RECESSION as to the UK - An historical compilation of events.

It is said that a picture paints a thousand words but however do note the following:-

(1) That the underlying loss of Gov held “Public digital data” over time has preceded the loss of digital transactional wealth from the Financial Sector/Industry!. It does rather give the impression that problems were visibly recognised to which a trail of “bird seed” became a necessary in getting the medias attention.

(2) That Mr Blair under New Labour “dismissed” Climate Change in 2005 [ see News below 14 11 2005 ] and so how was New Labour Mr Brown to meet EU directives concerning it ?. In going from A to B perhaps the Gov decided to go through the entire alphabet in getting to point point B to which the objective was to use less Energy and reduce Carbon emissions. First there was increased spending through easy Credit / loans to which

VAT filled Gov coffers against a backdrop of Insurance package sales and increasing Food/Energy prices that provided fat profits and Executive bonuses. After that the “pond was all fished out” leaving the Financial Industry scratching its head in Melt Down mode, all while Tax Payers now undergo forfeiting their Homes and Jobs awaiting new fluidity by way of loans, that may take generations to pay off in terms of the Nations Debt!.

So perhaps Mr Blair was right after all in saying "The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge." which does leave not only New Labour in a big predicament but the entire Country!.

(3) See News below dated 30 12 2008 – how very inteesting

 

14 11 2005GLOBAL WARMING [ Kyoto Protocol ] - Mr Blair at No 10 delivered TONNES of COAL by GREENPEACE. In a speech this month Blair said: "The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge."

04 01 2007: REVENUE -Npower price hikes of 17.2% for gas and 12.7% for electricity. gas prices will vary regionally - The change will mean gas price rises vary from 15% to almost 24% up to 27% for some customers in the East Midlands

?? 09 2007 spend - Northern Rock - for the first time since 1860 there was a run on a British bank. Although the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority have jurisdiction in such cases Darling authorised the Bank of England to lend Northern Rock up to £20 billion. Mr Darling was then criticized for so much public money being tied up in a private company!

13 11 2007 EU accounts - Auditors for the EU have refused to sign off the bloc's financial accounts - for the 13th year in a row.

07 12 2007: REVENUE Supermarkets Asda and Sainsbury's have been fined over their roles in a dairy price-fixing scandal thought to have cost consumers around £270,000,000.

20 03 2007 LOSS - 10,000 passports go to fraudsters. Thousands of people have obtained passports under false pretences, the Home Office has admitted.

21 11 2007: LOSS - Computer discs missing holding sensitive personal data on 25 million people and 7.25 million families along with the identities of hundreds of people in witness protection programmes.On the 20 11 2007 Chancellor Darling blamed mistakes by junior officials at HMRC

01 12 2007: MI5 warns firms of Chinese spying. The director-general Jonathan Evans of MI5 has warned business leaders that China has been carrying out state sponsored espionage against vital parts of Britain's economy, including the computer systems of big banks and financial services firms.

03 12 2007: Bank details 'sold on internet'. The Times newspaper said it had found more than 100 websites offering to sell UK bank details, including account numbers, PINs and security codes, and had been able to download banking information for 32 individuals, including a High Court Judge, for free.

06 12 2007 LOSS - Banking information. HMRC admits seven security breaches. The incidents had taken place since Revenue and Customs were merged into a single organisation in April 2005. The losses included a disc of banking information which was mislaid by HMRC's information technology partner in 2006.

06 12 2007 LOSS – Bank account details of every child benefit claimant in the country including names, addresses, birth dates, national insurance numbers Chancellor Alistair Darling reveals. £20,000 reward

07 12 2007 Banks could have an insurance-type "no-claims" bonus for people who successfully protect their own identity from fraudsters - a Think-tank suggests

09 12 2007 Computer Disc security warning in 2004: News of the World reveals that in March 2004 such worries were highlighted in a letter circulated by Treasury risk manager. Because no one took any action we now face a situation where millions of bank account details and information about all our children has been lost.

12 12 2007 LOSS - DRIVER DETAILS. A total of 7,685 vehicle-keepers' addresses, names and car particulars were lost at a Parcelforce sorting centre in Coventry after the Driver and Vehicle Agency in Coleraine posted two uncoded discs to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing offices in Swansea, Wales.

19 12 2007  WARNING OVER CREDIT CRUNCH. Bank of England Governor Mervyn King has warned that UK Banks face a "painful adjustment" in coming months as losses from the summer credit crunch mount.

19 12 2007 LOSS - Pensions data by HMRC. HM Revenue and Customs has become embroiled in another data scandal after it emerged that it lost personal details of 6,000 private pension holders.

