A Request...

...to Ron Paul supporters - please, please, please stop sending me shit about Ron Paul's money bombs. I don't have the cash to spare and even if I did I would spend it on candidates based in this country, not the US. And even if I did have the cash to spare and you'd got the right nation, I'd still be unlikely to give money to a candidate with practically no chance of winning.

Thanks.

An Epic Summer Recess

I always wonder why it is presented as something that is in some way comforting when the House of Commons returns from a recess to debate a key issue of the day. Why would a bunch of self-important, indolent and self-serving gobshites pontificating on riots or on phone hacking make a blind bit of fucking difference out there in the real world? No doubt the rioters are now shitting themselves and would never dare to rob a Foot Locker again, and all because Cameron and Miliband returned (no doubt briefly) to the Commons to engage in an extended bout of meaningless posturing.

But what is really striking is that this is the second time that the Commons has been recalled from its recess since it began about halfway through July. I don’t care that there have been two crises in that short space of time; rather, I’m staggered by just how many recesses the Commons has awarded itself and how long the summer recess is. MPs don’t have to attend the Commons from 19th July to 5th September this year, and then they’re back for a whopping 10 days before getting a Conference recess from 15th September to 10th October. Yeah, I know that they have constituency duties, but effectively from late June until mid-October MPs are doing at best half their jobs, and they aren’t doing one of the crucial things they are elected to do; they aren’t debating legislation, they aren’t legislating, and they are not governing despite being, y'know, the government. I feel some relief that they aren’t adding to the legislative burden of this country for much of what we laughably call the summer**, but I’m staggered given the amount they are paid and the role they do (governing, for fuck’s sake) which apparently still allows them to take a large swathe of the summer off. Because, as the hacking scandal and the riots show, politics does not stop just because we are in the summer months.

It would be too much to state that the feckless indolence of much of the population is the result of the feckless indolence of the parliamentarians who apparently see nothing wrong with taking the majority of the summer off*** - I suspect that most people don’t know about the recess and probably don’t care. But there is a concept called “leading by example”; our MPs expect us to follow them but time and time again they show a steadfast refusal to demonstrate why we should follow them or actually consider them to be leaders. At a time when the economy is struggling and disaffection with politicians is running at an all-time high, a starting point to turn this situation around could be our MPs starting to work at full pelt not just in parts of the year, but across the whole year. Which is not too much to ask, surely?

*Or in the case of Gordon Brown, pretty much at all.
**Given this positively autumnal August.
***There are some who have argued that the summer recess would be reduced – such as former MP Chris Mullin. The fact that their aruments have made sod all difference is probably a good indicator of the mindset of those who sit in the Commons.

I don't like the Royal Family and I firmly believe that Prince Charles is a jug-eared fuckwit of the highest order. But I cannot get excited or angry about the fact that he is costing the taxpayer more money. It's not because I think he deserves the money (the opposite is true), but rather because the money stolen by the government is spunked away on pointless projects like the Prince on an ongoing basis. It is too tiring to be angry about all the wastage of our money that goes on. If you tried, you'd spend all of your time enraged until you dropped dead of a massive stroke.

So Prince Charles is costing us more money, like a welfare recepient on the take but magnified onto a massive scale. Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose.

Spiderman The Musical: Turn Off The Show

I think we can file this one under "seriously, what were they thinking?"

Troubled Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark has officially opened to mostly harsh reviews.

Although critics agreed the latest reworked version was clearer, most blasted the show.

A Spiderman musical on broadway, in part scripted by those tools from U2, just plain doesn't work and gets shitty reviews from critics? Who'd have thought it? I'm a big fan of Spiderman, but even I can see that this had "shit idea" written all over it from the outset.

NCH: An Unconvincing Idea

Try as I might, I just can’t get worked up over this private university thing – certainly not the extent of this rather embittered commentator or this jaundiced old Marxist rent-a-quote. I can’t help but think that if Grayling et al want to do this, they should feel free. And the whole project can fall into the category of stuff I don’t really care about.

So my point isn’t about defending or lambasting this institution – I’ll leave that to others who care more. What I would say, though, is that £18k a year (or a magnificent £54k for a degree) does sound like an awful lot, particularly when you can get a degree from Oxbridge for literally half the price. The counter claim is that with fewer students there will be a greater chance to have face to face interaction with your tutors. But that is only of benefit if those tutors are great teachers. Which, along with the cost, is one of the things that really doesn’t work for me with regard to this project.

