" Working class voters were seen as racist,resistant to change,homophobic, and reactionary.So you had a terrible situation where a LABOUR government was hostile to the ENGLISH working class" who said that ? some one from The Daily Mail ? maybe The Sun ? no it was Lord Glasman Ed Milliband`s speach writer and senior political advisor --writing in Prospect magazine.
Brown and Blair wanted LESS regulation of the banks thats LESS
13 years of F**K all for England and you Labour twonks have the front to gob off about 18 months of the Tories.
Other than for about two years of my working life (pre kids etc), i've not been able to afford to add to the 5% of my salary my firm pay into a pension so my pension will be utter pants but I still support what the public sector unions are doing. When all is said and done, the tories are just using this financial situation to vindictively reduce the public sector. Put a super tax on the bankers, pay off your mortgage Cameron instead of using your cheap governmental mortgage rate to maximise your finances whilst collecting rent and then we can start looking at making savings further down the tree. 'We're all in this together' - utter guff. The Tories have made a complete balls up of getting us out of this recession and until we stop relying on the city, we can't stop relying on borrowing in order to stimulate growth. Put a stop to the immoral earnings and financial confidence tricks in the city and get back to the real world. Then, we may all have a bit more faith that we're all in this together.
But if you over tax the bankers until they leave the UK and cause hundreds of thousands of job losses and reduce the tax revenue by, literally, billions of pounds each year.
The only way we can replace the banking sector is to manufacture, and in order to be able to compete with China and India we would need to find employees that will do a 60 hour week for about £20. Either that or we'd need to devalue the pound to the point that we couldn't import anything.
I'd really like to test this theory as I personally don't believe it. Australia invited people in for just a tenner in the 70s, yes some people went, but everyone didn't leave. A lot of people will not leave their homeland unless absolutely necessary. I think this is something commerce says to scare us into giving them a cushy deal.
" Working class voters were seen as racist,resistant to change,homophobic, and reactionary.So you had a terrible situation where a LABOUR government was hostile to the ENGLISH working class" who said that ? some one from The Daily Mail ? maybe The Sun ? no it was Lord Glasman Ed Milliband`s speach writer and senior political advisor --writing in Prospect magazine.
" Working class voters were seen as racist,resistant to change,homophobic, and reactionary.So you had a terrible situation where a LABOUR government was hostile to the ENGLISH working class" who said that ? some one from The Daily Mail ? maybe The Sun ? no it was Lord Glasman Ed Milliband`s speach writer and senior political advisor --writing in Prospect magazine.
Brown and Blair wanted LESS regulation of the banks thats LESS
13 years of F**K all for England and you Labour twonks have the front to gob off about 18 months of the Tories.
Yep, but some de-regulation was necessary and has had an undeniable benefit to the economy and getting money to fiilter through society is not an inherently bad thing and can contribute as much to social mobility as progessive taxation. Where we as a society got it wrong was to de-regulate too far to the point where anyone who wanted a mortgage or a loan could get one and inevitably that meant that the banks and credit industry started to look beyond those who could put up some form of collateral to those who couldn't. That's where the problems really started.
Other than for about two years of my working life (pre kids etc), i've not been able to afford to add to the 5% of my salary my firm pay into a pension so my pension will be utter pants but I still support what the public sector unions are doing. When all is said and done, the tories are just using this financial situation to vindictively reduce the public sector. Put a super tax on the bankers, pay off your mortgage Cameron instead of using your cheap governmental mortgage rate to maximise your finances whilst collecting rent and then we can start looking at making savings further down the tree. 'We're all in this together' - utter guff. The Tories have made a complete balls up of getting us out of this recession and until we stop relying on the city, we can't stop relying on borrowing in order to stimulate growth. Put a stop to the immoral earnings and financial confidence tricks in the city and get back to the real world. Then, we may all have a bit more faith that we're all in this together.
But if you over tax the bankers until they leave the UK and cause hundreds of thousands of job losses and reduce the tax revenue by, literally, billions of pounds each year.
The only way we can replace the banking sector is to manufacture, and in order to be able to compete with China and India we would need to find employees that will do a 60 hour week for about £20. Either that or we'd need to devalue the pound to the point that we couldn't import anything.
