Britain now officially in double-dip recession

LOAM said:
Of course, that's what I'm saying. You can't blame a recession on one man or indeed one plan as the economy is influenced by so many other factors. It's likely we would be here regardless of what we were doing.
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The main differences as I see them are that Gordon Brown's biggest mistake as chancellor is what he didn't do; make sure the banks were regulated properly and the country suffered as a result. George Osborne's biggest mistake is something he has done; his austerity plan which practically ever serious economist said was too soon and too deep.

This recession is entirely predictable, people like David Blanchflower (former BoE MPC member and professor of economics a Dartmouth College in the US) have been saying a double dip recession was inevitable under the current plans. The great recession of 2008 was considerably less predictable.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Oh well, daft people will vote Labour back in and the idiots there can spend us out of another recession, again, that will result a few years later in the UK being plunged into a horrific recession of the likes America suffered last century, woo.

Here's the idea Scorza, we'd still be in recession under Labour, just with massively higher debt, massively higher deficit and be in a far far worse situation.

It's NOT about avoiding recession, its about riding the inevitable recession Brown put us on course with as well as possible, its that simple. The way to ride it as best as possible is with the lowest debt and lowest deficit they could achieve. Labour have faught tooth and nail at every turn to make cuts quick enough to lessen the blow of a recession while Labours plan was to continue spending to "fake grow" our economy........ WHICH WAS THE RUDDY REASON FOR IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Labours years of spending for artificial growth is what got this country in trouble, their plan of doing this again, and again and again is utterly flawed, have the conservatives got everything right no, have they done better than Labour did, without question. LIkewise without the idiots on the other side lying to the press and talking utter rubbish, had they helped come up with cuts and plans for more cuts rather than fighting every single cut and trying to make the other side look bad for every single cut, this country would be in a better place than it is now also.

You can't long term run a country the way Labour did, want to do now, and will do if/when they get back in power, and absolutely disgustingly, rather than admit their mistake, admit their ridiculous plan of propping up the GDP with borrowed money, they have the actual balls to make it more difficult to make the cuts that are absolutely needed?
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+1 :)
 
drunkenmaster said:
Oh well, daft people will vote Labour back in and the idiots there can spend us out of another recession, again, that will result a few years later in the UK being plunged into a horrific recession of the likes America suffered last century, woo.

Here's the idea Scorza, we'd still be in recession under Labour, just with massively higher debt, massively higher deficit and be in a far far worse situation.

It's NOT about avoiding recession, its about riding the inevitable recession Brown put us on course with as well as possible, its that simple. The way to ride it as best as possible is with the lowest debt and lowest deficit they could achieve. Labour have faught tooth and nail at every turn to make cuts quick enough to lessen the blow of a recession while Labours plan was to continue spending to "fake grow" our economy........ WHICH WAS THE RUDDY REASON FOR IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Labours years of spending for artificial growth is what got this country in trouble, their plan of doing this again, and again and again is utterly flawed, have the conservatives got everything right no, have they done better than Labour did, without question. LIkewise without the idiots on the other side lying to the press and talking utter rubbish, had they helped come up with cuts and plans for more cuts rather than fighting every single cut and trying to make the other side look bad for every single cut, this country would be in a better place than it is now also.

You can't long term run a country the way Labour did, want to do now, and will do if/when they get back in power, and absolutely disgustingly, rather than admit their mistake, admit their ridiculous plan of propping up the GDP with borrowed money, they have the actual balls to make it more difficult to make the cuts that are absolutely needed?
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Ah the old blame it on Labour, what have the Tories done in nearly 2 years in power?
 
as with the last recession - all this proves is that our government (who ever that is) has far less influence over the markets than they think they do

edit : recession or not - it still makes sense to get rid of debt as quick as you can
 
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You don't need to be a top economist to have predicted a double dip, it was a safe bet. How do you avoid it when all around you and indeed your main export partners are floundering in their own recession. You can't grow if nobody is buying. I don't know enough about it all but personally prefer the idea of austerity over spending / further borrowing because I don't see how we can handle further dept. Just look at Greece as an example of debt that's unmanageable.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Oh well, daft people will vote Labour back in and the idiots there can spend us out of another recession, again, that will result a few years later in the UK being plunged into a horrific recession of the likes America suffered last century, woo.

Here's the idea Scorza, we'd still be in recession under Labour, just with massively higher debt, massively higher deficit and be in a far far worse situation.

It's NOT about avoiding recession, its about riding the inevitable recession Brown put us on course with as well as possible, its that simple. The way to ride it as best as possible is with the lowest debt and lowest deficit they could achieve. Labour have faught tooth and nail at every turn to make cuts quick enough to lessen the blow of a recession while Labours plan was to continue spending to "fake grow" our economy........ WHICH WAS THE RUDDY REASON FOR IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Labours years of spending for artificial growth is what got this country in trouble, their plan of doing this again, and again and again is utterly flawed, have the conservatives got everything right no, have they done better than Labour did, without question. LIkewise without the idiots on the other side lying to the press and talking utter rubbish, had they helped come up with cuts and plans for more cuts rather than fighting every single cut and trying to make the other side look bad for every single cut, this country would be in a better place than it is now also.

