Ed Balls under Jeremy Paxman's interrogation

Ed Balls under Jeremy Paxman's interrogation in January 2014, just not answering questions and generally coming over so badly. Maybe the Conservative election strategy should be just to play Ed Balls interviews...



Remember that for 13 years of the last Labour government the top tax rate was 40%, it was raised about to 50% about 10 weeks before the 2010 election.


Here's Ed Balls being interviewed by Andrew Neil from February 2013



Just as slippery then...



And more recently from February of this year with Andrew Marr



Answer the f***ing question Balls.

Two Eds hid truth about global crash: Miliband and Balls knew UK economy was due to 'fall off a cliff' a year before it happened... but kept it a secret per Daily Mail Online

The Mail reports that:

'Two Eds hid truth about global crash: Miliband and Balls knew UK economy was due to 'fall off a cliff' a year before it happened... but kept it a secret 

The pair reportedly urged Gordon Brown to call a snap election in 2008Knew it was only way Labour could hold power once economy crumbled George Osborne said revelation 'exposed cynicism' of Balls and Miliband

Labour leader has not denied claim, dismissing it as 'ancient history'  

The claim appears in explosive new memoir of Martin Winter - who helped turn Miliband into an MP

Ed Miliband and Ed Balls knew about the economic crash of 2008 a year before it happened – but kept it secret, it was sensationally revealed last night.

The Labour leader did not deny an explosive new report that they both urged Prime Minister Gordon Brown to call a snap Election in 2007 because 'the economy was about to fall off a cliff' and it was Labour's only hope of holding on to power.

Chancellor George Osborne said the revelation 'exposed the cynicism' of Balls and Miliband, adding: 'They were more interested in saving their own skins than saving the British economy.'

The disclosure comes in a new book by Miliband's former ally and friend Martin Winter, the ex-Labour Mayor of Doncaster, where Miliband is an MP. Winter, who secured the seat for Miliband at Brown's personal request, says he has decided to speak out because he has lost faith in the Labour leader.

...

Last night Miliband made no attempt to deny the claim, dismissing it as 'ancient history' – but the revelation is potentially political dynamite as the Election campaign hots up, fuelling the Tory line that Labour cannot be trusted with the economy, or to tell the truth... '

One thing is certain, the BBC will not mention this book and its revelations as that might harm the electoral chances of their allies in the Labour Party. 

By way of contrast, any similar revelations from the Margaret Thatcher or John Major governments would be pored over for ways of harming the Conservative Party.

Ed Balls 'daunted' by chancellor task - but the BBC will do their best to ensure that Ed Balls is in that position

The BBC report that:

'Ed Balls has told me that he is "daunted" at the prospect of becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer, given the scale of cuts a future Labour government may have to make.'

There follows a list of the key points that were discussed, unsurprisingly the matter of the last Labour government's overspending from 2003 not 2008 as Ed Balls and other Labour ministers have decided to claim was the case.

Here are the facts, I wonder if the BBC's Nick Robinson is aware of them, or does he prefer to take Ed Balls line?

Maybe the British public aren't as stupid as the BBC would like them to be as the latest IPSOS MORI poll finds Osborne leading Balls as the " most capable potential chancellor" by 38 to 33. Personally I'm staggered it's that small a margin...

Ed Balls gets away with it again

Ed Balls was on Iain Dale's LBC Radio show this afternoon. At one point Ed Balls claimed that the last Labour government only overspent because of the financial crisis etc. etc. etc. The trouble is that as I and others have pointed out time and time again, the last Labour government started spending more than the national income in 2002. The proof is here...

I don't know if Iain Dale understands simple bar charts, but maybe he should study this one before his next cosy chat with the slippery Ed Balls. Maybe he could then challenge Ed Balls' statements rather than meekly accepting them.

A very perceptive tweet from Michael Crick

Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) tweeted at 2:20 PM on Sat, Jan 25, 2014:

On 1 Dec Balls said budget surplus goal by 2020 depended on economy; now it's a binding pledge. Has economy improved that much in 8 weeks?

(https://twitter.com/MichaelLCrick/status/427083479835492352)

I  look forward to the BBC asking Ed Balls this very question... Ha F***ing ha!Not a chance of the pro-Labour BBC doing any such thing.

Oh that's priceless, who on Earth would believe that of Ed Balls?

