Class war or not?
So, is the class war back as the Telegraph claimed this morning? I think not. What may be back is Labour's determination to fight the Tories instead of (or, perhaps, as well as) each other.
In her speech to the TUC this morning Harriet Harman promised to "step up" the fight for equality and not to put it "on the back burner" as the economy slowed. She went onto attack the Tories as "false friends" of equality and fairness. The Shadow Chancellor George Osborne's portrayal of the Tories as the true progressive party was a provocation too far.
Harman didn't mention the word "class" once in her speech announcing the membership of the National Equality Panel - a group of academics who will study inequality in Britain. She spoke instead of "investigating how "people's life chances" are impacted by "where they were born, what kind of family they were born into, where they live and their wealth" as well as their gender, race, disability and age.
A major theme of Gordon Brown's Conference speech will, I'm told, be fairness and how Labour not the Tories can be trusted to deliver it. Gordon Brown's article, which I wrote about yesterday, admitted that Labour had not done enough to increase social mobility. A White Paper on the subject is due by the end of the year.
So, what is the motivation for all this ?
Belief - that this is what Labour is for.
Anger - that the Tories are "getting away" with presenting themselves as the party which will reduce inequality.
Hope - that this is a theme which will allow others to highlight David Cameron and George Osborne's privileged backgrounds given that Labour's crude attempts to exploit the "toffs in top hat" factor played so badly in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election.
Not quite class war then but a hope to redraw the dividing lines with the Tories.
I'm 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~31~RS~)
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Yawn ...... a strategy to rewin middle Britain?
Did we ever get crash Gordon's vision, or did I miss it?
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Good god they are so predictable.
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Another Nu-Lab stunt doomed to failure.
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The National Equality Panel ??? Good to see they're planning to do something? Just what we need right now a bunch of tired old academics doing another pointless study on what's wrong with UK PLC. Harriet: we know what the problem is and we know what the solution to the problem is: an election.
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Of course it's class war. Trouble is, we're all middle class now so he can't say it. But he can hint at it for the 'core' vote.
Lowest social mobility for two generations. Gap between richest and poorest greater than Victorian era.
It's probably all the Tories fault.
But keep your cash offshore for now. Just to be on the safe side.
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DANGER! Thin Ice.
Remind me, who went to St Paul's School and where did she send her children? It's all very well trying on this sort of class nonsense but Wikipedia soon sorts out the hypocrites. The trick appears to be to get to the top, make sure your kids can follow and then lecture the rest of us on how we should send our own kids to failing schools set up and run by Labour.
Labour ministers will be quite happy to play the class card as long as the press goes along with it. A few of your rapier-like asides should put a stop to this rubbish. Go to it!
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Why are so many people who respond to this blog so unrelentingly negative? I think promoting fairness in society is to be applauded, and that Labour is far more likely to deliver this than the Tories ever will.
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Today I saw pictures of the booze being delivered to Manchester's Midland Hotel ahead of the Labour Party Conference (Pimms and mixers - You know, the usual socialist fare!) Well, considering the bankrupt state of the Labour Party, does anyone knows who pays for this?
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This woman is truly awful:
Country in recession, inflation up, sterling down, house prices tumbling, cant afford to fuel the car or heat the house, patients denied life extending drugs, the kids can use a knife better than a pen, prisons are full, borrowed to the max and the gold has gone.
And she promises equality. Is this your plan Harriet? To woo us with promises of equality. God it gets worse.
We are equal Harriet were all in the doo doo together.
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First step in getting better, is to admit that you have a problem.
Everyone knows Labour have screwed up big time.
As long as they refuse to admit it, they have no credibility.
Of course, if they do admit it then they have no credibility either.
They are a bit stuffed really.
They choose to leave the country in limbo for another two years so they can fill their boots with taxpayers money.
They will not be forgiven - but this is clearly a price they are happy to pay in return for their gold plated benefits.
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She spoke instead of "investigating how "people's life chances" are impacted by "where they were born, what kind of family they were born into, where they live and their wealth" as well as their gender, race, disability and age.
So the solution to this is to discriminate against men?
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There's a huge cause of so-called inequality missed off the list - the proverbial elephant in the room - and that's people's genes.
No amount of social engineering is going to fix that. The Labour agenda is doomed to failure and will cause no end of misery and frustration along the way.
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I think it was a mistake to use the term "class war" - was it Teresa May that said this?
Having said that the Unions need to wise up. Labour aren't going to be able to deliver them economic stability and social mobility. They just don't know how.
The Unions should take the olive branch from Osbourne and try and shape the Conservative agenda positively.
Labour is a dead duck.
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What do you do when you are in a corner and facing a battering from the electorate? Why, suggest that the electorate looks over its collective shoulder at the other guys in the room. This is Harman's stock in trade - deflecting criticism, not answering it.
Remember she and her party have been in power now for 11 and a half years next month. If after that time she has the temerity to suggest that social mobility is a mystery, can we really take anything she has to offer on the subject seriously?
Harman's solution will, no doubt, involve penal tax rates for those on above average earnings, compulsory state redistribution of the assets of the wealthy on death, School and university places to be reserved only for the poorest for a generation, and similar daft schemes. Harriet, what about reserving top jobs in government exclusively for those from deprived wards and without university education? That's the sort of blindingly stupid thinking that will inevitably come out of this desperate attempt to curry favour with someone, somewhere.
The irony of this whole debate is, of course, that Labour does not really want social mobility. Move out of the working class hy dint of your own efforts and you'll suffer financially. Labour needs impoverishment.
She and her party deserves the mugging at the polls that is inevitably coming their way.
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Out here in the real world...
None of get dealt a perfect hand in the game of life. So most of us just get on with life and make the most of it.
What does an equalities minister actually do? It strikes me that there is almost certainly a significant saving to be made by axing this whole department - surely it wouldn't be missed!
Does anyone know how big the budget is?
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"diamondunited9 wrote:
Why are so many people who respond to this blog so unrelentingly negative? I think promoting fairness in society is to be applauded, and that Labour is far more likely to deliver this than the Tories ever will."
The Labour party have been in power for over 11 years now and things are getting worse not better. The Tories might not be able to deliver fairness in society but if Labour really wanted to deal with it then they could have forced through policies using their landslide majority - they didn't then and they are only talking about it now to try and raise their profile with voters.
If people are convinced by Labour's lies after all this time then I really worry for the intelligence of the voters.
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National Equality Panel heh? Splendid idea, not! Presumably the academics will be tucked away in a University or dark room somewhere for a couple of years at daft expense and report their deliberations at some future point.
What will they come up with next?
Peoples life chances shouldn't be determined by Government, although many people have had theirs hampered by the present administration. Better parenting skills wouldn't be a bad start.
If Labour genuinely cared about fairness, why not some policy initiatives eleven years ago and not simply now when they are deep, deep in a mire? Here's a novel concept, initiate cost effective, workable policies that benefit the disadvantaged and make the Conservative party chase the game.
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Now they are going to check out where you were born and wher you live and where you went to school to make sure you've eaten your left overs.
This is control freakery gone mad.
When will they learn that some ill educated and low born people get to the top and many high bron and privileged fall to the bottom and there are all shades and colours inbetween.
These people claim to be the guardians of 'society' and 'fairness' but we'll soon all be wearing Mao jackets andhats if they have their way to make sure no one can tell where you come from before they decide to hire you.
Madness, complete ill intentioned madness
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Nick, you asked :
"So, what is the motivation for all this ?"
You forgot:
Desperation - trying anything to mask the woeful performance of the last ten years.
New laws - set up position so can introduce yet another new crime and ban something. Chairs. Let's ban chairs (as they obviously stop social mobility.)
Self interest - fear that the gravy train is over for a lot of Labour MP's
Love of hearing own voice - Who else would Harriet like to listen to but herself ?
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No 7: diamondunited9
Hell, lets give them another decade or so to do it then shall we? Labour can deliver on 'fairness'? Do me a favour, take a look at what they've actually done. Where have you been the last 10 years or so? All this is about is a crude attempt to satisfy their shrinking 'core' vote. People like you no doubt who'll take whatever crumb of hope they throw at you. Anyway, weren't they supposed to be doing this stuff when they got into power? Your party is bankrupt, just like the 'debt economy' it has created during the last decade. .
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Wow! The ultimate panel of tory tripe and theoretical reactionist to the global turn-down.
Whats up folks, is the big mortgage and the two cars becoming to much of a burden....
Thatchers selfish babies are not amused...
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Any party that oversaw the 10p Tax fiasco has lost the right talk about fairness.
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Does anyone else interpret the "where they were born..." stuff as going from socialism to communism?
Maybe that's the big plan for the economy...
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Mr. Robinson,
Whilst I enjoy your blog posts and reports on politics, this is a left leaning styled report. It is sad to see you returning to this style that the BBC was not so long ago seriously critised for. Please keep up with you neutral, and informative political reports, which I do enjoy... But not when you seem to take sides.
Regards,
Michael
P.S. The BBC is refering to 'class' in the headline of their main article on Ms. Harman's Speech.
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I presume Harriet is beating the drum to keep NuLabour's core voters of public sector workers and people on benefits. I must ask; why does taking money from people who have earned it and giving it to people who haven't earned it constitue "fairness"?
What NuLabour fail to realise is that people on average wages aren't that much better off than people on benefits. We don't get free housing, more money when another baby comes along, free dental care, etc. Our disposable income is now at rock bottom thanks to high tax and other rising costs.
Throwing tax money at the underclass has made no change to social mobility over the last 11 years.
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Gosh Nick you have to be quick.
A National Equality Panel. And exactly how will it be funded, who is going to actually pay for it, apart form the taxpayer.
Am I rich or poor, don't know anymore. I am rich in respect of the fact that I live quite comfortably on a modest private income. I am rich in that I continue to meet some very nice people. I am fortunate to have both a very good standard of living, and a great quality of life, only now is the reality becoming apparent.
Ah, yes social mobility. Now that's what we really need. A panel, and how much will be allocated to keep the panel going, who will be on it, the great and the good no doubt.
No Harriet, I am sorry that is action not words, what are you actually going to do. What will happen to this panel when you are thrown out of office. I can only hope that it is consigned to the dustbin, which is where this appallingly bad government should be consigned.
Trouble is there is only a rubbish collection every five years, although I wouldn't trust this government to even be held to that. A national emergency delaying elections, you read it on Nicks blog first.
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Who said that the definition of "hope" was the denial of reality?
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Nick - some of the correspondents on this website have already looked into the great university dumb down and fraud scandal.
Universities are already forced to take thousands of people who can scarcely read/write/count or even speak English - who then fail in droves. Worse yet they get degrees anyway, even if they can't reach traditional standards, because the university can't afford to loose their fees.
Presumably the shower in power intend to extend this debacle even further.
I'd love to see the TV news doing more to expose the great university scandal.
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Harriet is great, theres never been a lovelier person to make my blood boil, just the sight of her holier than thou approach is enough.
As ever the nulab bunch have a not unreasonable idea that there should be equality but implement it by discrimination (they like to call it 'positive' of course)
Animal farm springs to mind - HH and the NuLab clique are 'more equal' than the rest of us.
This is nothing more than an attempt to turn the people against each other to deflect criticism.
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She's got a nerve that woman, I'll give her that. Labour to deliver fairness? - excuse me while I chuckle.
Labour has done nothing to reduce inequality (let's not forget that they brought in tuition fees) and has done very little for the working populace. If anyone at the TUC falls for this after eleven and a half years of declining social mobility then they want their head looking at.
I think that the academics on the National Equality Panel, when asked what improves "people's life chances", will come back with "not working under a Labour Government". "Not being male when Harman is anywhere near number 10" will also probably be on the list.
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This is a very tired Labour party. A National Equality Panel - great, another quango to pay for just as the nation starts running out of money.
I'm not a particular fan of Teresa May but I think she got it mostly right when she said the following:
"I ... find it surprising that she (Harriet Harman) should raise issues of social equality when she's part of a government that has been in power for over 11 years, presiding over a 900,000 growth in the number of people living in severe poverty and over a country that has the lowest social mobility in the developed world.
"Labour has made poverty more entrenched and returning to the class warfare rhetoric of 20 years ago is neither helpful nor realistic."
In my own view, the Labour Party have actually managed in the last eleven years to create, in ascending order of wealth
(i) a working underclass that is actually poverty-stricken
(ii) a large benefit-sustained, inactive element that is now economically better off than most of those who work
(iii) the working middle-classes, who are being hammered into submission by rising taxes and prices and over-regulation
(iv) the rich who are either exempt from or indifferent to taxation or regulation.
So yes, in an odd way Labour have helped social mobility - they have helped the economically inactive, benefit-sustained element of society (i) to vault those in the working-classes who actually do work, and (ii) to overtake Labour's much-hated middle classes, in terms of money to spare.
Labour, please let someone else have a go before it is too late.
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One TOFF (Harriet Harman) taking umbrage with the TOFFS Party (the Tories) in front of the supposed representatives of the working class. It's a bit early for the pantomime season, isn't it?
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21. derekbarker
Welcome Derek,
We are amused by the irony here
"She's part of government that has been in power for over 11 years, presiding over a 900,000 growth in the number of people living in severe poverty and over a country that has the lowest social mobility in the developed world.
Labour has made poverty more entrenched."
But hey ho not my problem, but youre quite right I am cutting back on the staff.
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Whats up folks, is the big mortgage and the two cars becoming to much of a burden....
Thatchers selfish babies are not amused...
That's it. The economy is in the toilet. This government encouraged monster levels of debt on the back of an unsustainable hosue-price boom pump-primed by flooding the economy with hundreds of billions of quid. But the Labour apparatchiks know who to blame.
Yeah. Thatcher's children. It's all Margaret Thatchers fault.
That might have cut some ice eighteen years ago but it's eighteen years since Thatch got her P45. Labour has been in power for more than half that time.
If the economy is in the toilet (it is) and social mobility is the lowest for two generations (lower than under Thatcher) and the gap between rich and poor is the greatest since Victorian times then it's fair to say what we have here is standard Labour Pavlovian claptrap 'It's all Margaret Thatchers fault'.
'Fraid not old chap. If social mobility is a problem it's eleven years of Nu-Labour Stalinism that have made it so.
I'm not playing in your comfort zone. I'm not going to defend Thatch. I'm going to keep attacking the present bunch of grade A incompetents.
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Labour 'talks the talk' but almost never 'walks the walk' and has not done so since 1948 when they created the NHS and nationalised the Railways.
Where are the policies?
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I am still unsure why Labour feel that trying a class tactic is the best way to go in defeating the Tories.
It seems too easy to dismiss. I am reminded of one of the quotes from the film 'Gladiator' when one of the senate is told that he lives better than the people he represents.
He responds with the phrase 'I never claimed to be one of the people, but I do try to be a servant for the people'.
Why do Labour believe that where you come from dictates whether you are able to govern for a whole country. Another foolish idea from a Government that needs to be replaced before they do any more damage to this country.
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Wow! The ultimate panel of tory tripe and theoretical reactionist to the global turn-down.
OECD reports we are the only country in the G8 in recession.
Global downturn. You wish.
Brown's Bust more like. Like the Barber Bust only happening right now on your in your remortgaged house on your 52" plasma TV.
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After 12 years of screwing up the economy, (no return to boom and bust remember) how much longer must we suffer this sad and insufferable band of incompetants. But wait there is a light of salvation Hero Harriet will bark on about equality and all will be forgiven!......what a silly woman.
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21. derekbarker
We are amused by the irony here
She's part of government that has been in power for over 11 years, presiding over a 900,000 growth in the number of people living in severe poverty and over a country that has the lowest social mobility in the developed world.
Labour has made poverty more entrenched.
But hey ho not my problem, but youre quite right though, I am cutting back on the staff.
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There always have been, and always will be classes in society. People with sufficient initiative and drive can 'climb'.
Life is not fair. Idiots born to idiot parents surrounded by idiots will be idiots. Smart people born to smart parents sent to good schools and surrounded by smart people are more likely to succeed.
Labour seem to think that it is FAIR that the middle-classes, who by definition WORK for their money, should pay for the working classes to work LESS.
Being a highly-skilled above-average earner in my twenties, I cannot wait to get the hell out of this god-forsaken country.
I'm not sure anyone appreciates how many people in my demographic are leaving. How we were among the first to rack up massive debts to get a worthless university education, how we get absolutely NO tax breaks anywhere while constantly reading about the 'poor working classes' getting more and more hand-outs, the ridiculous housing prices and OUR money being used to bail out a totally predictable housing market bubble that was ENCOURAGED to form by Gordon Brown, MY MONEY.
Yes I am angry, very angry, and no, I don't read the Daily (hate) Mail. I'm just sick of this government, sick of this country, and want to go somewhere where my skills and income can afford me a respectable house in a respectable place without worrying about anti-social neighbours roaming the streets and be able to actually ENJOY LIFE.
Rant over.
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#1 Blogpolice
No I don't think you or I missed it for a very good reason, there isn't one. The word is a facade worthy of Prince Potemkin himself behind which no substance lurks. A blindfolded cyclops with glaucoma has more vision than Gordon Brown.
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Throwing tax money at the underclass has made no change to social mobility over the last 11 years.
They've trebled national debt since 2003. But you can bet what the 'fix' will be for their failure to offer hope to their core vote. Can't you?
Throw more borrowed money at the problem. That'll work.
It's watching like Field Marshall Haig.
Hmmm, so the last full-frontal assault got machine-gunned before they got 50 yards? Jerry must be running out of ammunition soon. Send in another hundred thousand men.
They really are a one-trick pony aren't they? Got a problem? Throw more money at it.
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Don't really think I want a lecture on equality from a woman who has been to a private school and from a privileged background and sends her sons to equally priveleged selective schools. Another case of do as I say and as I do. George Orwell had it just about right - all animals are equal, just some more equal than others
Bad choice of policitian to make that speech
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To say " investigating how "people's life chances" are impacted by "where they were born, what kind of family they were born into, where they live and their wealth" as well as their gender, race, disability and age"... sounds to me like an attempt to revive a sort of DNA database for everyone (provided they don't lose it).
Not forgetting of course, our own dear Harriet's own privileged background is closely linked with peers of the Realm. Also, remember that we are in the era of professional politicians who frankly have no idea what the real world is like.
The Government's behaviour reeks of desperation and is deeply disturbing...
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So now we know why everything is crashing around our ears: 'Old Labour' are back with the same old left-wing dogma and the age old chip-on-the shoulder aswell.
How clear it all is now; Economy in trouble, housing market in meltdown... LET it crash they'll think. Makes ot all the more affordable for the 'brothers'. And a little bit more tax? Middle classes can always afford more can't they?.
Time to realise who and WHAT is givernining us now (if you can call it governing) and it is NOT new labour.
Let's do everything we can to get rid of them as fast as possible and restore Freedom to Britain.
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Harperson wishes to reduce everybody to the same low level as herself and the rest of her comrades. - Her slogan - Vive Le Mediocracy!
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43. lawscottoo
And she be Squeeler.
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The more I see of it the more I become convinced we are witnessing some kind of ritual mass suicide by the Labour party. Imagine how the TUC must feel being lectured to about social mobility by this woman. A woman who went to the St Cakiest of St Cakes.
She probably believes she's so naturally smart that she'd have won a scholarship if she'd been born to a dustman in Shadwell.
Imagine what any bored journalist is going to do with this.
Nu-Labour has turned into a suicide cult. It's the only rational explanation.
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#7: "Why are so many people who respond to this blog so unrelentingly negative? "
Well, I can't speak for the other unrelentingly negative folk on this blog, but I'm happy to tell you why I'm unrelentigly negative: Harman's words are absolutely nothing but empty rhetoric. Labour have been in power for 11 years now, and in that time inequalities have got worse, not better.
So why should we believe a single word she says when she tells us she cares about inequality?
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Oh Ah, the tosh response from the boom an bust thatcherites.
Spit the dummy and shed your tears elsewhere.
OECD OPEC CBI do you read all material- related nonsense......Wow!
O' inflation.....is your vested interest in doubt.
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Oh dear, I seem to have slipped into a timewarp and am looking at the minutes of a 1970s Monday Club (lower division) meeting. Do the hard right have nothing better to do with their time?
What Harman is doing is re-adressing core labour values. Equality of opportunity is a worthwhile goal, one that the Tories are paying lip service to at the moment because they think it is a winner electorally. But as any student of history knows, the Tories will say and do anything to gain and hang on to power. Harman is right to point this out.
She is also right to try to redress the balance which is still in favour of white middle class males, whatever the screaming assumed victmhood of the Daily Mail readers tell you.
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National Equality
The research has been done very thoroughly and very well received when it came out. Author: Ian Duncan-Smith who, last time I looked, is Conservative and the research was not done at the expense of the taxpayer.
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If the Tories are 'false friends' then what are Labour? 'Rubbish friends', 'unreliable friends', 'incompetent friends'?
I'm not a natural Tory voter, but from where I'm standing the Tories appear a whole lot more competent than Labour and right now I'm struggling to see how the Tories could do a worse job. Thinking back to the situation in 1997, I cannot believe that I am now saying this of the Tories and Labour.
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The plain truth is they have run out of Ideas .They have not got a clue what to do next.So its lets run the others down and maybe the public will think we are doing something.
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Great, does this mean we can all wander round Prescotts place for a game of croquet and a jug of Pimms?
Seriously though, Labour are as bad, if not worse, than the Tories. This is the party who took full advantage of a meritocratic grammar system, then kicked the ladder down afterwards behind them.
A party who introduced selection along religious lines, rather than ability.
A party who have presided over a nation of social exclusions, increasingly alienated youth and destroyed social mobility.
It's a little late in the day to start trotting out this bilge then.
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Nu Labour's humbug and hypocrisy notwithstanding, Cameron and his immediate crew undeniably come from the sort of privileged background many of us find ouselves unable to identify with. Davies had true proeletarian street cred. Hague is from a small-business background and the local comp. Cameron, Osborne et al have no such credentials and their background makes Joe Punter deeply suspicious even if he has some sympathy with their policies. This is a scab which will have the top knocked off it time and time again before the next election.
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This so called MP for womans rights has got this one well and truly wrong.
11 years of Labour and she (sorry HH) seems to have forgotten that here we are 11 years on and its all the Tories fault.
I do not know or even care about this one crusade MP. She has done more harm to this country along with the rest of the Labour persons (apparently politically correct) and what do we have to show.
