The Super-Reluctant Builder/Bidder and Us

The Co-Op has voted to continue supporting the Labour party financially, perhaps we should have a Co=Op government.

You can't have it both ways.

The membership of the Teachers union is around 326,000. Simple arithmetic says that 70,000 members wanted to strike. In other words 256,000 did not.

The Tory government is a similar position. It's the tail wagging the dog.

But them's the rules!

Which takes me back to the Churchill quote.

It isn't me that wants it both ways. It's the government.

I'm just pointing out how illogical it is.

Just like most of their half-arsed ill-considered policies.

Rollo Tomasi wrote:

It was a conservative government that introduced the ECHR. Like all laws it needs restructuring. I don't see the problem.

One possible problem is that they aren't actually restructuring the ECHR - they don't have the power to do so - they're abolishing the Human Rights Act.

Quote :

You mention incompetence. That is, at least in my lifetime, the sole possession of Labour's socialist dream. From Wilson's forced devaluation of the pound, Callaghan's winter of discontent and Brown's prudence and the abolition of boom and bust. Truly disastrous for the country. And let's not forget Foot and Kinnock. Both millionaires of course.

You obviously haven't been alive very long otherwise you'd recall that the Tory administrations under Thatcher and Major demonstrated the most staggering incompetence ever seen, with Thatcher and Major presiding over no less than two record-breaking and lengthy recessions with far-reaching consequences - not least a sharp devaluation in the pound by Lamont after Black Wednesday. (I guess Wilson was not the only culprit).

In fact every single Conservative government since Eden in 1956 has overseen a full-blown recession (although the Eden and MacMillan recessions were admittedly short-lived). In other words since the war only the election of the Tory government under Churchill has not led to a recession. By contrast Gordon Brown is the only Labour Prime Minister who has overseen a recession in that time.

There have obviously been economic crises under other Labour governments , but when you look at the facts the situation has usually been objectively worse under the Conservatives. In reality the problems of the Callaghan government were largely an aftershock of the Heath-Barber recession that went before and the Wilson devaluation of the sixties was largely the consequence of the sort of balance of payments crisis that is not taken as seriously  today (in fact IIRC the situation is worse under the present government).

The Thatcher-Major years saw, among other problems, unemployment spiraling to above three million (the highest level since the Great Depression); the record year in history for home repossessions; a 17% base rate under Thatcher and a 12% base rate under Major; a massive rise in inequality; a massive rise in the number of households in poverty; the only two years since the war that average life expectancy actually fell; and a high of 27% inflation (contrary to popular belief it was only 10% when Callaghan left power).

The irresponsible and dangerous credit and housing booms that have contributed to the instability of our economy and the housing crisis (the latter also fueled by Thatcher's dismantling of social housing and the deregulation of the private sector under the 1988 Housing Act that saw rents explode in parts of the country) can be traced back to the relaxation of credit and mortgage controls under Heath and Thatcher. Add to that charge-sheet the "Big Bang" deregulation of the City which is the real genesis of the dangerously unregulated casino economy that has so nearly contributed to sinking us and in all likelihood will do so again soon.

Among many other disasters, the upshot of all this was the squandering of the peak years of North Sea oil revenues; a sharp rise in homelessness (anyone who remembers the seventies will know that the sight of significant numbers of wretched and destitute human beings littering the streets of our major cities in particular was unknown before Thatcher) as well as the destruction of social cohesion and the creation of an economic underclass - not to mention numerous riots. In fact I think I'm right in saying that there have been riots during every Conservative government since Thatcher and none under Labor.

Moreover the first Thatcher recession was mostly her own work - her recession was largely created  by the vandalism of a program of cuts inspired by the cultish Monetarism philosophy of Thatcher's guru, Milton Friedman, who was later shown to have fiddled his figures (just like Arnold Laffer, the recent right-wing darling advocate of  tax and public spending cuts whose fake Laffer curve is used to argue that cutting taxes on the rich brings in more tax revenue). By contrast the recessions that hit the governments of Heath, Major and Brown were all caused to some degree by external factors - i.e OPEC turning off the oil in protest at the West's support for Israel in the Six-Day War; the crisis among the US version of Building Societies (the Savings & Loan Crisis) which was  (hey presto)  partly caused  by the right-wing mantra of deregulation; and the global banking crisis of 2008.

