I stuck my head above the parapet last time and suggested all was not rosy in the economy at a time when green shoots were being claimed both locally and nationally. A week later it was confirmed that the economy far from showing signs of improvement is in fact still shrinking.
This is the biggest challenge facing Government and the risks of everything going belly up have never been greater.
Following the near collapse of the banking system 18 months ago our Government didn’t just allow the amalgamation of banks, they actively encouraged their merger. This has raised the stakes even higher as Government simply cannot now allow these giant financial institutions to fail. Consequently bankers are laughing all the way to…… well the bank.
Until Government takes steps to prevent a repeat of the banking collapse our economy is going to walk a knife edge.
Stocks and shares are gaining value in markets across the world as banks invest using money we the taxpayers have pumped into the system. It is unsustainable and another crash is as inevitable as the last. Yet these banks are rewarding their trading room staff with massive bonus payments! Shouldn’t we be taking some of this money back for the taxpayer?
The bonus pool in the banking system derives from the fact that the banks are making profits on the back of a taxpayer guarantee. Until a properly regulated structure can be established, banks should be paying the taxpayer a premium for this guarantee.
But the biggest challenge of all is the state of the labour market. With the legacy of unemployment likely to remain for years after the end of the recession, we need radical measures to avoid repeating the mistakes of the 1980s which left millions on the scrap heap.
Raising the age of retirement for many will simply mean an extra year on the dole before qualifying for a state pension unless we act now and start to match what needs to be done with the people looking for work. If we don’t, history will repeat itself.
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A late night stab attack in Torquay town centre, local landlords threatening to shut down their pubs in protest at an increase in violence against bar staff, and an editorial praising local magistrates for taking a tough line on drunken behaviour in the bay. These were the stories that jumped out of a Herald Express published on a Thursday in August 1975.
There were stories on domestic abuse, youth crime and work place theft, and articles on late night violence on the harbourside, credit card fraud and the blackmail and bullying of a 15 year old.
A fair proportion of the local news coverage in the paper was filled by reports from the local magistrates’ and Exeter Crown Courts.
You could be forgiven for thinking that the bay, and Torquay in particular, was riddled with crime and disorder on a scale unimaginable today, or perhaps it is just not so extensively reported nowadays.
Or is it possible that lawlessness was much more widespread back then, but we tend only to view the past through rose tinted glasses?
Nothing rose tinted about the entertainment on offer in our local theatres that week in 1975. The stars of Saturday night television were packing them in at the Princess and Festival Theatres, with the Val Doonican Show in Torquay and Ronnie Corbett with Kenneth McKellar in Paignton. For younger readers that would be like every night for the summer season Ant and Dec playing Torquay, while Armstrong and Miller perform in Paignton. I nearly said like Strictly’s Bruce Forsyth playing one of our local theatres, but he was probably playing the Babbacombe Theatre sometime that year! Another example of the more things change, the more they stay the same.
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There are some serious scientific brains working around the world on whether climate change is a consequence of human activity, or something way beyond our control.
Most of the world’s best brains have concluded that the climate is changing, that it is the result of human endeavour, and unless we take action our very survival as a species is under threat.
On the other side there are a number of vested interests against the changes that are being implemented, or proposed, to reduce our consumption of finite resources, or to tax pollution. The oil and gas industry, their bankers and financiers and everyone else who feeds off them who employ their own ‘experts’ to challenge studies and propagate doubt about some of the measures being undertaken.
Battle lines were revealed in the recent debate over the phasing out of incandescent light bulbs for low energy alternatives.
We know experts don’t always get things right and it is right to question their findings, but where the climate is concerned I think cautious acceptance has to be the right way forward.
If the climate change sceptics are right, the worst that can happen is that we slow down our economic growth. We may have to wait just a little longer to become a little more prosperous.
If on the other hand they are wrong, our ability to survive on this planet may be so short that a generation already born may be around to witness the death of our species.
In that context energy saving light bulbs are a small price to pay for a future.
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