Northern Crock

Last week, Financial Services Authority (FSA) chiefs reluctantly admitted that they had not challenged Northern Rock sufficently on its "business model". The FSA also conceded they had overlooked critical risks in the money market that had eventually forced the run on the bank. Even Northern Rock chief executive stated that "there are lessons to be learned here for our supervision process".

Is this the same FSA that was described by the National Audit Office (NAO) in April this year as "a well established regulator with an impressive set of processes and structures to help tackle high-risk organisations and markets"? An opinion echoed by the NAO boss Sir John Bourn who added his personal testimony: the FSA "has created strong and effective structures".

Yes! It is the same FSA. This verdict of the NAO delighted the Treasury with the City minister at the time, Ed Balls, pouncing on the independent auditor's ringing endorsement, boasting to anybody who would listen of the success of the FSA created by he and Gordon is a moron Brown.

How could the public spending watchdog (NAO) paint such a glowing picture of an unmitigated failure of a financial regulator (FSA)? Perhaps some negotiation took place over one of the hundreds of meals-for-two at London's finest restaurants hosted by Sir John for his anonymous "UK contacts" with tax-payers' money?

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

Labour's Cats Fatter Than Ever

It seems Gordon is a Moron and his culture of parasites are not content with lining the pockets of the Empire of Evil and Bastardlays. The following may be the most shocking of all Labour's privatisations, depriving aid budgets of millions of pounds while the managers who pushed it through have become multi-millionaires in just two years.

In 2004, the then Development Secretary Hilary Benn carved out the fund management operation from the government-owned develpment fund CDC. The fund's function is to invest UK aid in companies in developing countries. The private equity firm created to do this, Actis, was set up in swanky riverside offices using £5m of public money while 60% of the new "limited liability partnership" was sold for £373,000 to former CDC managers, led by Paul Fletcher. One hell of a good price for managing £1bn of state funds without facing any competition whatsoever.

Fletcher and his pals quickly recouped their outlay. Actis reported profits of $14m in the first year, and that was after accounting for its 192 employees being paid an average of $220,000 each and senior partner Fletcher pocketing $1.84m. Actis will tell you that the government is entitled to 80% of their profits but that arrangement ends in 2009. Furthermore, in a recent public accounts committee report, Fletcher and Co's share (bought for £393,000 remember) was valued at over £200m, and possibly as much as £600m.

So why was Actis sold for so little when it was quite obviously worth so much more? Private Eye has asked to see the calculations that led to the 2004 valuation of £393,000 and how much the still publicly-owned CDC pays Actis to manage the fund. However, the Department for International Development's Openness Unit (an oxymoron if ever there was) and the Shareholder Executive have both refused to release any details. The DfID claimed the valuation calculation was "commercially sensitive" and revealing it was not in the public interest. They did reveal however, that "the calculations were undertaken by KPMG Corporate Finance Consultants, appointed by CDC Group plc to provide an objective opinion."

OK, so that's the same CDC Group who's chief executive Paul Fletcher and other senior managers would be the buyers of the new company. Conflict of interest? Not according to Hilary Benn, Gordon is a Moron and the repulsive master criminal Blair.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

N'est Pas Difficile

Last week a report by the Healthcare Commission conlcuded that a "litany of errors" were responsible for the "avoidable deaths" of more than 215 patients, plus a further 1,100 Clostridium Difficile infections, in only 3 NHS hospitals between April 2004 and December 2006.

The Chief Executive of the Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells Trust, Rose Gibb, resigned a week later pocketing a £250,000 payoff. James Lee, the Chairman of the trust, resigned this week, blaming government targets and poor nursing for the deaths. The value of his payoff is, as yet, unpublicised.

The report found dirt and neglect on understaffed wards, where bedpans were left unwashed, staff were "too busy" to wash their hands and concerned patients were told to "go to their beds". Much of the press has taken the opportunity to throw blame at the nursing staff but the Commission's report clearly cites that "the trust's financial difficulties and its obsession with meeting government targets distracted it from tackling the medical priorities and, specifically, the outbreak of C.difficile".

What an abject failure of this nation that an 87-year-old Dunkirik veteran, Joseph Nixon, died in a Maidstone hospital having been admitted for a routine bowel operation. He was left lying in his soiled sheets for hours at a time, causing him to become infected and die from C.difficile ... a man that had fought for his country, risked his life on countless occasions and seen his friends slaughtered in the World's most brutul conflict, killed by 21st century Britain's inability to care for its popoulation in the most basic way.

Now, don't be fooled by the current government's historical finger-pointing, this problem is purely that of "new" Labour's making. These horrendous failings identified by the Healthcare Commission are recent. They all seem to start around 2003, a full 6 years after "new" Labour took power. This government is responsible for the obsession with "business-model" targets being imposed in the NHS. HIT YOUR TARGET OR ELSE. That's "new" Labour.

Assess this: in 1989 (the height of Thatcherite Conservatism) there were 510 Senior Managers running the NHS; today there are more than 40,000. However, I don't see this as a failure of "trying to make the NHS run like business". No business would, or could, tolerate a management overhead such as this. It is a complete and abject failure of the NHS management structure and personnel over the last 10 years that is the problem and at the top of that management chain is the Health Secretary. These problems should and could have been prevented if this government had bothered to perform its duties. Labour see the NHS as their golden goose, harping back to its invention, so just ignore it. The damage inflicted in the last decade is truly immeasurable and will haunt the nation for many years to come.

