Plan A

[IC1967]

Looks like it might be working. What does Ed balls know:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24444134

[vaya]

Still pretty pedestrian Mick - where's the verve and vigour of past days gone?

How about doing some of the classics? - maybe "Copy and paste somehting you don't understand and pass it off as your own" - that always got the crowds in.

[Glyn_Wigley]

World growth estimate lowered to 2.9%

UK growth estimate upped to 1.9%

I wonder what the rest of the world is getting wrong that Plan A is getting right.

[IC1967]

World growth estimate lowered to 2.9%

UK growth estimate upped to 1.9%

I wonder what the rest of the world is getting wrong that Plan A is getting right.

The big picture is that our growth estimate has gone up (by more than any other major economy) and that overall the rest of the world has gone down. We have been pretty unique in going for Plan A and Ed Balls has ended up looking even more foolish than he did when he was in power. He wanted Plan B which involved a lot more spending and debt. He said if we didn't do it we'd end up with another million unemployed. He obviously hasn't got a clue. In case he hasn't noticed, unemployment is actually falling.

The longer the good news keeps coming, the less likely Labour will win the next election and ruin everything again.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Dum-de-dum



PS: May 2010 is at Month 27 on that graph.

I'll give you an analogy. A man goes into hospital with a cancer. The surgeon puts a cushion over his face, stops him breathing and puts him into a coma. Three years later, he comes out of the coma. The doctor claims to have cured him.

Give me f**king strength...

[not on facebook]

Who ever is in the country would be in a mess Thats why only voted once and that was my first vote.

If you dont vote you Cant complain

What i like to point out is When i left school there wa NO Jobs or apprenticeships going back in 1980 or whatever year.

We had careers officers coming to school and giving us addvice on how to dress and act should we ever Get an interview.

A....you must dress and look smart,shirt,tie,trousers and Shoes.

Never turn up in jeans t-shirt trainers as first impressions will be very important.

The above fact was drummed into me again again and again

Then it came to my first vote.

The conserative party looked very smart as they all turned out in suits,ties,shirts,Shoes and looked the part.

Then i looked at the rag tail outfit Of the labour party and hat a set Of scruffs they looked.there was no uniform what so ever.they all looked like a set Of spare parts all mixed up from a pick and mix

This went against what i was Been told at school

Then to top it all off that tramp Michael foot wanted my vote to be prime minister

So i went blue and never voted again

[BillyStubbsTears]

Oslo

We've been through this before. The story that Michael Foot wore a donkey jacket to the Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph is a myth, perpetrated by right-wing papers at the time. It obviously worked on you. The Daily Mail was still peddling the myth on the day that he died. They did this in a disgusting article that also raised the fact that his wife had been raped by a family friend, deriding Foot for not reacting more violently when he found out about it decades later. Same old Mail. Lies and disgusting slurs, even on the day the man died.

Michael Foot was a thoroughly honorable and principled patriot who had campaigned tirelessly for us to take a hard stance against Germany in the 30s when the Mail's owner was writing articles saying what a wonderful man their leader was.

[not on facebook]

Oslo

We've been through this before. The story that Michael Foot wore a donkey jacket to the Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph is a myth, perpetrated by right-wing papers at the time. It obviously worked on you. The Daily Mail was still peddling the myth on the day that he died. They did this in a disgusting article that also raised the fact that his wife had been raped by a family friend, deriding Foot for not reacting more violently when he found out about it decades later. Same old Mail. Lies and disgusting slurs, even on the day the man died.

Michael Foot was a thoroughly honorable and principled patriot who had campaigned tirelessly for us to take a hard stance against Germany in the 30s when the Mail's owner was writing articles saying what a wonderful man their leader was.

Never read the mai in my life,but put Michael foot aside
And look at the rest Of the labour party candidates along side the conserative ones.

Labour=could do Much better on apperence,hence Caotic

Conservatives =professional looking hence trusting

Not that my vote got the conservatives into number 10
As doncaster was and still is staunch labour

But i never took any Interest in the Policys just judge the party by Its cover,just like how i was told at school
To dress smart for any job interview.

why was it that the conservatives were ALL very Well dressed but labour looked as Thou they could not be arsed?

I mean labour was the government When i first voted,so they must have sent out the careers officers to drum into me about how important dress sense was for 1st impressions.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Oslo mate. I haven't got a Scooby what you are one about.

I'll give you that Michael Foot had the sort of dress-sense, face and hair that even a £2000 make-over couldn't have made look neat. As for the rest of the Labour front benchers from that time, I cannot think of any one of them that you would ever see in a public event without a smart suit and tie on. James Callaghan, Dennis Healy, Tony Benn, Peter Shore, Roy Hattersley, Neil Kinnock, Gerald Kaufman, etc,etc.

