Gordon Brown Writes To The Isle Of Man . . .

[Evil Goblin]

Without Thatcher's reforms the UK would have sunk into third world poverty, just like the Eastern European Communist States did. I don't ask you to approve of all Maggie did - just give credit where it is due.

 

That's total rubbish in as much as Thatchers actions were not reforms .. they were a fullscale attack on Britains working classes in an attempt to transform Britain into a free market economy.

 

One of the best assessments of Thatcher's actions I have read recently was in Naomi Kleins Shock Doctrine; highlighting Maggie's determination to instill a Washington Consensus free market ideology on Britain at any cost, and to do that she had no option but to break the backs of the unions and Britain's working class.

 

Its that totally unfettered de-regulated free market system that has virtually guaranteed that we have ended up in the sort of financial mess we are in now. Even most of Britains power stations are owned by French multi nationals now so the UK does not even have control over its own power generation, much less control over anything else including (until it had to nationalise them because they were bust) its banking system.

 

I saw an interesting article in the Times yesterday suggesting that banking be relegated to simply being a utility function controlled by government as Thatchers de-regulated free market capitalist system has catastrophically failed:

 

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle6078127.ece

Ah, Oldie, so you're another unreformed and unenlightened apparatchik! In case you hadn't noticed, the global economy was developing and Britain's outdated working practices, incompetent managements and the whole country's penchant for living above its' means meant that disaster was almost upon us. The free market ideology didn't need to be forced on Britain - it was already out there in the world. Any country which decided to swim against the tide soon learnt better as it would be ruthlessly punished by the outside world.

 

It is worth remembering who has been in charge in Britain these last twelve years or so whilst the French and Spanish, etc. have bought things up (and who instituted the absolutley distasrous Regulatory System - oh yes, it was your ZanuLab and Co., wasn't it?

[oldmanxfella]

oh yes, it was your ZanuLab and Co., wasn't it?

 

If you care to check back in this thread I'm on record for calling Brown a total crook so how you think I can be a New Labour supporter is anyone's guess. You have, critically though, fallen into the typical forum position of insulting people because 1. They made a valid point and 2. You couldn't think of an equally valid counterpoint..

 

Intellectually you are very disappointing.

[Evil Goblin]

oh yes, it was your ZanuLab and Co., wasn't it?

 

If you care to check back in this thread I'm on record for calling Brown a total crook so how you think I can be a New Labour supporter is anyone's guess. You have, critically though, fallen into the typical forum position of insulting people because 1. They made a valid point and 2. You couldn't think of an equally valid counterpoint..

 

Intellectually you are very disappointing.

I did not say you were a ZanuNuLab, just a ZanuLab - one is as bad as the other (and for the avoidance of doubt, the Tories aren't much better). Incidentally, what exactly was the "valid point" you raised? As far as I can see it merely comprised some unsupported accusations arising from blind prejudice. I'm no Thatcherite but I believe in giving credit where it's due.

 

I note the final bit of abuse - typical of the Left, who seem to think they always have the high ground in intellectual matters. In which case you might contemplate why Socialism usually ends up having to be enforced at the point of a bayonet.

[P.K.]

PK - your final sentence gives the game away - you are obviously stuck in the past as an outdated "Class Warrior". Most working class people, like myself, have moved on and so should you. Take off your red-tinted spectacles and the reality just might make it through to you.

 

I note the final bit of abuse - typical of the Left, who seem to think they always have the high ground in intellectual matters. In which case you might contemplate why Socialism usually ends up having to be enforced at the point of a bayonet.

Oh dear, as I said when I drove a coach and horses through your childishly ridiculous assertions about the BoE MPC - I'm a wishy-washy liberal I'm afraid.

 

As far as I am aware this is the last time workers in the UK faced troops with fixed bayonets. I trust the quite delicious irony is not lost on you...

[oldmanxfella]

I did not say you were a ZanuNuLab, just a ZanuLab - one is as bad as the other (and for the avoidance of doubt, the Tories aren't much better). Incidentally, what exactly was the "valid point" you raised? As far as I can see it merely comprised some unsupported accusations arising from blind prejudice. I'm no Thatcherite but I believe in giving credit where it's due.

