It's not a big secret that Osbourne had to borrow another 10 billion last month-a record and more than the gold. He had to do this because he wasn't prepared to continue with the 50% tax on banker's bonuses. Essentially it's a great time if you are high up in the banking industry (sic) or the ST rich list. Otherwise the static economy is providing no growth whatsoever. It's not hindsight. We predicted this. Osbourne is hopeless.

But as you rightly point out, Garage Joe, delivering the goods for the super rich!  Just according to the masterplan. 

 

If they win in 2015 stand by for a cut to inheritance tax for millionaires, abolition of the Additional (50%) rate income tax and hawking of banking shares at discounted prices to the affluent.

Anyway, Gordon's well out the Labour party if this retread of One Nation Conservativism, rubbish that Ed's currently seeing as his big idea, is anything to go by.  I hope this Tory nonsense will be quietly binned in the very near future.  It's bad enough with the Tories, the Yellow Tories but Blue Labour!  WTF!

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/poli...blue-labour-thinking

Ah! One feels nostalgic! Fond memories of the dangerously left wing one nation governments of Home, Heath, n MacMillan. We never had it so good, apparently.

Just at a time when I'd like Labour to forging an alternative to the stupidity of this awful government, Ed seems to want to join them!

 

I had high hopes for Ed when he took over as he seemed from the genuine left of the party.  Now he seems to be touting himself as the new Tory Blair but without the charisma.

Have you read Milliband senior?

Ha ha, no, perhaps fortunately.  Any links?  Somehow, I get the feeling I won't like whatever he's saying. It's lovely to know the three main parties are forming a homogenised centre right consensus that largely ignores injustice and inequality, If things carry on much as they are, I'll end up voting for party that sends me the nicest Xmas card next time.

Ralph was very much a Marxist, and must be spinning!

Sorry, misunderstood, I thought the reference to Miliband senior was David.

End of April 2010. UK Debt 765 billion. May 2011 UK Debt 910 billion. Clue .......... Tax receipts down. No growth. Osbourne shit for brains, NFI, etc.

According to the Office for National Statistics the national debt, including the cost of bailing out the banks, now stands at £2,323,000,000,000. That works out at over £37,600 for every man, woman and child in the country.

This terrible debt is Labour’s legacy. They thought that they had abolished boom and bust and so ran large deficits even before the financial crisis.

Because of this, we are currently paying £43 billion per year, over £120 million per day, in debt interest. This is money that could otherwise be spent on frontline services like schools and hospitals. The average earner has to work for 148 days just to pay the interest on Labour’s debts.

 

Speaks for itself I would have thought.

Do you think the Tories would have bailed out the banks? A lot of, albeit naive, people believed that the Tories would sort the economy out. Due to their reluctance to tax earnings, their cuts, and no growth, the country is now worse off for the majority. Those of us with foresight, and an ability to budget for the coming financial disaster aren't too badly off I suppose.

Give 'em a chance GJ, they've only been in a year, it took GB 12 years to ruin the economy.

See! This is the point we keep returning to. If Brown ruined the economy, why aren't Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Greece and all the other basket cases blaming him? This has been a major failure of global capitalism and more fool him for going along with it. The say that if America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold, shingles, ingrowing toenails, and high BP.

So, we all know the current coalition government has inhereted an economy on the edges of oblivion. Government spending dominates the economy, we have one of the largest deficits in the developed world, and we have a deficit between 1 and 4 trillion pounds depending on what calculations you use.

    Now some on the Labour side might argue that it was an international crisis that caused these problems and that that fact absolves them of any responsibility. Well that might be true if these problems didn't exist before the recession.

    When Labour came to power in 1997 they inherited a booming economy with restrained public expenditure from the Conservatives. For the first few years, Labour cleverly followed the spending plans set out by the then Conservative chancellor Kenneth Clarke. Following these strict spending plans earned Gordon Brown the title of Iron Chancellor - even though all the work is actually down to the Conservatives.

    However, something then took a turn for the worse - they abandoned the strict and restrained spending plans of the Conservatives and instead went on a public spending binge. They tripled the budget of the National Health Service without any regard for value for money. They more than doubled the budget for our nations education, again, without any regard for value for money. This proliferation in public spending occured in most budgets across government; except the most important: the nations defence.

    Whilst other budgets saw massively increasing expenditure, especially the welfare budget, defence was neglected even though Blair signed us up to war after war after war after war.

    But I disgress, this isn't about defence this is about poor economic management on behalf of the Labour Party so I shall return to it.

    Before the recession was even contemplated Labour were running a fairly large budget deficit given the nature of the economy - during a booming economy, the only sensible path is to ensure you run a large budget surplus to ensure you mend the roof whilst the sun is still shining.

