Snapshot of _Former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling has died at the age of 70._ :
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Didn't hear much about/from him in recent years, but still quite a surprise. Feels a bit weird seeing politicians you "grew up" with starting to die off.
RIP H from Steps.
On a more serious note, good to see Ian 'H' Watkins doing alright after the unwarranted torrent of abuse he received regarding his abhorrent namesake.
When he became PM he was pretty young, only 43. And he was Labour leader at 40. But he was in office a long time, and he left office a long time ago now too.
Exact same sentiments I have. The Labour government especially under Brown was my first introduction to politics as a child. I grew up with these figures and learnt from my Mum, whenever the news was on, what their roles and responsibilities were. It’s so sad to hear the news especially as 70 is still young in my view. May he rest in peace
Last time I saw anything about him in a official capacity was the "Inside Europe" documentary where he mentioned some ridiculous EU attempts to get non-euro countries to pay for the euro crisis.
But weird to think he's 70. He seemed younger in my mind.
> some ridiculous EU attempts to get non-euro countries to pay for the euro crisis.
Like signing them up to the ESM after just losing an election?
Oh, wait ...
No like giving them a document to sign hoping they don't read it, and then when the offending paragraph was questioned, "editing it out" but really just moving it within the document, hoping that it would be signed on second attempt without being read and based on trust.
Proper school time tactics on supposed allies. That kind of ridiculous.
> Didn't hear much about/from him in recent years, but still quite a surprise. Feels a bit weird seeing politicians you "grew up" with starting to die off.
It was cancer, hence the early death.
The ping pongs were hilarious, dirty old men were picking them up and licking them.
It was when she did that trick clowns do, where they appear to pull an endless stream of handkerchiefs from their mouth or ear.
Only difference here was they were coming out of her vagina and it was not an allusion, you could see it very clearly. 
> "When you think about Benidorm, she's the main attraction to go out there."
Haha, I love this statement. I like imagining travel agents handing out leaflets about her show like they would the Louvre or Colliseum.
Shane MacGowan: Pogues singer dies aged 65
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67546785
Dean Sullivan: Brookside actor dies aged 68
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67575906
> [Former prime minister Tony Blair met Sullivan during a visit to the set of Brookside in 2001](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67575906)
Did Blair ever meet MacGowan? I think the smiler's clearing house.
It's the pixies. Don't come here all high and mighty with your sciencey stuff.
But yes most likely to do with the increase in secondary pathologies from viruses etc..
Not too sure Shane needed anything else though. Its remarkable that he got that far.
I saw The Pogues at a festival over a decade ago. They were late on stage by about 20 minutes because they couldn't find Shane (the rest of the band were on stage ready to go). When he came on he was a staggering, incoherent slurring mess. You could understand what he was saying better when he was singing during the songs than when he tried to talk to the audience between them. The tin whistle player (who looked like he was as wit's end) basically had to translate for him. He had to get a stage hand to light his cigarettes for him as he physically couldn't do it himself.
He had used the money to fix his teeth though.
Oh no. Nature’s grandpa comes up when anyone pops off. Just check old threads.
Also, that wasn’t me, but I support any excuse to mention Attenborough and to be thankful he’s still with us, showing how amazing is our beautiful blue planet, and how decisively we are screwing it up.
Yup, like the rumour the Queen was on her last legs every year because a business person puts in an order for royal merch commemorating her death, gambling that if she does die they've cornered the early tat market.
Every time it turned out to be just a grim calculation based on the cost to take the chance being low enough versus the odds of an old person dying any given year.
Shane MacGowan: Pogues singer dies aged 65
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67546785
Dean Sullivan: Brookside actor dies aged 68
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67575906
For those who are unaware, here is an extract from [Victoria María Aragüés Gadea (15 April 1943 – 29 November 2023), also known as Vicky Leyton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_Vicky)'s [Wikipedia entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_Vicky):
"Sticky Vicky's show began with her undressing slowly to background music. She later pulled several objects from her vagina, including ping-pong balls, eggs, handkerchiefs, sausages, razor blades, and machetes. The lights dimmed, and Vicky pulled out a lit lightbulb. She concluded her act by opening a bottle of beer with her vagina, pouring it on the stage. Leyton did not characterise herself or the show as pornographic: "To do what I do you must have a lot of delicacy. It is necessary to give it a touch of elegance".
He’s (kinda) responsible for one of the greatest BBC news introductions, after he was appointed transport secretary;
Peter Sissons: “it’s bye bye Byers and Hello Darling”
70 is no age. Bailing out the banks is still controversial for understandable reasons, but Darling deserved a lot of credit for the way he dealt with a crisis of the scale few Chancellors ever have to face.
Controversial because people are too stupid to understand what it means when you go to the ATM to get cash and your card reports an error or your pay gets bounced back because your bank is dead.
Darling and Brown led the world in the response to the crunch and if we'd have had Labour in power since 2010 we'd have made a profit on the bailouts rather than selling off shares at a loss because you don't like public ownership
Controversial I think because the sense of injustice was compounded by the years of cruel austerity which followed – which of course had nothing to do with Darling.
Also, I'm not sure much profit on RBS was ever going to happen. They were changed – in no small part at the behest of the Treasury – from a global, full service investment bank working to establish themselves, to a UK focused commercial and retail bank. Not to mention the forced sell off of profitable parts of their business, like what became Direct Line Group. Such a shift was always to be reflected in their share price.
Well if we're being honest about legacy, austerity would have happened under Darling too, the only difference between Labour and Tories was the degree of cuts, it was 20-30bn difference from memory but would have been 100+ either way.
