Ed Balls opens a new front in the same old way

Austin Barry

Yeah, well, unhappilly our lost youth is barely literate thanks to Labour's educational initiatives.

Every week I see work by our 'trainees', most of whom have two degrees, who don't know the difference between 'apprised' and.'appraised', 'they're' and 'their'. Yeah, two degrees, some from Oxbridge.

I think that Joan Littlewood was correct: any degrees from other than the university of life are essentially degrrees in 'bollockology'.

daniel maris

It's an entirely sensible proposal in response to the refusal of the City to tackle its bonus culture. It is also essential that we provide young people with paid work, so that they can see a route into the adult world and not become dependent on welfare.

So it has my backing 100%.

If it actually leads to a few bankers departing these shores, even better. That we will release a few houses to help address our housing problem.

Stroller

"if it actually leads to a few bankers leaving these shores, then all the better"

That would be really smart wouldn't it? Never mind the thousands a bank clerical staff (not on huge bonuses) who would join the dole queue if their employers upped sticks.

Austin Barry

Inevitably, when castigating our youth for its illiteracy I misspell 'unhappily'. The oldest rule: hubris leads to Nemisis.

AAE

Austin Barry - but sleep easy my friend, Catharsis is just around the corner!

Ruby Duck

Can't be arsed to read Balls.

Not worth a comment.

So many things Labour could have done with the healthy economy they inherited and all they did was blow one very big bubble.

Jabba the Cat

Balls talking balls as usual...

daniel maris

Stroller -

City financiers are always telling us that economies change and adapt. So there is nothing odd about us losing jobs in the financial sector. If we decide that the financial sector is bloated and sucking the life out of our economy, we should shed no tears over it being cut back, any more than we shed tears over the old nationalised industries like British Leyland being cut back.

The financial sector is sitting like a huge toad on London and the South East and destabilising the national economy. Every foreign banker who comes to live here immediately sucks out of the country about a million pounds in terms of their need for housing and impact on our infrastructure. I very much doubt they add one million pounds in value to our economy.

One thing that this government has achieved is some rebalancing of the economy back to manufacturing. That needs to continue. So, no - I will be happy to see plenty of bank jobs go abroad.

daniel maris

Austin -

I'm assuming you're joking...and that you do know how to spell nemesis. :) Or are you a serial offender?

Red Rag

Post of the year to Austin Barry - He attacks the Labour Party for British youth not being able to spell, then spots a spelling mistake in his own post......but actually misses the other spelling mistake....CLASSIC!

Fergus Pickering

Austin Barry, no, as usual, Joan Littlewood was wrong. What was her opinion of degrees in medicine, or would she have preferred to be operated on by a chap who had picked it up from the university of life? Ditto lawyers. Ditto accountants. I take it she did not attend a university, which did not prevent her - of course it did not - from casigating them from a position of pure ignorance.

I saw her version of Henry IV once. I think Orson Welles's was better. He seemed to have listened to what the play had to tell him. Our Joan just rewrote it - from the university of life no doubt.

Oedipus Rex

Austin Barry

Oh dear mate, you've gone and done it again - Nemesis, not Nemisis.
Also it isn't purely a product of 'New Labour'. The decline of written language has been ongoing for decades, bolstered by a reliance on the screen as a means of communication.

For those of you who obviously have no numerical sense either, the 'products' of New Labour are those aged 18 and under.

Holly ......

We could always use my idea.
Use the union fees,paid in by their members to 'fund'training/work schemes for the sausages churned out under Labour's years of
Education,Education,Education,instead of the fat,rich union leaders using the money for their own comfy lifestyles and the Labour party.
Just a thought.

Master Cobbett

Apart from the dedicated Lefties, is there anyone who takes Balls seriously. Even Mr Balls himself, I suspect, regards his contributions to political discourse as part of a game, the main aim of which is to obtain power, and not be too fastidious in how that aim is satisfied. He really is an absurd, nearly comical, figure. I'm not denying his, presumed, intelligence, but he is a scoundrel and a humbug, possibly the most notable in British politics. Of course his position as shadow Chancellor entails that the media have to take him seriously and give him air time, but the rest of can throw bread rolls at him and point out his risibility in the spirit of the game.

Axstane

Much inflation is imported - oil and gas prices on the international market, fall in the value of the Pound guarantee that.

A great deal is caused by green taxes of various kinds which, in turn, affect the price of fuels.

The most important extra component is QE although one might say that is the cause of the fall in Sterling.

One will readily appreciate that the alternative to inflation is deflation - long-term price immobility never having occurred naturally. Deflation is a sign of a faltering economy but we have not seen that although some economists forecast it - economic forecasts being usually as useful as an umbrella of bread crumbs.

