Brown admits he shouldn't be chancellor

From The Sun:

“I did maths at school and for one year at university.
“I don’t think I was ever very good at it — and some people would say it shows.”

Yes, Gordon, it does. Not just your lack of mathematical ability, but also your inability to grasp even basic economics. Let's look at the fiasco over our gold reserves, shall we?

whilst these normal folk can grasp supply and demand, our Chancellor of the Exchequer is still learning from the Fisher PriceTM easy learning guide to buying and selling.

Just in case you’re a little short of time, Gordon, let me summarise the basics for you. Firstly, gold, however much politicians like it or not, will always be purchased, especially in times of uncertainty and instability. Secondly, the price of gold goes up and down depending on demand and supply. The idea is to buy when cheap and sell when the price is high. This is one way of getting some cash in your coffers and it doesn’t include taxing people to buggery.

Thirdly, if you announce when the price of gold is already low that you are going to sell 60% of the United Kingdom’s gold reserves, it’s going to mean yet more people will sell ahead of the inevitable drop in price once a large amount of gold is sold back onto the market. Once they’ve sold theirs, the price drops even more! And here’s the golden (excuse the pun) rule: once you’ve announced you’re going to sell, don’t then wait a few weeks and sell gold which essentially belongs to more people than just you at a 20-year-low. But hey, you’re the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I’m just a girl with a few letters after her name: there’s no way you’d ever make that mistake! I mean, if you had waited just a few years, then you could have raised ₤4bn which would have gone down nicely at a time when the tax burden has risen from 39.3% of income in 1997 to 42.4% right now.

It came on the day that the Governor of the Bank of England warned of an economic slowdown (well, interest rates have been rising for some time to try to halt the growth in borrowing) and research showed that the UK has the most complicated tax system in the world.

I'll take the last point first. It's very simple, vote UKIP and you get a flat tax system. There. That was easy.

Yes, we do have a culture of borrowing. But is that so surprising when for a huge number of 18 year olds, the government is telling them that it's okay to be thousands of pounds in debt, even at such a young age. I speak of Student Loans. At 18 when I went to university I had to take out a loan, as did most of my friends. So at 18 my friends and I considered it normal to have debts of £10,000 or more. When friends and I now bemoan our dire financial situations, it is normally said as follows:

"I owe x...that doesn't include my student loan, which is about £12,000 now."

I thought nothing of taking out the loan, because my parents told me I had to if I wanted to go to university and it was, after all, a government loan. And yet, without even realising, I was becoming immune to the fear of owing money.

I said this to the Local Government Minister the other day, who conceded that I did rather have a point. Does that mean they will do anything about it? Does it bollocks. They will continue with their arbitrary target of trying to get 50% of young people into higher education, because they have some kind of chip on their shoulder about people not being worthy unless they have a degree, even if it is from a former polytechnic.

I see it as a huge problem trying to get this country back on track for an economic recovery unless we leave the EU. The EU sees tax competition as a bad thing, thinks that all businesses are bad and wants to stop people working more than 48 hours a week, which is the way most people manage to get themselves out of debt. Think about it. If I am being taxed to buggery, then it's going to be very difficult for me to lower my cost of living, because most of what I earn goes on simply surviving. So I will try and earn more, to have a greater disposable income at the end of the month. Except that the EU want to stop me doing that, and think that they are, in some odd way, helping me.

Just as, I presume, they think they are helping me by interfering so much in agriculture and thus making my weekly food bill more expensive. Or by trying to focus the attention of energy onto renewable sources which excludes nuclear and therefore makes it less likely that the UK will move to nuclear energy which will be a much more secure and cheaper way of producing energy and will help out no end with our foreign policy.

And on a final note:

But there was some cheer for Mr Brown when the Bank boss also predicted a sharp fall in inflation — which hit 3.1 per cent last month — over the next six months.

If anyone with a brain realised that the CPI, forced on us by the EU, which excludes among many things, mortgages, is a completely irrelevant way of calculating the rise in the cost of living. It's so consistently under the RPIx, or even the RPIy that it is actually a bit of a joke.

So, I ask again, can we leave yet?