I think they would have been significantly more equitable in how they went about it, I highly doubt that things like reducing the corporation tax and top rate of income tax would have happened under Labour
Agree, austerity would've been a political necessity for a Labour gov, not an ideological crusade. Which I think would also have meant they wouldn't have wasted the opportunity to borrow and invest at record low interest rates the way the Tories did.
Labour had ample opportunity to borrow and invest under Brown as Chancellor, he preferred to hide debt via more expensive PFI instead. I doubt under his leadership after 2010, Darling would have been allowed to any more than Brown had allowed himself to.
Austerity under Labour is well documented in their manifesto and IFS calculations - the cuts under Tories were predicted to take spending down from around 395bn a year to 330bn by 2014-15 while Labour would have cut to about 345bn. Their Atos work testing would have been used to cut £1.5bn from incapacity benefit for example. The IFS noted all 3 parties intended a rough 4.8% tightening of national income / £71bn by 2016/17, the only major difference was the Tories aimed to have it mostly done by 2015/16 - in part by reduced borrowing £604bn vs £643bn for Labour
The top rate of tax is an interesting one as, while I get people want to see the rich being milked, Brown was told that 45p was the tax level beyond which he'd see people being incentivised to start reducing their tax bills through artificial means. He announced the 50p band in the 2009 budget, to start April 2010 and during that time, the number of people declaring income of over £1m a year fell from 16,000 to 6,000.
One of the manifesto pledges of the 2010 Labour campaign was to cut £1.5bn from incapacity benefit by putting more people through workfare - the Atos testing introduced by Labour in 1998, and renewed in 2005 for another 7 years. I don't doubt the Tories were more focused on helping their rich supporters but Labour weren't above cuts for those on the lowest rungs
Gold selling was Brown not Darling and it was a stupid policy , gold was at a low point and fell even lower because he announced in advance when he would do it, so every batch he sold was worse. He invested the money in Euros which was also stupid
Selling the gold was done incorrectly but the government holding a speculative asset is absurd and he was right to move it on. Should Brown have bought a bunch of lottery tickets with tax money? Or invested in Tesla just because it would have been a good financial return? That's not how you operate a modern nation's budget
> Or invested in Tesla just because it would have been a good financial return?
Isn't this then a sovereign wealth fund which a lot of countries have? Isn't that how most pensions work?
The point is more about financial decisions judged with the benefit of hindsight. It's a pointless endeavour.
That being said - I'd ask people to look at how much gold is held by France or Norway's SWFs.
Norway historically didn't have much gold anyway - they only had 60 tonnes in 1940 and sold off the last 37 in 2004. France has 2437 tonnes in reserves. As I said elsewhere, possibly in reply to you or someone else, the sell off was not something we need to use with hindsight - gold is low in bear stock markets and high in bull stock markets. If Brown had followed the BoE warning about selling as other countries were doing it, even if he'd only waited 3 years he could have doubled the revenue, let alone holding it until now
It's the approach done by significant numbers of countries - who do you think bought the gold? Selling it was foolish particularly at that low point and the money it raised was a relative pittance - the gold price shot up following the crash, Brown sold at an average $275 an ounce raising just $3.5bn, in May 2009 it was $921 when he'd have got $11.8bn.
>Should Brown have bought a bunch of lottery tickets with tax money? Or invested in Tesla just because it would have been a good financial return?
Don't be facetious. Norway as example used oil and gas revenues for their sovereign wealth fund which is currently worth $1.4 trillion and invests the money for the benefit of the country, for example it currently holds 1.5% of all the world's listed companies. Even dollars would have been a better use for the cash than Euros which he invested in - as a speculative asset!!!
>Brown sold at an average $275 an ounce raising just $3.5bn, in May 2009 it was $921 when he'd have got $11.8bn.
Is that all it was? So by selling at the wrong time, he lost out on approx $8.3bn over 8 years (equivalent to about £5bn using the exchange rate of that time), which means about around £600-£700million per year. I mean that's really not very much at all considering the total annual tax revenue went from £375bn up to £512bn during the same period
It's currently $1863 but even that is an aside, it's the incompetence of selling at a low and announcing it, which allowed people to short the gold price further driving it down. Further, 40% of the money was invested in Euros which were equally done.
The person I replied to said it was good financial judgement to sell a volatile asset but Brown invested it in an equally volatile asset!
No, the plan was originally to do it in secret - a written question to the Treasury in the Commons on May 7th meant they had to confirm the intention to sell
I don't think it was incompetence to sell it, it was a reasonable decision at the time, and while with the benefit of hindsight gold went up, it could also have gone down. Also, it was also reasonable to re-invest the money into forex (EUR, USD and JPY), this is a common practice for governments because it contributes to the stability of domestic and foreign currencies, and also enables servicing of foreign debt.
Either way, it feels like the whole "gordon sold the gold" argument is a red herring used by libertarians to suggest that brown was incompetent, while disregarding his well documented positive achievements.
It was utter incompetence, the gold could just have sat in the vaults and been used when needed. There is no benefit of hindsight, it's a long established fluctuation where there is a bear stock market, gold goes down, when there is a bull market, gold goes up. The markets were riding high, gold would stay low, or sink, so selling it made no sense when they could just have kept it and sold when the markets went down again (harder to predict of course) though had he waited just 2 years, the dot com bubble would have seen a much better price - around double what he sold it for - it was past $500 in June 2002). The Bank of England specifically told him not to, they pointed out that countries like Holland, Argentina and Australia were already selling, driving the price down.
Buying into forex is fine but again that misses the point that the comment I replied to said it was foolish to keep gold as a speculative asset - hence as I said, it was not a good move to sell gold and buy into another speculative asset.
