I'll answer some bites if I can? 5,000 extra homes every year will make a huge difference to those who get them. Yes it would be nice to have more but it comes down to what I will call for now, reality* I think you will find the insistance to stick to a figure puzzles most tories too but being in the eu clouds a lot of those figures so when brexit happens they can't blame the eu anymore. To my own mind and I suspect most who voted for brexit, there is an expected drop almost straight away from taking in europe's unemployed. How many know the school 6 week holiday was to allow kids to help their parents pick the crops? My point for mentioning this is some immigration will be seasonal which will be low skilled or unskilled and other immigration will match people with skills that the country needs so immigration numbers will drop but the key issue here is that WE can change it year by year dependent on need and flexible to business. True on somethings they need to do better but on other they have done better than expected even more so within the last 5 years people have demanded more * I hear this but seem unable to find any cold hard facts on the claim most of the new employment is zero hours, do you have any solid info I could follow? I remember running an operation in 1998-2001 and using agency workers on zero hours and myslef being a zero hours agency worker in 2007/2008 so this isn't a tory invention, it's a business invention. I can tell you that even in 2008, I never had a full sky package, foreign holidays, latest £700 mobile contract or a pcp car contract for more than I earned. When we say poverty, I'm not always sure we in the U.K. understand the difference entirely between poverty and spending most of my wages on debts? Corbyns declarations of almost nationalising everything with no costings to do it scares me. If you are of a certain age you will remember how the unions held the country to ransom with constant strikes believing the taxpayer should always underwrite their every whim. It might be able to be renationalised but corbyn's Venezula economics will not be the thing to do it. I feel they have delivered most but the opposition concentrates on the missed ones for obvious reasons. I mentioned * reality a few times and I hold true that we have the same money just trying to fill the ever increasing demands of joe public, I use it a lot but the brits want armani goods on a primark budget and until a decent party sits down and says we need x because you want y and it will cost this much, then we will continue to to struggle. The real trouble is Labour will spend it till it's all gone then leave a note saying the money has all gone when people finally wake up and kick them out. Tories will always act with budget responsibility but that means there are areas that will suffer. After Brexit, long term but not too long, I see the U.K. doing what it does best, no not whinge, but innovate, create and achieve, we have 3 times more europeans coming to live in the U.K. than U.K. residents going to live in the eu, that isn't happening because we are shite and the eu is the utopia, quite the reverse
I agree 5000 extra homes is at least something, but allowing local councils to build council houses, arranging loans to enable the councils to build, and a temporary stop on the sale of council house stock would have been a far more productive agenda. Immigration is widely accepted as 50% from the EU and 50% from elsewhere. The government could have reduced immigration significantly. Immigration has not reduced at all until the referendum put off EU citizens. All council spending has been cut (a good deal of the spending was probably wasteful). The public may well have demanded more, but I don't see areas where the government have allowed more to be spent. Education, NHS, Policing & Public Highways, together with all councils are spending less/ receiving less in actual money or by a per capita basis. The Conservatives claim that the cutbacks are necessary to reduce debt. I want the debt reduced, so do most sensible people. The debt is 0. 83 trillion more than it was when they took power. So as the debt is still spiraling out of control and the services are all cut back. Why is that the case? How can they claim to be economically competent? Currently the Tories are increasing the debt at a faster rate than any previous administration (excluding ww1 & ww2) to record levels. How much worse could it be than the worst in our history? Especially when combined with closed libraries, closed parks, overcrowded pot hole filled roads, under funded prisons, hospitals etc and not enough police to catch the shits that burgle our homes and steal our bikes! Corbyns claim to give free University education will not cost much more money at all. Estimates vary but between 60% and 75% is widely accepted as the amount that will never be repaid. Here's just one article which explains that situation. https://www.aol.co.uk/money/2017/07/07/how-much-student-debt-will-ever-be-repaid/ The government charging 6.1% on loans which they then write off! There is no need to charge 6.1%, Take the interest off, deduct the 70% write off and the increase is small. Zero hours contracts are not new, and not solely the idea of this government. However it is this or any other governments responsibility to protect the work force. Zero hours do suit some workers. But more could be done to give employees better conditions, which could stimulate production, encourage employees to stay with employers and therefore improve their skills. The country will not create enough wealth unless something like this happens imo. It might be that the countries problems are too great to resolve without some new radical idea or scheme. Fair enough. It might be also true that Coirbyn is not the right guy to lead the country. But it is fair to say that the Conservatives have promised much and delivered very little except the EU vote. Which major policies do you as a supporter of the government do you feel have been fulfilled- leaving aside the referendum?
