The Prime Minister’s New Year message for 2009:
As we look forward to this New Year, we face a challenge. A challenge of how we build a better tomorrow, today.
It will be my unwavering focus to make the right decisions to build in a world of danger and uncertainty a Britain of opportunity and hope.
This coming year won’t be easy, but I am determined that this government will be the rock of stability and fairness on which the British people can depend.
The scale of the challenges we face is matched by the strength of my optimism that the British people can and will rise to meet them. Because we’re not a do nothing people and we’ve always risen to every challenge.
We can meet the security challenge, the environmental challenge and the enormous economic challenge.
The British genius has always been to embrace the world in which we live, not the world we want to live in.
At all times, but perhaps especially at this time of year, we must acknowledge the debt we owe to our servicemen and women who meet our security challenge. Their bravery is unsurpassed and their sacrifice knows no bounds.
And as we meet the security challenge, so we must also meet the challenge of climate change.
The pace of climate change is such that it not only threatens future generations, but imperils our generation today.
Again, in an ever more interdependent world this will require us to build alliances and win arguments for change that is real, fair and sustainable.
I believe we can do it - and because we can, we must. The stakes are too great with our planet in peril for us to do anything less.
I look forward to working with President Elect Obama in creating a transatlantic, and then a global coalition for change.
We can demonstrate this in 2009 in how we tackle climate change at the Copenhagen Summit.
And we can demonstrate this in 2009 by making sure that now, more than ever, we keep our promises to the world’s poorest.
As we look ahead into 2009, the most immediate and pressing challenge of all for every continent is the economic challenge.
When the history books come to be written - 2008 will largely be remembered for the scale of the great economic and financial crisis. A year in which an old era of unbridled free market dogma was finally ushered out.
And I want 2009 to be the year when the dawn of a new progressive era breaks across the world: purposeful and energetic governments giving real help to families and businesses when they need it the most; and through expanding through the downturn vital investments in our future - real hope for that future too.
Real help now. Real hope for the future. Both are essential. Alone one will not be enough. Failure to do either, as some propose, would mean both a longer, deeper downturn, and a weaker economy in the future.
The scale and speed of the global financial crisis was at times, almost overwhelming. I know that people felt bewildered, confused and sometimes frightened.
That is why the response had to be swift and decisive.
That is why we acted so quickly to get money into the banks. Not for any desire to finance bankers, but because if we didn’t it would have put at risk that which is most important to you and me - your jobs, your homes, your savings, your standard of living.
What keeps me up at night, and gets me up in the morning are the hopes and aspirations of the British people. My guiding principle, at all times, is the welfare and well being of British families and British businesses.
All of this would have been put at risk if we had not intervened and simply done nothing, as some would have had us do.
This will be a challenging year for the economy but I believe, with the right policies, we can build a better tomorrow, while dealing with the challenges of today.
The failure of British governments in previous global downturns was to succumb to political expediency and to cut back investment across the board, thereby stunting our ability to grow and strangling hope during the upturn.
This will not happen on my watch.
The lesson of this crisis is that we do not let recession take its course, yield to defeatism, or simply muddle through and just hope for things to get better.
The message is - we take action: we are providing an extra £60 to pensioners immediately, on top of the winter allowance; increasing child benefit from January 1st to £20 per week; and helping 22 million basic rate taxpayers with a £145 tax cut. Added to that, the cut in VAT this year will knock around £275 off the average family household bill. Not to do this would be imprudent.
Today the risk of attempting too little is a greater threat than the risk of attempting too much.
And in this period of difficulty and downturn, it is also important that we understand that amid the threats and the global risks there are great opportunities for Britain. We must prepare ourselves for these massive opportunities as the world economy doubles in size over the next two decades.
We must not just plan for tomorrow. Our task over the next twelve months is to build tomorrow today.
So that Britain creates the thousands of new tech jobs for the digital age now ahead of us, we must build the digital tomorrow, today
So that Britain creates the thousands of green jobs vital for the environment and our economy, we must build that green future of tomorrow, today.
So that we have the best railways, roads and communications for the future, we must build the infrastructure of tomorrow, today.
So we have the right skills for the future we must not let people’s lives waste away in unemployment without trying to help. So that they have the skills our country needs we must build that tomorrow, today.
If we coordinate our expansion with other countries then the effect of one country’s action can be magnified, almost twice over.
So I want to set out an agenda for the G20 meeting of all the major economies in London in April that will help renew our global institutions for the intense levels of international cooperation we now need to solve our problems.
So to those worried about jobs, we will take every action we can.
For those worried about their homes, let me tell you that ordinary homeowners should not be the first to pay the price of financial failures. We will help people trying their best to pay their mortgages to stay in their own homes.
To those who know that the only solution for our economy and environment is a global solution - expanding growth and tackling climate change together - let us say that we will work with Europe, America and others to meet the international challenges of this century - a World Bank for environment and development. And an International Monetary Fund that is an early warning system for crisis prevention.
All of these actions will play a role in delivering real help now and real hope for the future. And they will ensure that when we come out of this downturn we hit the ground running.
I am confident that we can steer Britain safely into the future.
First, because I am confident in the innate strength and decency of the British people.
Second, because Britain as a country has faced down many even greater challenges than those before us today.
And third, because this government has set short term, medium term and long term challenges before, and, more crucially, have met them.
Today the issues may be different, more complex, more global. And yet the qualities that are needed to meet them have been demonstrated in abundance by the British people before.
I believe that we will eventually look back on the winter of 2008 and 2009 as another great global challenge that was thrown Britain’s way, and that Britain met. Because we had the right values, the right policies, the right character to meet them.
That’s why I believe Britain is the best country in the world. And the British people will, in 2009, show the world the qualities we are made of - as we build tomorrow, today.
".....At all times, but perhaps especially at this time of year, we must acknowledge the debt we owe to our servicemen and women who meet our security challenge. Their bravery is unsurpassed and their sacrifice knows no bounds.
And as we meet the security challenge, so we must also meet the challenge of climate change........"
First of all, you and me cannot comment on No 10 Gov shite. So I ask the question, where is this security problem. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq has ever asttacked us in UK. Until we attacked them, we did not have any 'terrorist' attacks here in UK. G Brown is another T Blair I feel so far. What the fuck do commoners know init? They think they are there by right as Gov not put there by you and me. Cock suckers!
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