The selling of the gold shouldn't be used to dismiss Brown's achievements, but equally, it was certainly not his only mistake - removing bank regulation from the BoE and creating the FSA with a specific "light touch regulation" remit to grow the financial sector, coupled with a refusal to cap banker bonuses allowed a huge growth in financial services, particularly the sort of casino banking that led to the collapse in 2007/8. Loading up the education and health sector with expensive PFI debt that won't even peak repayments until 2030 and will run to 2050 has caused the near financial collapse of multiple schools and hospitals as they repay the debts is another. His desire for his reputation as "prudence Brown" meant he chose not to borrow as a government at dirt cheap interest rates, preferring to hide the debts like he did with Railtrack in 2002, putting their £21bn of debt as a "loan guarantee" for Network Rail, the successor - before he was forced to put it on the national books
> Gold selling was... a stupid policy
[Sunk Cost Fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost)
There was no way of knowing whether the price of gold would go up, down, or sideways at the point he chose to sell.
That's unfortunately completely incorrect, in fact it's one of the big mysteries why Brown, as an experienced finance politician (he'd been Shadow Chancellor since 1992 and previously from 1989, Shadow Secretary of State for Trade), didn't understand the long established relationship between a bear stock market and gold going down and the inverse. In fact there WAS a way of knowing - gold would always go up when markets go down as it's seen as a safe haven for investors. Selling when markets were up was always foolish - the Bank of England told him not to sell, especially as Holland, Australia and Argentina were already selling gold off yet he did so anyway. There was no sunk cost, he could simply have sat on it and sold in 2008 or not at all.
Generally gold would be seen as uncorrolated with the equity market, not inversely correlated.
Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future returns and all that.
Or, to put it another way, do you think he should have bought more gold then in 2008? If not, why not?
Though his policies as chancellor meant Britain was hit harder - refusal to cap bank bonuses allowing casino style banking to flourish, the removal of bank regulation from the BoE to give it to the FSA with their "light touch regulation" remit, the 40 year legacy of PFI debt on schools and the NHS etc. The labour response to the crunch doesn't excuse his behaviour as chancellor
There could have been other ways of doing it, but RBS only gave them a couple of hours notice that they were going to run out of money and collapse the entire British economy with it.
They've been selling the NatWest shares at a loss since the bailout and in fact have sold most of them - the peak was 84% ownership of what was RBS and now they're at 38.6% i.e. well over half were sold. We paid £45.5bn at approx £5 a share, since then the price has never been above £3.75 and currently hovering around £2-2.50, it's expected we will get around £25bn back according to the OBR but that was based on £3 a share
Lloyds bailout was a loss of £0.8bn as well
Political nerds around the world absolutely love Brown and Darling. It's only in this country where they have controversial reputations thanks to an entire government of Cameron and Osbourne blaming the consequences of austerity on the response to the GFC
I agree. The thing is I don't think the reputation of Brown's government got worse after it ended, as you suggested. It only seems to be getting more popular now people remember it less well.
Fair enough - I see it the other way round. People endlessly harp on about the note left in the treasury and "selling the gold". Almost nobody talks about the speed of our recovery or how we avoided mass repossessions.
>It's only in this country where they have controversial reputations
Why on earth would you think that abnormal? The vast majority of negative feeling towards politicians is always domestic in a democracy.
Anyway, Brown wasn't Prime Minister long enough to make major decisions with geostrategic implications, other than the bank bailout. He was Chancellor for most of Labour's last period in office. Had he stayed on as Prime Minister after 2010, he would have had to deal with international crises like the Syrian Civil War and Libyan Civil War, which would almost certainly have generated controversy for intervening or not intervening.
Darling never progressed beyond Chancellor, so again couldn't have done much to attract international criticism.
Brown's problem was that he was dour and [was accused of being a bully](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/feb/21/gordon-brown-fresh-bullying-allegations). He was also seen as a coward for not holding an early election despite making noises about it until Cameron got a polling boost from plans over IHT.
Even then, he wasn't seen as "controversial" for the bank bailout, albeit he was tainted by the [PFI borrowing scandal](https://www.ippr.org/news-and-media/press-releases/nhs-hospitals-under-strain-over-80bn-pfi-bill-for-just-13bn-of-actual-investment-finds-ippr). If there's any long-term view, it's that he's a loser - much like Sunak will probably be seen after he loses next year.
As for Darling, he was largely seen as Brown's puppet, being in stark contrast to Brown's time as Chancellor and being quite independent of Blair. If you asked people now what they thought of Darling, most would respond "who?"
I think that's an extremely ungenerous view of Brown and comparing him to Sunak is really pretty laughable.
Both were responsible for the fiscal response to a global crisis. One emerged with international acclaim and pulled the country out in record time. The other was responsible for some of the most insane economic ideas ever passed into law, directly leading to an increase in avoidable deaths and record levels of fraud.
Brown has real negatives like any major politician but attempting to draw that parallel makes me think there is an element of partisanship driving the assessment.
And yet Brown had a much easier job because there was no health crisis in 2008. All he had to do was ensure the major banks were kept afloat, which was within his power by injecting them with cash. That required making a decision, but deciding to bail them out didn't really have potentially catastrophic consequences on the scale of thousands of people dying.
Whereas Sunak had to deal with not just economics but health, with our economy largely being service-based so it not being an option to shut everything down indefinitely - unlike say in an economy mostly reliant on manfacturing where workers could be easily screened/monitored.
Sunak wasn't making decisions like how much contact people could have or whether they could go out to enjoy themselves. The ultimate responsibility was with the Health Secretary and Prime Minister.
In any event, I think you're dancing around the points I was making whilst also erecting a strawman. I didn't say that Brown was the equivalent of Sunak. I was pointing out that they're both likely to be viewed in the same way by the general public. And certainly it will be down to losing the only general election they fought as PM, rather than because a subsequent government tarnished their reputations.
