RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (Full Version)

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RealityLicks -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (8/31/2008 11:57:19 AM)

Be fair, I said that the current downturn wasn't about party politics.  I think privatisation, deregulation and council house sales were Thatcherite ideas - which some warned would bring short-term gain and long-term pain: they have - but globalisation isn't a Labour creation; neither is the credit crunch .  People can criticise Labour for embracing many Thatcherite ideas but not if they voted for them in the first place, surely?



meatcleaver -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (8/31/2008 1:10:12 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: seeksfemslave

Both parties after having poured zillions into manufacture  sat by and watched the decline and in some cases welomed it so that we could become the first post industrial nation..
Shows that politicions cant do much when the shit hits the fan.

Gentility and disdain for trade at the top levels of society are the root cause of our problems.
We are now too far behind to stop things getting steadily worse.



Precisely my point. Britain poured millions into manufacture and failed because the government failed to change British management culture which is short termism. Renault was no better than BL in the seventies for quality and useless models and suffered the similar industrial conflicts but went on to produce some innovative products that sold well throughout Europe.



meatcleaver -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (8/31/2008 1:17:01 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: caitlyn

The UK, and the rest of the west, have wonderful manufacturing capabilities and a strong workforce. They are just in competition with nations that have a near slave workforce.
 
Teriffs are needed, which will cause short term pain and inflation in the west. Eventually, the rise in domestic and intra-European sales and production will offset the rising prices of good.
 
Until that time, both Labour and Conservative governments are just applying band-aids.


I don't think tariffs are the answer but you are right about the west having top manufacturing capabilities and a strong educated workforce. This is the problem I have with many Americans on this board that complain about American companies outsourcing. America has the technology and the designers and if they haven't, they can attract the best so American manufacturing companies should concentrate on R&D and on making premium products that people would be willing to pay a good price for. That is what California does and what Germany does and it is what the rest of Europe and America needs to do.



Steponme73 -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (8/31/2008 3:25:32 PM)

I love it!!! Two of the most powerful nations in the World the US and the UK and neither one of them have a fucking clue!!!!!  LOL...Where in the hell are we going and how in the hell do we get there!!!  You just have to love to hate politicians!



Jeffff -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (8/31/2008 5:56:54 PM)

Not me......... I hate the voters!!

Jeff



RCdc -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (9/2/2008 6:38:36 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: RealityLicks

They said they wouldn't cut stamp duty but the media won't let it out of the public mind because they mostly favour the Tories - new blood boosts interest in their wares.


Whilst they did say they wouldn't completely cut it, they left it completely open.  They never made a direct statement.
That said, they have today announced they are raising it.  It wasn't the media perpetuating the issue, it was the governments error in being totally vague.
 
the.dark.



meatcleaver -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (9/2/2008 6:50:10 AM)

General point

The nonsense of this story is that Britain isn't going through its worst down turn in sixty years. As was pointed out on Newsnight the other night, Britain isn't going through any crisis at all except one that is largely in the head. If people remember the Tory recessions of 1992, 1981 and 1973, they were recessions. The 1981 and 1992 recessions being self inflicted by Tory mismanagement. The 1981 recession stole years out of the lives of millions of people and it wasn't necessary, it was a case of utter and total mismanagement. Anyone who remembers that recession and votes Tory needs to be put in a straitjacket. Of course, deregulation was a bonanza for the City but for up north, many people are still waiting for Thatcher to die of a long painful death so they can dance on her grave.

I can't abide New Labour but the idea of giving the Tories another chance to give the country another recession is just too much.



RealityLicks -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (9/2/2008 9:31:40 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Darcyandthedark

Whilst they did say they wouldn't completely cut it, they left it completely open.  They never made a direct statement.
That said, they have today announced they are raising it.  It wasn't the media perpetuating the issue, it was the governments error in being totally vague.
 
the.dark.

 
Today's announcement changes things only very slightly and they haven't raised the duty, just the level at which you start paying it up to £175k.  Call me a cynic but I don't think saving at most £1750 in today's market will persuade anyone to jump in and buy a house.  Not when the market is predicted to fall another 25%.

As far as London is concerned, they might as well have done nothing - because for £175k, you'll find nothing.  Outside London people will continue to wait unless totally compelled to move.

