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I assume the devil is in the detail otherwise that was a waste of 60 minutes for millions of us - did he actually announce any cuts? Did I miss them?

Wimp.

Oh, hang on - they cut 7 billion from benefits.

"1. At 1:40pm on 20 Oct 2010, tawse57 wrote:
I assume the devil is in the detail otherwise that was a waste of 60 minutes for millions of us - did he actually announce any cuts? Did I miss them?"

It's a shell-game with . Note how well briefed the media are, and the amazingly fluid complementing between the political and media classes (cf. Balls, Cooper, Miliband, Flanders etc()?

How big is the private sector relative to the public sector, and where was all that borrowed money going, other than through the Public Sector into the Private Sector? Now all they're doing is cutting out some of the middle 'persons' to save some money.

"Anarchists of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your public services"?. Does provide consultancy services to the IMF?

We've fretted about the level of spending cuts and their probable impact on the economy - would the cut in aggregate demand be large enough to drive the UK economy off the same cliff as the Irish have just leapt off?

If your comment about 19% DEL compared to Labour's 20% is right - that the ConDems are really proposing a 1% LOWER reduction in DEL than the Darling proposals - then clearly fear of carrying the can for creating a depression has stopped the libertarians from being allowed to turn the Autumn Statement into a blantant ideological offensive on the State.

When you add in the Civil Service concerns about it not being organisationally possible to make many of the cuts in the proposed timeframe, we are left with a "re-arranging deckchairs" exercise, whilst the Ship of State ploughs on its existing course.

Of course Darling had a different specific cuts/tax increases agenda from the ConDems and criticisms of the statement line items will quite rightly be made, but we're not looking at a ConDem economic suicide note: yes there still remains the issue of the OBR forecast for jobs, investment and export growth and the prospects of the private sector picking up the employment load.

That is not to belittle the impact on real people of the cuts - those who will lose their jobs, their services and see significant reductions in their living standards - I leave these issues to others who are more expert in these areas.

However for the ConDems to labour mightily, then to make rushed cuts in things like Harriers and surface ships in a world where global warming will result in our trade routes coming under threat - think Somali Pirates on virtually every 2/3rd world coast in 10-20 years - displays political bluster, ideology before competence and pandering to prejudices rather than practical government for the future.

BUSINESS AS USUAL.

I'd say that the risk now is Japan II more than Eire II - a decade of stagnation, rising unemployment and disilllusionment with those that talked big, laboured mightily, then produced a mouse.

I think I must have glazed over.

I listened to Osbourne talk for 60 minutes and didn't hear anything major that sounded alarming - I do not appear alone in this as numerous forums and blogs are all using 'damp squib' and posters are asking where the cuts were.

Then I listen to Andrew O'Neil talking to Robinson, Flanders and Peston and all 3 are sprouting out details of big cuts that I certainly did not hear Osbourne mention.

So much for these things being announced in Parliament.

I think they are putting something in the water now to catch those of us who refuse to watch soap operas and reality TV.

In #4, richard bunning wrote: "I'd say that the risk now is Japan II more than Eire II - a decade of stagnation, rising unemployment and disilllusionment with those that talked big, laboured mightily, then produced a mouse."

The UK is not Japan. The population of Japan accepts such nonsense and internalizes the stress; Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. The UK is full of Clockwork Orange people who will not go quietly into the night. No, I'm not saying that everyone in the UK is that way, but all you need is a small minority to raise hell. And given the UK's propensity to hardly ever send anyone to jail, the outrage might rise faster than the government can handle.

The Great Depression in my country (the USA) and many other countries was largely peaceful because people then were more peaceful as a rule. However, there were a few notable exceptions in Europe and Asia. And people are not so willing to accept compromise anymore, especially when it results in them being thrown into the street.

