Be Excellent To Each Other

Not sure I fully understand the question, Pundy, but yes, there are good, moderate, sane Labour MPs out there.

A standout favourite of mine is Hilary Benn: eloquent, educated, principled and a passionate Remainer; after all the luvvie pink beret and lukewarm nonsense that was the shambling Remain campaign, his empassioned defence of our EU membership was like oxygen to a suffocating man. And of course, his recognition of Corbyn and his acolytes as the dangerous, swivel eyed dinosaurs that they are, and his principled refusal to serve in that lunatic asylum of 'talents' stands as a permanent, lasting testimony to his political judgement and courage.

Ha! That speech about bombing Syria he pulled out of his arse, invoking the WWII spirit and suchlike. And then all the Tory press were fawning over him the next day about his MAGNIFICENT SPEECH just because he was perceived to have been on their side in undermining Corbyn, who of course at that time was the Labour leader no one would ever vote for and this was just more proof of how no one would ever vote for a Labour party led by Corbyn with all his dangerous old-fashioned ideas about fairness and social justice and equality.

Benn is a cockwomble and also he eats cockwombles and at the weekend he eats the poo of cockwombles and turns it into cockwomble cakes that he sells at local fetes but they are marketed as caramel shortcakes.

215/1000 - One of the worst Benns ever. Would not buy again.

Unlike his dad, who was ace.

I had the pleasure of meeting Tony Benn not long before he died. He was a total gentleman.

Man, I'm reeling from the intellectual tour de force that is the political opposition on here today. Hot on the heels of "y-yes, I *know* Gordon Brown explicitly admitted that his government of 11 years standing had not even the first clue of the interconnected nature of financial institutions; that setting up the FSA [the very institution Labour created upon their election in 1997, having torn down all that went before it despite no catastrophic failure or anything like it since their 1985 inception, fully 12 years prior and as tested through a recession] was, I quote, "a big mistake"; that he admitted they were only looking at "individual institutions" and not the bigger picture even in the UK; he had no clue how risks were spread across the system, and even how he talked about it endlessly at the time, he rather candidly had not even the first idea about the global nature of transactions, nor indeed the banking system and so-called shadow banking systems..... but if you're trying to suggest, Cavey, the fact that Labour by their own entirely unqualified, abject admission did not have the first fucking idea about what they were supposed to be regulating, upon which the economic fate of this nation and hundreds of billions of pounds rested, well, that's your problem pal!!".... we have now have "Benn is a cockwomble" Of the two positions, I'd say the latter has slightly more credibility.

Night chaps, I'm flying to Venice in the morning, and need an early night. It's been fun, as per.

Let's face it, Cavey, regardless of whether people agree or disagree on Labour screwing up on that point, will you at least admit that there is no fucking way on God's green Earth that the Tories would have regulated any differently? They admitted as much at the time, and given how many prominent Tory donors (and members too, no doubt) are involved in the financial sector, there's no way in hell that the Tories would have done anything that impacted negatively on their mates.

This, coupled with the fact that the economic crisis in the UK was as a "side effect" to the worldwide economic crisis, which Labour were in no way at fault, means that a Tory government would have basically had exactly the same outcome. The only practical difference is that the Tories now would not be able to constantly moan about Labour's mismanaging of the economy, despite everything still being shit after 7 years of Tory rule.

Labour leader comes second in polls and becomes Prime Minister.

The Tories are demonstrating that they would indeed have regulated differently, given that they appear dead set on regulating banking out of the UK entirely via brexit...

I thought that the only plan they have left is to try and turn the country into a grubby little tax haven. Won't the banks like that sort of thing?

We'd have to be able to negotiate 'passporting' to allow us to trade in EU markets. Given that we don't appear to be able to negotiate actually negotiating, that seems unlikely.

Also banks don't really much like tax havens.

For MaliA: a superb series of exchanges in the Commons where MPs try to prove that all roads lead to Shipley.

Shipley By-pass

That was stunning

Superb. He's an active member doing constituency stuff.

Minor correction there - things have actively got worse for poorer people. The ones who haven't died, that is, waiting for payments or having been denied essential benefits.

