Q) Guess who wants a second crack at being Prime Minister?

Meep wrote:Oh, and just in case anyone thinks I'm defending Blair or his government, no. I hold them as complicity within in the neoliberal scourge that has devestated the world economy and damaged, often ended, many human lives. However, I find it harder to feel any sympathy for those who continue to support such blinkered ideology even after it has been starkly disproven.

So, in other words, every politician in the Western world?

Honestly, as much as despise Blair, it's hard to imagine him being worse than the current government. Currently the coalition is set to borrow more tha Labour ever did in the same time frame while pouring money into a massive NHS reform no one wants, financing a wholesale reform of the entire welfair system (effectively spending vast sums of money over several years whose immediate effects will actually damage growth), meanwhile they are dropping the tax rate on the most wealthy (and yes, it did raise a substanial amount of money for the treasury) and reforming various other systems to provide even greater relief for people on those incomes. In short, pouring vast sums of public money into ideological reforms, cutting tax for the elite and squeezing incomes and consumer demand for the average person while refusing to invest in anything that might actually help growth. You could run the whole thing better simply by lying back and doing nothing.

I've said it all along, debt was the perfect excuse to enact an ideology.

They are making so many enemies and creating such bad will that I think they'll be gone In less than three yeas and half their reforms will never be completed. They will have just cost more for nothing,

TheTurnipKing wrote:

Shadow wrote:

Fatal Exception wrote:
What did your A-Level in economics tell you about borrowing your way out of debt? Perhaps they also taught you about digging yourself out of a hole.

You've heard the concept "You've got to spend money to make money."?

Well that's a thing.

Ironically, you can see this very effect in the videogame industry. It wasn't until all the publishers put the mockers on development because "it's an economic downturn don'tcherknow" that the economic downturn actually affected the video-game industry.

During a depression like this is when companies who've been making money hand over fist during the good times should be spending to keep money circulating.

Yeah, they were bastards. Cancelling sometimes often finished projects so they can 'save money' on marketing. Then getting all panicky when they realised they aren't releasing any games.

Now they pubishers have to set massive targets on their big hitters because they have put so many of their eggs into those baskets that, not only can they not afford to fail, they can't afford not to be huge success. By trying to midigate risk they have actually manage to increase it so now they are terrified of every bad review or bad first week. The game industry today is at a point were one bad release can cripple an entire studio and two can easily kill them off.

Meep wrote:Honestly, as much as despise Blair, it's hard to imagine him being worse than the current government. Currently the coalition is set to borrow more tha Labour ever did in the same time frame while pouring money into a massive NHS reform no one wants, financing a wholesale reform of the entire welfair system (effectively spending vast sums of money over several years whose immediate effects will actually damage growth), meanwhile they are dropping the tax rate on the most wealthy (and yes, it did raise a substanial amount of money for the treasury) and reforming various other systems to provide even greater relief for people on those incomes. In short, pouring vast sums of public money into ideological reforms, cutting tax for the elite and squeezing incomes and consumer demand for the average person while refusing to invest in anything that might actually help growth. You could run the whole thing better simply by lying back and doing nothing.

The current government are just an old-money version of the old government (*edit* Or should I say, and old-money version of the old government going in reverse). Blair wished Cameron to be the next leader of the Conservative party, you know, as he saw the shift back pretty clearly, and Broon knew he was just along for a ride on a dying wave. Blair is an absolute genius compared to Cameron. I think it's pretty obvious that the type of politician required to 'manage' the infastructure of a country that is torn apart by a cultural and ideological influx and control from America, and defacto rules of the European Union, with internal Union conflict, will have to be more than the robot that Cameron is. He's no fool, no one who goes through Brasenose as a member of The Bullingdon Club is. He knows the game. Just not how to push it in a new direction.

But Blair back again now? He's not really going to brutal places like Kazakhstan as a philanthropic missionary, he's backing them up. We don't need someone like that in a million years.

I actually think Blair is one of the best politicians I've ever known of, his silver tongue and charisma were really something to behold, his ability to control an audience was Derren Brown-esque. That's not to say I agree with everything he did in office - far from it - but as a politician I think he was brilliant. Just watch videos of him giving speeches, his ability to persuade and manipulate is seriously impressive.