Inflation has been with us steadily for centuries that we can determine and has never stopped growth as long as it is reasonably contained. I do seem to remember that up to 1973 inflation had averaged 2.5% for over 100 years. When it is accompanied by wage restraint it does, of course, depress demand and lower the standard of living. What we also know from long experience is that governments have few tools to bring down inflation for fear of created mass unemployment.

Does Ed Balls have a magic nostrum that can fix it? Unlikely since true inflation, not the government massaged figures, ran at about 4.5% a year from 1999 to 2007.

Gary Williams

Daniel Maris,

"Every foreign banker who comes to live here immediately sucks out of the country about a million pounds in terms of their need for housing and impact on our infrastructure."

To say that your assertion is a bit off the wall would be the understatement of the year.
Have you got even the slightest evidence for what you claim, or is it indeed as preposterous as it appears to be?

Occasional Ostrich

Daniel Maris, Austin Barry & Ruby Duck:

Perhaps it's "cereal offender"?

RD: Try "Can't be ballsed to read arse".
There's something satisfying about reading it this way around.

Simon Stephenson.

"Of his role in our downfall, he says nothing – again. But, for all of Balls’ conceit his article is tactically astute"

Tactically astute? What's he involved in? Some sort of teenage game, where being at the top of the pile at zero hour is the solitary purpose, and the ramifications of what you have to do to accomplish this is irrelevant?

It's time that Balls/Labour were honest enough to admit that the last 15 years has seen far too many houses of cards built on thinking that is possibilistic rather than probabilistic, and that they, as a political movement, have been at least as much a part of this as anyone else. When they do this, and they acknowledge the need for a re-emphasis of the probable over the possible, there will be some point in listening to them again. Not before, though.

The facts about jobs in Britain

Perhaps Ed Balls might want to acquaint himself with the facts about jobs in Britain by reading this press release from his fellow Labour MP, Frank Field.

http://www.balancedmigration.com/pressreleases/BritishjobsreleaseRev4.pdf

All private sector jobs created under Labour have gone to foreign workers
“British jobs for foreign workers”

New figures published today show just how few new jobs in Britain have gone to British born workers. Looking at people of working age, all jobs created in the private sector under the Labour Government have been filled by foreign born workers. The number of UK born workers in the private sector actually fell by nearly 90,000 between the first quarter of 1997 and the first quarter of 2009. A third of new public sector jobs also went to non-UK born workers.

In respect of the total working population over the age of 16, the picture is slightly different – because a significant number of UK born people have stayed on after the official retirement age. These figures show that 1.1 million new jobs have been created in the public sector of which 28% went to non-UK born workers. In the private sector there were 1.8 million new jobs – but 85% went to non-UK born workers.

Commenting on the figures, the co-Chairmen of the Cross-Party Group on Balanced Migration, Frank Field MP and Nicholas Soames MP, said:
“These figures tell a simple story: in the private sector it has been British jobs for foreign workers. The private sector should now match the public sector in ensuring local people have the first chance at gaining local jobs”.

* The Rt Hon Frank Field MP and The Hon Nicholas Soames MP are Co-Chairmen of the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration. The Group’s Vice-Chairmen are Lord (Bill) Jordan CBE (former President of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union)

E Hart

You don't build a thriving economy on the back of people who work part-time or who subsist on benefits, the minimum wage or half the medial income. This government is clueless and we are about to find out just how very shortly.

Only nutters in the Tea Party, the coalition and the European Central Bank believe you can cut your way to victory.

Ireland is a disaster, Portugal is a disaster, Greece is a disaster [fill in the rest of the disasters as they occur...]

We are building a land fit for Philip Larkin's Mr Bleaney - an ideological haven maybe - but not for most of the population.

Osborne better start stimulating something and soon. At the moment his very policy is undermining the recovery and he'll end up borrowing even more money just to keep us in the economic doldrums. You couldn't make it up.

Cynic

"On becoming shadow chancellor, [Balls] immediately attacked the government’s VAT rise and benefits changes, which he judged to be the main contributors to rising inflation" No mention of the 25% devaluation of sterling and the increasing reliance of the UK on imported energy that happened on his watch, then? Nor of the tripartite (failed) regulatory system installed by his boss that allowed rampant house price inflation (which was removed from the inflation measures)? It's a pity that Labour didn't do something about education standards (other than inflating grades) while it was in power, too. Barely literate school leavers are always going to struggle to find employment, particularly since the Labour Government (of which Balls formed a part) flooded the country with immigrants.

