Blog: Bet Lord Young wishes he’d kept his mouth shut. But I’d put an equal bet on the fact that he was only saying what he thought was true, writes Business Editor Amy Bould.
And that’s because Lord Young of Graffham is living in a completely different world to most of the struggling Britons whom he claims have “never had it so good”.
The multi-millionaire, one of David Cameron’s top advisers, said record low interest rates since the start of this “so-called recession” had left many homeowners £600 a month better off.
Well it may be true that if you’re employed and have a mortgage then the chances are you’re paying less to keep a roof over your head, but there’s a pretty good chance your standard of living has gone down.
A reduced mortgage is cold comfort for the millions out of work and for the public sector workers terrified at losing their jobs and being left with nothing to pay the bills – no matter how much their monthly repayments have come down.
For a wealthy peer to publicly say that those complaining about the ConDem cuts were “people who think they have a right for the state to support them”, when the majority are in fact hard-working people supporting families and homes, shows that not only was he ill-advised but completely out of touch.
Just the kind of accusation which the Conservative Party has been desperate trying to refute for years.
Lord Young is 78 years old, old enough to know better.
By lunchtime today he’d handed in his resignation.
Perhaps the only wisdom those years have brought him is knowing when it’s time to go.
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Amy’s comments are largely spot on – Lord Young is clearly out of touch with the financial struggles of ordinary working people, and with those seeking work.
But to some extent, this is a manufactured recession- unlike others we’ve seen before. The crisis was caused by a short-term shortage in the money supply between banks, originating in the US,, and resulting in panic across the world, causing banks to come close to failure, and leaving national economies to pick up the pieces.
It didn’t have the hallmarks of previous recessions – e.g. runaway inflation, high unemployment, but the real danger for us is that by frequently mis-describing the current debt leval as ‘the largest since the war’ (in real terms it is definitely not – even taking into account the bankers’ ‘share’), and taking advantage of the situation to apply a wide range of ideologically-driven cuts, we will find ourselves in a ‘real’, more ‘traditional’ recession, where we will see high unemployment, higher taxes for the poorest, higher inflation, and sadly, possible civil unrest. Think of the 80s all over again.
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Wasn’t he one of the gang that brought us record 15% mortgages? No wonder he thinks we are better off now. Time to go? He should never have been there in the first place.
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But the 1980s were great for some Peter. Council houses could be purchased at a huge discount. City centres, sport fields, public utilities were all sold off to private companies to which some benefitted from and the government were able to look as if they knew what they were doing.
Market forces, back to basics, Victorian values (poverty and public hangings?)
Families suffered the most with the massive interest rates so unless both parents worked it was impossible to meet mortgage payments.
Financial support to families was unavailable to most so it was the era of repossession, repossession, repossession if you were unlucky with a young family and buy to let, buy to let, buy to let for the few who could afford it.
Old Etonians running the country is scary enough but it is the conservative’s convenient black and white view of the world that is the most worrying.
If you are young, old, disabled, or suffer from illness there is a big carpet being made at this very moment to sweep you all under.
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Agreed. What a berk.
Cameron says that Lord Young will be doing a lot less talking in the future. Presumably by this afternoon he will be trussed up in a cupboard in Conservative Central Office, tightly gagged.
Apparently Conservatives like that sort of thing anyway, from what I hear :-)
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Are we surprised , ??? yes many will still do allright in the current climate , however many will be far worse off and it for the next 5 years at least you should look after number 1. All said and done if he was Joe Blogs he could have said it but as he is not Joe Blogs it is a case of silly old duffer.
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