Plus c'est la même chose?
Are the Tories about to pledge to abolish tax on savings?
The signs are all there.
This morning on the Today programme the Tory leader promised to set out how his party would help savers and how they'd pay for that help in a speech he's making this lunchtime.
A week ago the shadow chancellor told the Sunday Times that he wanted to help people "who did the right thing in the age of irresponsibility". The paper reported that he was working on a £2.4 billion plan to abolish the basic rate of tax on savings and spending even more to increase the tax-free allowance for pensioners.
The Conservatives are likely to claim that their proposals will encourage "individual independence" and "social responsibility". Those are the words used by William Hague when he proposed a similar package in February 2001.
If Labour want to save themselves time they could dust off their press release from that day when a certain Alistair Darling declared "This is the same old Conservative Party. Its sums don't add up".
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, you may say.
There is, though, one massive difference between the politics of 2009 and 2001. It's the recession.
The Conservatives can argue now as they couldn't then that savers are suffering thanks to plummeting interest rates. Indeed, they can quote the prime minister himself who told Andrew Marr yesterday that ministers were looking at ways to do "more to help savers" in the run-up to the Budget.
What's more, they can point to the need to build an economy based on saving and not debt.
Labour, of course, will demand to know where the money's coming from. Before Christmas David Cameron signalled that the answer was lower public spending. If he doesn't spell out today what he'd spend less on, ministers are likely to come up with answers of their own.
I'm 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~51~RS~)
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And let this further sugestion by the Conservative party be an end to all you Journo's regurgitating the labour line that they are a "do nothing party"
Clearly they have had more viable ideas in the last six months than Labour managed in 11 years.
Further more when Brown finally allows us the election we deserve no doubt the Conservative party will have there opportunity to do something.
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I own my own house and and am a substantial saver. I await developments with interest. There are 7 times as many savers as borrowers. It's high time our interests were taken into account!
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The tories sums don't add up?
That's a bit rich coming from a party that has plunged us nto the worst buget deficit on record and the highest national debt ever.
It took hundreds of years to get the national debt to 500bn pounds and newlabour propose to double it to one trillion pounds in two years.
And you want to say the tories have unfunded plans?
You are having a laugh... just like the newlabour party who are laughing at the electorate as they spend all our money.
Where is all the newlabour spending money coming from? Our pockets....
Newlabour are nothing more than a bunch of cheap pickpockets masquerading as egalitarian do-gooders.
Work hard in this country and your reward is to lose it all in tax; sit on your backside and you are rewarded with a myriad of benefits. This is the greatest newlabour injustice of all.
Call an election.
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Christ, you couldn't make it up.
People are concerned about their homes and their jobs.
Young naive Cameron wants to blow the retreat bugle and take everybody back to the thatchers years of the 1980's.
Promising a saving cuts in tax by reducing public spending will only create mass unemployment, absolute poverty for those on minimum earnings.
Less money for schools, hospitals, transport and employment, jeez, no how, no way, should this nation again accept the tory nonsense of elitism.
The tories never learn, as they revert back to Camerons 2005 manifesto of 20Bn cuts in public services.
Is young Cameron locked in a box, does he not realise that the whole world is implementing stimulus plans to ride this world down-turn.
Elections' yes! thats have it on! lets put the tories behind the black ball and bin them for the good of humanity for once and for always.
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@2
There may be 7 times as many savers as borrowers.
But there is substantially more borrowed than saved.
The wider economy is served better by taking into account the borrowers needs because without them the savers would get no return.
The Conservative approach to remove tax on savings is a good one that rewards savers without penalising borrowers
Interest rate changes dont have that flexibility.
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Nick,
According to your report on Radio 4 this morning the meaningless VAT cut has cost over 12 billion so reversing this measure alone should more than cover the cost and be more popular as well.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Nick, you miss the point. Had the package proposed by the Tories in 2001 been adopted rather than sneeringly dismissed by an arrogant government, people might have saved more and borrowed less. We would then be in less of a mess.
Now we need a package to encourage saving even more than we did in 2001.
And doesn't it look silly for Alastair Darling to have dismissed a useful and effective plan when he is now wasting over £10 billion on a pointless cut in VAT? Now Mr Darling's sums do add up, but the total is minus one trillion pounds!
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#4
Okay Dereckbarber; let's just keep on spending money we don't have -the newlabour answer to everything in life.
Acddicted to debt; addicited to public spending; addicted to a client state; addicted to worn out and failed socialist policies that have left us with a million extra diversity officers and a public sector pensions bill we can't afford.
You go on spending, the rest of us will vote tory or libdem to end this tyranny of debtors' prison hell.
'Young Cameron' or 'Young Clegg' would be infinitely preferable to Busted Flush Gordon Brown and his spendaholic cronies.
Call an election.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
New Labour have forgotten what fiscal control means. It's a case of tax the middle class, give to the undeserving. I never thought I would live in a Britain were the middle classes cannot afford to have children, whereas people on bennefits can!
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#2
Ditto... No mortgage now and reasonable savings which I will need to make up for the losses in the value of my personal pension pots if and when I eventually retire. So self evidently every little helps...
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Nick,
surely there needs to be atotal review of the tax system. The only solution is to merge income tax with national insurance, abolish the distincti between the two.
Also agree on a figure, say GBP15,000 below which there is no tax to be paid, the rate above that will be a straight 25% and for income over GBP100,000 a straight 50%. However, no tax allowances, none whatsoever.
As for Capital Gains tax that must be totally abolished, everything is income. You buy something for GBP50,000, you sell it for GBP100,000 then you pay the new merged income tax/national insurance rate. It is income.
I have a lot of other ideas, most of which have been on your comments board, but all the politicians seem to eventually get the drift. The major saving would be to get rid of the politicians, they are the ones who cause the problem when they try to get elected, it is called pork barrel politics. Stop trying to buy my vote.
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Hope they do it Nick. Sounds sensible to me.
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Oh nearly forget, I'd love to see a tax on lying. Gordon and his marry band of woodentops'll keep the whole economy afloat with that policy alone.
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derekbarker
"Promising a saving cuts in tax by reducing public spending will only create mass unemployment, absolute poverty for those on minimum earnings."
He's talking about a £2.4bn scheme in £600bn of public expenditure. It's less than 0.5%.
If you want to look at the record of this government, unemployment is now higher than it was in 1997 (a Labour trademark, unemployment after Labour is always greater than unemployment before Labour) and thanks to the 10p tax debacle, over 1 million of the lowest earners are still out of pocket.
So do tell me, which party really creates mass unemployment and absolute poverty?
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#9
Crass Robin, you know it!
Stop being so self righteous, GB is doing what every other G8 nation and many more are doing, helping people in their time of need.
Cameron has spent six months to come up with a very old conservative policy of cuts in tax, "GET REAL"
Young Clegg? the man who has no idea of the pension rate and what to do with 20Bn cuts in public srevices?
Your just to weak to fight your case in the private sector, squeaky!
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17 Derekbarker:
So Gordon is helping us is he? You must be nuts to believe this.
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#16
Why do you lie? tell the truth!
The old conservatives and the thatcher ideals are rife, come on be truthful.
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If you want to get a message to Gordon sign this Number 10 petition
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to resign due to gross financial incompetence in running the British economy.
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Fianance/
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Happy New Year,
Unfortunately, it seems nothing much has changed with this blog...
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!!!
Please can we have someone impartial to what is the never ending biased so flagrantly shown by the BBC time and time again.
I thought that the new year may bring some decent, political nose bleeding - first day back, same old stuff.
tell me, any news on Mandy and a certain yacht yet?
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Cameron may be " young " he may be a novice, but anything is better than the failed policies of this abyssmal Labour party's attempt at government. Like every Labour government since the first world war, it's unsustainable pandering to the idle and workshy and it's entrenched ideological beliefs have led to hardship for the working taxpayer and near bankruptcy for the country. Brown , who claims financial expertise, is lacking in any grasp of reality , intellect or honesty, and is hell bent on attempting to hang on to power whatever the cost to the people of this country. If he had a modicum of integrity he would admit his incompetence and call a general election now.
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4. At 11:37am on 05 Jan 2009, derekbarker wrote:
Christ, you couldn't make it up.
People are concerned about their homes and their jobs.
===
Yes they are, who caused the problem?
Labour!
By the way Derek, Margaret Thatcher hasn't been PM for 18 years, wipe the sleep from your eyes.
One of the biggest problems at the moment is the banks don't have the funds to prop up their balance sheets or to lend.
Anything that helps people to save more, and to keep more of their savings income rather than rely on (taxpayer funded) complicated state handouts has got to be a good thing.
As for cuts in public services, same old NuLabour mantra trotted out. Tell the same lies often enough and some people will begin to believe it.
Are you seriously saying that there is no scope whatsoever to cut costs in the bloated public sector without affecting front line and necessary jobs?
And finally, this sounds an eminently more sensible use of funds than the billions squandered by Badger Darling on his ineffectual VAT cut.
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'Labour, of course, will demand to know where the money's coming from.'
Are you taking the psis now?
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Nick
Is it true that the Tories don't have access to the figures available to the government from Whitehall?
If so why should they have to give costings before they actually know the state of the public finances?
I also think that rather than second guessing what the Government will say in response you should be asking serious questions of the people with the knowledge and then provide accurate balance.
I do wonder how long it will take Crash and Doddy to pick this up as policy they have been thinking about for some time.
Please ask what interest rates we can expect to encourage people to save.
My apologies for earlier quoting Spike Milligan.
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Nice to see yet more sensible policies from the Tories - unfortunately this only reduces the chances of us having an election any time soon!
And Derek, you're clutching at straws as usual. Everyone with an ounce of common sense can see that public spending can be cut quite easily without any noticable impact on services whatsoever.
Any government lacky who pops up to trawl out the standard "Tory sums don't add up" line ought to take a look at their own figures first.
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How are the Conservatives expected the price any proposals accurately when finances are so far out of control under Labour?
Gordon doesn't bat an eye when he doubles debt over night, or vastly gets his financial forecasts wrong time after time.
The general sentiment of the Conservatives, however, is correct. We have to get our nations finances under control. Spend, Spend Spend is not an option.
Let the Government and their supporters bang on about the Conservatives 'cutting nurses and teachers'. That won't be the case - but Labour are a one trick pony and refuse to engage with common sense.
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#16 derekbarking
derek, clam down, you seem rattled. go and have a lie down in a darkened room and when you wake up it will be 2009, not 1979 as you seem to think.
Are you having a "Life On Mars" moment?
"Your just to weak to fight your case in the private sector, squeaky!"
"Why do you lie? tell the truth!"
Insults, insults, the typical ZaNuLabour response. Smear your opponents.
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Is this yet another Tax loophole which will allow overpaid executives to get tax relief on the money they save while those of us on lower pay who do not have the luxury of excess income will be contributing to the Fat Cat's unearned income? Surely we should be closing tax loopholes for the highly paid if, as Cameron insists, he wants a fairer Tax system.
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It's very simple. The private sector creates wealth. The public sector consumes wealth.
Let's not forget that savers are saving the money that has already been taxed. The more people who put money aside for their own future, the less long-term expense for the State in the form of means-tested benefits. Therefore, it makes sense to encourage people to save. But when we see inflation running at anything from 4-10% (depending on an individual's spending habits), and savings rates well below this, it is truly obscene that the government then wishes to tax people on the interest they receive.
The only problem is that it doesn't go far enough. Why is there this obsession with basic rate taxpayers? Why not simply cut tax on savings interest across the board?
For all Labour's claims that the Tories are a do-nothing party, it's better to do nothing and plan the correct move than to simply jump on every passing idea in the vain hope it will help. The amount of damage Labour is causing by their "do anything" approach, they'd be better off doing nothing for a while.
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#28
Ooops, should have said "calm down", not "clam down"!
Actually, clam may be better after all.
Oh, and derek, at least I correct my spelling mistakes, unlike some ;-)
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Hahahahaha! The Tories' sums don't add up? So where did Comrade Brown mysteriously find all these billions to bail out everyone and their dog?
If we cut the useless public sector expansion (how many "5-a-day outreach coordinators" and "diversity consultants" do we actually need?) we could cut taxes across the board, give people more of their own money back, and produce more of a feel-good factor.
When people see rising bills, rising taxes to pay for an unproductive public sector, and job insecurity, they lack confidence in the future.
When people see taxes lowering, more money in their pocket, and their employers feeling more confident keeping them on due to lower corporation taxes, they feel more confident in the future.
People with confidence in the future are more likely to spend now.
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With interest rates at zero, the tax take on interest income is also zero, therefore this is not only a nice costless soundbite, but also a suggestion that interest rates are likely to stay there for the foreseeable future.
Unless, on the other hand, they want to start taxing the capital instead of the income on it...as an alternative to printing money so it deflates away instead.
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29. At 12:21pm on 05 Jan 2009, billatbasing wrote:
Is this yet another Tax loophole which will allow overpaid executives to get tax relief on the money they save while those of us on lower pay who do not have the luxury of excess income will be contributing to the Fat Cat's unearned income?
===
If you read the above properly you would see it is a proposal to abolish the BASIC rate of tax, not higher rate tax.
And increasing the tax-free allowance for pensioners, are you calling them Fat Cats?
"The paper reported that he was working on a £2.4 billion plan to abolish the basic rate of tax on savings and spending even more to increase the tax-free allowance for pensioners."
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33. At 12:27pm on 05 Jan 2009, rahere wrote:
With interest rates at zero,
I presume you are contributing from the USA then?
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20 Portcullisgate
Thanks for posting the link to that petition.
I have signed up immediately - in case anyone didn't read it - this is the cause:
"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to resign due to gross financial incompetence in running the British economy."
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Fianance/
It is a shame it only runs until 15th Jan - it won't have long enough to collect the huge number of signatories that it deserves.
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Surely with rock bottom interest rates, and marginal returns if any on the Stock Exchange, the amount of tax accrued by the Treasury will be negligible anyway. When interest rates were higher about 5 years ago, then we would be talking about the GBP 2.4 bn, but the fact is currently we are already getting just a few millions to the Treasury before you consider any tax cuts to savings.
Another point is that interest rates determine the price of annuities, and just now is a pretty awful time to retire - never mind the poor performance of the Stock markets as well which have hit pension pots. In the market place pensioners contribute a great deal to buying consumables in their increased leisure time.
The difference between Cameron and Brown is that the former applies joined up thinking; the latter is only able to handle one issue at a time. Unfortunately for Brown the UK economy and tax system are both fairly complex and strategic analysis is vital to understand the intended and unintended consequences of any actions. Just think of the VAT reduction of 2.5 pct when most shops from Boxing day have been discounting at 50 pct or more.
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Cameron wants to impose a 2.5% cuts in every council and you guys say it wont effect school, hospitals, jobs and so on,
Wow! Knock...Knock.
So from silicon thatcher to fibre optic Cameron, about 5 years to late "DAVE"
A complete blow out from young Dave there
A young man in an old conservative suit.
I now expect a new conservative leader by may, young Dave cant cut the mustard.
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#4 derekbarker
There IS going to be less money for schools, hospitals, transport and jobs anyway - unless you, as an individual, continue to borrow and spend at the rate we have over the past 10yrs
Don't you get it, the Labour plan didn't work!
They shifted state spending onto individuals, so instead of the state running up one almighty National Debt and pushing it into the economy, they let the people take on the debt to create the Boom Time..... and it broke!.... now the state has to borrow anyway... and the people will be left to pay their personal debts and the new National Debt!!
There IS no alternative - the Thatcher years of the 80's were a solution to the HUGE problems of the 70's - they weren't brought in as a punishment for a Country that was doing well!!!!! We hear a lot about the closure of the Pits – anyone been short of coal in the last 20yrs?
The solution needed for the 2010's will be equally as unpalatable, Labour are trying to create the impression that the past 10 years were the norm.... and far too many people have fallen for it!
There IS no alternative - the Thatcher years of the 80's were a solution to the HUGE problems of the 70's - they weren't brought in as a punishment for a Country that was doing well!!!!! We hear a lot about the closure of the Pits – anyone been short of coal in the last 20yrs?
The solution needed for the 2010's will be equally as unpalatable, Labour are trying to create the impression that the past 10 years were the norm.... and far too many people have fallen for it!
#5 I'm really not sure why we are reducing mortgage payments across the board.
I didn’t think it was the cost of borrowing that was a problem; I thought it was the quantity available. People have been borrowing like idiots for the past 10 years at the old interest rates, but they are now seen as too high
Many in this country (including civil servants approx 500,000) will be unaffected by the recession and yet (for no reason I can see) they seem to have been made better off by the Government!..... and at a HUGE cost. Should we be targeting the help a little more?
As you indicate far more money than saved in the UK is borrowed - If you are to attract more money into the market wouldn’t a better return, by way of interest, be the solution
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@38 Barker
Knock knock yourself
Thats the bailiffs coming to reposess your stuff cos you didnt balance your budget.
If you ask me what the country really needs is a housewife and grocers daughter in charge so that we can run a balanced budget and pay off some of the Labour debt mountain
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I see the same old Draperdrones are swarming the blog as usual in a desperate attempt to create the illusion of support for their rotten party. Give it up Dolly and chums, no-one's fooled by your Hoonery.
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#39
Dont you listen? Cameron wants to make an immediate cut in 2009 public spending of some 5Bn
He wants to go on and reduce the 2009 spending by another 25Bn in cuts.
Camerons words!
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derekbarker, dont suppose you're selling any of those rose tinted specs that make labour stupidity look like competence?
I wish I could have the same viewpoint as you, it would be wonderful to not get stressed by the appaling state of our country, but unfortunately I am not visiting a mental asylum any time soon.
If the conservative proposals affect services so be it, that is the price we will have to pay for your lord and masters incompetence in running our economy.
If you think Dave cant cut the mustard I would be fascinated on your opinion of Crash Gordon's capabilities....
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Cutting tax on savings is a welcome idea, but it won't benefit the low paid or save jobs.
Making earnings under 10k tax free for those earning under 20k in total, and all hours of work over 40 tax free as well would do a great deal to help the poorer workers.
In addition, a two year minimum wage 'holiday' would help businesses retain staff rather than make them redundant.
As for cuts in the public sector, that has to happen anyway - the current levels of government debt are unsustainable and will require either massive tax rises and/or reduction in services.
Labour are in no place to accuse anyone of doing their sums wrong, especially given the PBR GDP figure were a blatant lie and the pretty disgusting rewriting of his personal history that Brown has embarked on.
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#4. At 11:37am on 05 Jan 2009, derekbarker wrote:
"Christ, you couldn't make it up.
People are concerned about their homes and their jobs.
Young naive Cameron wants to blow the retreat bugle and take everybody back to the thatchers years of the 1980's."
Come on, derek. (That's not patronising, just an incentive to look at things differently...)
Young, naive Blair led New Labour to power. And wasted a huge opportunity because he had no idea how business worked. Sadly, Brown didn't either.
I was quite happy to see a change of government with a hope - expectation - that "things could only get better".
All I've seen is waste. Waste of prefessional competence in helathcare, education, etc.
I've always been very happy to pay tax to help the genuinely disadvantaged. But I don't like paying tax to support stupid people who have babies right and left, with people they probably don't evn recognise, and no sense of personal responsibility but a "right" to be supported by people who aren't that daft.
Pay taxes to bring up children who have extremely limited insight into history? Why? If you don't analyse and try to understand the past, you have no prospect of delivering a better future. I've had two families. Earlier children had a sense of history. Latest ones were taught almost nothing about the UK or European history. WWI and WWII were a focus. But with a very limited background understanding.
For goodness sake, Brown's supposed to be an historian. (OK, his PhD thesis was about a Scottish Independent Labour Party leader, but that should have provided a basis for more general insight...)
Guess that means I'm way out of line.
Society makes "leaps". More often or not that's down to technological change. Many of them came from the UK. Years ago.
I wasn't too happy about some of the Thatcher objectives. But, had Arthur Scargill taken a little more understanding line, maybe we'd have had a more sensible coal mining environment. Which I happen to think we need. B**ger the global warming arguement - things change (if they didn't, Scotland and even London would be covered by an ice sheet), but we need a source of energy production. We in the UK deliver a miniscule contribution to "global warming", but your children and mine will shiver pretty soon if we can't generate energy.
What's Brown's approach to stopping the destruction by burning of native forests? That creates much more CO2 than we deliver?
Just how many new power plants has Brown invested in, over a decade? He seems to rely on French expertise to invest in UK-based nuclear power. (Starting from 2008.) Big deal.
No more UK-based nuclear power capability.
Was that what you voted for?
I was happy to believe that education would be a priority. Where is it?
Why is a "media" degree more valued than a degree in a hard subject like physics, chemistry or biology?
Economics is a so-so, as it straddles art and science. Economists rely on "facts" that are "modelled". Just who creates the models makes a huge difference. (And those who provide "facts" share responsibilty.) Just take a look at "Global Warming" sites and recognise that some models are complete bunkum. Rediculous. Doesn't mean that climate change won't happen. It always has. But I'm not that happy to see any economy stuff itself up to support doubtful projections.
Climate change is certainly something we could worry about. Making better use of natural resources makes great sense. Having cars that consume less and deliver less damaging output seems quite "normal".
As an ordinary bloke, it was pretty obvious to me that allowing banks/building societies to make outrageous loans would cause a bit of stress.
What did Brown do?
Naff all. But this guy says that "if the world had listened to him" a decade ago, things would have been different. HIS approach allowed a UK environment that permitted banks to do whatever they wanted. Regulation? I quite like that. Some boundaries on what companies can do. Brown set up a framework for incompetence.
That's a normal New Labour attitude.
Sad, really. I've voted all over the place, as I thought some people really believed in what they said.
Believe Brown?
Yeah. I believe the sun will rise in the west.
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Nick,
Despite your time off, your head seems to have stayed within the Westminster bubble.
At the time of this present crisis, it isn't about scoring party political points, it's about steering a course towards recovery.
