The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[Genie]

Would Corbyn have sent pensioners from hospital to care homes without a covid test, resulting in many avoidable deaths?

Would Corbyn have ignored all the expert advice delaying the first lockdown resulting in many avoidable deaths?

Would Corbyn have ignored all the calls not to reopen schools after the Christmas break, then close them after 1 of mixing in class rooms? More avoidable deaths.

Would Corbyn have funnelled billions into donors bank accounts and then when got nothing for it just simply wrote it off. 

Would have Corbyn have allowed and attended large scale parties in downing street whilst the country was under lockdown restrictions?

As @Stevo985said, pretty much anyone could have done a better job during this period than Boris Johnson. He literally has the deaths of tens of thousands of people on his hands.

[Stevo985]

Just now, Genie said:

Would Corbyn have sent pensioners from hospital to care homes without a covid test, resulting in many avoidable deaths?

Would Corbyn have ignored all the expert advice delaying the first lockdown resulting in many avoidable deaths?

Would Corbyn have ignored all the calls not to reopen schools after the Christmas break, then close them after 1 of mixing in class rooms? More avoidable deaths.

Would Corbyn have funnelled billions into donors bank accounts and then when got nothing for it just simply wrote it off. 

Would have Corbyn have allowed and attended large scale parties in downing street whilst the country was under lockdown restrictions?

As @Stevo985said, pretty much anyone could have done a better job during this period than Boris Johnson. He literally has the deaths of tens of thousands of people on his hands.

And even if someone had done stuff wrong, they'd probably have done it wrong on one side of things. Like locked down too early or for too long, or not locked down enough and preserved the economy.

Boris just did little bits of everything and **** it all up together. We basically tried to do everything and did it badly, despite it unfolding a couple of weeks earlier in front of our eyes in other countries giving us an idea of how to respond.

Boris did an absolutely dreadful job

[Genie]

The balance was to find a middle ground between public health and keeping the economy running. Boris Johnson’s leadership ensured the UK suffered the worst of BOTH elements.
 

[blandy]

26 minutes ago, Rolta said:

The Tories got in opposition to Gordon Brown and Ed Milliband too. You can't just lump it all on Corbyn. … lumping a global financial crisis on Labour (of course, when Cameron was advocating removing even more regulation) was a vote winner…

The main factor here is time, I think. Brown lost in large part because Labour had been in power for 13 years and the global financial crash happened while they were in power. People were tired of Labour. And Cameron was promising all kinds of shiny new things and being all nice about the NHS and the environment and wotnot, while also blaming the global crash, which started in America, on Labour.

Where we are now is similar, but worse. Government has been in power for ages, people are fed up. The pandemic itself wasn’t caused by the tories, Ukraine wasn’t caused by the tories. The response to Ukraine has been good, as was Labour’s response to the crash. The response to the pandemic has been mixed at best, but it’s just the weight of time and events that presages change. All it needs now is Labour to look like an alternative government waiting and ready, not “dangerous” on defence or the economy etc. and with some sound looking plans for the country and they will be a shoe in. The only hope for the tories is that energy prices fall soon, that all the mad ideas Liz Trump and Crazy Kwarteng have somehow don’t completely crash the country and that in a year or 18 months they can say “see, we sorted it out”. But that looks so, so unlikely to happen.

 

[CVByrne]

13 minutes ago, Genie said:

Would Corbyn have sent pensioners from hospital to care homes without a covid test, resulting in many avoidable deaths?

Would Corbyn have ignored all the expert advice delaying the first lockdown resulting in many avoidable deaths?

Would Corbyn have ignored all the calls not to reopen schools after the Christmas break, then close them after 1 of mixing in class rooms? More avoidable deaths.

Would Corbyn have funnelled billions into donors bank accounts and then when got nothing for it just simply wrote it off. 

Would have Corbyn have allowed and attended large scale parties in downing street whilst the country was under lockdown restrictions?

As @Stevo985said, pretty much anyone could have done a better job during this period than Boris Johnson. He literally has the deaths of tens of thousands of people on his hands.

Who knows. He certainly would have made all his own errors though. 

Boris' economic decisions weren't bad ones if you take that Brexit was a forgone conclusion when he won the election. All the covid support, the vaccinations, the increased public expenditure. Raising taxes which focus on companies and the better off.

Specifically on an economic basis. Boris' government were fine. Corbyn would have likely been a complete disaster.

[CVByrne]

And anyone laying blame for the Global financial crisis and great recession on Brown hasn't a **** clue what they're talking about. 

It was United States of America who drove the world down that path with deregulation and a state sponsored Ponzi scheme which drove home ownership as the solution to all. 

The sub prime crisis lead to the insolvent banks and the absolute morons didn't even realise how important the situation was with Lehmans. Nowadays they're happy to pump cash out, print it and send it to people. Support the economy when it needs support 

But back then they causes the world a global crisis. Other countries made their own mistakes that's for sure but to just let the world burn when the USA were the primary cause of it all. Still leaves me bitter to this day.

