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CB Saint

CB Saint

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Instead of everyone looking for "downers" why doesn't everyone be happy about some positive news - you never know the whole positivity thing might just catch on leading to more confidence, more growth, more positivity etc etc.

 

Ed Balls seems to be rather quiet recently. Where does he stand politically now. He took a very public line attacking the coalitions policies and the doom and gloom haven't quite materialised in the way he implied they would. Is this an opportunity for Milliband to reshuffle him? I think Labour and Ed M would be better off without him.

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badgerx16

badgerx16

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Instead of everyone looking for "downers" why doesn't everyone be happy about some positive news - you never know the whole positivity thing might just catch on leading to more confidence, more growth, more positivity etc etc.

 

 

Just because GO says things are getting better, doesn't mean they necessarily are. From the Guardian article linked by Buctootim:

 

"

The recent rise in manufacturing has been welcomed by George Osborne as a sign that his economic policies are bearing fruit. But he is likely to be dismayed by trade figures from the ONS showing that the UK's recent growth has pulled in a record volume of imports and more than doubled the trade deficit to £3.1bn.

Imports rose to £104.2bn in the three months to July, a 3.1% increase, while exports to the EU remained flat and the trade in goods to countries outside the bloc fell sharply."

 

I think Ed Balls may be keeping quiet whilst GO runs out 'enough rope to hang himself'.

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CB Saint

CB Saint

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Just because GO says things are getting better, doesn't mean they necessarily are. From the Guardian article linked by Buctootim:

 

"

The recent rise in manufacturing has been welcomed by George Osborne as a sign that his economic policies are bearing fruit. But he is likely to be dismayed by trade figures from the ONS showing that the UK's recent growth has pulled in a record volume of imports and more than doubled the trade deficit to £3.1bn.

Imports rose to £104.2bn in the three months to July, a 3.1% increase, while exports to the EU remained flat and the trade in goods to countries outside the bloc fell sharply."

 

I think Ed Balls may be keeping quiet whilst GO runs out 'enough rope to hang himself'.

 

Wasn't so much a blindly follow George slant, more of a generic whinge about the negative always being highlighted.

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Johnny Bognor

Johnny Bognor

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Instead of everyone looking for "downers" why doesn't everyone be happy about some positive news - you never know the whole positivity thing might just catch on leading to more confidence, more growth, more positivity etc etc.

 

Because the lefties want the coalition to fail. They want the country to go downhill because it is in their political interest. They cannot stand the thought of the complete and utter mess that their lot caused when in power, so if someone else ****s up, it gets them off of the hook somewhat and makes them feel better. If the downturn continues through this parliament, it gives their lot a chance to turn things around so they can take the credit.

 

I would just like to see the economy recover as soon as possible, because it is in all our interests that it does so.

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badgerx16

badgerx16

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I would just like to see the economy recover as soon as possible, because it is in all our interests that it does so.

 

Is this ambition exclusively limited to 'righties' ? I just don't have faith in GO's competence, in the same way some on here slate Gordon Brown's record; I think that any positive news on the economy is despite him rather than 'because of' him, and there has been a huge amount of positive spin placed on some very mixed messages in the last few days.

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trousers

trousers

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24018350

 

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) plans to create 1,700 jobs at its plant in Solihull as part of a £1.5bn investment in expanding its product range.

JLR said that the jobs at the Solihull site would bring the total number of jobs it had created in the UK over the last three years to almost 11,000.

It also stressed that the investment would involve significant extra spending with its suppliers.

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OldNick

OldNick

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Somebody said just now on Radio 2 that as part of this expansion Jaguar are going to build a new factory in Southampton. Havent seen this reported anywhere else / may be wrong.
I have an XJ and it is a superb car. It would be great if they were also built in Southampton. Of course there is an disused factory where it could be sited.
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Johnny Bognor

Johnny Bognor

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Is this ambition exclusively limited to 'righties' ?

