Gordon Brown: I made a big mistake on banks

IronWolf

ninky wrote: »

scotland doesn't have to pay for defence. it also has its spending budget assigned rather than have to account for it all through taxation of its own population.

Yes but surely the things Scotland doesn't pay for are taken into account when the chancellor decides how much hes going to give Scotland.

ninky_2

IronWolf wrote: »

Yes but surely the things Scotland doesn't pay for are taken into account when the chancellor decides how much hes going to give Scotland.

you would have thought so but actually scots are granted a higher per capita allowance for spending than english. there are arguments that it costs more to bring them the services (remote villages etc). i'm not convinced myself. it certainly doesn't feel very fair having to pay for tuition fees and prescriptions when other 'brits' get them free.

ukcarper

This is how Wales get some of the money.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8483030.stm

Rochdale_Pioneers

If you want to attack a Labour big mistake, set aside the easy to pick at tactical errors and look at the strategic ones. My biggest complaints about Labour revolve around the national infrastructure, and the complaint is that they continued disasterous Tory policies which now leave us screwed.

First and foremost is energy. When the sector was privatised by Mrs Thatcher, the market was left to decide what was in our national interest. And they decided for some reason that this equated to what was in their shareholders' interests and built new gas fired power stations. This combined with the criminal decision to abolish the profitable coal industry has left us reliant on foreign sources of energy. The dash for gas burned off our North Sea reserves so we have to import more and ore from Russia. We're importing coal from Russia and Brazil rather than digging it up profitably from the pit a few miles away from the power station.

Labour utterly failed to grasp the situation and sat on their hands for 13 years. the market is still in control, now with many of our energy companies owned by foreign banks (reliable) and European nationalised energy providers (ironic). But our power stations are ageing and our energy use is increasing, so regardless of what happens to commodity prices we simply won't have the generating capacity to keep the lights on by the middle of the decade. The "we hate nuclear" stance of the new Secretary of State for the Environment and the "screw Forgemasters" insanity of not investing in kit which will let us build our own power stations just makes it worse.

And the second one is transport. Its all very well Hammond asking "why is our rail system 5 times more expensive" if he's unwilling to accept the answer - because its privatised. We have the absurd situation where we pay all this extra money to German and Dutch state railways to run our loss-making railway system allowing them to make a profit which is paid back to German and Dutch taxpayers. Again its "inefficient" public sector bodies able to run their own systems profitably - as BR did with Intercity - and expand in the marketplace.

Transport, Energy - two examples os national strategic assets which should never have been farmed off to the private sector. And Labour selling off NATS? Same stupidity.

Thrugelmir

[quote=[Deleted User];42740664]His mistake re the banks was to trust them to behave responsibly if regulation was reduced.

[/QUOTE]

The issue wasn't the quantity of regulation but the effectiveness of the regulation and the understanding of the risks the banks were taking.

Northern Rock was a pure UK retail bank, had no investment banking activities at all. Yet it's whole business model was based on a high risk borrowing strategy and a breaking of the banking rules.

chewmylegoff

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

the profitable coal industry

can you prove that using real numbers from the accounts of the relevant entities, adjusted for the level of subsidy the industry received, or have you just made it all up as part of a rant.

i'll give you a clue, it's the latter.

chucky

grimsalve wrote: »

I still think Blair, Brown, Darling, etc. have a lot to answer for though.

they probably do. i'm sure that Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Cable will also have a lot to answer for too.

fortunately the difference for them is that they can blame the previous government and people will believe them.

chewmylegoff

ninky wrote: »

you would have thought so but actually scots are granted a higher per capita allowance for spending than english. there are arguments that it costs more to bring them the services (remote villages etc). i'm not convinced myself. it certainly doesn't feel very fair having to pay for tuition fees and prescriptions when other 'brits' get them free.

that's devolution for you - they get to decide what they spend their money on. you can always vote for a party which promises to abolish tuition fees and prescriptions here if that's the most important thing to you, that would be the liberal democrats. (obviously as they are proving now, they won't actually do what they say, but then who does in politics)

the manifestos for the upcoming scottish elections are quite interesting. lib dems, tories and SNP have all annouced agendas which can only be said to amount to tinkering pointlessly around the edges, presumably in recognition of the fact there isn't much money to spend.

labour have said they will introduce a minimum wage of £7.15, so more more unfairness vs. england. more amusingly they have pledged to "eradicate" youth unemployment in just one term - pretty funny stuff. they might as well offer a free trip to the moon for every taxpayer.

ninky_2

chewmylegoff wrote: »

you can always vote for a party which promises to abolish tuition fees and prescriptions here if that's the most important thing to you, .

:rotfl:that's a joke. for one there was no such party (you can't count a party that doesn't do what it says like the lib dems). even if there were such a party the murdoch media would annihilate it even more than they did to gordon brown with bigot-gate.

ILW

ninky wrote: »

:rotfl:that's a joke. for one there was no such party (you can't count a party that doesn't do what it says like the lib dems). even if there were such a party the murdoch media would annihilate it even more than they did to gordon brown with bigot-gate.

GB annihilated himself on that one. The man was a walking disaster.