Explain for an Outsider - election outcome

[kes]

Is it not the mark of a moralist that they hope against hope that what is done for the good and for the best will be recognised? Is it not mark of the cynic that nothing is what it seems and therefore there is no value in morality ?
There was a time when honesty and morality mattered - I think it must have ended with Churchill.

 

[Kalahari]

Fair enough, I just meant that to say that the SNP are Nazis is ridiculous.

If you look at their policy of "all our problems are caused by the English mantra" there is precedent.

David.

 

[Bandit Country]

And this bit really scares me:
"The devolved powers give the Scottish Parliament the opportunity to produce Scottish solutions to Scottish problems."

I don't see why that should scare you. It provides the opportunity for an entrepreneurial Scottish Government to make shrewd investments to secure the Country's future. I believe there are currently great opportunities in Darien Province in Panama ...

 

[Pine Marten]

Top quality erudite gag there, I salute you.

 

[Yoda]

We voted to keep first past the post in 2011
We voted in a general election yesterday
We got exactly the result we voted for

Simple

So a party with 20% of the vote should be in power. sorry but you are a sick person

 

[JabaliHunter]

actually I can..

Granted Labour did not cause the "Crash"
arguably Bill Clinton did when he deregulated the markets and repealed the Glass-Steagall act of 1933
The original loans may have predominantly been in the US but the complex derivatives based on the underlying loan was traded globally and as London is the centre of the financial world the government in power are responsible for maintaining control over what is traded on its markets


However, aside from the oversight of what the rest of the world was doing...
the decisions made by Gordon Brown both leading up to, during and latterly following the crash (which was a result of massive gearing of low quality debt into ever complex derivatives) are ultimately the ones that Labour were never held accountable for.

1) Selling off the Nation's Gold Reserves when gold was at its lowest price in over 20yrs...apparently as it was too "volatile"..strange that Gold is the one thing that anyone invests in when volatility in markets is high! look at the price rise between 99 and 2010!!
sold at $282/oz when it rose to $1900/oz at its height
cost to the UK between £3 and £6 Billion

2) Bank bail out - £500 Billion of poorly structured loans and guarantees. Let me put that another way. ONE HALF A TRILLION POUNDS!!!
By contrast the US offered $700m (DOLLARS)
Now I am no economist but since when has the Domestic UK banking industry or GDP been worth almost double the US banking industry!?

The Bank ReCapitalisation Fund essentially offered an interest free loan to banks who wanted it (slightly more complex than that)
Now, I work with Investment Bankers..if you offer them a sniff of anything that is a better deal than liquidity at market rates they will be all over it like a **** house rat in sewer!!

The recovery of the funds injected into the system has been a wholesale disaster
RBS should have been aggressively broken up and sold off with overall control and recovery by the chancellor.
the bail out should have been structured so that the Exchequer gets its money back first and foremost BEFORE the accountants have spread the profit from one business into the losses of another (RBS Commodities business was going gang busters in the period after the crash......did we see any of that? did the shareholders? course not!)
When Goodwin got into a ****ing contest over ABN Amro they lost all sight of the due diligence. What they finally discovered when the dust on the auction finished was they had bought over 280 legal entities in 47 countries with books of debt that they still don't understand to this day!!
The onus does not just lie with him, it lies with the Board who are in place to control the CEO

3) Tripartite regulation - "cos three idiots managing a problem must be better than one"!! FSA - Treasury and Bank of England
Creation of the FSA and removal of direct responsibility an control of financial markets regulation from any one single entity has only ever been a disaster, we are still living with that now
if you are going to build a watchdog....don't fill it with accountants and friends of senior bankers!!
You fill it with aggressive little lawyers, disgraced traders and doorman from nightclubs in Sheffield and you target them with revenue generation from fines. give them knives and bats not calculators and breifcases.
They failed to curb any systemic issues in the derivatives markets as they fundamentally did not understand them.


I could go on by my coffee is getting cold!!

I am not suggesting any one of the idiots in Parliament could have spotted and avoided the issues but I know several bankers who did and as a result of the recommendations they made to their board, their banks did not suffer anything like as badly as anyone else's banks
did the government have a select committee in place to discuss the market issues and trends? No......of course not, they know how to run banks better than the people running them.....

Not forgetting that the more runaway 'profit' the banks made, the more tax Gordon Brown could spend lavish on the public sector. Regulating the banks would have been biting the hand that fed him! An incentive to look the other way perhaps...

