Economy at 60-year low, says Darling. And it will get worse

ManAtHome

Gorgeous_George wrote: »

She did it out of spite. Hatred for the working class. As bad as the worst racist.

The working class were a bit bigger than the miners, power workers, RMT, and GMB - not that they gave a toss...

fc123

Microstar wrote: »

Thinking a bit more - does anyone remember how bad things were in '85 ? I remember the pound was worth about $1 and interest rates were 12%. 3 million on the dole. Will things get worse than that?

1985.....*thinks* I was 22, life was a ball, at college being a bright young thing. All of the above quote didn't even touch my life. I had Sat job (in Liberty), grotty room in house and the total luxury of a student grant (the full one for independent person).
Had no access to any credit at all but didn't mean I sat in all the time, in those days, the bloke paid for the night out and we used to get onto all gthe clubs for free.
The coming downturn won't affect all ages....for 20 somethings, it will just be their normal.

Gorgeous_George

fc123 wrote: »

1985.....*thinks* I was 22, life was a ball, at college being a bright young thing. All of the above quote didn't even touch my life. I had Sat job (in Liberty), grotty room in house and the total luxury of a student grant (the full one for independent person).
Had no access to any credit at all but didn't mean I sat in all the time, in those days, the bloke paid for the night out and we used to get onto all gthe clubs for free.
The coming downturn won't affect all ages....for 20 somethings, it will just be their normal.

I was 22 too.

Having left school at 16 I had completed my apprenticeship. Bought my first car. Then sold it and bought my first house using the car loan to pay the house buying fees (:whistle:).

Interest rates were high but house prices were low. My mortgage ate up about 45% of my pay.

GG

wigglebeena

I never thought I could hate any person or party more than Conservatives/Thatcher, but NuLabour/Blair (I find Brown just clueless but not actively evil) are the vilest scum to ever walk the earth.

I dream of bumping into filthy old Tone and shouting 'Two words! THE HAGUE!' before I'm bundled off to a prison cell for disturbing his precious ****ing peace like the gentle old OAP at the Labour conference. What a dirty **** he is.

wigglebeena

I still can't believe the wasters decided we (the taxpayers and voters) weren't good enough to be allowed to examine a transparent accounting of their filthy pilfering of public money via abuse of expense accounts. Spending OUR money.

They should all be in ****ing jail.

dopester

Microstar wrote: »

I have always thought of New Labour as 'Tory Lite' - similar policies to the Major Tories, with the sharp edges taken off. If the Conservatives had been in power I reckon we would be in a very similar position.

I think people were brainwashed a few years back with Labour PR machine that "there really isn't any difference between the parties any more".

Too many people started singing the same message as though it was their own conclusion - instead of it being a Labour planted PR seed.

Conservatives for me are the party of small Government, of choice and opportunity, of letting people decide many issues for themselves.

Labour are big Government, who want to control on every matter they can, and try and push you in the direction they want.

G.George makes me laugh with his bitterness. Mr.Landlord himself giving venom to Lady Thatcher.

It is also deluded all this hatred towards Conservatives who haven't been in power for 11 years,. I doubt Conservatives would have allowed things to get so bad as they as the economic fallout looks to be heading now after the live-it-up credit-credit-credit HPI HPI HPI mega boom. Yes they might have enjoyed the HPI boom and fallen in to its addiction - but I doubt Conservatives would have taken us there if they'd returned to power in 1997.

Anyway, thank you all your Labour supporters. Great job your guys have done in power.

dopester

tomstickland wrote: »

Sure, she hated unions, and after the worst excesses of the late 70s the balance was a bit tipped too far.
The point I was making though is that things were moving on, and digging coal out of the ground was at that time not a viable business.

Of course it wasn't a viable business. Not when you could buy it and have it shipped to UK at something like 50% of the price it cost to have our miners do it.

And what about Thatcher's deal to get us cheap Russian oil for so many years... in the Cold War too. US strongly opposed the deal, but Thatcher wasn't going to turn away such a good deal, and the Soviets kept the oil pumping without any interruption.

tomstickland

The other thing that I find odd about the romanticism of the miners' cause is that the job was actually dirty, dangerous and bad for health.

Microstar_2

dopester wrote: »

I think people were brainwashed a few years back with Labour PR machine that "there really isn't any difference between the parties any more".

Too many people started singing the same message as though it was their own conclusion - instead of it being a Labour planted PR seed.

Conservatives for me are the party of small Government, of choice and opportunity, of letting people decide many issues for themselves.

Labour are big Government, who want to control on every matter they can, and try and push you in the direction they want.

G.George makes me laugh with his bitterness. Mr.Landlord himself giving venom to Lady Thatcher.

It is also deluded all this hatred towards Conservatives who haven't been in power for 11 years,. I doubt Conservatives would have allowed things to get so bad as they as the economic fallout looks to be heading now after the live-it-up credit-credit-credit HPI HPI HPI mega boom. Yes they might have enjoyed the HPI boom and fallen in to its addiction - but I doubt Conservatives would have taken us there if they'd returned to power in 1997.

Anyway, thank you all your Labour supporters. Great job your guys have done in power.

Some arrogant comments there. I haven't been 'brainwashed' by anyone. I started in business in 1979 and lived and worked through two Conservative recessions. I well remember the HPI mega-boom of the late 1980's (caused by Lawson's ham-fisted management of MIRAS) and the subsequent recession on the early 1990's. The difference between then and now is that a large part of today's problems originate overseas. The Conservatives managed to get us into a mess entirely of their own making.
I can't imagine for one moment that a Conservative government would have taken steps to limit HPI or the BTL market. It would largely have been their supporters that would have been hit - the Mail and Telegraph would have gone bonkers.
Having been in business for nearly 29 years under both flavours of goverment I can tell you that from a business perspective there has not been a lot of difference. And this comes from real-world experience, not from something I've read in the newspapers and parroted secondhand.

Generali

dopester wrote: »

Anyway, thank you all your Labour supporters. Great job your guys have done in power.

Important Labour PMs of the 20th Century:

Ramsey MacDonald: 1st Labour PM although sadly not the last. Managed to endure a National Strike. He resigned his own Government whilst staying on as PM and formed a National Govt. It takes a certain chutzpah to believe that you're good enough to lead whilst all those you promoted and who made you leader of the party are not.

Clem Atlee: After 3 years in power managed to have an economy in a worse state than it had been after 5 years of total war. Was unable to house or feed his people.

Harold Wilson: Took an economy that was thriving and gave it to the unions and civil servants to destroy. Left Callaghan to take the rap.

Blair: Took an economy that was thriving and gave it to the corporations and civil servants to destroy. Left Brown to take the rap.

To the tune of The Red Flag, as sung by most former Labour ministers:

"The working class can kiss my @rse, I've joined the Cabinet at last"