Hots on Posted February 3, 2011 Author Share Posted February 3, 2011 I think you're living in your tory ivory-tower, isolated from fact and the real world. Goods that were made in this country such as cookers were built to last. Fact. Nothing to do with Tory ivory towers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wednesday1 Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 Oh really? Lehman Brothers? Morgan Stanley? What blatant rubbish! Indeed what about BCCI collapse in the '90's? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mecky Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 Goods that were made in this country such as cookers were built to last. Fact. Nothing to do with Tory ivory towers. Claptrap, wishful thinking on your part. I bet you mum's yorkshire puddings were the best too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banjodeano Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 Claptrap, wishful thinking on your part. I bet you mum's yorkshire puddings were the best too. hahahaa...love it...:hihi: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hots on Posted February 3, 2011 Author Share Posted February 3, 2011 Claptrap, wishful thinking on your part. I bet you mum's yorkshire puddings were the best too. Whatever you say mecky, my parents British made cooker was still working when they got rid of it after 30 YEARS ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister M Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 Indeed what about BCCI collapse in the '90's? Or the 'secondary banking crisis' in 1973 (which was also caused by lax regulation). I think Ted Heath was in power at the time. Incidentally in 2006 George Osborne also agreed that financial markets needed to be unleashed. At a chamber of commerce event he said “Regulation too inhibits enterprise. For example, speak to any business in financial services – from the largest investment bank to smallest independent financial adviser – and the threat of future regulation from Whitehall and Brussels is now their number one concern.” Like the government at the time, he soon changed his mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister M Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 Amongst the main arguments for the introduction of the minimum wage were: "It will decreases the cost of government social welfare programs by increasing incomes for the lowest-paid." Guffaw ! And: "It will encourage people to join the workforce rather than pursuing money through illegal means, e.g., selling illegal drugs" Guffaw ! Its a complicated issue, but in a nutshell I contest that the minimum wage has done more harm than good to this country, both socially and for industry. Well that's your opinion, but in a survey of British political experts the Minimum Wage regulation is the most successsful policy of the past 30 years. See link below http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11896971 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rupert_Baehr Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 it is economically illiterate to suppose that it would be a good ide to try and making our wages competetive with China. It would require so many people becoming so poor that they would be left with no disposable income, with disaterous consequences for the UK economy, as demand for a whole range of goods and services dropped off. ... Why would the UK want to reduce wages to the level of those in China? There's no rule which says that if you want to export lots of goods you have to pay your workers a few pennies an hour. China (large country, lots of people) is the worlds biggest exporter. Most Chinese are not well paid. Germany (not very large country, about 100 million people) is the worlds second biggest exporter. German wages are rather higher than those in the UK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rowan22 Posted February 4, 2011 Share Posted February 4, 2011 It is totally accurate to say the Labour Government were soley responsible for the crisis. They had been in power for 11 years by the time it started. Thats as long as WW1 & WW2 added together. They had every opportunity to introduce whatever regulation they wanted if they didn't like what was there in 1997. And that is precisely what they did. Gordon Brown gave independence to the Bank of England and set up a QUANGO called the FSA to regulate all financial institutions. Things started to go wrong almost immediately with the failure of Equitable Life, but they didn't learn even when Northern Rock went down the tubes. Every failure of the banks occured on Labour's watch, and it is on their shoulders that the blame lies. Labour inherited a system which had been engineered by the policies of Monetarism and extreme Adam Smith economics. Indeed "Reaganomics" as the term was coined. Took this none interventionist stance to the extreme. "Outsourcing" jobs to third world countries where unions were kept well and truly outside the gates of factories and workshops. This was deliberate economic terrorism. This was no accidental by product of policy, it was policy writ large to destroy union power and remove the possibility of anything which threatened share holder returns. Even if this meant wrecking tens of thousands of peoples lives. Destroying communities and condemning generations of families to unemployment social disintegration. Thatcher’s "new vision" was nothing more than the old vision given a make over for the modern era. Return the labour market to a state of social Darwinism. But lets not forget that the people advocating this dog eat dog mentality were well and truly removed from its most brutal consequences. Preferring to bang the drum of personal accountability, but only for the working class who have very little access and power, whilst turning a blind eye to any and all instances of insider trading and corruption which the Conservative party became mired in. And, which was exposed and became the logical consequence of a party whose dogma is so rigid that hypocrisy is its only means of addressing the legacy of "sleaze" which is the true face of so called social Darwinism. I don’t think Labour or the Tory’s really have a sense of what needs to be done, since the people pulling the strings now aren’t politicians they are bankers and the corporations they underpin. We have returned to the situation where policy is an abstracted "ought" and where the actual climate of the political landscape is defined by the needs of fewer and fewer "players". Trickle down economics doesn't work. The poor are getting poorer and the rich ever richer. Whatever rationale we place around this it is an insult to the majority of peoples intelligence to say that this situation is anything but a "use" of people as objects in an economy where their lives are only as important as they are useful. And they decide who is, and who isn’t. This corruption of the nature of "Free trade" is something Adam Smith would have recognised as a tumour. And antithetical to all ends he advocated in the Wealth of Nations. Liberty, is not about the freedom of the rich to exploit the poor. It is about the right of every human being to use his/her talents to advance themselves in an environment where the possibility of this isn't negated by oppressive rule or hidden agendas of corporate greed. "Perfect liberty" as Smith saw it, was inseparable from the right to earn a living free from the yolk of serfdom. Indeed he believed that any economy which relied upon this kind of power imbalance to be doomed to collapse. Since it renders the capable powerless and the powerful tyrants. All of which stifles the creative Capitalistic commerce that would ultimately lead to a society of free and evolved humanity. Not the puppeteer of Stalinism or the predation of monetarism but an equitable meritocracy which removes all impediments to individual achievement. A vigorous and potent democracy where people are enable not disabled. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glamrocker Posted February 4, 2011 Share Posted February 4, 2011 The three biggest cons of the last 40 years....The right to buy...The minimum wage and V.A.T Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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