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Balls vs Brillo on the economy

November 15, 2011 8:01 pm

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  • http://twitter.com/GuidoFawkes Guido Fawkes

    If you get rid of Ed Miliband, please make Ed Balls leader.

  • Exlaboursupporter

    Ha Ha, Balls has ballsed up.  Answer the question or is that too difficult?  What’s the ‘stimulus’ you keep talking about?  if it’s not borrowing more to spend more where is the money coming from Ed?

    • Anonymous

      Ed Balls would be well advised to spend the next few years doing an unpaid internship in a real business, so that he can understand the real world economics of spending, investment, borrowing, growth and risk.

      Until he can properly explain his policy then there will be many ex Labour supporters who will not trust him with their vote and indeed their livelihoods.

  • Anonymous

    “Time to turn to Plan B: 100 leading economists tell George O:
    We must turn to Plan B;”

    29/10. (Guardian, I think.)

    J

    • Anonymous

      Sometimes these interviews sound more like a broken record technique;
      just requiring the respondant to agree with the interviewer,
      or give simple “yes or no” answers!

       I actually think Ed B came across well here, and his arguments make sense.
      He keeps being asked; “what do you think about x or y compared to
      Spain, Italy or Greece?”

      When EB disagrees with approach- the line seems to be:”so you’re alone in thinking that?”
      Doesn’t seem much of a balanced argument; more, some kind of indignation
      or pre planned presentation.

      I don’t think the public would be any wiser in this instance,
      other than Ed B explaining position quite clearly.

      That’s my perception here.

      J

      • Anonymous

        Gosh- was one meant to be joking on this thread?!

        • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray

          No, Jo, just the usual Tory trolls out in force. No wonder so many people have stopped bothering to post again!

          • Anonymous

            We will see in three and bit years time if Miliband is seen as being good enough to win an election. I joined Labour in 1966 and I went through the miners strike being on strike for six months to end up with Blair.

            Scotland has given labour a bloody nose in Wales Labour has not yet won a majority and the Tories have made massive grounds. people are not looking for another New labour party but that what we will get, removing a name from an email list does not make this Labour party any different from the last one.

            I knocked on a door and this disabled man came, I knew he could work, I went next door and the hard working tax payer.

            That is new labour.

      • Anonymous

        If a politician can’t answer a straight question then they shouldn’t be giving an interview. Far to often they go on tv simply to keep mouthing the same old slogans and party line “slower and shallower”, “tory led government”, “debt interest is costing x per day”
        Blah blah blah.

        It’s not clever it just comes across as shifty and dishonest.

        At the end of the day if you are attacking you oppositions economic plan then you better have one of your own that you are willing and able to explain in full.

        • http://www.facebook.com/TH999 Terence Hill

          Ed Balls comes across as shifty and dishonest because that is what he is.

          • Anonymous

            Dishonest tell me more, if you said weak then I’d agree but dishonest not to sure.

          • Anonymous

            Dishonest?

            See his and Yvette’s expenses… I could live for 5 years on them…

    • Simon

      Don’t trust the Guardian on anything. I think there were only 96 economists because some were counted twice and not all of them were in the ecomomists

  • Jules Wright

    Er, freedom of expression and speech perhaps?

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray

      You mean non-Labour supprters trolling on a Labour site? Which in turn reduces freedom of expression – which is why regulation and control over individual freedom is needed here just as much as everywhere else. Libertarianism is loony.

      • Mike Gooding

        Guido doesn’t seem to me to be Tory any more than Private Eye is.  He has a fairly jaundiced opinion of most politicians.

        I don’t see how “non-Labour supprters trolling on a Labour site” reduces freedom of expression, except that it seems to allow you to display the usual socialist meme of shutting down dissension.

        “regulation and control over individual freedom is needed here just as much as everywhere else” ?  Blimey.

      • Agente_de_mousse

         I was a labour supporter with doubts (and definitely not a tory troll). Mike (Homfray), you have delivered me to the tipping point:

         ”…regulation and control over individual freedom is needed here just as much as everywhere else”.

        Fine with ‘law & order’ stuff. Not fine in the context you mean. Which is just nuts. Thanks for the nudge.

      • Anonymous

        So freedom of expression should be regulated to protect freedom of expression?  Or to put it another way – you can say anything you like, as long as you agree with me.

      • Anonymous

        Sounds a bit new labour to me, if your unable to argue a labour defence then sadly it has to be seen as being weak.

        The Tories  should be so hammered now they become dizzy from the knocks, but they are not and I suspect the reason is labour either agree with the Tories, or they have no real answer themselves.

        telling people they will provide 100,000 jobs for the young leaving 900,000 sitting at home is no answer.

  • Jimjams

    I can’t understand why Ed does interviews with Brillo. Every time it is like a lamb to the slaughter.  Ed would be better to stick with breakfast telly and Bill turnbull where at least he can blag his way through.

  • Anonymous

    Balls really messed up this interview.
    The obvious answer which he didn’t push enough was that we are not France, Italy or Spain.
    We have our own currency, our own central bank which can raise and lower interest rates and increase quantitative easing.
    It is impossible for the UK to go bankrupt because we have our own currency but France and Italy very easily could.

    Poor performance from Ed Balls.

  • http://atoryblog.blogspot.com Man in a Shed

    Classic debt denial from Balls. He relies on the ignorance of Labour supporters about the difference between deficit and debt and the horrifying consequences of his over spending on their children.

    The man should have been hounded out of the shadow cabinet for the harm he has done to every man woman and child in these islands.

  • Anonymous

    Well done Ed Balls.

    Keep it up.

    You’ll learn what a sensible economic policy is if you try hard enough.. in about 20 years…

    He should read this…http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2011/11/16/749161/dr-glooms-reform-trilogy/

  • Cuse

    Ed did well under the usual Brillo tirade. Brillo and the right are trying to make disingenuous links between tenuous relationships. At least Balls is able to use facts to argue his case.

    The most telling  part of the interview was the unwillingness of Brillo to engage with the fact that Osborne’s plans are actually raising borrowing – despite them being designed to lower it. The more the right sees this happening; the less they allow it to be said.

  • AndyT

    I think we learnt more about Andrew Neil’s views on the economy than we did Ed’s. 

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