Martin Kelly makes me think

The picture is from the Sante Fe Art blog, and is of a pack of red wolves. It is by Carole Larouche, whose work I enjoy.


Martin Kelly runs a great blog, and I am flattered that he has called me a friend. I recommend him to you. On his blog, he has noted my sympathy for the latest scapegoat, Sir Fred Goodwin. In replying to him, I had two thoughts that emerged and that have started a train.

The first is the rather trite thought that New Labour, in trouble, does two typical things that connect it to its roots. In 1995, for instance, when in opposition, it launched a campaign against 'fat cats' which targeted Cedric Brown, the boss of British Gas. Mr Brown had risen from being a gas engineer to running a gas company, and was attacked viciously and personally for doing well in the context of what seemed at the time an obscenely cash-rich environment that New Labour was otherwise keen to expand. They called a man who had originally been an ordinary workman and who progressed 'a pig'. Then they laid out a trough for their pals.

Brown had the sense to warn a few years ago about this country's lack of gas reserves, which will soon begin to bite us, and to try to do something about it. Most people with knowledge of business in this country actually have no involvement with any real job, and we could do with more like Cedric Brown.

In 2001, Stephen Byers, Railtrack defender until forced to kill his pet, did the same to Bob Ayling, guv'nor of British Airways, which New Labour also held close.

Now they're at it again.

A whole generation of journalists, with standards progressively debasing to the level of their Victorian ancestors, has grown up feeding on this sort of thing. As their memories and forensic talents decline, their ferocity increases. So I have some sympathy for Fred Goodwin, pursued by politicians, editors, BBC employees and publishers on copper-bottomed, cast gold remuneration deals.

The second thing they do is get a scare up and attack someone. Sometimes they use fake, state funded charities, sometimes nonsense about the environment, sometimes real threats from terrorists and the BNP that result in real reductions in freedom. The people who became New Labour did this after their clash with the Unions over Labour's internal electoral college in the early nineties, when the Isle of Dogs fell to a BNP councillor; they did it after 9/11, and they'll do it again. They even blamed the Liberal Democrats, for whom I have no sympathy, for the BNP in 1993, just as they are doing now. We enter Hell singly; the BNP are to blame for the BNP, though we will all pay if they emerge from the muck where they belong much further.

The other thing Martin's post made me think about is wholly unconnected, except as a reference to the way New Labour works. They never actually say what they are going to do until they do it, but there are hints here and there because none of them have any class and they all want us to know that they know things we don't.

They are in frenzy about industrial pensions. They are attacking the Royal Mail on the pretext of pensions. They have presided over a huge public debt which will not be funded by borrowing and which will be, paradoxically, be made worse by printing money because then no one with any sense will lend to us again.

So how long is it before the government engineers an event which allows them to drop compulsory pension contributions, or a requirement to have a pension account in one of the banks they now own, on us? They have already pushed a bill through Parliament that will allow for semi-compulsory accounts.

Watch the skies.

Here's Creedence Clearwater revival singing about clouds of confusion and asking, 'who'll stop the rain?'. Not this shower....