As a nation the purse is empty and what we do have left (M's HH) you wish to waste on trying to move everybody even closer together. It will not work and perhaps if M's HH wishes to carry on this crusade she can do it somewhere else, preferably not anywhere on this small and overcrowded island.
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At 12:35pm on 10 Sep 2008, diamondunited9 wrote:
Why are so many people who respond to this blog so unrelentingly negative? I think promoting fairness in society is to be applauded, and that Labour is far more likely to deliver this than the Tories ever will.
--------------------------------------------------------
Equality has WORSENED under 11 years of New Stasi. Why do you think they will do anything now to reverse it?
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The only way this sham of a Government will ever introduce equality to this country is when they've bankrupted us all.
The entire cabinet should be put on trial for treason after what they've done to our once-great nation.
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Oh Ah, the tosh response from the boom an bust thatcherites.
Boom and bust Brownites old chap. Thatcher was soooo eighteen years ago.
Pull up a chair while the cleansing tsunami of debt and recession nibbles at the toes of the electorate and they wisen up, as they are, in ever greater numbers to the staggering incompetent mis-management of the UK by Gordon Brown.
20% behind in the polls and counting.
Labour are finished.
Good.
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Strange how every opinion from a government supporter on this blog has to contain a personal attack on people who have different opinions to them.
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I do hope that Labour takes an absolute kicking at the next general elecetion and it would be a brucie bonus if HH lost her seat in parliament...
What rubbish she talks really. New Labour stole traditional Tory economic policy and tried to bolt on socialist spending plans. That works fine when the economy runs at full tilt but now....witness the grand implosion as the government runs out of money.
Hardworking taxpayers do not deserve to be punished further in the form of stealth and other taxes in order to 'increase fairness in society'. I see no reason why I should pay for some chavs to lounge about all day watching daytime tv and breed lots of mini-chavs that follow their parents example.
The impoverished can be more socially mobile if they get into the workplace and earn money. Or alternatively improve their earning potential by learning new skills. Paying them more money to sit at home and do nothing is NOT an option.
Education+Jobs+Hard Work= Social Mobility.
From the second generation son of an immigrant
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Just listened to Harriet at the TUC conference.
If that's the best they can throw out then they have no chance at the coming election.
How many equality policies did the tories come up with in eighteen years? None. Precisely Harriet, because we lived in a free country then and didn't beed your rights.
If NewLiebore hadn't spent eleven years turning us inot the most snooped upon people in the world people wouldn't need your rights.
She must feel awfully comfortable surrounded by big banners with noble words saying, 'respect' 'dignity' 'rights' 'decency' but this is just all chip on both shoulders socialist dogma that has landed in one dreadful state.
As for her put downs of tories 'lurking' around womens' organisation and 'fawning' over TUC members...what planet are you on Harriet? Do you not remember Tony and Gordon 'lurking' around the City of London and 'fawning' over big business? It's called politics and you don't seem to be very good at it. Or is this just the same game the newLabour bloggers play... they disappear form the post when you play them at their own game?
They really are a bunch of lightweights heading for a crushing defeat crying to mummy that someone else has grabbed their policies.
We don't want your policies. They suck.
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50. derekbarker
Hi Derek.
Good to see you back so soon.
Can I just point out that shes been superseded by boom and bust Brown now so we dont need to hanker after her.
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Oh dear, I seem to have slipped into a timewarp and am looking at the minutes of a 1970s Monday Club (lower division) meeting. Do the hard right have nothing better to do with their time?
That's it. Insult the messenger. Discredit the messenger. Obliterate the message.
Soooo Alastair Campbell. Discredit Kelly, drive hime to his death. Discredit Gilligan, force him to be sacked. Discredit the BBC, force out their Chairman. Bury the message.
It's not working.
Labour is finished. The electorate have woken up, the media have turned.
Good.
Get over it.
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Derek
Can I just add the Thatcher argument doesn’t really work any longer, if you shoot that old gun, then my Wilson and Callahan howitzers are at the ready.
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Am I missing something or hasn't she been in power for the last 11 years?
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Watch out, derekbarker is a troll from the other blogs.
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51 The Notting Hill Hammer:
Re-adressing core labour values? What values? Didn't they throw those away when they got into power? Look, it must be nice to see one or two catchy words thrown around, sort of makes you feel gooey inside I suppose. You know what I mean, as if something is actually going to happen. Don't be deluded my friend it's just another new labour scam.
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If ever one needed to have an out of touch politician here she is !!!
Has privilege played no part in her life, its written all over her CV, this is silver spoon territory and she sits at the top.
If this is supposed to win votes or change peoples opinions then its wishful thinking,your days are numbered Harrie get a new kitchen before its too late.....
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All a bit rich coming from the daughter of a Harley Street doctor and a solicitor. As she went to a private school and has never had a "proper" working class job in her life she is no doubt new labour's best person for the job when it comes to equality.
I wouldn't call being a lawyer for the National Council for Civil Liberties with Patricia Hewitt a proper job and from there to parliament. Oh and where did she send her children to be educated?
Class war? It might have some bite if it came from someone else.
No doubt an opportunity for her cronies and old mates to have a great old time at our expense and no doubt all on first class train tickets and air flights. I can't imagine they will be staying overnight in a travelodge either!
The gall of the woman! Just how stupid do they really think we are?
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Nick,
You ask "what is the motivation for all this?"
It is policy making on the hoof - the agenda "political survival of the Labour party"
In only takes two or three Unions to realise that Labour will be out of office for the next few years and that they may as well save the millions of pounds they spend supporting Labour and instead engage in positive dialogue with the Conservatives 'for free'.
If the Unions engaged with the Conservatives now - it is a win / win for both the Unions and Conservatives. The Unions - if they engaged prior to a general election would have some value to the Conservatives and a good negotiating position.
I think it would be in the Conservatives interest in making sure they could build a pragmatic long term working relationship with the unions.
Of course - if an alliance of this nature happened - then there would be no longer any need for a "Labour Party".
Harriet Harman has thrown up some fodder to apease the Unions today and to try and keep them on side.
Labour, however, are a Dead Duck. If the Unions and Conservatives collaborated - then Labour would be demoted from Duck to Dead Parrot. Deceased.
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This is a scab which will have the top knocked off it time and time again before the next election.
I don't doubt it. This is now just a final desperate effort to cling to the core vote though. I think it's an admission that they've lost the key 'swing' voter. The aspirational middle class who were wooed by Nu-Labour. The difference between 18 years in opposition and 13 years in government.
I think with one eye on the upcoming Scottish by-election they're trying to bolster up their 'downtrodden heros of the proletariate' credentials to try and limit the humiliation whenever it comes. Losing by 1000 votes is better than losing by 10,000 votes.
It's just an admission of eleven years of failure. No surprise there then.
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When I hear the word "equality" I reach for my revolver...
The trouble with all this chattering from Harman and her drippy fellow travellers is that they never explain what they *mean*. What is "justice"? What is "fair"? I wrote about this a while back - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/03/fairenough - and all the discussion proved was that left and right fundamentally disagree about the meaning of the terms. For most people "fair" means getting just rewards for the efforts you pu tin. For Harman, it means getting something for nothing - and getting the same outcome as someone who has put effort in.
Why do poorer people have poor health? cus they drink and smoke more than average. Why do they have poor school results? 'cus they skive, and don't put in the effort.
Why should those who *do* work be penalised to pay for those who refuse to?
BBC - why not get into the nuances of what politicians mean when they say "fair", "just", "equal" - these things matter.
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Strange how every opinion from a government supporter on this blog has to contain a personal attack on people who have different opinions to them.
Tried and tested tactic from the old days old chap. Abuse the messenger, drag them into a slanging contest, run to the moderator and get your complaint in first, Anti-government message supressed. Job done.
Ignore them. It drives them nuts.
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A National Equality Panel - you just could not make this up. The Gold has gone, the public finances are in tatters, the Government is in the throes of a monumental bout of self denial and it looks as though our collective sense of irony has gone too.
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I dont believe it.....Victor Meldrew,.,
Blow the cob webs from your hidden agenda.
The cons have nothing to offer to the "GREAT BRITISH PEOPLE"
Streamlining, efficiency....your missed your bus stop in 1997......
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Frank Castle wrote:
Great, does this mean we can all wander round Prescotts place for a game of croquet and a jug of Pimms?
Seriously though, Labour are as bad, if not worse, than the Tories. This is the party who took full advantage of a meritocratic grammar system, then kicked the ladder down afterwards behind them.
A lttle knowledge of history can be quite useful. It was MacMillan's government that started the move to comprehensive schools, and this move continued when the Tories were in power in the 70s as well. The education minister from 1970 to 1974 enthusiatically supported comprehensive education. Her name? Margaret Thatcher.
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RobinJD 63;
Good stuff.
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You can all stop moaning about personal attacks. The immoderate hysterical accusations against anyone who does not agree with the hard right line on "dole scroungers" immigrants etc justifies a similar response
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Harman's comment is a bit like having a long conversation with a garage to work out the best way to adjust your wing-mirror when the whole car has just been written off in a massive car accident.
There's not much point making grandiose plans about how to deal with equality when the entire economy is in the toilet.
Get your priorities right labour; you can't spend money helping with equality when you're already bankrupt.
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#62
"I see no reason why I should pay for some chavs to lounge about all day watching daytime tv and breed lots of mini-chavs that follow their parents example."
What annoys me the most is that work is clearly there. Hundreds of thousands of economic migrants have had no trouble finding work in recent years.
Yet we still have millions who choose not to work, millions of NEETS, millions on disability allowance, etc.
Of course all their free housing, free school meals, etc, will be removed if they get a job so in effect they are trapped in poverty by the very welfare state that claims to help them.
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Posters here all seem to have short memories. The unpopular Major government won the 1992 general election by saying, in effect, "Yes, we're rubbish, but Labour are scary bogeymen."
Now that the boot is on the other foot, it should scarcely be a surprise if the trick is repeated.
If it works, we'll get a similar 5 years of corruption, self-interest and stagnation from Labour as happened under Major. If it fails, we'll be governed by David Cameron, who is the very embodiment of the triumph of style over substance. Bereft of ideas before even taking office, the Tories will most likely form the first one-term government for 30 years.
All in all, a lose-lose situation for the people of this country.
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#68
Can citizen Smith.....stop glossing everyone with his blue berry.......
would this cat trap party of conservatives care to share their greedy attitude with real debates.........
o' do they have policies????????
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Stick grandantidotes head on her shoulders and try and spot the difference.
Need a clue or two?
Brief mention of a crap Labour initiative and quite a lot more piffle having a pop at the Conservatives.
Answer - a brown blouse!!
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The irony is if there was true equality in this country, then HH would be sacked.
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So this is like us sending our kids to the local comprehensive, and you sending yours to a grant-maintained school is it then Harriet?
Or is it like the rest of us plebs driving at 70mph on the motorway whilst you thunder past at 99?
Or perhaps it's like the other time when you got a £60 fine for ignoring a 40mph limit and then paid it late?
Or is it like how you get to wear body armour on the streets of London whilst the rest of us have to take our chances?
I'm hoping that some of your New Labour underlings read this. In case they do let me explain what life is like down here on planet Earth...
Petrol prices up.
Food prices up.
Electricity prices up.
Heating gas prices up.
Taxes up.
Crime up.
Stock prices down.
House prices down.
Credit hard to come by.
The only thing staying the same is wages.
And you really think we care about equality at the moment?
Even if we do, I doubt we want to hear about it from someone as hypocritical as Harriet Harman.
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1) Are Labour now so desperate they need to incite class warfare?
2) Harmon should be tried for reviving class hatred.
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Wow, this is a surprise:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7604557.stm
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Nick,
it can't be true, it's not happening. I'm losing my neutrons. We are all doomed.
It's a cert, the national equality panel will come up with the answer, it's number 42.
My neutrons, aaaggghhh Shut it down , please shut it down, before it is too late.
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#74
I agree with your point on health. If you smoke, if you drink to excess, you're not doing yourself any favours.
But I thik your education point is unfair. I think it is unreasonable to expect a child to battle against the "anti-learning" atmosphere that seems to exist in some schools. If two children of roughly equal intelligence are sent to two different school - then it is pretty reasonable to expect that that ethos and atmosphere in each school is going to have a significant impact on the child.
This is shameful failure of successive governments. It is not about the curriculum, it is the fact that they have not been able to create environments which give different children the chance to find their niche.
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#90
I'm sorry I fell asleep and woke up listening to a BBC Radio 4 play.
We are still doomed though, all doomed.
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I am all for this National Equality, we can all become equal to Brown and co and have access to the John Lewis list, free TV licence fat pensions and free polltax, bring it on I say!!
I am also in favour of social mobility and cannot wait to see Labour get mobilised and bugger off!!!
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84. derekbarker
Derek whats a cat trap and where can I get one. well about 4 actually.
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89 Carrots........
I am genuinely shocked! I knew they were appalling managers - but they are more inept than I could possible imagine!
81 Getridofgordon
Great analogy - I was laughing to myself until I read the article posted by Carrots.
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There's actually little in life that I despise as much as rank hypocrisy, and yet this governement has been mired in it since 1997. They and their supporters love to throw abuse at those on the opposition benches who attended expensive public schools, yet never said a word about Tony Blair who had the good fortune to be edcuated at Fettes, often called the "Eton of Scotland". No sense of a silver spoon in mouth there then. No quibble either about those in government like Ms Harman who went to good public schools, or those like Ms Abbott who send their own children to expensive fee-paying schools rather than the local "bog standard comprehensive", made even more bog standard thanks to the education policies of their government and its constant meddling with education (but only for those unfortunate enough to be suffering education in England rather than elsewhere in the UK- where's the equality there?).
I am the classic swing voter, owing allegiance to no political party, just the sort that this government needs to vote for them if they hope to cling on to office. For their information, I want the people running my country to have received a sound education; that invariably means they won't have been students at the said bog standard state school, particularly after Ed Balls has finished playing again with them. I don't see those from Eton (or Fettes) as selfish ogres, but just the sort of people that may be capable of stringing a sentence together that I can understand, unlike our recently departed and not much missed Deputy Prime Minister whose utterings on the world stage were an acute embarrasment.
We have seen the efforts of New Labour to enhance "fairness and equality" over the last 11 years, and we don't much like what we see. A greater wealth gap between rich and poor than at any time in my lifetime, the disgrace of the NHS post code lottery, the destruction of final salary pensions unless you work for the state, the imbalance of the flawed devolution arrangements between the various home nations . . . . the list is endless. My advice to Ms Harman is: take your failed social engineering policies and put them in the bin where they belong. Those in a hole should always stop digging!
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Duke Jake
Well said. Shouldn't we be incentivising people to work in the form of benefits (such as free childcare or mortgage support/part buy part rent), not to stay at home. Once they earn enough to break the cycle then that's when the benefits should go.
Creating/sustaining a system where people cannot afford not to be in the benefits system makes no sense at all.
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What they want to do is to take money from whomever has worked hard and acheived much and hand it over to those who can't be arsed!
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I know that this may be more to do with the business page but sometimes people need to know about things which they may not find interesting.
So, when the BBC report about financial problems and the credit crisis they then refer to the Dow Jones index rising or falling by a number of points or a percentage.
The problem is that the Dow Jones is hardly representative of the United States economy. It only represents 30 companies, yes 30. Lehman Brothers for example is not part of the index.
So, I think even when the F.T. 100 Index is referred to, people ought to understand that again it represents many companies which really do not represent the UK economy as such, they are mining companies, and banks. The situation I think is much much worse than anybody think.
Listen to what the farmers are saying about their yields, the banks will not carry the farmers during this economic crisis. This is getting so close to a repeat of the 1928 crisis which laid the foundation for 1929.
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Derek Barker
You aren't by any chance sat at 39 Victoria Street SW1 being paid by your party memebers to write your biased views? Otherwise you seem to have a lot of time on your hands....
Or perhaps you too would be a beneficiary of HH's equality vision - lots more money for nothing.
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Trying to justify her existence again. She needs to find out how to get respect from the women she is supposed to represent first.
She like the rest of them are really stuck in 1997.
Times have certainly moved on but this government hasn't.
Someone please concentrate on getting this economy back on an even track and think ahead to the social problems unemployment and hardship will bring.
These are the real challenges that lie ahead. The last thing the country needs now is a government still stuck in the past.
All this petty pretence that they are still doing something is pointless if there aren't any jobs.
Perhaps she should be organising the soup kitchens if she wants to be popular.
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#94
Meow....a lyrical point with the c.. not the r..
A conservative solution to society....
entrapment.......
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I am not too sure that those who take responsibility for their own financial well being are in any way better of or have better lives. If you don’t bother to work or spend your money recklessly throughout your working life the state will make up most of your old age pension, pay your rent and poll tax. You will also qualify for free NHS treatment even though you have made no contributions whatsoever. Whereas if you are prudent and take responsibility you get nothing. The genuinely sick are often refused life enhancing drugs on the grounds that the NHS cannot afford to pay for them, yet at the same time we allow immigrants into this country who are suffering with aids ,TB and all kinds of diseases and we always find the billions to treat them. Apart from the fact that they have contributed nothing they put the health of others at risk, take up hospital beds, nursing staffs time and massive amounts of money that the NHS can ill afford.
Responsibility does not benefit the responsible on the contrary it benefits the waster or immigrant far more.
What is fair about that ?
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As I'm sure countless people have said - what exactly have Labour been doing during the last 11 years then??
Whether the Tories will be any better is another debate, but as a client of mine said recently, what have Labour been doing with all the money our economy has produced over the last 11 years because I can't see too many improvements and it looks like the poorer parts of our society are getting poorer!
Any the Tories are 'sidling' up to the unions? If that's true then surely Labour can be accused of 'sidling' up to big business?
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National Equality Panel?
Don't you mean ANOTHER quango with gold plated pensions (Just like MP's), above inflation pay rises (Just like MP's) and the ability to only work 2 days a week (Just like MP's).
Nice work if you can get it.
Ps. Oh and we get to pay for all of this through OUR tax
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"Yes, we're rubbish, but Labour are scary bogeymen."
Now that the boot is on the other foot, it should scarcely be a surprise if the trick is repeated.
I don't doubt that will be the trick. You see it here already with all the 'boom and bust Thatcher' chaff. Although Dave might be vacuous we have to trust that he won't make a Neil Kinnock-style proclamation of victory before the event. And of course Dave does have an advantage in that he isn't a ginger-haired Welsh pratt.
Trouble is the 'boom and bust' smear is out the window already as we enter Brown's very own bust. Plus the 'economic competence' is out the window with national debt trebling in only five years. Then there's the woeful social mobility and rich/poor gaps. Unemployment rising, deficits spiralling, his cabinet totally emasculated and incompetent to the very core of their being. PLUS the newspapers practically all turned on Nu-Labour.
They might get a sympathy vote from a few wavering Liberals but the way things stand Labour are going to get annihilated.
Jolly good. Too good for them in fact.
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#89 CarrotsneedaQUANGO2
550 Billion Pounds is a few bob to mis-manage isn't it.
I believe the Commons Public Accounts Committe presently has at least 8 Labour members.
Read the whole thing and you get the normal load of old pants justifying another woeful discovery. Deja Vu anyone?
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100. apeman383
No not London.
Me thinks Derek is a Scot and hes getting panicky about his subsidy.
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#100
What a dire (straight) response...
Are you suggesting that only the wealthy should have access too the "INTERNET"..
pppppp.....never mind!!!!
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Secret Diary of the British Government aged 11 and 1/2 years:
September 9th / 10th
1. A committee find that Government departments controlling more than £550Bn do not have sufficient finance management skills.
2. Gordon's recent article causes embarassment for Obama. Whilst McCain laughingly claims that Barack Obama has recieved the"coveted Gordon Brown endorsement"
3. We find that after 11 years of Labour, social mobility has got worse.
4. That despite public finances in tatters, the economy going down the pan and people unable to pay their bills - that a flag ship Labour announcement to steady the nerves is..... drum roll....... a 'National Equality Panel'
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#87
Please don't forget the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. How much are they costing and can we continue to afford them.
No!
Please go back to the early days of the labour government, I'm a straight sort of guy, the Bernie Ecclestone Affair, when did not money have to be returned to a donor.
Cash for honours which Gordon Brown knew nothing about!
Loans due to be repaid?
Ah, to be a labour party supporter, paying your party dues so that these loans can be repaid to very rich individuals. It is enough to make us weep.
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Suppose it transpires that the majority of people in poverty in the UK are below average intelligence, predominantly due to heredity. What will the "National Equality Panel" propose? Eugenics?
I've been lucky enough to climb socio-economically as a result of education, among other things. I don't think it's snobbish of me to point out that this will not work for everyone.
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107. Ilicipolero
I think youll find the Nu Labour term is miss- invest.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3953922.ece
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110. At 3:16pm on 10 Sep 2008, jonathan_cook wrote:
Secret Diary of the British Government aged 11 and 1/2 years:
Quality. Don't forget too....'nother drum roll... Free swimming for pensioners.
Truly we are going to the Promised Land.
Actually, don't get me wrong. The best thing this bunch of clowns can do right now is .. NOTHING. Because for sure if they try and do anything they'll just screw it up even more. They have form for this. 11 years of it.
Gordon, if you're listening. Don't just do something. Stand there.
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Labour (old and new) has always been the party of envy.
Unfortunately they have shot themseves in the foot, and made it illegal to be envious of race, gender, religious persuasion, marital status, disability, and 57 other things.
But you can still be envious about class without getting locked up. Hence the speech. Forget about airy fairy nonsense like Education, Education, Education. What the dinosaurs in the TUC want to hear is Envy, Envy, Envy. Give them what they want, and hope they cough up another year's Party subscriptions!
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Did anyone else spot Nick Robinson's subliminal acrostic when he discussed Harriet Harman's motivation?
Belief
Anger
Hope
BAH!
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'mis-invest'. Is that from the same brains trust as 'deferred success' in lieu of 'fail'.
Truly we are in the grip of a cabal of imbeciles. How long before the UN sanctions a task-force to liberate us from such idiocy?
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Derek Barker
Pa Ha Ha!
I thought I was reading a Ben Elton script from the 1980s.
Nice to see someone else from the Hazel Blears school for the Blind.
It is all going wrong, and with no money in the kitty it is going to tough for all of us.
If I were in opposition I wouldn't want to make any hard and fast claims on what I would do once in government. There is no telling with this current lot what state the country will be in when it is handed over.
The people who voted for this sham of a government have got what they asked for. Idealist dreamers with no firm grip on earning a living and a robust refusal to learn from History. We need people who are proffessionals who have succeeded in all levels of employment, professional, skilled and manual. Not purely ex council workers, student union activists and trainee solicitors.
