Senior advisers to Chancellor Angela Merkel are pushing for better-off households to pay towards the cost of any future bail-outs for the weaker members of the single currency.
The proposals, from members of Germany’s council of economic experts, raise the prospect of taxes being imposed on property in a country like Spain if its government was forced to seek a bail-out.
The council, known as the “Five Wise Men”, is often used to test new policies that are later adopted officially.
If (big if) this is true and not kite flying, it highlights the hopeless lack of democratic accountibility: where do I put an "x" in a box (were I a Eurozone citizen) to sack the five wise men in sn election? Or the Commission? Or Barroso/Rompuy/Ashton?
The issue is there's no solid vision for what "more Europe" means. Pro integration politicians (and in a multi polar world thre is a real case to be made) need to articulate exactly where the bus is going not to try to get "there" via stealth, hoping the European people(s) will not notice and just wake up one day in the USE by accident and like it. Contrast all this to the USA constitution drawn up decisively a few years after the defeat if George III which gave a solidity to to new nation.
Senior advisers to Chancellor Angela Merkel are pushing for better-off households to pay towards the cost of any future bail-outs for the weaker members of the single currency.
The proposals, from members of Germany’s council of economic experts, raise the prospect of taxes being imposed on property in a country like Spain if its government was forced to seek a bail-out.
The council, known as the “Five Wise Men”, is often used to test new policies that are later adopted officially.
The relatively higher wealth of the Southern Med affluent comes from overpriced properties not banked deposits. A quick look the Sotheby's International Realty website, will show properties in Spain and Portugal are massively overpriced when compared with their equivalents in France and Italy and even more so when compared with Germany.
Add to this the fact that Spanish banks are holding a vast stock of such properties following repossession from developers and are pushing 100% mortgages, interest payment holidays and other non-financial incentives to get the properties off their books, then there is a massive property price crash just waiting to happen.
Throw in even the threat of property taxes and the pack of cards will come tumbling down bringing the Spanish banks and government finances with it.
It seems to me that the Five Wise Men are playing with fire.
Even though the county elections are a CON-LD spat with UKIP taking votes off the Tories, Labour will gain about 250 seats !
Labour lost 284 in 2009, mostly to the Tories. The LibDems were almost unchanged. 250 or so gains sounds about right to me for Labour.
But you cannot take the Labour losses figure from 2009 because this year's elections are not directly comparable . You have to subtract the Labour losses in Beds in 2009 which are not being fought this year and add the Labour losses in 2008 in Durham and Northumberland . There are also around 50 seats fewer being fought because of boundary changes in a number of councils
Even though the county elections are a CON-LD spat with UKIP taking votes off the Tories, Labour will gain about 250 seats !
Labour lost 284 in 2009, mostly to the Tories. The LibDems were almost unchanged. 250 or so gains sounds about right to me for Labour.
But you cannot take the Labour losses figure from 2009 because this year's elections are not directly comparable . You have to subtract the Labour losses in Beds in 2009 which are not being fought this year and add the Labour losses in 2008 in Durham and Northumberland . There are also around 50 seats fewer being fought because of boundary changes in a number of councils
Mine was just a ball park guess, based upon a variety of information and speculation but no real evidence (though I did come very close to the exact outcome in Eastleigh!) I will also forecast LibDems above UKIP in the overall poll.
Mr. Welshowl, there's also the fact that America was seen very much as a new land in both a literal/geographical sense as well as a new idea. The USE would have to destroy the concept of nation-states to work, including strong, ancient countries who are the effective successors of the Roman Empire. The idea of Englishness or Britishness or Frenchness can't be dissolved and revised out of the minds of tens of millions of people because it's inconvenient for the eurocratic elite.
I firmly believe the EU will have to disintegrate. The question is whether it's sooner or later. The later it is, the greater the pain.
But there were revolutionaries committed to popular interaction.
Alexandra Kollontai, Lenin's Commissar for Social Welfare is my favourite. A leading light in the feminist movement she was a famous believer in "free love" and is accredited with stating that "sexual satisfaction should be as easy to get as a glass of water" .
My grandfather knew her a bit (probably not in the Biblical sense, though he was a lively character himself) - said she was the most fascinating woman he ever met (he thought his wife was the nicest, a different matter). I recently read her "Love of Worker Bees" which has various feminist heroines trying to be revolutionaries and yet individualists: the eccentric idealism glows from the pages.
Contrast all this to the USA constitution drawn up decisively a few years after the defeat if George III which gave a solidity to to new nation.
