I think you've highlighted something really interesting there, and it's a point I've kind of been making myself in different ways,

I've said quite a lot that many Tory-supporters reply to criticism of their party by bringing up an example of the Labour party.

I think this is a 'sin' in two ways:

- it sidesteps any actual reply (qv Oscar's posts)

- it makes the (often false) assumption that the original critic is a Labour supporter OR, even if so, wouldn't criticise Labour.

It's also, sadly, something you hear an awful, awful lot of on LBC.

Much more interesting, I think, to deal with the actual questions and issues honestly. I suppose that underneath everything I think, I was always brought up to question everything and remember that no-one has a monopoly on the truth. It's in the shades of grey and the nuances that we find reality, I feel, and that's why (for all his faults) I like JOB so much on LBC, because he at least attempts to look into the cracks.

It's bad not to close a loophole for ANY govt, not worse because it's Labour. But even if you scratch the surface of thinking this, it can't be long before we see the logical conclusion - that we EXPECT a Tory to be a cheating so-and-so. If anything's worse, surely it would be that? (I hasten to add, I'm not saying that, but merely pointing out how important it is to scratch the surface of what we think).

Just because people don't agree with your point of view does not necessarily make them 'thick'.

Protecting jobs is not greedy, it's about survival. Many communities felt let down by the government, when programmes were not put in place to replace the jobs lost. I think the miners felt it particularly as, through their hard, dangerous and dirty labour they had fuelled the industrial revolution and two world wars. They then felt they were being thrown onto the scrap heap of history. I witnessed many of the clashes first hand during the 1980's after secondary picketing was outlawed, but secondary policing was not. Convoy after convoy of armoured police transit vans travelling up the M1 in order to 'sort out' the miners.

A similar scenario with car manufacture, steel and shipbuilding. You mention political allies in Asia, India and Latin America. At the same time that we were deregulating during the 1980's, under Margaret Thatcher, Norman Lamont, Nigel Lawson etc. other countries were imposing (and still impose) stringent trade tariffs. Not sure where you get this idea of 'liberalism' in those countries from.

Improved infrastructure, increased access to raw materials and cheap labour in those, and other, countries were where the inevitability of changes to our industrial base were bound to come. In the latter I agree with you - although not in the callous way it was handled. There again, much too deep and much too fast.

By the way, the US car industry (mostly based in Detroit) is a mere shadow of its former self, and has created great hardship in that area, with appallingly high crime rates the inevitable consequence of a lack of forward thinking.

I believed at the time (the 1980's) that a caring government would help to replace the pride and self-belief stripped from a community - and I don't mean just by installing call centres.

First of all I am not a member of any political party. A Conservative with a small c who would never Conservative under Cameron.
But equally I have never voted Labour or Lib Dem.
My views are coloured by whether I think something is fair or not.
There is nothing remotely fair about tax avoidance.

But then I am a complete hypocrite because I buy a lot from Amazon thus making a mockery of what I have just said!!

There is nobody on LBC at the moment who can talk politics without his or her own opinions colouring any discussion.
Perhaps it is an impossibility for any presenter to be impartial.
Playing Devil's Advocate as so many presenters like to say they do is pretty farcical because in the end they will still sit with their own views.

And the phrase that two things that are certain in life are death and taxes.
The first yes but the second? I don't think so.

But to return to my assertion that I would have thought it logical that a Labour government would have closed any tax loopholes because historically that is what they have always done. If you want an example of what I mean the very first thing that Brown did when he became Chancellor of the Exchequer before he had even drawn breath was to make it more difficult for people to afford private medical insurance. It was such a petty measure that bought in so little to the Exchequer but it did mean that some who could afford say BUPA could no longer do so. More pressure on the NHS.
That was a loophole if you like that Labour closed.
But when it came to big business they just closed their eyes.

Like I am about to do now!!

I return to the point that we have not had a Labour government since 1979.

