Politics

[Renton 18552]

Interesting article.

 

Purely as a Labour supporter one of the most depressing things about the current situation is the Tories succesful domination of the narrative of the cuts

 

The myth needs nailing that Brown, not bankers, caused our economic woes. Then the case against cuts can be made

 

In France, they are already rioting on the streets. An estimated 3.5 million of them, according to one trade union estimate, from Lyon to Paris to Nanterre, either striking, marching or taking direct action in fury at changes to their pensions. Within hours, they had closed down schools, disrupted the travel network and prompted alarm about the nation's fuel supplies.

 

Contrast that with the scene that played out in London at the same time. Here, a demonstration against the cuts to be announced in full by George Osborne tomorrow brought a few thousand activists to wave their banners and chant their chants in Parliament Square. The closest they got to a threat was when Unison's Dave Prentis warned: "If the government doesn't listen to us today, they won't have heard the last of us." Storming the Bastille, it wasn't.

 

Why the difference? You could write a learned thesis on the contrasting political traditions of the two countries, how the French take to the streets at the merest tweak to their welfare arrangements. But there is another explanation that goes beyond British habits of passivity. Right now, even those people who fear and loathe the government's cuts don't blame the government.

 

Today a YouGov poll for the Sun asked voters who is most to blame for the current spending cuts. Only 18% named the coalition, a figure dwarfed by the 48% who pointed the finger at the last Labour government.

 

That outcome is the fruit of a strategy pursued with iron discipline by the Conservatives and Lib Dems. No minister can so much as remark on the weather without pointing out that they "inherited this mess from Labour". David Cameron said so when he unveiled the strategic defence review today, Vince Cable did the same last week, as he explained his volte-face on tuition fees and Osborne will do it too. You may not hear much about the Tory inheritance tax these days, but "inherited" is the coalition's favourite word.

 

So far it's working, the public believing that however painful the government's actions, they are merely the unavoidable consequence of Labour recklessness. For as long as this holds, anger will be directed not at Cameron, Osborne and Clegg but at the opposition. It means the public will close its ears to any alternative message Labour attempts to offer. This is why some in the party's top ranks now admit that "the most important issue" for the party's future is its immediate past. It has to nail the claim that the country's woes are the fault of the last Labour government. Put simply, it has to win the blame game.

 

That effort starts with setting the record straight. The coalition's case is that Labour behaved like the pools winners of yesteryear, showering tenners around like confetti. The 13 years of New Labour rule are recast as a binge whose golden rule was spend, spend, spend. Before that storyline takes hold for good – and it may already be too late – Labour needs to lay out a few facts.

 

The first should come in the form of a question. If Labour's spending was so wildly out of control, why did the Tories promise to match their plans, pound for pound, all the way until November 2008? Why didn't Osborne and Cameron howl in protest at the time?

 

Could it be because things were not actually that bad? A quick look at the figures confirms that, until the crash hit in September 2008, the levels of red ink were manageably low. The budget of 2007 estimated Britain's structural deficit – that chunk of the debt that won't be mopped up by growth – at 3% of gross domestic product. At the time, the revered Institute for Fiscal Studies accepted that two-thirds of that sum comprised borrowing for investment, leaving a black hole of just 1% of GDP. If the structural deficit today has rocketed close to 8%, all that proves is that most of it was racked up dealing with the banking crisis and subsequent slump – with only a fraction the result of supposed Labour profligacy. After all, even the Tories would have had to pay out unemployment benefit.

 

This is why Ed Balls was right to declare in his summer Bloomberg lecture – which remains Labour's most robust effort yet to redirect the finger of blame away from itself – that "it is a question of fact that we entered this financial crisis with low inflation, low interest rates, low unemployment and the lowest net debt of any large G7 country".

 

In other words, the position was relatively sound until the crash struck. The coalition would prefer voters forgot about that event; they mention it only rarely. But in this era of collective short-term memory loss, it is worth reminding people that the financial crisis was not limited to those territories ruled by Gordon Brown: it was global, it was systemic and it was caused by the larcenous greed of bankers.