#3 "Note how well briefed the media are, and the amazingly fluid complementing between the political and media classes"

The impact of the media on the politics of our time


"The pseudo-adversarial relationship between the press and politicians had trivialised politics."

saucymugwump - I disagree. In the past 15 years the UK has changed. You could instigate almost anything here now and so long as online gaming and the mobile phone network remain up nobody will blink. People accept anything here because they can't be bothered, which is why we are in the mess we are in. I think it will have to get really bad before we realise and dig deep. These cuts won't be that bad so that won't happen.

History will judge these actions for what they really are:

Farting at thunder

they were salivating on the Tory benches, it was what they had dreamed about, they did not condemn Labour when they let the bankers rip with uncontrolled borrowing, in fact they proposed no regulation of the banks, not a peep out of them when Labour encouraged the free for all on unlimited borrowing, 125 per cent mortgages, again not a peep. Today after a dismal performance by Ed (yet again) it was left to Alan Johnson to shoot the Tory fox and get to the 'real' truth...this going to run and run but the truth will out in the end

5. At 4:04pm on 20 Oct 2010, tawse57 wrote:

"I think they are putting something in the water now to catch those of us who refuse to watch soap operas and reality TV."

Can you think of another explanation? One that I have suggested?

8. At 5:08pm on 20 Oct 2010, Ben wrote:

"In the past 15 years the UK has changed. You could instigate almost anything here now and so long as online gaming and the mobile phone network remain up nobody will blink. People accept anything here because they can't be bothered, which is why we are in the mess we are in. I think it will have to get really bad before we realise and dig deep."

Do you know ?

It's about the tragedy of propositional modularity (intensional opacity). In the recent (15 years or so) vernacular 'silo-thinking'(non-transparency).

Will Newsnight be following the fates of the sick, the disabled and the very poor in the coming years? Documenting the story of their abandonment by the state? How they lose their homes, their means of support and slowly turn into an underclass dependent on charity?
The story of these cuts is its the weakest in society, those with no lobby groups to speak up for their interests who are being hammered into the ground, just as it always was going to be under the Tories...Business as usual for those at the top though, bonus time soon eh lads, things just get better and better for them.

More Labour back-slapping. muggwhump - did inequality increase under Labour or not? I know they +said+ they wanted it to decrease, but I'm less interested in rhetoric for tea and more keen on pounds in pockets.

You know, all things considered, I'm really not sure we're being told the whole truth you know. For instance, I'm frequently asked where all the British Chinese given that they also comprise half a percent of the British population, and come top in our schools too. Is it because the Chinese are bright, industrious, and that that sort of behaviour isn't deemed desirable in our libertarian democracy? On the other hand, does being a libertarian give you a 20x leg up?

Osborne's anarchism in brief: asset stripping, public sector personnel cuts, yet more decentralisation and privatisation, privatisation, privatisation as part II of an economic crisis in the private sector very effectively mastered by the red team of libertarians in order to 'justify' a later massive attack on the public sector by the blue/yellow team.

"I can tell the House that we have gone further than we thought possible in cutting back-office costs. Quangos will be abolished.

Services will be integrated. Assets will be sold. And the administrative budgets of every main government department cut by a third."

13. At 8:06pm on 20 Oct 2010, Ben wrote:
More Labour back-slapping. muggwhump - did inequality increase under Labour or not? I know they +said+ they wanted it to decrease, but I'm less interested in rhetoric for tea and more keen on pounds in pockets."

It wasn't Labour Ben, it was New Labour. Even Nigel Lawson said on Newsnight the other night that Blair was probably a Tory. Ken Loach described them as Tory-Lite, and well, on increasing inequality, just read what [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]Michael Young said before he died. If you don't know who he was, you really don't know what you're talking about. New Labour just set the Public Sector up so the Tories could knock the welfare state down.

Did you hear Osborne ever mention that people are poor because they are made that way genetically? Do you think there's much to be gained from encouraging short people to aspire to be tall?

I have looked on the Treasury website. I see a lot of assertion, aspiration,claims for efficiency and assumptions as to projected savings to 2014/15.Accompanying 'hard' measures such as welfare cuts, there appear to several 'soft' savings which may or may not happen. The word "Reform" disguises a raft of hopes as to how government 'may' be reduced. Much hinges on individual departmental business plans yet to be announced....I would be interested to see the £81 billions savings to 2014/15 broken down in to sub categories - those which are actual ( welfare cuts/projects axed etc) and those of which are contingent on someone,somewhere,later doing something or not doing something....you are left wondering whether this is deliverable.