25 12 2007 ASTRAY - ACCOUNT STATEMENTS sent to wrong customers. The Post Office has been forced to apologise to thousands of pensioners after more than 100 card account statements were sent to the wrong customers. The incident came to light in a memo from a civil servant at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) advising colleagues about the situation.

27 12 2007 FOUND - COMPUTER DISC FOUND AT A DUMP. A police chief has apologised after confidential staff data was found in a dump. The personal information included names, addresses, telephone numbers, ranks and qualifications such as firearms or drug-testing skills of Devon and Cornwall Police employees.

17 01 2008: Brown in first visit to China as PM. He said in an interview with News At Ten this week: "I can see in the next two years a 50% increase in our trade with China”;”I can see thousands of British jobs, perhaps tens of thousands of British jobs, over a period of time developing from this new relationship.".

18 02 2008 spend - Move to nationalise Northern Rock- Chancellor Alistair Darling is due to put forward emergency legislation in Parliament to Nationalise Northern Rock- the bank's estimated £55 billion liabilities will be placed in the public's lap.

21 02 2008: British Gas profits rockets to around £576,000,000 last year from £95,000,000 in 2006, according to Citigroup analysts.

25 02 2008: £41,600,000 meters fine for National Grid

01 03 2008 FOUND - COMPUTER DISC on eBay laptop. A highly confidential Home Office disc has been found on a laptop computer sold on eBay.

01 03 2008 BANK CARD CLONING at a PETROL STATION. Police investigating a bank card cloning scam at a petrol station found a small, drilled hole in the ceiling above a chip-and-pin machine.

03 03 2008  HSBC profits soar 10% to £12.2bn

13 03 2008 Morrisons profits rise by 66%14 03 2008 Alistair Darling has warned he would have to make an £8 billion cut in spending if Labour are returned at the next General Election.

10 03 2008 FAILURE - Data protection. The Government have failed to implement basic data protection policies, despite recent embarrassments caused by information breaches, research has showed.

08 04 2008: Severn Trent Water faces £35,800,000 fine for deliberately providing false data to industry regulator Ofwat

11 04 2008 Darling calls for financial reforms. Mr Darling will say the institutions, set up in the aftermath of the Second World War, "need to adapt to today's problems".

15 04 2008: Tesco rings up £2.85bn profits

19 04 2008 spend - Bank - planning £50bn bonds swap. The Bank of England is to swap £50 billion of government bonds for high street lenders' mortgages in a bid to ease the credit crunch, it has been reported.

20 04 2008 spend - Bank to inject billions into system. The Bank of England is set to inject billions of pounds into the financial system in a bid to ease the crisis in the mortgage market, Chancellor Alistair Darling said.

28 04 2008: Supermarkets to be investigated on allegations of price fixing

14 05 2008 Bank chief warns of budget squeeze. Bank of England Governor Mervyn King warns over the impact of soaring energy bills, food prices and dearer imports as the Bank's latest forecasts predicted Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation could spike as high as 3.7% this year

16 05 2008 spend - NHS-Electronic patient records – 4 year delay. £12.7 billion programme will not be introduced to every NHS Trust in England until 2014/15

20 05 2008 spend - UK MINISTERS consider a GIANT COMPUTER DATABASE for surveillance!.

20 05 2008: Marks & Spencer's annual profits have topped £1 billion

23 05 2008 Anger over £81m transport scheme. An efficiency drive designed to save £57 million is now likely to cost the Department for Transport (DfT) £81 million, a Government spending watchdog has said.

 

24 5 2008 The UK is heading for recession - Bank of England governor Mervyn King also warned that it is "quite possible" that Britain might face a recession. None of this should come as a surprise. The real surprise is that the downturn has been so long in coming. UK consumers are more indebted than they've ever been, with our total debt pile up over £1.4 trillion.

25 05 2008 SPEND – Police:  £50m scheme for 10,000 hand-held computers.

04 06 2008 SPEND –MPs angered over eight Chinook helicopters. Not in Service SEVEN YEARS after delivery and costing almost £500 million

11 06 2008 spend - Cash fears over polyclinics plan. There will be a £1.4 billion "black hole" in the Government's finances as a result of plans for polyclinics, the Tories have claimed.

11 06 2008 EU to act over UK budget deficit. EU to start disciplinary proceedings against the UK for breaching its economic rules. It says Britain's budget deficit, the gap between its spending and its revenues, is growing too large. The Treasury said it did not agree with the commission's assessment and asserted that the UK's public finances were sound.

12 06 2008 LOSS - £300bn wiped off value of homes

15 06 2008 FOUND - secret files on a train. A further batch of secret Government files have been found on a train. The latest confidential files were said to include details of how trade and banking systems could be manipulated to finance illicit weapons of mass destruction in Iran.

