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My three point plan:

+ Redwood's interest rate cuts;
+ Boris's infrastructure spending;
+ Abolition of council tax for one year.

Nothing else will avert a 30s depression.

It is very interesting to know that we are to be told "the truth; the whole truth; and nothing but the truth". I am not normally pessimistic, but it will be a "first" from a British politician for a very, very long time

Terry Clark

After the palpable economic falsehoods, perpetrated in the recent past ("24 hours to save the pound!" anyone?) the truth would, I agree, be a good and wholly welcome thing and an obvious counterpoint to the 'Brown-bullsh*t' such as "we've put an end to boom and bust". Guido is right - that needs to be looped into an online attack clip via YouTube!

The problem is that once you start telling the truth (there's no money, public service X will go short, soldier Y will be buying his own boots, tax Z will have to go up to service national debt), the public casts around for any alternative, no matter how fanciful. People don't like reality - they hide in books, TV, drink, drugs and all the rest - so they'll instead look to vote for a party that tells them what they want to hear.

Labour's basic problem is that no matter what they say at this point, nobody can convince themselves to believe them!

Hopefully he's just been waiting for Brown's milking of the headlines for his reckless chucking of our money at the banks in order to save his job to run its course. Reality is slowly again beginning to dawn on people about the impending story in the real economy.

He has a chance now to emerge from the shadow of the last week and remind people why they should rightly still be cheesed off with the labour losers, but as so many have commented, there needs to be a really convincing narrative, not just about the real reasons about how we got here, but what we can look forward to from him. I think that, if he combines it with bringing Kenneth Clarke back into the fold, he'll add gravitas and move the agenda back our way. I like Osborne, but agree with several others that in tough times, he looks out of his depth as shadow chancellor but would be a huge asset as Party Chairman. Why just reshuffle when Brown does? Let's surprise them by dictating our own agenda.

I look forward to hearing what MR Cameron has to say. This is the time for substance and and sober long-term planning to get us out of this mess. The credit-boom, supported and promoted by the Labour government has set us back years. Now we are starting from behind scratch, and we need to build our nation up again, through sound finance, through an internal market, through a reevaluation of government spending, luxury programmes must go and money used to support developing a job-creating infrastructure. Its time for action.

One question for conservativehome:

Does boldness mean bringing the public finances under control or fighting recession? They are not the same thing.


It's about time.

Time to feed the beast.

In my mind, today would have been an ideal to make that speech - a (relatively) quiet news day with the stats on unemployment coming out etc.

Friday's an odd day; no one reads Saturday papers and no one watches Friday's 10 O'Clock News.

Still, maybe he's not as message-obsessed as me!

A recession is inevitable as the reality of reckless spending and unsustainable debt overwhelms the world's economies and in particular those most heavily leveraged. That further borrowing and reducing interest rates is the answer is absolute madness. Sensible and highish interst levels together with a period of discipline and common sense is the way out of this mess. Concentrate what little money is left on essential services. Luxury life style areas of the economy ought to be left to pay high taxation whilst food, health and the future nurtured with PRUIDENCE. Borrowing constantly, a la Brown and Co is a joke. My respect for Redwood is tempered with dismay that more of the same is the answer.
This whole mess is out of control even more than when Maggie cleaned up the last debacle from Labour!

I think the timing of this speech is interesting, Brown has now positioned himself as some sort of superman that can save the global financial markets as well as dictating the market price for a litre of petrol. He has put himself up as the defender of public service spending, and all this before we even know how deep and long this recession is going to be, its not even Friday yet!

But the public are not stupid, and what they need now is some honesty and accountability from their politicians. They know that the present levels of public spending are unsustainable with such a high debt, the government cannot not afford it, and neither can the taxpayer. But, one thing I do want to see, and that is a recognition from our Parliament that as they make us tighten out belts they too will lead the way by slashing their expenses.