Recovery can only come about when money begins to circulate freely and that means getting money into the system.
Where is that money coming from? Either it can be raised by yet more borrowing - borrowing against present and future tax revenues. Or it can come from attracting investment - savings and deposits - instead of penalising depositors through zero to low interest rates.
It would appear that Brown and Darling have backed the wrong horse. Rather than admit to error, they pour scorn on the alternatives.
I sincerely hope that they are able to swallow their pride and indeed "do more to help savers" in more than just rhetoric.
#4 Barking Derek
I respect your right to express your views, but find your opening sentence unnecessary and offensive. Have you tried asking the one whose name you take in vain so freely for a perspective on these issues?
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I do enjoy Mr Barker's rants....I can almost see him in his shell-suit, veins pumping in his forehead, as he tries to defend the only point of view he believes to exist in his reality. Great stuff! keep it up Derek!
Good plan, methinks, from the Tories. More savings, means more capital for the banks to lend, and then they can start paying us back the squillions that GB gave to them on our behalf - plus, the additional benefit that as a big saver I win. Plus the plummeting interest rates on my tracker mortgage means that I can continue the pay the same per month as before and pay it off even earlier by using the additional interest from savings. I'd win again.
GB really hasn't got a clue. As someone said a while ago - (on here probably) - if you're in a boat filling with water you don't drill a hole in the bottom to improve the drainage. Borrowing to get out of debt is simply, well, idiotic IMHO.
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# 42 derekbarker
5bn sounds a very reasonable amount to start with.
I never thought I would say that but this government has got us into debt many, many times that.
And you've got to start somewhere....
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I am curious at all the Thatcher hate.
For a quarter of a century it was a highly successful model, but as times change, expecting the same model to function in the same way is foolish.
Thatcherism got derailed, and we either need to get it back on track or find a new model.
And anyone thinking increased state control of employment is that model... Well, that's Stalinism and that screws the worker and consumer over - the state tends to keep wages artificially low.
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#42 derekbarker
That sounds like a good start! What's next? There's plenty more money to be saved!
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@42 dont you understand?
GOOD!!! That is a start, I wish he had announced far greater cuts. The public sector needs to be slashed to the bone, including pensions.
As labour poured billions extra into the public sector for no improvement it stands to reason that we can cut spending drastically with no impact.
If socialist stupidity is a major contributing factor to our woes we hardly need more of the same.
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Gordon is a gambler
Who wasted all our cash;
With his massive, bulging nappy
I'm sure he has a rash.
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"The sun will rise in the west"
I dont fully understand the draw for Mecca.
Might have something to do with my christian values.
Fibre optic Cameron, Oh Ho Ho, that was a classic fairlyopenmind, did he get some influence from the rising sun on that one?
Yes! Ice age and climate change is not new to this world.
Again no real solutions as to how to tackle
this down-turn from Cameron and co, just a poorly adviced script, you can shoot peas through.
1986 and the thatcher deregulation of the FSA was indeed! the catalyst.
Look, THERE IS NO WAY THIS COUNTRY CAN EVER RETURN TO THE SORT OF CRAZY HOUSE PRICING THAT WAS!
The tories just dont get it! good stuff can happen, it occurs when good people collectively respond to a bad situation.
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i can only presume that derekbarker is a pseudonym for some wannabe in the mandelson office.... If he really believes that thatcher is to blame for all our ills perhaps he would like to ask his beloved leader why he did nothing in the past eleven years to remedy her "mistakes".
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#45 fairlyopenmind
Wise and well-chosen words as usual, great post.
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The government's stance is sounding increasingly weak and reactionary. The Tories have now proposed a string of proactive economic policies, the only response to which has been to bang on about the 1980's followed by sounding out similar proposals a couple of weeks later.
"The sums don't add up" is perhaps the most meaningless and worn-out phrase in modern politics. The problem is for Labour that after 11 years of waste, inaccurate borrowing forecasts and incompetence the public are less inclined to buy it.
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No doubt Labour will accuse the tories of planning huge cuts in public services. Trouble is what they don't realise is that's exactly what people want. The public sector has not shown anything like the amount of improvement relative to the huge increases in manpower and spending over the last 11 years. Everyone I know is tired of paying first world levels of tax for third world services. Time to get rid of all those labour voting non- jobs, quangoes and consultants and trim the fat.
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Happy New Year folks.
Interesting announcements.
Perhaps before rushing to judgement we ought to wait for comments from the CBI, Institute of Directors, the Retail Federation and the body that represents Small Business.
I doubt the "Save, Save, save" message is what they want to hear at the moment BUT I may be wrong.
As for one of the richest men in the country damning "materialism" may seem a bit rich (no pun intended) but if your massive inherited wealth allows you to have whatever you want whenever you want it, some may say "by your actions be judged" (not your words)
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David Cameron's proposals certainly get my vote, to move money from the public sector into the private, to encourage saving instead of debt, is certainly the way forward.
I hope he goes further to address the bloated public sector and addresses the ring fenced pensions they enjoy which are such a burden on the tax payer. Labour will never do this as it is their core voters.
Young he may be but watching D. Cameron this morning gives me much more hope for change than boring old Brown.
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how about a joint government for 2009 without an election?
keep every one happy
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It's not worth arguing with derekdraper.
No point! He's living in denial.
Just like Gordon Brown and the Liars Party!
We just need an election!
.
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Nick,
#42 DB,
Let me see if I understand your arithmetic. Cameron will reduce public spending by 5 billion in 2009. However, total spending in 2009 will be much higher than in 2008 (according to Darling and Brown). So would you not agree that the Conservative spending will actually be a smaller increase than was planned by Labour rather than a cut?
If that particular problem stumps you, consider what a reduction in RPI from say 5% to 3% entails. It is not a cut in prices, it is a lower rate of increase! Do you get it now?
I am also interested in your views about the principle of taxation in general. Do you think it would be a good idea if the government taxed us all at say 80% and then simply handed back what it felt we needed to live in their utopian world? What level of tax do you think would be appropriate?
ATB
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#42. At 12:51pm on 05 Jan 2009, derekbarker wrote:
#39
"Dont you listen? Cameron wants to make an immediate cut in 2009 public spending of some 5Bn
He wants to go on and reduce the 2009 spending by another 25Bn in cuts.
Camerons words!"
Derek, Reducing government tax take simply reduces the burden on companies and individuals.
When Brown decided to abolish the 10p tax-break - mostly affecting the poorer, did you cheer?
Stuffing up a part of the population who really needed that tax-allowance? Which I thought was a really good idea - but always thought it should be limited to people with relatively low incomes - so wouldn't give releif to the rich. So, because he couldn't say he made a mistake, there has still been no "correction". Do you really believe that people should have to grovel to get back money they originally owned, but any government took away?
VAT reduction? Great idea? Nonsense.
Food has no VAT. Nor central or local tax.
Brown says he wanted a change of global monitoring of financial/economic actions. To follow his agendaq. Like an independent central Bank, a really good Financial Services Agency...
Didn't work here. I'd be very happy to see stupid bankers, recognised but not reacted to, by the FSA, get tried for incompetency or fraud.
That will happen in the USA. Do you really think it will happen in the UK? After Brown cosied up to the money men/people over a decade?
If a decently prepared person couldn't get into government spend and take out at least 5percent of costs, he or she would never make it in a privately owned organisation.
What do you want? State control? USSR style garbage that did nothing worthwhile?
Chinese economy, that relies increasingly on privately delivered benefits?
Get real.
A Chinese style "one child and you're out" philosophy or a "have another child and we're all ready to pay for that outcome" approach?
Why should I pay for some stupidity by a teenager with no moral background?
Did you ditch your children? Or expect others to pay for them? If you're happy to pay, is it for a plasma TV, really good-up-to-date trainers, or just food, home and basic needs?
Been there. My problems were mine.
Never expected any others to pay for any mistakes I made.
Do you really believe we are "all" responsible for some stupid corporate or governmental choices?
I've never been financially out of control.
So why should I pay for idiots?
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"Labour, of course, will demand to know where the money's coming from."
I demand to know where all the LaLa Labour money has come from?
Borrow and steal (they never beg) is my theory.
Get back in your box Derek Baker.
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#4 - Watch the blasphemy, mate. I assume you were using "Christ" in a swearing sense. Either that or this blog must be gospel, eh?
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@53 Barker
Quote "Might have something to do with my christian values."
Sorry sir but your rantings certainly arent Christian.
Your Post #17 encapsulates your judgemental opinion and the one thing that the bible teaches is "judge not lest ye be judged yourself"
You acuse other of being self righteous while being self righteous yourself.
I suggest sir that you remove the beam from your eye before attempting to remove the splinter from mine.
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#53 derekbarker
wrote:
The tories just don't get it! good stuff can happen, it occurs when good people collectively respond to a bad situation.
That's what a great number of us are doing.
Outgoings not exceeding income and saving when possible.
We're still having to bear the brunt of the wild expenditure of others and the government's mismanagement.
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#53 derekbarker
"1986 and the thatcher deregulation of the FSA was indeed! the catalyst."
===
Derek, you must have a poster of Maggie on your bedroom wall, you truly are fixated with her.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) was established in October 1997 by the way.
Or did you mean the Food Standards Agency, which was established in 2000?
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We are now starting the real argument over the economy. This is good. The phoney war is over and we can all settle down to a feast of good red meat.
The Labour argument to date is that since the markets have failed then the state needs to take over. An interesting point of view; but constrained by the fact that the state also failed to regulate those markets.
In effect we are dealing with both market failure and state failure. When we look into the complex nature of those markets we discover that when things we starting to get out of control - see BoE Stability Report 2006 - the state failed to call the top of the market.
Both the state and the financial markets have been at fault. The participants of that failure must all be indicted and until this responsibility can be assessed, measured and a verdict brought in there will be no lasting solution to our current plight.
What we need are alternatives and it is interesting to note the gradual evolution of policy from the Conservatives. They now say they are opposed to the Big State: hurrah - sinners come to repentance!
The battle lines of the future political struggle are now being drawn. On the one hand are those, like me, who have no trust in either Big Business or Big Government, and on the other are those who will do anything to protect their power and their privileges.
Sounds like something we had once before, doesn't it?
`...that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore, truly, sir, I think it is clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not a voice to put himself under..'
By all accounts Tom Rainsborough was a decent man who, in the above words, set a standard by which all governments and politicians need to be judged in both his time and ours. Maybe, dear Tom's time has now come.
There would be a delicious irony if the Tories made his ideas come true.
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This just seems to prove that the Tories are economically illiterate. During a recesssion encouraging saving is the last thing you should do. Did Cameron learn any economics whilst at Oxford or was he too busy polishing the buttons on his Bullingdon frock coat?
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#62
Where on earth do you get your retail price index from?
Are you one of those in the top ten percent of earners, who have quickly worked out a tax safe on your earnings in real terms is far greater to you than say those on the miimum wage?
#63
Hey up' fairlyopenmind, a little less on the USSR and China syndrome and a bit more on the real world of economics.
Bad blood doesn't make a good black pudding?
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Dear Nuck,
Happy New Year,
BRITAIN PLC is an economic war zone.
2008 WAS A POLITICAL DISASTER
2009, will be worse,
Brown should go, PLEASE.
and those running the country and fiscal policy have dragged us to the Depths of dispair and as Politicians we all sit back and accept the diatribe that spews forth out of their mouths, BUT NO ONE HAS SAID SORRY, EXCEPT THE CHAIRMAN OF BARCLAYS. BANK
One thing is right though, GORDON Brown is not to be trusted, and Andrew Marr 's interview with him on Sunday 4th Jan, "who was licking whose shoes."? Marr did not do his job, he let the man off the hook like every one else, ALL too frightened to to Rock the Boat.
The Establishment needs a boot up the backside, they have behaved abomerably towards the British People, who they have ignored, and now expect them to bail the government out, its no wonder there is so much anger by the general public aimed at politicians and Bankers.
AND IT IS NOT NOW GOING TO GET BETTER AS GORDON BROWN SAYS FOR 2 YEARS.
ROLL ON THE GENERAL ELECTION,
IVE HAD ENOUGH OF LABOUR, EVERY ONE OF THEM. TIME TO SHOW THEM THE LAST RIVET,, BEFORE THE DOOR IS SHUT ON THEM FOR GOOD., IT HAS TO BE GOLD, TO REMIND bROWN WHAT HE DID WITH BRITAINS GOLD RESERVES????
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@70 Apb
"During a recesssion encouraging saving is the last thing you should do"
So therefore saving should be done during a boom and unfortunately for you Brown failed to do this. In fact he legislated to make saving less palatable during the boom so he is actually in a much less beleivable position now.
Its hardly a wonder so many people want an election
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70. At 1:39pm on 05 Jan 2009, APbbforum wrote:
This just seems to prove that the Tories are economically illiterate. During a recesssion encouraging saving is the last thing you should do. Did Cameron learn any economics whilst at Oxford or was he too busy polishing the buttons on his Bullingdon frock coat?
===
And James Gordon Brown is an economic Shakespeare is he?
By the way, Our Great Leader has not yet authorised the use of the "r" word. It is a "downturn", and it all started in America, and he saw it 10 years ago (but did nothing about it)!
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Question 1: Gordon Brown deserves:
1) To be tarred and feathered
2) To be flogged with rhinoceros hide whips dipped in brine
3) To be imprisoned in the Tower of London for treason
4) To spend a whole year in the pillory and have rotten tomatoes thrown at him, one for every person he has crushed with debt
5) To be sent to work in the salt mines
Discuss
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70. At 1:39pm on 05 Jan 2009, APbbforum wrote:
so your saying everyone should just keep spending?
Isn't this the very heart of the problem.........people spending what they don't have.
common logic tells us that books have to balance whether it is personal or business finance.
If this wasn't the case wouldn't the banks still be borrowing money.
YOU DON'T BORROW MORE TO GET OUT OF DEBT!!!!
You simply balance income against expenditure.
Something Golem Brown and his cronies led many to believe he was doing but it has turned out to be untrue.
I have no faith in this government and will not risk any serious expenditure until they have been replaced and i'm sure many other millions of hard working taxpayers who have been shafted by this government agree with my stance.
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#70 APbbforum
Did I misunderstand? I was under the impression that the announcement of scapping tax on saving for basic rate payers was to give people such as pensioners a better standard of living. After all, tax has already been paid on earnings.
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#70 APbbforum
Did I misunderstand? I was under the impression that the announcement of scrapping tax on saving for basic rate payers was to give people such as pensioners a better standard of living. After all, tax has already been paid on earnings.
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71. At 1:45pm on 05 Jan 2009, derekbarker wrote:
#62
Where on earth do you get your retail price index from?
Are you one of those in the top ten percent of earners, who have quickly worked out a tax safe on your earnings in real terms is far greater to you than say those on the miimum wage?
===
I've read the post and it is clear that it was a hypothetical figure so that you could understand and answer his point. Which I note you have not done.
What is a tax safe, by the way?
I think you must have eaten too much black pudding.
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Hi Nick,
There is another solution but neither party will have the foresight to suggest it.
A flat rate of tax of say 20% (full stop)starting at £ 16,000. The top figures before negotiated taxes could be quite high. All final salary pensions for civil servants to be halted and as the government has no qualms punitive retroactive legislation back date it to 1997.
The immediate benefits of a flat rate tax :
(i) ordinary people who are struggling would have instant and real liquidity.
(ii) the banks would not need government pressure to lend, as the realities of not having customers for their loans should do the trick.
(iii) the Treasury could be trimmed down to a much smaller Department.
(iv) the cost should be a lot cheaper than shovelling billions and billions into the abyss ... sorry into banks, car companies (et alia).
Why won't they do it ? No politician will ever believe that less government is better government.
This Labour Government can't afford to have so many people taken our of dependency on the State, because they will lose their electorate. So as far as Gordon Brown is concerned the poorer people become the better.
Why should they do it ? The rich will get a lot richer BUT the poor will also get richer and that should be their only focus.
Finally who wouldn't want to live and invest in UK when effectively it would become a 'tax-light' haven ?
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76. At 1:53pm on 05 Jan 2009, power-to-the-ppl wrote:
Question 1: Gordon Brown deserves:
1) To be tarred and feathered
2) To be flogged with rhinoceros hide whips dipped in brine
3) To be imprisoned in the Tower of London for treason
4) To spend a whole year in the pillory and have rotten tomatoes thrown at him, one for every person he has crushed with debt
5) To be sent to work in the salt mines
===
Is it all 5? Because he truly is a hoon.
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#71 DB
What an utterly pathetic response from a man that claims to know better.
Did you not notice the term SAY in my earlier post?
If you want to be taken seriously, answer the earlier question. Would the Conservatives spending plans for 2009 represent an increase on 2008 spending projections or not?
I am also keen to find out how much of our money you think is right for our government to take from us. Any suggestions, or do you simply accept what GB and his puppet Darling say?
I am not hopeful of a consistent or argued response, but you never know.
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I am curious about the effect of such proposals and to which 'savings' they might apply too. Most of my £30K is in ISA's which are either not taxed or bear a very light tax. I have another £7K for the cost of a house repair this year on which I will pay tax on the interest on the average amount held in the account. I am an OAP of course so maybe my temporary savings might benefit!
So who will get the benefit and is it likely to be worth anymore than the VAT cut to most people with "pocket money saving"? with 2-3% interest
As for NuCons cuts in public expenditure Camaroon had no idea about where the savings be coming from, should he be in government in the next few months, as told the students and academics at the LSE last month. NUCon shadows are supposed to be hunting hi and low for them. In the long term of course he expects to transfer much of the public services to capitalist and 'voluntary' bodies (remember the Housing Associations run by Estate Agents, Surveyors and Solicitors') fiananced I would expect on the basis of pay as you use. Its a Nucon's Cameroon con!
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yellowbelly.
Dont just rant your nonsense, check your facts first, thatcher and the deregulation 1986.
I guess they have a saying for folk like you!
"Big belly, Empty head"
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Brown was running a bigger than 3% budget deficit in 2006-07 when the economy was growing above trend. Hence Labour's figures to increase state spending do add up, but the balancing item eventually is massive debt.
Brown was running his budget clearly keeping in mind an election in late 2007 early 2008, but then was taken aback by Cameron's decent performance at the Conservatives conference late summer 2007 and some of their policies, including lower death taxes.
PS: please note I'm not from the UK, not a party hack.
PS2: Still waiting for a BBC reporter with a gram of economic bagage to ask Brown why he ran a budget deficit in boom times and tried to get more doves on the monetary policy committee when the UK savings rate dived below 0% in 2006.
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70. At 1:39pm on 05 Jan 2009, APbbforum wrote:
This just seems to prove that the Tories are economically illiterate. During a recesssion encouraging saving is the last thing you should do.
===
No, that's right. We should all go out and buy more Chinese made plasma TVs to boost the Chinese economy!
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you know what?
I don't even care if the tories win and are useless
because this government is so ridiculous, so out of touch with the common man, and common sense, that I would welcome anything else we elected
not only is Brown arrogant in refusing an election, which he probably will call later this year, despite it 'being the last thing on his mind' (and just remember that when he does - another fib)
that and their economic policy is based on a defense of the last decade, which from a purely practical point of view limits their actions, and leads to there being far too much politics directing it
meanwhile they are pig headed over ID cards, 42 days, the equalities bill and any other lefty agenda they can think off
they are an old tired government and need to be put out of their misery, if they somehow are in power after next year then I wash my hands of any responsibility
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76 power to the people
I believe 1 and 2 would be possible, I think the other punishments have been removed from british law, probably by this record breaking gov
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4 Derek Barker and 70 APbbforum
Some reality for you both to chew on:
Cameron Turns back the 'Do Nothing' Charge on Brown
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53. Barking: To be Christian means to FOLLOW CHRIST and his teachings. Having Christian values is just not enough. Being good to others is not necessarily Christian.
However, I forgive you because you are the only poor soul on here bleating away on behalf of the Labour shower. It must be so hard for you.
What you are actually doing is painting them in an even bleaker light and anybody who was half for turning has changed their mind.
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84. At 1:58pm on 05 Jan 2009, cping500 wrote:
"As for NuCons cuts in public expenditure Camaroon had no idea about where the savings be coming from, should he be in government in the next few months, as told the students and academics at the LSE last month."
===
That is because the spiteful Broon refused to allow the Official Opposition access to the Civil Service, going against all previous political convention. Could it be that Golem was afraid of what the Conservatives would find?
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re: 82, brownisahoon
Well done, you got it exactly right.
Which is more than can be said for the Hoon of Hoons and his NuLab goons.
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#42
Cameron wants to make an immediate cut in 2009 public spending of some 5Bn
He wants to go on and reduce the 2009 spending by another 25Bn in cuts.
Not enough. We need to balance the budget. This shouldn't be too difficult. With interest rates at 2% and mortgages only slightly more then the biggest expense for most people - their mortgage - has practically halved in recent months.
I reckon a (say) 10%-15% pay cut in the public sector should do the job. That's what the lads at JCB did to ensure they all kept their jobs.
Either that or fire 10-15% of the public workers.
It won't happen though. We've already doubled national debt since 2001 just to make the payroll and now Brown proposes to quadruple it in another three or four years. Again, just to make the payroll. We will still have absolutely nothing to show for it except an additional one million public service workers on cast-iron salaries (with annual grade increases) and pensions. No productivity increases, a few new concrete and steel hospitals and schools and a two week play-park costing 12bn quid.
Utter insanity.
Brown will go down as the man who quadrupled national debt. A man who, in ten short years, squandered three times as much as every chancellor in UK history before him combined. More than two world wars. More than Callaghan, Wilson and the rest of them. Combined.
For nothing.
For less than nothing. Because on top of the planned borrowing we also have PFI liabilities for hospitals and schools we won't even own in 20 years time. If they haven't collapsed due to shoddy materials used in the first place.
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Derekbarker
You have convinced me that Labour really is in terminal decline.