 

[bewsher500]

Not forgetting that the more runaway 'profit' the banks made, the more tax Gordon Brown could spend lavish on the public sector. Regulating the banks would have been biting the hand that fed him! An incentive to look the other way perhaps...

Not true, the corporation tax breaks offered to banks trading in the UK were a joke (still are!)

the only upside is all these ****** bankers everyone hates were individually propping up the economy by dropping 50% of their bonuses in income tax

 

[JabaliHunter]

In England you will see the rich get richer and the working class get poorer (guess which group I'm in)

I'm not sure how increasing the tax-free allowance so that no-one working 30hrs on minimum wage will pay any income tax, promising not to raise income tax and in fact promising to push the 40% tax threshold to £50k doesn't benefit the vast majority of working and middle classes... Or growing the economy to create more jobs? And one of the biggest contributors to growing wealth over the past parliament and probably over the next one has to be low interest rates - at least for anyone with a mortgage... But that is not the result of a government policy, so can't blame that on them...

Everyone has the opportunity to vote. Choosing not to is also part of a democracy, but people know how things work so those who don't vote are in no position to complain about the result. The result is exactly what you say - democracy at work.

Well said!

In fact some years ago the then Labour government changed the constituency boundaries in some parts, including where I live, to bring more of the traditionally Labour voting urban areas into what had previously been non-Labour voting rural areas. My local constituency went back to the Conservatives yesterday despite the tinkering.

I'm betting boundary change is going to be high on the agenda over the next 5 years...

 

[JabaliHunter]

Not true, the corporation tax breaks offered to banks trading in the UK were a joke (still are!)

the only upside is all these ****** bankers everyone hates were individually propping up the economy by dropping 50% of their bonuses in income tax

They certainly didn't drop tax liability to zero... the benefit outweighs the cost or they wouldn't offer it.

 

[willie_gunn]

So a party with 20% of the vote should be in power. sorry but you are a sick person

So what's your proposal for a better system? Have you been out and canvassed for change, or just sat on the sidelines saying how unfair it all is?

BTW, they got 36.9% of the votes cast. People who didn't bother voting are in no position to complain about the result.

 

[Greymaster]

The outcome in Scotland is that the SNP has all but swept the board.
They are Nationalist by constitution and Socialist by policy.

That means that National Socialism is alive and well in Scotland.

The West Lothian Question?

 

[Yoda]

Jabalihunter you are obviously one of the rich that will get richer.
I wonder if you earn 180 per week?

 

[Yoda]

So what's your proposal for a better system? Have you been out and canvassed for change, or just sat on the sidelines saying how unfair it all is?

BTW, they got 36.9% of the votes cast. People who didn't bother voting are in no position to complain about the result.

So a party that got 20% of the vote should be in power?

 

[private fraser]

I wonder how the SNP plan to "grow the economy"?.
Oh no, wait, they need more devolution or even independance to do that, of course.

Hang on a mo though, Spain has all the power and complete independence and they are in deep doo-doo.

Oh well, I'm sure Nicola will sort it, won't she ?

Meantime, I wonder when austerity will end, hope it's by next weekend

 

[2130martin]

Dictatorships for sure
You are missing the point. Until we have one hundred percent voting it will never be democratic

Yoda,how would you get the non voters to turn out and exercise there right to vote???.......or is staying at home exactly that,exercising there right......no one has to vote......

 

[paultap]

I didn't think this was a good idea until fairly recently but I have to say that this election, more than any other I've seen,beautifully demonstrates the potential benefits of PR & the downside of the existing format. It's just fairer.

If you look at the number of votes cast per seat gained the current system looks decidedly unfair in a multi party society. As an example -

SNP, votes received - approx 1.4 million , no of seats won = 56
UKIP, votes received - approx 3.9 million , no of seats won = 1

So the SNP has 56 times the number of MP's of UKIP while receiving only 35% of the number of UKIP votes.

the SNP received about 50% of the votes in Scotland but won 95 % of the seats

The system definitely needs to be changed.

 

[Yoda]

Yoda,how would you get the non voters to turn out and exercise there right to vote???.......or is staying at home exactly that,exercising there right......no one has to vote......

Compulsory voting

 

[JabaliHunter]

Jabalihunter you are obviously one of the rich that will get richer.
I wonder if you earn 180 per week?

I wish; I hope so; and no.

 

[Yoda]

I wish; I hope so; and no.

Well that sums up your attitude

 

[private fraser]

Yoda, your provocative, insulting attitude is likely to get Another thread removed.
It's an interesting and sometimes amusing thread that I for one am enjoying.

So please....GIVE IT A BLOODY REST.

Thank you