The current US was created by stealth. A powerful, directly elected president fighting wars without declaring them, vast central powers appropriated on the basis that all kinds of things affect interstate commerce, a federal supreme court pulling a right to privacy out of its arse - this is exactly the kind of government the founders were trying to avoid.
Mr. Welshowl, there's also the fact that America was seen very much as a new land in both a literal/geographical sense as well as a new idea. The USE would have to destroy the concept of nation-states to work, including strong, ancient countries who are the effective successors of the Roman Empire. The idea of Englishness or Britishness or Frenchness can't be dissolved and revised out of the minds of tens of millions of people because it's inconvenient for the eurocratic elite.
I firmly believe the EU will have to disintegrate. The question is whether it's sooner or later. The later it is, the greater the pain.
Agreed the USA was a blank sheet and they could create a nation, and did. I'm just struck by the utter ad hoccery and sticking plaster nature of the likes of Barosso. It's all tactics and bugger all. ( visible) strategy. Thing is in a world where European nations, even Germany, are going to be bit part players compared to China, Brazil, India, USA etc there is a case for banding together. I may think it's a bit of a pipe dream but there is a case to be made if only there dared to. It's as if Jean Monnet and his successors were and are gripped by a total lack of faith in their message and its appeal to Euopean electors, so instead they try to get there via the salami slice route, and that way lies disaster as you are not taking the people with you. Hence the Euro a top down political imposition without the stated support of the people using it, it's probably set European integration back decades.
Contrast all this to the USA constitution drawn up decisively a few years after the defeat if George III which gave a solidity to to new nation.
The current US was created by stealth. A powerful, directly elected president fighting wars without declaring them, vast central powers appropriated on the basis that all kinds of things affect interstate commerce, a federal supreme court pulling a right to privacy out of its arse - this is exactly the kind of government the founders were trying to avoid.
Possibly but I meant the "original" 18th century one.
But there were revolutionaries committed to popular interaction.
Alexandra Kollontai, Lenin's Commissar for Social Welfare is my favourite. A leading light in the feminist movement she was a famous believer in "free love" and is accredited with stating that "sexual satisfaction should be as easy to get as a glass of water" .
My grandfather knew her a bit (probably not in the Biblical sense, though he was a lively character himself) - said she was the most fascinating woman he ever met (he thought his wife was the nicest, a different matter). I recently read her "Love of Worker Bees" which has various feminist heroines trying to be revolutionaries and yet individualists: the eccentric idealism glows from the pages.
She survived until 1952 and died of natural causes just shy of her 80th birthday, which is a remarkable achievement for a revolutionary who was made a Commissar in 1917!
She mainly avoided the purges by being appointed to Ambassadorial roles with Sweden and then Norway being her main posts. I wonder if it was in the Nordic countries that your grandfather met her? She was multilingual, speaking even Finnish which she learned as a child from servants and locals on her family's estate in Karelia. She was the daughter of a General although her mother was not an aristocrat.
A truly fascinating character. I believe she even made political contact with the Labour Party of the UK during visits to London in the first decade of the 20th century. Maybe you should start digging in the party's records. There is a book to be written there.
Senior advisers to Chancellor Angela Merkel are pushing for better-off households to pay towards the cost of any future bail-outs for the weaker members of the single currency.
The proposals, from members of Germany’s council of economic experts, raise the prospect of taxes being imposed on property in a country like Spain if its government was forced to seek a bail-out.
The council, known as the “Five Wise Men”, is often used to test new policies that are later adopted officially.
The relatively higher wealth of the Southern Med affluent comes from overpriced properties not banked deposits. A quick look the Sotheby's International Realty website, will show properties in Spain and Portugal are massively overpriced when compared with their equivalents in France and Italy and even more so when compared with Germany.
Add to this the fact that Spanish banks are holding a vast stock of such properties following repossession from developers and are pushing 100% mortgages, interest payment holidays and other non-financial incentives to get the properties off their books, then there is a massive property price crash just waiting to happen.
Throw in even the threat of property taxes and the pack of cards will come tumbling down bringing the Spanish banks and government finances with it.
It seems to me that the Five Wise Men are playing with fire.
A Greek colleague of mine has a property back in Greece, about 400 olive trees and a two old houses, one of which he lets and one he uses as a holiday cottage, it is an old part of his family estate, and he keeps it for sentimental rather than financial reasons.
