Wednesday 16 April 2008

Poll Results: Outlook bleak


The poll we put up whilst away had a decent 33 votes.

The Question was when will we see the green shoots of recovery (a reference to a much derided term used during the recession of the early 1990's). The results were as below:

Before end of 2008
0 (0%)
Before 2009 Election
2 (6%)
Not until 2010
20 (60%)
Depression until the Olympics
8 (24%)
Whadyamean; all is well
3 (9%)

I am pleased to see we have some left-wing, labour voting readers for balance, as this must account for the 9% who said all is well.

The winner by a long way though was no real improvement until 2010, with not a vote for a turnaround this year. Economically, this is bad for us all if it comes to pass as it will mean, higher unemployment and higher costs of living.

Politically, this would eb even worse news for Gordon and Badger; no hope surely of winning and election after what would be 2 full years of economic hardship/decline. No blaming the Tories this time.

A significant vote went for no real improvement until 2012 - with my optimist hat on I think this is pushing the bear a abit far; but time will tell.

25 comments:

Old BE said...

My hard left matey is convinced that we need a real economic meltdown so that we can return to a more harmonious existence closer to nature. Naturally enough he is a Green and has a large trust fund to fall back on if he ends up out of work... I suspect he would have voted for an option not available in your poll!

Nick Drew said...

yer true hard lefty loves nothing more than to chop down a forest and build a state-run tractor factory, belching smoke

(whereas we capitalists like a nice belt of landscaped trees around our tractor factories)

Old BE said...

You are right ND, my friend must be terribly torn between his two competing aims.

James Higham said...

Shouldn't the poll be when is the crash? 2009, 2010, 2011 or 2012?

Anonymous said...

9% is truly what their suport base will be come 2010.

Have another poll asking when Labour will become the third party in the UK. A drop in support allied to a possible bankruptcy could see them actually become the third party.

CityUnslicker said...

BE - Trustafarians, I never could stay friends witht hem. it is also why Zak Goldsmith just gets my goat so much!

SM - Well it depends what coutnry you are in. US is already in deep recession and when we will follow will be determined in the next few months. I don't want to contemplate another disaster to occur in addition to the many woes already made for ourselves.

Shotgun - your back, hooray!

Anonymous said...

For the economically illiterate, can you explain whether the length of our recession will depend on that of the USA? If they come out soon, can we be expected to follow? Would we still be in this mess if the UK had not followed the sub-prime lending/fiscal shenanigans party?

CityUnslicker said...

grumpy -

more of our exports go to the US than Europe and much of our foreign direct investment is in the US. Hence the state of the US economy is crucial to the health of our own.

Also some of our biggest companies, like BP and HSBC report their results in US Dollars so the collapse of the US currency affects them too.

Overall, whether we were that involved in subprime or not we would still get a cold from a US recession - our economies are just very interlinked.

Mark Wadsworth said...

"higher unemployment and higher costs of living".

Yeah and? As somebody who is economically rational, I have sold-to-rent. To me this looks like jolly good news on the whole house-price front!

Shotgun - The Labour Party is insolvent, and has been for about three years. That is a simple question of law and fact.

CU "HSBC and BP report their results in USD". If the bulk of their income is generated outside the USA, then superficially this will improve their profits enormously!

Mark Wadsworth said...

"3 Labour voters"?

That must be the same three people* who voted 'Yes' to the question 'Have Labour put and end to boom and bust?' over at LabourHome.

But the funny bit is the number of people who voted 'No'!

* Badger & Goblin King, obviously. Who's the other moron?

Old BE said...

Re selling to rent: I have only been in my place a year and despite a likely spot of negative equity my mortgage interest is already considerably less than the rent I would pay so I am pretty happy. If the economy bombs then rates shall fall yet further!

I predict a sufficiently humiliating time for Labour that infighting will return to the fore allowing Mr Cameron two terms and his successor a further two. We might finally rid ourselves of socialsim.

Sackerson said...

Surely Lab and Con are mutually dependent. Look at past PMs and their contemporary Leaders of the Opposition - often similar to bookends. Perhaps they'll go down together into the abyss, like Gandalf and the Balrog.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Blue Eyes, you must have a fantastic mortgage deal!

CityUnslicker said...

MW - I know that full well, I was trying to explain ways in which we were tied to the US economy!

CityUnslicker said...

BE - property and shares have been good long-term bets for a long, long time. It is trying to make gains in the short term which is much more risky.

Old BE said...

MW yes I do :-) A simple case of right time, right circumstances.

Schadenfreude said...

"We might finally rid ourselves of socialsim."

I think not. We have had numerous Tory governments since 1950 and not one has dismantled either the welfare state or the NHS behemoth.

The reason for that is simple. If we the workers don't pay for our welfare and healthcare from our own wages, the employers would have to pay for it out of their own profits. Which is how Atlee sold it to the employers in the first place.

Old BE said...

It all sounds so simple and wonderful doesn't it! What a brave utopia Mr Atlee and his friends dreamt of. What a shame that the welfare state as it is encourages exactly the kind of inactivity it was designed to abolish and the health service swallows up all that cash and is still perpetually on the brink of collapse.

The reason Tory governments haven't had a chance to make proper reforms is that we have been recovering economically from the mistakes made immediately after WW2. This time Labour haven't managed to screw it up sufficiently badly that it will take 18 years to fix it which gives the next government time to do some proper welfare reform.

Nick Drew said...

haven't managed to screw it up

??

I'd put it differently: Blair had every opportunity to reform the system - he even seemed to want to, sort-of - but he bottled when Brown insisted on the head of Frank Field

Old BE said...

Apart from the debt bubble, Labour have done very little economic "tinkering" of the type they are used to. We should thank the TBGBs for that.

CityUnslicker said...

BE - I strongly disagree here. We have a terrible disfigurement in the economy with the sheer scale of the public sector. We hae more public workers than countries like Germany.

We are very socialist indeed. May of Gordon's 'reforms' to tax and welfare and seriously altered both the willingness of people to make changes and the ability of the country to pay for anything.

In addition, the extra signing up to Europe, which the Tories would have done too I guess, has also limited our range of actions.

It is a long haul back from here.

Anonymous said...

CU: 11.13 Thanks

Anonymous said...

Even an economic recovery won't save Brown now.

Anonymous said...

Blue eyes: - I disagree with your hope that a Cameron govt would be any real change.

Firstly Cameron is more in the mold of vile consensus politics but if he does get elected we must hope he's not as traitorous or stupid as Heath.

As for dismantling the welfare State - the Tories are up to their neck in socialism/statism as much as Labour. Even Thatcher was only able to only slow the rate at which the state expanded.

Depressingly 50 years of the welfare state has neutered the general population and inculcated socialism imho.

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