TRYING TO MAKE SOME SENSE OF IT ALL...

Okay, I've been reading an awful lot about the impending Armageddon, whose fault it is, what's to be done, why we've been bamboozled by those pesky Germans again, and I must confess I'm more confused than before. And don't sit me down and try to explain it to me in a way I understand, blog-reader if you're still there, because admit it, you're as clueless as I am.

So, I have decided to go back to basics. No, I'm not planning to shag Edwina Currie, I'm going to attempt to write down what I understand, in very simple terms, and see how it applies to this blog. Here goes:

1) Financially, the world is in a mess. There are several complex reasons for this, but the over-riding cause of this mess has been that financiers, unshackled by regulation or moral objectivity, have taken their creed of making money for its own sake to its logical conclusion. To use the obvious metaphor, if I drive a car and I keep driving it fast, going through red lights and refusing to slow down, I'll get to my destination faster than if I was driving within the rules - but there's a very strong possibility that at some point I will crash the car.

2) It's pointless trying to attribute blame. We're all tainted. Anyone who picked up a dodgy mortgage or took advantage of all those free credit lunches of the last decade helped to perpetuate the culture. We may have felt uncomfortable with it but we let it continue anyway.

3) Things cannot continue like this. A solution requires the following - a complete overhaul of the financial system that needs us all to take some responsibility for our actions. Bankers, shareholders, creditors, depositors, you, me (okay, I'll be realistic about this blog, just me).

There is a sense that some, if not all of these issues, are being addressed by the USA. As far as I can tell, the two main objecting voices to the US bail-out were a) the free market purists who said the weak should be allowed to go to the wall and b) politicians who knew they wouldn't be able to sell another hit on the taxpayer this close to an election. In the compromise deal that was finally passed, the voices of b) were allowed to be heard above those of a) - a first in the US to my knowledge.

So what are we doing in the UK? And I don't mean what are Gordon and Alastair doing to micro-manage the daily events. What overall message is being sent? As the Conservative columnist Bruce Anderson suggests in today's Independent, the overall message (the correct one, in his view) is that the city and the CBI are being calmed by the appointment of Peter Mandelson, friend of financiers and filthy rich filanthropists.

Am I the one out of touch then? Is it me who's mad to think that Gordon's latest move to stay as Prime Minister will make no sense or difference to the vast majority of people? And even to the anorak tendency, I must ask, was the recent threat to Brown's Premiership biggest from the Blairites?

Is there no one out there like me, who wanted Gordon Brown to take over, and has been saddened more or less from day one that for all those years of plotting he didn't ascend to the top job with a single innovative idea? I believe there are thousands who feel that way - which is why I need to get back to the original idea of this blog, which is to try and make the Labour party once more appear as a party that speaks common sense for the majority.

Piece of piss I reckon...