It seems that Ed Balls has pledged Labour to balance the UK's books and do away with the budget surplus in the next Parliament if it wins the 2015 election. The Shadow chancellor Ed Balls said Labour would pass a law to ensure it adheres to "tough" and binding fiscal rules. These rules would include eliminating the deficit and reducing debt as a share of GDP between 2015 and 2020.

Doe anyone seriously believe that Ed Balls is capable of adhering to such a policy? Ed Balls, the great deficit creator. Ed Balls, the deficit denier. Ed Balls, the man who did more to destroy the British economy than anyone in the last Labour government (other than Gordon Brown) of course.

In any sane society Ed Balls' promise to balance the UK's books would be greeted with hysterical laughter and total derision. However I'm sure the BBC will treat Ed Balls' pronouncements as gospel and question him ever so gently.

Dear oh dear Ed Balls - did he predict a double dip recession?

No comment from Ed Balls?

The BBC report very quietly that:

The OECD economic agency has sharply increased its growth forecast for the UK economy this year to 1.5% from an earlier estimate of 0.8%.

It said UK growth had gained momentum through the first half of the year.

The forecast came as a survey indicated that activity in the UK construction sector grew at its fastest pace for nearly six years in August.

On Monday, a similar survey had shown strong growth in the manufacturing sector.

Recent data and surveys have pointed to an acceleration in the UK's economic recovery.
'Impressive' performance
The OECD's UK growth forecast came as part of its latest assessment of global prospects. The body said that global growth was set to remain sluggish, as problems in emerging economies offset improving recoveries in some advanced economies.

However, it cited the UK, North America and Japan as places where activity was expanding at "encouraging rates".

Also on Tuesday there was an upbeat report on the UK building industry.

The latest Markit/CIPS purchasing managers' index (PMI) for the UK's construction industry indicated further improvement in the sector, with residential building leading the way.

The PMI reading rose to 59.1 in August, up from 57.0 in July and the highest reading since September 2007. A reading above 50 indicates expansion.

"The latest construction PMI figures are yet another indication that the UK economy has performed impressively over the summer months," said Tim Moore, senior economist at Markit.

"A steep upturn in civil engineering activity suggested that public sector demand has joined residential building as a key driver of construction output growth during August."

On Monday, the PMI survey for the manufacturing sector found the strongest growth in activity for two and a half years, with output and new orders rising at their fastest rate for 19 years.

Oddly there was no comment provided from Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, not even from the Shadow Chancellor Ed 'doom and gloom' Balls.

BBC News - Government borrowing fell in 2012-13, revised figures show

Can you hear the gritted teeth at the Labour supporting BBC as they have to admit that:

'Nonetheless, three months into the fiscal year, the government remains on course to reduce the budget deficit in line with its forecasts.'

Ooh that must have hurt. Just wondering what Ed Balls will have to say?

More gritted teeth comments here http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23372309

What the Labour/BBC alliance don't tell you

'Much highlighted by the BBC and others last week was the centrepiece of what Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, called his "tough" plans to reduce our public-spending deficit: his promise to scrap the £200 winter-fuel allowance to higher tax-rate pensioners. This, he proudly claimed, would save £100 million a year. What was not explained – by him or the BBC – was that, since our borrowing is running at £120 billion a year, this saving would only cover seven hours of the year. That leaves a mere 8,753 hours in the year for which Mr Balls has to come up with another "tough" plan.'

From here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/10107478/MPs-want-to-turn-your-lights-off.-A-shame-no-one-told-you.html

Ed Miliband political and economic genius

On 24 July 2012 the BBC reported approvingly:

'Labour leader Ed Miliband has declared the political "tide is turning" against the economics of austerity, after a meeting in Paris with French President Francois Hollande.

He said he and Mr Hollande agreed that Europe needed a "different way forward" to deal with the debt crisis.

...


Mr Miliband held a half-hour meeting with the French president, a fellow centre-left leader, at the Elysee Palace, saying afterwards: "The points of agreement we have were around the fact that the tide is turning against an austerity approach, that there needs to be a different way forward found.

"What President Hollande is seeking to do in France and what he is seeking to do in leading the debate in Europe is find that different way forward.

"We are in agreement in seeking that new way that needs to be found and I think can be found."'

