From: mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Some of my best friends are speculators
Date: 1 Oct 92 12:11:59 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept, QMW, University of London, UK.

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.
That was wrong. The Conservative government has (at least until
recently) run a healthy surplus on government expenditure and
greatly reduced the national debt, at the cost of a reduction
in public services. This is very clearly "belt-tightening"

>Both in the UK and the US,
>the main conservative policy has been deregulation.   That
>means returning control of assets to their owners.

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 second reason is that this is actually *orthogonal* to
>belt-tightening or slackening.    If a government returns
>control to citizens by reducing regulation, that government
>is saying "We don't *have* a policy about your belt.  It's
>*your* belt, so *you* decide how to wear it".

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.

>This is one area where the US is genuinely ahead of the UK.
>The US population has self-reliance as a positive value,
>including the notion that individuals can fail, make unwise
>choices, buy too many foreign goods, over-invest in houses,
>cause property bubbles.   You name it: they can do it.
>
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? Well, the
British seem to think so because they re-elected the government
under which it happened.

>The British have had so many decades of Nanny-knows-best
>that even after Nanny says "OK, Johnny, you're on your own,
>but be careful" then every time Johnny falls and skins his
>knee, he still turns around and blames Nanny.

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.

Matthew Huntbach
From: arf@otter.hpl.hp.com (Andrew Farmer)
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 18:33:17 GMT
Subject: Re: Abuse A Brit (was Re: Pardon my ignorance and such)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.