 

Some will say that Labour, nevertheless, bore some particular responsibility – if not for the crisis itself then for Britain's exposure to it, not least through Brown's indulgence of the City and light-touch regulation of finance. Some can say that – but not the Tories. The only problem they had with Brown's deregulation is that there wasn't more of it. One small reminder: Cameron endorsed John Redwood's 2007 report on competitiveness which declared that there was "no need to continue" to regulate mortgage provision – this just as the contagion of sub-prime mortgages was about to take down the world banking system.

 

Which brings us to the real source of the deficit: the colossal borrowing Labour had to undertake in order to prevent the crash of 2008 engulfing the entire economy. The party has to insist that it wasn't spending for the hell of it or because it was incontinent with the public's cash. It had to pump money into the economy to prevent a recession turning into a depression, to prevent the spiralling unemployment, house repossessions and bankruptcies that had accompanied previous downturns, to stop the banks collapsing. People mocked Brown when he accidentally claimed to have "saved the world" but it's true that his approach was copied the world over – and many did indeed believe his recapitalisation plan rescued the global financial system.

 

It will require great boldness for Labour to make this case. It amounts to rehabilitating the deficit itself, asking voters not to see it as some evil monster that has to be slayed immediately – but rather as the price that had to be paid to prevent unemployment tripling, interest rates galloping and the economy falling off a cliff. Lots of countries, from the US to Japan, have paid it with deficits of their own – or does the coalition think those are all Labour's fault too?

 

Only once this case is made can Labour go on to make its wider critique of the coalition: arguing that the government's response to the deficit is panicked and hysterical, that the surest way to enlarge, not reduce, the deficit is to cut in the midst of a downturn, that growth and jobs have to come first, that serious spending cuts are wise only once the economy is back to health.

 

This is the argument Labour has to win. Rather than the shadow chancellor cracking jokes about picking up a "primer on economics for beginners" – the dumbest self-inflicted wound since Liam Byrne told his successor "there's no money left" – Labour has to dispel the myth that it's all their fault. If they fail, it will take them a generation to recover.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...bour-blame-game

 

I'd like CT to answer the points raised in this because he's guilty of repeating the lies in almost every post he makes.

[manc-mag 1]

Party alliegances to one side, Ed Miliband was in full social spaz mode at PMQ's today.

[shackbleep 0]

I'm not getting my head round the benefit of the TV Licence being frozen for six years. The BBC is independent of government and is funded through the licence fee and not taxation.

 

So how does this 'freeze' impact the deficit at all? Or is it the Tories having a pop at the BEEB?

[Renton 18552]

I'm not getting my head round the benefit of the TV Licence being frozen for six years. The BBC is independent of government and is funded through the licence fee and not taxation.

 

So how does this 'freeze' impact the deficit at all? Or is it the Tories having a pop at the BEEB?

 

Because we 'all have to share the pain' according to multimillionaire born-with-a-silver-spoon in his mouth Gideon. Nothing to do with Murdoch applying pressure, no siree.

[Ayatollah Hermione 13024]

I'm not getting my head round the benefit of the TV Licence being frozen for six years. The BBC is independent of government and is funded through the licence fee and not taxation.

 

So how does this 'freeze' impact the deficit at all? Or is it the Tories having a pop at the BEEB?

 

Official reason is it saves a massive 16% but it leaves the BBC to do the dirty work of cutting.

[Guest alex]

I'm not getting my head round the benefit of the TV Licence being frozen for six years. The BBC is independent of government and is funded through the licence fee and not taxation.

 

So how does this 'freeze' impact the deficit at all? Or is it the Tories having a pop at the BEEB?

Well, they've probably got the biggest and best free internet news service out there. I'll leave you to fill in the gaps on that one

[Ayatollah Hermione 13024]

If they want to save 16%, the BBC should not broadcast anything between 1am and 5am.

[peasepud 59]

If they want to save 16%, the BBC should not broadcast anything involving Jonathon Ross and Graham Norton.

FYP

[Guest alex]

Ross has already left the Beeb hasn't he?

[peasepud 59]

Ross has already left the Beeb hasn't he?

There you go then, just got to buy one less box of biscuits a week and they'll have saved the 16%

[ewerk 27300]

If they want to save 16%, the BBC should not broadcast anything between 1am and 5am.

