Was Gordon Brown Partially Responsible For Labour’s Defeat In The 2019 General Election?
When automatic enrolment into pensions came in, I was very much in favour, as I feel everybody should have a pension.
There is a section called Automatic Enrolment in the Wikipedia entry called Pensions in the United Kingdom.
If you read the section, this is the last paragraph.
Between the introduction of auto enrolment and April 2016, “the overall proportion of eligible employees saving into a workplace pension increased from 55% to 78%” with the largest increases found in the private sector.
Consider.
- When I started work in the 1960s, the average man and the few women on the factory floor weren’t very well educated. But now, they are much more likely to have a few good qualifications.
- Most too will be computer-savvy to a level, that would have been unimaginable to their forerunners in the 1960s.
- Newpapers too, from the Sun and the Mirror to the Times, \guardian, Telegraph and FT, now offer easy-to-read financial advice to help everyone manage their money better.
Many working people today have a pension, that although some didn’t want it, they probably feel could be a help in retirement.
So did Labour’s reckless or ambitious spending plans, frighten many of their traditional supporters?
They certainly frightened me!
Would the election result have been different, if Gordon Brown hadn’t started the modern pension with the Pensions Act of 2008 and had left well enough alone?
As my quote said earlier in 2016, just over three-quarters of eligible employees are saving into a workplace pension.
Some may have been subscribing for over ten years now and they will feel protective of that amount pf money!
William Hill Plans 700 Store Closures Putting 4,500 Jobs At Risk
The title of this post is the same as that of this article on the BBC.
This is the first three paragraphs.
Bookmaker William Hill has said it plans to close about 700 betting shops, which could lead to 4,500 job losses.
The firm said the move followed the government’s decision in April to reduce the maximum stake on fixed-odds betting terminals to £2.
Since then, the company added, it had seen “a significant fall” in gaming machine revenues.
So should we protect problem gamblers from themselves or those who work in betting shops?
I should add, that my late wife was a barrister specialising in family matters. She would say that many divorces were the result of at least one of the four main additions; alcohol, drugs, gambling and tobacco.
In my view, it was an enormous mistake to allow fixed odds betting terminals into betting shops in the first place.
Anybody with a modicum of sense or knowledge of the betting industry, knows of the problems gambling can create.
The terminals were introduced in 2001, when Tony Blair was Prime Minister and Gordon Brown was Chancellor.
As Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn, Phil Hammond and John McDonnell don’t look the sort to wager a lot of money on these machines, it will be interesting to see, who gets the blame for the job losses at William Hill and the additional job losses that will surely happen at other betting shop chains.
The Bank That Keeps On Losing
This article on the BBC is entitled RBS blames legacy issues for £2bn loss.
This is the first paragraph.
Royal Bank of Scotland has reported a £2bn loss for the first six months of the year, which the chief executive blamed on “legacy issues”.
The only legacy issue that matters, is that Gordon Brown was stupid enough to rescue it with £45.5billion of the UK’s money, instead of let it go bust.
But then it was all about Scottish votes, as was the two aircraft carriers, that may not be what the navy needs in this increasingly dangerous world of terrorists and rogue states.
Thank you, Gordon!
How can I claim my share back, like I did with PPI?
Would You Buy A Political Idea From This Man?
Gordon Brown is going to outline his ideas for better power sharing between London and Edinburgh. It’s all here on the BBC.
I doubt anybody will be listening!
I certainly won’t be, as he was one of the idiots, who saddled the UK with that useless bank, the Royal Bank of UK Taxpayers, for which we are all still paying.
It would have been so much cheaper to liquidate it and then pay everyone who lost out in taxpayers money. But that would have meant Labour losing all votes in Scotland!
The Bill For RBS Goes Up
On the first of January, I wrote this post, entitled Will We Ever Get Rid Of This Worthless Bank.
