From: livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Subject: Re: Some of my best friends are speculators
Organization: sgi
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 92 03:32:56 GMT

In article <1992Oct1.121159.23009@dcs.qmw.ac.uk>, mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:
|> From: livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
|> > mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:
|> |>
|> |> The British Electorate has for the past four general elections
|> |> voted in a party whose main platform is belt-tightening. It
|> |> ought to be obvious after this latest crisis that the loony
|> |> right are part of the problem not part of the solution.
|> 
|> > This is a very foolish comment, for two reasons.
|> 
|> >First, it is factually incorrect.
|> 
|> No it is not. I was replying to a claim that Britain had
|> elected governments that were profligate in public expenditure.

No, that was not the claim.   The claim was that they "refuse to
vote for anyone who points out that a little national belt-
tightening might be in order.   That can as well be belt-tightening
by the consumer as the much narrower issue of public expenditure.

When parties proclaim fiscal responsibility as a goal, that might
encourage more investment, by returning some money to the electors,
but it's then up to the electors what they choose to do.

However you can always find some clown who is so used to the
government spending his money for him, that he reacts with
shock and outrage when they suggest that maybe he might like
to make a few of those choices himself.


|> No - in the UK reduction of public spending has been a major
|> part of Conservative policy. And government privatisation has
|> actually been about taking assets away from their owners (the
|> people) and selling them off at a cheap rate to the rich and to
|> foreigners.

The government has no money of its own.  When they sell an asset, 
the money they receive goes into the Treasury.  That means it 
belongs to the citizens.


|> It is hard to square this with increasingly authoritarian
|> control of local government by the UK government, such as the
|> recent nationalisation of the education system.

You mean letting parents control schools?   Yes, truly tragic.


|> Britain has had tens of thousands of business failures these
|> last few years, tens of thousand of home repossessions. We have
|> brought too many foreign goods, over-invested in houses, had a
|> propert bubble burst. All this is a good thing?

Please don't misquote me so early in the conversation.   I didn't
say it's a good thing when poeple make bad choices.   I think it's 
a good thing when people are allowed to succeed *or fail*.

What I find strange is when people like you protest at having the
power to make choices, even bad choices, given back to you.


|> I would have thought that the re-election of the Conservative
|> government for a fourth term this year, on a manifesto which
|> basically said "don't blame us" is fairly conclusive proof that
|> your view of what Britain is like today is not connected with
|> reality.

But I think the Tories are absolutely right.  When they say, in
effect "We can't make the Sun shine, so don't blame us when it
rains" they speak no more than the truth.

A few years away from the UK has convinced me that the British 
don't have worse Governments than other countries: the British 
merely suffer from the strange delusion that the Government 
waves magic wands, and all kinds of thing happen if the 
Government is "good" or don't happen if the Govt. is "bad".

Well, that's crap.    There are some strictly limited things 
that Governments can do, but most of the broad economic trends 
are actually outside the control of Government, and blaming 
the Government the the British buying too many imports is just 
silly.

jon.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british