please empty your brain below
I can't begin to communicate as simply and as effective as you how ill thought out, short termist, and ideologcally driven these cuts are.... for example the BBC licence fee being frozen for 6 years will not help cut the deficit in any way whatsoever, and is purely ideologically (and Murdoch) driven. The assumption that half a million public sector jobs will immediately be picked up by the private sector is ridiculous, and therefore the the amount spent on unemployment benefit will surely increase, apart from the fact that's probably going to be cut as well. The reduction in funding for social housing by half is worse than anything Thatcher would have tried.
Yes, the deficit needs to be reduced, but the scale and swiftness of these cuts seems to me like letting your children go hungry to pay off your mortgage a few years early...
OK rant over...
Of course, we woouldn't *be* in this mess were it not for his total mismanagement of the economy... It's amazing how short some people's memories are.
Let's blame the coalition for having to take drastic measures to keep UK PLC financially viable, while saying it's all the fault of the bankers/gloabl economy.
*If* that were the case, then every other country in the world would be in a mess too. And most of them are not.
I'd rather it got sorted sooner rather than later. Short-term pain for long-term gain. It's how we've paid off our mortgage years early. Sort the debts out and then you've got real choices. And that applies to country-debts and equally to personal-debts.
It appears to me that they know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Oh, the irony! Blue Witch - weren't you an ardent advocate of credit card stoozing - juggling large cash loans on credit cards offering interest free periods to offset against your mortgage? I bet that helped a great deal more than wearing a hair shirt. But perhaps that was using credit cards that were issued by finance companies that were not in part responsible for the global financial crisis? It's a shame we're all not so self-righteous, eh?
Loopholes in benefits, taxes etc etc.
You really can't blame people for using loopholes they're bright enough to spot.
Maybe stick to the Labour cuts which would be, let's say 2/3 of these?
Or carry on regardless and watch the country go bust in a year.
Cheap grandstanding. Adds nothing. Get back to topography and history: something you understand and do very well indeed.
Democracies are messy and that's why sometimes Local Authorities do things that seem to lack common sense. Greg Tinsley's comment about widespread corruption in LBWF is completely unfounded. If he does have evidence of it what is he doing about it? It's also worth pointing out that LAs don't have the power to give away buildings that they don't actually own.
Let's be clear about this - the govt is not paying historically amounts on interest payments, the deficit is not historically high, and there is no chance whatsoever of "UK PLC" going bust.
Cuts to public services (due to a recession caused by part of the private sector) are ideologically driven and nothing more.
Some fiscal sanity has to be restored. I'm thinking you are probably too young to remember the dire financial state the last Labour administration left us in. 97.5% tax rates anybody?
The world has changed and maybe the usual responses will not work anymore.
I think I will need many cups of tea today and tomorrow.
Nothing is ever good, nothing is even done well. They tell us how we have to suffer, then retire to their comfortable life.
What would have been done under the Tories in the previous 13 years. Would the high speed link been built to France? Would any investment gone on the rail infrastructure of this country. Would we have seen the investment in the Hospitals and schools. No.
Any they moan about the overspending. But who overspent, the private companies paid by our hard earn monies who took the piss, with inflated the prices and didn't really try their best and hardest for this country.
And yes that is where Labour failed they should have been on their case, because they should have known that these people would try to screw us rotten. They knew they wouldn't get the blame and their fat wallets would be ok when their pals the Tories came in.
All we need now is a war in the Falklands in 3 years time, Cameron can be the hero and rule supreme. Or has anyone forgot how awful it was to be around between 1979-1981 when the Tories were destroying our country.
As with all things, the truth lies somewhere between the extremes.
My view is this (and, since others have shared their views, I hope you won't mind me using your comment space to add mine): the truth is that our economy is in a worse state that other similar economies in Europe, which suggests govt mismanagement. The truth is that Labour proposed massive cuts before the election, so would be hypocritical to suggest that we can carry on without cuts now. The truth is that the Tories do believe in a smaller state and will take this chance to carry that through, like it or not. The truth is that we are all going to get hurt, one way or another - some more so than others, and certainly not limited to "hard working middle classes" or the poor. The truth is that the bankers contributed to the situation, significantly, but they also make an easy scapegoat - and they made their contribution under a regulatory framework designed by Gordon Brown. The truth is that the last govt spent £5 for every £4 it earned in taxes and that can never be sustained.