Can I just point out that "bingaddick" didn't say what is attributed to me.
No wonder the country is going to the dogs, most of what is written in these 4 pages has been done so between 9-5 when you are all supposed to be working.
Whether they were loans or gifts is irrelevant - they worked by investing in the respective nation's economies and that is the effect that I was referring to, it'd be interesting to compare where both nations are now if they didn't have Marshall Aid. Perhaps an unfair question as it involves unknowns, but you can compare Germany's post WWII economic performance with their post WWI economy when any hope of an economic revival was snuffed out by having to fork out large amounts of money in war reparations. That in itself is as good an example of the practical consequences of austerity v Keynesianism as you will ever find.
Well we can all interpret history differently. The point about gift v loan is actually this. Germany was gifted the money and its economy was rebuilt without the need to pay it back. On the hand the British economy having struggled to afford the war, then was stuck with huge debt and needed more loans just to meet its current expenditure. Despite our access to Empire labour rates and materials, Germany far outstripped us economically within two decades.
Like I said earlier a modern equivalent of the Marshall plan would certainly help, just borrowing more and more in the long run wont in my view.
As I said before, we all believe that investment is necessary, the trick is to do this without the negative effects of greater non cyclical borrowing.
No wonder the country is going to the dogs, most of what is written in these 4 pages has been done so between 9-5 when you are all supposed to be working.
I'd need to look up the exact details but from memory Britain did get some aid from the US as a grant and the remainder - albeit the majority - was loaned. Similarly Germany was both loaned and granted money.
I have been n both sides of the same coin, worked in the private sector with a pension fund that had to lose funds every 2 years as it made greater profits beyond what was required to maitain the pension andthe whole funds was trousered by an outside agency. Now working in the public sector and to old to get the full benefit and it dont amount too much.
Other than for about two years of my working life (pre kids etc), i've not been able to afford to add to the 5% of my salary my firm pay into a pension so my pension will be utter pants but I still support what the public sector unions are doing. When all is said and done, the tories are just using this financial situation to vindictively reduce the public sector. Put a super tax on the bankers, pay off your mortgage Cameron instead of using your cheap governmental mortgage rate to maximise your finances whilst collecting rent and then we can start looking at making savings further down the tree. 'We're all in this together' - utter guff. The Tories have made a complete balls up of getting us out of this recession and until we stop relying on the city, we can't stop relying on borrowing in order to stimulate growth. Put a stop to the immoral earnings and financial confidence tricks in the city and get back to the real world. Then, we may all have a bit more faith that we're all in this together.
But if you over tax the bankers until they leave the UK and cause hundreds of thousands of job losses and reduce the tax revenue by, literally, billions of pounds each year.
The only way we can replace the banking sector is to manufacture, and in order to be able to compete with China and India we would need to find employees that will do a 60 hour week for about £20. Either that or we'd need to devalue the pound to the point that we couldn't import anything.
Can I just point out that "bingaddick" didn't say what is attributed to me.
Sorry Bing, I don't know what happened there I pressed the quote button on Bexley Dan's post and it all went pear shaped.
Surely a fairer and more sensible way to deal with public sector pensions would be to allow current employees to keep their entitlements but to immediately close off these schemes to new entrants, who would not then receive the same benefits. It may not save money so quickly, but at least people would know what they are signing up for as they came in to public sector employment. I imagine the unions would still complain about that strategy, but I cant see there would be much support for them.
Surely a fairer and more sensible way to deal with public sector pensions would be to allow current employees to keep their entitlements but to immediately close off these schemes to new entrants, who would not then receive the same benefits. It may not save money so quickly, but at least people would know what they are signing up for as they came in to public sector employment. I imagine the unions would still complain about that strategy, but I cant see there would be much support for them.
I'd need to look up the exact details but from memory Britain did get some aid from the US as a grant and the remainder - albeit the majority - was loaned. Similarly Germany was both loaned and granted money.