17 06 2008 REVENUE - Chipped wheelie bin will to go ahead even though one council which tried out the technology scrapped it after it "failed to work".

19 06 2008 Deputy governor of the Bank of England to step down. Last year Sir John was savaged by MPs for his role in the collapse of Northern Rock, with the Treasury Select Committee accusing him of sleeping on the job.

01 07 2008: Severn Trent Water has been fined £2,000,000 at the Old Bailey for lying about water leaks.

03 07 2008 spend - Commons vote due on big MP pay rise. MPs are deciding whether to defy Prime Minister Gordon Brown and award themselves an inflation-busting 4.4% pay rise.

03 07 2008 Darling says oil price "real problem". The oil price is a real problem and production needs to rise, Chancellor Alistair Darling said on Thursday.

06 07 2008 SPEND - Civil Service bonuses under fire. The Tories have accused the Government of running a "something for nothing" culture after it was revealed that civil servants banked more than £128 million in bonuses during the last financial year.

07 07 2008 PM links food waste to rising price. Gordon Brown has urged Britons to stop wasting food

10 07 2008 REVENUE Car tax changes to leave 9 million worse off under Government plans to raise vehicle duty.

12 07 2008 US bank collapses amid credit woe. California-based IndyMac Bank is the largest government-regulated savings and loan bank to fail and the second largest financial institution to close in US history, regulators said.

16 07 2008 SPEND - City Hall 'squandered millions'. "Tens of millions" of pounds of public money has been wasted by London's local government, according to a report.

16 07 2008 SPEND - Dome site bill could rise by £60m. Delays in developing the Millennium Dome site in south-west London could leave taxpayers up to £60m worse off, according to government figures.

17 07 2008 SPEND - New PACKAGE of Police reforms, including a resurrection of plans to merge police forces - A similar scheme was ditched two years

18 07 2008 PM seeks way out of borrowing rules. Opposition parties have claimed Gordon Brown has "lost control" of the economy after it was reported the Treasury was re-writing his fiscal rules to allow the Government to increase its borrowing.

28 07 2008 'Government blamed for fuel prices'. Prime Minister Gordon Brown was accused of playing politics with petrol prices earlier this month after finally confirming this autumn's planned 2p rise in fuel duty had been scrapped.

29 07 2008 LOSS - Blank passports stolen from van. The Foreign Office admitted a serious breach of security took place after blank passports destined for British embassies were stolen.

29 07 2008 ASTRAY -  BENEFIT FORMS. Personal details about nearly 100 benefit claimants have been wrongly sent to a couple in Cornwall.

29 07 2008 SPEND - Council logo - cost around £476,000' – BARNDED a waste of money'.

05 08 2008 REVENUE - Tory condemns speed camera 'Cash Cow'. "Ministers need to tell us what they are doing with this £100 million a year taken from motorists

26 8 2008 SPEND - £20bn new Thames barrier- feasibility study within weeks. A £20bn new Thames barrier could be built to prevent potentially disastrous flooding in London, it has emerged.

06 09 2008: Energy costs - netted Treasury £1bn

11 09 2008 REVENUE Energy cost 'pushing 10% into debt'. The federation said one of the key issues that exacerbated fuel poverty was the practice of charging people who pay for gas and electricity through pre-payment meters higher tariffs than other customers

11 09 2008 spend - PM to unveil energy help package. More than 10 million households are set to be offered help with energy efficiency measures such as loft and cavity wall insulation, new boilers and double glazing.

15 09 2008 Anger as car journey data stored. Already some 10 million journeys a day are being recorded using automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), but this is set to rise to 50 million. It will be collated at a new National ANPR Data Centre in Hendon, north London, for use by police.

16 09 2008 Markets braced for more turmoil. Stock markets on both sides of the Atlantic are braced for more turmoil in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse. Bank of England to pump an extra £5 billion into panicked money markets

16 09 2008 LOSS - Details of 18,000 NHS staff missing. The personal details of nearly 18,000 NHS staff in London have gone missing in the post.

22 09 2008 REVENUE  -Darling dismisses tax rise claims. In his speech Mr Darling is expected to concede that no national government acting alone can deal with the problems of globalisation.

25 9 2008 spend - Home Secretary Jacqui Smith unveiled the new ID card. The scheme will start on November 25, and ministers predict one million cards a year will be issued each year from 2010.

27 9 2008 LOSS - Files on RAF staff stolen from base: Thieves have stolen files containing the personal records of thousands of serving and former RAF staff, the Ministry of Defence said. Earlier this week, a disc containing the names and addresses of almost 11,500 teachers went missing in the post.