[Boomstick]

Oslo

We've been through this before. The story that Michael Foot wore a donkey jacket to the Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph is a myth, perpetrated by right-wing papers at the time. It obviously worked on you. The Daily Mail was still peddling the myth on the day that he died. They did this in a disgusting article that also raised the fact that his wife had been raped by a family friend, deriding Foot for not reacting more violently when he found out about it decades later. Same old Mail. Lies and disgusting slurs, even on the day the man died.

Michael Foot was a thoroughly honorable and principled patriot who had campaigned tirelessly for us to take a hard stance against Germany in the 30s when the Mail's owner was writing articles saying what a wonderful man their leader was.

So what about all the pictures of Foot wearing a donkey jacket to the ceremony? I suppose they are photoshopped eh billy?

[BillyStubbsTears]

Show me one Boomstick

[IC1967]

He didn't wear a donkey jacket. It was the Press Association’s Chris Moncrieff who broke the story after receiving a phone call that day from  Walter Johnson, a Labour MP.  He had called Moncrieff to complain “I was watching this morning and was disgusted to see that the leader of Her Majesty’s opposition looked more like an Irish navvy than a party leader.”

The myth of the donkey jacket was born.

[BillyStubbsTears]

That photographic memory again Mick, eh?

http://order-order.com/2010/03/03/the-donkey-jacket-remembered/

Funny that you forget the bit about that MP having an agenda against Foot, eh?

Plus ca change...

[IC1967]

Back to Plan A. I think its working and no doubt so do a lot of other people. As time goes on no doubt so will many more people. This doesn't bode well for Labour.

I'd have more respect for Ed Balls if he would apologise for getting it so badly wrong when he said Plan A would cause one million to be added to the unemployment figures. I notice he never mentions Plan B now. Instead its all about the cost of living. He thinks this diversionary tactic will get him off the hook. If only life were that simple. He should have gone in the reshuffle. Big mistake Ed (Milliband).

[IC1967]

Funny that you forget the bit about that MP having an agenda against Foot, eh?

I don't know why you think that is a relevant point. I was actually backing you up in your assertion that he didn't wear a donkey jacket. I think it is you that can be accused of being economical with the truth. You stated that the right wing press perpetrated the myth when in fact all they did was report what a Labour MP had said. It was a Labour MP that started the ball rolling. Something you clearly forgot about. If he hadn't rung the press office that day then no one would have ever slagged him off for wearing a donkey jacket. A case of Labour shooting themselves in the Foot big time.

[Boomstick]

Show me one Boomstick

Google Michael foot donkey jacket, click on images - it's the first one. If you google Michael foot, I think the 3rd auto suggestion is the donkey jacket.

[Glyn_Wigley]

The big picture is that our growth estimate has gone up (by more than any other major economy) and that overall the rest of the world has gone down.

No, the big picture is that the rest of the world has had much more growth than the UK for a long, long time and even though the gap has narrowed it's still a whole 1% of growth different.

Which begs the very big question of why this government hasn't been doing what the rest of the world has been doing and enjoying the same growth as they have been enjoying. It says - in very big illuminated letters - that 'Plan A' is shit.

[Glyn_Wigley]

Show me one Boomstick

Google Michael foot donkey jacket, click on images - it's the first one. If you google Michael foot, I think the 3rd auto suggestion is the donkey jacket.

The Queen Mother didn't think it was a donkey jacket. She complimented him on what he was wearing.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Show me one Boomstick

Google Michael foot donkey jacket, click on images - it's the first one. If you google Michael foot, I think the 3rd auto suggestion is the donkey jacket.

The Queen Mother didn't think it was a donkey jacket. She complimented him on what he was wearing.

Glyn

Thank you. A shame Boomstick couldn't rouse himself to do just a little bit of research.

In fact, Foot was wearing a new and (according to his wife) rather expensive outdoor coat. As you say Glyn, Foot reflected in later years the QM complimented him on its smartness and suitability for the weather.

As Mick has so helpfully pointed out (I say "pointed out"; of course, it being Mick, I mean "copied and pasted with some slight adjustments") the source of the Donkey Jacket rumour was a Labour MP with a grievance, who (apparently whilst pissed up) phoned the PA to stick the knife in (although he never mentioned the words "Donkey Jacket". The PA passed on this to the papers. The Sun and Mail then ran stories inserting the term "Donkey Jacket".

