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General Election 2015 https://www.beexcellenttoeachother.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10141 |
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Author: | Grim... [ Tue Jun 02, 2015 12:49 ] |
Post subject: | Re: General Election 2015 |
Well, quite. |
Author: | Hearthly [ Tue Jun 02, 2015 12:49 ] |
Post subject: | Re: General Election 2015 |
ElephantBanjoGnome wrote: Although not much to be said as the news has garnered only a couple of comments in either thread. That's your fault for splitting the vote, like the LibDems. @Grim... Sorry old chap wasn't trying to push any buttons, to me it just seems that the Celebrity Deathlist thread (and for 'Celebrity' read 'Notable') seemed a far better fit. If Peter Molyneux died I wouldn't expect it to be pinned to the end of the GTAV thread. |
Author: | Bamba [ Tue Jun 02, 2015 14:10 ] |
Post subject: | Re: General Election 2015 |
Grim... wrote: What's the fucking point? He's fucking immune to any kind of criticism and 1,000 other people will jump in trying to hold his hand while mine are firmly in my fucking pocket. Is this aimed at me at all? |
Author: | Grim... [ Tue Jun 02, 2015 14:17 ] |
Post subject: | Re: General Election 2015 |
No. Forget it exists. |
Author: | Bamba [ Tue Jun 02, 2015 14:26 ] |
Post subject: | Re: General Election 2015 |
Grim... wrote: No. Forget it exists. Roger that. Hope your day gets better dude. |
Author: | Doctor Glyndwr [ Tue Jun 02, 2015 15:03 ] |
Post subject: | Re: General Election 2015 |
Good FT piece by David Allen Green on the Human Rights Act repeal (or, rather, the lack of it): http://blogs.ft.com/david-allen-green/2 ... ights-act/ Spoiler for length: ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view! |
Author: | Achilles [ Wed Jun 03, 2015 1:43 ] |
Post subject: | Re: General Election 2015 |
Damn, General Election has claimed its first death. RIP Charles Kennedy, history will judge you extremely favourably. You stuck to your principles no matter what. Sadly there is no room for a nice guy in politics. May you find a chatroom in heaven Charlie! |
Author: | Doctor Glyndwr [ Wed Jun 03, 2015 8:16 ] |
Post subject: | Re: General Election 2015 |
Those crazy liberal hippies at, err, the IMF think Britain's austerity is bullshit: Quote: In countries such as the UK and Norway which controlled their own monetary policy, the advantages [to not reducing the national debt] were even bigger, the authors said.
For these countries, the IMF said the "optimal" policy involved "living with high debt pile[s]". While the Fund said this was far from ideal, it was preferable to introducing "policies to deliberately pay down the debt" because the costs were likely to outweigh the benefits. "When a country runs a budget surplus to pay down its debt, there is no free lunch, the money has to come from somewhere," said Jonathan Ostry, co-author of the report. "Either through higher taxes, which undercuts the productivity of labour and capital, or lower spending which - unless that spending is completely wasteful - has a similar effect. "Advocates of ‘fixing the debt problem’ stress that the crisis insurance benefit of lower debt without mentioning the upfront cost of the insurance. Our paper shows that insurance can be expensive. "More importantly, for countries that have ample fiscal space, the cost of insurance is likely to be much larger than the benefit. It is much better in these circumstances to just live with the debt, allowing the debt ratio to be reduced organically through higher growth." |
Author: | Cavey [ Wed Jun 03, 2015 10:03 ] |
Post subject: | Re: General Election 2015 |
Well, we've been here so many time before, Doc, so I'll keep it brief(ish). Clearly, this whole "ever increasing borrowing and debt" Socialist mantra is empirically discredited bollocks, and it doesn't matter who's saying it, sorry old chap. Try telling Greece, Portugal, Spain or Ireland that they can just keep on borrowing more and more, and this is all somehow "good" in economic terms. The problem with "large debt piles" is that there are "large interest payments" to go with them - all 'dead money' that's a continuous, never ending drag on the economy, and money that could've otherwise been spent on social programmes, infrastructure or whatever. Also, the more indebted a government becomes, the less likely creditors will believe they'll get their money back, and thus those aforesaid crippling interest repayments just spiral ever higher still (as widely empirically demonstrated). I mean seriously, Doc, this isn't rocket science or advanced economics, it's just bloody common sense. Successive Labour governments have believed, in one way or another, that they can