'Doing the right thing'

[Minimammoth]

If anyone else uses this catch phrase for this government, I am going to scream very loudly. I would like to know by whose measure is it the right thing? Eh eh.
Am off for a lie down in a dark room now.

I've got more faith in politicians that are at least aiming to do the right thing than those purely concerned with the easy thing, or the popular thing... or the wrong thing.

Yeah, sure, Cogito.

I agree with Cogito. The right thing is usually not popular with a lot of people, especially after they have become used to a government pandering to them.

Sorry, I just think its propaganda . And I'm not falling for it.

Could be worse, could be lesions will be learned.

Rather than propaganda it's an expression of conviction. We're quite at liberty to disagree. Tony Blair said relatively recently that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was 'the right thing to do'. I'm quite sure he believes that, but we don't necessarily have to concur.

I agree we don't have to concur. I am more synical than hopeful these days, and constantly being told that we are doing or believe we are doing the right thing does not give me faith in the decisions being made. Especially by people of all parties whose judgement has been shown to be lacking.

CES - I think that there is a balance to be struck. Blair has ruined his reputation and legacy (which would have been good one) by getting involved in Iraq. The process by which the military involvement gained parlimentary approval was underhand and deceitful but will be justified by those concerned as to them the 'right' decision was made. There is nothing wrong with having strong beliefs - I generally like politicians who actually believe in something - but I have a problem when this belief can be used as a justification to ride roughshod over our democracy.

Of course there's a balance. That's always the case with leadership. We vote politicians in on the strength of what they believe in and their vision of the next four or five years. That's pretty easy when the future is rosy and the 'right thing to do' is no more contentious than mom and apple pie, but when all the options on the table are tough ones, sometimes all they can ask is our faith in their judgement.

I agree with Cogito. The right thing is usually not popular with a lot of people, especially after they have become used to a government pandering to them.

The government has been pandering to the people? Really? When did this happen?

Do you think the government pandered more or less to the public than it did the banking sector and large corporations?

Cogito-

Rather than propaganda it's an expression of conviction. We're quite at liberty to disagree. Tony Blair said relatively recently that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was 'the right thing to do'. I'm quite sure he believes that, but we don't necessarily have to concur.

No, it's propaganda, not an expression of conviction - certainly in the case of the coalition.

They Tory scum may have conviction, but it's not that there need to be made 'hard choices' (yeah sure, hard for the majority of the public, easy for Osborne's chums) in order to correct the debt and deficit for the well-being of the economy and therefore the public.

The conviction which the Tory scum hold is that a smaller state is a better state, and less state spending is necessarily better state spending. This dogmatism is what is causing a double-dip recession and for the UK to be in poor shape in terms of growth compared with many other european (and Atlantic) countries which have not enacted such extreme and inappropriate cuts to state spending.

So it certainly is propaganda. The message intended for the public is: "We're making these hard choices' for your benefit'. The motive behind the message is "This is a chance to exploit the situation to drastically reduce the size of the state, and damn the consequences."

Of course there's a balance. That's always the case with leadership. We vote politicians in on the strength of what they believe in and their vision of the next four or five years. That's pretty easy when the future is rosy and the 'right thing to do' is no more contentious than mom and apple pie, but when all the options on the table are tough ones, sometimes all they can ask is our faith in their judgement.

Politicians are not prophets or religious leaders. The public shouldn't be expected to have faith in their policies. They're supposed to demonstrate competence, reason, and possibly precedence for their policies.

Drastically slashing spending during a recession has historically lead to worsening of the situation. So why should we have 'faith' that this time things will be different?

Of course it involves faith. The Governor of the Bank of England this week admitted that the future is difficult to predict making strategy particularly difficult. So competence and reason we should expect from our politicians but using the past as a benchmark is not guarantee of future performance. BTW... at the last count, public spending for 2012/13 is forecast to be £683.4bn. In 2011/12 it was £687.6 and in 2010/11 £697.9. 'Drastically slashing?'

It shouldn't involve any more faith than any other decisions in life which are subject to uncontrollable events.

Asking to have 'faith' in a bad policy which has shown to be disastrous in the past is irrational and no way to run government.

And yes, public spending is being cut drastically. I don't know if your figures are in real terms or not, but a £14 billion dollar cut over two years is certainly drastic.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) claims that the government?s six-year plan to reduce borrowing will see public spending brought down from its peak of 47.4% of national income in 2009?10 to 39.3% by 2015?16. The institute?s findings indicate that the period from April 2011 is set to be the tightest five-year stretch for public spending since at least the Second World War. Out of 29 leading industrial countries, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts that only Ireland and Iceland will deliver sharper falls in spending as a share of national income than the UK between 2010 and 2015.

www.publicnet.co.uk/features/2011/09/02/driving-efficiencies-across-the-public-sector-%E2%80%93-how-it-can-act-as-a-catalyst/

Of course it's not irrational. What else is politics if it's not a belief system where we're asked to sign up to certain principles in the promise of achieving a particular vision of future society? We then expect the winner to act consistent with those principles and deliver the vision we vote for. If there was only one possible vision of the future and only one opinion about what was the 'right thing to do', there would be no need for more than one political party.

