Iain Duncan Smith

[PAULW]

If certain organisations(eg Vodaphone)paid the right tax & the banks hadn't cocked it up ?

Well thats the slack management of new liebour for you

[Two_Sheds]

If you look at the FT index and IMF report someone out there thinks the government proposals are the right thing to do

But that's like everything: one side will say "we're doing well" while some other sector says "oh doom and gloom, house prices are plunging"

[Cosmo and Dibs]

Iain Duncan Smith.....pft!

What does this multi-millionaire know about life on benefits or poverty? When has he ever had to go without?

He did a tv programme last year where he had to live one benefits in a tower block for ONE week......he walked out after less than ONE DAY. Bottler!

As for the proposal to force people into unpaid manual labour.......what is the difference between that and a community service order passed down by the courts? There is none.

Plus, under the current system those who have been unemployed for a while undertake a 6 week work placement in a suitable area. This is not at all demeaning or belittling.

I hope all those who are backing this plan from their ivory tower of employment would be first in line to scrape up chewing gum if ever they are unlucky enough to be made redundant.

[Cosmo and Dibs]

Oh yeah, and Iain Duncan Smith is an idiot who messed up the Conservative Party with his selfish but pathetic ambitions.

He then messed up this country by, instead of opposing Blair and Campbell's ego building illegal invasion of Iraq acted as Blair's head honcho and messenger boy!!

[Cosmo and Dibs]

Sorry for the rant, by the way!

I'd be interested to know how many of the 2.5m unemployed the Tories and right-wing loonies would class as 'scroungers'.

[SarzWix]

Well thats the slack management of new liebour for you

No, the banking cock-up goes back to Thatcher's deregulation of the financial markets in the early 80s.

During the end of the 1970's into the 1980's British Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the City of London financial interests who backed her, introduced wholesale measures of privatization, state budget cuts, moves against labor and deregulation of the financial markets. She did so in parallel with similar moves in the USA initiated by advisers around President Ronald Reagan. The claim was that hard medicine was needed to curb inflation and that the bloated state bureaucracy was a central problem.

For almost three decades, Anglo-American university economic faculties have turned to Thatcherite deregulation of financial markets as ‘the efficient way,' in the process, undoing many of the hard-fought gains secured for personal social security, public health care and pension security of the population. Now the ‘poster child' economy of the Thatcher Revolution, Great Britain, is sinking like the proverbial Titanic, a testimony to the incompetence of what is generally called Neo-liberalism or free market ideology.

As the Neo-liberal revolution began in the economies of the USA and UK, it should not be not surprising that the epi-center of catastrophe in the global crisis now unfolding also lies with the economies of the USA and UK, as well as a handful of economies, including Ireland Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Iceland, all of which embraced the free market Thatcherite agenda most strongly in recent years

From: Death Agony of Thatcherism Deregulated Financial System Model
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/

[PAULW]

But that's like everything: one side will say "we're doing well" while some other sector says "oh doom and gloom, house prices are plunging"

TWO SHEDS
Thats the problem the house prices are to high in the first place and instead of new labour stepping in and raising the interest rates to slow down the market they just told the house holders look how much your house is worth look how wealthy you have become under new labour, the down side was as the house prices soared the rent also went up so the poorest people struggle to find somewhere decent to live

[PAULW]

SARAH
New labour chancellor gordon brown gave the bank of england full control of the banking system without goverment control

[Cosmo and Dibs]

People say 'don't go to uni, get a trade by doing an apprenticeship' but there are just as few of those available as there are to us older guys!

Plus, people always say that Labour created the 'mess' we're in now, but wasn't it Margaret Thatcher who removed all those traditional working-class jobs, such as manufacturing and mining? Was there generational worklessness before Thatcher came into office? No, I tells thee!

[bubblewrap]

The Bank of England is/wasn't the problem it was the others.
The Bank of England never made any dodgy loans but other banks such as RBS did.
The Bank of England/tax payer had to bail them out.

[PAULW]

People say 'don't go to uni, get a trade by doing an apprenticeship' but there are just as few of those available as there are to us older guys!

Plus, people always say that Labour created the 'mess' we're in now, but wasn't it Margaret Thatcher who removed all those traditional working-class jobs, such as manufacturing and mining? Was there generational worklessness before Thatcher came into office? No, I tells thee!

Who was it that bankrupted the country before maggie came into office, oh thats right sunny jim callaghan's labour party

[bubblewrap]

Who was it that bankrupted the country before maggie came into office, oh thats right sunny jim callaghan's labour party

No it was the USA money men because Harold Wilson & Jim Callaghan refused to back the USA in Vietnam.
We then had to go "cap in hand" to the IMF.
To be honest the economy has been sick since he end of WWII.

[SarzWix]

It wasn't giving the BofE control over interest rates that caused the problem, it was the deregulation of financial markets. Not the same thing at all. And if you read the rest of that article, it cites the loss of our manufacturing and production of 'goods', and turning the country to dependence on the 'service industry' as major parts of the problem too.

[bubblewrap]

It wasn't giving the BofE control over interest rates that caused the problem, it was the deregulation of financial markets. Not the same thing at all. And if you read the rest of that article, it cites the loss of our manufacturing and production of 'goods', and turning the country to dependence on the 'service industry' as major parts of the problem too.

Caused by the murder of the coal mines & the privatisation of Steel,Gas,Water,Electricity,British Telecom & British Airways.(I think there are others?)

[Jeanied]

One thing that is different now - that wasn't here in previous times of recession / depression - is the high levels debt that individual households have to bear. That is never going to go away, regardless of what IDS says - and will haunt families who are struggling to survive.
Cause? Irresponsible and easy credit from greedy banks - and naive borrowers.