Close of conference
So the conference ends with the same news that led up to it: a resignation from the government. Although this time of course, it was a cabinet minister who insisted she was a mother who was resigning in order to spend more time with her children - and not a rebel with a cause.
The fact is, though, that Ruth Kelly has been profoundly worried about the direction of her party and has spoken with other cabinet ministers who were contemplating resigning too, to make their point.
What this illustrates is that there is a big gap between talk behind the scenes and action. There is also a sense here that Gordon Brown has taken the first step - of many needed - for a political recovery.
And what today's news also reminds us all is that one speech doesn't change a prime minister's electoral prospects. There is still for him, and his party, a long way to go.
I'm 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~23~RS~)
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Kelly is leaving the door open for a return in a few years without the stigma of having stuck the knife in.
A very politically aware decision on her part. Get out when it's bad but don't burn your bridges.
And she's jumping before she's pushed by the electorate.
A deal's been done for sure, we just won't know what it is for a while.
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Harriet Harman saying that something isn't quite right with David Cameron? Bit ironic.
Well, a nicely stage-managed conference - as all parties do - which makes out that UK is alive and well.
Re EDF, I may be wrong here but does Gordon Brown's brother not work for EDF in a senior capacity?
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Even more Nick Robinson hypothesis or is the truth, as always with Gordon Brown, simply being denied or suppressed??
Expect one or two "spoilers" in mid Tory conference, but don't for heavens sake be suckered in by them. The Machiavellian manner in which El Gordo operates is becoming clearer by the day. Can we please have a General Election urgently so the electorate can rid the country of this criminal, amnesiac, control freak for good.
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A long way to go... No too late
A long wait for an election... Yes.
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Hes a "towering figure".
Wonder if thats a Euphemism?
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Who cares how Labour spin it anymore? We know there is spin and discount it. New Labour was born out of spin in the first place.
The cabinet know Brown has no ideas and no money to spend with the economy broken.
Spending will be 40% above predictions this year. 40%, normally there are howls when it is one or two percent wrong.
Brown is a busted flush and the country needs a new direction and a better leader.
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"There is still for him, and his party, a long way to go."
You're not kidding!
Highly personalised attacks on Cameron...Harperson saying "something not right about him"...calling press conferences at 3am to announce the resignation of cabinet ministers...twisting Osborne's quotes and lying about it....highly selective interpretations of Labour's economic record etc...etc.
It's a very very long road to any form of Labour recovery, say a decade of Conservative government!
Labour have done everything but throw the kitchen sink at this, if the polls don't move then it's curtains for Brown. The clock is ticking until Nov 6th in Glenrothes and the next crisis.
Nick - Do you agree with Diane Abbott that the cabinet will move against Brown if Glenrothes is lost?
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"...Gordon Brown has taken the first step - of many needed - for a political recovery..."
The only valid measure of this will be electoral and the only national test on the horizon will be the European Parliament election of 2009. Will Labour improve on second in 2004? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/vote2004/euro_uk/html/front.stm
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Nick, Any comment about Harriet Harperson's ad hominem attacks on Cameron?
(Yes - I know that I am guilty of many ad hominem attacks myself, but I don't present myself as a smug, sanctimonious Nanny of the Nation).
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Nick,
the question now is 'Where is Brown going to turn up next week' in an attempt to upstage the Tory conference?
With any luck he'll be so deluded by his apparent success this week he'll call an election.
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Sure Brown is on the up. There's not much further down. However attention now turns to young Mr Cameron, whose silence on what has been billed as the worst financial crisis since the 1930's has been deafening.
Cameron is now playing from a poor hand. The villains of the moment - and for the forseeable future - are the Men in Red Braces. NuLabour has only had a brief flirtation with these characters and politically can start to distance themselves from the wreckage. The Conservatives, however, have been in bed with them for generations. Can young David now plausibly come out with plans to haul in the servants of Mammon? Not a hope - ideologically he's got way too far to travel and his handlers wouldn't let him anyway.
So, does he stick with a party doctrine of non-intervention and minimal government. If so, which bank will be the first to fail under a Cameron government?
Does he plan to match Labour's spending plans and if so how does he raise the money? Party doctrine says less direct taxes, not more. So will it be more VAT? Or will it be more borrowing (thus pushing interest rates up even further) or more PFI? Or does he let the whole thing wind down? Sure, there are quangos to kill off and economies to be made but I doubt it will solve a crisis of this scale.
The curse for Cameron is that so long as he stuck to ID cards, reform of the more vexatious parts of our Human Rights legislation and a referendum on the EU treaty he sounded bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Once the economy comes centre-stage he's stuffed.
Brown's not out of the woods by any stretch but at the moment he's the only one coming up with ideas, good or bad. If Cameron comes up with alternatives they will be critically examined. If he does less he will be condemend as a rich-kid frontman who may have less of the night about him than Michael Howard but who has far fewer ideas.
Where is Davis when you need him??
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The BBC quotes Harriet Harman as saying (about David Cameron):
"He's the kind of man your mother used to warn you about," she said. "He'll promise you the world. But if he ever got his wicked way with you - in the ballot box - you'd never hear from him again."
Hmmmm.... language that only 'wimmin' are aloud to use. If I were to say, for instance, that the reason Harman looks so annoying is that "she got her wicked way - in the ballot box [yeah, yeah] - only with Labour supporters" would it be censored?
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So let's take a closer look at the Brown boom and his potential 'recovery'...
Recovery from what?
Unde Brown's last five years as chancellor at the peak of the boom, real income in the UK grew at an average 1.4%
During the five years to 1990, under Thatcher, real income grew at 4% per annum.
Even after the top of the Thatcher years, under the first five years of Major, rela income grew at 2.1%
So Brown has presided over one of the most pedestrian periods of growth in income in three decades.
Raising taxes - the Brown deafult mecahnism - will slow this growth further and delay the repayment of the debt bubble he has built up.
Is it any wonder ministers and members of the government are walking out one by one.?
They have realised what a fake and a flake this man really is.
Easy credit, splashing the cash on pet causes and monstrous waste.
Call an election.
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After 10 years of Tony's appalling delivery record, Gordon had the opportunity to start afresh by appearing to lay 10 years 'blame' at Blair's feet.
Gordon had an excellent first 12 weeks as PM and then it all came crashing down.
Now the media and public in general have finally caught up with the fact that Gordon is a major part of Labour's failure in government over since 1997..
Gordon missed the window of opportunity to pull the wool over the public's eyes during the short window that was the election that never was. He fluffed it.
So although Gordon is hugely responsible for lack of delivery under Labour - since becoming PM he has since also been seen as responsible for these things as well:
- Knifing Tony Blair in the back
- Coming into power with no plan or vision
- Disastrous leadership once the 12 week honeymoon period ended
- Trashing the nations finances (the public now know this is an 11 year tragedy)
- Lurching to the left to try and prop up support in the Labour party
It was way too late for Gordon to turn things around several months ago.
We are just witnessing the death throws of Labour at the moment - this ain't signs of recovery......
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"2. At 3:46pm on 24 Sep 2008, Neil_Small147 wrote:
Re EDF, I may be wrong here but does Gordon Brown's brother not work for EDF in a senior capacity?"
No, you aren’t. He holds a senior position in their PR department. How lucky is that!
Is Gordon on the road to recovery? To misquote the song,
“And no matter what the spin is
Or what may yet be said
The simple facts of life are such
They cannot be removed
You must remember this
A speech is just a speech, a lie is still a lie,
The fundamental truths apply
As time goes by “
As long as Gordon Brown is still Prime Minister, Labour should not win the next election. Sadly CM Dave C is still an unconvincing alternative.
Get ready for the lowest national turnout in history, and our next Prime Minister, ‘None of the Above.’
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Expect "Baroness" Kelly of Bolton to pick up some plum quango jobs prior to being made a life peer when Gordon goes and she gets booted out at the next election.
Cynical? Moi?
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In response to Fooottapper (#11):
I'll have a large whatever you're on. For the pas 11 years Gordy has been sucking up to the wide red braces brigade. How else do you think he got a lot of the PFI stuff done, which, by the way, still doesn't appear in the nations books, where it belongs.
Everything that is currently bedevilling the world's financial markets has taken place during Gordy's watch, either as Chancellor or as PM, and he won't be able to hide from that.
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That's a good line from Harriet Harman about David Cameron. If she came up with that herself, I'm impressed.
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Not a big fan of Cameron myself but Harman's scrape the barrel comments......
Which is the nasty part now?
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Robin @ 13
Is all that from the WS Journal, Robin? ... you know, like you were telling us about earlier?
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Nick,
#12
are labour trying to ingratiate themselves with young illiterate people. First we have had Alastair Darling with 'pissed off'. Then we had Jack Straw with 'mother and father' MC5 'kick out the jam', if you must know, and now Hadrian Hardman with 'in the ballot box' which is another euphamism for a certain part of the family anatomy.
Trouble with these labour ministers, they are not just inept, they are dirty too, filthy minds.
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10
i doubt we'll be that lucky - labour do arrogantly think theyre the right people, but they are clever enough to know they'll lose - they believe allowing the public to have what they want would be bad for them, and so will cling on til 2010 - labour *are* the government after all, hell labour *are* the public in half of their heads
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The conference closes and Gordon Brown stakes the retention of his leadership on his claim to be the best person to see the country through the current world economic turmoil.
He argues that the world has changed, that the financial community is now different and that problems in one country can affect another. That better regulation is required to prevent this happening again.
However history is repeating itself, and Gordon Brown is repeating himself too.
In 1998 the world suffered from the Asian crisis. At the time Gordon Brown, as UK Chancellor, was also President of the G7 group of Finance Ministers. What did Gordon Brown say at the time?
The BBC reported at the time:
As president of the G7 finance ministers, Gordon Brown was instrumental in negotiating the package of measures that has now been agreed by central bankers and finance ministers from the USA, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Canada
"We will not let high-risk hedge fund speculation by the few translate into a wider risk for the many and destabilise the financial system on which we all depend for prosperity," Gordon Brown said.
The Chancellor emphasised that problems in the banking systems of foreign countries could have serious "contagion" effects that could threaten banks in the UK.
A BBC Video report of the decisions, which includes the then Chancellor Gordon Brown setting out his proposals.
HM Treasury issued a press release. (179/98)
Significant reforms to strengthen the international financial system were announced today by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown in the UK's role as Presidency of the G7 leading industrial nations.
As G7 President, Gordon Brown has led this process of negotiation, following agreement at the IMF meetings in Washington earlier this month to develop quickly proposals for reform.
Gordon Brown states:
“…the financial crisis that swept Asia last year and has reverberated around the world has served to expose long-standing weaknesses in the international financial architecture and, because by its nature the crisis is international, so too must be the policies to address it.”
“The old way has too often been crisis management in national economies where purely national regulation does not even reach minimum standards. The new way forward for today's global economy, where each economy can affect every economy, is sensible global financial regulation, credible crisis prevention, orderly mechanisms for crisis resolution, with a sure foundation in minimum standards and best practice which all adopt to participate in the international financial system.
So today we announce details of a mechanism for crisis prevention; a new process for global financial regulation; and new proposals for transparency and crisis resolution that each G7 country will now adopt and apply.”
Hansard, for 2 November 1998 quotes Gordon Brown as saying…
“Our predecessors had to meet the challenge of ensuring economic stability in an era of national economies. Our generation must meet the challenges of ensuring stability in the era of a global economy, in which each economy can directly affect the prospects of every other.”
“For 50 years, our policies for regulation, supervision, transparency and stability have been devised and developed for a world of relatively sheltered national economies with limited capital markets. Now that markets transcend national boundaries, we must create for global markets systems for supervision, transparency, regulation and stability that are as sophisticated as the markets with which they have to cope.
“G7 Governments have therefore concluded that the international architecture devised in the 1940s for the economies of the 1940s is no longer adequate for the challenges of the 1990s, and that we need new rules for the global financial system. In the statement, each G7 country has now agreed to adopt and apply codes of conduct founded on minimum standards and best practice.”
“In the G7 statement, we also commit ourselves to strengthening the regulatory focus on risk management systems and prudential standards in financial sector institutions, and, in particular, to examining the implications of the operations of leveraged international financial organisations, including hedge funds.”
“A fundamental problem has been a lack of transparency and poor standards of disclosure by some financial market participants.”
“We will not allow high-risk hedge fund speculation by a few to translate into wider risks for the many, and destabilise the financial system on which we all depend for prosperity.”
“The G7 countries have also agreed on the need for a better long-term mechanism for international authorities to work with the private sector and national authorities in handling debt rescheduling at times of potential crisis.”
“Globalisation has happened. We must now make it work in hard times as well as good. As we have shown, we need not new institutions, but new rules and disciplines. I want to thank other G7 Ministers and central bank governors, and Heads of Government who have backed this work all along, for working through this new agreement.”
It is clear that as President of the G7, Gordon Brown was instrumental in negotiating the world regulatory regime that has now failed. The risks were well recognised, more than 10 years ago. But the measures taken, negotiated by Gordon Brown as President of the G7 were inadequate.
Yet he claims he is the best person to resolve the current crises.
He uses the same language now, as he did 10 years ago… He talks of new global markets, transcending national boundaries, just as he did 10 years ago. He even set out 10 years ago what he had to do “Our generation must meet the challenges of ensuring stability in the era of a global economy”.
The current crisis is not a crisis caused by a new global economy, it is a crisis caused by a failure to meet challenges identified over 10 years ago. Throughout that time Gordon Brown was best placed to meet the challenge – he failed. Having failed over those 10 years he is clearly not the person to resolve the crisis now.
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#10
I would guess the plane to Iraq has already been chartered
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There can be no political recovery for Labour without ditching some of their distastrous policies.
Brown talks about a fairer Britain, but actually he's only talking about Scotland.
English people are not anti-Scotland, but this Government does seem to be anti-England. How can it be right for Scottish MPs in Westminster to decide Laws for England, when MPs (Scottish and English!) no longer make decisions for Scotland?
It's a total mess!
Scotland is a great place, but the population is tiny compared to England. Under this Scottish dominated Labour government, Scotland has certainly prospered!
Brown has no right to talk about a fairer Britain!
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11 fingertapper
Brown's not out of the woods by any stretch but at the moment he's the only one coming up with ideas,
---
and yet Vince Cable is much hailed for his wise words of warning on the economy, and his formation of a new lib dem economic plan - i've even heard tories say he has good ideas while whinging about cameron and osbourne - and yet will they vote for anyone but the tories? - no, even if clegg was cable, kennedy or ashdown most people would stick to labour or the tories and never look anywhere else
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Indeed not a Geoffery Howe moment, could have been what with her being an old Blairite stalwart.
Instead this could play to Gordon's benefit. She was gushing about him, he got to be all smiley on stage again, AND he now has perfect excuse for a nice healthy reshuffle.
It is said one should never reshuffle unless one has to, now he has to.
So, what do we reckon?
Who's (back) in and who's out?
Answers on a postcard.
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I think Nick Robinson must have been affected by the "aura" surrounding the conference,
Brown has done nothing of the sort, there is no vision, just deceit and dissembling. You only have to watch the Sky interview with Adam Boulton to see that GB was like a rat caught in a trap.
http://blogs.news.sky.com/boultonandco/Post:297250e8-990a-4a07-a5c7-6e6d9a1b796c
Play the video.
Its not the beginning of the end, its not the end of the beginning, its very close to the end of the end.
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Harriet Harman - there's something not "quite right" about her.
"She's the kind of woman your mother used to warn you about," she said. "She'll promise you the world. But if she ever got her wicked way with you - in the ballot box - you'd never hear from her again."
so if I said that, it wouldn't be sexist at all harriet? i'm probably just a misogynist trying to smear you
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Hariette harman is a very nasty piece of work - a devisive man hater who unapoligetically only represents wimin.
She is as suited to political office as bernard manning or alf garnet would be.
The person who warns you off evil people like her are not your parents, they are priests...
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PS Kelly got the same kind of garbage that appears in posts 7, 9 + 12.
Take your sexism somewhere else.
The frequent use of 'Harperson' instead of Harman, because she is a feminist or because she didn't change her name when she married Dromey, is offensive.
Women with a minds of their own, whatever next? They'll be wanting equal pay!
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#2
Correct, Andrew Brown was appointed as EDF Energy's Head of Press on 13 September 2004. Nepotism? Surely not?!?!
Nick, why is it left to Private Eye and various websites to tell us this information? Why do you and your colleagues not mention this extremely important fact?
There must be all sorts of shady dealings going on due to all the various directorships and consultancy posts held by MPs, as well as obvious links such as the above. Why does the BBC not highlight them? This would be proper investigative journalism. There doesn't even need to be any attempt to accuse the Government of dirty tricks - just present the facts and the public will draw their own conclusions.
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You only have to watch the Sky interview with Adam Boulton to see that GB was like a rat caught in a trap.
http://blogs.news.sky.com/boultonandco/Post:297250e8-990a-4a07-a5c7-6e6d9a1b796c
Agree totally megapoliticajunkie . Why does Brown ALWAYS get an easy ride on the BBC? As for Kelly's 3am announcement about 'spending more time with her family'... Rats and sinking ships more like. They must think we were born yesterday.
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As a member of Opus Dei and a good Catholic she must be telling the truth about wanting to spend time with her family, otherwise she would be committing a sin.
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This whole situation is incredible. It is entirely undemocratic. The Labour party should call an election immediately. That is what the country wants.
Brown is a nobody failure - sadly he is also ruling a people that do not feel that he hasn't any right to lead them.
What sort of signal does it send out to other nations we waggle our self-righteous fingers at, telling them they are undemocratic?
Election please, now.
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Nick,
can I give you all an extract from a mail being sent out by Ron Paul, who is a senior American politician and libertarian. He is drawing support for masses of people in America to phone their congressman declaring that they should, no must, vote against the bail out:-
'Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be'.
In liberty,
Now, I don't think that this save the banks and speculators will get through Congress. The Americans do not want to saddle their children and grandchildren to all this debt. They compare this bail out to what would happen in communist China, this is not going to happen.
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What Cameron has to say on the economy is simple.
He will attack Gordon Brown for almost doubling National debt. He'll repeat the message about 'Failing to mend the roof'. He'll make some quip about borrowing enough money to not only mend the roof but build a two-story extension and an indoor pool. Then he'll say that somewhere between borrowing the money and getting a quote from the builders he got distracted by 'The Blazing Saddles Girly Ranch' and metaphorically blew the lot on hookers and Wild Turkey because for sure he didn't spend it on the roof.
Then Cameron will have a good laugh out loud cameo on the sheer gall of a man who will lecture bankers on their SVI approach to hiding their true liabilities. This? This? This coming from a man who routinely hides over one hundred billion of liabilities from the national debt? The Tories will be rolling in the aisles.
Then having warmed up the audience he'll produce the 1997 manifesto and there'll be tears of laughter rolling down the delegates faces as he reminds them of 'no more housing boom and bust'. And then, when they're all about to soil themselves with laughter he'll remind them that this is the man who after eleven years considers himself no longer a novice. This is as good as he's going to get.
Gordon Brown is going to get destroyed. Of course Gordon will have a massive 'spoiler' planned for the day. I think Cameron should wrong-foot Gordon by bringing his speech forward a day with zero notice.
Cameron doesn't have to say a thing about how he would 'fix' the economy. His goal is to drive home who wrecked it.
Gordon Brown wrecked it. All by himself.
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Nick,
Ruth Kelly should be listened to, she stressed that all her children were 'born' whilst labour are in government. This should be understood with regard to the abortion debate, I don't think that many in the government support the Human Embryo Bill, Ruth can now possibly vote against, rather than go missing. I think that many others will also vote against especially if they are no longer ministers.
