Uncle Audley waxes lyrically about Public Enemy Number 1!

We had a family meal for Mother’s Day and Uncle Audley was present. Having enjoyed his meal and the wine and brandy afterwards he started to wax lyrically. 

 

“Who is public enemy no 1 in this country?  No prizes for putting Sir Fred Goodwin in the frame as the one most likely to.  Poor old Sir Fred must be reviled the length and breadth of the land.  Well, perhaps, not so much “poor”. 

 

He does make a convenient scapegoat, though, doesn’t he, least ways if you subscribe to the view that the current financial crisis is down to a few greedy American bankers with a bit of UK support.  We are a faithful ally not just in terms of the military. 

 

We should also ask a few more questions.  Who was it who recommended Fred for his Knighthood “for services to banking”?  Was Gordon Brown involved in this?  Sir Fred’s descent from hero to zero over four years or so has been pretty dramatic.  Perhaps, though, his services to banking were not quite so exemplary as people thought, though enough to dupe the best Chancellor over the last hundred years.  It looks like it. 

 

Sir Fred is not the only one getting a nice pension.  Gordon qualifies for a very tidy sum when the electorate finally eject him.  What is it?  £90,000 or so? 

 

Now you may not know it but the Government has put a block on the amount of pension fund the rest of us can build up.  It is frozen at £1.8million until 2015.  If a fund goes over that then there is a penal tax rate of 55% on the excess.  Do bear in mind we are talking about the value of the fund.  That fund has to be invested to generate the pension for you to take.  The annual pension is going to be an awful lot less. 

 

I believe Gordon is entitled to a pension fund of around £1.75million once he becomes an ex Prime Minister – not bad for what might prove to be less than three years work.  I think he will also get a useful supplement as a long term serving MP.  So how about Gordon giving back some of his pension in acknowledgement in his part in creating the crisis.  You might argue that Gordon is more culpable than Sir Fred.  Forget it.  Mr Prescott and Ms Harman are not going to leap into demand action.  Gordon, himself, is in self denial.  The Conservatives won’t do anything.  You can always be hoist on your own petard. 

 

I would not expect Sir Fred to give anything back.  He is a hard nosed Scottish banker.  There is as much chance as a hard nosed Scottish Prime Minister offering an apology for his part in the fiasco.” 

 

So is Uncle Audley correct – let him know your thoughts in the box below:

Uncle Audley says “it’s the (Global) Economy stupid!

Uncle Audley has been keenly following the credit crunch and recession, as you might well expect. You might know, from reading his comment that Uncle Audley has always been a fierce critic of Gordon Brown from day one. I was very surprised, then, to find that Uncle Audley seemed to be defending the “great Scotsman”.

“In fairness to Gordon Brown, I think he is right in saying that the current crisis is a global one. I think it might have been better for him if he did not keep continually stressing the point. People just think that he is playing the blame game and trying to shift any censure from what has happened away from himself. Thus, it may be a global recession, but it was made in America and therefore the fault of the US. What has happened over here in the UK, well that’s all down to the greedy bankers, including the ones Labour has given knighthoods to for their services to…er… banking (or was it for donating some of their bonuses to the cause?).

Let’s not dwell either on the failure of the regulatory system, introduced by Gordon, on its first test. It needs a global solution but Gordon has come forward with the blueprint for that to try and take all the credit. I could tolerate to all this but the only problem is you cannot have it both ways. In the late 90’s and early years of this decade, Brown kept trumpeting on about the success of the economy under his inspired stewardship. Our success was all down to him. He had banished boom and bust and you might be forgiven for thinking that it was done single handedly.

There was no credit given to Ken Clarke and his 4 years at the helm prior to Labour being in power. No UK Government has ever been given such a strong financial legacy in which to start their administration. Nor was the strength of the economy down to the power house US economy. This is despite the fact that any self respecting economist will say that the US economy is always the driver for the world economy.

You might well perhaps have attributed some of the success to the IT revolution and microchip technology which drove down costs. Well, you might have done but Gordon certainly didn’t.

Finally, one might have wondered whether the gradual emergence of the BRIC economies was a factor in establishing demand and helping our financial services industry, prosper. Gordon never acknowledged that any of these factors had any part to play in the well being of the UK in the 10 years or so he was Chancellor. The success was down to him and his prudent handling of the economy.

Well, I am sorry. You simply can’t have it both ways. If you want to take all the credit for success, even if your part in it was relatively minor, then you have to take the brick bats when something fails, even if it was not all your fault. Nevertheless, Brown will keep on repeating the mantra that it is a global crisis requiring global solutions in the hope that we eventually just accept this and forget that he deserves so much of the blame for what has gone on”.

So is Uncle Audley right? If you wish to comment please use the box below.

We are Tottenham: Super Tottenham

Last year it was joy, this year a tinge of sadness – but we did take Manchester United to penalties and kept a clean sheet over 120 minutes. True we rode our luck on occasions but then did their keeper not get the man of the match award? Chances were few but it was an enjoyable game to watch and one that was there to be won once we got our teeth into it.

As I’ve said before supporting Tottenham Hotspur is a rollercoaster ride and it is days like yesterday that make you scratch you head. If we played like that every week we would be in the upper reaches of the table and we would maybe not be desperate for Wilson Palacios to provide the tackles and midfield steel that we’ve been lacking. In our run up to last years final we tackled like tigers to beat Arsenal and approached Chelsea with similar vigour. Having won it we approached match after match as cocky world beaters and got shown the error of our ways week after week. Let’s hope this year we apply the effort and attitude we showed yesterday for the rest of the season to help get us out of trouble and up that Premier League table!