The Mail still to this day uses the term "Donkey Jacket" when it runs stories about Michael Foot. Other papers have at least accepted that it was unfair (e.g. the Telegraph, which says "Michael Foot is often caricatured wearing a donkey jacket, a somewhat inaccurate reference to what was to become an infamous appearance.")

And this is a simple example of the way that the media works. Lies and half truths, peddled as often and consistently as possible, resulting in the gullible and lazy accepting them as truths.

The Mail was doing it in 1924, when, just before a General Election that Labour was expected to win, they claimed to have a secret letter from the Soviet Foreign Secretary indicating that the Soviets and Labour would work together to revolutionize the British proletariat. It caused an outrage and the Conservatives won the General Election easily. Trouble was, the letter was a forgery.

The Mail was doing it in the 1930s, when they ran stories claiming that hordes of Jewish refugees from the Nazis were bringing in fatal diseases into the country. Trouble was, it wasn't true.

The Mail was doing it last week, with the ridiculous attempt to smear Ed Miliband as a Marxist, intent on bringing his father's wishes to fruition.

They always do it. Which is why it is important to point out the REAL truth when people trot out trite "truths" that the media have inserted into people's minds.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Back to Plan A. I think its working and no doubt so do a lot of other people. As time goes on no doubt so will many more people. This doesn't bode well for Labour.

Mick. What you THINK is pretty much worthless. What matters are the verifiable facts. The facts are (as that graph shows) that in 2010, we were emerging from a devastating recession pretty much on course as we have done from all previous recessions over the last century.

We then made a sudden change of policy.

The economy flat-lined for three years.

It is now, thankfully, finally starting to grow again (due in no small part to the very demand-management policy of the Help-to-Buy scheme, which is better than nothing, although perhaps the very worst way for a Govt to spend money to help the economy).

But it is something like 7-9% smaller than it should now be. That means that we as a country are something like £100-130bn poorer than we should be. And as a result of that, the Govt's plan to reduce the deficit and debt are wildly off-course. Osborne's central policy was to eliminate the structural deficit by 2015. He now accepts that he won't do this until 2018. And he calls this a vindication of his policies...

In fact, it is the direct consequence of the Austerity madness that we and the EU embarked upon in 2010. The outcome was predictable then. It was predicted then by anyone who really understood what the root problem of the economy was. It happened.

You question Balls. Balls predicted exactly that Austerity would lead to this long-term stagnation. Where he was wrong was in believing that this would result in higher unemployment. The fact that it hasn't is due to the fact that people are doing lower-productive, lower-paid, often part-time jobs. That is the inevitable conclusion of an economy that now has more JOBS than in 2010, but is producing no more OUTPUT. It means that each and every one of us, on average, are producing less. We as a country are less productive than we were in 2010. That is a horrific problem for us to now deal with.

Yes it's good that people found low-paid or part-time work rather than stew on the dole. No question. And Balls himself is surprised that the economy and workforce left to the Tories were flexible enough to allow this to happen. But it is not a long-term solution. You don;t succeed as a country by having highly skilled graduates working in Starbucks. Or successful businessmen such as yourself having to go door-to-door selling cheap bits of plastic tat.

[Boomstick]

Show me one Boomstick

Google Michael foot donkey jacket, click on images - it's the first one. If you google Michael foot, I think the 3rd auto suggestion is the donkey jacket.

The Queen Mother didn't think it was a donkey jacket. She complimented him on what he was wearing.

Glyn

Thank you. A shame Boomstick couldn't rouse himself to do just a little bit of research.

In fact, Foot was wearing a new and (according to his wife) rather expensive outdoor coat. As you say Glyn, Foot reflected in later years the QM complimented him on its smartness and suitability for the weather.

As Mick has so helpfully pointed out (I say "pointed out"; of course, it being Mick, I mean "copied and pasted with some slight adjustments") the source of the Donkey Jacket rumour was a Labour MP with a grievance, who (apparently whilst pissed up) phoned the PA to stick the knife in (although he never mentioned the words "Donkey Jacket". The PA passed on this to the papers. The Sun and Mail then ran stories inserting the term "Donkey Jacket".

The Mail still to this day uses the term "Donkey Jacket" when it runs stories about Michael Foot. Other papers have at least accepted that it was unfair (e.g. the Telegraph, which says "Michael Foot is often caricatured wearing a donkey jacket, a somewhat inaccurate reference to what was to become an infamous appearance.")

And this is a simple example of the way that the media works. Lies and half truths, peddled as often and consistently as possible, resulting in the gullible and lazy accepting them as truths.

