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My time at Shell was a most valuable experience because it taught me to look at the world in a long-term way. Shell takes a 20-year view on events and plans for different scenarios. It makes you see the world as a kind of large matrix.

Vince Cable

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Vince Cable
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: May 9
British Politician
Economist
Politician
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John Vincent Cable
Vincent Cable
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More quotes by Vince Cable

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The Robert Mugabe school of economics provides a salutary warning about uncontrolled monetary expansion in generating hyper-inflation. The road to Harare is not as long as we might hope.
Vince Cable
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The fact that John Prescott is being paid large sums of money to do little or nothing adds to the general malaise surrounding this government and the feeling that ministers are incapable of tackling serious issues.
Vince Cable
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Many of our problems are home-grown. Gordon Brown regularly advised the rest of the world to follow his British model of growth. But the model was flawed. It led to the highest level of household debt in relation to income in the world.
Vince Cable
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There was, of course, a global financial crisis. But our Labour predecessors left Britain exceptionally vulnerable and damaged: more personal debt than any other major economy a dangerously inflated property bubble and a bloated banking sector behaving as masters, not the servants of the people.
Vince Cable
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Well, as I said, you know the issue of Greek debt, they've grasped the principle of debt reduction. I think most people would argue that probably more needs to be done on that front, and they've just begun to take the first steps to accepting that there's going to have to be much closer economic integration in Europe.
Vince Cable
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And humility in politics means accepting that one party doesn't have all the answers recognising that working in partnership is progress not treachery.
Vince Cable
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I fear that the rising personal bankruptcies and repossessions are the first signs of bigger problems to come and personal debt - Gordon Brown's legacy to millions of Britain's families - will hang like a millstone around the neck of the British people for years to come.
Vince Cable
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The government increasingly resembles somebody who is trying to give the kiss of life to a corpse.
Vince Cable
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I made friends with a boy who was a communist when I was 13 and that broadened my political views, but it also brought me into conflict with my father who was very Right-wing.
Vince Cable
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My college, Fitzwilliam, was pretty good but unfashionable and I lived in digs so I was not part of the cloistered 'old college' environment, which frankly was a bit intimidating. But I worked hard and settled in by exploring politics and girls.
Vince Cable
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The economy has become seriously unbalanced. Its growth has not been driven by investment or by overcoming Britain's long-standing weaknesses in investment and productivity, particularly skills. Instead, there has been a binge of debt-financed consumer spending.
Vince Cable
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I am going to confront the old-fashioned negative thinking which says that all government needs to do to generate growth is cut worker and environmental protections, cut taxes on the rich and stroke 'fat cats' until they purr with pleasure. I'm completely repudiating the idea that government has to get out of the way.
Vince Cable
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Fundamental renegotiation is very, very unlikely to produce any significant change
Vince Cable
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The two policies that Ken Clarke is most famous for are his opposition to the Iraq war and being a very defensible and quite courageous pro-European. These are both policies he shares with us.
Vince Cable
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These 'masters of the universe' must be tamed in the interests of the ordinary families whose jobs and livelihoods are being put at risk. The Tories won't say anything about the current crisis as they are completely in the pockets of the hedge funds.
Vince Cable
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Billions of taxpayers' money has been wasted in bad deals. The London Underground modernisation, personally negotiated by one of Gordon Brown's team, was a disaster, as the National Audit Office has confirmed.
Vince Cable
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I clearly believe a lot more than some of my coalition colleagues - Tories - in redistribution and using the tax system for that purpose. I also believe in the government having an active role in the economy, which is having an industrial strategy. I'm not a believer in laissez-faire.
Vince Cable
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Banks operate like a man who either wears his trousers round his chest, stifling breathing, as now, or round his ankles, exposing his assets. We want their trousers tied round their middle: steady lending growth particularly to productive British business, especially small scale enterprise.
Vince Cable
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I think what is happening is I think first of all there is confidence in the U.K. economy. We're in a German rather than a Greek position in international financial markets, which is very positive and keeps our debt service costs down, and we're also beginning to see real evidence of rebalancing.
Vince Cable
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So I went into government with a clear mind about what the problems were, and what needed to be done.
Vince Cable