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    • #2920089

      Gordon Brown!

      by bizzo ·

      In reply to Recession – Reason- The Iraq War

      I completely agree.

      Gordon Brown is to blame. He was never voted in to power by the public. Only by his “buddies” in government who knew they’d powerful jobs and big pay-packets.

      And now he’s screwing (screwed?) the country.

      • #2920080

        How?

        by the ‘g-man.’ ·

        In reply to Gordon Brown!

        Gordon Brown was not in power when we went to war in Iraq, Tony Balir was. If you are looking to blame a single person look there.

        Besides, I blame the political party not their leader.

        What does Gordon Brown being moved up to leader of his party have to do with it?

        In a General Election you vote for what PARTY will run a country vua the number of seats and they have to gain a controlling majority, not who is their leader?

        The PARTY is the same as before – it is their fault for going to war and kicking things off.

        You just do not like Gordon Brown and look to pin everything on him – the classic uninformed voter – you should live in the US where they place a higher importance on ‘who’ rather than the party!

        • #2920003

          He should have posted that in my

          by dumphrey ·

          In reply to How?

          conspiracy theory thread….

        • #2919978

          Eh?

          by bizzo ·

          In reply to How?

          I know Gordon Brown wasn’t in power at that time.

          I too blame the Labour Party. But if you blame a party or an organisation, no-one takes responsibility. And what’s the point in having a leader if they’re not blame-worthy?

          In a General Election you vote for what PARTY will run a country vua the number of seats and they have to gain a controlling majority, not who is their leader?
          Oh, come on! So the leader of a party doesn’t sway you at all in the way you vote? That means that party leaders are just faceless puppets of the party as a whole? If that was the case, then why did Brown change his cabinet? Or did the cabinet change by itself and Brown had nothing to do with it?

          The party is NOT the same as before, how can you say that?
          http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6247502.stm

          You just do not like Gordon Brown and look to pin everything on him – the classic uninformed voter – you should live in the US where they place a higher importance on ‘who’ rather than the party!

          Do you know me? No, I didn’t think so. So please don’t label me as anything. The classic uninformed voter? Please, get off your high horse, who the hell do you think you are?

          You’re the one that started this discussion. If I’d have noted the “name-calling” tag, I wouldn’t have bothered.

        • #2919965

          What party is in power now?

          by the ‘g-man.’ ·

          In reply to Eh?

          What party was in power then?

          Cabinets are made up regardless of ‘who’ you vote for, you have no power at all to control who is (or is not) in the cabinet. You do not vote for the cabinet.

          You do not vote for the Lords either.

          You vote to elect your MP (this is a WHO vote) in the Commons.

          The PARTY with the most elected MP’s takes power.

          This PARTY wins the General Election if they have an overall majority of MP’s so as to out vote the others.

          What do you think the Opinion Polls all about?

          Labour Down x
          Conservative up Y

          PARTYS!

          What PARTY are you voteing for at the next General Election, not WHO?

          Even if you ask WHO, the answer will be a PARTY name 99.9% of the time!

          NOW – if you were active in a political party you would get to vote on WHO is the leader of that party – that is a different ball game!!!

          As for me – Well…I’m just correct.

          No further comments on this side issue (EDIT)

        • #2919958

          Let me guess … Labour?

          by bizzo ·

          In reply to What party is in power now?

          So who decided on the current cabinet under Gordon Brown’s Leadership?

          I didn’t mention the House of Lords. Who did?

          OK, in your little ego world, I’ll allow you to be correct.

          You started this discussion, and now you don’t want any further comments? You must be real fun to know.

    • #2919955

      Now…Back to the main Topic

      by the ‘g-man.’ ·

      In reply to Recession – Reason- The Iraq War

      With oil prices and all time high and the price at the pumps pushing up other costs, I say they were 100% correct.

