The So-Called Recession

[poliphilo]

I was a little surprised at how chipper George Osborne seemed to be about chucking 8 billion in the direction of the Irish banks. I thought there was a squeeze on and we had to save every last penny. 

But then Lord Young explained the situation. What we're suffering is only a "so-called recession" and most people "have never had it so good". Ah, so Cameron's inner circle aren't nearly as worried about the economy as they'd like us to think they are.

They see the recession as a blip; it's manageable- and there's cash down the back of the sofa for the things they really want to do- like helping out their enterprising friends. The crisis talk is to soften up the rest of us for a set of cruel and destructive policies- throwing public servants out of work, dismantling the welfare state, harrassing the weak-  that are a matter of choice, not necessity.

Comments

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Long comment is long, because the least we can do is owe an explanation.

I would like to say that the foolish activity was confined to a small elite and to a great extent it was. But it was an elite tacitly supported by the great majority of Irish people. The constant talk about "getting on the property ladder" between 2004-2008 by friends and colleagues was really bothersome. Even I am not totally off the hook - during the height of the boom I was a systems programmer for a mortgage company. But even though the banks would have given me mortgages for breakfast, dinner and tea, neither I nor Mr Strange was interested in buying some dump worth seven times our combined annual salary, so we stayed away while most people we know bought.

There was a great sense of entitlement, arrogance and racism. Foreigners were treated like shit. There is no other word for it. I worked in a company where a factory floor supervisor (Muslim, but not sure where he was from) was phoned by the plant owner on his hospital bed after being treated for a heart attack. The man in question, a brute, dark-haired, taciturn Paddy to whom the Moonlight Sonata and Yeats would be equal strangers, recently moved to a nice house in Sion Hill where he and his son, whose face was pale, red-headed and wide-mouthed like an extensive coldsore, ran the company. I remember also my German ex complaining that nurses in his hospital made fun of him because he did not own property and they did. That was in 2005. I used to hope they would fall into negative equity fast - but now I realised that all I was wishing for was that having returned to his homeland, he would end up paying their mortgage for them just that bit sooner.

Too many people overextended themselves too much, and that comic fool Ahern, who unfortunately was given the keys to the safe, snarled at anyone who said "this is not sustainable" and told them to commit suicide. No, I'm not joking. I only wish he'd tied the rope around HIS fat neck instead. This attitude, along with the inexplicable voting in of the governing party for the nth time in 2007, made me so fed up with Ireland that I nearly considered leaving the country. Mr Strange was the deciding factor really. So I stayed and watched more and more buildings, zillions of apartments being built while everyone coveted houses, Irish people buying stuff in the Black Sea for profit, and basically all the stupid shit that always happens when you mix low interest rates, a historically oppressed people who haven't owned their own land, and the opportunity to buy it, never mind that it's the size of a postage stamp and the walls are thin and there's rising damp and the sewers aren't completed...then it went on and on until someone turned the tap off - and the whole thing crashed. And I'm sorry for it, sorry for you and all the other people who have to suffer and are not to blame.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

No apology needed.

We've lived through an era of excessive greed- and if you guys went madder than the rest of us it was because you'd been kept hungry for so long- and that's very largely the fault of us English and Scots.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I am tempted to think they got the idea from our so-called conservatives over here. It has been speculated that the reckless military spending spree that Cheney had was an indirect attempt to destroy what little remained of US social programs.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Britain and the USA have been in the grip of right-wing ideologues for a long time now. Cheyney's a particularly hard nut, but he didn't invent this stuff.

[(Anonymous)]

all our savings from throwing people out of work and of benefit cuts will neatly go into Irish banks - is that it? Someone quipped that this might be the case on Have I got News For You. I don't know the figures but if this is near the truth it completely stinks!
Jenny

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Something like that.

We have money to prop up (foreign) banks, but not to sustain our own public services. The government has scared us into accepting their cuts, but the willingness with which they throw money at things they approve of gives the lie to their propaganda.

[ingenious76.livejournal.com]

If the Irish economy collapses so does a lot of trading business. If it is true that we export more than we import, having Ireland fail would have a knock-on effect on the UK economy.

What Young said was crass and stupid. He's admitted it. I'm not sure whats best - help a country out in order to lessen the long-term damage, or just let it fail which could have a catastrophic effect on the EU market, as well as our own. Its not a question of helping out a cosy clique of enterprising friends. Its a question of stopping a country's economy disappearing into oblivion and taking a massive chunk of our and the EU economy with it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

What Young said was the truth as he sees it- and probably as Cameron and Osborne see it too; the mistake was to let the general public in on the secret.

I'm not saying we shouldn't bail out the Irish banks- only that our willingness to do it sits oddly with the message coming out of government that we're skint and need to cut everything to the bone.