 

This thread is about the green shoots in our economy. The optimistic/upbeat posts tend to be posted by those of a right persuasion and the negative news is posted by the lefties. So reading this thread, one would think so.

 

Thankfully, there appears to be more positive news than negative news over the last six months, so maybe, just maybe, the UK is moving in the right direction. Whether that is down to GO or despite him is another argument. One thing is for sure, he can't be blamed for getting us into this mess in the first place ;-)

 

I do sympathise with you badger and your band of brothers, as deep down, I am sure you all want the UK to succeed. However, the price to be paid is a potential tory government for another 5 years and that must really be a head **** for you.

Edited by Johnny Bognor
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bridge too far

bridge too far

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Posted
This thread is about the green shoots in our economy. The optimistic/upbeat posts tend to be posted by those of a right persuasion and the negative news is posted by the lefties. So reading this thread, one would think so.

 

Thankfully, there appears to be more positive news than negative news over the last six months, so maybe, just maybe, the UK is moving in the right direction. Whether that is down to GO or despite him is another argument. One thing is for sure, he can't be blamed for getting us into this mess in the first place ;-)

 

You're not wrong there JB - his banking buddies got us into this mess in the first place.

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Ex Lion Tamer

Ex Lion Tamer

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The first law of politics: take credit for something that goes well

 

The second rule of politics: don't take responsibility when it goes tits up.

Indeed.

 

I would admit that Blair and Brown deserve some blame for not regulating the banks enough (although lets not forget that it was an international crisis).

 

But I don't think that necessarily tells us anything about the Labour Party now. As a party of the left, Labour is more likely to have learnt the lesson of getting too close to the bankers, compared to the Tories who are instinctively closer to business interests.

 

The Tories are funded by wealthy businesses magnates, for a start.

Edited by Ex Lion Tamer
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trousers

trousers

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10299665/Why-the-left-will-never-be-right-in-the-next-big-battle-over-living-costs.html

 

Why the left will never be right in the next big battle over living costs.

 

Economists will continue to squabble about the effects of austerity on growth until the end of time, but British politics has finally moved on, regardless of Ed Miliband’s rather pathetic rear-guard efforts on Tuesday.

 

The austerians have won in Westminster, thanks to the resurgence in economic growth, and the political warriors are gearing up to fight a fresh, even more vicious, battle over the cost of living.

 

The clash of visions will, if anything, be even greater this time around. On the one hand are those, sadly small in number, who argue that we should harness market forces to boost people’s living standards. On the other stand those who believe that the answer lies in much greater amounts of government intervention, a large group which, regrettably, even includes many well-meaning but short-sighted Tories.

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buctootim

buctootim

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Thats by Alistair Heath. You should read his other recent articles.

23rd July: If you think Britain is on its way back to prosperity, think again, it's a mirage

4th June: There’s a worse crisis on the way unless we get serious about tackling debt

Edited by buctootim
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Johnny Bognor

Johnny Bognor

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Indeed.

 

I would admit that Blair and Brown deserve some blame for not regulating the banks enough (although lets not forget that it was an international crisis).

 

 

Brown's involvement goes far deeper than just the involvement with the banks.

 

The so called "prudent one" (LMFAO) was only to happy to push HIS mantra that he put an end to Boom and Bust, thus misleading the British people and giving people false confidence.

 

Either he was a fraud/cheat/Liar (knowing that boom and bust hadn't ended, but peddled his bull**** anyway) and deliberately mislead the nation (to justify his overspending) or he was the thickest chancellor in the history of having someone in charge of a country's finances. Being a history graduate, I am not leaning towards the latter, so stick him in the prison cell next door to the criminal/fraudulent bankers

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Whitey Grandad

Whitey Grandad

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Please don't mention Brown, it upsets me and I have my blood pressure to consider. My theory is that he wanted to build a state where the majority depended on government handouts for their livelihood and would therefore vote Labour and keep him and his fellow incompetents in power. Every time he announced a big leap in public spending I held my head in despair. It was all supposed to be paid for out of future growth but why shouldn't the poor bloody workers get some of the benefits of this?

