Diana Carney to level with George Osborne

Mark and Diana Carney come as a package

I see that the wife of the new governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, is something of a left-wing firebrand. She doesn't take kindly to bankers who mess up, she promotes vegan ways and she is a supporter-cum-promoter of the Occupy movement. Just the sort of woman to make George Osborne wince when he goes into paradoxical statements about the economy.

It seems that public appointments now come with the appointed person's spouse and/or family members being given the once over to place them in a suitable position so that the media can speculate for ever in order to boost ratings and sales. Diana Carney is a godsend to them. My guess is though that had she not been so accommodating with her past glories, they may have been tempted to exaggerate a few of their own.

Justin Welby is going to be Archbishop of Canterbury with the media enthralled to know his father was a bootlegger and sometime confidante of John F Kennedy (in a non presidential way). Barack Obama has his aged Kenyan grandmother popping up with pearls of wisdom. Plus an array of relatives Obama didn't know he had.

However, I suppose it never has been any different. Billy Carter featured in Jimmy's life. Ronald Reagan had a few problems like that. John Major had his vaudeville dad, Tony Blair had a father-in-law with a colourful past and Margaret Thatcher had Denis, God bless him. Maybe having a spouse with opinions or a relative with a racy background is a help rather than a hindrance.

Diana Carney certainly appears to have views which may make George Osborne consider whether she is the best spouse in the world to be supporting the governor. She seems to have enough savvy to level with him in discussions about global financial institutions being “rotten or inadequate”. However, if his tenure as chancellor ends in ignominy, she might just be tempted simply to level him on our behalf.

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George Osborne's "going forward"!

I heard George Osborne give a good interview on the Today programme this morning. Agreed with it all until he ended it with the ridiculous expression "going forward". Who started this and will it end? It seems those in front of a microphone feel less important if they don't say it. As Joyce Grenfell might say, "Not now George!".

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George Osborne plans £1bn privatisation of Northern Rock

Northern Rock savers waiting to take cash out in 2007

Planning something and effectively carrying out the plans are two different things. George Osborne is keen to get rid of Northern Rock, the gobbler of toxic debts. As it happens, the Rock is cleaved into two halves. The good bank and the bad bank. Osborne is looking to flog off the good bit, which does not have toxic debt fouling its coffers. Apparently Virgin Money and the Yorkshire Building Society are expected to be among the bidders, and the formal sale process could start by the next month. But taxpayers are likely to experience a loss because this is a bit of a "reduced item".

Robert Peston of BBC fame has been talking about all this, and one suspects he's getting a bit weary by it. Having broken the original story of the bank going bust, he probably no longer feels he can dine out on this tale of woe any longer. He did, though, give the interesting point that savers currently attracted to Northern Rock may be there because it is a safe house at taxpayers expense. Put it in the private sector and, well.... he didn't elaborate, but the possibility is some may leave for pastures new.

The Daily Telegraph reports that "Although the sale of the so-called "good bank" part of Northern Rock is likely to generate a loss, this will be offset in the longer term by the repayment of tens of billions of pounds of state aid loans held in the "bad bank", now known as Northern Rock Asset Management". I thought all the bad stuff was toxic debt brought over in some grand recycling scheme from American sub-prime lenders. If the money was completely fake in the first place, how come these "asset managers" can turn the financial toxins into good money?

Maybe George Osborne can illuminate us all on that one?

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George Osborne to watch fuel prices 'like a hawk'

The eyes have it!

It's good to hear that the windfall tax on oil companies announced in the Budget will not be passed on to motorists in higher fuel prices.  George Osborne says ministers will be "watching like hawks" and will be wanting to "make sure" the tax rise is not passed on to motorists. I hope his talons are sharpened. A visit to his manicurist may be in order.

The Budget was like a curate's egg. Good in parts. Still no mention of clawing back the tax that large corporations just don't pay. Maybe the hawks have diplopia like me. In which case a good pair of spectacles might help or a hawk with gimlet eyes!

