You talk, but they simply don’t listen

Unfortunately, due to the fact that my garden is asking more of me each day, from now on I will no longer be able to write this blog for Froggy while he’s hibernating. Well, let’s face it, he’s more in tune with what’s going on out there than I am. In the meantime, while you are waiting for dear old Froggy to return in the early spring, this little break will enable you to look back over his previous blogs and catch up with what the little green fella has been up to.

While watching the latest news earlier today concerning the economic crisis we’re all having to endure at the moment, our government seems to be somewhat overly eager to help all of these Banks, and possibly car companies that are suddenly pleading poverty, to push what is now trillions of our tax paying pounds, into their holed pockets. And yet for the life of me, I can see that there are no guarantees that this will actually help them get back on their feet, or save any jobs. To be frank, this action may have saved the banks, but then they put us deep in the shite in the first place. Why isn’t our government putting the money where it will do us all some real good?

I’m going to ask all you people out there a simple question. If our government has had so much of our money to give away, then why didn’t they use it to bring the energy companies back into public ownership? These companies are making real money, a hell of a lot of money according to my recent bills. At least this sort of action wouldn’t be a one way thing. We’d have money coming into the governments coffers, and in turn, we could all have darned sight cheaper energy, and all because the government is not there to make excessive profits as is happening at the moment. They wouldn’t be losing our investment either, which is certainly what they are doing right now.

Wake up Gordon Brown and listen to what we, the electorate, have to say to you. You simply cannot keep on pouring our taxes into a bottomless pit, just because you haven’t the foggiest idea of how to get us out of the crapper.

Unfortunately, and as far as our government is concerned, you talk, but they simply don’t listen, ever…. The days of boom and bust are over, well, the days of boom certainly are. What annoys me these days, among a lot of other things, it’s the continual whining we have to put up with from all those people who forget that during the Labour Party’s first ten years in office, they made a whole pile of money.

Unfortunately, these same people seem only too ready to forget how well they did out of the boom years. Because things are getting a bit tough, they want the rest of us to feel sorry for them. I don’t recall that any of the rest of us ever twisted their arms, telling them where to invest their precious savings. They should recognize that it’s greed that fuelled this period of bust, of which they played their part in it, and what’s more, they shouldn’t damned well forget it.

Our problems are only just beginning. I think that we will soon be hearing about more revelations concerning losses in the investment world. Just as with the banks, other financial institutions will be telling us that they too have lost billions in the coming months.

Now ask yourselves this. How is it that whenever schools, hospitals, public transport and many other important considerations ask for money, it’s never there. The Banks pile tons of their useless debt on all of us, and suddenly there is billions available to help them out. How can this be right?

I’ve said enough for this week, so until Froggy returns, goodbye and mind how you go…


Bob, standing in for Froggy

We didn’t vote for him…

Where do I begin… Well, first I think that I should let you all know that our dear friend Froggy has decided to go into hibernation. I have to admit that the weather has taken a turn for the worse with snow constantly falling throughout the day. Anyhow, he deserves a rest after all the hard work he puts in for his blog. With luck, he’ll be back again in the new year when the warmer days return….

From the title this week, you may have gathered that I’m talking about Gordon Brown. He’s always harping on about the good he’s done, but from where I stand as a pensioner, he’s done very little at all. There is also the small fact that he wasn’t voted in to office by the electorate to stand as our PM, no, quite the opposite in fact. He gained this prestigious position from his colleagues by default and this isn’t quite the same as being elected by common consent is it?

What really hurts people like me, it’s that only recently Gordon Brown announced to the media that he’d taken pensioners out of poverty. Now, I don’t know about you, but this statement is about as bad as the one made by Nick Clegg when he said that he thought that pensions were £30.00 a week. For Gordon Brown’s information, this country’s poverty line is set at £151.00 per week. Now he has promised, with his government’s wisdom, that he’s going to be giving us pensioners an extra £5.00 per week from Christmas, instead of having to wait until April comes along. With the £60.00 extra on top as a one-off payment, this still falls far short of the level that poverty currently stands by a good £21.00 a week. I guess that what he is saying is simply this; we should be damned grateful for anything we can get. This from a man whose ministers are on £3,000 per week. If this isn’t insulting, then I don’t really know what is?

Enough of my complaining, it’s likely that soon the whole country will be doing the same thing, especially if he implements his plans for the unemployed, single mothers and just about anyone else who dares to live off the fat of the land for free.

Yes, as if we hadn’t got enough problems already, he now wants to make changes that would have typically come from a Tory government lording it over this country. His own party’s economic gesture has done very little to boost the economy. Let’s face it, who on earth is going to rush out to the shop, or whatever, just so that they can save an extra two and one half percent on their purchases? Well, certainly not me. The shops are in such a dire way that they are offering anything up to fifty percent in discounts, so what difference will the government’s miserly amount make towards our economy?

This was a typical half-hearted measure, one that we have come to expect from a government that doesn’t understand how our economy truly works. They said it themselves, it’s the working classes that spend the money that keeps our economic growth moving along under normal circumstances. Of course, how could people with the level of their pay understand how the working classes live? The mind truly boggles…

Apparently, savers are now up in arms because the Bank of England is suggesting that it may lower the bank rate again this week. Who cares!! If they want something to truly whine about, just wait until this government implements its plan to deal with the unemployed. Why is it that whenever the country gets into some kind of mess, they blame it solely on the poorest? It has just been announced that the automotive industry is set to lose tens of thousands of jobs, and remember, this doesn’t include any other loses that we read about almost daily in the press, on television or the internet. Now he wants to force all the unemployed into jobs that simply put, do not exist.

