Britain’s Self-Inflicted Misery This is a political thread, so, please, no accusations of "UK bashing" -- get over yourselves... Total agree with quoted NYT-article -- UK's a mess of epic proportions and Conservatives-Liberal Democrat coalition is doing nothing about it, in fact they are making the problems far worse. Guess, Leo2 -- among others -- need to try to convince that, in his case, his mother is voting for the bad guys.
Why the pop at Leo2? How can he control how his mother votes...even given she voted the way you seem to think she did? I agree with the article.....but it will be interesting to see how the US pulls itself out of the slightly deeper hole they inhabit. I'm not convinced the profligate NuLabour/almostTory party have the answer either.....but they'd be pushed to do worse. We've done another bout of QE, but can't see that making much difference, though I suppose it is still too early to tell. Economics-wise, I'm more of a Keynesian than a Freidman supporter or a Marxist. I have never quite understood the concept of one single system being appropriate for every single problem...it has always seemed to me that, as in everything, all options should be available so that the best can be chosen.
Perhaps we should do what Gaddafi did......gave power back to the people! As soon as the Coup de tat was over, Gaddafi gave all power back to the tribes and rested there until the American mercenary invasion of a sovereign state, ie Libya! The Libyan political model may be considered something akin to the clan system which was both its strength and its weakness! Regards Highlander
Perhaps we should do what Gaddafi did......gave power back to the people! As soon as the Coup de tat was over, Gaddafi gave all power back to the tribes and rested there until the American mercenary invasion of a sovereign state, ie Libya! The Libyan political model may be considered something akin to the clan system which was both its strength and its weakness! Regards Highlander
LOL! It's not a pop at Leo2... It was an odd attempt, which failed completely btw, of me to try to point out the following thing: I guess you are aware that after WWII was won by the Allies a lot of common Germans suddenly started saying: "we didn't support the regime", "we never voted for the National-Socialists"... The same is happening with the Conservatives in the UK, of course for an entire set of reasons! I'm not comparing the Nazis with the COnservatives -- that's not what I'm trying to say. But every Brit I meet, online or in real-life, says he didn't support the Conservative Party. EVERYBODY says it -- even on PF.com! Well, somebody did! Otherwise they wouldn't have so many seats in Parliament. Leo's mother is the only one that I know that votes Conservative.
I getcha! I'm another who has never voted Tory.but then I've never voted for a Unionist party of any shade in my life! Used to be like that in Scotland after Thatcher....nobody would admit to voting for the Party who decimated Scottish industry. Even now, in local government elections, for those with an Independent Description on the ballot, we always assume Tory unless we know different! Maybe they are just a wee bit embarrassed by admitting to voting for a Party they thought was going to make them better off....after they watched the Coalition target the vulnerable to save money..while letting the fat cats off with tax evasion/avoidance, and arse licking the bankers. I know in their place, I would be.
Culture....America.......where? On the Western European Forum, it is the Americans who are the foreigners! Can't comment on your height or hirsuteness though..so I won't!
I believe at it's core the UK's problem is the party system; dragging the UK from left to right every time the electorate has had enough of the current party. The result is seen in these crazy spending parties that Labour had, followed by austerity from the Conservatives. Better to have a permenant coalition, made up of all parties (inc. the Greens etc...). This way "democracy" should not be an "every four years" thing, but be in operation each day of government. Of course there are other problems, having a morally bankrupt PM for 3 tearms, who did nothing but line his pockets. Having the two main parties who are happy to accept that London is the wage earner for the entire country etc... And Japor, I don't buy your cop out disclaimer, not at all. If I spent my time posting continual threads about Belgium, it would be clear at to my reasons why.
Yep...that is exactly the problem..but I can't unfortunately see that system changing any time soon. Can't disagree with your opinion of Tony Blair or the london-centric UK policies....why do you think a rising percentage of Scots want independence. Belgium seems to have sorted out their governmental problems, with a caretaker Government which feels obliged to do just enough to keep the country running and do no damage....but does not have the authority to institute their own pet policies. A model for every democracy, imo..and with PR all countries could be that lucky!
Not so much the party system as the electoral system. We have multiple parties (3 big ones in England, 4 in wales and Scotland, and an extra quite big one in the Euro elections), but the electoral system we have for Westminster encourages negative 'tactical' voting, and voting for one party just to keep another out. It's a mess. We did have a referendum to change it recently, and bring in a system that would have been a little better (though by no means perfect), but the debate was so skewed by appauling media coverage and downright lies from the 'No' camp (claiming that the change would cost millions, which was a LIE, and that the alternative system was too complicated to understand, even though it was exactly how the party leading the 'No' campain elected their own party leader - that was a LIE) that it was sadly voted against. Thankfully we do at the moment have one of those rare coalition governments, and while a Conservative-led (they are the largest party) coalition is certainly not perfect, the effects of it are certainly reduced considerable by having to make their policies acceptable to another party. The madness that would have been a majority Conservative government has certainly been very much restrained by their Lib Dem partners, even if the media want to try as hard as they can to maintain the old simplistic 'left/right' battle and paint the Lib Dems as a party that used to be 'left' now becoming suddenly 'right'. It isn't remotely true, of course, but then the media have always struggled with reality!
Well you wouldn't run a very large successful company like this would? A change of philosophy potentially every 5 years, with the board of directors and the potential board of directors publically jeering each other at board meetings (the House of Commons is a public disgrace). The current coalition is shocking; a coalition in name only. It needs to be a full coalition, with minor parties (more minor than the Libs) involved. Moreover, the moron MP's need to learn to cooperate and compromise, without this they are self-serving. They act and make dacisions to keep their party in power, which is how Blair stayed in power; borrowing money to provide services on the tic. Thatcher did the same thing, screwing over the working classes for 4.5 yearsw, then 0.5 year of help, then back to screwing them over.
