The true reason for deficit cutting.

[ivanhoe]

David Cameron is using the deficit as a cover to dismantle the welfare State and the role of the State for the above mentioned reasons, but none of this reality is being picked up by either Labour Ministers, Lib-Dem ministers, or the BBC Media. This reality is being dumbed down. The BBC media is compliant.

The very fabric of the role of what the State should provide in tax payers money to welfare, services and State pensions, is being whittled away under cover of reducing the deficit, and there is no opposition to it.

The Tory mantra of making painful cuts to reduce the deficit is little more than a smoke screen they hide behind to implement their ideology of reducing the size of the State, driving down wages, cutting benefits ect.

My guess is that they'd make pretty much the same decisions for ideological reasons even if there wasn't a deficit.

The cynic in me says how easy it is for the right wing comfortably well off, greed infested Tory supporters to ridicule and chastise people on the receiving end of Tory cuts in welfare. And how equally easy it is for the right wing press to encourage this, just to sell their papers.

The Thatcherist, hard line, anti social policies the Tories are forcing on us all makes them feel superior. And they perpetuate the suffering while living in their comfy homes without a conscience.

The Tories pretend to care about the pensioners having to choose between heating, or eating, the Tory's pretend to care about the family's wondering how they are going to feed their children today and tomorrow.

The Tories since Thatcher have been the same !

No longer a small "c" left of centre Conservative party with a good social conscience.
No, since the 80's they have been ultra right wing, hardnosed, and with no compassion but to condemn the poor to a life of misery and no hope so long as they can live in relative luxury.

This is how they want it, to keep the masses under their eternal control. The Tories only aim is power and control.

For that reason the Tories love it when the economy is bad, so bad that they blame the masses of poor for it. It is malicious and insidious.

And what makes it even more appalling is that the Tories actually do believe they are superior intellectually to everybody else.

This will be their downfall!, and I hope that this will be at the next general election in 2015.

The Tories deserve to be out of office for decades to come, if only to stop their bare faced arrogance.

Food banks in 21st century Britain, is as bad as the chronic homelessness we have, the awful old age poverty, and the low waged economy the Tories have nurtured throughout their 18 years of running Britain, 1979- 1997, and I might add, New Labour under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, 1997- 2010, did nothing fundamental to reverse any of it.

Britain has suffered Thatcher's ideology for over 30 years.

Ivanhoe.

[niceguy2]

His/her last post was very short & succinct. In fact probably the shortest I can ever remember. Maybe we have got our wish Breeze?

[Ilikethebreeze]

[Toadinthehole]

Labour did overspend. They allowed public-sector spending to keep pace with economic growth during an apparent boom. When the economy went south, they had no plan B.

If it is right for governments to spend their way out of recessions, it behoves governments during times of boom to reduce public spending as a proportion of economic activity as a whole. As it happens, this is precisely what the Tories did, and Labour too, until after the millenium.

[BaconKetchup]

omg toadinthehole you are just allowing the evil tory lies to infiltrate your life

[niceguy2]

Come on guys & gals. Ttosca has clearly shown from the incredibly long detailed posts that there isn't a debt problem.

Have you not read every word? Have you not understood?

If not you must be a right wing 'tory scum' sympathiser.

[ttosca]

Toad-

Labour spending - or overspending - was not the cause of the financial crisis.

Here is the historical data for public spending as a percentage of GDP:

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

Before the financial crisis, it was not anomously high, by historical standards.

Labour's contribution to the economic crisis of 2008 was deregulation of the banks and sucking up to the City of London.

The global crisis was not caused by Labour's overspending. The Tory's have created a stategic narrative that Labour 'left the economy in a mess' due to public spending. This is quite simply a lie.

They have done this so that they can take advantage of the financial crisis to implement ideological cuts against social security and reduce public spending.

Meanwhile, since the Coalition have come to power:

1. The use of foodbanks has risen manyfold:
   
   www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19953938
   
   
2. British real-term wages are suffering an unprecedented fall:
   
   falseeconomy.org.uk/blog/the-fall-and-fall-in-the-real-wages-people-are-taking-home
   
   
3. A huge increase in homelessness, forcing some people to Manchester to live in caves:
   
   www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/scandal-greater-manchesters-hidden-homeless-4303590
   
   
4. Disabled people who are unfit to work are declared 'fit to work', including someone with schizophrenia, and someone with terminal brain cancer:
   
   www.politics.co.uk/news/2012/11/12/man-with-terminal-brain-cancer-told-he-s-fit-for-work
   
   dpac.uk.net/2013/05/welfare-reforms-not-fit-to-work-leading-doctors-protest-at-cruel-disability-tests/
   
   
5. Child poverty set to increase thanks to austerity measures, says the British Medical Association:
   
   www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/may/16/austerity-increase-child-poverty-doctors

[ttosca]

And so on, and so forth.

