Last Chance Saloon for Freedom of Speech.

Make no mistake, yesterdays "deal" between the parties to regulate press freedom is the last chance we have of keeping any semblance of free speech.

I bit melodramatic? I don't think so, because the press are the only people with the money and the power to resist political interference. If they don't grow a set in the coming weeks and tell the political elite to do one, then the next tier of free speech they'll come after is us, the bloggers. Primarily Guido, but anyone else who has the connections to get information they don't want released and the ability to post it up in a public space.

So, here's a challenge to the currently "free" press: You have a job to do, are you going to to the easy thing and capitulate, or are you going to tell the political scumbags to fuck off?

Excepting the Guardian from the argument, who are as bad as the French for surrendering.

Daylight Robbery: Icing the Iceland Effect

Yep, I'm on about Cyprus, where the government have caved in to EU demands and effectively decided the thieve a percentage of every saver's bank account. When exactly governments were given the power to help themselves to saver's bank accounts I don't know, but it's a canny way of avoiding Cyprus "doing an Iceland" and telling the government and the banks to fuck off. Just steal part of the money needed to reduce the bail out.

Hopefully there will be full blown riots in Cyprus with the Police joining the rioters as everyone will be affected by the money-grab.

The Cypriot government is on very shaky ground.

And those in power in the rest of Europe will be watching very, very closely.

If it doesn't kick off royally in Cyprus expect daylight robbery to become a common tactic of any future bailout plan.

The people of Europe should take this as a shot across the bows from the political elite. They should respond in kind.

The State of The Economy.

The current coalition government has been in power for quite a while now and as we're now on the downhill leg and running towards the next election, I feel its timely to report on how I think things are going.

I did say before the election that should the Tories win, they should come clean with the electorate about how fucked the economy was, what needed to be done to rectify it and how hard it would be.

They did neither with any clarity, certainly not in any shape or form that the man in the street could understand. Without understanding or comprehension of the situation, high levels of taxation and the withdrawal of funding for services just appears vindictive and punitive. Without the public on your side, you won't be given the room to manoeuvre the economy to a better state. It also allows any opposition to nip at your heels constantly without them having to own up to being the reason the economy is so fucked up. "Blame the Banks" doesn't cover every eventuality and becomes really boring really quickly.

So it comes to pass we've had a few years of "austerity", things are still as bad as they ever worse and now we have lost our AAA rating due to the dip back into recession.

Basically the coalition have done about as bad a job of things they ever could have. They have done better than completely fucking the economy up, but the policy they put in place relied too much on external improvements and the global economy picking up. Their reputation for fiscal fortitude is trashed, the opposition is several points ahead in the polls thanks to the various coalition own goals..... the list goes on

Before the 2009 election I said the best thing that Labour could do was to recognise the mistakes they made and apologised for them. That would take the wind right out of the Tory sails. It seems they have recognised that sorry goes a long way even when you don't mean it and have made it their strategy and have started saying they got it wrong and apologising on a number of subjects.

The thought of the country-wrecking fuckers getting back in terrifies me, but given the incompetence of the current government it looks a very, very real prospect.