One proposal to raise money by taxation in Greece is to put property taxes on agricultural land. His property would become liable, and he might be forced to sell as a result, but who would buy? It has all the makings of a downward spiral.
Senior advisers to Chancellor Angela Merkel are pushing for better-off households to pay towards the cost of any future bail-outs for the weaker members of the single currency.
The proposals, from members of Germany’s council of economic experts, raise the prospect of taxes being imposed on property in a country like Spain if its government was forced to seek a bail-out.
The council, known as the “Five Wise Men”, is often used to test new policies that are later adopted officially.
If (big if) this is true and not kite flying, it highlights the hopeless lack of democratic accountibility: where do I put an "x" in a box (were I a Eurozone citizen) to sack the five wise men in sn election? Or the Commission? Or Barroso/Rompuy/Ashton?
My grandfather knew her a bit (probably not in the Biblical sense, though he was a lively character himself) - said she was the most fascinating woman he ever met (he thought his wife was the nicest, a different matter). I recently read her "Love of Worker Bees" which has various feminist heroines trying to be revolutionaries and yet individualists: the eccentric idealism glows from the pages.
"Communist society will take upon itself all the duties involved in the education of the child, but the joys of parenthood will not be taken away from those who are capable of appreciating them"
That's not 'eccentric idealism', that is totalitarianism.
I wonder whether the football riots not really seen since the slash and burn era of Thatcher are an unconscious tribute to a time which they felt she represented. I can't be the only person who feels an ugliness in the air. A sort of mid 80's stench?
No Roger.
Newcastle lost to Sunderland.
It's as simple as that.
Perhaps though time to pause and ponder the wisdom of a parachuted in MP to Tyneside who thought joining the board of Sunderland smart...
Actually, according to local sources, South Shields residents interested in football divide almost equally between Sunderland and Newcastle. So D Milliband's decision might not have been so silly.
I believe that David Miliband was helpful in gaining the site for the club.
Impressive since it was completed 4 years before he was selected for South Shields!
The German election in September is going to be exciting: it looks like a handful of votes will determine whether there's a grand coalition or if the current coalition will be able to continue.
A £15 million institution to enshrine Margaret Thatcher’s political legacy could be housed in the former Liberal Democrat party headquarters.
Between Thatcher's religious background and possibly her father's history she came out of something of a Liberal background.
Conor Burns said she described herself as a 'Gladstonian liberal'.
Yes, although imho that's her doing a bit of studied positioning more than anything.
Before Dennis she was a methodist which traditionally had been quite strongly entwined with the Liberal party (her father may have been involved back in the past) and also involved her doing a fair bit of lay preaching from childhood (good political training).
A £15 million institution to enshrine Margaret Thatcher’s political legacy could be housed in the former Liberal Democrat party headquarters.
Between Thatcher's religious background and possibly her father's history she came out of something of a Liberal background.
Conor Burns said she described herself as a 'Gladstonian liberal'.
Yes, although imho that's her doing a bit of studied positioning more than anything.
Before Dennis she was a methodist which traditionally had been quite strongly entwined with the Liberal party (her father may have been involved back in the past) and also involved her doing a fair bit of lay preaching from childhood (good political training).
I think other members of the Thatcher cabinet described their administration as '19th century liberals' too. (possibly in John Hoskyns "Just in Time")
Liberal leadership convention is now underway shortly, with a result expected soon, former PM Chretien has been speaking, now Bob Rae interim leader. Justin Trudeau the favourite, to restore an iconic political dynasty to the premiership in 2015! http://www.cbc.ca/news/live/2013/04/liberal-leadership-results.html#igImgId_67525
Jim McGovern MP’s train ticket row costs public £27,000
Taxpayers have been left with a £27,000 bill after a Labour MP launched a legal challenge against the Commons expenses watchdog because it rejected his claim for a £24 train ticket.
She survived until 1952 and died of natural causes just shy of her 80th birthday, which is a remarkable achievement for a revolutionary who was made a Commissar in 1917!
She mainly avoided the purges by being appointed to Ambassadorial roles with Sweden and then Norway being her main posts. I wonder if it was in the Nordic countries that your grandfather met her? She was multilingual, speaking even Finnish which she learned as a child from servants and locals on her family's estate in Karelia. She was the daughter of a General although her mother was not an aristocrat.
A truly fascinating character. I believe she even made political contact with the Labour Party of the UK during visits to London in the first decade of the 20th century. Maybe you should start digging in the party's records. There is a book to be written there.
