Britain business held back by politicians who have 'never run anything'

Mr._Pricklepants

Ed Balls : He went on to attend Keble College, Oxford, where he gained a First in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, graduating ahead of David Cameron. Later he attended the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, where he was a Kennedy Scholar specialising in Economics.

George Osborne : Osborne did a few part-time jobs including as a data entry clerk, typing the details of recently deceased into a NHS computer database. He also briefly worked for a week at Selfridges, mainly re-folding towels.

(wiki)

mystic_trev

spacey2012 wrote: »

What financial qualifications does the Chancellor hold ?

Probably a Cub Scout Badge in Home Economics.

grizzly1911

Mr._Pricklepants wrote: »

Ed Balls : He went on to attend Keble College, Oxford, where he gained a First in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, graduating ahead of David Cameron.

Probably says more than any political debate.

Pennywise

Nothing will change until the public, yes, you and me, change our voting habits. After all, it's the public who've voted in the current batch of politicians as their MPs.

For a start, how about voters actually using their grey matter to think about which of the candidates is the best person to be their MP - yes, that means not voting the same way as your parents, grandparents and great-parents - will be quite a culture shock in some areas of the country!

Joe public should send a strong message that they don't want London-centric people being parachuted into their constituencies and instead vote for local candidates to represent them.

Why did Tony Blair get re-elected time after time in the Sedgfield constituency? Was it because he was locally born & bred, and could identify with the local people? Or was it because he was part of the metropolitan elite who Labour Head Office decided to send to a safe Labour seat where the electorate always voted Labour regardless of who the candidate was or how good they were?

At the moment, it seems there's little between the main parties - they're mostly the same kind of people, similar backgrounds, similar schools/uni's, etc. There was a brilliant article a while back in the paper which did a kind of diagram showing how the main players of the different parties were linked - amazing how many went to the same uni's, dated eachother, lived together, despite being in different parties today. Far too incestuous to be healthy!

purch

In our system of Government a Minister has to be foremost a political animal over and above their actual raw ability to do the job.

Ed Balls is a good example. He is well qualified academically to be Chancellor, but Balls will always be a political animal first and foremost, and that will always get in the way of doing a good non patisan job as Chancellor.

Osbourne is just an idiot.

Wookster

purch wrote: »

Ed Balls is a good example. He is well qualified academically to be Chancellor, but Balls will always be a political animal first and foremost, and that will always get in the way of doing a good non patisan job as Chancellor.

Osbourne is just an idiot.

That may be the case, however I'd wager that the UK would be doing much worse under a Labour government today, and in particular under the financial stewardship of Ed Balls!

grizzly1911

Seems discussion goes on ever more.


Sorry Purch more wiki.



By the end of the 1970s, Benn had migrated to the left wing of the Labour Party. He attributed this political shift to his experience as a Cabinet Minister in the 1964–1970 Labour Government. Benn wrote:

As a minister, I experienced the power of industrialists and bankers to get their way by use of the crudest form of economic pressure, even blackmail, against a Labour Government. Compared to this, the pressure brought to bear in industrial disputes is minuscule. This power was revealed even more clearly in 1976 when the IMF secured cuts in our public expenditure. These lessons led me to the conclusion that the UK is only superficially governed by MPs and the voters who elect them. Parliamentary democracy is, in truth, little more than a means of securing a periodical change in the management team, which is then allowed to preside over a system that remains in essence intact. If the British people were ever to ask themselves what power they truly enjoyed under our political system they would be amazed to discover how little it is, and some new Chartist agitation might be born and might quickly gather momentum.[30]

StevieJ

Wookster wrote: »

That may be the case, however I'd wager that the UK would be doing much worse under a Labour government today, and in particular under the financial stewardship of Ed Balls!

How is your gambling at Cheltenham?

Thrugelmir

purch wrote: »

Ed Balls is a good example. He is well qualified academically to be Chancellor,

Much of New Labour's policy was his I suspect.

purch

I am certain that the IMF (and more specifically the USA) "demanded" the cuts in expenditure due to the total mismanagement of the economy by the then Government.

I can understand the point Benn is making, and agree with much of it but the IMF Loan was thought necessary at the time, and you cannot expect such a Loan without some conditions.

To complain that this meant that the country could not continue to be mismanaged by the elected politicians, when it is they who got the country into the mess is rather bizarre.