'I am doing everything I can' - apart from watching defamatory programmes before they are broadcast, that is.

This screen grab shows the BBC's problem regarding the Lord McAlpine defamation

George Entwistle is doing everything he can but George Entwistle also admits that he didn't see the Newsnight report, which led to Lord McAlpine being wrongly implicated in child sexual abuse, before it was broadcast. Somewhat too late George Entwistle says that the Newsnight film should not have been broadcast.

What gives me hope is the news that Lord McAlpine is seriously considering  taking legal action against the BBC:

'"Then we have to look at Newsnight and... the way in which they behaved, the way they trailed, they made it obvious who it was, or who they alleged it was by referring people to the internet."'

What happened seems fairly clear to me; the BBC and its Labour allies saw a way of taking attention away from the Jimmy Saville story and placing the spotlight onto the hated Tory party. Tom Watson raised the matter in the House of Commons during PMQs on 24 October:

"Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab): The evidence file used to convict paedophile Peter Righton, if it still exists, contains clear intelligence of a widespread paedophile ring. One of its members boasts of his links to a senior aide of a former Prime Minister, who says he could smuggle indecent images of children from abroad. The leads were not followed up, but if the file still exists I want to ensure that the Metropolitan police secure the evidence, re-examine it and investigate clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and No. 10."

The BBC took the story forward with its Newsnight programme, a programme that cast serious aspersions without every even showing the alleged victim any photos of the alleged culprit. Basic journalism you'd have thought, but not at the BBC.

When even The New Statesman and The Guardian can spot the problems with Tom Watson and the BBC's coverage, you know that the left have a problem.

John Redwood has a pretty good feel for the BBC/Labour motives:

'Some  Conservatives feel particularly unhappy about the way this has been treated. Of course the treatment of the wrongly accused is the worst feature, but they are not happy that in a fairly unsuccessful attempt to disguise his name the Conservative party was accused of harbouring a paedophile in the Thatcher era. Some Conservatives will ask why the unnamed person had to be described in this way. Would the BBC have said a senior figure of the Callaghan or Wilson era, if the dates had been different, or were they as often seems the case, out to attack Margaret Thatcher?  Would they have constantly repeated the word Labour, if the senior figure had been from that party, or sufficed themselves with a general word like politician? Why, in the North Wales abuse cases, did the BBC not constantly refer also to Clwyd Council, the  Council responsible for the childrens’   homes? Clwyd was certainly not a Conservative Council. Why did  they not add the Labour party label to a very nasty set of incidents if they thought the fact that it was a national Conservative government mattered? Why didn’t the unpublished Clwyd report into the abuse crisis become a matter of interest, as well as the wide  ranging enquiry ordered and published by Conservative Ministers?'

What is also interesting is that Tom Watson asked another question in the House of Commons recently,

Hansard 29 October:
'Mr Watson: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many files relating to the premiership of Sir Edward Heath (a) are retained by Government Departments and (b) have been transferred to the National Archives but have not yet been released under the 30 Year Rule. [124917]'

Anything you'd like to add Mr Watson?

A "No shit, Sherlock" from elsewhere

Interesting angle on this in the Sunday Express. They state that John Redwood has told Cameron that his Cabinet is "too pro-Europe". 'No shit, Sherlock!' there.

Thanks to last week's Sunday Paper review at Talking Clock for that spot.

Is that really pro-Europe though? I am pro-Europe, especially the French Riviera and much of Italy, but I am definitely anti-EU.

John Redwood is not impressed with the latest piece of Quantative Easing

John Redwood is not impressed with the latest piece of Quantative Easing

'How silly of me not to realise we could simply create £75 billion to sort out our problems.  Now we are told we can, maybe we should ask what we should do with the new money?

It seems such a pity just to go on buying government bonds with it. After all, taxpayers have £199 billion of them in the Bank already. They are not a lot of fun, and do not seem to do a lot of good. Once you have  got some, having more does not add a lot.