Tim Reed

Can the government really step in to create jobs, or does it need to get out of the way for jobs to be created?

Unless he's talking about more public sector hiring, but we've been there over the last decade and are in the process of trying to scale that back.
As you say, Balls is as genetically dishonest as Brown was. To mention the rising cost of living, but concede nothing in regard to Labour's responsibility is taking the public for fools. Again, another trait he has in common with Brown. Hopefully the public at large will begin to see through their 'evil bankers caused it all' smoke-screen and start spreading the blame more evenly on those responsible. I shan't hold my breath though. Wealthy city bankers are too attractive a scape-goat for people who can't be bothered to think for themselves.

Occasional Ostrich

Oedipus Rex:

You're needed over at "The return of the signature parade".

libertarian

Dear Daniel Maris

I just read your second post. Ha ha ha even more deluded than your first, where do Labour find people like you?

Financial Services paid £62 billion in taxes into the revenue in the last tax year. So I guess we wouldn't miss that if they went offshore would we?

I guess you also don't know that there is a large financial services industry in Edinburgh, Leeds and Manchester ?

I guess further that you have no idea of who it is that actually gets these bonuses, what they are, why they get them and WHAT THEY SPEND THEM ON ( there's a clue there) in the economy and how much non financial services employment is created when they spend their bonuses.

Money is a really really simple concept. Its NOT a zero sum game and it has absolutely no value until you spend it and when you spend it that immediately creates income, work and jobs for someone else

libertarian

Dear E Hart

Please tell me where the money tree grows.

You are the only one making it up

eric

Doesn't everyone realise? George Osborne is running Plan 'B'.
Plan 'A' was the disastrous effort from Brown & Balls, and would have left us partnered with Greece, Ireland, Portugal etc

paulg

Bankers had a professional responsibility to lend their depositors money wisely, its called professional negligence, it was enshrined in law and understood by people where under took the profession.

Balls came along and, gave them a code of conduct that let them rip with Peoples money, not only their money but allowed them to leverage vast amounts off the state.

He is the most irresponsible fool that has ever put on a pair of shoes, to think he knows how the world works is to watch him studying the proceeds of his nasal cavity on the end of his finger, and tell us can predict the future.

If that idiot thinks he understands economics it truly is a voodoo science.

You need a job you idiot where reality is something you have to deal with every day. And then say you have some thing to tell us.

Its all your fault, why the country is in such a mess.

Frank Leader

Every Pop-eye Balls opens his mouth. He just talks rubbish.

daniel maris

Libertarian -

I've noticed before a tendency for you to misrepresent what people say. Did I say that I wanted to see the financial sector wiped out in the UK? No, I did not. I simply want to see some of the promised rebalancing. The logic of your argument is that growth of the financial sector must always be good for the country. But we've seen already how vulnerable it makes us to financial collapse and I contend that the financial sector (which necessitates a large immigrant labour force) puts a real strain on our infrastructure in London and the south east.

There may be stronger arguments for financial services being located in Manchester and Edinburgh and perhaps we should do more to encourage that.

Money is not just money - shows how little you understand the workings of the economy in my opinon.

To take a simple example: (a) you can have one person earning a million pounds, who then puts £500,000 into property ownership
or (b) you could have 20 people earning £50,000 each who collectively put £300,000 into property ownership. Under example (a)
the money will have a greater inflationary effect on house prices than (b). And if (a)is someone moving to this country and purchasing a house (or maybe two), he is displacing one or two families already living and we will have to use our collective resources to house them.

The trickle down theory is totally discredited. We've seen how much the incomes of people at the top of the tree have increased in the last decade and at the other end of the scale there has been hardly any real increase in incomes.

daniel maris

Libertarian -

The money tree probably grows in the quantitative easing garden, next to the performance related pay bonus playing field.

daniel maris

E Hart -

I'd divide the issue into two.

1. The need to reverse the government's approach which has succeeded in spreading economic fear across the land, so depressing the recovery. There will probably be an illusory bounce as people spend some of their redudnancy money in this and the next quarter, but I think it will be back to the doldrums again (this while the world economy is probably growing at something like 4-5%).

2. Longer term, we need a far more structural approach to how we are going to build a decent society for most people - providing enough employment, ensuring all young people take the step into paid work, breaking welfare dependency, and creating a successful, sustainable economy. We don't really have any debate about that, but we should. I think that elements would include:

- A restructuring of taxation away from income and corporation tax to property, transaction, energy and sales taxes.

- Encouraging a John Lewis style co-operative sector.

- Creating new financial institutions, including regional banks.