The Mail was doing it in 1924, when, just before a General Election that Labour was expected to win, they claimed to have a secret letter from the Soviet Foreign Secretary indicating that the Soviets and Labour would work together to revolutionize the British proletariat. It caused an outrage and the Conservatives won the General Election easily. Trouble was, the letter was a forgery.

The Mail was doing it in the 1930s, when they ran stories claiming that hordes of Jewish refugees from the Nazis were bringing in fatal diseases into the country. Trouble was, it wasn't true.

The Mail was doing it last week, with the ridiculous attempt to smear Ed Miliband as a Marxist, intent on bringing his father's wishes to fruition.

They always do it. Which is why it is important to point out the REAL truth when people trot out trite "truths" that the media have inserted into people's minds.

Last resort when all else fails, deny it!  Deny its a donkey jacket.
So wether it was or wasn't is debatable, but the fact remains, he doesn't look anywhere near as smart as the rest, almost scruffy, almost intentionally disrespectful.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Boomstick

You've hit the nail on the head. He looks a bit of a mess. But he, personally was pretty much incapable of looking any other way. His hair, his glasses, the very shape of his face. He looked wild and unkempt and he would have done even if he had been wearing a Saville Row morning suit.

That did not have anything whatsoever to do with the fact that he was one of the most intelligent, principled, honest and caring politicians of the 20th Century. He would not ever have deliberately gone to something like the Remembrance Day ceremony dressed in a way to be deliberately hurtful and disrespectful. But the fact that the press peddled a lie that he went dressed in a Donkey Jacket gave the IMPRESSION  (which you now repeat) that he had been almost deliberately disrespectful.

It's how the press operates. They play the man, not the ball. That's what they are currently trying to do to Miliband. Ignore the fact that Labour (correctly) predicted that Austerity would cause the economy to flatline. Ignore the fact that Miliband has (correctly) pointed out that even as the economy grows, people are not getting any better off. Ignore the fact that Miliband (correctly) led the way in bringing the Press to heel following the hacking affair. Ignore the fact that Miliband (correctly) helped prevent us wading into Syria with missiles, giving time for what is looking like a highly successful outcome on chemical weapons to be put in place. Ignore the fact that Miliband has (correctly) spent three years hammering the message that Big Capitalism went out of control over the last 30 years and that it needs to be made to work for ordinary people, not the few percent at the top who have creamed off most of the proceeds of growth. Ignore all that. Instead, make up some wild accusation that he is a revolutionary who will impose Marxism on us, because that is what his dad wanted.

[Boomstick]

Thought we were talking about Michael foot and the reasons why he didn't wear a suit?
I don't doubt he was a principled intelligent person which is the point, just can't fathom why someone in that position would dress like that to an important occasion. unless he had a hidden agenda.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Boomstick

He did wear a suit. The suit jacket was underneath the coat that he was wearing.

If you're going to get into arguments like this, you could save yourself a lot of embarrassment by doing the simple stuff. Like looking at the pictures you are talking about.

Do you have anything substantive to say on this now or have we finished. Because, if we've finished, you can get back to telling us who these affordable centre-halves are, that are better than Rob Jones. I'm waiting agog.

[Boomstick]

So why would he wear something akin to a donkey jacket OVER the suit?
Your using a very crude argumentative tequnique, typically used when someone is on the backfoot. That is to bring up another irrelevent argument in order to try to score points and discredit the other person. so I'll ignore your Rob Jones jibe, and I'll keep that to the football section. (That incidentally is something I'm willing to admit to being wrong to, but for the moment I'm sticking to my first point)

[RedJ]

So you're telling me, Boomstick, that you wear a coat under your suit? cos if you look at what you've just posted that's effectively it.

[IC1967]

Michael Foot was a thoroughly decent honourable man. I disagreed with his politics but respect him as a man. His jacket was actually a very expensive one bought from Harrods. However he did look 'less than smart'. I blame the people around him in the Labour party. Surely they should have had the nous to ensure their leader looked smart at all times.

[BillyStubbsTears]

RedJ

I don't do winky things, but if I did, there'd be a facepalm on the way now...

By the way, it appears that the Donkey Jacket, the item of clothing that the Queen Mother complimented him on was actually bought at Harrods. Hey ho.

http://www.phm.org.uk/uncategorized/michael-foot-obituary/

[BillyStubbsTears]

Bloody hell Mick.

You been wolfing chill pills while you've been away?

[CusworthRovers]

I blame the people around him in the Labour party. Surely they should have had the nous to ensure their leader looked smart at all times.

I'll lay a tenner down now, that some somebody, sometime will post a photo of you and Mrs Mick in full Frank Bough regale. You both look natural