May is on the way out. Wonder if that will make the DUP withdraw their support and a GE called? As said if this infighting was Labour the Tory press would be all over it. As it is the Tories are falling apart at the worst time for the Country and all over their own selfishness and will to cling on to power regardless. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41519601
I've no doubt and I don't care that the bigoted faux-Liberals will point to the newspaper title and ridicule it. Just happens that I agree 100% with the sentiments expressed by the writer http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...led-patronising-b-rds-says-QUENTIN-LETTS.html
Yes - the sentiments strike a chord.....but.....without a political party or movement to represent the people it will remain just that - sentiment. This country is in need of a viable alternative party like no other point in its history .......and there isn't one.....which is fucking appalling! .....it will end in tears at some point.......
83 trillion ? I think not. The debt isn't spiralling out of control, the debt is increasing at approximately 1/3 of the rate it was when Labour left office in 2010. The deficit is down from £150billion to under £50billion. We are still living beyond our means. It should be renamed a graduate contribution. Whilst the headline figure of 6% does seem high the reality is, for most graduates who will never pay off their loans, all it affects is the size of the outstanding debt at the point it is written off. There is nothing new in the economics being put forward by the Labour party, it has all been tried before both here and elsewhere, it failed then and it will fail again if, heaven forbid, Corbyn is elected. Their policies are superficially attractive to the uneducated and inexperienced and therein lies the danger.
I agree. Whilst I have never been a member of the Conservative party I have voted for them for the last 20 years or more (not that it makes any difference, I live in one of the safest Tory seats in the land), they desperate need to reinvigorate themselves or we will end up with a Labour government under Corbyn as PM and, even worse, McDonnell as Chancellor, then it will definitely end in tears.
John my typo mistake, the debt has increased during the past eight years by 0.83 Trillion or £730,000,000,000. That is spiraling out of control in my book. /uk_national_debt_chart.html Heres a link which supports this. https://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk What will we gain from renaming the Student Loans to the "Graduate Contribution" which everyone knows will not be repaid?
The debt is driven by the deficit, when labour left office the deficit was £150billion, it is now under £50billion. Your bar chart shows that the rate of increase in debt was higher at the tail end of the Labour government than it is now. Therefore the high debt we currently have is a result of high spending under a Labour government and it is to the credit of the Conservatives that this is slowly getting back under control. The debt is in no way "spiralling out of control", but it will if Labour is elected as they are making promises that will massively increase public spending leading to the deficit going back up and an increase in the rate of debt growth. This is basic mathematics. If everyone knows that it won't be repaid, and for many I agree with you on this, it isn't a loan. It is in effect a graduate tax on anything earned above £25k, so call it what it is. A 6% interest rate means that for student debt to reduce on a £30k "loan" at 9% (IIRC) of anything earned over £25k a graduate must be earning close to £45k, which is totally unrealistic for many of today's graduates. The debt will eventually be written off and the student will have made a "contribution". Reduce the interest rate to 3% and the earnings at which the "debt" falls is about £35k. All figures are approximations but close enough for our purposes. The down side of this is that there is no incentive for a student who is not confident of a good well paying job to be economical, they might as well borrow up to the maximum, it will not affect how much they eventually repay. The whole way in which higher education is financed is a dog's breakfast.
No I am not saying that. I accept the debt is in that region. Do you not understand that the Conservatives inherited high levels of spending, the £150billion deficit, from Labour and it is that inherited spending going forward that increased the debt at such a high rate ? For the Conservatives to have not increased the debt they would have had to cut public spending by £150billion. Just think what that would have meant, "austerity" wouldn't have come close. As is is they have reduced the deficit from 2010 levels, by about £100billion. They deserve some credit for that IMHO.
