Categories: uncategorized
Date: 02 September 2008 19:53:31
1. Be a member of the Labour Party
2. Great promoted beyond your ability
3. Work for an interfering control freak who used to do your job
4. Take the flack for his past mistakes
5. Spend all the country's available money - less a billion or two
6. Morgage your future income with badly thought out and implemented PFI contracts
7. Make policy announcements "on the hoof"
8. Recant when they are proved to be unworkable/ill thought out/unpopular
9. Tell everyone that you've made the biggest mess in 60 years
Result:
Stock market falls
Currency falls
Housing Market goes into freefall
Have fellow ministers say that you were misquoted/misrepresented (As always when someone tells the truth)
Have the OECD announce that your country will go into recession (haven't we already?) and that you'll be the worst performing major economy
Yes, this is not fiction but reality. Welcome to life in modern Britain where the poor pay the burden of taxation and suffer the most; where the rich are allowed to "avoid" tax and aren't pursued regorously. Is it any coincidence that the Revenue is run by a man famous for helping the rich and companies dodge taxes? That inspectors are laid off or transferred from enforcement?
History Today:
31BC: Octavian (the future Augustus) defeats Mark Antony & Cleopatra's navy at Actium and gains control of the Roman empire.
1666: The Great Fire of London begins in Pudding Lane and will destroy much of the city. You can see the Monument, tucked away among the skyscrapers, on the site.
1898: Lord Kitchener leads a British expeditionary force to victory against the Sudanese army of the Mahdi at Omdurman and reoccupy the capital Khartoum. General Gordon is finally revenged.
1901: Theodore Roosevelt, the US President, says that American foreign policy should "speak softly and carry a big stick". Nothing changes.
1939: Britain announces compulsary military service for all men aged 18-41.
1945: WWII comes to an end as the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri.
1958: China's first television station opens in Peking.