UK General Election thread

[pchang]

We still use them today. Pay me in USD and I will give you change in Puka shells.

[Dauphin]

I'm pretty sure Texas is cheaper than Hawaii, and so dollars last longer in Texas.

[Ben Kenobi]

I'm pretty sure Hawaiian dollars lasted longer than Confederate dollars or the Texas dollar.

Don't believe they minted enough to become the biggest currency. Also with a dollar peg, they never had an independent currency.

[Dauphin]

Don't believe they minted enough to become the biggest currency. Also with a dollar peg, they never had an independent currency.

Oops.

The Texas dollar, informally named the "Texas redback", was the paper money of the Republic of Texas. The Texas dollar was issued between January 1839 and September 1840 by Mirabeau B. Lamar to minimize national debt during his Presidency of the Republic of Texas.[1] The name "redback" comes from the reddish color of the back of the bills. Inflation, due mainly to overprinting, devalued the notes substantially, making 15 redbacks equal to one United States dollar.[citation needed] This debt of over $10 million was an important factor for annexation into the United States.

By 1842, the government of the Republic of Texas would not accept the bills for repayment of taxes.

[giblets]

Don't believe they minted enough to become the biggest currency. Also with a dollar peg, they never had an independent currency.

Currencies were valued in terms of silver and/or gold back then so all currencies were pegged.

[Ben Kenobi]

Currencies were valued in terms of silver and/or gold back then so all currencies were pegged.

Which is why the Pound had a different value than the USD?

I'm glad that Dauphin confirmed that the Republic of Texas did in fact have an independent fiscal policy.

And if all the currency was in fact backed by Gold, then how could Texas overprint?

[giblets]

Which is why the Pound had a different value than the USD?

I'm glad that Dauphin confirmed that the Republic of Texas did in fact have an independent fiscal policy.

And if all the currency was in fact backed by Gold, then how could Texas overprint?

The pound to dollar exchange rate was very consistent after the US adopted the gold standard during Reconstruction. Before the Civil War, the ratio fluctuated some because the dollar was primarily pegged to silver (although officially a bimetal standard).

Texas promised to repay the money it printed, but that doesn't mean it was convertible on demand. They retired the currency after joining the US and receiving $10 million for Texas's claims in and around New Mexico.

[C0ckney]

i spent a short time reading the guardian/observer today. it seems to have taken it upon itself to publish about 20 articles, including one by the war criminal himself, saying how new labour must be resurrected from its regrettably shallow grave. they must have had them all pre-written. in any case though, it seems like a tremendous political miscalculation, but one which may at least hasten the demise of the labour party.

[giblets]

You sound like Ben. He thinks the last two Republican US presidential candidates lost because they were just too moderate.

[C0ckney]

i don't think you really understand what i mean.

[C0ckney]

Could you please explain

sure. there are two points i'll make, the first about the specific situation in the UK and second a more general one.

firstly, the two things being said in the wake of the election are that 'labour must be more pro-business' (curiously few commentators use words like 'moderate' - and what would that even mean in any case; they already agree about most things), which i think is not based at all on what happened, but rather on the impression created in the run up to the 1997 election, and 'labour has lost the support of significant section of the working class population', which i think is a lot closer to the truth. now of course given my political views, i would say that, wouldn't i? but let's consider what actually happened 1) the SNP landslide, 2) nearly a million more votes for the greens and 3) UKIP eating into the labour vote across the midlands and north. the tory vote on the other hand barely moved.

we see, and i suspect we will see a lot more, the often reactionary concerns of an abandoned and resentful working class and the 'pragmatism' of pro-business blairites being brought together as some kind of 'rightward' consensus, trying to disguise the fact that these things are totally different and represent fundamentally opposed interests and demands.

secondly, people often talk about the centre-ground as if were actual piece of ground - a real immovable physical space - instead of shifting 'middle ground' between people's diverse political opinions. people don't form their politician opinions in a vacuum, they base them on their own circumstances and what they hear, read and see. so if for example people are told that excessive spending caused the global financial crash and that the UK would have ended up like greece were it not for the coalition's policies (these were actual points made during the UK election), and it is repeated more or less unchallenged by certain media outlets, then it's hardly surprising that people come to believe it, that it becomes the narrative, even when it is clearly and demonstrably false. or, to give some examples that i've spoken about at length before, when people are given a misleading impression about benefit fraud or immigration it, their views about these things are affected. there are in fact diverse areas where the public is mislead on a regular basis and this feeds through into the political debate. the mainstream left in many countries tries to fight on this unfavourable terrain created by their opponents with predictable results. the first task for the left must be to change the narrative and shift the 'centre-ground' rather than fighting on that created by their opponents.

[giblets]

There are already parties further left than Labour that could have challenged the right's preferred narrative, so how is it all Labour's fault?

[C0ckney]

well two of those parties, the SNP and greens, did improve their performance very considerably. but of course the narrative is not created wholly by political parties, but also by the media and other establishment figures, which clearly lean, sometimes very heavily, towards the right.

[Ben Kenobi]

Texas promised to repay the money it printed, but that doesn't mean it was convertible on demand. They retired the currency after joining the US and receiving $10 million for Texas's claims in and around New Mexico.

Never said their fiscal management was successful. Texas on independence basically had two options - sell land and keep some and try to survive, or do what they did, hang onto all of it and then join the US.

[Imran Siddiqui]

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-32696505

Nigel Farage is to remain as UKIP leader after the party rejected his resignation.

LOL! I'm shocked!!