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davep01

Listed below are comments made by davep01 between Friday, 1st May 2009 and Sunday, 17th May 2009.

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Sex scandal rocks rugby league 00:35am on 17 May 2009 I'm always puzzled that nobody ever raises the the quite blatantly homoerotic aspects of these cases, and surely it's no coincidence that this seems to be a regular occurrence in these "burly", masculine games. Maybe the male participants should just come clean and invoke freedom of sexual orientation in defence of their keenness to watch other men having sex. I'm quite happy for them to do it among themselves if that's their bag, I just object to anyone using other human beings as sexual props.
Bonus culture lives 5:31pm on 16 May 2009 Let's just let them have whatever bonuses they want, then tax them progressively on up to 98%. That way they can keep their differentials, jockey for place in the bonus hierarchy and still boast of their enormous pre-tax "earnings" - but taxpayers will get the benefit.
BT: Self-inflicted wounds 04:31am on 15 May 2009 Typical BT, sack workers rather than actually provide the services customers pay for. I suppose I'll spend most of this weekend with no internet access as has been the case every week since I found myself at the mercy of one of its broadband packages (I'd earlier been booted off an "unlimited" dialup connection for er, exceeding the linit). Never mind, at least they left their mark by leaving us with telephone boxes you can't hear yourself in for traffic noise and pushing the minimum local call charge up from 2p to 40p. The sooner this dismal bunch of profiteering incompetents goes under, the... no, I doubt we'll even notice.
Fishing for news 9:04pm on 14 May 2009 Enjoy the move, and by all means stick to Washington - I can live without heartwarming background insights from toothless yokels in Hogville, AL. I hope we get some revelations about why a promising president finds himself stymied by such a rubbish governing party, and who's getting what from whom to keep things that way. That's the story.
Sarko the Red 8:57pm on 14 May 2009 That wasn't a real Sarkozy (see picture), it's clearly a cardboard cut-out Sarkozy. You've been had in some bizarre opposition media prank.

But these people are at their most dangerous when ther start using the R-word (with excited encouragement from the uncritical media) ... remember education "reform", welfare "reform"... in the last 30 years it's tended to mean dismantle, privatise and hand the gains to the better-off at the expense of the rest. I'm not sure how one might privatise capitalism (its more bloated creations could certainly do with dismantling), but I can't see Sarko delivering real reform of anything much.
Oprah for the Supreme Court 02:49am on 08 May 2009 Lydia Lunch. Or Sarah Silverman. But Lydia's the more judgmental. Just the ticket.
A case of stolen identity 02:22am on 08 May 2009 Goodness! Money lets you buy your way to success in China? Quite unlike the West, then.

OK, identity theft by the children of the better-off isn't yet an issue here - just wait till we've those identity cards and the battery of ever-so-secure personal data that goes with them.
The right qualifications 02:13am on 08 May 2009 Intriguing, isn't it? We're told that our "democracy" is there to select people to carry out the popular mandate. But no, Mr Miliband believes (and he's far from alone in this) that he's there "to try and persuade people". No, I don't vote for someone to "persuade" me, I vote with the intention that they'll deliver what they promised, within reason. Politicians trying to persuade people delivered us the Iraq debacle and the disastrous neoliberal economic consensus. I'd prefer leaders with an explicit agenda who knew what they were doing - no reflection on Mr Miliband personally, he's doubtless as principled and competent as most and merely speaks with engaging candour for the whole opportunistic rabble.
'A bit of a week' 8:21pm on 01 May 2009 283. At 4:44pm on 01 May 2009, johnharris66 wrote:
"Try using 1983 as your baseline. Flatline GDP between 1979 and 1983 was the result of Tory (Heath) and Labour (Wilson, Callaghan) economic failures in the 1970s."

No serious observer measures growth from the immediate aftermath of a recession to a year of relative prosperity, it's a plain dishonest comparison. And isn't 1983 a bit late to be absolving the Thatcher government of responsibility for economic performance? But suppose we do as you suggest anyway, you know what? Still no substantial change over what had gone before, with the apparent 0.2% improvement entirely attributable to North Sea oil which would have been available to any government.

291. At 5:48pm on 01 May 2009, Susan-Croft wrote:
"I am sorry but anyone who can believe that Callaghans government was anything but totally inept, with strikes leading to the winter of discontent must surely be a Labour supporter. So there would be very little I could say to convince you otherwise."

Callaghan's government was indeed pretty inept, but if Britain was in such a terrible state in 1979 why didn't the Tories achieve better growth from such a purported low? You could convince me if you can disprove the financial and GDP data compiled under successive governments of both parties, but since the Tory party uses the same figures it would seem an uphill task.

"However when Thatcher came to office the country was on its knees. It was Thatcher who broke the power of the Unions, something I have noticed the Labour Party have not reversed and put Britain back on course."

Britain was already on course to reducing its debt as a result of the very policies the unions were so angry about. Thatcher came in and gave us 3 million unemployed with the 1981 Budget on top of an international recession not of her making, but few saw any subsequent return for £140bn of oil and privatisation receipts.

"The Conservative Party would not have taken away the powers of the Bank of England which Brown did in 1997 and replaced it with the FSA which we now know had no powers at all. However even if the Conservatives had done this the FSA could still have been fairly effective, if they had been allowed to be."

But the Conservatives complained that the FSA had too much power (an "over-mighty institution") - so how would they have made it more effective? When have Conservatives ever been advocates of tougher regulation?

"I think everyone forgets it was Brown who sold our gold at the lowest price ever and has led us to have the highest Government debt since WW2, I suppose that was the Conservatives fault as well."

No, the gold sell-off was Brown's fault. You see, I've no great fondness for this government either. But I do believe in some semblance of truth when there's so much mythologising and hysteria surrounding its (and its predecessor's) performance and the shared responsibility of both parties for the unregulated free-for-all that led to this debacle.
'A bit of a week' 4:31pm on 01 May 2009 113. At 6:28pm on 30 Apr 2009, Susan-Croft wrote:
"Brown changed the regulation on the banks in 1997 to the dreadful FSA. This is something the Conservatives would most certainly not have done. This left the banks virtually unregulated."

That wasn't why the Tories opposed it: on the contrary, then Shadow Chancellor Francis Maude objected (24 Nov 1999) that "It invests oppressive powers in a single, unaccountable, over-mighty institution.... The Financial Services Authority will act as rule maker, policeman, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner." Conservatives wanted less regulation of the financial sector, not more.

"it was the Labour Government of the 70s which brought the country to is knees at that time. It was Thatchers government who brought the economy back into balance and it took 18 years to do it."

It was £70bn in oil revenues that allowed the Tories to reduce public debt relative to GDP (in fact the North Sea windfall far exceeded the fall in the debt burden). And Callaghan's cuts had already brought the proportion down from its 1975 level. Thatcher & Major delivered us 18 years of cuts & sell-offs resulting in GDP growth no better than in any 18-year period in 1945-79, for a modest 5 percentage point overall reduction in spending and debt as a share of national output. The Thatcher "miracle" is a myth: the Official Monster Raving Loony Party could have done just as well - as indeed did Labour until the Northern Rock collapse triggered the crisis unleashed by its failure to decisively reverse Tory deregulation.

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