Syntagma has just received a personal email from Ben Bernanke at the US Federal Reserve. Here it is in full:

Federal Reserve Banks
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
33 LIBERTY STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10038,

Attn: Honourable beneficiary,

Contract fund credit from bank federal reserve board

This is to let you know that we received a payment credit instruction from the federal government of Nigeria to credit your account with your full inheritance fund of us $10.5million from the Nigerian reserve account with our bank.

However, what we required from you is your banking particulars where you want your fund to be transferred.

{1}. Your full name and address….
{2}. Your telephone, and fax………….
{3). Your bank name and address……….
{4). Your a/c name and numbers………….
(5). Your swift code / routing numbers…….
(6) .Your current occupation…………………….

Be informed that transfer will commence immediately we hear from you with the account information. Once more, bank Federal Reserve board will not hesitates to credit your account within 24hours in accordance with fund release order regulations.

Your immediate response is highly needed to enable us commence for the transfer.

Thanks for banking with Federal Reserve Bank while we looking forward to serving you better.

Congratulation to your inheritance fund.

Thanks and God bless you.

Regards,
Mr. Ben s. Bernanke
Director Federal Reserve Bank New York

Why does the word “Nigeria” make me suspicious that this may not be all it seems? I didn’t even know I banked with the Fed.

Mysterious.

John Evans

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

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I’ve decided to give up writing about politics on this site. The reason is that, with a new business to run, there simply isn’t time.

Writing about politics is an all-consuming activity. It glues you to 24-hour news almost 24/7. It entices you to read all the serious newspapers and political magazines every day of the year. Add to that, time spent trawling the internet, Googling for clarifications and chasing up leads, plus the background research and fact-checking.

Instead, Syntagma will revert to type and concentrate on a melange of finance, philosophy and technology as in days of yore.

I know I shall be tempted to dip inky fingers into the increasingly murky waters as the British General Election gets near, but be assured Reader, my resolve will hold.

Except, of course, to raise a hearty cheer, and glass, when David Cameron walks into 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister.

The rest is silence …

John Evans

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I’m always on the lookout for useful vignettes of what is wrong with the present British government. There are many naturally, but yesterday the perfect example appeared on the BBC.

Reporter Richard Bilton drew our attention to the extensive recording of every journey we make on major roads across the country.

Each time we stray off the country lanes, our number-plates are recorded by “sophisticated” software, checked for dodginess — undefined — and logged on a massive and growing database somewhere in the heart of … who knows where.

The police and other “agencies” of government are able to access this information at will, and use it in whatever way they see fit. Bilton’s point was that no one regulates this activity. Indeed, it’s hard to see how anyone could.

First, he approached the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, and asked who regulates the information. On camera, Thomas said, “We don’t regulate the police’s use of this information”. No one does.

Bilton trudged along to the Home Secretary, the infamous Jacqui Smith. With that wide-eyed and terrified expression common to many MPs these days, she tumbled out her answer to the same question: “The police are regulated by law and the Information Commission …”.

Bilton replied that Richard Thomas had told him they are not regulated by them.

Smith shot back, “We will have to look at that again and at further legislation”.

Call me pedantic but, was she lying, or didn’t she know that the Information Commissioner was not charged with checking this practice? Either way, she should be sacked.

But then that’s typical of the way Labour fudges every aspect of its performance. Jacqui Smith is just not very good at dissembling the facts, try though she might. We’ve become so used to it, we tend to shrug it off now. We shouldn’t. It’s yet another fraudulent element in the “new politics”.

I once worked at the Central Office of Information in Hercules House, London, centre of the government’s information service. The COI has a distinguished reputation stretching back to the war. Since 1997, the operation has been taken over by red-top tabloid journalists and bears little resemblance to its old independent role.

Therein lies the faultline at the heart of this government. There’s nobody charged with standing back in total neutrality and assessing real-time performance, compliance, and the fundamental integrity of the system. Sham operations pass for oversight.

Gordon Brown, who has dominated domestic decision-making for 12 years, first as Chancellor, now as Prime Minister, has run a Brezhnevian Soviet system of government.

The Supreme Soviet is centred on Downing Street, not Parliament, which has atrophied disastrously under his regime.

Local soviets — or quangos, as they are called — run almost everything below central government level and are populated by carefully selected members of the tribe. They genuflect automatically to everything that Downing Street wants, without being told. Thus, if they slip up, as is usually the case, no smoking gun is found that can implicate the Supremo in the cock up.

