[Archived] Election

[tashor]

None of that was as odious as the tories cheering as the cuts to the poorer and disabled were announced. Still, that's conservative ideaology isn't it? Isn't that why people vote Tory?

1 million workers to lose jobs.

3.5m people predicted to be on jobseekers

IFS saying the cuts are regressive.

They appeared to be loving it.

And so they should...........

As a Tory voter I know I do...............

[Flopsy]

Ed Miliband sounds like William Pitt the younger from Blackadder third.

As for the cuts, well we shall see, but Labour would have cut just as deep, but probably would have waited longer & would have done a worse job.

I've had to take a20 % pay cut & lost my final salary pension as I understand it the unions have rejected similar offers which would have sorted a lot of the cuts

[ABBEY]

And so they should...........

As a Tory voter I know I do...............

i really hope you lose your job after that...i think you can go on ignore when i get back to a pc.

Osbourne can barely disguise his glee ! The Lib-dems seem to be getting off on it nicely as well.

or tashor!!!

[RovertheHill]

What I don't understand is this.

The headline makers talk about the biggest spending cuts ever etc etc.

This is what Osborne said about expenditure

"Next year, current expenditure will be £651 billion, then £665 billion the year after, £679 billion the year after that, before reaching £693 billion in 2014-15"

In 2009 expenditure was £638 billion. In 2008 it was £582 billion. In 2006 it was £524 billion at a time when Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister claiming that he'd overseen the longest period of sustained growth ever etc etc

Now inflation isn't that much so where has all that money gone (and it isn't into the banks before anyone says that)? And if we were prosperous in 2006 spending £125 billion LESS than we will spend next year why will the country implode into a new recession?

[modes98]

the jobs that are going to be lost will be mostly people leaving for better private jobs and retiring from the jobs. And then not replacing them. But some people will be sack this is unavoidable.

We are paying more in debt and interest than we spend on defence because we spend more than we have. Also we have to cut now to balance the budget and clear the debt and interest on the debt. I think it's about time we all got A REALITY CHECK. We can't afford everything we want in life and its the same with the government. It's about time we has a country live within our means.

Also why do public sector workers only have to work till 60 but the private sector workers have to work till 66. This is totally unfair imo and it's about time the public sector live in the real work and work till 66 years old. Also why do the trade unions keep on moaning about the public sector is being attacked by the government. TYPICAL TRADE UNIONS!!! IMO it's about time they started living in the real world. We have to make cuts at the place I work at! But we have to live with it or they would be redundancies to the workforce.

Oh dear! No the majority will not be leaving for better private jobs, it isn't that simple and although we have an ageing population you don't see that dramatic a retirement level. People won't be sacked they will be made redundant, which involves a high pay off when they leave.

Your understanding of economics is outstanding, we have debt because we have spent more than we have made. The thing being that during boom times you run a surplus and in recession you run a deficit, so the idea is you pay back your debt during your boom years, never works in practice as Governments seek reelection by spending. The level of interest being paid is simply another figure on a computer screen which seems large but really isn't that severe if managed correctly. If you stimulate the economy you increase GDP and make more money, this alongside Income tax increases and Bank taxes would provide a better basis to slowly decrease spending and allow cutting of debt with a thriving economy. The good thing about Governments is they can get exactly what they want and the Tories have the perfect present from Labour in an excuse to make the cuts they so wanted to make, even better when they get a thumbs up from the Liberals.

Public Sector workers have a varied retirement age depending upon which sector they work in. I work for the NHS and my retirement age would be 65, although this is likely to be 70 by the time I get there, the majority of workers have the same retirement level as the private sector. Trade Unions moan about being attacked because the majority of people they represent are public service employees, so it makes sense they would moan when it is their members issues and jobs on the line. People lose their jobs and the union get weaker.

Osbourne can barely disguise his glee ! The Lib-dems seem to be getting off on it nicely as well.

Not a surprise, the puppet master comes to the fore. I have to admit I like all the press playing, it is blatantly obvious what the leaks they make and how they use the press, or the press let themselves be used, to further the message that this is the only way and how dare anyone question it.

