General Election Predictions

When Gordon Brown announced the sale of 400 tonnes of public gold he went against protocol and announced the sale in advance.  This meant the market knew it was going to get flooded and the result was, gold was driven down to it's lowest price, it is even proven in the link you posted, thank you.  The second blunder was selling the gold via auction this enabled big banks whose network of smaller bank clients and private orders allowed them to determine the exact price at which demand met with supply. Proof of this is that auction price in the morning depressed the afternoon sales.  I Wonder what was said in that meeting with Goldman Sachs and the Treasury.

Gold in the vault is an asset, cobwebs in the corner are not, what don't you understand about finance.

The link about Brown was a comical addition, I base my thoughts on Brown through family members who are Scottish (Labour), living in Scotland and Scottish customers living in Lincolnshire.  I haven't met anyone or spoken to anyone who is Scottish that had a kind word to say about Gordon Brown.  

Peter Hambro who is a leading figure in the London gold market exposed exactly what Brown did and why he did it and that the British public had been sold well short.

Who gave Brown the authorisation to sell public gold.

I'm not saying we wouldn't have supported the yanks but I can tell you from experience it wouldn't have been to the extent Blair went.  I also know the costs involved with operations. it costs over £30k a day to keep a Sentry aircraft (plane with a big smartie on it) in the air for a day, it costs around £650k to £1.2m for a 2-4 week exercise consisting of equipment with around 50 - 80 personnel.

I previously stated that Blair cost the UK tax payers billions and I am proved right with your link, thank you again.

Afghanistan cost UK tax payers over £37 billion
Iraq cost UK tax payers around £10 billion

The cost will creep up because of war widows pensions and disability pensions from those conflicts isn't included.

I have never voted Conservative, I have always voted Labour even at ward level. The country is in so much debt I am scared shitless and very little scares me.

The best way to get a problem solved is a workplace is to give it to the laziest person, they'll usually find the easiest and cheapest solution. If you have a financial problem you don't give it to someone bangs his head with one hand then throws the gold up in the air with the other.

Quoted from Maringer

Unfortunately, you've bought into the Conservative nonsense that the last government massively overspent and this is why austerity is required. This is simply not true, to be blunt, it's a lie. At the point that the financial crisis hit in 2008, the ratio of the national debt to GDP as a percentage was lower than when Labour took office in 1997. It was also lower than the US, France and those economic no-hopers, Germany. Here's a link to a simple chart (if you can be bothered to look at it):

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/debt-and-growth-in-the-g7/

In 2007, before the financial crisis had hit, the Conservatives had pledged to match the Labour government's spending plans. I can't see any mention from Osborne in this article that they thought the Labour government was spending too much at the time:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6975536.stm

The financial crisis came in 2008 after the markets crashed due, in large part, to the lack of regulation which was begun under Thatcher in the 1980s (and not reversed under the subsequent Labour government). I don't recall the Conservatives predicting such a crisis at all and, in 2007, they were even arguing that we should deregulate the financial markets even further:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1560100/Tories-plan-14bn-cuts-to-red-tape.html

The recession, subsequent huge deficits and spending on bank bailouts led to the massive increase in debt and came entirely because of the financial crash which was not foreseen by anyone at all in the major parties or the financial sector.

A complete cluster-intercourse, for certain, but it is a bald-faced lie for Osborne and Cameron to claim that the economic crisis and their subsequent choice for austerity is anything to do with previous Labour spending. It's just not true. The fact that the right-wing dominated media doesn't point this out is understandable, but the acquiescence of the BBC is just amazing (and depressing) to see. Still, perhaps it's not too surprising when you consider that the BBC's political editor, Nick Robinson was head of the Young Conservative Party when at Oxford University and subsequently was Chairman of the National Young Conservatives Party. Hmmm. Wonder if he ever shows bias in his reporting?