I didn't ever expect myself to agree with Boris Johnson (or perhaps he's agreeing with me?), but if there was ever a time for infrastructure projects this is it. Green and nuclear energy including the Bristol Channel hydroelectric scheme, extra tracks on railways, replacement and upgrading of watermains, a new tube line extending the jubilee across south london and to the districut line and so on.

Hoon getting a bit of a beating so far on QT.

Good to see Grieve putting the boot in and getting a good response. Must sort that hair though!

My three point plan:

+ End the Central Bank's role of setting interest rates and allow private banks to issue commodity backed currency if they so choose;
+ Massive cuts in spending and taxation;
+ Full-blown economic deregulation to help get the economy up and running as soon as possible.

"Does boldness mean bringing the public finances under control or fighting recession? They are not the same thing."

Why not? Cutting down on spending will free up more money in the private sector to be either spent or invested. It will also ensure we don't undergo some sort of Keynesian temporary recovery followed by a bust.

Now that there is a crisis, it is clear that Cameron and Osborne are not ready for prime time. Like their undisciplined friend Johnson they are left floundering around.

It's heartbreaking what is happening to the UK economy. But it is also a tragedy that the Conservative Party has no coherent vision or response. There is a price to be paid for copying Blair, Mandleson etc.

Someone needs to call for large and carefully selected spending cuts before you go spending on the infrastructure.
Also start selling State assets like the Royal Mail and the BBC

I still think that Redwood's interest rate "policy" is irrelevant given they can't be controlled from government, unless the law is re-worked. And I don't agree that a slash to 2% will work wonders.

Will keep ears open tomorrow.

Well Ms. Abbott seems to think that the 'Brown bounce' is still alive, so she obviously didn't watch Question Time from Stoke-on-Trent, as far as I could see Mr. Brown and his government got pretty short shrift from the audience - I would go so far as to say the most anti-government audience so far. And Mr. Hoon got a drubbing, a new experience for him! Dominic Grieve was OK, but he is too long-winded - waffles! However it all made a nice change.

Seeing as everyone is chipping in with a three-point-plan here is mine

The develoment of an internal market with a revived manufacturing and agricultural sector.

Significant tax breaks for business that supplies the domestic market, all new business should be exempt from taxation altogether until it has developed a sustainable job-creating infrastructure.

Fundamental review of public spending. The appointment of a 'wastefinder general' dept to act as a permanent audit on government spending, programmes without any quantifiable end-goal to be closed down.

"A time for boldness and truth-telling"

I agree, but has anyone told the media?

Listening to a report tonight on petrol prices, with the now standard demand from Gordon Brown that they pass on any cuts in oil prices. I listened in vain for any mention of his governments ability to help by cutting fuel duty.

We have been waiting for David Cameron to come out with the truth.Why has he not attacked Gordon Brown for allowing the sleazeball Mandelson a peerage.Does this send out the message that if you are less than honest, and have been sacked as a Minister in the Government,the supposedly top institution in the land, will accept you,and heap honours on you.It is disgusting that this pariah is being feted in this fashion.The house of Lords has lost its credibility.If David Cameron does nothing about this, I will be tearing up my Conservative Membershio card.Brown should also be attacked for his spin and lies.

I am also waiting,and agree with ChrisD,why is David Cameron not badgering Brown to cut fuel duty.It affects everything,not just personal motoring.All our food prices are partly based on the cost of producing food and services, and delivering them.Gordon Brown could save us all from a lot of misery by cutting fuel duty by at least 50%.We pay billions in road tax, but no more than 2.5% of what we motorists pay ,is used for roads.Get rid of spin and Brown.I am a Scot,living in England, I may add, but Brown makes me ashamed to call myself a Scot.We should petition for an Election,NOW.

Cut interest rates.

Cancel that runway and supplant it with the high speed rail network, London to Glasgow with stops at Liverpool and Newcastle.

Training under apprenticeship schemes.

