Gordon Brown made the Bank of England independent, as everyone thinks they know. Truth is it was a  very limited independence.

He did it give it the sole power to settle the Base rate of interest. This is done by an independent Monetary Policy Committee coming up with its own forecasts of inflation and the economy. No-one is challenging that. Many just wish they would get better at it.

At the same time Gordon Brown took away the Bank’s power to regulate individual commercial banks and gave it to a new Regulator, the FSA. This reduced the Bank’s ability to influence credit and money.

In 1998 he gave the power to issue government debt to the debt Management Office, taking that away from the Bank. This reduced the Bank’s influence over the bond market.

This system worked badly during the banking crash of 2008-9 with split responsibilities for the banks between the FCA, the Bank and the Treasury, ending with the need for Treasury bank bailouts on a grand scale.

The introduction of Quantitative easing or money creation by the Bank to buy  bonds was thought too big a power to give to the Bank. The overall sum of  money created and bonds bought had to be approved in advance by the Treasury and Chancellor. Any losses that the purchases might lead to were indemnified by the Treasury. There is no way this can be construed as an independent policy. The government has every right to ask the Bank to cut its losses.

The Bank has always accepted that it acted as an agent for the Treasury in building and managing a large bond portfolio. It has also always accepted that budget judgements over spending, tax and borrowing are for the Treasury and Chancellor. The decision of the Bank to incur large and needless losses by selling bonds intrudes on government control of  fiscal policy. Money spent on  bond losses is not available to spend on public services or tax cuts, or it drives up the public sector deficit x the Bank which is the key economic control number.

I have called for the UK to refuse to sign a new WHO Treaty. They want us to give away powers to combat a future epidemic. They want rights to part of our output and stocks of medicines, vaccines and health supplies. Their power grab is unlikely to end there. If we sign then in future we could be circumscribed in how we responded to a health crisis. There would be lawyers controlling what government and the NHS could do.

There also needs to be a proper public enquiry into how the WHO responded to covid.  Where did the virus come  from? Why did it take so long to find which existing drugs could help?  Why were lockdowns so long and how much other damage did they do? Why were WHO numbers on deaths and cases based on different definitions and collection systems by different countries yet published as if comparable?

Ireland and the EU fought to keep an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Now the Republic wants to close it to economic migrants!

The EU and the international lawyers  fought against the UK returning illegal migrants to France. Now they think the EU should be able to return them to the UK.

Why do so many upholders of the international rules based system set out to stop the enforcement of law against illegal migration?

I am willing to publish critical views and different opinions to my own. I have not been willing to publish one correspondent who every day writes in to explain how a couple of billionaires run the world. If they changed their minds global government would still be pushing the same net zero and WHO agenda.It is vexatious  to have to delete the same old refrains every day.Some billionaires are attracted to following the fashionable follies of the world establishment.

I have allowed people to state some disagreement with covid vaccination. This too is not what I wish to pursue as I do not have a sufficient grounding in medicine and the vaccination programmes are now behind us. I was critical of the length and severity of covid lockdowns at the time. Their past wrongs cannot be altered. Astra Zeneca is currently in court proceedings over side effects of its vaccine, where there will be a judgement in due course.

You and I will get more out of these exchanges if you engage with the campaigns I run and the issues I raise. By all means tip the site off about new mistakes and disasters. When responding it helps to build bridges with others rather than just expressing anger about most things.

Several of you want a box None of the above on ballot papers. That is a cop out. Democratic politics is about choosing between what is on offer. If you don’t like what is on offer join the party nearest to what you want and battle to change their offer, or start your own party. If you think all the candidates are bad persuade a better one  to stand  or stand yourself. If you decline to stand or start a party you are admitting your idea of what is needed is not sufficiently widely  shared to take off  in an election.

I have been out and about delivering leaflets and talking to people about the local elections.

People did want to talk about local matters controlled by Wokingham Borough Council. They are understandably very critical of the Council , which charges too  much, delivers too little and ignores public wishes.

People are angry about the extreme anti driver policies the Council  is pursuing. The big increase in car park charges is a rip off, putting people off going to local centres.

They are annoyed with the plans to end weekly rubbish collections for all items, and amazed that worsening the service will not lead to any cost savings.

They are opposed to such poor road maintenance, leaving the roads badly damaged with potholes.

They are fed up with expensive consultations to be followed by doing the opposite of what the public  wants. Why waste £5.5 m on damaging the California crossroads when the advice was not to do this scheme. Why plan a similar mess up for the Woosehill roundabout?

They worry that the Council’s refusal to publish a local plan leaves Wokingham wide open to more development.

The Council specialises in undermining  local businesses that want to give us good service. Road closures and dear and restricted parking are hitting local businesses hard.

The Council delights in doing what people do not want and then sending them the bill. Time for a change.