Your manic personalised responses highlight the fact that the ZaNuLabour party really has nothing relevant to say any more.
Are you really the media savvy party that controlled the media agenda for so long?
It’s quite sad.
Can you respond to this statement for me?
Labour has destroyed the economy every time it’s had power.
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@85 DB
There goes that non Christian attitude again.
Post less, read more bible or you will be sorely dissappointed when you meet St Peter
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Poor Derekbarker fighting a losinmg battle here today with no CEH or jimbrandt to support his spendaholic views.
Has it occured to you Derek that newlabour are already themselves proposing 5bn of public sector sepnding cuts and the vast majority of wonder 'boy' Dave's proposals are funded by said newlabour cuts?
He doesn't need to cut frontline services to anything. You can't grow public sector spending faster than the privatee sector ad infinitum or you will end up bust or a communist state. We can't afford it.
Newlabour cronies need to get teal to the real debt crisis facing this country and the total denial is more eviudence that they are unfit for government.
Call an election.
Let's live in a society that values work and training more than idleness and diversity.
Let's vote for a society that helps itself and others and not for a government that patronises that it knows better.
let's vote for a governemnt that abpolishes tax on the first 25,000 pounds of income and over 100,000 obliges charitabel contributions to charities that present a viable business case.
Let's get rid of this inept, corrupt and self regarding newlabour rabble.
goodbye newlabour.
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85. At 1:59pm on 05 Jan 2009, derekbarker wrote:
yellowbelly.
Dont just rant your nonsense, check your facts first, thatcher and the deregulation 1986.
I guess they have a saying for folk like you!
"Big belly, Empty head"
===
derekbarking
Check your facts!
The Securities and Investments Board (SIB) was incorporated on 7 June 1985.
The FSA came into effect on 28 October 1997.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Services_Authority
As I've said before, resort to smears, misquote fact and namecall any one who doesn't agree with you, typical ZaNuLabour.
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85. At 1:59pm on 05 Jan 2009, derekbarker wrote:
yellowbelly.
Dont just rant your nonsense, check your facts first, thatcher and the deregulation 1986.
I guess they have a saying for folk like you!
"Big belly, Empty head"
-------
Hello Dolly, how's the lovely Kate?
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I'm fascinated by the "Tories' sums don't add up" chestnut.
To any reasonable person, the story should be something like that the government acquires income through taxes, and then spends it through provision of services (e.g. schools, the health service, overseas development) and running costs (e.g. spin, derekbarker's salary etc.). When expenditure exceeds income, then "the sums don't add up".
Just what was the Pre-Budget Report then?
On the best available estimate, in the current year, expenditure will exceed income by £120 billions!
Labour's own sums don't add up - it's because tax income has collapsed.
How dare they try to cover that up by making the same criticism of the Tories' plans?
Some integrity would be brought back to a legitimate debate on the economy if the government could at least go against its current habit and be honest about the situation as it currently stands.
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Nick,
So there you have it, DerekBarker has failed to answer a simple question posted at 1.26pm, despite actively posting his usual anti Maggie, anti Tory line in the intervening hour.
The reason he won't answer the question is because he would have to agree that the Conservatives are not proposing cuts in spending as he claimed, rather they would simply increase spending less than that proposed by Brown.
In my humble opinion, there is little point in paying any attention to the thoughts of chairman Barker from now on. Perhaps this will mean that we have less drivel to cut our way through when addressing the points on this and other blogs. Bye Derek.
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#53. At 1:11pm on 05 Jan 2009, derekbarker wrote:
"The sun will rise in the west"
I dont fully understand the draw for Mecca.
Might have something to do with my christian values."
Derek - For Jews, Christians, Muslims, and anyone else, the sun rises in the east.
I have Christian values. Brought up that way. In a Protestant way. Strayed a bit, but still hold to those values even if I can't offer myself as an example of what to do... Bit sad that we Christians don't really understand that the Abramahic faiths all worship the same God. Jews/Christians/ Muslims. Why do we need to kill each other?
"Fibre optic Cameron, Oh Ho Ho, that was a classic fairlyopenmind, did he get some influence from the rising sun on that one"?
Don't really give a s£$% about who proposes a better fibre optic availlibity. I do realise that making it happen will be a result if private companies comtinue investing. The very people/companies who Brown took UKP22Billion from a tax auction, to allow them to do what they wanted to do in the first place? What happened o those billions?
"Yes! Ice age and climate change is not new"
Wow. Climate change has happened before we actually had any scientists to record stuff.
Where are the dinosaurs? Do you really believe that they should haved died off?
Like polutical parties?
I don't believe in "government".
"Again no real solutions as to how to tackle this down-turn from Cameron and co, just a poorly adviced script, you can shoot peas through.
1986 and the thatcher deregulation of the FSA was indeed! the catalyst."
Derek, PreThaIr simle folkstcher, there was no FSA.
Post Brown, we had a triumvirate of BoE, FSA, Treasury who had no proper idea of how they should really work together.
Did Brown really believe that 100 percent plus mortgages would make sense? Or intrevene?
Like heck.
The Man's a fool. We paid for him to go to University. Came up with a doctorate after studying a radical Scot. Wow, Great constribution to UK knowledge.
Funny that he allows Scots to get a free University education, but assumes the English should pay for tje privilege.
If simple guys like me could work out that a housing bubble wasn't a great idea, why didn't Brown and the very expensive advisors have a little bit of an idea?
Well, tax take makes a difference, doesn't it?
Exactly which industries has Brown built or encouraged over a decade?
Derek, it's all been a sham.
I didn't mind for a few years.
Just hate the present status.
Poor people begging for favours.
Really Socialist?
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potkettle @ #1:
"Clearly they have had more viable ideas in the last six months than Labour managed in 11 years."
- er, yeah. That'll be why they lost three successive elections then...
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#83 smf
Typical conservative make a statement then recant it, why dont you.
A real term spendature of 1% a real term loss of 2.5%.
And a further 25Bn cut to come, taking public spending back to 2001 figs.
By the way do you wear a duffle coat with your blinkers!
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Derekbarker
So something that Maggie did in 1986 left Labour in such a mess that they couldn't fix it in 11 years?
Perhaps I could blame healey and Callaghan, or is that going too far back in time?
You claim to want facts. These are straight from the PBR. In 1990-91, just before the last recession, net debt was 26.9% GDP, down 20.2% from the 47.1% the Tories inherited. In 07-08, just before the latest recession, net debt was 36.3% GDP down only 6.2% from the 42.5% Labour inherited.
Through a decade of growth, Labour failed to sufficiently lower debt and now that the first challenge has come along, the 40% Golden Rule will be broken.
How can Labour have a leg to stand on talking about the Conservative economic competence?
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Derekbarking
You say the Tory figures don’t add up.
The £1 Trillion debt figures in the Pre-Budget Report where based on the UK coming out of recession and showing growth in the 3 Q 2009.
Gordon Brown said in his Andrew Marr interview (Party Political Broadcast) yesterday that we will be in recession for 2 years.
If Gordon is right this will mean 6 more quarters of recession than you forecast 3 months ago. The borrowing figures you are relying on are massively out and the amount of debt you are running up is incalculable.
WHOS FIGURES DON’T ADD UP? Surely labours.
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#76
Question 1: Gordon Brown deserves:
1) To be tarred and feathered
...
I'd settle for an IQ test. I'm sick of hearing how clever he is when his grasp of economics appears to be on a par with a six year-old.
I'll accept that at one point he might have passed an IQ test with a phenomenally high score. Perhaps his 11+ or something. But years of 'studying' obscure avenues of political history or a good kick in the head while playing rugby has clearly rotted his brain.
He started reasonably well (following Tory spending plans) but as soon as he was off that hook he just went mental. Where he has remained ever since.
He perfectly encapsulates the 'Starbucks' decade. Where seemingly rational people think nothing of leaving their offices, walking for five minutes each way and then queueing to spend three quid on a take-away coffee.
Their rationale appears to be 'It must be good 'cos I've paid three quid for it and everybody else is doing it.'
If I were Starbucks I'd start charging ten quid for a coffee. People who are so disconnected from reality to part with three quid for a coffee are just as likely to pay ten quid. They clearly have no clue about the value of money.
Same with Gordon Brown's borrowing and squandering 850bn quid. It must be okay because the yanks are doing it.
No. It's a stupid waste of money. Spending more money doesn't guarantee a better outcome.
As the last decade demonstrates.
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whoever derek barker is he's a legend.
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#85 Barking Derek
To yellowbelly: "Dont rant your nonsense check your facts first Thatcher and the deregulation 1986".
Pots and kettles come to mind (there I've even recommended another blogger).
The 1986 "deregulation" was about dismantling some of the historic conventions surrounding the trading of shares - such as that only UK firms could be members of the Stock Exchange and that firms could act in only a single capacity - either a Jobber (Principal) or Broker (Agent) but not both.
The need for a different kind regulation of new markets wasn't appreciated until the effects of Big Bang (October 1986) were felt. The Stock Exchange started building a surveillance team the following year, from which grew the SFA (Securities & Futures Authority).
Out of a need for further reform across the Financial Services Industry, the FSA was formed - as Yellowbelly points out some ten years later.
However one of the weaknesses of the FSA has been regular interference by the then Chancellor, who - inter alia - favoured (deliberate pun intended) a light touch on the hedge funds.
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All those thatcher babies have been hiding themselves well over the last decade.
Jonathan, you are easily pleased by a "DO NOTHING GESTURE FROM CAMERON"
The hollow head is just raving about tax cuts, that will drive Britain back to those barren years we had under the last conservative government.
Robin, put some meat on your arguments, so far you are only showing bare bones.
The Skeleton tories have come pout of their closets......Boooooo
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103 Chrisleopard
And what a waste of time and money those 11 years have been
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Nick
You say - If Labour want to save themselves time they could dust off their press release from that day when a certain Alistair Darling declared "This is the same old Conservative Party. Its sums don't add up".
With you around, doing it for them, hey don't need to bother doing even that - do they ?
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Well! Well! fairlyopenmind, a bit of morris dancing from you, wont help put some beef on the real issues.
Your clearly out of step from the line dance most other nations are involved with.
Another reference to the Cromwell, while the poor oliver twist lad will be on his knees under a Cameron government.
So the sun does set in the west, funny that! I thought you were going all fundementalist on me( burial rites and all)
Another fake call from Cameron and the troops charge out, did the light-brigade put a bit of wieght on over Xmas?
Yellowbelly seems full.
The good thing about a programme, Is, it can be amended, conditions often play apart
you dont have to imagine a change, you can simply rearrange to suite.
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surely part of the problem is the size of the population... This is a problem that Labour have created as they have made making babies a career choice paid for by the working families who cannot afford them.
The result, less children from a families with a working ethic and more from a reliance on public benefits...
Until this trend is reversed there is always going to be more people on the scrounge than able to pay for it...
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108
Oh yes he's a something end alright, Campanology comes to mind.
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Derekbarker
you haven't responded to this
Labour has destroyed the economy every time it's had power.
Historical fact.
And what about
#106
You don't even know how much debt your racking up.
So your figures don't add up
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#104,
You still haven'r read post 62 properly, neither have you answered the question posed, nor do you give any information to support your wierd and wonderful figures (or even the new words that you invent). Perhaps we should rename you DerekI don'tdohardquestionsBarker.
BTW, if everyone who disagrees with you was a Conservative who wore blinkers and a duffel coat, at least those industries would be making a fortune.
Remind me, when was the last time you spoke out in opposition to NuLab, or is it only people who disagree with you who wear blinkers?
How sad you are.
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So, let me understand this proposal. I am a basic rate taxpayer, I am lucky to have substantial savings. I will pay no tax at all on this significant income stream. Then I am offered a promotion which takes me just into the 40% band. Suddenly I must pay tax on my income from savings and at 40% I will be worse off. Am I to be penalised for getting a better and more responsible job. This could be seen as a disincentive to self advancement. Or maybe the secret agenda of the Tories is to keep wage levels down on behalf of their sponsors. On the other hand they may yearn to return to the Wilson era when various "allowance" scams were created to get around the wage cap. Can a Tory explain this conundrum?
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76#
All Of The Above.
Please.
Right now.
Derek:
Can I have your job???
Sterling may well be devalued, but the money-to-old rope ratio for your position appears to be rocketing skywards.
You do get paid for this, dont you? You really should be, if not...
Nick.
Aptly titled blog. The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same.
Can we start a petition for Marr to be Political Editor? At least he appeared to be demanding some sort of answers in yesterdays interview.
You might be a political journalist Nick, but from the perspective of a lot of us, you're not Editor material.
Well, you might be, if it was the Piers Morgan School of Journalism, but thats another story......
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#109
Tubster, would that be the short selling commitment from 1986?
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#114
Well said. Anyone whos has over four children should pay for them out their own pocket. That will stop lazy good for nothings.
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#118,
As You need to work this out with a pencil and paper, and possibly even a calculator or spreadsheet. It is highly unlikely that you could go from your current job into one that taxed at 40% and not already be paying tax on your substantial unearned income. Even if you could, the marginal change would be relatively minor since you would be earning the new higher salary and also receiving 60% of your interest payment. I am sure that would be enough for most of us to want to climb the greasy pole.
If you remain unconvinced, get back to me once you have worked out the figures in a bit more detail.
ATB
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113. At 3:09pm on 05 Jan 2009, derekbarker wrote:
Well! Well! fairlyopenmind, a bit of morris dancing from you, wont help put some beef on the real issues.
Your clearly out of step from the line dance most other nations are involved with.
Another reference to the Cromwell, while the poor oliver twist lad will be on his knees under a Cameron government.
So the sun does set in the west, funny that! I thought you were going all fundementalist on me( burial rites and all)
Another fake call from Cameron and the troops charge out, did the light-brigade put a bit of wieght on over Xmas?
Yellowbelly seems full.
The good thing about a programme, Is, it can be amended, conditions often play apart
you dont have to imagine a change, you can simply rearrange to suite.
===
Not full derek, just sitting back and laughing at you making a complete @rse of yourself.
I was also giving you the chance to answer all those questions put to you by other posters that you conveniently ignore.
By the way, can you confirm the date the FSA was set up for me, I gave you the link to help you?
As english is clearly not your first language, your post reproduced above is a good example of this, I'll give you a couple of hours to come up with the answers we are all waiting for, in english!
Or will I hear from you "toute suite"?
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# 113....
Derek, this one is complete gibberish - well done!
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108. At 2:38pm on 05 Jan 2009, chrisleopard wrote:
whoever derek barker is he's a legend.
===
Or as derek would spell it, a leg end!
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Nick
You mention the PM's interview with Andrew Marr yesterday. During that and in other interviews he said
"I don't want to sound arrogant, but 10 years ago I was making both speeches and proposals to sort out this failure of global regulation and I couldn't persuade other countries after the Asian crisis of 1998 that it was necessary."
I don't know what he said then or if it was all words and no action in the face of the risks he had identified. It would be useful if you could provide details of his speeches, particularly those parts concerning his call for the sorting out of global regulation.
What I do know is what in his 2006 Mansion House speech - which was full of praise for The City and the bankers and boasted how he had resisted for calls for regulatory crackdown in favour of the Government's light touch system. He said:
"Let me say I see no case for a European single regulator and will continue to reject such a proposal, just as we will resist the new and unnecessary proposals to harmonisation corporate taxation in Europe."
Doesn't sound to me much like a clarion call for greater coordination of global regulation.
Incidentally, that Mansion House speech is well worth a read if one wishes to gauge the very positive boom time attitude of Gordon Brown to global trading and fianance, the innovative/leading/dominant role played by the UK financial institutions, all facilitated by the Government. Compare this to his post-bust stance with UK in supplicant/victim role and our Government as blameless/helpless spectators, albeit with our bankers' contributing to the problem via irresponsible behaviour - the behaviour formerly known as innovative.
Why don't you dig out some of this stuff when reporting on the latest utterances of the Labour machine, and not just old Labour press releases in response to the latest Tory stuff ?
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Thought for the day for Nick, from 'How this weblog works' on this weblog:
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2005/12/about_this_webl.html)
"The main thing which makes blogs different from a newspaper column or even TV or radio broadcast is that it is a conversation between the author and the audience."
Especially noteworthy, "a conversation between the author and the audience."
Also, Nick writes in The beauty of blogging: "As well as being a conversation weblogs can be more personal..."
There is no dialogue. This Newslog is a monologue. It may as well be a newspaper column. Why bother soliciting views if you have no interest in participating in the conversation?
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I am neither an economist nor Tory. However, when I see what havoc Brown has created, I believe either it is intentional to destroy the infrastructure of the UK, and render us all on benefits and therefore a certain source of NULabour voters, or else Brown is completely incompetent. In this case, somebody like myself, who possesses just common sense and manages to budget and finish the year without terrible debts, could probably do his job better.
I am not and never have been a Tory, but if this party really intends to help the average citizen, I will give them my vote, for the very first time. How I wish, somebody could save Wedgewood, a part of our National Heritage. Perhaps the Arts Council, the Lottery or some official organisation could nationalise and save a companyw hich for generations has produced works of art to be used everyday. Better than wasting public money on the horrors created by Damien Hirst, that vulgar female (name slips me - Emin?) who displayed her unmade filthy bed, and other establishment lovies.
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@103 leopard
You can read cant you?
I clearly didnt say the tories had had good ideas in the past 11 years either.
I said they had had more good ideas in the last 6 months than Labour had managed in those 11 years.
Strewth if you are going to debate at least read what is written
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If the people in this country had been encouraged by Gordon Brown to save rather than take on debt way beyond their income then this recession would not have been so deep.
A few billions spent then would have saved this country from a decade a least, of tax rises and cuts in public services, to pay back the massive amounts spent bailing out the banks and whatever, "bribes," there will be in the real budget to sweeten the gulible and party faithful.
Gordon Brown was at the head of the queue to take the, "glory," when this country was gorging itself on racking up more and more debt. But when the chickens came home to roost, he did his usual side step and blamed it on global influences. "Nothing to do with me gov."
The Tories are undoubtedly on the right track here.
Why should we pay tax on our savings? All our savings should be treated like the current ISA system, which has been a success in encouraging people to save. Albeit on a relatively small scale; but at least it encouraged people who normally would not have saved to do so - which is exactly what David Cameron wants to do but on a much grander scale.
It is certainly a far better idea than La La Gordon`s idea of cutting vat by 2 1/2% when the retailers at xmas were slashing prices at 50% and above. That headline grabbing idea will cost us 12Billion, plus interest when it has to borrowed to fill an unecessary black hole in the country`s finances. Looks like another tax increase is on the way to cover the cost - wonder what that will be on?
But as with all good ideas put forward by the other parties, it will be stolen by Labour, repackaged and sold to the gulible press as all their own idea.
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And a Happy New Year to all…. even to Derek at 2 and almost every other ruddy number.
Theres no point arguing with Derek B. Derek is Scottish and hasnt got a care or a clue where all the money comes from, hes not really concerned with wealth creation just spending, so long as he gets good service from his beloved party hes a happy man; and seeing as he is Scottish theres no chance of the good service drying up until an election. In short hes terrified the free ride will end sometime soon. Election is not a word Derek likes to hear. His manic ranting is just fear, so go easy on him, he may have to find a job next year.
Tory sums dont add up. eerrrrrr….gulp……. Anyone checked the current account recently? Nick why don’t you have a look and explain how Labours sums add up before rolling out the same old labour tosh.
Burning our money
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5439831.ece
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#119
Fubar, "ubar" go on tell! about Piers Morgan
I quite like Piers, I wonder what you do mean?
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I have just heard a Conservative spokesman say thet this move could save many upto £7000. Asked how much you would need in the bank to save that ammout, he eventually answered £250,000......what planet do these people live on.
Who do they think has a quater of a million pound stashed away in the bank.
We are in the middle of a recession , people are losing jobs and companies going to the wall, and they are saying if you have got a quater of a million pound in the bank, we will save you £7000.....it's not people that have a quater of a million pound in the bank who you should be helping, you plank.
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Labour, of course, will demand to know where the money's coming from.
Well wherever it comes from at least it goes into the pockets of people who deserve it.
As for Labour saying the sums wont add up,i think they should keep mighty quiet on that front as they have just thrown 100Bn + away....to the banks etc etc with nothing coming back to the people who will eventually provide it.
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#120 Barking Derek
Was that a facetious comment regarding the Thatcher years (impervious as far as I'm concerned - I bear no torch for her) or a serious question?
The greatest concern following Big Bang, and the basis of Surveillance was that Chinese Walls weren't being upheld with the dictum meum pactum kind of honour and that there were worries about insider trading.
Short selling wasn't an issue, because the SE was still on accountly settlement - and most participants closed out short positions within an account.
Woof!
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Gordon Brown has done nothing for the mortgage paid pensioner saver. He has also made my European break that much more expensive. Moreover I dislike him intensely. He therefore doesn't get my vote or the vote of my many teacher friends.
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Vis a vis NR's last paragraph, have you heard the joke about Gordon Brown accusing the Tories of putting forward unfunded spending pledges. Now that really is 'Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose!' Hypocrisy? We've just had the biggest load of unfunded spending pledges in history.
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Well Cameron's idea will make me better off. I'll not spend a penny of it, but keep it in my existing accounts. There it will be available for the Bank or Building Soc to lend to someone (or not as the case may be).
Here's another thought. Most of the £5bn cut in expenditure will be in the form of wages and salaries of people on public projects which we are told are non-essential. So if these people don't have jobs they will get some benefit. These people are not scroungers they are just people who are caught in the trap that there aren't any jobs and they cannot become a self employed gardeners (or whatever) if no one wants to pay them. So we end up paying people to stay at home rather than pay them to go to work on public projects.
The trouble with Brown and Cameron, most poltical writers and almost all bloggers is that they are always talking about a small part of the picture and presenting it as the whole picture. They are all like poor chess players who don't think more than one move ahead at the time.
