to boycott M&S, Next, Mothercare,Asda and all those other companies who think the cuts are a 'good' idea?

[mintyfresh]

So it is a good thing to make hundreds of thousands of redundancies, lose vital services and make the vulnerable in society pay for the mistakes of the bankers?

Who do these companies think spends money in their stores? Is it only private sector workers? Do they not understand that redundancies will affect their businesses?

Am so that it is more important for them to lick George Osbournes arse than think about the misery these cuts are causing for people who never made the mess in the first place.

I'm going to think very carefully about where I spend my money this Christmas....

'The total amount spent bailing out the banks was £117 billion'

wrong. That was the amount the government spent buying bank shares. They actually spent 1.5 trillion on managing the whole crisis

see here
or 850bn according to this

in my book, that makes the bankers responsible for the whole bloody lot and all this whinging about spending beyond our means is a bit of a red herring and jolly convenient if you are not keen on public spending

I shall do my best to boycot as many as I can - I don't recognise all the names on the list to be honest, but then this whole business with the cuts has made me nervous about spending much anyway - so it's just strengthened my resolve.

I will be doing my best to shop in small, local shops this Christmas and from now on.

Like everyone else I am worried about the cuts...but what I am more concerned about is:

After all this is over and we have all got "used" to reduction in services etc etc...will we ever get anything back? Will the services being cut be reinstated later down the line?

I dont think they will.

YABU

Even if your analysis of the huge structural deficit were correct, you would still be cutting your nose off to spite your face. I doubt the CEOs that signed the letter took a poll of the shop-floor workers prior to signing. So you would be punishing "normal workers" not the "fat cats".

Besides, your analysis of the mess we're in (blame it all on the bankers) is wrong.
The fact remains that we were running a huge deficit even before the bank bailout and credit crunch. The cost of the bailout is not included in the deficit figures at all, as we capitalised the costs (we effectively own the banks).

It's all very well to cry for Keynesian counter-cyclic spending but you must 1st do the other bit of Keynes: Build a surplus during the boom years.

As for the corporation tax cut. On the face of it, it looks like a huge slice of double standards and unfairness. but the principal behind it is to encourage growth and promote job creation. It's slightly daft to carp about where are all these private sector jobs going to come, from whilst at the same time opposing the very measures designed to promote them.

Et tu, Ocado?

Mind you, it's only the CEOs' opinions isn't it. They're probably just glad their pay and bonuses continue untrammeled.

Interest rates were in double figures from the mid 70s through to the early 90s (they were over 15% when I got my first mortgage in 1984) and were dropping long before Labour got into power.

What makes me really angry about Labour is how they wasted the "good years" by not building up any reserves. And I say that as a long time Socialist and Keynesianist who beleives fundamentally in free, quality education and health (no coincidence that my dad was a doctor and my mum was a teacher).

Corss-posted with Daemonbarber, but that is axactly my point: Labour failed in its duty to build a surplus for the "lean" years because of Brown's hubris (lovely word that ) that he had "banished boom and bust" .

And that was despite having all the revenues from North Sea oil, without which the UK would have been bankrupt long ago

CatIsSleepy,

That link from the Independent, that comes up with £850bn.
The figure includes £671bn Total Government spending in the financial year 2009-2010.

The figure is total spend, not just the bailout. It includes schoolsnhospitals etc.

CatIsSleepy
"That was the amount the government spent buying bank shares. They actually spent 1.5 trillion on managing the whole crisis"

You are really missing the point.
'Managing' the crisis isn't the same as adding the money to the deficit

Even your own link shows that £650bn of that was loan guarantees. They didn't pay anything, they just guaranteed the money to attempt to renew confidence in the markets.

Imagine you go out for dinner with some friends and one of them forgets her purse, so you offer to pay for her. Then she finds her purse so pays for herself. Do you consider yourself to have just paid for her meal because the offer was there? No, of course not. By the same token, you can't add £650bn of debt to 'the banking crisis'

Similarly, the money spent buying up bank shares was technically 'invested'
So at some point in the future, those shares can be sold and will pay off the national debt. Ditto the money used to recapitalise banks has been paid back and doesn't form part of the deficit

Whichever way you want to cut it, this country was spending well beyond its means on public services and the bubble had the burst eventually. When the bank bubble burst, everyone rounded on the bankers for being irresponsible. When the government tries to stop the economic bubble bursting by letting the air out a bit slowly, everyone rounds on them

Either you are in favour of reckless spending and dodgy finances, or you are against them.
But you can't have your bank bitching cake and eat it

I thought the list was pretty pathetic - was that all they could summon up in support

Anyone remember the letter to the Telegraph saying how the cuts should not be so savage. From over 60 leading economists.

details here

This 'announcement' is just pure unveiled PR. Shame it's quite pathetic.

e.g. Simon Wolfson (Next CEO) Conservative peer

And they say that public sector jobs will be offset by private sector job creation - there is absolutely no evidence of this at all.