Ed Miliband sounds like William Pitt the younger from Blackadder third.

As for the cuts, well we shall see, but Labour would have cut just as deep, but probably would have waited longer & would have done a worse job.

I've had to take a20 % pay cut & lost my final salary pension as I understand it the unions have rejected similar offers which would have sorted a lot of the cuts

I liked Ed's first speech but he hasn't gone on and done anything at all, I know it is early but he needs to attack and put over his opinions (if he has any).

Darlings plans for "the cuts" we're sound and would have provided good market stimulus as well as making good savings. Rather than the strange tiered system of pain Mr Osbourne has implemented. I noticed the distinct lack of previous quotes about the richest being hit hardest.

[thenodrog]

i really hope you lose your job after that...i think you can go on ignore when i get back to a pc.

or tashor!!!

Don't take it so seriously Abbs. Den was having a right old moan about the tories as he always does everytime he gets a chance. Labour would have had to do the same to avoid bankrupting the country but some people steadfastly refuse to believe it.

[Bazzanotsogreat]

Oh dear! People won't be sacked they will be made redundant, which involves a high pay off when they leave.

I don't think so.... Most councils will offer 1 weeks salary for every year served capped at 30 years service. Therefore people with four years or less will get less than a months worth of redundancy.

Unless you have twenty years service and earn more than 30K your redundancy package will be pitiful.

[92er]

Osbourne can barely disguise his glee ! The Lib-dems seem to be getting off on it nicely as well.

Osborne. As in Osborne and Little.

[Flopsy]

Darlings plans were not sound, they were vague wushu washy "efficiency savings" & no details on what or where cuts were to be made. & anyway if labour had won the election Balls would have been made chancellor, then we wouldn't be having this conversation because all the lights would have gone out.

Expenditure is back to 2008 levels, it will be painful, but would have been less so if labour had had the courage to do a CSR last year or a year before instead of spurging billions more borrowed money in a vain hope to buy enough votes to cling onto power that little bit longer.

Want to know why defence is so badly hit? One of the main reasons is the carrier contracts signed so as to (Please don't use that word again) the incoming administration completely by near criminal cancelation fees.

[BuckyRover]

Didn't it cost more to cancel than it did to build?

Poison pill?

I agree with you wholeheartedly agree with you Flopsy. I didn't vote Tory because I wanted to crush the poor (it's pathetic that those kind of insults are bandied around), I did it because I no longer had the confidence that Labour could be responsible with our economy.

I might be wrong, but I guess we will find out.

[jim mk2]

As a Tory voter I know I do...............

Makes sense: Nasty party, nasty poster.

Moving on, some of Tories who have been planning today's attack on Britain's weakest and poorest were this week accused of tax avoidance on Channel 4's Dispatches prgramme.

International development secretary Andrew Mitchell was shown to have invested at least £130,000 into offshore investment funds, one of which is based in the Caribbean tax haven of the British Virgin Islands.

Transport secretary Philip Hammonreveals was revaled to have "done a a Philip Green" – i.e. he transferred some of his assets over to his wife, resulting in a much-reduced tax bill for the millionaire. Last October, he transferred 40 per cent of his shares in Castlemead Ltd. (a company which has paid him £3.75 million in dividends since 2003) to his wife.

By transferring shares to his wife, any payouts she receives from the company could be taxed at a lower rate, and the fact that Mr Hammond made this transfer last October – just six months before the new higher rates of tax for high-earners was introduced this April – makes this potential tax saving even more valuable. According to tax experts, she stands to make a tax saving of £180,000 for every £1m of profit.

Meanwhile, George Osborne was revealed by the programme to have set up offshore trusts, one of the most common ways for the super rich to avoid paying inheritance tax –and there will be no inheritance tax to pay on the death of Mr Osborne's father, a saving of up to £1.6m.

This is all against the rhetoric of Treasury secretary Danny Alexander, the turncoat former Lib Dem who said before the election "We will be ruthless with those often wealthy people and businesses who think they can treat paying tax as an optional extra. This will mean: A crackdown on those hiding money offshore. And that includes not only those who illegally evade tax but those who use entirely legal means to avoid paying their fair share to the taxman."

