Italian John 2:24 Mon Aug 17
Austerity
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Austerity's record: UK debt doubled. Productivity 17% down on 2008. 2/3 economists against. Wealth of rich doubled.
Is it working for YOU?
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Replies - Newest Posts First ( Show In Chronological Order)
,
12:40 Thu Aug 20
Re: Austerity
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You two need to get a room.
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Nurse Ratched
12:39 Thu Aug 20
Re: Austerity
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I am prepared to sacrifice art for truth.
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Infidel
12:29 Thu Aug 20
Re: Austerity
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Nurse
'Infidel and Nurse' has a ring to it that 'Nurse and Infidel' does not.
Alphabetically correct too.
.
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Hammer and Pickle
7:32 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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Sorry Infidel, I don't do "nanny state nonsense". But then neither do I do absentee landlord state nonsense.
I've just noticed over the years that business needs stable conditions to develop properly, and that it cannot provide all those conditions itself. The rule of law, international order, road, rail and communications infrastructure, health, education, basic welfare and all the institutions that markets must be secured in to function effectively are broadly what might be described as the state, and are all worth forking out for today in order to ensure stability of business tomorrow.
So now we can disagree as much as you like because just as much as I have a beef with Leftie tax-and-spend magical thinking, I'll always take a tilt at the fantasy that the interests of business are at odds with that of the state, which is one that the far right is always peddling.
The flowering of Athens as a commercial power was at the time of the statesman Pericles, Rome flourished because of its state and faded with it, and the power of Britain was built on the state working hand in hand with commerce, while France went from the world's number 1 power under Louis XIV to being in the dock at the Congress of Vienna because it chose statism and war rather than the commercial state.
So can we now agree to carry on disagreeing?
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overbyyer
6:29 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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Yes, its syllable sensitive isnt it - like hinge and bracket?
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Nurse Ratched
6:25 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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It's Nurse and Infidel.
I get top billing.
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overbyyer
6:23 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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My apologies to Infidel and Nurse - I didn't realise I had a cameo role in your smug double act. I had to look up what GODWIN meant, I clearly don't spend enough time on the internet, winding people up in the hope of a bite.
I should stay in more.
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After8
6:07 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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If you take your south east blinkers off you would know that up and down the country there have been Government quangos handing out billions of incentives to businesses over the years. Regional Development agencies have handed businesses huge amounts in grants over the years - grants to subsidise jobs, grants to relocate to specific regions. Great idea if it helps fledgling businesses start-up and prosper, but it also attracted huge multinationals to the trough - effectively giving free money to very successful and profitable businesses.
Well over buyer you'll be delighted to know that despite howls of protest from labour we abolished the development agencies under the coalition.
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Nurse Ratched
4:42 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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You do it. You know how much busier I am.
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Gavros
4:42 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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yeah i reckon Infidel is related to Joseph Fritzl as well.
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Infidel
4:40 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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Nurse,
How does that rate on the Godwin speed scale?
I would say Overbbyer is a strong contender for the 2015 award - we only exchanged a few emails before he played the card.
Are you keeping a record of the Godwin scores on here or shall I?
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overbyyer
4:15 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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Infidel - did you have an Austrian relative that the rest of the family refuses to talk about?
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Infidel
4:11 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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overbyyer
'raw wealth'?
As opposed to what? Processed wealth? Cooked wealth?
You do talk some nonsense.
Some regions of the world are blessed with natural resources - oil, diamonds, copper, timber, whatever.
These areas will attract investment to exploit those raw materials, creating a lot of local employment.
But raw materials are also volatile - subject to fluctuating world demand and supply conditions. That means that the extraction might no longer be profitable and the operations close, leading to job losses.
It is a remarkable feature of these resource-rich regions that when this happens they scream and stamp their feet about the unfairness of it all. How dare the world not require as much of their coal/oil/copper/tin as they used to !
The act as if they are entitled to have their local mine open forever, irrespective of world market conditions. In that sense they seem to think they are a higher form of life than say small shopkeepers, who risk losing their livelihood at any moment.
I'm fed up with all the special pleading of raw material providers. We have it right now with the dairy farmers whose average price for milk has dropped like a stone.
They blame predatory supermarkets (!) but almost every poster on this board grew up eating cornflakes and weetabix for breakfast and now nobody eats cereal anymore so the demand for milk has collapsed. A large number of dairy farmers need to shut down and do something else for a living but they refuse to do so.
This creative destruction of capitalism is absolutely necessary for prosperity. It is naieve to complain about the human impact on those who lose their jobs because the alternative - the only alternative - is to subsidise these industries with taxpayers' money and thereby bankrupt the state,which means closing all the hospitals and schools.
Like Mother Nature, the market is brilliant and beautiful but sometimes brutal. You can't have its prosperity without also accepting its occasional casualties.
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overbyyer
4:05 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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Branded
And Ive got a sister back home with two part jobs, both zero hours contracts that expect her take a few hours work a day, or split shifts at short notice. She works about 15 hours a week but is effectively fulltime as she is perpetually either coming home from, or leaving for work.
And a niece working for a home care provider that wont pay travel time between care visits to people's homes. So she's dedicated to a job that saves the UK a fortune in in-patient NHS care, but the government allows the car provider to treat her like shit. How can that be fair?
They both live in a private rented house because they cant get anywhere near a council property.
And before any smart arse pipes-up, council housing was always intended to provide affordable stable accommodation to anyone in society, as well a social service for those in most need.
Its how are society used to work.
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BRANDED
3:52 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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I have relatives in the vallies of South Wales who've never worked. They've lived in council houses off the state all their lives. Happy as larry.
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overbyyer
3:48 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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Infidel wrote...
Re: Austerity
It is precisely because meddling socialists think they can steer the private sector into doing things it doesn't want to do that we have this mess in the first place.
People on the right like me would happily scrap all the tax breaks and grants. If businesses want to set up their headquarters in the South East then let them - don't try to bribe them with taxpayers' money to set up in Wales instead.
And that's the crux of it - people on the right like you would happily revert to a Victorian society whereby if you've got it, great, but if you haven't, then tough. You just have to doff your cap and respect those with wealth.
You mention your indifference to the rest of the UK - funnily enough I grew up in a South Wales steel town and saw for myself the dependence that the UK had on my, and other industrial areas, to create the raw wealth that people like you are now surfing on. I also know the cost to the communities in terms of depravity and relative poverty that industrial communities create.
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Infidel
2:31 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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H&P
I find myself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing wholeheartedly with your posts.
Can you please post some leftist nanny-state nonsense for me so that we can resume hostilities?
Thanks.
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BRANDED
2:31 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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There are different kinds of left and right. Most Western countries have a healthy dose of socialism in them.
Rampant capitalists can be the most ugly humans you'll ever find.
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