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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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Vince Cable
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: May 9
British Politician
Economist
Politician
Jórvík
John Vincent Cable
Vincent Cable
Boys
Views
Friends
Broadened
Father
Wing
Political
Communist
Also
Wings
Right
Brought
Made
Conflict

More quotes by Vince Cable

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The degree of leverage now being reversed is on a staggering scale, and the underlying global imbalances – notably between the savers and the spenders – will require long and painful adjustment.
Vince Cable
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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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Small- and medium-sized businesses need access to a diverse range of finance options, including non-bank lending. These new forms of finance are still small in scale today but they should, over time, bring additional choice and greater competition to the lending market.
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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For wide swaths of training and education there are valuable spillovers which mean that the private sector needs support from the government. That is why I have been so determined to protect and grow apprenticeships and put higher education on a sustainable footing.
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 food in the House of Commons is fairly good. The cafe in Portcullis House is really very high quality, and you also have a choice of eating in the more traditional restaurants, the Churchill Room or the Members' Dining Room. I don't often eat in them, though, as I'm usually on the run.
Vince Cable
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When Gordon Brown becomes prime minister, the balance sheet that reflects his economic stewardship could look very sickly indeed. He could become Labour's biggest liability, not its most marketable asset.
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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The House has noticed the Prime Minister's remarkable transformation in the past few weeks, from Stalin to Mr. Bean.
Vince Cable
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I don't feel comfortable with luxury, and I try to stay fairly normal.
Vince Cable
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I have managed to infuriate the bank bosses acquire a fatwa from the revolutionary guards of the trades union movement frighten the 'Daily Telegraph' with a progressive graduate payment and upset very rich people who are trying to dodge British taxes. I must be doing something right.
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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Now the main areas of higher education that still enjoy considerable financial support from government are subjects like engineering and science and the research ringfence which is the basic minimum to protect Britain's scientific competitiveness.
Vince Cable
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In my job I meet many outstanding, world class, British based companies. But we need more companies and more jobs in the companies we have.
Vince Cable
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No, and in fact I get a bit frustrated, because I'm actually quite good at one-liners, and I've had hundreds of them over the years, and they sink without trace, and I get very frustrated. Every party conference I really work on the speeches, and I always have two or three things I'm quite proud of, and no one ever remembers them.
Vince Cable
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Much of the shadow banking sector, a major contributor to the economic crisis, was also only possible because of taxhaven secrecy.
Vince Cable
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Our workforce is very co-operative, very flexible, easy to work with and one of the big selling points. The idea that Britain is still back in the labour market of the '70s is utterly bizarre.
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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If the pendulum swings, it may swing to a combination of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats and, thus, to a period of minority government or coalition, in some form.
Vince Cable