The idea that the periods of Tory Rule since the war have somehow been the halcyon days of economic yore is a myth largely fixed in people's minds by the relentless propaganda from wealthy and influential voices in the right-wing media and elsewhere - its the same brand of tendentious mendacity that you see today in the commonly-believed falsehoods about the supposed fiscal emergency and the demonstrable myth of irresponsible overspending under Brown. Of course these establishment commentators all have a vested interest in a low regulation, low-tax, low public spending economy - for them unemployment, chronic insecurity, the financial stress suffered by millions and threadbare public services are other people's problems.

By the time Thatcher left office inflation had only fallen to the level she inherited from the previous Labour government - as I mentioned earlier, inflation rose under Thatcher to a staggering 27% from the 10% she inherited, before falling back to the latter figure at the end of her reign.  Admittedly inflation was high in the first years of the Wilson/Callaghan Government, but the Tory press somehow always forget to mention that this was a hangover from the eye-watering 24% inflation Labour inherited from the previous Heath Government and the failure of its tax cutting "Barber Boom". In fact it was was that Labour Government which got the figure down to as low as 8%.

As far as the lie about Thatcher rescuing the economy goes, well average growth in GDP in the Thatcherite eighties was no greater than that of the seventies and neither was it any greater than the world average - so much for Tory economic competence. It's undeniable that we have a brave new world of shiny whizz-bang consumer goods that have given many of us a lifestyle we never knew in the seventies, but much of that is due to the quantum leap in technology of the Silicon revolution which would have occurred even if Pinky and Perky were in power in the eighties and nineties.

Quote :

Labour always was the politics of envy. Glad to see you're keeping the tradition going.

I stand corrected. You must be old enough to remember Thatcher to come out with that hoary old shibboleth from the Thatcher years.

It always makes me laugh when the same Rabid Right who constantly vilify the workless as "scroungers" living large off the fat of the struggling workers and who attack the Housing Benefit bill while spouting downright lies about the situation, describe justified complaints about an elite amassing more wealth than they could ever need in a thousand lifetimes while large numbers of people  live with financial stress, fear and hopelessness as "envy".  If you ask me its the Rabid Right who are demonstrating envy - and a particularly perverted kind of envy at that.

And by the way, the idea that the modern Labour Party are in any way even remotely "socialist" is completely deluded.





;

In view of what I said in the OP and elsewhere about austerity being a totally discredited policy among serious economists, I must apologise for forgetting to mention the 300-odd economists who signed a letter to the Times lambasting Thatcher's own policy of austerity and the damage it was doing.

Some people never learn.

jabba the gut ecfc wrote:

Rollo Tomasi wrote:

It was a conservative government that introduced the ECHR. Like all laws it needs restructuring. I don't see the problem.

One possible problem is that they aren't actually restructuring the ECHR - they don't have the power to do so - they're abolishing the Human Rights Act.

Quote :

You mention incompetence. That is, at least in my lifetime, the sole possession of Labour's socialist dream. From Wilson's forced devaluation of the pound, Callaghan's winter of discontent and Brown's prudence and the abolition of boom and bust. Truly disastrous for the country. And let's not forget Foot and Kinnock. Both millionaires of course.

You obviously haven't been alive very long otherwise you'd recall that the Tory administrations under Thatcher and Major demonstrated the most staggering incompetence ever seen, with Thatcher and Major presiding over no less than two record-breaking and lengthy recessions with far-reaching consequences - not least a sharp devaluation in the pound by Lamont after Black Wednesday. (I guess Wilson was not the only culprit).

In fact every single Conservative government since Eden in 1956 has overseen a full-blown recession (although the Eden and MacMillan recessions were admittedly short-lived). In other words since the war only the election of the Tory government under Churchill has not led to a recession. By contrast Gordon Brown is the only Labour Prime Minister who has overseen a recession in that time.

There have obviously been economic crises under other Labour governments , but when you look at the facts the situation has usually been objectively worse under the Conservatives. In reality the problems of the Callaghan government were largely an aftershock of the Heath-Barber recession that went before and the Wilson devaluation of the sixties was largely the consequence of the sort of balance of payments crisis that is not taken as seriously  today (in fact IIRC the situation is worse under the present government).

The Thatcher-Major years saw, among other problems, unemployment spiraling to above three million (the highest level since the Great Depression); the record year in history for home repossessions; a 17% base rate under Thatcher and a 12% base rate under Major; a massive rise in inequality; a massive rise in the number of households in poverty; the only two years since the war that average life expectancy actually fell; and a high of 27% inflation (contrary to popular belief it was only 10% when Callaghan left power).