The British public get what they deserve. Any resistance to these ideological cuts will be done by those which our media will call the 'political margins' (which includes the Trade Unions). The British public will roll over and take whatever is thrown at them. The rest of the world will be watching and thinking that we are useless and helpless lot - almost as useless as those aircraft carriers with no aircraft. The French, Americans and Greeks at least stand up and refuse to give in without a fight.

DELIVERABLE? (#17)

Look what Tony delivered! And he is a very great man - apparently.

"The rules of the game are changing."

Swansea mentioned on Newsnight - I wish it was in more happier times.

Thank goodness the question has been asked - when the job cuts begin what are people in Swansea going to do?

Paxman was right, it will have to be a case of getting on your bike as the train prices out of Swansea to the South East are eye-watering.

More worrying still, is the massive house price bubble that rose up in Swansea over the past 7 or 8 years - partly on the back of Londoners believing West Wales was the new Cornwall (They are trying to sell up in droves now but the locals can't afford the near-London asking prices) but mainly because of the perceived security of a Public Sector job in the city.

The asking prices are simply ludicrous and there are numerous stories of large numbers of people in Swansea who did actually believe Blair & Brown when they said that they had brought an end to boom and bust, who then went out and mortgaged themselves up to the eyeballs, then re-mortgaged... and then re-mortgaged again.

Stories are rife in the city of people, from all walks of life and all ends of the so-called Class spectrum, who are just managing to keep their heads above water as long as they keep the wages from their jobs... and the child benefit... coming in.

If the Public Sector job cuts do begin in the city expect to see a domino affect of house prices collapsing locally and bankruptcies rising.

Could this be the new Gary, Indiana?

6. I do so hope you're right about the Brits - Dylan Thomas and Under Milkwood is indeed very aposite - but the problem is that radicalism from the left is now pretty emasculated - unions that are poodles, students now self-serving, not idealistic - Labour is no longer "Labour" but "New Labour", (but we await Ed's reforging of Labour...) regretably the Tories and UKIP seems to be the new "radicals", not the left - has Thatcherism finally been reborne?

So I posit Japan II not as a positive decision, but as the result of apathy not a concious movement - entropy, not energy I'm afraid.

The war of ideas pits the libertarian ideal against the statist model of our society and economy - yet both are rapidly coming to the end of their credibility as the buffers loom - "we've got to spend more to keep demand, investment and jobs, but we can't afford to spend more" - "we need to cut spending to reduce debt and the cost of serving it, but cutting spending deflates the economy so much that debt goes up!"

The achilles heel is still the claim that the private sector will step in and create massive mounts of new jobs, invest billions in new capacity and pull off the miracle of an export-led recovery in the teeth of the ongoing weakness of all our export markets.

What is plan B when this fails to materialise? Is there one at all?

The ConDems are not only running a huge risk with the economy - they are also risking political meltdown for their parties if this does end in tears. The fallout for the centre and right of the political spectrum would be dire - not the return of the "New Labour" policies of Blair & Brown, but a much more radical reassessment of the causes of the nation's problems and possible solutions to them - IMHO, Ed not Dave makes this potentially possible.

The implosion of the LibDems is a racing certainty in this scenario - how long until Clegg, Alexander & Cable join the Conservative Party, if their own Party rebels and LibDem voters leave them en mass?

Along with the claim that the private sector is "crowded out by the state" and would simply "generate growth if the state is cut back", and the claim that "free trade works" will this also be consigned to the political dustbin of history?

An incoming resurgent and hopefully radical Labour government would then feel justified in adopting a massively interventionist policy to industry, trade and investment, not to mention the banks & the City - and in doing so, potentially hole the libertarian model so badly that it would never recover in the UK.

