Bolitics The New Condem Government

[tonyh29]

Wasn't that the point in question

Look at it this way when Dorries went on I'm a celeb , there were howls of outrage from the left about her not being in Westminster and not looking after her constituents

Cue Brown globe trotting the world raising money and not being in Westminster looking after his constituents and suddenly its a case of nothing to see here move on

It's the hypocrisy word at its finest

[Risso]

 

Might as well blame the first goldsmith who issued a receipt for a gold deposit for starting it off.  Bliar and Brown oversaw the biggest reduction in manufacturing this country has ever seen, and also the biggest increase in banking.  It was nobody else's fault, it was theirs alone.

And as policy's cause and effect an take many years to show I'd say that argument is a tad simplistic, though as I never supported any of Thatchers disciples, red or blue I'm not entirely sure why its even being said as some kind of retort.

 

 

It was Brown who created the FSA, and even he says he didn't understand what he was doing and that it was a huge mistake.  Thatcher was in power when Basel I was agreed.

[peterms]

Something doesn't smell quite right with those Brown figures.  If he gets £1.5m or however much from speaking etc, it then looks like it gets diverted to "The Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown Limited".  That company is then spending half a million on admin expenses.  On what?  The company itself isn't a charity that I can see.  How much does it cost to give a million pouns to other entities that ARE charities?  I might (and probably have) missed something from a quick perusal of his internet page, but surely the charities themselves will have the operating expenses?  He's already made the money, shouldn't it just be a case of handing it over?  What's "The Office of....." doing that a charity wouldn't be better at?

This is what their website says:

 

 

The Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown was established to support Gordon and Sarah in their work and to facilitate their ongoing involvement in public life. This is separate from Gordon’s work as an MP and includes his charitable and pro bono work.  The costs of the Office, including salaries and rent, are paid from income received by the Office for paid speaking engagements undertaken by Gordon.  Alongside paid speaking engagements (all of which cover Office costs) Gordon gives regular pro bono speeches to universities, charities and other organisations and of course in his role as a constituency MP.

 

We are budgeting to meet salaries, accommodation costs and staff expenses to support this work of around £550,000 a year. In addition to the costs of the Office, the costs associated with Mr Brown’s role as Distinguished Global Leader at New York University are met by New York University; as Chair of the WEF Policy Coordination Board are met by the World Economic Forum; and costs associated with a recent project at Harvard University were met by Harvard University. The author proceeds from Gordon’s recent book Beyond the Crash are donated to PiggyBankKids.

 

All the money received by the Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown goes either directly to charities like PiggyBankKids for children’s causes, and the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory which supports medical research into pregnancy and neonatal research to save newborn lives, or to support other charitable and public service projects. The Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown also supports a number of Education For All and A World At School projects around the world as we join efforts to get every child a place at school.

 

Mr Brown’s sole personal earnings are his salary as an MP. In 2009 he renounced the Prime Ministerial pension he was entitled to receive. He pays full tax on his income.

 

In addition to the £812,702 that has been gifted in charitable donations as part of a continuing and rising programme of disbursements to good causes, the Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown pays corporation tax on all profits, as recorded in the official records at Companies House.

 

Neither Mr nor Mrs Brown receive salary, dividends, or profits from The Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown, which was constituted solely for and remains only for the purpose of employing staff to further their charitable and public service work and donating to good causes both locally and internationally.

 

That's pretty explicit, especially about his personal income.

 

Are the office running costs reasonable?  I wonder if you're comparing it to one of those bodies which only exists to raise money to pass on to charities.  If that was the aim, then all he would need would be a PA to deal with requests for speaking engagements, travel arrangements, correspondence and so on, leaving him to write an occasional cheque for donkey sanctuaries or whatever.  But that's not what it is.  If you check the campaigns listed at the foot of the page, there are several, which involve producing reports, setting up panels of the great and the good and so on.  The kind of thing done by groups like Joseph Rowntree, Carnegie and by many others on a smaller scale, including many which aren't in nearly as good a position as Brown to influence things directly and which might very well be better advised to work thorough others.  That calls for more, and different, staff than just administering donations.  What they support obviously reflects their own personal priorities, including a charity Sarah Brown established following the death of their child.

 

If his organisation (which isn't itself a charity) only gave money to others, it would incur less running costs.  But I imagine the aim is to get more happening on things which they want to receive greater prominence than is already the case.

[colhint]

seems like nice work if you can get it, get paid for a job then go and do something else

[villaajax]

 

Something doesn't smell quite right with those Brown figures.  If he gets £1.5m or however much from speaking etc, it then looks like it gets diverted to "The Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown Limited".  That company is then spending half a million on admin expenses.  On what?  The company itself isn't a charity that I can see.  How much does it cost to give a million pouns to other entities that ARE charities?  I might (and probably have) missed something from a quick perusal of his internet page, but surely the charities themselves will have the operating expenses?  He's already made the money, shouldn't it just be a case of handing it over?  What's "The Office of....." doing that a charity wouldn't be better at?