We could, for example, give every man, woman and child  in the country £1250 each to spend as they like. They could use it to pay off the credit card debt, or meet the tax bills on their petrol. It would help with the Council  Tax and the VAT. As the main problem over the last year has been the drop in  consumer spending, this would offer a way of boosting it. Funny how the authorities never want the punters to have any of the new money.

Or we could use the £75 billion to recapitalise the state owned banks. They could write off  their losses for that, and have a load of new capital to lend. That too could do a lot to promote recovery.

We could decide to spend it on a big capital programme. It would buy plenty of roads, railway capacity, energy supply and broadband access. We could all be given free shares in the projects and companies established with the money.

Or the government could just use the money to pay its bills direct, instead of going through the mechanics of buying in old government loans, and then issuing new ones to pay for the excess of spending over income.

Come to think of it, why don’t we always pay for public expenditure like that? Why do we go through the painful process of demanding tax revenue from people, when you could just print some more tenners? Is there a snag the MPC haven’t spotted yet? Why pause at £275 billion?

The Bank will have a nice tidy income from the gilts it buys in. The government could simply cancel all the bonds the Bank owns, to get its interest bill down. Come to think of it, why stop at just £275 billion for doing that? The more you   buy in and cancel , the less interest you have to pay.That would monetise the lot, and should prevent the deflation the Bank must fear.

Why do so many spoil sports and jeremiahs write in to this site to say this is a bad idea?  Does the Bank think there are any   limits to electronic money?

We are owed a proper explanation from the Bank of why they think printing money when inflation is already 5.2% is a good idea.  Just telling us yet again that inflation will fall and that we are in the midst of the worst crisis ever is not a sufficient argument for actions that savers will fear.

Maybe the Bank does  worry that the banking problems remain acute. If so, the right approach is to seek actions to create strong banks out of the weak banks that currently spook the system. We need honest money.

In the UK there is no substitute for sorting out RBS.'

I could not put it better myself, so I haven't.

This country's economy is heading for disaster and the 'Conservative led government' seems to be accelerating the process.

Ed Miliband programming issue (update)

Further to this and especially the video...


I have found the ITV interviewer's reaction, here is an extract:

'Ed Miliband thinks that the strikes are wrong at a time when negotiations are still underway. The government has acted in a reckless and provocative manner, but it is time for both sides to set aside the rhetoric and get around the negotiating table and stop this from happening again.


I know this because he told me six times. His PR must have known that was what he was going to do. And yet he still went through a convincing charade of pressing me on my line of interrogation, urging me to keep my questions brief, and even – this was a macabre touch – placing a voice recorder on the table beside me as a kind of warning not to try and misquote his boss.
As it turned out, the first take was drowned out by a passing siren on the Embankment, but seemed like a thoughtful and precise position for a Labour leader to take. Clear in his condemnation, hopeful of a negotiated settlement. Not partisan, but engaged. Detached, but not aloof.
The second time it seemed like a less original statement. The strikes are wrong… the rhetoric has gone too far… parents across the country…But then, I’d heard it before and it was useful to have a clean version, unspoiled by a siren.