Well that's interesting - there may have been a bit of grant from USA but if I remember rightly the Americans didn't really want to prop us up certainly during Attlees time. They didn't like the socialism of our Govt. There was a documentary that I watched recently about Keynes and his three month negotiation to try and get the grant which was eventually offered about a half of what she said we needed and as a loan.
Not sure if Germany got a loan as well. That may indeed be right but I have always thought the real big bucks came from a grant via the Marshall plan.
We come back though to the issue of austerity verses stimulus. I read with interest the link that Rothko put up. It all reads so clear cut when written that way. We'd all be completely stupid to do anything other than a Keynesian stimulus. I just think that pat solutions are usually flawed.
The reality as I said earlier is a stimulus needs to come from those who can afford to stimulate, per the Marshall plan and going further back, the New Deal. Given the extent of the indebtedness of our economy, not just public debt but the trillions of pounds of private debt, and the fact that our own banking sector is massively exposed still to external sovereign debt, our government does not have much room for maneuver.
Let us just speculate that there is a worsening sovereign debt crisis in Europe. Italy is already argued to be to big to bail, where does that put us if our massive banks are suddenly exposed?
Our economy is massively unbalanced with vast private debt, as well as huge off balance sheet PFI debt. We are like a massive Iceland who as we know had a banking system which was just too big for its economy.
With all this overshadowing macro-economic policy, who could guarantee to make the right calls?
As it happens I have always thought that the structural deficit time frame was too tight and that inevitably there would be slippage. I also read many who felt that Euro sovereign debt crises would inevitably come for Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy. Despite what those on the left say about spin over "bringing us back from the brink" and "being out of the danger zone", we could easily have been the next economy on slide. I am not certain that we are so strong to be immune even now. Being out of the euro has certainly helped us.
I am not naive enough to know that there is a Tory agenda of a smaller state but I think they and I would settle for a state back to a position it was in only a few short years ago. Dealing with the structural deficit will effectively do this. The way forward is not a simple one. Anyone who suggests its a doddle really need to get a grip.
" Working class voters were seen as racist,resistant to change,homophobic, and reactionary.So you had a terrible situation where a LABOUR government was hostile to the ENGLISH working class" who said that ? some one from The Daily Mail ? maybe The Sun ? no it was Lord Glasman Ed Milliband`s speach writer and senior political advisor --writing in Prospect magazine.
Brown and Blair wanted LESS regulation of the banks thats LESS
13 years of F**K all for England and you Labour twonks have the front to gob off about 18 months of the Tories.
I can assure you that many of us striking today have no time for the spineless backstabbing shits in the Labour party leadership
I can't be arsed to look it up but I believe that Keynes was so exhausted/disappointed with the American (lack of an) offer of money that it sent him to an early grave. Also when the money came it arrived with a number of pre-conditions that accelerated our fall from and the US's rise to the pre eminent trading nation in the world (Gold Standard, access to our overseas markets and possibly purchasing agreements). It is commonly accepted that Britian had food/money for three months during the big freeze and the government had made emergency plans for mass starvation (I think). In the end the US gave/lent us a load of money via The Marshall Plan as they feared Europe (inc. the UK) going communist. Apologies if all or any of that is vague/wrong but its from memory.
feck me thats 1 hour of my life gone, reading the usual suspects political biases, I dont give a toss, I have paid the same amount into my pension for 15 years a misely £70 a month. I'm fecked but at least my kids are having a decent up bringing.I hate the political threads on this site, they are more predictable than my comments after a Charlton loss.
I've just this minute thought of a modest proposal to gradually deal with the scandal of private sector pensions -- which have been looted by employers, the skim-meisters in financial services, and governments -- and it is... abolish them and replace them with a state guaranteed scheme for private and public sectors alike.
Something like this:
- The employee decides what level of index-linked pension he would like on retirement, subject to the minimum being above the level at which additional benefits would kick in, and the maximum being (say) 50k. And, obviously, provided he can afford the contributions for the level of pension he wants.
- The inland revenue would deduct an appropriate % of monthly salary in addition to income tax, which could be used as, say, NHS superann. contributions are used now -- ie as part of general government income -- although eventually (years down the line) it would all, in practice, go to fund pensions.
- No fees or rake-off to the City, no reliance on volatile asset values or interest rates.