The end result of this move will be catastrophic for society as a whole. Look at it this way, those who operate a business don’t really give a damn who spends their money with them, but it must be legal money that is. As I’ve already said, it’s the unemployed who also keep our economy moving forward by spending what little they get in order to survive. Savers don’t do a damned thing for the general economy, and if you think otherwise, think of this. If everyone saved, like you lot of doubters, the British economy would collapse over night. The government wouldn’t receive any taxes, apart from what it makes from your earnings, and let’s face it, if this was the case, Britain couldn’t afford to pay a government because it would be broke.

If these measures towards the unemployed go ahead, then the national crime rate will go through the proverbial roof. Can’t you see that if you remove a means to live from a person, they are going to fight back by any means at their disposal, stealing, cheating and robbing the rest of us blind. Imagine, you’ve just been shopping and someone sees that you have plenty of money. Do you think that they are going to think, oh, lucky old you? No! They damned well are not. They will rob you because society turned its back on them. If you are among those who doubt my words, then you are either naïve, stupid, or one of the many who simply don’t care and would rather take their chances when it happens; by which time your broken body will be lying at the roadside, while everyone walks past and totally ignores your plight, as they always do. If you understand the situation, then perhaps it would be wise to contact your local MP and put your concerns to him/her on this grave subject.

Well, that’s enough raving from me, I’ve got some interesting jobs that need my attention. Bye…


Bob, standing in for Froggy while he hibernates

Housey, housey…

All is very well for me in the garden lately. However, as Bob told me early today, a whole lot of you humans are being put through the grinder, and all because of the greed and selfishness that pervades a certain level of humanity. You may not think so, but I truly sympathise with the predicament you find yourselves in today. Being a frog, this allows me to view life through different eyes and perhaps it’s just as well that I can. Ribbit!!!

Quite unlike Bob, I’m not able to watch what you call television. Why, I hear some of you asking? Well, it’s because I tend to leave a filthy mess in Bob’s living room if I go in his house, something that derives from my living in the garden. But hey ho, that’s how things are and I enjoy it this way. Ribbit!!!

Anyway, had I been able to watch this television, I may have been able to warn you of your calamity much earlier than I did. Sorry! You must have realised by now that those of you who bought houses and thought that their value could only go up, had unfortunately made the biggest mistake of your miserable lives. This came about because of a sinister plot perpetrated by a few unscrupulous financiers. They developed a way to help themselves make personal fortunes and laugh at you all the way to their bank in the Caymans, or wherever. They didn’t give Toad’s crap whether it would help you to lose your homes when the bubble burst. You could have avoided this if you hadn’t believed all that hype spun at you by so many of those house selling television programmes. Bob tells me that they still show these on a daily basis, so it came as a surprise to learn that you lot still think that paying a quarter of a million for a house that’s worth fifty thousand squid, is still a good bet. Hey! Shake those cobwebs from what you call a brain! Croak!!!

What still amazes me after these past years of learning about you humans, it’s that Bankers fell for buying up all these mortgages hook, line and sinker from the American market, Why??? Great horny toads, Bob told me that normally you lot have to move heaven and earth to get them to lend money to you, and even when they do, you have to give them something that will make them have trust in your being able to pay them back. So why did they trust the American Financiers and Bankers when it was quite obvious to a blind man that what goes up in value, also goes down? And why give out one hundred percent plus mortgages to British buyers, when the market quite obviously couldn’t afford to keep up the payments when the interest rates went up? One of your children could have spelled that out to them. Croak!!!

Bob tells me that you lot are laying the blame for what’s now happening, the credit crunch and the housing crisis, onto the shoulders of your Gordon Brown. Get real! This isn’t his fault. If you must blame somebody for the falling markets and the credit crunch, lay the blame squarely where it truly belongs: on the shoulders of those greedy financiers, top bankers and all those dumb enough to want to buy houses with a mortgage much bigger than they could comfortably afford to take on. If this is you, then accept the blame for yourself and stop blaming others for your pathetic mistakes. Croak!!!

Did you know that nobody else in the whole world looks at houses in quite the same way as the British? It staggers me to think that you lot are prepared to mortgage your lives to the hilt, just so that you can show and tell everyone how much of a pratt you are. Bob says that you frown on renting a house, possibly because it’s never yours. But the way I see it, many of you who bought your houses in the current financial climate, are destined to lose them anyway. And even if you don’t, you’ll spend your life shelling out piles of money to put on a new roof when it gives up the ghost, as it will, and all along with countless other repairs that will want doing and paying for. Do you think that those who rent are concerned with these kinds of crippling costs? I know what I’d prefer, and this is to rent. Even rented accommodation can be passed on to your children when you die. Of course, I’m forgetting that the Brits love to sell their homes every few years, so, how is this saving money? When I look at the current market, those who rent have the least to worry themselves about. Ribbit!!!

Oh! And I forgot your obsession for buying more than one house to live in, not forgetting all of those holiday homes you seem to go crazy for. You know what? Bob would rather go to a hundred destinations for his holidays and stay in five star accommodation, not forgetting those who will wait on him hand and foot, thereby making his holidays all the more memorable, than buy some pathetic holiday home. Whose is going to watch your holiday homes while you’re not there to do it? Okay, so you can rent it out to holidaymakers for part of the rest of the year, that’s assuming that somebody doesn’t break in and squat on your precious property while you’re away. It’s little wonder that humans are so messed up today. Croak!!!

One last thing that has been on my mind for some time. Why is it that you Brits cannot do anything without that the Americans have tried and tested it first? Their latest mistake is a dandy…. Croak!!!

Well, I have to go, so, if you haven’t been kicked out of your job, and haven’t lost your home either, I’ll see you all again next time. I may seem harsh at times, but someone has to drill some sense into you, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s me…

Froggy :-)