The figures show clearly what has been spent, by whom. If you look at the chart, the worldwide financial crash ( which was not caused by the Labour party) was the cause of increase debt. Prior to that Labour increased the debt at a lower rate than the regimes that have followed. Under the Conservatives the National debt has not improved at all. Overall I would estimate the performances by both parties to be similarly poor. The debt is bad enough, all the posturing & back slapping about providing better economic solutions when there are no factual results is disgraceful. You don't have to believe me. Here's one of a myriad of independent surveys which confirms it. https://fullfact.org/economy/labour-and-conservative-records-national-debt/
That's because there is a growing gap between the capabilities of our politicians and the public (as workers and managers)........and it is not the politicians who are getting better.. The establishment applaud each other on their debating skills learned at Oxbridge ......whilst the population see them as "baters" of a different kind and judge them as sorely lacking in their ability to make the country a richer, safer place for the people.
I will try one more time. There is no denying that the debt has risen to all time highs under the Conservatives. Now consider this. If I as the outgoing government commit you, the incoming government, to spending more than you take in annually, known as the deficit, and the debt goes up whilst you are in government, is that debt a result of your actions or my actions ? The outgoing Labour government ramped up spending before it left office and in doing so handed the Conservatives a poisoned chalice, either they cut spending (the bastards) or they see the debt skyrocket (the bastards). It is easy to increase public spending by borrowing money, the people love it, but it is much harder to reduce public spending once commitments have been made. To reduce the debt, the deficit must be cut through reduced public spending, cut too fast and you damage the economy, don't cut enough and the debt continues to skyrocket along with the interest on the debt. Interest on the current debt is about £50billion per year. Labour would have you believe that they can borrow and spend an additional £250billion on public services whilst spending hundreds of billions on a program of renationalisation and making everything free at the point of delivery, they believe this will "stimulate" the economy. And it will, in the short term, there might even be some improvement in public services, but then the debt will go up at a faster rate and we will pay an ever greater proportion of our GDP towards what we pay in interest on that debt and sooner or later the country will be bankrupt, again, like at the end of every Labour government, remember the note "there is no money left". The Conservatives will then take over again and people like you will say "those heartless Conservative bastards are cutting services" and "look at how the debt is increasing".
And just in case you think that renationalisation is cost neutral, as Labour would have you believe, consider this. I could borrow £1million, a debt, and buy a Ferrari for £1million, an asset. This would be cost neural because on my balance sheet the debt would be equal to and offset the asset. Great isn't it, I wonder why we all don't have £1million Ferraris on our drives.
John you can keep blaming Labour as long as you like. Labour were not spending more than the Conservatives in real terms. They were providing more services. The increase in spending came due to the world wide crisis. The Conservatives would have been faced with exactly the same situation. I expect the Politicians who claim to be the "Party of Business" to actually produce results. Significantly better results than those whom they describe as incompetent. Especially after eight years. The independent figures are clear. The Conservatives and Labour perform similarly.
Of course Labour and the Tories are performing similarly. The coalition government was virtually in distinguishable from the Blair/Brown government and the majority Conservative governments we've had since have drifted so far away from their core beliefs that many of the policy proposals that went unnoticed in the fiasco of Theresa May's conference speech were considerably to the left of anything attempted by Blair. However, while the May/Cameron Tory wet governments have remained very close to new Labour in thought and deed, Corbyn's Labour is an utterly different proposition. There's nothing new about what he's proposing. His ideas are only fresh and new to people who've never lived through the misery and destruction of Marxism. The true Conservative party (wherever its gone) would present a polar opposite to Corbyn. What we're living through is the result of continuing the policies of New Labour. The massive debts we're racking up do not represent a failure of the principles of free market economics but a failure to apply them.
I am not blaming anyone, I am pointing out the facts as I see them. All governments have been running too high a deficit and whereas in the past this could be justified by saying the debt will shrink, or maintain it's position, relative to GDP as the economy grows (do you remember Gordon Brown's golden rule of debt being no more than 40% of GDP) there has been no significant growth offer for over a decade, and what growth there has been has been fuelled by borrowing. Borrowing for genuine investment can be justified because there will be a return on that investment whilst borrowing for consumption is money spent that will bring no long term economic benefit. I concede that in the short term it might pay for improved public services but in the long term it will lead to ever increasing debt and stagnation. As a nation we are living beyond our means and productivity is continuing to fall. No amount of rearranging the deckchairs by either party will change this and the Labour promise of increasing public spending at the same time as productivity is falling is a sure fire route to disaster, again. The Conservatives seem hell bent on fighting Labour on Labour territory, and they will loose as Labour will just go one step further and the young people of today, who have never lived under Old Labour, will lap it up. Politics has turned into a popularity contest and we will all be worse off as a result.
