UKHamlet's Blog

Prof Joseph Stiglitz says Osbourne has it wrong

The first human casualties of our wonderful government’s war on the deficit have come to my attention. Alison is a friend, she’s the mother of two small children, and a woman whose husband “took one for the company” last year and reduced his hours by 25%. They are the parents in a family who can just about get by, and they have been told her civil service job will not exist in the near future, not because it’s not a necessary job, but because she’s been sacrificed to the ideology of neo-liberal economics.

Think of the country as a work horse. You need it to work hard to help you pay off your debts, so would your first action be to cut its food? That’s what Cameron, Osbourne and Clegg are doing to the economy.

You may have heard of Professor Joseph Stiglitz – he’s the Nobel laureate economist who correctly predicted the global crash. He’s distinctly unimpressed with Osbourne’s budget. This, he predicts, will make Britain’s recovery from recession longer, slower and harder than it needs to be. The rise in VAT could even tip us into a double-dip recession. He took time to offer George Osbourne a bit of advice – which will probably go unheeded, because Osbourne’s objectives aren’t necessarily to improve the economy. They are an ideological attack on the state, with the intention of shrinking it by forty percent.

Continue reading

Beryl Bainbridge

Beryl Margaret Bainbridge was, my favourite English language writer from the second half of the Twentieth Century. Although the great and the good (The Times greatest British writers since 1945) have her at number twenty-six behind such luminaries as Muriel Spark, Martin Amis and Penelope Fitzgerald. Ah well, so much for the great and the good.

Her creative period extends from 1967 to 2005 and includes eighteen novels, four non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories.  She also wrote the screenplay of her novel “Sweet William”. Perhaps she kept the best until last: her final novel, published in 2001: “According to Queeney” is a masterpiece and worth its place on the bookshelf of any discerning reader. A fictionalised account of the life of Samuel Johnson through the eyes of Queeney Thrale, eldest daughter of Henry and Hester Thrale, it received wide acclaim throughout the literary world.

Although nominated five times for the Booker, she never won the award, but collected the Whitbread twice and is rightfully described as a national treasure.

She died from cancer aged 75 on 2^nd July 2010. I will miss her words.

Irrespective of where you stand in this dispute, I’m sure you’ll agree that what BA’s management are doing will have a deleterious effect on industrial relations. To have a ballot where 81% of those participating voted in favour of strike action overturned on the technicality that the Union had not sufficiently publicised the BREAKDOWN of the votes, is a real slap in the face of the whole democratic process.

Continue reading

Don't let this man ruin everything

This Labour government has been pretty bad, but it could be worse. David Cameron wants to cut the deficit quickly. That sounds good, but what it means is – taking money out of the economy. It may be borrowed money, but it’s money that’s keeping our shops and garages and bakers and electricians and plumbers and cafés and newsagents and every other kind of small business afloat. It’s money that’s keeping our economy alive.

Not only do the Conservatives want to cut the deficit by restricting the amount of borrowing, they want to pay it back quickly. That sounds good too, until you realise it means an increase in VAT. They have form in this respect. When Labour warned that Mrs Thatcher would double VAT, everyone laughed. She increased it from 8 to 15% – not quite double, it wasn’t until later that they increased it to 17.5%. Now the figures are saying that they’ll have to increase it to 20% now and 25% later. This will kill the retail economy. Worse than that it will savagely cut your income. For every £10 you have, two pounds fifty will be taken from you. A quarter of everything you earn ON TOP OF INCOME TAX. It would not surprise me to see it introduced on food…

Yep, this Labour government has been pretty bad, but it could be worse. Much worse. I’m a businessman, I’m the Managing Director of three companies and I’m voting Labour.

The Letter from Gordon Brown in which he mis-spells the name of Guardsman Jamie Janes

Gordon Brown has telephoned the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan to apologise after apparently misspelling his name in a letter of sympathy.

Guardsman Jamie Janes, 20, from Brighton, East Sussex, was killed in an explosion in October. His mother Jacqui called the letter a “hastily scrawled insult”, but Mr Brown said he was sorry “for any unintended mistake”, adding that his writing could be “difficult to read”.

On the one hand we have a man who privately and personally expresses his sympathy and condolences to the bereaved parents, on the other hand we have a women who has lost her son and is brimming with indignant anger. I can see no wrong on either side here.

Continue reading