For decades we were told that tackling our deep industrial and social problems was simply unaffordable, yet tens of billions our pounds were magically borrowed overnight to bail out the financial services sector - now we are told that this borrowing has to be cut back rapidly and that this requires big cuts in public spending that are regressive and potentially deeply damaging to our economy and the least well off.

Clearly we were lied to by all the political parties who have completely swallowed the libertarian view of the world - when that model finally proves to be an illusion, then the debate can begin to be developed about what we could do to run UK PlC in the interests of ALL its inhabitants.

Meanwhile as the ConDems cut o/o/m £112 Bn, the Bank of England MPC is considering doing £100 Bn of QE to pump liquidity into the economy - vast resources are available - but not to meet the needs of people - socialism for the rich - the iron fist for the poor.

Paul

When are we going to get an analysis of the economic situation that starts by examining the underlying ideas and theories for their applicability and correctness?

Most mainstream economic thought seems to be based on a world with convertible currencies. We haven't had that since 1971! Things have changed and need updating. Listening or reading the analysis from organisations rooted in the past seems to me to be a waste. Journalistic comment is pointless in such a situation, you could all do so much better.

Anyone who believes we were on the edge of bankruptcy is rooted in this old era. Their policies and actions are likely to be wrong for us now. Please do a bit of background reading and challenge the politicians with some really difficult questions to show up the true level of their ignorance and incompetence. Question to reveal the true level of their economic knowledge and understanding. Do they know that:
There is an accounting identity that needs to be realised:
the government deficit (surplus) equals the non-government surplus (deficit) minus net exports
Its a straightforward accounting identity - its not open to debate - ever.
Cut the deficit and the non-government sector comes under financial pressure. This can be done for a limited period, but its not a sustainable long term policy.

My conclusion is that this policy will change or morph into something else - the only question is how long it will be for the change to happen and who will make the change.

'What is plan B ?' we ask

The ConDems have only one plan for Beveridge's 'want, squalor and idleness ':
wage class war and wait for the jobs fairy

Shhhh..... Just don't mention the "F" word.......

Is the US ForeclosureGate slowly uncovering the FRAUD?

"If there are no actual original, endorsed notes, well then we need to get that fact into the open - to force it into the open - because if true, this is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated in human history, and it permeates every single large financial institution in the Western World."



NO AUSTERITY WITHOUT FINANCIAL SECTOR REFORM

War on the Poor - its official.

The killer is the cut to local council funding and benefits (NOT WELFARE!) - that's where the ideological hurt is really to be found. Get set for 2 years of disgusting Mail and Sun lies about one legged lesbian crocheting groups supported by council money, while in the background elderly people sit in their houses for days at a time with no human contact, schizophrenics are told that they are fit for work in call centres and can't claim ESA, and another generation of working class kids come out of schools with the only dream in their lives being get rich or die tryin.

Disgusting. You may not see any sign of dissent from your windows, but where i live things are boiling already, and there are big alliances in the working class left being created around anti-cuts campaigns. The Old Labour warhorses are talking to the post-Thatcher anarchists and libertarian communists and the Left is rising again. Careful what you wish for, though, i think many on here will not be comfortable with what we have to say and who we have to blame.

The rich (families with a joint income of over £60,000 - yes, i do mean you) have to pay for their own crisis. The government and police may think they have full provisions for civil unrest, but in reality they are thinking in terms of a group of young middle class kids with their hands in the air shouting "this is not a riot" while they get batoned to the floor.

The coming reality will be very different.

There is an excellent episode of The Simpsons where ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖr manages to get Springfield's refuse collection head fired, and replaced by himself, using grandiose promises of solving the town's refuse problems.

Within a month ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖr has spent the entire year budget for refuse collection, the refuse collectors go unpaid, go on strike and within hours the town is knee-deep in uncollected rubbish.

At which point the town tries to get the former head of refuse to take over his old job and sort the mess out. This results in him telling the town that they deserve everything they got, says goodbye and leaves.