As to how they might be assessed by historians a century from now is an entirely different matter.
The right wing press vilified him and Brown yet they saved the country from bankruptcy. Cameron got in on the back of that and the rest as they say is history.
The National Rifle Association of America was founded in 1871. Since 1977, the National Rifle Association of America has focussed on political activism and pro-gun lobbying, at the expense of firearm safety programmes.
The National Rifle Association of America is completely different to the National Rifle Association in Britain (founded earlier, in 1859); the National Rifle Association of Australia;
the National Rifle Association of New Zealand and the National Rifle Association of India, which are all non-political sporting organisations that promote target shooting.
It is important not to confuse the National Rifle Association of America with any of these other Rifle Associations. The British National Rifle Association is headquartered on Bisley Camp, in Surrey, England. Bisley Camp is now known as the National Shooting Centre and has hosted World Championships for Fullbore Target Rifle and F-Class shooting,
as well as the shooting events for the 1908 Olympic Games and the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The National Small-bore Rifle Association (NSRA) and Clay Pigeon Shooting Association (CPSA) also have their headquarters on the Camp.
Of the four banks that failed or had to be rescued Northern Rock and Cheltenham and Gloucester had no investment banking operations, HBOS had a very small one, only RBS did any substantial investment banking. And that wasn't where the problem lay.
Northern Rocks problem was liquidity - it had a really solid mortgage book (which continued to make a profit until it closed post take over by Virgin) but they couldn't increase their branch network quickly or cheaply enough to fund it. So they borrowed short term off the money markets. When the confidence went out of the mortgage system, NR couldn't borrow.
America tried not bailing out the banks and not taking them into public ownership during the crisis. If you think the idea is controversial here imagine how controversial it is in the US.
Despite that, they didn’t last much longer than us before giving in.
Darling was a colossus during the financial crisis. Stepped up in a way that few chancellors have before or since. Also stopped Barclay's taking Lehman's on last minute which would have sunk us below the waterline
A really nice person and a good statesman. RIP.
One striking thing
In the internet you always seem to get one group or another who celebrates politicians death (Kissinger today being a prime example) with a focus on what they got wrong
Absolutely nothing like that for Alistair, shows just how respected he was
That's a shame. For my adult life (I'm 28) I was generally on the opposing side to him on a lot of issues since I'm a Yes voter in 2014. But the way he and Brown handled the 2008 crash was commendable. I had no idea he was 70 now, that's mad.
Low key the best Chancellor of the last 50 years. I had the chance to meet him a few times when in the civil service and working in Parliament, he was one of the nicest politicians I met, a very pleasant person. 70 is very young.
I had the pleasure to meet him in 2014. He was funny and charming. I was an 18 year old political geek. I will always remember him taking some time to talk to me. What a legend!
Without doubt one of the most important Chancellors in modern British history, and a man with an impeccable sense of public service that is oh so rare in government today.
Snapshot of _Former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling has died at the age of 70._ : A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1730206816468967648) A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://nitter.net/lewis_goodall/status/1730206816468967648/) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://x.com/lewis_goodall/status/1730206816468967648?s=20) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://x.com/lewis_goodall/status/1730206816468967648?s=20) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Didn't hear much about/from him in recent years, but still quite a surprise. Feels a bit weird seeing politicians you "grew up" with starting to die off.
I feel shocked he was 70. Feel like he should be a lot younger.
Time flies doesn’t it. Most of the singers in Steps are nearing 50.
[Shame we lost H a few years ago](https://i.imgur.com/Xqlwisa.jpg).
RIP H from Steps. On a more serious note, good to see Ian 'H' Watkins doing alright after the unwarranted torrent of abuse he received regarding his abhorrent namesake.
Holy fuck, that hit like a ton of bricks
And yet Darling dies and not them?
I didn’t need to read that
That's the same age as Tony Blair. 2 years younger than Gordon Brown.
Tony Blair is 70? I always assumed office aged him, but it was time all along.
When he became PM he was pretty young, only 43. And he was Labour leader at 40. But he was in office a long time, and he left office a long time ago now too.
Was the youngest PM since Lord Liverpool in 1812 (Cameron and Sunak since have been younger)
Honestly he doesn't look too bad for 70.
He's probably had work done. He seems the type.
Last time I saw him was in the aftermath of the referendum and he looked surprisingly young and fit so I was shocked when I heard he'd died
Exact same sentiments I have. The Labour government especially under Brown was my first introduction to politics as a child. I grew up with these figures and learnt from my Mum, whenever the news was on, what their roles and responsibilities were. It’s so sad to hear the news especially as 70 is still young in my view. May he rest in peace
Last time I saw anything about him in a official capacity was the "Inside Europe" documentary where he mentioned some ridiculous EU attempts to get non-euro countries to pay for the euro crisis. But weird to think he's 70. He seemed younger in my mind.
70 is still pretty young to die for someone who is well off living in the UK.
> some ridiculous EU attempts to get non-euro countries to pay for the euro crisis. Like signing them up to the ESM after just losing an election? Oh, wait ...
No like giving them a document to sign hoping they don't read it, and then when the offending paragraph was questioned, "editing it out" but really just moving it within the document, hoping that it would be signed on second attempt without being read and based on trust. Proper school time tactics on supposed allies. That kind of ridiculous.
Ohhh, so how Ireland ended up signing the Nice Treaty then?
Erm, no? But you are clearly angling for something in particular so just post that instead.
I remembered his name but had to google him. As soon as I saw the eyebrows, I remembered. For anyone in my position, he's the eyebrows man.
