The truce is over
The truce is over. The Tories have had enough of hearing that Gordon Brown is a super hero and they've decided to try to bring him down to earth.
In a speech this morning, David Cameron condemns what he calls "the complete and utter failure of Labour's economic record". The American sub-prime crisis is only half the story of the economic crisis he says. Just as important was the failure, "a British failure", to regulate British public and private debt. The Tory leader promises to usher in an era of responsibility with greater control of both public spending and private debt.
So why this speech now? Is it because the Tories have been panicked by Gordon Brown's recovery? Certainly, in an interview I've just done with the Tory leader the question he appeared to like least was the one when I pressed him to give personal credit to the prime minister for his handling of the past couple of weeks.
In his speech Mr Cameron comes up with another of those metaphors that he likes so much to explain why the political truce is now over. He says that it was right to man the hoses when the house was on fire - in other words to back the government in a crisis - but that it's now also right to see who built the house. Is this the same accident-prone house that only recently had a broken roof? My feeling is that this metaphor's unlikely to last quite so well as the last one.
What matters much more, of course, is whether the Tory leader's argument proves sustainable. Can he convince people that Gordon Brown is the architect of their problems rather than the failures of the global financial system?
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That's more like it ... there's nothing more boring (and phoney) than all the "National Unity" garbage.
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Well, David Cameron would know all about the failure to regulate the banks considering he is in favour of deregulation and his party is funded by the bubble bankers themselves!
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If anyone saw Question Time last night, most of the audience seemed to believe that the fault should be shared between the Banks, for lending the money to people who couldn't afford to pay the loans back, the people who borrowed beyond their means, and the Government for not regulating the Banks properly in the first place.
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To use an ugly expression, let him put his money where his mouth is. Cameron has a golden opportunity to win a nervous, even devasted electorate over. But, and this is a big but, he must demonstrate that he has real leadership qualities, and has a range of policies that can be applied to steer this nation through a really tough situation.
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Last night Robert Peston highlighted the fact that this countries total debt (personal, business and government) is equivalent to 4 times its GDP.
That is not a global issue its Browns.
We are convinced... regardless of metaphor.
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Everyone in this country knows our phantom prosperity has been been built on unprecedented levels of personal and Gov't debt.
Debt is the central political issue for the future and only one politician is talking about getting it down to a sustainable level.
Cameron also hit on the imbalances in our economy in respect of the North/South divide. Us Northerners need a "Barnett Formula" directly aimed as business development in the North. Tax business in the South and pass it on to the north to ignite economic growth up here afterall we have lots of skills, cheaper labour and premises and housing costs and were hard-workers too!!!!!!! The development of the SE should be halted!!!
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Correct, we need adversarial politics if we are going to move forward. Brown and his bunch of incompetents need to be challenged at all times and on all things.
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Because labour have proven over 108 years all they know about is wrecking economies. Tax & waste is Browns motto
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Gordon Brown a hero for saving the day??? The banks still aren't lending, the stock markets been crashing and the economy is heading into what looks a long and deep recession. God help us if GB has a bad day!
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He convinces me, anyway.
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"No more boom and bust."
"No more boom and bust."
"I say again Mr. Speaker, no more boom and bust."
And 10 warnings from the IMF that the UK was living beyond its means.
Brown says he needs an 'early warning system'.
No, he needs to listen to others more.
Brown regulated the debt management away from the BoE. Brown gave it to an organisation that patently was not fit for purpose.
And the Tories warned him in '97 it was a flawed idea.
Brown borrowed the money, gave away the gold, destroyed pension, taxed and spent.
And now is borrowing more.
Nail him Cam. Just nail him.
We don't need more regulation, we need better regulation because Brown's didn't work.
We need to know how we are going to re-pay it and how we start to rebuild our ruined economy.
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Cameron must have got all the contributions from the banks, so he can now join in whinging about them and the Government.
By the way has he been on holiday over the past few weeks, he's been very quiet!
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Once again the Tory's show their true colours..trying to win cheap political points at a time of crisis for the UK.
Perhaps Mr Cameron should spend his time working with the Government to help the country than to revert to cheap shots during worrying times for us all?
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Cameron is absolutely right - the government has presided over 10 years of waste, excessive borrowing, bureaucracy and takes hikes. In short Labour has helped cripple our economy. Brown is part of the reason we are in this mess and why the government cannot do more to help out the hard working people of this county. I just hope there is an election soon so we can kick this incompetent Labour government out of office.
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Of course Gordon Brown is the architect of these problems.
It is not just about the banking crisis. It is Dafur, it is Afghanistan, it is Iraq, it is the report about false consultations, it is about Mandelson, Cash for Honours, loans to political parties, it is about 42 days detention, it is about the upcoming commons vote on abortion and the changes to the law, it is about CTV cameras, its about the unemployed being roof laggers, it is about the non referendum over the Treaty of Lisbon, not being at signings.
I think that you get my drift, also how about human rights in China and the torch parade through the streets of London, foot and mouth, now that was a real crisis, caused by leaks from a government establishment. It is about Northern Rock continuing to sponsor a famous football club and paying a retainer to a former senior executive and then repossessing the homes of those people who should never have been given a loan in the first place.
Well I am no fan of David Cameron, but there is a problem. If you say that you are not with me then you are against me is the mantra. I am straining every sinew to save the country and therefore by inference if you do not support me then you are undermining our country, which a true conservative would never do!
So, we need a formal government announcement as to the policy in Afghanistan, because there is nobody saying about the elephant in the room about the effect that the war is having on the poeples of Britain.
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My take of Cameron's speech is that he's coming out of the starting gate strongly in the hope that he's able to capture the momentum by talking up innovation and society, the new business and kindness that I've been promoting all week in this blog. This is matched by a sideswipe which attempts to write off the economic and investment progress made during the Labour years, and extending his flanks to promise a rolling barrage of measures to help ordinary people with their everyday difficulties. It's a good set piece but I remain sceptical that Cameron fully understands what he's saying or genuinely cares for people.
You can't just pull innovation of the air by edict. That requires the right management attitude to employees, a nurturing environment, and a credible level of loyalty. The Tories oppose corporate governance, fair wages, and employment security law. On that alone their words appear to be a cut and paste job from my comments over the past few weeks while their delivery on the ground remains the same old blank cheque for the CBI and shareholders.
Another thing that the Tories don't get is the relationship between discipline and liberty. They talk tough on getting the job done and developing the regions, but if staff are to be skilful and work well together, and communities left behind by economic progress are to be raised up, they need to drill it into their heads that sound form or proper technique requires people to execute well and pay attention. That's rules and sensitivity by another name, and something they undermine when talking up licence, such as with their criticism of the government's upcoming communications bill, or policies on schoolchildren's behaviour. There is no capital growth in failed individuals or states.
The sense of creativity and community the Tories are familiar with is the cleverness and greed they've soaked themselves in. But, genuine creativity and community is open minded and open hearted. It doesn't game the system or seek to build wealth up for itself. It opens itself up to spontaneity and kindness. Far from being the evil of the City or marketers, genuine creativity is life giving and loving, quality and sharing. This isn't something you can deliver with a bunch of words from a lectern but it requires insight, commitment, and a lot of letting go. This is essentially the feminine, or Yin side of the Tao, so is very firmly on the left of centre political spectrum, not the shiny and brittle right of centre on the Yang side of the Tao.
Cameron has come a little way but his message isn't entirely credible nor is its sincerity tested, so I remain sceptical that the Tories are anywhere near fit for government. Unless their leading politicians, members, and friends and allies begin showing more of the qualities and sensitivities Cameron is trying to sell people, unless they deliver and take a little pain, I won't believe they're anything more than a bunch of spivs trying to sell double-glazing to an old lady.
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I am sure Vince Cable would have more credibility to criticise GB than Cameron (no I am not a LibDemer).
Fundamentally the failure to regulate the financial markets reflects the sad naive worship of USA style free enterprise by the current and previous Prime Ministers that has and had consequences for formulating public policy across the board.
Cameron is an unsurprising opportunist but so was Tony Blair when he was in the same doorstep position.
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Cameron will not be taken seriously until he acknowledges that the crises has been caused by the activities of free-market fanatics, not just in the UK but throughout the world. In view of the fact that the Tories are bankrolled by the bankers I have no confidence that he will.
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It is all very well Brown presenting himself as the only person who can save the UK (and the rest of the world as well!).
But we shouldn't be in this mess in the first place!
New Labours's basic failure is in not monitoring or managing the financial sector. They have allowed them to operate without restraint.
It is all so obviously wrong now but it would have been just as wrong over the last 10 years if anybody had bothered to look!
New Labour have failed themselves and failed the people in the UK in the process.
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This was long overdue.
Even the man down the pub knows that Cameron is right about this.
It was way overdue that someone stoood up and called this spade a spade and stopped him shovelling more garbage onto the pile
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At last Cameron speaks out.
He is 100% right, and Brown deserves a lot of the blame. Very impressed and encouraged that at last Brown's hubris may be "outed" in public.
No more boom and bust... HA HA HA
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The leader of the Tory Party criticising the leader of the Labour Party for embracing free market economics.
He's right though we were far better under the heavily regulated markets that were the hallmark of Mrs Thatcher's re...ohh hang on.
If elections are won on sheer brass necked hypocrisy then truly Cameron is home and hosed.
And they wonder why people don't bother to vote. The tired Labour Party led by beleaguered Brown, the shamelsessly populist Tories led by the vacuously smug Cameron and Osborne and the ever less relevant Lib Dems led by the anonymous Nick Clegg and the odious Chris Huhne. I believe they call it Morton's Fork.
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I'm certainly prepared to overlook past failings by Conservative government because this new party leader does deserve a chance.
And I think it's absolutely brilliant that, alone among MPs, David Cameron has the guts and foresight to speak publicly for those who have effectively had their livelihood STOLEN form them due the sudden collapse in sales in the 3rd qtr of this year, quoting from this website 'changes to the insolvency laws to protect sound but struggling businesses'.
I happen to believe (and I have held this view since the early 90s) that there has to be a point where the state can no longer just wag an accusing finger at firms and individuals who have totally run out of money through no fault of their own while the 'better off' prosper more so than ever and chuckle to themselves about how prudent they_have_been..
And I speak as one who recently posted a petition on the No.10 Downing St website. If you are at risk from Britains Dickensian methods of dealing with 'insolvency' The respected editor of 'Ripoff Britain' signed it today and I urge you to sign it too before the trainwreck hits all of us.
Hear hear!
Guy Croft
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Nick,
You ask if Cameron can convince people that Gordon Brown is the architect of their problems, rather than the global financial system.
It's blindingly obvious** that he is one of the chief architects. The downturn in global finances is not Brown's fault, but the way that it has affected the UK is down to the reaction of the UK economy. An economy that he has micro-managed for the last 11 years, an economy that has been regulated by the FSA that he introduced.
** to anyone but the most blinkered of Labour supporters, that is.
I'm not suggesting that the banks and the general public are blameless in the least, but it's like looking after a bunch of kids in a playground. If you let them run free they cause mayhem. Likewise if you put in place an impotent and hamstrung regulator, you get an unregulated banking system.
Anyone who claims that the Conservatives are simply 'the party of deregulation' is guilty of gross misrepresentation - the Conservatives are certainly keen on an economy that responds to free-market forces, but anyone can see that a totally unregulated market is just anarchy. The Conservatives don't want that. One of the left-leaning bloggers here likes to refer to the Conservatives as being driven by the acquisition of wealth, or words to that effect. Yes, indeed - but you need the market to be regulated for that wealth to be real and not just a hubris-fuelled bubble.
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Do you expect us to believe that if we had a conservative government now we wouldn't still be where we are? or even worse. I don't remember the Conservatives as being very keen on regulation and controling wreckless greed.
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David Cameron in favour of more regulation! Hypocrisy of the highest order. Here he is one year ago in his Tory Conference speech:
? “I don't believe in an ever larger state doing more and more.”
? “And I know that business wants to hear from the Conservative Party how we will reduce regulation and reduce taxation to give them more freedom in this new world… and we heard from Alan Duncan how we will introduce regulatory budgets to cut that regulation...”
? “[We will] get tax and regulation down for the long term good of our economy and that is the modern Conservative change for this new world of freedom.”
Hitherto Cameron and his free market Tory allies have wanted more not less deregulation – they wanted the corporate world which has sailed us into today’s financial black hole to be freer not more controlled!
The events of the last few months have shown undisputedly that what the corporate world needs is not, as Cameron tried to lead us to believe, less regulation but more. He was mistaken and the evidence of his error is all around us.
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When he talks about creating apprenticeships and rebuilding manufacturing I am immediately turned off. After all it was Mrs Thatcher who destroyed manufacturing in this country when she decided the economy should be built on the service industries. It was also the Tories who removed apprenticeship schemes; the Labour government reintroduced them and they are increasing year on year. Even Mr Cameron admitted that the massive increase in debt began before 1997 when Labour came to power. Looking at the Conservative manifesto in 1997, I see nothing to say they intended to regulate on debt. Nor was there any indication they intended to do so in the 2005 manifesto, which David Cameron wrote for Michael Howard.
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17. watriler wrote:
I am sure Vince Cable would have more credibility to criticise GB than Cameron (no I am not a LibDemer).
Very good point. I'm no Lib either, but Vince Cable, in my opinion is an able, and I believe sincere (if there is such a thing) politician. He is wasted in a party which is going nowhere and filled with nothings. If he joined either of the two main parties, he would bring a surge of new supporters to their cause.
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"Can he convince people that Gordon Brown is the architect of their problems rather than the failures of the global financial system?"
Wrong question Nick. I don't believe he has to convince people of that.
A better question is that posed by warning123 #4
Cameron needs to trust the public enough to provide them with a full and proper and honest appraisal of the medium and long term outlook for UK plc and describe how his party will help us through this.
As I mentioned on another post, while the bail out has improved the capital structures of the banks which will ease the situation somewhat; the fact remains that much of the interbank security is still tied up with toxic debt and as the economy slows and property prices fall the ratio of toxic to good will increase. Look at NR and the repossession stats.
I found it amusing that the pimplies in stripy shirts working at their trading desks thought for a brief moment that the crisis was over, when the fundamentals haven't changed.
We need to be told the full story; we need to know that Cameron understands the scale of the problem; and we need to know he "has a plan".
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I blame borrowers: for not sitting down and working out the real price of that holiday/ television/car once the interest payments have been added on top; the banks for lending in an incontinent fashion; for lifestyle television programmes hyping up "redevelopment" and how much money can be made if you just borrow £x thousand to do up an old wreck; for lifestyle magazines giving the poor they can live like millionaires; schools for not teaching finance .... and Gordon for presiding over it all. Especially Gordon, wrecking the pension market and encouraging people to think property can thprovide their pension. Nice one ... he collects more Stamp Duty that way!
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@16
Ah the usual Hogwash mantra of "he stole my ideas"
There is someone here who really needs to get overthemselves
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Of course Brown is the architect of many of our current problems. Let's re-iterate for the umpteenth time:
1. In 1997 Brown created the regulatory framework which failed to stop irresponsible lending practices by the likes of Northern Rock. His baby, the FSA, was simply not up to the job.
2. Brown irresponsibly spent and borrowed far too much during the years of growth. At a time when the Government should have been running a healthy fiscal surplus, he was borrowing to spend as though there were no tomorrow. Perhaps he believed his own rhetoric about an "end to boom and bust".
3. The Government allowed the housing bubble to run away long after it was apparent that we were in an unsustainable boom.
4. The Government has only belatedly started to get a grip on the current financial crisis, after a year of dither and irresolution.
5. Under 11 years of NuLabour, the economy became completely unbalanced, relying on public and consumer debt, combined with a housing bubble to keep it afloat.
Brown is just a big, boastful, bully and it is under his irresponsible stewardship of the economy that this country has gone down the pan!
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My points:
1. The FSA were set up to regulate the financial sector. They had plenty of warning that there were problems in 2007 when HMG had to nationalise Northern Rock - why didn't they take a good look into the practices of the banks then?
2. "Off balance sheet" lending MUST be stopped with immediate effect and never be allowed to return.
3. One overall credit card limit to be applied to each individual, NOT each credit card and credit card providers to be made subject to the same rules as financial advisers - issuing a client agreement, completing a fact-find, proving affordability, etc.
4. The practice of "revolving credit" (moving debts from one 0% for x months card to the next and so on, or re-mortgaging to move debt from high interest short term credit to lower interest longer term credit) to be addressed to stop the present disaster from recurring.
5. Pie in the sky - Gordon Brown to own up to his responsibilities and accept a significant proportion of the balme for the disaster - the BBC's programme last night with "no return to boom and bust" - I'd laugh if only I could stop crying!
6. Do something about closing hedge funds; it's legalised gambling, but with our money.
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It's about time Cameron took the gloves off. There should now be a concerted effort with the LibDems and disillusioned true Labour MPs to force a vote of confidence.
People have had enough of Brown. He's lost the plot and it's time to go.
http://theorangepartyblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/brown-has-lost-plot.html
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When will people see that anything that comes out of david camerons mouth is meaningless! he states that the tories are the only ones to fix the economy yet supports browns recovery plan, he calls for unity when it'll get him headlines and drops it for an attack which will get him more headlines. He expresses all these wonderful ideas about regulation and setting up the 'office of budget responsibility'... are these idea's that he subscribes to or are they ideas that sound good and will win him supporters? look back at past tory manifestos, especially the ones he's been involved with...are those idea's there? no! The mistakes brown made over the economy in the past would of been made by cameron, if anything cameron would of made even bigger mistakes! but now its not cool to favour deregulation he pretends to be something else! he is a politician in the worst possible sense and i hope people see through him in time for any forthcoming election!
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For all the chaos of the last few weeks--there are still many thousands of people who really still don't know what's going on economically , find it hard to understand or maybe just don't even give a damn.
When the election does--eventually come--it is these very same people who will probably say "Let's give the other lot a go".
Thus-my guess it is this group that Mr Cameron needs to focus on. His speech here , full of economic jargon will now be simplified over the next few days by the tabloid press/ popular media.
Nothing's changed, although the Brown bounce will probably seen as a flash Gordon within a week or three.
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It's nice to know not everyone lives in la la land where GB is the master of the universe. The Tories have a great shot now at illuminating GB and Labour's fingerprints which are all over this fiasco. To those who say the Tories are scoring cheap political points I say they have shown commendable restraint.
If it was reversed, the socialists would have been heckling from the sidelines from day one.
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flan @ 11
... "Brown doobedoobedoo, gave away the gold, doobedoobedoo and doobedoo" ...
He didn't "give away" the gold, he sold it at market price and reinvested the proceeds in interest bearing cash assets.
Gold pays an effective NEGATIVE interest rate (costs of storage and security) - when you factor in the interest rate differential, you find that the price of gold has to almost double every 10 years in order for it to keep up. Made perfect sense to sell it and buy something else.
Will you please amend and resubmit your post (without the gold bit) seeing as I've gone to the trouble of pointing this out?
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This Government has destroyed this country financially and socially. They have been engaging in a massive experiment over the last 11 years with social engineering and top down control over the populations liberty. We need to vote these dangerous Labour politicians out before it is too late for this once great nation.
I for one are genuinly worried about the Labour parties agenda.
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It is good that they are going to take on the government again.
I think it was a very poor start (no clear message... sound bites aren't all bad when you want headlines...) - but I guess 'it can only get better'
When the ship is sinking and the PM has called "abandon ship", everyone has to 'support' the crew in manning the lifeboats.
But getting bogged down in questions of exactly what you said (supported/objected to) earlier about the labour-voyage is a complete waste of time when if you had been in charge you would have flown anyway.
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I fully understand David Camerons concerns here & commend him for reminding the public just who is responsible for the country being in the mess it's now in.
Too many have held Brown up as the 'Great Rescuer' because he brought about a rescue plan for the banks. They have quickly forgotton that, had it not been for Browns shoddy policies in the first instance, a rescue plan may not have been required.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Does this mean the Tories are now retracting the accusation that Gordon Brown had been following Ken Clarkes policies as Chancellor?
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IT WAS BROWN THAT ENDED THE TRUCE.
PMQs, 8 Oct:
Cameron: Should not the Bank of England be restored to its proper role... so that this never happens again?
Brown: Of course... but I have to remind him of what he said on the “Andrew Marr Show”:
“What you won’t hear from me this week is sort of easy, cheap lines...beating up...the market system, bashing...financiers.”
Brown scores a cheap point. Huge laughter from the Labour benches. Blood boils on the Tory benches. Truce over.
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Try some of these numbers for size.
If you look at what the 20 largest financial institutions from all over the world have reported, the write down in capital is in excess of $200 bn. Since that inexorably leads to a reduction in liquidity (the cause of trhe problem), and using 20 times as a consrevative multiple, that means that the lending capacity has been reduced by $4 trillion.
Those are conservative estimates, and obly focusing on the largest US, UK, French, German, Swiss, Dutch and Japanese banks.
This figure is still larger than the $3.2 trillion that has been pushed at the problem by the governments.
It should illustrate that politicians looking for rewarding headlines, and something to get their teeth into, should avoid hasty action and intemperate language.
By no means is the 4 trillion figure an estimated total loss, but it is an immense financial burden that needs to be worked around. The banks are the providers of liquidity to everybody, including the government.
The government, at all levels, has been lax in its supervision, and now we are paying the price. The intervention is going to cost us more, because what has been thrown in isn't enough, and we are now locked in.
Where is this government going to find money to pay for all the public services they keep promising us, you know the world class health service and world class everything else.
They've kept quiet about it so far, but as the oil price drops, so does the government's tax take, making the domestic budget deficit even worse than it was.
Darling's autumn budget statement is going to make interesting listening.
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Gordon Brown is suddenly popping up in the Midlands saying that a manufacturing base is the centre-piece of a strong economy. Where was he when the Peugeot shut down and 4500 jobs went ?
Already with government owned banks the strings are being attached to business - Yes Lloyds can merge with HBoS - but only if jobs are protected in Scotland.
If Gordon Brown truely wants to help the economy of this country he should call an election.
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Sounding Brass
David Cameron is merely the leader of the oposition.
He will not be called upon to make any serious decisions about anything for at least the next 18 months - maybe not at all.
This is a serious situation that is far too important for juvenile party politics.
We need to know what the government is going to do: the rest is a distraction - just a side show - and we should treat it as such.
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At last - this has been long overdue.
It has been galling to see Gordon allowed to pose as an economic superstar and our saviour - when we all know he is a major part of the problem.
Hopefully the media will no longer pussy foot around Brown and take him to task over the disaster he has created.
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What came up in Question Time was a small but much needed debate about the advancement of the BNP with nine seats in Stoke for instance.,
If you look at it academically, it is the act of people in desperation due to the inadequacies of this government.
Last time I mentioned this I got moderated. Why?
This government does not like people stating the bl****ng obvious.
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3. shellingout
Fine except:
People behave like people (stupid and greedy)
Bankers behave like bankers (clever and greedy)
The government should behave like government (take an evolved position and exercise control)
Government failed.
Last night I heard Ed Miliband explain how the government is going to increase its targets on the environment, despite the downturn. How recession was not an excuse to row back on these issues.
That is evolved leadership. Sometimes you have to tell the people what they don’t want to hear for the greater good.
Shame Brown didnt do this on the economy.
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This comment has been referred to the moderators. Explain.
So who was it that got rid of all the regulations for Banks & market traders why Maggie Thatcher on big bang day 1986 let the market be free she said,also she said about the increace in house prices "it's nice for people to think they have somthing of value" the only thing that Gordon Brown did wrong was to follow Tory policies.
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Brown is part of the problem, he is not part of the solution.
Thankfully normal politics is resuming.
I for one think Brown should be held to account for his shambolic running of the economy. The public needs to know before the next general election why we got into this mess and who played a major part in it.
The encumbent of, first 11 Downing Street and now 10 Downing Street is where all eyes should be focused.
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Reired people and those approaching retirement with investments in stocks face ruin and financial restraints. Pension providers will also be adjusting their annuity rates.
"Crash" Gordon cannot deny that whilst he contantly bashed on about "no more boom and bust", the truth is that he was the overseer of the economy for 10 years and was quite happy to ride the global economic providence, but is now lame and reticent to even acknowlege that some of the UK's economic problems are due to his management over the last 10 years.
Come on Gordo, let's have some mea culpa
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I have been following events pretty closely: but have I missed the ideas from the Tory leadership about their specific, uniquely Tory policies which should be implemented NOW to get the banking system working again and minimise the depth and length of the recession? Certainly Osborne seemed bereft of such ideas when pushed hard on Today this morning. He and Cameron are still stuck in a 'how to get to Dublin' mantra which just does not wash, and they have hardly been in the vanguard of tight finacial regulation and abstemious, credit-free life styles.
The markets clearly cannot solve everything and apparently the society which does not exist is broken.....so clear blue water between the present leadership and Mrs T....most embarassing
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Another cause of the house prices going through the roof and making them inaccessible for many young people is - wait for it -
Mothers working. Wait, let me clarify before you go all PC on me.....
Because millions of mothers feel they have to go out to work, some even three months after their baby is born, it means the income of the two parents keeps the house prices high BECAUSE THEY CAN AFFORD IT.
Now, I know, some mothers just have to go to work because the father is poorly paid or, indeed if there is no father on the scene (disgraceful in many cases). It is not those about which I speak.
Labour didn't and doesn't look into social and economic factors, it actively encouraged young mothers to return to work and have their children "group reared". Scandalous.
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Too little too late. The point of a laissez faire system is that the banks that took the risks that put them in such peril should be allowed to fail. The amount of money thrown at the failing economy is frankly immoral as it rewards failure and encourages debting institutions to go into further debt, as your colleague Robert Peston said. However, creating a regulatory system now is rather like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted , to use an old cliche. The sooner the system crashes, the sooner it can be repaired, rather than the drip, drip that is happening at the moment.
The Conservatives have been particularly quiet for some time, they should have been, frankly, MORE vociferous in criticising Brown's economic policy. Now it just looks like a cheap attempt to score political points. Especially when more than one of them are talking about burning houses like a poor Gregorian chant.
