Conservative Conference

Just like the SNP!

It's too easy to wind up the SNP Grans. They have their own facts and aren't interested in others. Sad really.

"Many Local councils did not plough the monies raised through the right to buy scheme back into building more social housing as they were supposed to do."

As someone else has already said, councils were forbidden from using the money raised from Right to Buy to build more houses. So where does a belief like the above come from?

Was someone giving deliberate misinformation or were they just mistaken themselves?

Thanks Grannygravy, yes you are correct, printing more money causes devaluation, a bit like playing Monopoly

So the £450 billion the government pumped into the economy as 'Quantitative Easing' in 2007/8 (and the £60 billion after the Brexit vote) caused 'devaluation?

A great deal of the QE money wasn't 'borrowed' from anyone. It was just created by the Bank of England.

The pound was certainly 'devalued' after the Brexit vote, but that was in the financial markets (and Farage and his friends made a killing on that 'devaluation') and the financial markets don't have a great deal of bearing on the real, everyday, economy. The financial markets are mainly a gambler's paradise.

Maize , my comment was referring to making money as in printing it, not referring to borrowing , quantative easing etc

In which case, Bridgeit it only applies to the times when 'money' was linked to gold reserves which had a finite value. Issuing 'money' (cash?) in excess of the value of the gold reserves did indeed 'devalue' it, but we came off the gold standard in the early 1970s. It isn't linked to anything now.

So MaizeD, are you saying it would now be possible & sensible to do ?

It has already been done, Bridgeit with QE.

It's 'sensible' so long as the government can get it back via taxation to avoid inflation. And, some economists would say, by manipulating interest rates; raising them to encourage saving if there's too much money circulating or lowering them if there's not enough money circulating. Though I'm not altogether sure about the logic of that.

Of course it's not really quite a simple as that but that really is the principle on which 'money' works.

But cutting the money in the real economy makes no sense. It puts people out of work and adversely affects the businesses that they would have spent their wages with. and the businesses that the 'public enterprises' would have used to supply them with goods and services. And it has to be spent on benefits for people out of work. Admittedly benefits use less money than spending it on, say, the NHS but cutting benefits has no point either because it just cuts back the money people would have spent into the economy and which would have grown the economy. Keynes was saying this in the 1930s.

I would say that I believe that the 'mixed economy' of public and private enterprise is good. I think the role of the caring state is to provide for its citizens by providing services like the NHS which are available to all. Every man for himself isn't a particularly civilised way of proceeding.

But others might disagree that the state should care for all its citizens.

So really all back to the same problem with the same differences in solutions, real life snakes & ladders, with no real solutions.

I don’t see anyone on here disagreeing that the State should care for it’s citizens or saying the NHS should not exist.

Perhaps you should have been advising the government since the financial crash Maizie I wonder how they managed with only their own economic advisors.

Perhaps I should, lemon.

So really all back to the same problem with the same differences in solutions, real life snakes & ladders, with no real solutions.

Sorry, I don't quite understand what you are saying here, Bridgeit

What problems are we back to?

Bridgeit, are you saying, what I am thinking? In as much as whoever is in opposition suggest "solutions" in their manifestos and speeches, but if /when they are elected find themselves in the same position as the outgoing government, their hands being tied by legislation/civil servants, and not being in a position to change things as much as they thought or would have been able to in the past (40 years ago or so)?

No Maizie... you really shouldn’t.

GrannyG I would certainly hope that would be the case should Corbyn ever saunter in to Number 10.

'So really all back to the same problem with the same differences in solutions, real life snakes & ladders, with no real solutions.'

Well, the financial crisis which is forecast has nothing to do with Corbyn for sure. But the fact the banks and their shareholders are still based on greed and have not heeded the advice given to stop endebtment.

Yes more or less Grannygravy13 that’s about it, as I have said on another thread, we still see the appalling poverty in the same countries as I saw as a child when the then appeals were for the children of Biafra
And it is the same with Governments, all presumably believing they have the solutions, but they so often do not transpire even where the intention is a genuine belief that they will

Gosh, you're widening the scope of the subject a lot, aren't you Bridgeit? I though we were just talking about our own situation, not global problems...

Sorry MaizeD, to bring it back to the topic,
Boris will IMO do anything to become leader of Conservative party, I beleive he is sadly deluded, so yes why not ask for Donald Trumps advice , we can all do with a little light entertainment.