Watching Gordon Brown’s fantasy Budgets often felt like consuming a large dish of soused herrings — sour, vinegary, and more chewy protein than was palatable.

By comparison, George Osborne’s first effort was chocolate cake topped with whipped cream and strawberries. Given the differences between them, you might think it should be the other way around.

No! Osborne satisfied our despairing appetite for realism, honesty and a massive aspiration for a healthy, self-funding economy in the medium term. How we enjoyed every cut-throat word of it.

Despite his detractors in the City and the media, Osborne’s reputation is made. This Budget will be remembered even more than Geoffrey Howe’s pitch perfect 1981 effort — in which he defied 364 top economists to return the country to growth within a year — simply because, in scale and in enterprise, it tops it by a mile.

The structural deficit will be eliminated by 2014, producing a surplus that will begin the long haul of lowering the UK’s massive stock of public debt. Under Osborne’s strict rule, it will top off at 70% of GDP, not the expected 100% from Labour’s deficit halving plans.

This is serious stuff. It will need reductions in departmental spending of up to 25% across the public sector — apart from Health and International Development. The latter, of course, are political choices not economic ones. Any half competent economist can spot the waste littering these inefficient agencies of the State. I am sure they are marked down for major surgery in the Conservatives’ second Parliament — minus the Lib Dems, perhaps.

One thing I enjoy about this hybrid administration is the zeal with which it scraps anything that has Gordon Brown’s stamp on it. Out goes the FSA, the laughable “Golden Rules”, hugely complex benefit mountains, and, as we’ll hear in the autumn spending review, much of Brown’s cretinous agenda for public sector dominance of personal behaviour.

Brown must wonder why he bothered to build such a vast top-down infrastructure of command and control, especially as all that treasure spent didn’t win him his coverted General Election victory. The Tories are clearly intent on total ruthlessness where corrupt Scottish Labour politics are concerned.

The question we have to ask is why our democratic processes didn’t protect the nation against the mafia-like tactics of Gordon Brown, Mandelson and the rest of New Labour’s despicable crew.

Osborne’s Budget gives us hope that we will never see their like again.

Speculation is rife that the social democrat contingent in the Lib Dems, led by Charlie Kennedy, could split away from the Coalition. I don’t see that happening for a year or two, at least until Labour starts getting decent polling results under a new leader. Harriet Harman is planting the seeds of that move furiously. It could happen within this Parliament.

Nick Clegg and the genuine Liberals may even unite with the Tories to form a real Liberal Conservative Party. His loyalty so far suggests that this could be a return to the old Conservative dominance of British politics for decades to come.

John Evans

Recent Related Commentary
Saturday Ramble: President of the Royal Society criticizes the human brain
Saturday Ramble: The Grain of Things
Saturday Ramble: Should David Laws stay or go?
Saturday Ramble: The Conservatism is just below the surface
Saturday Ramble: Dick Clameron takes office

Way back in the halcyon years of the 1980s, I plied a trade as a freelance copywriter in the City of London. My main clients were in telecommunications, especially BT, or British Telecom as it was known then.

BP, or British Petroleum as it was known then, was also a player in my multinational ecosystem. In those days, it was good to be British. Margaret Thatcher saw to that. Now apparently it’s the kiss of death.

Watching the unfortunate Tony Hayward’s crucifixion at the hands of a US Congressional Committee on Golgotha Capitol Hill yesterday, demonstrated how the mighty are only milliseconds away from disaster at all times.

His defeated expression throughout the proceedings was in distinct contrast to that of his predecessor, John Browne, the real progenitor of the string of disasters now haunting Hayward, BP, its shareholders and pensioners, on both sides of the Atlantic.

On Jeff Randall’s Sky programme on Thursday evening, author and scandal-sniffer Tom Bower, reminded us of the precursor to today’s woes. Browne had bought heavily into American oil and turned upper-middle ranking BP into one of the world’s great corporations. Small in height, his alleged Napoleon complex had rendered him invincible in his own mind. And indeed for a long time it seemed true.

Nowadays he’s known as Lord Browne and was brought down by a sex scandal a few years back. One wonders if that was engineered by figures unknown to move him on out of sight.

At the height of his relentless drive for power and status, Browne ruthlessly cut costs and trimmed safety margins as a result. A string of major incidents occurred, involving many deaths and injuries. BP was gaining an accident-prone reputation in the American mind.

When a small pipe, thousands of feet down in the Gulf of Mexico, exploded, killing another 11 workers and polluting the fisheries and environments of countless people living along the US’s southern coastline, the dam of indignation and anger burst. It’s that spillover that now threatens BP more than the actual oil leak.

BP’s rise and fall is pure Greek tragedy. Even a minor godling looking down on the scene from Mount Olympus could have predicted the crash that was coming. In a small way I sensed it too after a final experience with the company in the 1980s.

I was asked to write a chunky booklet documenting and describing BP’s worldwide activities across all its divisions. These days they include, am/pm, Aral, Arco, Castrol, and Wild Bean Cafe, whatever that is. Back then it was chemicals and an array of petroleum products and outlets.

Entering BP’s massive headquarters in the City, I was met by a young woman from Tech Pubs who was to oversee the project. I was delighted to hear that the designer was someone I had worked with many times before and was a leader in his field.

The dampener came when Miss Tech Pubs warned me that the text would be scrutinized minutely by the senior managers of all the divisions, most of whom were engineers. I was experienced enough to expect a solid technical input.

Engineers worldwide have a peculiar way of expressing themselves. Most sentences begin with “Then …”, and the rest tends to be gobbledigook. If you’ve ever tried to master a manual accompanying a technical product, such as a top of the range digital camera, you’ll know what I mean.

Needless to say, everything I wrote was lifted out and replaced with chunks of already existent text written in impenetrable jargon. The broader purpose of the document, that of presenting BP as an inspiring benefactor of the Earth, was totally buried by formulaic spam.

When the final booklet appeared in print form, I was amused to note that the designer had used a small typeface and set the text blocks in a light grey on a white background. They were hardly discernible, except as a design element.

He had also agreed to a personal request to have my name discreetly removed from the cover. Tony Hayward eat your heart out.

For me, the writing was on the wall for BP back then. At its centre was a machine that preferred stale platitudes to vibrant messages, technical ramblings to vivid expressions of purpose. It was a vacuum that is visibly imploding today.

How can this massive international company retrieve itself from a seemingly impossible situation without being bitten to bits or swallowed whole by fat predators?

It should first do penance by admitting the early mistakes made in the John Browne era and the apparent inability to put them right over the last three years. Tony Hayward should go gracefully for the good of the company. An engineer with no public relations or presentational skills is of no use to BP now if it is to survive. So too should the silent Chairman.

I would recommend a massive programme aimed at finding new types of affordable, non-combustible energy, on top of its current commitments in the field.

This should be launched with an immense public relations effort around the globe, but especially in America. I’m assuming, of course, that the current leak and its effects will be cleaned up sometime during 2010, and certainly in time for next year’s fish stocks and holiday season.

Aggressive Big Oil should give way — if only partially and presentationally — to Saving the Planet.

John Evans

Recent Related Commentary
Saturday Ramble: President of the Royal Society criticizes the human brain
Saturday Ramble: The Grain of Things
Saturday Ramble: Should David Laws stay or go?
Saturday Ramble: The Conservatism is just below the surface
Saturday Ramble: Dick Clameron takes office

Remember those stop-loss computer programs that were all the rage in the City and on Wall Street some years ago?

Ingenious really. When a share index hit pre-set levels, screens would go beserk: BUY, BUY, BUY or SELL, SELL, SELL.

The problem was, every broker had identical software. When various points were reached, everyone in the share-dealing firmament would buy or sell. The result was huge spikes up, followed by vertiginous drops down. The market charts became one vast zig-zag of frantic activity.

Somehow the authorities got over that so that sanity returned. Graphs became more like the wolds of Kent than alien mountain ranges.

Something similar happened to your diarist back when long-distance running was the height of fashion. I wrote some software for marathon runners which used mathematical formulations to set training routines, and even predict the time each runner would achieve in the actual race. The programs sold in Boots and W.H. Smith. The great European record holder Bruce Tulloh sponsored one of them.

There was a flaw in the code, though — there always is! A kindly professional software engineer wrote to inform me that in an either/or situation, the “neither of the above” result, which was by far the most likely outcome, rested on a single numeral. He pointed out that hardly anyone would hit this knife-edge number despite its importance.

The more I read about the computer models used to verify so-called catastrophic man-made global warming (or cooling), the more I get the sense that the “neither of the above” category has been squeezed out of existence in the same way.

We are told that all the software used by the Met Office, NASA, the University of East Anglia (how did they muscle in?), and other “authorities” around the planet, use code that “always predicts global warming” and is set always to produce the notorious “hockey stick” graphic result.

Frankly, I would ban “modelling” software and require all “scientists” to work the damn stuff out for themselves.

Syntagma’s Christmas Reads

It’s good to see that Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, has a new book out. Even better that it’s on one of my favourite authors: Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction. This is my top tip for year end. I just hope Amazon gets it to Syntagma Towers in time.

Available free from The Taxpayers’ Alliance, 83 Victoria Street, London, SW1H 0HW, Ten Years On: Britain Without the European Union by Dr Lee Rotherham, is well worth a peruse, if you crave politics over Christmas.

If you’re interested in durability, time warps, extensibility, longevity, life, you might try: The Eternal Quest for Immortality: Is it staring you in the face? by a denizen of this parish. Just click the button, but hurry time’s getting very short — for delivery, I mean.

I wish someone wrote decent novels these days. One can’t always rely on the latest Dan Brown or old John Buchans. Can anyone recommend a good fact and thought-filled piece of fiction to pass the time over the holidays?

Oh well, I’ll just have to write one myself.

Annoyment of the Week
A Gordon Brown Free Zone

We’ve written many times here that when the good times are rolling, policymakers become blind to the obvious. They appear incapable of seeing the flaws in their mental infrastructure.

Similarly, during hard times, as now, they are petulantly reluctant to face the facts arrayed before their eyes.

The Pre-Budget Report was a blatant example of premeditative anti-social behaviour. Its cast of characters included a brow-beaten Chancellor unable to follow his deepest instincts in the face of intimidation by his desperate boss. Is honest weakness preferable to thuggish culpability? Probably, but the outcomes are the same.

We also witnessed a putative Prime Minister who smirked throughout the ritual reading of the PBR, imagining he was getting one over on everyone else. It’s hard to imagine who would ever vote for such a man.

This morning we had Brown sidekick Ed Balls on Andrew Marr delivering pop-eyed attempts at sincerity when, to a man and woman, the show’s informed viewers knew precisely that he was pulling the contents of a wool warehouse over their eyes. As an exercise in futility it would take some beating.

One longed for Mayor Boris Johnson — also on the show — to mount a coup from London City Hall. Crisp thinking and a positive, unquenchable spirit is what the country needs now.

My thanks to those kindly souls who advised me not to move to the Isle of Man, following my piece midweek.

It emerges that such a move is not to be undertaken lightly and would probably not deliver the hoped for improvements.

I’m told one can keep Brussels at arm’s length by ignoring everything the collectariat says — as do the French, Germans, Italians and Spanish. British leaders, I’m advised, regard it as a privilege to be bossed about by foreigners.

I hope the new Tory Government will prove them wrong on that one.

March 25 is now the hot tip as the date of the General Election. Apparently, Gordon Brown is quivering with excitement at what he perceives to be a narrowing of opinion into Hung Parliament territory. Add to that the desperate poverty of the Labour party in comparison to the “stuffed with cash” Conservatives, and you have powerful motivations to go early.

However, Brown is a ditherer and can change his mind in a minute. Quite what the 17-point lead for the Tories in one of today’s papers will do for his resolve is anyone’s guess.

Syntagma’s Advice to Brown
The government you lead is disintegrating in a swamp of lies and sleeze. It’s hard to see how it can cling on to power next year. Things will only get worse as time goes on. Many of the third-party votes accumulating in the opinion polls are almost certainly notional and will swing behind the Conservatives on polling day just to get rid of you, Gordon.

Go early, go fast, and get out. As Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the mind that created them.”

These are the dog days before the festive season begins in all its shallow earnestness. Works and office parties are already taking their toll on bleary-eyed commuters, while shopping in this time of austerity is not producing streets full of happy bunnies.

In fact, it doesn’t feel much like Christmas at all. Folk are wary of sending out cards or presents by post because of threats of strikes and the usual chaos. So far, I’ve only had one — from the Royal Mail. Cheeky blighters!

I’m recycling last year’s cards, but only because I ordered three times too many. If you’re on my list, expect the return of a snowy Buckingham Palace with the Horse Guards trooping down the Mall. It’s worth a reprise, I think.

Our chums at the Met Office — just down the road from here — are forecasting a mild winter, but not before an eviscerating cold spell gets us in the mood. They also expect another a barbecue summer. Despite having the memory of an elephant, I can’t quite remember one of those. Ah, yes, in Perth, Australia, last time I was there.

Science becomes more like science fiction every year.

John Evans

HURRY: Last Chance to buy The Eternal Quest for Immortality: Is it staring you in the face by John Evans in time for Christmas.

Buy now by clicking on the discount button at the top of the sidebar, or from Amazon.co.uk, or Amazon.com.

Recent Related Commentary
DIARY: A Burst-out manifesto, Annoyment, Conservationists, Etonians, Winos, Big money blogging
DIARY: Cameron’s follies, Darling is our darling, Annoyment, Cult of truthlessness, History programmes, Photography is a dead duck
DIARY: Hung Parliament, Annoyment, Rompuy and Ashton, Blost in space, Book bash, Business books
DIARY: Global Gordon, Sunspot crash, Annoyment, Headbanger, a Glasgow smile, Bo Jo

There are two things every school child should be taught as the basis of their education:

1. Learn to do something
2. Learn to do nothing

Learning to do something is obviously important since most students will have to earn a living. Doing something well is a prerequisite of wealth at all times.

As far as I’m aware, learning to do nothing is not in the National Curriculum. It should be. I’ve spent most of my life perfecting the art of doing nothing, which is probably why I ended up as a writer. When you do nothing, you enter mysterious depths where the real treasure is to be found.

The Pre-Budget Report was so obviously written by someone who can only do “something”. If Gordon Brown had learned as a lad to do nothing, he wouldn’t have got us into this mess in the first place.

It’s like the phrase, “He thinks out of the box”, implying that most people are forever confined to their boxes — the Undead, perhaps. Well, Gordon Brown has given us a vivid impression of a vampire over the past decade, syphoning off the country’s life blood.

Only those who have learned how to do nothing, know there’s a third way. For them, there is no box. They can see far beyond the current consensus to a world of infinite possibilities.

Meanwhile, the climate change hysterics are trapped in their nightmare of tsunamis and things that go “crump” in the dark. Anything can happen, and probably will. They live in constant dread and feel impelled to force the rest of us to comply with the rules of their savage, preternatural world. Their antics could well draw down other kinds of disaster, but not the ones they fear.

There’s an old tale about the frog who lives in a well and his cousin who lives by the sea in the sand dunes. One day, the sea frog visits his relative in the well and, as happens on these occasions, the conversation turns to philosophy.

