www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013 ... ebt-claims Seems the PM has had a reprimand from the UK Statistics authority, which is the watchdog that monitors misuse of official data, over the Conservative party political broadcast last week where he claimed "we are paying down Britain's debts". Quote Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Andrew Dilnot, confirmed on Friday that public sector net debt has risen from £811bn in 2010 when the coalition took office to £1.1tn at the end of last year.'" What Cameron could have said was that the annual deficit (between spending and income) is lower than it was in 2010, although it may get be higher in the current financial year than it was last year so dodgy ground that one. By talking in terms of 'paying down debts' he has given an incorrect message. This shows something about Cameron and also the people round him in Conservative party HQ who will have written his speech. If this had been a speech in official capacity as UK Prime Minister, he would never have been authorised to say those words because his private office would have edited it out. It's a little worrying that people in Conservative party HQ who are close enough to Cameron to write his scripts, would make a howler like that, and also I'm baffled that Cameron himself didn't pick up on it and went and said it to the camera. You can't even really use the argument that he knew it wasn't quite true but was trying to blag people because he must have known any false statement would be picked up by the Opposition or media and be a PR disaster. I can't imagine Brown or Blair, or Major or Thatcher making a mistake like this.

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013 ... ebt-claims Seems the PM has had a reprimand from the UK Statistics authority, which is the watchdog that monitors misuse of official data, over the Conservative party political broadcast last week where he claimed "we are paying down Britain's debts". Quote Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Andrew Dilnot, confirmed on Friday that public sector net debt has risen from £811bn in 2010 when the coalition took office to £1.1tn at the end of last year.'" What Cameron could have said was that the annual deficit (between spending and income) is lower than it was in 2010, although it may get be higher in the current financial year than it was last year so dodgy ground that one. By talking in terms of 'paying down debts' he has given an incorrect message. This shows something about Cameron and also the people round him in Conservative party HQ who will have written his speech. If this had been a speech in official capacity as UK Prime Minister, he would never have been authorised to say those words because his private office would have edited it out. It's a little worrying that people in Conservative party HQ who are close enough to Cameron to write his scripts, would make a howler like that, and also I'm baffled that Cameron himself didn't pick up on it and went and said it to the camera. You can't even really use the argument that he knew it wasn't quite true but was trying to blag people because he must have known any false statement would be picked up by the Opposition or media and be a PR disaster. I can't imagine Brown or Blair, or Major or Thatcher making a mistake like this.

The more they continue on their pilgrimage the more I'm convinced of one of two things (haven't made my mind up which of the two it is yet)...

1. They have not the first clue of what they are doing, they are like the scene in Titantic seconds after the iceberg has been spotted and the captain has given the orders for full astern and spun the wheel all the way to the left but the ship continues on its merry way smack into the iceberg - the look on the captains face is the same look on Osbornes these days.

2. They know exactly what they are doing, they know exactly what they are saying, there is a different agenda to what they are publically stating behind their Plan A.

What would the deficit have been if we had not had any cuts?

Would it have actually gone down?

I am more convinced that is is the second of your theories.

They know all too well that they can invest in growig the economy without it impacting too much on our debt levels. They are seizing the opportunity to shrink the state, regardless of the impact on the general population, so that their mates and backers can profit from privatisation. All under the banners of "austerity" and "all in it together".

That is the long and short of it.

The reality is that you cut the state so much people say it is not working and then it is easy to say, This part of the state is not working therefore we have to privatise it.

My ex is a deputy head in a inner city comprehensive. She spends so much time dealing with kids who are on Heroin and the fall out that she spends little time on teaching.

The school like others used to have what was called value added ( I dont know all the correct technical terms) to exam results to show whether it was it successful school or not. Basically that took into account social factors and how the school did with the children who came to it from Primaries.

That value added element is now being removed so the school will be regarded as failing after it's next OFSTED inspection. Hey ho a short trip to being made an academy and effectively being privatised


Once there are enough schools out of LA control it wil be easy to privayise them, introduce regional pay and then companies or "Charities" who take over schools will start asking parents for finacial incentives to keep the children in those schools.
The same is happening in Hospitals, Local Authorities etc.

This really is the end of the welfare state.

[urlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21310735[/url

That report (above) suggests that someone is lying.

You can't be increasing the numbers of front-line nursing staff and at the same time have front-line nurses admitting that their staffing levels are dangerously low due to cuts.

Its impossible for both statements to be correct.

And of course, those posters in 2010, the ones that promised the NHS was safe in a particular persons hands, he's got to be telling the truth hasn't he ?

After G4S repatriated responsibility for stewarding the 2012 Olympics, not [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/oct/10/atos-outsource-medical-assessments?CMP=twt_guAtos outsource medical assessments to the NHS[/url

This is how it works: take the money, buy a nice big beef rib, then throw the dog the bone

just what were the labour party thinking when they gave atos these contracts?

You mean the contract in question, the one mentioned specifically in that article ?

