Is the recession really Brown's fault?

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I haven't read through the whole thread but 'Is the recession Browns fault ?', he has been chancellor for 10 years, PM for 2, he and Greenspan were warned on numerous occasions about the debt driven bubble yet they chose to do nothing about it, so the answer is 'Yes' he has to take a large amount of the responsibility for our current plight.

Sir_Humphrey

Generali wrote: »

I voted Tory several times and have been called a Tory apologist several times on here (just ask Sir Humphrey what he thinks of my politics for example).

What Aitken did was very wrong by any standard. In a country where you have the rule of law, perverting the course of justice and perjury are very serious crimes and rightly so. His daughter should have been investigated because she also committed a serious crime. "He told me to do it" isn't a defence in law nor should it be IMO.

The media did go OTT, I agree with you there but that's British newspapers for you. They're renowned for it.

I don't see what's hypocritical about my position. Bloke commits crime. Bloke gets prosecuted. Bloke goes to prison. It happens all the time. Just because other people get away with stuff doesn't make it right. Those up to no good in the Labour Government will get theirs eventually. Probably when the Tories get in.

New Labour have done some pretty stinky, bent things, but nothing worse than the Matrix Churchill affair, (except maybe the 'dodgy dossier')

Matrix Churchill were the firm implicated in the Arms to Iraq affair. The govt gave covert support to the company to deal with Saddam Hussein. When the scandal came to light, the Major government denied all knowledge, leaving the Matrix Churchill bosses to face a long jail term. Their trial collapsed when Alan Clark admitted in court that the govt had known all along ('I was economical with the actualite')

I always think of this affair when people claim John Major was a nice, decent guy.

nickmason

This is where tribalism comes in most strongly. We naturally make excuses (often with far less information than we should have) for those we are benign towards, and make accusatory assumptions to those outside of our tent.

I can recognise that people in every party have been pretty despicable. What I really struggle with is to try and work out which is worse.

To me, I think the worst I know of was the dodgy dossier, because it broke the compact the government has with me that they can't tell me all the info re national security, so I'll trust them on such matters.

I remember arguing with loads of left wing friends that we had to be right to go to war, because the government couldn't have broken that specific area of trust, where we have granted them freedom from public investigation.

But I simply can't determine whether Aitken was worse than Mandelson. I recognise this as a weakness on my part - and I'd love to use the recourse to the law to say one is a v serious crime, the other less so, so one is worse than the other. Problem is, I don't trust the law when it comes to politicians anymore. That's probably an emotional response based on my anger at what I perceive, but I don't think I'm in any way alone. Whatever the reason, I wish politicians knew how fragile the trust is/was. Only this week, Jacqui Smith seems to have dealt another blow to trust. Can't she see that she needs to be beyond reproach, not just within the loophole?

LauraW10

macaque wrote: »

LauraW10

Johnanthan Aitkin told a lie. Following this, a relentless newspaper campaign was mounted against him and attempts were made to prosecute his teenage daughter. In the end he was driven out of office, bancrupted, jailed and disgraced. Was that a proportionate response to a moderately serious but very common crime? A similar story applied to Jeffrey Archer.

In 10 years not a single senior member of the Labour party has been prosecuted for a crime. Yet we know that unsavoury things go on all the time. How are people being appointed to quangos like the FSA? How did Peter Mandelson buy his first house? How did he buy another house in 2006 at 16 times his salary? How did some peers win their seats? How did certain individuals get passports? etc etc

Labour got into power with a smear campaign that destroy lives and reputations. It was the very worst kind of politics imaginable. Unfortunately, it turned out that they were better at smear than government. Our economy is in a shambles and much of our social fabric has been destroyed.

You posted emotive pictures of events during Conservative control. Are you suggesting that there are no unflattering pictures of life under Labour? Don't you think that you are throwing stones in a glass house. Don't you think people are more concerned about the state of the economy than more mindless smear campaigns?

Shirley Porter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Porter
While leader of Westminster City Council she oversaw the "Building Stable Communities" policy, later derided as "homes for votes". The policy was judged illegal by the district auditor, and a surcharge of £27m levied on her in 1996. In a review of the biography of Mrs Porter by Andrew Hosken (see: Further reading) Nicholas Lezard in The Guardian described her as "...the most corrupt British political figure in living memory

Mark Thatcher
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Thatcher
the role he played in an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea, for which role he was fined three million rand (approximately $500,000) and received a four-year suspended jail sentence.

Jeffrey Archer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Archer
He was a Member of Parliament and deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, and became a life peer in 1992. His political career, having suffered several controversies, ended after a conviction for perverting the course of justice and his subsequent imprisonment.

Jonathan Aitken
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Aitken
Jonathan William Patrick Aitken (born 30 August, 1942) is a former Conservative Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom, and British government minister. He was convicted of perjury in 1999 and received an 18-month prison sentence, of which he served seven months.