The names mentioned are certainly big names – and with the likes of A. C. Grayling and Richard Dawkins, this college is probably attracting the closest the UK has to public intellectuals. But fame does not mean quality – after all, Ben Affleck and Tom Cruise are internationally famous actors, but that doesn’t actually make them any good. Grayling is a remarkably bland philosopher, Dawkins is a relentless dogmatist who shows the same zeal with regard to his atheism as many religious fundamentalists. Elsewhere, the other intellectuals involved that I’ve actually heard of are Ronald Dworkin (a kind of sub-John Rawls obsessed with a sort of intangible egalitarianism) and Niall Fergusson – a controversial historian at best with an unhealthy respect for imperialism. Sure, these people are visible, but that doesn’t make them (a) any good or (b) able to teach.

The whole thing comes across as a bit of a stunt – an injection of celebrity culture into the academic world. I dare say there will be some who will be willing to pay these exorbitant fees to end up with a degree from the University of London and the right to say that they studied under Grayling and/or Dawkins, but I suspect they will be few and far between. Furthermore, even if the college does take off then there are no guarantees that the institution will win respect even if it does gain students (a point that much of the criticism of this scheme seems to miss). So while I wouldn’t deny the right of Grayling and the others to found this institution, I would recommend that serious students look elsewhere. You can get a decent degree from a respected institution without the cost and the risk inherent in the NCH project.

An Empty Voice Talking to No-one.

A summary of Laurie Penny's new book:

Modern culture is obsessed with controlling women's bodies. Our societies are saturated with images of unreal, idealised female beauty whilst real female bodies and the women who inhabit them are alienated from their own personal and political potential. Under modern capitalism, women are both consumers and consumed: Meat Market offers strategies for resisting this gory cycle of consumption, exposing how the trade in female flesh extends into every part of women's political selfhood. Touching on sexuality, prostitution, hunger, consumption, eating disorders, housework, transsexualism and the global trade in the signs and signifiers of femininity, Meat Market is a thin*, bloody sliver of feminist dialectic, dissecting women's bodies as the fleshy fulcrum of capitalist cannibalism.

I've no doubt that Penny's book is exactly the way it is described above. The problem is that pretty much everything Penny is writing about has been dealt with before. It has been dealt with by populists, by radicals, by academics and, with the best will in the world and basing my opinion on her blog rather than her book, by much better writers than her. There is nothing original or new on offer here.

So let me make a prediction - those who like Laurie Penny will laud this book as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Those who can't stand her will be vitriolic about it. The vast majority of people in this country won't give a fuck; they won't even know the book has been published, let alone engage with it enough to gain an opinion of it based solely on its cover.

No doubt Penny will make a couple of quid from her book, and good luck to her. But the chances of this book ever being influential, important or even widely read are minimal.

*At 79 pages, it is a pretty fucking slim volume. Less of a book, it sounds more a pamphlet in need of an editor.

Let Me In

There is a film version of The Woman in Black. Written by Nigel Kneale, it is an effectively creepy tale with some genuine scares in it. The production is difficult to get hold of not least in part because the novel's author hates it. One of the reasons why seems to be the minor, yet seemingly pointless and niggling, changes Kneale's screenplay makes to her book. I mean, why change the gender of the dog? Really, what was the point in doing that?

Now I've often thought that Susan Hill is over-reacting about these changes (if the rumours are correct and they are the main thing bothering her about the adaptation); they do little to damage the drama, and even the changed ending is still extremely effective. Then I saw Let Me In, a remake of the superb Swedish film Let The Right One In, and I got it. Because, while Let Me In is not an atrocious film, it is filled with pointless little changes to the original that add nothing but help to make the remake into a pale imitation of a far superior original.

I'm not going to list all the differences between the two films; instead, I'll illustrate using two crucial ones. First up, why change the title? Surely the filmmakers weren't worried that the Swedish title was too long for US audiences? But if that wasn't the case, then really, why make that change? The original title is playful, and hints at the ambiguous relationship at the heart of the film - has Oskar let the right one in, or is he being manipulated by a much older vampiric predator? Let Me In as a title lacks that ambiguity; it is a straight request, and a pointless truncation of the original title.