The £400m contract awarded in August 2012, that one ?

who'd have thought it, the tories want to shrink the state. it's almost like it's their political ideology. and like fools people actually think they're lying and go ahead and vote for them anyway. they should be more like the labour party who want to grow the state, then realise they've spent up and decide they should really shrink the state, alan johnson had £70bn of cuts in mind, £35bn from cuts in public services. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/a ... 786793.stm they should really make up their minds. big state, small state?

who'd have thought it, the tories want to shrink the state. it's almost like it's their political ideology. and like fools people actually think they're lying and go ahead and vote for them anyway. they should be more like the labour party who want to grow the state, then realise they've spent up and decide they should really shrink the state, alan johnson had £70bn of cuts in mind, £35bn from cuts in public services. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/a ... 786793.stm they should really make up their minds. big state, small state?

"these contracts" plural. atos seem to be killing people and now subcontracting back to the nhs. i'm just wondering what the labour party were thinking doling out this work in the first place. once again, the party of the ordinary people, beat the tories to punch.

Quote ="samwire"who'd have thought it, the tories want to shrink the state. it's almost like it's their political ideology. and like fools people actually think they're lying and go ahead and vote for them anyway. they should be more like the labour party who want to grow the state, then realise they've spent up and decide they should really shrink the state, alan johnson had £70bn of cuts in mind, £35bn from cuts in public services. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/a ... 786793.stm they should really make up their minds. big state, small state?'" Because, as has been said to you many, many times before, thats the problem with football supporter style political followers. Its not a red and blue world, if it was then the sort of politics that Harold Wilson and Ted Heath practiced, which are the sort that you describe above, would still be applicable - they aren't, the stereotypes that you describe are several decades out of date, but don't worry you're not the only one, I know Americans who still think that electing a Labour government in the UK is akin to letting the communists in.

Quote ="samwire"who'd have thought it, the tories want to shrink the state. it's almost like it's their political ideology. and like fools people actually think they're lying and go ahead and vote for them anyway. they should be more like the labour party who want to grow the state, then realise they've spent up and decide they should really shrink the state, alan johnson had £70bn of cuts in mind, £35bn from cuts in public services. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/a ... 786793.stm they should really make up their minds. big state, small state?'" Because, as has been said to you many, many times before, thats the problem with football supporter style political followers. Its not a red and blue world, if it was then the sort of politics that Harold Wilson and Ted Heath practiced, which are the sort that you describe above, would still be applicable - they aren't, the stereotypes that you describe are several decades out of date, but don't worry you're not the only one, I know Americans who still think that electing a Labour government in the UK is akin to letting the communists in.

The concern should not be the colour of the party in power at the time that the ideaology was introduced, nor for that matter the concern of why all party's seem happy to continue and expand the ideaology, but should be the concern that a privately owned, for-profit business model could be constructed from a process that should be the responsibility of a government department, ie the assesment of criteria to hand out public money from a government department should be well within the capabilities of that department given that it is they who write the specifications in the first place.

When you then introduce a bonus system based on a target of refusals, then you are starting to get insidious, there should be no targets, merely qualifications - with qualifications you have a line in the sand where disability recieves or doesn't recieve support, with targets you have a moveable line that no-one really understands from one month to the next.

Quote ="JerryChicken" ... 2. They know exactly what they are doing, they know exactly what they are saying, there is a different agenda to what they are publically stating behind their Plan A.'" This. Mind you, I've thought so for three years now. Quote ="Sal Paradise"What would the deficit have been if we had not had any cuts? Would it have actually gone down?'" Not sure if you mean debt, deficit or structural deficit. With growth there would have been more coming-in in tax receipts, so the structural deficit would probably have gone down. Debt as a proportion of GDP (the usual measure of affordability)might well have been coming down now even if it had gone up in empirical cash terms. Also, please don't forget how much of the overall debt is actually worth hard cash when and if we eventually sell-off our shares in the banks. i.e. From the bank bail-out that Osborne opposed but about which he has never said what he would have done instead, preferring to call it Brown's recession, which he has now renamed "the Euro crisis". Quote ="JerryChicken"...And of course, those posters in 2010, the ones that promised the NHS was safe in a particular persons hands, he's got to be telling the truth hasn't he ?'" The same chap also promised no top-down re-org of the NHS, so that can't be actually happening either. Quote ="samwire"who'd have thought it, the tories want to shrink the state. it's almost like it's their political ideology... '" Glad you agree. Quote ="samwire"...and they should be more like the labour party who want to grow the state, then realise they've spent up and decide they should really shrink the state, alan johnson had £70bn of cuts in mind, £35bn from cuts in public services. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/a ... 786793.stm they should really make up their minds. big state, small state?'" I think you might have missed the point. The state was not "spent-up" until after the banks had been bailed-out, up until then the deficit and debt levels were well within manageable margins by any Western Democratic state's standards.