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Derekbaker
can apply for this rapid rebuttal unit job on here
http://www.order-order.com/2008/09/enemy-of-state.html
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Those who refer to DC and Opposition supporters abusively forfeit my attention and their credibility almost immediately. Pity there isn't an ignore button on these blogs.
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#115
Harry! Ding Dong.
And enlighten me! who pulls your ropes.
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"As a result of the combined effect of lower revenues, our commitment to maintain spending and extra support to the economy, borrowing will rise to £78bn this year and £118bn next, or 8.0 per cent of GDP."
Derek Barker, as a matter of interest I have copied the PBR from last year. Does it still hold good or is the 78bn now nearer 110bn and the 118 nearer to 140bn?
And should a full time employee of the labour party really spend all his time on this blog?
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Why oh why do you persist in prsenting the Labour party with any credence whatsoever and deriding the Tory plans to strip out cost from government? They have pushed through masses of expensive legislation that has been around command and control from central government - creating more jobs for civil servants, and piling on taxes to us, the great proletarian worker-ants. It's time this New Labour nonsense was blown clean out of the water. The Tories are not suggesting doing nothing (something else you journos continually allow them to get away with). YOu appear increasingly partisan - what, I ask, is in it for you??? SHould there be a corruption inquiry into you political editors and your relationships with ministers? I wonder....
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So the NUlabour SPINATHON clunks in
The Parrots on full song:
"The Do Nothing Party"
Labour do something RESIGN PLEASE!
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Congratulations posters! We really have got Derekbarker's back up today.
If the best he can mange is the 'do nothing' argument then it will be a home run when the Dear leader calls an election in the late Spring and goes down to a right royal drubbing by the tory party.
The tory party who bothered to maintain the infrastructure of this country.
The tory party who shut down most of the union ridden economic mess it inherited form Callaghan's labour 'what crisis?' party.
The tory party who handed over the best set of UK accounts in the 20C.
The tory party who handed over the most successful private pension system in the world.
The tory party whose financial deregulation was ruined by Gordon Brown's tinkering Tripartite structure that managed to ignore 90x leverage at Northern Rock.
The tory party who did not have the hubris to claim to have abolished boom and bust so did not have the nerve to endlessly prop up and manipulate the boom for their own ends like Gordon Brown.
Bring them back to protect my savings and prevent the robber newlabourites form staeling any more of our money for handouts and the workshy.
newlabour = thieves.
Call an election
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121. At 3:28pm on 05 Jan 2009, maggyisgod wrote:
#114
Well said. Anyone whos has over four children should pay for them out their own pocket. That will stop lazy good for nothings.
Don't agree with you, on one point, maggyisgod. Lazy families who don't work or try to find work should receive NOTHING. Fair enough. But why should people who choose to have more than four children be labelled good-for-nothings? The Chinese commies set the goal as one child, you say four. That is a liberty, people should have as many children as they wish and provide for them. The future of a country is its children. The UK needs many, many more UK born children from decent families. Those children will one day be paying for the social benefits we all expect as we grow older. What we paid in ourselves will not be enough. Also, do we have to 'import' carers and medical staff for our sick and elderly? Government should make it easier for married people to house and educate their children. Note, I say 'help' not take away that parental obligation. The help should be in the form of social housing, where needed, and good schools.
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The ‘new’ Conservative idea sounds nice, but the more I look at it the less it really seems to achieve, especially while the interest rates are so low.
Derek I apologise old bean but you appear to have some issues and a chip on your shoulder bigger than Tower Bridge. Ignoring your rather inane name calling of anyone with the audacity to question your personal viewpoint, you seem unable to admit the fact that in some aspects you are simply wrong. As has been pointed out previously the FSA was formed by Labour in 1997, Thatcher had no part in its formation nor the resulting deregulation.
Throwing out financial sounding words you have read in the newspapers doesn’t mean you understand the situation, after all until recently Mr Brown didn’t and neither did the Governor of the Bank of England. Also remember the FSA maintain that short selling is a legitimate tool of the UK financial market – I know I check their bulletins regularly, since I do actually work in the financial industry!
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A posting on another site has drawn my attention to a Mail on Sunday article entitled "Brown to undertake whirlwind tour of UK to meet the people living in recession blackspots":
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1104818/Brown-undertake-whirlwind-tour-UK-meet-people-living-recession-blackspots.html
"Whirlwind" has a certainy irony for the Iron Chancellor, as Hosea succinctly put it:
For they sow the wind
And they reap the whirlwind
The standing grain has no heads;
It yields no grain.
Should it yield, foreigners would swallow it up
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Can I ask where he gave his speech?
And just who where the ten or so people applauding at each painfully rehearsed moment?
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Delboy:
Nice bodyswerve mate, you're definately a professional blogger. :-)
You must remember Piers' somewhat... acrimonious, shall we say, departure from Mirror Group HQ?? Faked photo's of Brit troops indulging in shenanigans in Basra, that turned out to be in the back of a 4 ton truck in a TA Compound in Preston??? Sly Bailey having security guards throw him out of the building?
You like Piers? So does Gordon. Never would have thought that. Britains Got Talent, my @rse.
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derekbarker says ...Stop being so self righteous, GB is doing what every other G8 nation and many more are doing, helping people in their time of need.
You what? Didn't you hear him just say that IF the rest of the world followed his plan it'd work? The man's on a no hoper, there's no way the rest of the world are going to follow his madcap ideas if borrowing and borrowing. They may give him an occasional nod of recognition but that's not a nod to say' Yeah, Gords, we's agreein' wiv yous.'
Didn't the Germans treasury folk not say before Christmas that Gords ideas were ridiculous?
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"Labour will demand to know where the money's coming from"
I just could not believe this comment Nick when we have a government preparing to spend billions and billions and we would all like to know where that money is coming from.
No one will tell us so the rest is left to the imagination.
Labour are the last party on earth to demand to know where anyone else is getting the money from
That just has to be the quote of the day.
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#76
Question 1: Gordon Brown deserves:
1) To be tarred and feathered
nah.. waste of good feathers we need 'em for our duvets to help keep us warm through this cold recession and we need the tar for repairing the rotten roads we have.
2) To be flogged with rhinoceros hide whips dipped in brine
nah... got to think of saving the rhinos and anyhow just think of the carbon waste importing 'em.
3) To be imprisoned in the Tower of London for treason
nah.. we, the tax payer would end up paying for his keep.
4) To spend a whole year in the pillory and have rotten tomatoes thrown at him, one for every person he has crushed with debt
more like it. :o)
5) To be sent to work in the salt mines
Too warm and cosy down there... big machines to help him etc etc... too cushy for the likes of him.
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For all those who do not understand:-
It is not a case of 'where will the money come from...?' It is already ours. That is before the government swipes it by taking a cut before we get our savings interest! People in the main are better users of their own money than are governments - of whatever hue.
It will not encourage savings at a time of recession! The extra money in basic tax payer pockets will be spent on essentials, thus boosting the economy. Basic tax payers, of whatever age, cannot afford the 'luxury' of saving any tax hand-back.
VAT reductions (although negated on petrol and diesel) at a time when goods are being heavily discounted to achieve cashflow at the expense of profits, shows an inability to think outside of the envelope.
It is called common sense - and all readers need to do to get a good dose of it is to just throw away their political prejudices for a moment, and think beyond the end of their noses!
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I think that many people do not realise the aim of the removal of tax on savings.
Many retired people live on the interest on their savings. In fact these are the ones most likely to have savings as the 30-60 have mortgages and the under 30s have student loan debt. I certainly do not begrudge pensioners who have been prudent (remember that word) and accrued savings to improve their retirement - I am not a Labour supporter after all!
So assume £100,000 savings - you could probably get 7% interest (£7,000) - tax @ 20% (£1,400) = £5,600. Now you could get 4% (£4,000) - 20% (£800) making £3,200 - a loss of £2400 or £45 per week.
If the Tory plan goes into action you get £4,000 - a gain of £800 BUT you are still wose off than this time last year.
(Oh and just remember that the earrnings you make on your savings result in you losing benefits)
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# 133
'Who has £250,000 in the bank?'
How about any pensioner south of Hull who has sold their house in the past 5 years to subsidise the falling value of their pension / annuity / stock market investments.
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#123
Potbelly,
Would that be E- nglish with a capital E
or not!
OK, so the do nothing party has a plan?
would that be the plan? to do nothing to help anyone but create tax cuts for the rich?
Jeez! bell boy, let the strings loose.
@... Anorak....can you elaborate on your conservative agenda? me thinks not!
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Our system here in the US has its drawbacks, to be certain. But the prospect of all seats in the House (as well as 1/3 of the Senate seats) up for grabs every two years, as a black-letter feature of the Constitution, does help legislators focus.
Hard to imagine you good folks going this long without the opportunity to vote on what is happening to you!
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They, Labour and the Tories, are always far more fixated on each other than they are on us, the people.
Hence the routine political tit-for-tat, savings 'here' for spending cuts 'there'.
As it has turned out, since the disaster of Equitable Life 'the so-called Rolls-Royce pension fund' coupled with Browns ill-advised abolition of pension tax credits a decade ago, many people instead poured their money into property, particularly buy-to-let'.
Now they may have come unstuck there too.
Seems like there is no hiding place for the hapless saver.
I do not have the answer for you but more trustworthy financiers and politicians would be a great place to start.
Happy New Year!
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#125
What a narrating narrow-minded catharsis you are "yellowbelly"
A real theoretical carrion (dead and void of debate)
Appalling rants......Anorak.
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New Year, same Mr.Robinson, the Government's apologist.
Put an idea into the public domain, however good or stupid and await the comments from pages such as this. Then act according to the howls of outrage from the sensible.
Currently awaiting protests about recapitalisation of banks, they forgot so many were off sick with 'flu or on holiday, still, with £b + or - floating, what are a few days to wait?
This is called GOVERNMENT under this regime, believe it or not?
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Phoenix we have four children. We had four under the age of six but the last two were twins.
We didn't order twins but we got them!
We never went on benefits, we both worked and looked after our family ourselves.
It is a former Tory idea that Child Benefit should be means tested.
Think about it - wealthy pop stars, entrepreneurs, even titled and royal people get it. They are embarrassed by getting it; they are the first to say they don't need it.
Bet Labour tries to copy that Tory policy now......wait for it...
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#150 fubar
Yes, I remember that incident well.
However fubar, I'm sure you'll have the kicking boots on soon.
Hey! I did laugh at the Britains got talent bit.
"STAGE MANAGED" or just pure Cameron trip/trap.
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118.
Still don't get it. Better pay takes me £2000 into the 40% band, I get £966 after tax and NI.
£100000 at 3% AER gives me £3000 untaxed, 40% tax takes away £1200 of that. Net loss £234, but then I can't make head nor tail of Excell.
It is theoretical, but I think you get the point!
I rather liked the suggestion of a flat rate of 20% on all taxable income. Think how much we would save on civil service pay!! No disincentives for self advancement on a flat rate.
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Good idea David! Let's sign the petition on No 10 website, get Crash Gordon out and get Britain back on the rails.....
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Fianance/
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Phoenix Tracey Emin is the name that escapes you! A slightly unhinged artist who hails from Margate.
Been there done that etc. with my art school training and I dispise the Emperor's New Clothes set who patronise those ghastly artists!
On the other hand, Francis Bacon. Now if only he were still alive, he would do a wonderful portrait of Crash Gordon. Features in juxtaposition, negative shapes......Oooooh the mind boggles....
Stop me someone......
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Just for the sake of accuracy, to correct in particular derekbarker's "factoids" and also Yvette Cooper's soundbite on the R4 news just now....
The Conservative policy is to cut THE RATE OF GROWTH OF GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE, not the actual value of expenditure. For the hard of understanding (I think that includes both Barker and Cooper) that means expenditure will continue to go up, just not as fast as Brown wants it too.
Therefore anyone wobbling on about "Tory cuts" is venturing into the territory of fiction (and indeed if you do so having read this, then you are knowingly producing fiction, for which there is a short and well-known alternative word).
Right, let's hope that keeps the debate in the realms of the factual (and out of the Labour spin zone).
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The conservative party are yet again. Doing what they do best, shut themselves away from the people, what Britain needs is government intervention. As opposed to leaving businesses alone. Is this a step back to laissez-faire liberalism, which Maggie used during the 1980s. The last thing we need right now is tax cuts, it is just the wrong thing to do.
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What a narrating narrow-minded catharsis you are "yellowbelly"
A real theoretical carrion (dead and void of debate)
Appalling rants......Anorak.
Are derekbarker's posts from a real person or are they automatically generated from buggy NuLab software? I suspect the latter.
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No-one has yet answered 118's question...
and what of 133's point?
These proposals sound great, but the actual amount saved by 99 per cent of savers would be loose change.
It's only those lucky few with 100K plus in the bank who would see any discernible benefit. It has to be suspected then that this is just DC looking after his own, as in the proposed inheritance tax changes.
Savers will only benefit long-term from the return of base rates between 4 and 5 per cent. This requires economic growth, ie the very thing which the world's governments are trying to stimulate via higher public spending...anything which deflates the economy (like govt spending cuts) will hurt savers long term- someone, like a bank, has got to want to pay them a decent rate of interest.
Oddly enough, you can even now get risk-free 4.25 per cent from National Savings 1 year fixed.
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Come on Derek, give up and take a few years rest. You really are embarrassing yourself quite badly. Only a few weeks ago you had quite a cohort of labour-sponsored Hoons on here, but you seem to be the only one thick-skinned enough not to feel an overwhelming sense of shame.
This tax reduction on savings is a very sensible idea, and would get those people who use the interest from their savings to supplement their income to spend more, not less.
I'm not convinced about the point it ends though. I would have thought that not paying tax on the first 2000 pounds (say) of interest a year, (whether the saver is a standard rate tax-payer or not) would be a fairer scheme.
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OldSouth @ 158
You are very polite about us English, Sir.
We English are stuck with a democratic deficit which basically has not fundamentally changed since the US founding fathers decided that they could devise a better way a few hundred years ago.
Only the politically apathetic English could put up with such a state of affairs.
Even now we are mostly governed by Scots, which is rather like Americans accepting Canadian professional politicians coming down to Washington DC and calling the shots.
Yes sir, we English have completely lost the political plot.
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My post @ 3.33p.m.
"Not full derek, just sitting back and laughing at you making a complete @rse of yourself.
I was also giving you the chance to answer all those questions put to you by other posters that you conveniently ignore.
By the way, can you confirm the date the FSA was set up for me, I gave you the link to help you?
As english is clearly not your first language, your post reproduced above is a good example of this, I'll give you a couple of hours to come up with the answers we are all waiting for, in english!"
===
157. At 5:28pm on 05 Jan 2009, derekbarker wrote:
#123
Potbelly,
Would that be E- nglish with a capital E
or not!
OK, so the do nothing party has a plan?
would that be the plan? to do nothing to help anyone but create tax cuts for the rich?
Jeez! bell boy, let the strings loose.
@... Anorak....can you elaborate on your conservative agenda? me thinks not!
===
derekbarking replies at 5.28p.m. Not bad, got it within 5 minutes.
Derek, I'll gladly answer all your questions, after you have answered all the outstanding questions posed to you by me and other posters on here today. You haven't exactly been forthcoming with straightforward answers to questions, have you?
Learning from your Great Leader Gordon the Golem are you?
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#16 Say hello to #17
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Seriously now
Aside from all the vague policy details - from both sides.
Where did Cameron make his speech? Who was doing all that mortifying clapping?
If, as I suspect, they are Tory researchers and the like, Dave really needs to put a leash on them.
Terribly embarrassing to be caught paying people to applaud you.
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161#New Year, same Mr.Robinson, the Government's apologist.
I think that Nick just plays devil's advocate and it's working. Gets everyone chatting along for or against what he blogs. :o)
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In the midst of this cold winter of discontent, it warms the cockles of my heart (whatever they are) to know that even after 19 years, the memory of Margaret Thatcher causes such anguish to derekbarking and his ilk.
I trust that this unpleasant experience is augmented by the knowledge that once Brown and his shambolic government are booted out of office, Labour (Old, Nu or second-hand) is unlikely to be re-elected for a generation -if ever.
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A list of proposals from the "do nothing" Tories
>abolishing income tax on savings for everyone on the basic rate of tax
> raising the tax allowance for pensioners by £2,000
> publishing reports, for consultation, on green tech incubators and the green environmental market
> undertaking a full-scale review of the creative industries
> financing National Loan Guarantee Scheme to help businesses
> freeze council tax for two years
> abolish Stamp Duty for nine out of ten first-time buyers
> provide tax cuts for new jobs with a £2.6bn package of tax breaks to get people into work, funded by money that would otherwise go on unemployment benefit
> cut the main rate of corporation tax to 25p and the small companies' rate to 20p, paid for by scrapping complex reliefs and allowances
> introduce a £50bn National Loan Guarantee Scheme to underwrite bank lending to businesses and get credit flowing again
> give small and medium-sized businesses a six-month VAT holiday, funded by a 7.5% interest rate on delayed payments
> cut National Insurance by 1% for six months for firms with fewer than five employees, paid for from the above changes to the company tax regime
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Del:
Kicking boots? Nah, theres no point mate.
Too many people too entrenched in their positions. Nothings gonna change what they think. You know it, I know it, Nick knows it. We're all just going through the motions here. Nothing is going to change this way.
I'm already on medication for high blood pressure as it is..... mind you thats for eating too much at Gordon Ramsay's restaurants, smoking too many Cuban cigars and drinking too much single malt, rather than getting angry at political bloggers :-)
No, I'm finding it much more fun sitting on the sidelines and watching.
Like a kind of Ken Clarke figure... but with Prada's instead of Hush Puppies.
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166. At 6:13pm on 05 Jan 2009, flamepatricia @166,
I once trod in a portrait of Brown.
It took me a week of scrubbing and cleaning to get the stench out of my shoe.
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162. flamepatricia
Unfortunately, we were denied a large family, something we deeply regret. Children bring such joy, and often heartbreak too, but that is all part of the tapestry of life.
166. flamepatricia Phoenix Tracey Emin is the name that escapes you! A slightly unhinged artist who hails from Margate.
Slightly unhinged? I'd say she has completely flipped her lid!
Yes, Francis Bacon could make an interesting portrait of Brown, so could Lucien Freud.
By the way, checked out Hotter shoes, and they appear excellent.
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re me at 84 and post 91
I have just learnt the NuCons' Cameroon bribe to me is £500 a year (raising the pensioner personal allowance or £9 a week) and maybe an extra £2 a week from the interest thing though most people won't do the calculation. This is compared with the £11.00 pw (per head) that someone has estimated I got from Gordon Brown' VAT reduction which NuCon may withdraw along with other sleath cuts on pensioners' income, bus passes, heating allowances and eye tests etc.
The example is very well chosen even a little muddled with a married couple both getting the same pension (hows it made up?) and set at the rate which is roughly the AVERAGE (the median is lower) income level of pensioners who have 'private pensions'.
NuCon in England can't control NHS expenditure or educational expenditure in the other UK 'Nations' nor can they control actual expenditure on Education in individual authorities in England. The suggested 2.5% cut in Local Authority expenditure sounds like the usual "slice a bit of everything approach".... childrens and adult services (not education) crime and disorder, bin collections etc.
Poster of 91 should really pay more attention at the back (or has he been awol from keeping up with NuCon developments). Gordon confirmed the other day to the Cameroon Tony Blair' s promise that shadow minsters could talk to Civil Servants from January 1st 2009. But you can make a good shot at public expenditure cuts from the Public Spending Review of 2007 and programmes announced within that framework, even by just reviewing the Departmental websites and parliamentary announcements.
My conclusion is Cameroon not only doesn't know what to do but doesn't know what he's doing.
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NuLab are clearly desperate as Pravda erm I mean the BBC has slowed moderation to a snail's pace. The loathsome NuLab and their freeloading BBC puppets are the lowest of the low.
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162. flamepatricia wrote:
I don't agree with means testing under any circumstances - too much like the old '30s Depression days, which my parents spoke about. Snoops would enter one's home, poking about and handling family 'treasures' and demeaning the unfortunate families. Those too wealthy to need Child Benefits, although they have contributed more than most to it financially through taxation, can always donate it on a regular basis, say by direct payments to a charity of their choice.
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At least this proposal from Cameron is a little reward for the responsible, unlike the Browns do nothing for the responsible and reward the feckless of society policies.
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168. At 6:51pm on 05 Jan 2009, Gravyfox wrote:
The conservative party are yet again. Doing what they do best, shut themselves away from the people, what Britain needs is government intervention. As opposed to leaving businesses alone. Is this a step back to laissez-faire liberalism, which Maggie used during the 1980s. The last thing we need right now is tax cuts, it is just the wrong thing to do.
===
Gravyfox, you are derekbarker and I claim my £5.
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re: 175, SimonInverness
Terribly embarrassing to be caught paying people to applaud you.
Almost as embarrassing as paying NuLab minions to swarm the blogosphere for you. I'm looking at you derekbarker.
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When the obituaries of this benighted government are written, the major theme will be that they turned us into a nation of borrowers, reversing the greatest cultural achievement of the Thatcher years, which was to persuade people from all backgrounds to make personal provision for their long term retirement plans, which neither the state, nor their employers could afford.
This government has preached the mantra that debt is good. The most cynical con perpetrated was to massage the employment figures by a massive expansion of the higher education system (largely of dubious utility) financed by personal student debt. That generation could turn out to be extremely unforgiving politically.
Even with interest rates at historically low levels, Cameron is right. Anything that gets people saving again and out of the debt mentality is to be applauded. Look at how the post-war Japanese boom was built on the back of companies like Nomura, which was to all intents and purposes a savings bank, whose agents collected peoples' piggy bank savings on a door to door basis.
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170. At 6:56pm on 05 Jan 2009, MunichMadrid7980 wrote:
No-one has yet answered 118's question...
and what of 133's point?
