Why the Lib Dems are great

[butchersapron]

I think there was a collective denial on behalf of all parties to talk about the cuts in the election campaign in anything other than abstract terms for fear of frightening the electorate.

You mean where they all made the cuts the central issue. Can you even remember 6 months back?

 

[elbows]

Now I think the important thing is to demonstrate strength in the fiscal plan to get the economy working.

Good luck with that. When it all goes horribly wrong are the Lib Dems going to shrug their shoulders and say 'oh well, our plan would have worked but we had no chance of implementing it so we threw our weight behind stuff that we always suspected was doomed?'

 

[moon23]

one of the sad things about your posts is your failure to comprehend what you're talking about.

Well done in the absence of thought you have learnt to take the same starting line as one of my paragraphs and turn it into a one-liner. You will go far on Urban with such skills.

 

[Pickman's model]

Well done in the absence of thought you have learnt to take the same starting line as one of my paragraphs and turn it into a one-liner. You will go far on Urban with such skills.

your vacuous posts leave much to be desired.

 

[Santino]

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader and deputy prime minister, has admitted that he changed his mind about the timing of spending cuts prior to the general election, despite publicly telling the electorate weeks before the poll that early deep cuts would be "economic masochism".

In what was seen as the biggest policy reversal of the coalition negotiations, the Lib Dems abandoned their policy of maintaining the government's economic stimulus through this financial year and backed a tougher Tory plan instead.

This isn't about being vague or abstract. It's about intentionally misleading people.

 

[butchersapron]

The word for that is...?

 

[Santino]

The word for that is...?

Clegging.

 

[Santino]

Or 'laying a cable'.

 

[frogwoman]

There was no alternative. They had to cut the truth.

 

[butchersapron]

Clegging.

That could be a goer - let's get in on the facebook page.

 

[butchersapron]

Or 'laying a cable'.

That is very good.

 

[elbows]

There was no alternative. They had to cut the truth.

The markets made us do it, the truth is incompatible with them!

The growth of lies is essential to our recovery!

The deficit in how much we exploit people compared to how much we really need to milk them to keep the system going must be cut!

 

[Dan U]

You link to

you make this easy.

I fucking hate that prick

 

[frogwoman]

The markets made us do it, the truth is incompatible with them!

The growth of lies is essential to our recovery!

The deficit in how much we exploit people compared to how much we really need to milk them to keep the system going must be cut!

They had to make efficiency savings on the truth It was tough but fair and progressive.

 

[ViolentPanda]

The real problem is that the blue, yellow, and red tories are all in hock to big money.

Sadly, all too true.

We let British politics get too expensive to work any other way because the vast majority of us couldn't be arsed to deal with politics other than via the mass media. So all the parties "borrowed" huge sums of money from people with a limited right wing agenda, low taxes for the wealthy and minimal regulation of business and finance. So when the shit hit the fan, and the fantasy economy of the majority of the capitalist world came unstuck, we were left in a mess.

Not quite as much of a mess as the USA, but one of the worst western European examples, certainly.

So I see the Labour Party as a bunch of sell outs who traded everything they stood for in order to have a taste of power, the Tories as the self serving bunch of wealthy and greedy bastards they have always been, and the Lib Dems as a bunch of largely middle class shits who have never grown out of student politics.

A fair analysis.

However the real blame lies with the British people. We've let them do this to us...

Agreed, but it's worth bearing in mind that we (as a people) have been indoctrinated into this attitude through 30 years of the denigration of organising, whether that's in the workplace or the community. Sure, we hear all sorts of bollocks about community empowerment, but it's always empowerment on the states' terms, not ours.

...largely because we pay lip service to the idea of not trusting politicians, and then we discuss politics as if somehow one set of them must be telling the truth.

I think that in many cases it's simpler than that, it's the human desire to trust, to believe in something bigger than yourself, that misleads us. We think we need them, when we don't. They're just parasitising off of us.

The simple fact is that the number of politicians in the UK who live in the real world can be counted on the fingers of one thumb.

Yep.

 

[nino_savatte]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/17/liberal-democrats-coalition-power-clegg

He's hoping to be judged on what he does: on his multibillion pupil premium; on being in a government brave enough to cut prison numbers and defence spending and middle-class benefits; on political reform. It hurts when everyone throws rocks at you – but it is better that the rocks come from all sides. It suggests the claim of balance is real. Navy admirals are angry, so is the Daily Express – and so are many Guardian readers.

This is what I like about Clegg he's been fair in dealing with the defecit that Labour left behind.

There's that word 'fair' again. So what exactly does your statement mean? How has Clegg been "fair in dealing with the defecit (sic) that Labour left behind"?

 

[Streathamite]

Clegging.

or "telling nickies".
(tho' I Have to admit, yours is better)

 

[ViolentPanda]

Problem is Brown's government spending boom did nothing to help enterprise, and instead went all on typical Labour tax and spend projects which became unsustainable. £12BN on CfH, foreign wars, quangoes, complex tax credit schemes, and PFI. He should have been aiming to reduce the deficit in the good times so we could afford to get capital moving again in the hard times.

Got anything approaching evidence to support your contention that the above were financed through borrowing?

Germany was able to delay it's deficit reduction program and spent a vast amount on getting business moving again.



Northern Rock? You remember that bank that needed bailing out that was built on the basis of supplying credit to the domestic housing boom? It raised it's money to fuel our ever increasing cost of mortgages on the back of the US money markets that were themselves affected by their own real-estate collapse.

