To not understand how people can justify it

[ijustdontunderstand]

Okay, not a bun fight I just want to understand how those who vote Tory can think the cuts to disability benefits are OK.

This is NOT saying if you vote Tory you're a bad person, at all, I just want to understand. Will you vote them in again knowing?

whats PA?

There'll be anti-Semitic tories too.

And racist ones.

And sexist ones.

All parties. We can look at all parties and see people we don't like and don't agree with.

We just need to be careful that what we believe and are accusing people of is true.

Passive aggressive, lurked.

I'd say you were more sarcastic, myself.

So I'm passive aggressive if I use sarcasm and point out the fallacies in arguments laid out here?

Ah, well, guess I am then. You're still wrong,

Sorry, bit vexed this afternoon and snippy.

Question for the Tories: do you see rising socio-economic inequality as desirable?

GUNPOWDER - the sooner the better I think

I grew up in a slightly lefty household with a severely disabled father so you can guess where my sympathies lie. However I had become so utterly disillusioned with the Labour party that in the last 3 elections I have voted Lib Dem, Con and Con. The last election I voted for Cameron, but with misgivings. However the last few months I have thought that I totally did the wrong thing. I’m not saying that I don’t have misgivings about Labour either – because I do, lots of them - but I think Osborne’s plan to take money from the disabled is completely and utterly despicable. I am speaking, by the way, as someone who has an income of approx £50K a year so I am, in part, a higher rate tax payer so the tax cut wil be good for me. However it’s not as if I can’t manage on what I have is it? To “live within one’s means” means cutting back on luxuries (ie I should have one Mediterranean holiday a year instead of two, or I should stop buying so many clothes?). It does not mean the disabled being forced to live hand to mouth, or worse, because their expenses are already higher than the average due to special needs and now any extra payment they had is being taken away.

Osborne appalls me but personally I think Cameron is worse as he knows only too well the issues that arise from disability. Not only was his son severely disabled but his father was disabled too. Of course they always had pots of money to help them cope, so maybe he doesn’t have any empathy. Okay, strike the maybe.

I think it stinks and I wil never vote Conservative again as long as these two are in the party and quite possibly never ever again, regardless of who is running it. I’m writing to tell him so too, not that it will do any good of course.

I was arguing discussing politics with my Tory fil last night and he believes the Conservative party has reduced child poverty and he had statistics to prove it.

I had DWP statistics that disproved it. Half of the issue is the manipulation of data and media bias. I suspect the tories of the world believe that the conservatives are reducing the socio-economic gap by raising employment.

Ok I've tried two email addresses to contact call me Dave. Both bounces back and the 'contact us' form only allows 1000 characters which is insufficient. Any ideas?

The deficit myth

that article doesn't do the problem justice. Look at claim 2. It makes out like the deficit didn't balloon under Labour. It did. The reason that the deficit to gdp ratio went down, isn't because labour made any savings, it's because the gdp rose dramatically. In fact, the deficit also rose dramatically, just not as much as the gdp did.

The problem with this is that if you are going to be keynsian about things, and labour wants to be, you are supposed to decrease spending in good times and increase in the bad times. But labour didn't do that. Deficit and debt didn't go down when times were good. they went up.

of course, then, when a crisis hits you have a double wammy effect. you have higher debt than you should have, but worse you have high spending which increases dramatically as a percentage of the gdp when gdp drops.

it's also gives labour a pass when people say they didn't cause the global crisis. of course they didn't. But they essentially let the city write the laws, so when the crisis hit, it hit us hard.

magratsflyawayhair - I have this one noted down, do not know if it works or not: [email protected]

Ah Chilli, the deficit should only be measured in terms of % of GDP ( the terms the chancellor uses today) because there is no point measuring it in cash terms because we don't know in what it is in proportion to.

magratsflyawayhair - I have this one noted down, do not know if it works or not: [email protected]

Does he have a constituency email? Maybe try that one?

so when the crisis hit, it hit us hard.
It hit everybody else hard too. Funny though, the non austerity budgeters remain in recovery.

Oh and if measured in cash terms the highest deficit run by any government prior to the crash the Tories did it at £51.6 billion in 1993. Labour are the only Government to have run a surplus in 3 consecutive years 97/98, 98/99, 99,00

The Tories still haven't got the deficit down below what to what it was prior to 2008 (in cash terms) either. So your putting the deficit into cash terms doesn't do you any favours.

The deficit mostly also occurred during the period when we were fighting 2 wars (both of which the Tories backed) so again your profligate spending mantra is neither correct nor valid.

Lets be honest, it wasn't public spending that brought down the economy, it wasn't investment in road, rail, hospitals and schools. The massive increase in deficit occurred when we had to bail out the banks and stop the economy from tanking completely. This would be the banks that the Tories wanted to have lighter restrictions on AND still haven't put controls on in 6 years in power.

The parliament one is deactivated now he's PM. Il check his constituency site and see what I can find.

Failing that I'll send it snail mail!

Government to have run a surplus in 3 consecutive years 97/98, 98/99, 99,00

so what happened? They should have kept that up.

The deficit mostly also occurred during the period when we were fighting 2 wars (both of which the Tories backed) so again your profligate spending mantra is neither correct nor valid.

Odd. sounds like you agree with me there. Whether the tories agreed isn't the issue. that was a labour decision to go to war and spend that money killing people.

The massive increase in deficit occurred when we had to bail out the banks and stop the economy from tanking completely. This would be the banks that the Tories wanted to have lighter restrictions on AND still haven't put controls on in 6 years in power.

yup. again, it sounds like you agree, but don't.

I don't think the tories would have done better. They would have fought the wars. They wouldn't have regulated the banks better. But those problems do fall at the feet of labour because they were the government at the time. Saying the tories would do worse I guess is a strike against the tories, but frankly it's only guess. Why not blame those who actually made the decisions and not the ones who might have done the same?

The reason that the surplus wasn't maintained is because the whole country needed investment! Schools, hospitals and infrastructure all over the place were falling apart due to 18 years of Tory under funding.

I don't agree that a surplus needs to be maintained at all, national debt when at low rates is fine, and has been far higher in the past!

Your Keynsian point doesnt really stand because Labour ran a lower deficit than had been run by previous governments but while investing in vital public services. It was necessary.

Anyway, all of it adds up to basically saying that the deficit myth, and debt reasons for the current governments actions are fallacious, and that really they are a mask for reshaping the economy and the country into one that favours the wealthy far more greatly, one that isn't progressive.

Doff your cap now...

Why not blame those who actually made the decisions and not the ones who might have done the same?

That isn't really much of an endorsement for the Tories. (Although to be fair, it's not clear what labour would have done differently to the coalition government)

Atleast Keynesianism is a recognisable economic theory. 'Austerity' just seems to be economic branding so that we can all think of ourselves as chirpy cockneys surviving the blitz.

Clearly IDS read this thread!

Your Keynsian point doesnt really stand because Labour ran a lower deficit than had been run by previous governments but while investing in vital public services. It was necessary.

war is a vital public service? By your own words that's what the deficit was about. why are you letting labour off the hook for one of the most disastrous foreign policies?

That isn't really much of an endorsement for the Tories.

i hate the tories slightly more than I hate labour. so, it wasn't meant to be an endorsement of the tories.

people see a false dichotomy. we can give another party a chance.

No one should give the Tories another chance. No one with a conscience.

0phelia funnily enough I feel the same way about labour...

"I am unable to watch passively whilst certain policies are enacted in order to meet the fiscal self-imposed restraints that I believe are more and more perceived as distinctly political rather than in the national economic interest," Mr Duncan Smith said.

Interesting comment.

YGGO I asked about your money to make the point that you are lucky to have it. You dont need it and you didnt work any harder for it than many people who have a lot less. But perhaps that embarrasses you as you descend to abuse and claim that everyone on the left does it. Actually its right wing people who do that most often and are always looking for dirt. When they cant find it they lie about it and repeat the lies often in the hope that they are seen as truth. It's the same with the economy.

The Labour Party did a lot to reduce the deficit run up by a Tory government who had destroyed the economy. The deficit increase was caused by bankers, who largely fund the Tory party. When the banks were sold that money could have been again used to reduce the deficit, instead of being blown on tax cuts for the bankers who caused the problems.

It is quite amazing that Tories cannot see that lower GDP under Tory governments is not something to try and use in defence of the deficit. We have lower GDP because we have a Tory government.

We would have had a banking crisis whichever party was in power but we would have recovered from it by now under a Labour government.

The level of inequality we have now is not only unjustifiable on any rational ground it is also bad for the economy. Perhaps even IDS can now see that and isnt just thinking about his political career.