More evidence, if any were needed, that the country is being run by a well-educated fucking idiot.
Cameron complains that he is “disappointed” by the council’s proposals “to make significant cuts to frontline services – from elderly day centres, to libraries, to museums. This is in addition to the unwelcome and counter-productive proposals to close children’s centres across the county.” Why, he asks, has Oxfordshire not focused instead on “making back-office savings”? Why hasn’t it sold off its surplus property? After all, there has been only “a slight fall in government grants in cash terms”. Couldn’t the county “generate savings in a more creative manner”?
Explaining the issue gently, as if to a slow learner, the council leader, Ian Hudspeth, points out that the council has already culled its back-office functions, slashing 40% of its most senior staff and 2,800 jobs in total, with the result that it now spends less on these roles than most other counties. He explains that he has already flogged all the property he can lay hands on, but would like to remind the prime minister that using the income from these sales to pay for the council’s running costs “is neither legal, nor sustainable in the long-term since they are one-off receipts”.
I’m somewhat bemused by the proposed plan to cut sixth form colleges. I thought this government was boasting about the increase in the number of apprenticeships under its watch.
How can young people undergo apprenticeship training if there’s no college to provide the academic element?
Or will they devolve that training to employers, many of whom use the term ‘apprenticeship’ to mean piss poor wages with no training whatsover?
That’s probably nothing more than your basic defund and watch the private sector roll in, as described by Chomsky. Corporate sponsored education is already a big thing over in the USA, and there isn’t a shit neo-liberal idea the Americans have had that their neo-liberal brethren over here haven’t tried to apply.
Workfare, boot camps, privatisation of utilities, health and finally, education. That’s what the free schools are really there for, imo. Foot in the door legislation to allow these kinds of interests in.
To show I’m not blind to ttheir failings, the last Labour government didn’t manage the economy so that we could weather the need to pump billions into a failing banking system caused by a) an economy unusually skewed towards and reliant upon financial services and b) a global banking crisis.
Actually that sounds more sarcastic (slighly) than I wanted it to, and I’d freely acknowledge that Brown was naive in his ignoring the possibility of bust.
But no amount of roof mending would have prepared our country for the scale of mess caused by reckless bankers fucking about in an unreal environment where they know they can fail and always be bailed out.
It’s win / lose, in their favour, now and forever, amen.
If the banking model was mirrored in the car industry, you and I would be driving an Allegro to work this morning.
To fair to most Conservatives I’ve met, it’s usually b). Of course, most Conservatives will say that I am being patronising or unfair simply for agreeing with your assertion, but I haven’t seen much evidence to the contrary.
That’s not to say that Labour has been much different in determining the direction of travel, which is probably why certain political interests are so terrified at the prospect of Corbyn becoming Prime Minister. Both parties have been champions of privatisation and debt since Thatcher assumed office in 1979.
The long term results of these policies are there for all to see. Yes, we pay less money to the state, but that’s because we’re paying more money to private companies for services that the state used to provide, be that power, water, education and (eventually) health.
In the case of people on low incomes and reliant on benefit, cutting that money isn’t a be all and end all. People still need the things they need, which is why we’ve got some of the highest personal debt in the world and a legalised loan shark emblazoned on the shirt of a Premier League football team (and the CEO of that company drawing up employment legislation for the government).
So yeah, selfish or haven’t thought it through. As good a description as any.
Cheers Bletch. I am not blind to failings from all parties (more of that later) and a great deal of what you say is spot on of course, I have a couple of minor addendums:
1). While it is true now, I am not sure bankers could have known, in 2007/8, that whatever happened they would be bailed out. Many have since lost their jobs, rightfully.
2). It was not all the fault of “the bastard bankers”. Some members of the public had plenty of involvement in the failure of the likes of Northern Rock. Hefty mortgages and personal loans to feed unrealistic spending desires led to record numbers of defaulters. Could all the banks have had tighter lending policies? Should the regulators have done more to stop people getting into mountains of debt? Yes to both. But some institutions collapsed, while others lost hundreds of millions, because consumers borrowed money they could not afford and did not pay it back.
It’s not all the fault of the bastard bankers, no. Establishment politicians played their part too, by never questioning the fragility of the system, and refusing to accept that the patient, a Mr Neo-Liberal Capitalism, died on the table back in 2007/2008 after it was revealed that it had been suffering haemorraghing all along.
