Man in a Shed: West Lothian

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Home rule for England

Alan Cochrane has an article in the Daily Telegraph today - based on his recording of a radio programme for BBC Scotland on home rule for England.

He correctly points out that the BBC in England don't seem all that interested in the subject - but the people of England are increasing becoming so.

Have a listen on the BBC's listen again service (Scotland) below - though I guess it will come down in a week or so's time.

Home Rule for England (30 min)
Broadcast on Radio Scotland - Tue 19 Jun - 11:30

The Campaign for an English Parliament believes England should have home rule. Will they be able to convince a sceptical Alan Cochrane?

The pound in your pocket

"We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists." James Callaghan

“The trouble with theoretical economists is that they don't understand that when you have a deficit, you can only finance it by borrowing, and you've got to persuade people that it's worth lending money to you and that they'll get their money back... there's no way of escaping it.” Dennis Healey during the 1976 Stirling Crisis.

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens ... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of over-turning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." John Maynard Keynes, 1920.

"To preserve [the people's] independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States of America,1801-1809.

Inflation is taxation without legislation .. Milton Friedman