It's Ironic, it used to be fashionable to say that you supported labour, all such people recieved now is sympathy and scorn.
Incidently I would be interested in how many Labour MP's have been in the Armed forces, as they have managed to drop more bombs, kill more civillians and lose more servicemen than any government since World War 2. Not bad for a party who boasted more pacifists and CND members than any other since and during the war.
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#112
So who do you interpret "intelligence" by the size of your coded fat wallet'''
Honestly....some-people..Eh
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"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery": Winston Churchill
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88) Jonamac
'1) Are Labour now so desperate they need to incite class warfare?'
Remember the Tory Toffs' in Crewe; they got well and truly kicked in the teeth for it.
You think they would have learnt their lesson last time.
But no they are trying it again out of desperation.
Hopefully it will be it will be seen for what it is - it is a kin to a drowning mans last attempts to grasp for something to save him - but there is nothing there.
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Hmmmmm. some only some poignant points.
Dripple, drivel, nonsense of an introduction although.
Look farmer bob, your cartel apporach to the political minnows of the conservative persuasion offers no alternative,nobody forgets those slavish years under tory rule....
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#78
Of course Margaret thatcher supported comprehensive schools because unlike ENwLabour she did not pander only to her own interest groups.
What she didn't do is propose the destruction of grammar schools which the expensivley educated Harmann and Williams would have if only to prove to us that they 'care'
If newLabour really 'cared' about anything they'd all stand down and call an election.
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Are Labour destined to follow the same fool-hardy path of the Conservative Administration in the early-mid 1990s? Surely, some sane Labour MPs are around to stop the party from commiting electoral suicide or has it got that bad that no-one gives a damn anymore?
Labour should think. Think carefully. Think really, really carefully. A 'class-war' campaign failed spectacularly in Crewe - it may work in 'safer' Labour seats (although Crewe was safe supposedly) but in other areas, especially the South Eastern England seats held by Labour MPs, this will backfire spectacularly.
Being in the thrall of the Trades Unions will cost Labour hard at the ballot box. It may retain some of its core voters but for the remainder it will be electoral suicide. Labour were kept out in the 1980s and early 1990s PRECISELY because of a large majority of the policies that the TUC now want adopted.
The biggest mistake Labour have made was to force out Blair early. He and others made Labour electable - yes, we complained about the 'sofa' style of Government, the spin, the War in Iraq (which now seems to have borne some fruit) and many others but my God people must miss him. Blair was capable of gaining votes from the Left and Right in equal measure and was immensely popular with Conservative voters who are only now returning to the party after the diasters of Major, Hague, Duncan-Smith and Howard.
A return to the hard left will be the end of this Government. Ed Balls (how he still has a job after the SATS fiasco is still a mystery), Harriet Harman, Jack Straw et al should look carefully at their respective numbers in the last Conservative Government. The New Labour project has died and the party appears to be clinging to the wrong life raft - Trade Unions (like other interest groups) have their place but shouldn't decide party policy. A bankrupt Government (of either politcal affiliation) offers little protection against this problem...
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re: 113 CarrotsneedaQUANGO2
That link makes interesting reading, I didn't realise the "Potato Council" was a real quango before, I'd previously (wrongly) assumed it was some kind of general metaphor for pointless expensive government departments.
"The Potato Council has a £6m budget and employs 49 staff."
excellent stuff, and I'm guessing the "Zoo Forum" is equally useful and value for money to the tax payer.
Coupled with the other link where even labour MPs admitted that none of their departments have any idea how to manage finance, it goes a long way to help explain why we're all in such a mess.
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So, Belief, Anger and Hope are Labour's motivation now?
What happened to Ignorance, Manipulation and Greed?
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120. CaptainJuJu
Id forgotten that one thanks:
I use a shorter version:
Equal share of unequal effort.
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So after eleven years of being in government and wasting 1.3 trillion pounds of taxpayers' money, Labour are going to step up the fight for equality. Wow!
And they are going to get a team of acedemics to look into it. Why academics? Why not people who work with their hands?
Let's face it there will be equality only when we are all on the same salary and pension package as Harriet and her colleagues.
However, that would mean Socialism. This would never suit New Labour as the middle class apparatchiks would have nobody left to patronise and look down on.
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Nu-Labour must take the blame
For the things they've done in our name,
For their lies and their spin,
Their corruption and sin;
They've ruined our country, for shame!
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,nobody forgets those slavish years under tory rule....
Twenty percent behind in the polls.
Labour are like, so yesterday.
And that's not 20% behind as in the difference between 160 and 200. That's 20% behind as in the difference between 25% and 45%. That's almost twice as many people voting Tory as Labour.
And they can't even rely on Scotland.
Labour are so going to get wiped out.
Good.
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This all seems to spell bad news for Britain. Frankly, I think Nu Labour doing such a bad job right now is going to spell disaster for them when a General Elction does come...and thats really bad for Britain. I'm tired of this lurching from huge majority on one side to huge majority on the other. Effective government requires effective opposition, and consensus politics.
Right now, NuLabour are destined to exist in the political wastelands for the next 15 years at least, But an unopposed Tory government will probably not deliver the nirvanah that everyone is predicting.
Worrying times!
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The sooner the current idiots running the country get the boot the better.
I have had more than enough rubbish from Harriet Harman and her kind.
How many people long for the days when a Labour politician had done some labouring in the first place rather than a bunch of career politicians who wouldn't know poverty, inequality or hard labour if it got up and punched them?.
We are stuck with a bunch of upper class hypocrites like Harman and Trotskyite turn coats like Alistair Darling.
Where did it all go wrong?
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119. derekbarker
Come on Derek, tell us why you support Brown,
Positives only dont mention the tories.
Outline what you think he has done well or just kick off with one thing. That should get things going.
Remember Im a swing voter, there might be a vote in it.
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One must remember Labour's achievements.
House prices have rocketed up so high that no one is rich enough to buy them!
We have been able to borrow shed-loads and shed-loads of money!
The army has been put to work!
Our country is so popular there's no room on the trains, roads or dentist's waiting lists!
Astronomical plumbers' prices have been reduced!
We are now so tolerant we even tolerate religious intolerance!
Scots don't pay student fees!
Scottish grannies get well looked after!
Scottish roads are brilliant!
The RAF is saving money by cutting down on aircraft so we can spend the savings on 2 new aircraft carriers!
Dirty polluting manufacturing has shrunk!
Daft foreigners have let us run up a massive trade deficeit!
We have 4,000,000 registered disabled and only 1,000,000 unemployed!
The pound has been devalued so more tourist will come here and see how brilliant the NHS is!
We saved space in the Bank of England by selling off gold cheap!
The poor are poorer but the rich are richer!
Primary school class sizes are more efficient as we use fewer teachers than before!
More languages are spoken in our schools!
We've got more people in jail AND more laws so we can jail more crooks then let more of them out early AND even let them off their fines to save money collecting them!
These are truly great advances - oh, and we've got a minimum wage!
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125. getridofgordonnow
You clearly havent been celebrating national chip week then, they clearly need more funding!
http://www.lovechips.co.uk/
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Interesting that our Gordon would seem to support Barack Obama, who is half white or half black. He is however, not black. Or am I being a pedant?
In the meantime would Gordon like to tell us what he thinks of a Presidential candidate who says that a pig with lipstick is still a pig.
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The key to social mobility and equality is education. The way that this and previous governments have decimated education in this country is a scandal that needs to be reversed.
In the days of Grammar Schools all pupils took the 11+ exam and the top third or so of those pupils were sent to a Grammar School where they were given a good academic education. The rest went to Secondary Modern Schools where admittedly many failed to gain much.
The issue back then was not with the Grammar Schools which offered true social mobility by being selective on ability not any other criteria, but with the Secondary Moderns. The solution however was seen to be to scrap the Grammar Schools and go Comprehensive, a now truely debunked argument.
Despite many attempts to discredit them every kind of statistical analysis still point to the fact that the remaining Grammars add more to a childs education than other types of school all the political parties refuse to admit that the old ways worked better than tossing all children into the hell holes that many Comprehensive schools remain to be and not giving those with potential, from whatever background, the chance of a decent education.
So, a challenge to politicians of all colours. Reinstate the Grammars and replace the old Secondary Moderns with decent schools offering vocational training to those best suited to it and a decent level of education to the rest. Done properly this will solve many of the current problems with the current postcode lottery as well as giving kids in deprived areas a real chance to reach their potential and improve their lives and become truely socially mobile.
Sadly no chance!
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Social mobility depends on education and bloody hard work.
My old man left school at 14, learnt everything he could and made his way in life. (He was probably much better read than the majority of current graduates.)
There are probably many people, with different political leanings, who feel an uncertain "guilt" that they experienced a better education than others who were equally clever.
Politicians over decades have fiddled about with education. With disastrous consequences.
Educationalists with a "social conscience" decided that traditional - phonics-based - teaching of literacy should be changed. Undermined by "look and say". So if you haven't seen a word before, you can't read it. Pillocks...
This lot had the chance to get back to a proven teaching method, but still can't bring themselves to enforce phonics/synthetic phonics.
Having a nice building as a scholl is fine. Getting taught is more important.
The latest "intelligent idiot" - Emeritus Professor of Linguistics - thinks we should absorb text-talk, simplify spelling, etc.
Wonderful idea. It's hard enough to understand laws, which are written with care using "real" spelling (even if the justifying thought processes haven't been followed properly!)
How does this nut think you'd write a contract between a UK company and a Chinese company, that would be absolutely watertight?
For goodness sake, English is a simple construct, with a plethora of oddities.
You can't even get started in Chinese without knowing a thousand characters.
There was a recent "expert" saying we should stop teaching "subjects" and, instead, teach topics. Good that there should be an awareness that physics, engineering, geography, history, economy have some relationships. But, if you want UK students to become real engineers, they'd better understand the subject! I hope to God there are no "topic" students running the CERN project...
Every school should be a centre of academic excellence - or seek to be so. It doesn't need to be specially designed, new or called something else.
If you took a random sample of 100 Indian and UK graduates and compared their real knowledge - and ability to express it in correct English - I'd bet on the Indians.
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#133 CarrotsneedaQUANGO2
Maybe derek is a swing voter, or then again another Labour chimp!
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We can't have class warfare anymore, because so many people are Celtic, Liverpudlian or middle class.
The Celts prefer to fight with England, rather than among themselves, so it's hard to stir up much class hatred there. Liverpool is a toff-free zone already, so there's no chance of a class war there either ... there's no one to fight! And middle class people are neutral like Switzerland; why should they bother?
I’m sorry to say that we'll have to endure this enormous downturn without the distraction of a massive strike by dockers, miners and factory workers. Unfortunately, that particular avenue of pleasure has been closed off since the 70’s. All we can hope for is that the bin men put on a good show.
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I have no faith in the Tories, they aren't winning anything, they are just the only option as labour spin their way into the grave, they're not my option, but let's face it, they will come in because no one will change their voting patterns
But this does not mean labour have a leg to stand on when it comes to equality - Harman seems to think she is fighting someone - labour have been in power for 11 years! you can't keep blaming the past administrations for the widening rich-poor gap and increasing poverty - you are not in opposition, you don't get to say these things
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'119. At 3:42pm on 10 Sep 2008, derekbarker wrote:
#112
So who do you interpret "intelligence" by the size of your coded fat wallet'''
Honestly....some-people..Eh'
What a bizarre response. Let me put it another way - social mobility enables people to escape poverty, but only if they're lucky enough to have useful abilities. Facilitating social mobility, while an estimable goal, is not enough to guarantee equality. In fact, it guarantees that an underclass will be left behind.
Or do you subscribe to the idea that we are all created equal in abilities as well as in rights? A sweet idea, but not one that appears to relate to reality.
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#83: I really wish I could disagree with you, but sadly I can't identify a single untrue word in your entire post.
Depressing, isn't it?
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I wouldn't deny that Labour probably are better placed to deliver fairness than the Tories. But fairness isn't high on peoples' wish list right now. A health service that's clean and dependable, an economy that's stable enough to give companies the confidence to invest, respect and appropriate reward for our armed forces, schools that aren't collapsing or mired in legislation and that can produce able young people...these all come above fairness on the list of things to fix. Labour should concentrate on the basics first. fairness will cost money, and we don't have any right now. Fairness is a headline grabbing, but ultimately pointless, gesture.
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NuLab do not want social mobility, they need the poor to stay poor. It is there core vote. Nu Lab can continue to "represent" the poor and be their guardians.
It is another reason why education under NuLab will also never improve as they thrive on being divisive. A "them and us" situation will always be on their agenda.
We need a government which represents all members of society, actively looks to improve social mobility, education, training (not just paying lip service) and to encourage all to have an ambition to improve. Instead we still have many areas where the vast majority of people are quite content to live off the state and the rest of us working ourselves into the ground to pay for their lifestyle.
Harman, and all the other NuLab hypocrites, should have sent their children to a state school where the vast majority of us were educated. But no they seek a more priviliged upbringing and then seek to blame the Tories.
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I not only went to a Grammar School, I went to a Roman Catholic Direct Grant Grammar School.
I had however, failed my 11+, I was lucky my father was an officer in the RN. I went to many junior schools because of frequent postings, from Nuneaton to Portsmouth, from Yeovil to Plymouth. Always being moved around.
If I had not gone to the Grammar I will never know how my life would have been different, however, it would have been.
It was the war which changed my fathers life, it was the war which forced social mobility. He himself had been born into great poverty, so can I thank the government or should I thank the war for how my life has been changed.
Just as an aside, I was conceived on or around the 5th July, 1948, the date that the NHS was born. Is that important, yes, I think it is.
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Social engineering; they've waited eleven years to finally own up to it but 'social justice' is just a dressed up name for social engineering. What next? Citizen brown clones all offering not just opportunity for the few but opportunity for the many.
What a bunch of dullards. the opportunity is out there already - go and grab it. Labour need to learn that someone who hasn't grabbed it is not in that position for lack of opportunity but becasue they are too idle to do anyhting about it.
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#133
Ah, the posion poke.
To the unconvinced......
FULL EMPLOYMENT (target 1.7m more)
MORE SCHOOLS
MORE DOCTORS
MORE NURSES
MORE HOSPITALS
MORE POLICE
MORE TRANSPORT (initiatives)
a better ditribution of wealth (tax credit)
a more coherent position on europe
in short under Brown things are certainly moving towards even better and brighter opportunities for all society
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#142
Play the brag card, is that it!
Anyone without a pocket full of pretty green is underpinned as underachieved rascals.
Bla...bla...bla
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Nick,
now I know that politicians are not scientists, and this blog of yours is all about class war, but for there to be a war there has to be collision of states.
Now you know, I think, what I am going to ask. If we are meant to think that a substantial amount of taxpayers money has gone on the CERN Large Hydron Collider, no private money as far as I am aware.
So, a question which I would like answered?
If we are meant to believe that the universe results from the 'Big Bang' and that the bang is as a result of a collision then it has to be the result of at least two particles, possibly the Higgs Boson Particle.
So, where does the Higgs Boson Particle come from? Because if you don't believe in God, as I don't, then where does it all start, and more importantly where are we going, or where am I going? Yes, I am a student of Philosophy!
And all that Harriet Harman can worry about is the class war. Can't make it up.
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#148 - So, Brown can boast of "FULL EMPLOYMENT" (no need to shout), apart from the unemployed.
Great work - a triumph of semantics.
"A more coherent position on Europe" - is that quantifiable?
"Things are certainly moving towards even better and brighter opportunities for all society". With a recession just starting, I don't think even the PM thinks that. Unless you mean "better and brighter opportunities...than there would be under the Opposition given the same financial conditions". Not quite so punchy.
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But labour have spent the last 11 years INCREASING the rich/poor gap. They have no credibility left on tackling poverty at all. They have been saying wonderful things for 11 years, but their actions have been opposite.
What does labour do for the poor? increase their numbers, make them worse off and hook them into state dependency. Labour hates self reliance.
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"#142
Play the brag card, is that it!
Anyone without a pocket full of pretty green is underpinned as underachieved rascals.
Bla...bla...bla"
Why are you so obsessed with money? And so incoherent? Are you actually a Tory coming here to make Brown's core support look bad?
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148. derekbarker
Ok a good start.
Now do you accept that given the tax take over the past 11 years, you really could not fail to improve those services to some degree.
Do you think you \ us other tax payers received good value for the tax take?
What do you think about the huge amounts of money wasted..
What do you think about Browns adherence to the golden rules
How do you feel about the dumbing down of public services. PCSOs for example.
I have attached my favourite video just to show you to what has happened to Londons policing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKl2sEN4yNM
We could go to discuss the civil liberties issues that your team has done more to erode than any other government since Magna carta, but for now just consider the quality of these public servants policing your country.
Any thoughts?
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derekbarker
Oh yes when you’ve watched this mull over this fact
PCSOs are now dispatched to deal with 999 calls, previously dealt with only by regular PCs.
Imagine those 2 turning up to deal with a 999 emergency.
Its coming to a place near you soon.
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#153
Was that a reply....
Or are you just an ape act........
Tell us then... do you just pitch your federal tent on any patch
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It would be amazing if the top Tories were to abandon the "old school tie" in favour of greater egalitarianism. I remember being told by a staunch member of the party that members of the Conservative party were born and educated to rule. "How could you consider voting for any other party?" I was asked. Somewhat taken aback. I mumbled something about the advantages of a meritocracy in reply, only to be asked if I had French ancestors and to be told I had dangerous and revolutionary ideas.
That, I will admit, was some years ago, but I still detect the same arrogance in some members of the Tory party and the Tory press. It is I believe the reason why Gordon Brown's face does not fit, whereas Tony Blair's did. The latter, it would seem, was "educated to rule" and therefore OK... even if he represented Labour.
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All Harman has achieved with this speech is to make Brown's Labour look slightly more ridiculous.
It's clearly a policy of Brown, Harman and co to try to portray the Tories as smug toffs - not only is that pathetic party politics which has no relevance to any real issues, it's also outdated by far. Many aspects of the Tory party have modernised, and Harman herself is in NO position to say things like that, as she was hardly reared by wolves herself.
Not only that, but also, comment 152 has got it bang on, and speaks for many others who I'm sure the irony of this whole thing won't have been lost on. Labour are trying to fire arrows at the Tories simply because of outdated anti-Conservative prejudices which could quite easily be fired at Labour based on something much more relevant - what's actually happened over the past decade!
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I had the misfortune to listen to this irritating woman while driving, found myself shouting at the radio while in a traffic jam.
Strange looks from others who were obviously listening to classical calm.
Re Derek , he appears unbidden all over the place with a plethora of posts, best ignored.
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#154
Tax is universal / are you advocating/ cut tax/cut public services
Giving a competitive world enshrined with capitalist fever, then its only right to control areas that affect inflation and interest rates
The party is a broad church, its all right to have another view, PCSO'S, is the man Blair at the helm conducting his research right?
I wouldn't consider the magne carta as constitutional heresay? I dont believe it will be possible to ignore civil liberties
you-tube..is a poor example to refer to.
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While the labour party stays rooted to the class war there are seriously big events taking place aroundthe world which have serious implications in respect of events in the world. I do not mean the collosal waste of money known as the Large Hydron Collider.
Look at what has been happening in Chad, which has serious implications for Dafur.
The World Bank has ended its involvement in the Chad/Cameroon Oil Pipeline Project. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development has been had the loan it made repaid. Now this is important, seriously important.
It will be most interesting to see whether this event has any implications on regional instability and the flight of refugees. I believe that there is a link between the government of Chad and the serious issues over what has been allowed by the west to occur in the Dafur region.
So, rather than concern themselves with the class war maybe the government would like to tell us what it thinks in respect of this event. Now then Mr Balls, this is important on stability in the region, keep an eye on even more civil strife, and don't forget the Chinese in all this.
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Wow! The reaction on this blog is astounding.
Labour minister says she is very concerned about the facts that the chances of doing well in life are still largely determined by one's social background, and says has an aspiration to end this.
Is that a surprise - a lot of Labour's policies (e.g. regeneration, SureStart, reducing poverties, education etc) have been informed by this aim.
Now, there's several responses to this. I don't understand why the Labour approach is wrong. At the very least it is a legitimate subject for political discussion.
1. Deny the facts and claim social background does not matter in determining life chances - talking to any serious academic or person and it is apparent that that is wrong.
2. Acknowledge social background is important in determining life chances, but that this is a desirable thing, or at least something government should be unconcerned with (e.g. it is due to genetics).
3. Acknowledge that social background is important, that Government should do something about it, but pre-empt likely Labour responses as ineffective (this is a launch of a review rather than a report). More traditional right-wing views are the answer - all people need to do is get off of their backsides and do some hard work, the state needs to end paying people to work, we should be relaxed about inequality and stop interfering in parenting and all will be fine.
4. Do what the Government are doing, review the evidence on what works, rethink various government policies and establish how effective they are and re-allocated resources to make sure they happen.
But why all the vitriol? And it amuses me all this talk of 'opening a class war' - can we not talk about the impact social class undoubtedly has on opportunities? Is that banned? Interesting if it is - I thought is was the 'Nu Stasi', as JeremyP eloquently put it, that was desperate to curtail free speech. And there's so much hypocricy in the reaction on this blog to Labour's Crewe tactics - maybe I'm imagining all the mocking of John Prescott for his working-class mannerisms and way of speaking, I'm imagining that the Tories has someone dressed up as Fidel Castro following Ken Livingstone around London during the by-election. Unbelievable.
No point chasing down all the incorrect assertions made by posters on this blog - there are too many and the poor quality of most postings on here is already well known.
Unrelated point - nice that you managed to slip in several references to the Potato Council, Mr Carrots, in an article that is so clearly related to your point. I thought you have agreed when challenged in the past that there is a clear rationale for this organisation (i.e. farmers value a sectoral marketing organisation, centrally organising it solves the 'free-riding' problem that would otherwise be apparent, it is funded entirely from subscription from potato producers, and it didn't seem apparent - at least to me not knowing the political issues in the potato industry - that potato farmers want to see this abolished. And it costs the taxpayer nothing!
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And inequality has increased - what a ridiculous thing to say. Flies in the face of all the facts.
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Does this sound like the prelude to a set of concessions to the Unions ?
Expect more flesh on the bones at the Conference.
John C.
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#159
Dorothy, just keep clipping those shoes together, you never know, you may just return one day, from your land of plagiarism.
