Refuelling the motor industry
What Peter Mandelson will announce this afternoon is guarantees for borrowings by manufacturers of cars and construction vehicles, as well as their suppliers.
Many of these companies were too big to qualify for the guarantees from taxpayers made available to small and medium size companies by the Business department earlier this month.
But these substantial employers are having terrible difficulty borrowing from banks and financial markets. So the taxpayer will now stand behind a portion of their debts.
These new guarantees are expected to underpin several billion pounds of fresh bank loans for the industry.
The state support is expected to be directed towards investment by the motor industry in low-carbon technologies - which may prevent the measures falling foul of a European Union prohibition on state support for particular industries.
The motor industry has been desperate for help with research and development into a new generation of "green" cars.
The funds for all this will involve some new money from the Treasury and some re-allocation for other elements of the Business department's budget.
The Business secretary is also expected to announce support for the retraining of motor-industry employees who have been made idle in recent weeks as the big carmakers have temporarily shut down production lines.
The measures are likely to be seen as a particular boon for Jaguar Land Rover, the subsidiary of India Tata Motors, which has been anxious about whether it would be able to refinance a huge loan when it falls due in June.
What will probably be announced at a later date is the use of government guarantees for the issue of bonds created out of personal loans to car-buyers - which would be a way of ending the drought of credit for those wanting to buy a motor.
UPDATE, 16:05PM: The scale of the support for the motor industry announced by Peter Mandelson this afternoon is not enormous, but is pretty green.
I'm 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~43~RS~)
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If you know, and are not just guessing, why/how do you know?
Shouldn't this all be confirmed to elected representatives first?
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All I will say is, a viable competitive business will have profits and a positive cash flow. That's the whole point of business - to make a profit and then pay a cash dividend to shareholders.
Cash and profits should also be kept in reserves on the balance sheet, to weather any economic slowdowns encountered along the journey.
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I'm not against help for ailing industries per se. After all, they are perhaps more likely to drag us out of the mire than a sudden change of heart by the banking sector. What concerns me is the use of taxpayers money to top up wages or to offset some other employer liability. So long as industry bailouts are used for the greater good (as the banking ones should have been) for things like transferable skills (general further or higher education, vocational training, etc.), I'd be satisfied that it is money usefully (rather than well) spent.
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The government still hasn't learnt to stop briefing journalists before telling Parliament, then.
In any case, quite why the government thinks that subsidising a bloated and polluting industry like the motor industry is a sensible use of borrowed money is beyond me.
Demand for cars -- which are essentially an inefficient means of diverting our wealth to OPEC countries -- is the last thing that should be stimulated at a time like this...
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My understanding is that car manufacture has been very profitable in the last few years. Therefore the manufacturers should have built up large cash reserves - where did the profits go?
Also, there seems little doubt that with or without help for buyers car sales are set to fall drastically over the next few years. Surely it is right that some makers should indeed be scaling down operations or even going bust so as to ensure those that remain can be profitable.
This initiative reeks of vote-buying to me. I am obviously concerned for those who will lose their jobs, but you cannot get through a recession by just artificially keeping people in jobs that no longer exist.
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slowleftarmround #1
I am waiting for the police to search offices to find out where the leak has come from.
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Cos of course, Robert, the major problem underpinning the recession has been the inability of people to buy new cars.
More debts underwritten by the tax payer
which we cant cover. Im sorry but what next, every action this government has taken has been piecemeal and ineffective.
If this government believes in keynesian solutions, where are the public works. where is the raising of tax allowances, where in short is the far reaching,far sighted policy this country needs.
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No-one wants to buy these cars, yet the government throws money at the industry to pump the unwanted machines out. What a waste of money.
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Dear Robert
This is an mitigating disaster Gordon Brown States he never saw this coming, Now he states its teething truoble for a new world order,
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Why do we need to invest in new tecnology ,Robin Reliants fuel consumption was over 60 miles per gallon
The RR factory could be taken out of mothballs unless of course it was sold to the Chinese as "uneconomical"
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Dear Robert
This is an mitigating disaster Gordon Brown States he never saw this coming, Now he states its teething truoble for a new world order,
Globalisation has not worked and those who were forcing it through have come a croper.
The Banks went first, then a series of Commercial failures, then the High street, Followed by industry, now cut backs on major capital expenditure,
"How come we the general public knew of the credit and debt mountain, by reading the Papers, and listening to political programs etc, and the Prime Minister did not
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'....which would be a way of ending the drought of credit for those wanting to buy a motor.'
Of course, silly me, the whole country has been seen queuing up outside motor dealers just begging to borrow money to buy new cars. Well, any sane person would, wouldn't they? After all, most of them probably won't have a job by the end of February and we will all, then become cab drivers .
You couldn't make this drivel up - could you?
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A joke - surely it must be.
Why are we saving this industry?
Once again the thirst for popularity is overtaking the appetite for sense.
This is simply about 'saving jobs'.
Lets get one thing straight - NO JOBS WILL BE SAVED FOR MORE THAN 6 MONTHS.
If you struggled in boom times - then how are you going to fare in a recession?
The car industry has had ample time to develop renewable energy fuelled cars - and it hasn't.
Why? because with renewable energy you loose scarcity of the commodity, without scarcity there is no profit, without profit - the capitalist does nothing.
So where does the bailout get us? It keeps us producing petrol based cars and ensures our reliance on Oil and of course the profits that come with it.
...and this is what they call the 'free market'?
It's such a closed market it would make any Soviet squeal.
We have reached a point in world political economy where the governments are stating that making profit is more important than the welfare of the population.
You can let your peope die - as long as there is money to be made from it.
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If the economy is going to recover in a sustainable way then it has to be rebalanced. We've become far too dependent on candy floss "industries" like financial services and retailing and we need to get back to proper industries that create real wealth. And that's why we have to ensure that companies like JLR, Vauxhall, JCB and Corus get through the recession.
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The government seems to think the most important thing is to spend huge amounts of money on over-complex schemes of unproven efficacy.
Has anybody added up all the money the government is spending on all these complex schemes that are supposed to save us from recession? And more to the point, has anyone calculated what the result would be if instead of all those schemes, the government just spent the money on reducing employers' NIC?
That's something that would genuinely help all businesses. And I've never understood why, particularly in times of rising unemployment, the government thinks that creating jobs is something so evil it deserves to be taxed.
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Interesting to note that they weren't so forthcoming to assist in MG Rover's hour of need.
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#5: "where did the profits go?"
Simple. They spent them all on sweets.
Seriously, I think you raise a very good point. It brings us back to that old chestnut: moral hazard. If the car companies couldn't manage their finances sensibly enough to put a little aside in the good times to get them through the bad times, why should the rest of us pay to sort it out?
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#5 -- "My understanding is that car manufacture has been very profitable in the last few years. Therefore the manufacturers should have built up large cash reserves - where did the profits go?"
In the case of JLR they went to Ford at the time they were sold to Tata. That included a healthy profit for Q1 2008 too...before the downturn took a grip.
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First he done deals on yachts, now he's doing deals on cars.
Amazing Lord
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So the final lines give it away
Mandy has managed to provide funding that ensures that Landrover and Jaguar stay in Tata hands instead of actually realising the whole debt mountain is unsustainable and let it go to the highest bidder. Even the workers would be able to buy it now.
You don't need to prop up viable businesses, and I don't accept that the banks aren't willing to offer car loans which would be substantially cheaper.
If this funding actually props up the Sub Prime motor loans then Crash is backing a loser before the race starts.
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The old favourites:
Poor lawyer
Honest politician (whether elected or unelected it seems...)
have been joined by a new oxymoron:
Green Car
Save petrol...Burn cars! (but ensure your toxic emission capture techonology is working first, of course)
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They need to work out the fundamental problem - are cars not being bought because no-one can get credit to buy one, or because people don't buy major capital items in times of uncertainty.
If it is the former, the bailing out of the companies themselves should be unnecessary - just free up the credit with some form of loan guarantee (after all cars are an asset with a value to put against the loan).
If it is the latter, they need to help companies mothball plants for a year or two.
Quite different responses.
As usual the government is wading in with taxpayers' money without working out the problem.
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This is not a comment specific to the blog, but a shard of information relevant to the present situation.
I have today received one of those 'Important information about changes to your account' letters from my credit card.
The key sentence in the letter is:
"Due to changes in the credit environment, it's now costing us more to lend".
?????? Base Interest rates are the lowest for 200 years, we (taxpayers) have pumped billions into the principal banks (to one of which my card is 'related'), and they put their rates UP ???????? Someone is 'aving a laugh' in no trumps.
(The new rates they are setting in place are all well south of 20%.)
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What are we getting in return?
Will UK plc be given a shareholding in these companies?
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Dear Robert
This is an mitigating disaster Gordon Brown States he never saw this coming, Now he states its teething truoble for a new world order,
Globalisation has not worked and those who were forcing it through have come a croper.
The Banks went first, then a series of Commercial failures, then the High street, Followed by industry, now cut backs on major capital expenditure, and massive job losses.
"How come we the general public knew of the credit and debt mountain, by reading the Papers, and listening to political programs etc, and the Prime Minister did not"?
He has without doubt denied to himself the very existance of Fiscal failure when he had been warned dozens of times.
THis a world disaster but i have a deep feeling it was generated by denial, a denial that has created an armegedan, from which everyone in the industrialised world is now suffering.
This has to have been planned, plotted and implimented, there is no way that this just happened. no way at all,
this was done on purpose a "Money Bloc" that burst on demand, and now Politicians and Bankers are hiding behind the " world excuse,"
its not even palatable, as individual countries basic domestic fiscal policies were allowed to fail, when governments and the regulators turned a blind eye.
THAT IS THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER.
NOT THE WORLD ECONOMY,
Had Brown had had the indicators in place and acted on them Britain would NOT be in this mess now, and that applies to America where all this has ben laid upon.
What is ceratin and irreversable is that Brown has now condemned this country to a decade of suffering unparralled in modern fiscal fistory.
Basically the government failed in protecting the country from Fraud, at the highest level.
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I guess most of the descenting comments on this blogg are from members of the financial sector who are happy to take taxpayers money in the hundreds of billions to pay ridiculous wages.
Alternatively a good few will be from the one third of the population that work for the government that do not have to consider market forces and efficiency.
Take a look at what other countries do to protect their manufacturing industry.
They do not look after their industry because they want to give away taxpayers money.
They do it because they realise the wealth it creates for their countries.
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I have'nt seen what the gov't proposes yet but as far as I am concerned it cant come too soon. The car part supply industry which relies on car manufacturing, is in complete meltdown, myself and many of my colleagues will loose there jobs very shortly, in my case prob this week.
Its all very well saying I'm alright jack and the industry should make profit, it does in Europe, but due to the vast losses suffered in the US where much of the ownership lies, this is lost. I have never been out of work and at 51 terrified of what happens next. Be very thankful if you go untouched by all of this.
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One step close to bankrupting us all.
Thanks Crash.
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Why are we giving tax payers money to the car industry when they are owned by foreign companies? Surely the money will just be taken out of the country to where these companies are based.
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Is this is an "appropriate response to a global problem" (the mantra of Mr Brown's choice at the moment) or a short term fix to bribe voters in Labour constituencies?
If so why are we not hearing of other countries funding foreign manufacturers who have plants in their country.
For example, Americans have funded American car plants but not Volkswagen, Toyota etc. who have major facilities in the country.
We, however, are proposing to help Nissan, Honda and Toyota (Japan), Ford and GM (USA) and Tata (India).
Are these international manufacturers going cap in hand to every government where they have plants and picking up a bit here, a bit there?
Or - as I suspect - are we the only country to use taxpayers' money to fund foreign manufacturers?!
Last but not least, have we any guarantees that they won't simply up sticks to a cheaper economy or the one offering the biggest subsidy when demand picks up?
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Brand new cars will help the dodgy bloodsucking Government vampires recover assets in future bankruptcies, child support and debt arrears (buy it someone else's name)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7852640.stm
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No surprise here.
This government did nothing to bail out the aviation industry when airlines went bankrupt recently, where all the usual arguments about saving jobs and related suppliers is just as relevant.
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This show a total lack of imagination.
If you want 'green' stuff, why go to non-green companies to get it?
In this context, we don't have a 'motor industry' and 'power companies' We have 'fossil fuel' industries.
They have no automatic claim to new 'green money'.
If you want a green car, why pay of the debts of a petrol-car company and ask them to do it?
Just make it easy for new debt-free, baggage-free 'green transport' companies to be founded.
If you want green energy why go to fossil-fuel energy compaines?
Just make it easy for new debt-free baggage-free 'green energy' comapines to be founded.
New green companies should be directly competing with the incumbent 'fossil fuel' companies -- and if they get it right the old companies will either change themselves (at no cost to the taxpayer) or they will be going to the wall.
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This looks to me like gesture politics, with the government needing to be seen to be doing something even if the "something" is of minimal real effectiveness and value.
The motor industry (and its suppliers) is concentrated in a string of important constituencies - unlike, say, Woolworths, where job losses were spread nationally - and has vociferous unions.
The problem is that customers are not buying cars. If we support the industry without the demand side changing, all we do is pay for more and more cars to sit on airfields. This would elevate the "produce for the sake of production" mindset to an art-form.
Customers have stopped buying for three reasons. First, because they cannot get credit; second, because their incomes are reduced; third, because people feel that buying big-ticket items is unwise at a time of such economic uncertainty.
It might be possible to part-fix the credit issue, but this would suck in imported vehicles. But we can do nothing about the second component, which is reduced incomes. And the wariness of customers about big-ticket items will remain a problem until there is a real upturn in confidence, which will take a very long time (years, I think, not months).
So let us be clear that the taxpayer is going to be bailing out the car industry, ineffectively, for political reasons. If this is short term, it will be futile; if long term, hugely expensive. And we should remember that virtually all of the companies being helped are foreign-owned. This bail out will be really helpful to some people in certain cities - Detroit, Tokyo, Mumbai and Paris come to mind.
At times like this, politicians are very expensive.............
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I can see that Peter Mandelson's super-rich friends might benefit from these measures but exactly how does Britain benefit if my taxes are used to help people buy a new German or Japanese car?
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Getaway Cars should be provided for all Bank Robbers.
(At least our leaders can plead insanity when caught).
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...or perhaps we're not buying cars, because there is some question about how we're all going to be taxed for them.
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Drive on the M5 past Avonmouth near Bristol, and you'll see hundreds and hundreds of cars all in rows. Simply at the moment, more cars are being made (and the wrong type of cars?) than being sold.
It's not about access to funds.
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What about manufacturers of Printing Presses ?
They'll be hard done by if Govt doesn't have the presses rattling day and night SOON.
But then the likes of DeLaRue could print their own subsidy, could they not Mr Peston ?
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"What Peter Mandelson will announce this afternoon is guarantees for borrowings by manufacturers of cars and construction vehicles.."
You mean BEFORE the yachts are visited?
Does not compute! Does not compute! Does not compute! |Does not compute!
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Hi Rob,
You know what amazes me is this idiotic governments assumption that people want to buy cars at anywhere near the rate they have been in the past few years.
The world is going through a deleveraging process. People are content with what they have got (not what they want) and industry is going to have to get used to this fact.
All these cries for support seem to suggest that there are a whole plethora of buyers wanting to extend their credit even more to buy a second or third car. This premis is simply false.
Offering this kind of credit guarantee is not going to start people spending on credit anymore. People want to save. So, if anyone in nuLabour with more than 1/2 a braincell is reading this, encact changes in the law to encourage people to save.
Trying to kick start the economy with taxpayer's money is throwing good after bad and will saddle all of us (recently empoverished) with a huge tax increase hangover in the years to come.
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This is investing in failure - by the back door.
This is perpetrating a fraud on every company in the motor industry supply chain who invests good money on the strength of this artificial market.
If Mrs Thatcher hadn't bailed out the motor industry when she dropped other lame ducks, all those suppliers would've been spared the best part of 30 years investing in failure.
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I run a secondhand car sales business and finance companies are falling over themselves to lend money, this is the government spin to blame the banks and anyone but themselves for a failing ecconomy. Brown is the never never P.M.
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Lord Fowler, committee chairman, said it was "vital" that important announcements were first made to Parliament.
"When Gordon Brown became prime minister he said it was his aim to put Parliament back at the centre of political life.
"However his premiership has not ended the trend for ministers and government departments to make their policy announcements outside Parliament first.
"It is important that this is stopped. There should be no question of ministers giving policy decisions in advance to favoured journalists or newspapers.
-----------------------------------
Robert -- seems to me and I suspect many others reading Nick & your blogs that you both constantly fall in this category.
Tell us honestly where did you get this information from ?
Peter M. direct perhaps or one of the many Labour "spinners".
Time for some of that "impartiality" that the BBC is claiming over the Gaza charity issue.
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#39
You got me thinking do the staff at De La Rue print their own wages?
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Hi
Perhaps if car manufacturers had not produced 'new' cars twice a year, ie January and August, but just once a year, then they would not now have a surplus of unsold cars. Just a thought.
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Bailing out the car industry...
Lets think about this from a realistic point of view.
New cars are bought predominantly by companies, these are the same companies who are struggling in a recession, so unemployment is rising as these said companies downsize.
so we have less people wanting a new car. point 1
If an individual bought a new car, he would be a proud owner of a glossy piece of metal. if he took out a loan, he would need to borrow - no credit. point 2
but if he got a loan and drove off in his nice new vehicle, the value of the car drops by 25% as soon as it leaves the forecourt. hence he is in negative equity. point 3
No doubt he likes his car enough to continue paying for the loan throughout its useful life.... this is exactly the same as buying a house, the loan is higher than the current value - negative equity. so why do people want to leave their nice new unaffordable house but keep the car ?????
Most prudent purchasers buy second hand cars (nearly new) to benefit from depreciation savings. So the question is how to create second hand cars first, or make cars that do not immediately loose value when driven.
it seems that we are trying to keep something afloat for the future, when no-one knows when the future will arrive and how it will look.
Car manufacturers are part of the circle of life (business) and some future entrepreneur will get the benefit of this, but for now, let them wallow in the misery of recession. We have successfully killed textile production, mining, engineering for a cleaner operating life. perhaps we need to get dirty again.
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14. At 1:29pm on 27 Jan 2009, garethm2 wrote:
If the economy is going to recover in a sustainable way then it has to be rebalanced. We've become far too dependent on candy floss "industries" like financial services and retailing and we need to get back to proper industries that create real wealth. And that's why we have to ensure that companies like JLR, Vauxhall, JCB and Corus get through the recession.
*********************************
These industries do not create wealth in an of themselves. They are one in a long chain of enablers that must be appropriately sized to supply its services to its customer base. No point having the market saturated with new cars if there's a reduced user base.
I'm beginning to think that finance follows the second law of thermodynamics. Wealth (energy) can neither be created nor destroyed but can only change hands (form).
How many true wealth creation companies are out there anyway? What constitutes wealth?
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Green Cars?
80% of the environmental damage done by cars is in making them, not using them.
What Mandy is doing is ensuring that lots more damage to the environment in the UK.
What's worse is that the battery powered cars touted as green are much worse for the planet and also put us in the hands of some pretty unstable economies.
Batteries are full of environmentally damaging heavy metals and have a shorter life than current cars (so cars will be replaced more often with even more environmental damage) and components such as nickel are so damaging that plants have a no-growth zone for miles round them.
Lithium, - as found in laptop batteries - is touted as the best battery material. It only comes from Bolivia and is a finite resource - if 1 in 20 cars used Lithium Ion batteries it would run out in 20 years.
Electricity comes from fossil fuels and our National Grid is so inefficient that only 1/4 of the kilowatts produced reaches the consumer - so 4 times as much fossil fuel is burnt as need be. It is only cheap as a vehicle fuel because it carries no fuel tax - if all cars used it the treasury would either go bust or have to tax it heavily to make up the petrol tax shortfall.
Until we have abundant nuclear or renewable energy to create hydrogen the green car is a myth. Even then it has to last 25 years or more to justify the carbon cost of its production.