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George Osborne pledges Budget growth for economy

"My box of tricks"

George Osborne is about to get up and tell us whether we are going to be better off or worse off. That's the usual stuff of budgets and chancellors. However, this budget is different, I think. We can either carry on with boom and bust or we can all be grown up and realise that the economy does not work itself but we work the economy.

The Coalition is doing some good things. It is doing some odd things. I don't think it has done that many bad things so far. However, they talk about tackling corporate sleaze but appear to be doing it through clenched teeth. It's no good talking to the bosses of big business as if one is attending an amateur ventriloquists convention. "Gottle of geer!" is no way to convince the bamboozlers we are serious.

Britain needs entrepreneurial activity, it needs new ideas for new products, it needs workers working sensible hours for good pay. It short we need to create real added value to everything we do. What we have had in recent years is fake money creating fake wealth. I saw the Bank of England officials withering under the scrutiny of the Treasury Select Committee. The Bank has a nice little video about "quantitative easing" (the 21st century's best  ever euphemism!) where they admit that money is created electronically. The female voiceover makes you think it is all so wonderful. Like a holiday in the Canaries!

THEY CREATE THE MONEY OUT OF THIN AIR!!!

So if George Osborne can turn the culture of bogus bond creation around, turn the fiddlers and fakers out and bring in the real workers, the real ideas people, the entrepreneurs, the wealth creators, then we will all be better off.

Let the bamboozlers pay their taxes, let the electronic moneymakers get a real shock from their machines, and turn the so-called tax havens into tax harvests.

If we are all in this together, we should be going in the same direction, for similar goals and similar aims.

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To whom do we pay the deficit?

The government is pressing on with reducing the deficit and I have no qualms or quibbles with this. However, it would be nice to know where all the money is going. It seems that when one enters the counting houses of billionaires, no questions need be asked. A billion pounds off this quango and a billion pounds off that state department. Good, but where does all the dosh go? Who will be getting it? Transparency is thin on the ground at the moment.

Last week, Matthew Wright had as a panellist that gruff Mancunian Terry Christian. In a moment of "hang on a tick", Christian asked Wright about the deficit payments. Matthew had no clue other than waffle. Then a day or two later, Christian asked the same question. Wright appeared to have been given a brief of sorts, but the answer was pretty vague and vapid. None the wiser.

Robert Preston hasn't helped much either. He never talks about it, which is a pity, as the BBC could do us all a favour. We are still in this triangle of quantative easing, fractional reserve banking and deficit reduction. Nobody gives us any balance sheets, tells us who owes what to whoever, and the merry-go-round still pumps out the same rickety tune. "We're all in this together". Yeah, OK, but in what exactly?

If you Google "To whom do we owe the national debt" it appears that the search engine to beat all search engines gets chronic amnesia. I've seen a bit about a guy who is seeking a Freedom of Information answer and a couple of weird answers on Yahoo Groups.

Come on George Osborne! Let's have a fact sheet with the pithy points laid out. Surely we should know who Paul is before we rob Peter?

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Not so bad, really - Osborne cuts back prudently!

From the BBC website -

Chancellor George Osborne has announced the government's four-year Spending Review to Parliament, revealing some of the deepest cuts in public spending in decades.

The key announcements:

• About 490,000 public sector jobs likely to be lost
• Average 19% four-year cut in departmental budgets
• Structural deficit to be eliminated by 2015
• £7bn in additional welfare budget cuts
• Police funding cut by 4% a year
• Retirement age to rise from 65 to 66 by 2020
• NHS budget protected; £2bn extra for social care
• Schools budget to rise every year until 2015
• £30bn capital spending on transport
• Permanent bank levy

Not so bad. From a selfish point of view I've still got a bus pass, or will do when I get it. However, I'm still not sure what nearly 500,000 redundant state workers ae going to do apart from visit the Job Centres. Some will get jobs in the private sector, but then some private sector jobs will go. For a while it will be lots of people trying to get on very small merry-go-rounds. But it would have been a hell of a lot worse with Tarnished Labour!