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Ex Lion Tamer

Ex Lion Tamer

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Brown's involvement goes far deeper than just the involvement with the banks.

 

The so called "prudent one" (LMFAO) was only to happy to push HIS mantra that he put an end to Boom and Bust, thus misleading the British people and giving people false confidence.

 

Either he was a fraud/cheat/Liar (knowing that boom and bust hadn't ended, but peddled his bull**** anyway) and deliberately mislead the nation (to justify his overspending) or he was the thickest chancellor in the history of having someone in charge of a country's finances. Being a history graduate, I am not leaning towards the latter, so stick him in the prison cell next door to the criminal/fraudulent bankers

 

It was a monumentally stupid thing to say. Sadly I think he probably believed it. Even very clever people get things very wrong when they get caught up in group-think.

Edited by Ex Lion Tamer
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Johnny Bognor

Johnny Bognor

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It was a monumentally stupid thing to say. Sadly I think he probably believed it. Even very clever people get things very wrong when they get caught up in group-think.

 

No excuse when you're chancellor of the exchequer. He could have asked any 1st year GCSE economics student who would have laughed him out of the room. So I don't think it was his stupidity. It was more sinister than that. For me it was to do with conning the public to win an election, by creating a false feel good factor, just so that he might be PM one day. He got his wish and went down as one of the worst on record. But he was definitely part of the problem, without a shadow of a doubt.

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saintfully

saintfully

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No excuse when you're chancellor of the exchequer. He could have asked any 1st year GCSE economics student who would have laughed him out of the room. So I don't think it was his stupidity. It was more sinister than that. For me it was to do with conning the public to win an election, by creating a false feel good factor, just so that he might be PM one day. He got his wish and went down as one of the worst on record. But he was definitely part of the problem, without a shadow of a doubt.

 

"We're all in this together"

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Lord Duckhunter

Lord Duckhunter

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Brown was a disaster for the country , incompetent even by labour chancellor's standards. Poured money into unreformed public services, neutered frank field, trashed our pensions, sold the gold at rock bottom price, set up the tripartite banking regulation, ran a deficit during boom years, in short a complete and utter **** up of a chancellor and PM. The pictures of him stalking mrs Duffy , hanging around in her garden whilst the worlds press filmed him, was the final nail in this clowns political career. I wouldn't let him run a bath let alone an economy.

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trousers

trousers

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24173414

 

The government borrowed less than expected in August, official figures show, helped by a fall in spending by government departments.

Public sector borrowing for the month was £13.2bn, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, lower than the £14.4bn recorded in August 2012.

The UK's net public debt pile stands at £1.19 trillion, which is equivalent to 74.6% of GDP.

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trousers

trousers

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10363899/IMF-upgrades-UK-growth-in-embarrassing-about-turn.html

 

Britain is now expected to end the year with the second fastest annualised growth rate of the G7 group of leading nations.

 

At 2.3pc, the pace of expansion in the three months to December will be better than the US’s 1.9pc and only slower than Japan’s quantitative easing-fuelled 3.5pc growth.

 

It is the second time the IMF has upgraded its UK forecast in the last three months. In July, the 0.7pc outlook was raised to 0.9pc before today’s larger increase. The IMF also sharply upgraded its 2014 projection from 1.5pc to 1.9pc. Both the 2013 and 2014 upgrades were the largest of the world’s leading seven nations.

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trousers

trousers

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10364157/Jobs-joy-as-full-time-salaries-rise-at-the-fastest-pace-for-over-five-years.html

 

Full time salaries across the country are rising at the fastest pace since the start of 2008 in a huge boost to the Chancellor's economic strategy.

 

A report today revealed that more employers were increasing pay offers to new recruits in one of the clearest signs yet that the recovery is gathering momentum.

