The United States government plans to bail out the creaking financial system to the tune of $700billion (£379billion). President George W Bush has urged that the plan be accepted or their economy will go in a tailspin.

Why should hard-earned taxpayers cash be used to fund the financiers’ gambling spree? It would have been better to have allowed mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac go to the wall so the government can bring help to those homeowners genuinely affected by such an outcome. The news of the proposals will be keenly (!) watched in the UK too. Whatever the US does, we tend to follow. If the package is rejected, if they suffer, we suffer too.

Like Gordon Brown in the UK, Bush feels he needs to help the bankers rather than the ordinary people he is supposed to be serving. The problem now is that he has left such a terrible mess now, that whoever suceeds him in November will have very little room  to manoeuvre. Would John McCain or Barack Obama want to become President on the back of all this?

Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologises for the axing of the 10p tax band at Labour’s annual party conference:

“What happened with 10p stung me because it really hurt that suddenly people felt I wasn’t on the side of people on middle and modest incomes, because on the side of working families is the only place I’ve ever wanted to be. And now it’s the only place Iever will be.”

Well, is there any chance that he can regain any self-respect, and restore the 10p band immediately? As they say, don’t bet on it…

I simply couldn’t make this one up. One bank’s shares nosedave at the markets due to rumour. The situation gets so bad that they hold talks with another bank for a rescue. The Prime Minister Gordon Brown gets involved, and soon the deal was struck- two banks allowed to merge (well, it’s in fact a takeover). That is what happened when Lloyds TSB and HBoS (Halifax Bank of Scotland) got together in what one business commentator called ‘a shotgun marriage’.

I couldn’t understand why was this allowed to happen. This takeover easily breaks regulatory and competition rules, yet the government ignored everything to ensure that it took place. HBoS, unlike Northern Rock, is deemed to be ‘too big’ a bank to fail, yet a combination of speculators’ nervousness and bad management had got the bank to the edge of bankruptcy.

The problems will not end there. Both HBoS and Lloyds TSB are national banks, with branches in most High Streets, and there were fears that at least a quarter of the jobs of the new ‘superbank’ would certainly be lost, already adding to Britain’s increasing unemployment rate. It seems that Brown  will fight to prop up our ailing banking sector, yet refuses to find much needed resources to fund our public services. His half-hearted ‘pledge’ today to clean up banking in this country will be seen by critics as ‘too little, too late’.

Still, there is one silver lining from the merger. At least we will be rid of that prat Howard from the Halifax adverts.

According to Jane Moore in The Sun today, the country is sinking fast…. and, like every other big-mouth, overpaid newspaper columnist, she blames the government:

“”Great” Britain is officially on the critical list, ravaged by 11 years of New Labour policies that favoured the super-rich and the super-idle, while robbing blind those who worked hard to try to make a decent life for their family”.

She also blames (non-white) immigration:

“Immigration now courts for 70 per cent of our population growth.

“Fine if the majority were coming here to happily integrate into the community and pay into the system, but they’re not. Consequently, the public services that were once the envy of the world are struggling to cope with the increased demand that’s not matched by investment.”

All this and what she claims in her column, is responsible for the fact that official figures have shown record numbers of Britons have left the country since records began. It harks back to the well-worn (!) argument that “In Britain today, nothing ever works”.

While it’s true that many people have left the country, there are plenty of others who have come here because they can get the opportunities they didn’t have before. They are often prepared to do the work that the locals often shun, like, run our public services, manage our businesses and maintain our vital infrastructure, and, except in a few cases, don’t get any thanks for doing so. Many immigrants often pay more in taxes to Britain than they receive back. It’s often they who are trying to keep this country going, in spite of the likes of continued anti-foreigner hysteria in the media.

As for Britain being overcrowded, the real reason is that improvements in diet and technology have seen people live longer (or larger?) than in previous generations, not just necessarily by increased immigration. At present, the non-white population in Britain is still reasonably low.

If Britain is sinking, it’s because of the rotten attitudes that many columnists like Moore and others hold, and the fact that the government spends too much time listening to those views.