 

[Meenzer 14245]

So how does this 'freeze' impact the deficit at all? Or is it the Tories having a pop at the BEEB?

 

They'd rather get rid of it altogether, this much has been clear for many years via their actions and the assault by their puppet press - the freeze is just the nearest they can get for now without encountering wide-scale resistance.

 

Now that our industrial sector is essentially non-existent and our banks are discredited, cultural output is one of the few saleable things this country actually has in its favour, and the BBC is at the heart of that. It's the envy of the world, but don't expect that to count for much over the coming years.

[ewerk 27300]

Full of leftie, hippy do-gooders tbh.

[Meenzer 14245]

Full of leftie, hippy do-gooders tbh.

 

I hear they all think Ashley is the best chairman we've ever had, too.

[Monkeys Fist 39413]

Finally, finally.... How you have the brass neck to talk about others being insensitive while in another post launching Thatchers dead body off off a grimbsy trawler beggers belief.

Can't believe the difference needs pointing out to even you. Potentially wasting money after taking away people's jobs compared to a joke on an internet forum?

He's never heard of Brass Monkeys either.

[Guest alex]

Full of leftie, hippy do-gooders tbh.

 

I hear they all think Ashley is the best chairman we've ever had, too.

And the Taliban deserve a second chance.

[Christmas Tree 4005]

Interesting article.

 

Purely as a Labour supporter one of the most depressing things about the current situation is the Tories succesful domination of the narrative of the cuts

 

The myth needs nailing that Brown, not bankers, caused our economic woes. Then the case against cuts can be made

 

In France, they are already rioting on the streets. An estimated 3.5 million of them, according to one trade union estimate, from Lyon to Paris to Nanterre, either striking, marching or taking direct action in fury at changes to their pensions. Within hours, they had closed down schools, disrupted the travel network and prompted alarm about the nation's fuel supplies.

 

Contrast that with the scene that played out in London at the same time. Here, a demonstration against the cuts to be announced in full by George Osborne tomorrow brought a few thousand activists to wave their banners and chant their chants in Parliament Square. The closest they got to a threat was when Unison's Dave Prentis warned: "If the government doesn't listen to us today, they won't have heard the last of us." Storming the Bastille, it wasn't.

 

Why the difference? You could write a learned thesis on the contrasting political traditions of the two countries, how the French take to the streets at the merest tweak to their welfare arrangements. But there is another explanation that goes beyond British habits of passivity. Right now, even those people who fear and loathe the government's cuts don't blame the government.

 

Today a YouGov poll for the Sun asked voters who is most to blame for the current spending cuts. Only 18% named the coalition, a figure dwarfed by the 48% who pointed the finger at the last Labour government.

 

That outcome is the fruit of a strategy pursued with iron discipline by the Conservatives and Lib Dems. No minister can so much as remark on the weather without pointing out that they "inherited this mess from Labour". David Cameron said so when he unveiled the strategic defence review today, Vince Cable did the same last week, as he explained his volte-face on tuition fees and Osborne will do it too. You may not hear much about the Tory inheritance tax these days, but "inherited" is the coalition's favourite word.

 

So far it's working, the public believing that however painful the government's actions, they are merely the unavoidable consequence of Labour recklessness. For as long as this holds, anger will be directed not at Cameron, Osborne and Clegg but at the opposition. It means the public will close its ears to any alternative message Labour attempts to offer. This is why some in the party's top ranks now admit that "the most important issue" for the party's future is its immediate past. It has to nail the claim that the country's woes are the fault of the last Labour government. Put simply, it has to win the blame game.

 

That effort starts with setting the record straight. The coalition's case is that Labour behaved like the pools winners of yesteryear, showering tenners around like confetti. The 13 years of New Labour rule are recast as a binge whose golden rule was spend, spend, spend. Before that storyline takes hold for good – and it may already be too late – Labour needs to lay out a few facts.

 

The first should come in the form of a question. If Labour's spending was so wildly out of control, why did the Tories promise to match their plans, pound for pound, all the way until November 2008? Why didn't Osborne and Cameron howl in protest at the time?