Let's not polarise this, I'm not claiming the gov't have covered themselves in glory.  But aid for families facing repossession has to be financed somehow.  They can't help people out and cut taxes without massive increases to borrowing. 



RealityLicks -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (9/2/2008 9:43:19 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: meatcleaver

General point

The nonsense of this story is that Britain isn't going through its worst down turn in sixty years. As was pointed out on Newsnight the other night, Britain isn't going through any crisis at all except one that is largely in the head. If people remember the Tory recessions of 1992, 1981 and 1973, they were recessions. The 1981 and 1992 recessions being self inflicted by Tory mismanagement. The 1981 recession stole years out of the lives of millions of people and it wasn't necessary, it was a case of utter and total mismanagement. Anyone who remembers that recession and votes Tory needs to be put in a straitjacket. Of course, deregulation was a bonanza for the City but for up north, many people are still waiting for Thatcher to die of a long painful death so they can dance on her grave.

I can't abide New Labour but the idea of giving the Tories another chance to give the country another recession is just too much.


It's hthe old story of Thatcher's omniscience.  Amnesiac Britain has forgotten that without North Sea Oil revenues, the miners' strike would have brought the Tories down.  The mythic trimming back of the state is a lie: it grew under Thatcher, all bankrolled by Brent Crude.  She was cutting back the military but enough forces remained to defeat Argentina, so she sold herself as the modern Boudicca and the fairytale refuses to die.

Its only a fortnight to the anniversary of Black Wednesday, the worst financial blunder this country has witnessed in a generation - entirely self-inflicted.

By a Chancellor with grey hair and black eyebrows. [&:]



meatcleaver -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (9/2/2008 9:54:59 AM)

Yep. Its depressing to think of how many people will be willing to vote Tory without a second glance at their history which is desasterous.



Politesub53 -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (9/2/2008 2:12:39 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: meatcleaver

Yep. Its depressing to think of how many people will be willing to vote Tory without a second glance at their history which is desasterous.


Whats depressing is how many people spew bullshit and claim its fact.

Tell me what were the causes of the 1973 and 1981 recessions ?

Here are two clues. The Arab Israeli war of 73 and the 27 % interest rate inherited from Labour. The first cased oil prices to increase fourfold. The second caused the £ to appreciate, which was a blow to manufacturing and exports.

I dont mind you hating the Tories, thats your call, but lets stick to the facts here please.



Politesub53 -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (9/2/2008 2:19:30 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: RealityLicks

Today's announcement changes things only very slightly and they haven't raised the duty, just the level at which you start paying it up to £175k.  Call me a cynic but I don't think saving at most £1750 in today's market will persuade anyone to jump in and buy a house.  Not when the market is predicted to fall another 25%.

As far as London is concerned, they might as well have done nothing - because for £175k, you'll find nothing.  Outside London people will continue to wait unless totally compelled to move.

Let's not polarise this, I'm not claiming the gov't have covered themselves in glory.  But aid for families facing repossession has to be financed somehow.  They can't help people out and cut taxes without massive increases to borrowing. 


I agree with this, it looks like a short term solution which has just been patched over. Im not happy that they have announced a free loan to home owners on less than £60 K. Then annouced a fee at the end of it, without giving details. If people are making long term financial plans, they need concrete figures to work on.



Politesub53 -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (9/2/2008 2:25:07 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: RealityLicks

It's hthe old story of Thatcher's omniscience.  Amnesiac Britain has forgotten that without North Sea Oil revenues, the miners' strike would have brought the Tories down. 


Do you feel a democratically elected governement, disliked or not, should be able to be brought down by a relatively small number of trade unionists ? I guess my question is which is more important to you in an democracy ?



RealityLicks -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (9/2/2008 3:01:16 PM)

I'm not saying that it's right for a trade union to intentionally usurp the democratic process but your description of events is far from impartial.  The huge inflation the Tories inherited in '79 was not the cause of the recession, that was down to the monetarist policy of raising interest rates and taxes to reduce the money supply.  Joseph and Thatcher could not have anticipated the enormous amount of North Sea oil that started coming ashore but it strengthened the effect of their measures because of the huge appreciation in Sterling.

Inside 2 years, she'd pushed countless firms to the brink  - and incidentally, destroyed manufacturing industry in the process because no-one overseas could afford British products; she'd driven unemployment up from 700,000 under Labour to over 3 million, where it stayed for 5 years. 

