-
born in the early 70s by the way. I experienced the 3 day week. The 80s were nothing in comparison.
The three day week was put in to force in 1974; at the most you were three. In what way, exactly, did you 'experience' it? Precocious is one thing; being the forum equivalent of Hilary Clinton recalling her trip to Bosnia is another.
-
it's hard to judge each recession seeing how ways of recording unemployment etc have changed but this one doesn't seem so bad. Ok, i have a job so that makes my life easy. i also live in london and not a harder hit northern community. I remember the thatcher recessions and they really did seem to effect communities in a harsh way. i work in education and have very close contact with families in newham (supposedly one of the poorest areas in this country, poverty being relative of course) and non of them, be they on benefits or working all hours god sends for minimum wage could possibly be described as destitute or starving. in fact many of them have bigger houses than me, more cars ( big 4 wheel bmw's too) and mobiles. of course i'm not denying the recession but i'm having a hard time finding it. perhaps this is because since the late 70's and 80's a lot of people have seen a massive improvement in their lifesyles and financial security thanks mainly to capitalism. this recession is also massively self inflicted by over borrowing whereas the late 70's and 80's were just proper grim and had a lot to do with poorly run state owned industries and a welfare system that was out of date even back then.
-
Frankly, from where I'm sitting the current recession is pretty frigging fierce..... Shirley it's all relative to individuals..... but then perhaps if I'd had a better grasp of Economics A level 25 years ago I wouldn't be feeling the pinch now.......Hmph....... Food for that.... pork chops this evening in my case.... (chance to merge with Food thread?)
-
yeah i see your point...they should defo teach more 'the rules of market capitalism' at school and end all this crying and whinging about having to pay money back after you've borrowed it. read the small print.
sorry to hear your feeling it fierce but enjoy your pork chops dude -
Thank you Sir, and for completeness... :-)
-
lol...hope you went for tiswas's suggestion
-
based in scotland but thought it was a good read:
http://www.indymediascotland.org/sites/default/files/Asylum%20Myths%202010%5B1%5D.pdf
-
• #661
Flippant pedants might say that it's the anti-Tory stance is dogmatic and irrational, and ignorant people might agree with throwaway remarks about disapline in schools, and a "family based society", but the Tories have their own agenda to play out.
Which is?
Is that a real question? Are you actually asking for a list of conservative values? I'm happy to play along if you're not be facetious.
Horatio, I'm interested in hearing actual information and not just the obvious, polarising "Tories are scum-sucking bastards and that's that" type comments.
I'd hate to return to a Tory government, but I'd also be MISERABLE if New Labour stayed in.
But you know what conservative values are? And you understand why the type of person who joins the Conservative Party is going to harbour these beliefs? And when it comes to running, they will be minimized as much as possible (small "c", big tent, centrist, etc.), but once elected, they may (will) boil over and become the influence behind the laws passed?
This is the type of thing I was talking about. It's the type of thing the Conservatives will pretend does not exist in their party, and will do all they can to shut up, but could, with a majority election, show itself once they're in power. That is, this is an example, albeit just one, of why the Tories are inherently fucking douche bags.
(Unless you believe being gay is some sort of demonic possession which can be cured by good-ole'-jesus. And if you do, maybe that's the type of thing you'd like to be embraced by your government, and perhaps become a mandated treatment).
-
This is the type of thing I was talking about. It's the type of thing the Conservatives will pretend does not exist in their party, and will do all they can to shut up, but could, with a majority election, show itself once they're in power. That is, this is an example, albeit just one, of why the Tories are inherently fucking douche bags.
+1. There's a great post here thats says "There is much made ... about the fallacy of "argumentum ad hominem". There is, as I have mentioned in the past, no fancy Latin term for the fallacy of "giving known liars the benefit of the doubt", but it is in my view a much greater source of avoidable error in the world."
That's pretty much how I feel about the Tories. We could assume complete good faith on their part, or we could assume that the party hasn't fundamentally changed and is still committed to the conservative values that Horatio has alluding to. I think a healthy dose of scepticism is a better choice in this case than saying "Well, the mask hasn't slipped yet, so let's assume that the party really has changed and they're not all biting their lips until Cameron gets them into power".
-
This is pretty neat:
http://www.democracyclub.org.uk/Notable is how few Tories have responded anywhere in the UK, and how many Green and Libs have.
-
No, I'm talking about the early 1990s recession. Which was far worse in its effects than the recent recession. It was also a direct result of domestic policy, whereas the recent recession was caused by collapse in banking triggered by sub prime market in the US. The early 1990s recession was 'managed' under the principles of Milton Friedman, i.e. government should do nothing, the market will sort things out all by itself. The recent recession was managed (both here in the UK and in the US and in Europe) according to Keynesian principles, i.e. government should act to prevent things getting even worse or to a point where recovery is slow and people and communities are blighted by poverty. The Conservatives were the only mainstream party in the world advocating something different. The early 1990s recession really didn't stop having an effect on the country until about 1995-6. The signs of recession are nowhere near as visible now as they were in the early 1990s. The lesson to be learnt from the economic instabilities of the 20thC is that there is a role to play by governments in stimulating growth, in lessening the harsh effects of downturns and in actually allowing for greater economic growth than the market can manage on its own.
