Monday, December 28, 2009

Nice Guy Cameron, Shame about his Party?

Its a view I suppose. He has taken the Tories towards the centre on social issues, but on economics, he is still a thatcherite fundamentalist who if he gets the chance will cut and cut, while wringing his hands at the consequences as a necessary price worth paying.

Call me cynical (mo?) but my first 18 years as an adult was under the Tories.

Been there, done that, had the UB40, got the tee shirt so... No Nice Guy Dave to me!

Hat-tip John Frost at Labourhome.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This Government is now borrowing a quarter of all the money it is spending. The economy is wrecked. We are currently embarking upon the largest scale public borrowing campaign in our history aimed at stimulating a short term recovery. There will be a record 12% Government defecit by the end of 2009.During the fourth quarter of 2008, the Labour government's goal was still to win the next general election and therefore the government response to the economic crisis was with a view towards leaving the country with an economy that was survivable in terms of electoral prospects at subsequent elections, which is why the government had at that time tried to both mask the amount of liabilities that the bankrupt banking system had forced onto the tax payers as well as tried to boost consumer spending without too much damage to the fiscal position of the countries finances by means of the £20 billion giveaway on VAT and other minor tax amendments.

In November 2008, the government had not truly realised the magnitude of the debt crisis that faced Britain with Alistair Darlings forecasts way below reality, as the government was in denial of what was taking place and continued to clutch at straws, just as we witnessed with the Bank of England throughout most of 2008 that remained paralysed into in action by the fear of inflation all the way into October 8th 2008 when Gordon Brown seized control of monetary policy and forced the Bank of England to cut interest rates by declaring the first of a series of interest rate cuts himself at the Prime Ministers despatch box and for the BOE to abandon inflation targeting in favour of trying to win the next election at any costs resulting in zero interest rates and quantitative easing.Alistair Darling also surprised many analysts by forecasting that the UK Economy would grow by 1.25% in 2010 and 3.5% in 2011. However we need to consider the following in that 1.25% growth on the annual GDP of £1.2 trillion equates to growth of just £15 billion and for 2011; 3.5% growth equates to just £42 billion. Therefore the government is borrowing a net £175 billion for 2009 and £175 billion for 2010 to generate £15 billion of growth, and then a further £140 billion for 2011 for £42 billion of growth. Thus total net borrowing of £490 billion to grow the economy by just £67 billion, which shows the magnitude of the scorched earth economic policy now implemented that literally aims to hand the next Conservative government a bankrupted economy that will be lumbered with the consequences of continuing huge budget deficits throughout the life time of the next parliament and therefore sow the seeds for a strong Labour victory at the 2014-2015 General Election.

Anonymous said...

great comment

John Gray said...

Hi Anon
So the Labour government is deliberately overspending just to hand over a poisoned chalice to the Tories just so they will lose the general election back to Labour in 2014-15. Hmmm? Do you really, really believe this conspiracy theory stuff or is it just a wind up? You start off with a half decent and credible (although of course wrong) argument then finish off with a load of foaming at the mouth off the wall Tory baloney.

The government has done a fantastic job of saving our nation and its economy from the neo-cons and free market Tory supporting idiots who very nearly bankrupted us due to their greed and incompetence. Yes, because of this failure of free enterprise and the private sector the government has had to adopt Keynesian economics to save us from a depression. Yes, we have large budget deficits which must be addressed. But you don’t have to pay it all back tomorrow. Also I hope that it be paid for by those who caused the problem in the first case. Let have a real equitable and progressive income tax, let’s do away with council tax and replace it with an annual Land Tax while we are at it let’s get rid of higher rate tax reliefs.

Finally, now we know for certain that "invisible hands" and markets don’t know best we need to better regulate and democratise our financial services. Make sure the governance of capital is in the hands of its real owners. Workers pensions and insurance funds.