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Gordon Brown is also the architect of 'soft power' and 'fair trade' which is an effort to supplant the militarism and transnational corporatism which has helped cause so much destruction and poverty.
As the Japanese say, people make mistakes and have difficulties, and campaigns like Iraq and Afghanistan take time to unwind. You don't want to create a power vacuum for warlords. Finishing the job to a satisfactory level can help that.
In my earlier post I mentioned liberty versus licence. Some folks confuse the two, not realising that sound rules are the basis for a good life and civilisation. While one may have minimal influence on nations, less banging on about it in here would be less disruptive and encourage more calm.
The Tao teaches that influence extends from the self outwards, so better focus and sensitivity in the self spreads out like the ripples created by a small pebble being thrown into a pond. More calm increases happiness. More happiness increases kindness and, maybe, a nicer policy.
Speaking of threats: "If a man throws a grain of salt into a little cup of water, the water in that cup would become salty and undrinkable owing to that grain of salt. But if a man were to throw a similar grain of salt into the river Ganges, because of the great mass of water therein, it would not become salty and undrinkable".
The lesson here for folks getting uppity about Cameron or foreign terrorists is that too much focus on problems tends to magnify them, but by developing inner calm and expanding its sweetspot, one develops more perspective so these things don't even cause a hiccup. This view would also be usefully applied to businesses and communities trying to look beyond the immediate economic issues.
All you need is love. RAT-A-TATA-TAT.
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guy @ 23
... "Britains Dickensian methods of dealing with insolvency" ...
That's an interesting comment. I thought we had a fairly lenient approach, these days, to bankruptcy - you know, walk away from your debts and start again after a period (quite a short period too).
Brought in to encourage entrepeneurship, I've heard the perceived laxity around this being cited as yet another of the factors which has encouraged the frothy, debt ridden economy we are now landed with. Not a subject I have too much knowledge of, however, so I'm wondering (given that you seem to be saying the opposite) if you could elaborate on your concerns a little?
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Any proper consideration of what the economic policies of the last decade have produced leads us to three simple words: we need Cable.
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All Cameron has to do is Rubuke the statement by J. Smith and Hoon, about closer monitoring of the publlic.
The electrate will be all over that like a Tramp over Hot sausages.
Please Labour remember you are in Office not Power.
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Cameron makes a strong and cogent critique of Government economic policy under Brown and all Yvette Cooper can do is call him "juvenile". I think the Government has to do better than resort to petty name calling - how about a bit of mea culpa for the mess they have created.
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carrots @ 50
... "Bankers behave like bankers (clever and greedy)" ...
They're big (a lot of them) but they're not clever.
Seriously, the intellect of people who work in the City is as overrated as Gordon Brown's has been - and that's saying something.
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I watched it this morning, and it was disappointing. So far as I could see there was a lot of generalisation, but few specifics - and most of those were things the government and its agencies is already doing or has announced that it will do (see for example Adair Turner's statement yesterday, and the announcement on the 80% reduction in emissions by 2050). The only* real specific was the new quango to advise the government as to whether it is borrowing too much - Osborne obviously thinks that is a big idea, but I can't see how it really adds anything new. It will have no actual power, and there are already a lot of people doing the same thing. We had the usual mantras about broken society, broken politics, etc - but not acknowledgement of the great improvements in recent years (eg crime, including violent crime, at historically low levels).
It was worrying that when the bankers(?) in the audience asked detailed questions, Cameron gave every impression of either not understanding the question or not having any sort of answer; the first one he passed hurriedly to Osborne, who then talked about the advisory body on debt, which had nothing to do with the issue raised. If it had been an exam, they would both have failed, I think.
* No, I forgot that Cameron also announced a commitment to building high speed rail lines to several parts of the country.
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Nick
"So why this speech now?"
Because he's Leader of the Opposition, of course.
Brown has had a relatively good week or so but that doesn't mean Cameron should not do what the Opposition is supposed to do, ie oppose. He did the right thing to suspend hositilities for a short period but why should he give Brown an easy ride?
#52
"the only thing that Gordon Brown did wrong was to follow Tory policies"
Not the only thing, but certainly his policies have been way to the right of Cameron.
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Well, looking at the markets it seems that the city has taken David Cameron’s speech this morning very well indeed.
Could it be that we need a Conservative government to give the banks the confidence they need to lower the LIBOR rate?’
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I admit to be conservative (with a small 'c'). However, I'm still skeptical about the Tories. Where were the Cameroons over the past few years, telling us how bad the situation was (potentially) and how poorly Flash Gordon was performing? Hammering the Labour Party from backside to breakfast time in the best interests of the British people?
I seem to recall the Tories basically saying "Trust us. We're like Labour, only, er, different a bit ...". Same public spending plans, focus on public services (rather than wealth creation), no tax cuts etc etc.
Now, all of a sudden, we're supposed to believe that the Tories were/are radically different, or are going to be. Well, are they? What's going to be different?
Like many voters of my instincts and persuasion, I want to see a serious statesman emerge from this debacle, capable of full-blown strategic thinking, planning and implementation, who recognises the huge economic and social challenges that lay ahead, who realises that the end of cheap energy is the next "global meltdown", closely followed by the adverse effects of mass global migration, and who sides with citizen-taxpayers to deliver small government, low taxes and genuine freedom to all of the good people of the UK.
Gordon Brown has indeed been a Stalinist disaster for this country. Simply having the Tories offer us more-of-the-same-but-different just will not work.
Are you up to it Mr Cameron?
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All these comments about scoring "cheap political points," funny I seem to remember John Smith being absolutely merciless on Major in the aftermath of Black Wednesday and quite rightly so! What goes around comes around.
Re. regulation. The irony here is that Labour have let the markets rip over the last decade while at the same time they have piled costs and regulation on to the real economy by gold plating EU directives to a degree which no other EU government has done.
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the truce is over and it was as expected as rain. to be honest they make me laugh these parties do, each party is a joke and as a whole i wouldnt trust any of them to run for a bus let alone run the country.
partly to blame for the problems we have today is party politics.
as organisations they are moraly corrupt and financialy inept, example labour has a large deficit in its accounts due to overspending in the last election but they won and are expected to manage this countries finances when they cant even balance there own books, the tories and others are no better.
theyt cannot be trusted and have shown they concider themselves first above all else.
can this country afford to keep these organisations and continue to suffer poor governments ?
no i think change is needed and the people of this country deserves a government that will think of the people first and foremost.
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I was beginning to warm to Cameron but now I've cooled off. I was not impressed with Brown up till recently, the way he stabbed his mate in the back was a bit too tory for me, but his recent actions have proved him capable as Chancellor at least.
Ozzy as chancellor? I don't think so. He doesn't seem to have a grasp of the reality of the situation and contents himself with trite comments. Just imagine Ozzy and Shameron in Downing street. No thanks.
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@52hfpaul
So according to you the fault lays 22 years ago in 1986 when there was some deregulation.
What you fail to see is that Labour have been in power for half of that time 11 years, and therefore had the power to change things.
This they did. they further deregulated put in place the tripartate agreement took powers off the Bank of England and gave them to the toothless FSA and quite frankly failed in their responsibility to the people of this country.
Two drivers share a car for Le Mans driver one says we can go faster if we set the car up this way and it will stay on the road. The next driver gets in the car changes some settings and removes the brakes to save weight to go faster. at the end of the moulson straight he goes straight on into the barriers and destroys the car. Who is at fault?
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All this talk of 'rebalancing the economy'....
who destroyed our manufacturing base?
who destroyed our ability to exploit our main indigenous energy source?
who sold off the utilities ( and thereby opened the door to foreign ownership)?
who privatised the railways at the 11th hour?
If the Tories are so keen on history, it did not start in 1997.
Is the collapse in UK banking/finance unique to the UK? Nope. So how come the policies of G brown et al are responsible?. Are Cameron and Osborne really selling us the idea that fixing that b****y roof would have defied the hurricane? Dream on boys, and just keep out of the way while we move on from here.
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Surely Cameron's speech is really an anti-Thatcherism speech.
Proper regulation of the financial markets.
Sensible borrowing and lending policies.
Reward for the long term, rather than short term.
The need for industries other than finance.
The need for a balanced economy outside London. Even trying to develop a manaufacturing sector.
The argument that crime, poverty, deprivation, improving education need to be tackled before giving out tax breaks.
Mrs T would be spinning in her grave. Erm I am sorry she's not dead yet.
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island @ 32
... "The Government allowed the housing bubble to run away long after it was apparent that we were in an unsustainable boom" ...
It got out of hand the last couple of years but, prior to that, most of the increase was a perfectly rational bidding up of prices in response to extremely (and artificially) low interest rates and the democratisation of credit.
There were excesses, no question, but the last thing I want to see now is for us to go kneejerking back to the old days where reasonable credit was the preserve of a privileged few.
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Personally I'm not convinced Brown is the saviour at all. I'm thinking it was more politics in Washington that he stepped forward and said he would announce the bail out here, with the recapitilisation and nationalisation of the banks as he is so arrogant and believing this to be the 'right' thing to do. It also went completely against the grain of the free market and therefore the US would have wanted someone to go first - ie. Brown. And he'll probably get some sort of Nobel prize for it!!!
Secondly he has played some juvenile politics himself with the oil companies yesterday.
So now on to Cameron's speech. He called it as it is - Brown is to blame, we are in for tough times and still have Brown in charge spending like a madman. Nothing juvenile but being refreshingly honest with the British people.
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"On regulation, the challenge at home is to match our risk based approach, which now extends from the risk based regulation by the FSA and HMRC to local authority inspection, to actual delivery on the ground. Like all advanced industrial economies - and this is what I hear every time I visit America - you know as do I that this requires a cultural change, a change of mindset, a rejection of the old model of blanket, untargeted, heavy handed intervention -- in favour of a new view of the corporate world, founded on trust in the responsible company."
G Brown - CBI Annual Dinner - May 2007
"What I said when I made the Bank of England independent remains even more true today, I said that our new monetary and fiscal regime was founded on stability first, foremost and always, stability yesterday, today and tomorrow. And I will be honest with you, many who advised me including not a few newspapers, favoured a regulatory crackdown.
I believe that we were right not to go down that road which in the United States led to Sarbannes-Oxley, and we were right to build upon our light touch system "
G Brown - Mansion House Speech - 2006
It is absolutely right that Cameron should seek to draw a line under the immediate measures to prevent a full-scale collapse through the largesse of the TAXPAYER not Gordon.
There needs to be a focus on how we were able to enter this "age of irresponsibility", given that G Brown and co have been at the helm for the last 11 years and made absolutely zero effort to understand what was driving the growth (in reality maxing the credit cards on a national scale).
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Thank you Charles_E_Hardwidge for a superb post there.
For a minute I was going crazy:
"Cameron is right" etc etc.
Maybe he is, but if you think he represents an actual alternative you are absolutely bananas. As Charles so rightly points out, Cameron is an avid spporter of the exact same types of policies that created this mess.
For example, how can you possibly stop another sub-prime type investment disaster if you propose LESS regulation for corporations and banks?
It makes no sense whatsoever. In my view this is a very,very bad move from Cameron at this time. Whether true or not, whether he likes it or not, Brown has a rock solid reputation on the economy, and one way or another it's to his credit that this remains pretty much untarnished.
Just at the moment not just Europe but the U.S. are listening to, and copying some of our proposals. In short, however briefly, we are leading the world in something political for the first time since Thatcher.
Therefore attacking Brown for his management of the economy, just at the time of Brown's resurgence, and given the party he himself leads, simply makes it look like he is:
a) Throwing cheap shots.
b) Showing surprising and unpleasant signs of desperation/opportunism.
c) A certain level of Hypocracy, namely trying to blame Labour for an economic system built by Thatcher, and in all the really important areas, 100% supported by himself and his party.
It's about time the cosy Cameron love-in stopped. As much as I despise Labour, I still remember the Tories in power, and I have no desire to see this country sleepwalk into another 18 years of that awefulness.
I'm already getting a distressing reminder of what it was like with Boris Johnson's current stewardship of London, Government by the rich, for the rich, and the poor can count themselves lucky to be tolerated...but don't be expecting any respect, or help, or understanding or anything. Stop and Search is the best they deserve.
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Dear Nick
Lets not beat about the bush, "The Tories are responsible for the deregulation of the Banks", under Thatcher, The party has been bank rolled by the City for eons, But NOW THE BANKERS HAVE BEEN ISOLATED AS THE VILLIANS IN ALL THIS, and politicians do not want to be aligned with the ramifications, as NOW the public are now only too well aware.
The banks have created a monster, and whistle blowers have now named the culprits and what they have been doing to rip the public off.
" Bankitus " the public are notifiably causcious of the way banks have been allowed to spend, uncontrolled by the watchdogs, WHO ARE THE CAUSE OF THIS FIASCO.----BY assossiation.
Bankers have been labeled PIRIAH'S , ARROGANT, SELFISH, AND CROOKS, YET THEY STILL STICK TWO FINGERS UP TO THE REGUALTORS BY SETTING OFF ON BOOZE CRUISES, FOR THEIR STAFF , AND ON TAX PAYERS MONEY.
Whilst ordinary people are loosing their Homes because of their lending schemes and scams.
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52:
So you're saying what exactly? The so called 'Master of The Universe' doesn't have a mind of his own and is nothing short of a copycat. Serious stuff? To try and lay the blame for all of this at Thatcher's door smacks of desperation to me. I'm no supporter of John McCain but when he said to Barack Obama in their televised confrontation 'It's me you're opposing here not George Bush' it struck home nicely. I'm glad that David Cameron has finally spoken out. It's only what many of us have been saying on here for a long time. He couldn't let Gordon Brown get away with all this misplaced glory worship for ever however grave our financial circumstances might be.
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sagamix
Agree with 1, this is much more fun.
Ref gold:
You clearly didnt watch the video on debt that I sent you.
Gold has increased almost 200 percent in the last 8 years.
You are right Gold offers no interest but its price has risen hugely. Wonder why.
When its price rises it says confidence in markets is low. Its the markets red light warning.
There is a finite supply of gold. This keeps it honest and its a safe haven in troubled times.
Gold is tipped to hit 1000 dollars an ounce.
Ask Gordon Brown. He achieved what most dealers can only dream of. In 1999, he spotted the bottom the market, a 20-year low. WOW!! The trouble was, Brown's order was "sell". He told the Bank of England to dump nearly 400 tonnes of British gold, since when the price has shot up and cost us billions
What are the products that Brown used the proceeds to invest in worth now then.. any idea?
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its not for cameron to "prove" anything... he has not been in control of the nations finances for 11 years.
it is for brown to prove he did not cause the problems we have.
"responsibility" brown urges in his speeches, lets have a look at brown's responsibility:
* the FSA had the power from day one, to step in and stop "off balance sheet" borrowing - they did nothing
* in the past two weeks brown has said "the FSA did not know about all the borrowing as the banks didnt have it all on their books!" now the labour spin machine is pushing out the story, "the FSA wasnt upto the job"
compare the "off sheet borrowing" model of the banks, to the government's own borrowing model - they are exactly the same!
the government are "off sheet borrowing" to the tune of billions of pounds - which shows clearly that they are playing the same game as the banks only with the nations finances, and no regulator to keep tabs on them.
its been a case of "everyone else to blame but us" from the labour party, we are told to be responsible, the banks are told to be responsible, but labour havent dared mention anything about the government being more responsible!
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Before getting carried away with "he was following Tory policy" remember the regulatory regime Brown installed was all his own work!
Brown was chancellor for 10 years.
Brown created FSA - a toothless tiger
Brown is directly responsible for the regulations that made the current situation possible
Brown is using money that does not exist (borrowing) to bail out the banks
The money does not exist because 10 years of Mr Brown's policies which have left the piggy bank empty
Brown claimed an end to boom and bust....
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63. sagamix
Bankers... They're big (a lot of them) but they're not clever.
Mmmm perhaps, I know a few who are very clever, but they are all cleverer than the average Joe.
As they are there doing it to others rather than having it dun unto them.
Not nice perhaps, but tis the way the world goes around.
And I wouldnt trust Browns interpretation of clever.
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We need an economy that has greater variation in its activities, so that if one sector catches a cold, the others will continue to prosper. Shipbuilding, steel industry and car making has largely been replaced by financial services or service sector call centres - in other words pretty much the same activity. In past labour governments public investment kick started new industries such as Concorde.
Why? Because most MPs had previous work experience, before they became politicians. Most MPs now are what I call professional politicians, and have never had a real job such as Brown, Milliband etc. By and large MPs are currently either ex lawyers, ex local councillors, or trade unionists. The latter I have time for, even if I disagree with their politics as do know which side is up.
Brown talks of investing in business to kick start the economy but it is just that - talk. A Tony Benn (who is still inventing things bless him) would have ideas by the score from totally wacky to quite sensible. I cannot think of any MP of either party that could fill his shoes.
Why are we not more dominant in computer software? There is a huge research facility part funded by Bill Gates (Microsoft) in Oxford or Cambridge Universities - yet where is the tangible commercial benefit? The Germans have hooked up with a company in Abu Dhabi in a revolutionary venture in solar power - we are content to build eyesore wind farms that decimate the local bird life.
A lot of government investment of late has revolved around computer databases, of dubious added value to the economy but usually farmed out to foreign consultancy companies. Given the number of projects has no one had the gumption to suggest in house solutions? Better value for money perhaps? Its not exactly a ringing endorsement of the British work force is it, if the government is always going to resort to outsourcing?
Brown seems to think that a new policy or soundbite a day is what his job entails. No, he is the Chief Executive of UK plc. He is responsible for making sure that people are doing their jobs and has clearly been remiss as regards financial services. As an economy the UK over the last 10 years has been merely motoring on at a sedate 20 mph. Now we have a flat tire, and the spare wheel has not been fixed yet.
But we do have the potential, whch makes it all the more frustrating. We need a leader with imagination or at least someone who will listen and consider other peoples ideas as new options for the future. Privatisation is a good way of raising funds for government spending, but it only works long term if new industries are created and supported by government investment and subsequently privatised etc. I got the impression that Blair saw this, but Brown never cottoned on.
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Eleven years in charge of the economy! No need to say anything else
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But... but...
...I thought Labour had merely inherited Ken Clarke's wonder economy...
...at least, that's what the Tories were saying until about a year ago.
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It's about time someone starting holding Brown to account for his time as chancellor. Ten years of tax, borrow and spend, ten years of pouring money into the public sector with poor value returns, ten years of allowing the economy to ride a wave of unsustainable house price rises, cheap Chinese imports and huge amounts of debt.
People look to their shiny new local schools and hospitals not realising they won't be paid off in years thanks to PFI, and private sector employees are fed up with seeing their pensions decimated whilst having to stump up for the ever increasing public sector pension committments.
Gordon allowed the fires to grow out of control and now wants a pat on the back for helping to put them out. His mendaciousness and arrogance is astonishing.
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@74
If you knew your Maggie properly you would know that all those things are what she advocated.
The only manufacturing that she didnt like was government subsidised. Surely even you can see that there is no place for unprofitable businesses.
When the tin mines closed they put them in moth balls for such a time when tin mining could be profitable again, and that is why those mines will reopen. The same will go for coal.
Proof of this concept comes from venezuela where they know that unless and until oil is over 75dollars a barrel it isnt worth them extracting it. As oil reserves wind down they have plans to bring their oili to market.
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It would help if the BBC and Nick in his blog could indicate what sort of audience Cameron's speech was made to. I know these well signalled/sign-posted publicity led set speeches are meant for the wider audience, but who were these invited people who could have sat through this hubris without shouting "rubbish". Was the early hour meant to catch them still asleep ?
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This is such an obvious line to start spinning now - I find it insulting and frankly embarrassing. Cameron is obviously backed into a corner at the moment. If he and Osborne had been shouting these claims 12-18 months ago then they may hold some credibility but unfortunately for them this is just not the case. Hindsight is a wonderful thing isn't it? Lets face facts, George Osborn and the Tory party didn't even have an economic policy until last month! In fact up until very recently Cameron was still touting that a new Tory Government would match Labour spending plans for the first few years of them taking power. This speech from Cameron is just another example of the Tories knee-jerk, petty, party political nonsense. As usual there is no substance to any of it.
I shudder at decisions Cameron et al. might have made faced with the recent banking chaos had they been in charge. Look at his response to the Labour plans to rescue Northern Rock back in February, "The nationalisation of Northern Rock is a disaster for the British taxpayer, a disaster for this government and a disaster for our country". Was it? What would have happened had this action not taken place? Based on this earlier response, would the Tories have taken the massively bold and decisive action to partly nationalise the rest of the UK banking industry as Brown did last week? Would Cameron have led a global movement to encourage other nations governments to follow the same course of action? The answers, I am certain would be NO and NO!
Now is the time for forward looking, positive, decisive leadership not retrospective, half-baked, inessential rumblings.
You really must try harder!
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When will the general public be willing to take some of the blame for borrowing to excess? Sure the government should have had greater regulation of banks, the banks should have been more careful who they are lending to, but without a general public who were willing to lap up all this easy credit, we'd have never got into this situation. Take out any one of these three things, we may have been ok.
We are all (or nearly all) to blame.
It is about time people recognised this, try to get us out of this mess TOGETHER. Apportioning blame is no good at a time like this.
Cameron may well blame the government, but he should blame the banks and electorate too. He should outline hard policies as to what he would do to resolve the situation - not simply say "it is your fault"!
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Under previous Labour governments, public spending was funded by massive levels of direct taxation. At one time the top rate of Income Tax was 98%. New Labour tried to con the elecorate into believing it was not raising taxes by introducing a series of stealth taxes whose effect on the economy has been really damaging. There is a direct link between house price speculation and the early measures Gordon Brown took to rifle pension funds and to make some investment income payable in advance of its receipt. The cult of celebrity and programmes such as Big Brother have also led to the idea that overnight wealth and fame are possible, without being remotely deserved. It is time to go back to sound money and sound values.
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Panorama last night summed up Gordon Brown; endless shots of him preaching no more boom and bust (in several different locations); endless droning on about lighter touch regulation and the wonderful spirit and talents of the city.
After watching for an hour one got the impression a ciy trader could have sold a used car without wheels or an engine and the dear leader would have been so bedazzled he'd have jumped straight in.
He's greedy, gullible and a hypocrite to suggest he did not cause the bubble. He was pouring in the jet fuel for ten years and strapping on the after burners.
Gordon Brown will be in the history books for being the guy nobody liked at school who suddenly had everyone's attention and stuffed it up. Want some money? Have some more of mine.
Call an election please.
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I think that David Cameron has done the right thing by highlighting that Brown's Britain isn't such a wonderful place, and one man more than most is responsible for this state of affairs.
Lets face it, who would want to be involved in any kind of truce or agreement with someone as untrustworthy, evasive and duplicitous as Gordon Brown ?
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Everyone pretty much knows that the CBI, City, and their Tory pals screamed from the rooftops whenever the government tried to hold them to account, with all the threats that it would reduce investment or they'd ship jobs overseas.
The huge shift of income from the bottom to the top has been the biggest heist in history, and the communities ravaged by lack of attention is a callous abandonment. Labour have done what they could but it's only now the crisis has blown the CBI, City, and Tories apart that they have a free hand.
For Cameron to forget what his parties policies were only a few weeks ago and try to present the "Brown Plan" as his own is the biggest brass neck I've seen in a while but amateurs tend to big it up and rush in too fast. He'll never admit it but I bet he's terrified of being shown up as fools gold when Labour deliver the real deal.
Gold bricks for a fiver...
Gold bricks for a fiver...
Got 'em 'ere in me van!
Gold bricks for a fiver...
Weee-waaah! Weee-waaah! Weee-waaah!
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Well it looks like Poor General Sir Richard Dannatt(Current head of the Army), will be off next July. Overlooked for promotion, becasue he was overly concerned about the welfare for his men.
Didn't see the ghastly Des Brown or any other Government official/MP/Minister.
Unlike Ian Blair who where they of course were properly angry at such treatment to a truly excellent copper?!?!?!?!
Lets Hope General Sir David Richards, keeps Dannatts ethos going. Spelling out to the government, that it is not to take the Army for granted.
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87
No relation to L_Greenhalgh of Afghan fame?
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Davi Cameron is for the family. Heaven knows he has said it enough times.
Brown was not a family man until recently. He has had years in which he could not fully empathise with the lives of ordinary family men and women.
The government has actively encouraged mothers to work - not for laudable or women's lib but for:
A)
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a) to obtain more taxes
b) to group rear and influence children's minds through the education system at an early age so that they do not kn ow the traditional family and are answerable to the state
Think about it
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@ 73 - olddocrob
"... All this talk of 'rebalancing the economy'....
who destroyed our manufacturing base?
who destroyed our ability to exploit our main indigenous energy source?
who sold off the utilities ( and thereby opened the door to foreign ownership)?
who privatised the railways at the 11th hour?"
* manufacturing: ask people of scotland where the previous "alternative silicon valley" jobs have gone - where has birmingham car making industries gone?
brown's own admission is that hes turned britains economy from one with a manufacturing base into a "service" base, then he allowed service jobs to move abroad to foreign call centres (who are not under data protection laws)
* energy sources: ask gordon brown who allowed the minimum storage capacity for uk energy needs to fall from around 20% of the country's needs to just 5%?
who allows us to buy energy then sell it abroad (to countries with decent storage capacity) then buy it back in winter at higher prices from those same countries?
who didnt pass on to UK customers, a single penny piece of the money norway PAID US to take their gas when the new pipeline opened?
who changed the laws allowing energy companies to only read a meter once every two years (instead of the previous 3 months) racking up big arrears bills for customers causing more hardship?
* who nationalised railtrack costing people hard earned money, then proceded to raise prices and triple the price of rail travel?
who killed competition on our other public transport services and allowed prices to rise to record levels, costing the individual again?
