Off Topic The Politics Thread

Just plain un-British, Goldie. I'm surprised that a patriot like yourself would want this. Saying it's OK for a news organisation to push a hard left agenda if it's not being paid for by the public purse implies you're also just as happy for a news organisation to pursue a hard right agenda if it's not being paid for by the public purse. Well, as you well know, there are a few of those already. Rupert Murdoch doesn't own them all, I'm sure.

The BBC employs people from all colours of the political spectrum. Laura Kuenssberg, the Political Editor, is widely recognised as being a Conservative. That doesn't mean she is biased in her reporting. They are professionals and not subject to the same pressures that a privately-owned company run by a member of the elite would impose.

I see it as a mark of the BBCs impartiality that both left and right often say it is biased towards the other side and unfair towards them. The biggest problem Murdoch has with the BBC is he doesn't control it and can't make money from it.

 

Nothing UnBritish about breaking up an organisation that claims to be impartial but isn't (Kuenssbery is about as Conservative as Ed Balls). Let's get rid of the hypocrisy and save people some money unless they want to subscribe. If you buy the Sun, you know you're getting a right wing view. If you buy the Guardian, you know it's the opposite.

If you want an idea of the BBC's impartiality, track down a recording of the "leader's debate" which Amber Rudd attended in place of May. Most of the audience had been shipped in from Momentum.

 

Apart from the financial institutions who were bailed out of a hole of their own making, who has benefitted from austerity?

Seriously austerity fans, tell me what it has delivered apart from some sado masochistic pleasure for Gideon and a harder life if you happen to be a nurse, teacher, policeman, disabled, a pensioner on a fixed income, living in a social housing block clad on the cheap etc etc and otherwise completely innocent of the causes of the crash?

What it has contributed to is a deeply divided, angry and confused electorate. Bravo.

 

Would be interested to see that if you have a link.

Here's one about a Tory councillor posing as a random member of the public.

http://m.huffpost.com/uk/entry/uk_5915562ce4b00f308cf43291

 

...and there was the Corbynite the other day that Dimbleby kicked out. I don't blame the program for not vetting these. They'll always be some that try it on.

Election debate here:

 

The BBC cannot be accused of bias in the selection of that audience. They didn't select it. It was a private company called ComRes. Their brief was to be impartial and have an audience representative of all the parties appearing. Just because the audience didn't like what Amber Rudd had to say doesn't make the broadcaster biased. It doesn't make the audience right, either. I don't give a monkeys what the audience thinks.

Regarding Kuenssberg - I said she was not biased, despite being widely considered to be a Conservative, because she is a professional. Impartial, - like the rest of the BBC.

 

what was the likely outcome for the country without austerity
why is it still going on

 

I am no austerity fan, is anyone really?

In my opinion whether it's the Tories or Labour running this country it doesn't make that much difference. This is because we are living beyond our means and spending more than the UK's tax revenue will ever be able to cover. In fact you could compare our country's finances to when Tony took our club over and signed a squad we could not afford.


The UK's budget deficit
As a country, we've grown accustomed to living beyond our means. The Government's tax revenues are rarely enough to fulfill its generous spending promises, so every year Britain runs a large budget deficit. The money we can't raise from taxation needs to be borrowed, and as taxpayers, we're the guarantee on the loan. Every year, this budget deficit is added to our national debt.

In 1997 Labour inherited a budget that was actually in balance. After a painful and turbulent decade under the Tories, the public finances had finally been brought under control. But after four years in office Gordon Brown took out the country's credit card and let rip. By the end of 2009-10 our annual deficit had ballooned to £170.8 billion.

This graph shows how the UK's budget deficit has fluctuated as a percentage of the country's economic output (GDP):

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As the graph shows, the budget was barely in surplus for more than a few years. We've been maxing out a new credit card almost every year, even in the good times. If a company were run like this, it would have long been declared bankrupt. So how much longer can we defy financial gravity? Well, we're about to find out.

