A few interesting comment and quotes, borrowed from another Forum:
I think one misconception should be put right. The failure in the City was due more to Blair & Brown's "light touch" approach to regulation which led to the barrow boys running amok than the original "Big Bang".
Hmm. I don't seem to recall everyone decrying their "light touch" and demanding tougher regulation - this cheeky chappie, for example:
Quote:
“...Poor skill levels, rising taxes, bureaucratic planning controls and chronic overregulation are high on the list of culprits. Britain is being left behind...”
- G. Osborne, The Times, 2006, in an article praising the Irish economy and the lessons the UK might learn from it. (Interestingly the article has been deleted from The Times' website - happily it has been automatically preserved for posterity elsewhere...)
Or how about this, from the same year in the Telegraph:
Quote:
"I fear that much of this regulation has been burdensome, complex and makes cross-border market penetration more difficult. This is exactly the wrong direction in which Europe should be heading and it threatens the global competitiveness of the City of London.
Major companies can pack up and move anywhere in the world if faced with damaging regulations. We have already seen it happen in the United States, with the Sarbanes-Oxley regulations that were hastily introduced after the Enron scandal and which have led to international companies delisting and moving elsewhere."
Both of these were written by Osborne as shadow chancellor. Here he is talking in the House of Commons that same year, warming to the same theme:
Quote:
"Our criticism of the Chancellor is that he does not understand how to respond to the big changes shaping the future of our world. In an age of greater choice, he offers more overbearing control; in an age of greater freedom, he gives us more interference; and in an age of flexibility, his rigid belief in bigger government is out of date. In short, in an age that demands a light touch, he offers that clunking fist."
(Hansard, 27 Nov 2006)
