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Listed below are comments made by chipshopshippers between Monday, 23rd March 2009 and Thursday, 10th December 2009.

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Swine flu 'less lethal than was feared' 4:13pm on 10 Dec 2009 Hold the front page:

Government in overhyped threat of death shock.
When politics matters... 2:24pm on 09 Nov 2009 I must admit I find your assertion that this affair is "so unremarkable" as more than a little insulting... you may just as well have written "yawn".

If this was about some trifling matter then perhaps I could understand it, but this wasn't.

It was a personal letter to the mother of someone who died fighting for his country. This should have been a letter to ease some of the pain that she is feeling. It should have been something that she could draw comfort from in the remaining years of her life.

Anyone can make mistakes, but there are some things where there should be no excuses - this is one of them.
Rising slowly 12:00pm on 14 Oct 2009 "This will allow the Treasury to make future "savings" (in reality, of course, simply a reduction in what they would otherwise have had to borrow) without making cuts."

This does of course assume other things remain equal, particularly that the growth figures in the budget are indeed accurate. If we don't get back to 3% plus growth from 2011, then we'll have to borrow more.

Given that we were only just growing at this rate on a debt fuelled economy with low interest rates, I'm highly suspicious this will be achievable in a world of much lower debt availability, higher interest rates and higher taxes.

Still, that all seems to be "Hush Hush" as well.
Wake-up call for world peace 3:56pm on 09 Oct 2009 "I expect a day of sneering reaction from the conservative media here"

Actually I think that statement is a little offensive Mark. Back in ol' Blighty there's more than a little negativity (or sneering as you put it) not because those people are conservative, but because it's a pretty daft idea to award someone who has accomplished so little so far.

Hope is one thing but even Miss World's all hope for World Peace. It'd be more than a little odd to see one of them awarded the prize if they hadn't actually accomplished anything.

Maybe there's some justification to the "sneering". Let's fawn over Obama when he achieve something, not beforehand just because he's the popular kid in school.
A note of caution 2:14pm on 30 Jun 2009 #9 apublicsectorpension
"This is now all irrelevant, as the world and the economy has moved on!
What happened in the first quarter is not what is happening now."

No no no! It certainly isn't irrelevant and it does impact on what is (or should be) happening now and certainly on what will happen in the future.
Because lower growth means the tax take is going to be lower and the budget deficit even worse than the nightmare it already is. It will mean bigger cuts in public spending and probably higher taxes in the future, and could well impact the gilt markets (which set the rates at which the government borrows) given the amount that the government is going to have to borrow, and put the pound under pressure - which affects anyone who still has the cash to travel abroad, or who buys things that are made abroad (they'll be more expensive).
This affects us all now and in the future too, and not in a good way. That's another fine mess you've got us into Gordo! But hey, lets spend spend spend and scorch this earth for the next government.
Indebted Britain 12:49pm on 21 May 2009 Have you ever thought of being a labour party spin doctor Robert?
Step 1 - Focus on the positives (check)
Step 2 - Rubbish those who report bad news (check)
Step 3 - Claim the Tories wouldn't do any better (not in this article)
Step 4 - Blame Thatcher (I'll be waiting for this)
Step 5 - Ensure good news is higher up news agenda than bad news (???)

Whatever you're opinion of S&P, the simple fact is that a Debt to GDP of 100% just isn't something you'd associate with a AAA rated nation.
The big point you've missed here is the fact that the negative outlook has come so early. It suggests that S&P don't feel the need to wait to see whether the economy follows the path set out by Darling in the April budget - they've dismissed it as fantasy
First cheques, now jobs 4:22pm on 14 May 2009 The Daily Mail (in their article on Phil Hope) state that MPs can claim a grant of £40k if they lose their seat at the election...
"Mr Hope is seen as a near-certainty to lose his seat at the election.
Even though he would qualify for a £40,000-plus grant paid to defeated MPs, he would miss out on his junior minister's salary of £94,228 plus more than £150,000 in expenses."
Please dear God tell me they don't get a £40k golden goodbye.
Charities and politics 1:48pm on 08 Apr 2009 I agree with you and the first post regarding how media should represent more political charities. There's actually a very important point that has unintentionally entered your report here Mark - highlighting the political leaning of the Think Tank ("Jill Kirby, from the right-leaning think tank Centre for Policy Studies"), but not doing the same thing for the various charities involved.
Clearly a desire to end something like say, child poverty is an apolitical aspiration, but how it is done, and indeed the definition of "poverty" (financial, educational, social), can have very strong political leanings.
I've often felt this to be one of the biggest biases attached to journalism in general, BBC and others. Whether it's Barnados when discussing children, or the Howard League for Penal reform when it comes to the prison system, they are always portrayed as the "Experts" and no mention of political leaning is discussed. The viewer/listener is expected to assume the expert is taking a balanced centrist view - clearly this is not always going to be the case.
The biggest danger that I see coming from this proposal to fund charities for political campaigning, is who gets to decide which charities get funding? If it's the government (of whatever colour) this could easily just end up as a proxy state propaganda tool (dressed up as independent) - because they are simply going to give money to charities whose views reflect their own!
Building up, tearing down 1:17pm on 25 Mar 2009 It was always going to happen, what with Gordon Brown as Dunfermline East MP for 22 years, his jinx destined the Society for disaster.

Which is why it will also clearly be bailed out, despite it definitely NOT being systematic to the risk of the financial system.

I think you've slightly missed a very important point here though. They may well have been competing for business on wafer thin margins with "greedy banks", but the problem is that this has been a massive massive housing bubble and is now bursting. Dunfermline could have lent money only to people with a 25% deposit in 2006, and those loans would still be underwater now (sure - not anywhere near as much as they are), because the housing assets they're secured against were just hideously overvalued. A company whose job it is to lend against housing is always going to be facing problems if house prices crash.
Perils of political promises 1:17pm on 23 Mar 2009 Why oh why is the latest Labour sleaze a 3 line addendum to a "Tories split over taxes" article?

There may well be discussions, heck even concerns, about the affordability of the tax pledge, but the sleaze deserves an article of its own.

I don't care if McNulty was acting within the rules, he was not acting with good ethics, and he blooming well knows it - so does everyone else, including the famour "Court of Public Opinion".

And why isn't Nigel Griffiths' intimate affair inside the Palace of Westminster being widely reported on the BBC. It's not been on the TV news or the radio, and is conveniently lower down the pecking order on the BBC website. I was gobsmacked to hear about this today in the newspapers, not just because of the utter disgrace of the event, but because the BBC seem to think it not worthy of news.

Anyone would think that it's only Tory Sleaze that matters.

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