    Whilst they were operating Tory budgets, they ran a small surplus but as soon as they abandoned those budgets, deficit Britain became the norm.

    When the recession hit it meant we weren't in a fantastic place to enter it - We entered the recession in the worst position of any G20 country. To quote Daniel Hannan in his now famous "devalued prime minister speech":

    "Well, it is true that we are all sailing together into the squalls. But not every vessel in the convoy is in the same dilapidated condition. Other ships used the good years to caulk their hulls and clear their rigging; in other words – to pay off debt. But you used the good years to raise borrowing yet further. As a consequence, under your captaincy, our hull is pressed deep into the water line under the accumulated weight of your debt"

    And he is absolutely right. Now we can continue to talk about the mismanagement of Labour economic policy but the same argument will come up again and again. Ed Balls loves to bring it up, Srb brings it up, Robin brings it up as well - that Britain was at the mercy of the banking sector and that it wasn't labour who are to blame but the banks. Those evil bastards in the City of London and Canary Wharf. It's not Labour, it's them!

    Well, I am not going to deny that the banking industry is at fault, it most certainly is, however, to deny Labour the responsibility of their actions is merely repeating the faults of old.

    The financial sector is indeed partially responsible, whoever thought gambling on beyond-toxic debt was a good idea is a complete fool. Or is he?

    In the United Kingdom, Gordon Brown encouraged the financial industry to be somewhat reckless and risky - why did he do this? Because he knew the more profits they made, the more tax revenue he would receive for public expenditure. No one would know about the risk as boom and bust had been abolished, surely?

    Gordon Brown absolved the financial sector of all responsibility - he guaranteed them their profits and guaranteed that if they were to fall the taxpayer would bail them out!

    By guaranteeing to rescue someone you instantly destroy any responsibility they would normally have because there is no failure. Without the possibility of failure, people will act recklessly and that is what happened and that is what was encouraged.


    The moral of this lecture is this: Yes the banking industry is partially to blame, however, they are not responsible. Why? Gordon Brown absolved them of responsibility. The financial crisis hadn't existed when Gordon Brown started his spending spree and his deficit production.

    Yes there was an international crisis caused by the financial industry, however, Britain also suffered a domestic crisis and that crisis was the Labour Party.

    The deficit adds to the debt. Currently we are paying large amounts on servicing that debt - we spend more on debt interest than on our military or educating our children. So long as we have a deficit, the debt interest payments will continue to grow.

    Brown's regulation was faulty because no organisations knew what was going on. The Triparte system was designed to protect against the sort of crisis we experienced - it failed. The Treasury, Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England didn't know what was going on, the powers were split up to much. The powers should have been kept solely with the Bank of England.

The Labour Party over spent; public spending accounts for over fifty percent of gross domestic product, that's unacceptably high. It needs to be reined in; we need to ensure that the private sector always grows faster than the public sector.

    The Conservatives are being very cautious about how they reduce public expenditure. They don't want to be seen as hurting the poor. When other countries, such as Canada, experienced this kind of problem they were much quicker to rectify it with almost slash-and-burn type policies.

    The coalitions deficit reduction plan isn't all that more severe than the plan Labour would have done. I believe the figure put around is that for every sixteen pounds Labour would have cut, the coalition is cutting seventeen.



This debt is Labour’s fault

Labour ran a structural deficit for seven years before the recession began. The recession began on 1 April 2008 (ONS, Times Series IHYQ). Cyclically-adjusted public sector net borrowing – the structural budget balance – was in deficit in each of the seven years before that between 2001-2 and 2007-8 (OBR, Budget Forecast, Table C15).

Labour entered the financial crisis with the largest structural deficit in the G7. According to the OECD, the UK’s structural fiscal position was one of the best in the G7 in 2000, but by 2007, just before the crisis, had deteriorated to be the worst in the G7 (OECD, Economic Outlook 88, November 2010).

Institute for Fiscal Studies: before the crisis Labour had one of the largest structural deficits in the developed world. ‘By the eve of the financial crisis, [fiscal drift under Labour] had left the UK with one of the largest structural budget deficits in the developed world… the vast majority of other OECD countries did more to strengthen their public finances during Labour’s first eleven years in office than Labour did in the UK’ (IFS, The Public Finances: 1997-2000, 19 April 2010, p. 2 and p. 10).
   
Tony Blair: Labour did not do enough to eliminate the structural deficit after 2005. ‘We should also accept that from 2005 onwards Labour was insufficiently vigorous in limiting or eliminating the potential structural deficit. The failure to embrace the Fundamental Savings Review of 2005-6 was, in retrospect, a much bigger error than I ever thought at the time’ (Tony Blair, A Journey, pp 681-2).