While public sector workers contemplate years without pay rises and possible unemployment it appears the ConDem govt has no intention of closing down the loopholes from which so many of them appear to have benefited at the expense of us all.

[Flopsy]

Jim want to discuss the tax evasion the majority of labours ministers & now shadow ministers carried out?

Majority of public workers have had pay rises over the last few years majority of private have had freezes or reductions in the years before the election. So the Public Sector won't get a lot of sympathy from the majority of private sector tax payers.

[jim mk2]

the Tories have the perfect present from Labour in an excuse to make the cuts they so wanted to make, even better when they get a thumbs up from the Liberals.

True unfortunately. The Tories are presenting these cuts as a necessity when in reality they are being driven by ideology.

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

You've got it in a sentence Jim. They've been waiting for this moment all my working life.

[Flopsy]

You do realise that the cuts will take us back to 2008 spending levels?

[tashor]

None of that was as odious as the tories cheering as the cuts to the poorer and disabled were announced. Still, that's conservative ideaology isn't it? Isn't that why people vote Tory?

Makes sense: Nasty party, nasty poster.

Well over 10 million people voted Tory....

Including much loved posters hereabouts - some, I believe, Tory counsellors........

They all find the ill fortune of the "poorer and disabled" a reason to celebrate???????

Yeh, right...........

I struggled to post something as gratuitously offensive as the first post I quoted.........

Or as rabid as our 80's fixated class-warrior...........

It is to my credit that apparently I succeeded

[Paul]

Since reading this article in The Guardian, Child Benefit: a stay at home mother's story followed a bit later by this story in the same paper Family finances, the abuse you'll get for £45,000 a year I've been trying to work out my view on how and who the state should be funding. My initial reaction to the mother's story was you have a good life, better than many, then I read the second article and thought some more about it. Today I listened to the whole of Osborne's speech while enroute to Bristol and on the way home I listened to The Moral Maze on Radio 4 which will be available to download for 10 days. One reads this board and it exemplifies the real issue our society faces - division. Division in wealth, opinion, race, creed, attitude. At one end of the spectrum we have jim mk2's views at the other posters with extreme right wing views. There seems to be so little expressed that is in the middle. In The Moral Maze debate one contributor put forward the view the economy is supposed to work for us and not the other way round and coupled this with the suggestion we do not know what is "enough." By which she meant we do not appreciate or understand what is an acceptable level of income at both higher and lower limits. Just how much stuff do we all really need?

In my life time both political parties have made serious errors, or rather in the years I've been old enough to appreciate the consequences. The Tories, to take some popular examples, sold our public utilities, destroyed major industries and wasted oil revenues, Labour in the rush to rebuild, literally in some areas, society overspent, perhaps recklessly, creating jobs in services, which we need, but which do not produce wealth. There has been pitifully little investment in work which produces product to sell - in my little circle I only know two other people who actually make something. Equally both parties have done much good but it is of course far more difficult to recall those things.

The more I think about this the more I can't help but feel the government has missed a trick today, and I don't suggest Labour would have got it right either. This spending review is said to be radical, it seems to me the same old Tory attitudes returning, and there was the opportunity to be radical. While the whole country believes we are in a deep hole, because we are told every day that we are, the electorate would probably have accepted just about anything the chancellor chose to do. He could have been truely radical, he could have made sure state funding really went to those who needed it, he could have said to the stay at home mother at £45,000 you are in the top 10% of earnings, shut up and get on with it. He could have hit the banks very hard, after all we own them, he could have invested in industry. He didn't and I doubt Darling would have done anything that different. It's a shame because we might, just might, have swallowed a truely radical approach at this time. it was an opportunity and I think it passed by today.

We now have to face more of the same. There won't be any real change. The change will only come when society as a whole recognises everyone must make a realistic contribution, that the services provided by the public sector are extremely valuable if we want a "rich" society, that income must be earned by everyone and going to work must be made financially worthwhile, those who earn the most must be prepared to contribute the most. We have the sixth highest GDP in the world, we are a wealthy nation we should be able to afford all we need. I can't help but feel the lady who said we need to learn what is "enough" is right and until we do this we won't get away from the enormous swings in the manner in which the country and economy is run.

