Libertine 62 wrote:
Have you been fully paying attention to the past 30+ years? Maybe it is different over there mate but here people were actually preyed upon, and sometimes even out and out pressured, by the banks to take out loans on/for homes that they, the banks, knew they could not afford. All under the (greedy) guise that the values of homes would go up for evermore. It was a lie that everyone from the bankers, to the financial experts, to the talking heads on TV insisted was true. And people who questioned those lies were referred to as idiots. Was it wise to buy that snake oil from the banks? No, but then again people are gullible.

Add to that the massive redeuction in the tax rates the upper earners have to pay, deregulation of businesses, costly unfunded wars, the allowing our jobs to be exported for the profit of the very few over the past 30 years and the picture starts becoming clearer what the real problems are. And you seem to think that people who have pensions, have been promised those pensions and now are being told to go pound sand because those pensions are being taken away due to no fault of their own, are idiots?

The last time the wealthy elite in the West uttered the words "let them eat cake" it didn't turn out too well for the elite. This is the West, and while a good many people outside of the top 1% are still doing well, it is the first time since the dawn of the 20th century when there are more people who are heading down the economic ladder as opposed to going up it. That is unacceptable...

I would cut the wealthy elite some slack if they were creating jobs other than in Asia. But they're not. And that is at the root of our problems. No amount of additional tax breaks, or business friendly deregulation, will make them start creating those jobs. So you are against that "single-aim pressure group" who want job creation for workers desperate for jobs which the elite refuse to create?



30+ years? Err, no Lib, I haven't. I'm younger than that mate.

Sorry, but if you take out a loan you can't afford to pay back you are an idiot. If a banker told you to jump off a cliff would you? I just want to see people taking some responsibility for the problems that they have been involved in the creation of. I am sick of hearing people blindly blaming the bankers as if some sort of demonic bogey-man hypnotised them into committing to a financial agreement that wasn't viable for them. 

The financial regulators created an environment that allowed bankers to sell loans they shouldn't have done, bankers decided to sell loans they knew people couldn't afford for the bank's gain, people were stupid enough to take out loans that they couldn't afford and government(s) failed to control the financial regulators correctly to ensure they were doing their job. All are culpable, not just the banks.

I bought a house earlier this year and took out a mortgage in order to pay for it. We shopped around and one of the banks offered us, what I considered to be, an unreasonably large amount of money. Did I grab the cash and buy a bigger house? No! Of course I didn't because I would have been at risk of not being able to sustain the payments. Instead I took a smaller mortgage that was within my means and bought a smaller house.

As to the pensions point, perhaps I wasn't clear. I think that civil servants in their 20s and 30s who are chanting "What do we want - pensions, when do we want them - now" are idiots as they are not retired so shouting that you want your pension "now" is stupid. Obviously it is difficult to read humour in the written word (particularly on an emotive subject) but that statement was supposed to be funny.

Clearly people not getting the pensions that they were initially promised is a problem but I don't see how a strike whilst talks are ongoing is constructive.

By "single aim pressure group" I mean the sort of people who campaign against cuts in funding for education but don't care about cuts in health. Or people who spend their whole time trying to reduce carbon emissions by targeting aviation only. Or those whose entire aim in the world is to stop the use of plastic bags in supermarkets. Clearly I am not against a single aim pressure group whose aim is to "make the world a better place".

*Big in Japan*