- Developing domestic energy sources.

- Guaranteed paid employment opportunities for all school and college leavers over a two year period.

Gary Williams

Daniel Maris,

What are you on about?

Your a) and b) property purchases have little to do with each other, for several reasons. They are not comparable; the dichotomy is a false one.

You object to a wealthy person's moving to the UK because...that immigrant will need a place to live, thus depriving a Briton of that place to live?
The same would not apply if the immigrant were not a wealthy person?

daniel maris

Gary Williams -

It's not at all false. The income distribution within banking is extremely top heavy and it is also very dependent on staff imported from overseas. I don't think the same applies in manufacturing to the same extent, and furthermore it can be distributed around the country.

As to immigration, I object to all mass immigration. I favour the sort of approach recommended by Migration Watch, where people coming to work here do so on a temporary, guest-worker basis and where we identify the full costs of immigration. I think any firm bringing an employee to this country should pay the full infrastructure cost of bringing that person in - the cost of providing their housing and a contribution to transportation and other infrastructure costs. Otherwise, we are simply subsidising immigration through taxes, charges and the price of goods.

E Hart

The Money Tree is the same tree which enables you to buy a house. I take it you didn't buy yours outright after saving up for 30 years and putting all the money in a biscuit tin? It is called credit.

You borrow the money - and please don't me give that shit about the GDP:debt ratio, I know it from the 17th century to date) and historically it is relatively low and not cause for soiling your trousers - unless your George Osborne on mission.

Then you take the money from the tree and use it to kick-start the economy in the form of capital projects which employ private contractors. You look around for worthy causes - which can add value to the economy - and you set about investing in them. For example, schools, houses, hospitals, rail, road, renewables, bio-tech, hi-tech, electrification, start-ups grants etc. This in turn employs contractors, construction and so on down the chain. It also provides NI and tax receipts.

When you close something down - say, a factory, the closure affects the primary, secondary, tertiary and so on in turn. It's a ripple effect. The same thing also works in reverse.

Just like with you house, you pay down the debt as you go. What you don't have is a non-productive, costly, decorative albatross hanging round your neck in the wasteland you've created.

The money tree? Go back to Good Housekeeping of whatever it is you read. Ever heard of the Marshall Plan, Lend Lease, the New Deal, WWII - they all worked - some better than others.

TheNoseyMole

My favorite is still..
"In ancient time there was, Heracles, Damocles and Pericles, unfortunately all we have now is Testicles"

Gary Williams

Daniel Maris,

Excuse me? Are you following your own postings here?

You made an "A v B" comparison of kinds of money going into property, and argued that one was more inflationary than the other. Apart from the fact that you compared the two sums as if they were like-for-like, although one was 60% larger than the other, you claimed that one level of property purchase was more inflationary than the other.
On what basis would a large single purchase be inherently more inflationary than an equal sum comprising aggregated smaller purchases?

Wrt your second point, that the employer of a new immigrant should pay the full cost to the UK of that person's community costs, do the immigrant's income taxes, NI, VAT, stamp, fuel duty, etc. not count?

Your example was of a person at a very high income level. Patently, that person is likely to pay much more in tax than the average person will do.
At the same time, that wealthy immigrant banker is much less likely to live out his/her days in the UK. Ergo he or she will, on average, pay much more per year of residence into the nation's tax pool, but over a lifetime take much less out of it.
You've got a problem with that?

Dr David Hill

Ed Balls’ recommendation to reduce VAT by 2˝% to 17˝ % will do little for the economy as long as inflation is running near to 5%. For the 2˝% will be gobbled up within 6 months and what good will that be? Better that Mr. Balls looks at the bigger picture and used his brainpower in finding the means to reduce inflation substantially and providing solutions to create economic dynamism. But as usual, these people cannot come up with anything more complex than cutting taxes and that is why the country is in the state it is. We need strategies Mr. Balls that create new jobs, industries and the means for our people to build a meaningful future. This can only come from the ideas people that all politicians ignore. If Mr. Balls and his fellow political cohorts understood this they would create ideas incubators for our people that would through this creative infrastructure, deliver the seeds of our future economic dynamism. Two and half percent, what long-term meaningful good will that do again I ask? Another fine example of simple thinking Mr. Balls I detect, not the solutions that we need desperately for our economic development. If you did not know before Mr. Balls, Britain has the most creative and innovative minds in the world by far according to global research by both Japan and Germany. Therefore put your efforts into creating the systems where our brilliant ideas can surface and be exploited and you would be saying something of real merit for this once great nation.

Dr David Hill
Executive Director
World Innovation Foundation