 

Could it be because things were not actually that bad? A quick look at the figures confirms that, until the crash hit in September 2008, the levels of red ink were manageably low. The budget of 2007 estimated Britain's structural deficit – that chunk of the debt that won't be mopped up by growth – at 3% of gross domestic product. At the time, the revered Institute for Fiscal Studies accepted that two-thirds of that sum comprised borrowing for investment, leaving a black hole of just 1% of GDP. If the structural deficit today has rocketed close to 8%, all that proves is that most of it was racked up dealing with the banking crisis and subsequent slump – with only a fraction the result of supposed Labour profligacy. After all, even the Tories would have had to pay out unemployment benefit.

 

This is why Ed Balls was right to declare in his summer Bloomberg lecture – which remains Labour's most robust effort yet to redirect the finger of blame away from itself – that "it is a question of fact that we entered this financial crisis with low inflation, low interest rates, low unemployment and the lowest net debt of any large G7 country".

 

In other words, the position was relatively sound until the crash struck. The coalition would prefer voters forgot about that event; they mention it only rarely. But in this era of collective short-term memory loss, it is worth reminding people that the financial crisis was not limited to those territories ruled by Gordon Brown: it was global, it was systemic and it was caused by the larcenous greed of bankers.

 

Some will say that Labour, nevertheless, bore some particular responsibility – if not for the crisis itself then for Britain's exposure to it, not least through Brown's indulgence of the City and light-touch regulation of finance. Some can say that – but not the Tories. The only problem they had with Brown's deregulation is that there wasn't more of it. One small reminder: Cameron endorsed John Redwood's 2007 report on competitiveness which declared that there was "no need to continue" to regulate mortgage provision – this just as the contagion of sub-prime mortgages was about to take down the world banking system.

 

Which brings us to the real source of the deficit: the colossal borrowing Labour had to undertake in order to prevent the crash of 2008 engulfing the entire economy. The party has to insist that it wasn't spending for the hell of it or because it was incontinent with the public's cash. It had to pump money into the economy to prevent a recession turning into a depression, to prevent the spiralling unemployment, house repossessions and bankruptcies that had accompanied previous downturns, to stop the banks collapsing. People mocked Brown when he accidentally claimed to have "saved the world" but it's true that his approach was copied the world over – and many did indeed believe his recapitalisation plan rescued the global financial system.

 

It will require great boldness for Labour to make this case. It amounts to rehabilitating the deficit itself, asking voters not to see it as some evil monster that has to be slayed immediately – but rather as the price that had to be paid to prevent unemployment tripling, interest rates galloping and the economy falling off a cliff. Lots of countries, from the US to Japan, have paid it with deficits of their own – or does the coalition think those are all Labour's fault too?

 

Only once this case is made can Labour go on to make its wider critique of the coalition: arguing that the government's response to the deficit is panicked and hysterical, that the surest way to enlarge, not reduce, the deficit is to cut in the midst of a downturn, that growth and jobs have to come first, that serious spending cuts are wise only once the economy is back to health.

 

This is the argument Labour has to win. Rather than the shadow chancellor cracking jokes about picking up a "primer on economics for beginners" – the dumbest self-inflicted wound since Liam Byrne told his successor "there's no money left" – Labour has to dispel the myth that it's all their fault. If they fail, it will take them a generation to recover.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...bour-blame-game

 

I'd like CT to answer the points raised in this because he's guilty of repeating the lies in almost every post he makes.

 

Did start to read it but the budget was just kicking off. I will have a look however....Guardian!!!! Its so predictable its going to be anti tory, whats the point.

 

I genuinely like a bit of balance on debate or stories so find biassed articles pretty dull.

[NJS 4054]

I genuinely like a bit of balance on debate or stories so find biassed articles pretty dull.

 

Surely reading biased articles from both sides leads to the truth somewhere in the middle?

 

That article is a bit soft on Labour but the pointsabout the Tories pledging to match public spending until 2008 and Redwood's call for more deregulation are killers.

[Christmas Tree 4005]

Party alliegances to one side, Ed Miliband was in full social spaz mode at PMQ's today.

 

Labour have made a massive mistake appointing him, he looks and sounds so strange that you dont take in half of what he is saying. If he is indeed the brains of the future he should have recognised his limitations and settled for supporting a commanding leader.