I know which recession you are talking about. But it started before John Major's govt actually fought an election and got elected. Black Wednesday happened after he got back in but it was a symptom of a recession already well underway. Do you remember the Spitting Image sketch which had the Tory cabinet returning to a vandalised Downing St amazed at having won. Having believed they were going to lose they had a party and smashed the place up. "Oh yeah, we trashed the place, remember?" says one. "Yes, I ruined the economy" replies Norman Lamont.
1991 to 1995 is only 4 years. No party in this election is talking about getting Britain's current deficit under control before 2016, and we're already a year or two into it.
It wasn't really domestic policy that caused that recession, but Britain's membership of the ERM, as a prelude to joining the Euro. This tied the pound's valuation to the deutschmark, set its value way too high, forced very high interest rates and generally screwed our economy. Black Wednesday, when the pound collapsed and the government wasted billions fruitlessly trying to prop it up instead of letting it happen and making a small profit, would appear to be the very opposite of Friedman's 'doing nothing and letting the market sort it out' It was precisely because they did not leave the pound's value to the market in the first place that the recession happened in general, and Black Wednesday happened in particular.
It's interesting that the proposed solution to both these recessions is to do more or less the opposite of what caused them. In 1992 the solution to a recession caused by political interfering was to back away and let the market clean it up. And it worked. In 1997 Tony Blair inherited an economy in exceptionally good shape. In 2010 the recession caused by Labour's stripping away of city regulation, and being in complete thrall to the city is solved by a return to governmental control - printing money, nationalising banks, tax and spend.
Neither way is necessarily wrong. Both have been shown to work in the past. I would not be so quick to say that the conservative plans are wrong: in this country however, only the Tories have actually got experience of getting Britain out of recession. Labour's only experience is getting Britain into them.
-
I realise we may not share the same views, but do you really believe the things you just posted... as in, literally believe them?
I have probably missed the rest of the debate but I find your views scary if I've read them correctly, seemingly based as they are on a strange version of history that I'm not sure I lived through.
-
The three day week was put in to force in 1974; at the most you were three. In what way, exactly, did you 'experience' it? Precocious is one thing; being the forum equivalent of Hilary Clinton recalling her trip to Bosnia is another.
Well since you ask...
I was born in 1972. At the age of 3 I had learned to read, and at 5 was made head of the cabinet office. The decimalisation of british currency was still a fresh memory in many minds and to allay the clamour of voices calling for a return of the threepenny bit I suggested to the then Prime Minister, Jim Callahan, that we should instigate a 3 day week. The week would be split into two working days and one weekend day. At first this idea was greeted with great enthusiasm, but over the years the short weeks led to shorter months, general confusion and unseasonal weather. Things came to a head with the famous winter of discontent, because in their haste to implement the new 3 day week, December only lasted 16 days, civil service officials had somehow lost Christmas, and nobody got any presents.
Thatcher won the next election, restored the 7 day week, and I was fired, and sent to bed with no tea.Either that or I just vaguely remember the electricity going off all the time because they were on strike again. And the 3 day week was a conservative measure of course, That's two of my gotcha's you've spotted.
-
I realise we may not share the same views, but do you really believe the things you just posted... as in, literally believe them?
I have probably missed the rest of the debate but I find your views scary if I've read them correctly, seemingly based as they are on a strange version of history that I'm not sure I lived through.
I got some of it off Wikipedia: Black Wednesday, that source of infallible knowledge:
The effect of the high German interest rates, and high British interest rates, had been arguably to put Britain into recession as large numbers of businesses failed and the housing market crashed. Some commentators, following Norman Tebbit, took to referring to ERM as an "Eternal Recession Mechanism"[6] after the UK fell into recession during the early 1990s. Whilst many people in the UK recall 'Black Wednesday' as a national disaster, the forced ejection from the ERM paved the way for an economic revival, the Conservatives handing Tony Blair's New Labour a much stronger economy in 1997 than had existed in 1992. This has prompted some commentators to re-label 16 September 1992 as White Wednesday. [7]
Unfortunately for the government, the country's strong economic performance after 1992 did little to repair the reputation of the Conservatives for competent handling of the economy. Instead, the government's image had been damaged to the extent that the electorate were more inclined to believe opposition arguments of the time - that the economic recovery ought to be credited to external factors, as opposed to good government policies.My original point about John Major's government being the best because it didn't do anything was a beer-induced joke, by the way.
-
BQ earlier.
deleted
clintsmoker
Bagheera
void
James1822
haroun
Markyboy
Seeds
neu
bq
Velocio
snowy_again-
Post a reply
About
General Election 2010
Posted by
@lpg
No, I'm talking about the early 1990s recession. Which was far worse in its effects than the recent recession. It was also a direct result of domestic policy, whereas the recent recession was caused by collapse in banking triggered by sub prime market in the US. The early 1990s recession was 'managed' under the principles of Milton Friedman, i.e. government should do nothing, the market will sort things out all by itself. The recent recession was managed (both here in the UK and in the US and in Europe) according to Keynesian principles, i.e. government should act to prevent things getting even worse or to a point where recovery is slow and people and communities are blighted by poverty. The Conservatives were the only mainstream party in the world advocating something different. The early 1990s recession really didn't stop having an effect on the country until about 1995-6. The signs of recession are nowhere near as visible now as they were in the early 1990s. The lesson to be learnt from the economic instabilities of the 20thC is that there is a role to play by governments in stimulating growth, in lessening the harsh effects of downturns and in actually allowing for greater economic growth than the market can manage on its own.