+++ THE EVIL TORREEES WOULD'VE DONE THE SAME KLAXON +++

Oh for fuck's sake, back into the UK, only to read this ridiculous shite yet again.
First things first: it isn't (or shouldn't be, if you can read the plain English that constitutes Gordon Brown's apology) a case of whether or not people agree whether Labour screwed up: they absolutely did, fact, as expressly admitted. For the nth time, here are the salient elements (er, from one page back):



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13032013

So basically, and as a matter of admitted plain fact, Labour failed to regulate due to "relentless pressure" from those whose duty it was to regulate (imagine the Police bowing to "relentless pressure" from motorists not to enforce speed limits, except the consequences of which would cost less than a trillion or so quid).

By their own crystal clear, specific admission, they created a demonstrably critically flawed monitoring and regulatory system of entirely of their own design (FSA), itself working on an entirely misguided methodology and Brief of their own making (looking at individual institutions and ignoring the plainly fucking obvious inter-connectivity of the the Banks - which they didn't even understand. (How the fuck can you regulate and police something that you don't have the first clue about (after 11 years)? It's not a matter of hindsight, it's plainly obvious that this is a recipe for absolute disaster!)

So, swivel-eyed thick cultists aside, no-one - absolutely NO-ONE - could deny that culpability rests with Labour here, not least because it is completely fucking admitted. People keep saying to me "it was the banks, not Labour", but if you don't have the first clue about whatever it is you have a statutory duty to police, you can hardly be surprised when the bunch of crooks you're supposed to be policing shaft you and everyone else? If the government of the day takes all the police off the streets and anarchy ensues, simply saying "it wasn't us, guv, it was the terrible criminals" would be a little stupid, yes? Would it not be equally pathetic to say, that in the event of switching all speed cameras off, the ensuing speeding epidemic would be wholly the fault of those motorists who are speeding?

Look, bankers will be bankers, that's why it is such a desperately important *UK* governmental duty, given the scale and size of the City of London (financial sector) relative to the UK economy and the entire world, and their need to be kept on a very "short leash" (Thatcher's words, not mine ). With the exception of New York (perhaps), the City of London (in 2008) was a financial services superpower, so it really isn't valid to be talking about the crash affecting Sweden, Belgium or Denmark too. The UK was (and still is) an absolute giant of that world and it is thus disproportionately important that WE get it right, far more so than anywhere else.

So your comment that we (the City of London) were some "side effect" and Labour were "in no way at fault" is laughably, demonstrably false bollocks, sorry. Get a grip.

As for the old Tories would've done the same blah blah, done to death a million times. Great defence Gaz: next time you get pulled up before the judge for speeding, just tell him your neighbour would've done exactly the same, sure that'll get you off. I mean seriously, how pathetic can this get? It's fucking irrelevant what you or I think the Tories may or may not have done. I could point to the fact that they spent 19 years in government and 13 years since the big bang, and through two recessions (remember "you can't buy your way out of recession"... ring any bells? ), and on that basis claim, with good justification, that unlike Labour's admitted clueless fuckwittery about not having the first idea what the financial sector was up to, the Conservative Party is demonstrably far more successful at keeping it under sufficient control whilst allowing it to grow and thrive. It would be almost as stupid as your entirely groundless claim that they would have been just as utterly absurdly incompetent, though, because (a) it is unknowable, we don't have a crystal ball at our disposal, and more importantly (b) it doesn't matter - see my earlier example about the validity of the "the other bloke would've done just the same, guv!" defence. Fuck, what are we here, 5-year olds? Labour_were_in_government (for 11 years) and as hard as it is for lefties everywhere to comprehend matters of governmental responsibility, restraint and efficacy, it was their absolute duty to firstly understand what was going on, and to regulate accordingly, what was uniquely for the UK an enormous proportion of its economy. Fucks sake, honestly.

tl;dr: Labour were weak, clueless, ignorant, confident without any basis of fact or underpinning expertise (or even basic understanding) on their part, and stupid, and they demonstrably fucked it, by their own admission.

(As for everything still being shit after 7 years of Tory government, well, that just about sums up your critical faculties eh Gaz. At least 2 million people more in work, an unrecognisably better shape economy, FTSE250 British Companies valued at 400% what they were in 2009-10. Yeah, it's all gone to ratshit in 7 years huh. Fuck, why do I bother )

Things aren't better for most people. NHS going to shit, crime going up, wages not keeping up with inflation. But I'm sure the 400% rise in the FTSE will start trickling down soon.

