Same Old Politics Of Hate

[JohnH]

I don't know about the best healthcare system in the world, but they do have networks of informers living amongst the people who report to the secret police if anyone dares to criticise the government...

tbf no govt is perfect, what about the heavy handed police tactics used on teenagers and school pupils during demonstrations? demonstrations which started peacefully!

I'm not sure that we can compare a few scuffles with the Met's heavy mob with a lifetime of oppression from a communist dictatorship... :?

Brown was warned by Ken Clarke in 1997 or 1998 not to meddle with the organisation of financial regulation

I bet he actually said 'some types of financial regulation are worse than others'

I tried and failed to find the actual quote online, but from memory, Ken Clarke stood up from the back benches and said something along the lines of "I must warn the new chancellor to stop meddling with the affairs of the Bank of England". That's obviously not an exact quote, but the essence is about right.

What I did find while searching, was an article written before the 2010 election in the Telegraph which pinpointed the date upon which the UK switched from being able to cover the costs of running the country to spending like a drunken lottery winner. It was the date that Gordon Brown stopped following the Major government's spending plans...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/7530 ... -fate.html

we're going to end up in the same position as Greece or Ireland.

arent the chances of that pretty low?

It's really nothing to do with chance.

Either a government imposes strict spending restraints and the credit markets reward it with low borrowing costs (like the UK). Or a government refuses to restrain its spending and the credit markets convey their uncertainty that that government will repay its debts by lending at high interest rates. Which makes that country's indebtedness even worse, as it has done in Greece.

But it does hurt ordinary people contributing to pensions, regular people who are trying to build their savings and public sector workers who are being axed because the country can't afford to keep them and pay debt interest at the same time.

if it had to be it had to be, recessions come and go

:shock: Erm sunrise, I thought we were worrying about ordinary people here....

The fact is, it didn't have to be. Gordon Brown saw the country getting wealthier and thought to himself "Great! I'm going to tax all of this wealth and use the money to build a massive public sector infrastructure that employs all of these out-of-work people!". He thought that he could keep that up forever because he'd "put an end to boom and bust".

But he failed to understand that the country's new found wealth wasn't built on abundant natural resources (like Russia or Australia), it wasn't built on a solid manufacturing base (like Germany or Japan) and it wasn't built on a roaring hi-tech sector (like Silicon Valley).

It was built on an abundance of borrowed money. And when the borrowed money ran out, so did our boom.

So now the country has to pay all of that borrowed money back.

I thought this recession had infact started with the Yom Kippur war?

Yom Kippur? Crikey, that's 1973! :shock:

At about that time, the United States printed dollars that were no longer redeemable in gold. Thanks to Nixon, it then became a so-called 'fiat' currency where the money markets would determine the value of the dollar rather than linking it to a valuable asset.

David Stockman, one of Reagan's former right-hand men, writes a devastating criticism of that decision (and others since then) that he says has "destroyed" the US economy...
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/reagan ... 2010-08-10
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/reagan ... 2011-05-24

I just think the condems are condemning the ordinary folk.

Sunrise, I'm sure you'll agree with me that you can't spend a fiver twice. You can either buy one thing or another. But you can't use the same fiver to buy both.

This country has to pay £120 million per day in interest payments to moneylenders. And we can only spend that money once. So instead of paying for special needs schools or extra classroom assistants or well stocked libraries, it's got to pay for the massive debts that this country has.

And the people who ran up those massive debts were Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling.

They are the people who have condemned the ordinary folk.

 

[sunrise]

Look I frankly cannot be arsed arguing with people on forums who may or not be real, when its clear they have different viewpoints. What i will say is that to me, and to a lot of other people too, David Cameron is using this recession as the excuse he was always wanting to cut back on things society needs.

I think it is part of the socialist ideal to say that this system only hurts those at the bottom, while the rich remain rich throughout- and to make real changes to benefit everyone its better to even these ups and downs out. That is probably what he wanted to say, not 'i'm such a big guy i can control the world'.

I guess the census of the left is probably that Brown kinda had to spend a lot to try to fix the years of social damage which happened under Thatcher, which we are still suffering from.