The third time… the third time I was struggling a little bit. I’d asked him how his opposition to the strikes fitted with his position as leader of the Labour movement. I thought it was quite a clever question. Silly me. The strikes were wrong at a time when negotiations were still underway. The government had acted recklessly. It was time for rhetoric to be set aside.
Some reporters like to have their questions written on a piece of paper, and tick them off one by one as they are asked. It’s something I’ve never done, but at this moment I wished fervently that I had a piece of paper in my hand, just to give me something to look at, and scratch away thoughtfully just buy some time.
I asked another question. Something about Francis Maude, and his tone of conciliation. Not very good, I know, but the best I could manage. Get him to say something about Francis Maude, I was thinking… his hairstyle, his glasses, the way he peers over the top of them as he drones on, anything, just stop already with the strikes are wrong while negotiations are underway, and the rhetoric has got out of hand…
I’m not sure what I asked next. Frankly I was in danger of losing it. On my own, with the eyes of Ed Miliband and his three handlers boring into me but apparently oblivious of my presence, I was getting twinges of what I can only describe as existential doubt. So I said some words. And Ed told me that the strikes were wrong, and the rhetoric was out of hand, and both sides needed to sit down…
That was the worst one, I think.
If news reporters and cameras are only there to be used by politicians as recording devices for their scripted soundbites, at best that is a professional discourtesy. At worst, if we are not allowed to explore and examine a politician’s views, then politicians cease to be accountable in the most obvious way. So the fact that the unedited interview has found its way onto YouTube in all its absurdity, to be laughed at along with all the clips of cats falling off sofas, is perfectly proper.
Afterwards, I was overcome with a feeling of shame. I couldn’t look him in the eye.
But before I dried up completely, and had to be led out of Westminster with my mouth opening and shutting, I had an opportunity to ask one last question. I had an urge to say something so stupid, so flippant that he would either have to answer it, or get up and leave. `What is the world’s fastest fish?’ `Can your dog do tricks?’ `Which is your favourite dinosaur?’ But, of course, this was a pool interview, and I had no wish to feed out the end of my television career to Sky and the BBC.
I realise now, of course, the perfect question to ask, to embarrass him and to keep my job. I should have asked was whether the strikes were wrong, whether the rhetoric had got out of hand, and whether it was time for both sides to get round the negotiating table before it happened again.
Because that was the only answer I ever got.'

It sounds as though Damon Green has had an epiphany about Ed Miliband.

In a sane world the 2 minute 30 second piece of video would become as famous and often played on the BBC as was John Redwood's failure to know the Welsh National (Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau). I however confidently predict that, just as with the video of Gordon Brown picking his nose in the Chanmber of the House of Commons, this piece of video will not be mentioned on the News Quiz, played on Have I Got News For You or on any of the BBC 5Live 'satirical' weekend shows. So if the BBC and their Labour friends want this video to disappear, I think all bloggers should keep posting it and get the word out about the massive dork who 'leads' the Labour Party.

As an aside, I bet David Miliband has this piece of video downloaded and is playing it to everyone he knows...


As an aside you can get same great effects watching this video if you want. Watch it to the end then replay it. Now try pressing and holding the number 3 on your keyboard down..... great isn't it? Now try the same with the number 8 - Ed Miliband is Ed 'Blinky' Balls reincarnated!

The BBC and verbal slips

When George W. Bush made a verbal slip or John Redwood failed to know the words of the Welsh national anthem, the result was BBC headlines and years of jokey references on topical news quizzes. When Barack Obama fails to remember how many states there are in the United States, when Alan Johnson reveals he doesn't know what the rate of employers NIc is or when Ed Miliband is somewhat economical with the truth during a BBC interview... as little attention as possible.

Is there any reason other than bias that you can think of?

Gordon Brown as sharp as ever, the BBC as biased as ever

That great historian and ex-Prime Minister (that feels so good to say that I will say it again EX Prime Minister) Gordon Brown once again shows how sharp his mind is as he confuses thousands of years with hundreds and then repeats his mistake. Just a quick history lesson for the idiot who managed to do more damage to the UK than any man that I can think of - The Royal Navy may be called the 'Senior Service' but it is not thousands of years old. There was a reasonably large English navy pre the Norman conquest but the Navy Royal was not created until the 16th century and it was not until the Acts of Union in 1707 that the three-ship Royal Scots Navy merged with the English navy to create a British Royal Navy. There you go Gordon, better now?

Of course if a Conservative politician had made such a mistake it would be headline news on the BBC but as it is Gordon, not a word. Just as with Gordon Brown's 'Obama beach' and Barack Obama's 's8 States' the BBC ignores comments that would make its political heroes look or sound bad but will endlessly repeat the mistakes of George W. Bush and Sarah Palin. The best test of this is to compare the number of times that the BBC has played the tape of John Redwood's non-singing of the Welsh National anthem and the number of times it has shown the tape of Gordon Brown picking his nose. As I have never seen the latter on the BBC and I have spoken to people recently who did not believe such a thing even happened...





