please empty your brain below
That said many have been accepting of cuts because it doesn't affect them. Many councils are now at the bone and sometimes beyond. Increasingly this is going to impact more and more people. Where I live there is a mini revolt over litter, yet cleaning the streets is an entirely optional thing for a council to do. My council is doing it still but with fewer people which becomes noticeable. There will be a time when people begin to realise more. But will it be too late. Is my council ever going to reverse cuts and provide Adult Education or meals and wheels ever again? Somehow I doubt it. We as a population only generally miss things when they are gone.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34788129
This FPTP electoral system produces some horrid results, I hate it.
For the record, I don't support the cuts, especially when they happen side-by-side with middle-class welfare.
Missing from ballot papers was the option 'None of the above', allied with the provision that if 'None of the above' got a majority of the votes, the the election would be re-run with none of the original candidates allowed to stand. A nice Darwinian solution.
In a sense, the emergence of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader (someone who would be prepared to stop all the cuts) is an indication that the public are looking for public services to be supported. Jeremy Corbyn is the 'None of the above' option.
Just yesteday it emerged out that Cameron is shocked that 626 million pounds of local government cuts might actually result in cuts to services in his own backyard, and won't just cuts to back office services and flogging off assets.
[Oxford Mail article]/
I particularly like the bit where the Tory council leader reminds Cameron that selling property can't make up for funding cuts.
"Jeremy Corbyn is the 'None of the above' option."
Oh no he isn't. He's living in another time frame, and is more of what got the country into the mess it's in. The choice of htose who don't understand economics (or, most likely, even their own finances).
i) The stoical nature of Brits. We're not a nation of rioters and militant barricade-builders. Sometimes this is a good thing. Other times, much less so.
ii) The way a vastly right-wing and/or supine media has allowed the entire economic conversation to be framed by the Tories. 'Common Sense' above is a fine example of someone who's unthinkingly swallowed the party's line.
iii) Breathtaking political cynicism and deceit. There's nothing inevitable or necessary about austerity, and the 'paying off the national debt' line, which treats the country's finances like a domestic budget, is utter tosh, as many eminent economists have said. It's a deliberate attempt to impose a continual state of emergency (see George Osborne's 'emergency' budget soon after the election. What emergency? Also see George Orwell's '1984'...). The end game is more profits for giant corporations and banks, less for the great unwashed. For more on this, I highly recommend Naomi Klein's book 'The Shock Doctrine'.
iv) As several have mentioned, our FPTP political system. And mainly the way it's been allowed to become a beauty contest. Ed Miliband may be a very decent bloke, but in the X Factor world of modern elections, having dodgy teeth and a voice like a malfunctioning Dalek did for his chances. Many of our greatest statesmen would have stood no chance today. Pissed fat posh bloke in a comedy boiler suit? Sorry Churchill, you're out...
Evening Standard
BBC
Daily Mail
Wikipedia
Daily Mirror
So in theory we should have more services, not less. Which doesn't seem to be what is happening. So I wonder what happened to the extra money. I appreciate this is probably too simplistic a view because Councils also get money from central government, and I don't know that has changed over the years.
Both from the Thatcher years.
First the idea thanked from the slogan "There is no society" The idea that the individual needs superseded the need of society. The poor were seen as the enemy.
The fact that Thatcher was finally destroyed by the "Poll Tax" warned any future government that even the talk of tax increases was political suicide.
I obviously can't give you specifics on your council, but I suspect they're running fast just to keep going backwards which is a default state for most councils at the moment. A fact that is not well known.
"The "Poll Tax" warned any future government that even the talk of tax increases was political suicide. "
The opposition to the poll tax came from those it would hit hardest - which as it was a regressive tax (everyone pays the same, whether it is 0.0001% of their income or 150%) were the less well off. It is the powerful movers and shakers, with access to the Government of the day (of whichever party), and deep pockets to contribute to party funds, who object to higher rates of income tax.
[spending chart]
300 motor/quad bikers decided to rampage through SE London as a result. The cops didn't/couldn't arrest one of them.
Once the knuckle-draggers realise they can do what they want it will all go to pieces.
The cuts are a false economy.
- First and foremost, every major party promised cuts at the last election. Some more, some less, but anyone who was against cuts either voted Green and wasted a vote, stayed home, or is Scottish.
- Economics is a factor in elections. But it is by no means the only one and its importance to most people is overplayed. The government's ability to actually *DO* anything about the economy is also vastly overstated.
