to think that there will be nothing left by the time the Tories have finished?

[lowrib]

Crown jewels' of Britain's landscape could be sold off

"England has 224 designated national nature reserves, of which the government ? via its agency Natural England ? owns or manages two thirds; Scotland and Wales have far fewer . A further 1,050 local reserves make up a national collection of beauty spots and sites of special scientific interest that is considered priceless. Covering an area the size of the west Midlands, they include windswept coast, ancient woodlands, flower rich meadows and moor, mountain and bog.

Proposals now being considered in Westminster and Cardiff include selling off the publicly-owned sites"

Agree with Callisto, having come up against English Heritage and the National Trust when trying make temporary changes to a grade one listed building they are absolutey dogmatic inflexible brilliant and single minded about preservation. I suspect that if a similar charity ran the nature reserves they would be far more protected than in the hands of any government.

Mindtheagegap - what, actual percentage figures? Like we will cut x% from the work and pensions budget? Love to see those figures, I remember Ed Balls being challenged on Question Times as to exactly what he would have cut and he didn't have a clue.

god this is all so depressing,and yes i dislike the tories,ok said one thing in budget and now seem to have x everything by ten.not a labour supporter either but wish wed have had a realection dont believe in coalitions

should of asked the country but as everything else carried in regardless,and i thought we were a democracy

Lowrib - I am not sure that Labour were any less in love with big business.

Didn't Tony Blair go to work for J P Morgan in 2008?

Who do you think uses his consultancy business?

Wasn't he all over the papers this weekend because his consultancy business has sought FSA approval, leading to claims that he is on the way to creating a bank for the super rich?

Anyway, we should all care about big business because they are the wealth creators and the economy can't recover without them.

While Labour certainly did seem to be very happy to cosy up to big business, they did put in place lots of policies aimed at helping families - WTC for example, professionalising Childminders, focussing on education to name but a few.

While there are lots of things about New Labour that make me very uncomfortable, I did get the impression that they were actually trying to improve the quality of life for people, by investing in people, not only in big business - or by following some long-discredited trickle-down theory (Please! do you really believe in that tripe? As long as we look after the rich, everyone else in society will be OK?! What a complete load of self-serving nonsense!)

Another example - quoting from the same article:

"In another possible sign of things to come, the latest strategic plan by the Environment Agency ... has shifted from a vision which opened with "a better quality of life for people, and an enhanced environment for wildlife" and other commitments, followed by commitments to cleaner air, water and soils, sustainability, climate change adaptation and finally reduced flooding risk. In its place are four much more limited and specific pledges to "clean up rivers, defend more properties against flooding, reduce emissions, discharges and waste from industry, and tackle the causes and consequences of climate change".

No is saying cuts don't have to be made, but my point is that there is choice about how many cuts, how deep, how quickly. I don't see them cutting Trident for example.

The Tories are using the cuts as an excuse to push through an ideological agenda based on small government and shifting power away from accountable public bodies, into private hands.

I am wondering if there will be anything left of the welfare state by the time they have finished? I am just so saddened by what we're seeing when they've only been in power 5 minutes.

This has got nothing to do with a coalition politics IMO. These cuts are coming so quickly, they can't possibly have had time to debate them between the two parties. The tories are pushing through their age-old agenda, god knows what the Lid Dems are doing.

ConDemmed indeed.

Oops that should have said "No one is saying"

So where the labour party reasponasble for the recession in the USA or Germany or Portugal or Turkey or Greece and are these other countires trying to clear up the aftermath as quickly and intensley as the Tory party?

"I don't see them cutting Trident for example."

Well, nor were Labour and they commited to order the new one as well. So you can't say that that is where Labours cuts would have come from.

Labour have done things like abolish the lowest tax band, increase the gap between rich and poor and give the banks carte blanche to do what the hell they liked. Things that if the tories had done, people here would have been howling about the evil tories who are just in it for the rich and sod the rest of them. But everyone is rewriting history now to make it seem like Labour were lovely fluffy victims of circumstance and I really don't get it.

Labour taxed the porr far greater than the tory party - but they introduced tax credits to compensate if you were over 55 or had chidlren. Which I never quite understood?

The Tory party are intent on people suffering and then blaming the labour party - thing is people will beleive it? No gordon brown was worng to sell the gold and his accounting left a lot to be desired - would have probably been better though to let labor continue to sort things out and we were coming out of the recession.

We are not though the only country inthis mess, the US had also a hugh massive problemt with mortgages and now houses - 5 bedroom houses stand empty where people have just left, their banks where also out of control.

the rest of europe isn't quite as bad as people are not so eager to buy and rent far more often.

I don't understand what is so awful about small government? Please do tell me?

And there is little to no accountability to government bodies either. It is far more democratic to decide things at a local level than at a national level, with obvious exceptions such as defence spending etc.