She said the recession was "needed" to clear out the dead wood and ensured it was deep and prolonged - no U-turns. 

She applied her supply side obsession to public services, which is why we never invested a penny of the hundreds of billions of North Sea revenue in infrastructure, hence the need for Brown's stealth taxes to pay for all the schools, hospitals, railways, universities etc etc we never built when we could have easily. 

Rather than build housing, she sold it off -- and carefully legislated against replacement homes being built, enshrining the unsustainable property cult of today.  My local council is finally building social homes for the many homeless families we have and which were unheard of here since the Sixties.

Now we can look at the books, we see that although the budget deficit was reduced during that era, this was largely a product of oil wealth, not govt cutbacks.  Inefficiency rose and the public sector spent more on less, because implementing the cuts was strangely, in practice quite costly.  Please don't tell me that you consider the sell-off of British rail a success?  Think of the lives lost to the newly unleashed gospel of greed. 

I haven't even scratched the surface of teh damage through bad management and vindictive cuts - victimising unwed mothers, blameless immigrant families and the very people she herself had rendered jobless.  The Tories have been a poisonous and ruinous blight on this country and nothing the incumbent has done comes close, it's only the strength of Saatchi media messages ("Labour isn't working"... just before the jobless total went through the roof, ha fucking ha) the slavish support of Murdoch's press and an isolationist attitude to Europe which was skillfully used to lull the public into applauding while the country was ransacked by the B'stards.  Go ahead turkeys, vote for Christmas.



Politesub53 -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (9/2/2008 4:12:45 PM)

RL.....Nice post, Its informative and well stated.

I did say both inflation and the discovery of oil caused the 1981 recession, this would have happened with or without Thatchers policies, in my opinion.

I dont see how you can blame either party for the lack on investment in Council housing, both have been as bad as each other since the war. I also fail to see your point about the building of hospitals and schools. I dont see any evidence that this is the case, and most of the money spent on railways is PFI money, which will come back to haunt us. You make a nice point about implementing saving costing more than they save, as many of Browns policies have done exactly that.

Im  not sure why you think Thatcher discriminated against immigrants and single mums though.



philosophy -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (9/2/2008 4:20:48 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Politesub53


I dont see how you can blame either party for the lack on investment in Council housing, both have been as bad as each other since the war.


...but only Thatchers government made local councils sell off their housing stock and then refused to let them build more.....

quote:

Im  not sure why you think Thatcher discriminated against immigrants and single mums though.


...does Peter Lilley's "I have a little list" performance at the Tory Party Conference in 1992 ring any bells?



Politesub53 -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (9/3/2008 12:30:39 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: philosophy

...but only Thatchers government made local councils sell off their housing stock and then refused to let them build more.....


Agreed, but it doesnt alter my point about lack of investment.

quote:



...does Peter Lilley's "I have a little list" performance at the Tory Party Conference in 1992 ring any bells?


Indeed it does, he had a point about young girls getting pregnant on purpose, so as to get council housing. Even if his words and policies were obnoxious.

You prove my point though Phil, i mention Thatcher, you quote Lilley`s speech from 1992 in response. Thatcher was long gone when Lilley made his speech, yet the left associate her with everthing that has gone wrong since WW2.

Incidentally Blunkett has said this was his all time favourite speech from a party conference, which kind of illuminates his own policies on welfare. And this from a new Labour politician, i am loathe to associate them with old Labour, as any social and socialist leanings seem to have been long gone.



meatcleaver -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (9/3/2008 1:02:58 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Politesub53

quote:

ORIGINAL: meatcleaver

Yep. Its depressing to think of how many people will be willing to vote Tory without a second glance at their history which is desasterous.


Whats depressing is how many people spew bullshit and claim its fact.

Tell me what were the causes of the 1973 and 1981 recessions ?

Here are two clues. The Arab Israeli war of 73 and the 27 % interest rate inherited from Labour. The first cased oil prices to increase fourfold. The second caused the £ to appreciate, which was a blow to manufacturing and exports.

I dont mind you hating the Tories, thats your call, but lets stick to the facts here please.



If you read what I wrote, I didn't blame the Tories for the 1973 recession but the fact that the British recession was worse than its neighbours says something about government management of the situated.