- The "National Debt is evil and must be slain" brigade seem to have convinced a lot of people, despite not having a shred of evidence to back their claims up. Countries are not people. The same rules do not apply. The Americans don't believe that nonsense and they have the most powerful economy on earth - partly because they'll never cut that deeply. (Obviously there's a limit, but debt up to 150% of GDP has never hurt a developed economy. In normal times, growth+inflation allows you to run an annual deficit AND shrink the debt-to-GDP ratio.)
- Finally, despite the previous recession being one of the worst global downturns of the past century, developed economies are now flexible enough that the overall pain was quite a bit less than it might have been in the past. This has lead people to believe (correctly or incorrectly) that we can part things back even more without feeling too much pain. The current government also did a bang-on job of convincing voters that a world-wide recession (that this country came out of fairly well before the current lot were even elected) was entirely the fault of the previous government.
I suppose you could add in that Mr. Ed wasn't a credible candidate, but I think the other factors outweigh that and it would have taken a political master on the level of Tony Blair to scratch a win out. (Hate the man, but he's really, REALLY good at his job.)
I know you said for us not to express opinions on cuts, but I'm all for paying a little bit extra for the public good, as long as it's done wisely and is properly accounted for. It used to be said that as you get older you become more right wing, but in my and a lot of my peers' cases it seems to be the other way round!
Government spending didn't cause the debt. £850bn of bank bailouts did.
1 - most of the welfare state came in after the war when we worked together to defeat Hitler, so the whole nation had a common experience, this generation has largely gone
2 - a job for life vanished a while ago, you are largely on your own now
3 - large industries employing lots of people at the same location has gone, this partly continued the spirit of item 1
4 - government keeps on screwing things up, weapons of mass destruction, expenses, endless ongoing child abuse everywhere, how long has the Hillsborough inquiry taken?, they only look into it after everyone has their final salary pension - and in some cases a Knighthood, remember when they had to redo the West Coast rail franchise? I think that was 45 million down the drain, buying computer systems that don't work - how much did the NHS one cost?
5 - related to 4 above, everything seems to be a scam, so exam grades 'improve', police reclassify crimes to meet targets, 50% of students go to university - regardless of whether or not it is the best option for them - but that's the target, patients get moved to another room so hospitals meet waiting time targets, or alternatively are left outside in the ambulance
As a result of 5 society is poisoned as people have to buy-in to the scams to keep their jobs - remember North Staffordshire?, apart from all the dead people, it was performing well as it was meeting its targets.
Basically most people think more tax = more waste.
I'm not so sure it is. Look at how many people claim they voted Conservative in the last election yet are shocked- SHOCKED I TELL THEE- that these cuts are affecting them.
I think there is a reason the Conservatives are quick to dress up cuts as "cutting inefficiency" or "dealing with benefit cheats". It's because most people do not want to see public services cut. If they think it is waste or scrounging that's been removed they're in favour- after all, who wouldn't be- and they've swallowed the lies hook, line and sinker.
That daft woman on Question Time lamenting her Tax Credit cuts after voting Tory sums it up for me. People don't want cuts but they do want cheats to be found out; it is only when it is too late that they realise there are no cheats, and the cuts are designed to target them.
"When the Tories promised benefit cuts, I thought it would only apply to those ghastly people off Benefits Street."
@ everyone else - this is not just a UK issue. It is happening more or less everywhere. If not 'global', it is pretty darned close.
It was in the 1968, in that most British of films, Carry on up the Khyber, that Kenneth Williams, playing the Khasi, had the following conversation with Angela Douglas, playing his daughter, Princess Jehli:
Williams: "They will die the death of a thousand cuts."
Douglas: "Oh, that's horrible."
Williams: "Nonsense, child, the British are used to cuts."
It does not have to be this way, but we as a nation have allowed meanness to rule our politics, not just from the Tories, who bring new definition to the phrase Little Englanders, but the Scottish Nationalists, pushing for the ultimate cut, to our union as an island people, and the in-fighting Dave Leninsparts now running Labour.
It's time that we stand up to this wormtongued mean spiritedness.
Sir, you are wrong, very wrong. I have not swallowed the Tory line at all. My local (Tory) MP would tell you that I have challenged Cameron and Osborne time and time again. I am basically a Tory, but one who thinks they often have the right ideas eg ensuring the NHS is a 24/7 service, but their implementation of many things is incompetent eg withdrawing working tax credits from next year but delaying the living wage till 2019/20. I challenge you: tell me which bit of my reasoning is wrong. The bit that I think you might challenge is the need to rein in the national debt but if you challenge that ask yourself how it was that of the developed nations probably Canada survived the turmoil with least difficulty, because in part of the commodities boom but also because Canada tightened up on public expenditure in the 1990s.
