Boris Johnson writes in the Telegraph today, he seems to be seeking to excuse the behaviour of dodgy bankers. No not the Tories’ fund raisers but actual bankers. He seeks to use a parable (he’s related to God) to compare being bitten by a random dog with the alleged dishonest conduct of many banks. In other words it’s all just a rather nasty accident that’s no one’s fault, a bit like a rapist thinking no means yes I guess. Check out the story here.

I think it means we need less wrong-headed politicians and a few with brains. The reason for banks closing is greed on the part of politicians just as much as bankers.

The parable is daft, there is nothing accidental in banks colluding with valuers and brokers to push up values and make borrowing easier; it was done to generate commissions and charges. The writing was on the wall fo them when folk took the law into their own hands and started issuing proceedings to recover dishonestly high bank charges. Again the politicians collude in defence of this by kicking the cases into the long grass for years.

Coincidence and accidents? Not likely fella.

Boris Johnson strikes me as Caliban to Gordon Brown’s Prospero, not sure who David Cameron would be.

Head for the hills, get your cash out now

Even if you have less than £35,000 in the bank get it out now. Why? Do you know how long it will take to get your cash off the Government? Let’s face it they’re bust as well. You know there is a problem when the Sky News people are trying to sell nationalisation in the US. The people with savings are the losers if the bail out fails. The ones with the debt win. It’s the end of capitalism. Marx and Engels were right. Once you get production controlled by too few folk there is a natural tendency to exploit the monopoly - look at oil. I believe that it is humanity at work. When kids are dying for want of a fifty pence vitamin the race will react unfavourably. I think it laughable to see George Bush desperately trying to give all that money to Banks. And why? So they keep getting paid. It’s not about you or me, or jobs or mortgages. It’s about keeping power and stopping natural redistribution.

Contribute to the fiasco, even if you only have fifty quid in a bank take it out now.

 Jeff Randall, writing in the Telegraph today, reckons that Gordon Brown and LAbour are doomed:

“There’s no contrition, no admission of fallibility, no recognition of blunders – and most certainly no apology. This isn’t clever. It insults the electorate’s intelligence and helps explain why, like AIG, he’s doomed.” (Randall, J. Telegraph, 19.09.08)

He seems to be saying that Tony Blair wasn’t so bad. But of course he was. He bottled it and did as the yanks told him. So the public loathed him for his spineless connivance in war crime activities, torture and killing. Gordon Brown has the power, the time and the cheque book. The electoral system is completely undemocratic. This is why his only hope is to bring in PR. There are precedents for doing so in Scotland and the European elections. The House of Lords has been fixed, they have a healthy majority. The Queen would sign the bill. The Tories would be finished, for good. The time for gloating is not yet nigh.

So I think it’s premature to write off Gordon Brown completely. As for Labour, like I say,  they have the power and the cheque book, so they could yet fix it. One way of course is to guillotine through proportional representation for the next election. A list system would mean he could buy off all the plotters with a high place on the list. Of course the Lib Dems would have a Damascean vision, and see the virtues of New Labour’s electoral reform ideas. Errant Labour MPs would also see the wisdom of Gordon. As for the Tories, well, they’d never see the inside of Downing Street again, ever.

It is interesting to note that the Tory revival is coterminus with David Cameron disappearing into the undergrowth, along with fellow prefect  and TUC shop proprietor George Osbourne. As soon as they start gloating (they won’t be able to resist) the public will turn on them.

Envy, it’ll do for the toffs everytime.

The British love an underdog, especially the possibilities of “comebacks” - look at Tim Henman mania and now Murray. We love it. Brown has carefully positioned himself as the underdog. There was little he could say while capitalism crumbled - gloating would be counter-productive - making excuses would just grate. So getting fit, losing weight and keeping schtum were good moves. I remember Jim Callaghan and have loathed the useless slime ball since I sat one Christmas Day wishing the electricity would come back on so I could watch the tele. It would be fatal for Labour and Gordon Brown to let the unions mess it up. PR is the only way. He won’t do it though.

Stock up on candles for this winter. And get some thermals.

After months of delay I have finally gotten round to installing a forum. I haven’t set up the boards yet but will be doing so today, hopefully. Anyway the idea is to have boards dealing with work shopping poetry, flash, short stories, novel extracts, chapters, prologues, plot ideas, character sketches and so on. I am also going to include some boards to discuss Philosophy Literary Theory and Literary Criticism, Book Reviews, Politics, Current Affairs and general chit chat. The last time I created a forum it was deluged by spammers posting crappy links to crappy porn sites. I’ve used Simple Machines this time and it seems better at stopping that rubbish. If you have any ideas for additional boards just let me know.

Ken Clarke today on Sky News gave the clearest and most unequivocal confirmation to date the the Conservative Party is set to reclaim the right to set interest rates should they win the election. He described “Gordon’s” decision to make the Bank of England independent a mistake. It was a Freudian slip. He was being asked to consider the reasons for the failure to arrest any of the British bankers that have busted the banking sector. His argument was that there was not enough political control.

Of course the whole sector is riddled with corruption and political connivance at a high level.

Remember the bank charges case? The banks have for years been stealing money from consumers in the full knowledge that what they were doing was unlawful. By any standards this is theft. The Theft Act of 1968 says so. Anything happened to the folk responsible for the largest fraud in UK history? Not likely. So a few brave souls began to reclaim the right and issued  summonses and requests for bank statement, using the Data Protection legislation to do so. The banks settled them all, not wanting a judgement recorded against them. Then, conveniently, the Office of fair Trading stepped in, issued hastily prepared proceedings, the government (who control The Court Service)  allocated a judge to deal with it and the whole case (worth billions) has been kicked into the long grass. The issues are very straightforward, the case is stopping hundreds of thousands of people from getting their money back, what happens? The OFT gets a second rate QC to fight the case against at least a hundred top rate commercial lawyers who are defending the banks. The banks will appeal this all the way to Europe. The Government could easily have passed emergency legislation to make the banks give the money back and instructed Scotland Yard to arrest those responsible.

Now with that kind of political interference and fixing of the court system it’s little wonder that the sector is rife with corruption. But incredibly they are still levying the charges.

The Tories will put rates back to 11% quicker than you can say “I’m bust”.  George Osborne reckons it’s the fault of house prices that HBOS is bust, but it’s his mates in the city who’ve ramped up prices in collusion with the valuers who suddenly decided that land in the UK was worth 100% more than it was ten years ago. And why? To generate massive commissions and bonuses. Where are they now? Gone fishing. Ken Clarke reckons capitalism is okay and there’s no real problem with the concept. How dumb is that? Of course there’s a problem.

Get your savings out as soon as you can, they’ll spend it all if you don’t.