Welcome to the corporatist state.
Purnell is fast becoming the Portillo (old-style, not the new touchy-feely, humbled version) of New Labour. He’s the one that anyone even vaguely liberal or leftish finds very, very hard to stomach.

state, not stae ^^

I had this too.

Applied at restaurants, petrol stations, all sorts.

Truly depressing.

This is not because the means to get people back to work aren’t there, or because I’m having such a stunning time on £45 a week. It’s because there really aren’t many jobs, because no-one can afford to hire.

Not quite: employers are reluctant to hire articulate, well-educated, qualified people for low-end jobs, because a) they’ll leave as soon as they get something decent b) they’ll know their rights and kick up a fuss. A is excusable, B isn’t. But it’s a hell of a lot easier to get a crap job if you’ve a crap CV than if you’ve a good one.

There are people who did, through malice, incompetence or unspeakably cold and morally bankrupt long term plans… All of them have frightening bank balances. And their callous reapportioning of blame to everyone but themselves is cowardly.

Hook noses as well, right?

(oh, and Purnell *is* a prick, and the new plans to punish unemployed people *are* evil, but I’m deeply uncomfortable with the ‘we’ve been destroyed by a greedy evil elite’ rhetoric. No, we’ve been destroyed by bad luck. There was no sinister conspiracy; there wasn’t even any particular incompetence at an individual level… sometimes shit just happens.)

@john b: Fuck you. Could do better. “Banks”/=”International Jewish Conspiracy”. Your assumption that this is the case says more about you than it does about me. To clarify, the people I’m talking about are those who benefit from and contribute to the corporatised state. I am suggesting callous and unbridled capitalism as the problem, not any kind of conspiracy, though there is a confluence of aims between the anti-civil-liberties crowd and the corporate-influence on government lot. Furthermore, I think that “bad luck” is unhelpful. There are reasons this downturn happened (AGAIN), and ways it could have been avoided. I recognise there are ways in which what I’ve written could be regarded as conspiracist, and am happy to discuss them. Throwing around lazy accusations of anti-semitism is not helping, I don’t think.

“Banks”/=”International Jewish Conspiracy”.

No, the synonym more often used is ‘international finance’. Seriously, read up on the 1930s, and on how ‘evil bankers are responsible for our woes’ is more or less *exactly* the argument made by antisemitic populists all the way from Father Coughlin to Hitler.

there is a confluence of aims between the anti-civil-liberties crowd and the corporate-influence on government lot

Massively disagree – all the loaded business types I’ve met have been quite socially liberal – just not enough to let it get in the way of the money. The authoritarian stuff is about appeasing lower-income groups, yer Sun and Daily Mail readers.

There are reasons this downturn happened (AGAIN), and ways it could have been avoided

‘There are reasons’ is definitionally true. I simply don’t believe there are ways in which it could have been avoided – nobody has yet set forward a plausible one, short of a people’s revolution / being Germany to start with / discovering an infinite supply of gold / etc…

John B,

Hook noses as well, right?

that was low. And wholly gratuitous.

Like Alex, and Tom, I’m in very much the same position. Graduated in the summer of 2008 and since then have applied for, quite literally, hundreds of jobs. Because of where I live, I always expected to be doing something like factory or retail work for quite a while anyway, but even those have dried up. Like Tom says, truly depressing. I don’t think there is much more I can add to that.

This crisis is not the Blitz

100% agree – what the down turn on that is you have Gordy and Darling running the show.

If they had any sense they would use this in a positive manner, rather than fighting off tabloid headlines. They do have to move quickly because this recession isn’t going to last that long, thankfully.

They won’t do anything – that’s for sure, but they could, they could do a lot.

But that is for them to see, not us to tell them – and as they won’t – let’s hope that this will bring about a real revival of the Liberal-left.

Of course this does not compute with the right wing trolls who are convinced Brown/Blair have been running a Communist ,Soviet state for the last decade. According to them, Chairman Brown has been leaving his home everyday to go and sit in the boardrooms of Northern Rock, Halifax, Bradford and Bingley, etc ,etc and telling them to make stupid decisions that would end up with the banks destroying themselves. Then , apparently Brown has been flying to America to sit in the boardrooms of many US corporate giants ,and again managing to convince them to screw up their own industries.

In the trolls mind this could never have been carried out by greedy, private business men because that just does not compute to everything they have been told about the genius of the private business model. Self regulation would work because hugely paid geniuses would never mess up their very own golden goose.

And now their whole economic theory has gone down in flames, the blame has to rest with left wing politicians because nothing else makes any sense to them.

Moderators,
I’m looking at the words “Abusive” and “Misogynist” in the commenting guidelines above, and I’m looking at asquith’s comment @11, particularly the last word of the first para.
So using terms referring to (parts of) women to abuse men is alright, is it?

I have a friend who has moved to France to work. Indeed, it might be best, for those that can, to consider a stint abroad until the economy recovers. I expect it to get worse before it gets better here.

@ 13. See what you mean.

In future, asquith, just restrict yourself to calling him a cock and an arsehole.

