Up late last night with nothing better to do so I watched these beelin' tw*ts.A collection of up market *****s and Chancers.Why do all the relatively young parties look as if they have Anne Widdecombe as a role model? They qualify for a Wid Ye thread on their own. But back to the politics.These folk are seriously fecked.If the Wallace lookalike Milliband manages to be as popular as Gordon Brown in the next election then Dave can't win.You would have thought that rather than buggering around with all sorts of irrelevant ****e that they would have addressed the issue central to their survival.If they can't work that out what hope for the country? And as for making the Dolewallahs pick up litter what is that about? There are no jobs for the poor c*nts in any case and the vast majority won't live long enough to draw their pension.They are too busy killing themselves with Woodbines,cheap cider and various equine based cuisine products.Let them spend their short lives watching Jezzer Kyle and cracking their ugly girlfriends across the jaw.
That's good that you like the sound of it.Because it's all you'll get from the fat chopped wide boy George.
Under Manx law it's illegal for the Isle of Man government to borrow money, they've £1 billion reserve in the bank and a yearly budget of £950m - if times are tight then they can dip into the reserve, but they have to cut costs to replenish it within a given period (they took £50m from it for this year's budget, but are putting it back after cutting costs in the next few years). If you look at the likes of Norway they have several years reserve in the sovereign wealth fund, so there is no reason why big governments can not act responsibly too. One of the reasons I distrust governments is that they seem incredibly bad at managing the nation's wealth and do not apply the same financial rules they demand of private companies to themselves. If I ran an investment scheme which paid off old investors with the money of new investors I'd be imprisoned for running a ponzi scheme, yet the Government does this to every working citizen in the country with National Insurance contributions. The worst case scenario of government profligacy is the likes of Greece where successive governments were quite clearly trying to buy votes from the electorate with borrowed money (and tax receipts dropped like a stone in election years because the government were scared to piss off voters!), the UK only comes off a bit better with Labour buying middle class votes by extending the benefits system upwards to include the likes of working family tax credits. It's all good and well trying to improve the lives of normal people, but you need to be able to pay for it.
You are comparing things that cannot be compared. You said the Norwegians had the right idea, and you're not wrong. However, the reason the Norwegians had such a surplus was in case things went to ****, which they did. You don't get ****ing browny points for wanting to start a surplus after the whole worlds finances have collapsed. There should've been a surplus in place before everything went to ****.
Well I don't disagree with any of that, but under the current political system it's very hard to achieve when the likes of Labour promise the electorate they can have their cake and eat it too (Labour was running £35b deficit in the boom times). I actually agree with the likes of National Insurance if the money was handled like a proper insurance policy. By and large humans are short term creatures who live in the ever fleeting present, almost everyone believes they are going to be richer in the future and therefore they can spend whatever money they have now. National Insurance was supposed to fix this human flaw by forcing people to invest in their future, whether they wanted to or not - only the government when managing everyone's money decided it was wise to spend the money now (because they would be richer in the future!?). If you are going to fix a flaw of human nature then you do it properly, you don't replicate it on a national scale!
I won't argue party politics, I leave that to the brain dead ****s that actually think it matters. And I won't even argue that labour wasn't to blame for our poor state of affairs. Siding with tories just because they come out with a 2 decade old good idea is for ****ers. I'm not even convinced they could ever achieve such a surplus anyway. Then again, there's plenty of **** we've no sold yet - I'm sure the Royal Mails just the start of the tory grand plan for a upper class utopia. Don't be ****ing moaning when it costs a quid for a 2nd class stamps.
I'm not siding with the Tories - I can agree with some of their economic policies but I doubt they would have did much different to Labour when the **** hit the fan (the banks still would have been bailed, the investment loses of private 'friendly' individuals taken on by the state etc). But then when it comes to privitisation I'm not necessarily against it - since I think the record of governance is ****, then it goes to say that I think the government should be in charge of less things, outside of genuine social responsibilities such as schools and hospitals, such as the Royal Mail. As long as the government does what is supposed to and regulates the market to ensure that monopolies are not forming to the detriment of the consumer (and the free market) then it should work out positive in the long run.
If we don't have a surplus, then we'll be running at a loss. That is unsustainable in the long term and will mean the Country is losing the wealth that has spent 500 years acquiring.
