No, I’m not being rude but merely quoting Alistair Darling on this BBC video (Which hilariously carries a warning that “This video contains strong language” – have you heard the profanities that litter so many BBC productions?) Anyway, Darling points out just how grim things are for the UK economy whilst suggesting that this is because of those international perfect storm economic conditions. The BBC interviewer could have enquired how it is that whilst the US reports 3.3% growth in the last quarter the UK under Labour has managed 0%. But that might suggest economic incompetence on behalf of Brown and Darling and that ain’t part of the BBC’s game. World conditions, nothing to see here, move along to the job centre…
PISSED OFF?
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Yes. Any why doesn’t ANYONE ask that prat Darling (what a daft name) why they don’t slash public spending and cut taxes and cut interest rates?
And before some leftoid wankstain comes on here and mumbles “wot abat skools and hozpidals man?” The Government has a total budget of some 550 billion a year. They can’t find savings out of that lot?
Here’s a start
http://jobs.guardian.co.uk/
Slashing the amount of money wasted on 5 a day co-ordinators, dog shit inspectors, one legged black baby officials and so on. None of these jobs come in under 50k + expenses.
Then Darling could stop pissing money away on illegal immigrants, shite computer systems that don’t work (just how much has been wasted on NHS computers?) ID card schemes and so on.
Oh and I could find 3.5 billion a year right away. Anyone want to guess what that might be?
if its affecting “every country in the world”, how come the U.S. has experienced a 3.3% growth rate in the last quarter?
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=5364066b-6e0d-4142-9eec-ce6add4d4f97
oh wait – that would be something to do with the TAX CUTS that they introduced at the start of the year.
as per usual the Labour Droids are spouting utter rubbish to cover up their own incompetent socialist policies.
“Alistair Darling: People are pissed off with us”
[Extract]:
“This is the frank, if somewhat blunt assessment of the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the view of the British people upon this Labour Government. And he is not wrong. But it is astonishingly candid, crude (despite ‘piss’ appearing in the Authorised Version of the Bible [2Kgs 18:27; Is 36:12]) and unparliamentary language from one of the holders of the great offices of state. If Cranmer were a betting man he would wager that Mr Darling’s tenure at the Treasury is about to be curtailed, not least because he rides roughshod over the Prime Minister’s assurance that the economic situation is not as bad people think and that Britain is ‘well placed’ to weather the economic storm. One of them is manifestly lying, or being recklessly deceitful.
“And if Mr Darling has not gone by Christmas, the Prime Minister will have.”
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2008/08/alistair-darling-people-are-pissed-off.html
“I could find 3.5 billion a year right away. Anyone want to guess what that might be?
Martin | 30.08.08 – 7:11 pm ”
one of the quangos?
The thing that gets me is this, we are about to or are already in a recession and this government is talking about INCREASING taxes!
However, NL have backed themselves in to a corner…they HAVE to increase taxes just to pay the wages and maintain the bloated excess that is todays public service.
Also, while the banks were asking for £50bil to help them out, why didnt Gordo FORCE the banks to agree NOT to make huge amounts of their work forces redundant (after all, UK banking business has actually increased inspite of the fall in profits!). Here we have a situation where the banks were BEGGING for money, YET Gordo let them get away with murder!
Mailman
archduke:
Save 3.5 billion
get rid of
http://www.bbc.co.uk
“Mailman | 30.08.08 – 8:15 pm ”
because labour does not care one bit about City jobs. thats why.
the thought never occured to them.
16 billion can be saved by not shovelling the money into the EU.To the BBC though, that`s like asking someone the question of can he survive without food. The EU, beloved to the BBC.
I clicked on Martin’s Guardian jobs link and then on the government tab.
On the first page there is only one job that I can recognise ie. “Clerk of Works”!
We need to get rid of these people; well their jobs I mean! Pace Stalin.
Mind he had the right idea in the nineteen thirties. All railway officials above the rank of Station Master for instance.
Gordon: Did you have to be a one legged lesbian asylum seeker to apply?
gustav is growing into a Cat 5 …
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D92SQ3B80&show_article=1
Hi David,
Here an article from the self-hating, pinko-commie, neo marxist Washington Post regarding the 3.3% figure you are mentioning.