You can't long term run a country the way Labour did, want to do now, and will do if/when they get back in power, and absolutely disgustingly, rather than admit their mistake, admit their ridiculous plan of propping up the GDP with borrowed money, they have the actual balls to make it more difficult to make the cuts that are absolutely needed?

Here's where Labour put us, a 3% shrink in construction output, a 0.4% manufacturing output reduction and a 0.1% growth(or was it loss) in the service sector averages out to a 0.2% loss overall.

That's right, Labour turned us into a service sector country, with no basis on manufacturing, construction or any world leading industry to rely on that is the entire reason our country is screwed, our economy is bad and Labour are utterly retarded. Their plan for fixing it, keep borrowing money we can't afford to borrow, to artificially create jobs that aren't needed in the public service industry, all the while shrinking the private sector and real "money making" industries.
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well said! Just a shame most people just don't see it.
 
cheets64 said:
Ah the old blame it on Labour, what have the Tories done in nearly 2 years in power?
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Ah the old, pretend we weren't really in recession the entire time, I think I already said what the tories did, they have put us in a better position for a recession that was 100% always going to happen due to the handling of the economy in the past 15 years, and specifically for how we "got out" of the last recession.

We FAKED our way out of the last recession, and by we I mean Labour, by borrowing more money and putting us in bigger debt, and increasing the burden of unrequired public service jobs that we could never at any stage afford.

Why haven't tories been able to do much to magically turn around 40 years of horrific economy planning in the UK? Do you really not know, a strong economy needs business, manufacturing, private sector making profit in this country, labour(and past tory governments) have destroyed this countries industry and left us with literally millions to many jobs in the public sector. Labour pushed up benefits and unemployment, and pushed forwards with many incredibly expensive plans to hide unemployement(like pushing as much of the population as possible into 4 years of extra education).

How much more would have been done by now if at every single cut that was absolutely needed to LESSEN OUR DEBT BURDENS, Labour hadn't pretending it wasn't happening. Labour put their heads in the sand, have no care for the economy or the future, they just want to be the "good guys" who wouldn't make cuts, they are campaigning to get in power, nothing more or less. If they cared for the economy they would have backed EVERY cut, made it much easier to slash the deficit by another 40-50billion.


This is where people just don't seem to get it, our economy is built on nothing, it was propped up by borrowing that is completely and utterly unsustainable, a "real" recession has ALWAYS been coming, the question was when and how bad. Labour's plan of keep borrowing more and more to keep buying our way out of one both, made the incomming recession worse, bigger, longer and their current plan is to... keep doing the same.

We've got Abu Dhabi, fully aware that their economy will collapse on the end of their oil supplies who for a decade or two have been investing all their profits into alternative worldwide industries that now have a massive and quickly growing turnover? When they saw one industry ready to disappear, they spent billions WHEN THEY HAD IT, on a NEW INDUSTRY. WHen Labour saw industry disappearing, they hid the unemployment by creating jobs we didn't need, that were paid too much, that unions have MASSIVE power over, and utterly screwed us. When you're making money in a healthy economy you PAY OFF DEBT so when the economy is going badly you AREN'T IN DEBT. What Labour did was when the economy was healthy they INCREASED DEBT MASSIVELY but spending money they never had, on the idea that economys will never ever get worse, they have always done the exact opposite of what we should have been doing. We should have paid off all debt, and then spent money we had on growing new industry, this would have put us in a hugely strong position for future world economic issues. Instead we let industry shrink, we increased public spending massively beyond our means, we got in heavy debt, we got a massive deficit, we got a massive public sector jobs increase, we got massive public sector wage/pension burden that we couldn't afford with our economy at its strongest, let alone now.

Everything Labour has done for the past decade has utterly boned us, completely, and their current plan is to continue making it worse.
 
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cheets64 said:
Ah the old blame it on Labour, what have the Tories done in nearly 2 years in power?
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Trying to sort out a mess that will take us until the next parliament and even longer. It will take considerable time before the pain is eased.
 
Labours plan to spend money trying to fix the problem was never going to work, we would still have a huge export deficit, with no more money coming into the country, increased levels of debt and an even more precarious financial position, no doubt our credit ratings would have been downgraded by now making the situation even worse.

Giving Labour access to the country’s money is like giving an unlimited credit card to a crack addict.
 