This should have been a completely free vote.
I think that Hadrian Hardman and her sisters are up to their necks on this.
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#20 sagamix: It's all IN the WSJ, but crucially not BY the WSJ. It's an opinion piece by a well-known very right-winger, who writes reports for think-tanks set up by Thatcher and Joseph and then by himself, and who took over Cameron's job as Lamont's side-kick.
A flavour of his views can be gleaned from two quotes of his:
"The problem the Conservative Party has is that it's spouting baloney."
"Tories who want the party to move closer to the centre of being "Vichy" style collaborators with the Labour government. "
Somewhat to the left of many posters on here, I admit.
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#23 egrid1
Get all that Jimbrant, derekbarker, sagamix, CEH, dhw, grandantidote and the other Labour apologists, over to you lads.
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#32
Did you not notice Gordons mention of the ending of the energy dictatorship of oil, and then the mention of nuclear power, and clean coal, and the labour delegates applauded. Are these people mad or what?
Yes, as Gordon said 'we will win for the sake of our country' only I worry about which country is actually Gordons country. Why did he even mention the BNP, who is labour more afraid of, the conservatives, or BNP.
What did he mean by the dictatorship of oil, this from a paternalistic despot, who has never been elected as Prime Minister, not by anybody. If he was elected show me the voting papers, tell me who actually voted for our Gordon, come on anybody, tell me how he was 'elected'.
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hy does Brown ALWAYS get an easy ride on the BBC?
David Kelly. Andrew Gilligan. The BBC had this mendacious cabal bang to rights but fumbled the ball on a technicality and wallop. Standard Nu Labour policy. Discredit the source. Destroy the evidence. Bury the facts.
They're totally eviscerated.
They're now all too frightened to give Labour the mauling they deserve so they're doing the next best thing which is to go relatively easy on Cameron.
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33 henry hedgefund
it's more a case of sky being notoriously anti-labour, they are basically the torygraph in tv form
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If coming out fighting is saying there is something wrong with DC and the like its not much of a fight is it. It is noticable that all the other parties are being very quiet but there is not much incentive, better to leave Labour in the spotlight, there isnt much need for a riposte is there.
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Re 10,
I have started a book on your very question.
The odds for an election being called is 100/1, nice for an outside bet.
Guest speaker at the Tory conference, 50/1.
New(ish) re-shuffle (Wednesday), 25/1.
Cracking jokes on GMTV, 10/1.
Stating hs side of the story on Jerry Kyle, 5/1 (With tears 4/1).
And finally, my sure winning bet, spending billions of our money on the black whole in his finances, evens.
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Oh dear!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Brown's central claim yesterday was that he was an experienced pair of hands for the major economic problems we are facing
You won't believe this then.....:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/labour/3074014/US-Treasury-Secretary-Hank-Paulson-rejected-Gordon-Brown-meeting.html
Looks like Brown has as much effect on resolving this situation as a 'Novice'
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#35. doctorbreezy
RUBBISH!
Since when was an unpopular prime minister and a cabinet minister resigning "to spend more time with her family" undemocratic!?
If that was enough to demand an election we would have had one in 1981, 1986, 1990, 1993, 2000, and 2007.
Demanding an election before an elected government's term has expired is unconstitutional and (conceivably) undemocratic!
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Get all that Jimbrant, derekbarker, sagamix, CEH, dhw, grandantidote and the other Labour apologists, over to you lads.
I assumed they were all the same person. You mean there's more than one?
How does Labour afford them all? I thought they were bankrupt. Rowling's money can't pay for them all can it?
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Whatever Ruth Kelly has done or not done, she musn't punish herself - oh, what am I thinking - she already does!!
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#41 TAG "...who has never been elected as Prime Minister..." We don't elect Prime Minister's in this country, we elected governments. How the party of government choses their leader is their own business. They can have an egg-and-spoon race for all I care, because we have 'collective responsibility'. You need to brush up on your constitutional knowledge, [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
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#45. tobytrip
I'll have a tenner on:
New(ish) re-shuffle (Wednesday), 25/1
and
Cracking jokes on GMTV, 10/1.
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44. glanafon:
"...better to leave Labour in the spotlight, there isn't much need for a riposte is there?"
Oppositions don't win elections governments lose them. Gunpowder is best kept dry.
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Wiltshire County Council A Conservative Nanny State!
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#48. U9461192
Ha bleedin' Ha
:P
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#49. StephenU
HeHe. Naughty! :)
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46. At 6:34pm on 24 Sep 2008, jonathan_cook @46,
Why would a can-do Republican Treasury Secretary want to meet a soon-to-be-disposed, Obama-supporting looser?
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47. dylunydd
Nothing to do with gender, everything to do with public will, failure and discontent. Brown could call an election now but he knows he would be humiliated. Kelly has jumped off the Titanic in what is a wise move (though I don't personally rate her anyway).
This government has created its own downfall, it is just a shame that it will take the nation with it.
It is time for reduced egos and straight talking.
Pulling 'sexism' cards is pathetic.
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StephenU @49,
LOL - You've been reading too many trash novels.... I think, however, that Brown has invented a Methodist version of the 'silice': biting one's nails to the quick.
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StephenU @49,
Hee hee - You've been reading too many trash novels.... I think, however, that Brown has invented a Methodist version of the 'silice': biting one's nails to the quick.
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56 Maxsceptic
That bit of news is the final nail in Gordon's coffin of a claim to be the right man to solve the problems with the economy.
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15. At 4:43pm on 24 Sep 2008, Constable_Shoe wrote:
"2. At 3:46pm on 24 Sep 2008, Neil_Small147 wrote:
Re EDF, I may be wrong here but does Gordon Brown's brother not work for EDF in a senior capacity?"
No, you aren?t. He holds a senior position in their PR department. How lucky is that!
Knowing the way Labour enjoy spin - and Alistair Campbell - Gordon probably thinks he runs the company.
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#45
Guest speaker....at the tory conference....
" THE LEHMAN BROTHERS"
followed by roland.......
followed by Tim but dim.........tory boy.....
laugh....laugh....laugh.....laugh
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Why don't you let people vote, then you can see.
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Re 52, royalgrounded
LOL, expected, how much gunpowder Guy Fawkes.
Prob is dont want genocide, landslide to DC and co not good simply because too big a majority not good, governments run rampant when that happens, look at early NuLab. Also don't want to see nutty fringe rise, situation could be unstable. The centre ground won't stay vacant as NuLab lurch left.
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I've got it, let them all resign for family reasons and they could probably be excused.
I doubt Ruth Kelly well be missed, lets face it
just like the others who resigned in the past, what is odd, very odd is the way it was done shortly after 3 am now that ain't normal...
... and besides the roads here still had potholes that HGV makes a bee line for in the early hours. making one hell of a racket.
The blue touch paper has been lit and theres a by election round the corner, wiffle waffle about leadership challenge is nothing, to gain public support they need to turn things round 'now' and they can forget all the showmanship and rhetoric - and it isn't gonna happen in double quick time they have finished preaching to the flock (thank gawd).
This guy's the right man for the job, gee he's had 11 years at it and look at the sate he's in - do please, bring on the novice...
and besides he was a novice once, a novice that inherited a healthy pension, money in the kitty and a swag of gold - where is it now?
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#42 U9461192: "The BBC had this mendacious cabal bang to rights but fumbled the ball on a technicality "
Yes, the truth is a wearisome technicality is it not? Still, given time and sufficient repetition of unsubstantiated conspiracy theory as fact, history can always be revised, rewritten, and reversed.
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#48 U9461192
It never occurred to me the "prosaic" grandantidote, cryptic derekbarker and the flowery CEH could be one and the same person, surely not.
Sagamix, give the lad/lady credit, does articulate his contributions very well in fairness though.
I'd have the devil of a job assuming those different personas - I guess desperate political parties revert to desperate means.
I reckon dear old JK Rowling stumped up the cash in exchange for being able to write her latest work of fantasy fiction, Gordon Brown's conference speech!!
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#42 U9461192 : "The BBC had this mendacious cabal bang to rights but fumbled the ball on a technicality "
Yes, the truth is a wearisome technicality at times is it not? Still, given time and sufficient repetition of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories history can always be revisited, revised, and rewritten. Especially if the reporter has conveniently lost his notes and wiped his recorder.
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47 dylunydd wrote:
RUBBISH!
Since when was an unpopular prime minister and a cabinet minister resigning "to spend more time with her family" undemocratic!?
If that was enough to demand an election we would have had one in 1981, 1986, 1990, 1993, 2000, and 2007.
Demanding an election before an elected government's term has expired is unconstitutional and (conceivably) undemocratic!
---
apart from the elected government pledged that their leader would serve a full 'term' - that leader left over a year ago, the public have been misled on a fundamental point of their manifesto and have every right to ask for a GE
oh and when does a term 'expire'? we don't have fixed terms in our country, only that it may not be longer than five years - both of Blair's full terms were four years
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46. jonathan_cook
Fantastic,
Poor old Gordon its just one nail after another.
Doomed Dooommmed Doooooommmmmmed
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#67 - Ilicipolero
"I reckon dear old JK Rowling stumped up the cash in exchange for . . . "
Baroness Rowling?
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#31
I think, dylunydd, that you should be offended at Harriet Harman's appalling sexism. What right does she have to stir up misandry in what is a thoroughly nasty piece of defamation of character? The insinuation of her comments about David Cameron are actually very serious indeed (if you can see what sort of person she is comparing Cameron with), and I think that she owes him a public apology. If that does not happen, then she ought to be prosecuted, in my opinion. This is not freedom of speech, or legitimate political debate, but mean-spirited slander. Any man making a similar comment about a woman would be (quite rightly) reviled.
"He's the kind of man your mother used to warn you about ... if he ever got his wicked way with you...". The mind boggles at the perverted ideas which must have been coursing through her mind as she tried to find some way of trying (and failing) to win a seedy point against the leader of the opposition. And funny thing is, I thought Labour's problem with the Tories was to do with policy! Apparently not. So can we assume that now Labour have resorted to sexist attacks and perverted defamation of character, that they have lost the policy battle?
Ms Harman seems to be incapable of using evidence to support her prejudicial assertions. For those of us who have the ability to think logically, we can see that it is impossible for her to support her claim about David Cameron, since it is based on a scenario that has not yet occurred - i.e. his winning a general election. It's like a kind of a version of "Minority Report" - condemning someone before they have even done anything wrong! Is this the depths our government has fallen to?
If any Labour party activist happens to read this, then let me tell you that, as a former Labour voter, there is nothing your party can do to make me want to support you again. You will lose the next election, and deservedly so, so get used to the idea. Everything you do and say is just one extra nail in your coffin as far as I am concerned.
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Spending more time with the family is the best reason I can think of for postponing retirement indefinitely.
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#68 Jimbrant
Did Andrew Gilligan, rather than mis-place his notes and delete his recordings, not add to them and studiously avoid revealing the source of his information? And did not the name of the late Dr David Kelly only become public with Blair and Campbell under pressure? The passing of Dr Kelly has much more to do with the axis of Blair/Campbell than the journalistic integrity of Gilligan.
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73. threnodio
Didnt Tessa Jowell take that view, she left her family to spend more time with the government.
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When - prior to 1997 - Blair didn't really specify any policies but just waited for the demise of the Tory Government ,everyone accepted that situation with more or less equanimity.
Then with the accession we had the start of the ' Blair Rich Project' - ably abetting his wife with Human Rights legislation . He became paranoid and employed spin to doctor what was really happening . He mislead the country over Iraq , ignoring the wishes of over 2 million people who protested , and at the same time had a lead part in the tragic events of Dr. Kelly and the subsequent emasculation and muzzling of the BBC . The pronouncements by his press officers were quite rightly treated with contempt - they were just spin . Having made his money ( nice house - nice job with a bank) he quit - knowing the writing was on the wall .
Now we have Dave boy - he says nothing , propounds no policies and just waits - like a vulture - till the body is cold . Then he and his Chancellor in waiting George ( oh no not a repeat ) will step in - with what ?. Deja vu or what ?. Don't let the Blair fiasco happen again - ask him what he intends to do ....
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Gordon "International Statesman" Brown.........
So in recent weeks GB has achieved the following:
1. Ridiculed by Senator McCain
2. Snubbed by Hank Paulson
and now.....
Following the Labour conference speech, clips of Obama - a spokesman has issued a statement saying that Mr Obama was not endorsing the Prime Minister.
Charles-E-Hardwidge - this isn't the sign of a major strategic mind. Brown is limping from one international blunder to the next don't you think?
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The Americans get women politicians who can track and shoot moose.
We English get women politicians who look and sound like moose.
Oink, oink!
Ok, now I've got the sexist piggery out of the way, here is the serious bit for the one (my mum) who can be bothered to read further.
Our resident journalistic 'pointy-head' Dan Finklestein of the Times, saves us political amateurs a lot of hard thinking/learning curve time by explaining today that it is not the 'economy, stupid' this time around, that has 'pissed off' the people with the NL Government.
Finkelstein predicted in a paper a decade ago that ultimately, the electorate would get totally disillusioned with NL as they saw for themselves that the money extracted from their wages packets did not generate an equivalent improvement in public services.
I concurred with Finklesteins analysis because I clearly remember the Blair/Brown combo trumpeting about the money that they were going to put into public services back in 1997 and dully thinking 'yeah, hundreds of millions of pounds destined to go down the plug-hole'.
Which of course, is precisely what has happened, plus the long-term debts Blair/Brown have run up on things like PFI.
The people have twigged and the NL Government are now dead men/women walking.
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What a pity Hazel BLEARS didn't resign.
She epitomizes what is wrong with the Labour Party - total ignorance
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#74 Ilicipolero: As I said earlier, repeat the conspiracy theories often enough and some people will start to believe them. Have you read the Hutton evidence? - Oh!, I forgot, that didn't come up with the 'right' answer, so it was a whitewash, so you can safely ignore everything that was said. Of course.
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68 Jimbrant
New Labour's media machine was vicious.
Can I suggest you read an extract from Adam Boulton's forthcoming book "Tony's Ten Years: Memories of the Blair Administration"
When you read the following extract - put yourself in the Kelly families shoes - :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/sep/22/alistaircampbell.media
So the government were proved 'not guilty' - as it were - by Lord Hutton.
Having read this extract - do you think that the government / Campbell are likely to be entirely 'morally' in the right over the Kelly / Gilligan affair?
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Yes, the attack on Cameron was disgusting wasn't it?
I mean, it's not like that Conservative's would ever launch personal attacks is it?
Oh, wait! What's that?
Gideon "George" Osborne is the master of it.
Talking about his ability to recall obscure facts, a journalist jokily asked if he was "faintly autistic". To which the witty Gideon replied "We're not getting onto Gordon Brown yet" (BBC, 6th October)
"It's very difficult to have any kind of personal relationship with him...he has psychological flaws...he's just pretty unpleasant and brutal" - more observations than the delightful Gideon in an interview with the FT 2nd December 2005.
Gideon's best pal is also at it too.
"That strange man in Downing Street" - David Cameron, 23rd January 2008, interview with the Times
Conservative HQ also released a pamphlet stuffed full of very personal attacks on the PM on 21st June 2008 "Gordon Brown Annual Report". Required reading for anyone who wants to learn whether the Tories are still the "nasty party" that Teresa May admitted they were a few years ago.
6 main chapters - "Brown the Failure", "Brown the Incompetent", "Brown the Ditherer", "Brown the Opportunist", "Brown the Hypocrite" and "Jonah Brown". It could have been written by the most unhinged contributors to this website.
Highlights include claiming that it was Brown's fault that England lost the first game at New Wembley, it was Brown's fault that England lost the rugby union world cup final against South Africa, it was Brown's fault that Scotland lost a world cup qualifier at home to Italy, it was Brown's fault that Arsenal didn't win the Premier League last season and that it was Brown's fault that Rangers lost the UEFA cup final against St Petersberg.
Their picture gallery is also quite amusing, mocking Brown for being photographed looking like his hair is on fire from the Olympic Torch, and claiming that "he's been targeted by aliens from the planet orange". While in the same pamphlet crying about Labour's 'Tory Toff' Crewe by-election tactic without apparently appreciating the irony of this.
I could go on and on.
And that's without even going into their long track-record of nastiness (e.g. 'Demon Eyes' Tony in 1997, criticism of single mothers, 3 million unemployed and the decimation of British industry as a price worth paying for low inflation, skilled people out of work due to said Conservative policies are just lazy etc).
Yes, how dare Harriet Harman make such an attack on Cameron. You're quite right aren't you?
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I'll agree with one of of Crash Gordon's points...........yes his pretend Government si full of novices..............
Darling..........is he really a iron Chancellor who can give us confidence? No, he's just a quivering pip squeak when interviewed on the telly!
Miliband. Foreign Secretary??? He isn't in the league of Douglas Hurd or Robin Cook. He's just a university schoolboy who's never had a job in his life and has no chance of ever becoming PM. Crash should sack him!
Gruesome Kelly? What has she ever done for anyone? Total non-entity. Good riddance.
Purnell? Pointless man!
The list of duff Cabinet Ministers goes on and on!
Only Jack Straw is decent and even he can be a bit two faced!
So next week Crash Gordon should sack the entire Cabinet, then himself and then
CALL AN ELECTION!!!!!!!!!!
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the problem with the prime minister's speech was directed only to the conference, that means he was really aware of the craks within his party, so the british people have to wait till next year to hear Gordon brown policies to sort out the economic mess the country in.
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72. logica_sine_vanitate wrote:
I think, dylunydd, that you should be offended at Harriet Harman's appalling sexism.
Without writing a long condemnation of Harman because I think you have succeeded very well, I should like to add just one sentence.
Her treatment of men, and scorn of the role of husbands, is the reason Fathers For Justice regularly demonstrate against her.
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When the next election does finally take place, I'm guessing a Tory government, with LibDems in second. NLab will reform, refresh, come back as NNLab, the party of change, and with the Tories unable in the first year to rebalance the housing markets, the banking systems etc cos it will take more than a few years, we will hear that the Tories are failing the country... and on and on we go... The following 4 years after the election will be the best time ever for the LibDems to move into 2nd place on a more consistent basis/ticket, but at the end of 4/5 years we'll be back to stalemate all over again... In the meantime, we have to just look after each other as best we can (isn't it all we ever do?) and see that real life doesn't exist in politics, but outside of it, above it in fact... wkae up to the real world....
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#23 well put argument - even more of an eye opener, look up the "early 90s crash" and when lamont bought us out of the ERM - check out who said he was wrong to do that and was the only MP to want us to stay in it, despite the pound dropping through the floor and manufacturing industry being destroyed before our very eyes.... *cough* gordon *cough*
as for ruth kelly, i dont understand how you can be part of the cabinet that brings in a law that is opposite from your own personal view?
if i was in that position i wouldnt stay on for 6 months and bite my tongue, id be gone and away before you could say "alistair campbell reappears"
and how crass of brown and co to leak a cabinet reshuffle, do they have no scruples at all?
ruth kelly's taking 6 months to leave the government will surely result in her being given a peerage, and as for the response from her fellow labour MPs... pure spin.
ive watched 5 interviews on various channels and radio today, with different labour MPs and each one has used the term "tittle tattle" and "we had no idea"
theyve just spent 4 days sat next to the woman - amazing since glasgow east - alistair campbell keeps popping up and more than normal, things keep getting leaked...
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It's high time that Labour - movement, party, government, ideology, the lot - were consigned to the dustbin of history.
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82 balhamu
can some of us simply be disgusted at Harman's comments? not everybody is a tory and frankly i don't care if it was against cameron, clegg or the queen's pet corgi - in my book two wrongs don't make a right
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I haven't been following the debate over the last couple of days. As I said before I had to switch off during Gordon Brown's speech yesterday after my stomach involutarily emptied itself.
