Politics Thread!

[The ghost of raids past]

From wikipedia

Gold prices remained relatively low until 2001, when the price began consistently rising in a protracted bull market. By 2007, the price of gold had reached US$675, and the loss to the UK taxpayer (contrasted to selling the gold later) was estimated at more than £2 billion, as the Euros bought with the proceeds had also risen in value.[1] The gold price briefly passed US$1,000 per ounce in March 2008,[10] before reaching all-time highs of $1,043.77 on 6 October 2009[11] and $1,048.40 on 7 October 2009,[12] by which time the loss to the UK taxpayer was approximately £4 billion. Gold prices continued to rise, reaching a new all-time high of US$1,896.50 per ounce at the London morning Gold Fix of 5 September 2011.[13]

I would say chucking away 4 billion pounds shows ecconomic mismangement on a grand scale

[pogo]

and the loss to the UK taxpayer (contrasted to selling the gold later) was estimated at more than £2 billion, ..., by which time the loss to the UK taxpayer was approximately £4 billion.

That’s nonsense: there was no loss to the taxpayer. Yes, if the government had speculated on gold for a decade or more it could have made billions ! Or it could have made billions speculating on oil. Or fine art. But it could have just as easily lost billions, as prices can go up or down. There’s no law of nature that says the price of gold or anything must rise, and gold has been falling for years now, and in real terms it is about 50% below its 1980 peak.

Famously, the pound used to be backed with silver, "sterling silver". If you're talking about before that, that would be hundreds of years.

The gold standard ended in the 1930s. Bretton Woods, a sort-of gold standard, ended around 1970.

[Wudzi]

http://www.itv.com/news/2015-04-13/poli ... tyle-duel/

Polish Prince challenges Nigel Farage to a duel

[merman]

Apart from the fact they still left their term of office with huge debts. The Gold was sold off too cheaply and as a result the country was in a poorer state than if it had not sold at that point.

Royal Mail flogged cheaply.

Bank shares flogged off cheaply.

East Coast Mainline profitable under a public franchise - so the Tories flog it back into private hands. So instead of 0.8p subsidy per passenger mile, it's now costing more than 5p per mile AND generating less revenue for the Exchequer.

Eurotunnel investment flogged off cheaply.

Green subsidies ended, but billions being paid to a French company to build a new nuclear plant at Hinckley and then billions more to guarantee them more than twice the market price for the electricity generated.

Yes, the Tories are to be "trusted".

[zip accident]

Yes, the Tories are to be "trusted".

Trusted to make a personal profit? yes they are.

All politicians make a personal profit from being politicians, the Tories are blatant, but they all do it. With Cyril Smith, it turns out it wasn't money, but it usually is money.

http://www.itv.com/news/2015-04-13/polish-prince-challenges-nigel-farage-to-18th-century-style-duel/

Polish Prince challenges Nigel Farage to a duel

The guy is too old, Farage should accept, then allow the bloke to live. Not that I support Farage, but knives need strength, and that bloke doesn't have enough. Guns would be another matter entirely.

[The ghost of raids past]

Apart from the fact they still left their term of office with huge debts. The Gold was sold off too cheaply and as a result the country was in a poorer state than if it had not sold at that point.

Royal Mail flogged cheaply.

Bank shares flogged off cheaply.

East Coast Mainline profitable under a public franchise - so the Tories flog it back into private hands. So instead of 0.8p subsidy per passenger mile, it's now costing more than 5p per mile AND generating less revenue for the Exchequer.

Eurotunnel investment flogged off cheaply.

Green subsidies ended, but billions being paid to a French company to build a new nuclear plant at Hinckley and then billions more to guarantee them more than twice the market price for the electricity generated.

Yes, the Tories are to be "trusted".

The Royal mail probably was sold too cheaply.

The Banks shares are being sold to reduce the states holding. As Pogo stated its not the job of a govenment to speculate.

The East Coast mainline was a special case, the private company dropped the contract and was replaced by the public, but the franchise has to be offered or the government would face a legal action.

Eurotunnel was sold to reduce the deficit, again it could have been held but governments like selling things.

The only reason the French won the contract was they were the ones prepared to finance the deal. I dont remember any UK company bidding. The price of that contract was the cost of the electricity. A nuclear powerstation is a high risk investment.

None of these sales lost the county muilti billions.

Its not really an argument I will enter into, as I stated before you are a Labour supporter and anything the Tories do seems to annoy you. I am a Tory supporter and as such Labour generally annoy me. Occasionally they do some good things.

Any party doesnt deserve unconditional support and its always easy to point out events but on balance I trust the Tories to manage the ecconomy and keep the tax rate as low as possible.

I would prefer a much more transparent Tax system where we all paid an Income tax that was the sole tax source. That way we could clearly see through the smoke and mirrors of the tax cuts and rises at budgets.

