Do we really need to make so many cuts?

Noi it goes into pockets of directors- and whilst I don;t care with the bin colections, having a child that I will one day have to hand over to residential care (and having worked in that sector- well I sort of do now, since yesterday) I am more than aware of how much they will cut from a person's care in order to finance their little hobby (my boss had a collection of very expensive ridiculously OTT goods (too identifying to name) whilst his residents often went without toiletries once trhe budget ahd been exceeded for the month).

Some things I don;t c care who provides; some things should be in house.

Yesterday I reguistered online to go self employed to rpovide a service that is curretnly supposedly satte funded. I don;t want to do that- even doing what I am (close to minimum wage, discount for FSM famillies etc) I will proce the people who need me most oput of the market and the state service no longer exists full stop. It's a service that can save the state a small fortune so worth financing anyway IMO, and i;d much rather do it employed but-

Obviously people with a disability who need support only deserve it if they can pay me per hour eh? Not.

as a taxpayer, i'm not sure i really care who provides my services - private or public sector. as long as its done to a proper standard and costs for the taxpayer are as low as practical. at least with the private sector a large proportion of the money won't go on pension costs

Yes it's necessary. If the tories don't cut as many public sector jobs as they can, they won't be able to hand over the big fat cheques to their friends in the private sector to take on our former public services. Don't you see?

from what i've seen of the public sector it could become a lot more efficient. there is a lot of waste. it was only yesterday on here that i was reading a post from someone who hates their job because they never have any work to do along with the rest of their team. the private sector has improved productivity massively over recent years. its about time the public sector did the same.

Very well said, nepkoztarsasag

It's drivel to say the country's current economic problems were entirely caused by the previous Govt.

Just about every Western economy has the same problems, some to a greater extent than us, some less.

What do all these countries have in common? Is it:

1. they all have banks and bankers

2. they were all run by Gordon Brown.

Finance capitalism ate itself, and now we must all pay. The stuff about Labour overspending is an ideologically motivated smokescreen to make you look in the wrong direction.

Newave. 'After the next election' Labour certainly will not be in power, if the electorate votes them in, after all the debt they have left us with, they must be mad! The last labour adminstration was the worst thing to happen to this country for a long, long time! (and not just for the debt either!)

Ideological in the main.

Some cuts could be amde absolutely; waste is waste.

Some will destroy lives (won;t go into it here but see this thread

There are also strange priorities being revealed: absent fathers still largfely getting away with it whilst the disabled are cut.

Some cuts and over a longer scale- OK. This scandalous slashing? no

(Or perhaps it is an English right wing conspiracy against the solidarity of good Welsh mutual aid?)

Sorry, that should be Dwr Cymru - I guess MN doesn't like the welsh w with a hat.

Returning briefly to utilities, there is an alternative model to either profit making companies, or nationalisation.

Dŵr Cymru/Welsh Water is a mutually owned company, with no shareholders, which exists to provide water for the benefit of the Welsh people. (Company info here )

Obviously, its not possible to draw definite conclusions from one company, but they seem to provide a good service at a reasonable price, and any profits are returned to customers as a dividend.

'[The economist Milton Friedman ] observed that, "only a crisis ? actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is out basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable." Some people stockpile canned goods and water in preparation for major disasters; Friedmanites stockpile free-market ideas. When a crisis has struck, the University of Chicago professor was convinced that it was crucial to act swiftly, to impose rapid and irreversible change before the crisis-racked society slipped back into the "tyranny of the status quo." He estimated that "a new administration has some six to nine months in which to achieve major changes; if it does not seize the opportunity to act decisively during that period, it will not have another such opportunity." '
Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, London: Penguin 2007, p6

That's what we're seeing here: a government for which the banking-induced crisis is a good thing - a wonderful opportunity to impose specific ideas they know damn well the populace would never vote for, like reducing aid to disabled people and the assault on the NHS.

Yes indeed, but if something is being done because of ideology, then we have choice - we can choose to follow this ideology, or choose not to.

Cameron repeatedly says, "we have no choice". That's not true. What he means is, "I am claiming there is no choice if you want to follow my ideology."

And that's the OP asked: is there a choice? The answer is Yes.

But what is wrong with ideology?... Surely the definition of politics is governing according to a particular ideology or set of principles? Isn't the ideology of a party what we vote for?

Chil, your first reading was right - I was wondering why in 2011 a big deficit is seen as a problem requiring urgent action, when in the 1980s it was just, "Oh and by the way, I'll be doubling the deficit, none of you Chicago boys mind do you?"

So it really is just ideology.

The banking crisis didn't destroy the global economy. The global banking crisis exposed that a lot of the money slashing around the economy had never existed in the first place.

Link to some graphs of the UK National debt in the 20th century.

The debt was, as Takver pointed out, huge. This was because the Second World War was immensely costly and there was a deliberate decision about the need to share it forwards across a generation.

That debt was cleared by the 1970s, and National Debt continued at more or less the same level until 2000.

Then it rocketed.

Idiotic to just blame the banks. EVERYONE lived beyond their means. Think its a right to have latest gadgets, holidays etc. Its not. Need to sort out need rather than wants. "I need a boob job on NHS as I can't get through life with a bcup". Get a job , save some money and pay for it yourself

Actually.. I read that wrong. If you're saying Reagan adopted a coalition-style approach to spending and the result was higher deficits... yes... turned out to have been the wrong strategy, didn't it? I would have to assume that government advisers are aware of the economic conditions that led to that result, are taking lessons from history and that conditions/forecasts are sufficiently different today. What I would point out is that Reagan's tax cuts are not being copied... spending is going down but my tax-bill, at least, is going up!

@ThisIsANiceCage... I haven't studied the economics of the Reagan administration. I was just pointing out a kind of simplified 'venn diagram' of decision-making that is going on at the moment. We're governed by an administration that think running a large deficit is a problem requiring urgent action. The Opposition don't think the problem is urgent and will look at it all again in 2014/15. Reagan's team presumably were of the same opinion as today's Labour party if they did the same thing. Where/how public money is spent is always a matter of philosophy and ideology.... regardless of whether the economy is strong or weak.

No I don't believe that they should be re-nationalised. Monopolies are very bad as there is no competition to drive efficiency and innovation which will lead to higher prices. Nationalisation creates the purest monopoly of all.

Utility companies return profits of course otherwise they would go out of business