And another thing…

Tom,

I like you think Cameron is a little over confident and will most likely get his ass kicked when he goes to the polls. He thinks he has won the people around but he needs reminding the polls suggest a hung government.

The only thing a Tory government would do is, like Thatcher’s government fu** the country up!

Call Me Dave might be a useless stuffed shirt with a “Heathrow Expansion forehead”, but I find this “do nothing” epithet kind of weird. Why? Because when doing something is a bad idea, it’s actually better to do nothing.

Let’s look at the nation’s Darling’s plan. It consists of-

10 Give away money willy nilly

20 Print money

30 Goto 10

This is based on a strange superstition that economies are driven by the circulation of money, and that more money, circulating faster, will somehow help the economy work. Eager experimenters can disprove this (with the assistance of a friend) by the following experiment-

Write “IOU TEN POUNDS” on a piece of paper. Now hand it to your friend. Have her hand it back to you. Now prepare another similar piece of paper and start handing that back and forth with the first one. After some period of time, note whether your surroundings have been enriched in any way; for instance whether the room you are in contains more goods. You will find it doesn’t and, since you have spent all day handing worthless bits of paper back and forth, you didn’t go out and do some productive work which may have allowed you to add some goods to the room in which you sit.

So, there you go. Keynes disproved for the cost of two scraps of paper.

Now go and try experiment this with Gordon and his Darling, and then when the light of understanding daws, they can stop “doing something” before the currency turns into a wildly swirling flurry of worthless scraps of paper**.

Wealth is production, not money. The only thing politicians can “do” is get out of the damned way and let people produce.

**An earlier version of this experiment carried out with the mortgage market was what got us into this mess in the first place, by the way.

“fu** the country up”

Whoa! Steady on Irfran!

In fairness to the Tories if you head over to their website they have some fairly detailed policy papers. The only problem is, none of the front bench either seem to know them, or are capable of communicating them to the electorate.

Doesn’t bode well does it? Especially since Cameron himself was once a director at Carlton Communications – and then has trouble communicating. Oops.

I do not know why you call him ‘do nothing’ he is not in government you are. Its just part of Labours ‘hide from the truth policy ‘and call names rather than talk about Labour.
We all know you are finished and the do nothing remark proves the fact.
Tell us what you are going to do for a change.Or better still dont bother as it will end in a mess as usual.

I ain’t gonna lie to you brother, I think, if it came down to a competition, I’d be a better jiver than you OR cameron.

That’s a fact!

I thought John Redwoods remarks hit the nail on the head. Is he also a do nothing Tory.

“1. Cancel the VAT reduction
2. Sell Northern Rock and Bradford and the Bingley mortgage business for whatever they can get for them, so they can start to work again.
3. Give the banks more time to raise their capital ratios and agree a faster timetable for repayment of the government Pref shares
4. Announce no more interest rate cuts for the next six months, to give money and savings markets some chance to settle down
5. Announce some tax cuts that put money back into people’s pockets.
5. Announce lower public borrowing figures based on 1,2 and 3 above being considerably larger than 5.
6. Announce that the government is concerned to keep overall public borrowing under some kind of control, adjusted for the cyclical effects”

This is the sort of thing you need to be doing rather than ‘do nothing’

Tom, you forgot to tag this as “Whimsy”.

4 can’t be done because the BoE has independence, and 2 can’t be done because no one would want to buy them and no one has the money.

I happen to think that Gordon Brown is an idiot. Unfortunately, David Cameron is little better. He’s getting cocky, frankly – he’s on-course for a hung parliament at the moment. The Tories are becoming very lazy and complacent, and that could prove fatal for them. 4 election defeats in a row will provoke the question “can the Tories ever win again?”. And if they can’t defeat a government as pathetic as this one, they shouldn’t even be in politics.

On a side note, when is And Another Thing… Version 4.o being launched, Tom?

The BoE is no more “independent” than any of the other cosy little extra-parliamentary governance committees that populate our sprawling oligarchy.

