I have often thought a much more sensible way to regulate the totally absurd amounts of money sloshing around in sport would be to bar television companies (I'm looking at you, BSkyB) from showing advertising on Pay Per View. That would reduce their revenue quite significantly and either force them to show things on free to air (which would benefit everybody) or cut their bids. This would (a) bring ordinary TV companies back into the mix for bidding and (b) would stop huge sums of money being wasted and sportspeople being on obscene salaries while no money is spent on promoting the sport in schools (I have only once seen a professional sportsman paid for by their board spend time training children in a school, and that was in 1992 when I was myself in primary school).
Football's not even the most egregious example. Take cricket. I enjoy cricket, and I enjoyed my day out at Cheltenham this week. But I haven't seen any cricket on TV for nearly a decade. I used to watch it nearly all the time while I was working, but now, I can't afford Sky, so I never see it. Giles Clarke claimed he signed with Sky to put money into the grassroots. Yet the grassroots are withering due to lack of investment and lack of interest from teenagers who never see games of cricket. Meanwhile, with due respect to Alex Gidman or Hamish Marshall, they are not worth six-figure salaries for six months' work in the second division, paid for with money from TV rights. £40,000 would be about right - but they're probably on three times that. (Indeed, the horrible shots they played this week, they should be paying us for the privilege of playing for the Shire.)
Ideas to lance this boil are welcomed - but I don't think taxes on the consequences would be as effective as tackling the root cause. Question is, would any politician have the Shadow Chancellor's name to take on Rupert Murdoch?
''This matters particularly this time around because, in contrast to 1997, everyone agrees that things are going to remain tough.''
I wouldn't want to be Osborne now. The Russia problem will cool down the city and the latest borrowing shows that the finances are way off course. Spending is still endemic in the public sector as many thatcherites have warned all along.
Osborne will be faced with having to cut spending into bit of a slowdown to get within a country mile of his targets. No wonder he wants to be foreign secretary.
""The Labour Party has barely seemed to notice that the big economic story of the summer is the deficit soaring once again, while complacency remains the watchword of the Osborne/Alexander regime at the Treasury."
""The Labour Party has barely seemed to notice that the big economic story of the summer is the deficit soaring once again, while complacency remains the watchword of the Osborne/Alexander regime at the Treasury."
People driving in city centres at 80 mph - whether it is legal or not - are behaving recklessly; as are people who create financial products that are tantamount to Ponzi schemes. Don't right wingers believe in personal responsibility? Maybe one of Brown's errors was to assume that of people working in financial institutions.
Agree, and most people wouldn't drive at 80mph because it's obviously dangerous. Analogies only work so far. Drunk-driving is a better comparison. We all know individual drivers who think they drive just fine under the influence. You need state intervention to make that illegal.
The thing about drunk driving and complex financial products is that they are not obviously dangerous. Even if they are obvious to you and me, they don't become systemically dangerous unless everyone is at it, including people who to whom the danger is not obvious.
Only a regulator can have a sufficient market-wide view to know whether this is in fact the case. Broon's crime was to dismantle the regulatory structure of the City and replace it with an ineffective one. The FSA did not have this view and didn't even realise it needed it.
It was in the position of a clipboard-bearing bureaucrat who visits your house to check that you are sorting your rubbish correctly, but who fails to notice or react to the fact that your house is a bawdy house and is also on fire. Because it's not his job to notice.
Such were the FSA / BoE's terms of reference that nobody, not one regulator, was sacked over anything that happened. No regulator had failed versus what they were supposed to be doing; nor had any player had broken any law. That in a way describes the perfect crime - you've fiddled the law so your crime isn't a crime at all.
This inept regime gave the City a huge commercial advantage that others couldn't ignore and had to copy. Broon did all this out of greed for the taxes, plus hubris, plus ignorance. So that this time Labour broke not only our economy but everyone else's too.
Again, you may well be right about Brown, but ...
There were plenty of people in the City and elsewhere who knew that what they were doing was irresponsible and potentially dangerous. We are not talking about stupid people here, but very smart people. They did it anyway.
The reason the Tories got no credit for the economic recovery in 1997 was because it happened despite, not because of, their economic policy. Their economic policy was high interest rates and ERM membership. Once the City had benignly destroyed that, recovery could begin.
O/T, how long will Salmond remain head of the Scotch socialists after he loses in September?
Cuckoo, Cuckoo
Did you enjoy the ceremony last night malc ? Loved the Red arrows spraying out the red white and blue over the stadium before the rousing version of GSTQ.
Would have brought a tear to a glass eye.
Flash Whoever thought of using that pillock Barrowman should be shot. It was nice to see the Tories keeping the politics out of it. Better earlier wen Cameron was almost talking to himself at Glasgow University, apart from a busload of pensioners the hall was empty. Kind of like a Better Together meeting. certainly not as cringeworthy as the Olympics and nice to see Elizabeth I open the games.
""The Labour Party has barely seemed to notice that the big economic story of the summer is the deficit soaring once again, while complacency remains the watchword of the Osborne/Alexander regime at the Treasury."
The reason the Tories got no credit for the economic recovery in 1997 was because it happened despite, not because of, their economic policy. Their economic policy was high interest rates and ERM membership. Once the City had benignly destroyed that, recovery could begin.
O/T, how long will Salmond remain head of the Scotch socialists after he loses in September?
Cuckoo, Cuckoo
Did you enjoy the ceremony last night malc ? Loved the Red arrows spraying out the red white and blue over the stadium before the rousing version of GSTQ.
Would have brought a tear to a glass eye.
Flash Whoever thought of using that pillock Barrowman should be shot. It was nice to see the Tories keeping the politics out of it. Better earlier wen Cameron was almost talking to himself at Glasgow University, apart from a busload of pensioners the hall was empty. Kind of like a Better Together meeting. certainly not as cringeworthy as the Olympics and nice to see Elizabeth I open the games.
My summary was similar - bar some of the more bizarre brigadoon moments of the first 15 minutes it was pretty good - well apart from shouty council guy but let's put that down to nerves. Also the space station link - not sure what 3 yanks in a bathtub in orbit had to do with anything.
""The Labour Party has barely seemed to notice that the big economic story of the summer is the deficit soaring once again, while complacency remains the watchword of the Osborne/Alexander regime at the Treasury."
Yes, and it was June which was worse than expected. The comparison with the same quarter last year is skewed by tax changes and receipts from the Swiss tax avoidance deal.
" Labour’s latest proposed tax on fun is a 5% compulsory levy on Premier League football TV revenues, announced by Harriet Harman this morning. The Premier League tell Guido that they already contribute £1.3 billion in tax revenues to the government annually, so it is inevitable that the cost will be passed on to fans. The cheapest season ticket at Arsenal for the coming year is £1,014, already a 3% hike on last year, while a Sky Sports TV package sets you back another £552 a year. Under Labour you would likely end up paying more. What cost of living crisis? "
Net monthly borrowing, which, as the difference between two very large numbers, is extremely sensitive to short-term variations particularly in tax receipts.
People driving in city centres at 80 mph - whether it is legal or not - are behaving recklessly; as are people who create financial products that are tantamount to Ponzi schemes. Don't right wingers believe in personal responsibility? Maybe one of Brown's errors was to assume that of people working in financial institutions.
