I'm reminded of an episode of South Park where the boys uncover a "conspiracy". Turns out that it's "W" creating a fake conspiracy to make it seem that his government is all powerful and controls everything - when really they haven't a f******g clue .
This is how I see this lot.
They don't even have the brains to follow a simple Tory ideology. Look at the latest clumsy outpourings, stop housing benefit for under 25's, bring back O Levels. Next they'll be blaming miners.
The great skill of the upper class is to look stupid, act stupid and talk stupid and yet still the plebs think they must actually be really clever. They hand each other prizes at their expensive schools and universities to show how clever they must be and we all buy it. Take away Cameron and Osbournes money and they wouldn't have been able to scrape a GCSE grade C between them.

Cunning plan my arrrssseee.

I seem to remember the Tories suggesting that private health treatment should have been subsidised by 50% by the NHS a few years ago when they were in opposition, I can't remember if it was the Quiet Man, the 14-pint-er, or the one who won't answer the question though.

Quote ="McLaren_Field"I'm constantly amazed that no Tory Government has ever suggested that anyone who spends their own money on education (via private schools) or on health (via private health providers) should have a corresponding discount on their NIS contributions. Its just so blindingly obvious to follow the political dogma to its natural conclusion that I don't understand why its never been suggested - or has it ?'" By the way, if any of you are feeling in any way sorry for Cameron's alma mater, you can help them out ... www.etoncollege.com/waysofgiving.aspx

Quote ="McLaren_Field"I'm constantly amazed that no Tory Government has ever suggested that anyone who spends their own money on education (via private schools) or on health (via private health providers) should have a corresponding discount on their NIS contributions. Its just so blindingly obvious to follow the political dogma to its natural conclusion that I don't understand why its never been suggested - or has it ?'" By the way, if any of you are feeling in any way sorry for Cameron's alma mater, you can help them out ... www.etoncollege.com/waysofgiving.aspx

There may be some short term benefit to construction sector, but special pleading for construction sector aside, for a long list of reasons I don't think it would deliver the sustained economic growth the country really needs. If Government is going to take risk and expand deficit spending to pursue economic growth it needs to be something more structural that only Government can do and there's no reason why that wouldn't be a boost to construction sector in short term too.



I don't think this will happen, it's just hot air, although I do wonder if it is a smokescreen for something else, that's how these things usually work.

Quote ="El Barbudo"By the way, if any of you are feeling in any way sorry for Cameron's alma mater, you can help them out ... www.etoncollege.com/waysofgiving.aspx'" What a bunch of t0ssers. How that is allowed charitable status I'll never know. On a slightly related note, it made me laugh on the outside and cry a little on the inside when I was watching coverage of Trooping the Colour and they did interviews with some of the officers of the Coldstream Guards. Every single one was a Julian or a Rory and usually with a double barrelled surname (& not in the Jones-Buchanan sense of the double barrelled name!) and every single one had gone to very expensive private school. They also did a short bit at Sandhurst and again, every officer cadet interviewed was from private school. A friend of mine is in the Grenadiers, and he'd mentioned before the poshness of the officers but it was still very depressing to see that in reality sod all has changed in the Army.

Quote ="El Barbudo"By the way, if any of you are feeling in any way sorry for Cameron's alma mater, you can help them out ... www.etoncollege.com/waysofgiving.aspx'" What a bunch of t0ssers. How that is allowed charitable status I'll never know. On a slightly related note, it made me laugh on the outside and cry a little on the inside when I was watching coverage of Trooping the Colour and they did interviews with some of the officers of the Coldstream Guards. Every single one was a Julian or a Rory and usually with a double barrelled surname (& not in the Jones-Buchanan sense of the double barrelled name!) and every single one had gone to very expensive private school. They also did a short bit at Sandhurst and again, every officer cadet interviewed was from private school. A friend of mine is in the Grenadiers, and he'd mentioned before the poshness of the officers but it was still very depressing to see that in reality sod all has changed in the Army.

Because they end up as the people who decide who gets charitable status. If it was you or me then things might be different, but it 'aint.

