His main preoccupations seem to be:
- short skirts
- Gordon Brown
- global warming
- short skirts.
Steve's good on numeracy though. Not for nothing was he the crap-filter for our epoch-making Open University statistics course - conceived 1979; still running in Hong Kong, I'm glad to see.
I'm not clear if Steve disbelieves that global warming is happening, or whether he is just against cap-and-trade. If the latter, then I agree with him: a globally agreed carbon tax is what we should be going for. And until that's agreed, the major polluters should start with local taxes. (Yes, that means you, President Obama.)
I also agree with Steve that Gordon Brown is now dead in the water. He's even ceased to bother to come up for air. I'm not surprised. One of the worst things about Tony Blair is that he cleared the Labour Party of anybody interested in innovative thinking - apart from all the lickspittles.
But at least Blair had charisma and could crack the occasional joke. He also looked as though he knew where he was going - even if it was 180o in the wrong direction.
Admittedly Brown had some bad luck to start off with. The floods three weeks after he took over were clearly not his fault (Blair's, probably). But his first dithering was the failure to call an election in Autumn 2007. (But then, if he had, he would still have 3 years to run now and that is too dire tro contemplate.)
Brown and Darling have thrown money at the banks. Meanwhile, homelessness and child poverty are still major problems. (How many times did you see child poverty mentioned after the budget - compared with the zillions of crocodile tears over the long-overdue 50% income tax rate and the poor guys earning over £150,000 p.a.?)
I suspect that Murgatroyd agrees with this. He probably also agrees with my proposal for "Brown pounds". This was a way of resolving the credit crunch without enriching the banks and hoping for a bit of eventual trickle-down. Brown pounds would have been a freebie for everybody. So it would have been equalising, and not "more for those who have". The idea is that everybody in the UK would receive 1000 Brown pounds from the kind Mr Brown (or ten thousand, or some other figure). The only trick is that this money is for spending, not saving. So it has to be spent by Christmas Day (say). Any Brown Pounds not spent by then immediately turn into pumpkins and are worth nothing. Result: an instant boost to the economy; everybody feels good about the kind Mr Brown; and lots of pumpkins. The idea is so brilliant that I'm surprised Saint Vince Cable (our next Speaker) did not think of it first.
Of course, variants are possible (more for the poor; special arrangements for people about to lose their homes; phased payments rather than one-off, .....); and it has definitional problems (who exactly qualifies? how to prevent scams?) But compared with most taxes and subsidies it is relatively simple, and easy to manage and monitor.
But I do agree with Murgatroyd about short skirts ....