(sorry, couldn’t resist)

@13, this is the kind of prescriptivist nonsense that deters me from identifying as a liberal, despite being one. Purnell *is* a cunt (and, per 15, a cock and an arsehole and a ballsack). The fact that ‘cunt’ and ‘cock’ are both synonyms for ‘person who behaves like James Purnell’ has got absolutely nothing to do with misogyny; at worst, it’s a demonstration of our prudery about genitalia of all flavours.

How does this blog help us to either understand the position or take things forward? I am afraid that if that is the rational analysis of an Oxbridge graduate it might explain the non-employment.

JohnB, there’s a special place for people who see anti-semitism everywhere and its called Harry’s Place. They can spot it in a pizza topping.

“we’ve been destroyed by bad luck”

If you gamble for long enough eventually you’ll lose your shirt. And if you haven’t yet, it’s because someone else has. Gambling is a game of how long it is possible to defer failure. And finance becomes a gamble when it loses connection with real world values.

A couple of years ago the banks were making as much in profit as they’ve lost this year and the asset price write downs aren’t so bad because they are tax-deductable. So whatever anyone says the banks aren’t in as bad a state as they are claiming, but they are probably in a much worse state than any government politician says.

Isn’t Northern Rock still paying out bonuses?

I mean, company failure isn’t market failure – it was the uninterrupted boom which was the period when the market failed. The economy is readjusting more sharply because it had been allowed to get further and further out of alignment with the real world.

Any overreaction to our pain will prolong the discomfort. There has been no permanent shift because we haven’t been destroyed despite our cupidity. No need for hyperbole here, thank you.

a) a pizza topping that resembles Palestine
b) blaming the depression on rootless and foreign financiers

Seeing echoes of antisemitism in one of these things is insane; seeing echoes of antisemitism in the other is pretty much inevitable unless you’re trying very hard not to.

@ thomas, yeah, I don’t think we’ve been destroyed either, was reacting to the OP’s rhetoric.

“I mean, company failure isn’t market failure”

How many banks not propped up by being a multi-national organisation are there in this country that would have survived without government intervention?

John B – I cannot be bothered to read the other comments (which are no doubt laying in to you) as I am so incensed by your gross stupidity; I make no apology for repeating others’ words.

That ‘hook-nose’ comment is truly pathetic and intellectually lazy to the nth degree.

I think the reference to anti-semitism was unnecessary and rather flippant.

Claiming that criticism of the disaster unleashed by international finance is motivated by anti-semitism is like claiming that concerns over global warming are motivated by Islamophobia because Muslim countries produce so much of the world’s oil.

For future reference, are there any other industries or companies whoose behaviour we are not allowed to criticise?

Hollywood or any company based in New York.

Shatterface @ 23,

Bloody hell, that was some comment, so it was. Perhaps the best comment ever?

Shatterface @23,

I agree with Douglas. I’d go further and say if you wait long enough there will be a thread on Harry’s Place proffering cast-iron proof that muslims are to blame; and Israel is man enough to deal with it.

By the way, how the heck did anti-semitism enter this thread?

On the issue in question, am I the only one who despises the ‘benefit cheats’ adverts that keep popping up? I could live with it if we also had similar adverts showing bankers surrepticiously pushing their bonus-laden wheelbarrows.

@ Refresh (27), no you’re not the only one whose blood pressure rockets with those ads:on a par with those vile ‘Big Brother’/we know where you live TV licensing ones.Intimidation and bullying should not be the tone adopted by Govt agencies.

Refresh @ 27,

No, you are not alone. I detest the whole idea of a nation of snoopers. As I don’t have a car it is probably safe for me to say that the ones that show your motor being squashed are also a vile example of an out of control state.

“On the issue in question, am I the only one who despises the ‘benefit cheats’ adverts that keep popping up? I could live with it if we also had similar adverts showing bankers surrepticiously pushing their bonus-laden wheelbarrows.”

I’ve said before, the connotations with witch hunting and, indeed, Germans giving up their neighbours as Jews, is too prevalent in my mind for those benefit cheat adverts to be anything less than disgusting.

That ‘hook-nose’ comment is truly pathetic and intellectually lazy to the nth degree.

No, the wilful refusal of people to see that it’s problematic to scapegoat an elite of financiers for a crisis that’s in fact nobody’s fault is what’s pathetic and intellectually lazy.

Lee,

I didn’t really know why I felt that way. Now you’ve said it it’s obvious.

Cheers.

I’ve said before, the connotations with witch hunting and, indeed, Germans giving up their neighbours as Jews, is too prevalent in my mind for those benefit cheat adverts to be anything less than disgusting.

Absolutely 100% agreed. Although I’m sure someone will describe you as pathetic and intellectually lazy for raising the comparison.

In addition to ‘Intimidation and bullying should not be the tone adopted by Govt agencies.’ I detest the clear anti-working class bias.

The attitude is: We will ask the white-collar types and ‘hard-working families’ to join in with us but we will happily criminalise the poor and the working class.

Can’t take it any more.