Quote ="JerryChicken" ... 2. They know exactly what they are doing, they know exactly what they are saying, there is a different agenda to what they are publically stating behind their Plan A.'" This. Mind you, I've thought so for three years now. Quote ="Sal Paradise"What would the deficit have been if we had not had any cuts? Would it have actually gone down?'" Not sure if you mean debt, deficit or structural deficit. With growth there would have been more coming-in in tax receipts, so the structural deficit would probably have gone down. Debt as a proportion of GDP (the usual measure of affordability)might well have been coming down now even if it had gone up in empirical cash terms. Also, please don't forget how much of the overall debt is actually worth hard cash when and if we eventually sell-off our shares in the banks. i.e. From the bank bail-out that Osborne opposed but about which he has never said what he would have done instead, preferring to call it Brown's recession, which he has now renamed "the Euro crisis". Quote ="JerryChicken"...And of course, those posters in 2010, the ones that promised the NHS was safe in a particular persons hands, he's got to be telling the truth hasn't he ?'" The same chap also promised no top-down re-org of the NHS, so that can't be actually happening either. Quote ="samwire"who'd have thought it, the tories want to shrink the state. it's almost like it's their political ideology... '" Glad you agree. Quote ="samwire"...and they should be more like the labour party who want to grow the state, then realise they've spent up and decide they should really shrink the state, alan johnson had £70bn of cuts in mind, £35bn from cuts in public services. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/a ... 786793.stm they should really make up their minds. big state, small state?'" I think you might have missed the point. The state was not "spent-up" until after the banks had been bailed-out, up until then the deficit and debt levels were well within manageable margins by any Western Democratic state's standards.

That is the old clause four which hasn't been current for two decades now, i.e. it was replaced when you were still wetting nappies.

Do keep up.

If Red Ed was in office we would have 10% growth, 0 unemployment and a £100 Trillion deficit. Aint that cool.

But why was the debt steadily increasing during boom years?

Was it because Brown was blinded by his own arrogance and seriously believed that he had ended boom and bust?

Brown had his own set of rules, one of which was not to borrow for "everyday" expenditure (the main cause of structural deficit).
Not a bad rule, actually.

Economists are still arguing amongst themselves as to how much of his deficit was structural. (Of course you will know for sure).

Whilst Brown may well have been arrogant in believing he had ended boom and bust, the economic consensus at the time agreed with him as he had given the Bank of England the task of keeping inflation down and he had a firm grip on expenditure (check the graphs if you don't believe me), although many will opine that he did cheat by putting PFI "off balance sheet" but, strictly speaking, where else can you put it?

If you want to see what he meant by boom and bust, you only have to look a little further back to the rollercoaster economics of Lawson and Lamont.

Brown actually paid debt off (unlike Osborne over the last two and a half years) and took the UK out of debt and into surplus ... indeed Tories were criticising him at the time for not dipping into his so-called "war chest".

PFI apart, that was considered to be what you needed for a stable economy but that consensus was blown out of the water by the banking crisis.

You sound to be one of those who think he should have had a "nest egg" put aside for the lean years.
Can you name me one government in the UK that has ever done that?
And how big a nest egg would we have needed to bail out the banks?

How long can you ignore that elephant in the room that everyone else has seen?... i.e. that the banks had to be bailed out.

Can someone on here come up with a realistic solution to the country's indebtedness (public + private)? I doubt it.

We are so indebted it is more than probable the only way out will be through financial collapse, with devestating consequences for all of us, better off and poor alike.

We are in such a mess that policy is aimed at playing for time and hoping something will turn up.

you can keep on saying it, it doesn't make it any more valid than the first time.

the stereotypes i describe where? are you simply making stuff up again?
there are brits who think obama is some socialist god.

so, it's labour ideology to make the sick/disabled suffer? their voters should be ashamed of themselves.

the colour of the party is entirely relevant. the process wasn't set up by the money grabbing, capitalist swine tories it was set up by the sodding labour party. it's exactly the sort of thing the tories would and indeed should do. the fact is the labour party did it. they decided the sick/disabled were screwing the system. what's that word that does the rounds here, oh yeah, the labour party and by association it's voters 'demonise' the sick/disabled.

the government decided the private sector could do it cheaper and quicker.

ah, someone else who thinks 2008-2010 should be erased from the record books. i'm sure the hundreds of thousand who lost their jobs will be pleased. a price worth paying? how very tory of you.

However you look at matters conventional Keynesian economics would suggest a cycle where growth and government debt are linked - when growth occurs debts should fall and visa versa. Under the last government labour the opposite happened, towards the end it was - even to labour - unsustainable and cuts - by their own admission - would have to be made.

Regarding benefits you cannot have a position whereby those who choose not to work are better off than those who do, its immoral. Not giving annual increases to those who choose not to work helps to redress the balance a little, this is a cut I agree with. Benefits should provide a very basic subsistence not cigarettes, Sky TV, beer, holidays etc.

Of the deficit how much is represented by our stake in the banks and the potential revenue we might get from selling them? How long will it be before we do sell our stake?

yes you can. if enough people vote for the party that allows this then that's what happens.

Which people have chosen not to work?