You are completely wrong here. The only reason the boom period ended was due to the banking crisis. Darling was already setting out plans to cut public spending while the economy was still going to be booming and so would have done what you wanted. There were no economic indicators the economy was going to contract in some sort of traditional cyclic manner either. The banking crisis came right out of left field. It is only with hindsight that you can level the charge you do and without the banking crises there would not have been a problem with the level of spending as was or what was planned.

Before the banking crisis the Tories were also saying they would match the level of spending Labour were predicting anyway where they to win the election which some people seem to conveniently forget.

The real problem is that there wasn't sufficient regulation of the banks to prevent the banking crises but it would be rank hypocrisy for anyone with a right wing bent to their politics to blame Labour for that as they would have been opposed to any such regulation in the first place. This is another charge that can only be levied with hindsight but given the Tories deregulated the banking industry in the first place and Cameron was even calling for LESS regulation literally a matter of weeks before the whole thing kicked off its just right wing propaganda to try and pin the blame elsewhere as if they had been forewarning everyone of impending doom. They weren't. They wanted even more of the same.

And it's a myth that Labour's public spending was at massive, record levels. It was, as Prof Colin Talbot of Manchester University points out, a convenient myth for Labour – and one they did nothing to contradict – but it was a myth.

That they couldn't see the bust coming is not an excuse for their overspending. Without the banking crisis the bust still would have happened. Maybe later, possibly sooner - people seem to ignore the contribution the banking sector made to sustaining the boom we all enjoyed. Of course part of what the banks were doing was just as unsustainable as part of what the government was doing.

Out of interest is anyone, other than you, propagating this myth? It just I've not heard it anywhere else.

Rubbish. Both spending and debt were easily sustainable prior to the banking crisis and would have remained sustainable without the banking crisis as evidenced by the HM Treasury statistics that show the public spending and public sector debt as a % of GDP were generally no higher under Labour than they were under the Tories.
Labour should have regulated the banks, so should every other nation, something which is conveniently forgotten by the "it's all Labours fault" brigade. If its all Labours fault, why has the same thing happened across the world?

As has already been said on here, before the crisis, the Tories were proposing to match Labour's spending. Cameron was saying that whilst the economy may be ok, "society was broken." Gus O'Donnell the head of the civil service under Major, Blair and Brown has said that the civil service didn't see the crisis coming.
I think some blame can be attached to a Labour government not regulating the banks, but the zeigeist was "the market is always right" As with many of this country's ills, the banking crisis can be traced back to Thatcher.
The British economy shrank 7% in 2008/9, the deficit was a product of that reduction. TBH I reckon Darling did well to pull the economy through that and nurture some growth. Osbourne killed that growth stone dead. He and Dave the Kipper should pay the price at the next election. I sincerely hope they do.
As an added vindictive bonus I'd like to see Clegg kicked out of Sheffield too. That'd larn 'im!

They were comfortably affordable in the short term, whilst the going was good, sure. The problem is the good times were never going to last forever and Labour should have, after such a long boom period, have left the public finances in a better state.



You'll have to ask some claiming it's all Labour's fault that one. You seem to be the one blaming Labour for the banking crisis - something I haven't done.

Labour could have spent less. That would have left us in a better position now. I doubt whether they could have put effective regulations in place to prevent the banking crisis - even after the crisis no-one has actually managed to come up with any effective regulation. That's with the knowledge of what went wrong. Expecting regulation against problems which have never happened is asking a lot in my opinion. That's why I blame Labour for what they did have control of (overspending) not for what they had no realistic control over (the banking crisis).

The only one is ignoring it is you because without the banking crisis there wouldn't have been crisis.

You seem to also be confusing the spending levels with the crisis that came after the banking crash. The spending levels were nothing out of the ordinary. As the figures show.

Without the banking crisis there would not have been a problem. As the figures show.

As to Labour could have spent less. How much less? Go on put a figure on it.

They could have kept the public service budgets in line with what they were when they took over the reins in 1997.

Then things would have been REALLY crap, a bit like where we're heading now.