   

No more boom and bust.

your belief is different to mine, but it is where the cuts are that is important and on that the tories fail miserably

The Labour plan was based on figures at the time.

As it happened, a recovery had begun (under Labour) and the ConDems reduced their figure.

 

The main consideration is that the ConDems want to do it in five years, whereas Labour's plans were to spread it out over two terms, so their assertion that Labours plans were similar to their is disingenuous.

Glad you mentioned debt as a percentage of GDP! GB left it at 53%. it's now 60.1% It's all very well taking money from the disabled, but it's not going to add up to much is it?

It seems that with Labour's attitude to income tax that they may have done it in half the time.

 

I think that the Tories are adopting the old trickledown theory. If they allow the Russian and  Indian "businessmen" amongst others at the top of the richlist to keep more of their cash, it will be spent in our economy, and not abroad on playthings such as yachts.

The facts are

 

To hear the Tories and their supporters talk, you'd think the Tory governments of Thatcher and Major consistently reduced the national debt. 

 

However, they couldn't be more innacurate.

 

In the years 1979 to 1997 the CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENTS of Margaret Thatcher and John Major ran deficits.  In fact, only during the period 1987-1989 did the Tories actually run budget supluses.  Just three years from EIGHTEEN tells you all you need to know about the Tory brass neck hypocrisy in the accusation that Labour didn't repair the roof when the sun was shining!

 

So by 1997, John Major had failed to run a budget surplus during the whole of his period of office, Thatcher, just three years from ten. 

 

Squiggle, this is your so-called golden legacy!

 

By 1997 the economy was recovering from the second Tory recession in little over a decade, the Tory recession that ended Lawson's idle boasts of a so-called economic miracle.  The recession of 1990-91 hit the UK and US harder than most of Europe precisely for the same reasons as you criticise Labour.  The UK and US were hit hardest because of the dogma of neo-Liberalism, where good regulation is always no regulation. Sadly, Labour continued this, but I'll come to that later.

 

Under Gordon Brown, the UK ran surpluses thanks to an expanding economy and restraint.  The surpluses under Labour reduced the deficit far more than ANY TIME under the Tories.  By 2008, Labour had reduced the debt to lower levels than they inherited after 18 years of Tory government. Your so-called golden legacy!

 

After eighteen years where the Tories had let public services go to rack and ruin while bribing the South East's affluent with sell offs and North Sea oil revenue.

 

To argue that there was no improvement in the health service as a result of Labour intervention is just rank stupidity.  Waiting lists were slashed and the NHS had to cope with a rapidly ageing demographic.  With treatments becoming ever more elaborate and costly, to expect the Health Service to manage on the same funding as under the Tories is mental.

 

Under Labour, NHS spending only matched the European average.

 

I wouldn't pay too much attention to Tory Blair's rewriting of history.  He is on record as  expressing concerns that the tripartite regulatory system WAS STIFLING UK financial services through excessive regulation.

 

On regulation: Yes, Labour didn't regulate as strongly as they should. Labour did ride a boom, but I've yet to see any government that hasn't.  The problem with proposing tighter regulation when everything's running smoothly in the boom times, is it's an own goal.  Nobbling British financial services with tough legislation in 2000s may have been worse for the country than what we have now.  The UK isn't a financial closed system, it operates within a global cut-throat market.  Regulating the banks in the boom times would have seen an exodus of banks and financial services to New York, Paris, Frankfurt and Tokyo. 

 

Now, obviously, the Tories wish to absolve their masters of the universe chums from all blame, so it's easier to just blame it all on the Labour government.  Get rid of Labour, get rid of the problem.  If only it were as simple as that!  We all know the Tories would have done the same. 

 

The problem was international, the problem was with international banking ignoring the recommendations of the Basel II Accord.  The problem was with ever more (intentionally) complex slicing and packaging of debt as a smoke and mirrors commodity with the aid of ever complex computerised investment models.  The problems were on Wall Street and in the Square Mile. The FSA was never designed to do the job of the international Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.   The FSA was created to manage the UK financial services industry and primarily to act as a consumer watchdog to prevent miss-selling on the high streets.  It's role could only ever be the UK regulator.      

 

 

 

 

 

Taking away from  the disabled is disgusting and robbing 85/86 year old pensioners of a £100 heating allowance beggers belief .. it will be the pensioners free bus passes next on the line,I remember when Gordon Brown said to Cameron that the tories would  do this to the pensioners heating allowance he strongly denied they would ..it did not take them long to change their minds ..did it, as for what they are doing to the  disabled I dont think anyone could have seen that coming .. if I was a tory supporter these two issues alone would make me feel rather ashamed of my party as far as them making the above cuts are concerned,I agree we  are needing cuts but dont agree the disabled or elderly should be treated so badly...