The Brown Crisis - storm in a teacup?

[Maninadirndl]

Anyone here think it's all irrelevant? Just a plot to get that "good looking" Cameron into power and that "miserable ugly" Brown out?

This expenses thing has been a "perk" of the job for decades, hell the biggest "perk" was under Thatcher called the Al Yamamah contract which Thatcher set up with Saudi Arabia. Google that. Putting the Tories back in will be a bigger disaster than Brown.

Likely scenario: Brown out and Cameron in. Within two years he'll realise the job of PM is a pile of shite and he has no real power.

None of these idiots in power addresses the following 3 simple threats to our existence:

1. Climate change.
2. Peak Oil. It is RUNNING out. Google "Hubbert Curve" and "Peak Oil" and then Google "Transition Town" to see how ordinary people are doing grassroots things to tackle this one.
3. Economic Collapse. Somewhere there's a graph showing how debt in relation to your country's GDP should only be 150% to be healthy. Credit crucnch it was 350%. Check out the programme "The Acent of Money" to analysewhy we ended up in the doo do.

Now if any of these clowns in that building guy Fawkes failed to renovate could figure this out, perhaps a charismatic woman MP or an Asian businessman then we'd have a Eureka moment like America did with Obama. But we won't.

Good job I live in Germany....

MT - My local LP have asked to stand a number of times, but I won't. They are buggers because what they see is a working class girl made good and it suits their PR tactics. TBH I would be rubbish, but I don't think they care, they just want to win the seat.

But that's a different matter.
What I was saying was that while I don't blame GB directly for the recession I just can't believe we have sold off all the gold reserves and have borrowed so much. You just cannot keep spending and spending. Becaus eif you have a tough year, which will alwyas happen on both the macro and micro levels, you can't leave yorself open to not being able to meet your outgoings. Surely that must be right?
GB has held the purse strings. He has known that he was at unprecedented expenditure and then some. Said expenditure could only be met by a dizzying level of tax income. i just feel hugely disappointed that he behaved so imprudently and no-one in government is interested in explianing why.

Saying 'oh it's all very complicated,' is so very patronising and not what I expect of the party I've voted for.

One thing that has been winding me up since long before the current crisis was the PFI/PPP con. Devised just to get debt off the government's books but at the price of making that debt ten times worse. If he'd just been honest and used government money to build hospitals and schools, the taxpayer would have done much better.

Now we are in hock to various shady companies that are coining it in, charging us ten times as much as we should have paid AND we are tied into these bad deals for the next 20 years. Madness.

I don't think he behaved imprudently. I many people would have just left the working classes take the brunt of the recession. He chose to spend so we would have some sort of buffer. I am very glad to him about that.

There will be less money around for a while in business and social enterprise - but there were no easy options in this - either you didn;t spend and the human misery would have risen exponentially, all in the working classes, or you did spend and did what you could to help.

MT - i'M not talking per se about the spending since the crisis began. There are arguments on both sides about whether or not that is 'working'. Personally, I feel that to do something is always better than to do nothing.
No, what has really, really shocked me as that before this mess, when times were very, very good, we didn't keep anything back. We just assumed that income would continue to grow so spent every penny and then some. I just don't undertsnad how GB cpould make that assumption. There will always be peeks and troughs in economies. Nothing is guaranteed in some part because we are now global and are co-dependent on other countries. But surely that's all the more reason to be prudent during the good times.

Also what is really frustrating is that those of us in the party asking these tough questions are being silenced. We are being told that any descent will let the other lot in. But what then? Does that mean the government can do whatever it likes and is beyond question? And any questions are met with patronism and 'you don't really understand, love'. In my local constiuency I feel like I've woken up in 1984.

Litchick - I hear you. Am very sore about the way Blair and Brown have betrayed the Labour party, and all those fine people who struggled so hard to get political representation for the ordinary working people. Blair was never Labour but I expected better from Brown. More fool me.

I am glad he decided to spend to mitigate the worst effects of recession, but that's about it.

John Smith's death was the biggest tragedy to hit politics in the past 30 years.

Someone mentioned the pensions crisis before. DP is knee deep (or even neck deep) in all the current issues in Europe - he says France has struck an agreement with Islamic states to draft is as many men to work to bolster the that sliding edge of it.

This at the same time that France has said that it cannot guarentee Jewish children an education and that gays have been warned away from Amsterdam.

1. I think much of the commentary that we are fed by press is vindicative and missing the point. I don't think that we can continue to measure the economy and progress on the narrow measure of GDP. We should not crucify govts when GDP goes negative for a couple of quarters? I make a living from the crumbs of capitalism on a daily basis but surely a prosperity model that is measured by and based on endless growth in consumption is not sustainable until/unless technology catches up. We need govt spending on bold initiatives in the direction mentioned. So just getting nice Mr Cameron in is not the answer unless he can tell us what he is planning beside public sector and tax cuts.

2)I wonder why it is not convenient for the media to report that the Brown/Darling initiative to take preference stakes (in various guises) in the banks is well on track to make the tax payer a nice earner. The US banks want the US govt to cash in their stakes but the US govt is making a nice little earner and Obama and Geithner are too smart to let the banks off the hook without extracting some more juice and conditions for the tax payer. Have been saying on MN for some time that we (tax payer) will make a handsome profit from the bank deals in the UK. It is the shareholders who are losing out (pension funds etc.). Give Brown/Darling credit for doing this and for showing the way to complacent Western govts.

I can go on....

The media is not interested in factual reasoned reporting but just creating storms to compete on a tabloid basis.

TD - Milliband wa son Radio 4 this morning peddling exactly the same line. And I'm not argiung with the fact that ultimately it might turn out very nice indeedy that the tax payer owns Lloyds.
But it is disingenous for GB and his supporters to claim this as a triumph. It wasn't their policy was it? Lehmans fell and the government had to do something. Their actual policy was to de-regulate the banks and assume all would go well.
As I say I'm not too unhappy with that outcome but it is utterly patronising of the government to now try to dress this up as success. And it is this sort of patronism that has undermined the party. Voters, howebver poor and uneducated are not thick. They know when they're being sold a line.
I have this argument endlessly at my local party meetings. We can't just keep grinning and reiterating that everything is fab.

Totally agree re the media commentry. These journos not feel the equal of many a politician, and what they report are their own ideas on policies/events. Andrew bloody Marr is an idiot - I don't what to know what he thinks!

And recent history (Blair/Bush/ Iraq) shows that most of their guesses are totally wrong - yet do they report that?

These journos now feel the equal of many a politician

Litchick- maybe Milliband reads MN .
I don't understand why you don't want to give GB and AD credit for coming up with the right solution to the crisis ?

Incidentally, I expect that GB is well prepared for SwineFlu. GB seems to be a man for a crisis.