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"

lucky/compo - are right. Indeed most of Britains most beautiful countryside is owned by farmers/landowners who have made it what it is. Anyone seen the North York Moors, Scottish Higlands, Lakeland Fells? All farmed and supporting grouse shoots run by private people and enjoyed by millions of Tourists for free with a little regulation from Govt to stop it being despoiled by developers.

Private does not always mean bad.

Damn those evil inflation raising Tories!

It's very easy, isn't it, for Labour politicians and Labour supporters, to sit back at this point and rip to shreds every decision that is taken on cuts, the public sectort and the economy generally, because they know they won't need to prove they can do better for rather a long time yet.

We all know how they'd be busy justifying half these things if the boot was on the other foot. The trouble is, they can never be trusted to have sensible judgement on what are the right things to cut back on.

So Ivykaty - your single reason for thinking that DC will manage the country and economy worse than Gordon Brown is inflation?

And you really think that inflation has happened as a direct result of the coalition coming into power 2 months ago?

I think perhaps you need to read up on economics and the causes of inflation. We will be feeling the effects of Gordon Brown's mismanagement for years. Economic cause and effect takes a while which is why there was a lag between US meltdown and UK meltdown and then a lag between the credit crunch and people actually seeing the effects. It is a bit much to blame David Cameron for causing inflation by, erm, becoming PM.

I listened to David Milliband talking about cuts the other day. He was very inconsistent on this. My take away from his comments was he agreed there needed to be cuts but he basically was saying - I would not do it now.

Well thats what I call having it both ways. I have heard politicians saying virtually the same thing in the US as they come up to their mid term elections. Politicians near an election just do not want to say specifically what they woudl cut for fear someone will be upset so they fudge and fiddle and hope to push the decision off down the road.

The Tories are 4 years from an election so they have to get the cuts in deep and early. Problem is the economy has stalled and is beginning to dip into deflationary spiral with house prices falling and wages stagnant and soon set to go negative and unemployment rising.

The Tories will get blamed but there is nothing that can be done. The pain has to be suffered before the economy can get well again.

Labour cut education??? Did you live through the Tory education cuts in the 80's? Cut to the bone and universal misery in teaching across the board.

The teachers and schools I know have found there has been more opportunity and funding throughout the Labour years than there ever was previously.

Ivykaty "would have probably been better though to let labor continue to sort things out"

ROFL

I am totally staggered that anyone can seriously believe inflation is a simple result of the coalition coming to power!! Clearly this is just about people venting that they personally are going to be less well off, rather than having a serious debate.

Yes, many of us will be worse off. I'll have a pay freeze, which means being worse off in real terms, and with all the LEA cuts in support services, my workload will increase (I'm in frontline education, in a school). So - more work, less pay. Boo hoo. No point whinging though - plenty of people in the same boat, and it's a result of the mess the country is in.

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

The only problem I have with small government is when it's, like here, accompanied by high taxes.

Then it's just a con, no matter how you dress it up as necessary, because you're left with less of what you earn to buy the services it doesn't provide.

'The Tories will get blamed but there is nothing that can be done. The pain has to be suffered before the economy can get well again'.

And isn't that always the way in the immediate aftermath of a Labour government? History repeats itself yet again.

I know that many people are saying that the tories are using the recession/debt as a reason to cull the benefits system but I think all that has happened is that the Labour government were too quick to create benefits that the country couldn't afford and now people are unhappy at losing money they shouldn't really have had in the first place. I am staggered at the fact that people on 40K plus are on any type of benefits at all???

"It's a shame they dont have anything like gold to sell isn't it? If Labour hadn't sent our gold reserves off to cash4gold then we might be in a better position."

Does that not mean that given a chance the new government would have doen exactly the same thing and sold the gold too? like criticising someone for doing something because it means you cannot do it yourself now?

haven't read whole thread - but didn't gordon brown sell off all our gold - and announced he was about to do it so the price plummeted and we got next to nothign for it...

Spot on Hammy.

I had a conversation with a friend the other day who is divorced. She works full time on a respectable salary, lives in a house with little/no mortgage worth around average, or above average for the area. She was given in settlement upon her divorce. Her Ex-DH now owns a house with another woman - they both have good full-time jobs and no dependents in the father's new household. The father has regular contact with his children. My friend will be receiving tax credits, (presumably) and free travel for DCs to go to college, and discounted council tax, etc.(presumably).

She was telling me how she will get 'help' with fees and living expenses when her daughter goes to university because she is a 'single mum on a low income'. This is someone who takes her children on cruises and long haul holidays from time to time. Fair enough - she works hard - her money -her choice - I don't begrudge her that, why would I?