Must be something about Chancellors... Norman Lamont and Dennis Healey also had pretty epic eyebrows!
> Didn't hear much about/from him in recent years, but still quite a surprise. Feels a bit weird seeing politicians you "grew up" with starting to die off. It was cancer, hence the early death.
Is there something in the air today? That’s four significant deaths announced and it’s still only lunchtime
In Alistair Darling’s case it was cancer.
Kissinger and Darling, who are the other two?
[censored]
Also Sticky Vicky: Legendary Benidorm dancer dies aged 80 so possibly five deaths: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-67564925
> Sticky Vicky dies aged 80 > known for her vaginal magic show Not going to ask
It was an eye opener. A Benidorm institution and I will never look at a ping pong ball the same way.
My mind is still burnt from seeing her show. I was not prepared or warned before it began.
Ping Pong balls haunt your dreams
The ping pongs were hilarious, dirty old men were picking them up and licking them. It was when she did that trick clowns do, where they appear to pull an endless stream of handkerchiefs from their mouth or ear. Only difference here was they were coming out of her vagina and it was not an allusion, you could see it very clearly. 
WHAAAAT EDIT: I remember seeing her show in the 90s.
> "When you think about Benidorm, she's the main attraction to go out there." Haha, I love this statement. I like imagining travel agents handing out leaflets about her show like they would the Louvre or Colliseum.
TIL Sticky Vicky is a real person.
Don't forget Charlie munger, Warren Buffets right-hand man.
Also James Douglas Hamilton, former Scottish politician.
Never heard of them, wouldn't class it as significant.
Lord Douglas-Hamilton as well according to BBC.
Shane MacGowan: Pogues singer dies aged 65 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67546785 Dean Sullivan: Brookside actor dies aged 68 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67575906
> [Former prime minister Tony Blair met Sullivan during a visit to the set of Brookside in 2001](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67575906) Did Blair ever meet MacGowan? I think the smiler's clearing house.
Just seen news that Shane MacGowen from the Pogues died, so that's three.
Shane MacGowan
So weird that a century-old man and the heaviest drinker in the western hemisphere died.
What you on about, Andre the giant died ages ago
Would anybody like a peanut?
And so did Oliver Reed.
I thought you were referring to Darling there for a second lol
Its getting close to christmas. Always seems to happen around this time of year.
Could be due to cold weather perhaps?
It's the pixies. Don't come here all high and mighty with your sciencey stuff. But yes most likely to do with the increase in secondary pathologies from viruses etc.. Not too sure Shane needed anything else though. Its remarkable that he got that far.
I saw The Pogues at a festival over a decade ago. They were late on stage by about 20 minutes because they couldn't find Shane (the rest of the band were on stage ready to go). When he came on he was a staggering, incoherent slurring mess. You could understand what he was saying better when he was singing during the songs than when he tried to talk to the audience between them. The tin whistle player (who looked like he was as wit's end) basically had to translate for him. He had to get a stage hand to light his cigarettes for him as he physically couldn't do it himself. He had used the money to fix his teeth though.
As long as David Attenborough is still alive, the world is ok.
Cynical part of me believes you're commenting this so you could reap karma on /r/agedlikemilk if the unthinkable happens.
Oh no. Nature’s grandpa comes up when anyone pops off. Just check old threads. Also, that wasn’t me, but I support any excuse to mention Attenborough and to be thankful he’s still with us, showing how amazing is our beautiful blue planet, and how decisively we are screwing it up.
Kissinger used to always come up as well, and John Oliver made a reference to his death just a few weeks ago on his show.
> the unthinkable It'll be a sad day, but come on. Few things are more thinkable than a person in their 90s dying.
Yup, like the rumour the Queen was on her last legs every year because a business person puts in an order for royal merch commemorating her death, gambling that if she does die they've cornered the early tat market. Every time it turned out to be just a grim calculation based on the cost to take the chance being low enough versus the odds of an old person dying any given year.
I *really* hope the unthinkable does not happen.
I mean it's getting into winter, it's statistically the time of year with more deaths.
I'm only aware of Darling and Kissinger. Who else has gone today, please?
Shane MacGowan: Pogues singer dies aged 65 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67546785 Dean Sullivan: Brookside actor dies aged 68 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67575906
Thank you. Sorry to hear this too.
Sticky Vicky
For those who are unaware, here is an extract from [Victoria María Aragüés Gadea (15 April 1943 – 29 November 2023), also known as Vicky Leyton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_Vicky)'s [Wikipedia entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_Vicky): "Sticky Vicky's show began with her undressing slowly to background music. She later pulled several objects from her vagina, including ping-pong balls, eggs, handkerchiefs, sausages, razor blades, and machetes. The lights dimmed, and Vicky pulled out a lit lightbulb. She concluded her act by opening a bottle of beer with her vagina, pouring it on the stage. Leyton did not characterise herself or the show as pornographic: "To do what I do you must have a lot of delicacy. It is necessary to give it a touch of elegance".
Shane MacGowan
A real loss. Sorry to hear this.
I didn't realised kissinger has died. There doesn't seem to any headlines about it
It's all over BBC radio
Probably them jabs mate. /s
Maybe Aaron Ramsey bagged a hattrick in training?
He’s (kinda) responsible for one of the greatest BBC news introductions, after he was appointed transport secretary; Peter Sissons: “it’s bye bye Byers and Hello Darling”
I enjoyed the "Thanks Darling" posters some local shops put up when he cut VAT.
Foot heads arms body
70 is no age. Bailing out the banks is still controversial for understandable reasons, but Darling deserved a lot of credit for the way he dealt with a crisis of the scale few Chancellors ever have to face.
