‘We let it slip’, but you must accept reforms, Mervyn King tells unions

I liken Bob Crow to a cross between Lenin & Mr Staypuft the Marshmellow man from the end of Ghostbusters

Most will see that Mervyn King wears glasses - at long last the rose tint appears to have worn off.

Paul Kenny is right - many saw the greed of bankers and the self imposed blindness of the CoE many years ago, now the time of awakening is with us it will be those who were circumspect who will have to pay for the excesses of the fools, the greedy and the inept. Which one GB falls into is open to debate

I think Paul means BoE, because whilst the Church has not distinguished itself in recent years, I don't think it carries any blame for our financial predicament.

Whether the governor was too subtle in his speech or Chris Marshall deliberatedly misunderstood; Mr King was including the past government in his condemnation, because who else could he mean by "policymakers".

There are those amongst us who could see that Gordon Brown was a disaster from the moment he clobbered the pension funds in his very first budget in 1997.

But I was as guilty as anybody else in not reading carefully enough the details of that budget, had I done so I would not have welcomed his granting of independence and sole responsibility for the interest rate to the BoE when it also split responsibility for supervision of the banks between three organisations. The implementation of those decisions became the root cause of the property bubble and our UK bank crisis.

For what it's worth, I don't think the real recession has hit us yet. The pundits refer to a double-dip recession, and that is how it will be experienced. QE and a 0.5% interest rate have only postponed the dreadful consequences of Gordon Brown's policies.

I believe that when it comes, the renewed recession will just be the playing-out of the inevitable correction to an economy built on debt and a delusioned chancellor who arrogantly thought he could end "boom and bust" and who pursued policies of extravagance based on that assumption.

Sorry, I should have referred to Clive, not Paul.

If you build your house using cards, it's bound to fall down...

Garbage in - garbage out! Using phrases like 'let it slip' seems to indicate they had enough control to stop the inevitable.

To start off appeasing the unions what should happen first is to start off with the financial industry. Get that house in absolute and total order. Re-align any bonuses to actual profits and ban all forms of derivatives or "never-never" money solely traded for monetary gain. Nationalise all the banks until the money has been paid back which will frustrate the hell out of the directors of the establishments. There has to be a re-education of monetary policy and draconian times needs draconian measures.

The majority of us have also to take one long good look at ourselves at the personal debt we've taken out, but the financial industry needs a root and branch and I can't see our Government having the balls to take this on.

Steven it is policies like yours that will make what is happening in Greece look like a picnic.

You need to get real labour created this mess and chose to blame the US. If you keep spending without creating anything like we have done for the last 13 years then you will run out of money get the country in a mess.

We need to start Exporting, Exporting and Exporting this stopped when labour came to power. There has not been one month of labours rein that we exported more than we imported. Spending on public services does not increase exports it actually increases imports!

We have lived beyond are means has a nation we need to stop spending for spending sake give tax breaks to British plc and try and grow an economy on investment and not public spending (public spending is not investment whatever GB says).

Before labour was created we had a nation of workers we now have a nation of benefits. We have to import goods because we cannot make them ourselves. Finally, we have to import workers because people just do not want to work. This is what a party owned and paid for by the unions does. Union’s leaders need to get their membership to start working like they do in the rest of the world!

To all you Trolls with your heads in the sand.

When they came for the Communists you were not a Communist so you said nothing.

When they come for the Socialists you are not a Socialist so you say nothing.

When they come for the Trade Unionists you are not a trade Unionist so you say nothing.

When they come for you who will be left to speak out?

CoE is Chancellor of the Exchequer - to my knowledge the Church of England does not decide the UK's economic policy...

The magority of the working public are not members of any trade union,

union leaders are only in it for them selves probably useless at the proffession they started out at so latched onto a real money maker,

To pay an outfit to look after your interests and have to negotiate by striking has got to be very silly,Mugged comes to mind.

Dissruption to a very difficult balancing act by unions is not required , give government a chance before we all go bust.

The problem here is that Mervyn King did speak out, sotto voce, and Gordon Brown applied his Nelsonian ear. In dereliction of his duty, he did not repeat it often enough and loudly to alert the nation.

I still find it surprising that so many people did not, in 1997, realise exactly what Gordon Brown was doing. He had to leave the civil service pensions alone because the unions would have gone on strike there and then and of course Gordon was not about to reduce his pension, which he now is drawing.

I knew immediately the implications of the pension raid and thereafter never increased my pension contributions. When I finally came to get hold of my pot in 2007, the value was exactly the same as it was in 1997 when in reality it should have been double that.

Of course the unions do not want cuts in employment, particularly in the public sector, because that is their last big bastion from which they draw massive union dues. How else would they be able to justify their salaries, pension pots and perks? Only because they have substantially increased the revenues by the extra million employed (and maybe another 250,000 in useless jobs in the LA's and quangos, and no doubt that was part of the discussions that they had with Gordon Brown/Bliar way back. They were looking ahead a long way

On top of that, they colluded to provide money to the unions from the taxpayers so that come elections, the unions would then be able to throw the taxpayers money that they had received behind a particular party, Zanuliebore. And this was done in the full glare of the public, ostensibly to "educate" members of the union. An obscene bit of gerrymandering legislation, which has only nearly been equalled by the rejigging of the boundaries of approximately 100 seats which guaranteed the socialist being returned in that seat. Without those dishonest acts Zanuliebore would not have the number of seats they now hold and the Tories would probably have had a comfortable working majority and not constrained by another bunch of left wing socialists.

The financial sector has a great deal to answer for, but equally the government of the day could have stopped it, but chose not to and this allowed imprudent borrowing and the results have been clear for everyone to see, but when the rates go up, it will make itself felt even more when there will be a considerable rise in defaults and more bank losses.

The pity of it is that the government has required ever-increasing accountability from the professions and company directors, even local authorities, but never itself. If they had applied to themselves what they have required of others, many MPs would be in prison and bankrupt because of their negligence, largely because they were incompetent and did not understand their duties, the obligation to the people as a whole rather than one section who were loyal to a particular party. The only qualification for an MP is a good tongue and a good measure of deceitfulness and in many cases mendacity. Many MPs are mere pawns and easily led, ill suited for the job.

The unions now realise that their party is about to come to a dramatic end and instead of caviar and champagne, it is likely to be water and hard tack and those now bleating the loudest are the bosses of the unions who see their pay packets, pension funds etc about to be dramatically reduced. Their train is going swiftly in the buffers at the end of the line. Instead of changing and negotiating they are about to make us suffer because of the excesses they negotiated, behind closed doors and in dark corners 'in the dead of night'. Why else were ther so many union personnel seconded to Downing Street and adjacent buildings during the last 13 years and why are thousands on the government payroll instead of the union payroll as they discharge their union duties?

That is probably why Jack Dromey, abandoned ship and persuaded his wife to shoehorn him into a safe Labour seat so that he could join the MP gravy train because there was going to be precious little gravy in the union as whoever got into power was going to have to into the excesses of the last 13 years. for all the principles of Harriet Harman and her misandry and a great boast of Zanuliebore, and their sexist approach, they threw out the five female candidates and rigged for Mr Dromey, and also, no doubt, to bolster the families income as the expenses loophole had been closed.