When Gordon Brown first arrived at the Treasury (in 1997), senior officials presented him with the precise state of the national finances he was inheriting from the Tories. "These are fantastically good figures," he was told. "The state of the economy is much better than predicted."

It was not what he would have wanted to hear. Charlie Whelan, his laddish press spokesman, had been spinning the story to journalists that the Tories had bequeathed Labour an economy full of 'black holes' with rising inflation and slowing growth.

Being told the opposite brought a sarcastic response from the new Chancellor. "What am I supposed to do? Write a thank-you letter?" he snapped. The mandarins quietly smiled. Politicians were a unique breed. Despite what the officials had shown him, Brown would stick to his position that the economy he inherited was a mess and his predecessors' predictions inaccurate. That way he could claim all the credit for economic recovery.

Extracted from the book GORDON BROWN by Tom Bower - Daily Mail, September 30, 2004

Webmasters note: Within a few weeks Brown withdrew $5billion a year tax credits from Insurance Companies, which led to the crisis affecting the pension funds of every worker in the private sector. *****************

R. Phillips, London W14, one of our silent majority, writes the following letter to the Daily Mail:

How much longer can this country afford to pay for the blunders of its Chancellor?

One of his first actions on taking office was to abolish tax relief on medical insurance, forcing thousands of pensioners back into the NHS and increasing the problems of that service.

Next he sold our gold reserves, managing to time the sale at such a low price that he lost us billions.

Now his misguided raids on our pension schemes have played a major part in transforming them from one of the best in the world into a financial catastrophe.

He is motivated by the intention to redistribute wealth from the middles classes to those in poverty. Like all socialists, he ignores the fact that it is precisely this wealth that provides the means for him to carry out his social engineering experiments.

Let's sack him at the next General Election before he wrecks the nation's finances for ever.

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Martin Phillips of Mold, Flintshire, one of our silent majority, writes to the Daily Mail (Jan 4, 2005) -

WHERE'S PRUDENCE

Chancellor Gordon Brown is always telling us what a safe pair of hands he is in steering the economy towards prosperity. His smug self-satisfaction should be tempered by the rank timing he showed when selling 395 tonnes of UK gold stocks at an average price of only $275 an ounce between 1999 and 2001, when gold prices dipped to their lowest level in decades.

The price is now in excess of $440 an ounce and predicted to rise to the princely sum of $500, leaving Brown with a big dollop of egg all ever his face. Mr Brown's sell-off must rank as one of the poorest deals in modern history and the latest figures reveal that Brown's faux pas has so far cost the British taxpayer £700million.

A charitable man would have held his hands up and admitted his ghastly error, but fallibility is something New Labour politicians are incapable of owning up to. What can one say about a man caught flogging off the family silver - or in this case, gold - at well below market price. There's no sign of Prudence , Mr Brown's erstwhile constant companion.

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H. Attwood from Cheltenham, one of our silent majority, writes to the Daily Mail (April 14, 2005)

I frequently read that if Gortdon Brown were to lead the Labour Party, people would be more inclined to vote for it. Why? Is he not the man who introducted 66 'stealth taxes' - taxes that, unlike income tax, take no account of one's ability to pay? Thus the poorer in society suffer the most.

He is also a large contributor to the pensions crisis by his £5billion raid on pension funds in 1997. He also introduced index-linked benefits which reward the feckless but punish the thrifty.

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Lionel Scott, London, SE20, one of our silent majority, writes to the Daily Mail (April 14, 2005)

I wish Gordon Brown had not got off so lightly over his decision to raise NI contributions by 1% on all earnings. When the 'rate' was supposedly increased from 7% to 8%, class 4 NIC contributions for the self-employed went up by a full 14.28% on earnings above £4,615 per annum.

So if someone who was self-employed paid, say £700 in one year, the following year they were charged £800 on a similar level of chargeable income. A recent Mail report made the situation clear when discussing fixed-rate, interest-only mortgages which wil soon end.

The interest rate might go up by 2.41% (from 4,23% to 6.64%), but in practice this will mean payments rising from £352 a month to £553 - a rise of 56%.

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Bernard Lewis, Buckingham, one of our silent majority, writes to the Daily Mail (April 27, 2005)

Between now and May 5, voters should acquaint themselves with the importance of the figure 100. Under Tony Blair, council tax hass gone up by 100% - quite an achievement in just eight years. since 1997, gordon Brown has plundered £100bn from the insurance industry.

In 2001, Mr Brown confidently predicted he need borrow only £12mn over the next 5 years. In fact, he's had to borrow £112mn - a small error of £100mn.

Meanwhile, Blair rates Brown 'the best Chancellor in 100 years'. Is this the same Chancellor who sold our gold at a loss of £100mn? No intelligent person can vote Labour on MAY 5.

Stop the gravy train

The biggest worry that most politicians have after the 'NO' votes in France and the Netherlands is how much longer thay can keep the lucrative gravy train rolling. When they are eventually kicked out of office here, they often have a juicy Euro job to go to, plus their pension.

Why does every aspect of our lives need to be controlled by zealously enforced stupid laws, supervised by quangos of cronies, monitored by umpteen committees and the results then translated into 20-odd languages by armies of overpaid, unnecessary pen-pushers?

Give them all a new job description, a mop and a bucket and tell them to do something really useful , such as getting rid of MRSA from our hospitals. Letter from A. McMurray, Luton - Daily Mail, June 6, 2005

"Taxes stop new things happening." from The Spectator's Notes by Charles Moore - The Spectator, July 2, 2005

Unemployment is at its lowest in almost 30 years, official figures revealed yesterday, writes Darren Behar, Industry Correspondent of the Daily Mail, October 14, 2004. Numbers claiming Jobseekers Allowance fell by 200 to 834,000 in September - the lowest since 1975. The jobless total - including those not claiming benefits - fell to 1.39million in August, the lowest since records began in 1984.

