NEW GOVERNMENT BAILOUT IS BLANK CHEQUE

Without a thorough review of all the assets that are being underwritten, the latest government bank bail-out means ministers are effectively writing a blank cheque to the banks that have arguably been largely responsible for the financial crisis.

The Government is now proposing to underwrite billions of pounds worth of debt which could leave taxpayers open to vast losses.

Ministers are offering hardly any details about the terms of this underwriting. Taxpayers are being signed up to yet another bank bailout, when it is clear the Government hasn't done its homework. The £100bn insurance of bad debts owned by the banks could result in enormous losses for taxpayers, since these assets are being insured in a falling market and there are still further big losses to come in the property market.

The Prime Minister says he is putting in place proper controls to monitor the use of taxpayers' money. They should already be there! Why weren't the banks required to make a full declaration of their bad loans when the £37bn was invested?
With RBS now 70% publicly owned, there can be no more excuses for it not to start lending at reasonable levels to viable businesses and individuals.

Northern Rock Bonuses

Nationalised bank Northern Rock is to award staff a 10% bonus.

Northern Rock, you will recall, was nationalised in February 2008 after a run on the bank in 2007. Once Britain's fifth-biggest home loan provider, it was taken into public ownership after it failed to find a suitable buyer from the private sector.

A Northern Rock spokesman refused to be drawn on how much money was being paid out, but pointed out that the staff-wide bonus scheme had been announced in October. He also stressed that no executives or senior management would benefit. The reward comes after staff met targets on repaying the bank's £26bn loan from the government.

Asked whether Mr Brown approved of the bonuses, the prime minister's spokesman said: "Northern Rock, as I think is well known, has repaid its debts to the government at a rate faster than originally planned for. Operational decisions such as this are a matter for Northern Rock."

Northern Rock still owes billions to taxpayers. At a time when millions of people are facing pay cuts or even unemployment, this bonus is hard to understand. And harder to accept.

Tories No Better Than Labour On Managing the Economy

Last week, the respected independent research organisation, the Institute for Fiscal Studies released their forecast for UK's public finances. Interestingly, they showed that Labour and the Conservatives are just as bad as each other at managing the UK economy.

Charting the UK's progress, they demonstrated the structural budget balance had risen from minus 5% of national income under the Tories to 1% after three years in government from 1979, but then fell back to minus 3% after eleven years. It then fell to minus 5% after 14 years, closing at minus 3% again after 18 years. Everyone remembers the Conservatives' humiliating failure with Sterling and the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM).

And guess what. Under Labour the structural budget balance started at minus 3% in 1997, rose to 1% again after three years, but then fell back to minus 3% after eleven years. The Institute for Fiscal Studies now forecast that the balance will fall again to minus 7% after thirteen years before closing at minus 3% again. And so no better than where they started.

So neither party left the public finances in a healthy position after many years in government.

After seeing so much crisis and failure, its now time to give Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg and the very well respected Lib Dem Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable and colleagues a chance.

Quote of the week

"This is a humiliating climbdown for Gordon Brown after he was forced to accept that people will not tolerate MPs continuing to act like members of a secret society. It is also a victory for everyone who think that politicians should be open and accountable to the people who pay their wages."

Nick Clegg, Leader of the Liberal Democrats, commenting on news that Gordon Brown has retreated from plans to exempt MPs' expenses from the Freedom of Information Act - 21 January

One third of suspected crimes fail to reach court

Almost a third of criminal suspects arrested in the past year were not charged, government figures have shown.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, has admitted that out of 550,000 cases leading to arrests last year, 160,000 were dropped.

This is a substantially higher number than was expected by the government and we need to know why.

Either police are not preparing cases as well as they should be, which seems unlikely, or the Crown Prosecution Service are getting more choosy about when to charge.

We owe it to the victims concerned to get to the bottom of this. At the moment it is out of order that so many cases are being investigated and then nothing happens.

Expel Lords who break the law

Lords who are convicted of a criminal offence and face a prison sentence should be expelled from Parliament.

The allegations of accepting payment in return for changing legislation are serious enough. But on top of that the sanctions applied to the peers if they are found guilty are so weak.

The most the accused peers will have to do if the Lords’ investigation finds them guilty is to apologise.

It is wholly out of step with the public’s legitimate demand for transparency in politics that just because someone happens to be in the House of Lords they are exempt from the most basic standards of accountability.

Police 'should probe Lords case'

The Liberal Democrats have called for a police inquiry into allegations that four Labour peers were prepared to accept money to change proposed laws.

Home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said if the claims, made in the Sunday Times newspaper, were true a criminal offence would have been committed.

The four are said to have offered to amend laws in return for up to £120,000 - claims that they all deny.

The Leader of the House of Lords has promised a full investigation.

The Sunday Times said its reporters had posed as lobbyists acting for a foreign client.

This firm was said to be setting up a chain of shops in the UK and wanting an exemption from the Business Rates Supplements Bill.

Mr Huhne said the Lords must "toughen up" its own procedures to make sure allegations such as these did not surface again.

From BBC News Online: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7849990.stm

Anti-knife campaign fails as crime soars

We are facing a crimewave which is being fuelled by the recession. Latest figures show a big rise in knife-point robberies, burglaries, and fraud.

Robberies at knife-point are up 18 per cent, domestic burglaries are up four per cent and fraud or forgery is up 16 per cent.

More people died last year as a result of stabbings than at any time since records began. The Home Office figures show that robberies involving “knives or sharp instruments” were up 18 per cent between July and September last year, compared with the same period in 2007.

Fatal stabbings increased by 10 per cent to 270 in 2007-8, the highest since records began in 1977.

Domestic burglaries were up for the first time since 2002, by four per cent from 66,900 between July and September 2007 to 69,700 in the same period last year.

Other types of burglary were also up, by three per cent.

Drugs offences were nine per cent higher in July to September 2008 than in the same quarter the previous year and fraud and forgery increased by 16 per cent.

There is now clear evidence of rising crime as the recession bites.

The effectiveness of the anti-knife crime campaign launched by the government last June is questionable. The Government has failed to effectively roll out the measures that we know work against knife crime.

Posturing about penalties is no substitute for the hard graft of visible and intensive policing.

Labour's housing failure as repossessions soar

Yesterday, it was announced that repossessions were rising at an alarming rate; today we hear that the number of households on local authority housing waiting lists has hit 1.77 million - official statistics show this is up 100,000 on last year.

With the banks overstretching their credit facilities it could well mean that in the coming months that councils will have to help pick up the pieces as people end up on social housing waiting lists.

Since Labour took power 12 years ago the council house waiting list has risen from one million to almost 1.8 million, showing this Government has failed to build anywhere near the number of social homes Britain desperately needs.

The Government’s response to the social housing crisis is not only inadequate but scandalous. It is essential that the Government uses the current economic crisis to allow councils and housing associations to buy up land to build new social houses for the increasing number of families left waiting for social housing.

By allowing social housing to wither, the Government has let down hundreds of thousands of families.