As the DWP’s House Idiot Ros ‘Jewels’ Altmann tells everyone to be vigilant about pensionscams, it seems not to occur to the Technicolor Turncoat that the scams are largely made possible by sloppy drafting of the Bills passed by her department in the first place – and the woefully insufficient regulation of a sector where most of the selling is being done by that specialist outfit, Elmer Gantry & the Tartan Painters.
At the same time, by the way, Ros is careful never to answer any calls about the greatest pension heist in world history – the £700 billion robbery perpetrated by 600,000 Sir Humphreys during 2005-6…and still appearing in the Budget accounts as ‘unfunded civil service pensions’. In fact, truth be told nobody answers my calls about this one. As the HSBC Witchfinder General, Nick Wilson has written ‘one bloke on his own is simply dismissed as a nutter’, and he is right.
That’s why – when dealing with Camerlot and all its jolly japes – crowd-sourced media pressure, moral blackmail and eventually, threats to make a bloody nuisance of yourself are vital…otherwise one will just be ignored.
Anyway, the main architect of all things nasty, Chancer of the Bouncedchequer Engorged Nobsore, has other inedible food on his plate at the minute. So he’s far too busy to listen to choirs singing anthems: because the Q4 2015 deficit numbers are in, and they are truly dreadful. Let’s call a spade a spade, they are the worst since records began.
But Little Squeaky as we all know has had his excuses lined up for some time, and these have been duly trotted out: headwinds in the World Economy, instability in China, the completely unforeseen plague of boils in Huddersfield and so on.
But after yesterday’s humiliating stats – the deficit stood at £32.7bn in the fourth quarter of 2015 (much worse than the £21.2bn economists expected) and now weighs in at 7% of GDP, up from 4.3% in Q3 – Number 11 came up with a belter of an ‘off the record’ briefing: it’s all the fault of these Brexiters.
The pro-EU Financial Times was, as ever, eager to write, ‘[the deficit] suggests foreign investment has already begun to fall sharply in the run-up to the June 23 ‘Brexit’ referendum.’
This is utter tosh for several reasons:
- Neville Camerlain didn’t even come back with his risible ‘profound reform’ package until the outset of March this year.
- In the years 2010-15, Ossie the Cokehead got his deficit calculations wrong by exactly 50%, when Brexit seemed to be a fevered dream in the head of Nigel Mirage and no headwinds at all were apparent in the global economy, according to the Treasury.
- Not even the sugar-free draper has ever suggested Brexit is a factor in his abject failure – although in the light of this unattributable briefing, he’s obviously going to give it a try.
- Most other economists dismissed the idea out of hand, citing the increasing dependence upon financial services, the dire state of the eurozone economy, a falling tax intake massively underestimated by Osborne, and poor productivity as the more influential factors. The increase “largely reflects the trade deficit widening,” emphasised Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at IHS Global Insight.
Yesterday was unilaterally designated World Reality Day by the Slog. For the Dark Knights of Camerlot, every day from here on is going to bring a new reality. Let’s hope it spreads to the Queen Waspis before too long.
The Slog 