I have never personally felt the need to take out private medical insurance. However, on the basis that some people do, and they still pay for the NHS, what is the problem? What did Mr Brown do having never thought of looking into it.

I notice that Global Radio have been accused (on Twitter) of not paying any UK Corporation Tax for five years.

http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=4857

I feel exactly the same as the above. It's other people who label my views as 'left-wing' (although on some issues, I'm not) - I just think of them as 'fair'.

I think Nick Abbot had it right when he said we don't have Capitalism, but Corporatism. It's almost impossible not to buy from a tax-avoiding corporate, as ultimately they own many of the high-street an online brands under their vast umbrellas. This idea of choice is largely a false one in reality. It's more like a system of giant global cartels.

sorry charlie drake but you really dont understand.
you can say thatcher had a "hard uncaring image" but "protecting companies" by stopping change rather than "protecting them" by adjusting them was the problem not the solution. the evidence and facts are now clear even if they were arguable in "real time" at the time. it was impossible to maintain the levels of employment that the unions were doing so in the 70s, the facts are clear, the left wing govts around the world were converting to liberalist ones, and they were going to compete in the very things we had people refusing to update in. those are facts. you can look at india, mexico, china, taiwan, malaysia, korea in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and now and see that the 70s was the end of our way of doing it forever. if the unions had not made our industry impossible to change it would not have been in the mess it was and it could have been adjusted to survive as it did in part in other countries like america and germany. but lack of change meant ours was too "wrong" shaped to change when it finally crashed.
those countries ramped up efficient production in coal, in steel, in cars etc. the numbers we had employed in them was already too many and it was going to get worse. no one was doing anyone any favours refusing change in those indursties, and anyone saying "they were protecting jobs" is thick. they are not thinking it thorough at all - simple as that. as for it being just thatcher, no, the 2 previous govts also tried to change it, but the unions brought them down. the late 70s was crunch time, we had gone to the imf for a bail out loan, we were on our last chance and it was the loan's terms that dictated a lot of the industrial change, not a thatcher thing. those are the facts.

you can argue thatchers style was wrong, but to argue that the facts about industry shape and the changing world means the label is right.
people who really believed the rubbish the unions and lefties said in the 70s and 80s (especially the populist easy on the mind easy to chant stuff) and then internalised it, repeating it for 30 years are going to be like suicide bombers, completely committed to the mistaken facts, but that doesnt make them anything other than fools if by now they havent been able to look at the cold hard facts of the period that are now known and have been heavily researched and checked. at the time it may well have been a political "view" on what could be happening. 30 years later and we know for sure what HAPPENED globally and in relation to each other - not what someone working in a building saw of their world and no more than locally around them to similar people.

http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN01441

Oh do wake up chin!!
This was posted yesterday - see my post 494.

But we are back on topic which is a safer place to be as I do not want this thread to disappear.

Thanks RL.

Okay, so there are pros and cons for this. If a lot of people started up private medical insurance then there would tack the burden off the NHS, but if people don't then it would not help.

The jury is out !

I wonder if Iain Dale will discuss this on Drive.
He should do.
Margaret Hodge is absolutely right about this - not words I thought would ever tumble from my lips!!
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013...&utm_hp_ref=uk

(keeping this on topic!!)

I would agree, unless (!) they are spending a considerable part of their recess time specifically working on constituents business and it is accountable.

I'm not exactly sure from your diatribe what it is I haven't 'understood'. I must be one of your 'thick' people.

What I was saying is that, yes, change was inevitable, but the way those changes were handled was harsh, to say the least.
I was there and involved (I won't go into all the reasons why), not 'watching the world from a building' and certainly not reading about it in The Sun.

You mention the 'liberalisation of left wing (sic) countries'. I lived in Brazil under a military dictatorship where the dominant (in fact only) control was decidedly right wing. Many of my friends and associates had to flee the country, only to return years later after the military junta had been deposed. Others were tortured and either died or 'disappeared'. I didn't see much evidence then or there of 'liberalisation'.