Brown’s government, with the full assent of Cameron’s Conservatives, decided to use our money to cover their debts, and we’re all still paying to cover _business losses, _many of them made with no long-term thinking in mind or any assessment of risk. You can’t blame the people that borrowed the money when there was always someone there lending it to them. The money men signing the deals up don’t care if it’s good for world capitalism or not, don’t give a clean fuck as to whether someone actually had the ability to pay. Commission; me, me, me.
Now i could do that with my business. Sign up a load of dodgy prospects that might not pay me for my work in the end. Would you cover my losses in those circumstances, when I’d knowingly taken on risky clients? Is it their fault I might be ruined, or is it mine?
Time to stop blaming customers for the failings of a business. Getting all of us to pay for its corrupted reconstruction is just a giant fuck you.
Whilst the bankers take the lions share, I have to agree with this. There is a distinct lack of folks taking repsonibilty for themselves - greed conquering common sense, and too may happy to default or take IVAs … the legacy of which is the bastard pay day loaners and their 2000% APRs, thriving as now the banks in a180 degree U Turn and now refuse to loan a bean. I think its the sadest think about our culture these days, is that someone else is always to blame…
It’s not all the fault of the bastard bankers, no. Establishment politicians played their part too, by never questioning the fragility of the system, and refused to accept that the patient, a Mr Neo-Liberal Capitalism, died on the table back in 2007/2008 after it was revealed that it had been suffering haemorraghing all along.
Brown’s government, with the full assent of Cameron’s Conservatives, decided to use our money to cover their debts, and we’re all still paying to cover _business losses, _many of them made with no long-term thinking in mind or any assessment of risk. You can’t blame the people that borrowed the money when there was always someone there lending it to them. The money men signing the deals up don’t care if it’s good for world capitalism or not, don’t give a clean fuck as to whether someone actually had the ability to pay. Commission; me, me, me.
Now i could do that with my business. Sign up a load of dodgy prospects that might not pay me for my work in the end. Would you cover my losses in those circumstances, when I’d knowingly taken on risky clients? Is it their fault I might be ruined, or is it mine?
Time to stop blaming customers for the failings of a business. Getting all of us to pay for its corrupted reconstruction is just a giant fuck you.
Morning all.
Why can we not push some of the blame onto the public who took out these stupid mortgages/loans? Do people not have any self control?
Why can we not push some of the blame onto the public who took out these stupid mortgages/loans?
To be fair, I think some have been trying to do that.
Do people not have any self control?
Widely acknowledged as a problem, which is why we have an entire industry dedicated to creditworthiness. The lenders decided, and still do, that someone that has paid loans badly in the past will somehow be able to do so better at a higher rate of interest.
Of course, that’s a fallacy. The sales people are just interested in the commission. Have they no self control?
It was the bankers fault, aided by the public.
Insomuch as the public are forced to use the banks, possibly. I’d still go for collusion between the bankers and a generation of politicians that were far too close to the financial services industry.
Some members of the public had plenty of involvement in the failure of the likes of Northern Rock. Hefty mortgages and personal loans to feed unrealistic spending desires led to record numbers of defaulters. Could all the banks have had tighter lending policies? Should the regulators have done more to stop people getting into mountains of debt? Yes to both. But some institutions collapsed, while others lost hundreds of millions, because consumers borrowed money they could not afford and did not pay it back.
Personal debt levels are nothing compared to the losses incurred by commercial banks due primarily to their recklessness, arrogance and short termist approach to a notional business model that is partly self generated and certainly has no rules. Bletch is right - they take the lions share of the blame for landing us all in the cart. Allied to this was the shocking way most behaved after the crunch, safe in the knowledge that the Treasury would bale them out in return for a slapped wrist, a wagging finger and a pathetic attempt at muddled regulation.
The one thing that’s lost with comparing personal debt to commercial debt is there is a very real consequence for the former and nothing for the latter. People were encouraged to borrow more and that isn’t a failing of the individual, but of the banking system in their pursuit to make profit at the expense of all sense of reason.
I agree banks were mostly to blame. But there is no escaping that some individuals borrowed more than they should, aided by less than 100% accurate applications, or by ignoring the “what if” implications if their earnings ever dropped, or if the housing market did not always keep rising, or even any sort of consideration of “do we really need another faux leather sofa for the garden”. To say that no individual has any responsibility for what they borrow is another symptom of what RallyBoy correctly identified, as our ever increasing blame culture.
How can you consider a sexual assault on a woman to be equivalent to borrowing money? Christ, Cherts, there’s some strange logic on forums, but that takes the biscuit!
