Ha de ha ha - Tory policies

[Ardesco]

One thing that makes me wonder is this obsession with the base rate of interest.

It would be interesting to take the relevant base rates of interest and work out the respective costs in both £ and % of gross pay. Then compare this to the amount of tax taken from gross pay (again £ and %) and see how much your average joe had left over at the end of the month.

I suspect that once you take everything into account most people will find that they have a larger amount of money left at the end of the month to piss up the wall before Nu Liemore got into power, however that is just a guess.

Anybody want to work out the figures?

[mjshrimpton]

Been babysitting (good rates and you get to pretend to be the Crazy Frogs car which is fun.........)

Impressed with this thread and the lucidity compared to the usual dross.

Not sure about the IMF bailout being entirely the governments fault, as there were several things all going on at the same time, including the global financial markets attitude to anything left wing at the time (which is another reason GB cosied up to them once in power), but that was a tulip government and no mistake, and is happily consigned to the dustbin of history.

I just happen to think the tories were a shower as well, and dont believe they will repeal IR35.

I also remember the headlines about the bodies in the morgues, seeing the green goddesses etc (I was 10).

Too much of that has now passed into the national psyche and just gets trotted out as accepted fact in the same way that K*****n M****zies falsehoods on the hillsboro tragedy have become fact when they were lies spun by the powers that be, pure and simple, as has been proven many times over.

Congrats to all for a good fact and opinion laden debate, and no personal slanging, but no-one has come up with the killer comment to make me believe regime change will be any good, for the country as a whole, or contractors as the selfish individuals GB would like to think we are.

[richard-af]

Impressed with this thread and the lucidity compared to the usual dross.

How very dare you!

[zathras]

I also remember the headlines about the bodies in the morgues, seeing the green goddesses etc (I was 10).

Too much of that has now passed into the national psyche and just gets trotted out as accepted fact

I'm assuming that you think this was an urban myth by that comment. Far from it.

Leicester Square was piled up with Rubbish when used as an emergency refuse center see http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/ilove/year.../rubbish.shtml

Gravediggers went on strike in Liverpool & Tameside; prompting one local health official said that burials at sea were being considered if the strike became prolonged (see http://libcom.org/history/1978-1979-...-of-discontent). This strike meant that bodies were not being buried while it occured. (see http://www.answers.com/topic/winter-of-discontent).

So these stories were by no means mythical.

The increasing unemployment that occured at the start of Mrs Thatcher's regime was in part caused by correcting the failures of the previous administration. Our industry had become inefficient and bedevilled by regulation. It cost far more to produce an item in the UK than other places. Had our industry not been streamlined then it was going to fail or take increasing amounts of Government subsidy.

When the Tories came to power unemployment was increasing, we had high inflation, productivity was abysmal and the country was known as the sick man of Europe.

When they left power inflation and unemployment were going down as were interest rates. Our industry was so efficient that Nissan described it's Sunderland Plant as one if not the most efficient in the whole group. We were going up the productivity tables as well

If you look at the Tories through the prism of the press at the time you got none of this, just endless stories about ministers jumping into bed with people
not all of whom were their own spouses! This 'sleeze' was then associated with the Tories from then. Very little however was financial (OK Cash for Questions is one of the few exceptions to that).

Now here we are after 10 years of Labour Inflation and interest rates are going up. Unemployment is at best stagnant. Productivity is down, taxes are up and despite all the extra money being spent; Children are still entering Secondary School illiterate, nurses and doctors are still being made redundant. The State takes even more of our money so the overall tax burden has gone up under Labour (over 40%) and is due to overtake Germany - if it has not already.

This country was in a far better state when John Major left office and it is not nearly in so good a condition now after 10 years of New Labour.