They're fundamentally different beasts, so you'd have to be financially illiterate to believe that, but the reality is that most people are financially illiterate.
(And "Common Sense" may wish to note that shouting in block capitals on the internet does not make up for that.)
What it shows is that every time in the last 15 years that public sector debt goes down (as a percentage of GDP), private sector debt goes up! As the article puts it plainly "the less the government is in debt, the more everybody else is."
When you think about it, it's obvious. You cut Tax Credits to help the national debt. This reduces the income of those on Tax Credits. What's the result? Many will end up more in debt.
I personally wouldn't mind paying a little more tax so that other people can at least live, if not prosper. But then, I'm one of the old school who reckons everyone is responsible for everyone else and that those who have have a responsibility to those who have not - nationally and worldwide.
It was the bank bailouts that screwed our national debt, not government spending. Things were actually going well before unregulated banks screwed us all over.
So there are two ways to cut a deficit so that things are more manageable. Collect more taxes, or cut (austerity). Sometimes you need to trim the fat, but after a while there's no more fat to cut, and you find out that the fat provided essential padding. We're way beyond this now, and Osborne is years away from achieving his aims.
Additionally, national debt is not anything like household debt, or personal debt. The important thing is to reduce national debt as a proportion of GDP - i.e., growing GDP (via investment) is a valid option, even if the national debt continues to increase. America did this, and it's growth rates since 2008 have put ours to shame (especially since 2010, when the Tories started austerity). And our current 'recovery' is mostly based on sustaining a housing bubble by not building more houses.
The media in this country is mostly right wing - often very right wing. This means that alternatives are often not even in people's awareness. However the cuts are going to be horrendous in the next few years, and they will affect more people, and make them actually think.
We want caring employers offering jobs for life, high salaries, company cars, long holidays, sports grounds and well tended lawns, but we don't like working long hours and being made redundant after a ruthless takeover. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
We want the Night Tube but we don't want to work shifts. We want cheap phone calls but superfast broadband in the Outer Hebrides. We love traditional red phone boxes but we use PAYG mobiles. We want the postman delivering twice a day, but we send e-mail rather than post letters and we've opted for paperless utility bills. We want to browse in specialist bookshops but we buy from Amazon.
We achieve 100% accessible public loos by closing all those with steps, so we end up with French pay-per-pee sardine cans and we use dark alleys instead. We want safety nets for the weak and the vulnerable, but we only look after No.1. We want to help refugees as long as they don't come anywhere near here.
I don't have any magic answers: all I know is that you can't square the circle, and that it doesn't pay to be poor !
Irregular verbs:
"I invest, you are getting into debt, he is squandering taxpayers money"
Or, on cuts: "I make savings, you cut debt, he slashes essential services"
There is nothing inherently wrong with borrowing money as long as you know how you are going to pay for it.
Of course, one simple answer must be that many people must believe that more cuts can be made without affecting front-line services.
People are now better informed by the availability of good-quality information on what is spent/wasted on what by public bodies.
Freedom of Information requests, and groups like the Taxpayers' Alliance show just how poor value for money public sector organisations often achieve.
The question that needs answering is why this happens. My view on this is that (1) people who bid for contracts know what they can get away with, price-wise, and (2) people who commission services are often not well qualified/trained and often can't manage their own finances, therefore have no grip on what is a fair price to pay for Value.
Plus, there is information overload. People don't know what to believe these days (look how things 'kick off' on social media - and, when one tries to find sources on assertions/statistics, it's often not as it seems.
As several older people have said to me recently (and I'm summarising/paraphrasing hugely here) "When you have litle of your life left, you have less desire to spend what time you have on things that don't directly affect you - for example, getting involved in local issues, or protesing about things as you might have done in the past - there is no desire to bang your head against a wall as you know you'll be dead soon enough."
Re your 12.36 post, I am confused! I agree there is no problem in borrowing money if your know how you are going to repay it. (I am currently using interest free payment periods on credit cards until fixed term cash ISAs mature next year). But if our national debt c£1.5 trillion keeps on rising, when and how is it going to be reduced if never paid off if we don't start some time? Critics of the present government's plans never seem to know, or if they do never say, when the debt mountain should be tackled. The plain fact of the matter is that if any body, whether a person or a company or a country, incurs increasing debt they are at the time living beyond their means and morally if not for any other reason should at least have a viable repayment plan. Otherwise they are cheating their lenders, end of story. Most people I believe grasp this concept and that is why we are willing to put up with this supposed austerity.