 

I note the final bit of abuse - typical of the Left, who seem to think they always have the high ground in intellectual matters. In which case you might contemplate why Socialism usually ends up having to be enforced at the point of a bayonet.

 

You must be American because its usually the yanks that are retarded enough to lower any ideological debate down to whether your a "Red" or not. It is, as PK pointed out, rather childish that you can't accept an independent reasoning for why something is wrong or why something happened without reducing it to childish party politics.

 

I am neither a "red" or a "blue". Some people, believe it or not, are just independent free thinkers quite happy to take bits from either side of the political divide with a view to progressing themselves intellectually. Other people, sadly, are hamfisted buffoons incapable of accepting that sometimes people who support opposing political ideologies might actually have something valid to say on a particular subject.

 

By the way my comments on Thatcher have nothing, really, to do with her being a Conservative Prime Minister and more to do with her being a hatchet faced US loving free market supporting old bag who through her encouragement of the services sector and financial de-regulation sew the seeds of what turned Britain into the bankrupt dump it is today. If the UK hadn't set its stall out to be America's profiligate, stock owning, debt funded 51st State, or she hadn't unleashed a generation of overly ambitious morally ambiguous greedy bastards into UK society all those years ago things might have been very different.

[Gladys]

Well said OMF. For the record, at the start of the mine closures I was of the view that no industry has an entitlement to live beyond its useful and effective life. However, I rapidly changed when I saw how the closures devastated whole communities with no alternative means of making a living being offered. Cruel beyond belief really.

[manshimajin]

Manshimajin - My view is that comparing Brown to Franco, Galtieri, and Ceauşescu (and chuck in Evil Goblin's Mugabe) is frankly preposterous. There is nothing in today's FT or in any FT to justify the comparison. I look forward to Stu and Albert joining the thread and adding Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Vlad the Impaler into the mix...

Maybe not - but this is a Forum and a degree of poetic licence is handy!!!!! My point is that politicians in deep holes tend to look for political diversions to get their voters to focus on anything other than what is going on at home.

 

The UK is making a lot of noise about "tax havens" but is not dealing with its own low taxation of foreign expats living in expensive suburbs of London or its permitting the establishment of shelf companies without seeking proper anti-money laundering ID information. Typical "tax haven" behaviour. For that matter what happened about any enquiry into the financial background to UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia that the NL leadership quashed???

 

IMO there is a lot of posturing going on at the moment by politicians who are looking for 'easy' targets rather than fixing up the messes they have made in their own stables. Unfortunately being a small legislature we are potentially one of these targets - particulalry when UK is looking increasingly like a country in deep economic trouble.

 

Keep praying for the US economic recovery.

 

PS: my apologies not to have mentione Margaret Thatcher, Arthur Scargill or coal until now.

[Sebrof]

Manshimajin - My view is that comparing Brown to Franco, Galtieri, and Ceauşescu (and chuck in Evil Goblin's Mugabe) is frankly preposterous. There is nothing in today's FT or in any FT to justify the comparison. I look forward to Stu and Albert joining the thread and adding Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Vlad the Impaler into the mix...

 

He's not comparing them, you irrelevance. He is simply mentioning some other polticians who, in a tight corner, resorted to populist measures to deflect attention from their own shortcomings.

 

How is it that you almost never participate in a thread except to carp or criticise or otherwise make a nuisance of yourself? You're not stupid; why not use your brain to do something positive? Like contributing some IDEAS.

 

S

[P.K.]

How is it that you almost never participate in a thread except to carp or criticise or otherwise make a nuisance of yourself? You're not stupid; why not use your brain to do something positive? Like contributing some IDEAS.

Your best post to date! Probably the most fantastic irony I've ever seen on here. Keep it up as it made me laugh and laugh. I'm still chuckling now...

