Osborne Loses It - Our Triple A Rating And Its Future

A._Badger

StevieJ wrote: »

Are activists people who take an interest?

In this example, yes. An interest in fomenting a Marxist revolution so that we can emulate all those other hugely successful Marxist countries like, er... and er....

Generali

A._Badger wrote: »

In this example, yes. An interest in fomenting a Marxist revolution so that we can emulate all those other hugely successful Marxist countries like, er... and er....

Cuba! Cuba is highly successful as they have good hospitals there to treat all those people suffering from malnutrition and related diseases because of Marxist agriculture.

The USSR was very successful if you lived life in the Zil lane.

StevieJ

A._Badger wrote: »

In this example, yes. An interest in fomenting a Marxist revolution so that we can emulate all those other hugely successful Marxist countries like, er... and er....

O no the Bogeyman

dunstonh

GeneHunt wrote: »

I'm sick of listening to the Tories blaming labour for where we are - they've had to 2 years to do something about the deficit and they've done sweet FA in the cutting department - in fact, things are getting worse.

GROW A SPINE AND MAKE SOME CUTS YOU BUNCH OF CLOWNS.

You cannot recover an economy in 2 years. Labour had very heavy cuts planned too. Just not as deep as the ConLibs.

lemonjelly

80% of the announced cuts will come into effect from next april. You just haven't seen the effects yet.

A._Badger

StevieJ wrote: »

O no the Bogeyman

The predictable 'reds under the beds' sneer you hear from those who either don't know what they are talking about, or who wish to conceal the truth.

Well here are a few randomly chosen names to consider:

Jack Jones - former TGWU boss and friend of Labour under Wilson. A paid KGB agent for 45 years. Finally outed by former KGB defector Oleg Gordievski.

Ken Gill - AUEW leader: open communist.

Jimmy Reid - Scottish ship building leader. Open communist

Bob Crow - RMT - no need to comment

Jack Dash - former leader of London dockworkers. Open communist

Arthur Scargilll - no need to comment

Andrew Murray - 'chief of staff at Unite' - openly communist

Derek Simpson - Unite - self-styled '"lieutenant of the Left". 'Former' communist.

Is the picture emerging yet? Or is the myopia permanent?

pop_gun

The madness of King George

StevieJ

A._Badger wrote: »

The predictable 'reds under the beds' sneer you hear from those who either don't know what they are talking about, or who wish to conceal the truth.

Well here are a few randomly chosen names to consider:

Jack Jones - former TGWU boss and friend of Labour under Wilson. A paid KGB agent for 45 years. Finally outed by former KGB defector Oleg Gordievski.




Is the picture emerging yet? Or is the myopia permanent?

Is that the guy that caused the Times to be sued by Michael Foot for Libel?

In July 1995 Foot received "substantial damages" from The Sunday Times, after articles had been published under the heading "KGB: Michael Foot was our agent".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/7359721/Michael-Foot.html

Mad as a box of frogs

In need of corroboration, John Witherow, the newspaper's editor, dispatched a reporter to Moscow, where interviews were conducted with several former KGB officers, including Mikhail Lyubimov and Viktor Kubeykin.
However, Mr Lyubimov later told the Independent that to suggest Mr Foot had been an agent was "a ridiculous smear", while Mr Kubeykin called the Sunday Times article "a 100 per cent distortion" of what he had told the reporter.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sunday-times-pays-foot-damages-over-kgb-claim-1590325.html

posh*spice

StevieJ wrote: »

I think the chalice that Thatcher inherited was not quite as bad as some make out, especially if you throw in the dramatic increase in oil production.

Indeedie. Take a look at the numbers. In 1979, when Margaret Thatcher came to power, the amount Britain owed, as a nation, was £88.6 billion. In the subsequent six years, taxes from the North Sea (which had been pretty much non-existent previously) generated an incredible £52.4 billion.

In 2008 thanks to record oil prices, the Treasury had its largest ever haul from the North Sea, at £13 billion. This colossal sum equates to more than 3p on the basic rate of income tax.

Look at what was put out by the government this week:-

The UK expects its tax revenues from the oil and gas industry to slip by more than a third in the current tax year as declining North Sea production levels, lower than expected oil prices and upstream tax breaks crimp its receipts, the UK's finance ministry said Wednesday.

Tax receipts from North Sea corporation tax and petroleum revenue tax are seen totaling £7.4 million in the 2012-13 tax year, down 34% from £11.2 billion collected in the 2011-12 tax year, according to UK Treasury's pre-2013 budget statement.

Further ahead, the treasury expects North Sea tax receipts will continue to slide, falling to £6 billion in the 2014-15 fiscal year and hitting £4.1 billion in 2017-18.


For the past quarter of a century, Britain has been a petro-economy. In 1999, we were producing more oil than Iraq, Kuwait or Nigeria. The following year, we pumped out almost twice as much natural gas as Iran – a country with reserves that are the envy of the world.The result is that while we are apt to attribute the sudden spurt in Britain's prosperity in the mid- to late-1980s to a deregulated and reinvigorated City, it owed far more to the massive windfall from the North Sea.

Looks like oil and gas won't save the conservatives this time.

StevieJ

posh*spice wrote: »

Looks like oil and gas won't save the conservatives this time.

It just might do, and in the much maligned North. Move over Scotland, Independence for North of Watford

The British Geological Survey (BGS) is currently carrying out a review of the UK's shale gas reserves, which will be published in the new year.

The Times newspaper reported on Friday night that the BGS will conclude that the the 1,000 square kilometres covered by the Bowland Basin to the east of Blackpool contains 300 trillion cubic feet of gas. This is roughly 17 times more than the known reserves in the North Sea.

In 2011, exploration company Cuadrilla estimated there was 200 trillion cubic feet of gas in the area.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/9731201/Blackpool-shale-gas-deposit-50pc-larger-than-first-thought.html