Wednesday, Jan 06, 2010
Oh no he doesn't! (He's behind you! etc.)
The Times: Mandelson outlines plans to reduce UK deficit
He said that government spending was providing vital demand at a time of low private sector activity.
"Pull away that prop for the economy and you reduce the tax take, push up spending on unemployment and make the deficit worse. This is the paradox of government thrift. We learnt it in the 1930s. It seems to be totally lost on the Conservative party."
Posted by devo @ 04:12 PM (1111 views) Add Comment
22 Comments
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1. alan_540 said...
Mandelson outlines plans to reduce UK deficit
...he's going to confiscate Brown's chequebook.
2. growler said...
Only in the UK can we tolerate someone who's had to leave under a cloud various times in his career as a public servant. And that's only because there's such a pityful array of alternatives: Britains need really must be at its most. The man is eye-swivellingly arrogant and displays all the charm of an obsequious sales negotiator.
Having his face in the press is the best thing that can happen to a Conservative election campaign.
3. stillthinking said...
The Irish Premier decried deficit spending, as Ireland pulled in so many imports, deficit spending would only act as a stimulus abroad. I don't see that the UK is different, aside from the difficulties of repaying the debt.
Just dragging everything out, most painfully, now in 2010, and nothing done since 2007 apart from additional borrowing.
4. will said...
Peter who?
5. alan said...
Does Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt agree?
I think it will only take a small crisis to bring down this government's house of cards. Unfortunately, many innocents will get blown away with them....
6. braindeed said...
The creepy one is bang on the money. If Dave and his fag get into No10 you'll all get your HPC alright, but also a drepression.
We'll all make a bob or two when the banks are 'privatised' again.
The real villains are illiterate financial journalism and red tops who promoted the notion of indirect taxation as a panacea to actually making stuff and working. No government could stand against the expanding bubble, while the proles felt richer than the poor bugger next door who rented HIS council flat. The Tories were screamingly silent, and by implication complicit in the big lie.
But whoever gets in, we'll be scraping the brown stuff off the walls for a generation or two.I now think I'd prefer Broon and the Badger for another term.
7. The Baldman said...
braindeed
Who ever gets in will have to reduce the deficit as our international creditors will demand this. IMHO.
8. will said...
Mandy wants to sort out the debt that Labour created. LOL.
9. braindeed said...
No Mandy wants to sort out the nation.s credit binge, suddenly everyone had a 4x4 and took 3 holidays a year by mewing their 'wealth'..
10. braindeed said...
I'm all right Jack......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkhX5W7JoWI
11. growler said...
@8. a bit of a stereotype. More like... everyone had an "affordable" mortgage of 6 x salary interest only..
We over-estimate the influence our politicians have. If Mandy can blame the UKs situation on the rest of the world, it must follow that what the rest of the World do will influence Britain. Cameron or no Cameron - the UK has to fix the problem and it doesn't matter who is in power. Thinking Cameron will cause a singular problem in the UK alone implys it was also the UK alone that created it. Mandy and his party can't have it both ways.
12. will said...
@9 braindeed
Do I take it you are a Labour supporter?
13. braindeed said...
Will @9
Do I take it that you read the 'Star'?
14. smugdog said...
A very clever man our Mandy. Don't underestimate him.
15. braindeed said...
Growler@10....We over-estimate the influence our politicians have.
Politicians except Dave, presumably.
The Party ystem stinks.
16. enuii said...
Braindeed, sorry; 'Mandy wants to sort out the nation.s credit binge, suddenly everyone had a 4x4 and took 3 holidays a year by mewing their 'wealth'. Is the sort of crass egotistical generalisation that goes down badly with all of us who havn't - who I suspect are the majority!
17. braindeed said...
15. enuii said...egotistical
Are you on drugs?
18. Growler said...
@braindeed
It doesn't matter who is in power - the UK has a problem that needs fixing. Labour are defaulting back to profile, except Tax and Spend has now become Borrow and Spend.
Having seen a few boom and busts in the UK, it seems uncannily a familiar tale. One side say you have to spend your way out of recession, the other you have to spend less. All I can see - regardless of the recession and who caused it - is huge fleets of managers in hospitals, an education system that has made a "C" the new "A", the total mis-management of financial instituions through the Financial Supine Authority - and a headline generating state. Great "new money" for this and that - but hurdles and hooks that means no money gets spent.
Lets call a spade a spade. We've created a huge welfare state - and notwithstanding the fact we can't actually afford, it hasn't done anything but absorb lots of money.
In the heart of hearts of the smelliest of socks, do you think school league tables, hospital waiting list targets, anti-terror laws for food waste in black bins, ever more starred A grades, a population that has the worst teenage pregnancy, alchohol and drug problem, more OFwatts than I can think of yet indecipherable yet legal utility pricing and - piece de la resistance - creation of "banks to big to fail" under the watch is something we can be proud of?
We need to get real, fast.
19. alan_540 said...
Smugdog @13... Too true, he was one of the architects of New Labour. Very smooth operator. Gordon is riding the back of the tiger.
20. dude said...
Labour has been successful for three terms mainly because it has moved away from being a party of the working class. Clause 4 is dead, and Tony Blair would never have made it up the ranks in the early 80s. GB has a more core Labour background, but recognises the need to move to the centre to make progress in many of the marginals, where the next election will be won.
If this was a Tory government, indeed when it was a Tory government, the shine had long gone off what they had originally promised at this part in the cycle. At the end of their third term in 1992 it was widely expected they would lose.
Unfortunately with all parties bunching in the middle, the two extremes are feeling rather left out. Redistribution and public funded services, paid out of taxation and not by then end users competes with the privatise everything because that is the only way to generate wealth. Of course *both* these stances are correct, just contradictory. Only by accepting that both are essential (one for social stability and one for wealth generation) and that some model should be created to bring them together.
Unfortunately neither Labour nor the Tories are planning to do this. But alienating homeowners by having policies to markedly reduce house prices helps neither party. So don't hold your breath. I for one certainly want to see very low interest rates to continue for as long as possible, so I can overpay as much of my mortgage as possible.
21. fallingbuzzard said...
@dude
That last sentence just about sums up the average voter. You want interest rates to stay low so you can overpay your mortgage. Do you expect inflation or not then?
22. dude said...
@fallingbuzzard:
indeed I do. So the less I owe when that happens the better it will be for me. Just got to convince the wife it is better in the mortgage than spent 'to have a good time' (her words!).