growth is growth is growth

[justcross]

Come on you moany lot! 0.3% is better than 0 or minus surely! We have to get out of this mindset that we are still swanning around in the early 00's. We have had a very tough year and we are growing...ok at a small rate but still positive. The media could have said .. great! look! crap year but we've still grown...how fab is that!
Come on! A little more positive thinking and less listening to spin.

I still don't understand what you mean. Even the Tories don't want people's living standards to go down! As far as I understand it, they see our pension/unemployment/health care/education problems as being regrettable but inevitable - and mostly our own fault.

The Tories definitely don't want to see people's living standards and pensions cut. The Tories believe in growth and prosperity, they are the exact opposite of teh zero growthers, the zero hopers.

An American youtuber was so impressed by one of our former PMs explaining wealth creation, that she uploaded a video to youtube and named it "Margaret Thatcher owns socialist".

She's amazing, Mrs T, isn't she?? Completely mad of course. She seems to think that all she needs to do is repeat a lie for it to be true.

I keep forgetting - it's all her fault ...

I agree with your first 4 words. There is no need to say any more, That is sufficient of itself and bears no expansion.

'She seems to think that all she needs to do is repeat a lie for it to be true'

Not at all. She repeats what Simon Hughes said, in order to demonstrate to him, its fallacy.

Well she was certainly a scary lady.

Not to the public, just to the progressives, in exactly the same way that the Lord is scary to the Devil.

She scares me ! I think of her as a sort of monster. Seriously - a monstrous human being. I think she appealed to all the very worst aspects in human nature.

I would ask you why you admire her, but we're sort of hijacking this thread.

Except that maybe we are totally alone here. Just you and me. Everyone else is either having their tea or bathing their kids.

I'm afraid I need to go and bore my son into doing his homework. Never fails. 'Night!

I think she was right on some things, wrong on others. But I think she was a good person.

Night, Solopower.

"However, if a growth in the GDP meant more money spent on the health service or education for everyone, then I would be happy"

Then growth will make you happy. GDP means companies are turning over more money. The more profit they make, the higher their contributions of Corporation Tax & VAT. The more people they employ, the more Income Tax is going into the pot. The more people are employed, the more they spend on goods and services, adding yet more tax pounds to the equation.

This is what pays for hospitals, schools etc. The reason why the banking crisis has been so disastrous is that the tax money the financial industry had been giving the Exchequer every year suddenly dropped. As the financial industry constituted a big % of our GDP this instantly affected the amount available for public services.

The congestion of the SE and high house prices would not necessarily move outwards if commerce and population were spread more regionally. There will always be pockets of desirable locations and city-centres will often be congested. But the overall effect would be more evenly distributed.

"I think she appealed to all the very worst aspects in human nature."

If you were around in the mid/late seventies the country was a total mess caused by a many-pronged problem including an oil crisis that pushed up inflation massively; excessive wage-claims to match the inflation, forced through by strikes; outdated nationalised industries, requiring heavy injections of tax money to stay afloat but unable to invest for the future. All resulting in a nation that was bankrupt, going to the IMF for bailouts and, if you can imagine it, a far more oppressively gloomy atmosphere in homes than today. In 1975 the Wall Street Journal famously ran a headline that said "Goodbye Great Britain"... we were finished. Junk.

If you've been following the Greek story recently, it's not dissimilar to where we were by 1979. So when Mrs T took the reins, drastic measures were necessary including serious cuts in public spending and privatising the industries that had been a black hole for tax money. If she appealed to any aspect it was that of 'self-reliance' and she encouraged growth (there's that word again) by dropping income tax from 33%+ to 25%. This was a big change from the socialist philosophy of the previous era. Critics say it morphed into selfishness and an 'I'm all right Jack' attitude - which is true to an extent. Many suffered, especially those in the nationalised industries, and the plans to replace those industries were inadequate.

Whoever takes over in Greece this week will probably be as unpopular as Mrs T in time and as unpopular as the coalition is now. Always happens to those that have to take the tough decisions. Far easier to be a PM in the good times... :)

Cogito, a growth in the GDP did mean more money to the NHS and schools under the last government. But I don't think the Coalition have the same priorities - especially as the last Labour government got slated by them for overspending!

