The Shadow Chancellor makes a start in demolishing the credibility
of Alastair Darling and the speech in which he said nothing except
that under his and Brown’s stewardship Britain will just continue the
very policy of reckless borrowing and spending which has got the
country (and individual consumers too) into the dreadful present mess.
Even this week we’ve had billions in extra bribes to be paid for by
more borrowing! I mention three: -
== Free computers for poorer children [that’s an anti-social policy,
if ever there was one]
== Free nursery school places (billions on this) for children as
young as two
== Free Theatre tickets for the 18-26s
“Bread and Circuses” is the order of the day while some people’s
world has - or will - crash around them.
xxxxxxxxxxxx cs
===========================
Conservative Press Release 22.9.08
Osborne: No plan from Darling except scorched earth
Responding to Alistair Darling's speech to Labour Party conference,
Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne said:
"How extraordinary that a Chancellor could give a speech in the
middle of an economic crisis and provide no plan about how the
government is going to handle it.
"The one thing Alistair Darling did make clear was that like Gordon
Brown, the Chancellor is clearing the way for a scorched earth policy
on the public finances.
"With national debt already higher than when they came to office,
Labour is now preparing to take us even deeper into the red. If they
had saved for a rainy day, they could be helping families, instead of
just making excuses."
===========================
THE INDEPENDENT 23.9.08
George Osborne: Labour is in denial over its role in this financial
crisis
A desperate lurch to the left is not a sensible way to tackle this
problem
The Labour Party seems to have developed a collective amnesia about
its responsibility for the current financial crisis. Listen to
delegates on the Conference floor and Ministers in fringe meetings,
and the loudest cheers go to those who play to the crowd by attacking
the way the City is regulated. They seem to forget that it was their
Prime Minister who created that system 10 years ago.
But the real prize for memory loss must go to Ed Balls. On Monday he
said that those who had advocated "light touch regulation" had been,
in his words, "routed". This is the same Ed Balls who as Chief
Economic Adviser to the Treasury for eight years boasted about the
"light touch" regime of City regulation he had designed. This is also
the same Ed Balls who then as City Minister called for "a light touch
approach at the global and EU level". The star player of Labour's
football team has scored a spectacular own-goal.
This desperate lurch to the left may be red meat to the activists,
but it is not a sensible way to address the very real problems we
face with our system of regulation and the financial crisis now
before us. We need to take a cool, calm look at what has gone wrong
and work out how to solve it.
The symptoms are clear and were played out on the dealing floors of
the City, and the TV screens of every family, last week.
Speculative raids on sound companies. Markets either in a state of
paralysis or unprecedented volatility. Runs on banking stocks and the
near failure of Britain's largest mortgage lenders.
There has been a whiff of Schadenfreude about the fate of
spectacularly well paid Lehman bankers, but spare a thought for the
thousands of hard-working people who go to work in their local HBOS
branch or call centre, who aren't paid huge sums and now fear for
their job.
Like any sickness, we need to treat these symptoms that have caused
such misery. I believe we should act swiftly to reassure depositors
that their savings are safe, which is why I have offered Alistair
Darling bi-partisan support for raising the level of deposit
protection to £50,000 and ensuring it can be swiftly paid out. The
current system of protection did not command confidence over Northern
Rock, but still remains in place over a year after we saw queues on
our high street.
The tripartite system of regulation created by Gordon Brown clearly
needs to be overhauled. I think we need to give the Bank of England
much greater powers to watch over the markets and seize control of
financial institutions that are about to fail. Both at home, and
internationally, we should look at new counter-cyclical capital
adequacy rules.
In other words, we should require banks to put aside more capital in
good years so they are better prepared when the cycle turns down. I
also think we need, as the Chairman of HSBC said recently, the
regulators to look at the structure of City bonuses to make sure they
aren't encouraging irresponsible risk-taking.
The idea that the Conservative Party is afraid or unwilling to tackle
these issues because of "our friends in the City" is ludicrous.
Remember which party was prepared to stand up and say that the non-
domiciles in the City needed to pay a fairer share in tax. Not New
Labour, too bedazzled by big money to do anything in the 10 years
they sat in the Treasury; it was David Cameron and the modern
Conservative Party.
Protecting depositors and fixing the broken regulatory system are
important steps we need to take to try to restore stability to the
financial markets. However, in the end these are symptoms of a much
bigger problem that has much deeper root causes. For a decade Britain
allowed an economy to be built on debt at every level: personal debt,
corporate debt, banking debt and government debt.
When you hear Gordon Brown say that we are better prepared than other
countries to face the current problems consider these three facts.
==First, our average household debt is higher than any other country
in the G7.
==Second, our house prices went up faster than house prices in America.
==Third, we enter this downturn with the highest budget deficit in
the developed world and higher net debt than when Labour came to
office. Gordon Brown simply refuses to even recognise the debt
problem exists.
Until we face up to need to wean our economy, our banking system and
our government off unsustainable levels of debt, then we will not
solve the root cause of the instability our economy is now exposed to.