"The Tory party are intent on people suffering and then blaming the labour party - thing is people will beleive it? No gordon brown was worng to sell the gold and his accounting left a lot to be desired - would have probably been better though to let labor continue to sort things out and we were coming out of the recession."

So, he was a crap accountant and made loads of mistakes but you still think he should have been allowed to continue doing a rubbish job? Why?

cos Dave is worse and if you have only two candidates for a job and cannot employ any others would you choice the worse one for the job or the slightly better person?

This is another demonstration that the Tories think the private or charity sector could manage something better than public servants (with dubious productivity) with high pension bills would.

You could say, does the government know more about managing nature reserves than say, RSPB or the National Trust?

Basically the Tories want to get rid of civil servants. This is another way of doing it.

Totally agree with lowrib. I can just see the Tories rubbing their hands together with glee when they realised they had the perfect excuse to assume all the control but drop all the responsibility that comes with running the country. They seem to just want everyone to fight for themselves, and the richest just so happen to be the least affected. Hmm.

And there is no rush to cut abolish the entire debt right at this moment, we are still in a recession FGS. Does the government need money more urgently than the people who are feeling the brunt of the cuts? No, it doesn't. The debt is just numbers on a page, there are people to take care of first. That is the primary responsibility of any government, but the Tories just can't wait to be rid.

Ivykaty - you seem so sure that DC is doing a terrible job even though the coalition has only been in power for a couple of months. You have given him no time to prove his competance/incompetance and yet you would be happy to have one of the least competant chancellors and PM's in history back in the driving seat. It is an amazingly churlish and narrow minded attitude, but one that seems very typical of the average Labour voter.

Miggsie - the RSPB quite obviously know more about nature reserves than the govt, just like the NFU knows more about farming than DEFRA. Not sure what your point is? Of course the coalition does want to get rid of civil servants - there are far too many in make-work jobs created by Labour to try and hang on to power.

Gagamama - numbers on a page could cause serious problems if the UK credit rating is downgraded. You could argue that Greece's problems are just numbers on a page, but that doesn't stop the rest of the world leaning very hard on them to cut their deficit.

He/dave has already effected me - within that two months I am now worse off due to him being in power - what would you like me to say? That I should give him longer to make my life more miserable? We were after all coming out of this slowly and he has put things back and could well lead to more misery, a lot of peple will be effected by his dealings within the alst two months...

Why Callisto aren't German and France making all these cuts that dave is? It isn't a problem within our country - this is an external problem aswell, yet other countries don't make their public suffer quite as much as the UK, even greece isn't making the cuts on pensions that we are in the UK (go and look at the pensions system in greec and be jealous and weep) and look at the state they are already in which is far far worse than UK

If you are in debt you don't shut down the heating altogether you run it turned down a little lower and take a little longer to pay the bill. Dave though has tunred the gas and electric off and makes sure there is no bill at all - but sod the people left in the cold and shivering.

Do you realsie that Phillip Green evades more money in tax evasion (285million)than the benifit system is paying out - yet Dave say oh come and join us and we can ignore all the legal but moraly wrong tax evasion

ivykaty44 - Your comparison with Germany and France is most unfortunate as both countries weathered the recession far better than the UK; they didn't have the enormous exposure to banking that we did.

And tax evasion is illegal, so if you have some evidence of Phillip Green's guilt you can most assuredly report him for fraud.

Gagamama - We are not still in a recession, and the rush was due to warnings from the IMF that our AAA rating was at imminent risk of being downgraded. Better to have some say over the cuts than have them imposed on us.

Ivykaty - Earthworm answered 2 points just as I would have (thanks EW). As for your heating analogy - if I can't afford to heat the house I turn the heating off and put a jumper on. I certainly don't take longer to pay the bill - I don't have that option. I have no idea how the coalition has made you worse off - if you tell me I may be able to give you reasons. Obviously you have my sympathy.

I'm not aware that any cuts have been actually implemented yet, that would affect you already, have they?

I am also interested to know the detail of how anyone has already been made worse off by cuts?

Many of us will be affected by cuts, it's inevitable, because of the economic recession. I would prefer not to be worse off in a year's time, but no point bleating about it, I just empathise with everyone else who is affected too.

But what cuts, so far, have directly led to the poster being worse off already?

inflation

Then why is it that france has had a deep recession - or are they making it up? eupolitics.einnews.com/news/france-recession have I missed soemthing?

inflation affects all of us!
I work in the public sector, so have a pay freeze. Not nice, but it's the way things are, the country has run out of money.
I will be worse off. So will many people. We would be worse off whoever is in power because the country is in a mess.
Just got to put up with it.

er yes inflation effects us all that why it will effect a lot of people...

it isn't a pay freeze though, it is a pay cut in reality, as inflation puts prices up and wages buy less