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Jace
Just to set the record straight, the high inflation of the mid '70's to early '80's was caused by the OPEC oil shock in the mid '70's. The unions also played the stupid card, and boy, they got their b*lls cut off by Maggie. The world was still adjusting to higher energy prices, I remember being issued with a petrol ration book. It was common knowledge that whoever won the '79 election would have North Sea oil revenues to play with, and at least two terms in power. No wonder things got better for a short while.
In 1988 Nigel Lawson also made the huge mistake of signalling the removal of dual mortgage interest tax relief, (it made it very tax-efficient for couples to take out a mortgage together) six months ahead of actually effecting the decision, which created first a housing bubble and then a crash. By 1989, interest rates were back to 18% or more (base at 15%) in an effort to control inflation, and the building industry was on it's knees.
I was a partner in a joinery, which could not survive the massive interest rates plus a recession in the housing market. We lost the business and the house, in the early 90's, after hanging on by our fingernails for a couple of years. Businesses that had been established for a hundred years and more folded too.
But the great evil Maggie and Co did was to increase the gap between rich and poor, partly by cutting tax rates for the better off. Exponentially. And to New Labour's great shame, they did nothing to bring society back together again by shrinking the gap between rich and poor.
Labour's main initiative in this area was not the redistribution of the tax burden, but rather to increase means-tested benefits to the poor. We now have the crazy situation that some people on means tested benefits alone are above the tax threshold. All makes work for the beaurocrats to do.
So now I hope for legislation to loosen the grip of the two big parties, who have over the last forty years proved that their vision is to narrow, their greed too great, and their hearts in the wrong place.
:tear:flybro
Hung parliament would be OK if it meant
that an MP would be hung everytime they screw the public,
imagine the veiwing figures.
:victory:One thing to celebrate, Esther Rantzen lost her deposit, beaten by 12,000 votes..
And Jackie Smith's out.
Good news, finally a seat in Parliament to the Greens, congrats to Caroline Lucas, very well deserved.
Both red and blue broadly agree on making it impossible to live without working. To use a medical not-quite-metaphor, Labour favours "better living through enforced psychotherapy" while the Conservatives favour "do not resuscitate". You can bet if the Tories have a majority they will squeeze the poorest, the sick, disabled and unemployed, worse, while enriching the diet of fat cats more efficiently than Nu Labour ever could, which is not to say Labour has been increasingly fascistic about it (in order to poach as many right-of-centre votes as posisble). A society that has no safety net for the worst off has no safety net at all.
Right near the end of the coverage, someone on BBC even suggested (as a joke?) defaulting on the debt, which sounds like a start on reorganising that global financial system - at least this illustrates that anything is now possible...
All of the richest countries in the world are in debt. Can someone with a degree in Economics (or anyone else who just fancies having a stab in the dark) please explain to me just WHO we owe all this money to?
The only logical/rational explanation I can come up with is Aliens.
I am, however. open to any other explanations, no matter how ludicrous.
Some loon reckoned we (6 billion people?), the whole world, were in hock to a handful of Bankers. But of course, that simply does not make sense.
My money is on the Ganymedians.
Lib Dems down 4?
Doesn't sound right to me.