But why, when both parents are earning decent salaries, and have decent standards of living, both are in regular contact with the children, should they get 'help' to put their child through uni, when another child from possibly the same or a lower income family not be entitled to any help, simply by virtue of the fact his parents are still married and share the same address?

The mother's income alone may not be huge, but this child is not soley the responsibility of the mother, is she? She has two parents, both earning. The fact that the father chose not to live there doesn't come into it as far as I can see. Or is it just me?

These two people still have the same responsibility to support their children through education as any couple do, do they not? Or am I missing something glaringly obvious - in which case someone please enlighten me.

And we wonder why so many people prepared to bend the truth their personal circumstances to make the most of the system. It needs to stop.

Expat - the Tories have long been in favour of small government and low taxes. They are doing something to make government smaller and less intrusive. Unfortunately they can't cut taxes yet, but by cutting spending and saving money now, should be able to cut taxes in a few years time. I agree with you though.

I just wanted to comment on Callistos assertion that 'of course' the RSPBA know more than the Govt about nature reserves and the NFU know more than DEFRA...
Personally, it irritates me to have the knowledge of many highly qualified professionals so easily dismissed, and I don't think this statement is true either.
The RSPBA are probably the best supported group of their kind in this country and do valuable and fantastic work. However, they have a specific remit - birds. The decisions they might want to take to protect and enhance nature reserves for birds might not in some examples be good for other species. The Govt (in my opinion) are there to provide a more balanced and less biased hand - with either policy or legislation.
Farming is likely to be well favoured by the current Govt, but this is an industry that has succeeded historically on the back of massive subsidy (not many other industries have had quite so much help) and in the process has damaged wildlife and biodiversity on a huge scale - would it really be such a good thing for there to be less control?

We have little choice but to wait and see what else the Coalition slices, maybe Labour are no magic bullet either, but I know who I would prefer to see in charge.

'Unfortunately they can't cut taxes yet, but by cutting spending and saving money now, should be able to cut taxes in a few years time.'

If you believe that, I've got some ocean-front property in Arizona for sale.

I have zero respect for millionnaires who talk the talk, but wouldn't even know how to put one foot in front of the other to walk the walk. I don't follow so-called leaders who tell everyone to do as they say, not as they do.

Even Obama, a Democrat, warned Cameron that he was going at it the wrong way, too short-sighted. As if Cameron listened to someone who actually had to work for a living and wasn't born with a gold spoon in his mouth. Haahahaaa.

I believe what I see, and what I've seen is big con.

I come from a place that values small government, but no one would take the tax rises put through here lying down. Because it's a con.

I can't ever see us getting income tax cuts TBH. What I am hoping for though (eventually) is better value for money on the high taxes we do pay.

I am deeply scared about what the country will be like in 5 years. If I had to make a prediction it would be this;

NHS
Top-up fees for those earning over 21k (similar to dentists) - say £10 for a GP visit, then a rising scale of charges for further procedures. If they call them 'top-up fees for those able to afford them' then it's not really privatising the NHS.....is it?

Education
Goodness knows what lunacy Michael Gove will bring in. Could be anything from having to fund 'ordinary' state schools ourselves, to all going to school via the internet. But I am sure schools will have funding massively cut unless they can find extra funding from business/private sector.

Universities
I suspect the cap on fees for those earning above a certain salary will be lifted.

I think it is good to try and help the poorest to cover the shortfall in income (not that this government seems to be doing that). Where I think this is a problem is when they introduce an arbitrary limit (which seems to be 21k in the thinking of this government), and then above that EVERYTHING is more expensive, because there's only SO many times you can hit the same people. For example, if above 21k you had to fork out to top up health, education, parking (they are talking about a £350 a year charge to park your car at work) etc etc it very quickly becomes a choice of "can I afford to send my child to school, or go to the GP?".

Expat - all I saw during the last interminable Labour government was spin, lies, spin, lies. It was the biggest con in history. Hopefully the coalition will be better. I shall reserve judgement until they have had a chance to actually change things rather than condemning them before they have even begun, though I know that it is the current, favoured MN pass time.

I also don't think that DC is incompetant or has no idea about 'life' just because he has got money. But then I don't have a chip about people with money in general. As for Obama - he isn't really in a position to advise right now. I don't see the US economy recovering any quicker or more robustly than the UK one. Plus Tories would be more akin to Republicans than Democrats anyway so the comparison doesn't really work.

