Brown in history books

[bengasman]

Brown got what he wanted; he will be remembered for a long time
We all new he had delusions of grandeur and wanted to rule no matter what the cost.

By next year, this government will have borrowed more than ALL previous governments in history put together.

We will have more national debt than ever before.

We will pay more in tax than ever before.

THREE fuel duty rises in 1 year, one today, one in September and we already had one when the vat went down. When the vat goes back up, the duty will stay.

The lowest tax band doubled from 10 to 20 percent.
The highest tax band went up by 25 percent.
The lower incomes can’t do anything about it.
The higher incomes will just leave the country or avoid moving in; Sweden saw it happen when taxes went up and so did Holland.
It is not rocket science to work out that 40% of something is a lot more than 50% of nothing. It only takes about 3% of the top earners to move out, to completely wipe out the calculated gain.
More people go bankrupt than ever before.
More businesses go bust than ever before.
More house repossessions than ever before.
Unless a miracle happens, more value of home owners’ possessions will be wiped out in one go than ever before, during the largest single house price devaluation in history.
Unemployment rising faster than ever before.
More people unemployed than ever before.

Over 2 million unemployed currently, with another million or more expected to come. Add to that well over a million completely artificial jobs for people who are completely useless like “tree-consultants” and “energy efficiency” consultants (who don’t really tell you anything you did not know already) and next year we are looking at a REAL unemployment figure of 15%

The pound has reached, or is like to reach soon depending on how you twist the figures, a historic low

On average, this government has added another law every single working day since it came to power.
At the same time crime is so far off the scale that victims in most cases don’t bother to report it as they have about 90% chance that a letter with their crime number is the last they will ever hear of it.
It is now official national policy for the police NOT to send a copper around to investigate a reported burglary.
You can now be picked off the street and locked up without charge for a month.
If crime is down, why don’t they investigate what is for a lot of people the most traumatic experience in their life?
Lots of people NEVER sleep the same again after someone broke in to their home.

The government claims (violent) crime is down. Reported crime may be down for obvious reasons, people seeking hospital treatment after an assault is up by 7% per annum. Almost a thousand people a day are so severely injured after a criminal assault that they go to hospital.

Have you seen enough proof that this lot will kill the country or do you want them to carry on for another term, just to be sure?

 

[JohnD]

You seem to be assuming the other lot would be better.

More people unemployed than ever before.

You must be too young to remember that dreadful Thatcher woman. More than three million unemployed. Mortgage interest over 15%. VAT doubled. Basic Rate income Tax 30% to 25%. Higher rate 60% to 40%

 

[bengasman]

Don't know about you geeze, but five million is more than 3 million where I come from.
Ole maggie had her share of blunders, but she did not borrow more than all the others in history combined.
As for high interest rates: most economists agree that there is a very high probability that "quantitative easing" is the beginning of high inflation.
Surely you are familiar with the million deutschmark postage stamps of the weimar republic?
Compare the cost of 15% of a 40 grand average mortgage, with 10% of £150,000; that is two and a half times.
Add to that, the 50,000 quid national debt per family, which will also have to be paid back by you and me, during a time that we take less home from our gross earnings than ever in history.
Even if the inflation stops at 5%, and there is very little chance of that, payback of the average national debt plus the mortgage is likely to be between 10 and 20 thousand a year.
Whoever can not afford that will loose the house.
What do you think that will mean for house prices, employment and the economy in general?
Remember Brown in 2007?
"No, no, I don't foresee a fall in house prices, slower growth maybe, but no fall."
"No, no, there is no sign of a recession, slowing growth maby, but no recession."
"The economy is better than ever before, we have more people at work than ever before." What he forgot to mention is that that included the millions of illegal immigrants, and millions of civics doing little or nothing useful.
As if we did not have enough of them, this government has on average hired an ADDITIONAL 100,000 plus civics every year, not to mention supporting companies like crapita costing billions to the taxpayer and producing nothing but hassle.
If you add the completely pointless and artificially created jobs to the unemployment figures, we already top 3 million, in fact, we would be close to 4,000,000.
And counting.

 

[Blasphemous]

Personally I'm sick of hearing about the bloody recession. It's effecting ALL of us, we cannot do a single thing about it (apart from economise as much as possible). Whoever gets into government next will be in exactly the same boat. None of them are worth a light anyway.

 

[gant]

None of them are worth a light anyway.

That`d be stitched up and noone to turn to then,what`s the answer?

 

[tim west]

Hit the rich for more tax sounds great to me

Where does 2 million equal 5 million unemployed? Sounds a bit of counting your chickens before your eggs have hatched.

As far as i'm concerned Gordon Bown is doing whatever he feels is necessary to get Britain back on its feet, its called action, not tory fantasy talk.

The biggest problem will be those that know no better will try to vote the tory rabble in who will find that the global financial situation isnt as easy to control as they think, they'll spend 5 years getting no where and just blame it all on Labour, instead of letting Labour get on with the job in hand. Recovery takes time and now is not the time to change but to allow time to see results.

What really makes me laugh are those that read the tory propaganda in the rags and believe it, instead of listening to lies(we had enough of that in the eighties with Maggie) let the results in a few years time show the truth.

The situation we have at the moment is unprecedented in so far as its not just us affected but it is global and impossible for one government alone to control, therefore recovery may take that much longer, Gordon Brown has taken the initiative to deal globally with other leaders to fight this recession which has been brought about by players who are rich ie Bankers, Oil Barons, Foreign(used to be british till sold off by Maggie) Utility companies to name a few, who have brought this problem upon the country leaving the government to try to pick up the pieces.