These proposals sound great, but the actual amount saved by 99 per cent of savers would be loose change.
===
Didn't you see the queues of people waiting outside branches of Northern Rock trying to withdraw their life savings when there was a panic (caused by Robert Peston) that it might fail?
It never ceases to amaze me the antipathy that NuLabour and its apologists have to people who have saved for their retirement.
The same people who praise Brown/ Darling to the skies for bringing forward the £4.55 per week increase in the State Pension.
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Before government apparatchiks accuse the Tories of having uncosted plans, they might care to reflect that the major reason for this is that Uncle Joe Brown has broken with constitutional practice, by refusing the opposition access to the Civil Service. A politically double-edged sword laying the government open to charges of concealment - things are far worse than even you think.
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175. At 7:24pm on 05 Jan 2009, SimonInverness wrote:
Seriously now
Aside from all the vague policy details - from both sides.
Where did Cameron make his speech? Who was doing all that mortifying clapping?
If, as I suspect, they are Tory researchers and the like, Dave really needs to put a leash on them.
Terribly embarrassing to be caught paying people to applaud you.
===
Sounds just like the Labour Party Conference. And then when one of your own, an 82 year old, dares to heckle, throw him out and have him arrested under anti-terrorism laws.
Terribly embarrassing and shameful.
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#36
I like the idea of a petition of this nature.
There is a flaw in the logic however. We may get 50 million signatures, but lets face it, Gordo doesn't actually listen to anyone does he?
It must be annoying to have to talk into a mirror in order to meet someone who's word you respect.
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#183
pttp, I guess there's no harm in your placid approach, you may wish to placate a friendly poem.
And please! stop throwing buns to your tenbelly friend.
Now! what was that plan............................
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182 cping500
You seem to think that the cut in VAT benefits you to the tune of £11.00 per week.
Interesting. That means your expenditure on VAT items, not including booze, fags and fuel, is over £500 per week.
Are you the Duke of Westminster?
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NuLab have killed Great Britain
With their greed and lies and spin,
They even favour criminals---
They're the enemy within.
Honour, truth and justice
Have no meaning for McBroon.
O bring on the election,
it cannot come too soon.
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#37
Good stuff.
I like the comments because it highlights the two nutty things that have happened in 2008 - the total mess over the 10p tax cut and the 2 1/2 % VAT cut - which has proved to be so incredibly unpopular - because the effect of it has been so invisible and we will all have to pay for it some time when.
I think it does show that Gordo and Ali D are struggling with an overcomplex tax system - that GB himself has made more complex - and they cannot judge the effects of changes they are making.
Labour seem to think that this thrashing about with huge sums of public money is the solution to a massive problem, and they seem not to recognise when they are just digging a deeper hole for us all to climb out of sometime when.
It will be interesting to see what "help for savers" Labour comes up with following Gordo's revelation on the Andrew Marr show - it sounded like a sounbite to me and he had nothing to back it up with.
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Would Anorak and Dufflecoat happily accept the single currency or will young Dave Isolate us more from the EU?
Would Anorak and Dufflecoat care to say whether they favour the banking bail out or adopt young Daves stance and let all failing banks go to the wall?
Would Anorak and Dufflecoat accept we had ten years of consecutive growth until the irresponsible bankers like N, Rock messed up?
Would Anorak and Dufflecoat please let the public know how to save when the banks themselves have a liquidity problem?
Would the deadly duo Anorak and Dufflecoat
alias yellowbelly and fairlopian-tubester just try and be honest for a change.
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#26 'Everyone with an ounce of common sense can see that public spending can be cut quite easily without any noticable impact on services whatsoever'
Ok so this isn't going to be a typical Tory 'we going to be reducing government waste' and is going to be actually going straight for public services, but with no 'noticable impact' oh good. How long does no noticable impact last?
And does this not just purely add up to a Conservative Party that has no clue what so ever and producing what really is an insignificant policy idea because of the reason it makes good headlines..
Still Tories talking about making jobs and helping out those who will likely suffer the most would be just, out of character for the Blue side of the political divide.
It'll be a campaign for 'Support to those hard up souls whose shares portfolio has taken a bit of a beating and are innocent victims of a capitalist system' next.
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182. At 7:38pm on 05 Jan 2009, cping500 wrote:
re me at 84 and post 91
I have just learnt the NuCons' Cameroon bribe to me is ?500 a year (raising the pensioner personal allowance or ?9 a week) and maybe an extra ?2 a week from the interest thing though most people won't do the calculation. This is compared with the ?11.00 pw (per head) that someone has estimated I got from Gordon Brown' VAT reduction which NuCon may withdraw along with other sleath cuts on pensioners' income, bus passes, heating allowances and eye tests etc.
===
So Cameron's £11 per week bribe is bad, but Brown's £11 per week bribe is good? OK.
Oh, by the way, the "NuCon" bit doesn't work, whereas ZaNuLabour not only has a ring to it, but is also frighteningly accurate as well.
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Nick:
Are the Tories about to pledge to abolish tax on savings?
[I think that in some ways, they are about to make this pledge]...
~Dennis Junior~
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#70
I don't think Cameron is encouraging saving in a recession, he's re-establishing the notion that saving should be encouraged by government, that it is "good" and that the main thrust of help should be towards those who will benefit most from it.
The more affluent will naturally have some money put to one side, it would be unnatural to spend every penny when you may want to put children through university or have a grand wedding.
The less well off have to try very hard to save and it is unjust to deduct small amounts of tax from small savers accounts, when all they may want is to save for a holiday or for retirement. If you have savings, then you are more inclined to spend it on what you want in the future - regardless of whether there is a recession on or not.
Cameron is talking common sense. Labour, by comparison, have given cash handouts to babies to start a savings account - a notion I never understood.
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187 power-to-the-ppl
You are quite right.
Another embarrassing thing would be having been caught paying people with public money to write supportive letters for you in the local newspaper (Jacqui Smith), or schmoozing up your wikipedia entry (James Purnell). See over at Guido's blog for those ones.
Smith and Purnell are unfit for high office, in my opinion.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
#126
Nice.
We know how much Gordo likes to blow his own trumpet and ignore his failures. Instead of making his clarion calls to the world, perhaps he should have been looking at his own back garden and getting it right. If he was such a sentinel, how come he then chose to stick his head in the sand?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
#203
Careful pttp, referred to the poets corner?
Hmmm...charlatan or characterless.
Charrado.......explain?
Plan ahead young man!
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Derek, you've got a cheek mate,
asking - no, demanding - honesty for a change.
Thats a beauty. Chutzpah of the highest order mate, I salute you. You might just get away with it as well. :-)
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201#Aristocrates.
So when Cameron says
Save, Save, Save
he isn't encouraging Saving during the recession.
Interesting interpretation even by the standards of this blog
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#170
I don't agree with the idea that 100K is needed as savings before we see a discenible difference if tax was dropped.
I've often seen 25 quid deducted as tax from modest savings - and over a few years that becomes a lot of money (to me). I really hate it when I see that 13p tax has been deducted from my little account! I always feel like I could spend that money more effectively than the government can, so why not let me have a go?
If I had all my tax back off interest on savings I bet I could get a new car with it.
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158 oldsouth
I know, tell me about it
altho you guys were stuck with Bush for a four year fixed term, so you yanks aren't without a degree of frustration
but at least he couldn't just quit and let his bully of a friend take over
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197 DB
I don't know how you do it mate, I couldn't spout such things even if I was paid
do you honestly think your sham arguments hold up with any readers?
here is your post in debating terms:
para 1: strawman
para 2: strawman
para 3: cherry-picking
para 4: meaningless
para 5: hypocrisy
saying 'tories smell' would hold more water
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I wish politicians wouldn't use repetitive slogans to spice up their speeches and anouncements. It's off putting. Just a simple message would do the trick!
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#207
Fubar' I thank you my friend,
Now! stop making me laugh..............
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#199
I think you are forgetting one thing.
To 'save' £11.00 per week with Labour you have to spend £500 per week on vatable goods! If you just reduce your spending by £15.00 you save more than Labour are giving you.
The £11.00 the Tories are giving you applies if your total earnings are in excess of £11600 or so - what you do with the savings is entirely up to you.
Naturally the Tories benefit does not help those whose earnings are substantially less than this amount but DOES help those who saved for a personal pension and who also saved for a rainy day. i.e. those who were really PRUDENT rather than the spendthrifts.
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Call an election.
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no 208
So when Cameron says
Save, Save, Save
he isn't encouraging Saving during the recession.
And when Gordon said 'prudence, prudence, prudence' he didn't mean during the boom?
Now is definitely a time for major belt-tightening. Both individual and governmental. We need to pay off our debts as quickly as possible and house prices need to revert to a sensible level before confidence will automatically be restored.
All that Gordon Brown running about like a demented bag lady promising 100bn here and 100bn there does is scare the wits out of anybody with even a passing understanding of how confidence works.
The only coherence in Gordon Brown's mania is that in the good times (due to your brilliant economic stewardship) you squander money you don't have and in the 'bad' times (entirely unforeseeable and totally somebody elses fault) you squander five times more money you don't have.
I've got to tell you that as an economic strategy it's insane.
For the lowest of personal motives (his imagined statue on the vacant plinth outside Westminster no doubt) he is prepared to utterly destroy the UK economy on the offchance that something, somewhere will turn up. Maybe a million ton meteor of solid Gold will plunge from space into the lake District. Or something. Certainly there is nothing in the PBR to show how we'll be paying off this one million million of debt he plans to run off.
Apart from a dog-whistle peep to the Labour core that they're going to stick the rich for an extra 5% which will apparently raise a thumping 2 or 3bn quid a year. Hardly enough to pay back 1000 bn but that's not the point is it.
Otherwise his plan seems to be to simply print as much money as is necessary to keep paying the million extra jobs he created in 2001/2. And that's the top and tail of it.
To hell with paying it back. To hell with the currency. To hell with the economy. To hell with the savers. To hell with the pensioners. To hell with you all. I'm the PM and I'm going to do exactly as I want regardless of how insane it is.
And these 400-odd Labour MPs will back me because they are as thick as bull's beef and because they would rather totally destroy the UK to spite one old woman than admit they were so profoundly wrong.
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Nick
Just watched your piece on the ten o'clock news. You referred to 'small amounts' when talking about money that would not be taken in tax under the Conservative proposal, but would remain with the saver.
With interest rates being so low, the amount of saving is obviously reduced, but is surely better than nothing. Remember the saying 'take care of the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves'?
Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight has just posed the question is this a policy or a fix. He asks, 'do the sums add up?'.
With you two guys doing such a sterling job, the Labour party should release all their PR people and save the money.
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This is all quite ridiculous!
Or as the great and wonderful Philosopher, Mary Poppins, said:
WHEN YOU'VE QUITE FINISHED!
Fact:
Labour with all it's experience and knowledge have brought this country to its knees (actually you may as well say Gordon Brown as has had control over the purse strings for years)
Fact:
Our current economic situation is vastly different from past times, so vastly different recovery strategies need to be put in place
Fact:
Basic economics is NOT hard
For goodness' sake - we need to stop all the bickering.
If noone out there is equal to the task, I'LL do it
The only people who will whinge and moan are those who orchestrated this whole mess in the first place.
My qualifications:
I am a wife, mother, ex bank manager in charge of lending (before the silly season), ex teacher, currently director and owner of 4 successful companies.
Neither my home life nor work environment has relied on credit (with the exception of a mortgage which my husband and I are paying off as quickly as we can).
We do not take extortionate salaries from our companies, only what we need. We value our staff from the bottom up, and pay them well for a good job done.
I may not be a Grocer's daughter (my father is a retired investment analyst and my mother a retired banking and stockbroking secretary)
I do have two degrees, but nothing remotely akin to Economics.
To do what needs to be done to get this country on it's feet again is going to be very painful for some, but worth it in the long run. This includes investigating and prosecuting those who have allowed all this to happen.
Unpopular , NON-BROWNIAN measures, but, failing that, we have to declare war on someone.
Personally, I would prefer to go through the pain!
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216. At 11:01pm on 05 Jan 2009, U9461192
Don't despair, Golem Brown is doing his 3 day tour now to tell us all how he is going to create up to 100,000 jobs insulating pensioners' lofts.
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Oh, and getting a handyman in to fix the roof of the local school!
so everything will be OK then.
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Jeremy Paxman now commenting that David Cameron making announcements rather than George Osborne. No mention that Gordon Beown making announcements rather than ALastair Darling.
Paxman also referring to George Osborne time on a yacht. No mention of another on that yacht. Remind me who it was........
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Announcements from two other major economies today, Germany and USA a further economic stimulus to get more money into their economies.
I don't think either said Save Save Save to their populus as a way out of the global recession.
How exactly will, if everyone was now to save a higher proportion of their income, help in the current recession?
Who will it help?
Industry?
Small Businesses?
SErvices Sector?
Construction?
Please let me know, I'm intrigued.
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#218 Tigerjayj
You have my vote, when can you start?
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15. doctor-gloom wrote:
Oh nearly forget, I'd love to see a tax on lying. Gordon and his marry band of woodentops'll keep the whole economy afloat with that policy alone.
Oops! Some people have short memory only me thinks, or are they being rather selective? The Tories take some beating when it comes to lying. But drawing upon 22 years experience of "taking them on", starting from Thatcher, through Major and then onto Bliar ( a closet Tory & admirer of Thatcher) I would not currently trust the leadership of either the Tory or the Labour party. Prior to the start of those 22 years, which by the way is still on-going, I had served my country in the Army for a total in excess of 14+ years.
It's rather ironic to find that I'm fighting for many of the same things that others like me fought in two World Wars for, fought and died, fought and were maimed etc. And they are always telling us lessons will be learened!!!
The Palace of Westminster is a great building - pity about it's occupants, and their apparent very long-term inability to hold the executive to account. And for as long as the executive misleads parliament in any way we do not even live in a parliamentary democracy, and there's little of any other kind in evidence.
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#218-
Well said, unfortunately it is politically incorrect these days to say we have to go through a certain amount of pain to get the country back on the rails. Overspending has got us in trouble and there appears to be some myth thet now the country is broke we can continue to spend to get us out of trouble.
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218#
All those qualifications and you still think your opinions are "Facts"
Perhaps a "degree" of modesty would help.
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The sums don't add up! They certainly do not, Gordon was in the chair for 10yrs and we do not even know what the sums we owe are, some are off line, like all the PFI, and who knows what else. It is rather amazing that you continually let Labour get away with that line.
Labour ar the 'Know nothing Party'. They know nothing about business, Mandy has come back to spin and so far the business comunity say he has not made any difference, because he belongs to the 'Know nothing Party'. None of them have been in business and use consultants continually, who themselves have not got a personal indepth grasp of business, ~(it is all business models and lovely slogans like 'added value') they listen to members of Quangos, who have no great depth of knowledge in business, and are hugely staffed by those sympathetic to the government. This government are still being given an easy ride by the media, the only time you are critical is when you are dealing with any of the opposition. You are too close to these people to be any use to us to provide an unbiased view.
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#227-
very true, how many labour ministers have had any experience of running their own buisness. They only like spending other peoples money (the taxpayers) if they had little experince of running a buisness they might not have indiscrimanantely wasted billions.
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How exactly will, if everyone was now to save a higher proportion of their income, help in the current recession?
Prices will have to come down if we save more money. Or the meaningless rubbish that we use to fill our empty lives will go unsold. And the people who peddle the meaningless rubbish will have to find another job. Ideally one that doesn't involve selling cheap Chinese crap that we dont really need.
Who will it help?
In the medium and long term it will help all of us. We won't be so in thrall to the consumer society that seeks to measure our personal worth or status by the latest gadget from Japan or Korea or China. We won't need to buy houses with four toilets when, gifted though I am, I can only use one at a time. With the money we're not spending on over-priced houses and cheap Chinese crap we can pay off our mortgages earlier, enjoy our leisure time more instead of working two jobs just to 'get on the property ladder'. Afford to travel around the UK and further afield.
That kind of stuff.
But the Maximum Leader wants us all to borrow as much money as possible to keep the whole illusion going for just one more election so he can dump the whole unsustainable pyramid of borrowing and squandering in somebody else's lap and blame them.
No thanks Gordon. I'll just save my money for now.
The major risk of course is that this is the mistake the white farmers made in Zimbabwe. They just sat tight assuming the insanity would end and then found themselves trapped in a hostile country with all their assets depreciated to practically nothing. Internal exiles trapped by the destruction of the currency.
I fear that will be Gordon's end-game if the UK public is stupid enough to re-elect him.
We must hope not.
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#197 Barking Derek
Made me smile - but I'm afraid it's too much trouble to change my sign-in to "Dufflecoat". Perhaps I'll bear that in mind for future reference. (Hey, if I get another sign-on, I could "toggle" between the two!)
At the risk of repetition, I don't carry a torch for Thatcher, the Boy Dave, the boy Clegg, Compo or anyone else. I try to give credit when it's due (you'll even find one comment of mine that has some moderate praise for Gordon Brown, but never on his "grasp" of economics), but most of the time am critical of most of our leading politicians.
One thing I look for and admire in politicians is honesty. For this reason, it might shock you that I actually have time for Alistair Darling. I may be wrong, but I see him as a man trying to do the right thing - if only his "boss" would leave him alone to do it.
What has been clear to me, for a number of years, is how badly Gordon Brown was running the economy as Chancellor. When he became PM, I was secretly pleased because he would reap the benefits (the whirlwind?) of what he had sown as Chancellor. With hindsight, one thing is clear - I under-estimated his capacity.
You talk about ten years of "growth" in banking "until" the likes of Northern Rock messed up. We know now (if we didn't before) that this growth was just an illusion, built on spiralling credit. The foundations were rotten and the whole edifice would come crumbling down.
I'm not sure if you know what you mean by "liquidity", but what the banks need isn't more repacked debt or tax-payer loans or foreign buy-outs, but good, safe, solid deposits - for which they should expect to pay out a fair and reasonable and commercial rate of interest.
On the basis of those deposits, they can then lend to sound borrowers, making a respectable margin on the interest received.
The "Brown plan" was to apply a poultice to a gangrenous open sore. We don't know how bad the wound is, but we're hoping that the 40Bn to patch up Northern Rock and the 37Bn so far for the other banks will be sufficient - because UK plc is struggling to meet the interest payments on its national debt.
Personally I do not believe in state aid, (certainly not the way it has been applied), but I know of wiser heads that do. Where the plan fails (present and future tense) is that we are not getting the tax-payer value for our stake (and risk) involved. The banks are not being held sufficiently to account.
As far as the single currency, it isn't about tourist rates and the dear old pound (though these things matter), but it is being able to manage our own economy which runs on a different cycle to the rest of the EU. This is the biggest problem Germany faces - they do not have control over interest rates.
As far as the basis of this blog, the Conservative plan comes over as little more than a cheap trick - in the same class as the VAT cuts. Might fool a few people, even make a slight difference to some, but have no great benefit to the vast majority or to the economy. Could do better.
There we are - honest, and I hope, impartial answers to your points.
Oh, and I'm quite willing to accept that you might disagree with me on these things. I'm willing to listen to a different perspective, but please don't insult me - I can spot a party line at ten paces.
Now, let's hope we can raise the quality of debate on this site and still keep a bit of humour while we do so.
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229. At 11:40pm on 05 Jan 2009, U9461192
Which is why the ZaNuLabour epithet is so apt, and so accurate.
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229 uetc
I repreat
Who will it help?
Industry?
Small Businesses?
SErvices Sector?
Construction?
in the UK
Say over the next 2 years.
I think the answer (as you know) is "none of the above"
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#230
Dufflecoat and blinkers, entrenched in your dogmatic blue coat.
Come on tell the truth!
It's free.
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Tigerjayj
You see the problem, lefties like etonrifle come out of the woodwork and slag off anyone or anything that does not conform to "Labour knows best. We are the idiots who got you in this mess, so we are the idiots uniquely well placed to get you out of this mess."
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#218 Sorry but you sound far too qualified to be chancellor! Two degrees and actual real-life experience? That would never do in Westminster!
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I can start next Monday- got to give ole Gordy time to move out!
'Fraid I don't have nicely flavoured cordials for him though!
Eaton Rifle - thank you so much for your kind words!
Fancy jumping into a pavement picture anyone? Seems the only way out of this mess!
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#233 derekbarking mad
Your dosage seems to have gone wrong mate, you are talking in incoherent riddles, you hoon.
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Truth?
A marvellous commodity.
I'll buy shares in it - after all, as my Grandmother says:
"the truth will out"
Love to see that - could even be a new reality TV show -
Now that's one Big Brother I would watch!
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#230
Good post, I tip my hat!
Brown didn't lead the scores to the banks, to borrow for the big new house, Brown didn't inflate their salaries by as much as 8 times to make the mortgage happen, people got greedy, bankers got careless.
Come on! making the horse drink water, I think not.
Any way, very articulate response, coherent
with shades of a responsible attitude.
Any - chance I could borrow your Dufflecoat
the weathers dreadfully cold..........
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Who will it help?
Industry?
Small Businesses?
SErvices Sector?
Construction?
in the UK
Say over the next 2 years.
I think the answer (as you know) is "none of the above"
Why do you set an artificial timetable of two years? We've just had a decade long boom of monumental proportions on borrowed money.
Brown's solution to the bust (which he totally failed to avert despite his 1997 manifesto promise and repeated boasts at every opportunity right up until it err bust) is to seek to defer the hangover for as long as possible. Just re-open the bar. Drink away chaps. Don't worry about the mess. Somebody'll be along in a while.
We've seen all this before. In the 1970's. Millions of public sector workers feather-bedded and suckling on the private sector and no way to pay them all. It took the IMF and the Thatcher decade to get us over that little debacle and now you seem to think this will all be sorted in two years if we simply print more money and employ 100,000 extra people to install loft insulation. Despite unemployment increasing by that practically every month at the moment.
