TheDon Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 Do you think it would have been any different under a Tory government? The monster was coming no matter what really. None of the political parties would have done anything to stop it, precisely because of what you said, the banking sector was one of the biggest in the world. Until this all blew up that was something they'd all have been proud of. They'd have stood up blind to what was coming, and proclaimed it a huge success. The false feeling of wealth wasn't really due to who was in power, it would have happened regardless, no one wanted to be the one to reign it in because they'd have been reigning in growth. You simply couldn't sell that to the electorate. Who would vote for a party that was going to stifle the cause of the boom period? No one, people would vote for the people saying they're going to encourage it and nurture it to build a strong future without keeping an eye on the risks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 It's impossible to say what would have happened under the Conservatives. But as it DID happen because of Labour, then it IS fair to blame them, especially that spectacular **** Gordon Brown. He's probably the biggest disaster to hit the UK in living memory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted September 30, 2011 Moderator Share Posted September 30, 2011 Bank de-regulation was pure Thatcherism, Labour took her idea and ran with it. They probably ran a bit faster because they weren't jumping the hurdles but the result would have been much the same by now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VILLAFC2000 Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 It's impossible to say what would have happened under the Conservatives. But as it DID happen because of Labour, then it IS fair to blame them, especially that spectacular **** Gordon Brown. He's probably the biggest disaster to hit the UK in living memory. Yes of Course - Everything would be hunky Dorrie under the Torries, The party that dont believe in Regualtions...! It was Labours fault that USA, Europe and pretty much the majority of the world is experincing ecconomic hardship. Its not like the Torrie would have blamed the Economy on Bad weather or a royal wedding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 Bank de-regulation was pure Thatcherism, Labour took her idea and ran with it. They probably ran a bit faster because they weren't jumping the hurdles but the result would have been much the same by now. "A bit faster". The very first thing Gormless Brown did was take away the Bank of England's power, and establish the FSA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDon Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 It's impossible to say what would have happened under the Conservatives. But as it DID happen because of Labour, then it IS fair to blame them, especially that spectacular **** Gordon Brown. He's probably the biggest disaster to hit the UK in living memory. No, it's not impossible to say because it was simply an extension of what came before, which occurred under a Tory government. If you think that the bank deregulation was anything but textbook Tory policy you're severely deluded. For things to have turned out any differently the Tories would have had to have done a massive u-turn on policy, they'd have had to of transformed into an entirely different political party. That simply would not have happened, and Tory or Labour, we'd be pretty much where we stand now. There's also plenty of people that would point to Thatcher as the biggest disaster to hit the UK in living memory. Labour weren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but the delusion from some people that things would have turned out all right if they hadn't got into power is frankly ludicrous. We were heading to this point no matter who was in power, and anyone that hides behind "it's impossible to say" is just kidding themselves, because it's not impossible to say, in fact it's easy to predict seeing as how there isn't a single decision on banking that Labour made that the Tories would have disagreed with. In fact I seem to recall they said that Labours attempts at then regulating banks were too tough (yet now apparently they weren't tough enough!). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 People are people. Trying to say that people who do X job are bad and evil whilst people who do Y job are hard working and virtuous is just silly. Indeed. No doubt some nurses are lazy arseholes, and some traders spend their leisure hours caring for the terminally ill, or mentoring young offenders. I'm concerned with the activity, rather than whether the person doing it is a good or bad person in other ways, or has left or right wing views on a personal level. It seems to me that a good deal of the trading activity that takes place adds no value to anything (though it transfers wealth between parties), adds to destabilising volatility, and causes a great deal of damage in order to enrich a few at the cost of many. So it's interesting to hear about the views of the people doing it. It would for example be interesting to hear from traders whether they think the views of the man interviewed reflect or don't reflect the general approach and attitude of the trading community in doing their job (rather than in their spare time activities at the weekend). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 The very first thing Gormless Brown did was take away the Bank of England's power No, you are quite wrong. What he did was give them more power, and give away previously existing political power over them. Bad move. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 It would for example be interesting to hear from traders Yes it would. Shame the BBC couldn't find any. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VILLAFC2000 Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 Bank de-regulation was pure Thatcherism, Labour took her idea and ran with it. They probably ran a bit faster because they weren't jumping the hurdles but the result would have been much the same by now. "A bit faster". The very first thing Gormless Brown did was take away the Bank of England's power, and establish the FSA. Firstly, Not Labour what you mean is New Labour. Secondly -Gordon Brown wanted to set up Early warnings signal in the boom years, No one was having any of it...! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LondonLax Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 People are people. Trying to say that people who do X job are bad and evil whilst people who do Y job are hard working and virtuous is just silly. Indeed. No doubt some nurses are lazy arseholes, and some traders spend their leisure hours caring for the terminally ill, or mentoring young offenders. I'm concerned with the activity, rather than whether the person doing it is a good or bad person in other ways, or has left or right wing views on a personal level. It seems to me that a good deal of the trading activity that takes place adds no value to anything (though it transfers wealth between parties), adds to destabilising volatility, and causes a great deal of damage in order to enrich a few at the cost of many. So it's interesting to hear about the views of the people doing it. It would for example be interesting to hear from traders whether they think the views of the man interviewed reflect or don't reflect the general approach and attitude of the trading community in doing their job (rather than in their spare time activities at the weekend). I think you are missing the point. You take those nurses you speak of and put them in trading jobs and they will act like traders. You put the traders in nursing jobs and they will care for sick people. If a sector is not performing as it should be then it should be regulated so it runs properly. Blaming the personalities of the individual people in the industry is really pointless. Everyone is going to try and do their job to the best of their ability, whether it's making money for their client or getting a sick person back to health. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 No, I think you're missing my point, or perhaps I haven't explained it clearly enough. I (partly) agree with what you are saying. It's not mainly about the personalities of the individuals, it's about the requirements of the task. My concern is about the task and what it requires of people, not the individual qualities they bring to it. As a qualification to that, and why I only partly agree with you, I don't think you can take just anybody, put them in a caring role, and expect an acceptable quality of care. You really do need them to have some qualities like empathy, and giving them a job description doesn't do the trick. We've seen some well publicised examples of that over the last few months, if we ever had cause to doubt it. Similarly, if your job involves making money for rich people by making trades which prey on the disasters of others, you will probably do better at it if you score higher on the task-centred than people-centred scales. So yes, blaming personalities is pointless; but no, someone emotionally disposed to care for others or exploit their weaknesses won't do equally well as a nurse or a trader. I imagine we all know this, and in fact it feels trite to say it. Though if we have a certain proportion of sociopaths in our society (as we will) and wish to find employment for them (as we should) it seems sensible that we should get them into roles where they can do as little damage as possible to others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonno_2004 Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 So we should generalise the views of an entire sector/populus based on the opinions/views of one somewhat radical element that has been sensationalised by the press to appear as part of the real sector? Sounds a bit too Nick Griffin for me. Just to prove the point. It seems that our IOM members of VT are very much defensive of any comment on the finance sector, even though the finance sector and tax evasion and avoidance are seen by many as major contributors to financial problems faced by members of the UK. To use the Nick Griifin comment is somewhat silly, IMO, a bit like an attempt of Godwin's law to fit in with political views on VT. The reality is simple and it's not one that fits comfortably in the finance sector. The world has been royally screwed by the finance sector, they call the shots, they make and they break society in general. On a daily basis you see them continue to screw with "real" people's lives by gambling with little in the way of any sort of social conscience to their actions. The one thing you have right is that you cannot label the whole sector as following that way of thinking, but the reality is that there are enough in it to ensure that the actions of a few are quite rightly seen as the actions of the majority such is the impact. But as before its not their fault its all the public sector's fault. Maybe we can spend 225 million on being able to throw away Chicken Tikka