Monday, June 15, 2009

The UK Government is beyond Contemptible

An Article by: Mark Jago - Published with his permission.
The Opinions Expressed are those of the Author.

It comes as a relief to hear that the rabble that call themselves politicians will be shortly shuffling off to their respective constancies for a long undeserved break from Parliament through to October.

It seems to me too much of a coincidence that the public should be subjected to a sordid little expenses scandal when there are other more critical issues that the Government should be held accountable for.

It's been long understood that the tabloid press is little more than a mouth piece used by politicians to communicate their positions and to influence public sentiment. There is an incestuous relationship between the press and their political insider informants. Over the last few days politicians have been using the press to communicate to each other their positions following the Labour Cabinet shake up.

It's my view that the Parliament expense scandal was deliberately encouraged as a relief valve in order to channel public attention and displeasure that has been building up over the past few months. The instigator and benefactor of this sordid little exposé is obvious. Gordon Brown, who now has all those people that would be his successor in Cabinet with him, where he can keep them busy and have them compete for his favour's as a possible successor. The hapless less intelligent politicians caught up in the coop that "really never was" having become collateral damage road kill. Convenient scapegoats that can be used to palm off past government failures onto, not many voters are going bother with semantics over these losers.

Mary Riddell's June 08th Telegraph Column:
"Gordon Brown: His enemies want him dead,
but he is still Labour's only hope"
could in my view have been written by Gordon himself. It's difficult to imagine why she would of her own volition and while being of sound mind write such drivel?

Meanwhile the Government's sound bite politics and disastrous economic mismanagement continues quietly unchallenged and without democratic sanction.

Readers of my earlier Articles about Oilexco in this blog will not be surprised to hear Chancellor Alistair Darling in an interview is warning that the current high price for oil had the potential to be a huge problem as far as a recovery from the recession is concerned. (See: Oil prices could hold back recession recovery warns Chancellor).

He goes on to say that "we've got to convince everyone, including some of the Gulf states, who really have been badly affected by this downturn in their broader economies, it is in no one's interest that we allow a high oil price to impede recovery." The truth is that the Gulf States have suffered very little. He doesn't mention that the current run up in oil is largely due to commodity market speculation in which the City's commodities traders are intimately involved in and are active participants in siphoning off huge profits.

He also warned that getting banks lending again remained a problem, and that lenders were still struggling to build confidence. "If you don't fix the banking problem, you'll never fix the wider economy," Mr Darling said.

What is clearly understood by the World political community is that the US and UK are jointly responsible for the credit crisis and recession. They both benefited by usurping their trusted positions as regulators of their leading financial centers to allow for their own financial institutions to fraudulently manipulate investments and defraud the World community.

The fact that the British Labour Government has added to these problems with their own profligate spending and lack of banking supervision has in truth brought the UK to the brink of economic oblivion. They continue to blame others while failing to put their own house in order with corrective actions that protect their citizens from additional liabilities.

Those people in the UK that continue to support this Government because they themselves have been bailed out of a bad personal banking situation, or are reliant on the Government for a job, or for financial support should know the facts and rethink your motives.

Firstly, the amount of Government bailout money used to help individual depositors makes up only a small portion of the bailout funds given to the Banks. Much of the money has gone off-shore to cover the obligations that the banks created as part of their sub-prime involvement. The collapse of the car industry, other business and of the housing bubble is because the Banks withdrew their lone support in all these areas in order to save themselves from bankruptcy.

The amount of World toxic debt is many times larger than the amount of bailout and stimulus funds that have been committed to date. The UK Government may be working feverishly at this moment to size the exposure that they took on by taking over the UK banking system, but they still most likely have no idea of the cost of their commitment.

This is a major critical error the Government made is compounded by the fact that they persuaded the US to do the same. The action the Government should have taken was to support the good UK banks, those with non-subprime exposure to take on the retail business and industry lone businesses from the bad Banks who had the toxic lone exposure. The toxic debt would then be imprisoned within a few bankrupt banks and Government stimulus would be focussed on a quick recovery of the economy.

As we now know, successful businesses and families who through no fault of their own were at the time reliant on bank funding in the course of a normal banking relationship have been whipped out due to this extra ordinary catastrophe.

Last week's meeting G8 optimism about an end to the recession should be taken in context. On a global basis the world economy has gone from free fall to a bottoming process. The more robust economies and those with less exposure to toxic debt have begun to recover. The change in sentiment has seen funds that were put into the US as a safe haven are now being taken out again. This has resulted in the drop in the US dollar that has also seen other currencies including the pound rebound.

In the case of the UK, the major economic engines are Government spending and the City's financial business. These are both areas of economic activity that are not going to collapse over night, but will wither and die over time given a shift global sentiment.

This shift has already begun. Following on from the London G20 meeting there is a move to have the City's financial oversight come under European Common Market control. This will most likely fought by Gordon Brown who will try to postpone the inevitable however, his position is becoming weaker by the day. The Government has already requested Common Market banking help to save the North Sea energy industry, a move that's come too late. They are also asking for assurances that UK Vauxhall car plant production will remain operational under the new owners.

With a tax base that's shrinking by the day and a Bank of England reduced to printing money to keep the economy afloat the Government has only a short window of opportunity turn things around. Unlike the US they don't have a reserve currency to fall back on. Any special relationship they have with the US is fading fast and their attitude towards the EEC has not won them any friends. A rising tide will likely come too late to lift this UK boat.

The World does not owe this contemptible Government a living. The UK has made its own bed and now it must lay in it.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mike T, sent me an email, which I have lightly edited (removing personal salutation and introduction) and posted it as a comment.
The email:
I found nothing controversial in the article, all pretty obvious to me.

They are all interdependent in a web of mutual self interest. Parliament is made up mainly of journalists and lawyers or people who have never worked as we understand work to be.

The government continues to make more complicated and unnecessary laws to provide more employment for lawyers. The government provides more and more opportunities for the media to be active through planned leaking and
planting stories. This makes the media dependent on the government for much of
its news stories. This keeps more journalists and media presenters in employment at huge salaries.

As the BBC dependent on the government for funding it has no alternative to ultimately bend to the will of the government. This arrangement provides the government with alternative means for spreading its message should newspaper editors not be compliant.

This situation also enables the government to mask, where necessary, its own activities and other activities carried out, with its compliance, by related areas of the establishment such as the financial institutions and the law enforcement
agencies.