It is this astounding lack of even basic economics that I find so dispiriting. I mean it's one thing to sound off for the Mirror readers but we're not all that thick you know. This country is shafted. Gordon Brown shafted it and his 'solution' is to deny any culpability and then just press on with the printing presses.
That won't work. Will it? And in your heart you know it hasn't a hope of working. He's just digging an even deeper hole.
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#230 Barking Derek
Is that the best you can do?
Not even an attempt at a serious response?
Perhaps you would like to question some of the information presented?
Disagree with the substance?
Enter a proper debate?
If you cannot, then please don't waste everyone's time with your numerous posts.
Woof.
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234#Brownisahoon
I'm sure tis will be pointless, but if you can find any post where I "slag people off" I'd be surprised and by any stretch how can 226 be descrbed as such?
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237 hoon
I merely give you the term hone, Mr hoon.
Sharpen up your tools, I might even go to second gear?
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242. At 00:00am on 06 Jan 2009, Eatonrifle wrote:
234#Brownisahoon
I'm sure tis will be pointless, but if you can find any post where I "slag people off" I'd be surprised and by any stretch how can 226 be descrbed as such?
===
post #226
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243. At 00:04am on 06 Jan 2009, derekbarker wrote:
237 hoon
I merely give you the term hone, Mr hoon.
Sharpen up your tools, I might even go to second gear?
===
DEREKBARKINGMAD, STEP AWAY FROM THE METHS!
You really are a hoon, aren't you?
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240 U
Alright set your own timescale.
THe 4 Private Sector parts of the economy I mentioned need consumers particularly at the moment. I ask again how will the Save Save Save policy help them?
You seem to be struggling I'm afraid.
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#245
Now! Hoon on a minute here, your in line of cross fire and contradiction or do you just want to continue with the slag.
Take your time?
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#247 derekbarkingupthewrongtree
I can't decipher your meths induced ramblings you old fool.
Baiting you is too easy, no challenge.
I'm of to bed now, something I sincerely doubt you have.
Get your duffel coat and huddle up on your park bench, mate. It's going to be a cold one tonight.
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A trillion pounds of government debt following one of the longest and most benign global booms ever, a totally insane vat reduction which benefits nobody but costs billions, and the labour treasury minister says that the tory approach of saving money (private and public) is "economic madness".
Methinks that tells the electorate everything that they need to know come the next election.
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I thought this blog was supposed to be moderated. Seems to me that several people posting here - led from the front by Derek Barker - would be better off on some student forum, talking about how 'fit' Avril Lavigne is.
Derek's point about the Tory in a duffel coat did make me laugh, though - reminded me of Michael Foot!
Gordon Brown tells us that we are in uncharted territory, but then says that his experience is why we should back him ("no time for a novice"). But if these times are uncharted, then what good is experience?
Mugabe is very experienced at running Zimbabwe. So does that mean he is the right man for the job?
I am like the horse in Animal Farm - I've seen all this before, and I'll see it all again. I just cannot wait until the Government starts the presses rolling and simply prints the missing money (worked a treat in Zimbabwe, didn't it?).
See you in the pub.
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The ZanuLab blog-Hoons are back again. We need to fumigate this blog.
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Nick
I see you haven't made the new years resolution so many of us hoped for.
But then your bridges and/or boats are already burnt beyone repair.
Asking the tories to explain in detail what public spending could be de-squandered is like me saying your expenses should be cut, and you asking me how - but with out giving me a full record.
Send me your expenses and I will tell you how, in the mean time I (and others) will just continue to see opacity and draw our own conclusions... Imperfect, but all that we can do with your expenses, and all that the opposition can do with the government.
p.s. Any Oleg/Mandleson/Yacht update? Any information on mandlesons christmas grand tour?
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246
THe 4 Private Sector parts of the economy I mentioned need consumers particularly at the moment. I ask again how will the Save Save Save policy help them?
You seem to be struggling I'm afraid.
It is you who must defend the Maximum Idiot's policy. Please point to one example in economic history where printing cash did anything other than lead to rampant inflation or, worse, hyper-inflation.
Then, with the 1970's as your reference point ,explain why even 'mere' rampant inflation would be better than a period of contemplation and austerity while we get the economy back to a more balanced footing. One not entirely perched on a mountain of debt.
It's the actual policies of the Eternal Idiot that you need to be defending since those are the ones he's actually following rather than the proposals of the opposition. But for clarity I prefer 'save, save, save' to 'squander, squander, squander'.
We all know Brown has only one policy. Squander. A policy for all seasons.
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Nick
I see your piece http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7812454.stm (Tories return to fray) admits that the 'what are you going to cut' argument against tory savings was a completely bogus line to take.
However, I notice that you only mention Labour taking this line, you make no reference to the BBC's complicity (including your own) in following this line of argument.
You know full well that you were part of this bogus attack, and that you hold some responsiblity for lumbering this country with the disasterous 'new labour years' - which as screwed many of us in the private sector, but feather bedded you and other public sector leeches.
I also notice fewer links from the main BBC pages to you blog - does the truth hurt?
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#226:
Pot Kettle
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Anyone who resorts to sarcastic abuse as much as the dogman does on here has already lost the argument.
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Derek
Given your ample posts I can only assume that you are working in the public sector?
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Blair to get US Medal of Freedom, "for promoting democracy, human rights and peace abroad".
Bush pins medal on the poodle's collar.
It makes me sick that this is happening whilst many hundreds of innocent people, including at least 80 children, are being killed or wounded in Gaza, by weapons made and paid for by the US.
Children are lying in agony right now, burned and with limbs missing, in Gaza's third world hospitals where medical equipment and drugs are being denied them by the Israelis, who are driven not by the Old Testament mentality of an eye-for-an-eye, but four hundred eyes-for-an-eye.
A war sanctioned by George Bush, who has brought the world to its knees in just eight years. In the meantime, this Texan oil multi-millionaire relaxes in the luxury of the White House, whilst Blair counts the millions he made whilst being a LABOUR prime minister, and the UK topples into the abyss of an economic nightmare.
These abominable men have innocent blood on their hands. I wonder how they can sleep at night. If they ever possessed one, their consciences must be seared.
US Medal of Freedom? More like a disgusting travesty.
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I suspect Derek is part of a clone.
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Eaton
In economic terms saving is defined as personal income less personal expenditure. In other words, income that is not consumed by immediately buying goods and services is saved; the proceeds of which tend to be used for real investment.
So given the policies of your hero and his many many years dept powered artificial growth, dont you think that its time for some real prudence.
Time for market and economic correction, time to save and to make savings, time to cut waste, time to focus on cost effectiveness and value. Time to get real.
The party is over.
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The poodle finally gets his rewards
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7812582.stm
Pass the sick bag
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The petition to get rid of Gordon Brown due to gross economic incompetence has risen by circa 200 signatories in 24 hours.
Still not enough people.......... it is a worthy cause:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Fianance/
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Hey! I have a dufflecoat! I own up! Howevever, mine is an Original Montgomery Duffle Coat as worn by our wonderful troops in the second world war fighting for the freedome which this vile, manipulative government is eroding before our very eyes.
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In rip-off Britain, if you are a saver you are gubbed by rotten interest rates, if you are a borrower you are gubbed by pseudo-variable-but not -really-comming-down rates, if you are a voter,now you are gubbed by false promises from the posh wannabe-but- never-have been new Tories.
If you think the economy is bad now, wait till the Tories get in and they will completely wreck it , just like they did before.
Nobody is fooled by this Tory tosh.
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#35
It's not what we're getting now, but what we'll be getting by the time the Conservatives get to implement this policy which matters. I see this going at least the same way Japan has gone, in one of the more optimistic scenarios.
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#232 "Who will it help?"
The answer is all of the above, but probably not in your 2 year time frame.
The way an economy is supposed to work is that people save money with the banks and the banks use those funds to lend to business so that they can grow and to people to buy house to live in (not as "investments"). Alternatively businesses can go to the stock markets where they can raise money by selling shares which people buy with money that they have saved.
In both cases, the bedrock for business growth and investment is the savings. What we have seen over the last 10 years is lending from the banks totally at odds with any sane business practice based upon a deposit base which is far too small and reliant upon the house price bubble to sustain it. The house price bubble has burst, the money which came from the bubble is disappearing into the thin air of which it was made.
In order for the banks to start lending money on reasonable terms again, they need to build up their deposit base - in other words people have to save and that is what will ultimately help drag this country out of the recession we are plunging into.
It will not be pretty, but until house and stock prices have fallen to sustainable levels (IMHO still a long way to go) this mess will get worse and worse as all the illusory money disappears from the economy. This means the banks situation will get worse as well and increased savings brings forward the day when new loans can be covered by the deposit base at a reasonable lending rate. Only then will this country actually be on the way to recovery and I believe we will need far more than 2 years.
The current public borrowing binge threatens only to massively devalue the pound (already down 35% against the Euro since the start of the crisis), making imports more expensive and driving inflation through the roof - destroying the value of the savings which are needed to drive the real recovery.
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#264 onward-ho
Errr if you did not know it the economy is in a bad way now, but at least your admiting the Tories will get in with your wait till the Tories get in line.
I can not see how they can wreck something when it has been so badly wrecked by Brown and his disciples.
And nobody is being fooled by Browns tosh like they have been for the last 11 years.
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If you think the economy is bad now, wait till the Tories get in and they will completely wreck it , just like they did before.
What garbage. It was the Tories wot fixed it. It was painful. But it needed doing. What we have now is a government in denial. A government afraid to tell the truth because to do so would be to admit their complicity in the greatest decade of idiocy in UK history.
Nobody is fooled by this Tory tosh.
Nobody is fooled by this Labour garbage more like. Not one apologist has made any argument as to why the solution for a decade when national debt doubled and private debt trebled is to now quadruple national debt.
Debt is the PROBLEM. People are not borrowing and banks are not lending because we've already got too much debt. We don't need more debt. Debt got us where we are.
Yet the keyboard monkeys of the Nu-Labour project just stick their fingers in their ears and give it 'ner ner ner ner I'm not listening - you caaaan't make me'.
It's like recommending sex as a cure for virginity.
Look I'm sorry Maggie T upset y'all so much. I wasn't her greatest fan either. But she did what she did because it was the tough choice and the right choice. Gordon Brown, by contrast, is incapable of making either a tough choice or the right choice.
He's taking the 'easy' way out. He's afraid to tell us the truth. Which is that he (and we) have borrowed too much and that the UK tax-public spending ratio is unsustainable. We need to either raise taxes or cut public spending. We need to live within our means.
But he lacks the courage to make this simple, self-evident statement. He prefers to perpetuate the illusion that borrowing need never be paid back and that debt is an infinite resource with no down-side.
The man is a clear and present danger to our continued survival.
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Just signed the petition as well.
Wonder why No10 spelt "finance" incorrectly on the link?
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Fianance
Makes it less likely for people to get to the petition does it not??
This government....pulling snidy strokes...surely not..!!
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#265:
Oh but it does matter what we're getting now. Very much so. We''ll be paying for GB's bungling far into the future possibly long after he has left Parliament.
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What odds will anyone give me on when Labour will suddenly come up with a brainwave to eliminate tax on savings?
I will take evens at within 7 days.
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The question we should be asking here.. and asking Derekbarker and is newlabour apologists in particular, is this;
What kind of country do we want our children to inherit?
A country with a morally superior son of the manse spending more and more of our money?
Or a country where sustainable wealth is created from hard work and creativity; where saving for the future is encouraged and where government is a last not a first resort.
'Where there's greed. Margaret Thatcher and the destruction of Britain's future' was a book written by Gordon Brown in 1989. It should be rewritten as 'Where there is an unfettered credit boom. Gordon Brown and the destruction of the UK national balance sheet' It would be an instant best seller.
Of course, it will never be written because no-one is capable of the sort of self righteous preaching that Gordon Brown is.
When the Church of England and the Bishops turn against you there message is simple; son of the manse or no, this is not the country we should bequeath to our children.
Gordon Brown and newlabour are morally bankrupt; lying to make all their numbers add up and borrowing our chidrens' future to finance another round of public sector spending splurges. Britian has become a laughing stock again on the international stage; borrowing Peter to pay Paul. The newlabour model is broken and needs changing; the moral argument for more public sector wastrels and benefits junkies is lost.
Call an election.
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264#
"Posh wannabe but never were Tories"??
Heh, sorry mate, thought you were referring to Mr T Blair there for a minute. Y'know, public school educated, well off backgrounds, upper middle class Islington Champagne socialists, professional politicians who had never done a days real work in their lives. Yeah, that cap certainly seems to fit!
Certainly we were gubbed in rip off Britain by all the things you mentioned. Someone could have done something about it though, couldnt they?
Beats me as to who though. Someone must have been in charge.....
258#
I asked you yesterday how you would fix it instead of ranting. I note you havent done so. I hope all that anti Israeli chestbeating makes you feel better, because I regret to say you show a singularly inappropriate grasp of history and also current military and political fact where this ongoing conflagration is concerned. If you support what Hamas are doing, take it to one of the other AQ sympathising boards. This aint the place for it.
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#264 onward-hope Brown leaves quick.
Your first few words don't help your blog by writting "In rip-off Britain"
We have been being ripped-off by this Government from day one and now its all falling down around Browns ears. The only bad thing is that we are ALL going to have to pay for it.
#268 is dead right, read and take it on board.
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239 derek barker
You forgot to add 'but cheerfully taxed it all' to GB's actions
All your 'area fruit co-ordinators','child pedestrian training facilitators' etc relied on GB taking 40bnBP from activities in the city you deplored
50bn from motorists, when they believe everyone should go on a bus
Billions from North Sea Oil to destroy the planet. You'll be glad to know activity in the North Sea is plummeting, unfortunately so is the tax take, putting at risk all these doctors,nurses etc you keep rattling on about
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264. At 09:08am on 06 Jan 2009, onward-ho wrote:
You forget that your Labour party promised a referendum on the EU Constitution..........did we get one...........NO so please save your ancient union socialist clap trap as it don't wash with most on here.
I'd like to know how many Labour supporters in the UK have done quite well due to either buying or having inherited an ex council property owned by a parent or relative?
These labour hypocrites slag off Mrs Thatcher and the tories but it was she (A tory leader) who made a lot of labour supporters so well off.
It was she who gave people the opportunity to own there own house where if they had been looking to buy a private house would never have gotten onto the housing ladder.
Quite a few I'd like to bet.
It's two faced standards from a two faced party and their hypocritical supporters.
The tories left a stable economy in the hands of Golem.
Golem & poodle Bliar have managed to do what no other P/M and chancellor have done in history and that is to morally, nationally, and economically destroy a country.
I'd like to hear Dr David Kelly's family reaction to the Poodle being honoured by six shooter Bush
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264. At 09:08am on 06 Jan 2009, onward-ho wrote:
In rip-off Britain, if you are a saver you are gubbed by rotten interest rates, if you are a borrower you are gubbed by pseudo-variable-but not -really-comming-down rates, if you are a voter,now you are gubbed by false promises from the posh wannabe-but- never-have been new Tories.
If you think the economy is bad now, wait till the Tories get in and they will completely wreck it , just like they did before.
Nobody is fooled by this Tory tosh.
===
Is that the best you can come up with?
I have news for you, the economy is bad now, and it is Labour who are responsible.
Thanks for your vote of confidence in the Conservatives though, "wait till the Tories get in."
With your amazing foresight, could you enlighten us as to when the election will be?
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#273 Fubar_Saunders wrote:
"I hope all that anti Israeli chestbeating makes you feel better, because I regret to say you show a singularly inappropriate grasp of history and also current military and political fact where this ongoing conflagration is concerned. If you support what Hamas are doing, take it to one of the other AQ sympathising boards. This aint the place for it."
Don't talk rubbish, or try to censor my comments simply because you don't agree with them.
I don't tell you where to go and post your comments.
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274 maggyisdog
Britain has always been a rip off.
It is part of the whole pathetic Little England Island Monkey nature.
Let's celebrate some Tory achievements:
Financial de-regulation...yes you started it.
Abolition of exchange controls....ditto.
VAT raised from 8 to 17%
Unemployment from 1m to 4m
276 Joining the ERM.
Signing the Maastricht treaty...Wot no referendum then either?
Total blitz on UK manufacturing.
And for borrowers:Phasing out and capping MIRAS.
For savers:abolition of tax relief on endowments.
For all the newly unemployed in financial services, Wedgwood , Adams....remember it was Maggie who did away with earnings-related unemployment benefit.
Shift from unemployment to incapacity benefit as government policy under Major.
Poll tax...didn't that one do well!
The joys of cardboard city for tens of thousands of homeless people.
And all those lovely riots on the rundown streets in the 1980s.
A pointless avoidable fiasco in the Falklands.
Aye them were the days.
As for pre-97 economic benefits...10 years of negative equity ??? .....those 17% mortgages....was it not Ken Clarke,the " leftie", who you rejected as leader, who turned things round?And did he not do so with a 50 bn PSBR which is about 150 bn in today's prices.
And Clarke broadly supports what Brown has done, like Brown, he has lived in the real world and not just a marketing campaign .
And as for David Kelly, well I didn't want a war,but I do not remember the Tories opposing one either.
273 fu-bar-none..Toffs cannot stand it when one of their own kind develops a conscience.
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279
My we have seached the net to write our little blog. All those reply to your blog get to you?
So your proud of how Brown /Blair have dragged us down jobs going everyday, Brown saying just keep spending it will be all ok. Wars, NHS still in a mess after all the billions thrown at but missed. I could go on but I expect others will be blogging to you.
All you can do is talk about Tory past but its Labour now you got to pick fault at and if you Brown to keep kicking in the nuts for the next 5 years you must be mad.
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278#
So, no answer then brynt, just anti American rhetoric. I figured as much.
OK.
"Weapons made and paid for by the US". Largely incorrect. The Israelis defence manufacturing industry is perfectly capable of producing its own weaponry.
Then theres all the bleeding heart stuff about women and children being casualties of war... Hamas knew exactly what they were getting into. Funny how an organisation that is dedicated to the overthrow of Israel and has its expertise (if it can be called that) in urban guerrilla warfare can claim to play both sides of the Geneva convention card. The rocket and missile baseplates that they use for launching Qassam & Katyushka's into Israel are in urban areas, areas of high population density. They knew exactly how Israel would react, they knew the level of casualties the population would sustain. Their thinking is that after the incursion into Lebanon against Hizballah that the Israeli population dont have the stomach for it.
Israel was always going to react by playing them at their own game, by their own rules (ie no rules) and Hamas knows this is an opportunity to then inflame the rest of the region by using the Palestinian diaspora as a political football and playing on religious divides.
You look at the amount of money given by us imperialist westerners, particularly the UK and the EU to the Palestinian authority. The amount of western relief organisations in Gaza. The opportunities to rebuild infrastructure, provide medical aid, education, agriculture... what did Hamas choose to spend it on instead? Smuggling Weapons through tunnels from Egypt.
Israel's reaction may seem disproportionate. Then again, you go back to 1948 when the state of Israel was founded, she was attacked simultaneously by the surrounding Arab states. As has been pointed out, The West Bank belonged to Jordan, Gaza belonged to Egypt. Land lost in battle when the Palestinians fled. Had it been the other way round, do you think Jordan and Egypt would have given the land back that they had seized?
Does it not surprise you how neither of those countries have pressed for the return of those territories to THEIR sovereignty - as opposed to the Palestinians - over the last 40 years?
Hamas are not in the slightest bit interested in co-exisiting alongside Israel. Fatah have at least finally realised that there can never be a military victory for either side and would be prepared to negotiate. Hamas accuse Fatah of being traitors to the cause and are prepared to use the diaspora as a human shield and the lives of innocents in a pointless war of attrition with a far stronger better equipped enemy.
What Bush, Blair and Brown, odious as they are, have done about Palestine is neither here nor there. Iraq is not Palestine.
Tell it to George Galloway and Annie Lennox.
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279#
Very amusing list mate, be prepared for yet more "ping-pong-politics" - you-did-this, we- did-that, no-you-didnt, yes-we-did, we we are all frankly sick to the back teeth of....
It'll keep the Labour hoons and the Tory trolls both busy for a few hours, but will ultimately achieve nothing and just serve to alienate the rest of us.
A politician with a conscience you say?
Where???
I Havent seen one of those in centuries!!!!
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~279:
As soon as the word 'toffs' emerged right at the end of your long diatribe I knew I could safely dismiss your comments as nonsense!
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~268:
Couldn't agree more!
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Reading through this blog it is clear what a polarised and divided country the UK is. Us and them, the toffs and the working man, the little Englanders and the rest of Europe. No wonder we are in such a mess and have been for years. The polarisation of conflicting views condemns us to silos where we happily throw hand grenades at each other, oblivious to the damage caused.
OK, get rid of Brown, vote in Cameron, watch everything being turned upside down as the new dogma is imposed. Wait a few years until everyone hates this particular bunch of incompetents and change back to Brown's successors. Turn everything upside down again. The problem with being of more mature years is that you see the same mistakes made time and time again.
The root of this lies in combative politics, the real change we need is to cooperative politics, where dogma takes a back seat and common sense rules.
I'm fed up with it and off to Spain!!
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onward-ho
And why use the word Toff so much I'm sure Blair could have been said that he was one.
No doubt you have been brought by a family who has allways voted Labour, beat in to you from a child. But me I can see when things are going wrong and have voted for who I thought was right at that time and yes in 97 the Tories got what the deserved.
Yes I did like Blair but he was let down by his idots like Maddleson, Blunkett, Presscot along with the others.
And now the time has come for Brown the biggest let down to get kicked out.
And if you dont like England why not move out as its been ripping you off for so long.
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285
Thats politics mate, and dont go Spain the Euro is only worth the same as the pound and its full of OAP moaning about their pension.
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Mallorquin - are you an ex pat living in Spain? If you are then that explains your cynicism of this country. Ex pats spend a lot of their time criticising this country, how else could they justify the fact that they stupidly sold up and moved elsewhere and cannot now return here?