I personally am not averse to a hung parliament, it is the nearest we will ever get to proportional representation, and give the country time to breath, a break from this helter skelter of new legislation, then the consequent picking up the pieces because too much is rushed through back to back without listening to genuine objection, and so called public consultation is so manipulated that the man in the street does not even know about it until it is a new statute.

The Bank of England Independent !!!!!

Don’t make me laugh.

Surely doing nothing is better than doing the wrong thing, over and over and over again without even the slightest idea what you’re doing and the the damage you’re causing.

I am foaming at the mouth! How dare you? How very dare you?

“So let’s hear no more of this accusation that the Tories are the “do nothing party”, you hear me?”

You don’t mean it, do you Tom? It’s the only reason anyone bothers to read your blog – so they can have a rant against your amusing whimsy (what a quaint word that is).

You seem to attract a strange band of folk who actually vehemently dislike Brown and his Labour band (and that includes you – sorry Tom) and what they have done (are doing) to the country but who, though Conservatives by inclination and conviction, don’t like David Cameron and George Osborne because they don’t adopt a sufficiently right-wing dogma.

Well, they are soon going to have make up their minds. Let you lot back in or bite the bullet and see that Cameron & Co are the best hope for this country to get out of the mess that Brown has been leading us into for the last 12 years?

Ooh! I do feel so much better for that.

Better then having an old government that placed us into this shit.

Still sounds better than Labour – the “do nothing right” party.

Diablo (and co.)
I do like Brown and happen to think that he’s done a good job for this country, and along with other international leaders is doing his best to steer us through these unprecedented and difficult times right now, unlike some people we could mention.

And I tell you what, I don’t recall too much moaning while idiots like you were spending and mortgaging your assets away to buy new cars, four holidays a year, and spending all weekend in shopping precincts.
In fact Tories were saying we were in such good times thanks to their golden legacy, and trying to claim the credit for it until about a couple of months before this downturn blew up.
It’s numpties like you who didn’t repair your own roof, so stop blaming GB and look in the mirror at who’s really responsible for personal debt.

And – I’m one of the Labour band, so push off and speak for yourself in future.
Strewth. The whining on here is incredible.
Tom. For goodness sake – bin the lot of ‘em!

I’m with you, ani, and I’m old enough to remember the last Tory administration.

The recent addiction to buying, spending, keeping up with the Jones’s, second properties, homes abroad, designer handbags, flash cars, travel to ever more exotic locations, has been deeply disturbing to many. Greed and envy are not only two of the “deadly sins’, but are also extremely unattractive personality traits.

In my humble opinion, no doubt to be shouted down by many, these trends began in the Thatcher era.

In my childhood, even those who were relatively affluent, like my own fortunate family, never let it show, but used their money and their vote to help others less fortunate.

This comment probably won’t be seen by ani @6.47pm 12/1/09 but just let me respond.

I have no way of knowing anything about the personal lifestyles or circumstances of the people that fritter away their time by following Tom’s blog but I can tell you that I am precisely not one of your so-called “idiots….spending and mortgaging (my) assets away to buy new cars, four holidays a year, and spending all weekend in shopping precincts”. Far from it. I drive a 12 year-old car, visit my family in New Zealand once every four or five years (if I can afford it) and hate shopping.

As for “Tories were saying we were in such good times thanks to their golden legacy, and trying to claim the credit for it until about a couple of months before this downturn blew up”. Oh dear! You really don’t understand what’s been going on do you?

Perhaps you need to get out more – and spend some money, as your Great Leader requires.

As for me, I will plough my own furrow and do what is right for me and my family. And I will continue to speak for myself rather than the Labour spin machine that seems to have taken over your mind.

Even Blair admitted that fiscal growth under Labour was a result of good fortune.

Hi there Rapunzel. I’ve just caught up with your comment, so thanks for that – and yes, we’re certainly on the same wavelength on this one.

“no doubt to be shouted down by many”
Are we bovvered? ;0) Nah!