Root and branch remodelling of government, quango's and external contractors.

A parliamentary enquiry into the financial muddle Brown created.

A return to regulators who have specific experience in the field rather than the bureaucratic monster Brown created which is not helping the industry get back on its feet and is adding unnecessary costs.

Remove stamp duty for buyers and place it on the seller at 5%.

Home Buyers to get a return of MIRAS.

Also, the model Margaret Thatcher created was to establish the means for ordinary citizens to share the proceeds of wealth through shares in privatised industries.
The shares the government has just bought on our behalf should be released to private individuals and placed into not taxable ISA's with an increased threshold of £20,000 and a government guarantee which makes them inflation proof.

It isn't all doom and gloom, we can change this if we want to and if we believe it can be done and work together then there is nothing the British nation cannot beat.

Brown's recession and Brown's broken Britain just gives us more urgency to crack on with it.

I'd also be asking Brown to call an election so people can decide his competence rather than him being his own judge and jury.

If Cameron really wants to connect with people's real fears today he could simply demand the following:

#1 Those facing repossession should be offered a 50% reduction in their mortgage repayment for a period of 3 years with the unpaid interest added to the loan.

#2 A ban on repossession of homes by the now partial or full state owned banks when borrowers agree to, and stick to repayments under #1.

Such a clear, bold move now would force the government to take action or leave them open to being the party that kicks people out of their homes.

No platitudes about 'hard' decisions, a real demand for action to protect people during the coming downturn.

Come on, take the attack to the government properly by helping the people!

Blaming the government will not address the public's immediate fears and stop people losing their homes, but offering action will.

Like the IHT cut, hopefully the government will pinch it, but by making a bold public call for them to do so, Cameron will take the credit and I am sure people will remember him saving their homes for a very, very long time.

The facts are, Brown has brought about this recession within the UK and must accept full responsibility. It maybe a 'global crisis' as he constantly reminds us, but he is responsible for the UK and must face the consequences.For the past 11 years,he has been responsible for our economy and has completely failed to manage its financial affairs in a 'prudent' manner.

When Chancellor,his soft touch approach towards the City allowed the abuse of risk with financial instruments.The Bank of England had its regulatory authority removed and was unable to intervene. Wholesale Credit Default Swaps were cut, packaged and sold off balance sheet to the highest bidder, thus nobody, including the FSA, could estimate or understand the wealth or liabilities of banks.Too many were based on the housing bubble and insurance defaulted.

It was right for DC to support the "bail out" strategy underpinning our banks. But now is the time for a forensic audit trail of events. Brown must be made to admit his systemic failure in allowing this crisis to develop because of his utterly poor fiscal control.

It would be totally wrong for Brown to continue unchallanged as has been the case for the past few weeks. He has shown poor long term political and fiscal judgement.According to the Chief of the Euro Zone Committee, Brown begged to be invited to the European Conference last week. Politically it made him look knowledgeable. However, he can no longer hide behind financial instruments and blame others. The buck stops with him and for the sake of our country, he must be brought to book.He cannot be allowed to 'pass the parcel' any longer.

Well we'll know in a hour or so if Cammers has anything up his sleeve! Fingers crossed.

" will be tearing up my Conservative Membershio card"

Alexander Smith -you must be very strong as they're plastic!!

Seriously though - can I suggest that people actually wait for the speech before coming out with their usual knee jerk wails of "he's not doing enooooooouuugggghhhh"?

Shaun Pilkington though makes a good point - people often vote for a party which tells them what they want to hear so yes, we have to hear the harsh realities but we also need a positive vision of what can be done to help put things right and that is something (cue the chorus of baaaaa's at this point...!) that David Cameron is very good at!

A time for boldness and truth-telling, but what good is truth without uprightness and revulsion and condemnation in the face of great wrongdoing? What does truth mean to an indifferent sheepish dominated people?