Also, anyone else a bit confused as to why we are spending thousands on bombing libya when supposedly we have no money?!

(Also I think kettling is something that is purely a british tactic. Give me a cigar and a weekly food shop for 1.50 due to govt subsidies anyday

 

[JohnH]

Look I frankly cannot be arsed arguing with people on forums who may or not be real...

Well in that case, I'll stop wasting lots of my own time writing long and carefully explained replies then... :roll:

What i will say is that to me, and to a lot of other people too, David Cameron is using this recession as the excuse he was always wanting to cut back on things society needs.

Fine. Let's ignore things like facts and numbers and just keep voting Labour until the country goes bankrupt.

People forget that there are all cycles of recession, that recession is as common as boom. I think it is part of the socialist ideal to say that this system only hurts those at the bottom, while the rich remain rich throughout- and to make real changes to benefit everyone its better to even these ups and downs out. That is probably what he wanted to say, not 'i'm such a big guy i can control the world'.

After 13 years of Labour government...

• The gap between rich and poor is the widest that it's been for 40 years -- http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/ ... comes-poor
• Gordon's PFI schemes are going to shovel huge quantities of tax money from cash-strapped councils to wealthy corporations for the next 50 years
• The former heads of banks that were so badly run that Alastair Darling had to nationalise them, walked away with pensions of over £60,000 per month
• The Labour govt. printed money to get the banks trading again. The value of our savings and pensions went down while Barclays pocketed £6bn of that money to patch up their own finances and pay themselves bonuses.
• Public sector workers lost their jobs so that the UK could pay interest on our largest ever national debt to investment bankers and hedge fund managers (that luxury yacht won't pay for itself...)

Does that sound to you like a party that's reduced the inequalities in society?

I guess the census of the left is probably that Brown kinda had to spend a lot to try to fix the years of social damage which happened under Thatcher, which we are still suffering from.

And how long is the "fix" going to last when it depends on borrowed money? (Answer: Just about until the lender wants their cash back.)

Anyway, I've said all I can say. As somebody who was born in Teesside, I've seen first-hand what voting Labour does to a place -- and it doesn't involve creating prosperity and employment.

 

[FMJ]

Look I frankly cannot be arsed arguing with people on forums who may or not be real

I looked at your join date and laughed. Irony does that to me.

 

[David B]

I would find it a lot easier to swallow if big businesses such as Tmobile, Tesco and others did not evade paying the tax they should pay. the taxes from that would surely mean we could keep the libraries and specialist schools and EMA?

I'm not sure Tesco would like you accusing them of tax evasion.

I'm not aware of Tesco having done so either. Phil Green and his BHS, Top Man, etc. empire on the other hand does seem to have "previous" (as Regan & Carter might put it) on this front.

David

 

[sunrise]

Yeahhh Arcadia! something defo suspect going on there. allegedly. i am just going to say stuff and then put allegedly after it so i cant be sued for libel.

here is an article about tesco's libel suit against the guardian for those who missed it earlier. although actually its like three years old, so not that relevent but whatever, i thought it was interesting.

theres tax avoidance and theres tax avoidance, in my mind anything involving offshore accounts is dodgy. i just dont like people who leave the country but continue to work here, so they dont have to pay taxes, i have respect for ABBA cos they stayed in Sweden despite the high taxes.. etc.
i am sorry if i make no sense, completely knackered and grumpy today!

 

[David B]

i am just going to say stuff and then put allegedly after it so i cant be sued for libel.

Works for Have I Got News For You, anyway.

Just be careful of those darned superinjunctions (or as they're now known, Gigging orders).

David

 

[Ernie]

it could be worse...we could be in the eurozone :shock:

Ernie

 

[FMJ]

here is an article about tesco's libel suit against the guardian for those who missed it earlier.

What? where?

theres tax avoidance and theres tax avoidance, in my mind anything involving offshore accounts is dodgy. i just dont like people who leave the country but continue to work here, so they dont have to pay taxes

Perhaps you should be directing your anger towards this tax avoiding Irish corporation. I've even provided a link.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/u2-respond-to-critics-of-their-deal-with-the-taxman/

 

[Easy_Rider]

Tax avoidance is perfectley legal, tax evasion is not.