Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

interesting

http://planetpmc.blogspot.com/2010/1...s-to-cuts.html

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

Yes, it is.

To paraphrase, we could help them deliver the cuts, but only if they don't cut us....

<cynic mode on>
No self-interest or (not so) hidden agenda there, then.
<cynic mode off>

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

You can invoke whatever law you like, very few have ever suceeded in gaining redress against members of the UK government, besides whats wrong with aligning various tryannical eras, history is there to serve as a lesson which it cannot possibly do if it's never referred to, such a law as godwins law only serves to belittle constructive opinion when one has expired themselves of any further constructive comments and as such has no value other than to be a distraction from the subject at hand.

The systematic and progressive dismantling of the welfare state, which I hasten to add is not set to stop at the state benefit and disability/pensions system but will spread to all state run sectors from schools and hospitals to the courts and eventually even the emergency services will be to the detriment of Britain, the last two eras of capitalism under Blair and Thatcher has demonstrated pure capitalism is fundamently flawed for a variety of reasons and that is exactly why removal of the states safety nets despite their shortcomings and regulatory bodies however impotent they may appear will be with great regret to all.

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

"The systematic and progressive dismantling of the welfare state" - what are you on?

Some facts for you (I know you don't like these, preferring diatribes and polemic, but some of us base our discussions/propositions on the real world, rather than some Third International/CPGB version of it) -

Government Spending in £billion*
Department_____1990_____2000_____2007_____2010
Pensions/Welfare.....53.............125...........177...... ......222
Health....................29.............48....... ......94............120
Education...............25.............42......... ....75.............86

Obviously a new version of "dismantling" I hadn't come across before - "I am dismantling your house, but I am also, over 20 years, quadrupling the amount of money spent on it".....:rolleyes:

btw, don't you think you are being a little dramatic equating a democratically elected Government which is trying to balance a country's budget to provide a stable base for growth in the future (without building up huge debts and deficits which would have to be paid off by our children), with one that banned all other political parties, started a war which killed over 60 million people, committed extensive acts of genocide, and invaded Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia, Greece, Vichy France (and tried with Russia).

You appear to be comparing apples with giraffes, imho....;)


*source - UK Public Spending

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

I think the user's signature is a useful clue as to why expecting his posts to be based on evidence and reason is possibly futile.

:shrug:

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

Hugh compare our spending per head to other developed countries, you may be surprised. Thats a better comparison than comparing to 1990 another tory era of 'under' spending.

Yesterday cameron refused to answer a very simple question, is it fair to reduce housing benefit by 10% to those looking for work. Instead he went on about whats fair for those who work, he is treating the unemployed as lower class citizens and welfare as a budget that can be thrown away. Welfare of people in this country is more important than making super schools etc. the latter is a luxury.

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

All politicians frame their questions in a way that suits their agenda. Politicians that oppose them frequently refuse to answer questions framed in such a way as to trip them up regardless of their answer.

I find it unsurprising that Cameron should decline to answer a question in the terms posed by Milliband. I also find it unsurprising that you should seize on the performance, rather than the content of the debate, as support for your view.

I believe Cameron declined to answer in the way Milliband wanted him to in order to emphasize that the real issue of fairness is why taxpayers should subsidise people to live in houses at rent rates that they as working people could not afford. I think Cameron is correct. Anyone who says that a person is being treated unfairly when they're receiving £20,000 a year housing benefit even after these cuts is just having a laugh.

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

BBC As Chris says, if someone says to you "are you going to stop beating your wife? and I will only take a "yes" or "no" answer", you are damned if you answer "yes" (because you are admitting to beating your wife) and you are damned if you answer "no" (Aha, you beat your wife and you are not going to stop).....

Also, in real life, most things are not binary, they are fuzzy - anyone who states otherwise is trying to mislead us.

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

the same as cameron you only considering whats fair for the taxpayer as if the rest dont matter.

however paying people full rate on JSA has absolutely zilch to do with the overall cap on housing benefit and you have simply shown to either misunderstand what I meant or sidetracking it.

I will explain.

Every housing benefit claimant has a calculation on how much they entitled to, based on circumstances and income levels, this clculation will then have 10% removed after 1 year of JSA which is what was been asked if fair. This will happen even if the benefit is only been paid at £200 a month for a bedsit.

In other words cameron's answer had little to do with the question.

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

erm, why shouldn't it be "fair for the taxpayer"?

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

I didnt say it shouldnt, I said it should also be fair to everyone else as well.

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

Actually, you said which is quite different - but now I understand what you mean.

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

Is high government spending per head really any kind of metric to be happy about? This is essentially saying that the populace aren't grown up enough to use their own wealth so the government has to take it off them in taxation and spend it for them.