And let's not forget fucking Brexit.

The most impressive thing to me was how labour managed to cripple 20 other national regulators along with the FSA. Whatever you say about GB he clearly had impressive political reach.

What's that you say? Neither the precursor to the FSA or any regulator in history would have caught and prevented the 2008 collapse? There's still fuck all in place today that would do anything to prevent something very similar happening, other than a softening of the impact due to the BASEL III capital ratios requirement, which had nothing to do with any regulation out of the UK and we've only gone along with very grudgingly? Gosh.

The FSA, its creation, and its shortcomings were wildly irrelevant to the collapse because of a total absence of regulation for it to enforce, and Labour did not at any point relax banking regulation. They didn't impose tougher regulation, but that it's utterly impossible to do that unilaterally unless you don't want a banking industry in your country. Would that have been better? Perhaps, but I doubt it.

Labour could have done a better job of recovery after the collapse, without a doubt. Nothing short of 20-20 hindsight would have led them or any other party to prevent it, which is why no other sovereign nation managed to prevent it.

But I've said all this a dozen times before, so

Yeah you've said it before 20 times and each time rebutted. What is there not to understand about the ex-PM's very clear apology?

I can only draw the conclusion that you must think it's fine to try and police something as critical as nothing less than the UK financial sector, without having the first clue about how it works, or what they are doing day to day running fucking rings around you (and laughing very loudly I should think). You're beyond help.

Imagine if the government regulated car manufacturers and safety, without even having the first clue how cars work? And then, after a catastrophic tragedy of car and passenger mega-death, and the ex PM giving a humiliating, unqualified apology about how utterly clueless his government was, they didn't know what was going on, and all the terrible mistakes that they'd made - and then some bloke like you stepping up (20 times) saying that actually, the PM is wrong, and it wasn't actually their fault at all. None of it. Imagine that.

We've had enough of experts Cras. This is the era of uninformed but strongly held opinions now.

As per usual, you offer precisely nothing but "me too" pile-on ad hom.
At least Cras offers constructive, earnest debate, which is more than could ever be said of you, Gaywood.

Politicians apologise for things not because they are at fault, but because they think it will bring them advantage with the electorate. Why the fuck else would they do it?!

Schools asking parents for money to pay for critical supplies thanks to underfunding
Food bank use at record high
Figures show link between benefits reassessments and suicides
Up to 600 suicides could be related to benefit reassessments
Met. police stretched after funding cuts
Britain's police service under unsustainable pressure
Child poverty at highest levels since 2010
Child poverty unit abolished
NHS on its knees
23 hospitals declare "black alert" (unable to guarantee providing emergency care)
Social care completely fucked due to funding cuts

But no, that's fine, as long as all of the rich businesspeople continue to get richer, the country will keep on trucking!

Oh, and here:

A report produced by the Tories (in 2007), and endorsed by Cameron, recommending that loads of regulations on the financial services industry should either be abolished or watered down, including money-laundering restrictions affecting banks and building societies.

Ah, right, he didn't mean it.


Wow. Just wow.

This is the fabled Politics of Common Sense and you can tell it's kicking off when people compare the deficit to paying off a credit card or mention Schrödinger's Immigrant.

And your analogy is flawed. It's basically as if every car manufacturer worked together to do what VW did and cheat emissions tests, and we only found out after the climate was destroyed.

That's not a failing of regulators, it's absolutely not a failing of the UK regulator, it's a failing of the law in not knowing that they should modify their tests to catch something they had no idea the manufacturers were doing. Which is what happened in 2008.

The reason why VW were even found out in the first place (albeit belatedly) was because some Regulator in the US was sufficiently motivated, competent and knowledgeable to get off their arse to do research and testing, have the first clue about how emissions software and hardware worked, how the tests (regulations) could be circumnavigated by unscrupulous manufacturers. It's called "doing your job" and "being competent to do the very important job you're being handsomely paid to do". The multi-billion mega-corp that is VW (encompassing multiple brands) was forced into admitting what it had done - and more importantly, the practice was arrested, reparations/remedial actions set in motion and the rot stopped.