However, I echo the thoughts of #72 logica_sine_vanitate. Well said (or written) my boy!!
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There is also a big gap between the truth and the speculative reporting which you indulge in.I would suggest in future get the facts right before going into print
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Jimbrant
Following the Dr Kelly debate above:
A little bit more on the New Labour 'media machine'................
Are you watching Newsnight tonight? They are running a story on civil war between Labours more vicious media briefing operations.
..........ironic really. Labour lived by Spin and may well die by Spin.
It would be poetic if Labour's own media briefing operations finally knifed the party to death.
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Some research on "fixing the roof when the sun was shining" using the HMT Public Finances Databank.
Let's have a look at how the last Government fixed the roof (admittedly the sun didn't shine much, but that was largely a result of their economic policies designed to destroy manufacturing industry and turf people out of work)
Current Budget surplus 1979-1997: MINUS (yes, that's minus, as in negative, additional borrowing) £315.6 billion (2007/08 prices). An average current deficit (i.e. not paying for investment) of £16.6 billion.
Compare and contrast with this profligate Government, who's current surplus 1997-2008 is PLUS (yes, plus, as in a surplus) £2.8 billion. An average surplus of £0.3 billion per year.
The Conservatives were increasing the debt by £16.9 billion per year to pay for their current spending. That's what 'saving for a rainy day' means.
Let's try public sector net debt. First, let's try Mr U's definition - absolute debt (at 2007/08 prices).
Public sector net debt was £88.6 billion in 1978/79. By 1996/97, it stood at £348 billion. Yes, that's right. Conservatives saved for a rainy day by increasing the national debt fourfold.
Makes the Labour performance of only increasing debt by 50% almost prudent doesn't it? (£348 billion 96/97 to £529 billion 07/08, or £640 billion - 84% - taking Mr U's unreasonable assumptions on PFI as the truth)
I'll be more reasonable, and use an income basis (I know Mr U will disagree with me, but I'm only trying to help him prove his point).
Debt was 47.1% GDP in 1978/79, it decreased to 43.3% GDP in 1996/97. By 2007/08, Labour had increased it to 36.9% GDP. Or, hold on a minute. 36.9% is lower than 43.3% isn't it? Surely that's wrong? That's a decrease of 6.4% GDP. A bigger decrease in debt as % GDP in 11 years than the Conservatives managed in 19 years.
And that's even without thinking about the fact the coffers were boosted by £100 billion 1979-1997 from privatisation public corporations (at a discount to their friends in the City).
That's without thinking about the fact the coffers were boosted by the revenue from the mass sell-off of council houses in Right to Buy. 2.2 million homes sold at a discount of 50%. Can't find an estimate, but even assuming they were sold for £30,000 each (07/08 prices) that's another £66 billion boost to the state.
That's without thinking about the £135 billion proceeds of North Sea Oil, which was gushing in the early 80s (revenues were over 1% of GDP through 1979-1986 and reached almost 3% of GDP during this period).
Where did this £300 billion of selling off our assets and the benefits of the black gold under the North Sea go? Quite a lot of sun, £300 billion+ of additional one-off revenue. Surely the Conservatives would emerge looking rather tanned.
And what happened to investment? New school buildings - no. New hospitals - no. Better public services - no. Where did it go? Paying off the debt - no.
Into the pockets of the rich, to pay for the negative employment, sickness and social impacts of poverty-causing economic policy, that's where.
So, if this is what fixing the roof looks like, what Labour have done since 1997 is equivalent to building a whole new city.
What the Conservatives are currently claiming about 'Labour should have fixed the roof while the sun was shining' is completely ridiculous. They did. And they had no stash of gold under the cellar. They did not have the benefit of selling of the family silver. Yet they still managed to build a whole city, rather than deliberately putting holes into the roof as the 1979-1997, to borrow Gideon's metaphor.
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#80 Jimbrant
My previous offering at #74 is not incorrect, I stand by this and refute your argument.
Please forget urgently conspiracy theories, the facts are quite clear in my honest opinion. An decent family took his own life after people unknown made his name public.
My point, and I will defend it, is that between them Blair/Campbell have previous form, form that has continued with Blairs successor.
----
Is there any any heartfelt criticism of Blair, Brown and Labour in general, you will not vehemently defend, however spuriously?
----
At this point in time, my voting intentions are unclear, what is perfectly clear to me is that Gordon Brown and the majority of his cabinet colleagues affect adversely the lives of both me and my family in a completely avoidable fashion. Gordon Brown is duplicitous, untrustworthy, ineffective, disingenuous and not to be relied upon. His weasel words are simply the actions of a man determined at all costs to prolong his stay in power, a role he coveted for many years and is determined not to relinquish.
His determination to become Prime Minister is matched only by his reluctance to cede power. The only difference is, before assuming office his actions were covert and not visible, now he has achieved his long held ambition, his inadequacy is glaringly obvious. Take for example his conference speech, how many years too late again? on the back foot? reacting to circumstances rather than preventing them? transparent policy announcements? (to go with the lamentable energy announcements which were found wanting one day later).
I could go on, but I can visualise already the three lines you'll use to respond.
Gordon Brown is a pathological liar and will go down in history as one of the most woeful Prime Ministers ever to have held office.
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72 and 90
Although Harman's comments are clearly ridiculous - the most damning thing that can be said about them are that they are "witless".
Labour just having nothing constructive to say about the future direction of this country. Harman certainly doesn't.
Miliband has passed the banana-baton in the Labour relay race to political embarrassment and oblivion onto Harriet.
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93:
Good arguments. But how, exactly, do you explain away adding about 800,000 useless pen-pushers to the public sector payroll?
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Just watching the Daily Politics - so many Labour MP's have such low expectations of what they could and should have achieved over the last 11 years.
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#81 jonathan_cook: "Having read this extract - do you think that the government / Campbell are likely to be entirely 'morally' in the right over the Kelly / Gilligan affair?"
In any complex affair going on in real time, I doubt whether it is ever possible to be certain that any one individual involved was entirely in the right, morally or otherwise. However, I read the evidence to Hutton each day as it was published, and before he gave his judgement I had formed the view that there was practically no evidence whatever to support the lurid conspiracy theories that were doing the rounds. Of course, the press had formed their collective view before the Hutton evidence ever came out.
Before I retired I was the Personnel Director in a large organisation that employed a lot of people 'like' Kelly - indeed including him. Once the evidence had been completed I wrote to the MoD Personnel Director, who was being vilified in the press, to say how impressed I had been with how Kelly had been 'handled' - much better than I thought we would have done in the same circumstances, with the press pack ('the feral media', to quote somebody who had to put up with them as well) in pursuit of their story. Blair and Campbell were hardly involved - at a crucial point they had to decide whether to tell the truth or to lie if a reporter came up with Kelly's name, and in my view they did the right thing by deciding to confirm the truth. If they had not, one can imagine the shock/horror (real or imagined) of the media at the government cover-up.
I am not particularly influenced by Boulton's piece, though it is only an extract and there may be more in his book. I have read Cameron's diary extracts (not an easy read!), and I recognise some events seen from the 'other'side. Certainly Campbell gradually came to the view that most of the journalists he was dealing with (including Nick, Marr, and Boulton) were usually only interested in pursuing their own 'line' and not the truth, and were always looking for the sensational. I guess that like most situations, the 'truth' is somewhere in the middle.
But it is quite clear from the evidence that Gilligan was in this case incompetent, and probably not very honest. He was unprofessional in the extreme in giving away Susan Watts' source (who was also Kelly, though her version was nothing like as sensational). In the end, I think there are only two options: either Kelly embroidered his story when talking to Gilligan, and then lied to cover his tracks (the Walter Mitty possibility that the other Kelly was crucifed for mentioning); or that Gilligan sexed up what he was being told. Unfortunately we wll probably never know which is the right version, but there is circumstantial evidence on Kelly's side, and it is at least suspicious that the only hard evidence was held by Gilligan and he lost it. In any event, what enraged the government was that Gilligan accused them of deliberately twisting the intelligence, and of knowingly lying, not just getting the judgement wrong ; neither charge stands up, on the basis of the evidence we have.
So in respect of Kelly, I am reasonably satisfied that the government were neither morally nor in any other sense responsible for the tragic consequences. I am also reasonably satisfied, on the basis of the Hutton evidence, that Kelly thought the 'dossier' was generally (though not totally) an accurate representation of the intelligence, and that the action against Iraq was necessary and desirable.
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Daily Politics.............
Alan Johnson (I think) - on TV and proud that they have lowered MRSA death rates!
Then having having a go at the Conservatives because they haven't congratulated Labour for this MRSA reduction achievement - double laugh!!!
.........I wonder - could the reason for Labour's 'MRSA improvement' possibly be that less people are dying of MRSA because more people are dying from the more virulent and deadly Cdiff and don't get a chance to catch MRSA in the first place?
New Labour. New Cash. New Taxes. New Data. No effect.
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#94 Ilicipolero: "Is there any any heartfelt criticism of Blair, Brown and Labour in general, you will not vehemently defend, however spuriously?"
Yes, there is. However, my posts on here are usually in response to what I consider to be unfair and unsubstantiated criticisms, made with little reference to the evidence - as is usually the case with the Kelly/Iraq affair, where the criticism comes from the left as well as the right. I don't much care how heartfelt the criticisms are - if I think they fly in the face of reason and the evidence I will say so.
Since you ask, as an example I disagree violently with both Blair and Brown about faith schools. I don't think that taxpayers' money should be used to allow people to brainwash our children. I also am not much enamoured of Brown as PM, and I have said so several times on here.
Now turn your question around and tell me whether there is anything you would give that trio any credit for?
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98 Jimbrant
An interesting response..........
I think all parties share guilt in the Dr David Kelly's death.
I do agree that Gilligan was, at first a bit sloppy although when wiping data unprofessional. (But I also think he had the gist of the story about 98% bang on).
Blair - I absolve him. He was really, really stupid to get into the war on questionable grounds - but I don't think he had much impact on Kelly.
Campbell - well - he is a bully boy and he got worse the longer he was (in power!?) in situ. I think he lost it - in many respects - and whipped up the media storm which eventually claimed Kelly.
Campbells obsession with beating the media and especially beating Gilligan and the BBC caused the maelstrom which killed Kelly.
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#68 jimbrant
"Yes, the truth is a wearisome technicality at times is it not? Still, given time and sufficient repetition of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories history can always be revisited, revised, and rewritten. Especially if the reporter has conveniently lost his notes and wiped his recorder."
Forget partyorientations.
I read the Hutton and Butler reports.
Hutton seemed to feel that it was legitimate for Government to manage the emphasis of evidence delivered by the security services. I wouldn't argue with that.
He didn't express shock and horror that a big chunk of material was extracted from a student's thesis.
He didn't recognise that the most compelling "evidence" was from a single source, already discounted by Scarlett's men.
He didn't seem to feel that stressing a "45 minute response" was tendentious, regardless of whether it applied to battle-field (i.e. short-range) weapons or long-distance weapons.
Hutton never conducted an inquest. That was way beyond his terms of reference. He certainly didn't investigate some areas that a half-way decent coroner would have.
(There was little evidence that Dr Kelly's blood-loss at the site should have resulted in death. There was no exploration of the change in position of the body reported between the time when Kelly was found and the "official" recordings. There was no demand for the identification of the 3rd person reported by the original witnesses, but not revealed at the inquiry. There was no detailed forensic challange about the apparent level of drugs ingested compared with those apparently missing.)
Hutton was supposed to inquire into the crcumstances of Dr Kelly's death - NOT conduct an inquest.
Yet no formal inquest was carried out. Why?
Butler was too soft. He subsequently said (in effect) he assumed that the content of his report would make honourable men fall on their swords.
What we got was a swaggering Al Campbell and a relieved Blair.
What we got was a bunch of craven governors of the BBC asking Chairman (Gavin Davies - a Labour man) and DG (Dyke - another Labour man) to accept being hounded from office.
I was all in favour of the US/UK forces toppling Saddam after his Kuwait invasion. Was quite happy to see him taken out at any time.
What I never, ever, wanted was a government that could build so much tripe into a justification for war.
How do you think Mrs Kelly feels, now that Tony's strutting the world on his Blair Rich project?
And who paid for the carnage. (But not enough to protect our troops...)
It's not about parties. It's about principle.
Guess we've lost most of the politicians driven by that simple imperative.
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jimbrant
Blair/Brown/Labour
Whatever affiliation you may have, there comes a time when that "Oh God, let there be someone else" moment occurs.
There seemed to be some energy in 1997.
I liked Brown's "prudence" when he started. No idea whether that was a Blair/Brown or simply a Gordon position.
I liked the idea of improving NHS delivery. And education standards being lifted. And getting tough on crime (and even getting tough on the causes of crime - although I've still not worked out what that means).
It's not the objectives I look at with governments - it's the delivery.
Brown was on about extending patient access to GPs. HE allowed some stupid deals to be done which allowed GPs to contract services with a pay rise. Then preening because (with extra pay) they would stay open later...
Education was the mantra. We still have a very large percentage of children who are functionally illiterate and innumerate.
Loads of money has gone in, but people who can't spell.
And they still listen to idiots who believe we shouldn't worry too much about whether children spell "there" as their or they're. The sort of dummies who have never tried to sit down and negotiate a contract with foreigners who have a better grasp of the complete structure of English than most English people.
Haven't you noticed that many of the overseas footballers rapidly speak more grammatically correct English than our local stars?
Guess I was very willing to see a change of pace in the UK. After a decade, it's changed. We've got more complacent, slower to pick up on ideas, burdened with laws and regulations, deprived of decent private pensions.
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The country's in s__t creek without a paddle after 11 years of incompetent labour mis-management. The good years were apparently all due to Gordo's stewardship (... in fact economies throughout the world prospered) but now it's all gone 'pear shaped' it's got absolutely nothing to do with him ... it's a global problem! Truly Gordo is totally out of his depth and it's clear that 'prudence' was nothing more than a fantasy. Still, Gordo's had a peck on the cheek from the missus and given a speech where he's muttered something about 'hard-working families' blah blah, fairness, blah blah, NHS, dodgy eye, blah blah. .... So. all better then!
Personally, I think there's something not quite right about him!
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#96 FriendlyCard (are you from Woking btw)
I think the number of people employed by the public sector is irrelevant to the debate on 'fixing the roof'. What we are interested in is surely whether the Government raised taxes enough to pay for this additional subject.
The issue of what happened to the additional spending is a valid one though - was there really an addition of "800,000 useless pen-pushers"? Are your figures based on total increase in public sector employment, or do they include some better definition of a "useless pen-pusher" that excludes front-line workers?
Unfortunately I can only find stats for 1999-2006. But, looking at trends in this.
In 1997, there were a total of 5.174 million public sector workers. This has increased 5.839 million in 2006, an increase of 665,000. The proportion of the workforce employed in the public sector rose from 19.5% to 20.2% (in the same period, private sector employment rose from 21.336 million to 23.125 million, an increase of 1.789 million.
However, not all of these are in the administrative/managerial parts of the civil service. Many are front-line workers - police, teachers, teaching assistants, nurses, doctors. We need to correct for this. I won't question your judgement that management and administration is "useless", and will assume you are correct (a very traditionally British approach to management).
The most recent statistics says there are 500,000 full-time equivalent Civil Servants, which has increased from a low of 479,000 in 1999 (civilservant.org.uk). The latter figure excludes casual and temporary workers, so the 1999 figure is biased downwards. This includes the central civil service and associated NDPBs (quangos), so an increase of 21,000 in this area of the public sector. These are typical "useless pen-pushers" to use the right-wing lingo.
Between 1999 and 2006:
HM Forces employment - decrease from 219,000 to 204,000.
Police - increase from 230,000 to 277,000.
Public administration (could be managers/useless pen-pushers) - increase from 1.124 million to 1.246 million
Education - increase from 1.14 million to 1.396 million
NHS - increase from 1.19 million to 1.546 million
I guess I'm not counting "useless pen-pushers"/managers within the police/NHS/education/army. But statistics on these will take a lot longer to find.
But on the face of it, the number of "pen pushers" does not appear to have risen by anything like 800,000 (which exceeds the total rise in public sector employment).
Happy to be corrected though.
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"80. At 9:52pm on 24 Sep 2008, jimbrant wrote:
#74 Ilicipolero: As I said earlier, repeat the conspiracy theories often enough and some people will start to believe them. Have you read the Hutton evidence? - Oh!, I forgot, that didn't come up with the 'right' answer, so it was a whitewash, so you can safely ignore everything that was said. Of course
Jimbrant, you have forgottten (or ignored)
several things..Firstly Hutton's remit was purposely extremely narrow....A proper Coroner's Inquest would have been much more thorough. Not all evidence was called. First on scene paramedics stated the position of th body was entirely different from that reported. Medical experts said severing the Ulna Artery would be very difficult and would not lead to sufficient blood loss to be fatal..(and again the paramedics reported very little blood)
Medical experts also said that not enough Coproximal had been taken to cause death.
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"88. Friendlycard
"It's high time that Labour - movement, party, government, ideology, the lot - were consigned to the dustbin of history."
Just one problem Friendlycard...NuLab have stopped emptying the bins
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I do find it difficult to believe people , who challenge the education services, especially when "A" level results increase year after year under the current government.
I guess that it not about delivering for some, its all about personal gripes, whether it be pensions or house prices.
It is very strange ,how people will conspire, twist and turn the truth for their own advantge.
Take the NHS such a fantastic service, why would anybody want to see it fail, why would anybody want to cut back on the NHS.
Is it not a good thing that Robin Cook secured the right of parliament to vote on any future war.
Is it not a good thing the Britain,is able to be competetive in the energy market.
There has also been a dramatic increase in school leavers that have gained another language.
(french, german to name two)
I guess that the biggest hurdle for some-people to over-come is their responsibility to society as members and not just individuals out to satisfy their own greed.
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# 108 derekbarker
"Take the NHS such a fantastic service, why would anybody want to see it fail, why would anybody want to cut back on the NHS"
It's one of the myths that Labour puts about that only they care about the NHS. In fact, all parties care about it. Where we disagree is how best to support it.
It is as you say "a fantastic service" but standards have been slipping - largely due to too many managers, too many pen-pushers, but not enough people with mops and disinfectant. The staff do a great job, but there is institutional mismanagement.
I think Brown's decision for free prescriptions for cancer patients is really just a gimmick. This will cost a lot to the service but will do nothing to help people with other life-threatening diseases.
For example, it's a national disgrace that NICE has stopped people with Alzheimer's having medication at an early stage. The drugs only slow down the progression, and are not a cure. That is why they must be started as soon as possible. But this government has decreed you can only have the medication once symptoms have deteriorated significantly.
What a shambles...
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If this is a recovery, it'll be the shortest one in history. Brown said nothing in his speech that would have made much impact outside of the conference hall. The bubble will burst (it is already starting to) and it will be business as usual. All this conference has done is buy him a little time, which is excellent news for the Conservative party as their strategy will work best with Brown in charge. He'll continue to lurch from crisis to crisis, he doesn't know any other way.
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105: Balhamu
You make some good points which I will endeavour to answer later.
But could I ask two questions please?
First, are you including local authorities in your figures?
Second, you ask if I am from Woking. No. In fact, I don't think that I've ever even been there. But, if I was from Woking, what is the point? Is there something wrong with the place?
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#39 jimbradnt
As per usual for a newlabour apologist you easily confuse numbers with political persausion.