Should you be driving, while under the influence??????
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160. derekbarker
Sorry Derek, cant keep up with you.
Is it me ?
Come back Charles all is forgiven.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe1MYsKdO2w
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50 quid to anyone who can decode 160
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171 Polero and J Cook theres a few things for you to be getting on with I didn't think I should leave with my tail between my legs like a whimpering puppy not that I've ever seen one I treat my fellow ihabitants of the world with respect unless their Tories and then I have to struggle with my conscience.
Two million back to work.
Peace in northen ireland.
More nurses.
More doctors.
Community police.
More regular police.
More teachers Teachers assistants.
Better and more schools that are much better equipped .
Better and more hospitals with infinitely better equipment.
Free museums.
Free bus passes for the elderly.
Free swimming for the elderly,and dozens more leisure centers.
Free TV for the elderly.
?250 winter allowance for over 65s, ?300 over 80s.
Sure start.
Tax credits.
Increased family allowance.
More maternity allowance for pregnant mothers.
Iincreased return to work and pay conditions for mothers with new babies.
More maternity leave for mums and dads.
More pay for child care.
Bank independance.
Minimum wage.
Massive overseas aid.
Overseas tax relief for many struggling countries.
The first to send large amounts of aid to countries with natural disasters.
Banning smoking in public places.
Taking an active part in taking action in several wars to free countless millions of people from subjugation thus giving millions of younsters a better chance in life.
Giving the police stronger powers to keep us safe from terrorists.
Bringing in the 28 day remand law
Giving conntracts to build two new trident submarines also two air craft carriers which in the light of recent russian military moves was a very wise thing to do.
Putting thousands of speed camerers in place thus cutting down huge numbers of lives being lost particularly children.
Saving NorthernRrock which in turn saved a catastrophic run on the banks that Would have decimated the banking system in this country.
Saved Rail track.
Paid millions out to disabled miners that had been waitng for the Tories to pay up for years.
Kept inflation and interest rates the lowest since records began and for the longest period,
Made inroads into the reform of the house of lords.
Banned fox hunting and hunting with dogs
Removed us from the tory fuel escalater which reduced the price of fuel well below the price it would have been under the tories. they have introduced two hundred young people into apprenticshipsand have moves afoot to get another couple of hundred.
well there are lots more. I am sure you will wriggle and squirm on some of these but there you are,I didn't want to write this list because its been done before not only by me but many others many of these things have been put forward by Tories so there you are.
Thought I had better put this post on here as well incase you missed being as you begged for it so much.
See you sometime in the future when you guys return to being human again.
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Look on the bright side - Harman managed to keep Alan Johnson out of the deputy position. That is one person you do not want in a position to become Prime Minister.
Union sponsored, and he keeps very quiet when unions are on the warpath.
As for class wars, a bit rich coming from one who was privately educated. "It was ok for me but not for you". A bit of communism coming out there. Do you get feudal communists?
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122 Derek Barker dont waste you time lad .
You will get no sense from the tories on these blogs.
They have formed themselves into a mutual admiration society.
Thats the reason you wont see many posts from Labour on here.
We have all decided to take a rest until they recover from their sickness let them stew in their own juice for a while. Otherwise on your own, they will tear you to pieces with their insolence and vulgarity. and bad manners, dont fall for it fella.
They have just been waiting for someone new to have a go at and your it.
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I'll contribute to Dereks list of Labour positives.
5 fold increase in real terms for winter fuel payments
Free TV licences for older people
Above inflation increases for child benefit
Over 200 new schools opened TODAY
Consistently low interest rates.
Bank of England independance and low inflation.
Minimum Wage
Vast increase in NHS funding (but still only to European average can you imagine the state of the NHS if left at Tory funding levels)
Now to be balanced of course in 11 years mistakes have been made because in Government you make realdecisions in the "present" not after the event with hindsight.
This blog simply draws the terminally disenchanted on here for a good old moan that everything is wrong with country for me just an ordinary bloke:
I have a job (like 90%+ of working age)
If I lost my job I'd get state financial support
I get ill I get free medical care
My kids now go to a well funded well equiped school
My elderly parents are financially secure even with just a state pension
Life expectancy has never been higher
I'm at the mercy of world economic issues such as oil spikes BUT so is everyone else on the planet
Everyone is entitled to whinge but there are people on here (naming no names) who need to get out more
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There should always be a "gap" between rich and poor as this will provide the rewards in a meritocracy.
Labour have had 11 years to narrow any notional or actual gap. Judge them on their actions an deeds not their empty promises.
The Conservatives should be the party of the aspirational providing life changing opportunity to all irrespective of background.
Harriet Harpoonperson simply wants to ignite some form of class differentiation in peoples minds...but I have news for her.........most people in the UK no longer think in those terms. Very few people, rich or poor would consider themselves to be member of a particular class. Most are individuals not part of a mass homogenic class.
This story will die within hours as it simply will not resonate with the vast majority of Britons despite the lady's best efforts.
Labour is in it's historical death throes. In 25 years time Labour will not exist as a vehicle for the "workers". It will either transform into a more non-idealogical entity or die.
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Harperson must have learnt all this class war stuff when she was head girl at St Pauls.
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Some really nasty and appalling stereotyping of poor people on here.
I grew up on a council estate, had free school meals, had the stigma of free school uniform that was always out of fashion and a distinct lack of money.
So according to the Tory contributors on here I should drink and smoke, have stupid undereducated friends and family and be reliant on benefits as be-fits my genetics.
Actually at school I was a chess champion, I served my country for six years and have worked non stop some times round the clock for the last 25 years, oh and I don’t drink or smoke!
I too resent paying tax’s to layabouts and yobs and would prefer a much tougher stance on law and order, I also think people should be forced to earn a living and not just expect the state to pay, but I was a Tory supporter for three elections running and all I saw was the systematic destruction of the North, mad cow disease and a government who point blank refused to govern.
Blair nearly got it right, Brown doesn’t inspire confidence and Cameron and Osbourne offer little but sneers.
Thank you.
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Oh Lord here we go again.
Another predictable rant from the slghtly sinister Ms. Harman or is Harperson?
Nu-Laba-PF is so bankrupt of any ideas now that they have to fall back on the tired old "class warfare" strategy.
This nation will breathe a sigh of relief when this sorry political correctness obsessed administration shuffles off this mortal coil and into the history books.
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re: 161
Ooh, have to disagree with you there TAG, the LHC machine is a great thing.
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Oh Lord here we go again.
Another predictable rant from the slightly sinister Ms. Harman or is Harperson?
Nu-Laba-PF is so bankrupt of any ideas now that they have to fall back on the tired old "class warfare" strategy.
This nation will breathe a sigh of relief when this sorry political correctness obsessed administration shuffles off this mortal coil and into the history books.
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Ckeckout Nick's blog under "Shock News" and then read:
Post 100. At 10:44pm on 09 Sep 2008, purpleDogzzz wrote:
It's exceptionally well written and illuminating. I can see this text being read out to a a series still black and white photos of Labour's Britain ..............as a party political broadcast days before the next election.
Imagine it as you read it. Very powerful!
..................and true!
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balhamu @162 wrote:
"No point chasing down all the incorrect assertions made by posters on this blog - there are too many and the poor quality of most postings on here is already well known".
Your own included, one assumes.
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CarrotsneedaQUANGO2 @166 wrote:
"Come back Charles all is forgiven".
No he's not. (And bullets are expensive).
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I'm quite encouraged. I really do think Labour can be trusted to deliver on their promises. I mean, surely they've got to be better than that smug, clueless, out of touch bunch who have been in power for the past 11 years. Oh, hang on...
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#148 , derekbarker
I am one of the unconvinced but am willing to be convinced if you can back up some of your statements with some evidence eg some links would be nice.
"FULL EMPLOYMENT (target 1.7m more)"
According to official statistics: 'The employment rate for people of working age was 74.8 per cent' and the number of people of working age who are econimcally inactive is 7.88 million see www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=12
so why do you consider this to be 'full employment' ?
The same site shows that :" Income inequality still remains high by historical standards"
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=332
so I am not sure why you refer to a 'a better ditribution of wealth (tax credit)' sic
As for 'a more coherent position on europe' are you referring to the constitutional changes made by Labour that allow Welsh and and Scottish MPs to vote on English matters but not vice versa ?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
It's good to see Labour fighting back against the hollow promises of the Tories. Over the coming months I predict they'll gradually show they are the party of substance and long-term gain and claw back much needed support. Most of the Labour bashing on this blog just demonstates the lack of substance to be found on the 'other side'.
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#171
Sup up your beer mate.....
Tell it like it is''''' no going underground for the toffs..
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#182
What kind of tripe is that...
1/3 of 33 is 11.1
1/2 of 99 is 49.5.............
What stats figs are the tories numbed with now!!!!!!!
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As usual Nu-Lab supporters fail to provide any worthwhile reason to back up their claims. This is because they are in denial of reality, and to accept that the Labour project has failed would be to accept that they have been deceived and under Nu-Lab's evil spell all along.
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MaxSceptic - what assertions would they be then?
I merely give different takes on what Harman was saying and show it is a legitimate topic for political discussion.
Unless you deny that social class has any impact at all on outcomes. I would be interested to hear that argument...
#5 "It's class war" - ok, it is class war to be concerned with investigating why social class impact outcomes.
#6 - it is hypocritical for anyone to be concerned with the lack of opportunities for the working class unless they are working class and have had few opportunities. Interesting viewpoint, though at least it will ensure such views are ignored by the media and political process.
#9 - questioning how you can be concerned with inequality during a recession. Surely this is the time to be most concerned - who do you think will be hit hardest during times of recession and high inflation particularly affecting fuel and food? And surely the economy will be helped by a more meritocratic society as the allocation of people to jobs will by definition be a better and more efficient one
#15 - "none of us get dealt a fair hand in life" - true, but surely we should try and make the hand dealt as fair as possible, rather than allowing some people to keep a royal flush up their sleeve
The article is concerning whether Labour should be concerned with investigating why social class affects outcomes. Why is that deserving of the scorn on here?
The facts are social class has a big impact on outcomes. Indisputable.
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Ironically amusing but also depressing reading all these tories criticising labour on the grounds of social equity.
since labour came to power, inequality has remained fairly static.
poverty, as measured by say households under the poverty line, or child poverty, is decreased.
long-term unemployment and incapacity claims are both down.
this is in contrast to the situation labour inherited, where 100,000 people a year were being added to incapacity benefit pre 1997, equality and poverty were getting worse etc.
from 1979 to 1997, poverty, inequality etc, were shattered by market reforms.
without debating the inherent value of these reforms, it is incomprehensible to me why conservative voters and labour haters choose to criticise a party that has tried to improve the national situation in these terms whilst broadly accepting the neo-liberalism voted in four times previously
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I know we are all entitled to our view, and a blog is not news or necessarily fact, but this is still a BBC employee on a official and moderated medium.
Also, are you on the pay of the labour party? This feels devoid of the balance that the BBC is obliged to give.
Harman and her ilk are all useless hypocrites. Enough has already been said here to give testament to both these points. What I will add is that these are the people that have considerably damaged our nation (in that I mean all the UK), possibly irrevocably, I want the people to remember their faces. Come polling day lets send them back to their original careers. Oh no, most don't have one outside of politics, maybe they will be on benefit and we will all have to pay for them still.
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Thanks Northern Thatcherite!
Post 100 is perfect!
Voices the complaints and rage of many.
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Wow.. I pop out for a few beers and just look at fun Ive missed.
Blahamu, Welcome back. We last left off with: Please define difference between compulsory levy and taxation. (not funded by subscription, that sounds optional)
Max, sorry to say youve lost your Father Jack badge we have a new contender and hes much much better... and sorry about the Charles comment. A mad mad moment of weakness.
Derek. Fantastic response to 182. Please stick around you add weight to the genetic theory posted earlier. I think those might have been government stats by the way. Ahh whatever.
Grandantidote, wow.. fingers a smoldering. Might get back to you on a few of those later. You do know we still hunt foxes dont you.
Night night.
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I do not believe there is any great enthusiasm for the Tories across England.
In our very muted democracy, their time is coming simply because the economy is failing and therefore the incumbent (Labour) will be punished.
By default, 'Dave' and his motley crew will fill the boots at Westmonster.
I am baffled as to why politicians, particularly Labour and Tory politicians, think that English people are as tribal as they are and would fall for this 'class' line.
Relatively few English people actually vote for either of the main parties.
Both of these parties remain something we endure, rather than support.
We all serve in some way, nobody is intrinsically superior to anybody else.
Unless, it appears, ala 'Harperson', you happen to be a particular type of professional politician.
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Oh dear Ms Harman - my MP; what sad, 3 rd rate thinking...and worse speaking up. Desperate divisioniasm - make those lumpen proletariat HATE everyone they sense above them on the 'scale'. The Labour party are , well, shown up as - low- by this.
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#186
derekbarker, I have no idea where you get your own figures from as you seem unable to provide any links to back up your opinions and in any case 1/3 of 33 is 11 not 11.1 as you seem to think.
Perhaps you could elaborate on why you don't like the information in the links I have provided; do you think the information is wrong , misleading or just irrelevant ? If so don't shoot the messenger but blame the owners of the site who are ultimately the er Government.
Finally. don't assume that everybody who is critical of the Government is automatically a Tory voter.
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#190 - What is unbalanced about the article? Labour minister announces a review of the impact of social class on outcomes and policies to address this issue.
Political analyst talks about what Labour are thinking about.
Maybe it is the judgement made that this is not class war. I think that due prominence are given to Teresa May's comments elsewhere on the site.
As for if it is class war, only if you think noting the impact social class has and questioning if it is desirable is class war. You are entitled to your opinion. On the over hand, is accepting people claiming massive salaries and 'being relaxed about the filthy rich' (as Labour are or at least have generally been since 1997 and as Brown is continuing with no change in higher rates of taxation) also some reverse class war? Is not addressing the issue a reverse class war? I think it can work 2 ways
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Carrots - I'm sure if there was demand from potato producers to end the Potato Council it would be abolished.
Do you know what the potato farmers think - they are rather unrepresented in the mainstream media.
Actually, try [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator] for a survey of the views of potato growers.
33% of growers believe that the levy charged is too high. Some of the stats may support your viewpoint (it seems around half of growers say they are dissatisfied with performance of the Potato Council)
The point stands it is not funded by taxpayers i.e. you do not pay for the Potato Council - funding is recouped from growers, and so maybe pushes up the price of your chips ever so slightly
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Nu-Labour Haiku
Ferrets in a sack.
Into the river with you
At election time.
* * *
Too long at the trough.
All the money has run out,
So they steal ours!
* * *
At last Labour calls
A general election!
Hope is in the air.
* * *
Snow falls as the votes
Are counted. Labour loses
Spectacularly.
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With apologies to my English friends.
Sometimes, we export our worst to you (though it serves you right if you support the idea of "Britishness")
Gordon Brown is clearly one (he might have been good if he'd got the top job some years ago, but any of you with understanding of management will recognise that managers, like supermarket products, go past their sell-by date)
However, we now offer you our latest product - derek barker. Often considered a troll because of his incoherent postings on Brian Taylor's blog, he may actually be a genuine Old Labour supporter.
The English are normally a tolerant people, and I'd ask you to be gentle with the afflicted.
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# 195
links later
So you are capable of plus or minus 2.
Your simply taking a demographic view of outdated figures (talk about smoke and mirrors)
Are you asking ME to ascertain whether the liberal has a conservative streak (cheap)
And finally without rounding on you to much, try hansard>>>>
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Wow! the liitle general, has a pit stop from his euro tour, no doubt he will have his fingers in others pies there too, i've meet no other contributer like him, total irrelevence, a lightweight and wait for it a "NATIONALIST" that seek separation, only in the UK but has strong aspiration for his country in a fully intergrated EU.....
Need I add any more
Ignore this puppet master........
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Ah, the dreaded Harperson spouts more of her drivel. Apparently even after 10 years of botching everything this useless excuse for a government still can't tell the difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.
Striving for equality of opportunity is all well and good, but fiddling with ever-more social engineering to attempt to create equality of outcome is doomed to fail.
But at least we know under Nanny NuLab we'll all be equal. When they've destroyed everything nobody will have anything.
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More time and more money wasted
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More time and money wasted
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Of course people from the lower classes can't get on. Its obvious.
Look at me. Poor family, council prefab, free school meals, semi-literate parents, full university grant, ...
Oh, I forgot. Fantastic teachers at small local primary school, great secondary school (Technical High), University degree at a proper university, professional qualifications and membership, own consultancy business.
The reasons why I got on. Parents who worked very hard to keep me clean and smart, well fed, and working hard to get on, teachers who taught the basis supremely well (spelling and mental arithetic tests every morning!!!), encouragement at school, ....
In the end all the government did was pay for my school meals and university grant. The rest was down to me and my parents (father died at 15).
We don't need government interference, we heed a "hard-work brings results" mentality, not spending the child allowance on drink, cigarettes and drugs. Parents need to talk and work with their children.
The basics in reading, writing, arithetic AND simple financial awareness (conpound interest and percentages) should be the starting point for everyone. Today this seems not important and plenty of teachers don't have the skills to teach them.
Rant over!!!!
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65. At 1:51pm on 10 Sep 2008, U9461192 wrote:
Discredit Kelly, drive hime to his death. Discredit Gilligan, force him to be sacked. Discredit the BBC, force out their Chairman. Bury the message.
Definatly one of Nulabour's lowest moments, and there are quite a few to choose from. However, lets not forget the Conservatives supported that illegal war that drove Kelly to his death too. Only the Lib Dems came out with any credit whatsoever out of that fiasco.
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187. At 11:00pm on 10 Sep 2008, power_to_the_ppl wrote:
As usual Nu-Lab supporters fail to provide any worthwhile reason to back up their claims.
-----
Funny, coming from the person who prefers puns, poetry and limericks to statistics, evidence or argument. Eat your heart out Alistair Campbell...
.....but at least we both love the LHC machine!
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balhamu @188, asks:
"what assertions would they be then?".
In your previous post yo asserted that:
Labour minister says she is very concerned about the facts that the chances of doing well in life are still largely determined by one's social background, and says has an aspiration to end this..
I would argue that Harperson has no such aspiration, but actively acts (like most of her party and colleagues) to perpetuate the conditions that engender a large social class totally dependent on the state.
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189. moderateprogressive wrote:
You say:
From 1979 to 1997, poverty, inequality etc, were shattered by market reforms.
Since labour came to power, inequality has remained fairly static.
But Labour rode to power on the promise of change and to work hard to reduce iequality.
If you accept that the Thatcher years increased inequality, and that levels were high when labour took over (which I agree with)
So you concede Labour policy has not altered this trend (Which I agree it hasnt).
Then you can only conclude that 11 years of labour policy has mainly failed.
Not only that but I suspect it has been very expensive.
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CarrotsneedaQUANGO2 @192,
Damn! I tried to respond in one word - the one Father Jack favours, but it won't get through the censorship...
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# 205 (Mike)
Investment in education is not "government interference", it is the single most important thing that the state can do to foster a better society.
Some kids have good parents, some don't. Some kids have wealthy parents, some don't. That will always be the case and it's why this whole issue is so important.
Unless you went private, the government did plenty to support you. It paid for the school you went to, the teachers who taught you there, the university from where you launched yourself on the world of work.
This is about equality of opportunity ... the most important goal of politics. Well, it should be.
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@210 - Drink? Girls?
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Ms Harman is just trying to appeal to the jealousy of voters, this is how socialism has always worked, look at all these rich people, support us and we'll give you what was theirs. It doesn't work, socialism leads to an increase in poverty but it will always appeal to some due to psychology. In many experiments based on giving and receiving value participants will try to close the gap with people who have more value than them even if this means they will receive less value themselves.
Could we approach the subject from a different angle and highlight the fact that people in our society can become wealthy and why don't we all try this rather than just whinge about inequality.
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168 Grandantidote
Thanks for the list.
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Its funny how the Tory argument is very similar to the "what did the Romans ever do for us" Monty Python sketch, in return the Tories haven’t outlined how they are going to make things much better by spending less money.
The reality is they will slash spending on the NHS, Police, Education etc in order to fund tax cuts for corporations. Britain has become the financial power house it is "or is that a NuLabour myth" because the Labour government has been generous in its tax breaks and allowances. Compared with Germany and other large European countries Britain borrows significantly less than them and actually has room to maneuver.
The Tories offer nothing new and are a party of the past, Labour should have grasped the nettle and joined forces with the Liberals and then we could have put the nasty Tories out of business for good.
Final thought, in 1979 the Tories ran a campaign with the infamous poster “Britain isn’t working” depicting a long queue outside a job centre, within a couple of years the Tories helped that queue grow many times over and unemployment more than doubled, it’s the same old Tories and the same old lies, new packet same old rubbish.
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Other 'assertions' (apologies for lack of links - the site will not let me post with these. I've given instructions for googling them if you want to check them up)
1. Social class has a big impact on outcomes - research shows that the social class one's father (based on occupational group) has a massive impact on the one you end up in e.g. 69% of sons of those in the top socio-economic group (professionals) end up in the top 2 (out of 7 groupings) vs 18% of sons of semi-skilled and manual workers. See para 25 of a study by the Strategy Unit of Social Mobility (top result of googling 'social mobility strategy unit')
2. Inequality has decreased - Child poverty figures (readily available from DWP's Households Below Average Income series); ONS figures calculating the Gini coefficient measure of inequality - "The Impact of Taxes and Benefits on Household Income" series
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211
I don't disagree about government funding for schools - that it a pre-requisite of a civilised scoiety - what I am saying is that education and hence your future opportunities should not be determined by government - it is up to you. Just as you can't get someone else to pee for you, neithetr can you get someone to learn for you. And to learn you need the basics, wherever you are born and into what circumstances.
This government seems to think that they can dictate how children learn and how they should live their lives through to the grave.
I am saying that that decision is yours and yours alone. And it is up to parents to see their children through this important stage of develoment.
The fact is that far too many people see the government's role as pandering to their every need, and this government certainly does it to the extreme.
I suppose I am lucky. My primary school was in the centre of a very working class area, but the vteachers knew their stuff and how to teach. My secondary school wasn't a privatr school, just 600 of us trying to get on. My university was a new university in 1969 when I went there but is now one of the best in the country. No one did me any favours except my parents who worked every hour available including growing their own veg.
This attitude, soon after the war, seems to have disappeared. People today expect the government to do everything for them. That is my gripe.