Thanks to 'Martin' on Biased-BBC for the video spot.

Is the UK a 'soft option'?

Why do so many people want to come to the UK, is it our climate, the friendly welcome and sense of humour or the benefits?

John Redwood has a thoughtful piece regarding Nick Boles’s “Which Way’s Up” and pays special regard to the chapter on Immigration. Here's a long extract from John Redwood's article, please read it all and think about it before commenting:

' Then I came to passages on equality. He takes the argument often used by the left that societies like Sweden and Japan are happier ones because they have greater income equality. He suggest instead that these societies are happier because they are more homogeneous, allowing far less inward migration than the UK has experienced in recent years.

Warming to his theme, he devotes a whole chapter to making a series of very radical and contentious proposals on immigration. His critique states that 70% of the new jobs have gone to workers born overseas since 1997. He says:

“We will not be able to sustain a social contract in which schooling and healthcare are provided to all citizens free of charge and are funded by taxation if we continue to allow, every year, hundreds of thousands of people from around the world to join the queues at A and E and send their children to British schools. Nor can we sit back while eight million British citizens of working age are either shun or shut out from all forms of useful economic activity because employers can find migrant workers who will accept subsidence wages to do menial jobs”

There is a raw edge and anger in his language, backed by figures higher than the official ones. His remedies are equally contentious:

“Britain needs a new immigration settlement, involving tighter controls on the number of people who can move into the UK every year (from both inside and outside the EU), greater selectiveness about who is allowed to settle here, tougher financial demands on new immigrants and those who want to employ them, more robust measures to remove those who break our laws, and more intensive efforts to ensure that all those who do settle in Britain adopt British values and become part of a truly united kingdom.”

So what does he propose?

1. A cap on the numbers of non EU migrants each year of up to 20,000 to 50,000 – putting a number on stated Coalition policy.
2. Requiring a surety deposit from all non EU migrants. This would be repaid after they had paid taxes here for a number of years, or forfeited if they committed an offence or lived here without paying income tax.
3. For EU migrants the UK should enforce the Directive which only requires a member state to allow free movement for the purpose of residence supported by work income or independent means. “Whenever a migrant from within the EU applies to a central or local government authority for benefits or housing or part of the NHS for non emergency healthcare, that authority should be required to check whether the individual in question has a job or sufficient funds to support themselves in the Uk. If they don’t, they should be told to leave the country…”
4. No-one should be eligible for social housing until they lived here for five years.

'

So what do you think? Immigration is a very sensitive subject and one that tends to cause me problems from commentators, but it is important...

The economics of cuts in the real world

'Many of our leading retailers regularly cut costs by at least 2% a year. They do not do so by announcing the closure of the bread department, or by failing to stock milk and butter anymore. They do so by working away at doing more for less. The managers and staff do not parade difficult choices over which costs to cut in our daily newspapers. They know they are all in it together. '

John Redwood on the reality behind defence cuts. At last some sense spoken on the government's cuts.

Those 'cuts'

In the 1980s I remember as a 6th Form Economics scholar complaining every time someone attacked the Tory Cuts, that they weren't cuts just reductions in planned increases. It was a point that the Conservatives didn't seem to try too hard to make and that the BBC would not allow to be made anyway. So I was not surprised to read John Redwood explain that:

' According to this year’s budget plans, public current spending will rise from £600.6 billion in 2009-10, the last Labour year, to £692.7 billion in 2014-15, the last planned year of the Coalition government in this Parliament. That’s a rise of £92.7 billion, or more than 15%: a rise of £1500 for every man,woman and child in the UK.

Total spending including capital will rise from £669.3 billion in 2009-10 to £737.5 billion, a rise of £68.2 billion. This shows that capital spending will be cut, according to the plans inherited from the last Labour government which the Coalition government has accepted.'