This is typical of revolutionary cadres throughout history, as they seize power for themselves and mangle every decent impulse in the system.

They then destroy the national culture piece by piece. For without that, no sense of coherence remains. What was once “a people” becomes putty in the hands of cynical operatives who “do politics” in place of governing for all.

We have been had. Taken over by a political class whose motives are not of these islands but of distant lands dominated by warlords and mercenaries. They have polluted the system, destroyed the economy, the Constitution, and our country.

Forget calling for “time to reflect”, as many are, we must get rid of them now. A General Election is the foremost imperative of our times.

John Evans

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There’s a lot brewing this morning, including PMQs, an election leak, and general discussion of the state of Parliament.

Let’s start with an intriguing snippet: an apparently inadvertent leak of Gordon Brown’s election intentions by Labour Chief Whip, Nick Brown, one of the PM’s closest confidants.

The picture shows a Twitter post from N. Brown to Labour MP, Austin Mitchell. Since the new Speaker will be installed around June 22, that means an August or September election will be called in July, give or take a few weeks.

The Twitter account was subsequently taken down. Oooops!

This is, of course, a breach of protocol. A Dissolution should be a request from Prime Minister to Monarch, not blabbed about on Twitter.

Nick Brown’s head sits uneasily on his shoulders today.

Via Iain Dale’s Diary

Don’t throw out 646 babies with the bathwater
In his press conference last evening, Gordon Brown was in “Save the world” mode — again.

Having done his bit to subvert and corrupt Parliament over the past 12 years, Brown now poses as the Great Reformer on a personal mission to clean up politics. One could be excused for feeling physically sick during his performance.

Do we want this moral wreck of a man to poke about in the soul of our Constitution? I can hear the howls of rage from here in deepest Devon.

We are now to have a new Speaker foisted on us by a Labour dominated House of Commons, and promoted, I’ve no doubt, by the man who gave us Michael Martin.

I’m rapidly coming to what might be called the Widdy Option — after Ann Widdecombe — of a temporary Speaker (Widdy herself?) to see out the remainder of this Parliament.

Already, leftish commentators are writing about a totally new Constitution, where sovereignty will rest with “the people”, not Parliament. That effectively abolishes the Constitutional Monarchy, characterized by the “Queen in Parliament”.

Let’s get this straight, the public is not angry with the Queen, or even Parliament. The general anger is targeted on Gordon Brown himself and the pig of a party he leads. In the mood of the times, my profound apologies to pigs everywhere.

Constitutional change must begin with what we want to retain, not what the Left wants to get rid of. That means the great principles that underpin the system and hold the revolutionaries at bay.

What we must chuck out is the class-based shop steward system introduced by a sizeable block of Scottish cronies around Brown, including Michael Martin. That should be dumped into landfill at a depth at which it’s unrecoverable.

Only a Conservative Government under David Cameron can do this with full public confidence.

If Nick Brown is right about the election, we may yet enjoy the glorious summer promised us by the Met Office.

PMQs
Two very entertaining encounters between the Opposition leaders and Gordon Brown were laid out before us at this morning’s Prime Minister’s Questions.

David Cameron once again shone a searching light on Brown’s inadequacies.

He spat out his first question: why did the PM say that a quick General Election would mean “chaos”?

Brown tried so hard to be slick but, as usual, stumbled oafishly. Because a Conservative Government would mean spending cuts, he gloated.

Eh? Don’t we have the highest government debt in peacetime history, one which our grandchildren will still be paying off?

Cameron left that hanging in the air by chortling: so he acknowledges the Conservatives will win the election then!

Spending cuts, mouthed Brown, cutting his own throat in the process.

I counted only four questions by Cameron, but they ended in a flurry of fury with his peroration, which left Brown in no-man’s land. “The Prime Minister calls an election chaos. I call it change. When can we have one?”

Spending cuts …

Oh dear.

Cleggie was in cracking form again too, and facing an inevitable barrage of snorting from Labour proles. After his first question, Speaker Martin — yes, the old goat is still there — called someone else.

Clegg stood his ground. “I have two questions, Mr Speaker”.

Martin fumbled. “I thought you asked two questions in your first one.”

Clegg laughed it off and continued.

The Speaker is in demob mood and may be troublesome in the weeks ahead.

Syntagma’s Verdict:
Cameron, 8
Clegg, 7
Brown, 0.9
Martin, vanishingly small.

John Evans

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