Let's face it, Belgium's only claim to fame is being the traditional place for Europeans to march through when they invade somebody.
"American mercenary invasion"??? Don't blame us buddy. We didn't want that war. That was all the UK and France! oh and yes. Austerity causes some recession like effects. That is to be expected. The point is that the economy will eventually recover, a few years from now. Until then people have to hunker down and do the best they can and in the future they will be much better off. Recession is the hangover from kicking the socialist habit.
There I disagree with you completely. The current coalition is certainly the first since WWII where more than one party have got together and developed a program for government which is genuinely a combination of the policies from both parties and manifestos and which removes the more extreme elements from either set of policies - a real document of compromise and cooperation. This government is nowhere near as radical and dogmatic in the way it would have dealt with the aftermath of Labour overspending as a Conservative government would have been. If you read and compare the coalition agreement with the manifestos of the two parties involved, the huge moderating infuence of the smaller partner becomes very, very clear. Of course, it isn't perfect from any perspective, and certainly it is taking the politicians some time to adjust to the idea (and most of the media seem unable or unwilling to adjust to the idea at all, and are reporting it as a 'Conservative' government propped up by the Lib Dems, which the policies in the coalition agreement make it quite obvious that it isn't, if the media could actually be bothered to read the documents they are reporting!). This is something quite new in politics in the UK, and it takes a bit of getting used to - it is a huge step forward, though. The picure being painted by some that this must be just a purely 'Conservative' government (which the Lib Dems are just going along with just to get themselves into government) because it is doing some 'Conservative' type things is just completely untrue. Obviously the other problem it has is the situation it is in, following the global financial meltdown and the ludicrous over-spending and waste of the previous government. Any government in this position is going to have to do unpopular things, and is going to find it hard to maintain any great level of public popularity while it does that. The population don't like being told that the government can't maintain the previous spending spree and have to cut back, but that was always the reality of this situation for whichever party won the last election. In general, though, I absolutely agree that the swings from left to right, and from 'spend, spend, spend' to 'cut, cut, cut' have been a blight on the governing of the UK for many, many years. There needs to be a bit of common sense, but the Labour instinct will always be to bribe the electorate with massive spending, while the tories will always try to bribe them with big tax cuts. What is needed is the sensible moderating influence of coalition, particularly with a partner that can emphasise the need for making sure that things are done as sensible and fairly as possible, and at least we have that at the moment. What we need is an electoral system that allows a greater reflection of the actual views of the people, and a greater moderating influence of parties other than 'the big two' in government. I strongly suspect that most people know that both Labour and Tories will always go too far in one direction or another, but have little choice but to have a government that swings one way or the other. We need to address the electoral system so that that doesn't happen anymore.
There's some truth to that in this current situation! There are other factors in the development of the recession, of course, but the overspending of the previous government is what has cause alot of the issues we have in the UK at the moment, and is the direct cause of the kind of cuts we have to have in order to get public spending back to a sustainable level. Labour spent money like water. They spent it like it was going out of fashion. They spent it knowing full well that the country couldn't afford it. They attempted to bribe the electorate with spending while trying to hide the scale of the problem that was being created, leaving the next government to sort out their mess. Had that next government been a Labour one, they knew they would have had to make huge spending cuts to sort out their own mess. They talked about doing it 'more gradually', of course, but even they still knew it still had to be done. The current 'austerity measures' are a direct result of the previous government's wild spending habits, as well as their inability to deal effectively with the UK economy's over-reliance on the financial sector and the inherent dangers in the way that that sector was being allowed to operate.
Labour did well to take over the world, however briefly, and cause this depression, so they obviously deserve to be blamed for it, and never the hedge funds and other gamblers. Justice where it's due: biggest thing since we got shot of the gruesome Empah!
Exactly. With the drugs problem, we criminalise and prosecute the dealers, growers and middlemen - whereas with money, all these people seem to get off scott free.
I certainly wouldn't disagree with that, and certainly Labour didn't 'cause' the global financial crisis. What they did do, though, was get firmly into bed with the financial sector and allow them free reign, ignore the warnings about what could go wrong, ignore the need to sort out the regulatory system for the finance sector, ignore the need for a more balanced economy that was less reliant on the 'spivs and gamblers' in the city, fail to deal with the systemic issues even in those banks that became necessarily 'nationalised' (so that the bonus culture was allowed to continue unhindered), and ignore the need to maintain public spending at a level which could be in any way sustainable even in 'good times', let alone 'bad times'! The global financial crisis would have happened anyway, of course, (the only way of avoiding that would have been the global community taking action collectively to deal with the way that financial institutions were operating) but the fact that it has left the UK as deep in the hole that it has is down to the actions of the previous Labour government.
Precisely what I was thinking. The burden of blame rests solely on Europe here. Europe wanted this oil war; not the US. At least own up to your own war mongers. America was merely there to provide consistent ordinance when Europe's logistics completely and utterly failed it. Shame, really. I should very much have liked to have seen the Anglo-French forces sputtering and flailing about when they ran out of munitions.
The deregulation of financial services, the "Big Bang", happened under the Tories. The Tories promised to match Labour's spending plans for much of the time they were in opposition. The Coalition is increasing public spending massively now. All the talk of "cuts" is fatuous. The hole the UK is in is the collective responsibility of Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems.
