In a ‘secret’ document revealed in today’s Daily Telegraph, Labour ministers are planning to slash the number of ships in the Royal Navy from 103 at present to 50 in 2027. While the purchase of two new carriers is confirmed, in others domains news are bleak to say the least. The numbers of frigates is scheduled to be reduced by 8 to just 9 units, of the present 13 submarines, up to 2 might not be replaced, the whole of the minesweeper fleet currently amounting to 16 units is due to be decommissioned and as far as the Auxiliary fleet is concerned, no less than 14 units will disappear.

In the present world climate, with the threat of Islamic terrorism, a resurgent Russia and an ambitious China, these cuts are ill advised to say the least. Before having a look at the offensive capabilities of the Royal Navy, it is also worth to remember that the Royal Navy must protect the home waters, but also waters around our overseas territories, the Falklands, Saint Helena, Pitcairn, Bermuda and twelve others places spread all around the globe. At present this task is devolved to our patrol ships, however since the 9 units are slated for removal by 2027 and perhaps much earlier, it is very fair to say that places like the Falklands will be defenceless by then. One of the reasons why Argentina attacked the islands back in 1982, was pencilled decommission of HMS Endurance, a patrol ship attached to the islands since 1967.

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Everybody must have heard about the tube strike in London, affecting millions of commuters, tourists and visitors alike. While the strike itself was unjustified, it has the merit of putting the light on one of Gordon Brown greatest failures, the Public Private Partnership for London Underground. For Labour politicians, PPP must look like the best of both worlds and there undoubtedly something deeply linked, to the infamous ‘third way’ in the idea of public and private finance working together.

As usual the facts are not to the advantage of the Labour Party, since Metronet as gone bankrupt it is fair to assume that the PPP is on the whole a failure. Separating train and track is not working on the railways and, there is no reason why it should be working on the Underground. In fact separation is even worse in the case of London Underground, mainly due to the fact that there is only one type of traffic using the track, as opposed to several on the railways. If one look at the history of the tube and also at other metro systems in the world, separation was never attempted and systems were and are integrated, may it be under a public or a private company.

Since Metronet is now bankrupt, Transport for London should take over instead its responsibilities, instead of paying administration fees and even for drawing another contract with a new provider. The contract with the other provider Tube Lines, could then be ended one their approbatory period ends in 2010, thence bringing back all maintenance and renewal works under the aegis of London Underground ltd, subsidiary of TfL. Heavy works like signalling renewals and new trains would be put to tender, and offered to the most competitive bidder.

I would even go further, and say that the opportunity should be used to completely revamp the existing structure of London’s transport. If projects like Crossrail or new tubes line are to be build, a healthy and well working structure will be needed, far from the bureaucracy which comes with PPP contracts. Several options are possible. The first one being the creation of a Transport for London plc, this would entail a complete reintegration of the buses and train operations into a single structure; economies of scale would follow and, opening up the capital of the company to private investors could allow billions of pounds in private money to be injected into the system. The second option would be as outlined before, for several subsidiaries to exist, London Underground ltd being one, as an eventual London Rail ltd, taking over the operation of Crossrail and Overground lines.

So far it seems that Labour transport policy is a complete failure since 1997, it is however not too late to end the current lunacy based on bureaucracy, lengthily contracts and micromanagement. This is providing of course that pragmatism triumph over ideology.

Yesterday, the Government announced that unclaimed money from ‘abandoned’ British bank accounts will be used to fund the building of ‘a youth centre in every town’.

The Government’s reasoning is that if they create a large number of very expensive youth centres, teenage thugs and ruffians will just suddenly stop causing trouble and enjoy using the new facilities instead.

Apparently many youths go out and cause ‘trouble’ (government speak for getting drunk, beating up other people, causing criminal damage to property, etc) because they have nothing to do. It’s not their fault you see. The fact that there are many other children who have ‘nothing’ to do and yet do not go around breaching the law does not seem to register as applicable to a government and a Labour party that just loves to waste your money on pointless and ineffective schemes.

But that is not really what this post is about. This post is about how the Government are attempting to legalise the theft of private money so that they can waste it on further unnecessary state projects, and unfortunately, this plan has been on the cards for sometime. With most British pension plans already pillaged and with government borrowing and taxation at unprecedented levels, Gordon Brown has been forced to pursue new ways of raising money for yet more unnecessary and wasteful government spending.