I think you're right about the purge survival being due to her physical absence - her book makes it very clear that she was into grass-roots communism and worker control, which was the sort of uppity leftist thing that got you shot under Stalin. My granddad knew her before she left Russia, though - he wasn't very political but his father was legal adviser to Kerensky (Lenin's social democrat rival) and my impression is that everyone connected with Moscow politics around then knew each other, a bit like pb.
As Richard N sharply notes, her views wouldn't appeal to many today, but it's tricky to judge people for their attitudes in another country 100 years ago.
The book I do want to write if I ever get time is on the English side of the family - a great-grandfather was a rear-admiral involved in combating the slave trade, and had his memoirs published at the time. Somewhere in a packing case I've got his wonderful water-colours, apparently painted on the quarter-deck in quiet moments, and combining those with the memoirs should make an interesting project.
I sometimes think it's a pity that all this colourful background didn't produce someone more interetsing than me...
What the reaction to Lady Thatcher's death shows most clearly is that the UK is stark, staring, raving bonkers. There even seem to be a large number of allegedly grown-up people who think she destroyed British manufacturing, killed off mining, promoted selfishness, and - most extraordinarily of all - increased divisions in British society.
Any one of these assertions doesn't survive thirty seconds' contact with reality, yet not only do people seem to believe them, they seem to believe them with an insane passion. This doesn't bode well for the future.
Any one of these assertions doesn't survive thirty seconds' contact with reality, yet not only do people seem to believe them, they seem to believe them with an insane passion. This doesn't bode well for the future.
They are the same people who believe you can borrow your way out of debt.
Results - 1st Count Cauchon 815, Coyne 214, McCrimmon 210, Murray 3,130, Findlay 1,760, Trudeau 24,668 Justin Trudeau wins on first ballot by over 80%, In the polls a Trudeau-led Liberal Party would also convincingly beat Harper's Conservatives in 2015, Trudeau now speaking http://www.cbc.ca/news/live/2013/04/liberal-leadership-results.html#igImgId_67525
Jim McGovern MP’s train ticket row costs public £27,000
Taxpayers have been left with a £27,000 bill after a Labour MP launched a legal challenge against the Commons expenses watchdog because it rejected his claim for a £24 train ticket.
And there are those who worship a PM who doubled crime and trebled welfare dependency
Now now, tim, you're surely not falling in to the trap of blaming Maggie for international social trends, are you? That's as daft as those who blame her for the disappearance in the UK of hot-metal printing, apparently utterly unaware of (or, more likely, uninterested in) the fact that it disappeared everywhere else in the world as well over the same period.
This is interesting: according to a report in the Economist, what women look for in men isn't any of the usually supposed attributes such as height but...
"...the combination of broad shoulders and a narrow waist, which accounted for around three-quarters of the variation in attractiveness all by itself."
@williamglen - please explain what "painful" decisions Cameron is avoiding.
The most obvious is the unwinding of the Brown debt bubble. Instead we have ludicrous policies like 'Help to Buy' designed to promote more debt to keep the housing bubble inflated. This makes the UK structurally less competitive.
We still have RBS and Lloyds on the government's balance sheet in fundamentally the same structure as they had at the time of the bail out.
CarlottaVance - Well, it worked for JFK, it worked for Dubya, it will probably work for Trudeau, but while charismatic, I wouldn't exactly say he was a heavyweight and Harper will give him a fight for the Premiership. Of course, if Hillary wins in 2016, and Miliband in 2015 and with Hollande having been married to a former presidential contendor himself, the major Western in the G8 will be littered with dynasties!
What the reaction to Lady Thatcher's death shows most clearly is that the UK is stark, staring, raving bonkers. There even seem to be a large number of allegedly grown-up people who think she destroyed British manufacturing, killed off mining, promoted selfishness, and - most extraordinarily of all - increased divisions in British society.
Any one of these assertions doesn't survive thirty seconds' contact with reality, yet not only do people seem to believe them, they seem to believe them with an insane passion. This doesn't bode well for the future.
Thatcher did kill British manufacturing - as a major employer. Thatcher certainly did inc rease divisions - we're witnessing that now, and the |Gini coefficient shot up under her painfully bad premiership.
And the culture of selfishness certainly did start under her government in the 80s. Yuppie culture and all that, with the subsequent razing of docklands London to make way for shiny citadels of selfishness that would eventually pull the entire world economy down.
I'm not sure if you've ever encountered "reality" judging by your fawningly foolish pro-Tory posts.
