Dear Gordon

£5.15 a gallon
My first gallon of gas for my motor bike cost me five bob that’s £0.25. No good looking back I suppose but with inflation running as it is faster than at anytime since the bad days of Heath and Thatcher I couldn’t help but reflect and yesterday we had to fill up my wife’s car. We made the decision to move to a small low emissions car nine months ago to try to be greener and to save money. We have I suppose to some degree managed to save a bit but we will never get the return on our investment we had planned.
I make no excuses for getting on my hobby horse about the sheer incompetence of our prime minister and his government. Or my persistence in my Pensioners against Brown campaign. I started this back in March 2006 after his first budget following the last general election when he stripped pensioners of the £200 bribe he had given during the election campaign. This was a clear indication to me of his attitude to us and followed a series of in my opinion bad decisions starting with £0.75 pence pension increase. I have written to my MP many times about the government’s attitude but with little success to the extent that he now ignores my emails. Recent events though have changed the picture somewhat in as much as that now not only are pensioners against him most of the hard working families in the country are. He uses the phrase helping hard working families quite a lot in his rhetoric. I would like to know how he defines them. My family of Mum, Dad two young children and grandparents are extremely hard working, all of us, and have always been. His £120 give back never came our way because my daughter’s salary is a few pounds over the limit. We are all hurting by the increases in fuel prices, food and other essentials. So what do we do? My daughter and her husband will do as they always do work hard together to provide a better life for my grandkids. We grandparents who now for health reasons can’t work will have to suffer a reduction in our standard of living. In one of my emails to my MP just before Gordon was anointed I pointed out what a bad Prime Minister he would be but it gives me no pleasure to say I told you so.
I liken the present situation to our PM being the captain of the good ship UK which has just hit a rock (northern) the captain is admonishing the navigator for not knowing the rock was there. “But Sir I was only following your course” “Why are all these nasty Arabs and foreigners attacking our ship? The captain asks. That’s what they do Sir? The captain then tells the passengers (us lot) its all OK no need to worry I’ll just back up a little and we’ll be off, I’m the man to captain the ship through these troubled waters and by the way your voyage is going to cost you a lot more and there will be no enquiry into the crash when we do eventually limp into port.
I’m sorry but it just does not work for me. The prime Minister and his front bench have to go. This in itself though gives us a problem. We would certainly have to have a general election and the Tories would win. Not good news for the nation because have you noticed they have not published any real solutions to how we get out of Browns mess. The only politician I have heard recently talking any real sense is Vince Cable and his lot have little chance of getting elected.
The governor of the Bank of England recently said the NICE decade is over. I always thought of it as the LICE low inflation continued expansion decade and it fits better for me with who was running the economy. Gordon during his Prudence period used to tell us the days of boom and bust were over. Well we pensioners never saw much boom but bust is upon us bigger than ever with seemingly little help on the horizon. Abandon ship?
Yours very sincerely
Bob the Black Country Brummie