That's what happens when you know enough about the industry you're supposed to be regulating and its latest practices and its cutting edge: it gets regulated, bad shit gets stopped in its tracks, compensation is paid and the President doesn't need to apologise for the sorry ass failure of the bodies that he and his party set up to do said regulation upon which we all depend. Good eh?

You say the 2008 crash isn't a failure of regulators, which is so utterly absurd, I cannot really formulate a response. (I'm still reeling from the "Gordon Brown didn't really mean anything he said in his apology" last gem).

You have read that Labour wholly admit they did not have the first clue what was going on at the time, yes? I'm sorry, but that's not a 20/20 hindsight issue; my 6 year old grandson could've predicted that such total, negligent, willful ignorance would end catastrophically. Still, I forget; you're now saying Gordon Brown only apologised to make himself look good to his electorate (which, even if this wasn't absurd enough, especially given that he never apologised for *anything* pretty much for the preceding 11+ years, he'd actually stepped down from Parliament and politics so had nothing to "gain" even according to your own hypothesis? Besides, "I fucked up the entire UK economy, soz everyone!" isn't exactly a vote-winner ).

You say it's a failing of the law that they did not know what to test for/how to modify their tests - but how could they do that, when they were totally ignorant about what was going on, by their own admission, and also ignored the inter-connectivity of the banking system and were, again as expressly admitted, looking at one bank at a time (despite talking about it as if they *did* know, again by their own express admission). You're in management, aren't you? With respect, these are hardly difficult concepts to grasp.

So then: ignorance, hubris and incompetence - all admitted and apologised for. Sadly, a potent, heady mix, there, and utterly damning.

Why is "The Tories would have done the same" not a defence with regard to banking regulation but "look at what Labour would do if they got in power" is every time the Tories are criticised?

The regulator didn’t discover the emissions scandal. A not for profit and a university did.

So an exact parallel then, pretty much.

So what? A body performing the de facto role of regulator did discover it. A *competent* body, who, in stark contrast to Labour's entirely self-confessed gross deficiencies in that regard, actually knew their shit, and were thus equipped to deal with the situation. Unlike, say, a really shit, misconceived government body like the FSA, who didn't know what they were looking at, or for, and in fact weren't even looking at the right things, or the bigger picture, again by subsequent candid admission.
Still, semantics etc., bravo. Way to miss the point, there.

Yes, "pretty much" as in "not at all".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interna ... sportation

Bravo indeed

I mean, unless you’re suggesting that Help the Aged and stafford polytechnic not noticing the banking crash and telling the FCA about it underlines a failing in Gordon Browns watch.

I think you need a good, strong, milky cup of tea.

No cup of tea is strong when it's had milk added

Very true.

Remember that remix of Clegg's apology? That was good fun.

So the fact that no 'competent body', governmental or private, in 20+ different countries didn't discover the underlying risk is Labour's fault? And every educated financier and economist on earth is stupider than your six year old nephew?

Bored with this now. If you want to know where they (Labour) went wrong, re-read Gordon Brown's apology where he talks very specifically about all the really stupid things that they - Labour - did (or rather, didn't do). You know, all that stuff about not knowing the first clue what the financiers were up to (which even you can't seriously claim is some amazing, unforeseeable error - if you don't have a scooby of the thing you're supposed to be policing, you're fucked, as my grandson will no doubt confirm for you), not to mention how shit, ineffectual and misdirected the FSA was, how they didn't realise how interconnected banks were (like, fucking DUH) and all the rest. You know, all that. (Assuming you don't *really* think Gordon Brown didn't actually mean any of it... )

Oh, and please don't start going on about what other people failed to do either. Like I've said a dozen times now, and to be fair as Brown specifically apologised for this very thing, if you're so stupid as to think you actually don't need to know stuff about that which you're supposed to be regulating, irrespective of what others were and were not doing (I could not give a shit about them, it wasn't their governmental duty to regulate the UK financial sector), well, you shouldn't be entrusted with a debit card, let alone the banks.

It's just always someone else's fault with the Left isn't it; "misplaced self-belief" doesn't even begin to cover it. But then, that was the core problem in this case wasn't it; I'm still just amazed any (belated) apology was even forthcoming at all.