It would seem that we do not care that "the war on terror", is also a war on our civil rights, goodbye habeas corpus and hello New World Order with our every move logged and every detail recorded, property of the state to be filed and indexed and controlled just like dumb cattle.

Wake up people and come to understand that the real terrorist is those that killed a million Iraqi women and children, the coalition of the willing. Bin Laadin said, "So Bush admitted there can only be two kinds of people: one being Bush and his followers, and any nation that doesn’t follow the Bush Government, or the World Crusade, then they are guaranteed to be with the terrorists. So what kind of terrorism is more terrifying and clearer than that? ", he also said: "who is the one that said that our children and our civilians are not innocent, and that their blood is permissible?"

Who, that would be Bush and our Government etc, that have killed countless innocent civilians and they did it without much protest from us because apparently we don’t really care about the slaughtering of their people and we fully accept the use of our cancerous depleted uranium weapons in their country along with other great atrocities, but let them take the life of 52 of our people and it’s denounced a monstrous inhuman act without any justification. Then and only then do we understand the horror, and feel the sorrow we readily inflict upon other civilians. There can be no justification for the death of civilians, it’s not collateral damage, it’s calculated evil!!

Understand 9/11 was an inside job and war makes billions in profits and it’s not about war on terror because long before the invasion of Iraq UN inspectors certified that 817 out of the 819 Iraqi long-range missiles were destroyed. In 1999, a panel of the Security Council recorded that Iraq’s main biological weapons facilities (originally supplied by the US and Britain) “have been destroyed and rendered harmless."

Why is there no collective condemnation, no sense of wrongdoing when the people of this country read that U.S. Forces Bomb Children’s Hospital, or that Coalition Forces drop a guided cruise missile on a crowded market in Baghdad, or 12 year old Ali Ismail Abbas loses his parents, 12 relatives, and both his arms when a U.S. missile hits his home in the suburbs of Baghdad, or Marine sharpshooter said "We had a great day, we killed a lot of people", or when a young Iraqi boy stopped to pick up a rocket propelled grenade off the body of a dead paramilitary, a godless U.S. Army Private made a decision. He unloaded machinegun fire and the boy, whom he puts at about 10 years old, fell dead on a garbage-strewn stretch of waste land in Karbala. "I think they thought we wouldn't shoot kids. But we showed them we don't care. "

And that is the truth the bloody truth, we don’t care, but we will care, when what goes around comes around.

War will never end until all the people say enough we will not vote for outright liars or warmongers.

We need to grow a collective conscience before it is too late!!

Posted by: Alexander Smith | October 17, 2008 at 01:42
Why has he not attacked Gordon Brown for allowing the sleazeball Mandelson a peerage

Two words - Lord Ashcroft. Mandelson is a novice compared with Ashcroft.

Really Resident Leftie? I expect you to provide all the evidence necessary to back up this assertion.

Posted by: Malcolm Dunn | October 17, 2008 at 11:29
Really Resident Leftie? I expect you to provide all the evidence necessary to back up this assertion.

I've posted on this before. Do a site search for Ashcroft Lefie for the meat of the allegations.

An update, as you asked for it:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4749210.ece

I also suggest you take a look a the Companies House site (which I did yesterday) at Bearwood Corporate Services Ltd, the company Ashcroft uses to siphon money into the Tory party, and note the sudden resignation of Lyn Austen, which is some time after he told the Times he was no longer an employee.

According to the Telegraph recently, there is a good chance that Ashcroft will be investigated by the Electoral Commission.

So no evidence at all,Resident Leftie. Just as always, a bunch of unproven allegations. Why am I not suprised!

Resident leftie, I can understand why you dislike a wealthy person buying power - it’s not an attractive thing. It is, however, within the rules (and the article you pointed us at expressly makes that point) and, in my view, not as obnoxious as the triangular funding arrangements that exist between unions, the Labour government and the Labour Party. I’m sure you’ll want to read all about that

You didn't read the evidence, did you Malcolm, just the latest update I presented? I didn't want to go into it, but as you insist.

