John McDonnell's Thatcher assassination joke

[UnquietDad]

here

Acceptable or not?

I think he has had an easy ride over this. Imagine a right-of-centre politician saying they wish they'd assassinated Harold Wilson or Gordon Brown.

ROFL @ LFN

You seriously fuck me up

Ask yourself a simple question: would you prefer to live in the Britain of 1979 or the Britain of 1990?

Good joke, really, I just lost another rib!

OMG longfingernails - are you for real????? I can't take that last post of yours seriously! I hope your union jack arm tats haven't faded

Ok ok jokes about people dying aren't that funny in general. However, I do make an exception where MT is concerned. I have wondered, over the years, just what exactly she and Pinochet chatted about over tea. Perhaps what Denis and the white supremacists in SA chatted about as they did their deals and slipped Mark a few hundred grand for his arms running....

Well you can laugh, but you still haven't answered the question. Would you prefer 1979 or 1990?

I will be generous about Labour, and say that I prefer the Britain of 2001 to that of 1997 - but not the Britain of 2005, and certainly not the Britain of 2010.

I was 4 in 1979 so not really qualified to make a judgement

What is so so bad in your 2010 ( that is different to any other western country that you are welcome to flee to?)

Still LMAO @ the "won the falklands war". Hilarity itself.

WRT Pinochet, he was only responsible for about 3000 disappearances. And really, you know, at least he backed Maggie in the Falklands. Unnecessary detail about the 3000 people really

LadyBlaBla What is so bad is the national finances. Britain has a bigger budget deficit than Greece.

There was simply no excuse for borrowing in the boom years. In the recession - of course - though the VAT cut was a massive waste of money.

But from 2003 to mid 2008 we should have been paying down debt.

British life is about to get very crap - and not because of the Tories and Lib Dems, who will be making the cuts - but because of Labour, who ran up the structural deficit (not merely the "recessionary" deficit) so high during an economic boom.

Ken Clarke left the public finances in a brilliant state in 1997. Gordon Brown continued in this vein, and even improved the public finances, at first - but he was following Ken Clarke's spending plans. As soon as Tony Blair won the second election, Gordon Brown went on his disastrous borrowing binge.

And what is so funny about winning the Falklands War?

I thought that was a fairly unarguable fact.

Argentina invaded the Falklands, the next day Maggie sent the troops and navy, and in a couple of months, Britain won.

longfingernails - blimey, working for the tories even of a weekend?

Yes, CristinaTheAstonishing, you have rumbled me.

It is time that we all acknowledge the truth: it is not possible for people to hold conservative views in Great Britain without being in the employ of Lord Ashcroft.

It just makes you sound very uninformed when you say the budget deficit is larger than Greece's.

That is misleading and irrelevant.

And as you rightly point out, really we are in no different a position ( and actually better than labour predicted but hambo refuses to acknowledge that ) to most other Western countries. Its that word global you conveniently forget.

It was a global recession but it was worse in the UK.

Why? Well, for a start, we had a structural deficit before the recession.

Second, macroprudential regulation was much worse in Britain than in Canada or Australia, for example.

Thirdly, we had too much household and business debt in comparison to our competitor countries - and not nearly enough of a savings culture.

Fourthly, we were disproportionately affected by the size of our financial sector.

Gordon Brown was responsible for most of those, though perhaps not the last one.

Of course the comparisons to Greece aren't exact. Our debt is largely medium-term, and overall debt is slightly lower than others, though catching up fast. Also, despite rather than because of New Labour, Mrs Thatcher's flexible market reforms meant that many private sector employees took pay cuts and shorter working hours instead of losing their jobs.

Above all, we aren't in the disaster zone that is the Euro.

Our position was worse going into the recession on many indicators than our competitors. That can be laid firmly at the feet of Gordon Brown.

Ultimately running a deficit in the boom years was simply unacceptable.

But it wasn't worse in the UK. Some figures are shown below. It depends what your definition of 'worst' is - look at the unemployment levels in some of these countries - 20% in Spain? But I really think you have been deluded to think that we are in a worse position that other countries. And also that it is ALL Gordon Brown's fault - press agenda anyone?

Unemployment causes people more pain IMO and many others' opinion

FRANCE:
2009 debt: 78.1 percent of GDP.
Deficit: 7.5 percent of GDP.
2010 growth estimate: 1.4 percent.
2011 estimate: 2.5 percent.
Unemployment: 10.1 percent.

PORTUGAL:
2009 debt: 76.6 percent of GDP
Deficit: 9.4 percent of GDP
2010 growth estimate: 0.5 percent
2011 estimate: 0.9. percent
Unemployment: 10.5. percent

GERMANY:
2009 debt: 73.2 percent of GDP
Deficit: 3.1 percent of GDP
2010 growth estimate: 1.4 percent
2011 estimate: 1.6 percent
Unemployment: 8.1 percent

IRELAND: 2009 debt: 65 percent of GDP.
Deficit: 14.3 percent.
2010 growth estimate: minus 0.7 percent.
2011 estimate: 3.0 percent.
Unemployment: 12.6 percent.

BRITAIN:
2009/10 estimated debt as percentage of GDP: 62 percent.
Deficit: 10.4 percent.
2010 growth estimate: 1-1.5 percent.
2011 estimate: 3-3.5 percent.
Unemployment: 8 percent

SPAIN: 2009 debt: 55.2 percent of GDP
Deficit: 11.2 percent of GDP
2010 growth: minus 0.3 percent.
2011 estimate: 1.3 percent.
Unemployment: 20.05 percent.

