Is The IMF taking Over perhaps just what the country needs

[WaitingInForMyFoodShopping]

Ok bear with me. This sounds like an idiotic thing to say because if the IMF are involved it means the country is officially in a mess and the IMF will slash spending and enforce their own budgets and rules. So anyone on benefits might lose them, NHS funding will likely go down, same for the police force etc

It just occurred to me today that the country is in a complete mess and there isn't really any end in sight.

Headlines today - I didn't read the detail but I am just getting more angry, helpless feeling and frustrated and want 'somebody' who has some balls to step in and say enough. Things change from today. Todays headlines are rising taxes, 1/10 high school kids on benefits, families of migrants can claim benefits from day 1 even if they don't speak english.

Now i will caveat this by saying the housing market does need sorted but lets be honest that's not what they are trying to do here - it's just about raising taxes. I also say there is another articles claiming ' a crackdown on bring families into Britain' - something that made me snort with derision giving the whole small boats/protests going on just now.

I mean lets just get to the point. Does ANYONE think RR/KS are able to fix this mess. I know they didn't cause it. I know they have been in office less than a year but if we give them another year are they able to fix it. I personally don't think so. It is going to need someone very tough to brave the mess and take it in hand (Maggie Thatcher where are you now).
So what are we left with - voting Reform - which I have joked about doing but i don't actually think that is the way to go. That's borne out of desperation. So who is going to fix it then.

AIBU to think a complete reset, painful as it will be by the IMF is just what the country needs?

House prices drop unexpectedly amid property tax fears - latest updates

The ‘ludicrous’ migrant family rule pushing councils to breaking point

One in 10 secondary schoolchildren on disability benefits

Any cuts will provoke howls of fury. The insane outrage of people with no skin in the game when the WFA cut took £150 away from a raft of people who didn’t even miss it made it clear it was just political posturing. Nothing this government did would suit some people. They could deposit £1 million in every bank account in the country and some people would still whine.

If France needs to be bailed out by either the EU or the IMF then markets attention will switch to the UK and a bailout could be self fulfilling:

https://news.sky.com/story/how-frances-government-reached-the-brink-of-collapse-and-the-staggering-numbers-behind-its-debt-crisis-13423047

People said to be ‘whining’ re cuts, including disability. Labour have that kind of belief and loyal support no matter what to from some, but not many.

Disapproval rating up again. Only 11% approve v 70%

First of all North Sea Oil was discovered in the sixties and was on line by. 1966.
The whole country was dug up to lay a new pipe network

North Sea Oil came online in 1975. Both mooted to save the country

Also definite lack of charities dispensing food and. good will where l live..No food banks at all Didn't exist. Families helped each other out. As for the politics of it all and the unions l think you could argue for ever.

So can we lay this matter to rest please.

I used to be a Socialist and my father was a miner when Joe Gormless Gormley as my father called him was a player I have never voted Conservative.

In fact, I have not voted for any party for over for over forty five years as they are all spineless and out for themselves and their friends.

RIP

I think you are addressing the wrong poster

The have to decide which howls of fury they prefer I suppose.

Agreed. Labour are sunk because they cannot make the decisions they need to to protect the economy without the endless whining of their economically clueless, pathetically childish ‘rebel’ MPs.

We need to get rid of the pensions triple lock, benefits for ADHD and high functioning autism, and reduce the WFA threshold to £20k a year income, £30k a year joint household income.

Some of the cuts did go through via the Welfare Bill. It is only the PIP element that was withdrawn.

My guess is that once the Timms review has completed, changes to PIP will be made via a Statutory Instrument (negative procedure?). Much easier to get through and is how changes to benefit regs are often made.

Possibly yes. We'll have to wait and see. Labour's main opponents here are their own MPs, however they choose to implement changes.

Its all historical record, fact is NS oil didn't hit significant production rates until late 70s, Thatcher had the lions share of this and privatised it.

Heath etc had to deal with 70s oil price shocks.

If you don't vote, i'm afraid you cannot really complain.

Fingers crossed it stays like that. Timms is at least a year away, so who knows what might change in that time.

Meanwhile, disabled people have all this hanging over their heads.

The Tory media and others loyal to the Cons, moaned like XXXX

Its a gross distortion to say it was mainly Lab MPs.

Bottom line its an extremely toxic subject, which wont win votes or support, hence no party has tackled it.

Yes. On this, you and I are firmly in agreement.

It's not a gross distortion to state that it was Labour MPs who brought that bill to it's knees. Rightly so imo.

I don’t think Labour are ever mentioned as the reason. 11% still have faith a few on here. You’re right though.

"The budget deficit currently stands at 5.8% - that is almost double the 3% allowed by the European Union."

That's going to end well.

Generally oppositions parties job is to oppose and bring down the government in any way possible (there are exceptions to this, votes of significant magnitude, but this wasn't one of them).

Since Labour hold the majority the responsibility lies clearly with their own MPs on this one, and a significant number must have been willing to rebel in order to overcome the current large majority.

In a nutshell.

Exactly. They have a large enough majority.

The issue for Labour is that the economy is slowing, national debt is at a record high and the annual budget deficit is also at a record high of £131 billion per year or 5% (which means that the national debt keeps rising) and productivity is amongst the lowest in the G7.

The options available to the Government are:

1. Cut spending - as we saw with both the WFA and PIP proposed reforms this is seemingly not possible due to political opposition from their own MPs and those in receipt of such payments.
2. Borrow the money and increase debt - this didn't work out too well for Liz Truss and the markets are becoming less willing to lend money hence the recent 27 year high bond yields.
3. Increase taxes - such as the NI increase on employers. However although this raises money in the short term this has the effect of further slowing the economy in the medium term meaning lower tax receipts meaning more tax rises and a further economic slowdown etc into a doom loop.

Unlike France we can't get bailed out by the EU (thanks to Brexit). Labour will continue in power until 2029, the financial situation will get worse, the economy will decline further and taxation will rise more.

The reality is that Labour governments lead to economic crises whether that be 1978 or 2008 or 2028.

But my favourite quote on this is by Alexander Tyler in the 1790's:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy"

It's a good quote and its age tells you that there isn't often new stuff in politics.

Just a rehash of old events that have long since been analysed.

The last part reminds me of loose evacuations of another kind which might be the same thing for where we are.

Agreed. The country is broken as the Tories tried to buy votes by slashing NiCs in a totally unaffordable fashion, and Labour tried to buy votes by promising not to increase the taxes that make up 70% of our tax take, totally backing themselves into a corner.

If things don’t improve there’s going to be a heck of a crash, but this might be a good thing. At least then the public might realise that drastic government spending cuts are the only option.

The other factor in that quote is having enough people earning to not want high taxes. When you get enough people not contributing at a low level it’s easy for votes to just run with ever higher spending and taxes.

If we’re at that point it might take an economic shock to fix it.