The Nakid Truth

[Massimo Giovanni]

I do believe Cameron is an unreliable, self serving and mediocre person, politician and not really a true tory. He has turned into Blair with his communication and spin styles.
Clegg, Milliband(s) and balls are no better.
The days of true leaders are gone: until it is accepted that to be very good then the mistakes/errors of a person's past need to be taken as growth experiences; some of the best PMs in history would not have "made the grade" to top jobs today because of their growth issues as they learnt & argued with honest opinion/conviction about some subjects.
We get the politicians we deserve?

 

[Pubey]

Nothing's changed mate. I did a balance transfer from one card to a Barclaycard for a fairly small sum of money and got a spanky new card with £16,500 worth of credit with the promise that if that wasn't enough, they'd up it!

Fortunately I'm not that stupid.

I'm not quite clear why an unsecured debt like a credit card is very straight forward to get (I've got credit of £16k but absolutely no debts on either of my cards), and my missus is the same with a £6k credit. However the second you want to get a secured mortgage it suddenly gets more tricky (at least until you get the help of DtS).

 

[C'mon you Shrimpers]

All the tory diehards (superblue and neil F) can do is blame the last government. It's exactly the same line Cameron/Osborne and Blair/Brown used to cover their own inadequacies.

The fact that you can come on here and use this argument to excuse this shambles of a government is laughable. You need to put your dogma aside for one second and just admit that this current government have failed to achieve any of the major targets that they set themselves. Apart from gay marriage, what has Cameron achieved since beingini office?

I've never voted Tory and in fact WAS Labour party member. What this government is trying to do is turnaround a moribund economy, that is state over loaded and inefficient. It's got to be done for our future generations. Without doubt the short term is hard. I think it will actually take 10 years and probably 15 if Labour come in with their policies. Yes the banks were at fault and tbh I would have let them fail, not because I'm an economist far from it, but because the sword they lived by was dog eat dog, survival of the fittest and if they are the rules then let them go. What we did was a bit like a punter losing the bet then the state coming in and paying their winnings. There have to be cuts or we will be like Spain or Greece. Even Labour agree with this. The Tories have not managed it in the way I would have dealt with it. There are huge savings to be made in cutting managers pay in local government. No chief executive of a Council or NHS trust should get more than £100,000. The chief executive of Essex CC gets over £260,000. Complete madness. The NHS should have been included in the cuts there are huge savings to be made there if people would look hard enough. It's going to be a hard slog but you don't give up just because it doesn't turn overnight. it was never going to. I dread Labour getting in and buggering it up again. However I do believe when the tipping point comes probably not until after the next election and banks start lending again the situation wi8ll change. One of the successes so far is to rebalance the economy in some small measure away from state funded jobs towards the private sector and this has to continue. It's tough but unfortunately necessary.

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

The last Labour Government was voted out of office because of Iraq and after 13 years in power they were perceived to have run out of fresh ideas.While Brown was also generally acknowledged as an excellent Chancellor he was rightly seen as an excruciatingly poor PM.

He was a disastrous chancellor. Go back and find any of my posts on PFI where I bemoaned that our financial policy was being driven by political motives instead of what was best for the country.

What is worse is that absolute mess that Brown created won't be fully felt for a further 10-15 years when all the current PFI deals unwind and we're left with no hospitals, prisons, schools etc.

Talk with any Labour party activist and you'll find that's the reason they they didn't vote for the party in 2010.

WTF the Iraq War was 2003. 2005 was the opportunity to vote against the war monger Blair.

I think the banks are to blame for a lot of this mess. Even during the last Conservative and Labour leaderships, I can recall forever picking up post with new credit card applications, falling through the door like confetti.

They encouraged debt as much as the man in the street spent it and bank/building society mortgages were very easy to get even for those that didn't stack up.

The banks and the borrowers because it takes two to tango.

People need to take personal responsibility.

 

[Davros]

You'll no doubt remember that there was a world wide economic crash which started in 2007/8 that we're still suffering from.

You have answered your own question really.

if it was not Labours fault that the economy went to poo, because it was a world wide economic crash, and we are supposedly still suffering from it, surely it is not Conservatives fault we have not recovered, if the thing you are blaming the cause on, you are saying is still the reason we have not recovered.

You cannot use half an arguement to defend one thing, but then ignore its consequence to critisise the other?!

 

[superblue24]

Valid points from YB and Davros......So what response will we have from Barna?

a) Change the subject
b) Ignore the points and make an irrelevant comment
c) Post another Guardian link in a new thread

 

[Cricko]

You have answered your own question really.

if it was not Labours fault that the economy went to poo, because it was a world wide economic crash, and we are supposedly still suffering from it, surely it is not Conservatives fault we have not recovered, if the thing you are blaming the cause on, you are saying is still the reason we have not recovered.