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199. oldnat
We dont blame you Scots for Brown. But Derek may just cause us to vote for independence.
Fear not we have taken him to our hearts and called him Father Jack.
He is a fine example as to why poverty shall always be with us and why one shall always be able to find cheap staff.
But back on topic for a second.
I would just like that a finer example of a champagne socialist will never be found as long as the Harperson is with us.
How those TUC chaps managed to keep their breakfast down is testament to their fortitude.
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#205 mikepko
"The reasons why I got on. Parents who worked very hard to keep me clean and smart, well fed, and working hard to get on, teachers who taught the basis supremely well (spelling and mental arithetic tests every morning!!!), encouragement at school, ...."
It really isn't rocket science is it?
"We don't need government interference, we heed a "hard-work brings results" mentality, not spending the child allowance on drink, cigarettes and drugs. Parents need to talk and work with their children"
Why can't the government work harder to achieve this three way partnership involving child/parents/teachers?
Spurious initiatives aren't the answer, go back to basics and make all three parties feel involved rom an early stage. There is no reason whatsoever why the most disadvantaged child cannot succeed. We have living examples here, from both sides of the political divide, who have mentioned their stories.
It is not the work of any government to make a success of your life, all they should do is provide an effective framework, whatever else happens is entirely down to the individual.
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168 Grandantidote.
Don't disagree with your list and threfore that beg the question.
"Why are Labour so far behind in the polls"
Its not as you say for lack of infinitives but perhaps the implementation and execution.
Doctors ...why so many foreign
Nurses.... why so many bank nurses
Teachers... why is moral so low
Dentist.... what happened to NHS service
Construction... why has building stopped.
Manufacturing ....why has it continued to decline
Armed forces...Moral all time low
Trains... overcrowded and expensive
Banking ....in a mess
Unions.....talk of 2nd winter of discontent
The list could go on and on. The point is we have an unhappy electorate who will when the time comes put their X where they believe will serve them best . Let time be the judge.
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189. moderateprogressive wrote:
I should add that you can not blame the Tories for increasing it and in the same breath excuse labour for failing to reduce it. especially when you consider the tax revenue they have raised and spent in the way of benefits along with other initiatives such as the minimum wage.
Balhamu
Income equality has not fallen: which is surely the major indicator. See link.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=332
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#205 - what about children who do not have parents who are able to propel them up through society? What happens then - should government just accept that as 'just life'?
I am in much the same position as you - working-class background but my dad worked really hard to try and teach me the basics, make sure I could read and write before I went to school, and force me (often against my will) to read books etc to give me a good start. My house was full of books. I was the first in my family to go to university, and I would say my success has largely been down to this.
What about people who are not lucky enough to have such parents? Should government intervene to make one's parents not be crucial in determining outcomes? I think that's the central question.
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219
Totally agree. The more you rely on others the less need there is for initiative on your own part.
I tend to think that as mammals the main purpose of human beings is to perpetuate the species by giving birth and bringing up the young to a time when they can look after themselves . Everything else is just an extra. Sadly many parents put themselves first and the children way down the list.
Until this is instilled into the population as a whole we won't be going anywhere, and at huge cost.
Get the basics right and the rest will be much easier and less expensive. Just hand out money willy-nilly and there is njo iincentive to do the basics.
Simple really.
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#168 grandantidote
Your list must have taken a while to compile, no I am not being facetious at all, a good effort with one or two excellent examples I agree wholeheartedly with.
What though, in your honest opinion, do you think the Blair/Brown years could/should have achieved but haven't?
For your information, one or two items you listed are a little tenuous, I won't split hairs here but those I agree with
(i)Coal miners, many of whom we lost before settlement.
(ii)Independant Bank of England
I don't want to piss on your cornflakes, but would you say that the much of the investment in say, the NHS, could have been better used with considerably less bureaucracy and better directed to front line care
Good morning by the way
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@ mikethebiscuit - grandantidote was responding to 134 with his list. I was amused to read his absurd justification for the Iraq war which Labour was so desperate to fake-up reasons for that they didn't mind who they drove to death or what lies they told us to get their way.
Or perhaps he meant success in Afghanistan where heroin production has now reached record levels?
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168 grandantidote
A heart warming story about equality in the NHS.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4727613.ece
I love the last line
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222
The answer to you question is to ensure that children have the basics to lead a good and worthwhile life, but to do that you have to start somewhere and not just tinker around the edges.
I think the current difficulties may do some good and instill some commonsense and financial discipline in people who until now haven't worried obout it.
Like my parents, yours were probably very carefull with money. Mind you there were no credit cards then!!!
The people in our road who looked poor were those who had to have the latest things, invariably bought on the "never-never." Radiogrammes, TVs, new cars, etc. These were the people who ate badly and quite honestly didn't have much discipline in their families. "We want it so we have to have it" was theit motto. Nothing changes.
Except today it is done on credit cards where the interest payments become huge because at least 50% of the population don't understand, or don't want to understand, compound interest and percentages.
Today's news about cookery classes is good news. It should make kids realise that they can eat well and it doesn't cost the earth, like buying pizzas at a take away, and hopefully by teaching these basics it will carry though to later life.
On a personal note, my wife are well off. But we are careful - we care about a decent retirement. I cook (and always have) almost everything from fresh, much now on Economy7 to save on electricity. We have just installed a woodburner to save on oil. We don't have gas where I live.
But we don't compromise on quality. I buy large free-range chickens (about £11) and get 12 portions out of one chicken, including boiling up the carcass for stock to make soup, just as my mother taught me. Anthing left over from a roast makes something else. Cottage pie, rissoles, curries, pasta dishes, sandwiches. Hardly anything is thrown away and we get out 5 a day everyday.
The basics save loads of money. The credit card is paid off every month and the points we get plus special offers go on treats.
This isn't frugal, its getting the most we can out of what we have.
Preaching over!!!
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The Labour party needs to look to itself on the 'equality and fairness' issue.
They seem to believe it is fair to over tax and ignore all those hard working families who are striving to keep up with the huge cost increases caused in the main by the Labour Party this last 10 years.
Controlling peoples lives through a 'benefits' system is not equal or fair.
What is fair is to take people out of the tax system who earn under £20,000 per annum, and I mean individuals not households.
Harman and the Labour party need to get real and take responsibility for the tremendous hardship that people are experiencing ---- but no they continue to dole out to the public sector and themselves at the expense of the rest.
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So Gordon announces 910Billion of my money to reduce fuel bills for old people and provide insulation.
The Muppet Benn (not a patch on his father) says insulate your house.
In my HIPS report when buying the property it said nothing more could be done to improve the energy effeciancy. So where is my help coming from!
They talk about fairness then only help the few!
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What a load of old toss , the woman wants hanging , competetiveness not equality is what england needs , tell the lazy benefit scroungers to get a bloody job and start working and paying the extortionate taxes i pay, they might feel a little bit more equal to me then.
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229 Pot-kettle
What does "Freeze on this year's bills for half a million poor consumers" mean?
- Price per unit won't go up?
- They don't have to pay bills at all?
- They have an extended period to pay the bills?
Not sure - anyone know?
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Morning bloggers.
So when are we marching?
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232. power_to_the_ppl
Im with you brother, but have you given the government 6 days notice of your intention and obtained a permit ?
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@231
Well freeze for the poor wont include me and my family. we are amongst the hard working where we both WORK and pay for ourselves.
Part of the problem is the definition of what is fair. Fair isnt necessarily equal.
However Labour interchange the two terms as if they were.
Equal would be if the government paid the some ammount off of all our energy bills.
Clearly that isnt particularly fair.
But the government say they treat us all equally. Clearly not
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# 232 p_t_t_p
Can we not march El Gordo down to the Thames and chuck him in, weighed down by Hilary Benn?
---
I really don't want to criticise for the sake of it, but........
......910 Million Pounds ? Sufficient??
Who decides "poor" "poorer" "poorest families"
"if there is a severe winter"
What criteria is used to determine this?
Why wait for seven consecutive days of temperatures below zero? For the group mentioned, pensioners, the disabled, families with young children, enough damage would have been done by say, day two.
"Contact your energy company and see if you're eligible"
Doubtless the energy companies will do what they can to maximise eligibility, yeah right!!
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232 power-to-ppl
I suggest some time around halloween.
that gives us time to organise and labour the chance to fell gordon themselves at their conference.
we will need voulunteers to:
1. get a website up and running.
2. draft a 'viral' email for us to send around
3. sort the permits
4. draft a press release
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Harriet Harman has shown a classic misjudgement of the national mood with an incredibly divisive speech.
She taps straight into several divisive newlabour themes like hard working families and looking after those who are prepared to work hard.
What is wrong with this lot? Do they not understand that everyone in a job paying taxes is working hard to make sure they can pay their bills.
Everyone in the entire country is facing massively higher energy prices not just the shopping list of interest groups that newlabour have chosen to shower with their largesse.
In difficult times people work hard, try to preserve cash and look after their families, friends and neighbours; it's human instinct. It is crass misjudgement of Harriet Harman to try and divide the country and claim some are more disadvantaged than others. We're all in this mess together thanks to eleven years of newlabour not working.
The only good news is that newlabour now seem incapable of resurrecting their cause with any of their chosen spokespeople, be it Harman, Miliband, Darling, Kelly, Smith, Purnell, Balls, Cooper, Flint; they are all tarred with the same brush - bragging, hectoring and hubris.
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#168
The point you miss is that most, if not all the achievements you list are under the Premiership of a certain Tony Blair. Gordon Brown was the Chancellor.
Now, Tony stood for election before the British people, he had a mandate, he faced the electorate as leader of the labour partyand labour MPs won the confidence of the electorate, and Tony as leader had legitimacy. He even won despite the war in Iraq.
Now, that is the problem with Gordon Brown. He has never stood for election as leader with a mandate. If he had forced a windfall tax all this would have gone to the courts because I consider that it would have been unconstitutional and the energy companies would have appealed against its imposition. I think that they would have won. That's why there is no windfall tax, the courts, and the Lords would have thrown it out.
So, despite all that has been 'achieved' by labour since 1997, none of it is relevant, Gordon was not the leader of the labour party, and he has no mandate, and he took over as a result of a coup. Well that's what I think anyway.
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Carrots #221
You seem to be correct - the slight decline apparent in the 2005/06 figures appears to have turned into a slight increase (compared with 1997) during 2006/07. Inequality is, though, lower than 2001/02, when a more confident Labour party began to increase expenditure.
I think the figures show that impact on inequality (as measured by the Gini coefficient) has been small. I am unsure why this is - it is undoubtably the case (and the source of much right-wing anger) that Labour has made real efforts to redistribute more income through its tax and spending. It is also difficult to square this with the real (and large) falls in child poverty we have seen, the introduction of the very generous (when it is administered properly) Working Families Tax Credit and the reduction of people who are unemployed.
I would suspect that inequality would be far higher now if the policies of the previous Government were continued. The Conservatives voted against many of the redistribution measures implemented by this government. I would suspect that this would have led to less redistribution and a greater rise in the Gini coefficient.
I think the IFS do a lot of research in this area - I seem to remember they published something a few months ago (maybe last year) about why this was the case. I'll have a look.
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#168
The point you miss is that most, if not all the achievements you list are under the Premiership of a certain Tony Blair. Gordon Brown was the Chancellor.
Now, Tony stood for election before the British people, he had a mandate, he faced the electorate as leader of the labour partyand labour MPs won the confidence of the electorate, and Tony as leader had legitimacy. He even won despite the war in Iraq.
Now, that is the problem with Gordon Brown. He has never stood for election as leader with a mandate. If he had forced a windfall tax all this would have gone to the courts because I consider that it would have been unconstitutional and the energy companies would have appealed against its imposition. I think that they would have won. That's why there is no windfall tax, the courts, and the Lords would probably have thrown it out.
So, despite all that has been 'achieved' by labour since 1997, none of it is relevant, Gordon was not the leader of the labour party, and he has no mandate, and he took over as a result of a coup. Well that's what I think anyway.
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re: 233
Is that a rhetorical question?
re: 235
That would certainly be a good thing. Maybe we could catch ourselves a badger as well if it decided to pop up out of its hole.
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#240
sorry pushed enter twice. I do occasionally make mistakes, but I don't mind admitting them.
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209carrots
remember.
171. grandantidote
Ref: your such a couragious person aren't you.
See what I mean about Education, Edukation, Edukayshun.
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178 carrots ,I am really quite sure that I will be able to return the compliment very soon.
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But Labour rode to power on the promise of change and to work hard to reduce iequality.
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See what I mean about Education, Edukation, Edukayshun.
Gotcha!
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238 TAG
I was asked what labour have done for the country.
Try to pull your head out of the feeding frenzy against Gordon Brown.
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242 Tag ther has to be a first time for everything I guess.
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#241 p_t_t_p
lol - "Bodgers" would be far easier to come by in the village of Westminster presently.
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229 pot kettle what next do you want Gordon to come and wipe your bottom for you.
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Again the chatters miss the point: Class is an integral part of our society - you are not citizens but subjects ergo you are subservient. From MPs doffing their caps to the throne right down to bewigged judges and the aristocratic land barons.
All these people harping on about hard work being the answer and social security scroungers are simply burying their heads in the sand. This country has institutionalised class bias and David Cameron is integral to it.
All other arguments are superfluous.
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#237 What was divisive about the speech?
I don't understand how saying that we want people's background not to influence where they end up in life could be divisive. Surely it is more divisive to be unconcerned with this?
I guess it is built on the assumption that it is undesirable that children from middle-class homes have more opportunities than those from less well-off backgrounds. Wanting to address this (and have a more meritocratic society) could be considered 'divisive' by some.
But surely it is more divisive to be unconcerned with this, and accept a society where children from less well-off backgrounds are systematically disadvantaged. But that is just my opinion - there is no right or wrong answer to this question as it is based on one's sense of fairness.
Carrots - here's the IFS publication I was talking about [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]. They say that the only reason income inequality has risen since 1997 is because of growth in incomes of the top 10% - exclude these from the analysis and the story is different.
Also note on p3 (I quote) "Without tax and benefit reforms, which have favoured low income households, the rise in inequality would have been much greater". It hardly needs saying that these reforms would not have been implemented had the Conservatives been in power (based on the fact that they voted against them in Parliament).
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#247 grandantidote
He'd bugger that job up too!!
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I would just like to say, and Labour apologists please take note (Unlikely!):
Criticism of Labour's appalling failure in government does NOT mean support for the Conservative Party.
Got me?
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#219
Well ....Well
Quite a little bag of tricks, an unconvinced tory, wearing your heart on your sleeve, Oh,my,
Do you have any idea about policy, or are you just seeking your 15mins of childish fame............
Dont phone a friend......4 an answer.....
Break out..and think 4 your-self..(maybe not)
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"I do not expect the £910m that we raise to be passed on to the consumer by the energy companies" says brown
I guess he must be living on a different planet to everyone else then. "Do not expect" isn't good enough, he needs to use logic like "will not be allowed to" instead, otherwise the "savings" will actually end up costing people more than we're being charged at the moment.
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#219
See the Random word generator is up and running.
Having Harriet Harmon standing up and making such a speech is up there with the Patricia Hewitt, at the NHS Conference spouting the "You've never had it so good."
line.
As insensitive as Nu Labour always are, they might have been better with Alan Johnson making the call, at least hecame from a humble background and has worked and struggled to get where he is.
There is nothing worse than a Champagne socialist.
It insults every one.
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250 polero you must know Pot Kettle better than I.
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#244
I wish that the billion pounds for homeowners was properly explained as being approximately 300 million per annum.
They actually don't know how much it will be because there is no evidence. Not only that but it will still depend on many people actually having to spend to receive the grant, and if it is a grant will the individual receiving the grant have to repay it if they sell their property within a certain time frame?
The devil as usual is in the detail. Why was the announcement made by Gordon Brown rather than the Chancellor, or will Darling be gone in the Autumn reshuffle.
Like many others just because I am anti-Gordon does not make me a Tory, nor does it make anti-labour. It is just that this whole parliament is a disgrace.
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#252 derekbarker
You ended up here did after your latest sleepwalk?
Quite a bag of tricks, unconvinced - Conservative or unconvincing Labour?
You decide!
Heart on sleeve?
Me all over!
My most pressing policy need is to undo the damage inflicted on the country by a Prime Minister who sought his own 15 minutes of fame and that history will judge as a deeply unpopular and ignominious failure
Your own ideas might be?
More of the same and hope something turns up!
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205 Mikepko,
"We don't need government interference, we- heed- a "hard-work brings results" mentality, not spending the child allowance on drink, cigarettes and drugs. Parents need to talk and work with their children"
I have asked many times why the middle and upper classes who dont need it dont give there family allowance back to the government well at last you have given me the answer.
Since people keep picking on me I have to say.
See what I mean about Education, Edukation, Edukayshun.
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251 poprisch
just to flag up to everyone that I joined the conservative party as a member a few months ago.
I think there are signs that conservatives are the best party next time around.
I haven't voted in a general election since 97. I think blair had the right vision but has been let down by the delivery. having read the recent labour memoirs I am convinced that gordon brown has been labours chief problem.
brown hoarded a 'war chest' of cash which I believe he intended to unleash when he became pm. I think he thought he would become pm in the second term.
labours delivery was hampered in the first term as brown witheld funding and in the latter years as he opposed blairs reforms.
the conservatives have been unelectable for years. I was prompted to join them over the 45 days detention issue. no convincing argument was made - it was just a case of macho politics. brown trying to look big.
as for conservative policy - it is difficult to defend. they have to keep their powder dry since when they do announce anything brown seeks to copy or spoil things.
there are clues in the way that the conservatives talk that shows they have a clear vision and a co-ordinated strategy. a lot of the detail will take a long time to evolve and deliver - hence they have a strategy to ensure they begin the delivery on day 1.
there has been a lot of silly bickering and personal baiting on this blog recently.
whilst my first priority is the removal of gordon brown, I hope when aappropriate to debate how the policies of the next government should look.
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My last post didn't make it past the moderators (again). I'll try and say again without the link.
The IFS publication I am talking about is called "Poverty and Inequality in the UK 2007" (try a google search).
It concludes that:
* Inequality (as measured by the Gini coefficient - higher value indicates more inequality - basically it is a measure of the proportion of income that would need to be redistributed to ensure complete equality of income) is slightly, but statistically significantly, higher than in 1996/97 (summary)
* However, it is lower than in 2001/02, when Labour began reforms aimed at making the tax and benefit system more redistributive. Before then they met their 1997 promise to stick to Conservative spending plans, and so did little about inequality (summary)
* There has been some rise in inequality during 2006/07, breaking the post-2001/02 reversal of the 1980s and 1990s trend towards more inequality (summary)
* The rise in inequality has largely been due to growth of incomes of the top 10%. Excluding these from the analysis leads to a conclusion that inequality has been largely static (summary)
* Without Labour's reforms to the tax system (which the Conservative party voted against), the inequality would be significantly higher (simulations run by the IFS suggest that the Gini coefficient would have been 0.378 in 2005/06 without reform, compared to actual value of 0.347) (p.23)
Anyway, this is just to say what the facts are on inequality. I think the taskforce set up by Harman is more concerned with social mobility rather than inequality per se
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#256
Tag, you seek a good answer to a good question.......may I suggest, you contact your local MP and put your question to him/her.........good luck....
many people often make valid complaints, yet never take their point to their MP...
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Let's try a little algabrae, shall we? ...
LO = NG + HW + LUCK
where:
"LO" is your (material) life outcome
and:
"NG" are your natural gifts (brains, looks ...)
"HW" is hard work
"LUCK" is luck (e.g. family circumstances)
So, the goal of decent politics is to minimise the impact on LO of the LUCK factor. That, in case you need a definition, is what's meant by Equality of Opportunity.
Labour have been been disappointing on this because they're too scared of Daily Mail reading Middle England to do what's needed.
The Tories, of course, don't have to worry about it because they don't give a flying fig about a fairer society.
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#257
Nice reply..........However..my 219.. was ..a....reply to 218..(my mistake)
However, who is the lesser of your choice Brown or Blair.
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239. balhamu
Sadly tis true.
I suspect this is the report you are looking for:
http://www.ifs.org.uk/comms/comm105.pdf
I find the fact that this land, with one of the richest economies, has the degree of child poverty that it does. Abhorrent.
Too much inefficiency and red tape, too much waste and bureaucracy combines to rob front end services of their effectiveness.
Hence why I hear Nu Labours No 2 claiming that they are the party to deliver equality, my breakfast starts to repeat.
I accept their intentions, I reject their skills and abilities.
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220 Mikethebicuit , Try the tory media for answers on that one they contol the vote you know it and I know it be careful they dont turn on the cons then you'll see the difference.
Doctors ...why so many foreign
Because we were so short of doctors that we had to bring them in can't very well tell them to go now can we anyway most of them are excellent doctors.
Nurses.... why so many bank nurses
dont know except that they get better pay so I guess they like most people jump on the band wagon.
Teachers... why is moral so low
Wasn't aware that it is, if it is, why do so many people want to be teachers.
Dentist.... what happened to NHS service
I dont understand why the government allows these people to take advantage of the training and are not compelled to do a min of five years NHS this could apply to nurses also,
Construction... why has building stopped.
Manufacturing ....why has it continued to decline
Same thing which you are quite aware of Economic downturn,
Armed forces...Moral all time low
If you were in the forces and were reading and listening to all the anti war merchants constantly giving out bad news regarding the war, how would you feel.
Trains... overcrowded and expensive
best ask the Tories they sold them at a knock down price deliberately as they were being removed, now you want the Labour party to take the blame for privatisation look at the fuss for taking back railtrack,
Banking ....in a mess
Not in half the mess that it would have been following Tory non policies regarding Northern Rock.
Unions.....talk of 2nd winter of discontent
A yearly event.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Have you people heard of the Investment Bank called Lehman Brothers? It's been run for ages by a guy called Dick Fuld. He's been the CEO for quite some time.
So, this Dick has done really well for himself over the last few years. He's pocketed of the order two BILLION dollars in total compensation. Yes, we're talking a really dynamic "wealth creator" here. Private sector wealth generation on the most colossal scale, right?
Sadly not, as it turns out. The bank is bankrupt now. Plenty of wealth involved, alright, but destroyed not created. Oh and you'll be shocked to hear this, I bet, but Dick won't be repaying a cent of that two bill.
Still, let's not worry ourselves over things like that eh? ... I know, let's get all worked up instead over how many public sector jobs are advertised in the Guardian!
