UKC

I'm just thinking about the deceptions carried out by 2 Pravda, sorry Telegraph, hacks on several Lib Dem MPs this. It turns out that they didn't just target Vince Cable but tried it on with several other Lib Dems as well. Obviously a serious effort to put the boot in.

I'm left feeling that a faction in the Tory party wants to bring down the coalition. It does rather remind me of the behaviour of the Communists in Barcelona who devoted most of their energies to murdering anarchists and Trotskyists while at the same time Franco's army were moving in for the kill.

Does anyone have the faintest idea what going on in the Conservative and Unionist constituency parties around the country?

In reply to Removed User:

That was my first thought..

then I thought that these tories are career politicians ..

they've already hung the LibDEms out to dry by not only getting the turkeys to vote for Xmas but also getting 'em to cook the dinner.

Now it looks as if they're engineering their escape from their erstwhile partners partic whilst Milliband looks ineffective with the benefit of getting Murdoch seriously onside...

My money is on a general election soon with the tories expecting a landslide

In reply to JimR:

Hmmm, I suspect that the loony right in the Tory Party may be thinking along those lines. Have another election now before the cuts really bite, the Lib Dems get electoral reform and the Tory Party becomes unelectable.

I don't believe for a minute that DC or anyone with any sense in their party think this is a sensible course of action.

An interesting observation is that the Tories hate Murdoch as much as the Labour Party do. When John Major was in Government he wanted to stick the knife in but couldn't figure out a way of "making it a mortal blow". Pravda, sorry the Telegraph, also hate Murdoch and didn't actually publish the really damaging stuff on Vince Cable, presumably because they thought it would aid Robert Murdoch.

In the end one has to ask oneself why politicians give the media much time at all.

In reply to JimR: doubtfull the tories will want an election after anouncing billions of pounds of cuts and public sector job losses.even though it was necessary it still doesnt make you popular with voters regardless of how shite the opposition is.

In reply to Removed User:

Hmmm .. betcha a pint. Be glad to pay up if i'm wrong

In reply to Removed User:


Wasn't it more about the bits that the Telegraph was not going to publish, and was leaked to the BBC (presumably by the journalists, disgusted by the editorial policy of hiding the most important issues) that is the real issue?

Papers decide what stance to take, and what to hide, to suit their political agenda.

No "truth, the whoe truth, and nothing but the truth" but mix and match as to what suits the editorial...

Perhaps the journalists who leaked to the BBC think they can get more money working for Murdoch, though...

In reply to Removed User:

New Labour loved Murdoch so much it was silly.
He created the 97 landslide. In fact, it was connected to John Majors attempts to recreate media plurality. He made himself very unpopular and as a result his cabinet became known for "sleaze", read targeted media campaign. They became unelectable in a mirror of what happened to Gordon, apparently they were ineffectual and prone to misdemeanours. The reality being John Major had fought tooth and nail to reduce media influence in politics.
JM was actually, and it pains me to say it as he was a Tory, a very moderate and sensible politician who had the countrys interests in mind. RM realised that the "young blood" would get support and recharged anti-Thatcherism in the public. And so Tony had a very close relationship with his media empire.
Why did Gordon get the hate? Because Rupert realised that his media creation had a time limit, and Tonys Iraq and spending legacy had made them a liability, so he turned the Sun anti-Labour and ramped up the Times pro-Tory bias, while highlighting Gordons poor public image and the public spending which wasn't solely his political child and making it a major issue.


Because Rupert Murdoch has chosen every election winner for the last thirty years. Hence why he was the second person who entered No.10 for celebratory champagne after Dave was elected.

In reply to Tdubs:


Regardless of what you think of Gordon Brown, it was interesting during the runup to the previous election to compare the number of people who thought hew was a weak ineffectual leader with the number of people who could actually specify what he was doing that was so weak and ineffectual.

In reply to Ramblin dave:

Brown was a bad leader, but a good tactician, and saved a lot of countries by his decision to bale out and nationalise the banks.

Knowing your limits is a rare thing. That is why we have so many wankers at the top in industry.

In reply to Ramblin dave:
That was my favourite game at the time

"Yeah but Gordons just not a leader"
"In what way?"
"..."

In reply to sutty:
I think he was a very good economist, as you say he made some very good calls. He had one 'error', hindsight says selling UK gold reserves was a bad idea. At the time it made a lot of sense and was definitely the right thing to do. Also he tried to show us that rapid growth isn't necessarily a good thing, which is something the world is going to have to adapt to soon - especially with respect to emerging markets.

