the brilliantly leaping gazelle

One of the most blatantly misleading falsehoods is the oft-repeated Conservative assertion that the last Labour government was somehow responsible for financial crisis. And that only due to the good offices of successive Conservative governments and the policies they implemented has this country returned to prosperity.

What, you mean the GLOBAL financial crisis, that affected most developed countires? That one? The one that because of the inter-connectedness of global money markets had a profoundly cataclysmic effect here in Britain. Those effects that were as unavoidable as they were inevitable, that one?

The one that was caused in part by highly speculative and risky financial transactions, the kind of things the chancellor and Mekon lookalike, former senior executive at Deutsche BankSajid David was flogging. That one?

The one that was helped in part by successive UK governments pursing ‘light-touch regulation’, essentially allowing the financial industry free reign from any government interference. That is, until, the collapse of the British banking system that years of ‘light-touch regulation’ had facilitated and suddenly the industry realized that actually, yes, they did favour government interface and the government – the taxpayer – bailed them out. That one.

It makes me mad that no-one calls them out on this, or if they do, it doesn’t make headlines in the same way a working parent eking out a few more quid by doing some cash in hand work is. Whets the difference? One is for survival, the other is greed. And Britain voted for five more years of it. Wonderful.