 

As a contrast, Johnson stood up to respond to George and was extremely comfortable and witty. His self admitted weak grasp of economics however meant there was no bite to what he was saying and he ended up looking very clumsy compred to George.

 

Labour defintely need some new blood to come to the front.

[Renton 18552]

Interesting article.

 

Purely as a Labour supporter one of the most depressing things about the current situation is the Tories succesful domination of the narrative of the cuts

 

The myth needs nailing that Brown, not bankers, caused our economic woes. Then the case against cuts can be made

 

In France, they are already rioting on the streets. An estimated 3.5 million of them, according to one trade union estimate, from Lyon to Paris to Nanterre, either striking, marching or taking direct action in fury at changes to their pensions. Within hours, they had closed down schools, disrupted the travel network and prompted alarm about the nation's fuel supplies.

 

Contrast that with the scene that played out in London at the same time. Here, a demonstration against the cuts to be announced in full by George Osborne tomorrow brought a few thousand activists to wave their banners and chant their chants in Parliament Square. The closest they got to a threat was when Unison's Dave Prentis warned: "If the government doesn't listen to us today, they won't have heard the last of us." Storming the Bastille, it wasn't.

 

Why the difference? You could write a learned thesis on the contrasting political traditions of the two countries, how the French take to the streets at the merest tweak to their welfare arrangements. But there is another explanation that goes beyond British habits of passivity. Right now, even those people who fear and loathe the government's cuts don't blame the government.

 

Today a YouGov poll for the Sun asked voters who is most to blame for the current spending cuts. Only 18% named the coalition, a figure dwarfed by the 48% who pointed the finger at the last Labour government.

 

That outcome is the fruit of a strategy pursued with iron discipline by the Conservatives and Lib Dems. No minister can so much as remark on the weather without pointing out that they "inherited this mess from Labour". David Cameron said so when he unveiled the strategic defence review today, Vince Cable did the same last week, as he explained his volte-face on tuition fees and Osborne will do it too. You may not hear much about the Tory inheritance tax these days, but "inherited" is the coalition's favourite word.

 

So far it's working, the public believing that however painful the government's actions, they are merely the unavoidable consequence of Labour recklessness. For as long as this holds, anger will be directed not at Cameron, Osborne and Clegg but at the opposition. It means the public will close its ears to any alternative message Labour attempts to offer. This is why some in the party's top ranks now admit that "the most important issue" for the party's future is its immediate past. It has to nail the claim that the country's woes are the fault of the last Labour government. Put simply, it has to win the blame game.

 

That effort starts with setting the record straight. The coalition's case is that Labour behaved like the pools winners of yesteryear, showering tenners around like confetti. The 13 years of New Labour rule are recast as a binge whose golden rule was spend, spend, spend. Before that storyline takes hold for good – and it may already be too late – Labour needs to lay out a few facts.

 

The first should come in the form of a question. If Labour's spending was so wildly out of control, why did the Tories promise to match their plans, pound for pound, all the way until November 2008? Why didn't Osborne and Cameron howl in protest at the time?

 

Could it be because things were not actually that bad? A quick look at the figures confirms that, until the crash hit in September 2008, the levels of red ink were manageably low. The budget of 2007 estimated Britain's structural deficit – that chunk of the debt that won't be mopped up by growth – at 3% of gross domestic product. At the time, the revered Institute for Fiscal Studies accepted that two-thirds of that sum comprised borrowing for investment, leaving a black hole of just 1% of GDP. If the structural deficit today has rocketed close to 8%, all that proves is that most of it was racked up dealing with the banking crisis and subsequent slump – with only a fraction the result of supposed Labour profligacy. After all, even the Tories would have had to pay out unemployment benefit.

 

This is why Ed Balls was right to declare in his summer Bloomberg lecture – which remains Labour's most robust effort yet to redirect the finger of blame away from itself – that "it is a question of fact that we entered this financial crisis with low inflation, low interest rates, low unemployment and the lowest net debt of any large G7 country".

 

In other words, the position was relatively sound until the crash struck. The coalition would prefer voters forgot about that event; they mention it only rarely. But in this era of collective short-term memory loss, it is worth reminding people that the financial crisis was not limited to those territories ruled by Gordon Brown: it was global, it was systemic and it was caused by the larcenous greed of bankers.

