Don, because of his eye injuries he probably cannot see you.

The scrappage allowance is a really stupid scheme that destroys classic cars (my Volvos are NOT "bangers"), damages the planet because of the energy used to make new cars, and sends money out of the country (UK) to the owners of the only car plants left in the country.

It also harms the poor because it drives up the price of old cars towards the value of the scrappage allowance and reduces the remaining stock of old cheap cars for those who need them.


But most of the rest of the stuff that Brown and Darling have done about the recession (apart from looking the other way, thanks to the pro-capital policies of New Labour promised by the great B. Liar, as we slid into recession, while the bankers (oh, foxes in charge of the henhouse?) failed to cut interest rates because they were more bothered about inflation (mostly affects thse with savings) than recession (mostly affects those at the bottom of the job pile)) has been right which is why the forecasts of UK progress are better than those of German progress where the German Chancellor sneered at the Brown-Darling Measures as "crude Keyesianism" (which I would have thought was obviously what was needed and proven in the last recession to work).

The Obama measures are in many respects similar to the Brown-Darling ones.

From what I hear about conveyancing, there is considerale improvement already.


What Brown and Darling really ought to have done was nationalise the banks so that they could control lending, and retake control of interest rates from the triumvirate. I always said that interest rates were too important an instrument of policy to be left to private capital and an "independent" bank to control.

Likewise the bureaucratic and tick-box FSA was bound to be less effective than "Henley winks", so long as the winkers were on top of the game. But that was not a Labour mistake (said he rashly without checking).


It is capitalism that has done it to you Don. What you need is some healthy socialism - and (slightly tongue in cheek bit here - vehicles for the masses, like the original Volkswagen, or the 2CV).



I warn you, allow the old Etonians back and it will get far, far, worse.