Blame-showering the Speaker

I'm no fan of the Speaker of the House of Commons. Indeed, I believe that the porcine imbecile is a living, breathing evocation of the Peter Principle, and I would like to see him doing a job more suited to his talents. Like working in a supermarket warehouse or something. So this post is an odd one for me to have to write. Because I'm going to defend him. Sort of.

That the Speaker should go is of no doubt to me. In fact, he should have gone a long time ago. Partly because he is inept, and partly because he is very, very greedy. But the logic behind some of those plotting his demise is very different to those reasons given above. They talk about him being part of the status quo, of him being a roadblock to reform. Which is true. But I can think of other roadblocks to reform. Such as all the MPs who have failed to reform the system and have exploited it, and only really discovered their zest for reform when the whole system has come crashing down around them.

If the Speaker is part of the problem, then he has several hundred other co-conspirators around him, helping him. This talk of sacking the Speaker is acting as a distraction from the real story - that the Speaker is not alone in warranting the sack, and that there are many people in the Commons just as corrupt and incompetent as the Speaker. He's part of the problem, but getting rid of just the Speaker is not the solution.

Turn the Rage against Labour

We’re still playing the blame game about the credit crunch in this country, with bankers still being placed in the public stocks for merciless criticism and indignant rage. Today’s victim is Fred Goodwin, who is being castigated for having (and admittedly fucking huge) pension. The rights and wrongs of this individual case are quite frankly irrelevant as the amount Fred the Shred will be paid is a minute drop in a mighty ocean when you compare it to the amounts of money that the government is throwing at the financial services sector.

Besides, this controversial pension plan is defensible on at least one level – until very recently, it was government sanctioned. That’s right – in order to get Goodwin out of his bank, the Treasury signed off on this massive pension plan.

There is a lot of anger in this country at the moment – anger bordering on rage. Which I can understand. But I really do think we are directing it at the wrong people. Yes, a lot of bankers were crap. But business people are shit all the time. That’s why businesses fail. And ultimately there is very little we can do to those crap bankers. However, there is another target that is just as responsible for this recession, and a target that we can do something about. And it is the target that frantically tries to distract us with hate figures such as Fred Goodwin. Yep, I’m talking about our government.

Labour was first elected over a decade ago under the leadership of a photogenic, harmless looking chipmunk called Tony Blair. We are now being governed by an unelected egregious grey ghoul of a man whose pronouncements on the economy increasingly resemble the demented mumblings of Jim Jones before the Kool-Aid was passed around. Whatever we signed up for in ’97 – and indeed in ’05 – is not what we’ve got now. In fact, this whole government has been exposed as a massive confidence trick – a fraud designed to con us into spending money that we don’t have.

And, indeed, the government still doesn’t have the first fucking clue about what is going on, but that doesn’t stop the Prime Minister shovelling great big piles of our cash into a cellar in Downing Street and setting fire to it. It doesn’t stop him blaming everyone else for the calamity that he himself helped to create. Gordon Brown is determined to channel the righteous rage felt by so many in this country in any other direction that towards him. But that will only work for so long. Because at some point, Gordon will have to call a General Election.

And then we will see the anger, the rage, and the hatred. Turned against a truly deserving target – the British government. Barring Gordon Brown pulling off something absolutely spectacular, Labour is facing decimation at best at the next election. And you know what? I’m going to relish that bastard and his shitty minions facing obliteration at the next election. For all the lies, the evasions, the corruption, the thieving of the past decade. I predict the petulant rage felt by many British people towards bankers at the moment will be nothing compared to baying of the mob when we next get to vote.

I think Brown et al will learn that Goodwin and his ilk are small fry, once the British electorate gets the much larger and more deserving target of the dog-tired, waste-of-space and utterly incompetent Nu Labour government in their sights.