Public finances out of control
At the very time tax revenues are declining and a debt crisis is ravaging the global economy, our politicians have chosen to go on an unprecedented spending splurge. To fund it, the Government borrowed a monumental £170.8 billion last year. If all goes well, we're set to borrow another £167.9 billion this year.

This kind of deficit is far greater than during the recessions of the 80s and early 90s and even higher than when Britain went cap in hand to the IMF in 1976. This isn't money saved for a rainy day. Because we continued to rack up debt in the good years, this latest spending spree is fueled by one big borrowing binge.

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Next: "Who do we borrow all this money from?"

 

The role of the bond market
The British Government borrows money by selling bonds, known as 'gilts'. These bonds are sold at regular auctions held by the UK Debt Management Office (DMO), on behalf of Her Majesty's Treasury. The term gilt is short for 'gilt-edged security' and is a reference to their perceived safety as an investment. The Government has never failed to make a repayment on a gilt.

When a gilt is sold, the Government guarantees to pay the holder a fixed interest payment every six months until the maturity date, at which point the full value of the bond is repaid. The proceeds from a gilt sale are then spent by the Government and the value of the gilt is added to our national debt.

On average, the bonds that make up our national debt need to be repaid within 15 years. With government spending so far out of control, interest on the national debt will cost over £42 billion this year. Currently we can only afford to make repayments by selling even more gilts. When run on this basis, government deficit financing is similar to an illegal Ponzi scheme.

Who we owe the money to
The DMO publishes a quarterly report that shows who currently owns the UK's debt, summarized in the pie chart below:

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Although the majority of gilts are held by British institutions, it's worth noting that the amounts held overseas has risen sharply since 2003. Currently just over 35% of our national debt is owed to foreign governments and investors. So it's not just Third World nations in hock to the rest of the world. We're relying on the confidence of foreign investors to keep our own country afloat.

 

Measuring the national debt
The precise term 'National Debt' refers to an older definition of public debt that excludes too many liabilities to be meaningful nowadays. The official government measure of what is commonly known as the national debt is Public Sector Net Debt. In this context, public sector refers to central government, local government and publicly-owned corporations.

Measuring Public Sector Net Debt (PSND) is the joint responsibility of the Office of National Statistics and HM Treasury. In their words, PSND "records most financial liabilities issued by the public sector less its holdings of liquid financial assets, such as bank deposits." The debt is financed by the sale of government bonds, or more recently, printing money via the Bank of England's Quantitative Easing programme.

Bank bailouts
The Treasury have made some provision in their forecasts for the losses we're likely to make on the bank bailouts. As of April 2009, unrealised losses from financial sector interventions account for £134.5 billion of the national debt. Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley account for £123 billion, with a further £9 billion going to compensate depositors with the Dunfermline Building Society.

If this wasn't bad enough, the picture is going to get considerably worse. The Office of National Statistics has classified the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds as public corporations but hasn't yet included their liabilities in the national debt. When they finally crunch the numbers, expect the results to be ugly. According to EU figures, Britain has pledged £781.2 billion in capital injections, liability guarantees and liquidity support to the banking system. As taxpayers, we're on the hook for any losses.

PFI
The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is a form of commercial partnership between government and private companies to build and maintain public projects. Since taking office in 1997, Labour have made extensive use of PFI to fund infrastructure programmes. PFI currently accounts for some £5 billion of net debt, although it is argued the true liabilities amount to significantly more.

 

Public spending in the UK today
In 2009-10 the Government spent £671.4 billion of our money, despite tax revenues of only £496.1 billion. That's the problem, right there. Under current spending plans, the national debt will top 79% of GDP by 2014. The last time we borrowed this much money the freedom of the entire world was at stake in World War Two. What on earth are we spending it on today? Here's the answer, in billions of pounds:

(£ billions) 2009-10 2010-11
Benefits and Pensions 195.5 202.6
Health 99.9 104
Education 66.4 69.2
Debt interest 27.2 42.9
Defence 38.7 36.7
Local government 30.1 30.8
Scotland 25.4 26.1
Law and Order 19.6 19.6
Wales 13.6 14
Northern Ireland 9.6 9.9
EU contributions 5.6 7.9
Transport 6.4 6.4
International aid 5.5 6.2
Other departments 127.9 125.4
Total government spending 671.4 701.7
The public finances are dominated by the welfare state, which will cost the UK some £202.6 billion to maintain this year. The welfare budget includes pensions and tax credits, plus unemployment, sickness, housing, council tax, child support and other benefits. In 2010-11, interest payments on the national debt will be the fourth biggest line in the budget, reaching £42.9 billion.