You cannot use half an arguement to defend one thing, but then ignore its consequence to critisise the other?!

Lets be honest here, the Cons do not have a clue if anything they are doing will pull us out of recession, I doubt Labour, especially under their current twonk of a leader do either. Times have changed since the boom and bust years and I even agree with a few of the current cuts being made. There is to much civil servant old boy school about and a friend of mine who is a Doctor in Peterborough recently told me, "The back office staff who earn the most are still looking to keep their jobs safe at the cost of reducing the on hands staff in the hospitals and actual care for patients".

Southend Council pays £800 a day to temp staff and some have been there 2 years, whilst cutting help to the voters in most areas of the borough.

Whilst this policy of continuous "lets look after ourselves and **** the rest" attitude is allowed to continue everywhere and seemingly being led by example by the very people that are voted in to act as representatives of the majority in this country, we are all ****ed.

 

[Davros]

Lets be honest here, the Cons do not have a clue if anything they are doing will pull us out of recession, I doubt Labour, especially under their current twonk of a leader do either. Times have changed since the boom and bust years and I even agree with a few of the current cuts being made. There is to much civil servant old boy school about and a friend of mine who is a Doctor in Peterborough recently told me, "The back office staff who earn the most are still looking to keep their jobs safe at the cost of reducing the on hands staff in the hospitals and actual care for patients".

Southend Council pays £800 a day to temp staff and some have been there 2 years, whilst cutting help to the voters in most areas of the borough.

Whilst this policy of continuous "lets look after ourselves and **** the rest" attitude is allowed to continue everywhere and seemingly being led by example by the very people that are voted in to act as representatives of the majority in this country, we are all ****ed.

I wasn't supporting or not the conservatives, I was mearly asking how (not for the first time) Barna was using a blanket argument to support what he was saying, but then tossing its relevance to one side when it continues to be relevant (by his own statement), for his own opposition.

With regards to the politics, I actually agree with Barna's original point as it goes. This was and still is a world issue, and we are just a small chess piece on a big board. The problem with politicians is that firstly, they are more interested with point scoring vs the opposition, when they actually could do better by working together (Utopian and unlikely, I know, but might help).

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Valid points from YB and Davros......So what response will we have from Barna?

a) Change the subject
b) Ignore the points and make an irrelevant comment
c) Post another Guardian link in a new thread

Sorry I've been busy working.:winking:
(However I must say that Davros seems a reasonable chap.As does Cricko.).

One thing has puzzled me in this "debate" so far though.

Nobody has mentioned that the UK ran a much higher debt/deficit ratio to GDP for much of the last century than it does now.

That was of course due to the war debt which was eventually paid off under the last Labour Government.
Nobody made much of a fuss and dance about it then.

Why are the Tories/LibDems doing so now?

On a (slightly) related point.I believe the only major Western economies to have escaped the worst ravages of the 2008 crisis are those of Germany and Canada (please correct me If I'm wrong).

Both were running a huge balance of payments surplus at the time of the crisis and therefore didn't need to borrow to finance their respective debts or run down their deficits.

Of course it's easy to argue (with the benefit of hindsight) that the last Labour Government should have done the same thing.

However, Germany was in a unique position in Europe ie of being about to export the Euro crisis to the rest of Europe while at the same time taking advantage of cheap domestic labout costs to export to China.

Canada is a different case.As I understand it they embarked on fiscal stimulus measures to turn their ailing economy around.No doubt the former Governor of the Bank of Canada will shortly be doing the same thing in his new post as Governor of the Bank of England.

 

[Massimo Giovanni]

I thought this thread was about Cameron and his policies?

For economics neither Germany or Canada are good comparisons with the UK. But there are some lessons to be taken from them re the £ and its value.
Germany is benefiting from the rest of the euro zone crumbling and doing most of its trade with them and Canada has huge natural resources which offsets its massive infra structure needs.
The UK doesn't help itself enough by trying to be as self reliant as it can; simple things like buying British and promoting commonwealth etc would help but aren't the full answer.

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

Valid points from YB and Davros......So what response will we have from Barna?

a) Change the subject
b) Ignore the points and make an irrelevant comment
c) Post another Guardian link in a new thread

Congratulations do all those who voted b).

Your prize* is on it's way.




*Grey rep, just as soon as Barna can dish some more out.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Congratulations do all those who voted b).

Your prize* is on it's way.

*I'm quite happy to nominate this for the most pointless post of the year award.:raspberry: