Something is going on with Labour's economic truth denial policy

Apparently Ed Balls is almost about to admit that there might have been a tiny little itsy bitsy structural deficit, which could (just technically amongst less generous commentators mind you) have been considered to have happened whilst Labour were in power. ( Apparently its in the New Statesman somewhere ).

So Denial not working for the two Eds so well then ?

My guess is Labour have been stung by the torrent of abuse they have received for supporting the public sector dinosaurs and their rent a thug supporters on #march26.

I bet the private polling is in.

I bet they realise people have seen through their lies and deceit.

So we'll perhaps be getting a new position shortly.

They had better move quickly before Portugal really blows up and the public become even more incredulous of Labour Debt Denial policy.

The Debt Labour have hung around our necks

Less Tax + no cuts = more debt

Announcements from Labour so far:

• Cuts are evil - kitten murdering Tories and making too many and too soon.
• Unpopular taxes are evil - like VAT ( even though they planned to raise it also )

How are they planning on funding this fools paradise ?

Debt

And of course the plan to get elected is to deny this fact.

Labour's new leader is already an accomplished liar and coward - ( unless its Diane Abbott )

How do I know this ? Well listening to Steve Richards’s first edition [link only valid for a few days] of his programme on the Brown years in No 10.

We hear ex-minister talking about the lies with the election that never was.

We know that things were terrible in No10, with Brown moving between despair and rage - and that was on a good day. We also know that none of the narrow minded selfish careerists put country before their own ambition and tried to do anything about it.

We know that factions briefed and lied against each other.

We know that Brown lied directly to the camera about the election that never was and that it was the middle class of southern England who saved the country ( I think those of us in that category can all have a little pat on the back for that one. )

Combine this with the cowardice that all the main candidates except perhaps David Miliband have show over the massive crippling debt they run up and the structural deficit Brown introduced just ( remember this ) to make it hard for the Tories at the general election. ( This is on record when Brown was talking to a Clinton adviser who asked him why he was running a deficit in the good times and Brown answered to make life difficult for the Tories at the election ).

Brown and co got of lightly over their tactical attempts to copy the Conservative inheritance tax proposals, which they then shamelessly tried to attack latter. ( My guess is that the thing that scared Brown and his Labour skivvies was the impact on the key voter group they were denying was tipping their election date considerations ).

No one who was in Brown's government is morally fit to run this country and unless Labour have a strange turn and election Diane Abbott then it means the next Labour leader is already damaged goods.

Sometimes we have very short memories in politics - but the moral corruption of the last Labour government should be a memory many of us keep alive for a very long time.

The economic argument is as important to the long term as fiscal action now is.

Some times Conservative commentators pull their punches. They've learnt to do this as their opponents have used their former strengths against them.

See: "Wanting to cut", "enjoying cutting" - etc coming out of the Labour party / broadcast by the BBC just now.

So an attempt is made to triangulate and some times obscure. And worse they fail to deflect and counter the lies, smears and misdirections of the left.

Currently the left is setting up the "double dip" as the test of failure ( ref almost any BBC broadcast recently ). But the odds are the momentum for this sort of thing has already been set and international events will play big in this also - so it really isn't that much of a determining test.

The left continue to argue for debt, more debt - using the argument that economic growth will reduce it latter and here' the really spurious part that the time to pay it back is when the private sector is doing well !

What shows this argument to be false is how they behaved when the private sector last seemed to be doing well - they ran a structural deficit and argued that anyone who wanted to slow the rate of growth of spending was heartless and wanted to sack nurses / doctors / destroy "front line services" and drown kittens.

Its quite clear that Labour would be politically incapable of reigning back spending during the good times, as its been their main strategy to hold and secure power for themselves.

There really is no alternative - and Conservative commentators need to nail this message home.

The likes of the disgusting Ed Balls will try to rewrite history with his spin and reliance on the ignorance of others as he did last night on Question Time trying to group the 1930's and 1980's together. He needs to be taken on directly and forcefully. His bullying debating style needs to be rebuffed - and his gaming tactics of always interrupting other people need to be outed as the thuggish bullying they represent.

The temptation for team Cameron is going to be to try to deflect the arguments about fairness and cuts rather than addressing the central arguments and winning the case. If we are unable to convince the public that the current disaster was made in the good times by Labour then we are doomed to repeat the whole thing in about 15 years time.

We must win the long term argument and well as the short term battles.

The sheer bloody nerve of Ed Balls

I've just read an article reporting that Ed Balls is trying to warn of cuts in education and that headteachers need to trim their budgets, especially primary school heads.

If you're not involved in schools this might sound fine to you, but I can tell you the government has until very recently been giving schools a hard time about not spending enough money !

And why won't the schools spend this money ? As they don't want to employ staff they then have to sack - that why Mr Balls !

Schools, like many other small to medium enterprises, are closely knit societies - and redundancies hurt moral hard.

The rest of us have seen the writing on the wall that Labour have been lying about and ignoring till very recently and have tried to act accordingly.

So its a bloody cheek for Ed Balls to start mouthing off at primary school heads and the need to save money to avoid redundancies.

Maybe he thinks sounding all tough on spending will get him made Chancellor if Brown wins and Alistair gets the "Forces of Hell" let lose on him again.

Balls annouces Laptop for core votes bribe with free internet P*rn thrown in

Of course commissar Balls puts this a different way.

He claims that the government needs to issue 270,000 laptops with free broadband to people in Labour constituencies to get them to vote for him poor parents.

So you'll be paying for your own computer and broadband, and for someone else's.

How many of these laptops will still be functioning 6 months after they have been given away ? How many will be used to access more p*rn than education ?

This is the insane way Labour behaves with other peoples money - during the greatest debt crisis that this country has ever seen which Labour directly brought on.

Remember the first internet enabled TV's are coming out. Mobile phones and games consoles can all access the internet. None of this is necessary - but it is a general election in a few weeks time, and Labour needs to bribe people to vote for them with other people's money.

Teenagers aren't stupid

Apparently teenagers are shunning Ed Ball's new social engineering diploma with its state set arbitrary value ( which no one else will honour ).

Maybe there's a lot to learn about life as you grow up, but its clear that our teenagers can spot a lame government programme when they see one.

There is hope for us all yet !

Labour's adoption of Conservative education ideas is driven by electoral tactics not education strategy

The Gordon Brown election fighting blue print is leading to a rerun of his standard election tactics.

Reduce the gap between the parties by copying as many of the Conservative policies as you can, and leaving a few chosen dividing lines.

Hence on education Ed Balls has been trying to create the equivalent of the Russian Concordski copy of the Tory Education Concorde.

Groups of schools are to be allowed to remove themselves from LEAs and now the national plans for teaching national strategies are being dropped.

Labour must know that the public is very dissatisfied with the current state of education with failing schools and worthless qualifications which 12 years of "education, education, education" have produced.

I suspect there is also a wish to smash the controls of state rather than hand them over to a Conservative government.

This is in part the explanation for why the Conservatives have kept much of their manifesto under raps. Brown just copies much of it and leaves his big lies to win the day.

Politics aside this looks like a good idea - if and only if - schools are given real control over their staff. I was talking to a teacher a week of two ago who told me that two teachers in their department were so hopeless that they weren't teaching any pupils, but because of the closed shop practices and Union domination in education couldn't be sacked. Hence the school and most of all the children are made to pay for left wing unions refusal to accept the norm int he productive sector of the economy that you do the job or you leave.

Personally I think Labour will fluff this necessary part of the reforms and leave a powder keg of Union resentment and educational inefficiency to go off on the Tory's watch. ( Like much else they are messing up and destroying right now. )

Ed Balls takes the voters for fools

I've just heard Ed Balls on Radio 4's The World at One.