Jim McGovern MP’s train ticket row costs public £27,000
Taxpayers have been left with a £27,000 bill after a Labour MP launched a legal challenge against the Commons expenses watchdog because it rejected his claim for a £24 train ticket.
If one post thrice in a row after 7.30am it is the PB tradition that one gets to keep the site for the day.
My PB/Vanilla clock has still not reached 7.30 am - you have had a lucky escape from our litigious friends. If future you will have to be most generous with your pies.
"Thatcher did kill British manufacturing - as a major employer."
Which is very different from the usual claim that 'Thatcher killed off manufacturing' which was made countless times on the radio and TV last week. It is also so politically biased as to be ridiculous.
Some questions:
What were the trends in manufacturing employment in other industrialised nations during that period? Was what happened a result of the government's policies, or somethign that was common to all developed countries?
What would you have done to keep those industries going, not only as economic concerns, but also as major employers?
What do you class as manufacturing? Where do I come in, as an engineer developing consumer products, or Mrs J, who designs computer chips? Are we service industries or manufacturing?
Over the years, the boundary between services and manufacturing have become increasingly blurred. Rolls Royce (aero) is seen as a traditional manufacturing business, but they actually have a massive services sector as well that is worth a goodly proportion of their turnover.
It is a trend that continued massively under New Labour (see figure 32 of (1), although also note the caveats). If Thatcher killed it, then Labour danced on its grave.
Like it or loathe it, the world has changed. Manufacturing has changed with it.
O/T, Rarely, Sam Delaney was quite amusing on the Sky papers review this morning, good comments about prisons and Ed's broken wrist.
I was unaware that Ed spent time in prison, presumably for conspiracy to f*ck the economy 2005-2010. I take it the broken wrist worsened from the repetative strain injury he acquired from the millions of personally written apologies to the voters !!
Comments
The issue is there's no solid vision for what "more Europe" means. Pro integration politicians (and in a multi polar world thre is a real case to be made) need to articulate exactly where the bus is going not to try to get "there" via stealth, hoping the European people(s) will not notice and just wake up one day in the USE by accident and like it. Contrast all this to the USA constitution drawn up decisively a few years after the defeat if George III which gave a solidity to to new nation.
The relatively higher wealth of the Southern Med affluent comes from overpriced properties not banked deposits. A quick look the Sotheby's International Realty website, will show properties in Spain and Portugal are massively overpriced when compared with their equivalents in France and Italy and even more so when compared with Germany.
Add to this the fact that Spanish banks are holding a vast stock of such properties following repossession from developers and are pushing 100% mortgages, interest payment holidays and other non-financial incentives to get the properties off their books, then there is a massive property price crash just waiting to happen.
Throw in even the threat of property taxes and the pack of cards will come tumbling down bringing the Spanish banks and government finances with it.
It seems to me that the Five Wise Men are playing with fire.
Is there any book on this yet?
Mr. Welshowl, there's also the fact that America was seen very much as a new land in both a literal/geographical sense as well as a new idea. The USE would have to destroy the concept of nation-states to work, including strong, ancient countries who are the effective successors of the Roman Empire. The idea of Englishness or Britishness or Frenchness can't be dissolved and revised out of the minds of tens of millions of people because it's inconvenient for the eurocratic elite.
I firmly believe the EU will have to disintegrate. The question is whether it's sooner or later. The later it is, the greater the pain.
The number one before Let's Dance was Duran Duran with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M0hogZyRyU
Emnid:
CDU/CSU: 41%
SPD: 26%
Green: 14%
Linke: 8%
FDP: 5%
Pirate: 3%
Others: 3%
http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/index.htm
You know perfectly well it's 'Patisserie' Valerie. Stop trying to take away their airs and graces. I saw Heseltine in there once sharing a table.
As for Garbo's hat-isn't it wonderful! (Good film too)
A £15 million institution to enshrine Margaret Thatcher’s political legacy could be housed in the former Liberal Democrat party headquarters.
https://www.stpauls.co.uk/documents/news stories/btoos.pdf
She mainly avoided the purges by being appointed to Ambassadorial roles with Sweden and then Norway being her main posts. I wonder if it was in the Nordic countries that your grandfather met her? She was multilingual, speaking even Finnish which she learned as a child from servants and locals on her family's estate in Karelia. She was the daughter of a General although her mother was not an aristocrat.
A truly fascinating character. I believe she even made political contact with the Labour Party of the UK during visits to London in the first decade of the 20th century. Maybe you should start digging in the party's records. There is a book to be written there.
