Author Archives: Millennium Elephant

In 1909, Mr Lloyd George went to the Cabinet fourteen times in order to hammer out approval for the People’s Budget before he took it to the House of Commons. That is an extraordinary level of co-operation; that is the way the system is supposed to work.

When I and my fellow Lib Dem bloggers went to talk to Mr Chris Huhney-Monster, on the day before the 2009 Budget, he mentioned this because, in more than thirty years of looking at Budgets in one form or another, he cannot think of a single case of the Cabinet being informed more than two days in advance.

It’s a SIGN of just how BROKEN our top-down, centralized, secretive, power-crazed system has become.

This year, however, the Cabinet no doubt learned most of the SALIENT details at the same time as the rest of us: by reading the weekend newspapers.

As we shall see, it has been a month when the MEEJA has been getting BORED of the continuing story of MONEYGEDDON (©Mr Charlie Brooker) and gone looking for new stories to distract us, whether it was the April Fool Riots, or Downing Street’s “In the Loop” antics, or Flying Piggies.

Anyway, before SWINE FLU goes all “Terry Nation’s Survivors” on us, which would REALLY put the kybosh on Global Recovery, hopefully there is time for me to tell you all about what ACTUALLY happened in April. Though, so if you’re feeling a bit SNUFFLY you might want to get your TAMIFLU in before starting to read…

During the financial crisis, Lib Dem blogger Millennium Dome, Elephant, has agreed to give LDV a glimpse of his Credit Crunch Diary. You can read Part One here.

Rescue packages for everyone* this month: from Mr Lord Mandelbrot’s car loan scheme to Bank Bailout II (this time it’s RBS) to the slightly surprising suggestion in the Grauniad that our beloved Prime Monster, Mr Frown, might be taking to his own little dingy dinghy.

But all these rescue packages have the same message: Mr Frown’s PLAN to save the World economy DOESN’T WORK.

With the Hard Labour Government’s opinion poll ratings on the slide … AGAIN, their “recovery” turned out to be just another “Frown Flounce” – a reverberation of the feline post-mortem variety** – and this triggered another bout of Musical Cabinet Chairs, with everyone*** desperate not to be left sitting in the Prime Monster’s seat when the General Election music stops.

Last month people were SCARED. But this month they are starting to get ANGRY.

Because if January saw people waking up and starting to see, though the blur of the post-Christmas hangovers, that the party was over and it was time to gingerly peel open the credit card bill and peek at the damage, then February was when they spotted all those bottles of Cristal on the statement and said: “Just a COTTON-PICKIN’ minute; WE didn’t order THAT!”

That’s why people are now so cross about Ms Jacqui Spliff, the so-called Second-Home Secretary, apparently feathering her nest. And her OTHER nest. In less straitened times people (or at least journalists) might have been more inclined to overlook this sort of story, but now when a lot, and I mean a LOT, of people are facing up to the possibility of losing their ONE AND ONLY home, this looks like it is taking the Michael. (To rub salt in the wound, can anyone have been happy to hear the news that the Government’s scheme to try to help people in danger of repossession has been delayed until April while who knows how many more people are going to lose their homes in the meanwhile?)

Similarly, “apologies” from obscenely wealthy bankers and the slap-on-the-wrist of a trip to the Select Committee (rather than a trip to the woodshed, which many think warranted) do not cut much mustard. Particularly when within 24 hours the deputy-chief bank regulator (and former head of HBoS) resigns on the grounds that he is “completely innocent” of ignoring and then sacking the man who warned him (when he was head of HBoS) that HBoS was dangerously overexposed in the risky borrowing department. As it turns out, HBoS WAS dangerously overexposed in the risky borrowing department. But that doesn’t, apparently, prove anything.

And only two days after that, the new Super-bank, “Lloyds TSB HBoS Gobble Gobble” announced that they might be heading for the teeniest, tiniest largest second-largest**** loss in British Corporate History, approaching TEN BILLION pounds!

What we are starting to realise is this: big banks are BAD banks – you can’t regulate ’em, you can’t let ’em go bust, you can’t (it would seem) stop ’em paying out bonuses from the taxpayers’ money that you gave them to try and get the credit market going again.

Lloyds Super-bank’s problems come from buying Halifax Bank of Scotland at the very moment it became completely worthless because of all the sub-prime mortgage lending it had exposed itself to.

RBS’s problems come from buying Dutch bank ABM Amrose at the very moment it became completely worthless because of all the sub-prime mortgage lending it had exposed itself to.

And remember, if we DIDN’T pay them their bonuses, this sort of genius-level decision maker might take their skills elsewhere!

We could learn a lot from the rapid defenestration of the JAPANESE Finance Minister who was “completely innocent” of being drunk in charge of a press conference. He put it down to COUGH MIXTURE. I guess he should have read that label more closely:

“Caution: may cause drowsiness. Do not operate heavy machinery or a major world economy after use.”