The truth is that those of the right of centre, like me, have had to watch govt of a persuasion that we did not like for the last 13 years. In truth, for a large part, it was not as bad as all that (although the national debt, the unemployment higher than 1997, the war in Iraq and plenty of other things are all pretty bad). Now those who are left of centre are watching a govt that they don't like - it will be unpleasant, uncomfortable and they may even shout "no". In truth, it won't be as bad as all that for much of the time (although they won't like the cuts, they won't like the public school boys (whilst forgetting that several major NewLab folk went to public school) and they won't like a bunch of other things. And then, in a few years time, the pendulum will swing the other way and the roles will be reversed.
It was ever thus. We live under a govt system where we each have a vote, but ultimately the decisions are taken by a small coterie of professional politicians who only ever represent a minority. Perhaps that system should change - but perhaps then we would end up like Belgium. I feel that reducing the reach and power of the state must, perversely, be good for democracy as it will restore power to those who should be taking the decisions - you and me - and reducing the power of the coterie to impact upon our lives.
Either way, I hope that today, and in the days to come, the discussion will be mature and reasoned. Somehow, I doubt that will be the case - in parliament, in the media, in the blogosphere or in the pub. The mud will be slung.
Really? USA, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, many of the Eastern European EU countries, to name but a few, are in a mess. In fact, many of the countries that have economies like ours, and many of them had right leaning governments at the time the problem was caused.
The ones that aren't in a mess are mostly those that didn't have economies to be destroyed in the first place.
Please don't buy the Tory lies. These cuts are purely ideological. They will hurt the worst-off in our society and will divide us as Thatcher so effectively did in the 80-'s.
It was in the Guardian. Funny that.
Where are you from Michael? And who is it you think we need to pay?
The majority of most countries' deficit is made up of government bonds belonging to pension funds and institutional investors, who are probably worried that they will pay up and they'll have to find other lucrative ways to make money.
I haven't.
What we needed was re-investment. Infrastructure repaired, new homes, hospitals and schools built. People employed, people spending, people saving.
What we're getting is higher unemployment, deeper poverty, homelessness, breakdown of NHS, higher crime rates, troops fighting with one hand tied behind their backs, failing schools, people spending their savings.
And David: how rude!
Pity the comment box resembles something from the Daily Hate.
Really Denise? You paid for my mortgage? I don't think so. It's much more likely that the banks fleeced us on our savings rate enough for us to get a bit back, and for them to still be quids in.
Real freeloading from the banks, Denise, was done by those people who attempted to claim back charges they'd legitimately (according to T&Cs available to them) had to pay. IMO, of course, but then I wasn't someone who tried it on in that way. because I manage our money carefuly enough to have never paid bank charges in my life.
I did not abuse any system. And I never would. I was just bright enough to spot an opportunity, adn time rich enough to avail myself of it. A loophole the banks have now closed. In the same way that the governmint should close a lot of loopholes in a lot of systems. Most of which they have still been left wide open today.
And the rich will drive by, on their way to their country cottages in cute villages and tut at the utter utter greyness of it all.
I voted Lib Dem thinking they would be a viable third party.
Never Ever Again.
Bastards.
kittens tomorrow...please DG ??
we can only hope.
Perhaps if we stopped having a system where we swung from one political extreme to another, we might actually stop having a rollercoaster economy.
Well maybe you shouldn't post lazy, provocative, derivative and political posts then...Just saying....
nail-head-hit-the-on
I can think back to 60 years ago in Essex-London.
Do you wonder what it will be like here in 60 years' time?
My guess is that we have just had the best of it in this area. Cheap oil did that for us.
So it'll be back to the 50s then - rationing, no hot water from a tap, very little heating, basic food.
And lots of laughs.
Oh, and lots of buses.
I'd rather take the cuts as opposed to tax raises - people telling scary stories about Tories somehow conveniently forget Labour's 33%-83% income tax in 70s.
The original "First they came..." verse was written about the inactivity of people to stand up to the rise of the Nazis in Germany and the holocaust that came as a result.
To then use (or 'subvert') this verse to bitch about spending cuts seems rather tasteless. Or histrionic.
They have come for us already, and destroyed an industry which was also a great export success.
Get a grip!
Take care.
CF
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