Today the BBC report somewhat less cheerfully that:

'Official figures show France has entered its second recession in four years after the economy shrank by 0.2% in the first quarter of the year.

Its economy shrank by the same amount in the last quarter of 2012. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

France has record unemployment and low business and consumer confidence.

...

France entered its worst recession since World War II in 2009. Although it was thought to have been in recession in 2012, these figures have now been revised to show only one quarter of negative growth.

The news comes on the first anniversary of Francois Hollande being sworn in as president.

Earlier this month, the European Commission warned that France would enter recession this year and said the eurozone's economy would shrink by 0.4%.

...

In France, the rate of unemployment is running at 10.6% and is forecast to rise further next year.

Its deficit is also expected to rise sharply, the commission says, to 3.9% of GDP - well above the EU deficit target of 3%.

But French unemployment is below the eurozone average, which was 11.4% in 2012 and is expected to hit an average of 12.2% this year. In both Greece and Spain, it is expected to peak at 27%.

The German growth figure was far weaker than expected. Economists had expected to see growth of 0.3%'

So in 2012 Ed Miliband supported Mr Hollande's policies as a way out of the economic crisis and as being better than George Osborne's so called austerity plan. How about now that France has gone back into recession whilst the UK has not? Perhaps the BBC could ask Ed Miliband or the unusually shy Ed Balls that question, perhaps not!

Ed Balls: Labour ran a structural deficit in 2007 - Telegraph

When you hear the Labour party or it's propaganda arm, the BBC claiming that the last Labour government was running a prudent economic policy and was only blown off course by the 2008. banking crisis, remember that:

'Ed Balls has admitted that the Labour government was spending more than it raised in taxes even before the financial crisis began.

Under pressure from the BBC's Andrew Neil, the shadow chancellor conceded that the UK had a structural deficit at the end of the "boom years" running up to 2007/8.

A structural deficit is a gap between tax revenues and spending that is not addressed by normal economic growth, and can only be filled by tax rises or spending cuts.'

More here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9633508/Ed-Balls-Labour-ran-a-structural-deficit-in-2007.html

More on Ed Balls from 2010

So who do you believe, Ed Balls or everyone else?

There is nothing I can add

Fraser Nelson's piece in The Telegraph is a must read. It contains all that the Labour/BBC alliance are desperately trying to keep hidden from the British public. Do read the whole article, here's a few excerpts:

'No matter what Balls’s title may have been over the 13 years of Labour’s government, his main job was as Gordon Brown’s de facto chief adviser. Together they bear more responsibility for the crash than perhaps any two people in Britain. They personally designed the regulation system which failed so spectacularly. They reprogrammed the Bank of England only to worry about inflation, rendering it blind to the massive asset bubble. They came up with the “golden rule”, which saw Britain’s debt rising massively even in the boom years. And while Brown paid the price at the ballot box, Balls had thought he’d got away with it. ... The fractured Brown/Balls regulation system had left massive gaps, which allowed the Libor crisis to emerge. And worse: London, in fact, became the Wild West of global banking. While Brown and Balls would lose no opportunity to say that the crisis “started in America”, the Americans are now beginning to wonder whether London was, in fact, the source of contagion. Just last month Carolyn Maloney, a New York congresswoman, asked why “all the problems appeared in London”. AIG, Lehman and UBS are all foreign-owned banks, she said, but it was in their London divisions that the rot set in. Why? And she might have added: why is there no equivalent of the Libor crisis elsewhere? The answer is that Brown’s regulators had, in effect, backed off from the banks – at least in terms of their dealings with each other. The Financial Services Authority fretted about life assurance policies, not people buying life insurance companies. When Howard Davies was appointed to the FSA, Mervyn King, now Bank of England governor, told a friend: “Howard will get so bogged down with regulating ISAs that he’ll miss something.” So it was to prove. The FSA took a caveat emptor approach to the bank’s dealings: let the buyer beware, and these men in pinstripes could do what they liked with each other. “With Libor, the feeling was that these were grown men, quite capable of dealing with each other,” one senior regulator tells me. This is why the Libor, the average of the rate at which banks lend to each other, was unregulated – and, therefore, wide open to manipulation. Now, it is seen as a matter of great outrage that traders were fiddling the figures. But then, it was seen as part of the rough-and-tumble of everyday life. During the parliamentary investigation, it may emerge that the Bank of England knew that Libor was corruptible, and did nothing about it. Its officials, too, believed they had found a magic formula in the City, where the banks were given freedom and profits churned in. Throughout all of this, Balls was widely credited for what Brown called a “golden age” for the City of London. Even when he was Children’s Minister, the City would take his word as gospel. He was seen as the real architect of this strange new deal where Britain had become what can, in retrospect, be seen as a bankocracy. For a while, bankers even wrote government policy. The late Sir Derek Wanless (NatWest) conducted the NHS review and Sandy Leitch (Zurich Financial Services) wrote the skills review. Labour did not just befriend the banks, it was – in effect – governing in coalition with them. This was corporatism, not capitalism.'