Just a thought when comparing our government spending to these many other developed countries:
https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/10/5.jpg

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

yep now its ok, but it was much worse in the 1990s, the sort of level people want back.

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

Not really. The level it's going back to per capita will be 2006-7 levels not 1990s levels.

It's a sign of how relatively left wing our times are that there haven't been any calls, within this thread at least, for cuts to those levels.

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

Nobody "wants it back" to any level - we just need to get our deficit down, and pay off our country's excessive debts, otherwise we will get charged higher interest on those debts, and they will continue to grow, putting them on future generations.

That wouldn't be fair, imho.

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

I think you need to re-read the what the numbers are and the proposed objectives of the austerity measures.

It is my understanding that the proposed objectives are simply to try to bring into balance the structural deficit which is the amount the government receives and spends. They have given themselves 4 or 5 years to get that spending under control and some influential financial bodies think they are going to be woefully short.

The measures do nothing to address either the interest paid or the almost a trillion pounds debt owed so the debt and crippling interest payments roll on until the government can balance the books on an annual basis.

The coalition has used IMHO scaremongering to hopefully frighten the population into allowing idealogical changes for what are in fact trifling amounts in the grand scheme of things and it looks as though they are succeeding. UK plc just like other fiat money western countries always operates in a sea of red ink and the current adjustments are simply an attempt to keep the bailiffs away from the door. Whether we were in that much trouble or not is debatable.

What is proposed does little or nothing for the legacy of debt unless it all goes horribly wrong. The current Westminster incumbents are fixated on their objectives and like young men in a hurry they look as though they will charge on come what may. I sincerely hope that there isn't a big deep hole en route to their objectives.

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

Each journey begins with a single step.

If we don't get the structural deficit under control, the interest rates on the national debt will be higher, thus accumulating more debt (and our debt interest bill is £2.3 billion per month at the moment) - this view is supported by some august and influential financial bodies such as the IMF, most of the City of London, and the International Credit Ratings Agencies.

One small, but very important, fact - Although public spending will be £43 billion higher in 2014/15 than it is this year, it will £30bn lower than planned by Alistair Darling. George Osborne is aiming to cut Labour's planned increases in spending rather than initiating actual absolute cuts in the public spending totals to be totally accurate.

btw, you do know that the forecast total for public borrowing of £167 billion for 2009/10 mentioned in the Labour Government March Budget was in fact more than every single Labour government had hitherto borrowed in history, so I don't think continuing in that vein was sustainable, do you?

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

Hugh we all understand that, however if its as critical as been made out there certianly should and would have been more tax rises.

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

I like the "each journey begins with a single step" because on the countless occasions I have heard it used, in my life, I have often stated that providing it is in the right direction:)

The IMF, The City, are international bankers and financiers and their interests may deviate from the populace as the IMF in particular is interested only in balance sheets irrespective of human consequences. The City has been of interest to me for decades and their interests are short termism and profit driven.

ICRA's have given the thumbs up to far too many USA created complicated schemes for creating debt out of debt that have gone bust. They hold the international standard of credit rating but IMO have a low credibility rating, not that it matters what ordinary folk think.

I do not care what Labour had planned because we are where we are and judgement can only be based on the way forward. Looking backwards or projecting would of, should of, could of scenarios are irrelevant. One comment.... of course the way we were going had to be changed as it was unsustainable.

In the run up to the election I was dismayed by a choice of dumb, dumber and dumbest (con, lib, lab) and when the outcome was known I thought "here we go again, 70' and 80's with a vicious deflationary twist". We are adopting the Canadian model which was used to very painful but good effect from 1993 to 1999. It worked for them because the most vigorous period of global growth started and ended during their grand experiment (1992 to 2000). We need the same burgeoning global growth but there isn't a snowballs chance of seeing it.

The busy young men on a mission have embarked on a route for the country at possibly the worst time in recent history and if any historic parallel was to have been drawn then liquidity reduction, at a bad time, was the USA 1930's model.

I may be and sincerely hope that I am overly pessimistic but I have little faith in politicians and fear of those who are driven individuals.

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

ours is different to what the canadians did.

they didnt protect any budgets.

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

The end product is the same. Remove liquidity (spending power, money in circulation) and unintended consequences follow with the ripple or domino effect.

Protected budgets are meaningless to individuals. There is a hospital within the ring-fenced NHS not 25 miles from where I live that has announced 600 job losses within a single trust. I expect that over and over again because protected budgets are having the spend focus changed. As always the devil is in the detail and many details never become public.

