Friday 5 March 2010

Margaret Thatcher's toxic legacy | Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford | Comment is free | The Guardian

There has been no significant private investment in the deindustrialised regions. They have still not recovered their social fabric or productive economies and are now sustained by government spending
True that

Financial deregulation turned the housing market into the centre of a casino economy that grew on asset bubbles and speculation. Dynastic levels of wealth grew alongside some of the highest levels of poverty and inequality in Europe
Ouch

"Low- and middle-earning households borrowed to sustain their standard of living, creating unprecedented levels of personal debt."
You can stick water in front of a horse. The tone, part of quote removed, is that it's the Tories fault and these people are poor innocent bystanders. Well it takes two to tango.

"When the private sector won't invest, the government must"
Exactly. Like it or not



"The future is Labour's to win. The challenge is to recover its campaigning role by building a new covenant with the people: a minimum income entitlement, for example, through the guarantee of a living wage and a citizen's pension; a referendum on constitutional reform; a crusade to build homes and reform the housing markets; a government industrial activism for the new green industrial revolution.
The longer-term goal is to reverse the transfer of wealth and power from the many to the few, and create a more reciprocal society of freedom and security."
All very nice, not about to happen under this government. Even if they did, it's a topic of debate whether the best poklicy programme in the world would be thrown out with the bath water because Gordy is so unpopular. We'll never know, but probably

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