That's it, no more blogging from me todayu. I am tired of fighting against forces more powerful than I who set the agenda in the interests of their friends and allies and trample over freedom.

Now do you see why the BBC are relentlesly attacking Bob Diamond?

From today's Metro newspaper

To quote Kevin Keegan "I would love it" if Ed Balls went down for his part in this affair, should he have had a part of course. The trouble is Blair, Brown, Mandelson, Balls et al are so slippery that nothing ever sticks.

Ed Balls talks balls

Fraser Nelson in The Spectator explains.

Alistair Darling confirms that Ed Balls and others are telling the truth when they state that there was no plot to replace Tony Blair with Gordon Brown

"It would be wrong to claim that there was a plot to get rid of Tony Blair; there was no plot. A plot is secret. This was an open campaign, and as far as the Brownite cabal were concerned, you were with them or against them. It was a fairly brutal regime, and many of us fell foul of it."

I'm glad he's made that clear. I can't see that quotation being reported on the BBC though, I wonder why...

The truth about the UK's level of debt

Gordon Brown hid it, Ed Balls still denies it and Ed Miliband is too busy jumping on bandwagons to address it but this week the true level of UK debt will be revealed when on Wednesday the Treasury will publish national accounts drawn up on the same basis as listed companies. So for the first time we will see official figures as to the amount of national debts were hidden from the public during the Brown Balls era. We will see the future liabilities of accrued pension rights for public sector workers and the future costs of private PFI projects, as well as the liabilities for Northern Rock, rescued to save jobs in Labour constituencies.

The figures will not be pretty, and they may tell us nothing that those interested in the subject do not already know, but they will show Gordon Brown and Ed Balls up for the devious little f***ers that they were and are.

The one-hundred and thirty eighth weekly "No shit, Sherlock" award

This week's award is presented jointly to The Mail, Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair for combining to produce this line in today's Mail:

'Now, the latest volumes of Alastair Campbell’s diaries reveal that Mr Blair repeatedly told him that Mr Balls, now shadow Chancellor and then Mr Brown’s senior advisor, was a ‘highly disruptive influence’.

My cry of 'Ed Balls - a "highly disruptive influence" - "No Shit, Sherlock"' is only tempered by the fact that I usually take any statements made by Alastair Campbell and/or Tony Blair with more than a normal sized pinch of salt.

Monday morning catchup

The usual story, too many tabs and too little time:

1) Edmund Conway in The Telegraph argues that it would be best if Germany left the Euro rather than Greece. It's a point of view. What I wish is that the EU-fanatics who connived to let Greece enter the Euro, despite knowing that it's economic figures were fiddled to meet the convergence criteria, are  made to apologise for their stupidity.


2) Wake Up America has a story of education in the USA.


3) The Algemeiner has news of Yale, anti-Semitism and Jewish donors.


4) The New York Sun compares

'Two pulchritudinous ones... Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin.


5) HotAir discusses the coming ice-age, for more look here.


6) Guido Fawkes in The Guardian explains what he thinks happened at PMQs last week. For my take, read this.


7) Andrew Lilico at Conservative Home explains the 'Twenty things Westminster needs to know about Greece and its debts'; it's not a cheerful read.


8) Elder of Zion has some pictures that show the true state of Gaza; warning not for the faint-hearted.


9) Andrew Grice in The Independent thinks that Ed Miliband and Ed 'second choice' Balls are divided over apologising for over-spending. You will not be surprised to learn that Ed Balls does not want to apologise for anything.


10) Finally World Net Daily has a story of an odd twist on the Obama birth-certificate story.