But the figures also show a record 7.93million people are out of work and not looking for a job. This includes 2.7million on incapacity benefit, about a million youngsters not studying or working, those who have retired early, full-time students and housewives and single parents at home.

The number of 'economically inactive' people has risen by 380,000 since Labour came to power. But because they are not included in jobless figures, ministers can claim they've slashed unemployment. The number of people collecting incapacity benefit has trebled in the past 25 years.

Tory Work and Pensions spokesman, David Willetts, said: "These figures represent a historic mile-stone. The number of people economically inactive is at its highest level for at least 20 years."

While there's been a boom in the number of public sector jobs, manufacturing jobs continue to be lost. There were 87,000 fewer jobs in manufacturing compared with a year ago, down to 3.36million, lowest on record.

The new expenses list had MPs in a stew. Keith Vaz (Lab, Leicester East) spent a good 15 minutes on the phone berating David Byres, political correspondent of the Leicester Mercury, after his local paper dared report that he came second at £164,265 in the list of most expensive MPs. James Cran, Tory MP for Beverley and Holderness, spent 20 minutes ranting at Caroline Wheeler, the new-but-tenacious lobby correspondent for the Hull Evening Mail, after her paper reported how much he had racked up (£88,524) in expenses. Mr Cran doesn't usually say much. He hasn't spoken in the Commons since before the last general election.

Labour MPs Ann and Alan Keen - Mr and Mrs Expenses - received £98,705 for their London housing since 2001. They claim £17,669 per annum a head. Expense claimin' is evidently a family talent. Ann Keen's sister, Sylvia Heal, is also an MP and she got through more than £107,000 of public money in expenses last year. Well done!

Ephraim Hardcastle - Daily Mail, October 26, 2004

At the trough

On and on rolls the Westminster gravy train. Just two weeks after the outcry over their outrageously bloated expenses, MPs vote to give themselves £3million more - this when their allowances have already soared by £20million in two years and when an independent review body recommends modest cuts in their perks.

They are useless at holding the executive to account, but their sticky-fingered opportunism is a wonder to behold. Do they have the slightest comprehension of the contempt in which the public holds them? Or are they so remote from the everyday struggles of taxpayers and pensioners - people badly hit by the decisions of politicians in recent years - that they just don't care.

Comment - Daily Mail, November 5, 2004

He has created a record number of bureaucrats

by Graeme Wilson, Political Correspondent, Daily Mail - August 7, 2004

Tony Blair is dragging Britain back to the Seventies with old-style Labour tax and spend policies, one of America's most influential journals claims. Newsweek magazine accuses the Prime Minister of turning Britain into a bloated Continental-style economy. It says his record - 50,000 extra bureaucrats and a 63% increase in public spending - has turned him into 'Europe's real big spender', and claims that Britain is less business-friendly.

Mr Blair has enjoyed a long honeymoon with the American media. The phrase 'Cool Brittania' was coined following a 1996 Newsweek feature that declared London the 'coolest capital on the planet'. For years, New Labour took full advantage of being associated with the phrase. However, the latest edition of the magazine pulls few punches.

Mr Blair's photo is on its cover with the headline 'Can Blair make it?' Inside, the magazine unleashes a ferocious attack on his stewardship of the British economy and the rising tax burden he has imposed on hard-pressed families. It asks which European country has seen public spending soar while recruiting armies of bureaucrats 'at a rate almost unheard of since the 1970's'.

"Statist France? No. Sclerotic Germany? No. the big spenders run a country that was once a model for 'third-way' reform - Tony Blair's Britain," it declares. While Mr Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown boast abut how Britain has avoided recent global downturns, Newsweek is unconvinced. It says some fear the massive increase in public sector spending was 'sensibly Anglo 39.8%' in 1998. Now, however, it is touching 43% and could soar as high as 49% by 2009.

Concerns are growing that extra billions pumped into the public sector are simply paying for wage increases, Newsweek stresses. It quotes Holger Schmieding, an economist at the Bank of America: "The UK used to be a low-tax, low-public-spending place, well suited to fostering the private sector," he said. "But over the past few yars, there's been a creeping convergence with the Continent."

Newsweek goes on to argue that 'Britain is becoming a less business-friendly place' and there are fears the Chancellor has 'spent himself into a corner, leaving little room to bolster the economy should there be a downturn'. With spending still rising fast, the article adds that most experts believe the 'baseline tax level will increase after the next election'.

Mr Blair is accused of jettisoning his 'third way ' policies - which claimed to be a halfway house between Thatcherism and socialism - in favour of old Labour policies. Newsweek quotes Oxford University Professor Alan Ryan, Warden of New College, who said officials were ordered to stop using the term 'third way'.

The criticism was welcomed last night by Conservatives, who are running a campaign to highlight the surge in bureaucrats under New Labour. Shadow Chancellor Oliver Letwin said: "Newsweek have hit the nail on the head. We are all gradually beginning to realise that Mr Blair's 'third way' is just another word for fat government, in which a bureaucracy with more bureaucrats than inhabitants of Scotland seek to run more and more aspects of all our lives and costs the equivalent of an additional £5000 a year in tax for each household in Britain."

Downing Street spokesman said last night: "This is not something we want to respond to."

As MPs are among the 'pension protected species' in today's world, do you agree the state sector in the UK must be slimmed down drastically to the levels of 1997 to save us their salaries and pensions?

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Do you agree that the threshold, above which Inheritance Tax is charged, should be increased from £263,000 to £1,000,000?

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