The Labour Government

Brewster's millions said:
I completely agree.

No one could have predicted that anything bad would happen to UK banks - other than a £700bn funding gap and RBS funding itself on overnight money by 2005 - and it was only a few of them that actually went bust.

The government only had to guarantee 90% of losses on UK bank debt and although they had to underwrite the entirety of the interbank market to stop it from melting down, that was only for a year or so. And the cost of this was pretty insignificant as well. The government only had to increase the amount of gilts in issue by 25% - hundreds of billions- in a single year to avoid a collapse of the financial system, so I don’t know what people are complaining about. I think they’ve just got an agenda against Gordon Brown.

Frankly, people have the same sort of shitty attitude when they talk about the Titanic. Everyone goes on about it sinking and the catastrophic loss of life, but it only hit the one iceberg and a few people did survive. Plus people generally had a good time on the first few nights of the voyage.
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Nice of you to agree with me for a change.
 
BobKowalski said:
Brown wasn’t a major factor. Labour went with a light touch on the City because it was booming and why meddle with something that was working. What they, and pretty much everyone else, didn’t realise was the degree of entanglement between institutions and across borders and no amount of regulation was going to firewall against that, unless it was a joint US/UK initiative and that was never going to happen.

The gold sale is tedious. It was a call based on data at the time and it was nigh on 25 years ago. It was a blip that barely registers. The fact that have had six PM’s in the last decade and the erosion of political stability, not to mention junking our foreign and industrial strategy has been far more damaging and we are still struggling with the consequences.
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Here's a question for you and your like minded pals on here.

Tell me three things that you think the last Labour Government did wrong? If it helps you can include this Government aswell?
 
Brewster's millions said:
Frankly, people have the same sort of shitty attitude when they talk about the Titanic. Everyone goes on about it sinking and the catastrophic loss of life, but it only hit the one iceberg and a few people did survive. Plus people generally had a good time on the first few nights of the voyage.
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I expect the catering in steerage wasn’t the best.
 
Churchlawtonblue said:
Here's a question for you and your like minded pals on here.

Tell me three things that you think the last Labour Government did wrong? If it helps you can include this Government aswell?
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In retrospect, Iraq was a fuck up, continuing with PFIs wasn’t the best idea and taxing pension fund dividends was a stealth tax too far imo.
 
Churchlawtonblue said:
Here's a question for you and your like minded pals on here.

Tell me three things that you think the last Labour Government did wrong? If it helps you can include this Government aswell?
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Iraq war and backing the Americans when it was obvious Iraq had no weapons of WMD. We went to war on a lie which is never good. As a side note I never voted for Blair or Brown, but compared to the shit shows that followed, it was a golden age of Government.

This Govt is obvious. Nailing themselves to the WFA from the off was the big one. Benefit cuts and cutting the overseas aid budget. Plus points. The budget, the EU deal, Ukraine support and actually doing the daily business of governing.

If you want a gut feel, I kind of get an early eighties vibe. Unpopular new Govt, weak opposition and leader, new political party upsetting the odds. And then a war and now the increasing threat of war.

Starmer showed a brittle strength over WFA, more show than substance, a lack of confidence. Ten months on and he is starting to grow into the role of PM.

As I said. Just a gut feel.
 
BobKowalski said:
Iraq war and backing the Americans when it was obvious Iraq had no weapons of WMD. We went to war on a lie which is never good. As a side note I never voted for Blair or Brown, but compared to the shit shows that followed, it was a golden age of Government.

This Govt is obvious. Nailing themselves to the WFA from the off was the big one. Benefit cuts and cutting the overseas aid budget. Plus points. The budget, the EU deal, Ukraine support and actually doing the daily business of governing.

If you want a gut feel, I kind of get an early eighties vibe. Unpopular new Govt, weak opposition and leader, new political party upsetting the odds. And then a war and now the increasing threat of war.

Starmer showed a brittle strength over WFA, more show than substance, a lack of confidence. Ten months on and he is starting to grow into the role of PM.

As I said. Just a gut feel.
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Fair plays.
 
Churchlawtonblue said:
How was Brown a good politician? Seemed an abject failiure in most areas to me. Dreadful Chancellor, unelected PM.
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He was naive when he declared “he’d ended boom and bust” and didn’t fix the roof when the sun shone, but when the shit hit the fan he did a good job.

If it wasn’t for the financial crash his time as chancellor would have been rather unremarkable.
 
bluethrunthru said:
Wow - I never knew Brown was at the Fed in 2008, encouraging sub-prime loans in the US and caused the collapse of Lehman Bros. Where did you learn that information about the cause of the 2008 crash - insightful.
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Post crash he (via the treasury) were busily telling banks to shore up their balance sheets yet lend to states as they were AAA and as good as “cash in the bank”. I know that first hand because I was in the “room” so to speak and recall commenting it would be good if they could land on one or the other because no debt is as liquid as cash unless the UK treasury was prepared to underwrite it - which, not unreasonably, they weren’t. The general mood was one of “we owed them one” so they felt empowered to give us some “steerage” - although the bank I worked for didn’t ever require a bailout but the system itself would have collapsed so we were all in that pot.

The sovereign debt crisis followed. This clearly wasn’t a British created problem, governments demand for money was insatiable.

Mental times.
 
metalblue said:
He was naive when he declared “he’d ended boom and bust” and didn’t fix the roof when the sun shone, but when the shit hit the fan he did a good job.

If it wasn’t for the financial crash his time as chancellor would have been rather unremarkable.
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To be honest it is preferable to have an unremarkable chancellorship as it means everything is working smoothly and the shit isn’t hitting the fan :)
 
Brewster's millions said:
Yes it is.

He was a very frequent visitor. You should note that the official record of guests at Chequers only states who visited during a period, and not whether a person visited multiple times and how frequently. Which is just as well for Mr Broon.
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How frequent? What's your source?
 
Churchlawtonblue said:
Two wrongs don't make a right Vic. Just because the Torries messed up doesn't mean Labour didn't aswell.

Why is it so hard for you Labour fan boys to admit that Labour has made mistakes. That's a pretty naive attitude to have especially with politics.
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Unlike you hindsight boys.

Who said at the time that it was wrong to sell off gold that was losing money against other investments?
 
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