Friday, Dec 26, 2008
We must refight the battles of the 1970s
Telegraph: We must refight the battles of the 1970s
We are facing a crisis as bad, if not worse, than that of the 1970s. The lights might not be going out and our dead are being buried, but don't be fooled. Our economy and most public institutions are, in Whitehall-speak, not fit for purpose. Unless Britain has a radical change of direction, prepare yourself for an era of decline.
Posted by eagle @ 01:13 AM (517 views) Add Comment
7 Comments
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1. dude said...
I fail to understand this article. It seems to be saying 'to get rid of Labour we need another Tory Govt, so lets try to cast this in the light of 1978/9. All I can see is Tory policies that managed to take away from everyone much that they had strived to own ('selling the family silver' was how McMillan put it), and this disastrous approach was only perpetuated by New Labour, which had redefined itself to look like the Tories.
What we need to resolve our problems are policies that will give real wealth back to the many (not just the illusion of wealth via debt) -- we don't need another Thatcher, what we need is a Tony Benn.
2. Karma4all said...
Couldn't agree more, it seems to confuse politics with dishonest/incompetent behaviour of "some" in the financial sector.
3. mrmickey said...
It seems with the UK that history has run it's course. I don't know what any government can do, Thatcher destroyed all our old industries and based our economy on consumption and new labour continued the process. Where too now, try to rebuild industry?
4. Panda said...
This has got to be the dumbest article and most ignorant from the Telegraph that I've read for a very long while, and that is saying a very great deal. If they really want to fight those battles again, it'll mean evern more depressed wages, the emergence of another financial elite, the destruction of industry, the dumbing down of education, and so on, and so on and so on.
The Telegraph edit all the posted comments to their site. They publish nothing that does not fit their exact world view, and do this shamelessly. In return one might expect some modicon of editorial control, restraint, or at the very least, a rather higher standard of journalism. This kind of hatchet work is the thing you expect to read just before they start to deny the holocaust. What next?
The astonishing revisionism that is evident in many Telegraph articles points to at the very least a fury that it was consensus politics that got us into the unholy mess that we are into now, and that there was in fact no "golden age" of privatisation or wealth creation in the 1980s. The only thing that the paper (or any other paper) should be addressing is how to get rid of and punish those who profited from the era of criminal fraud and rising house prices; and to make sure that we never, EVER see anything like it ever again.
I can't think of anything more vital for national prosperity than this.
5. Fatjock said...
"what we need is a Tony Benn."
Tony Benn???? What another MP who did nothing whilst in power? Mind you you could say the same for most MPs.
I will never understand why so many sheeple hold Benn in such high regard.
6. stillthinking said...
If this article is wrong, then the strategy of getting a government job and saving in a foreign currency is also wrong.
A very good point is that the debate has been controlled in a very insidious way i.e. capitalism has failed therefore discuss the merits of different levels of state intervention.
But capitalism hasnt failed, state intervention has. The state has expanded at the expense of the private sector. You may argue for government led industrial initiatives but I doubt very much you would purchase any of their cars i.e. Rover or the Russian Trabbant. Also you would be unlikely to buy aluminium from a government smelter when the alternative private production is cheaper.
The private sector produces food, energy, clothing, electronics, cars, medicine and production sufficient to support the entirety of the state.
Except in the UK the public sector is so large that the private sector cannot carry it, so disposable income and demand have collapsed.
The UK was heading for a recession anyway, and the global recession has mitigated this. Can you imagine what our import prices would be if Japan/US/Euro hadnt collapsed? They would be horrific.
At the moment the price of food is going up. We have had the same government for a decade. Price of food going up....This kind of flashes a danger light for me, crazy eating fool that I am.
Also,Thatcher did not collapse UK industry. The failed companies failed because they were no good. Did Thatcher cause Woolworths to fail? Or was it because nobody ever bought anything in there. The state cannot help private production. All they can do is stand back and watch the extremely painful birthing process of valid production to meet demand.
I completely agree with everything in this article.
7. stillthinking said...
Pointless exams for your kids. No point working. You want increased borrowing from government? Good luck with paying that back on your own while everybody with a brain gets out and watches from afar.