28 10 2008 BP oil profit -£4.4 billion EXPECTED for the July-September period, a 52% above last year's third quarter

02 11 2008 LOSS - Government data stick found at pub. An inquiry is under way after a memory stick with user names and passwords for a government computer system was discovered in a pub car park

03 11 2008 EMBARRASSMENT Heathrow T5 - MPs REPORT revealed "serious failings" on the part of British Airways and airport operator BAA and was "a NATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT"

03 11 2008 MPs will quiz banking system bosses. The heads of the financial authorities are being grilled by MPs over their handling of the banking crisis.

11 11 2008 spend - Tax fraud chief 'paid wife £100k'. The Government's tax fraud department has been criticised for internal failures that allowed a senior officer to hire his wife as a consultant and pay her nearly £100,000 of taxpayers' money

12 11 2008 spend - Conservative MEP expelled – EU Parliament tells him to repay £500,000 in expenses paid to his family for office work. 

12 11 2008: Sainsbury profit rose 13 percent to £272,000,000 in just 28 weeks

17 11 2008 Gordon Brown claims world leaders had signed up to his blueprint for reviving the global economy – a package worth between £15 billion and £30 billion - all funded through extra state borrowing

18 11 2008 Crime detection figures 'an insult'. In a leaked document a Home Office's top civil servant admits that serious violent crime had been allowed to rise due to a focus on targets.

25 11 2008 Brown's £20bn gamble to save economy. State borrowing would hit £78bn this year and £118bn next year, while total national debt will top £1 trillion by 2012-13

26 11 2008 REVENUE -Leaders clash over 'VAT bombshell'. But Mr Brown said ministers had rejected the option of raising VAT above 17.5%

26 11 2008 spend - MoD condemned - "substantial waste" in the procurement process. Resembles a stage farce or an episode of comedy, Yes Minister.

01 12 2008 A soldier set upon after a night out. He was charged and convicted on two counts of attacking the Police HOWEVER Liverpool Crown Court was shown CCTV footage of TWO Police Officers and a Special attacking him. HE thus won his appeal. In a statement following he said "I went into the Army thinking this country was worth fighting for. I put my life on the line every day in Afghanistan, so to come back and be treated like this for no reason was just so depressing."

15 12 2008LOSS - LARGEST EVER FRAUD [ alledged ] in ELECTRONIC TRADING: Investors loose $50 Billion and all UNDER THE EYES of the US Securities and Exchange Commission [ SEC ].

15 12 2008 LOSS -RBS reveals Madoff exposure. RBS said its potential loss could amount to some 400 million pounds, if it assumed that the value of its assets in market-making firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities were nil.

16 12 2008 LOSS -Bank 'fraud' may cost billions. Financial giants have revealed potential losses of almost £4 billion.

16 12 2008 spend -Thousands hit by pensions blunder. Thousands of retired public sector workers face having their pensions reduced after a massive overpayments blunder.

16 12 2008 spend -£100m to help first-time buyers. The Government has pledged an extra £100 million to help first-time buyers get on to the property ladder.

17 12 2008 spend -Bailed-out bank pays £1.6bn bonuses. City workers at a firm that benefited from the US bank bail-out are still to share in a multibillion-pound bonus pot, it has been confirmed.

17 12 2008 spend -£158m fund to help unemployed. The Government has unveiled details of a £158 million fund to help people made redundant or who fear losing their jobs with the aim of helping them find new work.

19 12 2008 spend -Cash 'wasted' on private contracts. Whitehall is wasting up to £290 million of taxpayers' money a year by failing to properly monitor "critically important" outsourced services, a watchdog has said.

21 12 2008 REVENUE Poor could face 27% Government loan. Low income households dependent on emergency state loans could be hit with an interest rate of 26.8% under plans being considered by ministers.

20 12 2008 REVENUE UK sells nuclear weapons site stake. Britain has sold off its stake in the Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment, relinquishing control of nuclear warhead production in the UK, it has been revealed.

05 12 2008 spend -£250m funding to train scientists. A quarter of a billion pounds is to be invested in training scientists and engineers to tackle the problems Britain faces.

12 12 2008 spend -Councils spend £430m on publicity. Councils are spending nearly £430 million a year on publicity, according to new figures

22 12 2008 Bank 'did not understand crisis'. The Bank of England did not understand the severity of economic problems before the current financial crisis, its deputy governor says.

30 12 2008: A Student in Ayrshire had his Bank Account incorrectly credited then debited by around £100Billion and was passed from pillar to post by the Bank whom then offered £10 in compensation!.