The coalition has unleashed a shitstorm of hate and nastiness on society which is causing suffering and death to children, the poorest, the inform, and the most vulnerable.

The Tories are a thoroughly nasty party, and the sooner the public get rid of them and throw them in to the dustbin of history, the better.

[niceguy2]

See! It's all the Tories fault and life was tickety boo before the Tories came to muck it all up.

In fact, the Tory lies were SO f'ing effective that even Gordon Brown and Darling were believing it! I mean after all, they were also proposing cuts in public services to reign in the non-existent overspending.

[ttosca]

Those things I posted are the direct result of Coalition policies.

You keep saying "Everything was tickety boo before the Tories" because you have no arguments and have to construct a straw man.

Since you've been wrong about just about everything for the past year and a half or so about the economy, don't you think it's better if you just took a break for a while. Maybe took a vacation... did some reading?

[niceguy2]

Sheesh...even when I'm trying to help you by helpfully summarising what you say for those who don't have enough time to digest your longer posts, you have to be so mean to me.

I'm off for a quiet sob.

[Ilikethebreeze]

I havent read any of ttoscas long posts properly or even half of them
My life is too short for that.

fwiw, the other poster I said the same thing to, she changed about 1 month after I pointed it out to her.
So maybe ttosca will do the same?
Depends on whether she is more interested in mouthing off, or in what her actual message is.

[ivanhoe]

MiniTheMinx , Well said.

[ivanhoe]

Yes.

[ivanhoe]

MiniTheMinx , Well said.

[Isitmebut]

Lets not forget SOME LEADER had to address the deficit, as Brown was in denial, Darling came clean and got set on my Brown’s ‘attack dogs’ – and that Labour’s solution to the deficit was ‘more of the same’ incompetence/spending until our interest rates borrowing £160 odd billion a year reached Geek levels (from the £50 billion a year now on our national debt) and the money ran out.

And ‘here is one I prepared earlier’ with the proof that Brown caused the largest post crash budget deficits in Europe.

ttosca…..while I can understand for YOU to write your claptrap, that YOU need to get up in the morning believing that Labour’s profligacy under Brown unnecessarily CAUSED the huge Budget Deficit the Coalition inherited, but you cannot ignore the facts on the previous page.

For a start, why are you comparing our debt/GDP/expenditure to OTHER European countries, when their economies were structured differently to ours?

How many European countries had spend £billions hiring one million plus more State workers from 1997 and a quangocracy that rose several fold to £170 billion, THAT RELIED on the ANNUAL £60-100 billion (direct and indirect taxes) from the now virtually unregulated City’s profits?

UK GDP was therefore an unsustainable government spending and debt (government, company and consumer) house of cards that was going flatline at the first major economic recession, but when the ECONOMIC recession is preceded by a FINANCIAL recession, as our country REVENUES collapsed (in the City and many private sector jobs) our FIXED COSTS built up Prior to 2008 not only remained, they increased as they do in any recession via the Automatic Economic Stabilisers.

www.economicshelp.org/blog/glossary/automatic-stabilisers/


So lets keep this simple and I’ve tried to find a source that is fair ( overly in my view) and try wasting your breath defending Labour by challenging the following link – with graphs and charts.

www.economicshelp.org/blog/5509/economics/government-spending-under-labour/

“During the years 2001-2007, there was a sharp rise in government spending. In real terms, government spending increased from just over £400bn (2009 prices) to £618bn in 2008-09.

As a % of GDP Government spending also increased from 36% of GDP in 2000 to 46% of GDP by the end of 2008-09

This increase in government spending contributed to budget deficits and higher public sector debt.

After a short period of budget surplus (due to spending restraint) in the late 1990s, the UK experienced a budget deficit of 2-3% of GDP between 2002-2007.

By historical standards, this is relatively low. It still met the Maastricht criteria of keeping budget deficits to less than 3% of GDP.

However, the budget situation was also improved by impressive tax revenues from the housing and financial boom. When the credit crunch hit, tax revenues rapidly dwindled causing a marked deterioration in public finances.”

• If the government had entered the credit crunch with a budget surplus and lower public sector debt, the government would have had much more room to pursue a real and sustained economic stimulus. However, because there was already a deficit, the recession caused a rise in the cyclical deficit. The deficit of 2009-10 of 11% of GDP was primarily due to the deterioration in public finances, only a small part of this deficit was due to expansionary fiscal policy (VAT cut)

• A great failure of spending decisions of the 2000s, was to allow budget deficits during rapid economic expansion. A budget deficit of 3% of GDP may have sounded relatively low. But, in hindsight, this exaggerated the underlying deficit because tax revenues were boosted by tax revenues which evaporated during the credit crunch.