Pmsl. You're understanding of my posts appears to be somewhat limited. I could be rude about you too but that's not my style. You know nothing about me or my experiences. So I shall forgive your misdemeanour.
I find it constantly amusing that Gordon Brown for all his faults, and there are many, is blamed for the global recession. The actions of the bankers worldwide is overlooked purely to score petty party political points. Not to mention the actions of the borrowers, us, who would borrow far too much to buy properties we should not have. Then wonder why we have such debts. I have a modest mortgage of 3x salary. I was offered 10x by the bankers but instead of saying yes i said no. Live within your means.
Those are the exceptions to the rule. Some may argue about Mrs Thatcher but I bet no-one will argue the Piers Morgan one. There are always exceptions.
Agreed. I pulled out of a house purchase once when I realised what the B. Soc payments actually meant. Seems it will be a while before the country as a whole gets to that point and the rest of the world can stop lending us money to buy their goods and food. Whoops, maybe we have to stop buying Ducatis and BMW cars etc etc etc. Not sure I like where this is going. I just hope it doesn't hurt too much and for too long before we get to the position of self reliance. I pity the pensioners trying to supplement their state pensions with the interest on their life savings at rock bottom so that Osborne can keep mortgages and lending interest as low as possible to help working folk and businesses. Can Labour do a better job though? I think not. A Labour/UKIP coalition? I think there would be a new election within the year if this happens.....sorry getting off topic.....The Daily Mail article on the Labour Leader's father's politics.....maybe this is something we need to know about and Labour is quick to sneer at Cameron's and Osborne's background as if that's acceptable.
Can't libel them either...........Slander - Oral; Libel - Written ...........collectively 'Defamation'.
Yes, that was amusing. I think they said that it would be in 2017 or 2018 - so that's 4 or 5 years away that the budget would be in surplus. Of course, to be in surplus you only need, say, to have £1m more in taxes than you have spent. It won't exactly be like we'll suddenly have £120bn to offset what the budget deficit was the year before. The slight joke is that I used to have to do long term plans over 5 years. We never had a clue what the world was going to be like in 5 years time and strongly suspected we wouldn't be in the same jobs, so we'd put in any old extrapolated figures that senior management wanted to hear and which stood up vaguely. Osbourne is doing exactly the same thing. He is telling the Conference and the electorate what they want to hear with no credible plan, or even commitment to achieve it. He's not risking much, because if in 5 years time the budget doesn't balance, the worst that is likely to happen to him - assuming he is still in the job - is a pointed question from Paxman.
Wonder what Jimmy Savilles family feel about accusing those dead and buried. Amuses me how some are 'pinky lefties want shooting' when it's immigration, and 'arrogant right wing fascists' the next thread...make your minds up ;-)
Given the amount of supposedly bright people on here - bright enough for many to have made enough cash to buy expensive motorcycles (mainly luxury items) and change them regularly, I find it surprising that people have so much difficulty understanding things like this simple graph. Even adjusted for inflation, if you have a global economy meltdown where businesses (especially small ones) suddenly see a slump in sales and thus a slump in tax contributions on the one hand, and a lot of people forced out of work who suddenly have to fall back on state help, then it is clear that you're going to have a lot of difficulty balancing a budget. Added to which the strange example of the UK where banking contributes disproportionately to the UK economy. And we all know what happened to banks a few years ago. The margin for a business to turn from profit to loss is small in many instances. It's not that different running an entire country. But no. Collective amnesia kicks in and suddenly it's easy to blame one single individual. Brown should have done more to reign in the banks. But you have to wonder where the zeal was from the Tories at the time to change the paradigm. Would they have done it? I doubt this very very much, seeing as they started the whole bank liberalisation theme in the UK.
To be honest none of the parties at the moment give me any confidence. Not even labour. Actually especially labour and I vote for em.
Glidd, the reason I posted that hurridly grabbed image off t'interweb was to counter, or at least put some perspective on, Pete's reference to Gordon Brown being one of the few Chancellors to preside over a budgetary surplus. As part of Labours pact to get elected they promised to continue with the Conservative spending plans, it was during this period that the surplus existed. It was the time of GB's affair with Prudence and his 'golden rules'. Once this period ended and the big increase in state spending to create the client state began the deficit started to climb. Then 2008 hit and the rest as they say is history.
It is not quite that simple and some countries fared better than us so the government of the day that had been in power for several years has to take its share of the blame. The economy only shrank a few % taking it back to its early/mid 2000`s level when Golden Gordon was telling us all how wonderful things were. This small shrinkage combined with encouraging mass immigration of people who went straight on to welfare ( I know plenty of immigrants contribute, I am not a racist or bigot ) and also spending a fair few quid on a couple of wars that Blair was very keen for us to be involved in, contributed hugely to the growth in debt. Politicians should not to take the credit when all is going well and then blame the world economy when it goes tits up.
the Daily Fail isnt even good for arse paper..it makes your butt crack black, and we know how much the Daily Mail readers dont like anything black...unless its their back account balances.
agreed, and yet somehow, its managed to maintain an air of authority as a proper paper...its a dish rag....take a look on their web site for an example..its full of celebrity trash and tittle tattle, bulemia inducing cellulite pics and a never ending obsession of whose wearing who, whose boning who, beach bodies, wags, handbags and utter utter plebean vacuous nothingness...its beyond derision and has taken the mantle from the Daily Sport as the lowest turd floating down the sewers of the gutter press....and, like its sister rag The Sun, is another right wing toilet paper but with a fancier banner.... Dont get me started on the express and torygraph...why anyone would buy a paper/comic or take any notice of the tripe served up as 'news' within them, or mainstream TV is beyond me..theres more cutting edge journalism in the Beano...(if thats even still going)
OK, but you seem to be arguing both that anything good that happened on Brown's watch is not to his credit, and that anything bad that happened on his watch is entirely his fault. Either one of those arguments might be sustainable, but you surely struggle to support both at the same time. Apart from that, even if (hypothetically) I make an invalid point in a post, you cannot refute it by posting a deliberately misleading graph in response, I'm afraid.