The irresponsible and dangerous credit and housing booms that have contributed to the instability of our economy and the housing crisis (the latter also fueled by Thatcher's dismantling of social housing and the deregulation of the private sector under the 1988 Housing Act that saw rents explode in parts of the country) can be traced back to the relaxation of credit and mortgage controls under Heath and Thatcher. Add to that charge-sheet the "Big Bang" deregulation of the City which is the real genesis of the dangerously unregulated casino economy that has so nearly contributed to sinking us and in all likelihood will do so again soon.

Among many other disasters, the upshot of all this was the squandering of the peak years of North Sea oil revenues; a sharp rise in homelessness (anyone who remembers the seventies will know that the sight of significant numbers of wretched and destitute human beings littering the streets of our major cities in particular was unknown before Thatcher) as well as the destruction of social cohesion and the creation of an economic underclass - not to mention numerous riots. In fact I think I'm right in saying that there have been riots during every Conservative government since Thatcher and none under Labor.

Moreover the first Thatcher recession was mostly her own work - her recession was largely created  by the vandalism of a program of cuts inspired by the cultish Monetarism philosophy of Thatcher's guru, Milton Friedman, who was later shown to have fiddled his figures (just like Arnold Laffer, the recent right-wing darling advocate of  tax and public spending cuts whose fake Laffer curve is used to argue that cutting taxes on the rich brings in more tax revenue). By contrast the recessions that hit the governments of Heath, Major and Brown were all caused to some degree by external factors - i.e OPEC turning off the oil in protest at the West's support for Israel in the Six-Day War; the crisis among the US version of Building Societies (the Savings & Loan Crisis) which was  (hey presto)  partly caused  by the right-wing mantra of deregulation; and the global banking crisis of 2008.

The idea that the periods of Tory Rule since the war have somehow been the halcyon days of economic yore is a myth largely fixed in people's minds by the relentless propaganda from wealthy and influential voices in the right-wing media and elsewhere - its the same brand of tendentious mendacity that you see today in the commonly-believed falsehoods about the supposed fiscal emergency and the demonstrable myth of irresponsible overspending under Brown. Of course these establishment commentators all have a vested interest in a low regulation, low-tax, low public spending economy - for them unemployment, chronic insecurity, the financial stress suffered by millions and threadbare public services are other people's problems.

By the time Thatcher left office inflation had only fallen to the level she inherited from the previous Labour government - as I mentioned earlier, inflation rose under Thatcher to a staggering 27% from the 10% she inherited, before falling back to the latter figure at the end of her reign.  Admittedly inflation was high in the first years of the Wilson/Callaghan Government, but the Tory press somehow always forget to mention that this was a hangover from the eye-watering 24% inflation Labour inherited from the previous Heath Government and the failure of its tax cutting "Barber Boom". In fact it was was that Labour Government which got the figure down to as low as 8%.

As far as the lie about Thatcher rescuing the economy goes, well average growth in GDP in the Thatcherite eighties was no greater than that of the seventies and neither was it any greater than the world average - so much for Tory economic competence. It's undeniable that we have a brave new world of shiny whizz-bang consumer goods that have given many of us a lifestyle we never knew in the seventies, but much of that is due to the quantum leap in technology of the Silicon revolution which would have occurred even if Pinky and Perky were in power in the eighties and nineties.

Quote :

Labour always was the politics of envy. Glad to see you're keeping the tradition going.

I stand corrected. You must be old enough to remember Thatcher to come out with that hoary old shibboleth from the Thatcher years.

It always makes me laugh when the same Rabid Right who constantly vilify the workless as "scroungers" living large off the fat of the struggling workers and who attack the Housing Benefit bill while spouting downright lies about the situation, describe justified complaints about an elite amassing more wealth than they could ever need in a thousand lifetimes while large numbers of people  live with financial stress, fear and hopelessness as "envy".  If you ask me its the Rabid Right who are demonstrating envy - and a particularly perverted kind of envy at that.

And by the way, the idea that the modern Labour Party are in any way even remotely "socialist" is completely deluded.





;

That just about covers it. Well played, Jabbs.

Really well written piece Jabba, and food for thought. I could pick holes in it but your entrenched views would make it pointless.

The overriding fact is that political parties have to win an election. They won't, by and large, do so with far right or far left manifestos. After 15,000 years of civilisation, we are where we are. Most countries adopt the 'British Way', because it's the best way forward.

You can write, and boy can you write, all you want. Your solution is not palatable with the people. It's been tested out in various countries and more often than not, failed.

You'll disagree no doubt. I wouldn't expect any different.

You've given up defending the indefensible about Javid's lunatic illogicality then?

I can't say I blame you because you're in a very dodgy place and I'm on rock solid ground regarding this one.