History would appear to repeating itself and John Redwood made that point on Newsnight last night when he apparently:

'flummoxed Kirsty Walk when he said that the government was not cutting public expenditure. She didn’t really know where to go with her line of questioning since it was so off her script. The BBC weltanschauung is that we will soon be seeing massive and terrible cuts in government spending which will provide endless material of the grinding down the poor and vulnerable kind for them.'

'Gis us a job' - John Redwood and his commenters have some good points about CVs and job seekers

John Redwood and his commenters make some points along the lines that I have made before, most recently here.

The cabinet

Predicting the cabinet that will presumably be announced tomorrow is a fun game and one that Mrs NotaSheep and I were playing around with yesterday evening - it's all fun and games in this house!

Mrs NotaSheep peaked early by predicting Nick Clegg as Deputy PM and then losing interest in the process.

My predictions I blogged earlier today:

'Vince Cable as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, a senior LibDem getting Foreign Secretary and a couple of minor positions - any more than that and David Cameron has given too much away/Nick Clegg has negotiated very well. I presume that Chancellor and Home Secretary will be Conservative positions, maybe with David Davis as Home Secretary. Ken Clarke is one problem, will he be happy with staying at Business and not having an expanded portfolio as a number 1.5 to George Osborne? Mind you he will be happy to have some more Europhiles in the government. William Hague also loses his non-official deputy Prime Minister spot, what will he require to placate him?'

At home last night I had predicted/hoped/feared Ken Clarke to be Chancellor of the Exchequer rather than George Osborne but I wasn't sure that David Cameron would be strong enough to move his friend down a rung and I am still not. However Ken Clarke as Chancellor would have the big advantage of being able to remind the Labour party of the contrast between the golden economic legacy he left them in 1997 and the economic mess Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have left him in return. Of course he is an irredeemable Europhile but that might help cement relations with the Lib Dems, although that will upset the likes of John Redwood and me. With Ken Clarke as Chancellor and Vince Clarke as Chief Secretary then that does mean George Osborne as Business Secretary. It'll be an odd team and what will happen to Philip Hammond, whose star had been rising? But then again it's stronger than Alistair Darling, Peter Mandelson and Liam Byrne.

Tomorrow we will know the answers...

What's sauce for John Redwood should be sauce for Gordon Brown

Beeb Bias Craig reminds me that the BBC do like to bring up John Redwoods failure to know the Welsh National (Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau). Oddly they seem less keen to show the video of Gordon Brown picking his nose in the Chanmber of the House of Commons, I am not so reticent...

Where did the UK stimulus money go?

John Redwood and his commenters have the answers, and it's not a pretty sight:

" Since 2005 the government has doubled central government borrowing (on its own understated figures ) from £469 billion to £922 billion – an injection of £452 billion.

Since 2004-5 money supply (M4) has surged from £1,212 billion (£1.2tn) to £2,100bn (£2.1 tn) – it has also almost doubled. Notes and coin have gone up from £42 billion to £55 billion.

And what has happened to real output? It is almost the same in Q4 2009 as it was in Q3 2005! No growth at all for 5 years.

So where did all the stimulus go? Much of the public borrowing went on inefficiencies and on imports. Some of the extra money went into price inflation, and some is just circulating less rapidly now, given the poor state of the banks and the new regulatory toughness. "


# Marcelluson 28 Jan 2010 at 4:30 pm

Everyone is warning that an immediate recovery is unlikely, possibly for years.

However, Labour and their BBC robots are currently saying that it is vital not to cut spending now as that would harm the recovery.

This is merely a typically deceitful Labour trap to catch the Tories. They are planning ahead. It is to give Labour a bullet proof attack narrative against an incoming Tory government

If the spending cuts that everyone says are essential are indeed made by the Tories and the economy does not surge ahead immediately – the Labour-BBC machine will say that the economy is not growing BECAUSE of “Tory cuts”.

Their attack along these lines will go on for years and years.

