Milibands New Shadow Chancellor

Labours new shadow chancellor, Ed Balls can justly claim that he has plenty of experience at HM Treasury and, after all, he was Gordon Brown's closest and perhaps only true political ally.

So close indeed that Gordon Brown when Prime Minister considered promoting him, to be chancellor of the Exchequer and droppng Alistair Darling as a chance to rebuild Labour's some what failing political fortunes.

By this time Gordon Brown's authority as PM had become so weakened that many ministers were openly defying Downing Street. For example ministers would not even take his phone calls. Lets face the facts, he is one of the biggest failures in modern times having taken the UK tothe brink of bankruptcy and the worst recession in living memory.

This is the man of "light touch" banking regulation, who said, "no more boom or bust" at each and every budget but led the electorate into the biggest recession since the 1930's.

Although Ed Balls was not elected to Parliament until 2005, he was an economic adviser to the ex Prime Minister Gordon Brown from 1994 before Labour came to power in 1997.

His career started as a writer at the Financial Times paper so famous for that catch phrase "no FT no comment" and he was there from 1990 to 1994 before his appointment as an economic adviser to the, then, shadow chancellor from 1994 to 1997.

When Tony Blair won the 1997 general election with a landslide Gordon Brown was appointed chancellor of the exchequer and Ed Balls continued to work for him as an economic adviser.

He went on to serve as chief economic adviser to HM Treasury from 1999 to 2004, in which post he was once named as the 'most powerful unelected person in the UK!

When Ed Balls was the chief economic adviser to HM Treasury he went to the Bilderberg annual conference for politicians, financiers and businessmen in both 2001 and 2003, and he was priviledged to fly back to Britain on Conrad Black's private jet on both occasions.

When in 2010 after these details were revealed having been reported in the press, Ed Balls stated "It saved the taxpayer the cost of a plane fare and on both occasions I declared it at the time to the permanent secretary in the normal way." What a glib comment to make from somebody obviously very out of touch with public sentiment.

Black was for a time one of the largest newspaper owners in the world. He was convicted of fraud in a US court in 2007 and sentenced to six and a half years' imprisonment. In 2010, the American tax service started a legal proceeding in the American Tax Court against Conrad Black for some US $71 million in past taxes which it claims is owed on an reported income of US $120 million between 1998 and 2003. These cover some of the years when Balls was enjoying the private jet setting life enjoyed by Black.

There is that famous saying you can judge the character of a man by the company he keeps!

Black is disputing the claim, on the basis that he is not liable to assessment in the US by their taxing authority stating claiming that he was, "neither a citizen nor a resident of the United States" and was not obliged to pay taxes in the USA.

When Balls was at the Treasury helping Gordon Brown Labour sold more than 50% of the UK gold reserves at the lowest price for gold in some twenty years. This was done in a very inept way by announcing to the market their intentions which of course depressed the price. The loss to the UK at todays market prices would be a touch under 10 Billion pounds sterling.

When Labour came into power Gt Britain had some of the strongest private and company pension providers in the World. Now it has some of the worst.

Labour took away the ability for private and company pension funds to reclaim the taxation deducted from their dividend income.

The Labour party is a completely spent force one with out any proper of direction let alone a moral compass.

To even think they could be in government again after 13 years of mismanagement is rather worrying to say the least!


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The author writes a great many articles on current affairs and for detailed more information please go to Ed Miliband