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Once upon a time people saved up to buy a car. The special lease deals and 0% finance were a product of the bubble during the past ten years. Anyway, as others have pointed out, there is massive overcapacity in the car industry, caused in part by the fact that modern cars are just too reliable to need replacing so often.
And another thing, Brown & Co are leading us to disaster, but was I the only one who was depressed by the feeble (and feeble brained) performance of David Cameron on Sky News last night?
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What worries me, is that if the government are using so much of the taxpayers' money to prop up everything from banks to car manufacturers, will an eventual shortfall mean that public spending, if NHS, Social Services, Education suffer from lack of funding?
And, would there then be drastic cuts in the above three areas?
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Congratulations New Labour !
You have managed to achieve what many Labour governments have failed to do. Namely nationalise (in whole or in part) many of the UK's commercial strongholds.
And in true Labour style you've done with money that the country does not possess !
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Here we go again! How much more money are we needlessly going to throw away proping up outfits that are no longer profitable? I was taught that a fundmental rule of a free market is survival of the fittest, with the weakest going to wall thereby strengthening the fittest. This however appears to have been dropped in favour of try to support everything to prevent the inevitable because the politicians are petrified that anything other than the status quo will finish their polirtical careers and possibly the way our society functions for ever.
The problem is that they are not looking for an effective change to a system that is collapsing and is rapidly becoming untenable, but just a quick political way of trying shore it all up - a bit like plugging a hole in a dam just to have another appear somewhere else. I fear the end result will be much more catastophic and will create far more damaging problems for the future than bravely dealing with the real causes now and I'm convinced that borrowing/printing more money adinfiniteum is NOT the answer!
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Tata have a problem because they need to refinance a huge loan. ie they BORROWED a whole stack of cash to take over Jaguar. Tata have oodles of cash they are enormous and they should pay up not the taxpayer. If they cannot find the money, let them go to the wall and let the Government buy Jaguar / Landrover back from the administrators. Of course, if you are telling me that no sane person would now buy Jaguar / Landrover, then is the Government simply buying votes again? Remember, these vehicles are not exactly environmentally friendly and they are in a market where there is over-capacity.
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Dear Gordon, As everyone seems to be getting a bail out and your splashing the cash around, please pay off my unnsecured debts that I am struggling to pay, especially considering its my hard earnt tax money you are using so as the old saying goes "charity starts at home"!
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Re Motor industry - simply the politics of fear - with the economy so skewed towards financial services, retail and property, the demise of the little remaining manufacturing and engineering would make any recovery take even longer if ever. The green bit is a fig leaf to get around EU rules. Mandy is probably congratulating himself as I write at the clever, clever solution. Shame no one except beige people want green cars.
Re £90m (not a large sum these days) lost by RBoS shareholders (mainly UK taxpayers and pension funds) to US hedge fund shorting RBS. Let's knock this off the bill for the JSF or Trident upgrade when the bill comes in. The UK economy and democracy is in play on the global free markets and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Robert we know it's bad but can't we have some leadership from somewhere to tell us how bad it is and what they plan to do about it. Where's the party political broadcast when you need one? Did I just say that?
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45. At 2:23pm on 27 Jan 2009, scouseflyer wrote:
#39
You got me thinking do the staff at De La Rue print their own wages?
In effect souseflyer they do !
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Making finance available to the car industry should be linked to the production of better fuel efficient cars and the production of hybrids cars (Electric / combustion)
If the Car Industry is to survive, it has to become not only competitive but also contribute towards the green policies of our Government.
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This time last year HMG were trying to put Land Rover (Chelsea tractors) out of business now they are saving them. Hey Ho.
Still when the Hyperinflation hits all debts are off and we can all start again.
Oh no I don't have any debt, better buy a couple of Land Rovers.
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It would appear that this government have NOT listened to some of the more common sense medical advice on how to combat the common cold.
Method 1: take some expensive syrup concoction to ease the sore throat, rub on some expensive ointment to protect the chest, take some expensive tablets to make the sore head bearable, clear the nasal passages and use an expensive spray to help keep them clear, wrap up warm and stay indoors.
Cost: a small fortune.
Estimated time of recovery: 5-7 days.
Method 2: wrap up, stay indoors and do as little as possible; a liberal strength hot toddy may make you feel better but has no proven medical effect.
Cost: next to nothing.
Estimated time of recovery: 5-7 days.
It would seem that only an Economic version of Method 1 is on their timetable, and we going to be paying back the very LARGE fortune for little effective result.
I VOTE "DO NOTHING" ! !
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"Who's gonna pick you up,"
"When You fall? "
"Who's gonna hang it up,"
"When you call?"
"Who's gonna drive you home, tonight?"
[Drive lyrics performed by The Cars.
The DRIVE LYRICS are the property of the respective authors, artists and labels]
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I left school at 16 and have worked extremely hard and paid my taxes ever since. I'm 37 now. On a fairly good wage at 31k per annum. However i'm on the breadline. I got married in 2003 and had my first child in 2005. Everything was great. My wife decided she wanted to be with someone else and left me. She now lives with a very rich man and drives a merc. I have to pay 15 % of my net salary to her for the upkeep of our son which she never spends on him per se. I have to drive 50 miles every weekend to pick him up because she completely rufuses to help out. I have just had another child and am now really with the right person and in that respect life is good. However, my old banger (car) just failed it's MOT and I cannot afford to get it back on the road. Why? Firstly, the mechanics charge of 60 pounds an hour is a joke. Once all of my bills are paid to put a roof over my head, pay maintenance (why I should be paying this I don't know as i've done nothing wrong and it's nothing short of criminal) pay the bills and travel to work which costs me £4800 a year!!!! (I have to commute to London) brought food etc I have absolutely nothing left. I've never earned a huge wage and have not even been able to save, which as it turns out with interest rates doesn't disapoint me too much, apart from a pension which won't be worth anything because of these cowboys in charge.
So, not only am I being priced off the railways (I'm trying to be green you know), totally knackered from doing 60 hours a week, unable to save, unable to get my car on the road and being robbed by my ex wife who left me and I have to pay, why the hell would I want a car loan from a sleazeball governement to buy another car when I can't afford to put petrol in it because the gas bill is so high and the cahoot flexible loan that i got at 6% is now charging me 21% interest (more daylight robbery) meaning it will take me 15 years to pay back the 3k loan on it?I've simply run out of money. What comes in goes out. Labour got it wrong. Britain isn't working. Britain is broke and is being run by a bunch of arrogant, power hungry individuals that do nothing but lie and cheat the people. I know many many other people in this same situation. This government are so out of touch with reality it's not funny anymore. I've watched and read everything about our economic mess and now I am actually getting ill over the stress of living here under this governement. can I sue them? Really! can I ? Everytime I read these blogs or watch the politicians on the BBC or wherever I get a rush of blood to my head. They never answer questions truthfully. They always avoid them and we're paying for these jokers to buy their second homes and fill them up with quality goods!! How the hell can it happen???
Now the lords are corrupt and cannot be prosecuted. To quote Terry Wogan..'Is it me'? What the hell is going on? Why aren't people taking to the streets? The dark one is announcing saving the car industry and jobs and creating money for more loans. Are they for real? Who the hell can afford more credit? Haven't they learned from their own mistakes about credit. They keep talking about the need to get banks lending again to business and individuals. Well most individuals are like me. They can't take any more on - don't they get it? There's nothing left to be able to afford it. Things are too expensive and people have had their fill. No amount of cars being manufactured is going to solve this crisis. Man there must be about 10 million cars standing unpurchased on this land anyway. Why don't they get rid of them first or give em away? it's not our fault they over manufactured and made them too expensive to buy. It's a freaking joke this country and I urge anyone who doesnt' have any real reason to stay here get out while you can.
Jeeeezus this is making me mad!!!!!
Sorry...that's better...just had to get that out...
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A few points:
It simply isn't true to suggest hat people can not get loans to buy new cars. The truth is that people are simply unwilling (rightly) to borrow money for a new car when they are unsure if they will have a job in 6 months time. It just isn't necessary to replace your car every 3 years, so why bother burdening yourself with (even) more debt?
The development of green technology is welcome, but actually this won't keep an entire assembly line busy, just the R&D department (and buying a new 'green' car is not as green as keeping your old 'dirty' car anyway).
What about intellectual Property Rights? If the taxpayer funds Land Rover to develop a super new clean engine, who profits? Tata or HMG? I don't have a problem with useing taxpayer money to safeguard jobs, but I do hope that long term, the taxpayer gets someting back in return from the companies.
There is (and has been for sometime) oversupply in the car market. Selfishly, I hope that it is plants in USA, France and Korea that close, but, of course, those countries will also be doing all they can to ensure their peoples' jobs.
As someone mentioned earlier, this government didn't consider MG Rover worth saving, why are foreign owned car companies deemed worthy now?
What about double glazing and conservatory businesses? They are (were) viable businesses, and double glazing is environmentally friendly. It costs as much as a new car. Can these companies get government handouts to see them through the (indeterminate) lean period and retrain their staff? Or are they small enough that there is no political embrassment when they go under?
It seems to me that we should all work for big companies, jobs are much more secure. There is definitately a growing issue of moral hazard, risk and reward. If large companies are not allowed to fail, they are not under any pressure to operate responsibly. They can take big risks - if the gamble pays they profit, if it doesn't the taxpayer coughs up. A small company on the other hand, must act more responsibly, knowing that they will not be bailed out if things go wrong. This will make the small business ultimately uncompetitive. Maybe, in the current climate, this is an unavoidable side effect. But it is a problem, and I would like to know whether the governement has any plans in the longer term on how to redress it.
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Brilliant!
So instead of creating money on the back of sub-prime mortgages (with asset security that was thought to be guaranteed to grow) we're now going to perform the same trick with cars (with asset security guaranteed to fall).
Brilliant.
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Let me get this right. So Gordon Brown puts up the road tax on gas guzzling cars i.e. Jaguars and Range Rovers and because the sales have dropped we now bail them out with tax payers money. I thought the idea was to force people to drive economical cars and unfortunately the above are not.
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"The motor industry has been desperate for help with research and development into a new generation of "green" cars."
Oh yes and jaguar have just unveiled their fastest car ever.........Yes that's really green.
I totally object to using our money to bail out luxury car makers selling cars most people cannot afford nor want!
To try and justify this as a "Green" agenda is utterly disgusting to say the least!
What have the done with all the profits?
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The easy way for the car industry to be assisted is for the government to remove the sales tax for a year or so. This would stimulate sales without handing over any more public money to lost causes. The car industry must also help itself by reducing their margins. There are far too many forecourts still charging , or attempting to charge , full list price, in spite of the industry's claims to the contrary. One need only look at the on line dealers' prices to see how much the forecourts are ripping off the punters. Car prices on the European mainland are still well below ours for like models, though the industry will also deny this, so they do not deserve public handouts, they must sell their products at a competetive price if they want to survive. The ones who do will survive Gordon Brown's incompetencies, the ones who don't will disappear.
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Why is the British government shoring up foreign companies?
Surely any problem with these manufacturers rests with the parent company.
I for one object to our money being paid out to support Ameican Multinationals.
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Funny how they let Rover die in 2005, isn't it?
I guess that political expediency must be the order of the day now, given this change of heart. Maybe if government departments had bought more British cars rather than fleets of French and German cars then our motor industry might just not have needed bailing out to this extent.
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47 % less cars being manufactured still doesn't mean the end of the car industry.
It is a contraction that is part of the overall contraction in the world economy.
There are still a lot of cars being sold as there are still more people in work than not.
UK car industry is modern and well able to restructure to cope with the decrease in demand.
Unemployment like everywhere else in a shrinking market is sadly inevitable
There is still a lot of cash in the economy and so there will still be many who can afford to buy these cars for some time to come.
It is not all doom and gloom as some would suggest just another case for restructuring the companies.
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If the taxpayer is going to start underwriting more and more personal credit in the way of car loans and mortgages over the coming months then is it not fair to ask what the new lending criteria will be for these companies to the borrower? After all, we will be told that this money will be lent responsibly but if the lenders are in the position of earning all the interest while we take all the risk, thats just a recipe for disaster. This is OUR money that these people will be lending now, not theirs, and it should be done as transparently as possible not shrouded in the mists of mystery.
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62. fookinhellno:
"Labour got it wrong. Britain isn't working. Britain is broke and is being run by a bunch of arrogant, power hungry individuals that do nothing but lie and cheat the people. I know many many other people in this same situation. This government are so out of touch with reality it's not funny anymore................. Now the lords are corrupt and cannot be prosecuted. To quote Terry Wogan..'Is it me'? What the hell is going on? Why aren't people taking to the streets?"
This is a brilliant and heartfelt contribution which I urge everyone to read. It sums up the reality of the mess we are in. Failed government; failed economy; failed system. Failed state? Failed society? I am not usually quite this gloomy, but things are getting worse, and worse, and worse..... and I have no idea why, in response to your question, people haven't taken to the streets.
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One more thing - car manufacturers and part suppliers have had many, many good years. As a consequence, wages in the industry are very high - much higher than they really ought to be considering the skill levels required and relative availability of labour (this is not just a UK problem, US automotive plant salaries are high too). Perhaps if they reduced their wage bill to more sensible levels, they wouldn't be in this mess?
Of course, car worker's pay is peanuts compared to bankers' salaries. But they are a law unto themselves...
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Great post #62....you really capture the net effect of 10 years of Labour on the average bloke in the street.
I expect your position is not at all uncommon these days, and a terrible indictment of what this country has become under this useless government.
I hope things work out for you. A general election would be a step in the right direction.
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Mandy has just demonstrated what a silly billy he is.
Like many who don't understand issues such as supply chains or indeed basic engineering he's talking about using taxpayers cash to bribe car manufacturers to build hybrid, electric and other "green" vehicles.
However, whilst Mandy was doing that this was announced...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7851344.stm
Classic commissariat style behaviour... left hand doesn't know what further left hand is doing!
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I'd rather the Govt invested in the nation's infrastructure than propping up failing car manufacturers.
What's wrong with giving train builders to produce more carriages for Britain's bursting railways.
Or even getting on with building MagLev railways.
Then again as we can see with NuLabour scuppering the plans for 2nd Forth Road bridge (weirdly because it's not expensive enough), the Govt aren't interested in what's best for the country at large, but rather in political point scoring and trying to save their own sorry derrieres.
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Where do all the leaks come from these days? Easy, the House of Lords. Wee Willy Straw isn't the only one to have a Dad in high places, you know...
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If things are so desparate in the car industry, why haven't there been any serious fire sales as would happen in other sectors like retail? The taxpayer has been given the poisoned chalice by Mandy to buy some more votes.
I am expecting Tata toturn up as Labour donors in due course (unless Mandy is already working on a fourth resignation). Tata bought Jaguar Landrover by taking on big loans if they default, let them go to the wall and taxpayer can buy back from the administartors for a peppercorn. Of course, whether it makes any conceivable sense except to Nulab to rescue a firm producing gas-guzzling speed limit breakers is a question that must be asked.
If there has to be support, why not limit it to cars with engines less than 1.4 Litres or capable of 60mpg plus?
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Speaking of cars, aren't these driven on increasingly congested roads ? Were not "shovel ready" plans to spend 4 billion UK pounds on tactical motorway congestion easing schemes abandoned as a cost saving measure only last week ?
Wouldn't these plans have represented a stimulus with lasting benefit for all road users ?
This year I won't be renewing my 2-year old car as I traditionally have done. This has but little to do with the current economic situation. Rather, I'm fed up with the government's ever increasing tax fall providing minimal improvement for the motorist.
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62,
Thats a very common situation, I know!
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Robert,
Please press the government about their car tax strategy. The government have been very keen to tax people away from high CO2 emmision cars. Now, surprise surprise no one want to buy them, so the government bails out the car firms. You couldn't make this up!
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JPMorgan, CITIBank & Bank of America on the verge of Lehman Brothers collapse...
(See OCC report, pdf page 23.) at:
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
NOTIONAL AMOUNT OF DERIVATIVE CONTRACTS TOP 25 HOLDING COMPANIES IN DERIVATIVES
SEPTEMBER 30 2008 $$ MILLIONS
At their latest reckoning, Bank of America and Citigroup held
credit default swaps with notional values of $2.5 trillion and $3.3 trillion respectively.
Total between the two banks:
An astounding $5.8 trillion...
Bank of America and Citigroup's combined credit default swaps are more than sixty times larger than the $90 billion they've
received so far in capital infusions from the US Treasury Department.
According to the OCC, among the three megabanks, JPMorgan Chase is actually the most heavily leveraged, with over 400% of its capital already exposed to the risk of default by trading partners.
Bank of America's and Citigroup's exposure (177.6% and 259.5%,
respectively) is also crazy maths, but JPMorgan Chase's exposure is obviously
far greater...
The bank has $9.2 trillion in credit default swaps, almost twice as
much as Bank of America and Citigroup combined.
I predict that these megabanks will be too big too save in the short term and the ripple effect will be disastrous for UK banks including some of our own megabanks who we know are in serious trouble but won't admit it...
Playing for time as they continue to hemorrhage bad, toxic debts and our governments continue to use ICU measures to offset the inevitable...
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Given that Land Rover Jaguar exports a huge proportion of its production, surely we should be supporting profitable exporters at this time? I thought that getting foreign currency in
And if we do let LRJ and others go to the wall (to the barely disguised glee of the loony green types), perhaps we should return ourselves to pre-industrialised Britain and a life of serfdom or peasantry?
Without industry, where else is the wealth going to be created in this country? Boutique homeotherapy vendors? Exotic nut importers?
You can bet your lentil soup that the Germans are protecting their car brands ready for the recovery, whatever form that takes.
The schadenfreude exhibited by some is laughable. Especially, given the current situation. We should be doing everything we can to protect successful British brands.
Incidentally, some have asked why Rover wasn't saved. Well, Rover was a dog and with no brand presence and was dead in the water. It was not viable. You can't say the same about Land Rover or Jaguar, both market leaders in their sectors. Only specific circumstances and the credit crisis threaten an otherwise sound and profitable business.
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74,
Wykhamist – True but lets not forget it was the tories that introduced the very wrong CSA (Hey now they can take your passport off you, now that is a punishment!)
The raping of the uk population goes on unabated, when wlll the people take to the streets and start hanging the folk in charge?
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# 49. PeterJ42 wrote:
"Green Cars?
80% of the environmental damage done by cars is in making them, not using them"
Where on earth did you get that 80% figure from?
The last report openly published on this was by VW and it stated that their particular manufacturing accounted for 27-30% of a car's total CO2 footprint. Substantial yes, but it means the bulk of the carbon was emitted after the car was delivered to its first owner.
The last time the UK's Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders commented on this in 2005 they estimated the footprint to build an average car in Britain as 600kg of CO2. It could well be less now. There are online calculators forthese things now.
Low carbon emission cars have a carbon dioxide emission rate of less than 100g/km. Very highly polluting cars have a carbon emission rate of over 200g/km. Even the lowest is emitting - over about 10,000 miles - which is not a high annual mileage - 1.6 tonnes of CO2, two and half times what it cost in CO2 to build it...
And naturally, CO2 cost to build is a relatively fixed quantity whereas use it certainly not so you can't form a valid argument on that basis - although many are already trying to. Low CO2 emission cars DO make sense for the environment, albeit that 'how many' should be produced?' is a very good question. There is massive over-production everywhere you look.
GC
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Back to the Future IV!
This is 1960s economics, when the country stood or fell by heavy engineering, represented by the car. It was replaced by 1980s economics, when it stood or fell by the City. Now, instead of focusing on a centre of excellence to lead the way out of the morass, they crawl back to the de Lorean approach...
It's incorrect, in passing, to suggest HMG's guarantees to small business are working - the symptoms of the earlier direct-lending post says Plan B died in the water as we predicted, for exactly the same reasons Plan A did. Watch for full nationalisation of retail banking within 2 weeks
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Bailing out the motor industry (and others to come) looks to be the fast track for a total collapse of our society as we know of.
We already have the electro-magnetic generator engine (EBM Technology) to replace our old combustion engine.