- No tax relief for massive earners on mammoth pension plans.
- No difference between private and public sectors.
I think you're all getting confused on Marshall Aid. Marshall Aid was aid, and not a loan. The loans were mainly built during the war, America insisted we pay them fully, whereas other countries such as Soviet Russia refused to and only paid the Co-Op back! The prevailing view from most people of that era is that we got a bum deal, whereas we got more aid than any other country. Whilst we received aid I think our repayment of loans exceeded that of the aid: that is totally from memory. But the whole point of the Marshall plan was to modernise and improve productivity, along with the usual reduction in trade boundaries.
feck me thats 1 hour of my life gone, reading the usual suspects political biases, I dont give a toss, I have paid the same amount into my pension for 15 years a misely £70 a month. I'm fecked but at least my kids are having a decent up bringing.I hate the political threads on this site, they are more predictable than my comments after a Charlton loss.
Good on you mate, sole focus on kids is a good thing.
I've just this minute thought of a modest proposal to gradually deal with the scandal of private sector pensions -- which have been looted by employers, the skim-meisters in financial services, and governments -- and it is... abolish them and replace them with a state guaranteed scheme for private and public sectors alike.
Something like this:
- The employee decides what level of index-linked pension he would like on retirement, subject to the minimum being above the level at which additional benefits would kick in, and the maximum being (say) 50k. And, obviously, provided he can afford the contributions for the level of pension he wants.
- The inland revenue would deduct an appropriate % of monthly salary in addition to income tax, which could be used as, say, NHS superann. contributions are used now -- ie as part of general government income -- although eventually (years down the line) it would all, in practice, go to fund pensions.
- No fees or rake-off to the City, no reliance on volatile asset values or interest rates.
- No tax relief for massive earners on mammoth pension plans.
- No difference between private and public sectors.
Waits to be shot down.
I naively thought that this was something that Gordon Brown was proposing. Wasn't it called a stakeholder pension or something? If you take the financial sharks out of the equation and run it on either a state-run or mutual basis with very tight control, I'm sure you'd have an all round winner.
Of course, the financial sector would hate it and put up all sorts of spurious reasons for running it to their own advantage and the politicians wouldn't face them down.
Which brings us right back to the agenda of the original poster who, with others, makes his living skimming as much as he can get away with from private pension pots.
Which brings us right back to the agenda of the original poster who, with others, makes his living skimming as much as he can get away with from private pension pots.
With respect BA, that's absolute bollocks and downright offensive.
I can tell you, as a financial advisor, that there is no money to be made from selling pensions - commission is now non-existent and will be banned as from 2013. I now have to charge fees for my advice & most people don't want to pay...........so the public aren't getting advice & therefore not taking out any type of pension at all. Public sector employees don't know how lucky they are to have a guaranteed pension scheme at very little (real) cost.
Comments
I'd really like to test this theory as I personally don't believe it. Australia invited people in for just a tenner in the 70s, yes some people went, but everyone didn't leave. A lot of people will not leave their homeland unless absolutely necessary. I think this is something commerce says to scare us into giving them a cushy deal.
I can't really disagree with the theory.
Yep, but some de-regulation was necessary and has had an undeniable benefit to the economy and getting money to fiilter through society is not an inherently bad thing and can contribute as much to social mobility as progessive taxation. Where we as a society got it wrong was to de-regulate too far to the point where anyone who wanted a mortgage or a loan could get one and inevitably that meant that the banks and credit industry started to look beyond those who could put up some form of collateral to those who couldn't. That's where the problems really started.
No wonder the country is going to the dogs, most of what is written in these 4 pages has been done so between 9-5 when you are all supposed to be working.
:-)
I'd need to look up the exact details but from memory Britain did get some aid from the US as a grant and the remainder - albeit the majority - was loaned. Similarly Germany was both loaned and granted money.
Sorry Bing, I don't know what happened there I pressed the quote button on Bexley Dan's post and it all went pear shaped.
The voice of reason
May I congratulate you on your perceptiveness and great good sense.
AFKA the first voice of reason ;0)
One Aim.
feck off LOL