Really - who would benefit under this government from 'growth'? I'm pretty sure it won't be me, because what I care about is the health and education of my children (and everyone else's), jobs for unemployed people, benefits for those who need them, etc. This government is not interested in these things. It has shown us very clearly where its priorities lie.

The only way the sort of 'growth' you are talking about will affect me is that it will allow global companies to buy up our green spaces and clog our roads with traffic. No thanks!

And Cogito, I don't recognise your 'oppressively gloomy atmosphere in homes'! People who left school in the 70s knew that they could just walk into a job or get a top-class, free university education with virtually guaranteed employment afterwards! That's how I remember the 70s. Plus - no waiting times for GPs or at A & E, etc.

That's why I feel so sorry for young people nowadays.

Sorry - got to go, but will be back ...

"walk into a job or get a top-class, free university education with virtually guaranteed employment afterwards! "

Not in the unfashionable end of Manchester I come from. Far from there being jobs to walk into, the people where I lived were either on strike from the local factory or consigned to a three-day week and all the financial hardship that entailed. University may have been free but, as hardly anyone qualified for a place (less than 10% of school leavers nationally), it was well beyond most of my friends' and neighbours' aspirations.

Thatcherism re-introduced the concept that you have a responsibility first & foremost to yourself and your family. That the state should not and could not provide everything for you. That if you went out, worked hard then you could expect to keep the fruits of your labour. That could be £10,000 a year or it could be £10 million.

Also that competition drives markets and growth. Not governments. Again that was right too. Look at our most contested industries, like mobile phones. See how quickly the pace of innovation and how costs continue to plummet.

I really dont see what's wrong with the expectation that you take care of your own family first and others second. It's what we naturally do anyway. Otherwise we'd be giving all our money to the poor starving kids in Africa.

Cogito, I was also in Manchester in the 70s - in Didsbury, Withington area. We might have passed each other on the street!

So how is it that our memories are so different? So near, yet so far ...

Niceguy, I don't think it is possible to take care of yourself and your family if you don't make sure others are OK too. If not enough money goes into education, your kids won't get the qualified medical care they need. If there are loads of poor people cluttering up the pavements, there won't be anywhere for you and me to tread, now, will there?

And many people think it is mainly unregulated competition that caused the financial crisis. If the government had done its job and regulated the financial services sector; if the politicians had shown us a good example of people working hard to serve others; if people had thought less about themselves and more about others and paid their taxes (which would then have gone into the NHS and schools) then maybe we wouldn't have had a financial crisis?

Just a thought.

Solo, I'm not saying don't take care of others at all. I'm saying that it's up to you take care of your own family first. Then that frees the government up to take care of those who really need caring for.

I think that's again what Labour have reversed during their last reign. We've moved away from personal responsibility to one where we expect the government to provide money and the answer to everything. Not enough money? Increase tax credits/housing benefit/whatever.

And I agree that governments across the globe failed to see the danger of allowing banks carte blanche to lend money and package up dodgy deals. However, all your examples are of irresponsible behaviour. I'm not advocating that.

All I'm saying is that for example, the success of my family is down to me going out to work hard, pay my taxes and it's down to me to ensure my kids get the best education I can give them. That's what I think Thatcher tried to promote.

What I dislike is the current mentality of "Well what's the point in working extra hours? It affects my tax credits. It's the schools fault that my kids aren't getting educated. It's the government's fault for taxing me so much."

Well I agree with personal responsibility, but I'm saying that to me that also involves doing what you can to make the world a better place for everyone. I don't see how you can have one without the other.

I don't want to nit pick - and I'm sure you are not advocating it - but if 'taking care of your own family first' involves tax avoidance, for example, then that leaves everyone else worse off.

I don't know why you say 'We've moved away from personal responsibility to one where we expect the government to provide money and the answer to everything'. I don't know anyone who thinks like that - but then I don't know any bankers.

I agree with you about not liking it when people say they don't want to work extra hours if it affects tax credits. Apart from anything else, I think that's very short-sighted. But if it was a young woman who could otherwise be there for her kids when they come home from school, I would think it was the right decision to work fewer hours for the same amount of money - and spend the extra hour or so with the kids.

I think that every penny the government spends on helping struggling families is an investment in all of our futures!