To be fed up with austerity and TM

[Theworldisfullofidiots]

So TM said I'm going to make a country that works for everyone at the same time as shafting education and health.
This government seems hell bent on austerity (which btw has never worked). I'm truly fed up with thus government and TM in particular who seems to have an inability to listen (see grammar school consultation).
AIBU to be totally fed-up. For me the last straw is cuts affecting my children's education. (it feels like the late 80s and early 90s all over again without a credible opposition - I worked in the NHS then and I remember the sigh of relief when the Tories were outed.....)

The Tories' biggest success is having persuaded intelligent people to believe the country is virtually bankrupt and that these "savings" - which disproportionately affect the lower waged and benefit recipients - are necessary.

Yes!

and labour's biggest failure is that they've failed to elect someone as leader that can get this message across...the support for the tories is in no danger of ebbing away.

I agree we need a credible opposition that can get people to understand that austerity has never ever been proven to work. It just reinforces the haves and haves not.

The Tories always manage to convince a lot of the Public that we can't afford to run our country. A lot of the rest have been convinced that it's because of the Immigrants/refugees, just like it was the fault of Sungke Mums and Somalians in the 80's.

""We're not actually experiencing austerity in the UK - Greece, for example, is undergoing austerity measures. As itsnoteasy said, we are experiencing cuts as a result of out of control public spending and debt.""

Who isn't experiencing austerity? As said, we are in Liverpool. Within weeks of the Tories coming into power, we have cuts in services for children on CIN and CP plans and disabled children. The two groups that were never supposed to be hit.

Just like last time, no money will be saved, they just plunge people into poverty and cause divisions.

The change in my area, because of the bedroom tax, won't ever be righted. The HA had no choice but to sell off their three bed houses, whilst the DWP pay more in rent for one and two bed properties.

The hospitals are picking up the slack in elderly home care, costing four times as much and as usual, the Criminal Justice bill will rise.

All that's before the 'jobs and money making for the boys', that we find out about afterwards. Up North our shopping centres are becoming Pound/land/world/bakery monopolies.

Outside Aldi today, two women were discussing the price increases, then one said "are you waiting for your taxi", to which the other replied "I'm not getting one whilst things are going up", so there's a fare missed out on. She may drop to having her hair done every couple of months instead of six weeks and it goes on, so everyone has a less money and jobs can be cut. Which doesn't help our economy, whatsoever.

Well said hefzi

YANBU. Austerity measures dont work, according to some economists.
Blaming Gordon Brown and forgetting what the banks did is at best disingenuous. Not to mention the role tax evasion plays in dragging us all down.

www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2015/apr/29/the-austerity-delusion

On the plus side, more and more people seem to be coming to this conclusion. Or am I deluding myself with hope.

The big challenge is how to explain complicated economics to ordinary people who are busy worrying about whether they can feed their kids tonight: how to get decent information out there past the media (who I see as largely to blame for Labour's problems), and how to ensure that gets read and acted upon at the voting booths.

Who on earth is it that votes these people in and how do we stop them?

Mark Blyth's book Austerity is good.

Itisnoteasybeingdifferent Thu 23-Mar-17 07:05:24

^^ totally agree.

hefzi Never ever read a post of yours I dont find myself nodding along too in agreement.

I cant understand the mentality that things change so quickly, TM has been pm for months,....The tories for all their faults were given an empty exchequer.

The pain we see now is a combination of factors and one of those was the last long labour governemt

The Tories are excellent at blaming others. As I understood it they have actually spent more than their predecessors.

My partner thinks we will be stuck with them for the next 15-20 years. Labour are useless at the moment.

Countries cannot continue borrowing for ever. They are not identical to households, but still need to pay their way.
Many of you are forgetting the 70's, when we had capital controls, galloping inflation and,eventually, the IMF needed to come in as no-one would lend to us.

Quite right, caroldecker, they can't continue borrowing for ever. So we'd better stop the Tories austerity package since that is somehow massively boosting borrowing hadn't we.

We could tax those top few who are gathering larger and larger percentages of the worlds' wealth unto themselves instead. Just a thought.

