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What is going on in London?


Joe
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A snippet from BBC Live Text, whilst watching the debate live on line.[:)]

Radek in London

emails: On behalf of all the Polish builders working in London I would like to thank the rioters for creating so much work for restoration of the damages. Thanks to you, the children in Poland will have amazing Christmas!

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[quote user="Sara"]You still don't get it do you?  Snip [/quote]

Well I guess it's good to find somebody to blame and lets not let the truth get in the way either.

During the Tories previous term of office there were two events, Black Monday (under Thatcher in 87) and Black Wednesday (under Major in 92) the latter was primarily caused by George Soras ("the Man Who Broke the Bank of England") who made billions at the UK's expense which ended up with the banks being regulated and the UK leaving the ERM. It was Labour, namely Brown who started to deregulate the banks when they entered power and at the same time breaking the link between the Bank of England and the government i.e. giving the B of E the power to raise and lower interest rates as they wished. This was partly due to Blair and Brown having the belief that interest rates would go up and ment that in the event of this happening they could point at the B of E and say it was them and not the government, a very clever move. Lets not also forget that when the last Tory government left power unemployment, because of Thatchers monitory policies, had dropped from 3m to 1.7m which proves that it worked.

As to the issue of work, well how comes people can enter the UK and get a job almost straight away. When we are being told on the TV and in the UK national press that there is no work. My neighbours daughters went to the UK to find work, one had a job in a couple of days, the other took a bit longer, two weeks. Whilst there may be many unemployed who want to work there is a core group who have no intention of ever working if they can possibly avoid it. Labour changed laws on education which resulted in people staying in education longer and loads going to both new and old universities. What was really happening was a time bomb, taking youngsters out of effective unemployment by placing them into the university system. Now they have completed the university degrees and go out in to the world 50% of them can't find work and this is set (according to something I saw on the BBC) to get as low as 25% in the next few years. These people may be better educated now but they have the same chance of a job as they did before they went to university, all that has happened is the market place has been flooded with people with degrees but there is still only the same 'X' amount of jobs around. Now your in the position of having people with degrees stacking shelves in supermarkets, a total waste of money because after a couple of years doing that their degree will effectively be worthless. But then under Labour you had less young people unemployed than ever before except it was a temporary fix and not long term and now it's come back to bite (somebody else) on the bottom.

This no doubt will be blamed on the current government just as now they have started to blame them for building aircraft carriers with no planes conveniently forgetting that Labour signed the contracts when they were in power leaving large penalties if anyone should try and cancel. If you look around there are some lovely little 'time bombs' that Labour have left, another is the new rail link to the North, another contract nobody can cancel or the new trains that Labour cocked up the contract on so the construction went to Germany and not to the UK and so it goes on and on and on. As I said early on, and its the same with politics, each blaming the other, nobody taking responsibility while the country burns and slips deeper and deeper in to the mire.

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In the U.K. we are all sons (& daughters) of Thatcher. We have inherited her ideology. I tempted to say full stop but I will desist from doing so.

Yes but you think that is a bad thing and I don't, in fact I wonder if you misunderstand Thatcher-ism, its not if I want it I can have it, it's if I want it and work for it I can have it - there was a lot wrong with some of her policies and I certainly do not agree with them all, however the Labour government had 10 long years to right what they saw as the wrongs, but instead of that they chased the popular vote and went for the middle ground to remain electable. Goodness, in some ways Blair was a better Conservative than many Conservative MPs !

 I think most people basically believe that if you work hard you should pay your taxes and deserve the right to do what you like with what is left of your money - the more you earn the more tax you pay and the more government has to provide services and to look after the welfare of those less able or unable to look after themselves.

 Just out of interest how many people here were able to realise their dream of living in France from the profits of living in the UK - you really cannot have it both ways.....do you think you were greedy - no ? I doubt it !

 If any one watched the Politics show at lunchtime they will have have seen Andrew Neil state that in the boom years, when unemployment was at an all time low, the unemployment in Tottenham was still 19%, now it is 20% a change of 1% is unlikely to account for what went on there or be attributable to any party -  much tougher measures are needed to deal with the problems there, and elsewhere and  address the cycle of generation after generation of families only knowing how to claim benefit and not how to get up in the morning and do a days work.
 Further more if you watched the parliamentary debate you would have seen that the House were not divided along party lines on these issues, in fact they were not divided but agreed on many of the issues that have arisen - we'll have to wait and see what actually happens but hopefully it will be a turning point and positive measures across the spectrum ( policing, benefits, employment, education) will be taken to address the issues

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[quote user="Russethouse"]

Just out of interest how many people here were able to realise their dream of living in France from the profits of living in the UK - you really cannot have it both ways.....do you think you were greedy - no ? I doubt it !

