KHOODEELAAR! telling Gordon Brown to scrap Crossrail as a small but credible act of competence. And responsibility. And accountability

0500 Hrs GMT London Monday 11 May 2009:

KHOODEELAAR! telling Gordon Brown to scrap Crossrail as a small but credible act of competence. And responsibility. And accountability. And a leaning TOWARDS democracy and truthfulness in parliament. The Crossrail Bill was crass. Wasteful. Unjustified. Unaffordable. UK MPs & peers DID NOT scrutinise it. They acted as stooges. And they ENACTED a pack of lies. Lies about the transport needs and about the economy. And about the society. And about the environment. That they did that is beyond dispute. KHOODEELAAR! has chronicled, reported and analyised the MPs and the peers’ lying behaviour in the period January 2006 to now. With the CURRENt ‘shock horror’ 'surprise' [!] at the latest disclosures about just how corrupt MPs and peers are and can be, the KHOODEELAAR! analysis again is vindicated. So we tell Gordon Brown: do one dignified and competent thing before you have to find some other address: Scrap Crossrail. That will signal your being aware, belatedly, of having been bamboozled, hoodwinked, misled, lobbied and lobbied off course by Big Business. And by their assortments of touts as personified by Ken Livingstone. And you can actually create a small but undeniable basis for claiming to have been able to recognise prudence even at a fading stage of your tenancy in Downing Street London SW1...[To be continued]





Iron Lady versus economic crisis
Matišák | 07 Máj, 2009 00:56
What would be a strategy of Margaret Thatcher.


Question:


Margaret Thatcher She assumed the Office of Prime Minister 30 years ago. When we look at her policy principles what do you think she would do today in the time of the economic crisis?


Nicholas Randall, Lecturer in British Politics, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology University of Newcastle



In many respects, I suspect were Margaret Thatcher to find herself in office today she would not have to repeat many of the actions and decisions which she took in the 1980s because much of her legacy remains intact - privatisation has not been reversed. Her reforms of trade union law are largely intact. The broader neo-liberal economic framework still persists. What I think she would do (and what David Cameron also says he would do in office) is to try and tackle the debt the British government now holds by cutting public expenditure. Exactly where she would choose to inflict those cuts is very difficult to determine.


Steven Fielding, Professor of Political History, School of Politics and IR, University of Nottingham


Thatcher was more pragmatic than she liked people to think BUT I do wonder how she would have responded to the present crisis, much of which is due to lack of regulation of the financial markets – and she was largely responsible for that. I suspect that she would have done much less than has the Gordon Brown government and done that very slowly and unwillingly – but that in the end might have been forced to go along with what most other major economies are doing, even the US – and she was very keen about keeping on friendly terms with the Americans!

FROM:


http://matisak.blog.obroda.sk/blog/english_section/2009/05/07/iron_lady_versus_economic_crisis

George Jones, Emeritus Professor of Government, The London School of Economics and Political Science


Mrs Thatcher believed in the great power for good of markets, in the benefits of low taxation to encourage individual effort and enterprise, and in praising the attitudes of housewives who had to manage a family budget, keeping within their means and balancing the books.


This set of attitudes would have led her to be suspicious of the irresponsible schemes of bankers and financiers who caused the world crash. She would have spoken out and acted against their activities before the crisis erupted last year. She would not have nationalised the banks but let them face the consequences of their irresponsible behaviour, but she would have protected small depositors who had been thrifty.


She said you cannot "buck the market". She would let the market solve the problem, leaving the Government to protect those hardest hit. She would not have introduced high taxes on the rich but carried on her, and Tony Blair's, policy of encouraging people to use their skills to earn high salaries. In this way citizens would have innovated to find ways out of the current recession. Now they may leave the country and avoid paying tax. She would have been tough cutter of public expenditure, eliminating waste in government bureaucracy, and stopping grandiose projects, like the Olympic Games and Crossrail.


Peter Snowdon, Researcher, The Politics Show at BBC News, Co-Author (with Anthony Sheldon) of the book The Conservative Party: An Illustrated History


It would be difficult to say how much she would intervene in the financial crisis. There was a pragmatic streak to her leadership. She probably would have made clear that the State would have to relinquish its ownership of the banks as soon as possible.

Twitter, to End POVERTY

follow me on Twitter