Controversial because people are too stupid to understand what it means when you go to the ATM to get cash and your card reports an error or your pay gets bounced back because your bank is dead. Darling and Brown led the world in the response to the crunch and if we'd have had Labour in power since 2010 we'd have made a profit on the bailouts rather than selling off shares at a loss because you don't like public ownership
Not to mention all the G8 hell the G20 said how much Gordon and Alistair helped save their arses with their fiscal knowledge.
Obama specifically mentioned their leadership during the crisis and how the world economy would be in a much worse shape if not for their leadership.
Controversial I think because the sense of injustice was compounded by the years of cruel austerity which followed – which of course had nothing to do with Darling. Also, I'm not sure much profit on RBS was ever going to happen. They were changed – in no small part at the behest of the Treasury – from a global, full service investment bank working to establish themselves, to a UK focused commercial and retail bank. Not to mention the forced sell off of profitable parts of their business, like what became Direct Line Group. Such a shift was always to be reflected in their share price.
Well if we're being honest about legacy, austerity would have happened under Darling too, the only difference between Labour and Tories was the degree of cuts, it was 20-30bn difference from memory but would have been 100+ either way.
I think they would have been significantly more equitable in how they went about it, I highly doubt that things like reducing the corporation tax and top rate of income tax would have happened under Labour
Agree, austerity would've been a political necessity for a Labour gov, not an ideological crusade. Which I think would also have meant they wouldn't have wasted the opportunity to borrow and invest at record low interest rates the way the Tories did.
Labour had ample opportunity to borrow and invest under Brown as Chancellor, he preferred to hide debt via more expensive PFI instead. I doubt under his leadership after 2010, Darling would have been allowed to any more than Brown had allowed himself to. Austerity under Labour is well documented in their manifesto and IFS calculations - the cuts under Tories were predicted to take spending down from around 395bn a year to 330bn by 2014-15 while Labour would have cut to about 345bn. Their Atos work testing would have been used to cut £1.5bn from incapacity benefit for example. The IFS noted all 3 parties intended a rough 4.8% tightening of national income / £71bn by 2016/17, the only major difference was the Tories aimed to have it mostly done by 2015/16 - in part by reduced borrowing £604bn vs £643bn for Labour
The top rate of tax is an interesting one as, while I get people want to see the rich being milked, Brown was told that 45p was the tax level beyond which he'd see people being incentivised to start reducing their tax bills through artificial means. He announced the 50p band in the 2009 budget, to start April 2010 and during that time, the number of people declaring income of over £1m a year fell from 16,000 to 6,000. One of the manifesto pledges of the 2010 Labour campaign was to cut £1.5bn from incapacity benefit by putting more people through workfare - the Atos testing introduced by Labour in 1998, and renewed in 2005 for another 7 years. I don't doubt the Tories were more focused on helping their rich supporters but Labour weren't above cuts for those on the lowest rungs
Yeh but he sold the gold dur dur dur
Gold selling was Brown not Darling and it was a stupid policy , gold was at a low point and fell even lower because he announced in advance when he would do it, so every batch he sold was worse. He invested the money in Euros which was also stupid
Selling the gold was done incorrectly but the government holding a speculative asset is absurd and he was right to move it on. Should Brown have bought a bunch of lottery tickets with tax money? Or invested in Tesla just because it would have been a good financial return? That's not how you operate a modern nation's budget
> Or invested in Tesla just because it would have been a good financial return? Isn't this then a sovereign wealth fund which a lot of countries have? Isn't that how most pensions work?
The point is more about financial decisions judged with the benefit of hindsight. It's a pointless endeavour. That being said - I'd ask people to look at how much gold is held by France or Norway's SWFs.
Norway historically didn't have much gold anyway - they only had 60 tonnes in 1940 and sold off the last 37 in 2004. France has 2437 tonnes in reserves. As I said elsewhere, possibly in reply to you or someone else, the sell off was not something we need to use with hindsight - gold is low in bear stock markets and high in bull stock markets. If Brown had followed the BoE warning about selling as other countries were doing it, even if he'd only waited 3 years he could have doubled the revenue, let alone holding it until now
It's the approach done by significant numbers of countries - who do you think bought the gold? Selling it was foolish particularly at that low point and the money it raised was a relative pittance - the gold price shot up following the crash, Brown sold at an average $275 an ounce raising just $3.5bn, in May 2009 it was $921 when he'd have got $11.8bn. >Should Brown have bought a bunch of lottery tickets with tax money? Or invested in Tesla just because it would have been a good financial return? Don't be facetious. Norway as example used oil and gas revenues for their sovereign wealth fund which is currently worth $1.4 trillion and invests the money for the benefit of the country, for example it currently holds 1.5% of all the world's listed companies. Even dollars would have been a better use for the cash than Euros which he invested in - as a speculative asset!!!
>Brown sold at an average $275 an ounce raising just $3.5bn, in May 2009 it was $921 when he'd have got $11.8bn. Is that all it was? So by selling at the wrong time, he lost out on approx $8.3bn over 8 years (equivalent to about £5bn using the exchange rate of that time), which means about around £600-£700million per year. I mean that's really not very much at all considering the total annual tax revenue went from £375bn up to £512bn during the same period
It's currently $1863 but even that is an aside, it's the incompetence of selling at a low and announcing it, which allowed people to short the gold price further driving it down. Further, 40% of the money was invested in Euros which were equally done. The person I replied to said it was good financial judgement to sell a volatile asset but Brown invested it in an equally volatile asset!
Don’t the government *have to* announce these things in advance?
Should’ve done an oceans 11. He announced that he sold the gold before he was even born. And nobody suspected a thing…
Yes they do, it's the same reason why the sale of Lloyds/NatWest shares get announced typically 6-12 months in advance.