Who cares what Darwall's political persuasions are? I was talking about the bald fact of the matter that real incime growth under newlabour has been negligibe and illusory. There was simply an abundance of cheap credit waved through by Brown under a lax regulatory system.
Dountess there will b no response to this post as newlabour don't seem to like ti when you present them with the real numbers about the failure of their eleven year social engineering experiment.
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Morning all,
Couple more useful words, along with definition. Please ignore if not relevant to you.
Arrogant
1. making claims or pretensions to superior importance or rights; overbearingly assuming; insolently proud: an arrogant supporter of the Conservative Party
2. characterized by or proceeding from arrogance: arrogant claims.
Ignorant
1. lacking in knowledge or training; unlearned: an ignorant man, often a Tory
2. lacking knowledge or information as to a particular subject or fact: ignorant of quantum physics, or of basic economics
3. uninformed; unaware.
4. due to or showing lack of knowledge or training: an ignorant statement.
Cheers.
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Harriet Harman
She's the kind of woman your father used to warn you about, he said. She'll promise you the world.
But if she ever got her wicked way with you - in the ballot box - your wallet will always be empty.
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Harriet Harman is a pathetically transparent and a crude user of airtime to try to make something stick. her "something not quite right..." quote trys and fails to "do a Widdecombe".
She is naive, old-fashioned, tactical, superficial and a bore.
Harriet, get some ideas of your own, learn to connect with people not patronise them and grow-up!!
You add nothing to the debate.
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It'll take a few days for the dust to settle, but after a while people will see through the shallow lies and the superficial "fixes" that Brown's on about.
It'll be like the 10% tax rate doubling all over again (or like when he lied to pensioners about their energy rebates).
The media will go through the small print and people will then find out the truth behind the lies, and then labour will be in an even worse position than they were before their conference.
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Well it looks like another wheel has fallen of Browns tractor, again.
Well one thing you cant accuse Brown of is inconsistency. Yep one screw up follows the previous one.
Many people are beginning to wonder if he will ever get his re-launch in, before time is called in 2010.
Only 6 weeks to Glenrothes - Bring it on. That is unless Crash Gordon bottles it.
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#111
Yes, local authorities are included in the figures for the total number of public sector workers.
To break it down further, in 1997, there were 2.728 million people employed by local government versus 2.940 million people in 2006 (an increase of 212,000).
However, it's difficult to know who these are (pen-pushers/managers/support or front-line workers). Many local authorities continue to produce their own services (e.g. Highways services, social care etc) - though you could argue a misleading picture is painted in the whole statistics anyway (e.g. rubbish collection is really a Government service, even if it is all contracted out to the private sector now).
re Woking - Woking FCs nickname is "The Cards".
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#109
Distant Traveller, Its no myth, its a fact that the tories ran the NHS into the ground through out the 80's and 90's.
There are many new drugs on the market ,for all kinds of illnesses, however the drug companies like Glaxosmithkline charge extortionate prices for them, this is a major factor in the distributions of these drugs.
Are you saying that the tories would allow everyone with an illness access to new drugs?(I think not)
The tories by nature, seek to privatise (yes)
Why cant you accept that the NHS is only safe under a labour government...."FACT"
Now! if you want to argue the case against
ID cards, then I would support you there, I don't see a need for them and the cost...well..thats just plain stupid.
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Depressed sigh.....................
They are relaunching ID Cards today:
http://www.itv.com/News/Articles/Smith-to-unveil-ID-card-design-647080039.html
..... the huge expense.........
..... the utter futility of an easily forged and manipulated system...........
...... infringements on liberty for the law abiding masses.........
.... Labour politicians without their finger on the countries pulse and barking up the wrong tree.......
This government is sooooooooooooooo depressing!!!!!
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Current Budget surplus 1979-1997: MINUS (yes, that's minus, as in negative, additional borrowing) ?315.6 billion (2007/08 prices). An average current deficit (i.e. not paying for investment) of ?16.6 billion.
Compare and contrast with this profligate Government, who's current surplus 1997-2008 is PLUS (yes, plus, as in a surplus) ?2.8 billion. An average surplus of ?0.3 billion per year.
S'cuse me? S'cuse me? You're trying to claim that this government between 1997 and 2008 has an annual current budget surplus of 0.3bn a year?
What on earth are you talking about? In 1997 the total national debt was 350bn. Now, with PFI it is reckoned to be 660bn and rising. It will have doubled by March.
But working with 660-350 = 310 and dividing by 11 I make that oooooh a deficit of 28bn a year.
This government squanders 28bn a year more than this economy generates in taxes. Which, funnily enough is almost covers the interest on their increasing national debt. SO when Gordie gets up every year as he used to and goes on about '35bn investment in infrastructure' what he really means is 'interest payments on our enourmous national debt'.
To claim a 'surplus' is disingenuity of the sort that we have come to expect from the squanderer's apologists.
How they summon up the bare-faced gall to tell such porkies is a mystery. I guess after eleven years being shielded from even the concept of 'truth' it comes easy to some.
Prudent?
I feel sick that there are still people who will, with a clear conscience, peddle such misinformation.
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The boy Balham @ 105
Holy smoke batman, why don't you bust out the Gulag and stop messin' with the poor little factoids? It just won't wash, my friend. It won't wash however much you tell it where the shower is. C'mon daddio, I know that, you know that, everyone with a sliver in the skull knows that.
So let's all up our game. Yeah, that's "up" and that's "game". Let's see the back of this larcenating, discombobulised, sad sack of spuds that calls itself a government.
Geddit now?
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I do find it difficult to believe people , who challenge the education services, especially when "A" level results increase year after year under the current government.
I could 'improve' the 'A' level results the same way this government does and it wouldn't need a new glass and steel building to do it in either.
Here class, take this 'assignment' home, download a pat answer from the internet, print it off and hand it in and I'll give you an 'A'. Oh, and if you accidently download the wrong answer you can go back home and resubmit the right one next week. Repeat for 18 months et voila 50% of your 'exam' in the bag from 'continuous assessment' before you enter the 'exam' room. And no motivation at all for any teacher to mark other than generously on the 'up' side. Their 'performance' being judged by how 'well' their students perform.
It wouldn't make the students any cleverer and it wouldn't fool anybody either but then neither do the 'improved' 'A' level results that we've paid a fortune for. Because that is exactly how such 'improvement' has been achieved.
They're becoming so discredited that the private schools are increasingly moving towards the International Bacchalaureate in order to distinguish real achievement from comedy pieces of paper.
The state schools pupils on the other hand are stuck with their discredited government-mandated sheaves of paper.
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Mr U,
Your contributions amuse me with their lack of financial knowledge.
Accountancy 101 - the difference between the current budget and the capital budget:
Current budget:
The current surplus is the difference between tax revenue and things the Government consumes - for example, unemployment and sickness benefits, the salaries of public sector workers, drugs on the NHS etc
Capital budget:
The difference between the total investment made by Government (e.g. new roads, new schools, new hospitals) and depreciation of assets.
So, the Government has had a current surplus of £0.3 billion per year.
But you're right - the Government has been investing heavily in capital such as new schools and hospitals. There was a lot of catching up to do after the 1980s and 1990s. It has made no secret of this.
And it has managed to do this while decreasing debt as a % of GDP.
I see you are still using your absolute debt figures (really, it is laughable).
I take it the Conservatives are going to follow your advice and introduce an absolute ceiling on mortgage lending of £30,000 for everyone regardless of income? And you will be castigating the US - they have a far bigger debt than the UK - at least £5 trillion. That's over 5-6 times our debt.
And you accept that the Conservatives increased debt fourfold in 19 years, while Labour only increased in by 50% (or 84% if we use your favoured dodgy PFI figures) over 11 years?
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The Dilbert cartoon in today's Computer Weekly seems strangely relevant:
BOSS: A business magazine is sending a reporter to interview me.
DILBERT: You?
BOSS: They want to learn best management practices.
DILBERT: That's a little like milking a squirrel because you need butter.
BOSS (thinking to self): I don't know what that meant, but I like the way it sounded.
REPORTER: Describe your day.
BOSS: Well, let me tell you...
BOSS: Sometimes you milk the squirrel, and sometimes the squirrel milks you.
DILBERT (Reading from the published article): "He is like a Zen Master. His words are peppered with squirrel-related wisdom".
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#122
Yes, looking at the facts is somewhat inconvenient for your flawed arguments isn't it?
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#109
Distant Traveller, Its no myth, its a fact that the tories ran the NHS into the ground through out the 80's and 90's.
It is a complete myth.
The fact is that with all the squillions squandered so that Gordon Brown et al could give it 'This year I have 'invested' umpty billion in the NHS...blah....blah...' productivity has gone down.
The corpulent NHS has simply swallowed all the cash and gone to seed. All the money has simply gone on doctors SunSail holidays in Antigua and hospital administraters Buy-to-Let empires and reserved car-parking spaces. A fair few billion has gone to Bovis and Tarmac but that's been hidden off-balance sheet while 'Enron' Brown and his 'little helpers' mess with the figures.
The fact is of the 300bn plus of extra cash just about every single penny has been wasted. It had got to the point where the projected borrowing (about to be blown out of the water by 'events') was just about enough to cover the interest on our insanely spiralling national debt.
Ten years of sunshine and this government took out a loan and lay on the beach boozing. Now it's raining and they're trying to kid on it's all the yanks fault.
What a bunch of comedians eh.
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Conference over, SO its back to the bunker then
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118:
Thanks. You make some good points, and I am not going to take issue over your numbers, which look OK. But there are some points that I would make here.
I would point out that there has been a lot of out-sourcing, and that there have been significant reductions in some front-line services (across a gamut of areas from waste collection to defence). By this means, the bureaucratic proportion of total government employment has increased; for these reasons, it is at least arguable that most of the net increase in government employment has been bureaucracy rather than front-line services. So bureaucracy as a percentage of the total has increased, though government is less than transparent on this subject.
It is not my point that Labour, uniquely, has presided over an unprecedented expansion in pen-pushing. I think that, with a few periods of exception, this has been a post-war trend, which has continued under Labour and Conservatives alike. The early 1990s were a bad period in terms of bureaucratic expansion; Labour has simply presided over a continuation of this.
Neither do I particularly blame politicians; I think that the driving factor here has been empire-building (and empire maintaining) by the self-perpetuating permanent establishment. Parkinson's Law explains this dynamic very well.
In an age of IT, the bureaucracy should be reducing in size, not increasing. In the past, big industrial enterprises employed hordes of clerks, which have since been replaced by computers. Government should have followed this path, but its use of IT is shambolic. Government seems to want IT to fail.
I do dislike the way in which public sector unions try to pretend that all of their members are nurses, teachers, dinner-ladies and other valued service-providers; they also represent armies of pen-pushers, but try to hide this fact.
My main concerns are three-fold. First, the self-perpetuating bureaucracy takes funds away from front-line services - to give just one example, most people would rather see the NHS provide more doctors, not more 'practice managers'.
Second, I am concerned about the tax/cost burden on working people on low incomes; they are struggling with a sharp increase in the cost of living, so even a few hundred pounds per person saved from wasteful bureaucracy could really help.
Third, bureaucracy makes work for itself; the result is a steadily increasing burden of regulation and interference on individuals and businesses. This is bad news in a globally competitive economy.
The global (and domestic) economic situation is grim, and the world is an increasingly competitive global market. Our huge expenditure on bureaucracy is a competitive own-goal. We need to be more efficient. Market forces compel companies to reduce their bureaucratic overhead; government needs to do the same.
Finally, thank you for the explanation re. Woking. Not having been there, I did not know the local football club's nickname.
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Unfortunately I can only find stats for 1999-2006. But, looking at trends in this.
Yeah. Winston Smith has been very thorough.
In 1997, there were a total of 5.174 million public sector workers. This has increased 5.839 million in 2006, an increase of 665,000.
2/3 of a million. Gosh, weren't the class of 2001 the lucky ones. All that 'education, education and education' sure worked out for them right on cue. Comedy 'A' levels, comedy degree and wallop, mass recruitment drive to hide even more from the dole queue. Years from now they'll be the British Leyland workers of their generation. Holding a copper-plated pension and guaranteed annual increment job at the council/hospital/school open for when their kid leaves school. Mind you, by then they'll be leaving nursery with 'A' Levels.
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#120
Jonathan, foreign nationals, first for ID cards
(the tories would do the exact same thing)
So why to you go straight, into a tribal response.
There are somethings that can be challenged by the public without reverting to political allegiances.
There is no point in barking, when the opposition would do the same thing.
Why dont you encourage this blog to start a petition against ID cards for British citizens.
Would you consider that...more constructive
than....a tribal attack?
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28.
Astonishing - Gordon just talks down Adam Boulton, refusing to even acknowledge he took Osbournes words out of context.
Mendacious, evasive, and downright dishonest.
And it's obvious to everyone who watches it.
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126. At 09:34am on 25 Sep 2008, balhamu wrote:
#122
Yes, looking at the facts is somewhat inconvenient for your flawed arguments isn't it?
You want to be careful about how you present your 'facts' dear boy. As I've pointed out, a 310bn increase in national debt does not equate to a an annual surplus no matter how many iterations of Brownian economics you apply.
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#127
Why are you in denial of the NHS,
clearly you were not about under the last tory admin.
Not even the tories dispute, what labour has done for the NHS.
If you have private health care, then say so, dont try and dictate to others who know better.
Go to any web-site about NHS services and see the vast improvements in staff, hospitals and general care.
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"Spend time with her family"
I'd expect a little more imagination. Actually, thinking about it probably not in this case.
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I.D. Cards for foriegn nationals.
What a complete waste of money.
Foreign Nationals need a Passport to get into the country so there is NO need for an I.D. card
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And you will be castigating the US - they have a far bigger debt than the UK - at least ?5 trillion. That's over 5-6 times our debt.
The yanks can go to blazes. I don't live there. Their debts aren't mine. Their debts are their business. It's the debts that I'm on the hook for that concern me.
I see you are still using your absolute debt figures (really, it is laughable).
Wasn't such a laugh for Labour apologists in 1997....
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. We will work in partnership with the private sector to achieve our goals. We will ask about public spending the first question that a manager in any company would ask - can existing resources be used more effectively to meet our priorities? And because efficiency and value for money are central, ministers will be required to save before they spend.
Save to invest is our approach, not tax and spend.
Eleven years later and you're all spinning like mad about 'percentage of GDP'. And look how much the yanks spend. Look over there. Don't look at what we're doing/have done.
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I have some questions for Nick and anyone else out there:
GB has come out with a raft of promises lately - free this, free that, free broadband for kids, more competitive sport for kids, blah blah blah. I expected a lot of promises, but more policy rather than handouts.
Do we think that any of this will become reality (how will it all be paid for)?
Is the voting public intelligent enough to recognise vote buying, and if so are they stupid enough to let it sway them?
Does the fact that almost all of these new ideas give money (directly or indirectly) to parents amount to an additional tax on those who have chosen not to (or cannot) procreate? There aren't many of us, but we seem to constantly subsidise the breeding population.
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I.D. Cards for foriegn nationals.
Tut tut. That's to appeal to the Daily Mail readers and the Mirror readers. One lot will countenance anything as long as it's targetted against immigrants. The other lot will countenance anything if it stops 'immigrants' coming over here taking all 'our' jobs. Not that they've ever worked in their life mind you. There's always some immigrant, somewhere, who took 'their' job.
What neither of them realise is that it's just a 'softner up' and a way of getting the systems up and running by practising on the marginalised 'immigrants'. Only a few years now before you'll become familiar with the phrase 'papers please' from police, binmen, social workers, doctors etc.
And we're being sleep-walked into this. Where was the avalanche of Labour MPs resigning to show solidarity with David Davies? Not a one. Too stupid to realise what was happening or too frightened of losing 18 months extra pay and pension contributions to show any principle at all.
The road ahead is all too predictable. Soon it will be 'Service equals Citizenship'. It'll be like 'Starship Troopers' but without the shower scene.
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#133
You continue to show your lack of financial intelligence. You're making a fool of yourself.
I note that you do not comment in any of your replies on the extent of 'fixing the roof' that the Conservatives engaged when they were last in power, nor do you explain why they let £300 billion of one-off windfalls somehow slip through their fingers. Why was there even a national debt in 1997 when there was this stash of gold?
You don't understand the difference between spending and investment.
Follow your diagnosis and don't invest. See what happens then. Old, crumbling and unsafe schools and hospitals, not suited to education in a modern world. Crumbling roads. 5 buckets in every classroom. Outdated equipment in every hospital. Could be a vote-winner for the Conservatives, no?
And anyway, part of the reason why Labour got voted in 3 times is because the public made the opposite choice to the one you would.
You have quite a ridiculous view that the absolute level of debt is somehow important. At the personal level, as I have clearly shown, this is self-evidently a laughable proposition.
Whether debt is unaffordable depends on a country's ability to pay it off - i.e. its income.
It also depends on the % of income taken up by repayments - smaller now than it was in 1997.
re public sector workers
I've demonstrated that the central civil service (i.e. Whitehall departments, their regional offices and quangos) has remained basically static. Local Government employment has risen by a couple of hundred thousand (though many of these will work on the front-line). The number of front-line staff has increased massively.
And again, the public had a choice between what has happened and your view at 3 elections, and decisively chose what happened.
It would be interesting to compare the % of management/support/back office staff in the private sector versus the public secto, as I'm fairly sure this will not support your argument that all civil servants are pen-pushers. I'll try and find some research for you.
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138:
I am not too surprised that GB is promising various hand-outs; it's what politicians tend to do at difficult times.
The scary point is that the government may be in a paralysed, "rabbit in the headlines" state over public finances.
With the public deficit at, say, GBP 30 bn, government is relatively careful with money; with the deficit heading for, say, GBP 90bn, could the thinking be "what does GBP 1 bn matter either way in this context? Is a deficit of GBP 91 bn much worse than a deficit of GBP90bn?"
It's a scary thought.
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#100 jimbrant
Good morning,
The list of Labour's achievements versus failures, in my honest opinion is somewhat lop-sided, we don't need to discuss areas where they have been found wanting, most anti Gordon Brown contributors here have voiced their differing, albeit similar opinions (does that make sense?), some very articulate others not quite so. Know idea which category I fall into, you decide.
To respond to your point regarding achievments, I would broadly agree with the introduction of the National Minimum Wage, and an independant Bank of England. Having said that, correct me if I am wrong, does not the Monetary Policy Comittee include a Treasury official? I have recently begun to wonder about the impartiality of of the BoE though.
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141. Friendlycard
A scary thought... commme on... youre to kind.
Wealth creation is down, tax revenue is down and will drop massively over the next 2 years.
This is not a time for giveaways from lame PM to placate the people.
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re: 139 U9461192
"Service equals Citizenship"
Already in-hand; Brown's introducing "compulsory voluntary" work for all non-eu foreign nationals as a pre-requisite to getting their visa.
(hence my accusations of slavery that I've posted loads of times before)
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Good comments earlier about how the rise in public sector workers is because of empire building by middle managers. There's a classic episode of Yes Minister in which Hacker asks for 400 jobs to be cut from the Department to save money, Sir Humphrey agrees to do this. A few days later Hacker discovers that the Department has taken on an extra 400 staff and he confronts Sir Humphrey about it. His reply is along the lines of "In order to identify 400 positions to to be axed it was necessary to conduct a review, and in order to conduct the review it was necessary to take on 400 staff!"
Believe me, it is exactly like that in the public sector!
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Why are you in denial of the NHS,
clearly you were not about under the last tory admin.
Oh yes I was. I'm old enough to remember when you could get an NHS dentist. Under the Tories.
Now even my kids can't get an NHS dentist. Even Von Braun had to go private for his dental care after almost a decade of 'investment in infrastructure'.
