing and misdirection at the expense of a public too busy watching football to realise what's going on around them. The so-called "beautiful game" is neither beautiful nor a game, it is an ugly multi-billion pound business and a poster child for the corruption inherent in the neoliberal economic system.

"I'm All Right Jack" Britain.

George Osborne will reveal his smash and grab raid on the poorest members of our society on July 8th. Only 37% of Britain's voted for this, though another 14% voted for UKIP who are probably even worse. Essentially then 51% of the British electorate have revealed themselves to be as selfish and stupid as the Tories wished them to be. It would be easy to say that the right-wing press that infests Britain stampeded a gullible and ill-educated electorate into voting the wrong way. The problem with this analysis is that the shameful press we have in Britain wouldn't exist if it wasn't supported by enough people to make it highly profitable. It could be argued that it was all Ed Miliband's fault for being "too left-wing." This too is utter nonsense since, if the British electorate were not so selfish, they would have given him a fair hearing and refused to be swayed by a bunch of rich people pleading for permission to make themselves even richer at some one else's expense. Some have suggested that what swayed the electorate was fear. Fear of what? The main bone of contention seems to have been the economy and a non-existent recovery suddenly evaporating over night. The fact that the Tories were simply offering tax cuts for themselves and austerity for the rest of us hardly made a dent in their vacuous arguments. If the electorate did vote out of fear then, on July 8th, they will know what fear really is. This budget will be designed purely to restore and extend the privileges of a tiny wealthy minority with a few crumbs for the middle classes to grease the wheels and an assault on the poor, the sick, the disabled and under-privileged unprecedented in modern times. The Tories plan to put the final nail in the coffin of the post-war consensus that our fathers and grandfathers spilt blood to establish. We should be ashamed of ourselves but I fear that far too many of us are gloating instead. You asked for this so enjoy, but don't bleat while the NHS is stolen from under you, your children become the first generation to be poorer than the last and you suddenly find yourself landed with huge bills as private companies charge outrageous premiums for services that used to cost very little.

So, Why Did Labour Lose The Election?

Ed Miliband is a decent human being who put forward a simple message - we deserve better than eternal austerity and should be entitled to a fair shake of the stick. David Cameron's message could not be more different - we deserve nothing better than eternal austerity because it was the British welfare state that crashed the world economy and anyone who can't afford a £1 million mansion cannot be anything other than a scrounger on benefits. One was the politics of hope, the other the politics of despair. The problem for Ed Miliband was that he struggled to get his message across. This is hardly surprising given the rabidly right-wing press in Britain, but there is a deeper underlying problem that Labour just could not overcome - an ill-educated and largely unintelligent electorate that is simply unable to grasp even simple facts. They have little understanding of economic history and cannot fathom the deep mystery of how a hugely destructive world war with its massive government spending could drag the world out of recession. By 1945 it was obvious to even the dimmest voter that Keynesian economics with its deficit spending actually works. By 1979, when Margaret Thatcher managed to wipe the collective memory, this had been forgotten and was replaced with simplistic economic theories that were apparently easy to understand even though they were utter mumbo-jumbo. Throughout the long dark years of the 1980's and 90's Labour spent a great deal of fruitless energy trying to re-educate the British electorate to no avail. They learned the truth contained in the old maxim; "Never try and teach a pig how to sing. You waste your time and you annoy the pig." Ed Miliband's mistake was the most basic of all - he tried to teach the pig how to sing. He had to try I suppose but, to be honest, the British electorate (or at least 37% of them) now have the government they deserve. The rest of us too now have the government we deserve. We had to chance to change the voting system for one that was fairer but allowed Rupert Murdoch and other right-wing snake-oil salesmen to talk us out of it. The News in Shorts has a message for all those who voted Tory - "Oink, oink." - its about the only thing you understand.

It's Official - Britain Is No Longer Civilized.

David Cameron has won the general election with a majority of 12. The man who gave us an economic recovery indistinguishable from the recession, who has hounded the weak, the disadvantaged and the disabled, the man who has rewarded the undeserving rich with yet more riches, the man who has all but destroyed the NHS, the man who imposed the bedroom tax and encouraged yet further growth in the number of slum landlords, the man who told us that he would put an end to uncontrolled immigration and then failed to do so, has won the election and seen off all his political rivals. How? Primarily this seemingly bizarre result was the work of a right-wing press that mounted an effective propaganda campaign against the electorates own best interests at the behest of an insane old man who hates Britain - Rupert Murdoch. Second, David Cameron did a creditable impression of the invisible man and dodged all efforts to force him into an open debate so that we could see the vacuous nature and utter barrenness of his political beliefs. The campaign that the Tories mounted was the most negative in modern electoral history, relived only at the last minute with a series of "sweeteners" and promises that Cameron has absolutely no intention of honouring. How else could he possibly sell the idea of unending austerity - a long dark tunnel of despair for the majority with a light at its end promising only greater riches for an already pampered minority? The real villain, of course, is the British "first past the post" system which has allowed 37% of the voting population to impose a Tory government on the the majority of 63% who didn't vote for them at all. Whatever the reason for this disaster one thing is clear, Britain will now abandon all pretence that it is a civilized nation while the Tories mount an unremitting and vicious attack on the poor, sick and weak on behalf of the rich, greedy and selfish.