Gordon Brown seemed to have a personal grudge against small business owners during the Labour years. Blair appeared to keep Brown in check from going after big business - Labour needed them - but talk to any small business owner and they will tell you how red tape, regulations and punitive taxes were hurled at them by Brown for 13 years.

Now the small business owner is supposed to help the country out of the mess that Brown created - good luck on getting them to do that.

#22

the government deficit (surplus) equals the non-government surplus (deficit) minus net exports

If I'm not mistaken, then Michael Hudson is a "fringe" economist who gets this accounting entry (he also "gets" the neocon / neolib agenda, plus the endemic fraud taking place in the financial sector).

The US has a gvt deficit nearing 1trn dollars, and (surprise surprise) a trade deficit of a similar amount. Therefore, non-gvt is not actually generating much of a surplus, and the sale of Gvt debt is funding excessive consumption of imports.

Hudson postulates that this began in the 1960s with the US running up debts funding the Korean then Vietnam war. The closing of the gold window merely enabled this accounting fudge to truly spiral out of control.

SATIRISTS DEFINE US - ADVERTISERS SHAPE US - FOR GOOD OR ILL (#26)

All we need is leaders of integrity and wisdom. No chance under the Westminster Ethos; it delivers megalomaniac PRESIDENTS.

A telling post 57. Meanwhile:

WE HAVE GOT OURSELVES ANOTHER ONE.

THE ANTI-TERRORISM THREAT AND NATIONAL DEFENCE

In a libertarian, free trading, world market, how does one keep an eye on what's in the holds/containers? Simple, you just agree to declare a 'war on terror'. That's the way to inspect it You don't want any unlicensed competitors muscling in on your market share. Trade is truly free, so long as you have all the necessary paperwork (from whom?) in order..


"26. At 09:38am on 21 Oct 2010, tawse57 wrote:
There is an excellent episode of The Simpsons ."

Excellent..

25. At 09:35am on 21 Oct 2010, mafftucks wrote:

"The Old Labour warhorses are talking to the post-Thatcher anarchists and libertarian communists and the Left is rising again."

That reads like a muddle. Old Labour were left wing socialists who wanted a big state which employed the people to work for each other.

Post-Thatcher anarchists were Thatcherites who are right wing libertarians (see Hayek, Friedman, Neocons). These have their roots in Left wing communism, Trotskyism. They are anti-state, pro individualism.
So who will your lot be fighting for? What will they be fighting for?
Old Labour would not have had any truck with anarchists, any more than Stalin or Mao did.

Some of the rest that you write seems on the ball, but don't get the above wrong or you'll get it all wrong. Politics is all about obfuscating class membership. To see through it, go by the consequences of behaviour, not definitions or intentions.

27. At 09:38am on 21 Oct 2010, Hawkeye_Pierce

There are book pluggers out there you know, but from a

"At companywide gatherings, Ameriquest's managers and sales reps loosened up with free alcohol and swapped tips for fooling borrowers and cooking up phony paperwork. What if a customer insisted he wanted a fixed-rate loan, but you could make more money by selling him an adjustable-rate one? No problem. Many Ameriquest salespeople learned to position a few fixed-rate loan documents at the top of the stack of paperwork to be signed by the borrower. They buried the real documents—the ones indicating the loan had an adjustable rate that would rocket upward in two or three years—near the bottom of the pile.
Then, after the borrower had flipped from signature line to signature line, scribbling his consent across the entire stack, and gone home, it was easy enough to peel the fixed-rate documents off the top and throw them in the trash.

And that's just from the introduction".

The first important thing to note is that we all know that this has been going on for a very long time and that the justification was caveat emptor. The next really important thing which I urge the smarter and more conscientious (a crucial combination of two statistical factors) to take on board, is that buyers can't beware if they're dealt a very poor bad hand of genes at birth and that's what right-wing libertarians have been preying upon for decades.

All else follows once one fully sees this, and I tell you, it's not a pretty sight as it demands regulation, a left-wing state..

I've had a lengthy comment removed (unfairly i thought) in response to tabblenabble's ideas of genetic profiling and so won't go into it again.

All i would say is that i am a post-thatcherite anarchist, and i am talking to old labour warhorses, so your dismissal seems quite peculiar to me.

"30. At 4:45pm on 21 Oct 2010, mafftucks wrote:
I've had a lengthy comment removed (unfairly i thought) in response to tabblenabble's ideas of genetic profiling and so won't go into it again.

All i would say is that i am a post-thatcherite anarchist, and i am talking to old labour warhorses, so your dismissal seems quite peculiar to me."

There's no evidence above of any post being removed and as to what you write above, the truth or falsehood of that depends on whether there's any evidence that you really do know what you're talking about and whether the people who you say you're talking to are what they say they are. There's nothing to go on in what you posted before other than muddle and empty assertion if one looks at it critically. You could say you're best friends with Cameron and we'd have no way of telling one way or the other.

As we now have anarchists in Government, what's your beef? Please explain yourself as a post-thatcherite anarchist, or don't you understand that Thatcherism means anarchism?

The comment was removed from another thread. It seems to be because i voiced the opinion that i thought you were arguing from a fascist standpoint. I made a complaint about its removal but have not yet received a reply.

The post-thatcherite anarchist movement - this came out of a combination of the Reclaim the Streets and anti-roads movement, allied with the old anarchist punks and the animal rights campaigns. It is the movement that is most visible when pursuing its tactic of 'summit mobilisations', first used at the G8 in Birmingham, then most famously in the Seattle anti-G8 protests. Alongside this it had a strategy of creating social centres across the country to act as a living example of the anarchist social alternative to a capitalist society.

The only relation it had to Thatcher is that it deliberately moved away from the tactics used by the Old Left that 10 years of anti-union and anti-poor laws had effectively destroyed.

The old labour warhorses in question are people who were engaged in a high level of activism under the banner of Labour party constituency offices, that formed the backbone of many working class communities. They withdrew from politics during the Blairite takeover of the party and the subsequent move to the centre.

"You could say you're best friends with Cameron and we'd have no way of telling one way or the other."

Thats why face-to-face, genuine organisation and debate is far superior to writing on internet discussion boards. The only reason i do it is that i am genuinely worried that, in this post-positivist age, unacceptable viewpoints such as yours can be camouflaged as 'common sense' and, if unchallenged, begin to affect the wider discourse, or even gain ascendancy (as has happened with the 'anti science' climate change denial movement, even on this very site).

This means that anarchists as Proudhon defined now have to label themselves 'anarchist communist' or 'libertarian communists' in order to reclaim what has been a widely accepted term up to now. I regard myself as an anarchist in the spirit of the 170 years of discourse and discussion that has taken place under that term. I don't need your position to do that. I will continue to use the term in the terms that i see fit, not as you see fit to fit me with.

As for anarchists being in the government, as a key aspect of anarchism is the rejection of representative democracy as an alternative to direct democracy, that is highly unlikely.

#32 mafftucks

Are you sure you're not a left-over from the Anarchist People's Front?...or should that be the People's Anarchist Front?...or is it the Popular Front of Anarchism?...

32. At 09:17am on 22 Oct 2010, mafftucks wrote:

"in this post-positivist age, unacceptable viewpoints such as yours can be camouflaged as 'common sense' and, if unchallenged, begin to affect the wider discourse, or even gain ascendancy (as has happened with the 'anti science' climate change denial movement, even on this very site).

This means that anarchists as Proudhon defined now have to label themselves 'anarchist communist' or 'libertarian communists' in order to reclaim what has been a widely accepted term up to now. I regard myself as an anarchist in the spirit of the 170 years of discourse and discussion that has taken place under that term. I don't need your position to do that. I will continue to use the term in the terms that i see fit, not as you see fit to fit me with."

Many people never grow up (it's a physical, brain thing). Many people need regulating for their own protection, and in the interest of others.
If that doesn't happen, failing states like Lagos and Pakistan are the consequence. Perhaps you've yet to grasp this? Perhaps you've still got time to grow up?