I hate the government

[wantanewname]

I hate the way they make so make public sector workers redundant and then infer everyone is a scrounger when there are no jobs, penalise the disabled, destroy education, librarys etc. But do nothing about the bankers, the tax evaders, destroy the morale of teachers (who have a bloody hard job for very little pay). What would I do if I lose my job? I am a single parent (yes the devil incarnate) and work for a local authority, coming up to my 2nd review in 2 years. If I do, then I'd be a benefit scrounger.

I hate the way they penalise the poor, the disabled and do nothing about the bankers and the rich who avoid tax. I'm sick of hearing about scroungers when there are NO FUCKING JOBS.

what worries me is that with the constituencies being redrawn along political lines the Tories will get a majority and then they will follow their own agenda...

...even after the consituency map is redrawn, Labour will win more seats than the Tories on an equal share of the vote.

"Thus, as YouGov's Anthony Wells shows, while the Tories need a lead of 7.4 per cent to win a majority under the new boundaries, Labour needs a lead of just 4.3 per cent. In addition, should the Tory lead fall below 2.2 per cent, Labour will emerge as the largest single party in a hung parliament"

www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2012/01/labour-win-lead-tories-changes

The old system was unfairly biased towards Labour, as every psephologist would acknowledge. But I guess most labour suppoprters would think that was okay, what with being the party of "fairness" and all that...

That doesn't sound fair. What has the BBC said about it? Have they informed the public about this unfairness?

Claig you might be interested in this animation clip, which discusses low pay

niceguy you say the last govt buggered up the economy. In the final year of the Brown govt, the economy grew 3.1%. In the first year of the Condems? 0.3%
Who buggered it up?
I'm not a Labour supporter, btw

Where did you get the 3.1% figure from? I don't recall any such growth. That would have been amazing given the economy was in the grip of a financial meltdown.

ChickenLickn, I watched that clip and it is very interesting, but I think he makes the wrong analysis.

He seems to believe that it is a problem of capitalism and that capitalism inevitability veers from one crisis to another in a form of crisis capitalism and that the 'capitalists' then go about fixing the cuirrent crisis such as wage depression by issuing credit etc. which then leads to the next crisis and so the inevitable wheel spins on.

He says he is surprised that the number of billionaires in India has increased during this crisis and that hedge fund mangers have taken ever larger profits. He thought that because of the crisis it would be the other way around.

I'm not surprised that the rich have got richer at all because it has been deliberate and they have engineered their increased riches. They have not blindly followed the wheel of fortune as it spun from one crisis of capitalism to another. They have been spinning the wheel, they are in charge, they have engineered it.

Capitalism is not a blind force that works like clockwork, it is created by people and people are controlling it and they are manufacturing events. He seems to think that the only solution is to scrap this magic clockwork capitalist system because it inherently leads to uncontrollable crises of capitalism, but he doesn't seem to understand that people are the agents and power is the agent and the crises are deliberate.

Credit is deliberately increased so that people become indebted and then the elite can pull the plug and impoverish people.

Why do they do this? Because they are the elite, they are people and they want control and they want to restrict the power of the people. The same elite are the ones promoting the climate catastrophe story and for the same reasons of control and impoverishment of the people.

He rightly says that we have given too much support to the City and this has harmed industry, but he then makes the mistake of impying that we should scrap capitalism to solve this. But industry is capitalism too. The answer is to control and regulate those who are creating unlevel playing fields, those who are pulling the levers of control, not to overthrow capitalism. That would be like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That would be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire, where Marxists would be in charge and would even remove the people's liberty.

I got the figures from here:
www.government-online.net/gordon-brown-did-not-save-the-worldbut-he-saved-the-uk-aditya-chakraborrty/

claig have you ever read anything by Marx? There's a reason why 'Marxist' organisations were called 'Social Democrat', you know. Presumably, you're basing your view on Stalinism/Soviet Union?

No I haven't read Marx, but I listened to that interesting animation by a Marxist thinker and I think he has the wrong analysis of why these events have occurred. He thinks it is due to capitalism (this mystical uncontrollable force that veers from crisis to crisis) and I think it is because of people - the elite who control the wheel of fortune and spin it to their advantage. Sometimes they use capitalism and sometimes they use communism, but it is the same elite in control of both and their objective is control of the people.

Link doesn't work for me? 404 - file not found.

What's their motivation? Pure love of power?