There was nothing at all wrong with the NHS during the Thatcher years. Same as today, emergency treatment is/was excellent and if you wanted an operation you simply needed a decent GP to have a word with his mate who he was at medical school with. Or pay 100 quid and get a referral via BUPA.
What we have is billions set up administering the waiting list for the waiting list for the waiting list. In this way true waiting times for 'key' target operations are 'improved' but overall waiting times for operations has actually got worse. The hospitals, like the schools are simply rigging their internal systems to deliver, on paper, what the government ordains. Just like the 'improved' A-level results - it is all rigged. The NHS is no better but Bovis and Tarmac have made hay building massively over-priced concrete and steel monuments negotiated by teams of government comedians who haven't a clue about the value of (other peoples) money.
Meanwhile we've levelled masses of Victorian hospitals because they didn't suit the soviet-style symbolism of Nu-Labour. Nothing wrong with them at all that a few million each in double-glazing and heating plus a new roof wouldn't have sorted out. But no. Not good enough. More concrete and steel. A monument to Nu Labour. Their glass and steel vision stamped on the landscape in perpetuity. Or until the 25 year PFI contract runs out and the cheap roof caves in. Take your pick.
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#137
So I can't look at the actual facts because the Labour Party (which I have no connection with) span the figures your way in 1997?
I think they perhaps should have added that the economy did not double in size under John Major and that there was little public investment either. Perhaps they made these points elsewhere?
And, unless I am misunderstanding, the Government set a debt ceiling of 40% of GDP did they not - and did not commit to maintaining debt at e.g. £300 billion for ever.
Are the Conservatives going to commit to a flat (or decreasing) cash target for the level of debt?
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133
You continue to show your lack of financial intelligence. You're making a fool of yourself.
It is you and your apologists with your tenuous grasp of economics who are making fools of yourself. Instead of just printing off that garbage handed to you by Labour Central you might want to stop and think about the rubbish you parrot.
Do you know how much I owe? Do you know how much my mortgage is? Nil. Not a penny. Zilch.
While the sun was shining I not only fixed the roof but bought the place outright. I then proceeded to save and save and save. Now I'm sitting here posting this not because I'm skiving at work or a paid apparatchik but because I no longer need to work. Been like that since I was 35. Fantastic.
Lack of financial knowledge? If only Gordon Brown had my 'lack' of financial knowledge. We'd all be in clover.
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Re 105
You quote a rise of staff from 1.19 mill to 1.546mill, in the NHS, which sounds wonderful, why then are we still short of Doctors, nurses, midwives etc.
Still have dirty wards that kill more people than the roads
The labour party still equates success in the public service purely by the number of staff it has, the amount of money its spends and buildings it constructs.
Yet an NHS that employs 1.5 million on the budget we have is unsustainable.
The amount spent on wages, buildings and IT doesn't leave enough money left over to use the staff and buildings effectively
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#146
Clearly you were not around.
It was the tories that introduced the strict payment methods of Dentists.
Thatcher reduced hospital services up and down the entire country...fact.
They ran down every NHS service, in favour of propping up the private sector..fact .
You do not understand your own party never mind any other one.
The tories favour tax cuts...which means..monies from the budgets of public services....there is no hidden clause...that a fact.
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#148
No further comments needed......
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#137
So I can't look at the actual facts because the Labour Party (which I have no connection with) span the figures your way in 1997?
If you have no connection with the Labour Party then you do a jolly good line on trotting out their misinformation verbatim. I'm simply using Labour 'facts' to bat away New Labour 'facts'.
I think one thing we can surely agree on is that this government has precided over unparalleled personal and governmental borrowing. That the 'miracle' economy of the past decade was in fact one perched on a mountain of consumer and government debt and that now we can no longer borrow money (Cos, according to Labour 'IT'S ALL THE YANKS FAULT THEY WON'T LET US BORROW ANY MORE MONEY') then this pathetic excuse for an economy is totally in the toilet.
And all this happened on Brown's watch. He said he was 'investing in infrastructure' but all he was doing was spending a fortune building glass and steel fixtures. We didn't actually get any transport infrastructure or anything at all that would enable British industry to rejuvinate. He handed out comedy 'A' levels to create a generation of functionnaires, box-tickers and call-centre operatives but we've lost over a million jobs in manufacturing since 1997.
We make practically nothing. We build glass and steel monuments to nu-Labour vanity and we buy and sell over-priced boxes to/from each other, all with borrowed money, and we kid ourselves that we have a 'miracle' economy.
Now we can't borrow any more money the wheels have come off the 'miracle' economy. Who does Gordon blame? The yanks. Because we can't borrow any more money.
Stop borrowing Gordon. It was borrowing that got us into this mess. Start saving. Start living within your means. Borrowing for a lifestyle we as a nation or we as individuals cannot afford willnot make us happy. Being content with living within our means will make us happy.
Stop borrowing. We should be thanking the yanks for breaking this cycle of binge-borrowing. Maybe now we can get back to assessing our priorities instead of trying to 'have it all' on the never never.
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#149 cobber 150
You must realise that a large percentage of the budget must go towards clipboard holders, and of course the clipboards. Then, rather than qualified nurses, a large proportion of nursing assistants, with at the most NVQs, health assistants, admin staff, and that all takes money. Lastly, and not least, we must included the experts, the consultants, NO NOT MEDICAL, but business ones, and the money paid to the contracting companies which these consultants employ to do the cleaning, which is bought expensively, yet which the cleaners receive so little of.
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The tories favour tax cuts...which means..monies from the budgets of public services....there is no hidden clause...that a fact.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Time for that 1997 Labour manifesto again....
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.
.....
New Labour will be wise spenders, not big spenders.
Seems to dispel this notion that more spending = better service. And by extension that less spending = worse service.
I could save this government a fortune. I'd fire entire departments as utterly superfluous. And I'd improve productivity in the remainder too. Wouldn't cost a cent. Well, maybe a one-off in redundancy payments but over the budget year not a cent.
What do we need TV licencing for? Really? Now that we've computerised all our drivers licences and vehicle details why do we need the same number of folk in Swansea? Really?
ID cards? What's all that about? Billion saved. A whole department to fire or that we won't need to recruit/pay/pension at vast expense.
Computerised health records? Why so much money? Why so long to implement? Why anyway? What was wrong with the old system?
Ooooooh. I'd run through that shower. They wouldn't know what had hit them.
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153
Sorry, 150 should not have appeared. This was in reply to 149
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#153
Yes, another tory mess, the introduction of private tendering in hospitals.
One of the problems are the differentials in staffs terms and conditions, again these were introduced by the last tory government.
I would agree with you that the NHS and all its function should be solely run by the NHS, and a quick end to private tendering and equal terms and conditions would be a very good move.( job structure terms of course)
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156 derekbarker
Saw two films last night on Nye Bevan, and whilst I am not a socialist, nor a tory I may add, I regretted that such a giant of a man is no longer around. If he was, he would call the NHS management and the Health Minister by that term beginning with "V" which he used for the Conservatives. I cannot use that word, because of the dlicate moderators here!
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So here's one for the newlabourites:
"I and then Alistair will meet financial and government heads in New York" (Gordon Brown conference speech Tuesday)
But neither George Bush nor Hank Paulson - architect of the mortgage backed bail out - are going to see either Gordon Brown or Alistair Darling.
This is the mark of a government that has truly lost its authority, its ability to rule and its abitity to do anything, let alone everything, necessary to sort this problem out.
This is what happens when you represent the country with the highest level of debt per household in the world and you spend fifteen months blaming your self inflicted problems on someone else (the started in America nonsense). Funnily enough; you're not wlecome in their land.
Great achievement Gordon Brown - the Americans don't even want to talk to you about your global solution ideas.
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Clearly you were not around.
It was the tories that introduced the strict payment methods of Dentists.
Shocking. And it hasn't been changed in eleven years because....?
Same reason nobody re-opened the mines or re-nationalised British Leyland or British Airways or British Telecom or BP or BAe or any of the rest of them I suppose.
Because it was actually a jolly good idea. Now instead of costing us money they earn money and pay taxes. Coooooool.
Except for the miners. Mind you they never saved us any money anyway. They even went on strike during the first world war. Men dying by the 100's of 1000's in bogs out in Belgium and they were moaning about their working conditions and/or low pay. A deep-grained philosophy of entitlement that informed their 'thought-leaders' up until the 1980's.
And all the Labour apologists go around wrapped in the mantle of faux concern for the miners or the other molly-coddled nationalised industries that humiliated this nation in the 1970's. To hell with them. They got precisely what they deserved. And Labour knows it.
Trouble is they can't resist empire building their core vote. So, because it would be too obvious to start renationalising stuff they simply expand the numbers in the nationalised stuff they've got. Spending goes up, productivity goes down, 'unemployment' goes down plus you snare another two million plus votes between your grateful new 'employee' and their spouse/civil partner/whatever.
This expansion of public employment are just 'new miners'. A million plucked from the obscurity of the dole queue and given an inflated sense of their status and entitlement to more of my money.
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#149 - your point is a good one - to work out how many additional front-line NHS staff they are we need statistics on the occupational breakdown of those staff.
How many additional nurses, doctors, surgeons, cleaners, porters, receptionists, call-centre staff and so on (front-line)?
And how many managerial staff determining policy, trying to focus the organisation on providing a good service, allocating resources across the organisation, making sure statutory responsibilities are fulfilled etc (or "useless pen-pushing")?
I've found some stats for the NHS, which break down numbers by non-medical staff, medical and dental staff and General Practice staff (on the DH Information Centre website) ["NHS Staff 1996-2006 Overview"] which can answer these questions.
There were 170,623 staff under the "NHS Infrastructure Support" category (i.e. managers + facilities staff such as cleaners) in 1997. There were 209,387 of these in 2006 - an increase of 38,764.
So that's a maximum for the increase in the number of NHS managers/pen-pushers. It is an over-estimate as it includes cleaners and other facilities support staff.
It just takes time to trawl through the stats to come up with a total management/back-office statistics for every sector of Government.
(For Mr U - re debt)
The total cost of debt interest on central government debt in 2007/08 was £30 billion, compared with £29 billion (£37 billion at 07/08 prices) in 1997/98 [from HMT's Debt Management Report]
This was equivalent to £631/person in 1997 at 07/08 prices (58.8 million UK population) and £492/person in 2008 (61.0 million UK population).
So we are paying £139 a year less each to service our debts (22% less).
In the same period, GDP has grown by 36% in real terms. Debt payments as a % of GDP were 3.5% in 1997 and 2.1% in 2008.
So, you want to thank the Government for reducing your contributions to debt repayment and making it easier to manage them on your income, no?
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#159
Well said. Beats all this dull stuff about the NHS. Anyone would think form some of the newlabour apologists that the NHS should consume the entire national buget, employ someone form every family in every generation and have its own five minutes at the end of the ten o'clock news.
We're talking about hospitals and doctors. They are places that most people would choose to spend as little time as possible in despite the wonderful job they do.
Next news we'll be building a monument to the NHS in Whitehall (no point in holding back on public funds durng a credit crunch) and Anthony Gormley will erect a great big man on a crutch to represent the disabled in the north (who have ben looked after a the caring NHS).
Even people who work in the NHS don't take it so seriously as the newlabour apologist on here. They recognise there are conflicts and rationing and it will never be perfect.
But far be it for me to accuse newlabour of taking itself too seriously; after all they represent us all; they represent fairness; every child matters; every child is a reader; everynew labour apoogist someone who drones on and on in a sanctimonious self righteous way. Oops, went a bit off piste there.
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152. U9461192
Cannot agree with you about the miners. You write:
Except for the miners. Mind you they never saved us any money anyway. They even went on strike during the first world war. Men dying by the 100's of 1000's in bogs out in Belgium and they were moaning about their working conditions and/or low pay. A deep-grained philosophy of entitlement that informed their 'thought-leaders' up until the 1980's.
Today it is so very politically correct to condemn the invasion of Iraq, damn Blair, abase the Americans and cry crocodile tears for corrupt Iraq. Yet, the First World War - the Great War is considered sacrosanct. In actual fact men went to die like cattle, and for what? Why should the miners have wanted to suffer so greedy industrialists, on both sides, grew richer and fatter? The First World War was an abortion that not only destroyed the young men involved, but also future generations who either never had the chance to be born, or reaped the seeds of evil in the Second World War, which many see as a direct result of the First World War.
Crawling on their bellies in the dark, with poor air conditions, the miners hardly had an ethos of self-entitlement. This is a very foolish statement that I cannot accept. Still, everyone can choose what to believe.
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So what has changed ? He's still dishing out the benefits (laptops for kids, nursery place for kids) like there is no tomorrow. For him, there isn't, but for the tax-payer there is, and he has left misery for many, many years to come. Labour has bankrupted the country (as usual). Roll on the election !
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160. balhamu
So, you want to thank the Government for reducing your contributions to debt repayment and making it easier to manage them on your income, no?
I dont I want to ask they why it wasnt reduced further over 11 years of unprecedented growth.
More to the point on debt, just watch it rocket over the next 2 years.
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160:
Good numbers, but I'm not convinced that the 38,764 increase in infrastructure employees is the maximum possible increase in the number of NHS pen-pushers.
There could in fact be fewer cleaners - and hence more pen-pushers - within the 2006 total, because of the intervening out-sourcing of cleaning to private contractors.
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And #152
So, looking at the evidence objectively and forming an independent view not from the Mail, Telegraph or Conservative Central Office makes me Labour does it?
I would have thought it just distinguishes me as not being a sheep bleating to the Conservative's tune.
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The total cost of debt interest on central government debt in 2007/08 was ?30 billion, compared with ?29 billion (?37 billion at 07/08 prices) in 1997/98 [from HMT's Debt Management Report]
.....
So, you want to thank the Government for reducing your contributions to debt repayment and making it easier to manage them on your income, no?
More Voodoo economics. What's with this putting everything into 2007/8 pounds?
If I had interest payments of 29bn in 1997 then, all things being equal, I would have interest payments of 29bn today. Wouldn't I?
Now if interest rates had gone down then my payments (on the same debt) would be even lower.
You're reverting to the man trying to hide the true extent of his borrowings from the missus. Again.
Let's make the maths easy. Let's suppose in 1997 I bought a house for 200,000 and took out a 100,000 mortgage. Interest rates are 10%. My annual mortgage is 10,000. In between times my salary goes up and we have a couple of kids. Oh, and I remortgage another 100,000 on the house. SHHHHHHH!!! Don't tell the missus.
Now it's 2008. My house is valued at 400,000. My mortgage is 200,000, interest rates are 5% (so still 10,000 a year) and there are four people in the house. All you're doing is giving me another way to mislead the missus.
Should I shield her from the truth and tell her:
a) Don't worry your pretty head, the debt repayments are the same
b) Don't worry your pretty head, the mortgage has not increased
c) Don't worry your pretty head, the mortgage divided by the number of people in the house has gone down so actually, we're much better off.
Or should I tell her the truth?
Ie Sorry love, I've doubled the mortgage. That's where I got the money for all those holidays in Mauritius and the new Range Rover. We'd better hope I don't lose my job or that these low interest rates don't go up because with the additional expense of the kids and fuel/food/council tax inflation etc and such we're living on the edge.
Anyway, you'd better forget about holidays for a while. And I'm not replacing your car either. I don't care if the women at school will look at you funny. It was your idea to put the kids in private school anyway. Yes, I know you wouldn't have started if you'd realise we couldn't really afford it....
You're just giving me the Nu Labour ways to hide the truth from the missus. I'm cutting through all that carefully cultivated misinformation to give you the facts.
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Labour have clawed back some of their deficit against the Torries in the latest voting intentions poll. Are we seeing the begining of a Labour recovery on the back of GB's speech or a dead cat bounce?
Views please...
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Meanwhile Gordon and Alistair have upped their carbon emissions on a flight to New York so they can talk to each other about the global financial crisis because Bush and Paulson don't want to meet them.
Makes a lot of sense to me
#168 even dead cats bounce...
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168:
Dead cat bounce for sure.
The Tory conference is likely to stretch their poll lead even further. For an opposition party, the situation is ideal; the government is wide open to attack on many fronts.
Labour has probably reached the point of electoral no-return (the same thing that happened to Major in the early 1990s).
It's not surprising that none of the cabinet really wants Brown's job. A long period of opposition and reconstruction is probable.
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ID cards for foreigners:
1. £311m to 2018 to replace passports.
2. Any budding terrorist could outwit the system, by say....... getting a small boat and landing on a beach in Devon. If they were more covert - they'd use maybe an old smugglers cove in Cornwall.
3. This will be funded by visa charges. What would they have spent the £311m of visa charges on if they hadn't introduced ID cards?
4. Why are they trying to sneak ID cards onto us?
5. I'd maybe go for this proposal if they said - the international community has agreed to upgrade passports to a common security standard. As it is - they are going to spend a lot of cash on this and no doubt a lot more cash when the international community comes to upgrade passports in general.
This is an idiotic proposal.
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#164
Labour were quite open when they came to power that they were going to embark on an era of investment in public services, to make up for a lack of investment 1979-1997. They said they would achieve this while reducing the level of debt to 40% of GDP.
PFI figures would suggest they haven't quite managed to reduce the debt as they wanted to, but they have kept it constant (well, reduced it slightly) as a % of GDP.
Annual debt interest payments are £139/person lower in real terms (22% lower) now than in 1997, which would suggest that you have seen some benefit from this approach in cash terms (if you are an 'average' taxpayer of course).
Maybe you would have preferred they chose not to invest (no new schools, no new hospitals) and paid back the debt. Unfortunately for you, the UK electorate made a different decision. In a democracy you have to live with that I'm afraid.
#165 You're right of course - that is a possibility. I'm sure there will be more detailed occupational statistics available somewhere to check this. I don't know where though. There's no sign of a massive increase in the number of back-office/managerial staff that I've found in the stats yet though. And you haven't commented on whether all managers/back-office can be thought of as pen-pushers or whether they play a useful role. But thanks for your sensible and open-minded contributions - very refreshing.
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Are we seeing the begining of a Labour recovery on the back of GB's speech or a dead cat bounce?
Gordon and Darling are out of the country. While they're in mid-atlantic they're not screwing anything up. Obviously people are going to feel better.
Just wait till they get back though.
Hilarious that the yanks won't talk to them. Hilarious too that they thought they had to get on a plane. If I want to talk to somebody in the US I just pick up the phone. Costs 2p per minute.
It's almost as if this was a reprise of his grand-standing when he flew of to have a word with the arabs about the price of oil. Photo-op, excuse to be out of the country ducking interviews. Perfect.
I bet the arabs didn't bother speaking to him either. Or more likely, just grinned politely at the great buffoon who'd come in on his silver bird as if he was somebody special.
Cameron should go and have a chat with Bush and Paulson. Now that would be funny.
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170:
After the latest polls I doubt DC's lead will be stretched further after The Conservative Conference (purely because The Labour Party has a core support of hardline voters who will always vote Labour no matter what their failings) but I do expect the 10 point surge to be eaten into quite substantially.
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169. At 12:17pm on 25 Sep 2008, RobinJD wrote:
Looks like both of Gordon and Alistair has wasted their time as no one relevant will meet them. Also carbon emissions does not apply to them, look at the governments cars they are chauffeured around.
In this modern world they could have done it by video conferencing, shows how much money is being wasted. Real purpose could be Brown wants to hide for a while.
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#167
I take it you are more an Arts person than a Science one.
Inflation 101:
£1 in 1996/97 is worth less than £1 today.
This is because, in most capitalist economies, the average price of all goods and services has tended to increase over time. This upward drift in prices is called inflation.