 

Some will say that Labour, nevertheless, bore some particular responsibility – if not for the crisis itself then for Britain's exposure to it, not least through Brown's indulgence of the City and light-touch regulation of finance. Some can say that – but not the Tories. The only problem they had with Brown's deregulation is that there wasn't more of it. One small reminder: Cameron endorsed John Redwood's 2007 report on competitiveness which declared that there was "no need to continue" to regulate mortgage provision – this just as the contagion of sub-prime mortgages was about to take down the world banking system.

 

Which brings us to the real source of the deficit: the colossal borrowing Labour had to undertake in order to prevent the crash of 2008 engulfing the entire economy. The party has to insist that it wasn't spending for the hell of it or because it was incontinent with the public's cash. It had to pump money into the economy to prevent a recession turning into a depression, to prevent the spiralling unemployment, house repossessions and bankruptcies that had accompanied previous downturns, to stop the banks collapsing. People mocked Brown when he accidentally claimed to have "saved the world" but it's true that his approach was copied the world over – and many did indeed believe his recapitalisation plan rescued the global financial system.

 

It will require great boldness for Labour to make this case. It amounts to rehabilitating the deficit itself, asking voters not to see it as some evil monster that has to be slayed immediately – but rather as the price that had to be paid to prevent unemployment tripling, interest rates galloping and the economy falling off a cliff. Lots of countries, from the US to Japan, have paid it with deficits of their own – or does the coalition think those are all Labour's fault too?

 

Only once this case is made can Labour go on to make its wider critique of the coalition: arguing that the government's response to the deficit is panicked and hysterical, that the surest way to enlarge, not reduce, the deficit is to cut in the midst of a downturn, that growth and jobs have to come first, that serious spending cuts are wise only once the economy is back to health.

 

This is the argument Labour has to win. Rather than the shadow chancellor cracking jokes about picking up a "primer on economics for beginners" – the dumbest self-inflicted wound since Liam Byrne told his successor "there's no money left" – Labour has to dispel the myth that it's all their fault. If they fail, it will take them a generation to recover.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...bour-blame-game

 

I'd like CT to answer the points raised in this because he's guilty of repeating the lies in almost every post he makes.

 

Did start to read it but the budget was just kicking off. I will have a look however....Guardian!!!! Its so predictable its going to be anti tory, whats the point.

 

I genuinely like a bit of balance on debate or stories so find biassed articles pretty dull.

 

Well, it states a series of facts, which you can either dispute, with evidence, or accept. Put up or shut up in other words. These are the same facts that have been stated over and over again in this thread which you've decided to ignore so far so I'm not holding my breath.

 

Plenty of other papers have been cited in this thread too, much of them with a far greater potential to be biased (Murdoch owned or the Mail/Express). The Guardian didn't even support Labour last election iirc. Like I say though, that's irrelevant because I'm not interested with you adressing the opinion, just the facts.

[Guest alex]

I do think there's a big lie at work here though. Without getting into party politics because Labour are just as bad / would be the same if the roles are reversed. The lie is that the previous government are solely to blame for the current massive levels of debt when it's basically the fault of the banks. The said banks have been bailed out and the Tories would've done the same thing. The banks'll recover on the whole and many already seem to have done so, turning in profits and so on but it's public sector workers and, by extension, private sector workers, who are having to and will have to pay for this bail out with their jobs, wage freezes and so on.

[Renton 18552]

I do think there's a big lie at work here though. Without getting into party politics because Labour are just as bad / would be the same if the roles are reversed. The lie is that the previous government are solely to blame for the current massive levels of debt when it's basically the fault of the banks. The said banks have been bailed out and the Tories would've done the same thing. The banks'll recover on the whole and many already seem to have done so, turning in profits and so on but it's public sector workers and, by extension, private sector workers, who are having to and will have to pay for this bail out with their jobs, wage freezes and so on.

 

Debateable, they objected to it at the time, a move that is seen as universally disastrous with hindsight. In fact I do think Brown deserves a lot of praise for his handling of the crisis, so the prefix 'the terrible legacy Labour left us' is more than a bit galling since the tories at best would have done just as bad as Labour, but at worst would have caused the entire economy to collapse.

