Quote:
Originally posted by Red_Hector:
I dislike labour but I don't really get the Brown hate. He's a skilled politician demonstrated by his competent stewardship of the economy in recent years.
People just get taken in by the image-concious tabloid politicians which is a sad indictment of society imo |
His strong handling of the economy, by that you mean:
1) The fact that he inherited a strong economy, then basically borrowed lots from overseas to cover ploughing all his fruitless overspending in the public sector.
2) The fact that not only did he sell off over half our gold reserves, he made such a dismally basic economic blunder that a five year old could have done better. A hint for the 'skilled politician' then: putting such a vast quantity of anything, even gold, on the market at once will obviously make the price plummet. That's the man you trust with the economy, is it?
3) Then of course, don't forget the fact that a hell of a lot of money has been circulating thanks to morons overspending on credit cards, loans, mortgages and so forth, that they clearly won't be able to pay back (in fairness to Labour, that's fundamentally Thatcher's fault but Labour and Brown haven't exactly been discouraging it by any stretch). Unfortunately, as shadowed by the situation behind the Northern Rock fiasco, at some point that money will have to be paid back and then, combined with the two points above, we're in serious trouble.
The hypocrisy of his criticising the Tories' strong economic record is hypocrisy itself (Black Wednesday was terrible for many people and we shouldn't have entered the ERM, a disaster waiting to happen, in the first place, but they managed to pull out before any significant long-term damage was done and their resuscitation of the economy thereafter was frankly nothing short of remarkable. There are many, many reasons to dislike the Tory governments of that era (especially Thatcher, who for all the good she did at the beginning, was essentially laying the groundwork for Labour to spend ten years destroying all the country's strengths), but their economic record certainly isn't one of them.
I'll never understand how people can magically disassociate Brown from the Blair years. He, like his predecessor, has shown every sign of being every inch the same liar and the same crook as held his position before. Sadly, I fear the unthinking masses will celebrate every time he garbles 'Britain' in his empty, rehashed speeches, they'll whoop with joy every time he announces some new measure to disguise losing another basic freedom (ID cards, this new anti-discrimination tripe... I'm almost looking forward to seeing what he's going to come up with next), every time he invents some new stealth tax under a popular banner...
Quote:
|
Basically, our country is f**ked whoever's in charge
|
That's called disassociation politics. It has been used throughout modern history by unpopular governments and dictators to strengthen their position by encouraging the view that although things are bad, it's better than the alternative and hey, isn't it better to stick with the devil you know (aka: cowardice). The most prominent example was Stalin's Russia, where a surprisingly large number of echoes can be found in Labour's population control techniques. I'd simply encourage anyone who is disillusioned with the current government to vote for someone else (anyone!): you may end up surprised (as for people who aren't disillusioned with the current government: well frankly, you're a bunch of blind idiots who clearly chase shadows and deserve everything you're destined to be put through by your wonderful Mr Brown. Needed to be said).
Otherwise, the Lib-Dems have essentially ruled themselves out for so many reasons (though none anywhere near as bad as the aforementioned), not least their hopeless immigration policies, their antedeluvian leader and the fact that they seem to stay completely silent when they should be taking Labour to task for their ineptitude. Despite my initial loathing of Cameron, I've actually come to think quite a bit of him in recent weeks. He'd have to be the finest actor this country's ever produced to deliver a seventy minute speech without a script as earnestly as he did if he was being insincere (his body language was pretty much flawless). His policies have been good, even if some of the financial estimates are a bit overenthusiastic (populist yes: but he had to stave off an election somehow and there's not much point focusing on things no-one would really care about). He needs to establish exactly what he stands for, but there's no point in doing that until closer to election time unless he wants to see more policies stolen a la green movement and inheritance tax reforms. I also like the fact he has William Hague in his government (whom I have always liked although he was let down at the crucial time by the ineptitude of those around him), although he also has Iain and Duncan Smith which is less encouraging! I think Cameron will make a very strong PM and so far, he has my vote.
Linear Mode
