More on media bias again today:
3 Likes
You didn’t though answer my question - ‘is it okay to add to the debt’?
We got our election voting packs on Friday last, 22 November. We posted them on Saturday, to be picked up today for onward prepaid airmail delivery to Rochford Council, Essex.
I voted Labour: my constituency MP is Mark Gino François, the small choleric and shouty member of the ERG, so I’m spitting in the wind electorally…
Mark François is, I must admit, a conscientious and energetic MP, who puts himself about a lot locally, so I’ve met him a few times. But I don’t like his politics.
That must have been a very difficult choice!
François comes across so badly he seems to exude “small man syndrome”. It would be great for him to be voted out.
2 Likes
It’s very much against the odds, Mat. This neck of Essex is very Tory, very right-wing, very anti-Europe.
Except my next-door neighbour Tom. The nicest young man you could meet. He has worked in France on contract for years, keeps hens and a tortoise, grows his own vegetables, and makes his own wine. He lent me some equipment and gave me a few tips when I made ten bottles of quince wine before we moved to France.
My in-laws always have and always will vote Tory, MIL is in love with Johnson and even has a soft spot for Farage, when I pointed out at the weekend that they were effectively voting for Brexit and possibly a ‘no-deal’ Brexit at the end of 2020 they were nonplussed despite having a daughter and four grandchildren living in the EU. It’s pointless arguing with them though as will never vote differently but being very comfortably off they are not affected by the public service cuts that have happened under the Conservatives so why should they vote any other way.
Peter is right I’m afraid - he won the last election with 36,914 votes - Labour, in 2nd place could only manage 13,464 and UKIP not standing in Rayleigh and Wickford will probably only help him (in 2015 UKIP and the Tories pulled a total of nearly 41,000 votes out of an electorate of 79k or so).
Basically the only way he’s getting voted out is if a) the turnout, already high at 70%, increases significantly and b) everyone who does not vote Tory gets behind a single alternative candidate.
Probably isn’t going to happen 
1 Like
Because we vote for the future.
It is a great shame that the blue rinse brigade have had such influence on the Tory Leadership election and Brexit, but we now see died in the wool Labour supporters coming out to vote for the Tories.
Meanwhile those such as Michael Heseltine warn how we will lose our place in the influencing of world events and should be listened to.
The Report from the Security Select committee needs to be published, especially with the publication of the book ‘Crime in Progress’ by Glen Simpson and Peter Fritsch and their interview on Channel 4 News last night saying how our Elections have been influenced by Russians with connections to the Tories.
No wonder BoJo does not want it published.
2 Likes
Of course Tim. The classic Keynesian wisdom is that when the private sector fails to invest the public sector must do so, or the slow-down spirals further down. The response to the 2008 crash should have been similar to Roosevelt’s to the Great Depression. Why? Because it worked. The Coalition & Tory governments did precisely the wrong thing from 2010 - and by worsening and prolonging the crash they have in fact added to the accumulated debt. They adopted policies that led to precisely the opposite result of that they said they wanted.
From both Keynesian and environmentalist perspectives, Labour’s is precisely the right strategy: invest now, when interest rates are negative in real terms (ie. the more you (or rather governments) borrow, the more you save, BUT invest in moving the economy towards carbon neutrality (ie. Labour’s ‘green new deal’ - and the Greens have similar policies.)
Of course this is only from Keynesian and Green economics perspectives - the Tories still believe in neo-liberalism (small state, unregulated markets) - they never really believed it was important to cut debt, they just took the opportunity to cut the state for ideological reasons. It’s perfectly transparent.
The tragedy, as always, is that some gullible people believed them. Just have to hope more people see through them this December…
So you think it is OK to have a huge state debt running at a higher percentage of GDP to make it harder to pay off.
Should we always be in debt?
Whose government Minister was it that left the note on his desk saying that all the money had been spent?
Which Council went round paying people in cash in taxis?
But what is the economic evidence or argument you want to bring to bear Jane?
Keynes’ idea (which Roosevelt broadly followed) was basically that governments should invest when the economy slows down and pay off debt when it speeds up, thus acting to mitigate both the slow-down and also excessive booms. (This was only one of a range of market regulatory arrangements he proposed.)
I’m not saying Keynes’ is the only wisdom - he didn’t, of course, take into account imminent, catastrophic climate/ecological breakdown - the response to which simply can’t be based on conventional cost/benefit kinds of analysis. There are some circumstances so extreme, like declaring war on fascism in 1939, that it is quite wrong to bean-count them - they really do merit the old ‘we can’t afford not to’ adage.
This really is spending on the never never. It assumes cyclical growth of good times and bad times and seems an approach for absolute ruin.
It is the equivalent of being made redundant so going out and buying a Ferrari - as you can obviously pay it off when you have got a job in the future (assuming that you get a job).
Well, as I said, I’m not saying Keynes’ is the only wisdom - personally I’m more inclined to the ‘degrowth’ movement, but you have to acknowledge that he is widely regarded as one of - and by many the - most important economists ever (one of his insights, by the way, being that trying to understand whole economies by analogy to household finances doesn’t work).
2 Likes
It will be interesting to see how Johnson gets on during his Andrew Neil interview after both NS and JC struggled in theirs. Not a great fan of Neil’s aggressive technique but it does get results and Corbyn in particular looked way out of his depth.
Wonder if he will question him on this:
With a certain poster extolling the virtues (or not) of a certain party, it’s time for a reality check. It is certain that the Labour Party that will promise to outspend the incumbents if they grab hold of the levers of power.
Analysis by Sky News shows that for every £1 of day-to-day extra spending pledged by the Conservatives in their manifesto, Labour are promising an extra £28.
“And that’s before one adds on the cost of providing extra money for women denied state pensions - the so-called WASPI women,” says Sky’s Economics Editor Ed Conway.
In his Andrew Neil interview, Jeremy Corbyn had no answer to where this money would come from. Have they learned nothing from their time in opposition? The Labour Governments of Blair and Brown bankrupted the country and they would do so again if given the chance. Corbyn is no more fiscally responsible than his predecessors.
1 Like
Given that the Labour plans are said to still fall short of public spending in France does that not call into question how woefully inadequate (or dishonest) the Tory spending plans are?
2 Likes
Maybe the Tories know how much Brexit will affect the UK economy.
1 Like
This deceitful canard, in my opinion, so often trotted out by the Tories, is almost totally disbelieved by the great majority of sentient British adults.
The world economy was brought to its knees by the corrupt predations of casino capitalists in the United States, and their parasitic co-conspirators in The City of London. Swinish greed and deliberate larceny.
My comments above, in terms of extremism, pale into insignificance in the face of the extreme wickedness of those money-manipulators who are still at liberty, and still living high on the hog at our expense. For now, perhaps…
5 Likes
What is true Peter is that Brown had no idea how to cope with the financial crash.