"Recession can be good for us"
1645 UPDATE:
We're talking about THIS in the programme tonight...with the health secretary, the BMA and a trustee of the Patients' Association.
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I think that's a great idea for a story. Perhaps at the same time you could look back at other offhand remarks that have revealed an utter lack of human understanding.
Was it Lawson or Lamont who said 'unemployment is a price worth paying'?
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Um... what's the problem? If the quote on that link is accurate, then it's clear that the chap was referring to a very specific meaning of "good for us".
The quote is: "On many counts, recession can be good for us. People tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol, eat less rich food and spend more time at home with their families."
He's clearly not saying it's good on all counts or even most counts. I suppose one could quibble about the veracity of the statement - I'd like to see statistics on them - but beyond that just sounds like troublemaking.
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Ah, forget about that bit on Lansley and scroll on down to David Cameron's catch-up paper on economics - hilarious!
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Every change can be good for us.
In a upturn we get to eat better food. Work less for the same money. (Remember all the quotes about making more from the house price rise than the job) We spend more on family holidays.
It is all down to choice and your view point, not the economy. The change is just the trigger.
However, Conservatives do love recessions. It is part of the big business management scheme. Every few years a little down turn and you tidy up the books and lose the worst workers and the market rewards your stock price.
BUT this is not a little down turn. We have multiple broken systems not just a simple house price or stock price re-adjustment.
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I can't get the link to work on this (work) computer but if Recessions so good for us why are the Government borrowing our way to oblivion trying to get out of it?
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What a pompous twerp!!
I did hear yesterday that "collars and cuffs" had thrown Prudence out of the window. Is that allowed?
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@6
"I did hear yesterday that "collars and cuffs" had thrown Prudence out of the window. Is that allowed?"
I understand there is a protocol that allows such action to be taken - in the proof of a mis-match.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
I hope that PM can manage to produce a sensible discussion of mental health services even if politicians and other journalists can't.
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It's all the fault of the "Contractionists" ;)
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Caroline (9) I have just recorded an interview with the health secretary and sought to do just that. You can hear it in the programme.
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But, from the broader viewpoint, recession may be good, but total economic collapse would be far better.
Vaya con Gaia
ed
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How anyone with a full head of hair can talk about recession in this way defeats me.
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Lansley said: "Interestingly on many counts, recession can be good for us. People tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol, eat less rich food and spend time at home with their families."
Oh come on. Only a Labour supporter with impeccable liberal credentials could possibly be offended by that. Of course he shouldn't have said it though. It's rather typical, I'd venture, of the BBC to pick this and run with it. Anything to bash a nasty old Tory who probably spits on poor people after all.
How about the man in charge in the making of the recession, oughtn't HE be apologising? And doesn't it show a real moral compass of Lansley to admit his mistake and apologise.
People bang on about wanting politicians to be real and say what they think. The same people seem to expect an apology when they do!
What DO people want? Only people who voice views they agree with, that's what.
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How marvellous. I take it the PM program has missed the half-dozen articles in the Guardian and Independent about the marvellous effects of recession and how cleansing they are? How about this article from Prospect Magazine, that leading light of what's laughably called the 'progressive left', lauding the marvels of recession?
(http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10415) It tells us how good it'll be that all the rich people will be out of work and how empowering that'll be for them.
Of course, if it's the left-wing media telling us that being poor and out of work is good for us, that's OK, but if a Conservative politician says it, then, well, it's front-line news for the Today editors! Good job guys.
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The Fed put another 800 billion dollars of lettuce into the financial markets today.
Markets were unimpressed.
Were you?
The crisis in Western society is due to it's history, the way we live, and the way we plan to live.
It seems increasingly clear that the West is wrestling with economies without the inheritance of slavery, without the history of colonial land grabs from Australia to Canada, and without plans to continue to have the rest of the world to do their work for them, in return for paper shuffling (or 'banking and financial services'. as it is so pompously called, with a million or so workers tied up, willy nilly, in scam production, producing 9-10 per cent of our "output").
India and China do NOT have to look to their history and their intended futures and know themselves to be bankrupt, morally and politically.
Contracting the economy to spite one's enemies, as Thatcher did, (fighting the Trades Unions (ordinary working people), here, and Islamic oil externally) only works if your enemies believe you CAN win.
Ours know WE are bankrupt morally and politically. Contractionists here, like the Thatcherite Tories (did you EVER think Osbourne and Cameron were ANYTHING ELSE BUT??), can only spite their own society - US!
Those who want our own poor to be further impoverished, so that the Georges and Davids of this country can live lives of ease, in a nasty closed society, here, can rest assured that the Tories will do exactly that, further spite the poor, given half a chance.
The slump won't save the West, thank goodness. It's just the way they've chosen to go.
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He's a Thatcherite, innit. Remember when the Lady opened her larder to reveal pre-war tins of spam and powdered eggs and all that stuff that kept 'em lean n mean during the war? Ah, those were the days. Can't wait to do me fake tan with gravy browning this Xmas.
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I agree with him!
The reason I am not up to my eyes in debt, owning a house I cannot pay for, and eating cheap seasonally available food is because I remember the last recession.
I was on the dole last time round, and learned how to live healthily on little money. It stood me in good stead for the future, more prosperous years.
Has anyone noticed the paragraph after Andrew Lansley's statement on food/drink? It balances out the picture - come on BBC, be more even handed!
