On 1 Oct 2014 at 8:15pm Tom wrote:
"The total mess left by Labour. Labour always bankrupt the Exchequer. They spend more, borrow more and destroy our future by increasing our national debt. Only we Tories can be trusted with the economy."
Lets put this to rest once and for all. Between the years 2004 and 2008, Labour borrowed a total of £148.8 billion. In 2008/9, the year of the banking crash, Labour borrowed £97.5 billion.
Since being elected in 2010, the Tories have borrowed a staggering £600 billion. George Osborne borrowed more in his first 3 years than Labour borrowed in their entire 13.
This has seen the National debt rise from £0.62 trillion in 2009 to £1.26 trillion in 2014. Labour bankrupted our future?
Between 2004 and 2008, before the banking crisis, the average deficit under Labour was £43 billion. Since 2010, the average Tory deficit has been 3 times this, at £108 billion. And they tell you with a straight face they have slashed the deficit!
Between 2004 and 2009, average growth in GDP was 2.4%. Since 2010, the average growth has been 1.4%. Even if growth reaches 2.5% per year between now and 2018, GDP will be a miserable 11% higher than it was in 2007. To put this in context, between 1996 and 2007 GDP grew by 43%.
On 1 Oct 2014 at 9:06pm Sword of Truth wrote:
Why didn`t you cut and paste the rest of it Tom ?
This was stolen originally form Guardian Comments although by the time got it here may well be fourth hand( I guess it is because there is a section missing ).It is an example of what is called astro-turf , ie fake grass roots, and was constructed by the Labour Party to be released in such a way. They hope most of the people repeating it won`t understand it and it would not stand up to any sort of public scrutiny.
Fortunately even a basic grasp of macro-economics is enough to reassure us of the facts of history. The banking crash arguably started with Norther Wreck but most people date it to September 2008.New Labour especially in its second terms had allowed Public spending to balloon, which was ok as long as they read the economy righ , ie that boom and bust was over and the conditions prevailing were eternal. Sadly and as was predicted by anyone who took an interest, this unlikely utopia had not been reached.
The affects of the credit squeeze on the economy 'lagged' (especially unemployment) which is ,believe it or not a technically used economics terms so during 2009 the storm in the real economy was still brewing as the world markets collapsed like dominos. Another affect is that when the economy tanks public spending automatically rises because more unemployment and other benefits will have to be funded . Other spending commitments will of course have to be honored as tax revenue starts to plummet .What this means is that structural debt New Labour built up only became a real deficit as the Conservative and Liberal coalition took power , or in the year before as you will see form any graph on the inter web
Now it is true that many people have argued , Nigel Farrage for one, that the coalition have not had enough austerity and should have cut far harder and deeper. In fact the Conservatives have ridden their luck and the fact that the global economy (oddly ) by historical standards is booming , due to China India S America and so on). They have also been fortunate that other comparable economies are even worse off than we are .
That has allowed them to hold interest rates down to zero and print money without inflation getting a grip they have also borrowed hugely by the simpe means of only making the bare minimum of cuts. That has heated the economy up actually achieving growth which will slowly bring the admittedly dire state of public finances into line.
This has been an exceedingly chancy strategy and could have gone badly wrong . Luckily it did not.
As you can see , no-one but a child like simpleton could blame anyone but New Labour for the structural deficit and as through this period Labour have claimed the Coalition were being too austere it is pretty impossible for them to argue that debt has not been tackled enough.
Its odd though that what this piece actually does is take figures originally used by the right of the Conservative Party crying for cut,s and use them as a weapon against the coalition.
If anyone is interested I have the rest of the piece that deals with unemployment , I think , rather more convincingly .See liunk , lots more of them
Check it out here »
On 1 Oct 2014 at 11:27pm Border Control wrote:
What I want to know is will the street lighting ever go on again at night. 12.30am is ridiculously early to go off.
