It's a shame Osborne doesn't yet seem to have grasped that the banking crisis started in America and was, therefore, not Gordon Brown's fault.

 

As for your statement about millions of people losing their lifetime savings, that is not true. Most people will have got their money back because of the government-backed guarantees in place. Of course, it would still have been utter lunacy to have allowed the banks to collapse as millions of people would have been left unable to access their money in the short to medium term while the guarantee scheme cranked into action.

 

By the way, when did the "I want this and I want it now" culture grow at its fastest? Yes, the 1980s and we all know who was in power at the time.

 

It did start in the 80s but it does not mean people have to fall for it like sheep and be like that

 

I was bought up to live within my means, only buy what i can afford, this has been my attitude throughout my life and i was 14 when Maggie came to power and 25 when she left so i was a product of the 80s

 

 

What you say while you are right about some of the stuff about the bankers what you are saying is very simplistic and overlooks a lot of things

 

The British public over borrowed, taking out lots and lots of credit and loans and credit cards that they could ill afford to do because they were too impatient and materialistic to save up and buy things 'i want it all and i want it now' culture is not the fault of the banks it was the fault of idiots who over extended themselves, banks should have been more responsible about who they gave credit cards and loans to but the public need to share a lot of the blame

 

The banking crisis started in America with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Barings so we would have been affected by the subsequent global recession no matter what

 

It would have been suicide not to bail out the banks, if the government had just left Lloyds, RBS etc to go to the wall millions of people would have lost their life savings, pensioners who had saved all their lives for their nest egg in retirement, businesses who had accounts would Lloyds and RBS would not have been able to pay their staff and suppliers, the country would have literally shut down

 

Of course we had to bail out the banks. Of course those getting into massive debt are also partly to blame. Of course it started in America (invented in London though I think you'll find, spread by JPMorgan to every reckless bank in the world). The major point though is that if banks had upheld sensible values and policies THAT HAD WORKED FOR 60 YEARS regarding lending and investing, and Thatcher and her loyal worshippers hadn't altered the law to allow them to make risky business loans for prolonged periods, and allowed them to invest ever-larger sums on casino-banking to the point that they became too big to allow to fail, then the whole mess would have been totally avoided. We'd still have had ups and downs and economic recessions for other reasons but they would have been survivable and shorter. I don't think most people grasp the scale of the damage thats been caused, nor how long it's going to take to sort out.

 

Banks of course will be well-alright-jack.

What you say while you are right about some of the stuff about the bankers what you are saying is very simplistic and overlooks a lot of things

 

The British public over borrowed, taking out lots and lots of credit and loans and credit cards that they could ill afford to do because they were too impatient and materialistic to save up and buy things

 

 

That sounds familiar... oh yes that's right, it is exactly what Osborne is encouraging with the 95% mortgages from his irresponsible Help To Buy scheme that YOU support Craig.

Edited November 5, 201311 yr by Doctor Blind

That sounds familiar... oh yes that's right, it is exactly what Osborne is encouraging with the 95% mortgages from his irresponsible Help To Buy scheme that YOU support Craig.

Ah yes but you forget that Craig is only interested in the Tories winning the next election. If it requires throwing billions of pounds of tax revenue down the toilet, that's not a problem in his eyes.

Very possibly, which makes it a bad thing to up the rate to 60% or so like Simon was suggesting

Where did I say that?

Ah yes but you forget that Craig is only interested in the Tories winning the next election. If it requires throwing billions of pounds of tax revenue down the toilet, that's not a problem in his eyes.

 

Nonsense

 

I have always maintained people should only buy a house if they can truly afford it, In the thread i said several pages back that people should only take on a house if they have not just the deposit saved but another 6 months mortgage payments saved for a 'rainy day'

 

 

 

 

Where did I say that?

 

Mistaken identity, it was someone else

Nonsense

 

I have always maintained people should only buy a house if they can truly afford it, In the thread i said several pages back that people should only take on a house if they have not just the deposit saved but another 6 months mortgage payments saved for a 'rainy day'

So why do you support Osborne's hare brained scheme? It is a subsidy for people who haven't got enough for a deposit that can also be used by those who have got enough.

So why do you support Osborne's hare brained scheme? It is a subsidy for people who haven't got enough for a deposit that can also be used by those who have got enough.

