Owner: Gordon Clown URL:http://www.gordonclown.com/ Join Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:23:59 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: The disturbing truth behind Britain's 'economic miracle', and its architect Gordon Brown Site statistics:Click here
Gordon’s Open Market HomeBuy Scheme A Complete Failure 2007-02-26 14:56:53 It seems that Gordon
’s plans to help first time buyers onto the housing “ladder” have been met with total and abject failure, after the Telegraph revealed today that only 100 buyers have taken up the offer of the key workers scheme. The Government had targeted 6,500 completions a year, and yet has managed only a fraction of that since the scheme was launched over a year ago, in late 2005. Seems as though Gordon may be planning a rescue strategy in his Budget speech due on March 21st, although with the failure already there for all to see it’s hard to believe he can do much good to rescue the situation now. The article has more:
Just 100 first-time buyers have taken out mortgages under the Government’s pioneering shared-equity home ownership scheme with the private sector.
The Chancellor unveiled “Open Market
Homebuy” with much fanfare in late 2005, setting a target of using the partnership to lift 20,000 key workers onto the housing ladde Read more:Scheme
Front Page Pain For Gordon 2007-02-25 00:59:31 A couple of nasties for Gordon
have hit the front pages this week. The Times and the Telegraph brought us these headlines:
First of all, the Daily Telegraph gave us the frontpage seen on the right here, with the headline Brown losing his touch on the economy, say voters. The Telegraph/YouGov poll is the second bad result in two days for Gordon, following on from the Guardian/ICM poll the day before that said he is currently completely failing to convince the country that he would make a better prime minister than David Cameron. The Telegraph gave these results in their article, also highlighting some of the problems that Gordon has run into lately:
Gordon Brown is losing his reputation for economic competence and failing to convince voters he would make a better prime minister than David Cameron, a Daily Telegraph-YouGov poll shows today.
The Conservatives are now seen as more likely than Labour to run the economy well — the most significant turnaround in the public’s Read more:Front
, Front Page
Gordon Getting Spanked In The Polls 2007-02-23 01:06:50 Not much of a happy 56th Birthday for Gordon
on Tuesday, as The Guardian reported that he is now trailing Cameron by 13 points in the latest opinion poll:
Gordon Brown is failing to persuade the public that he would make a better prime minister than David Cameron, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today which suggests the Conservatives could win a working majority at the next general election.
Voters give the Tories a clear 13-point lead when asked which party they would back in a likely contest between Mr Brown, Mr Cameron and Sir Menzies Campbell.
The result would give the party 42% of the vote against Labour on 29%, similar to its performance under Michael Foot in 1983. The Liberal Democrats would drop to 17%. The result is the highest that the Conservatives have scored in any ICM poll since July 1992, just after their last general election victory.
Pretty unhappy birthday all around for Gordon then. It is now just under a month to go until Gordon makes what will probably Read more:Polls
Debt, Debt and More Debt 2007-01-21 21:19:32 Unsurprisingly this weekend we were greeted with the news that the National Debt has now passed the £500bn mark. In a “miracle” economy whose foundations are built entirely upon debt, debt and more debt, the news that the country owes more money than ever before can hardly come as a shock to anyone. Gordon has slowly but surely sunk us further and further into the mire, and it’s now anyone’s guess as to whether the house of cards can be supported long enough for him to make the switch nextdoor.
One of the gigantic pits in which our money appears to be gathering is the coffers of various Private Finance Initiative companies, who are seeing profits beyond their wildest dreams, just so Gordon can keep a bit of the countries mammoth debts off his balance-sheet.
One of the more recent symptoms of the whole spiral of debt beginning to unravel seems to have been the fact that even the grossly fudged CPI measure of inflation is hitting new heights, with the Office
Gordon Is To Blame 2007-01-13 17:44:42 While he desperately scrabbles around attempting to draw our attention elsewhere, a few home truths seem to be dawning on the general public about the true state of the british economy. The fact that a 0.25% rise in interest rates comes as a shock to people while inflation is way over it’s 2.0% target at 2.7% (and likely to climb even higher when figures are released on Tuesday), gives some picture of how foggy the general public conciousness continues to be on the subject of the economy.