On 2 Oct 2014 at 12:16am Doubting Thomas wrote:
What Sword of Truth said. Please stop spouting your Labour Party HQ clap trap on here. Anyone with even a vague understanding of macro-economics can see through your carefully-scripted statistical nonsense.
Bringing the conversation back to local issues, when you lot vote Labour rather than Lib Dem next year, and the Tory candidate wins Lewes for the first time since 1987, I shall laugh my bl**dy ar*e off!
On 2 Oct 2014 at 6:21am Mark wrote:
I'm sadly forced to agree with much of what the Windbag of Truth says here. It was a banking crisis that rocked western, liberalised economies on their heels. Wildly fluctuating rates of GDP growth is a fact of life for economies with small governments. Nothing like that happened between the 1930s and the late 1970s.
On 2 Oct 2014 at 10:53am cheesecake wrote:
The recession was a consequence of Thatcher deregulating the banks. Nothing to do with Labour. What did George Osborne say when getting into power? He would come down on greedy bankers like a ton of bricks. What has he done? Gone to the EU to defend their bonuses which they don't need, nor the pension pots which they don't need. They are all multi-millionaires dripping with greed. Go to the same schools & unis & clubs & society events. Live in a different sphere to us & they think we're all scum. Viva the revolution!
On 2 Oct 2014 at 11:12am Ex Labour Voter wrote:
It's all Thatcher's fault - look what she's done to the Rooks and the street lights.
They wouldn't be chopping off heads in Iraq if it wasn't for her
On 2 Oct 2014 at 11:16am cheesecake wrote:
Totally irrelevant Ex Labour Voter
On 2 Oct 2014 at 11:48am SWord wrote:
Nothing like that happened between the 1930s and the late 1970s.
Britain's world trade fell by half (1929–33), unemployment up to 70% in places and it didn't suddenly all go away, it lasted to the war . Debts in the War were hugely larger as a proportion of GDP than they are now ( but lets say you mean peace time economy )
In the 70s we actually had to go to the IMF for a bailout and Callaghan (same party of course ( was obliged to let Eurocrats run our economy for him as he could not)
It was a nadir for this country , 25% inflation , strikes out of control ...
It was in this context that Thatcher came to Power
Nothing quite like this had happened, it is never the same but there had been little tranquility in the 20th century. New Labour spent as if there would never be a down turn and that was a profound mistake for which the country has suffered
On 2 Oct 2014 at 12:44pm Joe Kerr wrote:
So many problems with the Sword of Truth. Did you forget the rest of your name - " the trusty shield of British fair play" or would that not quite fit with your leader offering (uncosted) tax cuts for the rich while simultaneously cutting benefits for the least well off.
By the way, inflation was 25% in 1975 and had been going down for 3 years before you know who got elected in 1979, and then it went back up again.
But the main point is that New Labour needed to spend so much money on public services (especially schools & the NHS) was because they had been starved of investment for the previous 18 years, and were in a terrible shape. As they will be again after 5 years of the ConDems.
On 2 Oct 2014 at 1:39pm Humbert wrote:
Cameron says his Government, which of course is also your Government, is not selling the NHS. Is this true? Or are you selling it?
On 2 Oct 2014 at 1:53pm mark wrote:
Twisting my words sword. Clearly I was referring to the Great Depression and the Opec crisis. II didn't expect you to use a cheap tactic. There was no significant gdp instability between the end of ww2 and the start of the other. Recessions began with the start of deregulation of the labour market and liberalisation of trading laws. Lady Thatcher tried to deal with 2 of them and Major another. They've been a part of life since the junk economics of the Reagan years (eg: the laffer curve).
On 2 Oct 2014 at 2:12pm bastian wrote:
here is a truth, if the tories propose a wage rise of 11% for MPs it will cost the tax payer £7,500 per annum for each MP on top of their £67, 060 (and let's remember that they take a long summer holiday, like the teachers they complain about) whilst a full time employee in the public sector on the minimum wage is being offered just 1%, that is a grand total of £135 per annum.