Things are not as simple as you seem to suggest. But then, what exactly is new with this realisation.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/28/AR2008082803106.html?hpid=topnews
Exports Drive Surprising Economic Growth
By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 29, 2008; Page D01
U.S. economic growth accelerated from April to June as taxpayers spent their federal rebate checks and a weakened dollar boosted exports, the government reported yesterday.
According to new data from the Commerce Department, gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 3.3 percent in the second quarter of the year, the fastest rate since mid-2007. The department had initially estimated annualized growth for the period to be 1.9 percent, but more complete data — particularly on exports by U.S. companies — showed the economy to be growing faster.
The new data helped send U.S. stocks sharply higher and offered a respite from a period of sluggish growth. GDP shrank in the last three months of 2007 and grew at an annual rate of less than 1 percent from January to March this year.
Whether that pace of growth continues, however, is another issue.
Taxpayers in May and June, for example, received more than $100 billion in rebates from the federal government. That money helped boost consumer spending compared with the previous quarter — but won’t be available to sustain it going forward.
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A recent recovery in the value of the dollar, meanwhile, and slowing growth abroad could temper what has been a rapid rise in exports. They have been a key support for a U.S. economy buffeted by falling real estate values and a financial crisis that has spread from brokerage firms to include banks and mainstay companies such as the mortgage giant Fannie Mae.
Sales abroad jumped by 13 percent from April through June and accounted for most of the growth in second-quarter GDP.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters yesterday that the strong growth in exports “demonstrates just how important it is to continue with President Bush’s efforts to open markets for America’s goods and services.” She called on Congress to pass a trade agreement with Colombia and other such negotiated agreements when lawmakers return from their summer recess on Sept. 8.
Asked whether the White House felt any vindication from yesterday’s numbers, Perino said that “no one’s doing a victory dance, but what we are doing is making sure that we continue to press Congress on one of the most important aspects, which is free trade.”
While the overall GDP figure “looks good,” the economy was nearly stagnant when exports are factored out, wrote Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist with the consulting firm High Frequency Economics. “We expect much weaker” growth in the last half of the year, he said.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose yesterday by 212.67, or 1.85 percent, to close at 11,715.18. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index gained 19.02, or 1.48 percent, to 1300.68, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index finished at 2411.64, up 29.18, or 1.22 percent.
The stock market was also cheered by a Labor Department report that the number of newly jobless people seeking unemployment benefits fell for the third week in a row.
Gross domestic product is a broad measure of the goods and services produced by U.S. businesses and workers and is one of the statistics most closely watched in recent months amid fears that the economy is slipping into recession.
The stronger-than-expected GDP showing comes on the heels of a positive report this week on sales of long-lasting products, or durable goods, and modestly optimistic news on home sales.
But rising inflation remains a concern, as do a string of monthly job losses this year that have pushed unemployment higher and raised concerns about weak consumer spending in the future.
Martin
It does not matter who the people are that get these “jobs”. It is that the posts are completely without any usefulness.
Left wing wankstains are the cause of just about every single problem in society I can think of, from social unrest, to high crime, to kids leaving school with insufficient brains to wipe their own arses with, to the current “credit crunch”.
How can these fuckwits even mention the credit crunch without admitting that it was the American left that caused it in the first place? Groups like ACORN using Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act in order to bully banks into lowering underwriting standards they claimed were “discriminatory” to ethnic minorities.
And then of course when a crunch comes, the economy suffers more than it should because too much money is tied up in the public sector instead of where it belongs – in the pockets of those who earned it. The left is so stupid it believes that faceless government bureaucrats are better at spending our own money than we are.
And yet despite all of the empirical evidence to the contrary, they still cling to the fallacies of economic and social theorists from Marx to Keynes – I mean for christs sakes even a non-economist like Ayn Rand could show beyond doubt why free capitalism is better than socialism or “social democracy”.
Have these arseholes even bothered to take a cursory glance at Classical/Austrian economics? George Reisman has shown the superiority of laissez-faire capitalism beyond doubt in his book “Capitalism”, yet how many of these NuLiebor twats have even given an economist like Reisman a single look?
The highly-taxed “social democracies” of Europe have had terrible rates of economic growth since the 70’s, when they decided to put a stop to the free-market progress which was made after WWII by turning their nations into grotesque visions of producers and parasites.
The Great Depression was caused by state intervention in the economy. It was prolonged and magnified by the left wing New Deal shenanigans of FDR, causing unnecessary misery to millions.
Even aside from that, the empirical evidence that economies grow when you lower taxes has been overwhelming throughout history. Dammit, even tax revenues themselves go up when you lower tax rates…but this kind of logic is just too sophisticated for the infantile left who see life as a morality play in which they play the leading roles. They’ll continue with this tax/tax/tax/tax/tax nonsense until the wheels of industry come to a grinding halt, and even then they’ll blame capitalism for having “gone wrong”.
Given the irrefutable, undeniable scale of the harm that the left has done and continues to do the Western world, there is surely a case to have them all sterilized or imprisoned, no? After all, their very existence abrogates the rights of others to live their lives as they please.
By the way, Reisman….essential reading.
http://www.georgereisman.com/blog/
Newsnight Cock Down Up the Market Report Yet Again
http://www.order-order.com/2008/08/newsnight-cock-up-market-report-yet.html
Gordon: They have one use. They create Nu Liebour voters.
When Greg Dyke became director-general of the BBC, you may remember that he described the corporation as being “hideously white”. Greg didn’t mean himself, of course, even though he is. Nor did he mean those henchmen with whom he surrounded himself, even though they were all white. He meant lower down the ranks • where, in fact, they were not.
It is perhaps the case that the more politically correct an organisation • the more prone to that poisonous oxymoron “positive discrimination” • the more likely it is to be staffed at the top exclusively by self-flagellating white liberals who think that none of this stuff applies to them. And you can’t get any more politically correct, on paper, than the Met and the BBC
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rod_liddle/article4641038.ece
Move over darling.
The left whingers do not want us to keep too much of our money for social as much as ecconomic reasons.
The more money people have the more choice they have. If we get to decide more about our own schools healthcare pensions and spending we might realise that we need not be dependant on governments local authorities or quangoes to instruct us on how to live our lifes.
Archduke,
If this Government really wants to beat a recession then the key to doing that is keeping people in employment…and the first target should be the banks.
These organisations have enjoyed up to 40 years of unhindered profit, so therefore should be targetted to ensure they dont dump tens of thousands of their staff on the unemployment heap.
Now, Gordo can either do this through negotiations (ie. you want tax payer money then NO redundancies) or through legislation (companies that have made £100m in profits in the last year or three years running WILL NOT be allowed to make staff redundant).
However that would require a Government that actually knows what its doing. Something this country doesnt have.
Mailman
What depresses me, is that, if the economy collapses, nulabour will claim its the world economies fault. If it recovers nulabour will claim the credit.
In the same way if it turns out that AGW is nonsense (what we know to be true), and there is no massive climate change, the greenies will claim, success for their campaign in stopping climate change.
We cannot win!
Mailman, your request for Govt support of the banks lacks sound economic basis.
The irony is that it has been state interference in the banking industry that has casued the ‘credit crunch’, but you won’t hear that on the BBC.
[url]http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/07/18/fannie-freddie-regulation-oped-cx_yb_0718brook.html[/url]
More of the same interference will not imporve the market – it needs to correct itself by natural means.
The banking sector should then be left free to make loans to people on the basis of normal, sound lending principles, instead of such principles being ditched in favour of government supported “anti-social-exclusion” lending policies.
The Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac government-backed lenders in the USA meant banks were happy to give out loans to all and sundry, knowing that any defaulters would be paid for by the government!
Bad business lending decisons to people who cannot repay their loans leads to losses, and leads to crunch time.
Their’s no such thing as a free-lunch and the financial support of Northern Rock, which should have been left to die, was criminal use of tax-payers money for 6,000 jobs in a labour heartland. Hmm, any connection?
Actually GBS, it was not the Government who forced banks in to risky sub prime security, which is where the credit crunch has come from.
What Im talking about is the banks going cap in hand to the Government for money and then being given that money free of any conditions with no requirement to pay any of it back.
Northern Rock should not have been left to die. The fact you are spouting this tells me you, like your name sake, have no idea when it comes to economics.
Mailman
Mailman,
Northern Rock was built on a poor business model.
Bad business ideas, or bad business products like British Leyland et al, should not be funded by the taxpayer for the sake of votes. The market tells a business owner whether he can make a profit or not at any particualr venture and it is not the government’s job to subsidise on the hollow promise (not backed by any assets) that the money will be repaid.
It’s not a question of economics, but politics, that has “saved” Northern Rock.
Only that NR is not “saved”, it’s crippled and has *no* way of paying back the money it has received from our beloved “rob Peter to Pay Paul” government.
Northern Rock deserves to die.
Gordon BrownStuff:
…our beloved “rob Peter to Pay Paul” government…
Why do I alaways feel like Peter and never Paul
As others have said the – Country is in a disasterous position because of the stupidity of the left. The worrying thing is that with the help of the BBC they still seem to be able to get away with blaming it all on Mrs. Thatcher. The left are digging a big hole and are still digging. It will all end in tears.
GBS,
Northern Rock should have been sold off to who ever wanted it, not left to fall over in a screaming heap, which in turn would have impacted EVERY single person who has a bank account or any other business with that bank.
The fall out from NR falling over would have reverberated through not only the other banks BUT through the entire economy.
You CAN NOT have your banks falling over willy nilly, no matter how much they owe you for “unlawful” over draft fees.
Mailman
Getting back on track, if this government is serious about beating the recession then they must start with ensuring as many people as possible stay in paid employment.
If the banks, who have had a free reign on profits for the last 40 years, are allowed to dump tens or hundreds of thousands of staff on the unemployment heap then this will be disastrous and will then become a self fulfilling prophesy.
It concerns me that those in charge of the economy have not put forward any plans for staving off the recession other than to increase taxes.
Mailman
Darling has used an interesting tactic, for once…
With this announcement he’s given the press absolutely nowhere to go on this one and they’re pretty pissed off.
He’s meant to say that things have never been better etc blah blah blah bleh bleh bleh and then the press corps feed off his political nonsense.
They could have asked a whole host of questions regarding economic mismanagement. They are rather spoilt for choice really. Just one shocking example:
http://burningourmoney.blogspot.com/2007/04/brown-bottom.html
Fortunately, most survey’s suggest that people aren’t stupid and realise that Labour performance has been less than optimal.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bd17e96c-72ba-11dd-983b-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1
ady: I disagree. The BBC will try to kill the story, as they do with every negative Nu Liebour story.
But the questions that should be asked are
1. Why have’nt interest rates been slashed (as in the USA)
2. Why hasn’t public spending been slashed (especially when the Government is telling us we need to cut back)
3. Why haven’t taxes been slashed?
Broon and his glove puppet are continuing to spend our money like a drunk whore that’s just done a £500 track
Martin,
The Government cant slash its spending because that will make hundreds of thousands of people unemployed
NL has backed itself in to a corner simply because it has bloated the public service to such propertions that it has now become its own monkey.
This is also why you wont be seeing any tax rebates like in the states. Also, as we are seeing with the energy rebate, the Government has a nack of turning something simple in to a red tape nightmare.
Instead of just ensuring EVERYONE gets the rebate (which then means you dont actually need a whole division of public servants to administer the rebate) the Government is now looking at only making it available to a small select bunch of people who contribute nothing to society and the economy and at the same time will require tens of thousands of public servants to administer the rebate.
Mailman
mailman: They can cut an awful lot of public spending without gettin rid of people.
For example, put a block on ALL recruitment for 12 months and tell departments to cut spending.
Private companies can cut spending without sacking people, so I’m sure this wank Government can manage that as well.
Agree Martin, and massive savings could be made in the NHS and of course the massive (and biggest) annual government spend – benefits. Incidentally, both would do well from ending overseas use.
Meanwhile, the BBC could scrap its herculian annual taxi bill and pass on the reduction in the license charge.
“Private companies can cut spending without sacking people, so I’m sure this wank Government can manage that as well.”
hmmm – private companies aren’t very good at it on the evidence of my experience in the City. The trick is very much to run a tight ship in good times – this government has already dug its grave.
Yes I agree with you now Martin. Then again, its not like this Government is known for its common sense ideas is it?
Mailman