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In a couple of months time when labour come up with plans to help savers and then pretend that it is their idea and them that thought of it I trust that Jeremy Paxman will be metering out the same treatment to Alistair Darling as he did to George Osbourne last night. But I somehow doubt this will happen. All of a sudden an idea stolen from the Tories will be portrayed as a good idea and the fact it had previously been denounced as a bad idea conveniently forgotten.
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#281 Fubar_Saunders wrote:
"As has been pointed out, The West Bank belonged to Jordan.."
You do think you know it all, and have the audacity or arrogance to question others' knowledge of history.
I can't respond to all the points you raise, but I'll deal with one as an example.
The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan came into being when the British League of Nations Mandate came to an end in 1946 at Britain's request. More than seventy percent of the British Mandate was east of the Jordan in what was known as Transjordan.
In 1950, (The Kingdom of) Jordan annexed the area now called the West Bank (also referred to as Judea and Samaria), which had been under its control since the armistice that followed the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
The entire region has a long, involved, and confused history, as do many other parts of the world, stretching back to pre-Biblical times.
You say that 'Israel was founded in 1948' but omit to explain how and why that came about. The circumstances surrounding its creation were and are extremely contentious.
I have no right to object to others holding different opinions from mine, or from expressing them here, as long as they conform to the rules.
There is a humanitarian crisis of immense proportions developing rapidly in Gaza. This is a UK political blog. Britain has played a fundamental role in that region and in creating the problems that are extant there, yet it is doing little or nothing about it.
Comments about the conflict on this blog are most proper, even if the author chooses to ignore the issue. You do not have the right to decide what is discussed here.
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287,288
I live in both countries but am a UK tax payer. It gives a unique perspective on the UK in comparison with it's neighbours. As you rightly say the pound/euro rate is crap, but much better today! Happily as I own assets in euro I am partly protected from these shenanigans.
Get a grip Brits, engage with Europe, learn from them, copy the good bits, learn from the mistakes. Don't make the assumption that Johnny foreigner is some inferior species and always gets it wrong! Learn to cooperate, climb out of the silo!!!!
And I don't consider myself an "expat". I am a European citizen living in and enjoying my continent.
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285#
Thats exactly the nub of the problem. Shame we cant fix it from Spain though. I'd love to emigrate if I could.
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Well Mallorquin, you seem so disillusioned with this country it may be time for you take one foot out of it and let it join the other one in Espana. I see you call yourself a Majorcan already.
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brynt:
So you do know the history then.
Forgive my somewhat muddled (and, quite possibly unkind) analogy, but if you are a wolf, maybe you'd be listened to more if the contributors heard your wolf like growl instead of hearing a shallow bleat like a lamb with its wool painted in Hamas colours.
You know how complex the situation is; I dare say you have access to information then about how the present situation has arisen and the parts that all the surrounding nation states have to play and yes, the Jewish-American lobby as well.
You will then also be aware of Hamas being bankrolled by Iran, Hezbollah being bankrolled by Iran and the other players outside of the peace process being accomodated by the Syrians. You will be fully aware that all of the surrounding Arab states have used the diaspora as a political football rather than to absorb them or to seek a just and timely settlement.
Yes, we could all go back to the last days of the Ottoman empire and how the region was carved up after WW1. However, our direct responsibility for what is happening now, as in Zimbabwe has to be tempered. There is only so much we can do directly through diplomatic channels or otherwise. Its not just a case of the EU or the US "doing something". The root cause is a failure to co-exist.
Regardless of whether Hamas or Hizballah want, the nation state of Israel is not going to simply vanish, nor will they be able to ever achieve a military victory over it. The answer has to be co-existance. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, unilaterally and arguably has no strategic interest in Gaza.
It does not make sense for Hamas to pull the roof in over its own head and subject its own electorate - as the democratically elected government in Gaza - to the inevitable reprisals unless it had another agenda.
The Israeli Government have never been like the Brits who, for the best part of 30 years turned the other cheek to the IRA and eventually forced them to realise the only way they may ever achieve their aims is by the ballot box rather than the armalite. Call it the holocaust mentality if you wish, but it exists. If theyre attacked, they hit back. Several times they have been attacked simultaneously from 3 sides. Had that happened to the UK, we would have been sunk.
Theres been too much blood spilled already, too many generations lost for this latest flare up to be any different. Until both sides show any signs of being able to co-exist, then we are wasting our time doing anything. And, theres no sign of that at present. Regardless of who the occupants are of 10 Downing Street or the Whitehouse.
I dont mean to come across as a know it all and I apologise unreservedly if that is the case. But your obvious knowledge of the subject is hidden by predictable, simplistic rhetoric.
Sorry, but thats the way it comes across.
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emigrating
Tories are usually twits ,but occasionally they stumble upon a good idea and if their idea is magpied, diddums to them.
maggyisgoogah 285, sicilian 283:
My parents started off as Tories, but saw sense.. I have never lived in a council house,but good on those who do or did, bought it or rented it. I have been privately and state-educated, I am rich on paper and poor in pocket, I work in both private and public sectors,I have voted Labour and LibDem , my cash says Tory but my heart says Labour and my heart wins. I suppose I am a bit of a Toff and a bit of a Ned. A bit of a mongrel , and that is what a lot of us are like now and that makes it difficult to have allegiances.And Blair did to Labour what Cameron has tried to do with he Tories. But ShamCam will end up with a knife in his back from a gang of nutters in his own party, like the umpteen what-were-their-names before him!
As for the libdems, which one is their leader, are they greeny, Mr Angry, socialworkers or Whigs?Who cares?
Labour lager versus Tory toddy we know .....but Libdem dishwater,no thanks.
I like Cameron for being the dad of a special needs child ,my uncle went to Eton , my dad went to the bookies ,I am in a union, I have employees, tenants ,friends and family rich and poor.
But at the end of the day ,I think Brown will steer us out of this situation which we find ourselves in ,like the rest of the world.
We do not have to like him, but he will do the job.
We are not doomed.
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#294 Fubar_Saunders:
Hehe... and you accuse me of ranting!!
The outside world beckons, have to leave it at that.
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#295
But at the end of the day ,I think Brown will steer us out of this situation which we find ourselves in ,
No he won't. He cannot because he can't articulate the reason we find ourselves in such a hole. Which is that the past decade of prosperity, for which he spent the entire past decade claiming personal responsibility, was in fact a massive illusion atop a mountain of debt. Personal and governmental debt. Hundreds of billions squandered.
He can't admit it was all an illusion so he has to pretend that the present conditions are the extra-ordinary and unusual ones. Whereas in fact the decade of debt that preceded it was the anomolous event.
Hence he issues edicts to banks to maintain borrowing at 2007 levels even though the entire world now recognises that those borrowing levels were artificially high and underpinned by - well- absolutely nothing except insanely high property prices and relatively low interest rates.
like the rest of the world.
Where was he in 2002? Shouting from the rooftops about the insane levels of US money printing? Putting in place lending multiples limits and prudent capital ratios to prevent the UK banks and house-buyers from self-harming? The better to really clean up when the rest of the world fell flat on its face?
Naaaah. Printing money like the rest of them. Proclaiming prudence and doing quite the opposite.
We do not have to like him, but he will do the job.
Oh no he won't. He will simply keep on printing money until he is stopped. Either by an election or a Labour coup. Hyper inflation won't stop him. Nothing can stop him.
He just cannot face up to the monumental error he has made. Hence he blames the Yanks, the banks, the 'irresponsible'. Anybody but the bloke in the mirror who had his hands on all the levers and was privy to all the facts for the past decade and still decided to saddle us with an extra million civil servants that we couldn't even afford to pay in the 'good' times.
We are not doomed.
Not in the sense that there is a ten mile diameter meteorite about to hit the earth. No. Or at least I hope not. But doomed in that we will spend a decade (minimum) recovering from the idiocies of the past decade. Hell yes, in that sense, we are doomed.
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Unonamenohope
Maybe you should see your GPand get on an antidepressant.
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Onward-ho
Disagree entirely with your comments of GB as our saviour-IMHO he's has to take responsibility as the architect of our demise (as leader the buck stops on his desk). A little humility would be appropriate too-a quality found in any true believer of any faith.
Re your comments re electorate, however, I totally agree. The lifelong loyalty to a party is ceasing to exist as we look for a party most likely to address our needs and current situation.
Unfortunately, we believe the words which are uttered during electioneering-and most of us have no interest in a party whose some campaign is bashing their competitors. Unfortunately, parties tend to focus on one or two points which they think we want to hear.
All parties need to get back to basics-do what they are elected to do, listen to their voters and act on their behalf. This is the root of Obama's success. Such a humble man-our politicians need to take note.
I have no faith in any of them, frankly, until they do exactly this.
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#298
Unonamenohope
Maybe you should see your GPand get on an antidepressant.
Is that the secret to the altered sense of reality inhabited by Nu-Labour apologists? I must admit I had my suspicions over Brown's transformation from nail-biting, fidgeting mental wreck to grinning chimp-boy.
You may have hit the nail on the head.
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#295:
'But at the end of the day ,I think Brown will steer us out of this situation which we find ourselves in ,like the rest of the world.
We do not have to like him, but he will do the job.
We are not doomed.'
Bookmarked for the day when our profligate spending finally comes home to roost in the form of financial armageddon. Nobody really knows when we will eventually see the results of Gordon Brown's hand at the tiller but I don't share your optimism.
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300 301
Are Tories needing a bit of cognitive behavioural therapy, a psychological weekend mini-break in Madeira?
Is it because they are so very, very deeply afraid that Gordon Brown might actually be winning, that they have created a doomridden mindscape of economic black plague and famine and despair.
Tory futures depend on calamity....without economic meltdown there might not be a blue-rinse cocktail party!
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#302
Are Tories needing a bit of cognitive behavioural therapy, a psychological weekend mini-break in Madeira?
Ahhh. The old stand-by. Don't argue the facts. Just resort to personal abuse. For clarity it is not me who is in denial about the true nature of the past decade of profligate squandering and debt.
Until Brown admits the truth (which is a matter of historical fact) ie that the entire past decade was just an anomolous squanderfest then he has no hope of proposing a solution.
He cannot 'fix' the economy when he is psychologically incapable of confronting how it got bust in the first place. The meds may be helping him stop gnawing off his hand but they ain't helping him to confront reality.
As for Gordon Brown 'winning'. You're definition of a 'win' and mine are clearly at odds. 'Winning' isn't about Gordon Brown retaining power. It is (or should be) about fixing the economy he has so comprehensively destroyed. A task he has no hope of doing since he fails to understand or confront how he destroyed it in the first place.
He destroyed it by taking on too many liabilities with no strategy to ever pay them off. It's the same reason record numbers are in negative equity, going bankrupt, being made redundant and being repossessed.
Until we (they) all admit the cause of the recession then we have no hope of getting out of it.
Meanwhile the Maximum Idiot proposes to quadruple national debt. Two World Wars, the recessions of the 70's, 80's and 90's and he still manages to accrue four times as much national debt as all of them added together. And his paid apologists just shrug their shoulders and take the tax-payers shilling.
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302
Do your sums of your worth in 1979 ,1993,1997 and 2008.
How do they compare?
Is your perpective personal or typical?
There are sixty million other stories in the UK .
Not all basketcases either.
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Back to the issue at hand.
189. brown (+209 aristo)
'Didn't you see the queues of people waiting outside branches of Northern Rock trying to withdraw their life savings when there was a panic (caused by Robert Peston) that it might fail?
It never ceases to amaze me the antipathy that NuLabour and its apologists have to people who have saved for their retirement.
The same people who praise Brown/ Darling to the skies for bringing forward the ?4.55 per week increase in the State Pension.'
I have no antipathy whatsoever towards savers. I speak as someone who would benefit from Cam's policy.
The point about this policy is that those couples with say 1 million in savings are the ones who benefit the most from it.
The average Joe retired person with say 50K worth of savings doesn't pay much, if anything, in tax at the moment on his / her approx. 2K a year in interest.
The category of person who stands to be a real winner from Cam's plan is the one whose interest earnings are over 5K per year, ie those with 100K plus in savings.
For example, any ex bank director who recently took a nice pay-off for his or her part in wrecking our finance industry and economy, who has say half a million in the bank, would save about 4K per year in tax on interest.
Are those with half a million plus in the bank the ones in the most need of help at the moment?
Are they Cam's natural supporters?
The same argument applies to the inheritance tax changes proposed by DC. They're aimed, pure and simple, at helping millionaires to preserve their family wealth.
It's not being a NuLab apologist to point out these things. It's merely the product of applying basic maths to the stated policies.
4.55 a week increase for all pensioners is actually a fairer policy, I would suggest. It's also more likely to be spent within local UK communities, and not on imported luxury goods, or on overseas holidays / holiday homes.
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#302:
Not normally a pessimist but forced to be so by Brown's continuing ineptitude, a view shared by all those hundreds of thousands who have already lost their jobs, their livelihoods, their homes and in many cases their relationships. Not even contemplating the thought of Brown winning because it ain't goin to happen.
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#304:
Personally I'm quite well prepared for The Credit Crisis because I've worked hard to pay off our mortgage and have decent savings for similar reasons. My many friends however are in many cases a lot younger and are not in the same position. They most certainly are not thanking Brown for helping to steer us onto the rocks. If as first mate you choose to follow him into oblivion that's your perogative.
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When we are young a lot of us were financial basketcases.
OK some get a leg up when they leave the nest ...I never got one and it did me no harm.
What happened next was up to us .
The state of the public finances has a little but not a huge bearing on how we get on in our lives.
The personal factors outweigh the public ones.
Most people are pretty sensible with their money.They will be okay.And the ones who are not will have to adjust.And that can have a beneficial effect.
We have to think about our own lives and the people around us and not worry too much about macroeconomics.
The crunch is here.The crunch will go .
Pre-crunch I thought I could retire at 50.
Now I cannot retire at 50, but do not want to retire before I am 70.
Life is not fair. It never was.
But if I had predicted the present based on the past Iwould be wrong, and thank goodness for that. And the same goes for the future.
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Very commendable sentiments I'm sure but it didn't have to be like this. That's the really annoying aspect of this whole situation.
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Supposing there wasn't a crunch and I had built up a bigger pile of money for my children ... would that help them or would it dilute their drive to get on and succeed, the drive that I had?
Would I have done better with cash from Mummy and Daddy?
All five of us siblings have done well, without any cash handouts.
But the next generation....mmmh.
The UK is still a rich country .... wait and see...I wouldn't be writing us all off just yet.
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#302 in short NO.
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\308
But if I had predicted the present based on the past Iwould be wrong, and thank goodness for that.
Well I wouldn't be wrong. In 2002 I was listening to the budget speech when the awful truth hit me. He was spending tens of billions we didn't have.
There and then I knew we were in trouble.
Then, every year, regular as clockwork he did the same thing while bare-faced telling us he was 'balancing the budget over the economic cycle'.
And now we're at the point where in five or six short years he has more than doubled our national debt. And now he plans to quadruple it. Because he didn't see this 'global crisis' coming. We didn't need a 'global crisis'. This was nailed on. You can't double national debt and have house prices treble in under a decade and seriously think that's a 'normal' state of affairs.
Unless your Gordon Brown obviously. For whom this crash came completely out of the blue.
Likewise I knew in 2002 that housing was once again getting over-valued and that the longer it went on the bigger the crash would be. Not only that but I knew what Brown's response would be. Squander on regardless. With the ultimate inevitable inflation that this printing of money will bring about.
All this swooning about deflation is just a convenient diversion. An artefact of last years soaring oil prices dropping out. But printing money inevitably leads to inflation. And once it's out of the bag and once you're in a decade long habit (like Brown) of printing hundreds of billions that we don't have well, it becomes easier to just print another few hundred billion you don't have. And another few.
Thus trashing the currency and the economy.
It's (at best) the 1970's all over again. Inflation will go ballistic as a result of this printing of cash. Maybe not this year but by 2010 or 2011 we'll be back with double digit inflation. It's inevitable. If you print 10% of GDP out of fresh air then you inevitably decrease the value of your assets by 10%. If you try to raise enough taxes to actually pay any of this borrowed money back then the public sector unions will start squealing and going on strike so you're stuck with the choice of printing more money (see James Callaghan) or taking them on (see Maggie Thatcher).
That's it. Them's your choices once you decide to print astronomical sums like 10% of GDP. Every year. Just to make the public sector payroll.
Anyway. I have acted. I sold in Oct/Nov 2007 and exchanged Mar 2008. I'm sitting on the fence with heaps of cash because I reckon Q3 this year will be a great time to pick up a cheap house (for cash - natch) before Joe Public gets a whiff of the coming (hyper) inflationary armageddon.
The only thing I'm a bit surprised by is how the pound has fallen against the dollar. I thought the dollar would be even more in the toilet.
Had I stopped to think about the Euro I wouldn't have expected us to fall so far either which is rather more annoying because I was thinking of jumping ship to the French Caribbean in a couple of years and it'll cost me a few hundred K more than I'd hoped for now.
Anyway, point is, a passing knowledge of recent UK economic history would have told you as early as 2001 where this was all headed. It did me and I'm a Science graduate. And, with that knowledge I was able to plan accordingly.
As #309, Sicilian29 says....
it didn't have to be like this. That's the really annoying aspect of this whole situation.
He's right. There was no need at all for Brown to put us in this position.
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Probably the greater part of the borrowing boom was on buy to let investments and flats for student children.
It was not all splurged.
There is vast wealth, and there is a huge reserve in the government coffers in the form of capital gains and inheritance taxes in future years.
Lots of people are sitting on piles of cash and equity and not wanting to sell it because the price is low and they do not wabnt to cough up tax to HMG.
That is what the Tories want to stop, the latest lark from SaveDave is a smokescreen.
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312
So in other words ,you did ok out of Gordon.
And if you are so convinced we are heading for inflation, would property not be a good bet?...I would get back in now!
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#314
So in other words ,you did ok out of Gordon.
Naaaah. I did okay despite Gordon.
And if you are so convinced we are heading for inflation, would property not be a good bet?...I would get back in now!
Naaaah. Still a good six to twelve months before your retail punters figure out where this is going. Plenty of time to get another 10 or 15% discount on a monster gaff.
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You can also buy index-linked products, but to be honest if we got some inflation a few global, esp. US, rate-hikes would quickly kill it dead.
We've done this 'who caused it?' thing to death on this blog, and there's a split between those who want to blame politicians (esp. one Scotsman, but why not eg Bush as well?) and those who can see the broader picture- the problem for some is that the true cause is no one-liner...
Low global interest rates in 2002-4 led investors to search for yield. Banks saw a truckload of easy money by acting as intermediaries between the world's investors / savers and borrowers (mainly US) who were dodgy credit risks and so prepared to pay high levels of interest on loans. The trick was to persuade the savers / investors that dross was AAA, and the rating agencies helped there. Of course, it was nonsense, and the world's investors tried to exit en masse in 2007, with disastrous consequences for the banks and us taxpayers who ultimately stand behind them. The 'printed money' was overwhelmingly printed by private banks, not by governments.
Let's look at the way forward, then.
We can either have cuts in public and private spending, followed by a deflationary spiral including mass repossessions, unemployment, and a true economic and social collapse- not the Broken Britain tripe Cam likes to speak of, we are talking really serious problems here. If this was confined to the UK, by the way, the pound would truly become very weak indeed, and then we would have to print money, as opposed to borrowing it.
Or, we can have no cuts in spending yet, but a future of slightly higher than otherwise taxation, long-term especially on the wealthy.
It's obvious that for both political expediency and for ideological reasons, DC would prefer the former, but Brown (and Cable) and indeed every other democratically-elected leader would prefer the latter.
The question is, wealthy Tory bloggers, are you prepared for the full consequences of the policies hinted at by what your leader is currently proposin'?
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So if you think there is going to be a property boom in 12 months tome, it would appear that you yourself are betting on a speedy recovery,and you know who to thank for that, don't you misternoname...Gordon!
Looks like all this doomsaying is a Tory pre-election strategy!
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derekbarker @ 4
"...Young naive Cameron wants to blow the retreat bugle and take everybody back to the thatchers years of the 1980's.
Promising a saving cuts in tax by reducing public spending will only create mass unemployment, absolute poverty for those on minimum earnings.
Less money for schools, hospitals, transport and employment, jeez, no how, no way, should this nation again accept the tory nonsense of elitism.
The tories never learn, as they revert back to Camerons 2005 manifesto of 20Bn cuts in public services."
- Why do labour supporters continuously repeat the old labour party soundbite, "cuts in public spending"?
not only is it a soundbite, its also a lie!
- the conservatives dont intend to cut public spending at all, they will INCREASE IT slower than labour would (and only in certain areas)
- increase unemployment? so you think the labour way of having vastly over employment in the civil service is a good thing?
its ok for britains taxpayers to keep on funding nonsense jobs?
i would suppose that by your post sir, you objected strongly to gordon browns pledge to cut civil servants as he told us he was doing, over the past year? (i must have missed it sorry)
- "less money for schools, hospitals, transport..."
a reliable labour soundbite, again totally untrue. (this is one of greg pope's favourites - labour MP for hyndburn)
despite raising more than £45 billion pounds from the motorist for 2007, approx only £8 billion has been spent on transport projects in the UK, where has the rest of this money gone? - greg pope saw this question as my wanting schools and hospitals to close! (he never did give me an answer!)
with hindsight, i would assume you will retract this statement as the announcement today explained that education and health funding would continue to be matched as already agreed previously?
labour have been syphoning money off under the "green" banner since 1997 and spending it on god knows what.
- "they revert back to £20 billion of public service cuts"
not at all, in fact these proposals will cost less than half of the billions brown wasted on his magical VAT rate cut, which he will reverse in the next year or so.
gordon brown is a baffoon
on hearing the conservatives plans he states they are a "do nothing party"
if they are doing nothing, why is he so keen to hear their ideas and plans?