- take off the rose tinted glasses please sir, there are people everywhere, who are angry and are desperate for help.
until YOUR prime minister wakes up and takes some responsibility for his actions, then please direct questions at him, see how many answers you get from him!
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Oh, sit down Cameron and do be quiet. In this moment of fragile confidence your schoolboy petulance is ill-timed and damaging to the market, the real economy and the hopes of thousands and thousands of families who want a respite from the weeks of battering and fear. Now is not the time for your petty partisan point scoring unless, of course, you place that above the good of the country. The FTSE was up over 3% on opening this morning and then you got up to speak and it's now barely up 1%. Is there a connection? Maybe not but do you really think you have the right to take that chance? You have a responsibility to this country above your party so think on!
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http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7nD7dbkkBIA
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Yup. The problem isn't going to be solved by a blizzard of new regulations and tub thumping but by a change of attitude. Gordon Brown and Adair Turner of the FSA are already onto this. There's similar issues in business and communities and that's the big thing that Cameron has *completely* missed.
I'm not sure what the media's issue is. They should be wise to the marketing tricks Cameron is using to look plausible while covering up his policy on the hoof and rewriting history. Plus, the Turbo-Tories are quietly tearing themselves apart behind the scenes as the tax cutters and the ones who don't want to rock the boat, and this is not being given any coverage.
Boris Johnson is a clueless sociopath. He bulldozed and chummed his way in the door but it didn't take five minutes before the guys was ragging on the poor and starting barfights with anyone he thought he could score easy points off. They oughta put bells on that guy so people can hide before he comes around the corner. Mind you, the way he's going it might be a ball and chain.
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Carrots @ 82
The AU thing.
Because of the interest rate differential, the price of gold has to KEEP doubling every 10 years to keep up (broadly speaking) so a decision to hold other things instead was not, on a long term view, a wild and crazy thing to do.
Of course, you can make money on any asset by nipping in and out of the market, buying low and selling high, calling it right every time. You'd be an excellent trader if you could do that ... but that's not the approach we want to managing the nation's reserves, is it?
One can debate the merits and demerits of what's an optimum asset mix for a portfolio at different times in the cycle but this "Gordon blowing our gold" complaint is not particularly valid.
It's trotted out rather more than it deserves to be is the point I'm making, really.
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Another weak attempt to grab headlines by Cameron. Who advised him on this line of attack whilst the electorate are reading of Brown’s blueprint for recovery being adopted in Europe and across the pond? Whether or not this proves to be the answer to the economy’s problems this seems a miss-timed and poorly judged attack. Cameron needs stop with the PR spin and start laying out some clear and considered policy. He seems to be falling into the same problem Blair had mid-term - trying to be everything to every man. Brown may not be a publicist’s dream but he resolutely sticks to playing the game the way he knows best, something that I think will be increasingly respected by the electorate through the tough times ahead.
If Brown manages to steer the country through the downturn on a comparatively equal or better footing than our neighbours I think he would win significant credit with the voters, possibly even enough to convince them to stick with the devil they know.
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@88
HE did indeed inherit Ken Clarkes economy See my post 72 driver one
And he did a driver two on it
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At long last Cameron is following the majority of bloggers on this site.
Gordon Brown was in charge and has to take responsibility for the domestic part of the crash. The crash is a great deal worse in Britain than in Germany where the problem is German Banks buying toxic USA loans, here we have our own toxic loans in addition to the American ones.
Brown was eager to take responsibility for the "growth" during his time in power but also the growth for the previous 4 years. Likewise he claimed credit for low inflation when for the last 4 years it has been higher than the last 4 years of the Tory administration.
And Yvette Cooper (how she must be suffering with the loss of value of their London house!!) claims:
"But at a time when the British people want calm leadership and serious policies to get through tougher times, David Cameron is engaged in playing juvenile political games."
She is wrong we want Gordon Brown, Ed Balls and Yvetter Cooper out. When you consider the mess that has been made with pensions, PFI's government debt, poor education, welfare breeding and unrestrained immigration it makes my blood boil.
And it wasn't Gordon Brown's plan it was Standard Chartered Banks plan, we haven't heard him thank them yet, but then that would spoil the puffed up view of himself that he is so keep to project.
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#73.
Who destroyed our manufacturing base?
Indeed. If you look since 1997.... manufacturing has suffered three, yes, three mini-recessions.
3,000,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost.
We lost MG Rover, for want of a mere £110m loan for a new model and secure a new investment partner. 30,000 jobs lost, £6bn in turnover and £1bn in exports earning this country money.
Peugeot in Coventry and Vauxhall in Luton, Ford at Dagenham. Jaguar closed Browns Lane.
Could it be that they found Brown's business taxes just too much to stay in the UK?
Look at telecommunications, we had a good medium sized set of firms already to explode as large global players. The dot com bust (again under Brown's watch) saw many go to the wall yet Brown was happy to extract billions from the industry in the form of an auction.
These are 100,000s high skilled jobs that used to earn this country a lot of money.
No more.
As for energy. They have dithered over nuclear, failed to provide capacity in gas storage, we have failed to plan for a future without North Sea Oil. Instead Brown windfall taxes money used by private enterprise to invest, he taxed new oil exploration out of existence.
Coal, Labour could not be bothered to fund £30m to test new carbon sequester technology to make coal in the UK viable again. A technology that could be exported around the world.
Labour have a hell of a lot to answer for in their 11 years in power.
Yet, they could borrow money like it was going out of fashion.
To blame Thatcher is delusional, she left power 18 years ago, to blame her economic legacy is madness, Labour have been all too happy to wring out every penny out it and spend it.
If Thatcher's legacy was so flawed how come every international bank has been happy to lend this government money off the back of it?
Quite.
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He is in a difficult position and in opposition there is not really a lot he can do other than sit back and watch events.
We all have to hope the markets stabilise and he is quite right to support the emergency measures - which George Osborne also put forward on Andrew Marr's programme before Gordon single handedly saved the universe.
However Cameron is absolutely right to blame government profligacy for the fact that we are one of the first countries to go into recession because our boom has been entirely based on the spending money we have not got a firm basis for our economy to recover and the next few years are going to be very difficult for everyone.
Brown has a lot to answer for.
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Yes, Cameron is absolutely right. Yes there are global issues, but we should be in the position to be the last economy into the recession and the first out of it. However, the complete opposite is true. Whichever way you look at this, the buck stops at the door of the government, and in particular Gordon Brown, for the following reasons.
1. BROWN has resided over an economy which has been built upon an unsustainable levels of borrowing, particularly public and private debt.
2. BROWN changed the inflation target measure from RPI to RPIX to CPI, shifting the goal posts for the BoE which has led to the bank rate remaining too low. As a result money has been too cheap, fuelling house price inflation and creating a market for borrowing.
3. BROWN removed regulatory authority away from the BoE and set-up the FSA. The FSA has failed to regulate the areas of the banking industry that matter (systemic risk and risk management) and instead concentrated far too much on commercial aspects of banking. This is the job of the OFT not the FSA. Thus the FSA has been a complete and utter failure.
4. BROWN has resided as chancellor over unprecendented levels of government spending, often on short-termist and populist vote winning policies which have either failed, provided little return, or offered no long-term benefit to the country.
5. BROWN has run up a record government deficit. In times when we could really do with expansionary fiscal policy, the government coffers are empty.
6. BROWN had increased the tax burden of the British public to levels far above that of most European countries. These tax revenues have not been used to sure up the economy for hard times and have NOT been redistributed to the poor. To understand where they have gone see point 4.
7. BROWN deliberately fuelled the housing boom by manipulating interest rates (see point 2) to relatively low levels, investing in shared equity schemes and encouraging banks to be more "flexible" in thier mortgage lending.
8. BROWN sold off our gold reserves to fund his expenditure plans at a very low price. This was a poor decision which has robbed the country of valuable reserve assets which could be used during economic downturns.
I could go on.....
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stevie @ 103
... "You have a responsibility to this country above your party so think on!" ...
So the opposition can only attack the government when everything's going well?
Mmmm.
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I suppose you have to start some time fighting the next election.
Seems Party Offices have their blog watchers on full alert.
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#24 et al.
As I see it, the fatal flaw that poisoned so much of the "Thatcherite" reform process - and finally led to the downfall of Thatcher herself - was an essential childish naivite.
Don't laugh - I mean it.
The Lady and many of her grass-roots supporters (myself included) had this deeply ingrained belief that most people were basically decent and would not necessarily compromise their basic values for short-term gain if left to their own devices.
Oh dear.
Remember her roots - the North even today shows much more of that attitude than the South. In the world she came from, one's social standing and self-esteem were (and still can be) to a degree dependent on being seen to conform to group values. Naked self-interest was not respectable - at least a fig-leaf was required.
We now live in the world of the "Prisoner's Dilemma" (look it up) in which the payoff for acting in the common interest is only realised if ALL participants cooperate. Otherwise, cooperation results in a disadvantage for the cooperator relative to the non-cooperators.
I'm afraid the rats have it (irrespective of political colour) until the people in control get a bit more ethical - even hypocritical would do for starters.
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Gold bricks for a fiver...
Gold bricks for a fiver...
Got 'em 'ere in me van!
Gold bricks for a fiver...
Weee-waaah! Weee-waaah! Weee-waaah!
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Browns Gold Sale -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/mar/05/mining.economy
Even the guardian (earlier this year) reported it as being a poor move.
And (funilly enough) the treasury had NOT reviewed whether the move had been beneficial or not...
Now why haven't they ever reviewed the decision? They have had 10 years...
Only answer I can think of is that a formal review would have to be published, and they daren't risk putting in writing what they already suspect (or actually know).
Mind you it was Browns personal decision - the treasury did not like the idea.
As for storage/protection costs... I doubt security on 800 tons is that much different to 400 tons.
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106. sagamix
Perhaps, but they are called gold reserves for a reason.
Some gold, given my points in 82, in the portfolio would have been prudent.
Sort of adds more weight to the rainy day argument.
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#104 flamepatricia
I've just watched Aaron Russo on your link.
I'm speechless!
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If we don't get rid of Brown at the next election then there is no hope for this country.
The man (and his party) could not have done more harm to this country if he tried. We are still fighting in wars we didn't want, civil liberties have been eroded without a thought, pension funds have been decimated etc, etc, etc The incredible thing is, there's more to come - eg the punitive new car tax rates proposed.
The effects of his decisions both as Chancellor and PM will affect this country for a long time after he has gone and he knows it. We are heading for some very hard times. Brown saved nothing for a rainy day when times were good and now it's pouring down with the water level rising up to our necks.
Superman - may the ballot paper be your Kryptonite!
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Interesting (but not surprising) that the FSA don't know how they are going to change - but have already said it involves them recruiting more people at higher salaries.
Thats a quango for you. Dunno' much but I know we need to be bigger and cost more...
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Wow - not many balanced posts on this thread.
I have what has become a pretty irrational dislike for Brown.
Im no financial whizz but I could see years ago the house boom and debts created by it were going to cause us severe problems eventually.
What I find sad is that a lot of people cannot see David Cameron would have done no different as he supported the things that caused this.
Personally I think its time Westminster was changed to a version of PR like the Scottish Parliment. Here your vote counts a lot more as smaller Parties have power. With Westminster its two cheeks of the same backside.
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Please Nick - how about pointing out to the Tory front bench that the age of reckless investments and deregulation started in the eighties - on their watch.
This has nothing to do with "Brown" policies - it is how the city has been allowed to develop under many governments.
I hate party politics for politics sake.
They sound like moaning little playground bullies.
Makes me want to not vote for any of them.
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What about Cameron's role as advisor to Norman Lamont during Black Wednesday? The boom and bust of the 80s and early 90s was massive compared to what we are experiencing now, which would be much worse had a Thatcherite economic policy been in place. Brown cannot get rid of the ups and downs of an economy, but he has produced unprecedented levels of growth, without, so far, the massive recessions of the 80s and 90s. Those who are criticising him now are just resentful tories who's 'born to govern' right has been taken away. They don't like a talented Scot from a grammar school running the country, and want to install one of 'their own'.
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38. Yes he sold the gold at market rates, but made the schoolboy error of announcing prior to the sale that he was going to do so. Hence the market value went down and the country lost out.
Please resubmit your post acknowledging this fact.
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The Tory derision on more than ten years of economic growth under a Labour government, dismissing it as a boom gone bust, should make us all question what they would regard as success. All we have to do is examine what happened during the eighteen years of Tory rule. If, by some national misfortune, Mr Cameron should find himself in number ten we should not expect too much from a government led by the man who was Norman Lamont's advisor in the treasury in the dark days of the collapse of the pound.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
122. I don't think Cameron would have supported the vast public borrowing that GB has presided over since 1997.
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Sorry, I suddenly realised something:
Basically, David Cameron is blaming Gordon Brown for failing to correct Tory Mistakes.
How ironic
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carrots @ 85
... "Mmmm perhaps, I know a few who are very clever" ...
No they're not. In the City, what happens is they take something that is essentially simple (the lending of money and the management of risk) and they complex it up until it becomes difficult to see the substance over the form - it's a big mistake to confuse that with intelligent innovation.
Brown does exactly the same thing - witness his constant messing around with the tax and benefits system. No, I have never bought the line that he's any sort of world class intellect. Actually makes me laugh, that claim.
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#115 AZLewes
You are right that if you rely on ethics you will always get bitten in the end - the fatal flaw of any socialist utopian dream.
Let the market run without ethics - let it arrange itself as the participants see best - and extract benefit by taxing it.
Every one knows where they stand, and no prisoners dilema - where the honest get shafted, but really aren't that surprised just a bit dissapointed - no intervention, no public ownership, no regulation - just taxes.
The work should be on working out how to extract value from such unregulated systems, not on how to regulate them.
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#59 - thank you for remarking on my post regarding Britains laws on insolvency. My particular concern is that the law and the courts make make no distinction between those who are forced into insolvency (personal or corporate) against their will by foreclosure - or other means, and those who choose it avoid their liabilities.
There are thousands of firms who, like the brick mfr on Panorama last night, will be forced into that situation through no fault of their own and who, until, as that MD quite rightly said - had full order books until the 3rd quarter of this year - and then orders suddenly stopped.
The problem is in large part due to the arbitrary way in which court orders and foreclosures can be enacted - which force people and firms to insolvency hearings anyway. And the system of IVA (individual voluntary arrangement) is pretty touch-and go too, although it was touted as a softer approach, because if the creditor vote goes against the practitioner's request you're going down.
My particular venom is reserved for those who support and condone the way individuals are tainted with the 'bankrupt' label. It is a medieval way of treating people (that breaks lives )over sometimes quite small amounts of money (certainly in the context of the present drama) that, frankly, as I said, belongs in the Middle Ages. It is un-Christian and what the legal system should be doing is protecting deserving and otherwise hardworking people from this kind of treatment.
This is the petition. It is in the general good and has passed the No.10 protocols for posting. I trust that the moderator will not object to its being posted here, it is written in the general good.
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Harsh-treatment/
I might add that although David Cameron has spoken out on the urgent need for reform my two MPs - one Cons and one Labour, and many other notables have remained deaf to my approaches throughour this year. I am confident that in time, they will wish they had listened more closely.
Guy Croft
Capt (retd)
Owner Guy Croft Racing Engines
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119. I was speechless too.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7nD7dbkkBIA
My son told me not to be influenced by some of the rubbish on Youtube but this actually seems credible...
Other should watch it and make up their own minds.
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For Northern Thatcherite, everything "down South" is not a bed of roses.
I dont want to get into a north/south divide, but the Labour heartlands in the north get more money per head from central govt than we do in the south, hence our higher council tax bills, so you already have a "Barnett formula" in place.
14 years ago, I created from scratch a business and, since Blair/Brown came to power and introduce over 80 stealth taxes, am finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet, so please, dont give us southerns grief and hard luck stories of what lifes like up north.
Its no bed of roses down here!
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truth @ 121
... "Interesting (but not surprising) that the FSA don't know how they are going to change - but have already said it involves them recruiting more people at higher salaries. Thats a quango for you. Dunno' much but I know we need to be bigger and cost more" ...
The point is very valid though, The Real Truth.
You can have whatever framework you like in place but, as long as the rewards for the poachers are many multiples greater than for the gamekeepers, the former will continue to run rings round the latter.
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Looking at some of the earlier postings on this blog it seems abundantly clear that the cause of all our problems is hitsorical.
Blaming El Gordo for economic problems is passed off as being the fault of the previous administration. Plus Thatcher started it all 20 odd years ago when she did whatever.
Arguably we can push this back and back, blaming some past actions for where we are now.
If the cause of the current problems is due to external actions, high fuel and raw material prices, the credit crunch etc, and that our economy is fundamentally strong and better placed than the others, then how come WE'VE HAD TO SPEND SO MUCH MORE GOVERNMENT MONEY THAN ANY OTHER SINGLE COUNTRY THAT IS ALSO AFFECTED? HOW MANY OTHER BANKS HAVE BEEN NATIONALISED ANYWHERE ELSE? And I'm not referring to the US purchase of preference shares, which is in no way a nationalisation.
I think its only right that the architect of our problem, the bloke who started the fire and then threw petrol on it, should be the one we blame.
I have a whole bunch of pertinent questions that need to be put to Mr Darling when he attends this forum about the financial crisis.
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Good luck to Cameron. Hope he pledges to put an end to Nu-Lab's Orwellian nightmare.
Now, I'm off to Blackpool for the weekend for a well-earned rest, and the last thing I want to see is Brown's sagging mug leering out at me from the papers.
Have a good weekend fellow bloggers!
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105:
Yoy say that you despise Labour and yet I have hardly seen you direct a cross word towards the party in Government. Most of your writing is aimed at slagging off David Cameron and George Osborne who are not yet in power. Is it because you enjoy the challenge of going against the grain on here and pitting your zen wits against the majority or do you have a more sinister purpose? All the points you made about DC you could also direct at GB. I think most politicians use very similar methods to get their points across. As for your xenophobic attack on Boris Johnson all I can really say is Thank God London decided to remove Ken Livingstone.
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Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon says he is prepared to go "quite a long way" with civil liberties to "stop terrorists killing people".
The above seems to be a quote on the BBC site.
I wonder if hell is far enough away for him?
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'Why have the Tories chosen to end the truce with Labour?'
David Cameron acted responsibly in backing the government to resolve the immediate financial crisis so that things did not deteriorate further. The same can be said of the leaders of other parties.
Cameron obviously had issues with the way the government has handled finances during the last eleven years and, as with other subjects, needs to challenge the government. It's called opposition!
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@137 pttppl
The only way to avoid that is to not go anywhere near a paper shop, you probably shouldnt take breakfast either or go to the bar.
Have a good weekend and good luck on insulating yourself from jowlface
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#131
Yes, the notion of Maggie as a starry-eyed William Morrisesque person is amusing - but possibly a bit closer to the truth than people might think.
I don't think you attach enough importance to the moderating effect that social structure used to have on people's behavior. Say what you like about the old class system (and there's plenty to say) at least it made people think twice before doing something that might result in a loss of status. These days, by and large, relative wealth is the only status marker (instead of being merely an important one).
Come to think of it, the class system also provided non-financial incentives to become a teacher or a nurse rather than work in an office or a factory . . . food for thought there.
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I generally agree with those two comments. Doing a sound job and being kind would go a long way to changing things, and better insight and communication would help begin fixing the broken economic fundamentals. I think, Gordon Brown has the capacity to deliver while the Tories still have those lessons to absorb.
The Tao has useful lessons on the balance of power. By promoting the right leadership at all levels in business and the community this can help refocus attention. You only need to influence a third. The other third follows while the last third flips to the bottom of the pile. Macho politics won't give up without a struggle but, I believe, it's in the process of getting its coat.
I think, we're going through that process now which explains some of the flux but this economic issue could be just the boost people need to get a grip on that. The slight tightening is just a small frightener but as people look beyond that it's clear it won't last too long and there's huge scope for new business and markets beyond that. By sticking with Labour the electorate have a once in a lifetime opportunity of blowing the Tory myth once and for all.
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Mr Cameron knows full well that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have handled this financial turmoil perfectly competently,even to the point the Americans followed their example.
What this is about is seeing Labours popularity start to increase again and Mr Cameron seeing the reins of gaurenteed future power slip away. I suspect also quite a few of his colleagues have been moaning about his acquiescence in the Commons to the governments actions and also some whinging by Camerons pals in the city who fear regulation and control. They must also be grumpy they cannot get their noses in the bonuses trough for a while!
So we see a 180degree turn from Mr Cameron. Does the guy actually have any principles or beliefs or is he just blown about by his pals?
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#124
You are kidding right?
For a start the early 80s recession was the hangover from Labour's bust. A bust that had the IMF lending us money to bail us out.
The 90s bust was a much, much smaller credit bubble creating inflation, no banks were threatened with going under at all.
Sounds familiar, you'd think Brown would have remembered that one wouldn't you?
This bust, this bust is bigger than the 1929 crash, nearly 40% of this country's commercial banks have a government share in them.
We have the largest government deficit in history and one of the largest in the world today.
Even in the 70s bust and the 80s bust the government of the time managed to keep a surplus of money for emergencies.
Not Brown, he's had to borrow it, he forgot to build up a surplus.
It is easy, really easy to boom an economy on the back of cheap credit.
Brown has presided over a 10-15% increase YEAR-ON-YEAR of the country's money supply since 1997. Thatcher never ever presided over such long term recklessness.
In economic terms, that is reckless and irresponsible. It has inflated house prices, assets to silly levels, it allows people to splurge on credit.
And now they are falling and the borrowing has to be paid back.
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Gordon Brown had already mortgaged our and our children's future with his obsession on Public - Private financing. We will be paying for the "new hospitals and schools for the next 30 years or more.
His whole economic policy has been built on smoke and mirrors, with no sound financing, only living off debt, both private and Government.
He will be seen by history as the most deceiptful Chancellor ever.
Nothing ever adds up with Gordon.
Agreed he coudn't prevent the US mortgage crisis but he presided over the mad poilicies in the City that led to our banking collapse.
Ordinary people like me, have lost most of what we worked for, in oyur investments. Not just the Banks either.
I have many BT shares that are now worth less than when they were first issued in 1984!
What a debacle!
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Cameron criticises Brown.
Other news - bears defecate in woods, Pope is Catholic, water is wet
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Although its widely reported elsewhere, I can't find reference to it on the BBC website but I thought Cameron's most telling argument was about the reckless Immigration fueled growth we have had since Labour came to power.
We are heading for 3 million unemployed and have allowed 3 million immigrants into the country, many low skilled that provide services that low skilled UK residents could easily provide - need I say more!
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139 Willy
You are of course right, I find this story quite scary.
Hoon of course is the man who went on a skiing holiday while we were all lining up in Kuwait, in Feb 03.
Hoon the cure for insomnia, listening to him may put you into a coma, and all of a sudden, he has found somthing to get his teeth into.
I have asked several times before, what has changed as far as a Threat from Terrorism goes for the last 40 years.
The short answer is nothing we have always had this threat hanging over us.
All it really means is more governmental control over all of us. We as a nation have prided ourselves on establish Freedoms and Government that have been the model for the rest of the world (it's not perfect). My concern is as has been proven Terrorism laws are up for abuse and have been.
What is more concerning is Harriet Harmons (like Hoons) statement that if the Lords reject the bill (likely), she state that it will be dealt with in the "usual way".
I honestly what to know what has changed in 40 years of sustained Terrorism in the UK to endorse this bill. Are the government saying that Irish Terrorists are not quite as bad or dangerous than Muslim ones?
Anti Terror units Identify potential Terrorist by as series of Profiling measures, not I hope everyone has noticed that the most patently obvious profile of the latest batch of Terrorist (the bbc like to use the word extremists), are young Muslim men, not 80 year old women, or Childrem, or dare I say it the majority of the counrty.
Hoon, Smith and Harmen are correct. Everything this stands for is under severe threat, but it aint from the Muslim Terrorists.
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Seems like the loony left have lost their fight spirit this morning.
The moment Cmeron actually stands up and ha the nerve to say 'Actually, this was all Gordon's fault'
Good for him for lulling Gordon Brown into a false sense of security so he prances aroud the international stage showering our money all over them. Cameron knew Gordon Brown would fall straight into this trap - praising him for putting together a rescue package, alowing him to swell with pride, fly off to Europe to shake everyones' hand, utter his 'tower of solidity' speech and then turn around and pull the rug form under him.... "So who built this tower of Babel, Gordon?"
Gordon Brown has become such an easy target now, he can't wait to jump on the enarest grandstand and shout about things; 'get those fuel prices down you naughty oil companies' How about 'cut fuel taxes, Gordon?'
This is own goal after own goal. Long may it continue.
Call an election.
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Nick,
tantalysingly you ask the question "Why Now?" and leave a hanging doubt about the tories being panicked.
So let's ask ourselves, apart from the energetic posters on this blog, do the bulk of the electorate really understand all the nuances of what is happening in financial markets?
If the answer is no, then why should any party give a vainglorious leader the opportunity of using a series of sound bites to his advantage. I don't think there is currently a subject of global importnace where brown is not claiming responsibility for the rapid response to each and every problem.
Are they not aware of the enormity of the financial burden that Brown has imposed on us, and that is likely still to be imposing on our children and grandchildren.
Brown has been personally responsible for ratcheting up the tax take (try and think of anything apart from some foods that isn't taxed), notwithstanding his pathetic attempt to pull the wool over everybody's eyes with the 10p tax scandal, and increasing the level of public debt and now, due to skilful avoidance of the need to monitor what was going on, allowed the banks to get themselves into a position where they can no longer function.
Now that oil prices are falling the tax take will drop, but that's bad news, because that tax money has already been included in spending plans So our good news, costs going down, will soon be offset by the government's need to replace it with money from another source.
And if we try to borrow any more, who's going to lend it to us? The world's financial system is in meltdown. Plus we have opened a limitless line of credit to the banks to come and get more. Brown and Darling have publicly stated, on more than one occasion, they will do whatever it takes to get banks working again.
