to be disappointed in the apathy of the county

[southeastastralbeing]

and the quickness at which the people seem to roll over and accept all these horribe cuts and looming redundancies - it's so accepting and lambs to the slaughtery (yes i know that's not a word)

i find it very depressing and wish i lived in france, where at least they're prepared to get on their arses and be heard

:(

sorry don't get the link from CTC to house prices.
if you look at benefits, years ago if we were on them we got income support, now we get JSA and CTC.
so can't see the link(sorry if that doesn't make sense but dd is being rather noisy)

It makes little difference if cuts are made directly or by stealth - those that rely on services feel it.

I'm not protesting as I don't know how it's going to change my life (probably won't other than tightening our belts a bit) or affect the issues I care about.

Books need to be balanced, certainly, but I'm a bit pissed off by the daily reminder that the cuts are going to be bad but are simply a legacy of the last government (cleaning up their mess). They've been in govt months now so these statements don't wash. Ideology will drive the cuts.

OK - but with these cuts will it tackle the fact that we give alot of money on welfare yet have poor social mobility and that we work stupidly long hours but our output is pretty low? Doubt it.

I suspect rather that it will further fragment society, higher education will considered a luxury and only for those with a good financial base behind them thus rendering us a nation with very few 'educated' people (and then we'll need more immigrants and no doubt the govt will rabble rouse unrest with that) and that we will be pushed back into recession as people stop spending as they're so worried about the future and the very ambitious timetable for reducing the deficit.

But I'm not protesting, yet.

Of course I'd like to see those who are happy to ride the wave of those who work hard and pay their dues held accountable. But at the same time I do not want to see the many many people who rely on help and services with no other option being made to feel ever more desperate. We already live in a nation that's pretty fragmented for these very reasons and it could get much worse.

didn't CTC replace something else? not sure what.
I always though the house price problem was due to the low interest rates and lack of houses iynwim

Well it's all very well saying that it's all wrong. It might be all wrong. You need to have a proper plan as to how to fix it though, and preferably one that doesn't leave the country bankrupt.

It doesn't help that if you consult three economists, you'll have at least six answers. There are some differences of opinion in terms of when and how far to cut. But the consensus even among economists is clear that cuts need to be made and budgets need to be balanced. The Labour Government just wasn't up to the job of handling it. This bunch might not be much better but at least they're trying.

well I for one am glad to get it.
I do wonder about protesting. seen the french on the tv and wonder how much money they are costing France.
we had a protest in our city the other day, we have one every few months, loads of people from out of town come in and try and smash a local factory.cost thousands in policing.

My father, a sheepskin worker, and mother, a clerical office worker, owned a house in the 1970s that is more or less the same size house as I live in, give or take a couple of rooms. My DH earns way way more than the national average and is in senior management. We have teachers living on this road, but they are in their fifties, teachers salaries wouldn't buy this house. I remember when teachers owned the bigger houses in the nicer areas!

House prices are ludicrous.

The problem is the Labour Government allowed too much cheap credit into the economy which caused a property bubble to develop which burst in 2007 and we have since seen something of a market correction.

Well, they have been training us for years. Even the unions don't have power and people can't afford to go on strike.

Even the cost of fuel does not get people angry and to think that just over 10yrs ago, the country almost came to a complete standstill when petrol was 80p a litre!

We will either stay apathetic or something is going to 'click' and all hell will break loose.

Riven- we were away in Canada for 13 months 2003-4.

Before we went away I could get in and out of the supermarket having spent £40 for pretty much everything we needed. When we came back, discovered we could not do that for less than £60 any more. Ok, the children were a year older, but the oldest was still barely 11 so not eating teenage style amounts. I don't think we started eating 50% more while we were away. Only thing I can think of is that prices rose significantly while we were away.

The real problem is the Labour Party were like a drunk in a pub and just couldn't stop spending money and so now everyone is going to suffer.

Hi, Southeastastralbeing!Nice to find someone likeminded (just joined mumsnet)

Here's a few people who are not apathetic.Mind are a charity for the mentally ill, their families and carers.They are concerned about the way welfare reforms are currently penalising the sick and disabled.Interesting reading.

www.mind.org.uk/campaigns_and_issues/policy_and_issues/making_benefits_fairer-welfare_reform

I think people need to wait to see what is announced in the spending review before they start marching and protesting

How can people be so illogical that they persist in laying all the blame at the door of the Labour party when a world wide recession is occurring? Is the American economic situation also the fault of the Labour party? Of course it's not.