You may have heard something about this in the media quite recently. This rate of increase in average prices has gone up from the 2.5% per year it has been sitting at since 1997, to closer to 5.0% per year because of rapid rises in the price of energy and the price of food. The Government are receiving a lot of criticism about this at the moment. Maybe you haven't noticed.
The combined effects of inflation since 1997 is an increase in averag prices by 32%. This means that £1 in 1997 is worth the equivalent of £1.32 today.
So, if something is priced in 1997 pounds, you need to increase the price of it by 32% to work out what that means in 2008 terms.
I hope I've explained this "Voodoo" concept so you can understand it.
Or do you think this "inflation" that the media talks about is a myth? Prices are exactly the same now than in 1997?
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Unfortunately for you, the UK electorate made a different decision. In a democracy you have to live with that I'm afraid.
The UK electorate said 'Yeah, go ahead, double our national debt did they?' Funny, they look to be a bit baffled as to where all that money went just at the moment. I guess it would be years of being told that national debt is going down only to find its practically doubled. Oh yeah, and we're going to be borrowing a shed-load more. Because we (the government) haven't a clue how to manage money.
The UK electorate also made a decision that they'd like a referendum on a change of voting method for the house of commons and a referendum on the Lisbon Constitution. Those were quite clear manifesto commitments. I must have missed the referenda.
Fact is the voters voted 'Not Tory'. They were prepared to be kidded and lied to because the Tories needed to be taught a lesson.
Next time out they'll be voting 'Not Labour' for the same reason.
The Tories can put anything they like in the manifesto and renege on it to their hearts content for a generation. Nobody will care. Because it's now all about teaching Labour a lesson. Just as the past 11 years have been about teaching the Tories a lesson.
This government is going to be soooo punished.
Good. Richly deserved don't you think.
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I take it you are more an Arts person than a Science one.
Spoken like a true artist. The teeniest grip of maths and there is no end to your arrogance. Of course it is this attitude that typifies Nu Labour and their apologists.
I take it that you prefer to mislead the missus about the extent of your debts than come clean. Very Nu Labour.
Bury the facts in increasing mathematical iterations of fantasy and then declare that 660bn of national debt is lower than 350bn. Because that's what you're trying to do.
You are trying to tell all of us that having borrowed (and squandered) an extra 310bn quid we're actually better off than if we'd not borrowed a penny extra.
Away with your woeful concept of maths and logic. Stick to bamboozling old women and selling them over-priced stairlifts and memory foam.
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#177
Yes they did - at least in the misleading way you define 'doubling the debt' as.
Labour committed to reduce debt as a proportion of GDP to below 40% and hold it there.
The evidence suggests they have decreased debt from what they inherited (tick), but it is still above the 40% ceiling because of PFI commitments (cross).
Holding debt constant as a proportion of GDP would have implied growth in the real level of debt of 36% (or increasing it by 80% in cash terms if you are still scared of inflation).
These are the commitments that Labour made to the electorate. Not your mumbo-jumbo about reducing debt in cash terms.
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160
You miss my point completely.
The NHS has the largest workforce of any health service in Europe, ie it is larger than either the French or he Germans. Both spend more than us, yet have fewer staff. This gives them more money to spend on patients and provide a better service.
Nurses say they spend 20% of their time looking for things like bedding and pillows.
In effect we employ 80,000 nurses just to look for pillows. Increase the amount of bedding in wards and you would free up thousands of nurses to do more useful work.
if you employ thousands more nurses,then sit them in front of telephones on NHS24,they aren't in the wards looking after patients.
Nurses are a scarce resource that need to be used far more effectively than they currently are.
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And Mr U:
Try typing 'what is inflation?' into Google. The website listed first in the results gives a good illustration of the impact of inflation (I don't quote the site as moderators often reject posts with web addresses).
Say someone gave me a £1 coin in 1997. If I kept it in a jar, and tried to spend it in 2007, I wouldn't be able to buy quite so much with it as I used to be able to. 32% less in fact. Money was 32% more valuable in 1997 than 2007.
Likewise, if I wanted enough money to buy something that was £29 billion in 1997, I would need to have £38 billion 2008 pounds.
It's a rather simple concept. And something that any economist would tell you is the case.
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#178
Yes, I am.
Keeping the value of debt constant in real terms (accounting for inflation), would have increased it by 32%.
Keeping the value of debt constant as a % of income (as Labour promised) would have increased it by a further 36%.
Taken together, the cash value of debt to keep it constant as a % of income (as Labour promised) would have increased by 1.32*1.36=1.80. Debt could increase by 80% and still be as affordable.
And of course, as the macroeconomic management of this Government has kept interest low (and financial markets see UK Government debt as being less risky now than they did in 1997), debt repayments as a proportion of the national debt is lower.
So you (as an average taxpayer) spend 22% less now servicing the national debt than you did in 1997. And you still try to claim that it is more expensive for you now than in 1997.
Your argument falls apart.
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Without doubt the Prime Minister is well on the way to recovery.Wonderful speech to the party conference. Tory lead in one poll reduced by half. Enormous talent available within the parliamentary party. Perhaps the key will be no effective opposition, he has identified the novices.
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The evidence suggests they have decreased debt from what they inherited (tick), but it is still above the 40% ceiling because of PFI commitments (cross).
Any day now and even on the disingenuous definition of 'reduced debt' this government favours to hide the true extent of their squandering they'll be a busted flush on all conceivable definitions. Of the three you favour over the nice simple 'Debt has almost doubled from 350bn to 660bn quid'.
No doubt a new second or third derivative of debt as a function of the price of bread or cheese or number of immigrants or somesuch is being manufactured as we speak to convince us that while we're all bankrupt we're actually better off than we were in 1997.
The only growth industry under this government has been the growth in the use of rigged figures.
National debt has (almost) doubled. That will be in the Tory manifesto as sure as it was in the 1997 Labour manifesto. People understand that. It's a nice easy soundbite. It gets votes.
It worked in 1997 and no amount of 'as a percentage of GDP' or 'inflation adjusted, interest rate adjusted, population adjusted' flim-flammery will hide the fact.
KISS. Worked for the Labour 1997 manifesto. It'll work for the Tory 2010 manifesto.
In any case, in two more years, after imprudent borrowing and squandering through the good times Labour will require a PhD thesis of maths to come up with any
derivative of debt that has actually improved in the last 11/12/13 years.
Labour didn't fix the roof while the weather was good. They blew the lot on a bunch of over-valued, sight-unseen, down-payments for 'bijoux canal-side apartments' in Manchester.
Now they can't afford the repayments and it's all the American's fault. Because we can't borrow any more money.
No wonder the yanks slammed the door in their face. You'd think they'd have phoned before they left. Just to make sure their visit was convenient wouldn't you? I mean it's common courtesy isn't it?
I'm surprised the yanks even cleared them to land.
Arrogant, jumped-up incompetents is what they are. Wouldn't you agree?
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Another example for you Mr U.
EXAMPLE 1
Let's assume you get paid £20,000 per year.
RPI inflation is currently running at 4.9% I believe.
What would your reaction be if your boss said "Next year I'm going to pay you £20,000. You've done an ok job, but not enough for me to increase your pay"?
What would your reaction be if RPI inflation was 10%? Or 50%? Or 100%?
EXAMPLE 2
The familiar £30,000 mortgage example that you keep ignoring.
Mr Big goes into the bank manager's office and enquires about a mortgage. The bank manager looks at his income (£500,000 per year), and says that he can only prudently lend him £30,000.
Mr Small goes into the bank manager's office and enquires about a mortgage. Mr Big overhears the conversation (it's the same bank). The manager looks at his income (£10,000 per year), and says that he can only prudently lend him £30,000.
Mr Big is incensed. After all, with his higher income (50 times that of Mr Small) he can surely afford a higher level of repayment than Mr Small can.
The bank manager tells him that income is not important. You can only afford to borrow £30,000 regardless of income. It doesn't matter what you can afford - it is unimportant. I learnt these wise words from a sage called Mr U on the BBC.
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180., cobber950 wrote:
"You miss my point completely.
The NHS has the largest workforce of any health service in Europe, ie it is larger than either the French or he Germans. Both spend more than us, yet have fewer staff. This gives them more money to spend on patients and provide a better service.
Nurses say they spend 20% of their time looking for things like bedding and pillows."
Waste is now endemic in the NHS
In my area a large fully functioning hospital was knocked down and replaced with a PFI
rabbit warren. Treatment rooms are too small to accomodate trollley beds, waiting areas in the fracture clinic give no allowance for wheelchairs, the basement is perpetually flooded, wards are closed because there is no budget for the staff, and patients records are no longer kept on site, they are ferried over 50 miles away to a private company, so if you have an appointment a week later, the records have travelled 100 miles..if your appointment is 3 days later you are told..sorry the records aren't here. The hospital is then charged a great deal of money if the records are needed urgently. Oh! and it is still over 6 months for a physiotherapy appointment!
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183. At 1:06pm on 25 Sep 2008, braveSouter wrote:
Enormous talent available within the parliamentary party.
Do tell please.
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Likewise, if I wanted enough money to buy something that was ?29 billion in 1997, I would need to have ?38 billion 2008 pounds.
I see. Now try making things even easier. I can see you've got over-excited with your ability grasp the concept of inflation. Let us not let us blind us to the simpler things in life. Like debt.
If I have a debt of 350bn in 1997 and don't borrow any more money and make my interest payments then I have a debt of 350bn in 2008. My debt has not increased.
If I borrow oooh, say 310bn. It has increased to 660bn.
If I borrow 350bn. It has doubled.
National debt will have doubled by budget day 2008.
Introducing percentages of GDP, inflation, interest rates, population increases, Uncle Tom Cobbly and all doesn't alter that fact.
I refer you again to the chap remortgaging his house and using Nu Labour maths to hide the fact from the missus. The fact is that debt has increased. Any appeal to GDP, inflation or population growth (that's a new one though) is just trying to conceal/downplay the fact.
Hmmmm. Using statistical sleight of hand to imply one thing but conceal the truth. Hmmmmm. Very New Labour.
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That should be budget Day 2009. But you get my point.
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#184
You are probably right - your (wrong) way of thinking about the debt (not adjusting for inflation or income i.e. the real value of that debt or the affordability), is more understandable to the man on the street. Doesn't make it right though, does it.
Glad you have accepted you have lost the argument. Ask any economist and they will tell you the same things as I have. And glad you have accepted that we now pay less (even in cash terms) interest on the national debt than we paid in 1997.
I understand why you are going to value the simplicity of a wrong answer because you are financially illiterate and don't understand inflation and believe that income is unimportant in determining whether you can afford a debt.
And the simplicity ties in with your ideological belief too - so a great side-effect.
I look forward to Cameron's new policy of decreasing the cash value of the debt. It will be a big change from last time they were in power, when the cash value of the debt increased 4-fold.
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Isn't it nice that we have Mr balhamu educating us on these posts about how inflation and interest rates work.
now, Mr balhamu, please explain this calculation for me:
I bought a house for 100,000 pounds in 2006.
The Northern Rock gave me a mortgage for 130,000 so I could go and buy some nice things to go in it.
Now my agent tells me the house is worth 70,000 but I still owe 130,000.
What do I do?
I just got a letter telling me the government is increasing my interest rate but I can't afford to pay because the I only earn £25,000 and the Northern Rock said I didn't need to put that bit on the application form.
Please give me your words of advice as all my mates bought houses too and some of them earn less than me and would like to know what to do.
I have called debt free direct.
I have looked on the government's website
I have called GMTV to see if I can tell my story on the telly.
Who should I blame?
Please help.
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@182
IF what you say is true why do we all pay more tax now as a proportion of our income.
Perhaps its because SPENDING has increased above inflation year on year for 11 years with NO value add to the services provided.
I want to see you try to dodge the fact that we all have less disposable income due to taxation with one of your mathematical miracles.
I have proven before you do nothing but fudge figures. You have posted the same incorrect explanation 32% blah blah in four or five posts now. You are trying the old Labour trick of "If I say it enough times it will be true"
There is one fact that you cannot dodge, Everyone in this country pays more tax and has less disposable income now than they did 92-97. The tax burden on everyone in the country has increased since 97.
Let me say that one more time so that you get it. WE ALL PAY MORE IN TOTAL TAX NOW THAN IN 97. And the services we get for that burden has reduced. FACT
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@190
How very NuLAbour, deluded that you won an arguement that you werent even close to a score draw in.
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Waste is now endemic in the NHS
In my area a large fully functioning hospital was knocked down and replaced with a PFI
rabbit warren.
Nonsense. What actually occurred was a one billion pound 'investment in infrastructure'. It's back to the re-education camp for you.
This, of course, is my key gripe. The Tories were derided for not 'investing' in the NHS but Labour chose to manifest their investment not by buying a few new machines that go 'ping' and fix the roof on the old hospital/school. Oh no. Enough of these reminders of Victorian patrician philanthropy.
So what if they provide solid, well engineered buildings with great rooms/wards and massive grounds. That means we'll be able to build a new soviet-style monolith from glass and steel, hang the cost, to remind people how much we've 'invested'.
It's as if they'd decided that all our housing stock was old and although it only needed (say) new windows and a damp course and people were happy enough living there they simple bulldozed the lot and built tower blocks instead. Ohhhhh...
Same with these glass and steel hospitals and schools. There was never any need to demolish them all. They could have been rehabilitated for a fraction of the cost but that didn't suit Labours idea of how to spend money. ie Borrow as much as you can and spend the lot. Buy anything. How much? Who cares? Just spend, spend, spend.
The name of the game was just get that money out there. Pump-prime the economy. Employ builders, employ a million extra on the public pay-roll. Hide as many from unemployment as you can on borrowed money. Turn a blind eye to house price inflation riding on the back of the 100's of billions you've pumped into the economy. Just borrow, borrow, borrow. Squander, squander, squander.
Look at my 'miracle' economy. Never mind the quality. Feel the width.
Then 'poooof. Turns out all this 'miracle' was just borrowed money. All this expansion of GDP. Unimpressive at the best of times compared to the alleged dark days of the 1980's and 1990's. Just an illusion built on a pyramid of borrowed money. Wow. Who would have believed it.
Hey? What happened? Why can't we borrow more money? What's going on? And Gordon Brown desperately giving it:
'It's the yanks. It's the banks. It's the short-sellers. Not me. Nope. Not me.'
Don't look at me. I'm off to see that Mr Paulson right now to sort this out.'
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Balham at 126
Nice.
Was going to satirise but it looks like there's no need ...
- 127 "deals" with the NHS
- 130 "deals" with the Public Sector
and of course # 148 where we can celebrate a mortgage paid off (in full!) by dint of sheer thrift and application.
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How very NuLAbour, deluded that you won an arguement that you werent even close to a score draw in.
Just like Gordon Brown. If you don't admit to a mistake then no mistake has occurred. And nothing needs to be fixed.
And people wonder why anybody with an IQ greater than a fish is alarmed by the behaviour they see from the Maximum Leader.
We've (almost) doubled national debt. Our banks, our population and everything else is maxed out on debt and he's off to the US to give Mr paulson a piece of his mind. Oiii. Paulson. Sort it out. Print more money. How can my 'miracle' economy function if people can't borrow even more money.
How am I supposed to pay my 5 million plus government employees if I can't borrow 35bn a year eh? Answer me that Paulson.
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#193
he hasn't won any argument. There is still no answer to my quesion if all is so hunky dory why do we have the highest debt per household in the world?
this problem did not 'start in America' it started with a lax regulatory system created by Gordon Brown that lent 10 times peoples' wages to buy houses they could never have afforded.
he sat by and did nothing because he gambled that the banks would be blamed.
We know otherwise; Gordon Brown appointed all the mambers of the Bank of England supervisory committee and he did nothing to stop this widly reckless credit expansion.
It's a Scottish thing... look at the leson of Jon law who bankruted the French in 1920 with the same easy credit schemes.
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You are probably right -
Of course I'm right.
your (wrong) way of thinking about the debt (not adjusting for inflation or income i.e. the real value of that debt or the affordability), is more understandable to the man on the street.
Man on the street? You mean the voter. The guy Labour told back in their 1997 manifesto that national debt had doubled.
Doesn't make it right though, does it.
Oh make your mind up. You said I was right a minute ago.
Or was I only right if you adjust for inflation, interest rates, population growth and GDP increase. (GDP increase of course being subject to the effect of borrowing 3% of GDP every year to pump-prime the economy).
No annual 3% increase in government debt as a percentage of GDP = no 3% increase in GDP.
The more you think about how our GDP and borrowing figures have been rigged the uglier it gets.
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@192
According to the Adam Smith Institute (yes I know it's a right wing body but I think their calculations are fairly sound) if public spending had grown in line with inflation since 1997, we could have abolished income tax, corporation tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax, leaving the taxpayer £200 billion better off.
Tax freedom day (which is a broad measure taking into account income tax and national insurance, VAT, fuel tax, alcohol and cigarette duties, airline tax, fuel duties, car tax etc etc) was 14 June this year. This is one day later than in 2007 and the latest date since 1995.
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#188
Ok. You don't understand inflation. I've tried.
#192
You are right - tax has increased to pay for increased spending. That is a valid point to make, and you are entitled to question if its all been worth it.
However, the increase in tax has been slightly higher than the increase in current spending. The Government has not been increase borrowing to pay for increasing its current spending. This is a different point.
BTW I get my figure on the total inflation since 1997 from HMT figures on the GDP Deflator. That suggests 32%. Do you think inflation has been less than this over the period? What's your source?
#191
Many posters need educating about how inflation and interest rates work, and on what 'affordability' means. Mr U shows clearly he does not understand these concepts.
On your other point, so its the Government's fault that a private company ignores regulations and irresponsibly lends money is it? And its the Governments fault that people borrow more than they can afford?
Interesting take.
The answer would be its partly your fault and partly Northern Rock's fault. You borrowed more than you could afford and lied about your income in order to do it. Northern Rock gave you poor advice and broke the law in falsifying your income.
Arguably partly the Government's fault for not regulating more and not trying to burst the housing bubble (though there was political consensus on both these things - indeed the Conservatives were pushing for less regulation of the mortgage market last year). The media cheerleaders of rising house prices, and the estate-agent industry "experts" who pushed the lie that they would continue to rise also share in the blame.
Sensible people realised house prices were over-valued (e.g. compared with private renting), and did not overstretch themselves on unaffordable mortgages. Why should they have to bail out people who were irresponsible to let them maintain ownership of a house they could not afford to buy?
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GB has practiced slum landlord economics.
Mortgage on an interest only buy to let.
Tenant pays interest bills every month
So its affordable
Value of property goes up due to inflation
Remortgage to take more equity, the percentage of value owed remains the same, but dont worry we'll put the rent up the tenant will pay, repeat ad infinitum or until you cant borrow any more.
Spend equity as you go and when it all falls down go for an IVA or worst case declare banruptcy blaming everyone but yourself
ring any bells Balamory,
Perhaps you should have listened to Miss Hoolies maths lessons.
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The government must not be allowed to get away with linking pensions to wages. This will be a disaster, it was only the financial sector which kept wages up, now that they are in recession you know what will happen. This change must not be allowed to just go through, it must be challenged. Raise your cudgels, this will not be fair. Stick to RPI.
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Many posters need educating about how inflation and interest rates work, and on what 'affordability' means.
Ho ho ho. We should take lessons from this governments apologists on 'affordability'.
Bwahahahahahaha.
Ha.
Ha.
Ha.
Is Gordon back from trying to borrow money from the yanks yet? Who is next on his list? The IMF?
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#198
Probably right in thinking that your wrong statement the debt has doubled will likely convince the man on the street.
Sheesh.