I hope the Tories are aware of what Labour are doing, and prepare NOW to counter it.

John Redwood’s argument in this excellent post is the basis of the defence against that deceitful argument."

Climate Change roundup

1. The Times reports that (my emphasis):

"SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

...

In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.” "

How convenient, just the adjusted data remains, the data that their models say is more accurate than the original data?


2. The Telegraph's Christopher Booker discusses where we are with this story and what aspects concern him the most and it is this passage that the "warmists" need to address before they come on my blog bleating about science:

"But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.

In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.

What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results. "

3. John Redwood explains the different strands of thought that non-warmists fall into - Global warming sceptics, People who do not believe that man made carbon causes warming, Lawsonists and Pragmatists. Have a read, unless you are so wedded to the religion of "warmism" that to read anything contrary to your beliefs is taboo.

Unblocking the credit blockage

Take a watch of Thursday's Newsnight and see how you feel it goes. Angela Eagle for the Labour "government" complete with stock phrases and digs at Conservative "cuts", Vince Cable for the Lib Dems and the BBC world view and John Redwood for the Conservatives and common-sense. Oh and I nearly forgot the Labour insider Kirsty Wark on-hand to see "fair play".

John Redwood does his best despite being heavily outnumbered and comes over far better and convincing than George Osborne. Here is John Redwood's take on the interview. Angela Eagle seems, understandably, not to have alerted her constituents to her Newsnight appearance. Vince Cable hasn't mentioned his appearance either, but since he is hardly off the BBC I suppose mentioning every appearance might seem excessive.

Maybe John Redwood could become Shadow Chancellor and George Osborne something more suited to his TV-unfriendly "toff" image in a pre-election Conservative re-shuffle.

John Redwood versus Derek Draper

Take a listen here but thanks to University of Manchester Conservative Future here's a partial transcript from the Kevin Nolan show:

" Nolan: Derek Draper, the former New Labour spin-doctor, now a psychologist as well as a blogger with us tonight as well. Hello to you Derek.

Draper: Hello

Nolan: Lots of these leaders getting a good kicking today, thankfully not literally, by the critics who are saying “how on earth did they allow this to happen”, with up to 35,000 people on the street protesting against them today. Derek, what signal does that send out to those leaders?

Draper: Well, were the people really protesting against the G20? I don’t think so, I think they were protesting about the fact that the economy isn’t doing well and they want it to do better. The whole point is that that is what the G20 is designed to do. It’s designed to get the global economy moving. What does that matter? Because at the end of the day, that’s what’s going to protect jobs and allow people to keep their homes here in Britain.

Nolan: What a terrible job the G20 have done so far then.

Draper: Well, of course they haven’t done a terrible job so far, because they haven’t started yet. What you’re seeing so far is a series of meetings and negotiations and visits and Gordon flying round the world working like a dog to try and set up the situation where when all these world leaders arrive in Britain this week, they will actually be able to make some progress. There’s no magic wand, there’s no miracle cure. This is about really hard work, trying to get the world economy back on track.

Redwood: Why didn’t they take action earlier to tackle these things? I was calling for interest rate cuts over a year ago, when they might have had some kind of beneficial impact by now, why were they so slow, why were they asleep at the wheel?

Draper: There’s been a series of interest rate cuts…
Redwood: Yes, but far too late.
Draper: …I know, but listen. You’re talking as if we’re still in the old world. The fact is that because of the American banking collapse, especially Lehmann brothers, we have a knock-on effect around the world. And that’s something noone was prepared for…

Redwood: Northern Rock was a British bank lending money to British people under a British regulator and they got it comprehensively wrong. And they were warned by people like me not to get it wrong.

Draper: Yeah, well, the British banks, I’m not saying the British banks were perfect. What I’m saying is that the great shock to the system came from America. Now, what Gordon Brown’s been trying to do is to deal with that. And the British banks that are acting personally, I think that people were losing their deposits, losing their money, their life savings they have in Northern Rock and indeed Lloyds TSB, that didn’t happen…

Redwood: But why did the British government allow these mega mergers, creating these massive banks with these huge bonuses that then lost so much money and came with a begging bowl to the state?