Not a fan of Nu-Lab but credit where it's due, and GB deserves some.

In reply to sutty:

To be honest, I wasn't really making a point about whether he was a good or a bad leader, more about the proportion of people who thought he was a bad leader because they'd heard so many people say so rather than because of anything he'd actually done.

In reply to Ramblin dave:

Been around a long time, and seen the good and bad of politicians from Eden onward. They all had good points and bad points. Even Maggie had good points at first, but unluckily we had a Falklands war and that did for her reputation as a nasty woman, and she confirmed it when she was re-elected.

Best politician I know, Blair, he knew when to quit instead of hanging on to be defeated. He was a shit at times but turned things round for labour.

In reply to Tdubs: Can I have a pair of your rose-tinted glasses please? He made one good call right at the start, making the BoE independent and then after he turned the spending taps on a couple of years later spent a decade proving that throwing endless amounts of cash at things doesn't fix your problems or get you value for money. And in the mean time with his megalomania ended boom and bust and saved the world...

In reply to Removed User: Getting back to the topic, why would 4 Lib-Dem politicians want to bring down the Tories?

OK, so the Telegraph is biased to the right of centre but surely four seemingly educated guys go shouting their mouths off to total strangers about the internal workings of the coalition??

The Lib-Dems have nothing to gain by losing their first taste of power in several generations which is what would be gained by bringing this government down.

With their popularity at an all time low, it would surely be good night Mr Clegg and Co??!

In reply to Removed User:
Conspiricy theories are all very well, but in the end Vince Cable said what he said, the Tories didn't say it for him, effectively he has drawn his own teeth.

In reply to JimR:


Interesting point. Do you think this will still be the case when the dole queue start forming on mass? I understand we need to cut cut cut, but I am not sure that simply sacking the country is the best way. Good for the balance sheet yes, but not good for society and at the end of the day, do we exist to jump to the tune of the banks or to live in a civilised society?

In reply to bluebealach:

Given that the comments made by LibDem MPs in unguarded moments, it's not impossible they were saying what they actually think and have thought for much of their political life - you don't go from campaigning against the Tories to loving them unconditionally in the space of six months (unless, it seems, you're Nick Clegg). Some the LibDems will be profoundly unhappy about the way things are going, as will many Tory MPs, who must be looking at things like the pupil premium as some dismal sop to the LibDems which should have no place in a proper Tory programme.

It's surely no surprise that some members of Government say nasty things about other members of the Government? John Major had his 'bastards' moment, and the Labour Government was riven from top to bottom with Brownites and Blairites. Even Thatcher put up with her wets for a while.

There was a fine piece in the Guardian yesterday about Vince Cable and his ego. Quite how he's still a Minister is beyond me. His ramblings about not voting for his own tuition fees proposal was bad enough, but the Murdoch fiasco should have been the end of him. He's become even more of a hero to zero figure than even Clegg.

In reply to Tdubs:

We must have been living on different planets for the last 13 years. Gordon Brown was a power-hungry socialist of the old school, extending the reach and influence of the state, nurturing dependency and undermining responsibility wherever possible, buying votes in labour heartlands with borrowed money, plundering easy targets like company pensions with no consideration of the consequences, endlessly boasting about X consecutive quarters of economic growth that was actually built on massive public and private debt, absurd hubris of claiming to have abolished boom and bust, setting a deliberately disingenuous 'golden rule' that allowed him to overspend in the good times, etc. etc..
As for no one being able to say why he was a bad leader, would you like a similar list? Bullying? Insecurity? Paranoia? Lack of charisma? Insatiable appetite for power?
ps. apologies if this rant makes him out to be some kind of monster - he's just a man with some problems and bad ideas who ended up with too much power.
pps. this has nothing to do with the subject of the thread

In reply to EeeByGum:

Do you understand how debt works? A £150bn deficit means £150bn is added to the countries debt every year, meaning unattended the UK debt will double in around 4/5 years. What happens when your debt gets too large? I am sure you know this... Firstly the interest you pay increases (and currently at 50bn our interest payments are larger than the entire MOD budget) and this will happen exponentially because of the value of the debt increading and the credit rating will reduce meaning the interest rate will increase as well, and ultimately the no-one will lend money because they dont think they will get it back (see Ireland / Greece, Portugal next etc) so the economic is declared bankrupt. We are closer to this situation than a lot of people seem to think.

Who comes off worse if the economy goes bankrupt? If the country goes bust the people who come off worst are those the government protects, as the government will no longer have the money to protect them.