The main thrust of what I wrote in my last post was that working practices had to change here (I agreed with you about that, if you remember), but not entirely because the working practices here were 'wrong' but because of the fact that we were having to compete with the other countries that you mentioned, who had improved their infrastructure, had access to raw materials, but - perhaps most importantly - practically unlimited amounts of cheap labour who had (and often still don't have) anywhere near the workers' rights that we have enjoyed in this country - often thanks to the unions - which have been eroded, and continue to be so, since the Thatcher era.

As Makeba has written on several occasions, the general media (including LBC) seem to want to polarise their audience; if you're against one thing, you must be for another, and vice versa. This is Hegelian, divisive, unrealistic and obstructive - but it 'sells' well.

cd...

brazil is interesting as it is a country that has done the exact opposite, it has trade control, currency control and worse of all is only "living the dream" it is because it is bank rolled by oil money, not because its economic policy is a winner.

the protectionism you talked about is true, but it was phased out as part of the liberalisation agreements the countries struck in the 70s & 80s & 90s with gatt and the wto, so while it was a popular "soundbite" for the unions to call on continuing their "protection" of their own industry it was a red herring used to keep the dumb dumb on what was really the cause of the destruction of our industry. the unions were aware of those anti-protection "transitional" agreements and they should have been looking for a transitional agreement to reshape our industry of their own to limit the damage done to their members as foreign competition changed - they didnt want to change, they wanted to be kept more and more from reality rather than adjust for the future - the unions failed their members, not thatcher

the facts are 30 years old, the old left wing and union claims just do not hold up to the facts that are now not disputable - to continue to cling to the populist t-shirt excuses for the problems of the 70s and to blame thatcher for them is ignorance. and ignorance and being thick is fairly linked when the facts are so readily available for those who can open their minds to the idea the unions were not by and large looking after the long term interests of their members - unions would have had us all still using typewriters and having to make expensive telephone calls, rather than realise the world was changing and people would not be employed in large numbers on typewriters any more. change happens, the unions refused it.
you are right about "low paid" areas having a competitive advantage, which along with low transportation helped move internationalisation into globlaisation. but jobs have forever moved to cheaper locations, it is normal. whats interesting now is automation means lower labour needs, and transportation is getting expensive meaning factories are returning from red tape and exploding wage bills in china back to america. we may well see the industry returning even if the jobs dont. but the jobs were going so its a red herring again on why the unions had a valid argument at the time.

as for lbc and the other media wishing to "extreme" the story and pick callers to maximise the shock, i completely agree, but the fact people have the opinions they crave to put out there is the problem. there is no real excuse that after 30 years and with all of the technology and news sources around that people still cling to false truths of the time as if they were still factually correct.

this is where lbc fails london. it enables false norms to be repeated and repeated until they become accepted. the standards of some presenters are poor at explaining the news, some do not even seem to be able to accurately read out of a newspaper and relate it to old news they are aware of. these half truths then become "the facts" of those listening who a day later ring in presenting their understanding as the truth to be argued and the cycle of stupidity evolves on.

I find this dialogue rather difficult to continue, as observations and opinions seem to get confused with facts, and you have a tendency to include too many topics for me to deal with, given limited space.

You mention countries such as 'india, mexico, china, taiwan, malaysia, korea' but I find this general and simplistic. You will see from this chart, for example, that there is quite a bit of discrepancy between the various countries you have mentioned:

http://www.sonic.net/~schuelke/EMAI.htm

Brazil sits right in the middle, in terms of trade barriers and tariffs, and their main export (from memory) is soya. They went through a period of producing alcohol from sugar cane, which they used to run cars etc. Many taxis and private cars these days are hybrid, running on lpg.

Many of their oil reserves are untapped, and they are consulting with BP for potential deep sea operations. As it happens, I was a consultant at many of these meetings and was on the chief advisory board for Fernando Enrique Cardoso before I joined the committee to elect Lula (a PT (Workers' Party) or - as you might say - 'Left Wing' politician - although, as I've said before - it is all very relative.