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I presume that Balhamu was one of GB's advisors during his time at Number 11 and that is why we are now in the mess we are in.
As of this moment I will stop blaming it ALL on Gordon and share some of the blame with Balhamu.
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most of the blogs on here seem to be dancing on the head of a pin re debt.
people are overlooking something to borrow , you need a lender.
The only country with any money is China, who have been given a lot of choice over where to put it.
Do we really want to put ourselves in the position where funding our Health Service is dependant on the Chinese lending us money instead of buying Wall Street
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#200
so I take it when you say 'sensible people realised house prices were over-valued' you exclude Gordon Brown from sensible people who not only ignored all the warnings from the Bank of England that lending was out of control, but is now actively encouraging people to buy into a falling market?
Why is Gordon Brown running around now blaming everyone else for a regulatory system he put in place himself but singularly failed to supervise?
He is in no position to call for increased regulation. He willfully ignored those who were abusing the regulations. He did this for ten years.
He is completely the wrong man to sort this out as he is already conflicted from the first negotiation. No barrister would be allowed to go to court to prosecute a case against work they had carried out themselves. This is no different and the country needs to recognise it.
He's conflicted.
There needs to be new leadership and a general election.
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Do we really want to put ourselves in the position where funding our Health Service is dependant on the Chinese lending us money
The Chinese could probably run our health service at a fraction of the cost. Just fly everybody out to China and let them patch us up.
Better still, India. Their doctors all speak English and it's a shorter flight.
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How about a nice little logic tree?
Q1: Is the main cause of the looming recession ...
1. the International Credit Crunch?
2. the tangible but relatively modest shift in the UK towards higher public spending?
If answer 1, please go to Q2
If answer 2, please proceed to room B
Q2: Is the main cause of the International Credit Crunch ...
3. rooted in Wall Street financial engineering and the collapse of US real estate?
4. the tangible but relatively modest shift in the UK towards higher public spending?
If answer 3, proceed to room A
If answer 4, please go to room B
Now, where are you?
Room A?
You've passed ... doesn't mean you have to vote Labour but at least you're in the world as it is.
Room B?
Don't worry. Despite failing the test, we live in a democracy and you still have a say. You are free to vote Tory.
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Arguably partly the Government's fault for not regulating more and not trying to burst the housing bubble (though there was political consensus on both these things - indeed the Conservatives were pushing for less regulation of the mortgage market last year). The media cheerleaders of rising house prices, and the estate-agent industry "experts" who pushed the lie that they would continue to rise also share in the blame.
Wouldn't you just know that along with everybody else to blame (except Gordon 'no more boom and bust' Brown obviously) that the Conservatives would be in the frame.
Don't your toes curl writing this stuff? Poor old Gordon totally unaware of the effect of flooding the economy with borrowed cash. Concerned only that our teachers should have the finest Norman Foster style buildings in which to rubber-stamp laser-printed 'assignments' and our nurses have sufficient parking spaces at their new glass and steel hospitals.
Oblivious to the rampant borrowing of his government and the knock-on abandonment of good sense in the general population. 'No more boom and bust'. Where could they have got such a silly notion that somebody would choke any boom at birth if indeed there was a 'boom' which obviously there couldn't have been.
Three cheers for Gordon erector of glass and steel buildings from sea to shining sea.
Three cheers for Gordon. Banisher of 'Boom and Bust'.
Three cheers for Gordon. Slayer of housing bubbles.
Thought not.
Is he back yet? Has he got a plane load of borrowed cash from anywhere?
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Roy Hattersley is right in saying we have the worst political journalists in the Western World....they trivialise everything.
When was the last time you wrote a proper political article?
So now it's on to the Flashy and Wee Georgie extravaganza next week...I wonder if you, and that former Tory, London Scot, and the Brown hating Paxman and Kearney, will trivialise it in the same way....I doubt it!
Years ago Malcolm Mugeridge observed that people who appear regularly on TV, become television buffoons. After watching Newsnight this past week I know what he meant.
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#209
Question 1 is incomplete,
it should read:
Is the main cause of the looming recession?
1. The international credit crunch which followed the international credit expansion in which Gordon Brown willfully participated attaching the afterburners to the UK economy. He allowed debt per household to rise to the highest level in the world and he allowed the housing boom to get completely out of control and failed to supervise his own Tripartite regulatory system. At the same time he realised he could spend even more by putting 650bn pounds of 'investment' spending off balance sheet and simultaneously add one million 'key workers' to the public sector workforce. Not happy with his efforts so far he decided to give the one million all index linked defined benefit pensions that would be paid long into the future by someone else. his final act was to get on a plane to America with Alistair to try and pin the blame on someone else.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Why do the Tories here complain so much about Labour despite the fact that they have consistently performed a good job for the whole country? The Tories have not had a decent leader since John Major, another man who cared for the people of the UK.
Mr Cameron is best advised to keep to non-specifics on policy and play negative politics, that way he is sure to win as long as the media continue to support him.
I just wish I could believe that the Tories really do have the UK's best interests at heart (and that means more than just tax cuts for its supporters) and then I would happily vote for it. Until I see that real change I am going to vote for a normal person from a normal background like GB and not a privileged baffoon like DC, who is never going to relate with the issues or real people (i.e. not London based marketing executives).
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Roy Hattersley is a buffoon who has been on the recieving end of many a pasting by an intelligent journalist.
Crying about his treatment is pathetic. if he didn't want public scrutiny he should be in parliament.
Period.
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@209
Now for the real question.
Is our ability to weather the storm
1) The best in the western world
2) Completely hampered because we already failed to pay off our debt when we had the money
If you answered 1) congratulations welcome to Gordonland, We the state will take care of all your needs just climb up into this hamster wheel and run around for 24hrs a day we need to generate some power
2) Welcome to the real world free from delusion, you have your own free will and arent reliant on state hand outs, Please bear with us until 2010 when we oust the current shower that are in government and normal service will be resumed, Cutting out the beauraucrats thus reducing government spending and thus reducing the tax burden on you, the real hard working people of Britain.
By the way in industry Lean principles have been in vogue since motorola took them up in the late 90's. These priciples look at all business processes and any part of that process that adds no value to the customer, and is for internal beauraucracy reasons only, is cut out.
That is how the public sector need to learn to operate.
Therefore anyone in the NHS that adds no value to patient care should go. Bed managers for example add no value to the patient they are for internal use only.
Anyone in local government that adds no value to end user services should go.
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Sorry to have to report that it's all going bells up with Jasper.
He's got something pretty yucky apparently and they're keeping him in. Trouble is is that the old boy won't let the Doctors anywhere near him. Keeps shadow boxing around his room and calling them "good for nothing public sector medicine heads". Which normally I'd laugh at and say was typically wild card but he needs help, Jasper does, and he's been such a good chum for such a long time.
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#209.
Absolutely right dear boy.
No doubt some apologist for the Irish government is leaning back admiring a similar piece of disinformation as supplied by my young padawan.
Fact is that the US had a housing bubble. The Spanish had a housing bubble. The Irish had a housing bubble and we, in the UK had a housing bubble.
The yanks are responsible for theirs, the Irish for theirs, the Spanish for theirs and we, in the UK, are responsible for ours. It is disingenuity of tru-Nu-Labour proportions to blame the fact that we've borrowed too much money on.... not being able to borrow even more money.
Laughable isn't it.
We've borrowed and squandered too much money and now that we can't borrow and squander any more it's somebody else's fault. The yanks. The banks, the short sellers. Anybody but the government that turned two blind eyes because it suited them to foster the illusion of a 'miracle' economy.
The worst part is there are only two possibilities. Rank incompetence and failure to recognise the danger and act. Or rank cynicism figuring this pyramid borrowing might just endure long enough to collapse on the other lot's watch and for them to shoulder the blame.
Only question is. Which one is it?
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#214
More class warfare from newlabour. how dull.
What exactly is the definiton of a 'normal person'?
Isn't this like the 'functional family'?
Doesn't exist.
Problem is newlabour class warfare is racism by another name.
No-one should be disrespected for their background - rich or poor. It's time newlabour worked this out. I shall never even think about them as a serious political force as long as this class drum is kept beating.
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Robin @ 212
I don't disagree that our rising living standards over the last few years owe more to easy credit and inflated property than to real wealth creation. I also agree with you that GB is very far from blameless.
Nevertheless, it's clear to me (and I am not a New Labour supporter) that the main causes of the economic downturn lie outside the UK.
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191 robinjd, first thing is that you were very lucky in 2006 to get a house for that money but nobody twisted your arm to borrow the other £30 thousand, that was just foolishness on your part did you expect that when times got hard they would say its alright mate you didn't know there was going to be a recession just forget pay it back some time later. as for the reduction in the value of your property ,You didn't honestly believe that prices were going to continue to rise forever did you , we should all have seen quite clearly that that wasn't going to happen it was a bubble that would inevitably burst before long.
You need to ask the genius U94 his advice he apparently made a fortune by the time he was 35 and I think he said or inferred that he's sat on his backside since, but be careful he wants to sack everyone in sight and if you say anything nasty he'll moderate you.
But if you are genuinly in trouble which I very much doubt then you will get a much more sympathetic ear from Mr Balhomu.
Your first trip should be to you mortgage holder and dicuss your situation but I have the feeling that your far too clever for that.
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186
I totally agree with you
In my original post I said an NHS with 1.5mill staff,on the budget we have, cannot be sustained.
Both the French and Germans have a better Health service despite employing fewer staff. This means they can spend slightly more than us and get far better returns on the money they spend in terms of medical outcomes.
On the issue that has dominated this blog i.e. debt
In the past we have been able to rely on countries selling us something(oil etc) and lending us the money so we can carry on buying the same products
The current crisis is forcing us to borrow money, which we will be unable to spend as freely. This makes it far less attractive to lend to us. Given the fact that the 2 countries with the most money are China and Russia,the price they will want extract from us for any money they lend us could be massive
The government which us wants to reduce our dependence on foreign oil to improve our security, seems quite happy to increase our reliance on foreign money to fund it.
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I shall never even think about them as a serious political force as long as this class drum is kept beating.
They're like Al Queda now. It's Labour fundamentalism. They're going back to 'The Base'. The 'core values' of Labour. It's Labour Wahhibism.
Your life is rubbish. But it's not your fault. It's that rich guys fault. If you vote for us we'll take money off him and give it to you and you will instantly attain intelligence and a sense of purpose. Here, sign this postal voting proxy form.
That's why the BNP got a mention. They're not after disaffected working-class votes any more. The working class are all 'middle class' now. John Prescott said so. They're consolidating their 'never-worked-at-all' votes and the immigrant vote.
Just so they have at least some core vote to work with in the generation of opposition they've got to look forward to.
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U @ 218
Yes, yes. UK housing bubble bad. GB bad for presiding over it. GB no longer credible because of hubristic "no more boom and bust" boasting. Agree with all that. Tick.
But back to the International Credit Crunch ... primarily caused by US sub prime, no?
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This is all getting very party political; good, fun, knockabout stuff, and no complaints - it's a politics blog, after all.
But I don't think that criticism of the Tories is all that relevant right now. They haven't been in office for over a decade. I don't see how anyone can blame them for the current mess.
It's equally fair to say that they've not put forward much in the way of policy ideas. Perhaps that's good tactical thinking - "we're not Brown" will probably get them elected, same as "I'm not Major" got Blair elected in '97.
But I still think we need some policy ideas.
So, who HAS put forward some good ideas? I'd say Vince Cable. Let me stress that I'm not a Lib Dem, and have never voted for them, but I'm impressed with this man's insight and integrity. Any comments?
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Nevertheless, it's clear to me (and I am not a New Labour supporter) that the main causes of the economic downturn lie outside the UK.
Well there we differ my padawan. To me, the main cause of the economic downturn in the UK lies....in the UK. Although possibly mid-atlantic as we speak. It's hard to keep track of him when he's avoiding parliament/interviews etc.
I don't think we can seriously blame a UK downturn on the failure of the yanks to continually prop up their own carousel of pyramid borrowing. I might concede that their bubble burst first but I don't think you could deny that our bubble was just as stoked and was just waiting for a trigger itself. Just like Irelands and Spains.
And in the UK the bubble-stoker-in-chief was/is Gordon Brown.
I don't see how anybody could doubt that no matter how many times he blames the yanks. Listen to the guts of his complaint. His complaint is that the US banks were contaminated with bad debt and so now all banks are reluctant to lend. Okaaaaay.
And so, Mr Brown, your solution to a housing price bubble is to borrow even more money? Which will keep prices inflated and continue to hide the fact that the UK 'miracle' economy is based on a pyramid of debt?
Nope. Gordon Brown's boom and bust. No question.
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@209 - chance would be a fine thing, unfortunately we havent been given the chance to vote for another party.
If Labours policies are so good, if the Tories are so shallow, call an election and lets see who wins. Shall we?
I shan't hold my breath
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Just been talking to some of the fund managers at a very well known international financial house in the City. Apparently it's brown trouser time there and their view is if the latest U.S. rescue plan doesn't get the nod then the games up and we are all totally scr***d.
Exciting times ahead... .
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Yes, yes. UK housing bubble bad. GB bad for presiding over it. GB no longer credible because of hubristic "no more boom and bust" boasting. Agree with all that. Tick.
I take on board your acknowledgements that the blame for the UK housing bubble and resulting ballooning public deficit lies at the feet of Gordon Brown.
Now, lets stop trying to blame the yanks. The only thing the yanks seem to have done is wake up to the lunacy of it all before anybody else. That hardly counts as 'starting in the US' in the sense of 'all being the yanks fault'.
In fact it is to the yanks credit (no pun intended) that they woke up first. Our government seemed content to just keep on encouraging even more borrowing. We should be thanking the yanks. Imagine if we'd gone another year or two down this insane path.
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You have no right to ask for a general election. If you want to change the rules for how Governments call a general election after they select a new leader during a term then get the Conservatives to put it into the manifesto, shall we?
I shan't hold my breath either?
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U218
It would be nice if what the Americans got up to didn't affect us so much. No Iraq, no Wall Street meltdown. I wish that were the case, believe me.
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@228
There in lies the problem
1 its not a game.
2 its up anyway
3 we've been scr***d by the tax system for the last 10 years anyway and most people have borrowed to fund things they would have funded from disposable income, but couldnt because it was taken in tax.
Thats how labour kept the middle classes voting for them, by convincing them that they had credit forever.
I saw that the brown stuff was going to hit the rotating blades when IVA's made it to the statute books.
IVA yet another Gordon Brown financial con. Borrow until you owe so many people so much you cant even repay the interest let alone the capital, then take out an IVA pay around 10% off over 5 years and hey presto your debt is gone.
Who pays for the written off debt? The Rich (oh and you do ultimately as well because the cost of borrowing takes into account an ammount of write offs and any that it hasn't will be picked up by a tax payer bail out)
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Isn't it outrageous that when Gordon Brown flew to New York, he and his entourage* of 23, chartered a Boeing 747, with a seating capacity of 409! It is almost pornographic in it's extravagence and wastefulness.
No doubt Nick you will be commenting on this in due course, (especially since you were - apparently - on the plane). Will Sarah Brown and the B-list hangers-on be refunding the British taxpayer the cost of their passage?
* including Sarah Brown, Elle McPherson and the Duchess of York, all off to a private charity event in NYC
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Manendo @ 228
Mmmm and, in their view, does the problem lie mainly with Wall Street and US sub prime or with Gordon Brown?
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Inflation part 2:
I have a friend from Zimbabwe. He borrowed $20,000 Zimbabwe dollars a few years ago to purchase a car.
Inflation since then has been 5 million% - a car now costs $100 million Zimbabwe dollars.
However, his loan now stands at $40,000 Zimbabwe dollars - about the price of a slice of bread in today's Zimbabwe economy.
His debt has doubled.
Is he really borrowing more though?
Please, answer the question Mr U.
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U229
Yes, we would have had a problem but this mega stuff in the States is magnifying it many times.
Consider the fact that countries that have not had a property bubble or a credit boom (e.g. Germany, France, Japan) are also heading into a major downturn.
That is relevant when seeking the root cause, no?
(yes I know we don't live there!)
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@235
What is his ability to pay it back?
That is the real question you muppet!
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Potty @ 192
You're doing that thing again where you type out something that's not really true and then you end it by typing FACT.
I wonder where you've picked that up from?
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re 233 WillsteedAsh
Maybe it's my warped sense of humour, but I actually find that quite amusing, especially as nobody in America's willing to speak to him.
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Balhamu
On debt and inflation.
The point is that the Tories are surely entitled to use a similar calculation when describing National Debt, as Labour did in 1997. Now do you think Labour did a proper calculation on GDP and inflation adjusted debt, or do you think Labour looked at the numbers and thought 'Hmm, its just over 400 billion now, it was over 200 billion then, lets call it double'? Here's a hint, they used what you call a "misleading way of referring to doubling the debt". So, we are entitled to call it doubling the debt now.
Of course, if you want to go off and calculate the GDP / inflation adjusted figures for 1979 - 1997, or 1992 - 1997 then feel free. At least then you'll be comparing like with like. Make sure you include any population increase as well though.
By the way, according the the Office of National Statistics, "At the end of December 2007 general government debt was £618.8 billion, equivalent to 43.8 per cent of GDP."
The Institute of Fiscal Studies also points out that NOT included in the government figure are such things as:
Public Sector Pension Provision (already huge and getting huger)
Private Finance Initiatives
Northern Rock guarantee (worth around 100 billion)
They also point out that we have an ageing population which is certain to make things worse as we have more pensioners supported by fewer workers.
Any way you look at it the numbers are not great and getting worse.
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@238
Probably you!
If you dispute the fact perhaps you can furnish us with information pertaining to the contrary veiwpoint that you cling too!
Post#199 tried but in his calculation of tax free day unfortunately needs clarification.
He didn't mention it but he is working from the "average" without specifying what the average is based on, mean, medium, mode.
The beeb had an interesting 6 article peice on statistics over the summer which most people on here could do with reading just so that they understand how both sides of this debate can and do alter their figures.
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Re 208, India
Believe it or not Frank Field MP came up with a so called serious plan to fly us all to India for operations to save money. What you think is fiction is fact. It's when I heard of that brilliant idea I became convinced NuLab had lost the plot, alongside the other brilliant ideas of course.
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Pot @ 237
Well he can pay it back with a loaf of bread, can't he?
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Pot @ 241
"Overall tax burden has gone up" ... Yes
"Taxes have gone through the roof" ... No
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@214
"Until I see that real change I am going to vote for a normal person from a normal background like GB and not a privileged baffoon like DC"
So even though Labour and GB have spent more than a decade bringing the UK to it's knees, you would still vote based blindly on background?
Once the knives come back out after Glenrothes I think you'll have a new "normal" person to vote for anyway.
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245:
Agree. GB is always giving us his "son of the Manse" rubbish, and the rather bizarre, sanctimonious philosophy that seems to go with it. Is this supposed to be a "normal" background?
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*234
A mixture of the two - the potential problem was known about and had been flagged but nobody wanted to stop the good times rolling on. Both these aspects have been well described on this blog including GB's knowledge of this.
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@243
Is that Gordons solution then, If we get global run away inflation all we will have to do is bake a few loaves?
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242. glanafon
Frank Field, in my opinion, is the only worthwhile member of the Labour party and wasted being joined to a pack of wastrels.
Considering the state of hospitals in the UK, the hygiene, the lack of qualified staff and the general misery of being in hospital here, I would be happy to be flown to India for treatment.
The doctors and other medical staff I have met who are from India are mostly fine, highly educated people, and I'm sure the hygiene of Indian wards which would receive UK patients would be of the best. This would be a better solution than poaching away medical staff from their native lands where they are sorely needed, and the money earned would hopefully be used to provide medical treatment for the Indian population.