[ingenious76.livejournal.com]

But we do need to cut back. Public spending under Labour increased to a level that was unstainable. Thats a fact which a lot of people cannot seem to accept. The so-called boom of the Noughties was built on encouraging people to spend money they may not have had, and as a result, created a mountain of debt that no-one seems prepared to accept needs to be re-paid.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I agree. Other countries have taken the line that the way to get out of a recession is to spend your way out- which is what Roosevelt did in the 30s. I believe this government is using the debt mountain as an excuse for cuts which are actually driven by ideology.

[ingenious76.livejournal.com]

But we can't afford to keep on spending. As I wrote previously, the recession we tipped into in 2008 was based on over-spending. Also, Rooselvelt may have increased public spending in the 30s, but it wasn't the New Deal that pulled America out of the Depresion, it was the involvement in the Second World War.

This Government may be cutting in line with ideology. But the Labour Government overspent in accordance with theirs - a return to the bad old days of tax n' spend and overmanning. I'm not sure which is worse. The former puts people out of work. The latter creates false expectations that eventually have to be dashed.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, the Blair and Brown governments were horrible, but I'm a man of the left and I'd always rather be misruled by Labour than by the Tories.

[ingenious76.livejournal.com]

The key word is "misrule", and it was. The Blair era took us into war, overspent, and did a hatchet job on Education. Then he handed the job to Brown, who proceeded to spend even more. They didn't just misrule, they took the country to the brink of economic collapse. This Government have been left in the position of having to make hard choices, which people will not like. But, regrettably, we are where we are.

Oh, and I forgot that Brown and Blair created an ethos of bullying nannyism in the country. Misrule or borderline dictatoriship? Hmmm.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I know all that. I think Blair and Brown and most of their ministers should be awaiting trial at the Hague. They're criminals- but they're our criminals- my criminals- traitors to the cause rather than downright enemies of the people, like the Tories.

[ingenious76.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but taking us into an illegal war, overspending to the point of bankruptcy and also creating a culture of fear and suspicion in Britain makes them enemies of the people also in my book.

It seems to me you're suggesting they betrayed ideology but didn't betray the people. *Shrugs*

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Put it this way, I expect more from Labour than I do from the Tories. I expect the Tories to be on the side of the military-industrial complex and the bankers and the
billionaires and their newspapers. I doesn't surprise me when they act on behalf of those interests. But when Labour launches a pre-emptive war or gives Bernie Ecclestone a peerage I feel like its a betrayal. Yes, it's naive of me I know.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

As far as I am concerned, Lord Young was right. Baz and I have never made as much money as we do now, and with reduced interest rates we've paid off the mortage. But we represent a subsection of the community. If you are trying to get your first mortgage, or you get thrown out of work, or you end up in negative equity, or you suffer from reduced social services, or you are dependent on earned interest to supplement your pension, it is not going so well.

Lord Young has probaby lived a life of privilege and cannot detach his own experience of the recession from that of other people.

And of course, I lose my job next summer, so I will get my turn too.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

This government is made up of people who have never known what it's like to be out on the edge. Young's a businessman and may have made his own pile (I don't know) but Cameron and Osborne (and Clegg) have all inherited their wealth.

We were driving through the manchester suburbs yesterday and passed building site after building site. It didn't look like the landscape of a recession.

[petercampbell.livejournal.com]

I read somewhere that the amount of goverment debt is the same amount as that we, as a country, owe on our credit cards. That's an entirely different picture from the one that the government is painting.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

Obviously it's not a good thing to be so heavily in debt, but I think this Government is accentuating the negative so it can push through an agenda of cuts for the sake of cuts.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Tories are Tories, and leopards never change their spots. It's all very well dismantling the welfare state, so long as they think through the consequences and put mechanisms in place that enable people to help themselves escape from long-term welfare dependency.

I'm having increasing concerns that these problems aren't being addressed. And I'm quite depressed that the poor old Lib-Dems are being pulled along with the current. I still p****d-off at Labour for getting us into this mess - it's enough to make me consider voting Scot Nat.

Oh, but they backed Donald Trump. So I guess that leaves me with the Greens.

Help!!! I'm running out of options here!!!!!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I believe I've always voted in general elections, but I often wonder why I bother. As Neil Innes put it, "The government always gets in". This time I voted Lib Dem in the belief that they were the least right-wing option- and look what happened!

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

It's such a typically Tory thing to do. They lull you into a sense of false security with their Saruman promises, then sink their teeth into your jugular.

I have a long memory. I remember what happened in the 80s. I cannot forgive, and I cannot forget. Yeah, the public sector has got really fat and bloated under Labour, but... The Tories can't provide us with a panacea to cure all ills. If the workforce must be lean, flexible and mobile forcing people to move to where the jobs are, is it any wonder that social cohesion and the fabric of communities has completely disinetgrated? A mobile work force and a stable community cannot go hand in hand...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Tories don't care about us. They live in a world where everyone they engage with is a millionaire. They can afford to fuck with the fabric of our society because no-one they care about is going to be adversely affected by what they do.

My political loyalties aren't fixed. I wobble about between Labour and the Lib Dems, but I have never voted Tory and never will.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

I agree entirely.