Why Labour Cannot Refute The Austerity Argument.

There are few economists in the world who do not recognise that austerity as an economic principle is utter nonsense. Ever since the 1930's it has been known - known that is and not simply believed - that the only way out of recession is to stimulate the economy by deficit spending. The Tories understand this like everyone else but continue to wield the axe because they would rather the poor paid for the present recession, caused by criminal bankers, rather than themselves and their rich mates. And, it must be said, it has worked to a certain extent - the rich have grown richer while the poor have grown poorer and those in the middle have all but stood still. So why has Labour not pointed this out and advocated an end to austerity entirely? The problem is that in order to refute austerity some sophisticated arguments are needed and these immediately run into the simplistic argument that the Tories have deployed - that the British economy is just like a household budget. The British electorate, largely unintelligent, ill-educated and led around by the nose by a right-wing press, think they understand this argument and lack the attention span necessary to hear about the alternative. Labour, recognising this but unable to tell the electorate that they are thick, have no choice therefore but to pay lip-service to this Tory cliche in order to prove their economic credentials. Labour, in effect, have ducked the argument on the very sensible grounds that they cannot win. If they argue for an end to austerity they will appear dull and uninteresting and be open to the accusation that they are "out of touch". The Tories, meanwhile, will trot out the "just like a household budget" argument knowing full well that this is simply short-hand for "you're too thick to understand". Paul Krugman, the American economist, has described the Tory obsession with austerity as a "delusion" but the truth is that it is a confidence trick perpetrated by the greedy, selfish and dishonest and accepted by an electorate too dumb to walk and chew gum at the same time.

So Why Won't Dave Debate?

It's the burning political question of the day - why is David Cameron so afraid of a public televised debate? First and foremost, of course, is his record in government. How can Cameron answer when asked "Why are you allowing Iain Duncan Smith to kill British citizens for money simply because they are disabled?" The closest anyone has come to this is when Jeremy Paxman asked the PM about foodbanks. What was Cameron's answer? Evasion. Then there is the embarrassment of Grant Shapps. Why is the Tory election campaign being led by a confidence trickster who trades under the assumed name of Mike Green and then lies about it? Meanwhile the Tory campaign is firmly mired in the dirt with the spectacle of Afzal Armin trying to do a secret deal with the English Defence League to steal the election in Dudley and Ed Miliband being physically threatened by Tory activists in Rotherhithe. Faced with such questions that touch upon both his integrity and honesty it is hardly surprising that Cameron would shy away from a direct debate with the leader of the Labour party. Instead he has resorted to dirty tricks, name calling and false promises. The whole debate-ducking debacle was nothing more than a dirty trick in itself, designed the shield Cameron from direct questioning about his shameful record as PM. As an alternative Cameron offers empty accusations such as describing the Labour party as "hypocritical holier-than-thou, hopeless, sneering socialists”. What is this if not sneering? The Tories told us that they would not raise VAT and then promptly did it. They promised no "top-down reorganization" of the NHS and then did exactly that. What is that if not hypocrisy? And what is more holier-than-thou than pointing at the working poor, the unemployed, the sick and the disabled and telling them that they are nothing more than an expensive liability? As for being hopeless simply look at the state of the British economy which, despite Tory claims, is now geared to deliver only for the rich. The truth is that David Cameron is trying to hide from the electorate. A shifty, double-dealing conman with no possible way to defend his disgraceful premiership is hiding from you and me, hoping against hope that we won't notice his cowardice.

Inside The Tory "Mind".

Every now and then a Tory MP manages to avoid his party whip and tells the media what he really thinks. This week David Tredinnick, Tory MP for Bosworth in Leicestershire, did just that and revealed, as if we didn't know already, that the Tory party has just as many dingbats, nutters and morons in its ranks as UKIP. While the BBC News website is carrying a story that homeopathy has finally been shown to be the ridiculous idiocy it always was, Mr Tredinnick has been championing it on the basis that "Ninety per cent of pregnant French women use homeopathy". So its science nil and 90% of ignorant uninformed pregnant French women one! Case closed. Not content with this stunning revelation Mr Tredinnick then went on the outline why astrology - that's right, astrology - could solve many of the problems facing the NHS. "Astrology," he tells us confidently, "is a useful diagnostic tool enabling us to see strengths and weaknesses via the birth chart." To clinch his argument he also informed us that "Hippocrates once said, 'A physician without a knowledge of astrology has no right to call himself a physician.' Unfortunately Hippocrates (c. 460 – c. 370 BC) also believed that "the body contains within itself the power to re-balance the four humours and heal itself." In other words patients, no matter what their infirmity, should be immobilized and left to get on with it. None of this would be of much import of course - after all irrational thought processes are to be expected in a political party that believes that taxing rich people returns less revenue and in times of famine rich people should be fed bigger meals - but it just so happens that Mr.Tredinnick is also the chairman of the All-Party Group for Integrated Healthcare. This, as I'm sure you'll agree, is a bit like making Scarlet O'Hara a relationship councilor. Still when you have a government with Iain Duncan Smith in charge of the DWP, Michael Gove in charge of Education, Jeremy Hunt in charge of the NHS, George Osborne in charge of the economy and Boris Johnson as mayor of London, its probably not that unthinkable after all.

