11 March, 2010

They Just Don’t Get It

Today’s Guardian carries a letter from ‘leading’ lefties. It calls for a second stimulus package to ‘protect’ the economy and ’stimulate growth’. It’s not a long letter (the arguments in favour of such things aren’t as you can imagine extensive), but it is perhaps best summed up in this sentence:

“A programme of government investment would not only stimulate the wider economy in the short term, but would increase long-term growth, thereby lowering the debt levels through a higher tax take.”

So, borrowing, £6,000 every second has stimulated the economy? The Government didn’t need to borrow in January did it? When will these idiots realise that you just can’t keep chucking money at a problem and hope it will fix itself? In just 56 days the country will have to make a decision. Do they want five more years of Gordon Brown and Labour who will put the recovery at risk by dithering on action? Or do they want the Conservatives and David Cameron who will act quickly to cut the deficit in order to keep things like mortgage rates lower for longer?

Incidentally, the list of people you might want to direct your abuse at for this ridiculous letter are as follows:

Colin Burgon MP

Alex Smith, Editor, Labourlist

Austin Mitchell MP

Anne Cryer MP

Alexandra Kemp, Chief Executive, West Norfolk Women and Carers’ Pensions Network (personal capacity)

Bellavia Ribeiro-Addy, NUS National Officer

Billy Hayes, General Secretary, CWU

Byron Taylor, National Trade Union Liaison Officer, Trade Union & Labour Party Liaison Organisation (TULO)

Cat Smith, Vice Chair, London Young Labour

Chris Edwards, Senior Research Fellow, UEA,

Chris McCafferty MP

Chris McLaughlin, Editor, Tribune

Christopher Cramer, Professor of Political Economy of Development, SOAS

Clifford Singer, Director, The Other TaxPayers’ Alliance

Colin Challen MP

Compass Youth Executive

Dave Anderson MP

David Drew MP

Dai Havard MP

Dave Prentis, General Secretary, Unison.

David Hamilton MP

Diane Abbott MP

Denis Murphy MP

Edward O’Hara MP

Ellie Gellard, Labour blogger

Grazia Ietto-Gillies, Emeritus Professor of Applied Economics, Director Centre for International Business Studies, London South Bank University

Glenda Jackson MP

Gerry Doherty, General Secretary, TSSA

Gordon Prentis MP

Prof. George Irvin, Univerity of London, SOAS.

Professor Ian Gough, Professorial Research Fellow, LSE

Hugh Lanning PCS Deputy General Secretary

Hywel Francis MP

Harriet Yeo, Labour Party NEC

Hilary Wainright, Co-Editor, Red Pepper

Ismail Erturk, Senior Lecturer in Banking, Manchester Business School

Janet Dean MP

Jeremy Corbyn MP

Jim Cousins MP

Jim Sheridan MP

Jon Cruddas MP

John Austin MP

John Ross, Editor, Socialist Economic Bulletin

John Weeks, Professor Emeritus of Economics, SOAS, University of London, and former director of the Centre for Development Policy and Research.

Jonathan Rutherford, Professor of Cultural Studies, Middlesex University

Katy Clark MP

Karen Buck MP

Keith Norman, General Secretary, ASLEF

Ken Livingstone

Kevin Maguire, Associate Editor, Mirror

Kelvin Hopkins MP

Martin McIvor, Editor, Renewal

Malcolm Sawyer, Professor of Economics, University of Leeds

Mehdi Hasan, Senior Editor (politics), New Statesman

Michael Connarty MP

Michael Meacher MP

Mick Shaw, President, FBU

Mike Wood MP

Michael Burke, Economist and contributor to Socialist Economic Bulletin

Neal Lawson, Chair, Compass

Neil MacKinnon, Chief Economist, VTB Capital

Paul Kenny, General Secretary, GMB

Paul Truswell MP

Paul Sagar, New Political Economy Network.