Agree, and most people wouldn't drive at 80mph because it's obviously dangerous. Analogies only work so far. Drunk-driving is a better comparison. We all know individual drivers who think they drive just fine under the influence. You need state intervention to make that illegal.
The thing about drunk driving and complex financial products is that they are not obviously dangerous. Even if they are obvious to you and me, they don't become systemically dangerous unless everyone is at it, including people who to whom the danger is not obvious.
Only a regulator can have a sufficient market-wide view to know whether this is in fact the case. Broon's crime was to dismantle the regulatory structure of the City and replace it with an ineffective one. The FSA did not have this view and didn't even realise it needed it.
It was in the position of a clipboard-bearing bureaucrat who visits your house to check that you are sorting your rubbish correctly, but who fails to notice or react to the fact that your house is a bawdy house and is also on fire. Because it's not his job to notice.
Such were the FSA / BoE's terms of reference that nobody, not one regulator, was sacked over anything that happened. No regulator had failed versus what they were supposed to be doing; nor had any player had broken any law. That in a way describes the perfect crime - you've fiddled the law so your crime isn't a crime at all.
This inept regime gave the City a huge commercial advantage that others couldn't ignore and had to copy. Broon did all this out of greed for the taxes, plus hubris, plus ignorance. So that this time Labour broke not only our economy but everyone else's too.
Again, you may well be right about Brown, but ...
There were plenty of people in the City and elsewhere who knew that what they were doing was irresponsible and potentially dangerous. We are not talking about stupid people here, but very smart people. They did it anyway.
I'm not sure that these people were/are that smart. Indeed its clear to me you do not have to be smart, just pathological. I am a great believer in capitalism - but the world needs regulation and in this the regulators failed abysmally. (lets not forget the whole thing was set off by Democrat polititians pushing vast volumes of mortgages to people who were high risk, all for political reasons)
Just looked at the rumoured sanctions that the EU are pushing for on Russia. Unsurprisingly they have gone after finance, there has been something tabled for industrial and capital goods but nothing on arms exports. So Germany and the UK give up exports of goods and services while the French give up nothing. I wonder how Hollande sleeps at night. Absolutely disgusting, chasing exports and GDP growth at any cost is an awful way of running a country.
Hello taffys -- Osborne has already pointed to the need for more cuts. the headlines were pointing to him targetting welfare. But where is the painless alternative? And for heaven knows howmany years under labour tax revenued=s failed to match their spending ambitions - so the real question is why is our economy not generating revenues which might be expected?
Actually in fact the figures showed significant increses in revenues from income and corporation tax and VAT.
Of course, if an abnormal windfall had caused a huge drop in borrowing, you would be praising Ozzy for his economic astuteness. The deficit is rising and that is that for now.
" Labour’s latest proposed tax on fun is a 5% compulsory levy on Premier League football TV revenues, announced by Harriet Harman this morning. The Premier League tell Guido that they already contribute £1.3 billion in tax revenues to the government annually, so it is inevitable that the cost will be passed on to fans. The cheapest season ticket at Arsenal for the coming year is £1,014, already a 3% hike on last year, while a Sky Sports TV package sets you back another £552 a year. Under Labour you would likely end up paying more. What cost of living crisis? "
People don't need to go and watch Arsenal or have a Footy TV package tbh though.
Just looked at the rumoured sanctions that the EU are pushing for on Russia. Unsurprisingly they have gone after finance, there has been something tabled for industrial and capital goods but nothing on arms exports. So Germany and the UK give up exports of goods and services while the French give up nothing. I wonder how Hollande sleeps at night. Absolutely disgusting, chasing exports and GDP growth at any cost is an awful way of running a country.
The ludicrous FCO line that the CFSP gives the United Kingdom greater influence in the world has been significantly undermined by recent events in the autonomous Donetsk People's Republic.
People driving in city centres at 80 mph - whether it is legal or not - are behaving recklessly; as are people who create financial products that are tantamount to Ponzi schemes. Don't right wingers believe in personal responsibility? Maybe one of Brown's errors was to assume that of people working in financial institutions.
Agree, and most people wouldn't drive at 80mph because it's obviously dangerous. Analogies only work so far. Drunk-driving is a better comparison. We all know individual drivers who think they drive just fine under the influence. You need state intervention to make that illegal.
The thing about drunk driving and complex financial products is that they are not obviously dangerous. Even if they are obvious to you and me, they don't become systemically dangerous unless everyone is at it, including people who to whom the danger is not obvious.
Only a regulator can have a sufficient market-wide view to know whether this is in fact the case. Broon's crime was to dismantle the regulatory structure of the City and replace it with an ineffective one. The FSA did not have this view and didn't even realise it needed it.
It was in the position of a clipboard-bearing bureaucrat who visits your house to check that you are sorting your rubbish correctly, but who fails to notice or react to the fact that your house is a bawdy house and is also on fire. Because it's not his job to notice.
Such were the FSA / BoE's terms of reference that nobody, not one regulator, was sacked over anything that happened. No regulator had failed versus what they were supposed to be doing; nor had any player had broken any law. That in a way describes the perfect crime - you've fiddled the law so your crime isn't a crime at all.
This inept regime gave the City a huge commercial advantage that others couldn't ignore and had to copy. Broon did all this out of greed for the taxes, plus hubris, plus ignorance. So that this time Labour broke not only our economy but everyone else's too.
Very funny and of course the shadow chancellor and leader of the opposition were demanding more regulation. Labour broke the worlds economy you couldnt even get the Daily Mail to write that (ok you could)!! 4 years on the city is still not been dealt with and is as big a danger to our economy as it was in 2008.
Very funny and of course the shadow chancellor and leader of the opposition were demanding more regulation.
The Shadow Chancellor did indeed call for better banking supervision, and warned in eerily accurate terms of exactly the disaster Brown was setting up. In particular he pointed out the exact flaw in Brown's ludicrous tripartite system, namely that no-one was actually in charge of ensuring the integrity of the banking system. That role, which had been extremely successfully handled by the Bank of England for 150 years, was taken away from them and given to: no-one.
BTW: Why on earth is that that the Left can't their heads around the difference between 'more' regulation and 'effective' regulation? Every single time the subject comes up, they repeat the same idiotic mistake. Brown provided plenty 'more' regulation, in the brain-dead FSA with its thousands of staff and the corresponding army of compliance offices in RBS and all the other financial institutions. Fat lot of good it did, unsurprisingly, since no-one was actually supervising the system. They were just ticking boxes.
On one hand these taxes always get passed through to the consumer - but then again there is more competition in the bookies market than ever.
I'd rather not see it but bookies have hardly covered themselves in glory whilst they
a) Have ridiculous amounts of FOBTs in their premises basically just ripping off the stupid b) Ban/Limit/Refuse winning punters.
Perhaps instead of a levy they should have an obligation to take at least a £100 bet from anyone on any of their advertised prices. It'd probably cost them about the same (Less maybe) - and have less Gov't interference.
Footer is grossly undertaxed. These buffoons are paid half a million quid a week and there are more mugs queueing up to watch it than ever before.
Put a £10 tax on every seat or pay-per-viewer of foopbaw. Absolutely nobody in the UK has ever stopped watching foopbaw because it was crap, and neither will they stop watching it if it's made slightly more farcically expensive than it is now.
The art of taxation is taking it off people who don't notice or care. Anyone stupid enough to pay what it costs to watch these talentless monkeys, or who pay £90 to dress up like their favourite foopbawer, won't blink at another tenner a game.
Indeed, maybe we could tax grouse shooting along the same lines, with a couple of added 0's.
Except you would kill the industry and ruin the jobs of all associated with it. VAT is at 20% so most if not all discretionary spending is taxed at 20% anyway. Of course in the case of football there are only a few top teams and only a few of them are in the high cost to watch band. Overwhelmingly fooball (and RL and RU) all over the country is watched by ordinary people in pretty plain ordinary grounds. Its all overwhelmingly unpretentious. May I say both your ideas seem a bit silly to me.
The stupidity of having a strident feminist hellbent on tokenism and quotas announce a tax that could increase prices on the working class mans favourite sport is incredibly bad PR by Labour IMO
Wow, if this football tax is real, it's an own goal by Labour (pun not intended). Absolutely stupid idea that won't raise a lot of money and will come across as mean spirited. Surely it's not real.
blackburn 63 says - 'The economy isn't better, the June figures were awful in terms of borrowing.'
In fact tax revenues were shown to be up. Corporation tax significantly up. My own suspicion is that all the socialists dancing on the grave of the economy are being a bit premature.
Someone says - ' It really is an extraordinarily good time to be rich - your income taxes are going down,' Really? They are still higher than through 13 years of Labour misrule.
""The Labour Party has barely seemed to notice that the big economic story of the summer is the deficit soaring once again, while complacency remains the watchword of the Osborne/Alexander regime at the Treasury."
Exactly the point I made earlier, delighted that Patrick has picked up on it. Ukip will continue this message right up to the election, that the economic recovery is a nonsense
It is true that in 1997 the Shadow Chancellor warned about Brown's reworking of the banking regulatory regime. He was then replaced and we never heard another word about it from the Tories. All they called for from that day on was less regulation.
Very funny and of course the shadow chancellor and leader of the opposition were demanding more regulation.
The Shadow Chancellor did indeed call for better banking supervision, and warned in eerily accurate terms of exactly the disaster Brown was setting up. In particular he pointed out the exact flaw in Brown's ludicrous tripartite system, namely that no-one was actually in charge of ensuring the integrity of the banking system. That role, which had been extremely successfully handled by the Bank of England for 150 years, was taken away from them and given to: no-one.
BTW: Why on earth is that that the Left can't their heads around the difference between 'more' regulation and 'effective' regulation? Every single time the subject comes up, they repeat the same idiotic mistake. Brown provided plenty 'more' regulation, in the brain-dead FSA with its thousands of staff and the corresponding army of compliance offices in RBS and all the other financial institutions. Fat lot of good it did, unsurprisingly, since no-one was actually supervising the system. They were just ticking boxes.
I'm no defender of the tripartite system but I'm not sure why there's all this faith that the Bank of England would have handled it fine. They hardly covered themselves in glory over the crisis.
The stupidity of having a strident feminist hellbent on tokenism and quotas announce a tax that could increase prices on the working class mans favourite sport is incredibly bad PR by Labour IMO
But some of the revenue generated will be 'ploughed back into grassroots sports' and helping those with gambling problems. Don't look at the details, just bask in all that niceness...
It is true that in 1997 the Shadow Chancellor warned about Brown's reworking of the banking regulatory regime. He was then replaced and we never heard another word about it from the Tories. All they called for from that day on was less regulation.
It was Labour, and Labour alone, which deliberately dismantled banking supervision. You can't blame the opposition, which explicitly opposed the measure and voted against it.
It is true that in 1997 the Shadow Chancellor warned about Brown's reworking of the banking regulatory regime. He was then replaced and we never heard another word about it from the Tories. All they called for from that day on was less regulation.
Less regulation that is more effective is what was needed. Under Labour regulation became an exercise in box ticking. The new scheme is not much better, but they seem to have a better handle on capital requirements, no banks are over-leveraged like RBS was when it crashed (30:1!). It is still a three headed monster though with the PRA, FCA and BoE all taking different responsibilities. Of those the FCA seems to be the most useless and most obsessed with making headlines like the FSA was.
""The Labour Party has barely seemed to notice that the big economic story of the summer is the deficit soaring once again, while complacency remains the watchword of the Osborne/Alexander regime at the Treasury."
Exactly the point I made earlier, delighted that Patrick has picked up on it. Ukip will continue this message right up to the election, that the economic recovery is a nonsense
So the decrease in unemployment is a fantasy, is it?
It is true that in 1997 the Shadow Chancellor warned about Brown's reworking of the banking regulatory regime. He was then replaced and we never heard another word about it from the Tories. All they called for from that day on was less regulation.
It's not really the matter of more or less regulation, it's the matter of the right regulation.
Regulation too often just falls into tickbox exercises, or mindless 'covering your arse' work, which is of little use.
I'm no defender of the tripartite system but I'm not sure why there's all this faith that the Bank of England would have handled it fine. They hardly covered themselves in glory over the crisis.
Maybe they would have screwed up for the first time in 150 years, who knows, but if Brown hadn't messed things around there would at least have been someone supervising the integrity of the banking system.
More tax on anything means less discretionary spending on something else. How does this help the economy? Labour are only going to use this ntax to spend more themselves. So how does labour spending more and you less help the economy. All it means is Labour spending money on its voters.
It is true that in 1997 the Shadow Chancellor warned about Brown's reworking of the banking regulatory regime. He was then replaced and we never heard another word about it from the Tories. All they called for from that day on was less regulation.
It was Labour, and Labour alone, which deliberately dismantled banking supervision. You can't blame the opposition, which explicitly opposed the measure and voted against it.
Absolutely right. But let's not pretend anyone was ringing the warning alarms in advance of the collapse. One speech was made in the Commons by a soon to be replaced Tory shadow chancellor. Then there was silence. Clearly Brown should have listened. Maybe if the Tories had too and made more of a thing about it more questions would have been asked more generally. But without doubt it was and is Labour's responsibility.
""The Labour Party has barely seemed to notice that the big economic story of the summer is the deficit soaring once again, while complacency remains the watchword of the Osborne/Alexander regime at the Treasury."
Exactly the point I made earlier, delighted that Patrick has picked up on it. Ukip will continue this message right up to the election, that the economic recovery is a nonsense
So the decrease in unemployment is a fantasy, is it?
Delusion rather than fantasy, zero hour contracts and part time work.
Anybody who believes the economy is recovering is bonkers, the debt is rising all the time. Of course that doesn't suit the govt agenda, I'm genuinely amazed that people believe it.
It is true that in 1997 the Shadow Chancellor warned about Brown's reworking of the banking regulatory regime. He was then replaced and we never heard another word about it from the Tories. All they called for from that day on was less regulation.
Less regulation that is more effective is what was needed. Under Labour regulation became an exercise in box ticking. The new scheme is not much better, but they seem to have a better handle on capital requirements, no banks are over-leveraged like RBS was when it crashed (30:1!). It is still a three headed monster though with the PRA, FCA and BoE all taking different responsibilities. Of those the FCA seems to be the most useless and most obsessed with making headlines like the FSA was.
One would certainly hope that the new system is better than the old one!
Very funny and of course the shadow chancellor and leader of the opposition were demanding more regulation.
The Shadow Chancellor did indeed call for better banking supervision, and warned in eerily accurate terms of exactly the disaster Brown was setting up. In particular he pointed out the exact flaw in Brown's ludicrous tripartite system, namely that no-one was actually in charge of ensuring the integrity of the banking system. That role, which had been extremely successfully handled by the Bank of England for 150 years, was taken away from them and given to: no-one.
BTW: Why on earth is that that the Left can't their heads around the difference between 'more' regulation and 'effective' regulation? Every single time the subject comes up, they repeat the same idiotic mistake. Brown provided plenty 'more' regulation, in the brain-dead FSA with its thousands of staff and the corresponding army of compliance offices in RBS and all the other financial institutions. Fat lot of good it did, unsurprisingly, since no-one was actually supervising the system. They were just ticking boxes.
Good try but no
George Osborne, was a keen advocate of further banking deregulation when the Conservatives were in opposition.
Mr Osborne accused Labour of being "too tough" on many occasions.
Bank of England: weakness of wages is becoming more striking, The Bank of England is concerned, though, that people's earnings aren't increasing faster, especially as inflation jumped to 1.9% last month.
The minutes say:
The weakness of wages in the face of strong rises in employment was becoming more striking, and there was reason to believe both that reductions in labour market slack were taking longer to affect wage growth, and that the effective supply of labour had increased.
Very funny and of course the shadow chancellor and leader of the opposition were demanding more regulation.
The Shadow Chancellor did indeed call for better banking supervision, and warned in eerily accurate terms of exactly the disaster Brown was setting up. In particular he pointed out the exact flaw in Brown's ludicrous tripartite system, namely that no-one was actually in charge of ensuring the integrity of the banking system. That role, which had been extremely successfully handled by the Bank of England for 150 years, was taken away from them and given to: no-one.
BTW: Why on earth is that that the Left can't their heads around the difference between 'more' regulation and 'effective' regulation? Every single time the subject comes up, they repeat the same idiotic mistake. Brown provided plenty 'more' regulation, in the brain-dead FSA with its thousands of staff and the corresponding army of compliance offices in RBS and all the other financial institutions. Fat lot of good it did, unsurprisingly, since no-one was actually supervising the system. They were just ticking boxes.
Good try but no
George Osborne, was a keen advocate of further banking deregulation when the Conservatives were in opposition.
Mr Osborne accused Labour of being "too tough" on many occasions.
Still falling into that classic trap of more regulation meaning better regulation. Canada has one of the least regulated sectors in the world, but it is effective and the Canadian financial sector is pretty much bullet proof. You can have fewer, but better regulations, just like lowering the marginal rate of tax can yield a higher overall tax take.
Very funny and of course the shadow chancellor and leader of the opposition were demanding more regulation.
The Shadow Chancellor did indeed call for better banking supervision, and warned in eerily accurate terms of exactly the disaster Brown was setting up. In particular he pointed out the exact flaw in Brown's ludicrous tripartite system, namely that no-one was actually in charge of ensuring the integrity of the banking system. That role, which had been extremely successfully handled by the Bank of England for 150 years, was taken away from them and given to: no-one.
BTW: Why on earth is that that the Left can't their heads around the difference between 'more' regulation and 'effective' regulation? Every single time the subject comes up, they repeat the same idiotic mistake. Brown provided plenty 'more' regulation, in the brain-dead FSA with its thousands of staff and the corresponding army of compliance offices in RBS and all the other financial institutions. Fat lot of good it did, unsurprisingly, since no-one was actually supervising the system. They were just ticking boxes.
Good try but no
George Osborne, was a keen advocate of further banking deregulation when the Conservatives were in opposition.
Mr Osborne accused Labour of being "too tough" on many occasions.
[Bangs head against brick wall]
Yes, we needed LESS idiotic box-ticking ineffective regulation, and BETTER supervision.
I'm no defender of the tripartite system but I'm not sure why there's all this faith that the Bank of England would have handled it fine. They hardly covered themselves in glory over the crisis.
Maybe they would have screwed up for the first time in 150 years, who knows, but if Brown hadn't messed things around there would at least have been someone supervising the integrity of the banking system.
I just think it is far too party political to blame the banking crisis solely on Brown. I've seen several very clever people try to explain it and they always seem to focus on a process that started in about 1970. There was a 4 decade mass expansion of credit and size of the banks' balance sheets. there were new financial innovations developed here and elsewhere that had some of the old grey beards of finance horrified.
Brown has to take responsibility for what happened on his watch and it's hard to say he hasn't personally felt the consequences. Trying to reduce it to 'his' crisis is just labour-hating nonsense.
""The Labour Party has barely seemed to notice that the big economic story of the summer is the deficit soaring once again, while complacency remains the watchword of the Osborne/Alexander regime at the Treasury."
Exactly the point I made earlier, delighted that Patrick has picked up on it. Ukip will continue this message right up to the election, that the economic recovery is a nonsense
The key point is that Labour spent 13 years screwing the economy. Repairing the damage properly could take as long.
Ozzy's done a pretty good job in the circumstances cutting public sector employment and reducing the deficit as fast as he felt the economy could cope with. And growing employment.
But...even though the deficit is no longer 160bn it is still 100bn and that is still a massive risk to the UK. We're still mired in debt. We've only taken a bit under half our medicine. I remain of the view that no political party can survive the electorate and do what is needed. The Tories have the right destination in mind but are politically frit about the speed of travel. Labour are dangerous a'holes who will ruin us as there is no money left and no capacity to absorb their idiocy another time around. I genuinely fear the macro outcomes of PM Miliband.
We need as a nation (the entire developed world in fact) to move beyond our entitlement welfare state mindset and compete. Something that can't go on won't go on.
Very funny and of course the shadow chancellor and leader of the opposition were demanding more regulation.
The Shadow Chancellor did indeed call for better banking supervision, and warned in eerily accurate terms of exactly the disaster Brown was setting up. In particular he pointed out the exact flaw in Brown's ludicrous tripartite system, namely that no-one was actually in charge of ensuring the integrity of the banking system. That role, which had been extremely successfully handled by the Bank of England for 150 years, was taken away from them and given to: no-one.
BTW: Why on earth is that that the Left can't their heads around the difference between 'more' regulation and 'effective' regulation? Every single time the subject comes up, they repeat the same idiotic mistake. Brown provided plenty 'more' regulation, in the brain-dead FSA with its thousands of staff and the corresponding army of compliance offices in RBS and all the other financial institutions. Fat lot of good it did, unsurprisingly, since no-one was actually supervising the system. They were just ticking boxes.
Good try but no
George Osborne, was a keen advocate of further banking deregulation when the Conservatives were in opposition.
Mr Osborne accused Labour of being "too tough" on many occasions.
[Bangs head against brick wall]
Yes, we needed LESS idiotic box-ticking ineffective regulation, and BETTER supervision.
Can you really not understand the difference?
Here’s a reminder of what the then shadow chancellor and his colleagues said whan Labour was in power, and, indeed, failing to regulate properly: “I fear that much of this regulation has been burdensome, complex and makes cross-border market penetration more difficult. “This is exactly the wrong direction in which Europe should be heading and it threatens the global competitiveness of the City of London.” - George Osborne, 2006 “In an age of greater choice, he offers more overbearing control; in an age of greater freedom, he gives us more interference… “In short, in an age that demands a light touch, he [Gordon Brown] offers that clunking fist.” - George Osborne, 2006 “I want to give you [The City] lower taxes and less regulation.” - David Cameron, 2006 “Light-touch… regulation is in the interests of the sector globally and the government need to send that message more strongly.” - Mark Hoban, 2006
@FrankBooth - Oh, certainly, no-one is blaming the crisis as a whole on Brown; we would undoubtedly have been hit whatever he had or had not done. However, when the storm came, we would have been much less badly affected if he'd left someone in charge of ensuring that the defences were as solid as they could be.
@bigjohnowls - Yes, precisely. As I said, they were advocating removing burdensome ineffective box-ticking nonsense. "Much of this regulation has been burdensome, complex and makes cross-border market penetration more difficult". Couldn't have put it better myself.
@FrankBooth - Oh, certainly, no-one is blaming the crisis as a whole on Brown; we would undoubtedly have been hit whatever he had or had not done. However, when the storm came, we would have been much less badly affected if he'd left someone in charge of ensuring that the defences were as solid as they could be.
Patrick, agree entirely with the last part of your post, hence my use of "delusion" earlier. Eventually we're all going to have to face the reality of the financial mess we're in. Trumpeting recovery is irresponsible at best.
BF this is incoherent BS - and you know it. The 2010 deficit was 160bn and getting it down was inevitably going to take time - so rising borrowing was baked into the future by Gordon Brown (and Ed Balls). What should Ozzy have done the reduce the deficit faster in your estimation?
Typical 'shit on the carpet and then complain of the stink' from lefty cynics.
@bigjohnowls - Yes, precisely. As I said, they were advocating removing burdensome ineffective box-ticking nonsense. "Much of this regulation has been burdensome, complex and makes cross-border market penetration more difficult". Couldn't have put it better myself.
The stupidity of having a strident feminist hellbent on tokenism and quotas announce a tax that could increase prices on the working class mans favourite sport is incredibly bad PR by Labour IMO
But some of the revenue generated will be 'ploughed back into grassroots sports' and helping those with gambling problems. Don't look at the details, just bask in all that niceness...
This bookie tax is just another example of politicians ignoring warnings about some preventable evil, and then making half arsed apologies and sweeping a few crumbs left by the mess into the bin in an effort to clear up the avoidable ness.
FOBT machines are all that are keeping bookies going. They are designed to give the punter no chance of long term gains but every chance of extreme short term pain. At the same time the bookies refuse to take bets off winning clients or even those that don't lose enough
Tom Watson warned about these machines a long time ago. labour ignored him and the Tories haven't repealed them
Instead Labour want to tax bookies sports profit, which couldn't miss the point anymore if it tried.
Betting shops are no more than a fence for the FOBT machines
I have answered this question so many times on here I might ask Mike to pop up a sticky.
I'd have brought forward capital investment projects earlier in the parliament. Sure, the usual suspects will screech ha ha so you would increase borrowing to reduce borrowing?
My answer is yes: I would have brought forward investment projects with a large multiplier, get growth moving.
@FrankBooth - Oh, certainly, no-one is blaming the crisis as a whole on Brown; we would undoubtedly have been hit whatever he had or had not done. However, when the storm came, we would have been much less badly affected if he'd left someone in charge of ensuring that the defences were as solid as they could be.
Or in other words, someone that had fixed the roof while the sun was shining!
Patrick, agree entirely with the last part of your post, hence my use of "delusion" earlier. Eventually we're all going to have to face the reality of the financial mess we're in. Trumpeting recovery is irresponsible at best.
Yup. It's like a submarine that is perilously close to crush depth. We're rising a bit towards the surface again - which is good. But we've taken on hugely more ballast than the last time we went deep, we're very very short of compressed air to blow the tanks and there are plenty of depth charges falling around that might sink the whole shebang anyway. The current captain has set on us a slow course to the surface that might take too long before the air runs out.
Electing Labour will be akin to opening the stopcocks. Their captain is targetting the bottom of the abyss.
The stupidity of having a strident feminist hellbent on tokenism and quotas announce a tax that could increase prices on the working class mans favourite sport is incredibly bad PR by Labour IMO
But some of the revenue generated will be 'ploughed back into grassroots sports' and helping those with gambling problems. Don't look at the details, just bask in all that niceness...
This bookie tax is just another example of politicians ignoring warnings about some preventable evil, and then making half arsed apologies and sweeping a few crumbs left by the mess into the bin in an effort to clear up the avoidable ness.
FOBT machines are all that are keeping bookies going. They are designed to give the punter no chance of long term gains but every chance of extreme short term pain. At the same time the bookies refuse to take bets off winning clients or even those that don't lose enough
Tom Watson warned about these machines a long time ago. labour ignored him and the Tories haven't repealed them
Instead Labour want to tax bookies sports profit, which couldn't miss the point anymore if it tried.
Betting shops are no more than a fence for the FOBT machines
That's very true, but then without the FOBT, I expect that bookies would just go fully online, or at least close a large number of shops. Another nail in the coffin of the high street (although whether it's worth having a high street if all you have are bookies and charity shops is another matter)
The stupidity of having a strident feminist hellbent on tokenism and quotas announce a tax that could increase prices on the working class mans favourite sport is incredibly bad PR by Labour IMO
But some of the revenue generated will be 'ploughed back into grassroots sports' and helping those with gambling problems. Don't look at the details, just bask in all that niceness...
This bookie tax is just another example of politicians ignoring warnings about some preventable evil, and then making half arsed apologies and sweeping a few crumbs left by the mess into the bin in an effort to clear up the avoidable ness.
FOBT machines are all that are keeping bookies going. They are designed to give the punter no chance of long term gains but every chance of extreme short term pain. At the same time the bookies refuse to take bets off winning clients or even those that don't lose enough
Tom Watson warned about these machines a long time ago. labour ignored him and the Tories haven't repealed them
Instead Labour want to tax bookies sports profit, which couldn't miss the point anymore if it tried.
Betting shops are no more than a fence for the FOBT machines
That's very true, but then without the FOBT, I expect that bookies would just go fully online, or at least close a large number of shops. Another nail in the coffin of the high street (although whether it's worth having a high street if all you have are bookies and charity shops is another matter)
I'd happily see the shops close. They are fences as I say, and there are too many anyway. One independent per town would suffice
The really depressing, worrying thing is that Cameron and Osborne are repeating Brown's worst mistakes.
Stoking a debt-fuelled bubble, aggressive deregulation, dazzled by the spivs and speculators, a top-heavy trickle-down "long term economic plan".
Short termist and unsustainable.
The best reason to vote Labour next year is that they seem to have learned lessons from the Bankers Crash. The Tories merely saw it as an opportunity to play Fantasy Rightwing Government.
The really depressing, worrying thing is that Cameron and Osborne are repeating Brown's worst mistakes.
Stoking a debt-fuelled bubble, aggressive deregulation, dazzled by the spivs and speculators, a top-heavy trickle-down "long term economic plan".
Short termist and unsustainable.
The best reason to vote Labour next year is that they seem to have learned lessons from the Bankers Crash. The Tories merely saw it as an opportunity to play Fantasy Rightwing Government.
Richard Nabavi will be along shortly to say GO has fixed all this
The really depressing, worrying thing is that Cameron and Osborne are repeating Brown's worst mistakes.
Stoking a debt-fuelled bubble, aggressive deregulation, dazzled by the spivs and speculators, a top-heavy trickle-down "long term economic plan".
Short termist and unsustainable.
The best reason to vote Labour next year is that they seem to have learned lessons from the Bankers Crash. The Tories merely saw it as an opportunity to play Fantasy Rightwing Government.
Greetings PBers! Thought I'd de-lurk, as it's a Scottish and barmy Labour tax themed day, to post this puzzle:
The most likely outcome of the GE appears to be Labour as the largest party or even a small majority.
In the above scenario Labour can only hope to govern using their Scots MPs.
Labour plan to raise income taxes.
Labour also plan to devolve income tax to the Scottish government.
Ergo: Labour will use Scots votes to raise taxes on the English even though the Scots MPs & their constituents won't be affected.
So, my puzzle is this: how many taxis will the English Labour party fit into in May 2020?
I like puzzles how many seats in each taxi dont want to fall for a how many bikes for scottish Tories only to find out we were talking tandems. </blockquote
It's well known Scots Tories ride unicycles (the pandas ride tandem). Nonetheless, you can't dispute that given current Labour policy and the polling this appears to be where Ed's going to find himself - it's quite remarkable, suicidal, but remarkable.
There's an important distinction on banking regulation between two fundamentally different kinds of thing: Protecting customers from their banks and protecting society from the banks' customers. The latter seems to be what's causing most of the box-ticking, especially after 911, when governments conscripted banks into doing all kinds of law-enforcement jobs for them. Like a lot of national security legislation, I doubt much of it would survive any serious cost-benefit analysis, if you didn't have the magic word "terrorism" to make cost-benefit analysis go away.
I think people on the left who are worried about deregulation are mostly thinking of the former, where people working in the industry are incentivized to take big risks and the government is supposed to restrain them. I don't know enough about it to say whether they've got a point.
The really depressing, worrying thing is that Cameron and Osborne are repeating Brown's worst mistakes.
Stoking a debt-fuelled bubble, aggressive deregulation, dazzled by the spivs and speculators, a top-heavy trickle-down "long term economic plan".
Short termist and unsustainable.
The best reason to vote Labour next year is that they seem to have learned lessons from the Bankers Crash. The Tories merely saw it as an opportunity to play Fantasy Rightwing Government.
Dont need regulation just supervision apparently!!
The really depressing, worrying thing is that Cameron and Osborne are repeating Brown's worst mistakes.
Stoking a debt-fuelled bubble, aggressive deregulation, dazzled by the spivs and speculators, a top-heavy trickle-down "long term economic plan".
Short termist and unsustainable.
The best reason to vote Labour next year is that they seem to have learned lessons from the Bankers Crash. The Tories merely saw it as an opportunity to play Fantasy Rightwing Government.
Strangely I do not see that at all.
Nor does any informed observer. For example, the very respected EY Item Club:
"Business investment is being ramped up, generating over half of the growth over the last year and helping to rebalance the economy away from consumption," Mr Spencer said.
"Underpinned by a strong labour market that provides the best of both worlds - boosting incomes via employment rather than wages, while keeping inflation low - the UK economy has hit the sweet spot."
Does anyone with the internet ever use a high street bookie?
I was last in one when smoking was allowed.
Wonder if they are an less unpleasant places to be these days.
I do so on a regular basis.
Working in the centre of Manchester, there are, inter alia, numerous betfred, Ladbrokes, Coral, William Hill and Publicity Shy Paddy Power.
On political bets, Paddy Power, William Hill and Ladbrokes restrict online bets.
I can walk into the shop, and place larger bets over the counter.
For example, when I backed Maria Miller at 14/1 as next out of the cabinet, I was restricted to £6.06 online with Paddy, but £50 in shop.
Additionally with Corals, Paddy Power and Ladbrokes you can withdraw your winnings in the shop, rather than having to wait 3 to 5 days to withdraw it online and into your back account.
The really depressing, worrying thing is that Cameron and Osborne are repeating Brown's worst mistakes.
Stoking a debt-fuelled bubble, aggressive deregulation, dazzled by the spivs and speculators, a top-heavy trickle-down "long term economic plan".
Short termist and unsustainable.
The best reason to vote Labour next year is that they seem to have learned lessons from the Bankers Crash. The Tories merely saw it as an opportunity to play Fantasy Rightwing Government.
If the same thing keeps happening over multiple governments you have to look for the constant, not the variable. Britain needs better voters.
The really depressing, worrying thing is that Cameron and Osborne are repeating Brown's worst mistakes.
Stoking a debt-fuelled bubble, aggressive deregulation, dazzled by the spivs and speculators, a top-heavy trickle-down "long term economic plan".
Short termist and unsustainable.
The best reason to vote Labour next year is that they seem to have learned lessons from the Bankers Crash. The Tories merely saw it as an opportunity to play Fantasy Rightwing Government.
Very good summary. This government are storing up huge liabilities (e.g help to buy) for the future and I don't think they have dealt with cleaning up the City of London financial centre.
"Rise in NHS trusts in financial difficulties" They need to be privatized, just like that one that was being praised to the heavens on here, the other day, Hinchingbrooke I think it was? "One of those referred is Hinchingbrooke, which is the first hospital trust to be run by a private firm, Circle." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-28439323
I have answered this question so many times on here I might ask Mike to pop up a sticky.
I'd have brought forward capital investment projects earlier in the parliament. Sure, the usual suspects will screech ha ha so you would increase borrowing to reduce borrowing?
My answer is yes: I would have brought forward investment projects with a large multiplier, get growth moving.
*screeching here"
you might have, but the markets would have had none of it. I know the capital markets are evil and a plaything of the military-industrial complex but they do matter, you know.
And regarding your famed multiplier, in exactly what time frame do you suppose the benefits would be delivered? What do you imagine the policy lag would be or do you have some areas of outstanding natural beauty already earmarked for new roads and bridges? And in the meantime you only have an increase in borrowing to show for it.
"Rise in NHS trusts in financial difficulties" They need to be privatized, just like that one that was being praised to the heavens on here, the other day, Hinchingbrooke I think it was? "One of those referred is Hinchingbrooke, which is the first hospital trust to be run by a private firm, Circle." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-28439323
You oddly missed this
The Audit Commission looked in-depth at only those trusts that have not achieved foundation trusts status - given to the elite performers - and, as such, they tend to be the most financially-challenged organisations.
@TheScreamingEagles Look at all the warnings Thatcher received? I would have thought an incoming Labour government might have done something about it, but they too were busy counting the cash without wondering where it was all coming from.
@FrankBooth - Oh, certainly, no-one is blaming the crisis as a whole on Brown; we would undoubtedly have been hit whatever he had or had not done. However, when the storm came, we would have been much less badly affected if he'd left someone in charge of ensuring that the defences were as solid as they could be.
Or in other words, someone that had fixed the roof while the sun was shining!
