Remember Thatcher !

Hadn't got down to your post! It is odd though how many people still seem to trot out the idea of Tories handling the deficit with necessary austerity measures.

The global economy crashes, as did ours. The global economy slowly recovered, as did ours. Austerity is just passing money from public sector to private sector, the Naylor report is advocating penalising hospitals who refuse to sell assets and service provision to independent contractors (as in they get fined if they have not sold off parts). It's not even subtle, I just don't get how instead of looking at the facts and figures people say the conservates are x and labour are y because some people say they are. Funnily enough the reporting media aren't actually impartial, they have a huge vested interest in lower corporation taxes and income tax- not conspiracy theories, just true.

 

Brown gave the control over setting the Base Rate to The Bank of England. Just that.
And it was a long overdue and good move. It kept Politician from making decisions that might be good for their party but bad for the Country.
Watering down the controls, which incidentally had been put in place following the meltdown after the 1928 crisis, to ensure this couldn't happen again, was all done on Gordons watch and by The Treasury, HIS Department which he, apparently ran under his tight personal control.

 

Amazing isn't it. Just trot out the "facts" (loose term) that support their arguments without actually looking at the reality of a situation.

I'm not one for stating that Labour are the be all and end all - I voted Blair in and backed him heavily back in the day (way before all the stuff came out about the illegality of "his" ventures into Iraq etc) and he was good for the country at first then bad for the country.

If the tories are in, the country runs at a deficit. If Labour are in, the country runs at a deficit. Although one large chunk of the deficit that Labour left the tories with was due to the Northern Rock banking crash - the deficit would've been reduced if the labour government hadn't bailed out the bank and used public money to pay for it - and thousands of people would've lost their homes and savings!

As someone who works in the NHS I feel the Tories will be a very poor party for me as a worker.

 

I am genuinely confused by the points you have been making.
Then again, I was up late for some reason, so might just not be at my best.

As I understand it you are unhappy that The Conservative Party introduced an 'Austerity Programme' because of the debt that the state was in.
This debt arose because the State had, at one time or another, spent more than was generated by the various taxes raised.
I presume we are in some sort of agreement so far?

To get things right, expenditure was reduced.
The alternative would have been an increase in taxation or perhaps both.
Still OK?

After some years of this the debt has actually grown.
You are blaming the Austerity Programme.

And that's the bit I don't get.
Should it have been even more austere?

If I understand your point you seem to be saying that The Government should have spent MORE.

I'm a simple soul who tends whenever possible to bring these things down to my own level.
So I relate this to my household spending.
If I'm going overdrawn I cut back the expenditure. (I'm too old to be able to increase my income).
I can not see how increasing my expenditure will reduce my debt.

Of course I'm assuming in this that debt is a bad thing. Certainly too much of it is.

Now just to be clear, I have no axe to grind.
I dislike the loony left just as much as I do the rabid right.
I dislike and distrust most Politician of whatever Party.
Except when Chris Mullin was my MP, (one of the few I would trust) I tend to vote for whichever party is not in power*. I do this as I feel that losing the odd election is good for politicians.

So, I'm not trying to make a point but I would like to understand the case you are making.

PS*

Just to be honest I changed this practice Yesterday.
As a former Serviceman,I would have died of shame had I cast a vote for a Party led by someone who was in favour of decorating members of the IRA for their bravery against my successors.

 

It's a strange situation - but, as I said further above, the deficit would've been reduced under the previous Labour government had the financial mess that Northern Rock created not been apparent. The Government increased the deficit in order to ensure people did not lose savings/homes etc in order to bail out a company that had seriously ballsed up! (I know for certain there will be people on here who would be grateful for that!) - the Tories then introduce the FSCS to ensure that it wouldn't cost them if the same thing happened - so they reacted to something that it was almost impossible to be proactive about and sung their own praises for it

The Conservatives then came in with all of their ways to reduce this deficit and made cuts to public sectors yet still managed to increase the deficit by more than 50% in less time than Labour had in power (when they effectively cut the deficit - albeit by a small amount but still managed to reduce it if not for that financial crisis). Empty promises (I suppose you kind of cover that! I don't trust politicians either!)