Osborne's choice to implement austerity almost took us back into recession until he quietly reduce the rate of cuts whilst still claiming his "Plan A" was working. Nobody in the media seemed to question him on this. Regardless, all the economic text books show that austerity during a recovery is absolutely idiotic and this is why, despite his cuts, the drop in wages and living standards, debt continues to increase enormously. In fact, in the past 5 years, this government has borrowed more than every previous Labour government combined.

The amazing thing is that the majority of people have been hoodwinked to believe so many lies - Osborne is so political that pretty much every time he's opened his mouth in recent months, an untruth has come out, yet he's still considered more competent on the economy than the Labour party!

That said, I do wonder what on Earth the two Eds have been doing over the past few years? Surely it wouldn't be difficult to point out the many lies that have been told, yet they've kept shtum! Bizarre.  

As I was reading this I was thinking why on earth if you can put forward such a creditable reasoned argument, why can't someone from the opposition??

Maybe though this is why everyone is so disillusioned with the current state of affairs...there seems to be no credible, outstanding individual politicians with the nous or the balls to try and get the public onside and to work for the good of the country and its electorate, rather than just keeping to the party line

Quoted from Marinerz93

When Gordon Brown announced the sale of 400 tonnes of public gold he went against protocol and announced the sale in advance.  This meant the market knew it was going to get flooded and the result was, gold was driven down to it's lowest price, it is even proven in the link you posted, thank you.  The second blunder was selling the gold via auction this enabled big banks whose network of smaller bank clients and private orders allowed them to determine the exact price at which demand met with supply. Proof of this is that auction price in the morning depressed the afternoon sales.  I Wonder what was said in that meeting with Goldman Sachs and the Treasury.

Gold in the vault is an asset, cobwebs in the corner are not, what don't you understand about finance.

The link about Brown was a comical addition, I base my thoughts on Brown through family members who are Scottish (Labour), living in Scotland and Scottish customers living in Lincolnshire.  I haven't met anyone or spoken to anyone who is Scottish that had a kind word to say about Gordon Brown.  

Peter Hambro who is a leading figure in the London gold market exposed exactly what Brown did and why he did it and that the British public had been sold well short.

Who gave Brown the authorisation to sell public gold.

I'm not saying we wouldn't have supported the yanks but I can tell you from experience it wouldn't have been to the extent Blair went.  I also know the costs involved with operations. it costs over £30k a day to keep a Sentry aircraft (plane with a big smartie on it) in the air for a day, it costs around £650k to £1.2m for a 2-4 week exercise consisting of equipment with around 50 - 80 personnel.

I previously stated that Blair cost the UK tax payers billions and I am proved right with your link, thank you again.

Afghanistan cost UK tax payers over £37 billion
Iraq cost UK tax payers around £10 billion

The cost will creep up because of war widows pensions and disability pensions from those conflicts isn't included.

I have never voted Conservative, I have always voted Labour even at ward level. The country is in so much debt I am scared shitless and very little scares me.

The best way to get a problem solved is a workplace is to give it to the laziest person, they'll usually find the easiest and cheapest solution. If you have a financial problem you don't give it to someone bangs his head with one hand then throws the gold up in the air with the other.

Whatever the good and bad about Brown's sale of gold! (Always my favourite Spandau Ballet song) it pales into insignificance against the Tories sale of utilities, B.T. under the Evil One and latterly the Post Office at a price far below the "market value"....

Every P.M. since WW2 has seen fit to take us into various conflicts. I'm certainly no defender of Blair but he did at least by virtue of The Good Friday Agreement end the troubles in N. Ireland whatever you may think of the terms. For me only Harold Wilson has stood up to the Yanks-refusing to make a concrete offer to join them in the Vietnam War (Now THAT would have been a disaster!!)