These problems are clearly the result of political motivation, or lack of it, not that of business or economics. The architect of our current social devolution: not Blair, but Gordon "is a moron" Brown. Vote for him at your peril, and that of your children!

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

Princess Diana, Mohamed Fayed & A Big Waste Of Time

So jurors are being flown back and forth to France to see a ten year old accident site, all sorts of rumour and innuendo are being presented at an official inquest and hundreds of journalists are doing nothing but publishing all this crap on a daily basis.

Am I the only one who thinks this is all an utter waste of time and money?

Diana, Dodi and Henri Paul died tragically in an horrific car accident that may or may not have involved another car. That's it, let them rest in peace. Why is all this nonsense being trampled out now? It's plainly absurd.

As for the greatest advocate of all things conspiratorial, Mohamed Fayed, let's see how his 'evidence', and I use the word in the loosest possible sense, stacks up:

Pregnancy

In 1997, Michael Cole, Fayed's official spokesman, wrote to the Daily Telegraph on his behalf complaining that the paper's coverage of the tragedy was "spoiled by references to pregnancy and cocaine, for which scurrilous allegations not a scrap of evidence has emerged". Cole also wrote to the Press Complaints Commission on Fayed's behalf stating "it was alleged the the princess was pregnant at the time of her death but no evidence has emerged to support these damaging allegations ... nasty rumours which have no factual basis".

Furthermore, Fayed himself asked, during an exclusive interview with the Sunday Mirror on 9 November 1997, "who gave French newspapers the false tip-off that Diana was six weeks pregnant?" And in February 1998 he told the Mirror "I doubt that Diana was pregnant, the only two people that can really tell us are the coroner over here and the hospital in France and neither of them have confirmed this information which makes me think it is not true."

Then, all of a sudden in 2003, he remembered that the Princess herself had actually told him personally that she was pregnant in a phone call on the night of her death. Yes, of course she did Mohamed, of course. It's totally plausible that you forgot this inconsequential fact for 6 years.

Engagement

Was the ring Dodi bought for Diana an engagement ring? Absolutely not according to Fayed in 1997. Cole held a press conference at Harrods in September that year where he told reporters "Mr Al Fayed has authorised me to give you a few details ... What that ring meant we shall probably never know and if the planet lasts for another thousand years, I am quite sure that people will continue to speculate about it's significance."

Once again, more than a year later, Fayed suddenly remembered that the couple had told him this was an engagement ring when they telephoned him to say they were getting married. Again, very believable that somebody would forget such a detail for over a year.

Long and short of it is that this inquest has been forced upon us based on utter fabrication and nonsense. It will be enormously expensive, traumatic for some and will accomplish absolutely nothing. Those mentalists that believe Prince Phillip shot the tyres out with a slingshot will continue to do so. Those people that think some stupid French bloke had drunk too much and lost control of the car he was driving through a tunnel at 100mph will also continue to do so.

What has happened to common sense? The public's lack of interest in this inquest can be judged by the number of people in the overflow marquee at the Royal Courts of Justice by the second day, which was just three. Compare that to the Hutton inquiry when the overflow capacity of 70 was fully utilised almost every single day. How can this process have come so far based upon Fayed's lies and inability to grasp reality?

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

The Budget's Real Cost

Ra-ra-ra, inheritance tax cuts and capital gains tax changes. All sounds lovely. But let's analyse the real consequences of the latest budget, not the guff and nonsense spouted by Alistair Darling.

There are some circumstances in which you might consider yourself a winner. Basically, if you are a well-off couple who had done no previous tax planning, your children will benefit. And if you own a second home or a fleet of buy-to-let properties, you will be considerably better off when the new flat rate of CGT is introduced in April next year. From that point, even a higher rate tax payer will pay only 18% on capital gains. Non-domiciles also get off lightly, now being allowed 7 years tax free in Britain before having to cough up a penny.

So, if you are already pretty rich and were too lazy or stupid to make inheritance tax arrangements, you are quids in. And that's pretty much it for the winners.

What about the losers? Well, that includes anyone who had already spent time and money setting up an inheritance tax trust; first-time home buyers; anyone who had invested money in bonds; workers who invest in company save-as-you-earn schemes; savers with windfall shares; anyone saving in to a pension scheme and anyone who drives a car.

So, if you are trying to buy your first home, live outside of London where public transport is universally crap, or are planning for your future and trying to save for retirement, you have been screwed.

New Labour is truly the party of the super-rich. If you are working or middle class, you have been repeatedly screwed by this government. I think they believe that the destruction of the middle class will solve the problem of social mobility but the reality is it does not improve the situation for the needy, it just makes more people needy. Meanwhile, the super-rich are laughing all the way to the bank to withdraw big piles of cash with which to bribe government ministers.

Those that suggest that the increasingly repulsive Gordon "is a moron" Brown is a real socialist need their heads examined. You need only to have seen him egging on his Chancellor like some wart-ridden jockey to realise that he is still the architect of all things budgetary. Then he topped it all off with a tantrum-laden, foaming mouth performance at PMQs. Pathetic, odious, vile.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!