But now according to reports, like this one on the BBC, the bill is going to get bigger. The BBC article says that the bank needs another £3.1 billion for claims relating to the financial crisis. As there are sixty three million of us, that means, that even the granny in the council house and the baby just leaving the hospital will have to find another pound a week.
So next time, you look at your bank account or count the change in your pocket, think of the mess that the prudent Gordon Brown, dropped us in.
How To Lose Money Bank of Scotland Style
If we thought Fred the Shred and his crew of comedians were a wunch of bankers, this story from the Herald in Scotland is up there with his worst.
The Bank of Scotland loaned £11.2 million to an ex-banker to fund a new stadium for his football club; Dunfermline Athletic. Everybody then went bust leaving Lloyds Bank holding the baby with the gold-plated nappies. Here’s what the article says about the final outcome.
Despite being valued at £11.2m in 2011, the East End Park stadium was sold by administrators KPMG to a fan-led buyout team for just £700,000.
It strikes me, that there has been a bit of hanky-panky here. After all why would a club with average gates of a few thousand want a stadium that holds over eleven thousand? I wonder if Gordon Brown has any links to Dunfermline and its football club!
Will We Ever Get Rid of This Worthless Bank?
This report in the Guardian is depressing reading for the New Year.
If we look at the figure of £14.5bilion out of pocket, that means that all sixty three million of us will have to contribute around £230,000 each. I know some of that money will come from corporate taxes, but where do the big companies like BP, BT and Vodafone get their profits from?
If we look at the performance of the two state-controlled banks, we see that Lloyds is actually improving both in value and share price, but RBS is still an impossible basket case.
More and more, I’m coming to the conclusion that Gordon Brown’s decision to save RBS was one of the worst pieces of political judgement ever, that ranks with when Neville Chamberlain thought Hitler was a good bloke to be trusted.
I wonder how many idiots, still bank with RBS or their accident-prone subsidiary; NatWorst?
I know of one supposedly sensible guy who does, but he got a mortgage with NatWest, in the good times.
With RBS, the bill would have been lot less, if we’d put the bank down and compensated, all those individuals and companies, who’d lost money as a result.
But if he’d done that, Gordon Brown would have have lost every Labour vote in Scotland to the Nationalists.
He might though have retained power in 2010, as the rest of the UK, would have applauded his courageous action.
Tumblr News Give Me A Plug
I don’t read Tumblr News but they must sometimes read my blog, as this article entitled, Former OFT boss: regulation can be a bridge to new customers, has a link to this post of mine. In that post from August 29th, 2009, I said I had over £30,000 invested in Zopa and now nearly four yeas later it is just a shade under £140,000, with total interest of nearly £140,000 and bad debts of just £650.
I think I’ll accept that!
My investment in Zopa has certainly performed better than pudence’s investment in the Royal Bank of UK Taxpayers and Lloyds TSBleed.
A Take On Bankers Worth Reading
This blog post on bankers is worth reading. Two of my least-favourite politicians get the treatment with no holds barred.
Read it! If I paraphrased it, I’d reduce the quality of the criticism.
Miliband Shows His True Colours
I have never been a fan of David Miliband. To me, he is one of those I would bar from Parliament, as he doesn’t appear to have done a real job in his life. Two many MPs on all sides of the house are just political time servers, who live off the fat of the land.
He was also one of the yes-men, who didn’t stop Gordon Brown’s disastrous policies, that led us into the state we’re in today.
So his first desertion to New York, is probably a good thing, as hopefully he’ll never get into another British Government. But then the Labour Party in recent years has shown a particular talent in bringing in their friends to important positions, despite past failures and indiscretions.
Incidentally, I can never understand, how anybody ever wants to work in the United States, because of that country’s adherence to the death penalty.
I suspect that his resignation from the board of Sunderland Football Club is just as much about practicalities, as about the appointment of Paolo di Canio as manager. Sunderland is a long way from New York.
The Anonymous Widower 