 

I would hope that the banks will be careful who they give mortgages to even with this 'subsidy'

 

Given they are tighter than a ducks fanny when it comes to lending to small businesses one would hope they are ultra careful now

Latest barmy idea in this age of 'austerity' is the government is going to give grants of £200 to new mothers who agree to breastfeed their babies

 

While people are homeless in the street, while many old people have to choose between heating and eating these idiots are going to pay out £200 to mothers to breastfeed

 

This sort of nonsense you would not even get from a loony left council

 

The grants are going to be paid out over a few months so presumably there is people going to periodically examine the mothers tits to see if she is keeping to it

 

FFS give £200 grants to people who cant pay their heating bills not people voluntarily churning out another brat

 

 

That's a pretty good supply-side policy actually, given the well established benefits of breast feeding for a child's later academic achievement etc. A more intelligent populace is far more influential for economic performance than tax cuts of a few pence here and there are.

That's a pretty good supply-side policy actually, given the well established benefits of breast feeding for a child's later academic achievement etc. A more intelligent populace is far more influential for economic performance than tax cuts of a few pence here and there are.

 

Even if that is so where does it end?

 

Fat people given £200 vouchers to lose weight?

Smokers given £200 to give up?

Mothers of older kids given £200 if they keep kids away from KFC/McDonalds?

Alcoholics given £200 to give up drinking?

 

All those would have added health benefits in a generations time

 

But totally unaffordable

Latest barmy idea in this age of 'austerity' is the government is going to give grants of £200 to new mothers who agree to breastfeed their babies

 

While people are homeless in the street, while many old people have to choose between heating and eating these idiots are going to pay out £200 to mothers to breastfeed

 

This sort of nonsense you would not even get from a loony left council

 

The grants are going to be paid out over a few months so presumably there is people going to periodically examine the mothers tits to see if she is keeping to it

 

FFS give £200 grants to people who cant pay their heating bills not people voluntarily churning out another brat

It's nothing to do with the government. It's a study by Sheffield University involving a very small number of women.

 

My initial thought is that it is slightly barmy. However, if the experiment proves to be a success, I am prepared to change my mind. After all, I like to put evidence above gut instinct. The fact is that, in some parts of areas like Sheffield, the number of mothers who breast feed is very low. As the health benefits of breast feeding are widely acknowledged, anything that increases the numbers has to be worth considering.

It's nothing to do with the government. It's a study by Sheffield University involving a very small number of women.

 

My initial thought is that it is slightly barmy. However, if the experiment proves to be a success, I am prepared to change my mind. After all, I like to put evidence above gut instinct. The fact is that, in some parts of areas like Sheffield, the number of mothers who breast feed is very low. As the health benefits of breast feeding are widely acknowledged, anything that increases the numbers has to be worth considering.

 

According to the original article on Sky, the government is bankrolling the trial and presumably if it is a success then it will be rolled out nationally

 

Even if it was Sheffield Uni funding the scheme it would be coming out of the £9k a year students have to pay in tuition fees there.

 

We need to be encouraging people NOT to have kids, with old people living longer more and more kids in the country is going to mesn greater demand on our infrastructure and services

 

 

According to the original article on Sky, the government is bankrolling the trial and presumably if it is a success then it will be rolled out nationally

 

Even if it was Sheffield Uni funding the scheme it would be coming out of the £9k a year students have to pay in tuition fees there.

 

We need to be encouraging people NOT to have kids, with old people living longer more and more kids in the country is going to mesn greater demand on our infrastructure and services

Do you seriously think that a woman is going to have a child just to collect two hundred quid?

According to the original article on Sky, the government is bankrolling the trial and presumably if it is a success then it will be rolled out nationally

 

Even if it was Sheffield Uni funding the scheme it would be coming out of the £9k a year students have to pay in tuition fees there.

 

We need to be encouraging people NOT to have kids, with old people living longer more and more kids in the country is going to mesn greater demand on our infrastructure and services

You're looking at it the wrong way. Because the demands on pensions and infrastructure are higher for older people and both rate has gone down, we need more children in order to pay the taxes to fund the infrastructure to support the aging population.

Even if that is so where does it end?

 

Fat people given £200 vouchers to lose weight?

Smokers given £200 to give up?

Mothers of older kids given £200 if they keep kids away from KFC/McDonalds?

