Nick Pickles’s blog

From now until the election, Labour’s narrative is simple: The Tories are only looking out for the rich. There is only one response - to tackle the issue head on, and show it to be the lie that it is.

Having seen much of Gordon Brown’s new year address leaked to the press, it’s clear GB still sees the ‘dividing line’ as tory cuts versus labour investment. Nowhere in his message, it appears, is there any acknowledgement of the huge reduction in Government spending that will be required to get the defecit under control. Nowehere is there an acknowledgement that taxes will have to go up for everyone.

If Labour want to play the ‘many not the few’ card then I for one will be happy to throw it back in their face. This is a Labour Government, who, after all have taken the hugely progressive steps to:

• Abolish the 10p tax rate, hitting the poorest hardest
• Burden future generations with a collosall public debt
• Raid pension savings, hitting anyone who was responsible enough to save for their retirement
• Do nothing as managers in local government and public services inflated their pay packets to more than the Prime Minister
• Encourage schools to drop science, history and maths in favour of ‘less challenging’ subjects
• Stretch our armed forces to breaking point by invading Iraq before Afghanistan was stabilised - and with scant evidence of any real threat
• Allow a huge expansion in the unregulated labour market by failing to control immigration
• Oversee a massive increase in the growth of the surveillance state and the harvesting of DNA data from innocent people
• Do nothing as unsecured personal debt and 125% mortgages spiralled out of control
• Annointed a Prime Minister and a European President

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hey there pop pickers. with my last gig out of the way, it’s time for me to run down the records that have made my year.

2009 has been a great year for music - the live scene has continued to thrive, there’s a continuing buzz around new ways of delivering music and what the future might hold. while the NME as a magazine has continued to loose circulation, online offerings and local print titles have thrived. such a shift is no bad thing - as it became more london/industry focussed, the NME became less relevant and many of these titles are filling the vacum once occupied by the NME/melody maker at a regional level.

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In the boom years, consumer spending contributed around 1.5% of GDP. As we now know, much of that was financed by borrowing at historically low levels by people who in reality couldnt afford to borrow as much as they did.

For those who say the banks are blameless, this is the main flaw in that belief. Banks borrowed money cheaply on wholesale markets and as a result had much more to lend. Rather than holding onto the cash, they lowered the bar for getting access to credit and et voila, 125% mortgages and unsecured personal loans running into the tens of thousands for (just about) anyone.

This clearly inflated the housing market and pumped billions into the economy through increased consumer spending. The problem is, debt isnt wealth. When the credit dried up, and the economy began to slow down, people lost their jobs. Only unlike most other recessions, people didnt just have mortgages to pay - they had finance agreements for cars, several credit cards and other unsecured loans.

This situation was exacerbated by the appalingly low interest rates on offer for savers.

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