Is anybody actually watching?

[MrGongGong]

The lie about labour and public spending is a big and pernicious lie, and really gets in the way of proper debate.

(and i'm not Labour supporter either)

We also got the 75% of laws lie again

ARREST THAT PLANT

[P. G. Tipps]

(and i'm not Labour supporter either)

We also got the 75% of laws lie again

ARREST THAT PLANT

Okay, I give up, you're a former member of the Stasi, then ... ?

[MrGongGong]

Okay, I give up, you're a former member of the Stasi, then ... ?

Interesting that several very active members of the Christian churches are up in arms at Cameron's comments about Easter don't you think?

Telling blatant lies seems to be the way to gain popularity it would seem

[Tevot]

Okay, I give up, you're a former member of the Stasi, then ... ?

oooh oooh oooh you funky gibbon

[P. G. Tipps]

Interesting that several very active members of the Christian churches are up in arms at Cameron's comments about Easter don't you think?

Telling blatant lies seems to be the way to gain popularity it would seem

Oh come on, MrGG, he wasn't telling blatant lies he was just talking a load of old rubbish.

He's a politician not a religious leader!

[Serial_Apologist]

Even that would have been something of an underestimation.

Broon himself inadvertently let slip to Parliament that he had 'saved the world'.

Yes - by underplaying his claim I was er trying to be ironic...

[MrGongGong]

He's a politician not a religious leader!

Who never get found to be "just talking a load of old rubbish."

[ahinton]

One problem with the banks and their involvement in the crash is that people who blame them for it rather than blaming the government in office at the time tend to ascribe it to insufficiently robust regulation; whilst this is undoubtedly true and a significant factor in what was allowed to happen, the crash would not have occurred as it did, nor had the effect on Britain that it did (and to some extent still does), just because British banks were being allowed to get away with all manner of suspect conduct - they were all at it, everywhere. That's no excuse for the British ones, admittedly, but merely having a robust regulatory régime in place is one thing but actually implementing it in practice is quite another.

Did FSA/FCA oversee bank conduct with enough care? No. Had they exercised all due care, however, they'd have been faced with the "too big to fail" argument against fining them to bits for misconduct and, had they first tried to force them to split into smaller ones, they could have been taken to task for undue interference in matters of corporate governance and possibly even attempted breaches of human rights and the entire exercise, even were it to have succeeded, would have taken years anyway, by which time the damage would already have been done as it has been done. I am reluctant to believe that that any political party/ies in government or opposition could have seized full control of all of this without nationalising all the banks and even that would be no guarantee of ridding the banking industry of incompetence or misconduct.

Speaking of nationalisation, incidentally, let's not forget that it's not only the UK banks that are private corporations; the UK financial services regulator that supposedly governs their conduct is one as well (albeit without shareholders and on a not-for-profit basis).

[Serial_Apologist]

We can't have that

WHY doesn't anyone (apart from the Green's) challenge the idea of "trickle down economics"?
Some "choice" that gives us

Trickle down only works when you have strong enough trade union structures to back up ensuring that the extra wealth produced by increased productivity is shared out down the social ladder in the forms of increased wages and salaries or taxes to fund better welfare provisions including such outmoded things as local authorities building council housing. And then it only works when there's a boom.

Booms come to an end, to put it crudely, when the totality of product exceeds the (buying) capacity of the market to absorb it. The least productive firms go out of business, their employees get laid off, and there are less corporate tax receipts to pay for the resulting unemployment. The latter leads to disillusionment, because people have been led to want unsustainable product to stay in fashion because fashionability = being cool, and cool = you belong here - crime, insecurity, mental dosorder, suicide and all the other sins specific to capitalism that could be elimininated were things to be run rationally and not based on greed, envy and inequality.

Thatcherism was as much about weakening or eradicating these essentials for a more humane capitalism as about deregulation.

The mortgage bonanza was in effect an acknowledgement by the ruling class that capitalism could no longer work by reverting to an earlier age before working class militancy on behalf of an increased share of the cake ineluctably contributed to the health of the system. Before that, working class people were hardly tempted to consume via advertising and making shopping accessible to people previously consdered too oikish to be allowed to besmirch the good name of shops like Whiteley's which had encouraged the middle classes to avail themselves of fashions then unaffordable to the hoi polloi. The only way to get them to spend was now to make them offers in the form of home ownership and share schemes whose rising market value would provide future self-financing, forgetting or deliberately ignoring the lessons of the 1929 Wall Street Crash, despite it leading to eventual fascism and war. The meantime widening of the income and hence ownership gulf between the top and bottom of society would of course protect the richest - those without whom, we are constantly brainwashed to believe, there would be no work.

[MrGongGong]

Trickle down only works when you have strong enouggh trade union structures to back up ensuring that the extra wealth produced by increased productivity is shared out down the social ladder in the forms of increased wages and salaries or taxes to fund better welfare provisions including such outmoded things as local authorities building council housing.

Indeed
Why do they all (and they caught this from Thatcher) carry on with the pretence that running the country is like running your house?

So much homespun nonsense that people find credible.

[jean]

Splendid stuff!

But isn't it all illegal on this board, especially at this time?

[Anastasius]

..
But it was bank greed that caused the world recession, not the inaction of Blair. and Brown.

....

But it was also Joe Public who relished all those cheap loans and mortgages. 'We' also share the blame. As do the politicians.

[jean]

Indeed
Why do they all (and they caught this from Thatcher) carry on with the pretence that running the country is like running your house?

Particularly cringeworthy the example of 'Miriam and I' and our credit card bills...

[Anastasius]

..... if nuclear war had broken out, I wouldn't have known a thing about it.

I fear that none of us would have known a thing about it. Well possibly someone living in a cave at Land's End!

[jean]

But it was also Joe Public who relished all those cheap loans and mortgages. 'We' also share the blame...

We couldn't have done it without them.