And it was an almost unbelievable performance, except our expectations have been lowered so much by the pond life moral standards of this Labour government.

Presented with the simple proposition that Labour's own figures showed they were going to have to make large cuts, most likely in Education, Balls kept banging on about a misuse of taxpayers money he had cooked up to try and make the Michael Gove look bad.

Balls, a real thug amongst politicians that he is, always interrupted Mr Gove and I'm afraid Martha just couldn't hold the ring with him - letting him off her first and key question.

But worse of all was Ball's misuse of language to mislead, obscure and misdirect the listener. When the show is put up on listen again and I have a few minutes I'll put some of it up here.

Fraser Nelson warned us a few days ago that Labour's plans for the general election were to just keep lying all the time - even when they were found out. He wasn't wrong.

---

Summing up on The World at One 15 Jun 09 ( Martha is speaking live before a recording of Ed Ball's comment made earlier in the program ).

Martha Kearney "The schools secretary has defended plans for funding schools Ed Balls and has Denied that Labour would also have to cut spending"

Ed Balls - "I won't admit that. Of course there are going to have to be tough choices, of course we are going to have to be more efficient. What I said today is it will depend on what happens to the economy and to unemployment and debt interest, but I that with tough choices we can see real rise in the schools budget and the NHS budget in future years."

Just look at the words Ed Balls has used. Marta says he's denied Labour will cut education, but that's not what Mr Balls said - though he said it in a way that easily leads to that mistake ( ie very misleading ).

Remember Balls is trying to deny the Labour budget. What do these "tough choices" mean ? They are of course money being spent in one place and not another - and that boys and girls - is mostly going to mean cuts.

The caveats he uses are his get out clause on the cost of unemployment and the cost of debt ( yes that's interesting - Labour are perhaps more worried about their ability to run up the nations debts on the elect Gordon campaign than they admit - a bit of a Freudian slip there perhaps ). Of course these have commonly accepted assumptions, with inflation and welfare costs also, which give just the figures that result in the 7% real terms cut in departmental budgets that Labour are trying not to admit - but the rest of the country know are the most likely outcome ( from of course reading Labour's own budget ).

Then the most disgusting weasel bit of Ed Balls' words - the vague promise that schools budgets and NHS will rise in "future years". Which exactly ? Could be 2050, 2200, when pigs fly ?

What we have is a statement that is the very opposite of what an honourable man would give if he was honestly trying to inform people about his policies.

But then Labour aren't honourable at all. ( See this from Iain Dale about the vile smearing that Hattie Harman is trying on to drag more peoples money back to help the bankrupt Labour party).

There is no plan any time soon to be honest with the people of the country by Labour. Instead they intend to try the dirty tactics that Brown used in 2005. There are rumours that Damian McBride is out there working for Labour. ( So yet another example of the complete fecklessness of Gordon Brown and the Labour party about their faked outrage over the smeargate scandal and Gordon taking tough measures "because he's very angry about this ").

Labour are now clearly an amoral party that either just couldn't tell the truth if it tried or has entered a pact with the devil to lie in exchange for power and a few more years as parasites of the taxpayers of this country.

Update note: Thats starting to look like a key observation. Guido reports that banks are having to be paid to desperately try to sell government debt - bypassing the Debt Management Office Gordon Brown set up ! Perhaps the key moment of the crisis isn't far away. ( If so I would expect Labour to call a general election first as that might stablise the debt sale problem with the markets thinking a Conservative government is coming in to clean uip the mess, whilst saving Labour from being found out about have badly they have betrayed us with their finaicial waste and unaffordable spending )

Michael Gove on Ed Balls

Mr Gove is getting a reputation for this sort of stuff. I wonder if he does kids parties also ? ( H/T to SPOILTBALLOT ).

PS Watch how much Ed Balls is enjoying this ....

