| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Conned by the Tories | |
| Posted by: | David Giles | |
| Date/Time: | 24/01/05 18:37:00 |
| Toby Thank you for reminding people with short and selective memories of the reasons why the country experienced the problems it did in the early 1990's. Other countries also experienced these problems and some of them are still experiencing them. Thanks to the measures taken by John Major and Kenneth Clarke, this country was in pretty good economic shape by the time Labour took power in 1997 with low inflation, low unemployment, rising employment, very significant inward investment, improving public services, competitive interest rates and competitive exchange rates. The high interest rates were connected with a misguided attempt to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism at the behest of the Europhile lobby - including the Labour and the Lib Dem parties.After the UK gave up this attempt at integration with our European neighbours, the British Government under John Major was free to adopt policies which were in Britain's interests rather than in Europe's. It turns out that many of the policies adopted by Europe at the time have turned out not to have been in Europe's interests either. In fairness to Gordon Brown, he at least seem to have learned some of the lessons learned in the early nineties, and that is why he gave the Bank of England control over interest rates and has resisted attempts by Tony Blair to get us to join the Eurozone. Regarding poverty, recent studies have show that the gap between the rich and the poor has widened since Labour took power. Many of the underlying causes of poverty such as marital breakdown, single-parent families, teenage pregnancies, alchohol and drug-addiction, illiteracy, poor skills etc have continued to be very serious and in some cases have got worse since when Labour took power way back in 1997. Regarding unemployment,it is now widely acccepted that a large number of people who previously would have been registered as unemployed are now on disability benefit. The number of people dependent on state benefits has grown hugely since 1997 and the inequities of the tax and benefits system encourages far too many people to live on state benefits rather than salaries or wages. |