Why are the 70s still quoted as demonstrating the complete failure of all public spending and redistribution models for all time, but the 2008 collapse is not a similar demonstration of the complete failure of privatisation?

The trade deficits of a country are cyclical.

Austerity is a belief system with not one iota of evidence for it

Time to put taxes up to pay for the services people want

Time to abolish caps on local councils - so they can provide local services to local people

Not spending money on education and health services isn't good economic sense it's total fucking lunacy.

It's like 'saving money' by buying a crappy car and then having to spend way more fixing it when it constantly breaks down than it would have cost to buy a better, more reliable car in the first place.

Yep I was a Nurse in the late 80s early 90s and this feels like deja Vu!!

My husband who has always been a Tory voter has totally changed his mind and has said he will never vote Tory again after seeing what this lot have done to the NHS.

missy both my PIL are the same. They were dyed in the wool Tories, had never voted for anyone else, and MIL was a staunch daily mail reader ( she said it was because of the puzzles). Neither of them will ever vote Conservative again after the shameful goings in of the last 12 months, they've both said.

Gordon sold off the country's gold reserves, which was great! We don't produce much as a country these days, and obviously export even less. We are in decline. We had it good, but that is over. Therefore education doesn't really matter for those in charge, coz what is the point of having an educated workforce when there are not many jobs for them. Maybe student loan debt is helpful (but not for the student). I often find myself wondering to whom we owe all this crippling national debt? And the other countries experiencing this? Are we all being held to ransom by some blofeld type character, like in a James bond movie?

I mentioned the 70's as proof you cannot borrow or print money for ever. You have to balance the books.
Government income as a % of GDP has remained at around 40% since the late 60's. Many different tax rates and policies have been tried and they end up at about the same level.
So only choice is grow economy and/or cut spending. Economy has been amongst the fastest growing in the world, so no evidence austerity is failing.
There is a discussion on speed of book balancing, but commitment to it gives confidence to lenders.
2008 was not a failure of privatization, but bank regulation (encouraged by the Labour Party). Banks have never been nationalized.

The imnternational financial crisis came out of the US and spread around the world.
Brown helped the Uk avoid the worst of it. (He didn't save the world)

The financial crisis was enabled by the US - in the interests of higher bank profits - neutering financial regulations that had been in place since the 1930s.
This allowed them to underwrite a huge number of risky mortgages and complicated high profit / high risk transactions.
They couldn't keep juggling all those plates in the air, so it all came crashing down.

The Obama administration put in regulations to try to stop a repeat, but Trump has vowed to repeal these - to increase profita for the financial institutions.

If Trump does this, then expect another world financial crisis in a few years

Fast growing economy, one of the richest countries in the world.
Billions in cuts, to healthcare, education, welfare, programmes like sure start. Restrictions on all kinds of things to ''save money''
yet huge tax cuts for corporations and little to no crack downs on tax evasion and loopholes. While we tax the poorest in society for having the audacity to have a spare room.
So wheres our money going?????
Austerity will actually cost more money, as is evident in our ever growing debt and deficit.
When someone with a brain cell gets into parliament - whoever that may be, fixing this mess will cost billions.
I'm also not sure why you think running a household is like running a country. Spend to invest not spend to cut. Investment across the board (not just for the privileged few) creates growth, growth creates revenue.
BTW, Theresa may says she's listening to me and on my side, in her first speech as PM. All she's done so far is tell me anyone my age who falls on hard times won't get housing benefit just because well, everyone has rich mummies and daddies to pick up the bill, don't they
oh and my council tax is rising. While an urgent health appointment of mine has been put back repeatedly (3 times) the newest appointment I have will mean, presuming It isn't put back again, an 11 month wait in total.
How fabulous.

TM and Cameron have done a fantastic job with the mess they were handed. You need to compare the UK economy compared to others in similar positions either geographically or other ways (US, EU). It is doing fantastically, much to the chagrin of remainers who expected the country to collapse the day after the referendum.

You can't run a country into the ground (previous Labour governments) to remain popular with certain demographics by handing out unlimited benefits to those who don't want to support themselves.

If Labour were so great, they'd be in power.

Realistically, Labour won't be back in power until 2025 which is a peculiar thought.