borrow/spend their way out of the shit, and each of them has been proved catastrophically wrong. For years I was told "governmental borrowing isn't like 'normal' finances" and all the rest, but subsequent events, still very much reverberating to the current day, demonstrate otherwise. (Ed Miliband's 'we didn't overspend last time round' sent a collective shiver down the spines of ordinary working people up and down England at least, consigning him and his party to almost total irrelevance) Clearly, there also needs to be some distinction between WHOM we are talking about here. Yes, the US with its Reserve Currency and great financial importance to other big players like China and Japan, as well as being #1 world economy, does mean that it can borrow heavily (for now, albeit that could change long term). Same is true to a much lesser extent for Japan at #3. By the time you get down the list to France and the UK, though, this is much less the case, and for the likes of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, it most certainly doesn't hold (they don't have any money-rich sugar daddy states buying up their government bonds by default, to keep them afloat). I think most people have woken up to the reality that, for the likes of mid-ranking economic countries such as ours, simply piling on debt on top of more debt regardless of the economic weather, and mortgaging everyone's futures not only isn't a good idea, but is actually not morally sound either. Why should my grand kids be expected to pay for the opulent retirement arrangements of the baby boomer generation that they themselves will never have, or for the manifest economic failures of our collective, current generations? There's not much very "progressive" about that as far as I can see (to coin the Left's latest buzzword for borrow, tax 'n spend). We need to face up to responsibilities and reality, and that means cleaning up our own mess I'm afraid, not leaving it all to our hapless kids and grand kids. |
Author: | Malc [ Wed Jun 03, 2015 10:11 ] |
Post subject: | Re: General Election 2015 |
Cavey wrote: ... for the likes of mid-ranking economic countries such as ours... 6th or 7th out 200+ is not mid ranking. Unless you are saying Tottenham are a mid ranking English football club? British American Tobacco are a mid ranking company? etc |
Author: | Cavey [ Wed Jun 03, 2015 15:23 ] |
Post subject: | Re: General Election 2015 |
Um.. |
Author: | Malc [ Wed Jun 03, 2015 16:00 ] |
Post subject: | Re: General Election 2015 |
You said the UK was a mid ranking economy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... nominal%29 This has the UK as either the 5th or 6th larges economy in the world. (I thought it was 6/7 not 5/6 but the point still stands) There are about 200 countries in the world, so that puts the UK in the top 3 or 4 percent. Not a mid ranking economy, unless you think Tottenham or Liverpool are mid ranking football teams in England (finishing as they did 5th and 6th in the Premier league. or British American Tobacco is a mid ranking company (being the 6th largest company in the FTSE 100) IF you do think those things, then fair enough. A bit odd, but fair enough. |
Author: | Cavey [ Wed Jun 03, 2015 16:11 ] |
Post subject: | Re: General Election 2015 |
The UK is a mid ranking economy in the specific context of which we're all talking about here, i.e. economies in a position to borrow and accrue vast hundreds or thousands of billions of pounds worth of national debt. Those at 115th, 140th or 180th place don't generally have this option in the first place. (By way of example, 120th place is Equatorial Guinea, whose entire annual GDP is about £8 Billion) The IMF specifically mentioned the UK and Norway. (OK Norway is a relatively small economy, but it has an enormous 'investment fund' and vast per-capita oil wealth, hardly the run-of-the-mill) |
Author: | Grim... [ Wed Jun 03, 2015 16:11 ] |
Post subject: | Re: General Election 2015 |
That high? Goodness. Technically anything from #2 to the penultimate one is mid-ranking, though. |
Author: | Hearthly [ Tue Jun 09, 2015 10:41 ] |
Post subject: | Re: General Election 2015 |
Cavey wrote: Last night's stand out moment for me was Miliband denying Labour had overspent in their last term...? The questioner's and audience reaction was priceless. https://theconversation.com/fact-check- ... trol-41118 Quote: Verdict
If we knew that the financial crisis was about to happen then one could argue that Labour would have delayed some of the pre-crisis spending to help in buffering the impact of the recession. But this is easy to say with the benefit of hindsight. So on this basis, it is unfair to say that Labour “overspent”. |
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