Politics Thread!

[pogo]

The deficit's under control. If it weren't we'd rapidly find ourselves unable to borrow money, real borrowing costs would have rocketed and the pound fallen far further. We might have needed rescuing by the IMF again.

At least there was a real danger of this four years ago. Things are very different now with interest rates around the world seemingly stuck at zero or near-zero levels. There's a massive hunt for yield leading e.g. investors to pile into the pound just this week on the vaguest hint that rates would start rising sooner than expected. Even Spain, Greece etc. are finding it cheaper to borrow now than pre-crisis, which makes little sense given their economic fundamentals.

[VNVObit]

The deficit's under control. If it weren't we'd rapidly find ourselves unable to borrow money, real borrowing costs would have rocketed and the pound fallen far further. We might have needed rescuing by the IMF again.

At least there was a real danger of this four years ago. Things are very different now with interest rates around the world seemingly stuck at zero or near-zero levels. There's a massive hunt for yield leading e.g. investors to pile into the pound just this week on the vaguest hint that rates would start rising sooner than expected. Even Spain, Greece etc. are finding it cheaper to borrow now than pre-crisis, which makes little sense given their economic fundamentals.

more cash in leading to higher exchange rate, adverse impact on exports, increase in imports and all because Gideon wants the Bank of England to be responsible for house prices ignoring his own policy of "help to buy" which has added fuel to increasing the housing bubble.

definitely under control

[pogo]

The exchange rate is up as the economy is recovering, causing people to put money into the country, just as the pound fell at the start of the crisis.

The pound is still well below levels pre-crisis though, and this I think explains the (to many unexpected) resilience of the economy. Despite the recession which was worse than most other countries unemployment didn't rise much and is now falling, while employment is at record levels. Exports haven't risen but they should have collapsed, with our main trading partners almost all suffering. We've weathered this, and been able to avoid major job losses, due to the low pound.

(Conversely countries in the eurozone have had recessions but been unable to do anything about the exchange rate. Hence their far worse recoveries, especially their much worse unemployment).

Now we're recovering, causing interest rate expectations to rise and the pound to look more attractive. Which is a good thing. We want the country to be one where people want to invest.

Housing is a problem. Not due to Help to Buy which has helped only a few thousand people, most outside London where the biggest price rises have been. They need to do more on the supply side though, i.e. build many more houses. Hopefully they will see the sense of this and announce something soon.

[gumboot]

Idiot:

Seems there's a spate of it

Milliband's the only one not open on page 3. What a homo!

[gravy]

I wish we'd ended up with Alan Johnson.

Anyone read his autobiography, it's supposed to be excellent

[merman]

House prices up 9.9% in a year.

Inflation may have dropped to 1.5% last month (RPI down to 2.4%) but wages are still increasing by a lot less.

This recovery is not being handled well.

But don't worry, Cameron is busy selling out to the Chinese and offering them quicker visa applications. Immigration is bad except when they can invest billions, right?

[Absolute_Zero]

Yerp, it's a macro-economic disaster the likes of which I've never seen.

You're an idiot, Ethel... last month bleating about a 0.1% CPI blip that moved the rate toward the target. Either that or you waste far too much energy lying for Jesus.

[zip accident]

lying for Jesus.

Now there's a phrase.

[pogo]

House prices up 9.9% in a year.

Inflation may have dropped to 1.5% last month (RPI down to 2.4%) but wages are still increasing by a lot less.

This recovery is not being handled well.

We want inflation down and wages up from where they were mid-recession (5% and 0% then) and that's what we've got. It's moving in the right direction which is the main thing. More importantly unemployment is falling, which apart from being good in its own right will drive up wages. It's a recovery; the economy's not recovered but it's well on its way.


House prices are rising more quickly than they should be. It's important not to read too much into the headline figure which is being heavily distorted by London and the South East. Strip those out and the average is more like 6%, though that's still too high. We need to be building many more homes.

But don't worry, Cameron is busy selling out to the Chinese and offering them quicker visa applications. Immigration is bad except when they can invest billions, right?

I don't know where to start with this one ! There is a pressing need to do something about the visa problem. France receives something like ten times as many Chinese tourists as the UK, the same tourists who are the top spenders on luxury goods when travelling. This is insane: many would love to come here, for the culture, the shopping, the strong historic connections, or just as many more of them speak English than any other European language.

The reason is the Schengen Area agreement, which lets Chinese tourists get one visa for 26 countries but not including the UK. Getting a UK is a separate expensive and time consuming business so most don't bother. Doing something about this is a no-brainer as it will be massive boost to tourism.

It's not about immigration which the government still seems keen to suppress. It's nothing to do with investment, such as in HS2 which they seem to be doing for purely commercial reasons. The Chinese Development Bank is charged with finding good investment opportunities overseas and they've picked HS2. Some might question the wisdom of this but that's for the CDB to decide. They might just be diversifying away from their traditional holdings of US treasuries and investments in developing nations.

[(o)(o)]

He probably believed what he was saying in the first half of this parliament: that the government was cutting too hard too fast. He didn't do enough to distinguish himself from the more extreme "no cuts" movement, and [A] didn't say what he would cut, but being in opposition he had the luxury of not having to make policy decisions.

The problem is his dire predictions about the consequences haven't transpired. The recession Tory policies would cause? Didn't happen, [C]we only had one recession and it ended in 2009. [D]Mass unemployment because of civil servant cuts? Again didn't happen, after rising because of the recession unemployment has been falling for two and a half years. The employment rate has been rising even longer, for almost three years (so all but a year of this parliament), and is close to an all time record.

So [E]his convictions about the economy have been proven very wrong, since when he's been grasping at straws to find something to replace it. He's been [F]unwilling to admit to Labour's part in the 2008-2009 recession, which makes many suspicious that he would make many of the same mistakes of the Brown-Blair government. A year until the election, so lots of time to come up with a policy platform and manifesto, but he's still got a lot of work to do.

This probably your most retarded political post so far.

Almost 100% lies/nonsense.

A) Labour set out a longer less severe cuts programme which was published nationally. Ignorance is no excuse for criminal stupidity!
B) The consequences of the conservatives ideological cuts / social cleansing programme et al are occurring NOW with frontline services being shut down, people in work requiring benefits to survive, zero contract labour, millions of disabled and poor people being illegitimately sanctioned and denied benefits, increasing reliance on food shelters, people on the breadline or being forced to move to slums due to bedroom tax etc etc.. all while the rich are getting richer. Let's not forget the mass rioting that occured a couple of years ago which the police were unable to contain, Pogo, And what a lot of people don't realise is, these cuts are only just starting to kick in, and many haven't begun yet.
C) Condem inherited GROWTH which, despite your lies, Condem turned around into a double dip recession.
D) There isn't mass unemployment because oligarchies of corporations are in concert paying their staff below living wage with staff having their wages topped up by tax payers money in benefits, and the usual fudging of figures from conservatives (as per Thatcher years) with large numbers being removed from unemployment figures via sanctions and work programmes that cost the tax payer money whilst being less effective than doing nothing.
E) Labour were on point with their budget programme and the outcome would have been healthier for all with less suffering (though of course Labour are the lesser of two evils).
F) You keep repeating the same lies. Gordon Brown admitted he was wrong to be light on regulation, he fully admitted that, but the 2008-2009 recession was NOT caused by Labour, it was caused by a number of factors predominantly a banking crisis. Otherwise it wouldn't have affected the whole of Europe, would it, dickhead.

Conclusion : The usual steaming pile of bollocks.

The worst problem right now is complacency. The masses are being deluded. They have been deluded into thinking immigrants are to blame, that 'scroungers' are to blame, now they are being deluded that growth is lovely and rosy.

