1640 Hrs GMT London Saturday 14 February 2009
[This was originally posted 1615 GMT on the KHOODEELAAR! blog on wordpress.com] :
By Muhammad Haque…..
KHOODEELAAR! is TELLING ken Clarke that he is WRONG to feign surprise about the lack of competence and alertness on Brown-Darling front over the banks-- Clarke's OWN party has been ASLEEP for ages on the matter of auditing the executive... Clarke may enjoy the tag 'big beast;' that was given to him by the London Daily Mail during the last time that Clarke was bidding for leadership of the Tory party... But Clarke has shown that he is no real big beast when it comes to actively watching and auditing the Executive from the Opposition...
Apart from Clarke's one - and one-off - intervention in the House of Commons on the Blair folly of joining the GW Bush attacks on Iraq, Clarke has remained as comfortably inactive on all major issues of fundamental democratic, parliamentary and constitutional importance as any of his so-called smaller beast colleagues...
For Clarke to now pretend that he represents the alternative politician who is capable of delivering the task of actually holding the UK Executive to account in the Houses of Parliament, there are literally thousands of hours to go before that can be even considered........
Clarke should quit being another faker and start to follow the principle that was evident in the particular part played by Theresa May when she said that the Tories had been seen as the nasty party...
Clarke’s corresponding phrase should be a retort to Brown's taunt as the 'do nothing party'. Has Clarke the guts to begin the really big task?
Can he start by admitting that the Conservatries have been as CRASS as the Blaired regime? Can Clarke show that he understands the stupidity, the dishonesty and the corruption of the Crossrail agenda and those of the Big Business crooked elements that have been behind that agenda? Can Clarke show that he is not now merely imitating the Lib Dems without acknowledging their leader Clegg’s particular comments about the banks and that he, Ken Clarke has the honesty to own up and acknowledge the Lib Dems’ role on this occasion in at least being ahead of the Tories in their observations on the banks and on the financial crisis facing the Brown-fronted Blaired regime….. [To be continued]
The following texts {NOTE NOT the visuals or graphics] are taken from the BBConline site carrying Ken Clarke's 'news':
Clarke attacks 'failed' bank plan
Government initiatives to get banks lending have failed, shadow business secretary Kenneth Clarke has said.
Measures including credit guarantees were launched by Chancellor Alistair Darling in January to boost lending.
But Mr Clarke said a Federation of Small Businesses survey suggested only 8% of small firms found banks had made credit available under the guarantees.
He also said the HBOS and Lloyds TSB merger had been a "disaster", more so for the latter institution.
"They should never have been allowed to merge," he added. "Lloyds TSB was a boring bank, it was a steady bank, it hadn't done silly things."
'Dithering'
The FSB survey that more than half (53%) of small businesses said they did not believe the government's policies would get banks lending again.
Mr Clarke said it was "frightening" that ministers were "dithering" over implementation, he told the BBC's Today programme.
He said there was a "huge gap" between Treasury rhetoric and reality.
"I am just astonished that no-one appears to have had the discussions with the banks about the operation of the scheme from the day it was proposed," Mr Clarke added. It looks increasingly as if Lloyds HBOS will now go into majority public ownership - followed inevitably by nationalisation
Vince Cable
Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman
Lloyds shares tumble after update
He said he hoped that ministers would "get the banks in, give them the way in which these applications should be handled and get this scheme into practice".
Mr Clarke also accused ministers of "dithering" over taxpayer-backed protection for banks from so-called "toxic assets".
'No alternative'
Lloyds Banking Group - which completed its takeover of HBOS last month - has said that it expects its subsidiary to make record losses of nearly £11bn.
Shares in the group, which is 43% owned by the taxpayer, closed down 32.5% after the surprise announcement.
Mr Clarke said that if the government hadn't forced through what he called a "shotgun marriage", the company might be in a more comfortable position now.
But Mr Darling told the BBC's Newsnight the government had to intervene quickly to stop the banking system's collapse.
Alistair Darling comments on the HBOS losses
When asked whether the losses represented a disaster for the taxpayer that he had caused, Mr Darling said the government had "no alternative" but to act.
"We didn't have months or weeks to look at it, we had to intervene quickly and that is what we did," he said.
"Now what we've asked the new management to do is to go through the books so we can deal with the assets that have gone bad and the other problems that have emerged."
Mr Darling said allowing HBOS to collapse would have had knock-on effects for all of Britain's banks.
"If we had not intervened... the banking system would have gone down, taking millions of families, millions of businesses with it. No responsible government could have done that," he said.
The extent of HBOS' problems were revealed in a week when the City watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, said it had raised concerns about the way the bank was being run as far back as 2002.
Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman, Vince Cable said: "Obviously we need to digest the detail, but it looks increasingly as if Lloyds HBOS will now go into majority public ownership, followed inevitably by nationalisation."
The chancellor refused to rule out nationalisation of Lloyds but insisted a range of options remained open to help the banking sector.
'Long-term potential'
He said the key was getting banks to identify their bad assets so they could be removed from the system.
The expected losses at HBOS were £1.6bn more than it predicted in November.
Much of the blame has been laid at a £7bn write-down at its corporate division, which is heavily exposed to the hard-hit housing and commercial property sectors.
Lloyds chief executive Eric Daniels insisted the company's longer term prospects were brighter.
"Lloyds Banking Group has the largest UK financial services franchise, with excellent long-term earnings potential," he said.
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