This country is in a mess; it is a mess that has developed over many years but it is a mess nevertheless. I will repeat my view that the government of Blair and Brown has been the worst in my life-time. Mrs Thatcher was wrong about many things but at least she stood for something. John Major had his problems but apart from privatisation of the railways he did not indulge in too many madcap, money wasting schemes. Throughout the time in office of Blair & Brown they have swamped us with a tidal wave of pointless legislation which has increased national bureaucracy. But there is precious little benefit to show for all the money that has been spent. They have attacked and destroyed our civil liberties in the name of anti-terrorism - a situation exacerbated by their involving us in unnecessary wars. Even as government debt mounts Brown continues to pursue the needless costly indulgence of ID cards. This government has failed - miserably - to control the excesses of the financial sector of our economy, both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown giving the City a free rein to do as they wished. They have courted the favours of the very rich, the gamblers, the celebrated and the notorious and looked on while ludicrous pay packages were handed out not just to CEOs but to all and sundry in financial institutions. While this has been going on MPs of all parties have milked a system of expenses, apparently secure in their misguided belief that they too deserved extreme pay packages. It is quite amazing that numerous MPs - particularly government ministers - have become seriously rich while in office and have acquired impressive property portfolios. The Financial Services Authority [FSA] has failed to regulate the City while MPs have been left either unregulated or actively encouraged to milk the system of expense payments.
The public has had enough. Our savings pay us no interest. Even as they are bailed out with our money, the banks arrogantly treat their customers and saviours with contempt. Their central obsession is to pay themselves obscene amounts of money and our MPs complain about their pay and fiddle their expenses. Together bankers and MPs avoid the taxes that we must pay. Together, it is the rich who govern this country and they are getting relatively richer and richer. Together they have ignored the needs and wishes of ordinary people. Governance rests with a cartel of MPs and the super rich that brooks no moral constraints - but they do so now at their peril. We can return to riots in the streets.
One of the most extensive and impenetrable clouds that still hangs over this Labour government is that of their record on pensions. Do they hate pensioners or do they truly just hate the poor? Mrs Thatcher changed the basis on which the state pension was calculated each year. She moved from a calculation based on average wages to the one based on the RPI. This has resulted in much smaller increases in the state pension over the last 20 years than would otherwise have been the case. The Labour government could have changed this back again in 1997. They chose not to do so and still have not. The values of private pensions decline year by year and the state pension is now almost the lowest in Europe. At 18% of average earnings it is lower than it was when Lloyd George introduced the pension 100 years ago; then it was set at 25% of average wages. Pensions provided for government employees [including MPs] are impressively generous and will require considerable inputs from tax payers to finance payouts in the future. While bankers make millions, MPs reward themselves and a pensioner is asked to get by with just £95.00 per week plus some means tested state supplementary benefits. It is blot on the record of any Labour government. Is there any more powerful evidence that Labour has lost all contact with every single part of its roots.
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Keir Hardie and Clement Attlee and Aneurin Bevan will be rolling in their graves?
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Is our democracy safe with Labour? I think not.
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