to think that St Vince Cable's halo has slipped..

[MulledWineandGingerbread]

.. and that he couldn't make a decision to save his life. First he'll vote for the tuition fee increase, then abstain, then for, then still might abstain...

He's making himself (and his party) look ridiculous.

The problem with the larger timescale is that you risk losing the confidence of the capital markets who may put the interest rates up on your bonds. Even if they don't you'll still end up paying more on debt interest if you prolong the period of deficit reduction.

Benefit scroungers buy things, don't they? In fact, if some of the posts on here aare to believed, they're always buying holidays and new TVs. Isn't stimulating the economy a socially useful function these days?

Slashing the deficit in Ireland didn't do much to improve the confidence of the capital markets though, huddspur.

Playing the benefits system is just as 'socially useful' as playing the tax system. Not very. But if you pretend large corporations that dodge taxes are OK because they employ people then you have to admit people who overclaim benefits are OK because they spend the money, helping to prop up the economy.

Don't see why it's laudable for a big company to employ people. That's what big companies do. Sod all use to the public if they are avoiding 90% of the tax bill, though. (Plus many of them shift jobs and money overseas anyway - Kraft is setting up some corporate structure to ensure Cadbury's profits go via Switzerland and not the UK.)

edam I actually think HMRC are to blame. They could have demanded the taxes, but didn't.

So why blame Vodafone?

Blame the idiot bureaucrats who are evidently useless at collecting taxes, even if they are legally owed.

Imagine that you owed HMRC £15k in tax this year, but you felt that the real figure was £10k. If they accepted the £10k figure (wrongly) - are you saying you would then volunteer to write a cheque for an extra £5k?

x-post edam

newwave I can't let that stand. The coalition's policies will do more to combat poverty than Labour ever did. If that is true it will be a first for the Tories, since when did a Tory ever give a toss for the poor, they even opposed the minimum wage

yy happy to blame HMRC but public spending cuts inevitably mean fewer people collecting taxes. And I'm willing to bet this government will make sure there are fewer people around with the skills to bring Vodafone or Tesco to heel.

newwave The latest figures show a massive rise in employment, and a small lowering in unemployment. There are lots of jobs being created.

The big drop in real-world and interbank interest rates, which depend so heavily on confidence in government policy, are helping too.

edam You evidently missed the announcement that there would be extra money going to HMRC to detect and prosecute tax evasion. Either £700m or £900m, I can't remember the exact figure now.

LFN so your saying that the amount of vacancies will match the amount of unemployed, can you say when this is likely to happen.

Then again i suspect they will be McJobs on minimum wage.

It is £900m

www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=515145&in_page_id=2

This government is putting more resources into tackling tax evasion than any other in history - it's just that you don't want to believe it because you prefer your own mental image of what they are like to the facts.

Prolesworth- The OBR forecasts say that unemployment is going to fall over the next few years

Prolesworth It is true, most of the jobs, especially at the low-end, will go to immigrants of one type or another rather than British citizens on benefits.

Dismantling the welfare state, as you so evocatively put it, or incentivising people into making socially useful decisions about their lives, as I prefer to put it, will help alleviate this. Align the incentives correctly, both for wealth creation and for work to always pay, and 99% of the work is done.

LFN ok I read that but i will wait to see it in practise.

My mental image of the Tories is based upon fact, the Tories opposed:

Minimum wage
Most equality bills
The formation of the NHS
The repeal of the poor laws

Thatcher left us with:

Low taxes for the rich
Crumbling schools
Crumbling hospitals
Rising child poverty

Have the Tories really changed that much LFN

The OBR is a Tory stooge

Prolesworth Let me let you into a little secret. 330k public sector job losses over 5 years (the new OBR forecast) can be filled almost entirely with hiring freezes.

Retirement and churn will account for a huge chunk of it.

Of course there will be some compulsory public sector redundancies, but not very many.

Remember, more than 150k extra private sector jobs were created just last quarter. Another quarter like that, and the loss of public sector jobs is compensated for already!

The OBR is totally independent the former head of the IFS chairs it

newwave Robert Chote is a Tory stooge? Don't make me laugh. If anything, he is biased to the left. At the IFS his lack of dynamic modelling meant that he bought into Labour's terms of reference. Giving money to the poorest decile counted as being "progressive", but getting them a job, so they were no longer in the poorest decile, did not.

And if he's a Tory stooge, why did the Labour members of the Treasury Select Committee unanimously decide to approve him as head of the OBR?

The Audit Commission which the Tories are closing was independent the OBR is a stooge just like Mervyn King

The OBR is based in the Treasury and gets it's figures from the Treasury officials. Maybe it will become independent but it sure isnt yet.

How is Mervyn King a tory stooge? he was the governor of the BoE when Labour were in power as well as now.

Oh, Mervyn King definitely thinks Tory, that is pretty clear - though I wouldn't call him a stooge.

He really believes in tight fiscal policy compensated for by temporarily loose monetary policy.

The Audit Commission wasn't independent, by any means. the fact that Polly Toynbee's husband ran it should give you a clue as to the slant it developed. Now I know that spouses don't always share political views, but in this case, they definitely do.