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208. U9461192 "The Chinese could probably run our health service at a fraction of the cost. Just fly everybody out to China and let them patch us up.
Better still, India. Their doctors all speak English and it's a shorter flight"
Better than that U......hand the NHS over to TESCO...No cancelled operations because the surgical instruments weren't there. Scrupulously clean wards, windows, bedlinen, floors and toilets. More front-line staff than management, all brought in on a much lower budget.
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Never thought I would hear Brown described as a normal person. If he's normal we have problems
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@244
How do you manage to disassociate the two?
As we were taxed to the rafters anyway it doesnt take much to go through the roof!
At least some parties have the ambition to reduce the tax burden to the top of the stairs.
For goodness sake the 1997 Labour manifesto stated that they wouldn't be big spenders as has been pointed out in the blogs several times.
So why the U-turn, They were elected to be prudent and yet they were profligate with our money.
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249:
Good point. As someone who thinks it's high time Labour were kicked out, my secret fear is that they might ditch GB and choose Frank Field. Led by him, they might even get re-elected. Still, they'd be a different (and far better) party under Field's leadership.
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Just come up that Brown has donated his conference cloths to charity. Its obviously to help those who have lost their shirts
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I have a friend from Zimbabwe. He borrowed $20,000 Zimbabwe dollars a few years ago to purchase a car.
Inflation since then has been 5 million% - a car now costs $100 million Zimbabwe dollars.
Blimey. Whenever anybody expresses concern about the Maximum Leader's proclavity for squandering money he doesn't have there is always some apologist popping up to give it 'aaaah but our debt (as a percentage of GDP) is lower than Italy or France or the USA'.
But this is the first time anybody has called up Zimbabwe as a comparator. Things must really be bad if we've got to compare our debt and inflation rates with Zimbabwe.
Is this going to be the Maximum Leaders 'fix'? Just print money? Why not, it's what all Labour governments end up doing.
Prepare ye for rampant inflation. Gordo's apparatchiks have given us the heads up. Don't worry. You'll be better off than under the Tories. They told me so.
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Just come up that Brown has donated his conference cloths to charity.
Might as well. He won't need it for the next one. Although he might have found it handy for his court appearance.
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One last word for you guys. It's a new one that I've only just stumbled across ...
"Campbellitis" (n) a disease
1. nasty complaint which erupts in certain adults but has its roots in issues going back to childhood.
2. affects almost exclusively men between the ages of 35 and 45 - extremely rare in women of any age.
3. takes its name from the former Director of Communications for Prime Minister Tony Blair (1997 - 2007).
4. characterised by a deep seated, existential fury which is always there inside the sufferer - would consume both the id and the ego if directed internally and so, as a matter of self preservation, it tends to be directed outwards ... typically at political opponents.
5. causes some quite strange symptoms, most commonly an inability to concede even the smallest point when engaged in a political argument - sufferers will continue to shout and bluster long after all logic and reason has been exhausted.
6. in extreme cases, if not treated effectively, the sufferer ends up completely unable to seperate themselves from their world view - this is very dangerous, both for the sufferer and those around them, since to "lose" any argument of a political nature will likely lead to personal meltdown, and possibly even violence.
7. although named after a New Labour spin doctor, the disease is these days particularly prevalent amongst the Tory community - doctors feel that, in all probability, this is because of the 11 painful years of opposition.
8. sufferers are easy to spot on things like political blogs (indeed most Tory supporting "bloggers" will be infected with at least a touch of the Big C) but it's not so straightforward in real life because sufferers, although hyper intense individuals, will go out of their way to be super convivial in social settings - they will often, for example, wear revolving bow ties when out and about.
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# 255
do U wear a revolving bow tie, U?
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Re Post 249
Franks okay as long as he keeps taking the pills, its just he goes ott sometimes. What about the carbon footprint of flying people back n forth to India, and you couldnt trust the airlines to ship you back if you died could you, not with terminal 5. They lost a body between the US and Brazil recently.
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Believe it or not Frank Field MP came up with a so called serious plan to fly us all to India for operations to save money. What you think is fiction is fact.
Hmmmmm. The more I hear about Frank Field the more I warm to him.
The key to breaking this spiral of squandering in the NHS is to bust the myth that medical services have to be performed in the UK by UK nurses/doctors on UK salaries. Why?
If it's cheaper to fly plane loads of patients to Poland or Russia or India or South Africa for their routine treatment/operation than treat them in the UK then fly them out.
Likewise our prisons. Why would you spend 40,000 pound a year keeping an inmate in a UK prison when I'm sure the Poles must have heaps of pre iron-curtain prisons kicking about and guards to guard the prisoners at a fraction of the cost. Maybe 5,000 a year. We could jail everybody who deserves it for the full term instead of letting them out early to make space for somebody else.
There has to be some good points to being in Europe. Just have the much cheaper Eastern europeans run our jails. In Eastern Europe.
I could save this country sooooo much money.
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#255
Zimbabwe illustrates the concept of inflation and why using cash values for debt is misleading - and you know that's what I was saying.
It has nothing to do with the issue of whether debt is affordable or not - merely illustrates a concept you have to use.
Just interested if you stand by your points that inflation does not matter. You say that the only important thing is that debt has doubled, inflation not important.
I have given you an example where the cash value of debt has doubled.
Why don't you stand by your original point, and say yes, debt has doubled and my Zimbabwean friend is worse off?
Or is the logical flaw this exposes in your previous argument too much even for you?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Brown maths: 3 x 1 = 1. Repeat something 3 times and spending appeared to increase only it was the same amount really.
Brown proclaimed the end to boom and bust giving excessive borrowing the green light. I reckon a lot of you are of an age to realise that everything is cyclical and what goes up must come down. This time it is a big drop because it has been a long time going up. Probably means we're in this for the long haul as it will take a comparable amount of time to return to balance.
Borrowing 125% assuming continual rise in value makes an ass out of you and me.
China has lots of cash at the moment, but if we stop buying Chinese goods because we can no longer afford to buy anything at the same time as the Chinese people want more money spent on them, they won't be spending money bailing us out.
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Why don't you stand by your original point, and say yes, debt has doubled and my Zimbabwean friend is worse off?
Or is the logical flaw this exposes in your previous argument too much even for you?
So you want me to claim that because inflation is rampant your mythical friend is better off. Only in La la la la labourland. But if you think Zimbabwe helps make your economic record look good then by all means do please keep using them as an example.
Meanwhile, back in the real world of the UK national debt has (almost) doubled.
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#264 But the concept is the same.
2 possibilities:
1. Inflation matters as I argue (in which case, my Zimbabwean friend would be better off even though the cash value of his debt has doubled).
2 Inflation does not matter as you argue (in which case, my Zimbabwean friend would be worse off - I mean, look at the cash value of his debt, it has doubled)
Tell me you believe in number 2. Go on. Don't be shy.
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259. glanafon wrote:
Re Post 249
Franks okay as long as he keeps taking the pills, its just he goes ott sometimes. What about the carbon footprint of flying people back n forth to India, and you couldnt trust the airlines to ship you back if you died could you, not with terminal 5. They lost a body between the US and Brazil recently.
So what, pal, if I'm dead I'm dead! I'll tell you something else, I'm getting tired of this carbon footprint nonsense. It's getting as bad as the nonsense about putting certain rubbish in dedicated bins, and after buying lots of personal shopping, the dingbat salesperson asks, "Do you want a bag?" No, I reply I'll carry it home between my teeth!
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260. U9461192
Your idea for prisoners going to Poland, Russia, etc. is brilliant. With any luck they may decide to stay there!
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I'm not altogether sure about the relevance of the Zimbabwean person here - I mean, I know the UK economy is in trouble, but is it quite that bad? - but I'll suggest an answer.
If he can sell the car for a (nominal) amount that is far more than the (nominal) total of his debt, and then pay the debt off leaving himself a surplus, then he is better off by the difference between the same figures. A car-sized debt has been reduced to a slice-of-bread-sized debt. So he's better off.
Except that the same inflation from which he has - in this narrow instance - benefited has also reduced his country's currency to confetti and its economy to rubble.
Beware the temptations of inflation.
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Balham @ 265
Thanks. Good day.
Don't worry, they know.
Whoosh!
(SYL)
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Re 266
But - lets say you go to India for a op and things go tragically wrong and you died. Look at the grief it would cause to all your buddies here if we couldnt turn up to check that it was you they had shipped back and to give our condolences. Just because you are dead doesnt mean your not missed. I agree that the carbon footprint concept is a problem but the cost of fuel will probably scupper the scheme.
The rubbish bin thing is very Labour isnt it, we can't get wheelie bins from Germany because thats the only place that makes them and they are busy. Wheelie bins are obviously too technologically advanced for us to make. Plus if you overfill your bin you get fined by a bin inspection official at 75 quid, if anything gets dropped out of the bin an undercover litter detective will jump out and give you a 75quid fine, and if you dont pack your rubbish prettily in accordance with the leaflet issued you will get another fine at the depot. And dont speed to pay your fine because even if the safety cams don't flash at you the automatic numberplate recognition cams that are logging your movements will record you. Mind you a friendly operative might speak to you thru one of the new pivoting cam and speaker systems, but please remember to be polite when you answer back or you might get an abso.
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Re 267
Why limit it to prisoners, you could pick on any group that didnt need to be in the UK as judged by a specially set up government office. You could extend it to retirees, anybody. You need to be careful for what you wish for with this lot in power. Actually they did try your proposal about prisoners a long time ago - it was called Australia, seems they have immigration control there now, too many people wanted to be in the prison.
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270 glanafon
You sound a good man, glanafon, but I don't think many will mourn me if I pop off. Victor Meldew is a saint compared to me. It's true what you wrote about the bins and the spying going on, so maybe the best thing would be to have the op' overseas and just quietly disappear - at least until Gormless Gordon is out the way.
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balhamu, I stand in awe of your patience. It reminds me of having an argument with a creationist - the normal rules of logic are just consigned to the dustbin. I think if they can't understand your Janet and John example of the Zimbabwean you just have to accept that you are flogging a dead horse.
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re post 272 Phoenixarisen.
Fella you shouldnt let it all get to you. Not worth it. Keep the fire alive in your belly, its a good thing, it is appropriate the phoenix and fire are in your name. Many people read your stuff. The problem is the way things are a going in this green island. Thats not your fault. Zen and the art of the brave new world. I do think Franks a good guy one of the genuine ones, the type that are disappearing, but he will never get the hot spot whilst he comes out with the fringe stuff. Hes spot on some of the time and then he blows it.
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re 273
I agree jim, I take it is jim brant rather than jimb rant, although I think the latter would be brilliant. Trouble is owning a car that is worth a loaf of bread, there no answer to that.
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Balhamu (and supporters)
Would appreciate an answer to post 240 please.
Basic point is its not about whether any particular method of calculation is actually 'correct', its about using the SAME term of reference as used by the Labour party in 1997. They used non-adjusted numbers back then when claiming "debt under Major has doubled", so why should we use adjusted numbers now?
Cheers
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#273
Jim - I think they're convinced. They just continue the denial because economics is a tricky subjecy, and as I noted 'the man on the street' will probably be convinced of the 'debt has doubled' argument.
Labour did do the same misleading tricks with the debt in 1997 though - that point is fair enough. And they have made a huge play of getting rid of boom and bust (though I'm not convinced that the recession that looks likely will send year-on-year growth into reverse).
And they deny the facts that interest payments on the debt are exactly the same in cash terms as they were in 1997, which is definitely true.
Actually looking at the facts destroys the 'saving for a rainy day' argument that is one of the central planks of the Conservative's strategy. So obscuring the facts is a necessary part of the Conservative strategy.
Others include "Lets hope there is a massive recession" (as a shadow minister today stated), "Continue to make personal attacks on Brown", "Don't make any firm policy commitments" and "I really hope the media don't start questioning us on our plans for Government".
You'll see this next week. Be interesting to see if they change their tune on regulation or on redistribution in response to the current economic situation.
I'm not sure they will though. I think they were proposing a US-style 'solution' of swapping the bad debt of financial institutions for Government bonds in April and maybe still are (i.e. taxpayers subsidise the massive City bonuses built on decisions that were poor and value-destroying over the long-term), with business-as-usual once the current crisis is over (i.e. City bankers earn their multi-million pound bonuses and an attempt to change it is 'the politics of envy').
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#276
The answer to the basic point is simple.
If you want to judge Labour on what they have actually done, you would want to look at the actual figures that are presented in a sensible way that looks at the affordability of the debt and its real value.
If you have an interest in the Conservatives being in power (or have already made up your mind for other reasons e.g. disagree with policies that have increased the tax burden), you want to use misleading figures to try and convince others of your case.
I prefer to look at the facts and make my own judgement. What about you?
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re Post 276
Why are you so bothered about these figures. Something about lies, damn lies and stats comes to mind. They are meaningless to most people. Most people have emotive reactions and are not interested in actuarial tables. Its the soft not hard that wins the arguments, people will just walk away.
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#279
Which is why the simple (and wrong) account will win the day.
I think I'm resigned to that.
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Re Post 278
I don't think it has much to do with what has been achieved or not achieved. It is about perception.
I am not bothered who is in charge providing sound policies are in place that respect people and give a sound framework.
The problem is that emotive headlines are used repeatedly throughout the day. The 700 billion dollar bailout is one, previously the UK debt doubled due to NR is another. In both cases you would think the money had been given away and nothing secured in return. On the BBC News it is very much paraded as a 700 billion bailout in the US, a gift to bankers. Nothing is ever said about the fact that there is a strong case for a profit at the bankers expense for the US taxpayer based on smaller but not disimilar intervention in Japan at the start of the noughties, it depends on the deal price and subsequent market stability.
In both of the cases (NR and US deal) the money is ulimately secured on property and its value is dependent on the market variation but a government can take a longer term view, that is the whole point of the arrangement.
It is a gross misrepresentation of the facts to major on one aspect and not the other. Emotive words like hysteria and fear are used when the situation is quite clearly under control and moving to a resolution, which was never going to be immediate. All this the sky is going to fall Turkey Lurkey from people who claim to have contacts with important people is just ridiculous.
Arguing how prudent or not a government has been is irrelevent to the average guy who just feels poorer, even if in fact all that has changed is the illusion he had has gone. Thats the problem you face if you spin it too much.
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Re 280
Unfortunately being right is no help, and forecasting the future correctly doesnt help, you won't get thanked for it. If you say I told you so it is worse not better.
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From the Guardian a while back:
"Thus when the ever-courteous Alistair Darling gently noted a late intervention at Treasury question time last week with "I wondered when we would hear from the honorable gentleman, who has been uncharacteristically quiet this question time", Master George replied: "I am sorry that I waited 45 minutes to intervene. I almost lost the will to live listening to the chancellor for 45 minutes.""
"Master George" being George Osborne. So unlike Harriet Harman, Tories are always courteous and polite and would never hurl stupid insults around.
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I think the legacy of this Conference is that we are left with the best of a bad bunch. The Electorate will have the chance to give their verdict in 2010.
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278. balhamu
The problem is that it is very hard to get to the true figures and people suspect that figures are easily adjusted to back up almost any position. We all know that Brown is a master of it.
PFIs must be the biggest example of jiggery-pokery under Nu Labour. 100s of schools and hospitals have been built by Nu Labour and they take the credit as though we have paid for them through taxation.
Not only that but we are tied into crazy maintenance contracts which is really just a lot more hidden debt, check this link out.
People now see the huge levels of waste in every walk of life, but they also hear that much more is hidden. All they know is that it smells bad.
People arnt bothered or smart enough to follow the complex analysis of debt, inflation, interest rates, most people don’t even know what GDP is or how it measured. I bet most people could not even roughly outline Browns Golden Rules.
People listen to politicians for a few minutes each day and then vote on instinct:
They assess the man and ask do I trust him?
They ask do these sound bites add up with my personal experiences?
They see the levels of government waste in their everyday lives and ask is this fair?
They hear of public sector pay and conditions and compare them with their own and ask is this what I voted for?
They hear of Quango and council bosses on fat salaries and ask is that right?
The people seem to be saying No… It smells bad.
Statistics wont change the way the herd votes
Honest, fair and charismatic leadership will
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278. balhamu
Not only that but we are tied into crazy maintenance contracts which is really just a lot more hidden debt, check this link out.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article4087496.ece
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#285
Carrots - you are right in respect of the need for transparency in the management of the public finances. This is why misleading statements (as made by Mr U and others here) stick in the public mind - it is a complex area and people do not trust HMT as the ultimate arbiter of whether the rules are being met.
This Government have improved transparency a lot which has helped them be held to account. The Government publish a lot more statistics than they used to. They have improved the institutional arrangements for public finance (e.g. introduced the Golden Rules, 3-year settlements for departments instead of 1-year settlements and so on).
However, PFI is quite opaque and HMT are still the arbiters of the rules.
A limited Fiscal Council could be an answer. They would be a (trusted) independent organisation accountable to Parliament rather than Government that is the arbiter of whether the fiscal rules are being met and whether the public accounts are sustainable, who would comment on debt, structural deficits, the direction fiscal policy will need to take etc (like a beefed-up IFS). They should be advisory only and have no statutory powers over fiscal policy - this needs to be kept under democratic control.
This would get over the trust/transparency issue - but at the expense of introducing a new quango.
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Logically Gordon Brown should sack David Milliband, even better, since he's already said he won't accept a demotion, offer him a ministerial post below that of full a Secretary, and he'll be duty bound to resign!
Seriously. GB has nothing to lose by re-shuffling David Milliband out of his cabinet, and it might even get him the next election.
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287. balhamu
All true and I agree Labour have made things more transparent.
I might just let that Quango through.
Sounds good. in fact name your salary.
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Labour Ministers are keep saying that come the election, people will choose them because they have the experience to guide the country through the economic crisis, unlike the "inexperienced Tories". Do they really believe that? It has never been the case in the past!
They just don't seem to get the fact that many of the Labour policies over the years have contributed to the present financial mess which the country now faces.
If they really believe what they are saying, lets have an election now!
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#289
Glad we agree (for once!).
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#290
So you want constitutional change?
You don't like the system where the UK electorate votes for a constituency MPs, and the resulting Parliament decides who the Prime Minister is? Let's have a more Presidential system, where we directly elect the PM in a similar way to the London Mayor.
You don't like the system where a Government can stay in power even if it is unpopular with the election? Change the constitution to ensure that slipping behind in the polls triggers an election.
Looking forward to Cameron bringing forward these changes.
Oh, what's that? He's not?
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230 Carpeter the only reason that they ask for a election now is because its the worst possible time that the government could give a election, any government whatever its colour would be crazy to hold an election in the middle of a recession when the general consensus would be to blame the government. The other stupid reason that you have challenged them on is never going to happen as much as they would like to gain power by the back door.
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258saga You ask
"do U wear a revolving bow tie, U?"
The answer to that question my friend is it's the brain thats revoling not the bow tie.
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294 sagamix I am sorry about that but I couldn't make my mind up whether to put Revolting or revolving, I think it works out OK it's one of those fill in whats applicable situations.
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293:
Your'e dead right it would be crazy for Gordon Brown to call a General Election in the middle of a recession. Just as crazy as not to have called it before the recession stsarted to bite. The problem he has now is that the recession is predicted to last the entire length of the time he has left. I think they call that 'a pair of trousers!'.
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Brown is re-shuffling as we speak, who knows who goes and who stays?
I supose he needs to do this before anyone else escapes.
Maybe before they re-shuffle him.
MP's will be holding their breaths, Miliband
must be wondering about his position.
Maybe the whole deck of cards will collapse.
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