Matrix Churchill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_Churchill
The Arms-to-Iraq affair concerned the uncovering of the government-endorsed sale of arms by British companies to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The scandal contributed to the growing dissatisfaction with the Conservative government of John Major and may have contributed to the electoral landslide for Tony Blair's Labour Party at the 1997 general election.
Following the first Gulf War of 1991 there was interest in the extent to which British companies had been supplying Saddam Hussein's regime with the materials to prosecute the war. Four directors of the British machine tools manufacturer Matrix Churchill were put on trial for supplying equipment and knowledge to Iraq, but in 1992 the trial collapsed, as it was revealed that the company had been advised on how to sell arms to Iraq by the government. Several of the directors were eventually paid compensation.

There are plenty more - Neil Hamilton for starters




Posters called labour sleazy. I just showed them what sleazy really looks like, just in case they are too young to know.

LauraW10

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

As you know I am firmly in the pro-Labour camp, but even I agree with this. The world wasn't all riots and looting under the Tories, nor did it suddenly ecome sweetness and light under Blair - or the other way round if you are an ardent Blue.

I'm sorry - yes it was.

LauraW10

Mark Thatcher - Arms Dealer

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"Mark Thatcher was so dim he could only manage a few o levels in a top public school, even the worse of the worse in Kirkbys schools would likely be picking up a hatful of o levels if they had a decent education. Intensive tutoring perhaps led his two brain cells to bang together and create the few tiny grains of intelligence needed to be able to sign cheques.

But how come someone who would struggle to collect the trolleys in a supermarket can accumulate a massive fortune of £60 Million pounds?

Mummies Boy.

Mark, carrying with him the obvious approval of his mummy, the notorious "Iron Lady", became an unofficial roaming salesman for British arms companies. A bit like the Richard Branson of the arms trade, though to be fair, as daft as Richard Branson may act, at least his fortune is not built on death and nor did he tag along after his mummy to sell his records. Virgin Record Stores don't do a 'good deal' on a gross of stinger missiles to the Arabs, or Iraqis. Thatcher's spawn became a middleman who was ideally placed to get the British arms export industry accountants smiling with delights as the innocent's spilt blood and mounted up in death piles. Mark Thatcher earned himself millions in commissions, in particular dealing with Countries like Saudi Arabia. This disgusting trade, whilst it profits the likes of Thatcher and shores up dictators, is one that should surely be abolished. It is ironic that Maggie Thatcher, the supposed Patriot, would allow her son to sell arms to Countries which are now using those arms to kill British troops.

Mark Thatcher's contacts

Being son of the Prime Minister meant that Mark could tag along and meet the various dignitaries and suchlike of other Countries. His mum, the Satanic Highness herself, would sweet-talk the depraved corrupt Saudi Rulers and hug and kiss the dirty disgusting evil murdering dictator Pinochet, whilst Mark could presumably read from a prepared script which went something like "I have a few friends in the arms trade" Its just like fronting for a drugs cartel, only there's no danger of being nicked, or there never used to be! He associated with arms dealers and mercenary organisers, and his fortune came from his middle man position, just 'being there' as it were. Right man, right place, right time. People need arms to kill, you're English and selling arms is one of our biggest export industries. Chile is alleged to be one place he dealt with.There is a case of a MI6 officer being unlawfully killed there, with links to suggest that Thatcher may have had a connection. Don't sue the messenger. You can see that news here and here (Details of some of these allegations are contained in the Profits of War: Inside the Secret US-Israeli Arms Network by the former MOSSAD agent Ari Ben-Manashe (Sheridan Square Press, New York, 1992).

"It is now known that British firms supplied weapons to both Iran and Iraq in the 1980s by the simple device of sending them to intermediary countries, which then re-exported them. The British company BMARC, of which former Tory minister Jonathan Aitken was a director, supplied hundreds of light naval guns to Singapore -- a country not renowned for the huge size of its navy. Those guns found their way to Iran.

Favourite staging posts for Iraq-bound weapons were Oman and Jordan. In 1986 Swedish Customs discovered a European cartel, including British firms, supplying explosives via Jordan."

http://www.kirkbytimes.co.uk/news_items/2004_news/mark_thatcher.html
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StevieJ

Hey Laura, good to have a real life ban the bomber on here :T

LauraW10

StevieJ wrote: »

Hey Laura, good to have a real life ban the bomber on here :T

Yes I suppose I'm making Rochdale Pioneers look right wing LOL:D

StevieJ

LauraW10 wrote: »

Yes I suppose I'm making Rochdale Pioneers look right wing LOL:D

Great to have you aboard, this will be !!!!!! the right wing mob :eek:

SGE1

MrFonzerelli wrote: »

Your use of technical jargon combined with your intelligent use of facts has confused me :rolleyes::D.

Are you suggesting that the word "crummy" is not technical jargon? :eek: