No it was a cyclical crash converted into a f*cking implosion caused by the burst of a decade long credit bubble.
Brown's error was to take the electorate for granted.
Blair's first term was noted for its fiscal prudence. Tony had insisted that Labour had to accept Major's spending plans for the whole term. Once Labour were returned in a landslide for their second term, Brown revolted and stubbornly shoved his foot down on the spending accelerator. In 2001-2, government spending increased by 12% in real terms! and the GDP to net debt ratio went from a low of 34.6% in 2000-1 to 40.8% in 2005-6. All this at a time of an economic boom and peak revenues and self-sufficiency in energy supply from North Sea oil and gas.
So Brown's pre-crisis profligacy, at the very least, exacerbated the impact of the financial crisiis on the UK. And the failure to control credit supply and regulate the banks in the UK's oversized financial sector (through the weakly structured Tripartite Agreement) meant the UK fell further and faster than any of its main competitors. So no retrospective awards or plaudits for Gord, please!
As for Osborne and Plan A, he is the one laughing today with the UK economy exiting the recession earlier and faster than its European competitors. Being outside the Eurozone helped but the key decision he made was to start fiscal consolidation in 2010 (against Balls's advice) and to maintain it a rate of 1% per year (avoiding crisis measures as,for example, in Ireland and Greece, and avoiding (just!) a second recession in 2011-13 caused by market attacks on peripheral EU deficits and debt (remembering that the UK's debt and deficit was a good deal higher in many of the crisis countries). So whether by luck of judgement, George's 'Plan A' not only survived but thrived to win the competitive race.
On Carney and the extended monetary policy, you have to come up with some better counterarguments than just gut feel. There are plenty around and a bundle of statistics available from the BoE and elsewhere to construct a case. The BoE have outlined all the arguments for and against extension and, although there is no conclusive and risk free solution, their case is well worked and more plausible than the alternatives.
The Premier League opens up next week, seeking greater visibility by moving to NBC Sports from ESPN.
For the last week viewers of NBC Sports have been bombarded with a commercial to the tune of Nessun Dorma, showing excited soccer crowds, and the message appearing line by line in big letters on the screen -
Forget Downton Abbey
The Real English drama
is coming on August 17th
Every match
Every Week.
LIVE
The logistics of 'every match - live' are not explained. Presumably they will mainly be shown online. Will it finally kick start soccer as a major TV sport here?
August 17th is also the day the new Fox Sports 1 network opens.
NBC Sports is the new home of Formula 1 in the US, and they have just signed a contract to begin showing Nascar in 2015, though admittedly both ESPN and Fox pretty much admitted they weren't prepared to pay what Nascar demanded.
They are spending big, as are Fox Sports, who this week signed a contract with the USGA for the US Open, Womens Open etc.
Plato clearly another outlier of a poll with a Labour lead down to a few % even in a holiday period where often in the past, fewer Conservatives can be found. Meanwhile I wondered if Balls/Cooper were the source of the leak to red Suemus, just to stir up the pot for EdM? http://thecentreleft.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-falkirk-coda-who-leaked.html Who gains if EdM fails, before or at the GE?
No it was a cyclical crash converted into a f*cking implosion caused by the burst of a decade long credit bubble.
[ snip to keep within post size limit ]
As for Osborne and Plan A, he is the one laughing today with the UK economy exiting the recession earlier and faster than its European competitors. Being outside the Eurozone helped but the key decision he made was to start fiscal consolidation in 2010 (against Balls's advice) and to maintain it a rate of 1% per year (avoiding crisis measures as,for example, in Ireland and Greece, and avoiding (just!) a second recession in 2011-13 caused by market attacks on peripheral EU deficits and debt (remembering that the UK's debt and deficit was a good deal higher in many of the crisis countries). So whether by luck of judgement, George's 'Plan A' not only survived but thrived to win the competitive race.
On Carney and the extended monetary policy, you have to come up with some better counterarguments than just gut feel. There are plenty around and a bundle of statistics available from the BoE and elsewhere to construct a case. The BoE have outlined all the arguments for and against extension and, although there is no conclusive and risk free solution, their case is well worked and more plausible than the alternatives.
I'm not attacking Carney.
Osborne's austerity plan didn't work; nor did (as widely predicted) its equivalent imposed on Europe by Germany. This may be a valid argument against the Eurozone but does not mean Plan A was in any sense successful. But I'm not here to attack Osborne either, since I believe his appointment of Carney is part of a deliberate shift in economic policy.
Gordon Brown should be excoriated for PFI and for the house price boom. It is, however, nonsense to blame the tripartite structure or any other measure of Brown's for the global economic meltdown. Now the 2010 election has been lost, if not won by any party in particular, we should be able to stop campaigning and acknowledge what Brown got wrong and what he got right.
That fightback by Labour at the start of this week has .... er..... gone quite well then? From that Grauniad article "One senior figure in the party said that there was a widespread anxiety within Labour's upper echelons about Miliband's personal ratings. "We don't seem to be making any concerted effort to change it", the source said. "He needs to make more speeches, for a start because Miliband is the only one who really gets any traction in the media."" It sounds like a load of Balls to me. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer". How far away is Balls?
To be fair, the individual moves don't amount to much. The Con/UKIP bloc is 46% which is higher than many other polls so that might be worth mentioning.
Compared with other pollsters, the split between Con and UKIP looks very different on this survey with Con much lower and UKIP much higher.
Labour would have a very comfortable majority on these numbers but there's still a long way to go before the next GE.
To be fair, the individual moves don't amount to much. The Con/UKIP bloc is 46% which is higher than many other polls so that might be worth mentioning.
Compared with other pollsters, the split between Con and UKIP looks very different on this survey with Con much lower and UKIP much higher.
Labour would have a very comfortable majority on these numbers but there's still a long way to go before the next GE.
I guess I just can't imagine at the GE UKIP polling 17% nor can imagine the Lib Dems polling 9%
It feels as if Ed Miliband's leadership is teetering. His forthcoming conference speech could be a make-or-break affair. He desperately needs to hijack an old Tory slogan for it, as that goes down well with the anti-Cameron right-wing press ('Ed plays a blinder with his audacious raid on Conservative territory' etc.) I suggest 'Blood, sweat and tears' or 'You turn if you want to.' ('You've never had it so good' might not be the wisest option.)
To be fair, the individual moves don't amount to much. The Con/UKIP bloc is 46% which is higher than many other polls so that might be worth mentioning.
Compared with other pollsters, the split between Con and UKIP looks very different on this survey with Con much lower and UKIP much higher.
Labour would have a very comfortable majority on these numbers but there's still a long way to go before the next GE.
It's interesting that Labour is losing mid-term polliing numbers equally to the Tories , LibDems and UKIP. Labour is looking increasingly like a failed opposition.
Comments
Labour lead drops 3 points to 7% in latest Observer/Opinium poll: gu.com/p/3tvtq/tf
I'm getting exhausted, DJL, so here goes.
It was not a cyclical crash
No it was a cyclical crash converted into a f*cking implosion caused by the burst of a decade long credit bubble.
Brown's error was to take the electorate for granted.
Blair's first term was noted for its fiscal prudence. Tony had insisted that Labour had to accept Major's spending plans for the whole term. Once Labour were returned in a landslide for their second term, Brown revolted and stubbornly shoved his foot down on the spending accelerator. In 2001-2, government spending increased by 12% in real terms! and the GDP to net debt ratio went from a low of 34.6% in 2000-1 to 40.8% in 2005-6. All this at a time of an economic boom and peak revenues and self-sufficiency in energy supply from North Sea oil and gas.
So Brown's pre-crisis profligacy, at the very least, exacerbated the impact of the financial crisiis on the UK. And the failure to control credit supply and regulate the banks in the UK's oversized financial sector (through the weakly structured Tripartite Agreement) meant the UK fell further and faster than any of its main competitors. So no retrospective awards or plaudits for Gord, please!
As for Osborne and Plan A, he is the one laughing today with the UK economy exiting the recession earlier and faster than its European competitors. Being outside the Eurozone helped but the key decision he made was to start fiscal consolidation in 2010 (against Balls's advice) and to maintain it a rate of 1% per year (avoiding crisis measures as,for example, in Ireland and Greece, and avoiding (just!) a second recession in 2011-13 caused by market attacks on peripheral EU deficits and debt (remembering that the UK's debt and deficit was a good deal higher in many of the crisis countries). So whether by luck of judgement, George's 'Plan A' not only survived but thrived to win the competitive race.
On Carney and the extended monetary policy, you have to come up with some better counterarguments than just gut feel. There are plenty around and a bundle of statistics available from the BoE and elsewhere to construct a case. The BoE have outlined all the arguments for and against extension and, although there is no conclusive and risk free solution, their case is well worked and more plausible than the alternatives.
New Opinium/Observer poll: Lab 36% (-3), Con 29% (+1), UKIP 17% (+1), Lib Dems 9% (+1)
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/10/labour-opinion-poll?CMP=twt_fd
https://twitter.com/alexlmayer/status/366218870836563968
https://twitter.com/CambridgeMagpie
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Nik/423496584402119#!/pages/Dr-Nik/423496584402119
For the last week viewers of NBC Sports have been bombarded with a commercial to the tune of Nessun Dorma, showing excited soccer crowds, and the message appearing line by line in big letters on the screen -
Forget Downton Abbey
The Real English drama
is coming on August 17th
Every match
Every Week.
LIVE
The logistics of 'every match - live' are not explained. Presumably they will mainly be shown online. Will it finally kick start soccer as a major TV sport here?
August 17th is also the day the new Fox Sports 1 network opens.
NBC Sports is the new home of Formula 1 in the US, and they have just signed a contract to begin showing Nascar in 2015, though admittedly both ESPN and Fox pretty much admitted they weren't prepared to pay what Nascar demanded.
They are spending big, as are Fox Sports, who this week signed a contract with the USGA for the US Open, Womens Open etc.
http://thecentreleft.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-falkirk-coda-who-leaked.html
Who gains if EdM fails, before or at the GE?
Osborne's austerity plan didn't work; nor did (as widely predicted) its equivalent imposed on Europe by Germany. This may be a valid argument against the Eurozone but does not mean Plan A was in any sense successful. But I'm not here to attack Osborne either, since I believe his appointment of Carney is part of a deliberate shift in economic policy.
Gordon Brown should be excoriated for PFI and for the house price boom. It is, however, nonsense to blame the tripartite structure or any other measure of Brown's for the global economic meltdown. Now the 2010 election has been lost, if not won by any party in particular, we should be able to stop campaigning and acknowledge what Brown got wrong and what he got right.
"One senior figure in the party said that there was a widespread anxiety within Labour's upper echelons about Miliband's personal ratings. "We don't seem to be making any concerted effort to change it", the source said. "He needs to make more speeches, for a start because Miliband is the only one who really gets any traction in the media.""
It sounds like a load of Balls to me. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer". How far away is Balls?
Compared with other pollsters, the split between Con and UKIP looks very different on this survey with Con much lower and UKIP much higher.
Labour would have a very comfortable majority on these numbers but there's still a long way to go before the next GE.
It's interesting that Labour is losing mid-term polliing numbers equally to the Tories , LibDems and UKIP. Labour is looking increasingly like a failed opposition.