One day someone with a bit of power may have the balls to do it. Osborne didn't and clearly Cameron doesn't either.Would Milliband and Darling? Doubt it. But with a coalition government there should have been a better chance. Disappointing.

Apoligies. It's probably nonsense.

[LeChuck]

Child Benefit: a stay at home mother's story

"But the reality is, as a family living in an expensive area..."

Stopped reading there.

If people choose to live in an expensive area then they shouldn't be receiving government hand outs for their kids. If that family can't afford to live in an expensive area without handouts then they need to move.

[Flopsy]

No, it's quite reasonable. (to Paul's point)

Ian Duncan Smith and the Lib dems (and to be fair, it appears Osbourne) are trying very hard to make it worthwhile for people at the lower end of the market to work. Under the last government the minute you earned a certain amount you lost most of your benefits, leading to near 90% taxation. That's disgraceful. Hopefully sorting that will help people to work, boost tax take & eventually reduce welfare.

We shall see.

I note that a certain MP for Kirkaldy was AWOL again. I'd be well ###### off if he was my MP

[Paul]

"But the reality is, as a family living in an expensive area..."

Stopped reading there.

If people choose to live in an expensive area then they shouldn't be receiving government hand outs for their kids. If that family can't afford to live in an expensive area without handouts then they need to move.

It's really, really easy to look at it in this way. Read the rest of the article, avoid the initial reaction, mine was the same, and think about it. You are immediately characterising this family. I agree they should be able to live without state support but it's actually about a lot more than that. It's about division and the reaction to that division and by characterisation you fall into the trap.

[thenodrog]

"But the reality is, as a family living in an expensive area..."

Stopped reading there.

If people choose to live in an expensive area then they shouldn't be receiving government hand outs for their kids. If that family can't afford to live in an expensive area without handouts then they need to move.

Rather an introverted point of view Lechuck. imo Most people in the country live in expensive areas now.

1. Can you inform me where is an inexpensive area to live in England?

2. Also by implication you are proposing that 80% of the country should not have access to a local Doctor.

3. I'm also not convinced of the morality either of the people that pay most into a system (or society) being denied benefitting from that system. It is certainly in direct opposition to the basic socialist principle that everybody is equal.

Cambridge Dictionary....

Socialism noun /ˈsəʊ.ʃəl.ɪ.zəm//ˈsoʊ-/ n

The set of beliefs which states that all people are equal and should share equally in a country's money.

[koi]

I note that a certain MP for Kirkaldy was AWOL again. I'd be well ###### off if he was my MP

At least he's got some shame then! The amount of spending he increased during 2008 and 2009 is nothing short of scandalous. Jonathan Powell really laid into him yesterday and whilst I know he's selling a book there's overwhelming consistency about how incredibly poor he was. IMO it's hard to choose Blair's biggest mistake; the Iraq war or keeping Brown in a job.

Read a funny twitter last night; 'Alistair Darling is like the bloke at the pub who owes you a tenner; he's always good for it.....next week'. Quite.

[jim mk2]

At least he's got some shame then! The amount of spending he increased during 2008 and 2009 is nothing short of scandalous. .

Brown had to increase spending during 2008 and 2009 to bail out the banks and pump money into the economy to keep it going in the teeth of the biggest worldwide recession since the 1930s. This is why Britain now has such a large deficit - not because of "spending". Brown's policy was successful and Britain's economy emerged from recession in spring 2009 and has been recovering since then. It is this recovery that is now threatened by Osborne's slash and burn of the public sector. This has been explained on here many times before and is not difficult to understand.

[BuckyRover]

It was an unavoidable decision. Unfortunately he also had a deficit in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. Which meant that we screwed when the bust came (he believed he had abolished bust, going against all economic theory). It was only at this point he started using Keynesian theory.

Look at the German deficit now, even after bailing out another country. Why are they doing ok? Do you think they believed they had abolished bust?

Is that too hard to understand?

[Amo]

It strikes me that the Tories are trying to recover the economy with too much, too soon. It has to be a gradual process, otherwise the #### will well and truly hit the fan.