Look up Chakraborrty?

No it is not love of power. It is control of the population and to limit their growth and any potential challenge to their own power. They even refer to themselves as 'Masters of the Universe', they don't want ordinary people to have good economic or population growth. Why do you think they always talk about sustainability and limits to growth and how growth is bad and we need to scale back etc.? They won't scale back but they want to trick teh people into doing so. Teh marxist was srprised that there are more Indian billionaires and more highly paid hedgefund bosses. It's no surprise at all, they don't believe in sustainability for themselves or scaling back for themselves, those things are only for us - the lumpen masses, the proletariat, the proles.

That's why all the peoples of the world are suffering austerity programmes and some countries are being run by a puppetocracy, a technocracy which will implement austerity on the public. But don't be fooled like the Marxist was - the rich will only get richer while the masses get poorer.

The 'crisis' started with Lehnman Brothers. They could have bailed the whole thing out then for a mere bagatelle compared to what they have now taken from the public purse to bail out private bankers and it would have been cleared up then and there. But if they had done that then there would be no excuse to implement austerity on the public, no excuse to limit growth for the people.

No excuse to 'save the world' and no excuse to 'save the planet' and restrict the growth of the public.

The rich are still getting their bonuses, but this time funded by the poor taxpayers who are being thrown out of work. I haven't read about their profits, but I wouldn't be surprised if they start to grow and their bonuses start to grow while the public's growth declines and their benefits are cut.

Interesting...3.1% growth. Especially given the same paper's own statistics show nothing of the sort! Guardian Datastore. Given the figures in their datastore match up with other sites for example Trading Economics, I do wonder how he can justify that.

Honestly a 3.1% annual growth rate for any western economy would have been damn good news during a boom, let alone at the height of a crisis. In fact I don't think we ever broke 2% even during good times although I could be mistaken on that one.

I actually think that Brown/Darling did largely the right things when the financial crisis hit. Bailing out the banks, organising the G8 into some semblance of action. I don't think he was quite right though when he claimed he "saved the world" anymore than he was right when he claimed he had abolished boom & bust.

But don't forget Brown was chancellor for over a decade and frittered all the money away we were earning during the good times on various well intentioned but unaffordable schemes.

I dont think the Tories would have avoided the financial crisis either but I do think they wouldn't have made the cupboards so bare, giving us a few more options right now than we do have.

'niceguy'-

But don't forget Brown was chancellor for over a decade and frittered all the money away we were earning during the good times on various well intentioned but unaffordable schemes.

You mean by running a 3% deficit?

I dont think the Tories would have avoided the financial crisis either but I do think they wouldn't have made the cupboards so bare, giving us a few more options right now than we do have.

By running a 2% deficit instead?

The crisis would have been worse under the Tories because they would have further deregulated the banks.

Secondly, it's not because we can't borrow money in the short term to spend on Keynesian stimulus that the government isn't doing so, and in fact, the IMF and OECD have both said that the austerity measures are harming the UK economy.

The reason we're not doing so is because the Tories are ideologues who are committed to a small state, and wish to cut public spending, and privatise public services - and that's exactly what they're doing.

Re: constituencies being redrawn, am sure that I read an article saying that the Lib Dems would lose 11 seats. What the New Statesman article doesn't fully analyze is the possible Lib Dem votes and who would benefit.

Shame there isn't an effective opposition at the moment...

Miliband seems to be doing better lately in performance terms (sadly not in political ideas) Surely, only a matter of time until more unions disaffiliate? But go where instead?

"in fact, the IMF and OECD have both said that the austerity measures are harming the UK economy."

No they haven't.

OECD:
?The ambitious fiscal consolidation has bolstered credibility and helped maintain low bond yields,? it said. On its forecasts, which are calculated on a different basis than official UK figures, Government debt will breach 100pc of GDP in 2013. As a result, it added: ?Planned fiscal consolidation tightening needs to continue despite the significantly weakening economic outlook.?
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8920050/OECD-UK-has-begun-slide-into-double-dip-recession.html

IMF:
"Britain will be the best-performing major economy in Europe this year, according to the latest forecasts from the International Monetary Fund.
The UK economy will grow by 0.6 per cent in 2012 ? far weaker than previously thought but much better than the 0.5 per cent contraction expected in the eurozone.
Germany is set to grow by just 0.3 per cent and France by 0.2 per cent, while Italy and Spain face at least two years of deep recession, the IMF predicted."

www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2089264/UK-growth-outstrip-continental-rivals-euro-crisis-comes-head-2012-IMF-say.html#ixzz1lv0IgCic

OH YES THEY HAVE bradbourne!