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# 4 says that in an upturn we eat better food. Maybe when we are feeling flush we can eat more expensive food if we want to - but better ?
Doesn't necessarily follow.
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The realities of recession always brings on a case of Tory foot in mouth.
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As some of your bloggers have pointed out -how easy it is to pick one comment from a whole argument if your intention is to mock. What about GB himself-'You can't spend your way out of a recession?'
You just seem to want to give Johnston a chance to give us the usual -what do you expect from the Tories.
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I'd like to echo Edwina (something I've never dared do before). I think the coverage on today's PM programme has been fair. Fair Mair.
'Soddball' still has a point though; it took a Tory to speak it for it to become news.
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The new improving access to psychological therapies (IAPT) is making a HUGE difference to local services.. My local Mental Health in Primary Care team has just added an extra nine mental health workers in the last fortnight, all given new training using new central gov money to inject all the services with a bigger team for the earliest stages of depression and anxiety, and picking up more complex difficulties earlier.
The IAPT project is massive, and the timing for complaining against the government for lack of resources in primary mental health care is out of touch.
Yes, mental health services are permanently under resourced (especially in tertiary care), but right now we're getting so much more in primary care that the system's only just coping with the additions/changes!
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We've just been landed with a trillion pound time bomb by the government. But the bbc thinks a couple of words written by a tory on a web site; lifted out of context and seized upon by a desperate labour party is news. And you wonder why growing numbers of us no longer want to pay the license fee?
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This recession does not appear to be doing anyone I know directly affected by it any good what so ever. As usual people in ivory towers are talking philosophically about things they know nothing about. They should be honest with us and stop trying to make us all feel so much better about losing our jobs, our homes and the break down of family life. Not everyone in the boom years was bingeing on drink, drugs and gambling. By the way, who was it who changed the laws on and the accessibility of the above? Who was it also who encouraged borrowing and who was it who took us into two very expensive wars?
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I am always interested to hear when the government says it is going to fund more psychological therapists, this time to combat depression among the unemployed. Could I take this opportunity to register my interest in paid work? I am an experienced, qualified, UNEMPLOYED Art Psychotherapist living in Edinburgh. I wonder if all the many ready, trained, Arts Therapists who are often required to work as volunteers will at last have opportunities to use their skills as state registered mental health professionals in order to help others, and be recognised for it.
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Andrew Lansley is absolutely right !!!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=oK_7ju0W8HA
But our corporate paymasters will kill him for letting the cat out of the bag !!
Remember - be a 'good consumer' and do what our lords and masters tell us to do !!
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Just when you think that the Tories have managed to shake off their reputation for being 'The Nasty Party' someone has to open their mouth and spoil it all.
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(19) epc - I said "get"
In the next months you will see the variety of food diminish as producers choose the lines with the best returns. Manufacturers cut back on the marginal quanity lines and go for the trash food that always sells. Importers will cut back on the range of fruit as the quanities sold diminish. If there is not the economies of scale the choice withers.
You might think that choice is yours, but it is actually the stores that give you the choice.
People will travel further in an upturn to get the better products. In a down turn they travel as far as the cost advantage allows.
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We were, apparently, much healthier during the last war - all that digging for victory and eating lots of vegetables. So how about a re-run of World War II - d'you think the others would be up for it?
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Sid - I think you'll find hoarding was illegal during wartime. If the government accepts your idea, how are you going to explain those cupboards bursting with sprouts you've been stockpiling since last winter???
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Is Andrew Lansley a distant English cousin of Ted Crilley, by any chance? ;o)
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have just come across this from Polly Toynbee
'Even if unemployment reaches 3 million, that still leaves 90% in secure jobs. Most people will suffer not at all in this recession: on the contrary they will do well..'
Are you going to have her on the programme to question her about this? Are you then going to offer those who disagree with her politics to comment?? Thought not.
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Sid @ 30, that isn't entirely funny, you know: the way we all got out of the recession in the 1930s was WWII. Please don't give anyone any ideas! :-(
Somewhere I have a booklet about nutrition from the later 1940s, and I think we are now allowing as the basic requirement double the amount that they did then. But I can't remember the figures.
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This is a pretty extraordinary debate. It's probably the most polarised discussion i've seen on the blog with a very quick transition to Labour vs Tory increasingly poorly disguised. I agree with SSC way back at 2 and a few people since who have said "what's the big deal". Further, discouraging honesty in politicians seems a retrograde step.
I have to add that I disagree with PML at 16 who I had difficulty following but certainly feel presents a very flawed argument not least in the sense that our nation or it's government is not morally bankrupt as s/he suggests. Or did I misunderstand?
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There could be an interesting link here with today's story about the perils of the 24 hour news culture.
Journalists (from all organisations) are under increasing pressure to report what happens in minutiae to provide an update for the next news bulletin (in 15 minutes time) - and you can't exactly fill a timeslot with "Nothing's happened since I last spoke to you."
Added onto which the tabloid press in particular tend to be very partisan, and see the world in black and white. They seemingly cannot cope with statements laced with caveats and conditions, so look for a soundbite, take it out of context, then (usually) spin it to suggest the speaker is either a complete buffoon who doesn't know what he's talking about (a certain mayor springs to mind) or the devil incarnate.
Having said that, the flames aren't helped by civil servants (either intentionally or unintentionally) fanning the flames by leaking draft copies of documents / internal memos / internal emails, or by corporate policies that allow staff to download unencrypted database dumps onto removable media (CDs, UFDs, notebooks etc.)...
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