Labour isn't working

[zathras]

Lies, damned lies and statistics.

Another figure you could use to promote NL would be the employment figures - we now have more people in work than at any other time since figures began.

Don't want to promote NL as a roaring success by any means, but it's all relative - cherry pickking a few stats doesn't make them suddenly the worst or best.

And BTW Some of us still remember the dark days under major, i.e. 3 1/2 mill unemployed, interest rates up in double figures and inflation almost near 10% - to say NL inherited a good eceonomy is ignoring the fact that the tories created those issues also - from my undertsanding politicians have a lot less influence on economics than we imagine.

I'm still tempted to vote for DC but not on the basis of a few choice stats.

Unemployment was no way 3million when John Major was in power than it dropped by 2million when New Labour came to power!

Further to make a comment like that you must be fairly young and therefore unable to remember the last Labour Government - the one lead by a certain Callaghan and kept in power by a coalition with the Liberals. The increase in unemployment was caused by correcting the failings in our own manufacturing industries. That themselves was down to over regulation (something the current New Labour government is repeating). It was also down to the power of the Unions. 10 years before the miners strike the miners actually brought down the government - that is how powerful they were!

When the Tories lost power they had already corrected those anomolies - to the point the Japanese actually described their Sunderland plant as one of the most productive! Further the reason Gordon Brown has had a good run is purely down to the work of the preceeding two Tory Chancellor's!

Interest rates were high but then they were all over the world. Further the highest interest rates came out of the failure of the ERM which was artificially kept up by the Central Banks propping up currencies with higher interest rates.

You can hardly complain about the last Tory administrations, until you are position to remember the last Labour administration - so bad that the IMF had to step in to bail it out!

Since New Labour came to power our pensions have been wiped out, inward investment has been going down, any reduction has been down to the growth in Public sector jobs which has been magnitudes more than in the Private Sector - jobs lost over the same period in the private sector far outstrip those created and had there not been the growth in public sector ones unemployment would have been going up far longer.

It's worth noting that the current run of increased unemployment is longer than that during the 1992 recession.

[Forumbore]

Left wing ideology has never stimulated any economy. All it does is feed off (as parasites do) free market economies that have sprung out of counjtries that have cleared govts out of the way.

[hattra]

Lies, damned lies and statistics.

Another figure you could use to promote NL would be the employment figures - we now have more people in work than at any other time since figures began.

Don't want to promote NL as a roaring success by any means, but it's all relative - cherry pickking a few stats doesn't make them suddenly the worst or best.

And BTW Some of us still remember the dark days under major, i.e. 3 1/2 mill unemployed, interest rates up in double figures and inflation almost near 10% - to say NL inherited a good eceonomy is ignoring the fact that the tories created those issues also - from my undertsanding politicians have a lot less influence on economics than we imagine.

I'm still tempted to vote for DC but not on the basis of a few choice stats.

Actually the Tories under Thatcher and Major managed the same trick - despite having 3 million unemployed, they also managed to end up with about 3 million more in work at the end of their government than at the beginning.

They also inherited inflation at somewhere between 21% & 24% - interest rates at 16%, and an economy that was flat broke and had been put on "special measures" by the IMF (and a top rate of income tax of 98% - which is why all the real money went elsewhere).

And the first thing NL did when it came to power was say that it was sticking to the Tory spending plans for at least the first two years of their term.

IIRC, it was only after the two years was up that Gordo started to loose his grip

[xoggoth]

What an old fart you must be Z! Glad I'm still 32, never heard of Calaghan, before my time.

[BobTheCrate]

10 years before the miners strike the miners actually brought down the government [Ted Heath] - that is how powerful they were!

The fascinating thing about that was the then NUM leader, Joe Gormley, was considered a moderate even by many a Tory.

A few decades later Tony Benn reflects (as he does) on Tony Blair's New Labour being more right wing than Ted Heath's Tory Gov't.

[Hart-floot]

A few decades later Tony Benn reflects (as he does) on Tony Blair's New Labour being more right wing than Ted Heath's Tory Gov't.

Probably apt today - New Labour appear to be more 'right' wing on most issues than Cameron's Tories? They're even more pro Bush than Cameron!