As for the 1981 recession, Howe deflated the economy at a time of recession, something copmpletely against ALL economic wisdom. That caused unemployment to jump from one million to three million and that was only the official figures. Thatcher tampered with the unemployment figures 21 times to reduce them on paper. If you lived up north at that time you too would want to strangle Howe and his fucking bitch queen Thatcher. Just about ALL economists claim the recession was far deeper that it need have been to reduce inflation and shake out inefficient companies. What the Tories did was destroy many viable companies and many communities in the name of economic dogma.

The 1990s recession was due to the Tories joining the ERM, claiming they had cured the British economy of its economic woes which they hadn't and the pound was strong enough to keep up with the DMK, which it wasn't. Despite the Tory destruction of UK industry in the early eighties, they hadn't cured inflation, largely due to them giving tax cuts to their friends. The markets believed the pound to be overvalued and began to sell the pound, the government responded by using foreign currency reserves to support the pound.

http://www.economicshelp.org/2008/02/uk-recession-of-1991-92.html

Mistakes of the Thatcher Government

1. Allowing the economy to expand too rapidly causing inflation.
2. Targeting the exchange rate, when this was detrimental to other more important objectives like preventing a recession.
3. Inflation should never have been allowed to increase so much, but when they tried to slow down the economy, they overacted making the recession deeper than it need to be.

Two deeper than necessary recessions caused by the mismanagement of the Tory government. TWO is unforgiveable because BOTH could have been avoided through conventional economic wisdom. There were no surprises to government actions. The Tories ruined the lives of millions, set in process a social situation where young teens were reaching their mid twenties and having a family without ever having a job, which caused social problems that are still part of Britain today. I can tell you what happened in many towns in the north thanks to the Tory destruction, jobs moved out, guns and drugs moved in and still after all this time, many social problems caused by the are still there.

Yeah, the Tories were a great government, particularly if you worked in the city or were in thw affluent south.



meatcleaver -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (9/3/2008 1:19:28 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Politesub53

quote:

ORIGINAL: RealityLicks

It's hthe old story of Thatcher's omniscience.  Amnesiac Britain has forgotten that without North Sea Oil revenues, the miners' strike would have brought the Tories down. 


Do you feel a democratically elected governement, disliked or not, should be able to be brought down by a relatively small number of trade unionists ? I guess my question is which is more important to you in an democracy ?


The fact that the government was lying through its teeth which has time and again been proven sort of corrupts the democratic process anyway. The fact that the government was cooking the books to make profitable pits unprofitable (proven), is another reason to question the Tories belief in democracy. The fact that the state's intelligent agencies were trying to frame and politically assasinate a democratically elected Union leader (proven, read Pilger and Paul Foot) also leads one to question the Tory belief in democracy. The fact that the police were used as political storm troopers (that term was used by a judge) making tactical arrests of innocent people to threaten others. The fact people couldn't move about their own areas without being stopped, searched and harrassed by the police makes one question the government's belief in democracy. The fact that when 235 miners were found not guilty in a crown court and the judge accused the South Yorkshire Chief constable of deliberately allowing his force to be a political arm of the government says a lot about the Tory government and their belief in democracy. The fact that the Tories had already destroyed great swathes of industry, laid waste and abandoned communities to their own devices was one of the main reasons the miners decided to fight.

Yeah, you lot in the south know fuck all of what went on in the miners strike because one, the media was more or less solidly Tory and two, you didn't fucking care how how the country was governed as long as you were doing OK. What the Thatcher government taught me, was that the bastard establishment in London doesn't fucking care about democracy and cares less about its citizens. Fuck Britain, what it needs is a democracy because it hasn't got one worth protecting.



meatcleaver -> RE: Chancellor Darling admits Labour have failed (9/3/2008 3:53:06 AM)

Which member of the Tory government said 'If it ain't hurting it ain't working.'?  Who said get on yer bike and find a job? Great if you could afford a bike and if you couldn't, tough because if you found a job you couldn't get a bus to work because deregulation destroyed all the bus services. South Yorkshire had one of the best public transport systems in Britain, it was so good local politicians from many European cities used to come to see it but that wasn't good enough for the Tories, they just fucking destroyed it with their stupid transport policy which was really an anti-transport policy. Governements, I've sat on the bog and defaecated better.



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