Draper: Well, because at the time people felt that bigger…might be better. People thought that there was a strong financial system around the world that would keep these banks going, now we now know that there were actually hidden problems with these banks, especially Northern Rock, but it was in America where these banks had done these subprime mortgages, that was where the real flaw in the system was…

Redwood: But we did subprime mortgages over here as well, Derek. Get real, that’s why people are so angry. Labour have been so complacent about this.

Draper: Well let’s not get party political, because it’s not as if the Conservative Party had been standing up and saying let’s have smaller banks and more regulation…
Redwood: It’s exactly what I was saying in my report a couple of years ago Derek, if you bothered to read it.
Draper: …the Conservative party has called for less regulation.

Redwood: We were calling for tighter regulation for cash and capital which were the things that went wrong. You introduced all this petty mortgage regulation which didn’t stop anything…
Draper: The notion that the Conservative Party were in favour of little details here and there…
Redwood: Try reading the report, Derek, it was crystal clear. We said that your broken Bank of England wouldn’t manage to sort things out.

Nolan: Surely if you listened to yourself tonight, Derek, you would thing that Labour weren’t in power while all of this happened? You’ve been in power for a long time and you’re blaming America.

Draper: Look, the fact is, that however much people try to make party political points about it, voters at home can see on their television screens, that this is a problem that is affecting America, Japan, Iceland, Germany, France, all countries around the world. So voters come to the conclusion that actually this is not in any way something that can be laid at Gordon Brown’s door. The fact is that this is a global problem that started in America, and that Gordon Brown has actually been doing a very good job. People accept this all around the world, from President Obama down, it’s not about apportioning blame, it’s about doing something about it and moving forward.

Nolan: So help me understand this about the G20 summit, Derek. What criteria can we use, as members of the public, to determine whether this meeting has been a success or not?

Draper: Well, the criteria will be, have these countries come together, set forward a path to increase the global regulation of banks more effectively, maybe coordinate their economies a little bit better, maybe refocus things a bit more onto those bread and butter issues about homes and jobs that people care about…but that’s a hard thing to do. It’s a bit like herding cats. But I must say that I’m really glad, and this is not just a party political point, I’m really glad that Gordon, the man who has actually got experience of the financial system and who has the contacts and knowledge to make this happen, is in charge of this rather than a bunch of lightweights like David Cameron and George Osborne.

Redwood: But look, this is the man who has presided over the collapse of four major British banks, something that’s never happened in…
Draper: Collapse?
Redwood: …before under any other government.
Draper: This is the man who has presided over the prevention of the collapse of those banks, don’t be so ridiculous.

Redwood: Well he was the chief regulator of them, he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer running a tripartite regulatory system…
Draper: Of course he wasn’t the regulator, the regulation was at arm’s length.
Redwood: ….Derek you have to let me speak occasionally. He was the tripartite head, he put in a new regulatory system, and for the first time in British history five major banks got into serious trouble, because the new regulation didn’t work.

Draper: And you really think that that’s because of the regulatory system, do you?

Redwood: Yes, of course it was. Because they didn’t control the cash and capital…
Draper: Really?
Redwood: …they allowed the banks to borrow and lend…
Draper: You don’t think that perhaps…
Nolan: Hang on, hang on, let him finish!
Redwood: …huge amounts of money in a way in which we didn’t allow them to do.

Draper: We…you didn’t the Conservatives?

Redwood: We kept much tighter control over them in the 80s and 90s and…
Draper: Did you?
Redwood: …and they didn’t go bust on our watch…
Draper: I thought you were in charge of the big bang in the city of London, I thought you were in charge of this massive booming financial system? Look, the rest….
Redwood: We stopped the banks borrowing and lending on the scale they did in the last 10 years…
Draper: You’re interrupting me now. The idea, that the Conservatives were in favour, during this time, of more regulation, of more caution, of less remuneration of the city, is frankly fantastical. It just doesn’t bear a moment’s scrutiny.

