I was disgusted at the leader of the Bullion Bovver Boys speech at conference yesterday. He was suggesting it was the Tory’s good management of the Olympics that the UK is looked as a good idea for foreign businesses to set up here.
Sorry but I thought the vast majority of building and planning was done under Blair (nearly as bad as Thatcher in my estimation)?
Cameron must be getting desperate for him to mention his son; not in any way whatsoever should this be brought into any political speech.
It’s not rocket science the way out of this mess being made worse by the Government. If you get out of this financial mess; even Osborne will find it difficult to make the poor; poorer. Simon Jenkins and Billy Bragg are singing from the same hymn sheet and are portraying the way out of this financial mess the world is in.
It makes me smile when any Tory says “you can’t spend your way out of debt;” but isn’t that exactly what they are doing?
By getting the Bank of England (BoE) to print more money (Quantative Easing) surely that is precisely what they are doing
The way they use Quantative Easing (QE) is entirely wrong. The idea is The Bank of England (BoE) prints money, puts it in circulation and the banks should then loan it to businesses enabling them to employ more people and creating growth.
But surely growth comes from business selling their goods/services and creating profit? The business will then earn sufficient money to employ a person; that is the way to create growth.
An alternative: give everybody above the age of 16 who earns below £80,000 per year £2,000. They will spend the money on bills, rent/mortgage, consumer goods etc. making profit for businesses and thus creating growth. If they put it into a savings account that is doing exactly what the BoE are doing. This would cost about 20 billion pounds but it should be remembered that the BoE has given the banks 375 billion in QE so far.
In the long term the Robin Hood Tax must be implemented. A less than half 1p in the pound tax on every transaction involving bonds, derivatives etc. (not in your high street bank) would raise £100 billion per year (see http://robinhoodtax.org/)
Vince Cable (bless his Lib-Dem cotton socks) is setting up this new bank to only lend to business but it’s going to take 18 months to start. While we have a Chancellor who equates the country’s budget with that of a household budget saying “in times of austerity we must cut back on our spending” we will have a long, bleak future.
The answer to any bank that wants to move to, say, Hong Kong is simple. If they move they will not be allowed to operate in this country. I’m sure you would get agreement on that in the EU.
This is the way out of this problem. Too many people, especially up North, are feeling this financial catastrophe. £2000, although not perhaps solving their problem, will take some of the pressure from them.
Solve the debt you will not have pressure to reduce benefits.
George