So Nick, coming back to the questions you posed, Yes, Cameron is right to break ranks and ask questions, and Yes, the British public is not stupid and will know what to believe.
All we crave is a chance to put all this to the test!
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Looking at the strapline on some of his posts today, which is what gets left at the top of your screen when quickly scrolling through (no reason to read the pretentious claptrap), I'd say the taoist sage is firmly entrenched in la-lla land.
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130. sagamix
I didnt say what they did was clever, I said they were.
Theres a difference.
But we agree on the key points.
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robin @ 95
... "He's greedy, gullible and a hypocrite to suggest he did not cause the bubble. He was pouring in the jet fuel for ten years and strapping on the after burners" ...
Hi Robin! - I'm wondering whether it may be time for "strapping on the after burners" to be retired to metaphor heaven?
I know it's served you well but what about a change now? How about, say, "primed the pump" or "lit the blue touchpaper" or something like that?
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If there's any good to come out of this it's that politicians are starting to wake up to the need to re-invigorate manufacturing. Both parties are to blame for it's decline, Old Labour made the mistake of trying to use public money to keep every last widget factory open. All they achieved was to create a load of lame ducks producing shoddy products that were uncompetitive. The Tories were right to let the worst go to the wall but they should have ensured that enough coal mines, shipyards and steel mills remained open to provide work in industrial areas. By letting them all go under they undermined the social cohesion of those areas. The Tories may have privatised companies and utilities but it has been under Labour that the likes of ICI have been allowed to be bought over by foreign firms, something that would never have been allowed before.
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A great little video about banking and debt
Sorry its a repeat, this is the BBC though.
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I agree with several other comments that the world did not start in 1997. The entire economic and social attitudes of this country were set by Thatcher in the 1980's and we are now paying the price for them. The "greed is good", self, self self, ideas put forward by the Tories have led to many of our current economic and social problems. How can you expect kids bought up in the 80's under such conditions to then bring up their own children in a decent way.
I think Labour has tried to change social attitudes back to a more caring society but unfortunately they fell hook line and sinker for the greedy economic policies.
Until we get back to a more, (dare I use the word), "socialist" way of thinking in our society, as they do in many european countries, then we will never have the type of society and economy that serves the majority and not just the rich few. (and by socialist I do not mean extreme left wing)
David Cameron, as he keeps reminding us, is a big fan of Thatcher, so is not the person to be leading our country to a better future. I find his comments opportunistic and hypocritical in the extreme. I also think he and Osbourne are not intellectually strong enough to be our leaders. Cameron comes across as a nice guy by tory standards, but nice is not enough. George Bush is apparently a "nice" guy!
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I am glad that Nick has seen the minutes of the meetings to be so sure that Brown has to have personal credit for everything.If heaven help us it ends up costing billions I think that the brilliant economist will soon become common knowledge,for as we all know Brown loves all the credit ,but it's always some one else who makes mistakes.
If Brown is to stride the world as the great healer he should not be allowed to bury his past,eg never saying no boom and bust.
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It's all very well trying to argue about the past, and blame your opponents for the sake of scoring political points, but do we actually see anything specific - at all - about what the Conservatives would actually do about the crisis now, or in the future?
They are completely clueless about the situation.
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sticky @ 125
... "38. Yes he sold the gold at market rates, but made the schoolboy error of announcing prior to the sale that he was going to do so. Hence the market value went down and the country lost out. Please resubmit your post acknowledging this fact" ...
Yeah, touchay and all that. Well done!
But that's just something you heard down the pub, isn't it?
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Cameron's personality type is incapable of deep strategic thinking or forming meaningful relationships with people. He can change his policies like he changes his socks and if the herd changes direction he'll follow even if it means selling you out. People like him like to talk up cutting edge ideas and be seen to be your friend but under the presentation he's deeply conservative and prone to gossiping behind peoples backs with his chums.
This type of personality will also kowtow to authority figures above them and are intensely loyal, but are insanely bad choices for management roles because they're prone to bullying and pettiness, and can't handle the reality of change. People like this rarely rise above the post room in most businesses but when they do they never develop real vision and often bankrupt businesses that are experiencing market change.
Don't believe me? Phone Harvard.
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#149
Spot on Harry.
As each day passes I'm afraid the government is enmeshing us ever more in the Orwellian nightmare. Naturally the lefties can't see this, and bleat whenever you try to inject a little humour by parodying 1984, but unfortunately our entire society is becoming a tragic parody of it.
And, what's more, its not bad enough the government seems to think it is THEIR right to collect all this data, but they have absoutely no idea of how to keep it secure. And, like a weeble, after each rebuff they come up saying we've taken the lessons on board, and lets start on an new page. That's more likely because they've lost the previous one.
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As per usual all bluster and no policies. The man is a political midget and will always be so.
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#142
You're right.
It natural order will be restored in 2010 though. Enough of these clowns - they weren't even educated at Oxbridge or privately for goodness sake.
We need our leaders picked from the realms of the elite again. That's the only way to arrest the dreadful situation that has emerged from the proles taking charge.
Disaster can only emerge from the working-classes not knowing their station in life. Did you know they even go to university now - it's ridiculous.
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Politics at its finest
Gag.. gag.... bluragghhh.
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So Cameron is signing the Tories up to regulating the banks, eh? ..and to go further and 'regulate private debt'? Whilst the Torygraph condemns Brown (and Bush too) for adopting psuedo-socialist measures, the Tory leader argues that Brown's Government should have intervened in banking sooner and should have extended Governmental powers to control personal debt! Is he a 'state socialist'? Is this the end of Thatcherism?
Sadly not. Cameron is a phoney.
Watch for big spits in Tory ranks over this, just as the Republicans split in the USA.
Meanwhile, back to 'Flash Gordon' Brown. Yes it is a global crisis. Yes, he should have seen it coming. And yes the global crisis has been caused by slavish adherence to neo-liberal (Thatcherite) economics - let the market decide (let the 'market speculators and bankers steer a course to hell taking the rest of us with them). Gordon Brown was fully 110% an advocate, and follower of such a philosophy. The Tories too.
The 'bail out' - a huge reckless gamble of tax payers money. An attempt to paper over the cracks for a few years without tackiling the root of the problem. And the Tories? Fully behind the bail-out.
Cameron and Brown can both go to hell, but I'll be damned if I'll follow them. The bus workers who were on strike last Friday across the capital have the right idea - let's not pay for their crisis; all out war on the bankers and their New Labour and Tory backers!
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It seems very clear now that the Tories would not have done anything different to the government. I dread to think how it may turn out with the Tory Etonians in charge.
There is only one reason for the current economic crisis and that is greed. The bankers in Wall Street and The City have been immoral and imcompetent in their dealings. We have all been living beyond our means and the banks have encouraged this. This whole crisis is more fundamentally an indictment of our society that any governmental mismanagement. Our media gives us messages of "you can do anything and get anything" and we the people have fallen for it. We as a society seem to have quantity of life and not quality of life.
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1) Tony Blair: 1997 Conference Speech
"I want this to be the New Labour Government that ended Tory boom and bust forever."
2) Tony Blair: 2000 Conference Speech
"The first big choice: a government with the strength to deliver stability, or a government that takes the country back to boom and bust."
3) Tony Blair: 2005 Conference Speech
"In the first two terms we corrected the weaknesses of the Tory years: boom-and-bust economics "
4) Tony Blair: November 2003
"If we want to contrast what we have done in the past few years on delivery with what the right hon. and learned Gentleman delivered, let us remember the interest rates at 10 per cent. to 15 per cent., the 1.5 million fewer people in work, the boom and the bust and the borrowing at 8 per cent. of GDP. "
5) Tony Blair: November 1999
"We have the best chance of ending boom and bust in years."
6) Tony Blair: November 1998
"...examine the legacy that we inherited and what we did. We had boom-and-bust economics and a doubled national debt. "
7) Tony Blair: 2006 Conference Speech
"In 1997, we faced daunting challenges. Boom and bust economics.....
Now, for all that remains to be done, dwell for a moment on what has been achieved."
8) Tony Blair: February 1999
"Moreover, for decades we have been prone to far greater swings in the economic cycle than our continental counterparts. It has been boom and bust....Under this Government, there is an entirely new framework for economic management in place "
9) Yvette Cooper: May 2004
"We know that they want to turn the clock back, but it would be foolish to turn it back to a policy of boom and bust. "
10) Alistair Darling: January 2000
"On top of that, we have a healthy and stable economy and an end to the boom and bust that characterised the Tory years."
11) Alistair Darling: March 2005
"As I said, there are two approaches—first, a strong economy, stability and helping families or, secondly, the Tory cuts, the undermining of stability, and a return to the boom and bust of the 1990s."
12) Alistair Darling: June 2007
"...acknowledges the outstanding performance of the economy under this Government with the longest unbroken economic expansion on record, in contrast to the boom and bust of the previous Government "
13) Gordon Brown: March 2007
"We will not return to the old boom and bust "
14) Gordon Brown: December 2006
"Boom and bust is a term that applied to the Conservative years and two of the worst recessions in history"
15) Gordon Brown: March 2006
"I have said before: no return to boom and bust."
16) Gordon Brown: March 2001
"We will not return to boom and bust. "
17) Gordon Brown: November 2000
"Our approach is to reject the old vicious circle of the '80s--rising debt, higher long-term interest rates, higher debt repayment costs, lower growth, higher unemployment, then enforced cuts in public spending. That was the old boom and bust. "
18) Gordon Brown: March 2000
"Britain does not want a return to boom and bust. "
19) Gordon Brown: November 1999
"Indeed, Britain was set to repeat the old, familiar cycle of boom and bust. Since then, we have created and rigorously adhered to a new framework of modern economic management "
20) Gordon Brown: November 1998
"Britain was set to repeat the boom-bust cycle that led to 15 per cent. interest rates for one whole year in the early 1990s. "
21) Gordon Brown: June 1998
"rigorous financial discipline that, together with monetary stability, ends once and for all the boom and bust that for 30 years has undermined stability "
22) Gordon Brown: May 1998
"The Government have put in place policies to deliver that objective and are determined to avoid a return to boom and bust. "
23) Gordon Brown: April 1998
"We will not return to the stop-go, boom-bust years which we saw under the Conservatives. "
24) Gordon Brown: November 1997
"I am satisfied that the new monetary policy arrangements will deliver long-term price stability, and prevent a return to the cycle of boom and bust."
25) Gordon Brown: July 1997
"Today, the Bank of England has agreed with me that, if we are to prevent the cycle of boom and bust, inflationary pressures in the economy, which the previous Government negligently failed to tackle, must be brought under control "
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165. balhamu
Playing the socialist reactionary as always.
Heres my Toff reply:
Good god man there arnt any working class in politics, well Prescott perhaps but hes gone now and thank the lord for that small mercy.
I know, what we need is a return to the days where PMs wear donkey jackets at the cenotaph. Not these darn toffs running everything.
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#165 balhamu
Not really what I was on about y'know . . .
Toffs were always freer to do what they liked, as their social position was more secure.
Insecure middle-class respectability is what I sometimes think we need a bit more of.
Just a bit - not too much please 8-{>>
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Brown should be castigated at every opportunity.
For eleven years he has been at the head of the Treasury (as Chancellor and 'First Lord of...').
He did two good things:
1) Adhere to Tory budget plans for his first two years of office; and
2) Grant independence to the Bank of England.
The indebtedness of the British economy and all that flows from that is directly attributable to him and his government.
Furthermore, his botched financial regulatory system was a major factor to the current credit crunch and financial crash hitting the British economy and banking system far harder that it otherwise would.
The result of all this is that Britain will endure a longer and deeper recession than other, better managed economies.
"No more boom and bust"..... Ha!
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168. At 12:36pm on 17 Oct 2008, The Master wrote:
It seems very clear now that the Tories would not have done anything different to the government. I dread to think how it may turn out with the Tory Etonians in charge. "
Oh dear, where do I start?
1. If the Conservatives had been in Government these past 10 years, they would not have borrowed and spent so much as Irresponsible Brown has.
2. I don't care which school Cameron and Osborne went to. Labour people are apt to forget that Tony Blair wents to Fettes public school, that Harman went to St Pauls Public school and so on!
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#165
You know Balhamu what we really need are politicians who've had a real job. This applies to all the front benches, apart from Vince Cable, none of them have held down a job in the commercial world.
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I don't know about you but I find Brown cold and scary.
I am worried about these conspiracy stories and the New World Order he keeps on about with one supreme government and the rest of us purely minions.
I truly believe some men are hooked on power and will stop at nothing.
Socialist Capitalism? Doesn 't resonate with me.
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How much did we hear from David Cameron, and those Conservative leaders whom he advised, about the unsustainable private debt that potential Tory voters were running up in the last ten years? How popular with the City would proposals have been to increase Government regulation of financial services before the banks caught their own unregulated cold? It's easy now to propose tighter discipline, when we've all seen that self-inflicted under-capitalisation is lethal. It wasn't politically easy to say what Mr Cameron now says Gordon Brown should have said and taken flack for it. Those who see the truth too early are massacred by lovers of a status quo. So how many more counter - intuitive proposals for financial chastity belting has Dave in mind?
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Low interest rates and low inflation in the UK in recent years has been helpful to those on low and fixed incomes, it has helped the boom in retail and the expansion of certain supermarkets and stores.
It has also allowed many more people to aspire to own their own homes and with that sort of goal in view, there is more incentive to work hard to achieve it. And to cherish it, when it has been achieved.
I notice both parties are keen to encourage industry. One home grown industry which has been booming over the past decade has been building. But this is an industry which needs substantial investment to survive and banks are keen to hang on to their cash to the moment.
This has been caused by the emphasis on so called "creative" financial "products" in the stock market. Those with enough money to invest may have been persuaded to put it in the US "shack" property market, among other mysterious financial "products", which have created a huge "red" void in world finances. And it has added to the financial void created by Enron a few years ago.
There have been a few scare stories recently... ideas of food shortages, speculation on oil... banks collapsing (but that one has been dealt with)... stock markets falling (but then when prices fall, surely it is the good time to buy) property prices "crashing" (but they were over-inflated anyway weren't they? And anyway, you buy a house to live in not to speculate on).
These are just a few economic factors in recent years and recent weeks. And in view of all this I'm not sure Cameron's attack on the PM has either been carefully thought through or well timed.
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The debate about whether the economic situation in the UK is all (as some believe, eg Robin the boy wonder) GB's fault will go on for many years.
The state of our economy, our "wealth" as a nation or individually, standards of living, our regulatory frameworks even, are all relative to to other comparable countries. That's not really the USA for us but other G& countries frm Europe, ie France, Germany, Italy.
If GB had made the monumental mistakes that the Tories both as a party and their bloggers on here want people to believe, then surely something would STAND OUT as "different" for us compared to them.
But I don't see this. Their banks have been exposed as just as vulnerable as ours to the crunch, just as exposed to sub-prime US lending, and dodgy derivitives. Not really that surprising as banking is Global not national. Therefore their rgultory framework was comparabl;e to ours good or bad.
In terms of recession all 4 European G& countries are going into recession at approx the same rate and time, Germany already announced.
Our National debt to GDP ratio is comparable, infact lower I believe than France (but stand to be advised, Balhamu please help)
So in conclusion IF GB was such an economic disaster then by som strnge coincidence so were the leaders if all comparable countries at exactly the same time.
Perhaps a more realistic view would be have mistakes been made, of course, would anything have been dramatically different under a Tory government, very unlikely as their approach would not have been for any tighter regulation at all, quite possibly less tight.
We all carry some blame if that's the right word, nobody has ever "made" me or anyone I know "borrow" money inappropritely. Anyone who did/does surely carries the overwhelming responsibility themselves.
On grounds of Political principal you'd expect alll Tories to agree to this. Strangely at the moment its all someone elses fault.
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Ed Balls attended Nottingham School, an independent fee paying school for boys.
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#160
In the time honoured political traditions of this country, there is no need for any opposition party to outline their specific plans till an election is called.
I seem to recall from 1997 till the election in 1997 that all the labour party did was highlight the then shortcomings of the Major government which was, to be fair, an easy target to hit.
Strangely, now the boots firmly on the other foot, labour seems to think that that approach is somehow unfair.
Please enlighten me as to how?
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De-regulation of markets and the liberalisation of markets started with Thatcher and Major and were continued by Labour. It was naive of them to think that they had broken boom and bust cycles because by the increased liberalisation of the markets (by a traditionally right of center and a newly right of center party), this made the economy more unstable. Such de-regulation and opening up of markets was touted out by the IMF who followed the advice of the US. Therefore, Blair and Brown do have to take some of the blame but at the same time so does the IMF and the Tories. What people forget (and so far hasn't been mentioned) is that there have been two recessions in the last 10 years: the Asian market recession and the US recession around 2000/2001 when the dot.com bubble burst. And that is all this is, a bubble bursting. Interestingly the ban on short selling may actually be exascerbating the problem. It has been part of the stock markets for well a long time. Yes it can damage companies but option selling is one way the money flows. But yes, the economy of the last say 10 years but probably longer has been built on consumer over expenditure and consumer borrowing. And it's no good blaming the kids who grew up in the 80's for all the problems today it's their parents who are now really in the positions of power that have helped create this economy and the society (yes the Baby Boomers). Blaming people who are under 30 or will be turning 30 soon for societies problems and the economic problems is just trying to shirk responsibility. We all need to share in that responsibility.
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#169 wheresmyvote,
Brown said he would abolish 'boom and bust'. Not the business cycle - of which there have been frequent referrals to the continued existence of by the Government over the past 11 years.
For example:
* one of the 5 key tests on determining whether the UK would join the Euro was about convergence of business cycles.
* one of the government's Golden Rule is that the current budget would balance over the economic cycle. They have made frequent reference to the existence of an economic business cycle in respect of forecasts of whether the Golden Rule would be met.
So, the Government has always acknowledged the existence of a business cycle, with periods of above-trend growth and below-trend growth.
What abolishing 'boom and bust' referred to was in reducing the volatility of the business cycle. In the 1980s and 1990s, economic growth in the UK was very volatile, with wild upswings (e.g late 1980s) combined with wild downswings (e.g. early 1990s).
Academic studies show that the volatility of the business cycle has been decreased significantly since 1997, and that economic growth in the UK has been the 3rd most stable in the OECD, after previously being one of the most volatile. Maybe you would disagree with these academics?
There is no political business cycle now - interest rates are set indepedently by the Bank of England to stabilise the economy and keep inflation in check, rather than engineer pre-election boosts in the economy (e.g. the Ken and Eddie show of 1993-97)
I guess you would say that the previous 15 years of economic growth (4 years under Major and 11 years under Blair/Brown) has been a wild upswing, making any recession a wild downswing.
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Independence please.
Yours faithfully
Scotland
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One merely has to breath in this blog and the habitual and reactive Tories go off like firecrackers. Simply, by typing words on the screen like, say, "Gordon Brown is a genius", has you lot going purple faced and ripping the arms off your chairs in a fit of Dickensian style rage.
More seriously, it's a general fact that people attack their enemies at what they perceive to be their own weak spots, so all the wall of criticism Labour are getting says more about the Tories than anything else, and that's not even counting how Cameron has overinflated his own stock price.
Looking at Teresa May the other week I was struck by how she gave the impression of someone who'd say anything she was instructed to, and how she puffed up as she felt more dominant during a conversation. Her eyes were blazing with the anticipation of power.
Scary bunch, Tories.
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Cameron is quite right to ask us all to examine Brown's record of economic strategic management over the last 12 years. As political commentators are so fond of telling us, looking back on the past offers valuable clues towards the future.
Of course, Cameron and Osborne must also put forward credible proposals of their own and to ask us if they are of merit. Critical comment of someone else's failures isn't of itself enough.
Frankly, a little less posturing on both sides would be welcomed. A little more honesty would also help. A clearer insight into economic proposals for the future would give some comfort to the small businesses, the retired on fixed incomes, and those wondering if they will have a roof over their heads before too long.
Brown and Darling have had their opportunity and failed to grasp it. Cameron and Osborne need to come to the despatch box and make clear their remedy for returning the UK to economic health. If they can do it, then they deserve the opportunity to try to make it work.
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The bank crisis is over for the moment so let's have a bit of realism back.
All parties were involved in the emergency plan so how can Gordon Brown be allowed all the accolades for being the spokesman. After all that's what he is paid for.
The media have been mischief making again by feeding his ego and they know full well he needs to be fed a script or otherwise he'd talk himself and the rest of us into an even bigger mess.
Those of us who are fortunate to have internet access so we really can find out the truth as far as is known have the advantage on those poor folk who are brainwashed day and day out by what the Labour spin thugs decide they should know.
The realism of the financial mess the country is in will be drip fed as and when they see fit.
The other two parties Tory and Liberal should really hammer home on Brown now and not jibe at each other.
Country first please!
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#175
Yes - Governments that are run by these 'real world' people perform far better.
Look at Italy, for example.
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#178 & 179.
It's called value. It applies in both your arguments.
First, Cameron is not calling for more regulation but better regulation.
Just as Brown ignored the Opposition warnings in 1997, debt management is the KEY issue here. No-one was watching the banks AND government borrow ever more money.
Now value.
I'll tell you why the UK is not so well placed as say France or Germany.
Both these countries have a diversification in their economy. Call it in simple terms, not having all your eggs in one basket. If one industry does badly, others provide growth.
Think about French and German industry, you could name BIG international names.
Labour let ours die and more often than not as a result of their policies.
The reason why the UK will suffer more than most is this reason.
This is a banking crisis. It will spill into the real world as the service and retail sectors are hit.
78% of this nation's economy is in services.
Look up France and Germany, they are far more diversified.
Next, look up their levels of fiscal responsibility.
A few years ago, they were told by the ECB to reduce their government spending deficits to 3% GDP. They did, they signed up to this as part of joining the Euro.
As a result, they hold reserves of cash for a rainy day and they aren't so indebted as the UK.
We do not have such reserves. Brown took away the right of the central bank, the BoE, to do what the ECB did.
Brown gave it to the FSA - it did not work.
The UK is not France and Germany.
The UK creates value aka wealth off the back of a service sector, then the public sector, then manufacturing.
Brown has invested heavily in the public sector, which has not created value or wealth. The unreformed public sector actually achieves a negative ROI, it is a pit for which money goes in. Services might improve but not by as much as they could have done.
Brown resisted all attempts at reform, we have an expensive public sector which does not deliver much in the way of ROI as the French or German public sectors do.
Cameron argued for a more diversified economy and a watchdog to overhaul Brown's faulty reforms.
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Those supporters of the present government who claim that nothing would have been different had the Tories been in power ignore a simple political fact: it is the party in power which has to take the rap when things go wrong.
Labour fully supported the UK entering the ERM when the Tories were in power. When it all turned to mud and the UK was forced out, Labour made sure that the blame stuck firmly to the government of the day, and that more than anything ruined the Tories reputation for economic competence during the lead up to the 1997 election. The boot is now firmly on the other foot. Labour have held the reins of power for 11 years. It is only they who can be blamed for things which are now going wrong. And boy, are they going wrong. The economic fall out from this will make the 1990's difficulties seem too trivial to mention. Future generations will be paying for all this long after we are gone. It is the present Labour government that they will blame when history is written because they were the ones in charge. That is way that things work, and quite rightly so. Only those folks inhaling incense in a Zen-like trance don't get it.
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#180
Government of all the talents.
Compare the 2 front-benches:
* What % went to Eton?
* What % went to private schools?
* What % went to Oxbridge?
* What % are female?
* What % are from ethnic minorities?
Which party is more representative of the UK?
But, maybe this stuff doesn't matter...
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Hi Nick,
Gordon Brown is not a saviour of the UK. He is thoroughly incompetent and what makes him even worse is he is a meddlesome, bumbling incompetent.
He is a socialist who has been forced to embrace capitalist values (otherwise Labour would still be in the political wilderness) and it shows. He had no idea how to run the country as Chancellor and he is equally clueless as Prime Minister. Only as PM he is more destructive because he has managed to persuade other (formerly saine) leaders he is 'a man with the plan.'
Because of his complete arrogance and ineptitude, he has
1: been unable to admit to the massive mistakes he made while being chancellor (selling our gold at the 'Brown bottom', raiding the pension funds and turning them into basket cases to name but a few of his catastrophic disasters, all of which he is proud)
2: stolen a plan from Warren Buffet which is also fatally flawed because he has failed to come to terms with the cause of the problems we are experiencing.
As I continue to bang on about. Banks not lending to each other is not the cause of our problems. It is a symptom. The cause of the problem is the massive deleveraging of a world which has become too use to being in debt and the easy money, loose credit policies of the Greenspan Fed, which Gordon Brown not only failed to regulate during his time as Chancellor, but was also only too keen to take all the credit for. (Something about Labour putting an end to boom and bust.)
So Nick, Gordon Brown is incompetent. He is the blind man trying to lead people with one eye. I am very glad that David Cameron is going on the offensive, because anyone who buys into GB's bluster is seriously delusional and deserves the recession we are going into.
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Nick, I recall not so long ago, after a thinly veiled attack on Mr Brown by you outside Number 10, you came out with those damning words to characterise Gordon Brown’s position "its the economy stupid" how ironic is it now that Browns experience (good and bad) in managing the economy has turned him from a zero to a hero!
I stopped voting Tory in 97 because I didnt trust them, Labour have let me down on quite a few occasions but Dave and his chums look even worse. If the Tories ever return to having true members of substance like Pym, Hesseltine, Clark and even Thatcher, I will consider them again, until then I will vote for the party that I think will do me the least damage, so for now Dave the car salesman and his non descript band of opportunists can make their own arrangements.
Thank you.
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Incredible, who deregulated the financial industry in the first place, errrr Thatcher, who was responsible for the anhialation of manufacturing in favor of the service sector, errrrr Thatcher.
Not to say Brown should not have seen this coming, he does carry some blame but the whinging Osborne this am on Today could not come up with one single thing he would have done differently apart from govt borrowing but everyone who I have heard have said that borrowing is actually not too bad.