This news, however, appears to be making at least some sit up and take notice, not least the Daily Telegraph, where we are reminded that any oncoming hardship is most likely to be all Gordon
’s fault:
With typical dishonesty, Gordon Brown’s apologists were quick to say that he would support the Bank of England’s aggressive (and, in my view, entirely correct) monetary policy in the interests of sound money. But this is a man whose borrowing addiction and spendah Read more:Blame
Gordon Drowns Us In Debt 2006-12-10 10:53:33 The Telegraph has an early christmas present for Gordon
, reminding us all of how hopelessly debt-ridden his economic miracle has become. Highlights include the following:
The truth is that the “Iron Chancellor” has long shown a cavalier attitude towards fiscal management. Year after year, his borrowing has turned out to be much higher than his forecasts. Last week’s PBR – less an economic statement than the latest staging post in a remorseless political campaign – was a classic Brown performance. Drunk on ambition, he did nothing to acknowledge the true scale of his liabilities, or the fact that his fiscal rules lie in tatters. Yet the man who presents himself as our next prime minister is living in a never-never land of debt.
It has become painfully clear just how wrong Gordon’s predictions on debt have actually been:
In his budget five years ago, the Chancellor said he would borrow a total of £28bn between 200
Gordon Wastes Millions Propping Up Housing Bubble 2006-10-04 14:35:06 The desperation of Gordon
to keep house prices rising and therefore keep the public borrowing was demonstrated again yesterday with the announcement of the Open Market HomeBuy scheme which has been designed to help key workers buy their first house. The possibility that the reason they cannot afford to buy a house in the traditional fashion lies with the vastly overinflated debt bubble that the UK finds itself in today has been all but ignored, and Gordon has decided instead that the best course of action is to continue inflating debt and waste £230 million in the process on a scheme which will only help around 20,000 people. The other obvious implication is that the salaries of teachers, nurses etc. determined largely by the government are set too low and eroded each year by pay rises linked to the massively fiddled inflation figures of CPI at roughly 2%, when the cost of living is increasing at a rate far far higher. The likelihood, as pointed out by the RICS, that assistance Read more:Housing
, Bubble
, Housing Bubble
Circus Comes To Town 2006-09-25 23:43:38 This week the Circus
is in town and the new Ringmaster opened proceedings today with a predictable speech, going down like meat in a butcher’s shop. Familiar promises on issues from education to the economy were trotted out, to an audiance of virtually unanimous favour. In a familiar mixture of magic, illusion and religion, Gordon set out a safe-bet plan which demonstrated that very little is likely to change under his leadership, and that the mistakes of the past have not been learned from and are highly liable to be repeated, let alone corrected. Fiddled figures on unemployment, recently pulled apart in the press, were bare facedly reiterated for the umpteenth time.
It has not been the best of times recently for Gordon, since the happy events of a few weeks ago that saw his predecessor virtually decapitated by his own party. Today’s speech may have gone some way to repairing the damage of press comments of the past few days, but how permanent the patching-up exerc
Gordon’s Honeymoon Period 2006-09-18 17:09:57 Recent political events make it look very likely that Gordon
will get his greatest wish within the next 12 months and accede to the throne of Number 10 Downing Street. Like most new Prime Ministers before him, Gordon will doubtless be expecting the privilege of a honeymoon period, in which the press lays off their customary day-by-day attacks on the incumbent PM for at least a few months while he gets his feet under the desk.
Evidence is steadily mounting, however, that this may not be the case for Gordon. In fact, now that it appears that the toppling of Blair is fully complete, the press seem to have already declared open season on our dear chancellor, racing to get the early punches in to soften him up. This recent Observer article, for example, can be summed up with the following verdicts on Gordon’s performance:
Tax and benefits: Good if you are on a low income or have children. Bad if you are on a high income or are childless.
Homes and Inheritance: Bad for homeowners, w Read more:Honeymoon
, Period
US Sneezes, Gordon Catches Cold 2006-09-03 04:32:20 The outlook for our friends across the pond appears to be looking bleaker by the day, as an economy fed by rampant house price inflation on a scale never seen before, and subsequent mortgage equity withdrawl, looks to be heading into reverse at a very rapid pace. What is surprising is not that the US housing market has popped after 17 consecutive rate rises by the Federal Reserve, but that the rapid U-turn in sentiment has been so widely reported by the British press, who have been well known to keep any bearish housing market stories under wraps in their bid to sell papers. Some commentators are drawing sinister conclusions as to what may be in store for the American people in general, should their recession prove particularly bad. Still, I suppose just because it is happening in America, that shouldn’t affect Britain in any way, should it?