 

This has been an interesting thread, with plenty of sensible debate. Some I agree with, others I don't, but I'll leave you with this thought.....

If Labour or the Tories were so great at running the country, why do so many people vote against the "great job" that the party of the day are doing?

Whoever said " you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time" was bang on!

 

I look at it slightly different just think how high it would of been if Labour were in.

 

We mostly agree mate. Where we differ is our understanding of what austerity has actually been in reality. Of course on any level (micro or macro) if you spend more than you have then you're in trouble and the only way out of it is to either earn more or spend less, there's no argument there. However, the debt has risen hugely and there are a number of very, very Tory policies which have been slipped in under the mantle of "austerity" which has been no such thing. Many of the private companies who have been brought in to handle schools and hospitals are charging the country more money than if it had been left in the public sector, Hunt even literally wrote a book about how you could go about chunking sections of the NHS and selling it off the business - only the profitable parts of course, the bits that actually make money. Austerity itself has valid reasons, my issue is that it has been used as a smokescreen for a variety of policies which have nothing at all to do with saving the country money and everything to do with cutting wages in the public sector to make it more sale-able for profits to then be passed on to business. It makes me sick.

 

Spot on Dorset. There are staunch labour, staunch conservative, staunch lib dem etc everywhere. Those who think they're right always argue their point for their party and ignore the negatives. Nobody will ever be the perfect pm. It's simply not possible to please all of the people all of the time.

Monster Raving Loony all the way... I remember back in the 90's they promised a free skiing holiday for everyone when they won. They had their victory party the day before the election!! But then again... Some people will hate skiing too

 

I work in the NHS,
Over the last financial year my department (5 of us) brought in a "surplus" of over £2m (technically a profit but not allowed to be called that)
Because we're NHS we were still subject to cuts across the entire training budget and our profit was fed into other departments who had made losses. Can you imagine if we were a private company just how much we'd be charging for this? Our relationship with customers etc is also first class so it's all done the right way. So far this financial year we've brought in a surplus of over £600k but have been told to pull back as were effectively making too much money!

 

I'm obviously more than a bit out of touch about these thing but I don't doubt you.

What you say though sounds like an extension of the Blair / Brown disastrous Public/Private Partnership Policy, (if I have the name right). The one where large construction companies build such as schools and hospitals then lease them off to the public sector for a wacking great profit.
This in turn was preceded on a smaller scale but in very great numbers by Doctors building their own surgeries and getting the public sector to pay them a rent broadly equal to the loan repayments being charged. When the property was paid for the rent was to continue.

Both of these schemes were put forward under the guise of enabling schemes to go ahead with them not APPEARING to be Public Expenditure and outside of the Public Borrowing statistics. (A rose by any other name?)
And in the sense of Capital cost this was true.
It continues to be a drain on current costs though.

Or to put it another way, a smokescreen to baffle the public, put up by politicians, and it seems that it's not just one Party that does it.

Who can you trust?

p.s.

Can I add what an interesting debate this has been, in general.
I for one have learned things.

 

You are absolutely correct. The PFI's (Privately Funded Initiatives) were brought in to help fund new buildings and developments in the public sector but the numbers were lunacy. They were loans at marginally unhealthy rates of interest with guaranteed returns to private business, the fact that a Labour party brought them in was scandalous - though Blair only vaguely qualified as a red to be fair.

ps. Feel free to doubt me, I question myself most of the time. I assure you I do at least believe what I'm saying to be correct and it tends to have been checked a bit, though that is no guarantee!!

 

Your a smart cookie Mr Haslet

 

I hate it when people correct grammar on a forum but it just felt like a good response.

 

PFI was brought in by the Tories but continued and expanded by Blair and Brown when they had a big enough majority to reverse it. Intention to reduce the Public Sector Borrowing Rate (PSBR) and all sorts of accountancy manoeuvres to keep it off balance sheet.

 

I recommend that the UD gets banned for just mentioning the name.