If you not a low earner, don't know anybody who is disabled, out of work, etc, you may be blind to the effects which disproportionately hit the poor and are being positioned below radar in mainstream media. You probably haven't paid much heed to the undercurrent of information that is easily accessible if you look beyond your nose.

Meanwhile, the conservatives continue to dismantle the infrastructure of the country, pumping up another housing bubble, whilst practically destroyed the NHS (TTIP has ensured that it's effectively privatised via the backdoor).. dismantling welfare.. taking the system back 40 years with learning-by-rote and injecting commercialization.. it's disgusting isn't it !!

Just the tip of the iceberg anyway. You can't look at the UK economy in isolation without considering the "perfect storm" that is approaching very quickly.

Climate change
Overpopulation
Food shortages
Financial system collapse

[pogo]

I'm not going to rebut that point by point, anyone can read my original post. I'll just point out a few things:
* it's factually wrong to say we had a double-dip recession: see the 1st graph here; can you say where the second dip is? You can't as there isn't one.
* What Labour cuts programme/budget programme? Please link to the programme they set out.
* As for 'consequences' we've just had the worst recession since the 1920s, which hit real incomes particularly hard, down by 10-20% across the board. So many more people are struggling. It's taken time but we're at long last moving in the right direction. Meanwhile government policies have done a lot to help the low paid, in particular raising the personal allowance.
* Yes, wages are down, more people are working part time or on 'zero hours'. The best fix for that is to create more full time jobs for people who want them which the economy is doing – employment is at record levels.

[Governmentyard]

We believe that teachers – not bureaucrats and politicians – should run schools

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazin ... r-27888584

[Governmentyard]

* Yes, wages are down, more people are working part time or on 'zero hours'. The best fix for that is to create more full time jobs for people who want them which the economy is doing – employment is at record levels.

...because people are being forced to accept useless part-time jobs.

[(o)(o)]

I'm not going to rebut that point by point, anyone can read my original post. I'll just point out a few things:
* it's factually wrong to say we had a double-dip recession:

I'll give you this one. Apparently the double-dip recession was "revised away" - by the narrowest of margins.

However : "ONS was keen to point out that the fact that the UK avoided a double-dip recession by the smallest of margins was largely academic in the greater scheme of things."

* What Labour cuts programme/budget programme? Please link to the programme they set out.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... -timetable

Now let's have your retraction ..

* As for 'consequences' we've just had the worst recession since the 1920s, which hit real incomes particularly hard, down by 10-20% across the board. So many more people are struggling. It's taken time but we're at long last moving in the right direction. Meanwhile government policies have done a lot to help the low paid, in particular raising the personal allowance.

Vague babble saying nothing in particular. What we have seen are some of the most regressive policies imaginable that hit hardest the people who need it least. People earning above a certain level.. say £50-80k a couple.. or those who have inherited a substantial amount of cash (heeeello there!) may have barely have felt "the crisis".. that's cos the policies are directed at low earners / unemployed / youth/ poor / disabled people who have been hit hard. The policies are regressive across the board, and are based on immoral ideological principles.

* Yes, wages are down, more people are working part time or on 'zero hours'. The best fix for that is to create more full time jobs for people who want them which the economy is doing – employment is at record levels.

How many of them are in work programmes pogo ??

I can see your mind is about as closed to new ideas as a clam is to stretching wide open and sunbathing...however I have a book recommendation ideal for someone like you.. posting shortly in the what are you reading thread.

[(o)(o)]

We believe that teachers – not bureaucrats and politicians – should run schools

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazin ... r-27888584

Gove is a backward fuck who has some Dickensian nightmare vision of a school place he wants to act out in the real world...

I know a few in the teaching profession and bar none they wish he would fuck off and die with his shitty ideas.

Art and PE in particular are fundamental to keeping kids fit and creative but NO! You must instead sit rigid at your desk learning everything by rote from textbooks and be tested to see if you are intelligent enough to avoid the workhouse.

Given half the chance I bet he'd have them under looms or down pit...