[/quote]

Me

[quote user="Russethouse"]

I think most people basically believe that if you work hard you should pay your taxes and deserve the right to do what you like with what is left of your money - the more you earn the more tax you pay and the more government has to provide services and to look after the welfare of those less able or unable to look after themselves.

[/quote]

Exactly and whats left I will spend on whatever I like.

[quote user="Russethouse"] If any one watched the Politics show at lunchtime ......[/quote]

Yes I did and going back to the original thread I thought one interesting thing was that Cameron thought that media companies like Facebook (to name but one company out of many) should also accept responsibility for allowing the mobile phone video out on to the Internet. I believe there was talk of even turning 'off' the social media websites until this is over although how practicable this is I do not know.

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Quote

It was Labour, namely Brown who started to deregulate the banks when they entered power ......................

Unquote

I think you have just rewritten history. Seriously if you believe that to be true I am more than a little concerned for your command of history. I think Margaret Thatcher & Reagan, if he were alive, would have something to say about that also..

You're not serious are you?

Sara
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[quote user="Chancer"]

NormanH.

How does/did cutting the jobs of low salaried workers enable the rich to pay less taxes?

I agree with you on not being judged by your salary but surely your French pension is proportional to your 42 years of cotisations and your level of cotisations (salary)?

In the UK I believe that the state pension would be the same for a banker as for a street sweeper both having 30 years of NIc contributions, the former having paid much more in.

I seem to recall that someone told me that there is a minimum French state pension meaning that the lowest paid workers (and perhaps those that were unemployed etc) got the same as moderate paid worker (whatever that is), is that what you are referring to.

Please correct me if I  am wrong for either country.

hope your recuperation is going well.

I can see where you are coming from and dont disagree with you but i do have a couple of questions/comments.

 

[/quote]

1) Well a lot of low paid workers were in local government jobs that were privatised, such as rubbish collection or other privatised industries.

This was done in the name of economy, but in fact threw a lot of people into unemployment just to enable tax cuts for the better off .

See this article about present privatisations which draw on the same ideas for their justifications.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-a-sweeping-privatisation-without-a-democratic-mandate-2255794.html

2) No my French pension is not proportional to my 42 years, only to the part in France, and then on an average earnings over those years in France  some of which were very lean. The base they took for calculating my average was around €9500

The years in the UK are taken into account to make sure I am eligible to ask for a pension (i.e. that I have paid into a system somewhere in the EU  for 160 quarters, but after that they are not counted in calculating the amount paid.

So I get a sum based on the actual numbers of quarters of contributions paid in France   divided by the  theoretic maximum quarters (160) multiplied by the average (see above)

Only quarters in which you earn over a minimum amount are counted so I lost some, as I also lost some of my UK contributions There is also a mechansim bu which the pension is much reduced if taken before 65

There is another loophole in that you can only have the French minimum pension if you have 160 quarters in France so I am stuffed there.

I should be able to claim an OAP in the UK as I  paid in 30 years of contributions, but that will be the same flat rate pension as  anybody else in the UK

On the other hand I have to pay  charges  (CGS and CFDT) on my pension in France (unlike OAPs in the UK who don't pay NI)

Obviously all this has no bearing on the topic of this thread, but since you asked...

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[quote user="Sara"][quote user="Quillan"]

[quote user="Sara"]You still don't get it do you?  Snip [/quote]

 It was Labour, namely Brown who started to deregulate the banks when they entered power ......................[/quote]

 

I think you have just rewritten history. Seriously if you believe that to be true I am more than a little concerned for your command of history. I think Margaret Thatcher & Reagan, if he were alive, would have something to say about that also..

 

You're not serious are you?

 

Sara

[/quote]

 Within 4 days of being elected the then chancellor Gordon Brown severed the tie between the Government and the Bank of England http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/6/newsid_3806000/3806313.stm

The slightly amusing thing reading the article is that GB wanted to put an end to boom and bust politics !

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Quote -

Within 4 days of being elected the then chancellor Gordon Brown severed the tie between the Government and the Bank of England href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/6/newsid_3806000/3806313.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/6/newsid_3806000/3806313.stm

The slightly amusing thing reading the article is that GB wanted to put an end to boom and bust politics !

Unquote -

Yes? And? What has this got to do with the central point being made here?

What I am referring to here is the fundamental concept of monetarism, Thatcherism, if you like, Reaganomics & the economic revolution in financial deregulation that came with the wholesale introduction & implementation of such concepts that took place in the 1980's.

Fundamentalist free market capitalism if you prefer the expression. Something born in the 1980's. Deregulation of the financial markets was the central precept of Thatcherism & Reaganism. This is what the two movements concerned essentially stood for.. It was a revolutionary move in economic terms. To go that far..

This is a given. It is a fundamental footnote in recent history. It is universely understood, accepted & appreciated. By all I seriously thought.

People may disagree with the critical arguments against free market fundamentalist capitalism but to deny its large scale emergence onto the world stage in the 1980's is to deny recent history.

Or was it all down to a dour Scotsman who came up with a not so bright idea one day in his rather short time in office?

Sara
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Or was it all down to a dour Scotsman who came up with a not so bright idea one day in his rather short time in office?

On 15 June 2004 he became the longest-serving modern day chancellor, beating the previous record set by David Lloyd George

 of seven years and 43 days between 1908 and 1915.

He was chancellor for 10 years and then PM from 2007 to 2010 -

Plenty of time to right any perceived wrongs - or maybe you meant Alistair Darling ?

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Yes. Of course I can do nothing but agree with the quotes you have provided. Again these are recorded points of recent history.

These are facts known by all & sundry. Or at least they should be.

However, the specific point I was responding to, made by another poster, as you are aware, was that deregulation of the financial sector was something implemented for the first time by Gordon Brown after he became Prime Minister. Which categorically & absolutely was not the case. Gordon Brown, as we all know, inherited this monetarist free market (i.e. deregulated) approach from his predecessors......ultimately from Margaret Thatcher.

I am therefore somewhat confused by what you are saying here.

I would concur, however, that New Labour joyously & wholeheartedly embraced the ethos & system of free market capitalism. They carried on with it unashamedly. Which will be to their everlasting fault. In my honest opinion & firm opinion. Due to the undeniable fact that the proximate cause of the worldwide credit crunch & financial turmoil we have witnessed was an unregulated financial sector. The collapse was due to fundamentalist free market capitalism..

This is the basic point I have been repeatedly making in my recent posts. Is it not?

I am supportive of capitalism but have always held a strict preference for that of the properly regulated kind..

For this reason I personally hold Margaret Thatcher, in particular, alongside Reagan, as a fool. I would also say the same of those who came after her. Both those who held positions of influence within the Tory party & New Labour. Including Tony Blair & Gordon Brown.

It will probably take 40 years or so for the U.K. to recover from the debacle of the last 30 years. One can only hope the country & those who govern it will have learned an important lesson. Somehow I doubt it though.

I think, firstly, everyone needs to start opening their eyes to the truth.

Sara
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@ Sara.

I am watching TV and reading the thread on a notebook. The laterally expanded wide display is more than a trifle annoying requiring shifting everything to left or right. It seems that you are composing your posts on "bloc notes", no idea what it is called in english, and then copy pasting to the post reply window.

Can you please open "bloc notes" and in the menu bar select "format" and the click on automatic line return. A little tick will appear. Like magic the width of your posts will be trimmed in width to the forum default line return width.

Many thanks, PPP.

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I would suggest the obvious. Germany.

Post reunification and notwithstanding their inevitable involvement in the global credit crisis I think that, nevertheless, Germany represents a pretty good example of how it might have been done.

I also feel, in general terms, there is much the U.K. could learn from Germany in terms of avoiding consumer debt and the excesses of property speculation. Bearing in mind, however, our only half-joking economic rivalry with our more sanely managed neighbour, I somehow doubt it.

It is not very surprising that the epi-center of catastrophe in the global crisis unfolding before our eyes lies principally with the economies of the USA and UK. In addition the economies of Ireland Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Iceland are also noteworthy in terms of the depth of their financial woes. All of whom bought heavily into the ethos of free market capitalism in recent years. Granted, however, that other countries within the euro-zone , notably Spain, Greece and Italy now also are very troubled indeed.

I also fear that the U.K. will not be able to reap much benefit from the weak pound as was hoped for. As a direct consequence of its advanced de-industrialised state & reliance upon service industries. Again, a consequence of long term Thatcherism..

Despite what one might hear in the U.K. media. I personally would not be overly surprised if we do double dip in the U.K. within the forseeable future.

Just my honest opinion.

Sara
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I don't care how offended people are by my earlier post but I repeat what I said then.  Public life in Britain is in a dire state and the moral compass of the nation lost to a large extent:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2025017/Organic-chef-opera-steward-How-heeled-joined-downtrodden-looting-spree.html

It's no good people misunderstanding me and saying I was making sweeping statements.  I have heard my very statements repeated many times in the media in the last couple of day.

And I did make a distinction between the private and the public sphere in British life.  Yes, of course, there are morally upright people in the UK and I certainly would not insult 60 million of my fellow compatriots.

But, I still maintain that large areas of British public life are in moral decay and that there is very little about our public figures to admire or, heaven forbid, emulate.

And, just in case I have people getting on their high horse again and start attacking me without any real counter arguments, this is my last word on this thread.

In any case, I am too upset by what's happened and too contemptuous of the way Cameron is conducting things to feel any further comment worthwhile.

Edit:  OK, then that was only my penultimate post.  Just read this; everything that I have said but expressed a great deal more cogently and elegantly:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100100708/the-moral-decay-of-our-society-is-as-bad-at-the-top-as-the-bottom/

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Several posts have mentioned Thatcher, why turn on someone who wanted to make the people of Britain proud - they didn't call her the 'Iron Lady' for nothing. Without her, The Falkland Islands would no longer be British.

She diluted Union power, it needed to be done, people were on strike, out of work, the only benefits were to the Union leaders who went home each night to comfort.

As for the US, Maggie and Reagan were trying to build respect on both sides of the 'pond'. No country gives us respect now or looks upon us with admiration for what we have achieved. Sadly her own party  stabbed her in the back, which brings to mind the demise of another gentleman of the Government who expressed his concern for letting all and sundry into the country. Was he wrong? On the contrary, he had foresight. We have practically every nationality living in Britain, and once established who do they employ in their business? The Brits are left to saunter into Welfare offices in order to live.

Baroness Thatcher was a great leader and certainly not a fool as suggested earlier.

 

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Frankly, anyone who wishes us to be more like the Germans should seriously think what that means. Control, control, control. Whereas Margaret Thatcher broke the grey, control-freak mould and failure of the socialism imposed by Labour and gave people the chance to work and earn for themselves. Blair and Brown destroyed that by  emascualting the superb pensions inheritance of the British people, restricting the entrepreneur culture and by massively increasing the useless job myth of the public sector which, remember, lives off the backs of others exclusively. B and B never created a private sector job which is the only type of job that creates wealth, which in turn they depended on to fund their stupidity.

What they did to the education sector is worthy of the guillotine at any time; to simplify matters, they watered down everything and sold the idea that it was excellence. That is the cause of these riots.

For Bobo's sake, leave you childish, univeristy socialism behind, some of you and get real.

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[quote user="sweet 17"]

I don't care how offended people are by my earlier post but I repeat what I said then.  Public life in Britain is in a dire state and the moral compass of the nation lost to a large extent:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2025017/Organic-chef-opera-steward-How-heeled-joined-downtrodden-looting-spree.html

It's no good people misunderstanding me and saying I was making sweeping statements.  I have heard my very statements repeated many times in the media in the last couple of day.

And I did make a distinction between the private and the public sphere in British life.  Yes, of course, there are morally upright people in the UK and I certainly would not insult 60 million of my fellow compatriots.

But, I still maintain that large areas of British public life are in moral decay and that there is very little about our public figures to admire or, heaven forbid, emulate.

And, just in case I have people getting on their high horse again and start attacking me without any real counter arguments, this is my last word on this thread.

In any case, I am too upset by what's happened and too contemptuous of the way Cameron is conducting things to feel any further comment worthwhile.

Edit:  OK, then that was only my penultimate post.  Just read this; everything that I have said but expressed a great deal more cogently and elegantly:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100100708/the-moral-decay-of-our-society-is-as-bad-at-the-top-as-the-bottom/

[/quote]

I'm disappointed in you Sweet - its no good criticising Cameron if you have no constructive suggestions, easier, yes...... as for the blogger you quote - he makes an error at the start ' The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat.  If it had truly been alright then no one would have had to repay the money or would have gone to prison, the fact is that they did.

However I do agree about what he says about the very wealthy - I have worked for extremely wealthy people who had inherited their wealth - they felt they had an obligation to treat people properly and create employment to everyone's mutual benefit, on the other hand some of those I have worked for who were 'self made' have been inconsiderate louts whose behavior was frankly disgusting. I also agree with him about the likes of Sir Philip Green -

Sara, Germany had the benefit of Marshall aid, (for political as well as financial reasons) we got stuck with repaying lease lend until 2006 - maybe if the winners in WW2 had been rewarded instead of the losers things might be a whole lot different [:-))]

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