But Brown not only did not fix the roof - he punched holes in it. Brown thought in his big head that the financial sector was permanently bigger than it really was. He therefore launched into excessive spending (of dubious quality) - even that was too much for the available revenues. But in reality a significant part of the financial sector was a bubble, it was cyclical not structural. That sector has evaporated away. Gone. So have its jobs and revenues. it was these revenues that Brown was relying oin to park millions on benefits. Lets not give Brown any credit. He was culpable and a massive massive disaster for Britain and its economy. It will take years to unpick the damage that his spending did.
@TheScreamingEagles Look at all the warnings Thatcher received? I would have thought an incoming Labour government might have done something about it, but they too were busy counting the cash without wondering where it was all coming from.
Perhaps you can cite numerous IMF and other body reports like this that were given to Thatcher
The last piece of the article on the Green's wealth tax proposal said the Greens were challenging the Lib in Bristol West.No prices on the Greens winning anywhere in Bristol,not even in the betting so where has this come from?
The really depressing, worrying thing is that Cameron and Osborne are repeating Brown's worst mistakes.
Stoking a debt-fuelled bubble, aggressive deregulation, dazzled by the spivs and speculators, a top-heavy trickle-down "long term economic plan".
Short termist and unsustainable.
The best reason to vote Labour next year is that they seem to have learned lessons from the Bankers Crash. The Tories merely saw it as an opportunity to play Fantasy Rightwing Government.
One more thing on British banks: Yesterday I had to phone my British bank, because the only electronic communication they accept is fax. On my third attempt at a phone tree that I think must have been designed by Jorge Luis Borges, I finally managed to get through and speak to a human. He used the word "action" as a verb. Repeatedly.
This industry must be destroyed. Burn the whole thing down.
Comments
Football's not even the most egregious example. Take cricket. I enjoy cricket, and I enjoyed my day out at Cheltenham this week. But I haven't seen any cricket on TV for nearly a decade. I used to watch it nearly all the time while I was working, but now, I can't afford Sky, so I never see it. Giles Clarke claimed he signed with Sky to put money into the grassroots. Yet the grassroots are withering due to lack of investment and lack of interest from teenagers who never see games of cricket. Meanwhile, with due respect to Alex Gidman or Hamish Marshall, they are not worth six-figure salaries for six months' work in the second division, paid for with money from TV rights. £40,000 would be about right - but they're probably on three times that. (Indeed, the horrible
shots they played this week, they should be paying us for the privilege of playing for the Shire.)
Ideas to lance this boil are welcomed - but I don't think taxes on the consequences would be as effective as tackling the root cause. Question is, would any politician have the Shadow Chancellor's name to take on Rupert Murdoch?
"BobaFett's Fancy"
Sounds like a winner ;-)
I wouldn't want to be Osborne now. The Russia problem will cool down the city and the latest borrowing shows that the finances are way off course. Spending is still endemic in the public sector as many thatcherites have warned all along.
Osborne will be faced with having to cut spending into bit of a slowdown to get within a country mile of his targets. No wonder he wants to be foreign secretary.
Cutting the deficit? Yeah right.
When does the mansion tax get wheeled out ?
A standing ticket there must be one of the best value sporting entertainment deals on earth.
There were plenty of people in the City and elsewhere who knew that what they were doing was irresponsible and potentially dangerous. We are not talking about stupid people here, but very smart people. They did it anyway.
Whoever thought of using that pillock Barrowman should be shot. It was nice to see the Tories keeping the politics out of it. Better earlier wen Cameron was almost talking to himself at Glasgow University, apart from a busload of pensioners the hall was empty. Kind of like a Better Together meeting.
certainly not as cringeworthy as the Olympics and nice to see Elizabeth I open the games.
Must admit it is disconcerting not to have ALP with his yellow boxes to guide me through the latest sojourns of our economy.
" Labour’s latest proposed tax on fun is a 5% compulsory levy on Premier League football TV revenues, announced by Harriet Harman this morning. The Premier League tell Guido that they already contribute £1.3 billion in tax revenues to the government annually, so it is inevitable that the cost will be passed on to fans. The cheapest season ticket at Arsenal for the coming year is £1,014, already a 3% hike on last year, while a Sky Sports TV package sets you back another £552 a year. Under Labour you would likely end up paying more. What cost of living crisis? "
But where is the painless alternative?
And for heaven knows howmany years under labour tax revenued=s failed to match their spending ambitions - so the real question is why is our economy not generating revenues which might be expected?
Actually in fact the figures showed significant increses in revenues from income and corporation tax and VAT.
Of course, if an abnormal windfall had caused a huge drop in borrowing, you would be praising Ozzy for his economic astuteness. The deficit is rising and that is that for now.
Retail sales in June rose by 0.1% from May, leaving them 3.6% higher than a year ago.
The sales increase in the second quarter, at 1.6%, was the largest for any calendar quarter for 10 years.
The price of goods sold fell by 0.7% in May, leaving the price of retail goods the same as in June last year.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28460232
Judging by the size of some of the bikinis (or monokinis) I saw last weekend, the cloth markets cant be doing very well.
Osborne has done well on generating revenues. Spending is the problem. It is still out of control.
Osborne may end the last nine months in office either making drastic cuts or excuses. I bet its the latter.
BTW: Why on earth is that that the Left can't their heads around the difference between 'more' regulation and 'effective' regulation? Every single time the subject comes up, they repeat the same idiotic mistake. Brown provided plenty 'more' regulation, in the brain-dead FSA with its thousands of staff and the corresponding army of compliance offices in RBS and all the other financial institutions. Fat lot of good it did, unsurprisingly, since no-one was actually supervising the system. They were just ticking boxes.
Of course in the case of football there are only a few top teams and only a few of them are in the high cost to watch band. Overwhelmingly fooball (and RL and RU) all over the country is watched by ordinary people in pretty plain ordinary grounds. Its all overwhelmingly unpretentious.
May I say both your ideas seem a bit silly to me.
In fact tax revenues were shown to be up. Corporation tax significantly up. My own suspicion is that all the socialists dancing on the grave of the economy are being a bit premature.
Really?
They are still higher than through 13 years of Labour misrule.
Do the grouse moor owners get any subsidies/tax breaks for their estates?
Regulation too often just falls into tickbox exercises, or mindless 'covering your arse' work, which is of little use.
Labour are only going to use this ntax to spend more themselves. So how does labour spending more and you less help the economy.
All it means is Labour spending money on its voters.
"So the decrease in unemployment is a fantasy, is it"
Great swathes of it are...But the headlines look good, which is all it takes for the casual and uninformed observer to believe.
Anybody who believes the economy is recovering is bonkers, the debt is rising all the time. Of course that doesn't suit the govt agenda, I'm genuinely amazed that people believe it.
George Osborne, was a keen advocate of further banking deregulation when the Conservatives were in opposition.
Mr Osborne accused Labour of being "too tough" on many occasions.
The Bank of England is concerned, though, that people's earnings aren't increasing faster, especially as inflation jumped to 1.9% last month.
The minutes say:
The weakness of wages in the face of strong rises in employment was becoming more striking, and there was reason to believe both that reductions in labour market slack were taking longer to affect wage growth, and that the effective supply of labour had increased.
Yes, we needed LESS idiotic box-ticking ineffective regulation, and BETTER supervision.
Can you really not understand the difference?
