Not me, gov, - not guilty!

For many people Gordon Brown is like McCavity the cat – never there when anything goes wrong. He is now working this trick on an even larger scale, trying to sell himself as someone who was never there when the Blair government made so many mistakes (ignoring the power he wielded then), and when the Economy turns down it will be the hapless Darling who will be stuck with the blame for Brown’s mismanagement.

But are we doing him an injustice by trying to tie him in with what went before?

After all, did he not single-handedly end the recent Foot and Mouth epidemic, acting like some world-statesman, and saving farmers from great disaster? Well, he certainly did take professional advice this time, thus avoiding the vast slaughter that Blair caused before. But we can’t let him get away with this unchallenged. A report by Dr. Anderson, asked to investigate the Government’s response to the crisis, is likely to blame Defra’s negligence for the cause of the outbreak at Pirbright. There will be criticism with the expected paean of praise! But Gordon is not guilty – the guilty one is one of the hapless series of Agriculture ministers, while Gordon was only Chancellor! No, it’s McCavity again. Brown cut the Defra budget, and one of the victims with a low priority was maintenance, despite concerns over the state of the drainage system. Gordon and Defra are still hoping to pin the blame on Merial, the private firm which uses the site, but at the very least Defra is the regulatory authority for the whole industry and failed to guard the standard.

Ah, well, its only 8 farms (so far) and the Government will compensate them. O not it’s not, - hundreds of sheep and cattle farmers throughout the country will have lost millions of pounds through travel restrictions and no markets. It is just emerging that some Scottish hill farmers have so many unsold (and not exported ) lambs that have lost all value now with the result that many will be used for bio-diesel fuel!

Well, you can’t blame McCavity for the Northern Rock fiasco, which the Chancellor had to settle. The blame is being directed by the Government at the Bank of England, with Mervyn King the fall guy, and latterly the select committee is less than happy with the Financial Services Authority. Anyone is guilty but McCavity! But in 1997, when to great praise he made the Bank independent, he added the FSA and took away the Bank’s traditional function of regulating the banking system. The result is that there has been confusion. The Bank was also apparently constrained by directives from Brussels against intervention secretly to support private sector organisations. There is confusion caused by McCavity’s policies, which was reinforced by the Chancellor’s actions in promising a massive guarantee on funds deposited. (Guess who nudged the Chancellor, and then made the hapless largely rescind to a maximum of £35,000 per account – little more than previously, when it was realised what a blank cheque had been offered?)

The list goes on;

- inadequate funding for the authorities who should have ensured that drainage was maintained, and that flood defences were adequate

- selling off gold reserves at rock-bottom prices, now costing us £1.5bn.

- denying defence funds sufficient to equip our troops in battle, with the result of needless deaths.

- complicated welfare benefits – difficult to understand, expensive to run, producing countless errors and creating a “benefit class”.

- pumping money into teaching, health and police, without reform and trying to control them from the centre by targets and form-filling. Little wonder that productivity is declining and that it takes all the ingenuity of the government statistical mis-service to conceal what is going wrong.

McCavity is trying to reinvent himself, by saying that he was not there in the past, but unfortunately his fingerprints are everywhere.

Brian R.