confused of somerset o/t

[TF_herbie]

all the debates in this green and pleasant land of our seems to be about what we can cut and how much , and what to do with those fat lazy jobless that cause us to lose millions in health care every year. the health service despite promices to the contary is to lose funding. the schools( in wiltshire alone) are expected to have to make 10% of teaching staff redundant, come april 2011 despite promices to the contary. we will have less policemen, less care staff, services to the needy and elderly will go because of funding cuts to the councils. our children will have to find a massive amount of money for further education, taxes will rise affecting the very poorest in this country. fuel prices rise almost hourly, heating is becoming a luxury to all but the middle classes, food is expected to rise by twice the amount of inflation making healthy food again only for the better off, which will become a burden to our already stretched NHS.this is what we are all talking about just how much pain we are all going to have to endure , and the less you have the more the pain.
what no one is talking about is just what and who caused this economic meltdown. they,ve got off scot free, robbed the nation blind, not one prosecution for fraud despite losing trillions of pounds on dodgy deals. nothing oh except they get there bonuses taxed . poor things. but wait for it if we are too nasty to these crooks they will move elsewhere. the day when they might just have to is fast approaching when you remove everything from the less well off including any chance of work then you can bet there will be a backlash. am i talking just about england ?? no. usa, ireland, spain,portugal,greece, all suffering who,s next i wonder. noticed today russia/china making moves to get away from the euro/pound/dollar. Mmmm

[TF_caster robParticipant]

This will only rake over old ground herbie.

I think you know my view is largely that the risks in UK banking were facilitated by the undermining of the BoE’s authority and establishment of the tripartite FSA. The BoE of old would never have allowed the Northern Rock situation to develop, as one example.

It cannot be denied that there was political encouragement for all the financial activity because taxation of the profits yielded a massive tax haul for the treasury, which was spending more than was incoming from about 2001 onwards, a full SEVEN years before the financial crisis. Even without the banking problems the government of the days fiscal policy was unsustainable, the end was inevitable, only the timing in doubt.

Whatever you think of the bankers, and the people that unconditionally loaned them our money, they are the best bet for regenerating it that we’ve got.

With regard to cuts, a lot of this is political too. Political capital can be made much more easily by slicing front-line services rather than tiers of administrators. It’s often the administrators that decide where to cut, are they going to fall on their own swords?

I watched a recent BBC news report about Coventry City Council. The reporter stated that the council employed over 170 managers on salaries of over £40,000pa. That’s a phenomenal amount of money when you consider local authority overheads of generous holiday entitlement, record levels of sick-leave, pension-rights (in which another multi-billion black-hole has mysteriously been discoverd).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11996504

How many managers does a council need to deliver essential services? Bin-emptying, grass-cutting, road-sweeping, drain-clearing snd the like are all relatively mundane and repetitive tasks. I can think of fewer activities requiring intensive management input, they barely change from year to year.

Take the example of “poor” inner-city boroughs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11984977

With loonies like this in control they’ll always be poor.

[TF_Katarino]

A few points Herb, speaking as someone who works for one of the wicked naughty banks.

Don’t confuse liabilities with actual loss, they haven’t lost trillions, most of the major banks, whose positions were never as bad as some painted are back in profit. The US government sold it’s last remaining stake in the bank I work for last week and netted approx £20bn profit in the process.

The same will certainly be the case with most of the banks here. You could argue that Northern Rock could have been allowed to go to the wall with very little damage to the system other than 2,500 jobs going in one of Labours’ strongest voting areas. Likewise letting RBS go pop would have been a mega coup for the SNP. Even so the actual nest cost of the bailout, not counting money that will be paid and is being paid back was less than £250bn i.e roughly 1 years spending deficit. It’s the other 9 years of spending what wasn’t coming in caused the damage. That along
with a Government hell bent on sustaining a non existent boom by encouraging (and in some cases insisting on) easy credit for all (fairness). As long as the tax revenues were flowing in Gordon could keep borrowing against projected future income. The current mess in Gov finances is the result and cuts were always going to come no matter who was in power (See Alistair Darlings’ pre election statement).

Then you come to the screaming about bonuses. The guys who earn the real money have to turn a profit, losing traders get nothing but a cardboard box and an escort from the building. You want banks to stop paying those bonuses in this country, go ahead. The banks will carry on doing the same somewhere where they can and the treasury can kiss goodbye to the 50% of that bonus pot that they would have had. Smart move in the current situation?

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