Does the way Brown is handling the recession highlight the differences in the parties?

[Ico]

With all the tories shouting 'irresponsible'?

Isn;t it more that the tories would sacrifice blue collar workers livlihoods and houses in order to protect the middle and upper middle classes?

Is Brown trying to protect the working class when normally thay are just thrown to the lions during recession?

I think the gap opening up in the parties at the moment is a great thing.

I'm by no means a Labour supporter but if I had choose between the two it would never be Tory and I feel the latter are really making fools of themselves at the moment.

John Humphries destroyed George Osbourne on the Today programme (on R4 this morning).

George Osbourne: "Families earning £19,000 or more are going to be hit by this"

Humphries: "Yes but only by £2 a year according to your figures"

Osbourne: blusters, erms, generally useless.

If Labour dropped this scary police state stuff with DNA databases, surveillance, phone-tapping etc. then I may even support them.

I think Brown is trying to protect his own reputation. Or he would have protected the working class when he had the means to do so.

lol NNM!

What rep though AN? And when hasn't he protected the WC's whilst also being politic about the world we are ion today?

and I'm just really hoping it works!!!

The rep that he was a good chancellor who would never again allow bust and boom economics. And now he is talking about how he is going to save us all from the bust he had nothing to do with. When actually what he should be saying is "shit. Fuck. Damn! I spent all your money and now you are going to give me more so I won't have to face the music."

Now everyone praticise saying it. All together now...

"Prime Minister Cameron"

Brown was warned by the IMF back in 2004 that he was heading for disaster and the pure arrogance of the man that he knew better annoys me, but not just that the fact that he is now blaming the Americans when they warned him.
They are all the bloody same.

I don't know AN. That sounds a bit too cynical to me. Brown can't change the rules of global economics and boom and bust is the natural order of things - the boom has lasted longer under his management though. We're in a global recession which has probably got more to do with China than it has to do with Brown.

"They're all the bloody same" - well I suppose we get what we derserve if that's what we think of politics

I'm not suggesting that he could have prevented it. But he certainly could have prepared better. He acts like it was unforseeable. But, of course, it was not. So his claims that there would be no more bust and boom econimics were naive at best, deceitful is more likely.

Oh come on, deceitful?

Anyway, I don't want to get into a slagging match about things we can't know.

If it was up to the Tories I'd be cannon fodder for sure. I'm glad to see Brown trying to lessen the impact on the working classes. Good on him.

So you think he really believed he had the power to prevent boom and bust? I think he knew full well it was beyond his power but he kept saying it, so yes I think deceitful is the word. Now if you think he really didn't know that I guess we can go with naive idiot. Either way, he was a shit chancellor.

Snd he is always taking credit for things that will actually have negligible impact on the grim reality.

Like this 5%... it isn't going to do much at all. But he might score some points with the working class for taxing the rich. It won't do much else.

What it's highlighting is the woeful incompetence of the Tories as an effective opposition. They didn't oppose the spending when they should have, and they are now completely on the wrong foot about what the way to deal with the current issue is.

Spending now is the way to encourage us out of the mess, but the reason we're in the stuffing mess is because Golden Brown hasn't left us with anything in the ruddy kitty anyway - which is why yesterday's 'big announcement' was just a bunch of stuff and nonsense. 2.5% cut in VAT and a rise in NI for crying out loud. Utterly meaningless.

The Tories just look like like rank amateurs, which is bloody farcical, because they should be Brown-bouncing his arse out of number 10 on a racquet, and they're most definitely not.

It just shows how all parties are just so out of ideas as to how to get the economy back on track ...

Oh I disagree. There are no guarentees, but ideas a plenty.