Quoted from Marinerz93

When Gordon Brown announced the sale of 400 tonnes of public gold he went against protocol and announced the sale in advance.  This meant the market knew it was going to get flooded and the result was, gold was driven down to it's lowest price, it is even proven in the link you posted, thank you.  The second blunder was selling the gold via auction this enabled big banks whose network of smaller bank clients and private orders allowed them to determine the exact price at which demand met with supply. Proof of this is that auction price in the morning depressed the afternoon sales.  I Wonder what was said in that meeting with Goldman Sachs and the Treasury.

Gold in the vault is an asset, cobwebs in the corner are not, what don't you understand about finance.

The link about Brown was a comical addition, I base my thoughts on Brown through family members who are Scottish (Labour), living in Scotland and Scottish customers living in Lincolnshire.  I haven't met anyone or spoken to anyone who is Scottish that had a kind word to say about Gordon Brown.  

Peter Hambro who is a leading figure in the London gold market exposed exactly what Brown did and why he did it and that the British public had been sold well short.

Who gave Brown the authorisation to sell public gold.

I'm not saying we wouldn't have supported the yanks but I can tell you from experience it wouldn't have been to the extent Blair went.  I also know the costs involved with operations. it costs over £30k a day to keep a Sentry aircraft (plane with a big smartie on it) in the air for a day, it costs around £650k to £1.2m for a 2-4 week exercise consisting of equipment with around 50 - 80 personnel.

I previously stated that Blair cost the UK tax payers billions and I am proved right with your link, thank you again.

Afghanistan cost UK tax payers over £37 billion
Iraq cost UK tax payers around £10 billion

The cost will creep up because of war widows pensions and disability pensions from those conflicts isn't included.

I have never voted Conservative, I have always voted Labour even at ward level. The country is in so much debt I am scared shitless and very little scares me.

The best way to get a problem solved is a workplace is to give it to the laziest person, they'll usually find the easiest and cheapest solution. If you have a financial problem you don't give it to someone bangs his head with one hand then throws the gold up in the air with the other.

I'd heard rumours about the Goldman Sachs stuff. Here's the 'best' source I've found for them:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/f.....-a-knock-down-price/

A blog from a few years ago which talks about rumours regarding the sale. Rumours and hearsay. Nothing more. You've convinced yourself that there was definitely something dodgy going on behind the scenes when there is absolutely no evidence that this was the case. The way in which the gold was sold was mildly convoluted but, in the grand scheme of things, it made little real difference to the price received at that time. Here is what the BoE says about the sales:

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/markets/Pages/forex/reserves/goldsales.aspx

The money received from selling the gold was invested in interest-bearing foreign currency assets. Not frittered away on quangos or whatever. In other words, something which generated a return instead of sitting there inertly and costing money to store. No conspiracy there, that I can see. If you want to argue it was a bad decision, that's your choice, but I'd argue it was just unlucky timing. Do you really think that if there was a shred of evidence of malfeasance by Brown and his government, the Tories wouldn't have been jumping up and down making hay about it? If there was any truth about the sale secretly bailing out US banks, it would have gleefully been pointed out that he hadn't learned the lessons when the financial crisis came around in 2008. No, I don't believe it.

You ask who gave Brown the authorisation to sell the gold? Pretty obviously, the First Lord of the Treasury! The same as who gave Ted Heath authorisation to sell a load of gold off 30 years earlier!

As regards Brown's apparent unpopularity in Scotland, if this is the case, how did the generally unpopular Labour government manage to increase their proportion of the vote there by 2.5% in 2010? And why was it seen as a big boost to the 'No' campaign for him to begin making appearances before the independence referendum last year?

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a fan of Brown as a Prime Minister (not decisive enough most of the time and second-guessing himself from the off), but your narrative that he was a terrible, wasteful Chancellor who did nothing right is simply not true. In fact, he actually made a pretty good fist of it went everything went mammaries-up in 2008 and his actions helped to form a consensus of sorts amongst the various G7 countries which led to some stimulus to alleviate some of the worst effects of the recession. Politically, on the other hand, he wasn't well-equipped to be a Prime Minister.