[Guest alex]

I do think there's a big lie at work here though. Without getting into party politics because Labour are just as bad / would be the same if the roles are reversed. The lie is that the previous government are solely to blame for the current massive levels of debt when it's basically the fault of the banks. The said banks have been bailed out and the Tories would've done the same thing. The banks'll recover on the whole and many already seem to have done so, turning in profits and so on but it's public sector workers and, by extension, private sector workers, who are having to and will have to pay for this bail out with their jobs, wage freezes and so on.

 

Debateable, they objected to it at the time, a move that is seen as universally disastrous with hindsight. In fact I do think Brown deserves a lot of praise for his handling of the crisis, so the prefix 'the terrible legacy Labour left us' is more than a bit galling since the tories at best would have done just as bad as Labour, but at worst would have caused the entire economy to collapse.

I take your point like but opposition is different to being in power. I reckon they'd have bailed the banks out were they in power though. Especially as the US did so.

[Christmas Tree 4005]

I do think there's a big lie at work here though. Without getting into party politics because Labour are just as bad / would be the same if the roles are reversed. The lie is that the previous government are solely to blame for the current massive levels of debt when it's basically the fault of the banks. The said banks have been bailed out and the Tories would've done the same thing. The banks'll recover on the whole and many already seem to have done so, turning in profits and so on but it's public sector workers and, by extension, private sector workers, who are having to and will have to pay for this bail out with their jobs, wage freezes and so on.

 

 

Surely thats just politics though, nothing new. Blame everything on the last lot and hope it sticks.

 

The truth of the matter for me lies in three parts.

 

1. A disasterous banking crisis (without getting into semantics over regulation etc)

 

2. An idealogical decision to vastly increase the public sector.

 

3. An inability over 13 years to tackle some of the massive reforms of the day. Public sector pensions, welfare etc.

 

Labour inherited a fantastic economic boom time and while doing some very good things (as you can when times are good), also dodged a lot of the big decisions that this lot are now taking, supported it must be said by all sides.

 

Some of those were Labours fault, some wern't but hey thats politics.

 

Did anyone of the Labour benches get up and compliment the coalition on some of the great things that were announced today?

 

Is Jeremy Paxton going to focus on any of the good stuff tonight?

 

Overall, given the job that had to be done, I think today was a spectacular achievement that has put this country on the right path. (And before the usual suspects jump in that does not mean that I am happy about any cuts or job losses).

[Guest alex]

I do think there's a big lie at work here though. Without getting into party politics because Labour are just as bad / would be the same if the roles are reversed. The lie is that the previous government are solely to blame for the current massive levels of debt when it's basically the fault of the banks. The said banks have been bailed out and the Tories would've done the same thing. The banks'll recover on the whole and many already seem to have done so, turning in profits and so on but it's public sector workers and, by extension, private sector workers, who are having to and will have to pay for this bail out with their jobs, wage freezes and so on.

 

 

Surely thats just politics though, nothing new. Blame everything on the last lot and hope it sticks.

 

The truth of the matter for me lies in three parts.

 

1. A disasterous banking crisis (without getting into semantics over regulation etc)

 

2. An idealogical decision to vastly increase the public sector.

 

3. An inability over 13 years to tackle some of the massive reforms of the day. Public sector pensions, welfare etc.

 

Labour inherited a fantastic economic boom time and while doing some very good things (as you can when times are good), also dodged a lot of the big decisions that this lot are now taking, supported it must be said by all sides.

 

Some of those were Labours fault, some wern't but hey thats politics.

 

Did anyone of the Labour benches get up and compliment the coalition on some of the great things that were announced today?

 

Is Jeremy Paxton going to focus on any of the good stuff tonight?

 

Overall, given the job that had to be done, I think today was a spectacular achievement that has put this country on the right path. (And before the usual suspects jump in that does not mean that I am happy about any cuts or job losses).

2.'s a lie isn't it? 1. - I'll give you that but we don't agree on who's most to blame. The rest's opinion which we'll never agree on.

Could you prove 2 is correct though? With figures.

Edited October 20, 2010 by alex