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George Osborne's cutting plans today

Today is the day. George Osborne is about to tell us what's in store for us by way of hardships and hefty cuts. I'm getting all doubtful about what is best. All I know is that we've been playing with monopoly money for too long. Something has to give. The only problem is who gives more and who gives less. Being all in it together implies the tax avoiders are going to cough up as much as the soon-to-be redundant state workers.

I wouldn't mind if we all had an equal shot at trying to reduce the deficit but just as in wartime, when some were active backsliders, we must be on our guard for those who think this debt crisis is nothing to do with them. We'll see in just over an hour!

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George Osborne's Counting House

I am still wondering how Britain will get out of the financial mess. The government seems fairly certain it will mean tough times. But for whom? Are we to rely on the bankers to get us out of the mess? If so, it's more funny money and a greater catastrophe down the line.

Britain is no longer a manufacturing country of note. OK, some things are made in the UK, but mostly we import things we want "others" to make. These being mainly dragooned Chinese workers. Globalisation is a kind of empire strikes back. It is also significantly unpatriotic. Even bordering on high treason. Export the jobs, import the cheap merchandise. Everybody is happy. We now live in some kind of wonderland fueled by collective denial and financial amnesia. I do no exclude myself from joining in the scrum. Very soon the Chinese workers will demand better conditions and then what do we do? Connive with the politburo or cave in to their demands?

Some say each man, woman and child owes £22,000. Some put it as high as £35,000. The debt counter on this blog has it just passing £33,000. Who really knows? The thing is most people don't earn £22,000 so they will have to get some form of easy payment plan going. It's commonly called taxation. But if everybody draws in their horns and doesn't buy as much, VAT goes down in revenue take. David Cameron talks about wastage by which he means people as well as things. We've just got 3000-odd HIPS surveyors thrust onto the dole. A prime example of cutting back. But will it save any money. We can sack all and sundry in those jobs we think are useless but where are these people going to earn money?

The stark reality is that all this grandiose talk of scaling back in order to reduce the deficit means diddly squat unless the country PRODUCES something that other countries want to buy. Proper goods and proper services. Anything else is akin to moving the deckchairs around on the Titanic.

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We want honesty and transparency in politics

The political elite in Britain have long been used to treating the electorate as morons. Somehow it is seen as an electoral own goal if a politician tells the truth. Lying is not encouraged but spinning the truth to such a degree that it only vaguely ressembles its original status is. Also encouraged is the black art of the political double entendre and the equally absurd habit of deliberately not answering a straight question.

Gordon Brown has been saying recently how much he recognises the public's desire for transparency. Yet he seems incapable of admitting any fault other than to suggest "we are all to blame". Even now he is encouraging his ministers to denigrate the Tories about "swingeing cuts". Everyone knows that the UK is heavily indebted. They know the banks and the government are still sitting on toxic debts. So why, when there is no public money to talk of, the Prime Minister insists that he is going to invest more money. What money? There is no money. He is just gambling on the future tax take of generations to come.

This is the Gordon Brown who sat by whilst the sub-prime scandal exploded around him. Yes it started in America, but it was British banks who were up to their eyeballs in the lending racket. He implies now that he never thought to ask a question. Not one ounce of inquisitive vibes left his body. We must therefore understand that he was either incompetent or a calculating character who hoped it would all blow over.

He never qizzed the bankers, he sought to delude the public, and he blamed others. Now he is acting as an invester with a philanthropic heart. It's all balderdash. He knows it and we know it. Ed Balls is a man where the disingenuous remark is always available. "The Tories are ideologically wedded to cutting spending to fund tax cuts for the few," he warbles. Old style rubbish politics.

George Osborne is right to say that the public wants the truth. We want to know how much the country owes and what taxes have to be raised to pay back our debts. Unless we know, we will not be able to have confidence in the future. That future could be one of selfishness now leaving future generations saddled with a third-world existence or it could be one where we really tackle the root problems and create an economy that is vibrant and entrepreneurially virile!

It's in our hands and it lies with our votes.

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