Most people thought that - and in many cases could see that - the last Labour Government pissed money up the wall on things that most people didn't think were reasonable priorities. Thus opening the door for the Tories to not only stop all that but also a good deal more of really essential stuff. Liberals applied the brakes last Parliament. Labour spat on them for it. Thus the Tories now have carte blanche.
Thanks, Gordon. Great work, Ed.
For those of us that do not support the so-called austerity..I'm genuinely at a loss as to where we find an effective political alternative. The Labour Party don't provide it..which in a FPTP 2-party system leaves us with....
* A perception that Labour "overspent" during their time in Government - this is obviously backed up in some ways due to the state of the finances post-2008 crash, but damagingly, when Ed Milliband was quizzed on this in the run up to the election, he appeared to try and distance himself from the spending of the era rather than wear it as a badge of honour (which I think he should have done) - even if they did overspend, it seemed clear to me that spending did have to go up to make up for the lack of investment in the previous years, and doesn't imply that "spending = bad" but more that "spending is good, but only if you are more careful"
* A general perception that the Government is incapable of being efficient - whether it's reality or not is unclear to me - British Rail may not have been a particularly efficient setup, but then Railtrack weren't much cop either. This is also something that's likely being imported from the USA too, where things are WAY more extreme than here.
* Cyclical nature of politics - Thatcher/Major had 18 years where they were popular, then less popular, then horribly unpopular - then Labour were massively popular, medium popular, and then unpopular - Cameron hasn't exactly had huge amounts of popularity (at least in terms of being able to win the sort of majority that Thatcher or Blair managed) but it's enough to allow him to probably be PM for 10 years, before eventually, opinion will swing, and unless his successor is spectacularly successful in ways I can't imagine, they'll be out on their ear for a period again and the Labour (presumably) PM will probably spend until he's unpopular etc.
They rescued the banks.
For some unknown reason they didn't scream and shout this every time the Conservatives went on about "overspending".
What would the Conservatives have done if they'd been in charge? Would Osborne have allowed the entire banking system to collapse?
'Shouting in block capitals on the internet...does not make up for financial illiteracy...' Oops, re the capitals, how else does one emphasise a point? Can't find the option of say italics!
You say there is a difference between national debt and personal debt and that the Tories (presumably Mrs T)insidiously merged the two. You are of course right: nations continue and people die. But debt is debt. Currently national debt is some 80% of GDP. During WWII it exceeded 200% but in 1976 when Denis Healey had to scuttle back from Heathrow it was less than 50%. Control of debt is a necessity if you want financial flexibility when the poo hits the fan and, although a country can keep postponing repayments, at some time some have to be made otherwise one could end up like the Greeks, begging the German taxpayer to write off their debts. Not all Greeks are poor and not all Germans rich. That is why financial prudence, to avoid defaults, is sensible. WWII was ultimate austerity, people like my parents were happy to survive, be fed and get used to hand me downs and second hand goods. To stick to DG's original point or question, as others have pointed out, tax rises are unpopular therefore some public spending cuts are inevitable and the populace at large understand this, hence we are where we are.
You can avoid shouting by using standard commands for italics, bold, underline etc, e.g. by enclosing i, b, u or whatever within <> symbols and then undoing them with a slash before the command.
(a) in the population at large, and (b)commenting here today
know the actual size of the national debt, without looking it up?
Or what that equates to in terms of amount per head of the working population?
Or what that equates to in annual interest payments per household? (and as a % of GDP?)
If we look at the financial crises of 2008, 'we' bailed out the banks (exactly as the Tories would have done - point taken), so if we 'lent' the finance houses that money, then they owe it back to the UK, not me, not you. The finance sector's net profits since rescue have exceeded the amounts we 'lent' to them, so why aren't they paying back what they owe, and allowed to continue generating excessive profits? No proper socialist has a problem with 'reasonable' profits, which have a purpose (to shore up and develop the business) but it's the excessive surpluses, which solely line peoples' pockets which aggravate.
We have no choice about accepting cuts - I can't refuse, neither can you. This is political blackmail of the worst possible kind, and none of the above arguments (all read, some twice) change my mind.
Maybe Corbyn isn't the way out, but if he reforms the Labour Party (never mind becoming PM - I don't see how someone who's been a rebel all his life can suddenly accept that horrifying level of conformity), he can have the credit for it!
@Blue Witch: sad guy that I am, yes I do know the stats (I use them almost every month to bash my very nice Tory MP!), rounding a bit: national debt £1.5 trillion, GDP about £2 trillion, number of workers 30m, interest approaching £45bn. So: debt per worker c£50k and annual interest per worker £1500 pa, obviously more per household. Debt/GDP on the above = 75%, I quoted the slightly more exact figure of 80% earlier. To me these are frightening figures, action is needed and most citizens even if not aware of the detail agree.