In reply to Richard Horn:

Yes thank you very much.


But this is the big unanswered question. Make massive cuts now. Everyone looses their jobs. This impacts on our service lead economy because no one is earning cash any more which results in even more job losses in the private sector. Government spending goes up due to paying out more money on social security and also looses in tax receipts. Society in general goes down the pan because everyone is out of work. A possible scenario but to fire figures into the air to back up your argument is short sighted. The simple answer is that no one actually knows. Only the future will tell.

In reply to EeeByGum:
That depends on who the service economy is providing the services to, if it's the state it's a self defeating circle of money.

You cannot continually borrow your way out , which is what both the Cons and Lib-Dems realise. To some extent Labour has at last got this message.

In reply to neilh:


I couldn't agree more. But I also don't see how simply cutting the amount of dosh you spend (which results in job losses) is necessarily a good thing. There is surely a balance?

It should be interesting to see what happens next year. Don't various banks have to repay several tens of billions of dosh loaned by the government with interest?

In reply to tony:

I know coalitions are something of a novelty in this country, but are people really suprised that both parties are having difficulty accepting the compromises. The parties haven't merged, Lib Dems haven't become Tories overnight. But because they are outnumbered 5-1 in parliament, they have to compromise far more, which means accepting certain policies which they are unhappy with.

Do people really think Nick Clegg has had much choice ? The chances are he's actually weilding more left-wing influence than he is entitled to, which is why the tories have set their attack dogs to work. Then again, I don't think it's going to do the LibDems much harm to remind the public that they are pretty uncomfortable with all this. Of course they are going to have a huge job on their hands trying to convince people that coalition govts are the way forward.

In reply to Chris the Tall:
Agreed.Even before the fuss about Vince cable, he had done various press interviews saying he always had the option of walking away. There was really nothing new in what he had said. There is also some talk that his comments about being at war with Murdoch were taking out of context of you listed to what he siad both before and afterwards.

Me I am glad there is disagreemnt, as usually compromise makes better policies.

In reply to EeeByGum:
More likely the govt will shell it's shares in RBS etc and make a killing, which is what the US govt have just done with Citi Group - $12 bn they made. Still insignificant if you are borrowing £150bn a month or so.

Thiose jobs should in the ned be taken up in the private sector, but it will be a pianful restructuring for those concerned. Nobody should pretend otherwise.

Perosnally I am concerned about the high rate of youth unemployment.I do not like to see people aged 16-25 with no jobs.But just emplying them in none jobs in the state is not good.

In reply to neilh:

Thankfully it is not quite that bad.

In reply to thomm: ...and he couldn't spell. A complete joke of a leader and chancellor as has been proven by the economic state we are in and the total hash he made of key decisions that we will all suffer for. Pensions being the most obvious and most damaging.

In reply to neilh:
In the context of the UK economy, what's the relevance of a borrowing figure of £150bn a month?

In reply to EeeByGum:

Personally I think its a few people lose their jobs now vs a lot more people lose their jobs in the future if the debt problem were to get worse. Lets wait and see the unemployment figures in Greece and Ireland over the next couple of years and I would think UK unemployment might not look so bad, but we would be heading that way if Labours spending continued.

In reply to bluebealach:

You've got it the wrong way round though.

Two reporters were sent round to the surgeries of several Lib Dem MPs and posed as constituents concerned about the direction that the Lib Dem party was taking.

So, under the instruction of their editor they carried out a deception on a number of MPs. When they had got their stories the editor of Pravda, sorry the Telegraph, decided not to publish the whole story and left out the bits about Rupert Murdoch.

If this isn't manipulating and manufacturing the news in order to influence public opinion and Government policy by deception and breach of trust then I don't know what is.

While I wouldn't mind seeing the coalition fail next year I am outraged that again, an editor and probably a newspaper owner decide to twist the truth in order to further their political aims and perhaps the aims of a faction inside the Tory party by destroying a coalition which the electorate of the UK voted for.

Instead of besieging the homes of Nick Clegg and the other MPs who were the victims of deceit I'd rather the media were beseiging the homes of the editor and owner of the Telegraph, the two hacks that lied to the MPS and the Chairman of the Tory Party asking them who's idea this was and whether on reflection they think their behaviour was acceptable.

If anyone out there does think their behaviour was acceptable then perhaps they can tell me when MPs can give candid opinions on political matters and to whom?

In reply to Tdubs: there was a lovely comment from a foreign diplo recentlt reflecting on world trade negotiations along the lines of

"since gordon isn't here we seem to be going nowhere..."

In reply to Removed User:

Totally agree. Whereas I might have expected it from the News of the World, I rather hoped that our not-so-broadsheets were somewhat straighter than this.

In reply to Richard Horn:

I have never seen 1,000,0000+ being described as a few before.

In reply to EeeByGum:
The plans simply take public spending back to where it was in 2006.Is that so outrageous?

In reply to Postmanpat:


I have no idea. Only time will tell I guess?

In reply to GrahamD:

The Times wasn't above doing this to Lord Triesman, but then again I wouldn't really expect it to be very differant to the NOTW. I guess once one half of Fleet Street starts to show complete disregard for privacy and ethics on bugging, it's only a matter of time before some of the others feel they have to compete.

You know what, I don't want to know about other peoples private conversations, just as I don't care which footballer is shagging which Z-list celeb.

In reply to Richard Horn:

Really?

George osbourne 2006

"A GENERATION ago, the very idea that a British politician would go to Ireland to see how to run an economy would have been laughable. The Irish Republic was seen as Britain’s poor and troubled country cousin, a rural backwater on the edge of Europe. Today things are different. Ireland stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking, and that is why I am in Dublin: to listen and to learn. "

Source here

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/arti...

If the current shower were in power back then we would now be in the same situation as ireland and greece.

In reply to doz generale:

Lived out there in the west of Ireland in 97/98 and I could of told you then it was a built on a pile of shit.

Notice Alex Salmond not squawling about 'the arc of prosperity' any longer?

Just goes to show politicians are a set of grandstanding bastards with little in the way of depth or honour. Learn from the Irish economy - all the money they stole from the EU maybe??? F*ckwit.

Regards

D

In reply to Removed User:


There was a faction that didn't want the coalition in the first place.

the right of the party felt Cameron had let them down by not securing enough seats for a majority government, there were calls for his head, if the lib dums had joined labour he might not have survived. It was viewed as an easy election to win and he didn't win it.

There was a perception that if a government hadn't been formed then the tories would have won the run off as people were scared of a coalition. There is a certain logic to it, I doubt it would have helped the lib dums to have another election and GB would have been seen as weak, leaving the tories to obtain majority.

In reply to neilh:


I'm sure everyone would agree with that.

But, you can TEMPORARILY borrow your way out. Spend large, nurture new businesses, the public sector and struggling areas so that 5-10-15 years down the track you can start pulling back the apron strings and earn that investment (and the interest paid) back, several-fold. Preferences in household or personal spending/debt patterns don't necessarily apply to the national economy.

Cutting off the cash flow over night, plus the results of insidious privatisation, may in fact lead us down the plug hole in a way that increased debt wouldn't.

As for Clegg et al, I think the UK needs to realise the unusual circumstances we are in in terms of multi-party democracy - and grow up. Minor parties do not have a monopoly in power in a coalition and it is arguable the less savoury aspects of the current coalition are a result of the halfway house we have: just 3 credible parties and no proportional voting system yet in the midst of a coalition govt and a recession. Hardly an ideal situation for idealistic politics.

In reply to Postmanpat:


When house prices and GDP drop to 2006 levels don't we consider this to be a major issue? Why not the same when looking at public sector spending?

I don't entirely disagree with you, I just feel there is one tone of discussion when referring to public sector cuts, another altogether different tone when discussing private profits, spending, exec remuneration etc etc.

In reply to David Martin:


That might have been an option if Labour hadn't borrowed their way through the boom years as well. That would be the point of Keynesian economics that those opposing cuts don't like to quote - you run a surplus in the good years so you can afford to borrow and create a stimulus in the bad years. Instead a certain Gordon Brown massively increased spending so we had to borrow ever increasing amounts through the boom and then when tax receipts collapsed couldn't afford to borrow enough to keep up with current spending, let alone run an extra stimulus.

In reply to chris j:
Agree completely. But I'm not sure New Zlabour profligacy doesn't allow us to take a Keynesian approach right now.

In reply to David Martin: No, but I think the markets would take a very dim view of it if we tried. Austerity being all the rage at the mo, so we'd probably have to expect credit ratings being cut and interest rates rivalling Spain, Portugal and Greece....


Happy thoughts for Xmas anyway...

In reply to Postmanpat:

Because taking inflation over 5 years it is not back where it was in 2006?

In reply to Al Evans:

Real terms. But merry christmas anyway x