Gordon Brown's address to the CBI - A new world order?

Having returned to the UK, Gordon Brown will attempt to restore faith in his floundering government in a speech to the CBI. Brown is expected to announce greater spending on transport infrastructure and energy, including nuclear power stations. If Gordon really wants to impress the nation with increased spending, then he should give Des Browne the £1bn for defence that he refused him last week. Of course he won't because Des has already been told not to trouble his boss with further concerns over the defence budget. That to me sounds a bit imperious, I can just imagine Gordon wearing a toga, laying on the sofa in No10 whilst dictating his commands to a lowly scribe.

Gordon will use sugar to make the bad medicine he has to announce in his speech go down. He will announce that the planning system will be streamlined so that it will be easier to build nuclear power stations - the sugar will be that this will also make it easier to build homes. He will announce a third runway at Heathrow, which he will hope to sweeten with a promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by at least 60% by 2050. I wonder if any pies (or pigs, take your pick) will be taking off from the new runway? Even though I'm in favour of expanding our capacity for air travel, I think some honesty would be welcome on the subject. Building a third runway is not going to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions, so to continually promise a reduction of at least 60% by 2050 at every opportunity is a little two faced.

Update: Gordon has just quoted Montgomery's statement that the most important thing to a frontline soldier is not his weapon or equipment, but it is the soldier's skills. I think Gordon will find that today's soldiers would not agree. Your skills will not stop you getting blown up by a roadside improvised explosive device, a decent armoured vehicle and body armour will do that.

The questions from the audience have generally been negative towards Gordon's governance of the country. There is however one point that I would like to praise from his speech: That is the desire to get the long term unemployed back to work through skills training. The only problem with that, is whether or not Labour have the leadership skills required to implement them. They have shown that they are highly skilled at setting up schemes and throwing money at them, but they have failed miserably at managing those schemes.