Boss Radio

I'm getting more than a little issed poff by politicians telling me there is no alternative to the cuts because we have a really really bad debt situation. It's not that bad. Really bad is Ireland, or Iceland, Greece, Spain, Portugal... I'm thinking Japan's problems maybe consist of something containing the words 'really bad'. We're just a wealthy country that owes a lot of money because it stupidly rescued a load of banks that would have been better off left to go broke.

Of course the problem with that is that innocent people like us, and me in particular, have money invested in them. There used to be a safe bank owned by us, via the government, but Thatcher privatised it, leaving us with no choice but to trust the market. She also deregulated the banks which is why they were able to get into the mess in the first place. Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?

So now there the coalition are, telling me that there's no alternative, invariably followed by their assessment of what Labour would have done, had they remained in power, so my question is this...

If Labour wouldn't have done the same thing as the government is doing, doesn't that make it an alternative?

Our longest stretch of peacetime prosperity (Why peacetime? Are things better during a war or something?) ended when the banks screwed things up and we had to bail them out. Banks being international this was an international problem and the world soon split into two camps, the supporters of Gordon Brown and those who thought the only solution was to tax the people senseless.

For better or for worse, we'll never know, Brown was quickly ditched by the people of Britain who apparently thought, by an admittedly small margin, that hitting the people for everything they've got was the way to go, and so it began. Slowly the government are revealing the lengths to which they (Or rather, 'we') are going to have to go to claw back the money to fix things their way.

Meanwhile, just over there >>>* they're having a real crisis. The Republic of Ireland is deep in it after making the same kinds of cuts that we're now going through. Their banks have been especially silly billies and lent lots of money to housing developments and stuff that's probably never going to be paid back. Unnnnfortunately... Some of our banks have been equally silly and lent the Irish banks a lot of money.

So we're going to 'lend' Ireland seven or eight thousand million pounds (It depends from where you get your news) to help them get out of the mess, i.e. for them to use to bail out their banks.

So we're being taxed to the max so that we can lend money to Ireland so they can give it to their banks who can use it to repay our banks, who were the people who got us into this mess in the first place.

Capitalism's not working.

*This bit only works if you're facing south.

Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberals who are the third party in UK politics, has said that in the next budget there should be savage cutbacks on government spending to pay for the recession and all the money that we 'lent' to the banks. To put it into perspective, the Labour Party admits that there will have to be cuts, the Conservative Party don't think those cuts are nearly big enough, and Nick Clegg thinks the Conservative party are being too, er.. conservative... He wants the kind of cuts that would make Attila the Hun's eyes water.

Which is odd, because I had a water related accident in the kitchen just now, and to mop it up I grabbed for a newspaper, and in this newspaper I found the Liberal Party's pledges for the forthcoming election:-

* Put people back to work and combat climate change by investing in green jobs
* Break up the banks to prevent them taking risks which threaten the whole economy
* Cut taxes for people on low and middle incomes, funded by closing loopholes for the rich and
green taxes, ensuring that no one pays a penny on the first £10,000 ($15,000) of income they earn.
* Tackle entrenched disadvantage through smaller class sizes, extra help for those struggling
at school, cutting student debt and investing in training and jobs for young people.
* Cleaning up Westminster by reforming expenses and donations, and ensuring every vote counts.
* Nothing. There is no 6th thing.

And with one bound we shall all be free.

I'm reminded of Steve Martin's 'How to become a millionaire and pay no taxes'. "First. Get a million dollars. Then... Don't pay any taxes". I have my own plan to save the nation and bring peace and harmony to the world.

* Get elected ruler of the world.
* Give everyone a job.
* Give everyone who has a job a pay rise.

Not only is my plan simpler than the Liberal one of making slashing great cuts whilst giving lots of money away to the poor without taking anything from the rich unless they're lying cheating b@$#@&ds (Although I guess most of the are...), but I personally think it's more achievable.

So Gordon Brown has just made his make or break speech and early opinions are, well... Not very invigorating to be honest.

They basically ran the gamut from "That's what he always says" to "That's what they all say." I'm guessing you can guess the political slant of the responders by which reply they go for.

The reason for this dearth of constructive critique is that the newspapers haven't come out yet. Tomorrow nearly everyone will have an opinion, and for a frighteningly high percentage of them it will be based upon what their choice of 'paper has to say. And Britain's favourite daily is The Sun.

In other words Rupert Murdoch will be dictating how people will eventually vote in the next election.

That's not my opinion, by the way, it's the opinion of The Sun itself, and of the politicians who woo the Murdoch clan at every available opportunity. Which I find a little frightening. The thing is, all newspapers are registered as such, it gives them certain privileges. To me, any 'paper which publishes opinions as news should lose that registration, opinions should be kept to the opinion columns.

Meanwhile I can but exhort the Sun's 10 million readers to think for themselves whilst they're admiring page three with one hand. Don't let Rupert Murdoch tell you what to think.

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If anyone noticed my several week's absence and wondered why, I just thought I'd mention. I downloaded Opera 10 for Mandriva Linux, and it doesn't work. It doesn't even load. Hence I am writing this on a pretty pink laptop running XP, and I don't like it.

XP that is, not the pretty pink computer, which I shall continue to worship for at least as long as it takes for this to get published...