With several shoots of green indicating that the UK economy may be on the recovery, the BBC has had to find new ways to dampen any positivity people might have so today they have been pushing a survey that claims that half of UK adults are struggling to keep up with bills and debt repayments and this number has worsened since….2006. One assumes that the recession created by Labour might have had something to do with this and that the financial situation for some individuals post economic recession would be more precarious. This is no news served up as a gloom and doom and is simply the BBC trying to help the ludicrous Miliband/Balls agenda.
LESS CASH POST RECESSION…
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Now even I wouldn’t go so far as to claim the recession was created by Liebour!
Ever irresponsible and a history of mass immigration and bankrupting the country, even their idiocy cannot be held responsible for a global recession.
If someone is to blame for the global recession, then it’s the USA and the Democratic party for the disastrous Community Reinvestment Act. In the future I’ve no doubt that the USA will also suffer from the spending Obama is throwing around, but at the moment the UK is benefitting !
FSA?
Yes, the Brown HMT-BoE-FSA set up and its non effect had a similar result as the US Clinton repeal of Glass–Steagall.
Well the BoE FSA did play a part in the magnitude of the collapse of UK banks, but that didn’t cause a worldwide recession.
You know two certainties when a Liebour government are elected. Mass immigration and a wrecked economy, but even the ravings of the looniest laborite could not cause a world wide effect, the UK just isn’t that influential any more.
NOT sure DV is saying that they caused the whole credit crunch but they certainly had a more than major role in the UK part of it; funnily enough for years I agreed with the separation of the BoE from full treasury and politician control but it was only a false dawn, cosmetic change, with Brown still holding all control.
This is an idiotic comment. All governments, all leaders, all people in fact face circumstances that are uncertain on a daily basis. Good leaders make wise choices that allow even bad situations to be dealt with. Bad leaders make unwise decisions and then blame the outcome on ‘things out of their control’.
The labour government, with the full backing of puppet media like the BBC, came into power on a wave of disillusionment with the previous tory regime, which by the mid 90s was a tired washed out remnant of the party that turned Britain around under Thatcher from being the sick man of europe in the 70s to a powerhouse economy in the 90s, second only to probably Germany (in Europe).
Labour then proceeded to destroy the private sector and manufacturing in particular even though they represent themselves as the party of the working man; they hugely bloated the public sector, adding *one million* new civil servant jobs (on an already bloated base of 5.5million); they threw money at the NHS without ever making anyone accountable; they created an overly complicated financial regulation structure that allowed the regulators to point their fingers at each other when the shit hit the fan; they created a ridiculously complex tax credits system under Brown’s chancellership in order that large numbers of families became government clients in an effort to boost their voting blocs; they allowed unchecked immigration into the UK under cover of EU regulations, and implemented an interpretation of human rights directives from the EU that went far beyond what the core countries of France and Germany would even think of tolerating from the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels; their spending was wildly out of control under ‘No more boom and bust’ Brown; Blair was responsible for blindly following (arguably in some cases leading) the USA into (illegal) wars; and to top it all off, if thats even possible, one of their (half)wits left a message for the incoming coalition minister that ‘sorry, the money’s all gone’ when they were finally booted out of office (and even then the wretched Brown refused to accept defeat in good grace).
Labour is very much to blame for the state of the UK, global recession or not.
Its also amusing in a tragicomic way that long stints of Labour rule seem to end in disaster for the country – the last such being of course the late 70s, which people at the time I’m sure blamed on the oil shocks, but in reality were made much worse for the UK by cowardly, supine ‘leadership’ under labour which then as now is driven by its various Labour Union patrons.
“This is an idiotic comment.” – well you got that bit right.
” Bad leaders make unwise decisions and then blame the outcome on ‘things out of their control’.” – You mean like Cameron and Osborne blaming the failure of their economic policy on problems in the Eurozone.
“……….. to a powerhouse economy in the 90s, second only to probably Germany (in Europe).” – hardly, it was an economy built on the service and financial sectors; the speculative nature of much of the latter was a fundamental reason behind the banking crisis.
“Labour then proceeded to destroy the private sector and manufacturing in particular ………….” – Can you provide any evidence to support this assertion?
Cameron is a bad leader, and his situation is made worse by being held hostage by the lib dems and their apalling anti-business policies (c.f. Vince Cable et al).
Where they promised reductions in spending, the reality is that government spending has actually increased over their term, not that you’d hear that stated on the BBC of course.