One proposal to raise money by taxation in Greece is to put property taxes on agricultural land. His property would become liable, and he might be forced to sell as a result, but who would buy? It has all the makings of a downward spiral.
That's not 'eccentric idealism', that is totalitarianism.
Bercow asked if he can take a colleague with him instead of Sally.
He can take Ed Balls
Yes, although imho that's her doing a bit of studied positioning more than anything.
Before Dennis she was a methodist which traditionally had been quite strongly entwined with the Liberal party (her father may have been involved back in the past) and also involved her doing a fair bit of lay preaching from childhood (good political training).
This was number one 25 years ago this week:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTkfK2g4pKI
http://www.cbc.ca/news/live/2013/04/liberal-leadership-results.html#igImgId_67525
Taxpayers have been left with a £27,000 bill after a Labour MP launched a legal challenge against the Commons expenses watchdog because it rejected his claim for a £24 train ticket.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/9993703/Jim-McGovern-MPs-train-ticket-row-costs-public-27000.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
As Richard N sharply notes, her views wouldn't appeal to many today, but it's tricky to judge people for their attitudes in another country 100 years ago.
The book I do want to write if I ever get time is on the English side of the family - a great-grandfather was a rear-admiral involved in combating the slave trade, and had his memoirs published at the time. Somewhere in a packing case I've got his wonderful water-colours, apparently painted on the quarter-deck in quiet moments, and combining those with the memoirs should make an interesting project.
I sometimes think it's a pity that all this colourful background didn't produce someone more interetsing than me...
Any one of these assertions doesn't survive thirty seconds' contact with reality, yet not only do people seem to believe them, they seem to believe them with an insane passion. This doesn't bode well for the future.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/live/2013/04/liberal-leadership-results.html#igImgId_67525
http://www.cbc.ca/news/live/2013/04/liberal-leadership-results.html#igImgId_67525
"...the combination of broad shoulders and a narrow waist, which accounted for around three-quarters of the variation in attractiveness all by itself."
There's hope for the rest of us then.
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21576061-womens-expectations-opposite-sex-are-least-unrealistic
http://www.cbc.ca/news/live/2013/04/liberal-leadership-results.html#igImgId_67525
"And there are those who worship a PM who doubled crime and trebled welfare dependency"
"Are you some kind of automatic responding computer? Does your program trip on certain words?
You must have made this post at least 6 times.
Or a Labour PM to take responsibility and resign after the deaths of 500,000 people.
We still have RBS and Lloyds on the government's balance sheet in fundamentally the same structure as they had at the time of the bail out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWDWxw-U8JE
Wake up PB.
And the culture of selfishness certainly did start under her government in the 80s. Yuppie culture and all that, with the subsequent razing of docklands London to make way for shiny citadels of selfishness that would eventually pull the entire world economy down.
I'm not sure if you've ever encountered "reality" judging by your fawningly foolish pro-Tory posts.
Curses !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Typical leftie cheating a poor Scottish gentleman of modest means from a small accomplishment !!
Your own "culture of selfishment" in posting at that time shows clearly why Ed is totally unfit to govern.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationquestions/9987757/Good-grammar-test-can-you-pass.html
If future you will have to be most generous with your pies.
"Thatcher did kill British manufacturing - as a major employer."
Which is very different from the usual claim that 'Thatcher killed off manufacturing' which was made countless times on the radio and TV last week. It is also so politically biased as to be ridiculous.
Some questions:
- What were the trends in manufacturing employment in other industrialised nations during that period? Was what happened a result of the government's policies, or somethign that was common to all developed countries?
- What would you have done to keep those industries going, not only as economic concerns, but also as major employers?
- What do you class as manufacturing? Where do I come in, as an engineer developing consumer products, or Mrs J, who designs computer chips? Are we service industries or manufacturing?
Over the years, the boundary between services and manufacturing have become increasingly blurred. Rolls Royce (aero) is seen as a traditional manufacturing business, but they actually have a massive services sector as well that is worth a goodly proportion of their turnover.It is a trend that continued massively under New Labour (see figure 32 of (1), although also note the caveats). If Thatcher killed it, then Labour danced on its grave.
Like it or loathe it, the world has changed. Manufacturing has changed with it.
(1): http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/BISCore/business-sectors/docs/m/10-1334-manufacturing-in-the-UK-supplementary-analysis.pdf
Early discussion for Bahrain is up here: http://politicalbetting.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/bahrain-early-discussion.html
Shameful.