Not one for smileys, but:

Back to the politics.... Who controls the economy anyway? Does the government?

Seeing as they have their hands on the Bank of England, yes.

I'd say that means they control monetary policy, rather than the economy. If the City decides to have a run on the pound, or to push the value of stocks and shares down, then the government is pretty powerless.

It is my belief that you are moving more towards global economics, in that respect. Which, as you quite rightly say is outside government control and more under the auspices of the likes of Soros.

Day-to-day spending, saving and loans, do sit under government control purely through controlling the base rate.

Thought Brussels controlled all aspects of our lives anyway.

This will be my 1st time voting and I am relishing putting a cross in the box next to the Labour Party. They are the party who makes small mistakes but gets the big decisions right. The Conservative Party were the only major party in the World who opposed fiscal stimulus as an economic recovery method, without it the Recession would have been far more horrific.

As many have also alluded to - Cameron is unelectable, it's took him many years to finally arrive on a handful of policies, though any scrutiny questions are completely forbidden. His fellow Etonite Mr Osborne is the weak link, hence why he's been hidden from public interviews in recent weeks, this role has instead been left to other members of the Shadow Cabinet who the British Public have already said NO to. Labour have a strong Cabinet - Burnham, Darling, Balls, Mandelson, Straw, Johnson and the Millibands, a great mix of experience and New ideas.

It's going to be a frantic 4 weeks and we'll have to be ferocious in our onslaught on the Tories if we want to win, as well as fighting the battle against the fascist BNP.

My heart says Labour by 2, head says Hung Parliament where I hope the Libs will join with us, would be shocking to see a party so similar to Labour backing a right wing agenda.

Nobody controls the economy because its an open economy and it exists as one of hundreds of economies in the world. Various bodies have a big influence over it, ie the Bank of England, the Treasury and the City.

The government doesn't have their hands on the Bank of England, all they do is set the target inflation rate which the Bank of England is supposed to work towards. Other than that the BoE is independent. They probably have the biggest influence over the UK economy of any domestic player because they can increase or decrease the money supply on a daily basis and they control the rate of interest which has a huge impact on all businesses and households decisions on saving and borrowing/investing.

The Treasury obviously is controlled by the government and as it makes decisions on what to do with the entire amount of taxpayers money it is the richest player in the market, it decides how much money the government borrows off the markets, and the Chancellor sets taxation rates so influences decisions on saving and consumption in a similar way to the BoE with interest rates.

However neither the BoE nor the Treasury are entirely independent because other parties can force their hands, eg when big banks like HBOS and RBS collapsed, the Treasury didn't really have a choice other than to bail them out, else the whole financial system of borrowing and lending for households and businesses would have collapsed. We were also scuppered by the Bundesbank raising interest rates when we were trying to stay in the ERM, the markets realised we couldn't stay in indefinitely and started to sell, and for all our interventionist efforts we just threw good money after bad.

Okay Mr Farage.

The conservatives might stand a chance if they had better policies than "they other lot are rubbish". Thats all Cameron and his cronies have come up.

It's a shame that this is the opinion of a lot of people. What we have in this country is anything but a democracy. At best, it is a flawed democracy. We have an uniformed and, largely, disinterested electorate. Many people don't take the time to educate themselves about Politics; look up the parties' policies, research who their local candidiates and representatives are, etc. And the really sad thing is that those with the responsibility of informing the electorate fail to do so. Britain's biggest selling Newspaper, The Sun, has the leader of one Political party (David Cameron) writing for it, while not allowing his opposition leader the right of reply. That isn't democracy. It's a one-sided agenda.
The largely right-wing press - The Daily Mail, Sun, Telegraph - have been practically smearing Labour on a regular basis since the dawn of their publication (lies about Kinnock, "The Sun Wot Won It", The etc) and over the next month the mud slinging will no doubt increase.
But for the large part it just creates apathy amongst the electorate, who get bored of the repeated "they're no good" rhetoric, without hearing why either side is better. Most papers run with the 'if it bleeds, it leads' motto and will run anything negative against their opposition rather than highlighting the policies of all sides and allowing the public access to the relevant information, rather than building up and then tearing apart personalities. It's a disgrace that personality takes priority over policies. Voting for 'change' is a flawed ideal IMO, as nobody knows what this 'change' is they'd be voting for. Cameron's lack of policies make him an absolute joke of a party leader tbh. As bad as Brown has been made out to be by certain sections of the media, at the very least, he has clear policies on issues. The only thing I've heard from Cameron is a proposed tax break for married couples and the laying of the blame of 'Broken Britain' on single parent families.
What people have to question is why are the Sun suddenly up Cameron's ? Many are suggesting that Cameron is looking at laxing the mergers and takeovers laws, allowing Murdoch more power than he already has within the media and journalism in this country. A pretty dangerous scenario IMO.

What's more is that I feel that Politicians themselves should do more to involve the electorate. We only see them on public transport and kissing babies in the weeks leading up to en election. Why can't we see them down the shops for the other 11 months of the year? Why can't they speak to the public themselves find out the issues that they feel important? It is a two way process, though, and I think more people need to take responsibility for their vote. The right to vote is the biggest thing we have and so many people take it for granted, it's unreal.

All that said, I think Labour will actually win this election. There's been a big swing back towards Labour in the opinion polls lately - as you'd expect in the run-up to an election. If anything, the Sun has lost readers since it's switch to the Etonians and I really can't see them getting the majority they need, especially in marginal seats.

So you want all the foreigners out, but want a Polish PM?

In a nutshell this is where we are with politics and politicians - it's about them and not about us I'm afraid. You have summed up everything that is rotten with the political system at present and I applaud you on that.

Great - we'll all do the same then shall we and take advantage of the system? And where would that lead economically, fiscally and socially?



I would suggest that anything that reduces the existence of benefit scroungers and reduces the burden on the poor tax payer is no bad thing and hardly a mainstream policy that diverts attention away from:_

cutting taxes for the rich - so what? If you've earned it you should keep it, if you're a benefit scrounger tough sh**;

slashing public services - even if there were no cut in the existing level of spending in public services tragically you'll find that the level of public service will be falling because of the the amount of money due from the public sector to Pfi companies which own all the new schools and hospitals over the next 30 years. Your Labour Govt's love and obsession with all things off-balance sheet really is going to be felt and noticed;

mass unemployment - it's not the 80's anymore you know ....... let it go;

poverty - people are working harder than ever to survive and to make their rent/mortgage payments ...... tax & NI - council tax - bills - the cost of Iraq - the cost of bailing out the banks etc etc. what are you expecting them to do?

homelessness - what homelessness? Everyone's entitled to something anyway aren't they if you know the system?

Not decrying your right to choose who you wish to vote for as we do live in a democracy the rest of it is about as wrong as you can get. Ask yourself the question - why are we in a recession and who put us there?

Labour like to spend other peoples money (the taxpayers) trying out stuff that might work but has never been thought out because none of them has ever done anything apart from play at being a politician!

What they have done "for the good of society" in the last 2 terms in power is totally changed the UK into something that is totally unrecognisable to what it was as an exercise in social engineering no doubt dreamt up by a handful of them with the strictest intentions of creating a reliance on the state for the large voting majority so that they would never be unelected again ..................

Because mortgage lenders in the USA lent too much money to people who were a bad credit risk, too many people defaulted and when the markets realised that there were a lot of defaulters in the system, the whole trade of "selling on debt" collapsed and they went into a panic and stopped lending, hence the credit crunch, hence the global recession started. Unfortunately because the biggest sector of the UK economy is the financial services sector, we felt it worse than most other countries, and also because we are financing a war which most other countries don't have to pay for. Regardless of what the Tories will try to claim, the same would have happened under their stewardship, and it's not as though Tory economic policy is proven to be recession proof, we had lengthy recessions under Thatcher and Major which were not global led in which the levels of inflation and unemployment were far higher than this one.

A finger can legitimately be pointed at Labour because they had been running a budget deficit over the past few years, around the turn of the millennium for a few years the government was running a fiscal surplus not a deficit, we then started running a deficit again at the time we started financing a war. The Tories keep saying that this is the biggest level of government debt in peacetime, they need to start keeping an eye on foreign affairs, we're at war.

We could talk for 40 days and 40 nights and obviously never agree. I just do not accept that politicians are that cynical. They want to improve people's lot, that's why they do it (even the Tories). I happen to think the Labour Party's way of going about it is better. I know you mocked my references to mass unemployment, poverty and homelessness on your other post. Yes, they are very 1980s, so let's not go back there.

I get the feeling that people deliberately choose to ignore this, citing Brown specifically (due to his tenure as Chancellor and his prudent stance) as the erason that we have been 'led' into this recession. As you have pointed out we have felt the effects of a global financial meltdown. We are not alone in this, unlike Black Wednesday.

best not mention the millions of the poorest in society who were screwed by the labour party when the 10p tax was abolished either through incompetence or vindictiveness.

none of the 3 main parties deserve my vote.

Why not? What do they need to do to "deserve" your vote?

This thread shows why people get so disillusioned and frankly, bored, when it comes to an election or politics in general in the UK. I said at the start that it's all just will waving without any real end substance and this thread is exactly the same. Everyone just posts what they think, and the next person tries to better/disagree with it. The thread will go on and on and until all the fuss is over, Labour get voted back in and we all get on with our miserable lives.

Just face it, who ever gets in, the majority of our lives will not change. Something may change from which we benefit, but to pay for it, we will be disadvantaged or punished somewhere else.

It's all swings and roundabouts.

Err, yes, that's the point of political debate. What else should we do?

The point is, that it's rarely debate aimed at actually benefiting the public. Rarely do you tune in to a clip from the HoC and hear any proper debate on issues which you come away from thinking.. yes, I agree with that particular argument.

All you see and hear is 2 crowds of numpties (parties) trying to point out where the other party tripped up recently in a press or public conference. Everyone shouts hear hear on one side and the other side boo like saints fans. A point is won and we move on to the next round.

These folk are so dettached from the real world it's not even funny.

Read the broadsheets, watch Channel 4 News, watch Newsnight, listen to Radio 4 news programmes. That's where the policies are debated.