Alcoholics given £200 to give up drinking?

 

All those would have added health benefits in a generations time

 

But totally unaffordable

The answer over where it would end is simple: whichever action is not cost-effective. Most of those proposals probably would have health benefits, but nowhere near enough to justify the expenditure. An education benefit is far more cost-effective than a health one though - an intelligent population that is slightly less healthy as a whole is far more economically productive than a less intelligent one that's slightly healthier as a whole. Given the strong link between breast feeding and later education and health benefits, it makes far more sense as a policy than any of those you've stated.

We need to be encouraging people NOT to have kids, with old people living longer more and more kids in the country is going to mesn greater demand on our infrastructure and services

What? We can deal with population growth if it's vaguely even because it's effectively the same model we have now. Fewer births means an ageing population, which is potentially disastrous for a million reasons.

God we need to find another right-winger, and fast. (Even though a good half this thread was just correcting Craig on rudimentary knowledge and mathematics.)

Get the CHAMPERS out- the depression is almost over !!1!

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28417993

 

On Friday we will have - depending on how you look at it - either the most symbolically important or the most pointless economic event of recent times.

 

Namely, official confirmation that the depression caused by the mother of all banking and financial crises is finally over. UK output or GDP has finally exceeded its pre-recession peak (the technical definition of a depression is the period during which GDP remains below that peak).

 

On the official government stats, GDP fell by 7.2% between its peak in the first quarter of 2008 and its trough in the second quarter of 2009.

 

Since then recovery has been unusually - some would say lamentably - slow, and national output in the first three months of this year was still 0.6% below that peak.

 

But that recovery has been picking up considerable momentum over the past year. The UK is now the fastest growing economy of all the world's rich ones.

 

So in the quarter to the end of June, quarter-on-quarter growth is bound to have been more than 0.6%. The respected National Institute for Economic and Social Research predicts growth of 0.9% in that period.

 

Which means - hooray hooray hooray - that the depression is officially over, and that we are now once again earning more than we did before the banks got us into our pretty pickle by starving us of credit.

 

All of which is terribly exciting. And we can expect the Tory chancellor, George Osborne, and his Lib Dem treasury chief secretary, Danny Alexander, to shout from the rooftops that this economic renaissance is all down to their sagacity and tough actions.

 

Except, as is usually the way with blinkin' economic statistics, it isn't quite as straightforward as that.

 

For one thing, the Office for National Statistics is in the process of reworking how it calculates GDP. And it has already admitted that the number I gave you above, about how far output fell from its peak between 2008 and 2009, is wrong.

 

The current officially recorded contraction of GDP exaggerates, a bit, the magnitude of the decline in output. Which implies that the previous peak for output was almost certainly surpassed some time ago - so long, that is, as there aren't significant offsetting revisions to subsequent growth.

 

Chances are, however, that this terrible depression actually ended some while ago, probably last year. Fingers crossed we will know more about this - I won't say the truth of it (nebulous concept in economics) - in September.

 

So on Friday we will basically be doing the equivalent of celebrating a World Cup victory that may or may not have actually happened some months earlier.

 

This could only happen in the wonderful world of economics.

 

Which brings me to my second and third reasons why you may not need to put out the "Britain is booming again" bunting on Friday.

 

For one thing, the industrial experience of the past few years has been variegated.

 

So we are certain that the service industries, which dominate our economy, are already producing more than they did before the great crash, whereas manufacturing is still generating considerably less - 7.6% less in the first quarter of this year, on those questionable official figures.

 

The vaunted rebalancing of the economy between intangible services and tangible making has not remotely happened - and probably never will.

 

Perhaps more importantly, it is very unlikely that you personally - yes, I am talking to you - feel any richer than you did at the beginning of 2008.

 

Because whichever way you cut it, most people remain poorer, largely because the population has increased considerably faster than output has recovered.

 

How much poorer?

 

Well the acknowledged brainboxes on this are the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

 

And they say that a year ago real median income - that is adjusted for the impact of inflation - was still 5.8% below its peak for a typical individual (the median calculation) or 8.5% lower on average (the mean assessment).

 

There are various other ways of cutting these figures, according to which measure of inflation is used or whether housing costs are incorporated.

 

But the relevant point is that living standards for most British people haven't yet recovered to their pre-crisis levels - and probably won't for two or three years yet.