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Up The Anti: Reclaim the Future
‘Up the Anti is a one day conference to think about and discuss how we lay claim to the future that we want and deserve.’
BBC’s Paul Mason was expected apparently to give a talk:
@paulmasonnews are you still coming to speak on journalism in the 21st century this weekend, Paul?
Paul Mason 
Simon Hardy @paulmasonnews the Up the Anti conference at Queen Mary’s university, http://uptheanti.org.uk
Mason has his own take on the Banks and who caused the financial crash:
Dear Mark Carney – here is a visual signifier of our regulatory culture here in the UK: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kampupot/3820563952/ … – welcome
It’s the posh boys fault then….nothing to do with this bloke…..
Note the kind of place Queen Mary’s London, where Comrade Mason chooses to speak, has become:
“Islamist stops university debate with threats of violence”
http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2012/01/islamist-stops-university-debate-with-threats-of-violence
Gordon Brown, and Labour’s economic prowess:-
“Gold hits all-time high of $1,500 an ounce (which means the amount Gordon flogged for £2bn would today fetch £13 BILLION)”
(2011 report.)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1378784/Price-gold-hits-record-1-500-What-Gordon-Brown-sold-2bn-fetch-13bn.html
The Brown Bottom thing is always a good story and it tends to be the first one people remember however it is peanuts compared to what Brown did and the hole he left the country in…and despite what the squealing harpies say this was only partly due to the world financial crisis.
True. The whole PFI scheme is a series of financial timebombs, the wreckage of which will be left for future generations to deal with.
Agreed. i don’t want to take this thread off topic but just to thwart probably ‘intervention form the usual suspects I think it right to point out that PFI was thought of as early as the 1980s (“Ryrie rules”, released in 1981 by Leon Brittan) and was finally introduced at the end of 1992 by Norman Lamont. In 1995 Kenneth Clarke announced nearly 10 billion PFI spending (even with this caution was advised) with plans to rise by an average HALF a billion a year up to 2000….so, getting up to maybe 12 or 13 billion….we all know the rest: New Labour “enthusiastically embraced” the idea from 1997, by 2004 private financing constituted 39% of annual capital expenditure by the public sector! It did drop but the average remained high 20s (percent). I must be said that not all of this was “off books” but by 2005, just under half of the PFI projects were off the balance sheet.
So, in recession-recovery Conservatives use caution and spend 10 billion, in boom times when none should have been necessary Gordon (the rape of Prudence) Brown spends hundreds of billions.
Yes. PFI is not necessarily entirely bad in principle, it’s the negotiation of sensible contracts that deliver a reasonable deal for the tax-payer that are the issue. This is where New Labour failed completely. A party with a disdain for, and therefore no understanding of, big business and with no concern for trifling details like public debt/deficit.
It’s not the principle of PFIs that’s the problem. It’s that Brown shifted them off the books so he could keep up appearances of being righteous and building more hospitals and social housing or whatever, and not have the billions of pounds affect the official debt numbers. Something the highly-credentialed and highly-paid BBC economics geniuses like to pretend didn’t happen.
Gordon Brown was a liar and a thief. He stole the pensions of millions of private sector workers but not of course his clients in the public sector.
Even the BBC realise that he is so loathed by the country that he must not be mentioned so as not to remind people of what happens under all Labour governments in the end ie financial meltdown.
And Comrade Mason’s fellow socialist political economist, Stephanie Flanders, speculated today whether the new Bank of England Governor, Mark Carney, was ‘able to think outside the box’.
Rich that, coming from someone who’s been wedged in her Labour box for some time.
@ ‘able to think outside the box’.
Hmmmm….I wonder where Comrade Flanders came up with that little saying then…It’s a common purpose motto…
That phrase is also beloved of the not very bright ‘just out of uni’ management consultants that infest the public sector and the cr*p managers they influence.
In many way Common Purpose resembles one of those religions which steals bits from other religions and shoves them together into their own Holy Book of twaddle. The various phrases and the NLP rubbish is just what they would have been taught as Public sector management on courses 15 or 20 years ago.
Stephanie Flander’s report yesterday about the appointment of the new Bank of England governor lacked a crucial bit of information.
She stated that he may be a good appointment as Canada had no banking crisis. However she failed to mention why. When Gordon brown was increasing our government spending and loosening credit in the run up to the financial crash, the Government of Canada was cutting spending and getting a grip on banking and stopping the massively risky gambling that the labour government here was encouraging.
Additionally, I am concerned about the appointment of the new Governor of the Bank of England. Why?
Well, Ed Balls and Danny Blanchflower, (the noted economist who predicted unemployment would top 5 million if government spending was cut), both approve of him. If all these lefties approve of him, I am seriously worried about them.
Of course Canada (and Australia) rather give the lie to the standard BBC/Labour line that no country could have escaped the ‘global financial crisis that started in America’
A lie that the hapless Tories and the hopeless Droid Oliver can’t ever seem to nail them on.
I believe that Labour were wedged in Stephanie’s box for some time, too.
she was also know to give ‘ed
“@paulmasonnews are you still coming to speak on journalism in the 21st century this weekend, Paul?”
An irony-free zone,then
‘Students are being attacked by police’ says protester
Or as iIprefer it,
BBC website in beardie lefty telling lies shock
Carney stuck with the tried and tested bank regulation in Canada, kept a lid on private and public debt, and Canada came through the financial crisis largely unscathed.
Brown did the opposite and……