To think the last 10 years of austerity is being thrown away?

[Snowy111]

I know some of you will say it was a waste of time anyway, and we should spend and raise taxes to get out of national debt, but...

Osborne followed by Hammond were following the traditional Tory policy to reduce spending to get out of debt. People and services have suffered very badly over the last 10 years because of this. If the tories carried on with their policy for a few more years it would turn the trend of debt going up and the debt would start to reduce. It’s around £2 trillion, that around £60k owed for every person in the country on top of any personal debt people owe.

And BJ/Cummings are throwing it all away with their election bribes. The NI threshold rise, the spending promises. Plus the BJ brexit deal is worse for the economy than where we are now, so there’ll be less money coming in.

But people completely fall for the election bribes and don’t think that the tories will eventually revert to type. Austerity will come back again and it will be harder and longer because of the throwaways being given now.

But of course it’s always labour that are the irresponsible ones with the finances

Agreed.

Yanbu but there are a fair few people on here who agree with benefits cuts because 'they work so much harder than everyone else and why should they pay for shirkers etc.'

YANBU

It will be the tried and tested method of throwing a bone in and watching us fight while the wealthy get on with running the debt up.

But was austerity working? I think I read a statistic somewhere that said the national debt was currently higher than it was in 2008. I'll have to dig out the source, but if that's the case then austerity wasn't working anyway!

If someone doesn't mention Labour's magic money tree before 9am I will eat my slipper (not wearing a hat)

My first ever biscuit!

Not sure why!

www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk/

Do you know how long pay has been frozen for in local government?

River it’s because UK outgoings are STILL more than UK income, but the tories have vastly closed the gap. If we carried on without Brexit we’d be close to starting to reduce the debt, which is costing us all in interest.

Yep, here you go. Graph taken from ONS, with link to report below.

www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicspending/bulletins/ukgovernmentdebtanddeficitforeurostatmaast/june2019

If only we could believe they were putting a stop to austerity because they knew it didn't work and had compassion on the people struggling. It's all a con to get votes and as soon as they're back in they'll return to it.

I don't think the ONS data shows they have closed the gap at all...

It's something to do with headwind, fiscal space or something like that.

Governments are allowed to borrow more because the GDP is better, tax income is better.....

But yes - as someone has just said, it will be interesting to see the attacks on Labour this time because last time, it was all about 'the magic money tree'.

There is lots of spending promises and lots of promises of tax cuts as well.

Austerity is ideological. It actually harms economic growth.
All that suffering really has been for nothing.

www.economicshelp.org/blog/334/uk-economy/uk-national-debt/

The first election bribes were for TMs election, the original plan for reducing the debt was that we would be turning the corner now.

I think I read a statistic somewhere that said the national debt was currently higher than it was in 2008.

It’s more than doubled since 2008 and is now at around 85% of our GDP. Not much of a buffer for the devastation any sort of Brexit will bring to the economy.

www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_national_debt_analysis

It is all. Lies anyway, bj is not going to do any of those things, he will say anything to get back in and do brexit.

My conservative mp has defected to lib dems,. I don't know if I can trust her, but I am voting lib dem in the hope that it helps.

The debt didn’t go down with austerity. All austerity achieved was an increase in poverty and cuts to vital services. I had friends come over to the UK having not been here for years. They said it looked much more run down now since their last visit. Everybody looks more tired and angry. The UK is a very depressing place to be right now.

The promised giveaway is all bollocks. They have no intention of keeping to it. It would blow every Tory argument that austerity was needed because Labour was wasteful out of the water. It would prove that austerity was ideological and unnecessary.

In any case Johnson is in power now, if he knows services are on their knees and need cash, he has the power to throw cash at them right now. He doesn’t need to wait until post election.

The debt is still huge because the government has had to get the deficit under control first. According to the BBC “the amount being borrowed each year has been reduced from 9.9% of GDP when the coalition government took power in 2010 to 2.6% of GDP in 2016”.

A lot of people don’t seem to understand the difference between debt and deficit - this explains it well:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39897498

According to the BBC “the amount being borrowed each year has been reduced from 9.9% of GDP when the coalition government took power in 2010 to 2.6% of GDP in 2016

Our GDP has increased though in those 9 years.....

So are there other good ways of measuring our borrowing.

Basically - tax income vs spending. Difference is the deficit. Both fluctuate over a long period - is the deficit reducing relative to the increase in spending?

I suppose some kind of bar chart with each bar split into income and borrowing - the bar would increase in size over years but the relative proportion of income vs borrowing should decrease...

PSNB is the relevant stat, although not perfect at all. Recently taken a hit due to reclassification of student loans. This is the measure where ‘headroom’ discussed by former chancellor would have been taken from.

PSND is the debt

National debt has doubled in the last decade, so I don't think more austerity is going to work, no.

The economy isn't the same as a household budget. You can't scale back to generate more available money, that's not how it works. People need to be able to spend, to afford to set up small businesses and neither of those things happen during periods of austerity, because everyone is worried and playing it safe.

Gosh. The Tories suggesting they will get rid of the benefit cap they introduced isn’t barely veiled electioneering? I owe them an apology, clearly.

You can't beat that meme showing Johnson saying Britain deserves better - better than the past decade of Tories!