[Messianic Trees]

There is sadly mass support for nationalisation and price controls

SLOWLY but surely, the public is turning its back on the free market economy and reembracing an atavistic version of socialism which, if implemented, would end in tears ... Supporters of a market economy have a very big problem. Unless they address the concerns of the public, they will be annihilated.

[youngian]

Nothing in there to threaten a market economy and are a list of practices common throughout the capitalist world. But there can never be enough money or assets to grab for class warriors like Allister Heath.

[new puritan]

Priceless wailing and gnashing of teeth in that article. What was it Thatcher used to say - "the object is to change the soul"? There was never mass support for most of the privatisations in the first place and there still isn't.

[new puritan]

Great response to Heath's turbo-Thatcherite bullshit from Michael Roberts.

http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2 ... inking-of/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Tubby Isaacs]

Priceless wailing and gnashing of teeth in that article. What was it Thatcher used to say - "the object is to change the soul"? There was never mass support for most of the privatisations in the first place and there still isn't.

Indeed. A point made Douglas Carwell, among others. Shame then that this "direct democracy" supporter doesn't vote along those lines on this issue.

[Messianic Trees]

Great response to Heath's turbo-Thatcherite bullshit from Michael Roberts.

http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2 ... inking-of/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Excellent. Thanks for posting this.

[The Red Arrow]

+1

[new puritan]

This bloke is just hilarious.

The simple, tragic truth is that our political elites, with a handful of courageous exceptions, have turned decisively against the market economy, embracing instead an interventionist orthodoxy reminiscent of a bygone era.

The shift is most noticeable in four key areas: a growing belief in price and wage controls across the political spectrum; a renewed faith in industrial policy; a decline in respect for property rights; and a growing tolerance for higher inflation.

It is a historic mistake – nothing less, in fact, than a new Butskellism, a return to the failed consensual approaches of the 1950s to the 1970s, exemplified by Tory chancellor Rab Butler and Labour’s Hugh Gaitskell, albeit in a modern, updated guise, influenced by a flawed analysis of the financial crisis.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comm ... onomy.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What can you say about stuff like this? Completely detached.

[youngian]

Christ on a bendy bus

Take price controls. The Tories have now adopted Labour’s policy to cap payday loan rates (even though some financially troubled folk will now be pushed into the arms of illegal loan sharks); they support limits on pension fees (which were not the best way to tackle the problem); they are seeking to buck the market by lowering the cost of risky mortgage loans through funding for lending and Help to Buy (which will take house prices to dangerously unsustainable levels); they want the Bank of England to fix interest rates at an excessively cheap rate for as long as possible (at the risk of causing bubbles and keeping productivity-destroying zombie firms alive); they back a tax on plastic bags (hitting the poor hardest and promoting the re-use of unhygienic, dirty bags); and they support drastic interventions in pay contracts in boardroom and trading floor alike (which in some cases will actually make the financial system riskier).

He appears to have omitted the most audacious piece of state intervention in the past few years; the nationalisation of banking debt.

[MisterMuncher]

I'm at a loss as to how the interest rate cap makes payday loans less attractive and causes people to go to illegal loan sharks instead.

[Andy McDandy]

They legal sharks can only be so generous if they offer the loans at 5000%. Those endless adverts on Channel 5 don't pay for themselves, you know. Or something like that.

His entire worldview is essentially "Fuck 'em as long as I get my Porsche, docklands flat and bonus", isn't it?

[youngian]

Outfits like Wonga are not financed by backstreet spivs but established City investors (Heath's mates) like Dawn Capital http://www.dawncapital.co.uk/#dc-aboutus" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Chairman is odious Tory cockroach Adrian Beecroft

Among Beecroft's known personal investments are Gnodal, a computer networking company, and Wonga.com, a high interest loan company.
Beecroft has dontated more than £500,000 to the Conservative Party since 2006

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Beecroft" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Big Rob]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comm ... onomy.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What can you say about stuff like this? Completely detached.

A truly awful piece of work. A load of soundbites with nothing to back up his claims.

I am surprised he managed to type that in between sucking all of those rich men's cocks.

[cycloon]

The next tool who warns of Soviet-esque doom and gloom if we dare do anything un neo-liberal is getting a smack round the face from one of the tomes on my shelf. I was recently given a hardback biog of Stalin, is very big. That'll do nicely.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Plastic bag tax hitting the poor most?

I reckon they'd rather that than what his mate Boris has done to bus fares.