A small DC motor initially rotates the EBM drive unit until it achieves operational speed. Its unique geometry allows excess shaft power to be produced as the rotor is rotated through the magnetic field. The shaft power is converted to electricity via a synchronous generator attached to the shaft of the EBM unit. A small quantity of this electricity is then fed back to the EBM unit as excitation current to continue the rotation. The excess powers produced can be used or sold for profit.
As the current economic crisis unfold couple with reactions from our elitist “leaders” and knowing that the new technologies are ready to be commercialized, lots of questions are popping up.
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Unelected Lord hands out taxpayers money to foreign owned businesses and amends laws.
Is this connected with any other news item?
Can someone help me with my credit card bill?
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Friendlycard @ 72
People haven't taken to the streets because we have not yet reached the tipping point.
Which naturally leads on to the question of when will we get to that stage, if ever?
Although in the end, it may be a tiny individual action such as refusing to give up a seat on a bus, that sends the movement 'over the edge', there will be a number of larger events just before that point, which in retrospect were the primary drivers.
For examples, major bank failure(s), mass unemployment, pandemic and so on.
I believe we English have been far too passive about politics in the past decades and the time may be fast approaching when a radical shake-up is precisely what is required.
In that sense, a few riots and a total recasting of the English political system may turn out to be the best thing that has happened to us English since we were last independent a few hundred years ago.
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#87
Hear, Hear there's so much nonsense spouted about so called "gas-guzzling cars" that it makes my blood boil!
I posted some figures on here a while back about how many of the Land-Rovers and Jags had emissions similar or better to a family car such as the Ford Mondeo - are we going to ban them too! Much of the eminity pointed at Jaguar's and especially LR is people being able to have a go at someone for their class (inverse snobbery) whilst hiding behind a green banner.
Re Rover, it was a rump that was doomed from the moment BMW stripped out the good parts and either sold them on (Land Rover) or kept them (the new Mini). it's just a shame that they didn't merge with Honda back in the Early 90s as they know how to build smaller cars and run a sucessful business.
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much of this is music to my ears. Governments planning for declining industries should be a natural thing to do.
My reservation is, wouldn't it be greener ( and possibly fairer) for the goverment to invest heavily into public transport?
Also if this is truely green investment wouldn't the r and d take many years before cars were available for us all to buy?
surely mandy wouldn't resort to pure spin!
Wouldn't it also be great if the world could share its knowledge to produce good quality green cars, instead at best heavy uk investment being copies and at would the uk picking the wrong option.
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If a UK car manufacturer, say Jaguar, borrows money from a part nationalised UK bank, say RBS, and then defaults then what is the position of the guarantee given by the UK Government?
I presume that the Government would then pay RBS in order that it can maintain its capital position but this would, surely, mean that the Government was paying itself.
This whole thing is getting very complicated!
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Hmmm, Ken didn't pull his punches did he?
Nice to hear someone take on Mandy, just a pity it isn't across the same despatch box
Maybe we can get him to ask about parties on yachts, or mortgage discrepancies.
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# 62 and 63 pretty much said it all.
May I just add that it's alarming having the country run by a bunch of self serving buffoons.
This scheme is ridiculous!
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So the government brings in measures to discourage people from buying gas guzzling cars, sales drop through the floor. Government gives the foreign owners our tax Monet they then give it to their competitor as sponsorship for their racing car. Pressy you could not make it up are you such a limp lettuce that you cannot tie these Muppet's of Ministers in knots? Tell you what Give me a week at your side and I'll show you how to do your job. Being a licence payer I contribute to your wages I just wish I had the power to sack you and your oppo Robinson.
I bet Nixon would have loved to of had you pair around instead of Bernstein and Woodward. I could just imagine the sweet nothings "Hey Dick been up to much"? "nah you now how it is boy's bit o this and a bit o that just shooting the breeze lads". "Oh right, that's fine then shall we tell everyone not to worry it's all kosher in the big house then"? "That would be real swell boy's". (Dicks thought for the day) glad these lads ain't Limeys they'd be after Knighthoods.
It Tata is in such dire straights then they should not be funding Ferrari on the other hand why not nationalise the firm run it as a private company let it keep its share holders but when the profits come rolling back in reap the benefits? Be brave follow the Nisan example one union no strike deal and turn the place around.
By the way is Mandy going sailing with Ratan any time soon? Go on Pressy find a pair and do your job not Gordy "I didn't eat all the pies" Brown's.
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85. guycroft:
"The last report openly published on this was by VW and it stated that their particular manufacturing accounted for 27-30% of a car's total CO2 footprint. Substantial yes, but it means the bulk of the carbon was emitted after the car was delivered to its first owner".
Sounds about right.
Though seeing through the green fig-leaf worn by Mandy today, I do believe that we need to make very major changes if the car industry is to survive.
As well as some environmental impact from manufacturing, there is impact from disposal as well. This is actually worse with electric than with conventional vehicles.
Some of the ways ahead are being piloted by Smart. Their cars have a low environmental impact during build, during use and through recycling. They are small (which helps with congestion as well as environmental impact). Their fuel efficiency is excellent. Their construction (titanium steel frame, recyclable plastic outer panels) is excellent.
At the moment we are scrabbling around for environmental solutions, with no real focus. Biofuels are a bit daft - you use up half the energy growing them, and use up land that will be needed to feed people if the population keeps growing by 1.4 million a week. Electrics are OK, but you have to produce the electricity somehow. Fuel cells and hydrogen are less than wholly convincing.
I think that we need to tweak existing technology. Smaller, lighter cars can be built, the way Smart do it. This could double average mpg. Hybrids are a good idea. We may also need to redesign the way in which we live - better public transport, greater housing density.
If Mandy is serious about this (and not just using it as a fig-leaf for a bail-out) then we need a Royal Commission (or whatever) on the future of transport.
I would not be at all surprised if Obama is thinking along these lines (it is the only way he can realise the ambition of freeing the US from dependency on imported oil).
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89,
Listen to yourself!
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89. JohnConstable:
"People haven't taken to the streets because we have not yet reached the tipping point.
Which naturally leads on to the question of when will we get to that stage, if ever?"
I suspect we may, and for some of the same reasons given in your post. Fundamentally, I suspect that the economy is going to get drastically worse, and that what we have seen so far is just a foretaste of what is to come.
Combine economic hardship with growing contempt for the politicians and you have the recipe for a very nasty backlash. This may be one reason why our liberties are being steadily eroded - ID cards, surveillance, 42 days and so on. I have long wondered whether the powers that be are making preparations for something pretty nasty that they think may be coming.
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BBC Breaking News!!
Pound bounces to over 1.40 to the US dollar!!
Other News this Tuesday afternoon:
Pound recovery bad news for exporters say exporters
Pound recovery good news for the housing market say estate agents.
Pound recovery great news say importers of cheap junk from Chiner.
Pound recovery great news for us say sportsmen jetting round the planet playing games and completely unaffected by recession say sportsmen.
Pound recovery should mean fewer repossessions says circuit judge.
Pound recovery great news for us say travel firms.
God Bless the Republic of Westminster say Peers.
Later in the programme:
Pound recovery shows we are doing whatever it takes says Brown pound recovery shows we are doing whatever it takes says Brown pound recovery shows we are doing whatever it takes says Brown pound recovery shows we are doing whatever it takes says Brown.
Repossessions and foreclosures and redundancies up and nobody came.
GC
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Have you noticed that many of those commenting today about how terrible it is government helping out the car industry are the same people who previously have been complaining that the government has been destroying manufactoring in this country?
No 62 clearly is upset, but it's not the government's fault he got divorced, it's not the government's fault his car has broken down and it's not the government's fault that he signed a loan agreement where interest has increased from 6% to 21%. Government can't make people happy - they fund via taxation, public services and government can infliuence (for good or bad) the economy.
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#62
Best laugh I have had all day reading that.
Thanks
'Schadenfreude' has a lot to answer for.
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Welcome to GB PLC,
Brown nearly controls the banks, soon the car companys will be under GB's control along with any other major enterprise with the begging bowl at hand.
Back to the 60's come on down, where is Red Robbo?
Strange how the Beeb's idea of the natinons business affairs centres around the Palace of Westminster.
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Green cars have to be based on the internal combustion engine because of the cost of rebuilding the supply chain to support anything else.
So the emphasis should be on the development new liquid fuels which is I presume why the Govt have now set up this new 2nd generation biofuel research centre. That said, one of the oldest and easiest to produce alternative fuels is Methanol which is still used as a racing fuel.
Manufacturing Methanol from the CO2 produced by coal fired power stations would seem a neat way of killing two birds with one rock .......
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Staggering, this announcment should have been heard in parliament first and not the Lords.
How the hell are the opposition supposed to debate policy with government if they are not in the same chamber?
"Stoop" and "any level" are ideal words for this bunch of idiots in power.
Gordon Brown must think it's groundhog day, every day he wakes up it's the same "bad news"
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It is a disgrace that the unelected Mandelson is making these decisions.
How cost effective can it be for Ian Pearson to read out in the Commons what Mandelson has already read out in the Lords.
There is something very wrong with this.
One wonders just what John Smith would have made of Brown and Mandelson.
Is anyone keeping a balance sheet on all of the loans made by the taxpayer.
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85 GC
Guy, that's a well-presented case against the 80%. But it mitigates rather than defeats the thrust of the argument.
Speaking as a "seriously loony green" (thanks 83 landyStang) every tonne of CO2 is a tonne too much for my liking.... and probably nearly a tonne more than my bicycle will emit during its life. Mind you, with all that lentil soup, beanshoots and wholegrain muesli I can't pretend to be methane-free.
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This is madness and politically motivated.I fear bankruptcy is around the corner.
Whilst a car is an essential item to the vast majority,a new car isn't.
Who,in their right minds,would commit themselves to probably their second largest liability.
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The government is like the little Dutch boy trying to stop the dyke breaking. It has a finger in every possible orifice of the economy and its still leaking.
Look at the car industry, why is it (allegedly) uncompetitive. Could it be because the government:
1. Puts far more tax on fuel than other countries.
2. Keeps putting up road tax, parking tax and driving tax (speeding tickets) to persuade people not to drive.
3. Allows countries (e.g South Korea) which protect their home market to dump subsidised product here.
4. Pushes up energy prices and enacts all kinds of environmental laws to increase costs for manufacturing industry.
5. Takes too much corporation tax so companies find it harder to build up cash reserves.
6. Pushes up labour costs through all kinds of 'protections' on employment which actually just export jobs to countries that don't have them.
Then it notices that all these policies have sufficiently weakened the car business that it can't withstand a recession. Its no wonder a country that sets out to destroy the car industry can't compete with Asian countries that do everything possible to protect it.
If the government hadn't killed the car industry in the first place it probably wouldn't need to save it.
There's no need for subsidy programs that employ even more civil servants and give more control to the state. Just cut back on the policies that disadvantage UK industry and export jobs.
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Another comment on 62. It is arguable to what extent government (of any party) is responsible for his problems, and it is equally debateable as to whether government could improve his situation. I would say that government policy has contributed to his problems, but not caused all of them.
However, the real point is that the pain that he is suffering, however caused, is very real; that there are probably millions who would echo his feelings; and that there are likely to be millions more in similar situations as the economy deteriorates.
We therefore need measures to counter this situation. Easing the tax burden on average and low incomes - albeit by raising taxes on high earners - would really help. Cutting government waste would help too. We need to remove some onerous regulations and excessive red tape on businesses and individuals. MPs and ministers need to lead by example (openness on expenses would help, and how about pay cuts as well?). Simple fairness and transparency might allay some of the anger, if not remove the pain.
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# No. 62 LOL Thank you, thank you, thank you. the best blog on these page for a long time.
I bet there is some third world dictator out there wishing he could get away with half as much a Fozzy McBrown and the rest of the Muppet's.
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Blimey!....I wonder what more joined up Government thinking is due tomorrow...and the next day?
Private Eye must be having a field day.....they will need to start publishing weekly with this amount of material.
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What's all this about the Bank of England being independent? The Treasury always had the threat (the Government controls so much by threat rather than legislation, doesn't it!) of access to the media or Parliament to criticise the Bank and make it look foolish if it operated independently. This is far more powerful than any other sanction and the Bank would have had the choice of a full blown public battle or caving in. Which would be easier? To co-operate or to differ? To co-operate, of course! The Bank's so-called independence has always been a fiction as well as a triumph for the spin of a Teflon Government.
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to 107.
The largest liability at the moment is GB and his cohorts including Lord Meddlesome!
Thank God for the pile of sand I bought last year that I can now stick my head in!
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* 62
...I hate to say this but thats life....some of us get on with it some of us post our woes all over the internet. Getting back to the issue in hand though, the bail out for the car industry is as important as the banking system in my opinion. I have posted on here many times that manufacturing is an integral part of getting out of a recession. For too long in this country we have built ourselves up as service providers. Now the car industry are as guilty as the banks for squandering their cash , but as with the banks we may see a new landscape in the way the car industry is managed from now on.
While I'm having a whinge I would like to ask all those GB haters on here who blame Mr. Brown for our current predicament why didnt the US Govt. or any other world Govt spot the onrush of this financial meltdown ? And have any other Govts acted any different from the UK ? The answer is of course NO ! While I am no big fan of GB and this so called Labour Govt. I do not blame them for the current global situation. I don't remember Mr. Cameron issuing a warning in parliament about this nor do I think he could have acted much differently from many of the other Govts around the world.
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So what next, the Drink and Tobacco industries? What is Browns criteria here, who shouts loudest?
It seems businesses can fleece me as much as they like for mortgages, cars etc when things are going well and then when it's going badly they get given even more of my money (without my consent) to bail them out.
It's a lose-lose situation for consumers and a win-win for the companies.
Also, judging by the number of unsold vehicles at the manufacturers nobody wants more Jags and Land Rovers anyway so why make more of this inappropriate brand of yesterday?
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The French government has always supported Peugeot Citroen and Renault, and would not entertain the idea of them failing or closing.
And these companies have been highly successful in the past decade.
We allowed all British marques to die, leaving only foreign-owned factories.
Perhaps we should ask the French for their ideas on how to support our motor industry.
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So Mandy has made his long awaited annoucement on the auto industry which is going to help get credit back to help out the car industry. It says 3 out of 4 people who buy new cars buy them on finance deals such as 0% interest - and as we all know those deals have well and truely dried up. The Govt wants to get credit and finance deals flowing again so we can all flock out and buy new cars - BRILLANT!!
Are we all living on the same planet as GB and his cabinet??
We are - as a country and individuals - up to our eyeballs in debt and from years of cheap credit. This Govt is burdening the UK with more and more debt at a level never seen before and they expect us to all rush out and do the same. I'm sorry but I don't know a single person at present for whom buying a new car is high on their list of priorities. I don't know anyone who is desperate to take out a new loan. I do know lots of people who would love to bring their debts down!! There is next to no demand which is why the auto industry is suffering as much as it is. Is Mandy`s loan guarantee really supposed to change this??
With redundencies coming at a rate of 2500 a day and 2/3rds of people (as stated in a recent poll) listing job security as the biggest concern for 2009 this UNELECTED PM and his side kicks are really proving to be out of touch with getting the country back on track. They show us more and more as each week passes.
UK plc may suffer a fatal blow as a result of the crisis but atleast we can all drive around in nice new cars!!!
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ThortonHeathen:
Everytime I press the gas pedal, I'll think of you!
Off-topic I know, but I find it darkly amusing that while the soft Western democracies are filled by people hell bent on seeing their countries dominated by China and India in the industrial output stakes, said countries are going from strength to strength. One day (quite some time before the advent of the environmental apocalypse you no doubt subscribe), Western Europe will be completely overshadowed by China et al, politically, economically - and militarily. At that point you will be chaff in the wind - and your touching 'environmentalism' will suddenly seem quite... silly.
Incidentally, my Landrover has the CO2 emitted from manufacture and the first 45,000 miles of use offset through some carbon offsetting scheme. Same for any Landrover built since 2007.
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More reactive policy making.
Serious commentators have been urging change from the car industry for many years, and none has been forthcoming.
The motor sector along with successive industry ministers has failed to plan for a day such as this. They will fail again to interpret the market of the future.
British motor manufacturers cannot survive in their present form - for the simple reason that gas guzzling super cars are are out of fashion BIG TIME.
If its a question of low carbon cars then there are already planty of good ones on the market.....but as far as I can see no-one is buying these either.
Far better to put the money into greening our infrastructure. Just because we cant see power stations, waste disposal plants, sewage systems etc does not mean that they do not count......Does it really matter if James Bond ditches the Aston?
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JavaMan1984 @ 97
You ask me to listen to myself?
I do, I do ... and I hear voices, strange voices.
They are saying listen ... you will hear voices.
I listen and I hear voices...
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#22 PeterJ42
That's what the plan is - loan guarantees, not a bailout.
Typical idiot poster's response - wade in with all kinds of criticism without bothering to read the article first.
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The most crucial factor that Mandelson has missed is supply and demand. There’s no point in throwing money at car manufacturers if no one is buying their cars, because – as we have seen – they will stop production to prevent un-sold vehicles being stock piled in fields.
Instead, he should give customers incentives to start buying cars again, by say, suspending new car tax purchase tax and reducing the high bands of road fund licence duty to affordable levels.
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Robert - if you did just happen to read these posts these are the simple questions I would like answers to from GB & the opposition too actually - I posted these near end of your last blog to some people who felt we were all being a little pessimistic - it would be brilliant to hear the responses and discover we have all been worrying about nothing! The questions are very simple so make it harder to get complicated answers I hope!
Over the last 10 years has individual debt gone up or down?
Over the last 10 years has the country's debts gone up or down?
Over the next 10 years what do you think will happen to personal debt levels and the country's debt levels?
What is currently happening to asset values?
If you think they are falling does this mean that less debt is available even with credit availability unaffected?
Can individual debts and the country's debts just go on increasing forever as a higher and higher ratio of asset values and GDP?
If the answer is no - does there need to be a period of readjustment?
What will happen when this readjustment takes place (clue - its starting to happen now)?
What is your strategy for the next 5 to 10 years?
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You guys against CO2 from cars and against hydrocarbon fuel, actually I read you all the way.
In my small and unspectacular way over the last 5 years I lobbied for a shift to hydrogen fuel in many fields and in particular tried to get F1 interested in diesel. Sure, diesel is pretty bad news but controls have come on in leaps and bounds in the alst 15 years and it goes a lot further than gasoline. One letter by me on F1 diesel got 'star' letter in Autosport when they we having a green day. Did F1 take any notice, no of course not!
As it happens I'm owner of a race engine firm and heck, I don't care if I have to do something else to make a living but I can't do it on my own, I don't have any spare money to diversify. Every day's becoming more of a survival game. Sure I have a new non-engine related product ideas with extensive patent work to support it but no money left to bring it to market. I'm by no means alone and I wonder how many who work in the car industry read this. That's Britain, plenty of entrepreneurs and inventors but a shortage of dragons. I'm a skilled bloke with mcuh to offer and I don't fancy being forced into the workhouse like some wheelwright at the turn of the 19th century, thanks.
That, I should point out is also the problem faced by the motor industry. Those guys - and they have some of the best brains - that I DO know - are tearing their hair out. Sure they want to produce motive power that gives absolute best value for driver and environment but resetting a factory on the scale everyone's talking about takes 5 years or more by current trends and cost absolutely BILLIONS! They just don't have that kind of money - they know it and Guvt knows it. Never mind the added fact that their sales have all collapsed. And as if that were not bad enough they're all foreign owned so they have no strategic autonomy at all!
It might not be a bad idea to set up a very large and ambitiously funded state-owned technology company to develop the new ideas as exclusive British products and then sell them on. However, German car firms are probably way ahead of us already in alternative fuel. Whatever. Under Plodder Brown, anything as dazzling as a British initiative is about as likely as a duff bottle of Hirondele..
GC
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Andyjac06 wrote:
'While I'm having a whinge I would like to ask all those GB haters on here who blame Mr. Brown for our current predicament why didnt the US Govt. or any other world Govt spot the onrush of this financial meltdown?'
