Timbo and the Order of the Response

Before I begin, I want to clarify a change in the style of these blogs.  About a month or so ago, I started to make videos of my blogs for YouTube: writing the blogs directly onto blogger.com and then making the video.  However, instead, I've decided to reverse the polarity ("I just don' have the puwer!"), and instead decided to write transcripts for the videos, which I then convert into a more detailed written blog for here.  So here goes.

On the YouTube video of my second to last blog, entitled Joe Cotton and the Education Maintenance Allowance (video called Joe Cotton and the Prisoner of the Education System), there was a related video taking me to another YouTuber who makes videos about various political/social events or discussions; he too had picked up on Joe Cotton's speech, and had made a video called Why Joe Cotton is Incorrect.  Refer to my previous post about the article to see exactly what the fuss was all about: http://tinyurl.com/3pcee4e

Tim's response to Joe about why the current government is cutting so much is because the previous government spent so much, and from the language used suggested that the actions of the Labour government caused the economic meltdown.  Whilst I generally agree that a lot of money was spent by government and borrowed from the bank, and that it was generally wrong to do so, I don't think that the last government can be blamed for the current economic situation.  At least, directly – you could go at it at all kinds of different angles.  The point is, the economy was caused by issues on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean initially, which had a subsequent effect here, and as the situation worsened in one of the world’s largest economies, everybody was starting to feel the effects.

The source of the problem came from the the United States of America's property market, which reverberated around the world, particularly here.  Usually when something crashes in the US, it has a lasting economic effect internationally.  All Labour can be accused of is not handling it effectively, but even then you can argue other factors were involved: such as the financial authority being exercised by the European Union or the rapid collapse we were experiencing that would have had effects on the time available to grant massive bailouts to banks or make immediate cuts.  Sure, their plan fell through, but I wonder whether this is because of one of the follies of democracy: inconsistent leadership.  Gordon Brown was booted out and the financial plan of the United Kingdom PLC was dramatically changed by a new government.

He was never a Prime Minister anyway; he should have stayed in the Treasury where he belonged.

Governments have been spending more than they’ve actually received from their national income for years, long before Labour decided to up the ante.  We’ve also had recessions before; in fact, we’ve had one (or close to one) every decade for the past forty years - in the US the last sixty.  There’s always going to be massive rises and huge lows to the economy as long as we base our economic systems on credit.  The government’s not the only one to blame for borrowing: it’s the creditors and the public too.  Banks handing out mortgages and loans that the people can't afford to pay back and the public taking them on.  When the payment is due, the debtor simply finds another creditor with low payment brackets.  You can see the effects in a lot of the things that banks, building societies and other creditors currently do: accessing cash using a credit card at an ATM, paying for goods and services using credit, remortgaging homes, and so on.

The people that have come out of the economy the best is South Korea.  This is partly due to their low national debt, but they've just increased it because they bailed out all their companies and didn't make any cuts.  Why?  Because they know the economic system is flawed at its very conceptual core, so you might as well run with it until something or somebody revolutionises it.

The Office for National Statistics financial review for the last three recessions: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/elmr/08_10/downloads/ELMR_Aug10_Chamberlin.pdf

South Korea's avoidance of the recession: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8015918.stm  -  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124053088380050309.html

http://twitter.com/thesteadyeddie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zrzhwJMFVA

Barack Obama and the Goblet of Victory

To be honest, I’m really not that bothered about Osama bin Laden.  After almost a decade, the nutcase with kidney problems has not really been the main focus.  The mourners and the families of the victims of the attack on the Twin Towers will hopefully see this as a form of closure, although judging by some of the interviews conducted by the BBC Correspondent in New York this is not a universal feeling.  Fair enough.  I can imagine it would be very difficult to let go of something like that; when you’re related to one of the victims, the scale will seem so much bigger from that subjective viewpoint.

Osama bin Laden may be dead, but I don’t think it’s going to change the strategy of Al Qaeda.  Considering their fundamental ideology, it may even embolden them.  I think that we need to be careful of a retaliation of some kind; a particularly rattled cell launching a violent vengeance for example.  Bin Laden may have been seen as some sort of leader to a mostly secular and divided terrorist group, but there are so many cells spread out across the Middle East and with links to other groups globally that the War on Terrorism is probably just going to get harder from here on out, if the situation changes at all.

If anything, this is not so much a loss for Al Qaeda, as a win for President Obama.  I get the feeling that the next month or so will truly define his legacy as the President of the United States of America; the immediate reverberations of Osama bin Laden’s death, and the way that he handles the aftermath of the tornados that hit the country over the past few days.  The latter will be especially important considering his response will most likely be compared to the previous administration’s reportedly haphazard response to Hurricane Katrina.

As for the location of where Osama bin Laden was found; well, I expect the US President is resisting the urge to proclaim “I told you so” to the Republican Party, considering I remember him insisting during the election race that dialogue with Pakistan would be needed to further the War on Terrorism.  Stick it to ‘em, Barry.