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Like so much else, this comes down in the end to language. Equality as a term can mean so much or so little, and here the government is an expert manipulator. Labour can and does so easily sidestep from a narrative of economic fairness into one of the politics of difference, citing minority ethnic, lifestyle, faith group or other interests. Valid, worthy, yes, but not the same, and harder to tie down in terms of decisive, redistributive policy.
Such as a 'Windfall Tax' on energy, for example? Such as effective tax relief for the low paid?
Who trusts Harriet Harman to convey meaning of any value at all?
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#264
The dangling carrot, a "CATHARSIS"
What...drama will the vegtable portray now!!
laugh.....its free.....just...laugh
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263. derekbarker
Very helpful Derek
You do know that your missing Jeremy Kyle dont you.
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Dear Moderators
Can you please check if there is actually a person at Dereks PC.
I think his cat might be walking over the key board.
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#267
Just have a look at my earlier posting #99.
It is much worse than anybody can imagine. Wish it wasn't but sad to say that with every passing day there is more and more evidence to support a return to the Great Depression.
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#263 derekbarker
Fair enough, an easy mistake to make.
Was the question, Blair or Brown ? addressed to me? If so, I'll respond.
I honestly cannot recollect a politician I have disliked more than Gordon Brown. Blair was oily but not so loathsome. An easy question to answer but don't be mis-led.
I suppose though your #252 could equally easily apply to me.
My voting intentions were clear some time ago, quite possibly shaped by a horrible incident to a family member before Gordon Brown was even given the keys to number 10 as un-elected Prime Minister. The policies I would change or strengthen are failures I saw first hand or were of concern to me at that time.
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derekbarker @269
Are you interested in zen buddhism?
Your ramblings remind me of one Chuck E Hogwash late (but not lamented) of this blog.
Could it be reincarnation?
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sagamix @267,
To the best of my knowledge, I am not robbed left, right and centre (aka taxation) by Lehman Bros. to pay the salaries of their staff and management.
The government will through me in jail if I refuse to 'contribute' (aka taxation) to the bloated public sector non-job creation schemes.
The likes of Dick Fuld I don't care about one way or the other.
The likes of, say, John Prescott I loathe.
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#200 derekbarker , unlike other contributors you seem unable to provide
any links to justify your opinions and as for the links I provided in #182 being out of date, they give figures to June 2008, just a month or so ago. Take a look at entry 221 and notice how balhamu, having read the evidence ,concedes the point. I find his/her attitude and comments far more refreshing and illuminating. Similarly as #251 stated, criticism of Labour does not mean support for any other party.
Finally, Hansard merely records the working of parliament and any employment statistics they quotewill simply have been provided by the same Office of National Statistics that I have quoted eg a typical Hansard entry will state "The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply ....."
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#270
Who? look there is no point in your flawed tactics,anyone can have a go, its easy...
Why dont you sprout out and tells us what type of alternative government..you seek..
What type of taxation do you endorse?
How would you improve policing?
Do you agree with the NHS ?(free at the point of use)
Would you have a rolling programme of council houses built?
How would you improve education?
How would you deal with the energy crisis?
What do you deem as a just and fair society?
What type of foriegn policy would you have?
Would you extend devolution in the Uk with greater powers?
Would you spend 2Bn on 2 new warships?
Would you have a defence and security policy??
there more if you can reply (sensibily)
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By the way, anyone who uses the Gini coefficient is either a sociologist or a social-economist.
Both pretty useless and unproductive professions that wouldn't exist without public (i.e. taxpayer) funding.
Economists are usually endowed with 20:20 hindsight and are know to have predicted 10 of the last 3 recessions. Socio-economists are similar, but lack the analytical rigour of the former (and profess to 'care' more).
Sociologists just moan a lot and ask for more public subsidy.
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224 Polero in answer to yiour first paragrapth,
Who Knows!
Item one the reason miners died before payment was made was mainly because the Tories had not made any effort to deal with it, so that by the Time Labour had sorted the situation out many have died. if they have died the money is being and has
been paid to their dependants
Labour gave the bank of England independence shortly after being returned to power some claim that the Tories would have done the same well they had a long time to think about it dont you think.
your last paragrapth , of course they could. Hindsight is wonderful it makes us all look clever doesn't it.
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#259
John, what can I say! There's one born every minute, perhaps?
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Now then ...
YC = EV - P
where:
"YC" is your economic contribution to society
and:
"EV" is the economic value added of the work you do
and:
"P" is what you're paid
If YC is positive, you're a net giver and you're making the rest of us richer. If YC is negative, you're a net taker and you're making the rest of us poorer.
Please do not get confused with the private sector versus public sector thing, by the way. That's not relevant.
So ... the big net takers are those who have a low to zero EV, combined with a big P. Who springs to mind are all those people in managerial positions who don't actually do anything useful. Not all of these people are in the private sector but most of them are.
The truly mega net takers are those (e.g. the CEOs of Investment Banks) who manage to combine massive P with EV that is both large AND negative. That's a double whammy because they've gone around destroying wealth and paid themselves a massive wedge for doing so ... these guys, the ones who are really dragging us all down, can be found almost exclusively in the private sector.
Why not apply this equation to ourselves and see how we shape up? ... Max, how's your EV looking these days? ... Carrots, what about you? ... both of you, would be fascinating to know how big your P is?
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@130 U9461192
"Labour are so going to get wiped out.
Good"
You know what, I strongly beleive they aren't even going to be the main opposition party after the next election.
3rd place is even too good for them.
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#267
I suggest you start worrying aout the fact that there won't be any new public sector jobs for ten years whether the Labour party is in power or the tories.
Why do you think there is no money for the housing market, no money for the energy crisis, no money for food shortages?
There's no big solution because the treasury has told Gordon that he simply can't go out and spend what he hasn't got or we'll be bankrupt. Thye've all hung themselves. They let him spend and spend and there has been no return.
All 'jimbrandts' teachers, doctors and nurses did was add to the government's wage bill. They forgot to make the investment in infrastructure that had been so successful under Major at putting the country back on its feet.
If you don't get a return on your money you're just an expense and we now have an NHS that costs three times what it did under the tories... three thousand pounds a second to be precise.
If that's the Labour party's strategy to fix the country after eleven years then good luck to them. tThy're out of here.
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Sagamix
You need to work on your algorithm.
There have to be some statisticians amongst the posters here who could help.
How about LO=(NGxOE) X (HWxRF) X LUCK
Your original meanings, but
OE = opportunity to exploit gifts
RF = relevance factor (area within which you choose to work)
LUCK = support from parents x personal expectation x chance of finding a suitable job x probablity of politicians interferring with your area of work x impact of technological change)
Your original equation works well for the majority of the current Labour Ministers.
And we've probably all noticed that Lehman Bros is a US company - having little impact on the range of esoteric jobs advertised by central and local government in the Grundian.
Funnily - many people, Lab/Lib/Tory/other dislike the nonsense of huge personal gain being achieved by people who don't actually create "real" wealth.
The money markets don't represent anything other than hope/expectation of totally theoretical profit.
Manufactoring companies' output doesn't change because of a rise or fall in the market.
I haven't noticed Blair or Brown trying to impose some control over the "take" by senior private company executives. In fact, ex-ministers seem to flock to private companies as soon as they become "ex".
Come on Nick - make some comment about the latest Brown statement about "long-term help with energy costs for the poor".
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Labour won't get away with it this time.
Viva la revolution!
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259 jonathan cook I thought it was 42 days detention . I think the Tories have given David Davis 42 day detention for spending a hundred and eighty thousand pounds to inflate his ego because it has archieved nothing else, has anyone seen him or has he been led quietly away to a nursing home.
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232ppl You'll be marching straight to hell if the Tories get in.
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277. derekbarker
Oh alright, I preferred Father Jack though!
Conservative
Lower
Cut out the form filling and PC procedures
Yes
No
Nuclear and Hydroelectric.
Fire Ed Balls
Freedom Freedom Freedom
Small
Yes. Id give you independence
Yes but Id build them in Liverpool
Yes, but much less restrictive.
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282 Captain Ju Ju, why dont you go back to doing what you do to chickens because you know nothing of any thing else.
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re: 287 grandantidote
The road to hell is paved with politicians. I will be marching on the rotten remains of the Labour party.
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#278
"anyone who uses a Gini coefficient is either a sociologist or a socio-economist" - alternatively, they are someone who wants to look at the facts of the matter and make their own judgement, rather than accepting factless assertions. How can you measure what is happening with inequality without any facts? How does it work?
We could use poverty (a far more understandable measure to the man on the street) - here Labour's performance is more impressive, though you could contest whether a relative (comparison with other people) or absolute (so long as you can afford a minimal level of bread, warmth, clothing and shelter it does not matter how rich everyone else is).
I understand why you have so much hostility to sociologists. They shine too much of a light on what the implications of not being concerned with inequality, rampant individualism and stacking the economy in the favour of the few really are.
Do you think it is unimportant that we understand what is happening in society, and are able to use facts to analyse it rather than pub rants, anecdotes and ideology from the right-wing press?
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#288
Devolution not Independence(good god)
So you would have a streamlined public sector....efficiency savings.......
All things you relate to are the politics of 1979 and that! thatcher lady....
high unemployment
failing school
under-investment in hospitals
no foriegn policy(remember the falklands)
Boom and Bust
high inflation
high interest rates
sleaze and corruption
fewer police
fewer teachers
fewer nurses
Wow! ARE SO OUT OF DATE????
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274 MaxSceptic
Not enough time has passed to conclude this is ceh disguise.
I read these blogs frequently but rarely take part as I feel its pointless debating with brick walls.
He may have the same sycophantic love of brown ceh had - could be a coincidence.
He may make multiple posts at the same times of day that ceh did – could also be a coincidence
He suddenly appeared in force the day after ceh and crew left – could also be a coincidence.
Time will tell until then give him the benefit of the doubt, these blogs will be dull without red flag wavers.
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286 Grandantidote
You are correct - it was 42 days. I couldn't remember and was typing that from my mobile - so had no way of double checking the figure!
As for David Davis - I feel sorry for him. I think he let the emotion of the moment get to him when he resigned.
Although - in hindsight resignation was a bad move - at the time I was really pleased that someone was taking a stand based on principles.
I didn't see a convincing argument made for why 28 days is not sufficient and that 42 days are needed. The whole thing seemed to be an exercise in proving Brown was tough.
Anyway - Brown was forced into compromises that make the proposals almost unworkable.
I'd like to see David Davis return to the Conservative front bench. With Ed Milliband and Tony Benn among his friends - it makes sense to make sure there are people in government (soon I hope!) able to discuss the bigger picture - rather than one dimensional types with an obsession for divisive party politics (Gordon Brown?)
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# 284 (Open)
Thanks but I was trying to keep it simple in order to illustrate what equality of opportunity means. Equality of outcome is a different story and I will get back to you shortly on that.
# 283 (Robin)
No, please refer to # 281 where I explain why the private sector versus public sector distinction is not helpful.
# 272 (Griff)
Yes, just read your # 99. Agree with you on the severity of the slump. Mainly the fault of greedy and stupid bankers ... I'd allocate 90% of the blame in that direction. Verging on the criminal.
# 275 (Max)
Saying you "loathe" JP hints at it being a visceral thing rather than anything else. Also, I know you're really hung up on this "private sector good / public sector bad" thing but I say the same to you as to Robin. I hope my # 281 converts you because I'd really like to.
# 285 (People)
Get away with what, please?
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281. sagamix
Sir I have to say that your understanding of everyday economics is terrible.
How can you say: Please do not get confused with the private sector versus public sector thing, by the way. That's not relevant.
The private sector creates the wealth, the public sector eats it; they are a total overhead.
This is why Scotland needs so much subsidy from England, I gather that over 55 percent of people are either directly employed in the public sector or their income directly depends on it.
Part of the problem is that this government, all too often sees paying public sector staff higher wages as a method of improving equality, We now have a situation where average public sector pay exceeds that of the private sector; this does not include their perks and pensions. (didn’t we do this earlier in the week?)
Any how its not irrelevant its everything.
I think your algebra needs a tad refining, but Im happy with my P and if it was excessive in relation to my EV then the market would nudge circumstances to bring about a correction.
No such correction is possible in the public sector. Just look at pensions, most private firms, thanks to Brown, know now that they are unaffordable and have stopped providing them, but the public sector carries on regardless of cost or affordability.
The upshot to this current formula will have to be at some point a dramatic cut back on public services and public sector pay. Either that or we will have to find oil in the Channel.
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#296
Narrow minded people indeed! sagamix makes good sense, the fact that you revert too the selfish mode is disappointing,you dont contribute to society as a whole,if you fail to recognise that its all about "TAXATION"
Be constructive by almeans, but dont divived a nation through ignorance.....
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#296
"the private sector creates wealth, the public sector eats it" - that is ideology, not fact.
Take for example, the experience of the late 1990s dotcom boom. Irrational behaviour from banks led to a lot of worthless investment in ideas that would not work. A lot of people lost a lot of money. Take the housing boom. Etc. There are many circumstances in which the private sector destroys wealth rather than creates it.
There are also a lot of market failures that prevent the private market being efficient in many sectors. While building an appropriate institutional framework can be a solution (e.g. negotiation between a factory and a community to ensure that pollution is at the 'optimal' level), regulation can lead to a more optimal outcome as well. See e.g. impact of the monopoly power that the utility companies have. See e.g. the lack of information that people have about complex pensions products and the misselling scandals of the early 1990s. Left without government action, market outcomes in many sectors would be sub-optimal.
There are many circumstances in which Government creates wealth. For example, investment in education, transport, law and order etc. If Government chose not to spend money here, the economy would undoubtedly be smaller, as business would be unable to operate as effectively. This is accepted by the vast majority of neo-cons - there is a role for Government in some sectors - it is not always a wealth-destroyer even for these idealogues.
Society is also concerned with equity. From the point of view of the self-interested rich, this is desirable - crime, risk of revolution and instability would be likely to happen were the Government to leave the poor to fend for themselves. E.g. if we did not pay income support, there will be more begging, crime etc as those who cannot get a job try to ensure they can feed their families. The private sector would find it difficult to offer unemployment insurance - this would reduce welfare for everyone in society too.
Also, it should be considered that, at least in theory, a more meritocratic society would ensure that there is a better allocation to people to jobs in society, and thus a bigger economy. A situation where 'the old boys network' and people's genes determine position in society will be inefficient - and has been blamed by many for the relative decline of the UK compared with other developed countries that has occured since 1850. Thus a government that tries to improve social mobility should, in theory, increase potential growth in the economy over the long-term, rather than destroying wealth.
I would agree with you that there are some activities where the Government is simply 'eating wealth' (where there is no clear rationale for intervention/the interventions used are wrong). There are also inefficiency in many parts of the public sector, much as there is in the private sector too.
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#295
I don't think you explain anything particularly well in any of your posts, actually.
A bit like the labour party; you promise a great roar and then out pops a mouse of a policy.
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# 296 (Carrots)
"The private sector creates the wealth, the public sector eats it; they are a total overhead"
Why do you cling to this?
Enron was a private sector company. It destroyed wealth. The M25 was built by the public sector. It created wealth.
The truth is that wealth is created by useful work done and that happens in both the private and the public sector.
If someone does work that adds value of 100 pounds, and he gets paid 60 pounds, then he has contributed 40 pounds to the rest of us. If someone does work that adds value of 500 pounds and gets paid 700 pounds, he has made the rest of us collectively 200 pounds poorer.
Someone like Tim Berners-Lee who invented the internet (let's just say he did for the sake of this argument) whilst on a public sector salary in a public sector university (again let's say that happened) is therefore a massive net giver to you and I.
Someone like Dick Fuld who runs a bank into the ground whilst banking 2 billion dollars in pay is a massive net taker from you and I.
What's the problem with what I'm saying here? Is it the way I'm presenting it?
I truly do not understand your (and others like Max, Purple, Robin, Open) insistence that public sector activity is an overhead whereas private sector activity creates wealth. Seems almost like a mantra or something with you guys.
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sagamix @281,
My "economic contribution to society" (ugh - horrible phrase!) is positive in that I am not a drain or burden on others. That is, all that you - or anyone else - need know.
My - er - 'P' - is, er, modest (alas! I wish it were extravagant so that I could indulge in conspicuous consumption and stir up the envy of shallow people).
At least half of the pubic sector - almost by definition - must have a negative contribution: they suck in money from productive people and produce paper and regulations in its place.
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balhamu @291:
So you are a sociologist, then?
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re: 295
They won't get away with lying to us again of course. Everywhere, lies! The denied election, the denied referendum, the wasteful squandering, the enormous debt, quangoes, the economy etc...
Open your eyes, Nu-Labour supporters! Wake up and rebel against your corrupt and wicked party, the withered husk of a once great movement... They have lost their way. The Lust For Power has taken them all, they are all slaves to the will of the Pound. Nu-Labour are bleeding us dry!
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# 299
sorry Robin, which bits don't you understand?
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sagamix @295,
Of course my loathing John Prescott is visceral!
Some things - like being up to one's neck in effluence, or contemplating the physiognomy of the former DPM (or his inflated pension) cause instant gastric upset.
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Good old Labour,
Take from the rich and give to the poor!
Only trouble is Labours classification of a rich person is anybody who works for a living. The poor of course are all those that will not work at all. They are poor because they were born into poverty and have no way of improving their lot right????
Why do Labour hate people who try and make themselves a better life through hard work soooo much.
And why do they see lazy, uneducated people as just victims of society who need to be showered with free everything??
How I HATE Labour
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This posting will probably set the cat amongst the pigeons. Good, we need a real discussion, even argument, and an end to personal snipings by depressed socialists and deranged tories. My hypothesis is this: racial or class differences are unimportant and shouldn't have a place in a democracy. The true value of a person are their moral and intellectual abilities. This mass rush by various ethnic police officers to seek legal help is both pathetic and opportunistic. They are taking advantage of politically correct attitudes which have been drummed into an unwilling public. The most worrying thing to me, is the really low standard of judgement or savvy of these policemen/women. In the evening papers, I read they selected as their chief legal adviser, a fraudster, Shahrokh Mireskandari, who was convicted in the US in 1991. The Solicitors Regulation Authority are investigating this man, for various serious criminal activities. If our best police officers can fail to see what type of people they engage, what is right under their very noses, how can they be so smart? These current cases bring no help or advantage for ethnic groups, who I believe can achieve a lot by their own merits. It is a tragedy if they should be exploited by corrupt lawyers.
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#301
Clearly under-pressure........relax and join the human race........
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@247
No i would rather they kept from interfering altogether.
That said they need to decide whether they want equlity OR fairness as the two are not the same thing! Only a blinkered Party aparatchik would think any different.
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#302 - No I am not a sociologist.
Is being interested in exploring the facts about the impact of certain economic and other policies something that only a sociologist should be interested in?
Is not basing ones opinions on the facts really sticking ones fingers in ones ears and saying "lalalala" to drown out what the real implications of policies that you think should be followed are. And won't basing Government policy on such opinions lead to poor policies being adopted?
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@255
Genuinely you made me laugh there.
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#304
I don't understand this - how this government thinks that bleeding the private sector dry with higher taxatin to pay for more public sector jobs with inlfation proof final salary pension schemes is a sustainable model.
It's a rapid path to a collapsing currency (now down further than in 1992) and a ballooning public sector debt. (ditto)
Please explain.
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@289 grandantidote wrote:
"Captain Ju Ju, why dont you go back to doing what you do to chickens because you know nothing of any thing else"
Another invasion of privacy thanks to Labours CCTV society.
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balhamu @310,
OK, then your partner (or mother / father / brother / sister / son / daughter /best friend - delete as appropriate) is a sociologist....
;-)
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258 grandantidote
I don'y know, I don't post for a month and you haven't mellowed one little bit.
Had a great two weeks in France with most of the family - all hard workers paying loads of tax to keep you in the manner to which you accustomed under this travesty of a government - and all you can go on about is paying back child allowance to help keep the lower-paid out of work. Now GB is banning the immigrants who do the jobs the lower paid or unemployed won't do because life is rather cushy on benefits.
Keep smiling!!!
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Thought experiment:
Imagine that you were allocated a position in society at random. You could be the child of a single mother in an inner-city area. You could be the child of a wealth land-owning family. You could be the child of a hard-working working class family in Leeds.
What would you want society to look like? High inequality + low social mobility (imagine the gains if you were one of the lucky ones). Or alternatively, more limited inequality + high social mobility.
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Maxsceptic, you really don't like sociologists.
It's telling you focus on sociologists rather than address the issues I raise.
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So, yes, equality of opportunity as defined in # 262. Key is to minimise the effect of LUCK on material life outcome.
But of course some people will still do better than others due to the other 2 factors of natural gifts and hard work. Nothing wrong with that. That's fine. Total equality of outcome would require an unacceptable degree of state control. Individual freedom (which is not unimportant) would be too severely compromised. No way do we want Pol Pot!
However, you don't have freedom (in any meaningful sense) unless you have true equality of opportunity and we don't have that in this country. The following is what's required to achieve it.
A massive investment in education. Not just buildings and equipment but in teachers. Teaching to become a creme de la creme profession. Attract the best people with top salaries. Enforce rigorous academic standards across the board. Abolish private education because that's the only way to get a level playing field. Sit back and watch as people get liberated and able to succeed in life regardless of background. Just see how our GDP roars once we've set ourselves free like this.
A clear and progressively stacked tax regime. Low earners pay far less than they do now, high earners pay far more. A very high rate for Death Duties in order to prevent the propagation of wealth and privilege within families. This is necessary because otherwise, we put the benefits of equal education for all at risk.
Rich people will still have a much better life than poor people. They'll be able to spend their money on houses, cars, clothes, travel, better health care, you name it. Just like they do now. Only difference will be that they won't be quite so much richer than everybody else and they won't be able to spend their money (either in life or in death) on giving their kids an advantage over everyone else.
I see all this as being liberating rather than controlling. I don't like the State tinkering about in our lives any more than the next person. It's just that, for me, a society which is both successful and fair is what I want my politicians to be striving to foster.
Don't like Labour very much because they are scared to have much of an impact on the things I care about but I feel I have to stick up for them a little bit because the prevailing mood of this blog seems to be to take us all backwards.
Anyway, it's been great participating in the debate on here and I wish you all well.
(Tories will win in 2010 but not by much)
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Sagamix
Sorry if you have the impression that I believe all public sector activity is simply an unnecessary overhead.
That's absolutely NOT what I have said.