All the Govts are culpable. Is there a conspiracy? Who's to say.
This much is true.
There is only so much money Laurel and Hardy can keep shelling out on the peoples behalf into dead end businesses and the wealthy's pockets before the same people rise up and string them up on the lamposts on Parliament Bridge.....
The car industry needs to take a sabbatical.
As others have pointed out, there is a glut of new cars sitting on disused airfields etc around the country. Not being sold and not likely to be sold in the immediate future.
We're in recession.
We know that we may need every penny we've got to use prudently (remember the Prudent Chancellor anyone?) to ensure we survive this period by cutting back on luxuries and buying necessities.
A brand new car for the vast majority of people is a luxury, not a necessity.
In recessionary times luxury industries will suffer.
If these manufacturers haven't improved their businesses or set aside for a rainy day then they deserve to go to the wall (admittedly not good for their employees and suppliers)
Reinvent yourselves.
Manufacture something different or unique but necessary.
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#83
If Jaguar Land Rover is such a good British brand, why was it sold to foreign investors?
I am having real trouble understanding why the British taxpayer is bailing out a company that was sold to foreign investors. Surely it is now their responsibility?
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Is it too late for a post-extinction bailout for the dinosaurs? How about dodos? C'mon Gordon, you know it makes sense...
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Post 62 (which was a brilliant contribution to the debate) has been 'referred to the moderators' and has disappeared. Why?
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Someone...one the expert posters on here who obviously has more insight and expertise please tell me what their solution to this global economic meltdown would be ?With all the experts who post on here I am surprised we ever got into any trouble at all this country... Why didnt one of you tell GB that it was coming...then we could have avoided this whole mess..
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Anyone want to buy an Allegro or a Princess???
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Another useless gesture from a useless government, which postures to the Unions for money for the next election.
Of real benefit to the economy and citizens would be a reduction in domestic rates and or income tax and job cuts in local government and civil service to fund the reduction.
Would anyone miss 500,000 jobsworths ?
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Please can you tell me why my post no. 62 has been taken off? I haven't broken any rules surely?
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Dawea1 @ 122
There is supply and there is demand.
Both in the car and housing industries.
What has happened in both cases is that the essential lubricant, namely cheap money, has evaporated.
So, car and brick-making factories grind to a halt and all those businesses in the relevant supply chains also slowly grind to a halt.
In this extreme situation, where the normal suppliers of the volumes of cheap money required i.e. the banks, have screwed up, then only the Government can open up the money taps.
They are, but in a singularly inept way, as 'big beast' politician Ken Clarke mercilessly points out.
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129 "Why didn't one of you tell GB that it was coming...then we could have avoided this whole mess"
Read the Tory manifestos for the last 2 elections.
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Guy Croft,
This is out the actual post, however
Why don’t you start to produce some electromagnetic engine, some of us are ready to have their old puffing carbon engine replace by electro-magnetic engine I am one of them.
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I'm potentially in the market for a new car.
I'd love one of those new Mondeos, which as no less than Jeremy Clarkson pointed out, is actually a better car than the equivalent BMW but appears to have suffered poor sales because snobby people would apparently rather drive a BMW.
Not in these recessionary times, I think, especially when you look at the expense of those Beemer parts and servicing costs.
However, I'd need the Government to provide me with an interest free loan for my Mondeo, to be repaid only when the economy is officially recovering.
Yes Sir, I am prepared to do my bit.
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#129 some of us tried, OK?
GC
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Where was this EU money when Peugeot were closing their Ryton plant for somewhere cheaper in Eastern Europe???
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Loans, bail outs?? They are all the same.
What I dont understand is that the government taxes drivers of cars such as Jaguars and Land Rovers to the hilt to get them off the road and when they succeed we, the tax payers have to once again step up to provide loans/bailouts call them what you will, to keep these companies working so the government can once again tax those who buy their products to the hilt to get them off the roads. Another dance anyone?
A better solution would be to cut 15% off the big fat civil service, close down all the qangos who do no good but spend billions (no we wont miss any of them!) and then distribute those savings as opposed to taxing us more.
Dear Gordon do something useful for once. Please.
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Can ANYONE provide any evidence that car sales have fallen due to customers wanting to buy, but being unable to source credit?
My own, admittedly unscientific quick "ring around" of a range of local dealers shows that they have lost no deals whatsoever under those circumstances.
Is this another red herring a la reduce rates to encourage investment?!
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Re #62
Probably down for a number of reasons:
1. Telling it exactly like it is for tens of thousands, if not millions in this country.
2. Honesty.
3. Attempting to focus attention on some of the real underlying problems i.e. personal debt.
4. Because your debt is only 3k - only debts in the regions of 10's of billions of punds are taken seriously (sic) these days.
5. Honesty...
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129. andyjac06:
Your second question is easier than your first. Plenty of people DID warn that this was coming. It is a crisis that has happened in gradual stages, like tumbling off a cliff in slow motion. At the time of the Sub-prime crisis, many warned us of what was coming. Brown didn't believe in the possibility of a bust because he had abolished it, I seem to recall.
Goodness knows what the solution is, but I suggest we start with the real cause here. I call this 'notional value'. Here's how it works.
Say that the value of my house increased by 50% (in the past, I mean). That is 'notional value' (unless I sell, when it becomes 'real value'). Apply that to every house in the UK and a huge amount of 'notional value' has been created. Now, it is impossible to sell every house in the country simultaneously, so that this aggregate increase in value has to remain purely 'notional. If house prices then fall back, the 'loss' is equally 'notional'. No problem.
But, if we borrow up to an inflated 'notional value', we have a real liability offset by a 'notional' asset. Now, if the 'notional value' falls, we are in big trouble. If all assets in the system were now sold (impossible, of course, but important in theory), the proceeds would not repay the debt secured against it. The system owes itself more than its assets are worth - I call this 'excess debt'.
So we need to get rid of that excess debt. Ultimately, the only way to do this is by diluting it through inflation - printing money, or 'quantitative easing' if you prefer the spin term.
Unfortunately, this situation is asymetric. Some individuals, busineses and countries have been prudent; others are burdened with excess debt (borrowed against temporarily inflated notional values) in varying degrees. The stage we are in now, here in the UK, is trying to work the interest rate lever, which will not work. What comes next is printing money, which inflates ourselves out of the excess debt burden by driving 'notional values' (in nominal terms) back upwards.
Generally speaking, the cost of this process is spread in different ways. Those individuals and busineses with 'real' assets (such as cash) lose through inflation. Those countries with greater-than-average excess debt lose because their currencies depreciate, reducing collective global purchasing power. Those - individuals, companies or countries - without the staying power to last out this process suffer worst - like Iceland or Woollies. Wealth gets reallocated globally on a ratio which approximates to excess debt.
OK, maybe not a good explanation, but I had to give it a go. I think it means inflation, high interest rates (eventually), a lot of suffering, a lot of global realignment, and light at the end of a long (five to ten year) tunnel.
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fookinhellno @ 132
Don't take it too personally, I'm sure your post will return.
I had read it and it was powerful because it was plainly heartfelt.
It reminded me of the late Blair No. 10 website Speakers Corner forum, where a lot of posts similar to yours used to appear.
That must have simply been too much for Mr. Blair and company because the Speakers Corner forum on that website rapidly disappeared.
NL came to power promising to 'get closer to the people' but when that happened, even virtually speaking via that web forum, it turned out to be far too close for comfort.
I think that 'they' (politicians) secretly fear and loathe the unpredictable beast that is the electorate and much prefer to keep it at arms length.
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The news about the motor industry bail out and other recent pronouncements seems to me to highlight the current government approach to the problem - throw money at it. Yes I agree that financial aid is needed but we are in danger (I think) of forgetting why we are here.
Following the changes over many years to the Building Societies Act which gave freedom to Building Societies and as a by-product to Banks to downgrade the requirments of prudent financing and lending. These (then legal) requirements would I believe had stopped the growth of the "special products" market that has produced the current mountain of toxic debt.
But we do not seemed to have learnt - The Building Societies (Funding) and Mutual Societies (Transfers) Act, known as the Butterfill Bill after its sponsor Sir John Butterfill MP, would give building societies greater freedom to merge with other companies. It will also change the current restrictions on the way they are allowed to raise money.
(See the proposed Brittania Merger)
Is this really a good thing? Should we not have more control and less freedom? Is prudence a bad thing? Is safety boring? Is greed a positive attribute for business and those that run business?
I think that the "No's" have it
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#125 ...survival of the fittest ?? If that were the case then 90 % of the banks would have gone to the wall. I am totally against that kind of strategy...its a unique situation that we find ourselves in and in a strange way i applaud the governments for trying to take some action over this. If this action is futile or misguided then i guess only time will tell. What they couldnt do was sit back and do nothing, i believe that would have been a total disaster.
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So Jaguar/Land Rover are to get a so called loan. It was reported that Tata said they were looking for a loan and pay back by September, assuming they are loaned £1bn, my question is how do they pay it back?, they are not producing vehicles at the moment and it will be at least another month before production starts again, there isnt the market for new vehicles, the recent cutback in staff isnt going save that much money, ok someone might say we have vehicles already built, if they have there isnt very many as the Companys policy has always not to stockpile.So if Tata can generate £1bn by September what have they done with all the Billions they have accrued since takeover?. Could be they have in mind to take production abroad and sell the land
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129
There was no need to tell GB the problems were coming. He already knew - apparently 10 years ago he had appreciated the peril that faced us and was giving speeches about the need for better regulation of the financial industry.
This is years before I figured it out: but then the man is incredibly smart. He has a PhD in the history of the labour party and they dont give them away in lucky bags.
I'm not sure why if he saw this coming 10 years ago when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer he didn't do anything to prevent it. Might be worth asking him that.
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I thought there were 10s of thousands of unsold new cars sitting rotting on lots all around the UK.
When all these are bought and we all have a new car with pre fitted rust, does that release the storage space for the cars to be manufactured after the taxpayer donation?
Who will buy these cars?
I know.
The taxpayer.
Then MPs, their wives and children and all civil servants their wives, and children and members of the House of Lords, their wives and children can be given cars.
That should solve the problem.
Should it not?
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118. LandyStang wrote:
"Incidentally, my Landrover has the CO2 emitted from manufacture and the first 45,000 miles of use offset through some carbon offsetting scheme. Same for any Landrover built since 2007."
So thats all right then, LR export your pollution to some far flung "clean" place and you can press that pedal with a clear conscience. IMHO Carbon Trading/Offset is "Green wash" of the worst kind and largely discredited as ineffectual. Don't offfset, eliminate at source by reduction and conservation.
124 guycroft
Thanks for a very honest post and sanguine appraisal of your future prospects. I work as a minor cog in a big (very private sector) wheel and don't have to put my money where my mouth is...yet.
It will be very interesting to find out which side of the barricades all of us bloggers end up on. Am I the only one imagining a libertarian Green/conservative (small c)/Trade Union alliance against the NuLab/Neo-Tory Police State?
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#62
Missed your post, I suggest your 'f' word title.
Please try again with moderated title.
#129
Brown was written to by the EU and ECB on 5 occasions between 2002 and 2006.
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#140 morpethian
I agree. Brown is fixated on consumer purchases through credit. He cannot envisage any other scenario.
Yet the car market is a lot more diverse than this. I do not have the figures but company cars are bought/leased as a fleet every 2/3 years, but in recent budgets the tax policy changes actively disincentivise this. There is a distinct lack of joined up thinking going on here.
Similarly local authorities and public bodies such as police forces own large car fleets. Although there is a certain predilection amongst the police for high performance Mercedes Benz over British cars.
Then the remaing part of the market is the individual consumer. The Gov package seems to be only targetting this sector which would imply that the above sectors are doing their bit. But are they? The Business secretary does not seem to know much about the UK car industry.
Ho hum, another day another botched effort. Even the Trade Unions have expressed severe disappointment at this effort labelling it "as too little, too late".
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Such a shame we cannot see Ken Clarke and Mandelson go head to head.
I felt so sorry for the insignificant MP who was on the opposite bench to Ken today.
He literally looked as if he was shaking in his shoes.
Well on form Ken Clarke rightly laid into this government and its dithering and limitless policies for wrecking the economy.
Mandelson was probably having a giggle upstairs somewhere for managing to weazel out of having to confront him.
Seeing as there was nothing new it certainly saved him from a right pasting.
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I keep reading people referring to post 62 - but it´s not there.
What did it say?
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It would seem that reducing taxes would be the obvious solution to revive the economy rather than throwing money at banks etc.
My guess, as the average bloke down the pub, is that if the people we need to borrow huge sums of money from in the near future see the UK income from tax payers going down they will be very reluctant to lend, in the same way as if I get a huge pay cut and then trot along to the bank and ask for an increased loan / overdraft. Not credit worthy.
Hence the current strategy.
I'd plan for very high interest rates coming to a bank near you very soon.
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129
How about eating politicians, bureaucrats and senior bankers?
High calorific value, grown in the UK and significant cost cutting benefits.
They might give you flatulence.
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re 63
Spot on comments
re 14
Whilst it is preferable to retain manufacturing companies such as the car markers the companies that will have the most benefit to the UK life will be ones that have significant competitive advantages. Otherwise if they are given significant support now then this will tend to be repeating pattern. The current owners know this and may play it to the hilt over the next 5 years
I am not aware what competitive advantages JLR, JCB etc have. But in particular the car manufacturer will have competitors that also may be getting backup from other governments. These manufacturers need to right size their output to match the anticipated demand over the next 5 years which is going to be significantly lower than the last two. JLR in particular may at the point that demand for their products will decrease each year if the people continue to move buying smaller cars.
Ideally better to support manufacturing companies that can produce, or do produce, products that can lead the world.
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For those interested in the real reason for the bail out I would suggest checking the following links.
Land Rover (constituency Solihull)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/mpdb/html/523.stm
Toyota (constituency Derby South)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/mpdb/html/183.stm
Who she?
Nissan (Sunderland)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/mpdb/html/558.stm
Honda (Swindon)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/mpdb/html/567.stm
and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/mpdb/html/567.stm
Aston Martin (Warwick)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/mpdb/html/613.stm
Just imagine that?
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Dear Robert,
It seems the detail is in the fine print. So fine you cannot read it, let alone understand it.
May I suggest you look at Kenneth Clarke`s
response in the Commons which was masterly.
No punches pulled, no quarter given; a brilliant disection of the lastest panic non measure by Gordon where is he Brown.
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Attempting these days to read more, and write less:
I see the anger mount on both sides of the ocean.
We WILL get through this, and it WILL be painful.
I suggest the term 'Moral Hazard' rise to the top of the conversational heap, because to my feeble mind, it is the root of our ills on both sides of the pond. It is the ethical 'elephant in the living room' that everyone has ignored.
When do you and yours get to have an election again?
We all send our good wishes and sympathy to our English cousins.
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post 62 MODERATED!!!!
WHY ??????????????????
Moderator???? Your having a giraffe, more like the gestapo!
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post 62, told it like it was, we are ALL slaves.
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My main gripe is with the Banks and their trough rustling Management...
This however is folly...
At some stage we have to pay all this back...
By the way, I noticed that Benefits in Kind Loans are to be re-calculated by HMG. Apparently the biggest savings are to be had by 'Higher Rate' TaxPayers...
That seems fair then...
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139. At 5:24pm on 27 Jan 2009, mkerry13 wrote:
Loans, bail outs?? They are all the same.
What I dont understand is that the government taxes drivers of cars such as Jaguars and Land Rovers to the hilt to get them off the road and when they succeed we, the tax payers have to once again step up to provide loans/bailouts call them what you will, to keep these companies working so the government can once again tax those who buy their products to the hilt to get them off the roads. Another dance anyone?
Great post sir!
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132. fookinhellno:
"Please can you tell me why my post no. 62 has been taken off? I haven't broken any rules surely?"
If this does not reappear, let me know - your post was so good that I kept a copy of it!
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More taxpayers' money at risk. When will it all end? How deep are our pockets? How much more can we filch from our children to pay for all this? How long are we going to have to work before retirement can be a remote possibility? For how long are we and our offspring going to be in hock to the State? Five years? Ten years? A generation, more like.
What an unbelievable mess this is turning out to be. How unavoidable it all was had we been led by other than grossly incompetent and self-serving politicians for this past decade.
On Gordon Brown, I would say, "Never in the field of human endeavour has so much been sponged by so many from so few".
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154,
I think you are right however, this will exacerbate the problem IMO.
The demand side has gone, lets make it even worse.
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I need a new car, have the money in the bank but certainly won't be buying one in the current climate no matter how many incentives they offer.
How many more people are thinking like me?
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Re Post # 62
I didn't see the original version, but I think the BBC/mods get edgy if there's anything posted on here that could remotely be construed as inciting insurrection.
Somebody quoted Terry Wogan earlier wondering (on BBC airtime presumably) why we weren't taking to the streets? Take to the streets? Is he kidding? With so many people now on some form of State handout/ bailout/ tax-credit/ benefit/ sabbatical/ pension/ quango/ grant/ John Lewis List ...... there's only about nine of us 'proper taxpayers' left to take to the streets (including Wogan).
"Never in the field of human endeavour has so much been sponged by so many, from so few" Supreme Leader Brown, January 2009.
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"Those the gods wish to detsroy they first turn mad". A very good description of what has been going on in the UK since the late 60's. Each successive bunch we elect has been prgressively worse and now we end up with this joker and his back door Socialism.
I remember reading an old saying "to be born British is to win the lottery of life".
Someone, where did it all go wrong? As a nation why do we keep letting these idiots run our country into the ground?
There is plenty of credit available to solvent persons and good companies, albeit it at higher rates then they might be used to. We can't keep living beyond the means of the country to pay yet all we read is Brown trying to get us all to get further into debt, both as individuals and as a nation. Buy cars we don't want, prop up foreign owned businesses etc. Let failing businesses fall and build fresh from the ashes. Who doesnt want cheaper housing for our children?
Crazy, crazy, crazy.
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Morpethian @ 140
I spoke to a chap who had, until very recently, four garages, but is now down to one, the other three having gone into liquidation.
He told me that it was not a lack of credit per se but simply a fact that a few months ago customers just stopped coming to the garages to look at or purchase cars.
He thinks that the main reason is a fear of unemployment suddenly loomed onto the horizon back then.
Of course, it turns out that those fears were well founded and indeed unemployment is now a very real fact.
People, especially working people have to have a sense of where things are going or pretty soon they will find that they cannot keep to roof over their heads, let alone luxuries like new cars.
Anyway, in the light of this, I withdraw my notion that a lack of finance money is the primary reason of poor new car sales, although it probably is still a major factor in the lack of new home sales, along with the fear of unemployment of course.
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I see lots of references to English this and that on here, nothing British. Now as a Scotsman the English may think I should be worried, how wrong they are..............
I said some time ago,
The Scottish presence in the Labour party would cause friction, it has proved so. And what of the union, do you want it to go?
Personally (and I have many English friends, I think of them as people like me not English, call me old fashioned), you / we have all been duped and the masses will enact their revenge (to the detriment of England I may add, your enemies lie within)
The bankers
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fookinhellno can you email your #62 comment to this address please? [Personal details removed by Moderator]
I would like to read it even if the thought police don't like it.
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OldSouth @ 159
Typical American, so polite.
Sir, we are a few hundred years behind the US democracy so you will be very surprised to hear that this pitiful democracy does not have fixed terms.
No Sir, the incumbent gets to choose when the election is to occur, within a timeframe of around two years.
As you can imagine, that gives the incumbent governing party a huge advantage because they can chose to go for a 'snap' election and it is all done in just over three weeks.
Nevertheless, at present we are in a situation where the Government must have an election by May 2010 at latest.
I have mentioned before that political Britain is slowly fragmenting back into its main constituent parts, namely, England, Scotalnd and Wales.
If that process continues, then this is likely to be the last nominally 'socialist' Government that we English will ever have.
These are nasty times and so it would seem that, by default, when the General Election occurs, we English will have the 'nasty' party back governing again for a while.
