Property slump hits Gordon's spending plans

MissMoneypenny

"Plans by Gordon Brown to raise £16bn from asset sales between 2011 and 2014 to help rescue public finances are looking increasingly unrealistic in the latest sign of the government’s tough fiscal situation.

The prime minister’s belief that property sales can make up nearly 90 per cent of the target now seems precarious, given the savage collapse in the real estate market"

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/028aaa82-6425-11de-a818-00144feabdc0,Authorised=false.html?

Gordon sold the gold, he wants to sell the property, he sold the uk down the river. Has he never heard of the word "savings". I don't suppose they covered that when he did his history degree.

Rochdale_Pioneers

MissMoneypenny wrote: »

Gordon sold the gold, he wants to sell the property, he sold the uk down the river. Has he never heard of the word "savings". I don't suppose they covered that when he did his history degree.

Oh I don't know - perhaps he has been a student of recent political history. How many UK-owned things were sold under Thatcher? Phones, Water, Gas, Electricity, Steel etc etc. I take it that your frothing about property "selling us down the river" was done tongue in cheek?

If "savings" are your thing then you will of course consider the ridiculous low prices these chunks of the national infrastructure were sold for - and the vast profits made by the city when those ridiculously low prices increased by many times their original value - and consider this to also be selling "the UK down the river"? No?

Oh thats right - Tory good Labour bad.....

stonethrower

Oh thats right - Tory good Labour bad.....

Labour absolutely disastrous

amcluesent

>Oh thats right - Tory good Labour bad...<

Just two of the privatisations have really been in bother -

Building societies - largely due to the abysmal regulation of the FSA - which was a regime invented by Clown

Railways - scuppered from the start by Labour's tribal politiking, compounded when 'Liars' Byers pulled the rug-out from Railtrack for force the company into liquidation, so it could be stolen from the shareholders.

The full, appalling damage of Clown's use of market-forces, the dodgy PFI wheezes, is only now becoming clear. Taxpayers will be regretting his tax'n'bungle since 1997 for another 30 years.

Rochdale_Pioneers

amcluesent wrote: »

>Oh thats right - Tory good Labour bad...<

Just two of the privatisations have really been in bother -

Building societies - largely due to the abysmal regulation of the FSA - which was a regime invented by Clown

Railways - scuppered from the start by Labour's tribal politiking, compounded when 'Liars' Byers pulled the rug-out from Railtrack for force the company into liquidation, so it could be stolen from the shareholders.

The full, appalling damage of Clown's use of market-forces, the dodgy PFI wheezes, is only now becoming clear. Taxpayers will be regretting his tax'n'bungle since 1997 for another 30 years.

I think you have either utterly missed or deliberately ignored the point. It wasn't privatisation success or not, its the price that the government sold these companies on for. The policy at the time was flog the assets at a knock down price so as to tempt more people into share ownership. All of the newly privatised companies - and Failtrack was a prime example - immediately saw a multiple-times increase in their share price making a fortune for a handful of investors - money that should have gone to the tax payer had they been sold for a proper price.

Which Building Society was owned by the taxpayer BTW?

And Railtrack? A catastrophe in bad management from start to finish. A company responsible for railway infrastructure that didn't miantain its main asset, that didn't even know key facts like loading gauge which kept fleets of new trains locked in the sidings unable to be used, that oversaw crash after crash after crash.

BTW Railtrack got into trouble because having signed a contract with Virgin Trains for the West Coast rail upgrade it found that it couldn't deliver. The plan was for 140mph trains in 2005 - thanks to their incompetence we finally got 125mph trains in 2008. Railtrack and Virgin Trains both went under as a result- Railtrack evolved into Network Rail, Virgin trains sold a 49% share to Stagecoach and now run the West Coast as a management contractor.

Amusing though your pro-privatisation frothing is, a simple check of the facts would help your arguments. Not all companies succeed, privatised or otherwise. Railtrack were incompetent, they went bust, they had to be rescued.

ad9898_3

Roch, I kinda admire you in a funny sort of way, it's been a long time since I saw anyone keep their head so far in the sand, for so long without expiring, you would go a long way in Brown's government, may I suggest you missed your opportunity to take your head from the sand, and into the taxpayer trough.:D

Rochdale_Pioneers

ad9898 wrote: »

Roch, I kinda admire you in a funny sort of way, it's been a long time since I saw anyone keep their head so far in the sand, for so long without expiring, you would go a long way in Brown's government, may I suggest you missed your opportunity to take your head from the sand, and into the taxpayer trough.:D

You're studiously ignoring the point of course. Well, no surprises there. The OP complained that Brown was doing something that would sell off government assets for less than they're worth and there is loud harrumphing. i point out that this was Tory policy for a decade and suddenly we're onto personal insults. Is that the best you lot can manage? Do you actually know anything about politics and history, or is it all name calling?

kennyboy66_2

BellenCheddar wrote: »

Nice to see Damian McBride posting on MSE. :rolleyes:

Nicer than your homophobic ramblings that you seem somewhat obsessed about.

Perhaps you protest too much.

chewmylegoff

one of the main problems with the public sector selling off property is that it tends to need it - offloading large amounts of property means large numbers of sale and lease back agreements, many of which will be incompetently negotiated.

more expensive in the long term - especially if they pull off a genius move of selling large numbers of buildings at below market value to an offshore company so that the money flows out of the economy.

Graham_Devon

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

You're studiously ignoring the point of course. Well, no surprises there. The OP complained that Brown was doing something that would sell off government assets for less than they're worth and there is loud harrumphing. i point out that this was Tory policy for a decade and suddenly we're onto personal insults. Is that the best you lot can manage? Do you actually know anything about politics and history, or is it all name calling?

What's ruffled your feathers. The worse labour do, the more stern and insulting your writing gets :rotfl:

Are you following your leader on tantrums too now!?

Rochdale_Pioneers

Graham_Devon wrote: »

What's ruffled your feathers. The worse labour do, the more stern and insulting your writing gets :rotfl:

Are you following your leader on tantrums too now!?

Erm, so how is your reponse not proving my point about you and others talking about the person and not the issue....? Not sure who is ranting - its not me!