All I can really do is repeat the exact same thing, to be honest. Every single regulator failed to predict or prevent the crisis. Regulators under left wing government, right wing governments, fiscally liberal governments, and fiscally conservative governments. The underlying bad behaviour in the banks was almost exclusively rooted in banks in the US, with the other countries institution mostly suffering the fallout as a result of the inter-trading of asset backed loan books for which the assets were a myth.
There was specific US legislation in place (therefore de-facto global legislation, because that's how banking works) that would have prevented what happened. It was called Glass-Steagall, and it was enacted after the Great Depression. It was repealed in 1999 by a Republican Congress and a Republican Senate. That was the direct cause of the failure to regulate the banks in the leadup to 1999. Not the FSA because the UK could not possibly in any way impose unilateral legislation on the global banking industry.

I have no issues with saying Labour/GB should have done better. But to say that they, or left wing politics, are directly to blame is outright bonkers. I'm sorry, but it's outright falsehood.

There's no politician's mea culpa that's going to change that in any way whatsoever.

Well, all I can do is to (yet again) redirect you to the absolute specifics of what Gordon Brown said - about "big mistakes" on his government's part; caving in to pressure from the Banks; a complete failure to understand the interconnected nature of modern banking/practices; a total ignorance of how things worked and what it actually was they were supposed to be policing. You can try your usual schtik at this point and attempt to widen the debate by pointing out that other important players also did very badly, but absolutely none of this in any way deflects what *I* am saying about the UK government whose express task it was to regulate the City of London, ergo a *huge* chunk of the world's total financial sector and transactions, and upon which the entire fate of this country of 70 million souls very much depended.

Let's be honest, Cras, it's just the same old straw man nonsense, eh. No-one, least of all me, is denying that other governments were also rubbish, but, given the scale and influence of the City of London, in this specific (financial) sphere, you simply cannot claim it was all the Americans guv, even in the face of Gordon Brown's confirmation that they didn't have a clue what they were doing and were acting in total ignorance, and looking in the wrong direction.

It's not even so much a Left and Right thing (albeit it's true to say that post-war left wing governments of the UK have an utterly sorry fiscal outcome record, whatever else they may have achieved, with an almighty great fiscal mess to be cleaned up (by the Tories) every time - and the Blair/Brown government's demise was the worst example of the lot). I don't believe that to be a left wing government is to be *inherently* incompetent and/or negligent; it is quite possible to hold to this ideology and pursue left wing policies and *still* have a good knowledge about matters of governance, and, specifically in this case, full knowledge of that which you seek to regulate (and are required to regulate).What I'm suggesting, in fact, that the whole business of not knowing what they were regulating and not understanding how any of it worked etc. is not a function of being left wing at all, but actually a function of being the Labour Party, and therefore incompetent. I mean seriously, what did Labour ever run well? Even their sacred NHS is in tatters in Labour-controlled Wales; they're just bloody useless.

As for your writing the whole thing off as "one politician's mea culpa", I did have a chuckle at that. The guy is not "some politician" but was the Prime Minister at the time - and more importantly, Chancellor of the Exchequer for the 10 years leading up to the whole sorry debacle (and to a large extent, Architect of those exact failing institutions like the FSA). I realise it makes for awkward reading but try to rise above the programming as it were, old chap? This is a rare and candid insight into just how complacent and useless that government *really* was, and it serves as a salient lesson as to how things can go badly wrong (current in-fighting Conservative Party take note). Perhaps if there had been less of the "Blairites" vs. "Brownites" briefings, counter-briefings and ridiculous office politics shite that so characterized and engulfed that sorry administration for years leading up to the crash, they may have had at least half an eye on the ball.

Vince Cable saw it coming.

I actually think Vince Cable is ace. Seriously.
I've long been a fan, and at this rate I'm voting for him.

He did very well with the Royal Mail.

Just as well the present government isn't embarking on policies that might massively raise prices, reduce trade, and move major industries overseas.

Cavey, not poking a stick, but how do you think Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling responded to the crisis? Some accounts I've read seem very complementary about their decisiveness compared to the US government's.

Also Obama's decision to stimulate growth with spending after the crash is widely accepted as the reason America's economy recovered much better than ours did under austerity.

Indeed, they also framed a much better bailout deal than we did. The US made a tidy profit out of the bailout loans in a reasonable timeframe. Which we obviously did not.