Well thank you Chz. That's twice today that I've been patronised. Thanks.
The fact is that the realities/principles of personal economics do matter, when it comes down to paying for things at the local level (which is what the 2011 Localism Bill is driving towards).
They matter a lot.
Local councils/service providers/commisioners have much less ability/no ability to borrow than national governments. Therefore if they don't have the money, they can't provide services. Better use of the money they do have would enable them to do more with the money they do have.
If person x doesn't have the money to buy what they want, once they have exhausted the credit options available to them they have two options: (1) go without, or (2) get another job (or other income stream).
Which is exactly why local councils are looking for other income streams now that their budgets have been cut (one example from recent media - Bedfordshire police talking of setting speed cameras on the M1 to exactly 70mph rather than allowing the usual 10% for equipment accuracy - they reckon it will generate an extra million pounds a year from motorists to plug gaps).
Not sure if this is the first time you have posted here, or whether you are usually someone else... Most other people who hold differing views to the majority here give up and disappear eventually. But, I suspect there are a lot of champagne socialists around...
I'll just say that the FT are now reporting that the DfT have told TfL that it will lose its entire revenue grant [1] of roundly £700m per annum by 2020. I dare say DG's readers outside of London won't give a damn but our transport network is in for a woeful time as are the pockets of farepayers if the FT story is correct.
As it aligns with Sir Peter Hendy's view of the future just before he left TfL I'm going to assume the FT story is pretty much spot on.
[1] money to support the provision of affordable comprehensive services of a reasonable quality. Not investment grant to build new toys that allows Chancellor Osborne to sport a sparking hi vis jacket and get secretly very excited.
Long way to go break the comments record
Borrowing and debt is bad and irresponsible, but it's not when interest rates are low and it's not if government money is spent on improving public infrastructure. Most businesses borrow to invest in new products and to expand, and many families take out a mortgage to invest in somewhere to live.
The wicked thing this government is doing is to reduce low cost public debt by cutting welfare payments and driving the people affected into high cost personal debt, such as credit cards and pay day loans.
When all this only affected 'other people' it was accepted, but now it's affecting us all, as our parents can't get decent home care and our grown up children on zero hours contracts and minimum wage stand to lose more than a tenth of their earnings.
This government's supreme confidence in its economic prowess is now being revealed as a sham, as they fail to meet their own deficit reduction targets, and people begin to see through their homespun homilies about 'the party of the workers' when their ignorant attempts to cut tax credits fall apart around their heads in less than a week.
(I wonder if anyone had time to critique the comments...)
The lie we are being fed is that the people in charge of the UK's debt have the same standards and practices as those used to police our credit card payments.
Is this part of DG's secret monetisation strategy to carry out psychological experiments on "us" on behalf of some shady political party polling cabal!?
Re '...debt is only a bad thing if your creditors think it is...' Possibly true, but surely debt is often risky. At the moment the UK pays roughly an average 3% interest on £1.5tn. Say we end up paying 5% on £2.0tn, the interest bill goes from £45bn pa to a whopping £100bn. That in a nutshell is what I have been bleating about for 24+ hours. Reducing national debt reduces the risk of being stuck with a scarily large future interest bill.
That's my lot!
PFI and the NHS for example.
And when the rate goes up...
Sure, you have to invest, but to what level?
The fact that the UK has *never* reneged on any debt makes us a good credit prospect. Currently. But, if we leave the EU...
Interesting experiment BTW.
"DG, you and others who think like you have lost the plot. It is really quite simple."
Perhaps most people are just in it for themselves, and sod the rest. I hope not. But maybe nastiness is the natural state.
The Council is highly unlikely to be anything other than Tory in the near future and the majority of voters won't be affected by those cuts so although they might tut at some story in the local newspaper about e.g. damp homes or feral children on an estate, they'll blame the 'inefficient do-gooders' trying to fix these on a shoestring budget rather than the 'no such thing as society' credo that has dominated our politics for 30 years. (Dave's 'Big Society' was only ever a short-term gimmick to hide his agenda for cuts). Thatcher's children and grandchildren have never known anything different.
If I am not mistaken though, most UK government and other public sector debt is taken out at a fixed or index-linked interest rate - UK gilts certainly are. Taking out variable rate debt just now would indeed be unwise. Of course some local councils have done stupid things in the past, but they have to get Government approval for major borrowing.
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