Redwood: Well Derek you should read Hansard, you should read the reports we raised…
Nolan: Ok
Draper: Your report said there should be less regulation of the mortgage industry.

Redwood: It said there should be tougher regulation of cash and capital and that the process regulation of mortgages…
Draper: What did it say about mortgages…
Redwood: DEREK LISTEN for a minute, it said that the process regulation of mortgages wouldn’t work, never has there been so much regulation of mortgages, and never has there been such a mess. What we said was that you need to regulate cash and capital which is what would have controlled the banks, which is what we did in the 80s and 90s, which is why they didn’t go bust on our watch.

Draper: Did it say that there should be less or more regulation of the mortgage market?

Redwood: It said there should be less regulation, but that you should regulate the thing that matters, the thing that stops banks going bust. This is a bank going bust problem, Derek, not a mortgage process problem.

Nolan: OK, thanks very much"

Compare and contrast

The BBC are still refusing to show the Daniel Hannan attack on Gordon Brown but are more than happy to show a minute or so of the Labour video which ridicules Conservatives John Redwood and Nick Bourne, and Plaid Cymru leader Ieuan Wyn Jones.

What's the difference, apart from one being a video seen by over a million people on You Tube and the other one being doomed to disappear the main difference is that one is a Labour video and ridicules John Redwood (a Labour and BBC bogeyman), whilst the other ridicules Gordon Brown (the Labour leader and BBC pin-up).


Since the BBC won't show the Daniel Hannan video, I will...

and here is Gordon Brown showing that he can listen to a speech without grinning like an imbecile...

Mind you it seems he can only do this if he picks his nose in public

John Redwood on quantative easing and government decision making

John Redwood making sense as usual.

Gordon Brown and his problems with mathematics

Back in 2007 Gordon Brown said that

"I did maths at school and for one year at university but I don't think I was ever very good at it - and some people would say it shows."

Today at PMQs Gordon Brown said that the typical family would be £5 a week better off "that's £275 a year". The last time I checked, 5 x 52 was 260, but what do I know.

The BBC manage not to refer to this obvious mistake, preferring on their "The Full Story: PM's Questions" page the dry

"1212 Mr Brown defends the VAT cut, saying it gives the typical family an extra £5 a week to spend."

Are the BBC unaware that 5 x 52 does not equal 275? Do they have nobody who can multiply a two digit number by 5 working there? Or are they trying to protect the Prime Minister from ridicule?


Ask yourself this, if a similar error had been made by Margaret Thatcher or John Major when they were Prime Minister or by any subsequent leader or shadow Chancellor, do you think the BBC would have played the clip over and over and over again for years.


So will the BBC correct the page or will Hansard be "corrected" to show what Gordon Brown "meant" to say? We will know what Hansard has done when it comes out online tomorrow morning.


Just as with the media's endless repetition of George W. Bush's misspeaking whilst conveniently ignoring Barack Obama's claim to have visited "57 states" with "one left to go"



as well as ignoring his other documented errors. The media choose a "narrative" and indeed a favourite and ignore any other evidence to the contrary.

It was the same with John Redwood, the BBC destroyed him with the endless replaying of him failing to song along with Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau and associating him with looking like an alien, whilst they seem unwilling to show the video of Gordon Brown picking his nose and eating the results (and cleaning his fingers on his tie) whilst Tony Blair answers PMQs, why the lack of balance?

Here's the video of Gordon Brown picking his nose.




I promise that, when the BBC can prove to me that they have played this video as many times as they have played the video of John Redwood not knowing the Welsh National Anthem, I will post the John Redwood video here as well.




UPDATE: It appears that my hearing let me down; I thought Gordon Brown said £370, whereas in fact I am told he said £275. Still can't multiply correctly though.

Fire up the printing presses (update 2)

John Redwood's thoughts on this matter are well worth a read.