 

The Recruitment and Employers Confederation (REF) said the pick up in demand for full time staff was being felt in all corners of the UK, with the biggest jump coming in the North.

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Wade Garrett

Wade Garrett

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I am a lifelong Labour voter, but the prospect of Unite's rent boy Ed becoming PM fills me with horror. So does the thought of another predominantly Tory government.

 

If only the w*nker unions failed to get their poodle in. Labour would have looked like a real government in waiting with David Milliband steering the ship, with James Parnell beside him.

 

Osborne is a poor Chancellor, in a poor government.

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Verbal

Verbal

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The Telegraph and you, unsurprisingly, forget to mention that the UK's growth, like Japan's is "quantitative easing-fuelled" too. And let's be clear about what QE means in the UK. It means the Bank of England prints money in order to buy government debt (and some higher-quality private debt). This enables Cameron/Osborne to continue to run a huge budget deficit without derailing the economy. But this is really smoke and mirrors. Do it too long and inflation is sucked into the economic system - and markets get wise to it and respond accordingly, marking stocks sharply down, which are a key part of the present asset bubble.

 

This is all very well in a desperate attempt to get reelected, but it's storing up huge problems down the line. At some point, we'll all have to pay for this...again. And with those costs will come a collapse of the unsustainable asset bubble (which is screamingly ridiculous in London right now - the house there I bought in 2011 has "made" nearly a quarter of a million pounds in just over two years) - as well as the ruin of many of the very first-time buyers now being tempted into the bubble by what is by common consensus the truly idiotic Help to Buy scheme.

 

In the property asset bubble in particular, we're chasing our tails up, and we're about to be chasing our tails down again, with hundreds of thousands of new Help to Buy homeowners suddenly trapped in horrendous levels of negative equity.

 

But by the time it happens, Cameron and Osborne will (they hope) be back sitting in a newly elected government, declaring the need for Austerity, Take Two. The difference is that, this time as the cuts dig ever deeper, one of the biggest consequences of QE - the transfer of even more wealth to the wealthy - will leave Britain with the most fragile grasp on the social cohesion that makes civilised life possible. Look our for London Riots Mk 2. My guess - as someone who works and lives in both London and the North - is that fault lines will now be more regional, with a fierce backlash from the North where decimated public services no longer paper over the cracks.

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trousers

trousers

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24547749

 

The number of unemployed in the UK fell by 18,000 in the June-August period to 2.49 million, official figures show.

The unemployment rate drops to 7.7% down from 7.8% the previous quarter.

The figures, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), also show the number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance last month fell by 41,700 to 1.35 million.

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buctootim

buctootim

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Whoever you vote for its been a very odd recession. Record low plunge in GDP - worse than the 1930s, falling wages in real terms and incredibly sluggish recovery - but continued high levels of employment and record low interest rates compensating for loss of real income (for those with mortgages).

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Lord Duckhunter

Lord Duckhunter

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I had to pop home to sort out a problem there and happened to catch PMQ on Sky News. It's the first time I've seen Milliband in action. Jeez, Cameron is really really lucky.

 

They're both pretty poor at pmq , but Red Ed is particularly bad. Not that it makes that much difference. William Hague used to murder Blair and have them rolling in the aisles but it didn't do much for his vote in the country.

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trousers

trousers

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24668687

 

UK GDP: fastest growth for three years

 

UK economic output rose by 0.8% between July and September, official GDP figures show.

The Office for National Statistics said there had been a "fairly strong" performance across all sectors.

The data builds on a 0.7% GDP rise in the April-June period and is the best quarterly performance since 2010.

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne tweeted: "This shows that Britain's hard work is paying off & the country is on the path to prosperity."

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the figures "show that we are firmly on the road to economic recovery".

The ONS data for construction were up 2.5% over the quarter, the second successive quarter of growth after a volatile performance over the past year.

The BBC's chief economics correspondent, Hugh Pym, said: "This could signal that a recovery in that sector is really under way."

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