There was a reason for Cameron’s pisspoor performance in the first debate, and that reason will be repeated in the second. Cameron is being coached for the debates by the Hon. Anthony Charles Gordon-Lennox, son of Lord Sir (sic) Nicholas Charles Gordon-Lennox, grandson of the Duke of Richmond. The Hon. Anthony Charles Gordon-Lennox is the Tories’ communications guru. Tax dodger in chief Lord Ashcroft presumably thinks the Hon. Anthony is worth the £322,196 pa the Tories pay him.
The Hon. Anthony is, naturally, an old Etonian. This is no laughing matter. Cameron evidently has a visceral need to be surrounded only by people of precisely his own caste. Do we really need an 18th century government? Hence his obsession with tax breaks for the ultra rich. Hence also his inability to communicate anything to anyone who doesn’t think yes is pronounced yaaah.
Thatcher, Major, Tebbit and Clarke actually knew what everyday life for ordinary people was, whatever their peculiar political beliefs. Today Cameron. Osborne and Gordon-Lennox will be knitting their noble brows to work out why forelocks are not being tugged.
They are about to get a pitchfork up the arse.
MJ, I don’t think the financial meltdown was “a global event” at all, although you might be forgiven for thinking it was if you have listened to too many of Gordon Brown’s speeches lately (or his flunkeys’ for that matter). There is clearly a rule that the financial crisis cannot be mentioned unless it is immediately prefaced with “global”. Kinda like global warming or the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes: not our fault, but if it is the blame is spread so thinly it can’t be attached to individuals.
Actually, as one might expect given the source, that is the exact opposite of the truth. The credit crunch was home-grown in the USA, and exported worldwide – and of course among the first (and most eager) victims was the UK, where we cannot wait to lap up the USA’s freshest vomit. Private Eye (often a more reliable source than the “broadsheets”) notes in its latest issue that, when Lehman Brothers could not get even the venial and pathetic US authorities to agree to its latest bending of the law, it simply turned to a London law firm which quickly did its bidding. All this happened on Gordon Brown’s watch, and with his smiling approval. At the opening of Lehman’s flashy new European HQ in Canary Wharf, 5 April 2004, Brown said:
“Lehman Brothers is a great company today that can both look backwards with pride and look forwards with hope. And in wishing Lehman Brothers the success it deserves for its future, let me thank you for the privilege of being here and formally declare this new building open.”
It turned out that, a few short years later, Lehman Brothers did get “the success it deserves for its future”. But the Great Prognosticator never saw it coming for a moment. And now he is trying to convince us he was against deregulation from the start!
Tom Welsh
Ah,there we have it. You see it was the “Chicago school” that started the present day…The Accelerating World Financial Crisis/Collapse… they were the ones that were the disciples of Milton Friedman, free-market economist who inspired Reagan and Thatcher who led us into this mass. The “Chicago school” is the essence of pure evil and will/have never changed. New Labour kept true to Thatcher deregulated finance model. I leave some links below for you to read…
http://tinyurl.com/yber858
“Ian Gilmour served as defence secretary during Edward Heath’s administration, before becoming Lord Privy Seal in Margaret Thatcher’s first government”
“In September 1981 he was sacked by Mrs Thatcher and remained a prominent critic of what he regarded as extreme Thatcherite policies”
“He responded to his sacking by Mrs Thatcher by issuing a statement declaring that she was steering “full speed ahead for the rocks”…
tinyurl.com/6cmprl
“Death Agony of Thatcher Deregulated Finance Model”…
tinyurl.com/cdtuw4
Yes. The finacial meltdown may have been a US/UK thing really and not global at all, but the idea that a Tory government would have stopped it needs a bit of explanation.
“The credit crunch was home-grown in the USA, and exported worldwide – and of course among the first (and most eager) victims was the UK, where we cannot wait to lap up the USA’s freshest vomit.”
Tom Welsh
Thatcher started this and exported it to the USA and then the world…
The influence that Thatcher had over Reagan as regards economic thinking (or lack off) was key to todays events.
“They really respected each other’s views, and if that is not influence, I don’t know what is”.
“President Reagan said: “We met before she became prime minister and I became president, and the moment we met, we discovered that we shared quite similar views of government and freedom. Margaret ended our first meeting by telling me that we must stand together, and that is exactly what we have done ever since”…
http://tinyurl.com/2266eb
technicolour: just watched that video. I thought it was quite amusing.
As for the Chicago School, or whatever they are called, I must say that I think all economics is modern-day shamanism. Someone once said, “If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, it would be a very good thing”; I think that about sums it up.
I’m reminded of the remark about John Kenneth Galbraith that his theories were made up of parts as exquisitely designed and machined as the finest Swiss watch; but when put together, they could not tell the time. That’s spot on, too. Economists see patterns and model them mathematically; and very often the patterns are real. But sadly they cannot hope to make their models complex enough to predict the real world accurately. As long as economics cannot predict (and it cannot) it will remain pretty useless – except for its practitioners, many of whom have become extremely rich and famous. No matter what your views, you can always find a squad of famous economists to support them. And if you wake up tomorrow and find your views have done a U-turn, why there is another squad of economists to explain why things must be so.
Tom Welsh
I saw this coming in 1981. Please don’t tell me others much more clever then me didn’t see it. This was planned and planned well. Deregulation and globalisation in a world where world resources are being exhausted was sheer insanity the outcome was so predictable. Don’t get me wrong we were always going to go where we are today but what Thatcher done was to climb out onto the wing off the jet that was already hurling to the ground and strapped a turbo onto the engine.
About sums it up.
Craig, it is surely gratifying for you as an honourable defender of the generic underdog to note Cameron’s promise to “empower” this racially alien minority group – one which, on a per capita percentage population basis is woefully under – represented in Business, the Law, Medicine, Media, Academe and Politics :
http://www.totallyjewish.com/news/national/c-13853/cameron-i-will-empower-uk-jews/
Sadly,Craig,your paltry observations on Singapore owe little to an understanding of that city’s history or colonialism.