Then you have the elimination of the drinking buddies in the original as properly drawn, credible characters. This is the most irritating change for me; those characters were crucial to the success of the original - they made it more human, and the characterisation helped us to care when they were killed. By reducing them to walk-on parts in the background, the film loses a crucial counterpoint to the central drama, and makes the film solely about the relationship between the vampire and his/her would be carer.

Any remake has to work hard in order to show it is as good as its predecessor. Let Me In hampers itself by implementing a number of pointless changes. The end result is a passable film if you haven't seen the original, but if you have, then the US remake is simply an inferior and irritating faded photocopy of a much better predecessor.

Gordon Brown's Book - A Failure

So, having checked the figures in my local bookshop, it appears that the “Right” “Honourable” Gordon Brown has managed to sell just 13 copies of his book in its first week of release. That’s less than two a day.

Of course, it would be wrong to compare the sales of his book with a high-profile release of, say, a popular fiction title (or, to put it another way, a book that people in large numbers might actually want to read). So let’s compare like with like – let’s compare the first week of sales for Brown’s book with that of another former Labour Prime Minister – Tony Blair. How did Blair get on? Well, he sold nearly 400.

Are there any mitigating factors that might explain Brown only managing about 3% of the sales of Blair? Well, we are in the run-up to Christmas, but that should work in Brown’s favour. After all, his book could be a bought as a gift as well as for the individual purchaser to read. Yet that just hasn’t happened. Once again, Blair has outperformed Brown.

The reasons are simple, as far as I can see. Even as someone who would rather cut out my own eyes and fry them than read either one of those books, I can clearly see that Blair’s self-aggrandising nonsense would be preferable to Brown’s pathetic excuse making. Ultimately, Blair won three elections and ruled this country for ten years. Brown won none and was in power for under three years. And he hasn’t even chosen to give the insider account of his time in power – instead, he’s trying to paint himself as the man who saved the world once again – even though we know he was just a pathetic shit who made sure that the economic crisis hurt each and every person in this country through his ineptitude.

And why does it matter? Because we paid Gordon Brown an MP’s salary to stay at home and write this fucking thing. Even when taking months of unauthorised paid leave from his job, Brown is no capable of turning out a book that people might actually want to buy. What a waste of space – both him and his book.

Public Transport

Every government, at some point, seems to want more people to use public transport. Be it to reduce congestion, to make the planet "greener" or just because they can't stop coming up with bullshit proposals. However, as someone who regularly uses public transport (as I hate driving) I see two flaws with trying to get people to use public transport. They are:

1. The public is allowed on them. Which is generally ok, but we shouldn't lost sight of the fact that some members of the public are not that nice. Like the chap on my bus ride this morning who turned up singing to his copy of the Metro, before preceding to burp, fart and chunter his way through the first part of the journey. Before passing out and then having a tiny chunder. He was clearly wasted; no mean feat, given it was nine thirty in the morning. And frankly I don't want to have to deal with people like that at all - let alone when I can still taste the toothpaste.

And he's just one (albeit extreme) example. On our nation's buses I have seen a passed out woman who had wet herself, had to listen to some feral youth having a blazing (and profane) rant against his mother on his mobile and a woman sobbing hysterically at lunchtime. And this is all since October. Frankly, the public are often rubbish and I don't want to have to bear witness to the worst of them as I am transported from one location to another.

2. It is shit at transporting you. Seriously, trains and buses are generally unreliable and prone to stopping their service at the slightest provocation. Take the snow; it has made the buses of York and Leeds more inefficient than ever despite the fact that the roads are clear! There is no reason for it, none at all. But still four buses drove past me yesterday - for no reason other than, presumably, the drivers are jumped up little jobsworth pricks. And the trains aren't much better. The wrong kind of leaves on the line, snow, rain, sun, too many passengers, too few - pretty much anything will stop them operating effectively. I don't who designed trains, but they must have done so with a view to operating them in a vacuum - or at least for use in a world without weather.

So public transport is undermined by the fact that the public use it and it isn't good at transporting you. Generally speaking, using public transport will leave you running late, a bit angry and having had to share a compact space with people you would normally cross the street to avoid. There is nothing relaxing about it. And, these days, it isn't that cheap either.

Fuck it. I'm going to get a car.

Ted Heath's House

Edward Heath's house for sale. Strange, you might think, since the corpulent so-and-so met his maker a few years ago. Why is his house only going up for sale now?