      The recession that is starting/started is all our own governments fault. They need to admit this, step down and stop blaming some ‘Universal Economic Cycle’ that would have happened regardless…

      • #2919941

        That’s right

        by bizzo ·

        In reply to Now…Back to the main Topic

        When a discussion doesn’t go the way you want, edit all your previous posts. Nice one. So does this mean you win?

        • #2919803

          Eh?

          by the ‘g-man.’ ·

          In reply to That’s right

          How you vote to decide the PM unless you are an active member of a political party in power?

          You can’t.

          You can vote for an MP only.

          Let me ask – who took the UK to war in Iraq?
          What party was he from?
          Who did not take the UK to war in Iraq?
          What party is he from?

          I state the war is the cause of the recession. I blame the political party and the leader at the time.

          As for the edit – it is clearly marked where (as is the post marked ‘off-topic’), but you are using this as a weak way to avoid admitting you are incorrect about the ability to vote for a PM.

        • #2919640

          Get over it

          by bizzo ·

          In reply to Eh?

          If you bothered to read any of my posts instead of “going off on one”, editing your posts and changing the slant of the discussion, you’ll actually discover I never said that the public could vote a PM into power.

          In fact, read my first post.
          “He was never voted in to power by the public.”

        • #2919598

          You don’t see it – here it is!!!

          by the ‘g-man.’ ·

          In reply to Get over it

          OK, one more time….

          You say:

          “He was never voted in to power by the public”

          I say:

          Question- How could he ever be voted in to power by the public?

          Colletive aggreed answer is:

          A: He Cannot

          So…

          This makes your now famous first post point mute and irrelevant, why…as it is impossible.

          See it now – Logic 101 for you.

          Edited – to further annoy Andy.

        • #2919524

          Yawn

          by bizzo ·

          In reply to You don’t see it – here it is!!!

          Congratulations on now being the most boring person in history. You are now more boring than Borey McBoring, President of the Boring Persons Society.

          Is it me you have a problem with or are you just annoyed at something.

          Rephrasing someone’s statement into a question doesn’t make the statement irrelevant and doesn’t make you more right. In fact you’re actually agreeing with my statement. That has nothing at all to do with logic.

          For example:

          I say:

          “These apples don’t taste like oranges”

          You say:

          Question- How can apples taste like oranges?

          Collective agreed answer is:

          A: They cannot

          Doesn’t make sense now does it?

          Thank you for inviting me to Logic 101, I hope that they’ll allow you to resit it.

          I see you’re getting quite anal about this now. How many of my previous posts did you look through to get my real name? That is quite sad. I really don’t know whether to laugh at you or pity you if you think that kind of stuff is going to wind me up.

          Editing posts doesn’t annoy me, I find it quite amusing. Because it means you have no more logical arguments, so you change the slant on the original post to make your subsequent statements relevant.

          Thanks for calling my first post famous, it makes me proud, but I think the word you’re after is ‘moot’.

        • #2919507

          Mute point

          by neilb@uk ·

          In reply to Yawn

          mmm mmmmm mmmm mmm mmmm mmmmmm mmmm mmmm!

        • #2920919

          Neil: :D

          by bizzo ·

          In reply to Yawn

          Thanks for the levity!

      • #2919505

        Oil prices

        by neilb@uk ·

        In reply to Now…Back to the main Topic

        are $20 down on a month ago.

        For whatever that’s worth…

        • #2920763

          What about since the war started?

          by the ‘g-man.’ ·

          In reply to Oil prices

          ?

        • #2920663

          What ABOUT “since the war started”?

          by neilb@uk ·

          In reply to What about since the war started?

          YOU are the one who started this thread.

          YOU are the one frothing at the mouth about this.

          Produce some figures, link to some graphs, prove your point. “With oil prices and all time high and the price at the pumps pushing up other costs, I say they were 100% correct.”

          Should be easy enough. YOU prove it.

          Neil 🙂

          Posting a link to a Google search page with the key word misspelt doesn’t constitute evidence.