Told you it was misdirection

Looks like Balls has been caught trying to divert attention from the failings of Labour's education system to provide parents with the education they would like for their children.

My assumption is that this was part of a smoke screen for the budget ( I'm sure this is where Balls' mind was at that time with his weird growth theories ).

The press association is reporting the following:

Children's Secretary Ed Balls was accused of trying to "bury bad news" of figures that showed nearly a fifth of pupils were denied a place at their preferred secondary school this year.

He released the figures at the same time as making a high-profile statement that "a significant minority" of schools were breaking the law, with some charging parents "many hundreds of pounds" for what should be a free education.

Mr Balls' claims - based on unverified research - made headlines across national and regional media but the official admissions figures received less coverage.

The statistics watchdog has now written to civil servants in Mr Balls' department and stressed that the release of official figures should be "seen to be independent from policy comment" as a matter of "public trust". Full article here

Given that Cameron's slap down of 'childish' Balls is quickly becoming the favourite moment of the budget - even amongst Labour - I think Balls should be worried. There's a lot of us out to get him ;-)

'A' levels - the gold standard ?

On hearing Ed Ball's latest ploy to try to destroy objective information with his social engineering diploma scheme I was going to write a rant about why anyone needs 4.5 A Levels anyway - at least of the difficulty which was the standard when I took them in the mid 1980's. ( 3 A levels could get you into Oxford or Cambridge in those days ).

But then I saw a quote about Michael Grove referring to 'A' levels as the gold standard, and thought a bit more about what he was actually saying. Reference to a gold standard doesn't mean gold as in coming first or being expensive, but in terms of be convertible into something of intrinsic value. 'A' levels, at least in the sciences, used to lay the ground work for understanding science, defining its language and philosophy as well as a bit of history and a few facts. This had convertable value to many of the applied subjects that you could study afterwards as well as keeping on with a more narrow range of interests in the pure sciences.

I wonder if the new Diploma will be 'convertible' to something of worth ?

I worry as I see how my children are now taught. Arithmetic is now re-branded numeracy and is hidden behind a range of woolly concepts that are not clearly defined like number bonds, differences sharing out etc. Gone is the clarity - in is the muddle that many primary school educationalists probably felt themselves when they failed to get qualifications in maths and the sciences.

I am told by a science teacher that the situation is far worse in GCSE sciences and now A levels. A trip to the BBC's revision web site should show you that.

Gone are the convertible underlying principals. In are trendy subjects designed to make scince more relevant and interesting - but unfortunately impossible to carry out as you are not actually getting an education in science any more.

Our education system has suffered grade inflation, curriculum dumbing down, debasement by widespread and systematic cheating and even the subject of the curriculum is now longer valid.

The use, ie proof of convertible ability, skills and understanding, of these qualifications has been reducing for years. They are no longer held to any standard. You can only suspect that the diploma's will be worse as they are provided by the same liars and cheats who ruined the current system and whose motives for that destruction are the same as they were before.

Now what the government should do is let people choose whatever qualifications they like and let the market decide. But then it would be harder to damage middle class children's futures with you socialist hate and spite that way wouldn't it.

Pointless diplomas

The government department for deckchair relocation on sinking vessels, currently headed up by the highly paid and over promoted Ed Balls, has announced the cancellation of one of its weird and pointless schemes.

In short, much like an MA from Oxbridge, some GCSE pupils were to be given an added diploma by virtue of getting a group of grades. What on earth for is anyone's guess - so that the mindless educationalists could feel they had introduced a diploma I suppose.

Anyway they love their diploma's so much that they are worried that this would devalue their latest scheme to destroy British education - the other diploma's. So the first pointless diplomas are to be cancelled to save the second.

Why are the diploma's so popular with the educational establishment ? Well I'm guess because it means they can reward who they want to, rather than be constrained by the mundane business of measuring actual achievement, ability and talent.

Of course this is a further disaster for UK Universities and business and instead of producing the socialist results the educationalists want will destroy the system and extend the testing that already forms the main part of many interviews for business or academia.