Lord Ashcroft made assurances to William Hague and Downing St to get a peerage. He made them, and has not fulfilled them. It's a huge embarrasment to the Tory party, and it should be dealt with. Either he is paying UK tax, or he isn't. If he isn't, he's a lying sleazeball. He made those assurances in the public sphere and should confirm them in the public sphere.

Certainly Lord Strathclyde thinks it's wrong and publicly stated he should come clean about his tax status. And, in February, the super-brave David Cameron told him the same thing face-to-face. He hasn't had the balls to do anything about it since, of course. Cameron backed Liberal Democrat plan to make it illegal for anyone who does not pay UK taxes to sit in the Lords, so he must think it's unethical, and yet he's still happy to take his money. The Tories backed down when the bill was presented, of course.

As for the millions of union members who elect their leaders and choose to donate money to the Labour party - that's as it should be. The DTI spends large sums funding industry, and the Government spends much, much smaller somes promoting union modernisation. You could draw exactly the same diagram if the Tories were in power.

That's not evidence Resident Leftie!!! Jesus! That's your take on as story you know damn all about.

Posted by: Malcolm Dunn | October 17, 2008 at 15:29

That's not evidence Resident Leftie!!! Jesus! That's your take on as story you know damn all about.

Lord Strathclyde, leader of the Tories in the Lords, thinks it's a problem.

David Cameron, your leader, thinks its a problem.

The Spectator, Times, and Telegraph think its a problem.

The electoral commission are investigating. (I've just had this confirmed to me by John Mann)

Two bills have been introduced this year specifically to deal with it - the most recent talked out by the Tories (confirmed to me by Gordon Prentice)

I could go on.

You can tell me I'm wrong, but I am in the company of many others from all parts of the political spectrum.

Two bills have been introduced this year specifically to deal with it - the most recent talked out by the Tories

The progress of Prentice's bill's can be checked here. If you read the transcripts I think you'll come to doubt whether it really was "talked out". It seems to me that, once a few of the problems were pointed out (e.g. Lords Kinnock and Robertson and the Good Friday agreement), the bill died through lack of government support.

"bill's". Aggh. My apologies.

Posted by: Saltmaker | October 17, 2008 at 21:00

Two bills have been introduced this year specifically to deal with it - the most recent talked out by the Tories

The progress of Prentice's bill's can be checked here. If you read the transcripts I think you'll come to doubt whether it really was "talked out". It seems to me that, once a few of the problems were pointed out (e.g. Lords Kinnock and Robertson and the Good Friday agreement), the bill died through lack of government support.

I was reporting what Gordon Prentice told me.

I agree with B.Garvie.

I remember the 1970's when the then Labour Government were prevented from borrowing anymore money by the I.M.F.

1) the first thing Gordon Brown did in 1997 was to give our Gold away.

2) Gordon Brown/Alastair Campbell are still lying and fiddling the figures by using the percentage of G.D.P. to calculate the amount of Debt we are in. Their latest figures are 44% of G.D.P. in 1997, and is now 38%. What they failed to show is that the G.D.P is nearly 3 times that of 1997, and therefore so is the Debt. A DEBT IS A DEBT, AND HAS TO BE REPAID.

3) Unemployment is already above the 3 million mark, as the Job - Seekers allowance is only another cover up of the truth.

4) David Cameron is right to start attacking now. He had to be seen to support the Government during this crisis, otherwise it would have been thrown back in his face later. He cannot expose too much detail of future policy, because they will copy all the best points, and ridicule anything that they cannot achieve. However, we must start to show a direction in our policies in general terms.

Reform of Taxation must be a PRIORITY, to help Senior Citizens who have been and still are the backbone off our party.
Tax Credits are the biggest con that Brown dreamt up, and many people who are entitled to the do not claim them because they are too complicated.

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