Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross: Who thought that was funny?

I see that Russell Brand has resigned from his show on BBC Radio 2 and Jonathan Ross has been suspended.

This all stems from phone calls to Andrew Sachs' answering machine giving details of a liaison between Andrew Sachs' granddaughter Georgina Baillie.

This does leave some strange questions, like just who thought that was funny? Has Russell Brand no manners? After all he should not have discussed his relationship with Georgina Baillie in such terms with anyone, let alone use it to taunt her grandfather and then broadcast it.

Who at the BBC thought this was fit to broadcast? Why have they not been sacked yet?

The content of the BBC is becoming increasingly worrying, especially that aimed at children and the younger audiences. The latest CBBC logo animation features farting. Why? Dick and Dom is puerile and vulgar as well. Perhaps the attitude that allowed Russell Brand's show to be broadcast is endemic in the BBC.

The BBC has this.

EU: Mandelson did nothing wrong!

Apparently the EU has insisted that Lord Peter Mandelson did nothing wrong as far as his relationship with Oleg Deripaska is concerned.

The question is; Does this say more about Peter Mandelson, or the EU which has failed to have its accounts signed off for years?

The BBC has this.

Bank Bailout looks OK so far.

Markets around the world look very positive over the frankly massive bank bailouts world wide.

However we have two issues.

The first is excessive debt in the west, particularly in the USA and UK, and excessive savings in places like China all leading to massive trade deficits funded by fiddling currency rates and the savers lending us the money to buy what they produce.

Expect tight times ahead.

The BBC has this.

Government admits defeat on 42 days?

The government admits defeat on 42 days, but wants to keep a bill in its back pocket to bring out at a moments notice to blackmail parliament into passing it at a moments notice.

You just could not make it up.

As a previous Lord Chancellor, Lord Cheerful Charlie Falconer has pointed out, its not needed because if the prosecuting authorities have a reasonable belief that the evidence will become available, they can charge someone much earlier then gather the evidence. The bill as it now stands includes provisions for post charge questioning as well.

So where is the problem?

This is obviously just political posturing, and trying to look hard.

The BBC has this.

No more boom and bust!

Prudence is our watchword.

I knew it was claptrap at the time, and I screamed it from the rooftops. I, and indeed anyone with a brain, could see we had a looming problem built on a debt mountain, joyless economic growth built on immigration and so on.

I won't say I told you so, because even I did not think it would get quite this bad.

Last year I had a building society account. This year it appears I own ten banks. Bizarrely they probably will not lend me my own money. Quite amusingly they won't borrow from me either.

Our banking institutions seem to me to be schizophrenic. They will throw money at people who they know can't repay their credit cards, or they will not lend at all. There seems to be no sensible middle ground. The reasons for this are obvious. Whereas a junior member of a bank had a final say over a certain size of lending, and a bank manager much larger, now a bank manager has to do what he is told by a computer operating on a model built by a mathematician who has never lent money to anyone. The system is simple in its wrongness. The more money you have available, the more victims you seek, the less, the harsher your lending criteria. At no point in this is there the opportunity for individual judgement. That is what is missing from the system.

The Big Bank Bailout: Will it work?

That is of course the £500 billion question.

I suppose the answer depends on what you mean by "work".

Will it bring on days of endless economic sunshine?

No. Emphatically no.

What it may do, and by goodness I hope it does, is stave off a depression. It will not stave off a recession, I am afraid for reasons I will state below.

You have to start by asking where we are. We are a debt ridden country with a debt ridden government. Money supply has been out of control. We may as well have been printing the stuff, but we haven't, we have been borrowing it from the Chinese and the OPEC countries to buy their exports. This is the fundamental root of the problem.

We have hideous amounts of private debt, something like £500 billion on credit cards and unsecured loans, let alone what we have in mortgages at horrific income multiples and/or self certified housing debt quite a lot of which was based on what now seems very optimistic valuations.

The bottom line is that we have to pay back at least £500 billion in foreign debt. We also need to encourage local savings. That will hit the economy hard for many years to come.

Still, at least we can bank on our banks, but with a bit of luck we can reduce the number of regulations they have to comply with whilst making them more effective. Less can definitely be more here.

The irritating thing about all of this is that both the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats have been pointing out this car crash for years, though none expected it to be either this bad or this costly.

The BBC has this.

Sir Ian Blair resigns!

My position is clear. Sir Ian Blair should not have resigned. That is a tragic error.

Left leaning twits have accused the Conservative party of making things party political. This is tosh.

Sir Ian Blair should have been sacked, long ago for dragging his office into politics, and indeed so should have this government, for dragging the police into politics especially over various bits of anti terrorism legislation.

The fascinating thing was watching Chris Huhne's comments. he basically said that if Blair did not have the confidence of London's mayor, he should go. The reason for this approach is obvious. It distances the Liberal Democrats from a direct link to the ousting of a pratt, whilst supporting it, because Liberal Democrats have also been irritated by Ian Blair dragging his office into politics.

So when New Labour freaks (and anyone who is still new Labour is a freak) shout about us Conservatives dragging the police into politics, perhaps they might consider how they have dragged them in first.

For my first article on why he should go see here.