[tiger lily]

all in restrant thinkin ilse of mann must investiggat UK bad tax deelings

ilse of mann must advetise thees

lets show uk fiddlin tax on non uk domiciel ressidant

lets show london as tax fiddlin center of world

mr boom boom boom need good kikkin

lol

lil

[Gladys]

A more balanced and measured report on MR this morning.

[Tugger]

Anyone who thinks Brown et al are doing this to distract attention from the world-wide credit crunch should have a sore arse from talking too much. It hasn't even merited a mention in my Grauniad who are very anti tax evasion.

 

Politician sounding off always makes me smile as he makes me think of this.

 

Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool. I have little doubt that Brown is ideologically opposed to places like the Isle of Man, and no doubt at all that he wants to maximise his tax revenues. That said, he can't stamp out UK tax avoidance simply by squashing the crown dependencies. All "offshore financial centres" or "tax havens" (depending on your point of view) exist because of the mobility of capital. If he stamps out the use of Isle of Man structures, the money will go through Luxembourg, or Hong Kong instead (it's quite clear that the OECD isn't going to shut ALL such places down). So he will know that throttling the IOM and the Channel Islands won't stop avoidance schemes (it might save him some VAT in our case, but that really is a drop in the ocean in UK budgetary terms), and so there's no money to be made from it.

 

There is, however, political capital to be had out of it. And that's what he's hoping for.

[Evil Goblin]

Oh Dear, OMF, you really were foaming at the mouth, weren’t you?

 

Firstly, let’s get one or two facts straight. I am certainly not American – I am “as Manx as the Hills” and I am no fan of the “Washington Consensus”. As for your claim to be neither Red nor Blue – I would suggest that any reasonable reading of your diatribes would contradict this claim – if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck ........ Neither do your rantings sit well with your self-implied status as a “free thinker” – why do you assume that anyone who does not agree with you cannot themselves be such “free thinkers”? As I have pointed out before, I am no Thatcherite/Reaganite in terms of political philosophy – I just believe in giving credit where I think it is due.

 

Gladys, OMF and yourself really do need to come into the harsh reality of the world. Simply decrying what was done by the Thatcher Government without suggesting a realistic alternative course they could have followed is to do nothing but whinge to no good purpose. So, given that you think what the Tory Government after 1979 did was dreadful (and I do not for one minute deny that the events of the 80s were anything other than extremely painful – I well remember them!) how do you suggest they should have proceeded? And just as importantly, how would it have been paid for, because any alternative policy would have required the taxpayer to subsidise the NCB and the state the country was in that wasn’t on. And what makes you think most taxpayers would have been happy to subsidise an industry with a workforce which was already one of the highest paid groups in industry and lead by politically motivated leaders. As it is, an admittedly very painful period for most of us resulted in a healthy enough economic base to permit NuLab to throw money about for years like a man with ten arms. That’s why the UK is the relatively barren wasteland it has become.

[La_Dolce_Vita]

So, given that you think what the Tory Government after 1979 did was dreadful (and I do not for one minute deny that the events of the 80s were anything other than extremely painful – I well remember them!) how do you suggest they should have proceeded? And just as importantly, how would it have been paid for, because any alternative policy would have required the taxpayer to subsidise the NCB and the state the country was in that wasn’t on. And what makes you think most taxpayers would have been happy to subsidise an industry with a workforce which was already one of the highest paid groups in industry and lead by politically motivated leaders. As it is, an admittedly very painful period for most of us resulted in a healthy enough economic base to permit NuLab to throw money about for years like a man with ten arms. That’s why the UK is the relatively barren wasteland it has become.

 

If the government is going to force people into losing their jobs then it is absolutely their responsibility to make certain that these same people are able to find paid jobs of an equal or greater salary, in the same area, and with assistance given if training is required. This did not happen. I recognise that the mines were a economic burden and closure would have been a sensible measure, but it cannot be justified unless there are jobs for these miners to go to.

[Evil Goblin]

Well, LDV, we are in no doubt (if anyone ever was) which side of the Left/Right divide you belong on! So, the State must be responsible for everything, people must always be rescued from the consequences of their behaviour? As Scrooge said, "I'll retire to Bedlam"!