We really aren't all in this together. It's disgusting.
The tories are the party of keeping the working poor, poor!
On 2 Oct 2014 at 3:50pm Sword of Truth wrote:
Joe Kerr - .Galloping inflation (stagflation, in fact) was a feature of the 70s caused by the Labour ideological drive towards full employment in the 60s and 70s which entailed debauching the money supply.When it lessened it was only because we were simultaneously suffering a demand slump. It was not a good thing
Mark - At the end of the WW2 there was almost no GDP obviously it rose although we performed horribly compared to our neighbors ( hence the National inferiority complex that sent us into the EU). This is not a benign pattern .
Recession or market fluctuation is a feature of any market and did not start with Reagan . Anyway the efficient cause of the burst credit bubble were the policies of the Clinton administration on affordbale homes Effective in January 1993, the 1992 housing bill required Fannie and Freddie to make 30% of their mortgage purchases affordable-housing loans. The quota was raised to 40% in 1996, 42% in 1997, and in 2000 the Department of Housing and Urban Development ordered the quota raised to 50%.
Typical of what happens when public servants think they can out think real economy people . Disaster. Look who deposited in Icelandic Banks ..Coucils! No-on else is that stupid
On 2 Oct 2014 at 5:32pm Boris wrote:
Hey Bastion, would you say that the 17.5% pay rise that Len Mclusky and his union chums gave each other earlier this was an act of all being in this together.
Please remember, MPs from all parties voted on their wage increase.
Your last sentence wasn't backed up by the Prime Ministers speech yesterday.
It is staggering how much ignorance, jealousy and hypocrisy there is on the left at the moment all being fuel by the Guardian and the unions, especially those from the health and education services.
On 2 Oct 2014 at 9:57pm Joe Kerr wrote:
Sword of Truth - Most historians and economists would credit the primary cause of 1970's inflation as the 400% increase in oil prices by OPEC. Also note that the government from 1970-74 when inflation really took off was Tory.
But back to the main question - would you like to justify uncosted tax reductions for the rich at the expense of benefit cuts for the poor. Go on, have a try.
On 2 Oct 2014 at 11:34pm Mark wrote:
And furthermore Mr Truth, what gives me the best giggle about your response is that just the other day someone or other quoted a very insightful passage from the FT describing the Conservatives' "reluctance to ever doubt" as being a failing. You were straight onto this denying its truth ans saying that this was more of a Liberal trait. But you really are a prime example of this. You fail to ever accept or even appear to consider any unpalatable viewpoint. The usefulness of the Laffer Curve is questioned and it's "No, No not at all". You have remarkable powers of some sort that allow you to quantify our position on it. A suggestion that GDP growth was more stable in the 1950 and 1960: unthinkable. "Not at all, I can quote that statistics to prove that this is quite untrue". If your view is blinkered and you can't ever "consider" or "doubt". Then your arguments are just tales full of sound and fury and signify nothing.
On 3 Oct 2014 at 9:26am Sword of Truth wrote:
Au Contraire Mark I am frequently racked with doubt and your,"you just fink you know everything", offence has reduced me to a quivering mass of existential uncertainty......
On 3 Oct 2014 at 1:48pm Merlin Milner wrote:
See link. Shows how much the right wing press and politicians are influencing the public.
View the picture »
On 3 Oct 2014 at 5:50pm Mark wrote:
I'm pleased that we progress, Mr Sword. You might next re-consider the name you chose. It is suggestive of a degree of intellectual over-confidence, wouldn't you say?
On 3 Oct 2014 at 10:16pm Sword of Pork wrote:
Cor blimey!Have you seen the size of my Todger!
On 3 Oct 2014 at 11:15pm Chipolata wrote:
You are a plastic phallus - I am the original Sword of \pork . I am also a cockney
On 4 Oct 2014 at 8:43am Azil Nadir wrote:
Don`t bring me into your arguments - Sword . 2nd Oct.