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New car prices on the broker webb sites jumped by up to 10% today. This demonstrates the motor trade's attitude to the punters, up the prices to the punter and hopefully the government will help keep them afloat. The Mandellson measures look like a non starter.
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It is reasonable to guess that Peter Mandelston knows such subsidies to the motor industry will not help in this crisis, through his paternal links to Harold Wilson's governments.
He appears to have forgotten the white heat of technology, Donald Stokes, British Leyland and buses sold to Cuba discredited 60's spin!
#27 Please accept my sincere commisserations. From Paul Mason's blog http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/ it may be of scat comfort to read:
Now, who is "we" in this "wea culpa"? Clearly Lord Turner's predecessors at the FSA, Calum McCarthy and John Tiner. In addition, Mervyn King the governor of the Bank of England. Also the people who designed the tri-partite regulatory system: Gordon Brown, Ed Balls and Gus O'Donnell. Once you put names to this "we" it reads as a very strong criticism of the Labour government and its chosen regulators.
and last but far from least:
The "golden age" epithet uttered by Gordon Brown in his 2007 Mansion House speech.
"So I congratulate you Lord Mayor and the City of London on these remarkable achievements, an era that history will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London....And I believe it will be said of this age, the first decades of the 21st century, that out of the greatest restructuring of the global economy, perhaps even greater than the industrial revolution, a new world order was created."
Unbelievably and sadly for the taxpayers Peter Mandleston appears to want to be the belated last member of 'The Unmagnificent Seven'.
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WITH REGARDS TO POST #62.
This removal of posts that tell the truth is not on. So, lets start a little cyber-wat. Ig the originator of post#62 would care to re-post, we all cut it and paste it in a safe place. If it disappears again we all replace it - not just here but on other blogs, including labourhome, conservativehome etc etc.
Hopefully such a guerilla action will attracy the media and they will run with it. Then insyead of a few die-hards on here reading it, millions will.
Let's do it.
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"12. At 1:26pm on 27 Jan 2009, Bluematter wrote:
You couldn't make this drivel up - could you?"
It's only drivel because you don't know what money is.
A car is the second largest purchase most people make, behind a home. Doing so on credit creates a bunch of money (and debt) from the loans which are taken out. This is an attempt to further inflate the supply of money.
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Good Evening
I am a latecomer and have missed the oft referred to #62...in the interests of my sanity can it be reinstated please??????
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129. There is only one solution and it is politically unacceptable (at least it is if you want to win elections). The only way of 'fixing this is to reduce our standard of living (including our incomes). Live closer to work and get there by bus/train, stop eating lettuce at christmas, give up cheap flights and plentiful credit, change so that the majority of the population rent instead of own, stop easy access to credit, etc etc.
Not very nice is it. The politicians might be pigs but they aren't stupid pigs so unfortunately even though they do actually no it's wrong, by virtue of the fact they rely on popularity and votes then they will do all they can to keep the circus going.
And that's why we are in this mess and that's why it will get a lot worse before it gets better.
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The government announced policies last year to deter people from purchasing cars such has landrover and jaguar citing green taxes etc, importance of the environment. The government now deems it important to bail out these foreign owned companies.
This stinks and the fact that Mandy is involved it stinks even more.
What is most stressful is that we taxpayers have no recourse to reverse this action. If part of the solution of this problem is public confidence then we should have some sort of say as to how our money is to be spent especially given the accumulating debt we are stacking up for future generations.
Why are we investing in a motor industry when there are vehicles sat there waiting to be purchased, Lets just waste money to make some more - that's really green isn't it!
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UK is in worse state than anyother country and its all down to short term policies of this government. Only few months ago government was discouraging public not to have cars like landrover and they increase road tax upto £400 and now same government is using tax payers money to bail out landrover who is in this mess partly down to the policy of this government. By the way why tata is not using its billions of pounds to save its company. would tata share its porfit with uk tax payers definitely not and may be they are saving their billions to by another uk institute like they did with cors and landrover at rock bottom price and run it to ground (after making money for themselves)
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I see that Clarke is now responding to anything economic on the Tories behalf. What has happed to little Georgeski Osbourneski? He's been awfully quiet, nay, silent for months. Is it because this economic situation is totally alien to him.
I have a cunning plan too. If the banks need bailing out with £300 billion, then why not give say, 20,000,000 taxpayers with credit card debts, £15,000 each to clear their debts, with the money still going to the banks. Genius I know. I thank you
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142. At 5:28pm on 27 Jan 2009, Friendlycard wrote:
"So we need to get rid of that excess debt. Ultimately, the only way to do this is by diluting it through inflation - printing money, or 'quantitative easing' if you prefer "
Printing money is one way.
Another is mass bankruptcies; The debt is repudiated leaving behind the credit. If the government had simply allowed the banks to fail the problem would have been solved by now.
Now... Here is the moral of the story...
Printing money does ultimately cause inflation, it would first fill in the debt and then go on to devalue all of the existing money in existence. Your 40k salary and 10k of savings will drop in value, until they are worthless; Money acts like a commodity. So printing money punishes those who work hard and earn cash. Particularly badly hit are pensioners and the poor. The people who do well out of it are those who own assets and commodities. Essentially, value is moved from the poor to the rich.
Bankruptcies on the other hand would punish the actual culprits. The people who caused the problem in the first place.
Clearly the expedient option is to rob the poor and give it to the rich, which is exactly what the government are going to do.
I've been buying commodities, banks, energy companies and property since the crash began in preparation for this governmental response because I know the quality of "leaders" in the UK.
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"169. At 8:01pm on 27 Jan 2009, Omnimech wrote:
Someone, where did it all go wrong? As a nation why do we keep letting these idiots run our country into the ground?"
You voted for them.
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Gosh - people are all so clever on here. Maybe we should get them to run the country's finances. Save jobs and industries - wh on earth would we want to do that. After all my job/income/pension is safe.
Except it isn't. If the country does go down the tubes, we will all hang together - even the civil servants and the journalists.
Something a bit more realistic than 'well these businesses should have put something aside for a rainy day' is needed.
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#167 public-servant
If you are a public servant in the sense of being employed by the state then your new car might be closer at hand than you think.
Faced by the still growing car mountain this coming spring the govt is set to issue all employees at grade 3.2 and above with a new Jaguar X-type.
Recipients of this perk will however be asked in return to defer drawing their pension until age 56.
Government employees (whose number is growing healthily) are also to be given free confetti with which to buy foreign fuel for their cars. Current estimates put the 2011 price of 4 star at four and a half pounds of confetti per litre.
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Excellent, tax land rovers off the road at the end of a boom and then pay billions to put them back on the road in a recession.
Inspired.
Who on earth is going to buy land rovers in 6 months time? a years time? Even the (pretend-to-be-) posh lot that used to buy them realise they just look plain silly in them and the only people that need land rovers, farmers, can't afford them.
Bizarre and inspired.
I'm going for a beer.
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Where is post 62 - Loads of people are writing about it, and I can´t get to see it.
Given the comments it is clear that some people have seen it - but not me. Why not? This smacks of discrimination of the worst kind. Why does the BBC allow some people to see things and not others?
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Maybe someone has a quota to fill in deleting posts - just delete post 153, (it´s tedious, uninformative and whinging in tone) and re-instate post 62.
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green? you fool preston, car and oil industries are the most polluting in human history, sadly it seems people won't wake up to this fact before its too late
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Hooray!! At long last the government get off their backsides, even if it is only loan guarantees and not a bail out.
It's not as much as the Germans have supported their motor industry, or the swedes theirs, or the French theirs or the Americans. They all have a competitive advantage over our industry because of this financial support.
The British cars are as good, in some cases better (Jaguar XF) than their competitors and it's time we all started to buy British. Shame on you if you drive a new car made anywhere else.
And anyone that wants to use exhaust emissions as an excuse........try calculating the number of BMW gas guzzlers on British roads.
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Good on Mandy for judiciously supporting this lifeblood industry.
My brother and his wife have spent 75 k pounds on a German and a Swedish 4x4. Our neighbours have a 3 German 4x4s and across the road are another 4 foreign 4 x4s.
Look at the mania for foreign convertibles, coupes and exec saloons.That is why our economy is in its current state.
We love exotic things.
Now the government are no longerr allowed to advocate a Buy British policy and cynics may say that previous attempts have failed but we really do need to ask ourselves where our wealth comes from.
We have consumer-preferenced our way to bankruptcy by not asking ourselves where the money we spend goes to. If we spend it on a British made car, even if it is under foreign ownership, the money spins round and round generating income and tax for the UK.
If we spend it on a German ubermobile the money flies away and then these same Germans give us lectures on being basketcases.To heck with that !
If people like us, like my brother and my neighbours were to buy British we would not be such a basketcase.
Think local , think smart!
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Surreal?
This all becoming surreal.
Bailing out Jaguar/Rover? Madness. Providing gurantees for vehicle loans to the uncreditworthy? Even madder. And we're all paying for it? incredible.
Earlier this evening on the PM show I heard a government minster say that we "weren't buying sufficient cars" It's the old "wrong kind of leaves on the track" thinking. Hilarious.
I can't wait for a decent scriptwriter to turn all this into the funniest TV series since Fawlty Towers. David Renwick?
Actually, I'm knocking out a 30 minute telly one-off myself. Insider material and gems to [Personal details removed by Moderator].
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#129 andyjac 06
It was inevitable, human nature being what it currently is. The system gave the illusion of success, there were plenty of people flagging this up but noboddy wants to listen when they are doing well.
Human nature.
Those in a position to know and do something about it were making far too much money to 'cry wolf'.
Human nature.
The traditional left wing labour counterbalance to the excesses of the city was lost when Nu labour compromised its principles to become more 'electable'. The result was 25 years of unchecked city excess and the resultant biggest asset and debt bubble in history, fed by surplus money from the east due to their enormous trade surpluses.
They a made it, they sold it, we bought it, they made some money, lent it to us, we bought some more ad nauseum until we popped and their guys get thrown out of jobs.
That is one aspect.
The other ineviatable aspect is the economic model itself, which worked well for a while but which can no longer work. As a species we have become too efficient in meeting our needs and desires for it to work.
Through the rapid development of technology we are now way too efficient in making things, feeding and clothing ourselves etc for those activities to keep an ever growing population in gainful employment, it is now a negative feedback loop.
The more efficient you become the more stuff you make with less people and you need more people to sell it to, all the while you are burning up finite resources. The extra people you want to sell it to have no money because they can not find work because everything is mechanised and people are not needed in the process of making it....society starts to become deeply divided.
This is not new, what is new about it now is that it is global.
Our country is a bit of a microsystem of what is happening globally. We have a hard core underclass of unemployed. In years gone by it did not exist, they would plough the fields as a minimum, but we are not going to throw the tractors away and make the unemployed use Oxen and wooden ploughs just to keep them busy. We keep them on long term benefits, enough cash to feed, clothe themsleves put a roof over thier heads, have broadband, a flat screen TV and a crate of high strength cider a week.
It is worse than that we had to invent a class of 'non' jobs to plug the yawning gap left by ever efficient manufacturing, the ranks of the oft quoted 'diversity' consultants elf n safety trainers, hospital managers, complicated laws and regulations..all jobs for the boys but with no tangible 'real' value to society, in fact it drives most of us crazy!
But if they did not have those jobs they would be on benefits also, but that would not be politically acceptable.....
The worlds current economic model served a purpose up to a point in harnessing our creativity such that we do not have to spend endless hours toiling in the fields or gathering wood or making our own clothes or suffering from pain and infection.
Great.
All these things, I think most would agree, have value. But it is now turning in on itself. In order to keep the current economic model fed we have to burn up ever more prescious non renewable resources ever more efficiently to make more and more stuff we do not need to keep more and more people busy.
You asked the question 'what is the answer'. the truth is the answer lies outside the framework of the current economic model. Not an answer most people want to listen to (especially those who depend upon it for their privalidged position) because it means great change for everybody.
All this blogging on here and talking about bail outs and interest rates and quantitative easing ammounts to a bunch of guys (most of whom have a vested interest in this system)describing the house burning down from different perspectives with different ideas about how to slow one bit down or save another temporarily.
To make the 'house' go back to what it was to 'un-burn' the house is impossible unless you consider 'unlearning' all the technology and effcienncy and knowledge we have now is an option, go back to ploughing the fields...
I dont think many people see that as a solution.
So what is the solution. It is pretty simple actually. We keep the technology and knowledge but we all work much less, look after this beautiful world we have and spend more time with our families and less time trying to 'get more and better stuff'.
Sounds good. Here comes the tricky part, like I said in the beginning the cause of this is human nature. This crisis is a warning shot accross the bows. a
A temporary recovery and 'carry on as we are' is possible if new markets open up in Africa for example to buy all this 'stuff' but a long term solution requires something else.
The solution requires a change in human nature.
Fancy our chances?
Jericoa
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62? Repost
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Bring back 62
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bring back #62
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# 62. At 2:47pm on 27 Jan 2009, fookinhellno
This comment has been referred to the moderators. EXPLAIN
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E X P L A I N
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NEWS FLASH
Earlier today a man asked his lady friend 'Will you marry me'? She replied 'No'. So he then lived happily ever after!
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Unless people start buying cars the motor industry in this country will go by the wayside. A positive step by the government would be to cancel VAT on all cars produced in this country. This would then not only help the car manufacturers but also those smaller businesses which supply them.
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It's me again. That's right the author of post 62. Thanks for everyone's concern. I'm quite amazed I caused such a stir. It was my first post here on the BBC. I have been heavily into the recent events with the economy and learnt an awful lot recently. I'm not here to try to outdo anyone with wit, brains or one upmanship that's not my game and seeing posters on here acting like the big I am makes me laugh, reguarly. It was my first attempt at telling it like it is for myself and many many people I know. Yes, some of the mistakes that I described are my mistakes but not all. Society here in Britain has changed dramaticaly in the last few years that I can remember. I took life decisions based on the way I was brought up and they were simple ones in retrospect. I don't expect too much of myself, maybe that's my downfall. I like words though and writing because I can't get across orally what I can get across with a keyboard or a pen. I haven't been that privileged in life. I wasn't blessed with a great education yet I tried my hardest and like I said in post 62 I have done reasonably well. Yet I have been punished and some say it's not the governments fault. Well i'm sorry but some points of it is. Yes life is tough and I totally accept that is the way it is. My post was a rant admittedly but if it was read correctly it, hopefully, gave an insight as to what the majority of people I know feel about things and why this governments actions and decision making is alienating peopl like myself. I know i'm youngish at 37, I certainly try to act as young as possible and I may be totally naive but I didn't expect to be censored for saying my piece as I meant no harm. I don't know if i've had an email explaining what was wrong with it as I sent it from work. I will check tomorrow but thanks again for the posts that fully appreciate what I said. I intend to write further on here, if i'm allowed. If i'm not liked for being too real then obviously I will write elsewhere but I hope the BBC give me a good explination so that I can learn what i've done wrong and maybe adjust my future to posts to suit their agenda but it won't come across quite as I would like it. Good night and look out for more posts !
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Post 62 could end up being a point of reference for those of us who think that some thing needs to be done. I have not had the benefit of reading this comment as it was removed by the moderators before I joined the blog.
However, from the comments of others, Post 62 has hit the mark and I would be very interested to read it.
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post 164friendlycard
Yes please hold that post I may ask you for a copy as I never kept it. Not sure how you go about contacting each other on here but I will speak again to you tomorrow.Thanks.
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far be it from me to have a cynical thought ...but i was told by Radio4 that 10 out of 12 UK car plants are in marginal labour constituencies..........
why were 27,000 jobs at Woolworths not "saved"...........
beware of politicians claiming "green" credentials........
“There is no blank cheque on offer, no operating subsidies. This [car] industry is not a lame duck and I am not proposing a bail-out.”...................
not a lame duck? So why does it require state aid? Anyway as we know this, just like all the other initiatives, will not make a scrap of difference apart from creating even more debt for the taxpayer...
When is this government going to realise the times have changed.....trying to put it back to how it was is not going to work.....
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Plot new car sales vs "Forecourt Tax" (& other 'environmental' initiatives). A pattern surely emerges ?
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# 194. Jericoa
At last some decent analysis. When we entered the age of computers and automation who would have predicted how many non jobs would be created instead of us gaining leisure time.
We may despise these non-jobs but many people doing them work very hard at them. This is ridiculous. We need to think about a new model of employment.
I know this idea is not original but when first proposed it was derided. Maybe it's time is coming.
It goes like this:-
1. Most people agree that work is a good thing.
2. We are quite conditioned to pay for good things.
3. We should therefore scrap the non-jobs, pay everyone an allowance and those who wish to work will have to pay for the privilege.
It would take some time to sort out the rate of allowance and the work charges. It will also be difficult to handle the transition.
We have reached a point where new thinking is required.
======================================
Come to think of it I have in my own way already got somewhere near this model.
I have made some money and derive an income from it - my allowance. I spend much of my time working on many different things such as charities, free advice, engineering projects etc, all of which cost me money.
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Come on government get real! What ordinary chap in the street is going to take out a loan to buy a car when he doesn't know if he will have job next year???? Doh!
Pump money into this and you will only prolong the agony. Maybe, just maybe our values are changing and new cars are pretty low on our list of needs at the moment. I'd say a new car is a "want", not a "need".
Needs are shelter, food and warmth, pretty basic needs, and we are not all selfish, I want to know my friends, family, elderley parents, neighbours etc. are ok too.
So government.... help us with these "needs" and then maybe we can move to the "wants". Then maybe the economy will pick up. We are all skint you fools, bail-outs to industries won't work. Put the pounds in our pockets and we will do the rest and decide who survives.
Here are a few things you (government) can immediately do to help:
Launch an investigation into why the energy companies (mostly foreign) are ripping us all off. Invest in UK energy production and stop importing energy, sever the gas and electricity connections to Europe. Stop importing liquified gas. Examine why we are so dependent on foreign food, invest in British farming instead. Discourage overseas outsourcing. Start making REAL things we can trade. Basically, start looking after your people or get out of office.
Lastly, close the non-elected upper house, it's corrupt to the core!
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62
I think the moderators are extremely sensitive to any kind of swearing. Even if the word is misspelled or asterisks are used.
I would recommend following Mr Peston and replacing any profanities or near profanities with 'muller/mullered/mullering' as required. There is sufficient disagreement as to the semantics and etymology of this term that it can be safely substituted for most expletives in common use.
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#62. Many requests for this to reappear, and the author may not have a copy of what he wrote.
So, with due apologies to him, I kept a copy - it was so good that I wanted to keep it - and here it is:
"I left school at 16 and have worked extremely hard and paid my taxes ever since. I'm 37 now. On a fairly good wage at 31k per annum. However I’m on the breadline. I got married in 2003 and had my first child in 2005. Everything was great. My wife decided she wanted to be with someone else and left me. She now lives with a very rich man and drives a Merc. I have to pay 15 % of my net salary to her for the upkeep of our son which she never spends on him per se. I have to drive 50 miles every weekend to pick him up because she completely refuses to help out. I have just had another child and am now really with the right person and in that respect life is good. However, my old banger (car) just failed it's MOT and I cannot afford to get it back on the road. Why? Firstly, the mechanics charge of 60 pounds an hour is a joke. Once all of my bills are paid to put a roof over my head, pay maintenance (why I should be paying this I don't know as I’ve done nothing wrong and it's nothing short of criminal) pay the bills and travel to work which costs me £4800 a year!!!! (I have to commute to London) brought food etc I have absolutely nothing left. I've never earned a huge wage and have not even been able to save, which as it turns out with interest rates doesn't disappoint me too much, apart from a pension which won't be worth anything because of these cowboys in charge.
