Tuesday, Mar 30, 2010
Vince Aced it
BBC: Darling in debate clash with rivals on tax and spending
Made George & Al look like history graduate no marks.
Posted by doomwatch @ 09:06 AM (1116 views) Add Comment
12 Comments
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1. str 2007 said...
Good viewing lkast night (don't think this link works BTW)
Vince definately seemed to be the most popular with the audience.
He was the most honest saying he wouldn't 'ring fence' the NHS but would look for effieciency savings within it.
Audience seemed to accept this.
VC gave the most honest contribution by far.
And the audience seemed to appreciate this.
What I don't get is why the audience would then go out and vote Conservative or Labour.
They should re-run this programme on the BBC instead of Eastenders. The public need to listen to this.
IMO The Labour Party got off the hook fairly lightly given they've precided over this whole mess.
2. powerofnow said...
Unsurprisingly the BBC changed tack with their reporting style on this debate. Unlike the US presidential debates where the Beeb quickly identified who they thought came out on top, with this debate they did not report that Vince Cable stood out as the 'winner'.... I suppose they didn't want to confuse the sheeple.
3. doomwatch said...
powerofnow : Sky News were worse this morning. The only clip they showed was the bit where GO got a slight [only]
laugh from the audience when AD wobbled a bit. Shocking, shocking bias.
Vince had a solid, transparent and credible plan. The other 2 muppets just looked like amateurs. In fact GO's understanding
of macro economics and fiscal planning beggar belief. God help us.
4. tenant super said...
As expected the questions were as expected (bonuses, jobs, cuts, tax) so the men had their prepared stock answers and there were no difficult questions to test their debating skills.That coupled with the short presentation style meant we didn't hear anything new and tho whole thing was, in my opinion, a complete bore.
I disagree that Cable put in a performance far above the others. He went in with popularity behind him and traded a little on his status as economic guru. When they were asked why they didn't predict the crisis, he got a round of applause based on his former record not anything new he bought to the table last night. He is not a guru, he is just the only senior politican with anything resembling common sense.
His debating skills were fractionally better than Osborne's. In fact, Osborne put in a far better performance than I had anticipated. Darling was the worst of the three by a long way. It was clever of Osborne to say at the end "With all respect to Vince, it's between me and Alistair" reminding voters in the marginals of this. I think it was UT who predicted that the UKIP vote will collapse and the Conservatives will win the marginals as a result when old-school tories crumble and reluctantly vote 'Dave' in the face of reality.
I like Vince Cable and would love him to be chancellor. I liked what he said about increasing spending on Mental Health. NHS resource allocation is based on emotion. Neo-natal facilities always get lots of money because people like babies, they're cute. Nobody likes old, smelly people or those with mental health probIems. As we lose our status as global player, our tactical nuclear deterrant is also pointless so agree that Trident should go. I am also a libertarian and so like a lot of lib dem policies in areas of social policy like drug classification. However, like most right wing libertarians, I can't stomach some of their economic policies.
5. uncle tom said...
I didn't think VC showed that well; you didn't come away thinking that he could fix the economy any better than the other two. We all know he warned of the impending dangers (as did I, and many others..) but he was very lite on solutions going forward..
GO could have been worse, and gave the impression that he's got a pretty good idea as to how he wants to tackle the economic crisis, should he be elected. But he is so lacking in gravitas, it is hard for him to sound convincing..
AD was treading water, and managed to look more confident than the other two. He got off quite lightly..
6. This comment has been removed as it was found to be in breach of our Blog Policies.
7. tenant super said...
I agree AD looked more confident. His delivery was very good, it's the substance that I rated third!
8. tenant super said...
"IMO he looked like a retard, playing in the road, and caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck"
Well he mentioned that the severe downturn was experienced across the globe but at least he didn't keep emphasising the GLOBAL economic downturn as if we had behaved with total modaration and sense and just caught some strange alien sub-prime pox off the yanks. I would have switched over if he did.
9. a saver said...
I missed the programme but accidentally saw AD on the news a few days ago.
Never fails to irritate me the way he treats people like utter morons, as does GB.
When asked about how the budget changes would affect savers, many of whom are older citizens, he replied well older people would be getting the cold weather allowance to help with their fuel bills after this cold winter!
When the BOE had just cut IRs to a derisory 0.5%, AD/GB? said they realised that this was hard on older savers, but they would remedy this at the next (2009) budget. What did they do? They let you save a few more K in your ISA! Big deal, when you're lucky to get 3%!
10. orcusmaximus said...
When they were asked to spell out where they were going to save money, both AD and GO dodged the question, whereas VC reeled off a huge list of areas! It was quite impressive.
I was disgusted by AD refusing to countenance cutting spending.
11. mr g said...
What is it that makes people think that Cable is this country's potential saviour?
Whilst he might have been Chief Economist for Shell from 1995 to 1997, as far as I'm aware, his main claim to economic competence is, to quote Wikipedia:
Cable is credited by some with prescience of the Global financial crisis of 2008–2009. In November 2003, Cable asked Gordon Brown, then Chancellor, "Is not the brutal truth that … the growth of the British economy is sustained by consumer spending pinned against record levels of personal debt, which is secured, if at all, against house prices that the Bank of England describes as well above equilibrium level?" Brown replied, "As the Bank of England said yesterday, consumer spending is returning to trend. The Governor said: 'there is no indication that the scale of debt problems have… risen markedly in the last five years.' He also said that the fraction of household income used up in debt service is lower than it was then."
I'm sure that many contributors to HPC were as prescient as VC of the house of cards economy in 2003, therefore does that make us all potential saviours of the UK?
12. letthemfall said...
I think the view to who "won" the debate - a curious notion - depends on ones political allegiance as much as anything. So those who support Cons or Lab will be a touch sniffy about VC, just as GO was in his supercilious closing remarks. For my money VC spoke more openly, less evasively than the other two, who weaved and stole their way through the political discussion lest they stick they foot in it and blow the election.
But his ideas stand apart from the other two and offer an alternative to the Cons, who will favour the wealthy and not take too much trouble to hide it, and Lab, who also favour the wealthy but spend a lot of effort pretending otherwise.