But CK was pure retail and like all retail we saw the drop in consumer spending immediately and heavily directly after the budget. That flowed throughout the economy. The issue wasn’t if those changes should have been made (that can be debated forever), it was purely how they were made that was so destructive. It was too fast a change in consumer spending for the economy to adapt to.

That was why it was artificial. The rest of the world had a boom time through the 90′s. We didn’t, and it was in a large part due to that idiotic budget put together by moronic ideologues.

By 1995, I’d shifted to purely working on mainly (ie 80%+) export based projects. That way I didn’t have to put up with dickhead governments screwing up as much.

There was noting artificial about that recession lprent, the ying and yang of govt storming off in different directions after every tea break had destabilised all the dependable sectors in the economy and govt debt was horrific. The country simply couldn’t afford the last u-turn of the Labour govt, there was not enough head room in the economy post the ’87 crash to attempt to initiate a return to the policies that stagnated the economy pre ’84.

But hey I wasn’t running inventory at Cargo King so what would I know.

It was about the only thing that I have any praise for her at all.

The mother-of-all-budgets was just damn stupid. I was running the inventory for Cargo King at the time. You could see the retail sales plummet like a stone in the six months after the budget was passed. People got laid off left, right and centre because business confidence dropped like a lead balloon. Which in turn was because the benefit cuts were far too abrupt and cut beneficiaries disposable income to negative amounts. That cascaded into layoffs at the remaining manufacturing and staff reductions throughout retail.

It was a truly artificial recession because there was no urgent need to do it apart from some rather pathetic taxcuts for the wealthy. The scale of the cuts caused a massive increase in the costs of the beneficences that they were trying to reduce the cost of. The nett effect was that they wound up with increasing debt that reduced the governments ability to reduce taxes subsequently. This was despite dramatically cutting the levels of government services.

Wasn’t a major hassle for me. I left and started doing contract programming.

Fair call on the ‘superior intelligence’. I over egged that one. I apologise.

May I rephrase;

You have a very twisted memory of 1990 for someone so inclined to remind us how outgunned we are when debating science, economics and law with you.

For goodness sake lprent, a statue was enacted to protect tax payers from outgoing govt’s telling out right porkies about the state of the nation to curry support from disenfranchised voters because of what happened in 1990.

[lprent: thank you. ]

Always amuses me to see dipshits like you repeating myths. Show me where I have ever claimed that I had “superior intelligence” – I’ll bet that you can’t.

I’ve frequently pointed out certain levels of stupidity in others (including you), and referenced my various degrees at times. Neither are the same as your claim. However I’ve always been aware of other people around me who can outperform me in various tasks.

It appears to me to be a claim that has been promulgated by some of the idiotic trolls that I’ve banned from here previously. I guess they don’t like my method for seeing them off. Must have been hurting their wee egos.

I’ve seen this assertion around various blogs, in particular from that blowhard fool barnsley bill, and I’ve commented on it before. However I think this is the first time someone has been stupid enough to say it here.

BTW: You’re not welcome back until you can either substantiate your assertion, or are willing to acknowledge it as a mistake.

You have a very twisted memory of 1990 for someone who claims to have superior intelligence.

Why politicians occupy the lowest rungs of the respect ladder.

I may not agree with National policies and I think they are usually economic suicide but don’t look at a trough of a bell curve and say it’s clear evidence of mismanagement. Labour got into power in 1999 and before then we had seen a decent amount of GDP growth, not as fast as we would like but still growth.

Does this table include an adjustment for the deflators as per table 5.2 & 5.3. The reason I ask is that the final table says the comparisons are not seasonally adjusted although there are other tables in the set that provide seasonal adjustments.

This is all relevant because the figures should adjust for inflation, seasonal factors etc to be truly comparative. Perhaps the data set that English referred to included all necessary adjustments whereas the table that Marty refers to doesn’t. Not saying this is the case, but some clarification would help.

Goff’s got to go… when he’s not boring the world with his overlong answers full of rhetoric nobody cares about (if they’re awake at the end) the rest of the opposition appear to either be muzzled or out to lunch. We pay an opposition to do a job they aren’t doing currently.