Pre-Budget Report: Darling Brings Us In From The Arctic Monkeys
CAN Britons civil servants and public sector workers buy enough HD-ready televisions to bring the country back from the gaping maw of depression?
Gordon Brown says yes, adding:
“With any luck a pre-budget report will provide more work for the key public sector demographic. If it works, we’ll be looking to introduce a pre-pre budget report and push on from there to a concerted pre-pre-pre budget report and, paper willing, a pre-pre-pre-pre budget report.”
The Telegraph leads with news of the “Middle-class tax time bomb” and a cartoon of Alistair Darling as the economic terrorist passing a huge bomb to a grey-haired woman labeled 2009. To her left is 2010 and to her side 2011. Beyond that there is nothing.
In 2012 everyone is trying to win gold for Britain in the Olympics and fill their teeth. The credit crunch is good for British sport and the causes of British sport.
“BROWN GOES FOR BROKE,” yells the Indy. And Brown seems to have Broke well within his grasp. Not for Brown a footnote in history as the whathisname Prime Minister who never won an election. Brown will leave an indelible red smudge on the ledgers.
Briton is going “Into The Red,” says the Times, a fact illustrated by Brown waving the Pound And Sickle flag of socialism.
Middle Brian is being “bashed” says the Express.
But hope is not lost, because there on the paper’s cover is the prize, the sign that all will be well, that all is well: “WIN A 42 INCH HD TV.”
Win that and it will be like the credit crunch never happened. It will like the good old days before Brown and Alistair Darling – the man who one ran the trains who now runs the economy! – never issued their pre-budget report.
Says one middle-class voice:
“I’ve been reading about the credit crunch but had little experience of it. But now, thanks to Darling I can really live it out and feel part of things.”
Says Gordon Grown: “Now I’ve done my bit, go get ‘em John ‘Baby P’ Sergeant, it’ll be a cold day in the Arctic Monkeys before we give up!”
Posted: 25th, November 2008 | In: Key Posts, Money Comments (7) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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November 25th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Anorak asked:
‘Does anyone understand any of it?’
Yes.
But I’m not sure that understanding it is of much help. Try an analogy; I’m feeling wonderful, because I am on a high dose of steroids. Whilst feeling wonderful is, of course, wonderful, I am also aware that high doses of steroids carry a hefty penalty in terms of unwanted effects.
That future penalty is inevitable though variable, but not taking the steroids would have a much higher penalty now; this way at least I’m alive to worry about the future penalty.
The global financial markets drank the Koolaid of securitisation; it originated in the US some thirty years ago, spread first to the UK and then on to a varying extent in other countries. The Savings and Loans debacle should have prompted any rational legislator, and any rational regulator, to repeal the legislation enacted at Salomon Brothers’ behest to make the securitisation of mortgages legal. But it didn’t and the consequences are what you see around you.
The Japanese, who actually have some money, are the people arguing from their bitter experience in the 90’s that governments should do what Brown and England’s Darling are attempting to do, and not do what the Japanese, aided and abetted by the IMF, did do in the 90’s.
They might be wrong; there might be an excluded middle which no-one has thought of; but I’m reminded of the cartoon of the Tommy in the trenches in the Great War:
“If you can find a better hole, you go to it”
At the moment no-one seems to have found one…
November 25th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Are we meant to understand it?
I think its all bluff, double bluff and treat us like mushrooms and hoping we’ll go away and stop asking impertinent questions such as why are bankers being bailed out and why if they need bailing out why the f*ck are they being paid huge bonuses.
Ok, they are cutting income tax and bunging up tax on all essential consumables, wait for March and the sodding rates demand, and then the annual round of ‘keep it below inflation’ pay awards, unless you are a banker or politician in which case a bottomless pit of dosh is yours as and when.
We need a new desktop, and I want a new camera, just waiting til after Xmas…..
November 25th, 2008 at 11:52 am
well I don’t. as I’ve said before, in the old days the ’sum’ on Anorak used to fool me sometimes.
November 25th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Does anyone understand any of it?
November 25th, 2008 at 10:22 am
I can never raise enthusiasm for budgets and finacial wheelings… its a done deal after all, we have no say, and never will, on how they do the stupid things they do.
However my own judgement bothers me a little,,,,, Only I could buy a new car the day BEFORE the announcement of VAT reduction! Now you all know why I’m not rich!
November 25th, 2008 at 9:30 am
If you’re going to lose an election at least lose in style
November 25th, 2008 at 9:08 am
Thats the ticket increase national debt to quadzillions, why stick at trillions?