        • #2920657

          The Graph…..

          by the ‘g-man.’ ·

          In reply to What ABOUT “since the war started”?

        • #2920648

          Not enough

          by neilb@uk ·

          In reply to The Graph…..

          The graph has a box with the Iraq War, weakening Dollar, the Venezuelan strike, and the Asian economic growth. Not to forget the Nigerian production issues, the tendency of companies to work a more “just-in-time” stocking scenario, the Hedge Fund operators moving in to make money, Israel, insufficient US refining capacity…

          One graph doth not a Summer of rising oil prices make.

          Now THAT is just for rising oil prices. Factor in everything else from the World Banking crisis downwards and then, if you still insist it’s “just” the Iraq war, I reckon you need to show me some more specifics.

          Try harder.

        • #2920575

          Knock yourself out…..

          by the ‘g-man.’ ·

          In reply to Not enough

        • #2920554

          And your point is ? What?

          by neilb@uk ·

          In reply to Not enough

          The word “Recession” appears nowhere in the document. You seem to think that all you have to do is start a thread with a contentious point and no evidence to back it up and we’ll all go and do your work for you.

          FFS, the BBC [b]2002[/b] link poses a “whatif” scenario where Saddam Hussein fires Scud missiles at Israel. I don’t know whether you’ve caught on to the fact that Saddam Hussein is dead, Israel wasn’t attacked by Iraqi Scuds and the area didn’t go up in any more flames than usual. Oh, and Saddam Hussein is dead, Israel wasn’t attacked by Iraqi Scuds and the area didn’t go up in any more flames than usual. I know they are the same points but they are such good ones…

          I’ve already pointed out tat the other link was a page from a Google search with the key word misspelt. I mean, attention-grabbing stuff or what!

          I think I’ll go and play in Shellbot’s thread.

          Edited to add a smidgin of sarcasm.

        • #2920532

          This is fun…..

          by the ‘g-man.’ ·

          In reply to Not enough

          If we are going there:

          “I’ve already pointed out tat the other link was a page from a Google search with the key word misspelt. I mean, attention-grabbing stuff or what!”

          Well – That is not spelled ‘tat’.

          If you are going to point our a spelling error please (oh! please) at least make sure the sentence pointing it out is correct itself.

        • #2920519

          Neil…

          by jellimonsta ·

          In reply to Not enough

          You don’t use sarcasm my friend, irony is the weapon of choice.
          Just how it was ironic that you spelled ‘that’, ‘tat’. Is that a word play expressing your discontent for the number of immigrants in London? 😀
          BTW, G-Man. Do yourself a favor, don’t question Neil’s intelligence or integrity. :p

        • #2920515

          Well, you’re not really very good at this, are you?

          by neilb@uk ·

          In reply to Not enough

          If you can’t spot the difference between a misspelling and a typographical error, then you’re a bit of a tat, aren’t you?

          Neil 🙂

          By the way, the missing letter [b]this time[/b] is a ‘w’.

          Still, if it makes you happy and gives you a chance to have a small “poster’s orgasm”, be my guest.

        • #2920512

          Jelli, it was just a typo

          by neilb@uk ·

          In reply to Not enough

          Alas, I have a lot to do for w**k at the moment so no time for proof-reading and if the speel-chekcer doesn’t catch it, I don’t see it.

          Still, if you reckon my typos are smart, I’ll let my subconscious take some credit…

          B-)

        • #2920509

          Typo vs misspellings

          by jdclyde ·

          In reply to Not enough

          misspellings are not knowing

          typo is hitting an incorrect key occasionally

          The two are not in the same ball park. Take it from one of the worst speelers on TR. B-)

        • #2920469

          The word in question…..

          by the ‘g-man.’ ·

          In reply to Not enough

          was correctly spelled through out the OP but not on the Google search. How very strange.

          Despite this Google gave back about 314,000 for war in Iraq caused ‘resession’.

          Common ‘error’ it seems.