------------------------------------------------------
The writer is the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer
of Alastair Darling and the speech in which he said nothing except
that under his and Brown’s stewardship Britain will just continue the
very policy of reckless borrowing and spending which has got the
country (and individual consumers too) into the dreadful present mess.
Even this week we’ve had billions in extra bribes to be paid for by
more borrowing! I mention three: -
== Free computers for poorer children [that’s an anti-social policy,
if ever there was one]
== Free nursery school places (billions on this) for children as
young as two
== Free Theatre tickets for the 18-26s
“Bread and Circuses” is the order of the day while some people’s
world has - or will - crash around them.
xxxxxxxxxxxx cs
===========================
Conservative Press Release 22.9.08
Osborne: No plan from Darling except scorched earth
Responding to Alistair Darling's speech to Labour Party conference,
Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne said:
"How extraordinary that a Chancellor could give a speech in the
middle of an economic crisis and provide no plan about how the
government is going to handle it.
"The one thing Alistair Darling did make clear was that like Gordon
Brown, the Chancellor is clearing the way for a scorched earth policy
on the public finances.
"With national debt already higher than when they came to office,
Labour is now preparing to take us even deeper into the red. If they
had saved for a rainy day, they could be helping families, instead of
just making excuses."
===========================
THE INDEPENDENT 23.9.08
George Osborne: Labour is in denial over its role in this financial
crisis
A desperate lurch to the left is not a sensible way to tackle this
problem
The Labour Party seems to have developed a collective amnesia about
its responsibility for the current financial crisis. Listen to
delegates on the Conference floor and Ministers in fringe meetings,
and the loudest cheers go to those who play to the crowd by attacking
the way the City is regulated. They seem to forget that it was their
Prime Minister who created that system 10 years ago.
But the real prize for memory loss must go to Ed Balls. On Monday he
said that those who had advocated "light touch regulation" had been,
in his words, "routed". This is the same Ed Balls who as Chief
Economic Adviser to the Treasury for eight years boasted about the
"light touch" regime of City regulation he had designed. This is also
the same Ed Balls who then as City Minister called for "a light touch
approach at the global and EU level". The star player of Labour's
football team has scored a spectacular own-goal.
This desperate lurch to the left may be red meat to the activists,
but it is not a sensible way to address the very real problems we
face with our system of regulation and the financial crisis now
before us. We need to take a cool, calm look at what has gone wrong
and work out how to solve it.
The symptoms are clear and were played out on the dealing floors of
the City, and the TV screens of every family, last week.
Speculative raids on sound companies. Markets either in a state of
paralysis or unprecedented volatility. Runs on banking stocks and the
near failure of Britain's largest mortgage lenders.
There has been a whiff of Schadenfreude about the fate of
spectacularly well paid Lehman bankers, but spare a thought for the
thousands of hard-working people who go to work in their local HBOS
branch or call centre, who aren't paid huge sums and now fear for
their job.
Like any sickness, we need to treat these symptoms that have caused
such misery. I believe we should act swiftly to reassure depositors
that their savings are safe, which is why I have offered Alistair
Darling bi-partisan support for raising the level of deposit
protection to £50,000 and ensuring it can be swiftly paid out. The
current system of protection did not command confidence over Northern
Rock, but still remains in place over a year after we saw queues on
our high street.
The tripartite system of regulation created by Gordon Brown clearly
needs to be overhauled. I think we need to give the Bank of England
much greater powers to watch over the markets and seize control of
financial institutions that are about to fail. Both at home, and
internationally, we should look at new counter-cyclical capital
adequacy rules.
In other words, we should require banks to put aside more capital in
good years so they are better prepared when the cycle turns down. I
also think we need, as the Chairman of HSBC said recently, the
regulators to look at the structure of City bonuses to make sure they
aren't encouraging irresponsible risk-taking.
The idea that the Conservative Party is afraid or unwilling to tackle
these issues because of "our friends in the City" is ludicrous.
Remember which party was prepared to stand up and say that the non-
domiciles in the City needed to pay a fairer share in tax. Not New
Labour, too bedazzled by big money to do anything in the 10 years
they sat in the Treasury; it was David Cameron and the modern
Conservative Party.
Protecting depositors and fixing the broken regulatory system are
important steps we need to take to try to restore stability to the
financial markets. However, in the end these are symptoms of a much
bigger problem that has much deeper root causes. For a decade Britain
allowed an economy to be built on debt at every level: personal debt,
corporate debt, banking debt and government debt.
When you hear Gordon Brown say that we are better prepared than other
countries to face the current problems consider these three facts.
==First, our average household debt is higher than any other country
in the G7.
==Second, our house prices went up faster than house prices in America.
==Third, we enter this downturn with the highest budget deficit in
the developed world and higher net debt than when Labour came to
office. Gordon Brown simply refuses to even recognise the debt
problem exists.
Until we face up to need to wean our economy, our banking system and
our government off unsustainable levels of debt, then we will not
solve the root cause of the instability our economy is now exposed to.
------------------------------------------------------
The writer is the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer
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