The inequality in the world has grown and grown specifically because of that event. 

Edited September 27, 2022 by CVByrne

[Demitri_C]

35 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Corbyn had nothing to do with 2010 and 2015, which is when Labour’s economic record under Brown was being hammered by Osborne.

I agree Corbyn then made things a lot worse, but the starting point for this disastrous decade was a bizarre narrative that said Brown had wrecked the UK economy by running a deficit.

We then had Cameron and Osborne refuse to borrow in a record low-interest rate environment when any sensible govt would have borrowed to invest in infrastructure and growth.

Now finally as interest rates start surging, the Tories have magically decided to start borrowing.

It’s insane. Gordon Brown was a weird guy, but he and Ed Balls ran the economy very sensibly, and it was a huge right wing smear campaign that undermined them and dragged this country into loonynomics territory.

A few holes in your post here mate i am afraid. You praise brown and balls for looking after the economy then criticise cameron and Osborne for not spending and trying to balance the book. Osbourne and cameron did a good job on the economy and saved money. They went abit too extreme though that was the problem.

Cant really blame them for the global mess that the russian war is causing. No one would have anticipated this. Would you be criticising brown for not investing sooner if it was him in power?

[Genie]

18 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

Who knows. He certainly would have made all his own errors though. 

Boris' economic decisions weren't bad ones if you take that Brexit was a forgone conclusion when he won the election. All the covid support, the vaccinations, the increased public expenditure. Raising taxes which focus on companies and the better off.

Specifically on an economic basis. Boris' government were fine. Corbyn would have likely been a complete disaster.

I’m sure Corbyn and his government would have made their own errors, but I can’t think of a way he could have been worse than what we had.

Edited September 27, 2022 by Genie

[blandy]

Just now, Demitri_C said:

Osbourne and cameron did a good job on the economy and saved money.

They really didn’t, Dem. They damaged it and more importantly they damaged people and society because of their stance. Austerity, as they called has wrecked so much, and was completely counter productive. To put it in small example terms, by cutting spending on care homes and on care for the elderly, they notionally “saved” money, but the consequences were that more elderly people had to go into hospitals (at greater cost), they then also blocked beds for others because care in the community had gone and so waiting lists went up to the detriment of unwell and injured people, and the workload on NHS staff was increased…

And that kind of counterproductive stuff happened across the country and across sectors. Sure start centres, defence, social housing, local government, infrastructure, energy and on and on. And they didn’t cut the deficit, they didn’t meet their declared target. They utterly got it wrong.

[KentVillan]

9 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

A few holes in your post here mate i am afraid. You praise brown and balls for looking after the economy then criticise cameron and Osborne for not spending and trying to balance the book. Osbourne and cameron did a good job on the economy and saved money. They went abit too extreme though that was the problem.

Cant really blame them for the global mess that the russian war is causing. No one would have anticipated this. Would you be criticising brown for not investing sooner if it was him in power?

No, you’re just wrong. It was precisely Cameron & Osborne who got us into this mess, and you’re illustrating the point that far too many people believe they got things under control by obsessing over deficit reduction.

In fact, by sucking the life out of the economy, and not borrowing at record low-interest rates, they left a legacy of stagnant growth that probably triggered Brexit.

The Ukraine / Covid stuff is largely irrelevant to the point - the stagnant growth has been in place now since 2008 (and our OECD comparators haven’t shown the same pattern, so it’s policy-related).

[Wainy316]

55 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

We will never know but i doubt it. Corbyn wasnt even a PM and the amount of division he had in his party was astounding. I think he would have been collosal failure.

Alot of **** up but getting the vaccines out early was a wise decision on reflection and the furlough scheme saved massive unemployment from happening.

 

Is getting the vaccines out early your main memory of Johnson’s covid response?

What about the missed cobra meetings, the brazenly shaking hands with covid patients, the late lockdowns, the comparably high death tolls, the dodgy contracts for mates, the 26 billion completely spaffed on test and trace.  
 

Oh and the parties.

[Chindie]

'Brown sold the gold 'n all!' in 5, 4...

[KentVillan]

Just to explain the Cameron/Osborne vs. Brown/Balls point in a bit more detail, here's a table of BoE interest rates 2007-2016:

04 Aug 16	0.25
05 Mar 09	0.50
05 Feb 09	1.00
08 Jan 09	1.50
04 Dec 08	2.00
06 Nov 08	3.00
08 Oct 08	4.50
10 Apr 08	5.00
07 Feb 08	5.25
06 Dec 07	5.50
05 Jul 07	5.75

 

So as the GFC hits (which we all accept originated in the US and was a global phenomenon) in 2007/08, interest rates are at a pretty bog standard 5.75%.

By the time Cameron becomes PM, interest rates are 0.5%, and they stay that way the whole time he is in power (ok, that might not have been forecastable at the time, but still... markets predicted low interest over an extended period).