[zip accident]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32295970

A Conservative government would extend the right-to-buy scheme to housing association tenants in England, David Cameron will say, as he unveils his party's general election manifesto.

That's terrible. I wasn't voting for them anyway, but that is truly horrific.

[gravy]

It worked for Thatcher, wonder if he's got time to sneak in a quick south Atlantic punch up?

@pogo: do you think the NHS funding proposed by the cons is an empty, unfunded and barely plausible bribe?

I know you're not keen on prolifigate governmental spending proposals when we have no money

[pogo]

We’ll see what’s in the manifesto. Yes, the right to buy is like under Thatcher a populist gimmick. It’s not going to address the housing crisis – that just needs more houses built.

More interested in Labour‘s economic policies, which rather than clarifying things have just muddied them.

They’ve announced nothing concrete to raise money. The higher rate tax has been tried before, didn’t work. Non-dom status changes won’t work either – if anything they seem likely to lose money. The Mansion Tax will have the same problem: it’s essentially targeting the same people (rich foreigners in London) and gives them a further reason to leave, or to ensure their assets or income aren’t accessible by HMRC. They know this – they’ve attached no numbers to them which they surely would if they were trying to use them to offset spending promises.

They say they will ‘balance the budget’ but not when, and more importantly they measure it differently from the Tories as they don’t count “investment”, i.e. spending on infrastructure and the like. But this is a bit of a con as investment is not just stuff with genuine economic returns such as new roads, but also spending the government does all the time such as building and repairing schools, hospitals and the like. And of course the last Labour government promised to balance the budget (Brown’s “golden rule”), but it turned out to be a big con, including hundreds of billions of unfunded off balance-sheet borrowing:

Crippling PFI deals leave Britain £222bn in debt

[gravy]

So avoiding that one then.

[offyoutoddle]

problem with saying build more houses to fix the housing crisis here is the tiny issue of space in this country. In other bigger, countries this is less of an issue - over here we see pubs closing or someone moves out of a semi that had a big garden and some builder moves in to pop an apartment block in as quick as they can. I saw part of a car park closed in a Mc Donalds round here the other day and couldn't help but wonder if that would be flats in a month or two....

Green belt is permanently under threat too where I live so its all squeezing things in where they can always. Its not going to be an easy one to fix with the population increasing in a small island I suppose. Right to buy and all that is just a football to kick around.

[zip accident]

problem with saying build more houses to fix the housing crisis here is the tiny issue of space in this country. In other bigger, countries this is less of an issue - over here we see pubs closing or someone moves out of a semi that had a big garden and some builder moves in to pop an apartment block in as quick as they can. I saw part of a car park closed in a Mc Donalds round here the other day and couldn't help but wonder if that would be flats in a month or two....

Green belt is permanently under threat too where I live so its all squeezing things in where they can always. Its not going to be an easy one to fix with the population increasing in a small island I suppose. Right to buy and all that is just a football to kick around.

I don't like expansion into the green belt. However, to say there's not enough land to build on in the green belt is just silly, there's plenty of land outside cities, it's a bit far for a commute perhaps, but there is nearly enough to feed us all and still grow trees for paper.

[offyoutoddle]

I don't like expansion into the green belt. However, to say there's not enough land to build on in the green belt is just silly, there's plenty of land outside cities, it's a bit far for a commute perhaps, but there is nearly enough to feed us all and still grow trees for paper.

Just to be clear I don't like building in the green belt either tbh. I'm really just saying that land to build on is more of a limiting factor in the uk than larger countries.

[pogo]

No, we are certainly not too crowded to build more houses. We build on about 10% of suitable land (i.e. excluding mountainous regions etc.). We are not the country with the highest population density in the EU: both Holland and Belgium are higher. There’s plenty of room to build more, it just requires the political will to do so, and to realise the needs of large numbers of people for affordable housing are far greater than the needs of nimby protestors for a nice view over neighbouring fields.

The green belt in particular is an anachronism. It was instituted to ensure people living in cities had access to the country for leisure. Except who now spends their leisure time visiting the local countryside? They mostly now benefit the people living in them, who can live there and commute to the city. But housing policy should not be based on the needs of that small, well-off group.

[offyoutoddle]

Its a popular opinion that building on green belt will solve things at the moment yes - certainly building on some green belt land might help, the problem is if it opens the flood gate to the whole country becoming a concrete jungle. I don't really fancy that much and I wouldn't like to see the whole green belt setup swept away.

However, the cost of the land is the largest part of what makes the house prices so high. And it costs a lot because there is not a lot of it available - you can argue what reasons cause that outside of this. I'm not saying we are bursting at the seams yet and there are no spaces left to build houses though. And certainly the Green belt policy means there are artificial limits on what land can be used for building. But I will never agree thats all bad and should be done away with myself.