Is Gordon Brown an economic illiterate?

StevieJ

Degenerate wrote: »

Hrm, well I stand corrected. I'd be curious to know how many people actually had more than 50K in icesave. I thought it was mostly ISAs?

I think this is partly why the Iceland govt had a problem with compensation claimed by us, I think they were happy well maybe not happy to cough up the first 18k.

Degenerate

StevieJ wrote: »

I think this is partly why the Iceland govt had a problem with compensation claimed by us, I think they were happy well maybe not happy to cough up the first 18k.

I'm pretty sure that's all we've been asking them for.

morag1202

Degenerate wrote: »

Hrm, well I stand corrected. I'd be curious to know how many people actually had more than 50K in icesave. I thought it was mostly ISAs?

IIRC wasn't the problem that many LA's, hospital trusts, charities etc had savings of over 50K? I don't think many individuals did.

Degenerate

morag1202 wrote: »

IIRC wasn't the problem that many LA's, hospital trusts, charities etc had savings of over 50K? I don't think many individuals did.

Indeed, and in the case of LAs and Hospital Trusts UK taxpayers would have ended up paying either way.

dopester

Watching Gordon Brown's speech at Citizens UK yesterday. I'm thinking it might require a military-coup to remove Brown / Labour. It's power at all costs for them, it seems to me - no matter what it requires to get votes... impossible promises that can only wreak further destruction. Much of the electorate has had their minds diseased under the Labour system since 1997 as well. They think money comes from nowhere and just rely on Nanny Labour for everything good.

Gordon Brown seems to show no compromise on cuts or other measures required to genuinely try and get through the crisis the country is facing. He continues to talk the language of boom and endless money from nowhere imo. It's a full-on basket case economy and country imo under Labour, and threatens to destroy us even further imo.

Tell me this.. when did it become the Government's role to act like big Daddy to everyone in the country? There used to be a time when we were equal, and not all indebted to a government for kickback credits for children, child-trust. On the whole, it used to be individual parental responsibility to look after and provide for their own children, and ourselves.

Generali wrote: »

So that more people feel beholden to the State for their income.

Thatcher's failure was that she never broke that mindset despite never standing on a platform of buying millions of votes by increasing spending. Every election since has been won by the party prepared to offer the most outlandish promises.

There was a very good article in the FT a few days ago saying that in the past 2 weeks, Labour MPs had promised to spend £7,000,000,000 on community projects. The politics of the UK are such that the Tories can't stand on a platform that says, "We'll not build a new village hall" (or whatever).

Gordon Brown threatens and attacks everything I believe in. His speech was full of wishful thinking and actions on the same old path of trying to distort and pervert market realities to their own wishes, to such extremes, that economies and markets eventually force-ably recoil from it - breaking.

Gordon Brown (Speech yesterday): Our shared belief is that wealth must serve more than the wealthy. That prosperity must serve more than the simply prosperous. That good fortune must help more than those who are just fortunate. [If you don't leave open the opportunity for those to profit from their intelligence and actions, their personal investment, creativity - rather than block such a route... preferring to equalise, feed, drain and deny those who are trying to better themselves; you limit and harm more people - and retard the economy in so many other ways.]

And across the years I feel my life has become full circle because when I became Chancellor of the Exchequer the first thing I was able to do was to create the minimum wage for the first time in 100 years - justice for the low paid. And the fight continues. And that is why we have said in our manifesto that the minimum wage rises in at least in line with earnings. It will reach £7 on reasonable assumptions by the end of the parliament. Because we must lead by example Labour is pledged to go even further by asking all Whitehall Departments to back the campaign that you have lead and to which I pay tribute, the campaign for the living wage.

A monopolistic wage which is too high for prevailing conditions generates still more unemployment when reckless booms end.

My suspicion is the minimum wage had the effect of allowing those in higher ranks of office (public sector) to begin awarding much higher artificially pay-increases within their own ranks.. outstripping the previous gap in wages, before the minimum wage. Good employers pay fair rates, for fair work/input and return, in the market-place (provided you're here legally ect), and if not other employers.

If you've gone about bettering yourself, with education and higher skills for the marketplace, you should, ordinarily in an non-distorted market-place, have even more options. Fairness is not making everyone equal and poor and holding back those who can achieve... having Nanny Labour heavily on their back, taxing and red-taping them up. Control freaks.

dopester

GB: Then prattles on about communities being the cause of everything (not businesses which employ and are supposed to be paying and supporting employees with this mega nice minimum 'living' wage).

Gordon Brown (speech yesterday): Investing in good schools, good hospitals, good community centres. And we are fighting not just for the minimum wage, but for sure-start, for free childcare, for tax-credits, for the child trust fund - we are fighting to build on that with more childcare in the next few years a new toddler tax credit.

And we are fighting to defend and extend the child tax credit and the child trust fund to help all parents give their children the best possible start in life. And I tell you this we will not cut the child tax credit. We will not half the child tax credit. And we will certainly not propose an inheritance tax cut to worth on average £200,000 to the richest 3,000 people in England. And that is a policy unfair. My motto; the motto of that policy is not god helps those who help themselves, the motto is god helps those who he has already helped and that is not acceptable to me.

Hey, more free money people, no cuts, even more benefits/kickbacks/higher minimum wage!

I've got an idea. Let's talk about no cuts whatsoever, and spending even more money we haven't got. God? If you continue to help yourself through ability/investment - and help others along the way as you do so, via employment or purchase orders.. that is good. I'm uncertain about the IHT tax cut, but in general I wealth in the hands of citizens, allows for more discrete and gainful spending and investment by non-wasteful government. In general I back low taxes - not high taxes to squeeze everyone then small kickbacks for the little-people followers.

RobertoMoir

A._Badger wrote: »

Be fair, neither have Conservatives. What 'call me Dave' has done to the Tory party is at least equal to what Blair and his cronies did to traditional Labour.

Not sure I'd agree it was "at least equal", I think "nu-Conservatives" still has more flavour of traditional Conservative politics than "nu-Labour" had/has of traditional Labour. But I do see your point.

And I'm not suggesting that the parties shouldn't evolve and move with the times either... I'm just saying there's a difference between modernisation and abandoning 90% of your traditional values.

grubby23

dopester wrote: »

Tell me this.. when did it become the Government's role to act like big Daddy to everyone in the country? There used to be a time when we were equal, and not all indebted to a government for kickback credits for children, child-trust. On the whole, it used to be individual parental responsibility to look after and provide for their own children, and ourselves.

Indeed, it is quite scary how the people always count on the help of our rulers. Now we even start crying out for help if the planes are grounded for a couple of days to bring us home. Its just ridiculous what has happened here over the last decade. What is interesting to see is that most socialist-style ruled countries (e.g., Greece) go bust and with Labour in power it seems very likely that broke(n) Britain is the next in line!

grubby23

Degenerate wrote: »

The UK government took the view that allowing these savers to lose their cash would be detrimental to the health of the entire banking system, and I agree. The moment the government allowed British savers to lose their supposedly guaranteed deposits, savers could legitimately question the safety of any guaranteed deposits and start more bank runs.

I disagree. People invested the money abroad, no sane government should have supported such behaviour. Money should remain and should be invested within the
country in order to be protected by the government!

CLAPTON

grubby23 wrote: »

I disagree. People invested the money abroad, no sane government should have supported such behaviour. Money should remain and should be invested within the
country in order to be protected by the government!

does that mean that you wouldn't provide a government guarentee for savers in HSBC, Lloyds, Barclays, Santander as well Santander is outright foreign and the others lend / invest all over the world.