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#317
So if you think there is going to be a property boom in 12 months tome, it would appear that you yourself are betting on a speedy recovery
I think you're confusing a sterling crash with a property boom. I think we'll have massive inflation starting 2010/2011 so it makes sense to have your cash in assets rather than being printed into oblivion.
and you know who to thank for that, don't you misternoname...Gordon!
Oh I have no doubt who'll be to blame for the collapse of sterling and the ongoing destruction of the economy.... Gordon. Although he'll be blaming the Yanks and the banks and saying he's taking tough choices and 'doing the right thing'. Yeah. Right. I can tell you now what the 'right thing' will be. Printing more money we don't have.
He's a one trick pony.
Looks like all this doomsaying is a Tory pre-election strategy!
So you're telling me that come mid 2010 - election time - there won't be in excess of three million unemployed and average house prices won't have fallen by 40%?
And that we won't have witnessed record rates of repossession (despite 0% interest rates), largest decrease in house prices in history, largest increases in unemployment (despite hiding an additional million in 'universities' since 1997) in history and the largest budget deficits in history?
And none of this was entirely foreseeable since 2001/2 and that Gordon Brown bears no responsibility at all.
Sure. And I've got this bridge to sell you...
Gordon Brown wrecked the UK's economy. Anybody who gets out with what they went in with in 2002 will be doing exceptionally well.
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Misternothanks, I wonder how many others like you deliberately sold out to try to get a bargain later.
So in 2002 you knew the market was about to crash so you waited .....5 1/2 yrs? Mmmh....sounds like the economy was a lot more stable than you thought.
Yes, you have done well under Gordon, like the majority of your whining mates, you bite the hand that feeds you.
How much money would you have made under the Tories....I think they would have crashed the economy by 1998. Ten years more stability is what you got from Labour.
You're alright, Jack, but en-masse you armchair strategists have destabilised the market and caused a lot of misery. But you never know, you might end up with egg on your fat Tory face, and it would serve you right!
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So in 2002 you knew the market was about to crash so you waited .....5 1/2 yrs?
Once Brown started borrowing 30bn a year and propping up the unemployment figures by hiring an extra 1 million on the public payroll that rather changed the picture. It defferred the inevitable bust.
Mmmh....sounds like the economy was a lot more stable than you thought.
But of course we now see it wasn't stable at all. It was underpinned by a cynical doubling of national debt and hiring of one million public employees that we had to borrow an extra 30bn every year since to pay. A completely artificial boom which fed into the inefficient deployment of hundreds of billions of borrowed pounds into a housing bubble.
A bust waiting to happen. A bust made all the more horrendous by the amount of borrowed money pumped into it by Gordon Brown.
The only question was how long could the bubble be kept inflated. 30bn a year kept it inflated. Rigging interest rates to artificially low rates kept it inflated. But eventually it had to go 'pop'. Gordon did is best to keep it inflated alright.
Hell, he's trying to get it re-inflated by squandering another 500bn quid over the next five years. And that was when he was claiming the recession would end in six months time. God knows how much he'll have to pump in now that he's reassessed that to two years time.
You can't blame me for looking out for myself. That's all Gordon is doing and using 41p of every quid I earn to do it with too. The cheeky git.
But you never know, you might end up with egg on your fat Tory face, and it would serve you right!
Oh we're all going to have a lot more than egg on our face before this is over. The entire economy is being ground into the toilet as a result of the madman Brown's financial incompetence.
Still, if it makes you happy to destroy the entire UK economy just to personally inconvenience me and pay me back as some kind of displacement therapy for your spat with Maggie T then I hope it was worth it.
Personally I'd have been more than content if Brown had simply balanced the budget since 2001 and not given me several hundred thousand quid in tax free capital gains on my house in return for Brown not destroying the UK economy.
I'm all for prudence and sustainabilty me. The difference is that I practice what I preach.
But since he seemed determined to destroy the economy it seemed pointless me joining in and getting wiped out like everybody else when I could just take the cash. Don't you think?
You're alright, Jack, but en-masse you armchair strategists have destabilised the market and caused a lot of misery.
What? Because I refuse to join in with Brown's pyramid scheme of ever-escalating house prices and ever increasing purchases of plastic Chinese crap only fit for landfill in order to sustain his illusion of a stable economy. Oooooh. Aren't I evil.
If Brown wants to refloat the economy on another sea of debt then he can liquidate all his personal assets, get a mponster loan and buy a warehouse full of Chinese crap from Woolworths. Keep somebody in an unsustainable job in retail for another few months if he likes.
Don't expect me to join in.
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This is slightly off-topic, but I think the financial issues will allow it to appear. It concerns Sharon Shoesmith, the Social Services Chief in the Baby P case. This person is claiming £173,000 as a payout. Need I say more. Public voices should be raised to stop this travesty of justice.
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Phoenix, you're correct and no-one would deny that if this is true (beware sources) it's clearly wrong. You're also correct that it's a bit off topic...
Unless, that is, you're trying to say that this is an example of public sector waste, hence the need for DC to come in like Batman and clean it all up. You're not suggesting, are you, that because those at the top are sometimes greedy and incompetent, their whole organisations are flawed, are you? In this case, you don't mean those hundreds of thousands of frontline social workers and hospital staff who work for 15-25K a year in some of the most difficult conditions, for long hours, with little or no thanks.
Plus, Phoenix, what do you make of the recent pay-offs, and massive remuneration packages over the past five years, for some current and some now ex- directors of UK banks? They would not get out of bed for 173K.
But, under Cam's tax policies, all those greedy numbskulls will be able to invest their millions and gain 40K a year tax free. They'll also be able under Cam's plan to leave 2 million (as a couple) to their families tax-free, helping the wealthy families of failed bankers stay that way.
That's equally disgraceful to me as the example you quote, even if she gets the money (which is very unlikely- I'd love to be there at the court case at which she claimed she should get it).
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323. MunichMadrid7980
Calm down and read some of my previous posts, if you can bear to. I was for many years working in mental health and involved in social services. I heartily defend the workers in the field, who are usually only given low grades and yet do all the work. This is usual in the UK, whatever government is in charge. The post boy gets the elbow whilst the CEO who screwed up remain in his job. Read my post about Marks and Spencer, I ask why Stuart Rose doesn't get the push. The same goes for the banks. The poor guys (and gals) who face the public get sacked, whilst the parasites in charge either get rises or huge pay offs.
Finally, I hope I am wrong and you right. You don't think Shoesmith will get the money. I think she will get a lesser sum, with the rest handed over under the counter. It is a question of you scratch my back and I will scratch yours. The ones taking on her job will alas be as indifferent.
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Cutting taxes on savings when savings rates are this low seems like a non-event. It's the old "anything times nothing is nothing" argument.
What we have not seen over the years from either side of the house is a committment to home-grown policies.
Not a better relation with the Kyoto treaty.
Not better relations with the U.S.
Not better relations with the incumbant party.
Right now, David Cameron has not much more than a year to get his act together before the next election. Getting elected because you're not as bad as the departing party just leads us to more of the same in the future. Even Gordon Brown's trial and error way of doing things at present seems better than having no real policy at all!
We need policies that are going to be very good for the vast majority of the public, but very upsetting for the minorities. I'm not talking ethnic here, but lobby groups that currently seem to have a disproportionate impact on future government policy. The same lobby groups that for example, shout down a clean power station construction program in favour of eating out of Russia's hand, letting them get away with pretty much anything - because we are now addicted to their gas.
"Workfare" and a home-performed version of it (for the disabled) seems more viable now than ever before. Job agencies to enable government staff to be employed on short-term contracts like many non-government workers is another "hot egg" waiting for the right launch.
The younger generation have been pretty disinterested (rather than uninterested!) in politics for quite some time. This entire group of the population should be the group that has the most influence on the future, not the least! Future party leaders need most of all to harness this power before we instead see the devil making work out of idle hands.
Finally, we see that flexible working practices leave us far better off than the continent where restrictions on employers are rife. This is one area where we see in our day and age that policies CAN be different from everywhere else - and work very well indeed.
Now, let's see more of such policy differences in the future.
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Generally speaking it is the rich who save and the poor who borrow. It is a bad joke telling the poor that they will pay less tax if they save.
So the rich man's party is true to form. The trouble is that nowadays the people's party also seems more concerned to look after the interests of the rich than those of the poor.
So who do you vote for if you are poor? Probably nobody.
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Stan. That way lies at least 5 years of DC; you don't think there's much difference between the main parties' policies towards the poor. I'll give you 1, what about the minimum wage? Even now, Tory apologists like the CBI are calling for it to be 'suspended'. That policy would go nicely with ending income tax on the wealthy's savings interest and ending inheritance tax on estates up to 2 million per couple.
Phoenix. I'm quite calm thanks, and I agree with your post, but I can't see SS getting much if any cash. On this occasion, the authority will be too sacred of being found out by a journo, or a whistleblower (as long as they don't fear Jacqui Smith's Stasi). Like you, I hope that I'm right.
I fear I'm also right about the payoffs of failed UK bankers. I've got plenty of personal experience of the ineptness of one particular UK bank (now part-nationalised). I wrote to its chairman, who said he would personally oversee my complaint, only to announce his resignation a few days later (with juicy pay-off).
It is galling to say the least that my own savings now get much lower rates due to the financial crisis, yet these bankers whose profligacy caused this, and wrecked the economy for all of us, can live very comfortably on the interest from pay-offs and past bonuses- and they are the ones who stand to gain most from taking away tax on savings interest under DC's plan, as announced yesterday.
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#327 stanblogger
...and who do you vote for if you are neither rich nor poor - ie., working c lass?
It's the people in the middle that keep everything going. We get shafted every time.
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328. MunichMadrid7980
SS will probably get her money by blackmail, and oiling the right hands, but of course done very subtly. I hope I'm wrong, I really do.
You are correct about the UK bankers, and I am sorry you have lost because of them.
What do you think of Marks and Spencer's Stuart Rose's gall? What does he expect a medal? He smirked and said he won't be taking either a pay rise or a bonus this year. I know what rise I'd like to give him, and what his bonus should consist of!!
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#328
It is galling to say the least that my own savings now get much lower rates due to the financial crisis, yet these bankers whose profligacy caused this, and wrecked the economy for all of us
I see you've fallen for Brown's misinformation. I think you'll find the reason we are where we are is not the banks profligacy but the governments profligacy.
It is the government that doubled national debt in the boom years and hired one million civil servants we couldn't afford to pay to the tune of 40bn a year since 2001/2. IT was Brown that increased nurses pay by 30% overnight. For no particular reason other than to curry favour. It was Brown who increased doctors pay by 40% overnight to an average 95K (at the time) with an additional 5K if the agreed to work weekends and was then stunned when the all promptly moved to three day weeks and refused to leave their beds all weekend.
It is Brown's commitment to continue to pay them all these massive un-earned increases along with similar increases for teachers etc which means we will have quadrupled national debt in under a decade.
Meantime the only efficient department he runs - the ministry for misinformation has all his apologists banging on about 'global downturn' and 'all the banks and the yanks fault'. And y'all fall for it.
This is Brown's bust.
And it's due to get a lot worse. We are being softened up for the printing presses. The diseased mind that got us into this crisis by thinking he'd discovered the 'right' amount of GDP to borrow indefinitely (3%) is now turning the same flawed thinking to the 'right' amount of money to print annually. He's going for the Goldilocks equivalent of Zimbabwe.
Print not too much and not too little. Print just the 'right' amount of money.
Moral hazard?
Wot dat?
In Brown's rotten brain Mugabe had the right idea but just got a little carried away. He's going to show us all how it should be done.
And 400-odd Labour MP's are either too concerned about another 18 months comp and ben or so stupid or so spiteful that they, along with Brown, would rather see the UK sink beneath the waves than admit they'd been wrong all along.
We now see the disasterous policy of Blair not simply firing Brown. Brown was uniquely placed to destroy the economy and is now uniquely placed to cover it up.
If Labour had had an election on Blair's resignation we might have got rid of Brown. Or Blair's successor might have. Just like Major got rid of Lamont when it became apparent he'd cocked up. Then there was scope for his replacement to change policy.
But Brown can't admit he was wrong and he won't let Darling fix anything even if he (Darling) had the first clue where to start.
And this is why we are utterly stuffed. And why Gordon Brown is completely culpable.
This is why the yanks are full of hope for Obama because they've got rid of their numbskull who couldn't admit he was wrong. Meanwhile we are stuck with ours for another 18 months. At least.
Imagine the damage he could do if he won another five years after that.
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Well that's the kiss of death for Rolls Royce after Brown's visit to Derby yesterday.
Get rid of Brown and save the UK.
Did anyone see McNulty being interviewed by Paxman last night on Newsnight. McNulty should not even be on the minimum wage no matter an MP's pay. How on earth has he got into the position he holds ? It really does beggar belief.
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331. u
'I see you've fallen for Brown's misinformation'.
From previous posts you'll note that I am in global banking myself. I'm believe me I'm not quite gullible to believe much of political spinners' nonsense.
This crisis was made by bankers. It was they who printed the money to lend to less-than- secure borrowers (corporate and residential). Whatever Brown and Bush may have done in addition was frankly peanuts. (I agree with you on GPs, but leave off the nurses). It was bankers who sold trillions of loans as AAA rated, and other bankers who insured these products. You may say they should have been regulated, but the point is they were, but until it all blew up they wouldn't accept the regulators' interference in free markets.
All the rest is history, and there is not much anyone can do now except hope that Obama, Brown and the others are successful in their reflationary policies. The alternative would be truly frightening.
By the way, whatever DC and GO may say now, they would be doing approximately the same thing now as Brown- just as they would have intervened to save the UK banks including NR, whatever they said at the time.
Perhaps other groups in society would be receiving the largesse of the public fiscal stimulus if Cam was PM (not hard to guess which ones, judging from the two tax policies so far announced), but public spending and borrowing would be rising at approx the same levels. We can either have that, or a really shocking depression, with all the negative implications of that, or higher taxes long term.
I don't think even Thatcher would choose the former this time.
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#333
This crisis was made by bankers. It was they who printed the money to lend to less-than- secure borrowers (corporate and residential). Whatever Brown and Bush may have done in addition was frankly peanuts.
I fundamentally disagree.
Basically Osama Bin Laden won.
Post 9/11 America was on its knees. Stunned. George Dubya wasn't about to let them pesky A-Rabs have the publicity coup of a recession to go on abot.
'See you kill 3,000 yankee dogs and their whole economy grinds to a halt'.
So he started printing bazillions. Adverts went out on TV telling Americans it was their patriotic duty to go out and consume. Interest rates were cut. Bazillions more were printed to prosecute wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was the patriotic thing to do.
Meanwhile...back in the UK... Brown used all this US borrowing and squandering as justification for his own feel-good pump-priming. A million were plucked from the obscurity of the dole queue and given well-paid jobs we had no way of funding. These were the 'good' times and we still couldn't balance the budget.
Meanwhile we have an extra million unfunded civil servants wandering around with pockets stuffed full of cash looking to live the life-style they've just been awarded. Hey Presto - housing boom. Well all that excess money had to go somewhere.
Bush is responsible for America's economic woes and Brown, by copying Bushes example of borrowing and squandering, is responsible for the UK's.
If Brown had balanced the budget from 2001 onwards there is no way we would be in this disasterous predicament. If individuals had been taxed sufficient to cover the million jobs he'd created then there is no way they'd be feeling flush enough to bid up the price of houses to their insane levels. If Brown hadn't created a million extra jobs for no increase in productivity then we wouldn't have had a million extra folk running around bidding up the price of available housing using the 45bn a year Brown was borrowing just to pay them.
The whole past decade was a borrowing orgy pump-primed, whether delibrately or accidentally by Gordon Brown.
Gordon Brown is responsible. He guaranteed to return to boom and bust. He guaranteed no house price bubble. And then promptly set off down a route guaranteed to produce both.
And now the 'solution' is to wet his finger and try and guess what amount of printed money will wipe out his previous failures without producing a Weimar Republic or a Zimbabwe or an Argentina.
As I said on another thread - he's going to attempt to be Goldilocks Mugabe. Print just the 'right' amount of money.
Oh, yeah. Good luck with that.
If the UK public are stupid enough to vote for him again he'll go further down the Mugabe route. It'll be confiscation of assets - land, housing bank deposits - and their 'sale' to more 'productive' bidders or 'redistribution' to more 'deserving' individuals.
Tell me I'm wrong.
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The Brown Clowns Band is currently on a mini regional tour.
Tour expected to lose around one million pounds.
Brown Clowns appear not to be bothered about this as they are sponsored by the UK taxpayer and savers.
Rock on Gordy
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334.
I suppose we're going to have to disagree.
You'll never accept that it was the very application of pure free-market philosophy by the banks (they called it things like matching investor goals with those of borrowers) which produced the borrowing binge. That would mean admitting the commies were right!
You seem to want to believe that Brown and Bush somehow ordered the banks (including French, German, Swiss and other non-UK / US) to lend in totally unsustainable ways in eye-watering amounts.
I'm never going to convince you, I know, because you seem to want it to be the bogeyman Brown's fault, but up to the end of 2007, the major global banks thought themselves invincible, with far more power than sovereign governments- and they effectively printed far more money than countries, via loans. Any attempt to regulate / influence the banks' business practices was met with threats to relocate, and the nature of their business was and is such that it can largely be done anywhere, including tax havens and cyberspace.
It took the events of 2008 for them to fully appreciate that they are not the gods of capitalism that they thought, and that they need the fallback of ordinary mortals' deposits and taxpayer guarantees. It's an expensive lesson, but perhaps good for humanity, long-term.
Alan Greespan, the man who took US rates to 1% in 2002, blames himself to the extent that the Fed believed, mistakenly, that bank directors would act in their and their companies' medium term interests. That's very big of him, but he's wrong. The buck stops with those who took the conscious decisions to lend out trillions of dollars worth of loans, purely so that they could be parcelled up and flogged to gullible investors, reassured by their AAA status.
It was criminal fraud, and the result of short-term greed of those who stood to gain most- the directors of major banks, few of whom understand credit derivatives, or much else, apart from climbing the greasy pole.
The irony is that those responsible will be among the ones sitting on the biggest piles of loot, exploiting the deflationary collapse which they caused and which will get much much worse unless Obama prints away some of the US deficit.
Governments must intervene since the free market has ceased to function. Let's hope they get the amount of intervention right- the Goldilocks way is the only way. Unless you'd prefer the wolf?
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Alan Greespan, the man who took US rates to 1% in 2002, blames himself to the extent that the Fed believed, mistakenly, that bank directors would act in their and their companies' medium term interests. That's very big of him, but he's wrong.
As you say we'll have to agree to disagree. And I agree that you'd think that the banks would have acted in their own best interests. I remember wandering around from 2002 onwards wondering where the hell all this money was coming from. Scratching my head at the unsustainability of it all and the clear pyramid scheme that was being built.
But I'm not the regulator. I'm not the government. I'm not paid nor entrusted to make sure that banks and individuals don't self-harm. But it was pretty obvious to me that we, as a nation and a government, were self-harming. And so it should have been equally clear to our government and they should have investigated or regulated.
Instead Brown chose to stand up every year and proclaim the squandering boom and the house price boom as further evidence of his financial genius. The natural order of things now that we had a history PhD as Chancellor. A genius. A real polymath. History and economics.
Meanwhile I'm listening to his moonshine and scratching my head. Even with all this insane borrowing and consumption and 'record employment' he still couldn't balance the budget. What if anything went wrong? No contingency at all. Blind bragging about how brilliant he was even as he doubled national debt.
And now you too tell me that the solution to all this pretendy money conjured out of fresh air by the banks and the government is to print up some more.
How can that be?
We, as a nation, just have to take the pain. There will be job losses in banks and retail. There will be mass unemployment in industries that only existed because we were borrowing and squandering like it was judgement day. House prices will go down. Eventually they will become affordable, confidence will return and we'll all get on with our lives. Hopefully we will learn the lesson that borrowing massive amounts of money you ain't got is not a smart idea. You'd have thought we'd have learned the lesson in the 1989 housing bust wouldn't you?
Pretending that printing money will solve anything is just more Mugabenomics.
Name one country for whom it has ever been tried and worked.
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332. telecasterdave wrote:
Did anyone see McNulty being interviewed by Paxman last night on Newsnight. McNulty should not even be on the minimum wage no matter an MP's pay. How on earth has he got into the position he holds ?
Sorry, telecasterdave, I didn't see your blog until mine appeared on Return to the Fray. I've copied it for you here.
604. At 3:24pm on 08 Jan 2009, phoenixarisenq wrote:
Several of us have agreed that Jeremy Paxman is a rude man. I must say, however, that if I had been in his seat when he interviewed Tony McNulty, I would have been even more abrupt. Indeed, I would have been removed from the studio for reasons that I am often moderated on this forum! I cannot tolerate idiots, better a bad person than a fool. The way McNulty wiggled in his chair when asked about apprenticeships was beyond words. Does anybody else share my horror at this behaviour in a minister?
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337.
We would only get to the stage where we had to print money if we couldn't borrow it first- the US would get there a while before us. Not that that makes it desirable, or laudable, it's just reality. It's got nothing to do with politics.
One point you raise is that we in the west squandered the borrowed money on luxury goods and services. Since this led to an exit east of pounds, dollars and euros, it is these countries with surpluses who stand to lose most from any currency devaluations in the west. One way of looking at it is that this is the price they will have to pay for their hoarding of our currencies, and an alternative would be for them to finance our reflation by investing in the west, as well at home. After all, the Chinese and other Asian / Middle Eastern / Russian elites have done very well (as well as the western elite) out of the last ten years.
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Cameron and Osbourne have hit the ideas doldrums, they have nothing. No one trust them anymore as people remember the dreadful Thatacher years and realise how Cameron will just take us back there.
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