GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

fighting for their victories and, let’s face it, most of them would not be there,

would not have the sort of lifestyles they have if it was not for all that hard work,

they soon forget that. While we are doing that, the real issues that we should

have been struggling for, and this is where Larry is totally right, May says no

snap election, here it comes. Are we ready for that snap election? Okay,

Jeremy Corbyn said, “We are on a war footing for an election”, but in truth our

policies were not ready, because we had been doing too much internal battling

and it still seems to me that we are caught up in the same abysmal situation

that we had with Ed Miliband where it seemed that every day we were making

up policy on the hoof which instantly, when the Andrew Neills of this world get

hold of it, could destroy in a matter of moments. That, to me, is absolutely total

nonsense, that we as a party, a party of government, should be in those sorts

of positions. We have to be strong and determined.

I still have not given up the battle in terms of winning this election. There are

too many doom and gloom merchants going on. I still hope we will win the

election, but if we do not the one thing we have got to start is all this internal

fighting and we have actually got to get down using all that we can in terms of

producing a programme that everybody can commit to, everybody could

commit to and that is why I am proud of the GFTU. I am not going to get

another chance to speak and I am just going to say this, that it looks at what we

are doing in terms of our education programme, we are actually building that

coming together of all people thinking that we can bring about change and that

we can actually influence some of that change and that is what the GFTU is

really about. I thank everybody here and I thank you, Larry. (Applause)

LARRY ELLIOTT: We have not got three or four years, so I am not sure I can solve

the entire problems of the Eurozone! What would I do about Greece? The

obvious thing to do is to give them large amounts of debt relief. They have got

debts running at something like 200% of GDP and rising. One thing you could

do if you did not want Greece to leave the euro was to make their economy

more sustainable by giving them a major amount of debt relief. That is an

anathema though to the Germans, so that is probably not going to happen.

Even the IMF realise that you cannot have a sustainable future for Greece

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