Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Where did this come from?

By Christopher Booker
10:00PM GMT 06 Dec 2014
It was on July 14 1998 that Gordon Brown announced that he planned to double public spending in 10 years, writes Christopher Booker.

Strangely missing from all of last week’s talk about the “government deficit” and Gordon Brown stepping down as an MP was any reference to the origins of what future generations will look back on as arguably the most catastrophic political blunder in our history.

The reason why Mr Brown for two years enjoyed a reputation as a “prudent” Chancellor was that he had been committed by his predecessor, Kenneth Clarke, to keep public spending under tight control under the “Maastricht criteria”. (It was not widely noted that Britain was bound by the Maastricht Treaty to comply with stages one and two of Economic and Monetary Union – it was only from stage three, the euro, that we had an opt-out.)

This had cut public spending to a mere 36 per cent of GDP, its lowest point for four decades. But on July 14 1998, carried away by the success of the economy he inherited from the Tories, Brown announced, with the aid of his economic adviser, Ed Balls, that he now planned to double public spending in 10 years. As the Economist memorably observed, he had “morphed from Scrooge into Father Christmas”.

The consequences of Brown’s hubris, as we now see, are that public spending has soared from £322 billion a year to £732 billion, still remorselessly rising every year. Despite the talk of “cuts” so beloved of the BBC, under this Government alone the national debt has more than doubled, having recently topped a mind-boggling £1.5 trillion.

George Osborne may talk airily of spending £2 billion on roads here, another £2 billion on flood defences there. But each of these sums represents only what he has this year had to borrow each week to plug the ever-widening hole in our finances. So dire is our plight that the £60 billion a year we now pay just in interest on our borrowings has risen to become the fifth-largest item in public spending, exceeded only by the ever-rising bills for welfare, education and the NHS.

Mr Osborne may now talk even more recklessly of how he hopes to cut the deficit to zero within five years. But so long as hundreds of council officials and NHS managers continue to pay themselves more than the £142,000 a year earned by the Prime Minister – let alone that £50 billion earmarked for HS2 – we know nothing is seriously being done to rein in a public-spending spree that continues to spray out our cash uncontrollably in all directions.

We can scarcely expect to be told about this by the BBC, whren 91 of its executives have also arranged to pay themselves more than Mr Cameron every year. We live in a country where too many people in the public sector have totally lost contact with reality.

But the start of it was that day back in 1998 when Messrs Brown and Balls unleashed a monster that now threatens to swallow us all.

Miliband and Balls are just Mr Brown's boys. They learned their trade at his side and plan on copying him.

Mr Brown's boys - very good Haystack !!

Brown was a brilliant chancellor , Balls would be considered to be a far better chancellor than Osbourne, your Tory Polling station Hays Sun/YouGuv have the statistics showing this.

So whats your point?????????????????

Balls-up was Broons right hand man.


What are you drinking gf?

Errrr read this then Max........

Brown 'was a better chancellor than Osborne'

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/11/26/brown-seen-better-chancellor-osborne/

dont forget yougov is the Tory partys mouth aswel.

Enough said point proved.

from the comments section gf, rather more accurate.


Why Gordon Brown gets so much air time is beyond comprehension. Whilst under his leadership we witnessed our Gold being sold off at rock bottom prices. We saw our domestic rates more than doubled. He raided private pension funds and used this money to bolster up public sector pension pots. The public sector increased by over 1.2 million extra non-essential employees increasing our public debt. The NHS suffered through lack of funding and poor management. Overall this man virtually took us to the edge of bankruptcy, and yet he is still viewed in some quarters as a good leader? People should take time out to truly analyse his disastrous and reckless leadership, and then compare him to Osbourne, who has the unenviable task of cleaning up Gordon Browns calamitous legacy from which we are all still feeling the effects.

Ohhh thats miniscule compared to Thatcher wasting north sea oil revenues, selling off council housing stock, selling off the utilitys, selling off the railways, selling off government services. Selling off everything that moved and ruining the manufacturing and mining industries of this country.

Thatcher and the Tories sell off was far bigger at least 1000 times bigger than anything Brown sold.

And the Headlines tell the story, people thought Brown was a better Chancellor than Osbourne despite all the Tory propoganda and right wing press.

And it comes from a tory polling company.

sticky - do yourself a favour and go and make some money on either dow or ftse indices ...... london is heading into a slough(!!) tomorrow with dow currently down 275

The Aftermath of the Budget, for the Mail on Sunday
22nd – 24th March: sample size 1097

Balls: 29%
Osborne: 28%
Don’t know: 43%


Jubilee, Politics & Monarchy Poll (Daily Star Sunday)
17th-18th May: sample size 1003

Balls: 28%
Osborne: 26%

Welfare & Topical Issues Survey, for the Mail on Sunday
28th – 29th June: sample size 501

Balls: 29%
Osborne: 27%
Don’t know: 44%


As can be seen, the fight between the Chancellor and the Shadow Chancellor for economic credibility, crucial to the message of both parties, has been extremely close ever since the Budget. In three of the six polls since then, the two men have been within 1 percentage point of one another – since May Balls seemed to be inching ahead.

Balls as it, Balls as it.

Brown was an awful chancellor. Don't take any notice of polls showing who the public think was better. They have no way of knowing and just look at their personal circumstances.

Manufacturing fell by more under Wilson than Thatcher. She just got rid of the loss makers like the mines.

Rubbish, your down south and havent a clue.

There were 290 mines closed under Wilson and 160 under Thatcher.

The mines business was very badly handled.

Disgracefull really....mounted police riding down un-armed citizens..the stuff of tyrants.

Thatcher lied though about pit closures as did Heseltine and the ones Thatcher closed would be economical now (well before this blip in oil)Wilson closed down uneconomical surface mines that were at the end of there life.

This is from a Welsh newspaper

http://www.southwales-eveningpost.co.uk/Wilson-closed-mines/story-18821771-detail/story.html

THE detractors of the policies of Margaret Thatcher are still labouring under the misapprehension that it was she who was totally responsible for closing down the mining industry after the bitter dispute of 1984.

This is wrong. The industry was in crisis in the 1960s with the burden of excessive wage demands and cheap imports from China and Eastern Europe.

The unions were in such a parlous state that in 1969 a White Paper was introduced by the Labour MP Barbara Castle entitled In Place of Strife, which was intended to bring some sort of control over the union leaders.

That White Paper was undermined by James Callaghan and eventually dismissed by Harold Wilson, leading to the greater closure of mines during Wilson's two terms in office than in Thatcher's three terms, and yet Wilson is held as the great left wing hero.

What followed when Wilson resigned and Callaghan took over will ever be known as the Winter of Discontent, contributing to the collapse of Labour at the following general election.

The whole miners strike and trouble was down to Scargill. He never gave his members a vote on the strike as he would have lost.