It's either irresponsible or ill-informed to paint pictures of reckless Labour moneyspending ('like a drunk in a pub') and to keep using the analogy of household budgets. The Condems who are using that rhetoric are relying on most people being economically illiterate so they can use the economic crisis as an excuse to dismantle the state, which will leave a lot of people - a lot of people who have very little political voice, power or energy to argue back - extremely vulnerable. We need to protest these cuts in order to protect those people who need the help and protection that our state provides. We also need to protest them on a whole load of other ideological grounds - for example that it is unacceptable that only the wealthy should have access to a university eduction.

It is not the time to 'wait and see'. It is the time to be pre-emptive, because once things are cut and dismantled they are gone forever, and believe me the wheels are already well in motion.

Give it until Wednesday. Then we will see just what the cuts are and can make a decision. I would just like to say to everyone: Cuts in public sector mean deeper cuts to private sector (look at how puting miners out of work, put builders/electricians/shopworkers/hairdressers) out of work. Remember this, the income of public sector workers/benefit recipients benefit all others in our society, even if you don't think they deserve it at the minute. And the reason you don't think they deserve it is because the govt. and their lackies want you to believe that. Propaganda is powerful, but ultimately stage dressing.

Quattrocento, good post.

Labour were like a drunk in a pub unfortuately. Compare the UK position with Australia. Same worldwide recession, but the Aussie administration managed the finances better and their economy is growing.

Its not just about the recession though. Labour were racking up debt before the recession. We had a 4% deficit before the credit crunch and resulting recession. Labour built our economy on public and private debt and now we're going to have to pay for it

There's a much more intelligent explanation of why the economy is in the shape it's in here than any of this soundbiting is going to achieve. I just get frustrated with all this one-line over-simplistic slagging off of either one government or the other, which doesn't help anyone understand it any better (which I would argue we should all try to do if we're not going to let the Murdoch-meeeja make our minds up for us). Yes propaganda is 'stage dressing' but also, if it's the only information that a lot of people have about a situation, it becomes what they actually believe and form their opinions on. If we're going to see beyond the ends of our noses then we could all do with a well-informed understanding of the bigger picture. And yes of course we should look at a multiplicity of viewpoints, but please let's have well-constructed intelligent arguments about it.

monkeyjamtart, if you're in London, then there's a march happening on Wednesday, deets here:

If the cuts are not idelogical and necessary because we are supposedly on the verge of bankruptcy then how come HMRC just let Vodafone off of £6bn in taxes after orginally pursuing them for underpayment? Surely we need this money? I'm livid and there hardly any mention of this in the mainstream press. We are being lied to and ripped off! We are being told there isn't enough money to fund things like NHS Direct or school buildings when we can apparently afford not to take £6bn owed by one of the biggest companies in the world and buy Trident.

www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=514832&in_page_id

I still haven't heard anything about closing tax loopholes for the richest. In fact our loopholes are so attractive that I know of Americans on over £90k living here who are applying for British citizenship and giving up their US passports because the Americans are actually pursuing non-dom money stashed in places like Switzerland but we won't and they will pay less tax here.

@SpookyLettuce. I'm married to an Australian and have many close ties there. Our situation is nothing like the Aussies. Its like comparing apples and pears.

Firstly they were not as exposed to the financial services casino as us because their economy is more havily geared towards mining.

They are benefitting hugely from the boom in Asia, particularly China which buys most of their mined natural resources.

As long as China and the rest of Asia is growing, Australia will be okay. Even if they are better at managing their finances, their insulation from the worst of the downturn has nothing to do with them managing their finances better than us.

The thing that really gets me about all this slinging mud at the previous government is that yes, 20-20 vision with hindsight is a wonderful thing, but please show me the evidence of the Tories, at the time, predicting the crash and campaigning for different economic policies?

Yes, in hindsight we can see that the British economy was overstretched - but so did millions of businesses, banks, private equity firms and other governments the world over.

Look logically at the rhetoric the Condems are offering up: 'they were all reckless and irresponsible, but we are tough and fair and we will clean up this mess'. (Note the deliberate similarities they are drawing to bad parenting/good parenting, btw, very deliberate choice of language, as is all the 'it's like a household budget' stuff, which is also utter guff).

But it's not that simple, is it? The Tories weren't, as they are trying to portray, out of earshot whilst the Labour party were having some kind of debaucherous teenage party with the nation's cash. They were in opposition, in the same Houses of Parliament, with access to all the same information, and they didn't see the economic collapse happening anymore than anyone else did. They are constructing a fictitious, simplistic version of the truth after the event, and the deliberate nature with which they are trying to feed us this bollocks I find insultingly inaccurate and misleading.

Quodblit the Lib Dems did warn about the levels of personal and public debt for a few years before the crash. Opposition Partys do not have the same access to data that the governing party(ies) have.