As the figures I've linked to have shown, he didn't overspend enormously (as the Tories would have you believe), and he wasn't the cause of the recession (as the disingenuous Tories would have you believe). In comparison to Osborne, a staggeringly cynical and incompetent Chancellor, he wasn't too bad.

It must be said, I'm pretty amazed that you think that the Conservatives wouldn't have entered the same wars as the Labour government and to the same extent. In the 2003 Commons motion about military action in Iraq, 139 Labour MPs voted against the war in comparison to just 15 Conservatives! The current Conservative-led government voted for airstrikes in Libya and was defeated in their relatively recent motion for military action in Syria. Just why would you think they wouldn't have followed the Yanks in the same way that Blair and Co did?

Don't worry about the debt. It's not important at the moment, despite what Osborne and the media would have you think. The cost of government borrowing is incredibly low at the moment and it set to stay that way for a good time yet so it is more important to get a proper recovery going rather than cutting back on the size of the state further which the Conservatives apparently plan to do (though they still claim to be planning further tax cuts - strange, eh?). Increased tax receipts from a recovery will reduce the deficit and once the recovery has kicked in, then we can then think about perhaps paying off some of the debt.

Oh, if you ever hear any politician comparing the UK to Greece, you know they are a devious lying fornicator. We aren't going to run out of money - Sterling is a fiat currency which we control so we can literally print more money to pay off debts as necessary. All the bullshit about "the nation's credit card is maxxed out" is utter nonsense. Greece don't have control their own currency and that is why they are screwed. As long as we have people willing to buy bonds (and they are still queueing up), we're not in any serious trouble.

Japan's debt to GDP ratio is over 200% and they still have low costs of borrowing so we're not at a level where we need to worry as yet. As the past has shown, high debt levels can be paid down relatively easily (and inflated away) in good times so getting a proper recovery is the most important thing.

Quoted from FishOutOfWater

As I was reading this I was thinking why on earth if you can put forward such a creditable reasoned argument, why can't someone from the opposition??

You and me both, mate.

Balls has a First Class degree in PPE (specialising in economics) from Oxford University, studied and taught economics at Harvard University in the US and worked (briefly) as a leader writer in the Financial Times before starting his political career.

Osborne has a degree in Modern History and never worked anywhere but Conservative Central Office before he became an MP.

Ed Miliband graduated from Oxford in Politics and Economics but subsequently studied at the LSE and left with a M.Sc in economics.

So the question is, why do the two Eds let Osborne get away with some of the nonsense he spouts and why haven't they pointed out that the claims about the economic failings of the previous Labour government are mostly untrue?

Beats me.

I'd like the Conservative Party to win, mostly because the other parties appear to me to have no idea. My prediction? I think they will win. I just worry it will be a very poor majority or even worse, they have to form a coalition.

One point I'd like to make is how Cod Almighty seems to be politically weighted. I'd really rather they stuck to GTFC and football. I know John Fenty has decided to join the local politicians but Cod Almighty has a definite Labour swing that is mirrored throughout Grimsby. Nationally, Labour were in power for 13 years during one of the greatest economic growth periods the country had experienced, and yet Grimsby did not - in my eyes - benefit at all. Also, what has a Labour Council done for Grimsby? The crazy paving?

Why there is such weighting on who is in power does confuse me. I read a few history books and everything happening today has happened before. Politicians wanting to stay in power, people ill suited for the job selected because of connections rather than ability. It seems to me who is in post rather than their politics is more important.

I have a friend that once told me about a band called the Mariana Trench. When asked why they were called so, he said "because they're so deep". I find every political party today very shallow. They're not overly concerned about the Party line, more so about winning votes. Why should I vote for Lib Dem, Labour, Conservative when it's likely they're going to end up in a coalition, making concessions and not actually doing what I voted for. The system is broken when everything is a compromise and nothing coalesces towards the national interest.

.

Quoted from Maringer

The recession, subsequent huge deficits and spending on bank bailouts led to the massive increase in debt and came entirely because of the financial crash which was not foreseen by anyone at all in the major parties or the financial sector.