I appreciate that the Tories are trying to retain their momentum but this attack is laughable, I fear for this country if Osborne ends up as chancellor, he would have stayed well and truely in his bunker if this global crises had hit when he was in power, we are soooooo lucky that Two Brains Brown was in charge.
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So now we know that the Englisg taxpayer has bailed out the Scottish banks for the reasons of winning the Glenrothes bye-election. Gordon Brown is now saying that how could the SNP have saved the Scottish banks. This whole episode is appalling pork barrel politics.
It is the Scottish banks which have been nationalised, not the English ones. Lloyds TSb must not go ahead with the merger, they must not allow the rape of their shareholders by allowing the government to dictate dividend policy.
I am not a shareholder in any of the companies nor do I live in Scotland, although I do have a soulmate who does.
Nothing has been nationalised, the banks have not for sure. If they have been nationalised then why have we been told that as soon as possible any banks in receipt of taxpayers money will repay that money and then become the same as they were before they were in receipt of the aforesaid taxpayers largess.
In the meantime why are Northern Rock repossessing so many properties, is this how socialists want the state to behave.
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'sagamix'
Brown sold gold at around $250 US. By your 'mathmatics' every ten years gold would have to double to have kept its value. Did you look at the price of gold before making this absurd comment? Gold today is around $850 so in your 'ten year period' gold has more than trebled, surely a very healthy return when compared to the reinvestments that Brown made with the money. Everyone, or nearly everyone, knows that gold is a safe haven for troubled times, so surely had we not sold the gold it could have been used now to help the banks when it would have been worth so much more, and thus the rescue would not have been such a drain on the tax payer who will be paying for this for years to come.
Browns disasters of the last ten years will come back to haunt him, what about the removal of pension fund dividends and the subsequent collapse of pension funds by 'I'm all right Jack' , Mr Brown.
I coudl go on with a huge list but so many others have stated the obvious roll on the general election. I recall a slogan used in the 1960's
Land of hope and fading glories
Please bring back those wicked Tories.
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#169 - yes well said.
Q - When is a pledge not a contract?
A - When it's made by a politician
High time contract law applied to them, sharpen their wits some,
GC
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Flamepatricia 176
The new world order is something that neo-cons throughout the western world have dreamed of for years.
This includes Cameron & Major.
The EU,on the other hand, is the total opposite. It is based on 50's style old fashioned communism.
I really dont like either of them.
The way to a new world order, as has been said by a previous sec Gen of the UN ( whose name I forget) " Is to eradicate from the minds of men their traditions, culture and family loyalties" or words to that effect.
And on the economy.
One way to really kick start the economy would be to raise the tax free threshold to £7,500 to bring into line with what it was in 1997 and reduce interest rates by (at least) another 1%.
Also, all new credit cards issued would have to repay a minimum of 5% monthly + the interest accrued.
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Labour have been aiming for and delivering better law and regulation for some time but, more importantly, better attitude.
The City didn't finance manufacturing but favoured less risky and more short-term returns from services.
Britain has deep seated cultural issues that get in the way and Cameron showed no understanding of that in his speech.
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150 robinjd
"Seems like the loony left have lost their fight spirit this morning. "
The loony left as you like to call them have been able to take a well earned rest this morning, I'm afraid your hero pulled of his worst gaff yet with his inapropriate speech this morning, it has raised the heckles of many on here and they have raised their voices in condemnation it has also invigorated many usually quiet labour supporters on this blog.
The Tory apologists are not to confident either,
I have been telling you for weeks now that I can smell the fear in the Tory posts and today its stronger than ever.
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"So why this speech now? Is it because the Tories have been panicked by Gordon Brown's recovery? Certainly, in an interview I've just done with the Tory leader the question he appeared to like least was the one when I pressed him to give personal credit to the prime minister for his handling of the past couple of weeks."
ah, the wonders of the BBC. Why should you press Cameron to give credit to Brown when Brown has mis-understood the entire point of the rescue package and that it's all doomed to failure because of the way that he's approaching it?
The tories are annoyed because the BBC are painting Brown as a saviour when he is in fact the reason why we're in this mess, and his solutions won't work because he doesn't understand economics.
Most reasonable people can see that, but the bbc/labour are trying to spin the opposite of reality, and a very large number of people are livid with the bbc/labour at the moment.
The tories did try to help, but Brown used party politics and told them not to bother because Brown believes he is god and that nobody apart from him has any ideas worth listening to; why's the BBC not reporting that?
Brown announced the rescue package, billions of pounds of tax payers' money, which, to be fair, was needed given the situation that Brown had created, but then Brown turned round to the banks and told them that he was going to force them to revert to the same level of mad/bad debt that we had at the height of the debt-driven false boom; he missed the whole point and is steering us straight into disaster. If we carry on with Brown's plan then the UK will be totally finished; it'll be game over for the uk and we'll be back in the stone age.
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Could someone please explain to me why they believe that a woman who has been out of power for over 17 years is responsible for the current economic crisis. I would have thought that a fair and impartial observer would think that the people who have been in charge for the last 11 years may just have a little more responsibility for it. For every thing they say Thatcher did wrong, the Labour party failed to change it, so that is no answer. Is is just a tribal blinkered inability to accept that just possibly a few mistakes have been made on the Labour watch?
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#180
Dunno the answer to how many of each group on either side really, too lazy to look it up but I'd like to remark on how many MPs are legal types of one sort or another. far too many lawyers in Parliament, like to see a few businessmen. I mean, lawyers and barristers have their place I'm sure, but is it Parliament?
GC
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#143 Charles E Hardwidge
Apologies for referring to your post, but you didn't reference the quote at the start of your post, so not aimed at you:-
"They don't like a talented Scot from a Grammar School running the country and want to install one of their own."
Well, I'm not sure who you mean by 'They'. I don't want Gordon Brown running the country and I'm working class and went to an RC in Manchester. It's not his school or nationality that bothers me it's his unsuitability for the job.
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#189
So balhamu, enlighten me. Is it "toffs" (whatever they may be any more) you don't like governing us, or people who've been privately educated, or people who have been running multinational businesses?
Personally I think we need commercial experience and a certain level of education.
Bad examples are anybody currently on the front benches of this parliament, Berlusconi, Robert Maxwell, Joe the Plumber (the latest 15 minutes of fame person in the US election), Mugabe.
Good examples are Heseltine, George Brown, Vince Cable, Meacher.
Discuss
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I appreciate that this is a Global phenomena but some countries are better placed than us to deal with it.
In the first month of Labour coming to power I was £30 a month worse off after they scrapped the tax relief on mortgages, it's been down hill all the way.
This Governments answer to EVERY problem has been to throw our money at it, this one is no exception.
Yes, as individuals we have borrowed too much. Our individual tax burden has become so massive that people have borrowed rather than see their standard of living decline.
BUT, whilst cheap credit has flowed the public have "loved it" and as a result voted for them time and time again.
I have been saying to friends for years that the Labour Government of the 70's were determined to bankrupt the country and now they want to ruin every individual.
Under their watch industry collapsed in the 70's. Thatcher had to scrap the lot and start from scratch. The result was 3 million unemployed but she embraced a new way forward and Labour have managed to destroy that now too.
Cameroon will now have to take the difficult job of rebuilding this country. Unemployment will soar but the Tories will take the blame again for clearing up the mess left by these people who are hell bent on destroying the very fabric and identity of a great country.
They Government should be taken out and shot - they're a disgrace. Gordon and Tony first.
PS. I hope Clive (124) finds his mind
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#192
What is your point exactly?
Do you begrudge people their education?
Who cares about your percentages - here's a better one for you; every university educated prime minister during the twentueth century went to OXford.
Does that make Cambridge rubbish? Durham? Bristol?
Does that make Alan Johnson just so not the man for the job? Of course not.
Blithering on about peoples' backgrounds is the politics of envy and yesteryear. Anybody is up to the job who has good ideas, wants to improve the country and is not riddled with idealogical dogma. (so no newlabour please)
Carry on banging on about tory toffs there will be no sensible debate; just a slam dunk victory for the toris like there was in London and at Crewe and Nantwich - where this strategy failed spectacularly.
It's called hiding behind your prejudices and fortunately, the electorate has rumlbed it.
Call an election. Vote tory toffs.
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#201
I can smell the wreckage of the newlabour spin machine trying desperately to steer Gordon Brown away from the car crash of his age of irresponsibility.
I can also smell the cowardy custard who dare not call an election.
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It is obvious from the looney left that they are terrified of the only credible opposition - David Cameron and the Conservative Party. Why else would they keep referring to his speeches?
If the looney left are so happy and confident with Brown why do they feel the need to constantly defend themselves? They must be afraid.
David Cameron is not afraid, and he has time to research and ponder on the mess made by the present incumbent.
Obviously governments go out of power when they are out of favour and that is what will happen with this
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This is yet another reason to highlight the shortcomings of this government.
"The home secretary makes it clear that at all times, on important issues such as these, she wants to listen to what people's concerns are, she wants to consider those concerns, she wants to consult on a bipartisan and wide basis."
On Wednesday Ms Smith attempted to reassure people that the content of their e-mails and phone conversations would not be stored and local authorities would not be able to trawl through looking for "lower level criminality".
Now, at the risk of being considered pedantic, if they are not going to "store" e-mail and phoone conversations, how are they going to monitor them? On-line, real time on a one to one basis (which would of course solve the unemployment issue at a stroke), or by going over them at a later date?
Doesn't she get it yet? It is the fact that they need to keep them for any length of time that makes it extremely likely (I would go so far as to say certainly) that they will "go missing". Somebody will put some of them on a memory stick, and lose them. Guaranteed.
Now, is she not the most useless home secretary since, oh I don't know, the last one?
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Well if the "Tories" are also in favour of New World Order, I think we may be in for a BNP government in about ten years time.
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There are no such truces. To claim one is just another bit of the game. That having served its rather empty purpose, and unable to make much impact over what Brown has just done, Cameron is now on about what he did a long time ago under different circumstances. As predicted, Brown has survived through conference and the banking debacle without serious challenge from his own party. Cameron has not scored. It's easy to give Brown a thump. Getting him to fall over is another matter.
The 'real' economy, as wise men say, is what may do for him, not Mr Cameron, and from the perspective of these days, not tory solutions in tough times.
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"Certainly, in an interview I've just done with the Tory leader the question he appeared to like least was the one when I pressed him to give personal credit to the prime minister for his handling of the past couple of weeks."
umm, why would *you* be pressing him to give credit? What are you, on Gordon's "side" or something? It's nothing to do with you Robinson.
Further, isn't it a little early to tell if the bailout has worked? I can't see that it even addressed the issues, and the markets dont' seem to have been diverted, do they? Why not ask factual questions about policy, rather than trying t get your own positions endorsed.
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People talk about Britain's "prosperity" over the last ten years, but this is a dangerous fiction.
If I borrow £2000 off of a friend, buy a sharp suit, go for dinner at the Ivy and hobnob with celebrities does this mean I am rich, popular and famous? Absolutely not. I wake up in the morning alone in my bedsit with no money and a hangover.
Similarly, does our last ten years of reckless borrowing, spending and acquisition, both personal and national, mean that we were prosperous and rich during that period? Absolutely not. Dark times await Britain whether or not the "global financial crisis" that we have heard so much about persists. Whether it is this year, next year, five or ten years from now, we will wake up in at some point with no money and the economic hangover to end all hangovers, and for reasons largely distinct from events around the world.
New Labour's elite rulers, Gordon Brown in particular, have been guilty of unbelievable fiscal hubris and mismanagement, which has discredited the New Labour programme (not, in itself, a bad one) and will bring Britain to its knees, 1947-style. Cameron has all the criticisms now, but neglects to mention that New Labour only built on the bad policies of the previous Tory government, which he would have adopted too did he not see an opportunity for some shameless point-scoring "now the house is on fire".
In short, both of these parties are rotten inside and out, the sooner we can open the market up to some new parties with new ideas the better chance we have of saving our nation. (and incidentally, giving voters more options representing more political positions would stop quite as many people opting for the BNP as a protest vote, a prospect even more terrifying than the recession imho.)
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when a government of any country hands over the reigns of its finances to an overseas confederation there will be problems, opposition to the government will always have the right to speak out if not then the government will do what it wants and the people the government are supposed to represent will suffer.
party politics sadly suffers the same basic problem.
i think this government needs replacing before all our rights are handed to europe via the back door, fouling up the ecconomy and wasting billions should ring alarm bells up and down the country.
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Hey, I've got a good idea, why don't we just vote to be part of Scotland?
They've just announced a council tax freeze for next year.
Now, where did I put that list of local authorities who invested in Iceland?
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@203
well said.when new labour came to power they really just carried on where the cons left off. thats why you saw blair and thatcher having tea. thing is it people did not tig on to that. after 27 years they have managed to dis mantel this country
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By the way, with regard to our economy being best placed to avoid problems, did anybody notice that tata, the ubiquitous Indian conglomerate, is cutting down production at Corus, so some jobs will be going. this is because of the worldwide recession which is not actuall affecting us.
Now I thought that the government had sanctioned the sale of Corus to some other Indian, who was accused of funding the Labour party, but I might just be spreading malicious rumours, not.
My point is, any manufacturing process in this country is not actually controlled within this country, and hasn't been for some time.
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The words "pot", "kettle" and "black" spring to mind!
This is just blind Tory panic in response to a few poll points lost.
Another word that springs to mind is "irrelevant". I can't beleive that this is the top BBC news story. I guess it must be a quiet day!
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Nick,
If the world of politics collapsed around the ears of the media pundits, and the only hope of rescuing themselves was by battening down the hatches and not arguing with one another, then I am sure that you would all behave in the manner that was necessary for the period of the emergency. However, at some point the emergency recedes and as night follows day, one or other pundit takes it upon themself to grab all the kudos for those emergency measures. In those circumstances is it not natural for the other pundits to pull out of the act of unity and respond.
If what I describe is merely human nature, why are you at all surprised that Cameron has grown tired of Broon and his followers seeking personal glory from what is otherwise seen to be a concerted and non partisan agreement?
Indeed, I feel that it is Broon's motives that you should be focusing upon as it is he who is seeking quite definite political gain from his recent pronouncements despite the gravity of the situation which was, at least in part, caused by his own actions or inaction.
Finally, as has been pointed out above, I don't remember Labour holding back its criticism of the Conservatives in the late 80s/early 90s when all that they could see was the chance to boot the economy while it was down. Even now, guys like Twigg go on and on about 15% interest rates as though that lifts all blame from them with regard to the mess that the economy now finds itself in. In last night's Panorama, he couldn't bring himself to answer whether Broon had lied when he claimed to have ended boom and bust. Oh how lucky we are to have men of the calibre of Broon, Mandelson, Darling and Twigg.
All the best
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219
I wouldn't if I were you. That council tax freeze has come off the education budget, and they seem hell-bent on voting themselves into becoming another Iceland anyway. At which point they will rush into the arms of the EU wondering now how do we take down the common fisheries policy?
If you want dreamland, stay home.
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149 flashman,
You wrote
"I have asked several times before, what has changed as far as a Threat from Terrorism goes for the last 40 years.
The short answer is nothing we have always had this threat hanging over us.
I honestly what to know what has changed in 40 years of sustained Terrorism in the UK to endorse this bill. Are the government saying that Irish Terrorists are not quite as bad or dangerous than Muslim ones?"
You say
"Anti Terror units Identify potential Terrorist
by as series of Profiling measures, not I hope everyone has noticed that the most patently obvious profile of the latest batch of Terrorist (the bbc like to use the word extremists), are young Muslim men, not 80 year old women, or Childrem, or dare I say it the majority of the counrty."
You wrote a similar post a week or so ago and I replied and it went as followes
you said
"So for taking terrorism more seriouly is a bit of whitewash to be honest. The surveliance system in Northern Ireland, over the last 40 years, was pretty tight."
I replied
Thats why they were able to blow up Airy Neve and Almost succeeded in blowing up half the British government including Margaret Thatcher who fortunately was in a different room.also earl Mountbatten was also blown up, So yes I guess it was pretty tight.
You then said
"George Bush introduced us into a world of pain when stating he is carrying out a war on Terrorism. To have a war you really need an identifiable enemy. This has now been to our cost going for all out combat rater than using counter terrorist surveillance. "
My reply was
Yes it was a bit of a knee jerk response but I think the leader of any country that had suffered the horrific atrocity that had occurred in America would probably have reacted in the same way.
You then said
"Believe it or not it is easier for Terroists to hide in war zone and rally the locals against the occupier, it happen in NI and is happening now."
To which I replied
The situation with northern Ireland terrorists is entirely different to the situation now. although the actions of the IRA were abhorrent they would never of carried out the atrocities that these people commit today,. I dont imagine that they would have indoctrinated a young boy/girl to walk into a market square and blow themselves and many others to pieces,
or that they would have stolen a few planes loaded with passengers and crashed them into Canary Wharf. Do you.?
you ask
"I have asked several times before, what has changed as far as a Threat from Terrorism goes for the last 40 years. "
"The short answer is nothing we have always had this threat hanging over "
Your summing up couldn't be more wrong the situation is entirely different.
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124Clive Jenkins
"They don't like a talented Scot from a grammar school running the country, and want to install one of 'their own'. "
Thats the reason all these Tories hated John Prescott, not one of the upper class but he was a man of the people and that didn't sit well with the Tories.
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217. At 2:30pm on 17 Oct 2008, U11714077 wrote
A dam good post.
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The roots of these problems go back to Thatcherism when the presupposition was that everything we do as capitalists is fine. Increasing deregulation over the years has led to general fiscal irresponsibility. Government is not exempt, nor are banks and other financial institutions and bodies. Nor are we, the consumers, who wanted everything today as long as we could pay tomorrow. Well, tomorrow has come. Let's be honest: we are a hedonistic, selfish, flashy nation and we have forgotten the prudence, common sense and carefulness of our ancestors. So, let's stop thinking the government is going to get us out of this, or one party will be better than another. It's up to us to live differently. It's a wake up call, also, to what we are doing to the environment with all this consumption.
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time for the bucther ,tailer and caddle stick maker to run this country. not one of the main parties have any real leadership and they are so far out of touch with the public, that no wonder you get all these conspiracys banded about
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28 Warning 123.
Now come on warning last week you told me you weren't a Tory now you say your not Libdem and I know your not a labour man, so if I return to the trenches I need to know who I'm up against.
I thought you said you were going away.
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When you type FSA into Google, underneath the name it says -
"Regulator of all providers of financial services in the UK; Bank of England retains responsibility for systemic risk".
So it is actually the BoE who should be looking at systemic risk not the FSA
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#206
You are right that it is good to have commercial experience in Government, yes.
It does not necessarily follow that that the expected career of politicians should be have life experience in business and then move to politics at e.g. age 55
Two points:
1. How do you prevent capture of Government by narrow interest groups, if you do draw most politicians from the corporate world? It's difficult (though similar issues from e.g. drawing politicians from the public sector)
* see e.g. Italy, where the legislative programme is aimed at protecting the PM's media empire and safeguarding him from corruption charges on leaving office)
* see e.g. USA, where an ex-director of Exxon (the oil company) was in charge of environmental policy, an ex-director of Halliburton (the military services contractor) was influential in the decision to launch a war in Iraq, financial regulation was written by Enron etc
2. Running Government is very different to running a corporate organisation. Outcomes are more difficult to measure, and policy levers are less effectual and take much more time to be effective. There are a very diverse range of stakeholders, rather than just shareholders.
The Civil Service has a lot more commercial experience than it once did (indeed, the Government is much criticised for the cost of bringing such expertise in, like consultancy spend and the cost of making senior government salaries competitive with the City). I think this experience in delivery arms of Government is essential.
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29 fredalo,
You say
We need to be told the full story; we need to know that Cameron understands the scale of the problem; and we need to know he "has a plan".
The only plan he's likly to come up with is Baldricks, "I have a cunning plan"
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225 Grand,
We can agree to differ on many of the things mentioned I can live with that.
Pub bombs and Harrods Bombs Are every bit as disgusting as Tube Bombs, as it was for the poor guys picking bits and pieces up of the Blues and Royals after that work of evil.
Anyway, you are at odds I personnally think they are the same and you think not.
But are you really saying you endorce further investigations into our phone calls and email, on the pretext that it catches Terrorists?
Sorry I'm not buying that!
The government agencies have mishandled so much data of late, not to mention councils oversteppiing thier authority regarding civil liberties. There is a man in Cumbria with a criminal record which stemmed from the council pulling a fine for a bin being open a couple of inches.
Question when is enough enough?
There is too much knowledge about us all bandied around, double glazing and Kitchen sales are bad enough phoning at all hours, and that is just with our names and numbers. What happens when they have the lot.
I prefer to be Private and Free, as opposed to being someone who's every call, email and movement is scrutinised.
Russia had a similar system of information gatherers. They were called the KGB.
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Really, the nerve of the Conservatives.
Regardless of Labour's handling of the economy, after the appalling mess the Tories have made in the past they are no position to criticise.
Not only that, but I cannot recall a single time in parliament when a Tory stood up to alert anybody to the lapse of regulation they are now claiming. They didn't, and they wouldn't, as the idea would be taboo to them.
Why now? Why the Tory U-turn? Cameron can be as angry as he likes, but the argument doesn't stand-up and can be torn-down with very little effort.
We can all clearly remember who _did_ have the guts to stand up and challenge the Government over the economy at a time when everything seemed strong. It wasn't he silent Conservatives.
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#225
Typical newlabour bickering from grandantidote.
We all need to be very, very scared. You said, I said and I said, you said. It's like being in the playground.
'The war on terror' so who is the enemy? The perfect war? No-one knows. You can keep going forever scaring the population into more and more surveillance, ID cards, 42 days detention.
All governments need a hobgoblin and my goodness newlabour found its hobgoblin when they invented 'The war on terror'.
Now it's the clunking fist and his rock of stability act. 'You can't vote me out because the world woulfd fall to pieces without me in charge'.
What utter piffle. Nobody is swallowing this rubbish anymore.
Call an election.
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#224
No dreamland is right here, on this blog.
You can see from their posts those for whom reality is an undiscovered concept, truth is something to be stretched and distorted as much as possible, and fact is a firm belief that anything their febrile imagination conjures up must be so.
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Grandantidote.
One more thing, why is it do you think that these you Muslim men are committing these atrocities?
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We need no reminding of the need to re-balance the economy and build a new high speed train.
But remind me please who was it who closed down our manufacturing industry? And made such a mess of privatising the railways that it still requires more subsidy than ever before?
Oh yes - the Tories. We need no lessons from a party that presided over such events, not to mention 15% interest rates, a collapsing economy, civil strife and funded by opaque sources.
Perhaps it's time to re-run some old newsreels.
By comparison with which any excesses over the past 11 years have been minor.
It's just a fit of pique from DC and his sidekick GO. To say this to the City which is currently (and possibly unfairly) in the dock marks the height of cynicism and posturing. Give the boy a toy.
And what's this about some independent controller? It would leave government with nothing to do so except wash its hands like Pontius Pilate. Maybe some of the problems in the UK are home grown but quite a lot of it is external.
Why not abolish govt and let some collection of experts to take charge? Or call in the military.
Stupid.
If a government overspends and makes a mess, that's what the ballot box is for - not even HYS.
If the government makes a good case for overspending, then so be it.
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eaton @ 179
... "nobody has ever "made" me or anyone I know "borrow" money inappropritely. Anyone who did/does surely carries the overwhelming responsibility themselves. On grounds of Political principal you'd expect alll Tories to agree to this. Strangely at the moment its all someone elses fault" ...
That is a very good point. What's happened to the usual lauding of "personal responsibility" that one hears from BTP town.
Don't, myself, agree that it's mainly the fault of individual fecklessness but, still, I would expect to be hearing a lot more of that from the rightists.
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#227
Thats the reason all these Tories hated John Prescott, not one of the upper class but he was a man of the people and that didn't sit well with the Tories.
It makes absolutely no difference from which background members of our Government come. It's suitability for the job which counts. Apart from the fact that he couldn't actually do the job in the first place, Mr Prescott couldn't even cobble a sentence together and that alone made him unsuitable for such a high position.
Not bothered if you don't reply.
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#234
somewhere in all this is the right answer. people who are professional politicians, and we know who they are, have absoultely no concept of what life is like outside the rarified atmosphere of the corridors of power.
Not sure I can buy your arguments about the civil service, nor of the compelling need for consultants, except for the fact that they are temporary. Now I may be using too broad a brush but I work among consultants the whole time. Their experience tends to be related to what it took to get their dgree plus the MBA, and their knowledge of the boston matrix in all its forms, and how to work Project, so that they can keep posing questions which they will go and find an aswer for, but never do, except when its wrong. the wonderful budget busting IT system for the NHS, which doesn't work strangely enough.
Keeping government out of the hands of any given control group, big business or unions, is, of course the great imponderable, and what political argument is all about. Frankly leaving it to "qualified" politicians of any political hue is not my preferred solution. You've got political wonks on both side of the debate.
A mix of knowledge, experience and, dare I say it, public spirit seems to be required, and you don't get that all in one person, so you need a mixture.
And before you say anything, I don't mean a government of national unity.
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Now that our glorious leader has saved the world, he has returned to walk among us and already he personally has reduced the world oil price, but the bad fuel companies have not passed his reductions on to the consumer. They should now be very afraid, if he mobilises his invalidity benefit and always unemployed army and descends on them, they will really be in trouble. The bad bankers will also be villified but not the builders , developers, and speculators, they might donate to te labour coffers since they came to rely on the inability of Brown to control the amount of borrowed money floating around the housing market just waiting to be collected.
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#235
You certainly have that right at the time of an election.
Can you call one now?
If not, be quiet until there is one.
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#208
No, that was not what I was saying.
I think it would be a very positive development if most of the Cabinet went to Eton and Oxbridge. It's the best school in the country combined with the best universities.
However, it may not be diverse - and may lead to 'group-think'.
And it may lead to important policy misconceptions (e.g. the majority of people are affected by inheritance tax and would benefit from a measure reducing the tax for millionaires; e.g. most people pay higher-rate income tax).