Perhaps we are blaming the wrong people and should have long ago said enough is enough to these institutions by campaining to have more control over our wages and where they are paid into ie paid in cash not into banks (another situation forced upon us by Maggie) I personally believe that was the turning point for banks becoming as powerful as they did.

Unfortunately as politics go and governments stay in power for many years you get the problem that generations grow up under the one government party and then associate all that is wrong with them having not had the advantage as some to have seen successive governments and how they cope with the economy and its ups and downs.

Personally I think this government has had the bad luck to be in power when the worst economic down turn the world has seen for some time has happened due to external global factors and those that know no different put the blame wholly on the british government when its not fair to do so and forgetting the stability this country has had for the past decade or so.

And lastly, Its all well and good to criticise but look back into history and you'll be surprised how similar things are to then, recession is nothing new.

 

[Bilioustrumpstaine]

Personally I'm sick of hearing about the bloody recession. It's effecting ALL of us, we cannot do a single thing about it (apart from economise as much as possible). Whoever gets into government next will be in exactly the same boat. None of them are worth a light anyway.

Agreed.

If politicians spent more time looking after joe public rather than fiddling their expenses perhaps we would be in a better position.

The Conservative policy is a weary mantra of "Labour bad, Labour bad, Labour bad etc etc" It would be the same if the other way round I'm sure.

 

[EddieM]

I don't think Gordon Brown or Tony Blair will be more than history footnotes.

 

[wotan]

Personally I'm sick of hearing about the bloody recession. It's effecting ALL of us, we cannot do a single thing about it (apart from economise as much as possible). Whoever gets into government next will be in exactly the same boat. None of them are worth a light anyway.

Yes but what caused the decline? the western world keeping fuel prices artifically high, this had the knock on effect of putting a lot of people who were already stretched to the limit, over the edge.
The same happened to industry, struggling before, but then faced increased costs and went out of business.
This economy of ours is based on taxation, not growth.
The government has ruined the banking system, virtually no interest now, from hard earned savings.
They have adopted the chaos tactic, throw everything up in the air and hope it sorts it's self out.
I pity the government who has to follow this lot, they will certainly have their work cut out.

Wotan

 

[tim west]

The government has ruined the banking system, virtually no interest now, from hard earned savings.

I don't understand how very low interest rates have ruined the banking system? The banks pleaded poverty(?!?) and now they rake in money from public debts owed such as mortgage payers who are still paying several percent above the going rate, yet the banks don't need to pay out much due to low interest rates to savers so they are making a killing at the moment, It will be interesting after this bailout(not forgetting the handouts as well) to see how many of these banks plead poverty in the future.

 

[JohnD]

The government has ruined the banking system

It's more accurate to say the banking system has ruined the government (and us, who have to pay for it all)

You surely don't imagine governments forced banks all over the world to lend money to people who lacked the ability or the desire to pay it back?

 

[oompah]

Stick with this and listen from 2 minutes onward describes whats happening now from back then so Les saw it coming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b_U6ZjWQ0w

 

[bengasman]

...Whoever gets into government next will be in exactly the same boat....

Scale the problem down to household size.

If your neighbour used to spend 20,000 a year and ended up being 10,000 in debt at the end of the year, do you think it would be clever for him to borrow 10k to pay for last year and borrow 11k to pay for this year's overspending plus the interest on last year?
And 12k the year after?
"Ah" says mr next door, "it is no problem, because I am getting a history degree. I will be a MsA in two years and earn 20,000 more than I do now.

We got into this mess through mismanagement and continuous overspending.
Browns answer: "I know what we did wrong, we did not overspend enough."

 

[JohnD]

household budgeting is not the same as national budgeting.

if we all pull in our horns, and so does the govt, the economy will just get slower and smaller. What will happen to keep it going, or restart it?

 

[bengasman]

Hit the rich for more tax sounds great to me

The only net result will be an flight of top managers; Sweden had it, and the north border of Belgium is full of Dutch topearners that fled the country when taxed through the nose.

Where does 2 million equal 5 million unemployed?

Over 2 million today, growing at around 100,000 a month with no end in sight, expected by the most optimistic to add another million. Add the 1.5 million completely pointless jobs created by this government out of thin air, and you arrive at 4.5 million. And that is the optimistic figure.

As far as i'm concerned Gordon Bown is doing whatever he feels is necessary to get Britain back on its feet, its called action...

He has been in charge of the country's dosh for a decade, and pm for 2 years. He has shown where he leads us.

The biggest problem will be those that know no better will try to vote the tory rabble in who will find that the global financial situation isnt as easy to control as they think, they'll spend 5 years getting no where and just blame it all on Labour, instead of letting Labour get on with the job in hand. Recovery takes time and now is not the time to change but to allow time to see results.

The job in hand? You mean the cap in hand for the millions on the dole.
He has spend 12 years playing santa with taxpayers money, and every budget forecast he has made in those 12 years was wrong and left a deficit.

...those that know no different put the blame wholly on the british government when its not fair to do so and forgetting the stability this country has had for the past decade or so.

That "stability" was created by increased taxing, topped up by increased borrowing.
The same as people taking a personal loan for the new car, pay the 3 holidays with their credit card maxing out, and the new kitchen with a second mortgage.
And just like this government they say: it is not my fault, I was expecting to get a 12% pay increase per year, just like my friend.