Pat Devine, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Manchester

Peter Kilfoyle MP

Peter Willsman Labour Party NEC

Prem Sikka, Professor of Accounting, University of Essex

Richard Ascough, Regional Secretary, South Eastern GMB

Richard Murphy, Director, Tax Research UK

Roger Berry MP

Robin Murray, Fellow, Young Foundation, Author of Danger and Opportunity:Crisis and the New Social Economy

Roger Godsiff MP

Ronnie Campbell MP

Sam Tarry, National Chair, Young Labour

Sunder Katwala, General Secretary, Fabian Society (personal capacity)

Susan Himmelweit, Professor of Economics, Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University

Terry Rooney MP

Tim Roache, GMB Yorkshire Regional Secretary

Tony Juniper, environmentalist

Tony Woodley, Joint General Secretary UNITE

Will Straw, Editor, Left Foot Forward

11 March, 2010

Quote of the Day

5 March, 2010

Parish Announement: toryboynews.co.uk

For those of you who still make their way to this blog via the address, toryboynews.co.uk, you will, from 8th March, need to re-point your browsers directly to greensdiary.co.uk as toryboynews.co.uk will cease to exist.

Tory Boy News is the former name of Green’s Diary, but was retired a while ago when the name changed to Green’s Diary. From this coming Monday, toryboynews.co.uk will no longer point to this blog and all links via toryboynews.co.uk will cease to work.

5 March, 2010

CCHQ Turns Up The Heat on Immigration

With the polls tightening and the Tories now just 2% ahead in key marginals, CCHQ has been forced into a corner and has approved a new message on immigration which is to be used by candidates on literature and the doorsteps. Tim Montgomerie has the full story over at ConHome.

The overall Tory policy on immigration remains the same, it’s just that a clear line has now been approved that has been deemed as ’safe’ to say out loud. The idea of reducing immigration from the current hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands is a good idea. Imposing annual quotas on immigration was Michael Howard’s downfall at the last election. The Tories remain committed to a national border protection police whose main task will be to crack down on illegal immigration which can someimes be a much bigger problem than immigration itself because of the associated crime and gang warfare that goes with it.

Clearly CCHQ are trying to do everything they can to improve the party’s position in the polls. Will it work? I don’t know and to be perfectly honest I would not be surprised if we get to May 7th and find a Tory government, but with only a slender majority of perhaps less than ten. If we have a hung parliament, I think the Conservatives would be the largest party and therefore Cameron would be PM and then I think we would see another election in October in order to try and get a more decisive result.

Clearly, the fight is on and as I have always said, Labour are always a force to be reckoned with. Yes, they have a substantially reduced grass roots base, but never underestimate Labour’s ability to bring people out on the streets from nowhere come polling day. What Labour appear to be doing is focussing their campaigns very closely. For example, Sandra Osborne, the incumbent in Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock has about 15 campaign team members canvassing with her on a weekly basis. That’s a similar level to many other Tory target seats, so Labour is not so dead and buried across the board as some would suggest.

If it’s money that’s going to win the election and the ability to spend on glossy leaflets, etc. then it’s the Tories who will win. In the last year, local associations alone raised a staggering £25m, and that’s before you consider central office funding and Ashcroft’s target seat funding.

However, if it’s the size of campaign teams, policy and ability to get the vote out on May 6th, then it’s anybody’s Downing Street.

3 March, 2010

Quote of the day

“I’ve not yet developed the capacity for time travel”

Europe’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Baroness Ashton

HT: Today programme Twitter feed

2 March, 2010

Banter

Farage can always be relied on for a good show. This, like Hannan’s tirade against Brown is perhaps Farage’s finest hour yet. I doubt this speech, and his manner will go down too well with the people of Buckingham, but then you know what they say about the UKIP anyway…

1 March, 2010

Prescott loses his Rag on Newsnight

Man alive, how can anyone take this man seriously? He is just a typical union thug dressed up as a politician. The sooner the Commons is rid of him the better, for both Hull and the country as a whole.

1 March, 2010

Hypocrisy of the Highest Order

News broke late last week that Jack Dromey, Labour Party Secretary and husband of the equality campaigner (militant feminist) Harriet Harman has been selected to fight a Birmingham seat for Labour.

The whole thing has smacks of hypocrisy about it. Hatty has been going on and on about how wee need all women short-lists to encourage more women into parliament, then the only seat not to have such a case just so happens to be the seat her own husband is selected in.

So, of course we know that the Tories just hand out seats based on who your parents are and how disgraceful this is, so we couldn’t imagine the Labour party doing the same thing could we? Let’s run down a list of such Labour persons:

1. Mr & Mrs Ed Balls (Evette Cooper)
2. The Benn clan. Tony, then there’s Hilary, and now his daughter has been selected as well
3. Harriet Harmen and Jack Dromey

The list goes on and there are more examples which I wont bore you with. Anyhow, Labour aren’t guilty of keeping it in the family, surely not?