as a better way of solving the problems and pay for it by sacking many of the military - many of who have just served in Libya. The maths show the cost of one virtually equals the "savings" of the other.Nick Griffin comment a bit too silly? Or a bit too much of an 'inconvenient truth'? Fit in with what 'political views on VT'? From the vast array of bollitical opinion on here, I wouldn't like to put a percentage on any consensus. Interesting to see the IOM comment creep in again, maybe if I removed my location I could avoid the pigeon-holing. Struggling to see what that has to do with anything - I **** hate traders in any case. It is interesting to see when that suddenly becomes appropriate though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 The very first thing Gormless Brown did was take away the Bank of England's power No, you are quite wrong. What he did was give them more power, and give away previously existing political power over them. Bad move. How does linking to a site about the Bank being given control over interest rates make me wrong about the FSA being given the power to regulate banks instead of the Bank of England? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 Nick Griffin comment a bit too silly? Or a bit too much of an 'inconvenient truth'? Fit in with what 'political views on VT'? From the vast array of bollitical opinion on here, I wouldn't like to put a percentage on any consensus. Interesting to see the IOM comment creep in again, maybe if I removed my location I could avoid the pigeon-holing. Struggling to see what that has to do with anything - I **** hate traders in any case. It is interesting to see when that suddenly becomes appropriate though. Sorry, I should have picked up the earlier comment. We should form views about people, including groups of people, on what they do. Our views on traders, mine, yours, other people's, I would suggest are shaped by that rather than by what some narcissistic **** gabbled out in his 15 minutes of fame. But since what he said about their views seems to reflect what people including both critics from the left, and also people professionally in contact with traders, see as their values and how they operate, his comments have raised some interest. I do tend to judge people partly by what they choose to do. I bring certain prejudices and assumptions to that, as we all do. If I meet an artist, I assume they will have some sense of aesthetics, and views about using visual media to express concepts. If I meet a prison officer, I will assume they have a relatively high respect for control, and will score higher on respect for authority than individualism. And so on. Those occupations reflect choices. Not totally free choices, because no-one has that, but choices all the same. Nick Griffin, on the other hand, takes a view on people based on things over which they have no control, and his organisation seeks to incite physical violence against people based on those characteristics, mainly race and skin colour, more recently religion. Do you not perceive the difference? Do you really, really not? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 Do people really not have control over religion? Different discussion I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 The very first thing Gormless Brown did was take away the Bank of England's power No, you are quite wrong. What he did was give them more power, and give away previously existing political power over them. Bad move. How does linking to a site about the Bank being given control over interest rates make me wrong about the FSA being given the power to regulate banks instead of the Bank of England? Your point was about power being taken away from the BoE. The BoE were given significant new powers by Brown, and this was in my view a mistake. Moving the regulatory function was relatively trivial. The BoE had already screwed up on this. In the period since the tories gave them more regulatory power in 1987, they presided over BCCI and Barings, and were found by Bingham and Wolff to be unsuited for the task. Moving the regulatory role, as I recall, was uncontroversial. The issue of power, which your post concerns, is quite different. Brown significantly extended the power of the BoE at the expense of the government. This is the exact opposite of what he should have done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VILLAFC2000 Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 The very first thing Gormless Brown did was take away the Bank of England's power No, you are quite wrong. What he did was give them more power, and give away previously existing political power over them. Bad move. How does linking to a site about the Bank being given control over interest rates make me wrong about the FSA being given the power to regulate banks instead of the Bank of England? Questions - Who do the Torries represent and who bennifits from a Torie goverment...? Hmmmmmmmmmmm - I wander...? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 It's impossible to say what would have happened under the Conservatives. Is it? Perhaps we could take a peek at when and where the Tories did and did not differ from the Labour government's economic policies (and spending commitments). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 Questions - Who do the Torries represent and who bennifits from a Torie goverment...? Hmmmmmmmmmmm - I wander...? To answer in a style I'm sure you'll appreciate: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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