So you're effectively getting free / cheap money to invest in stuff that matters. In the end, Osborne did borrow quite a lot, but he used it to prop up specific things that were vote winners (pensions, housing market) while investment in local govt (big provider of public services), and infrastructure fell significantly so that Osborne could present himself as a "book balancer":

So during that entire period of low interest rates, we borrowed to prop up frothy shite (pensions, housing market) and cut stuff that had an obvious economic multiplier effect.

That's why we've slowly slid down the international rankings in terms of wealth, quality of life, and so on.

[Chindie]

We are discussing Tories here. So long as the home counties remain leafy and white, and the pension pots full, they've done their job. The poor can get back to the chimneys.

[The Fun Factory]

30 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Just to explain the Cameron/Osborne vs. Brown/Balls point in a bit more detail, here's a table of BoE interest rates 2007-2016:

04 Aug 16	0.25
05 Mar 09	0.50
05 Feb 09	1.00
08 Jan 09	1.50
04 Dec 08	2.00
06 Nov 08	3.00
08 Oct 08	4.50
10 Apr 08	5.00
07 Feb 08	5.25
06 Dec 07	5.50
05 Jul 07	5.75

 

So as the GFC hits (which we all accept originated in the US and was a global phenomenon) in 2007/08, interest rates are at a pretty bog standard 5.75%.

By the time Cameron becomes PM, interest rates are 0.5%, and they stay that way the whole time he is in power (ok, that might not have been forecastable at the time, but still... markets predicted low interest over an extended period).

So you're effectively getting free / cheap money to invest in stuff that matters. In the end, Osborne did borrow quite a lot, but he used it to prop up specific things that were vote winners (pensions, housing market) while investment in local govt (big provider of public services), and infrastructure fell significantly so that Osborne could present himself as a "book balancer":

So during that entire period of low interest rates, we borrowed to prop up frothy shite (pensions, housing market) and cut stuff that had an obvious economic multiplier effect.

That's why we've slowly slid down the international rankings in terms of wealth, quality of life, and so on.

The impact on social welfare and local government spending since 2010 is massive. This has accelerated inequalities and quite possibly the decreasing life expectancy in certain areas of the country. But as you said not really vote winners.

[KentVillan]

11 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

The impact on social welfare and local government spending since 2010 is massive. This has accelerated inequalities and quite possibly the decreasing life expectancy in certain areas of the country. But as you said not really vote winners.

Well yeah, and then middle class people wonder why crime and drug abuse are going up. Maybe slashing spending on mental health services, probation, and early intervention programmes was a mistake?

This is the huge irony with Osborne. He created all these bullshit rules about book balancing, but he only applied those rules selectively. So he still ended up borrowing loads, in order to keep promises on pensions, NHS, house prices, and so on.... and it was all the other stuff that got brutalised (the stuff where govt investment actually makes a huge impact).

Osbornomics makes sense as a way of winning elections and (broadly) keeping financial markets happy. But it created all these long-term ticking time bombs that we've started to see explode one by one under the May/Johnson/Truss governments.

[Demitri_C]

1 hour ago, KentVillan said:

No, you’re just wrong. It was precisely Cameron & Osborne who got us into this mess, and you’re illustrating the point that far too many people believe they got things under control by obsessing over deficit reduction.

In fact, by sucking the life out of the economy, and not borrowing at record low-interest rates, they left a legacy of stagnant growth that probably triggered Brexit.

The Ukraine / Covid stuff is largely irrelevant to the point - the stagnant growth has been in place now since 2008 (and our OECD comparators haven’t shown the same pattern, so it’s policy-related).

You seem to be forgetting there was no money even labour left a note to admit that so why would they borrow more? If they did we would be in even more of a mess than we were in now. 

The mess started in the brown era and then continued from cameron, to may to boris (x100) to the damage to the economy.  Now truss is doing x10000 worse

Im not defending the tories as they have mainly been a complete shit show but its the defending of labour and not holding them accountable for the massive **** ups they did as well.

[PaulC]

1 minute ago, Demitri_C said:

You seem to be forgetting there was no money even labour left a note to admit that so why would they borrow more? If they did we would be in even more of a mess than we were in now. 

The mess started in the brown era and then continued from cameron, to may to boris (x100) to the damage to the economy.  Now truss is doing x10000 worse

Im not defending the tories as they have mainly been a complete shit show but its the defending of labour and not holding them accountable for the massive **** ups they did as well.

It would have been far cheaper to borrow then than it is now. Austerity did a lot of damage and made the poorer even poorer. Cameron put us in a weak position with min.  growth

[Demitri_C]

1 hour ago, Wainy316 said:

Is getting the vaccines out early your main memory of Johnson’s covid response?

What about the missed cobra meetings, the brazenly shaking hands with covid patients, the late lockdowns, the comparably high death tolls, the dodgy contracts for mates, the 26 billion completely spaffed on test and trace.  
 

Oh and the parties.

Who knows if any of us would still be here today if he never got those vaccines in early while the EU was dithering.

The rest of your post i agree with absolute shit show and scumbag behaviour

[Genie]