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Response to Phillip Milton's letter comments - NDJ 9 Jan 2014

10/1/2014

1 Comment

 
I may be being a little unfair but reading Philip Milton's letter commenting on my article (see earlier post) reminds me of Denis Healey's famous quote.  When referring to an attack on him by Geoffrey Howe, Healey responded -  " it was like being savaged by a dead sheep".

But to address his substantive point about the state of the economy in 2010, he, like all his fellow Tories continue to perpetuate the idea that Labour's economic policy was to blame for all our current economic woes. This has been politically astute - if you repeat a lie often enough it gains currency and acceptance. What is clear is that most objective observers have a somewhat different view. I quote below an extract from William Keegan's article in the Observer last August where he refers to an article in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy whose author paints a much more realistic picture of Labour's economic record. In particular Philip should note the final sentence - 
"The line that the Labour government was responsible for leaving a disastrous fiscal position which requires great national sacrifice to put right is pure spin,"

What Philip also needs to accept is that Labour was taking the right action to respond to the recession between 2008 and 2010 and that Coalition policies have been responsible for holding the recovery back and leave us facing the prospect of more economic woe in the years to come.

"I strongly recommend the spring issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy. It covers the economic record of the 1997-2010 Labour government in considerable and balanced detail, warts and all. The chapter of particular relevance to the austerity policy is the one by the economist Simon Wren-Lewis, who is widely respected in the profession, and who played a notable role in the famous "five tests" study published in 2003 – which ended in the conclusion that Britain should not join the eurozone. Wren-Lewis finds that fiscal policy (taxation and spending) was actually too tight in the early years of that administration, overcompensated in the middle period, and failed to correct sufficiently in the final years.

But in the face of the great recession, the supposed benefits of tighter policy in the latter years would have been small: "The debt-to-GDP ratio in 2007 was lower than its level in 1997, and the net borrowing requirement was fairly close to a neutral 2% deficit, so it cannot be said that fiscal policy was seriously deficient over this period."

Wren-Lewis concludes that, with the onset of the recession, "the Labour government had two key fiscal decisions to make: by how much, and by what means, to try and stimulate the economy … and how quickly to plan to correct the deficit caused by the recession and any countercyclical action it took … my own view is that the government was absolutely right to try to use fiscal policy to mitigate the impact of the recession, and it was also right to plan to correct the deficit relatively slowly."

This rigorous academic observes that is it is unfortunate, but hardly surprising, that the Labour record of this time has become highly politicised.
"The line that the Labour government was responsible for leaving a disastrous fiscal position which requires great national sacrifice to put right is pure spin," he says."


1 Comment
Tony Olsson
7/7/2014 05:15:38 am

Hello Mr Cann

It can only be coincidence that having decided to contact you today regarding the persistent lies of the Tory Party (and Clegg and Alexander who are closet Yellow Book Tories) that Labour was responsible for the financial crash and the resulting damage to the British economy; that you have referred to it in your latest blog.

What I want to know is: why has the Labour Party not attempted to sue for libel and very substantial damages? As it mentions in your piece, if you repeat a lie often enough it gains currency and acceptance. Sadly this is only too true; hence the mistrust voters have of Labour’s ability to run the economy. Why the people can’t see through the lies of the Tories, particularly when their fiddling of statistics is repeatedly being held up to view, I don’t understand. I can see them, so it probably explains why I am regarded as a pariah locally for trying to bring the corruption of the two local councils (particularly Ilfracombe) and the North Devon Journal to public notice. The well-known phrase “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” comes to mind here. There are obviously a lot of wise (?) monkeys in North Devon.

“Evil” is my long held impression of Philip Milton. That comes not only from what he has had published in the local papers; and his notorious election leaflet saying a single mum with a young child should pay her landlord before buying food for herself and her child (that’s the Nasty Party with a vengeance!) but from many vicious unpublished email conversations. Not only does he lie without conscience when losing an argument, but as has been Tory tactics since 2010, he ridicules people who oppose Tory doctrine and lies.

I’m a Christian, and it offends me deeply to have this evil man professing his Christian values when people question his morality. Sadly, he is in bed with the Journal – only the Gazette publishes letters critical of him; or on the few occasions when the Journal prints one, it doesn’t the print letters responding to his pathetic replies.

We don’t need to keep Milton out at the next election, though of course his support for Tory policies and opposition to Socialist ideas will keep his opponents busy up to Polling Day. In a recent email conversation he told me he regards pensioners as benefits scroungers. Not long after that, the Government (including IDS, Gove and Osborne) announced plans to persuade pensioners to be fast track trained as teachers; to be included in the next Manifesto. Not content with delaying retirement, the Tories clearly want the elderly to work ‘til they drop. How that will help the young who cannot obtain work, I can’t imagine, and how it will help education standards to flood schools with amateur teachers, I don’t know.

Sorry I can’t support your efforts to be our next MP. I’m a Socialist – the Labour Party abandoned Socialism when arch-Tory Blair secured control. A political party still run by multi-millionaires cannot be in touch with “real people”.

Tony Olsson
Flat 2, 10 Oxford Grove, Ilfracombe, North Devon, EX34 9HQ
01271 879319 tonyolsson124@btinternet.com

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