          Had it been spelled correctly we would have about 1,060,000 for war in Iraq caused recession.

          But…

          For all you know, at the time, I may have preferred the order and content of results with the incorrect letter retained. There is 314,000 of them.

          If I’m being pointed out for posting an incorrect ‘web link’ then sure as hell I will point out a typo!.

        • #2920440

          Later!

          by the ‘g-man.’ ·

          In reply to Not enough

          I like to save my answers for serious responses anyway.

        • #2922192

          neil how do you DO that???

          by oz_media ·

          In reply to Not enough

          Now, I just got out of a circular argument that dragged on for weeks, I said it was over, enough is enough and alll that but the guy just kept going on and on, misquoting me, nto reading replies and simply offering complete nonsense in return. It FINALLY ended when he changed his opinion and we found middle ground.

          But YOU, you just say ‘I’ve had enough’ and your debator simply agrees and buggers off.

          Some people!

        • #2911442

          Simple….

          by the ‘g-man.’ ·

          In reply to Not enough

          Just post this as a question on the correct ‘Questions Section’ of the site and await your response!

          Meantime understend that neilb and I have fundamental UK constitutional differences that are way bigger than this subject – that and I got bored with him disagreeing just for the sake of it.

          Edit – typo

    • #2919933

      I don’t think it’s that simple

      by tony hopkinson ·

      In reply to Recession – Reason- The Iraq War

      A factor definitely. If only for the military spend.
      China.
      Some very high profile rip offs.
      Sub Prime mortgages.
      Soaring insurance costs.
      Welfare & Health spending
      The dawning realisation, that oil isn’t inexhaustible
      Greater ecological awareness.
      Outsourcing
      Service as opposed to manufacuring preponderance in our economies.

      But the main reason for economic ups and down, the fallacious assumption that if you twiddle with once piece of it, the results will be exactly as predicted…..

    • #2920897

      War is not cause of recession

      by dr dij ·

      In reply to Recession – Reason- The Iraq War

      but close

      the main problem is that the US government has been creating money ‘out of thin air’ by lending non-existent money to banks.

      They do this by the hundreds of billions of dollars a day.

      This has caused a steady inflation that in 7 years has eaten away 50% of the value of the US $. And they lie about inflation in official stats so they don’t have to give cost of living increases to Fed employees, or to Social Security recipients.

      The other main reason they inflate the money supply is that they can make payments on the national debt (now in the trillions of dollars) with money that is worth less. (Inflating their way out of the debt). This is more ‘politically correct’ to Washington than raising taxes to pay for programs and national debt. And we wouldn’t get anyone to loan us anymore money if we defaulted on the debt.

      Being a more flexible economy than many others where hiring, firing and prices even are regulated, the US economy did tighten its belt and become more efficient. But there is only so much of that to be done.

      The push to outsource and offshore is largely as a result of inflation of costs. Tho it would have occured anyway more slowly.

      The housing market was distorted by this inflation. Everyone ran to buy houses as investments as it was seen as one of the last things that was outpacing inflation. (actually houses were barely keeping pace with inflation while other assests were losing to inflation).

      This is typical of low level hyper-inflation. In Turkey years ago when they hyperinflated their currency everyone continually added rooms to houses and built new buildings and sheds as was only way to bypass inflation (keep real value).

      Anyway, the end result is that because of massive ‘theft-by-inflation’ by the govt and its favored huge banks people have 2/3 or so less spending power than they did just 10 years ago. Sadly people don’t realize this as some things have been getting cheaper due to advances in technology, such as computers and flat screen TVs, cameras.

      The Iraq war was just a chunk (albeit a good sized one) of the spending spree that the out-of-control govt is on, which caused this recession, thanks to YOU the people demanding more, and to insufficient controls to tie spending to ACTUAL REVENUES coming in.

