To not understand why people are blaming the coalition for the cuts

[tetrea]

The Labour Party were in power for the last 13 years and it was the Labour Party that racked up a structural deficit of £160 billion and an annual debt interest payment and there is a broad consensus that this needs to be eradicated. Why are some people having a go at Cameron/Clegg/Osbourne/Cable etc for doing what the majority of experts say is needed.

The cuts being made have the support of the IMF,EU,OECD,CBI etc so I do think they have a broad consensus. There is some opposition from arch-keysnesians but most economists have spoken at length about the dangers of our deficit.

Significantly = £10 billion give or take the odd penny

Am i the only person who can see my posts ?

pallette - actually the IMF have warned that cutting too quickly risks a double dip. And whilst the CBI (and the 38 Tory big-business leaders) support the cuts, the Federation of Small Businesses doesn't. Because it can see that taking too much demand out of the economy will be bad for its members.

Bumpsoon The national debt rose significantly in 2007 due to the banking bailout but the real problem the country faces is the structural budget deficit which the banking bailout did not contribute to.

I would probably feel more open-minded towards the cuts if it wasn't for the vile rhetoric about anyone who receives a benefit being workshy scroungers etc. that has been being pushed all the time by Tory-supporting papers and that suddenly seems to be more socially acceptable than it ever has been before.

It's depressing to discover that so many people seem sincerely to believe that anyone who is poor must be so only through their own laziness or other fault, and therefore that their suffering is deserved, not just something that unfortunately has to happen. Not even just deserved - actively welcomed as some kind of long-overdue punishment for the personal failings anyone poor is presumed to have.

Laziness can lead some people to be poor, but not everyone who is poor is lazy, and the demonisation of anyone who receives benefit as a workshy scrounger is poisonous, and it makes me much more untrusting of Tory choices about exactly where to make cuts than I might be otherwise.

The FSB didn't condemn the cuts it just said that the Government needed to formulate a growth package which is what Cameron and Cable said they were going to outline today.

I'll go with the Nobel-prize winning economists. I think they might know more about it than me. Unless of course some of you posters are Nobel prize winning economists in RL, in which case I apologise.

That should say "might know more about it than me or you". Hmph, too late for typing.

I agree with what RainbowRainbow said about the fact that they are enjoying it - that is disturbing. There's a seam of opinion both led by and reflected in the Mail etc. which seems to relish the idea of a bit of traditional poverty and desperation coming back - I don't think they want to see actual starvation, but they're not bothered by the idea of people getting a bit closer to that than they have lately. They seem to want cuts that are literally punitive. If deep cuts in certain areas are needed and/or effective to solve certain problems, then that's one thing, but relishing them and talking about scroungers getting what's coming to them - that sort of thing - that's really distasteful.

I see a lot of people slamming Cameron and particulary Clegg but whenever I see them they don't strike me as particulary enjoying making these cuts. I'm a single Parent so the cuts are not great for me but I accept them due to the dire situation that the country is in. I agree with the OP the real cause of the cuts is Labour

No it wasn't the banking bailout that happened in 2007, it was the collapse of the subprime loans industry when Fannie May announced it would no longer buy them, and the chickens of the credit default swaps coming home to roost in the US and then around the world that were the catalysts for the deficit to balloon.

I don't think there's any developed country that doesn't have deficit spending/ structural budget deficit built into its economy.

YANBU

Labour are largely responsible for the cuts, because they failed to save for a rainy day during 13 years of boom.

For years we watched them spend the country into the ground. They refused to listen, as their supporters cheered them on and sneered at anyone who questioned their divine right to rule.

If Labour are feeling a little victimised/ignored, thats because they are pretty much blamed for this whole mess, and rightly so. Many of us are praying that it will be a decade or more before they get near power again.

Get used to opposition :)

"did you not see all the cheering and smiling people behind them. Cheering on each cut. Instead of being somber as they should have been." - TheLastWitchFinder

They were cheering and jeering at Labour, not the cuts. Osbornes final twist of the knife when he revealed the average cuts would be LESS than Labour had planned was politics at its best.

Labour were floored, had no response. Totally outmatched and outmanouvered.

Then up steps Alan Johnson and jokes his way through the labour response. Punch and Judy slapstick on a day of such seriousness for the Labour core vote.

And what are they saying now? Not fair. Too fast. Wishywashy bullsh1t. They have no plan, no solution, and are trapped by their own responsibility for this fiasco.

Its a joy to watch.

(Condems probably should have left the mobility allowance alone though)

I really don't think that Clegg and Cameron came into politics to cut public spending by 19% and that they are doing this out of necessity rather than desire.

They refused to listen? To what? Far from being opposed to Labour's spending plans, as late as 2007 the Tories were promising to match them.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6975536.stm

Don't assume everyone who thinks there's something distasteful about the attitude of the Tories and their press to these cuts is actually a Labour supporter, either. I thought it was probably the right time for Labour to go into opposition but I'm still concerned about the Tory attitudes to the cuts. ANY government would have had to make cuts now after the financial crisis, and both sides promised to, but the divisive rhetoric of punishment and 'scrounger' demonisation used by Tory supporters is really unpleasant.

There is Punch-and-Judy on both sides. That's politics. The only time the House is sombre is when paying tribute to a prominent politician, or discussing a major terrorist incident like 7/7.

A lot of the cuts are misguided, but that doesn't automatically mean Labour would be doing it any better.

One good example is libraries. They were already being cut before the Coalition came into power, and Labour are doing their best to airbrush this out of history. The current library closures are being based on a snapshot of footfall - e.g., in one of our libraries in South Yorks, that footfall has dropped to 75% of what it was on a Saturday morning.

What they fail to mention is that Labour cut this library's Saturday morning hours from four (9am-1pm)to two (11am-1pm). So the footfall is 75% of what it was, on 50% of the opening hours... so pro rata, it has gone up.

'Divine right to rule'? Were they not elected several times, or did I miss something?

When you've been elected and asked to form a government, and not as a pig in a poke coalition, you have the right to assume your policies have the support of a majority of the electorate and to pursue them.

With a coalition that was cobbled together OTOH, the recent glee in the House of Commons was unwarranted. The word hubris sprang to my mind.

My understanding is that when Blair won his first election he kept his spending plans in line with Major's.

However, after his second election win, spenidng began to increase more than tax take.

And it increased from there...so the deficit grew and grew.

How we resolve this is one of the most important questions for our children's future.

Now, I don't want to see the most vulnerable suffer, but I do think we have to grasp the nettle. What cuts would folks agree to stomach? Cos all I see is opposition to every single proposition.

I really think Ed M would look less like a student activisit if he stepped up to the plate and said, okay, we don't like the tories plans, so here are ours.
So many of us are waiting.

I thought that the Labour Party had one big last spend before the election to buy votes but stuck in a manifesto commitment to cut spending by a significant amount

Now all this 'we would do it slower' schtick sounds both unconvincing and unapologetic.

Litchick I agree.

I would be very interested to see what sort of plans they would suggest.

Labour are in opposition and like all opposition they will criticise the Government but won't come up with any alternative solutions.