Devious Dave Dodges Debate.

David Cameron, according to Jacob Rees-Mogg speaking on Channel Four News, is avoiding a televised debate during the forthcoming election campaign because the media is full of "left-wing people". This might come as a shock to the Tory party but, after five years of their right-wing lunacy, so is the rest of the country. Most of us are used to the Tories avoiding debate of any kind and simply pursuing their insane slash-and-burn policies at the expense of everyone else, but it seems that the media and the other political parties are bemused by Cameron's complete refusal to engage in democratic debate. There are two very good reasons why they shouldn't be. First and foremost is that David Cameron, like all Tories, doesn't like democracy too much and would prefer to return to the good old 19th Century system of only allowing rich people to vote. Second, and far more important, is Cameron's reluctance to defend his record in government. Pretending that the country is recovering economically, that unemployment is down and that wages are now beginning to grow will only get you so far it seems - especially when none of these things are actually true. The reality - the explosion in the need for food banks, the shame of growing homelessness, an entire wasted generation (yet again), the cancer of zero-hour contract low-paid work, fewer policemen on the beat, fewer doctors and nurses, the lack of a credible defence, rising immigration, tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for the poor, the selling of the country's assets to various organised crime syndicates, and the all too evident greed and selfishness of the Tory party - is difficult, if not impossible, to defend. Cameron's solution, it would seem, is not to bother while, at the same time, dangling carrots in front of the electorate that he has absolutely no intention of honouring after the election. To say, as much of the press and all of the opposing political parties are doing, that Cameron is "chicken" misses the point entirely. Cameron is no more "chicken" than any other confidence trickster, shyster or snake-oil salesman. Avoiding any meaningful debate about his disastrous premiership is simply part of his make up and stems from his insufferable upper-class arrogance and complete disconnect with the rest of us lesser mortals. The fact that the Tories have to wheel out the aristocratic (in his mind at least) Jacob Rees-Mogg of all people to defend themselves tells us all we need to know about the public school "Boys Own" London club that the Tory party have always wanted to be. The Tories are and always have been a complete disaster for this country. Masquerading as the friend of business they have always sought to undermine commerce by attacking the very basis of its success - demand. The Tories are no more interested in the capitalist system than was William the Conqueror, Ghengis Khan or Vlad the Impaler. Their vision is for a kind of updated 21st century feudalism in which the rich, greedy and selfish do as they please and the rest of us peasants gratefully tug at our forelocks.

Cameron: Why Children Should Be Taught To Be Greedy And Selfish.

David Cameron has been outlining his thoughts about the proper way to bring up children to the Institute of Directors Magazine. Children, he told the magazine, should be taught "how to turn a profit" in order to combat the evil "job killing regulations" coming out of the European Community. "The arts and science are as nothing when compared to making money," Cameron told our reporter when we quizzed him about his interview. "We must instill in our children a love of money above all else and rid them of any fanciful ideas that they might become astronauts, pop stars, painters, sculptors, novelists, scientists or, God forbid, charity workers. Its time we turned our children's eyes away from the stars and back to the gutter where I and my rich mates live. As for protecting the rights of ordinary working people, or the peasants as I like to call them, why bother? Anyone whose interests are not solely concerned with making money doesn't deserve any protection. Bankers, on the other hand, need all the protection we can give them whether its actually legal or not. Where would we all be if bankers had to answer for their criminal activity? The Tory party wouldn't exist for a start and that, as I'm sure you'll agree, would be a tragedy. Greed and selfishness are the core values we need to instill in children before they even start thinking about such rubbish as the meaning of life, what constitutes good and evil and what the future might hold. Once greed and selfishness have taken hold such questions become irrelevant. What is the meaning of life? Making a profit, obviously. What is good and evil? Good is being richer than your neighbour and evil is missing an opportunity to turn a decent profit out of someone else's misery. What does the future hold? More and more money - what else? The real strength of Tory philosophy is its "Can do - if I can get away with it" attitude and in its complete disregard for thinking instead of simply grabbing what you can. As Descartes once said; "I'm greedy, selfish and don't think too much, therefore I am."