When he died five years ago, Sir Edward Heath left his home to the nation.

The former Prime Minister hoped "Arundells" would give the public a better understanding of his life and achievements.

A-ha! Clearly, Heath's arrogance never deserted him. Even when making his will, he still thought he was a political giant that people would give a fuck about. The reality is somewhat different. The majority of people don't care about Heath and those that do tend to see him as a failure. Hardly the best background for a tourist attraction, is it?

NHS Direct

So... NHS Direct is being culled. Unlike so many others, I just have to shrug my shoulders and say "oh" with an overwhelming sense of crushing apathy. It is not so much that I don't care; it is more that I can't even bring myself to care about the fact that I don't care. The fact that GPs have called for it to be cut makes me, if it were possible, even more apathetic.

Yet people moan, and people bleat. For the life of me, I can't figure out why. Unless it is the fact that NHS Direct has the acronym NHS in it, and that acts as a flashpoint for idiots. "You can't cut the NHS!" they scream, like an unthinking mob of would-be right-on campaigners. However, the fact that the campaign to save this glorified health call centre is being spearheaded by that fat cunt John Prescott convinces me that this is not so much a storm in a tea-cup as a fart in a tea-cup; the sort of campaign only of interest to the terminally whiney - the sort of mindless statist chumps who should, at best, be politely patronised and, at worst, just plain ignored.

Grow up, people. And get a grip while you're doing it.

Blair the Greedy vs Brown the Noble

From the Twitter feed of Gus Baker:

Tony Blair wants £150 4 a signed copy of his memoir. Gordon Brown affirms that all proceeds from his book will go to charity. #justsaying

Probably being a bit cynical here, but I rather think that the reason why Blair is charging £150 for a signed copy of his book is because people are willing to pay £150 for his book. Fuck knows why, though. However, I think the chances of anyone paying that amount for a signed copy of Brown's book is less than zero, so why on earth would he embarrass himself by trying to ask for it?

I think we're all supposed to be impressed by the fact that Gordon is giving the proceeds of his no doubt entirely self-serving and largely unreadable book to charity. I'd be more impressed is (a) Brown wasn't writing said book at the expense of the taxpayer while neglecting his duties as an MP and (b) if this book was destined to be in the remainder bins across the country within weeks of its release.

Just sayin' is all.

UPDATE:

And now Blair's got in on the charity act - he's giving millions to the Royal British Legion. I'm sure I won't be alone in noting that if Blair really wanted to help soldiers, then he might not have sent them into an illegal war without the equipment they so clearly needed.

What is nice about this, though, is that it is likely to be a yet another way in which Blair will best Brown. Since his book will almost certainly sell more than Brown's, he'd going to be better at the "giving book proceeds to charity" competition that he has just started. And what's the betting that's a big part of the reason for this announcement?

Security and Blair's Book-signing

Just look at what security precautions you have to jump through if you want the former Prime Minister to sign a copy of his autobiography for you:

...Blair fans will have to comply with a number of strict conditions before being allowed near the great man:

Customers cannot be photographed with Blair, there will be no personal dedications, and all bags, backpacks and briefcases must be checked in, along with cameras and mobile phones, before meeting the former Labour leader. Blair will sign a maximum of two books per customer.

In addition, those wanting to have their book signed must show proof they bought it from Waterstone's that morning. They will then receive a wristband, although, as the Bookseller points out, this "does not guarantee Blair will sign the customer's book". Ouch.

Blair fans? Do they actually exist? And is there anyone who actually wants a signature from Blair enough to jump all of those hurdles? I doubt it. The only reason why I would accept those security precautions is if the end result was me being allowed to call Blair a warmongering, lying, self-serving cunt and then being able to spit in his face. But something tells me that isn't on offer...

The Big Society

So that's it? Really? That's all it is? Cameron's great, exciting, bold new vision for the future is little more than a Lyndon Johnson rip-off? Actually, I don't know why I'm surprised. It was always going to be like this. They are, after all, the Tories.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for increased localism and increased voluntarism. Yet this doesn't feel like the great rolling back of the state that we almost seem expected to think it is. Firstly, there's a suspicion that the areas being foisted onto volunteers are all areas which the government can no longer afford to fund and run itself. Furthermore, I remain very uncomfortable about state-promoted voluntarism; it has the potential to become the state interfering further in people's lives rather than the state retreating from the private realm. Besides, by definition, voluntary work taken up under compulsion from others ceases to be voluntary work.