My sister is currently on holiday here from Vancouver (lived there for 40+ years) and she remembers that model well as she did voluntary work in the soup kitchens and food\ clothes distribution centres. It caused pain in globally improving environment so I hate to think of the outcome in a stagnant or declining environment.

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

The BBC seems to disagree with you on this.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10254055



---------- Post added at 17:36 ---------- Previous post was at 17:33 ----------

The only solutions then are to either ignore it or to increase taxes. Taxation will reduce spending power, incentive to work and cause multinational companies that contribute so much of our tax revenue to leave likely resulting in no benefit.

Ignoring it will create a deeper deficit that must be funded and almost guarantee more expensive borrowing in the future further increasing deficit due to higher interest payments.

Before you're so nasty on the reference agencies by rights the UK and USA should already have been downgraded. The only reason we haven't is historical, we're the UK.

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

Did you miss the fact that I used "global";).

The only thing that replaces a local economy is exports to a larger "global" economy and that is what made the Canadian experiment work. They drastically reduced the public sector and thanks to a burgeoning global economy the private sector eventually took up the slack. The private sector found business in exports.

We have done some things in reverse inasmuch as we lost over a million jobs in the private sector, many of which found their way into the public sector. The coalition, in its wish for list, hopes that the private sector will take up the slack with the unemployed flowing back the other way along with all the people it deems fit for work. The private sector will be constrained within a smaller domestic economy so exports will be the only solution. The major UK trading partners are in no shape either now or the foreseeable future to engage in buying anything much of what we may produce and we are in no position to compete with the Far East.

With the options available I agree that we are between a rock and a hard place but I do think that rather than rushing off like hares the busy young men should have taken a more tortoise approach. There are levels of structural debt ratios that are internationally acceptable and it may have been possible to operate on a slower less socially damaging timetable. However the guys in charge are on a mission and have such a short window of opportunity to make their mark on history.

I like the tongue in cheek last paragraph. Good to have friends in the right places. I thought it was funny that Cameron went to the USA with press comments of "heck you guys are doing it wrong" and came back with a ringing endorsement of "hey that's great idea but not for us":)

BTW Quietly and without fanfare, my sister informs me that, Canada are still cutting back and at an increasing pace since the global economic mess. They have been fixing the fix ever since they started the fix.

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

So in reality and relative to the ever decreasing spending power of the pound at a seemingly ever accelerating rate not a fat increase in public spend then ?

Democratically elected ? If our institutionalised dysfunctional electoral system is your idea of democracy then your welcome to it, to me even the coallition cannot claim to be truly representive of the people and barely scraped enough undemocratic electoral seats together to claim their false majority, and thats before we start looking at such failings like party dogma.

Whereby you invoked godwins law:
Please enlighten me where I aligned Mr Camerons potential reign of dictatorial tyranny to the one of Hitler when I clearly stated a comparison of all since his reign, the era which coincidently bears particular importance and relevance to major developments within many aspects of the welfare state of today and certainly not excluding the inception of the NHS which arrived shortly after Mr Hittler left, just as did the wheels of todays comprehensive education also begin to gain momentum during this period. If the policies of the current government do result in any form of social cleansing then I certainly hope they will be just as well remembered for their notoriety.

If such terminology which I had tried to refrain from using is offensive and carries any perceived similarity to that era then perhaps the government should reconsider the methodology behind its current policy proposals in order to ensure such events cannot and will not occur, it is their policies and the threats they carry against the smallest, poorest and most vulnerable minority group in our society most of who'm in reality are barely on a minimum wage equivalent causing the problems of which tycoons like Mr Murdoch are in favour of and no one elses whilst garnering a frenzy of public support from very convenient selective journalism in the various tabloids on a small selection of extreme situations.

Ok so looking beyond this now as it will probably go through like so many poorly thought out government policies do, just where are the 2.5 million or so incapacitated people that can miraculously be deemed fit and available for work going to find employment not forgetting we will be fighting the half a million the government is throwing out for similar positions in the private sector. All this in the name of sticking a minute dent into an ever increasing defecit thanks to an impossible to reverse debt driven economy which will probably cost far more to implement than it will ever save ?

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

You're right, Nitro - we should just not do anything, and everything will turn out magically all right.

Your cohesive and fluent proposition has convinced me of the error of my ways, thinking that perhaps not leaving huge debts to my children was not the optimal solution - there is no problem so big or complicated that it can't be ignored.

<fingers in ears> La la, la la lah, la la la lah......

Re: The Comprehensive Spending Review Thread
 

yes because nhs budgets are still been squeezed as the tories are rediverting the funds. not to mention even a protected nhs budget is under cost pressure.

protected budgets make quite a difference as it affects confidence as well as how proportionate the hit is to everyone.