BRAGG FREE!

>> Sunday, January 08, 2012

I am pleased to see that the awful Billy Bragg image thingy has now gone, thanks to our dear friend, All Seeing Eye. Recorded an interview on 5live - things have come to a pretty pass when I have to attack a Conservative MP Matthew Hancock for his plans to imprison bankers. It goes out later, I think,

12 comments:

Nick 10:18 PM, January 08, 2012  

Go on the attack.

Ask them how much debt the government has? 

If they can't tell you, they are incompentent as MPs to be deciding on how to spend money.

If they come back with a figure - it will presumably be Gilts and only gilts, ask the follow up.

First ask what is owed under PFI. MPs think PFI is bad. The figrue is 350 bn


Does the original debt figure include everyone's state pension where they have accrued rights,  or not? [It doesn't]

Then ask how much is owed for state pensions, state second pension, ...

2.4 trillion for the SP, 1.3 for the civil service. ...

Now ask them how much income the government takes in taxes. 0.55 trillion

The question is then, what assets they have against the liabilities. 

A clever lefty might say, future tax revenues. So the question is, are citizens the property of the state? Are we slaves? After all the state already runs a stud book for cattle and people just like the slave owners of the past. 

Martin 10:21 PM, January 08, 2012  

If only we could get rid of the real Bragg so easily.

john in cheshire 10:24 PM, January 08, 2012  

Surely, the government (that being the labour lot at the time), the regulators (the fsa?), the Bank of England governors and then the bankers, in that order. Why, because the first three could have reined in the bankers, but they chose not to do so.
It was all about cake and circuses so that the socialists could get on with their project, worldwide, while keeping the proles quiet with distractions that made them/us/me feel we were affluent and successful. And we were too stupid to wonder, just for a minute, how this affluence had come about.

Jonathan S 10:58 PM, January 08, 2012  

if only this country was Bragg free...cunt

Jonathan S 11:04 PM, January 08, 2012  

if only this country was free off the cunt

Frederick Bloggs 11:49 PM, January 08, 2012  

Hancock was an economist in the Bank of England in 2005 specialising in the property market just as it was reaching the peak of its bubble. Did he come out and say anything about it then and suggest raising interest rates or impose higher capital ratios on banks ?

Perhaps MPs who bankrupt the country should also be imprisoned.

Frederick Bloggs 12:00 AM, January 09, 2012  

The banking story is complex as different things happened to different banks. 
- Northern rock ran out of money as no-one would lend it money when it needed it. It also had a dodgy loan book with high LTV mortgages. The regulators knew all about NR. 
- RBS crashed because it made a disastrous purchase of dutch bank ABN Amro. This purchase was approved by the regulators.
- HBoS - I think they had a lot of bad mortgages and maybe some toxic assets. The HBOS takeover by Lloyds was pushed by Gordon Brown and approved by regulators.

So in all cases the regulators were highly involved. Also, none of the problems were caused by the high-flying investment banks but by good old traditional retail bankers which should have been very safe.

Span Ows 8:52 AM, January 09, 2012  

Well done, I now don't have to worry about it!

Span Ows 8:56 AM, January 09, 2012  

Excellent post. Very few want to know these figures, continuing in debt and new pension liabilities will take it to 7 to 9 trillion in not a long period of time.

cjhartnett 10:11 AM, January 09, 2012  

Didn`t listen to Toady to any extent-but did hear Sarah Montague tell me that she and John would be "looking at "
1. High Pay(not theirs, but still...)
2. Tories trying to stop wee Alex dictating how best to keep the money, but not give a referendum at a time inconvenient to him.
3. CO2 delaying the coming ice age-and, no: that is NOT good news-you`re missing the point.
4. Vanessa Redgrace telling us why she gets angry with politicians(what...Uncle Joe, Mao, Pol Pot, Gerry Healy?...or would that be Thatcher and Cameron/Clegg?..no, let me guess...i`ll listen along to find out shall I?)
Over to Wessex FM...and that`s where I`ll be staying!

Geyza 10:45 AM, January 09, 2012  

I am sure that the lefties would love a new ice age. All of Western Capitalism crushed under a sea of ice a mile thick?  Yeah they would love that.

Until they realise that their lavish lifestyles could no longer be funded that is.  Then they would blame the industrialists for failing to keep the ice sheet at bay!

Nota Sheep 7:29 PM, January 10, 2012  

Oddly whilst I had never seen the Billy Bragg pic at the top of the website before today, today it has started to appear...

Antony Jay

"But we were not just anti-Macmillan; we were anti-industry, anti-capitalism, anti-advertising, anti-selling, anti-profit, anti-patriotism, anti-monarchy, anti-Empire, anti-police, anti-armed forces, anti-bomb, anti-authority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place, you name it, we were anti it."
Antony Jay, Telegraph, July 2007

Andrew Marr

"..the final answer, frankly, is the vigorous use of state power to coerce and repress. It may be my Presbyterian background, but I firmly believe that repression can be a great, civilising instrument for good. Stamp hard on certain 'natural' beliefs for long enough and you can almost kill them off."
Andrew Marr, The Guardian Feb. 1999

Jeremy Paxman

"But the bigger question is whether the BBC itself has a future. Working for it has always been a bit like living in Stalin’s Russia, with one five-year-plan, one resoundingly empty slogan after another. One BBC, Making it Happen, Creative Futures, they all blur into one great vacuous blur. I can’t even recall what the current one is. Rather like Stalin’s Russia, they express a belief that the system will go on forever."
Jeremy Paxman, The James McTaggart Memorial, 24th August 2007

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