Brown blasts "age of irresponsibility"

Cannon_Fodder

...and throw in the Pension raid, great link MrsT, which made investors look for alternative, "safe" investments, and lo they saw property as the promised land, and behold the bubble was born.

wymondham

Gordon needs to stop making these silly comments as it's not helping him at all. I could understand it if he was a voice of moderation over the last few years, warning people, but he has been quite happy to take the credit for the illusion of good times...

It's quite rare that a Prime Minister has ever been more responsible for the economic problems of the day, since he has been the Chancellor for such a duration and directly responsible for policy.

Why has he just now decided to ban 'short selling' ? - should he not have done this years ago, or was he happy with the boom that he say's did'nt exist?

mrstinchcombe

Cannon_Fodder wrote: »

...and throw in the Pension raid, great link MrsT, which made investors look for alternative, "safe" investments, and lo they saw property as the promised land, and behold the bubble was born.

What is it with my posts that make people think I'm female?

Its Mr S! :rolleyes:

lostinrates

mrstinchcombe wrote: »

What is it with my posts that make people think I'm female?

Its Mr S! :rolleyes:

Its the wordshape of your login name - not an optical illusion, but that sort of thing. The line of the word is level til the t which means the first three letters are almost inevitably read as mrs t not mr st. Even though I know you are male it catches me out every single time.:o

luvpump

phil_b wrote: »

He didn't single-handedly force banks around the world to lend hundreds of thousands to people who couldnt afford it. He aint perfect but he's becoming one almighty scape-goat.

Perhaps so, but Labour were happy to take the credit for our booming Economy & it has helped them maintain power for 3 terms !!! .... not for much longer tho

WTF?_2

Llyllyll wrote: »

I'd expect nothing less from Gordon Brown, the most half-asr5ed and truly incompetent PM we've had in a long time.

I won't take credit for this quote, but I read somewhere, not long ago, that:

"The greatest gift Tony Blair gave this country was keeping Gordon Brown out of office for so long".

Now that he has finally had a stab at it he's manged to decimate, in a matter of months, what would take most others at least several years (if not longer) to achieve... (although if you count his time as Chancellor as well :mad:)

You don't get it - what we are seeing now is the logical and unavoidable culmination of all the 'good times' of the last decade.

This hasn't all just happened in the last year.

See dad-of-4's post just before yours.

lotto-dreamer

I am speechless (almost) having read Brown's comments in FT - what a cheek.

I still think Brown's Tax Credits system has a lot to answer for

- people thinking they have better incomes than they have and then a significantly high proportion finding the extra clawed back because of the complicated way it's worked out retrospectively.

Loans and mortgages often took into account tax credits

I may be missing something - but I have never understood why it wouldn't have been simpler and fairer to make more adjustments to tax according to income levels.

baby_boomer

What you are missing is Gordon's great desire to control society.

But more importantly, so many didn't fill in the 30 page forms to claim, so he could proclaim on budget day (and on the extra-day of the pre-budget report he created for his ego] that he was giving away £x million to "hard working families" when in fact he was giving away only half, of which 20% was lost in pointless administration, claim and counter claim, and demands for money back after overpayments.

To say nothing of the time wasted by the people who did fill in the forms.

The man is a relic from a past age.

We need a Gladstonian Chancellor with the authority to take an axe to Gordon's tax labyrinthe and start again from first principles of simplicity, efficiency and fairness.

BUT we digress from the issues of "the age of financial irresponsibility" coinciding almost exactly with "the age of Gordon's financial regulation" and his weak and foolish attempts to pass the buck.

margaretclare

baby_boomer wrote: »

What you are missing is Gordon's great desire to control society.

But more importantly, so many didn't fill in the 30 page forms to claim, so he could proclaim on budget day (and on the extra-day of the pre-budget report he created for his ego] that he was giving away £x million to "hard working families" when in fact he was giving away only half, of which 20% was lost in pointless administration, claim and counter claim, and demands for money back after overpayments.

To say nothing of the time wasted by the people who did fill in the forms.

The man is a relic from a past age.

You've hit the nail on the head about Brown wanting 'control'.

People have been encouraged to 'claim their own money back' - remember the slogan for pension credit: 'Pick it up, it's yours'. Well, if it's theirs, why are so many folk still not claiming it? I heard a news item yesterday saying that 'benefits should be paid automatically, not having to be claimed for'. This referred specifically to pension credit, but if this was paid to everybody in the relevant age-group, which was what seemed to be suggested, it would land with many people who can live without it. If it is recognised that the basic state pension of £90.70 a week is inadequate to live on, why is this amount not higher? The more people are encouraged to 'claim' for things they are said to be entitled to, the more control is possible. With tax credits - WTC and CTC - plus pension credit, a huge proportion of the population is claiming something or other. Add Child Benefit to that and you have the mechanism in place for social control.

mr_magoo_5

I’m confident the guy doesn’t have a mirror,

as I’m sure he would fail to recognize himself.

Nice and loud everyone,

The King has no clothes :laugh: