Money

[Quizmonster]

"There's no country, really, that can afford another fiscal stimulus. They've all run out of money." (David Cameron)
Good grief! If Gordon Brown - rather than the casino bankers - was responsible for Britain's current financial position, does this mean he was moonlighting as chancellor/leader everywhere?

[Gromit]

Translation:

Every country is in the same mess. Brown just happened to be leader when the bankers dumped on us all. So it doesn't really make sense to blame Brown.

[DTCwordfan]

He sold the Gold

He stitched up Iceland

He caused the Pound to weaken

Then they had a deliberate spend of the little money that they had. That pudding Byrne ought to be dismissed from ever beingan MP for that note he left in the Treasury - and Brown was his boss.

Ought to be done for Treason

[Zeuhl]

It will be a long time before anyone can use the terms 'prudent' or 'prudence' without prompting derision.

Especially Scotsmen with speech impediments.

[ABerrant]

History graduate and politics lecturer "An end to Boom and Bust" Brown (it's always useful to remind everybody that there is not one shred of economics education in his background) was the steward of the UK's finances for 10 years and was therefore supposed to be overseeing the bankers e.g. reigning in their excessive behaviour - that is where his blame lays.

[ABerrant]

* reining in...

[emmie]

Yet i have read enough threads on here praising Brown to the high heavens, well this is a turn up for the books. If i wasn't so tired, its been a long day, id throw my hat in the air and say yipee. Gromit who would blame Brown, well lots would believe it or not, Chancellor then PM, Ab is right, at his door, the bankers could have and should have been dealt with, but were given free rein and as to Byrne he should be told to go and never darken the door of politics ever again.

[jno]

the bankers were given free rein by Thatcher (the "big bang" City deregulation). US banks then pleaded with Washington to be let off the leash too so they could compete, and they were. And so here we are.

[BayBoy1]

SPOT ON JNO ...THATCHER STARTED THE BALL ROLLING LOADS OF MONEY....

[askyourgran]

Thatcher may have started something, but she did not leave the country up to its neck in debt, twice over, as the Labour Party have done each time it was in power. Nor was Britains gold reserves and pension pots raided in desperate bid to shore up the economy. Blair/Brown have an awful lot to answer for and I think they should be made an example of. At least Brown has earned the official title of "Britains Worst Prime Minister".

[BayBoy1]

Hitler Tried to sink this country , Thatcher managed to do it. she privatised every thing she could get her hands on.All the Leaders that followed could only re arrange the deck chairs on The Titanic . It has just taken about twenty years for the damage she started to take effect......

[emmie]

what she did was give a good deal of pride back to Britain, they didn't call us the sick man of Europe for nothing, ailing nationalised industries, marxist union leaders, and a can not do attitude, the hardline they took made the unions today look like pussycats. The me generation was in response to a very hard time, called WW2, rationing went on for so long, and eventually people had had enough, prosperity when it came, jobs and a degree of freedom, led to people wanting more, there is nothing wrong with that.

[BayBoy1]

em10 no disrespect to you at all. but you mention ww2 yes it must have been tough then, and we bless every one of them ,they did a very good job defending the country .But Thatcher came to destroy us fifty years later..

[Quizmonster]

I know it's not easy to present an ironical view in writing, but some people seem to have completely misunderstood my question. I specifically intended it to draw attention to the fact that it is utterly brainless just to blame Brown for OUR financial state, given that - according to Cameron himself - every OTHER country is in the same condition...and I know Brown wasn't chancellor/leader anywhere else!

DTC, if you care to read the Wikipedia article on Reginald Maudling, Tory Chancellor, you will find that he left a note for the incoming Labour one, James Callaghan. It read, "Good luck, old cock. Sorry to leave it in such a mess." I realise most right-wingers have little if any memory beyond about a decade, but can you really see much difference between his note and Byrne's? Click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Maudling and read the last sentence in the section headed ‘Chancellor of the Exchequer'.

Well said to those of you who got my point.

[Gromit]

I'm not sure Byrne's note was so bad.

We had borrowed and spent £Billions buying banks we did not want. "Sorry, there's no money left" we seem to be an accurate summary of the situation.

"Your money has been swallowed by fat cats" would also have summed things up.

http://www.guardian.c...-byrne-note-successor

[Quizmonster]

Byrne's note was virtually identical in effect to Maudling's, as outlined above.
I readily appreciate that not everyone is old enough to recall political matters in 1964, but I have to say it gives me great pleasure to point out to someone younger - which I assume DTcrosswordfan to be - that Tory MPs are just as likely to leave jokey notes to their successors as Labour ones. Perhaps those of us who were around back then had more of a sense of humour.

[jno]

I hadn't heard of Maudling's note myself, QM, but you're quite right - it's no more than a sardonic (and reasonably accurate) note from a defeated man to his hopeful successor, exactly the same as Byrne's. Neither was even close to being scandalous.

[DTCwordfan]

It was a iconic moment of a disastrous Government. One of the worse that we have ever had.

There have been good an bad Governments on either side - this gets me on a bugbear of mine and that is if we pay peanuts we get monkeys as our politicians.

Time is right for a major rethink of our Government and maybe Alex Salmond will do us a favour if his referendum does go for a more independent Scotland.

i.e. why in feck do we need a HofC with more delegates than the US congress does for a population that is 5 to 6 times ours. We don't.

Cut the house to 300 - 200 first p[ast the post and 100 by proportional representation (and in doing so putting up some interesting dilemmas if you, as a candidate, stand for the seat or the proportional list). Double or treble the salaries as well and attract in a better genre of a candidate.

The "Mother of all Parliaments" has been slowly rotting and a major restructuring is needed - it is almost as bereft as its early 19thC counterpart and the restructuring under the Reform Act of 1832 which saw the first sweep away of the rotten seats.

It will take inspired leadership, something that no party seems to have at the moment. Unfortunately for the suffering electorate of this once "proud and fine" land.

[Quizmonster]

I totally agree, DTc, that Sir Alec Douglas-Home's government was disastrous and "one of the worst that we have ever had." That IS what you meant, isn't it? (Written 'tongue-in-cheek', as it were.)
I even quite agree with much of the rest of your latest response above.