Gordon
is certainly hoping so. Against all the odds, perhaps the oft-used proverb that when “America sneezes, the world catche
Gordon Lines Up Public Sector Pay Cuts 2007-03-02 00:00:29 Desperate to save as much money as possible to balance the books, Gordon
has announced that public sector wages will increase by an average of 1.9% in this years pay round. Given that RPI, the traditional measure of inflation used when calculating pay increases, is currently running at 4.2%, this makes a real terms wage cut of 2.3% for the public sector, or £38 a month for a civil servant earning £20,000 a year. Gordon is truly stuck between a rock and a hard place this time around - he is potentially throwing away the votes of over 6 million public sector workers - votes he cannot afford to lose if recent polls are anything to go by. On the other hand, he is currently about 20 billion pounds in the hole with public sector finances, so every pound saved is vital. The third aspect to the conundrum is the spectre of wage inflation that faces Gordon head-on. If wage inflation spirals out of control as some say it might, interest rates will eventually have to be risen to match, Read more:Lines
, Public
Gordon Brown Betfair Update 2007-03-03 16:28:51 It has been a few months since the last time we checked on Gordon
’s prospects in the Betfair
markets, so lets see how he’s doing now. Then we will gauge reaction to his Budget speech in a few weeks time by checking on the odds again afterwards.
In the “Next Labour Leader” market, we can see that Gordon’s odds are now 1.29, significantly shorter than September’s odds of 1.45. Things are starting to shake out in the leadership race, and it is also a lot clearer now that Blair is likely to stand down soon, so Brown
has less time to make any “cock ups” and therefore a better chance of winning. There are, however, two more interesting things to note in the market. Firstly the odds of Brown’s nearest challenger David Milliband have come in significantly to only 11.0. Betfair are good enough to provide charts of how the odds have changed over time and these are displayed below:
So a serious challenger has emerged in Milliband, alb Read more:Update
, Gordon Brown
Highest Taxes In 20 Years 2007-03-06 10:39:13 Newspapers are reporting today that the International Monetary Fund has sent a severe warning to the “Iron Chancellor”, that taxation is at breaking point and public spending must be slashed to avoid disaster for Britain’s public finances. The news will come as a blow to tax-and-spend Gordon Brown, who has in the past 10 years shown his love for all things civil service by pumping cash into the public sector.
The IMF also warned that there is a “significant chance” of a fall in house prices, an event that - if it were to happen - would surely spell disaster for an economy built on debt, perpetual house price inflation, and consumer spending funded by second mortgages. The IMF also urged the Bank of England that interest rates must be upped to 5.5%, and soon, to avoid sending the economy into an inflationary spiral.
The IMF calculated the tax burden, based on the ratio of taxation to Gross Domestic Product, is now at 38%, a level last seen in the mid 19 Read more:Taxes
, Years
House Price Backlash 2007-03-11 00:24:13 The media over the past few years, in reporting inflation and rumours about it’s true levels, has worked on the general principle that rises in the prices of essential commodities are a bad thing, and that the government and Gordon Brown are cleverly trying to hide them from us by sleight of hand. There is one basic necessity commodity, however, that has always escaped this consensus, that commodity of course is housing. As evidenced by various sensationalist headlines, like the one seen on Friday in the Daily Express shown here, it seems that continuing inflation in the price of homes is news to be “toasted” and “celebrated” by Britons, and this can only be a good thing for the country. It certainly helps Gordon appear to be doing a bang up job anyway. Or does it?
A similar headline appeared in the Telegraph on Friday stating that rises in house prices are now outstripping earned income from regular jobs for many people. Why work hard at your Read more:House
, House Price
Gordon Biggest Waster Since 1983 2007-03-13 14:07:24 It appears that when Gordon
vacates number 11 later this year, he will leave behind a legacy of tax-and-spend that sees the Government’s spending as the largest share of national income for nearly a quarter of a century. But it’s all alright for him, as when the house of cards collapses he can simply blame it on whichever sucker steps up to take his place. It seems as though Brown is planning to use Jack Straw, one of the biggest suckers around, as his sacrificial lamb. This Sunday’s Telgraph says:
Gordon Brown’s 10th - and final - budget is on March 21. In the run-up to his swansong, it is increasingly clear that the Chancellor has driven Britain onto the fiscal rocks.
New official figures suggest that this will be the seventh successive budget in which Brown is forced to revise his borrowing figures upwards.