So, not only am I being priced off the railways (I'm trying to be green you know), totally knackered from doing 60 hours a week, unable to save, unable to get my car on the road and being robbed by my ex wife who left me and I have to pay, why the hell would I want a car loan from a sleazeball government to buy another car when I can't afford to put petrol in it because the gas bill is so high and the cahoot flexible loan that I got at 6% is now charging me 21% interest (more daylight robbery) meaning it will take me 15 years to pay back the 3k loan on it? I’ve simply run out of money. What comes in goes out. Labour got it wrong. Britain isn't working. Britain is broke and is being run by a bunch of arrogant, power hungry individuals that do nothing but lie and cheat the people. I know many many other people in this same situation. This government are so out of touch with reality it's not funny anymore. I've watched and read everything about our economic mess and now I am actually getting ill over the stress of living here under this government. Can I sue them? Really! Can I? Every time I read these blogs or watch the politicians on the BBC or wherever I get a rush of blood to my head. They never answer questions truthfully. They always avoid them and we're paying for these jokers to buy their second homes and fill them up with quality goods!! How the hell can it happen???
Now the lords are corrupt and cannot be prosecuted. To quote Terry Wogan..'Is it me'? What the hell is going on? Why aren't people taking to the streets? The dark one is announcing saving the car industry and jobs and creating money for more loans. Are they for real? Who the hell can afford more credit? Haven't they learned from their own mistakes about credit? They keep talking about the need to get banks lending again to business and individuals. Well most individuals are like me. They can't take any more on - don't they get it? There's nothing left to be able to afford it. Things are too expensive and people have had their fill. No amount of cars being manufactured is going to solve this crisis. Man there must be about 10 million cars standing unpurchased on this land anyway. Why don't they get rid of them first or give em away? It’s not our fault they over manufactured and made them too expensive to buy. It's a freaking joke this country and I urge anyone who doesn’t' have any real reason to stay here get out while you can.
Jeeeezus this is making me mad!!!!!
Sorry...that's better...just had to get that out..."
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#62 etc
People have not taken to the streets because it is too cold, wait until the summer, thats when all social unrest happens traditionally in this country. We are pragmatists, who wants to run amock in the street when it is 2 degrees c and horizontal sleet!
I only say this part in jest, check it out statistically you will see I am correct.
Slight problem though social unrest starts to look like pointless anarchy unless there is some positive focus to it.
We have got afew months until the summer to work one out so perhaps it is just as well it is winter and too cold for most to risk sleeping on the street in London.
Strap yourselves in everybody.
Jericoa
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# 194
Spot on! However, I don't fancy our chances :(
What we have here is modern slavery, most people are so conditioned to accept the system that they daren't contemplate walking out of the "prison with no bars".
Take the subject matter at hand - cars. Explain to me again why we need them? Err, but my grandfather never had a car, tell me again, why do we need them??? I don't understand, am I a little thick or a little bit too bright? Oh dear, I need some more reconditioning, not enough time in front of the TV!
Stop watching the movie people and take back your power.
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Re 62 and friendlycard
"Labour got it wrong. Britain isn't working. Britain is broke and is being run by a bunch of arrogant, power hungry individuals that do nothing but lie and cheat the people. I know many many other people in this same situation. This government are so out of touch with reality it's not funny anymore................. Now the lords are corrupt and cannot be prosecuted. To quote Terry Wogan..'Is it me'? What the hell is going on? Why aren't people taking to the streets?"
This is a brilliant and heartfelt contribution which I urge everyone to read. It sums up the reality of the mess we are in. Failed government; failed economy; failed system. Failed state? Failed society? I am not usually quite this gloomy, but things are getting worse, and worse, and worse..... and I have no idea why, in response to your question, people haven't taken to the streets.
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Paul Mason to the rescue again, another fine gritty and realistic piece from him on newsnight tonight.
keep it up Paul and Newsnight you are lone voices out there at the moment.
For those who do not already know Paul mason has a Blog under the newsnight web page. If you are looking for underlying gritty analysis that is the place to go.
If you want scoops and sharp suits stay here.
Jericoa
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Please repost 62
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#182 is that some kind of financial illusion? Instead of giving the bucks to the bank to sit on and lend to no-one, you re-route it via the customer -effectively hitting the reset button, still re-funding the banks and giving a bit of confidence back to the consumer -who benefits from his own taxes -I could go for that. Nice idea.
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202. sensibletrojanhorse:
"Post 62 could end up being a point of reference for those of us who think that some thing needs to be done. I have not had the benefit of reading this comment as it was removed by the moderators before I joined the blog.
However, from the comments of others, Post 62 has hit the mark and I would be very interested to read it".
Agree entirely. Essentially, #62 told what it was like living in Brown's Britain. Yes, it is a point of reference.
Fortuitously, I kept a copy of it, and have put this up (#209). It did indeed hit the mark. Let's see if #209 makes it past the mods. #62 is a bit of a talisman. Also, if EVER Robert is going to reply to a post, #62 is surely the litmus test.
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203. fookinhellno:
"post 164 friendlycard
Yes please hold that post I may ask you for a copy as I never kept it. Not sure how you go about contacting each other on here but I will speak again to you tomorrow.Thanks".
I've put it up as #209. Your #62 was brilliant, from-the-heart-stuff - as you will have appreciated from our collective reactions.
When #209 appears, I suggest you copy it and paste it to Word. You might want it again.
And thanks for #62.
Friendlycard
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Each car we have lasts longer than the previous one due to advances in technology. We can keep them for longer, so we replace them less often.
Hang on, soon we can buy a greener one.
Bet I don't get knocked over in the rush. Unless the subsidy gets me a good discount as an incentive to buy. What do you think will happen?
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hi all! Late as usual-sorry!
Tata industries are now rubbing their hands together with glee (reference one of my posts the other night)
How long until the steel workers follow?
I have a couple of rhetorical questions (been training staff today so will have to reset my blog language overnight!)
Do the various assistances mentioned carry any other strings than to be 'more green'? ie: restructuring etc?
Is due diligence going to be undertaken in order to ensure government is not going to be liable?
Loan guarantees-hmmm? Are said loans those taken out by companies and individuals to buy cars? What happened to ppi?
UK manufacturing needs to be supported and encouraged, but where is the support for all the other small businesses? These are surely just as deserving, if not more so?
Just how much, exactly, of our nation's future is being thrown away? Wouldn't massive tax cuts have benefited more of the electorate than the measures so far?
All these initiatives are being reported as coming from GB and Mandy but shouldn't they be coming from Ally D?
Has anyone any idea where Alexander Curzon has gone? He may be controversial, but I do miss his unique one liners and caps!
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the Richard Bacon show with his right wing friends want NO support to one of our few exporting industries !
should we still continue to subsidise farming for their agri-chemical approach ?
natural food might be dearer but how many food scares have we had in recent years when industrial farming fails ?
BSE, v-CJD, salmonella, e-coli, how many others ?
the damage to water supplies by phosphates and their resultant absorption into the food chain.
but farmers are Tory voters and they MUST be protected at OUR cost !
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Robert, could you tell us of businesses who have been able to take up the 'available' business loans from the government?
A friend of mine who deals with this sort of thing told me on Friday that SFLGS had been withdrawn and the new loan process had still to be implemented.
#62
Would love to read it, but it does appear to have been murderated! If it comes back, it will only do so when Robert's next blog lands and draws attention away from this one!
See the removal as a compliment-it usually means a posting is too close to the truth. Did you question our relationship with the US or compare GB's actions with theirs? That often causes a problem too. I had a numerous post removed for good a couple of weeks ago-I was told it was defamatory! It wasn't at all!
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My #209 - re-presenting #62 - got modded. Surprise surprise. Well, at least I tried.
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Post 204. Guess what one of the other two is?
Solihull is the Tories number one target from the Lib Dem with a majority of less than 300
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/mpdb/html/523.stm
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And just where is all this money going to come from, tired of hearing about this or that bail out, for high profile industries to prop them up. Without any substantial guarantees being given by the industries concerned. On top of this we've got a devaluing pound, which is only being made worse by actions like this. And then the government let profitable core industries (steel anybody?) which would be the first to recover and start paying back just fall by the wayside. No doubt this is all done for pr as we let our main car, truck and van manufacturing (rover, erf., etc.) companies fail long ago, and only a shell is left now.
Ah well, on the bright side at least maybe I don't need to worry about a career change just yet [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
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Morning Robert,
yet more bad news for you to expound the thinking(non) of HMG.
Subsidies, bailouts, retraining are all just euphemisms.
The real problem here is the hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of unsold cars sitting in car/van parks.
If you stimulate demand for these then all of the other problems go away.
Here's my suggestion to HMG....sell all the cars already made AT COST to anyone who wants/needs one. Make available an interest free loan backed by HMG bank.
Yes I know that there will be those on this blog who will complain about unfair practices, glut of supply etc. But remember what happened when the last manufacturer went bump.....people bought the cars if they were cheap enough.
We're talking about bridging the next three years here.
p.s. whatever happened to the inquiry into the "Big Fours" alledged abuse of their position to pay themselves huge bonuses out of taxpayers money?
Kicked into the long grass I suspect because it didn't reflect well upon the politicians involved.
We need some investigative (impartial) reporting by the BBC (Blair, Brown Counterfeit) here!
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What the IMF said 15/12/2008
First : Restoring Stability to Financial Markets
To restore confidence and stability, we need government intervention in the financial markets which is clear, comprehensive and cooperative between countries.
Government action needs to have a clear objective so that effective oversight of how public money is used is possible. This is still not always the case, and this lack of clarity goes some way to explaining the "bailout fatigue" which is a major political risk at the moment.
Second : Supporting Aggregate Demand
Another priority is to support aggregate demand, in the face of what now looks to be a dramatic fall in consumer demand. As often for the Fund, the solution to global economic problems is mostly fiscal but with a twist—it is fiscal expansion, not fiscal contraction, that we need. And this has been advocated by the Fund a soon as last January in Davos.
Fiscal stimulus is now essential to restore global growth.
At present, the most urgent need is for a strong foot on the accelerator of fiscal spending. But I don't want to leave you with the impression that the IMF has forgotten that good brakes are important too.
164. At 7:38pm on 27 Jan 2009, Friendlycard wrote: 203
see my post from yesterday and repost it there
206. At 10:56pm on 27 Jan 2009, OldNick666 wrote:
'Come to think of it I have in my own way already got somewhere near this model.'
That's what they do in star trek. The means of production (the replicator) have obsoleted the requirement for indentured labour, freeing the people to live life as they see fit.
A bit utopian really (or distopian if you don't like lycra :)
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#62
You've caused quite a stir! It's a shame that I didn't get to read it.
Can I make a suggestion... Ditch your current user name and sign up from now on as "post62", now that you and that post are famous in blog-land.
Can you give us, those who didn't get to see the blog, a brief summary of the points, bearing in mind the rules.
I think I know where you are at. Many of us are very angry with the current situation and feel powerless to change anything.
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Refueling the motor industry by refooling the taxipayerrs.
I can foresee many migrant workerrs driving their flexible credit cars "home" and other associated frauds as credit cars are given out to anyone on demand .
Since taxipayerrs carry the risk, presumably of both the capital and interest payments default.
But not before it produces the green shoots of wreckovary for Laberr to boast about just before the next election.
Repackaged snake oil with new Labour written on it
And the small print" for taxipayerrs AAA's holes only"
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221. At 00:25am on 28 Jan 2009, Tigerjayj wrote:
yes they do seem a bit sensitive, I'd better not mention Gaza then.
Doh..
Sin binned again :)
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From the Socialist Handbook of good Govt and how to make a little mess bigger ' Give all money to the Banks, if helping Industry make a Deloreon Mk 2'...
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#62 and all your supporters / commentators:
Number 62 (as he will be known by me from now on) is just a number. As we all are.
We are witnessing the end of the greatest Ponzi scheme ever devised (CAPITILISM). It's a pyramid scheme, those at the bottom join in ever increasing numbers at the bottom of the pyramid to fund those further up.
This all works very well until we run out of people to join the scheme to fund it or we exhaust the natural resources needed to feed the beast. I'm afraid we have both at work here.
Just look at National Insurance as an example, take a look at the demographic charts, there are no longer enough people at the bottom to fuel the baby boomer engine.
Actually, it's a bit worse than that. The elite spotted the collapse and decided to rob from the future, i.e. those not yet born, to prop up the pyramid. So now we have a national debt that will take a generation to pay back. Our children will have to pay.
Every new person born is immediately saddled with a debt when he takes his first breath.
Who does he owe that debt to? (Guess) Is he really in debt?? Can he say NO! NOT MY PROBLEM! Of course he can. It's a paper debt, it's not real, it's money, that isn't real. Morally he has no debt. Morally the elite have no right to saddle him with it.
This situation is nothing new to civilisation. What we are seeing now is societal collapse. It has happened numerous times before in history. A natural correction to balance the planet. Google "societal collapse" and you will see how pyramids have collapsed in the past.
If you study your history you will also note the return to sustainability following the collapse and the emergence of an egaliterian society for a period until someone gets the bright idea to build a pyramid.
#62 and others give me hope that we are beginning to see the real truth that is modern slavery: Born into DEBT!
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Number 62 causes quite a stir
Today on the Robert Peston blog, one solitary voice provided the rallying call for a host of bloggers.
A simple post, his first apparently, appeared briefly and was then pulled by the moderators.
Only the lucky few saw the Number 62 posting, but what was in it ? what was so controversial on an economics blog to cause such an outcry ?
Was another poster so incensed about the Number 62 posting to complain about it or did a moderators supervisor come back and nearly choke on his coffee and danish that one of his underlings had allowed something so outrageous, so dangerous to be posted on the hallowed blog, we will never know.
Unless..
Unless some brave soul, some right minded, free thinking individual decides 'Publish and be Damned'
Come in Number 62 your time has come
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I can see container loads of credit cars beiing loaded onto bulk carriers and sent to some olegarchy in eastern europe and the debt will have to be recovered from those signing contracts to the name of micky mouse [in some east european language ]
No No ,silly me ,the contracts will be insured by the taxipayerrs of course ,so their is nothing to worry about.
The Taxipayerr will pay for the
Cars
The debt insurance on them
Legal council to recover monies from non eec juristictionc
The interest payments
The cost of suing and giving comunity service orders to those running off with billions etc etc and of course etc .
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19. At 1:37pm on 27 Jan 2009, PetersKitchen wrote:
First he done deals on yachts, now he's doing deals on cars.
Amazing Lord
...........................................................
Theres only Gravy trains left to do deals on after plane saelling .
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Re: post62
If anyone can send me a copy of this I will happily try to give it some wider coverage.
John Bray in Spain
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Can I suggest everyone looks at Paul Mason's economics blog, "An Orwellian Episode"?
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231. wakeupbritain
Some more good analysis on this blog instead of the usual deck chair rearrangement.
We have ripped off the younger generation very effectively. Maybe in this context we can understand binge drinking and drug abuse. While they carry on with this behaviour they will be too out of it to take to the streets.
I fear them giving up drugs and drink.
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re the now famous #62 why is it moderated here and yet not on another BBC blog? are moderation rules different on other blogs?
orwellian episode is indeed enlightening on this subject!
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Well, I feel increasingly privelaged to have read #62. I am at a loss to understand why it has been referred to the moderators.
Incidentally, it has only been referred, not yet banned. How long does it take the moderators to decide whether it is okay or not???
Its like something from 1984.
The House Rules state:
We reserve the right to fail messages which:
- Are considered likely to disrupt, provoke, attack or offend others. #62 NOT GUILTY
- Are racist, sexist, homophobic, sexually explicit, abusive or otherwise objectionable #62 NOT GUILTY
- Contain swear words or other language likely to offend #62 NOT GUILTY
- Break the law or condone or encourage unlawful activity. This includes breach of copyright, defamation and contempt of court. #62 NOT GUILTY
Advertise products or services for profit or gain #62 NOT GUILTY
- Are seen to impersonate someone else #62 NOT GUILTY
- Include contact details such as phone numbers, postal or email addresses #62 NOT GUILTY
- Are written in anything other than English - Welsh and Gaelic may be used where marked #62 NOT GUILTY
- Contain links to other websites which break our Editorial Guidelines #62 NOT GUILTY
- Describe or encourage activities which could endanger the safety or well-being of others #62 NOT GUILTY (but did call for a march - our legal right in a democracy)
- Are considered to be ‘spam’, that is posts containing the same. or similar, message posted multiple times #62 NOT GUILTY
- Are considered to be off-topic for the particular message board #62 NOT GUILTY
By the way, why is RPs blog pre-moderated? The beeb's rules suggest pre-moderation is for childrens sites.
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Is this not delaying something which has to happen. If cars are not selling and unlikely to start doing so would it not be better to try and save companies that may survive if people have no money they won't start buying cars stop wasting money to grab headlines there is only so much money in the pot and we can't keep bailing everyone out.
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Ladies and gentlemen
I believe the time has now come to refer the moderation to the BBC Trust. The BBC Complaints system has three levels, to make a first complaint, follow it up with a second complaint, and then take it to the Trust.
I made a first complaint about the moderators working outside the limits of their mandate and it was upheld, but they reverted. A second complaint has been ignored, therefore please will everyone post the references to the numerous objections on this site to the BBC Trust, trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk
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Is this what we call 'joined up government'?Why have I now got to pay the best part of £500 to get Road Tax for my Land Rover as it is a 'dirty gas-guzzler', and the next minute Mandy is giving the factories that make these 'anti-social' machines £Billions to keep making them!?
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In return for the early scoop, Peston has become little more than a Labour poodle.
Pity.
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If you want to abandon ship, try Craig Murray's blog: he feels the same way you do about what's been going on. Research Craig Murray and you'll see why.
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241. rahere:
"I believe the time has now come to refer the moderation to the BBC Trust."
Good point. Here's a thought:
"I left school at 16 and have worked extremely hard and paid my taxes ever since. I'm 37 now. On a fairly good wage at 31k per annum. However I?m on the breadline. I got married in 2003 and had my first child in 2005. Everything was great. My wife decided she wanted to be with someone else and left me. She now lives with a very rich man and drives a Merc. I have to pay 15 % of my net salary to her for the upkeep of our son which she never spends on him per se. I have to drive 50 miles every weekend to pick him up because she completely refuses to help out. I have just had another child and am now really with the right person and in that respect life is good. However, my old banger (car) just failed it's MOT and I cannot afford to get it back on the road. Why? Firstly, the mechanics charge of 60 pounds an hour is a joke. Once all of my bills are paid to put a roof over my head, pay maintenance (why I should be paying this I don't know as I?ve done nothing wrong and it's nothing short of criminal) pay the bills and travel to work which costs me ?4800 a year!!!! (I have to commute to London) brought food etc I have absolutely nothing left. I've never earned a huge wage and have not even been able to save, which as it turns out with interest rates doesn't disappoint me too much, apart from a pension which won't be worth anything because of these cowboys in charge.
So, not only am I being priced off the railways (I'm trying to be green you know), totally knackered from doing 60 hours a week, unable to save, unable to get my car on the road and being robbed by my ex wife who left me and I have to pay, why the hell would I want a car loan from a sleazeball government to buy another car when I can't afford to put petrol in it because the gas bill is so high and the cahoot flexible loan that I got at 6% is now charging me 21% interest (more daylight robbery) meaning it will take me 15 years to pay back the 3k loan on it? I?ve simply run out of money. What comes in goes out. Labour got it wrong. Britain isn't working. Britain is broke and is being run by a bunch of arrogant, power hungry individuals that do nothing but lie and cheat the people. I know many many other people in this same situation. This government are so out of touch with reality it's not funny anymore. I've watched and read everything about our economic mess and now I am actually getting ill over the stress of living here under this government. Can I sue them? Really! Can I? Every time I read these blogs or watch the politicians on the BBC or wherever I get a rush of blood to my head. They never answer questions truthfully. They always avoid them and we're paying for these jokers to buy their second homes and fill them up with quality goods!! How the hell can it happen???