You either rigorously test and verify peoples educational abilities and capabilities once in a trusted system - or if that trust is lost the government qualifications become irrelevant and everyone wastes loads of time repeating the testing themselves on every occasion they need to verify or establish a candidates abilities.

Diploma in government social engineer launched by government

Using the rather obvious ploy of saying their new diploma will be worth more than 3 'A' levels for University entrance "because we say so" the government is moving to fix its social engineering ideas on Universities. ( As of course no one will want to switch before the course are established - poorer candidates will start the diploma and get grade inflation built in. Allowing Gordon Browns/Balls wish to crush the life chances of middle class kids so that socialism can be achieved .)

Surely Universities should be allowed to matriculate as they wish ? Not in the land of Balls.

The only outcome from this will be more interview testing and more Universities setting their own exams as they can trust the government of Balls and Brown.

If they weren't trying to pull as fast one they would have introduced new 'A' levels for different subjects. If pupils can't handle 'A' levels they have no business going to University, as its going to be academically harder.

This change is all about government determining who goes to University and which University and stopping talent and hard work being the determining factors. 'A' Levels are unpopular with the educational establishment as they make the social engineering and punishing of children because of who their parents are harder to achieve - not that Labour haven't tried that already with their how were your parents educated part of the UCAS form.

Remember - Labour hate your children, at the same time they are getting private/selective education for their own. Lets see where Balls & Cooper send their kids ....

What is Ed Balls actually up to ?

There are some odd signals from the department formally known as Education ( before that word became too embarrassing for Labour ), and its minister Ed Balls.

Publish tests are to be stop, or considered to be stopped, or reviewed by special parents soviets to be convened to do Labour party focus group work provide input. This will stop any objective information being available and prevent the headlines about our education getting worse not better. ( See my New Labour - Soviet post/joke to see how this works here ).

There is to be, as any good comrade knows, a ten year plan. This is of course arrogance personified - but it also add to the Brown myth that his government is inevitable in his one party state.

Balls also wants schools to take on social work - advising parents on all sorts of things. What I guess this means is that social workers will be in schools - though they are careful not to annouce that ( as well as the police recently announced ). That'll allow then to pry into everyone's lives and ask the children what goes on at home. Very soviet.

The educational establishment has got its claws into Balls (you'd think that would hurt wouldn't you ? ). They hate objective information because it cramps their style and imagination. Its stops them doing just what they feel like - or wish to programme kids to do - and makes them teach them to read, write and add up.

Primary school education went well for the first 5 years of New Labour because it had been set up that way by the previous Conservative government. Now that they are meddling more performance is declining and they are moving to hide the evidence.

Typical shameless and immoral socialists. Typical Balls. However their is no doubt some method in all this - which bit of the road to socialism and enslavement of the people do they think they are building here ?

Update: John Redwood wasn't impressed either.

You need Balls to fib like this ....

Ed Balls is reported as saying the following to a Labour party conference today ( reported by Pravda the faithful BBC ). Labour party members must be brain dead if they can swallow such direct contradictions of the facts of the last month - and indeed last 10 years.

He's beyond parody - here's what the faithful were expected to swallow:

"But for all the sound and fury of the past few weeks, it is still our party that has been setting the policy agenda - not taking the easy, short-term course, not just chasing headlines, but showing how a Labour government will meet the long-term challenges our country faces.

"And I believe that as a party and a government we have shown the strength to deal with difficult times and keep setting the agenda and responding to the concerns of the British people."

Also notice the mention of British - when we know most of the policies of the Brown government only apply to the English whom voted for another party at the last general election.

Lies - deception and spin. New Labour, MacLabour, Gordon Brown and its all Balls.

Labour move to destroy the evidence of their education failure

Ed Balls is moving to create so educationalist dream of a diploma (one no doubt when the educationalist can choose who succeeds and fails - the party faithful will at last be rewarded!).