Aye, they should have emulated the Tories who after 18 years, during which they engineered two dreadful slumps through their magnificent fiscal management, left us with a debt at a level that is now considered by the same Tory party to be unsustainable.
And that even omits all the massive North Sea oil revenues that they, the Tories, managed to spend as well as the debt.
Plus all the huge amounts of cash from selling-off gas, telephones, electricity generation, electricity distribution, water ... etc etc.

So, it seems that when the Tories spend money, that's careful management but when Labour spend the same without privatising or getting the same monies from the North Sea, that's shockingly wasteful profligacy.

I'll say it again (and this is going to be very boring because I'll keep saying it) ... the Tory Jackanory Story about debt and spending, whilst it has a grain of necessity in it, is a handy cover for rolling back the state in a big way.

The Thatcher/Major era was all about the rolling back of state-owned enterprise, de-regulation of the markets and smashing Union power regardless of who got hurt, this one is about the shrinking of the welfare state and filling the pockets of their sponsors regardless of who gets hurt.

Here's the graph, again:



To be very clear I'm talking about the spending from 2001-2007. Which is in a nice contrast to 1997-2000. As the figures show Labour were running a significant deficit during those boom years. Quite similar to those in the preceding recession.



Without the banking crisis (and the causes of the crisis being present in the period preceding it) we have no idea what state the economy would be. What we do know is that economies are cyclical and Labour failed to prepare for the inevitable (whatever the cause) bust.

You have pointed at 2001 in an earlier post.
Brown had refused to over-spend in the previous four years, building up what the press referred to as his "war chest".
I think you'd agree that the time to spend is when there is a danger of recession?
Well, in 2001 GDP growth fell to 0.3%.
Exactly the time to start spending.

Added to which was the cost of the stupid war in Iraq.

Pointed out in response to his first posting of the graph, good luck on getting a response this time around

Where have you been since summer 2008?

The crisis was causes by massive over-spending on public services and the gold-plated pensions of public sector workers.

...and those greedy disabled people.


I think we're keeping immigrants in reserve for another spin-day.

Vicky Redwood, chief UK economist at Capital Economics, said the figures boded ill for the rest of the year, particularly because of the effect of the Queen's Jubilee holiday: "Given the negative impact of June's extra bank holiday, GDP is likely to have contracted again in the second quarter."

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18623199Full story[/url

One day is likely to screw up 90 odd? When people spent the day shopping or in the pub? These people are just guessing, aren't they?

Fred Karno really does appear to be in charge.

Clearly I don't agree. We were not in danger of recession and we certainly didn't need the six years of overspending that followed.

Whilst I failed to get a decent explanation for the overspending on this thread I have spotted one on another [url=http://viewtopic.php?p=16983265&tsmp=1341065643#p16983265thread[/url:





Again I ask who, other than you, is making this claim?

Quote ="Chris28"Fred Karno really does appear to be in charge.'" TBH I wonder if anyone is in charge having seen this: www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012 ... intcmp=239 from about 6 miinutes in. Perhaps the Downing Street cat is running things. The government borrowed an extra £3bn in May because of extra dole and less tax coming in. But according to this young lady there's £4bn underspend floating about somewhere - at least that's how I understood her. But then she said in May that the fuel duty rise would produce £1.5bn and now its cancellation will only cost £500m. All very confusing. Labour were once again attacked last night on Any Questions for leaving a huge deficit but as Chuka Amunna said, we did leave a plan for dealing with the deficit (the Darling budget) and we left a growing economy not a recession. The current state of affairs is all Mr Osborne's own work.

Quote ="Chris28"Fred Karno really does appear to be in charge.'" TBH I wonder if anyone is in charge having seen this: www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012 ... intcmp=239 from about 6 miinutes in. Perhaps the Downing Street cat is running things. The government borrowed an extra £3bn in May because of extra dole and less tax coming in. But according to this young lady there's £4bn underspend floating about somewhere - at least that's how I understood her. But then she said in May that the fuel duty rise would produce £1.5bn and now its cancellation will only cost £500m. All very confusing. Labour were once again attacked last night on Any Questions for leaving a huge deficit but as Chuka Amunna said, we did leave a plan for dealing with the deficit (the Darling budget) and we left a growing economy not a recession. The current state of affairs is all Mr Osborne's own work.