Currently the plan is to allow the Government to claim any money in any UK bank account, so long as it has remained dormant for fifteen years. Apparently there is £15bn of such money is stashed away in UK bank accounts. However, what individuals do with their own money is up to them. If they wish to keep money in an account for fifteen years or more, then that is their right. The Government should not be able to take an individual’s money whether they wish to make use of it or not. In the event that a person dies and leaves money in an account, then the bank should make efforts to trace the relatives of that person’s family and they should receive the money.

The government has plenty of other nasty ways of taking money which they have no right to – inheritance tax being a perfect example. Legalised theft from private accounts should not be another way.

Gordon Brown told the House of Commons today that the Government would research and look carefully at the reclassification of Cannabis from a Class C drug to Class B. In other words, they might reclassify; they might not.

However, regardless of whether Cannabis is classified as Class B or C is largely irrelevant. More often than not, drugs laws are not enforced at a low or personal level. Individual users are rarely prosecuted, if ever, and it is only large scale importers and distributors or dealers that are sporadically targeted.

Celebrity addicts such as Kate Moss and Pete Doherty regularly flout the law without any consequence, other than the minor inconvenience of a court appearance which invariably leads to nothing. In fact, it’s probably fair to say that Pete Doherty is now better known for his drug abuse than his music. Such behaviour and lack of any retribution sends out completely the wrong signals about drug use to ordinary people who read about it in the media.

The use of illegal drugs needs to actually be enforced by the police - though unfortunately this seems unlikely in the foreseeable future since most of our political classes and the liberal media probably have used or continue to use these substances themselves, and so have little or no interest in discouraging their misuse.

Labour’s announcement is nothing more than another meaningless gesture that will do nothing to actually solve the growing drugs problem in Britain.

Or not, as the case may be. Does anyone honestly believe that there will be any change beyond presentational purposes that will separate Gordon Brown from Tony Blair?

Gordon Brown has played an enormous role in the running of this country for the past decade. He has been responsible for Britain’s economic problems, the disguising of real inflation, the raiding of the pension’s pot, the massive increases in taxation and wasted Government spending and the selling off of our gold supply for an extremely poor return. He has had an equal hand in it all.

I’m watching the BBC News 24 coverage of Tony Blair’s leaving office as I write this. As per usual, the institutionally leftist BBC journalists are discussing Blair’s Iraq legacy. We know by now that the British people’s number one political priority has never been Iraq, but in recent times, immigration – but, of course, the biased Beeb haven’t mentioned that once, because they do not speak for the people, but themselves.

Now, Blair is yesterday’s news, and those journalists who were welcoming him into Downing Street so warmly and with so much celebration only ten short years ago are now hounding him out of office, taking every opportunity to run him into the ground. Not that Blair does not deserve much of the abuse for what he has done to this country, but there is no greater hypocrisy than has been engaged in by many of these smirking journalists. So many of them have a spring in their step, a quiet smile on their faces – and yet they have spent the past years willingly aiding Blair in his deception of the British people.

Prime Minister’s Question in Parliament looms. Blair is at Parliament now and soon it will be over. Far too late in my opinion. Then I’ll be off to watch Tim Henman beat Lopez in the second round of Wimbledon. A real, decent British man. Come on, Tim!

Our friends, Arleen Ouzounian of Kings College London Conservative Future and Richard Jackson of the University College London Conservative Future have tagged us with the ‘It’s Got To Be Brown’ meme.

I’ve had a very quick go at filling out the questions, though unsurprisingly, I am not expecting Gordon Brown to undertake any of the latter six points any time in the near future - and if he did, I would probably go into shock.

2 things Gordon Brown should be proud of:

• Not losing his hair.
• There really isn’t anything else is there..?

2 things he should apologise for:

• Raiding the pensions pot and leaving many OAPs in effective poverty.
• The massive and unsubstantiated increases in taxation, crime and immigration.

2 things that he should do immediately when he becomes PM:

• Request that Her Majesty dissolve Parliament and initiate a general election.
• Resign.

2 things he should do while he is PM:

• Take Britain out of the European Union immediately.
• Recall all British troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Only one week until Gordon Brown becomes our next Prime Minister. I can’t wait… not.

For Britain (and in contrast to the Orange slogan,) the Future’s Bleak, the Future’s Brown. Blair left this country a legacy alright, but it was certainly not a pleasant or favourable one.

