Ever since the banks were bailed out, I was worried that the government could not resist micromanaging their way through this mess. The difference between the Libor - the rate that banks lend to each other - and the BOE base rate - the rate that the BOE lends at - cannot be clearer. Generally speaking, banks don’t borrow from the BOE but from each other, so the rate that they pay for credit is the Libor and not BOE base rate. Yet our government do not understand this and are embarking on a policy of interference and micromanagement. The 1.5% cave in is all the evidence we need:

It was a difficult meeting… Right at the start the chancellor’s people thrust unflattering newspaper headlines under the executives’ noses. We then had to make it quite clear that just because rates fall it does not mean we can afford to do the same with our products… The issue was unresolved.

Bankers do not care about headlines. They only care that their business is viable and sustainable. Admitted, there is sometimes a correlation between bad headlines and poor business performance, but this it is not the place of the government to point this out. But what is perhaps more worrying is that it is “treasury officials” that are pushing the banks into a very political corner. Civil servants should not be worried about the papers - why are they doing political dirty work? Does this not break the rules?

Gordon Brown claimed £17,017 on a second (non-constituency) home last year. Since 2001, he has spent £99,161 of tax payers on a second home and every single minute of that time he has had access to a government apartment in Downing Street. And I bet that it has been the case since 1997. So seeing as at the moment we are in the business of investigating all the ‘dodgy’ dealings of our MP’s, I wonder if the next victim will be GB himself? 



p.s and it seems Tony and John weren’t much better, although at least John’s grace-and-favour flat was paid for by the unions. 

Why are they so corrupt? Or have they always been corrupt, but the media have been not too interested? In the days of unpaid politicians, were they any more corrupt?
In June 1922, the Conservatives were able to show that David Lloyd George was selling Knighthoods and Peerages to the highest bidders. As a direct result of this, the infamous Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925 was brought into statute, which is precisely the law that the police failed to charge anyone under just recently. Then there are the pocket boroughs, whereby land owners were able to nominate politicians to do their bidding. For example, at the beginning of the 18th Century, the Duke of Devonshire and Lord Darlington both had the power to nominate seven members of the House of Commons. Then there were rotten boroughs, where towns had reduced in size to allow bribery to dictate the member of parliament. An example was the coastal town of Dunwich in Suffolk, that had mostly fallen into the sea by 1831 and only had 31 voters. And of course, these rotten MP’s would be in it for their own good.
But actually, you can go back a lot further in European history and still discover political corruption. One need only look at the Ancient Greeks (500BC), whose politicians were guilty of lies, cheating and, curiously enough, were generally lawyers. Aristophanes, a political satirist, took every opportunity to make fun of the Athenian establishment in his anti-war play (familiar, anyone?) called The Archanians. Then there is the play called The Knights, which is an outright attack on one of the most powerful politicians in Athens.
So even the Greeks, who incidentally invented the word Rhetoric, had their fair share of media trouble. And the politicians back then were as corrupt as they are now. I am not surprised when I hear of politicians with their snouts in the trough. I just wonder, is it really a few bad apples, or are they just the ones unlucky enough to get caught?

We here that the reason Peter Hain “forgot” to declair £103k of campaign funding is that he was too busy. So what has he been doing since the failed deputy leadership bid?

Misleading Parliament . In October, he made wrote a letter to the Speaker and the opposition that said “I apologise for having to make this revision. I am sure you will understand these calculations are not straightforward,”. He admitted that 300,000 foreign citizens working in Britain were left out of official statistics, reported to parliament earlier in a written answer.1.1 million people from abroad have taken jobs in Britain since 1997 and the previous figure was 800,000. And he did it using a letter on the last day of parliament, before the closure for the Queens speech, such that he did not have to defend himself in the house itself.

 Defending Policies not in his brief. Apparently, he described the EU constitution as a ‘tidying up’process. Um, what has Wales and his pensions brief got to do with the EU constitution? And why wasn’t the Europe Minister, Foreign Secretary, or Gordon Brown himself doing the dirty work? Well, that will be ‘defending the Labour Party’s interests’ then.

 Avoiding his brief. If doing other people’s dirty work wasn’t enough, he failed to do his own. Being in charge of pensions, you would expect he would be interested in talking to campaign groups worried about people loosing their hard-earned pensions. Apparently not. 

When he does do his job… It appears that even when his eye is on his brief, he is making a pigs ear of it. WorkDirections UK, won six out of 15 contracts worth more than £85m under “Pathways to Work”, which aims to get disabled people off benefit. The group’s Australian subsidiary, WorkDirections Australia, provider of similar services, has been involved in controversy. One of the firm’s businesses was found to have underpaid staff and its star performance rating set by the government fell. WorkDirections UK won the contracts after legal advice that it did not need to apply TUPE conditions - designed to protect staff when an undertaking is transferred to a new employer - by providing Whitehall index-linked pensions, sick pay and holidays. Its rival bidders in the charity sector did factor in the cost of TUPE and are crying foul - blaming unclear advice from the DWP for the mess.

 Oh - and this group were founded and run by Therese Rein, the wife of Kevin Rudd, leader of the Labor Party in Australia and also quite prone to 

eating earwax. But more importantly, a personal friend of certain Blairites 

Parliamentary Record. And in his years in parliament, he is clearly a party animal:Has never voted on a transparent Parliament.Voted moderately for introducing a smoking ban.Voted strongly for introducing ID cards.Voted very strongly for introducing foundation hospitals.Voted very strongly for introducing student top-up fees.Voted strongly for Labour’s anti-terrorism laws.Voted very strongly for the Iraq war.Voted very strongly against investigating the Iraq war.Voted very strongly for replacing Trident.Voted very strongly for the hunting ban.Voted moderately for equal gay rights.And for someone who is somewhat “forgetful” in his finances, it is no surprise he has never voted for a transparent parliament, and has strongly voted against investigating the Iraq war. What else has he been up to? If he had nothing to hide, then he would want a transparent parliament….  

So the question is, what has Hain and the Australian Labour Party got in common? Are there more skeletons in his cupboard?