Now the lords are corrupt and cannot be prosecuted. To quote Terry Wogan..'Is it me'? What the hell is going on? Why aren't people taking to the streets? The dark one is announcing saving the car industry and jobs and creating money for more loans. Are they for real? Who the hell can afford more credit? Haven't they learned from their own mistakes about credit? They keep talking about the need to get banks lending again to business and individuals. Well most individuals are like me. They can't take any more on - don't they get it? There's nothing left to be able to afford it. Things are too expensive and people have had their fill. No amount of cars being manufactured is going to solve this crisis. Man there must be about 10 million cars standing unpurchased on this land anyway. Why don't they get rid of them first or give em away? It?s not our fault they over manufactured and made them too expensive to buy. It's a freaking joke this country and I urge anyone who doesn?t' have any real reason to stay here get out while you can.
Jeeeezus this is making me mad!!!!!
Sorry...that's better...just had to get that out..."
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116 - The French buy French cars
Helping the care industry is OK but those cars are so expensive!!
Kia are very good cars, reliable and very affordable.
At the end of the day there is so much stock they might as well reduce the prices.
and in the meantime we need to think of a Nea Deal kind of plan, so many derelict builidngs all other, they need converting into affordable housing, office spaces etc, roads need resurfacing etc.
There seem to be a little plan for this a little plan for this and not a big general plans. Fire fighting
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What happens next year when sales are still not coming through and even more people are out of work (including myself)?
There may be a few people wanting to buy new cars right now but I cant imagine that there are many who can't find credit if they are in a good financial position and willing to buy?
Car companies have built up huge stockpiles ready for their planned shutdowns, it is very unlikely that these stocks will be diminished when the employees return for there 2-4 month shutdown.
The problem is that a huge percentage of us are at our credit limits, that is no matter how good our payment history is, we simply can't borrow more - and nor do we want to.
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If post 62 started with the magic words
It is all Margaret Thatchers fault because ......................
and ended with
..............and of course Gordon Browns solution will save the world order.
It would be passed immediately
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Post 62....as posted by fhn....for those that missed it.
"I left school at 16 and have worked extremely hard and paid my taxes ever since. I'm 37 now. On a fairly good wage at 31k per annum. However I?m on the breadline. I got married in 2003 and had my first child in 2005. Everything was great. My wife decided she wanted to be with someone else and left me. She now lives with a very rich man and drives a Merc. I have to pay 15 % of my net salary to her for the upkeep of our son which she never spends on him per se. I have to drive 50 miles every weekend to pick him up because she completely refuses to help out. I have just had another child and am now really with the right person and in that respect life is good. However, my old banger (car) just failed it's MOT and I cannot afford to get it back on the road. Why? Firstly, the mechanics charge of 60 pounds an hour is a joke. Once all of my bills are paid to put a roof over my head, pay maintenance (why I should be paying this I don't know as I?ve done nothing wrong and it's nothing short of criminal) pay the bills and travel to work which costs me ?4800 a year!!!! (I have to commute to London) brought food etc I have absolutely nothing left. I've never earned a huge wage and have not even been able to save, which as it turns out with interest rates doesn't disappoint me too much, apart from a pension which won't be worth anything because of these cowboys in charge.
So, not only am I being priced off the railways (I'm trying to be green you know), totally knackered from doing 60 hours a week, unable to save, unable to get my car on the road and being robbed by my ex wife who left me and I have to pay, why the hell would I want a car loan from a sleazeball government to buy another car when I can't afford to put petrol in it because the gas bill is so high and the cahoot flexible loan that I got at 6% is now charging me 21% interest (more daylight robbery) meaning it will take me 15 years to pay back the 3k loan on it? I?ve simply run out of money. What comes in goes out. Labour got it wrong. Britain isn't working. Britain is broke and is being run by a bunch of arrogant, power hungry individuals that do nothing but lie and cheat the people. I know many many other people in this same situation. This government are so out of touch with reality it's not funny anymore. I've watched and read everything about our economic mess and now I am actually getting ill over the stress of living here under this government. Can I sue them? Really! Can I? Every time I read these blogs or watch the politicians on the BBC or wherever I get a rush of blood to my head. They never answer questions truthfully. They always avoid them and we're paying for these jokers to buy their second homes and fill them up with quality goods!! How the hell can it happen???
Now the lords are corrupt and cannot be prosecuted. To quote Terry Wogan..'Is it me'? What the hell is going on? Why aren't people taking to the streets? The dark one is announcing saving the car industry and jobs and creating money for more loans. Are they for real? Who the hell can afford more credit? Haven't they learned from their own mistakes about credit? They keep talking about the need to get banks lending again to business and individuals. Well most individuals are like me. They can't take any more on - don't they get it? There's nothing left to be able to afford it. Things are too expensive and people have had their fill. No amount of cars being manufactured is going to solve this crisis. Man there must be about 10 million cars standing unpurchased on this land anyway. Why don't they get rid of them first or give em away? It?s not our fault they over manufactured and made them too expensive to buy. It's a freaking joke this country and I urge anyone who doesn?t' have any real reason to stay here get out while you can.
Jeeeezus this is making me mad!!!!!
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so the Tories now claim they would do MORE than the Government to help the car industry.
as the seeds of the present crisis go back to the 80's and their "set the market free" approach, this "new" policy appears to be the Opposition just saying they would do more and lacks credibility.
no doubt the Eton boy will claim this is all down to GB but their economics policy usually means taking away the crutches to a man with an injured leg, this Tory U-turn has more to do with opportunism then well thought out policy !
if there is to be greater financial support, I can only assume that some parts of the NHS budget will be raided to pay for it !
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re 62: maybe the mods objected to Mr. kinhellno's moniker
"Moniker" is a slang expression for "nickname", "pseudonym", or "cognomen". Typically, this title is used as a personal or professional name, instead of the person's given name, for works of art, music, books, or performances.
Monikers are commonly used in small subcultures such as in railroad tramping (i.e.,"Baltimore Red") and on Internet message boards.
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Post 62 ...again, see next post..
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Post 62 in it's etirety...
"I left school at 16 and have worked extremely hard and paid my taxes ever since. I'm 37 now. On a fairly good wage at 31k per annum. However I?m on the breadline. I got married in 2003 and had my first child in 2005. Everything was great. My wife decided she wanted to be with someone else and left me. She now lives with a very rich man and drives a Merc. I have to pay 15 % of my net salary to her for the upkeep of our son which she never spends on him per se. I have to drive 50 miles every weekend to pick him up because she completely refuses to help out. I have just had another child and am now really with the right person and in that respect life is good. However, my old banger (car) just failed it's MOT and I cannot afford to get it back on the road. Why? Firstly, the mechanics charge of 60 pounds an hour is a joke. Once all of my bills are paid to put a roof over my head, pay maintenance (why I should be paying this I don't know as I?ve done nothing wrong and it's nothing short of criminal) pay the bills and travel to work which costs me ?4800 a year!!!! (I have to commute to London) brought food etc I have absolutely nothing left. I've never earned a huge wage and have not even been able to save, which as it turns out with interest rates doesn't disappoint me too much, apart from a pension which won't be worth anything because of these cowboys in charge.
So, not only am I being priced off the railways (I'm trying to be green you know), totally knackered from doing 60 hours a week, unable to save, unable to get my car on the road and being robbed by my ex wife who left me and I have to pay, why the hell would I want a car loan from a sleazeball government to buy another car when I can't afford to put petrol in it because the gas bill is so high and the cahoot flexible loan that I got at 6% is now charging me 21% interest (more daylight robbery) meaning it will take me 15 years to pay back the 3k loan on it? I?ve simply run out of money. What comes in goes out. Labour got it wrong. Britain isn't working. Britain is broke and is being run by a bunch of arrogant, power hungry individuals that do nothing but lie and cheat the people. I know many many other people in this same situation. This government are so out of touch with reality it's not funny anymore. I've watched and read everything about our economic mess and now I am actually getting ill over the stress of living here under this government. Can I sue them? Really! Can I? Every time I read these blogs or watch the politicians on the BBC or wherever I get a rush of blood to my head. They never answer questions truthfully. They always avoid them and we're paying for these jokers to buy their second homes and fill them up with quality goods!! How the hell can it happen???
Now the lords are corrupt and cannot be prosecuted. To quote Terry Wogan..'Is it me'? What the hell is going on? Why aren't people taking to the streets? The dark one is announcing saving the car industry and jobs and creating money for more loans. Are they for real? Who the hell can afford more credit? Haven't they learned from their own mistakes about credit? They keep talking about the need to get banks lending again to business and individuals. Well most individuals are like me. They can't take any more on - don't they get it? There's nothing left to be able to afford it. Things are too expensive and people have had their fill. No amount of cars being manufactured is going to solve this crisis. Man there must be about 10 million cars standing unpurchased on this land anyway. Why don't they get rid of them first or give em away? It?s not our fault they over manufactured and made them too expensive to buy. It's a freaking joke this country and I urge anyone who doesn?t' have any real reason to stay here get out while you can.
Jeeeezus this is making me mad!!!!!
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In a stunning move the Treasury announced a new scheme to finance its bail out of the entire British economy.
Analysts at the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform have noticed that the most economically successful business model in the UK for the last year has been short selling bank stocks.
Looking to build on this success the chancellor has authorised the Bank of England to short sell stock in all British companies. Previously, funds from quantitative easing were expected to be used to buy government debt and other assets in the market. However, Bank of England analysts concluded that since these assets were expected to fall in value over the next year much better returns could be made for the taxpayer by taking short positions in UK equities.
"It is important to understand that the object of our strategy is risk control, not speculation" said an insider at the Treasury, "our data shows that as soon as Mr. Mandelson or Mr. Darling mentions a company its stock falls at least 25%. By short selling the stock in advance of making the statement we can turn this to the taxpayer's advantage."
The UK government is believed to be the first in the world to attempt to hedge against its own incompetence."
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#203 #209
It has become clear that the moderation on this blog is politically motivated. The suppression of your posting was simply the last straw on a camel's back already fully loaded with a lot of similar activity, and Rahere cannot and will not post under such circumstances.
God bless you all
Rahere
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Re. #62 fhn...
If it was his name that was at question...then only his name would have been moderated.....it would have changed to U followed by a string of numbers.
There was nothing wrong with his original post!
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#62
I read this blog yesterday and was touched by its contents.
The difficulties its blogger faced may well not be untypical...mine are different in ways and VERY similar in others.
I ride a bike instead of paying for fares which even on an Oyster Card are too expensive for me.
My heating has been turned to 'off' for the whole of the Winter so far.
I have gone to sleep wearing three pairs of socks....and woken up during the night with cold feet.
I head for Aldi's, Lidl, Poundland, and The 99p Shop to do my shopping. Nearly always buying 'remaindered' food.
Another person I know has started to 'freegan': searching in supermarket bins for cast-offs and street markets as they are closing for discarded fruit and veg. And said person has TWO Peers in their recent family history ! NB Mr Peston.
We are the Nu Poor....I know several others who are educated, informed and not without charm.
Not entitled to State help, living on decimated incomes and either with recently reduced earning capability as freelancers and/or modest savings and assets which are rapidly dwindling to nothing.
Not one of us feel sorry for ourselves.... perhaps just dismayed at the way events have turned out. Each now trying to sort out and improve their current new circumstances as best as poss.
PLEASE PLEASE BBC re-instate Blog #62.
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Robert,
are you going to change the blog now that Ken has shown that all this announcement by Mandy was actually already pledged money, with a commitment to "look into" the car industry
So really it is "do nothing" but we'll pay some consultants to sit around a table, and maybe provide them with coffee and biscuits
In a few months people might have forgotten about the quango
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Morning all. I've not received any explination yet as to why my post was removed. Robert I would appreciate it if you would let me know in writing as to why you feel it is not a good post? I cannot see why my poster name is the reason/ problem as my other posts have been allowed. ILike I've said I don't want to be troublesome I'm just interested to know why a post that has obviously hit the nail on the head isn't allowed? Maybe the BBc would like to interview me to know the inner feelings of someone who is truly British but suffering without, it seems, his voice being allowed to be heard?
Noone listens do they....
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256. BankSlickerminustheR:
"Re. #62 fhn...
If it was his name that was at question...then only his name would have been moderated.....it would have changed to U followed by a string of numbers.
There was nothing wrong with his original post!"
Agree. Also, I have twice tried to put his 62 text up, moderated out both times.
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Post 62 part 1...
"I left school at 16 and have worked extremely hard and paid my taxes ever since. I'm 37 now. On a fairly good wage at 31k per annum. However I?m on the breadline. I got married in 2003 and had my first child in 2005. Everything was great. My wife decided she wanted to be with someone else and left me. She now lives with a very rich man and drives a Merc. I have to pay 15 % of my net salary to her for the upkeep of our son which she never spends on him per se. I have to drive 50 miles every weekend to pick him up because she completely refuses to help out. I have just had another child and am now really with the right person and in that respect life is good. However, my old banger (car) just failed it's MOT and I cannot afford to get it back on the road. Why? Firstly, the mechanics charge of 60 pounds an hour is a joke. Once all of my bills are paid to put a roof over my head, pay maintenance (why I should be paying this I don't know as I?ve done nothing wrong and it's nothing short of criminal) pay the bills and travel to work which costs me ?4800 a year!!!! (I have to commute to London) brought food etc I have absolutely nothing left. I've never earned a huge wage and have not even been able to save, which as it turns out with interest rates doesn't disappoint me too much, apart from a pension which won't be worth anything because of these cowboys in charge."
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Post 62 part 2...
So, not only am I being priced off the railways (I'm trying to be green you know), totally knackered from doing 60 hours a week, unable to save, unable to get my car on the road and being robbed by my ex wife who left me and I have to pay, why the hell would I want a car loan from a sleazeball government to buy another car when I can't afford to put petrol in it because the gas bill is so high and the cahoot flexible loan that I got at 6% is now charging me 21% interest (more daylight robbery) meaning it will take me 15 years to pay back the 3k loan on it? I?ve simply run out of money. What comes in goes out. Labour got it wrong. Britain isn't working. Britain is broke and is being run by a bunch of arrogant, power hungry individuals that do nothing but lie and cheat the people. I know many many other people in this same situation. This government are so out of touch with reality it's not funny anymore. I've watched and read everything about our economic mess and now I am actually getting ill over the stress of living here under this government. Can I sue them? Really! Can I? Every time I read these blogs or watch the politicians on the BBC or wherever I get a rush of blood to my head. They never answer questions truthfully. They always avoid them and we're paying for these jokers to buy their second homes and fill them up with quality goods!! How the hell can it happen??? "
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Can somebody please explain to me why we are pumping money into an industry that makes a product that nobody buys ? Even if the money is spent on developing new low energy vehicles, what will happen to the huge stock piles of cars sitting around now ? The manufacturers will want to recoup some of their costs, so sooner or later they'll slash prices drastically to shift those vehicles - in a year's time once they've sat and rotted, and with new ultra low energy models arriving, the old stuff will be worth nothing, so when they are sold at cut down prices, the second hand market will collapse as well, end result, cheaper cars for everyone right across the board, and an industry that's destroyed it's profit margins in order to stay afloat. Manufacturing plants will then close in the UK as costs outweigh profits, and we'll have pumped billions in and achieved nothing but the death of the very thing we strived to protect.
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Post 62....part 3...
"Now the lords are corrupt and cannot be prosecuted. To quote Terry Wogan..'Is it me'? What the hell is going on? Why aren't people taking to the streets? The dark one is announcing saving the car industry and jobs and creating money for more loans. Are they for real? Who the hell can afford more credit? Haven't they learned from their own mistakes about credit? They keep talking about the need to get banks lending again to business and individuals. Well most individuals are like me. They can't take any more on - don't they get it? There's nothing left to be able to afford it. Things are too expensive and people have had their fill. No amount of cars being manufactured is going to solve this crisis. Man there must be about 10 million cars standing unpurchased on this land anyway. Why don't they get rid of them first or give em away? It?s not our fault they over manufactured and made them too expensive to buy. It's a freaking joke this country and I urge anyone who doesn?t' have any real reason to stay here get out while you can.
Jeeeezus this is making me mad!!!!!"
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I think one reason why Post 62. may have been referred to the moderators is due to the creeping silencing of dissent in this country, especially in recent weeks. Unfortunately the effect of this is to make anyone with a different view from the status quo to feel marginalised and very angry.
It appears the BBC is being lent on by the authorities. Why oh why do BBC moderators never come out and explain their decisions? Post 62. is a case which highlights that most on this blog have lost any respect for the impartiality of the BBC.
Publish Post 62. BBC and let us make up our own minds. We are not children and may well come up with better suggestions than are being created in Parliament. Or is that the problem? Surely at this point in time we need to work together to try and sort out this mess. Divide and rule is only going to make it a lot messier. Good on you Post 62. don't give up, as you appear from the number of subsequent comments, to have struck a chord amongst the readers here.
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Has anyone in the media stopped to think how many people are going to be made redundant by the HSBOS/LLOYDS merger... tens of thousands, so why did the government fund Lloyds to buy HSBOS when a large proportion of the employees were going to lose their jobs anyway! I don't understand, but what frightens me most, is that, with the benefit of hindsight, none of the people who profess to know their job, obviously don't... Where does that leave the country, Bankrupt!
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This latest initiative has all the hall marks of a government thrashing around in an attempt to be seen to be doing something.
The analysis that we need to free up credit to stimulate the car market is false.
The issue for most potential car buyers is uncertainty not the availability of credit. This uncertainty is fuelled by both Ministers and the media predicting the continued fall in property prices throughout 2009; which for most people means their major asset will fall in value. Hence they feel less inclined to increase their debt as their asset base has lost value.
As a result people acting in their own interest do not want to take on more debt at this point in time when the value of their houses is falling and they may not have a job in three months time ?
They also know that if they delay their purchase the price of a car will in real terms will fall further.
Simultaneously major companies in their efforts to reduce expenditure are also delaying the replacement of company cars
The policies in some european countries to incentivise the scraping of the most polluting cars particularly if it was limited to a six month window would I believe be much more effective than this ill thought through package
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As someone who works in the automotive industry, yesterday's news comes as a welcome relief. For now. Some/most of the comments posted here portray us as scrounging parasites sucking the country dry of much needed money. We're tax payers too! And there's tens of thousands of us; much of our manufacturing industry is reliant on the automotive sector. We've paid tens of billions into this country's economy over the decades. Only a tiny portion of that is earmarked as coming back. IF we need it...
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Come in number 62 your time is up.
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I wish Post 62 was reinstated. All this chatter about it and I've not a clue as to what it contains.
I understand several people have kept a copy and have reposted versions - which have also been moderated away.
I sent in a post with an email email address to whicvh invited anybody to send me a copy. this is currently still under moderation - six hours later.
For those in the decade of Copernicus y not email me?
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At 1:28pm on 27 Jan 2009,
TheresOnly1Soupey wrote:
A joke - surely it must be.
Why are we saving this industry?
Why do you think? It is a sham of course but have you not figured that all these industry bases are in Labour heartlands.
So 2 people in positions they were not voted for (by the electorate) are using tax payers billions to buy votes.
I think they realise they wont win the next election, but they are trying damage limitation to vainly hope the next loss will not be too humiliating.
Please note I am not an anti motor industry hand wringing greenie, I have spent 15 years in the industry and even I believe it needs a Darwinian cull with only the strongest surviving on merit alone.
Long live the revolution brothers (and sisters!!)
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I suspect that the reason #62 got taken off is because the moderator is a woman and that it was felt it cast his ex in a bad light.
They are ever so PC at the BBC don't you know.
You could post again with that bit taken out, but I don't see why it should be edited at all - we are grown up enough to make our own minds up.
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259...kinhellno
Re: Post #62
I read your post at the time and though clearly heartfelt and emotional (hence the impact you have made on very many other bloggers) I was actually a bit worried about your mental state after reading it.
May I further suggest that your post may have been a bit too "truly British" in sentiment and been removed for that reason?
After all, any hint of the suggestion that someone born here and "truly British" has more entitlement to this country's shrinking wealth and opportunity than someone not born here, or even born here but with different colour skin or culture but who is also legally entitled to be here, would seem to be a point of view that the BBC would NOT want to allow to appear.
Good luck anyway and keep your chin up.
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#62 - I've read the first part of your post, and I've soooo got that t-Shirt. you're not alone.
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#62 - and now I've read the second half.
I'm with you all the way.