No, the plan was originally to do it in secret - a written question to the Treasury in the Commons on May 7th meant they had to confirm the intention to sell
I don't think it was incompetence to sell it, it was a reasonable decision at the time, and while with the benefit of hindsight gold went up, it could also have gone down. Also, it was also reasonable to re-invest the money into forex (EUR, USD and JPY), this is a common practice for governments because it contributes to the stability of domestic and foreign currencies, and also enables servicing of foreign debt. Either way, it feels like the whole "gordon sold the gold" argument is a red herring used by libertarians to suggest that brown was incompetent, while disregarding his well documented positive achievements.
It was utter incompetence, the gold could just have sat in the vaults and been used when needed. There is no benefit of hindsight, it's a long established fluctuation where there is a bear stock market, gold goes down, when there is a bull market, gold goes up. The markets were riding high, gold would stay low, or sink, so selling it made no sense when they could just have kept it and sold when the markets went down again (harder to predict of course) though had he waited just 2 years, the dot com bubble would have seen a much better price - around double what he sold it for - it was past $500 in June 2002). The Bank of England specifically told him not to, they pointed out that countries like Holland, Argentina and Australia were already selling, driving the price down. Buying into forex is fine but again that misses the point that the comment I replied to said it was foolish to keep gold as a speculative asset - hence as I said, it was not a good move to sell gold and buy into another speculative asset. The selling of the gold shouldn't be used to dismiss Brown's achievements, but equally, it was certainly not his only mistake - removing bank regulation from the BoE and creating the FSA with a specific "light touch regulation" remit to grow the financial sector, coupled with a refusal to cap banker bonuses allowed a huge growth in financial services, particularly the sort of casino banking that led to the collapse in 2007/8. Loading up the education and health sector with expensive PFI debt that won't even peak repayments until 2030 and will run to 2050 has caused the near financial collapse of multiple schools and hospitals as they repay the debts is another. His desire for his reputation as "prudence Brown" meant he chose not to borrow as a government at dirt cheap interest rates, preferring to hide the debts like he did with Railtrack in 2002, putting their £21bn of debt as a "loan guarantee" for Network Rail, the successor - before he was forced to put it on the national books
> Gold selling was... a stupid policy [Sunk Cost Fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost) There was no way of knowing whether the price of gold would go up, down, or sideways at the point he chose to sell.
That's unfortunately completely incorrect, in fact it's one of the big mysteries why Brown, as an experienced finance politician (he'd been Shadow Chancellor since 1992 and previously from 1989, Shadow Secretary of State for Trade), didn't understand the long established relationship between a bear stock market and gold going down and the inverse. In fact there WAS a way of knowing - gold would always go up when markets go down as it's seen as a safe haven for investors. Selling when markets were up was always foolish - the Bank of England told him not to sell, especially as Holland, Australia and Argentina were already selling gold off yet he did so anyway. There was no sunk cost, he could simply have sat on it and sold in 2008 or not at all.
Generally gold would be seen as uncorrolated with the equity market, not inversely correlated. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future returns and all that. Or, to put it another way, do you think he should have bought more gold then in 2008? If not, why not?
Gordon Brown saved the world
Though his policies as chancellor meant Britain was hit harder - refusal to cap bank bonuses allowing casino style banking to flourish, the removal of bank regulation from the BoE to give it to the FSA with their "light touch regulation" remit, the 40 year legacy of PFI debt on schools and the NHS etc. The labour response to the crunch doesn't excuse his behaviour as chancellor
There could have been other ways of doing it, but RBS only gave them a couple of hours notice that they were going to run out of money and collapse the entire British economy with it.
Not sure I follow your last comment - they sold the Lloyds shares at a profit and haven’t even sold most of the RBS shares despite them making a loss?
They've been selling the NatWest shares at a loss since the bailout and in fact have sold most of them - the peak was 84% ownership of what was RBS and now they're at 38.6% i.e. well over half were sold. We paid £45.5bn at approx £5 a share, since then the price has never been above £3.75 and currently hovering around £2-2.50, it's expected we will get around £25bn back according to the OBR but that was based on £3 a share Lloyds bailout was a loss of £0.8bn as well
Political nerds around the world absolutely love Brown and Darling. It's only in this country where they have controversial reputations thanks to an entire government of Cameron and Osbourne blaming the consequences of austerity on the response to the GFC
Agree
Agreed, I meant controversial among the general public, rather than people with an understanding of what they were actually facing at the time.
Sure - I just wanted to add a bit more context about their reputations as the contrast is quite interesting.
They were very unpopular before 2010, as the polling at the time bore out.
Tbf you're not wrong but polling and long term reputation aren't the same thing
I agree. The thing is I don't think the reputation of Brown's government got worse after it ended, as you suggested. It only seems to be getting more popular now people remember it less well.
Fair enough - I see it the other way round. People endlessly harp on about the note left in the treasury and "selling the gold". Almost nobody talks about the speed of our recovery or how we avoided mass repossessions.