LOAM said:
You don't need to be a top economist to have predicted a double dip, it was a safe bet. How do you avoid it when all around you and indeed your main export partners are floundering in their own recession. You can't grow if nobody is buying. I don't know enough about it all but personally prefer the idea of austerity over spending / further borrowing because I don't see how we can handle further dept. Just look at Greece as an example of debt that's unmanageable.
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Yeah, so if your trading partners aren't growing, you need to get your growth domestically. Raising VAT, which disproportionately affects lower earners who form the bulk of Britain's spending was an incredibly stupid move. Cutting the 50p rate of tax will do nothing to promote growth yet the chancellor made it his priority to get rid or reduce it as soon as he could. When tens of thousands of public sector workers join the 2.65m people in the dole queue it's only going to get worse. The chancellor has no answer for unemployment, and indeed appears to welcome it as an excuse to drive down terms and conditions for those who remain in employment.

The worst thing is that this severity of austerity is totally unnecessary and based on a lie, which you have repeated; that Britain is somehow in a similar position to Greece, and only adopting Osborne's plan to the letter will allow us to escape the same fate.
 
So what, blips come and go and we are doing ever so slightly worse than predicted. This may even be a blip of blip as the real picture will not be known for a few months. If anyone expected us to be out of **** creek with constant plan changes or a magic fairy waving a wand then they are just deluded.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Oh well, daft people will vote Labour back in and the idiots there can spend us out of another recession, again, that will result a few years later in the UK being plunged into a horrific recession of the likes America suffered last century, woo.

Here's the idea Scorza, we'd still be in recession under Labour, just with massively higher debt, massively higher deficit and be in a far far worse situation.

It's NOT about avoiding recession, its about riding the inevitable recession Brown put us on course with as well as possible, its that simple. The way to ride it as best as possible is with the lowest debt and lowest deficit they could achieve. Labour have faught tooth and nail at every turn to make cuts quick enough to lessen the blow of a recession while Labours plan was to continue spending to "fake grow" our economy........ WHICH WAS THE RUDDY REASON FOR IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Labours years of spending for artificial growth is what got this country in trouble, their plan of doing this again, and again and again is utterly flawed, have the conservatives got everything right no, have they done better than Labour did, without question. LIkewise without the idiots on the other side lying to the press and talking utter rubbish, had they helped come up with cuts and plans for more cuts rather than fighting every single cut and trying to make the other side look bad for every single cut, this country would be in a better place than it is now also.

You can't long term run a country the way Labour did, want to do now, and will do if/when they get back in power, and absolutely disgustingly, rather than admit their mistake, admit their ridiculous plan of propping up the GDP with borrowed money, they have the actual balls to make it more difficult to make the cuts that are absolutely needed?

Here's where Labour put us, a 3% shrink in construction output, a 0.4% manufacturing output reduction and a 0.1% growth(or was it loss) in the service sector averages out to a 0.2% loss overall.

That's right, Labour turned us into a service sector country, with no basis on manufacturing, construction or any world leading industry to rely on that is the entire reason our country is screwed, our economy is bad and Labour are utterly retarded. Their plan for fixing it, keep borrowing money we can't afford to borrow, to artificially create jobs that aren't needed in the public service industry, all the while shrinking the private sector and real "money making" industries.
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Agreed...
 
I really shouldn't bother posting in this thread. Generally the lack of actual economic knowledge in these threads is ridiculous....

Some have talked about it quite well already actually.

Economics lays down the foundations for two basic ideas of how to get out of a recession, considering the debt crisis and the such like, I honestly think that Osborne made the right choice. I also know some of my lecturers would disagree with me and some would agree...

There's no 'right' answer as to what to do, there's a couple of options, and nobody knows which one is most likely to work.

Could Labour have done better? Maybe. Maybe Not. Nobody will know. A recession was always possible with this strategy, but long term it might be the better idea. Frankly I'm glad they had the balls to do it this way. Politics now a days is far too much about the short term solution, so we can win seats. It was clear when Lib-Con took power that it was a poisoned Chalice. Congratulations you're in power in a recovery. No matter what you do the other party has the potential to rip you to shreds, and the public won't like you. Chances are you won't win the next election.

As for those of you who are going 'oh is he going to blame it on the Eurozone crisis'... Seriously? Do you know nothing about the export market in the UK, and how much we rely upon European exports. It's not like we have a big Asian export market. In fact you'd probably struggle to find a British product in China. Our biggest export to them is something like Lipton's Ice Tea. Then you've got America who aren't exactly on top of the world right now. This is hardly a surprise, and I doubt the markets will see it as one.

Only risk now is Moody's etc... downgrading, which wouldn't surprise me. But jeeze people, we're holding onto our rating a lot better than a lot of other countries are.

The thing that really makes me Facepalm about Brown is that he said we're out of the cycle of Boom and Bust.... I mean seriously Gordon... SERIOUSLY?!

kd
 
scorza said:
The main differences as I see them are that Gordon Brown's biggest mistake as chancellor is what he didn't do; make sure the banks were regulated properly and the country suffered as a result.
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Are you really so blind to Labour's faults? What about increasing he deficit during the boom years believing your own propaganda about eliminating boom and bust?

If we had followed Labour's "plan" we would still be in recession but with a worse credit rating and even more debt.
 
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