The austerity is harming the UK economy, growth forecasts are cut as fast as public services, the economy shrank in the last quarter and we are borderline recession again.

Europe may be worse, but in the US they have increasingly strong growth and, guess what, policies for jobs and stimulus.

brad-

Those articles are from 2011. More recent articles indicate the IMF has changed position:

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8740736/IMF-global-economy-faces-a-threatening-downward-spiral.html

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Your thisismoney article about the IMF doesn't explicitly say the IMF supports the austerity measures, only that the UK is expected to perform better than europe.

This article, admittedly also from 2011, states:

Although advanced economies need medium-run fiscal consolidation, slamming on the brakes too quickly will hurt incomes and job prospects

"The bottom line"

The research described here shows that it is important to have realistic expectations about the short-term consequences of fiscal consolidation: it is likely to lower incomes?hitting wage-earners more than others?and raise unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment. These costs must be balanced against the potential longer-term benefits that consolidation can confer?such as reducing interest rates and lightening the burden of interest payments, permitting cuts to distortionary taxes (those that discourage desirable behavior).

Accordingly, fiscal measures that are approved now but kick in to reduce deficits only in the future?when the recovery is more robust?would be particularly helpful. Examples include linking statutory retirement ages to life expectancy and improving the efficiency of entitlement programs. In contrast, fiscal consolidations that are unduly hasty risk prolonging the jobless recovery in many advanced economies. So countries with the scope to do so should opt for a slower pace of consolidation combined with policies to support growth (Lagarde, 2011).

www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2011/09/ball.htm

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Spending cuts will damage British industry, say UK exporters

info.travelexbusiness.com/rs/travelex/images/Travelex_Confidence_Index_SEPT_10.pdf

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UK in recession until summer, NIESR warns as it calls for break in austerity to revive economy

www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2095746/UK-recession-summer-NIESR-warns-calls-break-austerity-revive-economy.html

The thing I hate most about this society is the obsession with wealth and profit as measures of one's worth. Not all profit is good profit and not all wealth is deserved. It's amazing how top business people tend to despise unions and accuse them of abuses of power and underhand tactics, yet expect us all to put up with bullying greed from themselves. And their income has always in the past been dressed up as being worth it because they are creating the jobs we all need and putting money in the economy, yet when they are laying people off to make savings and not put much money back into the economy, they get paid even more. There is no pretence even that they are worth it because they are the job creators. They are merely worth it because they are generating money for themselves and a small group of investors. Everything is focused on the City, still, and how everyone can become rich by being a shareholder. Shareholders aren't generally interested in the business of the businesses in which they invest, they are only interested in their profits, because the financial sector has become too dominant and it couldn't care less about anyone or anything but itself. And if the main source of the country's income couldn't care less about anyone or anything, then that attitude trickles down through the rest of society. Apparently, it's sufficient to go out to work just for the money and to leave all other considerations for your spare time. Except, of course, all we ever hear is that people are so hard pressed these days, juggling work and childcare and other personal responsibilities, that they don't have any spare time. So, the result is a society that couldn't really care less about anyone else, because it's too busy looking after number one. And I don't lay the blame there on a few scroungers at the bottom of the heap, I lay it at the door of those who are the architects of the obsession with wealth.

ttosca

Lagarde has, quite specifically, said that the UK is not one of the countries which can reduce its austerity measures (speaking 28th January 2012.)

*THE BRITISH government has no choice but to continue with plans to reduce its annual deficit, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said last night...

...Christine Lagarde (right) recently recommended that some governments had scope to slow down austerity measures in the face of strong economic headwinds.

But yesterday she stated that the UK is not one of them. ?Those countries that have fiscal space and that can slow down their fiscal consolidation efforts are very few, and I?m afraid Britain is not in that particular group,? she told Channel 4 News.

On a more upbeat note, Lagarde insisted that the IMF expects Britain to return to levels of growth that will help tackle rising unemployment. ?If you look at our forecast for 2012-2013, we?re clearly seeing an improvement going from 0.6 per cent positive to then two per cent positive,? she said."

www.cityam.com/latest-news/lagarde-uk-must-cut-deficit...