It needed bailing out because savers and the market panicked, and because it's own borrowing and lending practices were questionable, not because of any putative property bubble collapse in the UK. No sensible commentator regarded a collapse (as opposed to a deflation of the bubble by 10% or so) as a possibility, despite the fevered dreams of property speculators about a 30-60% price drop (tough shit, Fong!).

The reason Germany banks fared better is because they had less money invested in sub-prime real estate.

No, they had less money invested in financial instruments that included sub-prime mortgages. The article you linked to says this on the final paragraph of page one.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Clegging.

I thought "Clegging" was a euphemism for licking Tory ball-bag.

 

[frogwoman]

dont tell me fongs become a dem-bot as well!

 

[frogwoman]

can i say, its bad, but watching your party self destruct is one of the funniest things i ever seen on here/in politics

 

[ViolentPanda]

dont tell me fongs become a dem-bot as well!

No, but he was forecasting a massive crash in house prices, and rubbing his hands together at the thought of getting somewhere for a knock-down price.

 

[i_got_poison]

I believe that was implicit to my point, but thanks for repeating it.
"Proper" regulation, though, was never on the cards. Not from a post-Foot Labour, from the Lib-Dems or from the post-Heath Tories. Once neo-Liberalism was accepted as "the only game in town", anything that militated against as "free" a banking/financial market as possible couldn't be approached.

No, the disease pre-existed CDOs and CDSs by decades. They wouldn't have been possible without the de-regulation of the mid 1980s

I realise that such a claim can be made by people who enjoy a turn to the tabloidesque, but anyone with an interest in economic and social stability within a democratic paradigm should be able to work out for themselves that although the costs of the bail-out were high, what price economic and social destabilisation?

so according to you VP, the bail out was essential to stopping an economic collapse (we agree!), because most developed countries
had opted to do the same. yet, when an argument for cuts are made using the same rationale, you cry neo liberal and hoist your little red flag.

who do you think is paying for the bail out? have you not made the connection between the spending cuts and the bail out?

 

[Streathamite]

, when an argument for cuts are made using the same rationale, you cry neo liberal and hoist your little red flag.

except the argument isn't using the same rationale, not at all- because it's calling for deficit reduction on a scale far greater than is needed, and in the process risking the same economic calamity the bailout narrowly averted

who do you think is paying for the bail out? have you not made the connection between the spending cuts and the bail out?

The Wrong people, according to anyone with a drop of progressive blood in them! (HINT:that means not you). If these cuts were fair, it would be done by higher top-rate income tax, corporate taxes, bank taxes and CGT. Instead, it's being done by ordinary workers. Oh, and your hero, the Chancellor, is giving those poor persecuted banks a £19 BILLION tax break - paid for yet again by the poorest. In addition to the £120 Billion you're doing nothing about!
VP running up the red flag? No - you running up the blue one.......

 

[Streathamite]

can i say, its bad, but watching your party self destruct is one of the funniest things i ever seen on here/in politics

Rejoice!

they're not quite at that point yet; that'll be when open civil war breaks out in their ranks (I give it 6-12 months, when the cuts bite, and LD constituency activists start getting things thrown at them in the streets - and more importantly when they get their first catastrophic set of council election results)

 

[Santino]

moon's awful quiet.

Probably masturbating over the CSR figures as we speak. All those people being kicked out of their homes in case the bond markets have a wobble.

 

[editor]

The Lib Dems going along with the Tory's latest poor-bashing wheeze to slash social housing budgets means they are now officially as bad the Tories and as such will be treated with contempt forever more. Clegg! Get in line next to your pal Thatcher.

 

[ViolentPanda]

so according to you VP, the bail out was essential to stopping an economic collapse (we agree!), because most developed countries had opted to do the same. yet, when an argument for cuts are made using the same rationale, you cry neo liberal and hoist your little red flag.

1) I don't stand under a red flag.
2) The cuts being brought to bear in the UK are not primarily motivated by the prevention of economic collapse (we are nowhere near such a situation, even in the wildest fever-dreams of a Daily Telegraph op-ed writer). If that were the case, a much shallower taper would be being attempted, so as to not cause the sort of economic shocks that the coalitions' cuts will.
3) When cuts are ideologically rather than economically motivated, of course I'll cry "neo-liberal", because that is the motivation.

who do you think is paying for the bail out? have you not made the connection between the spending cuts and the bail out?

I know who is paying for the bail-out, and the connection between the cuts and the bail-out are at least partially (some would say wholly) spurious: The majority of the costs of the bail-out will be recouped through the sale of the holdings in the various assisted banks. To claim that the cuts are necessary because of the bail-out is the claim of either an economic illiterate or a party-political partisan spinning a narrative.

 

[ViolentPanda]

The Lib Dems going along with the Tory's latest poor-bashing wheeze to slash social housing budgets means they are now officially as bad the Tories and as such will be treated with contempt forever more. Clegg! Get in line next to your pal Thatcher.

There'll be a few Lib-Dem MPs in constituencies with large amounts of social housing tenants (so, Hughes perhaps) shitting themselves over this.

 

[Streathamite]

There'll be a few Lib-Dem MPs in constituencies with large amounts of social housing tenants (so, Hughes perhaps) shitting themselves over this.

and Featherstone, and Teather.........and arguably Clegg!