Michael Choo - do you know the full story on that? I don't, but it could have been for a good reason, diplomatic reasons maybe, or whatever. Things never do look as simple when closely analysed.

Anyway, less money for the tories to pizzle up the wall if they had their hands on it now, no matter how much an ounce goes for. Less for them to sell as the family silver, as they did in the 1980's with utilities and British industry, to pay for that nonsense, the poll tax, and other small-minded dogma.

Michael Choo

And from your post we are to assume that you are psychic and Gordon Brown isn't? That at a time when gold was falling and many other countries were also selling off reserves, you looked into your crystal ball and decided to wait until 2011 to sell off gold at record high prices? Not withstanding the loss we would have made meantime and by the same assumption, may I ask why previous Tory administrations did not look into their crystal ball and see that gold was going to fall and sell quickly while prices were high?

If I were you I would stand up, your voice is sounding muffled.

@Michael Choo

Tell me where the £300 Billion of North Oil Receipts 1979-1997 went?

King MIdas and Croesus - bad vibes. Winston even worse. As for a proper job - is a position in a bank such?
Was John Major the only banker prime minister?

Derivatively Yours

I love the comments here in reply to Choo. Cameron is genius. Brown an idiot.

And the Royals did not invite Brown and Blair. An ultimate and deserving insult.

There is no better pleasure than seeing the reds burn to hell with envy.

yepeeeeee.

Sorry to criticize Gordon Brown but after 10 years in office he made the UK economy incapable of withstanding any shocks via all his stealth taxes, business regulation, and public sector employment boom.

Would the Tories have copied Brown by hiring over 1 million civil servants (maybe 1.3 if you include civil service consultants) from 1997 to 2008? I doubt it, I really do.

So the crisis would have had a different starting point but please do ask Mr. Fallon and share his thoughts with us.

ach, more deleted posts, ach.

Yes RK, you correct, Brown and Blair are not invited. madness!

All I got to say to the bloke that made the above video, which he fails to mention, is fish and oil.

Lord knows where he gets his info from, or what dark forces he works for....

part 2 to 7 even.

South England torys live in a bleeding dreamworld, they surely do. They get me right in my knackers, the clueless idiots.

"Some oil money was invested wisely in 1980's education:"

Indu Pendant, so that's why educational attainment went through the floor, children were sitting in classrooms with leaking roofs, no heating, teachers' morale was at an all-time. A word of advice, do a bit of historical reading before engaing the keyboard. As the saying goes, it's better to keep your trap shut and look a fool than open it and confirm you are one.

RK,

Your inability to articulate whatever it is you're trying to get across is something of a handicap in a comments section.

I agree, Skyrocket. Why, the idea that a high profile politician should be criticised for his mistakes is outrageous.

And he did make mistakes-plenty of them. Borrowing £30bn per annum during the boom years, flogging gold at bargain basement prices (that his decision to announce the sale in advance largely determined), building an illusion of prosperity on a housing boom, and a half-arsed compromise on banking regulation that left banks free to take any risks they pleased along with a guarantee that, if it all went wrong, the state would pick up the pieces.

I've asked his groupies on here before: if it was a truly global financial crisis, why did many countries come through it pretty much unscathed? Germany, Denmark, Norway, Israel, Poland, Switzerland, and most of the developed SE Asian economies? Is that just random chance, or is it because the people in charge of those economies were up to the job in a way that Brown never was?

Rosie, you don't have to be psychic to realise that, if you announce in advance that you're going to sell a shedload of gold, the price is going to come down. Obviously Gordon's knowledge of economics is too rarefied to pay attention to something as mundane as supply and demand.
Spot on, Ang. I'd love to see Gordon Brown in court proving that he's not inept. If anyone can track him down, that is. He doesn't seem to be spending much time in Westminster, does he?

If mega-bonuses undermine the consensus (a narrative, a fiction - yet the most important fiction) on which society rests, then so too does insufficient reward.

By insufficient reward, I mean a) pay; b) retained reward after paying rents and taxes; c) ability to purchase satisfactory healthcare and other basics (don't tell me the NHS will straighten my teeth); d) quality of work; e) respect; and/or f) the prospects of acquiring a)-f) in a reasonable timeframe, with a surplus, given self-application.

And I believe the policies of this administration militate against such, favouring, rather than the demand which might provide distributed opportunity, instead a gratuitous and ill-augured cull of the lower orders' jobs and services, in the name of long-run tax cuts to be mostly enjoyed by the better off.

Well, Fallon is his own man I'm sure, but I think he'd do something along the lines of:
not going on a loony spending and borrowing spree like Brown;
not setting up the FSA when the Treasury and Bank of England were regulating banks fine (Barings comes to mind);
not make speeches at Mansion House urging bankers to make bigger deals and take greater financial risks;
refraining from getting Victor Blank and Eric Daniels to merge BOS with Lloyds TSB, while easing the merger rules

Gold at RECORD HIGHS today Brown sold our assets at $200 per ounce now over $1500 per ounce - his judgement and understanding of economics was and remains woeful.
The man never ever held an actual real job so had no grasp of fiscal responsibility.