Matt
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Posts posted by Matt
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If they want to get into power ( and unlike Blair and co in 97 I don't think this lot has what it takes), they need to start talking up some decent real policies that are more than fiddling with numbers.
No they don't. If Labour could usurp Milliband with someone with a shread of imagination and personality, then it's theirs to lose. Which is depressing cosidering their policies are made by a random word generator and that they are still riddled with failures and fiddlers from the last government. Keith Vaz is still out there offering his critique- shouldn't he be focusing on securing passports for Indian businessmen? What's Mandy up to these days?
The Tories are being shown up on a lot of issues, Cameron is left of the party's power base and is clearly under pressure with the rightwards lurch during the reshuffle. Mitchell's rant has written at least one Labour election poster for them and it turns out that the crowding-out principle only works when there is actually some private sector activity to take the place of reduced public sector activity. Who could have seen that coming?
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The BBC's most essential use is broadcasting the 'UK view' across the world in various languages and not the latest showing of series 45 of My Family.
I question its role in providing prime-time entertainment and the licence fee itself is archaic (just fund it from general taxation) but the importance of it as a news outlet cannot be underestimated. Try watching Sky News for more than 10 minutes and you'll see for yourself.
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Angry Miliband will force banks to break into pieces (consultancy fees galore to any former Labour SpAds) so that we will never suffer from the hands of collapsing investment banks like Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley and the...er.. Dunfermline Building Society.
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RIP, what a voice.
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I think you dont grasp that when the tap gets turned off, the money stops creating jobs and the taxes dry up.
So only governments can create jobs? Is CT actually a Communist?
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Do you understand the difference between absolute advantage and relative advantage?
Why do we need thousands of jobs in an area in which we are at an absolute disadvantage to other countries?
You appear to have completely given up the UK as a lost cause. So, do you plan to move your family to a country where there is hope as opposed to your expectation that decline and misery are inevitable?
Can you also let me know how much depth you would like me to post on a forum.
The tap has to be turned off. You simply cant keep borrowing to spend as an ongoing way of life.Revenues - Expenditure = Surplus (deficit)
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Well answer the question then oh imaginative one
If any government borrows money and chucks it at the economy stimulating growth, what happens when they turn the tap off. 'Chuck' suggests a careless and frivolous bout of spending, which is not what I said. And the idea is you don't need to turn the tap off. It should be blindingly obvious by now that we will not erase the deficit position by cutting, it is simply too great and the social costs associated would be politically impossible. Instead we need to target our weaknesses as an economy to give us a hope of growth in the future (sadly for the politicos, this is beyond the next election and maybe even the one after that). It might not even work- we may not grow, we cannot control the Eurozone for exmple- but we must do all we can within our control to create a skilled workforce in a business-friendly environment.
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Im not sure where the jobs will come from if we suddenly train lots of people to do hi tech / engineering stuff. You are not going to persuade many fat cats to have their TV's PC's made here when he can make billions by having Africans make them for £2 a day.
Re your second point, again I dont think thats a big issue. Big companies like Nissan and Rolls Royce get around that now by making sure a good percentage of their workforce is made up of short term contractors that can be recruited / paid off at very short notice as contracts are won and lost.
Assembly line work is not high-end engineering. Designing and building the robots and machines that make up the lines is. Germany is the absolute master of it- high quality, precision equipment.
And on the second point, it is. I have worked at a small company that would only hire as an absolute last resort because of the issues involved with getting rid of people. It mainly impacts smaller companies (you know the ones being targeted as the drivers for growth?). If companies were able to hire more liberally, they wouldn't need to use contractors so much and can instead build a business on permanent employees rather than an army of mercenaries (apologies to contractors, but just my experience to date).
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If Cameron through money at the economy surely it is a short term boom that you either have to keep fuelling (finance bubble) or it eventually ends. Whats on the other side of the wall?
When the government stops spending, where will the real jobs be?
You don't 'throw' money (or through it, for that matter). Do you think government expenditure only has short-term impacts, or that targeted government spending can improve conditions for private investment?
You are a very unimaginative individual.
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Let's face it, there's no money left and no room for any party of any colour to do anything meaningful.
This is why we have the fat pleb, whose name I Forget, (shadow chancellor), talking about a wealth tax on homes over 2 million.
Politics for the sheep.