When in opposition, Gordon Brown used to call escalating social security and debt interest payments the costs of failure. In his own terms, we're now failing on a scale never seen before.

 

I would like to add that I can't stand the Tories or Labour and you could describe me as apathetic with a capital A now.

I wan't teachers, nurses, the police, firemen, NHS to name a few to be well funded but we are heading slowly for a global depression imo. Free market capitalism is fooked imo, it's the system we know and adhere too, but I hope in the long term a new way is found. I don't have the answer but something needs to give, change imo.

 

Social mobility: radical reform urged to repair divided Britain

Damning study says successive governments have not done enough to tackle a fragmented society.

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Social mobility policies have failed to significantly reduce inequality between rich and poor despite two decades of interventions by successive governments, according to a highly critical new report.

The study by the government’s Social Mobility Commission warns that without radical and urgent reform, the social and economic divisions in British society will widen even further, threatening community cohesion and economic prosperity.

And it highlights new divides that have opened up in the UK, further fragmenting society – geographically, and between income groups and different generations.

Alan Milburn, chair of the commission, said that for two decades Labour and Conservative governments had not made enough progress in turning welcome political sentiments into positive social outcomes.

“What is so striking about this new analysis is how divided we have become as a nation,” he said.

“A new geographical divide has opened up, a new income divide has opened up and a new generational divide has opened up.”

The report highlights that:

• Child poverty has risen in the aftermath of the recession, with about 4 million – or 30% – of young people now classified as poor.
• The divide between the attainment of rich and poor children at the age of five has only just begun to shrink despite billions of pounds of investment, and in early years education and it will take 40 years before it is closed.
• It will take 120 years before disadvantaged teenagers are as likely as their better off counterparts to get equivalent qualifications.
• Graduate employment for disadvantaged students has “barely improved”, though widening access to university is a seen as a success for social mobility policies.
• Wages have stagnated in real terms – particularly among the young – with the poorest most affected by the resulting falling living standards. And, despite slow progress, the best-paid jobs remain “deeply elitist”.

A new geographical divide has opened up, a new income divide has opened up and a new generational divide has opened up

Alan Milburn, chair of the commission
The report, Time for Change, assesses government policies on social mobility from 1997 to 2017, covering the governments of Labour’s Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, as well as David Cameron and Theresa May for the Conservatives.

It concludes overall there has been “too little” progress. It says it will take decades before the divisions in education and employment narrow and cautions that many of the policies of the past are no longer fit for purpose.

Launching the report on Wednesday, Milburn warned that in the bleak post-election landscape there was a greater need than ever for improved social mobility.

“As the general election seems to demonstrate, the public mood is sour and whole tracts of Britain feel left behind.

https://www.theguardian.com/society...e-both-failed-on-social-mobility-report-finds

 

Yeah, you stick your head in the sand and perhaps the facts will go away. #deluded

 

Another reason why I gave up stressing about politics is it divides people as much as religion does

 

It was probably a bit of both in fairness. I don't think we'd have fared any better with the Tories in 08.

 

Fair point

 

I suggest that some people avail themselves of the facts. 'Banks given a free rein under Brown' might be a starting point.

 

Was it the Tories who left a note at the Treasury saying that there was no money left? Errrrrrrrrr that's a big fat NO!

 

Yes it is a starting point, which begs the question of how free a rein they'd have had under Cameron. Not exactly notorious for being tough on such institutions.