Between April 2006 and January 2007, the central government current budget deficit - tax revenues minus day-to-day spending - was £11.6bn. That&rs
Credit Crunch Arrives To Bite Gordon 2007-03-15 00:10:20 With less than a week to go now until Gordon
’s last ever budget speech (hopefully at least), nobody can have failed to notice the sharp slide in share prices that has reverberated around the trading floors of the world this week. Traders in London today particularly noticed, as over 150 points were wiped off the FTSE 100 leaving it teetering on the brink of the key psychological 6000 barrier.
The cause of these upsets, it seems, is a crisis of confidence in the sub-prime mortgage lender sector of the US economy, and the wider economy in general. One of the biggest sub-prime lenders, New Century, is now effectively out of business, and a whole bunch of others are lining up to follow suit. Obligingly, one enterprising blogger and former New Century employee has decided to post up his inside story of the company, and that will doubtless be worth watching over the next few days and weeks as more is revealed.
The headache for Gordon is that the bad news can’t realistically be Read more:Crunch
Unemployment Three Times Higher Than Official Figures 2007-06-13 08:54:32 A new study shows that the “low unemployment” which Gordon’s much heralded “miracle” economy has been built upon, is a mere sleight of hand, and that actually unemployment is much much higher than the government are willing to admit to.
Unemployment
is almost three times as high as the Government’s official figures a new study has [...] Read more:Three
, Times
, Higher
, Official
, Figures
MPC Has Lost Control Of Inflation 2007-05-25 05:01:22 The Confederation of British Industry has said today that the number of manufacturers intending to raise their factory gate prices soon has hit the highest level for 12 years. This is the latest in a sequence of events demonstrating that inflation is back with a vengence, and that suppliers and retailers have rediscovered their pricing [...] Read more:Control
, Inflation
Spare Some Change For Gordon 2007-05-14 16:07:28 Gordon Brown is set to face a major headache just as he takes over as leader of the Labour party, an event that now looks to be mere weeks away. It has recently transpired that Labour, who have long been running close to the wire in financial terms as witnessed by the various loans for [...] Read more:Spare
, Change
, Gordon
Gordon Admits No Mistakes 2007-05-12 05:44:37 The newspapers today are reporting that Gordon
has admitted his mistakes in an aim to make a clean break with the Blair years. These mistakes he has specifically admitted to are as follows:
Some mistakes made in Iraq
Some mistakes over ID Cards
The culture of celebrity
Cunningly, none of these mistakes could be directly pinned on Gordon and [...]
Country Demands Gordon Call A General Election 2007-05-05 04:24:44 After taking a pasting at the polls on Thursday, obtaining a meagre 26% of the popular vote and losing control of the Scottish Parliament, Gordon
must be wondering what message the general public are trying to send him. Blair, having promised to serve a full third term, looks set to take the money and [...] Read more:Country
, General
, Election
Gordon Rules Out SNP Coalition 2007-05-01 07:08:10 Apparently, Gordon
has said that he refuses to work together with the SNP in the Scottish parliament, not withstanding the massive defeat that Labour will almost certainly suffer in the elections on Thursday:
Gordon Brown last night warned Scottish voters that he will find it “impossible” to work as prime minister with a Scottish National party-led [...] Read more:Rules
Gordon’s Helpers Rig The Votes 2007-04-29 05:02:51 The Times has revealed today that Labour party workers in Leeds are deliberately attempting to rig postal votes by collecting them from voters and selectively posting only the Labour votes. A Times undercover reporter posing as a Labour volunteer recorded this conversation:
Keith Wakefield, the leader of the Labour group on Leeds city council, drives two [...] Read more:Gordon
, Votes
Interest Rates Could Rise To 7.5pc 2007-04-24 09:03:48 As we draw closer to the local elections, a group of prominent economists have today put forward their argument for higher interest rates in an open letter to the Bank of England in which they state that inflation risks could surge out of control if the Bank does not raise rates soon and quickly.
Tim Congdon, [...] Read more:Interest
, Rates
, Interest Rates
Brown Has Created An Addiction To Credit 2007-04-23 09:09:08 Peter Spencer of the Ernst and Young ITEM Club economic think-tank has characterised the UK consumer as being addicted to credit, according to the latest ITEM club report. The report says that while the outlook for growth remains reasonably good, most of that growth is likely to be based on borrowing, as consumers follow Gordon’s [...] Read more:Brown
Gordon Is A Nasty Piece Of Work 2007-04-21 11:49:51 The Independent lays into Brown today, saying that he is a nasty piece of work for the way he has treated those people who’ve been unfortunate enough to see their pensions go belly-up. But to expect anything different from the Iron Chancellor is clearly misguided, as he has shown his true colours only too well [...] Read more:Gordon
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