However the biggest problem I have with all this is that it is state led. The central government is telling its people what areas they are allowed a little bit of autonomy in, and no doubt will also tell people how to go about their voluntary actions. This isn't about freedom, it's paternalism rebranded. It is a bit like parents allowing their kids to do a few things on their own - ultimately the parents remain in control because they can decide which areas their kids are allowed to be free in, and can also decide to remove that freedom whenever they see fit.

All this is based on the assumption that the central government knows best, and that state control is a given. And I just cannot stomach that. All this is saying is "you can be free if the government lets you." And that isn't freedom; in fact, it is quite the opposite. I don't want a big society, headed up by a bloated government. I want a free society, where those living in it can decide for themselves what that society should look like, rather than responding to government control and "guidance".

The publishing sensation of the decade, I think we can all agree:

It is perhaps the most famous address in the world and now Sarah Brown, wife of the former prime minister, is to pen a book about life at 10 Downing Street.

Of course, there is something inevitable about Mrs Brown writing a memoir - no doubt her husband will at some point put pen to paper to write a tedious tome justifying his execrable tenure in Number 10. After all, once someone leaves politics, the autobiography becomes a nice little earner that can help to take the edge off defeat and the loss of a hefty income.

I just hope that Sarah Brown got the right price in order to write this book. At that price, in case anyone was wondering, should have been £2.50 and a can of Vimto.

ID card uptake: Some Statistics

According to the propaganda around the government's utterly contemptible ID card schemes, there has been some "voluntary" uptake:

Trials have already been held in Manchester, where more than 3,500 people signed up.

What? More than 3,500? Sure, that's thousands of people but... let's crunch some numbers.

Now, according to Wikipedia (yeah, I know, Wikipedia is about as reliable as... well, government stats, so bear with me) the population of Manchester is 464,000. Which is an uptake of 0.75%. Hardly a massively impressive result, is it? Particularly when you consider that in the 2005 British General Election, the BNP scored 0.7% of the vote. Which makes ID cards only marginally more popular than the BNP. How depressing for advocates of this particular invasion of our civil liberties.

Ministers have admitted spending £1.3 million on an advertising campaign to persuade people to pick up ID cards in pilot areas.

£371 per sign-up. No wonder it needs to become compulsory - otherwise, it could cost circa £22,260,000,000 to get everyone in the country to "volunteer" for it.

We're supposed to be impressed. We're supposed to see this as some sort of endorsement of ID cards. But the numbers seem to suggest that the public is doing anything but endorsing the ID card scheme. They will have to be forced on us if the government truly wants everyone to carry them - and if they become enforced, then they fail to realise the key claim the government makes on their behalf. After all, how can they make anyone feel safe, when they have to be forced onto the people at great cost?

Harry Brown

See, I think I know why Harry Brown (or 'Arry Brown, to mimic the Caine accent) was made. Caine has obviously been playing Alfred in the successful Nolan directed Batman movies. And he must have been watching Christian Bale meaningfully mumbling his way through those films, and decided he wanted a bit of the action for himself. Of course, what any self-respecting film-maker should have said to Caine is "no" (or perhaps "you're a big man, but you're out of shape"). Instead, they decided to shun the moulded body armour and instead gave Caine a cardigan and a replica firearm. And so the utterly execrable Harry Brown was born.

The plot - such as it is - is simple. 'Arry Brown is a old man who used to be a Royal Marine. 'Arry lives in a housing estate so awful that you would probably emigrate to a war zone for a better life if you lived there. He has an old friend. Who gets murdered after trying to stab some feral fucking youths with a bayonet. 'Arry gets drunk, accidentally stabs a thieving junkie on his way home, and then becomes a vigilante extraordinaire. He is like a wheezy version of Paul Kersey. Or Rambo with a pot belly.