This is what their website says:

 

 

The Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown was established to support Gordon and Sarah in their work and to facilitate their ongoing involvement in public life. This is separate from Gordon’s work as an MP and includes his charitable and pro bono work.  The costs of the Office, including salaries and rent, are paid from income received by the Office for paid speaking engagements undertaken by Gordon.  Alongside paid speaking engagements (all of which cover Office costs) Gordon gives regular pro bono speeches to universities, charities and other organisations and of course in his role as a constituency MP.

 

We are budgeting to meet salaries, accommodation costs and staff expenses to support this work of around £550,000 a year. In addition to the costs of the Office, the costs associated with Mr Brown’s role as Distinguished Global Leader at New York University are met by New York University; as Chair of the WEF Policy Coordination Board are met by the World Economic Forum; and costs associated with a recent project at Harvard University were met by Harvard University. The author proceeds from Gordon’s recent book Beyond the Crash are donated to PiggyBankKids.

 

All the money received by the Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown goes either directly to charities like PiggyBankKids for children’s causes, and the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory which supports medical research into pregnancy and neonatal research to save newborn lives, or to support other charitable and public service projects. The Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown also supports a number of Education For All and A World At School projects around the world as we join efforts to get every child a place at school.

 

Mr Brown’s sole personal earnings are his salary as an MP. In 2009 he renounced the Prime Ministerial pension he was entitled to receive. He pays full tax on his income.

 

In addition to the £812,702 that has been gifted in charitable donations as part of a continuing and rising programme of disbursements to good causes, the Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown pays corporation tax on all profits, as recorded in the official records at Companies House.

 

Neither Mr nor Mrs Brown receive salary, dividends, or profits from The Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown, which was constituted solely for and remains only for the purpose of employing staff to further their charitable and public service work and donating to good causes both locally and internationally.

 

That's pretty explicit, especially about his personal income.

 

Are the office running costs reasonable?  I wonder if you're comparing it to one of those bodies which only exists to raise money to pass on to charities.  If that was the aim, then all he would need would be a PA to deal with requests for speaking engagements, travel arrangements, correspondence and so on, leaving him to write an occasional cheque for donkey sanctuaries or whatever.  But that's not what it is.  If you check the campaigns listed at the foot of the page, there are several, which involve producing reports, setting up panels of the great and the good and so on.  The kind of thing done by groups like Joseph Rowntree, Carnegie and by many others on a smaller scale, including many which aren't in nearly as good a position as Brown to influence things directly and which might very well be better advised to work thorough others.  That calls for more, and different, staff than just administering donations.  What they support obviously reflects their own personal priorities, including a charity Sarah Brown established following the death of their child.

 

If his organisation (which isn't itself a charity) only gave money to others, it would incur less running costs.  But I imagine the aim is to get more happening on things which they want to receive greater prominence than is already the case.

 

 

 

Round of applause for peterms totally killing off Risso's fairly weak arguments - worthy of more than just a like

[tonyh29]

^^ bin Dunne

[peterms]

Funny how pointing out that a man with mental illness was unfit to be PM is somehow construed as being mean and mocking the afflicted.

Are you thinking of Churchill?

[villaajax]

^^ bin Dunne

[Awol]

 

Funny how pointing out that a man with mental illness was unfit to be PM is somehow construed as being mean and mocking the afflicted.

Are you thinking of Churchill?

 

No, I thought it was clear who we were talking about.

[peterms]

Might as well blame the first goldsmith who issued a receipt for a gold deposit for starting it off.  Bliar and Brown oversaw the biggest reduction in manufacturing this country has ever seen, and also the biggest increase in banking.  It was nobody else's fault, it was theirs alone.

I'm not sure what you mean by a reduction in manufacturing (employment?  Output?  Share of GDP?  Something else?) but this is what PWC say (p 10):

 

 

Manufacturing misconceptions 

 

Long before the onset of the current downturn, there was a widespread perception that the manufacturing sector in the UK was either already dead, or soon would be. This is not true.

 

Manufacturing’s share of the total economy is certainly in decline, because services have grown more quickly in recent years. Likewise employment in the sector has been shrinking, as a result of significant and essential productivity improvements, which are in fact a ‘good news’ story for the sector. Another popular misconception arises from a confusion about foreign ownership: a significant number of flagship British brands have indeed been bought by foreign companies, but this doesn’t always mean that their UK manufacturing capacity is then shut; in many cases manufacturing activity stays and thrives here.

 

Strip out the facts from the fallacies, and the truth is that the real value of UK manufacturing output has increased in 35 out of the past 50 years,and as the graph below proves, 2007 was a record year for UK manufacturing production:

 

And in the executive summary:

 

 

Output of British manufacturing reached an all-time high in 2007, even adjusted for inflation

 

But I would agree we want to see more emphasis on supporting manufacturing rather than the relentless focus on rentier activities which seems to be what's happening now, stoking another house price bubble.

 

The increase in banking was of course a consequence of the financialisation of the economy, which as Bickster has pointed out, was encouraged more by Thatcher's government than by any other UK government.  The failure of Blair and Brown was, in this as so many other things, not to make a real effort to roll back some of the crazy things done by Thatcher.

[peterms]

 

 

Funny how pointing out that a man with mental illness was unfit to be PM is somehow construed as being mean and mocking the afflicted.

Are you thinking of Churchill?

 

No, I thought it was clear who we were talking about.

 

 

I think you'll find that Churchill is far more likely to have had a mental health concern (depression, alcoholism) than Brown, if it matters.

[Risso]

 The failure of Blair and Brown was, in this as so many other things, not to make a real effort to roll back some of the crazy things done by Thatcher.

 

 

Not to make a real effort?  That's one way of putting it.  Another would be to use an American football analogy, and say they picked up the ball on the one yard line and then ran the entire length of the pitch for a touch down.

[bickster]

I'd argue bankrupting a country makes him a little more than a foot note , but I'm sure someone will be along to tell me he didn't bankrupt the country and it was all the fault of the nasty Tory's

He didn't bankrupt the country but the Bankers had a damn good go

[bickster]

Might as well blame the first goldsmith who issued a receipt for a gold deposit for starting it off.  Bliar and Brown oversaw the biggest reduction in manufacturing this country has ever seen, and also the biggest increase in banking.  It was nobody else's fault, it was theirs alone.

And as policy's cause and effect an take many years to show I'd say that argument is a tad simplistic, though as I never supported any of Thatchers disciples, red or blue I'm not entirely sure why its even being said as some kind of retort.

 

It was Brown who created the FSA, and even he says he didn't understand what he was doing and that it was a huge mistake.  Thatcher was in power when Basel I was agreed.

The FSA started out as the SIB under Geoffrey Howe in 1985, the FSA was merely a rebranding with a couple of bits of extra responsibility, which had been continually added since its inception. The whole concept of the FSA was the Thatcher Govts and in particular Howe's.

If it looks like an Opal Fruit and tastes like an Opal Fruit then no matter what the packet says its still an Opal Fruit

[tonyh29]

Interestingly I just saw an HSBC advert saying they were giving more mortgages than ever before ( or something) and I think Barclays have made a similar claim recently

Wasn't that ( along with incapability Brown) what got us into this mess in the first place ?

[bickster]

Interestingly I just saw an HSBC advert saying they were giving more mortgages than ever before ( or something) and I think Barclays have made a similar claim recently

Wasn't that ( along with incapability Brown) what got us into this mess in the first place ?

Thats because of this Govts idiotic Help to Buy Scheme, which they just extended against much advice

[chrisp65]

They had a parade of economists, accountants, housing specialists, finance specialist all lined up on R4 the other evening saying the Help to Buy Scheme was a barmy crock of shit that would create a new house price bubble by putting demand yet further ahead of supply. The only person willing to defend it was......an estate agent.

[peterms]

Quite astonishing.

 

It was cheaper delivering the Royal Baby than the average American baby

Keep this in mind the next time Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, or any right-winger, refers to the American health insurance model as the way forward for Britain.

 

The average amount paid for child-birth in Britain is around £1,700. In the United States it can easily be three times as much.

 

The ‘amount paid’ (usually by US insurance companies or NHS hospitals here) is a different figure to the total cost of child birth.

 

When comparing the total cost, child birth in some of Britain’s “fanciest wards” – like the one for the Royal Baby – can be as much as £10,000.

 

But in the United States, the average cost of American child births is double the cost of our most expensive births – around £20,000.

 

This piece in the New York Times lays out how the price of child birth has shot up so much in the last few decades.

 

The comparable figure is laid out in this graph, showing the amount paid for child birth is usually three times in the US as the UK.

 

 

The Royal Baby was not delivered as a public hospital, it is very closely linked to and partly subsidised by the main NHS hospital.

 

And yet, even at a semi-private and fancy British hospital, delivering the Royal Baby cost half as much as delivering the average American baby.

 

This is what a free market does to healthcare costs.

 

 

 

[tonyh29]

Average amount paid £1700 :shock:

I'm fairly sure I paid a grand total of zero £'s and zero pence for the birth of my 2 children

Not excluding the excessive amounts of NI contributions I make of course

[peterms]

Average amount paid £1700 :shock:

I'm fairly sure I paid a grand total of zero £'s and zero pence for the birth of my 2 children

Yes, me too. Free at the point of use. The point being made is that the cost (in this case paid by the nhs here or by insurance cos in the US) is far higher in the privatised system. The advocates of privatisation would have us believe the opposite.