JaynieB - I think charities like the RSPB and the National Trust are far more likely to see the big picture and plan long term than any government. The RSPB is mainly a charity to preserve bird life, but as any ecologist knows, you can't preserve birds without preserving the rest of the ecosystem, including predators. So I think that the govt of the time is going to be far more likely to make expedient decisions based on what is good for the government, not what is good long term for the wildlife. Your blind faith that the government knows best is really disturbing. Did you also support ID cards and Contact Point?

Expat - I am not sure that Obama 'warned Cameron that he was going about it the wrong way'.

Are you referring to the G20 in Toronto in June?

If so then it's true that the US warned Europe of the dangers of a double dip recession, but the leading European superpowers put a strong emphasis on cutting back government spending.

Indeed, Cameron was praised by the hosts for the recently announced budget cuts as being a course of action that they were trying to steer the G20 towards.

You clearly disagree with the tax rises announced so far, would you rather see more severe cuts in their place or are you a deficit denier?

Incidentally, the ratio of cuts to tax rises was not so very different in the Labour deficit reduction plans.

No, I'm talking about when he visited the US. That'll probably be the last time :o.

It's a load of codswallop to blame Labour for the recession, as the US got a major one, too, despite having an extremely Conservative government for the 8 years prior to it (and still having a Conservative Congress).

The only ones in a period of growth now is Germany, who are not as capitalist. What does that tell us?

Whatever it is, we aren't listening.

DC is a clueless twonk who got his kicks by destroying peoples' property and then throwing money at the proprietors like that makes it all okay.

Value for money, my arse. This place is one of the biggest rip offs on the planet.

If we could leave, we would, but at any rate I'll encourage my children to get out of here asap rather than salaam to da master and freeze in the dark for the mistakes of his cronies because he feels that's their place in life.

Gorionine - you're right. The difference is that gold is trading at I think roughly 3x the price GB sold it at.

IvyKaty44 - you should declare any political allegiance you have. I notice the site you posted the article from is "for political professionals". Are you one?

I have a deep suspiscion party activists use these boards for marketing purposes.

In the interests of clarity, I am not a member of any party.

The economic condition the UK was left in by the outgoing Labour govt is a complete disgrace and is a direct result of the policy decisons they made over their time in power. Remember that roughly half the economic growth we enjoyed until the recession came from financial services and property.

The coalition govt have no choice but to make radical cuts as we are overspending our income massively. Even with these cuts the national debt will still be growing in 4-5 years time (as we will still be overspending)and will peak at something like 70-80% of GDP. This is before we add in public sector pensions (fault of all govts since the 50s) and "off balance sheet" liabilities such as PFI which I guess would at least double this.

We can't grow our way out of debt because consumer spending will be limited as consumers are still hugely over borrowed themselves.

We find ourselves in this position after having 15 years of relatively strong global economic growth.

Expat, you're allowing your hatred of DC to colour your reasoning. He is anything but a clueless twonk and I very much doubt he gets his kicks from destroying anything other than the odd pheasant. The reason Germany weathered the recession well is because the country was never deeply in debt and had a strong economy. Canada weathered the recession well too because they have extremely conservative banks. They also have an extremly capitalist government.

Greece and Ireland, on the other hand, are deeply in the shit because, just like the UK, they had idiotic leadership that spent and spent and spent and thought that there was no such thing as recession (or in GB's case, thought that he has banished recession forever). The US may have had a conservative govt, but their spending levels were anything but conservative. The recession was global, if you discount Asia, but the UK was in a horrendous position at the start of it. No money, no gold, banks in crisis, no manufacturing base to fall back on, huge and growing deficits and an electorate that was used to having its snout in the trough of easy credit and government hand-outs. How you can say that this was all incidental to the Labour governments tenure is beyond me.

Absolutely spoton FellationNelson.

The benefits system is a mess, and some people simply play the system to their advantage, eg I know several women of my age, 40s, who are divorced, who very deliberately work only about 16 hours a week so that they can take advantage of benefits. These aren't women with young children - their kids are teenagers or adult. Rather than working more hours, which they could quite reasonably do, they deliberately work fewer hours because it doesn't disadvantage them financially.

And the EMA and maintenance loan you describe - another total scam for many families. I know kids at private school FGS who get £30 a week to stay on in the 6th form simply because their parents are split, and they claim residence with the lower earner (usually mum, again being careful to do only a part time job!) And these are kids who see their dads regularly, and indeed daddy pays the school fees. So, what was intended to be a benefit to enable young people from genuinely poor homes to travel to college, buy books etc, has become extra beer money. This squandering of other people's hard earned taxes is a disgrace, and not surprisingly, we're now suffering the consequences.

Benefits need to be streamlined and targeted properly for the genuinely needy.