'The figure is total spend, not just the bailout. It includes schoolsnhospitals etc.' daemonbarber where does it say that?

'The commitments include buying £76bn of shares in Royal Bank of Scotland and the Lloyds Banking Group; indemnifying the Bank of England against losses incurred in providing more than £200bn of liquidity support; guaranteeing up to £250bn of wholesale borrowing by banks to strengthen liquidity; providing £40bn of loans and other funding to Bradford & Bingley and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme; and insurance cover of over £280bn for bank assets.'
where are the schoolsnhospitals in all of that?

I sniggered at this bit

'So, each writing in our personal capacity, we would encourage George Osborne and the Government to press ahead with his plans to reduce the deficit'

when they all signed the letter with their job title.

And just for laughs........guess who said this ?

"Look, the decision on how we govern this country and how people vote shouldn't be driven by fear of what the markets might do. Let's say there was a Conservative government. Let's say a Conservative government announced, in that sort of macho way: "We're gonna slash public spending by a third, we'll slash this, we'll slash this, we'll do it tomorrow. We have to take early, tough action."

Just imagine the reaction of my constituents in south-west Sheffield. I represent a constituency that has more people working in public services as a proportion of the workforce than any other constituency in the country. Lots of people working in universities, the hospitals and so on.

They have no Conservative councillors. They have no Conservative MPs. There are no Conservative MPs or Conservative councillors as far as the eye can see in South Yorkshire. People like that are going to say: "Who are these people telling us that they are are going to suddenly take our jobs away? What mandate do they have? I didn't vote for them. No one around here voted for them."

I think if we want to go the direction of Greece, where you get real social and industrial unrest, that's the guaranteed way of doing it."

Nick clegg?

this is interesting re size of national debt

aside from the bank bailout it's pensions that cost us the most money...

who's up for having their pension slashed then?

Correct

The first word gives it away. He is incapable of answering a question without passively aggressively saying "look"

What a twat he is

YANBU,

You don't need to know or understand the economics of reducing public expenditure vs. increased taxes. In fact, it's a very fair bet that few if any of the signatories to that letter do. Unlike, hmmm, the many economists who've written advising strongly against the cuts in government expenditure (like Danny Blanchflower in The Guardian today). Unless of course I'm missing something, and guys like Simon Wolfson are actually classically trained policy economists...

In writing the letter, they are simply lobbying for a policy that they believe will benefit their company and their shareholders. And gosh, guess, what what's good for their company and their shareholders isn't necessarily what's good for the country. But hey, that's the way corporate lobbying works - push whatever you think might work for your company and sod everyone else.

Whether they're right or wrong (probably the latter) is almost neither here nor there - the fact that they're willing to potentially screw the country for the sake of their own little empires is the much more salient point.

[shudder] at Clegg and "look". yuck.

Couldn't agree more, cestlavie

something tells me you work in the public sector minty and are lobbying for your job. Have you not heard of the budget deficit and the huge amount of interest we are paying on a daily basis? How do you propose sorting this out if its not by cutting costs? And you can't blame it all on the bankers - the labour gov threw money at any cause they thought would win them votes.

I don't work in the public sector but do have some idea from friends and family of the services we are all about to lose dreamingofsun.

It is absolutely staggering what is at stake from these cuts - so much good work that has and is being done will just be wiped out.

Many people that will be affected are vulnerable and won't be able to fight for these services.

This is what I object to..

And it is NOT just bankers I blame for this crisis either but you have to admit they have royally contributed to the mess and will be getting away absolutely scot free with their huge bonuses - a bit like the CEO's of these companies that agree with the cuts!

Anyone who thinks public sector office workers earn their money is deluded. I am a private sector worker who is contracted into the public sector and I have seen this first hand. The amount of hours I have seen wasted is obscene. Normally these office bunnies get to just move to another government department, but not now. Oh dear, they may have to look for some real work while spending their 'rubbish' redundancy packages.

So you have seen some public sector workers waste their time and everybody else's money readywithwellies and that applies to absolutely everyone? I wish I had just stuck to the hours the school was open when I was teaching then, instead of giving up almost every evening, lots of the (admittedly v generous) holidays etc. Obviously I was wasting my time doing that and would have been paid the same amount no matter how little I did. However I had professional pride and cared deeply about the deprived kids I worked with and for.

Yes i will boycott Next don't shop in the other ones anyway. Also please boycott Philip Greens empire which includes Top shop as he is tax evader.

hornedtoad - i think it varies depending on what you do - teachers, healthworkers all seem overworked - , but i too am in similar situation to readywithwellies and know of people who aren't doing anything much worthwhile in public sector.

if the economic situation is not sorted the vulnerable people will suffer too. too much money will continue to be spent on interest payments rather than services.

agree the bankers are at fault (as well as labour gov) and still seem to be able to earn great swathes of money - should market be more competitive to drive down prices?