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Hope for the UK?

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K-Mac

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Wow, UK debt is only 10% of GDP? And he calls that "unbelievable"?! The US debt is at 85% of GDP now, I believe.

The speaker in the video is talking about the budget deficit (as he explicitely said). I think the US Federal deficit is not yet at 10% of GDP, but it will easily pass that this year. It is unclear whether it will actually surpass the UK's deficit, since it is expected to rise sharply too.

The 85% is of course a different number. It is the total US public debt, held by private citizens and other governments, in various notes, bills, bonds, the right to funds etc., as shown here:

Holders_of_the_National_Debt_of_the_United_States.gif

This figure is also higher for the UK (I'm just guessing here, but they don't seem to have a ceiling set up under the Constitution that has to be expliciitely modified by Congress through legislation every time, the way the US has. Check this out for details (or just google "UK national debt" yourself):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/finance...2-trillion.html

There's no way we're surpassing that one without crashing the global economy, so the gentleman's assertion stands: the UK is in the worst shape out of the top 20 biggest economies in the World.

Edited by Jake_Ellison
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This guy is actually pretty cool. You know the Treaty of Lisbon, right? Basically, it was one of the latest great expansions of the EU. The MEPs were willing to pass it, as were the Houses here. This guy was basically trying to get a vote on it, as in, a public vote, because he knew that the British public would vote it down. I mean, the British public are pretty sick of the EU, which is why any steps forward are kept out of the public vote here. The big guys know what's best for us after all.

Anyway, his party (a far-Right party, mind you) got sick of his constant demands, at the end of every speech - Carthago Delenda Est style - for a public vote on the Treaty. He was asked to leave, and did so. He now sits as a backbench MEP these days, making his stand known, but remaining pretty ineffectual.

He's a very good bloke. David Cameron (party leader of the Conservatives) has taken a cue from a book Hannon wrote, putting forward proposals (at least in the media - we'll see if it translates to any action as a Manifesto) to begin down-scaling the Government, lowering taxes and putting more emphasis on Local councils, as opposed to centralised authority. Hurrah.

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When I heard his speeches, I found nothing wrong with what he said, and that is something that is very rare when listening to politicians. So it was no surprise that i found this on the second page when googling ' "daniel hannan" "ayn rand" ': http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/daniel_hannan...ho_is_john_galt

Who is John Galt?

Posted By: Daniel Hannan at Apr 4, 2009 at 14:50:00 [General]

Posted in:

Tags:

Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, Tory Bear

As an Ayn Rand fan, I was touched to see this tasteful piece of merchandise, brought to you by that master blogger Tory Bear.

So, not only is he one of the better conservatives, he might even be an O'ist or at least O'ist-leaning which is fine by me. He definitely used phrases that regular conservatives dont use, such as actually boiling it down to hurting the productive for the sake of the unproductive, and actually using laissez-faire capitalism in a sentence, without saying "obviously i dont support that" right after it.

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