To think that Labour voters are living in cloud cuckoo land if they think there wouldn't have been severe cuts under another Labour government?

[Callisto]

I'm sure I'll get roundly flamed for this, but why are you all so upset about the cuts that the Tory/Lib Dems are proposing? We are screwed financially, absolutely screwed. Labour would be making the same sort of cuts had they ended up in power again. But it seems that Labour voters can't believe that their own party (who caused a lot of these problems in the first place, however you look at it) would be making the same cuts.

It is quite bizarre that there is so much venom directed against the govt for doing the necessary.

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YANBU

Totally agree Callisto. I have also noticed that the BBC are already being uber negative about everything. Why can't people try and be positive? [hides under desk]

Totally agree. Sure, nobody's happy about cuts and tax rises, but people have to realise the 'burying their heads in the sand mentality and spending money the country doesn't have' had to come to an end.

YANBU - totally agree

YANBU. I voted Labour but am feeling actually quite chilled about what happened in the end. Labour ran a gravy train for a long time and now the coalition are going to have to start kicking people off. If Labour had won they would have had no choice but to do the same.

YANBU - the debt mountain is huge and has to be tackled now.

Who was it that said whoever won this election would probably end up out of power for a generation because of the swingeing cuts they'd have to make?

YANBU OP, whichever party or coalition came into power would be faced with making radical cuts in public sector spending and finding ways to bring more money into the Governments coffers.

However, different parties would have approached this in different ways, but the bottom line is that cuts were coming whoever won. I think that it's this ideological difference that is making people so worried.

I'm going to hold my judgement on cuts until they actually start announcing what they're going to do. No point in getting worked up over speculation - they're going to have to consider every single permutation before making concrete decisions, and I'd be more worried if they weren't doing this.

Of course there would be cuts whoever gets elected

The order those cuts are made in will be different

And different people's interests will remain protected

If you're skint now, you'll just be more skint soon

YANBU I am so sick of listening to my die-hard Labourite mates whinging on about how awful life will be under the Con-LibDem coalition and complaining that they didn't win. I am no right-winger (and in fact work in public sector so no doubt can expect vol redundancy soon) but the cuts were going to come either way. Totally unrealistic to say that if we had a Lab govt it would all be lovely and just like the late nineties again.

Goodness, I really thought I was in for it when I started the thread. I'm feeling very hopeful too, and I agree about all the bloody news reports being so negative. Why on earth shouldn't a coalition work? Plus (as others have said already) each party cnacels out the others more extreme ideas. I would love to see some positive, grown up journalism about the whole thing.

Well so far, I haven't seen anything that affects the less well off more than it affects the well off. And tbh, child tax credits are the most ridiculous waste of money. Why on earth take the tax out of a persons wages just to give it back (with ensuing fuck ups, cost, confusion etc). Why not just give tax breaks instead?

Am I being unreasonable in thinking that the Tory supporters shouting loudest about the Labour government being guilty of war crimes for involvement in Iraq/ Afghanistan are living in cloud cuckoo land if they think a Conservative government would have opted not to go to war?
Hypocrisy lies on every side.

I 100% agree with you Callisto (there's a thing I never thought I'd say!) on the tax credits issue. Despite being a not-well-off family, I only ever applied for tax credits during their first year. The thought of re-applying year on year (massive load of forms) with all that could go wrong - inadvertently giving incorrect information, being overpaid and having to pay it back way down the line etc etc made me think it was not worth it. Consequently, my family has been worse off than we were when we just simply had the 'married man's tax code'. And don't get me started on the £250 for every baby born. How many of those £250s will languish in forgotten accounts and never claimed eighteen years on?

i am very optimistic and am so very hopeful that the country will be in a better financial situation by the time my children (now teens) are looking for work and homes. we really do need as a society to be more realistic about what can be done financially. in the meantime i am doing my best to teach politics and finance to DCs in order that they can see exactly why i nag them to do their best in school and not just enough to get by. hard work but i think it will be worth it.

YANBU. whatever government is in power, people are going to hate, because we're never going to have a governing body who can please everyone and have unlimited pots of money.

YANBU

Of course Labour were going to bring in cuts they were just being less honest about it.

As for the CTC fiasco, claiming tax from the IR is an absurdity in itself - I think that the Labour govt were banking on some people being unable to make the claim.

Let's not even go there with the original ability to claim online where £££££££££££ were fraudently obtained by people inputting false or stolen NI numbers

Grumpyoldhorsewoman - as a fellow grumpy old horse woman I think we would probably agree on an awful lot in RL.

cakeywakey "I'm going to hold my judgement on cuts until they actually start announcing what they're going to do. No point in getting worked up over speculation"

Come, come, CW, that is faaar too reasonable. You should be shreiking hysterically about what-ifs and rumours.

I was very surprised to hear Mervyn King make, effectively, a political point in saying that they were correct to get on with addressing the budget deficit now, rather than waiting for a year like Labour proposed.

I work in the public sector, and we were already planning for cuts, whatever the result of the election. The difference is that the conservatives were saying they'd cut deeper and quicker, so we'll probably have to go with our "worst case" cut planning instead of the "not too deep" version. But either would be painful!

"we're never going to have a governing body who ... {has] unlimited pots of money."

I wish someone had told GB that.

YANBU, but I think society in general (not just Labour voters) is clueless if they think the cuts are nasty old Tory initiative.

We all should have known it was coming.

As a socialist though, I want to see the banks taking the brunt of the cuts. It's not fair to make ordinary citizens suffer whilst the fat cats schmooze on