Season’s greetings to one and all :-)

I guess that you don’t need me to tell you that Christmas is only just around the corner, although for some, you couldn’t care less for one reason or another. Many may not feel like celebrating, perhaps you’ve just lost your job, or your debts are getting way over your head. If this is you, then you only have the government to blame for your terrible predicament.

Talking of our glorious government, but then what’s new in this? Nothing really changes where they are concerned. If, like me, you came through the 1960s, you’ll have experienced the Beeching era, a period that saw the incumbent government party pay Beeching £24,000 a year to destroy our glorious railway system. Despite what many think of this, the railways were operated to give a public service to one and all, and not to necessarily make a profit at that.

Unfortunately, this is not quite how the government saw the situation. To these ministers, the railways were blocking the way forward for car ownership and the motorway system. If we really want to understand the truth about what happened, we have to understand that Ernest Marples, the Tory transport minister, had a vested interest in seeing the eventual demise of the railways. He was the boss of a motorway building company. Without the railway system in place, he could simply go ahead with his plans to develop a bigger and better road system, something that today’s motorists are experiencing to their cost, one where they are now forced to deal with the terrible congestion that clogs the very roads that were formerly built to make life easier.

Well, there’s no turning the clock back and what was done is done. Never the less, there is a similarity between the reasons for taking away a much needed public service, and today’s government ministers. Remember, on Beeching’s say so, they closed these railways and thereby put countless thousands out of work. Now, if I understand this correctly, the government firmly believes that unless a service can be seen to pay its way in society, it has to be done away with, right?

I don’t know about you, but I’d say that this country is in a hell of a mess at the moment, one where countless thousands will once again lose their jobs. To me, this indicates that the service given to us by our government is, to put it mildly, in a hell of a mess. Since by their standards, anything that doesn’t pay its way is deemed as being unwanted and certainly not cost effective, then our government should immediately give up their jobs and go back to doing something more suited to their talents, and running a country certainly isn’t one of them.

All government ministers and officials working throughout the city of London, are a complete waste of time and money. If something should be done to save Britain’s economic collapse, we should begin by greatly reducing the salaries of these vastly overpaid officials at the top. Have you ever wondered what sort of money these people receive for what they do, if indeed they actually do anything but delegate the work to someone else? Believe me, the total amount paid to such people could quite easily bring us out of the economic doldrums we’re in at present.

What the government did for the economy is a national joke, just like the thought that Gordon Brown has about the fact he thinks he‘s saved the world! Did he honestly think that we‘d all go rushing out to the shops because he gave us two percent off VAT? He should have made the lowest wage earners, like those earning less than ten thousand a year, go free of income tax, at least until the economy got back on its feet. These are the people who spend more money on the high street than anyone else.

Gordon, if you really do care about Britain, then do something more positive to help, and preferably before it goes completely to the dogs. You helped the banks, when it was their fault that they were all on the verge of collapse in the first place. Why didn‘t you bail out the general public instead? Now this would have been a potentially huge vote earner. After all, it was the taxpayers money you used to prop up the banks in the first place, so what had we done to deserve this kind of treatment from you and your government?

Of course, it all boils down to what happens to the rest of us during the current economic climate. As I see it, ministers like you won’t suffer any real hardship at all, and this no matter how bad the slump is. You’ll come up smelling of roses even if the Labour party gets kicked out of office, and all because every single government minister is far too highly paid for their own good. Now, if your income, and that of the rest of Britain’s ministers was at stake here, you’d do something about it quite smartly to change the situation, wouldn‘t you?

Mister Brown, you are a family man, well, be a real man and do something for us for a change. Britain’s economy hasn’t collapsed yet, and it’s full of families just like your own, but if you let things slide with your half-hearted gestures, it will be beyond helping.


Bob, your friendly gardener standing in for dear old Froggy…