Will that be the one that many people said would not create growth and would, instead, cause more problems and a greater deficit?

The crux of the matter is we are in a Catch 22 position - all ideas for growth that I have seen involve further borrowing, which is how we got into this mess. To carry on doing that is just not an option. The idea is that we have to get back to somewhere near where we were at before / near the start of the long period debt-fuelled "boom" period by a process of "de-leveraging". That involves living standards and real wealth being diminished in as painless a way as possible. The capitalist way would have been to let the banks go bust, mass repossession of houses, mass foreclosure of business loans, etc. That was unpalatable, so people in power have played for time and continue to do so. But make no mistake, there is no way out that does not result in significant loss of living standards (which will inevitably also include public services, as seen in Greece, Ireland, and to a lesser extent, to date, here).

Tell George it's not an option, he's borrowing more.
In fact, tell Cameron that George is borrowing more, because Cameron doesn't seem to realise it judging by his PMQs this week when he scoffed at the opposition about "wanting to borrow more, which is what got us into this mess in the first place".

But George is doing it not to boost growth, nope, he's doing it to pay dole and because he's getting less in tax take.
Maybe he hasn't twigged that if you will allow businesses (e.g. Vodafone) to avoid tax (e.g. £6bn) when you've already got a legal judgement to force them to do so, you will get less tax take, won't you?

Look at the French going on the attack.

It's every man for himself in this crisis.

It was a response to the fact you didn't like the fact I (unwittingly) quoted an independent think tank that you think (probably rightly) is Eurosceptic.

I originally quoted the Guarniad, a quote which which you ignored, and I followed that up with a joke suggesting that I couldn't find anything more left wing than that to support my argument.

I was replying to a charge that Blair would have successfully sorted this problem. Apparently he was such a good negotiator that it wouldn't have been any problem whatsoever for Tony to have sorted this. My argument, which I stand by, is that he failed to deliver what he set out to deliver in previous negotiations and therefore the idea that he would have sorted this one was flawed. That's my view and the one I stick with. It isn't a support for Cameron - I haven't stated my view on Cameron's performance at the last summit nor have I stated my view on the single market.

As you well know I have worked for a French multi national for 22 years who manufacture in this country mainly because they sell lots of their products in this country and it makes sense to do so. Of course there are exports and imports involved and the single market is crucial. Unfortunately the single market is no longer the main issue - which it should be. As the doomed single currency in the Eurozone breaks down we see individual countries (and at the moment one predictable one in particular) begin to lash around and attack us because they wish they hadn't joined. Amusingly the likes of Blair (and that political genius heavyweight Ashdown) have said within the last month that we still could join. Whoever was slagging Brown in a previous post should think again. He might have destroyed Britain's private sector pension industry with the removal of tax relief on dividends paid into pension funds (the single main reason today why public and private sector employees are at odds with each other in regard to pension provision) but at least he stopped Tony from joining the most ill thought out Franco German project of all time that was always doomed to failure. The five economic tests - well done Gordon.

We need another Labour Government:

The Labour message that 'everyone can have anything now without paying for it' is far more appealing than the coalition message that one must pay for what one consumes.

The economic boom of the last 10 years was an illusion built largely upon cheap credit and people getting rich quick off the back of massive rises in the housing market. Now the time has come to repay the debts the economy has gone massively t1ts up.

So the Conservative party will presumably be regulating the credit market to ensure that this does not happen again?

I expect they will also be regulating the financial services sector so that the banks cannot squander savers money whilst paying themselves high bonuses and leave the risk to the taxpayer if they become insolvent?

Don't worry i'm sure a resource based economy is just around the corner.

Soylent Green, it's the new black

Agreed



Now when did Labour ever say such a thing?



The last ten years?

Go back a little further sunshine, it was t'conservatives that deregulated banks and laid the path for demutualising building societies. They were the ones that flogged off the nation's assets in the name of free-enterprise & choice. Tell me which water supplier you chose to buy from?

It was also the conservatives that directly gave us the unsustainable house price boom. You can't seriously lay that one at Labour's door, not even noooooo Labour

I didn't [idislike[/i it. I pointed out that it was hardly a balanced take on what happened.


I didn't ignore the Grauniad quote. I didn't comment on it because there was nothing in it that I had a problem with, although subsequently I've commented that I don't agree with your interpretation of what they had to say. That probably explains why I didn't understand your quip about the SW.


And I wasn't supporting Blair [iper se[/i nor agreeing with the position that he would have sorted the current situation with a snap of his fingers. I think he was a far better diplomat and negotiator that Cameron will ever be, but the main thrust of my posts were disagreeing with the accuracy of the evidence presented rather than agreeing with the opposite view. If you see what I mean.




And as you well know I've worked for the last 30-odd years in a major industry where the opposite applies and where companies have set up shop in the UK [ispecifically[/i because of the single market. Make no mistake about it - dropping out of the single market would do enormous harm to the UK economy. Assuming that the single market survives the current crisis of course...

As far as the Euro goes I am and always have been in favour of it in principle. I have also always been critical of the way that it was actually implemented - in particular the waiving or ignoring of critical and eminently sensible rules on admission to the Eurozone just to expand it as rapidly as possible. What is happening now is not a reflection on the fundamental practicality of a single currency but the reaping of a whirlwind sown when the likes of Greece and Italy were admitted to it when they were nowhere near fulfilling the criteria. I haven't seen the comments from Blair and Ashdown (a man I loath BTW) as I've been out of the country for the last three days, but if either is suggesting that we could join the Euro any time soon then they need to put away their crack pipes. Europe is in a mess, and the path they're going down at the moment - one I fundamentally disagree with as it is hugely undemocratic - is not going to sort it out.

Me too, in fact the main reason that the UK didn't join the Euro at its inception was because too many dipsticks thought it should be called "Pound" instead of euro, an attitude that wasn't prevalent across the whole of the rest of Europe where renaming your centuries old currency was just not a big deal at all - no wonder they despair of us sometimes.

Pension holidays, anyone?

How much was it that Goldman Sachs got let off, with a handshake, in fines for unpaid taxes, IIRC?

The "events" presumably being every aspect of the economy getting worse and every one of his predictions having turned out to be wrong

The last thing this country ever needs again is a labour government,

you re not wrong there.


however cameron has gone down in my estimation after playing a blinder with the veto last week and then coming out with all this god/religion crap yesterday.
no need to mix politics and make believe.

It's just pandering to the make believe mystical man in the sky worshipping nut jobs though, there's a fair few of them and every vote counts unfortunately.

Yeah because who needs things like sex-discrimination legislation, race-discrimination legislation, disability-discrimination legislation, minimum wage, the NHS, the social welfare system and all that other guff eh?

Obviously the politicians are hopeless compared to the posters on this forum.
Dally for PM
Mintball for chancellor
What a coalition that could be............

There are lots of reasons for the rise and fall of UK defined benefits pensions schemes, but the main drivers have been government policy (primarily taxaxtion), rising costs and accounting standards.

When you say pensions holidays who are you blaming?

Who allowed pensions holidays?

Thank goodness you have no political opinions and, therefore, never express any.

Presumably, you don't vote either?

So in the last year or so, you've have fared better with, say, no free health care, yes?



I'd agree – except to say that I'm less offended by that than our getting involved in a civil war in Africa and spending yet more billions bombing people. Perhaps you liked that?

Pension funds had their heyday in the days of high taxes, both corporation tax and income tax (83% income tax on earnings of over 20,000, CT at 52% etc). It was more efficient for employers and employees to reward via pension contributions, rather than extra salary. Companies got 52% tax relief on contributions, employees did have an immediate and high tax liability. That period corresponded with high stock market growth and the back-end of the era of big numbers in employments compared with pensioners, so the garden was rosy.

Then the Revenue, under the Tories, saw companies using over-funded pension funds for tax abuse and paying off the higher paid in their 50s to replace them with cheaper, younger people. So they sought to tax surpluses. Companies then started to take holidays as the stock market was booming and creating apparent surpluses. The Pensions Act that came in after Maxwell's abuse exaggerated the problem. Then Brown went for the stealth tax option too. It was then realised that actuarial factors were inaccurate and people were living longer, costs of schemes were increased due to legislation, employee numbers were falling and liabilities to present and future pensioners rising and stockmarkets were not going anywhere, so companies were getting out at an increasing rate. Then FRS 17 (an accounting standard) came in which was the final straw for many companies.

In short, with the significant exceptions of actuarial cock-ups and accounting standard setters, most of the boom and bust in defined benefit pension provision has been driven by politicians and their inability to think through (or care about) the longer term results of their actions.