      • #2920604

        Actually, most of that is not relevant

        by jdclyde ·

        In reply to War is not cause of recession

        Because the OP is one of them “dang foreigners” talking about the status in one of them “dang foreign” countries… 😀

        And yes, war has always stimulated economies, (if you are not on the receiving end)

    • #2920548

      It always has done

      by oz_media ·

      In reply to Recession – Reason- The Iraq War

      It is a well known fact that whenever there is war, gas prices shoot through the roof and the economy takes a dive.

      War, always seems to surround oil, he who holds the gold.

      Whenever war takes place, oil production slows, oil fields are often a target for destruction, as it cripples the battlefield too.

      Even in WWII, Hitler NEEDED to conquer Russia and get to the oil. If he had succeeded in beating Russia, the war would have taken a VERY different run indeed and the outcome may have been a lot different, with Germany ruling Eastern Europe, strengthening that tie to Japan and opening up the Eastern Seaboard etc. With Japan taking islands close and closer to US shores, the war would have had a much greater effect on North America that’s for sure. The map would not be the same today anyway.

      So to see this middle eastern war effectign our economy so directly is no surprise, everyone knew it would happen, well everyone who didn’t just grab a gun and go running into the dessert to kill some Arabs anyway.

      Becaus ethe focus was placed upon American safety and WMD, it was easy to instll a NEED for war into people, a NEED to protect and save your families. Nobody even thought about the oil issue at that time and if it was mentioned, the most common response was that they are unpatriotic and how the war is to save Americans from attacks, not for oil.

      MANY people actually bought into it, lock stock and barrel.

      • #2920463

        Indeed!!

        by the ‘g-man.’ ·

        In reply to It always has done

        Wars are bearish for international trade, and it is in the international oil trade that the war with Iraq has caused some economic havoc.

        Two of USA’s worst recessions (that effected the UK) of the last half-century were the 1974-75 downturn and the deep trough of 1981-82. Both were closely associated with sustained spikes in oil prices.

        Today, as the US is the world’s largest consumer and importer of oil, along with being the most energy-intensive economy. The US (and by proxy economic ties the UK) remain acutely vulnerable to higher oil prices than other countries.

        • #2920460

          acutely vulnerable

          by oz_media ·

          In reply to Indeed!!

          Funny though, we provide 60% of your oil imports and OUR station prices are higher than yours.

          Not so bad with the US dollar so low right now but its still plain wrong.

        • #2911433

          Hmmm…

          by jellimonsta ·

          In reply to acutely vulnerable

          Oz, I think the OP is in the UK. Unless things have gone haywire, UK is more expensive for *petrol* than Canada. :p

    • #2791194

      Oil drops by 1/3rd, now what?

      by jdclyde ·

      In reply to Recession – Reason- The Iraq War

      What has caused the price drop?

      Why has the price of petrol not followed?

      Where does this leave us now?

      Was it really Iraq that raised the price of oil/petrol in the first place?

      Is Iraq to blame for housing markets?

      Is Iraq to blame for failing banks?

      Is Iraq to blame for off-shoring of jobs?

      People losing jobs has a nasty effect on the economy.

      • #2781189

        Well jd

        by tearat ·

        In reply to Oil drops by 1/3rd, now what?

        Governments will use any excuse to point the finger
        Can you pick the most likely from your list?

        Me I think the mess would have been avoided if the press did their job properly
        Report on the lowlife tactics of the government and its opposing party?s
        Report on what is really happening around the world (not just at times of war)

        The things that cause war are more important than the wars they create
        It appears the only time anyone gives a damn is when it affects him or her personally

        The cause of the war is every person who ignored the problems that created the war
        The people who knew about the problems and did not report it are guilty of more than anyone else
        Wars do not happen by themselves

        The war will be used as an excuse for many things
        The politicians love it when they have something to blame

        Think about this
        How many other wars are happening around the world now
        How many other problems are there that will become war

        One more thing
        Politicians lie
        Politicians get lied to
        So who is worse the person lying to the politician or the politician lying about a lie
        Is it any better if the lie of a lie turns out to be the truth

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