I'm not sure where you get the idea from that Brazil is 'living the dream'. Millions of people living in favelas certainly wouldn't agree.
It is a nation which has many, many obstacles to overcome, but is a country with phenomenal potential for the future, if they can overcome those obstacles. It will take time, but change is accelerating.

It would take a fair bit of research to accurately and objectively quantify the historical claims and trends you touch on, but just to say the only countries from the ones you have mentioned which have, or have had, a truly Left Wing regime would be Venezuela and Cuba.

Seriously, these issues are far more complex than you seem to want to admit or realise - I really don't wish to hog this thread, nor venture too far off-topic so I think, with respect, I will rest my case on this one.

Thanks, anyway.

cd... you make a good argument, but where you say i raise too many points, that of course is the essence of the situation, there was no single cause, which the unions wanted to paint as "its thatchers fault" - it was the huge number of external and internal factors which were converging to create the bust of the late 70s.


brazil of course is the last of the "bric"s, russia faded first, india is faltering, china is over heating - bric's being the "economic darlings" of the last 5 years. but it is "a dream" as you said there are huge areas of hardship, yet they want to hold the extremely expensive olympics and the world cup, and they are doing so with very protectionist policies. that is why some of the "made in china" oem makers have set up in brazil as it is the only way to get the product into the country without at least a huge import tax.
the old school oil companies are sniffing around but they have to do so on a limited basis, with a partner or via a large tax licence or combo...
what most people dont know is the amount of borrowing brazil has done on its future oil production, to pay for its spending. it has a property boom that could end up making spain look like nothing. the economic story of brazil doesnt factor into most peoples understanding because they just dont know what is going on - and because it is a "specialist" investment market (hard to access unlike say investing in the uk), it doesnt get well reported so that is no shock.

your link is interesting but it is the lower the number the more protection (weird that singapore which effectively made a rover 200 there as dear as a bmw 7 series here had such a good rating at the time, but they had very "targetted" restrictions and for the time even used "the environment" as a reason to keep imported cars a luxury). however it is 2000. thats 13 years ago on data from earlier than that. at that time india required a "domestic partner" as did china.. both those things have changed a lot recently, both those markets have rapidly changed from the 2000 figures. and the wto liberalisation agreements had typically 15-25 year transitional periods which would have meant affecting that info you gave with protectionist policies now gone.

lastly, again agreeing with you, it is very difficult to argue the "now" without subjective understandings of what is going on and what the aim is. that is not true for arguing about what actually was the state of play 30 years ago. the games have played out, the dust has settled, we can actually see who was doing what, not who might have been doing what

Fair enough.

Here are some figures for the last 20 years, which I hope you will find useful:

http://www.factset.com/insight/artic...nniversary.pdf

CD

looks interesting
i would love to be able to ask one or two lbc presenters to read through that and explain it in their own words

Indeed. I think even James Max would struggle. Slightly longer than a tweet, eh?

no wonder they want to go back to what katie price did last

And talking of LBC presenters I wonder if any of them have ever been found guilty of a transgression such as this!!
Please do not click on the following if you are faint of heart..........

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013...mail&utm_sourc

hahaha. i bet he thought he had another minute as it was 4:59 on the clock

do they still have a 5 second "dump" button (to screen out callers trying to swear) that could be triggered to save them?

I fear I could be in danger of coming across all prudish, but anyway...

Posting here is supposed to be enjoyable. A robust debate is enjoyable. What is not enjoyable is some of the derogatory language (and implications) used recently. I don't think it's acceptable to say that anyone who disagree with a view is 'thick' or stupid. I also don't think it's acceptable to talk about 'lefty-wefties', or to deride some well thought out contributions as 'flailing', etc. It's unnecessary and, with some deep regret, I fear that I will have to use the report button for the first time if it continues and let DS decide.

I'm sure it's possible to get a view across without having to be rude about someone who doesn't share it.