I'm quite happy that some aspects of life should be controlled at a national (governmental) level. National defence, policing, collection of tax and the provision of basic transport infrastructure seem logical areas. To a large extent, the provision of health services seems best provided through a national organisation.
My issue - is the lack of financial discipline exercised by Government agencies.
Private companies can be truly wasteful. Their share-holders frequently have too little control over the benefits offered to the directors/executives. They make bad choices while being "protected" by government agencies who don't necessarily understand the businesses they're supposed to oversee.
But companies, on the whole, cut their expenditures to match their disposable income (like individual tax-payers). Local and national governments just seem to plough ahead, regardless of the impact on the people who pay them - i.e. taxpayers.
This government seems to have bought the consultant talk, without understanding that walking the walk is a different proposition.
I think it was McKenzie which first proposed that "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it". That's a fair point. But, if the cost of devising what should be measured and then carrying out such checks, exceeds the benefits then you are in deep trouble.
Victorian businesses - some of the most productive in our history - collected information. Mostly as a natural by-product of working out what they were doing. Now we have so many people setting targets, collecting and analysing data and "adjusting" outcome figures to "prove" how well things are doing, that the real deliverables get trampled underfoot.
I've been in despair for decades because well-meaning (social-engineering) people want to make education "relevant to the individual". For goodness sake, if people can't read, write and perform basic arithmetic activities, what "relevance" do some of these bright idiots want to offer?
By the way, the Internet was established as a mechanism to allow the US military to ensure communications in the event of war. Tim Berners-Lee (what a guy - should have been made Lord B-L years ago), developed the language which enabled the WWW. He wanted to allow companies/organisations within CERN to exchange data. From his input (when his superior turned a blind eye to a slightly unauthorised use of his time!), many businesses have grown.
There are plenty of "commercial" businesses that could contribute to making the NHS better. I find it objectionable that Blair (presumably with Brown's connivance) allowed fairly simple areas of medical activity to be hived off to private companies, while chopping the income from the hospitals dealing with much more difficult procedures. How does that square with a "social conscience"?
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I'll eat my hat! Always said no politican or top businessman ever told the truth. Well I was wrong. Mark Owen-Lloyd of E.On let the cat out of the bag when he claimed that "Higher gas and electric prices means more money for us."
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I probably won't be posting for the next 24 hrs - I have to do some work (the income of which will be taxed at 40%).
At least I'll ensure that a sociologist won't go hungry.... ;-)
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313 captain ju ju I like your answer both clever and funny.
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311 pot kettle, it's nice to see you have a human side. please no backside jokes.
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#321 it become clear now. The reason you don't wish people to find out facts about inequality is self-interest - you are in the top 12% of people who pay higher-rate tax, or as the Daily Mail or Conservatives would put it 'a middle earner'.
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298. balhamu
We were talking specifically about economic value added, not the social benefits of certain public sector workers. who are all over heads. Or which sectors of the markets make money, of course some sectors loose money, but the market as a whole creates the wealth.
I do agree with many of your points though, and in a modern and fair society we need an efficient public sector. However, Private sector can survive without the public it might not be pretty but it can happen. The reverse is not true.
Any how, the main thrust of my point is that its all gone too far. The overhead has become too large.
I suspect that we are over committed in terms of public sector pay, pensions, debt and PFIs.
If Im right, we have 3 options; especially now that it seems the tax take has dropped.
Borrow more.
Increase taxation as a percentage of the wealth created.
Cut back on public spending.
If Im wrong then we are all Ok
What ya rekon
Derek, youre going to have to punctuate for me to understand what youre writing.
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324. balhamu
Cripes as Boris would say; is that 12% figure correct ?
Can I see back up
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This is hilarious the majority of you are negative about Labour. Thats fine blame someone if that makes you feel better but its peoples irresponsibility, ignorance and greed that has taken things to where they are now.
Governments across the world have stood back and let it happen but I would like to have seen their popularity if they had tried to regulate more.
The British and most of the developed world face really serious long term problems which are well understood BUT governments with only 4 year mandates and a selfish voting public can do very little about it.
Conclusion: Things are going to be very bad and it does not matter a hoot which bunch of politicians are in power.
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Balhamu
And Im with fairlyopenmind at 319
All good points
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#325
Not so fast,let the lesson sink in first.....
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316. balhamu
Id want a model that rewarded hard work in spades and one that did not take too much of said reward and to reward sloth in others.
Id like a government that made spending decisions according to affordability and not desire.
Any how; out tonight so have fun chaps.
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What's happened on this site?
Why don't postings get acknowledged?
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#319 and #328 - several good points. I think the Golden Rule about only borrowing to invest over an economic cycle is the best approach (with maybe a few alterations to the current methodology to acknowledge a lot of current spend e.g. education, preventative healthcare spend etc could be considered as investment if this could be policed adequately - it would definitely be considered investment at the individual level).
Another thing to remember is that public debt is at low levels historically and compared to other countries
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Gordon is rubbish
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#326 - here's how i calculated the statistic re 12% of income tax payers pay it at the higher marginal rate.
There are 3.96 million people who pay income tax at the higher rate in the UK and 31 million people who pay income tax (projected estimates for 2008/09 based on the 2005/06 Survey of Personal Incomes (source: HMRC website http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats/income_tax/table2-1.pdf).
3.96/31=12.8% (ok, I was a % point out).
It does, however, include older people which you may think is misleading. Assuming that no older people pay higher rate tax, this would give a % higher rate payers of 3.96/27=14.8% of income tax payers.
Just including full-time workers - 3.96/19.5 million =20.3% are higher-rate payers
Remember that this is income tax payers only, and excludes those who are not in work through unemployment or disability. There are 38 million people of working age in the UK. Using this 3.96/38 million =10.4% of people of working-age pay income tax at the higher-rate.
So a range of 10-20% depending on what you think is the appropriate population you should measure the number of higher-rate payers against.
This is an analysis of marginal tax rates - of course the vast majority of people affected by the 40% marginal tax rates would pay most tax at the 20% basic rate - average tax rates would be far lower.
I don't think I need to provide evidence for the misleading picture painted by the press that higher-rate payers are 'middle earners'. It is why Labour decided to commit to not raise the higher-rate of income tax (and has stuck by that pledge) because of the false impressions painted by a self-interested media.
If you asked high earners about what average incomes are, what the minimum income you need to live on or what the minimum wage actually is it would contrast sharply with the reality, and jar with their opinions on redistribution.
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gillipollas
I'd hardly call the taxpayers "selfish". We've all been shafted by Labour's stealth taxes and now we can only just about afford to pay our utility bills, do the weekly shop, and fill the car up with petrol.
If Gordon Brown had had his finger on the pulse, instead of putting all his efforts into trying to oust Tony Blair, we'd probably all be a lot better off!
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For goodness sake.
Where do postings go?
I wouldn't mind if a posting was "referred to the moderators" - but just disappearing seems a bit too much.
What are he key words we should avoid to ensure that comments don't disappear?
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319 Fairlyopenmind - I agree 100% with that.
332 Balhamu
I agree with you - that a chancellor should work within some rules which govern affordability.
I'm not sure what an "economic cycle is" - I heard Gordon use it - but have only just got around to looking up a definition:
"Traditional business cycles undergo 4 stages - expansion, prosperity, contraction, recession".
So in the UK we are moving from 3 to 4 at the moment.
So you'd probably need to amend your rule:
i.e. you might want to borrow in phase 4 in order to kick start a new economic cycle (which sort of begs the question where is the UK's financial flexibility to spend to invest and kick us back into 'expansion' again?)
A Chancellor should also work within other affordability rules i.e.
1. "PFI" -
the amount of borrowing off balance sheet at the moment is vast. Our true level of borrowing is hidden - out of sight out of mind. You can't plan properly if you don't face facts.
2. "Other Future Spending Commitments" -
for instance I was surprised yesterday to find out that we are now committed to £1 Trillion worth of pensions for civil servants (who retire with final salary pensions) - which on average works out at £17,000 in tax for each of us to fund just to provide public sector pensions
I don't really need to add this - but for completeness...... I'd like a bit of that £17,000 in my pension fund - which has been raided by the marvellous Mr Brown.....!
So Balhamu - I'm with you - affordability spending rules are a good thing. How they should work........... well that needs some careful thinking.
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#336 fairlyopenmind
The usual reason why posts don't appear is that you have used a symbol that the BBC can't deal with - usually & (has to be specially coded to appear). If you post doesn't appear, press the back arrow to return to the earlier page where your comment will still be in the Comment box. probably you'll find an & which you can replace with "and".
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#338 oldnat
Thank you, I was going to ask one or two of the same questions.
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336 FOM Ive had the same trouble but being thick what black arrow
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The trouble with Harriet is that equality does not extend to white, hetrosexual, able bodies males.
If she is worried about equality perhaps she should start with her own boss who made a point of not making her Deputy Prime Minister.
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#340 grandantidote
I use Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. If you use the latter and my explanation is inappropriate, then someone else will post to help you.
In Firefox, there are arrows at the top right hand corner of your screen which allow you to go back or forward to earlier/later pages. If you click on these arrows, you can see the earlier page you were on (and in a blog that will be where you posted your comment) or go forwrd to pages you viewed later.
I'm not a computer geek, and may not have explained this well, but if I've got it wrong, I'm sure someone will explain it better,
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So, after the pretence of "new" labour, we are back to the same old routine. Back in the 70's, Dennis "Silly Billy" Healey wanted to tax the few until the pips squeaked. Today, taxes have never been higher for everyone.
Labour has always been obsessed with how to divide the cake. The problem is, they have no idea how to bake the cake in the first place.
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re: 341
Exactly.
Hopefully someone will persuade her to do a Tarique Ghaffur and help deliver another hammer-blow to the rotten Nu-Lab spin machine.
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I haven't posted since July and oddly enough, nothing has changed inspite of the promised listening.
Well, excluding that the polls are even worse than back then and even more people accept that Gordon is probably mental.
They call it a united front leading up to the party conference, the rest of us call it denial.
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re my #342
I can't tell left from right! (rather like Labour and Tory - both the same) the arrows are top left.
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Am I off the Naughy Step Yet?
Gordon is Rubbish
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Know when will someone make a big deal about thatchers return to chequers......
How will be the first to Blaaaah
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re: 343
An excellent metaphor for Labour.
The cake is burned. Nu-Lab have dropped it (icing face down) onto the carpet.
On a related note, they certainly know how to divide the cake. For their greedy selves: everything but the crumbs.
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More and more problems appear
And they say we must be austere,
The economy withers,
Gordon Brown dithers,
Labourgeddon is here!
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Ooops i.ve got me.....who and how's mixed up and me......now and know.....Silly
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351. derekbarker
Its OK Derek weve grown to expect nothing less.
Tell us.. Why do you think Thatcher was voted into power with such a landslide?
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Nick,
Isn't it about time that you started a new theme, or are you too busy getting ready for the conference season. Come on Nick earn those huge sums of money I think you 'earn'.
For example, I don't think that many people understand how serious the situation is getting in Pakistan. A new president, the Americans using Special Forces to operate in a foreign sovereign state. Hundreds killed and bombs dropped on so many innocents. we need a statement from the Prime Minister about this, what are our soldiers doing, are they at risk without the approval of parliament. This 'war' is spreading out of control.
We know that Bush wants the head of bin Laden on a plate before he leaves the White House.
We must not just sit back and watch this happen, not without parliamentary approval at least. What exactly is going on in the killing fields of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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197. balhamu
Sorry I missed this.
1, It would be abolished if the levy was optional and market forces applied.
2, Isnt a surprise, spuds are not really that interesting to todays modern media.
3, Didn’t know that. But having grown up in a farming community the one constant I can assure you of is that farmers always think that everything is too expensive.
4, is the big one
A compulsory levy is taxation by another name, it is more directly targeted but as you say, the consumer pays for it in the end. Its effectively VAT which is then ring fenced for a specific purpose.
I understand business finance very well and can assure you that companies don’t actually pay for anything, costs are almost always passed on to the consumer. It’s a basic market force that always applies.
Hence why; when I heard Brown say that he didn’t expect fuel companies to pass on the concessions that he has negotiated to consumers; I snorted my tea and chuckled.
Any government imposed levy is a form of stealth tax, even the minimum wage and HIPs packs can be seen in the same light. They distort the market, by artificially increasing prices. Which the consumer eventually pays for one way of the other.
Take the minimum wage for example, (which I do not oppose) this extra cost is not paid for by employers, it just gets added to the cost of production. Ironically one of the largest sectors affected by this was the NHS.
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Ahh the Golden rules by Gordon Brown.
My first rule ensures that over the economic cycle the Government will borrow only to invest and that current spending will be met from taxation.
My second rule is that, as a proportion of national income, public debt will be held at a prudent and stable level over the economic cycle.
Well weve had one of the best decades economically speaking that many can recall, yet we still have massive levels of debt. By comparison the IFS reports that 1 in 3 OCED members now has a surplus.
GBs golden rules sounded great when announced I thought they were very prudent at the time. You can imagine I quite liked the sound of budgets at least balancing or being in surplus over the course of the cycle, The idea that net borrowing was for investment purposes only, tipped it for me and I voted Labour. Very prudent. So no debt without an asset element that would in time further increase revenue. Wow.
There is an argument to say that this is very inflexible. i.e. if tax revenues soar in the future. Similarly, the government should run significant surpluses if economic performance seems set to deteriorate.
When the rule came under stress GB decided that the rule should not be judged absolute terms, but rather by calculating the budget surplus/deficit as a percentage of GDP. Since GDP rises over time, this has the effect of inflating the size of earlier surpluses compared with later deficits. But fair enough I can live with that.
There was the debate over what is included as current spending. i.e. interest paid on Network Rail loans is not included, spending previously counted as road maintenance is now investment in new roads. Stretching it a bit thin this I thought.
He has massively increased the number of PFIs Which are an off balance sheet method to hide debt. Which nearly everyone agrees will prove to be much more expensive in the long run and is simply a trick to stay within golden rule.
But then it started to fall apart in 2001 GB reported a surplus for the period of some 118B. 2002, 95b. 2003 43bn. 2004 10bn, and by 2005, nil. Analysts warned that taxes would have to rise by at least 10B during the cycle to get back to a stainable footing for the next. (prudence had left the building)
Since then the government has taken some every day expenses off the books to stay with the golden rule
In 2005 he simply altered the start point of the cycle and put if back 2 years, turning a deficit into a 17 Billion surplus.
All smoke and mirrors, don’t believe a statistic this man presents you with. Its actually the only thing that he his really very good at.
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321. MaxSceptic
So golf then. Eh.
Have a good game!
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334.balhamu
Interesting.
I had thought the figure was low, but was thinking of only full time, regular employment, and see that is 20%
Good info though
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Has anybody noticed that so many of the NewLabour apologists just disappear when challenged to defend their points of view?
There is a brief attempt initially to trot out the usual mantra 'wouldn't have had all these doctors and nurses without us'; this is generally followed by some bad tempered responses to rebuttals and then they disappear?
It appears to me that newlabour are losing the will to govern (if that's whatever you could call it).
Which brings me back to the original point of this post - Harman's speech. The speech was met with rather muted applause by the TUC. This appears to be, on relistening, because she hasn't actually said anything. This appears to have become a central plank in Gordon Brown and newlabour's failings - they are not actually doing anything.
The energy policy is nothing new, the housing market help is a drop in the ocean, the great relaunches we have been promised never seem to happen, the givernment seems to have no policies whatsoever except this fumbling nonsense about 'guiding the economy through diffcult times'
So my question is - are we bankrupt?
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Carrots - re the potato council (again).
You are right that the council is unlikely to survive if it was an optional subscription.
But that is probably not welfare improving. In theory, the action of the potato council should help small producers (of which one would expect there to be many, given the industry is far more competive than most) market their products (National Chip Week etc)
If the potato farmers value this marketing effort and it is actually effective in increasing sales of potatos (an important caveat), the functions of the Potato Council should continue.
The question becomes how should it be funded. If it was a private organisation and funded by subscription there would be a problem. It is what economists call a public good - a potato farmer who does not contribute would still reap the benefits of the marketing efforts that go on as it is impossible to exclude them from this. This is the so-called "free-rider" problem - why bother to pay when you can just take a free ride off the payments of others.
Another example of such a good would be defence spending.
There is thus a clear rationale for government intervention here, as it is clearly of benefit to all farmers compared to the private market outcome of no marketing effort (provided the caveat that the marketing effort improves sales for each farmer over and above the cost of subscription).
There are other activities that the Potato Council does that may be suited to a private organisation (e.g. providing market information, information about new varieties of crops or how to improve yields, information about protecting crops from disease etc). But perhaps the economies of scale involved justify the Potato Council getting involved here too.
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Carrots,
re the action on energy efficiency launched by the PM yesterday.
I wouldn't be so sure businesses would pass these costs on. The Government does have a threat of taking more rigorous action (e.g. the much talked-about windfall tax) if the energy companies do not fall into line and simply pass costs onto consumers, which may prevent the temptation to increase prices in the short-term. Of course in the long-term, the investment in energy efficiency will pay off for consumers in terms of lower bills, so it doesn't matter so much if the tariffs charge are increased.
re minimum wage
I think it was necessary to introduce the minimum wage if the Government was to introduce the working-families tax credit and meet its aims of reducing poverty, otherwise business simply would have responded by cutting wages (labour supply would increase at each level of income pushing wages downwards). I would also question how successful the minimum wage has been - many businesses get around it by simply employing immigrants who either do not understand their rights or are working illegally (though not necessarily in the UK illegally - in my experience most illegal workers do have a visa to be here), and/or paying cash-in-hand.
re golden rule - I think it would benefit from an independent body charged with assessing if the rule is met and/or methodological changes needed to it in terms of how it is measured - people simply do not trust the Government to get around its self-interest here. There's a question on whether the level of debt (40% GDP) is appropriate - why not 60%? Why not 20%? What happens if we enter a period like the 1930s where urgent fiscal stimulus is required - don't the rules lack flexibility? What about if we need a lot of infrastructure investment (e.g. transport) but the rules are not flexible enough to allow it - sticking to the rules would decrease the rate of economic growth etc.
The Golden Rule may be too inflexible - but it was essential for Government to get the trust of the people to keep being electable, and they have managed to stick to it for 11 years - contrast with the previous Conservative government who had the benefits of massive revenues from North Sea Oil and a massive sell-off of public assets to help the accounts.
RobinJD - there were not many 'apologists' on here (even if I would disagree with that description - more injecting some factual basis to the discussion, though I accept my politics are left-leaning). I would say a maximum of 4 people on this blog could be described as sympathetic to the Government, one of whom is probably a troll winding up the 'New Labour PF/Daily Mail crowd. It's like talking to a brick wall arguing against many of the comments (though your contributions are a lot more reasoned and sensible than most on here) - make up facts and run away from any debate about them.
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Yet again I'm seeing the deliberate mis-representation that national debt has decreased under this government.
It has not. It has doubled since 1997. It was 330bn, now it's 660 bn (including 110bn of PFI).
Worse than that, as Gordon Brown borrowed our way into recession it has (almost) trebled from 230bn in 2003 to 660bn today. It will have more than trebled in another few months.
This government has destroyed our economy.
Again.
Luckily the voters have finally twigged what's going on. Labour are finished.
Good.
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This is the so-called "free-rider" problem - why bother to pay when you can just take a free ride off the payments of others.
Or, why bother to work when you can just claim 'incapacity benefit', unemployment benefit, free housing etc etc. Sod a few free-loading spud-farmers. It's several million free-loading free-loaders I'm more concerned about.
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Who on earth has not had the sense up until now to lag their attics and eliminate draughts etc. It stands to reason that not to do so is asking for trouble in the long run. I object to the fact that my contributions to The Exchequer are being used to prop up the living standards of thoughtless householders who may well prefer to spend their money on fags and booze.
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359. balhamu
We might have done spud council to death now.
I agree that there is strong rationale for government intervention in many areas.
I agree we need a public sector funded by fair taxation.
I just think the current model is too inefficient, over bloated, interfering, meddlesome and exceptionally complacent about the way it spends my money.
It needs a good spring clean,
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Balhamu
I promise you the cost will be passed to the main stream consumer one way or the other. It is the way of things.
See the times today
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article4735361.ece
I also thinks its rather laughable that the government points at the energy companies. They typically make 2-3% profits after all their efforts and risk , while the government happily sticks a 5% tax on your bill. or 56p + 17.5% on a litre of diesel.
Also worth a read
http://business.scotsman.com/consumerdebt/Brown--set-to-ditch.4305022.jp
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Who on earth has not had the sense up until now to lag their attics and eliminate draughts etc.
Yes indeed. They should have repaired the roof while the sun was shining.
Oooooooh.... It's not like they got a very good example from our squanderer-in-chief is it.
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We might have done spud council to death now.
I agree that there is strong rationale for government intervention in many areas.
But there is a strong rationale for the seizure of the means of production and redistribution of the profits to the workers. I mean, it sounds fair. It's just that the unintended consequences are that everybody starves and everybody freezes. Except for the professional bleeding hearts who get chauffeur-driven Zils.
If the potato farmers want to band together to promote their interests then that's up to them. They should be aware that there will be a government-sponsored media campaign dedicated to crushing many of their main products in the name of health. Yep for every pond we give the Potato Council we'll be giving ten pound to be lectured not to eat crisps or chips.
But there'll be another few thousand government drones sitting in offices racking up a fat pension.
The obvious thing would be to disband both agencies. Save the money and let me spend it on firearms and moonshine.
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#361 - your figures are wrong
I take all my figures from the Public Finance Databank on the HMT website. I think these figures may exclude PFI (you are right that definitional issues such as these are important - I don't have time to check if they are or are not included) http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/economic_data_and_tools/finance_spending_statistics/pubsec_finance/psf_statistics.cfm
Public sector net debt (the Golden Rule measure) was £348 billion in 1996/97, vs £529 billion in 2007/08 (the latter figure based on Budget 2008 forecasts, all in real terms i.e. adjusted for inflation) [table A7]
This represented 43.3% of GDP in March 1997, and 36.9% of GDP in March 2008 [table A8]. All the other measures of debt published in the databank have also decreased (e.g. the Maastricht measure used by the EU).
So, debt has increased, but at a slower rate than income has increased. I guess you could argue that as income increased, debt should decrease.
There are public pensions liablities not included here (I think), but these were not included in 1996/97 either so the comparison is fair (except they are likely to increase as there are more public sector staff now than there was).