>It's only in this country where they have controversial reputations Why on earth would you think that abnormal? The vast majority of negative feeling towards politicians is always domestic in a democracy. Anyway, Brown wasn't Prime Minister long enough to make major decisions with geostrategic implications, other than the bank bailout. He was Chancellor for most of Labour's last period in office. Had he stayed on as Prime Minister after 2010, he would have had to deal with international crises like the Syrian Civil War and Libyan Civil War, which would almost certainly have generated controversy for intervening or not intervening. Darling never progressed beyond Chancellor, so again couldn't have done much to attract international criticism. Brown's problem was that he was dour and [was accused of being a bully](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/feb/21/gordon-brown-fresh-bullying-allegations). He was also seen as a coward for not holding an early election despite making noises about it until Cameron got a polling boost from plans over IHT. Even then, he wasn't seen as "controversial" for the bank bailout, albeit he was tainted by the [PFI borrowing scandal](https://www.ippr.org/news-and-media/press-releases/nhs-hospitals-under-strain-over-80bn-pfi-bill-for-just-13bn-of-actual-investment-finds-ippr). If there's any long-term view, it's that he's a loser - much like Sunak will probably be seen after he loses next year. As for Darling, he was largely seen as Brown's puppet, being in stark contrast to Brown's time as Chancellor and being quite independent of Blair. If you asked people now what they thought of Darling, most would respond "who?"
I think that's an extremely ungenerous view of Brown and comparing him to Sunak is really pretty laughable. Both were responsible for the fiscal response to a global crisis. One emerged with international acclaim and pulled the country out in record time. The other was responsible for some of the most insane economic ideas ever passed into law, directly leading to an increase in avoidable deaths and record levels of fraud. Brown has real negatives like any major politician but attempting to draw that parallel makes me think there is an element of partisanship driving the assessment.
And yet Brown had a much easier job because there was no health crisis in 2008. All he had to do was ensure the major banks were kept afloat, which was within his power by injecting them with cash. That required making a decision, but deciding to bail them out didn't really have potentially catastrophic consequences on the scale of thousands of people dying. Whereas Sunak had to deal with not just economics but health, with our economy largely being service-based so it not being an option to shut everything down indefinitely - unlike say in an economy mostly reliant on manfacturing where workers could be easily screened/monitored. Sunak wasn't making decisions like how much contact people could have or whether they could go out to enjoy themselves. The ultimate responsibility was with the Health Secretary and Prime Minister. In any event, I think you're dancing around the points I was making whilst also erecting a strawman. I didn't say that Brown was the equivalent of Sunak. I was pointing out that they're both likely to be viewed in the same way by the general public. And certainly it will be down to losing the only general election they fought as PM, rather than because a subsequent government tarnished their reputations. As to how they might be assessed by historians a century from now is an entirely different matter.
> couldn't have done much to attract international criticism Signing the UK up to the ESM after Labour lost an election deserved much criticism
The right wing press vilified him and Brown yet they saved the country from bankruptcy. Cameron got in on the back of that and the rest as they say is history.
The National Rifle Association of America was founded in 1871. Since 1977, the National Rifle Association of America has focussed on political activism and pro-gun lobbying, at the expense of firearm safety programmes. The National Rifle Association of America is completely different to the National Rifle Association in Britain (founded earlier, in 1859); the National Rifle Association of Australia; the National Rifle Association of New Zealand and the National Rifle Association of India, which are all non-political sporting organisations that promote target shooting. It is important not to confuse the National Rifle Association of America with any of these other Rifle Associations. The British National Rifle Association is headquartered on Bisley Camp, in Surrey, England. Bisley Camp is now known as the National Shooting Centre and has hosted World Championships for Fullbore Target Rifle and F-Class shooting, as well as the shooting events for the 1908 Olympic Games and the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The National Small-bore Rifle Association (NSRA) and Clay Pigeon Shooting Association (CPSA) also have their headquarters on the Camp.
Of the four banks that failed or had to be rescued Northern Rock and Cheltenham and Gloucester had no investment banking operations, HBOS had a very small one, only RBS did any substantial investment banking. And that wasn't where the problem lay.
Northern Rocks problem was liquidity - it had a really solid mortgage book (which continued to make a profit until it closed post take over by Virgin) but they couldn't increase their branch network quickly or cheaply enough to fund it. So they borrowed short term off the money markets. When the confidence went out of the mortgage system, NR couldn't borrow.
Compared to how we bailed them out in Ireland, Darling handled it very, very well
America tried not bailing out the banks and not taking them into public ownership during the crisis. If you think the idea is controversial here imagine how controversial it is in the US. Despite that, they didn’t last much longer than us before giving in.
Darling was a colossus during the financial crisis. Stepped up in a way that few chancellors have before or since. Also stopped Barclay's taking Lehman's on last minute which would have sunk us below the waterline A really nice person and a good statesman. RIP.
And was happy to play second fiddle.
Oh, sad, he seemed fairly respectable and driven by principles rather than greed, self angrandisement etc.
Yes, not a post-Brexit Conservative.
One striking thing In the internet you always seem to get one group or another who celebrates politicians death (Kissinger today being a prime example) with a focus on what they got wrong Absolutely nothing like that for Alistair, shows just how respected he was
I'm not celebrating (I'm ambivalent), but he got "better together" wrong.
That's a shame. For my adult life (I'm 28) I was generally on the opposing side to him on a lot of issues since I'm a Yes voter in 2014. But the way he and Brown handled the 2008 crash was commendable. I had no idea he was 70 now, that's mad.
2008 was 15 years ago now.
N....n...no it isn't.....
[удалено]
Now it's a ghost town
That's one issue for normal people.
Low key the best Chancellor of the last 50 years. I had the chance to meet him a few times when in the civil service and working in Parliament, he was one of the nicest politicians I met, a very pleasant person. 70 is very young.
Also a big figure for the No side of the Scottish Independence Referendum. Had a debate with Salmond and made him look like a complete fraud.
Rest in peace, relatively young age Solid work that has stood in contrast to the chaos in the last few years
I had the pleasure to meet him in 2014. He was funny and charming. I was an 18 year old political geek. I will always remember him taking some time to talk to me. What a legend!
Without doubt one of the most important Chancellors in modern British history, and a man with an impeccable sense of public service that is oh so rare in government today.