Shadow wrote:I actually think Blair is one of the best politicians I've ever known of, his silver tongue and charisma were really something to behold, his ability to control an audience was Derren Brown-esque. That's not to say I agree with everything he did in office - far from it - but as a politician I think he was brilliant. Just watch videos of him giving speeches, his ability to persuade and manipulate is seriously impressive.

Not nearly as impressive as Thatcher.

Shadow wrote:I actually think Blair is one of the best politicians I've ever known of, his silver tongue and charisma were really something to behold, his ability to control an audience was Derren Brown-esque. That's not to say I agree with everything he did in office - far from it - but as a politician I think he was brilliant. Just watch videos of him giving speeches, his ability to persuade and manipulate is brilliant.

His techniques are now well-known though, studied and perfected long ago with walking monstrosities like Ed Milliband being (hopefully) the last of that breed, and Cameron being a blue-blooded version of, with far greater dignity and poise than Milliband, but with a loyalty to the rich - old always, new when the lobby payments are large enough. Anyway, off on a tangent, meant to say that as admirable as Blair's persuasiveness was, it's now too obvious to lure most in.

Hmm, maybe I take back a bit of that, to say it's just such a shame that Milliband appears a tad foolish on occasions, because I'm not too sure the new sensitive males most of us are compared to in the 70s would want one of the old school socialists back again. So maybe not an end to the Blair model legacy, just hopeful that someone who's better at it than Ed will come along to helm the Labour Party.

Maybe also being fair on Cameron, while Blair got to make his own pretty pattern while starting on an exciting, optimistic journey, Cameron wouldn't be so perverse as to do anything other than avoid dispossessing the richest, for every single time that happens, it's back to square one, and the rest of the world won't wait for us to catch up again whether or not we've got a neat idea.

Fatal Exception wrote:

Shadow wrote:I actually think Blair is one of the best politicians I've ever known of, his silver tongue and charisma were really something to behold, his ability to control an audience was Derren Brown-esque. That's not to say I agree with everything he did in office - far from it - but as a politician I think he was brilliant. Just watch videos of him giving speeches, his ability to persuade and manipulate is seriously impressive.

Not nearly as impressive as Thatcher.

Indeed. Not to praise the hard bitch too much, but look at her route to power. Granted, her dad had a little dabbling in politics through being mayor of Grantham for a bit, but that just represents the shove she needed. Compare that route to Blair's and Blair comes off less favourably (Cherie has undoubtedly been a driving presence in his life, too, where Maggie could hardly be said to have been inspired by Dennis), and then compare to Cameron's route and have a great big laugh.

Shadow wrote:It's a well known fact that you can't cut your way out of recession (I was taught this in A-Level Economics a decade ago),

If it's such a well known fact, how come people continue to debate whether Keynesian economic principals really work, and have done since its inception?

Personally, I think Keynesian principals work best, but I acknowledge there are perfectly valid arguments against it. However, for it to work properly, it requires that certain principles are adhered to. Principles which were disregarded by New Labour, who believed that they had "beaten boom and bust", simply because they'd seen a long boom. They didn't even necessarily have to believe this themselves, but it was this kind of posturing that led to their drift from responsible Keynesianism. Boom periods are when governments accumulate wealth, (one of the key arguments against it, as this withdraws money from the economy, that could be put to better use in the private sector,) through tax revenues on higher incomes, and by decreasing spending as fewer require benefits. Running at a budget surplus allows government coffers to grow fat for the rainy days of a recession, where they can then utilise this extra capital to forcefully stimulate growth.

Labour, on the other hand, under the stewardship of Blair and Brown, then Brown and Darling, continued to operate a budget deficit in considerably good times, and ran up huge levels of debt. Then, when recession hit, globally, financial institutions naturally become wary of lending, especially to governments that already owe them money. The lack of any reserve funds from the good times, forces Britain back to the banks, and whilst our borrowing rates are, in comparison with other nations, pretty reasonable, as the debt continues to grow further, we risk losing those good rates, and reaching a point where spending at all becomes utterly unaffordable.

So yes, whilst it would be nice to be able to instigate lots of 30s America style "New Deal" programs to kickstart the economy, Labour had left us in a position from which we're unable to afford to do so thanks to their arrogance, which it seems, Blair hasn't lost.