On the assertion re: Labour and manufacturing, ironically enough its Flanders to the rescue here with the graph in this article:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23452662
We see production fall by about 5% from 2000 to 2007 (just before the crash), but that isn’t the full picture. Note how services and construction grew during that period, and what you have is an economy that grew by over 20% during that period, but where manufacturing fell by 5%. In other words, the economy under Labour shifted further away from manufacturing, into services (due to their huge bloating of the public sector) and the construction boom (fuelled by heavy borrowing and cheap money under Brown).
“In June 2010 manufacturing in the United Kingdom accounted for 8.2% of the workforce and 12% of the country’s national output. This was a continuation of the steady decline in the importance of Manufacturing to the Economy of the UK since the 1960s, although the sector was still important for overseas trade, accounting for 83% of exports in 2003.”
“A 2009 report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, citing data from the UK Office for National Statistics, stated that manufacturing output (gross value added at 2007 prices) has increased in 35 of the 50 years between 1958 and 2007, and output in 2007 was at record levels, approximately double that in 1958.”
“However, manufacturing employment fell faster in Britain since 1998. This started with manufacturing productivity flatlining from 1993 to 1997 and a rise in pound sterling. PricewaterhouseCoopers presumed that British manufacturing was less able to adapt to new production immune from Asian competition. Since 1993, Britain also invested less in R&D and adaptation than its OECD competitors.”
Al Labours fault?
You seem to be hard of thinking.
My statement was that Labour, during the Blair years, rather than boosting manufacturing were content to let the decline continue. Labour supporters, particularly those who main news sources are the BBC and the Guardian, cling to the idea that all the bad things that ever happened to manufacturing happened on the tories’ watch, when the reality is that all the major manufacturing industries have declined under Labour as well – for example, more coal mines were shut under Labour’s regimes than under Thatcher in the 80s, but ask any mouthbreathing labour supporter today who destroyed coal mining, and they’ll unthinkingly parrot out that it was all Thatcher’s fault.
Labour could definitely have done more to boost manufacturing during their tenure, but they were more interested in consolidating their voting constituencies via expanded welfare and public sector employment, and were keener to cosy up to bigwigs from the Finance sector and from the entertainment industries than to help manufacturing businesses regain lost ground.
“……. output in 2007 was at record levels, approximately double that in 1958.””
Not me that is hard of thinking!!
You assert that those in receipt of welfare and in public sector employment vote Labour – no doubt you can evidence this?
I’ll use the Guardian’s figures:
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2009/nov/25/gdp-uk-1948-growth-economy
1958 Inflation adjusted UK GDP (total) is £90bn
2007 Inflation adjusted UK GDP (total) is £370bn
I.e. 2007 total GDP, adjusting for inflation, is over 4x 1958 level.
Manufacturing during the period doubled. This means that relative to the economy, it was worth half as much to the UK in 2007 as it was in 1958.
I stand by my assertion that you’re an idiot.
Your original post stated: “Labour then proceeded to destroy the private sector and manufacturing in particular even though they represent themselves as the party of the working man”.
You have agreed that “output in 2007 was at record levels, approximately double that in 1958”.
Based on your own assertions it is not me that is an idiot.
Overall output, (including financial services) was at a record on 2007. Manufacturing was in deline for every year labour was in office. Financial services and debt were used by labour in lieu of actual productivity.
Labour changed all the financial regulations as soon as they came to power in 1997, scrapping the Bank of England’s oversight of the financial sector entirely and handed it to a toothless quango that Brown routinely bullied. Idiotic and unqualified bankers (which brown ended up knighting), would phone Brown up as soon as the FSA tried to hold them to account and Brown would slap down the FSA everytime, so that the unqualified bankers could gamble ever more money, leverage ever more debt which had the appearance of keeping the economy growing. Meanwhile real productivity continued to decline. Brown knighted those same bankers, because they allowed insanely loose money to create a housing boom that MPs were using to flip houses, with all their mortgages on expenses, they became paper millioniares.
So yes, labour is very much to blame for overseeing a financial sector that they regulated in such an irresponsible way, that they rewarded the most irresponsible bankers with knighthoods and never once blocked a banker’s bonus and do not forget that Brown also created the massively complex tax code whic allowed bank executives to pay LESS tax than their cleaners. The same loose tax regime which labour now cirticise Google and starbuck for using legally.
And all the while, labour stomped on the poorest workers. Doubling the income tax level from 10p to 20p.
Now those poorest of workers who were paying 20p in the pound under labour, are now not paying any income tax whatsoever.
The poorest pay less tax under this coalition and the richest are now paying a lot more. (top rate was only 40p for 155 of labours 156 months in office)
Not that you would realise any of this if you rely on the BBC for news.
Albaman: quick to defend the BBC, quick to defend Labour.
Coincidence or magic? You decide, dear reader.
I can just imagine Maggie Thatcher reading a Northern Rock advert: ‘125% mortgages? Have we gone mad? What is Mr Brown doing about this?’
Is that the same Northern Rock who during the period mid 1980’s to early 1990’s was offering 100% mortgages with up to 5 times joint income multipliers and self certified interest only loans to the self-employed.
Guess that was Brown’s fault as well.
You know, I don’t remember at all that 100% LTV mortgages at multipliers like those you mention above were being widely offered by any financial organisation in the mid-80’s. I’d be interested to see the evidence for this, or, as you often put it – can you evidence that claim ?
Hmmmmm, no mention of the ‘green’ lunacy pushing up those hard-to-meet-bills.
Most strange.
This was a phenomena well before 2006 it’s just that before then the easy money was still there to be picked off the trees: another credit card, a loan to pay off existing loans, 2nd mortgage etc. People were and are living off borrowed money and are now upset they have top pay some back without borrowing more to pay it back with. This the truth of the ‘CUTZZZ’ hurting: many don’t want to man-up and accept that things need balancing and wanting someone else to blame.
I believe they even used the headline 26 million people “living on the edge”, a risible length of hyperbole that rather destroys any credible point they were trying to make.
Who’d a thunk it? People worse of after a recession, shock horror. In other news: Man breaks leg, finds it difficult to walk afterwards.
Inflation running at at around 3% (as it has been for around 3 years), average pay rising at around 1% and interest rates for savings at an all time low and David seems to suggest that people struggling to meet their bills is “no news”. It is just a fiction made up by the BBC to support labour.
Such insight into the effects of the recession on millions of people shows why he receives so few votes when standing for election.
The figure in 2006 was 35% – aye, even during Brown’s miracle years of ‘no more boom and bust’ it was that high. Don’t recall it being featured by the BBC then, do you? But then, how could it, we had all arrived in the promised land, hadn’t we…..
A lot of the filming for the report on TV this morning seemed to be in fish and chip shops, involving people who were clearly overweight.
Perhaps they were trying to pass on a message which was too un-PC to actually voice. If not, it didn’t make a very convincing argument; just proof of widespread fecklessness.
Bloke in our local paper this week fined for driving his car whilst high on illegal drugs.
The court decided to take the fine in instalments out of his benefits.
Car…..drugs…..on benefits….. Another of the country’s ‘vulnerable people’ doing what they do.
I don’t know why they don’t do what the saviour of the world, Gordon Brown, aka the White Mugabe did and just print out loads of money and dish it around like confetti to keep everyone happy.
“Brown is just a tiny fleck!” – Robert Mugabe.
General guard ….. Flash Gordon approaching …..
Sorry – misheard lyric, it’s General Kala.
What would the cost be of abolishing the TV License, once we`ve added it to green taxes for our energy?
Have the BBC got an online calculator for this…and who do I tell if I want to be on a Panorama Special about this regressive stealth tax on the poorest and most vulnerable in our society?
I`ll give it a few minutes shall I?
The BBC have been running with Labour’s ‘cost of living’ narrative for a couple of weeks now (they must sit down with their spin doctors to co-ordinate their messaging).
I even heard one beeboid on Five Live yesterday mention the ‘squeezed middle’….like the ‘Bedroom Tax’ taken by the BBC straight out of the Labour songbook
Robert Peston should take some responsibility for the recession. Back in 2008, every time he opened his gob the ftse crashed. But he was just doing what beeboids do, talking the country down with doom and gloom. No wonder people have no confidence in the economy
5,000 people were questioned concerning their lack of cash by an organisation that is sought for help because of a lack of cash. Amazing how this 5,000 people (who are they?) suddenly become the whole of the U.K. population and used by certain media to paint a poor picture of the economic health of the country. And it is a fact as Span Ows states, that personal debt is being paid off which puts less cash into the pocket. Another *State the bleedin obvious* story.
…and not much emphasis was put by the BBC on the increase in personal debt in the UK from around £0.5 trillion to nearly £1.5 trillion during the ‘Brown’ years.
But I guess this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with people feeling poorer.
This story was on 5live drive again today at roughly 420. By the sound of the report we are already in a depression.
Unbelievably the “I’m poor now” was in the main bbc1 news at roughy 1020pm. Pretty obvious they have an agenda. Why would this non story be repeated on all the channels?