Welcome to my blog. I am a former local journalist who now works in PR and a Conservative and community activist in Woking and Horsell. This blog will keep updated on local issues as well as my interests and quirky news stories.
I'd rather have the Royal Mail deliver for me than this lot
I was stopped on the street the other day by someone who wanted to talk about the economy. “Do you know where the problem started?” he said. I started on about how the banks had mixed their High Street and investment banking functions for the sake of profit. “I know all that,” he said. “You’re wrong, let me tell you when it started.”
“The Bank of England used to get payments from the banks and could control money flowing in and out of them. If a bank wasn’t performing or was lending too much, the Bank of England could control the amount that it let flow to them or demand that they pay more money into them. Then Gordon Brown decided he didn’t want that to happen any more. He created this thing called the Financial Services Authority, which didn’t have any of those powers. And with their new-found freedom, the banks went off and did all the things that they had wanted to do but were stopped by the Bank of England.”
I listened – finally getting in with “so you support then the Conservative proposal to hand back regulation of the banks to the Bank of England?”
“Yes, but it’s not as simple as that. I’ve voted Labour in the past but I’m going to support you not because of the Bank of England but because the worst possible outcome for this country right now is a hung Parliament. I think you are the only party who can win outright and it’s important that we have a majority government for the sake of the economy. A hung parlimanent would be a disaster – the uncertainty could cost us our AAA credit rating, we wouldn’t be able to sell our guilts and bonds and repay the deficit. If that happens, we’ll be like Greece.”
It’s exchanges like this that make you think how important it is that we win this election. The Liberal Democrats want you to think that a hung parliament is a positive choice and will bring change. What it’ll actually bring is no change because the Civil Service will continue along the same course it’s been taking the country for years and the Lib Dems will run with it in order to stay in government. If anyone doubts this, look at what happened when the Lib Dems were in power in Scotland - not much.
If the Lib Dems go into coaltion, it will only be with Labour and Gordon Brown would remain as PM. Make no mistake, politics is a power game and all three parties are motivated by exactly the same desire for power and the enactment of their agenda, despite the ‘fresh approach’, the optimistic promises, the ‘plague on both your houses’ populism. Britain is in too fragile a place economically and socially to risk it on the Liberal Democrats.
