UK has been bailed out by IMF

ThrowingStonesAtYou

...In 1976 - I was too young to exist unfortunately so I don't have previous experience of Labour bankrupting the country, however I was wondering if anybody who remembers what happened would compare the scenario leading up to the bailout to today?

Did the bailout come as a surprise or did everyone see it coming? Did the government try to hide the truth from the public? Did the economy come to a grinding halt or did it make little difference to the man on the street?

Mr.Brown_4

I remember it well. Mr. Wilson, the PM at the time made a statement to Parliament saying "we're in a bit of a fix". The figures had been set out throughly and openly by our then Chancellor Mr. Ted Heath and it was clear from the Treasury report that the Govt. had messed up.

There was a full and open debate along non political lines, and then Parliament voted on approaching the IMF. Most MP's supported the IMF idea and so the motion was carried. Hansard reported it, and the Times carried an intelligent and analytical report the following day.

Of course nowadays it's different. We have the internet.

nearlynew

ThrowingStonesAtYou wrote: »

Did the government try to hide the truth from the public?

I was only 13 at the time, but I definitely know the answer to that one.





ps
I do remember finding power cuts exciting though.
Getting the candles ready and all that....

These days kids would find it a lot harder to do without all their electrical equipment which we didn't have.

fc123

ThrowingStonesAtYou wrote: »

...In 1976 - I was too young to exist unfortunately so I don't have previous experience of Labour bankrupting the country, however I was wondering if anybody who remembers what happened would compare the scenario leading up to the bailout to today?

Did the bailout come as a surprise or did everyone see it coming? Did the government try to hide the truth from the public? Did the economy come to a grinding halt or did it make little difference to the man on the street?

There was a thread last year about the 70's recession and what it was like....lot's of us older types wrote about our memories of it....mind you, many of us were kids or teens, so having a ball regradless......just with powercuts plus we had no techy gadgets back then but are used to having today.

Worst bit about the 70's/80's was having a really important rendevous and being, either the one waiting, or the one held up in traffic/cancelled train...and having no way to contact the other person...I mean...can you imagine??

fc123

Mr.Brown wrote: »

I remember it well. Mr. Wilson, the PM at the time made a statement to Parliament saying "we're in a bit of a fix". The figures had been set out throughly and openly by our then Chancellor Mr. Ted Heath and it was clear from the Treasury report that the Govt. had messed up.

There was a full and open debate along non political lines, and then Parliament voted on approaching the IMF. Most MP's supported the IMF idea and so the motion was carried. Hansard reported it, and the Times carried an intelligent and analytical report the following day.

Of course nowadays it's different. We have the internet.

My son and Daughter (15 +22) just cannot imagine how we survived with no internet, MSN, moby 'phone and 'The World of Me' Facebook. Son said something like...but how did you find jobs and stuff??? I had to explain back pages of newspapers.

bo_drinker

fc123 wrote: »

My son and Daughter (15 +22) just cannot imagine how we survived with no internet, MSN, moby 'phone and 'The World of Me' Facebook. Son said something like...but how did you find jobs and stuff??? I had to explain back pages of newspapers.

I have read about it in books :rotfl:it must have been awful.

CLAPTON

The records show that in those days there were a lot of quite mad politicians of all parties that thought fixed exchange rates were a sign of national virility and must be defended at all costs.

Many sensible people thought that this was madness but they weren't in general politicians and so were ignored.

So the mad politicians thought that calling in the IMF was better that floating exchange rates.

PasturesNew

fc123 wrote: »

I had to explain back pages of newspapers.

Yes. If you needed a job you'd buy the local paper on a Thursday and see what they had. If there was nothing there, then it was another week until the next one. Also, having found an advert to apply for you hand-wrote your CV out and posted it in a real envelope with a stamp on.

SingleSue

I was only 6 in 1976...all I can remember is power cuts and lack of bread in shops.

My mum and dad had just got into camping so we were ok, they would power up the camping light powered by a car battery, cook on the camping gaz stove and had a camp out indoors...oh and mum's home made bread was gorgeous.

I can cope quite well without power as can the boys as we have had a few here recently...we just get the candles and wind up lamp out and read books, tell stories and play games by the small light that is emitted.

Job hunting - I remember the once a week job section in the paper (we still have one!) plus the looking at the boards in the job centre or going door to door to the business in the town asking....very rarely did a CV though, for some reason, you didn't seem to need one so much in those days.

iolanthe07

Harold Wilson (Labour) and Ted Heath (Conservative) were not in government at the same time! Dennis Healey was the chancellor, and he was the worst chancellor we have ever had until Brown. Inflation peaked at 27%, people's savings were decimated, the IMF had to rescue us, the pound slumped, unemployment soared.........this happens every time we have a Labour government - they couldn't run a pi$$ up in a brewery. The Tories always have to come in and sort things out, but the current crisis may be beyond them.

kennyboy66_2

iolanthe07 wrote: »

Harold Wilson (Labour) and Ted Heath (Conservative) were not in government at the same time! Dennis Healey was the chancellor, and he was the worst chancellor we have ever had until Brown. Inflation peaked at 27%, people's savings were decimated, the IMF had to rescue us, the pound slumped, unemployment soared.........this happens every time we have a Labour government - they couldn't run a pi$$ up in a brewery. The Tories always have to come in and sort things out, but the current crisis may be beyond them.

Inflation peaked at 16% under the Heath Govt in Jan 1974.
Infaltion peaked at 27% under Wilson Govt in Aug 1975 then went down to 10.1% in May 1979.
It went back up again to 22% in June 1980 under Thatcher.
It was 11% in Oct 1990 - which is amazing considering the vast increase in unemployment under Thatcher and that we were then in recession.

The biggest currency crash in my lifetime was under Thatcher in 1985 when a £1 bought you about $1.07.
It had fallen from $2.40.

Boy, those Tories really sort things out.

Please Sir, can I have some more.