To think this silly patronising man needs to take long hard look at himself...

[MrsBuntyCuldeSacFunnyLady]

and his policies before telling the rest of the country what to do:
www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/oct/05/david-cameron-households-debts-speech
Of course households need to pay off their debts, nobody wants to be saddled with debts. It shows weak leadership IMO to now try and turn the blame of economic problems onto ordinary households, because months of blaming Labour is wearing a bit thin.

That's reading what I said much too narrowly.

I am maintaining that everyone finds it difficult to empathise with people whose situation is very different from their own. That's why I began with an example of MNetters posting links to houses worth 900k as dream homes having won £85m on the lottery.

Personally I couldn't give a stuff if the PM was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Indeed the patrician classes tend to see the bigger picture rather than getting sidetracked by emotive individual examples, and frankly I'd quite like a PM who prioritises the bigger picture over sentimentality.

I'm more disturbed by evidence of MPs feathering their own nests through expenses, or votemongering with no clear principles or long-term plan, than I am by any amount of inherited privilege.

I'll judge Cameron on the long-term results of his policies, and for that it's way too early to tell. All this outrage about his birth and wealth is mere inverted snobbery, and just serves as a distraction from the real business of whether his coalition is making decisions which will be in the long-term best interests of the country as a whole or not.

Another good post slhilly.
The thing is whichever side of the argument you're on the fact is he will really piss a lot of people off saying this, which shows just how out of touch he is... and really Cogito he IS out of touch. He lives in a completely different world to most of the people he represents.
And as for the banks - of course they are culpable, they went out and actively persuaded - using hideous sales push techniques - people to take out mortgages and insurances that they knew those people could not possibly afford. They were greedy, shortsighted and their behaviour was appalling and directly responsible for the state of the economy imho.
Oh, and now having had their free Oxbridge education, they want our children to come out of uni with debts of over 60 grand, while their own will be happily debt free climbing the greasy pole with daddy's trust fund to fall back on.
Just my HO.

Princess You can thank Tony "Labour" Blair's ridiculous policy of commoditising higher education for the reintroduction of tuition fees. When he created the current 'prizes for everyone' HE system it became unaffordable for the government to subsidise all students as there were suddenly too many. If we went back to a properly intellectually rigorous university system drawing only the top few % of students it'd be affordable to make it free again. But that would be elitist, so we can't do that.

And meanwhile so much of the UK economy now depends on the HE sector that even if we wanted to withdraw subsidy from the lower-performing universities to fund the better ones, we can't: so the current government has been forced to rack up tuition fees instead in order to sustain the sector. And if you look at that, in reality the government is still providing the money: it's just calling it student debt instead of government subsidy, and hence keeping it off the public balance sheet, when in reality a large proportion of loans will never be paid and hence are still in effect subsidies.

It runs way deeper than some malicious desire to keep the poor down, and blaming the whole mess on Cameron is absurd.

votemongering with no clear principles or long-term plan

I think that's what's getting up people's noses, Werewolef. Presumably Cameron has competent economists and fiscal engineers advising him. They cannot possibly be telling him the little people need to save a few quid each, then everything'll be all right. So this vapid advice is nothing but an attempt to push the "In it together" strapline and cover the absence of workable policy.

The fact that he's got it so hideously wrong, due to aforementioned lack of empathy, just makes it worse. Empathy isn't a requirement in effective government, however actually giving a shit about the people you govern is.

OTheHugeWerewolf, I find it truly ironic that you say you're interested in the bigger picture and then go on to talk about MPs' expenses. MPs' expenses are a classic case of an "emotive individual example", representing as they do an extraordinarily tiny fraction of public spending. They pale completely into insignificance compared to, eg, the monies wasted on NPfIT, botched MoD procurements, etc etc.

Well Tony Blair was another out of touch privately educated meh politician. There is no charisma in politics now - any that exists has to be airbrushed out for the media, which is a crying shame. The only excepyions are jolly panto clowns like Boris. Labour, Tory, Lib Dem? All unconvincing with no real opinions and no passion for it - no wonder people don't turn out in elections any more.
Subsidy or not, calling it student debt is NOT an acceptable answer. Saddling young people with this level of debt is a psychological barrier which will cause a lot of harm longterm. No matter whether they actually ever pay it off, their aspiration will be to do so, and it will be hanging over them. It's just not fair to load this onto them while the children of the rich, yet again sail through with no such disadvantage.

Sorry, having bad day!

the monies wasted on NPfIT, botched MoD procurements, etc etc. - ah, yes :) And the multi-million-pound IT systems that never work, including the one for the new benefits system which doesn't even work in testing. The £1-a-sheet copy paper and overpriced notepads sold to public bodies all over the country, the bulk NHS supplies that are more expensive than buying them individually ... not to mention the pilferage, wastage and cock-ups. It's a joy to behold.

I met someone who was involved in setting up new computery stuff at Westminster. They'd already spent millions on consultancy, software design, specifications, etc, etc. They hadn't laid in enough power to support the system

Note: The above doesn't only apply to this administration, it's been going on for ages. But It does somewhat grate when those same incompetents are telling us how to manage our personal finances.

I just wish we had some hard-nosed businessmen running the economy - people with years of experience at the sharp end instead of career politicians (whether born with silver spoons or not) who think they know how economies and markets work in the real world just because they learned about economics from textbooks in some ivory tower. How many of the top politicians in this govt. or the previous had any wide experience outside of politics?

You see the damage economically illiterate politicians can do when you look at the basket case that is the Eurozone, trying to have a single currency without first having political/fiscal union, then breaking their own rules on conditions for entry and debt management to try and hold on to their fantasy.

Let's have people in Government who can make money by running the country as a successful business first - then they can hand the money over to the career politicians to spend on vital services - NHS, education, social services, defence etc. though I suppose they would still manage to waste a lot of it

PS - hard-nosed businessmen would have been less likely to fall for the bankers' spiel either as they probably spent a good deal of their time finding out how slippery some of those wankers people are.

Why should I pay off debts incurred through careless greed? The banks didn't and got paid off by the taxpayers of this country. Never mind the bills, where's my bonus?

well said depob If only somebody wasn't too scared to ask DC that yesterday? x Re the finance issue, everyone knows as a business you need to spend money to make money. As someone said earlier upthread, I can't imagine his financial advisors are telling him to stick to the Plan, especially when the IMF have publicly warned DC of the consequences x