While Gordon Brown will want to give the appearance he has made a clean break with the past and Tony Blair, I fear much of what his government will pursue will be along much the same lines. This has most prominently manifested itself in Mr Brown’s pledge to introduce a package of constitutional change. I’m not sure I like the sound of that, especially if it’s anything even vaguely similar to the previous attempts at meddling Labour have partaken in – which I suspect it is.

Labour’s highly contentious devolution of Scotland and Wales began the now irreversible break up of the Union, which Gordon Brown now rather curiously (and hypocritically) claims to somehow be in favour of protecting. The House of Lords and hereditary peers worked well, and yet Labour entered government and engaged in constitutional vandalism without any clear idea of an end outcome – effectively change for change’s sake. Labour are now going to use their own potentially illegal dealings as an excuse for further reform, and as a measure to head off the Loans-for-Peerages scandal which engulfed Blair’s premiership.

Worse still, perhaps, was that within days of entering office, Labour enacted a law allowing unelected special advisors to give direct orders to civil servants. This lead to a fundamental change in the very nature of the relationship between state and government.

The Chancellor tells us that no challengers were able to run for the leadership because Labour are wholly united in their determination not to return to the past. Does anyone really believe that? In reality, Labour MPs were fearful of a leadership contest that would highlight Labour’s divisions in the eyes of the electorate, and the differences between what they publicly said and privately believed.

I believe that Gordon Brown will be ruthless in any changes he will want to make to this country. Some believe the new Prime Minister will be a relatively easy push-over. I am not so sure.

Gordon Brown yesterday told MPs in Parliament that, ‘tax rises for small firms were needed to counter East European scams’. He claimed that East European workers were being encouraged to register themselves as companies to avoid paying income tax when they arrived in the UK.

That is, quite possibly, the most ridiculous excuse since ‘the dog ate my homework’. To punish all small businesses with a tax rise for the misdemeanours of a few seems completely unfair. The Federation of Small Business rightly accused Mr Brown of being ‘disingenuous’ and commented:

Why did he not close that particular loophole, rather than increasing tax on small firms, the vast majority of whom don’t incorporate as a tax dodge.

In truth, Gordon Brown is an archaic socialist who hates enterprise, freedom, personal effort and self-furtherment. He desperately wishes to curb such behaviour by stifling everyone and everything through ever increasing levels of taxation, regulation and bureaucracy. These were the reasons for the small business tax increase; nothing to do with Eastern European immigrants.

Such a deceitful man does not deserve to leader this country as Prime Minister. So far it would appear that there is no challenge to the seeming inevitability of Brown’s Labour leadership victory. David Miliband waits in the wings – though he too is equally as bad a prospect, being another Blairite clone who has never had a real job in his life. Future British prospects seem bleak.

The veteran left-winger Michael Meacher has today thrown his hat into the ring with a direct challenge to lead the Labour party while calling for Trident nuclear weapons to be scrapped, huge investment in renewable energy, curbs on City bonuses and nationalisation of the railways.

For Gordon Brown at least, this can only be good news. Michael Meacher has stepped up to the podium as yet another willing sacrificial lamb for the slaughter – just another no-hope candidate for Gordon to beat. However, as one Labour MP commented last year, “We don’t do coronations.” The Labour party therefore need to put on the appearance of a democratically contested selection, but I think there is little doubt in the ultimate outcome.

Despite Tony Blair being, in my opinion, the main reason for Labour’s previous three electoral victories, it now seems to have become common practice for leadership and deputy leadership candidates to openly attack the Prime Minister, his record in office and his polices – each doing their level best to undermine Blair in the waning days of his leadership and gain favourability with the Unions and grassroots party membership whom will ultimately decide their fate.

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News reaches us that Tony Blair’s top Downing Street aide, Ruth Turner, has been arrested yet again in the police investigation over the alleged sale of Peerages for Loans. She is currently under the suspicion of perverting the course of justice and colluding to sell House of Lords peerages to Labour party donors.

Miss Turner, Labour’s chief fund-raiser Lord Levy and Tony Blair must be becoming quite familiar with their local constabulary. These three core suspects are however not the only people that should be having sleepless nights. The ongoing investigation will undoubtedly have implications for Gordon Brown as Primeministerial heir apparent. Had there been any misdoings, it is highly unlikely that Chancellor would have been out of the frame and completely uninformed – he has extended his tentacles and all-seeing-eye into most other operations, so why not the illegal sale of peerages?