GREECE:
2009 debt: 115.1 percent of GDP.
Deficit: 13.6 percent.
Deficit projection for 2010: 8.1 percent.
2010 growth estimate: minus 4.0 percent.
2011 estimate: minus 2.6.
Unemployment: 12.1 percent

USA - also has a deficit of at least 12.3% (2009 figures)

ITALY:
2009 debt: 115.8 percent of gross domestic product
Deficit: 5.3 percent of GDP.
2010 growth estimate: 0.8 percent.
2011 estimate: 1.0 percent.
Unemployment: 8.6 percent.

LadyBlaBla

I think high unemployment is very bad - but short term unemployment is often better than a "stimulus" fed by borrowing which leads to long-term sluggish growth. I believe that an economy with sound public finances, with the right conditions in place for growth, gives better long-term prospects for employment.

I believe that unemployment is a price worth paying - with the big caveat that this is only true in the very short-term, and provided that it is sensitively managed and leads to better long-term employment. Also, any politician who says explicitly deserves to be have opprobrium heaped upon them for obvious PR reasons.

This is a moral position and one on which I don't think we will agree!

I generally believe that there are better long-term economic indicators than unemployment - though it is very important to keep the number of long-term unemployed minimal.

Oh - and the growth forecasts for Britain are ludicrously optimistic. They were essentially set by Labour ministers, not independently.

The new independent Office for Budget Responsibility is set to downgrade the growth forecasts to a more realistic level tomorrow - see the front page of tomorrow's FT.

Although the Tory press would not like us to think it, unemployment causes people far more pain. And it is argued actually increases the debt.

As for the labour predictions - as we know they over estimated the deficit and things were better than they said.

But yes, by 10am we should have a better picture.

I will never agree that unemployment is a price worth paying..........because we all know who pays the price. And its not Dave's mates.

LadyBlaBla

I want full employment; you want full employment.

We disagree how to get there.

I have been made redundant and am well aware of how rubbish it is on a personal and social level.

But as I see it borrowing ridiculous amounts wastes so much money in debt interest that the gain you get by keeping continuous employment profiles is completely outdone by the high tax resultant rates deterring businesses starting and growing.

Short-term unemployment sucks but it is better than long-term unemployment.

I actually respect Keynesianism and am not an out and out Friedmann/Hayek disciple - but Gordon Brown was no Keynesian. Yes, Keynesianism involves big spending and public works projects during recessions - but it also requires running surpluses and not deficits during the good times in the economic cycle.

I'm no Christian, but the story of the seven lean cows and seven fat cows provide a rather succint analogy:

www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+41&version=NIV

strange but I can't help but have a feeling of loathing for MT. Never had it for John Major or Cameron so it's not just a Tory bias. Don't know where you live LFN (would be interested). Thatcher decided to punish those who didn't vote for her - Scotland, Wales, traditional socialist communities. She had nothing to lose - we didn't vote forher anyway. For those who came from the south, or areas likely to vote Tory who never suffered the way these other communities suffered - then you will NEVER understand why these people feel the way they do. Remember moving from a hard hit area in Scotland to the South of England. Within a day - I had at least 2 job offers. In Sctland hundreds had been battling for one job. You will never understand - it was punishment for those who she despised and wanted to crush.

Scanty, I agree.
Step-father lost his job due to Thatcher destroying all the pits in South Yorkshire (worked in a co that supplied machines for pits) and had to sign on for the first time in his life - where he collapsed in tears. He never got a permanent job again and is now living in poverty on a very small pension though he invested while he was working. The misery that woman caused just to my family was massive and think of it multiplied by millions...
I loathe and despise Thatcher and frankly would've been glad if someone has assassinated her. I will crack open the Champagne when the monster is finally dead.

Sorry LFN, you completely lose me when you throw religion into this. Delusion is still the word that crosses my mind when you post.

So the media is reporting that things are bleak bleak again, because the growth forecast has been downgraded to 2.6%.

here

Might I just remind everyone that Annual growth rates averaged 2.68% between 1992-2007 according to the IMF.

And apparently these were the boom times. So what's going on here?

scanty I am from London. A modest part of the capital, which voted very heavily for Labour in 2010 - sorry, unwilling to be more specific!

LadyBlaBla As I said I am not Christian (in fact not religious). As a total aside, I do think that the purely literary value of the Bible is very undervalued though. Many of the stories would be interesting even if there were no religious subtext whatsoever.

LadyBlaBla The issue is that Alistair Darling told us all that growth would be 3.25%.

No-one believed that - as you said, even in the boom years it wasn't that good - but he needed a big growth forecast to try to hide the full scale of the financial problem before the election.

All the independent forecasters are predicting much lower growth - the OBR forecast is actually fairly optimistic by comparison.

It is not the problem at all LFN. The OBR say they have readjusted the figure because they have new information not because it was a made up figure by Alistair Darling. And it is not that different anyway.

Indeed the real problem is the scare tactics being used by Ham and Eggs to get through the standard Tory agenda, which typically will hurt those who need assistance most in our society, that thing that seems to bypass most Tories.

But here is a definition for you:

Society: a system of human organizations generating distinctive cultural patterns and institutions and usually providing protection, security, continuity, and a national identity for its members.

Can't say that much of that has any relevance to you from your previous posts.

As Dave is so fond of saying - there is such a thing as society, but it is not the same thing as the State.

Society doesn't depend on big government spending - and indeed, in many ways, is diminished by it if the State takes over in a centralising way.

It's true that Margaret Thatcher didn't do enough for social cohesion - but she was a bit of an aberration.

Cameron is much more a "one-nation Tory" - indeed, many people on the right of the Conservative party wish he wouldn't bang on about social problems so much, because it is almost inevitable that he will fail on issues like drug/drink addiction, low-level disorder, etc.