And so he goes around killing a group of chavs and hoodies who all seem to have decided how to act by watching Kidulthood over and over again. He is also pursued (in the loosest sense of the word) by two police officers - one of them a wankstain in a flat cap and with all the sensitivity of a pitbull, and the other a female Inspector who no doubt is meant to come across as thoughtful and intuitive but instead comes across as wet as bog paper that has been immersed in the loo. Oh, and he also kills a drug dealer who looks like Gollum and a drug dealer who looks like some twat out of Razorlight in order to save a junkie whore. And I am not disparaging the woman in question; the way her character is set up makes it clear she is both a junkie and a whore. Still, 'Arry sees something worth saving. Maybe it was the fact that she is choking on her own vomit as he offs her boyfriend. Who can tell what the logic is of a psychotic pensioner with a grudge?

And everything spirals to a deeply unconvincing climax in a pub where the wheezy 'Arry (who appears to have some form of emphysema that vanishes by the very end of the film) and the Keystone Kops without the charisma are menaced by the king chav and his uncle in the middle of the sort of riot we stopped having in this country back in the 1980s. Before everything turns out to be OK. For 'Arry, at least. Not for all of the dead people, though.

No doubt this was meant to be gritty. A sort of update of Get Carter for a generation now drawing their pensions. Unfortunately, it seems to think that characters sporting cliched accents and a certain level of visceral violence makes something gritty. It doesn't. It just makes it a late-night version of The Bill with hints of Last of the Summer Wine. See, for something to be gritty it also have to be vaguely realistic. Harry Brown not only stretches the bounds of credibility, but takes the boundaries of credibility to a bar for a drink, drugs it, then carves out its kidneys to sell on the black market and then leaves the boundaries of credibility for dead in a ditch. The Punisher was arguably less daft; it certainly had better characterisation. It you want to see something gritty, then go watch Scum or I.D. Harry Brown drifts into satire without realising it - which is the kiss of death for any "gritty" film.

Sorry, I should have put a spoiler warning at the beginning of this post. But trust me, the stupid fucks who made this film have already spoiled it far more than I ever could be by revealing elements of the "plot".

As DK asks, why now?

Why now has Ed Balls announced that he could save £2 billion in education spending cuts? What has taken the Labour Party - who have been in power for over a decade - so long to work out they could make this saving? From what the ever odious Ed Balls is saying, they could have saved this country literally billions of pounds in the years they have been in power. Jesus titty-fucking Christ, Balls' statement shouldn't be applauded. It should come with a charge of criminal negligence and a demand for a taxpayer refund from those Labour leaders who have had anything to do with education spending in the past 12 years.

And if they have wasted that much money on easily identifiable waste in the last decade and a bit, just imagine how much they have wasted on other areas of the increasingly vast enterprises associated with the government...

Government Funded Gap Years

In a move surely carefully designed to provoke a howl of impotent rage from the right wing, the government is going to pay for unemployed students to go abroad. A new form of dole here; certainly more ambitious than sending people to the Jobs Centre in Gateshead. And in fairness, those who do take part in these schemes are going to have to be committed:

But according to the Times, graduates must raise £1000, buy their own flights and cover the cost of vaccinations to be eligible.

Still, it is going to cost the taxpayer the government half a million pounds. Fuck know where the money is coming from, since it was my understanding that government's purse was already stretched tighter than... well, I was going to put an unpleasant image there, but instead I'll leave it to your imagination. 

Besides, what does this actually achieve, other than spending even more taxpayer government money? Because it is *nice* that these unemployed graduates get to go abroad part funded by the state. But in what way is it connected to... well, reality? Because are these trips going to help these people get future employment? Are they going to find jobs waiting for them when they get back? Or is this a chance for the government to subtly manipulate graduate unemployment figures, and give those unemployed graduates a chance to stick their head in the sand and just pretend it isn't happening to them?

Graduate unemployment is a big problem: a few graduates making like Prince William and pissing off abroad whilst being part funded by the taxpayer government expense isn't a way to deal with that problem.

Budget 2009: A Summary

The budget in one word: craptacular.

To summarise it, Darling basically said he is going to pillage the purses and the wallets of everyone in the country to allow him to spend massive piles of cash whilst also borrowing eye-wateringly large amounts of money. True, that sounds like a lot of other Nu Labour budgets. But this time out the figures were much, much higher. And this time it was just brazen; there was no attempt to hide in anyway that his is a tax, spend and borrow budget.

Darling, and his evil overlord Brown, have shown us that they are numerically dyslexic morons with no concept that the actions they take now are going to have crippling affects on the country later down the line. We'll be talking about this budget for a while yet; we'll be suffering from it for a lot longer.