I've got 2 children by my second marriage, and the combination of the high cost of childcare for 2, plus the child maintenance I pay for a child I almost never get to see (while my ex wife is allowed by the courts to flout the contact order that was in place), is such a burden that it's become cheaper to quit work and be a stay at home dad.
We were coping just about on my wife's salary, but rising costs have now pushed us to the breadline, and we're struggling to stay afloat now.
I suspect there are thousands of #62s across the country, and this government is failing us.
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Well done Friendlycard, although posting it on a blog with the title 'An Orwellian Episode' has a kind of sinister irony about it.
It was certainly heartfelt and was probably a very cathartic excercise for the poster, nothing in it seemed to be in violation of the moderators code.
I have also published it on my website at
http:www.democraticbritain.tp2p.com
The announcement with regard to insuring new car loans is indeed part and parcel of previously announced policy, nothing new here.
There have been many such announcements, made in leaks and special briefings over the past couple of months however I have yet to see any real money being spent.
Government lend money to Banks to help ease liquidity problems at the same time as forcing them to increase the amount of liquid holdings to de-leverage their loan ratio.
Nett result is big headline but no actual money flowing
Cut VAT by 2.5% to reduce prices to boost consumer spending and at the same time increase fuel duty by 2.5% thereby increasing the price of the products on offer.
Nett result is big headline but no real price cuts
(LCD TV's fall in price, bread and potatoes rise)
Guarantee bank loans to small/med businesses to help them with cashflow
Nett result is big headline but no increase in lending as the banks won't/can't lend due to earlier point.
Increase credit supply insurance to larger businesses to allow them to increase market activity.
Nett result is big headline but no increase in activity due to all consumers business and domestic alike are tightening their belts.
Guarantee Loans on new cars
Nett result is big headline but no actual takeup as people can't afford to buy these cars as fuel duty has risen (see above) road tax is astronomical and road pricing is forcing these cars off the road.
All these announcements are not for our benefit (as you can see, they have very little effect)
They are for the benefit of the IMF whose policy the government are following (if only in announcement not action) this is so that when we go cap in hand to be bailed out (after suffering bail out fatigue ourselves) they might look favourably upon us.
Personally I wouldn't buy a new car anyway, my boss has a 4 year old car that is already going rusty, mine at 19 years old is only now starting to show the signs of old age (as we all are)
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Stand by for #257 to be removed...
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Reading it again I think the problem with post 62 may be that it is too specific. I've posted quite a few really negative things about the govt without being moderated so I dont think its political.
Post 62 is great because it has lots of detail but if you look at it from a legal risk viewpoint it makes all kinds of statements about specific organisations and individuals which those organisations and individuals may strongly disagree with or believe to be untrue. The moderators have no way of checking the accuracy of the statements so they are just being careful and making sure that neither the poster or the BBC gets sued for libel.
Maybe if the name of the company which gave the bank loan was taken out it would get past.
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267
The thrashing around is inevitable.
Once you set out your stall that your opponent is proposing to do nothing, you are fully committed to doing something.
The problem is that the some thing might not be the right thing.
Why oh why will they not hold fire a while to see if an initiative is working before implementing a new one that might have the effect of cancelling out the old one?
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The government is advised by economists.
Economists will try to persuade you theirs is a science. They analyse data and prognosticate.
It is not and never can be a science when the experiment cannot be repeated with all trained economists agreeing with the outcomes and conclusions.
This country is being ruined in an experiment based on a pseudo science where the Government only believes the economists who conclude what the governments’ dogma dictates.
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#62
I understand why you feel you are being ripped off by the Government but I don't understand why you begrudge 15% of your net salary going on your own son. If I had a child I would gladly spend 15% of my income on them. (Besides, that amount would easily be eaten up by child care costs if I had one and continued to work).
I appreciate your personal situation is depressing but it has always been expensive to have children and always will be. They are a life-long commitment regardless of whether the child's parents stay together or not.
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62
Consider a DNA test.
I heard of a case where the man was actually supporting the wifes lovers illegitimate child thinking it was his own.
If that is not a scandal what is?
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270. Omega_Cassandra:
"I wish Post 62 was reinstated. All this chatter about it and I've not a clue as to what it contains".
Please see #236 and #238.............
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To no. 62
Having read your blog in full, I find it amazing that the moderators could possibly deduce that some nut job somewhere may take offence.
I'm pretty sure that the British in fact must have one of the highest proportions of their population living abroad as expats, from America to Thailand to China to the Middle-East. You have said NOTHING that could POSSIBLY offend anyone.
Going back to your post, the people have been conned indeed, by the elite. But wasn't it always like that? I would argue the recent European social democracies must rank as mankind's greatest achievement. Monarchy never worked and communism was terrible. 3rd world democracies are simply an institutionalized system of the elite bankrupting the rest. The UK has it good, compared to most of humanity.
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Re #62 ....I think the issue was to do with the first sentance of para 3
The words were (in no particular order)...
are
The Lords
corrupt
cannnot
prosecuted
be
and
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If posts 261 and 262 really are the reposted parts one and two of the original post 62 why on earth was it censored?
It resonates strongly with me. Well said, 62.
I imagine your less than kindly references to the ex Mrs 62 stuck in the craw of some precious and inexperienced young slip of a thing.
Odd chaps, women, although I've always found it better to smile and suffer. But this type censorship (NOT moderation!) illustrates the kind of thinking that riddles the political debate now.
Personally, I say whatever I like - and I would fight to the death to defend the opposite and even perverse voices of my most extreme enemies.
And if anyone doesn't like that - come and get me.
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To the extent that this is a crisis of confidence the cheapest way out for a taxpayer may be to issue those guarantees. If the longer-term outlook for a business has not changed, and there is no reason that it should have given that this is a crisis in the financial system that has spread to the real economy, the taxpayer will never have to make good on the majority of guarantees anyway.
Of course, that assumes that the businesses are viable in the longer-term. If they are not, that can only be addressed by the management and employees of those businesses. The guarantees must be contingent upon the willingness and ability of those stakeholders to address the issues of long-term viability.
Much has been made of the fact that American automobile manufacturers are not competitive. There are "legacy" two issues which have to be considered in making this comparison. After adjusting for these, unions and management are the sole owners of the problem.
In the context of the United States the lack of a publicly funded Medicare system penalizes their manufacturers compared to others. If they were not so ideologically rigid they could improve their situation and the health and financial security of their citizens by introducing a system of universal health care. Every system has its problems, including the Medicare system in Canada, but it would seem to be superior to the hodgepodge of insurance schemes, health maintenance organizations and lack of universal coverage inherent in the US approach.
Those of us fortunate enough to have a universal healthcare system enjoy competitive benefits as compared to American manufacturers. However, the world economy cannot be healthy without a healthy American economy.
Pensions are another issue involving basic fairness and equity for those who worked on the understanding that they would receive a defined benefit payment at the end of their working career. Retroactive changes to earned pension violate basic fairness. Unfortunately, there are other issues involved, including the status of those without defined benefit pensions. These issues would have to be resolved on a pragmatic basis by governments, employers and unions.
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I too have read the post 62 that has caused so much controversy and would concur that it is possibly the comment re the inate unfairness of the UK family law system that caused its pulling.
Perhaps a moderator or Bob will elaborate?
I however have another view. If you read the under current in the post it portrays a world of total despair out of 1984 or Pink Floyd's The Wall. Perhaps the powers that be will dispatch him to room 101?
Post 62 is an example of thousands if not millions of the UK population who have kept their nose clean, worked all their life, paid their taxes, had a respect for the law and society even though that so called society has spent the last ten years doing him down and pandering to every latest fad and seen everyone on the take apart from him. With Zanulabour's latest borrowings he and us will be paying for this for decades.
I suppose the one bright side is that as he can't afford a car or foreign holidays when they take his driving licence or passport away he won't necessarioly miss them.
Perhaps someone will answer me a simple question? This is merely the latest story on this blog where it is clear that information has been leaked.
If so why then hasn't Bob or the leaker felt the long arm of Inspector Knacker of the Yard in full anti terrorism gear a la Damien Green?
The only alternative is that the leaks are authorised and agreed by ministers who have a complete contempt for Parliament.
Which is it?
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Post number 279 says:
"Why oh why will they not hold fire a while to see if an initiative is working before implementing a new one that might have the effect of cancelling out the old one?"
That is a good observation. Ready, fire, aim rarely works.
This issue involves psychology as well as the financial system as well as the real economy and timeliness is another concern and tardy action may make the problem more difficult to resolve. The positive feedback loop between housing prices, employment, and business and consumer spending threatens to run out of control if intervention is not both timely and well thought out.
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#62 is still missing, without explanation but not without trace.
Seems to me that it is broadly reflective of the real situation for many millions - not likely to go down well with the chattering classes and the neo-liberal elite.
Your acts of censorship may serve many fictitious purposes and serve many bogus masters, but you should know that if you close your eyes it will not go away.
Many, many people are in a similiar position to #62, and they are begining to reach the end of their tether. One way or another when the mass of the population is ready their voice will be heard - as it has always been throughout history.
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Well what a wonderful place this is, yes the government in there wisdom are going to give the car industry millions of pounds. Great maybe now we will get cheaper cars than the rest of europe, does nobody understand that Briton has always been the Golden Apple for the car industry, now it will become the Golden Apple Tree. Yes lets support our industry but why cant the manufactures make their prices more acceptable, get the loan companies or the Government to allow interest free loans on cars, then people will buy them. I dont buy nerw cars as they are over priced, better to buy a good quality second hand one.
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255. At 09:50am on 28 Jan 2009, rahere wrote:
'Rahere cannot and will not post under such circumstances'
Come on Rahere, whilst I might not agree with your posts, they are well written and very informative.
This blog is read by many more people than actually post and your views really are welcomed by the majority and your views do have real influence.
(a recent blog had over 500 posts written by nearly 300 posters and no doubt read by many more who did not post)
The moderators have a job to do, let them get on with it. (even if we might grumble a bit about speed).
I imagine Number 62 was pulled for what the moderator believed was a legitimate reason, posts 203 and 209 definitely broke the house rules about reposting moderated comments.
By force of opinion Number 62 was published.
Free speech is only there because people in the past have fought tooth and nail to make it so, giving up the fight betrays all those who fell on the pen before you.
So please keep posting, your country needs you.
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I really cannot see how post #62 could have offended anyone, with the possible exception of a reference to a religious figure towards the end.
Given the quite extraordinary level of interest in #62, I really think that the moderators ought, in this instance, to explain this.
I appreciate that explaining these decisions cannot be done on a frequent basis - the time demands on the system would be excessive - but this really does seem to be a very special case.
A really smart move for Robert would be to write a blog about #62, possibly putting some of the issues raised in the post to the government and reporting any response.
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Well, glad the Post 62 business has been sorted out. What a kerfuffle.
I trust young Johnny Moderator has been properly reprimanded and returned to milk monitor duties. Do I hear the cry of disciplined minion?
Hark ..... it is the sound, I moot
That follows close upon unfortunate collision
'twixt testicle and boot.
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Having browsed through the postings so far I am surprised that only #263 has raised what I think is one of the most important issues afflicting the car industry and it's problems.
This is the retail price of cars. We have all probably seen the vast fields of vehicles. Therefore why can't a medium family saloon be bought for, say £500-£1000 now?
Ignoring the political fear of losing such a large number of jobs and the impact such job losses would have on their respective communities, there is absolutely no practical reason to churn out cars priced at a level that no one apparently wants to buy them at.
The main issue is not, I think as #263 puts it as recovering costs, although there is undoubtedly will be an element of that, but the manner in which large multi-nationals conduct inter group pricing of parts to maximise profits and ship this profit offshore as many of these transactions are conducted inter country.
For a more detailed exposition of this tactic I recommend the book Offshore by William Brittain Catlin.
These are quite obscene market manipulations and the end product is that these huge companies can hold governments to ransom with the threat of job losses and the following political fall out. Just as is happening.
If you actually read this blog Mr Peston, please ask Mr Mandleson (who is unelected, unaccountable and should NOT be in government anyway) how much of these loan guarantees will actually result in money being siphoned off by the parent companies to "protect jobs" The claim of developing low carbon technologies is nothing more than a smoke screen. The basic idea is to extract as much money from the many and direct it to the very very few!
The ongoing issue of privatise the profit, socialise the risk. It will continue to be so, make no mistake!
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Off topic. Why are these people called "lords" and why are male MPs called "Honourable Gentlemen"?
I have heard and read these term thousands of times but the penny dropped yesterday ...
There is nothing lordy or honourable, is it?
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#62
Hey post 62 ..why so glum have you not seen the headline news today. ASDA have created 7,000 new jobs!!
Wait a minute doesant ASDA cater for the bottom end budget supermarket market generally for people who do not have much if any spare money to spend.
Hmmmm ..expecting a big expansion.
Hang on a minute isnt that BAD news for the economy again then?
Jericoa
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#268 - you miss the point though.
Why is the car industry being singled out for help? It seems to be getting far more than the house building industry for example, despite there being a well known housing shortage forecast for the next 20 years with 26,000 new homes needing to be built in the south east of England alone to accomodate population/migration trends. It'll be a bit hard when the house builders don't exist any longer!
The last time I checked there wasn't a shortage of motor vehicles.....
If Taxpayer money is to be used, it should be for helping toiling industry that clearly serves the public interest. Having a roof over your head is a bit more in the public interest than lots of people having the latest Audi....
The car industry is a business model that has been absolutely raking it in - for years - by selling overpriced vehicles during the credit bubble. Automotive companies have made billions between them, a large proprotion of which could have been set aside for addressing a future economic downturn and a fall in demand (seeing as economic cycles do exist do they not!), skills and training investment.
The fact is they CHOSE not to, and hand out the profits to shareholders, workers and so on isn't the Taxpayer's fault, nor that of the Government.
Therefore, it's a little rich for automotive companies to ask for support from Government at this time. If you can't shift your vehciles then lower the prices right down (even if below cost temporarily) to the point where they do sell!
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If EU rules prevent the government from bailing out industry such as the motor industry, so much so that the plan is convoluted, how come the government were able to bail out the banking industry without falling foul of this same rule?
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Number 62 (again)
It would appear to be the choice of username that got the comment pulled as it now magically appears as
# 62. At 2:47pm on 27 Jan 2009, U13800295
This comment has been referred to the moderators. Explain.
No doubt the original post will now be re-instated and future readers of this blog will wonder what the later posters are going on about
(thereby reducing the validity of any other posts those people made)
This is truly 'Orwellian'
History rewritten at the push of a button.
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History repeats itself and we still do not learn from the South Sea Bubble and the like until modern times. Vince Cable was right when pointing out our governments from Margaret Thatcher in 1979 reversed the controls on credit rules that had protected the overall community since the Great Depression then the chance rs had the brakes taken off and we now have the price to pay. Without money in the pocket confidence will not return so until this government finds a way of achieving this we all will suffer. Just pumping money into the Banks and Company coffers is only some of the answer although it does mean they remain in operation for the time being. Where are the policies for helping the ordinary working people? Reduce income tax for the lower paid or increase the tax free allowances might be another piece of the jigsaw.
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Hi everyone, again!
I can confirm that my post was taken down because of the nickname. I cannot see how fookinhellno poses any offence to anyone but there you have it. I think post_62 as a new nickname is very fitting and I would like to thank everyone for their concern over my post. I shall post (or pour my heart out) as (the infamous) 'post_62' from now on anjd hope I can stir the same amount of feeling as I did previously.
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We should not be investing in car sales in this gridlocked and polluted country. The government money should go towards a major re-investment in the railways - lets invest in a transport system of the future that we can be proud of and that wont kill 3000 precious lives every year
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#295 has made a very good point. Until I came to that post in the thread, I was wondering why is it that we the taxpayers are bailing out an industry owned by foreigners. Why doesn't Tata or Ford or others put the money in or if they can't put teh company on the market. By the way, where is that R&D going to take place? If foreigners own the motor industry they will conduct this research elsewhere, we are just an assembling industry.
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302. post_62:
Congratulations on your new username, which is great, and your well-deserved fame!
I look forward to reading more of your contributions.
Friendlycard
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Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac
Coming forth to carry me home
Going Home
You got shoes, I got shoes
all god's children got shoes
in heavennnn
every one talking about heaven
ain't going to heaven
you got wings I got wings
all god's children got wings
old cadilacs never die
the finance company
takes them away
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@ #263 BiggusDoggus
I think you will find that the unwritten plan will end up being this over-production exported at knock-down rates to Russia etc. From their it will be sold on finance to dealers with dubious names.
They will promptly disappear owing all the money. Our governments underwritings will kick-in and the manufacturer gets the money owed.
Problem solved and everyone's laughing. Cars gone, manufacturers paid.
Oh, and taxpayers footing the bill.
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#298 - The government has no interest in saving the building industry and having them build more houses because that would dilute the housing stock and cause further significant falls in (over inflated) house prices. That of course would kill the market and plunge yet more people into yet more debt.
#304 - I suspect if they sat back and waited for the overseas owners of our car industry to stump up the cash, all that would happen is that those owners would pull the plug on the UK manufacturing jobs and the industry would die anyway.
This way, Gordon gets to throw a few billion at the industry before it dies - makes him look a little less incompetent in the short term (at least to the average man in street), and he's hoping that it will keep the wolf from the door so that the industry survives long enough to go under on Cameron's watch.
History repeats itself, we're watching the 1970's all over again.
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Where has Alexander Curzon disappeared to ??
Has he succumbed to a fate worse than that of moderation.
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#302 Post_62
Welcome back! I look forward to your comments. You should take comfort in the fact that there are many of us really peed off with what is going on!!!
If you find bloggers of a like mind spend some time clicking on their blog-name to read their previous posts.
Interesting article yesterday in the Guardian:
"Week of mass strikes set to paralyse France in protest against Sarkozy's reforms" - google it.
The French are getting angry too.
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It depends what the loan is for and the risks involved. I agree with the governments' scheme to loan money at a rate that reflects the risk. Consider 2 scenarios of automotive businesses seeking a loan;
1. Business has firm orders (or clear promise of) to keep or grow workforce but needs cash to pay short term bills/invest in new capacity to ensure orders can be met
2. Business order book is 30% down and no recovery in sight so needs a loan to maintain current staffing levels and invest in business so it is ready for when the upturn finally arrives
In case 1 the risk is low and the problem is a clear one of short term cashflow, in case 2 risk is high as the business wants money to maintain a production capacity that will not be needed for quite some time to come.
If demand for a product falls the capacity requirement to produce it also falls, this is simple maths. So whilst I understand the sentiment of trying to avoid redundancies, there is no logic in providing funding to support a capacity that is no longer needed.
We need a manufacturing base yes, but one that meets the demand. Jobs need to be cut now to save the remaining ones and ensure the industry is best placed to take advantage of the slow recovery when it comes. We need to be mindful that we cannot simply 'switch on' the demands levels of the previous credit boom.
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309 gonzo the muppet
Alls well just a bit busy,ive a few interests in
the automotive sector re component
production.
Unsure about Mandys weird "generousity"
LABOURS ONLY ANSWER IS MORE & MORE
DEBT!!
Any way you will all be pleased that China
beckons for a few weeks after a visit to
Moscow.
SO THERE WILL BE FEWER CAPITALS
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I'm similar to the person who wrote post 62.
One parent family without a penny paid by father in over 40 years. I could not get credit anywhere until I achieved a piece of paper (degree) and a subsequent graduate job.
Since that date I would get regular loan/card mailshots which I never took up. In over 20 years driving I have not spent 10K on cars. Why? What is the point in spending thousands on something that depreciates so much is my response.
So I work hard, pay my taxes, live within my means but cannot afford £10K for that now reduced £18K new Vauxhall. How does the government change my financial spending habits if I do not need that vehicle on my drive? Back to the banks, if they dropped the loan interest payable to purchase a car, maybe but maybe not. I have no worry about redundancy for the next two years at least in this country but fear for the inevitable tax increases that these bail out appear to require in the next parliament.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
circle up the wagons to defend yourself from a nuclear attack
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