If I were you I'd let it go too.

I was being polite even though most of it's bollocks.

I learnt long ago, never disagree with lefties. They'll be patronising, condescending and righteous
in their attempt to take the moral high ground.

One last thing. Why have you named yourself after a slave trader? Are you a proud Plymothian too, or a secret admirer.

No changing the subject now.

Naughty naugty.

Oh here he comes again.
Pissed as usual?

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

No changing the subject now.

Naughty naugty.

And on that note, I rest my case.

Rollo Tomasi wrote:

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

No changing the subject now.

Naughty naugty.

And on that note, I rest my case.

You don't have a case. And never did therefore you can't rest it.

I'm right and you are wrong. It's as simple as that.

As you well know.

Instead of playing the sad victim, victim of what - getting your facts wrong and being illogical? - and running away why not just admit it?

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Rollo Tomasi wrote:

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

No changing the subject now.

Naughty naugty.

And on that note, I rest my case.

You don't have a case. And never did therefore you can't rest it.

I'm right and you are wrong. It's as simple as that.

As you well know.

Instead of playing the sad victim, victim of what - getting your facts wrong and being illogical? - and running away why not just admit it?

Oh Boris, please lay off the poor Tory. They are a minority group now and likely to become even more so.

I liken them to the Reed Bunting, "The familiar, if somewhat monotonous, song of the cock is a repetitive zrip".

Oh dear

The Tories always go on about how wanting a fairer society is the 'politics of envy'. Unless you happen to have a bit of cash, then you're a hypocrite.

I haven't posted for a while (Illness) but just reading this thread and a couple of others I am reminded that in the main that ATD are a quite a sophisticated bunch of posters. I compare the posters on this site with those on the farm and while Nool may boast of new members they certainly do not the edge when it comes too the quality of posts.
I guess that if they take their lead from the man at the top it's a no contest really.

gasser9 wrote:

I haven't posted for a while (Illness) but just reading this thread and a couple of others I am reminded  that in the main that ATD are a quite a sophisticated bunch of posters. I compare the posters on this site with those on the farm and while Nool may boast of new members they certainly do not the edge when it comes too the quality of posts.
I guess that if they take their lead from the man at the top it's a no contest really.

Fakin ay

As I see it you can sprout forth all you like about Left or Right or Tory or Labour or wealth or poverty but the country voted .... oh boy did they vote!!

As for comments about ''benefits scroungers'' - well some people just cannot work and need to be supported. However, many don't even know what an application form looks like and never plan to change that. At some point in the not too distant past Cornwall had about 4200 unemployed against about 2500 vacancies. Food for thought? Maybe the rules should be more strictly enforced and if someone is capable of doing a job but chooses to turn it down then sanctions are used.
Oh well .... back to work.

"The country" did not cast its votes in such a way that there is an over-whelming mandate for the government. The Tories actually polled fewer than 1 in 4 of the electorate. The election is considered to be a disaster for the Labour Party and yet it still got 700,000 more votes than last time.

If as few as 901 people had voted differently in 7, I think, constituencies there would not have been a Tory Majority.

Labour received more votes than the Conservatives in Wales and Scotland and in every age group bar the over-65s in England.

All of the above is factually verifiable and not mere opinion.

What we need is an electoral system that actually represents the votes people make because the one we have stinks. It shouldn't be the job of the democratic process to produce a "strong government" it should be its job to allow the views of the people to be accurately represented. Ours does not. It is not fit for purpose.

Is this thread even argyle related anymore?

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

"The country" did not cast its votes in such a way that there is an over-whelming mandate for the government. The Tories actually polled fewer than 1 in 4 of the electorate. The election is considered to be a disaster for the Labour Party and yet it still got 700,000 more votes than last time.

If as few as 901 people had voted differently in 7, I think, constituencies there would not have been a Tory Majority.

Labour received more votes than the Conservatives in Wales and Scotland and in every age group bar the over-65s in England.

All of the above is factually verifiable and not mere opinion.

What we need is an electoral system that actually represents the votes people make because the one we have stinks. It shouldn't be the job of the democratic process to produce a "strong government" it should be its job to allow the views of the people to be accurately represented. Ours does not. It is not fit for purpose.

Let it lie Frank, them grapes are getting sourer by the day

Mr. President Angry wrote:

Is this thread even argyle related anymore?

I think the current Argyle board should run the country with help from Freathy as Sports Minister, Angry as Secretary (don't mind which one) and Jabba as Communications Minister.
Phew - back on track now as an Argyle thread.

Gutless can be minister of arts