No money left where? This is a national economy, not a cookie jar. Government finances are circular, and austerity in a recession is acting as the death spiral.
And your idea that we are beyond hope because your Bullingdon wunderkinder haven't cracked it in two years is lacking in any imagination. I agree with you on Balls- he's blissfully unaware of his role in the last government and yesterday came out with this belter: "another bank bonus tax to fund 25,000 new low-cost homes". You have to love the way opposition politicians can pluck unconnected items out of the air in the full knowledge they make no actual sense and will never actually come to fruition.
Here's two very simple suggestions that I think would vastly improve our economy:
- Massive government investment in training and skills, especially high-end tech/engineering roles - ie not charging the earth for an education (lefty idea)
- Relaxation of employment law so that companies can hire people without fear of endless litigation just because someone is surplus to requirements (righty idea)
The only thing that will rebalance our economy is improving our skill base for the future and allowing the labour market to be flexible enough to take these people on. We will not grow the economy by cutting, traditional right-wing 'crowding out' theory does not apply when we are rapidly losing competitive advantages on a global stage.
This situation is not beyond salvage- but it will require a government who realises that left or right thinking is not going to solve this alone.
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This Govt is rapidly losing credibility. I just hope they somehow last long enough for Miliband and Balls to fall under a bus. Then it would also be nice if the new faces of the Labour party weren't ones Brown's cabinet.
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A lot of companies would actually charge you more if you didn't take the interest free credit option as the finance contract would usually be longer than the interest free period and would be with a third party, who would in turn pay the seller the cash upfront plus a commission for sending business their way. The lenders then packaged them up and sold them wholesale. Something tells me that will not be going on as much these days.
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You'd also have to be vigilant against people going abroad but that would fit in with my other plans to abolish private education and healthcare and strip anybody who goes abroad for anything like this of their citizenship and right of residency.
(Yes I know I sound like a fascist)
Just a little.
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It's easy to fly off into sci-fi scenarios, but it's a fair point to underline that the concept of the welfare state is still relatively new, yet a few generations down the line people see it as 'twas ever thus'.
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Because nature intended it that way, so why should it be decided who can and can't have children.
Because this isn't nature. If animals neglected their young, then they would either starve or fall prey.
You are also the only person on this thread who seems to think it's about sterilisation.
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Which one's do we sterilise?
I propose a test based on correct use of apostrophes.
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We spend a huge amount of money on controlling the impact of bad parenting, yet do so little around stopping it before it does its damage.
How many times do you see a kid being dragged around by some tramp and think 'they've got no chance'. The parents are probably a write-off, but we can at least make a bit more effort to break the cycle.
As it is, everyone has the right to have as many kids as they like and the whole of society has to pick up the bill. It's inherently wrong.
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Originally there was JJ and Ritchie aswell. Midds wasn't part of it and Isegrim lives in Germany!
Rikko as well.
Never seen what's that odd about going for a drink with folk you know from the net. You should already have a reasonably good steer of what someone is going to be like.
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They also seem to have an issue differentiating between Curtis Stigers and Billy Ray Cyrus.
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Another thing CT, when the problems of the post-banking crisis ...
You know what, I think we're finally making the move from banking crisis to what it really was/is- a monetary crisis with governments spending less time worrying about banks and more worrying about growth.
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But it still wasn't downgraded.
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I'm off to the Olympic Park on Saturday for Handball, only got one lot of tickets in the ballot. Only other venue I'd really want to attend would be in the Stadium itself but that swiftly sold out. Opening ceremony should be good, will watch the fireworks out the upstairs windows!
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Germany was downgraded by one ratings agency last week. We certainly won't fair any better.
The Germans are in a catch 22: Pay up or let the euro and the cheap exports that come with that go.
Germany wasn't downgraded. It was put on negative outlook.
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From the FT:
"The data are shocking and no amount of excuses about rainfall or the Queen’s Jubilee can explain away such weak growth,” said Alan Wilde of Baring Asset Management.
“Osborne’s personal ratings for economic competency are plummeting and the credit rating agencies will be deeply concerned by today’s report . . . this may well hasten a downgrade.”
Sounds like Gideon has lost the confidence of the very people his austerity measures were supposed to reassure.
Politics
in General Chat
Posted
Tony Blair was elected in 97 on the basis Paul Daniels would leave the country as part of the deal.