Brown has to take responsibility for what happened on his watch and it's hard to say he hasn't personally felt the consequences. Trying to reduce it to 'his' crisis is just labour-hating nonsense.
Ozzy's done a pretty good job in the circumstances cutting public sector employment and reducing the deficit as fast as he felt the economy could cope with. And growing employment.
But...even though the deficit is no longer 160bn it is still 100bn and that is still a massive risk to the UK. We're still mired in debt. We've only taken a bit under half our medicine. I remain of the view that no political party can survive the electorate and do what is needed. The Tories have the right destination in mind but are politically frit about the speed of travel. Labour are dangerous a'holes who will ruin us as there is no money left and no capacity to absorb their idiocy another time around. I genuinely fear the macro outcomes of PM Miliband.
We need as a nation (the entire developed world in fact) to move beyond our entitlement welfare state mindset and compete. Something that can't go on won't go on.
“I fear that much of this regulation has been burdensome, complex and makes cross-border market penetration more difficult.
“This is exactly the wrong direction in which Europe should be heading and it threatens the global competitiveness of the City of London.”
- George Osborne, 2006
“In an age of greater choice, he offers more overbearing control; in an age of greater freedom, he gives us more interference…
“In short, in an age that demands a light touch, he [Gordon Brown] offers that clunking fist.”
- George Osborne, 2006
“I want to give you [The City] lower taxes and less regulation.”
- David Cameron, 2006
“Light-touch… regulation is in the interests of the sector globally and the government need to send that message more strongly.”
- Mark Hoban, 2006
Lower wages.
Greater borrowing.
Ozzy's treble whammy.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28460625
'
"Company pulls out of workfare scheme days after Osborne visit to promote it"
http://labourlist.org/2014/07/company-pulls-out-of-workfare-scheme-days-after-osborne-visit-to-promote-it/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+LabourListLatestPosts+(LabourList)
Typical 'shit on the carpet and then complain of the stink' from lefty cynics.
The most likely outcome of the GE appears to be Labour as the largest party or even a small majority.
In the above scenario Labour can only hope to govern using their Scots MPs.
Labour plan to raise income taxes.
Labour also plan to devolve income tax to the Scottish government.
Ergo: Labour will use Scots votes to raise taxes on the English even though the Scots MPs & their constituents won't be affected.
So, my puzzle is this: how many taxis will the English Labour party fit into in May 2020?
Glad he has fixed it.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jun/04/uk-banks-still-vulnerable-next-financial-crisis
FOBT machines are all that are keeping bookies going. They are designed to give the punter no chance of long term gains but every chance of extreme short term pain. At the same time the bookies refuse to take bets off winning clients or even those that don't lose enough
Tom Watson warned about these machines a long time ago. labour ignored him and the Tories haven't repealed them
Instead Labour want to tax bookies sports profit, which couldn't miss the point anymore if it tried.
Betting shops are no more than a fence for the FOBT machines
I have answered this question so many times on here I might ask Mike to pop up a sticky.
I'd have brought forward capital investment projects earlier in the parliament. Sure, the usual suspects will screech ha ha so you would increase borrowing to reduce borrowing?
My answer is yes: I would have brought forward investment projects with a large multiplier, get growth moving.
Rumours that it should be quite a strong quarter?
Electing Labour will be akin to opening the stopcocks. Their captain is targetting the bottom of the abyss.
" What should Ozzy have done the reduce the deficit faster in your estimation?"
Increased the deficit. Isn't that obvious? Honestly, it has been explained on here so many times I am surprised that you need to ask the question.
I was last in one when smoking was allowed.
Wonder if they are an less unpleasant places to be these days.
Stoking a debt-fuelled bubble, aggressive deregulation, dazzled by the spivs and speculators, a top-heavy trickle-down "long term economic plan".
Short termist and unsustainable.
The best reason to vote Labour next year is that they seem to have learned lessons from the Bankers Crash. The Tories merely saw it as an opportunity to play Fantasy Rightwing Government.
I think people on the left who are worried about deregulation are mostly thinking of the former, where people working in the industry are incentivized to take big risks and the government is supposed to restrain them. I don't know enough about it to say whether they've got a point.
"Business investment is being ramped up, generating over half of the growth over the last year and helping to rebalance the economy away from consumption," Mr Spencer said.
"Underpinned by a strong labour market that provides the best of both worlds - boosting incomes via employment rather than wages, while keeping inflation low - the UK economy has hit the sweet spot."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28393377
Working in the centre of Manchester, there are, inter alia, numerous betfred, Ladbrokes, Coral, William Hill and Publicity Shy Paddy Power.
On political bets, Paddy Power, William Hill and Ladbrokes restrict online bets.
I can walk into the shop, and place larger bets over the counter.
For example, when I backed Maria Miller at 14/1 as next out of the cabinet, I was restricted to £6.06 online with Paddy, but £50 in shop.
Additionally with Corals, Paddy Power and Ladbrokes you can withdraw your winnings in the shop, rather than having to wait 3 to 5 days to withdraw it online and into your back account.
They need to be privatized, just like that one that was being praised to the heavens on here, the other day, Hinchingbrooke I think it was?
"One of those referred is Hinchingbrooke, which is the first hospital trust to be run by a private firm, Circle."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-28439323
In 1945 and 1997, the voters blamed the Tories for the mess they were gotten into, regardless of them getting out of the mess.
Nobody, but the dimmest Labour supporter/troll believes the Tories were responsible for the economic mess that Labour presided over.
I mean look at all the warnings Brown received.
you might have, but the markets would have had none of it. I know the capital markets are evil and a plaything of the military-industrial complex but they do matter, you know.
And regarding your famed multiplier, in exactly what time frame do you suppose the benefits would be delivered? What do you imagine the policy lag would be or do you have some areas of outstanding natural beauty already earmarked for new roads and bridges? And in the meantime you only have an increase in borrowing to show for it.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/24/green-party-calls-wealth-tax-assets-multimillionaires
The Audit Commission looked in-depth at only those trusts that have not achieved foundation trusts status - given to the elite performers - and, as such, they tend to be the most financially-challenged organisations.
Look at all the warnings Thatcher received? I would have thought an incoming Labour government might have done something about it, but they too were busy counting the cash without wondering where it was all coming from.
Brown thought in his big head that the financial sector was permanently bigger than it really was. He therefore launched into excessive spending (of dubious quality) - even that was too much for the available revenues. But in reality a significant part of the financial sector was a bubble, it was cyclical not structural. That sector has evaporated away. Gone. So have its jobs and revenues. it was these revenues that Brown was relying oin to park millions on benefits.
Lets not give Brown any credit. He was culpable and a massive massive disaster for Britain and its economy. It will take years to unpick the damage that his spending did.
From 2003 - IMF gives Brown borrowing warning
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3333125.stm
From 2004 - OECD warns on UK budget deficit
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3412495.stm
From 2005 - Irate Brown rejects IMF's warning over deficit
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2005/apr/18/politics.ukgeneralelection20051
From 2007 - IMF warns Brown to curb spending
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/796ab7d6-cb44-11db-b436-000b5df10621.html#axzz38NwY8S00
I could include many others, but I have to worry about the site's bandwith costs.
Luis Suarez's ban ends the day before Barca play Real Madrid.
This industry must be destroyed. Burn the whole thing down.