I told you in passing that Labour would move to hide the evidence and just tell people things were working earlier. (See New Labour and Brezhnev post).

Why shouldn't there be some granularity to qualifications. The Diploma idea is a con to allow politically correct results to be published, not ones back by actual achievement and knowledge.

New Labour and Ed Balls are on the edge of criminal irresponsibility here.

Labour implicitly admits education failure over exams

Ed Balls (he originally thought up the lets pretend to make the Bank of England independent wheeze ) is to repeat the trick by making a new independent body to oversee exams. [ We now know that really the bank of England was neutered, Gordon's appointees put on the board and when Alistair Darling finally said jump the governor said how high ? ]

The reports on this are full of the usual misdirection and straight lies about how exam standards haven't been falling, armed with the Labour smear on their critics that they are doing down "children,schools and parents".

But the brutal truth is that after 10 years the evidence that this is just untrue is too crushing even for the Labour spin doctors and hangers on to continue to push on the public.

So what does Ed Balls do - he identifies where the mistrust is - New Labour - and tries to pretend he's moved the body out of their control. But you can be sure that Labour favoured people, donors and party members will be on the board and will do their master bidding.

If this move is not to be seen as anything else than a repeat of the Bank of England independence dishonesty then why not have multiple boards. You know like they used to ?

Why not let schools and even pupils chose which exams to sit and Universities decide how they want to weight them.

A free market in education - with opportunity and fairness for all ....

... of course nothing like that could be further from the aims of the servants of the dead and vengeful hand of socialism.

Education, education, education ? Spin, spin spin. Lies, lies lies !

PS Man in a Shed is really going to have to get lots more work done for the rest of the week, so posting will be light. But I'll be back for Monday !

Update: Ed Balls on R4's Today this morning repeating the same matra. I wonder if his boss will like how much claim for the credit for the Bank of England misdirection move from 1997 ? He also just point blank refused to acknowledge the University of Durham survey that says A levels grades have inflated by one grade level in the last 10 years and 2 in the last 20.

Remember what these confidence tricksters came into power saying ? They have instead effectively inflated qualification grades as part of a great con on the public. Cheating children - odd that that didn't make its way into Gordon's conference speech.

Right - work today, not blogging. Comment moderation is back on for a bit as a spammer is trying to add links in comments to old posts.

Update: See John Redwood's take on this also - on much the same lines.

Plans to further Balls up education

Softly and bit by bit Ed Balls looks like he's going to undermine Tony Blair's academy schools. Not directly - as the socialist have become cowards about outlining their ideas in the light of day - but by stealth ( wonder where he learnt that trick ?).

Universities are to be bullied into running academies. Now the headline might sound good but if you have some experience of universities the idea should fill you with horror. ( Perhaps Ed Balls privileged private school education and time at that most a-typical of British universities Oxford has blinded him to the problems.)

Now Universities have enough problems running themselves. Many academics can hardly teach - let alone administer things. The trendy academic educationalists are who cause a large amount of the break down in standards and achievement in our education system - putting them in charge is just madness.

Anyway why should Universities be any better than LEA's ?

But its a good stalking horse to remove the cash requirement for setting up the schools. It also provides a route for Brown/Balls to do their social engineering so that those school's pupils will get favoured entrance to the Universities, by taking the places of gifted children whose parents vote the wrong way - just like Eastern Europe under Stalin.

The BBC quotes Balls as saying:

"The test of whether an organisation can be a potential sponsor should not be its bank balance, but whether it can demonstrate leadership, innovation, and commitment to act in the public interest," said Mr Balls.

Which other potential sponsors does Balls have up his sleeve - Trade Unions perhaps ? The government will no doubt give them more money like the Union modernisation fund - so the Union's will have more money to give to the Labour party.

Having said that it would be fun to watch the NUT try to run a school - as long as my Children don't have to go there.