Of course it's irrational, because we're asked to believe that severe austerity in times of a recession is supposed to balance the budget and bring us out of recession. That's an irrational belief because there's no evidence that it will work, and plenty of precedence to show that it won't work.

It's not about having a 'vision for the future'. We know the Tories have a nasty vision of the future where the state is almost non-existent, where public services have all been privitised, wealth inequality has increased to unprecedented levels, and the poor and the weak are left to die in the street.

However, if the economy remains in deep recession, there will be no jobs, no enterprise, no political stability, and no future.

What the Tories are doing is pure dogma. It's not even about ideology of 'vision'.

Well ttosca and cogito, thank you for your views. I am still waiting for the outcomes of the 'right' decisions. I am not filled with confidence, and not persuaded by words. I believe the politicians are trying, but I have no confidence in their abilities to manage the economy, or the country.

The phrase is 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'. When the last government were spending like crazy, handing out cash left, right and centre & being intensely relaxed about record personal debts, I'm sure they thought they were doing 'the right thing', tackling poverty. We ended up with a generation of people dependent on tax credits to pay off their loans, cards and mortgages. Not the intention of the strategy but the unfortunate outcome.

"Please stop repeating hateful bile with no basis and no attempt at understandhing history or context. You're just making yourself look foolish"

'Hateful bile?' Don't know how you reach that conclusion. It's a matter of record that the last government were paying families with annual incomes as high as £55k benefits in the form of tax credits. As the subject is 'doing the right thing' & the noble intention was to eradicate poverty, I'm sure for many low-income households that was the effect. But for others, those tax credits became part of the income they depended upon to finance the easy-credit lifestyle of the first 10 years of this century. Prices go up, tax credit thresholds go down and suddenly we have a lot of people on relatively good incomes complaining that they can't make ends meet.

'Hateful bile?' Don't know how you reach that conclusion. It's a matter of record that the last government were paying families with annual incomes as high as £55k benefits in the form of tax credits. As the subject is 'doing the right thing' & the noble intention was to eradicate poverty, I'm sure for many low-income households that was the effect. But for others, those tax credits became part of the income they depended upon to finance the easy-credit lifestyle of the first 10 years of this century. Prices go up, tax credit thresholds go down and suddenly we have a lot of people on relatively good incomes complaining that they can't make ends meet.

I reach that conclusion because the you consistently support the policies of the Nasty Party which is killing people and putting a huge number of people out in the streets:

www.24dash.com/news/housing/2012-06-29-Crisis-43-rough-sleeping-increase-a-scandal

The discussion about benefits coming from the Tories and their apologists is not rational. The Tories don't care who they kill or make homeless, so long as the state spends less money and the rich can be taxed less, their apologists are irrational - not because there is no such thing as dependent families in the UK and people who take the piss - but that the propaganda against this alleged 'culture of dependency' is completely out of proportion with reality.

The Tory apologists who complain so much about a tiny minority of people cheating on their benefits or taking the piss are the same ones defending tax evasion by large corporations and the rich, and furthermore govt. cuts to the HMRC dept., when tens, possibly up to a hundred billion pounds could be recovered as govt. revenue if there was a crackdown.

Get a grip. The vast, overwhelming majority of people who claim JSA or benefit are not committing fraud, and are not taking the piss. These cuts on welfare are quite literally making people homeless and sometimes killing people.

flatpack-

The two are not mutually exclusive. The last government was spending like crazy. It doubled government expenditure between 2001 and 2007. In fact this government will spend more than any other government in history.

UK total public spending since 1963 : £bn and % of GDP

www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/apr/25/uk-public-spending-1963#data

All figures in percentage are in percentage of GDP%

1992-93 271.5 43.3% 1993-94 283.7 42.7% 1994-95 296.4 42.1% 1995-96 309.5 41.6%

Prior to the financial crisis, the highest spending during the 'last government' (New Labour) era was:

2005-06 524.0 41.2%

Oh look! That's less than the previous Tory government.

Damn. Wish you could edit messages. Formatting came up all screwed. See link.

flatpack-

Incorrect. People's standards of living have risen because they have taken on debt. Our standard of living is far higher than it was 30 years ago. They weren't taking on debt to retain the standard of living of 1980.

A minority of people took on debt to pay for luxuries. The majority simply took on debt to stay afloat. Our (the majority) standard of living isn't much higher than 30 years ago when measured in terms of wages (in real terms) and spending power. Wages have remained, for the most part, stagnant. There have, of course, been other developments as science, medicine and technology progress which means people live longer and have more 'things' like home gadgets, etc.

What's important is job security, disposable income, and savings, pensions, etc. All of these things have declined for the majority. The average Brit is now £25K in debt. They have less job security than in the 1980s, have to pay for Higher Education, usually need both parents to work in order to bring up a family, and most can't afford to get on the property market because house prices have increased manyfold since then.