Fitch Ratings gave out many warnings about Icelandic Banks...the same banks our Glorious local authority had deposited in.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/mar/26/uk-local-government-icelandic-deposits

Quoted from Southwark Mariner

I'd like the Conservative Party to win, mostly because the other parties appear to me to have no idea. My prediction? I think they will win. I just worry it will be a very poor majority or even worse, they have to form a coalition.

One point I'd like to make is how Cod Almighty seems to be politically weighted. I'd really rather they stuck to GTFC and football. I know John Fenty has decided to join the local politicians but Cod Almighty has a definite Labour swing that is mirrored throughout Grimsby. Nationally, Labour were in power for 13 years during one of the greatest economic growth periods the country had experienced, and yet Grimsby did not - in my eyes - benefit at all. Also, what has a Labour Council done for Grimsby? The crazy paving?

Why there is such weighting on who is in power does confuse me. I read a few history books and everything happening today has happened before. Politicians wanting to stay in power, people ill suited for the job selected because of connections rather than ability. It seems to me who is in post rather than their politics is more important.

I have a friend that once told me about a band called the Mariana Trench. When asked why they were called so, he said "because they're so deep". I find every political party today very shallow. They're not overly concerned about the Party line, more so about winning votes. Why should I vote for Lib Dem, Labour, Conservative when it's likely they're going to end up in a coalition, making concessions and not actually doing what I voted for. The system is broken when everything is a compromise and nothing coalesces towards the national interest.

You are, of course, welcome to vote for whoever you like.

What I'm interested in is why you think the Conservatives have any idea. As my other posts in this thread have noted, Osborne has been a catastrophically bad Chancellor, an appalling failure even on his own terms. Somehow (and I'd argue it is with the collusion of the ranks of the right-wing media and the ineptitude of the BBC), he's persuaded the public he's doing a good job! Here's a good article pointing out the pertinent facts from that well-known left-wing paper, the Telegraph   :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fin.....s-wins-politics.html

Of anyone in government, Osborne is the living embodiment of your comment about, "people ill suited for the job selected because of connections rather than ability". He's never had a job anywhere, but started working at Conservative Central Office pretty much immediately after graduating. I just can't imagine why you would want him back in power?

Regarding your comments about the 'New' Labour government not achieving much, they actually did a decent job in many respects though, as with all governments, failed in others. Bear in mind that the New Labour bunch are basically very centrist and not really left-wing at all, as is noticeable by people like Milburn and McBride openly criticising Miliband and Balls this close to the election - it's almost as if they want the Conservatives to win! New Labour continued many of the policies of the previous Conservative government and their failure to deal with issues such as proper banking regulation (along with the rest of the world), led to the financial crisis in 2008. The worrying thing is that regulation is still too lax as Brown didn't have the guts to bring in proper legislation and Cameron/Osborne have no interest in doing so. The economic crisis was caused entirely by the financial sector and they've got away pretty much scot-free. Nothing whatsoever was done to try and approach the problems of rising economic inequality, either.

Quoted from Southwark Mariner

Fitch Ratings gave out many warnings about Icelandic Banks...the same banks our Glorious local authority had deposited in.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/mar/26/uk-local-government-icelandic-deposits

It was, indeed, incompetence by the N.E. Lincolnshire council (a Conservative/LibDem coalition at the time) which led to these losses, as it was clear that the Icelandic banks couldn't possibly stay liquid following the events in the banking sector which began in 2007. But you've rather missed my point. Things started to head south in 2007 and continued to worsen throughout 2008, but nobody saw the problems coming before then, especially the rating agencies who were actively complicit by award 'AAA' ratings to all sorts of complex equities which turned out to be almost worthless. Rating agencies are required to some extent, but the sheer incompetence of the Big Three in the lead up to the Great Recession was just breathtaking. It's amazing anybody pays them any attention today.

Best thread on here by a country mile....