Has the Government done anything so far which we can say is of benefit to society?

[Waltraut]

I don't really want to talk economics, mainly because there are opposing views of how the Coalition's approach is going to pan out [understatement]. I'm quite interested in the "small" things that governments do to make life fairer, safer, easier, more productive, or simply more pleasant for the citizens of a country.
I honestly cannot think of a single thing.

He's not ordinary. He's extraordinarily privileged. He's never had to worry about paying a bill in his life. He's never had a proper job in his life. He was a member of the Bullingdon Club.

He just hasn't got a clue how his reforms will impact on ordinary people - take the NHS. If you, and everyone you know or care about, uses private healthcare, then why would you really understand the significance of the NHS to ordinary people?

It takes an exceptional human being to bother to find out about and to genuinely care about, the lives of those so outside one's own experience, and in this sense, sadly, I don't think he is at all exceptional - in this sense he is, sadly, extremely 'ordinary'.

starrywillow - re Labour's plans over the deficit - as I understand it the main difference is that they would have cut slower. And in a more nuanced fashion, so affecting the very poor less (whose earnings all go straight back into the economy, as they cannot afford to save, unlike the super rich, whose money all goes abroad and benefits the UK not one little bit.)

Now that even the IMF, that bastion of socialism , have come out and said that Osborne's plans threaten to tip the country back into a double-dip recession as a result of cutting too much too fast, only a fool (ie Osborne) would refuse to consider a Plan B.

It's all very well saying that if you make huge cuts you get out of the deficit quicker, but of course that's nonsense. If you cut too fast, unemployment rises, so tax receipts fall and benefits costs rise - so you end up saving nothing at all and actually spending more. I believe the platitude is 'you can't cut your way out of a recession'.

Ed Miliband has never had another job either. Has Ed Balls? I thought I'd heard this week that he hadn't. I personally don't have a problem with that, I think that working your way up from being a tea boy in politics, preparing and writing speeches, briefing ministers etc is all important stuff. If you just pop in at the top and get handed a script to read without going through that process, I think there's something lacking.

You might know how to be banker for example if you work first, but you don't know how to be a dustman, on the other hand, you might know how to be dustman but you won't know how to be banker and you know nothing about the political machine. I count working for the Conservative party or Labour party, in the background, as a job.

I do know some really random things about GO.

His first jobs were folding towels and putting info about who had died the day before, into a computer.

If you want to stop privileged people working in certain jobs you must also stop unprivileged ones. After all, if someone who has lots of money doesn't have a clue about people on benefit then people who have always been on benefit haven't got a hope in hell of treating people who pay high taxes, fairly. But I doubt you can ban people from being a Chancellor because they grew up on a housing estate. GO's father made his money by having a very successful business, not because he's a Baronet. Plus, and this is something that confuses me so maybe someone can shed some light, he had a scholarship for Oxford, apparently, so how does that work if you're rich?

And DC didn't use private healthcare for Ivan, he used the NHS, that's why he loves it so much and why he made it a huge part of his campaign. GO and DC do talk from time to time so I think DC might have mentioned his experiences with it, to him.

Well... you can't borrow your way out of a recession either.

As I understand it, Labour would be cutting more slowly by the end of this parliament, but at the moment, they would have done it at pretty much the same level. Maybe someone has some figures. There's a 7p in every pound for Labour against 8p in every pound for this government, statistic that I vaguely remember hearing. So Labour, overall slower but not this year.

And just to go back to the previous comment while I remember, Ed Miliband has a very rich background, Ed Balls went to a private school and Harriet Harman went to the same private school as GO did so Labour are not paupers compared to the Conservatives, if you really do think that should matter, which as I've said, I don't.

We can't know who Labour would be cutting because they haven't said so anything about that is hypothetical.

And what I heard from the IMF was that they supported the government's strategy as of now but if growth continued to stagnate, they would expect some further proposals.

The cuts aren't huge. They hurt like they are, but they really aren't. The amount being cut is miniscule, compared to what isn't being cut. No one's saying it's not very painful and that each job lost isn't a tragedy, but the cuts are barely touching the surface so it's not quite as simple as if you make huge cuts you ruin all chance of growth. There was a recession and it's all connected, the problems are not all down to the government's strategy.

Britain?s Self-Inflicted Misery

For a year now, Britain?s economy has been stuck in a vicious cycle of low growth, high unemployment and fiscal austerity. But unlike Greece, which has been forced into induced recession by misguided European Union creditors, Britain has inflicted this harmful quack cure on itself.

Austerity was a deliberate ideological choice by Prime Minister David Cameron?s ruling coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, elected 17 months ago. It has failed and can be expected to keep failing. But neither party is yet prepared to acknowledge that reality and change course.

Britain?s economy has barely grown since the budget cuts began taking effect late last year. The most recent quarterly figures showed the economy flat-lining, with growth at 0.1 percent.

New figures released this week reported Britain?s highest jobless numbers in more than 15 years. Independent analysts expect unemployment ? now 8.1 percent ? to keep rising in the months ahead. The government has kept its promise to slash public-sector jobs ? more than 100,000 have been lost in recent months. But its deficit-reduction policies have failed to revive the business confidence that was supposed to spur private-sector hiring.

Drastic public spending cuts were the wrong deficit-reduction strategy for the weakened British economy a year ago. And they are the wrong strategy for the faltering American economy today. Britain?s unhappy experience is further evidence that radical reductions in federal spending will do little but stifle economic recovery.

A few years of robust growth would go far toward making swollen federal deficits more manageable. But slashing government spending in an already stalled economy weakens anemic demand, leading to lost output and lost tax revenues. As revenues fall, deficit reduction requires longer, deeper spending cuts. Cut too far, too fast, and the result is not a balanced budget but a lost decade of no growth. That could now happen in Britain. And if the Republicans have their way, it could also happen here.

Austerity is a political ideology masquerading as an economic policy. It rests on a myth, impervious to facts, that portrays all government spending as wasteful and harmful, and unnecessary to the recovery. The real world is a lot more complicated. America has no need to repeat Mr. Cameron?s failed experiment.

www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/opinion/britains-self-inflicted-misery.html?_r=4&ref=opinion