Also, you say "Gordon Brown borrowed our way into recession" - that's a different way of thinking about why we are in recession. I thought it was about irresponsible lending by banks, irrational increases in house prices (which maybe the Government should have curtailed, though this would have been very unpopular if they tried to do it) and world food and fuel price shocks. I must be wrong...there is also no recession yet (though a couple of quarters of negative growth looks likely - ie a technical recession. We'll still see year-on-year growth though. More stagnation than recesssion and in the context of 11 years of growth under this Government).
I'll leave your comments on 'free-loaders' claiming incapacity benefit. Most people on this benefit are sick and are unable to work. What's your answer - let the sick starve? Corporate fraud, tax evasion and bail-outs for their mistakes costs the Government far more money. You're entitled to your opinion though - you will just have to hope that if the reforms you want happen do that you do not have an accident or serious illness that affects your capacity to work.
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#364 - I think so too. It's an important general point though - many people criticise Government spending in many areas, but often there is a clear rationale for intervention and everyone would be worse off if the Government did not intervene in these areas. The picture of Government=Waste is plain wrong.
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And Carrots, I am sure that if energy companies do put up prices, the political pressure the Government will come under to charge a windfall tax will be irresistable. I don't think the energy companies would want to call their bluff.
We will see.
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U9461192 - so, your political philosophy is leave everything to the private market (even in case where there is a clear reason for Government to get involved for economic efficiency reasons).
Ok - that's your opinion. I don't have a problem with it.
We can try and implement a system where all services are provided by voluntary subscription, and see how that works out. Just try and go to another country and do it. And come back when you've learnt the hard lessons about why Government is needed.
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Balhamu
Who do you think will pay the windfall tax in the end?
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Public sector net debt (the Golden Rule measure) was ?348 billion in 1996/97,
Okay. 350bn it is.
vs ?529 billion in 2007/08 (the latter figure based on Budget 2008 forecasts,
Yeah, but we know already those forecasts are, for the 11th year in succession, going to surprise on the down-side. I believe national debt is already 550bn PLUS 110bn of PFI.
This represented 43.3% of GDP in March 1997, and 36.9% of GDP in March 2008 [table A8].
Only by hiding 110bn off balance sheet do you arrive at a figure of 36.9%. But why the rush to have everything viewed as a percentage of GDP? It wasn't so in-vogue in 1997.
Here's Labour's 1997 manifesto. Good for a laugh in the light of where we find ourselves today:
Spending and tax: new Labour's approach
The myth that the solution to every problem is increased spending has been comprehensively dispelled under the Conservatives. Spending has risen. But more spending has brought neither greater fairness nor less poverty. Quite the reverse - our society is more divided than it has been for generations. The level of public spending is no longer the best measure of the effectiveness of government action in the public interest. It is what money is actually spent on that counts more than how much money is spent.
The national debt has doubled under John Major. The public finances remain weak. A new Labour government will give immediate high priority to seeing how public money can be better used.
New Labour will be wise spenders, not big spenders
Laughable. Isn't it?
You just need to replace 'Conservative' with 'Labour' and 'John Major' with 'Gordon Brown'.
Eleven years and the economy is shot.
Your disinformation, however disingenuinely presented is fooling nobody.
Labour are finished.
Good.
Too bad they took the UK with them.
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349 ppl May I refer you to168. There must have been an awful lot of crumbs to manage that lot, but then whats really going on in life means nothing to people like you, as long as you can write silly poems and even sillier posts your a happy man .
simple things please simple minds, still I guess your more to be pitied than blamed.
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I'll leave your comments on 'free-loaders' claiming incapacity benefit. Most people on this benefit are sick and are unable to work.
There is no way that 50% of people claiming 'incapacity benefit' are in any way sick. They were simply systematically shifted there to hide them from the unemployment figures. Doctors are actually rewarded extra money for signing people off as 'incapacitated'. I wonder how many would be miraculously 'cured' if we payed doctors twice as much to 'cure' them.
Single mothers are systematically moved onto 'incapacity benefit' once their youngest child reaches eighteen.
What's your answer - let the sick starve?
There we are with the 'free-rider' problem again. Because there is no effective mechanism to ensure only the genuinely sick receive benefit it is abused to the rafters.
Corporate fraud, tax evasion and bail-outs for their mistakes costs the Government far more money.
What 'bail-outs for mistakes' are you referring to? Northern Rock mayhap?
The government-sanctioned housing boom that underpinned their 'miracle economy'? That was no 'mistake'. That was deliberately nurtured and fed by this government. We'd seen one as early as 1989/90 and the 1992/93 bust. It wasn't an historical footnote overlooked by all but students of economics and still Gordon Brown flooded the economy with more borrowed money and allowed the BoE to concentrate solely on an inflation proxy that he deliberately chose to ignore rampant house-price inflation.
And when things (ie house prices) were wobbling in 2005 the 'fix' went in to the 'independent' BoE (since admitted by Eddie George) to lower interest rates and keep the plates spinning.
This economy is in the toilet and it's going to get considerably worse. And it is entirely this governments fault.
And everybody knows it.
Good.
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373. U9461192
I may just use that one day.
Superb
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#373 - accepting your figure of £110 billion for off-balance sheet PFI deals (could you provide a source - I'm sure this would probably be an exaggeration like everything else you say).
GDP was £1,434 billion. 110/1434=7.7% of GDP. 36.9%+7.7%=44.6% of GDP.
This of course assumes there was none of these off-balance sheet things when the Conservatives were in power (and of course your £110 billion figure is correct - source please).
So - simply provide a source for £110 billion off-balance sheet PFI, a figure for what the value of off-balance sheet PFI was in 1996/97 and we can get an answer. PFI deals would have had to increase by (43.3-36.9)*1,434=£92 billion for you to be correct.
And if you are right, you are correct. Between 1997 and 2008, debt would have risen from 43.3% of GDP in 1997 to 44.6% of GDP in 2008.
But I stand by my original figures unless you can prove otherwise (find a reliable source for there being in excess of £92 billion increases in off-balance sheet PFI and additional public pensions liabilities)
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Oh yes and they also said:
In contrast to old Old Labaour, New Labour rejects the idea that high social spending is a good thing.
Have a good role on the floor folks
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352 carrots remember See what I mean about
Education, Edukation, Edukayshun.
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grandantidote desperately tries
To distract from Nu-Labour's lies,
But he'll fail in the end
When the electorate send
Nu-Lab to their well-earned demise.
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So - simply provide a source for ?110 billion off-balance sheet PFI,
There you go...
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2068576/the-scale-of-browns-broken-economy.thtml
The Treasury admits to £542bn of net debt (as of Jul08) which it says is 37.3% of GDP. But, as Jimmy Cricket said, there’s more. The IFS gives figures in its indispensable Green Budget 2008. The PFI debt is £110bn (as of Nov07)
So, not only has debt doubled in cash terms it's increased by this newly-adopted %age of GDP thingy.
We must also remember that Major doubled national debt (under the 'old' measure of doubling) coming out of a housing crash. Gordon has doubled it going into a housing crash. Truly we are blessed. Or bankrupt.
Nothing to say about the particularly apposite quote from the Labour 1997 manifesto?
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379. grandantidote
d'accord
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23530975-details/A-level+standards+'down+by+a+grade+every+decade'/article.do
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At 2:21pm on 10 Sep 2008, PorterRockwell wrote:
'David Cameron, who is the very embodiment of the triumph of style over substance. Bereft of ideas before even taking office'
Before 1997 you could have replaced David Cameron with Tony Blair in this quote and the meaning , and probably the result , would be the same.
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#381 - accepting PFI debt under the Conservatives was £0 (I'm really not sure of that), and that your figures are correct (the Spectator is hardly an objective source and puts a Conservative-spin on the IFS-figures - it would be like me quoting the Socialist Weekly) for the sake of this response.
Brown has "doubled" debt from 43.3% of GDP to 44.6% of GDP. Interesting definition of the word "double" and it implies that as a society becomes richer, debt should become a smaller and smaller proportion of GDP, which I'm not sure makes too much sense without thinking about how much investment is required.
Hardly the explosion of debt you were talking about. And we have lots of new hospitals, schools, investment in education etc to show for it (rather than the last Government's increases in debt, which were due to increasing structural deficits e.g. to invest in long-term unemployment and associated problems caused as a direct result of the policies followed e.g. unemployment is a price well worth paying for low inflation, destroying manufacturing as a policy aim etc).
The points re pension liabilities are valid - there are unfunded public sector pension promises (though these also existed in 1996/97). They exist in the private sector too - this Alice-in-Wonderland accounting re pensions applies to the previous government, this government and a lot of the private sector.
Let me quote from the IFS study you indirectly refer to via the Spectator article (the IFS 2008 Green Budget - see Ch2, p20 of http://www.ifs.org.uk/budgets/gb2008/08chap2.pdf). Different to what you say I think.
"Looking back over Labour's 11 years in office...the structural budget deficit and level of public sector debt are now lower than the levels inherited from the Conservatives (though other country's finances have improved by more over the period)"
re PFI
It was used under the Conservatives and we need to compare like with like (see Ch3, p26 of the Green Budget http://www.ifs.org.uk/budgets/gb2008/08chap3.pdf) "the use of PFI began in 1987 with the QE2 bridge over the Thames". The IFS £110 billion makes no attempt to account for the extent of PFI deals in 1996/97.
The IFS also acknowledge that some of the liabilities can be escaped from (e.g. by changing levels of service in schools, some of the spend built into PFI contracts is future current expenditure rather than capital spend - and this is as much as 50% in hospitals and 30% of schools, which would significantly decrease estimated PFI liabilities if accounted for in the data
See p27 of Ch3 of the Green Book "in many cases these payments are in return for the future delivery of public service provision...for a typical PFI schools project around 30% of the charge goes towards caretaking, maintenance and future services. Therefore a future government might well negotiate a lower payment from the public purse in return for a reduction in services provided". In other words, the £110 billion PFI figure provided is probably an over-estimate.
Assume 20% of PFI spend is not a capital liability (remember, true for 30% of schools PFI and 50% of hospitals PFI, so could be an under-estimate given these are the two sectors where the majority of PFI spend has been concentrated). This would reduce PFI-related debt to £110*(1-20%)=£88 billion.
The conclusion - even accepting the dubious assertion PFI debt was zero in 1997, debt as %GDP (inclusive of PFI liabilities) in March 2008 was basically the same (in fact slightly lower) than it was in March 1997.
As the issues are complicated I don't expect this to convince you. But the facts are not on your side (though I know this is unimportant on this blog).
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7. At 12:35pm on 10 Sep 2008, diamondunited9 wrote:
Why are so many people who respond to this blog so unrelentingly negative? I think promoting fairness in society is to be applauded, and that Labour is far more likely to deliver this than the Tories ever will
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They've had 11 years, and things on this score are worse then when they came to power.
What else do you need to know?
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RE the Labour quote - what do you expect from a political party other than to put spin on what's actually happening (e.g. 1979 - 'Labour isn't working' with a picture of a lengthy dole queue - it wasn't apparent at the time was the way Labour wasn't working is that the dole queue wasn't long enough).
One thing I would say is that the Conservative deficit was due to a structural deficit to pay for policy choices on the level of unemployment and associated problems that society should have (i.e. we want to see higher long-term unemployment, as it is an acceptable price to pay for achieving our other policy goals)
Labour have, while keeping debt constant, significantly increased investment, they have increased the pay of teachers and healthcare workers (which the Conservatives had squeezed through their time in power to an unsustainable position where quality of those staff was affected) and they have put in place a number of programmes to regenerate our cities and improve the quality of public services (and the Conservative Party acknowledge this - their argument is based on whether the extra investment was worth the improvements seen.
And the Conservatives managed to increase debt without increasing net investment, while presiding over a drop in standards of public services, while also selling off a lot of public assets and enjoying the benefits of the North Sea Oil windfall.
I know who's record looks better.
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And I should add that public sector net debt in March 1979 (from the HMT Public Finance Databank) was 47.1% of GDP, so the Conservatives did reduce it between 1979-1997 by 3.8% of GDP. Credit where its due.
This was aided by sell-offs of many state-owned companies (e.g. BT, British Gas, Water, British Rail), by selling off a large chunk of the social housing stock (through the right-to-buy), through disinvesting in infrastructure (e.g. schools, hospitals). through squeezing public sector wages unsustainably (e.g. decline in real wages of teachers seen over the period), through a decline in the standard of public services (e.g. widespread dissatisfaction with health and education that swept Labour to power in 1997), and helped by the North Sea Oil windfalls (which the HMT Databank estimates as e.g. 1.1% GDP in 1979/80, 1.5% in 1980/81 and 1981/82, 1.8% in 1982/83 and 2.7% in 1983/84, 3.3% in 1984/85 and 2.8% in 1985/86.
So a lot of one-off factors helped reduce debt/restrict taxation over the period. Compare with Norway's approach to their oil windfall.
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I don't give a monkey's aunt what Major and Thatcher did over 11 years ago. I'm interested in the here and now and it aint a pretty picture. Taxpayers money is being thrown at various hair brained schemes in a vain attempt to steal back lost votes and it's failing miserably. Gordon Brown will never regain the misguided popularity he had a year ago. Thank the Lord he didn't hold an election when he had the chance or we'd be facing another four years of muddle and spin.
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Do you see the Teachers, The Police and Nursing staff clapping their hands in appreciation of what the Government has done for them? No and with good reason.
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misswaldorf - but it is relevant if people are harking back to the good old days of sound financial management under the Conservative party is it not?
And if people suggest that debt has increased as a core part of their 'didn't repair the roof when the sun was shining' views, it is relevant to point out that debt has not increased. As the IFS note in their Green Budget, the structural deficit in 2008 is far lower than it was in 1997, and Labour's borrowing has been predominately funding increased net investment.
And teachers were clapping their hand for pay increases while they were happening (doctors are a different beast, and despite massive pay increases they are unsatisfiable).
Public sector workers problems with the Government at the moment are a) Do not want to have to account for their performance - it was far easier when they were unaccountable to people for their behaviour (either to perform poorly and remain doing what they want rather than what people want them to do, or to continue discriminating against certain groups in the case of the police); b) Hate the fact that the Government is holding pay increases down to -3% in real terms to curtail inflation (which is fair enough, but doing this is a sign that the government is making very tough political decisions to restrict expenditure and inflation)
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Kenneth Clarke wasn't exactly an abject failure in his role as Chancellor but whether or not he was is an irrelevance. It has no bearing on events today in my opinion. I accept that investment has to some extent been sucessfully made in the infrastructure of the country (you would expect that when you consider the enormous sums we are paying in taxes) but a great deal has also disappeared down a bottomless pit with precious few checks and balances being instigated to ensure that it has been wisely spent. When you refer to accountability in The Public Sector I can say from my own experience that I left teaching because of the pernicious Ofsted Inspections and frequent observations which made life hell in the classroom and prevented us from getting on with the real job of teaching. The constant stress didn't help either. I loved teaching and I loved children but the mounting pressures imposed on us by Government edict made the job impossible to enjoy. Teacher's salaries have been on a downward spiral for some years now. I can't speak for The Police or Nurses but to be unfairly treated at a time when fuel and food bills and rates etc. are sky rocketing is difficult to bear.
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#391
On the one hand you say we talk about "the enormous sums we are paying in taxes" and that "a great deal has disappeared down a bottomless pit".
In the next sentence you say "Teachers salaries have been on a downward spiral for some years now...unfairly treated at a time when fuel and food bills are sky rocketing".
I think that often when "massive waste" is talked about, people mean (at least in part) that the salaries of public sector workers have increased (i.e. teachers, police etc) without necessary reforms (i.e. more accountability through more market mechanisms rather than managerial control). Indeed, this is an accusation that has been levelled at the Government by the opposition.
So, increasing teacher's salaries would, in this view, be "throwing money down the bottomless pit".
Do you deny teachers salaries, relative to other professions, has increased dramatically since 1997? That teachers have done very well over 1997-2008. And that more pay restraint is likely should the Government be voted out.
The decline in real wages in the most recent pay settlement for the teaching profession (though this is for teachers as a whole, remember, I'm sure progression through payscales as retiring teachers are replaced will mean many have salaries that increase faster than this), is difficult, but without it expenditure would be increasing faster (i.e. more tax or more debt, given short-run stickiness of expenditure programmes) and some impact on inflation (though this is perhaps more debatable).
The Government made a difficult political choice (especially given the increased reliance on Union donations to fund the Labour party) to try and curtail Government spending and growth in the rate of inflation. Surely the sort of thing "Bottler Brown" gets so much criticism from the Conservatives and their media cheer-leaders for apparently not making (of course, he also gets criticised for making this tough choice by the same people who criticise him for not making it - this opposition lark is quite easy isn't it).
As for accountability, I'm sure you agree that it is important that education standards increase, and that teachers are incentivised to perform well. Teaching unions rejected performance pay (the scheme implemented was watered down so much that 97% of applicants receive it). So Ofsted regulation and League Tables are the only tool available to Government, or alternatively more marketisation (though you could argue this would lead schools to focus on the wrong thing - and I'm sure as an ex-teacher that would be an argument you would make).
I refer you to my last post for why the level and evolution of public debt under the last Government is so important to the debates going on in this blog, and pretty much explode the line peddled by the shadow chancellor and others that the Government "should have fixed the roof when the sun was shining". Labour have done a lot of roof fixing (investment in schools, hospitals, reducing crime, improving public services), without the benefit of discovering a stash of gold hidden under the cellar (North Sea Oil) or selling the family jewels for less than they were worth (selling off utilities, housing stock etc). Debt is low as a % of GDP - the same or lower than the 'golden legacy' left by the Tories, and as the independent IFS make clear, a lower structural deficit.
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getridofgordonnow. this is a repy to you from another blog that i am sure you will recogise
203 getridofgordonow.
I think the whole basis of this debate first and foremost is who decides if another persons job is pointless or not.
I am quite sure that nobody is going to stand up and say my job is pointless.
As I said previously your obviously referring to the civil service as its obvious that no private company will employ people to do nothing.or they wouldn't be in business very long. and to sack them wouldn't benefit the country only the employer.
So if I am right, then what you are saying is that there are enough people out there already working for public service that we could sack in order to benefit the rest of the country,to the tune of billions of pounds but that is only after they find what you consider real jobs.
Now I know that under Labour there has been plenty of work for most people but what you are now asking for as we teeter on the edge of a recession.
Is that we sack millions of workers and happily pay them benefits which will in no way cover the cost of the life that they and their wives /husbands and children are at present experiencing, these benefits would have to cover the interest on their mortgages as well.
If we do slip into recession as you Tory bloggers are determined to predict it will be difficult to sustain the level of jobs generally throughout the country, never mind find thousands of what you call real jobs.
So where do we go from here is there anyone in your family thats going to put up their hand and say fire me I do a useless job, I know theirs none in mine that would do that. so I ask again who decides.
you say,
"You obviously don't understand (or acknowledge) the basic logic that people are shouting so loudly to you about, and that's why your party is finished."
well I think if we walked into a workplace where you consider that they should all be sacked until they find a better job or even to tell them their doing a pointless job and we asked for a show of hands to decide on your idea or mine,I think that you would find it difficult to emerge unscathed.
If your party were to make it clear to the electorate that that is what they intend to do whilst waiting out of sight for the media to try to oust the government then I think their ratings would drop dramatically so I suppose by that token you are to be commended ,But wrong,
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389 miss waldof,
i am afraid that what you say is right about the nurses police etc unfortunately its in the nature of the beast.
As long as you are giving and making things better no one gives a damn but the moment things get a little tough all the good things are forgotten the pack instinct creeps in.
Both the bodies that you mention have done very well out of this government and If you speak individualy to members of these professions they generally will tell you so but put them into a large group, it only takes one or two in order to make them behave badly, its the old barrel of apples story.
I will give you a example The WI is what you would say were more or less a middle aged group of well mannered ladies.
You know whats coming but be patient.
They invited the Prime minister of their country to come as a guest speaker to their conference, now I am sure that Tony Blair had many more important things to do than to go to the conference of these ladies who he knew would consist of 85% tories but out of courtesy he went.
He had only been in office a few years and I dont think anybody would deny the country at that time was doing very well, amongst
his audience were a couple of trouble makers [you get them in all walks of life] they were obviously dyed in the wool blue rinse Tories, they started to slow hand clap and some stamp their feet while their invited guest was speaking.
Now how do we look upon these women who are supposed to be nice gentle helpful souls but in fact they turned in a few minutes encouraged by what can only be described as the ignorant element, into a ungrateful ignorant bunch of screaming fishwifes that showed a total lack of respect or decorum for the man they choose to be their guest.
who was the only person to walk from that hall with his respect intact?
A quick one have you seen anywhere a sign of apreciation to the government from the staff or indeed the many customers of Northern Rock for saving their jobs or investments, because I haven't its like when you give a dog a bone everythings fine until you try to take even a little bit back, you can give to a dog all day long but you'll have to wait a long time for a dog to give to you.as I say its the nature of the beast.
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CarrotsneedaQUANGO2 @356 wrote:
So golf then. Eh.
Have a good game!
LOL,
But, no: I would not - in Churchill's phrase - countenance wasting a good walk.
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392:
I don't consider it to be a waste to pay hard working public servants what they are due. The waste I speak of is mainly in the areas of unecessary administration, quangos and ill thought out schemes (e.g. the 10 tax fiasco which proved costly for the taxpayer). When I see poorly qualified young lads earning more at the age of 21 than a teacher who has been in service for 10 years or more something is very wrong. The Government are partly responsible for the mess we are in and must pay the consequences for a disgruntled work force.
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If you're going to use the word 'Labour' to describe the party in power could you please use 'Conservative' to describe the opposition please?
Constant use of 'Tories' instead of 'Conservatives' on the BBC is, I suspect, a way of reminding voters of the Thatcher years.
Maybe I'm being pedantic but that IS the party name after all!
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I recently reread the excellent book "Yes, Primeminister" - once a great favourite of Margaret Thatcher.
Just when I think its cynical portrayal of Government initiatives is outdated, Labour goes and does something like this!
Surely we can't be expected to believe that the true culprit to blame for Gordon giving away all our gold is equality?
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Independent public enquiry required into HBoS issue, the Shares, the negotiations and the Government involvement
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I'm all for equality:
I'd like my pension rights and benefits to be equal to those of an MP.
I'd like my expense account to be as generous as those of an MP.
No MP can lecture me on equality until the gravy train that is Westminster is tackled and they all have to survive in the real world, on real finances.
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