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Let me say this plain and simple. Get Britain into the Euro. End of story, now try and find an excuse to moderate this one out.
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Why has he been quiet recently? Because the action being taken needed unity. That has now been passed. Do people expect him to be quiet until this is 'finished'?! That won't be for many years yet (especially if labour stay in power).
Yes, the markets plummeting has affected almost everyone, but all the same, it is the UK's poor position which has been created by GB and Labour, especially by overspending when they should have been saving for a rainy day. GB ignored warnings from far too many people over the way our financial system and general economy was going.
Yes, some of the systems which let us down were already in place from the Tories, but the Tories kept the books balanced (even if it made them look bad). Labour have simply squandered what they have taken (which is ever increasing).
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Let me just say that this appalling government wants to stop the compulsory education of foreign languages at the age of fourteen. This is a disgrace. It must not happen.
By the way which government was it that brought in charges for higher education, uuhhhmmm let me think!
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Please don't fight with each other citizens - over class and education. Not now.
I campaigned (unsuccessfully of course) in the last election (for UKIP although I am no longer a member) and it was very clear, going door to door day after day, that there were really only two sides - left and right and they were utterly opposed to each other and in many cases hated each other. That crossed the class and education divide.
Now in this recession there are 3 sides, (1) the relatively well-off (robust savings, investments, own property, no mortgage etc) who will not be touched by anything (and never are), (2) those who have little enough and who are fighting to stay afloat and stand to be ruined and (3) those who don't care about anything and couldn't care less and who probably couldn't spell recession far less would understand what it meant.
I know who I'd be fighting.
GC
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Gordon will call an election in the spring. Simple really.
Now all we need to know is that he will serve a full term as Prime Minister. Now who exactly was it who said that and then threw in the towel so that somebody else could step into their shoes. Anybody got an answer.
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fens @ 197
... "Did you look at the price of gold before making this absurd comment?" ...
Hey, I don't make absurd comments! - I only make reasonable, well argued comments.
I was merely pointing out (since I think many people don't know) that the interest disadvantage of gold, as versus other assets (e.g. cash), means that it has to significantly outperform in order to stay still. So the "loss" supposedly made by Brown's selling of the gold cannot be taken at face value.
Course, in the light of what has actually happened in markets over the last few years, what he should have done was sell gold for euros (as he did) then, around about 2001, switch out of euros and into dollars - then, in early 2003, gone heavily overweight Japanese Yen - and finally, in the spring of 2005, flipped into residential property before dumping that last summer in favour of oil - oil to be sold a couple of months ago for shares in shoe repairing firms. That's cobblers to you and me.
What was that again about absurd?
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@236
not being funny. but this just shows where we are going. your topic should never of a risen. there were no wmd,s. we went to war on a lie. if the war had not of happened then we would not need to be looking at terrorism laws as they want to try use now. also oil prises then would also never of rose to the prises they did. we need to get our brave solders out, and at the sametime save money. we have no industry ,our financial markets our on there knees and house prises 40% higher than they should be , with 1.3trillion of personal debt. this thanks to both labour and the cons
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The 'success' of NL in political terms, that is, three consecutive General Election wins has meant that the Tories have ended up being 'me too' clones of the NL 'magic' formula.
What the Tories have practised all these years in opposition is abject political cowardice, bereft of any meaningful ideas of their own.
So, Cameron finds himself in an awkard place.
Tough.
The Tories do not deserve to 'win' a General election by default, filling the boots, simply because Labour have screwed up.
English people deserve better, fresh political movements with new ideas ... stripped of tired Labour, Tory or Lib Dem dogma.
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31. At 09:46am on 17 Oct 2008, Pot_Kettle wrote:
@16
Ah the usual Hogwash mantra of "he stole my ideas"
Agree one hundred percent with you. But beware, now both of us will find our postings have been moderated and removed!
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Robin,
Quick question:
Were you calling for an election in September 2007?
Or would that have been opportunistic?
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CEH,
Apologies for my post on the previous "real economy" which was removed by the mods.
What I was trying to say was that you have a unique and distinctive distinctive literary style, and you do not seem to experience the same everyday frustrations with Brown's Britain that many other people do, and theycertainly invite comment. It is certainly their right to disagree with you, though they also have a choice in whether to engage in blog discussions about your postings.
As for the Tory comments about me - I don't really have to have an "ism" to define my views of the world, be it - buddism, tory-ism, socialism, blair-ism or whatever.
I simply have a sense of values that mean I don't think it's right or fair that people who leave their bin lids open too far shopuld be fined more than shoplifters.
I don't believe that it is right or fair that we give residence and benefits to foreign people with links to terrorists but have forced the gurkhas - who have served and contributed to our country - to go to court in order for them to be allowed to stay here.
I don't believe that a benefit system which pays £170,000 a year to an Afghan woman can be right or fair.
I don't believe that a parent should have to take her dead son's ashes in a casket to court when he is summoned by a government agency (DVLA) who's processes and management have so hopelessly failed to deal with the problem.
I don't believe its fair that people called up for compulsory jury service may lose earnings which may amount to more than the criminals found guilty are actually fined. Who is the legal process penalising more here ? Tough on crime, tough on the civil responsibilities of crime.
I could go on. Perhaps Zen has a view on such values ?
There is no moral or spiritual basis to any of the current governments activities. Or common sense either. This is reality of Brown's Britain today - it's time for change.
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49. At 10:12am on 17 Oct 2008, flamepatricia wrote:
What came up in Question Time was a small but much needed debate about the advancement of the BNP with nine seats in Stoke for instance.,
If you look at it academically, it is the act of people in desperation due to the inadequacies of this government.
Last time I mentioned this I got moderated. Why?
This government does not like people stating the bl****ng obvious.
Replace BNP with Communist Party and I dont think it would be moderated.
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tim @ 207
... "Thatcher had to scrap the lot" ...
Well I don't know that she HAD to but what's for certain is that she did, sure enough.
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#249 Arnie
"The Tories kept the books balanced".
Not strictly true - for example, a cumulative current budget deficit of £320 billion was run by the Tories 1979-1997.
Your sentence would be right if you said:
"The Tories kept the books balanced by privatising state owned industries at a discount to their chums in the city, selling off council houses at a discount, using North Sea Oil receipts of 2-3% GDP, freezing pension-benefits for older people, freezing teachers and other front-line public servants salaries, and dis-investing in schools, hospitals and other infrastructure in order to plug the £320 billion hole that would otherwise have been in the books because of their investment in long-term unemployment and social breakdown"
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Nick,
maybe there ought to be a process by which the number on any single log can be limited. Say 500 max. There are sometimes so many.
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robin @ 208
... "Blithering on about peoples' backgrounds is the politics of envy and yesteryear" ...
It isn't - it's a very valid concern. If, for example, almost a quarter of the front bench of a major political party have been to the same (upper class and male only) school, that is a ridiculously narrow pool of people to draw your "talent" from.
One could go as far as to say that it makes them unfit for office.
Fact I'm going to go as far that, if you don't mind.
They are unfit for office.
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@ 258
... "don't believe that a benefit system which pays ?170,000 a year to an Afghan woman can be right or fair" ...
Sounds crazy - where are you getting that from, please?
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Put very simply I think The Government and Opposition parties are united on the remedy but not the exact causes of our present financial malaise. The Government virtually absolves itself of all responsibility for it (global crisis and all that). The more responsible however point out that they did have a part in it. How large that part was is open to debate.
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Constable @ 255
... "people deserve better, fresh political movements with new ideas" ...
Yep. New Party of the Left please! - we can call it the Clear Thinking Progressive Party.
You can be a member, John, if you drop that English thing you've got going on.
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Good afternoon fellow bloggers,
I think you will find this interesting:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=b8EBOv9MnnM
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croft @ 251
..." Now in this recession there are 3 sides, (1) the relatively well-off (robust savings, investments, own property, no mortgage etc) who will not be touched by anything (and never are), (2) those who have little enough and who are fighting to stay afloat and stand to be ruined and (3) those who don't care about anything and couldn't care less and who probably couldn't spell recession far less would understand what it meant. I know who I'd be fighting" ...
Sorry Guy, I'm guessing you mean the answer to be obvious but I'm not sure it is - so, for the sake of clarity, who would you be fighting please?
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The truce is over - let's see if the Tories have any real policies.
1) Co-operating with Europe. - I don't think so - Tories froth at the mouth at the mouth when words like France, Euro or Commission are mentioned.
2) Adapting to the new world of state control of the commanding heights - even Nu Labour are having trouble with that one. The Tories idea of commanding heights is the upper floor of a Nottinghillgate mansion.
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cooper @ 216
... "the sooner we can open the market up to some new parties with new ideas the better chance we have of saving our nation" ...
I so agree - if you're up for it, if you can be bothered, I'd be interested to see the main points you're looking for in a new party.
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#268,
terribly sorry, really a most unfortunate typo, I mean't
'who I'd be fighting for..'
GC
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268:
Fighting for no. (2) and a little bit no. (1) because without them we'd all be up the swanee. Fighting against none of these but very sorry for no. (3)s. because they must be wondering what's happening to them.
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161 Sagamix
You really shouldn't bother trying to defend Brown on the gold sell off - he made a catastrophic mistake.
Yes - Brown really did announce to the market that he was going to sell our gold (thus ensuring he achieved the lowest price possible):
Gold Sell off announced to the market
Worse than that - prior to this he had been urging the IMF to sell off their gold - thus ensuring traders thought the market was going to be flooded with gold and supressing the price:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1999/04/27/cnimf27.html
In the first article I posted did you notice this quote:
"Gold has special characteristics. It has been held as a reserve for thousands of years. Its value does not rely on anybody else's promise to pay, unlike cash, and it builds public confidence"
Brown is, unfortunately, an economic calamity.
That is one of the many reasons why David Cameron is justified when he says:
New Labour had embraced free market economics "without question" without "properly understanding how it worked".
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re my typo - I did ask the moderators a week ago to put some facility in for editing one's posts but they didn't...
GC
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264
This was in all the papers last week. An Afghan mother of seven lives in a very big house house in an expensive part of London, which is rented from a private landlord with the council paying the £12000 plus rent each month. Other benefits given to the family gave a total benfits package of around £170,000.
I didn't mean to imply that £170,000 was given directly to her !
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political parties are like gangs of children in the school yard, and we all know that after a while these gangs fall apart or fall out.
sadly these groups become lead by the strongest who then exerts there will over the rest of the group, they dont care if they are right or wrong just that they are the boss and others must obey.
looking at political parties they seem the same except when there leaders are challenged they more so act like babies throwing there toys out of there prams.
they look to be the most popular media friendly strong willed leader to push through there idea of correctness upon not only there party but the whole country.
they get a very generous wage and very good expences and thus loose there conection to real life, but the public still allows them to dictate and squabble wasting taxpayers money whilst being too stubourn to realise they are wrong.
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#266
Jeepers you're now against male only schools. What is wrong with a little diversity? Why do all schools have to be mixed? This is prejudice of its own kind.
there is no question in my mind the tories will walk it whenever the elction is called as these historic prejudices died years ago.
the only people blithering on about class warfare are the die hard left with their Harman-esque do gooders supporting them with their cires of 'it's not fair'
Life is not fair. Gordon Brown is prime minister. That has to be the biggest injustice of all time.
Calll an election.
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ian @ 193
... "because anyone who buys into GB's bluster is seriously delusional" ...
Fair enough. I don't buy Brown's bluster (or Gordon's gibberish) but what I buy even less is the way that the tories are claiming that they always knew that the prosperity wasn't real and it would all end in tears - that is nonsense of the arrant variety.
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http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qyW7jHjZrrk
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David Cameron and responsibility.
23rd April 2007:
"We need a revolution in responsiblity in this country, and for Government that means a simple test for every policy - does it give people more responsibility or does it take responsiblity away from them
There's a news story - an incident, an accident, some new research
The politician tries to be popular by saying they will "do something about it". The media, with growing ferocity, call for "something to be done about it
We end up with a frenetic bidding war for action"
"We have to end this cycle if we are to build a responsible society"
It's an interesting speech.
I'd be interested in how Cameron squares his "responsibility test" with some of the things he is currently saying.
It seems he is saying that people can't be trusted to make financial decisions that are in their interest, so the government should take the responsibility away from them.
It seems he is saying that banks cannot be trusted to make decisions on lending or on the assets they hold that are in their interest, so the government should take the responsibility away from them.
How do you square the circle? And is "the responsibility test" defunct?
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What makes the Gordon Brown aplogists on here so certain that David Cameron and George Osbourne are going to fail spectacularly in Government. They have a vested interest in succeeeding or they will last only one term. I cant' see them making a hash of it in the ways described but you never know I suppose. The deficit might be so big that they have no room for manoevere on anything.
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264 sagamix
Here's a link :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3160307/Mother-gets-170000-a-year-in-benefits-to-live-in-1.2m-house.html
Sorry it's the telegraph, but it was in all the papers as well !
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@ 275
... "An Afghan mother of seven lives in a very big house house in an expensive part of London, which is rented from a private landlord with the council paying the ?12000 plus rent each month" ...
Ah I see - one of those. Sounds like the landlord is the big winner there then. Still yes, not a great use of public money is it? - a temporary arrangement, though, I'm betting.
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#277 Robin,
A thought experiment (I'm not saying any of this is practical, just trying to get at ideal objectives)
How would a society that maximises its growth potential fully be structured?
Do you think that it would be a meritocracy, where those with the most talent occupy the most important roles in that society?
Does this imply that there should be equal opportunity where one's talent determines how well one does, rather than the income and social connections of your parents?
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For years I have been telling anyone who might be interested that the government has been irresponsible in its attitude to savings and debt. Brown replaced RPI with CPI as the MPC target rate, in an attempt to keep interest rates artificially low. He also froze ISA savings limits for a decade which substantially reduced them in real terms. In 2005 the government even organised a poster campaign to boast about how low interest rates were, the same year that personal debt crashed through the £1 trillion mark. No wonder then, that the savings ratio is this country has been much lower than in comparable EU countries.
Brown has certainly done more harm than good. It's probably fair to say that he doesn't really like savers much.
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Please get rid of Nick Robinson. Having a former of Tory Youth member as your political correspondent does give a jaded view of the way the BBC are reporting politics.
It might be helpful for the Tories if they actually came up with some workable policies rather than just the sound bites they keep spouting.
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On alighter note, I married a Russian woman some 10 years ago and a condition of her coming to the UK (with her young daughter whom I later adopted) was that she must NOT take any form of employment for 6 months...
Compare and contrast with the Afghan mother.
Mind you, I'm all for the immigration officers at Heathrow, one quizzed us on how we'd met and - given that it is essential to be truthful - we both (separately, because we we interviewed in different locations) admitted rather sheepishly that it was from GC's outrageous ad in Private Eye, at which the (female) officer laughed and said to me 'don't worry, it does show good left-wing credibility..' and let her through.
Can't say the law regarding her working helped us any, she arrived with two suitcases and I had only just enough money to convince the Vice Consul in Tashkent that I could 'afford to support a foreigner'..
Ho hum
GC
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279:
I think the GB nose picking video is also rather interesting. With those worn out fingernails how on earth does he manage it?
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Sagamix @ 266
I am not inclined to drop the 'English thing' because I think that slowly a political momentum is building in England for English people to have more direct political control over their lives as people in Scotland, Wales and NI already do.
I think that the English need to take this political step back to being {political} England again but its kind of irrelevant because I think the Scots and the Welsh will do the job for us and us English will find ourselves on our own anyway.
I would prefer us English to think of ourselves as primarily Europeans, as a person from say New Jersey thinks of himself as an American, but that is obviously a very long way off.
Mainly because European politicians keeps on doing stupid things (incomprehensible treaties) and sometimes bad things, like not producing audited accounts year after year.
Nevertheless, I'm sure we'll get to a strong common European identity one day, almost in spite of the politicans.
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Of course the truce is over. I know it's Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition and all that but enough is enough - loyalty can be so tedious. By the way, has Glenrothes been postponed for the foreseeable future due to the crisis? No?
Anyway, look on the bright side. If Jacqui Smith gets her way, we won't need elections any more because they will know what everyone's thinking 24/7 - until someone leaves the hard disk on the 6.18 from Waterloo. Then everyone will know everything everyone is thinking.
Peerage anyone?
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robin @ 277
... "Jeepers you're now against male only schools" ...
Now much as I admire your nimble and devil may care debating style (and believe me, I do) that's not really the point I'm making, is it? No, the point is that it's not healthy to have undue political influence being exercised by a privileged elite.
Or is that healthy? Have I got things wrong again?
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I agree that the Tories privatised industries and used the money to aid spending.
Likewise I am sure someone raised a few billion by auctioning off licences for mobile phones, raiding pension funds etc.
If you need money you use the tools at hand to do so. At the moment there is no (I was about to say obvious - but I suppose ) stealth way to raise money.
Which is why the Budget deficit is expected to be £60 Billion this year.
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guy @ 287
... "On alighter note, I married a Russian woman some 10 years ago and a condition of her coming to the UK (with her young daughter whom I later adopted) was that she must NOT take any form of employment for 6 months. Compare and contrast with the Afghan mother" ...
Sorry Guy, that's good bringing in a lighter note but I'm going to be a bit partypooper by asking a question. Only asking it because I genuinely don't understand what you're driving at when you say "compare and contrast with the Afghan mother" - you saying that the AM was told she MUST get employment rather than being forbidden to do so?
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sagamix @260
.....well those that could be salvaged were privatised. The rest HAD to go, the losses were too enormous for the tax payer to carry on paying.
Thatcher knew that we had to acquire new skills to survive modern times. This has been the basis of the wealth we have all enjoyed for the past 30 years.
Sadly, Gordon has been spending faster than he could create new taxes but hey, if the country or the services were better, who would complain? Alas, they are not.
As i said in my opening comments, this is a global problem but the likes of Australia, France and Germany are much better placed than us to weather this storm, they have had more responsible government.
Anyway, until he holds an election he does not have the consent of the people.
Role on Spring 2009.
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286 Frosty_icecube
Get rid of Nick Brown because he was a Young Conservative....
.... where do you stand on Robert Peston - a son of a Labour peer and the author of a very 'sympathetic' biography of Gordon Brown?
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John Constable @ 289
... "I would prefer us English to think of ourselves as primarily Europeans, as a person from say New Jersey thinks of himself as an American, but that is obviously a very long way off" ...
Right, got you now.
England as a distinct, and progressively run, region of a coherent, civilised Europe, rather than Ingerland as a proud and independent Island State of reactionary, shaven headed berks with replica football tops and unlicenced pitbulls.
We have pretty much the same vision, it seems to me - which is nice!
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286. At 4:48pm on 17 Oct 2008, frosty_icecube wrote:
Please get rid of Nick Robinson. Having a former of Tory Youth member as your political correspondent does give a jaded view of the way the BBC are reporting politics.
It might be helpful for the Tories if they actually came up with some workable policies rather than just the sound bites they keep spouting.
---------------------------------------------------------
Look you can't have it all your own way. Andrew Marr is a leftie, the reporters on the Radio 4 Today programme are so NuLabour it is embarrassing, so it is no good trying to smear Nick Robinson!
As for workable policies and sound bites - where have you been for the past 11 years? NuLabour has been nothing but Sound Bites and spin since its inception.
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jcook @ 273
... "You really shouldn't bother trying to defend Brown on the gold sell off - he made a catastrophic mistake" ...
I'm sorry, JC, but I don't think there is any way on earth that the switch from gold into euros can reasonably be looked at as a "catastrophic mistake" - but you're right in that I've devoted enough time to it now and there's probably no point in prolonging.
So I won't - but only if everyone else promises to not raise it again. If they do (and I spot it) then I'm just going to reply, saying the same old thing about interest differentials and the fact that managing the reserves is not a trading activity.
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238 flashman.
Your question was
I honestly what to know what has changed in 40 years of sustained Terrorism in the UK to endorse this bill. Are the government saying that Irish Terrorists are not quite as bad or dangerous than Muslim ones?
I gave you my opinion which I thought that
was what we did on these blogs.
But as usual you like to go on a rant about everything and anything.
"But are you really saying you endorce further investigations into our phone calls and email, on the pretext that it catches Terrorists?"
No I didn't say a word about that subject.
The rest of what you had to say on that post had nothing whatsoever to do with my reply to you.
It was just a personal rant of your own making. Nothing to do with me mate,
238
"Typical newlabour bickering from grandantidote."
Well all I did was reply to
You wrote
"I have asked several times before, what has changed as far as a Threat from Terrorism goes for the last 40 years.
The short answer is nothing we have always had this threat hanging over us.
I honestly what to know what has changed in 40 years of sustained Terrorism in the UK to endorse this bill. Are the government saying that Irish Terrorists are not quite as bad or dangerous than Muslim ones?"
Can't see much bickering in my reply. neither would any one else except you.
"We all need to be very, very scared. You said, I said and I said, you said. It's like being in the playground"
So me writing a post and trying to make sure who said what suddenly makes you very very scared. Well all that says to me is that I may be bordering on my second childhood but you obviously have not got out of your first.
"All governments need a hobgoblin and my goodness newlabour found its hobgoblin when they invented 'The war on terror'."
And there was me thinking that you said,
"George Bush introduced us into a world of pain when stating he is carrying out a war on Terrorism. "
Perhaps you would like to tell us which version you favour.
This was followed by more sensless ranting.
240
"One more thing, why is it do you think that these you Muslim men are committing these atrocities?"
The reason that these men are committing these atrocities, well my answer to that may not please you but at least its my opinion not influenced by anyone else.
These young kids start out in life like all other children, there lives are fashioned by there environment, if you take one of these babies and put them in a Christian family they will grow up with a Christian mindset or put them into any religion in the world and thats the way they will lean and thats the way with any child they are a blank canvass.
As with the boy soldiers in Rwanda
and some other african states they can be brainwashed into doing anything that evil men want them to do.
The muslim religion is a very all encompassing religion where there is no choice you have to study the Koran every day and there are very few of these young people who cannot quote you practically anything from the Koran.
Like in many things words can be twisted to mean some entirely different from the original meaning,and thats the ploy that is used on these young people, they will have there place in paradise, so there told with 99 virgins at their command, I have no idea what the girls are promised.
They have all been convinced that they are doing this for Allah and from the reaction of other muslems, they patently are not.
The thing I notice most is that the evil guys are never the bombers they sit back in there bunkers and rejoice at the success of a bomb that kills 50 or so individuals of their own religion men women and children. Thats why these poor misguided kids go out and blow themselves to pieces, and their mothers rejoice as they have had the same treatment,
Now thats not labour bickering its me with my playground mentality.
Does that answer your question? I fear not.
.
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@ 217. U11714077
Top notch!
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#286.
As it goes, I'm always surprised to see the number of BBC reporters who end up working for the Government as press officers.
Although the transition is not always an easy one, as Lance Price and Martin Sixsmith will tell you.
Interestingly, they both started working for the Government soon after the 1997 General Election.
Greg Dyke, the former D-G of the Beeb was hardly on John Major's side in 1997 either. He was made D-G in 2000.
And who is it who's editor or something of a BBC current affairs programme, said also to have Labour leanings? Let me have a little think and I'll come back.
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Guy Croft @ 132 regarding insolvency ...
Thank you for that. I think I agree with you, broadly speaking. I like the idea of people being able to bounce back from adversity, not being stigmatised by it.
Not sure it's something that I personally would march on number 10 about but I can very well see why you feel strongly about it.
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#301
Like Guto Hari?
Left-wing activists the lot of them!
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299 Grand.
THAT! was my whole point the governement is looking to interfere further into our personal lives, using the pretext anti Terrorism. You as always like missing the point.
Nobody buys that!
However you are right these idiots are claiming to do these thing base on a misinterpretation of the Koran.
My Question stands why have they started doing it in the UK?
My gut feeling is you are reluctant to admit it to do with the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Which is the Party line when Government officials (especially Blears) are asked.
It is however the reason, (unless of course the Terrorists are lying, which would be an odd time to do it.) when they state these reasons in thier last videos.
Pehaps they just want to make Blair feel guilty, fat chance!
And cue the Rant and the delibrate missing of the point.
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299 Grand
For gods sake put your glasses on straight I neved accused you of bickering!
Go and have a cup of tea.
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#293, sagamix
don't want to drift off topic, but by way of quick reply - I would not wish to appear unreasonable (because I am ignorant of the processes involved in that case, nor would wish to offend anyone in saying this/that in this context), but I'm remarking on the difference in the 'Welcome to Britain' that two 'foreigners experienced, and the extraordinary scale of the help extended to one in particular. Always curious how folk get access to that kind of help and how the resource is justified.
GC
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Camera On just could not hold it any longer could he? Nothing better to see and hear than a peeved politician with aspirations to lead a great country. Grow up, little boy blue, your heroine started this thirty years ago.
Could any political party of the past twenty years have stopped this festival of spending? I use a quote about the old colonialists in the New World (even though it was an Old World to the people already living there) that they were "possessed of a peculiarly intense dream of possession". Nothing changes in the Wild West. No, I never bought into it....
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tim @ 294
... "Thatcher knew that we had to acquire new skills to survive modern times. This has been the basis of the wealth we have all enjoyed for the past 30 years" ...
Gee, that is a very generous interpretation of the PM'ship of the Wicked Witch. I can't argue with you because I wouldn't know where to start! - on the traditional pre-weekend note of agreement, however, I will say that, IMO, the unions had to be pegged back and she was the person for the job. That was important and she deserves some credit for it.
I think there's a similar kind of "right wing" task now that needs attending to and that is to curb spending on the NHS.
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#303. Good catch. The point is that the references to Nick are unfair.
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If the blogsphere is representative of public opinion can I challenge anyone to point me in the direction of any blog that supports our glorious leader.
Mr Brown has, once again, shown how he lacks judgement. He had the opportunity to create a come back with a humble approach and maybe a "mea culpa" but no he plays it for a legacy.
Come on Cameron get stuck in!
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298 Sagamix
The point is.....just think how many more Euros, Dollars and Yen he could have bought if he hadn't stuffed things up?!
Brown's actions pushed Gold to the lowest price for 25 years and that is known in the trade as the "Brown Bottom".
One trader explained "The joke in the market was that Gordon had guaranteed he would get the worst price. The world and his grandmother shorted the market"
The treasury surprised not only traders but other central bankers. The governer of the Bank of France explained the policy of other banks:
"I will simply say that as far as I am aware - and this is not just the position of the Bank of France and our country but also the Bundesbank, the Bank of Italy and the United States, and these are the four main gold stocks in the world - the position is not to sell gold"
Brown also chose an 'unusual' auction method of sale. Potential buyers were invited to submit bids for the gold. The Treasury would then choose "the lowest acceptable price" and everybody who had bid at this price or above would get their gold at this price, even if they had been willing to pay more.
Now that is a bit like announcing to a few neighbours in January that in July you are going to sell 100 kilos of strawberries from your garden. You then invite the neighbours to each put in bids for some of the strawberries and inform them that however much they chose to bid per kilo, they will get the strawberries at the price of the lowest bid you accept. Of course, the first thing that happens is that they all discuss with each other how much each will bid, which pushes the price down, and then you lose more money by allowing those putting in higher bids to get their strawberries at the price of the lowest bid you accept.
It really is a thankless task to be trying to defend Brown on this. It is a catastrophic mistake.
There is more here if you need it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2008/03/gold_and_gordon_brown.html
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An excellent "Litmus Test" question, the answer to which says a lot about both you and your political attitudes, is ...
Would it be a good idea to have somebody like Sir Richard Branson in the cabinet?
So, are you a YES or a NO to that?
PS: Please read the question carefully - that is "somebody like" SRB in the cabinet, not SRB himself which (as I think people of all hues would concur) would be a grave mistake.
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Nick asks "Why now?" in terms of the ending of the truce. My question would be "Why not?"
A major reason of the short-term bipartisan approach was to avoid the kind of damage done by the partisan bickering in the USA in relation to the action to be taken in respect of the banks. That purpose was served and action was taken. In other words, the danger point in terms of the risk the specific damage feared through bipartisan bickering has passed.
Presumably everybody agrees that the truce must end at some point ? That being so, why not now and if not now, when?
In terms of Cameron seeking to distinguish as between action taken by the Government in response to the crisis and the part played by it in causing it - or its performance on the economy generally - surely he must ? Or is opposition to the Government to be abolished?
Is not it absurd to proceed on the basis that Gordon and New Labour should be allowed unchalleged to eg :
claim all the credit for the years of boom but none of the blame when it transpired to be a bubble the busting of which was inevtitable ?
claim credit nationally for the benefits of the global boom but assign blame globally for the bust ?
repeatedly tell us that boom and bust was a thing of the past, right up to just before the bust happened, having done nothing to prepare for the possibility ?
laud London for years as THE leading force in global finance but pin the blame on USA for the global financial crisis ?
praise the City for its innovative financial instruments then condemn it as irresponsible for using them?
point to the sub-prime mortgage problem in USA as if we did not have the same issue here ?
condemn banks now for giving credit and mortgages to people who could not affford to repay, having spent years pressing them to addresss social exclusion by expanding offerings to individuals lower down the earnings scale?
condemn banks for "off the books" liabilities and under funded commitments, pausing only to hugely increase government debt and build up huge unfunded future liabilities for PFIs and public sector pensions?
bemoan regulatory weaknesses having designed the regulation sytsem, including stripping Bank of England of important powers - against the advice of many ?
etc
To all of these "charges" the Government might have good answers. But surely it is the not only the right but the duty of Cameron and Clegg (or, realistically, Cable) to raise the issues ?
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guy @ 306
... "I'm remarking on the difference in the 'Welcome to Britain' that two 'foreigners experienced, and the extraordinary scale of the help extended to one in particular. Always curious how folk get access to that kind of help" ...
Okay thanks, I understand now - I'd like to have seen us be equally welcoming to the both!
I'm sure the "AM in a mansion" is a highly unusual case. Hence why it appeared in all the papers, I suppose.
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#310.
Your last sentence. Therein lies the problem. When in Opposition, Labour perfected political communication (it was more than spin, it was everything).
The Conservatives haven't got there yet.
To my mind, they haven't learnt an awful lot after being put on the rack over the Dome, when in point of fact it was the then Labour cabinet that endorsed and carried through the decision to go ahead with it, believing it would provide a legacy.
Neither have they understood the difference between "opportunism" and "opposition". In the olden days whenever the Tory Government was criticised, we were treated on the telly to seeing a trades unionist, Labour activist, Liberal activist and sometimes a concerend member of the public too. Nowadays the Government makes its case and the news reader makes the case for everyone else.
It's all very well not wanting to scare the cat, but at some point we will all want to know and hear a bit more.
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could i ask any "pro" gordon brown posters their opinions please:
* do you think gordon brown has had any part to play in the causes of the crisis?
* was gordon brown's decision to set up and run the FSA - taking powers away from the bank of england, a good idea?
* would you agree with my own view, that the government have substantial "off balance sheet" borrowing, and that this is equally as "irresponsible" behaviour, as the banks have shown?
* does it surprise you that despite having "off balance sheet" borrowing, the government have proposed not one single change in policy as regards ending this position, either for the banks, the government or both?
* are you angry at gordon brown (for want of a better word) for having laws in place (via the FSA) to step in on overstretching banks, but not using them?
- the reason i ask is because i think perhaps i am missing something?
i have tried to think of a possible reason for gordon brown to be totally innocent as regards the financial problems, but all roads point back to him.
thankyou in advance for your enlightenment.
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We ain't seen nothing yet on the financial fallout front. Credit default swaps are likely to be the next weapon of mass destruction. Unlike those in Iraq, these are very big, nasty and real. Lehman went bust with $400bn of these, the insurance being underwritten around the world. And there are trillions elsewhere, addresses unknown, to be covered. Claims are about to come in from all directions. The whole system remains toxic at present, yet the stockmarket has had a good day.
Insurance companies should be avoided as investments until this business is sorted out. I understand Swiss Re have already lost over $2bn on this type of business. Get ready to bail out the insurance underwriters on behalf of taxpayers/voters Mr Brown, they'll love you for it.
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#311 jonathan_cook:
Interesting topic, but clearly not as black and white as you paint it from the comments made on the Preston blog. Even with hindsight (always a useful commodity - pity it can't be traded) it seems that there is no definitive answer to the question of whether it was a good move or not. Was it done to re-balance the portfolio (I have seen an investment manager argue that it was sensible on those grounds)? Or was it to save British bullion banks from a collapse that would have brought down the whole system? Or was it just sensible to keep half our reserves in gold, and the other half in investments/currencies that would earn interst and/or be just as likely to appreciate as would gold?
I don't pretend to know. Neither does Peston (though he makes a guess). And I suspect neither do you.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Jon C @ 311
Okay, on the gold "catstrophe" ... please calculate approximately how much you think it has cost us - he switched to euros, so use an interest rate differential of say 4 or 5 pc, something like that (being estimate of euro interest earned plus negative gold yield saved) - and then we can take a look and come to a view, okay? - I'll check in later to review your answer.
Hey, and don't forget compounding.
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228 Carrots
300 CaptainJuJu
Thanks for the appreciative comments on my 217 post.
Some people obviously do not share this appreciation and the mods have removed it ! I wonder who it could be ????!?
This is Brown's Britain for you !
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I've had a bit of a bad turn at the bookies. I was doing OK until I put my shirt on Bail Out Boy in the 3.15 at Walthamstow.
I was told it was a dead cert and it romped home in first place. Unfortunately, my bookie, Honest John McLoan Shark, was unregulated and has bu**ered off with my winnings.
Given that Gordon is in such a generous mood with other people's money, could he see his way clear to bunging me a pony 'till payday.
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I have said before and I repeat it, we had 9/11 well now we have 9/15 to go with it, the date that Lehman's went down, another day that changed the world.
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Denzil,
I take it you have me in mind as someone who is pro-Brown (I'm not, which will come out in my answers to your questions, but I'm not anti-Brown either)
* do you think gordon brown has had any part to play in the causes of the crisis?
Yes, to some extent.
The Government should have been brave enough to ignore the siren voices on the right and from the City saying that regulation was too high and that it should be reduced further to prevent flight of companies to New York, Frankfurt or Shanghai. Such flight of the financial industry, in retrospect, would have been beneficial to the UK economy.
It should have had the balls to embark on corporate reform to cap outrageous banker salaries and ensure incentive structures acted in the interests of shareholders, rather than accepting the line that 'high pay for the few and high inequality is necessary for bankers to innovate or to locate in this country'.
It should have resisted the political attractions of allowing the housing boom to continue, and the political auction of promises to help people sustain home ownership, and challenged our cultural obsession with home ownership.
But:
The origins of the crisis are with the banks, and them failing their shareholders and their deposit holders through allowing toxic waste (in American sub-prime debt and associated securities) to seep through their balance sheets. Not a single part of the Western world - even heavily regulated continental Europe - has escaped massive economic difficulties as a result of this.
The Government were being encouraged to go even further by their political opponents, and criticised for having too much regulation.
Hopefully now we can have a more sensible discussion politically that acknowledges regulation is beneficial and the power of the City has massive downsides. Though the Conservatives will have to do a lot to convince me that they want to dramatically increase regulation, sever their historically close links to the City, and begin regulating the pay of the rich. They are just words for a crisis to me at the moment, in normal times these concerns will likely melt away.
* was gordon brown's decision to set up and run the FSA - taking powers away from the bank of england, a good idea?
Not really important either way. The problem is in the lack of resources (and power) with the regulator, rather than whether it sits in the BoE rather than as a standalone body. Not surprising that the City ran rings around the FSA, when you consider the quality of the people that you can attract in the City at ~£100K salary for junior analysts versus offering ~£25K to the regulators.
* would you agree with my own view, that the government have substantial "off balance sheet" borrowing, and that this is equally as "irresponsible" behaviour, as the banks have shown?
The Government has some off-balance sheet borrowing in PFI deals, and they have been dishonest to pretend otherwise, yes. I would agree with you.
The key difference with the banks is that it is no secret they are there. It is all publicly accountable and scrutinised by Parliament. The problem is that the Government pretends its debt is lower than it actually is in its public pronouncements (e.g. claiming debt was ~38% pre-financial turmoil, when it was ~42%).
So it is not irresponsible at all - indeed, so long as the PFI projects work properly - they are far from irresponsible. The risk and project management of the projects should lie with the private sector, rather than the Government.
* does it surprise you that despite having "off balance sheet" borrowing, the government have proposed not one single change in policy as regards ending this position, either for the banks, the government or both?
No. The Government has reasons for PFI borrowing, which as I said is transparent and publicly accountable. One is political - they want to claim debt is lower than 40% as this is one of their Golden Rules. The Second is about the risk element.
The Conservatives have a good idea in taking providing information about the state of the Government accounts from the Treasury. But in that limited sense only - an institutional arrangement that gives executive power to this independent council will be undemocratic - fiscal policy is definitely something that the public need political control over.
* are you angry at gordon brown (for want of a better word) for having laws in place (via the FSA) to step in on overstretching banks, but not using them?
Not really. I understand why they did not. The consensus towards low regulation was strong. The Government would have been voted out if it regulated heavily enough to prevent the problems that occurred - sufficiently tough regulation would have led to capital flight from the UK and the loss of the City's status as the world's financial centre. Taking action to reduce house prices slowly would have also been unpopular.
- the reason i ask is because i think perhaps i am missing something?
i have tried to think of a possible reason for gordon brown to be totally innocent as regards the financial problems, but all roads point back to him.
Maybe they do if you take the problems the UK facing in isolation to the situation in the rest of the world.
thankyou in advance for your enlightenment.
That's no problem, Denzil. Glad to enlighten you.
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denzil @ 316
... "do you think gordon brown has had any part to play in the causes of the crisis?" ...
No, not really. He was a passenger, not the pilot - just the same as he is now.
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#320,
And don't forget exchange rate movements increasing the value of our euro holdings (in terms of sterling), and decreasing the value of dollar-priced gold 1999-2008
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"This type of personality (Cameron's, you say) will also kowtow to authority figures above them and are intensely loyal, but are insanely bad choices for management roles because they're prone to bullying and pettiness, and can't handle the reality of change. People like this rarely rise above the post room in most businesses but when they do they never develop real vision and often bankrupt businesses that are experiencing market change.
Don't believe me? Phone Harvard."
I just don't understand why you keep doing it, Charles.
1 Why bother with Harvard? They've delivered many allumni who populated the big banks and helped get us here. I've worked with a number of their MBA output, some good folks, others with the morals of alley cats and who you'd never trust in an office with an accessible cheque book.
2 "Prone to bullying and pettiness..." Sounds like Brown to me. Although I can only work from published sources. Maybe you know him better.
3 "Can't handle the reality of change..." Just how well did Brown adapt, when Mandelson et al decided that Blair should get the nod ahead of him?
How did he react when it was blindingly obvious that his "10p tax-rate change" was going to damage the poorest?
Not well. And it hasn't been sorted. Just a "fix" for one year - after which it will bite even deeper.
4 "People like this rarely rise above the post room in most businesses but when they do they never develop real vision and often bankrupt businesses that are experiencing market change."
Still can't identify the vision Brown has brought to businesses. The "Brown Plan" was not created by him, although he projected ownership. It's getting a bit tattered already - like much recent legislation that is half-thought-through and needs a few major adjustments before it can work.
I was a little sympathetic to Brown after he lost out to Blair. But still believe he has damaged the UK economy by NOT insisting on the degree of control either within Government or without (e.g. banks/bulding societies) that would allow money to be managed properly.
I seem to recall Brown saying that he/the government would take a hard look at business regulations. It's a bit hard to knock Cameron, when he says that business needs less regulation, when Brown has almost tripled the number of laws, rules, regulations, edicts, etc that somebody has to pay to manage.
We didn't just arrive here overnight.
The mess in financial circles was certainly created in the USA. The UK did NOT have to be plunged into complete chaos. If Brown had forced a foot on the brakes, credit would not have been allowed to swill through the streets.
But that would have slowed tax-intake.
I always think that the sinner can repent (been there done that).
But it doesn't work if the sinner just changes his mind, never repents, never gives credit to a "team" (not a very Brown-like word) and ignores any responsibility for things past.
If you really believe that Brown has all the qualities to carry the world through this period, just why didn't he demonstrate those abilities over the last decade?
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#326
so what! it's over, get over it!
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318 Jimbrant and 320 Sagamix
Firstly - Brown bought into other currencies to spread the risk of having reserves in a single portfolio.
Presumably he did this because he didn't want the risk of our one single reserve declining.
His actions, however, meant he seriously undersold our gold. See my post at 311. Which meant that he devalued the total size of the countries asset that he was trying to protect by spreading the portfolio!!
Sagamix - You ask me to calculate how much we have lost (and tell me that you will mark my homework - thanks...!)
Well in the link I posted at 311 Peston says this:
"It is probable, however, that the effective net loss on Gordon Brown’s great gold sale would be a bit less than $9bn – but it would still be a very significant loss."
So whatever way you want to calculate compound interest, or whatever else, it is a big number. Even if Peston was 50% wrong - it is still a big number.
Remember - the Conservatives on Black Wednesday lost £3 Billion pounds. That loss ensured that the Conservatives were regarded as economically incompetent for a generation.
Brown's gold loss is just the tip of the iceberg with him. He is lucky that the media pussy foot around him and haven't gone for him (yet).
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#328
Easy Nick.
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319. At 7:36pm on 17 Oct 2008, warning123
This comment has been referred to the moderators. Explain.
This comment was removed without justification. No explanation has been given, so one can only assume that the moderators simply comply with that nuisance who is getting all my comments and those of others who scorn him, removed.
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My comment #319 was a well thought out remark and was moderated out after it appeared.
Here is an example of what the person who is spitefully having me removed has published in the garbage he spewed up today:
Weee-waaah! Weee-waaah! Weee-waaah!
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Weee-waaah! Weee-waaah! Weee-waaah!
Is this what teh BBC really wants?
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Nick,
So many people just don't understand, they just don't get it. This is the start of Great Depression II, you know we had WWI, known as the Great War, which actually was not a world war, it was a European civil war, followed by WWII, which was a world war. So, this is actually going to be World Global Recession I. Be afraid, be very afraid. History will refer to it as WGRI, then in eighty years, WGRII. 9/11, 9/15. As for me 7/4/49 the day Griffin was born, or to our American cousins 4/7/49. You think I'm crazy, no, not at all. Be afraid.
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I have taken the step of writing to the head of the BBC about the disgraceful behaviour which allows moderators to remove postings, on the say so of a possibly mentally ill person. My posting #319 was a serious and I hope, thought provoking opinion on the tragedy of the soldiers involved in the helicopter incident in Afghanistan.
Imbecilic garbage as shown in #332 and #333 is indicative of the nonsense he writes. Because I objected to his obscene posting yesterday, #421, on the previous thread, he is sabataging me nonstop. #421 was eventually removed, but the moderators were rather reluctant at first. This clown of the forum is becoming quite nasty. I wonder how long my two postings will remain?
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I'm resending my comment #319 and would appreciate knowing if fellow bloggers see anything offensive in its contents.
Cameron Should come right out and tell it like it is. No time for truces, when British military personnel are dying because of the gross incompetence of a government-run military high command. So art and peerdoms are more important than winches? Basic military equipment may not be so "sexy" as the rubbish Brown's government wastes money on. £12,000 a month rent, plus benefts for an Afghan family of single mother and seven (some adult) children could provide towards basic material, or even comforts for soldiers and their families.
Enough talk of how this government takes care of its military. It's a load of false information. They probably dont even know its untrue, since they neither understand or want to. The coroner at the inquest said it all, and no platitudes from on high will make any but the self-deluded believe thsi government can cope.
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324 balhamu
All very logical and nicely said, etc etc.
Without wishing to upset or offend you -
Your position apparently merely means that you would get in a time machine and go back and just watch it all happen again. In fact the danger is that we may all end up in the future watching it all again. The danger is that the only 'prosperity' is pumping up a housing bubble. Brown has already said he wants to pump up the volume. The next government, which may or may not include Brown, may grab at the same solution. Honest John and Pinnochio time again.
The fact that there is such a fuss and bother about now putting financial measures in place tells anybody that the measures should have been put in place earlier. It is akin to going out to surf on a tsumani that has hit to do something now.
The housing bubble, which is at the heart of the problem has been a 5 year bubble, that is all. Steps could have been taken easily 5 years ago to dampen things down. It is irrelevent if the newbies at the FSA could not understand the bull the banks pumped out. The government had the BoE controlling interest rates based on inflation but not measuring house price inflation so interest rates were low effectively subsidising borrowing. The government could have easily put standards in place at the retail point to control lending but chose not to. Demands could have been made that self certification was not appropriate, loan sharks are outlawed. Nobody could have argued much about that.
It is irrelevent if the job of managing the economy is difficult. Going to war is difficult but it was still done. How many people wanted that. Brown was not, is not a passenger, not unless he wants to be.
The normal housing turnover is a little over 2 percent pa. Small percentage changes dramatically change house price inflation either way. Anybody can see it - housing booms are due to demand pushing turnover up to 4 percent. It is not rocket science it is very simple. The Treasury know it is happening becasue their receipts go up. The Land Registry know it is happening. The root of the current problem is not whether the government is misrepresenting its borrowing, it makes little difference if it is a few percent either way, it is because the ecomony is in a bind due to the bloating in the housing market.
It is remarkable just how much management and control, irrelevent of cost, Browns government wants to put in place on individuals of the public when compared with the lack of the same on big business. Perhaps it is divide and rule, keep the public separate and small. Chilling. As were Hoons comments to the effect that he was prepared to make substantial inroads on peoples liberty to stop terrorists killing. How many people have been killed on the roads in this country, or in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the locals as well, who are human, not just statistics. Where is Mr Hoon fighting about that.
Every time one of these financial tsunamis hits it destroys people, destroys businesses, destroys sectors of the economy. It is damaging and weakens the UK.
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Gordon Brown made hasty statements during this crisis and in particular bout the Icelandic bank Kaupthing, Singer & Friedlander. As a result pressure on the bank led UK Govt to put the bank into administration. The Isle of Man branch although solvent also collapsed leaving thousands of UK citizens without access to savings. This eror will come back to haunt him and Cameron et al know that this information will come out.
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For a man who claims to believe in nothing you're clinging to a lot of clutter and negativity. This is shaping your perspective and how you perceive and interact with the world. This may be why you understand nothing and rail against everything.
There is a flow to time, the pluses and minuses that make us up, and it all flows through now and into the future. The important thing is now. Everything in the past has gone forever and the future hasn't even arrived yet.
By dropping all clinging to ideologies and sentiments the self is less dictated by these things, and external thoughts and feelings are less likely to wrench you around in a fit of misery. Thus, one is more in contact with the world, self, and reality.
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228. CarrotsneedaQUANGO2 wrote:
"217. At 2:30pm on 17 Oct 2008, U11714077 wrote
A dam good post."
Hi! Carrots,..Shame we can't read 217 now..........moderated into oblivion...can you remember what it said?
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336 warning123
Blair asked Paddy Ashdown about having a quick war(s) beforehand and Paddy said, as broadcast in a tv interview with Paddy afterwards, that he thought - I can't remember the actual words but it was along the lines of - ..can have a quick in and out, a surgical operation... And he was in the Army at one time. Did he read about the history of conflict in the area I wonder.
Thats where the whole thing went to bits. The idea that it was a quick picnic. No proper prep, what looks to be underestimation of the oppo, the equipment needed, everything. The Russian troops who went to Afghanisatn said that the problem wasnt going there, it was getting out. Oh and all of the above was broadcast on the BBC I believe so nobody can object to it being stated here can they.
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About time too, Cameron and lib Dems did what had to be done in supporting brown, did brown at any time acknowledge that support, other than in a way to enhance 'his' brilliance, brown has absolutely wallowed in our country's collapse, it is sickening and the media well!what an utter waste of @!!>@&!!@o!!! useless.
Some learn from mistakes, perhaps now the Conservatives finally acknowledged theirs, they might prove to be the party to get the Great back in Britain, they did it before, can do it again.
Meanwhile brown and labour will not accept any responsibility, although, in not accepting responsibility is he in fact accepting irresponsibility, one ponders mmm..
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336 Warning123
That post is fine.
The 'house rules' are so wide ranging that they are vastly loaded in the favour of someone who likes to refer people to the moderators.
Thus - it is a bit idiotic for anybody to beat their chest like a gorilla and boast about the number of posts that they have successfully referred and then had removed.
Clearly the bar is so low almost anything can get referred and removed.
The statistic that the gorilla chest beater(s) should focus on - is not the number of referred posts that have been removed, but the number of posts that have been referred and yet still accepted by the moderators.
For instance, anybody that had 10% of referrals rejected should seriously consider if they are 'just an annoying nuisance'. The moderation bar is so low, even 1% of referrals rejected would be high.
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305 flashman,
"Typical newlabour bickering from grandantidote."
what was that about glasses
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336 warning 123
I disagree with most of what you say but there is no reason for it to be modified.
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I'm just glad and thankful that someone is finally not just blameing the whole crisis in the UK on America!! Like people in the banking sector, government higherarky etc in America decided one day to knowingly drag the rest of the world into this calamity for fun, because we haven't screwed up the world enough as it is over the past 8 years!!
What Brown did was wonderful and camendable!! That cannot be overstated!!! Just look at the affect its had on the rest of the world!! Every country in the EU has adopted similar rescue plans, and my God! even Henry Paulson has begrudgeingly been forced to implement the same policies of his rescue plan (the most free market gurue person on the face of the earth!!) When a foreign leader (yes, regretfully in my opinion includeing the prime minister of the UK) can convince a Republican president to act on advice, that's saying something!!!
Of course Brown was complissit in creating this mess, but at least he's woken up and is takeing the necessary steps (disagreeable though they may be) to fix it now, which is much more than the Republicans can say for themselves here!!
At least be thankful for that!
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#336
I share your views sir.
I am totally against both the war in Afghanistan and our continued participation in the occupation of Iraq. I also think that our soldiers, and their officers both junior and senior were wrong to accept orders, from a higher authority.
Therefore, I consider that the leaders of both Britain and America, both current and immediately past, should be taken to the courts and charged with committing wars of aggression, for lying to our parliament and for breeches of the human rights act, for torturing individuals and for being complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people. There is blood on the hands of these people, they should not just be allowed to walk away with their pensions secured.
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Nick says "The Tories have had enough of hearing that Gordon Brown is a super hero "
I think very few people ever thought Brown was a super hero (whatever the BBC tells us).
Yes, there certainly is a global problem, and no, it's not all Gordon's fault. He didn't create the sub-prime disaster in the USA.
But Gordon has taxed, borrowed and wasted, leaving us with massive debts and problems for the future. He has left us up the creek without a paddle.
But from Gordon's point of view it doesn't matter - he knows he's going to get booted out at the next election, so he won't have to pick up the bill.
This is his scorched earth legacy!
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The Guardian highlights Labour doubling their lead over the Tories on economic competence, gives a run down of Cameron's position, and highlights the Liberal's distaste for Cameron returning to Punch and Judy politics.
Asked about Cameron's comments, Brown said: "My undivided attention is on taking this country through the difficult times as a result of a global problem that started in America. I think the whole country wants everybody who can to work together through these difficult challenges.
"We are rebuilding the banking system. We are working to ensure that people with small businesses are helped and we are trying to make sure that we restart the housing market. I am determined that we as a nation come through these difficult times and to make sure that we can."
Just in case folks miss it, the Prime Minister has written an article for the Washington Post. I like what I'm reading as it suggests a strong sense of purpose, cooperation with Britain's partners in America and Europe, and building something that will stand the test of time.
There are no Britain-only or Europe-only or America-only solutions to today's problems. We are all in this together, and we can only resolve this crisis together. Over the past week, we have shown that with political will it is possible to agree on a global multibillion-dollar package to recapitalize our banks across many continents. In the next few weeks, we need to show the same resolve and spirit of cooperation to create the rules for our new global economy. If we do this, 2008 will be remembered not just as a year of financial crisis but as the year we started to build the world anew.
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If Cameron wants to attack Gordon perhaps he can look it our cause. Depositors of Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander in the Isle of Man.
The money of British citizens has been taken by the UK Treasury to fulfil it promise that "UK citizens won't lose in the banking crisis"
However we are British citizens that bank with KSF in the Isle of Man and you have taken our money to pay depositors in the UK.
Gordon you cannot and will not get away with this
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Nick . . i would like to know why Andy Burnham is 'suggesting' censoring BLOGS, what, how and why? please report.
My theory is, labour are having a real crises with their spin machine, the BBC being just one of its media spin cycles, are sadly not having the desired effect on the British public, Why, because on the internet we can independently inform ourselves, we have an arena where we can still exercise our right to freedom of speech without, we can say what we really FEEL not what some jumped up reporter or expert tells us we feel, PLEASE READ, WE ARE NOT FOOLED. you will not brainwashor into believing brown is the right man for job, and lastly, do you really think this government could achieve such censorship based on their record with I.T. mmm! we dont have to worry, and could cost us alot money?
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336 warning123
You may find it amusing to read the BBCs own blog OpenSecrets, about FOI, in particular the Mickey Mouse story with its reference to another website. Off thread but interesting. Perhaps you should request moderation stats.
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I tend to think of life like a garden. It has big trees, long grass, brambles, the odd flower, and so on. Storms, wind, and rain come and go. Once you understand this you, pretty much, understand the world, economics, and other systems. One can build universities, supercomputers, and vast libraries to accomodate ranting and raving but it all boils down to this.
Some people keep picking away at the Iraq and Afghanistan war. That's a similar pattern of construction and destruction. In some ways it's almost like a beautiful flower growing and expanding with all the drama of life and death that involves. But, once one steps beyond this obvious level there's a trascendent quality to it that spiritual people and sober economists alike might call the hand of God.
I get no sense that Cameron properly understands this as his speech is all about control and his attitude is land-grabbing. He doesn't grasp that creativity and love, or new business and society, or thinking and feeling have a quality and flow to them. His words may change but there's still the same unaware quality of licence about him and his party. The Tories still don't "get it".
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339 C E H
.zen.. blah blah blah ...one is in touch with the world, self and reality...
Emm, are you trying to describe yourself then or zen. As usual what point are you trying to make because being very simple I find it as enlightening as a bee buzzing around in a open box, zzzzzzzzen. or was that non zzzzzzzenz, I can't tell em appart.
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336. warning123 wrote:
Nothing wrong with your post.
In fact the Government's disgusting treatment of our Forces has been overlooked for far too long.
Again the Coroner Andrew Walker has castigated the lack of proper equipment.
Hey! But Bob Ainsworth says the Government "were determined to learn lessons from the incident".. There have been hundreds or preventable deaths and the Government hasn't learnt yet
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@ 324 - balhamu
@ 325 - sagamix
thankyou for the feedback.
"I take it you have me in mind as someone who is pro-Brown (I'm not, which will come out in my answers to your questions, but I'm not anti-Brown either)"
sorry that was my failing - ive read through the posts, and wanted views of posters who were more left leaning?
my uncle jimmy (sadly no longer with us) was labour through and through and we had some right battles, but i always respected him for it, as he would always have conviction, a kind of benn + skinner times 10.
the way i see it, i cannot shape my own beliefs just on one side of the argument, its best to see where others are coming from, before forming an opinion.
when i first discovered that the banks had hidden borrowing off balance sheet, i was amazed that brown hadnt stepped in, i personally gave him the benefit of the doubt, but when i looked at the government's books and saw they also were hiding borrowing off balance sheet and the FSA hadnt stepped in, it seemed more cynical to me.
when i read also about blair's public spat with them, back in 2005, it looked to me that they were deliberately being undermined.
when brown revealed that the regulators were upto the job the other day, i immeadiately asked, why? you put them in position, so if they have failed for so long why didnt you do something about it?
i believe that brown's plan could have gone much further - he could have given money to the banks using the voters as a filter, the banks would have got their money one way or another, either via debts being paid off, via the retail industry and for those people who have no debts and wanted to save, via deposits in banks.
this would give the public a bit of breathing space and possibly keep competition between banks real, i would hope this competition would also help out the saver and maybe even rebuild some of the trust between banks thats vanished.
the main thing that erks me, is in all the media reports and live press conferences and interviews and speeches, brown has not admitted one single failure or acknowledged he has been in control for 11 years and may have had something to do with it in some part.
i dont believe anyone never does anything wrong or makes a mistake, but ive yet to hear gordon brown admit to a single thing.
i hate with a passion the constant reference to others being at fault, not just on the financial issue but all issues, when they have gone wrong.
appreciate your feedback.
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I like many other British souls washed up on foreign shores around globe right now am angered to the point of distraction by the smugness on Mr Brown’s face at the moment as he savours all the positive media coverage he is getting . He is grinning like a Cheshire cat somehow wallowing in his own “ Falklands Moment” as he single-handedly saves the finances of the free world and steers us to safety . He should not forget that he was at the helm of our economy for many years as he sailed the good ship of banking greed and financial complacency onto the rocks . Now he wants to take the credit for saving us all . I like many other British and foreign nationals I stand to potentially lose my entire life savings in the failure of an Isle of Man , branch of an Icelandic bank ( Kaupthing ) . His actions last week like his actions in failing to regulate the banking sector and the economy as a whole have directly caused our plight and now he has forgotten about throwing us a lifeline while he stands on the beach covered in the flotsam of peoples ruined lives and shattered dreams and takes praise for his heroism . Some of us are sinking in the waves . I hope after his Falklands Moment has past and he has finished throwing all the big number bailouts around and replenishing the mouths of the greedy banking seagulls who led us onto the rocks in the first place that he will remember that there are real people out here , ordinary hard-working people , men women and children whose dreams have been lost , and lives destroyed in the banking crisis and that we are drowning in despair and need a lifeline now . We are in peril floundering in a sea of financial turmoil. Throw us a rope now Gordon please before somebody succumbs to the swell and you have a real death on your conscience .
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349 Charles_E_Hardwidge
Yes - all very well - but Gordon still can't face up to his own mistakes can he?
Also a lot of what he was saying in this article he had already lectured us on 10 years ago.
The question is why has he not acted on his on advice long ago?
P.S. I prefer the more lucid style you used in this post - I hate to say it but I skip over a lot of your posts because they are so 'Welsh-windbag' and tortuous to read. I'm sure you have a lot of valid points - they just remain hidden most of the time.
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#336 on #319
Thanks to you all who wrote your findings that there was nothing in my posting which deserved it being referred and discarded. Thanks too, Grandantidote, I appreciate that while you didn't agree with a lot in my blog, you still saw no reason for it to be modified. That's what we are trying to do here, debate and discuss in a rational manner. The subject is too tragic to create new but petty wars on a forum, and I am certain all of us who saw the TV film and read about the case were moved at the loss of young lives. It was especially poignant to see those brave young men who had lost limbs walking proudly to give evidence, some walking even without the aid of sticks, a credit to modern youth.
I do wish that a system could be initiated whereby comments which 'may be thought to be controversial' could be left on the board and the other bloggers allowed to decide if they should remain or be removed. We are all adults, and unless something is so obscene or racist that it would offend and hurt, then let us decide for ourselves the content of the forum.
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353 C E H
What a load of old tosh and whatnot you write. ....Life is llike garden..... Unless you are careful it will be a brownfield site.
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It does seem, that the only way Camera On
Cameron can get any air time, is when he wants to talk negative and attack................
Tora....Tora.....Tora......
Doesn't anyone want to know what the tories polcies are.....do they have maybe just one.
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#316 denzil69 :
I am actually pro-Blair rather than pro-Brown, but I guess that is a difference wityhout a difference so far as you are concerned.
Balhamu at #324 gave a very comprehensive response to your queries, and I largely ( but not entirely) agree with him. For example, I don't think that balhamu gives sufficient weight to the political realities that would have been involved in stopping people exercising their 'right' to take out mortgages, even if the state might take the view that their leverage was too high. Just look at the response from the 'right' when the state in the form of NICE decides that a particular treatment is not justified because the cost of extending a few peoples' lives for a few months is not cost effective.
The other area on which I would disagree a bit with balhamu is on PFI accounting. It is as I understand it the independent Office of National Statistics that decides how PFI deals should be accounted for, and their view seems to be that since PFI deals are a form of capital investment they are not appropriately dealt with as borrowing. I am not an accountant ( thank god) and so I plead ignorance.
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If you look at some TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, most of the story and character is guided by the producer, and the actors are carefully selected to stand in the right place with the right camera angle. Some of them become minor stars and attempt to go onto movies but bomb in the transition because they can't make the leap from being a puppet to carrying the role.
Some of the all-time movie greats of the last generation had no formal training in acting. Most of their ability was an out flowing from their character, the life they'd lived, and a commitment to the roles they played. Iconic people like that carried movies, many of which enjoyed many awards, box office success, and being placed in the movie hall of fame.
Cameron can walk and talk in the right place but the guy is too plastic and lacks warmth like some afternoon show rip-off of Cary Grant. But, he ain't no Cary Grant. Gordon Brown has the presence of a George C Scott. The guy just has to roll up and they're pressing the Oscars before the film is in the can. Maybe it's in the genes, chance, or the hand of God but everyone knows which one is the day player and which one is the superstar.
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most of the negative points on Cameron have been made already, maybe except one.
"What have you or your cabinet contributed in this financial crisis??"
Also when will share holders and bankers ect: realise during these times dividens and/or bonuses must be curtailed until the markets are much less volatile. No longer can they have their cake and eat it, for now they are like every body else a normal human being, not a greedy one!!!.
purpleradar1
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Just back from visiting London to see the Hadrian Exhibition at the BM.
I hadn't realised that the Ceremony for the British Olympiads was taking place next to our hotel, but watched the parade (I've always felt that the English always do a great job in ceremonial).
I amazed Mrs Nat by accepting one of the Union Flags on offer!
I took it because it was a wonderful metaphor for the modern UK that Labour and Tories have created.
It was made of plastic. On one side it had the Union flag - it was backed by an advert for Visa Credit Cards.
Says it all really.
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344 Grand
You silly old stick read 238 You'll discover that I never wrote the below statement.
"Typical newlabour bickering from grandantidote."
How ever due to your repeated carping on about it has not convinced me that the statement is not the case.
In addition to the original debate, you never actually answered my question.
But never mind my lack of knowledge of you answer is now only exceeded by my lack of interest. So don't bother.
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Brown a hero for saving the day now thats funny !!!!! just remind us how much has been knocked off the stock market again ??? they dont believe him so why should we...
He just looks a bigger fool than ever running around the planet saving the banks.....
A good government wouldnt have let this happen ,for all the rights and wrongs the banks just took the opportunity to get away with murder...knowing full well that Brown would be too weak to let them die a death...
We will all suffer for this for the next 10 years, so dont give me that Brown is a Hero clap trap and stop blaming deregulation 20 years ago...
People would do well to look after themselves because anything Brown ,his Party, or his experts say only look after there own backers they are doing nothing that will help us at the sharp end....if he wants to do something useful for the tax payer get round to the energy companies and get them to reduce the prices they are charging as oil is now lower in price than it was when the hikes came twice in the last 12 months so we should see levels back at or below that time......that would help us all !!!! will it happen you bet it wont he is impotent against these companies...
As for Cameron attacking him and his parties policies so he should its not as though it isnt the truth...although the knives are not out in his own party atm when the euro election results come in next year he will be gone !!!! and most of the present cabinet too...The only one of the Nu Labour architects to be left will be Mr Mandelson and we all know his financial reputation from past misdemeanours....
We are stuffed so superman can take the smile of his face and sort out new employment for himself because the clock is ticking....
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MR Robinson
Mr Cameron wont have to prove that GB was the man who failed our once great nation. The people will soon wakeup to the fact when they are losing there homes and jobs. And so will you and all of those so called people who call themselves members of parliment that the country is heading for something of the likes no one as seen before. looks like civil unrest may already starting in china with the lost off 7000 jobs in a toy factory. its time for them to wakeup and smell the bacon. and before its to late. but i guess like always they will after the event.
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336 Warn
341 Glan
343 John
336 - You are correct; the campaigns on both fronts are a sham. Especially Iraq, which was based on dodgy logistics in the extreme.
Consider during the time between 1990 and 2003 the country have been universally sanctioned. It had no air force (the left for Iran at the start of the campaign).
To that end they had no threatening Tactical (battle winner) or Strategic (war winner) capability.
Everyone knew this in fact it becomes more farcical when you place the Canadian Super gun story into context THAT was Iraqis inter-continental deployment system which went as far as Tel Aviv.
Believe me when I say the Israelis could have looked after themselves if it had been built and used.
However that is not the point is it? 9/11 kicked of a major storm and America wanted to take a back handed slap at them.
Blair all too quickly jumped on the bandwagon as is his way, and forced it through Parliament, we all know how.
In the time we were out in Iraq looking for CBRN weapons and WMD's finding not a great deal, few 1980's Chem carrier projectiles, certainly not enough to fight a war on, in fact you'll find more chemical munitions in the Farm lands of France and Belgium than anything you will find in Iraq.
Care of our Forces is a real bug bear of mine.
Where are the ministers meeting the honoured dead of Hercules planes?
What minister was it that inferred that people who join the army probably couldn't get a job as a traffic warden?
Why the previous (Part Time) Secretary of State for Defence of Course. Which of course makes sense you don't want a full time defence minister when you are fighting on two fronts in two different countries. How ever really important roles like the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport needs one person on the job at all times. Madness.
Some Territorials who was mobilised for a year lost money and while waiting for deployment to Iraq, had to stay in condemned quarters for 4 months with 7 other men. The ablutions were a disgrace. Better facilities for prisoners.
I have said before the equipment is good but in ridiculously short supply. In Afghanistan our soldiers had to borrow 50mm calibre round of the Canadians as our guys had run out.
341
The whole Iraqi war strategy was a farce. The directive was to destroy any hold the Bathists had on the country.
However what appeared to be over looked. If at that time you wanted to be a Doctor, Teacher, Soldier, and Policeman, Engineer or anything else worthwhile in Iraq you had to be a Bathist.
So the Bathists were removed. Infrastructure collapsed, borders broke down, and insurgents arose.
I am not aware that any of our soldiers were killed by Iraqi forces but I am certain that at least two were killed by Insurgents in Basra.
The problem after the breakdown everything goes crazy. I have seen weapons bunkers broken open, for people to take the crates and wriggly tin off the roofs. Leaving Ordnance scattered everywhere.
Hoon congratulated soldiers for getting fridges into villages for the first time which were paid for by the tax payer. The run was of course there was no electricity so the local kept their chickens in them.
No exit strategy for a war is naive and disastrous, and the loss of British and Iraqi lives is a testament to that.
Blair wanted his War. In fact I'm sure I have read a diarist on Blair stating that he was getting uncomfortably excited about deploying soldiers, ships and planes - wish I could remember who it was, someone on the blog may know.
343
Sadly, right or wrong a soldiers lot is to do what he's told. That's what the chain of command is all about and that is what makes our army (militia at the moment) a good one.
Like Kipling said Oh, it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' 'Tommy, go away':
Never been truer than it is now especially in Hotels in Wales...
Goodnight
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# 363 Charles_E-Hardwidge
You say"Gordon Brown has the presence of a George C Scott".
I was a great admirer of George C Scott, but I'm afraid I don't see Gordon as Patton!
The Changeling... maybe!
George C Scott also portrayed a good Scrooge. Perhaps Gordon is bit like the reformed Scrooge (after being visited by the three spirits). He's certainly chucking money around now!
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# 248 T A Griffin (TAG)
"Get Britain into the Euro"
I seem to remember reading in the paper (so it must be true!) that a poll showed that the majority of French and German citizens did not want to join the Euro - but were given no choice by their governments.
Gordon, for all his mistakes, appeared to be resistant to the Euro, whilst Tone seemed to be in favour. One suspects that Gordon's resistance was based on his liking of micro-management. If we had gone into the Euro, he would have lost control. For once I agree with him.
Personally, I'd like to see a change of currency.
I would like to go back to Pounds Shillings and Pence.
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If you examine any entity, or power and relationship block, you can run into trouble if you take them head on. Being right doesn't necessarily make it easier. Been there, done that. The left-right and managment-worker, and rich poor polarisation in Britain doesn't make it any easier. That's why Brown took a more gentle, indirect, and long-term approach to things.
It crossed my mind to write a profile for Gordon Brown and how that's related to events but that's too much hassle and I'd rather not bother. But, there's an article looking at Obama and McCain that's worth reading as it highlights a number of philosophical qualities that map roughly but well enough to Brown and Cameron.
You may not notice it in the posts I've made in this topic, and some of my thinking remains off screen, but Tristram Hunt takes a closer look at David Cameron's character and finds it a little vacant in contrast to Tony Blair's and, by implication, Gordon Brown's as well.
Maybe it's just me but I didn't get the impression that Cameron's speech was entirely his own work. He ticks a lot of boxes I've mentioned over the past few weeks but there's a lack of depth behind it, and the cheap swipe is unnecessary for a whole bunch of reasons. Plus, his presentation was badly timed as the markets just weren't settled enough yet.
The shallowness and haste of Cameron is partly down to his inexperience, the Tories ethos, and his own character flaws. I've commented that he can tend to be a bully and has been looking a little cocky lately and, I think, this can be seen in his misjudgement. I fear, all those character flaw jibes Cameron poured on Brown are going come back to haunt him.
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Nick,
#369 can be quoted as saying that 'Sadly, right or wrong a soldier's lot is to do what he's told to do', now I would disagree with that, and the reason why?
I go back to Germany at the cessation of WWII, when some people claimed that the reason why they broke the rules of war was that they were following orders, not all of which were written down so could not be referred to, as a formal defence.
Now, I am sure that Tony Blair never wrote down how prisoners should be treated, neither did Geoff Hoon. However, some of these prisoners did end up being extra-ordinarily renditioned, and then either maltreated, or even worse tortured and killed. There is sufficient evidence to support this allegation, of maltreatment, torture and killing.
What also has to be understood is that even at the cessation of WWI, when on signing the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had to admit to responsibility for the war, even though most fair minded people would not place all the blame on the Kaiser. However, the Kaiser had taken refuge in Holland, and lived there until his death. Holland, would not extradite the Kaiser to face any trial, because he may have faced execution.
My point, that British soldiers under international law, should not have accepted orders when they knew what would result from their actions. I think that you will find that an inquiry held by senior MPs have taken legal advice and confirmed my comment, and earlier ones.
So, I would totally disagree with anybody who asserts that 'a soldiers lot is to do what he's told', in fact I would disagree most strongly! Bush and Blair must be brought to book, they have blood on their hands, and I would also say that the senior officers in the army should also be brought to book, if a soldier is meant to do as he's told then who does the telling.
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Nick,
a points based immigration system is going to be used to limit immigration from outside the EU. This from a socialist government is an absolute disgrace.
The labour party is sinking to new lows, and this must not be allowed, it is racism pure and simple. Get them out of office now.
There must be an election and it must come soon, probably in the spring if you ask me.
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Nick,
I must say that some people can be just so stupid. The gas companies announce that if you pay a premium then gas prices can be fixed for two years into the future, just before they announce huge price increases, so people sign up.
In the meantime it would appear that Gordon Brown is now saying that he wants energy prices to fall, in line with the decline in the price of oil. So, what happens to all those who signed up to guarantee their prices, will they have to pay the higher price until their contracts expire, just asking.
Also, Gordon Brown has announced an increase in the winter fuel payment, for this year. If prices do fall then will the winter fuel payment be reduced, next year, or possibly even this year, because of the economic crisis.
The same with pensions, and benefits, linked to the Retail Prices Index. When we do get deflation, as I expect we will, then what is then going to happen, will benefit payments be reduced because of this decline in prices. I exclude the state pension because this government is going to return it to link with wages
Just when wages in the real economy will start reducing, inflation 5%, wages increase about 2%, there is a problem brewing which nobody seems to want to talk about, I wonder why not Nick, any answers would be sincerely appreciated.
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Some people do wake up eventually. As soon as my gas supplier announced an increase in the price of my supplies I read my meter and sent the new reading to the company.
I was given a new bill and settled it. Now then, if I had not read my meter at the time and they had estimated my bill and I had used less units, according to them, then I would use more units at the higher price.
So, I hope that others actually read their meters when the price rises were announced because otherwise they may well end-up paying for expensive gas when they used the gas at a lower price.
This is now being reported in the various media but yet again I think that the British public may well have been conned. What are you going to do about it Gordon, come on, actually do something.
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I've taken steps to emmigrate and intend to follow that through when I can, and there's a whole bunch of hurdles in the way that I understand and tend to agree are necessary.
Border controls and quotas are necessary for quality control and flow of human capital reasons just as much as for money. Some of those are hard factors, like housing and services, and some of those are soft factors, like jobs and culture.
As for the rest, you're obsessing. You're letting your narrow perspective take you over. This isn't healthy. If you take a step back to look at the bigger picture and from different angles things look a bit different. That's the difference between a General and a squaddie.
Now, I think, Cameron's an ass and the Tories need to get their fangs out of the national bloodbank, but the end goal isn't necessarily their destruction but change into something better. Both yourself and a whole bunch of haters tend to miss this because they're too caught up in themselves.
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#351 tisfedup
Re: Andy Burnham. I have lived in a country where censorship was severe. In the early 1970s in Sao Paulo Brazil there was a large fire in a 30 floor office building. That afternoon from my home large columns of smoke were visible. Local media TV and radio were silent. At 7pm we tuned into the BBC World Service on the radio and received news that hundreds were feared dead. The local news stations were only permitted to broadcast this news at 10pm.
The real point is: how do you control the controllers? It is a judgement call and with all due respect Mr Burnham's judgement is questionable as per the following article from the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/10/andyburnham
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#372
'The shallowness and haste of Cameron is partly down to his inexperience, the Tories ethos, and his own character flaws'.
Now, since when was David Cameron caught picking his nose and eating it, or wiping the bogey on his tie. Would I like to shake the hand of either man, no!
As the nose picking was caught whilst Tony Blair was addressing the house, can we expect Tony for a quote as to what he thinks of people who pick their nose and eat it whilst he is speaking. Is it not unparliamentary to do this.
Some of us have not forgotten the pasting that David Cameron got when he was referring to hoodies and one stood behind him making unflattering hand gestures.
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#377
I must say that I am not obsessing nor am I a hater. You really must stop using emotive terms which actually detract from any well structured argument, it does you no credit at all.
I think that there so many people who could make well structured, knowledgeable contributions but who seem to be concerned that they may well have their confidence and certainty undermined by comments which do freedom of speech a dis-service.
What may well be interesting is if there was a sort of hstory of who has actually read what, then we may get an indication as to the popularity, or not of any comments. How about a sort of voting, or rating system, where people can agree or disagree without having to actually make their own valued comments.
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I think, his hug a hoodie comments were a little misjudged and he lined himself up to be shot down but I put that down to naivete and bad luck. It happens. There's a dash of that about his speech but it's not something I'm obsessing about.
Brown can focus a bit too tightly to the point where his peripheral vision fades out but he seems to be getting a clue about confidence and presentation. Your own obsessing is causing you to fall behind the curve and that's only damaging yourself.
Of course, obsessing about people obsessing is just the same poetry with different words, thus, proving the fifth force of the universe is irony. And, I think, people taking themselves too seriously helped kick this war off in the first place.
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I just think folks need to let go. There's been some obsessing and inexperience with online posting around here. But, as folks calm down and learn what works they'll develop a clue.
I could post a whole chunk of stuff on what you've said but I feel like taking a break from that, and some folks around here might want some space to play in. There's some Tao and the art of doing something by doing nothing in there.
"Stuff happens".
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chuck,
please go eat a haiku, or learn to be less verbose.
as you say less IS more!
and ask Super dooper Gordo to stop meddling, as you and him are so similar, that you would surely have a direct line to him?
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#381
I am afraid that sometimes I can be just that little bit on the slow side. Therefore, I was wondering if you would like to expand on your view that 'people taking themselves too seriously helped kick this war off in the first place'.
The war, to a certain extent, has proven to be not the problem, it is the subsequent occupation of Iraq where the problem arises.
Therefore, do you seriously think that my continued commenting about the actions of the politicians and the soldiers has in some way been obsessive. You ask the family of any of the military, both close and extended, what they think about the death, or injury of or to their loved one. I don't think that I am obsessive at all, I now begin to understand how Churchill must have felt in his wilderness years!
Mind you there are some people who are now beginning to write about the lies told by Tony Blair, in more than one situation, and even if they now take the credit I seriously don't care, as long as there is truth and justice, then I feel part of a free country. Maybe not as free as I would love it to be, but Rome was not built in a day.
Mind you, I have to say that the courts can still issue injunctions preventing free speech on the spurious grounds of breaking a contract, so there is a long way to go yet.
I wonder if Tony Blair, or Gordon Brown who paid for the wars, would like to take me to court for impugning their character. Mind you if they did I would have to demand access to all the papers, transcripts of all conversations, to show that my comments were valid. Mind you they can always try to bring more editorial control to the internet, couldn't they Nick. Now surely, nobody would even think of doing that, would they?
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Charles E Hardwidge has not forgotten Camerons words on understanding hoodies, but has he forgotten the words of The Great One Gordon (trust me) Brown on the referendum? One thig that Cameron can do is learn and hear what people say. Brown will just do and say what he like no matter what. Pensions and gold come to mind.
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#375
Almost forgot the time when the Prime Minister was still the Chancellor and, if I am correct, he increased the state pension by the princely sum of 50p. People seem to have such short memories.
Any comment because we really mustn