The Growing Concern These Twats Don't Know Wot They're Doing

Alistair Darling today insisted he was right to use hundreds of billions of taxpayers' money in a fresh bail-out of the banking sector, saying the recession would be much worse if he did not act.

And that's because Alistair Darling doesn't have a clue about what he's doing. The answer is throw more money into it, like a gambler trying to overcome massive losses by continuing to gamble more and more until there is nothing left to gamble with.



Gordon Brown told a Downing Street press conference that the loss showed the consequences of "irresponsible lending"

Consequences to whom? The bank fat cats on multi-million dollar bonuses they will never have to give back?

Brown, demonstrating yet again a propensity for being wrongwrongwrong, claims that his first priority is "hard-working families who are worried about whether they can afford or get a mortgage and businesses who work hard every day to employ people. They need credit and lending to be made. They need the banks to do their job that the banks say they are there to do. What we want to see is for businesses to get the money they need to create jobs and secure the future..."

Brilliant.

So why not give THEM the fucking money instead of the banks who have already demonstrated a clear me-first penchant for irresponsible lending to crony millionaires, most of whom aren't even doing business in the country and continue to fuck over the very people Brown and his Monkey Brigade allege they want to help?

Why throw more money at the banks when £32 billion didn't convince the banks to free up credit?

Just because the only answer Gordon Brown knows is throw money to the banks? Feed the addiction?

Wby doesn't the government tell the banks to fuck off and use these absurd bail-out sum to guarantee savings and create a massive fund for small businesses and hard-working families to borrow from?

Ok, the government are inefficient, corrupt and well, in the pocket of the banks, that's for sure, but logically, instead of giving the money away, dropping it into a black bit bank bailout, why not just admit the banks are fucked and use the money to help people directly?

Ah yes, public anger grows at "irresponsible banks" blablabla - so why are we giving these irresponsible institutions MORE money? And why aren't the thieves and idiots who ran these banks into the ground fighting legal charges to save their lives and having every penny they own sucked back into the government funds?

Frank Dobson, a former Health Minister, said these "severe constraints" should encompass the pay and bonuses of bank bosses, adding that the measures unveiled by Alistair Darling would be acceptable to the public only if they were accompanied by "strict national and international regulation" to prevent further economic catastrophes.

Fuck that. Fuck severe constraints in the future. Make these fuckers pay NOW. They aren't bankrupt, just the banks they ran into the ground. Make THEM pay everything they have, leave THEM penniless, not the rest of us.

Ok, ok. Rant is over.

Nearly.



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On to more pleasant things, better news: Obama's inauguration, a Day for Hope.

President-elect Barack Obama and others participated in a "Day of Service" to help commemorate the birthday of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

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Oh yeah, and if you live in Arizona or Pittsburgh, for the next two weeks you're probably going to be happy because YOU'RE GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL

And if you live in Manchester and support Man City you're probably going to be pretty unfucking happy because Kaka ent coming to town.

Eastern European Unrest

Does the misery ever end for these poor bastids? After years of singing in the shadows of the Soviet Union, standing in bread queues and suffering bitter cold they get a little freedom, a little breathing space and now all hell's gonna break out on the Eastern front.

"Eastern Europe is heading for a violent "spring of discontent", according to experts in the region who fear that the global economic downturn is generating a dangerous popular backlash on the streets."

Breakdown in public order, the theme song of 2009.

Layoffs followed by reduction in tax revenue followed by cut backs in state budgets, discontent, anger, riots. It's a pattern of cause and effect spreading like an air borne virus.

"These are often fragile economies ... with brittle political structures, political parties that are not very well formed and weak institutions. They are ill-prepared for what has hit them," Eyal said. "Last year it was the core western European countries which were shaky; now it is the weaker periphery that are getting the full blast of the crisis."

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Balkan Hardcore, Pop Culture and Paramilitarism...

"The combination of "porno-nationalism," media overload and constant propaganda across music, television and print could be characterised as a type of "kineto-catastrophism" using speed, immersion and overload as terrorising, mobilizatory forces, bringing to mind Ulrike Meinhof's critique of what she termed konsumteror: the deliberate and violent instillment of a compulsion to consume."

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Meanwhile in France, they are turning to hardcore feminism;

"Baise-moi (translation: Fuck Me) lit the touchpaper for a new movement of French extremism in cinema and literature. The movie, which starred two former porn actresses, proved so shocking that it became the first film in France to be banned for 28 years and was only released after an outcry from anti-censorship campaigners.

With its depictions of graphic sex and nihilistic violence, the film has become the visual mascot of a new wave of hardcore feminism in France that seeks to subvert traditionally male boundaries with a savage and frequently uncomfortable honesty."

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Speaking of Fuck Me, hold on to your seats, kiddies but it looks like there's a fresh banking crisis set to undo the British economy and send it all reeling into bankruptcy

"Unless we act quickly, decisively and cleverly, the difficulties of our banks could overwhelm us, triggering an enormous run on the pound. Britain, in short, risks bankruptcy."

Yes, as we innocently spend our weekend on relaxtion and keeping out of the pelting rain and gale-force winds, the Brown Boys are sequesetered hammering out another "emergency package" to save the British government. It reminds one of the patient that won't die, the Generalisimo Francisco Franco of the world economy. Just die already. Let's get on with the future and stop bailing out the fat cats, some say from the peanut gallery.

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Whilst we have nearly unfettered misery all round, the world is preparing itself for Obama's coming out party which will hopefully lighten the mood for a minute or two before we plunge back into the rollercoaster misery of fear and doom we've been riding on for the last six months.

Even the auld 9:30 club in DC is getting into the act with a "America Feels Kinda Cool Again Inaugural Gala" will feature the Beastie Boys, Sheryl Crow and Citizen Cope

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Last night's movies: one heavily depressive (although I sense it was meant to be uplifting trust me, it isn't...) Seven Pounds, yet another Will Smith is the nicest human being alive vehicle...it does holds one interest for awhile whilst you try and figure out what the fuck he's up to in the early stages.



and on the other end of the scale, uproariously funny and just too goddamned truthful for its own good and oddly, virtually unavailable on youtube for some strange, heavy-handed reason, Chris Rock's Kill the Messenger.

You will laugh, guaranteed. At some point.

And finally, Mr Madonna's heavily panned Rockandrolla which proves yet again you can take a horse to the same fucking watering hole over and over but eventually, there won't be any water left...