“The universe is infinite,” says the sea frog, “surrounded by blue seas and topped by a wonderful blue sky.”

“Don’t be daft,” replies the well frog. “The universe is tubular, about 10 feet across and bounded by a slimy brick wall.”

The difference between them is that the well frog is forever busying about making up for the deficiencies of the dank, slippery well, while the sea frog is quite happy to saunter about his magical landscape contemplating his good fortune. Eventually, however, the well frog’s activities will undermine the foundations of the well, causing it to collapse, depriving everyone in the neighbourhood of fresh water.

The Pre-Budget Report and all its predecessors after 1997 were made by a denizen of a deep, dark well. He is forever “in the box” unable to see how illusory it is and always destined to do “something” rather than nothing.

Learning to do nothing is just as important as learning to do something.

John Evans

HURRY: Last Chance to buy The Eternal Quest for Immortality: Is it staring you in the face by John Evans in time for Christmas.

Buy now by clicking on the discount button at the top of the sidebar, or from Amazon.co.uk, or Amazon.com.

Recent Related Commentary
Saturday Ramble: My word, you do look queer!
Saturday Ramble: Rotten information – Part 2
Saturday Ramble: Poor information is destroying the quality of our lives
Saturday Ramble: 1759 and all that + 250

Some months ago, when the scale of Britain’s debt problem became clear, I suggested a cut of £150 billion from the UK’s mountainous £650bn annual public expenditure bill — Gordon Brown’s toxic gift to the nation.

A lot of people clicked through that this was impossible, unsustainable, and would worsen the gathering depression.

Now many commentators are talking openly about 20pc cuts across the board. That represents £130bn.

The successful Canadian model from 1994 is being touted around as if nothing less will do. It won’t. Brownianity, with its near-religious obsession for spending other people’s money, is a dead religion.

As Rachel Sylvester points out in today’s Times (London): “In 1994 Canada was running a deficit of 9.2 per cent of GDP, about the same as Britain’s today. It had tried ‘efficiency savings’, public sector wage freezes and departmental budget cuts with little success.”

Actually, we’re probably looking at a UK deficit closer to 14pc. In Canada, the number of State employees was cut by 23pc, while health and defence were protected.

Isn’t it strange that, despite Britain’s massive commitments to war in the East, defence spending continues to fall, and is earmarked for further reductions by Labour, Lib-Dems and Conservatives alike?

In Canada the deficit was eliminated in three years and the Government returned to power at the following election, despite the staggering shock to the system. Bearing in mind that little of this creative carnage was leaked to the electorate before the previous election, it must surely provide a model for the Tories here.

The Canadian connection throws up yet more eerie echoes in this extract from the American website: PoliticalBase.com, from December 4, 2008:

From Tuesday’s New York Times:

“The governor general of Canada announced on Tuesday that she would cut short a state visit to Europe and return here as a coalition of opposition parties sought to unseat the Conservative government.

“Governor General Michaelle Jean, who represents Queen Elizabeth II as the nation’s head of state, has the power to appoint a new government, dissolve Parliament and call for a new election or effectively allow the Conservatives to remain in control for up to a year.”

But what I find absolutely fascinating is how the Queen of England continues to have the power to shutdown the Canadian parliament. Seems that the British-Canadian connection goes beyond the symbolic tradition of the Queen on the colorful Canadian currency.

Oh that the fate of Brownianity could be discussed here with such practical openness, and the Queen’s intervention taken for granted, not whispered with trepidation behind closed Palace doors.

John Evans

Recent Related Stories
Midweek Politics: PMQs – Gordon Brown lays claim to Mr Zero Percent
Midweek Politics: PMQs – Don’t mention Gordon Brown
Midweek Politics: Gordon Brown’s agony
Midweek Politics: PMQs – Clegg shines, Brown bores